only as happy

i came across this phrase in my reading this week. "you are only as happy as your saddest child"... (chuck colson.)

oh. my. stars. gasp. gulp. sway. this hit me right where it hurts. this is why there is always a part of me that stays gray...throbbing...empty...longing...weeping.

my children, my children. since eve, who mourned her lost son and her other lost son...we grieve for our children.

i asked my mother once, "which of us is your favorite?" (i know i was...funny thing, the others all said the same...) she replied, wisely, "whichever one needs me the most."

my children. my child. my lost, lonely child who needs me but doesn't know it. who needs god. who needs love. this can be said about any of my children on any given day, but sometimes, particularly, and for long periods of time.

i know the endless back and forth of a mother's heart, rejoicing, weeping, screaming, imploring, ceaselessy bombarding heaven with cries and prayers (i've also just been reading augustine's confessions...oh, precious monica, who did not give up all those long years...)

who knew. how were we to know when we bravely/foolishly/carelessly/lovingly gave birth to our kids that never again would our hearts be at rest, that we would forever be connected to someone who had the ability to tear our innermost being apart simply because we loved him/her.

it's true, chuck...i am only as happy as my saddest child.

oh what a day today...

two hours of a baby screaming with colic.

6 hours with a reluctant homeschooler with ADD.

a visiting babysitter (of the colicky baby) who can't understand a word of english.

a two-year-old and a 5-year-old who alternated between dressing each other in every item of clothing in the house and playing with every single toy in the house.

teaching my helper, (limited english) to mix and bake a batch of home-made bread.

doing hot/cold packs on my surgical wound every 4 hours.

catching up with my husband who's been gone for a week on all his traveling news and my home news.

sigh. i'm tired. meals, baths, snacks, reading done. teeth brushed. pull-ups on for night. house is a mess. puke spots, pee spots, spilled food spots everywhere.

i'm about done. getting too old for this.

so tired of pain...

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway

i have another broken place...another scar...another part of my body that droops and bulges and throbs and aches and in a thousand different ways tells me that it has been violated.

i'm not so sure i agree with hemingway. none of my scars feel stronger.

my interior scars don't either...they throb at unexpected moments just when i think they're healed up.

pain. i'm so tired of pain.

delightsomeness...

enjoying my emma so much...it's taken her almost all of "two" to be able to hold up two fingers, and now she said to me proudly yesterday, "i'm big, mom...i'm two ones!" as she held up those two little brown fingers, both hands (so it's actually four)

when asked her name, she sometimes jumps to the next question's answer and does the fingers...and when asked how old she is, "emma....rose...hepper" (she can't do the n and p together so the n gets left out)

such a treasure of a little person. her black curls, her brown skin, her twinkly black eyes, her happy personality, bring joy day after day after day. even when she was so sick, she didn't cause me grief...she lay hot and silent day after day in my arms while the bacteria invaded her tiny body...thank God for antibiotics, or we would have lost her.

i look forward to the years ahead with such joyful anticipation. taking nothing for granted, i expect every milestone, every achievement, every passage of life, to be nothing less than wonderful. just as it was for the other kids.

it's just that because i'm older, and smarter, and less rushed, each moment is savored like a delicious melting mouthful of chocolate (let's not go there...)

love you, baby girl, every minute.

mommy.

"it's friday, but sunday's comin'..."

this is a sermon title that i saw many years ago...and here it is again, easter time...and the christian world is rejoicing with choirs and lilies and the pagan world is having easter egg hunts and bunny shows...

I was reading this morning a very old book (recently i don't read anything much that isn't about a hundred years old) about rees howell, the famous intercessor. something he preached pierced my heart..."when I saw Him I broke down at the foot of the Cross and I have never recovered."

my heart echoed with these words. the sting of the statement pierced and throbbed in my mind. when have i ever really understood what it means to break down at the cross?

the resurrection means nothing without the Calvary.

i have a choice to make. Do i glance at Calvary and hasten on to the empty tomb to rejoice? to sing "he's alive" or the "hallelujah chorus" and dance in the streets?

Or do I allow myself to linger there in the agony until the reality of what Jesus did "breaks" me, changes me, in a way that I will never recover from...the movie "the passion of the christ" did not tell the half of it, and i could hardly watch it. how can i stay there in my mind until it's real? until it gets inside of me and gets ahold of me and i don't have to rush through the black friday gloom and on to the sunday glory...

Death is the prequel to life. real life cannot occur until there has been a death. i don't understand this, can't.

i glimpse it darkly. let me change those old words just a bit, to try to hang on to the depths of what i'm discovering, again...

"when i see You, i want to break down at the foot of the Cross, and never recover."