2023's Greatest Hits

This has been a hard year. That makes it hard to write any of the things most people write in their Christmas letters like "we had a blessed year" and "God is so good to us". Those things are very true, even truer after a hard year. That doesn't make it a bad year, just a year--we enjoyed many good things. But after a hard year it feels disengenuous to brag about all of the accomplishments and highlights without acknowledging the difficulties. So here is an attempt at a yearly update that isn't depressing but is still realistic. Becuase that's where I'm trying to live my life right now.

Life on our little acerage is full of messes and magic. We had some kittens born and are up to 4 who hang around the property (and hopefully no more). Our dumb dog Diesel is always up to mischief but he keeps the critters away and tries to protect the house, so we keep him around. I kind of enjoy having an enthusiastic greeting every single time I drive into the garage.
There are always chicken dramas being played out in the hen house. Daniel spends as much of his spare time as he can working on tractor projects, chopping wood, and using the tractor he spends time fixing up and improving. The girls all enjoy outside time, exploring the woods and running free and wild.

In January, we took a quick weekend trip to Chicago and went to Medieval Times with the kids who hadn't ever been there before. We'd been studying middle ages in school so the timing was good. We showed them some of the downtown sites and watched "Adventures in Babysitting" which takes place in Chicago. 

In Feburary Jayna and I attended a Bright Lights conference for moms and daughters at the Ark Encounter in Kentucky. We got to stay with good friends who live in Cincinatti, and learned about speaking truth to your heart. Jayna enjoyed seeing the replica of Noah's ark and took lots of pictures.

In March I attended a homeschooling conference with some of my other mom friends who homeschool (and one who doesn't but just likes to come with us). Speaking of homeschooling, for those interested, we are still at it. Stacy and Lois are still in Classical Conversations and I enjoy having a community of friends who are doing the same stuff as us. We get to do a lot of exploring and reading about subjects we find interesting, and the girls are learning a lot of useful and not useful things about history, science, music, art and everything in between.
Arlene has transitioned to more online classes and will be taking some high school classes at the public high school as well. She still isn't sure about her plans for the future, but being a pilot is one of her serious options. Jayna is still exploring all of her potential while we try to find the best ways to educate her with what she likes and needs to get her to her career goals.

Which takes us to April, when we wrapped up our year at Classical Conversations. For a special treat, I got pied in the face. the kids in our Essentials class which teaches grammar and math, had an insentive to be the ones who practiced copying charts the most. Whoever got the highest amount could put a pie in the face of the mom of their choice. Having spent the spring being a goof ball with some sixth grade girls, and having tutored a class of 4th graders, I was the logical choice. I don't really hope to repeat that experience but it was funny and I love those students a lot.
Jayna participated in the musical State Fair with the homeschool assistance program, something she very much enjoyed. She was a pickle judge. we also got to see some of the fruits of a year with a new piano teacher for Arlene. She still loves playing and has flourished with an instructor who has honed in on technical details, music theory, and self-teaching. 

In May Daniel got to experience a career highlight. His team of engineers took a three-week trip to Alaska to demonstrate their radio to the military at a giant military thing. His job is technical and I never have any idea what he actuall does. It was a successful and rewarding trip but full of work, work, work. He and his team stayed together at a mansion in the mountains and spent every waking hour together. Thankfully they get along pretty well, and did manage to squeeze in a couple of sight-seeing things whle there. Of course Denali was on the top of the list.
My friend from college, Meagan, came to visit during that three weeks, a nice break in the three weeks of single parenting for me. We only see each other once a year at most, so we filled up the time getting the garden ready, eating tasty food, and exploring some unique spots in Cedar Rapids.
May also held some very hard moments for me personally as the youth pastor I've served with for five years lost his position. That involved a lot of heartbreak for a lot of people I care very much for, including myself. Then helping a friend in crisis took up the second part of the month, as well as a family emergency that hospitalized a sister-in-law and three of her children.

Meagan and me at the Noleridge Greenhouse

The happy reunion

 After crazy May settled, we decided to take a family vacation in June. We'd been thinking Colorado, but when the forcast was rain for the whole week, we switched plans and drove south to Tennessee and stayed in the Great Smoky Mountains at a cabin. We enjoyed hikes to waterfalls and exploring the culture of that region. A fun story from that trip: I left my purse at a Waffle House on the trip down, and spent the whole week trying to call them and locate my purse but they were not answering the phones. Checking the credit card useage and finding no charges, I just decided to leave that in the hands of God and enjoy the vacation time instead of cancelling every card. We swung back through Kentucky waffle house on the way home and, praise be, the waitor there had immediately seen my purse and locked it up. He said he'd tried to find me on facebook and attempted to find any contact info but couldn't, so he just kept it. They recognized me the minute I came in. What a gift to have strangers who chose to be the good in the world.

