A Tribute to the Bravery in Dying

His respiratory machine and her repeated stories are the background music you hear at my work when you are put on hold.

In the biopsychosocial field of medical care, I spend hours upon hours with people who need assistance. I have done things only mothers would do and I have done things no mother should have to do.

Hygiene. Cleaning. Diagnosis. Toilet Duty. Heart and respiratory monitoring. Exercises. Story-telling. Lifting. Stages. Assisting. Moving. Medications. Changing. Praying. Watching. Listening.

I have listened to memories of strangers that consist of mumbled words with three-to-five minute pauses. In the midst of disease, watched these soldiers struggle to tell their story through memory loss. Fighting the deterioration of the sinews in their brain so one more person might hear about their causes on this earth.

In a few cases, I get to be that person.

It has been an honor. To watch people in need forced to allow me to help them. My job is to offer dignity when there is no dignity to be found. I fight to bring hope when no one else is hoping. Inviting comfort when there is only the accompaniment of pain.

And then after months, maybe a even a year of exhaling life comes the bravery of
death.

Oh death, you silent threat. As if aging were not enough to test a man. You come to demand our humility. I have watched you yet again creep into test tubes and through organs to stare down augustness and demand to be noticed.

It is a confrontation of the soul that few are allowed to witness. It is here that bravery is more present than I have ever seen.

His breath is slowing. The morphine has kicked in again.

Death is near.

Glory, even closer.

Tripping to the rhythm of you

I am watching a 2 year old dancing in only his diaper in the waiting room at the hospital. We are both here to get an immunization, but I am the only one of the two of us, who knows.
I wish I could dance while waiting for my shot.

I love being here. Seattle. I love the city and my friends. I love feeling like I am starting something of my own, and it is good.

I only miss the South on holidays when I know my family and friends are gathered together and I am missing their laughter and the growing moments of their lives.

Other than those moments, I love this new family I have, this husband I now do life with and our tripping over each other in attempt to stand up in Marriage, even for just a few moments at a time.

We make small, gigantic steps and we stop and smile at each other, with the tears still drying on our cheeks. We smile not because we are ahead of few and way behind others, but now there is a “we” and we are.

And a few months into it, it feels like we might learn the dance after all.

Marriage and Jesus have been dancing near us, Andrew and I are just watching, wondering if we will ever be able to look like that when we dance, to move with such grace and rhythm. To laugh and twirl, in the midst of stepping on the others toes.

Marriage turns to us and says, “Just let loose, be free.”

Andrew and I look at each other, wondering if we have ever felt that free on our own, better yet with each other.

Jesus reaches down to help us up and says, “The secret is, Marriage dances with freedom because she knows I will never drop her.”

“I will never drop you.”

Haiti

She is like a foreigner to me. Lying there in the stillness of the morning.

Silence.

Although what I fear, I crave. I want to be silent. To sit here on my 1970’s burnt orange couch and click away on my keyboard, spelling out words that mean less than I would like them to mean.

Haiti.

I feel you.

Torn down by your faulty infrastructures. Maimed by your concrete wreckage. Smothered and murdered by the earth’s trembling.

Haiti.

I am sorry.

How can I know you if I am not with you? And how can I think of you while I am here - it makes me crazy.

To know your breath is being stolen and I cannot find the culprit.

God?
Nature?
Evil?

You, Haiti, have been crying for so long now, maybe the shaking of your country was you yourself finally telling the world they cannot ignore your tragedies any longer.

Maybe you had enough of no one helping your hopelessness, maybe God heard your cry and He demanded the world to finally help His children.

Probably this had nothing to do with nature or some have said punishment, maybe some starving Haitian child cried out and God said; this is enough. You will be heard. You will be helped. I thought by now someone would have come to save you, but no. This time I will demand them to hear your cries.

And the earth quaked with their pleas.

Maybe this time we will listen.

And possibly we might be more aware and convicted to those in need so that God doesn’t have to demand us to extend our wealthy hands.

With me.

