…are bloggers.

Yes, it’s true.  And for me over the past two years, so much of my community has been found here on the Internet.  It’s hard to explain to people who’ve never fallen in friendship love with someone online.  Why I would spend hundreds of dollars in plane fare to visit her or her; why I would let her stay in my house for 3 weeks while we were out of the country, or why I would share my deepest secrets with her or her?

They are some of my best friends in the world and they are spread out all over the globe.

So while I’m hiding out with my husband (in some undisclosed location – wink) for the next 36 hours, here are some of my favorite Internet loves and friends.  I hope you find a new friend today, too.

Start here: if you’ve never read my story.  Start with that.

Cindy Beall (the goddess of Oklahoma) has an amazing testimony of God’s faithfulness and grace in the face of her own husband’s infidelity.  She’s beautiful and (did I already say amazing?) amazing and I can’t wait to hug her very very very soon.

Mandy Thomson (coolest girl drummer in Boston) is a Georgia transplant who is about ready to move home.  Mandy will make you laugh and then let you listen to her latest song right there on her blog.  Last fall Chad and I visited her and Drew for the longest double date of any of our lives.  I’ve never laughed so hard or had so much fun in a graveyard, ever.

Annie (well, we’re just going to call her Annie Blogs) is the funniest person I’ve met (not including my own husband).  I call her first for everything writing-related and can just say, “hi” and pick up from where we left off the last time.  She loves my kids and she graciously tolerated my cat for 3 weeks last spring when she stayed in our house while we were gone.  She’s the kind of writer I want to be like when I grow up (and maybe I can live in Nashville too, like her).

Along with Annie and myself, Melodee and Linda make up the Hermonistas. We met two years ago at Mount Hermon Writers Conference and have been the best of writing friends ever since. They’ve torn apart my writing (in good ways) and have been both excited and disappointed for me at appropriate times.  Mel lives in Seattle and Linda lives about 5 miles from my but I’ve never been more thankful for a group of women. (By the way, anyone out there going to Mount Hermon this year?)

Lisa Leonard (Internet jewelry maven) has been my best real life friend since college.  She taught me how to blow dry curly hair (even though mine is straight), to drink hot tea without letting the loose leaves free in the cup, and how to be a good friend.  Lisa has an amazing jewelry business and blog. If you’ve never seen her work, go visit now and buy something!

Alece (aka Grit and Glory) is someone that I admire maybe more than anyone right now. She’s been sharing her story the past several days. She’s home in the States for awhile before she returns to her ministry in South Africa sometime in the future.  You will love her as much as I do, I know it.

Denise and Kristen (from California and Idaho respectively) are two of my favorite girls.  Both homeschooling moms (a reason alone for earning the title of HERO in my book) the three of us spent a (short) few days together in May.  I love them. Simply that. If I could live next door to anyone in the world, it would be them.

Elizabeth Esther is worthy of all honor because she has FIVE amazing kids and seems to keep it all together too.  And…she’s writing a book.  She lives close by so I call her on a whim to meet me at the park or she calls me on a whim to meet her at Starbucks. It works out less than we’d like, but when it does, it’s all laughter and misadventure.  (Well, not really the misadventure. It just sounded good).

There are so many more.  Visit my blogroll to see some of the girls (and guys) I read when I get a chance to read blogs.

Let me know if you’ve found a new “friend” today!

I’m going to be honest but I’m not going to wallow.

I’ve had two separate (but familiar because they are so similar) disappointments recently.

Two distinct opportunities that I thought God had placed in my lap. Two ways in which (somehow) I’d been in good favor.  Two amazing things in which I would have been able to speak to the hurt in others, proclaim the beauty He’s made from ashes, and see people healed. Two platforms to share our (mine and God’s) story in a more public venue.  Two opportunities through which I would have been able to point glory to God.

But both things fizzled.

Follow: feelings of rejection paramount with a high school I’ll-never-be-popular-enough mentality.

Obviously someone had made a mistake.  These two things seemed so… PLANNED BY GOD. How can God plan something and then, I guess, UNplan it? I’d come to expect His grace and favor, so these disappointments seemed like a kick in the teeth by a God who I thought had my future in mind.

He does have my future in mind, and He didn’t kick me in the teeth. In fact, he’s preserving me.

