all the heavy hard

If I could just not feel like a failure that would be good. That would be such a nice change of pace. I have struggled with not being okay for decades. Decades. And that is just not fair. I sound like such a baby. I’m just so tired. Why does healing take so long?

Why can’t I just be better already? This inner battle has ruined me. It has made me a bad friend, parent, wife. Why can’t I just be even keeled and patient? I am so angry and frustrated- most of the time. I think I am worse as a person as I ever have been.

I’ve looked back at my childhood traumas. I’ve forgiven. I’ve prayed. I’ve searched for meaning and tried and decades have passed and I am still so stupidly needy for your affirmation and admiration and I don’t even know you.

I need a stranger to tell me that I am okay or good or something significant to be those things. Not my husband though. Or my friend. Or Jesus because I just can’t believe them. I’m broken. There is something wrong with me and I just cannot figure out what it is and frankly, I am just so tired of trying to figure it out.

I try. I work hard. I delve and listen and read and try and nothing. Just more words inside my head. I am no different. I am still a mess. No better. In fact all these decades of all this work leaves me more frustrated than ever. Makes me angry. Makes me worse than I was before.

And here I am. Unable to really change. Unable to really be enough. Unable to really believe. And done. Lord, I think I am just done. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know where it takes me. I know that for decades I have been trying to be okay. Satisfied. Enough. And I am still none of those things.

I also know- somehow- that for the decades and all the time before and for all the time after- You, Lord. The God who made everything- have been and will always be faithful. And for me. And I don’t really know how I can hold on to this as truth and feel the way that I feel today but there it is.

This. Is. All. I’ve. Got.

And then it is not. Hope slips up into my limbs from my dry ground like dew covering so much grass. There was nothing and then there was so much. I am not my feelings. I am not my feelings. I am not my feelings. Sometimes feelings lie. Like the devil. Like my hungry stomach. Like my woman body. Like my sleepy head. Like my fears. Like my weary soul.

Lord, take all of this. I lay it down. These worries for my kids. For my marriage. For all the heavy hard in the world. How I never feel good enough. Your work on the cross made me good enough. Not anything I do or have done. None of it. You answer all my prayers. I know you have healed me. The ashes proof of so much fire. I trust in Your Holy love. I do. I’m just tired Lord. I know that You know it and that You can handle my weary whiny messiness.

You are Lord. You are Lord. You are Lord. Jesus and I put my trust in You.

September Yarnalong

I finished the socks that I spoke of last time. I really love the greens and browns together in this Arne and Carlos Regia line. And they are perfect for Fall. I don’t think that they are for me though. I’ll write something more about that later.

I am steadily working on the wee quilt I spoke of last time as well. I figured out who it is for and now have a deadline. I do despise deadlines. They make me slower rather than faster but I will get it done.

I finished Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott. It is funny and honest and beautifully written. Writers of all sorts are encouraged to pick it up and read it and keep it on a shelf where they can see it and reach it easily.

I started the three books pictured here. We’ll see if one sticks. I hope to read all three- rewarding myself with the most entertaining of the three when I finish the more clinical one, and the more spiritually challenging one. But we’ll see how it pans out.

I started a test knit for Sally Jane last week. It is a lace weight cardigan; the yarn feels so soft and lovely as I turn long rows of knitting into fabric. It doesn’t look like much now because I was near the place where I would divide for the sleeves but then I looked at other test knitter’s pictures and realized that I’d made a mistake and repeated it for too many rows. I went to take back the area and fix it but I guess I was too tired to do it so I tinked the entire thing and cast it on anew.

I am considering doing the same with the gray cardigan I showed last time as well. Something about it just doesn’t sit well with me. I placed it in a drawer where the wool waits for me to make up my mind. So goes my creative process in jumps and starts and back again.

I’m so glad for September to have arrived. It is by far my most favorite month as it signals the end of the long Summer and the beginning of the cooler then cold seasons. Yay and sigh. I am joining Ginny for yarnalong. Be blessed friends. Peace.

A Letter To Luke

I don’t often come here. To the quiet place in my room. To the small brown desk with someone else’s name scratched into the bottom of its drawer. But here I am with tablet and pen and coffee hot and strong. I’ve dusted off my working wheels and pulled the pages from my shelf; pen atop my ear. I’ve gathered toys from tables and chairs and counters and placed them into rooms and closed their doors; clutter our of sight.

