Cheek to Cheek (Bruises, Curses and Kisses)

The cheeks of a two-year-old are delightfully irresistible, which is why I kiss them as often as I can. This morning, in fact, I leaned over and planted one on Levi’s tender cheek for a reason I cannot remember, but he quickly pulled back in pain.

Yesterday he fell while standing on a sideways can of chicken broth that lay on the dining room floor. He whacked his soft cheek hard on a sturdy wooden chair and came up screaming, red faced. Today he sports a deep blue bruise that runs like war paint across the most sensitive part of his face.

“No,” he said, pointing to his cheek after my ill-placed kiss, “boo-boo.”

Then he turned his head and offered me the other.

I kissed it too.

//

It was so gray this morning. This Monday, this second try at getting the kids back to school after a snow day kept them home last week and a two-hour delay threw schedules into havoc again today. Yesterday was filled with freezing rain and ice and I had hoped, just maybe, we might get one of those clear crystalline mornings out of it all, when the world is dressed in icy diamonds with sun glittering down. But, no, wet slush and gray cloud-filled skies cast shadows over us all and I found myself standing crying over the dishes in the sink while my children bickered and fussed, swirling in layers of need and want, heavy like those clouds.

I went to the attic, flash light in hand, and dug out Brennan Manning’s book, Ruthless Trust, and yet another floor lamp, hoping both would shed some light. But our outlets are all full and the lamp stood dim in a dimmer corner.

Finally I went to the window, the one that looks out on all of the ugly, pulled back the curtain and cursed the sky.

“This is such an ugly day,” I said while my children watched, gathered at the dining room table. My words struck the sky, heaven’s tender cheek. 

Those words hurled in front of my kids felt like blasphemy to me.  Then my daughter followed and peering out confirmed, “Yes, it is ugly.”

//

Later, standing in the laundry room which is really a walled-in porch I felt the sun lay warm across my cheek and paused under its caress. That room’s usually half-frozen and I rush about in it wrestling icy cold clothes from washer to dryer.

But on sunny days, it’s one of the only rooms in this whole cave, where the light pours in, abundant. On those days the sun warms it like a spa and the windows fog with moisture.

Icy winds blew in this morning, breaking clouds, shaking branches, causing the twins and I to bustle as we trotted through frozen parking lots. “Run, run, run,” we sang, “Don’t slip! Don’t fall!”

Then Isaiah fell and I almost did too, but the sun kept up its peaking.

By the time I went to check on the laundry the back room was lit like a flash bulb, bright and I was blinded like someone emerging from a cave. I suppose that was why I felt it and paused there by the window soaking in the warm kiss of the sun on the most sensitive part of my face.

//

The boys woke up crying from their naps and things were touch and go for awhile.  So I sat on the old wooden floor in the kitchen while they clustered nearby with snacks and juice.  

Levi turned to me red faced and sleepy eyed and I said, grinning, "I'm gonna eat your cheeks."

Then both boys turned, as if on cue, and started stalking their way toward me, hands raised and growling.  Two sock-footed, fleecey-pants-wearing, sweaty-headed bears with round mouths open wide.

"Eat Mama!" they taunted, leaning in with gaping jaws.  They planted wide, wet circles on my cheeks, each standing on either side and we laughed and giggled and I covered them both, cheek to cheek, with kisses.    

This post is linked with Playdates With God.

Bittersweet (the end of Christmas Vacation)

She stands at the top of the stairs in her soft pink and green pajamas - the ones with the ruffles on the ends of each sleeve.  Her long blond hair is tousled and tumbling, fresh from a shower the night before.  Lit by the light of the Christmas tree, she smiles, holding something in her hand.

"My tooth came out," she says, smiling still, "the one that wasn't very loose."

Curled on the couch, I tip my head up to her, drink her in, this vision of seven poised at the top of the stairs.  I smile wide, exaggerating my excitement so it carries across the distance between us.

"How?" I ask in a stage whisper, because the boys are sleeping still, and, "Do you need anything?"

