the dungeon of despair {letters to kai}

it had been a bad day. a bad roll of days. a bad week. i had just declared to the world the most magnificent thing. i declared that i had been healed. and i knew. i knew the week that would follow that statement would have its challenges. i knew to expect the word to be tested. i knew & yet still wasn't quite prepared & unraveled quicker than my resolve could hold. maybe it was how the testing came from such unexpected places. maybe it was the bulk effect of multiple things coming at one time. but whatever the reason, i was in the unraveled place. a dark, dungeon-y place. a place i had just declared i'd never be in again. and i was sad. 

it was a rainy day & we were watching veggie tales’ 'robin good & his not so merry men'. you were nested sweetly on my lap while the others flipped & flopped on & off the couch & surrounding pillows. 

i was stroking your hair while we watched & i choked back a few tears. this veggie tales was a little too close to home. everything from lenny & his lost birthday with his mom singing to him about where to put our hurts & disappointments to the fat motherly gourd who consoles robin good or the sheriff in the dungeon of despair, too sad to escape. feeling ridiculous how much i was relating to a movie based on the lives of vegetables, i reel in my emotions. this is silly i think to myself. and then, with your eyes still fixed on the tv, you say...

"i'm so sorry mummy"

"so sorry for what?" i ask.

"so sorry for my God."

"what do you mean God is sorry?"

"God says i’m so sorry for the dungeon of despair."

big tears began to well in my eyes as i clutch you a little closer. 

"that's nice kai. that's very nice." i squeak out. 

"yeah." you say, eyes still glued to the screen, like nothing profound just happened. like you didn't just give your first, life changing prophetic word. 

you wiggle free a few moments later & bound across the ottoman & leap into the big arm chair finding a new spot to perch. 

“i love you kai” i say.

“i know & you & God made me special & you love me very much” you pause a moment & then mumble under your breath as you get lost in the movie again, “and i love you too mummy”.

sometimes you just need someone to see you. you need to know that they know how much it hurts. and that is what God did that day. He saw me. i know that God doesn’t cause pain or hurt. He isn’t the author of despair. but knowing that He doesn’t cause suffering & knowing that He is there in the suffering with you are two different things. He saw me & i turned into His embrace. seeing someone is a powerful thing. truly seeing someone & choosing to be there beside them. just being there to know. being there to see. being there to impart comfort & courage & hope. He was there because you lent your tiny voice to His. and He spoke bedrock to my quicksand. He spoke security & strength to shaky knees. 

these may be choices you are someday faced with. when disappointment crosses your path, will you turn into His embrace or will you turn away in your hurt? will you listen to the still, small voice there beside you that says “I’m here & I love you & I hurt when you hurt.” i pray that you'll know His presence & turn to Him. the only One who truly knows what our hurts feel like & carries them for us if we let Him. the only real comfort a soul can feel. the love of a saving Saviour & the embrace of the extravagant Father. 

it was a completely ordinary moment transformed into holy by your tiny voice. don’t ever underestimate the power of your little voice. for even you my little kai, at the small age of three, have already had a profound effect on my life.

health & happiness

we're a healthier family & we're always on the look out for healthier ways to be healthier. i must say that it has been quite the journey from my single days when my diet consisted mainly of shreddies & white bread to now sprinkling chia seeds on greek goat yogurt. but i think sometimes i can cling to a sort of false sense of comfort, thinking i've arrived because i made a few positive changes a few years ago & stuck to it. i always want to be committed to continual growth in every area of my life, including my health. little changes all the time are always more sustainable than huge overhauls. and so every so often, i like to shake things up with a new recipe book or diet tweak. i am always culling the internet for new research & evidence behind differing theories. and there are a lot of differing theories out there. i've read that {raw} cow's milk is one of the most nutritious things you can put in your body & then read the complete opposite in a study that likened cow's milk affect on health to cigarettes. it can be a confusing world of information out there. so you really need to know your stuff. go with the greater body of evidence & most of all, go with the evidence proved by very your own home.

i came across these 'truths about food & diet' that helped me keep it simple yet focussed. it's always nice to know why we do what we do. i've clipped these to our family planner in the kitchen, just so i can keep the goal right in front of me while i'm preparing meals. this lovely lady, who gathered these nifty truths, has been such a source of encouragement & education to my family & my recipe book {her recipes seriously must take up over half of my recipe collector}. find the original post here.