The sound of the bathroom fan and my breathing in and out. The click of the keys and the dog gnawing on his bone. Helicopter overhead and semi truck passing on the road. These are the sounds that fill my ears while I wait for…something. You put down your cup and look up at me and we see one another better. I understand what you meant by the things that you said last night and you see, in my brown eyes swimming, how it all might have meant very little in the light of this new day. Time and sleep and sunshine and coffee bringing us back to common ground.

What a subtle grace it is to love ones best friend. You hold my hand even though we fight and I call you terrible names. I stand beside you even when you make me feel small and alone. We cling to one another in the battles of the everyday and we don’t let go and we always mean it when we say sorry and when we forgive. Even if its hard, maybe especially when its hard.

When I am weak and tired and don’t think that I can make it you send me trudging onward with such clever words and laughter and strong shoulders to cry on. When you are low and defeated I take your hand and whisper truth and the curtains open or the clouds part and light comes back behind your eyes to hope and to strength and we go on together.

I know that I can smash my face into your chest and weep and you won’t shove me away because you are busy or tired or angry even if you are feeling any of those things. You know (or at least I think that you know, rather hope you know!?) that even if you need to show me how scared you are that I still trust you, still believe in you, still love you.

I am thinking of braids now; picturing them in my mind. Three strands of differing colors and textures folded in over and under and together making something new. One strand of gold, one of silver and one of silk; Father God, you and me; strong, unbreakable. I am thinking that I am so thankful that we met so long ago in those large rooms among the rows of seats and angst filled youth. Thankful that we stayed friends even after you went one way in the world and I went another. Thankful for plain rides and holding hands and waiting for kisses and all the rest of it. This great love, steeped in sweet friendship was worth waiting on love. Thank you.

Yours, t










July {yarnalong}

I must confess that the photos I stole from my Instagram while the house sleeps are from June and not July. Our five kids and two wee visitors, hubby, the two dogs and the cat are all still, amazingly, asleep. So I type with the phone held above my head in the dim morning light now, unable and unwilling to fetch all my projects and find some lighting and a spot to take real July pictures. My apologies.

I was doing that thing I do in the early hours of the day where I slide my phone from the night stand / desk and check all the places that I check before the world around here gets moving too fast. Email. Facebook. Instagram. Bible App for the verse of the day etc. I saw that Ginny had posted on Instagram her July Yarnalong was up and I felt I should join her.

I have been slow with the blogposts this past Spring. Weeks of sickness and then recovery left me unwilling to do more than the basics in life. I’ve been fairly productive on the crafting side of things though now that I’m feeling more myself. So here goes it.

I finished The Path Between Us by Suzanne Stabile and picked up (again) Becoming by Michelle Obama. Both are tremendously good books of differing sorts and I recommend them to you and to everyone.

I’m knitting socks (not pictured here) that I started in the Spring. I might add a picture later. I’m also knitting a sweater which is pictured that I started several years ago. Recently I decided that finishing things long left unfinished might be a good practice for me, a doing repressed four on the enneagram. We. Will. See. So far just working on the long neglected things feels really good. Feels like needed progress.

I did also start a wee hand quilted… something. I started out thinking it was a baby’s Summer quit. I’m not too sure of that anymore. As I work with the fabric bunched up in my hand and move the needle up down and over with my other hand I feel such deep joy in it’s making.

When the fabric is pulled taut in my quilters hoop and my eyes and fingers can run over the stitches in their varying lengths and colors, it feels less like a quilt and more like art. I wish every project felt this way. Maybe this is just because it’s a new kind of project for me, I don’t really know yet. It really is so lovely to work on though.

Thanks for stopping by and happy knitting or crocheting or crafting and reading!

our road {a promise}

Last month my husband and I went on a trip to another state for six days. It was the very first time we’d both left the kids for more than one night. My husband could have gone on twenty trips without the kids at any point in our marriage because he doesn’t have the insecurities and mama worries that I have had. It took me a bit longer. It took hard work on myself and the building of relationships that we could trust when it comes to care for our kids. It didn’t happen overnight. It took ages. It took a lot of prayers and change and growth and for me, none of it was easy. But it was worth the work. I feel like we are now in a new stage in life. Like we have crossed a road that has always scared me and walk in a place of peace.

