F I V E

The boy turned five today and my heart is full.
I realized that for the past five years I've known his mood every single day, and watched him grow and change. First the physical connection of carrying him, giving birth to him and feeding him, then the gradual independence of his first steps. Thousands of times I've corrected him, read to him,laughed with him, kissed him. I know the changes will be rapid in this continual process of letting go in little ways. But for now I am so thankful that these five years have been so intertwined, and that I am able to spend my days at home loving him. I am the recipient of his unending questions, and of his generous affection. His excitement about things brings a smile everyday. I just turned around from where I am typing to see Juden creeping through the living room dressed up like a cross between a pirate and a crazy woodsman with orange sun-glasses announcing in a gruff and commanding tone, "Quiet Ella, we're going to fight the bears in the forest of Africa."
I feel so blessed to be the chest he falls on, in a worn-out heap at the end of his days, pink faced and smelling like grass and sunshine.
Happy birthday baby.

31 things

So despite feeling like it's kind of narcissistic and since I've been in the house for way too long with children under the weather and because my good friend tagged me a while back, I will write some random things about myself. If there is any topic I'm an expert on I suppose it would be me, besides I like reading them about other people so here goes.

1 I hail from NJ but I hate being cold.
2 I have a British looking nose that I use to be shy about but now I'm fine with it because I look like my dad, however I listened to my husband who told me not to pierce it several years ago when I was about to.
3 My middle name is Dorothy which I don't particularly like except that I was named for a woman who has been through more than any mother should ever have to bare and she is still faithful to God, so I am proud to have her name.
4 I love a lot of things, photography, art, singing, poetry, creative writing but don't feel particularly very good at any of them, and that's okay because I still want to do them.
5 I was always extremely shy and some people thought I was a snob which bothered me. I think my very extroverted husband has helped me come out my shell.
6 I have always been terrified of going to the doctors and I still break into a cold sweat but I no longer try to kick them when getting a needle.
7 Thai food is my favorite and hot tea or chai are my drinks of choice.
8 I believe Jesus is our only hope to cure the mess and pain that brokenness and sin leaves us in.
9 I have a few mantra's that are daily prayers of mine, "Lord help me to love what you love and hate what you hate." and I repeat these verses to myself alot, Lamentations 3:22-23 Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
10 Fall is my favorite season though I would not like the absence of any of them and I've noticed I like to wear colors that go with the season, yellow and white in summer, orange and brown during Autumn, black and white in the winter etc.
11 I'd take a mountain trail over the mall any day. I don't like to shop unless it is a thrift store or book store. I do however like pretty things and dressing up occasionally. Anthropologie, Blue Skies and shops like them do make me drool a bit, but I'm happy to look and admire.
12 I used to be really into pottery and sculpting.
13 I used to have trouble trusting guys and was much more interested in going on the mission field than dating.
14 The first time I ever sang in front of people I was so scared my sister sang with me so that I could do it.
15 I like to have a tidy living space but kids make it harder and I wish organization came more naturally; don't look in my closets or junk drawers.
16 I have a good memory and often see my life like the clips from old 8 millimeter movies, complete with soundtrack.
17 I have been blessed with an amazing tribe of woman surrounding me whom I love dearly and who help me be a better person.
18 I cry when I'm sad, I cry when I'm happy and sometimes when something is beautiful.
19 There are few things more luxurious than someone washing or brushing my hair, it melts me.
20 I have always wanted to adopt children and hope God will use me in some capacity in the realm of adoption/ child advocacy.
21 I met Josh at Covenant College my freshmen year and the first time I talked to him was sitting around a fire at a Halloween party.
22 He was my first boyfriend and the first guy I ever kissed.
23 He asked me to marry him in a train tunnel.
24 He makes me laugh everyday, made me breakfast in bed last week and last night I watched him strumming his guitar from across the room and felt like every ounce of me would burst with love for him. He makes my life better everyday. With that said, marriage is really hard work and I fail at it all the time.
25 I love road trips and daydream about going to India, Italy, Ireland, England,and Prague, to name a few. I hate confrontation, racism, cancer, and legalism.
26 Josh teases me about taking long showers but that is because when he isn't home it's a two minute affair with someone begging to get in with me or unraveling the entire roll of toilet paper before I even get the shampoo out.
27 Sometimes I have bad dreams and wake up mad or disturbed even though it didn't really happen.
28 I sometimes struggle to quiet voices that tell me I can't, I'm not lovable, I'm not good enough, I'm not of worth.
29 I am a little dramatic, an idealist, a complete romantic, and usually a very content person in the sense that God is more than enough.
30 I have slept many places including a bedroom in Dorset overlooking a meadow of sheep, the floor of a Church in Lisbon Portugal, a castle on the coast in Jamaica, a homeless mission in NY city, a VW bus near the beach in Savannah, an RV behind an adult bookstore in Denver, on a mountain top near a waterfall in Georgia.
31 I had a boy and two little girls in three years and I love being their mama.

