for days when you need a little hope... {guest post for Velvet Ashes}

Photo credit: William Broughton, age 6

Have you walked through a season - maybe right now - where you feel like your creativity is bottled up inside of you, waiting for a chance to come out?  Since I’m in the throes of early motherhood, that’s me, most of the time!  But every once in a while, despite my crazy, interruption-filled days and miles-long to-do list, something creative leaks out and finds room to breathe.  And that feels hopeful to me.

I write songs for all sorts of reasons: to tuck Scripture inside my heart.  To express myself to Jesus.  To capture a quote I love.  To revitalize an old hymn text.  

Mostly, I write music because it gives me hope.  

There’s definitely something creative in spreading peanut butter on apple slices for my kids (in between writing these sentences).  But then there’s the specific “art you were made to live”, which Emily Freeman describes in her hope-filled book A Million Little Ways.  Something deep inside me starts to wither if I don’t intentionally exercise my creativity beyond cooking meals, playing with my kids, and trying to keep my house relatively dirt-free and attractive.  

When I feel a song rising in me, it gives me hope that my creativity is still alive despite the fog of fatigue and swirl of mundane tasks.  So I pay attention, and try to write in the little cracks of time I can find.  It isn’t perfect, or as much as I’d like, but it keeps hope alive.  

For me, music is a bridge between the seasons of my life. 

Rewind ten years to my first stint overseas, fresh out of college....

I'm over at Velvet Ashes today, sharing my story of creativity and hope... come read more and be encouraged! 

songs for heavy hearts

{With hearts still heavy for Boston, I humbly offer these songs as, maybe, a balm for sore spirits?}

She’s listening, and she says she feels better.

Both our hearts are heavy today for a mutual friend.  Already this morning I’ve prayed aloud with tears, the words stumbling slow, while she drinks belated coffee and tries to summon enough appetite for a banana.  She says she's just not hungry.  What if it were her babies in the hospital?  

What if it were mine?

Even after praying, the burden remains for both of us.  I cut up vegetables for chicken stock while I lift up every thought as a prayer.  

I’ve told her she can borrow my iPod whenever she wants, that she can listen to whatever she wants.  Today it happened to be set on these heart-songs when she arrived, and when I offer to change it, she says she likes it that way.  Says my voice is comforting, even though she doesn’t understand the words.  

She asks for my earbuds, plugs one in, leaves one dangling.  Connected to both worlds at once.  She wears the earbuds and my blue cap with the silver spangles out to turn over the garden.  I see heaven covering her head.  

I make chicken stock, and watch her spading earth through the window.  The stock simmers, and I join her, pick up a spade, shove it in heavy ground and lift.  The sun warms our backs.  I ask her: how does she feel now?

She says she's feeling better, listening.  Smiles, glances at me over the top of her spade handle.  

This music, almost all in a language she doesn’t understand… somehow, she feels my heart beating through these songs.  Somehow, God’s peace is filling her ears, her heart.    

This dear friend, she is sound as a good apple - sweet right through to the core.

It’s her ordinariness that rescues me from thinking too highly of myself.  She’s like a solid oak tree whose very presence is reassuring.

It’s her humble, laughing acceptance of the hardships in her life that humbles me, prods me into contentment.

I don’t know what I’d do without her friendship.  She is the rock for me in this strange land.  Even though I have had to learn her heart language to communicate with her heart,  sometimes I think even if we couldn’t speak a word to each other, we’d still be friends.

And yet, she doesn’t know.  She doesn’t know what I know.

She doesn’t know where to find that welling up of joy, that spring of peace that flows in any circumstance.  She doesn’t know where to find wisdom that actually works, love that is tender and intimate, romance that surprises.  

She doesn’t know how much she is Loved.  

I am here to tell her.  

Thank You for this music.  Speak through it, through my stumbling tongue.  Fill me with timeliness, and courage.  Help me wait patiently until the moments are ripe, then help me speak boldly when You nudge.  

With all else wonderful that she is, she is not yet my heart sister.  

This I long for.  Every. day.  

setting up the pins...

Life with small children sometimes feels like weaving a braided rug.  I pick up a strand of one color - dishes, laundry, a cup of tea - only to have it interrupted by another color - the baby crying, a scraped knee, a knock at the door.  The days tumble out in no particular order, my best attempts to build a routine crumbling around my feet.  

My favorite song at the moment is by Sara Groves, from her album Fireflies and Songs.  It’s called “Setting Up the Pins”, and there’s a bit in the middle that goes like this:  

Everyone, everywhere, someway, somehow,

Settin’ up the pins for knockin’ ‘em down…

It can feel simple but it’s really profound…

Settin’ up the pins for knockin’ ‘em down…

Rent-a-tent, build-a-stage, throw-a-party, get-a-gown,

Buy-a-ticket, rent-a-car, pack-a-bag-and-leave-town.

Cook-a-dinner, clean-the-kitchen, hit-the-light,

Brush-your-teeth, read-a-book, say-a-prayer, good-night!

