Falling

I barely know how to talk about what happened last night, but I need to, so here goes. 

Violet is nineteen months old, but she’s been trying to chase her brothers since she figured out how to crawl.  If they can do it, she’s going to try to do it.  Most of the time, she succeeds.  She learned to climb before she learned to walk, and the ladder on the playset is no obstacle to her.  She climbs ours.  She climbs the one at the park.  She climbs the one at the neighbor’s house.  She loves, loves, loves to go down the slide, and she loves, loves, loves to do it by herself.

We popped over to the neighbors’ back yard last night because it was warm, sunny, and too completely delicious outside to go to bed.  The kids kind of scattered, with Violet trending toward the dog and the slide.  I usually try to stay within ten feet of her, and I move closer when she climbs the ladder.  Sometimes I need to catch her at the bottom of the slide, and sometimes she loses her footing on the ladder.  Just yesterday, she fell off playground slide, right into my arms.  She bit her lip and cried, but no harm was done. 

Last night, she was climbing the ladder for the twentieth time while I stood three feet away.  The kids had pulled an old wooden bench over and placed it facing the ladder (why?).  I was right behind the bench…within arm’s reach.  Maddie and I were chatting when Violet lost her balance; we saw it at the same time.  I heard Maddie say, “She’s falling!” and I was already on the move.  So much of this is muddled in my mind…the opposite of the clarity you sometimes get in terrifying situations.  She was near the top of the ladder when she fell, she caught herself a step down, and then sort of skidded with her tummy to the ladder.  It wasn’t a total free-fall, but it was close.  And here’s the thing: I couldn’t get to her.  The bench blocked my way, and no surge of adrenaline project me over it.  I was still reaching for her when she hit the ground. 

I watched her hit the ground.

I did not catch her.  I could not catch her, or maybe I didn’t know how.  All those mama bear instincts that I thought I’d have…failed me.  The image of her lying there, facing away from me so I couldn’t even see her eyes…I just can’t.  I didn’t know she was OK.  She very well might not have been.

She was only on the ground for a second or two…not enough time to even start crying.  I snatched her up, which in retrospect wasn’t a great decision seeing as I didn’t know if she’d hurt her neck.  But I had to hold her, had to touch her, had to comfort her.  The moment she was settled in my arms, she started to wail.  Loud, terrified screams…not screams of pain.  My friend checked her head for bumps and ran for frozen peas.  My husband exploded in a mix of panic and rage.  And after no more than thirty seconds in my arms, Violet decided she was over it and started squirming to get down.

I wouldn’t put her down.  I sat on a deck chair and tried to hold the peas on the part of her head where we thought she might have hit.  The frozen peas were vastly more horrible than the three-foot fall.  (Why do they tell you to put ice on kids’ injuries?  Is anyone actually successful at this???)  She screamed every time I picked them up and squirmed some more to get down.  The baseball game was continuing in the backyard and she was missing it.  The dog was still in the yard, and she was stuck on a deck.  Oh, the fury of a toddler!  I didn’t care; I was watching her pupils, scanning her head for bumps, and waiting for her to throw up.  She didn’t.

Finally, we brought the dog up to keep her occupied, and Maddie got out the treats.  She offered one to Violet, thinking she would enjoy feeding the dog.  Violet snatched the treat and popped it in her own mouth.  That should have been my cue that she was OK.  Maddie reclaimed the treat and showed Violet how to feed it to the dog.  She giggled and the process was repeated at least five times.  (The whole process.  Violet tried to eat every single treat.)  Slowly we started to piece together what had happened.

Our best guess is that the wooden bench – the one that prevented me from catching her – met the leg of the playset ladder to form a V.  It appears that Violet’s shoulder landed squarely in that wedge, absorbing the fall and cushioning the fall for her head.  Other than a scrape on her knee - probably sustained when she grazed the ladder, a graze that certainly slowed her fall – she has absolutely no sign of injury.  I kept her up late to watch for signs of a concussion, and checked on her throughout the night. 

This morning she woke up to a croupy cough…but she woke up.  She WOKE UP!  I know how very blessed I am, how different this story could have been. 

When I hear stories of terrible accidents, I like to distance myself from the situation by assigning blame.  That couldn’t happen to my kids because I supervise them.  That couldn’t happen to my kid because I’m responsible.  That couldn’t happen to us because we are good enough to prevent it.  But last night?  I was supervising.  I was close.  And I couldn’t catch her. 

As I replayed this over and over, another realization hit me.  I couldn’t catch her, but God did.  He let her land in that perfect V.  He protected her head.  He protected her neck.  I wish she hadn’t fallen at all, but He broke her fall in the perfect way.  She’s back at daycare today, sharing her upper respiratory infection with the kids who shared it with her.  She’ll probably try to climb the playset again tonight…because this kid knows no fear.  She is quite confident in her landings.

