Singing Hallelujah

In the 90s movie Dangerous Minds Michelle Pheiffer's character gets her class' attention by using the word "choose" in one of her first lessons.  She later says that each person in her class has a choice, always.

          "You can either choose to leave here and not graduate, or you can stay and put up with me. 

           It may not be a choice that you like, but you do have a choice."

When all this madness happened, I was left without a choice… or at least, that is my perspective.  It may seem insignificant or even purely symbolic to ask a person's opinion especially if the answer seems completely obvious, but the very action, the physicality of withholding says my decision isn't important, my voice not worth hearing. Decisions may bruise my heart, but not even asking my opinion breaks it.  

Today, I made a choice, one of very few that I've been able to make over the last 16 months.  Almost everything has been dictated- by people, by circumstance, by finances.  This was completely and truly my choice.  It's a choice that closed a circle I never wanted to close.  My heart and soul flourished in South Africa… I still slip and say 'back home'.  A series of what some may call serendipitous, others fate, I call God-ordained events occurred and I found what would become my tribes.  Two distinct groupings of people who were destined to become so integral in my heart finding a home I can't separate, even months later, the circumstances, the people, and the places.  Two years ago I had just come into a place of leadership, a leadership I'd delayed because of my family, the responsibilities of work, and my own self-doubts.  One tribe I had to completely abandon, unable to contribute from such a distance.  In the other, I was in the process of completing my leadership training.  Today, I clicked on the "SEND" button for the final submission of my application.  I've been delaying it, because, for a thousand reasons that won't really make sense to anyone else, as long as my application was outstanding, as long as I hadn't finished "my part," then I was still there, still connected, still a part of something familiar, something I was capable in, something that made me feel even marginally useful.  Almost like the baby bird who knows they must leave the nest, but hangs on for one more day, one more feeding, one more warm night beneath mother's feathers.  As long as I didn't complete that application, I was still a member, they were still my people, I might still be able to go home.  It was my only choice for months and months, and I didn't want to finally cut the last heartstring, so I held out.  

I held out through my father's funeral, I held out through a cross-continental move.  I held out through a nearly-failed career change and my grandfather's funeral.  I held out through my child's spirit and inquisitive nature being beaten up and held ransomed to the American School System with it's Common Core robotic disciplines.  I held out through a conference back home I felt I deserve (yes, present tense) to be part of, a sort of completion of a dream I had held in my heart for so long.  I held out through my friend's apology, though not needed, because I knew how he felt before he did. I've held out through birthdays and anniversaries because my heart still wants to go back and shout at the top of my lungs, "please, give me a chance to choose… give me a voice."

I have lost so much in the last 16 months.  I was listening to a podcast by the person I would consider to be my pastor, although his church doesn't receive any tithe from me, nor am I a member of his congregation.  He was preaching out of 1 John and talking about how we can't really get what it was like for the Jews of the first century to be booted from the synagogue.  They lost their families, their jobs, their religious community and their cultural identity.  I was listening while driving and the sobs racked through me, because I know what that feels like… to have it all yanked away.  Walking away is different.  To be left without a say, without a VOICE, it makes you doubt in a way I can't explain. And that doubt plagues and haunts not just in the far corners of your soul, but out in the open, in the daylight, in the grit of day-to-day.  

Today, when I completed my application, I heard my voice, a faint whisper from a ghostly shadow, but there nonetheless, for the first time in a long time, amidst the grit of daily life.  I miss my tribes.  I miss my friends and my home and my familiar.  I miss my heart and the sound of my own mamma bear roar.  

I've been trying to get things back, put things back together, piece my life and my heart into some semblance of 'normal'.  But unlike moving house and figuring out where to pack away the dishes, unpacking your life is a bit more difficult.  And, in all of it, I've often felt guilt... overwhelming guilt. Guilt about the shoulders of friends back home I was still standing on, guilt that I haven't been doing "better" by them.  Guilt that I have been so selfish, so Brittany-centered, so lost and tossed about. Guilt that none of this "should have been..."  Should have been so massive, Should have been so traumatic...  Should have been prevented. Then I heard this song, sung by artist Regina Spektor and it knit itself into a hole I haven't been able to put words into.  

