abide

i stood in my son's room folding grey t-shirts.   laundry.   sweet smelling warmth.  fold.  crease.  smooth.  stack.  clean heat held in tired hands.   i am not a woman who especially loves laundry.  perhaps it is the overflow...or maybe it is the constant flow.  i am sure it is in the never done.  the never ending.  and in the always coming.  i mean i turn my back for a quick moment...just long enough to plop a toddler in a tub or throw a roast in the oven and the pile grows large.  staggering.  who are all these people wearing all this clothing?  it seems we have seventy not seven living under our roof.  my machines are big and highly efficient...even digital.  but they are always, always running.  the only time they seem to pause with quiet  is when there are multiple showers going.  other than that...they could run without ceasing and we'd still have something dirty stashed somewhere.  and, i have to confess,  i am not gifted in this area.  really. truly.  i don't do laundry, i attack laundry.  i have been known to throw great, big heaps of foul smelling clothing into the mouth of this steel machine with no regard for color or fabric.  appalling, i know.  i also have been seen taking those same prodigious loads out of the cavernous heat and leaving them in wicker baskets for days....or just piling it all on my bed until night comes and then flinging the great mass recklessly to the floor at the tired midnight hour.  shocking.  i am sorry.  but this happens in my home.  i have no tender touch when it comes to this monumental-always-mulitplying-task.  i launder our clothes in desperate fashion:  scoop.  shove.  bang.  dump.  and then, of course, sometimes, on occasion, even fling.

i am not without laundry role models.  my mother is one of them.  she is a woman without an ipod or a laptop, but whose backyard has always boasted a clothes line.  i have watched this woman attach pillowcases with wooden pins in the dead of  an ohio winter.  i am sure at the top of her favorite things list are bed sheets dried in sunshine.  i have even wondered if there is no greater joy for my mother.  i feel accomplished when, on occasion, i throw in a downy fabric sheet.  it doesn't come close to the sunny smell of my mother's bedding however.  i have found this, at times, inefficient and frustrating.    there were evenings when i'd return from a long day of school and basketball practice only to find my sheets flapping out in the moonlight.  as a 16 year old i wasn't concerned much with the sun-basked fragrance, i only wanted a bed to climb into.   my mother was right to care about this though.  i want to be that way soon.  i want to hang sheets in the georgia sun and take pleasure from the sharp creases stacked inside  brown wicker.   this practice speaks of time.  it speaks of dedication to the ordinary. to the simple.  it is taking time to do something right.  to do it well.

so there i was standing quietly in my son's basement bedroom over a basket of what he wears:  school uniforms, athletic shorts and an impressive pile of grey t-shirts.   all of his hangers adult sized now.  his t-shirts no longer tiny.  i have been folding this boys' clothing for almost 14 years.   long gone the baby blue.  long gone the trains and trucks.   oh my...as a mother i held these boy-teen items and realized how thankful i was to be standing right here.  right now...simply holding.  and something changed.  i carefully creased each t-shirt.  folded each short.  matched corners and ends.  smoothed. tucked. my piles were a work of art.  there would be no flinging today.  i was privileged to stand in my boys' room and hold dryer warm cotton.  i was privileged. this week i have found myself in the middle of these kinds of moments.  they have happened in the laundry room and at the dinner table.  they have occurred at bath time and bed time.  when my health became questionable, the eyes of my  heart became clearer.  all these things...all these common, everyday, ordinary things...all these tasks and chores and have-to-dos became so quickly precious.  they became gifts -  metamorphosing from tasks to treasures.  i know there may be a day when i will have to lean on others to wash and wipe and fold.  there may be a day when my hands cannot do what needs doing.  even if it be,  just for a while.  i'll be honest, it worries me.  i have laid awake at night wondering how a family with five children will survive a period of time without a fully functioning mother.   i don't mean to get ahead of the game, but if you had five children you'd have to wonder too.  trust me on this.  as i was adding the final shirt to the pile, i noticed a word in red across the grey shoulder of my son's shirt.  abide.