We spent the summer doing summery things like youth group trips, camp, and hanging out at the parks and pools. Despite a drought we had a bumper crop of wild berries, so I canned several batches of jam. (among other things like tomato sauce and green beans). This is a recent endeavor of mine that expands every year.
We attended four weddings, one for our babysitter who Stacy is named after, and one for our nephew, the first of their generation to tie the knot. The other two weddings were for family friends, who happened to be cousins of Stacey the babysitter. 

At home with a therapy pet in the hospital

August was extra full with preparing for school. I took a trip to Atlanta to visit my sister and had a great time relaxing while she and her husband did all of the cooking, cleaning, planning and driving. I got to see the Gone with the Wind Museum, hike through a woods where some Avengers movies were filmed, and take in the sights and sounds of Atlanta.
Stacy decided to get baptized which was a wonderful milestone for her. 
At the end of August Jayna underwent surgery #15 for her burn injury. This time they were releasing some of her tight skin to allow better growth and development. She had a second surgery four weeks later in September, a skin graft to cover the open areas that had released. She spent most of those two months focusing on healing, and I spent most of them caring for her. With physical therapy, she's gained almost all of her mobility back, something that hasn't been the case since her original injury. She handled all of that with grit and bravery, as she always has. She honestly didn't complain about the inconveniences of it or try to make anyone feel sorry for her. She just powered through and did everything she needed to. That girl knows her way around a hospital room and almost has a different personality when she's among the caregivers of the medical world. She's planning to be a child life specialist and work at a hospital some day.

In October we enjoyed another piano recital for Arlene, after which Stacy and Lois decided they also wanted to take piano lessons. For Fall Fest at church, we went as brand mascots, except Stacy who wanted to be a cat. Jayna was Blue Bonnet, Lois was Sun Maid, and I was Little Debbie, which I'm pretty sure is a costume that will never be topped. It was annoying that so many people thought I was there to hand out snacks, though...

In November I took a random trip with two of the homeschool moms to Chicago to see Hamilton and go to the Field Museum. that was a highlight of the year for me. We got in lots of good memories and conversations. Even though I wouldn't call myself a Hamilton fan, I very much enjoy live theater and soaked in every second of it.

December filled up with the usual December things, and here we are, the last week of the year, reflecting and relaxing. Looking forward to a better year in 2024, just as we always do. Hope is a beautiful thing that keeps us moving through hard times and huge transitions. We're always hopeful of better times ahead. We studied Revelation in church this fall, which established a hope of the future, of a time when there won't be big let-downs and needs for surgeries and failed attemps at teaching and learning. We're hopeful of the days when Jesus returns and makes "everything sad untrue" as the hobbit likes to say. Until then, we rely on our faith to take us through and give us the consolation and fortitude to continue. Blessings to each of you who took the time to read this long letter. I'm more thankful than ever for friends who show up and pray and care, and friends who stick around year after year. Happy New Year and may it be everything we hope for--and more.

Valleys and Scars

 What do you do when your soul is broken open and the only way you know how to heal it is to write, but it seems all of the words you normally have are strangling in the lump in your throat and your heart can’t seem to handle one sentence?

What do you do when your heart breaks and you want to run and hide but you have people depending on you and daily duties that can’t go undone, and your heart is pounding but you can’t stop to think?

What do you do when you long for a friend to share you burden but all of your friends are either too busy with their own burdens, don’t want to know, or don’t know how to share yours?

I guess the only answer there is, is the Answer Himself—Christ’s own broken heart that heals us, his own scars that speak into the darkness and the wounded hands that hold us on those long nights when no one else can see us cry. He’s the one friend who’s always been there for me, who continues to lead me through valleys and streams and deserts, who is strong enough to carry all of the burdens no one wants to hold for me. He tells me to climb on his back and take his yoke, welcomes my pain in his gentle and lowly way. He knows my heart more intimately than any friend or husband, and he sees my pain so vividly, enters into it, and engulfs me in his own scarred heart to remind me I’m not alone.

I have to hold on tightly to that every day, knowing that living will bring scars, but also rewards. His hand will guide me wherever I go, into the valleys and onto the mountain peaks.

