rescue - part 2

You can read part 1 HERE.  Still not sure if i'll finish - or how many parts this little journey will document, but pressing on with part 2...

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i have stars in my eyes. Makes me wonder if they cloud and distort my view or make it clearer. - january 1996
i can read... or maybe remember... the doubt in my words. Pages and pages of oozing love, passionate displays of trumpeting affection - and yet this line jumps out at me. It wasn't my love that i doubted i'm sure - because even now my heart beats slowly - almost painfully in my ears when he calls to tell me he's coming home.  It was doubt over my actions, my lack of wisdom, the careless destruction of my character. i force myself to read from the beginning. On these pages, i find fleeting wide-eyed romanticized awe over a random musician, disappointment over a song that bombed and elation over a performance that rocked... little of substance, other than the one small doubt voiced above.
And then... at the bottom of a page that has no other mention of my Father, these verses...

"But i trust in Your unfailing love. My heart rejoices in Your salvation. i will sing to the Lord for He has been good to me." - psalm 13:5,6

"Don't let anyone think little of you because you are young, be their ideal; let them follow the way you teach and live; be a pattern for them in your love, your faith and your clean thoughts." 1timothy 4:11-13

And the battle waged.

My Father spoke truth through His word... He didn't abandon me. i have the proof captured in my own handwriting.
Hey, daughter - you're mine. i gave you a framework for love, for marriage, for purity - not as a stern task master - but because i love you so very, very much...
As i read the parts of my journal that are hard for me to read, i see Him reaching out to me; trying to save me from my own weakness, offering me an alternative, a better way, a straight path.
The whisper in the wind was lost on me.
Hey, Papa? i wish i would have heard you. i wish i would have listened. i know now that You were with me - and You never did take Your fingers off of me.
i turn the page, and it brings me to that old distance. The distance between us - from Edmonton, Alberta to Kelowna, BC - may as well have been the distance across the milky way. Phone calls in those days were excruciatingly expensive, and a full time student and a boy still living with his mama and daddy don't have many pennies to spare... (that said, the phone companies made hundreds off of us in those months). i didn't have my own computer - neither did Neil. It was a different world then - and we were hundreds of miles apart.
Eight pages into my journal, there's an entry written in red ink:
i'm scared. i have no one to talk to except Neil and he's so far away and it costs so much money to talk to him... so i will write a letter to God...
And i did. My childlike fear, my contrition, my agony and shame - i brought to Him - along with an aside that i find interesting:
"if only people knew. i'm not telling anyone. That's for sure."
And now i can laugh - just like He must have - as he orchestrated His answer...
"Do you think I'm going to leave you there, Daughter? Agonizing over a secret shame that you're intent on keeping covered, rotting and destroying you from the inside out? I am your Rescuer - and i will teach you to love Truth just like I do... "
Unbeknownst to me, a little life was already created - Truth was going to be acknowledged and my Great Rescue began...

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PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6

courage - part 1

i don't know how these posts will come out. i've got three started in drafts, and i haven't even made it very far into some of what i'd like to explore. i know that i'd like to end with a challenge to unwed mamas, to the churches that surround them and hold them and to the parents, siblings, boyfriends and friends that are in their lives. Maybe these posts will just be lame... and maybe i'll quit part way through... No promises :) But for what it's worth - here is part 1.

i picked up my old journal. The one whose starting date is January 4th 1996. The one that has butterflies and doodles inscribed all inside the front flap. It has quotes drawn around and decorating the broken binding... things like:
"i never wanted to be famous, i only wanted to be great." Ray Charles
"An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit." - pliny the younger
A description of beauty: in the eye of the beholder, self-control, happiness, dainty, gentleness, purity, meekness, honesty, love, fleeting, skin-deep, love, goodness, hope, worker...
It has, written in tidy black ink in the top right hand corner, the address of my first apartment - and a name: miss. retha paige sloan - 1996.
It belonged to a girl i hardly ever think about because my memories are so conflicted. My eyes are tearing up and my cheeks are burning with that smouldering shame just picking it up again.
i don't read it.
A few women have told me about their abortions in the past little while.
Their stories moved me - and even days later, i wonder at their courage in sharing honestly from their hurting chapters. There is beauty in honesty after all - and theirs shakes me from my comfortable middle class mama role - and knocks me back in time to when i was 19 in my second year of music school - and i became a girl who chose not to have an abortion.
Immediately following those days and life altering months that made up the first half of 1996, i attempted as a young woman in my twenties to distance myself from the foolish girl who kept the journal full of confusion, timidity - and just the smallest bit of grit.
Honestly? i've judged that girl... and i've judged her harshly.
And now - i feel the older woman in me murmur comfortingly, "She wasn't so bad... she was young, foolish, hurting, insecure and scared. Don't be afraid of her - she's a part of you - learn from her."
And i crack the cover - the tears spill over - and i'm ready to read ancient unread words. Swirly immature handwriting covers each page - most of it makes me impatient and mortified... but some of it makes me shush the hater inside and title this blog post, "courage"...

