Letter To Self: You Shall Not Perish

Dear You,

 Yeah, you. You with the brave word KNOWN tattooed on your heart for the year. You with the new commitment to sink deep into the Word and speak in tongues not your own. You who thought maybe John 3:16 might be an easy place to start.

I watched you this week. I know you found out it wasn't. You found out that familiar isn't the same thing as easy with the Word of God. I watched Love pierce deep in a dark place. Say a hard thing to you.

Because you, daughter of the King, child of Light, lover of Love, you've had a pretty messy year. A good one in so many ways. You counted more than 1000 gifts. Marked them out in pen. But even still, you were dogged by the darkness of anxiety more than ever before, felt the pain of loss open fresh old wounds, trusted and mistrusted yourself for the trusting then felt the guilt of unfounded mistrust. In the Word this week, you heard it. The hard word from Love itself. You have been living like you are perishing. Instead of living this:

You who lay down your life to help others believe, you have forgotten to believe yourself. Forgotten to live knowing no one is relying on your heroics to save the day, and that the dark villain chasing you has already been defeated by the only Superpower. You forgot that at the beginning of it all He WAS. And at the end, He will be. And right now, He is.

You have spent your days swirled in the dark mist of discontent, the bitter sting of hope dashed. And you have refused to believe in eternal life. Day after day, you lived like you were perishing, like any minute now, it was all going to fall apart.

You lived, dear one, in fear. In that unspoken and lonely fear of failure who is your worst enemy yet long-time companion. You courted her a bit this year, invited her in for coffee one too many times. And she wooed with quiet accusation. Made you believe you not only needed to fear the possibility of failing but that you had already failed, that you were a failure.

That the dishes left in the sink overnight said more about you that a God who put on skin to save you. That lack of routine and continuity and kids who went to bed too late and didn't do as much school as they should have said more about you than the miraculous fact that the God of the Universe trusted you enough to put eternity in your hands in the form of people who are His. That your body's betrayal, its inability to cup life safely in its womb, its bleeding out of hope said more about you than the Blood He shed so that your pain matters for something.

That the to-do list without the check marks and the so many days you made no lists whatsoever because you didn't care any more mattered more than the fact that it is done in eternity. That what people thought about you and their approval of your work made you who you were more than the knitting He did in your mother's womb.

You ran and raced within from the menacing threats, from mortal peril, from perishing, so many days. And more often than not, you still felt you had not run fast enough, that the darkness had caught you. But:

And as you have dug back in over the last month, heard Him say, "I know. Come out of hiding, sweet one. You are known. You are loved. Even with, even if, and even when. You are loved. And there is mercy and there is grace and there is light enough for all your dark battles. I put on skin for just this reason. So you would know. I laid my head in the meanness and cold of your cruel world so you would know. I held out my hands and embraced the tears of the woman who wept at my feet and the one who his at the well and the one who banged pots and pans in the kitchen in frustration so that you would know. I became incarnate in the womb of a woman that you would know. From the inside from forever until never-ending glory shines, I have known you. In the beginning, I WAS. And because I lived, I live in you. And you do not have to perish, only believe."

I hear the question forming before you ask. And I know that you know that you already know. All you have to believe is this one little thing: it doesn't matter if you are enough because He is. It doesn't matter what you know because you are known. It does't matter what you do, because it has already been done. So just live and breathe grateful. Keep counting. Live in the embrace of His Word.

You have chosen well, sweet soul sister. This is your year to remember that you are known. And to believe. And to live like you have eternal life in you. Because you are not in peril. You shall not perish, dear. So live in the light. Let it shine on your darkest places and let them be known. Because you cannot fail at what has already been won. And you cannot perish when you know you will live forever. So live lavishly and love long and let it go. He's got you. 

Come link up with us at the Grove at Velvet Ashes  this week.
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If I Got to Pick

The life I live here in missions is a life that places me, for the most part, totally dependent on the Lord, His provision, His timing and His holy will for our lives. It is good. It is the way I really, truly desire to live.

However, it is totally contrary to my personality. I am a girl who likes to have a plan. I wake up in the morning and within the first two sips of coffee could easily tell you how I would prefer the day to play itself out in 15 minute increments. I can plan a vacation in my head complete with packing list at the mere mention of it over a dinner. I am the kind of girl who makes lists for fun, who would willingly pack for someone else simply because I enjoy the opportunity to organize. I once spent the night at a friend's house after a recent move. Our husbands were both out of town for work. There were boxes everywhere and she was totally overwhelmed. By the time she woke up in the morning, I had moved all the boxes to the correct room, labeled her closets and unpacked her kitchen and bathrooms. She had to call me for months afterwards to ask me where things were. It was some of the best fun I have ever had.

So you see, this life I lead can be hard for me at times. The trust it takes to leave timing and planning in God's hands is a huge leap of faith from my natural temperament. So is having five sons, but that's a story for another day. At the time that we left to take up our mission here in Costa Rica as the St. Bryce Foundation, one of the greatest challenges for me personally meant that it left leaving my oldest brother and his wife and his children and the rest of my family as we united with him in his fight against ALS. It was a sticking point for me with God.