The Call

It started out as a feeling
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a queit word
And then that word grew louder and louder
Until it was a battle cry
I'll come back when you call me
No need to say 'goodbye'

Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are
As you head off to the war
Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light
You'll come back when it's over
No need to say 'goodbye'

Now we're back to the beginning
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can't feel it too
Doesn't mean that you have to forget
Let your memories grow stronger and stronger
'Til they're before your eyes
You'll come back when they call you
No need to say 'goodbye'

I am, once again, an alien in a foreign land.  To many, that may sound ludicrous because I am in fact, back on native soil, but my heart belonged somewhere else long before I ever left America.  Madeline L'Engle put it best in A Wrinkle in Time when Calvin said to Meg Murray, "I've never even seen your house, and I have the funniest feeling that for the first time in my life I'm going home!" The dream that I had, that I married my future to, that I clung to for dear life as a child, is obliterated, completely gone.  The last heartstring was cut this morning, and my soul is saddened by that.  I came full-circle. I am now no longer an expat living where my heart thrives, but an American struggling to find my footing.  Like the kids in The Chronicles of Narnia who were more alive, more at home in Narnia than England, I too was a better person away from these shores.  I got a chance, for five glorious years of life and babies and friends and struggle and laundry and gardening, to be at home in my own skin, in my own heart. 

A friend recently visited me. She gave me insight that I will forever be grateful for.  She pointed out that I'm really good at being me if given half a chance.  That simply inviting people to join life, mine and my family's, IS a gift.  Over the last 16 months, I've fought depression, homesickness, grief, mourning, loss and crippling changes.  That American adage to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" has been so far from applicable it's not even remotely funny.  Looking back, I see how I could have fared better, should have been more, coped better.  But the one thing I held on to, even in all of it, was that invitation.  The thing about my tribes that I've missed the most is how grounded and centered I felt in who I was, because I was surrounded by people who repeatedly and honestly pushed me to be just me.  To own my own footprints- no more, no less.  So many people here, especially in the church-attending communities, have brushed me off... brushed off our struggles as "hiccups" along the bumpy road of life.  We've been easily discarded with cliches and maddeningly simplistic sayings.  "Whenever God closes a door, He opens a window..." or "You'll never get more than you can handle..." or something equally insane.  My tribes proved to me that who I am is so messy.  And, the me that I like best is the me that says my mess is okay, not an incumbrance to social interaction or some dirty secret to hide in a dark corner but a venue for friendship.  Come into my house, I'll cook a mean Cashew Chicken Curry for you, just push the unfolded laundry aside.  Come join me for coffee, I'll try really hard not to complain too much about my kids because I'm up to my eyeballs in trying to steer them through life and I'll listen to you and we'll laugh, promise.  Come over, sleep in my beds, I'll make you whole-wheat buttermilk waffles for breakfast and we can hang out in pajamas until 11, no judgements.  

Last November I committed to being fully present, not spinning my wheels because it made me feel better to be "doing something" but to wait, deal with each moment as it came.  I've honored that.  I've chosen to stay in the weeds as long as it took to find the path again.  I still wish my path was the yellow brick road I was on, leading me back home.  But with every part of who I am, I know I can't go back, no matter how much I want to.  My "pastor" is back in my "home" celebrating and honoring dear folks and I'm crushingly sad about it, but I made a choice even in the midst of that reality… a choice to say goodbye, because it's the right thing to do.  I don't know what's next, and I know good things will come of all this.  But please don't think, in your naiveness of my great and big God, that this was ever a Plan A… He's working things into a "good" but there was a fight, a massive, all-consuming fight for each person to have free-will.  It cost Him His Son, and He will always allow people to have the power to weald their wills, even when it means that there's collateral damage. Even as I stand amidst a broken heart that is the definition of collateral damage that could have really, really used close friends, familiar and comforting settings over the losses of this last year, I stand as the psalmist, the songwriter… singing Hallelujah.  Because I don't have to say goodbye forever.  I can cut the heartstrings, remember the memories, and come when they call... and answering the call to remember friends, places, spiritual awakenings and life-altering moments of truth, just as in the darkest of emotional holes you can fall down into, in ALL of them, there is always the choice to sing "hallelujah."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFb5DKod4KI

How Do You...??

I was asked today by fellow mamma-in-the-trenches How far apart are they?  So I responded with their respective gaps:  15 months, 18 months, and 19 months.  Her response was exactly what I expected.  HOW?!?!

I know what she was saying.  I know exactly what she meant.  She's up to her eyeballs in books and milestones and uncertainty about how to not drown in work and gas pains and sleepless nights and the strange but all-too-familiar urge to obsess about poop.  Yep.  I knew what she meant... because I was exactly like her a not too many years back.

So I told her exactly what was on my heart.  You can do this.  You too can choose.  There is no glass ceiling, no shame in wanting only one or wanting half a dozen (or more!).  Motherhood is like shoes, it comes in every shape, size, and color.

I stumbled upon this blog this week.  I loved how she put it:
Every child has the potential to do something great in the world. So please, give the   
mother of these children the support and encouragement she needs whether it is her     first child or her ninth. Because your last child deserves just as much excitement as your first.