abide.  it was the t-shirt on top of the pile.   a t-shirt tyler had gotten at a youth retreat last year.  abide.  i read the word, but thought of the phrase, "abide in me."  i could almost hear my name attached.  "abide in me, jody."  abide in me for the laundry and the lunches.  abide in me for the washing of windows and hands and countertops.  abide in me for the scrubbing of faces and feet and floors.  abide.  abide in me jody.  abide.  dwell.  stay.  connect.  "i am the vine you are the branches;  he who abides in me and i in him, he bears much fruit.  apart from me you can do nothing." (john 15:5)  nothing.  it sunk in.  nothing.   everything i have already done...been doing...it is from Him.  it is All From Him.    this is not about the cancer.  this is about the living.  the daily breath He has been providing all along.  i have been fooling myself in believing  my hands capable and controlling.  Every Thing has always been from Him and Every Thing will always be from Him.  we think ourselves too able.  that is it.  at least that is it for me.   when life is good and health is full i whirl around in a cloud of my own capability...but it is foolishness.   each and every breath is decided by the Creator and Sustainer of all.  He gives and He takes away...and Blessed be His name.  this may not strike a peaceful chord for you right now.  but it does for me.  i have spent some considerable time this week worried about the day when i will have to be dependent...when my children will have to be dependent...i just haven't been able to remove that from my weakness.  i have worried.  but then i folded the final grey t-shirt and i read the word in red, abide.  in the taking time with my laundry, i found a word from my Jesus, a reminder in this most ordinary task.  i found a much needed directive and a crucial instruction.  abide.

this words reminds me of  an old hymn -  like circa 1847 old.  written by a man named henry francis lyte.  he wrote this while he lay dying of tuberculosis.  now, i hesitate to even  put that information in this post.  i, want to be clear here....in no way do i think myself dying.  i am living with breast cancer.  and i am fighting it.   i may take advantage of the situation and lay around blogging....but i am certainly not going to be writing ancient hymns on death beds.  nonetheless, these 19th century lyrics connect with me even in my 2011,  and i wanted to share:

Abide With Me 

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;

Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;

Change and decay in all around I see;

O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word;

But as Thou dwell’st with Thy disciples, Lord,

Familiar, condescending, patient, free.

Come not to sojourn, but abide with me.

Come not in terrors, as the King of kings,

But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings,

Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea—

Come, Friend of sinners, and thus bide with me.

Thou on my head in early youth didst smile;

And, though rebellious and perverse meanwhile,

Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee,

On to the close, O Lord, abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour.

What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?

Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?

Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;

Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.

Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?

I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;

Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.

Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;

In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

and that's it.  abiding with Christ in health and in the not so good health.  abiding in Christ in the ordinary and in the extraordinary.  how in need i was of that reminder.  how thankful i am for that remembering.   it is not easy, but can i believe it might be good to consider how incapable my hands are.  i'll be honest,  it makes me uncomfortable.  but i want to abide.  i know in all of this i will need to abide.  whether or not i ever hang sheets in the sunshine is yet to be seen,  but in the meantime, i will abide.  abide.

carry us Lord

Lord, let my tyler's sleep be sweet tonight.  a mother's prayer.  a silent chant as i finally fell asleep in the midnight hour.  it would be tyler's last night of not-knowing.  tyler has spent the past few days on a class trip.  he has been on an island off the coast of georgia exploring the wonders of marine biology.  on an island--protected.  i am sure much of it has been heaven for my teen-boy-explorer.  

but back at home we have been staring into the ugly face of a breast cancer diagnosis.  we have resisted any exploration. in fact, it feels as if we have all just shut down to any further discovery.  tuesday's news was enough.  for a while.   

but today tyler comes home.  i wake in the early dark knowing i will have to look into the eyes of my strong, young man and attempt to explain something i can't really explain.  after sharing it with sarah, connor and then emily, i have spent all my sadness.  it is not the kind of news any mother wants to share with her children.  there is no way to dress it up nicely or spin it out kindly.  it hurts.  from the first utterance of the word it slices. rips. tears.  the children know too much.  we have heard too much in our day and time.  i can attempt to assure them of best cast scenario, but we are shaken to our core.  we rattle.  i can see the rattling of my already told-children in these past two days.  