1.  Eating a wide variety of nutrient-dense foods is key. Too much of anything can be a bad thing.  Our bodies need a balance of nutrients to grow, thrive, and be well.  You can’t even pinpoint exactly how much you need of each nutrient because it could be different for every individual.  The only way to get the ideal balance of nutrients is to eat a wide variety of nutrient-dense foods on a daily basis.  If you are eating too much of any one thing, even if that one thing is “healthy”, you could be hurting your body.

2.  What we eat has power to make us well or make us sick.  I wholeheartedly believe that nutrition does matter.  It goes beyond maintaining a healthy weight.  What we eat can truly affect our health, both short term and long term.  Overall, I actually think nutrition plays a stronger role than genes do in our health because I think nutrition can turn on or off certain genetic tendencies.

3.  The bulk of our diet should be made up of plant-based foods. The reason I think this is simple.  If you are going to get the wide spectrum of nutrients you need, you have to eat a lot of plant-based foods, specifically a lot of vegetables.  There are nutrients, important nutrients, you can get from animal foods.  I think eating them is fine, nutritionally speaking.  But if they make up the bulk (more than half) of your diet, you don’t have enough room in the rest of what you’re eating to get all the nutrients you need.

4.  No matter what diet you follow, make sure you’re eating whole, unprocessed foods. Whether you eat vegan or paleo or somewhere in between, most of what you’re eating should not be packaged, processed foods.  If I were to give one piece of advice to someone  looking to improve their health, it would be to cut out processed foods & refined sugars.

5.  Nutrition is highly individualized. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all diet.  One person may thrive on a vegan diet, while the next person’s health may suffer.  A certain individual may need more fat and less protein than the next.  This is why you need to be careful and never assume that what “works” for one person will “work” for you.    source: happyhealthymama.com

the wanderers & the wilderness

the israelites were wanderers. they wandered in their faith, all to easily distracted by golden calves. they wandered in their hearts, becoming rebellious & disillusioned and as a result, they physically wandered in deep wilderness for forty years.

"the christian life is this, that your internal realities become your external realities." 

{b. johnson}
they wandered internally & so they wandered externally. they were anchorless & their hearts drifted & got lost & tangled up in all that wilderness. and that is where i have been. in the wilderness of the heart. all tangled up & lost in this unfamiliar terrain. until i realized the manna. life giving, hunger quenching manna. God's miraculous nourishment falling from heaven daily. manna literally meaning "what is it?"

"when we are despairing, we can choose to live as israelites gathering manna. hungry, they chose to gather up that which had no meaning. more than 14,600 days they take their nourishment from that which they don't comprehend. they find soul-filling in the inexplicable. they eat the mystery. they eat the mystery. and the mystery, that which made no sense, is 'like wafers of honey' on the lips."

 {ann voskamp, on thousand gifts, p. 22}

the wilderness can be a disorienting, terrifying place. it's the kind of suffering that can eat a person up from the inside out. but in the baffling, lostness of the wilderness, this manna, this "what is it?" question has been freedom to me. choosing to gather the manna bread crumbs & eat the mystery. although the purpose be latent & hidden at times, nothing is wasted. not even in the wilderness. and that is a great comfort to me, that this too has a purpose & it is to prosper me. to provoke me into the Presence of Peace himself. 

it is in the darkest moments of this wilderness that i have tasted the deepest, purest Shaloam. the kind of Shaloam that John talks about. soul prosperity. mental wholeness. tangible, grip-able peace. it's in the torrents of the raging sea, i have found the place of rest. soul restoring, lie destroying, war waging rest.  the kind of rest that leads to the promise land.

"the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet."

 {romans 16:20}

those poor israelites never got to see their hard sought for promise land. never got to taste the honey, drink the milk of their inheritance. and unlike them, i will find my way out of the wilderness. and i will arrive on the other side of the Jordan stronger, more resilient & most of all, clearer & closer to the One who was there the whole time. my anchor. my ever present help.

"because you are my help, i sing in the shadow of your wings." 