My big brothers and I on our first night back in the States
February 2013

But my brother had always one of the most faithful servants of God I have ever met, and I knew he, more than anyone else, would want me to do what God was calling me to do. He assured me of this himself. Shortly after we arrived in the field, he entered into a medical emergency that threatened to end his life. I was horrified that it would happen that way, that God would take Him home just as I had left. That all my family would be there at his side and I would not. He did not go home then. He fought back, chose life and kept battling.

So many days it hurt that I did not get to pick the timing of things. That I didn't get to be there when I would've chosen. But I did get there. Last July, we spent quiet evenings together enjoying my sister-in-law's kick ass cooking and holding hands and watching So You Think You Can Dance. We had Skype sessions where I laughed at him sipping Red Stripe through a straw and he laughed at me sitting on a tree stump to get good internet reception. In February, we launched our candidacy for the papacy (There is no logical way for me to explain this to anyone who did not know my brother. I can only be sorry for you that you missed out. It was big fun.)

And in March, I headed home to see him again, this time with my whole gang at my side. Our first full night home we went out to dinner. Both my brothers and their families and us. It was glorious and heart wrenching at the same time. I was so happy to meet my sweet niece for the first time, to hold those big brother hands again, to hear my sister-in-law's laugh, to watch my boys giggle maniacally with their cousins, to share quiet conversation with the man who is my first nephew and open my eyes to what a stellar human being he is.

Cousins at dinner

But it ripped me up inside to watch my brother fight for every breath, to see the look of panic in his eyes, and to realize how tired he was. I went back to our guest house that night knowing deep in my soul he was ready to go home soon. And with a panic in my heart. I was there. Then. But I would leave again soon. What if the timing God chose happened to be the one that left me far away in that moment? What if I would have to leave knowing I would never see him again here on earth? And I was angry about the lack of control my life demanded of me.

Cousin Dinner

In the days that followed, my brother entered the hospital and we began to realize that his battle with ALS was drawing to a close. Difficult conversations had to be had. Hard decisions made. A birthday had to be celebrated. And seafood had to be eaten. And a family had to come together to figure out how to live, laugh, love and say goodbye. And do you know what? If God had said to me, "Colleen, I am going to take your brother home and you have no choice in that matter, but all the other details, I will let you plan", even in my eager to plan brain, I could not have come up with a more perfect scenario as we experienced in the days surrounding my brother's going home.

So many of the details are too intimate. Words are great tools to express certain things, and for others, they are cheap. So much of what happened would be cheapened by them in this case. But here is what I would like to share. I do not have a family that has followed a cookie cutter path. We touch every point on the spectrum when it comes to personalities and temperaments, life choices, and religious, spiritual and moral orientations. But I am blessed beyond belief with a family who knows without a doubt how to love fiercely and stand in unity despite those differences. And I believe a large part of our ability to do that was won as we watched my brother live and fight his battle with ALS with that as his only priority -- to love well, to point people to the love of Christ, and to live with unbounded joy.

These apples don't fall far from the trees, y'all
Cousin Shenanigans

So in the moments surrounding his going home, that is what we did. We laughed loud and loved strong and teased relentlessly. We drank too much and ate too much and talked too much (so much so that we were "shushed" by the ICU nurses while we were still outside in the waiting area). We cried and we embraced and we figured out where our strength lay. So that in the moment that Kevin ran into Jesus' arms, we could leave all of our differences behind and stand hand in hand singing. And cheering him on his way. I have no absolutely no words to describe what that moment felt like. It is forever suspended in time for me. The woman my sister-in-law was in that moment has forever changed me. Being the daughter who first lost a child of a mother who now sent her little boy home is the most breakingly beautiful title of womanhood I now carry. Standing in the embrace of my remaining siblings is a moment I will take with me forever. The faces of nephews and nieces and their expressions of love for their father and their uncle and the love shared by our children, the great big band of cousins that make up this family is for me a joy beyond all belief, a hope for a future that shines with radiance. These young people that we raised? They are good, y'all. So, so good. You will thank us one day for our procreative gifts. I promise you.

Celebrating Kevin's birthday in the ICU waiting room the day before we cheered him home to heaven
Me with some of my favorite people on earth, my sister, my niece, and my cousin

I look back on that time and feel overwhelming gratitude to my God. I didn't want my brother to have ALS. I don't want him to be gone. But these are things God does not consult me on. However, I did want to hold his hand and be next to him when that moment arrived. And I was. I did want to feel a tight part of my family circle and share that experience with my mom and my siblings. And I did. I did want to see him one more time outside of the hospital when he was still "well" and I did. I did want to be able to tell him all the reasons I loved him and was so proud of him and I did. I did want to celebrate with joy when at last he had beat the beast and won the crown. And I did. I did want to sing to him the songs that had beat in my heart for him while I was far away and I did. I wanted my sister-in-law to know how deeply beautiful she was and how much I appreciated her. I wanted to say out loud to her that we supported every choice she had made in this difficult journey and we supported her as she began a new phase of life. And we supported her relief that the battle was over. I got to say those words. And I did want to laugh and have a good beer and eat fried stuff from the Gulf and talk in my New Orleans accent. And I did. I wanted a piece of my brother to take with me forever. He left me that. That man, he knew how to live well, and you know what, because of that, he knew how to die well. I know that sounds weird, but anyone who witnessed it would unequivocally agree with me, I know.

