intentional filters

May 23, 2013 in change, Katie Mulder | Tags: , , , , | by | 7 comments

Katie Mulder*

by Katie Mulder

Growing up? Always noise in my house. Not from people- there were only four of us, including my parents, and we weren’t a chatty family. But, there was a constant backdrop of music or the news or an old black and white film filling in empty spaces around teenage angst and hard-working parents. Music to wake us up on Saturday mornings, music in the garage, news during dinner. The radio and the tv were always on. Well into my college years, I could not fall asleep without the tv. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve watched (or heard) When Harry Met Sally. There is still nothing better to me than a Saturday nap with squeaky shoes on a college basketball court in the background.

Psalm

Now, I write on my computer. I lead an on-line support group for moms of special-needs kiddos. I fill out doctors’ forms online and I email Curt to find out what he wants for dinner. I text my conscience in Texas and ask her when it’s appropriate to run away (never, without her) and I search Google for honey chicken recipes. I charge my Kindle and wait for new books to download while I forward photos of my kids (usually asleep in awkward positions) to my parents. I edit photos digitally and save them for a (someday) family album. I look up tomorrow’s weather and Ry’s class pictures from her last field trip… all on the computer. I reorganize my Netflix queue and make a grocery list… on the computer. I pay my bills and I update the family calendar… on the computer. I watch Cosby Show reruns and crime shows and English brilliance after the kids have gone to bed… “to relax.”

Hear me: I love my computer, my phone, my tv. I love the quiet noise that tethers me- on my own terms- to the world outside of this farm. But the quiet noise has become loud and bossy of late. It grew from comfortable background static to aggressive intermission music where you can’t really hear the person next to you.  I was nodding and keeping up with the conversation, but barely. The soundtrack had taken over the story.

And, I was a wreck.

Job

Somewhere in the chaos of the last 2 months, I tuned out. I have no idea how, really. I’ve been trying for years… but something finally clicked and I simply walked away.

What does that look like for me?

I unsubscribed from the super-blogs… the blogs with thousands of readers and hundreds of comments. The ones who have never talked to me, who do not share life- in any personal form- with me. Not because they’re bad- quite the contrary. They’re huge and lovely and… overwhelming. If I have to be picky, and I think I do, I don’t have room for them right now.

I also unsubscribed from a bunch of crafting blogs and sites that are simply out of my reach right now. I have a 6-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 1-year-old. Sewing and knitting, while personal loves of mine, are not on the daily agenda.  I do not need to troll Pinterest or my ‘favorites’ file to be reminded that I am (as Margie says) in the weeds right now. There is no sewing in the weeds. There is reading while stirring gravy and there is writing while waiting for the school bus to to arrive… but there is not everything. And that’s ok. The weeds are high but temporary. In another season, there will be room for endless inspiration and group sew-alongs and pattern sales. Now? I don’t need those reminders flooding my inbox right now.

I stopped watching Law & Order reruns at 4pm when I was folding laundry. My brain… my brain moves too fast and rarely shuts off.  It forgets that tv is not real. I do so love stories. I love books and essays and movies. But I have to be careful with what I’m filling the spaces with. Too much bad-guy-deviant-desperate-world-too-close-for-comfort, even with a good ending, leads me down a dark and narrow road. It’s dark enough here in the weeds. I don’t need to block out more sun.

I started hesitantly answering ‘yes’ to my husband’s post-kid-bedtime requests of ‘come for a walk with me,’ ride the tractor with me,’ ‘sit with me while I work.’ My instinct and habit is to use that precious time for reading or emails or reruns. Now some of that time is filled with… us.

I stopped answering every email within seconds of receipt.  I turned off the speakers on my computer so I wouldn’t be informed of new mail and comments immediately. I started closing my computer every time I walked away from it.

I turned off NPR news and started reading while making dinner.

I have never been less-informed, less-in-contact, or more available than I am right now.

Romans

It’s not silent.

It’s intentionally filtered. 

It’s completely new and life-changing for me.

Saying ‘no,’ in my care-free world, used to imply that that particular something was bad. Turns out, there are LOTS of good things out there. SO very many good things. I just can’t do all of them at the same time. I can’t even do a LOT of them at the same time. I have to pick and choose. It’s not permanent. I get to change my mind.