I’ve been trying to journey to a place of trust with my Father.  Today, I keep telling myself: He caught her.  When my hands weren’t enough, He protected her.  He catches me, too…especially when I can’t catch myself.

Waiting

Waiting is hard stuff.  Sweet Eli cut his baby teeth really late, and true to form, they are taking their time about falling back out.  One by one, his kindergarten classmates have parted with their first tooth and received the subsequent visit from the revered Tooth Fairy.  Eli listens closely to each classmate’s story, inspects the newfound gap in each smile, and wonders when it will be his turn.  If you could make a tooth lose by checking it fifteen thousand times a day, Eli would be sitting on a pile of riches.  He wants this next step so badly, he craves the experience his friends are having, and there’s not a thing he can do but wait.  Ahhhh…sweet boy.  My heart hurts for him.

He got a glimmer of hope yesterday when I checked for myself and discovered that his bottom teeth do, in fact, wiggle just the tiniest bit.  I hope that hope will be enough to propel him through a few more months; I’m no dentist, but I just don’t think those suckers are coming out any time soon. 

Waiting hurts the heart and tests the faith.  Sometimes it whispers, “God has forgotten you.”  Sometimes it plucks hope right out of your heart and plants a bumper crop of despair.  It steals on the perspective you have and manages to convince you that you are, in fact, going to be the first person in the history of the planet who will never lose a tooth.  It settles in with “what if” and makes itself comfortable.  It is hard stuff.

I remember well the waiting.  The waiting for a first boyfriend, for a first kiss, for a husband, for a home, for a child.  Some things took longer than others, but even one day of waiting can deflate a hopeful heart.  It can be a time to turn away from faith or a time to turn into it.  I am waiting now.  We got one offer on our house last night; it was so low, so out of line with the comps, that we were actually insulted.  We’ve been told we are getting another today…this morning, actually, although this morning is over and we’re still waiting.  Is the waiting a good thing?  Or will we be back to showings and stress?  And if we do sell, where will we go?  Where will we live?  Will it be a good place?

I know in my heart that God is moving us in his time.  I know He will provide for our needs.  But right now, my head feels like Eli, waiting for that tooth to come out and wondering if it ever will.  It feels like forever.

He Speaks

I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, putting on makeup for the day.  Caleb, ever the grumpy early-riser, was “sleeping” on my pajamas piled on the floor and rubbing the stubble of my unshaven leg.  “Mommy, you need to take a deep breath.  Take a deep breath NOW.” 

I obliged, making more of a sigh than a deep breath. 

“No, Mommy.  Louder.  Take a louder deep breath.”

For a second time, I sucked the air into my lungs and blew it out through my pursed lips, exaggerating the noise to satisfy the child on the floor.  It is funny, though, deep breaths really do clean and calm the soul…even when they are forced.  “Do you think I need to calm down, honey?”

He nodded, and mumbled some jumbled, indistinguishable words…and then, “Mommy, you just need to trust God.” 

Oh, little one, if you only knew. 

God’s still, small voice, concealed in the murmurs of a four-year-old who got up too early. 

My Brave Step: Trusting Boldly

Another day with no offers on the house.  Another day of feedback from buyers who aren’t interested.  Another day of deeply wanting to stay in Cincinnati, of ambivalence towards the community I am supposed to be joining.  The fact is that I don’t want to go.  There are no neighborhoods that I love and can afford.  There is so much I’m leaving behind, and the fact that our house won’t budge at the price point we need is not exactly encouraging either.  In Cincinnati, we live in a neighborhood we could never afford anywhere else, and we live here because we bought a short sale when no one else can buy.  We were brave.  We likely can’t do that again, especially not with three kids who would be living in the construction zone.  The peace I woke up with has quickly eroded to an ugly mess of fear, hurt, and anger.  I’m furious that no one wants to buy my house because I don’t want to sell it.  There.

Our church is doing an all-church journey called “Brave”…appropriate, don’t you think?  I started with the same heading I used last year because frankly, I haven’t found a way to make it happen yet: “Make wise decisions as I find a way to make a living as a writer and stay at home with my kids.”  I’ve taken some Brave strides in the past year; I’ve found increasing amounts of freelance work, seen my product published, and gained confidence in what I can do…but my kids are still in daycare while I teach eight hours a day.  If we stay here, we still can’t afford for me to quit.  So I set the wheels in motion, but nothing has come to fruition.  As I worked through my individual work tonight (before my phone battery died), I felt like last year’s heading was all wrong for me.  After all, I’m stuck being brave in the selling our house/moving to God-knows-where mess regardless.  I felt like my Brave step needed to be something both easier and harder, something much more difficult to quantify, something much harder to act upon.  I’ve watched my emotions over the last two days as I received negative feedback in text after text, and I am wrecked.  I lash out in every direction with every piece of bad news.  My inner turmoil, my quickness to tears…it all points to one thing: I do not really believe God answers prayer.  I do not believe He truly wants to care for me.  I do not really believe I can trust Him.  I do not believe that He will move unless I work my tail off and get everything right for Him.  I believe I don’t see answered prayers because I do not work hard enough.  I really, truly believe that I do not qualify for answered prayers, for miracles, for evidence of His hand at work.  Other people get to see the big stuff, not me.  How disrespectful to God, and how very human.

