To Care and Not to Care

Broken Hallelujahs/Lent 2019 I've been hearing Hallelujah (by Leonard Cohen) alot lately. Mostly because Amos is obsessed with the Sing soundtrack. I'm never prepared to hear it. Amos quit hitting Nathanael! I've never understood it. Boys stop screaming! Hallelujah. Gosh I'm so tired and my neck hurts. Broken Hallelujah. Stop spitting. Cold and broken Hallelujah. The miracle is always in the Hallelujah to the One and Only. Dying and resurrecting all day long. Anything and Anyone can be made new. ... These have been my Lenten thoughts this season. Lots of broken Hallelujahs. Lord may I have the courage to believe that everything I do matters. Eastertide: New Life/1 1/2  months later A season of health is upon me. Cultivated soil through the winter. Dark. Wet. Tears. Prayers. Hallelujahs. Grace grows gratitude for my Maker and the Maker in my sons. Warmth. Sun. Rain. Push. Receive. The Body of Christ sowing more seeds in my s...

So I'm fasting from social media right now. For Lent. You could say it's a spiritual maintenance thing. My uses for social media (mainly Instagram and Facebook) are multiple, but mainly they are a source of not dealing with my feelings. What I realized only 3 days in was that although I'm not on them alot collectively, I am on them for short bits several times throughout the day. My phone is usually on the kitchen counter, available and always in sight - triggering me to check something. (even my 3 yr old son will say "I just need to check something). On my 3rd day of fasting, in a moment of frustration with my kids I went to tap the alluring Instagram app. I immediately stepped back, alarmed at myself. Every time I have unwanted feelings and/or feelings I don't know what do with, I tap that trusty app. I zone out for a couple minutes. Then I jolt myself back into reality, having not dealt with whatever emotion I was trying to escape (in myself AND in my children)....

"Deep & Wide" Winter. 2017 We've had our second official m family come and go. They came in like a whirlwind, so excited to have a place to call "home" for 1 1/2 months. Kris and Stephanie and their two lovely daughters, Adalia and Indira (Adi and Indi) immediately made us feel at home in our own house! The first night I came home from work to find both the girls hiding from me. I immediately thought, they don't even know me and these girls already want to play? What kind of girls are these? I turned the corner to find them "hiding" on our stairs. They were so excited that their pajamas matched the varying shades of blue, green and gray on our stairs that they were lying on them, trying to blend in. Their laughter was contagious and immediately had me laughing, getting me out of my post-work slump. Kris would make us coffee in the mornings, even though he was not a fan of our coffee tastes. We would endearingly tease him back for his love o...

"If a bird abandons the eggs she has been sitting on, she prevents them from hatching, and in the same way monks or nuns will grow cold and their faith will perish if they go around from one place to another." -- Amma Syncletica I used to be deathly afraid of buying a house. Of having a fence and a two-car garage. I saw the feigned satisfaction of my fellow society with their fences and two-car garages and accruement of "things you must have" in order to be considered as a stable, responsible  person. Stable and responsible. It was (and still is) really confusing. Who doesn't want to be considered as stable and responsible? I did. And I still do. But what happens when such words carry so much weight with my identity, and I observe other people who describe themselves as such, and I want nothing to do with them? Or at least their idea of responsibility and stability. They looked frazzled and exhausted, making sure everyone around them knew that they were r...

For at least this past year, I've been wanting to try and put into words the beginning of a dream and how that dream became a reality. I'm not the best writer and I know that shouldn't matter but I always let it get in the way of me writing anything. The other struggle for me is that I have a lot of input in my life and not a lot of output. I love gathering information, thoughts, pictures, stories of purpose. But the thing is this, they're starting to get all muddled and I'm forgetting what their purpose was in the first place. And I really don't want to forget. I don't want to forget what my and my husband's dream was and how suddenly we've found ourselves doing a little bit of what we were made to do. So with this written piece of transition, this blog will take on a different purpose.  Our house now is serving as a space for sabbaticals and rest for people involved in the never-ending work of the Gospel. These are people who have been sent out b...

well...after a brief hiatus (or not so brief depending on your definition of brief) we are back in business. that is, the business of restoring this crazy house. making all things beautiful. but as most of us know, it's not all beautiful. with our anticipation of our dear friends arriving from the philippines in 3 days, we are hurriedly making the downstairs master bedroom into a livable and clean room to live! which means, no more storing 20,000 gallons of paint, sheetrock, old chairs, black walls and God knows what else. it is turning into a place of rest. we also find time to record ourselves while installing carpet... one other thing we did today is paint... and (finally!!!) take this busted door going into the above bedroom. cut out the broken glass and reframe it with some plastic we had. and that's it!

We found these little treasures buried in the databases. In these two videos, you will witness jay and ben working together at their finest. It was taken back in August earlier this year, and we were really excited because it was our last demo in the entire house. I am so glad we've taken videos along the way. I look back at some of these and cannot believe how far we've come. Literally and figuratively. (Everything in life is a moment to learn right?) This next video was also taken in August of this year. Ben and I had been working all day and hadn't seen luke in a while. I just thought he was hanging out in his room. But no. He was taking out all 4 of the giant "monster bushes" (that we despise) from our front yard. With a shovel. And his sheer man-power and wit.