This process of fading out the noise, of taking everything off the shelves and doing some inventory, has opened up a whole new dialogue between me and my God. A ‘what’s True and Good and Necessary here?’ kind of conversation. Sometimes, His answer is, “Um, not a whole lot.” It’s been humbling, to say the least.

I’ve learned silence is preferred to noise, that gaps in time are to be left alone, and that I am healthier when I am less instead of more.

Now, to remember that every day.

Amen and may it be so.

Recycled

May 14, 2013 in Marsha Marks | Tags: , , , | by | 2 comments

Marsha Marks*

by heartland guest author, Marsha Marks

I love the Bible verse from the 23rd Psalm that says, “He restores my soul.”  If you’ve ever restored furniture you know how much work is involved, how much sanding (and sometimes gluing back together) is involved to restore the piece to way it looked when the creator first set it out from his shop. I like to think of God like that, as the great restorer of me, restoring the parts of me that other people have damaged or kicked in or bruised.

When I was a child, about 4 years old, my mom (who was a just a teenager) married a man who was into destroying souls by abusing little children. I was one of those children. When I was 9 years old, I finally told a teacher what was going on. I would have told sooner, but he had taken me to the garage and skinned my pet bunny alive in front of me. Then he told me he would do the same to my baby sister if I ever told on him. He held up my 4-month-old baby sister, who was screaming her head off. So, I kept quiet to protect her.

But, when I was 9 I told anyway. The teacher at school told the principal and they called a conference with my parents (this was long ago — now they would call county aid,) and at that conference the stepfather from hell said I was lying… that I told tall tales for attention. But, after that conference, he never touched me again.

However, as I grew into an adult, the fear that I had developed because of his abuse stayed with me, stuffed down into a place that I was afraid to visit, until I was 43 and he died.  I went to a therapist then because as soon as I heard of his death a song began to play in my head. I recognized that the song was being sung in the voice I had as a little child: “Ding dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch, the wicked witch. Ding dong the wicked witch is dead.” I told the therapist everything — and then I showed the therapist some of my cartoon drawings.  I showed him four cartoon characters and told him they were based on different people in my life, like my sisters etc.  He said, “I think they are all you.”  And in that moment, I knew he was right. I knew when I was 9 years old (and had finally stopped the bad guy from hurting me), that my personality wasn’t whole, like it is now; it was fragmented into four distinct characters: one very strong character who was a protector, one sweet character, one popular character, and one character that loved the law and loved enforcing it.

The therapist helped me to see that I was a victim when I was a child, but that my tragedy was not my identity.  I continued to write for and draw my cartoon characters all the rest of my adult life, and all the while I was growing in my faith in God.

But one thing in my faith bothered me. I could understand how God could work all things together for good, and that he allowed some awful things – but I could not understand how he could work what had been done to me as a child together for good. How could he possibly use child abuse so bad that my little personality had to split to handle the stress? I had no idea. Then recently my first book of cartoon characters came out. People are telling me they are blessed by these characters, and I’m thinking, maybe — just maybe — when God restores my soul, he recycles all the damage into something good.

You be the judge. You can download my eBook based on these characters at Amazon.com: Lambu looks at the Bible.  Click the blue title “Lambu Looks at the Bible, by Marsha Marks” below the hearts at the top of this web page (right above this post) to see samples from the book. Enjoy! ♥

A Fine Way to Waste My Life

May 7, 2013 in Jean Foster Akin | Tags: , , , , , | by | 4 comments

P259-LTPP0259109273JCP-4*

by Jean Foster Akin

I was 24 when I married this sweetheart of a guy I met at work, and after several devastating miscarriages, I gave birth to a healthy son. I was twenty-seven. Six years later, we adopted a little five year-old girl from the Caribbean. I’d been married 9 years by then, and, strangely, I loved the man more than I had the day he turned his hazel eyes on me and asked me to marry him.

I planned boys’ paint ball parties, girls’ tea-and-crumpets parties, camping trips, days at the beach, and I wrote whenever I could. I looked forward to sitting with my husband on the back porch at night after the children were asleep, watching the stars move and knowing it was us who were moving, not the stars. It was us, sitting on a spinning blue ball.

