My daughters are fearless.

Story after story of boy-like injuries I could tell.  All from jumping, launching, falling, climbing and propelling.

Naomi, my wispy, blonde princess can leap with the best of them. Her favorite right now is to climb a jungle gym, find a far-reached horizontal bar of sorts and see if she can grab it in the air.

I sit on the bench nearby, watching and not worrying if she’ll fall (I DO, however, worry about her older sister perched on top of a barrel racing horse every Wednesday afternoon). Wood chips, sand or spongy ground covers the playground.  I look at her face; she’s intently thinking and making quick calculations in her little brain. Can I make it, I’m sure she thinks.

She catches the bar more often than she falls (although her shins tell a different story) so I sit and watch with the pre-summer spring breeze. And if she doesn’t, I think, she’ll just bounce.

She lurches and for a split second in the air she touches nothing.  Her hands catch the bar and her feet dangle 12 inches above the ground. Swinging, smiling and then realizing that she’ll have to let go to find solid footing again.

MAMA! She screams. HELP!

But she’s in no danger.

She’s perfectly safe, just suspended a little above the earth.

“Just let go!” I call to her from a few feet away. But she can’t see me. Her hands and arms fiercely grasp the bar and she can’t turn her head; it’s pressed between her tiny shoulders.

Just. Let. Go.

And she does. And she reaches the ground without injury. Without broken ankles or a bruised knee, she just lands softly.

She has faith in me, her mother, that if I tell her it’s safe to “fall” then she will be okay. She trusts me, even though she couldn’t see me. She trusts that I love her and won’t ask her to do something of which she’s incapable.

God is asking me to let go of what I THINK is saving me and listen to him even though I can’t always see Him. He asks me to hear His voice and trust that He loves me enough to direct me into what is best.

And sometimes it’s oh, so hard. And oh, so scary.

But that’s the point, right?

I know too, that like any good mother with a child in danger, if I was dangling high above the earth He’d rush in to catch and cover me and carry me to safe footing. But those smaller things, those JUST LET GO things, He wants me to practice trust. He wants me to be alright sitting in the middle of fear.

Just Let Go.

The earth is solid and its right beneath my feet.

Naomi’s sandled-feet run toward me. “Mama! I’m gonna do it ONE MORE TIME!” And she climbs back up to the top of the jungle gym and leaps again, this time more confident and less fearful.

Do you need to JUST LET GO?

Watch, because there is a quiz at the end…

{For those of you who read in readers, click here to view video.}

“…the great stories go to those who don’t give in to fear.”

Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

I know. I know. I’m late to read this. A little late.

But maybe I was supposed to read this now. Today. And not a few months ago when it released.

Maybe, just perhaps I was supposed to ingest Don’s random {but oh so NOT random} musings on writing and God, living and fear and most importantly STORY now. This week.

Because it’s speaking to me right where I’m at.

{I know I’m not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, but 1- I do it all the time, and 2 – how else could I have written that?}

I don’t want to be a novelist. At least not now. But someday, someday, I will call in all my novelist friends to help coach me through my ONE and ONLY novel that I will write {and will flop terribly}.

But all writers, regardless of novel-producing abilities, must have a good grasp on the idea of story. And I feel like I’m at a weird place in my own story. Sigh. Part transition, part wondering, part looking forward and not back. Stuck in the middle of my own book, not sure where the future will lead us, slowly figuring out my calling.

I so want to live a good story.

I want to listen to God, to be a good mother, to walk forward in my call and purpose. I want to be obedient. And in all of that, I don’t need life to be exciting, I just need it to be good.

I need to live a good story and I need to live it without fear.

So, I’m pretty sure this blog post is a commitment I’m making to myself to start to try to live with less fear {remember, I process life through writing? I didn’t know I was doing this when I began}.

Last summer I went with some blogging friends and their families to Bass Lake. At the end of the day, after the kids had all come in shivering from playing in the Sierra water, I suggested to my friends that we run and jump off the end of the dock.

