Happy Anniversary Chris! Twenty-four years!
The kids are taking me to dinner, we'll take in some jazz too and we're going to S.A.M. for the Picasso exhibit. I'll miss you terribly, as I always do but I do so rejoice with you. You remind me daily of the Promise that is each of ours.
Loving you always!
Your sister in our very present Christ,
Leigh
Monday, December 20, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Big Band Dance
Monday, December 13, 2010
Staying Open
It was nine months last Saturday. I meant to post a blog but life and busy-ness and Eric's homework were all vying for my attention too. We're three quarters of the way through the first year. In some ways it's still very surreal at moments. In some ways I can't believe how far we have come. We've grown a lot, we're closer to one another, we've each changed. Those awkward, awful weekends of early on have been replaced with a growing normalcy. Fourteen will never be what it might have been for Eric but I also appreciate greatly the maturity and deepening of his spirit. And college stuff is in perspective for Emily in ways I don't remember at her age. So we've grown.
I think I have fallen deeper in love with God than I ever knew I could fall. It's almost as if God simply stretched open my heart and whispered into it, "you have no idea how I can fill this space if you only stay open to Me." And that's my biggest take-away in life thus far...stay open. Stay open even when you think you already have a pretty good idea about things, stay open when it looks scary or filled with hurt, stay open at all costs because Grace enters the open doors in life far faster than closed ones, into which Grace must push and knock repeatedly.
A week from today would have been our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary, five days later is Christmas and it is into that reality that I find myself yearning to stay open. Leaning in to Grace, realizing that God is so much bigger than I can imagine, that God has my children in His care far more tangibly than I can myself and surrendering them in their tender years and their grief to Him. Parenting is far more about praying than anything, not for God to DO something as much as for God to remind me they are His more than they are mine, something mothers work a little harder to accept at times, I think. Still, there is a freedom in that acceptance.
And so we stay open, as individuals, as a family...and God just floods the space.
Grace for your journey,
Leigh
I think I have fallen deeper in love with God than I ever knew I could fall. It's almost as if God simply stretched open my heart and whispered into it, "you have no idea how I can fill this space if you only stay open to Me." And that's my biggest take-away in life thus far...stay open. Stay open even when you think you already have a pretty good idea about things, stay open when it looks scary or filled with hurt, stay open at all costs because Grace enters the open doors in life far faster than closed ones, into which Grace must push and knock repeatedly.
A week from today would have been our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary, five days later is Christmas and it is into that reality that I find myself yearning to stay open. Leaning in to Grace, realizing that God is so much bigger than I can imagine, that God has my children in His care far more tangibly than I can myself and surrendering them in their tender years and their grief to Him. Parenting is far more about praying than anything, not for God to DO something as much as for God to remind me they are His more than they are mine, something mothers work a little harder to accept at times, I think. Still, there is a freedom in that acceptance.
And so we stay open, as individuals, as a family...and God just floods the space.
Grace for your journey,
Leigh
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Puzzles
Last year it was the Seattle skyline and he didn't feel much up to helping. Between the months of chemo and then radiation afterwards, Chris was simply too tired to help with the jigsaw puzzle. We've had one every year. During that time when the academic quarter ends and as we head into Christmas we just seem to gravitate to the slowed down pace of a jigsaw puzzle amidst all the other things of life.
Chris had Job's patience for them, I had enthusiasm but I was pretty terrible at organizing them. I always got the border done and then he would find his way over to the table and begin this process of fitting pieces that I plain couldn't see or didn't work hard enough to see. Like in so much of our life Chris brought patience and a methodical determination. Last year he offered encouragement from the recliner but I was still pretty much on my own with it and that felt a bit weird. It also took longer that way. Still, Chris had imparted a desire to learn patience in me and I managed to get it finished before the new year.
Little did I know the ways in which God would be preparing me to face the coming year and everything it held. Like always, however, God is at work keeping a covenant with me, writing a story and remaining totally faithful. And so I poured the pieces of this year's puzzle out on the table, it's a map of the ancient world. Somehow I think Chris would approve of the choice, it's got both kids engaged in the history of it.
Like my life, the pieces of the puzzle are fitting together in places, offering glimpses of something greater. Chris witnessed to me the value of patience and God has lovingly and consistently taught the lesson to me for years, especially during this last one.