Crawfish and beer. It's how we live. It's how we love. It's how we roll.

I didn't really know how to write a to-do list for my brother's death. I didn't want to. But when the moment came, I knew, he knew, we all knew, how to live it. And if I got to pick, this is how it would have been. If I get to write the script for my own going, I want it to be just like his.

And just to keep reminding me that this was just a sweet tender mercy and not to let myself get used to it, God went back to his usual ways and put me back in my place of humble submission, when, on the morning of the funeral, I found myself late and lost and in the midst of an utter panic attack, screaming at my older sister on the phone for help. And then the brunt of the pastor's joke as I walked into the church having scorned my poor family into beaten little pulps in my grief and pain and the anxiety of things being out of my control again. Crying and laughing at myself, and seeing that once again, He had worked it all for good even when He didn't give me a say. And me, back to my sheepish little apologies and promises of greater trust in the future.

And do you know what? I'm pretty sure I could hear that man, my big brother, giggling at me from heaven. And I think he might have been tying my baby's hands to his shoes too. But that, too, is a story for another day.

Family bonfire in my brother Stephen's yard

On Growing Up, Grief and Grace: Part 3, Grace

There's one last post to be written in this series about how growing up, grief and grace have changed me as a person, and as a missionary.

I've had a hard time wrapping my head around how to write about grace. It's not like God suddenly invented a new grace that has made this leg of my missionary journey easier. It's also not like I've suddenly become a saint and I don't want to write in such a way that anyone would ever think that. In fact, I've stalled on writing this post, because I've been struggling to keep up the discipline of the very practices I want to write about.

It comes down to this. I have always known that living the life of grace, both the sacramental grace offered by the Church and the grace of turning our daily walk into something sacred, was the both battleground and the victor's circle of the spiritual life. It is where we fight to stay strong and to persevere, it is where we get up again when the knock-out punch rings loud in our ears, it is where we dance with joy in our victorious moments and where we wipe away the tears of our failures. It is where we learn to walk in the light and where we learn to keep walking when there is no light.

But in my young faith life, this was all pretty much theory. I got the grace thing. But whatever the ups and downs of life were at the time, my hopes and dreams and boot straps were still enough to pull me and keep me going day to day. Then there was all that growing up and grieving. And those little bits of self weren't enough any more. I wasn't enough for me any more. I was really utterly dependent on God to sustain me for the first time in my life. And I learned what grace really was. 

I think back to the days after Bryce's death, of the cloud of grace that carried me through to the other side of the darkest days of my life, and I am humbled to the point of tears. I think of coming home from a D & C to a cleared out house and mound of suit cases and departure for the mission field looming four days ahead, and the grace that carried me forward to the hospitality of waiting friends, the love of people who wrapped my babies in their arms and held them for me so I could grieve once again, and the grace that made my feet go when my head could not think straight.

These memories, when I think back on them, feel like a dream. I know they are real experiences, but the memories is not sharp and painful like some memories. They are soft and wispy. Bittersweet. But sweet. They are surrounded in a cloudiness. It is grace.

And that cloud has surrounded this whole first year here in this mission post. It has not been easy. Neither were those things I just described above. It has not been without its ugliness, mistakes, and failures. I have battled self long and hard here. I have been disappointed and hurt. My husband lost his mother. My brother fights a terrible disease daily and I am not there. And yet, the walk through all of that has been made possible each and every day. And I have found peace and consolation in being where I am each and every day. This is grace.

I can point to three things that have kept me living in that cloud of grace over the last year. Habits that have been formed in the years of growing up and grief and learning to live dependent on grace. Habits that have become a focus and cornerstone of our life over the last year because of the strong leadership of my husband and the faithful spiritual direction of a holy priest. Habits that dear sisters mentored me to form. All gifts. Gifts given to me by someone else's love, sacrifice, sharing.

Because isn't that the essence of grace? It is the redemptive work of mercy in action. Sacramental grace is won for us by Christ's ultimate sacrifice and administered to us by the shared faith of our Church. And the actual grace that comes into our lives too most often comes my the love and service and sharing of another.

The first gift is the gift of speaking grace. I am user of words. Lots of words. Verbally. Written. Read. I like words.  I have learned from some of the loveliest women the power that encouraging, building-up words have to transform those around us. And to transform our own perspective. When we make a commitment to speak of our daily walk in a way that highlights the beauty and the grace we find in it, the world is made better by it. So I have worked hard to cultivate the habit of using my love of words to communicate all that I see as good and lovely and noble and true about the journey we have been on for the last year. And it has transformed the way I look at the journey. Shrouded it all in that cloud of grace that makes both the hard and the bitter sweet. Progress on the verbal end of this habit is still faulty and flawed. I have that punched in the gut feeling when I relive my own words in my head way more than I would like. But imperfect progress is still progress and I am going to keep honing this habit of speaking grace.

