You can arrive to a family party with your children neatly dressed and pressed and the bread not burnt and the baby asleep and you can sit on the hill watching the two older ones explore and gallop and roll down the lawn and you can sigh over the dreaminess right before you gasp when your son runs to you, giggling over the red berries he has found, your daughter not far behind with the juice running down her fingers, her dress, and as swiftly as that, the loveliest moments lie up against the dangerous ones: little adventurers climbing hills while clasping deadly nightshade.

Later, while you're all gathered to pray, your son will wrap his arms around your leg lifting your dress to show off that part of your thigh you are still working on and motherhood is a constant tug of war between so many things: pride and humility, discipline and comfort, laying down boundaries and also handing out freedoms.  

The same God who created family to be a sanctifying, glory-to-Him-shouting cluster of eternal souls is the same kind God who also ordains the moment you're leaving a restaurant patio, the owner rushing after you simply to let you know she is beautiful and all the tables have been exclaiming over how tiny, how pretty she is.  The same kind God who has refined and sanctified your father to the point that when you're on your weekly bicycle ride and you haltingly ask him if we are all too much (your children, your lawn that is never trimmed, the laundry that he shows up to fold and put into drawers) he replies with a small laugh and Oh, Tasha.  

The two eldest are on their way back from a backyard campout with their nana and pappy and the baby is squealing on the floor and the coffee is hot and already 22 miles have been ridden, hundreds of verses read, the counters cleaned.  But I know, in an hour or two, there will be toddler wailing and baby messes and my own sin simmering in my heart and that kind God will cradle us once again after gently correcting the crooked moments, I know that the moments all add up and that when we fall and rise and even when we dine, there is glory there.

And in the middle of people losing their minds
their thinking minds
getting hot and woke and snarly
instead of humble and wise
in this wacky outrage culture where we demand the kingdom
but not The King
there are

first baby giggles after
evening park picnics
where your son gives his birthday present to
the boy who has no shoes
and your daughter whispers
so much
after she tells you she loves you
her arms caught around your neck
her strong heart pressed against
your stricken one
and the baby giggles while you pray
over the other babies who had no shoes
no mama
no drink
no food

you pray and you are doing the work
the holy work of raising souls who
will maybe learn to be still instead of be noise
be hands instead of empty clanging banging
for The King
Thy kingdom come

Even though it feels like it came out of nowhere: that moment on the road when the cd he must have found while you were out of town, must have put into the car's player when he drove to the city  to have a part serviced starts, startlingly, playing instead of the veggie tales cd that should have been in the slot.  That cd that really spoke to you a decade ago screams at you, now.  And not in a sweet, siren way but in a scathing, how did I get here and where did I turn and Father I need time with you now-- right now, time, like earbuds in, no schedule, coffee in a hand and my red journal that has long been filled and a pen and time.

You pull back into town and the Bible study you were supposed to attend is suddenly canceled, your husband is in a meeting, you DO in fact have a coffee in your hand and, after shooting a quick message to your inlaws, you turn up the heat, draw the curtains, put that same music over the speaker and you sit there in your bed with your God and His words and you weep.  

It didn't come out of nowhere.  Just last week in the shower you had the sudden urge to write gratitude and so you appeased yourself with a hasty post.  You've been soaking in 1 John instead of your phone most mornings.  You've been so aware of the little souls at your feet who are learning about the God found in the tone of your voice, the warmth (or dimness) of your eyes, the words you pray and the songs you sing and the things you choose to marvel or not over.  

And at night you and he have been brutally honest with each other while reading through the marriage book you naively gifted him.  Unaware that the growing and strengthening that might come out of the pages would hurt and cause you to doubt things you've tidily packaged away before they would bolster.  Is there anything more vulnerable than being opened and measured by your person?

Yes.  You didn't think so but then that music played and now you remember.

It's a long road home, friends, when you've been slowly and cooly drifting away from that first flame. I find myself so easily justified because my hormones, my pregnancy, my toddlers, my lack of sunshine and fellowship and community.  It is so easy to blame my smallness on this town or closed doors or seasons.  

And then that music hits you.  Music you listened to in the days when you would hole up in coffee shops for whole mornings, tights and heels and waterproof mascara on, but mostly with a raw, hungry heart that yearned for Great Things.  And how did those Great Things get replaced by whatever I have been labeling as great lately: well behaved children, financial security, paint, gear, furniture.  How did I lose track of the war between light and dark and when did my heart get so cool gray?  

I've tried to say this before and I will try again:  that music hits you and your eyes open and you realize you've been kissing the dust at His feet instead of His feet.  You've been lost in your tears instead of His heart.  You forgot your first love (you're no more brilliant than the Old Testament Israelites were, wandering for decades in a desert just outside the promised land) and here is the sweet, sweet reality-- He is so easy to return to.  Three measures into a song, He's there.  He'll hunt you down and tug you back and those pieces of your heart that He has marked will brag, boast, absolutely scream to you memories of His goodness, His perfect kindness even in the dismantling, realigning, killing of things you allowed to grow in His place.

