The Great Escape

I spent this weekend at a women's retreat up in the middle of nowhere.
It was a special weekend because my friend Dayna came from North Dakota to speak at the retreat. She spoke on Psalm 23. She is a lovely woman with a heart that yearns for God and so her words were both inciting and beautiful.
On Sunday, when it was time to leave, I was feeling particularly relaxed. The retreat ended officially at 2pm but brunch was done by 12:30 so we were pretty much packed and ready to go by 1pm. I was driving my friends Julianna and Dayna home and we decided to take a quick jaunt to the waterfall before heading back. We let someone know we were leaving to walk, so no one would worry about an empty car, and we sprung joyfully away.

We look like three cute girls, but we are actually something of a Bermuda Triangle.

It was a mossy walk with the background music of water and the freshness of ferns. Truly good for the soul. When we got back to the main camp all the cars were gone. We jumped in my van and pulled out to the main road of the camp. As we got to the gate of the camp we were a little alarmed to find it locked. It was secured with a chain and padlock. Just a little setback, we hadn't been gone that long, surely someone was around. It's all fun and games until someone gets locked in the retreat center.

It was a little difficult for my husband to wrap his brain around that text.

It took us about 20 minutes to find that every building was locked and there was no.one.there.
As previously stated, we were in the middle of nowhere, so our options were limited. Julianna started to call people to try to get help, Dayna jumped the fence to find if anyone was home at the house we could see, and I rummaged the shed to find a pick-axe and a metal cable to try and break the lock. Julianna suggested calling 911 but I was pretty sure we'd end up in the news. Who gets locked in a retreat center?

Isn't Dayna cute? 

Thank God I didn't injure myself with that pick-ax!

Right about now I was wishing I'd watched Macgyver with the boys.

The neighbor couldn't/wouldn't help us. The less said about me wielding the pick-ax the better. I hooked the chain up to the bumper of the car with a tow rope and was in danger of taking out the whole gate so I stopped (but it was really fun while it lasted). Finally Julianna got a hold of a relative who lived only 45 minutes away and had a metal cutter (or something like that) and he agreed to come spring us from lock down.
We put our coats down in a green pasture in between two bodies of still water, where we could still see the gate, and we had a picnic.

Julianna and Dayna talked and I thought about where we were.
I had never been locked in anywhere before. Or had I?
My brother and sister were allowed to babysit me when I was very young and they, not much older. I was a naughty child and one method they had of watching me was of locking me in a cupboard. The panic I felt in that cupboard led me to become a claustrophobic adult.
The retreat center is large and lovely and even contains a waterfall, but it was still a prison that I couldn't get out of. All kinds of resources were there, food, drinks, beds, but they were also locked to us. It wasn't a cupboard that I was cramped into, but it was still a prison. Our prisons aren't always stifling, sometimes we don't even know we're in one; until we try to get out.

As we sat waiting, and I worked to fight my claustrophobic panic, I remembered God's faithfulness of getting me out of the prison of myself. Jesus was the key to the gate of my own life as I was trapped in the retreat center of my sin. He not only opened the gate and gave me glorious freedom, but he unlocked all the resources and allowed me to truly use them, to live well within myself. To welcome people in through the gate of Himself, that He opened, or to go out of myself and into the big wide world of lonely, lost people.
I am so grateful.

I'll never forget Julianna on the phone, "Hi! Are you at home? Do you happen to have a lock cutter?"
This is what family is for. 

And as a truck pulled into view and we gathered our picnic food, I was grateful again. Grateful for a way out. Grateful for freedom in Christ. Grateful for friends that come in and out of the gate with us. Grateful for the reminder that there are still many people locked in themselves and their sin, and searching for a key to get out, and I can help them, because I know Who the key is.
As we drove off into the big, wide world with the exhileration of freedom, I had to laugh.
God finds such creative ways to restore my soul.

Prone to Laugh

I felt that maybe we should have been wearing a label.

"Prone to Laugh." At everything.

In January, at a Mission Conference, I discovered that Sue Gilmore, a Capernwray legend, would be speaking at a woman's conference in Canada in May.

I sent out an email, would my Capernwray girls like to go to Canada?

Johannah was having a baby in March, Canada would not be realistic.
Chrissy was going to Disneyworld, in the opposite direction.

But Traci and Sara were up for the adventure. So we went.

