The Morning...

While having mentioned it before, I feel the need to express again just how much I abhor mornings. I awake in a tizzy, hearing my name in my dreams…whiny voices all around, like a house of talking mirrors… and then suddenly I awake with harsh taps on my sleeping arm to find someone, a person around three feet tall, staring at me, demanding that I get out of bed at an hour that I once thought only professors of a ridiculously early class could require of me… and even then I had a choice whether to get up and go to class or not… settle for a C or strive for an A. And even if I was striving for a D- in parenting, little people still wake up. They still need to be fed. Of course Go Diego Go is something to be grateful for at a ludicrous hour, but when I’m up, I’m up. Thomas can somehow stumble to the couch and fall peacefully back asleep, ignoring his ardent little ones, dozing in and out of talks of Cocoa Wheats and school snacks and homework and un-brushed teeth and untied shoes. But not me. The weight rests heavily on my already aching shoulders as I carry a little person to the toilet because he is about to pee his pants and has successfully waited until the last possible second to tell me before his bladder explodes into the only clean pair of pajamas I could dig up the night before.

And while on the weekends there is no set schedule or place to be at 8:30 a.m., it’s almost worse. I wake up with ADD, pondering all the possibilities of the day: Should we go to the market? The mountains? Ikea? The mall? Oh, maybe we could stay here and paint Elias’ room. Perhaps I should make a nice breakfast and we could sit down together as a family. The bathrooms need cleaned. The laundry needs done. Oh…everything is closed on Sunday and today is Saturday. Maybe I should get groceries…

And then, added to my rat-like skittishness, are my children. They begin fighting. One is tired. The other won’t eat his eggs. The other keeps saying, in a very, very whiny voice, “Will you please have alone time with me in the bedroom…. and watch me make stuff… and have tickle time?” This is the true test, as I am now guilt-ridden and unable to please anyone, and still am running around like a headless chicken in my mind. And of course the “one” isn’t going to handle it well when I try to rationally explain just why locking ourselves in a room won’t go over so well with the other two, namely a certain two year-old who screams at the top of his lungs when not getting what he wants WHEN he wants it. Did I mention we live in an apartment building? In Italy? And that our neighbors underneath us have comically mentioned hearing “the scream?” While they say the don’t care if they do hear us, I don’t think anyone enjoys waking up to a screaming child, especially one that isn’t hers, on her only day off in the week.

“Oh I haven’t taken my medicine. Maybe that will help.” I down 10 mg. of Lexapro and a glass of Diet Coke and think about the easy days--- about the days when I had one child and had the time every morning to read my Bible and ponder philosophical and theological ideas. Time to write in cute little homemade journals… time to read a parenting book here and there… time to pick my nose, twiddle my thumbs, clip my fingernails…without the demands of children filling my subconscious brain at all times. It’s not just their voices…and it’s not just in the morning… it’s just the idea of three people depending on me…sinful, immature, self-centered me…at all hours of the day. I understand why women keep their full-time jobs. Losing one’s identity in mothering, while it is made out to be such a harrowing thing on the covers of Parenting magazines…and such the morally “right thing” in Christian circles…is not exactly my idea of fulfillment.

Do not get me wrong. I have these moments when I truly see the fruit of my attempts at parenting. I see my son care for his little brother in a way that I know has somehow, between all the yelling and screaming and bickering that his parents do, been emulated by our underlying abundant love for him. I hear Keziah in the kitchen, spinning in circles and singing about Jesus and about how much she loves him (and about Satan and how she wants to kick his butt…but that’s another story). I see her bring me her misfit toys and tell me that they are for “Africa people.” And then there’s Ezra. And God love him, the two year-old kid is so incredibly wrapped up in his own wants and desires it isn’t even funny. But even when he’s innocently squeezing the life out of our pet bunny, I see love in his eyes and a desire to do what is right.

And I have to say that while I may struggle with depression at times, especially when in the midst of change (like now…just for example), children bring a certain joy that is unexplainable and strange. As completely cheesy and unhealthy as it sounds, they give me a reason (albeit not always the reason I want) to wake up in the morning. I know. I know. I should WANT to get out of bed. I should WANT to be joyful in every situation and so LOVE life that I desire to hop out of bed like Snow White and skip down the road to tell people about Jesus’ love for me. After all, I’m in “full-time ministry,” whatever that means (Insert Record scratching here).

But the reality is that I’m in a new place, enduring culture shock and a new language and no cheap fountain drinks and no Target…which have slowly found their replacements in yummy cappuccinos and the American-like mall…but still…

And then there are those actual important things in life—like relationships…and in this new home, in this new country, there are not those things that are familiar…like my mom and dad, my sisters, my friends… you know…all the things that give one a sense of identity and recognition

A pity party is not in order. Really. I chose this. At the end of the day, I love this. I’m always learning to embrace change, to try to have a good attitude toward life and its challenges. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. (After all, I am living in ITALY!) Following God is fun in that He truly does provide what we NEED. Perhaps not what we want always, but His provision is immense when we sojourn with Him. Sure I’m tempted to give up some days. And if it weren’t for my kids, there would probably be those days that I wouldn’t get out of bed.

Redemption lies in these moments, wrapped up like the gifts under my tree right now. These moments are change and the gifts are my children. While their demands suck every last bit of energy from me, I don’t know what I would do without them right now. They give me a glimpse of the past, as I remember their small helpless bodies juxtaposed against the individual creative and passionate (and completely stubborn) little people they are becoming. And they give me a peek into the future, as I try to live accountable for their knowledge of grace. I love watching how God uses all of this change to shape their lives…to help them embrace the difficulties that come with missing friends and cousins and grandmas and grandpas. And I have the opportunity to parent them through it all…to give hope even when I don’t necessarily feel hopeful.

My house is quiet now. Ezra is watching Thomas the Train on the computer, Elias is making a card out of magazine cutouts for our teammate, and Keziah is busy creating something with scissors and tape in her room. Dinner is on the stove (thanks to another teammate who has become like family to us)… and the smell of cider apple candles engulfs my senses. All is calm. All is bright.

Until the morning, that is.

And it was good.

I'm in one of those perfected chemically imbalanced post mentrual meloncholy but not depressed moods. The ones that beckon me to do something creative with what little time remains in this night...

I scanned through pictures of mammals and amphibians and explained to my seven year-old that we aren't the same as monkeys even though we both have opposable thumbs, I read a chapter of "One Hundred Dresses" to a very whiny, very unamused and unappreciative four year-old daughter, and then went to the kitchen to check my e-mail and stalk random people on Facebook who I haven't seen in years. While looking at an old friend's pictures and listening to a C.D. my sister gave me the day before I moved to Italy, entitled "The Saddest Day of my Life," I decided something creative must be regergitated in a way that would allow me to see on paper or a screen or in a 4 x 6 image, the passion that flickers inside me, between wiping a two year old's butt and breaking up fights over whose room the new guinea pig will sleep in tonight.

And thus I reached for my camera, scurried around my apartment to find my card reader, slipped the card in and shoved it all into the computer in order to make sense of the images I see in my head that must in some way, be captured with my camera. If I don't see in flesh these things in my heart, I fear they will fade or drift away, like an old friend... an image... a friendship once so bright and vivid that now only holds a shell of memories and silent laughter.

I'm remembering one of those friends even now. I can see her laughing but the sound has been silenced by time and new memories, ones both beautiful and heart-wrenching...

But not even pictures or words can express one's soul. It's all just an attempt to beckon something to come forth...to make sense of the beautiful mess that lay before us here in this strange and yet familiar planet. I wonder if God felt that way before He spoke it all... and I wonder how He felt (not what He SAID, for "and it was good" are just words desperately trying to convey this deep emotion that FATHER GOD FELT) when He stood back and looked at it all. Not even the best cinematographer can tuck that feeling in his gut and make it appear on a big screen. The Father's expression of His emotions came in the form of long shadows cast across mountains at sunset... of waterfalls flowing from endless heights...of the body of a woman... the crest of the ocean. How amazing that his creatures get their inspiration from the very medium of art, namely Creation, that Father God sculpted with His mind.

That's neat.

Delicate

Well.

It's been awhile.

After my last attempt at a post (see Thrashing, but don't read past paragraph three...it's quite lame), I concluded that I would do best to lay my creative flow aside, as, well, I didn't have much of an option given that the orange was squeezed to its max and i was left looking like a shriveled old lady.

But today as I was watching a Subway worker (as in sandwich artist) feed some geese in the field of sorts across the street from our house, next to the interstate, I thought that perhaps it was time to write. After all, how desperate must I be to have been inspired by geese. It's just that they were rushing to this man, like they were starving. And the sun was setting and it was my favorite hour of the day because things were getting all orange and the trees were getting all black. And I had a McDonald's Diet Coke in hand. And I was thinking about Africa. About a very dear family we know there. I was thinking about how I just got an e-mail from the woman who was humbly asking for money because they didn't have any and their son had recently been chased home from school because he didn't have black shoes.

