(We got a wild hair, had a different house drop in our laps, decided to list ours briefly and see what happens)

Last week, Nate asked me what I wanted to take with me from this space we have poured ourselves into creating. I looked at him and desperately thought, I want to take the dang drywall! The steps on the back deck where we had our first meal after pulling the carpets out of the house— a pot of pasta, two forks, and wine straight from the bottle (you opened it with the drill, remember?)! I want to take the 120 year old floors I sanded and stained, the knob from the nursery closet door that creaks when it swings open! I want to take the sunlight that pours into the upstairs bedroom window and the way it feels to sit as a family on the old, green couch all squished together in our cozy loft. I want the grape vine and the cherry tree we planted years ago, the front perennial bed that I’ve added a layer to for nearly 8 springs.  The copper sink in the bathroom that has bathed two of my babies beautifully. This house— more than a building, a structure with our marriage and our family and our growth written all over it. I can walk into any room, and memory rushes at me, smacking its lips with the way we stormed and then calmed during projects, the late night hours planning, the the way this house graciously made space for each sweet soul it has sheltered. Ask me what I want to take with me, and I’ll tell you about the bathroom mirror and the dining room lights and the yellow cabinet, but what I really mean is this: I want to take you. You and our babies and I want you to promise me we will do it all again, only this time with small hands helping us along and a baby on each hip. 

 Way back in the beginning, when we were sitting on my couch with mugs of coffee and the gray dawn mourning someone we both loved, he had me feel that spot on his neck, his eyes not meeting my eyes.   Later that night she brought me her board book-- a lion and a lamb on the front, Psalm 23 in picture form inside and I wept.  

I pushed the chore list aside today to sit down and try to write because it is all cluttery and fluttery inside (my heart, usually so steady, is beating all over the place, waking me in the night, stealing my breath), but I got this far and then I wept.  Someday, saints, we are all going to stand at that throne and we are going to beam at each other over love for Him and it will be all that matters-- our love for Him, His love for us.  Simple and true.  And not one of His people will be missing, sheep gathered before the Good Shepherd.  Not one soul will be taking time off, or distracted, or skeptical, or triggered.  We will be there, so close-- bodies reaching and earnest, erupting in joy and praise and I truly cannot wait.

We’re all dying, of course. But to watch someone die at a faster rate than you, to watch his body disappear and his voice go and to see the shudders of pain, hunger and loss right in front of you, right next to you on the brown couch that smells leathery and new, in your back yard under the cherry blossoms, in the car seat, him still and shallow and red hot from radiation— that’s more startling than remembering your own mortality (or dashing from it).  He was my first best friend and he has always been larger than I know to write. We are one moment slogging through the woods in our mud boots, children excited about making it further down the creek than before, the next moment hitting our first century ride on hot Nebraska pavement, jumping from our bikes into the pool, sweat and chlorine rolling off us. He is walking down the airport terminal all shades of beige and brown: pack, pants, muscle and even then you know he’ll do it again and again.  You expected him to stay in Vietnam or the Sudan or Guatemala or even in the Middle East, but he didn’t. He moved three blocks down and when you had your second and third babies, he was there. There on the back deck late at night, there on the sailboat, the bicycle, the beach. Still living a large, untamed life but also taking time to wrap your kids around his finger, to refinish a desk for her birthday, buy the first nerf gun and chase your son around with the leaf blower. He watched them ride their first bikes, cheered them on with you and your smiles split your faces.  Last week you told your children about the strong words promise, hate, never ever. How careful we must be with them, how we need to save them and only spend them when absolutely necessary.  And while those words left your mouth, you used them inside I hate this for him, I hate it.  And you do. But you love things, too. As strange as that is. The milkshake shack in between your houses and the evening walks from there to his couch. His excellent goodbyes (this is new, the eye contact, the hugs). Cleaning his kitchen, hearing your daughter’s prayers, worshipping next to your sister while the tears roll and the hands reach and you get new layers added to the word Hope. 

There are, of course, worse things than death. There are much brighter things, also. A friend once told me to not waste my suffering and that has become the strongest prayer I know right now. I hate this. But I love pieces, too (hope, eternity, knowing The Healer, and milkshakes). I’m raising three littles and my vision is sharpening. I’m teaching them to love one another and I’m also praying over their grown futures: may they one day have the great honor of carrying each other, may they please. 

David's son dies and that man after God's heart picks himself up off the floor, dresses, and goes to the temple to worship.  I hadn't been able to read that without halting, wondering over his response to such a horrific loss until there I was: driving home from the appointment that required me to sit with him in a small, brown and beige room with graphs and pictures and the wails of a child next door seeping through.  We sat there trying not to talk about it, talking around it, breathing in sighs and unable to hold still, all nervous fingers and tapping feet.  Him cajoling first the receptionist into letting me go back with him Oh, I see the note on your chart, I'm sure your sister can be in the room with you and then the nurse into explaining what she may have seen in his PET scan, her telling him about the color, about the way it might light up on the screen, using the word pretty.  

