Lessons from the soil part II

 I have a fern a friend gave me two years ago. I know it was two years ago because she gave it to me shortly after (or before? That whole spring is a blur) my toddler was born and I literally did nothing with it for weeks… maybe months.

Eventually I repotted it and decided to try and start taking care of it because miracle of miracles it was still alive. 😂 

For the past two years it has struggled and struggled some more. Mold would grow on the surface and I would scrape it off. Sometimes mix it in. Honestly I had no clue what I was doing. Eventually I asked my friend and she recommended I repot it with completely new soil and rinse off the roots to make sure I didn’t transplant any mold with it. 

Today I gently pulled the root ball out of the old pot. It was a huge tangled mess. I rinsed and tried to gently pull off broken pieces of rotten root ball. Eventually this is what I was left with: 

There are only a couple of roots attached to these 5 growing stems of leaves. I can see at the tips some healthy root growth beginning. 

2 years this fern has limped along, hiding under the contaminated soil rotten roots that were keeping it from thriving. 

How often does this happen to us humans? We have rotten roots hiding under the surface. We need the great Creator, the God of Heaven to reach into our lives and gently pull out the rotten bits and rinse us with clean water and repot us in fresh, uncontaminated soil. But it hurts. It’s a lot of scary to willingly walk into something new and hard and unknown. But God has greater things planned for our lives than just 5 measly stems. He has a whole flourishing plant planned for us, if we’re willing to do the work, and let him do the work in our lives. 

Blessings my friends. 

Brie

Lessons from the soil Part 1

 After 15 years in the same house we moved late last summer across town to a house that provided a little more room for our family. While not the reason we purchased the house, I was drawn to the many flower beds that provided ample opportunity to create and explore. Our old yard was very sunny and I looked forward to new adventures in a part shade yard. 

As I dug into the soil last fall for the first time, anticipating the release that comes from plunging your spade into the rich dark soil, my spade stopped short. I pushed harder. I heard crunching and scratching. What could be hiding under this grass? It looked to me on the surface to be green lawn, a fresh place to dig a flower bed.  But I was met with so much gravel.

A long time ago, this big green lawn was a well manicured oasis for someone. Landscaped completely and beautifully with rock. And although in its day it graced a magazine, it became over grown and someone else came in and laid some sod on top of all the rocks and called it good. 

Today, I was changing around a different bed. I decided to move a couple of hostas to a different location. It looked prime. There was a layer of mulch covering the soil. Again, I thrust my spade into the mulch and it went in less than a quarter of an inch. I scraped back the mulch. More rock. 4 inches of rocks. Large rock, small rock. It was all there hiding just beneath the surface. 

As I scraped away the rock, trying to decide how to proceed with my flower beds, I was again reminded that God always brings the best revelations out of my time in the soil. 

Just like my well manicured lawn and flower beds were hiding so many rocks, people too can look well manicured and put together on the outside but when you dig a little bit, you may find a lot of rocks. 

What may have looked easy might instead hold for you long hours of digging through the hardness of life picking out all the rocks. Underneath all of those rocks there is beautiful fertile soil waiting to welcome the new life it can now receive in abundance. 

Peace and love to you as you patiently dig out the rocks in your own soil. 

Brie

What's New with You?

Summer of 2018 is well underway and the busyness of early summer has slowed down.  It is finally restful.

I started taking classes this summer to earn my degree.  To be honest at this point I have no idea where I'm going with this but I know that moving forward is the right thing.  I started attending Southwestern Assemblies of God University earlier this summer by taking ONE online class.  One.  And I was surprised to find that one is just about all I'm able to do right now.

This fall I'll be finishing up some Gen Eds at our local community college.  Okay, I'll be finishing up ONE Gen Ed.  I will still have 3 others I need to take but one is about all I can handle mentally and financially right now.

The last few months have been transformational for me.  In the spring I began listening to the Going Scared Podcast by Jessica Honneger founder and CEO of Noonday Collection.  If you know me, you know I LOVE Noonday Collection.  From the company's beginnings to it's mission of empowering women around the world and its FANTASTIC eclectic and quality jewelry - I love it.  So naturally, when I heard about the Going Scared Podcast I HAD to listen.

