“Twenty minutes each. I’ll set the timer. We’ll go in birth order, youngest first. Be thinking about what you want to do together.”

Once upon a time I had a conversation with a friend who mentioned that while my newsletter blast of blog posts that reach “the masses” are nice and all, it’s pretty special to get a piece of my time dedicated soul-ly and solely to her.

Really? You want some of me just for yourself? I was honored.

This was followed by a worrisome thought of, “I wonder how many people want a small piece of my time all to themselves? I wonder how many pieces of my time I have to give?”

She gently suggested that it was possible that I might get something out of the time I spend with others. That it might not just be a pouring out, but also a filling up. “I mean, it’s quite possible you might actually like it,” she said.

This spurred some texts and emails and phone calls where I asked friends, “Hey, how many people are in your inner circle? How many people to do you give your time away to on a regular basis?”

And their answers spurred some list-making of my own where I tried to figure out who in my life has priority. Who gets my time? Because, apparently, my one-on-one time is valuable. What a vulnerable thing to realize, and even more vulnerable to decide to intentionally give away pieces of my time. I want to be sure I’m giving it to those I want to give it to.

I’m finding this list shifts as it needs to. The inner-circle can widen a bit or shrink a bit depending on the week, depending on my grace and energy levels. But there is a pretty solid core there, and my kids are in that core.

I did an experiment one Sunday morning. Twenty minutes with each child, in which we would do whatever they desired. I added up the minutes and realized with four kids that’s a lot of minutes to give, and I felt vulnerable committing me to them and their desires. But it felt good. It felt good to care intentionally. To give something away for once not because I was being pawed at but because I had willed it so. And let me tell you, the time flew by.

I played ice-man superheroes with Luther. We wore capes and ran through the house shooting ice out of our fingertips and freezing everything in sight.

I played secret spies with Nehemiah. We were being attacked by evil bad guys. We went into separate rooms and talked in hushed tones over FaceTime, trying to outsmart the enemies while flying our ships.

I played little people with Charis, and we set up shop and created a fantastical story about a husband that loved candy and a wife that wanted to sew a hat and bossed her husband around. They drove a semi-truck and had five dogs and stepped in dog poop and fought a lot, but they loved each other.

I took Zoe shopping so she could spend her Christmas money, and we scoured the entire Toys-R-Us and she explained to me why everything single thing she picked up was junk and a waste of money and how they just made it look fun so kids would buy it. Then she saw the karaoke microphone stand, and she gave me puppy dog eyes to spot her the money she was short on, and I texted Tony and we both buckled hard.

The twenty minute experiment was a success, and that night we made a family dance floor and had open mic night where we sang and danced and fought over whose turn it was to sing. And we laughed.

It was my time, my time to do with as I saw fit, and it was eye-opening to think people might actually desire time alone with me.

Me.

Worth something.

Worth something worth giving away.

Who gets me? Who gets my time?

I feel so vulnerable.

But I want to tell my friend, I think I do like this.

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

-Roald Dahl

I received an email recently from my daughter. All that was in it was this picture and the words following:

Sometimes you wolk in to majek.

The words can be translated this way, in case you don’t read kiddio: Sometimes you walk into magic.

So I ask you, what magic are you walking into today? Some of it will be self-initiated and some of it will find you, if you’re looking, but you have to have a sense of what you’re looking for first. You have to have an idea of what magic would have to look like if it were to sweep you off your feet.

What’s crazy is your heart probably isn’t asking for much. Magic can be pretty simplistic, just a little something special here and there. Get enough of those “something specials” in a row and you’ve got some great momentum for your life. (This all said in the wake of having a pretty horrible beginning to my day yesterday, which kept threatening to suck the magic out of everything. You know what changed the course of my day? A simple walk outdoors and the willingness to embrace the magic of that simple act and come out of my funk cloud.)

I wrote in my journal recently the words Be lucky, because what if the only criteria for being lucky is believing you already are?

And, well, are you?

I’ve always had a thing for self-portraits (if you can’t tell by my blog header). At times they have been hard for me to take, but still, I am drawn to them. I always try to encourage people to take more photos of themselves, because I think it’s a powerful action. (You know you want to take some!) It’s also vulnerable, which is my new word, so I’m in for a year full of self-portraits.

We’ve been using Ambleside Online to give us a basic, yet flexible schedule for some of our learning, and the past couple weeks we’ve been looking at Albrecht Durer’s paintings. (The Wing of a Roller pictured above is my favorite of his). Lots of artists choose to do self-portraits in one way or another. I think as artists we are drawn to really giving something our attention, and so it’s only natural and healthy that we would be drawn to studying ourselves.

Looking at Albrecht Durer’s paintings and then thinking of some of the paintings I’ve seen Rick Beerhorst create, led me to this self-portrait project with my kids.

They picked out costumes and then posed in a chair by a window, so I could take their pictures with good lighting.

We talked about how the painting of Albrecht would probably have had to been created with him looking in a mirror. We talked about how the light hit his face, making it appear lighter on one side than the other. We talked about where the light source must be coming from and we decided it was probably candlelight. They studied his painting and tried to pose similar to him, sitting up tall and maintaining their best straight faces.

I printed the kids photos out and then they went to work drawing their self-portraits.

Later, I added my own versions of the self-portraits, drawn with pencil on lightly gessoed scrap cardboard.

For the sake of full-disclosure, I should tell you that this project did not go smoothly. But a bumpy life is far more exciting, right?

My 3-year-old was sick with a fever and so he took a nap and missed the whole thing.

My 8-year-old got frustrated because she started with an ink pen and couldn’t erase. I tried to tell her about Danny Gregory who encourages the use of ink pen and not being perfect, but she wasn’t buying it. So I gave her a pencil and passed out giant artist erasers to each kiddio.

My 5-year-old son knew he couldn’t possibly make his drawing look as realistic as Albrecht Durer’s self-portrait, so he didn’t want to participate. Not. At. All. I got out one of my new favorite art books, Basquiat, and showed him how Basquiat made his guys. He started to smile through his tears, as I re-explained Ish, and reminded both of us that we create our own unique art that does not have to look a certain way in order to make it right. I also told him I would be his partner through the whole entire process, helping him when he got stuck or felt scared of failing. He faltered a few times in the costume selecting and in the actual drawing process, but overall he stuck it out and created his best realism drawing to date.

I had a friend ask me recently what I thought about my husband riding his bike so much. Then she leaned in closer and said, “I mean, what do you REALLY think.”

The assumption is that I play along with it when underneath I’m really harboring bitterness for his time on two wheels, but this is just not the case.

Tony wrote a post about cycling and your spouse which is great, but I thought I would add my two cents.

Why I Am Glad My Husband Cycles (in no certain order):

• He’s taking care of his health.
• He works off stress on long bike rides and comes back home to us more happy.
• He looks hawt in spandex.
• Chasing hard after dreams creates in him confidence, enthusiasm, and a general sparkle about life.

• I swoon over him in competitions. I love to see his raw aggression take flight in this form.
• He does his own laundry sometimes now.
• We get to travel and be outside (two things I love) to watch him race.

• He’s teaching monumental lessons to our kids (and me) about not giving up when something is hard or when you make mistakes or when you feel foolish. He’s owning his dream in its entirety.