Sara picked me up, whisked me out of a mind-bogglingly stressful May, and drove me up to Seattle to Traci's house. Somehow, I shed 20 years in the drive. Life became a thing to be laughed at again.

We left at 5am the next morning and headed for Thetis Island. A journey including 2 ferries and lots of driving and much laughter.

This is Capernwray Harbor. Unbelievably beautiful.

We saw Sue within minutes of arriving. She was surprised and astounded and happy to see us. And she somehow made us feel like we were AMAZING women for braving the journey to visit her, when really, the AMAZING is all on her side.

As a speaker, Sue was hilarious and challenging. She has lived her life for Jesus. Unabashedly. She is full of the joy of the Lord. She is feisty.

This is our little cabin in the woods.

If I had a dress or a pair of pants that I wore 20 years ago at Capernwray, I wouldn't be able to fit into them. Life has changed the shape of me. I was immensely relieved that I could still fit into the psyche of a young girl laughing at life. That with Sara and Traci, the core of who I still was rose up and asserted itself....even though Traci and I were asked how many grandchildren we had, by an obviously seeing-impaired elderly person. Even though I was asked if I home-schooled because, "you just look like a home-school mom." (Good to know. I obviously wasn't showing my tattoos and body piercings off enough. Probably because I don't have any.)

Trying to escape "Grandma"

And when we told people that we had been to Capernwray together 20 years ago and they replied that we had just given away our age. Traci piped up, "Oh we were very young!" and I backed her with, "We changed each other's diapers." Sara had to think hard about this comment, because we did so many wild things at Capernwray, she wasn't sure if I was joking or not. I was, but the three of us were laughing....laughing.....laughing.

I was glad to get home. Glad to see the faces of my kids.

But I also felt, that in a sense, I had left home behind me. That those girls, that place, that sound of laughter, was my home. That snuggled next to my friends, telling the stories of our lives, singing around the campfire, downing dessert, laying on the dock, worshipping God, listening to Sue and her English accent, were as familiar to me as my daughter's face. And just as dear.

A Hit and It's Ramifications

I believe I left off writing our journey when we were on the cusp of Scotland.
I haven't been able to pick up the thread,
because I'm wobbly.
Once, many years ago when my grandpa died I said something like this,
"Grandparents are like chair legs, you don't even think about them being there until one of them is gone and all of a sudden you're off balance." Wobbly.
Apparently friends are comparable to chair legs as well.

Rowan has been complaining of a toothache for several weeks. I've been my usual compassionate self and have said beautiful things that he'll always remember like, "Well yeah Rowan, if you don't brush your teeth for two minutes like I tell you to you're going to get cavities and the dentist is going to stick a big needle in your mouth. And I'm taking it out of your savings account, say good-bye to the dreams of Lone Ranger Legos..."

Anyway my mom finally took him and it turned out to look like an abscess. They tried to fill it for now and he came home with a huge lip and plenty of drool. My mom said the dentist asked if he had been hit in the face recently. Hmmm, does the wheel barrow full of rocks falling across his cheek at the cottage count?

Later in the day he did math and I noticed him just kinda staring into space. I went over and asked, "Rowan, are you alright?" (Insert British Accent)
He looked up, swollen and startled, and said, "I think I'm just in shock."

And I had to turn away.
Because I completely understood.
Shocked, wobbly, just kinda looking around but not really seeing anything. That's me right now.
I lost a friend, she moved away, and it's not the end of the world, and yet it is. It's the end of the world as I knew it with a loving personality at my side, who delighted in the days with me. I didn't realize that she was a chair leg when she was here. I didn't realize I depended upon her for stability. But I did.

Extractions are shocking.

Exodus

There's been a mass exodus out of my life.
This month.....

Neighbors. Two families across the street moved. Ten years of learning what it looks like to be a neighbor. 5 day clubs where their children whispered "yes" to Jesus. The noise of 13 children (3 in one family, 10 in the other) eradicated. And there's this vacuum of silence.

My mom. She's giving her energy and love and time to an orphanage in India. Serving Jesus is something you never retire from apparently. She's gone and there's no one to laugh at my jokes or bribe my children. She'll be back, but until then, this gap.

My friend and her 3 children. Missions again. Serving Jesus is something kids can do too apparently. Her children run their race and it happens to pass through Africa and Russia, she cheers from the sidelines. Cheers are synonymous with prayer in this word picture. They're gone and there's no one to laugh at my jokes or tea party with us. I'll see them again in a month or more, but until then, this silence.

