Some of my favorites

I think there are certain pictures that make you fall in love with someone again and again and this is certainly one of Riley. Her fish face is a perfect example of her precocious spirit.


It was the day after Christmas, the snow was piled up and we were out shoveling snow and throwing snowballs. Gabriel was having the time of his life. I took this with my new camera I had gotten from Scott for Christmas. It was one of my best pictures.


This picture of Phineas is stunning. His Aunt Julie captured it and I am not sure what she did to get the background, his shirt and his eyes to match, but it is great. I also love the sand on his cheek. He is such a boy and this captures the curls and his serious big eyes.

Graceful Exit's

"There’s a trick to the 'graceful exit.'

It begins with the vision to recognize when a job,

a life stage,

or a relationship is over — and let it go.

It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity

or its past importance to our lives.

It involves a sense of future,

a belief that every exit line is an entry,

that we are moving up,

rather than out."

— Ellen Goodman

(thanks - lejardingirl)

The Grace of God

I don't have anything special to share or deep (thank the God Lord for that, because these last few post of mine have been a bit weighty), but that the Grace of God has been very near to me in the last day or so and it has been sweet.

Grief

Grief is a funny thing...everyone feels it differently and as much as we want to say "I get it" to another person - we really don't. Sure, most of us understand the steps of grief, the emotions of grief...the echo of grief, but we just can't walk in anyone else's shoes completely because we can't exchange their thoughts and their heart for ours.

Grief has many levels...there is the kind that takes your breath away and changes your life in a moment...death, terminal illness, but there is also the smaller griefs. The one's you will, most certainly, get through, but they still hurt. Saying goodbye can, at times, be like this for me. Maybe it is because I am cognizant that when you leave a place you can never go back and rearrange the players in the picture quite the same - you can only savor the moments played.

I have had to say goodbye a lot. Scott and I met overseas and have lived in 5 states since we have been married and moved some 25+ odd times. We have really been blessed to make friends wherever we go and we are just people who connect at a deep level with people. The upside is the depth of relationship, but the downside is saying goodbye.

I have learned to honor those times of change by recognizing that I can feel both grief and excitement all at the same time and to just give myself permission to feel the loss as deep as possible. It seems like it makes it easier to move into another type of emotions. Anticipation.

Sarah

Today, I am saying goodbye to a friend as she moves out of our home and into the next stage of her glorious journey in life. We met her 5 1/2 years ago, but it has only been in the last 2 that we have come together in partnership and ultimately in friendship. Our family needed a nanny and she was the answer. It was a mutual partnership. She would live in our apartment expense free in exchange for roughly 25 hours of childcare and what started as employment turned into something altogether sweeter.

Because of the nature of living in the same house we saw each other at our best and worst. No make-up, ugliest granny pj's, hair sticking out 5 inches after a rough night...it didn't matter - we always seem to have a genuine connect for one another. Something wholly unique happens when women live together in community. When they rub shoulders on a regular basis over children and dishes and tea and life and loss. When they cry together, pray together and say "it is going to be alright" to each other. When they turn the other's face toward the mirror and say "look beyond the tasks at hand and into the future; into your dreams".

I am very excited about the door she is walking through as she heads off to work on her Master's. I have no doubt she is going to be successful, but man alive, we will miss her!
Of course, we will stay connected. I have no doubt that she will be a lifelong family friend, but for now I am sad and grieving the loss of the mystery of this friendship in it's present state. I will miss the morning hello's and late night goodnight as she pops her head upstairs to share about some special thing that happened in her day. The prayers, the tears, the music, the dreams.

I always knew she would leave. That was a given. We talked about it from the start, before she even took the job. I remember saying "nannying is not the call on your life. This is just a season in which we can come together in mutual partnership. You love on our kids, we love on you." AND - she loved well.

This is my goodbye letter to her. I want it here in cyber-space, because there might be a time when life is difficult, a day when circumstances seem harder to deal with than normal and she is questioning herself, wondering if she was crazy to be where she is, doing what she is doing and I want her to be able to come here and be reminded that she is wonderful!. That God DOES have a plan and she is smack-dab in the middle of it. That there is a whole lotta love comin' her way!


August 13, 2010


Sarah –

Well – today is the day.
The final day of being our “nanny” (I still laugh at that title because it makes us sounds so posh and we know the truth about our humble surroundings ). Tomorrow you will pack your u-haul, drive away and this season will be over. We both know that although it is an ending, it is also a beginning. I say to you again my friend….THIS is only the beginning!!! And what the Lord started in you and around you will be completed, because we understand (even if we don’t fully understand) that He is faithful to ever plan and purpose. There are SO many exciting adventures, wonderful moments and glorious discoveries yet to come as the Lord draws you into the fulfillment of a dream that was way down deep inside of you, yet to be realized, and now being played out.

I have been encouraging you to take this step and am excited for what is ahead, but I have also been dreading this day in many ways because I know that it is the completion of a segment of time in my life that has been such a huge blessing. Your friendship has carried me through some days when I needed the tender love of the father to be tangible.