What I’m realizing is that I can’t make God love me any more than He does right now. Any favor I’ve received from God or man is by His grace.  Not because of anything I’ve done and I can’t do anything to grow in favor. I’m His costly, expensive treasure whom He’s already bought with His blood.

And God will have His glory regardless of the opportunities He puts in my path. His message will be shared whether it is my lips (or pen) that speaks it.  The beauty He creates from dust will be shown even if its not the beauty He’s created in me, but the beauty in someone else.

Back in the spring, God gave me this book to write.  And then in the summer, He told me He’d give me the time.  And ever since I’ve been trying to carve minutes out of my already busy days to do it.  Maybe these disappointments would only have served to be distractions. Maybe God does know what He’s doing. This might be God giving me time to do what I know He’s called me to do and helping me preserve my heart-energy (something that comes in small portions lately) for the things that are most important.

He protects me.

He preserves me.

He stands beside me.

And any platform that I might use to speak God’s story should only be the platform that Jesus Himself has built. I don’t want to stand on anything else.

So yes, I’m disappointed in the giving and the taking away.  I’m disappointed that I can’t share to those people who would have heard. I’m saddened that I won’t be changed by the women and men I might have met.  And it sure doesn’t feel good to be disappointed.

But now I’m seeing these disappointments as a means to God’s end in me.

Have you been disappointed lately? How is God using it to change you?

I have at least six of my daughter’s toy horses in a bag with broken legs and hooves.

I have a sewing basket for needles, thread and homeless buttons.  I have a place on my desk for tape to mend unintentionally ripped coloring pages.  I have boxes of batteries to fix electronic toys that have made their last sounds.

I fix broken things.

I put bandages on three-year-old knees and use words to bind up little spirits who’ve been wounded.  [I do the best I can to fix those].

As a mother, I’m a fixer of the broken.

But today, tonight, I need a broken heart. In fact I’m looking for one.  And I don’t want to fix it.

I need a heart that breaks for the world: a heart that hurts for the lost, for the less than, and for the needy. I need a heart that is broken for the hungry, for the ones without homes and for the fatherless.

I want eyes that well up when I witness oppression or slavery, for war-torn families and famine-ridden land.  I want to break in half for the ones who are dying, who are starving, who’ve been victimized.

I need a broken heart.

I want to feel for the unloved, the unwanted, and the unneeded.  I even want to break for those that hurt and abuse, because they’ve been abused [and You love them].

I want You to ravage me, ruin me and destroy me for normal life.

I need a broken heart, one that

glue,

tape,

or words can’t fix.

Because only with a broken heart can I learn how to love.

Do you?

Little girls make friends so easily.

On the playground it consists of nothing more than shared interest, inhabiting the same place in the space/time continuum and a tag-you’re-IT mentality.

Naomi walks right up to two little boys near the slide, Can we be friends? Let’s play on the swings. I’ll show you how to swing on your belly...

And off the three of them run.  Together.  No gender issues. No worrying about status or name or race or worldview. They don’t even try to beat each other to the swing set: they know there is more than enough playground equipment to go around.

It’s just three preschoolers happy to be at the park, happy to find someone else to share the morning with and happy to look eye-level at another kid.

Three-year-old community.

And an example for us.

So often I feel like I’m in the search for community.  There isn’t much community in suburbia unless I look for it.  And somehow, in my search, I seem to want to look across the table from people exactly like me.  I’m going to be honest, I never actually think this. But on this lofty search without thinking about it I set out for people who believe like me and in some ways look like me.

I know I’m not alone in this, so I’m going to be vulnerable.  Sometimes, before becoming friends I conduct an “interview”: I weigh comments and ideas and beliefs of the other person and in the depths of my brain, I make some kind of judgment about how close we can become based on these ideas.  Less like me, less close.  More like me, we can be bosom buddies.

But this isn’t right.  It’s horrible, I know.  And I realized this when I watched the three-year-olds swing on their bellies at the playground.  They were different. They didn’t come from the same place. But they all just wanted to play.

Friendships are richer when we are different.  They can actually be better when we find those people who are our opposites.  They rub off our rough edges.

Churches are stronger when we come from different backgrounds. We all add our wisdom to the work, wisdom that has come from vastly different experiences and lives.

And because of this, I think community is better when we aren’t alike. Our lives would be so much sweeter if we were less consumed about the what’s and why’s and more concerned about being friends and letting others into our lives and hearts without worrying about the outcome.