Her reply is long and complicated, filled with unnecessary detail, like every story she tells, exact.  

"Wow," I offer, not sure what she needs from me.  The first tooth, last April, was a song and dance, picture-taking occasion, but we're a good ways in to this new season now.

She lingers, eyes twinkling in the light.

"Is it bleeding? Do you need some tissue?"

"I'm going to rinse my mouth," she says, turning.

//

This is my daughter who lost her first tooth in the night sometime last year and didn't bother waking us, who dealt with the blood herself and told us, triumphant, the following morning.

This is the morning they return to school and I feel it again, the pang of grief and loss at yet another vacation spent - too little quiet, too little time, too few moments with this oldest child.

The night before, after prayers and a song, she said for the first time that she didn't want to go back to school.  She was hanging from my neck, half smiling and I like to think she was 'playing' the moment, but maybe she feels it too, the pain of these moments turning us away from each other.

//

She stands at the top of the stairs, beautiful, like the star shining light on top of the Christmas tree that stands between us.  I sit on the couch, lit by the same light, warm and sleepy-headed still with my journal and coffee in hand. 

She turns toward the bathroom and I hear the water running as she rinses and spits out the blood of her loss.  I turn toward my journal and another sip of darkness, grateful for the moment, grateful to have seen her there, softly lit, standing at the top of the stairs. 

Linking with Imperfect Prose.

An Introvert's One Word Post (363 days late)

Last year was my first year blogging through the New Year and the first time I was exposed to OneWord365. Alece Ronzino came up with the concept of praying for One Word that encapsulates what God might be inviting you into in the year ahead and a whole community has blossomed around it (Claire DeBoer has written a great introduction into the concept over at SheLoves Magazine). 

It seemed like everyone I followed online had a Word and not just any word, mind you, but a Good and Meaningful word.  Not only did they have a word, they were writing about it, blogging about it and what it might mean for the year ahead.

So I started looking for my word in a rather anxious way, as in, "I'd better hurry up and get a #$@^ing word, so I can write about it and get in on the trend."

(ok, so maybe there wasn't any swearing involved, but I did feel a lot of pressure.)

I'd just recently read, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, by Cynthia Bourgeault and was fascinated by her ideas around the embodiment of spirituality, how our outward postures can both reflect and shape our inward experience and expressions of spirituality.  The more I thought about it, the more I felt my word might be "embodied." 

Pretty quickly I had a word or at least the idea of a word, but I was hesitant, it seemed like a big deal - One Word, for the whole year.  What if I messed up?  Was this THE word? How was I to know?  So I tucked it away, in true introvert fashion, and kept on waiting and listening to see if anything else would turn up.

I told a friend about the Word situation over breakfast a few weeks later.  My voice rose with anxiety as I spoke about the stress of not having a Word.  It was all so random and I was only venting, really, but as I spoke, her face lit up and she said, "I know what your word is!"

She had recently watched one of the Nanny McPhee movies where Nanny pins a word on each of the members of a family.  Coming to the mother, Nanny McPhee pins the words, "Leap of Faith" onto her lapel. Watching the movie, my friend thought "That's Kelly!"

Well, I think you have to take a word when it comes at you like that, right?

So there I was, a little way into 2013 with FOUR words: "Embodied" and "Leap of Faith."

In the beginning I thought of them as separate ideas, parallel, but unconnected roads leading into the New Year.

It wasn't until after we sold our house, failed to find a new home to buy and moved into a month-to-month rental that I thought of reading those words all together as one sentence, "Embodied leap of faith."

So that's what we did, looking back, though I wouldn't have called it that at the time - we took an embodied leap of faith.  It's funny, we ended up renting about two blocks from our old  home which may not seem like much of a leap to some, but a leap of faith may not always be accurately measured by visible bounds.  Maybe a better measure might be the stretch and lurch induced in that strange muscle known as the human heart.  