Up to this point we’d been sitting in our bathing suits and cover ups in the rough lake sand making sure none of the kids drowned. Our shoulders were warm and pink from the mountain sun.

“Let’s jump in!” I looked at them and smiled.

“Why?” one of them asked.

And honestly, I didn’t have a reason. “Because we can,” I answered. And silently, I thought, because it feels good to face something “difficult” like that and get to the other side.

The lake would be very cold, and we were very comfortable on the shore. I dug my toes into the granite sand, “Come on! Let’s just do it.” I stood up and began to discard my dress.

About five minutes later the three of us ran, hand in hand, screaming down to the end of the dock and launched ourselves into the lake.

Cold water stole my breath but we all emerged laughing and decided that once was enough.

“No fear”, to quote a cliche.

We’d done it and we’d lived a story. It was a normal story but it was ours and we’d faced a tiny fear (of being uncomfortable) and ran right through it.

This is how I want to live my life: launching myself from the end of the boat dock for good reasons, God reasons, kingdom reasons. Risk is hard and feels bad sometimes, but it is only in risk that growth and change happen.

Are you living a good story?

There really isn’t an excuse for how I treated the both of you on Sunday.

I’m not as bad of a mother as you could have been given, but for you, for me, Sunday wasn’t what I’d intended.

I’ve been distracted. I’ve been tired. I’ve been very, very full of thoughts. Still none of this vindicates me. I should know better.

So for that, I’m deeply sorry.

I’m sorry for yelling. For hanging my head in my hands and shouting at the ceiling. I’m sorry for letting the both of you see the tears and allowing you to think it was your fault.

You are both too young and too much mine for me to let you carry the weight of me.

Because I’m a heavy soul. I’m heavy with anger and bitterness sometimes, with passion and grief.  I’m burdened with discord and dissatisfaction. And two days ago I let you hold that end of the kite on a windy day.

I put the string in your tiny hands and asked you to hold on.

I’m so sorry.

Instead of buffering you with boundaries and blessings equally I let you see the end of me.

{Luckily at the end of your mother is the One who Fathers all three of us. He is there to be strong when I am not.}

I’m a broken woman, a cumbersome soul. I’m a human who tries to act superhuman.

I try. Then I stop and listen. And I try again.

So tonight, let me hold each of you and rock your long, awkward limbs for a minute or two. I know you might roll your eyes and squirm a bit, but I hope you’ll relax your weight into the curve of me. Maybe you’ll let me love you and try to make up for my heavy soul. Hopefully you’ll let me smooth your hair and maybe you’ll even close your eyes and sleep.

Today and tomorrow {and for the ever} I will let you be the light, little souls you are. I’ll capture all of your miniature gifts: seashells, stolen flowers and painted rocks. And I will let them create in me a graceful vastness that will replace the weight of my own soul.

I’ll cushion you with boundaries and blessings that you and I both need.

Has anyone else ever been here?

It was just me and my girls this weekend.

Birthday parties, a couple trips to the book store, a new book and some new music.

And lots of hugs, laughs and morning breath kisses.

Without another adult in the house, I’m left alone with my thoughts. There’s a lot of that because an 8 year old and a 4 year old, while amazing companions, are not the best recipients of my thoughts about the power of story or how the events of last week have affected my future.

Usually I process life by writing. I begin to write and by the end of whatever it is I’m writing I’ve had the ah-ha. It happens all the time which is why I usually don’t stress about deadlines. The inspiration will come, and when it does, the words are like water.

Sometimes I process life by talking. Maybe it’s a rich conversation with a new friend. Maybe it’s in the dark before closing my eyes after I’ve already turned on my side to sleep. Maybe it’s a phone call about something I’ve been avoiding.

But this weekend, I’ve been processing my life by thinking. It only happens once in awhile because I’m not alone that often.

I hate it when my husband is gone. I hate it.