And I was alone. Talking to Jesus. Thinking to myself that I should probably write.

I was asked for the hundredth time today when we are leaving (for Italy that is). I wish I knew that answer. I sometimes wish I was one of those people who made these very solid plans and actually saw the whole thing unfold just as I had dreamed and planned it would. But alas, this has never been the case in my life. And as much as I'm up for adventure (i.e. I was dumb enough to ride the Diamondback at King's Island last week despite the post-three-children-nausea factor), sometimes I just wish I could know how it's all going to play out. At least how the next few months are going to play out. Living in limbo is not fun. And what's worse, sometimes, rarely but too often...too often as in a few hours ago, I get the dreaded question:

"So what will happen if you don't raise all the money???"

I really don't like this question. It really makes me feel kinda sick when someone asks me this. And I mean sick, like to my stomach.

And then I pause. Deep breaths, I tell myself. I can handle this. After all, we are living a life that is a lot different than the get a good job, have 2.5 kids, move further out of the city (where it's safe you know), eventually get a puppy, and put down some roots, kind of life...

Not that this is bad. In fact, some days it sounds pretty darn good. And if I ever do live in one of those neighborhoods, gosh darnit, I will find one with a neighborhood pool.

There. I said it.

A couple of deep breaths later, I found myself answering with my standard answer. It goes something like "Well, if God has brought us this far, I don't think He's going to just drop the ball. I can't even think like that because it takes away from everything He has done and has called us to do. Eventually, we just have to get out the boat."

And in the pit of my sick stomach, the six year-old in me begs Jesus to not let that answer be in vain. To not let us be put to shame. In that moment, I cling subconciously to David's words, the ones about God's favor. About not letting him be put to shame.

Shame and guilt have very unequivocally become my brain-mates over my lifetime. So any time I am risking them being enlarged like a helium balloon in the confines of my small brain, I am tempted to jump off of a ledge. I think this could perhaps be the reason as to why I feel sick to my stomach when faced with rejection or harsh tones, or mean people or the idea that what we thought God was leading us to was just some whim of the imagination and that surely we are losing our minds, thinking God would actually speak to us, lead us and guide us, and work out all the details so that we could follow Him to wherever it is that He has asked us to go.

Oh, that's a little deep. But since I started...

When I'm honest with myself, I'm not so sure I'm living the reality of truly following Jesus...not when I know there is a man in India who has prayed for a bicycle for ten years so that He can go tell people about this Jesus who didn't remove him from the burden of living in poverty but who gave Him eternal life and who is a best friend to Him. That's a reality that I will probably never know. But I do know that even though I am a privelaged white girl from the suburbs of the Midwest in the richest country in the world, my reality of following Jesus carries a sort of heaviness to it. When you are given more, there's more to abandon. There's more to risk. And with risk, there's a sort of impending shame that haunts me like an evening shadow.

But then, I look back. Beyond the shadow. Into the darkest moments of my life. The moments in seventh grade when I really wanted to die. The moments when I was sure my marriage would end. Moments when relationships lay in shambles. Moments when I prayed to find money on the ground. Moments when I just didn't know how it would work out.

And I see it all. Like a movie. Like a good movie.

I see the light creeping slowly into the picture. And I see Jesus sorting through the muck, finding something beautiful to make out of this mess. I see Him taking it all...the harsh words, the depression, the loneliness, the fear, the shame, the guilt, the desperation over finances, my marriage, my future, my children, my relationships... and gently kneading it all together, leaving it alone for a bit...letting it settle into just the right texture.

And then, when the time is right, usually about the time I've given up, he picks up the big messy clump of clay and sprinkles some water on it. He takes it back and forth between his hands, sorting out all the lumps, softening it just so. He puts it on the wheel and very slowly, very gently, begins to spin it, holding that clump in a way that looks as if it would just slip out of his damp hands and onto the floor, adding to the mess it is already.

His hands are cupped around the clay now, as it cautiously makes its way into what simply resembles an okay-looking bowl.

He holds the bowl, like he's holding a baby, and he lifts its sides, moving so slowly that I don't even realize he's doing anything at all.

The wheel continues to spin. The bowl is getting taller. And much more delicate. A few times I think that it will surely fall to the ground. But it continues to grow. Upward. Outward. With a rim that looks as if it's reaching to the heavens. Every piece of what is now a rounded vase is perfect. Every ounce of every lump has been smoothed into this piece of art that now has the capabiity of holding its own. Holding something else even.

And perhaps in that redemption of all things broken is the capability of holding those who are broken. Holding people who are withering. Dying. Those who are hopeless. Ashamed. Abandoned. In need of Light.

This is my vase. It's the beatuiful mess I have to offer. It's the willingness to be broken and formed into something new. Even if it's not as delicate.

Because it's not my life.

I do not have the answers. But something tells me that's a good thing. That this "not knowing" is preparing us for something greater.

And for that reason, I'll find the rest I need. I won't stop begging Him to not be put to shame. I won't stop pleading with Him to make this calling a reality.

But I will find hope in how he redeems it all. How he forms it into something more beautiful, more useful, than we could ever have imagined.

Thrashing

When you are married with three small children, having a date night is something like a child arriving at an amusement park and staring at the mountains of steel that will soon move his insides in ways he never thought possible but which are surreal and exhilarating. Just the thought of getting to sit at a table and have food delivered to me, just me, especially when it comes in the form of Lettuce Wraps from PF Chang’s, gets me excited. And staring at my husband, even when we have nothing to say, gives me a new appreciation for silence. (And I’m quite aware after re-reading that paragraph at how it could be taken in a sensual way…I assure you that Lettuce Wraps are sensual in their own tofuey, soy saucey, crunchy noodly way.)

Last night, sweet Laura came to our rescue once again after receiving an e-mail that perhaps forcing us to have a date night would be a good thing, given that I really, really didn’t like my husband at the time the words were emphatically typed. Mentioning, “If we haven’t killed each other” always helps too.

After going out to eat, we went to Wal-Mart to get an iron (which I am realizing at this moment, we forgot to buy). While standing in the car isle, trying to decide which refrigerant to buy for our leaky air conditioner in our ghetto van, I found it necessary to have Thomas massage my very achy neck. As I was making the oohing and awing sounds that may have left quite a few employees wondering what was going on in aisle 17, for the first time in about a week, I felt whole. As Thomas compared products, I stood there, peacefully, allowing the humor and seriousness of our evening to ensue in my mind, recalling the conversation we had over dinner. I had shared with Thomas how I doubted God’s goodness and provision for this “calling” He has both burdened and blessed us with. How I was feeling “done” in the sense that we are slowly moving to our destination, all the while living in limbo of trying to embrace the present while longing to be in the future. I am finally to a place where I really, really want to get to Italy, set up camp, and get to work. But here we are, awaiting His timing, His provision. In the meantime, thoughts of doubt and guilt and very earthly frustrations have been nearly drowning me. Here is a word picture of this:

I’m in the ocean, in the midst of drowning…and there is this life-saving device attached to me. As I frenziedly try to stay afloat, the little ring moves with me, waiting for me to notice it, like my friend Joy’s dog. My to-do lists push me under…the calls and e-mails and meetings. Worry and anxiety push me further down. I try to swim, but guilt comes in the form of a giant wave and I’m barely making it to the top.

Little lifesaver, gently knotted around my ankle, bobs up and down, wondering why I haven’t noticed it by this point. It stays on top of the water, moving this way and that as water fills my mouth three feet below. We drift along, moving toward the shore, as the Wind takes us where only It can.

My arms: flailing. Lifesaver: riding the waves like a tanned surfer.

Just as I start to give up, realizing my destiny at this point is to die a sad and lonely death in the middle of a murky sea, my toe catches on something. My other toes begin to feel it too. My feet and ankles are now immersed in this familiar squishy feeling. I press my foot down, as this is my last hope for survival. Sand meets my feet and I straighten my tired body. My head comes up from the water as quickly as it immersed from the womb. I look down and notice that not only is my head above the water, but my neck and shoulders as well.

I look to my right and notice the tube. I grab it for fear that it will float away. It must have drifted out here from the shore. Then I notice it is attached to something and that the something is me. I grab onto it, as I am very weak at this point. It guides me, nearly pulls me, to the shore.

It was my destiny all along. Oh the needless and ridiculous thrashing about. The questioning. The missing out on all of the blessings right in front of me. The exchange of the quiet drifting only to be inundated by waters too chaotic for my helpless body to endure. The Holy Spirit alongside me, pushing me ever so slowly to the shore. Jesus, my companion, never leaving me, attached to me, for that is His promise. The Father, the ground on which I stand when alas I have been too ignorant to receive His Helper and His Son.