The second is gift if finding grace. I used to think that grace was something that appeared miraculously in over lives, happy moments that were sure signs that God loved us and was with us. And then there were the days of little wooden coffins and still ultrasound screens and miracles that flitted into our lives and faded out before they were real. And if I was going to continue to call myself a believer, grace needed redefining. And there was this voice in my life. This melodious gift of words that told me that grace is found where we look for it. That we can count the ways He loves in the lovely but we can count it in the ugly dark too. This voice that told me that to walk in grace is to realize that eucharisteo is about brokenness, not the warm smell of fresh bread, that the fragrance of the hurting and wounded heart who seeks His presence right there in the hard places is a perfume for the spirit. A voice that said, " Don't just look casual. Don't stumble upon grace accidentally. Don't hurry through the hurt and the chaos and the confusion. Live it. Look it in the face. See that He is there. Over and over again. In myriad ways. And count them. One by one. Count them. Until there are a hundred then a thousand, then more. Until you are forever changed." And I did. And I have been.

The third gift is the gift of the greatest grace. When my husband told me that our spiritual director was suggesting that we make an hour of prayer in front of the Eucharist a daily habit for our family in mission, I chuckled. A cynical chuckle. A chuckle that said, " Clearly, he's a good guy and a smart guy and holy guy and doesn't have a clue." Because getting myself to holy hour once a week for silence I relished and savored was already a bewildering conundrum and getting my boys through 15 or 20 minutes every now and then was enough to rob me of the grace earned in that hour.

But they were stalwart these two men. Stalwart in the face of my I-know-so-much-better-than-you pride and stubborn will. And we arrived in this mission post and we put feet to dusty road and we went. Every morning we went. Just us. Sometimes silent, sometimes begging repentance and conversion, sometimes singing praise. Some days boys slept and some days they sneaked outside and climbed high in the limbs of trees before we noticed. It was not perfect. But there before Christ, there was more than enough grace for all those imperfections. Grace to cover loneliness and loss and worry and fear and pain. Grace to keep us near to Him and remind us to stay out of His way. Grace to remind me that the miracle is not in the big Hollywood action scene life but in the daily walk on the dusty roads that says to others, "I am still here", just like His quiet presence in the silence of our Churches says to us.

These last few weeks have been a bit off kilter for us. Our schedule has been flipped on its side and spilled into chaos by sickness and surprise runs to immigration office and a million other things. I have failed to live the greatest grace--the going to Him there fully present, divine and real, and drinking of the fullness that fills and drowns out all that is broken and ugly in me. And in the midst of it, I feel myself creeping in, getting in the way, wanting it my way, seeing the ugly and not counting the grace, speaking the ugly and not the lovely.

But the good news? I recognize the way out. I know where to find the cork that will plug my grace leak. It's in heading back to the greatest grace, breathing in the fullness of Christ present in the Eucharist, breathing in the air of perfection, the light of hope, listening to quiet whisper of His voice that says, "Don't run so fast next time, and maybe you won't fall as hard." That says, "You know, breathing is good. When was the last time you checked to see if you were still breathing. Be quiet. Breathe with purpose. Breathe grace. That is where you will find strength. I am the Breath of Life."

And in a great mercy, I see it now. When I start to feel the shoulders tighten and the jaw clench. When the thoughts flow ugly and mean long before the words ever do. When there is so much me I am too heavy to carry, I want to run to Him. Sit under the protection of grace. Be called back into a life of grace by forgiveness of my sins, wiped clean by the grace of confession, my emptiness filled by the bread broken and blessed, the Eucharistic body of Christ.

Sometimes, I'll feel the weight of brokenness heavy in my heart and think, "Wait. I'm getting all in the way again. How long has it been since we went to adoration? To Mass?" And to my surprise I will realize it has been a day. And when I see how much of mess I can make of His lovely work in just one day without Him, I wonder how I ever lived, breathed, survived before this. I count the blessing of the greatest gift -- the fullness of His love and mercy made present to me every day so that it is not my boot straps that pull me back up when ugliness and brokenness and hurt knock me down but the river of mercy that flows from Him. 

And so I receive the greatest grace. And I seek it. And I count it. And I speak it. And I walk out of the brokenness and the darkness and into the light once again.