December offers so many opportunities for "grief moments," a phrase the kids and I use for the official calling of a time out in our house. Our anniversary is on the twentieth, there's obviously Christmas and more poignantly Christmas Eve, which will mark a year to the day since Chris was last in church. He had been unable to get there after then, exhausted from radiation. He sang every word of the Hallelujah Chorus at the end of the service, you would have never known how sick he was then because he sang with an enthusiasm and love of God that was palpable.
And so the dining room table is adorned with a jigsaw puzzle, pieces waiting for a patient hand, something I learned from Chris and God. I am grateful that God is patient with me as well.
Grace for your journey,
Leigh
Chris had Job's patience for them, I had enthusiasm but I was pretty terrible at organizing them. I always got the border done and then he would find his way over to the table and begin this process of fitting pieces that I plain couldn't see or didn't work hard enough to see. Like in so much of our life Chris brought patience and a methodical determination. Last year he offered encouragement from the recliner but I was still pretty much on my own with it and that felt a bit weird. It also took longer that way. Still, Chris had imparted a desire to learn patience in me and I managed to get it finished before the new year.
Little did I know the ways in which God would be preparing me to face the coming year and everything it held. Like always, however, God is at work keeping a covenant with me, writing a story and remaining totally faithful. And so I poured the pieces of this year's puzzle out on the table, it's a map of the ancient world. Somehow I think Chris would approve of the choice, it's got both kids engaged in the history of it.
Like my life, the pieces of the puzzle are fitting together in places, offering glimpses of something greater. Chris witnessed to me the value of patience and God has lovingly and consistently taught the lesson to me for years, especially during this last one.
December offers so many opportunities for "grief moments," a phrase the kids and I use for the official calling of a time out in our house. Our anniversary is on the twentieth, there's obviously Christmas and more poignantly Christmas Eve, which will mark a year to the day since Chris was last in church. He had been unable to get there after then, exhausted from radiation. He sang every word of the Hallelujah Chorus at the end of the service, you would have never known how sick he was then because he sang with an enthusiasm and love of God that was palpable.
And so the dining room table is adorned with a jigsaw puzzle, pieces waiting for a patient hand, something I learned from Chris and God. I am grateful that God is patient with me as well.
Grace for your journey,
Leigh
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Thanksgiving
Pumpkin pies are cooling, the tree is up. Pajama clad kids are still nestled in their beds, 19 and 14 but looking especially innocent and sweet to me this year. It's early Thanksgiving morning and I'm very present with the thoughts of all the many Thanksgivings in my past.
Chris was a perfect southern gentleman when it came to appreciating good food and he made over my dinners each year like we were dining at the nicest of restaurants, telling me he couldn't take in another bite but always finding room for a bit more. Then he would doze in his chair with one eye on a football game and one on the kids and I miss that.
Life changes. We're facing a day without him, our first significant holiday and everything is tempered with that awareness. When we finished cleaning up last night, Eric said I can see Dad sitting right here, looking at this Disneyland picture of Emily and me and getting that smile and slight laugh that he would get. Then a couple of tears streamed. I said I missed him too and Emily was right on my heels, yelling from her room that she did too. So we stopped everything we were doing and met grief right there, where it once again screamed for instant attention, this time speaking first to Eric but engaging us all. We all knew it but we hadn't said it out loud just yet.
I love that we can be real. Grief is real and saying it hurts is real. Being able to pick up a picture and cry that your Dad can't see it too is real. Being real and honest and allowing the waves of grief to wax and wane and to be felt is how we live now. And God meets us in it, right where we are.
So today is Thanksgiving and we ARE thankful because the blessings are bountiful in our lives. Yes we miss him, yes we face hard moments but Chris' life now is this very real testimony to the Sacred Promise. And the smell of pumpkin pie hangs heavy in our home, a reminder that we are a family taking a little more time for gratitude today. Once again, God draws us close and the Mysterious Divine says it's all okay, we are a part of an eternal story...and for that we give thanks.
Grace for your journey,
Leigh
Chris was a perfect southern gentleman when it came to appreciating good food and he made over my dinners each year like we were dining at the nicest of restaurants, telling me he couldn't take in another bite but always finding room for a bit more. Then he would doze in his chair with one eye on a football game and one on the kids and I miss that.