The logistics were challenging for this kind of trip. Rather than use respite for our FD9 we asked Hubby’s mom to come and stay at our house for those 5 nights. Two couples from our church, people the kids know and love, came and gave my MIL a rest, took the kids for a walk, did crafts, took the boys to lunch and just teamed up to help care for our six kiddos so that hubby and myself could rest and recharge. It was hard to leave. It was difficult to plan. We had to work hard on the budget to make it happen and I had to let go of trying to control everything and trust God and my friends and family to meet my kiddos needs. Was it perfect? Did it all go super great? no, but it did work. The kids were safe. The team worked together and everyone did so well.

We spent five nights in Seattle and it did not rain once. The sun shone down on us. The water lapped and sparkled along the shores and the snow-caped mountains smiled at us as we drove on freeways, stood on towers and relaxed on waterways. It was splendid. It was refreshing and restful and restorative. We met people like us. Folks who are foster parents and adoptive parents who love Jesus and who struggle and question and persevere. It was so great. At the end we boarded flights and ate great food and enjoyed hot coffee and stout beers and when we landed in our own state we were so surprised to find that it was raining.

Tiny raindrops dotted the cracked windshield of hubby’s old work car as we drove into and over the mountains on our way home. We smiled and laughed that the rain was waiting for us in the desert rather than meeting us in the Pacific North West. We smiled at the thought of all the lovely sunshine that we had enjoyed over the past several days. It felt to my heart like a lesson. Like God had smiled down on us and given us this gift of Sun and rest and peace. Like he was saying that it was not just okay that we take the time for ourselves and for rest, but that we must and that He was pleased with us. I’m not sure where my brain and heart had doubted God’s goodness toward us. Maybe only in that this life is so very hard and we often fail and that terrible feeling that God is disappointed in us and that means that He doesn’t want to give us good gifts. But that is just not true. I know it. I would tell anyone else that it isn’t true for them, but I struggle to believe it for me, for us.

As we started the drive home remembering the blessed days before the clouds moved in, blue-gray and hanging over the mountain tops. The Sun set in a fantastic mix of orange, yellows and red hues behind us. The rain became a little more steady. The end of our day was looking just as beautifully complex as all of our years together. When the sun finally disappeared over the horizon and the darkness closed in around us and the car sped over miles of long straight highway the full moon shone out over us as we went. A large singular light in the skies above us. I remembered God’s chosen people, guided in the dark by fire in the sky. It felt like Father’s gift to us again. The tears burned at the corners of my eyes as I remembered just then what a woman whom I did not know said as we walked out of the church a few days before. She reached out and touched my arm as I passed and when our eyes met she said, “God will give you strength in a time of great need.” The moon looking down through the dark and rain now felt to me like a reminder. It felt like a promise that God would be with us when it was hardest. Things I know, things that I would tell anyone, but such a sweet word to my spirit now as we traveled home.

After more than an hour the moon and its light was swallowed up by the darkness and the clouds were heavy and the rain was hard. Now the roads were narrow and the wind was fierce and my hand gripped the door as we flew across the miles. I was scared. We could not see well through the window and I could feel my husband’s tension build. I have learned that it does not help my husband to ask him to slow down or to be careful. He wasn’t driving that fast but I was filled with fear and as we went I prayed quietly and whispered to myself- God is good and faithful. A reminder that He is trustworthy even when I feel all the terror of my circumstances. The drive through this storm lasted a long time. I fought with myself to hold tight to the truth of who God is even when I felt so much fear. What if we wrecked and the kids were left without us? What if more loss and hurt bled into their lives from all the edges? What if we’d had days full of sunshine and the rest and then the worst would happen an hour or two from home? It had not ever been so clear to me just how fearful for my children I had been. Or how I did not trust in our good God for them. I prayed. I Asked for His forgiveness. On that dark road, our car pelted by rain and wind, I laid them all down and asked Father to keep them and whispered again, God you are good and faithful and I can trust You, no matter what I feel.

It seemed to me, the whole journey, was a picture of the years ahead of us with our children. There will be sunny days and stormy days and days when the darkness and rains last too long but God would always be good and faithful and we can, all of us, trust him.

Selah~

Blessings~ Tina