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! 

on writing and other peculiar habits...

{Linking up again this weekend with the ladies over at the Velvet Ashes Grove, writing about... well, writing!}

Picture a little girl perching on a wooden stool at a low table, head bent over a small piece of paper on her placemat.  She grips a purple marker tightly in her chubby fist, poking the tip of her tongue out in concentration.  Finally, she heaves a sigh of satisfaction.  

“Look, Mommy!” she jumps up and runs to the kitchen table, waving her scrap of paper. “I filled it all up!”

Her mom takes the scrap of paper and looks at it.  From top to bottom, every inch of white is completely covered with wobbly rows of tiny little scribbles.

“See, Mommy?” the little girl says proudly.  “I’m writing!”    

One guess who the little girl is.  

Yep.

My Mom still has the paper.  

My own little writer...

I remember sitting next to my Mom at the kitchen table, resting my chin on the tablecloth, watching her left hand move gracefully across the paper forming magical connected letters called “cursive”.  I would watch for a while, then I’d get a bit of paper from the basket by the phone and sit down at my little table to practice.  

I filled up reams of paper scraps with my “writing”.  I loved the feel of the marker or pencil or pen in my hand, the sliding, curvy motion as the tip curled across the paper, the look of the ink as it unwound itself in knots and loops and dips and dots.  I loved the tidy straight rows of inked shapes, one row under another, marching down the page.  It didn’t matter to me one bit they weren’t real words.  

I was writing.  

I remember sitting bored at my desk in front of my homeschool Saxon Math book (it was a good book - I just detested math), gazing across our postage stamp lawn at the huge scarlet-leafed maple tree.  Guiltily latching my bedroom door, I would slide Saxon aside and write a poem instead.  

In Jr. High, a friend and I wrote almost a whole novel together.  It was to be the first of a trilogy; we unashamedly plagiarized J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  The heroine was a combination of the two of us, and the hero was modeled after a boy we both liked in youth group.  To our credit, we did create a completely original race of beings called “the Gargoilim”, but our “Nolbids” (Hobbits) and Elves were pretty much all J.R.R..  

I wasn’t good at making the plot exciting, so my friend would write the gist in outline form and pass the floppy disk to me on Sundays, and I would embellish to my heart’s content all week.  I was really good at embellishing.  Then she would take the finished pages back and draw beautiful, detailed illustrations with colored pencils.  We were completely absorbed in our project, and completely happy.  We wrote for the fun of writing and created for the joy of creating.

In the years since then, I have journaled.  And journaled.  And journaled.  Boxes of journals crammed with my handwriting are living in storage all around the world - my parents’ house in Sonoma, my mother-in-law’s shed in New Zealand, my desk drawers here in Central Asia.  Every era of my life is chronicled.  In detail.  If one of my great-grandchildren decides to write my biography, they’ll be in researcher’s heaven.    

Obviously, I can’t stop writing even if I wanted to.  In an earlier post I said if I was ever kept in solitary confinement, I’d write with my fingernails on my jail cell wall.  

It’s an addiction.

It was a couple years after college that I started asking myself, why?  Why do I feel this irresistible compulsion to move pen across paper, even if no one ever reads it?  

I remember sitting in an upstairs room in a little guest house during my first year overseas on a holiday with three girls from my English-teaching team.  We were enjoying the quaint touristy Asian town, and I was trying to process something - I can’t remember what.  (I was always processing something.)  That afternoon each of my roommates was occupied, and no one was really in the mood to listen to me think out loud, so I sat there on the bed and tried to do it by myself.  

I decided to think an entire train of thought in my mind beginning to end, without saying anything out loud or writing anything down.    

I couldn’t do it.  

I nearly drove myself crazy!  

I actually got scared.  What kind of person was I who couldn’t hold a coherent string of thoughts inside my head - was my brain a sieve?  Why was it evidently essential for me to use some external crutch - a pen, someone’s ear - to reach a mental conclusion?