But when he is, things happen to me. Good things. I stop talking and start listening. I pray more. I let my mind do more wondering {because, I’ve discovered, I’m a visionary}. I remember things that I’ve forgotten about.

So this weekend I’ve been processing something God did inside me on Thursday, some important words a friend spoke into my life, and the hole left in my heart by hugging a new friend goodbye before she left for the airport.

It just seems like I don’t have enough time to think about it all.

So because a mother can’t take a sabbatical or just get in her car and drive {trust me, sometimes I consider it} I sit outside on my hammock chair after the girls have gone to sleep. A mug of tea. A book in hand. Closing my eyes and the book and opening up my ears to the bigness that is God.

I wait and I listen. To my own thoughts and then to God {because He does talk in the silence}.

How do you “hear” yourself? How do you process thoughts that seem too big for you?

I did a lot of things to heal

recover

and forget

after my affair six years ago.

A lot of you have asked me to be more detailed so I am. I’ve written about it here first.

Recovery from addiction (because I was addicted to the attention and the emotional attachment), healing from sexual sin and restoration back to a place of wholeness took about a year. I’ve done so much further growing in the years since then, but the main triage, blood-transfusing surgery took about twelve months.

Recovery might look different for you. But I imagine some of the main issues are the same.

1. I stopped looking back. I mean, I did a little looking back because Chad and I entered a solid Christ-centered couples therapy program. We had to look back at the reasons why we got the place we did. But I cut off ALL ties with the guy I’d been having an affair with. I didn’t call him to say good-bye. I didn’t email him ever again. To this day, the last time I saw him in person was three days before my confession in January of 2004.

And I tried to stop thinking about him, about what we’d done. Everything. Some of you who are struggling with this today are shaking your heads saying that it’s way harder than you’d ever thought it would be. It is. I think this was the most difficult part. Practically speaking, the way I “forgot” about what had gone on before was by constant, vigilant attention to my own thoughts.

Every time I’d think about him, I’d ask God to replace it with something else. I purposely drove my thoughts away from him. After time, it subsided quite a bit and I was able to control where my thoughts went. It became a habit.

2. We got rid of all distractions. I’m not going to make a big statement about drinking alcohol right now. But at the time we were trying to repair our family, drinking was a big distraction and a big obstacle in the road of our recovery. So we stopped drinking for a long time. Now, once in awhile we have beer or wine with dinner when we have a date night, but we live in moderation. Six years later. At the time, we were unable to moderate ourselves so we went with a zero-tolerance rule on drinking.

The same was true with movies, TV, cable, etc. We wanted to stop looking at all the things which were going to be detrimental in the short run to the healing of our marriage, and more particularly, the healing of each of our minds.

I’ve written before about pornography. This was one of those things that we never looked back on. We wiped our hearts, minds, and computers clean.

3. We began to focus on what and Who was right. Almost immediately we began to go to counseling. On a weekly basis we needed that 60 minutes of focused time to talk about communication, and rebuilding what had been lost. We looked long and hard at the ways we’d wounded each other and the ways we’d failed. We wondered why we had failed. And then we sought to fix it.

We also spent hours and days getting to know our Savior again. We read the Bible from cover to cover that first year and we spent time learning how to pray again. And this time we did it as a couple.

4. We took it one day at a time… and promised we’d love each other forever. And that neither of us would allow something so horribly destructive to ever take us to the edge again.

Sometimes the healing hurt and sometimes it was harder than we’d ever thought. I know my husband was at times preoccupied with the hurt and the wound. And at times I was preoccupied with how to be pure again. But even so, we took one day at a time promising that I LOVE YOU today. Promising that we would give each other our best in the future not our worst.

We renewed our vows on June 8, 2004 and have not broken those ones. But even in that it’s still one day at a time.

5. I safeguarded the future. We put up new boundaries on our relationship. It was no longer what the other thought was right, but what God thought was right. We thought hard and prayed had about what our new marriage would look like, what my new mind and heart would look like and we made rules to safeguard it.