Shucking Corn

My college girlfriends, who had gone on to be professionals-married-to-professionals, sighed at my contentedness and gave me sad faces, telling me that I was “wasting” my life washing dishes and keeping house. They didn’t understand the concept that “to everything there is a season,” and that I was made to mother. Sometimes, neither did I. “You need to be doing something with your life,” they instructed me. Something? Why, I was regularly spending 20 minutes getting action figures like Woody, Buzz Lightyear, G.I. Joe, and Spiderman out of their packages and into my son’s grateful hands; Barbie was rarely out of her box in under 30 minutes, much to my daughter’s chagrin. And then it took another half hour getting Barbie out of her skimpy mini-skirt and into a fluffy, ankle-length evening gown, threading her pointy hands with those sharp outstretched thumbs through the narrow lace sleeves. There’s Doctor Barbie, Horse Riding Club Barbie, Teacher Barbie, and many more, but regardless of what the package says, Barbie always comes in the box dressed like Street-Walker Barbie. Any mom who has ever remedied that while making a daughter happy has accomplished this thing called ”doing something.“

Off to Picnic

We also accomplished something on the Day of the Wasps. Dean was outside mowing the lawn, the children were outside playing ball with our puppy, I was inside mopping the kitchen floor. Suddenly I heard high-pitched screaming and Dean shouting: “Run! Run!” In seconds my family burst through the kitchen door followed by the angry ground wasps that Dean had disturbed with the mower. I jumped into the fray with my husband, frantically slapping wasps off our children’s heads, off the wailing puppy, releasing more malevolent buzzing into the air.  Our young son feinted this way and that, stomping wasps dead with his sneakered feet. My husband stripped off his clothes, leaving on only the minimum (in order to maintain some modicum of parental dignity) while releasing the wasps from the rest of his clothing and swatting at the stinging insects that were menacing his children. Our daughter, reverting in her terror to her mother-tongue, screamed a mixture of French, Spanish, and pure gibberish while dancing in place. It was a scene of chaos, and, when it was over and the enemy had been vanquished, we all stood there in the suddenly silent kitchen, listening to our battle-weary panting. Dean and I looked at each other then, and struck with thoughts of the antics we had all just engaged in, burst into laughter that the children couldn’t understand. When two kids in love become parents, they develop strange hormones that allow them to run into a swarm of bees to save their children from pain. Sure, it’s heroic, but it often looks pretty ridiculous.

I wanted to write books from an early age. Children disrupted my writing schedule, but as Anne Tyler once said: “It seems to me that since I had children, I’ve grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.” More grey hair. More heartache. More joy. More anxiety. More love. And yes, Anne, more of a self to speak from.

Boating in Vermont

The adoption failed; for all intents and purposes it failed. But the rest of us are here. I am married to a strong, principled, protective man, one who can still make me laugh—25 years after we said “I do”—till the tears run down my face. Our son has kept the Faith. His life stretches out before him, filled with great possibilities, filled with some uncertainties. There will be moments of spirit-lifting excitement for him and for us. There will be moments of heartbreaking sorrow (because there always are). But we will be there for each other; we will get each other through.

I am a wife and a mother. I am a writer too. I will always love to write…and I will always love ”wasting” my life with these people.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY.

sunrise

April 30, 2013 in Margie Boswell Miller | Tags: , , , | by | 6 comments

Margie Miller*

by Margie Boswell Miller

Recently, my six-year-old daughter Sarah put her arms around my neck and said, “I’ve had a hard day.” I quietly held her and stroked her hair. Then she pulled back, put my face in her hands and said, “And you have too, Mom.”

Stunned by her awareness, I could only nod and whisper, “Thank you.” Simply the fact that she noticed began to mend some of the broken parts that were drifting, edges jagged, within my heart. The rift of damaged relationship and the sorrow-based anger with which I respond reveals the vast imperfection that is me, the me I like to pretend doesn’t exist but who, like a shadow in sunlight, is inescapably present.

