Monday's Much Needed Song of the Day: Dead Leaves by the White Stripes

Some bittersweet rock comin' atcha. WAKE UP!

Sacred

Some things are sacred.
Like the time I touched your tooth
Or you put your palm on my scar for two seconds too long.
Or me seeing your feet in new socks,
Two blue crescents I wanted to rub against my face.

It feels wrong to lay them out here
like tools in a physician's office, waiting to excise a thing.

I'd rather expose them like leaves no longer kept inside branches.

And leaves? What do they do but change?

Me, you, breathing.

I try hard to pay attention like before you, but I am losing.

You are not, so I am happy.

Maybe here,
under a different moon, I can let the sacred fall, soft and magnificent
so my branches don't ache from emptiness.

Maybe I can grow a thing from the fall out.

Monday's Much Needed Song of the Day: Only Love by Ben Howard

 Maybe he means falling apart because he's falling in love or falling apart because his heart is broken or just falling apart because life is hard.
Either way, I know what it's like to hope someone will love you even if you're falling apart, so the song struck a chord.
This video is beautiful. The underwater, and rock jumping frames are my favorite.

Sweee-T's Tips for Trips

Basically one tip: denial.
I left for Austin this morning and if you don't know this yet, when women travel, they get weird.
Even weirder if they are leaving their family behind.
Which is what I am doing. For a week. And instead of being completely focused on getting my pickles in a row, I planned way too many social activities. It's like it's the last week before school starts and we haven't had all the fun we were SUPPOSED to have.

I packed intermittently, wrote and re-wrote lists that I forgot to post on the fridge, pre-read curriculum info on my phone between trying to do everything and see everyone.

At some delirious point Saturday night, Chris and I made it to the pool to stare at each other without interruption; some much needed gush time before the separation.

Now, I'm on my phone typing up the lists and emailing them to the sweet ones with instructions to only post one day at a time, hoping this will help prevent my husband's descent into an ADD haze. (Think the possum in Over the Hedge.)

And despite all the procrastifun, I managed to make French toast this morning, make it to the bus with clean socks and underwear ON TIME and write this blog.

Here's a little peek into the fun.

Monday's Much Needed Song of the Day: Midnight City by M83

I really like the sound of this song, but never really listened to the lyrics, so I decided to look it up. Kinda weird after the last poem I posted, but that's the way I roll.
Oddly serendipitous.

Time

Twilight is a time.
It is simple
Sad and haunting
I hold my breath
willing the seconds to stand still,
the light to separate from the horizon,
the colors to stop bleeding over,
the tears to stand at attention,
the warmth to stay, and stay.
Instead blue light finds me
holds my hand,
leads me languishing,
brings the cover to my chin
makes a tent over my ear,
so the fan sounds
like a far off ocean.
One I will only reach in dreams.

Reluctant Sorta Home-School Momma: Tidbits of Goodness

I like my kids, even thought two of them are kind of mean to me forty percent of the time. Betcha can't guess which ones, huh?
But for the most part, hanging out with them is awesome. I am trying to soak it all in before this internal, apron-string rigged time bomb explodes.

Here are just a few tid-bits so you can share in my wonder.

On the way home from, well, it could have been a kajillion places, Chloe says:

"Mom, I have an idea. I am going to write a short story about Adam and Eve's first kiss. You know, the very FIRST KISS." And she does, and it's awesome, and If she doesn't publish it elsewhere, I get to post it here:)

I am at the kitchen counter, when Caleb rushes in and says:

"Mom, you have to read this short story, the third one." He hands me Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger.
"What's it called?" I ask him.
"'Just before the War with the Eskimos,'" he says.
"What's it about?" I ask.
"Not Eskimos. You have to read it."

And I do. And it's weird and I kinda love it. I share in his awe even though I know he was reading in part to procrastinate revising a research paper he didn't do so well on last year.

Chaz knocks hard on my bedroom door, rushes in and says:

"Mom." Even if I look at him he will wait for me to respond with, "Yes." He even does this in text messages, instead of just texting what he needs to tell me.

So, anyway, I reply, "Yes?"