And this is the cycle in which, day in and day out, I find myself.

But in that dinner conversation with my newfound friend Thomas (a.k.a. my husband), he reminded me that this is our life, not someone else’s. The way Jesus moves in our lives is not like the way He moves in your life…or the life of your best friend or your brother or your mom. Each of our journeys is so unique. And each story is meant to bring glory to Jesus in its very distinctive hurt, pain, suffering, laughter, joy and contentedness. We cannot take what works in someone else’s life and replicate it in our own.

I was talking to this guy at our friends’ wedding last weekend. He is an actor who has been in a couple films. The one he just finished is about the early years of Billy Graham. He talked about what an incredible opportunity he had to be light among some very broken people in Hollywood. But he also mentioned that the film lacked something because of its secular take on a very spiritual figure. “It lacks the Spirit of God…. it’s told like a story rather than what it really is.”

This is so true in our lives as well. When we try to be someone or do something or live someone else’s life that we were never intended to live, something inside of us dies. Suddenly practicality and earthly comforts and anxiety rush in to meet us in our shirts that are too baggy, our shoes that are too small, our hair that is too long or too short or too pink or too green. Something is off. And I believe others can feel it when we aren’t living a life guided by the Holy Spirit. We thrash about like a tired two year-old.

This past week, I’ve tried to force myself and my family, mostly my husband, into a plan that was my own and not God’s. Sure, my plan makes sense to me. And I bet I could get a list of a hundred people who would agree with my plan. But if Jesus isn’t on the list, what good is it? I only get the wonderful opportunity of becoming a nagging and bitter woman with whom I wouldn’t even want to live (and I’m pretty sure there’s a Proverb about that one…something about it being better to live on the corner of a roof than with a bitter wife. Too bad we don’t have an accessible roof).

But grace and redemption have once again met me in the form of a new day and a very forgiving husband (of course, I must say there is always forgiving to be done on my part as well. For those of you who know us… and I mean “us” in terms of the messy, catty us, you know that my husband needs lots of forgiveness and grace. Almost as much as I do. See, I couldn’t just be the quiet, humble wife that many wish I were. I had to go and insert my pride in here).

Church at Ikea

In Italy it isn’t uncommon to share a table with someone you don’t know. So today at the café at Ikea, when a woman pulled up a chair next to us and set her bags down between Thomas and her chairs, as a divider of sorts, we thought nothing of it. We continued eating our couscous, pasta and very yummy “dolce” (Italian for dessert).

As I was nearing the end of my chocolate crunchy cheesecake bliss, I asked the woman, in Italian, if she spoke English (I had a very important question to ask her). She said, “yes” without so much of a hint of an Italian accent and so I asked her if she knew if the mall next door was open today or not (apparently most things are closed here on Sundays). She answered me with a wonderful British accent, which took us into the next question travelers always ask: “Where are you from?” We exchanged our answers and then began asking (and answering) the next set of questions regarding marital status, children, work, length of time in Italy, etc.

This all spawned our conversation into something of a very spiritual and intense nature. It was way beyond the moment. I knew just by what felt like a force field around our table that this was holy…this was Jesus answering this woman’s cry for help. She didn’t go into detail but told us that she and her (Italian) husband of twenty years were separated…that everything had seemed to fall apart as of late. This very beautiful and kind woman who looked like a friendly sitcom wife said that in the car on the way to Ikea she had been questioning whether or not she was “possessed” because everything in her life had been going so terribly. She couldn’t believe how strange her encounter with us was, given the conversation didn’t start with this intention. Given she was seemingly desperate for some sort of answer to the questions burning in her soul.

We shared about our marriage and God’s redemption and Jesus’ love and abundant grace. At the beginning of the conversation, when it started taking on a more spiritual tone, she mentioned that, having grown up in a home where one of her parents was Catholic and the other a mix between Protestant and Jehovah’s Witness, she thought it was ridiculous that people would fight over little things regarding this one “God.” She mentioned Buddha and Ala in all of this and so we got the opportunity to share the difference between these religions (which was fresh in our minds given we talked with a Muslim man on the plane for about two hours regarding the differences in our faiths). We talked about the assurance of salvation Jesus offers because of his death and resurrection on the cross. The man on the plane said that by doing good works, he “hoped” to get to heaven. In this moment, with this woman, I re-lived my salvation experience, realizing that I really am sure that if I died this very moment, I’d be with Jesus. Not because of anything I’ve done, but because God chose to send His only Son to die for me. It’s because of this that there is anything holy and good that dwells in me and allows me to do “good works.”

At the end of the conversation, Thomas asked if he could pray with her. “Please do,” she said, a woman not too proud to pray in this very unreligious and overcrowded restaurant of sorts. We all closed our eyes and Thomas put his hand on her. We all felt it. I know. It was a rare and beautiful moment of the sweet presence of God. When we opened our eyes, hers were filled with tears. She got up from the chair and we rose to hug her. I felt like I was hugging my sister.

We exchanged information in the midst of all this and I told her that we should keep in touch. “Yah,” she said. “I’ll tell you in an e-mail why this is all so strange.” With that she turned to leave and looking back, she let out a deep breath, as if weight had lifted from her and said, “Well. I’m going to be thinking about this all day.” She smiled, her eyes dry now, and walked away.

I believe she walked away knowing that God is big enough for her questions. Big enough to seat her next to two foreigners who simply wanted to know whether or not the mall was open. Foreigners who God has asked to go to this place, to encounter people like her, to give answers to those who are seeking…to harvest these seeds that have been planted in the hearts of His people. His sons. His daughters.

This is church. Yes, even at Ikea.

Train Ride

Everything I could possibly say about Italy seems incredibly cliché’ and rather asinine. I could talk about the beauty or the culture or the history, but who hasn’t seen the pictures of the Italian villages hanging on every wall of every “Italian” restaurant in the U.S.? Who hasn’t heard about the rich history here? The wars. The fashion. The wine. The cheese. And the bread. Oh, the bread. Foccocia has an entirely different meaning here. Though I have to say that, after eating at an oddly inviting (and a bit dirty) Italian diner of sorts, the only very small glass of wine I ingested left me unimpressed.

Even as I’m riding the train through the mountains, I feel a bit removed from it all. I’m remembering an 18-hour bus (very old VW bus, that is) ride I took through the mountains of Eastern Europe some ten years ago. Recalling how I had to pee so bad and finally we stopped at the home of an elderly Albanian couple in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere… and was directed to a little room with concrete floors and a drain.

I am, however, reflecting on the “aura,” if you will, that I got from our time in Genova the last few days. Our friends, the Paces, live in an apartment that, if you can make it to the top of without heart failure, is beautiful. It has a large balcony that overlooks the ocean that is only a couple of miles away. The day we arrived, Donna and I sat on the balcony, the sun warming our exposed arms, soaking in each other’s presence and awing over the beauty of the view that God has so amazingly given them day in and day out.

But last night, or early this morning rather (jetlag is killing us), as the Paces and we listened to my favorite worship song together (From the Inside Out), one lyric struck a chord in me, in a way that is not really profound at all, but which awakened my heart once again to the reality of people’s need for Light in this place. “Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades…” And in this place, after sojourning through the labyrinth in the downtown district last night, noticing the prostitutes and the street kids and the drunk men and the lack of children, I felt surrounded by darkness and admittedly felt a twinge of hopelessness in giving these people a message of Jesus’ love, as if any of us is “too far gone” for such a God.

And then, like the enemy’s nefarious clockwork, I awoke in a terrible mood and nearly hated my husband for a good two hours for no apparent reason other than he was acting a bit like a child. Donna could see my very obvious frustration building and she prayed with me that I could be kind and filled with love. “Deep breaths,” she kept saying, half joking and half not. Deep breaths, Holy Spirit, Zoloft, a meditative trinity of sorts, got me through the bus ride to the train station. Listening to my IPod and reading 1 Corinthians 13, the infamous chapter on love, got me through the first twenty minutes of the train ride until it stopped, at which point all other passengers exited. Then the train’s engine turned off and we were left on what resembled a ghost train, all alone, questioning weather or not sweet Phil put us on the right train or not.

Turns out, after the janitor guy came through picking up trash and noticed us sitting there like the ridiculous foreigners that we are, that this train was no longer running and indeed it was not heading to Torino and never was for that matter. So we got off and in the midst of waiting another hour for the right train, I began liking my husband again. Of course it helps that he was acting much less like a child and I had gotten a Coke Zero from the little man at the “Chef Express.” And he (my husband, not the little man) is wearing black. And his red hat. And jeans that make his butt look cute. That always helps a little. I overlooked the dog poop on his shoe and made peace with the multi-faceted, flawed but wonderful human that he is. (It seems I come to this conclusion a lot in my writing… much less expensive than a counselor…).

