Called and Response

To me this idea is worth revisiting. I think called doesn’t mean what I originally thought which was a big lofty word that defined a section of your life and heart and encapsulated all that you were dramatically passionate about. My calling was at one point what I held on to, it was my secret answer for what I wanted to be when I grew up.

So much has changed in the span of that one word. Calling is a choice now every day. Life doesn’t look the way I imagined it. So many crucial yes responses turned out to be no and my part of it is to realize I am no less called. That my calling is to be crushed and redeemed and disappointed and at the end of the day turn and thank God for His blessings. For His plan. There is a line in a grief observed by C.S. Lewis that paraphrased says Faith means nothing to you until it is a matter of life and death. I get that now.

If any word has ever betrayed me it is security. What a vain, selfish word, and yet I find there are times when I grasp it tightly in my hands as if I can capture it and keep it from squirming away.

At the end of the day there is only one true thought about my calling. God has my son. I would be most foolish not to willingly hand over everything else.

Peace

It is a peculiar thing to find peace. It has been so elusive and a much hoped for specter that once it arrives I want to rush and clothe it with words as if they may slow down it’s retreat. I don’t think it’s leaving. I think it has made friends with the sadness that has dwelled so long and took up residence in a corner of my heart.

Thoughts in quasi-list form

So there’s been a lot spinning in my head lately. I feel like when I have this many thoughts sprinting off in every direction it’s hard to know what to focus on. So in a quasi-list form:

Angel: Baby. I miss you. We celebrated you on July 25th and there’s still as much love and pain there as there’s always been. It’s frustrating not knowing if remembering or moving on is the right step. I guess I take one with the left foot and the other with the right. 

Family: This one is where I need the most prayer. I am introducing my heart to the idea that God has our family the way it is supposed to be right now. And there is peace in that if I can lay my desires down. That’s the tricky thing about desires though- they can have a strong hold on your life.

Faith: There are parts of my life where God shows up clearly and then there are parts where all I can hear is a dial tone and I wonder if He is still listening. This is probably the nature of faith, an opportunity to hear Him in the silence. I know You’re there. Maybe that’s all I need right now.

Challenge: You know what’s a challenge? Grieving with someone you love. Or letting them grieve on their own. Or knowing that you support them in prayer because the rest is up to God and God alone. I told you it was a challenge.

Thankfulness: I am thankful. I am also selfish, pitying, and very human in my frustrations and my questions. Why doesn’t mean I disagree. To me it means God I have seen Your will and I am fighting my own will as I desperately try to embrace Your own.

And another day begins with my kaliedescope of thoughts shifting and changing, rising and falling.

Tomorrow we leave for vacation. These thoughts are staying here on the page for a while. I’ll pick them up when we get back.

Prose colored glasses

There’s so much to say about this. I think losing Angel last year was like being given a permanent set of colored glasses. It’s hard to see at first. It feels different and foreign, almost like you’re not sure you can focus clearly ever again. And then that fades and you realize that even though it’s different you can still see, you can make out life happening before your eyes and you learn how to look at things so they don’t seem so far away. Then one day as if out of nowhere you notice that your perspective is different, that it still colors everything you do and see. I wonder if people are uncomfortable when I talk about Angel. I know they are uncomfortable asking me how I am. I think this is all part of it, I don’t have some large sweeping conclusion. Sometimes there are no resolutions to write about. Life is messy and beautiful and this is all part of it.

An important day

Yesterday we went to visit Angel. It was the first time we had gone since the day we buried him. I don’t know why it took us so long, but I guess I do know. I know I sat in the chair when they asked all the mothers to stand up on mother’s day and yesterday I watched the same confusion and hesitation as my husband sat there instead of standing too. We had a child but do we have a child? And honestly does it (insert profanity) matter? He was our son. He is our son.

I think once again kids have the better perspective on this. I read a story where a mom came home and saw a picture her 4 year old drew of the family. It was mom and dad and him and two figures in the clouds. When asked he said they are my baby brother and sister in heaven. They are part of our family.

That we could be like little children again.

He is part of our family.

Wednesday Devotion

Happy Wednesday. It’s actually been kind of a sad wednesday because Mike’s parents left today and we were sad to see them go. They left us with a wealth of knowledge (how to barbecue ribs, how to use the grill, the best way to paint doors, hang gutters finish framing a wall ect ect) and a couple extra tools to continue the ongoing projects at Casa de la Brady. I promise their next vacation is going to be filled with bike rides and beach trips and looong lazy days.I went home for lunch and the house seemed so quiet. It will come. It will all come. I was reading a book from one of my classes called Holiness for Ordinary People and was struck by the idea that first we must see holiness as something that is attainable. God would not call us to His perfection and not give us a way to get there. It makes me envision a ladder that only reveals the next step when you put your foot in what seems like mid-air. 

 And most of all I am grateful for where I am and not where I think I should be or where my heart wanders off to sometimes. If I have learned anything, and I have, it is that I only want what God wants. I am grateful for where I am.

Thoughts on a page

I can’t believe its June already. I’ve had a lot of down time to recover and am looking forward to getting to see some good friends this week. It’s fondue night at Erica’s house this Thursday ( I still miss cheese) and then the lovely Pink Light Party on Sunday. I plan to wear my frilliest, girliest dress. Mike’s parents are coming on Wednesday which will be wonderful. I don’t think you can ever plan for how much work goes into fixing up a house. Our bathroom off the kitchen is now missing it’s ugly dark green wallpaper and showing off a fresh coat of primer. I may keep it white-it looks so much bigger. Hopefully they can finish the roof if it doesn’t rain but we are in our rainy season.  Mike’s mom and I are going to put the sheetrock up again in the dining room and hopefully paint. Also if we can fence in the backyard that would be great. We’ll see how much we can get done. Bible study is tonight and we’re taking turns leading so it’s always fun to go and hear what someone else has been thinking and praying on. Here’s to a great, productive, slightly crazy week!

