Author: amylynw

Touches of Love

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Healing as been a recurring theme this week!  It can never come unless there is something unwell!  Throw up on the couch.  On the kitchen floor.  On the bed.  In the bowl.  It’s been everywhere, and is magnified by the number of tummies feeling its effects.  Yet today, I can praise God for healing.  Full suitcases, healed bellies.  He is so good.

My geranium is in full bloom.

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This morning at breakfast Elsie climbed up next to Elijah at the table, laid her head on his shoulder and sweetly said his name.  Ji-jah.  Sometimes we only need to hear our name to know we are loved.  When God says my name and rejoices over me with singing, I know I am loved.

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I love this sweet little girl with hot pink fingernails, who keeps tripping over herself because she has her shoes on the wrong feet.  I will miss my babies this week in a heart-ache kind of way.  Great is our God who watches over His children.

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I’ll see you on the other side of Haiti.

My foes are many, they rise against me
But I will hold my ground
I will not fear the war, I will not fear the storm
My help is on the way, my help is on the way

Oh, my God, He will not delay
My refuge and strength always
I will not fear, His promise is true
My God will come through always, always

Troubles surround me, chaos abounding
My soul will rest in You
I will not fear the war, I will not fear the storm
My help is on the way, my help is on the way

Oh, my God, He will not delay
My refuge and strength always
I will not fear, His promise is true
My God will come through always, always

I lift my eyes up, my help comes from the Lord…

song by Kristian Stanfil that has been on repeat this week in our house.

A Snake in My Garden

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I have a favorite book called There’s a Snake in My Garden, by Jill Briscoe.  I remember seeing it on my mom’s bookshelf in Africa and came by my own copy later in life.  Not until recently has that realization really hit home.  Knowing there is an enemy and feeling his slithering evil are two different experiences.  His whispers are believable yet untrue.  His enticements are tempting, but always destructive.  Temptations are shiny on the outside but ugly on the inside.  Sweet to the taste, but leave us throwing up and bent over with pain.  Temptation in and of itself is not sin, but just like a seed only needs some water and light to grow, it doesn’t take much for temptation to grow into more.  The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, He will show you a way out so that you can endure. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

That is the good news.  The gardener of our hearts doesn’t turn His back on us, lock the door and let us fend for ourselves.  When we start fending for ourselves, is when everything falls apart.  Thinking I can handle temptation on my own strength is recipe for complete failure.

Jesus isn’t looking to condemn us.  He is looking to free us.  Confession and repentance lead to forgiveness and healing.  Don’t let the ripple effect of sin reach its tendrils into every facet of your life.  The yucky part is confessing our sins to one another.  Even more yucky, though, is if we don’t.

This week I’ve experienced love, healing, and growth.  The snake isn’t dead yet, but he is defeated and he knows it.  He surely wants to ruin us while he has a chance, but Jesus is stronger.  Sin is broken.  He has healed us.

Empty Suitcases

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Recently my prayer has been to change, to grow.  So He challenges me.  He pulls out all the stops until I’m left with nothing but His grace alone.  I’ve come face-to-face with the hard reality that our enemy isn’t after Christians who have everything to lose.  He’s after those who have nothing left to lose because they’ve given it all up for Christ.  Jesus is after total surrender.  I assumed that because we’re traveling to another country this week, God would keep us from sickness.  He is more concerned at honing my trust in Him than He is about keeping me comfortable.   As I washed sheets covered in vomit at dinnertime, then bathed another child reeking in their waste at midnight, I had to praise Him for the strength to do these things.  The water to wash.  The clean sheets to replace.  The comfort I could give.  As my tummy gurgles uncomfortably tonight I have to praise Him.  The other choice isn’t an option, because it will just keep me where I am, and I want to grow and change.

The suitcases sit empty, and I anticipate their filling soon.  As they are filled, I pray I would be emptied of myself so I have nothing but Christ to offer those He puts in my path.suitcase

Like A Kite

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The clouds have done nothing but rush by all day long.  The sky changes so abruptly I can barely keep up with whether it’s sunny or cloudy.  This week has done much of the same: quickly change from one thing to the next.  All of a sudden it’s Thursday again!  My thoughts feel choppy, like the gusts of wind whipping us about today.  I won’t try to smooth them out, but rather let them out as they fly.

Pig tails, brown eyes, and boo-boo’s on her nose.

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A frequented spot in our house: the potty!  This week Betty has successfully potty-trained herself.  She loves her panties, her potty, and the two chocolate chips she gets when she goes!  Sometimes even her pink baby bunny has to go potty too.  We’re going on day 3 of dry panties, even through naps!  It’s super fun going places without having to think about a diaper bag!

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I caught this boy engrossed in a book.  He was pretending to be annoyed at me.

