SortaCrunchy

Better Late Than Never Poetry Jam!

Here we are - the last day of April, the last day of National Poetry Month.  Are you feeling inspired?  Maybe a little lyrical?  Are you up to reveling in the delights of the written word?

Whether you are in your pajamas rubbing sleep from your eyes or taking a short coffee break at work or sneaking in some blog reading while Sesame Street provides distraction for the little ones or just sitting down for some "me time" after having tucked in your children and your chores, let's all close our eyes for a second and pretend we've all pulled up a chair in a dimly lit coffeehouse and we'll do a little pass the microphone.

What did you bring to share today?  Original verse?  Favorite work from your favorite author?  Don't be shy - let's hear it!

There was no question for me what I wanted to share.  This poem has been my very favorite from the moment it first sang to me from the pages of a handout of works by e.e. cummings in tenth grade Honors English.  Tenth grade girls have been to known to fall in love hard and fast, and mr. cummings invited me to a lifelong romance that day.  He defied all the rules of grammar, and what sophomore isn't drawn to a little rebellion?  He confirmed for me what I already suspected - that poetry is so much more than pentameter and feet and couplets, that a few well-chosen words can penetrate far deeper than line after line of flowery verse, that I just might have a tendency to fall for a smooth-headed man . . .

I was a frizzy-haired fifteen year old who only thought I knew something of love and loss the day I clipped this poem from the pages of the poetry handout and carefully tacked it on the bulletin board in my room.  The heartaches and heartbreaks yet to come deepened my connection with this poem, and by the time I chose it as the subject for my first poetry explication in college as a sophomore English major, I knew it by heart.  It spoke to me then, it speaks to me now:

it is at moments after i have dreamed

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes
when(being fool to fancy)i have deemed

with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds

the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;

moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination,when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:

one pierced moment whiter than the rest

- turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grown deep.

*sigh*  Love it.  My two runners-up are Fleur Adcock's Things and William Carlos Williams's This is Just To Say.

So, who is next?  I would love for you to post your own favorites and use Mr. Linky tell us about it.  Pass the mike, bloggy style.  If you don't want to do your own post, won't you please share in the comments?  And hey Lurkey Loo Lurkers, what better motivation for delurking than to celebrate poetry?  We all have a favorite poem, right?

Work, Interrupted

Inside

Washer swishes, dryer swirls, dishwasher moans and groans.

Television pouts (protesting its sudden silencing) while the computer idles (unsure of what to do).

Outside

Birds flirt, sunshine beckons, shade invites

Mama snaps and snaps and snaps

A baby in a basket and a big girl in a box

play and play and play

(Inspired by Missy's Bless My Interruptions devotional at Christian Women Online)

Inspiration, revisited

When I wrote about Sara and Walk Slowly, Live Wildly on Tuesday, I had no idea that the Lord was about to send me a magnificent dose of inspiration in the form of my sweet friend Melissa the very next day.  (You remember Melissa, right?  She of the amazing voice and profound lyrics . . .)

Melissa and I had been planning to get together for coffee and talk (both small and big) for, gosh, months?  Since before Christmas.  We live in the same town!  How hard can it be?  You know how it is, though.  Sick days, hard weeks, things come up, stuff goes down, plans are rearranged.  In a way that only He can do, God orchestrated both of our schedules yesterday so that we were finally able to connect.

Now, Melissa is not going to be one hundred percent in love with me sharing this part (she's one of those who gives quietly, shunning applause), but I must tell you that she came bearing gifts:

Look at all that organic, natural-living, good-for-you-and-the-babies goodness!!  Blessed. My. Heart.

But far more importantly, she brought with her a conversation in mind that I know without a doubt was from the Lord.  We talked about art and life and spirituality and she shared with me some of what she learned from Madeline L'Engle's Walking on Water.  I can't possibly retell all we discussed, but as we talked I knew precisely why the Lord sent her yesterday.

Well over a year ago (like late fall of 2006), I began to feel a burden to start a writing project.  My friend and mind twin Laura and I talked through some of it and we decided to try to tackle this topic together.  It's something we both feel strongly about and we were excited to get started on it.  Then within a few months, both of us got pregnant and welcomed our second children to our families.  As you can imagine, plans were rearranged.

