intention

Two Januarys ago I began consciously choosing a word for the year. In 2009 it was breathe (still working on it) and in 2010 it was simplify (a post that makes me laugh out loud - my oh my, was I ambitious, but, hey, the kitchen's clean and organized!).

As I feel both simultaneously stressed about some huge challenges we're going to face in 2011 and excited about the possibilities for tackling them, I can feel paralysis setting in. While I am good at dreams and ideas, actually focusing on something and jumping in, that's a different story. And, so, for 2011, I'm choosing intention: setting my sights on doing something, actually starting and then putting one foot in front of the other to keep it going.

I expect this post will make me laugh out loud in 2012, but accomplishing just one thing will be a step in the right direction. Here are some of the things I intend to do:

:: write more poetry
:: start working on my book
:: put our financial failures behind us
:: learn more about my son's brain
:: have a plan for saving and giving
:: spend more time talking with my husband instead of talking at him
:: print five years worth of photos
:: make a quilt
:: open an Etsy shop
:: cook almost exclusively with whole foods
:: eliminate sugar from my son's diet
:: investigate adoption
:: write letters, with a pen
:: play more
:: laugh more
:: eat at the table more
:: worry less
:: sweat
:: simplify
:: breathe

old sweater gifts

Last spring I collected and cut up more than a dozen sweaters to make a patchwork sweater blanket. This month I gathered up the remaining scraps and, voila, teacher gifts! Between my two sons, we had 15 - oh, yes, 15! - teachers and therapists to show some Christmas love. And we had zero dollars to spend.


Almost all of our gifts were sweater coffee cozies. I used a fancy stitch on my grandma's wonderful Bernina and guesstimated how to creatively sew some scraps together to fit a to-go cup. Each then got a button or two. If spending had been an option, we would have tossed a coffee shop gift card in the cup. Instead, we got creative and mixed up our favorite cocoa, bagged an individual serving and attached the recipe and a little candy cane.


For Liam's wonderful, special teacher (who he has blessedly been with for two years), I made fingerless gloves from the sleeves of a beautiful white sweater. She has a lot of style and loves stores like Ruche and Anthropologie, so the mismatched buttons were the perfect finishing touch.

I see a lot of sweater scrap sewing in my future. Maybe even an Etsy store. Stay tuned!

how I wonder

This Advent, many have been sharing what they are waiting for on Facebook and on Twitter. Things like this: waiting for the day when food banks are no longer needed...waiting for cancer walks to become obsolete...waiting for the day that living simply doesn't require a 200 page magazine...waiting for immigrants to find room at the inn. Although I haven't contributed to this conversation, I am waiting, too. I am waiting for kindness and compassion, for integrity and peace. I also am waiting for something much more personal. I am waiting for answers and revelation. I am waiting for the unknown to be revealed. I am waiting to see what the future holds for my son.

For three and a half years we've sought answers to Elliott's developmental delays. A few weeks ago, a brain scan revealed the source and according to one specialist, "explains everything." Although our son now has a diagnosis, which is both helpful and hopeful (as it is not thought to be degenerative), we still do not - nor ever will have - the definitive answers we sought. Even the most special specialist can not predict how our son's abnormality will affect his future cognitive functioning. His growth and development will continue one day at a time for years to come. And we will continue to wait and see.

As a result, we rejoice with every learned word, phrase and ability. We tear up when he learns a song and sings it in its entirety. (Twinkle, twinkle is the latest achievement - or, as he calls it, "How I"). We seek out all the therapy he's offered, eating our words and ideas about public school special ed, and choosing instead to give him every opportunity to develop. We hope and pray. And we wait.

As he gets older, the waiting becomes more difficult. The gap widens. Two year olds overtake him in vocabulary and understanding and potty training.

Recently a child asked our six year old, "Why is Elliott still wearing diapers?" And I can't help but wonder and worry what questions Liam might be asked about his brother in the future.

Liam, however, regularly reminds us that there are far more important things we don't have to wait for.