We sat there and heard hard, hard things.  On the inhale of relief, the color was not everywhere, an exhale too quick and then something caught, has been caught ever since somewhere behind my sternum, somewhere between my lungs and my heart and I have thought to google the thrumming, to pull up a graphic of those organs and to locate the sharp jab that hasn't left since the layout of his diagnosis, the steps for his care, the percentages and stages and the doctor's repetition of You're only 34.  You're so so young.

I was driving home and it was beginning to darken and I was listening to The Blessing for the seventh time when I realized that I wanted to be there-- in David's temple, bent, face down.  I craved The Notre Dame and its way it has of making you feel small, making you feel like you are indeed on humming, holy ground, the singing of men echoing off the walls all the way to heaven's floor.  I nearly pulled to the side of the road I need to be on my knees.

Did you know that you can read the ruination of Job and the grace of Romans side by side and that it will gently undo you?  A children's book at night (Psalm 23) will cause the thrumming to build so greatly that you're convinced something may fly out of your chest cavity and your daughter's evening prayer at the table thank you for uncle to get better pushes the thrumming to the front, it's here, right under the skin, panging against my breast bone. It's also there in David's temple wailing, there in Job's blessing of the name of the Lord after all was lost, it's in the valley of the shadow of death; I'm finding it nearly everywhere I look.  I've craved the mountaintop in the past, craved my feet to be on high places, but to crave the glory of His presence after facing the harshest moment, this is a new gift from an incredibly kind and severe God and it is right here in this holy space that I am beginning to understand the posture of grief (bent, folded, laid low) in worship (praising, declaring, hope filled).  

The sky will weep, will pour out gray and chill over the yard, will create a large mud puddle under the swing, next to the cherry tree and along the side of the house where the gutter has carved a slow hole into the ground.  The children will put on their rain boots, their waders, their jackets and their bear hats, gather bowls from the kitchen and their sand toys and claim puddles as ferociously and adamantly as the barbarians claimed villages.  They'll war and then make peace, repeat.  And you'll watch them from the inside while you do your own weeping, warring, fervent praying.  You'll stumble at first Please let it all be okay but you can pray holier prayers than that and Thank you.  Thank you for loving him more than I ever will, thank you for being good and perfect and holy.  Thank you for gently mending us, wether here or there and for always, always keeping us.  

The sky will weep.  Isolation and pandemics and even scarier things: natural disasters, war, fallen heroes, cancer, will snake its way into your life and you may find yourself leaning over the washing machine with your head down (how does your body know to do this, to make the tears, the shallow breaths, the pounding heart) but then the resolve rooted in deep faith pushes back.  You were just the other day exclaiming to him over the power of The Word and its great ability to elevate friendships, perspective, life during these strange and cold times.  Verses, true promises-- they all fly in the face of the dark, preach light and hope and confidence no matter the situation it’s our sword! and during my most weary prayers, when words are hard, I picture His arms.  Those great, everlasting arms we sing about and read about in the Psalms and I see myself collapsing into them, completely engulfed and at rest.  Often that scene is the greatest, strongest prayer I know.

If you know me, you know I love my babies.  As a mom, I sometimes run through dangerous scenarios in my head and imagine how I'd save my kids if we were ever in harm.  And in every scenario, I do the same thing first: I scoop the baby up.  

Because babies need saving.  

If you've followed Kamala Harris at all, you know her stance on babies' rights inside the womb and you know (among many other things) how she voted on the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.  

If the mama doesn't want to be a mama, if the mama doesn't feel like being a mama, and if that baby somehow makes it out of her womb still alive while she is undergoing an abortion, then Kamala voted that those doctors don't have to scoop that baby up.  In fact, she called the saving of a baby after a botched abortion a gross injustice to the mother.  

Bottom line: she voted that they let that baby die on the table.

If you're running through all the broken situations in our society and the policies needed to address them, I will probably nod my head along in agreement with you.  Yes.

But I'm always gonna want to scoop that baby up first.

I've been making a list of women to teach my daughters about.  Because it seems like the world has gone a little mad talking about glass ceilings.  I've started that list and someday soon I hope to say to my children, listen.  The world will try to tell you what good is and what wrong is.  They will tell you that your heart is not deceitful and that your feelings ought to be loud decision makers.  But you were made by a God who fashioned you in my womb, who made you to be His image bearer and who looked at you and called you good the second you were alive (do you know, I spent time researching when a pro abortionist determines a baby is alive and ALSO human and, crickets).  I have questions.  I also love science.

I will say to them, you are loved by a God who turned the world He made on its head, who told the children to come, who saved sinners and rebuked the self righteous and who loves you even more than I do and here, children, here are some women who stood their ground, who fought for justice and life and also for lives who were overlooked and undervalued by the majority of the world at that time.  Their names are this: Harriet Tubman, Corrie Ten Boom, Amy Carmichael, Florence Nightengale, Jochebed, Gianna Jesson, and so many more.  Let me tell you their stories and of the great God they also loved.

I thought this article summed the Harris Biden duo as well as any "news source" can these days: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/20/health-202-kamala-harris-is-invigorating-abortion-rights-activists/