when we buy art, we know we are home

It's been a full week here, in the best sense, drinking deeply from our community and being refreshed as our roots sink down a little further.  Sharing meals with friends who could be family, my dad's famous pizza dough recipe making bellies full while children wrestle and run wild.  (Our downstairs neighbour asked if we are training for the Olympics, a twinkle in his eye.  Gracious, he is, knowing our son since he was just learning to belly crawl.)

We also experimented with a Thai style curry with eggplant and brussel sprouts - I suspected I shouldn't have tried a new recipe (because: brussel sprouts) with dinner guests but they gobbled it up grateful, maybe to humour me but I'll never know.





There were friends stopping in on rainy days and long walks in our neighbourhood, sun warming winter skin.  We knock on neighbour doors with strawberries in hand, talk of Ramadan preparation and sadly they are moving home soon, we share zataar on Lebanese bread, always a favorite.

Another friend stopped by with her kids, the older is almost four and still nurses and in her home culture that's pretty common.  We commiserated together because they seem to need more than we want to give, but isn't that often the way of parenting?  It's good to have a space to complain about your choices, because even when you feel they are the best choices for your family, it can still be hard, isn't that true?  We watched our nurslings take turns rocking out on a little guitar.

And last Saturday morning was the monthly artists gathering on our street, so we walked up there, the four of us.  A young man in too small over-alls sang with his guitar case open and baristas brought coffees to people I've never seen before sitting in the grass.  It's nice to see people coming to our street for hot drinks and art rather than sex and alcohol.  I saw a large painting and liked it, calling my husband over and he did as well.  It was about 60% off the original price, by a local artist who pays cheap rent for a small studio two blocks up from us and we said we'll take it, we didn't even think about it.

When we moved into our very first place, after about six months of newlywed house-sitting I cried when we needed to buy things, because I'm like that.  I don't like spending money frivolously and when my husband mentioned that we would need to look for a refrigerator I was on edge:  "I'm pretty sure we can get by without a 'frigerator!"  But of course we bought one, second-hand and a washing machine as well and we were given beds and dressers and we made other purchases to complete our tiny apartment, a baby already hanging curtains in my growing belly.  It was hard for me, not even sure how long we would stay there and can't we just keep a few boxes packed up for a quick escape?

Three and a half years later, over two years into our second apartment together and we finally bought some art for our gray, windowless walls.  Maybe they're trees whose roots go deep into fertile soil, faces turned to the bluest Australian sky.  Or maybe, as a friend imagined, it's our local smokestacks reborn, turning into the green-brown strong of life, a prophetic piece reminding us that even massive towers of poisoned metal will one day be made new.  Either way we are happy to have some art on our wall and in our family, a frivolous purchase maybe, but more important than I know.

links that make me go 'mmmmmm'.

 Here's a few posts that I read this week and probably forwarded along to my husband or a friend.  I'm going to try to get in the habit of doing this more regularly.  It's Saturday morning here, the sun is shining on our new winter. We're in the middle of turning our second bedroom into a bit of a playroom and packing away summer clothes for long pants, hoodies and scarves.  Hope you have a great weekend wherever you are!

10 Decisions You Can Make to Change the World - Jim Wallis @ Sojourners (Be encouraged and inspiried!!)

The Peril of Complacent Ambiguity - Jess in Process  (This is a brave, grieving mama's understanding of why terrible things happen in the world.)

Tougher Than Lion Taming: When Your Child Hits Your Other Child - Aha! Parenting (A great gentle parenting resource ... not that my children would ever hit each other ... *cough*)

Kids on the Block - Craig Greenfield writing @ DL Mayfield's blog (For when you worry that your neighbourhood will negatively affect your kids ...)

