New Year’s Eve usually finds me home alone while the husband and kids go to a party. I sit in comfy pajamas, soaking in the quiet of an empty house. Just me and my thoughts. I think about the year gone by and dream for the year to come. Small miracles of hope whispered by pen on lines of paper, as I make a list of things we need. I love to look back over the lists from previous years, marveling at all the check marks that are there. So many small miracles came to me during the year gone by. I sit and pray, a myriad of longings, hopes and desperation swirling like rainbows of color.

This year I found myself at home with the family. It was another night in a blur of time as the fabric of our family is stretched across the loom, new threads being woven in. Our oldest came down with a bad case of the flu right before Christmas and we all hunkered down at home.

Today he is moving all his stuff back into our house, and I feel the walls stretching and expanding outward with each load he brings from his apartment. Boxes line my dining room, ready for him to sift through and repack before catching a plane to take him across country for his final semester of college.

catching moments

So much craziness happening around me. The 5 of us on top of each other in a tiny space. Not much room for me to hear myself think. I’ve been trying to catch moments here and there. Sometimes that is all a mom can do. A moment to catch my breath at the list of miracles from last year. Moments to laugh with the kids as they remind me of escapades of the past year. A moment to get away with my man, to remember who we are together.

I feel a little out of sorts without being able to experience my full tradition, yet I am piecing it together bit by bit. Journal open beside me, I see the list of things I hoped for in 2019. A whole page full. 12 check marks to celebrate needs met. 9 blank spots, empty places still waiting for answers. Some of those spots have been blank for 5 years now.

Sometimes I get stuck on those blank spots, honing in on all that isn’t there instead of marveling in what is there. And, while the empty spaces and losses we feel are important to acknowledge, for they have much to teach us, they should not define us. I know I will always have empty spaces waiting to be filled. But I also always, even in the leanest of years, have much to marvel about.

surviving the desert

A few years ago, Austin and I had an encounter with a very wise person. Without knowing a thing about us or our story, he told us that we had been walking in a desert for a very long time. He went on to say that we were not doing it alone, because water was following us through the desert.

What if the biggest miracles are the ones right in front of us?

At the time, Austin was still mostly in the closet. The two of us were still muddling through what his bisexuality meant for him and for our marriage. I was tired, so tired. I wanted nothing more than for all the pain and struggle to just go away. What I really wanted, was to be rescued from the desert. But what I got instead was assurance that I could make it through the desert.

What if the biggest miracles are the ones right in front of us? All of us hit desert-like stretches of life and want nothing more than to find our way out. But which is the true miracle? Being rescued from the desert and returning to the life we think we should have? Or surviving the desert for year after year after year?

Surviving the desert has none of the glamour of being rescued. It is gritty and exhausting, confusing and utterly draining. It shows our humanity and changes us at our core, for better or worse. But, like any journey, it is an invitation to the beginning of something new. Waking up in the desert is the beginning of a miracle. How it ends is up to you.

Where the sun beats without mercy

She wakes, bewildered, in the unfamiliar
the terrain unlike anything she knows.
Terror replaces sleep and she stumbles
in this wild barren place
where the sun beats without mercy.
For days she sits and does nothing
but weep in abandonment
until the night moon hovers above
and she howls with a despair
that emanates from her bones.

She waits for rescue but none comes.

So she rises and walks in circles at first
round and round this place where
the sun beats without mercy.
As the unfamiliar becomes familiar
and the circles become wider
she sets her gaze on the horizon
and pulls herself towards the mountain.
Though the sand shifts daily
and it takes all she has to take the next step
she moves on while the sun beats without mercy.

She waits for rescue but none comes.

Days turn to years as she walks while
certainty and grace begin to fill the cracks
in her soles and her heart and
each day she finds just enough to sustain.
In the place where the mountain embraces the earth
she finds a spot as soft as her heart.
Tenderly scooping she moves the earth
until there is a space enough for her whole self.
She carves out a home and decorates it
with splashes of dignity and colors it with grace.

She no longer waits for rescue.

She is fully alive in this place where
the sun beats without mercy.
No longer wandering in circles
she has crafted her home and created her shade
where she rests when she is weary
drinks when she is thirsty
dances when she is restless.
She leans into the music of this place
once thought to be wild and barren.
She is surviving the desert.

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