On Growing Up, Grief and Grace: Part 2, Grief

I wrote recently that I have been processing a bit about our past missionary experiences compared with this one and why I seem so much more able to cope this time. I wrote a little about how how I've grown up a bit since our first mission last week.
Another reason I think I'm coping a bit differently this time is that the experience I've had in losing my sixth son Bryce 3 three years ago and suffering two subsequent miscarriages since then has changed me. I am a different woman in many ways that I was before. But I think the thing I have seen most in our time here in this mission post is that grief has taught me how to be lonely.
This mission life is an inherently lonely life. No we are not the missionaries of old who waved goodbye to their families, stepped onto ships and were fully prepared to never to see their homeland or families again. I mean, just since our last spell in missions six years ago, the availability of internet, Facebook and Skype have drastically changed communication. I can daily peek in to life back home and check on a family member in the hospital or a friend about to give birth to twins. I can readily communicate with supporters and people helping to meet the needs of our ministry. It is a huge difference in the level of isolation we feel.
However, regardless of how much easier communication is now, the missionary life is an essentially lonely one and battling feeling lonely and forgotten is part of the daily struggle of this life. I think it is in God's design for this life, really, because that daily hunger for something that you can't quite put your finger on (and not the hunger for a bacon cheeseburger and margaritas -- that's a different issue altogether) can, if you let it, keep clinging to the grace and the love that is meant to fill you with only good things, that is the only way to keep walking this missionary road without completely falling apart. Ideally, the loneliness should draw you to prayer, and into the heart of your marriage if you are a married missionary, which I am. Ahem, let me stress, ideally.
You leave behind a lot when you go to the mission field, including real face-to-face contact with your family and having the encouragement of a friend a text message away. You also leave behind the happy chatter with your sister on your drive home from the grocery store and the chance to recharge from a stressful day by hanging with mommies on the sidelines of the football field or the lobby of the play rehearsal for a couple hours. Days are long and stressful and often lonely. You chat with your neighbors and it helps, but it's not the same. You feel the terrible sting of disappointment in your friends because, well, their lives go on and are not all about keeping you happy on the mission field. And then you get over it. Ideally. Ahem, let me again stress, ideally.
Because, you see, last time, six years ago, I never really got over it. I am an off-the-charts extrovert who has long dealt with stress and trial by seeking a little socialization and the company of others. A laugh with a friend, or to be quite honest, a perfect stranger, is like pushing the reset button in my brain. And it can be a good coping strategy. However, there have been times in my life when I have clung to that need like it was oxygen. Like I would die without constant contact with others. In times of difficulties, sorrow, or trial, I am tempted to use the company of others to placate the wounds.
I didn't quite have the self-awareness I do now six years ago. I couldn't put my finger on that hunger and call it loneliness and tell myself, "This is you looking to cope with stress in the way you are accustomed to, and that's not going to work here. Slow down, settle in, you'll figure out how to cope." Instead, I became increasingly panicked about that nagging feeling that something wasn't right. I frantically searched out the company of others. I built resentment toward my husband that he couldn't fill this growing thing inside me. And I was completely ignorant of what it really was and that it was and would always be an inherent struggle for me.
In the growing up I've done in the past six years, I've come to see this tendency in myself. I can't say I've learned to rein it in. It's still a daily struggle for me. But when I was plunged into grief after the loss of Bryce three years ago, I was plunged into a lifelong sense of loss and loneliness that I have had no choice but to learn to live with. And that has made the transition back into missionary life a bit easier to live with this time around.
Don't get me wrong, the loving support of family and friends was essential to my survival after Bryce's death and my subsequent losses. But the truth is, grief drives a wedge into your heart that leaves you always feeling a little disconnected from the rest of the world, always a little bit apart from everyone else. Your internal dialogue is constant and intense and it's not something you can articulate regularly to others without risking getting a reputation for being the new crazy lady in town. I mean, when the phone rings and a friend's voice rings out sincerely, "How are you? What are you doing today?" you can't well answer, "Well, I just convinced myself to take the last ten breaths! In a row! And then shook each of my kids in their beds to make sure they were breathing. Now I'm cooking breakfast and counting to 100 while I stir to try to shake my brain free of horrific images. What about you?"
So you give away little pieces of your heart to make sure you don't implode. But you come to live with the reality that this is an essentially singular process. And that the hunger and loneliness you feel is largely for the person you lost and the future you won't have and, well, that's not going away no matter how many good conversations with friends you have or how you fill up your days with constant interaction.
However, if you can look at yourself honestly and recognize the hunger for what it is, it can drive you to honest communication with your Heavenly Father, a real clinging to grace, and to baring the most vulnerable parts of your heart to your spouse, which is how it should be.
I think in my initial grief, I did pretty well with this. As time went on and I experienced the two miscarriages and the pain of reality became a little much to bear, I slid back into old habits, filling life with hustle and bustle and laughter and joy, but leaving my real interior living and processing, and the chance to heal, on the back burner. And running from the very person for whom I should have reserved that vulnerability, my husband.
But an incredible grace accompanied me into this mission along with that new grown self-awareness. I knew I was going to be lonely. I knew it was going to be terrible intense. I knew I would battle a rising hunger, a craving nothing could seem to meet, and I knew what it was. Loneliness was no longer foreign to me. I surrendered to it this time around and admitted that, if I was honest, I had paid the price of clinging to others to feed that hunger and it just wasn't worth it. I'd rather be lonely than disappointed, hurt, and betrayed, which are the inevitable results of giving too much of yourself away in the search for the company of others.
That's not to say I haven't felt its pangs here. I have. Desperately at time. I've cried for loneliness and I've laid myself at the feet of Jesus over and over again. But what is different is that I have not rushed headlong into the frantic illusion that it can and must be fixed. When I throw a lifeline out to a friend via e-mail and get no response, I cling to the grace to sit in that pain. When I feel the temptation rise to run after the response of others, I strap on my shoes and pound it out into the pavement with a long walk or run. When I need to spill it all out somewhere, I grab my journal and head to a rock on the river's edge.
We've been here almost a year now. I've spent a lot of that time living the dull ache of loneliness day in and day out. And it's a familiar ache. And it doesn't scare me the way it once did. Because, in all truthfulness, it's been long coming that I let go of the illusion of belonging, of fitting in. I used to look for that in places like homeschooling communities, circles of like-minded friends, mommy buddies. But, really, where does the women who has turned birth into death three times in the last three years fit in those circles anyway. Pictures of pretty cupcakes and cure crafts don't really bridge that gap, if you know I mean. I've been long recognizing that the diet of spiritual cupcakes I used to feed myself on in loneliness, the company and approval of others, wasn't enough to give me the strength to recover from the enormity of these losses, from the desperate hunger for love and intimacy it has evoked in my soul. In His grace, the Lord used missions to force me to fully surrendered to this gift of wisdom He had long been growing in my heart.
Yes, I've spent the better part of the last year feeling the dull ache of loneliness. And I've realized it is not a panicked, haunting feeling for me any more. It is a familiar, albeit occasionally unwelcome, friend. And in surrendering to it, I've learned a little more how to cope. I've felt the gaping wounds of grief close a little tighter in my heart as I lean in to the embrace of the Savior and the ready arms of the man I love. And I've learned to settle into it when the hunger just won't go away and let it be what it is. Not something to fix but something to carry, in cupped and careful hands, because it is the work He is doing in my soul and it is sacred.
And I am daily singing myself a new song. This one. And reminding myself daily to settle down. It'll all be clear. To pay no mind to the demon of loneliness that can fill me with fear. Because He's going to make this place my home.