Now it's your turn.

Since then..

I am breaking my blogging hiatus, since I realized I started to miss it like an old friend. It really is good for me to write and I see it as a way to remember the goings on of our family since I'm not good at scrap-booking. I really have no reason for my lack of posting lately other than I just haven't been at the computer much at all. Here are some things that have happened since my last post;
1 We had a somewhat steady flow of large quantities of people and children in our house from Aunts, Uncles, cousins, friends, grandparents, musicians, and occasionally my husbands spandex-clad biking crew. Not usually all at the same time, but occasionally, (and that's how we like it, not the men in spandex, the house full of people.)
2 We had a reflective, blessed, chaotic,noisy, yummy,fun, beautiful holiday season.
3 I had a minor surgery on my pinky toe of all things( and let me tell you that little guy can cause a lot of pain.)
4 I was randomly interviewed in the park by Allied Arts. While they filmed I tried to answer questions like "What is art?" while my children yanked on my coat and whined to go on the carousel.
5 I had a date night with my husband and saw Seven Pounds and I cried the whole way home.
6 I went to the Mountain Opry with some friends. It's a quirky little place up on signal Mountain. It's a bit of a cross-cultural experience where mostly old people have a ridiculously good time playing blue grass and joking in southern accents that I can barely understand. I don't listen to much blue-grass but watching them play can't help but make you smile.
7 Visited the Terminal Brew house which used to be an old hotel for the Chattanooga Choo-Choo and then a brothel and is now quite a nice three story pub.
8 Enjoyed some lovely times with women that are dear to me.
9 Answered a series of strange obsessive questions from Juden like, "When is Barack Obama coming over?", "Where is Barack Obama's house? Cause I made him this picture.", "What does Barack Obama eat for dinner?"
10 Thought and prayed and discussed homeschooling Juden for Kindergarten.
11 Tried not to let the barren trees and freezing cold seep into my bones. Recently felt like I had a little case of winter time blues. But the blue skies today are a welcome sight, now if only I wasn't such a wuss about the cold.

12 Dreamed about the beach and what to do for our tenth wedding anniversary.
13 Took some bundled up walks with the kids (yes that is a woman's fur on Josh, what can I say, he couldn't find his coat.)

14 Took Naya to the dentist after she chipped her two front teeth on the bath tub.
14 Looked forward to a brand new year and thinking through all the things I want to change and try to do better by God's grace.
15 Marveled at how my kids are sprouting too rapidly.

Merry Christmas

With festivities in full swing I just dropped in to share a few things I've been loving lately.

hints of Christmas everywhere,

This cozy room to sit in after a cold rainy day when the house is still for a few short moments after bedtime,

The adorable way she says Merry Christmas,and her insistence on this hat that is way too big for her,

His intentness when I read him The Jesus Storybook Bible even when it makes me cry,


The hands that carved this bird,

and the hands that fixed its broken wing,

and my constant little songbird.
May you be surrounded with warmth, peace and love this season. To you and yours, Merry Christmas!

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O Come...

I find myself a few short days from Christmas with a heart full of thoughts. I've said before I'm just a little crazy about Christmas. I love helping to create some of the magic and meaning of the advent season with my little brood. I think there are hints of Christmas in every room in the house; paper snowflakes in the windows and the smell of pine and baking fills the house.