A couple days before Christmas break, Liam brought home and proudly read to us his "Holiday Collection" of essays. Each day for a week his teacher gave them a topic to write on: Christmas, a letter to Santa, a letter to the Grinch, a special gift they received. I expected the last one would be about LEGOs - the only gift he ever wants. Instead, Liam's essay, The Gift, said this:

Dear Elliott,
Thank you for always saying "ma, are you ok?" when I get hurt. I always say "I'm alright." And sometimes you try to pick me up! But always you tug on my arm. And I say ok, ok! And we go home.
Love, Ma

("ma" is how Elliott pronounces "Liam")

As much as Advent is about waiting, it is about the waiting being over. It is about Love come to earth. Love being born - in the lowliest and most unexpected places.

We are, by no means, an exceptional family. We don't have riches or status. We have made mistakes and poor choices. We have a son whose developmental future is unknown. But we have love. And when it breaks through in beautiful, surprising ways, the importance of what we wait for dims. Because what we have outshines it in every way.

God is love. The Gospel in a word is love. Love, love, love, love. All you need is love. In this, there is no wondering or worry, and no waiting.

trash to treasure

Friday night I spent five hours around beautiful, creative people and a whole room of handmade items that were dreamed up in the mind of their makers and fashioned out of old, found stuff. In other words, upcycled, useable and wearable art. I was giddy the entire time. I made half a dozen recycled jean skirts for the event and a bunch of coffee cozies made from the left-over denim and other vintage fabrics and buttons.


One of the first people in the door bought a jean skirt, which was a thrill. But the real fun was all the dreaming I did that night. Of making fingerless gloves from the sleeves of old sweaters, sweet ornaments from fabric scraps and strands of discarded fake pearls, and beautiful gift bags from leftover white house paint, salvaged ribbon and empty cereal boxes. Nothing new but the ideas.


My friend Liita can do the most incredible things with garbage. Things you would be pleased to own. Things people would want to receive. Things that look like they cost big bucks at Anthropologie (like her necklace - the type that costs $130 at Anthro). Real-life trash to treasure. It costs nothing to make these amazing things but a little time and creativity.

Not only does this kind of "making" help conserve resources and feed the creative soul, it breeds bigger ideas about ways to be kind to the planet, to ourselves and to one another. The sales at this gallery night raised enough money to buy two sewing machines for an outreach program Liita and her business partner Rose are putting into place at the Ronald McDonald Children's Hospital. They are sharing this creative, restorative kind of craft with terminally ill children and their parents, giving them the tools to pour their hearts into making something beautiful out of something that - on the surface - is not. It's transformative. It's rewarding. It's life giving.

I'm really not exaggerating. Before you toss that old sweater, take a second look. Hat, gloves, blanket, garland, stocking...there are so many things it could be. Spend an afternoon at the Little Bits Workshop and be inspired. Be giddy. Be Anthropologie.

Only 12 upcycling days til Christmas.

crossing thresholds

A couple years before I met my husband, he had moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, on a whim. He was living in Italy, where he had spent most of his youth, and was jobless, homeless and essentially ignored by his mother and siblings who lived in the same town. As he tells the story, he had the equivalent of $400 in his pocket and saw a sign in a travel agency window for a one-way ticket to Edinburgh for roughly the same amount. With barely a second thought, he walked into office, bought the ticket and left the next day.

His first day in Edinburgh, Andrew found a job washing dishes at a pub. After a week, the pub manager called him into her office and asked him how it was going and where he was living. He told her (proudly, I imagine, and without any sense that it should have been otherwise) that he had a tent and was camping at a nearby campground. Alice, the bar manager, looked surprised and then shook her head "no, no," reached into her purse and pulled out her checkbook. Before Andrew could protest, she wrote out a check for 800 pounds and told him to go find an apartment and he could pay her back later.

Every time I hear my husband repeat this story to someone, I get a lump in my throat. Although Alice knew Andrew for another two years and saw not only her loan paid back but his promotion to cook and assistant bar manager and his courtship and engagement to this nice-enough American girl, I don't think she could ever know the tremendous (dare I say, life-changing) impact her split-second decision had on him. She did not know my husband for more than seven days and yet she risked losing a large sum of money, not to mention trust in another person's ability and desire to do the right thing, just because she had an instinct to help him.