Heatbreak

When people say their hearts are broken, you usually think of a relationship ending, a break-up of the romantic kind. I never had to break up with anyone or be broken up with but I have lost a child. And I know that sometimes our hearts break over other things that are just as painful, if not more, than losing a love.
In May I had a ministry heartbreak and I'm still recovering. I'm thinking it's going to take a while. I can't even explain the heartbreak I'm going through because it involves other peoples' private lives, but I can write poetry about it. 

HEARTBREAK

My heart has been broken in small ways

Thousands of times

Cuts and bruises, occasional splinters

Sometimes by knives thrown my direction

Unintentional shrapnel from others’ decisions, and fights

Or sometimes intentional stabs that aim and miss and hit somewhere else

Sometimes it’s more of a stretching, tearing

                 a realization that life can’t stay on this same course

Like seeing those first steps and knowing one day they’ll run

Or the last glimpse as they wave and board the plane

The slow and painful pulling away of a heart that was once glued to yours

 

My heart has been shattered

six times 

In the irrevocable way—healing somehow but different in the end, mangling up into a harder kind of heart

                Scar tissue

pulling in painful positions and remains visible forevermore

The repair happens with time and listening and waiting and care

But the heart that got beaten in the process

                never beats the same, never sees the same

                                And no time can heal that

No truth is big enough to unwind the truth that a person you loved isn’t who you thought they were

That the world is worse than you ever believed

That God sometimes gives us crushing weight and allows damage that only he can fix

                And that sometimes he chooses not to or we choose not to allow him and we live with the occasional punched-gut feeling of remorse

 

Erosion of confidence is a hard, hard end

And then it seems there’s no way forward

Except to grab the only hand that’s there and let it pull you back toward the light

        mending and embracing and waiting for whispers of truth

To pour into those cavities and cracks within the shattered heart

 A glimpse of wisdom that fills the void left where innocence once lived

Christmas Simplicity

One thing I know about my family is that we're pretty bad with traditions. Whenever people start talking about their family's Christmases, I realize again how growing up, we never had those special things we did every year. We did special things together; they were just different (and random) every year. A tree would usually show up and I remember Dad bringing out a string of lights wound up on a homemade wooden frame, and they were still always tangled despite his efforts. We had some ornaments that we always used and I think we went to church. Dad usually did a devotion before on Christmas Eve after dinner, and the one thing that stayed consistant was that we had to wash dishes before we could open presents.

But that's about all that I have. It's not because of dysfunction or or poverty or any sad orphan story. I guess it's just that my parents broke away from their families and, like every parent, just kind of flew by the seat of their pants through some of these things. 

And maybe Christmas wasn't as big of a deal in the 80's before the internet advertisements got out of control. I think commercialization was just beginning to take on a new form and maybe hadn't reached my boomer parents yet. I remember poring over the Radio Shack catalog, but never expecting to receive anything from it as a gift. I remember commercials for elaborate toys and sometimes going to Toys R Us and looking around. But our lives were simple and my parents didn't have a lot of money, so I think most of our gifts arrived in the UPS boxes that came from relatives. I don't remember the gifts. I genuinely only remember two things: A container of colorful hairbands one year, which my mom accidentally gave to my dad to open, and a pack of Bazooka Bubble gum (which I made REAL GOOD use of for about a month). Maybe I've just gotten old and those things were childish so they've faded from my memory. 

But I have a pretty vivid memory, and what sticks out from those early traditionless Christmases is just time with my family in a cozy old farm house with green shag carpet, watching network Christmas specials together and eating popcorn. A generous Christmas Eve meal and extra cookies, and just beautiful simplicity. Maybe all people feel that way as they get older, that their lives were more simple as children and the world has gotten more terrible and dark. Maybe it really has. I don't know, but I do know I treasure those breaks from school when everyone could be together, and I treasure them now too. Nowhere else to go, no traditions to uphold or programs to be at. Just a few days here in the new homestead with a Christmas tree, a fire, and youtubes of the network Christmas specials. And a few days with my parents and siblings, remembering and laughing together, traditionless, but bonded nevertheless. 

Middle School and Bethany and Jesus' birth.

 I keep trying to think of something profound to say about this last year, but nothing comes to mind. In most ways, we're in a holding pattern, just plugging through the normal, mostly mundane things. There weren't any major milestones or big family trips (just a quick getaway to nashville for me and D). BUt Christmas is on my mind, and I realized that this year has been a lot of me remembering my life in the phases my kids are in. Having teenagers is hard and painful because you just have to watch them learn things and suffer and grow on their own. They don't really want your advice and they pretend they aren't listening when you give it. But it's also painful because it's a reminder of who I was at age thirteen, fifteen, sixteen. Middle school was very difficult for me, so while I watch my own middle school daughter try to navigate that complex world, I'm reliving my own memories of never fitting in or having the right things to say, of losing friends and trying to find new ones. I thought about it a lot this year, about friendship and loss and the pain of growing up. As adults we still suffer those same heartaches, but we have the persepctive to know that we'll survive, we'll keep making it, keep meeting new people. That it isn't hopeless and we aren't losers because someone doesn't like us.