they have all slept with me in these nights since knowing.  we can't be close enough.  Oh Lord, thank you for children who want to run to my arms and bury heads in my lap.  thank you for children who want to make me things, make me laugh, make me okay.  they are the worst part of this and the best part.  i have hated the telling and the knowing and the fearing, but am so thankful for the healing and the comforting and the distracting of my children.  they have already pushed me beyond breast cancer in just these two days. even if just for a moment. they have reminded me they still need lunches and band-aids and baths.  they will keep me going in this journey.  this journey for which i didn't sign up.  this journey which i never once imagined.  this journey which requires my entire family to travel.  this journey...

so today i look at my list of things to accomplish and i must add the telling of tyler.  i wanted to be thinking about easter eggs and pastel colored baskets.  but this Good Friday afternoon i will sit my son down with news which will cloak him hard in heaviness.  this boy.  this soon-to-be-man will want to carry it for me.  i know him.  he is a carrier.  he is my son who seeing me with arms full of laundry insists on taking the load from me.  he is a boy who has said over and over, "here mom, let me do that for you."  that trash emptying. that hole digging.  that firewood getting.  that chair moving.  that little sister toting.  that carrying.  he carries.  he is tender like no other teen boy i've met.  a boy with a strong spirit, but soft heart.  i have nothing to do with this.  it is how he came.  God dropped him into our laps 13 years ago and though he has my green-blue eyes, he came with his very own tender heart.  he is a comforter.  a peacemaker. a laugh-bringer.  a joy-digger.  a gentler.  a steadier.  a smoother of wrinkles.   

but he is also a rather smart kid.  he will know immediately this is not an easy load.  he will know he cannot whisk this yoke from his mother's shoulders.  he will know he cannot move this mountain. he will know soon that his arms, like mine, are just not able.  

oh Lord.  you know today i will tell him.  you already know the conversation and the concern and the comfort.  you already know the reaction and the response and resistance.   precious Jesus, will you provide the strength in the telling and the strength in the hearing and the strength in the journeying...the carrying.   Jesus will you carry tyler?  all of us.   he is a carrier.  but he, today, like the rest of us, will learn to be carried.  held.   we never knew in all our blessing how very much we would need to be carried.

today, all of us will know. 

Lord, our arms are weak.  our legs give out.  our hearts beat in fear.   

mouths taste the bitter.  breath catches.  

minds wander.  thoughts spin. voices quiver.  eyes tear.   hands shake.  dread rises.   doubts simmer.  

but you, Lord, you Lord, you Lord...

you carry.  

when we can't.  you can.  

and Lord? we can't.

would you...

carry us Lord.  

carry us. 

carry.  

Lord.

 "it was our weaknesses he carried; 
it was our sorrows that weighed him down."  ~ isaiah 53:4

 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,

 and you will find rest for your souls.

  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

~ matthew 11:28-30

reaching arms

bella does this funny little thing when she sleeps.  she constantly reaches out with one arm.  she is reaching for me.  even in deep slumber her hand pats across the bed in tender search of her mama.  she wants to know i am there.  we've had her in our arms, and occasionally sleeping in our bed, for 9 months now.  but i just last week realized why she is doing this....i was thinking back to her bed in the orphanage.  i stood beside it that day we visited last july.  the room was set up with  about 26 beds and every two cribs were attached.   she had spent two years sharing a small wall of rails with another child and i am certain bella and her tiny bedfellow reached through the bars of their separate cribs for one another. they reached out for warmth.  they reached for connection.  they reached for comfort.

i understand that reaching.   last night i went to sleep and felt myself reaching through rails.  reaching all the long, long night.  reaching for comfort.  reaching for warmth.  reaching for my Jesus.  yesterday i was diagnosed with breast cancer.  i sat under the clean blue sky and the front yard tree of my friend's home and i listened to a doctor say, "unfortunately..."  i heard little else after that first word..."unfortunately."  from that moment i have felt myself falling.  falling deep and fast and dark.  my hands came out quickly.  i was all hands and arms and limbs flailing.  attempting to brace myself for the smack of concrete.  trying hard to stop the hurt of hit.  catch myself.  clutch up the wind knocked out of my chest.  put it back.  fill it up.  hold it close.  but i couldn't.  no matter how hard i have tried in these past 12 hours of my diagnosis, i know only one thing this morning:  my arms are not able.  they aren't long enough or strong enough or even soft enough to hold. stop. cradle.