• He takes our son on bike rides.
• He is following his passion for engaging in local community.
• We have made some wonderful friends.
• He is awakening to his ever-unfolding leadership traits.

• He rides in unbelievable weather conditions, and he eats it up. In other words, he is strong, and I need him to be strong.
• He is letting it lead him into even bigger dreams that have been with him since his youth.

• It enables him to get out from behind the desk, away from the fumes of a car, and out onto an open road.
• He gives me reciprocal time to chase my artist dreams, and completely understands and values the obsession of my own passions.

I have something to tell you. I officially have a book publishing contract with David C. Cook! And I am bubbling over with excitement! I’ve written a sort of spiritual memoir about my dark night of the soul and it’s expected to come out in Spring of 2013.

How did this happen? I mean, I only have been dreaming about it since gradeschool.

Well it happened when I signed the contract this afternoon.

Or it happened when my amazing agent Greg believed in me.

Or it happened when a friend from California gave me a lead on an agent.

Or it happened when I put myself through a self-directed study called writing school.

Or it happened when I took a November to learn the discipline of showing up to write, every. single. day.

Or it happened when I believed I was an artist.

Or it happened when I sat in Japanese Literature, Short Story, and Novel class in college.

Or it happened when I did internships with newspapers and magazines.

Or it happened when I sat with Fred, and Sauer and Shoemaker in high school English classes.

Or it happened when I took Creative Writing in a summer 4-H program.

Or it happened when I read Boxcar Children, Where the Red Fern Grows and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe for the first time.

Or it happened when I wrote in my gradeschool journal that when I grew up I wanted to write poetry or fairy tales.

Or it happened when my mom and dad told me I could do and be whatever I put my mind to.

Or it happened when my lungs puffed up with an inhale for the first time and Someone blew an extra dose of poetry in through my wind pipes.

What I am really trying to say is that it happened one small manageable step at a time. It happened by what my friend Teresa calls baby steps and it happened by what Anne Lamott calls Bird by Bird. And it will continue to unfold in this way. Because while today I celebrate, tomorrow I face another beginning. My tomorrows hold the process of editing and writing my manuscript with the publisher. My tomorrows hold the process of marketing a book. My tomorrows hold the process of facing another blank canvas and starting another writing project.

Tonite Teresa calls me and as I explain the patience and energy required to keep facing yet another beginning she tells me, “But this is not the beginning. You are not starting over. You are just picking up where you left off.” I am quiet, pondering. Realizing on the other end of the phone that she is right.

We do well to celebrate our baby steps. We do well to let our loved ones bring us over-sized vanilla cokes from Sonic. We do well to document the thin threads that have woven us a bridge to get us to where we are at. We are tightrope walkers, we artists. And we advance one foot before the other, heel in front of toe and when our foot touches some sort of actual steady ground, we are wise to throw hands up high overhead and yodel echoes across wide caverns. Today I’m yodeling and twirling with my friends and family. And I’m yodeling and twirling with you who are chasing after your own dreams and weaving your own thin thread of a tightrope.

This is the life, the one we are creating! Let’s celebrate the milestones and catch our breath here for a bit. Let’s sleep tonight on our pea of celebration like princes and princesses and wake tomorrow with that sort of joyful disturbing ache of, oh yes, I am so ready to continue. Because when it’s art, and we are artists, we do it because we must. Because we haven’t a choice. Because we love it all…the fear, the hope, the vulnerability, the failure, the risk, and the teeny tiniest tastes of triumph building upon ever mounting triumph.

We had been playing outside. In the course of playing outside for an extended period of time, my kiddios tend to make a handful of trips into the house. Someone needs to go to the bathroom. Someone needs to fetch a lightsaber from their room for the fierce battle that has unfolded in the front yard with the neighbor kids. Someone needs a drink of water. I usually don’t accompany them on the repeated trips indoors. I stay put outside. Keeping an eye on the three-year old who sometimes likes to wander a little too far from home.

So once the playtime ends, and the scooters and balls and skateboards and hockey sticks are all properly returned to each neighborhood garage, we close the big metal garage door and wander back into the chaos that random kiddio touches have caused. Bathroom lights on, play-clothes strewn on the floor while someone went searching for the swords, and on this particular day, puddles of water across the kitchen floor.

“What went on here?” I ask, a little too coldly for someone who is 11 months into living the word MESSY for 2011.

“What do you mean?” She asks, matching me attitude for attitude.

“I mean the puddles of water on the floor and on the kitchen chair.” My eyes are starting to follow the trails of water. “And why are there all these crumbs all over the kitchen table?”

“I cleaned it up,” she says quickly.

“But there is still water everywhere,” I replied.

“Oh. Well, I don’t see any,” she says, frustrated.

“Come on, don’t lie to me. Just finish the job.” I’d rather not make an issue of this, but I can feel that familiar raise in my voice and the racing of my blood.

Why is it so hard to see eye-to-eye. Why is it that we see things so differently?

“I’m not lying. How do you want me to clean up water I can’t see?”

The detective in me surveys the clues and knows what has happened. She’s spilled the water trying to pour it into a water bottle. And then she has reached for the nearest towel, which happened to be the one in a basket on the table that held our chips from lunch. In whipping out the towel she had tossed the chip crumbs in a scattered mess across the table. The wet towel still sits damp on a kitchen chair.

“I’m glad you tried to clean it up, but next time maybe use a different towel. And next time make sure you clean up all the water.”

“I did clean up all the water,” she reiterates.

I think she’s being lazy. I think she’s being curt. I think she’s trying to do anything but clean up the mess she has created. I walk away from the puddles. Away from the crumbs and the table and the damp towel sitting on the chair. I walk over to her, stalling for time, holding my tongue and searching for the breath, wondering why little stupid things always become big stupid ordeals in my brain space.

I stand beside her and look at the mess, only to find it is not there. From where we are standing, me with her, it’s as though the puddles have dried up. The light hits them differently and they have vanished. I am taken aback.

“Ha!” I burst out, shocking both of us with a zap of lightning amidst our anger clouds. “You can’t see the water from this perspective.” She looks at me like with tears welling and arms crossed. She looks at me as though she is not amused with my discovery. She looks at me in the way someone looks when they have been made not to bend but to break.

I walk her over to where I stood when I first walked in from the outside. I can sense by her body language she feels like a baby. This is not a good thing.

I show her the light, the puddles, my perspective, but it’s not enlightening, it’s defeating. She is not filled with awe, she is filled with dread, embarrassment, a sense of failure. “Yep Mom,” I imagine her saying. “Everything is just as you suggested. And aren’t I the idiot for never seeing it clearly?”

Of course she doesn’t say this. She just grabs the towel I’m offering and huffs and puffs her way through the waxing on and off of the remaining puddles. She cleans up water with an heir of brokenness and she sees me as the evil stepmother and herself as belonging amongst the cinders.

I didn’t intend… I didn’t realize… I didn’t mean to… I think of a handful of ways to start the apology that wants to fall off my lips, but she is too far gone now and I know that the teaching moment is meant solely for me. Me who sees so clearly from my own vantage point, but who gets so twisted on the inside when I can’t make her see that my way is right. Me who wants her to clean up the mess, and quickly, well before she even has developed eyes to see it.