This burden in my heart has been weighing every more heavily in the past few months, and as Melissa and I talked, God started whispering to me, "Seriously.  What are you waiting for?"  Yesterday, He helped me to know that the time is now.  And a quick phone call to Laura confirmed that she, too, is ready to take this up again.

Exciting, scary, overwhelming . . .

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Speaking of inspiration . . . the girls' Aunt Emily says there are never enough AJ pictures.  (Those second-borns gotta look out for each other!)  So for Aunt "MiMi" and anyone else who enjoys some almost-seven-months-old baby girl love . . .

She loves to play . . .

. . . she's got some cheeks . . .

. . . she's kind of smiley . . .

. . . those eyes . . .

. . . and pretty much is enthralled by Big Sister.

On learning to love . . . and to clean the toilet

This post is my submission for Scribbit’s Write-Away Contest for February on the topic of love. Thank you, Michelle, for creating and hosting this monthly indulgence in inspiration!

Tucked away in the back corner of our bedroom is the doorway to the room my husband loves the best.

His bathroom.

Not much bigger than a closet, this little master bathroom has always seemed to me to be more of a master afterthought. When we moved in last summer, we decided it would work better, logistically speaking, for him to have the tiny master bath and for the girls (all three of us) to share the roomier hall bath.

He carefully chose the long longed-for white bath linens (finally free of his wife’s protests that white bath towels and women do not a happy bathroom make) and meticulously lined the four narrow wooden shelves with the most choice acquisitions of his shaving collection. Bowls of luxurious British shave creams and hardy, robust shave soaps stand alongside soft but sturdy badger bristle shave brushes. Bottles of heady, musky cologne line the windowsill and cast brown and green and blue shadows when the sunlight filters through just so.

It’s definitely his inner sanctum. His sanctuary, really. It’s painful for me to confess that this room of such great significance to my husband is too often the location of my deepest neglect.

And anchoring the room, there stands a monument to my inattentiveness . . . a testament to my disregard.

Oh, sure, I could blame it on the hard water that curses our hometown, but that wouldn’t fool a one of you. All of us know that it takes more than hard water to get to that place of disgusting. It takes days, nay weeks, of avoidance and evasion and I’ll get to it later.

Of course, it’s not that I want for my husband to be greeted by such a revolting scene in his most cherished of places. It’s just that, well, like I said, his bathroom is his and rarely do I trespass into that territory. It is, quite literally, out of my sight and out of my mind. Besides, there’s a lack of urgency that accompanies cleaning a bathroom when all day long I have babies climbing on me, crying for me, and cluttering around me.

But when I read this passage from Gary Thomas’s Sacred Marriage, I felt the sharp pang of conviction as visions of my man’s filthy toilet appeared before me. Thomas references Betsy and Gary Ricucci’s statement that “Honor isn’t passive, it’s active . . . Honor not expressed is not honor” (Love That Lasts), and then he writes

The biggest challenge for me in upholding my spiritual obligation to honor my wife is that I get busy and sidetracked. I don’t mean to dishonor her; I just absentmindedly neglect to actively honor her.

Absentminded neglect.

It occurs to me that unintentional dishonor is dishonor all the same.

As a woman to whom words means so much, I try to love him with my words. Never is a phone call ended without my profession of love for him. I brag him up to my friends and his family. I embrace him with exclamations of how I admire, adore, and appreciate him.

But my man is man of action, and so if I want to be intentional in loving him, in tending to this priority relationship, this covenant relationship, this awesome man of mine . . . if I want to be intentional, I must learn to love him a way that surrenders to honor, even and especially when it’s inconvenient to do so.

So while I am sure the loving words are nice, nothing makes him feel more honored than when I go out of my way to take care of the little things that mean so much to him. Little things like making sure his favorite pair of jeans make it through the laundry jungle with great haste and not hogging the driveway or his side of the bed. Little things like taking thirty seconds of my life every few days to work that toilet over armed with a scrub brush . . . and love.

Negative

I took a pregnancy test yesterday.