{psalm 63:7} 

little fellows & their fellowship

sharing is perhaps one of the biggest issues of a little person's life. the why, the what, the whom & how they share are much of what i spend my day sorting out at the moment. with four fellows four & under, most of the toys in this house are communal, which has lead to some inevitable conflict. it is rarely the brand new race car or the latest newfangled trinket, but rather the old broken purse strap
that they love to chase the dog with or some old bottle cap tucked conspicuously in someone's shirt pocket that causes murderous rage to erupt between them. silly things possess children to do silly things. who knew a trike could be welded as a weapon? who knew a flashlight could be like catnip to a little sinner? who knew a bubble wand could set off WWIII?
needless to say, we have tried regulating & implementing sharing policies so fair is fair which has only made us all into legalists. we have tried making the punishment fit the crime, which has lead to an un-ending conveyer belt of timeouts. we've tried toy jail & chocolate chip bribery, sticker charts & sharing magnets & total toy isolation. we have tried just about every parenting strategy out there to prevent sibling rivalry from raising it's ugly head but nothing has been as effective as getting to the heart of the matter.

"now every time your children have a conflict about a toy, they are breaking fellowship. if you step in and redistribute the toy but don't address the unkindness or selfishness or envy, you allow that to stay between them. it is sort of like trying to get rid of a dandelion by shaking the seeds all over you garden. there we go. solved that problem. until this afternoon.

it is a lot harder to work through grabby heart problems than the grabby hands, even though they usually travel together. if this part of parenting were only about toy distribution, then we should just be setting timers & keeping tally sheets. but teaching them about dealing well with each other, looking to their own hearts, and staying in fellowship is hugely important if they are ever going to get on without you." 

{rachel jankovic, loving the little years}

i know they are little fellows at the moment but i very much value their relationship with their siblings & i want them to too. people are always more important than toys. more important than anything that could possibly come between them, i tell them. and when the wild rumpus starts to rage in the other room, it doesn't matter who started it or how, they are both in the wrong. absolutely nothing i can think of necessitates a lord of the flies savage outbreak. they both have the ability to communicate. and if the other wasn't listening to their plea, that's when they should have grabbed me to come help, matthew 28 style. but wild rumpus is never ok, no matter what. i want them to learn the lessons i am still learning, that no matter what, we can always walk through a dispute in fellowship with one another. no matter what, i can still love my brothers & my sisters regardless of the sinful nature they have just manifested towards me. and then, once we agree the we love each other & that this is worth working out together, we get down to the heart of the matter. 

"remember that the house rules for the toys are foundational social laws to your child. they will take these lessons with them for life. so think through what your rules communicate to your children.

do your kids know that if they grab they want & cry mom will make their brother give it to them in a minute? do you try to pacify them by offering them things & trying to persuade them that it is better, rather than deal just deal with envy?

it is the hearts that are the problem. only sorting out what they may grab & when does not deal with the actual situation because it does not address the engine of the situation - their hearts. nobody profits from this kind of a system, but everyone learns how to work it to their advantage.

it's important to stick to principles, teach principles & then sort out the details in light of them." 

{rachel jankovic, loving the little years}

it is hard to see our precious little one's in true light sometimes. to see them chose to use their wallop instead of their words. to see them clobber instead of communicate. and it is definitely difficult to see such big, ugly emotions come out of such teeny hearts. but they are there whether we want to recognize it or not. envy is still envy, even if i choose to call it 'spirit-ly concerned for the welfare of all toys everywhere'. selfishness is still selfishness, even if i choose to call it personality. we put names to the big, ugly emotions, we call them like they are, & then we work through those emotions in repentance & replace them with the true feelings of fellowship, like it had never been broken. 

i'm not saying that every time there is an altercation between children i run through all of this, but i most definitely set it as a goal to talk about the heart of the matter later if there isn't time or if space to deal with it right there & then. stories help too. the story of the brave knight who fought dragons all day protecting the castle & then came home & walloped the princess over getting the blue plate has convicted each of my own brave knights at some point & the same with the beautiful princess with glass slippers & a regal tiara who went around calling the boys poopy heads. for some reason they always know what the right thing to do is when there is a brave knight or a princess involved. :)

the crown on your head {letters to eva}

"the beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries or the way she combs her hair."

 {audrey hepburn}

nancy tillman's the crown on your head

this morning started out like any other morning. a good hearty start to the day. there was the usual feeding of the four hungry bears at the counter. one extra grumpy bear down with rosy cheeked


teething but nothing mama couldn't handle after a big swig of caffeine.
my mistake was reading that book. that book that has gotten me into trouble in the past. kai had found it stuffed under the couch & begged me to read it. and so i did. and 'alexander & his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day' jinxed us.
i shuffle you kids into your various spaces for room time. shower. get a good roll on the dishes & the day & then spring back upstairs to get you dressed. you chatter in my ear as a scramble through your drawers only to realize laundry day is long overdue. i pick a tuff of hair off a discarded sweater, thinking jeepers i should have done a better job cleaning up after i trimmed your bangs.  the sweater will do. not so dirty you look dirty. just dirty enough to think you play hard. i lift you up onto the change table & begin forcing limps through clothing holes. you prattles on. something about a haircut.
"see mummy! see?"
"yes eva. uh huh" i say half heartedly as i continue to build my list in my head for the day. groceries. gym. can't forget to mail that letter.
i sit you up all dressed & get out the hair stuff.
"which pretty bow should we use today?" i ask as i awkwardly fumble the comb through your hair only to realize...