And now we are heading to Torino, our future home. It all seems a bit dreamlike. I mean dreamlike in the sense that most of my dreams are not wonderful, but odd rather, and sometimes scary and most of the time confusing. I imagine our experience in Torino, while wonderful because it’s like a first honeymoon of sorts for us, will be a bit like my dreams.

Our future is truly in the hands of God. It’s both fun and nerve wrecking to follow His lead. It’s fun when it all works out. Nerve-wrecking when we step out of the boat and aren’t really sure whether or not we will sink or walk. Turns out Jesus can handle it all, the days when I’m so sure He’s real and good and a God who provides, and the dreadful days, which make up many, when I ask Him if He’s really sure He knows what He’s doing… and if using us, ridiculous, over-sensitive, critical and melancholy us, is really a good idea. But then I put one foot in front of the other, like a baby learning to walk. Knowing all the while that I will indeed fall, but that God’s kingdom isn’t contingent on my perfection, rather His grace toward very flawed people like me.

And in minutes, I will get up out of this seat and step off this train into a land I know little of. It’s one step at a time…one little baby step will take us off this train and into another unknown.

Tsunami

This morning, I awoke in a reasonable mood. Typically, I awake in one extreme or the other. The few times I wake up in a really good mood usually coincide with warm, sunny weather and sleeping children. The other times, I basically wake up wanting to die. Not in a suicidal way. Just in an “I’m not happy to be alive” kind of way. Meaning I don’t want to get a very whiny Elias out of bed and ready for school. I don’t want to listen to my daughter’s demands for Cocoa Wheats and candy. And I certainly don’t want to face the aroma of Ezra’s daily dose of nastiness when I enter his room.

But we are in Kansas City today and I didn’t have to deal with the first two scenarios, so I was in an okay mood. Surprisingly, even though it’s the beginning of February, it was warm and sunny, with the kind of breeze that teases my senses, making them think spring is nearly here. I made my way to the little workout room and walked twenty-five minutes on the treadmill while watching the biography of Reese Witherspoon. Afterward, I took the kids outside to the playground and let them run around.

So it seemed odd, after returning from a quiet retreat (meaning I was by myself) to McDonald’s and the Dollar Tree later that afternoon, that I found myself emotionally out of sorts. It wasn’t until an hour or so later that I apprehended the familiar cloud of loneliness and depression looming over me, concealing the sunshine that warmed me only a few hours prior. I wasn’t sure quite what to do with this feeling…this Tsunami of sorts, which was fast approaching.

So I ran from it.

I subconsciously decided that a pity party was in order. For starters, I would remind myself that I am not a likeable person and this is why when I walked up the stairs to chat with my team, everyone disbanded (nothing to do with the fact that they had been sitting there together the whole time I was gone and probably wanted a little solace). And then, I would begin criticizing people I love, namely my husband. This one always works really well, especially because it gives him a good reason to be mad at me and thus adds some fiery flavor to the pitiful atmosphere I have created, at this point, for the whole family.

Around six o’clock, we made our way over to the home of a couple on our team who lives a mere football field away from the training center where we were staying. The team was convening there in order to head over to the main office. I decided that instead of forcing myself to be a part of the conversation that was happening on the other side of the cul-de-sac, I’d tend to a shrilly Ezra who kept pulling me away from the group, his chubby hands using all their fortitude to drag me into his two year-old world, a world of open fields and plenty of room to run and explore. Thomas calls Ezra our little John the Baptist, and I have to say that in terms of being a wild man, this is true, even down to his crazy hair that matches wholly his personality.

I felt something inside of me churning while he led me into the open field. Something deep and God-like. I knew this was a teaching moment. Only this time, I was the student and my two year-old, the teacher.

He kept walking, his little Chuck Taylors picking up speed with every step. He had something to show me. Something way too big for his little two-word sentences to explain. I kept following him, getting further and further away from our team…from my agenda…from my self-pity.

Suddenly, he stopped, like a man reaching the edge of the Grand Canyon. He took my hand again and turned around, silently asking me to mimic him. I turned just as Keziah and her little friend Katie came racing down the hill, hand in hand, giggling as their bare feet ran over the damp grass and their bellies filled with tickly butterflies. The sun was just setting and pink and orange filled the sky behind their silhouetted figures. I took in the scene, like I was watching a really good independent film. I let the feeling settle down into that place that’s made just for Jesus and me. The place where revelation supernaturally prevails any life circumstance.

I breathed deep, suddenly realizing all of my senses were in tact and that they were all in perfect sync with one another, down to the crisp and dry smell of winter and the feeling of wheatgrass tickling my legs. Ezra stood next to me, like Morgan Freeman on Evan Almighty. It was like he was enjoying this moment every bit as much as I was. Keziah and Katie fell to the ground and their little dresses blew in the wind as their bare legs flew toward the sky. They continued laughing together, so hard, so freely. They were abandoned to the simple pleasures of life. The pleasures I so staunchly repress in all my grown-upness.

Instead of continuing to run from the sad and lonely feelings I held within for half the day, I unknowingly ran into them, knowing that God was beckoning me to embrace the beauty in front of me. All we really need is always in front of us, isn’t it? It’s just that we are sometimes way too sensible to see it. We think, in our very human minds, that we know what we need. And what we need certainly can’t be embracing our negative emotions… or can it?

We forget that Jesus felt lonely. That he spent much of his life empathizing with very sad people, mourning with them and for them. That he was rejected and despised and that even down to the evening before his betrayal, he wanted the cup of despair to pass him.

But He walked into the darkness. And from it came the most glorious moment in all of history. A moment on which hinges every bit of light that this sad world embodies.

I could have told Ezra to hold on for the hundredth time that day and tried desperately to repress my emotions and partake very superficially in the ensuing conversation. But I would have missed the reminder of how blessed I am to have these children. What’s more, I would have missed the opportunity to walk into the bigness of God, where my emotions are all put into perspective…where laughter and solitude dance together, hand in hand, as they apprehend the freedom and simplicity that comes with being children of a Father who delights in meeting us in our moments of angst.

Glorious Vegetarian Body

I was about to eat some asparagus tonight, but my husband warned me of its lengthy stay in Hotel Refrigerator. So I ate leftover manicotti instead. I don’t really like vegetables all that much. In Chicago, I have an ex-Amishy friend (I say Amishy because I can’t remember if she was Amish or Mennonite) who is as sincere and happy as the lady that plays the piano at Nordstrom. We took a walk around the block one afternoon and as we were discussing my vegetarianism and how I’d take a donut over celery any day, she said to me, very nonchalantly, “Yah, you aren’t like most vegetarians. I’ve never known one that wasn’t really skinny.”

Now, I could have given her the benefit of the doubt. I’m a far cry from really skinny. However, I don’t like that other people actually have the conscious thought when looking at me that indeed those are love handles that I’m trying desperately to tuck behind a mid-length cardigan and yes, that is most likely back fat you are seeing spill out of my bra indentation. I’m convinced that if I keep my black pea coat on, I can pass for somewhat skinny. Black works wonders in hiding all those post-three pregnancy creases. And coats, especially wool ones, well they were obviously invented by a woman who knew what she was doing. They are that perfect thickness, so as to not enlarge nor cling. Brilliant, I say.

I didn’t say anything to the Amish girl (she’s Amish now; she said I wasn’t skinny so she’s Amish, dangit). I just laughed that awkward “I don’t like what you just said but I’m not sure what to say” laugh and went on about the day, the thought lingering somewhere inside me that I probably should do something to become really skinny, like all “good” vegetarians. By the end of the day, that thought dissolved and Diet Coke and a Snickers bar were practically calling my name. I became okay, at least for the moment, with being chunky vegetarian girl.

If you were to meet me…perhaps you already have…you would not think that I’m overweight. I know this because, well, I just know. It’s not like I shop in the plus sizes or have considered bariatric surgery, though this is the reality of many of my friends...friends whose weight has never stopped me from seeing their inward and outward beauty (why can’t I be this kind to myself?). It’s just that I don’t know a time in all of my 29 years that I have been happy with my body. I take that back, maybe when I was two and three, before the four year-old dance recital trauma where I had to dress in a shiny green jumper and bright white tights and pretend to be a Magic Flower. I remember rather vividly wishing I had taken Jazz because they got to wear these cool black skeleton suits that covered them from head to toe. We’ve always had a good relationship, black and I. We were destined for one another, almost as much as I was destined to fall in love with that good skinny mirror in my bathroom.

