Sunrise With A Six Pack - Blog

August 11, 2013 by Karin 12 Comments

When You Are Feeling Stripped and Alone

Stripped in Las Vegas.

Ok, not literally. Stripping does not have to be literal to leave you feeling naked.

I’ve been in this place before, though it has been many years. I can barely remember.

The memories are returning and I am surprised that I forgot how it felt back then. Like a mama holding new life… slowly a window opens to scenes from moments gone by with babies before. How do we forget? The memories pour into the window like a rogue rainfall… streaming sideways, soaking the sill and everything in its path.

We forget… until, suddenly, we remember.

I remember feeling the loneliness that comes with the solitude of mothering children far from family… far from friends… far from anything, and everything, that feels like home.

It is different this time. There are… more children. The change is not in the numbers.

The change is in their awareness of the same loneliness mama felt years ago, when just mama was enough to fill their young hearts. When just mama was enough to keep the days full, the tummies full, the hours full, the arms full. When daddy’s evening arrival brought booming shrieks and wild, flailing arms. Thankfully, that has not changed with the years. Daddy’s arrival floods those young hearts with joy… maybe even more than back then.

It is different this time. There are hearts feeling this stripping for the first time. Much younger than this mama ever experienced it.

My oldest son… those blue eyes gazing out the window. The sun blinding. The rays blurred by the silent tears rolling down his smooth young, freckled cheeks.

My arm on his shoulder wishing I could keep the weight of all this from bearing down.

Are you ok?

Are you sad?

The blinking of tears, nodding. His jaw clenching in hopes of tightening a heart to this new place.

If you could be anywhere, doing anything, where would you be?

The hard choking of words from the boy growing up just too fast.

Um, I dunno, I guess I’d be hanging out with my friends.

That feeling. I know that feeling.

There are many things a mother can bear and hold… but this.

I know this one. There is nothing a mama can do to get around this one. This one, this time… I have to teach him how to go through it. Teach him to square his shoulders, cry without shame, pick his head up, and find joy.

This joy that does not come from friends spilling in the front door at all hours. This joy that does not come from endless summer days spent swinging on hammocks engrossed in conversations that only 11-year-old boys can truly appreciate.

Show him how to find the joy that comes from seeking.

This joy doesn’t come from the ease of childhood we long to give our kids.

This joy doesn’t come from the cushion of security that comes from the familiar. It comes from the hard step onto the path of uncomfortable. The rocky road filled with obstacles.

I recently read an obituary of a woman who knew she was dying. She had this to say…

…And may you always remember that obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they ARE the path.

(Jane Catherine Lotter)

The obstacles… they are the path.

Stripped of family. Stripped of friends. Stripped of familiar routines. Stripped of the go-to-girlfriends. Stripped of waves from familiar passing faces. Stripped of the moments when a look between friends is more than enough. Stripped of walking through children’s bedrooms at night, without needing one single light to guide the way.

Stripped of the paths that are worn and smooth.

We had comfort back there. We had a place where the seeking was easily met with the busyness of schedules. We had a place where we grew to rely on our friends. We had a place where we knew everything by heart. We had a place we left pieces of ourselves.

We had support and a good life. Maybe… maybe, we grew too comfortable… and maybe we forgot, just a little bit, to find our comfort in God.

The journey to this new place was filled with schedules and the go. go. go. of moving.

Here, now, the moving is done. We find ourselves in this place of sitting still. It is in the stillness that you can find yourself feeling stripped. Feeling naked without the clothing of the security blanket. Still and alone.

This time is different. The times that ring in my memory remind me of what was missing back then. The joy I could not find in the stillness all those years ago. The One I didn’t even know was there. Not floating up high, but right… there.

He is still right… here. Here in the stillness.

I held my boy’s chin in my hands, wishing I could take the sorrow. Knowing that this way is better. My dear sister reminded me…

They have to learn this sometime.

The places will change. The faces will change.

Our hearts will break. Our tears will fall.

The loneliness will come. The solitude will appear.

But, He is here.

Just waiting.

I held his chin,

I know this is hard. It will get better. I know this.

We need friends. God will give us friends.

We have to stay with Him. And trust Him.

He only has good plans for us. For you.

His head nodded slowly. Just to know we are not alone… sometimes that is all we need.

We are not alone. You see, my kids asked Him for friends before we even left home. This day, this day of tears spilling and a young heart touching sorrow and solitude… this day, one showed up.

She texted,

I’ll be there in 5 minutes to get him.