I'm not sure when it happens but somewhere along the line the innocence we have as children is lost. The forever-long wait until the 25th, filled with all manner of festive wonders is traded in for being the one responsible for making it all happen. So days quickly pass with shopping, parties, baking, cleaning, visiting, and just being the mama and making sure everyone is happy. Despite the busyness, I love every minute of it. This year though, something has felt different.

This is a portion of a book called Watch for the Light which I like to remember this time of year.
"What if on Christmas Eve people came and sat in dim pews, and someone stood up and said, "Something happened when you where out at the malls, while we were baking cookies and fretting about if we got our brother-in-law the right gift: Christ was born. God is here"? We wouldn't need the glorious choruses and the harp and the bell choir and the organ. We wouldn't need the tree strung with lights. We wouldn't need to deny that painful dissonance between the promise and hope of Christmas and a world wracked with sin and evil. All of that would seem gaudy and shallow in comparison to the sanctity of that still sanctuary. And we, hushed and awed by something greater and wiser and kinder than we, would kneel of one accord in the stillness. A peace would settle over the planet like a velvet coverlet drawn over a sleeping child. The world would recollect itself and discover itself held in the womb of The Mother of God. We would be filled with the fullness of God, even as we filled the emptiness of the savior's heart with ours."
---Loretta Ross-Gotta
I heard a sermon last week that captured so much of how I have felt this season. This season of advent really is about rejoicing in our manger-born King who became like us so He could rescue us and about our longing for Him to come again. My pastor read this story from a recent issue of the New York Times about a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe that killed the youngest five children of one family a few weeks back. This month, in this season of celebration, my heart has at times been heavy. We have had some grey days as of late. Some so grey when I woke I wondered if it was still night because the darkness dragged into the day, and I sipped my tea watching the cloud-shrouded dripping mountain instead of the pink glow of morning sun lighting it up. I don't suppose I'd stopped long enough to sort through how I'd been feeling. On one such grey day last week I found myself on a lonely stretch of highway peering through water streaming down the windshield and down my cheeks. There was a weight on my shoulders of loved ones hurting, broken relationships, the struggle of our flesh. I thought of those precious children whose little bodies' fought for life and quickly lost under deplorable health conditions. For the woman whose husband abandoned her this year, the man diagnosed with cancer, the family that lost their house and is broke. What does this baby born so long ago mean for them? And I wept for those children who suffered and for the ones they left behind, wept for thousands of others who are suffering all over the world. I was not despairing but longing, expectant for the day His sword will yield the final death blow to suffering and sin.
Certainly there is no easy tidy bit of rhetoric to dissolve these gut-wrenching issues. But with that said, I cling to the hope that is Christmas. That the King and creator of all that wrapped himself in human flesh was so pained by the sadness and suffering of the people he loved, that he made a plan to rescue us. It didn't end in a manger or on a cross, our Prince of Peace will obliterate and destroy the sting of death and disease. This is what I know, so I wait... and whisper through tears, O come, O come Emmanuel.

Today I held my friends brand new baby girl. Her name is Selah Grace. Selah was taken from the Psalms and is believed to mean to pause and reflect, what a lovely reminder. It is in the light of such darkness that I was awed by the beauty of her tiny face, the wrinkled skin on her hands, her smell. The contrast of such suffering and such blessing. The strength in Josh's arms around me, the sweet spirits of my children, these blessings that I am overwhelmed to be the recipient of. As Christmas draws near my soul rejoices in the love that our God has lavished on us and in the promise of hope and healing.

happy december

I kind of can't believe that we are in December already. But it seemed fitting that today where I stood in my kitchen sipping my first morning tea, watching the sun light up the mountain, that the first snow of the season was gracing the tippy top of Lookout. Here in the south we don't see too much snow so I knew we just couldn't resist. I bundled up the kids until they could barely walk and up we went to see what we could see. We left behind the soggy grey valley and finally reached the fresh beauty of new fallen snow. I watched in delight as my furry little creatures touched and tasted exploring like they had just stepped out of the wardrobe into Narnia... a good way to start December I think.

bright spots

Some things that have made me smile lately:
watching Josh and Juden at their easels side by side, painting away a sunny afternoon,

my kids endless fascination with Fall and finding the remnants of their treasure baskets everywhere, Ella's teapot filled with acorns, leaves in the couch and stuck in the windows,

watching the fire leaves fade to warm browns as Autumn starts to breath its last and the stark branches spread like veins through the twilight sky,

chasing daylight but finding more time to curl up and read in front of the fire,

cozy Wednesday breakfasts at Niedlov's watching the city wake up through foggy windows,
my niece, "sweet Sophia" as Juden calls her



finding this lovely scarf in my mailbox, made by a thoughtful friend,

I love the bright spots.