I love that.  I was trying to explain all this, in a friendly, non-overwhelming way to this buddy of mine when I saw the deer-in-headlights look getting more and more pronounced.  I stopped.  There is a point at which, with a new babe in arms, you just can't remember what it feels like to have a deep, unencumbered breath of air that fills your lungs, refreshing your very soul.  Everything, everything seems overwhelming.  The next diaper change, the next feed.  The brand of laundry detergent or the cause for a child's incessant screaming.  It's all so much... so much more than what you expected, what you prepared for.  This poor girl was in the throws of it, and I wasn't helping.

At that same moment, another girl came up to ask me a question.  One of the most heartbreaking losses in leaving South Africa was the loss of my credibility.  This may seem frivolous to some but it was extremely important to me.  I had a few mommy groups I was active in and I had slowly but surely been fostered, guided and matured as a mom, enough to feel like I not only had legs to stand on but that those legs could and would help support other moms.  Therein was my credibility.  Here, no one has seen me with only one babe struggling to carry her around a growing belly.  No one has seen me battle thrush for two and half months with a boy who didn't stop screaming until after his first birthday. Here, people only see a mom who can manage four kids in a grocery store, even once or twice without any meltdowns, on her own.  What used to be credibility...relevance really, and give others the option to come and chat about the brutality of kids and trying to drink a cup of hot coffee is now something that makes people feel they have to compare.

It often makes me want to shout from the rooftops:  Be you a mother of one for fifty years or a mother of three or a dozen or a mother for only four minutes, YOU ARE A MOTHER!

Same title.  No pay raises.

The quantity doesn't add up to the mothering equivalent of a promotion, it's just a different department.  Much the same way when a child moves from one stage to the next, the mother's job doesn't get easier, she just moves to a different division within the parenting warehouse:  Out of Destination Diapers and into Trial by Toilet Training.

What if we were all on the same team?  What if we all realized we were connected, integrated, vital in the success of our own families, kids, selves?  What would happen if my parenting success was only graded on how well the next mamma two houses over scores on her parenting exam?

I miss my friends.  I miss having people who know how hard I fought to get my family, my kids, myself to where we are.  I miss being looked at in the eyes, not with judgement OR condolences, but just seen for what I am giving my life to right now- motherhood.  No judgement heaped on top of that title, not degrading what I do below it.  Just me, doing what I do with hundreds of thousands of other women doing what they do.  Maybe someday I'll have my street cred back, maybe I'll be able to help support others, which was such a blessing to me.  Maybe.  Someday.  A mamma can dream, even in the land of "pull yourself up by your boot straps" and fierce independence and mantras that you can "have it all"... even here, I can dream I suppose.

Tantrum Fighter on St. Crispin's Day

The CEO of Urban Mattress and his wife, Allison, were in San Francisco this past week.  Todd knew they were coming and of an invitation to go to dinner with them, if Todd could make it back in time from his cross-country trek.  Todd worked hard (smart, but really hard) and managed to get into town with enough time to make the dinner date.  I'd never met either of them before so I didn't really know what to expect.  As happens when people get together who have never met, many questions were asked.  

I felt in good company.  Allison and I both have a hard time leaving our children in anyone else's care, and neither of us see this as a major personal fault or defect.  She has six children, the youngest being 9.  I was able to ask a lot of hands-on questions that come with raising a larger family.  How do you manage that many car seats when even a mini van really isn't equipped for it to be actually hauling the number of people it was built for.  *Side note to all you car makers out there:  For future consideration, if you are building a car specifically designed to primarily be used by young families, don't put an analog clock on the dash that has a button which changes the time so easily a one-year-old can manage the task.  (Sorry, that's been in there a long time!)  Over the course of the night, questions came up about how long we'd been together, how we'd liked living abroad, and so on.  Towards the end of the night, Allison says to me:  Wow ya'll have been to a lot of places.  

On the ride home, Todd and I were talking about it.  From my perspective only, I didn't see anything particularly "exotic" or "romantic" or "adventurous" about what we've done.  We've lived the life we believe was designed for us, for our family, for our hearts.  There was nothing exotic about finding out I was allergic to chocolate and air in Santiago, Chile.  No joke, that was the actual diagnosis, allergic to air.  Nuh-thing.  But at the same time, I was on Pinterest and I stumbled across a travel website with the Top 12 Places to Visit in South America.  I realized I'd seen three of them, and all the others were in countries I hadn't been to.  Better still, I agreed with each estimation.  The colors and vibrancy of Valpariso, Chile are unrivaled still, even after all the places I've been to between here and there.  The majesty of Cotopaxi, Ecuador on a crisp and clear day is truly one of God's great wonders.  Picturesque and noteworthy.