I fell asleep last night with a smile on my lips.
I am so happy inside, happy like I laugh when no one is watching and sometimes I dance a little while I am smiling…and I even yell out sporadically in my car with pure glee.

He loves me.
Andrew loves me.
He picked me to be his wife.

I carry his invitation around in my pocket like a little secret. A promise wrapped in white gold around my finger.

He asked me.

To grow old with him and turn all wrinkly together.
To hike waterfalls, cook dinner, buy a house, jump out planes, race go-carts and sleep in hammocks in the afternoon…he wants to do all the little things and the gigantic things…with me.

And that makes me happy.

Dreamers who Overcome

I am excited to write this entry, sit back because you are in for a long one. It’s a bit of a story, an update, it is a little window into my everyday for the last couple of days, the last few weeks, the past months….9 months to be exact. That is when she called to tell me they were pregnant. I was getting on a plane to Africa for the summer so I was safe to tell. We had been praying for over two years for them to get pregnant….she wasn’t even sure if she would carry the baby through but she wanted me to know.

A lot can happen in 9 months, for me in the matter of these 9 months many things in my life changed – new dreams appeared, I graduated through stages, life and death occurred, my heart soared and fractured – but throughout all of this, a baby was growing inside of her….life was growing.

In a turn of events, my location moved from the East Coast to a house that when the blinds are open I can see the silhouette of my cousin’s belly as she walks through her own house across the street. These days have been priceless.

Many a morning I have sat with her and a cup of tea, as she cried over the baby’s stalling. I stare at her swollen belly as she swears to me it will never come….I think to myself, well where else is it going to go, it has to come.

It is similar in my life, in all of our lives, God’s promises, they seem to be swollen in my own belly as I scream at God and tell Him they will never come.

Labor began at home, with family all gathered and my cousin never looked more regal as we took turns holding her through contractions. Hours passed as I watched her coach her body to breathe through each pain. It mirrors to me our struggle, we are each birthing a story, and the only way it can be born is through pain.

Acelyn Nicole was born after 72 hours of labor.

Acelyn means Dreamer. Nicole means Overcomer.

I held her in my arms as she slept last night, thinking about the weight of her name. In each of our stories, through the pain of birthing greatness, we need more dreamers who overcome.

seeing him again

The first miracle might have been the snow we drove through…I mean snow in Texas!? I was delighted yet my delight paled in the thought of seeing him. I was so nervous. After three outfits, the only certainty was my favorite red coat that I wrapped tightly around my frame. Would he like it on me? Would he still think I was beautiful? Had he found another to love him better? It’s the feeling you have deep in your stomach when you know that you are about to see an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend after a couple of years. The insecurities run rampant in your mind. The difference here is that I still talk to him all the time, but the last three years have mostly been in anger and pain, little love. I was so nervous.

I walked into the dimly lit auditorium; I lost my breath….so scared to see Him. I remember the night so well, leaving him, with his kiss still on my lips. My mind spun…What if He doesn’t even come to see me? What if He is with someone else, a better lover? My fears were lost in a moment, before I could see His face, I was in His arms. His embrace brought tears and He held me, and never let go. There were no words, no songs, we just stayed there. I in His arms. Tears ran down both of our faces. He held me, the one who had hurt Him so much, who wounded His heart, who has been so cruel, yet His love fell on me like tears, not of pain, but of longing. Why hadn’t He found someone else after all this time? Why had He waited for my broken, lacking love? I had chosen other lovers. This whole time, He was still hoping for me.

There are no arms like those of a true lover.

The worship surrounded us and as I raised my eyes to Him, His longing found my shame. He kissed my forehead, there was no reason for shame. This was perfect love. When the tears ended, I saw His name on the screen. I don’t know how, but as I stayed in His arms, I knew He was holding each broken soul: holding the defeated man, the cutter, the motherless wife, the starving woman, the unfaithful lover….He held them, just like me. See He had been waiting, waiting for each of us to let Him love us.

