Category — Family

Truly, my world feels small. I wake and my life, from dawn until dusk, is ordered by a 19 pound toddler. We sit on the floor. We try new foods. We tear books off shelves. We sing, play the piano, take walks, swing, babble.

Then there are moments I step out. I get my act together, cross the street and meet women, mothers, new friends. One, a forensic biologist with the RCMP. Another, a casting director. Still another, the wife of an SFU professor, recently moved from San Fransisco. These are interesting, beautiful women who, along with me, have given up their ‘day jobs’ to nurse babies on hard wood chairs in the centre of Starbucks as the world speeds by.

It’s hard to give up. It’s hard to let the e-mails stack up for days, some for weeks, as I retire at 8pm, my body a sack of worn out bones. It’s hard to pass up opportunities, quit jobs. I don’t read blogs. I scan newspapers. I get by on CBC Radio newscasts as Madeleine and I spend the day. It’s enough for now. My life demands focus. 

I am surrendering. 

It’s my theme at present: Surrender. I recently read a book titled Surrendering to Motherhood, a gift from my friend Julia that spoke right to my core. “I realized I was working not for dollars but out of ego and a need to create,” author Iris Krasnow writes. It seems I had lurched back into the saddle for the same reasons and the stress of mothering a 6-month old, keeping a home, being a wife and working on a variety of projects was quickly killing any creative energy I had left.

A glimpse into my journal tells the story best:

Father, please help me unravel. I am wound so tight. Soiled laundry, dishes, clothes demanding mending. Unwritten stories, e-mails, notes to prepare. Waiting friends, family, husband, baby… clamouring at my skin.

You win.

I surrender all into your open arms. Wash, wash, wash over me like the liquid wind of ferry deck. Spill, spill like milk, the scent of honey, washing away my worry.

It is too much for me. I need to fall open, fall out of this rhythm, this frenetic pace.

I am mother, wife, daughter, friend. Then writer, teacher, blogger, business owner.

I fail Madeleine when I spill myself like an open grave. Smiling through fatigue, tears stored on shelves for moments like these.

They are a city wall. Built up, built up. Revealed first to my mother’s eyes, ears, love. 

“I am worried about you.”

(“Heed her words,” I hear you say.)

“Cut everything out. Say no. Until you have got her on a schedule and sleeping well in the night.”

At first I push back, then I breathe out. “Yes, Mom.” And the wave pulls back…

Yes. May that be my first response, Friend. Rather than no, no, no. I don’t know better. (Oh God, do I ever not.)

Candle, key and canvas feel dead to me. Oh spirit, come. Damn you assignments, damn you ego. For what is your gain?

Strip it away. Strip it away. Strip it away. 

My life leaves me little time for writing. I have an inquisitive, social child who demands all of me in her waking moments. When I have time I want to create: pen poetry, paint, write stories — the website for the Seeking Eve (inspirational Christian women) project is almost complete and I want to concentrate my energy there. I’ll also still be blogging weekly at After Hours. 

What does that mean for this little old blog? I hope to share pictures and poetry as life unfolds, sometimes writing, though I hope to spend more and more of my time on published work.

The few of you who read here: thank you! I love being able to share my life with you in this writer-ly way. I hope you keep reading and I promise to keep you up-to-date on new projects, and our ambling life.  

I’d like to leave you with another quote from Henri Nouwen, sent to me this week by my husband (he’s been doing that a lot lately!) 

“Our Unique Call

So many terrible things happen every day that we start wondering whether the few things we do ourselves make any sense. When people are starving only a few thousand miles away, when wars are raging close to our borders, when countless people in our own cities have no homes to live in, our own activities look futile. Such considerations, however, can paralyse us and depress us.

Here the word call becomes important. We are not called to save the world, solve all problems, and help all people. But we each have our own unique call, in our families, in our work, in our world. We have to keep asking God to help us see clearly what our call is and to give us the strength to live out that call with trust. Then we will discover that our faithfulness to a small task is the most healing response to the illnesses of our time.”

Here’s to seeing our call clearly and living with the trust necessary to see it through.

A very goofy angel

It took parenthood to awaken me to the fragility of life. 

These days, as I make my way through the world, fearful thoughts dart through my mind: 

“What if that car, racing the red, hit me? I’d be brain-damaged, mangled. Would my daughter recognize me? When they wheeled me out of surgery would her face still crest like the sun at the sight of me? Or would she not know me at all?” 

I imagine her life without her mother and my eyes well with a flurry of tears.

In other moments, I think:

“What if something happened to my little girl? What if she had a life-threatening disease, her body shrunken to a mere few pounds as she fought for life? How would I cope with feeding tubes being laced down her throat? Would I crumble like paper or would I rise up, warring in the fight?”

I find my lips whispering prayers of thanks for life, every day. It’s a new posture for me. For most of my life I have taken life for granted. It was given. I am living it. But now, with a small life entrusted into my faulty hands, I tread lightly. I am mindful. I want to drive slower, look both ways, meander more, notice. 

It’s the way God sees, I think. He watches this spinning globe He made and hones in on a delightful little boy kicking soccer balls in Argentina. He smiles. Delights in this young child, destined for a profession in plumbing, fatherhood, public service. He sees the fullness of a life unfolding beneath dusty feet.

God is a God of love, the Bible tells us over and over. 

Psalm 33:18 reads: “The Lord watches over those who obey him, those who trust in his constant love.” 