Years ago, a friend said, “You are a situational-based person.” When I asked what he meant he said I entered situations believing they should be certain ways, and when they weren’t, I perceived them as flawed. “No I don’t!” I laughed. “You have got to be joking,” and vehemently denied his characterization. For weeks, nay years, I shook my head and thought, “He just doesn’t know me.”

Later, I moved and married and had children and all the while fashioned ideals around how it would be. Marriage would be blissful and supportive. My children would be responsible, happy, and well-adjusted. My home would be clean; not perfect, but – assuredly – clean.

Until the times it went off the rails.

It’s the big and the little things that do it: The loss of a parent, or the frustration of finding – and buying – a house on which two people agree. Differing opinions about what makes a dinner good, and bickering over whose job it is to pay the car insurance. It is full containers of plastic wrap/aluminum foil/paper napkins spread across the kitchen floor by a toddler, and the months stretching into years without nearly enough sleep because the sensitive second baby’s lactose intolerance remains undiagnosed for far too long. It is ear infections and strep and pinkeye; allergies, seasonal colds, and unexpected trips to the ER. It is stress and worry and exhaustion, and the inability to express oneself without tears. It is the months-long unmopped floor.

On Sunday evening, my husband and I walked into church and sank into the pew in silence. We were worn with tension and misunderstanding. I mentally reviewed the day that had turned from shared purpose to one of cross purposes. The light fell upon us from the large stained glass window, and the seats began to fill. The lights dimmed slightly and we stood and started to sing.

As the music rose and our voices with it, clarity and gratitude swept over me. For it is in this place that I can be tired, and worn down, and messy. It is in this place that I can admit failure without shame. And in this place my faults are known, and I am loved even so.

I am grateful beyond measure for this faith in which perfection is neither expected nor required. In which I am not expected to do, but to accept. In which redemption is the happy ending, that situational expectation, I so often seek in this world.

I am grateful I can turn to the author of creation who, instead of accusing, takes my face in his hands and says, “I know you’ve had a hard day.”

I bowed my head and whispered, “Thank you.”

And with an ever gentle shift, the broken and jagged pieces of my heart softly began to mend.

IMG_1948

Dear Reader

April 23, 2013 in Vikki de los Reyes | Tags: , , | by | 9 comments

vikki*

by Vikki Carr de los Reyes

Dear Reader, have I shared with you that Catherine had me at mashed potatoes? From that point on I became a fan of her work. When she asked, do you write ever?, she got me into writing better (my ever wish) and writing more (my ever want). I became a student. When we started working on some creative projects together, I became an ally. It all started with becoming friends, of course.

For the past 2 years, I enjoyed reading posts at this site (which used to be baaaaa.com) and engaging with the authors. I was honored to contribute a few. A community of trust, inspiration and comfort was built. These bleats were really good for my soul. I have a feeling it was good for you, too. I just remembered Seth Godin’s book, Tribes. He defined a tribe as a group of people connected to each other by an idea. That the group only needs two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate. I think Catherine has become an excellent Tribe Leader.

When initial plans about some changes at baaaaa came up, I thought a change might do the site good. It’s the bright side of needing to replace something so dear, isn’t it? It means the hunt begins again. A reboot might not be so bad, right? So I thought, “Neat-o! I wonder what baaaaa 2.0 will look like this time.”  

I would love to be involved somehow. I would be perfectly happy to be a cheerleader for those trying the writing life. I can be counted on to give my comments in the posts.

But, Catherine had a more extreme idea of baaaaa 2.0. She invited me to share ownership of the site. I have to be honest, to be a regular contributor is not exactly my idea of involvement. I have been asked to write alongside QUALITY writers, and I am amazed.

Dear Reader, there’s a reason why I don’t promote my own personal blog. I have always felt it was never good enough to be promoted as #amwriting, to a wider audience. I know, right? It’s always an issue with me. I am picky. I share my blog only with friends. Friends with whom I feel safe enough to share my rawness. Friends who just love to read.

“A young writer is like a young horse. The basic gaits must be developed before too much perfection is required.  Just as we would not give over valuable young horse to just anybody to train, we must not give over our work to just anybody to critique. We must write from love and we must choose those to read us who read from love: the love of words.” ~ Julia Cameron, The Right To Write

Thankfully (for all), I am not the only one here at heartland. We’re a total of five. The other ladies who share this ownership have been kindred to me.