Let's Listen

One of the hardest parts of the life of an exploited victim is never being able to speak up for yourself and be heard. The feeling of helplessness and hopelessness of being totally silenced is a terrible aspect of stripping away someone's humanity.
For survivors of this terrible atrocity, there remains the terrible feeling of no one wanting to hear your story. I know just a little bit of this feeling from my loss of my son Bryce. There is an overwhelming feeling when you meet people to let them in to this part of your life that marks you so deeply and makes you who you are. And then there is a shame for having that need. No one wants hear your ugly, painful reality. You make people feel awkward. It is taboo in our society to be that real, to tell that much truth. So you sit instead with a lump in your throat and pain searing your soul while you smile and chatter idly.
For survivors of trafficking, it is necessary to share their stories when they have recovered enough to do so. In order to re-enter society, they need to be able to trust people in general again. They will never do that if no one ever listens to them, if no one is ever able to go there with them, to the hard and hurting and painful places.
It is easy to read the facts about human trafficking. It is harder to listen to the real horror stories. I want to shut it off myself. To say, "I get it, I don't need to hear any more." But the truth is, if I am going to choose justice and mercy for these women and children, it is not about what I need to hear. It is about listening. It is about the fact that they need to be heard. To help them heal, we need to listen.
So today, I invite you to follow these links and read, listen to the stories. As it pains you, as it makes you want to turn away, let the Lord break your heart for them. Pray for them. And pray for the valiant people every day who are working in the recovery effort, listening daily to this pain, trying to sop up the emotional and physical and spiritual wounds of this atrocity.
Let's not turn away from the ugly and the pain and the real. Let's show mercy and take action by being willing to listen.

• Survivor stories at the Polaris Project
• Facing the real and the ugly of these stories at the blog Jammed True Stories
• This Is Our Story can be borrowed for free on Kindle
• Here is a list of videos that come up when you search Human Trafficking Survivor Stories on You Tube
• When your heart is breaking over these stories, maybe you could pen a note of encouragement to Maria at Salvando Corazones and thank her for being willing to give up her life, her business, her home, move her family to Costa Rica and daily live with this pain, daily try to instill hope. You can post your note here, e-mail it to me, or Facebook message me. Or you can post it on the Salvando Corazones Facebook page. 

Let's listen to the hard stories because we know we must. And then let's thank the people who are listening every single day. This is living mercy. This is living justice. And you can do it. Now. Today. Please do.

And don't forget to keep praying our prayer. And sharing these posts and the prayer with others. Don't be discouraged if no one responds. Do the right thing anyway. God will work with what you give.

More Than Enough

Recently, in the days that the whole "Are You Mom Enough?" debate broke out, I confess that I regarded the whole thing with a bit of indifference.  My mind was already abuzz with its own justified indignation about motherhood and the media. And it was not about the infamous Time cover. It was about this article and the link I followed from Facebook to the Huffington post summation.

The condensed article focuses on the thirty best countries in which to be a mother, with only a passing mention of Niger, which is last on the list in terms of suitability for mothering.  The discussion that followed the article was all about how it seems implausible that the U.S. should rank 25^th in the statistics and what we should do to fix that.

I immediately wanted to know more about this survey and the other 116 countries that fell behind these top 30 in the rankings. Turns out the survey was actually conducted by Save the Children and its intent was not to turn another cog in the Mommy Wars wheel over whether Norwegian mothers with two years maternity leave are enjoying a better brand of motherhood than American mothers with minivans and soccer schedules.  Its purpose was to highlight the other 116 countries in less developed nations and the plight of mothers therein. But, it seemed to me anyway, no one was paying attention.

Then there was that blazing headline plastered everywhere, “Are You Mom Enough?”  I confess that I hardly glanced at the picture through my tiny cell phone internet screen and barely related the Dr. Sears headline I had seen mentioned online to that article until I began to see the responses of a few friends.