"I wanna write a play of The Sandlot."
 Whoa!
"Genius idea!" I say and I am serious. We are going to try to write up a mini-version before school starts again and see if the vocational group at his school can perform it.

As this summer starts to fade into the busyness of the school/work mode, I am hanging on to these moments for dear life, hoping my kids still have room to breathe. With God's grace, I am trying to let these moments lead me, as I lead my children in their giftings without sucking all the fun out what they enjoy.
My fellow sisters in the cause of hoping our children make better choices than we did and lead more fulfilled and less stressful lives, your prayers are coveted.

Monday's Much Needed Song of the Day: I'm Getting Ready to Believe by MIchael Kiwanuka

This makes me think. It's a continuous act--believing. Even before you do it. Maybe that's why some Christians prefer to call themselves Believers.

Midnight Survey and Morning Mercies

I'll admit that I was having a weird week. I was finally coming to the realization that I might not ever find my children's baby books after 8 to 10 boxes came up missing out of the shed they were stored in.
I was moving back and forth between rage and denial, staving off old-mean Tamitha with a denial teat, attempting to move slowly and deliberately, so nobody would be harmed in the search.
Blame crept it's way in craftily and took me all the way back to the burning of my own baby pictures in a BBQ pit- a vengeful act after a horrible argument between my parents.
"I have not been cared for properly, and that is why I can't care for my own things properly!"
I was an internal mess, trying desperately not to create an external disaster.
I have caused enough of those.
As a result of not being able to find something so precious, I began to notice my list of undones, unfinished.
And some words, uttered by various people over my lifetime echoed in my brain:
"You need to take care of your shit."
The spinning and toil commenced. At midnight, I sat down in front of the computer to delete emails, when I noticed a message from good old Bank of America asking me to comment on a recent phone interaction.
I have never given any person or institution such a low score, and when the time came to comment, which I usually skip, or put a winky face, I tore into their "puny, money-grubbing hearts" and thanked them for NOTHING!
It was not a shining moment and somewhere it is in print. I am sure the employee who reads it will think it mild, compared to some other strongly worded letters by those who have been grievously wronged, but still, I felt bad as soon as I sent it.
When I opened my eyes the next morning, the note popped into my head like a blurry dream. I pushed it away to start my day and didn't think of it again until I checked the mail, where there was a postcard revealing my own banking errorS, not just the one I had been charged for and realized, BOA had actually shown mercy, at least in this case.
And I had not.

Lamentations 3:22-23

22 It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

Thank God. For real.

The Art of the Cover #1: This Land is Your Land

I love a good cover song. I have written this blog with different songs and their covers at least twenty times, but never posted. I decided today was the day to begin the series.

Some covers leave me wondering why. This is not karaoke, people.

A cover is not about imitation. It's about honoring the original work and artist with a personally rendered re-creation.

Sharon and the Dap-Kings take a song I loved to sing as loud as possible  in elementary school choir, and make me not only want to sing it, but dance and lift my hands and smile and get kinda proud.

Here is the cover and the original for your enjoyment.

Monday's Much Needed Song of the Day: That Wasn't Me by Brandi Carlyse

"Follow your heart," some people say as their best bit of advice. What they don't know is that sometimes our heart can be tricky, crafty, and full of stupid crap it might have learned while your momma was watching General Hospital.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9.


Being ruled by flesh and emotion can cause irreparable damage. Ask people who traded in their wife and children for some good times, who are in prison for bad choices, who thought by following their heart they were serving some kind of higher purpose, only to lose their way completely.

"Don't forget who you are," our friend Martin says often.

This is easy to do when you are trying to escape the pressures of everyday family life, of a life that hasn't turned out like you expected, of a life that is really hard, even when you've worked your tail off to make things go smoothly. Mostly, it is when we forget to be grateful that our heart turns on us. When all our hard work hasn't paid off.  When the often unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others becomes a heavy weight. When pride tells us we deserve more, instead of humbly receiving what is given to us.
So, as Chloe Curiel says, "Follow your heart, but only the part that Jesus lives in."
And, maybe, just maybe, you won't have to learn who you are the hard way.