Katie had me at I want; She needs; He knows. I know you like that. Margie’s Yet is worthy of print, and her sweet visits to my blog are a delight. I met Jean via a cute and sweet comment thread. What a pleasure to engage with these ladies on any topic!  I’m a huge fan of their work. We have become friends, but that was no surprise, as my initial encounter with each prepared me to like them very much. What a QUALITY bunch of girls! Loverlies, indeed.

To encourage me further to continue to participate here, Catherine reminded of the Grace feature. You like that word, Grace, don’t you? Grace means, undeserved kindness.    Writers here are promised, from the group, grace.

So, here is my state. I am honored. I am excited. I will share my interests. I will communicate. I will trust my fellow contributors to take me under their wings.  I am eager to journey with them, the loverlies.

Isn’t that exciting? Everyone in the Tribe can be a leader and spread the idea that we share a common interest and a way to communicate.

Dear Reader, you shall read stories of women who face struggles and problems in life but also of hope, love and peace. Stories that find we are not people who always respond correctly in life… That we are weak and sinful in nature… that we are not finished products… that we try to be realistic in our way of life. You shall find a tribe committed to follow the One whose life ended on the cross.

Dear Reader, you will read of our need to rely on YOU daily.

Through this tribe, we hope to be a friend and bring friends who will encourage and support our relationship with You.

o (✿) (✿◡‿◡) o (◡‿◡✿) o (✿◡‿◡) o (◡‿◡✿) o (✿◡‿◡) o (◡‿◡✿) (✿)o

“Sing to God a brand-new song.

He’s made a world of wonders!” 

                                   ~  Psalm 98:1, The Message

perfection

April 18, 2013 in Katie Mulder | Tags: , , , | by | 6 comments

Katie Mulder*

written by Katie Mulder

•

He waited as our pastor introduced him… a young man, standing to the side of the stage. He wore a sharp, blue-checked button-down and khakis. Nice shoes. Cool glasses. He was headed off to lead missions in the public schools of Chicago, to follow the Great Commission, to begin a new life away from the church in which he’d been raised.  He was young and handsome and, apparently, well-known.

As he began to climb the stairs and walk to center stage, it was obvious that there was more to his story. He limped. He limped as if he’d limped his whole life. Standing still, of course, you couldn’t tell.  But as soon as he moved, well, there was a flaw. An obvious, mean-kids-on-the-playground kind of flaw.

I closed my eyes,

and my heart sank.

Don’t send him, I cried out silently.  Don’t send him away from here where he is known and loved and respected. They’ll laugh.  They’ll ignore him.  They’ll ask awkward questions.

They’ll hurt him.

They will.  I know they will because I have. I have been both the giver and receiver of irrational prejudice and find myself none the wiser. Having a daughter with special-needs, I should be the first to champion the meek and mild. I should. But, my heart is still human and my head thinks like a cautious parent. As much as I advocate for my child and challenge those around me to use their gifts, I am silently afraid.  Paralyzed.

What if they break his heart?

Please keep him safe.

Ah, but there are no guarantees.  Lucy and Mr. Beaver cleared that up for us years ago:

“Is he—quite safe?” [...]

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver [...] “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

No, Katie. He is not safe. All bets are off. No bargaining, no promises, no lengthy explanations.  No if-this-then-that’s, no crystal ball, no easy street.  He is good and magical and brilliant and all-knowing… and that is enough. He is the King. 

As our pastor prayed for guidance and grace, there was no question in his voice, no hesitation.  In the quiet that spread over the congregation, it became clear: that young man was perfect. Perfect for the kids, the parents, the co-workers he would soon meet.

What about the hearts this boy was—perfectly—made for?

Yes, what about those? 

My God is big enough to work through imperfect people.

The King is not safe, but He is good. He does not employ perfect people to work in perfect circumstances for perfect results. He asks everyday saints to inch their way forward for eternal gain.

We are in good hands.

I saw a flaw and begged for perfection.

God saw a willing heart and turned it into glory.

May my eyes be ever changed.