Since those days, I’ve become intimately acquainted with the term “external processor”, and this perpetual urge I have to put words on paper or debrief with a friend in order to reach a conclusion has been partially explained.  (Whew!)

But aside from using words for compulsive external processing, I’ve had a life-long love affair with words themselves.  I always read them voraciously, thrilled to their savor and their power, and avidly put pen to paper to form them myself.

A peek at my ever-messy kitchen desk, where I do most of my writing -
complete with candy wrappers, old rubber band and TP...

“I write.”  That’s easy to say.  That can mean journals nobody sees.

“I’m a writer.”  Whew.  That’s a lot harder.  Somehow saying “I’m a writer” seems to ask a lot more of me and feels more intimidating than saying “I write”.

I’m still in the process of realizing and embracing the fact that the second statement is actually the same as the first.  If I write, I'm a writer.

I haven’t published one single article, anywhere, even online.  I haven’t even guest-posted for anyone.  Ever.  

So how can I call myself “a writer”, you ask?  

Because I write.  Every day.  Because I can’t not write.  It’s just something I have to do.  

"I’m a writer."  It’s starting to feel really good to say that out loud.

So… here comes the crunch, the part of this post where I get really honest:

Recently I’ve been feeling differently about this writing thing of mine… I want to Make Something with all this writing.  

I started my blog when my first son was born, mostly for my Mom (and other dedicated, wonderfully loyal friends) to read stories and see pictures of our kids and our overseas life.  But gradually, over my six-year blog life thus far, I’ve started to think almost as much about writing books as I do about reading them.

I do not have a big announcement to make (as in, watch out, world - here comes the next NY TImes best-selling author!).

But I do have Heather Seller’s inspiring book Chapter after Chapter: Discover the dedication and focus you need to write the book of your dreams living on my nightstand.  

I do not know what the future holds.

But I do dream of {gulp!} writing a book of my own someday… (I’m saying it out loud.  On the internet.  There’s no going back.)

I want to Make Something with all this writing, something more concise, profound and useful than stacks of journals hidden away in boxes.  

But since I’m not to the book-writing stage - yet - for right now, the Something I’m Making with words today is... (drumroll please) 

...this post.  For you. :)

And here’s what I want you to hear today:

Whatever “weird” (in the most flattering sense, of course) or insatiable habits you may have, pay attention to them.  Why do you feel the need to do them?  What is in you that isn’t in anyone else?

What is it that only you can do?  

Kenneth Atchity in his book Write Time (recommended by the ever-wise Heather Sellers) advises, 

“Stop doing things no one needs to do.  

Stop doing things someone else will do if you stop doing them.  

Stop doing things that aren’t the kind only you can do.  

Start doing the things you want to do, the things only YOU can do.”

Get the picture? 

Maybe the reason I can’t stop writing is because I need to keep writing.  Maybe there’s something God’s put in me to say, and all this writing is practice for letting it out one day.  

Maybe the thing we can’t stop doing is what we’re made to do, and we could stop putting it under lock and key and saying we don’t have time, and just let it out to breathe a little.  

Emily P. Freeman, in her lovely and inspiring book A Million Little Ways: Uncovering the Art You Were Made To Live, says, “Being an artist has something to do with being brave enough to move toward what makes you come alive.”

She goes on to say, “God is on the move.  But he is not invisible.  As long as there are people on earth, the world will have glimpses of God.  He chooses us to move through.  He chooses your personality, your spunk, your passion, your strengths, and your weaknesses to work in and through and with.  Christ still moves around in the world through the filter of your you-ness.”

My me-ness definitely includes writing.  Writing helps me process life.  I think better when I write.  I love better, calm down, and see clearer when I write.  

I can’t not write.

What is it you can’t stop doing?  

Maybe that’s the thing you were meant to do - the art you were made to live.

Be brave.  Write.  Create.  Be you.  

for when you're feeling homesick… {Pt. 1}

{Today I'm linking up with the community of sojourning ladies over at Velvet Ashes, posting on last week's prompt "Home"… I have so many thoughts on this subject, there might have to be a Pt.2 to this post!}

A black car pulled up in the driveway, and my husband got out of the driver’s seat.  Ben and Will ran to meet him across the yard of our rental house.  Daddy picked them up and swung them around.