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Recently, the boys started wrestling with our local school.  They love it!  Such a great experience for them both!

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Elsie is the queen of accessory.  While on an afternoon visit to Grandma’s, she had to bring half  her bed along.

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Looking at her eyes is like drinking dark chocolate.

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I’m so thankful that tea-parties are not above my boys’ taste.  They’re manly enough to enjoy fine china.  Elijah had a laughing fit at one point.

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In a week, Nadine & I will be getting ready to fly out of the country to Haiti!  We’re super excited to leave these wintry winds behind for a week and see the sunshine from another part of the world.  I haven’t started actually packing yet, but in my head I have.  There is school, cooking, laundry, and other things that don’t stop just because I think it would be super convenient of them to do so. My heart is more important than my suitcase, and I’m praying that God prepares me for whatever He has in store for us there.

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I love her creative self.  She’s always had a thing for kites, so she came up with her very own garbage bag kite to enjoy on this very windy day!  She told me she’d like to sell them for 50 cents.  AND they conveniently fit in one’s pocket.  Love it.

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It’s been a grand fast-flying week.

 

The Snow Angels Declare

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All week  I’ve been watching my little geranium about to bloom on the kitchen window sill.  This morning it was fully open.  It’s simply breathtaking to see a burst of living color in the dead of winter.  My eyes look at it, feeling starved.  I can’t stop drinking in its color and life!

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Now the snow is falling.  Of course the boys went right outside to play in it.  I happened to look out of the laundry room window to see them smiling at a pair of snow angels they just made.  I gave them a thumbs up and they grinned even bigger.  A few minutes later I heard their voices at the front door asking me to come and see something.  My first thought was, No thank you, I’d rather not risk being bitten by the snow.  However, an excitement in their voices drew me past even my annoyance of the cold.

Mom!  We made snow angels down the WHOLE sidewalk!  Sure enough, they did.

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When I turned to come back inside, Elijah said, Now everyone can see how great the glory of God is!

I am speechless.  What a way to look at everything we do.  All for the glory of God, so everyone can see how great and awesome He is!

God’s Holy Equation

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The icy air seeps through my gloves which clutch the steering wheel.  I mutter under my breath as I pull the wheel with every muscle fiber in my upper body, just to get out of the parking space.  The inside of his truck reeks of glue and wood and stain.  The darkness of the evening hides what I know is everywhere: dust & dirt from a working man’s truck.  The stick shift comes naturally, but every change of gear is a bit precarious because of everything I’m trying to balance on my short drive.  A big red plate of cookies, half-way fitting on the dashboard, slides as I make my first left turn.  Instinctively I grab it with my right, still making the hard left turn up-hill.  I quickly remember that it is a two-handed job to turn this beast, and I shove the plate onto my lap before it’s too late.  Again, I grumble at the hardship.  My arms burn from making one left turn.  I sit and think about him.

The icy feeling is in my heart too, you know, not just my fingers and toes.  This gift called marriage is work, they told us.  Eleven years ago I wasn’t sure I believed them.  How can something so amazing, so right, and so beautiful take work?  Doesn’t it come naturally?  Don’t the feelings just fall into place?  You know the answer, as sure as my arms were burning.

Sometimes the drifting is over days or weeks or months.  Other times it’s from one hour to the next.  Suddenly he’s there and I’m stuck over here and there’s a bridge somewhere but I’m too tired to find it.  I clutch the steering wheel harder, hoping my fingers will get warmer.  There’s no heat in this thing, and I keep the bad words from coming out of my mouth.

It seems impossible  not to let my feelings match up with the cold.  Like a game of memory, I flip them both over and stack them up beside me.  Inside me.  I turn them over again and again.  Before the stack gets any higher, I arrive at my destination.

Warmth overwhelms me.  Physical, yes, but it reaches into my soul.  Friends, sisters, they are changing the game.  I keep flipping over matches, but they’re the opposite of what I’ve been seeing.  Love coupled with warmth.  Another toasty card is matched up with care, then listening ears, then more love.   The unity and power of love can not be squelched.  The chill is dissipating from my soul.  My heart beats faster for him.

As I walk back to the dusty, rusty truck, I’m jolted back into winter from the brief oasis of warmth I’ve experienced.  Yet something has changed.  Love changes us.  It certainly trumps this eery, distant feeling that’s etched itself all over my heart.  I quit the game of selfishness and throw my towel at the frigid feelings trying to squelch my desire.  Once home, I crawl into our cozy bed and pray over his sleeping warm body.  Then as if from God Himself, the bridge we needed but couldn’t see from cold and selfish hearts, opens up between us.  The gap is closed.   God’s holy equation of two equaling one, melts my chill hard heart into worship.