So it all got me thinking about what makes an "adventurous" or "exotic" life.  I started to google and pin my home town, the cities I've lived near, and my country of origin.  Have you ever done this?  Have you ever stopped to actually look at all the places near where you live?  Places tourists pay serious money to see?  Places that you'll find on Instagram and Pinterest, but places that are (potentially) so common to you it doesn't register as adventurous or exotic?  

My life here, even in freeloader purgatory somewhere between employed and with a permanent address and still mostly broke and without a place to call my own, let alone stuff to put inside said place, looks very similar to my life in South Africa.  Key points are missing, like an oven I understand because we've duked it out for years and I came out victorious, familiar grocery stores and remembering that I can turn into traffic even if the light is red.  Those things are missing.  But I still wash my diapers every second night.  I still fight the good fight against laundry and tantrums and sweets and the necessity to wear sunscreen and why it's not okay to hit.  I still have that nagging feeling that the dishes multiply while I'm otherwise occupied and I still have a creeping suspicion my children think they're smarter than me.  I'm still stopped by complete strangers who comment on how sorry they are that I have my hands "so full with so many" and I still get to battle the grocery store which seems so full and yet never seems to have what I need before my child/children have a complete melt down because he's touching the exact place I want to touch!  All those mind-numingly crucial daily details of my life are the exact same.

I see the validity in what may seem crazy exotic or fabulously romantic or noteworthy or that life there is somehow more important than life here... but in the end, I just don't see it.  My heart doesn't miss the romance of a Home Affairs visa line or the adventures in pothole dodging, especially when those potholes could and would swallow my mini van whole if given a fraction of a chance.  My heart misses people.  My heart misses the beauty of place that you love, that you call home, that you hold and cherish in your  soul.  Looking back, I realize that Joburg with my pokey little flat, well below street level so anyone walking or driving by could have a picture-perfect view of my backyard and living room was my Green Gables.  It was the first place I allowed myself to put down roots in a way I'd never done before.  In a relatively short while, I had three babies, celebrated the births of scores of others, helped myself and helped other women learn how to mother without the voices of guilt and shame and doubt screaming louder than the voice that says this is good, this is right!  And I think I've come to realize that the friendships you build "in the trenches" of whatever war you're fighting- addiction, depression, parenting, newly wedding, recovering, whatever, those friendships are irreplaceable.  Because you'll never go back and need someone else in the same way you needed those people you barely knew when you showed up with a 17 month old and a 2 month old and were in throws of shell shock.  

Just before we found out we were leaving South Africa, I purchased an artisan necklace from an amazing market in downtown Joburg.  It was the shape of Africa with a tiny heart over Johannesburg.  It was hand oxidized and it matched another friend's... two sentiments in one I figured.  Zora recently broke the chain on this necklace so I took it to the family jeweler here in town that sorted out my wedding rings, my 18th birthday jewelry, all my mother's jewelry and a few things from Todd over the years.  Somewhere between me explaining to the lady there and her explaining on a ticket which went to the master jeweler, the "oxidized on purpose" part was lost.  When the store called to say I could pick up my necklace, I was thrilled.  I'd felt a bit naked without it and more than a little nostalgic and homesick, because without realizing it had somehow become a security blanket of sorts.  When I went to pick it up, the company had diligently worked to buff out the 'imperfections' of my silver pendant and the artisan oxidation, which I had spent over an hour picking just the one I liked, was gone.  In it's place was a shinny, silvery outline without depth or soul and my heart, for the four-hundred-and-ninety-seventh time in the last 7 months, audibly cracked and formed a crevasse.  I left bruised and defeated, feeling alone and like somehow, my time in South Africa would always be chaulked up to just a "good visit," an "exotic trip," a "romantic time" in my life and that, just like my necklace which had labored and born countless exhausting physical changes to get it to the beautiful state it was when I bought it, somehow all that could be polished out, the creativity and sweat buffed and forgotten.  Who wants tarnish and etch marks and imperfections anyways?  Who wants baggage of a person whose life isn't all together, who is still holding on to a few things that used to be?  Who has time for that??