“What do you think of our new car?” he asked energetically.

Three-year-old Ben’s face immediately fell.  “That’s not our car!” he protested.  “I want my blue car!  I want our car, from Central Asia!  I want to go home!”  He burst into angry tears, and James’ face registered consternation as he looked at me over Ben’s head.  

Of our two boys, Ben struggled the most last year with our transition back to New Zealand for the birth of our next baby.  He didn’t like our “new” house, he didn’t like living in Christchurch, he wanted his own bed, his own house, his own trike back in Central Asia.

In a word, he was homesick.  

We’d only been living in this Central Asian village four and a half years, but we moved here right before Ben was born, and since three months old he’s spent more time here than anywhere else in the world.  

From our first days here my own heart, too, has been knitted to this place: the people, the simple layout of the town, the routes to different friends’ houses, the mountains, the fields, the flocks of sheep and cows and horses, the quiet, slow, backwater feel of the place.  

All three of our children (now ages 6, 4 and 1) have spent their early childhood here, so this place is the most familiar to them.  When we’re visiting one of their two passport countries, it’s so ironic to me when they say “I want to go home” - and they mean this tiny corner of Central Asia.  

It’s been in this village that our family has transitioned from three members to four members, and now to five with the addition of our daughter last year.  Our rental house for the past two years is the place where I prepare our meals, where we sleep and play and wake up day after day.  It’s the first place in which I’ve hosted my own parents, proudly fed them pizza and breadsticks made from scratch in “my own” kitchen.  

At this moment, for this season, this is our home.

My dad, having breakfast with the boys in our rental-kitchen...

I remember my Mom stenciling our house when I was little,
so when she came she helped me stencil this rental house,
even though I know we won't be here forever…
Now, when I see my red cherries, I think of her.

This has not been tested yet, but I think even if we have to change houses again in this country, or even if we change countries (a very real and contemplated possibility), “home” for us and our children will travel with us to the new place.  We’ll have our dishes, our bedspreads, our pictures on the walls, our books, our carpets, our water-filter, the same clothes and shoes and toys… and we’ll be together.  Familiar things and familiar people will make both the external house-shell and the internal atmosphere of our next house feel like home to all of us.

The dictionary on my word processor defines “home” as “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or a household.”  But don’t you think it would be more accurate to describe the essence of home as familiarity?  Beloved people with whom we can be ourselves, a place where we know every little nook and cranny, a certain possession treasured because it evokes special memories… 

Our hearts seem to be designed to knit to other hearts and tie to certain places.  

In Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, the prince has a conversation with a fox in which the fox asks the prince to tame him.  The prince asks, “What does ‘tamed’ mean?” 

The fox replies, “It means, ‘to create ties’…” 

“‘To create ties’?”

“That’s right,” the fox said.  “...If you tame me, we’ll need each other.  You’ll be the only boy in the world for me.  I’ll be the only fox in the world for you…” 

We are made to ‘create ties’, to long for connections that make us unique to the other in all the world.  We are created to lavish love and care on a person or a place, until they become so familiar and precious that when we’re away from them we ache inside.

And yet, places aren’t permanent, however much we wish they were, and eventually we have to say goodbye to people we love.  On this planet, the only constant thing is change.   

The apostle Paul compares our earthly bodies with tents (he was a tentmaker, after all, so he knew his stuff), and says we have an actual “building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens…”  He encouraged the Corinthian church to look to the “unseen weight of glory beyond all comparison” to get them through “momentary, light affliction…”  (2 Cor 5:1-6)

How does knowing our true home, our “house not made with hands”, is in heaven - and that means we are actually sojourners, strangers and aliens on this earth - factor into our understanding of “home” and our heart-sense of where home is?