We've been practicing natural family planning since D arrived (and by "we" I mean me, I suppose, because I've not once seen The Coach charting temperatures or measuring cervical mucus in the past three years . . .). I thought I had gotten to know the usual signs pretty well, but evidently not as well as I thought.

According to my calculations, a certain long-lost visitor should have shown up last weekend. When she was a no-show, I decided I'd better toss a test in the cart next to the birthday candles and the rice cereal and the Diet Coke. It's funny, really, how many times both the grocery checker and the grocery bagger will ask a mama (with one baby strapped on her in a Mei Tai and another koala joey riding shotgun in the cart) who has just purchased a home pregnancy test, "are you sure you don't need help out to the car with these?" Seriously, it's funny. I laughed.

So anyway, the test was negative. I was relieved.

And disappointed.

And as The Coach and I talked about it last night, I became aware of something else . . . how fearful I was feeling. Not the fear you would think. Not the fears that speak of "how can we afford it? where would we put another? how will the girls respond?"

No, instead, this Fear traces its finger over the now smooth scar at the base of my belly and whispers in my ear of two uneventful pregnancies, two sets of chubby cheeks and bright eyes, two times that two slender pink lines yielded two wardrobes fat with pink.

Then Fear lifts my eyes to that shoe. That shoe that swings recklessly over my head.

When will it drop?

Labels: mothering

Elusive

Laurie Berkner duets with Tom Chapin in a song called "The Happiest Song I Know," and this fun ditty is on the Most Requested list from DJ Jazzy Dacey. The lyrics are an ode to all things happy ("happy as a newborn pup," for example) and one phrase caught my ear as we drove home and I hummed along . . .

The way you shout when school is out

. . . and for a second I thought back to the school days of my childhood, waiting and watching and sighing as the second hand ticked off those last minutes of captivity. I remember that sweet anticipation of the freedom to be relished on the other side of that school bell's ring. I remember the day I counted off the years ahead of me on my fingers and discovered it was to be 1995 when at last I would be relinquished from the bondage of my school years.

My college years flew by in a blur of classes and papers and meetings and tests and dates and functions, and yet always I was looking ahead, X'ing off the days on the calendar in my mind as I hurtled toward graduation. For surely after I was finally, finally done with school, surely that was when I would really be free, right?

And then I turned around and I was married and teaching and once again counting down the days until the school year ended, this time from the other side of the teacher's desk. I was teaching so The Coach could finish his Masters work, and after that? Freedom from teaching! Freedom to start a family.

And then I had a babe in arms and found myself a far cry from free. Convinced that successful parenting was built on solid scheduling, I found it difficult to leave the house for fear of upsetting the delicate equilibrium of naps and nursing. When opportunities knocked, I would sigh and say, "I can't . . . I have a baby" as I wistfully closed the door.

And that's where I find myself again. Times two. As we prepare for D's Big Three and as AJ inches ever closer to five months, my frustration levels rise in the face of so very little freedom. Jealousy wells up in me as I drive past co-eds jogging up and down the hills of our town. I used to jog . . . before I had babies. I thumb through old Bible study workbooks and look longingly on the notes I scribbled on the pages when I had nothing but time to share with the Lord.

And even as I write this, I realize it all smacks of undeniable selfishness.

And I gaze down into AJ's smiling face and I crack up at D's antics and I know I am deeply, unspeakably blessed. So why I am not content? How can I create freedom for myself when there appears to be none? When will I luxuriate in the freedom that is most certainly mine? And if I do discover newfound pockets of freedom, what then? Will I spend it on myself or do something that might just have an impact on eternity?

These are things I think about as I drive and think and whisper Laurie Berkner lyrics to myself on the way home.

Labels: faith, mothering

On being known

Last week, my mother-in-law, whom I love and admire very much, called to ask about a possible gift idea for AJ. She had found a really neat swing with all the lights and sounds and stuff that Fisher Price is convinced babies need on swings.

