On Motherhood...

 I look at his tiny face and the way his hair is swooped just so. 

 I allow my eyes to examine the contours of his face

praying that they find a safe hiding place in my memory banks.

I touch his hands and curl his little fingers around mine.

I am not one to turn them down when they come to me in the night.

I know these moments are fleeting.

I know that  they won't last.

Even though there are moments when I wish to be left alone,

one day I will be just that.

Alone.

I remember the feeling I had when I gave birth to my first child.

For nine months he was literally attached to me.

Just like that...he was out of me.

This was the beginning of letting go.

It hurt deep.

As each year passes I have to let go a little more

until the day comes when I am a left woman.

This is the rub of motherhood.

These beautiful little people will grow up to be big people someday.

This home that I share with them now will one day just be a memory.

They will find a new home.

I pray that if nothing else, I can point them to streams of Living Water...

and I pray that they drink.
 

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It could have been anyone...

It isn't normal for a twelve year old girl to decorate her room with pictures from the Holocaust that she tore out of TIME Magazine. The images of emaciated corpses piled upon one another are still burned in my mind. It's not as if I enjoyed those images or got some sick pleasure from them. In hindsight, I can see that I was trying to deal with death.

I was now occupying my newly deceased brother's room. I would dream about him and wake up with the stench of death still in my nose. My youth ended with the abrupt death of my brother. I would no longer do things that kids do. From that point on, my life would be filled with skipping school, drugs, alcohol and unfortunate encounters with growing boys and groping hands that didn't have the decency to ask permission. For the record, I would have said no.

I could read fluently at a very young age. I was reading Stephen King, Clive Barker and books about true crime and the Son of Sam with graphic pictures at the age of six. These were the kinds of books that were in my house, so this is what I read. I smoked pot for the first time when I was seven. My friend's dad smoked a lot of weed and would always have ash trays filled with roaches. We decided to smoke them one day. I just remember being tired and hungry.

I was exposed to death and evil and all forms of ugliness when other little kids were still playing GI-Joe and Barbie. What this did was provide a familiarity with brokenness and depravity. That is what I knew best. I knew it and lived it, but desired for better. Even though I knew that the world was not what it should be, I still gravitated towards the broken things. They had a magnetic pull that I could not resist.

Sometimes I feel sorry for myself because of the horrific things I encountered. Things that even those closest to me have no idea about. I feel sorry that I never fit and never felt as if I belonged, and yet those are the very things that God used to draw me to Himself.

Some people are surprised by their own sin. They know that horrible crimes are committed by other people, but they never seem to be able to grasp that they have sinned as well. Maybe had my life played out a little differently, I would have been surprised, too, but God has always brought me back to my own brokenness and need for Him.

This doesn't mean that I am always aware. I suffer from a horrible form of spiritual amnesia...but for some reason, I have been redeemed. I don't quite understand it, either. I was always the underdog, always the weirdo, always the misfit. I never did anything right. In the midst of all of my sin, folly and aimless wandering, He found me. For this, I am thankful. According to the world, I am the least likely candidate for redemption. I certainly didn't earn it or deserve it, but I needed it and recognized my need for Him. The amazing thing is that this is the only requirement.

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In the thick of it...

 I remember the day he kissed me on the way home from day camp.

He was tall and skinny and pasty white.

I don't even remember what we talked about.

But we kind of got each other.

There's this unspoken thing between sensitive types.

We operate at a different frequency.

You can see it in the eyes if you pay attention.

Many years later I ran into him.

At church.

He was married and had a beautiful baby boy.

His eyes were still the same.

Yet different.

We didn't talk much.

But that shared look was still there.

It's not a look of the romantic kind.

Anyone who has ever felt the weight of existing...

or the way that sometimes just thinking and feeling is too much...

you know the look.

The one that says, "I am in the trenches, too. I see you."

Many years after that, he hung himself.

It has haunted me.

Maybe not in the way that it has haunted those closer to him...

but I am haunted just the same.

Whenever I am in the trenches,

I think of him.

I pray that he has found peace in the arms of Jesus.

Be kind to those who are suffering.

That is a heavy weight to carry alone.

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Tree House Dwellers...

You have to be crazy to move your family across the country to live 35 feet up in a tree.

But, hey! It comes with an amazing art studio!!!

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Run, Mandie, run!

I am not sure what to do with this here space.

This here season.

This here life.

So, like Forrest Gump,

I just keep running.

And running.

Eventually, I will get there...

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The Christian Hater...

You know those people...

Those people

(the ones who are forever finding fault in the lives of others).

They are the people with the extra pointy fingers

and spiritual hearts that hardly ever bleed for the lost and broken.

Those people hurt people

and they hurt them in the name of the Lord.

I notice those people

and get angry with those people

and then I hear that small voice

reminding me that I am not so different

than those people.


Sometimes I find myself looking at other people

and thinking

how I would never

ever

act like them.

And then usually

(shortly thereafter)

the same characteristic or behavior trait manifests in my life

flowing from my spirit.

I am humbled

again

and again

by His Spirit.

I am thankful for the reminder

that this little heart hasn't arrived yet either.

It is becoming...

and it is happy.

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Effects of the Fall...

When people die,

 floods of well-wishers come around to offer up their condolences

to those who have been left behind;

only nobody talks about what to do when everyone leaves.

You are left with an empty house

where the grief residing there becomes this living, breathing life-sucking

organism that hides in every nook and cranny of space.

Death blows a hole in the dynamics of relationships that self-help books cannot repair.

It sucker punches while violently invading your spirit.

It can make strong men weak and gentle women bitter.

I remember the day my brother died in random bits and pieces.

I remember that he gave me two dollars.

I remember his friend and the smell of alcohol on their breath.

They were only supposed to be going to the store.

 I remember watching television in the basement and hearing a knock on the door.

 I remember hearing my mom repeatedly ask two male voices where her son was.

They said that she needed to go to the hospital

and that they couldn’t give her any more information. 

I remember knowing that the situation was very bad, but nobody told me anything.

I remember standing in our kitchen as my brother’s cat wove in and out of my legs,

not really understanding the gravity of the situation

but trying to stuff down that gut feeling that something was indeed very wrong.

I remember my mom coming home and taking my sister and me into our bedroom.

 I remember the matter of fact way in which she told us our brother was dead.

She said three words: Mike. Is. Dead.

It was as if her mouth and vocal chords were doing all of the work.

She had already checked out.

I couldn’t touch him,

my dead brother.

His hands were huge.

They didn’t look real.

His ear didn’t look like it belonged to him.

Somebody had come in the night and put a giant’s ear in the place of his.

I watched his chest waiting for it to rise and fall,

but the pasty orange make-up on his face told me that this was not going to happen.

I knew without fully knowing, that I was looking at a vessel, and that vessel was empty.

 Sometimes you find yourself in a vortex of a moment.

A wormhole of sorts,

where the world buzzes and flits around you,

but time has somehow stopped…

for you.

This was one of those moments.

After the funeral everyone gathered in our backyard.

The weather was ideal for an outdoor wedding.

 It seemed odd to me that the weather seemed so…happy.

Where were the storm clouds?

Where was the rain?

Shouldn’t the heavens be crying out?

Didn’t the universe feel the need to lament with me?

There are certain events that take place that one would expect the ground to open up

and swallow them whole,

but it never happens.

The weather does exactly what God planned for it to do.

This was one of those moments that I realized that I was not at the center of the universe.

Life was going to play out how God intended it to,

and it was going to play out

regardless of whether or not I (or my brother) was there to witness it.

That’s a hard but necessary pill to swallow.

There’s wisdom in that pill.

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