At least I think we have that perspective.

I've been thinking about my best friend Bethany and the way she stuck by me through middle school. I was probably an awkward, difficult person who did embarrassing things and had too many opinions and negative thoughts. I think I was loud sometimes, but she laughed at my jokes and she invited me to things when no one else did. We wrote stories together and even though she was beautiful and always getting guys' attention, she still didn't mind hanging around tom-boy me with my ridiculous fashion taste and really bad hair days. She was a gift to me in a lonely time of my life. She still is a gift to me because she didn't leave me through that, and I can still call her up and hear her voice and know I'm okay even when the rest of the world feels crazy. She's solid ground for me when my world slips all around. She's there with truth and prayers and comforting words of encouragement.

And I guess thinking about that brings me to thinking about Jesus. Because all of the times growing up when I was alone, when I felt rejected and ugly and really truly despaired, I had Jesus there with me, and it didn't feel as bad. I heard his words that He'd never leave me, that he loved me and made me and had plans for me. I believed the promises about the future with Him, about blessings when people curse, and overwhelming love that never lets go. And I guess at Christmas, I just think about the way He came to be with us. He just joined the world full of selfish people with their own agendas and gave up all of the power that he could have used to judge and condemn, and used it instead to love and save. He walked into the world's giant mess and made the biggest things that were wrong right again. And I guess that's a friend that I can always count on. 

Green notebooks and my 8th grade self

 I've been writing in journal/diary since I was 12 years old. It started with some really stupid shallow posts and slowly matured as I did. I don't have as much of a chance to do it anymore, but from age 15-25 it was at least a weekly habit, often daily. The majority of the journals are in green notebooks of some form or another.

Yesterday I pulled the one from '95-96, thinking my 13-year-old would enjoy reading her mom's adolescent thoughts and seeing how similar to hers they are. Do I want my kids to read all about my crush on so-and-so hottie? Not especially. Do I want them to read random play-by-plays from camp and family vacation and Bible quiz meets? That's not really a big deal. I didn't write about my worst mistakes usually, and the worries I actually wrote out were pretty shallow. There is one thing I want them to see if they ever read through those diaries, though.

I was a girl who loved Jesus. I trusted him and followed him in ways I think I've forgotten how to, and maybe am just not capable of anymore. When you're young you haven't yet learned to harness some of your big feelings, to temper your view of the world, and filter through some of the lies. There's this unbridled passion for the things you see as important, and an obsession with love and friendship and community. You're full of big ideals and foolish plans. You also aren't as jaded. You see the world with your starry eyes, hopeful of the future and full of wonder, experiencing things for the first time.

I used to write songs. I'd almost completely forgotten doing this. I was really hoping I'd get some spiritual gift and be able to play piano without ever learning it (my parents couldn't afford a piano until I was 18), so I'd just write the lyrics to songs. like a lot. They're embarrassingly pedestrian now, but the heart behind them was so pure. So sweet. I just wanted to worship my Jesus.

Sometimes when I look back at myself, I can see how much I've matured and grown. I know that I have a deeper faith and a truer view of God. but I feel that I'm missing that pure heart that just wanted to worship and serve Jesus with my whole life. I still want to, but I also don't find hope and reality grounded in happy-go-lucky Jesus and me kind of lifestyle some people still manage to find. I've been damaged and I don't know how to fix that. When you go through a great deception in your spiritual life, or a spiritual trauma from a church, it changes your spirit. I don't trust preachers. I question everything that happens to my spirit and I've built up walls to keep myself from being seen. My life is so good, and my faith is this steady part of my life. It's rich and deep and full of real life examples of hope and truth and God's power. But sometimes I wish I could go back to that reckless trust, the freedom of knowing that He heals every hurt and not wondering how and when that healing comes. I sometimes think I'd take that naive heart over the grief that's led me closer to the cross. I know I can't, and I know that I'm better now than I was then. Even in my faith, I'm better. I think it was wide from a young age, with lots of knowledge and truth to build on. But it's deeper now, dug with trenches of loss and grief and questions and doubts. Still I think there's a place for that girl I used to be and I've been doing some thinking about how to get back there, back to where I began, still holding the wisdom of age that I now have. Is it possible to go around to your beginnings and find yourself back there, wiser and stronger, not just beat up? Is it worth the fight to find that joy again? Is it Jesus calling to me from my own past, showing me that my heart can still be made soft and joyful and pure?