The Painting

So, it's not looking hopeful, at this point, that we will have the cd completed by Christmas. It is a time consuming project but one that I have so enjoyed. We've spent many nights in the attic studio. Sometimes I call it the nest because it is so high all you can see from the windows are the tree tops; a good place to create away from everyday distractions. We've spent many hours thinking through ideas and weaving together sounds and pieces of melodies and watching songs take shape like a mosaic with tiny specks of bright colors that finally form an image. Some nights we sip cheap wine and inspiration flows more quickly than we can bottle it, the music comes easily and the hours are swept away in the pleasant outflow of ideas. Other nights it is technical and tedious and hard to focus, but mostly incredibly fulfilling especially to be able to do this with Josh.
I thought I'd share a song from the cd which is almost done. It still needs an intro and some strings but it is mostly done. It is called The Painting. It is dear to me mostly because it ends with words my dad spoke to me almost every night before I went to sleep. You can listen to it by clicking here.

today...

Autumn is my favorite season but it also seems that my mind goes involuntarily back to the last days I spent with my dad while he was dying. Our last conversations, the last thing I fed him, the last songs I sang for him,the last time I heard him laugh, his sadness, his worship and the rapid disintegration of his dignity. I don't really want to go back to those end days so I try to not let myself.


There is so much I love about the Fall only intensified by my desire to share it with my children. So we spend our days outside, on walks, collecting treasure, throwing rocks in the water, we try to take our work and play outside to soak up every last drop of the fleeting daylight. There has been healing and these Autumn days have been quite magical really. Do you ever pass a place where the golden light is so surreal you just want to lie there all day?



Today however I knew it would be hard not to remember that four years ago today I held his hand and watched him die. I wanted to be outside with my family on this pristine day, much like that day four years ago. So we drove a little ways to a mountain to hike and escape for awhile. As we drove I watched the trees, their colors as thick as oil paint and the notes of this song penetrating my soul.Definitely worth taking a minute to listen. Suddenly the way the leaves spun and swirled across the road from the truck in front of us like sunlit sparks from a fire seemed to be in unison with the lilting melody and the memories of him. I was overwhelmed with how purely glorious the sights and sounds of aliveness are. I let the quiet tears fall into the reflection in the window and let myself go back there for a few moments.

The other day I was walking with the kids at the Nature Center and Juden was asking all sorts of questions like why we were always outside lately and what happens in the Fall. I told him that Autumn would go by quickly and that once it gets cold the leaves turn colors and they die and the trees are all bare. He looked very sad and said, "mommy, I don't want the leaves to die and turn back into soil." So I tried to explain the natural process of life and death in nature and that the leaves die and replenish the earth to make room for new life in the Spring. But they get to turn all the colors of flames and shine their brightest before they die, the best I could do in four year old terms. I looked around at the sun shining through deep yellows and red and thought of how my dad seemed renewed and like the truest version of himself right before his journey ended.
I have a little matchbox which reads,"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I've got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible..." G.B. Shaw
My dad made his life shine brightly in a million ways and I like to think I am continuing some small aspect of the burning.


Grief can take on so many faces. There is the grief which causes momentary sighs of melancholy and there is the grief that torments your dreams at night and wakes you sweating and gasping for air, grief that makes you wonder when you will have a tearless day. I have experienced both, and once you have stood alongside a grave where your loved one lies, you are never really the same. But four years later I can testify to God's power of healing. There is a void that can not be filled at holidays and in family pictures and in all of our hearts but I can see now, God's tender mercies and I trust in His perfect plan.