May Resolutions

Well first things first I went to the eye doctor and he said my scars are looking great. Now I never thought I’d be happy to hear a doctor say that but by scarring my retina he saved my vision. Amen. I have another appointment on Thursday to get the all clear so if you think of it send a prayer my way. Mike and I had our 4 year anniversary and every year gets better. We postponed our celebration because I had just had my surgery but we’re planning on going to Cerviche downtown which is like an authentic slice of Spain right in orlando, complete with live Flamenco guitar. Also our present to each other was his and hers Kettlebells which I’m kinda excited about. Which brings me to my May resolutions. I went for my yearly check-up and found out that I am absorbing enough folic acid (yea!! jumping up and down) and all of my cholesterol is low. The good cholesterol and the bad one so the doc said to get my good hdl up I need to do aerobic exercise 3-4 times a week and get my heart pumping. We are still the proud owners of a Wii so I started My Fitness Coach on the cardio setting. It was such an easy workout until I woke up the next day. My stomach hurt my legs hurt I think my feet even kinda hurt. I definetely had more energy, I just couldn’t move that much. Oh well today is day two of my fitness coach and because I clicked too easy last time I lunged and helicopter kicked like never before. I really enjoy my days off and today is no different. Mike’s parents are coming soon and when they come we’re going to finish drywalling and paint the living room and dining room. And then I will take pictures. I promise.

Through It All

I really don’t know what to call this post. I went to the eye doctor for a routine check-up on Monday because I needed to renew my prescription to order contacts and ended up seeing an eye doctor I have never been to. He did a really thorough exam and told me my prescription was the same. Then looked at my eyes once they were dilated and he was really quiet after that. I watched him write a lot on the chart and it made me a little nervous. He said I had a hole in my retina but my body had sealed it off.  He asked me to go to a specialist the next day.  I had work the next day but he said it was better to be completely sure about these things.  I got an appointment for Thursday b/c this specialist sees over 50 patients a day and drove out to Altamonte Springs that morning. I waited to see the specialist and she turned out the lights  and looked at my left eye and said that’s not a hole, it’s a retinal tear and a shallow detachment. You are going to have surgery today.  I sat in the waiting room unable to read all the papers I had to sign to consent for surgery because I had no contacts and my eyes were really dilated. If you have a retina tear it’s painless and hard to detect and your retina slowly begins to detach from the rest of your eye. If you have a complete detachment then you are pretty much out of luck and are blind in that eye. As an act of God they caught it early enough and sealed both the tear and the detachment with a laser. It feels like you are getting repeatedly punched in the eye and is definitely not something I could go through every day but I recognize how blessed I am and just how much God really takes care of us. I haven’t been to any eye doctor in a long time and to catch something like this when it’s new and able to be fixed is such clear evidence of God at work. So I sit here waiting to heal and thinking on how you never ever know what each day brings but that God will see us through it all.

What God can do with a reluctant heart

So it seems that every big event in my life comes with a story. This one was surprisingly no different. I have been so focused on nutrition and food and what’s in the food we’re eating it has almost become a hobby. Since we moved into our new house we had been excited to have a fire in our fireplace. It was cold enough for a while to actually warrant one so we grabbed a handful of the free fliers from our local grocery store to use as kindling. As Mike was trying to light the fire I was reading one of them and there was an article about how kids that got their food from food pantries were more likely to be obese, have diabetes and not have proper brain development. On a very personal level nutrition was the reason our baby didn’t have proper brain development. I suddenly felt like these were all my kids and I needed to do something. A couple weeks later Mike came home with a lemon tree and we started to talk to our neighbors about gardening. I sat down and had a conversation with my dad about what to plant and when to plant and how to plant. I was excited about starting our garden in the fall. Then while watching Jaimie Oliver’s food revolution a couple weeks later I turned to Mike and said “wouldn’t it be great if someone started a garden just for kids and then gave all the vegetables to the kids who would normally go to food pantries?”  And left it at that. In early April I received an email for children’s ministry grants and when I read the topic for this year I froze: ending childhood hunger. Something inside me clicked at that moment, I had to do this. Maybe I was the one to start the garden. But I didn’t want to. I’m part time at the church I work at and I’m already putting in 24+ hours when it’s all said and done. I talked to the pastor and asked him quite honestly “Am I crazy to try this?” I had a week and a half to get the grant application in. I had to get the approval of our Trustees to use the land and I had to get a majority vote from the church council. This took a week of much explaining and emailing and clarifying. I had 4 days left and I called my husband. I told him I was going to have to give up sleep to finish this. He told me to go back to the reason I started this in the first place and see if it was still held true. Well God told me to do this and Mike told me then there was no reason to call him. I got up early and went to all 5 sunday schools explaining what we’re trying to do and sending a sheet around for people to sign up to give resources like labor or tools or money. Everyone signed up. There was a teacher who had just gone to a workshop on what she thought was butterfly gardening only to get there and find out it was on how to start a kids vegetable garden. A wonderful woman in the church who had worked in a grant office sat down with me and worked from 9:00 AM to 10:30 PM on it once I discovered that it wasn’t due by tomorrow but in fact midnight that day. And now I am sitting here looking at the grant approval letter for Conway Kidz Garden. It is amazing what God can do with a reluctant heart.