I find this difficult.  I’m a physical person with a physical body, and my heart naturally knits to beloved people and special things and physical bits of earth.  It is so hard for me to believe that intangible, difficult-to-imagine heaven will actually feel more like home than here…  

I do know God will be there, and I know the closer I draw to Him now in this life, the more familiar He will feel and the more my heart will be knitted to Him and I will long to be with Him in person all the time, face to face, without ceasing.  

While I was engaged to my husband, I went through this. When I was with him, I felt such a sense of belonging, of homecoming.  He made me feel so safe and loved and welcomed and cherished that I wanted to be with him all. the. time.  The more time we spent together (and even while we were apart), the closer our hearts drew together and the more familiar he felt to me.  The more familiar he felt, the more I loved being with him.  As we neared our wedding day, separating for sleep was torture.  (Having said that, after marriage, learning how to actually sleep and get good rest in the same bed with another person definitely took some getting used to!  But it was bliss not to have to say goodbye.)

A little-seen engagement photo from 9 years ago… :)

I wonder if that’s how we’re meant to feel now about heaven.  Like an engaged bride feels about her coming marriage.  What if we felt so comforted and accepted and safe and welcomed and cherished when we experience the presence of even Jesus’ non-physical Holy Spirit, that to be physically with Jesus Himself, our Bridegroom, face to face for all time and never have to say goodbye again… would be unimaginable bliss?

Maybe that’s why Paul (a person with arguably one of the closest ever relationships with the risen Jesus) wrote to the Galatians saying, “It is better for me by far to depart and be with Christ, but for your sake I’ll stay here on this messed-up, broken planet and keep shepherding you for your progress and joy in the faith…”  (Phil 1:21-25, my paraphrase, emphasis added)  

He was longing to be united with Christ.  

Paul goes on to describes death not as unclothing us from our earthly bodies, but as being further clothed - “swallowed up by life.”  After death, we’ll be more Alive, Paul says.  Our resurrection bodies will be even more gloriously Real than the ones we have now.  

What if it was the same for our sense of home, and all our knitted ties here on earth?  What if after death (or when Jesus comes back!) we experience an even deeper sense of familiarity and delicious Home-coming than we ever have before?  

In his book on heaven and hell, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis imagines the grass of heaven to be so much more Real than earth-grass that its spikes hurt the feet of the spirit-people who travel there in a bus to take a look.  Might the sense of Home in heaven be like that too?  More Real, more strangely familiar, more deliciously comforting than anything we’ve known on earth? 

What if all our varied experiences of “home” on this earth - our house growing up, our parents’ home, our new homes we build as adults, our various patches of earth around the world to which we tie ourselves throughout the course of our lives - what if all these glimpses are merely meant to whet our appetites for the Real Thing?

What if we imagined each glimpse of beauty or delicious sense of homecoming or mouth-watering whiff of baking bread or sweet kiss from our child as a lovely shadow cast by an even lovelier Reality in Another Country?  Wouldn’t we long to get to that Country?

In his thought-provoking fairytale The Golden Key, George MacDonald describes the journey of two children, Tangle and Mossy.  During their travels they pass through a land of wonderful shadows, which MacDonald narrates in part like this:

“Now a wonderful form, half bird-like half human, would float across on outspread sailing pinions.  Anon an exquisite shadow group of gambolling children would be followed by the loveliest female form, and that again by the grand stride of a Titanic shape, each disappearing in the surrounding press of shadowy foliage.  Sometimes a profile of unspeakable beauty or grandeur would appear for a moment and vanish.  Sometimes they seemed lovers that passed linked arm in arm, sometimes father and son, sometimes brothers in loving contest, sometimes sisters… Sometime wild horses would tear across… But some of the things which pleased them most they never knew how to describe.   

“About the middle of the plain they sat down to to rest… After sitting for a while, each, looking up, saw the other in tears: they were each longing after the country whence the shadows fell.”