There will never be another Sara.
You are a unique and incredible woman and we have been blessed by you ! I am sure in ways we don't even get, but that is the beauty of good gifts....they keep giving in memories and love stored up deep in the heart. We have you stored up girl!

The other day I was looking at cards trying to find one for you and although some of them expressed snippets of what I wanted to say, they just seemed inadequate or only half done.

I want to say…

Thank You in 25 different languages.

Thanks for loving us. For flexibility, and grace. Thanks for long suffering. Thanks for sharing your heart. Thanks for camaraderie; friendship, faithfulness and loyalty. Thanks for the times you did your job even when you were sick, because you knew it would bless me. Thanks for your listening ear and your available heart. Thanks for being with our kids, for laughing with them, playing with them, reading to them, wiping their tushies (there’ve been many wipes ). Thanks for seemingly always being patient with them, for appreciating them. Thanks for being taken by their fascinatingly unique personalities.

Thanks for the hugs and the smiles. Thanks for asking how I was and then waiting to hear my heart. Thanks for even letting me ramble and lose my train of thought and than laugh with me when I had no idea why I made the point I made. Thanks for your perseverance in the Lord and your faithfulness to intercession. Thanks for your patience with change and for wanting to be with us even when it meant a sacrifice in your schedule. Thanks for the words and THE WORD. Thanks for the many, many, many times you prayed with me and went to bat in prayer for us. Thanks for your love and tenderness!

I WILL MISS YOU SARAH STROER. You will be missed by all of us – BUT most especially by me. I love you and am proud to call you my friend.

It will be strange to wake up on Monday and not hear your voice or see your face or feel a hug. This will take some getting used to, but we will and you will and the call of God will carry us into wonderful things. AND this friendship we have built will continue….regardless of where we are; there you will be, in our hearts and our memories. Regardless of where we are – you are welcome.

We look forward to the days ahead….hearing about the journey and the jobs and the relationships and the music and the relationships (oh..did I already say that????. We look forward to seeing you bloom even more.

Go BIG girl – or don’t go at all
Go big in your own, unique Sara way.
Mark the world some more with the colors in your hand!!
We know it is going to be a beautiful tapestry.

And down the road we will be together… standing side by side, arm in arm, looking at the weaving of our life’s and we will recognize skeins of each other in the pictures. This is how God does it. Nothing is lost and so much is gained. He is good that way. He is eternal that way. He calls things significant we label as minimal. He sees every stitch and He saw every thread that you sewed into us and He called it beautiful!!!!

Well done Sarah – you loved well and served well! Huge, huge, huge hugs from us!

Shalom, Shalom and Peace of God!

The Comfort of Women

Women have a wonderful camaraderie and comfort amongst themselves. There is nothing quite like it. Men cannot really achieve it in their relationship. I think men are capable of great depth in relationship, but they express it and experience it differently then women. Maybe it is the all the "cereberalness". Don't get me wrong...logic is needed. Logic is dependable, structured, foundational to sound thinking; but the emotions of the heart, the ability to express something from a deeper level which happens in a rich way between women is something to behold.

Women are the expression of the feminine side of God; not as an afterthought, but on purpose. Eve was not an answer to a mistake..."Woops", said God to Jesus and the Holy Spirit..."Adam is lonely, quick get your heads together and let's come up with a fix!!!"" Jesus says..."oh, oh (snap, snap of the fingers) what about a wo-man for the man? Similar, but different" Holy Spirit ponders "Wait...wait....YES!!!! By-jove that is brilliant Jesus! Wish I would have thought of it"

We all know it didn't go that way, but at times our society, our family and even our friends have treated women as a less then, or something to tolerate or deal with.

The Word of God indicates Eve was made out of a rib taken from Adams. Hebrew definition translate the word "rib" as "side". I like this better. Not because I am some Nazi feminist who swings around by her bra straps shouting "I am woman! Hear me roar". I like it because I think it gives a more accurate picture of what happened that day in the garden when God birthed Eve.

Imagine it...

THE God, came into the Garden, put the only man the world has known up to this point into some sort of sleep state and then took a side of him to make something similar, but wholly other than. When the creating was all said and done, God then decreed that in male AND female the world would see the fullness of the image of God and by HIS words set in to motion a principle that it would take looking at and knowing BOTH to see and experience the full expression of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Without man, our view of the trinity is lopsided and mis-adjusted. Without woman the view is also off balance, tilted and not complete. Just the man and we can get an overpowering amount of strength, boundaries & task oriented action (we also get a whole lot of honor, warrior courage and determination). We miss the more intuitive side of life; the depth of emotions is skewed. Nurturing, tenderness, long suffering, graciousness, quiet strength, fortitude, beauty and resilience get lost in translation. Without the feminine, I am not sure we could understand the layers that come with a statement like "Jesus Wept".

