Every day I get to learn something of creation. Every day I get that chance to open my eyes and see something touched by holiness. One of the greatest roles I have as a homeschooling mother is that of student. Even after the chicks leave the nest, I will still be learning. Following a cue from my friend @harthandhome I took time today to plan what I would be learning for myself this year, from Geometry to Moths to Latin, and it felt like a feast I’m in no hurry to get through. Time tables and fast goals 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️ that’s difficult for me right now in this season of mothering. But a long term work of beauty, attention and diligence? This I can do. One bite at a time, one page at a time, one walk at a time, one pondering after another. I’m not looking for knockouts, I’m looking to linger. I am petitioning alongside the trembling and awe-struck Kate Comstock in the cathedral of the Limberlost, breathing prayers of worship and wonder for as long as I have breath in my lungs. ✨✨✨✨ “ ...I feel like saying to Him, ‘to the extent of my brain power I realize Your presence, and all it is in me to comprehend of Your power. Help me to learn, even this late, the lessons of Your wonderful creations. Help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders. Almighty God, make me bigger, make me broader!“ -Kate Comstock, The Girl of the Limberlost by Genie Stratton-Porter. 🦋🐛🌿
I woke up this morning and read a text about Molly Clee’s death. I read the words over and over and they would not sink in. I thought about her children and her husband and Katie and about how hard it is to get hay off of cardigans. I listened to the soft breathing of the sleeping boy beside me and the deep snores of another boy across the room. My parents were downstairs making breakfast and the homey sound of dishes clanging in the sink and their familiar voices floating up the stairs made me feel all of seven years old. The other children were just starting to rise, ready for another day of vacation. A few hours later my boys reached this swinging bridge and I stepped out into a green space where I could breathe and wonder why. I watched the boys bound recklessly across the wooden planks suspended over the swollen creek water. We walked up a trail and I stopped to photograph mushrooms and sift through damp leaf litter. I held a velvety moth wing of pale lambent green in the palm of my hand and felt the wind move through my hair and then I asked God why on earth He would take Molly Clee, mother of five, lover of Henry, sunburst of welcome and laughter to her friends in VA, home to heaven at the age of 29. A rumpled boy drew close to my side and I pressed my hand to his chest and felt one of the heartbeats that sustain my known universe and I resolved to hold fast to the author of its beating. He who spoke the world into being, who was present at Molly’s first and last breath, who was mindful of the luna moth’s last graceful arc through the trees, and who keeps eternity in the palm of His hand. I direct my prayers to Him who is faithful to comfort and bring peace to those left standing by the imprint Molly made in her world. My youngest, sensing my sadness asked, “Mama, are her kids waking up without her today?” I nodded, unable to speak. He slipped his hand into mine, “Her mama love is with them though. No matter what. Her mama love stays.” ✨❤️Friends, there is a link on the @wildandfree.co page that will direct you to a gofundme page for the Clee family. Please support if you are able. Pray for Molly’s family and friends who are walking this valley of grief.
I almost never share things like this because it seems too intimate, but he has a word of encouragement for you, so here we go. ✨✨Today we returned from the beach, which was already in itself a terrible thing to do in his eyes. Why would we ever leave the beach? Then I ask him to shower. No. He’d rather stretch himself out along the tallest part of the grass and look up at the clouds. “I still need more freshness of air in me.” Please take a bath? He looks at me, “let me show you my other home.” I nod and follow him and he leads me to the heart of this palm. He reaches for the wrap I wear almost daily. He calls it “the mama love” because it has come to be a tangible representation of my arms, my warmth, my love. He wraps it around himself and settles in. “This is my favorite. I have green and sky and mama love and that’s all I need right now. This makes me a brave boy.” He looks up at the sky, closes his eyes and smiles as only he can. He is one of those rare creatures that really knows what it means to be in nature and the whole sight is so beautiful, so RIGHT, it overwhelms me. I think of the day four years ago when I was pacing on the other side of the very same palm, with tears in my eyes and a constricting throat, wondering if what I had to give would be enough for him. What a moment, the ghost of the worry-drenched mother pacing behind the present day stillness of the boy at peace. What miracle brought him safely to the other side of that palm? Mama love. One of God’s greatest designs. A mother’s love is such a powerful thing, isn’t it? What a gift this moment was to me—I just had to share it. I’ve mentioned before that I always ask my boys permission before I share something online. “Can I share this with others?” I asked. He paused and then nodded “Yes, but only if you tell the moms that shining their mama love is making their kids like me braver.” So there you have it friends. Keep shining that mama love. It means more than we’ll ever know this side of heaven.