That’s what my days feel like… and I love Sara’s song because it ends like this: 

My grandmother had a working song

“Hum-diddle-oh” all day long

Sing for the beauty that’s to be found

Settin’ up the pins for knockin’ ‘em down

There is actually beauty to be found in setting up the pins every day, just to knock them down again.  There is Beauty to be found, and His name is Grace, and I can find Him just by opening my mouth, my heart, in thanks.  The minute I thank Him for the moment, the dirty diaper, the crying child, the potatoes boiling over on the stove, He’s right there with me.  

He was already there, I just didn’t have eyes to see.  

Thanks weaves the sacred with the mundane in a daily-unrolling tapestry of grace, where dirty diapers come right before softest snuggles, and crying children give way to laps full of stories.  Crusty dishes mean three growing bodies ate nutritious food, and piles of laundry mean healthy kids played in good clean dirt today.  

It’s all in how you look at it.  

Thank you, God, for...

...a breezy, blustery spring day.

...clothes drying on the line.

...a surprise visit from a friend.

...a clean bathroom sink.

...my sweet-smelling, soft-cheeked baby daughter.

...my blue-eyed, blond-haired dynamo three-year-old son.

...my thoughtful, studious, mischievous five-year-old son.  

...my hard-working, loving husband.

...Your love, unending.

...Your grace, that covers all.

...Your Presence, all the time.

The best moment of today?

Sparrow - finally here!

It's finally finished... 

...just in time for Christmas! 

I am so excited to share these songs with all of you!  They come from my heart, and I hope they minister to yours.  

From the booklet of Sparrow: 

These songs have blossomed out of thoughts and realizations from years of living a cross-cultural, transient life.  

I’ve recorded a few songs in the past, but this is my first original album on this scale, and even just agreeing with God to start the process was a huge step of faith.  I recorded the whole thing when I was nine months pregnant with our daughter, Ruby Grace.  

The title track especially captures my relief at being able to tuck my most precious treasures - my children - under God’s wings and trust Him to be our home.  

My prayer as you listen is that God Himself will draw near and speak to your heart, and that His presence and peace will become tangibly yours.   

Some photos from the making of...

May you know His presence and peace this Christmas, kind friends!   

"merge like a zip"

I feel like I'm about to have my second baby in the same space of time.  I said yes to God to make this album a couple months after we found out we were pregnant with Ruby.  The whole album was recorded during the last month of my pregnancy, and now we're racing toward completion, and Ruby will be one month old tomorrow... it's a weird feeling.

Most of my friends and family, while they're proud of me, are probably secretly thinking I'm insane for trying to do this.  And sometimes, while I'm frantically dashing off emails over Ruby's head while she's feeding (like right now), I do feel a little manic.  But I've just kept thinking to myself, over and over, my favorite New Zealand highway sign, "Merge like a zip":

(The New Zealand road rule for blending two or more lanes into one: 

a zip is a zipper, for you Americans out there)

And it does seem to help!

Each day is flowing together in a different pattern, but somehow the baby's schedule, boys' schedules, CD details, James' studies, dishes, laundry, sleeping, friends, emails... somehow they're all merging (blurring!)  together, and what doesn't get done today gets saved for tomorrow, and I am learning to release and receive, release and receive.  Release my own agenda, and receive God's.  Release my nap, and receive Ruby, whimpering in my arms, as a gift.  Release control, and receive... peace.  I have my freak-out moments, every several days, but they're like red pimply blips along the path and then things settle back down to the whir and rhythm of "merge like a zip, merge like a zip"... 

And we are just a few days away from final mixing, final editing, and then mastering... and the CD cover graphics came through yesterday and look beautiful... and we are gathering quotes for duplicating  this dream gift from God to me, through me, so that it can be broken bread and poured out wine, passed out to God's people for the nourishment of their souls... and in the breaking and pouring, I am somehow nourished too.

Would you pray with me, as I rock and shush and swaddle and sing and croon, for the completion of this collection of songs, that it would be shining and shimmering grace?  That all the details would slip into place, that the final product would be exactly how I dreamed it would be, that it would be a blessing?  

shadow sounds of true soul

One day it’s all going to coalesce.

All the pieces will fall into place, and I will finally be free to create the art I’ve always dreamed of making.

That’s how the thoughts come these days, these days holding only snippets of me-time when I get to choose dishes, laundry, email, nap OR… art.  

My pieces lie scattered: A recording system I purchased last summer but don’t know how to use.  An electric piano I rarely touch.  Journals filled with scribblings of poems, set to solfeggio melodies with chords.  Musical connections all over the world.  Thoughts and images floating through my head, scraps and shards, needing some magnetic force to draw them all together. 

I say, I’ll just sit down to the piano for a minute… And seconds later, little hands are clamoring for a turn at the keys, and how can I resist the sweetness of little bodies wanting to fight for my lap to have their turn at music-making, and the wealth of small fingers under mine?  Isn’t this art of a different kind?  Yes, of course, I think, but there is the other waiting in the wings, and part of me aches for grown-up things.  