I need friends who aren’t like me. It’s important.

I need people around me who don’t think like me.  I need blog commenters who disagree.  It’s good for the community.

So, even if we don’t all think the same or look the same, let’s jump on the slide and play tag for the morning.  Let’s be friends, no matter what. We’ll be better for it.

How do you find community?  Am I alone in this?

I just have to give it up that no one is going to love my kid as much as I do.

Not any teacher.

Not a sister.

Not even a grandmother or an aunt.

It’s just that way. I tell my oldest that I love her. And she asks, maybe testing, How much?

To the moon and back at least, Mama?

Yes, to the moon and back.  How about to Pluto and back?

That’s far.  How about to heaven and back, she asks.

(but she doesn’t know that heaven is closer than she knows).

And then I say to her, You won’t understand how much I love you until you have a little girl yourself.  And then you will see just what I mean when I tell you that I love you. Pluto, the moon, heaven…all of it is too close.

God gives a special heart to mothers and fathers.  One that looks past dirty diapers, flu symptoms in the middle of the night and possible H1N1 infection.  This heart doesn’t care about three-year-old morning breath or fingernails so dirty they should be clipped instead of scrubbed.  A parent’s love doesn’t worry about sweaty soccer shin guards or tantrums in the preschool classroom. They kiss the dirt in skinned knees and the picks up pieces of shattered hearts.

Love covers these. And makes up for them.  Love lives in the chasm between selfishness and selflessness.

When kids are loved like this, they are free to run and make mistakes and ask hard questions. They can cry and hurt and open little hearts to be healed.  My girls know that they are loved, they know that they are prized and they know that even if everyone else in life is against them, I will stand up for them. In this kind of love, there is a freedom.

This protect-at-all-cost love is the same that God has for us.

We test Him all the time, How much do you love me?

What if I do this?  Will you still love me?

And He says, Yes.

He looks past our grimy fingernails and our intentional sins.  His love covers our gossip and our hurtful words and the lies we tell.  He doesn’t take it personally when we forget to thank Him or don’t give our lunch to the hungry.

His love for us is like no other.  No husband or earthly mother can love us the same as He does.  His is fierce and strong and does not waver.  He never thinks twice about the cost of loving us, the people that damage one another and so often forget that we need someone to bridge our gaps.

Between our selfishness and selflessness.

Between bitterness and forgiveness.

Between anger and mercy.

His perfect love lives in the chasm for us.

How has God’s love “lived in the chasm” for you lately?

I fought a battle over a baby carrot that escalated into a war.

Sounds impossible, right?  Not when I’m working with one of the most stubborn three-year-olds ever to wipe a stringy blonde piece of hair away from her peanut-butter crusted face.

And today I’m writing about it over on (in)courage.

Carrots and Obedience

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been the most diligent of mothers when it comes to the eat-all-your-veges fight that plagues mothers of toddlers everywhere.  This is mothering confession number one.

And now that my sweet toddler has morphed into a three-and-a-half-year-old, full of gumption preschooler, I was worried that it might be too late.

She hates vegetables.  I know, I know. It’s my fault.

My older daughter took to them easily.  Maybe because I forced her to eat them early on (earlier than my necessity born “whatever works” mothering philosophy kicked in) or maybe because she simply likes them.  Either way, she will eat them and my three-year-old will not.

Up to a couple months ago, I hadn’t wanted to deal with the ramifications of a screaming preschooler sitting for 90 minutes at the dinner table digging her heels in over a half of a baby carrot. Mothering confession number two: I was more concerned about peace in the home than what was best for her health.  So I never made her eat them.

But one Saturday night we decided to make a war out of a baby carrot…

Click here to read the rest of the story.

I used to be afraid of healing.

What it would cost.

What it would mean.

What it would require of me.

Years ago, trying to function in my marriage while having an affair was like trying to run a marathon on a broken leg.  It just wasn’t working and there was something really, really wrong.

I knew things had to change and part of that included my healing, but I was worried about what that mending would cost.

What would it take to stitch up my heart, to make it pliable again when it had become so hard?  As if the pain from the healing would be worse than the pain in my current state.

Healing takes time I wasn’t wiling to give and energy I didn’t have.  It also takes a submission to the Healer that I was reluctant to begin.