Life changes. We're facing a day without him, our first significant holiday and everything is tempered with that awareness. When we finished cleaning up last night, Eric said I can see Dad sitting right here, looking at this Disneyland picture of Emily and me and getting that smile and slight laugh that he would get. Then a couple of tears streamed. I said I missed him too and Emily was right on my heels, yelling from her room that she did too. So we stopped everything we were doing and met grief right there, where it once again screamed for instant attention, this time speaking first to Eric but engaging us all. We all knew it but we hadn't said it out loud just yet.
I love that we can be real. Grief is real and saying it hurts is real. Being able to pick up a picture and cry that your Dad can't see it too is real. Being real and honest and allowing the waves of grief to wax and wane and to be felt is how we live now. And God meets us in it, right where we are.
So today is Thanksgiving and we ARE thankful because the blessings are bountiful in our lives. Yes we miss him, yes we face hard moments but Chris' life now is this very real testimony to the Sacred Promise. And the smell of pumpkin pie hangs heavy in our home, a reminder that we are a family taking a little more time for gratitude today. Once again, God draws us close and the Mysterious Divine says it's all okay, we are a part of an eternal story...and for that we give thanks.
Grace for your journey,
Leigh
Friday, November 19, 2010
Ornaments
I found the ornaments. They were packed away in the back of the closet under the stairs. I knew they would be in there, that's where they have always been stored, for the last seventeen years in fact. Thanksgiving has just kind of snuck up on us this year and that's the day we put up and decorate our tree.
In December of 1985, Chris and I were dating and approaching our first Christmas. He didn't have a lot of money, I didn't have any more than he did so we went for a walk through the woods behind his Grandmother's house to cut down a cedar tree to bring back inside and decorate. We bought some lights and one pack of ornaments but the little tree still looked pretty empty so I went through some things at home until I found a few things to make some homemade ornaments for his/our tree. Chris was so sweetly grateful and gave those little creations of mine far more praise than they deserved.
A year later in December of 1986, just days after our wedding we put up our Christmas tree and Chris brought out the ornaments he had saved from the year before...the ones I had made. And every year those ornaments are lovingly placed on our tree, a reminder of that first Christmas, merely 19 and 22 years old and with lots more Christmas spirit than earthly money.
Amidst the smell of turkey and pumpkin pie, warmly tucked inside of our home amidst the cold drizzle (and possibly snow this year) of a Seattle Thanksgiving, those same ornaments will once again find their place on our tree. They will be joined once again by little teddy bears, ten in all, marking the first five Christmases of both Emily and Eric. They will be joined by lots of other ornaments representing the life of a family including a golden key from 1993, our first house. This year we will also hang a lovely angel, carved in wood by a woman at my childhood church in North Carolina, with Chris' name and 1963-2010 written upon it. I think we will hang that one last...completing this year's tree.
I found the ornaments...packed under the stairs...a box full of the history of this family.
Grace for your journey,
Leigh
In December of 1985, Chris and I were dating and approaching our first Christmas. He didn't have a lot of money, I didn't have any more than he did so we went for a walk through the woods behind his Grandmother's house to cut down a cedar tree to bring back inside and decorate. We bought some lights and one pack of ornaments but the little tree still looked pretty empty so I went through some things at home until I found a few things to make some homemade ornaments for his/our tree. Chris was so sweetly grateful and gave those little creations of mine far more praise than they deserved.
A year later in December of 1986, just days after our wedding we put up our Christmas tree and Chris brought out the ornaments he had saved from the year before...the ones I had made. And every year those ornaments are lovingly placed on our tree, a reminder of that first Christmas, merely 19 and 22 years old and with lots more Christmas spirit than earthly money.
Amidst the smell of turkey and pumpkin pie, warmly tucked inside of our home amidst the cold drizzle (and possibly snow this year) of a Seattle Thanksgiving, those same ornaments will once again find their place on our tree. They will be joined once again by little teddy bears, ten in all, marking the first five Christmases of both Emily and Eric. They will be joined by lots of other ornaments representing the life of a family including a golden key from 1993, our first house. This year we will also hang a lovely angel, carved in wood by a woman at my childhood church in North Carolina, with Chris' name and 1963-2010 written upon it. I think we will hang that one last...completing this year's tree.
I found the ornaments...packed under the stairs...a box full of the history of this family.
Grace for your journey,
Leigh
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Eight Months
Still missing.
Still celebrating the blessing he received.
Still changing.
Still a family.
Still celebrating the blessing he received.
Still changing.
Still a family.
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