For the rest of their journey Mossy and Tangle are filled with this unspeakable longing to reach “the country whence the shadows fell”.  MacDonald ends his fairytale  like this:

“He took his key.  It turned in the lock to the sounds of Aeolian music.  A door opened upon slow hinges, and disclosed a winding stair within.  The key vanished from his fingers.  Tangle went up.  Mossy followed.  The door closed behind them.  They climbed out of the earth; and, still climbing, rose above it.  They were in the rainbow.  Far abroad, over ocean and land, they could see through its transparent walls the earth beneath their feet.  Stairs beside stairs wound up together, and beautiful beings of all ages climbed along with them. 

“They knew that they were going up to the country whence the shadows fall. 

“And by this time I think they must have got there.”

Surely our love of “home” and our ability to get “homesick” proves that every human being on this planet has a God-planted longing deep in our hearts, a longing to find our Way Home.  

Isn’t it wonderful that the One who said, 

“I have gone to prepare a place for you...” 

also said 

“I am the Way…” ?

And aren’t we here, sojourning on this planet, to introduce the hearts longing for home all around us to that One who is Himself the Way to our True Home? 

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get to 

“the country from whence the shadows fall”.  

Because once there, with Him, we’ll never be homesick. ever. again.  

The Princess and the Crown

{Today I'm joining in with the community of sojourning ladies over at Velvet Ashes, writing on this week's prompt: Story…}

Once upon a time… (aren’t those lovely, magical, anything-can-happen words?)

Once upon a time, there was a princess.  

But she wasn’t always a princess.  She was born the daughter of humble peasants, and they lived in a small cottage and kept chickens.

Now, the king of that land had a heart as wide as the sky.  One of the things his big heart loved to do was adopt children.  He didn’t care if they already had parents of their own; he adopted them anyway, so that he could care for them and honor them and bless them just like he did for his own son, the prince.  He knew there was a difference between ruling over people and fathering them, and he loved being a father.  

When the king wanted to adopt another child, he sent his firstborn son, the prince, to tell them the good news: that they had become a prince or princess too.  The king’s son took immense delight in ranging far and wide over his father’s kingdom, delivering his father’s messages.  

One day, our princess (who didn’t yet know she was a princess) was outside feeding the chickens.  She tossed grain to them and hummed a little song to herself, because the sky was blue and the air smelled sweet.  She was about six years old, and she wore a ragged peasant dress and had bare feet.  Her long brown hair fell loose down her back.

Suddenly, at the edge of yard, leaning on the fence, she noticed a most remarkable person.  He was tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in peasant garb like herself.  He wore a jaunty cap on his head, and when he saw her looking at him, a broad smile spread over his face.  She liked him at once.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” he replied.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m the prince,” he answered.  She believed him without question; she was only six years old, and miracles happened every day.  

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said politely, dropping a quaint little curtsy in her peasant rags.  His grin broadened.  She could tell he liked her too.

“I have something to tell you,” he said.  He beckoned her over to the fence.  She quickly threw the rest of the grain to her chickens, and came over to where he was.

“It’s a secret,” he said, “so I shall have to whisper in your ear.”  Obligingly, she stood on tiptoe, and the prince leaned down over the fence rail and whispered something into her small ear.  

Her face brightened immediately, and she pulled back and gazed up into his face to see whether he was telling the truth.  He gazed solemnly down at her, his brown eyes twinkling.  “It’s true,” he said.  “From this day on.”

She flashed him the brightest of smiles.  Hopping onto the bottom rail of the fence, she stretched up to plant a kiss on his cheek.  Then she skipped off across the yard, glancing back and waving her hand before she disappeared into the house.  

The prince watched her go, a smile still on his face.  Then, whistling, he sauntered off up the lane, hands in his pockets.  He had more houses to visit that day.

The little girl with the wonderful secret in her heart grew up.  She married a good man and gave birth to three beautiful children of her own.  Sometimes she remembered the truth of what the prince told her that day, and sometimes she forgot.  On days when she remembered, she walked with a beautiful grace and was polite and kind and gracious, no matter how tired she felt.  On days when she forgot, she grumbled at every inconvenience and was rude and unkind and impatient.  

One day, the prince returned.  The little-girl-grown-up was inside her house, washing the dishes.  She and her husband still lived in the same cottage; they built a little hut next door for her aging parents, and that afternoon her three children were playing at their grandparents’ house.  