Those four little words, that one act, has shaped so much of my writing over the past year.  I wrote about Hope, and Trust, Waiting and Surrender as we worked our way toward and eventually over the edge of our little nest out into the wide unknown (you can read a number of these posts by clicking HERE).  

Here we are, though, twelve months later, still winding our way through the air, waiting to land, waiting, again, for another Word (or Four).  

Will you participate in OneWord365?  What will your word be?

One of the Cherubim

 

                                                  Walking with my family,
                                                  I am like one of the
                                                  four living creatures
                                                  "full of eyes
                                                  in front and behind;"
                                                  two pairs at my head,
                                                  two at my waist,
                                                  and two at my knees.

                                                  Together we spot
                                                  the monarch caterpillar
                                                  green and yellow
                                                  stretched-out along
                                                  a blade of grass,
                                                  the cicada half out
                                                  of its shell, suspended
                                                  on the side of a tree

                                                  and, like the angels,
                                                  I am filled with praise.

 * Photo Credit

This is Our Story (Bearing the Light)

This is a reading I wrote for the Christmas Eve service at our church a few years back.  Merry Christmas to you and yours and may you be blessed by the Light that shines!

In the beginning was the Word
     and the word was with God,
          and the word was God.  

Genesis tells us that the first thing God made was light. 

The first thing Jesus – the Word who was with God – made, was light. 

“Let there be light” said the Word. 

     And there was light. 

God saw that the light was good;

     and God separated the light from the darkness. 

“Let us make humans in our image,” said the Word.

And life was brought into being. 
Humans were made in the image of God,
     in the image of light,
     in the image of the life that was the light of all people.

The first thing God made was light,

     but the first thing we chose was darkness.

We chose darkness and it welcomed us,

     with promises to hide our need and nakedness,
          with promises to bring us life.

Our eyes became dim and we learned to flee the light. 

The darkness wrapped us with itself,

     we became prisoners and captives
          and the light that smoldered within us went dark. 

We walked in darkness

     and lived in the land of the shadow of death. 

God looked down and saw our darkness. 

The Word said, “I am the Light of the world.  Let me go to them.”
     And he came. 

The people who lived in the land of deep darkness saw a great light.

     Like the coming of the dawn.
          Like the sun in all its glory. 

And the angels sang, “Arise, shine, for your light has come.”

But we didn’t know him for who he was. 

     We knew darkness.  We knew captivity. 
     The light was painful and we clung to the darkness. 

But some remembered how it felt to live in light and love.

     They squinted and stared, even though it caused great pain, 
     even though his light exposed their darkness.

They welcomed the light 
     and the light within them flickered and grew. 

Then they too became light
     and the light spread, 
     like a fire that burns and never goes out. 

The light shines in the darkness 
     and the darkness has not overcome it. 

And now Christ comes 
     in every person who will welcome him, 

     in every one who will bear the light.   

We Are Held in the Dark

". . . and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by . . ."  Exodus 33:22

My twin boys travel the steep wooden stairs, short legs stretching with a two-year-old's unique combination of purpose-filled distraction.  They run through the house on winged feet, blinded with joy and speed.  They climb - oh how they climb - improvising foot-holds as little arms reach and stubby fingers grab for that which is too hot, too fragile, too dangerous for them to have.        

To be two is to live life perpetually on the edge - the fall is nearly inevitable.

Sometimes it's an accident of their own making - the lean that goes too far, the stumble - but other times the world gives way beneath them, that which they trusted is not what it seems and at this their eyes widen, betrayed by unforeseen pain. 

The worst falls are followed by a long, slow intake of air.  Alerted by the sound of their impact, it's my turn to fly, up or down the stairs, across the long pine floor boards in search of the injured one.

The first wail erupts, twisting his little face, causing his eyes to half-shut as all of that breath drawn-in now comes rushing out.  Screaming, he rises and staggers toward me, reaching, half-blind, for comfort.