So for, let’s just say 26 years, I have not been content with this vessel that I have inhabited. When I was younger, it was my thighs. I had this routine where I’d take a long walk down our upstairs hallway, sporting only undergoods, and glaring at twelve year-old me in the mirror on the back of the door, I’d focus on the jiggle factor of my inner thighs. I hated them. Really hated them. There is a reason why in Africa, showing your inner thighs is like going without a shirt in an American mall. They weren’t meant for public exposure. Who wants to see the two pads of fat that aren’t sure what to do with themselves while just chilling there between otherwise normal legs?

At some point, thigh jigglage was no longer the issue. In high school, my complaints were filed against my belly and my arms. I’d like to say I moved on with the body assault after that, or even better, that I overcame my self-esteem issues and am hopelessly in love with this body, but the truth is that I’m still fixated on doing something about the belly bulge. Only, whereas the problem used to lie in the front part, like a college girl who drank too much beer (I hate beer and was never that kind of college girl…and why does the phrase college girl sound so x-rated?), now the fat has spilled around my sides and back, creating the ultimate love handles, or better put in Oprah’s words, “The muffin top.” My sweet friend Carina, who is all of eighteen, likes to squeeze my handles, like she is squishing Play-Doh. I’m not sure why. But she’s one of very few people who could get away with such antics. And then she tries to tell me how she too has love handles and “see, feel them.” Upon squeezing the fringes of her abdomen, every bit as hard as she did mine, I tell her that what I feel is merely skin, not the rubbery stuff spilling out of my jeans.

Therefore, I have actually considered buying my first pair of mommy jeans. I own all of these jeans that prefer to cut my non-waist in half and leave the spillage issue obvious at hand. Somehow when I’m in the dressing room, I tell myself that the jeans actually go over the muffin top. But when I get them home, strangely, they no longer cover and when I wear them once, they loosen enough to fall down, because unlike most women, I have no butt and no hips. Which brings me to the other problem: I look like a man with boobs. I have calves that could be likened to the statue of David’s legs. And while I’m not up for a sex change and don’t even like males most of the time, I think I could be a pretty good-looking man.

Okay, I know there are a few of you right now who are rather angry with me in this moment, or in the very least, annoyed (oh, I can just hear my good friend Linda now). I sound like a sad woman on Dr. Phil, or worse still, Tyra, lamenting over her body image and what not. And trust me, I always hated it in high s school when the girl who was a size 2 complained about being “fat,” while all the rest of us were left squeezing into our size 8 (or was that a 10?) hip huggers (made for those with hips, not for us she-men folk). We always assured her that indeed she was skinny, all the while despising all 98 pounds of her preposterous self.

But as I have had friends who have struggled with eating disorders throughout the years, I have come to see that it isn’t about being fat or skinny. I have a good friend who has struggled with bulimia for a long time. When she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t ever see her tiny waist (which yes, I might consider giving up a toe for) or her very womanly body or her beautiful facial features. What she sees is everything she would change. She hates those outward features enough to damage her insides. It doesn’t matter how many of us tell her how skinny or beautiful she is (which is not hard…she is gorgeous), there is something inside of her that screams that she will never be good enough.

And therein lies the problem. While our culture doesn’t make it easy to be satisfied with anything short of a perfectly airbrushed Victoria’s Secret model, the reality of our discontentment is that we just want to be good enough…accepted and loved, not in spite of, but with this body, no matter its misplaced bulges and lumps. I have this theory, one that I did not come up with but which I read somewhere in some book, which means it wouldn’t really be my theory, so I recant and start this sentence again: I read one time that at age 12 or 13, the mother’s role in a girl’s life takes a back seat. At this crucial age, it is the father’s job to affirm this pre-adolescent…to make her feel completely accepted and loveable in the face of raging hormones and a changing body. I saw this movie once that starred Adam Sandler. I can’t remember the title and I have to say that after Billy Madison, I haven’t been too impressed by Mr. Sandler; however, in this particular movie, he played a father, married to this woman who is very critical of her overweight daughter. He loved his daughter unconditionally and despite the mother’s words, told her she was beautiful and made her feel completely worthy of his love. Something inside of me melted at their interaction.

Maybe that’s why I still have a certain image branded in my mind, an entrancing icon, and one that takes my breath away, like a burnished sunset. It was about this time last year and our daughter had just turned three. She was chubby and squishy in all the right places, meaning all the places that I like to tickle and squeeze. Keziah is perhaps the most kindhearted little girl I have known. She is in tuned to other people’s needs and emotions, the way I envision Mother Teresa was as a child. I’d like to say I taught her this, but because I have birthed two strong-willed boys who seem to think the world revolves around them at times, I know this isn’t true. Empathy and compassion and sharing come to her as natural as a mother’s love for her newborn.

She had just gotten out of the bath and while Thomas was drying her off, he lifted her up to the vanity and took the towel off her. He looked at her in the mirror, her sweet chubby body, her baby soft skin, and, as she made faces at herself in the mirror, he said to her, “Look at you Keziah. You are so beautiful.”

Tears welled up in my eyes as I peered through the small crack in the door. She smiled and continued to ask questions, her daddy’s words remaining inherent in her little mind. Of course she was beautiful. Of course her daddy was captivated by just one look at her.

And just like that, I watched how a woman’s self-esteem is formed.

I thought for a long time after that about how if we all received that same affirmation, we’d probably be perfectly fine with our not-so-baby-chubbiness, despite our cultural standards. We’d bask in the Father’s love because we had a father who modeled this. That love would be tangible and we would sense it every day, breathe it in every morning, be in awe of this body with its amazing gifts and talents, of the ways in which it carries babies and brings them into the world, and then astonishingly makes its way back to a beautifully altered, more motherly (and humbling) form.

And when we aren’t carrying babies within, we are running marathons, dancing like swans, diving from platforms, caring for the sick, creating machines, jumping out of airplanes, using every ounce of splendor these bodies have offered us. They are glorious, these womanly bodies. If only we believed it on the inside, where beauty exudes and glitters, like Tinkerbell, through the tiny holes of our outer selves.

We are all 13 year-old girls. I believe we all want to know that there is a prince whose heart we have captured. How beautiful when that prince is first and foremost our earthly fathers. How much more completely whole and enchanting it will be when, upon receiving the respect and dignity we deserve, a husband comes along and affirms the beauty, hopes, and dreams of our inner selves.

Just as my uninhibited daughter stands naked before her father, so we stand before our heavenly Father, the True Prince, who I like to think laughs at my ludicrous assaults on my body while gently guiding me toward confidence in this lumpy non-vegetarian-like being that has the audacity to be used in such wonderful, glorious ways.

Swallowing

Two odd occurrences of my day:

One: while shopping in Forever 21 and asking the kind salesgirl how to wear a square-shaped scarf, I heard a remixed version of a Johnny Cash gospel tune. Interestingly and strangely, I really liked it. Though, toward the end of the song, my head began pounding. By the time I left, three really, really loud songs later, I figured out why they call it “Forever 21” and not “Forever 29.” Loud music has the same affect these days as the spinning Spider ride at Santa Clause Land had on me when I was three.

Two: I ate the skin of a chicken. I haven’t done such a thing since I was thirteen, before the day I sat across from my eighth grade classmate and future best friend, Heather, at McDonald’s and, staring at the processed meat slathered in processed cheese, setting on that infamous crinkly, yellow wrapper, decided that indeed what we were about to eat resembled that of a cow’s butt. From that day forward, I claimed vegetarianism as my legal middle school right. My mom played along, making me special little meals all along the way.

The other day I got a call from this marketing place that does “focus groups.” Certain companies hire out marketing agencies to host these FBI-like studies, where a very detached and unbiased, as well as oddly friendly “host” (think Ms. Pattycake meets flight attendant) asks a set of questions, all the while reminding you of the mirrored walls surrounding you, behind which sits a mystery person, with a name like Joe or Bob, who the host always inevitably tells us to wave to. JoeBob is taking notes for company purposes. If that isn’t enough, we are likely to be recorded, at which point Ms. Pattycake points out all of the tiny microphones dangling from the ceiling. The lighting is the kind that makes my skin look pallid and makes me want to sleep, like first period in high school.

I have done focus groups on computer accessories, diapers and baby products, organic food, nuclear weapons, makeup, Taco Bell, and even a little device called “Potty Tunes,” made to fit into a child’s Pull-Up and play music while they peed in their pants. Every mom, including me, found that one rather ludicrous, knowing that our little toddlers would be much more apt to pee in their pants just to hear “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” There is a reason why I’ve yet to see “Potty Tunes” on the shelf at Target.

So ever since I moved to Indianapolis from Chicago, I’ve been kind of bummed because I used to go to these things rather frequently and they paid anywhere from $85-$200 for one or two hours of my time. Plus, I got to take the train downtown by myself and pretend to be childless for a few hours while I walked the Chicago streets, feeling like I had conquered something in the world by just being able to figure out which train connection to take and where exactly was my stop.