I listen to CDs of lullabies bequeathed by a friend who’s left the country, and I listen to art made by singers become mommies, and I think, I could do that.  Why don’t I?  It’s all the pieces on the floor, and I just don’t know how to pick them up and put them together.

Wait, says that Quiet Voice.  Just wait.  We’re getting there, you and I.  I do have a plan, you know.  

I sigh.  I do know.  I just find waiting and holding my artistic breath difficult, when there is so much beauty to be created.

I thumb through emails, and come across this in blue, penned thoughtfully by one of my sweetest friends, (a breath-taking singer and a sensitive, brave mommy):

We are writing poems, memories, and songs within the hearts of our children each day, and it is there that perhaps we are the truest recording artists we ever will be, perhaps all the rest is the shadow sounds of true soul we try to capture with our instruments.

And I find my breath returning.  I am suddenly at peace.  It is there, within the hearts of my children each day, that perhaps I am the truest recording artist I will ever be.  And perhaps all the rest is the shadow sounds of true soul.  

My heart aches with truth.  I listen to Jewel’s mesmerizing voice, thankful that a mommy somewhere had all her pieces linked just right to capture these delicious shadow-sounds for my true soul.  

And I catch glimpses of my boys’ hearts growing up with memories and songs recorded on their hearts… making music of their own one day.

{Ben, trying to walk in my shoes}

Eureka!

{Just settling back in after our house move... back up online this week, and trying to process everything... thank you for grace!}

European Roller, one of my favorite birds 

(photo found thru a Google image search)

Currently, I would call myself a “blocked creative”.

I say I am a musician, and I do love music, yet I rarely make music when I’m by myself.  I rarely catch myself singing, or even humming; I rarely have the urge to play the piano just for love of the keys under my fingers; I have to remind myself to turn music on in our home.  I say I long to help my children grow in their creativity, but I control each creative activity to the nth degree, so that they still have to depend on me to facilitate and make it happen, and their crafts or painting never get out of hand or take on a life of their own for them.  Even though I love color and design and creating atmospheres, before I had kids I kept my home so perfectly in order and gave off such a “neat-freak” aura that good friends were reluctant to let their kids into my living room in case they “messed it up”.  

Why?  What am I really afraid of?  How do I reconcile my love for order and the peacefulness it brings me (although admittedly, it’s a tight kind of peacefulness that might snap at any moment when another surface gets cluttered or the sink fills back up with dishes) with my longing to be creative?

And I do long to create.  In the depths of my soul I long to make whole albums of stunning original music, I long to have music pouring out of my soul all day long, I long to paint gorgeous water-colors, I long to mural my walls, let my creativity run wild.  I long to see my kids enabled and freed to create whatever their little hearts desire.  What is holding me back?  

Well, I have had a personal epiphany.  

I have finally put my finger on the root of the reason why I say I love creativity and long for productivity in my creative giftings (music, writing, painting, crafting, etc), but yet never seem to be able to let myself go into a passionate pursuit of any of these.

Here it is, the root of the reason, from a quote in an article James asked me to read tonight to help him with a paper for class:

“Mess is the precondition of creativity… Creativity is not neat.  It is not orderly. When we are being creative we don’t know what is going to happen next...  In any creative enterprise there are risks, mistakes, false starts, failures, frustrations, embarrassments, but out of this mess--when we stay with it long enough, enter it deeply enough-- there slowly emerges love or beauty or peace…”

~Eugene H. Peterson, in Under the Unpredictable Plant

I love neat.  I love orderly.  I hate loss of control, and that whole list of messy stuff in the middle of the paragraph, with every fiber of my perfectionistic being.  But... love, beauty and peace are exactly what my heart longs for.  Those are what I long to see blossom like birds of paradise flowers everywhere: in my parenting, in my soul, in my marriage, in my ministry, in my relationships, in my home.  Everywhere.   And yet love, beauty and peace are the exact things that always seem just out of reach, a bit forced, not quite fully matured.  Elusive.

I am buying the rest of this book.  (I'd buy it just for the title - it conjures up images of jungles and plants with personality and ant-sized people, like in “Honey I Shrunk the Kids”.)  I really need to learn how to invite the mess, practice the mess joyfully, and stay with the mess long enough to let love, beauty and peace emerge, because those are the things I’m really longing for.  It’s the staying with the mess I find exhausting, because I detest the chaos so much - it feels like stretching a muscle to the pain point and then making myself hold it there indefinitely.  Ouch.  

But you know what?  

I am really tired of living a grey-ish, safe life.  

Writing that sentence feels scary, because I have inklings of what living a red-indigo-mauve-chartreuse life will mean for my love of order and control… But even though our family lives outside our home countries, in a context brimming with a colorful mixture of cultures, it is actually extremely possible to make our day-to-day lives grey and predictable, and that is exactly what I have been doing.  

So.  Stay with the mess.  Invite the mess.  Stay focused on Love, Beauty, and Peace, and how much my soul is thirsty for Jesus’ presence.  Think about that while my soul stretches to maintain sanity amidst the chaos.  And hey, maybe if I toss out order and control, I might make room for Jesus to show me how to have a little fun along the way?