The only words I was able to sing that night…..“hope which was lost now stands renewed…”

trying to downsize

Hey guys...i am trying to not have to post blogs all over the place, so I am going to stop posting on here (unless I go overseas again) and have my myspace blogs updated - please go to

http://www.myspace.com/liquidlifeline

If you want to read my blogs!! -christy

"hot yoga"

Bikram Yoga otherwise known as “hot yoga” has made it into my life this week. We rush in because our overcoats are leaking in 25 degrees air through our spandex. The warm air is a mild welcome to the instructor behind the counter who greets us in a towel! I suppress my laughter as I tell him this is my new favorite place to workout. We are calmly rushed into a room set slightly above 108F and “hot yoga” begins. Between balancing, stretching, and opening my chest “like a blossoming flower” – the detox is welcoming but what has stayed with me was two lines the instructor gave us repeatedly:

“Keep your eyes open, be right here, be all here. If you have can learn to be with yourself, you can handle anything.”

So I stared up at the water-damaged ceilings, and I was with myself. I thought about all the things I lack in and all the things I don’t, I thought about how I can’t stretch even close to as good as the girl in front of me.

“Be okay with where you are….remember, even if you move a millimeter, you have grown.”

This is good for me to hear. I am learning to be much nicer to myself as I grow. Allowing me to be not as good as someone else and still loveable. So I take a long, hot breath in and I think to myself, you have grown a millimeter and I am proud of you.

I smile to myself and then look over to see a very large, hairy man who is smiling with his eyes closed. Maybe we both think that a millimeter is just enough for today.

gingerbread shoe

The secret to our gingerbread dough was told to me this weekend, I have waited a long, long time to find out – well five batches later, I not only knew the secret ingredient (orange juice & cloves) but I had the recipe memorized!

It was a wild day in the hill country of Fredericksburg…Uncle Steve was at it again with his attempts to roast chestnuts on an open fire. We began the voting on Friday night, thus Old Woman in the Shoe was chosen and our engineers began early Saturday morning with chicken wire, measurements and sketching – our only other surprise was Aunt Jinx who surprised the entire family and showed because she can’t seem to miss out if there is a party going on!

The all-weekend event ended Sunday afternoon when the last gingerbread kid was secured climbing the shoelaces of the boot – we were done (check out the pictures and tune in for how we will destroy it Christmas day (and it if will actually make it 8 hrs. to Louisiana!)

Hope your holidays are just as fun!
Merry Christmas!

running through the creek

The cold hit our excited faces, like two kids who could be no younger.
We ran.
Often times the physical reflects the emotional, as our bodies longed to go so much faster than our hearts would allow.

We exchanged few words as we ran, we were both lost in our wonder of God and our heart’s love.
I could see the creek’s invitation up ahead, shall we go?
At his hesitation I ask…
Shall we make such small excuses for an invitation to adventure?

Kyle and I took to the woods and I could see it was going to be harder for me to jump or climb the rocks than I had thought. In my best English warrior princess voice I say…

I fear I can only see one way.

Kyle’s response stays with me even now, weeks later…
Well, that is your first problem, because there is always another way.

It seems this way in life, that we are captivated by only seeing one way, sure that God couldn’t possibly have found another way? We get caught staring at this one path: this is how my career must look, this is what love from my spouse looks like, and these are the ways my kids should choose.

When I stop to find a little trust and peace, I can see there are other ways. When I breathe in deep, there are ways I can trust my God sees that I can’t even recognize.

Kyle stood there looking at the different jumps and the rocks and the mud – deep in his leadership he muttered….The true struggle is finding which is the best way.

I have a deep respect for a man’s calling to lead. Having been single for some time now, I must say as a woman the stress and frustration of leading myself is a daunting task, I long for the comfort of my husband’s covering. Yet the Lord has sweetly whispered and sometimes yelled of His provision and covering, and for moments I have rested in it. I love the verse, and I rest between His shoulders. We can rest there, men and women alike can rest in His ultimate provision. As we externally wrestle to find the best way, He is chuckling above as He lays out the path right under our feet. It is truly a gift to build a relationship along the way of trusting the Father’s faithfulness.