Over and over and over again the resounding message I have heard is to just do it. Do something. Move Forward. Do it Afraid.

It has been YEARS that I have wanted to go back to college and for many of those years I knew I wanted to go back but had no idea as to what my degree would be.  I was held back by not knowing the whole story.  But if there is one thing I have learned from living life (and being told by amazing leaders all around me) - is that I'm not supposed to know the whole story. I'm just supposed to take the first step.

I am learning to give up regrets and to stop living in "should have".  My husband and I often quote to each other one of our favorite lines from C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia (said in our best Aslan voice - which if you have listened to Focus on the Family Theatre's audio version you know what I'm talking about)

"To know what would have happened, child?" said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that."
"Oh dear," said Lucy.
"But anyone can find out what will happen," said Aslan

So move forward friends.  Go on, find out what will happen.  We're on this journey together.

Peace,

Brie

Beauty all around

Several years ago a friend of mine and I had a garden.  It was a good size, and we loved it.  We would spend hours out there together, listening, talking, just being silent but safe.  It was a form of therapy for both of us.  I was struggling with through infertility and miscarriage, and she her own journey to walk through. 

It was a beautiful garden, and I had a beautiful walkway, beautiful flower beds and I enjoyed them.  I had only one child, and my friend had her two (and later 3) and our kids would play while we talked.  And many days I would go out to the garden alone and just pray.  Mostly I prayed for more children. 

In all those prayers, that were one day answered - I never once realized that when I had those more children I would not be able to continue to maintain a garden well. 

Here we are, my oldest 9, my second child almost 5 and my youngest home for two years - and my garden still waits full of weeds. 

It has been 4 years since our large joined garden.  And this year, I am finally planting a couple of vegetables again.  I planted strawberries and lettuce today, and I pulled 3 dandelion plants. 

That is seriously all I have time for.  I don't even have time for writing this.  Because our social worker comes for our two year post placement in just a few days and if I spend all my time cleaning up the outside, she will find a very messy inside.  It looks as though we have been busy for the past three weekends and sick in between... because that's true. 

I am so thankful for these three amazing kids that God has given me.  And I'm even thankful that I don't have the time for the meticulously maintained garden and flower beds of my past.  Because the friendships have stood the test of time, and the children are growing.  Both are a very beautiful thing. 

...but she out of her poverty...

Some days are really difficult.  Whether you are a parent or not, everyone has difficult days.  It can be brought on by nothing more than a difficult night of sleep, sleeping past your alarm, not eating breakfast, or traffic slowing you down.  Everyone has difficulties in life. 

Sometimes though, there are people that have more difficulties than others.  Whether mental illness like depression, bipolar, or schizophrenia, or a physical illness like chronic back pain, fibromyalgia, cancer treatments or foot pain (psh. lets just say any pain.. because anytime there is pain, there is just difficulty!)  - so  Let's just say that - when people are in pain, life is extra hard! 

What about those suffering from an emotional heartache?  Infertility, miscarriage, death of a loved one, a struggling marriage, concern for your children -

In Luke chapter 21 vs 1-4 we read the story of the widow's offering -

As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. ² He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. ³ “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. ⁴ All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

I read this and thought about how I could give out of my poverty.  I cannot claim to have ever experienced true financial poverty.  Even as a child when my parents were at their poorest, we still had food and shelter, warmth, and clothing - by this worlds standards, I have never experienced financial poverty.  I wondered what it would be like to give out of my poverty. 

And then as the morning progressed it came to be known that one of my kids was having a really hard day. I was doing my best to speak life into this little one - but she really didn't want to hear it.  I told her that even in hard times we can make the choice to have a good day or a bad day.  This day was her choice, regardless of whether or not it went the way she had hoped it would.

And that is when it struck me - what about giving out of our emotional poverty?  When life is really difficult and we show grace to someone who needs it.  Or when we choose to be joyful despite difficult life circumstances.  When we bring peace even though we feel that our world is in turmoil...  Might this be a little like this widow giving out of her poverty. 

