Category: Contentment

Super Heroes And Scars

This last week, I had an opportunity to teach in Chase’s class. As we talked about narratives, he sat quietly, drawing his heart onto a blank sheet of paper. The story would shape into a super hero boy whose mom would not let him save the world until he cleaned his room.

“Are you saying that the world would be a safer place if you never had to clean your room again?” I asked him with a smile.

Eyebrows lifted, mischievous face in full bloom, he grinned. “Of course. It’s bad for the world when I clean.”

But then he pulled me aside and his voice was a gritty whisper of sadness as he asked me. “Do they know I have hearing loss?” This is something Chase does often. Despite it being a reality for the better part of his decade, Chase fights his hearing loss and is still tempted to treat it like a dirty secret, even when obviously wearing an aid in school. I’ve watched him feel shame about it, and frustration too. In fact, it’s one of his big three – “The H’s” – height, hair, and … hearing loss.

We remind him how brave he is. 

We remind him how hard he’s had to fight for those scars of loss and how proud we are of him.

We remind him that they are a precious part of him, but need not define all of him.

And yet, he struggles. 

Until last week.

Last week, I got to see an incredible change in Chase regarding his hearing loss. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I saw pride. 

This joy-filled confidence came about because he, as a fourth grader, got to walk into a second grade room and be physical encouragement to a new second grader who had just started wearing a hearing device and was doing a presentation on it for her class.

How brave is the precious eight year old girl who stands for such things?

And how brave is the precious ten year old boy who stands with her and says ‘You’ll be okay because I’ve done it and I’m okay too”?

After all this time, and all the affirming words and normalizing exercises, I finally saw Chase most proud when he was able to use his disadvantage to someone else’s advantage. He became most heart-full when the very scars that bother him became someone else’s encouragement.

And I hope you hear the truth underlaying this story and that you can hold it close to your own heart even today. 

Your struggles are not in vain.

Your pain is not without purpose.

Your weakness may very well be your greatest strength. 

Because, Dear Ones, when it comes to the story God has for you, the pieces that fall into place are never in error, even if we don’t see how they work together. You are in the middle of your story for a reason – “for such a time as this”. 

Moment by moment.

“God comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.”

2 Corinthians 1:4 (Message)

For privacy purposes, I will not share the school where this was taken, the hearing teacher who took it, or the two other children in the original frame, both with hearing pieces wrapping their ears or devices around their necks. But I can tell you that the joy on their faces is beautiful, and I can share Chase’s smile with you as he stood alongside them.

Of Food, Fire, And Being Fine

“What if Chase ever did something truly harmful?” 

 Sometimes the question keeps my mother heart and brain up at night. Raising a child with brain damage and low executive function (the part of his brain that reminds him if things are a good idea or not) can be exhausting, but it’s the element of danger, the knife’s edge – both a literal and metaphorical idea most of the time – that keeps my eyes open in the dark and makes my heart pound faster. 

What would I do if he ever did?

He wouldn’t, would he?

I didn’t know how soon I would be asked to put those ambiguous thoughts to the test of reality…

“FIRE…!!! FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE…!!”

It was early on a spring-cold Sunday morning and I thought I had heard all of Chase’s screams, but this one was new and horrible – the panic at a level I’ve never experienced before. I could feel his fear in my own blood. Hitting the lower level stairs at a dead run, I turned the split corner by the front door landing and looked up into my kitchen, the glow of flames currently contained in the microwave clearly reflecting off the dingy white ceiling. 

Why hadn’t we ever re-painted the ceiling? It’s so strange what random thoughts race through your mind in a moment of threat and adrenaline.

The kitchen was on fire. How long did I have before it spread and cut off the boys escape from down the hall? Did Aidan have his headphone on – could he hear Chase scream? Thank God Bob and Darcy were already gone.

My view of the unfolding glow was only a split second as Chase and both of his brothers came pounding down the stairs, free of the hallway in their pajamas and bare feet, obeying the command to take nothing but their bodies and exit the house immediately. 

Heart racing so hard I could hear the thump of it against my ear drums, I pressed those three precious digits into the screen of my phone and thumb hovering over the final push to put the call through, I stood in front of my house, the door thrown wide open and wondered if today was the day Chase finally burned the house down. Perhaps it was always only a matter of time…

Thumb paralyzed on the phone, I realized that there were no longer glowing ripples of flame reflections visible through the door. I expected to watch them climbing a wall by now, not go dark.

Did I dare look before I placed the call? To go back into a structure potentially on fire was the height of stupidity...

Did I misunderstand when Chase cried for us to run? But I had seen it happening with my own eyes…hadn’t I?

I left the boys crying in fear on the front walk and gingerly entered the house again. 

There had been a small fire. 

And it was totally gone. 