There was much mud and water that followed Kyle and I’s adventure through the creek all the way home. We arrived cold and dirty but with smiles that stayed the rest of the day.

This has to be a picture of His invitation to life, a calling that has little directions, many guesses, lots of mud, and many rivers to cross. Yet we made it home, and realized His concern was not so much the path we took. He was just glad we made it home.

sounds of home

This is the helmet conch, dad explained.

To a 5 yr. old, a glassy coated shell from the ocean is treasure beyond belief. I would carry it next to my ear, listening to the sound of the ocean. I asked my dad how it kept the sound inside. He told me that when a conch is taken from the water, it dies, and it will forever holds the sound of the sea…the sound of its home.

I think this is much like each of us, our hearts carry the sound of where we belong. It may be why we believe in destiny or fate, why
I love the idea of carrying who you are deep inside of you.

For years after my dad left, I would often take the shell and lay listening to its sound. Wishing the ocean would wrap me up, wishing my father would wrap me up.

Today, Thanksgiving day, I am missing the sound of the ocean and the sound of my father. There are no oceans and no shells anywhere around.

I went up stairs to be away from the busyness and in the closet I found a box with my name, Christmas presents from last year (can you believe my life is so busy I fail to open presents, it is true) but my mom had said she had bought some things for my house one day, and since I am no where near having a house, I left them wrapped.

Is God so purposeful that today I would opened the first present a year later, and my tears brim….I was looking at a carved wooden angel with long brown hair, and she was holding a beautiful conch shell up to her ear.

Who are You, God?

burning the vows

He was holding the scissors up to one of his dreads, questioning if he really wanted to cut them.
Do they free me or keep me in bondage?
The peace came, and he cut it.

He continued cutting them off, one by one and burned them. He said they smelled sweet like incense.

This is a tradition of the Nazarite - to grow their hair out when they make a vow to God. When they have fulfilled the vow, they cut their hair to signify its completion and then burn it.

As he watched them burn, he said he felt freedom come.

Not the Savior

I am listening to her words on the phone….
she is asking me if she is beautiful,
she is asking him if she is beautiful,
she is asking the world is she is beautiful.
I am asking the same question.
Each woman is asking the question.

If dad doesn’t answer it, if I don’t know how to answer it, if mom answered but I couldn’t hear her, then who will tell us we are beautiful? Because society tells me to be a slut and the world asks me to be a whore…and if my breast aren’t large enough, doctors tell me they can fix it. Fix it? Like it is some deformity or disease.

How will femininity be taught if there are few women who can remember the definition? What will I tell my reflection everyday? What will I tell my daughters one day?

I ask God about it often – see, I really want to be beautiful. I want to capture men’s approval, I want to collect the world’s affirmation so that I can feel beautiful. I want my husband to think I am beautiful enough to be faithful or my father to think I am beautiful enough to love. Why does that seems so impossible?

And He answers…you weren’t made to be the Savior.

We weren’t made to save them….a woman’s beauty is not a man’s savior. A woman’s beauty is supposed to ultimately point a man to God eternal glory, the truest beauty. Thus a man’s strength was not made to be a woman’s savior, it was to draw her into God’s perfect strength.

The battle is harder now, because men and women who have little sense of their beauty and their strength are trying to save each other. Women build their beauty upon the desire to complete and answer a man’s hunger, yet she will always fall short. She will always fail to satisfy his lust and he will fail to satisfy her expectation.

5 a.m.

It’s dark outside and the Texas air is a bit colder than my previous Central American mornings. Seriously, who likes waking up when it is still dark, I mumble to Kinsey as we brush our teeth. I got in late last night for Thanksgiving holiday, and to my normal expectation of family ritual, we are all up early going to workout at the wellness center together.