and so i reach.

i will not pretend in this news to be calm or in control.  for there is no calm and nothing about it feels controlled.  i will not pretend to embrace this awful.  i don't.   right now i want to, instead,  put down my legs and run.  run fast away from the news and the decisions and the horror.  i want to run from the plan and the next step and the one-day-at-a-time talk.  i want to flee from the telling:  telling of mother,  sisters.  oh, dear Lord, the heart-wrenching telling of children.  i don't want to share this news i want to fling it down and smash it with my angry heel. i want to obliterate the screaming word which has seemingly seared the flesh and fabric of my future. i want to run fast and then curl up in this blanket of  breath-snatching fear and close up everything inside.  but i cannot.

and so i reach.

i reach with arms weak and scared. dangling.  useless, except for the reaching.  i know what i walk into is beyond me. beyond my strength.  there will be no arm wrestling winner in this contest.   this morning i have strength enough only for feeble reaching.  that is it.  that is all.   i have walked from room to room already before the sun's waking.  i can find no answer in its silence.  i have touched things:  walls.  coffee pot. wool blanket.  countertop.  a window pane.   my searching hands feeling their way wishing to uncover how this all happened. willing to scrape off layers of disbelief.  knowing i will find nothing.  no sense of peace and no thing secure in any hard object.

and yet i reach.

oh Lord, it is the hem of your garment for which my fingers long to feel.  The Hem.  like the bleeding woman of the bible, "when she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, 'if i just touch his clothes, i will be healed'...."then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.  He said to her, 'daughter, your faith has healed you.  go in peace and be freed from your suffering.'"  (mark 5).  i don't bleed, but i tremble.  oh, how i tremble this april day.  and i reach for his cloak even now this first morning in my knowing.  i clutch. i am certain it is the only place worthy of my grasping.  there is nothing else.  no doctor.  no report. no plan.  no percentage.  nothing to replace the hem of my God's garment.

and so i reach, arms trembling, for my Master, Savior, Healer, Holder.

i can't begin to know why.  my fear and disbelief and even my outrage blind me from any answers.  there is no sense.  i have five children.  they need me well.  healthy.  whole.  why Lord?   satan is dancing wildly at this sad girls' questioning... wondering, pleading, crying.   his hands clap in great rejoicing at the suffering and doubting which might very well run rampant in my home today.  tomorrow.   i am sure of it.  and this morning as i sit with my unkowns and my what-ifs i can almost see his demon-party at my window.  i can feel the heat of his merry-making.  and i am scared.

and then i reach for the devotional on the table nearby. Jesus Calling.   the devotional which i have spent time in daily now for over a month. knowing not else what to do or what to think or even how to breathe...i flip open to my morning routine and i read: 

i may very well be weak in my reaching. my arms nothing more than frail bones blowing weightless in heavy wind, but my father...my cloak-wearing-hem-healing-father...My Father Holds Me. this has nothing to do with my strength. this has little to do with my limbs. My Father Holds me tightly by my right hand and pulls me close, whispering soft into my trembling ears, "I am here, child.  I am here. I am here."

and He reaches for me.

"with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; His love endures forever.  ~ psalms 136:12 

a street with no name

i grew up on a street with no name. this bothered my poetic sense as a child. i had friends living pleasantly on mulberry lane and ivy hill road, but i grew up on east 171st street in a dark brown duplex. even that number seemed too large. perhaps had it been 3rd avenue or 2nd street it may have felt slightly better. a tad more poetic at least.  perhaps.  i love names, not numbers. this was clear by middle school math. numbers and i had little in common. since those years in my brown duplex i have lived on streets with more picturesque names such as lakeview lane and sunset drive.  currently, we reside on buttercup trace.  buttercup was almost a deal breaker for my husband though. rick is a big man with a big voice. hearing him audibly lay claim to 815 buttercup trace has brought a touch of amusement to just a few individuals, not least of all, his wife.