I don't think my life has been extraordinary.  I think my life has been completely and perfectly mundane, totally without any more or any less high points, fabulous pictures, amazing stories to tell around a camp fire of Remember that one time?  Maybe I'm a bit jaded by all the media here, maybe I'm just a bit cooky.  Either way, I think every life is exotic and every story romantic and every person full of adventure with unique moments of plot twists and cliff hangers and long-awaited loving embraces... because every life is totally individual, totally yours.  I don't want any life other than mine, not because I cherish the stamps in my passport or the pictures on the wall, but because I cherish the people I met, the lives who changed me.  I'm going to stick my neck out here but I honestly think it's true.  I think I'm always going to miss those trench friends I had in Joburg.  The ones who were there when I needed, I mean really needed people.  My necklace, which is still in rehab but I've given up hope of it ever being what it was, has been replaced by a cross that a fellow Tantrum Fighter gave me.  It reminds me of her and her fight against society to let her kid find his path to toilet trained victory.  It reminds me of exhausted, crumpled playdates at Papachinos because I needed the coffee and sugar boost... and the additional witness of a friend because my children were driving me batty.  It reminds me of the thousand  big and small moments that made up my backup platoon-- that time I moved you in and you couldn't get past the guard gate and our one-year-old girls learned the words "open" and "closed" by jumping their legs open and closed by said guard shack for almost an hour.  That time we went to the bird sanctuary and had 6 kids to our two adults.  That time you counted down from 35 the days to your husband's return but you still made me a meal because you knew I needed it.  That time when you made spaghetti bolognese when Zora was days old and Todd was away on business and it changed the way I make spaghetti for life.  That time you trusted me to make your kid's first birthday cake and I had to fight Harper tooth and nail to make it happen, and it nourished my soul to be included like that.  

My life isn't exotic, it's real.  Messy, mundane, diaper-filled and real, here or there doesn't matter.  And I'm so incredibly blessed by the women who shared in that mundane, that mess, that diaper-filled void of sleepless nights and endless amounts of baby spit up and developmental milestones that often gets reduced to a picture of perfectly flat-tummied mamas holding sweet, plump little babes in perfect lighting who, no doubt, smells amazing. I know that those pictures, the ones of those mamas in that moment of beauty and the ones of that moment of outdoor adventure in an exotic locale is just that: a moment.  It's not the whole story, it's not even a significant portion or even a fraction of it.  I know that and I touch my necklace.  My cross given by another Tantrum Fighter.  A Tantrum Fighter  who needed me and opened herself up to make space enough for me... and my neediness... and my mess... and my kids' mess... A Tantrum Fighter who declared allegiance to the same platoon of other tantrum fighting mamas who had gone before us.  I touch my necklace and I'm thankful for the incredible gift of knowing so many who fought, are fighting, or will fight with all the bravery and valor and passion described by Shakespeare.  Because at the end of it, I'll remember the names of each, and I'll consider myself blest to be able to show the mothering battle scars, the etched places, the scratched and dented, discolored and not-so-shiny silver places that brought me from there to here, gave me a flavor and depth and soul I couldn't have manufactured.  I miss my comrades.  I miss our trench.  I remember.  I know you by name.  I pray over you by name.  My mammahood isn't cheap, it's come at a cost, a high cost, and I'm glad you helped make it so valuable, so meaningful, so worthy of the fight.  

That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
                                           -Henry V, Act IV

A Story

I'm a storyteller by nature.  So let me tell you a story about what happened this past Tuesday.

Todd and I were sitting in a small family-owned cafe in a little section of Berkeley (California).  We were keeping the kids occupied with snacks and babyccinos (steamed milk with vanilla) awaiting Doug.  A few weeks ago, when we'd come into the city to dream and make plans and find a place to open the new store Todd has been working on, we went into a coffee shop near a farmer's market to get caffeinated.  While there, we saw a guy with three kids.  We noticed him because he had three kids and we had noticed, that really wasn't the norm in the Bay Area.  True to form, Todd struck up a conversation about the kids and local schools and how great a find this little coffee shop was.  Turned out the man Todd was speaking to was Doug, the owner of the shop, and he and his wife had lived in the areas of town we were looking into, he knew all the small business ins-and-outs that Todd was navigating, and his youngest will be starting Grade 1 in September, same as Em.  This was the hand of Providence in the unlikely form of a new friend, Doug.

So we're waiting for Doug and the kids see some ladies with a dog.  They ask the dog's "mommy" if they can pet him.  The ladies look somewhere in the early to mid 70s and like they've been best friends through many a storm.  There is a wisdom and ease with which they carry themselves and a genuineness that is rare to find.  As her father's daughter, Em starts a conversation that leads to a grown up conversation with Todd and me.  Doug and his coffee appear somewhere in the midst of this new conversation and the kids, Doug and I take off down the street towards a park.  Todd is still chatting, and Doug and I are chatting.  No big deal.  It's small and slightly irrelevant conversations-- where's home?  how long have you been here?  what does your wife do?

By the time our coffee date with Doug is over, he gives me a hug, a proper hug and says, "Give me a call, day or night, if you need anything.  And send me a message about the house hunt, I'd love to help you out."  The thing is, he means it, and my heart is eternally grateful because he's BEEN there, he's DONE that, and to have someone to ask about it all, it's just sits well in your soul.

On the ride home, Todd sends his new girlfriends an email, then googles her, only to find out that she (who loved the kids names and knew each author, which never happens) is an award-winning poet.  She volunteers in the local schools teaching poetry and is an acclaimed psychologist.  She and Todd had spoken briefly about the store he's opening, the concept, how it all came about and why it's bringing our family to Berkeley.  This morning Todd gets a message from her asking after sheets, because if his store will sell them, she'll wait until August.