Slowly, the reality began to unfold with the story. Chase struggles to read, so many times, he simply does not read – relying instead on pure instinct and determination. So he didn’t see the small, brightly-colored print at the bottom of a fast food bag warning about the microwave and his first clue to the awful mistake was watching the bag with his leftover chicken sandwich burst into flames in front of his eyes. 

There is probably a logical, scientific explanation for why the bag stopped burning, for why the dish burned, but did not catch fire, for why the inside of the microwave smelled heavy and densely of acrid smoke, yet there was not so much as a vapor or scorched wall present when I finally got the courage to pop open the door. The walls of the machine were cool to the touch.

There is probably a logical, scientific explanation, but to me, this will always be both a miracle and a message. 

Everything could have burned, but it didn’t. While Chase made crazy decisions and took uninhibited risks, the worst was withheld and we were kept wildly, joyfully safe.

And as I stared at the cinders of the paper on my scorched dining plate, standing in the middle of the kitchen I still had, listening to my children stepping back into the house in relief and joy, it felt as if God himself whispered quiet and close: 

“See? I’m not taking it all away, but I’ll see you through it just fine.”

Moment by moment. 

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
    and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
    and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

Isaiah 43:2-3, ESV

Life Lessons From Broken Glasses

It seems like life is all about what we can see.

But what happens when we can’t see?

What happens when the paradigm blurs and we’re left to wander, not even in the dark, but in the fuzziness – life without definition?

Mother’s Day, sitting on the front porch in the sun…

He lunged before I could stop him. I should have seen it coming. It’s happened so many times before. “BUT I WANT TO…!” The argument is always a tired and tried variation of the same.

Chase pushes the boundaries… I reestablish the boundaries… Chase struggles to give an appropriate voice to his disappointment.

Then comes the lunge – and if I’m lucky and wise; I see it coming.

But on Mother’s Day, of all special days, I did not. And my glasses hit the pavement with a sickening crack, splitting clean down the center – as clean a break as our lives are messy.

His screaming stopped as the import of the action sunk in. A damage on the weekend…no back up glasses, no contacts, no nothing. Just blur. The world was suddenly reduced to a foot or two in front of my face.

Driving only as a necessity… Clean the floors of toys so mom doesn’t trip… Try not to walk into anything.

“I’m so sorry, Mommy”; he said in his remorse-filled way. The anger having drained as fast as it came. “Can’t we fix them?”

Yes, but not now. I would stay in a state of undefined navigation for four days.

At first, on the surface, the lesson seemed to come for Chase: your actions affect others. Sometimes the anger will leave more than sadness – it will leave brokenness that can’t be easily repaired. Those were the thoughts that unfolded as we stood on the front walk and stared at the broken pieces of black plastic that had been my constant companions for years.

But somehow, in the four days that followed, the lesson turned from Chase to me.

How do I live when I can’t see?

Things are so much easier when I can either close my eyes for total nothingness or open my eyes for total clarity.

I found that I did not like the in-between. The waiting. Surrounded by things I know, but could not see. Things that were not clear until they were close.

The truth of seeing life “through a mirror dimly” is frustrating. The truth of a “God, can’t you fix it?” prayer answered with “Yes, but not now” is often more than we want to bear.

Shapes rise up out of the distance and become clear just as they hit you in the face: like cancer, like the child in trouble at school, like the husband who has to work late again, like feeling alone. Clarity makes for safety while the lack of it forces me to rely on something other than sight – something outside myself.

Funny how broken pieces of plastic on Mother’s Day force me into “seeing” weakness and strength in new ways. And, if I’m honest, I wasn’t so much “seeing” as “re-learning”. Perhaps we are – at times and seasons – robbed of the sight we most rely on so as to SEE HIM.

I can be weak because HE is strong.

I can wait because HE is time itself.

I can rest because HE fights for me.

And when asked to, I can abide in blurriness because the truth is that my life is only undefined to me. To God, our lives are deeply, perfectly clear. Always and forever.

So, in the blur, the noise, the wait for faith to be sight, we wait on Him: moment by moment.

“And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend…even so, it is well with my soul.” ~ H.G. Spafford

This Is The Week

This is the week.

This is the week I’m going to write more.

This is the week I’m going to have brilliant insights.

This is the week I’m going to take better care of myself and those around me.

…the week I’m going to be more intentional about the words of Jesus.

…more intentional about parenting.

…about a child with special needs.

…about my neighbors.

…my friends.

…my spouse.

This is the week.

This is the week that nobody is going to get sick.

This is the week that all the meals will be beautifully home-cooked – even the last minute ones.

This is the week that I’m not going to raise my voice.

…that nobody is going to cry.

…that life isn’t going to seem like such a struggle.

…that the joy will outweigh the hurt.

…the pain.

…the terminal.

…the endlessness of it all.

This is the week.

This is the week I’m going to solve things.