Who needs the glasses? Is it me? Or is it her? Or is it both?

I think how funny my daughter would have looked, had she raced off with her towels to start wiping dry ground because she was told that somewhere puddles existed. Should she keep her hands moving in Mr. Miyagi motions because that keeps me happy? Am I raising a people-pleaser? Would she wonder why her towel was never getting wet. Would she wonder if the puddles even really exist?

Who needs the glasses? Is it me? Or is it her? Or is it both?

She is gone now. Off playing with her siblings, and I hold the damp towels, and I touch the water. Her water. Water that I did not want to see in spilled puddles on my kitchen floor, but water that must be spilled if there is ever to be a learning and a living and a realization of perspectives. Let the mess be messy, I remember. The messes have their purposes too and the eye-opening has a time table all to itself, like fresh puppies that squint in darkness for days after birth.

I wonder if eyes are like snowflakes, no two alike. Each created, destined, expected to see something no one else can see…which would mean in turn each equally equipped with numerous blind-spots yet to be discovered.

Who needs the glasses? Is it me? Or is it her? Or is it both?

I suppose I think of faith as a pretty personal thing. Something that an individual must own and work out for themselves, an internal pilgrimage that incorporates attempted communication and interaction with God. And really, I like it that way. Solitary, mysterious, secretive, exciting.

That is why when people have asked me, “What does your husband think of the struggles you are having in your faith right now?” I have thought, “Well, in many ways, it is a person internal journey. So a lot of it is worked out in my head and my heart and my soul and my journal. A lot of it is worked out in hushed whispers with God. And a lot of the questions aren’t ones I’m necessarily wanting my husband or others to answer. They are questions I’m just trying to live with for now.”

That being said, I am aware that my spiritual life is not a clean cut division from the rest of my life. What I believe about a Higher Being most certainly does trickle into my marriage as well as my parenting, my art, my friendships and my day-to-day motivations and decisions. So Tony does get to live up close to a woman who at times is flailing a bit in her faith. (*Side note: I think we are all flailing a bit in our faith, it’s just whether we choose to face that or not.) He asks me questions to check on me, and I share my roller-coaster faith as I feel so led. Today I’m depressed. Today I finally feel hope again. Today I’m confused. Today I can’t believe in a God that would do X, Y or Z. Today I love Jesus. Today I’d like to climb in a hole.

As I have had more and more conversations with others about what Tony thinks of all this, I have come to find I am in a very unique and blessed relationship with my spouse. I want to highlight a few of the reasons this is true.

1. He gives me space.

He told me one time, “Mandy, I trust God with you.” This is huge. This has allowed me the freedom to wrestle with God and with Christianity and with the Church in my alone times. To say whatever it is I need to say, question whatever I need to question, rant whatever I need to rant about, cry about whatever I need to cry about. It has also given me the confidence, at times, to believe that I really and truly do hear from God personally and that I need to use my artistic voice to express that. I do not feel like Tony is constantly trying to spy on me to see if I’m upholding the rules and regulations of what faith should be. Never once have I felt judged or shamed by Tony. In fact he will say to me, “I’m enjoying being on this spiritual journey with you. I’m okay being beside you.” And there is great peace in that. He doesn’t expect reports from me, but because he doesn’t I feel free to share with him from time to time how I’m doing. When I touch on bits of theology he doesn’t agree on, we state our thinking as best we can, and when in my questioning I don’t have the spiritual legs to stand on firmly, he doesn’t crush me with answers.

2. He is a pastor.

This word has never meant so much to me as it does right now. I’ve never really felt in need of a pastor because I’ve never really felt lost enough to need one. I have felt a lot of lostness lately. The good kind of lostness. (Not lost in the sense that I want someone to show me the way out. I’m adamant that I don’t want easy answers or faith tied up in nice neat bows right now. I don’t want to be escorted out of the darkness, because I do believe the mystery of God is often explored in dark places.)  But I do have this desire to be reminded every now and then that I’m okay. That I’m not going under. That true life is filled with the most glorious mind-boggling paradoxes: in death we find life, in fear we find courage, in darkness we find light. A pastor, as I see it in Tony, is one who has strength when my own strength is waning, and who draws more fighting breath out of me when I was sure I was going to be swallowed up. He prays, out loud and silently, for me and for our family.

The other day he came home from work on his lunch break and had us sit down all together on two couches facing each other. This was after a morning of two of my kids screaming they hated me and me deciding I should have never become a parent to begin with. Sitting there staring at each other I felt a little wiggly. How could I look at my children and not love them? And as Tony prayed I felt anger fall away, and as Tony talked about an enemy wanting to destroy I felt a welling in my chest at the realization that this pastor husband of mine was fighting for us. He believes in redemption, fighting for free hearts, the love that binds, the on-going access to the Divine. Sometimes I feel like he believes enough for the both of us. That he is able to carry me for a moment until I can catch my breath.

3. His love is God when God is foggy.

The way this man loves me is rich and full of grace and fierce. He is on my side. He is for me. He may not be into the details of all the things I’m into. He may not want to sit and paint with me or hear me talk for hours about the powerful imagery in a novel I’m reading, but when it comes to helping me carve out space and time to do the things I love, he is all about it. He champions my artist’s heart and believes in me. He has always believed I am a writer, a creative, a poet. He believed in my silly dreads as much as I did. And so when the details of God are foggy, I think, yes, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” The love of God is so often displayed to me through other humans, and lately that has happened powerfully through my husband.

4. He is human.

Tony and I are united in our humanity. In our messiness. In our trippings and fallings. When we were first married I NEEDED him. I NEEDED him to fill the empty places in me. I needed him to love me because I couldn’t love myself. I needed him to be my fix and my new set of rules. This did not go so well.

With time, somehow, I’ve managed to see him differently. Maybe it’s because I see myself in him. I see my own shortcomings and my need to be accepted anyway. I see my own limitations, and my desire to be worthy and valuable anyway. I see we are both just trying to do the best we can and sometimes that “best” seems to come up shorter than we would like.

Tony tells me, “True independence comes from a foundation of comfort and intimacy in those you depend on.” And I think he’s right. I can depend on him because I know when I accidentally spend $100 more than I need to on a car rental, he’s going to let it slide even though it’s infuriating and messy. And this helps me to be independent because I don’t have to cling to someone to fix me and all the mistakes I’m going to make. I become free to accept myself mistakes and all. Tony and I do this for each other. We embrace and unite in our humanity.

I don’t think this sort of relationship is limited to a spousal relationship, although the spousal relationship is the most intimate form I have found. I think we can also find these sorts of friendships in other areas of our life. I have a few artist friends (that I CAN paint with or talk about the powerful imagery of novels with for hours) that give me similar support. I have found it vital that I have these sort of people in my life. People that “get me.” They give me space for my wrestlings, they come along side in the darkness and they pour love on thick. It’s not perfect, but it’s necessary. It satisfies a spiritual need in ways words can only touch on.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friend, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

-Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson

“That is why we need to travel. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Don’t let yourself become one of these people. The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveler has to take.”

-Letters to My Son, Kent Nerburn

“I’m thinking about taking the kids and driving to Colorado to visit friends for a week while you are in Australia,” I said to my husband, Tony. What do you think about that?”