The point of this story is to reveal, in some small part, our hearts.  We've always been "mission minded" (or some might say global-minded) but our missional living has been the thing that has brought us the most joy.  Todd and I have both come to realize that if we genuinely interact with people and relevantly invite them into our lives, our mess, we are better people for knowing them... and maybe, just maybe, they're better for knowing us.  We found in South Africa that our hearts would come alive from interactions with PEOPLE, so we met and interacted with a lot of people, from different races, ethnic backgrounds, economic levels with a diversity of education.  There was a 'right'ness we felt in those interactions, with people of our own faith and people who weren't.  In some ways, that tired old line from Jerry Maguire is true:  You complete me.  Only for us, we found that "you" was broad and included many, many people because in big and small ways, each of those people have shown us a new picture of our Creator, and even if they didn't mean to, I'm so thankful for each snapshot.

I'm still heart-sick about being here and not there, both physically and metaphorically.  I'm sad that I'm needing to navigate schools for Em and that she has completely missed, in it's entirety, kindergarten/grade 0.  (Seriously, think about it-  no "first day" pictures, no graduation at the end, no proper opening or closing of this section of childhood, this opening of educational doors... no transition for her, and nothing for her mama to help find some footing, ease into this new world of "big school.")  At the same time, I'm thrilled to see my husband with that fire in his eyes, that hitch in his giddy-up about life because it's been a long time.  So to the nuts and bolts.  There's a terribly long and fabulous story about how and when and where, but Todd connected with the owner of a company (Urban Mattress) and is opening a store in Berkeley, California.  They signed the lease agreement on a store in a great location last week.  We're still trying to figure out how to open a small business and move to a highly competitive housing market and enroll Em in school all before August 1... among other things.  But first and foremost, we're extremely grateful to have a job, have a trajectory in life that fits with our hearts and are praying for a place to lay down our heads... on our own sheets... with our own towels, even if that's on a floor in some rental in a new city we haven't yet discovered the wonders of.

Warmth and High Cholesterol

I pitched up (aka attended), two kids in tow, with a sweet, strawberry jam roll with unrefined sugar on top.  I'd made it three times because I hadn't yet figured out centigrade or my oven or the high altitude.  I'd made it three times because the first wasn't "pretty" enough and the second had caramelized jam making the edges sticky.  I'd made it three times because I was scared and this dish was my safety blanket, my soothing balm, my excuse for being an outsider.  It smelled of warmth and high cholesterol, therapy and desperation.

That was then...

I was baking with the older two kids earlier.  I needed something to be right in the world and the kitchen was the surest place to find it.  As Em was mixing in the cinnamon and allspice to our oatmeal cookies she looked up at me and commented that the mixture smelled like home, smelled like South Africa.  I agreed.  I usually had a pot simmering on the stove with cinnamon sticks, allspice, and cloves.  Then, in all the seriousness a 5-year old with the soul of a 76 year-old former Hollywood starlet can muster, she said, "Mommy, our home in South Africa was wonderful because you made it lovely."  I asked her what she meant by that and her response made my knees buckle.  "I mean that you always made the home smell lovely, you made the things inside lovely and we had lovely friends in South Africa."

Over the years, I've done food for friends... a lot of friends.  I've baked for gatherings and teas, birthday parties and backyard braais.  I've cooked for new babies, family losses, and no reason at all other than it's a Tuesday and no one wants to make dinner on a Tuesday.  Food is my default language.  It's my offering of peace or friendship or ignorance or assistance and my way to scream at disparity or discomfort or loss.  It's my Song of the South and my language of love.  It's my poetry that says that life, like food, is meant to be full-bodied, decadent, savored, enjoyed and gulped down so that you can shove more in before you get too full and have to stop.

This is now...

So I walked that strawberry jam roll into the group of women that I barely remembered from the previous meeting, praying that it would be accepted as the peace offering it was.  Because I needed those women to like me.  I needed them to be my friends.  I needed reassurance that being an outsider was okay as long as they liked my food, because then something would still make sense.  Something like food or friendship or familiarity.

Details

I've been asked a number of times over the last few days/weeks what we're doing and where in the world we are.  So here are some details...

We finished our time in Denver with a truly gifted counselor who is absolutely a God-gifted man that spoke prophetic words into our hearts, words we desperately needed to hear but didn't realize it at the time.  He connected us with a potential (a very strong potential) for a job but that will take a few months and a SERIOUS amount of God's leading and direction in the details of it all.  We came back from Denver in time for an engagement party for one of my dearest and oldest friends in the world.  It was such a great time of fellowship.  It was one of the few times we've gotten to "live life" with friends and family in a long time.  We've missed so many babies, so many weddings, so many funerals and so many birthdays, it was a true blessing to be there, be celebrating with the couple, be loving on them in a very real, very physical way.