The Path of Least Resistance (or, 16 months of Tandem Nursing)

One of the most frequent searches that draws people to my blog is related to tandem nursing.  Sometimes it's "what is it like to tandem nurse" or "fed up with tandem nursing" or "tandem nursing older children".  For those of you interested in our family's journey with two nurselings (and I know that's not everyone who reads my blog and that's okay) I thought I'd share where we are at these days.  I wrote about how things were going at 4 months and then at 10 months and somehow six more months of life has happened and here we are again.  16 months of tandem nursing.  (Almost 17 now as I started this post awhile ago ... )

I wrote in a post on my word for the year, "capacity", that I'm planning to wean my older child (currently 34 months, aka 2 3/4) by the end of the year.  Hopefully.  When Saf was first born my plan was to nurse him until at least 18 months but maybe to 2, since that's what the World Health Organization recommends at minimum.  But the thought of nursing a running, shouting toddler freaked me out quite a bit.  I could handle a new baby I thought, but a boy speaking complete sentences?  That seemed pretty weird.  But as many parents who have gone before can testify, just as that baby grew and developed so did our nursing relationship.  It's been lots of things:  easy, bonding, annoying, tiresome, aggravating, special, healing, reconciling - but it's never been weird.

We finally  night-weaned Saf for real, for real and I am very pleased to share that for the past two months he has slept really, really well.  He is still parented to sleep each night by his dad who lays next to him in bed and tells him a story that becomes a story-song, which becomes a song and then some kind of hypnotizing hum (I'm guessing).  That routine takes anywhere from 5-30 minutes depending on how tired he is but my husband is sooo happy to no longer be bouncing/rocking/dancing our 35 pound son to sleep.  He will probably complain of his bad back everyday for the rest of his life anyway.  Sometimes I didn't think it was possible, but we now have a great sleeper who still shares a bed with us, but with rarely a wake up.  If you're a parent approaching sleep gently, be encouraged.  It may not be the quickest or most efficient road but you can get there.  It took us a long time, but a few good nights of sleep can erase years of rough ones pretty quickly.  [A slight update: we've been back from two months abroad for about a week and he has been somewhat wakeful but we are hoping it's an adjustment period.  Very, very hoping.  Please, God.  Amen.]

We've been in four countries in the past four months and just returned from SE Asia.  Transition is hard on toddlers generally and we have a sensitive one.  He's also a bit wild, so that is a noisy combination if not handled with care.  Like, you will feel ringing in at least one ear.  Nursing him when he asks nicely has been a very easy way to help him feel secure with all of the transition we've had recently.  I do set limits though and I've found that if he is very upset and demanding "nai-nai" then it's extremely aggravating for me to nurse him.  I have to wait until he can calm down and take a few deep breaths, or sometimes I'll just find another way to help him settle (holding him in my arms while walking around and singing usually works).  I also usually keep our nursing sessions fairly short, probably less than two minutes usually.  I almost always end the session before he wants to be done.  I would have thought by this age he would become bored and finish on his own, but no.  Almost never.  So he typically still nurses 4-6 times a day but it's for very short amounts of time and it's usually all that he needs to re-set himself and get on with life feeling safer.  I asked him once what my milk tastes like and he said, "It tastes like honey.  And peanut butter.  And vegemite!".  What a great combination.  No wonder he doesn't want to stop.

My younger nurseling, Jubee, is almost 17 months.  She probably gets half of her calories from table food and half from breast milk these days, although she is known to still go back to only milk for the day if no food inspires her palate.  She's a healthy size, about 24 pounds, a little bulldozer who can tackle boys and snatch toys with the best of them.  She still nurses 3-6 times a night, more if she is teething, but her night-waking has always been only momentary (nothing like my son who would wake for hours until we eliminated dairy from his diet).  She probably nurses at least 12 times a day.  That only seems like a lot to me some of the time.  Sometimes people, not knowing that I still nurse Saf, will ask me when I'm going wean her.  It has hardly even crossed my mind. 

