teach me to pray

It was Friday... & i felt foolish.
i'm too full of pride & shame is an easy tool for the enemy to use on me. 
i was still in my jammies at 11:47 & i pulled on my sweats and a hoodie and grabbed my keys and headed to the church. 
"God - i'm sick of my own words.  Teach me to pray..."
This *purposefully* meeting with God is stretching me.  To stand on the street corner across from the abortion clinic makes me check and recheck my heart - makes me press in closer to His heart - causes me to reach deeper - to learn how to pray. 
The 15 minutes i spend at my church on Fridays are much like this too - sometimes it's an emotional meeting with my Creator that feeds my soul - and sometimes it's all i can do to pleadingly whisper again and again, "meet with me.  please, meet with me."
As i pulled into the parking lot - the psalm that kept running through my head was Psalm 121.

1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains—

where does my help come from?

2 My help comes from the LORD,

the Maker of heaven and earth.


3 He will not let your foot slip—

he who watches over you will not slumber;

4 indeed, he who watches over Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.


My parents used to sing the King James version of this psalm together & it's indelibly imprinted on my memory...
& so i prayed that psalm.  i sat on the concrete steps of that building - and prayed those first verses again and again... meditating on His goodness.  i lay down the struggling marriages that make my heart heavy, lay down the shame that threatens to overpower me, i lay down my sorrow, my heartache, the sickness, death and disease.  Gratefully turning my face to where my help comes from
There were no words but those - nothing of my own creation - nothing added... Nothing offered except an echo of these old lines - and a change in my posture...

walk to remember 2011

peace be still

He woke at midnight - writhing and angry.  i shushed, offered water, walked, nursed, comforted with lights on - and off, held tight, and let loose.  Nothing worked. 
He screamed - the blue veins sticking out of his tiny furious neck. 
i could NOT get him to stop.  
It was the most insane thing. 
Neil got up after the first hour to see what (ahem), *on earth*- was happening & then went back to bed with the bathroom fan on. i don't blame him - he has no patience & this was beyond him helping.  Baby wasn't just 'fussing' he was all out going crazy. i covered his mouth for parts of it because it was so incredibly loud & the other littles were (trying to) sleep.
Finally... spent - at age 35 - i bowed my head and cried.  Big alligator tears slid down my haggard face as i sat & beheld rage and had not. one. more. tool in my mothering toolbox. 
"Oh God - you told the wind and the rain to be calm, and they obeyed you.  Can't you still this small boy for his crying mama?"
& i turned... expecting him to fall into a peaceful slumber...
But he didn't. 
The child raged on. 
For two full hours he screamed - until he was utterly spent - and slowly, painfully (painfully because if i moved an inch in the wrong direction, he would start screaming again) - my son finally went back to sleep. 
And i wondered why God didn't answer that little prayer in the affirmative.  Such a small thing to get hung up on - when there is hunger and famine, sickness, death and disease in our world.  It was a baby's tantrum that caused me to wonder in fascination at the prayers that aren't answered. 
It feels like a months... years long conversation i am having with my Father.  He teaches me, and conforms my heart to His.  He hears - and sees... yet is sometimes not heard or seen.  He is compassionate, full of love - and yet He is Holy and just.
& i long to be already arrived - changed, conformed, made perfect... & the raging world around me flings me to my knees - hungry for more of Him.

prolife is not my passion part 2

Last week, i posted one of those posts that sits in my drafts box for a week before i gather up the courage to press "publish".  i always worry that i'll misrepresent my heart - or that i'll choose my words badly, and hurt people in the process. 
There wasn't a flood of comments, but the ones that did come in were thoughtful and thought provoking.  You can read them HERE. 
What my sister steph posted near the end was what most resonated with me - & was perhaps more "what i meant" - in the original post. 

She said:
Pro- Life isn't just about abortion. It's family planning, teen STDs, divorce, fatherlessness, poverty, IVF, custody battles over embryos that are biologically the result of more than two DNA lines, immunization cultivated in a stew of materials resulting from abortion(to try to phrase it delicately). Abortion is the defining issue of our age, and we have lost, but that doesn't mean the tide can't turn and justice can reign one day for our culture just as it did for the black slaves, or the Jews at Auschwitz. I love this quote by Elizabeth Rundle Charles:

If I profess with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages, the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point."

Saying that prolife is the 'defining issue of our age'? - This is a sentiment i agree with. 
& that's why i'll keep plugging away - with whatever work He puts before me - praying for courage to speak truth and taking courage from my brothers and sisters who choose to do the same.   
Yeh, it's gonna look different for each one of us - but i'm going to cheer when i see God's people praying and fasting - listening - and taking action where they are able. 

hi

When things are too quiet for too long - and you think to yourself with a heavy sigh of contentment, "man, this is too good to be true..."

Yeah... it probably is.

When i heard his breathy baby voice whispering at me, "hi", i glanced up - and beheld sweet perfection smothered in bum cream. He probably wouldn't have bothered me, but he had shoved his hand into a wipes bin & it was stuck fast.

We washed it out of his hair for a week.