Naked

Tucker and I were watching Terminator Salvation last night... up waaaay too late for a a school night but folding clothes and hashing out the movie. I plan to marry John Conner and if any of you 1. do not know who John Conner is or 2. Want to give me grief cause he is a fictional character in a movie and does not actually exist, then you can zip it. Zip.
Anyway, Harper comes around the corner and @ the time there is a massive battle and I am folding towels so I tell her to go back to sleep. Those of you who don't know The Harpo need to realize she is a strange little bird. Her nocturnal habits confound me. First, she is a naked sleeper (which will actually be important later in the story though for now it just seems like TMI). She also will not sleep in a bed. She "nests" all around the house. On any given night you will find her with all her blankets a strange collection of precious trinkets in some random corner. The big kids long ago decided they do not like her in their beds but almost nightly she asks if she can sleep with them. Actually Avery got in big trouble the other day for bribing her out of some M&M's with a night's sleep in her bed. Never trade your bed for candy. Giant and profound lesson there but I digress.
So I can't pull myself away from John Conner or my towel folding long enough to deal with Harp's nightly ritual. I just tell her to go to sleep. Tucker and I finish the movie, and talk about waging war with Skynet and what it means to rip out or programming and defy the flesh... I love that kid. Love him and how he can dig into stuff like that with me... and I send him to bed. He comes back around the corner in about two minutes and tells me I need to come get Harpo out of his bed.. He is laughing. So I follow him around the corner and there is her arm. Flopped thru the railing and I can see that she is wearing a coat. Like, a real winter coat. He goes up the steps to the loft and I ask him what she has on, both of us laughing @ this point, and he says... nothing. She is butt naked except a scarf, her purple winter dress coat, and she is unconscious in his bed.
As I picked her up I imagined her... lost in her own mind somewhere.... deciding that pajamas needed to be traded for her coat, and that absolute warmth came not from pants but a scarf, and that the safest place to be... for now was in her brothers bed. I wish I understood the process. As I held her I just wished she could tell me. Not to change it, but because I envy it. I envy that she is not afraid to move to the floor or discard the pajamas or move to a new location when the one she is in offers no comfort. She finds it. She tracks it down. She chooses not to lay in her bed. She chooses a bare butt and a warm coat and motion... creativity, oddness. And in that, she finds comfort.
I could spend the rest of my life trying to make her get in bed and put some clothes on. Trust me I have tried and it's exhausting trying to make someone something they are not, particularly when they are three. I stopped that a while ago when I discovered that the only reason I wanted her to get in bed was because that's where I thought she should be. But what if I serve her better by letting her be where she needs to be? Now all you fruits who want to accuse me of being all lib and having no rules and letting naked coat kids run all over the house and put their fingers in light sockets or sleep in the knife drawer... give me a break. Freedom to choose rests under a blanket of love. The threads of that are understood... protection, safety, common sense, love.... but isn't there room in there just to be naked sometimes? I think sometimes God wants us to move. I think God holds us sometimes, and as long as we are under his beautiful blanket of absolutes, and he smiles as we are uniquely us... who he made us to be. The older I get the more I think that the God who I am coming to know is so out of the box that he might just be cool with a whole lot more than I give him credit for, under the previously described blanket, of course. I just think I made him so small.
Avery, Harper and I were in a big office park waiting for Tucker to finish with an appointment not long ago. It was pouring down rain and the girls wanted to watch it come down so we abandoned the waiting room for the wilds of brick and mortar corporate America. The girls decided that something was chasing us... a game ensued. A game of running down the open areas that were covered in awning. They were laughing and wide open and I was in full sprint behind them. What fascinated me was the varied looks we got. Every tiny office in this complex had a window, some open, some closed. The corners were even giant board rooms with floor to ceiling windows. As we ran I caught looks that ran the gamut from disdain and annoyance to joy and humor. I know the look that says "That crazy lady should control her offspring." I see that one alot. But the one I liked was the lady in her pumps and three piece suit who longingly looked out the window, twirling the cord to the phone receiver, engaged in some forced or mundane conversation about bottom lines or spread sheets, and as we passed she saw us as a breath of fresh air in a gray place...As if we were leaving a trail of brilliant color that would fade seconds after the passing. For just a second I locked eyes with her. Envy. She wanted to run too. I saw it in her eyes.
I can't say what God was doing as we ran, cupping our hands to fill them with rainwater and throwing the contents at each other, laughing, playing, but I think it was probably the same feeling I had as I carted Harp, naked butt and purple coat and all, back to her bed. Joy. Peace. The sweetness of watching someone you love be happy, be themselves, and be unique and comforted. I had to give myself over to the game though. I had to fight the adult in me that wanted to scream out rules. "Be careful not to slip." "Walk quiet by the offices we don't want to disturb anyone." "Don't get wet we don't have a change of clothes and the car can't get wet." "Sleep in your own bed with pajamas on." Why? Can't it get wet? What if slipping in just part of the fun and what if people could use a disturbance and what if the joy of the run is more important than the rules in my head. And where did they come from anyway? It was a beautiful moment. Not of rebellion... but reinvention...re-definition.
My rules come from the God of the Universe, who sent his son to die on a cross for my sins.. Mine. He tells me he came to give life and give it abundantly. And that he made me and I am unique, or specifically "fearfully and wonderfully made". What does abundant look like? What does unique mean? Why do we try to capture those words and put them in a jar... like fireflies? Those are reckless words. Vast and wide words. Pants-less run in the rain words. Praise God he is no where near as small as my box... or bed...or an office park covered in rain and judgement. Praise God for sending my redeemer who gave me salvation I don't have to earn, and for giving me the freedom to run. Merry Christmas to all of you and may you spend the next day thinking over the ways God is calling you out of your box. What could he do.... If you let him out of the box? Here is one of my favorite verses in the whole bible... it's huge. Vast. Put it somewhere special.
Indeed he would have brought you out of dire distress, into a broad place where there is no restraint, and what is set on your table would be full of richness. Job 36:16