This new friend, with an 11-year-old son, saw the sadness she had seen in her own children’s eyes just a few years ago.

My son, all smiles when he saw the face of his new friend. Hours later, he came bounding back into the house. Joy.

My tears came later.

My warrior, a helpless look in his eyes shadowed by guilt,

Are you ok?

There is so much a mother can bear, but it is the heartache of her children that renders the mother heart… wounded.

I am ok, it’s so much harder when it’s one of my babies.

He nodded understanding.

We moms, we sneak grief into a closet and drop tears into plush carpet. Only One sees them. Only One wipes them away.

How am I going to learn more?

Who is going to teach me?

Whom am I going to depend on?

Whom am I going to go to?

Pleading heart behind the we-are-gonna-get-through-this and there’s-a-reason-for-this-place facade that slowly began to crumble.

Then, the whisper…

I am.

His words whispered to this still heart,

You have Me.

Maybe sometimes we have to strip off the worn, comfy, rubbed-bare silk we have clothed ourselves with through people, tasks, schedules, well-intentioned missions… just to get back to… Him.

Him.

Stripped. Wholly naked… to become Holy clothed.

Luke 5:16

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Karin signature

July 31, 2013 by Karin 12 Comments

When You Realize That “Maybe Later” … May Be Now

It is hard to leave.

I think, though, that it’s harder to be left behind.

leaving

It was only a month ago. I watched the tail lights until they were only a glimmer… and then gone.

I don’t know when I will see her again. I didn’t cry. Not one tear. It’s pretty strange for me to hold back a good flood. Cleansing… those tears. Though I have to remind myself that there is no shame in them. I wonder why we struggle so hard to fight tears, when releasing them is far beyond the relief that any long talk or soothing glass of wine can bring. I have to remind my kids… especially my boys… there is no shame in crying. We were made to cry just as much as we were made to laugh.

Nevertheless, the tears didn’t come.

Hm, strange.

My heart hurts… but, no tears.

Maybe later.

I looked into eyes… blue eyes, brown eyes, and those green ones. Brimming heartache. My own blue-green soul windows… guarded. Heartache in my throat quickly smothered by my own words…

It’ll all be ok.

This will all work out.

Just wait and see.

This is only the beginning.

I repeated these same words over and over. My kids needed to hear them, but maybe I needed to hear them the most. I just didn’t know it yet.

I looked back as our own tail lights rounded the curve. The tan mama arm thrown over her son’s shoulder.

I wonder if she is telling him the same thing…

We began the first leg of our journey.

maryland my maryland

Hours upon hours and then darkness set in. Finally, through the veil of trees I could see the outline of the house I called home for decades. This place of carefree youth nestled in the overgrowth of memories. Snapshots tucked in my mind. My parents still live there. A gift. The feeling in my throat returned… joy, sorrow… how odd the two can mix and swirl and just get stuck in your throat. That ache that burns up to brimming lids.

Squeals from the back seats,

We’re finally here!

The words pushed that feeling and the brimming back into storage. Maybe later.

Just a few days. We had many more days to go. A long journey for two parents, six kids, 1000 videos, and one truck. We had a long way to go. It would just leave time for a few short days here.

grandma's secret garden

The thunderstorm woke her that night. She doesn’t do very well with thunderstorms anymore. She tells me that they remind her of the bombs. The bombs that burned her German city when she was 13. The apartment home her family lived in was hit directly. The air raid sirens shrieked through the night. My mom and her little 3-year-old brother were separated from her mother and three other siblings. Running in all directions. Running into a burning city. For a while, she sat with him on a park bench.

You just can’t imagine the storms that come with that much fire.

So many storms.

They began to walk. They walked and walked. The door to the bunker was open. The women standing at the doors wore only their slips. The heat was too intense to remain dressed in proper clothing. The women were fanning air into that bunker. That’s where she found them. That’s where mom found her own mama and siblings. They were reunited. A gift.

The storms, they scare me.

distant storm

I looked into these eyes that had comforted, disciplined, loved, and raised me. She was the one who calmed my young heart during the storms of my youth. Now, she walked into the kitchen shadowed by midnight and needed a little bit of comfort right back.

It’s ok, Mom.

It can’t hurt you.

We’ll just talk a little while.

We talked for a while. The memories slowly sifting from this mind that holds decades upon decades of life. Those same blue eyes looked into mine,

You are going so far away.

I don’t know if I’ll see you.

There it was again. That feeling rising in my throat. No, not now. Maybe later.

Her eyes smiled into mine. Brimming.