And the worst of it, mending requires introspection. Looking at myself, at a blackened heart, is ugly.  I didn’t want to see it and I didn’t want anyone else to see it either.

Wounds need time for the air to purify and clean them.  Tendons and relationships need to grow back together where they have been severed.  Bones and trust need time to form new bonds and new connections.

When the pain in me became to great to  bear and the current state of me was uglier than I knew I could repair on my own, I broke in half.

Bones shattering, tendons ripping, ribs cracking, muscles tearing: the ugliness of breaking was almost as great as the carrying of the sin itself.

This is why healing is scary.  This is why people stay where they are — filled up with the hurt and the loss and the wrong — because it feels so much safer.  The pain we know is easier to medicate the pain we don’t know.  And I won’t lie; the tearing hurts.

But this pain was different.  It had a purpose.  Break in order to mend.

Because it doesn’t end there:  in the breaking.  The breaking is only the beginning. The Healer breaks, and then He mends.

Now I know that mending, even though it costs energy and time, even though it requires me to be silent and wait, even though it means looking closely at my broken places and ugly scars, is the only way to peace.

Peace with God.

Peace with myself.

And there is no fear in that.

Why do YOU think healing is so difficult and scary?

I’ve never been so thankful for an hour.

(Not since last November’s fall back time change).

Because I hate it when I’ve packed our family schedule so tight that none of us can wiggle.  There is no space for mistakes, no leeway for lateness and certainly no time to take off our shoes in the backyard and feel the new grass. It’s during times like this that I struggle to write because I have no time to think, no time to hear anyone else but myself recite our daily schedule in my head.

Weeks like this are rare, but when they happen, we all have to fight to function well.  We move from school to lesson to dinner to event without much stopping.

This is one of those weeks.

But yesterday, I had an unexpected and undeserved hour of quiet.

The second grade field trip ended by 1:45 and I asked Hope’s teacher if I could take her home.  What were they going to do until 3 o’clock.  Could she finish her work from there?

Absolutely.

So I piled Hope and her backpack back into the now empty car (still echoing with the memory of six seven- and eight-year-olds 15 minutes before) and drove her home.

I drove slowly and she was quiet in the back.  We both needed this extra space in our day.

At home she finished her work quickly and then we played together.  Her sister wasn’t home but had spent the afternoon at her Mimi’s and it was quiet in the house.  Hope noticed this,

It’s so quiet, Mama. I like this.

Away from the classroom.  Away from the other kids. Away from the TV or the Internet. Free space.  In our day and now inside us.

A chance to wiggle our toes and take off our shoes for a little while.  We both needed the time to rest and to be restored.

After a few minutes of arranging horses in made-up family groups on the floor of the playroom Hope got dressed and we headed to our next thing. We both felt healed in small ways.

When I don’t have wiggle room, I can’t hear anyone. My schedule grows up and over my ears and I’m deaf.  I can’t hear the needs of my girls or my husband because they are all heard through the filter of what I need to get done. I can’t hear in they way that I need to in order to sit down to write every day.

And I surely cannot hear God.

Only during retreat, during the quiet can I hear Him.  I have to quiet the noise, the schedule and the doing in order to be calm enough to hear. It kills me that I’m the kid with her nose in a book when God is trying to talk to me.  He calls my name ten time and I’m never concerned about what He’s saying.  I don’t want to live like this.

And I don’t want to live my life deaf to the lives and needs of those who are most important to me.  I want to hear and to hear I must stop and listen.

How’s your hearing today?

Believe it or not, once upon a time I used to be really in shape.

I’d spend hours (you read that correctly) in the gym not trying to lose weight (I’d already done that) but trying to build muscle and tone my body.  One hour of cardio and then one or more hours of weight lifting EVERY day.  I’d usually take one day off a week.  Let’s just say I was overtraining. But for a very short amount of time, I had great muscle definition and a low body fat percentage.

The amount of time and energy I poured into this was deafening. I’d arrange my day and my life around my gym time.   If I took time off or my schedule was interrupted for something (vacations, illness, etc) within the first week I’d notice a distinct difference in my fitness.  Mainly, my muscle tone.  I know it sounds silly, but it’s true.

And then when I got pregnant with my first daughter taking months off of the gym, was when I really began to notice the atrophy.