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PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6

i'm thinking about

i read THIS and THIS this morning and i'm thinking about adding my story.
i'm not crazy proud of a lot of chapters in my life... and this is one of them... i know i've been honest on here about where i've been - and the preciousness of life - but i'd like to share more about what it was like for me with deadlines looming, the future spinning, shame attacking and a diploma on the line...
Those were some crazy soul stretching months...

some days i miss him more than others

  Some days i'm so busy; and the joy of my little crew and the bustling of my house keep the ache a little farther away. But there are other days - the days that i bemoan my travelling man's travelling - and i miss him more. The floor can hardly bear to be swept, i get the stares, meals are left-over's left-overs... 'cause i'm lonesome for the man who makes it feel like home.
  i've never been the type of woman who cherishes her independence. i've always been a kinda high maintenance girl - but my Father seems to want to stretch me in ways that bring about the most intense kinds of discomfort, and so my independence grows too. And it seems funny to me that when my protector is on the road, that's often when my Father calls me out to "tussle" (as my friend Rita puts it). When i feel the most vulnerable and solitary in my stance as parent, when my bed is shared with a tiny needy two year old, rather than a big strong man, when i have to find the courage to stand - rather than to stand behind - my Papa brings me more opportunities to show the world that i'm His.
  And i try and i fail - and my reflexes are poor and i miss opportunities and completely flub others. A friend told me that the only failure is if you don't learn from those lessons, and i guess that's true - but man, i'd like to have neil around when i'm down and lickin' my wounds. He's pragmatic, unemotional... and good. We're such an odd-ball match, but i can see how God saved us by putting us together and making us one.
  But what helps most of all is that i know that God has a hand - even in the comings and goings of a travelling salesman, and his little wife left at home. i know that my Father will use the circumstances of my life and that they'll allow me to grow, if i let them.
  So keep taking, Father, scrape away my security blankets, my comfort, my desire to be served. Do Your good work - and help me to be wise enough not to hinder it.

My heart has heard you say, "Come and talk with me." And my heart responds, "Lord, I am coming." psalm 27:8 NLT

soul speak

i was listening to a song on the radio the other day - and i decided i wanted to learn the rap. Imitation is honestly a good way to learn, and sometimes some of the raw emotion expressed in rap is truer than any pretty melodic line... So i thought, "Why not give it a go, mama?"
i listened and printed the lyrics off the internet - but they rang hollow and phony in my own ears - even though it was their authenticity that caught my attention in the first place. i hadn't had any of the life experiences that the writer of that song had... and even though the song resonated with me, it felt weak to imitate his inflections and pauses - let alone the words he stretched and bounced artistically across the beat.
So i sighed... and decided to write my own.
Honestly? It's not my first time trying to rap... (and don't get a strange picture in your head of a white 36 year old woman trying to be young and hip... that's not what it's about - it's more about finding my own voice - no matter the genre.)
And so i wrote. i scrawled lyrics across the note pad, crossed out bits and crowded others in tiny letters. i was gentle with rules - and generous with heart. i used my piano and sang a simple melodic hook. i didn't write about apartheid or abuse... i wrote about how we've been lied to and taught to believe things about God that just aren't true.
Neil can hardly look at me without smirking... Cai stopped me as i attempted to show her the fruit of my afternoon labour, "No, mom. i don't need to hear you rap..."
But i don't care.
Art is like that - begging to be attempted... and yeh - i think i probably made a big mess out of it - and i should have probably followed a few rules a little closer - counted syllables with a little more care, paid attention to the lyrics of the hook rather than just the melody... or maybe i should have put my pencil away and cleaned the toilets or scrubbed baseboards - but i didn't.
And there it is...
It's kind of like this pathetic little blog that i keep up. i'll keep trying to find my voice - and speaking the little bits of truth i discover - with my eyes open to see Him in every tiny bit of life i capture.