He hesitated. I wondered what he was thinking about. He couldn’t have a doubt that I hadn’t already had. Money, safety on the road, my energy level – I had already been through all the reasons it wasn’t a good idea for me to go.

“I’d be fine with that,” he answered.

That was all the support I needed. You see, it seems on every dream list I write, travel becomes a part of it. I have this desire for wandering.

This need to explore. This urge to be around something and someone different than what I am always around. This need to be challenged, stretched, to have my horizons broadened. And this was a chance to own my own dream list and satisfy a bit of soul-longing that needed to be heard. I ran downstairs to email my Colorado friends of my intentions and to work out lodging and dates. I had to do it quickly before I talked myself out of it.

The trip, which I took the end of August, included stops in Colorado Springs, Boulder and Fort Collins. And for me, it turned out to be a bit of a pilgrimage. A trip I felt pulled to take.

There were conversations I had to have, sights I needed to see, a calling I had to answer.

The tension with travel is reflected in the two quotes I shared up above. Traveling is great because it allows you to get out of your normal routine and to see things in a new light. It can awaken your senses. It can have the sensation of bringing you back to life. However, traveling doesn’t let you get away from yourself. You are always with you, and if you think that by traveling you’ll be able to escape all the baggage you haven’t quite worked through at home, well, I’m here to tell you it’s a lie.

If your dreads feel a bit sloppy on your head at home, that feeling of sloppy will only intensify when you wake up on day 2 of your trip and realize you’re still you. If your kids only occasionally wet the bed at home, you can be sure it will happen in the most beautiful pristine guest bed. If you are unsure of your parenting and whether you want to lay down the law or give your kids free reign to explore, you can bet all boundaries will be tested, which will include being screamed at in public and possibly even kicked.

If you are floundering for your spiritual footing, you can bet those questions won’t escape you just because you’re in a new land (as I found out when my book agent asked me, “So, what, do you do with Jesus?)

If you are questioning where you fit in the world as an artist, you can bet your head will be all the more spinning with possibilities and insecurities as you rub shoulders with some greats.

As much as I wanted to gallivant with confidence into my Colorado adventure, the humble truths of my own limitations were very present reminders that I was still me, and that I was going to have to decide if I was okay with that or not.

Another chance to love myself. To accept myself. To allow myself to vulnerably unravel in the sunshine of the unknown.

The travel was messy. There were awkward moments I just soon not have had to face, but with them came this raw feeling of being alive.

This feeling of looking at myself in the mirror and saying, “You’re enough, even in your brokenness, you’re enough. And I’m listening to you. You want to travel? Well, here you are. You’re doing it! So what are you here for? What are you going to take home from this?” I was so proud of myself for having the courage to continue stepping through each unplanned day and to not lose touch with my soul-talk even though I was playing single-mom to four kiddios.

When I started to feel my energy wain and my patience slip away, I tried to look for secret messages to get me through.

And when I couldn’t find any, I would create my own. I was determined to find some soul-food so my artist’s heart wouldn’t wither up or cave in. It took every ounce of my self-awareness.

Sometimes it felt like I was holding on for dear life; it was invigorating.

Sometimes I felt like laughter was the best medicine.

Sometimes I just wanted to melt into the moments.

But then of course, when it’s time to go home, well…there is no place quite like home. Reuniting with Tony coming home from Australia wasn’t so bad.

In all seriousness, I’m still processing the person that I became on this journey, and on the majority of my current days where travel is not an option, I am thankful I can curl up to the warmth of these rich memories.

I have proof for my gypsy soul, “See, I listened to you, and when the time is right, I promise to listen again.”

PS Here’s another post on traveling I really enjoyed reading.

I am wrecked through and through. I keep thinking of my time at Saddleback Church, and hearing a series of messages by Kay Warren called Dangerous Surrender. I keep hearing her phrase in my head, “I became a seriously disturbed woman.” I remember at the time thinking, I’m not sure I want to live my life that way. And now, now I’m thinking I’m sure I don’t. This hurts too much.

A friend of ours had tornado damage to their house, and hearing the news my heart felt heavy to do something. Do I find someone to watch my kids, so I can go help clean up? Do I…

These words aren’t coming out easy. It is as if I’m forcing them. This is not the usual way that I write. What is wrong with me? What has happened to me in the past 48 hours that has me acting not at all myself?

I took my kids out to the land flattened by tornadoes. I took them, and I took me, and now I’m wondering if I should have. Were we ready for that? Were we ready to see twisted metal on twisted trees? Can anyone ever be ready for that?

I wanted to hug my friend’s neck. To see that she was okay. That someone that was hurt by something I somehow escaped, was going to be okay. Did I feel guilty for escaping the tornado? Remorse that somehow my family was spared from the devastation? I prayed prayers last night and said, “Thank you God for keeping us safe,” but the words fell like lead because I didn’t know how to pray the opposite, “And thank you God for letting the others get harmed? Thank you God for letting their houses get blown away?” So then I wanted to take back my prayer. Maybe it was not God that kept us safe at all, for why would He save some and not others. Maybe it was just fate that the tornado touched in one place and not in another. I can’t pray. I can’t be sure.

That’s part of the problem. I can’t be sure about anything anymore.

We went out to help. We took two bags of ice, three bags of chips, a box of trash bags and two sets of work gloves. We went to pick up shingles and glass and puzzle pieces scattered across yards. I knew it was going to be messy going into it. 4 kids, ranging in age from 7 to 2. Would we just be in the way? Could we really do something? What was my motivation? To fix something? To teach my kids something? To teach myself something? To relieve the inexplicable guilt rising inside of me? To make it all better? To touch the hurting? To share a burden? To not stay in my home wishing and wondering if there was something I could do?

So we went, and you know what we spent the majority of our time doing? Eating. Everybody kept asking my kids if they wanted food. And my kids kept saying yes, of course. And I kept shooting dirty looks at my kids and whispering my disgust with their choices. “We are not here to eat. We are not here to take. We are here to give.” I wondered if I was really here to give.

Every time I turned around they were munching on something else and whining a bit about how tired they were, when we’d only been there for minutes and had done next to nothing. I was ashamed of us. I wanted so badly to have grace and accept my kids (and myself) where we were, but I kept looking at the destruction surrounding me, soft pink ballet tutu wrapped around broken bricks, bikes with mangled handlebars and roots stuck in the spokes, winnie the pooh bear soaked in a layer of grime. I kept looking at all of that and wondering why we were here chewing on sub sandwiches, pizza, bananas and cookies and slurping on soda and gatorade and water.

But there was joy. There was joy in the eyes of the people who offered us food. When my kids accepted the sustenance there was relief in the eyes of those who offered it. And I realized, they too, are just looking for a way to help. They too are just wanting a chance to be of some service, and my kids have accepted their service, when I couldn’t.