Five of us pile into the car as I laugh out loud at Uncle Steve’s brilliant white headband that lies in a straight line across his forehead. I think to myself that if I had this entourage with me, I might get up every morning to workout. Now stretching is a great preface, but as the song My Hips Don’t Lie begins our circuit routine – I can’t help but laugh as I watch my beloved family workout in their perfect form. Aunt Nicole’s arms are flailing vigorously as she lunges up to complete her set of sit-ups, Kinsey and Alan will not be left in the dust with their elevated heart rate apparent in each jumping jack and jump rope. Uncle Steve’s headband is methodically peeping at me in the mirror with every push-up. And little old me, well, I laugh as I attempt to balance on this exercise ball, certain no one has ever mastered looking attractive bouncing up and down on a circular rubber object.

It doesn’t end there, our $10 was not well spent until we walked out of the building only to run up a hill – now the hill country of Texas is a small feat to one who lives in the mountains, but to this flat land Louisiana/Florida girl it was quite the push. (don’t worry, I was the first one back!)

My only complaint to the morning was the dissonance of the ever-still darkness we drove home in. Somehow I am not conditioned to understand how people get up and finish such a task before the sun is awake. Yet I look forward to my holiday here, because with my family, it is always an adventure.

Burning of the Pines

We were driving through the Pine Reserves in the Maya mountains – this Reserve was once filled with acres of beautiful strong pine trees. In the midst of rainforest mountains, a wild piece of land grew with thousands of pines. Their strong backs in rows across the land.

The trees were plagued with black beetles and the entire reserve was almost lost. The only way to save it was to set fire to the trees. The fire, which stripped them of all of their glory, was actually their savior. The forest burned with brilliance only leaving small remnants of what resembles a tree. It no longer draws tourist in, the ash is all they see. But if you look close you would find deep under the burned bark, sap remains. Life is still beating deep in the roots.

The irony is chilling as I am looking for myself in this forest. Trying to find if I am still standing, if he is still standing? The disease was too deep, it had spread too far – we couldn’t catch it, all would have been lost. He dropped the match and walked away.

I wonder if God saw the light from up there? I wonder if He notices when we are burned up, if He too stops and stares? Seems our God is too wild for me. Only He would allow beauty and disaster to share the same scene. The fires take everything. Little is left.

I stare at the trees covered in ash, stare at my future and back at my past. Which one more beautiful, who is to say? Is it brilliance of glory that I am burned up by His mercy…and I am left to discover that their is beauty in what someone else said is an ugly, burned pine tree.

In a few years I will return to this forest - I will dance in its radiance, in the re-growth and the glory.

Fighting crime and hanging hammocks

Boating to the mainland wasn't half as fun as packing into our 15 passenger rental van. After picking up a friend at the airport, we headed into the rainforest...passing everything from Taiwanese communities and the Haitesville jail, to finding ourselves a Mennonite! I must move on quickly through my story as the hitch-hiker though one of our favorite stories is one of many.

On our way to the Mountain Equestrian lodge, the Mennonite attempted to recruit us to his church - promising 20 men for every woman. We kindly thanked him for his offer as we let him out at his horse shoeing job...on to our weekend in the mountains! We spent our days cantoring horses through the rainforest (learning every plant antidote), hiking through waterfalls and pools, and our evening playing Scrabble and Texas hold'em by kerosene lamp...definitely the life!

We soon headed to Guatemala to climb the ruins and run from the "conejo (rabbit) hunters" better known as banditos! The land was beautiful...an untouched country with landscapes where huge lakes kissed mountainsides. The magnificence of a sunset over an untouched mountain surrounded by the sea took my breath away.

Since this adventure to the mainland, we have settled back into the normal. We spent our days at a fly fishing resort: kayaking to the reef, healing our mosquito bites in the ocean and still finding the occassional tick. My favorite is swimming into the middle of the ocean and letting the water carry me, the ocean seems to be the only place big enough to handle my heart. We are going to relax a few days....dad and I set up hammocks this morning and then ran to the bridge to report an attempted burglar who wears a gray hat and blue backpack...the elderly tariff collector at the bridge assured us he would keep a look out! i laugh at the simplicity of this place.