The next day, Todd left for Haiti.  He was gone a little over a week on a short-term mission trip.  A former pastor and dear friend had a spot open up and he called Todd up to ask if he would join the team.  About 26 people went and Todd really enjoyed the time.  Time away from the kids to process our two weeks in Denver, time to remember what face-to-face service can look like, time to sort of get 'back to his roots' and all in the company of good friends, new and old.  He was due to come back in the middle of the night on a Tuesday.  The Saturday before, while he was still away, a good friend phoned me up at my parent's house.

I've known Bill and Connie for about as long as I can remember.  They have been mainstays in my childhood church and somewhere in my teens/early 20s, Connie and I became true friends.  A few years back, Todd and I might have hypothetically started a chain of events that would eventually lead to Bill and Connie spending nearly 8 months in Madagascar for some missionaries who were on furlough.  A few years later, they did it again.  That Saturday, Connie and Bill were furiously preparing for yet another trip to Madagascar, this time for 5 months.  They were due to leave Tuesday, just hours before Todd would get back. The phone call was because they thought it over and wanted to offer the Leslie Zoo their house while they were gone.  It took a bit to get connected with Todd but the decision was made to take the offer, rather than drive back to Pennsylvania (and all our stuff) because there really was no point.  We could be hunting for jobs out there, or hunting for jobs in Auburn, California with ease.

We're still reeling a bit from it all.  We came out West with a week's worth of clothing for each of us packed, because we had every intention of being back to our temporary 'base' in Pennsylvania by early March.  There's been a bit of scrambling, and still, to some degree, there is more to come of finding some temporary items.  But my fabulous cousin lent us a high chair and my mom lent us her pack-n-play.  Everyone seems to have an overflow of toys and books, so we never hurt for either.  The kids are all situated in beds and are truly loving Connie's soaking tub.  The four of them were a tight squeeze in a regular tub but they insisted on all being together, and at least for now, the problem seems to be solved.  Tonight at dinner, after an afternoon celebrating my second cousin's 8th birthday (can you follow that one?) 9 deer pranced across the front of the house.  It was one of those moments where you breath a heart-felt "thank you" heavenward.  We're still not 'settled', we still don't have a job per-say, still have no idea what the next year will hold, but for the moment, at least, we're here, trying to find some footing and doing the best we can to move forward in what feels like a very thick mud of waiting.

Some details we know.  We'll be in Auburn (barring a move to a permanent location) until about July.  That means we'll be around for 3 Leslie family birthdays, 5 family birthdays, and (hopefully) two second cousins' birth days.  Some details we still don't know... like a job or address or permanent housing or school to register Em for the upcoming school year.  For now at least, we're doing well.  We're trying to find a rhythm, trying to get back into the groove of being a family on our own terms.  We may not have our own things yet, but I brought my blue pot, I've got car seats in the mini van, and the rest, we can sort out as it comes I guess.

Thanks for asking.  Thanks for making us feel loved and cared for.  Thanks for not forgetting that this is seriously one of the hardest things we've ever done, each step being a massive step of faith.  Thanks also, for not expecting us to be "normal" or have things sorted and settled "by now."  This timing is not my idea, it's not my ideal, but we know we're doing this exactly as we should be, in His timing, and because of that, we have confidence.  So very often these days I find myself singing that song from The Sound of Music (the movie, not the musical because the musical version didn't originally include the song) when Maria has left the Abby and is going to the Von Trap family house and trying to convince herself she'll be wonderful, she'll do great, and above all, that she knows she's up to the task before her.  I take great comfort in the wisdom of the songwriter because she does do wonderfully, she is great, and she is more than adequate for the task at hand.

Oh, I must stop these doubts, all these worries
If I don't I just know I'll turn back
I must dream of the things I am seeking
I am seeking the courage I lack

The courage to serve them with reliance
Face my mistakes without defiance
Show them I'm worthy
And while I show them 
I'll show me

So, let them bring on all their problems
I'll do better than my best
I have confidence they'll put me to the test
But I'll make them see I have confidence in me

...
I have confidence in sunshine
I have confidence in rain
I have confidence that spring will come again
Besides which you see I have confidence in me

Strength doesn't lie in numbers
Strength doesn't lie in wealth
Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers
When you wake up -- Wake Up!