Ok, c’mon, Mom. You went far from home and still saw your mom.

There I was, trying to convince her. Or, perhaps, myself?

There is no fooling wise eyes. No matter how much they seem to forget.

Her hand touched mine.

Well, we will certainly see each other in heaven.

I don’t think in all my life that I have ever tried to fight tears like I did at that moment. Why, I am not sure, but fight them I did.

Of course, Mom!

But, we don’t have to go yet.

My mind racing… it’ll all work out.

Not to be undone by sadness or uncertainty… we danced. Mom has a thing for polka music. At midnight, she turned on her music despite my and my husband’s attempts to quiet the music for the sake of sleeping children. No, we had to dance. She is quite German that way.

The three of us danced polka and sang Biergarten Musik into the wee hours.

My 83-year-old mama, my warrior, and I. We danced and my eyes brimmed. No time for tears now. Maybe later.

The morning came. The truck loaded with kids and cargo. Little arms wrapping and squeezing around these grandparents and then my turn.

Every time I leave them, I wonder…

No, not now. It’s just too much right now. Maybe later.

I could see their waving arms in the rearview. Smiles. A gift.

Our tail lights climbed the hill and disappeared.

Texas sunset

The journey went on for days and days. Rolling hills and green gave way to prairie, and desert, and majestic mountains. The scenery mesmerized. Sweltering humidity gave way to blistering heat. It’s all sometimes just too much to take in. You know that feeling when you can’t believe you are somewhere doing something until it’s over. Then and only then can you see what was before you. Only to find it is behind you in the rearview mirror.

bridge over water

Desert mountains

We made it. Road trip with a six pack. All the way across this breathtaking land. Mama sanity is over-rated anyway.

evening mountains

Sometimes it’s on the other side that we can finally see.

We can choose joy, you know. Joy comes from the surrender. The real surrender.

The feeling came back. That feeling in my throat. Here, right where I am.

It’ll all be ok.

This will all work out.

Just wait and see.

This is only the beginning.

I could only whisper it to myself. Thoughts colliding like bumper cars in my mind. Just almost too much to take in.

I could only whisper this to me. Stripped of the old normal. The comfortable. The safe place I could squelch that nagging feeling in my throat with,

Maybe later.

Maybe there is no later. Maybe the point is now. Right now.

I told my girlfriends,

Live day-to-day. That’s my new motto.

I can only think about right now. The rest of it is all sometimes too much. It is meant to be taken in day-to-day doses.

We have right now and to live fully in this moment… is the point. That is the gift. It’s not a new idea. Carpe diem has existed for ages. Actually seizing the day takes practice. So, here I am in this new normal. That nagging feeling in my throat. Here it is again… burning, brimming, blurring these eyes. Maybe later has tricked me just a little bit. Maybe later delays the sorrow… and the joy. Maybe later, may be just all wrong.

Yes, here it is again. That collision of sorrow and joy. Maybe later…

May be now.

Matthew 6:33-34

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

June 29, 2013 by Karin Leave a Comment

A reminder for you…

Hi Friends…

I wanted to let you know that if you subscribe to this or any other blog via Google Reader…

Google reader is going away on July 1, 2013.

If you would like to continue to subscribe to the Sunrise here or any other favorite blogs via a reader, here is a link to Feedly…

http://cloud.feedly.com/#welcome

Feedly will import your Google feeds if you sign up before July 1, 2013.

Happy Weekend!

Karin signature

June 27, 2013 by Karin 14 Comments

When You Can Take Everything… but the Kitchen Sink

My eyes drifted to the very back. There is a part of the fence I can’t see from where I scrub the dishes.

They run wild out there. Sometimes their energy takes over and they stumble out like puppies tripping over themselves trying to get to the good stuff.

Sometimes I send them out… those times that my own energy just can not keep up. Those times I want peace with soapy running water. Just my dishes, me, and the kitchen sink. Strange, it’s actually one of my favorite spots in the kitchen. The sink.

This sink has washed dishes of 1000’s of meals. This sink has rinsed boo-boos clean. This sink has bathed babies, caught tears, and one too many times was readily available when morning sickness (in truth, all day sickness) couldn’t wait one. more. second.

This sink has been my big screen to the world of my young ones. The secret garden of their youth.

I have had many conversations at the sink here. Phone pinned to my shoulder, scrubbing circles over the parts of the pot already clean. Scrubbing circles, listening to the voice on the other end. Wanting to scrub away the pain, the hurt, the sorrow, the fear and uncertainty, the doubt, the shame… just all of it… from so many voices I have loved over the years at this sink.