but back to the duplex on our number-named street. my grandparents lived downstairs and my family of six lived in close quarters upstairs.  eight of us sharing one roof, one driveway, one back door.  i found this arrangement of too many kids and too few bathrooms failing miserably in my often imagined perfect-family-fairytale.   most of my friends visited their grandmothers for sunday pot roast and potatoes and then promptly returned to their single family dwellings. but this wasn’t our case. i grew up with what felt at times a second set of parents breathing beneath my floor boards. as a young teen one set seemed plenty. there were moments of frustration. i remember my grandfather waiting up for me. i can still see him standing under the bug-zapping bulb of our front porch watching me cross the street from kathy tramte’s house. it was okay when I was 7 and afraid of the menacing shrubs shadowing our front path. but at 14, when my first boyfriend walked me home from his ballgame, i can assure you i felt entirely different about grandpa’s observant perch on the front porch.

growing up, it was grandpa who walked out of the house and into the rowdy street’s kick-the-can game or hide-and-go-seek fun. he came to check on us. always. i could count on it. all of the neighborhood kids could. he knew their names and he knew their parents and there was something in this knowing. when front porch sleepover parties formed it was grandpa’s flashlight which swept over our ghost stories and our girl-giggles and our bags of doritos. it was his strong voice through the dark asking if we were okay and reminding us to be careful. as a child i heard only the overprotective and ever-watching worry in his words . i didn’t understand it and i didn’t always appreciate it. i wished often to be less protected. less watched. less known.

that was long ago. the house on a nameless street bears the most vivid memories of my childhood but it seems a different life as i now raise my own brood on buttercup. one warm evening recently i sat on my back deck and felt the taste of summer’s coming. i sat in filtered twilight gazing out at the acre of woods behind my brick home on its cul-de-sac-ed street. and the summer memories of childhood’s season seeped out of my mother veins. i was startled at my nostalgia for that brown duplex and the barefooted gang of reckless kids running rampant on 171st.  i found myself missing the grandparents living only a floor below … longing for a grandfather who knew every kid on the block. i was sad for how close they were and yet how far i had kept them in my most childish years.  how could i so carelessly take for granted a grandfather who loved me enough to come out for a thousand street crossings and a hundred neighborhood games? he was there watching. he was there listening. he was there loving.

my grandfather died the year i went off to college. but to this day, almost 25 years later, it is easy for me to see his tall frame bent over a pot of hardy marigolds on our small square of patio. he tended these plants with careful passion. summer nights this big boned man stood in the yard watering our tiny patch of city grass. i wondered why as a child. i just assumed he was once again planting himself near our teen-girl whisperings. watching. listening. spying. but now i know.  i, too, stand in my yard. i stand in my sprawling sprinkler-privileged yard and water thirsty spots on our georgia lawn. the steady streams of water in summer night-dusk ease the day’s tension and try-ings out of my mother-heavy shoulders. i breathe. i sigh with the day’s quiet closing.  i replenish my own brittle soul in the pulsing flow. and i watch and i listen and i spy. sometimes children happen across my evening quenching. and sometimes it is the white starflowers in their smoky glow. and sometimes it is the birds settling into their evening perch. but i feel close to my grandfather at this time. i only wish for the chance to tell him.

my street may have been lacking in poetry, but i should have listened more to the music of my grandparents. my, church organist, grandmother would practice each evening a floor below and my grandfather a lover of hymns would sing in his great big baritone. what a picture they created for that little-big girl. a beautiful picture i couldn’t name and i most certainly took for granted. but today in my mid-life when I am most in need of music’s comfort it is my grandfather’s voice i hear…singing, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus there’s just something about that name. Master, Savior, Jesus…like the fragrance after a rain. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, let the heavens and earth proclaim…kings and kingdoms will all pass away, but there’s something about that name.”

and i know. i know that growing up on a street with no name and in a house with, what seemed, too many adults was somehow good.  how often God gives us things we resent and rebuke and even rebel against…but how often these are the very things which protect us and shape us and the very things to which we return. effortlessly. eagerly. quietly. these might be the things which sweep over us in our independence and the things which check on us in our self-proclaimed freedom…but they are the very things which are able to comfort and quiet us in our later felt restlessness. and whether they happen on perfectly named streets or not, they are ours.  my gratitude comes a little late. gone are those summer-porch evenings in ohio. but even in its tardiness, i feel the quench of something remembered. the glimpse of something beautiful. the whisper of something well named.