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Doing the Beautiful

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Between the lines… what really happens?  More than I can write about.  I want these writings to be something my children can look back on and see… love… laugh… learn… remember.  This month has been full to the brim with adventures, excitement, ordinary happenings and trying ordeals.  Some days have felt full.  Others have felt more like everything has broken all around me and what was once beautiful is being spilled onto the floor and wasted.  But more on that later.

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Sometimes I feel like I’m looking in a mirror when I glance up at this girl.  She’s eye-level with me now.  When did this happen?

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Sometimes I am looking in the mirror.  Yes, I was rather grossed out to see there was enough dried-on toothpaste flung onto our bathroom mirror for someone to play tic-tac-toe on it.  Yes, I took a picture.  Because I know this aberration will not be seen when these kids have flown the coop and I have all day long to polish my bathroom mirrors.  That is what I’ll be doing, right?

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This guy’s blue eyes fill a special place in my heart.  They are the first to open in the morning.  They are tender with tears when he misses his little sister visiting Grandma.

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Way back on January 5th, we were woken up with rustling feet and excited voices.  Big sister pulled everyone’s signatures and proudly presented this card to us.  Then littlest sister proceeded to eat the breakfast I was served in bed.  It was a special morning, marking eleven years married to the love of my life.

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Before the leg was hurt, everyone enjoyed watching Daddy crank out some moves on his blades.

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Don’t be fooled by the princess helmet, polka-dot pants and Mary Jane shoes underneath those plastic fisher price wheels.

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This girl can bust out some moves of her own!

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Sometimes I have helpers in the kitchen.  Sometimes an egg beater covered in vanilla pudding is the trick to stopping the evening-blues that tend to hit sweet two-year-old girls.

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Often there are hand stands, flips, break-dances, and other movements thumping the floor.

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After our December journeys, our van really did look that bad.  Not a speck of shine.  Since we had exactly enough money for a car-wash, we treated our van to a little pampering.  I’m not sure who was more excited: the kids or I.  Betty was in awe and when we exited the wash and kept saying, Again!  Again!

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Five days a week, there is school.  I relish the one-on-one times.  Jack is like an airplane who has stopped its taxi only to get faster until its airborne.  He is flying over obstacles, and getting better and better at sticking to a hard task until it’s finished.  The new camouflage overalls given to him recently have been a huge hit.

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Other spaces in my day find more messes.  More brokenness.  More being spilled out.  Sometimes I react like Jesus’ disciples did to the woman who broke a very expensive jar of perfume with which to anoint Jesus’ head:  Why this waste, Lord?  The time spent cleaning up, making beautiful, or saving for something special.  Then, disaster, messiness, shattered glass.  What’s the point?

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I hear Jesus speak in return to my disgust, my wondering, my anger.  You have done a good work for me…  You have done what you could.

Jesus never wastes trials.  Our perspective is so temporal.  It sees the shards.  He sees the end.

The ultimate brokenness was for you and for me.  He hung, perfect and sinless, bleeding and broken on a wooden cross.  More pain than shattered glass or ruined hopes.  In His brokenness, He crushed through the worst barrier separating us from God: sin.  While his mother wept and wondered at this loss, this waste of a perfect life… God saw the end.  He saw what we get to see now!  Resurrection power poured out on all who believe.  Forgiveness of sins.  Eternal life.  All because of brokenness.

Nothing we are going through is a waste.  He redeems, sweeps up broken pieces, restores, heals, forgives, and makes beautiful that which we thought was defective.  He turns what we think is worthless into something of unimaginable value.

So I will keep on doing what is before me.  What I can do.  I will give Him my best, my cracked, empty self.  Jesus says when we do this, we have done a beautiful thing for Him. (Mark 14:6)

Falling in With Joy

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Have you ever fallen into something terrible?  Generally speaking, I don’t tend to fall into pits or deep crevices, but I do sometimes fall into trials.  James said this would happen if you’re a Christ-follower.  We don’t go looking for trials.  We don’t try to get ourselves into trouble.  We fall into it.  Like last Sunday night: I never saw it coming.

Now we have a choice once we’ve fallen in.  Consider anger.  What does this benefit?  Bitterness toward God starts to grow.  Mistrust in His ways and character.  Consider depression.  Where would that lead?  A despondent spirit, full of myself, my feelings, my pity.  The third option is what James tells us to do when we’ve gone in deep.

Consider joy.  Not just a dash of joy, either.  All joy.  Pure joy.  Nothing but joy.  Opportunity for great joy.  Full of joy.  Sheer joy.  Exceeding joy.  We’re fortunate.  We should be happy.  Trials are  occasions for joy.  