Looking for wounds - for blood, for bruises or the tell-tale red, puffy skin of a cheek or forehead - I gather him in like a hen with her chicks.  My long arms twine tight knowing by instinct that the press of flesh on flesh will bring consolation.

Then I rise because there's comfort for them still in being lifted, in being held.  Perched on my left arm, short legs wrap around my waist and I reach up instinctively with my right hand, cupping the back of a silken-haired head. 

The wailing continues in my ear now as he leans back time and again to fill his lungs and all of the pain comes pouring out dressed in a vivid cloak of sound.  Finally, when the sound has been let, I gently press his face into the intersection of my neck and shoulder, that dark corner of mother-scented skin.  Holding him there, his face buried, he gentles, calming as the tension eases and he melts into me.

Standing there, swaying, with my head crooked to the side to close him in, my hand still covering the back of his head, I hear the words of an old familiar hymn in a new light,  

                  He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock
                  That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
                  He hideth my life with the depths of His love,
                  And covers me there with His hand,
                  And covers me there with His hand.
                                                  (Fanny Crosby)

Then it dawns on me, maybe the darkness I so often feel is not a sign of God's absence, but rather a sign of God's intimate presence.

Maybe when the eye of my spirit grows dim and darkness descends all around, it is simply because I am being held, steadied, in the cleft of the Rock, covered by a soft and sturdy hand.  Breathing in with my eyes shut I can almost feel the press of God-scented skin, the presence of the One who holds, who hides, who covers us all.

This post is linked with #TellHisStory and Imperfect Prose.

If you liked this post, you may also like Remembering (We Are Held) "God waits like a hammock swinging in the breeze, like a mother’s lap that sways full of life and breath and song."         

Breathing (in Advent)

"I told you about this, right?" he asks, "About how I don't breathe?"

He said it casually as we stood together washing and cooking in the kitchen.

"No," I said, with a rueful smile, "you didn't tell me you stopped breathing."

But then I added, with seriousness, "I know."

*   *   *

"I can't feel my face," I'd gasped on the way to the hospital, "it's all numb and tingly."

Our van flew North along the highway and my husband, driving as fast and carefully as he could, kept glancing over to where I sat in the passenger seat, encouraging me to breathe through wave after wave of contractions.

We hadn't practiced breathing this time around, hadn't practiced anything really.  My previous labor lasted a few brief hours and aside from panting to keep from pushing as my friend sped us across town, there hadn't been time for breathing.

This time, though, we were driving to the big city hospital with the level one NICU to deliver twins, one of whom was breech, and we were hoping to get there in time.  Recalling a breathing pattern from a lamaze class years ago, my husband coached me over the miles, though he told me later he was making himself dizzy in the process.   

I was nearing panic as we pulled off the exit ramp into the downtown streets that were mercifully empty.  We parked in the emergency entrance and an angel with a walkie-talkie found a wheel-chair and whisked us away in the freight elevator, directly into the maternity unit.  
  
As soon as we were assigned a nurse, we explained my tingling face and hands.

"That's because you're not breathing right," she replied.

Before signing off of her shift for the evening, she educated us both in a pattern of "ha"s and "hoos" that would carry us through the rest of labor and delivery.  She spent a total of fifteen minutes with us, but she turned the tide of delivery by helping me figure out how to breathe.  

*   *   *

We're trying to learn to breathe again, my husband and I, here in this season of Advent; here in the waiting and in-between, when each breath matters more than we can tell.  Caught in the middle between two houses for five months now, we've both been holding our breath out of habit as we wait through wave after wave of hope and discouragement.  

Lying in bed at night, side by side, we take deep breaths and the blankets rise and fall with each inhale and exhale. 

Watching the children gathered on the carpet, still and expectant for one brief pause as they wait for an Advent treat, we draw the moment in, through eyes and ears and nostrils, before exhaling into the chaos of wrappers and chocolate that ensues. 

We are learning to breathe as though each breath is a doorway, an invitation and each breath deeply drawn, holds within it the foretaste of that for which we wait.

This post is linked with Playdates With God.