When people see how close my kids are in age (17 months apart) they often ask if Saf is jealous of Jubee.  It's actually the opposite - Jubee is quite jealous of Saf, especially when he is having milk.  She often will start crying when she sees him nursing, or if she hears him asking me she'll run and jump in my lap and start asking for nai-nai too.  I rarely nurse them simultaneously anymore (although when I do they almost can't drink because they are smiling at each other so much).  I always count to ten with Saf when I'm ending the nursing session and recently Jubee started to come over if he is nursing and say "2 .... 2 .... 2....".   When I do start to count him down she will immediately stop crying and do the most triumphant smile.  Hilarious.  She's almost always the priority when it comes to milk and they both seem okay with that.

I have a week every month where I feel very sensitive and touched out and aggravated when nursing my older child.  I'm pretty sure it's hormonal and I have to trust it will pass (and it does) but it's a tough few days to get through.  It's pretty much severe PMS.  A friend just told me to try magnesium supplements and my husband was already googling to find out the maximum dose I can take as if he has some kind of vested interest in it. 

My good friend had to instantly wean her 13 month old daughter when she was admitted to the hospital recently.  Her story brought me to tears and made me so grateful for the opportunity I have to nurse my children with such ease.  As hard as it is sometimes I want to treasure this as long as I can knowing that there are many moms who have planned and dreamed to nurse and not been able to, or have had to stop nursing suddenly. 

It's still the good/hard that it was when I started but the good is heavier than my children are, at least most of the time.

If you're a tandem nursing mom, what has your experience been like?  If you're a nursing mom have you struggled with extreme mood swings and found anything that has helped?

a small life update, just in case you were wondering.

We are back home now after spending two months in SE Asia, entering Australia as residents for the first time.  I have things to write about our time away which I'll  do soon.  We didn't have much internet acess in the last few weeks we were gone, hence the lack of posts and if you are a FB friend you'll notice we were pretty quiet there too.  I can't lie, it was surprisingly nice not to have eternal access to the world-wide web.  I only missed it a little bit.

It's quiet in our neighbourhood, with winter setting her sights on us and the sun clocking out early.  It's a funny thing to go from so many people all around, because of house-sharing with four kids under 3 and the crowded spaces of an Asian city, to a neighbourhood that's virtually deserted by 5pm, unless you are in a bar or looking for a sexually exploited woman.  We miss having a bustling night market  a street over, where many evenings afforded us a one dollar smoothie or bubble tea.  It's good to have my kids back in car seats when we are driving but I miss the togetherness of crazy traffic, with all the people going somewhere in a culture where relationship matters more than anything else.  It feels a bit lonely, a whole apartment to ourselves and dark, empty streets.

my boys, no seatbelts.

Our first night home, when we realized we suddenly had to start cooking food again (after eating most meals in very, very cheap restaurants for two months) I took Saf up the street to the little Macedonian grocery store, where the owner and her husband have kept watch for 40 years.  I always wonder if people will remember us when we've been gone a couple of months.  They do.  They asked about our trip, remarked on my son's growth and showed me pictures of their first grandchild, seven months old now.  I picked up the milk and veggies we needed, also a can of beans and said we would see them again soon.  Our next door neighbours were very excited to see us and to hear we didn't have plans to leave again anytime soon.  "You're true, blue Aussies now!  We just have to work on yer accents!"  It's a good thing to be known.

Every time I've arrived home, wherever that place is, it's much relief with a touch of sadness, always, every time. 

My kids will turn 17 and 34 months soon.  Jubee will be half of Saf's age, for the only time in their life.  Is that interesting?  She'll also be the age that Saf was when she was born and that is crazy to me as she seems like such a bay-bay and he already was a big brother, learning to be independent from me while still needing me so much.

I've really enjoyed thrift store shopping since being back.  I've scored some pretty cool stuff, including "Winnie The Pooh:  The Complete Collection of Stories and Poems" for $6.  Also red boots and red shoes for Jubee that are beyond adorable.  My kids live in generous, high quality hand-me downs and gifts from people so I very rarely buy them anything, not even second hand.  I was happy to find that my daughter actually needed shoes for this winter and that I got to treasure hunt in four second-hand shops for them.