How would our lives look differently if we believed it?

I’d be much less fearful, I think.

Her fingers wrap around mine like a chord. Limbs darting up to tug at my linen, cotton billows, reaching out to declare: “You are mine.” Tenacious, yet layered with a heart like cream, Madeleine steals frames from faces in an instant. Translucent glass beads scattered about the floor save her from topples as she devours them with her finger folds. Snowy flesh. She is sitting better and better every day. At dawn each morning Daddy awakes to spend sleepy hours with her while I try and catch up from night waking. Enfolding one another in the day’s first light. This is our love.

My step mom’s humour strikes again. Check out my two sisters and I in action here: We Are Disco (Elves)

:::

To view more picture of our little munchkin, click here.

Your face is an orbit. Pursed lips, supple skin. Bright eyes, like moons. A constellation.

You are a little ship, a face like an ocean cresting. Raven hair and blue eyes the size of boulders. 

I swim in your sea from day’s break to day’s end. You are my life’s greatest treasure. Lying beside you these first days has felt like a rebirth. Your soul, your face, every inch of you speaks pure. Your loveliness outshines the rainbow that nestled itself outside our window yesterday. I would spend the rest of my days gazing at your face if the world, the Lord, would allow. Instead I will take my moments, store them in my heart like gold, and watch you grow, grow, grow up into heaven, out into the world.

We welcomed our little girl one week ago today. Madeleine Jacoba Hope.

Madeleine comes from the root ‘Magdalen’ meaning ‘High Tower.’ Therefore she is named after Mary Magdalene and also the wonderful writer, Madeleine L’Engle. Jacoba (pronounced Yacoba) is my grandmother’s middle name, common to the Dutch, which shares the same Hebrew root as my brother James’ name. Hope is a word that has particularly captured me this year (I wrote about it here.) Also, we felt the name appropriate due to to the amount of times we had to reach out to Jesus for hope during her labour and delivery. It was a long journey to meet our little girl. 

Madeleine weighed in at 9 lbs 11 oz after 81 hours of labour, start to finish. Although we laboured almost entirely at home, she was delivered naturally by our midwives at Burnaby General Hospital in the wee hours of the morning. Mommy was too tired to go anymore without a little help (a small amount of IV Oxytocin.)

Our new life with Madeleine:

In the words of Madeleine L’Engle, one of our little girl’s namesakes: “Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.”

Our prayer is that our little one will tell the story of Christ through her beautiful, adventurous, and marvelous life. 

We welcomed Madeleine Jacoba Hope on September 2 at 9:15 AM.

9 lbs 11 oz. 72 hours of labour. Mom and baby are happy and healthy. Daddy says: “God help fathers of daughters.”

We are in love.

So, when do you think our bundle of joy is coming? Will it be a boy or a girl? And how much will s/he weigh? Post your predictions!

Date:
Gender:
Weight: 

Whoever is closest will win a prize! I am going to think of something exciting to mail you in the meantime… (Hint: the due date is August 27, though it changed once to the 19th, after a 20-week ultrasound.)

Let the guessing begin!

Living, working, shopping, churching in my own neighbourhood has become immensely important to me.

This passion began when Michael and I were first praying about where to live when we got married. We started off living in the tiny loft of the house where I’d lived for the previous five years. When we prayed we never felt God giving us a clear answer on the location question. We had settled on living in Kitsilano, renting part of a house or an apartment, until my dad and stepmom offered to sell us a condo they owned in Burnaby. The offer was clear out of the blue and as we prayed we felt it was God’s leading. We said yes. So, since last spring, we have lived in a corner of suburbia.

I never expected it, but I grieved moving out of Vancouver. I had fallen in love with my dirty corner of southeast Vancouver. I loved the hole-in-the-wall takeout Indian, the $2 bags of naan, and the crazy Chinese lady with the wooden broom handle. I missed running into neighbours on the street and housemates on the front stoop. Now I lived in apartment-land. On the 13th floor. APART-ment. It’s written right in the name.

I suffered something of a depression. I hardly went out. It was easy to do because I was newly self-employed and was working crazy long hours. Plus Michael and I were newly wed and working on building our relationship. My life felt disjointed. All of my favourite digs were on Fraser and Main, now I was a city away. We went to church near Vancouver’s city hall, but we were paying taxes in Burnaby. Familiar faces were non-existent.

I decided to get a (very) part-time job at Starbucks to meet people in the neighbourhood. And, you know, it worked! But I was SO overworked (5-9 AM at Starbucks, 9-6/7/8 at my desk) I had to quit. No matter, the short stint at the neighbourhood coffee shop opened up relationships where I lived. Now I walk into Starbucks and meet friendly faces. They even treat me to free beverages. They ask after our baby. They make me feel welcome — at home.

Slowly, slowly this area has become home. I think, in our right-now, click-culture, we forget that things take time. Relationships are forged. Homes are built. The expectation that these things will happen overnight is our great adversary.  

We found out yesterday that Michael’s sister is moving into our neighbourhood, two blocks from the little Anglican church we have been visiting and the butcher where we buy our steak and kolbassa. On Sunday we met up with our neighbour Tricia and her son Diego at McDonalds. We talked politics over Happy Meals (she’s meeting some federal big wigs as I type). Jennifer, our neighbour on the 8th floor, greeted us at the grocery store the other day. Her two-year-old daughter Amelia is looking forward to playing with our baby when s/he comes. 

Today, I thank God. We have a home.