Atrophy: the degeneration of something from disuse.

A few months’ vacation from calf raises and squats and all of a sudden my legs felt like jello.  Some time off from curls and I couldn’t see my biceps any longer.  Triceps?  They were the first to go.  To keep it up, I would have had to spend nearly the same amount of time devoted to exercise and weight lifting for the rest of my life.

Now, I’ve settled into a routine of working out when I can, jogging a few miles a few mornings a week and squeezing in squats and lunges at the kitchen sink.  I no longer have triceps that I can see or definable quads.  I simply don’t have the time (or the motivation) to spend 14 hours a week in the gym.

Anything atrophies if we stop using it.  Including relationships.  Especially relationships.

Marriages and friendships are either getting better or getting worse.  There is no hover posture for relationships.

We are either taking steps to repair, restore and increase closeness and intimacy, or we are not.  And when we do not, it begins to atrophy. The relationship loses effectiveness and impact.

Of course there are natural times for relationships to cycle in and out of uber-excitement and crazy joy (read: my time off from the gym for pregnancy).  That’s just life.

But, I don’t want to get flabby in my friendships or my relationships with my daughters.  I don’t want to lose my intimacy with my husband.  I want to fight this. It seems like a lot of work, right? It is.  I can’t lie.  There isn’t any one-word fix for it, or “Eight Steps to Intimacy” e-book I can send you.

I can’t ignore the needs of my husband for months and expect our relationship to be at the same place it was.  I can’t.  I can’t put off my daughter’s requests for time spent with her just one-on-one and hope that our relationship will be better for it.  I need to pour time and energy, at a deafening intensity maybe, into the relationships I deem important if I want them to flourish.

Unless you don’t want them to flourish.  Unless you want to be flabby.  In which case you will be.

You won’t get fit by sitting on the couch.

How do you fight relationship atrophy?

Because you will be tempted.

Someone will look at you in that way the same morning your husband didn’t thank you for getting up in the middle of the night with the kids.

Somebody will share their heart in a way that tugs at you and you’ll want to respond in kind.

You won’t always be in love with your husband.

You will get distracted with good things like kids and church and blogging.

You will be tempted.

And this title is a little misleading because I don’t really think you can affair-proof your marriage.  Not really.  By now, I hope you all know that we are fallible and vulnerable at times. It’s not like baby-proofing (because we all know babies who can climb over the gate at the bottom of the stairs) or fire-proofing (at a high enough temperature, something will burn or melt).

We all are capable.

All the boundaries are good things. They are what keep you from walking down a path toward someone else or another kind of life you think you want.  But boundaries are merely safeguards, not free rides to fidelity.  It is the heart is that truly matters.

So forgive me if any of you have given sermons or written books about 10 ways to affair-proof your marriage or the 5 things to keep your husband faithful to you. I’m sure there are some beneficial pieces of advice there.  But in all honesty I think it all boils down to one thing.

Follow close to Christ daily.

That’s it.  That’s the mystery.

Both of you. If you both are walking in close relationship to God, you will be in close relationship to each other.  If you are closely following Christ, attempting to allow Him to transform you on a day by day basis, you won’t want to be unfaithful to each other. There will be no need for it because Christ will be filling the needs you have and your spouse will be right there with you.  Daily dying to self and becoming alive in Christ is what does it.

Your desires become God’s desires. And you won’t commit adultery.

You can live your whole life trying to safeguard your marriage. You can do all the good and right things, but there will be someone someday (if it hasn’t already happened) who will think you are attractive and tell you so.  There will be someone who seems to know you better and listen in a different way.  There will be a need that your husband cannot fulfill in you and it will seem like someone else can.

When the boundaries that you’ve carefully placed become habits and the fences you’ve built become the necessary routine of your life, these temptations become easier and easier to combat.

But nothing takes the place of a living, breathing daily relationship with Christ. This relationship, this following hard after Him under girds all the boundaries you’ve put into practice. The boundaries are tools to a healthy marriage; they aren’t the heart of a healthy marriage.  Truly living for Christ is the only way to “affair-proof” your relationship.

All the boundaries, all the rules, are important. But love (for the two biggies: God and others) is the real rule.  Love God and you will do what is right for your marriage.

What do you think?  Do you agree?  Do you disagree? Why?

Let’s have a discussion today.