Some people may think that those boundaries are prudish. But we think they are the only way we will be able to hold hands one day, in honesty, as we watch our grandchildren walk down the aisles of their own weddings. I’d rather have that than anything else.

This is just us. But remember — it was God who did the healing and we were the ones called to obedience. We allowed God to clean us, heal us and purify us but we also had to practice self-discipline on a daily basis.

What have you done to heal from brokenness? Do you have any more questions for me regarding restoration?

I’ve always had trouble making friends.

The ONE friend I had changed throughout my life. First it was Teresa. Then when she moved it was Ralna. Then in Junior High it was Jennifer. And since 8th grade it has been spread out between Heather’s and Lisa’s and a few more Jennifer’s.

Oh, its probably mostly my fault.

I’m sure I inherited some unintentional relationship stiffness from my matriarchal roots. It’s easy for me to be transparent with all of YOU but sometimes its a bit difficult in real-life situations. And I never fit in with the big natural groups where girls make friends easily: cheerleaders or softball teams or girl scouts.

So for most of my life it’s been me and one other girl to face the world.

Now my friendships have taken different courses. I’m so blessed to have Vanessa’s, Stacia’s, Lisa’s, Cindy’s and Annie’s (to name only a few) in my life. And it seems like, despite my natural tendency for reservedness, I’m making new friends every day like Lindsey, Amber and Bianca.

It’s no longer just one. And I’m glad for it.

My girls seem to make friends quickly and with extreme passion (maybe my hangups will skip a generation). I’ve noticed it, the around-the-neck-hugs when they meet on the playground at school and the constant can-we-have-a-play date requests. Kids don’t seem to have the same hangups that women do when it comes to making friends.

Today I’m writing about that on (in)courage:

Quick to Love

I’m still a “park mom” but I fear that my simple park days are numbered.

They’re getting older and the bucket swing is almost a thing of the past as is the chase-the-toddler stage. So I usually sit on a bench and watch them play. To a tired mother, the park is a breath of fresh outdoor air on an April afternoon. To two little girls, the neighborhood playground is a world of possibilities contained in a couple acres of municipal property.

“Do you think there will be other kids there, mom?  How long can we stay?” My eight-year-old’s anticipation builds as we walk up the hill and around the corner…

Her expectation isn’t for jungle gyms and monkey bars, but for the prospect of new friendship in the space of a short spring afternoon…

To finish reading, click here.

What about you? What do you think keeps women from making better or deeper friendships? Or maybe you don’t agree with me…

I get to play hotel for the next six months.

Starting today.

And I am EXCITED!

Our home is modest and has been known to become a itsy bit cluttered from time to time. Always with some residual dog and cat hair hiding in the corners and clinging to the sofa cushions, a stray goldfish cracker (or twenty) near the garbage can and always, always, with a little bit of toothpaste on the sink. Our two daughters have more books than our local library and more tiny ponies and dolls than even my 8-year-old could count. We have a guest room with a moderately comfortable futon that shares space with our printer and network router.

But the pillows are soft. The quilt is clean but worn. The chair in the corner is easy enough to read in, with a gentle light above. And I promise, the internet connection is the best in the house.

I’m excited for several reasons. First, I get to introduce all of them to YOU.  One by one, you’ll meet the sojourners. All people who have made a significant impact on me in the past year or three, all people who follow hard after Christ, and all people who are working hard in the Kingdom.

What an honor to host each one. Because I GET to serve.

I get to clean my house. I get to stretch my budget and cooking skills. I get to provide a comfortable place for these people to land. We GET to let our girls fall in love over and over again, each time meeting amazing people who will enrich our lives as a family. And who will challenge us to live more selflessly and openly. I get to make pancakes for Saturday breakfast and keep my fridge stocked with orange juice and fresh fruit. I get to sit across the table with beautiful friends and have coffee.