The thing is, we already have two swings. A simple one and a lights/sounds/overstimulation contraption. I sorta had to scratch my head a bit because my mother-in-law has been in our home very recently and had to become quite familiar with our ridiculous amount of baby gear. And honestly, I am just not a swing kind of mama. Granted, I have two of them, so it would be hard to guess that swings aren't my thing. It's just that I would rather tuck a baby in a sling rather than buckle her in a swing - and I find that most often, the desired outcome is still the same. Sleeping baby.

I was telling my sister later that day that I felt just a little bothered by this gift idea. I have a very close relationship with my mother-in-law, but her idea of getting AJ a new swing made me feel a little bit like she doesn't really know me. Know what I mean?

Juxtaposed against the swing suggestion was the arrival yesterday evening of my husband's gift to me. Our new camera.

I quite literally had butterflies in my stomach as we excavated the camera from its layer upon layer of packaging and protection. As we tinkered and toyed with our newest baby, I couldn't help but to reflect on what a meaningful gift this is for me. Not only did the man devote all of his share of the money given to us by our parents for Christmas presents toward the camera purchase, he also spent hours and hours researching what the perfect choice would be.

It made me wonder . . . Could it be that on all those road trips of our youth, when we would just talk and talk our way down the flat highways that cut through grassy plains of Oklahoma, could it be that he was really listening as I talked about the things I loved as a child? Did he remember how I had told him once how I so treasured the back issues of National Geographic my aunt would save for me? That I would drink in the power and mystery and beauty captured by those lenses?

And did he know that it was always the photography exhibits that called to me from the corridors of museums? That, yes, Botticellis and Jackson Pollacks make for amazing art, but what really moved me were the photographs. A hummingbird caught mid-sip. A new baby cradled in the arms of a new daddy. A village unconcerned with the advances of modernity. A brilliant diamond wedding ring on the finger of a hand dulled and weathered by time.

Eleven years ago tonight, a good-lookin' football player from Small Town, Oklahoma, slipped a diamond engagement ring onto the finger of his sorority girl girlfriend from Another Small Town, Oklahoma. Eleven years ago. Having dated for ten whole months prior to our official engagement, we thought we knew each other so well. I don't think my nineteen year old self could quite have conceived how much there was still to be discovered in that man.

This camera . . . it's extravagant. It is way, way more than I would have asked for or ever felt I deserved. But for me, it quite unexpectedly became a concrete fulfillment of that abstract desire I think every person shares . . . that longing to be known.

Labels: marriage

In which I discover I really I am a fool

In every person's life, situations and circumstances come along that reveal the truth and depth of character that person possesses. Sometimes these situations and circumstances are big. Life-changing. Other times, it's an utterly ordinary scene that exposes the ugly hiding beneath the pretty.

A crucible, if you will.

There are few places on this planet that turn up the heat on my own personal crucible as hot as the open-twenty-four-hours-a-day-seven-days-a-week flame that is WalMart. And I'll tell you where I get singed every time . . . Not when I am walking the three point eight miles from one end of the store to the other because I forgot that now they stock the watercolors in the back by the toys and not in the front by the office supplies like they used to. It's not the snarly employees or the crying babies or the skanky bathrooms or even the mealy produce of questionable freshness. It's the check-out line. Every stinkin' time.

And so the last time I was there, I had AJ strapped on in the mei tai carrier and D riding shotgun in the cart which was filled to the brim with our weekly groceries. And wouldn't you know it? Wouldn't you just know it? At the Not-So-Okay Corral of check-out lanes, there were exactly two regular lanes open, two express lanes, and then the self check-out lanes. All of those were open, you bet.

Now I might not be the smartest mama on the block, but I do know better than to purposefully station myself in an already painfully long line near the check-out counters with a toddler in tow. A toddler who to this point had been amazingly patient and gracious while her mother zoomed her up and down the aisles, but a toddler, nonetheless, who was also known to go a little nutso upon spying the deliberately placed goodies next to the counters. After all, who can resist the glittery packs of gum? And what of the light-up pens? And the plethora of Dora playing cards? And the siren's song of just one more sippy cup?

So the two (and I am really not exaggerating for effect here, ladies, there were two) regular lanes were out. Express lane? Sure. Yeah, that's out. And what does that leave us with? Those darn self check-out lines.

Deep breath. Don't curse. She's talking now, remember?