I've been reading a couple of books lately, "Daring Greatly" by Brene Brown, on vulnerability and shame.  Also "An Altar in the World" by Barbara Brown Taylor which is wandering and beautifully written, on the practices of life that make up our daily grind but are an invitation into the holy.  I'm not quite finished with both but highly recommend them.  My husband also read a book, his first in a good long while, "Naked Spirituality" by Brian Mclaren.  I think it took him about a year to finish, but he loves it and would read me large chunks of it, so I almost feel like I read it to.  Chris wants it to be the next on my list.

Chris got us a vegetarian cookbook app - Green Kitchen - because we ate way, way too much meat while we were traveling and my husband likes to swing to opposing extremes.  We are no longer buying meat, apparently.  Tonight we had a vegetarian chili with dark chocolate.  That sounds yummy and strange, because it is.  Both kids gobbled it up and there wasn't even MSG in it.

I'm hoping to put my roots down in this writing space a bit deeper, I want to be more willing to hit "publish" and less obsessed with feeling extremely proud of everything I write.  I just want to write more.  I'm also trying to get Chris to guest post on here sometime.  That boy won my heart with his writing but he acts like two crazy toddlers and a demanding wife doesn't leave him with much time to create.  Hmph.  He says he doesn't want to share the blog with me but I'm hoping he will at least become a regular contributor.  We'll see.

Here's to getting the grease flowing on the old blog again.  Cheers.

4 Things I've learned in (4) Years of Marriage

We turned 4 this week, that stocky, singing and opinionated child called "becca/chris".  I may not have a degree as if this was four years of college, but I've put in my hours and learned a few things.

1. Committment is scary.  I thought after getting married the anxiety beneath such a life-long choice would flee with the wedding kiss.  The deeper we put down our roots, the more permanent our home becomes, the more children we have and boxes we unpack together - the more woundable we become. That's how is goes.  Tomorrow feels a wild thing, so unknown and foreboding, I occasionally wonder if we're cut out for children at all, although it's a little late I admit.  We bare our souls to each other talking about having another baby someday, or maybe not.  Is it best to bring a whole new person in this world when we've got our hands full as it is?  The more I love Chris, the more webbed together our lives become in every single dimension.  The thought of losing him, to death or divorce, soon or after many, many years is still one of my darkest thoughts.  This clinging of my life to his, while a beautiful sacrament, it's also terrifying and irrational. To put yourself in that place, to love someone who is not immortal and to face the possiblity of life on earth without them is a challenging thing.  There are no limits to God's grace in the world and God's ability to bring new life from suffering soil but I want to grow very, very old with my husband.  And there are no guarantees that we'll do that. The risks of love haven't gone away for us yet.

People think commitment is scary because it is scary.  But it's the best kind of scary that I know.

2. I'm broken and so is he.  I thought I was a fairly stable and capable person until I got married.  I can blame it on hormones and babies close together and living far from family support and having to share everything with a *boy* but I'm still responsible for my words and actions.  I've never sworn (under my breath) so much as I do now that I have two toddlers and a husband.  I find life EXTREMELY challenging some moments and I struggle with outbursts of anger and frustration which usually are targeted at my husband.  Sometimes it becomes an argument, sometimes he just welcomes me into his arms, sometimes he makes me laugh.  But always he shows me that I am loved and I try my best to reciprocate that truth.  (I know this is not everyone's experience and some have had spouses who've walked away, or maybe you've needed to walk away from your spouse, for your own emotional or physical safety.  In our marriage there isn't abuse, but there is ugliness sometimes and when it's met with relentless affection and acceptance, we have power to change.)

3. "I'm sorry" and "I forgive you" are hard to say.  This was the biggest shock of my life I think, how hard it can be to say I'm sorry to the one person in the whole world that I've completely chosen.  I have so many relationships that I've been born into, or stumbled upon, or been assigned to–but this long-distance love turned into a marriage–I really had a sense of choosing it.  And still it is so unbelievably hard to even mumble the humbling words that can turn raging water into dry land.  It always feels nearly impossible, when there is hurt and hard feelings.  And that nearly impossible gift is the only way forward, every single time.

