Living on a Prayer

This academic year marks my first year parenting a high schooler.

An underlying feeling of anxiety has pervaded my days, my soul, my mind, my heart.  Can I do this?  It is sort of like that feeling expecting mothers get a month or so before the baby is due to arrive.  I've changed my mind, I'm not sure I can go through labor.  But it's too late by that time.

Now I am birthing him out into independence from me and Brian.  He has so much to learn, to be prepared for.  What if I fail him and he moves out into the wild, tumultuous world desperately wishing his crazy little mother had remembered to teach him x, y, or z?

I was sharing my fears with a wise friend who was stuck listening to me while we were on a quick, twelve hour road trip in which we rode a ferris wheel.  Her questions brought me full circle to remembering.

Fourteen and a half years ago Conner was born.  Brian and I were living on a prayer.  The government covered our the medical costs for the birth because we were in a very low income bracket.  Brian had two more years of seminary ahead of him, and I wasn't sure how my teaching job could support us if I had to pay for childcare.  And I wasn't sure I was supposed to put him in childcare all day, everyday.

So even with all the anticipation of meeting our new son, there were questions lingering...what is going to happen to us?  Will we be able to provide for this new, vulnerable life?

The day, or rather, middle of the night came when he chose to arrive.  I held his precious six pound body fiercely, albeit gently, in my arms and looked at his perfect form.   I knew then, I just knew, that even though I didn't deserve God's care over my life,  God would help us provide for our baby.

He has.  Abundantly more than I could have asked or imagined.

Within a week of finishing his first year of school, Brian was offered a two-week job to help with a lighting project.  As that was finishing, he got a call  to consider a paid internship at our church which would include flexible hours and experience required for his masters degree.

Within a week of me terminating my teaching job (which was VERY hard for me to do, having no plan for how to replace that income), our apartment managers called me and asked me to interview to be the assistant manager, lowering our rent to about $200 a month and allowing me to keep the baby with me.

Over and over I saw God provide for our needs as we put our faith in His provision.  I seriously could go on and on and on.

Now, as I'm looking forward with fear, I'm also looking back.

 My anxieties are rooted in a failure to remember.

God remembers us...all the way back to the rainbow he set in the clouds in the time of Noah.   He wants me to remember Him; the ways He's worked in the Bible, the ways He's worked in the lives I've encountered, and the ways He's worked in my own life.

We discover him in our stories.  We experience life, the story we inhabit, as if we are walking backward.  The future is completely unknown.   We see the present through our peripheral vision, through a kind of fog.  Only the past has some clarity, and that clarity increases with time.  
                                                                                       A Loving Life by Paul E. Miller


We're still living on a prayer, for that is the best way to live.  But it is a prayer backed with evidences and answers to many other prayers. Evidences of a faithful God.

For Memory's Sake

Right now I'm ready for him to be potty trained.

I'm sure I've been the one to tell some struggling mother not to worry, her child will be potty trained before they hit the teenage years.

But when it's me....well....
I'm ready.  Apparently he's not.

So I'm telling myself he'll be potty trained sometime.
And I'll look back on these current moments with deep fondness.

Ode to June and Other Birthday Thoughts

Oh lovely June,
The month in which I entered
Over thirty-four years ago.

Little did I know that
You would also be the month
Conceiving three of my greatest gifts.

So now in March
We gather in joy
To thank God for life begun in you, June.

The other night we sat around the table eating fudge cake made entirely by two of the boys.
Brian read Psalm 139:


For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.


Life-giving words.  David knew God's works are wonderful.

And His most wonderful workplace is in the womb.  

Each of us, knit together by God's hands: the womb His workshop.

I pray God helps me believe this is truth about myself....and that I impart this truth to my children--how wonderfully He has made them.

Being Mommy

Last night a group of ladies met in my living room.

One of them is single, past childbearing years, and lovely.

She's cared for each of my children in the church's nursery.

When the meeting was through, the children were already in bed but the one who just turned two.

He's in a "needing Mommy" phase.  So he came calling to me as soon as Brian knew were were adjourned.

"Hi....Mommy."  "Mommy."

And that precious single lady standing next to me said, "Oh, it must be so nice to be called Mommy."


Healing, blessed words.

How easily I forget the amazing privilege of being called Mommy.

The Gift of Memory

I remember I was great with child.  Third baby boy.  Carting the other two through WinCo on less sleep than I thought I could bear.

I wondered where God was.  Why He was allowing me to suffer in this way.  Who could be asked to care for little children and not be able to sleep?

And to make it worse, I felt awful about my appearance.  Huge, exhausted, discouraged...those words do not a pretty Mama make.

But I get to WinCo to get food and this old war vet without an arm walks near us.  He looks at Conner, the oldest at three and tells him that he has a pretty mama.

Again in the dairy section he sees us, gives a kind (not at all rude or presumptuous) smile and confirms the boys' mama is pretty and they should be thankful.

Then we're bagging the groceries and he stops once more to tell them they're lucky they have a pretty mama and to make sure and tell her that.

I'm nearly in tears.  'Cause I know God used him to speak to me.  About His thoughts toward me at a very challenging time in my life.

Now I try not to forget.

Another picture, years before the WinCo incident, returns often as well.

Taking my Friday stop at the coffee stand on my way to teach 5th and 6th graders.  I'm great with child that time, too.  Driving in a borrowed car of my parents'.  Wondering how we're going to make it financially when this baby comes.  Me, the money-maker while my husband's in Seminary.

I'm listening to Focus on the Family and they're talking about God's provision.  When I reach the pick-up window to get my coffee and hand over my three dollars the lady looks blankly at me and mutters something. "What?"  I turn the radio down.  "It's paid for."  I'm confused and she can tell.  "The person before you paid for it."

I barely get to the school for all the tears that just keep coming.  The little act at the right time tells me God has not forgotten us.  He will provide.  He always provides.

Memory's a gift. 


We hold on to past provision knowing that He always keeps His promises.  His mercies new every morning, His faithfulness reaching to the skies.

photos: enjoying a few hours of snow here this week