And so my Brave journey needs to be one of trust.  There are so many prayers I do not pray because I don’t think God will answer them, and I don’t want to be disappointed.  I pray safe things, things that I think might actually happen, things I can bring about myself…but my heart aches with years of unanswered prayers, of prayers that were only answered years after the fact.  I am afraid to trust my instincts; I must not know what to pray for because God doesn’t show up very often.  Obviously this is completely antithetical to what God tells us about Himself, and it absolutely comes from a place of fear, hurt, and mistrust. 

So on this Brave journey, I’m going to lean in to God.  I’m going to explore what it means to pray boldly in faith.  I’m going to seek God’s wisdom in my prayer life and start asking for – and expecting – big things.  I’m going to pursue God and I’m going let Him heal my mistrusting heart.  Failure to trust means holding on to control…I’m going to beg Him to let me feel safe in letting go. 

So we still don’t have a buyer or a house we like in North Carolina, but I do have a heading for my Brave journey.  That’s something, right?

Keep Paddling

I like safety.  I like properly-installed carseats, seatbelts, helmets, high fences, padded floors, hedged bets, back-up plans, and pretty much anything else that mitigates risk.  Somehow, my high school friends talked me into white water rafting in spite of my personal feelings;  I remember thinking it was a necessary evil on the way to an epic week of Young Life camp, and since I couldn’t find a way around it, I said yes.

The bus ride to New River Gorge was long, and we traveled through the night.  Someone got the great idea to watch The River Wild while we dozed; after all, it fit pretty perfectly with the theme.  One by one, my friends drifted off to sleep while I stared, in horror, at the tiny screen.  Meryl Streep’s abductor forced her to raft through enormous rapids, ending with what had to be a fifty-foot water fall.  No one bothered to tell me the rapids were computer-generated.  And no one was awake to reassure me that the New River was nothing like the movie.  For all I knew, my morning would include a fifty-foot freefall in a tiny inflatable raft.  I was terrified.

The bus ride into the gorge did not help one bit.  The aging school bus bounced and squeaked as it zig-zagged down the side of the mountain.  Each turn required the driver to stop on the edge of the cliff, back up until the back of the bus touched the mountain, then pull forward to the cliff again…an eternal see-saw that eventually enabled us to navigate the turn.  At any minute, the bus was going to hurtle hundreds of feet into the gorge below, bursting into flames on the way down.  I was certain of it.

And yet, we survived, and we were unloaded into a landing area where we put on lifejackets (thank goodness) and met our guides.  There I got another shock.  Actually, I got two.  First, our guide had approximately five teeth.  Total.  And second, the raft wasn’t exactly fitted with harnesses and safety belts.  In fact, we weren’t supposed to sit on the seats at all.  Five Teeth grinned and told us to perch on the sides of the raft, with our butts hanging precariously over the water below.  And we didn’t get to hold on; instead, we were told to jam our feet under the “seats” to anchor ourselves and devote both our arms to paddling.  Right.  I knew Five Teeth had been riding this river since elementary school, but I thought he was full of you-know-what.

Nevertheless, I only had two choices: take a solitary bus ride back to the top of the gorge and risk the falling off the cliff, or get in the boat.  Thanks to peer pressure, I got in the boat.  It was pleasant for approximately fifteen minutes.  The water was smooth and relatively shallow.  The only “rapids” were really just bumps here and there.  Five Teeth told me that the rapids in The River Wild were computer generated.  It felt like a canoe trip with padding.  I could get used to this, I thought.

Then I saw the first real rapid.  Angry white water swirled and gushed on either side of a twenty foot rock.  We had to choose our side, and Five Teeth screamed for us to steer to the right.  Frankly, the right didn’t look any better than the left, but steer we did.  Our boat hit the white water and the front flew into the air; the impact threw me off balance, and I did the only sensible thing to be done: I threw my paddle into the boat, put my head between my legs, and grabbed onto the canvas ties in the bottom of the boat.  Remember doing tornado drills in elementary?  That was my exact position. 

Thwack.  Five Teeth hit me in the head with his paddle.  I looked up, and we had passed the rapid.  “What are you doing?”  he yelled.  I thought the answer was pretty obvious.  “Your team needs you to paddle, and the force of your paddling keeps you balanced and in the boat.  You can’t just quit in a rapid; you put yourself and your team in danger.  You’ll get through if you keep paddling.” 

