charlee:
moooom!
jane won't be my horse!
she never wants to be my horse!
me:
honey, i can't help you with this.
i'm not going to tell jane to be your horse.
charlee:
she just wants to visit.
she always just wants to play visiting!
i'd like to say the conversation ended there but it didn't.
we spent some time after talking about our hearts when someone doesn't want to be our horse.
and then how to be ok when they decide they do. we need grace people.
they are fine now. i think bo is in there checking their hooves.
at the dinner table last night, bo confessed that he might have brought some garbage from the neighbours yard into his room. he passionately explained his desire to repurpose the thrown away items into inventions and creations.
after dinner i walked into his room and found an entire bag of trash sitting on his desk.
as in someone had put their trash out at the curb and my son dragged it into his room.
and attended their easter sunday church community celebration.
it was pretty hip and groovy and made me want to boogie, for the most part.
as part of the service, a couple shared
what "hope," the kind that comes from jesus, looks like
after the heart break of loosing an infant
for unexplainable reasons.
they told their story
and it was really fun.
not really.
it actually felt like a bad joke
in our guts.
we writhed and
wiped at our eyes like maniacs
and kept giving each other
"this is awesome" looks.
that's what we do when we feel vulnerable.
it's comical.
(for the record, we love that couple now.
we love them for getting up there and being all bruised and naked
and praising jesus anyway. it truly did minister to us).
...
for me
loosing my boys
has meant
that pain has moved into one of the spare rooms
of my heart.
and she is here to stay.
she's an interesting character -
social skills are a bit off.
we are getting along fine.
it hasn't gotten weird or anything.
when any of the following things happen she opens her door
and holds my hand for a while:
passing the baby section at the store.
seeing sweet sleeping baby boys on instagram
because everyone seems to have one right now.
seeing the soft swollen pregnant bellies of the women i meet and know and love.
when one of the receptionists at the doctor office uses a patronizing tone with me.
when my new family doctor tells me to stop talking so he can give me a hug.
when bodhi asks me if i saw jesus when his brothers were taken to be with him.
twins.
fridays.
...
my favorite thing the couple shared
was that hope looked like being
surprised,
surprised at how well they really were doing with it all,
surprised by the joy.
"yeah." i thought.
"me too."
pain and joy are surprising good neighbours
made possible because of hope in jesus.
it's like a math problem that shouldn't work.
but it does.
it works because hope in jesus says
jesus is the prize.
he is not a means.
he. is. the. prize...
(this is what i am learning at our church these days).
all of the things in life are the means to him.
the peace and the storm,
the pain and the joy,
the tears and the laughter,
they mean to lead us to the prize...
i mean the Prize.
so all of that to say,
we are doing well, surprisingly well.
and i'm learning to be ok
with my sometimes erratic, sometimes uncomfortable and reclusive bag-lady pain.
and i'd be ok with yours too.
if you ever see me squirmy and wiping away tears like a maniac,
you can be sure that she has me by the hand
and is leading me down they way made by hope to the
comfort found in jesus,
my Prize.
so there...
fyi, this post was made possible by the following:
mostly because of the line, watch me fall apart, watch me fall apart.