I don't want to paint a picture of woman as weak and full of emotional mumbo jumbo. She is far from that. Any wise man knows that to understand a women he will have to spend YEARS digging diligently at the layers and if he persists there are treasures to be found inside her and he is all the richer for having found it. Any wise man knows that to dig until he finds the treasures GETS to be his delight...that it is a gift to know woman, because in doing so He can know God more.

To know women is to know mystery and taste beauty. Women are also warriors and fighters - they just carry that in a different way. They are God's answer to Adam's cry of loneliness, but more so they are God's answer to the whole earth's travail to understand just a bit more of the fullness of the Glory of God.

Women are partners of equity. Maybe not equal in skill or strength, but most certainly in value. They are Adam's ezer kenigdo; man's help meet. This does not mean that they are the perfect cloth folders or dishwashers or kid tenders. It means they are equal to the task given to man, by God in Genesis, to rule and subdue the earth.

Adam was the first human created in the Garden, but Eve was the last and she was a Glorious crescendo. God ended creation with woman. She was the crowning jewel, the apex, the final part of a masterpiece and then God said ...now ..."it is good".

Wow!!! That year flew

I am laughing!

I knew it had been "a while" since I had posted anything on my blog, BUT I am a bit surprised myself that it has been a year.

A crazy, wild, painful and glorious year. Well - honestly - it doesn't feel like anything really glorious happened. Mainly, just life.

The kids grew up - I regressed. (smile)
Carpets got cleaned and then were dirty (way too quickly)
The garage was organized (mostly) and then got messy
Ideas were tossed out and some tossed away.

If I were to title this year it might be "Feeling betrayal, experiencing loss and finding myself".

* Confusion in friendship - some resulting in going deeper in a most precious way, some resulting in feeling betrayed by what you thought you perceived.
* Sorting through a house and selling most of the stuff in that house for some dear friends who had left for South Africa and are not returning.
* Watching my father move closer to death due to lung cancer and farther away from the Lord due to choice.
* Lack of integrity in some business dealings with some fellow brothers and sisters in Christ that never got resolved in the right way.
*A major stab in the back from someone who worked with us in our business. Knowing that it was out of his own childhood wounding and so trying to give grace, but feeling like our tails were really far out in the wind.
* Still having no contact with my only sibling who, because of my relationship with Christ, cannot seem to be in relationship with me.
*Watching one of my best friends walk through death and loss herself and not be able to be near her and feel her pull away to try to cope.

Some of the feeling and finding has just been a part of the ebb and flow of life lived in a broken world. Some because of realistic expectations dashed, but ultimately, I am discovering that the deepest pain, the greatest betrayal I have felt, has been by my own hand, my own heart as I have reached out for dreams and come up a bit empty.

I am not even sure how to articulate it well.

I think I am just starting to walk around everything I am weakly expressing. I am trying to give myself space to feel the pain in such a way that it propels me to look deeper into myself. I want to do it without obsessing about it. I want to explore with honesty and integrity without finger pointing or blame shifting, yet also give myself the freedom to admit that people fail us. We fail each other. I want to discover wisdom and use it to walk away from some old habits, old cycles, old thoughts AND use it to walk into greater things.

I know...I am talking all mystical and vague. Partially because I want to process, but I want to protect. Partially because the details don't matter, it is where I end up in my heart that will mark me.

I have a raw idea. When we feel betrayal or rejection by another it is either because:

a.) we got completely bamboozled by someone who was really good at snookering people. Usually this entails tangling ourselves up with a narcissistic personality. (a part of my experience this year)

b. ) we kept giving "that person" or "that situation" the benefit of the doubt and never confronted (really...who LIKES confrontation? ). Fairly quickly the quirks or hairball oddities, or sins, that were not healthy, became the norm. There comes a point where we either say "What is the use with saying anything...I have lived with it for this long. Why bother" and in doing so condone a thing into acceptance in our silence.

c.) ultimately - the real betrayal TOWARD us is usually felt because it is allowed, BY us. In essence, we betray ourselves. Swirling around inside of our souls are tipping points. Moments where we made a choice to adjust in order to be around a certain person. The adjustments were not wrong....we all make small changes in relationships to accommodate personality, quirks, likes, dislikes....This is normal. I am talking about the changes we made that went in direct conflict against what we hold to be true, loving or genuine. What is not healthy is knowing down in your gut that the way a person is undervaluing you has become a common theme in your interactions. What is not healthy is involving yourself in more of a word based relationship then action based....they say they value you really well, but they do not show it....the use of the word friend is strong, but the priority of being a friend is low. What is not healthy is when the value scale is unbalanced...when there is always a reason or excuse for why they can't be healthy. I find myself here and frankly...it is awkward and painful.

Maybe, maybe, maybe....maybe if you find yourself here.

Maybe I will write more about the problem with finding yourself after you have taken a sabbatical from some of the truer parts of you.

OR, maybe I won't write for another year.
Maybe...because it is too raw or too real.

Reality is - A LOT of wonderful and good and poignantly beautiful things happened in the last year. Things I am grateful for. Events I wouldn't trade. People I hold close to the heart.

I do remember those!