The day after a third trimester ultrasound to confirm that baby is, indeed, growing, you might find yourself weep-singing in the shower with Shane and Shane turned up and your soul turned up and your praises shooting up, up, up to heaven's throne.  I don't deserve the fragile life growing inside me, have done nothing to merit a healthy, thriving baby, and when I posture myself from that place, healthy seems so over-the-top gracious.

I've found myself in 1 John all month, some days I read the whole book in one sitting, others I trip stumble around the same verse.  All the days, though, the word remain plays again and again in my mind.  There is a quiet war between my pride and remain and it is dangerous because of how quiet it is.  How stable my pride seems, how risky remain feels.  But I am trying.  To remain when the toddler uses his defiant voice, when the girl is attached to my leg, my hand, my hip all day long.  To remain when I pick up his piles again, finish his dishes again, wipe the tray and the table and the floor and the nose and the booty, again.  When, after a day of repeating and giving second and third tries, he walks through the door and doesn't listen as closely as I would like, doesn't treat me as carefully as I think I deserve, maybe doesn't see me all the way, remaining in Him is so hard.

But the morning keeps coming.  His quiet knock on the door as he dashes to work keeps coming, the cup of coffee he hands me, the reach to the floor for my Bible, the bookmark and 1 John, they keep coming at me and when I posture myself from that place, remain seems so over-the-top gracious.  Because I have done nothing to deserve a God who invites me to abide, a King who would walk with me, would kill my sin for me and build a forever place for me and invite me to the table over and over again even when  I don't listen as closely as I should, don't treat Him as carefully as He deserves, don't see Him all the way.  Remain Tasha, remain.

For a month we stayed in my parents' house, climbed the spiral stairs, tucked the babies into rooms that housed my siblings and I when we were small, brighter eyed, tired in a different way.  We walked the woods and the neighborhood and they rode their bikes in the dead end for hours.  I rested to the sound of my father mowing the lawn, my mother typing at her desk.  I woke in the morning to the bustle in the bathroom, the kitchen, and, after a season of feeling absolutely spent, I started to fill.  Almost everyday I packed the kids up and we visited all of my old haunts: the library (that smell!), the museum, the zoo, the orchards and pumpkin patches and, sweetest of all, dear friends' houses where our kids played together, sat and read books together, scarfed down lunches and raced back to their games and my heart that had been so hungry started to still.

My parents are selling the family home and so I had expected to spend a month slowly saying goodbye.  What I had not expected was how hard it would be to leave after a month of my son learning from the same Sunday School teacher I taught with, a month of him going to Cubbies on Wednesday evenings and flinging verses around after.  I hadn't foreseen how teary I would be when the same woman who held me as a baby in nursery would eagerly hold my sad daughter, too.  Or the rush of emotion at the end of a seasoned mother of 10's talk (rally?) to all of us younger moms: We can't force them to love Jesus, girls, or we would.  But, we can win them!  And through them, we can win their children and their friends and..."  

Nate flew out to drive me home (he knew I'd need a push to leave) and I don't think he was surprised by the quiet weeping as we drove away from that haven, drove down the interstate and out of the land of "the good life."  But he was taken aback by the way I prickled and sobbed as soon as we walked into our own sweet home.  As much as I love the mountains and the lake and the dear family and friends here.  As much as I find this small, quiet town to be sweet and simple.  I'm also mourning the richness and depth, the faithfulness and wisdom of my midwest roots.  Mourning the conversations with friends who preached Scripture to me, asked me heart deep questions, and also had the good sense to let me order dessert for dinner.  There's something so beautifully solid about the community He birthed me into.  There's something incredibly rare about going home to a church full of people who raised you.  It's the hug of a 80 year old woman who squeals when she sees you.  It's your old youth pastor hunting you down and spending a good hour talking life with you.  It's hugs from women who have mentored you, prayed you through so much of life, who still seem to know everything about you.

I thought I was saying goodbye to a home and I was prepared for it to be one of the hardest goodbyes I've had.  But I found home still alive and well and in every corner of that city I love and you better believe I am going to find a way to do it again every year, no matter where my parents land, because I can't let my kids miss the rich heritage there.  What a gift to go, and what a gift to come back.

It’s that time of year.  The trees have bloomed, have stunned us all with their nostalgia, their branches dripping in blossoms. They’ve birthed the cherries, and we felt proud of their produce, felt so American, so plentiful. But now the berries have sat hot in the sun, have dropped to the ground by the bucket load. Now we wake early, before the babies, rake the beds, the lawn, the dirt. Now the toddler stands at the edge of the deck and points out the sticky clumps in the grass; the baby squishes them between her fingers, delighted at the rotten warmth. It’s that time of year. The birds fly dizzy in the air, fly into windows and roofs, the squirrels fall from the limbs, bellies and brains full of sweet, fermented fruit. And we feel it too— the overdone days at the end of August. The last withered sprint of summer before the gentle release of fall.