This song encapsulates those feelings I often have when I'm looking in the rearview mirror. I've always loved this song, and I'm finding it more relevant now than I did the first time I heart it. Ironically, it is from a singer who hit his popularity peak right in the thick of my own youth. seems fitting.

Passionate Man by Geoff Moore

It was my summer of 18 years old
I grew tired of not letting go
As the promise land spread out
Beyond that old dirt road

I looked in my rear view mirror
And watched as my past slipped away
Like the dust cloud that rolled
From the back of that old Chevrolet

I gave you my heart with a promise
That I would never turn around
You led me out of that wilderness
Before the dust had settled down

(Chorus)
And I loved you like the air I breathe
And you filled my empty heart
And I wore my faith out on my sleeve
Like a fire in the dark
I was willing to do anything
Eager to make a stand
I was a passionate boy
Make me a passionate man

My good intentions
Like water under the bridge
Have I thrown away the pearl
That made my life so rich

I turned down an old dirt road

So familiar to me
In the mirror I see a man
I swore I would never be
And I remember the promise
That I would never turn
What will it take to rekindle
The flame that used to burn

(Chorus)
I remember the promise
That I would never turn
Won't you take and rekindle the flame
The flame that used to burn

And I'll love you like the air I breathe
And you fill my empty heart
And I'll wear my faith out on my sleeve
Like a fire in the dark
I am willing to do anything
Eager to make a stand
I was a passionate boy
Make me a passionate man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcj7ztWytxk

Full Circle

I've been struggling to come up with words to explain what the last two weeks were like. It started with a busy week leading into a last-minute decision to go on the youth group mission trip as an adult leader. The first part of my busy weekend involved a funeral, then a pool party, then a baseball game. Strange combination of mourning and grief, then celebration and family time. The pool party was its own combination as I dealt with emotions of being with my friend who's going through a divorce and the reality of that sinking in hard. The funeral was my friend's father who died kind of quickly from brain cancer. The next morning at church I needed to get away from worship and pray and weep the tears I hadn't been able to the day before.

That afternoon we had another joy-filled event that I'd been anticipating for a long time. Some kids from my class had organized a 20-year reunion. Not my school class, but my youth group. 

I can't even explain the beautiful experience it was. Yes, it was great to see everyone and take that walk down memory lane together. But it was more than that. Our youth pastor created a group where we could all invest, and that kind of leadership allowed all of us to have a place of belonging. We led worship, we planned outreaches, we shared our spiritual growth with each other on trips and retreats. There are bad memories from those times, but overall, there was something really special between us. Being together again, older but the same, was a special feeling I've never had. Feeling accepted and known, mutual affection that the adult world doesn't offer in the same ways. 

We hugged, we laughed, we sang our old songs together. While not everyone articulated it, we had the same beautiful memories that wove us together on our hearts, and we wished for more time together, and for more of us to be there. Standing there singing the best of our old songs, I wanted to capture one of those experiential photographs, just hold on to that moment and return to it whenever I wanted. I wanted a day-long conversation with everyone there. I wanted to listen to everyone's stories and memories and hear where God had taken them in the last 20 years. Alas, there was so little time. But the joy between us was so real and alive. It was precious to be with people who I knew when my faith was still young and being explored, who knew me at vulnerable times and grew with me through those years. They were short years, but impactful. 

I left one week later as an adult leader for my youth group's mission trip. And in those moments we shared together I felt the same beautiful, unique memories being formed for these young people. I wanted so much for them to share the same kinds of bonds that I have with my church friends all those years ago. We experienced some great moments together, and I hope that when they look back it will be with the same fondness and affection that I have toward those years in my life. To have the same joy of pure fellowship. To experience gratitude for where God was leading them at that time. And mostly, that they'll be seeing Jesus at work, woven into every interaction and every memory. 

We sang some old songs on that trip (left photo), songs from when I was in high school. And while we did I thought about my little high school heart, reaching out to God in the only ways I knew how, and all of the places he's taken me since 1999 when I really thought life couldn't get much better. It got better, and everything got deeper. Looking at the students I was with in that moment, I just thanked God for carrying me along and putting me there in that moment, a full-circle face to his goodness and mercy that follows me all the days of my life.