The voices of my parents have become gravelled… grown quieter. Eight years is a long time when you are in your 80’s. Eight years is a long time when you are 8. Eight years is a long time… and a blink. My eyes wander to my little girl. She is 8. Just a baby when we came here. Eight years is a long time when 8 years is all you know. And it is just a blink.

The voices of my friends have risen and fallen at this sink… just like the laughter… and the tears.

The cherries… they hang from this window to the backyard. I put them up there 8 years ago. I had no idea then.

She gave them to me when I left home for the first time. The place I grew up. She gave them to me, gift-wrapped with a bow in the parking lot on a sweltering South Carolina summer night. That was a long time ago. I had no idea then… she would be gone 12 years later.

A gift, you know, to have no idea.

This life as a military wife has kept me in this place for a long time. It’s unusual to stay in one place for this long. Ten years in one place and eight in this home. This gift to watch our six little ones grow from flailing to crawling to sprinting legs that fly past mama.

My eyes drifted to the very back.

Just over the hill the yard slopes into woods… just out of sight.

I pulled on the rain boots. The ones covered with hearts. I get tired of the boring. The black boots. I found boots covered in hearts. It’s on the rainy days that we sometimes need a few more hearts.

It was actually sunny, but the boots would be just right for the lurking poison ivy. The stuff that creeps and crawls and licks at our heels. Only later do we know that it has touched us. The damage can sometimes show up much later. Sometimes the things that touch us, the ones that seem so benign at the time… they show the damage much later. Yes, the boots covered in hearts… they would do the trick.

I had to go back there. The big old oak tree. The woods, the peace, the quiet.

There is a trail through the back of our yard. The trail itself has been long swallowed by brush and trees and time. The tree line is what remains. You can see the line of trees stretch beyond sight. The trail was worn thin in its heyday. George Washington rode this old road. From his capitol home to the harbor city. Years and years and we have no idea. The years… a blink.

It was the wind that day that caught me. The kind of wind that whispers and names itself wild. Just the sound of wind as the leaves turned belly up in anticipation of quenched thirst.

Eyes closed, I just stood and felt the wind.

This wild wind, blowing in all directions. The whisper…

It’s all going to change.

You just can’t capture a moment. I tried to capture this wind, but on the screen it just stood still. The beauty is in the motion… and we just can’t capture the motion. All we can do is move. Be still… listen… and move.

I found my way to the bench. A small clearing with traces of marshmallows melted and sticks charred. I’ve watched from my kitchen sink countless time… I wonder if I forgot to come out here… I wonder if I forgot to move… one too many times.

The sound of squeals woven through the blowing breeze on this day. This wind of change blowing His holy purpose through our comfortable secret garden.

The plans we make, the routines that keep us flowing in forward motion, the secret gardens where we hide from the world. This garden where we have been planted for a decade… where we bloomed into something entirely new. From five to eight of us. From blindness to sight. From stillness to motion. From doubt to devotion. From fear to faith.

I just don’t know. I have no idea. This one moment in time to the next burst of wind. Unpredictable.

With each gust, this crescendo of hope. This hope that His holy purposes cast our doubts to the wind.

I have no idea where this will take us.

The one thought in my mind… the whispers growing louder… my sight growing clearer… it’s a promise. The number he flashes before me over and over. This number… He has reminded me to pay attention to Him again and again. He has a way with all of us… if we would just pay attention.

It’s 3:33 pm.

I smile.

I hear You.

I know it’s time to move. To leave this place where our roots have grown stronger.

It’s time to move into the plan of His choosing.

I know this. This wind of change is the one worth riding. This wind that whispers, that beckons, that commands… this wind is the breath of Life.

The breath of life that brings me to leave the secret garden…

and the kitchen sink.

Jeremiah 33:3

Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

May 14, 2013 by Karin 10 Comments

When You Pretend

Frazzled.

Frazzled and frantic.

We all have those times, don’t we?

If I could just pull it together… just keep moving.

That’s it, isn’t it? The real goal. Keep walking and just. don’t. faint.

Never mind this false illusion of control and perfection… even when we pretend that is not what we are doing.

It really is, you know. Pretend. False control, false perfection… or something like it. Pretend.

The real goal. Keep walking… with Him… toward Him. And just don’t… faint.

Mama…

He looked at me with those sky blue babies that stole my heart over a decade ago.

You are really good at being a mom.

This red-head spinning around.

Are you kidding?