These two items and the life I am living tumbled around in my mind for a few days and I struggled to piece it all together. They tumbled and jumbled with my thoughts about the fact that when we left for this mission, I had a ticket home dated this week. A ticket home to welcome the third trimester of a much awaited pregnancy that ended abruptly four days before we left. They tumbled around with my growing anxiety about the impending date of my Bryce’s would-be third birthday. They mixed their way in with images of orphans and sick, hot babies strapped to their mommies’ backs while they walk for hours to secure provisions for their families.

And suddenly, I found myself very angry.  Angry at the very notion of “Are You Mom Enough?” whether it was pointing its ugly finger at attachment parenting or any other aspect of mothering.

The very idea that motherhood could be made into a competition is infuriating. But the bigger picture, the picture no one seemed to be seeing is that the very idea of parenting philosophies, of choices in motherhood that involve anything more than sheer survival are a luxury, a blessing afforded by relative affluence to mothers in developed cultures.

Tag that question onto these images of motherhood and feel its shallowness, feel the punch in your gut:

I have been pregnant three times in the last four years and I have no baby in my arms. No baby to choose to nurse and for how long. Am I mom enough?

The chance of becoming the mother of a dead baby in Niger, Africa is 1 in 1. Meaning that every woman who risks motherhood will eventually be the mother of at least one dead baby. Are they mom enough?

Last week, I invited an indigenous mother in out of the rain with her sweet baby girl. She was sick. She was wet. And she had been carried on her mother’s back for eight hours to town to receive money from a government fund that it turns out wasn’t available. That mother sat on my porch and nursed her wet, tired baby without reserve. Because she’s mom enough? Or because she needs to survive?

I rode the bus the other day with a mom whose baby had such bad cold and conjunctivitis that her upper eye lids were almost swollen shut. She struggled to nurse her in a hot, crowded bus with men standing over the top of her and her baby sweating profusely in her arms. She wanted to buy tamales from a man on the bus and was humiliated when she misunderstood how much they cost and did not have enough money to pay for them, so had to return them while her hungry toddler was reduced to tears at her side. Is she mom enough?

My friend who helps me in my house two days week asked me the other day if she could take three pencils from my children’s school supply box for her son. He has been in school for four months without a pencil to write with. She can’t read the notes that come home from school so doesn’t know if he needs anything else and she could not afford to buy it anyway. Is she mom enough?

I spent five days at an orphanage in Nicaragua with kids who are not really orphans at all but who have been turned over to this place by families who could not afford to feed them, care for them, educate them. I watched a mom come early one morning for her two teenaged daughters who have lived at the home all of their lives. She turned them over when her husband abandoned her and the children and she was unable to find work or a place for them to live. But every Saturday morning she gets up at 5 am and walks four hours to see them and, if there is enough food, to bring them home with her for the weekend. Because she’s mom enough?

And what about the “tias” who daily provide care for little girls who know no other way of life than living like this, in this home with other children who are not their brothers and sisters, cared for by people who are not their family. They rise at 6am to get little heads brushed and bodies dressed for school. They lead those babies to God’s Word as they feed them breakfast. They study with them and teach them life skills in the afternoons. They feed them and bathe them and sleep by their sides at night. And they love them. They love them so well. They fill these little lives with confidence and trust and openness. Are they mom enough?

The truth is, they are not. Sometimes, all that love is enough to replace what’s missing, what’s broken in these little lives and it results in the three children now studying together in a university in Managua. But sometimes it is not. Sometimes the brokenness is just too much to overcome.

Mothers will do their best all over the world to be mom enough tonight. And some of them will still hold a lifeless baby in their arms in morning. They will nurse a baby with each little whimper all night long and tuck that little one up next to them to sleep. And they will still wake to dirt floors and not enough food and babies whose intestines are filled with worms and parasites.  A mother will look into the eyes of her hungry baby and make the choice to hand it over to someone who may be able care for that little one better than her.  And she may never know if it was enough. 

The truth I think we would all do well to admit is that none of us is enough. No mothering style or parenting philosophy is enough to overcome the sin, the brokenness and the death that plagues humanity. Mothers have a special role in lessening that burden for the children they are gifted, but alone, they are not enough. As much as we love our babies, none of us, rich or poor, well or sick, capable or incapable, are enough to take the weight of our children’s brokenness on our shoulders, the weight of the children of the world, and be pierced through by their needs, nailed to the wood of a cross to save them from death. None of us can open to them the gates of the only place that will ever be enough, the only place they will ever know perfect love.

With that knowledge, we, the mothers, become clinging, needy little ones, grasping tight to the breast of our Savior and begging for His sustenance. We are not enough. But He is. And He knows the hearts of all these mothers all over the world struggling to be what these little ones need.  And He feeds them and loves them and binds up their wounds when we cannot.

There are moms all over the world who will never be enough. Never enough to fill their babies bellies, never enough to heal them from their illnesses, never enough to build them a warm house or buy them the books they need to learn. And yet they mother as best they can. And they need someone to tell them about the loving Savior who fills in where they cannot and makes all things new.  And the ones most well-equipped to do that are not the moms who are “mom enough”. They are the ones who know all too well that they are not enough, who know the sting of want and need and loss. 