No lines at the self check. So that's good. I start throwing things on the mini conveyor belt, muttering to myself about how this the last time, the last time I tell ya!, I will be shopping at WalMart and I am gonna go home and write me a letter, that's what I'm gonna do, and on and on. Meanwhile, a sort of (how shall I say this?) scruffy looking middle-age man gets in line behind me and starts chatting me up. I glared glanced at him and sorta half-heartedly responded to his attempts to chit-chat, but what I really wanted to do was bring about violent retribution on the check-out machine because every single time I tried to swipe an item, it would wait about five seconds and then instruct me to place the item in the bag and if I didn't do this on it's time frame, it froze up and I had to start all over.

Must. Not. Hurt. Anyone.

So I think you get the picture. By the time I endured that ordeal, I was exhausted. And annoyed. Annoyed with Chatty McSmall Talk, annoyed with WalMart, annoyed with the world.

Well, not at all coincidentally, the next day I was looking up a word in my Bible's concordance, and as I glanced through the listings, a word jumped out at me. Annoyance. I sorta chuckled and thought, "I don't remember annoyance showing up in Scripture." Curious, I turned to the lone verse listed under annoyance.

A fool shows his annoyance at once,
but a prudent man overlooks an insult. Proverbs 12:16, NIV

Well, hello Conviction. Good to see you.

Again.

Labels: faith, mothering

Verily

Woe, woe unto thee, foolish woman! For thou hast committed a grievous error. In thy foolishness, thou hast chosen to gather food for thine household on a day of unparalleled madness in the market of thine city.

Dost thou not know? Hast thou not heart? The Lord spake unto thee a command, “Do not enter into the marketplace of the city on the day preceding the feast of Thanksgiving. To do so would be great folly. Travel to the marketplace earlier in the week and by doing so save yourself from great sorrow.”

But you, O woman, you have neglected the Lord’s command. And this shall be your punishment.

You shall find the marketplace to be in great chaos, just as it was prophesied unto you. In the aisles there will be cursing, gnashing of teeth, casting of evil glances, great and heavy sighs of aggravation, and the wailing of young children. Ye shall find the aisle of spices and flour to be depleted; verily, ye shall look for the cinnamon sticks but the cinnamon sticks shall not be found.

For the schools have released the schoolchildren and the wives have sent their husbands with their children to the market. But the children and the husbands do not keep the holy laws of the marketplace. They have no understanding of the teaching which says, “Thou shalt not stand in one place reading labels whilst others need to pass by you, for doing so will cause the people to have great anger burning in their hearts against you. Verily, it would be better to cast your fatted calf to the dogs than to cause the flow of cart traffic to be obstructed and provoke the people to burn with indignation.”

And yet, O woman, after you have endured the trials and tribulations of the punishment set before you, the punishment for thy great and grievous error, ye shall escape from your ordeal unharmed. And as thou packest the food for thine household into thy car, a new song will be in thine mouth. A song of praise, for the Lord our God has been good to you.

Verily, I say unto thee, the Lord God, Jehovah Jireh - God our Provider - He hath provided for thee indeed.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ORIGINAL POST COMPLETE WITH ALL COMMENTS

SortaCrunchy Q&A #4 - Their future men

Elle was sweet enough to offer two questions for my month of Q&A, and here's her second question: " . . . as a mom of girls, what qualities would you ask moms of boys to consider in their training of future husbands and daddies?"

Well, a quality that I would personally place as the highest priority is to raise up men who know and love the Lord. Not just men who were raised with the memorization of scripture and perfect attendance in Sunday School, but men who had modeled for them what a real relationship with Christ looks like lived out in every day life. Men whose reality matches their theology. And ideally, men who have seen what a healthy and vibrant marriage can and should be.

Not that I have high standards or anything.

Men who would say to my girls when they are dating, "I only have eyes for you." And show it.

Men who would say to my girls after they have become man and wife, "You are more lovely every day." And mean it.

Men who would say to my girls once they have started the journey of parenthood together, "What can I do to help?" And do it.

Those, my friend, would be some mighty fine men whom I would welcome to our family with open arms.

Labels: marriage, NaBloPoMo