Potatoes

Tucker had two millipedes that have lived in a tiny box in his room for months until their untimely death about a week ago. I will leave out the part about my kicking them out of the house because they generate fruit flies. Or maybe I won't cause I just said it, but my guilt is minimal. Anyway, he buried them, shed some tears and had a tiny memorial. Yes, they are bugs but we do all kinds of things for our children... do we not? So last night I went outside and saw this little plant. It was soooo not a weed, it didn't look... well, weed-ish, and I decided to investigate. Down there in the dirt was the stump of a potato and out of it springs this plant. A potato plant. FYI, Millipedes eat rotten food and that was their last supper... ok that's a little funny cause I'm about to get all spiritual in a non-Oprah straight up Jesus kind of way. God speaks thru nature. I'm not trying to get all weird and metaphysical it says that in the bible and I have seen it over and over again.... when I listen. All those granola earthy types have so got this figured but the rest of us just roam around with our eyes and ears closed to all the delicacies of life. We are covered up in too much complication to see the simple. So there is this plant... born out of rot, and death. I planted 30 sunflower seeds in that same spot this summer and got one to grow. But on accident this one spring up. It didn't even really have to try. In Mark Jesus tells this story about some seeds that fall on different types of ground. It talks about rocks and weeds and all the "stuff" that can choke out the new growth.. All metaphors for bigger stuff in the world. Worry, anxiety, business, stress, all the things that drive us nuts. I am praying this for someone right now very intensely so it's all over me. My world is emotional chaos right now. Intense and sharp... uncomfortable. But I love that little plant. It just sits there right outside my window reminding me that it can be simple. Uncomplex. Natural. And that from death and decomposition the right soil for deep roots and new growth is born. Makes me want to buy Tevas, throw on a Camelback, some granola in my Noth Face pack and hit the Appalachian Trail. Be "one with nature" and Just let God speak in the best way he does post Resurrection. Thru his creation. I just want to sit next to it, and thru tears, let it remind me that there is something bigger... and yet something so much simpler at work here. I can't sufficiently explain it, but I feel it. Thanks Mili and Multi... those were the "pedes" names.... I hear ya.

Gas Station

I stopped @ the gas station this morning. Just me and Avery. She was in need of chocolate... far be if from me to interfere with a girl and her need for chocolate. So,I'm holding my 3 Musketeers and Diet Coke at the counter and in walks a guy who is visably flustered and announces he is lost.

"How did I get here? I was coming from Cloumiana and I turned next to (names some random vet office) and somehow I ended up here! What did I do wrong?"

Me and the guy behind the counter look at him dumbfounded. I start to ask for more specifics about his journey... turns, street numbers... and I pause. All I can think is who cares? Who cares how you got lost. We are having a conversation about how you got lost, not how to find your way from here. It's stupid. It's pointless. Right now dude, you are lost and I can't pick apart how you got here and even if I could what purpose would that serve? What do you want to do now? Stand in a gas station while my Diet Coke gets cold and hash out your wrong turns? Or let me help you find your way from here? Guy behind the counter... We can call him Captain Obvious from this point forward.... says

Real slow and overpronounced, like he's trying to slow him down with words or talking to someone with a hearing deficiency. I find this more than a little bit funny.

"Where are you trying to go?"

At this question lost guy again launches into all the turns he took and random landmarks he passed and asks "What did I do wrong?"

Dude. You're killing me. Or maybe, I dislike this conversation because it is way deeper than a moment with a random stranger and Captian Obvious is right. How much time have I spent picking over things that cannot be undone? I can't help how you got lost. You are. Maybe there is some merit to reviewing the steps... for the sake of posterity or so that you won't repeat those wrong turns but all I cound think for lost guy is I can tell you how to go where you need to go from here, but I'm not wasting 3 Musketeers day on sorting out your lostness. I can get you un-lost in 5 minutes or you and Captian Obvious can spent the next 20 minutes pouring over pointless backtracking. I hate backtracking. So, I left. But it was one of those moments that sticks on you like the yuck that gets left after you pull off a piece of tape. It stays sticky in the spot where the tape was and all kinds of fuzz and funk still hangs there. I have spent days picking over the ways I am lost guy. I am reading John Adams by David McCoullough and I have driven my best friend crazy with random political quotes from great Americans. They were so awesome. So real. And they did big, cool things...like founding the United States of America, which worked out well for me.... but anyway last night I am reading and after a personal betrayal by a friend Adams wrote in a letter "A man who is injured loves to talk of his wounds." Im sure Adams did not have me in mind when he wrote those words but that is the beauty of great writing, it is a collection of words from another time, place and person, but you find an element of your self hidden amongst the collection of vowels and consonants. (See... amongst... the use of that word shows the effect of spending days lost in the 1800's.) But it's true. I found lost gas station guy. Modern day translation "A man who is lost loves to talk about how he got there." I'm exhausted of lost. I'm exhausted of wounds. I don't corner the market on getting lost, making mistakes, enduring pain, or even rolling around in it. But I refuse to be the person who can't find her way because she is stuck trying to figure out how she got that way. Why pick over that mess when you are holding a 3 musketeers? What problem in life cannot be solved with a 180 degree turn and chocolate with a nougaty center? I open my blog with this random reflection because it is me @ this moment. And I... like John Adams advised his son... "live life in a constant state of reflection."