4.  No matter what happens, we are never alone.  We thought our marriage started off pretty rough after we became pregnant and lost our baby within the first few months we were together.  Then there was a move across the country and a huge shift in identity and occupation, a surprise baby in the midst of grief and uncertainty who ripped open our sense of vulnerability with his intense (and normal) need for us.  Then another baby came right on his tail and a risky visa process (which we were granted this week!) and the everyday stresses of two toddlers and not a lot of money.  It's been hard, and this is good stuff, the things I dreamed of for many years.  Somehow it still challenges the dimensions of my capacity right off the edge, it seems.

Who knows what awaits us in the next four or ten or twenty years.  I'm hopeful, but life is precious and vulnerable and the only guarantee is that God will be with us, but not that this or that will or won't happen to us.  That's where my faith is, with an omni-resourceful God who helps us write redemption in the darkest places.  We are not adrift in a wild ocean alone, though it feels that way sometimes.  All the chaotic waters in this whole world will be channeled into a river of healing and life.  We are held perfectly in God's steadfast love–it's not a love that dictates or controls or coerces, but a love that runs alongside, imagines and re-imagines and has so many back-up plans for us and the whole world.  Even if things get bad for us, we are not alone.  We're not ever alone.

The words we say when God is dead.

"He whose soul remains ever turned toward God though the nail pierces
it finds himself nailed to the very center of the universe.  It is the
true center; it is not in the middle; it is beyond space and time; it
is God.  In a dimension that does not belong to space, that is not
time, that is indeed quite a different dimension, this nail has
pierced cleanly through all creation, through the thickness of the
screen separating the soul from God" -- Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Grief (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I wonder about the ways that we share the experience of grief, and the ways that we never will.  Grief is always, on some level, a solitary thing.  No one else has your map, even when the territory is shared.  No one else is behind your eyes or in the recesses of your heart, connecting memories to fears and feeling the emotions of this present moment, passing now.

Even in shared trauma or loss, no one else has experienced exactly what you've experienced.  You were injured in the same accident, abused at the same age, devastated by the same earthquake - still your experience of grief is unique.  I think that's why the country of grief is often a lonely place.

I shared a trauma with seventeen people physically impacted and hundreds more directly affected by the subsequent chaos and loss.  A horrific car accident in Nigeria, December 2005, killed eight of my friends while nine of us survived.  Some of those dear people are still physically recovering even today; some may wear trauma on their bodies until the earth itself is made new.

As consciousness returned and stories unraveled, as months past and emails flew one thing was clear - it was the same van hitting a truck driven irresponsibly that impacted us all, but each of us felt and processed the event differently. And not only us, but moms and dads, siblings and friends of those in the van, leaders in our organization and people who caught wind of the tragedy from far away, whose hearts were broken as well.  We all had loss to grieve.  We all had ache in our hearts, some of us in our bodies.  And we all had a different story to tell, our own description of the events and the state of our minds in the aftermath.  Especially if you ask why it happened.

The "why" of any traumatic event is a complex and emotional topic.  Some people think our accident was wrapped up in spiritual warfare, others an avenue of redemption in that country or some part of God's greater plan.  Others think it's just life in West Africa, a terrible accident, a work of potholes, poor decisions, gravity and chaos.   Most of us directly involved would probably sense that even our own processing of that very bloody Sunday has changed, has evolved, as healing comes slowly.  Grief is like that, healing in layers and years.  Traumatic events have no easy answers to the "why" question.  There are lots of reasons why bad things happen, and none of them are good reasons, none are enough to eradicate pain.

I'm wondering if that can be said for our understanding of Jesus' work on the cross.  My husband recently posted an article on our Facebook page that brought a different-than-usual perspective to ideas of sin, shame and what Good Friday means for us.  I didn't find it that controversial, just an angle (written for a very wide audience) that brought some new light, new ways of thinking.  The post on our wall received about 75 comments from a good handful of people, a friendly dialogue (with actual friends of ours) about the meaning of the cross: what happened, why it happened and how we are now meant to live.  Everyone had a different perspective and held to it passionately.  My husband stayed up late reading and replying.  (I think that boy needs a blog.  Some of his comment lengths were a bit out of control.)