When my friend’s yard was as cleaned up as we could get it, we helped at what was left of the home of their neighbors – Ms. Snow and her husband. He didn’t want my kids there. He told me to “get them out of here.” I know he was just afraid they would get hurt on the glass and the nails, just like Tony warned me before I left home, that maybe it wasn’t the best place to take our little kids. I looked at that man, standing there in the middle of what was once his home, and wished I felt remorse for him, all the while wanting to yell cuss words in his face. I wanted to scream, “You don’t have much of a choice Mister. Your life is kind of in shambles. Do you want our help cleaning it up or don’t you?” But I know it was just my own insecurity of feeling so small and so helpless next to all this destruction. My insecurity of wondering if maybe Tony was right, and we shouldn’t be here in the first place.  I am embarrassed to say I wandered around literally unsure who I felt more sorry for, myself or the tornado victims. I picked up old rusted pots and pans and wondered, are these trash or treasure? Do I toss them in the ever-mounting pile of debris, or do I carry them to be boxed up for safe-keeping. Who am I to be making these choices for someone else?

I watched a friend of mine pitch things into the junk pile, and I asked her how she could make these decisions so easily. She was valor to my ineptness. I wanted to curl up in the fetal position on the dirty, faded purple couch laying in a tornado flattened land and take a nap. Instead I paced around the edges of a crime scene while my kids ate chocolate chip cookies and carried pillows, soccer balls, and lap desks to the growing “to-keep” pile in the front yard. My head swirled as if the tornado was in my brain, as if I was carrying it along inside me because I couldn’t just let it go. I had to create my own semblance of suffering to match with the fragile humanity of my fellow-man.

Ms. Snow and my dear friend Vanessa. They were so stoic. So unshaken. Their calmness unnerved me. Why couldn’t I be calm? In my interactions with them I wondered who was helping who. I heard the shatter as teenage boys loading a truck up with stuff to keep dropped a few glass items onto the street beneath them. They looked over their shoulders at Ms. Snow and she wrapped us all up with her calm Asian accent, saying “I’s o-kay. I’s okay. I’s okay.” Over and over again she sang it, like a lullaby, soothing us all. I felt like her child. I felt like I climbed into her lullaby and rode the sing-song words up like bubbles to the wide blue sky, praying I wouldn’t be popped by a shard of glass in the journey. Ah, but Ms. Snow, how can you say, “I’s okay, I’s okay, I’s okay” at a time like this? I am so glad you can find joy in this, but what about me? Can you give me permission to feel okay with all of this? Who hurts more – the hurting or the people that have to watch the hurting hurt? The people who long to be fixers, but feel like hands are tied, and so they become sideline watchers eating pizza and drinking soda like it’s a ball game. Can I say “I’s okay” if it’s not my hurt? Can I find art in someone else’s pain? Can I find joy, if the suffering doesn’t rightly belong to me? Who do I go to for that sort of permission and how can I withstand this life if I never get it?

How does my life continue normally when I know theirs will not? How do I know when I’ve given enough, when enough is never enough?

My friend Vanessa mentions that glass covers their bedroom floors and the structure of their home is warped and literally in the same breath she tells me that her flowers are blooming. She walks around outside and counts the things in her garden that were spared, and I marvel at her joy. I want it to be my own, to share in it with her. I was hoping her joy would lay thick over me and change me. But it leaves me feeling more raw, and I’m not sure why. Is it because I’m not needed? Is it because I’m not sure why I came? Is it because I can’t make sense of how I’m supposed to live, of what my role is in this whole unfolding mess we call life? I feel like a horrible friend and I say stupid, insecure things I vowed I would never say, like, “I hate to bother you” or “I hate to be in the way.”

I thought, over the last 8 months, I had gotten to a place in my faith where I felt pretty free from guilt. Pretty free from have-to’s and shoulds. Pretty free from indecision and insecurity. Pretty comfortable in my own skin. But don’t let the smooth smile fool you. These last 48 hours have wrecked me. They have left me wondering, does my mess only feel manageable when it’s not mixing with the mess of another? How convenient. And yet, who wants to live this life all alone? Who wants to huddle up in a cabin in the woods and never experience human interaction. I want my children to learn to care for those who are hurting, but will I ever be able to enter in with enough grace for them, or will I always just wash them over with the same guilt I’m drowning myself in? Can I take another 7 months of living with this word MESSY? How have I so quickly forgotten to breath and to search for the love of the Divine through this all? How and why do we position ourselves to help others if we really need so much help ourselves?

What does it mean to be vulnerable (tripping clumsily over your every move) and is it worth it?

And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

- William Blake

I’m learning to call people all the time and ask for help, which is about the hardest thing I can think of doing…I’m beginning to believe…that someone somewhere is always well if you’re just willing to make enough phone calls.

- Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions

Well I know you are frightened, and I know you are angry
And I know you tired of the unknown
But I am beside you, and I will remind you
That you don’t have to go it alone

- Kendall Payne

Today marks the end of our family’s homeschool co-op. We will break for summer and reconvene next Fall, when the weather is hinting at crispness and the trees are flirting with color.

Last year, this ending couldn’t come fast enough. Perhaps it was due in part to the fact that I was teaching art all three hours of our co-op. I have no doubt this added to the overwhelmed feeling I had every Thursday morning as I lugged in art supplies and wondered if the kids would be into creating that day and if I really had anything worthwhile to offer them. But to be honest, there was more. More beyond the lesson plans.

Last week one of the co-op moms asked me if I was “in” for next year. I looked at her inquisitively, not sure what she was getting at. “Is your family coming back? Are you going to be apart of all this next year?” I surprised myself with an adamant, “Oh yes!” And even though it felt foreign on my tongue I wish I would have added, “We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

What had changed in me since this time last year. What made me such a passionate convert? What if I did leave what would I, what would we, me and my family, really be missing?

And then the faces. The faces began to pour into my mind, parading memories across my heartstrings. There was the little baby I held in my arms and fed a bottle while I worked in the nursery the first hour of our co-op this year. The baby who was born earlier then expected to a dear friend of mine. The baby who spent his first days in the NICU. The baby who might not have made it.

There was the athletic and muscial teenager who was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and whose smile persisted despite the troubling news that said tumor was growing. I watched as our little community drew around him and his mom and his siblings in the only way we knew how to. Who were we to comfort, we who knew so little about walking through fear the size of mountains? And yet I watched as we plunged in anyway, making it up as we went along because even though it’s awkward it’s better than doing it alone.

There was the mom who, though haunted by the loss of a baby in her past, plunged gallantly forward into a new pregnancy and as those strange and unpredictable demons of fate would have it, broke her leg days before her due date. Are you kidding me? “Anyone,” I kept thinking. “Anyone but her.” Hasn’t she been through too much? When does a person break beyond repair? She was absent from co-op for awhile, but when her face returned I swear a portion of me, the portion that had been holding it’s breath, finally breathed again and thought how blessed that I get to walk in close proximity to saints such as she?

There were the 3 year-olds that called me “hey teacher.” That asked me to draw them monsters, to build them doggy cages, to fly fighter helicopters with them, helicopters disguised as upside down chairs. And there was the mom that sat with me that hour, co-leaders in creativity, who stunned me with her imagination and asked me poignant questions and discussed art and beauty and the things of faith that simply don’t make any sense, but lure us ever closer anyway.

There was the face of a momma, watching her already injured daughter fall from the slide. The sigh of my heart as a curse word tumbled from fearful lips and then a tinge of deep love and appreciation for humanity as she placed hand to mouth and apologized for what had slipped out. Oh thank God for the raw. Thank God for the imperfect showing up in what some might call the most Christian-ish of places. Because I need to know I can be real, and now it is safe here. She has made it safe for me.