nancy tillman's the crown on your head

"eva, what have you done?!" i exclaim in sheer horror as you hand me a golden clump of your hair.
your enthusiasm for your new do evaporates as you burst into tears.
"i sorry mummy! i so sorry!" you sob.
i pick you up & you bury your head in my shoulder. i run my hand through your hair to feel for the missing chunks.
i take you to melonheads. you sit in the chair reluctantly until you agree to a stale granola bar & my hand to hold. i hold your hand tight as the hairdresser lops off the rest of your hair. i hold back tears. but you don't notice. you're zoned out watching 'rapunzel' on the t.v. overhead, a cruel irony.
i breath deep as i carry you back to the car, stoking the back of your practically bald little head.
throughout the day, i watch you as you play. taking in your hair. taking in your beautiful little face. you catch me watching you a few times & instantly run to me with quivering lip.
"it's ok evie. it'll grow out. i'll be ok" i say.

nancy tillman's the crown on your head

they say a woman's hair is her crowning glory. some say it is her definition of femininity. some believe it's where her strength comes from. and that may be true. but you came into this world with no hair at all. you came into this world with a crown all your own a top that bald newborn head. i noticed it the first day we met. it was beautiful & bold & bright. full of all that is you. it's fierce full of life & wild joy uncontainable. and oh how it's glimmered & grown with you. and whether you have locks of gold to for that crown to nest on or are bald as the first day we met, it is there just the same. saying the same thing it's always said. shining to all and to all it says 'she is magnificent'. you wear it a top of that head of yours even now & carry it with you for always & wherever you go.

"in other words, from your very first day, you were chosen to glow in a very big way! 

with your crown made of glittering, high-flying things, you've got wind in your pocket, your wishes have wings...

your crown is your best friend forever, by far. it tells the story of just who you are. 

that's why every night, when i put you to bed, i'm careful to kiss the crown on your head."

 {nancy tillman, the crown on your head}

just bring you {the box}

as a mom, i have often fallen into the trap of 'one day'. one day i'll be able to appear in pubic without smudges all over my clothes. one day i'll have it all together. one day i'll have a ministry.

somewhere along the way, i built a box called ministry in my mind. and it was full of pulpits & conferences & travelling & elite status. the Lord recently found this box & convicted me in this. ministry is not as much about what you do but more about who you are. and when you begin to realize who you are, then what you do out of that is ministry.

whether that's behind a pulpit or a coffee cart, whether it's teaching in an amphitheatre or changing a diaper in a small stinky room, intentional or not, it's who i am that ministers to everyday situations & people. there is no box called ministry. ministry is just who i am. no striving needed.

just bring you, He says, to the everyday challenge of life. bring you everywhere you go.  the God-birthed you.

motherhood in the trenches

happy belated mother's day! this is my fifth official mother's day. five years since i was belly round with my first child & my, how things have changed. my, how i have changed. little did i know on that first mother's day how i was jumping head long into the steepest learning curve i'd ever experience in my life. i am transformed. so much learned & yet still so much left to learn.

i have been reluctant to share my own parenting journey, especially with the blog-o-sphere. it's kind of like those who have perfect children please go first. i am very aware that i am no where near the perfect example of a mother but i am in a committed, continuing process of becoming perfected into the likeness of Him & i have collected a few gems along my way. from my own experiences but also from many brave & courageous women who have walked before me & have shared their own treasure chest of wisdom with me, full of the precious stones that they have mined out of the trenches of motherhood.

although i can't entirely take credit for all of these treasures, it is such a beautiful grace to get to share & experience the prize of long fought for wisdom with each other. and so, i thought i'd start a little blog feature called 'motherhood in the trenches' to help me remember the priceless journey i'm on & perhaps encourage others on the same journey.

and so, here's to motherhood in the trenches & loving the little years! (*also the title of an awesome book that has become just such a treasure to me, couldn't recommend it more!)