Historically there are different perspectives on Christian atonement, how humanity is reconciled with God through the life, death and ressurrection of Jesus.   A quick google search will give you at least seven views on this and there are more emerging.  There are plenty of verses to quote and theologians to employ and maybe some aspects are so important that it's worth debating over.  I won't dismiss the hard work of theology and it's role in shaping the way we think and hopefully live.  

But I wonder if part of our experience of the cross is an experience of grief.  I remember being with a group of friends, working in an Indian hospital, overwhelmed by the pain and suffering we saw daily.  We stayed together one morning and read through the gospel of Luke, which is Luke's account of Jesus life and teachings.  I wrote about it here.  Those were powerful hours as we were immersed more deeply in the story than ever before.  When Jesus was being executed I cried, maybe for the first time in my life, I cried hard tears for his death.  I felt the brutality, the injustice, the godforsakenness of that dark Friday.  I felt the loss on behalf of a world in great need.

As starchy as atonement theories can get, we are a people who need to grieve.  What do we say when God is dead in the world, if only for a short while?  We live now in that "Holy Saturday", between death's daily assaults and the world's final resurrection.  Creation groans with labour pains and we do too.  We wait for God to come and rescue us as He makes home here, laying a foundation of justice and mercy and truth over our corruption and exploitation.  We truly live with an inexhaustible hope, but when we are quiet to creation's chorus and honest with our deepest heart, the reality of today is full of grief.

And everything I know of grief says we experience things differently, we interpret events differently, and ultimately as we grow and change our understandings change too.  The cross of Jesus means different things to me now at 31 than it did when I was 18 (and knew everything).  And I anticipate even more change coming as I read the Story in new cultures, hear the songs in different languages, see oppression and resurrection on all corners of the earth.  Educated white men do not have the last word on the cross.

Ask a woman who lost her toddler to diarrhea, a father whose son was killed by gun violence, a soldier whose seen the devastation of war.  Ask a nun who cares for the dying in India, a child whose been trafficked by their parents into sex slavery, a boy whose lost his mom to undiagnosed cancer in a slum.  Ask your teenage neighbour, the shop owner down the street, the lady sitting two pews over in church.  Most of us come to realize that the world is not a safe and happy place.  The nails have pierced cleanly through us as well. 

In our experiences of grief we can be grafted into Jesus' own experience–the utter abandonment he felt on the cross, the separation from everything right and just and true, fully given over to a violent, raging world.  As we read the Bible and books, converse about theories and perspectives, let us open our hearts wide and trace our fingers along our own scars.  If we engage the world's pain (and our own) and somehow stay, as Simone Weil writes, "ever turned towards God though the nail pierces", though we don't understand why, we speak Truth more powerfully than doctrines or theories ever will.

Let's tell our reconciliation stories with courage as we stay in the painful wait of Holy Saturday, alongside a world pregnant and longing for all things new.

my teachers these days: a book, two blogs and some kids.

the kids.  get it?

I'm currently in SE Asia and while there are some challenges to being here with two toddlers, there is also a lot that is, as my son would say, "pretty fantastic".  Like being able to take them to the zoos for a total of $3.  My son thinks elephant-riding is normal.  My daughter roars like the tigers she has seen pacing in cages (yes, sad).  My kids really love animals–they get it from their dad.  It's pretty special to be able to visit some pretty cool animals for 1/30th of the cost it would be at home.  Did I mention we also have access to some of the best food in the world for a few dollars a night?  Oh, and kind, smiling and crazy-child excusing people everywhere?   Yes, that too.

I thought I'd share a few things that are stirring my heart this days: giving me new ways to process, new concepts through which to articulate and some new reasons to just stop, settle down a bit and be aware and grateful. 