My friend and her family. God called her husband to a pastorate in North Dakota. When God calls the husband, the whole family has to go apparently. So she trades in trees for prairies, and she gives me her hammock to rest in while she builds a new life. She's gone and there's no one to laugh at my jokes or tell me what the heck to do with the 30  pounds of strawberries my husband brought home today. She may never be back, and oh, the gap.

And for the first time in my life I feel like Pharaoh. Pharaoh, who says, "NO." I want to chase them.
I want them back. Oh why did I let them go!
But instead of running after them, I run the other direction. I run to the mountain.

Walking in the orchard, up one row and down another, I pray.
And I find, to my amazement, that I am blessed.
Blessed to have so many friends who love Jesus. Really love Him. Love Him enough to go.
And I pray for them. Pray and walk until I am weary and content.
And as I fall into bed, I know what He's asking of me.
"Let my people go."

And I give Him the only possible answer.
"Yes Lord."
And I stick on a post-it prayer.
"But next time, send me, too."
Because there is really no point in being funny if there's no one to laugh.

The Value of a Wedge

We have a saying in our family, "Don't be a wedge."
Granted, it's said mostly to one child.
He has a gift for provoking, dividing us in anger or frustration.
One day in school, we studied the wedge as a tool. I explained to the kids that a family is like a piece of wood. We have cracks, but we're a solid unit. When one child acts as a wedge in a family, they stick in the crack, and their actions and words hammer and split apart something that was whole.
"Don't be a wedge."

We walk this Christian walk with others and we learn from each other. We've been close to a family for years, and this family also harbors a wedge. And as their wedge got older, the consequences, the frustration, the crack in the family veneer, deepened. But what dawned on me the other day is this family is not falling apart. God is using this child to provoke things deep within themselves, things that never would have come to light if it hadn't been for the struggles with this child. And the way they handle the situation brings glory to God and brings others closer to God.
And their child, with wedge tendencies, is a tool used by God to bring light into dark places.

Jesus was a wedge. Everywhere he went He caused division. Because God didn't care about what people looked like on the outside. God cared about their hearts. God is in the business of cracking people wide open, healing, and binding up again. Jesus blatantly stated that He came to divide, "Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division....They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter..." * You get the idea.
To God, no whole is worth more than the Spiritual whole.
He knows that we can put up a good facade while we put our faith in a whole lot of other things, but by His Grace, He cracks the facade asunder, shows the rotten core of our faith, exposes the heart.
Jesus brings light into dark places.

The family who's wounds are bound by God, who's fissures and cracks prompt repentance, confession, change and growth, will be used by God.

We have a wedge, and we have to acknowledge that for some reason, God wanted us to have him. We need him in our family.
Just because something is whole, doesn't mean it's healthy.
The core of our family could be rotting, but as long as we're keeping it together on the outside, we resist help. Jesus refers to this as "whitewashed tombs."*
So my thinking evolves. And I thank God that the son who provokes has a purpose. And I pray that I stop resisting the wedge and let it do it's God-given work in our lives. Even when that's painful. Even when it cracks the veneer. Because I want light more than I want a glossy exterior.
And I thank God for friends who let me see into their crevasses and who say in the dark places, "God is good to allow this."
Because He is.
Always.

I need to alter the family saying,
because any tool in the hand of God can wield good.

*Luke 12:51-53 NIV
*Matt. 23:27 NIV

Friend.

It started at a tea party almost thirteen years ago.
A group of girls came over to my house for a baby shower tea. Nice girls, proper tea, it was good. But one of those things wasn't quite like the others. One of the girls was explaining something and got up and stood on one of my dining room chairs. This surprised me. While she was up there, I happened to notice that she was wearing a floor-length retro '70's dress. Wow. Not normal tea-party attire, but groovy.
Unbidden it popped into my mind, "I like her."
I still do.
We managed an escape this weekend. Just a night up at the cottage. Our loving husbands watched our nine children (combined total) and let us have time to talk and laugh and eat and pray. [Blessings on you good men.] One of the first things we had to do when we got up there was strip the girl's bed and wash the sheets so she could sleep there.
"It's so much better to do it together," she said.
I gave her my smiling, I have no idea what you're talking about look.
"The bed, it's so much better to make it with two people. Didn't your mother ever say that?" she asked.
I explained that I have NO recollections of my mother ever saying that or of her making my bed. (Side: Uh mom, did you ever wash my sheets????)
Sheets done, we rambled long through woods and country roads. We remembered so many funny things and added a few new ones to the list. Our recollections turned to reflections which led to prayer.
She's my friend and I thank God for her.
She dropped me back home the next morning and the rest of the day her words ran stream-like through my mind, "It's so much better to do it together."
Life is good. Life together is better.
I don't know if my mother ever told me that either.
But it doesn't matter because I've found it out for myself.