Indianapolis, however, doesn’t have the same urban feel, first of all. Second, I rarely get phone calls. And when I do, at least the times I’ve been truthful when answering the ridiculous and redundant questions, I get turned down. So the other day when they called, I was determined to get “in,” if you will. When they started asking me about fast food, I knew perhaps I was in over my head. All of a sudden, I began hearing myself saying that indeed I’ve eaten at KFC “3-5 times in the past three months.” I don’t think I ate there when I did eat meat, let alone in the past few months. After posing (because that sounds much better than “lying”) my way through about ten more questions, I was told I was “in” and that I should arrive promptly at 11:00 at their marketing oasis is some business park on the west side.

I arrived ten minutes early and waited in the little waiting room, complete with complimentary water and an excess of gossip magazines. I opted out of the water, as I was holding off on a McDonald’s Diet Coke, and pulled my ReadyMade magazine from my purse. I flipped through the “how to” section with my pink nametag, spelled wrong as usual, setting on my little table in front of me.

When they called us in, I knew I was in trouble. The Taco Bell one I did a while back, in Chicago, my first attempt at posing as a carnivore, was rather successful due to the group size and the fact that chicken hides pretty easily under a tortilla. This one was different. Group size: 7 Topic: Chicken wings. No tortilla.

I felt like I was halfway undressed in the locker room, right before some supermodel girl walks in, glancing in disgust at what is really under my black shirt and pants. I thought about going to the bathroom and not coming back. But I wanted my hundred bucks. I birthed three children. Certainly, I can sit through an hour of chicken wing talk. But every time the host dude said, “You are going to get a chance to try them here in a little while,” I started getting panicky, and a bit queasy, inside. I tried to picture the texture. The biting. The chewing. The swallowing. Oh dear. The swallowing.

After playing the girl who doesn’t really have much of an opinion, which was obviously very much an act, for forty minutes or so, feeling like such a phony, shallow and hopelessly desperate individual, it was time for the chicken lady to deliver the KFC wings. There was talk about the batter and the grease and, my least favorite, “the chicken itself.” Oh Gosh. The swallowing.

I prayed or hoped that I would only get one wing. She passed them around and cheerfully gave me two large ones, thinking she was doing me the wonderful favor of showering me with free food. I looked at them and tried to make peace with them. I thought about the times my mom would make chicken on the bone and how much I loved it as a kid. I thought about all the Thanksgivings that bird and I spent together before that fateful day at McDonald’s. I remembered all the times I considered eating one of my kid’s chicken nuggets when I was pregnant with Ezra because I desperately wanted anything fried and full of protein. Oh, if only I felt that way now.

I picked it up, focusing like a hot-dog-eating-contest-champion, and, trying to look very casual, took a very, very small bite of the skin. I nibbled around the sides, so as to make it seem that I had eaten around the entire thing. I glanced over at the eighteen year-old white gangsta boy across from me and noticed two lonely bones lying on his plate. Same with the policeman next to him. And the two African-American girls to my right who talked about chicken wings like I talk about Diet Coke. They knew the ins and outs of a good wing. Just bones lay on their plates as they waited for the conversation to ensue.

Picking up my napkin, I wiped my face and slowly placed it over my second wing, hoping that the distracted host wouldn’t notice. I continued nibbling at the first wing, like a girl on a first date.

“Well, I hope you didn’t eat too much, because we have more,” said the host in a gleeful and silly tone.

I smiled and looked to my peers for what to do next. Mental note: Continue smiling. Laugh like you’re excited. Sit still. Look relaxed. Act like you are listening to Mr. Host. Eat more chicken. More chicken. The swallowing…

I made it this far without eating the meaty part of the “tender chicken,” as my cohorts would later describe it, and I was determined, as I placed my napkin-laden plate on the chicken lady’s tray, to make it through the next round.

The smell of honey barbecued fowl filled my nose as the chicken lady entered the room once again, holding a whole feast on her large tray, including the wings that my husband likes to get from Aldi…the ones that must be so bad that they have to slather them with sodium-filled goop. The other wings only had a slight advantage over the high fructose corn syrupy ones, as I haven’t found a fried and crispy something or other that wasn’t at least edible. I sighed inside, exhausted by my own stupidity.

I offered the girl to my right one of my honey barbecued ones, thinking maybe I’d say something like “My stomach just isn’t feeling well today.” The words never came out because, even though she had a slight obsession with wings, she had a similar expression while glaring at the once free-to-flap wings of the bird. This was a hopeful sign. At least I wasn’t the only one grossed out at the idea of the slippery little guys.

One down. Syrupy wings: not edible

Okay, now for the crispy ones. I grabbed a napkin and acted like I was wiping my mouth due to the messy nature of the Aldi wings. I repeated my same trick, placing it over them in a blasé fashion. I picked up the crispy ones, looking like a professional chicken eater at this point, and nibbled at its State Fair-like deep fried bubbles of pure and tolerable air. My teeth neared the flesh as I continued on, having begun a possible career in acting.

Apparently I botched. As I picked it up a second time, I made some sort of disgusted face, like my son when I make him eat asparagus. The vocal lady to my right started roaring with laughter as she announced to the room, with cues from my brightly colored, very large, nametag, that they “should have seen Cristina’s face. Oh my gosh! That’s hilarious!”

All eyes were now on me. I laughed with them at myself as she re-enacted my expression and verbalized what exactly happened to my eyes as it neared my mouth.

I kept laughing. I had no other choice at this point then to laugh at the fact that I could never fake my way through representing a natural-born wing lover. And now, apparently my ridiculous expression matched this quite well, as the entire room could probably sense there was just “a little something off with that girl.”

Was it worth the hundred bucks, five of which I spent on that square-shaped pink and green checkered scarf at Forever 31…I mean 21?

I had a boss once that used to joke to others that “Cristi will do anything for twenty bucks.” And as much as I’d like to think that eating meat would qualify for anything, especially when we can always really use an extra hundred dollars, I will most likely re-think my answers the next time one of these marketing people calls and begins asking me about fast food.

I really thought I could eat meat. Sometimes the hardest thing to swallow is my pride.

Life is but a dream...

Sometimes you have to check yourself. And at approximately 11:55 p.m. last night, as I laid in bed on my very uncomfortable pillow, it all made sense.

The reason I write is to inspire people.

The reason I sent my manuscript to a publisher was because I was advised that it would be a wise move financially. After all, we are moving overseas and how wonderful it would be to support ourselves via sales from a book.

Well, the only publishers who got back to me were those whom I would have to pay to publish my book. And I have no idea if something will still come from the others.

But given that I would have to pay someone to make me a book...well...that's not serving my purpose. So, my dear friends, I'm back. And I have a few things to share with you.

Love you all.

Cristi

When Souls Collide: The book

Well, I did it.

I went and put my very ridiculous self on the line and sent my book out to a group of publishers.

Thank you to all of you who have encouraged me to do this, as it's been in my heart for a long time, like a recurring dream that I can't quite make sense of.

I do not know what will come of it. I have heard back from a couple of "partnership" publishers, which means I'd have to put some money into the project. I'm praying for peace in whatever direction God leads. Who knows...

So in the meantime, I'm writing, but most likely not posting. Because what good is a book if you have already read it?

Much peace until then.

Cristina McEwen

Losing My Shadow

I do a majority of my thinking and praying in the shower; but on days like today, when I am not afforded the luxury of twenty minutes of good water pressure and the white noise that muffles the voices of fighting, crying, or (on a good day) playing children in the other room, I do my thinking in bed, as I lay between Elias and Keziah, waiting for them to fall asleep. And so tonight, after Elias got done telling me how he wished he was born like the little boy in his Sunday School class who can't walk and gets to ride in a cool remote control wheelchair, I watched Keziah as she unknowingly discovered the art of shadow puppets. Her fingers moved slowly as she hid her thumb and wiggled her chubby fingers, watching their mirrored reaction on the wall. I felt like I was watching Peter Pan lose his shadow. I felt for a moment like Wendy, taking it all in and believing it, letting child-like naivity and simplicity settle down ino the part of me where inspiration and beauty are intertwined. The part of me that says it's time to write.

I remember seeing the mountains for the first time. I was something of eight or maybe ten, and we went to visit my aunt and uncle in Montana. My uncle, my dad's brother, embodies every last one of his parent's short genes, standing a mere five feet four inches (with cowboy boots on). But for what he lacks in vertical stature he makes up for in creativity and humor. The guy is seriously funny. He reminds me of Robin Williams, his absurdity and sensibleness entwining into a personality that is both likeable and infectious. Hence, I'd have to name him my favorite uncle.