She was feeling especially tired; the baby had been up in the night teething, and her two sons had struggled to play kindly all morning.  She was tired of breaking up fights, tired of holding a fussy baby, tired of dishes - just tired.  

Suddenly, there was a knock at her door.

“Come in,” she called, sighing a little inside.  She had been hoping for a quiet cup of tea all by herself with her book.  She dried her hands on the tea towel, and went to open the door.

There stood the prince.

“Hello,” he said cheerfully, the same old twinkle in his eye.

“Hello,” she replied, a little flustered.  

“May I come in?” said the prince. 

The woman opened the door wider and gestured into their humble living room.  “Of course,” she said, “but I haven’t much to offer you.”

“I don’t mind,” said the prince.  “It’s nice to see you again.”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” said the woman, thinking how handsome he still was.  He didn’t look like he had aged a single day.  Staring at him, she forgot her manners, until he said, gently, “I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea, if you have some…”

“Oh!  Oh, yes, of course,” the woman went quickly to the stove, where the kettle had just begun to boil.  She reached another mug down from the shelf, placed it next to her own, and poured out two cups of tea.

Handing him a steaming mug, she sat down across the table from him, and they looked at one another in silence for a moment.

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” the woman finally blurted out.  “I just can’t seem to keep remembering what you told me all those years ago - I have trouble believing what you said is, well, is really true.”

“You believed me back then,” the prince said, mildly.  “What happened?”

“Well, I grew up, I suppose,” the woman replied.  “And… life happened, I guess.  It’s just that I don’t feel any different, and my life is just the same as it was before I knew - before you told me, that is.”  

“I brought something for you,” said the prince.  “I’ve been waiting for just the right moment.”  He reached into his satchel and pulled out something that sparkled in the sunlight.  The woman’s eyes widened.  The prince set the beautiful thing on the table between them.    

“I - I don’t know what to say,” she stammered feebly, staring at the delicate golden circlet set with precious gems.  She loved beauty.  All her life she had dreamed of owning such a lovely thing, but they never had money for anything extra.  

“This is a very special crown,” the prince said gently.  The woman raised her eyes from the circlet to his face.   He picked it up, and said, “May I?”  

The woman flushed a rosy pink, but she lowered her head and leaned forward slightly.  The prince set the circlet on her shining brown hair.  Then he took one hand, and raised her chin so their eyes met.  The woman’s eyes filled with tears.  She could feel the beautiful crown resting lightly on her head.  

“Only you will be able to see this crown,” the prince said to her earnestly.  “You will feel it resting on your head, and when you look in the mirror you will see it glimmering there, but it is only visible to you.”   

The woman reached up her hand, and carefully touched the smooth gold with her fingers.  Her face bore a look of wonder.  She rose from the table, and walked into the bedroom, where there was the only mirror in the house.  Looking into it, she saw a still-youngish woman with tired eyes gazing back at her.  A sparkling golden crown rested on her head.   At the sight, her tears began to overflow, and trickled slowly down her cheeks.  She reached up again, as if to make sure it was really there.  

After a long moment, she returned to the table and sat down again opposite the prince.  He was looking at her quietly, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth.  He reached across the table and covered both her hands with his.  

“Never forget,” he said, looking into her eyes.  “You are a princess.  You are a daughter of the king.  You are loved, and you are cherished.  Live each day like that is true.  Never forget who you are.”

She nodded, gazing at the prince, not trusting herself to speak.  He held her eyes, and her hands, for one more moment, and then he rose.  

At the doorway, he turned and smiled at her.  “That means you’re my sister, you know,” he said, his smile broadening to a grin.  “See ya round, sis.”  

And he was gone.  

Taste {The Grove}

{Linking up post-Thanksgiving with The Grove community over at Velvet Ashes, musing on  Taste…}

I never fully realized how one taste can send you straight home (in the "where-I-grew-up" sense).  