It tells me all I trust I lead my heart to
All I trust becomes my own
I have confidence in confidence alone

Sheets... and Home Smells

About two weeks ago now, my parents' phone rang later in the evening.  Todd was in Haiti on a Work and Witness team with a friend and pastor from South Carolina.  I was busy trying to forget the day and how sub-par I'd been as a parent.  I was wallowing in homesickness and sleep deprivation when the phone was handed to me.  I tried really hard to understand what was being said because the friend on the other end of the line, I thought, had just offered me her house.  Part of me was instantly sick because I immediately thought of the thousands of ways my children would ruin her beautifully kept home.  The other part of me was relieved that we might actually know where we would be washing our clothes for longer than two weeks.  Gypsy life isn't for everyone and I'm certain it's most definitely not for me.  I relish washing my sheets in my laundry detergent and hanging them on my washing line.  I love making my beds just right and tucking my babes in to the sheets I've worked so hard with for just that particular moment when they snuggle down, put their arms under the covers, and smell the sweet freshness of momma's hard work.  I've been deeply missing that moment of domestic accomplishment because, as I've been realizing more and more, I love my family through small, finite measures of hard work that go mostly unseen.  

I distinctly remember the time period after Todd and I got engaged but before we were married when I felt like a kid in a candy store.  I wasn’t giddy about bridal dress shopping but because we got to go into stores and were handed what I might consider the world’s BEST toy: the registry gun.

Now some might argue that it’s great until you don’t get something you really wanted, but I beg to differ. My opinion is that you use that thing so much, and on so many different things, that you completely forget 90% of what you shoot with that gun because you can point-and-scan anything. Two different sets of 4 glass ramekins? Yes, they look pretty and I like them both (totally didn’t cross my mind that I may want to, oh I don’t know, STACK them someday). Three different types of cream colored towels? Cream is a neutral so they’ll match anything (and will show ALL the dirty, skuzzy, grim that builds up rather quickly when you’re coaching soccer).

The one thing I do think I managed to get right, by the grace of a wonderful friend who had the foresight to see the issues in my registry and took it upon herself to get what she knew I NEEDED and not what I thought was “pretty” at the moment, was sheets (just like Polly and Kim who knew that EVERY woman, married or not, NEEDS a crock-pot and recipe book for it- bless you!). Just before our wedding, I was given a set of towels and a set of sheets for my bridal shower. After the shower, I was pulled aside and told that I had made a few mistakes and to listen to someone who’s “been there.” Problem number one; I hadn’t registered for sheets. When I protested this saying that Todd already had hand-me-downs from his parents, I was led to point number two; nothing makes you feel more grown-up and good than a NICE pair of clean sheets that YOU think are wonderful and decadent. Three; thread-count matters and no college hand-me-downs would ever have more than a 300 thread-count. She then opened the packaging of the most gorgeous white sheets I’d ever seen outside of a really nice hotel and shoved my hand directly into the middle of them. I tell you what, for a tactile person like me, you’d have thought I just discovered the most luxurious fleece straight from the dryer on a cold winter’s night. I don't recall exactly what they were, and looking back they had to be no less than 1,000,000 thread-count of Egyptian something-or-other, but all I knew was that I was NEVER letting them go!

The only thing no one warned me about was how bruised and battered sheets can get over the years. Also, that once you’ve had soft and silky, it’s hard to go back. Not impossible, but hard. Sadly, we were in South Africa less than 6 months when another wedding sheet set ripped (irreparably). Then one night Todd and I were going to bed when we heard a noise that broke my heart a little… tell-tale ripping. Sure enough, upon inspection, our beautiful white sheets had not one but 3 holes and 4 spots the size of a small pillow that would tear in the next wash or two.

I was sad.  Very, very sad.   Those sheets had seen us through half a decade and 5 moves. They’ve snuggled my first two babies and washed so easily when my babies weren’t too nice. They served as the backdrop to all my at-home-wanna-be-professional portraits of Em and Coop. Em loved when I pull them straight from the dryer and snuggle her in them on the couch. 

After the nostalgia and lethargy from losing my sheets wore off, I decided I was going to make something useful, and came up with a super-cute Christmas dress for Em. 
That was two babies ago and tonight, for some reason as I'm sitting in a massive blessing in the form of an actual house where all four of my babes are sleeping in a bed, I'm reminded that once again, I'm still emotionally tied to my sheets.  I'm tied to that part of me that wants to settle in to the smell of home.  I miss it.  My heart longs for the day when my child snuggles down and buries their face into sheets and says, "I smell the spring in my bed Mommy!" I'm so glad to be in a house, able to wash dishes at my leisure, but deep down, I know it's only temporary.  I know this stage of transition isn't over and part of me wishes I could just take a nap for the next 18 months because I just want to fast forward to wash day as I'm hanging up my sheets, knowing that night, I'll be able to snuggle down into them and smell the smell of wash day, the smell of momma work, the smell of home.