But about the mountains. So I remember looking out their picture window and being mesmerized by the mountains that seemed a mere one hundred feet away. I asked my dad how far they really were. He said they were some twenty or thirty miles away. I was sure he was wrong...that if I ran to the end of my uncle's long driveway, I'd certainly begin my ascent into them. And surely it wouldn't take long to reach their snow-capped summits.

It all looked so fake, as if someone had pulled down a backdrop and landed it right behind my uncle's wooden fence, a little ways down the wintry hill that was, in actuality, a mountain in his backyard.

When I returned home, no longer a virgin to the west, I would pretend that my flatland home embodied a moutainous landscape. The clouds in the distance were mountains, the blue sky the ocean. And when they met in the sky, exchanging their blue and white hues, overlapping just as the waves when they meet the shore, I pretended it was a reflection of the Hot Springs where we swam a few weeks prior. The world was now wide open to so many possibilities. Why, if that backdrop in Montana were truly real, surely anything, even the flatlands of Indiana, held in them the promise of mountains and waterfalls and sunsets so pink and orange that not even the African plains could compare.

Thus my journey for something beyond the cornfields began. And while the illusions of mountains in the sky soon dissipated, I was left with a yearning for something outside of my surroundings. Different illusions were to follow. Illusions of fulfillment in friends, boyfriends, popularity, money, and lots and lots of material things. And when humility finally slapped me upside the head, I had the teenage audacity to believe that the ocean would heal all things broken.

So when I moved to Florida at eighteen, the ocean offered me nothing more than the reality that I was slowly packing on fifteen pounds and quickly realizing that the vision of me running, blonde and tanned, along the sand, perhaps in a swimsuit, maybe even a bikini, was something of yet another illusion. And all the true Florida girls that had the waistline that still makes me want to die, gave me a reality check day in and day out, as they flaunted their tanned bodies in tiny tank tops and shorts, all day, every day.

I left Florida a year later with a desperation for God. Of course I'm always in essence desperate for Him. But at that time in my life, I was so incredibly broken and confused, having faced one of the biggest personal battles of my life (yes I'm being vague. This isn't my diary for the love). Feeling defeated, I went back to the only place that has ever been truly "home" to me, no matter my location. No matter my struggles.

My knees.

Clinging to my Bible, like my daughter with her "silky blanky," I memorized Scripture and wrote out countless prayers, prayers that spoke of my helplessness and of my desperation for the Father to remain with me, through the storm, through the laborous and tiresome journey to simply do what was right. Most of all, I waited in hope that He would heal my heart.

Little did I know that the Midwest, namely Indiana, had a tiny jewel in its otherwise mundane topography. Bloomington, Indiana. Home of Indiana University, for those of you who remember the infamous Bob Knight (who I witnessed giving his final speech on campus, right after he got fired!). Having transferred to I.U. sort of by default (ie. it made the most sense), I arrived relieved to be only an hour or so from home and without the year-round pressure to derobe at any given moment in order to reveal a perfect swimsuit body. I never truly appreciated the Fall until that year. The changing leaves and autumn air reminded me that life turned in seasons and indeed this was the season for renewal in my personal life.

I met some great friends, fell in love with photography, learned to play the djembe', and took some amazing classes about Judaism, philosophy, psychology, writing and graphic design. I experienced community amongst roomates and met homeless people in parks. I interviewed people and heard their stories and took their photos. I dreamed of being a photographer and became obsessed with Sebastian Salgado and James Nachtway. I came to realize that my camera could tell the world of injustices that were being executed in Africa, India and in our own backyards.

As a perfect counterpart to the illusions I had as a child, I became conscious of the fact that Indiana had its own oceans and mountains and waterfalls and sunsets. I drove. Drove to lakes at sunrise. Nature parks in the middle of the day. Coffee shops at night. And allthewhile, I clung to Jesus, like He was my co-dependent boyfriend. Ours was the only relationship in which I felt truly known and secure. Loved. Adored. Treasured.

When I think back to that time, more than any other time of my life, I can feel Him in the car with me, like I felt the sweet breeze through the windows as I drove through the hills toward Lake Lemon. I can feel Him at the parks where I'd lay out my Mexican blanket and listen to Moby while working an art project. I can feel Him in even my closest friendships, those late nights at Taco Bell with Liz or at Jimmy John's with Jozee, the night we found out we had a bazillion things in common. I can feel Him at Soma, the night I went there in the rain and sat in the far corner, right under the speaker where "Ring of Fire" played through the speaker right above me, loud but strangely soothing.

Those three years offered me grace, redemption and the reality that the Father never leaves or forsakes His own, no matter how big the battle, how many the falls. Sometimes I long for that closeness. On other days, I feel it. It is the backdrop of my life, a mountain that is both near and far, a paradoxical union of ordinary and supernatural. While most things we hope in will fail us or prove, as they have in my life, to be an illusion of one kind or another, it is in losing our shadows in the Almighty and finding ourselves in His (shadow) that we can believe and hope for a future that is brighter, a healing that is greater, and a love that overcomes every shattered dream, every disheartened soul, and every broken heart.

A Christmas Toast

I have never been to Hawaii, but I imagine it would be like listening to Sufjan Stevens sing “Amazing Grace,” the banjo lulling me into a peaceful trance as I place another poorly wrapped gift under our burnished, ribbon-laden, and memory filled tree. I have always loved the hymn, but there’s just something about his version…

A guy in New York City committed suicide today. Something about a big financial scheme and losing lots of money. And I mean “lots” as in a billion. Though, the way the government throws around “billions of dollars” these days, like the lady at Costco giving out free chocolates at Christmas time, one billion doesn’t really sound like that big of a deal. Not that I’m into talking politics. I would risk sounding like my father discussing a woman’s menstrual cycle or better yet, afterbirth. That is to say, I would sound pretty um… how do you say it?

Dumb.

And mortified.

But more or less…dumb.

And I get that same uncomfortable feeling when discussing politics with people that my father gets whenever he is telling “us kids” goodbye and my husband is standing within three feet of him. I see his square jaw line tense up and a knowing smirk appear, it trying desperately to hide behind all 180 pounds of his seriousness. Then, he avoids eye contact with Thomas and embraces me until his three feet of personal space ensues…until he is no longer cornered by an oblivious Thomas. Apparently, this is the universal signal that hugging another man would indeed mean he is gay, or in the very least, to quote Mister Gepetto, “A real boy.”

I don’t know why I brought up the guy in New York. I guess it caught my eye because it seems Christmas, perhaps more than any other time of year, brings with it such a contradiction in terms. The Christmas cards, cookies, carols…the lights and laughter and the feeling that love is in the air, all imply that we are living on the set of The Brady Bunch.

Certainly, just for the month of December, the food fairies take food to the millions of people who are starving to death in Africa! And I’m quite sure the psych wards, just for a couple of weeks, will send all their patients home so that they can eat sweet potato pie with their “functional” families. Oh and let’s not forget the homeless folk down the street. Or the pregnant teenager out on her own. The AIDS patient. The child with leukemia. Her family. The grieving husband. The orphaned son. The unemployed single mom. The falsely accused inmate. Surely the holidays will offer them reprieve. Nothing a little mistletoe and fruitcake can’t resolve.

Sometimes I lament the delusions I had as a child and adolescent. The world was safe, people were on my side, leaders were trustworthy, and only kids on After School Specials did drugs. That’s back when drugs meant alcohol or cigarettes. When the problems on Seventh Heaven were the real problems of the world (admit it…we all wished our dad was a little more like Rev. Camden). Back when I thought that families stayed together forever. When the term “children are starving to death” meant nothing more than that kids were to clean their plates.

In one of our first years of marriage, Thomas and I were doing this no-carb diet thing. For me, a vegetarian, this left me eggs, cheese, and natural peanut butter. Oh, and vegetables (but they can be so darn boring). One of the items we could eat, however, was pork rinds. I am not a pork rindish kind of gal, but one day when Thomas brought a bag home from the store, I thought I’d throw back a few. Just as I placed the fifth or sixth one in my mouth, Thomas turned to me and said, “You eat pork rinds?”

I knew that very second that the name implied something. “Rind of pork.” “No, this can’t be…they aren’t really made from pigs? Are they?”

Thomas laughed at me, perhaps harder than he ever has before…or after. He was taking great pleasure in the shocked and disgusted look on my face and the fact that I had contaminated my meat-free body with fried pigskin. Sure enough, I turned the package around and there on the ingredient list read, first, “Pork Rind,” as if the pig himself were smiling at my ill-informed dieting scheme. I wanted to vomit. Like when I accidentally drink my toddler’s backwash.

Needless to say, I was ignorant.

Plato said, “Ignorance is the root and stem of every evil.” While it is bliss when we are children, as adults we must own up to the problems in our world. In our cities. Our neighborhoods. Our families.