Really.

We drove out to the cottage on Saturday. It was a glorious day. We passed a popular hiking trail and I saw a sight that brought a wry smile to my face. It was a red pick-up with a teen age girl and boy in the back. They were obviously not siblings, if you get my drift. The warm sun beat down on their entwined bodies and rapt faces. They were in love, and there was this clear circle around them and their red pick-up.
The wry smile had to do with what I saw when I brought my gaze back inside the mini van. At my feet laid a dog who had under gone a mastectomy the week before. Yes, Winnie-the-Pooch has breast cancer. One breast has been removed, but apparently she has seven more to go.
Immediately to my left was my husband. Sweet, loving man who recently told me I was whining. Which was not true. I was stating facts, simply stating facts. Some facts can not be stated with a smile. Fact.
Behind and between us was a Persian cat in labor. Yes, that too, you read correctly. On Thursday we had a Traumatic Delivery of the Himalayan cat during Spanish class. The story is long and involved and ate my entire day and ended, by the grace of God, in the delivery of one dead kitten and four live ones.

See.

We mated Guinevere with an orange and white cat. Hmmm.....

Anyway, Jane, the Persian, decided I didn't have enough stress the day before and went into labor on Friday afternoon. She delivered a deformed kitten (for the record it was also black and white). She continued in labor for so long that we decided not to waste our lives sitting and staring at her cervix, but to just pack her up and take her up to the cottage with us.

Hence, the Persian in labor.

On top of the menagerie, there were four children in different stages of consciousness, some drooling others merely jerking.

Perceive the motivation for the wry smile yet?

As I looked around, I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Having a family is so much fun. Really. Nothing you could offer could entice me to go back to red pick-up days. Really.

At the cottage this week, this was confirmed. My eldest daughter, turned 12.



We forgot to pack candles and made do with sticking matches in the cake.

She and her friends had a lovely day of wading in the brook and running through the orchard and playing dolls. They are beautiful, healthy, loving girls.

Jane gave Avonlea a birthday present and delivered the rest of her kittens in the doll house room.

The rest of the week we just enjoyed the beauty around us. We worked hard stacking wood and clearing trails. We found nature full of surprises.



The new wheel barrow was a big hit.

Weapons are always entertaining.



So I laugh to think Dave and I were once a red pick-up pair. We've morphed into a minivan stuffed with animals and kids and drool and laughter. And I'm so glad.

Really.

Having a family is so much fun.

Resurrection

Mom was here the other day fussing over Dave.
She asked, "Have you been taking your ALIVE vitamins?"
Dave replied, "No, I'm taking something better now."
Not being able to resist, I teased, "Yeah, he's taking RESURRECTION vitamins now."
Mom rolled her eyes and went home.

One of the best books that I've read this year is Lilith by George McDonald.
Everything in it has metaphorical meaning (oh delight). Truth, wrapped in many layers of imagery and beauty. One of my favorite themes throughout the book is the idea of sleeping vs. death. The protagonist, Mr. Vane, is brought into a mortuary-like room where corpse-like people are supposedly not dead, but asleep. He is shown his slab and told to lie down and sleep his sleep so that he could get up and do his work. He hesitates.

"But these are all dead, and I am alive!" I objected, shuddering.

"Not much," rejoined the sexton with a smile, "--not nearly enough!
Blessed be the true life that the pauses between its throbs are not
death!"

"The place is too cold to let one sleep!" I said.

"Do these find it so?" he returned. "They sleep well--or will soon. Of
cold they feel not a breath: it heals their wounds.--Do not be a coward,
Mr. Vane. Turn your back on fear, and your face to whatever may come.
Give yourself up to the night, and you will rest indeed. Harm will not
come to you, but a good you cannot foreknow."

Page and her husband came for a brief visit this weekend. She's been my dearest friend for over twenty years. We sat in front of the fire on Sunday and talked, laughter sitting in the seat beside us. At one point she mentioned her wedding and the picture of us at it. Then she mentioned how weird it was that I was even at her wedding because we hadn't really talked for almost two years before it.