There were the faces of the older kids. My son’s favorite “grown-up kid” who without question would let him sit with the “big kids” at lunch and his sister who always managed to hold my 2-year-old when my arms couldn’t handle one more task. There were the guys who carried my stuff to and from my car, who actually passed me the ball during pick-up games of basketball in PE, and who occasionally beamed me with dodge balls (even though I was sitting on the sidelines), but always offered their sincerest of apologies. There were the sweet pre-teen girls, dancing wildly into beauty and shyly warming my heart with their soft, “Hi Miss Mandy’s.”

There were the faces of my children’s friends. The laughter alighting on stone-padded playground. The secret meetings, the holding of hands, the young innocent questions of love and friendship and even betrayal. Lesson upon social lesson, and me just thankful to get to be a part, some small part.

And the faces go on and on. Faces of women unashamed to share the messy details of parenting and marriage and home-educating. Faces of women who taught me what it means to ask for help. Faces of women who champion story after story of hurt and hang-ups and heroic proportions of fighting for joy and richness in the mundane. Faces of women who exchanged texts and emails and within those exchanged laughter and tears, because we just want to get this one life as right as possible and we know this means in some way or another letting others in close.

So today, today, this last day of co-op, I am feeling something new born within me. The awakenings, the beginnings of, the dawning of what it means to be vulnerable in the company of another. Something that was foreign to me last year as I walked co-op halls trying to do it all, all of it, all on my own. To shoulder full responsibility for education and parenting and marriage and art and womanhood, to clean-up the messes that incur, all. by. myself. And I see that it was not co-op that I did not like, it was the letting of others in. It was the opening to love. It was the surrendering to the need I have for others. It was the acceptance of differences (for we have many differences) and the realization that this Mama does not always know best. And this year, this year is the deep sigh of I need you and I want you and I’m awkward at this, but I certainly can no longer imagine life without you.

So no, it does not end today. It begins. And there is so much left to learn and, thank God, an environment conducive to doing so.

She was having a bad day anyway. She had taken a nap. A long one, which isn’t typical for her. And as long naps can do, it left her feeling sad, out of sorts, tears pouring out and she couldn’t say why. They were embarrassing tears to her because they were uncontrollable. It’s the uncontrollable that leaves us feeling raw. She rubbed them away, leaving red marks to replace wet ones.

We were early on a beautiful night, and so I encouraged her to play outside with her siblings. Maybe the fresh air would blow the confusing bits away. But there was more than air, there were people. There are always people. And if we’re not careful, and even sometimes when we are, people can amplify the confusion brewing within.

They ran away, far from me, the details of their faces blurred. They ran through teenagers strewn across the grass. They ran up grassy hill only to roll back down. I smiled at their innocent fun. But she, the oldest, was running back now. Approaching me with increasing speed. I didn’t see the tears making trails down red youthful cheeks again until she was close. And when she saw me those drips and drops of salty water increased the speed of their descent, one right after the other.

“They laughed at us,” she said.

Oh, they’ll do that. They’ve been known to do that.

“Who?” I asked.

“Those boys. They threw their trash on the ground, their cups, and we went to pick them up, and they laughed and said, ‘Don’t touch that, kids.’” I looked far across the grass seeing small white dots of torn styrofoam litter the grassy hill, nearby the teenage boys in a cluster. I recalled my own interactions with teenage boys in a cluster, laughing.

Oh they’ll do that. They’ve been known to do that.

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking at her apologetically and drawing her close for a hug.

“But you are allowed to throw the cup away if you want. You don’t have to listen to them. They were probably embarrassed that someone younger then them knew the right thing to do with trash. Probably embarrassed that they got caught throwing it on the ground. Embarrassment makes people do weird things, like laugh at others or hurt others.”

The tears had stopped, but she looked broken.

“Do you want to throw the cups away?”

“Yes. But I’m too shy.”

“You should never let someone keep you from doing what you need to do. I will help you throw the cups away.”

We marched. Her little hand in mind. My courage soaking into her scared. My chin was raised and I made careful, precise steps in my platform shoes crossing rocky ground, for fear I’d turn my ankle. We do not need to cross rocky ground alone. My sunglasses gave me courage, eyes shielded from memories of teenage years and mobs. People do strange things when their embarrassed, but especially in mobs. People do strange things to protect their ego.

We marched her and I, the first of many marches into fear that she will have to make, and I thought how beautiful that we could do this one together. That I could show her the smoke and mirrors of fear. It’s a mirage sweet girl.

I wasn’t myself anymore. I was just energy, energy sucked into the vacuum of shredded styrofoam cups and teenage boy mobs. My energy and her energy together cut the mob in two, and I asked in my strongest mom voice that echoed in my ears like deja vu, a teenage girl voice trying to fight back tears in order to fight for what I believed to be right. I asked,

“Whose cup is this?”

The fear dispersed. The mob broke into tiny pieces, like shrapnel sprays. Each went his own way, their haunting laughter gone. A couple shrugged shoulders, a few momentary eye contacts, a solitary boy mumbling, “It’s not mine.” They would reconvene, they always spread out only to come back together. But for now, for now they would not bother us. I looked at her, looking at me, looking at the mob spray, wondering what she was thinking. I bent to collect 4 styrofoam pieces and a red straw. Orange goo stuck to the edges of my hands, slushy melting mess. Their mess. What was I doing cleaning up their mess? It is like that though. We do get pulled into messes that aren’t our own. The messy that we should have no part in. The messy of others that leaks onto us, sometimes in our most vulnerable moments. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair, and yet this is life.

She’s knows now that this is life, but she also knows she doesn’t have to go it alone. She knows that fear dissipates and people, oh humanity, we do weird things when we are embarrassed. We do strange things to protect our ego.

We walked to the trash can and threw away the torn white pieces, the slushy sloppy mess left to melt in grass, sinking sticky into dirt. Stains of orange making mud that few would notice.

I still held her hand, her right hand in my left. I would keep it there as long as she would let me.

On my right hand, my thumb stuck to my fingers. A sticky reminder of their mess.

My friend Dana posed a question that got me thinking. She wanted to know what to do with all the artwork her kids create. We have our own fair share of overflowing artwork, a lot of which Tony gets pawned off on him. “Can’t you take this to your friends at work, Daddy?” Or “Daddy, I made this and this and this and this and this for you while you were gone today.”

As much as Tony tries to humor them, he can’t take all their art. And our house can’t contain it all.

We talk about how art is something that is created and then released. It’s not something to hold on tightly to. For the artist it’s really about the creative process anyway more than it is the finished product. At least I think it is.

Anyway, here are some of our solutions:

• Give it away to people. This can be friends, family, neighbors or strangers as we’re out running errands. I also think it would be neat to find a nursing home that would permit visits to give artwork to residents.
• Create a gallery to display multiple pieces of artwork in our home and/or use frames to display and switch out artwork.
• Use a basket to keep all the finished artwork. When the basket gets full, it’s time to get rid of art. (Usually enough time has passed that there is not as much of an emotional connection to the art, so it’s easier to part with. Or I get rid of it when they aren’t looking. They never miss it.)
• Scan or take pictures of your favorite artwork that you’d like to remember, but don’t need to keep.