1 Samuel 16:7

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Anne Lamott and the Hounds from Hell

April 9, 2013 in Catherine Fruisen | Tags: , , | by | 8 comments

Catherine Fruisen*

Written by Catherine Fruisen.

In recent years—for the past decade, give or take—I had to write.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that I wanted to be an author, or that I enjoyed the craft, or felt a duty to exercise some kind of God-given talent. Perhaps little bits of those motives were present from time to time, but if so, they were pure fantasy. No. I mean, I literally had to write. I typed pages and pages, entire books that I could never share with anyone because they were about deeply personal stuff: bad, stupid things done in real families, and how all of that mess affected the people I love and, ultimately, me. I had to get it out.

Apparently my experience was not unique. In her book Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott shared an author friend’s description of the phenomenon: “It’s not like you don’t have a choice, because you do—you can either type or die.”

She went on to say, “writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained.”

An apt description, to be sure.

Bird by BirdAnne Lamott is one of my favorite authors. In many ways, she is my very favorite. She is hilarious, which I love, and she understands that life is a mix of beauty and horse poo—a reality she accepts without trying to recolor the bad parts with pithiness. In other words, she is wise. Our life stories are similar (but different), so I can relate and still find her fascinating. Most importantly, she writes about her faith with an honesty that I find refreshing. Her stuff is too raw for Lifeway—don’t look for Anne Lamott in any Christian bookstore. For a long time I considered the oversight a scandalous shame, but I have come to realize that the typical Lifeway shopper is not a member of this best-selling author’s target audience. She writes about her faith for people who would never go near the place, and that is good, because who else does that? Precious few.

Here’s the thing: It’s been a tumultuous year for me. My family moved a thousand miles north, and simultaneously my work load was stacked higher than I could see. My mind was filled to capacity with to-do lists, including the overwhelming tasks of helping my soft-spoken eleven-year-old son get settled in a new home/new city/new school, finding a new church (which I naively assumed would be easy—#amateur!), and meeting a hefty barrage of book deadlines, which, in addition to illustration, included writing assignments. Ha ha. (Future post: “God’s Sense of Humor,” or, “Praying Jabez for Your Business: What’s That You Say About Broadening My Horizons?”)

Recently, as things began to settle, I noticed an abject lack of barking between my ears. The hellhounds that formerly tormented my brain were gone. I wondered where they were, and, expectantly—drumming my fingers on the kitchen table, shooting anxious glances left and right—when they would return. So far, there has been no sign of them, and frankly I am giving up hope. But it’s okay. After the initial shock of their departure wore off I was hit by the realization that I don’t miss them. Nope, not at all. Fare thee well, hounds from hell.

In the resulting quiet I am able to notice, w-a-a-a-a-y down in the deepest part of my soul, a tiny, trembling sprout of desire. My former need to get it all out—to rat out the psychopaths and bullies, to analyze all of the crazy I see in myself and everyone around me—is being replaced by an as-yet timid desire to write for the people I used to know and still love: the atheists and actors and New-Agers, the agnostics and the hedonists and those beautiful, hell-bent alcoholic writers. And, God, the artists. They are my people, and I can’t go to my grave without making some kind of effort on their behalf.

So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God. ~ Philippians 1:9-11, The Message

Annie, it seems, understood from the start how to put legs on this passage. Not me. I have to figure it out.

a breath…a blink…

April 2, 2013 in Jean Foster Akin | Tags: , , , , , , , , | by | 13 comments

Jean*

Written by Jean Foster Akin.

My paternal grandmother was a Michigan farm woman of British and French stock. She’d been born Maude, a twin, fine-boned and wiry. I have only one photograph of her wearing slacks: she stands in a yard, holding up a long string of fish she’s caught. My grandfather snapped the photo. In it, Maude doesn’t smile proudly. She doesn’t smile at all. Taciturn, that is the word I would use to describe her. Her infrequent smile was always guarded.

I don’t remember her ever being cruel, but I also don’t remember much affection either. Only once can I recall feeling her papery, slender hand wrapped around mine: I was just a small child, standing on some dusty Michigan road with my dad’s extended family and friends, now-cloudy images, like ghosts in my mind. It was an August evening. We watched heat lightning scratch across the hot-as-blazes Michigan sky. I’d never seen lightning without rain. My Grandma, her cool summer frock hanging still in the oppressive heat, held my hand and tipped her face to the heavens, her expression unreadable.