When life is going easy, when the money is there, when we got all the sleep we needed, when we woke up on time and our hair was perfect, on the days that we absolutely LOVE LIFE - it is so easy to spread joy and love, and grace - and on those days it is so easy to be full of patience for those around us and to respond softly to harsh words. 

But on the days that our hormones are OUT OF CONTROL, on the days we want to eat our feelings and punch other people in the face (c'mon I can't be the only one right?), on the days we just don't feel like we can summon the energy to play with our kids, or make a decent meal, or focus on our work, - but yet we give our very best in that day... our best might be yelling less than you wanted to and making boxed mac and cheese - but might our best on our worst days be worth more than our best on our best days? 

Just some thoughts tonight. 

I would love to hear what your thoughts on this might be!  Have you ever felt like you had nothing to give, and so you gave the very best you could even when it felt pitiful?

Comment on this blog, or comment on Facebook - I would love to connect with you!

Finding A Connection

I am outside tonight, enjoying the cool temperatures, high humidity and gorgeous Iowa sunset.

I love connectedness.  I love how one person is connected with another; how the sky is connected to the earth, the beauty of the sunset, the importance of the bugs and animals and that all together as one we sing out a beautiful chorus to our great Creator.

The sun has just disappeared behind the blue/purple/pink haze of summer but the sky is still bright.

I have just returned home from leaving my oldest child at summer camp for the first time. I have no doubt she will have a fantastic time.  She is growing into a young woman and is full of confidence and grace - and laughter, so much laughter.

(Okay so the bugs did make me go inside. I know mosquitoes serve a purpose but why does that purpose have to include MY blood?)

My husband and littles have stopped for ice cream on the way home and I have been granted the rare opportunity to sit in quiet and reflect on life.

I don't get to reflect much anymore - I just feel tired alot.

(And now I itch.)

I walked to the post office tonight and watched a plane fly overhead.  I wonder where those people are going?  I wonder who they are going to see?  Are they happy?  Are they sad?  A business trip or a pleasure trip?  What about us?  When we travelled to China to pick up our sweet baby boy, were there people down below wondering about us?  I wish I could tell them how wonderfully our world was about to change.

(Seriously, I just got so many bug bites and I was out there 5 minutes. I hope Amariss uses the bug spray I sent with her.  Soooo glad I packed bug spray!)

I was prompted to write another blog post by a good friend of mine.  She was 12 when I met her... She was a shy girl coming to youth group as a 6th grader and my husband and I were youth sponsors.  I seriously remember the very first day she and her older sister came to youth.  Now she is 24 and is married and is mothering her own little one.  I'm pretty sure when I was 20 I never imagined that we would someday be sitting and having coffee and catching up as friends.  Friends, connected - through life, seasons and motherhood.

Also, where did 12 years go?

(My family will be home soon and I'm anxious to check the camp website and see if there is a picture of my little girl yet.)

I love to remember my connections.  The new neighbors down the street with young children, being from a small town, loving to sing and dance and paint and experience life - I love to see connections everywhere I go.

I wonder if we looked deeper to see how we were all connected, if we might learn to love a little more deeply, to share a little more grace and to experience a lot more joy?


 

It's the week before Mother's Day and I have been thinking -

I haven't logged into Blogger in so long I was worried I might have to reenter my password... and then the hassle of trying to remember my password. 

I almost didn't put forth the effort. 

But here I am - so far past my last blog.  

It is the first week of May already and we are on our spring break before we head into our final 9 weeks of school.  Ending the last week of July, just in time to take a 4 week break and start again in September.  Woohoo!

Homeschoolers love making their own crazy schedule to fit their own crazy needs!
  
It has been an emotionally strange week for me.  And by that I mean that I have cried this week.  To a friend, not my husband and that was weird.  Not because crying is weird, I'm just not one of the people in this world who can make the tears come out.  I feel them inside, but rarely do they work their way out of my eyeballs.