Wow.  Unlike the other non-benefits to responding otherwise, choosing joy brings a great reward. The testing of our faith produces patience, which leads to perfection, or complete maturity.  Basically, we grow up when we go through trials.  Our endurance has a chance to grow.  We’re told by James to let it grow.  Don’t hinder endurance muscles by plopping down on the couch and yelling, “Why?  Why?”  Another version says, Learn well to wait so you will be strong and complete and in need of nothing.

This week has been a steady dose of waiting.  Plenty of opportunity to learn well.  You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

Matthew’s leg continues to heal slowly.  It’s a stubborn infection, needing much rest.  For my many-mile-loving-hard-working-only-stopping-to-sleep kind of guy, this has been a huge faith and endurance test.  I think running one-hundred miles was easier for him than lying down all day has been.  Just like when you’ve been lifting weights for a while and someone looks at you, tilts their head and says, “You look stronger!” I can see faith muscles starting to show.  Let it grow.  Medical or otherwise, trials are just plain hard.  That is why we don’t go looking for them.  We fall into them, and yet we’re not alone.  As Isaiah 33:6 says, He is your constant source of stability; He abundantly provides safety and great wisdom; He gives all this to those who fear Him.

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ER Date

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Please, God, just let us stay at home tonight, I kept praying.  Matthew went to bed at 8 o’clock, looking feverish and limping into bed.  A two-week-old gash on his leg changed from a sore that looked like it was healing, to an angry, swollen, sore leg.  Infection was swiftly making its home in his blood, taking up residence where it has no right to belong.  So, here we sit in Hallway Bed A.  Emergencies all around us, requiring us to take a hallway bed.

Thank you, Lord for his leg.  In a different century, that might not be.

We see how frail our bodies are.  How quickly a small trip up can lead to more serious consequences.  It was just a wooden box.  It was just a little wound.   How can it wreak such havoc?  One thing leads to another.

We see people we know.  A friend of theirs rushed here by ambulance because of an overdose.  One choice ravages a life.  One thing leads to another.

The red creeps past the black marker.

………………………………………………………………….

It’s been awhile now.  Antibiotics are surging into his bloodstream.  Picking a fight with the nasty bad guys we can’t see.  The red stops creeping.

Fear collides with peace.  We will keep our eyes on You.  

Going home for the rest of the night.  We’ve had fun on our ER date.  It’s been awhile since we had one of those.  Prayers all over the globe were answered on our behalf in a lavished-on grace-full way.  Home tonight.  We eat popcorn in our bed, fully aware that God is good.

We will keep our eyes on You.

Terrifical Twos

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Click.  The dreadful sound of Betty locking herself in the bathroom.  Again.  It is futile to describe to her how to turn the old-fashioned lock on the other side.  One inch away, yet so very far.  So I don my imaginary cape and slip out Nadine’s bedroom window onto the steeper-than-I-remembered roof.  Again.  I’m sweating profusely in the January air.  I really hope I don’t start to slide.  Carefully, I crawl to the bathroom window, praying it’s not locked.  It’s difficult to open, but not impossible.  There she stands, in her baggy pink panties, yelling at her siblings through the door, oblivious to my presence behind her, climbing very awkwardly through the window.  I think if I had a real cape on, it would have looked more impressive.  I show her (again) how to turn the lock other other way, and we’re out in the hallway again!

Not a bad way to remember her 2nd birthday.  Little miss has been strutting around in panties too big for her, held up by a giant safety-pin.  She wants to sit on the potty all the time, but nothing comes out.  Every few minutes: Mommy!  Potty!  Then nothing.  Finally, about the fifty-third try: success!  That chocolate chip never tasted sweeter.  She loves to talk.  She, like her two siblings preceding her, loves oats.  Opes with bananas!   She loves to help unload the dishwasher with Nadine.  After they’re all finished, they bump the door closed with their bottoms.  She laughs every time.  We just love our Betty Ann.  Happy birthday, darling Betty!

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I’ve never liked the “terrible twos” title.  I think it boxes them in to being a certain way.  She has certainly found her voice and exerts her will, but are those terrible things to learn?  I can’t allow a stereotypical label dictate how I perceive or train her.  She is not trying to frustrate me, and I need to respond to her challenges with love and firmness.  It’s an hourly, sometimes moment-by-moment work.  It’s sweaty, tiring, and sometimes takes me away from my personal to-do’s.

We recently switched bedrooms around, and she is now sharing her little pink room with Elsie.  They are both thrilled with the arrangement.  Now the boys share the attic and Nadine has her own room.  She has been craving her own space, and feeling the age gap between her little sisters very keenly.  Other arrangements throughout the house have been an improvement on our space: switching the dining room table with the kitchen table, adding a shelf here or there, throwing more things away, doing a little tidying every day throughout the day.  Sometimes I feel like I’m growing up.

Maybe one day I’ll get that cape.