This is the week I’m going to be ahead of the ball.

This is the week I’m going to spin all the plates.

…I’m going to make it look easy.

…find my groove.

…get it right.

This is the week.

This is the real week.

In this real week, I can’t find words that I haven’t already said.

In this real week, I don’t want to write about all the silly frustrations that hamper and shame.

In this real week, I’ve already given up on self-care before I started because there’s just too much to do.

…I already plugged a fiction book into my headphones; reaching directly over my untouched bible to push “play” on my phone.

…And then I yelled at my kids to be quiet.

…especially the kid who can’t hardly control his volume.

…while I closed the blinds to the neighborhood.

…and let resentment fester that work was keeping my husband out of the house and away from the family again.

This is the real week.

The reservoirs of joy, thankfulness, and intentional living are on empty…or beyond empty (if there is such a concept).

This week is dead on arrival and it isn’t even here yet.

Call the code. Throw in the towel. But wait…

There may still be a week.

There may still be a week because it isn’t about me anyway.

There may still be a week because my story is not really my own.

There may still be a week because any good thought I have is a God gift.

There may still be a week because I can ask for wisdom and it is promised to me.

…because I have a merciful high priest in Jesus.

…because the mercy is new every morning.

…because my life is atypical for a glory reason I don’t yet see.

…because I plan things and then Jesus directs it all.

…because while I have breath, I can still surrender.

…my family, my neighbors, my friends, my spouse.

…the pain, the terminal, the endlessness of it all.

This is the week.

This is the week formed by Perfect Love – just like the last week and the one that comes next too.

This is the week with glory purposes that have yet to unfold.

This is the week that dawns moment by moment in grace.

This is the week…

…the day.

…the moment.

…the breath.

…that the Lord has made.

Rejoice.

The story is bigger than the week.

~MbM~

When Five Days Turn Into Five Weeks

Sometimes I sit down to write and five days turn into five weeks when the sickness and weariness go long and the days are short.

Sometimes all it takes is five seconds to forget – from one breath to the next – that God has sustained this far and will continue to do so. And in those five pin pricks of time, well then, that is when the discouragement creeps and says “It isn’t enough…YOU aren’t enough.”

But here’s the truth: that voice of discouragement is both right, and terribly, awfully wrong (Praise God!). It’s true that I’m not enough, but…BUT…I don’t have to be enough. GOD IS ENOUGH and when I am at my weakest, he shows his strength to be most beautiful and right.

Boys getting ready for school and being, well, boys.

 

Celebrating Darcy’s 11th birthday.

And into these struggles fall the crazy but normal business of little kids (some of whom are suddenly not so little), my first engagement speaking at a women’s retreat (!), another writing assignment, and of course, the random child who stamped the name “Chase” on the family room window sill and refuses to confess.

Keep finding joy…

Keep breathing…

Keep remembering that He is enough…

Keep letting go of all the moments I think I have to be strong…

Preparing to speak with my amazing retreat-planner-friend, Carley

During an incredible weekend spent with some amazing Christian women at their retreat, I got to address some of these feelings and scratch the surface of what God has been teaching me in regards to living in authentic community with himself and others. Here’s just a hot second on applying what He gives us in suffering and love equally (the vertical) into our relationships and interactions with others (the horizontal):

“The concept of GRACEFULNESS is a necessary balm for the open and honest life. I’m not talking about the ability to walk without tripping, but rather, a GRACE-FILLED life – graciousness, really. Ephesians 4:29 takes us through what our speech should look like with others – nothing unwholesome, things that edify – GIVING GRACE TO THOSE WHO HEAR. Think of those around you almost like an immune compromised cancer survivor – it doesn’t take much to inflict damage and pain. Being authentic frees us in AMAZING ways, but it also makes us very, very vulnerable, and to this end, we bless and encourage each other to remain open by grace-filled treatment of one another. 1 Corinthians reminds us that love “bears all things, believes all things, and endures all things”. Think about applying this to your weekly interactions with others. Do you believe the best of others? Do you have the ability to see them or interact with them outside your pre-conceived notions? Practicing graceful living is a crucial part of Spirit-filled living and will help encourage an atmosphere of authenticity in any community because we will genuinely, dramatically be attempting to see each other the way Christ sees us: not without faults, but precious in the redemption plan all the same.”

Post retreat weekend rest with my “bald boy”

So back to your regularly scheduled programming, and somehow, even though five seconds turned into five days and then five weeks, my heart is full because God is love, he is enough, and this sustains the next breath.

I hope as you progress in this already passing-too-quick week, you are encouraged to find his strength enough to help you and that you find ways to live in authentic community with others and the ONE who loves you best.

Moment by moment.

Happy Easter – HE IS RISEN!

**If you are interested in having Ellie speak at an event, please contact her by email at ellieewoldt@gmail.com**

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