Tuesday's Happiness

 Getting a group text from your mom, its not quite fair she learned how to do that before me.


Music turned up way to loud to get the house cleaning done, because its just what you do.

Waking up after the sun has risen. Seeing the first rays of the coming day may be all artistic sounding, but the romance of the dawn is lost over the even deepened pain of the morning. Not going to hide it, me and the morning like to start slow and gentle.

Showing love to the last warm day of summer, by anointing it with cold brew, having the car windows down low and the radio turned up high. Summer you will be missed, but don't be jealous of my fall crush.

Watching people get out their brand new fresh textbooks and allowing yourself to revel in the fact that your really and truly done.

 Chocolate covered espresso beans, if happiness were to explode with flavor.

The sky brilliant and full of Monday's sunset. if happiness were to be seen in lively color

 If happiness was a feeling it would be that random moment when my brother and I both thought the same thing was funny and just couldn't hold it in.  We couldn't stop the hysterical laughter that bubbled out. I blame it all on the facial expressions of my big brother. We possibly might not have displayed socially acceptable coffee shop behavior. Side effects of growing up together in the same house. Sorry, but not sorry.

Tell me, what made your Tuesday happy? 

Of Babies

Soft skin brushes my arms and little arms and legs flail with startlement and then the cries erupt. Cries of shock from being taken from what was comfortable to what is new and harsh feeling.




Just as quick as they started the cries silence. A soft rhythm of breathing takes over and the little baby falls asleep in my arms. This baby, the one that is only a few weeks old. The one that coes and sighs just like any newborn. This baby willingly trusts itself to my arms and lets me rock him to sleep. He cannot comprehend who I am, he only knows that he has found a warm place to sleep. For now his needs are filled and he blissfully sleeps till a rumble of the tummy will wake him.




I snuggle this tiny weight against me, so much warmth and soft snuggles. It seems as I rock this baby that every problem and care in my life is melting away. Calm fills me from the peace of watching this baby sleep.




 This is new life at its best. The late night feedings, blow out diapers, and never ending fussiness are not here. Only beautiful bliss and marvel of what happens when two people come together and a baby is born.




I wish to never relinquish this baby back to its mother. For there is nothing more that I ardently adore than gazing at an infant. This feeling, of simply holding new life.




There is a certain breath taking awe over the start of life. Its the excitement and giddiness of finding out a new baby is coming and being trusted with a secret.




Its finding out that the impossible has happened and a new life is to be born when it wasn't supposed too.




Its when you see those chubby checks on the ultrasound photo and knowing that the baby is full of health. Realizing that worries can be pushed aside. Getting all happy with knowing that in a few weeks you will be snuggling the baby and touching its chubby checks.




It's hearing of the awfulness of morning sickness, but the realization that the unpleasantness is assuring that a baby is growing and thriving in its mother's womb.




Life begins tiny and fragile. Life makes its announcement when it forces a mother to bend over a toilet and cling to the couch. Life comes into the world through excruciating pain. Life drains a mother of energy as she toils to care for someone so completely dependent on her. But yet this something not traded for anything.




 I cannot get over how a human grows in its mother's womb. And I will never stop swooning whenever an infant rests in my arms.




This is not knowing the potential of this tiny life, but knowing that the baby not yet seen or the completely dependent baby you are holding will turn into a person with potential to change its world.

Dr. Suess, says it perfectly, "No matter how small, a person is a person". the essence of life.

When Sept 10th was normal....

Tomorrow, is the day where we pause. The day we remember and we say to people where we were when it happened. We remember how we watched on live television as the World Trade Center crashed to the ground, taking the lives of countless with it.


We remember when our innocence was taken away.


The horror and the grief that struck our country in the aftermath.


Today is September 10th.  It was a day that happened 14 years ago, and I don't remember much of what I did on Sept 10th. I remember baking a cake and frosting it with cool whip frosting. It was my sister in law's first birthday with our family and my nephew's first birthday in this life.


That is all I remember. I don't remember the school I did. I don't remember the interaction I had with my family. I don't remember the good and I don't remember the bad.


Because it was all so normal. And it is the normal life that gives me amnesia.


 I can remember the way I was hurt by someone or something and choose to feel hurt for years. I will remember that one little thing someone did to make me feel special.