• And my newest favorite option, turn it into stationary. You can make cards and paste artwork on to them. Or for bigger pieces of artwork, you can cut them down into card or stationary size. Then we can give our art to friends and family with a nice letter on it. Win-win.

Do you have any other solutions?

I haven’t shared many creative happenings from around our house recently. I was looking back through photos, and found this project that makes me smile. This is my favorite thing we’ve created with clay so far. We did this in August. I have no idea where the worms are now. They probably got broken and thrown away. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.

We did it. We bought an Art Museum membership. It’s not as if you have to have an art museum membership to be an artist. It’s just that I’ve always thought it would be neat to have one (especially in New York or Washington DC, but Oklahoma City is okay too.) I can count on one hand the times I’ve been in an art museum, and those times hardly count because I didn’t believe I was an artist then. Now that I believe I am an artist, and I am hungering for the chance to rub shoulders with others who have a passion to create. I am one of those people now who wants to sit and stare at a painting, to drink it in. To see color and lines brush strokes, but to also see a real live person whose heart is somehow wrapped into those streaks on a canvas. I understand now what it feels like to dare to believe in yourself and what is inside you, to dare to use your voice to express yourself, and I want to hear the stories of others who have taken just such a risk.

I have to admit I walk around in the art museum with a chip on my shoulder.

It’s a chip of insecurity. A chip that has accumulated over years of telling myself I am not good enough to be in such a place. I know nothing of the “fine” in fine arts. So I walk around and assume that the people with the museum pins on their shirts are looking at me like I don’t belong there.

And the artists, like the non-conversational woman painting my kids faces and arms on family day, believe that I am nothing but a novice and am just there to grovel at the feet of those who are too good to share techniques or the names of paint supplies. I assume that the short lady in the navy suit coat, following me and my kids around, and peering at us over her glasses, knows that it’s our first time and that we are mere common-folk who shouldn’t be allowed to wander the corridors of greatness.

I want to shout at her, “Are you going to follow us around the whole time. Back off!” But I am polite and maintain some semblance of self-control because I am aware of the presence of that chip on my shoulder, and I think it’s starting to whisper insecure things into my ears. And I realize that yelling at her would only give testament to the fact that I am in fact the common-folk that I don’t wish to be.

I feel at home in family art classes where we can drop-in and create freely. I don’t feel the chip quite so heavily when I have oil pastels all over my hands and I’m dressing up in crazy outfits with my kids so that we can stare into a mirror and create a unique self-portrait. I am looking forward to this weekly encounter with art that is CHILDLIKE in its nature.

This feels like the art I know. The art that is messy and touchable and breathable.

The art that does not require a 3-foot distance rule or is not framed in gold or placed behind a glass box. I’m tired of putting art in a box. I’m tired of putting myself in a box.

The Art Museum is still a strange mixture of rules and freedom for me. It is both exploratory and hands-off. It is touchable and yet unapproachable. I’m not sure if that will change over time as I rid myself of this annoying chip or if the paradoxes are just part of the territory.

What I do know is that I am determined to take the advice of a fellow artist and use this year of membership to the fullest. To not visit once and then never return.

I am determined to make this little plastic membership card be what I need it to be, despite my chip, despite the rules, despite the people in navy suit coats who stick to me like a shadow once I enter the building with my curious children. This is uncharted ground for me, but it is necessary ground, and I’m determined to cover it and learn from it and embrace it.

I wanted to share some new things with you about my Messy Canvas Bookstore.

FIRST

I have a brand new e-Book available!

Homeschooling our children greatly feeds into me as an artist. It is inspiring me to be creative, to think outside the box, to chase dreams and curiosities and exploration and adventure and story. It teaches me to want the most out of my today. It makes me live more childlike. It also teaches me a lot about mess and being imperfect.

If you are considering homeschooling or are currently homeschooling, but just aren’t happy with the results, I hope this e-Book will be an inspiration to you. I hope it will empower you and inspire you to do exactly what is best for your unique family, and I hope you’ll have fun in the process.

You can read more about it here.

SECOND

From now until the end of this year (December 31, 2010) all sales of the Angry Homemade Noodles e-Book go to the charity A Beautiful Idea. If you’ve been wanting a pick-me-up as a mom or want to give some hope to a struggling mom, I believe you will find this e-Book inspiring. And now your money goes twice as far, by also supporting a good cause.

THIRD

There have been nearly 700 downloads of the FREE e-Book Messy Canvas: You Are An Artist. What Will You Create? It’s so exciting to hear feedback from readers whose hearts are awakening to what has been lying dormant inside them for far too long. Thank you for sharing the e-Book so generously with your own friends and family and blog readers. Please continue to do so. This creative movement is far bigger than any one of us. It’s fun to just play a part in the stirring.

Welcome to 2!

He wasn’t saying words really. It was more just a gesture and a grunt. He motioned towards the cabinet. His face serious and passionate. He needed something, that much was obvious. Again he grunted and pointed this time with more enthusiasm. His body bending at the waist to emphasize the importance.

I could feel the tension in his body. The desire to communicate something profoundly important and yet the inability to find the right language to bring about the desired results.

I knew my window of cracking the secret toddler code was about to end. There were whimpers trailing the end of each grunt now. He was threatening to lose it.

I started opening cabinets and pointing to options. Do you want raisins? No. Do you want peanuts. No. The “No” word was clear, as it is with most two year olds. It was the grunt I could not quite decipher.

Finally I landed on the bag of pretzels. The panic left his voice. The grunting stopped. The pointing arm dropped. The jumping began. With a flurry of giddiness he began hopping in place. Uncontainable joy threw him into action. He ran in a circle, chasing his own anticipation and nearly catching it by the tail. He tried to help open the drawer to get a cup to hold them, but his emotions were too scattered to allow him the focus to perform such a task. Instead he continued the ear-to-ear smile and patted his little toes on the ground in a quick little thump, thump, thump that matched the beats of his racing heart.

I handed him the cup filled with pretzels. And then he did something I didn’t expect.

He took one step away and then turned around again, looking up at me with that same smile. He held out the cup, up in front of his face, stretching his tiny arms towards me, as if to say, “Look, have you seen this wonderful thing that has been given to me?”

I found it humorous that he should share it with me. Afterall, I had been here all along. I was part of the process. I was the one interpreting the groans, cracking the code, scratching the itch. I was the one that poured the pretzels, provided the cup, and passed him the treat.

None of that mattered. What mattered is that a deepest longing had been satisfied and the giddiness was just too much to contain. It had to be shared. It had to be noticed. It had to bubble up and pour out over anyone in close proximity. His shoulders hunched up close to his cheeks. He wiggled back and forth with glee. His body was no longer a body at all but a rushing wind of pure childlike delight. And he was sharing it with me, and I couldn’t help myself. I was entering in.

This is yet another lesson for me in being CHILDLIKE. The impatient groanings that growl out of me as an artist. The painful attempts to point out my cabinet of needs. The maddening inability to express the art inside of me in a way that would make sense to anyone and yet the connection to a Master Artist who I know can decipher my groanings and give me what I need to fulfill the urge inside of me. He provides it. And while I could go running off content with my pretzels, I am too taken by the moment when all that screamed inside of me somehow managed to be understood and satisfied.

