Today I stayed in bed till 10 am, went downstairs made pancakes, held both the small people in my arms and napped while they watched a movie and then promptly went back to my bed with my third cup of coffee. I also had a bubble bath at some point. So you know…my life is rough.

I started a second job a month ago so while my time is actually manageable my brain is spread a fair bit thinner then perhaps it should be. Our community, our family, has been under pressure and to be honest I am out of the fog but am still needing to nestle in, read, stare at walls. It has been…All the people. All the time.

My new job has to do with youth mental health and not to be a pessimist but with a youth pastor father and a youth mental health advocate mother it is almost assured that our children will be raging, strained teenagers. Here is my plea: Joel and I both just believe in building community that will help to catch your kids if they start to fall. We trust you to do the same. How about we just show up for each other ok?

O spent the day building Rube Goldberg machines with dominoes and marble runs. There was a dog treat dispenser and a book closer (important for a son like mine ;-). He called me seventy-seven times to come watch and of course I did (though my book was great and my bed was soft)…watching their passions emerge is the greatest honour of my life. Last night O played his first basketball game and I got so close to the edge of my seat that I actually fell off. Turns out it was a stage and I fell onto the court. Bless. So thankful my son is not yet the raging teen he just might be.

Elvis Costello said his grandmother (while tremendously ill with Alzheimer’s disease) had moments of terrifying lucidity. I have finally had those again lately. Do you know those? The moments of profound and intense and terrifying lucidity. I am certain you feel it too. When, just for a moment, the world of life and death and real and true hits you right between the eyes. The instance when you see another parent with your identical parenting style and it terrifies you. The moment when you watch a women in her older adulthood still so bound by fear and insecurity that she can’t choose her own life. Can’t listen to the call of God.
It beckons us doesn’t us? The moments when we just can’t ignore the nudges and inklings and can no longer eclipse the truest of the trues.

If I were a writer I might have called it writers block but I think of it more as spiritual dementia, profound aphasia that I am finally overcoming. I feel myself waking up, able to speak…watch out world.

Today the children dug into my hope chest, which at this point in life is actually a time capsule. I held my high school diploma and E found a cheap ring Joel gave me as a joke in high school. O found my basketball jacket and various sports medals. I found my poetry and small books I had bound when I was seven. These words have always been my way. Broken and terrible, weird and intangible.

I am too busy for this blog.

I am going to do it anyway.