But the normal life that makes up so much of my life. The normal life that is shaping me as a person as I develop routines and hang out with people. Normal is what gets forgotten, even though without the normal, there is not much left to my life. The mile stones shape, but its the normal life that got me there.


It was the normal life knowing the sovereignty of God that carried me through day after Sept 10. It was the normalcy of habits and routines that allowed me to find some sense of being when everything around me was so fearful. It was the normal thing of looking for joy that allowed to have hope again in the months to come.


Normal is not much but on day like Sept 11 it is everything.


 I'm not going to know when I'm having that last normal moment, before things get shaken up. The end to normal comes without warning.


And so its a learning to enjoy the normal. To seize moments of joy. And to love this place called normal.

The Homeless Shelter

To be honest the first time I volunteered at the local homeless shelter I was little scared. Later I find my worries were needless and now I think every bit of misconception about homelessness needs to be wadded up and flushed down the drain.

This is what homeless is not. Homeless is not grungy dirty people bumming around a shelter for the free food and AC. Homeless people work. Lots of homeless people work and if they are not working our shelter requires that they ferociously look for a job unless disabilities or other life situations prevent them from doing so.

The shelter is not dangerous, I feel safer there than I do walking around in the Wal-Mart parking lot. The shelter is not full of manics. It is not full of undisciplined people. Some of them are getting up for jobs early in the morning. That is discipline.

Kids strap on their backpacks, their mother's hand them sack lunch's from the fridge and off they go to meet the bus.

Its Saturday and people drink their morning coffee while catching up on the news. Kids run around and they get a little noisy because they are kids and kids do that.

This is life at the shelter. Life in a dorm setting. Its not homey. Its not a motel. Its a place to sleep and to stay because there are no other options. There was no family. there were no friends. There was no one, but the shelter.

The goal of the shelter is not to provide long term housing but to help residents move toward long term goals of getting back on their feet.

And honestly my thoughts are so mixed whenever I walk out the shelter door. I leave to go home, my safe home. While behind me people for various reasons remain in that uncomfortable setting. I'm at a loss when I'm inside the shelter. How am I to relate? I who has never wanted for anything material? What can I say? What can I do?

The directions are easy. Countless times in Scripture God called for us to care for the poor. Care, go, and meet their needs. Not pray, but show them compassion. What did Christ do so many times on earth? He served with Christian compassion.  Compassion that loved. Compassion that served. Compassion that did. Because Christ did not just be. He did.

I'm just a person. A person with some spare time. A person who needs to get out of her comfort zone. A person who needs to grow. A person who doesn't have it all together. A person who is still learning what following and loving God means. But I'm thankful the shelter is a tool God uses in my life to help grow me in so many ways.

of sickness

This week wasn't quite what I expected, wanted, and never would have begged for.


Aches, and fever and laying on the couch for days. It's not my idea of a good time.


 As a child I could watch movies and shows for hours when I was sick. Now as an adult it seems my brain begs for silence more than the entertainment. I watch the cooking shows and other random stuff but I'm thankful for a good book, rest, and just the quiet.


The days seem to stretch and the nights seem even longer. The unending hours of nothing to do to rest can't be glamorized. Because I want to be back at my job. Because I want to be up and working around the house. Because I don't want to be canceling a get together with friends.


I usually covet a afternoon to just read and be quiet, but this week there was too many hours in a row to just be quiet.


I fought it and begged the thermometer to read a lower number, but still I was sick.


It sounds awful except it really isn't. I was sick for three days and one night. Today I know my health is seeping back in my veins. Its awful to be sick, but not so awful as battling sickness every day of your life. Not so awful as chronic illness, cancer, and other life altering problems. It was just a virus that has altered my life for 5 days not for years.


So being sick, its a good thing. I did enjoy reading more, because I love reading and it was fun to catch some shows.


Perhaps the best thing was to know, that my plans are not my own. When plans are taken away I can still know its the right thing. Because I have to remember to never get so caught up in the moments of life that I forget the privilege of the ability to do and to be. To realize that an extra rest is a gift and not to let the idea of rest be stolen by attitude of grumbling, but enjoy what God has given.


Today it is so good to be well, but yesterday it was good to be sick for that was what yesterday was supposed to be. And being is not that terrible because in the security of God its the most amazing place to be.