I, for one, am a product of an ethnocentric culture. We truly believe that the U.S. of A. is the latest and greatest thing since pickled cucumbers. More than that, I personally have “middle-child syndrome.” This is my self-diagnosis of what is otherwise known as narcissism. So getting outside of myself is my biggest challenge in life. Oh oh oh. Did you know that there is such a thing as “Truman syndrome?” It’s true. Heard it on CNN (is that a paradox?). It’s when you think people are following you around, like the paparazzi or something and that everyone knows who you are…basically an exaggerated version of egotism. Well golly gee willikers, as my papa would say, can you believe, in our culture of overdone reality TV, glam ads, and rags to riches sagas that people would actually think that the world revolves around them? I like to think I’m pretty normal (on a good day, which is about 182.5 days out of the year), and I still struggle with thinking that the world owes me something. That this life is actually about me and my comfort and my adaptation to all things surrounding me. It’s my own little “Cristi Show” right here in these four oddly shaped walls.

So I have to force myself out of these pathetic patterns. I actually have this self-talk thing I do in moments when I am thinking the whole world is against me. On a typical day, one where I have to be around people, it starts in the parking lot. I used to pray for a good parking space. And then I realized that Jesus probably wanted me to get some exercise. So I stopped praying and started my own little Norman Vincent Peale session right here in my own pint-sized brain. For instance, if it’s cold out I say to myself, “There will be a parking space close to the store.” I speak very kindly to myself, like I’m talking to a newborn or a dying elderly woman. As I’m having this conversation with the little kid inside of me, I feel the virtue of patience fastening itself to me, like a good bra. I drive. Ho hum. There will certainly be a good parking space.

Eventually.

I drive some more. By this time, I’m stopping for pedestrians, letting cars go in front of me, smiling for no apparent reason, feeling like I just stepped out of the North Pole, like Buddy, and into the donut shop with the "world’s best cup of coffee." In reality, the donut shop is an overcrowded mall and the coffee is water dressed in brown. But by this point, I don’t care. I’m waiting on my destiny. And then, in my peripheral I notice white lights, the sign of a car in reverse. Right time. Right place. I just won myself a front row parking space. I park and nearly skip to the entrance. Never mind the fact that I just lost the opportunity to burn a few calories. It’s cold out, for the love. Jesus probably didn’t mind the cold like I do. After all, He patented it.

If this is as easy as it is to subdue my self-absorption, I am wondering why I don’t do it more often. It feels good to serve. To be a part of something outside of myself. I have noticed, even in our marriage, that if Thomas and I serve someone (or something) together, even by picking up trash on a walk, we are much more apt to be kind to one another. Serving allows us see beyond the interior, with its monotonous sounds and smells. When we look at the infrastructure of humanity, that every person deserves to be loved and that God created the earth for us to care for, serving becomes the wheel of change. We are hands and feet, fashioned for good. Period. Bottom line.

On a few instances I have lost one of my children in a store. I remember one time, in Chicago, Thomas and I were in a kids clothing store with Elias, who had just turned two. We were both looking at clearance racks, I guess thinking that the other had the boy, and suddenly we looked at each other and said, “Do you have Elias?”

“No,” we said, in unison.

We started searching the store. Calling his name. There is a timeframe that those of you who are mothers or fathers or owners of a beloved dog or cat or maybe even a ferret, are familiar with, when the child or pet disappears. At first you are like, “Oh, I’m sure he’s around here.” You call his name, expecting him to respond. Nothing. You walk around, eyes darting to and fro like someone on an acid trip, waiting for him to appear. Still nothing. Panic sets in. Headlines news scenarios rush into your mind. “Stay calm. Don’t panic. He’s around here somewhere.” Your motherly impulse overrides sanity.

And just as I started to lose it, there, out from behind the clothes rack on the far left side of the store, crawled a smiling Elias, as if he had performed a successful circus act, expecting us to be excited at his newfound passion for hiding. We hugged him, my hands shaking, heart pounding, still haunted by the thought of losing my baby boy. I kissed his neck, that little crevice between his shoulder and cheek that’s made for a mama’s lips. I smelled his baby-fine hair and then gazed into his huge eyes that have always looked ever so serious, and said, as every mother does, in my best mother tone, “Don’t you ever do that again.”

I have vowed in my heart that if a mother loses her child, I won’t just stand there and stare at her turning into a volcanic mess as many people have done when I have lost one of my kids. While I am a natural pessimist and would quickly believe that others simply don’t care about the fact that I’ve just lost my child, I think the reality is that they don’t know what to do. Again, I think this is partly because of our cultural apathy. We believe the problems of others aren’t our problems and thus we have been trained to keep to ourselves…to not be a part of the solution.

Last weekend Thomas and I ventured to “Christmas at the Zoo” with not only our three kids, but my sister’s three as well. The first stop in the sea of lights and creatures, and more than that, people, was the butterfly garden, which was transformed into a big train exhibit. As our kids peered into the tiny villages of snowcapped mountains and covered bridges, I noticed a mother next to me calling for her son. “Jess,” she kept saying, “Jess!”

Her voice became a little more troubled. Panicked, really. “Jess!”

Now, I must admit that I also have a superhero complex. I’m sure it’s intertwined into the middle-child thing, but mostly this one is used for the good. I even caught a guy at the Disney Store in Chicago last week as he stuffed a bunch of clothes into his huge black coat and darted for the door. I ran to the store clerk and yelled, “That guy just stole a bunch of stuff.” She ran outside and caught him just as he was about to step onto the “getaway” city bus. It was beautiful really. I half expected the whole store to put me on their shoulders and shout “hip hip hooray” just like they did on the Smurfs. But it’s Chicago, so I accepted my husband’s pat on the back and continued shopping for an Ariel doll and a Power Ranger.

My “mama empathy” rose up as I watched the mother wait for her son to return. I noticed no one was even paying attention to this woman. The ones that were sort of looked at her like she was an alien and then walked by, caught up in their own children, their own experience here in train land. I approached her, thinking simultaneously that I would probably lose one of our kids in the meantime. “What is he wearing?” I asked, knowing her mind was already to the “what-if” stage.

“He’s African-American and he’s wearing a striped hat and a black Zip up hoodie with a red shirt underneath and jeans. He’s five.”

Wow. “Good description,” I thought. This chic was on it.

“He was right behind me. And then I turned around and he was gone.”

“I’ll go look upstairs,” I said.

I went to the top floor and scoured the place, thinking the “what-if” question but mostly believing that he would show up. I was just starting to pray when I heard her say, in a stern but relieved sort of tone, “Jess. Oh Jess, where were you?”

I made my way down the stairs, eased at the sight of them together.

“Thanks,” She said, her countenance completely different than before.

“No problem,” I said. “I’ve totally been there,” I offered, an overused but true proclamation of understanding.

In the moments before this occurred, I had been frustrated with Thomas about something. I think it was his passivity. Feeling like the zoo idea was mine and he was simply being strewn along, like me when my daughter talks me into playing “baby.” (“Now you pretend to put me in bed. Now pretend to feed me. Now let’s go shopping and I’ll be the baby and you be the big sister and we can go to Chuck E. Cheese and I’ll have ice cream and then you are frustrated with me because I’m crying and then you spank me. She reaches for her doll and acts this out for me, announcing to the baby she is getting spanked and then hitting the poor thing and throwing her on the floor. That’s about the point when I tell her that mama is done playing baby and offer to put a movie in. And I don’t spank babies…or throw them across rooms, for the record...).

But after helping this woman, feeling as if I’d acted on a thought instead of just letting it dwindle, I was okay with Thomas. Of course, he still drove me nuts with his complaining about the cold and his obvious annoyance with pushing our ridiculous, and I mean ridiculous, double stroller. But I no longer let his attitude affect me in the way it had before. And by the time we left the zoo and made our way down to the Monument Circle for ice cream at our favorite chocolate shop, he was playing silly games with the kids, chatting it up with strangers, and being kind to his exasperating wife.

It began with getting outside myself. Announcing to the bratty middle child within that a) the world isn’t against her and b) that if she’d look in her peripheral she’ll find someone in need (or in the very least, a good parking space). Both of these things point me to the reality that this life is beyond my pendulum-ridden moods. There will always be someone in need. Always a bigger cause outside of myself and my circumstances. And to this, I raise my eggnog latte’ and give a Christmas toast:

May we suppress Ignorance and every excuse we have for her. May our eyes be open and our hearts be primed so that we can see all 360 degrees around us. May we embrace the narcissistic child inside of us, but may Kindness forever win out as we seek to serve and care for those in need.

Heaps of peace, abundant grace…and the small subtle nagging feeling of discomfort… to you and yours.

Cheers!