I miss my friends tons but who would fight crime here on the island if I weren't here. I am looking for a replacement so I can come home soon!

all my love.

Belizean Citizenship

So we've been here a week and dad tells me I should consider dual citizenship, I laugh as I think about my trip on the motorcycle last night that left me stranded asking the grocery guy to help me start it...i am not so clever when it comes to Belizean transportation: golf carts, boats, and motorcycles! It has been good to be here - the sea has welcomed me with her silence that heals my heart a little more. God seems to be giving me kisses through sea turtles as I have chased two in the last two snorkeling trips (and they are pretty rare!)

Autumn and I have been spending 5-6 hours a day on the book, and I must say I have never felt more vulnerable than to actually live out this dream to write and publish. I don't want to admit how much I love to write, that if people really would read it, I might write for the rest of my life!

If this wasn't exciting enough, I broke through another fear tonight as I sang karaoke with Bonnie and Autumn - picture a Latino bar with the smallest dance floor and a french woman who dances with such fierce abandonment I find myself next to her smiling and dancing the same! I have never seen so many latino men sing slow spanish love songs with more passion than I have ever seen in the movies!

If all these things were not enough yet I will try to win you over with this, dad thinks we need to practice if the world were to end...so we leave tomorrow for a weekend camping trip on the island! We are taking 10 of us and we are fishing and living on the land....dad says that reality t.v. is not his thing, and he wants to play Survivor in real life, so off to the island!

There is my update....heels and a machete will always be my preference!

disorderly beautiful

“God hasn't invited us into a disorderly, unkempt life but into something holy and beautiful—as beautiful on the inside as the outside. If you disregard this advice, you're not offending your neighbors; you're rejecting God, who is making you a gift of his Holy Spirit.” -1 Thessalonians, The Message


I am baffled by this verse, for what is inside of me is definitely a ‘disorderly, unkempt life’ – I mean, I only show you so little of loneliness, so little of my face – so what does it mean if God has only invited me into something holy and beautiful? It means that either I am in sin or I am redefining beauty. Is it beautiful to cry and curse till there are no longer words but silence the only thing that holds your heart, because pain can not be heard? Then that is what I will call beauty, in its elegance and grace, because all I have of holiness is by invitation He’s laced.

We read these verses blindly or we watch t.v.
and beauty and holy are no longer me.
They are chipped out and painted on canvas across my drive home,
of women and men yet I know their alone.
See the hurting and suffering our hearts try to lock
up, are bursting of pain - if only someone would knock.
Yet I falter to know if that is beautiful at all
when she’s left there naked and there is no you?
Stories upon stories I hear everyday and if hurting and pain are not holy, what do I say,
to all those who linger without limbs from the fight…. I pray that God redefines beauty alike.

A tribute to friendship

What can I say about people who stand beside you in your struggle: hope for you, cry with you, laugh with you, pray for you, and commit to seeing you reach all that is within you. I want to love the way these women have loved me - i want to love all people with such freedom. There have been women in my life who have stood next to me (in this picture and don't forget Bonnie, Toni, Angie and Beth!) If life would bless us with only one gift, it should be love - at the end of it all we will be asked if we loved well. I want to love well....for all is lost if there is not love. It is worth more than anything I have, thus everything I will give to learn what it means to love. May we all experience it.

Mom's rocking chair

I tiptoe to the glass room with the phone in my hands
and crawl into the rocker set near the window.
Its dark and I listen to words from a distance
and wonder if relationship is worth such precision.
I trace the wood on the arms of my momma’s old rocker
the scratches left by my fingernails long ago.
As I sway in the rocker it takes me back to her songs
that she’d sing; back to the rhythm of the methodical creak.
Now a woman I sit but as a baby I lay in this rocker that held me,
that lessened my pain. Same fabric holds tears that it held long ago
and if mommas where wooden then here is where I’d go.
If I found her I’d ask her to sing to me please
because life and its brokenness has not offered her ease.