I am overtaken by a cloud of giddiness. I turn to show Him, holding my art up in front of me, arms outstretched, my toes thump, thump, thumping in excitement to match my racing heart beats. As if He didn’t know, as if He wasn’t there all along, as if He wasn’t the provider, the sustainer, the interpreter, the helper, “the source without a source” (- Thomas Aquinas).

And yet, in this moment, he doesn’t remind me of his involvement. He just enters into my delight. He beholds my art and we share a moment, with my shoulders raised up to my cheeks and my eyes squinting with uncontainable excitement. What was once just an idea in my head has now materialized. I am holding it. And I am, in my own giddy, CHILDLIKE way, telling him thanks.

A couple weeks ago I posed a question to moms.

At the time I was knee deep into reading A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf and loving it. It was this book that started to stir the question in me.

I realized at different times I have tried to sink completely into being a mom and a wife, but it always leaves me feeling angry and incomplete. I realized at other times I have tried to sink myself into a career, but it too always leaves me feeling angry and incomplete.

I personally have been on a sort of quest to learn how to balance the role of wife and mom and the desire to feed an artistic passion that exists outside of that role. I don’t seem to be able to survive with one and not the other.

This book of Virginia Woolf’s was specifically on the topic of women and fiction, though I think it relates to women pursuing any dream or calling outside of taking care of the home/family, not just writing. She suggests that a woman can actually do something outside of her roles as wife and mom if she so desires, she just needs to have a room of her own (to get away alone to write) and some money that allows her the freedom to chase that dream.

I love the extension of myself that my art allows me. To start my morning writing sets off my whole day with this sense that I have contributed to the world in some way. That I have given back a gift to an artistic God who gives to me. It is my worship. It is my thank you note. And in many ways it is my sanity. Because as much as I love my children and my husband and even my God, just knowing I love them does not seem to complete me. Is that shocking? It feels shocking to write. But I know this to be true. I feel completed when I’m doing what is written on my heart, when I’m chasing the dreams God seems to have planted there. Surely He won’t hold this against me. It’s His plan, right?

In the movie Mona Lisa Smile Julia Roberts comes as a professor to an all girls school, and her ax to grind is that all women can make something of their lives besides just being a wife and mother and homemaker. Women can have their cake and eat it too.

What she finds is that some of the women are inspired by this while others aren’t interested because they really are content with just being a wife and mother and homemaker. Why chase after more if you are content?

So I see Virginia and Julia on one hand, pushing women to be more, to use their voices, their gifts, their passions both inside AND outside of their family. And I want to jump on that bandwagon and say, “Yes women, let’s do something big with our lives. I want to be an artist. What do you want to be?” And then I see Julia Childs character in Mona Lisa Smiles, and I think, perhaps it is the nobler choice to stay at home and be content with the roles of family.

Which brought me to posing the question to all of you. The answers I got from you all on twitter and facebook and on my blog prove how different we all are. We range from working moms to stay at home moms, from moms that work from home and moms that are single and have no choice but to work. From moms who are in difficult seasons with newborns and toddlers, tweens and teens, to moms testing out their wings again in their own empty nest.

It seems there is no one right way. Virginia and Julia might beg to differ, as would some of the leading women in conservative circles that I’ve come across. Even the Mandy from the past would not agree with the Mandy in the present.

And the truth is, we’re sometimes relentless and even catty with each other as women. Virginia says in A Room of One’s Own, “Women are hard on women. Women dislike women.”

My lesson in all of this has been grace. Grace to love each other, as women and mothers, right where we are at. Grace to love ourselves in the season we happen to be in. And grace to allow ourselves to change, even when we were quite sure our previous convictions were right.

My husband met Blaine Hogan recently at a conference. This is how he came on my radar. Since then I have been inspired by posts like:

The Artist As The New Pastor:

“In this age also of destruction and dehumanization, we are waiting for you, the artist, to show us your {messy} CANVAS. We are waiting for you to reveal the beauty that might be underneath the rubble of our neighborhoods, our relationships, our souls.

Unfortunately, many of us have given up. We are resigned to thinking our role is mere utility. We’ve believed the lie that the beauty we make could never evoke someone to a higher place. And more will continue to do so unless you claim your call to reveal the beauty in the broken places and raise your prophetic voice.

We are waiting.

We’re waiting for you to call us into the deepest places of our soul. 

We’re waiting for you to call us to more than we thought was possible.

We are waiting for you to make staggering amounts of beauty that imagine another way.”

Please Stop Making Propaganda:

“I believe our work could be much more potent, truthful, and effective if we viewed ourselves more as pastors and prophets than as programmers and producers; if we turned inward for our ideas instead of killing ourselves trying to create something more grand than the place down the street; and if we used our OWN stories to begin our work instead of someone else’s.”

“Many of you make art every week that asks people to reflect on and consider their own stories. Every week you invite your communities to enter the deepest recesses of their souls. If YOU aren’t willing to do this as well, your art will lack the truth and authenticity that you’re asking for from your congregation (community). If you desire to create art that truly opens people up to these places of deep pain and joy, then you must be willing to do the same.”

I am encouraged by his call to action. Encouraged to know God is stirring other artists’ hearts like He is stirring my own.

But Blaine equally inspires me to laugh at myself and life as well. A much needed balance for an artist who is diving into the depths of the mess of this world and trying to make something beautiful of it.

Blaine has these dance videos on Vimeo that make me smile. And they make my kids giggle. And yesterday, we decided to have Blaine teach us THIS dance. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. And strangely enough, when we finished dancing, I felt just as energized to do something with my art as I did when I finished reading Blaine’s blog posts.

I hope you’ll laugh and dance and create along with us.

The Club Can’t Even Handle the Stewards Right Now from Mandy Steward on Vimeo.

The Club Can’t Even Handle the Stewards Right Now Part 2 from Mandy Steward on Vimeo.

Annie the Bird Boy gets PANTS!

What’s a detail from your today?

My neighbor Amy recently gave me a cookbook called Deceptively Delicious. It’s by Jerry Seinfeld’s wife, Jessica Seinfeld. The basis behind the cookbook is that you create vegetable and fruit purees to include in your meals, so that your kids are getting the benefits of eating healthy food without even knowing it. I focused solely on the vegetable purees since I have no trouble getting my kids to eat fruits.

This past week my kids ate butternut squash, beets, summer squash, sweet potato, spinach, carrots and cauliflower and didn’t complain! We talked about what vegetables were hidden in each dish and then how each food was helping their bodies.

While the process of pureeing was a bit intense and took me longer than I expected, there was something very satisfying in buying all that produce and actually consuming it as a family without a fight on my hands. I bought raw beets and a butternut squash for the first time ever, which was fun simply because I was doing something I had never done.

The artist in me was delighted with the rich colors represented in the purees. I wanted to paint with the beet puree (while simultaneously holding my nose because of the stench.)

I am not sure I have it in me to puree this much consistently, but we loved how all the recipes tasted, and I walked away with some more healthy tricks to use in the kitchen.

Moms, are you more content when:

A) You know all you have to focus on is your kids & your home?

B) You have additional passion outside kids & home to focus on?

Why?

Charis, you see the world in a way no one else does. You are constantly exploring, creating and imaginating. You teach me so much about being CHILDLIKE. We love you! Happy Birthday!

Your name fits you well. You bring our life to life. We love you!