My dad had moved us to Upstate New York by then, and so I didn’t see Grandma except every three years or so. I really didn’t know her well, but I know she believed in unhurried prayer and thanksgiving to a Protestant God, while the dinner grew cold on the table. She believed in hard work, sweat, and a molasses cookie for after. She attended church when the doors opened, and you didn’t say “God” around her unless you were on your knees.

Maude and Ira Foster, the author's paternal grandparents

She hid something painful behind that once-pretty face. I’ve never known what it was.

My maternal grandmother we called Nana. She was Irish. Her grandparents had come across in the 1840s from County Clair and County Cork. She was born Genevieve in 1900, and was raised Catholic in upstate New York. When Gen was six, a childhood friend was killed as a horse-drawn milk wagon raced over the top of her in the street. When Gen was eight, her mother, Anne, died in childbirth, leaving Gen, her two younger brothers, and her father behind. Gen’s father—feeling he could not care for them properly—sent her little brothers to an orphanage where he visited them every Sunday, with Gen in tow. He held her hand as they walked home together afterward, tears of grief streaming down his face. Every Sunday.

When she was twelve, Gen convinced her father to bring the boys home, and she raised those wild, mother-starved boys to responsible young men. They adored her, and, even as old men, their manner toward her was the respectful and considerate manner of sons toward a beloved mother.

My Nana was married 30 years when her husband died. She’d cared for him through heart disease, just as she’d always cared for everyone else: her father, her brothers, her children, and the children at the local school where she worked to make ends meet.

If she had a secret sorrow, it remained so. She taught us to sing Irish ditties, to speak with a brogue. She made cookies and lemon meringue pies. She told us stories about the people of our past…the people whose lives had molded ours. We knew if we had a problem, she would pray, not just once, but until the problem was resolved. She made us feel precious. She made me feel precious.

Once, when I was eight, a man brushed past me, my twin sister, and my Nana as we were on our way into the bank. He reached the door first, but instead of holding it for us, he allowed it to slam in our faces. With quiet dignity, my sweet Nana, maker of pies and singer of lullabies, drew up alongside him in line, and gave him a healthy shot in the ribs with the tip of her umbrella! Startled, he turned, and she proceeded to instruct him, calmly, before all the other customers, on the proper way to hold a door open for ladies. He mumbled an embarrassed apology, but it was enough for her. “He got my Irish up,” she told us later. She didn’t tolerate uncivil behavior, but she never held a grudge.

It’s all gone in a breath, in a blink, and only memories, imperfect memories, remain. We work, we fight, we laugh, we love, we hurt each other, we make up or we don’t. And when we die, words and dates are chiseled on our tombstones: Here lies…born…died…dearly loved…dearly missed…So much happens in that little dash they chisel between the date on which we were born and the date on which we die. So much.

How will they all remember me? Will my little dash be spoken of with warmth, with love, with bitter-sweet remembrance, perhaps even with a little astonishment? I often doubt it, but I hope so.

Yet.

March 26, 2013 in hope, Margie Boswell Miller | Tags: , , , , , , , | by | 6 comments

Margie Miller*

Written by Margie Boswell Miller.

Of late, I am touched by loss: The mother of a childhood friend and the young husband of a sorority sister have recently, and quite suddenly, died, and another friend’s spouse is newly beset with terminal cancer. The heartbreaking news has me scanning Facebook and Caring Bridge posts with greater frequency and with the oft-murmured entreaty: “Help them.”

By contrast, it is springtime at my mother-in-law’s home in the rolling woods of East Texas. The girls and their cousins — barefoot and bare-legged — run in and out the back door calling each other scavengers as they search for treasure before racing scooters down the long, winding driveway with the sun on their arms and faces. Here, the greening has begun; against a background of as yet bare-limbed trees, grasses sprout. I spy a bee carefully alighting on a newly revealed flower even as I am called to Come! See! Play! amidst shrieks and laughter.