Just keep paddling.  I tried it on the next rapid, and you know?  It worked.  In fact, I sort of enjoyed myself.  I went rafting again the next summer, and again several years later as a Young Life leader.  I’m not saying I would sign up to go tomorrow, but I developed kind of a fondness for the whole adventure, even on the trip where we paddled through an electrical storm.  When you keep paddling, it keeps you upright on top of the water, most of the time.

This has a point, I promise.  This whole home-buying/home-selling/moving three states away thing is a lot like white water rafting without the smooth, placid parts.  We haven’t found a home we like and can afford in North Carolina.  We put our house on the market today and both showings rejected it.  We can’t afford to move if we don’t sell our house for a good price, but I don’t know what it would do to James if he had to turn down this opportunity.  We had a good weekend in North Carolina, exploring and finding new favorite spots, but three days later, we are no closer to knowing what to do next.

When the promised offer turned into not an offer, I threw down my paddle.  I lost sight of our end goal: a better life for our family.  I decided we’d just stay put in Kentucky.  I’ll teach for 38 years, James will hate his job forever, but at least we won’t fall out of the boat. We’ll stay in our lovely neighborhood with our remodeled kitchen and our great backyard and we’ll be safe.  Right?  I just don’t think that’s what God has for us, if I’m honest with myself.  Paddling means keeping my eyes on Him, turning my fears and hurts over to Him every single time, and expecting that He has plans to prosper us and not to harm us, even though today felt a lot like harm. 

I do not want to go through weeks and weeks of keeping our house clean for showings.  I do not want to get my hopes up again and again.  I am bone tired, but now is not the time to throw in the paddle.  I can't do this one my own, but how can God show up for us if we climb out of the river?

How Now?

I had to wear a belt today.

Seriously, I didn’t want to, but I needed one. 

I ran 8.5 miles on Saturday.  Some people, namely my husband, might not be that impressed.  But folks, in January I couldn’t run two without stopping to walk.  And then there were some weeks where I couldn’t walk at all because the shin and leg pain was so excruciating.  Now, here we are a month out from the half-marathon, and I logged eighteen miles last week.  And I (mostly) liked it.  After months of work with no pay, I’m down thirteen pounds, hence the pants that no longer fit. 

I really wanted to be OK being heavier; I don’t think body image should rule our lives.  But I was tired and miserable and depression had settled in to stay.  I didn’t think I’d ever run again, and now here I am.

It started with a small thing: one set of weights every morning, a spinach smoothie instead of carbs, a “yes” to an invitation to go running.  It meant running through some painful moments, and showing up and trying again.  It meant making time when I wanted to sleep.  It was sacrifice.

But I also noticed that my mood is (slightly) more stable when I’m running.  And I walk with more spring in my step (when I’m not too sore).  The euphoria of seeing the numbers drop on the scale is something I didn’t expect. 

I don’t begin to think I did this on my own.  God provided me with opportunities so I could say yes.  He healed me.  He gave me accountability.  He sustained my body to do things I didn’t think it could.  He showed me the value in perseverance.

Sometimes being brave just means saying yes, showing up, and doing your best.  I’m choosing to believe that our move will follow the same path.  It is really hard right now.  We need to get our house sold, preferably before this weekend when we’ll be scouting new houses.  We need the money from the old house to get the new one.  We need to stop looking back and keep looking forward, unwavering.  James has compared this move to a long, painful breakup with our hometown.  It seems like time to rip off the band-aid.  I prayed that God will confirm that we are on the right path by providing a buyer for our home before this weekend.  But what if he doesn’t?  This morning I opened my email to a note offering me an ongoing blogging position, much like the one I have in Cincinnati.  Is that confirmation?  I have a meeting this week about an ongoing freelance job.  Is that confirmation?  I’ve found a running buddy and a homeschool resource.  Is that confirmation?  Yet none of this can happen if we don’t sell our house on Scenic View.  I suppose God know that, too, and He will make a way.  Time is ticking, and it is ticking fast.  How will He work this time?

In this season where I’m seeing fruit from many of my small (and large) yesses, I have to keep saying yes.  I have to keep doing hard things.  I have to keep cleaning the house for showings.  I have to keep engaging my husband in conversations about the new house.  (This is much harder than it seems.)  I have to keep filling out loan paperwork and trusting that the money will be there.  I have to keep following God’s promptings; the latest seemed like an invitation to mentor college-aged women.  What am I to make of that? 

I am walking a delicate balance between waiting on God and making a plan.  I’m not sure I’m walking it well, but I’m trying to remember the times He has provided…often unexpectedly…in the past.  He can do the same again.  I believe it.