I’m looking forward to dinners in and dinners out. Trips to our same favorite beach, our same favorite restaurant, our same favorite hiking trail.  I’m looking forward to hard conversations and easy silences. I’m looking forward to community.

And I promise to wipe the toothpaste from the sink for each one of them.

{Today, Lindsey is here from Nashville for Catalyst West. We’ve been friends since Blissdom ’10 back in February. She’s agreed to stay in The Crazy instead of getting a hotel. Actually, I forced her to stay and threatened friendship termination if she did anything different.}

Do you like to host? What is your favorite thing about staying at friends’ homes?

I really ended last week on a bad note.

A bad attitude. A distracted heart. A long, long drive up to our church’s women’s retreat on Friday. A journey that should have lasted just a shade over 2 hours crept closer and closer to four.

I was by myself in the car surrounded by every other Southern Californian trying to get home or up to their own women’s retreats.

When I finally arrived, my forearm muscles knotted because of the white-knuckled style of driving I’m forced to take on mountain roads, I thought maybe I’d relax.

Nope. We had 50 minutes to check in, swallow a dinner salad whole in the hotel’s restaurant and make it to our evening meeting.

I was agitated, excitable and not. really. there.

I was somewhere else, four hours away, with my daughters who were probably cozying in front of a movie at the moment and my husband who was most likely falling asleep in bed next to them. All I wanted was my pajamas and a cup of chai.

Throughout the whole meeting I listened, I prayed, but I felt like I never really “clicked in.”  I sort of hovered around the edges.

Please, Lord, speak to me.

I was going to be one of the speakers at this retreat; my message would be Sunday. And I knew that if I couldn’t shake this disassociation I was going to fail miserably. I needed desperately to leave

the traffic,

the week,

and my worries

somewhere else. I needed to engage.

After the meeting ended, I stood with an old friend and a new friend approached us. The three of us began talking and we each shared our stories. You know, our Stories.

Even as different as they each were, we shared some eerie similarities. Each of our marriages had been on the brink of ruin in the last decade, we’d each looked over the edge and saw what hell might be made of, and we’ve each been restored by grace and love. But all for vastly different reasons.

For the next 4 1/2 hours the three of us cried, ate chocolate and talked about all the places our feet and hearts had walked in the last ten years.

And then I clicked in. The horror of the drive to the mountains faded away, the fatigue headache I was fighting lifted and I forgot about the lengthy to-do list resting against my computer in my laptop bag.

I engaged.

God did speak to me. He spoke to me through two other women who, shyly and beautifully, shared the hardest parts of their life with me. He gathered me close through words only meant for three, not three thousand. He was there, in that room, with three mothers who needed to see God’s grace in another woman’s life.

Friday began poorly for me, but instead of disintegrating into bad, hotel sleep it blossomed into a beautiful sharing of hearts and souls.

It wasn’t the mountain air, or the sight of snow on the slopes still. It wasn’t the break from fixing breakfasts and giving baths. It wasn’t even the glassy lake just a quarter mile down the hill.

It was the power of a Story that led me back to Him.

Have you heard an amazing story lately? If there is a link, feel free to share it.

Two weeks ago during the girls’ spring holiday we packed a picnic and we rediscovered what can be accomplished in the space of an afternoon.

Studying a forest hollow.

Gathering.

Taking my shoes off.

Reading a quiet book.

Running.

Resting in the shade.

Watching little girls form a life long friendship.

And isn’t okay to take a Sabbath once in awhile? To put down all-things-digital and recreate peace in my heart. It seems as if I don’t take enough Sabbath because I muddle my life up with phone calls and text messages and the pile of books to read on the side of my bed.

I’m beginning to think that if I DON’T take Sabbath time, then I’m stealing from God.

My friend, Brad asked me to write about how I find time for God as a busy mother. It challenged me because I’m not sure I DO take enough time.  I answered him here. Click over to read.

Do you take Sabbath times? How do you escape and find time to rest with God?