This season should come as no surprise, but when winter with its heavy brown coat obscures the living earth, it’s easy to believe the land will remain in a sort of permanent dormancy. Last year, we think, the flowers bloomed. But at the sight of the season’s new-birthed radiance we gasp, as beauty floods senses and spirit as if a promise — perhaps long-forgotten or, in some cases, doubted — is fulfilled.

The funeral last week of my friend’s mother, Nan, a lifelong Episcopalian and woman of the church, fell squarely in mid-Lent. During Lent all weddings, baptisms, and confirmations are postponed until after Easter, and even the altar dressing is minimal. The liturgy, too, reflects the arid aesthetic with a restriction of the word Alleluia. A Lenten funeral, then, would appropriately be as barren as winter.

Nan’s son Patrick and I, and our three younger siblings, rode many years to summer camp in her station wagon. She and my mom claimed the front seats while the rest of us piled up in the back. The heat was stifling in the vinyl-seated car in the ‘70s in Texas in July, but we were too excited to notice. At week’s end, they returned and we, now grimy and sunburned, climbed in again and rested in exhausted silences to the muffled and indistinct sound of our mothers’ voices rising and falling and laughing as the car lumbered home.

We believed life would go on like that forever.

At the funeral, Patrick said that as a little boy his mother allowed him to go down the sidewalk, “only as far as I can see you.” As an older boy, it was “only as far as you can hear me call.” As an adult, the sidewalk became the phone call “to let me know where you are.” Now, he said, “I can’t see her, hear her voice, or let her know where I am.” It is, as he said, a place of great grief.  A winter of the soul.

By contrast, his mother’s funeral was celebrated with the full Easter liturgy:
Celebrant: “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”
People: “The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!”

Through the tears of our grief and beneath the weight of our loss we said it:

Alleluia. Alleluia.

We strive to understand these mysteries: That grief will turn to joy, that suffering will lead to glory, that death will lead to life. And yet we ever bear witness to this truth:

Winter is the harbinger of spring.

The girls and their cousins are calling me outside to the sun, to the trees, to the new life around them. Their laughter peals even through the heavy windows and walls of the house, beyond which new-birthed beauty floods senses and spirit.

Easter yet flowers forth.

Alleluia. Alleluia.

IMG_2703

new day

March 16, 2013 in Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , | by | 1 comment

Catherine Fruisen*

by baaaaa.com sitemaster Catherine Fruisen (a.k.a. the rotund bald guy pulling the levers behind this site’s curtain), an illustrator who lives with her husband and awesome little boy amid dairy farms in upstate New York

Hey everybody. (Big smile. Bigger wave.) It’s me, Catherine, the one who thought up this blog two years ago and has been maintaining and promoting it for the past year and a half. (Straightens skirt, tucks fallen tress behind unusually obtrusive, elf-like ear.) I have an announcement:

baaaaa.com is moving in a new direction.

There are several good and valid reasons for the change. The only one that I will share is the simplest to explain: my personal schedule has changed. I am out of time.

Henceforth I will share ownership of baaaaa.com with four friends—Katie Mulder, Margie Miller, Jean Foster Akin, and Vikki Carr de los Reyes—all of whom are excellent writers. (I am  totally riding on their shirt tails; it’s an understanding between us.) We will take turns posting on a rotating schedule, with the occasional guest post (by Margo James and others, t.b.a.) thrown in when one of us inevitably can’t make her deadline.

Readers, thank you. We hope you’ll stick with us. And WRITERS—you marvelous, wonderful people—thank you for all of your completely voluntary contributions. Thanks for putting up with my editing, my barbaric 800-word limit, and my—ahem— *scheduling errors* (big smile coupled with nervous chuckling). Special thanks to Kimberly Shorter who helped get the site going, and to my friend “Nueva Luz” who risked life and limb to share his story here. And Brett Wilkes, volunteer editor-in-chief—THANK YOU!

You’ve all been so good to me.

Every blessing,

c

Heartland (formerly baaaaa.com) is a writing group shared by Katie Mulder, Margie Miller, Jean Foster Akin, Vikki Carr de los Reyes, and Catherine Fruisen.

Katie’s Blog

Margie’s Blog

Jean’s Blog

Catherine’s Blog

Vikki’s Blog

Lambu Looks at the Bible

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