Like a child offered a prize… the best prize of all. It couldn’t be a true statement. Must be a jab… a joke.

Me. Running frantic fixing 6 different meals for 6 different palates. Just trying to get out the door. On. Time.

No, I’m serious mom.

I was listening to the precious ramblings of my 6-year-old, his little brother. Little blue-eyed boy was telling me something so very important. I was responding in the uh-huh-uh-huh-yea-wow-really-oh-boy-that’s-great mode. My oldest boy. He noticed. I scrambled and scratched food together… trying to scramble and scratch and keep it all together.

You do everything without complaining.

You are doing all this and listening to him.

And you do it without complaining.

My eyes brimming, as he continued,

Unlike us.

He smiled and laughed easily at his own joke. They don’t help without a good deal of cattle prodding. Most of them, anyway. We all need a good bit of cattle prodding along the way, don’t we?

That’s probably the nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me.

I squeezed this boy grown to my chin. Where do these years go? The hours, they sometimes skid and swerve… but, the years. They race and speed… until all we see is smoke and dust. Gone.

It’s not true, you know. I don’t do everything without complaining. In fact, I have made many of my nearest and dearest friends through rants of complaints and crankiness.

I complain. Sometimes to myself, sometimes to my friends, my husband, my children… and to God. I am working on it. This work in seeing all things in the light of grace and gratitude. It takes practice.

For a moment, my boy noticed something in my attempts. He noticed and he told me just what I needed to push on in this quest. That positive reinforcement thing. Amazing. No amount of guilt and self-defeat, no amount of you-should-stop-complaining could bring what he brought me with those words.

You do everything without complaining.

No, I don’t. But nothing will make me try harder than those very words. Pretend. Pretend that I am that very person. The non-complainer.

Playing pretend.

We start that as kids. We pretend to be like our moms or our dads. We pretend to be famous or funny. We pretend to be skilled or savvy.

We pretend to be princesses or princes. Kings or Queens. We pretend we are doctors or dare-devils. We pretend to save the weak… we pretend to save the world.

We pretend.

Maybe that’s where it all really starts. Sometimes this pretending really takes us somewhere. It can take us to dreaded pits. I can take us to dazzling pinnacles.

There is something about pretending that begins to sink into our bones. It sinks and slides and settles into our very souls.

Maybe, it’s really about what we pretend. What… who… do we really want to be?

Complainers… or gratitude givers?

Wound-wielders… or soul-soothers?

Misery mongers… or joy seekers?

Sometimes it takes a little, and maybe a little more… pretending. We could just call it practice.

We don’t have to pretend to be princesses or princes. We have already reached royal status. We are already children of the King.

We don’t have to pretend to be doctors or healers. Just one kind word can soothe a gaping wound.

We don’t have to pretend to be dare-devils. We have every reason to be brave. Bold. We have the power of truth and love… and legions of angel armies on our side.

We don’t have to pretend to save the weak. We can simply reach out and touch them.

We don’t have to pretend to save the world. That has already been done.

Just one thing.

The only pretend that matters. The one act of dress-up that changes everything… and needs more practice than we have time.

Pretend to be like Him. We are not. We will not. We won’t even come close. But, that’s the one that matters.

The more we pretend to be like Him, the more He sinks into our souls. The closer we get to anything that really matters.

I have been talking as if it were we who did everything. In reality, of course, it is God who does everything. We, at most, allow it to be done to us. In a sense you might even say it is God who does the pretending. The Three-Personal God, so to speak, sees before Him in fact a self-centred, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human animal. But He says ‘Let us pretend that this is not a mere creature, but our Son. It is like Christ in so far as it is a Man, for He became Man. Let us pretend that it is also like Him in Spirit. Let us treat it as if it were what in fact it is not. Let us pretend in order to make the pretence into a reality.’ God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one. I daresay this idea of a divine make-believe sounds rather strange at first. But, is it so strange really? Is not that how the higher thing always raises the lower? A mother teaches her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long before it really does.

CS Lewis

I do complain. I try not to complain. But, I do.

For a moment, my son caught me. A moment. A moment in which the game of dress-up, this life-long challenge of pretend… actually took hold.

The pretend became a reality and an eleven-year-old boy took notice.

And lifted his own young armor for this life journey. Bold, brave… joy seeking.

1 John 3:2

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

When You Are Feeling Stripped and Alone

When You Realize That “Maybe Later” … May Be Now

A reminder for you…

When You Can Take Everything… but the Kitchen Sink

When You Pretend

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