After being inseparable in high school we went our own ways for college. We lost touch and somewhat lost sympathy with each other. I got married and she wasn't at my wedding. After I had been married about a year I decided to try and get in touch with her. I did and her news was that she was getting married. I told her I was coming.

Our friendship laid down, went to sleep, and I didn't know if it was even going to wake up. But it did, and a good came of it that I could not foreknow.

I think God asks this of our friendships sometimes. I think He asks it of our talents. I think He asks it of our dreams, hopes, ambitions.
Can you lay this down and trust that I will resurrect it in My time?

There are times when I say "this place is too cold to let one sleep" and I run from the shadows of the mortuary. But I seem to always come back eventually and I have seen much resurrected. Sleep is not death, but sleep mirrors death in it's complete submission to the unknown. Sleep is the consent to sail uncharted waters. Sleep is faith.

On Sunday afternoon, as Page and I lounged in front of the fire, Avonlea played the harp. Talking soon ceased and breathing deepened and we traded out conversation for slumber. Somehow, those moments of repose meant more than thousands of words could have. Because we've learned that sleep is not death and that resurrection is joy and that He is in control of all the laying downs and rising ups and that the cold will heal wounds.

Resurrection comes to all who lay down.
There is something better than just being alive.

Things We Love

Twenty-three years is a long time to be friends.
But not too long.
My best friend Page, from Alaska, came to visit last week.
We stayed up late and laughed.
Laughed until the tears came, and we love that.
We forgot that we were mature mamas to many and only remembered that we like to dress up and take pictures of ourselves.
We put on loud music and dance partied with our kids because we still want to be liked and thought of as fun.
They like us, and we love that.

And they like each other. I was a bit surprised when our boys come down in matching camo shorts, holding hands, and claiming they were on the same team.
Our house was a little boy war zone from dawn to dusk, and we love that.

I write poetry and Page likes to shop and our children encompass the whole range of our personalities with dashes of our fun husbands thrown in for good measure.

Our kids make us laugh, and we love that.

Our daughters looked at pictures of us when we were young and were scandalized by our vanity and trendy apparel.

They are modest, sweet, little women, and we love that.

Page and I see the laughter lurking in the mundane.

We gather the joy up wherever we can find it, make a bouquet out of it, and put it in a vase to gloat over.

We speak the same language, understand each other's reactions and feelings, and share a common history.

We grow up together in Christ.

Twenty-three years is a long time to be friends.

But not too long,

and we love that.

Cat Update

For those of you who have gnawed your nails to the quick with anxiety over our infertile cats....relax. There is a plan in action.
Our girls went into heat on Sunday (ahem, our girl cats).
I called a friend and asked her to help me in the kitties hour of need.
She asked if I wanted her to bring her tom cat or alcohol. Both?
(She actually only had cooking wine on hand and the vintage was questionable)
The first attempt to bring her tom cat failed. He fled; terrified. Avonlea remarked that he would have been glad to come if they would have told him that two girls were awaiting him.
Okay.
The second attempt was successful and they brought him over on Wednesday morning.
I'm not sure if it's because Mr. Tom is the cat of a home school family, but he appears to have socialization issues.
He wants nothing to do with my voluptuous Persian females.
We put kitty treats around the girls, appropriately labeled "temptations." Nada.
Perhaps he feels inferior because he's not a Persian?
We've tried to talk him through this misconception. He's a gorgeous cat and will be a worthy father. No Go.
So we've kinda concluded that maybe it's the 6 pairs of eyes peering at him that's intimidating. So we're giving them their privacy. And praying.
If this doesn't work....
....I won't even let my mind go there.
I'll just be thankful for a friend who still loves me even though I ask to borrow her cat.
I'll focus on the anticipation of kittens......
Cheers!

Random Joy

All of my pumpkins.












Grant's face after he found a frog.


My little Beka (who I nannied when she was two) and her Mommy came for a surprise visit!

Page, my Alaskan psuedo-sister came for a talk-as-fast-and-as-much-as-you-can-in-24-hours visit.

Rowan and his side-kick love to dance with guns. (At least they're well rounded).

October was a month of friends and family. I grab a handful of the beautifully hued blessings falling from the trees right now and wax paper press them here. Many more litter the lawn and I lament that I am unable to capture them all! Thank God for bounty!