cowboy morning

A bit obsessed with bento-esque kid food lately. (www.anotherlunch.com) Also, the wild one has dived deeply into character stories in his imaginative world. There will be much costuming this fall, I feel. Just continuing the family tradition. Wahoo for 50% abott days.

Today Siah and I were sitting at the table while he enjoyed peanut butter and jelly as only kids can, reading a stack of books. He received this book for Christmas from my in-laws and I LOVE IT, especially since it is filled with brown people and non-anglo Jesus and the heart of God. We were reading about how the Bible is a story that sometimes people think is about rules or heroes or a nation, but how it's really a story about God and in the middle is a baby and that baby grew up to be the biggest hero ever, and I asked Si if he remembered baby Jesus from when we talked about him at Christmas time.

He said, "Dep, momma, dep. Yeah-Yeah love baby Jesus." (Yep, momma, yep. Siah loves baby Jesus)

I got choked so up and said, "Yeah Siah, momma loves baby Jesus too. And baby Jesus loves Siah." To which his eyes widened, and he said, "DEP!"

I have a fear of brain-washing my children with religiosity, when really I just want them to know the whole, beautiful truth and self of God. We tell the stories, we go to church, we practice life as the church, we focus on truth and love and grace in our parenting and as a family. But I know that true relationship is deeply personal, and I want to respect our children's own stories with God as they explore that. Never to have this.

When my small boy, who is just learning what it is to love someone or something ("Yeah-Yeah love hi-ho momma. Yeah-Yeah love pitates. Yeah-Yeah love Buzz.") shared an unprompted open heart about Him who I love most of all; I can't even explain. In that moment I understood what the difference was between the brain-washing and the genuine spirit. And I was humbled and overwhelmed and overjoyed and trying not to cry so that he would finish his apples while we read more stories. Language has enabled me to share this greatest love and hope and truth with him in a way that I never had been able to before.

A friend of mine reminds me that the kingdom of God comes through babies. Although I am not often able to unpack the whole of what that entails, today I was able to taste a wide and delicious slice of it. In a season of my life that has taken over my mind and soul, I very much needed to experience the washing over of the promise and spirit of God as He holds my family so much more expertly than I.

iphone photos for the week

it's good to be home and creative with the small boy again.

run. ran. running.

I bought a pair of ridiculous looking shoes and began to run. It took a long time to get over it all. The "it" being the healthy husband, the marathoning friends, the serious lack of lung health, the absolute distrust of my ability to find success in any sport-related activity, and not being able to ever find my sports bra.

The runners I know and love run for miles and miles and eat gels and train and race and track and time. I love them and their running love; it's why, after 5 years of supporting their gatoradey ways, I began -- and think I can actually follow through this time. I am not training for a race. I am not monitoring my speed/distance/calories. I am not ever having the expectation of doing this for more than 30-40 minutes at a time. My only goals are weight related. And it feels different. Maybe the endorphins? Maybe the opportunity to be in the wild by myself for a while? Maybe I am just in that expanding place and want to run in the trees alongside of Jesus and sometimes joey and sometimes siah and feel the physical free that my heart has returned to.

Yes, that sounds right.

from many thousands of feet above the desert

Mostly I feel like looking out the window at the stream of broken lights and weeping. She is a shattered girl, collected in a tall glass with a lid that doesn't fit quite right. I am a shattered girl who is familiar to this feeling of having been spilled upon the kitchen floor, my important bits lost beneath the lip of the cupboard. I will be collected in the dustpan again, and reglued into the next manifestation of self. I will be whole and new again again again. So will she. Again again again.

flying back from utah

there is a lot of tree cutting going on, originally uploaded by paperelephant.

home to the small boy


how i missed you so

my wee boy who

tumbles

and laughs

and

reads about whales

digging to a face of dust

tucked beneath

my chin

kicking kicking

kicking

my knees

home is so much more

of

you

minor toddler tragedies

I just retraced our afternoon trip, scanning the curbs for a lost Leonardo. Drove obnoxiously slow, peering into the grass for a lime green, fuzzy monster. He went to bed a little bummed, but I am incapable of understanding loved creatures as anything less that secretly sentient. I blame the Velveteen Rabbit and an over-active imagination. I'm having Toy Story flashbacks. Thank the Lord for Amazon.