And yet, after all the times I have heard this story, I wonder. What would I have done? Even if I had an extra $1,500, would I freely loan it to someone who clearly needed it but who couldn't give me any collateral or firm assurances that he could pay it back? Would I be too caught up in wondering if I'd be taken advantage of or if the person in need really deserved to have the loan? Would I be afraid of looking foolish if I was "had"? Would I be willing to cross the threshold between what was comfortable for me and what might make a life-changing difference for someone else? I'd like to say that I would. I would like to say that I would be like Alice. I would like to say that I would do what Jesus would do. I am really praying that I would.

This post was published on another blog a couple years ago, but in this season of giving I thought it was worth repeating. May we all be moved to cross thresholds and give in such extravagant ways. In ways that pay dividends in the future but do nothing to improve our own position. In ways that cannot go unnoticed in the life of another, even years later. Thank you, Alice, for being Jesus to my family. May we never forget your example.

waiting

Somewhere between Thanksgiving and December 1, it occurred to me that what I love most about Christmas is the waiting. In fact, the 25 days leading up to and culminating in the baby in a manger are perhaps my favorite 25 days of the year. Each of these days is filled with intention, a deliberately slower pace (at least internally), joyful anticipation and a lot of reflection (not to mention a guilt-free increase in sugar, flour and chocolate). I relish the sight of twinkling outdoor lights popping up around the neighborhood and the smells of pine, hot cider and, did I mention, sugar, flour and chocolate. I stretch out in these days and soak them up.

For my six year old, however, waiting hurts. It is agony. Everything centers around the main event.

To ease the over-eager anticipation, we feed the waiting with chocolate, crafts, activities and daily readings that bring us closer to each other and the One we wait for. Some of our waiting traditions have a long history and some are newly discovered or created. Here are some things we're doing during these 25 days of Christmas:

:: Moving Santa from pocket to pocket on an Advent Calendar my grandma made for her own Advent celebrations many, many years ago.

:: Opening a door a day in our wonderful book called The Advent Book. (Thank you, Deb and Randy!) Such amazing doors revealing the Christmas story bit by bit, it seems new and surprising ever year.

:: Checking the Advent House each morning for a small treat (most often chocolate) and a note announcing a special event of the day - everything from Christmas movie night to ornament making to coloring a Christmas picture to taking cookies to our lonely neighbor. This tradition is Liam's favorite.

:: Making magnetic number ornaments for a magnetic tree. I got this idea from an advent calendar my friend Liita made three years ago. I think of it every year and never find time to make it before December 1. This year I decided to make it as we go through Advent and then pull it back out and use it in following years as more of a calendar. Like Liita I used an old cookie sheet. I painted ours white and then painted a large Christmas tree on it. We are making one ornament a day using found objects and glueing them to small round magnets. For instance, for December 1 we decided on a penny since it's 1 cent and it represents something we need to give up thinking about and worrying about so we can focus more on Jesus. December 2 is a two-holed button. December 3 is going to be, drumroll please...a number 3.

:: Dipping into Watch for the Light: Readings for Christmas and Advent. Bonhoeffer, Nouwen, Merton, T. S. Eliot, Kathleen Norris. I pull it out every year and I find something new every time. I never get tired of it.

:: Distilling the Christmas story day by day with our version of the Jesse Tree devotionals. The one created this year by Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience is wonderful but a little old for my kids. I pick out the theme and we talk about it in a way they understand.

:: Following the Advent Blog Tour. As part of a work project I came up with this tour idea and found all the bloggers to bring it to life. With Andrew's help I even pulled off the website. The more I've gotten to know the bloggers, the more I have become excited about what each day's reflection will hold.

Advent, I learned once, means "coming." And here we are waiting throughout it. I yell to my kids 100 times a day, "I'm coming!" "I'm coming in a minute." "I'm coming right now." And they sit and wait. I guess that's one way to imagine it - God tells his people, "I'm coming, I'm sending myself to you." And his people sit and wait. And, like a bunch of six year olds, we get anxious with anticipation. Or frustrated. Or bored.

Lately, I've been seeing Advent a different way. God is constantly in the process of coming to us, revealing himself to us, meeting us where we are. And we actively wait. We look for glimpses. We create beautiful things. We savor the moments. We give and receive love. In our finest hour, we live with such intention and purpose and joy that we know His coming even while we wait. And when the big day arrives it's like we've been there all along. 25 days out of 365 waiting like this. It's a lofty goal and it's just a start.