I am not mom enough. Love as I might, I could not breathe life into these last three little ones my heart so longs to hold. As painful as it may be, I am grateful for that knowledge. Because every time I look into the eyes of a mother feeling the terrible weight of not being enough, I pray that they see in my brokenness the One who is enough.  Because He is waiting to rush in and be all that we, His little ones, needs.  He who more than enough, He who is everything. 

Useful and Beautiful

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”

I've always loved this quote and I would say it applies doubly to a missionary's suitcases. When you are at home, with space and storage to spare, it is easy to justify the possible usefulness of many things that in the end are in fact just things that you'll never use.  Not so much with a two bag allowance per family member.

We are blessed in that the home we are renting is furnished and the owner is leaving many of the household items in the house.  Nonetheless, a mom making home still reserves the right to bring a bit of her own beauty to that space.  And a dad on an adventure reserves the right to a few fun items of his own. And kids, boys anyway, can beg space for legos, soccer balls, and football trophies.  And somehow amidst the clothes and boots and rain gear, there is space for each person definition of useful and beautiful to be fulfilled in small, intimate ways. There is great joy in this mother's heart for that part of the process.

I think every family would learn a great deal from this challenge. Imagine a two suitcase plus one backpack limit per family member.  You need not consider furniture, and kitchen items and things like bath towels and sheets are packed as choices based on pleasure or frugality, but can be replaced where ever you're heading.  Your allowance must fit all clothes, shoes, homeschooling books and supplies, toys and games, personal items, and any items you would bring to make that place feel like home.  Oh, and just for fun, eliminate one allowed suitcase for the monstrance you are bringing the parish for a gift and another for your husband's computer.  And if you really want to make it a challenge, another for the guitar.

Here is a little look at some of our choices:

Useful: Boots for All the Adventurers

Both: A Basket of Favorites for my Kitchen

Beautiful: Just a Little Box of Pretty for Mom

And the most useful and beautiful of all the items we bring, a vessel of honor for the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord.  A gift from the moderator of the Saint Bryce Foundation, Msgr. Jefferson DeBlanc and his parish to the San Juan Diego mission. 

We pack in our suitcases all the things we think we need to live, but the one thing we really need is already there. Him. Present. Waiting.  And the most important thing we bring does not fit in a suitcase. It is a desire to love Him. comfort Him, adore Him, and enflame that love in the hearts of others.  To tell the poor and the sick and the hurting of the Great Love that sits quietly waiting to meet them, to pour Himself out for them, to bring hope and healing and peace.

As I began the process of packing, I knew well that feeling of being emptied as we prepared for our mission. I have walked this road before. I pondered early on about what a good feeling it is to be emptied of so much stuff, of so many day to day worries and cares. That the space made in not just a blank, bereft space inside, but room for Christ to grow, to fill more of me.

I had no way of knowing the very hard emptying He was about to ask of me. I could not calculate the waves of emotions that would set in as the moment of driving down the drive way for the last time grew near.  That gaping space, that emptiness, it hurts. It is raw and real and deep.  But I know with all my heart, in all my frail brokenness, that the truth remains.  It is His space. He has emptied it for His good purpose, and He will fill it with His goodness.  

As we drive away from one home today with the blessing of another awaiting us, I pray for you all to find a way to empty yourself of something you do not need to be carrying in your heart, to let go of the fear of feeling empty, and to make a little room for Him.  He wants to fill us all.  We must make the space.  Would you too pray for us and especially for the people to whom we go? Pray that we may be able to bring the love of a Savior and the witness of His presence in the Holy Eucharist in a way that fills empty spaces with the warmth of heaven's love.  

We thank you for the kind support and prayers you have offered this past week. They have buoyed us and propelled us forward in a great wave of mercy and grace for which we could not be more grateful.  

Our Gabriel, a sweet friend, and Msgr. DeBlanc

It Wasn't The Goodbye We'd Planned

Yesterday afternoon we were supposed to take a break from our packing and preparations to have a BBQ and some fellowship with our friends before we head out.  A little "goodbye" gathering.

But on Wednesday afternoon at my doctor's appointment, we found a sweet little baby that had already left us and flown home to the Father.  So yesterday, instead of a joyful gathering of friends, we spent the day at the hospital, and, in our hearts, we bid a sad goodbye to our third sweet saint.

I have long ago given up any desire to understand the will of God. I beg Him only the grace to know His will and to do it. In the situation where we now find ourselves, there is no room for wondering. I know what I must do.  So there is only left the begging of the grace to do it.

I have been surrounded by the prayers and love of beautiful souls and the compassion of a wonderful pro-life medical team. It has been a great consolation.  But I hold in my heart the greatest of all consolations, the hope of heaven.  For I realize, that even when my body is well past the age of bearing babies, even if I should live until I am 100, always, I will be an expectant mother, until the day I hold my babies for eternity.

And the hope of that day makes the suffering and struggle and strength to do His will in the hard times all worth it.  For with every drawing near to His cross, we draw near to the glory of the Resurrection as well, and with every bowing low to His sovereignty, we come closer to bowing before His Holy Throne.

With His help and the grace won through your prayers, I will continue to count the ways He loves in the midst of the sadness, to seek joy in the midst of the pain, to trade the ashes of brokenness for the beauty of grace, and to live with expectant hope.

So goodbye for now, sweet baby...pray for us always.