For the first time in my 8 years of married life, this week I cooked my first ever Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings: roasted chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, roasted veggies, peas, even cranberry sauce made from scratch from real cranberries!  The crowning glory, however, were my two pies, made from scratch - and I am NOT a pie maker!  

Without apologizing, I made the pumpkin pie for myself.  I knew my Kiwi husband would love the apple pie and tolerate the pumpkin (New Zealanders tend to keep things like pumpkin in the "savoury" category). I wasn't sure how my kids would react since they've never had pumpkin pie before, and I was pretty sure our local guests would take a polite bite or two and leave the rest (and I was right).  But I wanted pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, and so I roasted the pumpkin, and followed the recipe carefully, and made one.  All by myself.  For me.  In honor of American Thanksgiving, as the only pure American in our vicinity.  I even tracked down real whipping cream (for a prince's ransom) to go with it!

I wasn't sure how the pies had turned out.  (After all, you can't taste a pie without cutting into it, and who serves a pie with a chunk out of it?)  

But as I slid my first forkful of pumpkin and real whipped cream into my mouth, I closed my eyes with pleasure.  Yum.  It tasted perfect.  I couldn't believe it.  Just like Thanksgiving at home.  

And with that mouthful I was at once perfectly happy and very sad.  No one else around my table - my kind local friends, my wonderful Kiwi husband, our lovely guest from New Zealand, even my sweet children - could share my experience in that moment.  

I felt immensely far from home, and immediately close to my original family, all at once.  I felt sorry for everyone else around my table who couldn't share this taste with me… not just the taste of pumpkin with whipped cream, but the taste of home.

And yet, I didn't feel guilty.  I savored every bite of my piece of pie, cut off another sliver and ate that too, and kept my eyes closed the whole time.  Home tastes sweet.  

And as I build my own home, I'm feeling nourished by the physical memory of the home that made me…. one Thanksgiving dinner at a time, year after year, holiday after holiday, memory after memory.  

Best of all, unbelievably, my children will have the taste of pumpkin pie and whipped cream as part of their memories growing up, even though they live in Central Asia… and that thought tastes really good to me.  

Together... {Friday word prompt at "The Grove"}

{Today I’m joining the Grove community over at Velvet Ashes, writing five minutes on the prompt “together”… Come and join!}

Five minutes. Unscripted.  Real and raw...

GO.

This week my poor, teething 13-month-old has been crying almost non-stop.  (That was a lot of hyphens, but that’s how my week has felt - minute-to-minute hyphens, with barely pause to take a breath.)  Some days it feels like if she could crawl back inside my womb, she would…

Yesterday I finally grabbed the flowerpots I had bought earlier in the week (in my one free hour of sans-kids time), and went outside gasping for some fresh air.  I brought my sweetie with me, since she needed air as much as I did, even if she wasn’t a big fan of her new “outside” boots… we sat together in the back yard, and dug in the dirt for a while.

Back up to an hour earlier, when my six-year-old flatly refused to do his reading lesson for the day, and I’d spent over 60 minutes cajoling, threatening, and finally bribing (combined with a promise from Daddy to come home and take over) before he finally gave in… still kicking and screaming.  Literally.  But we did our lesson together, and we had our promised hot chocolate bribe, and then I took myself, my camera, my pots and my sweetie outside.  Phew.  

So here we are, digging in the dirt, and I’m realizing how peaceful it is.  Ruby’s not crying.  She’s completely quiet, absorbed in lifting tiny bits of dirt out of one pot and pouring them into another.  Then she lifts her pot up and dumps the little dirt she’s gathered straight into her lap.  (Blueberries for Sal comes to mind.)  Then she starts over.  She does this, completely unaware I’m watching, totally absorbed in the dirt, happy just to be outside, with me.  Together.  

So I have a choice.  

I can resist and resent her clinginess.  Or, I can cling back, and enjoy every moment she wants to spend together, knowing that the day will come very soon when those pink-booted feet will run in the opposite direction.  

Together can be suffocating, or it can be good.  I choose good.  

STOP.  

(Links and photos added after my five minutes was up...)