Whoa - that was off.

This whole post is off.  Who knows if I'll even post it! 

Monday was the 3 year anniversary of our loss of Isaiah.  Monday Aaron left for France for 4 days (work trip, mostly travel time.), Wednesday I finished reading Ghost Belly, which is a memoir written by a mom regarding her stillbirth.  And Mother's Day is Sunday.  

All of this just wraps its way around my heart. 

Isaiah's loss, Aaron gone, emotionally exhausting book, Doron's birth mom.  My heart is feeling pulled at.  

I don't know.  That's it I guess.  It all is just surrounding me and I'm trying to process while I live and breathe and mother and purge and manage this.  all of this.  

I started a 2000 Things Clutter Free Challenge, and I'm decluttering spaces - 15 minutes at a time, 15 minutes a day...

That's really about all I can handle.  But I look up at the top shelf of my closet where 5 baby boxes sit.  5 boxes of memories representing 8 babies who never took a breath on Earth but live full and beautiful lives in heaven - I don't know what to do with them.  And I know that right now, I'm leaving that space to be purged later.  I'm not sure what to do with them.

A paragraph near the end of Ghost Belly rings through my mind - 

"It's supposed to be comforting to know that overwhelming grief will not last forever, that it will fade and you'll feel normal again, that sadness will become something that remains within measure rather than covering the universe.
It's certainly practical that this happens.  It makes it more tolerable to correct page proofs for a book that has been in production far too long.  It's even good that this happens: It makes it possible to laugh at baby giggles.
But it's no comfort.  Even when I was in my deepest despair about Thor's death, I feared the day that despair would lessen, because I knew it would feel like a betrayal: a betrayal of a child already grievously betrayed."

- I feel that, towards each baby box.  Even though I know they were there for me.  For Aaron and I to process our grief better and to remember the journey of each child of ours.   But here now, almost 10 years after our first loss - Seriously, 10 YEARS?!  I can remember that day like it was yesterday.  

10 years after our first loss... almost 3 years after our last...  I'm healed, healing?  healed enough?  I don't think of our little ones every day, not even every week.  I remember their lives.  I can mention 8 miscarriages without feeling the angst in my soul.  And even then, I have forgotten the most wrenching parts of the pain surrounding it.  

I sat yesterday morning reading in my devotions from 2 Corinthians 1: 3-4  "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. "

I was reminded in this.  I don't speak as much about the years we walked through our miscarriage journey, I have felt out of place in this world having now moved to the other side of that journey and have followed God's leading into a new and different (albeit still hard) journey of motherhood.

There was a time when remembering the pain, plunged me into feeling the pain so deeply all over again - and now that that has past, remembering the pain just reminds me of God's faithfulness here on this side of our journey.  But as I read those verses in 2 Corinthians I was reminded, yet again, that I was comforted in all of my troubles and because of that I can be a comfort for those who are facing the same sorts of troubles.  I took so much strength from God as I walked that hard hard road of loss.  And it propelled me to lean into him for strength during the hard hard road of life.  The hard road of adoption and unknowns, the hard road of surgeries, the hard road of respiratory illnesses, the hard road of separation disorders, the hard road of night terrors, the hard road of an incorrect ADHD diagnosis, the hard road of making hard decisions, hard phone calls, and asking the hard questions - the hard road of all of the unpredictables that are bound to come our way.

While the journey I am currently walking is important and valuable and holds great significance - the journey we have already endured has not lost its importance, its value or its significance.  While speaking about miscarriage is no longer a daily part of my life, the role it has played in my past can still make an important impact on someone else's life.

And then there is Mother's Day - and tackling this day as an adoptive mom for the very first time.  I am currently processing that - remembering and honoring Doron's birth mom on this day.  I remember her nearly every day because our boy is so incredible.  I look at him in awe and wonder and I love him, his past, his present, his future.  All he is, all he will be, and where he came from.  This woman, who loved our son, but couldn't mother him - I am processing her this week as well.  I suspect she will be in my heart for the rest of my life.

God bless,
Brie