Thanks to D. L. Mayfield's recommendation, my husband bought me copy of Katherine Boo's "Beyond the Beautiful Forevers" for my birthday.  And I gobbled it all up.  I got lost in the Mumbai slum community she writes about every spare moment I had.  (I'm currently house-sharing with a family who also has two small children, so spare moments are few.)  Boo digs far beneath the colourful sarees and extreme poverty, looking at the slum's living and dying in the larger context of global economic struggle, with all the corruption, fear and self-preservation that it brings.  If you dare read this story you will meet complex (real) people who labour and love, fight and reconcile, despair and celebrate and ultimately survive as well as their environment will allow.  Boo calls her work "narrative non-fiction" as she spent years with this community, interviewing, documenting, watching, asking and writing–and while the people she wrote about knew her story wouldn't be pretty, they still let her in.  That is why what she writes is true, and we need much more truth communicated in media than we are used to.

I stumbled upon a blogger called "Jess in Process" -  she's a writer and mother who recently lost her 4 year old, Henry, to brain cancer.  She is vulnerably and publicly processing through her grief and ache and inexhaustible loss by writing on her blog: about the world and senseless suffering and how God can somehow, without pre-ordaining anything evil, still bring meaning and purpose through it.  I appreciate the work of Ivy league educated theologians and how they shape the way we see God and the world, but sometimes I more appreciate the "back-door theology" of mothers who suffer great loss, walk with God through it, and let us in on those conversations.

Another blog that I've been following closely for the past year is a real-life friend of mine, Michaela Evanow.  Michaela and her husband live in Vancouver, Canada, and she's one of those people who sees the world as if its all lit up. We traveled for a year in community together when we were both younger and single-er, drinking chai on back streets and designing tailor-made punjabis, laughing and crying lots.  She's passionate and fiery, a lover of tastes and textures and colours and sounds, her writing brings you in close whether she is sharing a new recipe or writing about her baby girl, Florence Marigold.  When Florence was 3 1/2 months old Michaela noticed she wasn't meeting some milestones and a fairly routine check-up resulted in Florence being given the diagnosis of SMA, Type 1.  Florence turned one in March and is thriving.  I was able to spend a few hours with her and Michaela this December.  Florence is one of those soul-searching children, with eyes that will change you if you look at them for too long; she is a little girl who knows a lot.

Michaela has been on a journey that I don't know anyone else on.  And she writes about it.  She is living in the dynamic, painful tension of trusting that it's God's will to heal Florence and asking for and expecting that healing to come daily while also loving Florence exactly how she is, noticing and celebrating the small victories although her experiences are nothing like those of moms around her.  And while Florence is completely dependent on Michaela, lacking the strength to do very much at all for herself, as I've read Michaela's words this year I can see that Florence is saving her.  Florence's condition has opened Michaela's heart up wide, to depths I can't imagine, and Michaela writes with brutal honesty: about her dreams, what she feels God speaking, her darkest fears, and the sunlight and shadows that make up her every day.  Florence is saving Michaela because Michaela is "loving past the pain and in the weakest places".  And that's what makes us all more fully who we are meant to be.

This is a week full of suffering, as most of the world's weeks have always been since she was born.  Bombs rip through our bodies and sense of safety, devastating so many families in so many parts of the world.  Mothers weep for children with blood on their bodies and blood on their hands.  The world is a dreadful place most of the time, and somehow it's still glorious and worth risking to love.  I write from a privileged place with my basic needs met and also my deeper needs of community, love, acceptance and space to create and give of myself.  My children are alive and close to me, my husband is faithful and caring, always non-violent in word and action.  These are things that I cannot take for granted, not when mothers weep in Baghdad, in Boston and Somalia, in Texas and South Africa, in Burma, Afghanistan and every other country on this raging planet.  It's a few months later, but I stand by what I wrote after the December mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.  My hope is not in more guns (and not even in less guns), not in border control or religious uniformity.  My hope is in a Mother's love that will save the world.