It’s Elsie, jumping on for the #wildandfreeconf #fridayintroductions with my hair still full of beach sand 🙈🇬🇧 🙌🏼 I’ll share 10 quick things. 1) 📚 on my nightstand: Scot Cairns, LM Montgomery, Madelaine L’Engle, Nancy Pearcy, Calvin & Hobbes and GK Chesterton. 📚 2) I just spent thirty minutes having tea and biscuits and reading Edward Ardizzone books to my youngest and it 3) beat the thirty minutes prior which were spent getting sand out of our 12 passenger van. 4)My family was able to leave Cuba and come to the United States in part because of Eleanor Roosevelt. I’ll have to tell that story sometime. 5)Jo’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott and Rainbow Valley by LM Montgomery were two of my favorite books growing up. In my heart, I knew. 👦🏻 👦🏻 👦🏻 👦🏻 6) When I was a little girl my imaginary friend was Davy Jones from the Monkees. I would blame him/yell at him (in Spanish) for getting my hair dirty. 🎸 7) Saving books is my jam. Sometimes I buy or rescue books just for the inscription. 8) I love cooking for huge groups of people. I pretty much want to feed everyone I meet. The ministry of good food and gathering round the table is powerful. 9) I impulse buy chickens, ducks, turkeys, it was a problem. I’m recovering. I’ve made promises to my husband. 🙈🙈 p r o b a b l y won’t do it again? 😂🤷🏻♀️ #prayforjeff 10) THe book I can’t wait to read next is “The Supper of the Lamb” by Robert Copon. That’s my 10! Can’t wait to read your #wildandfreeconf intro 🇬🇧 ENGLAND! I can’t wait! Stopping in London (for museums and theater), Oxford (for inklings and to show Jeff my old haunts) and Stratford upon Avon for the @wildandfree.co conference 🎉🎉 I wish I could take you all with me! Have a beautiful weekend
I’ll be honest, sometimes my brain is a stew pot of probabilities and news stories and webMD panic searches and what if’s.
There are many times when I have to put the lid on that pot of bubbling anxiety and SURRENDER so we can LIVE. Because if I spend my life panicking over their physical health, it will likely come at the cost of our collective mental health. Because if I live a life of fear in which my actions directly countermand the words of beauty and courage and freedom I read over them each day, the lesson lived will trump the lesson read. Outside observers will often ask, “aren’t you worried they’ll get hurt?” We’ve adventured enough to know that getting hurt is part of going outside. It’s part of learning, part of healthy development, part of what motivates us to exercise the muscle of new experience the next time we venture out. A decade of boyhood has left us well versed in bruises and stitches and staples and stings and bites and burns and splinters and scrapes which means we’ve had a decade of recalibrating, adjusting, dealing with disappointment, showing mercy and empathy, sacrifice, care, self education, humility, understanding of physical limitations, and the value of second and third tries, facing fears, acceptance, fighting dragons, overcoming obstacles and failing with the knowledge that we will survive that failure. Funny how that list includes nearly all the things I could not do, could not handle, in the years following my PTSD diagnosis. As for those jagged rocks that crown the churning surf? The one a dozen strangers sent messages about the day I shared our beach day in my stories? My boy knows his way around them, that’s why he moves fast. He understands how tides and surges work, that’s why he knows the best paths to take. He isn’t reckless, he is learning. I’m not reckless, I am learning. He is wild to be free and I am free to let him be wild. Together we are practicing the beautiful art of holding close and letting go. The greatest adventure is remembering that we are redeemed, no longer bound to fear, and living out that truth with confidence. 🌊🌴☀️
It was only recently that I decided to start looking for books to go with our holidays that go beyond the watered-down children’s books of today. I have always found it important to read quality children’s stories to our children, but for some reason just accepted the holiday twaddle that came into our home. I am so excited to enrich our understanding of these different times of celebration through reading good books. Thank you for giving me a place to start with Easter.
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