Celebrating our fourth anniversary

To my husband: sorry you have to put up with me. But also, thank you. 

Happy 4 years baby <3 

Marriage Advice

I don't know about you, but 
I never expected marriage to be hard. 
Lots of people said it was, but
honestly, they should have made their advice meaner.
They should have said, 
marriage is raw like a scaled fish,
ready for filleting,
and this person, the one you're marrying,
this person you love more than anyone in the world,
will, very soon, very often be the person 
you struggle the most not to hate. 

No one says that on your wedding day.
Probably because
no one has yet had the guts to put it on a Hallmark card.
The crockpot your aunt in Minnesota sent
definitely did not include that kind of warning. 
So we say, marriage is hard, 
and make sure you eat a piece of your cake.

Marriage is hard, 
you'll soon find yourself repeating. A veteran. 
You've fought about something very silly,
like where he chooses to clip his toenails.
You get it now, why it's hard. 
It's hard, living with an imperfect person.
At some point though, you'll realize
you're no war hero.
Someone else sees you. You exist, to him,
in full, unadulterated reality. And
if marriage is a mirror,
you are far uglier than you ever thought.
You are the inconsiderate roommate
and the control freak,
the excuse-maker, the tally-keeper.
You are the hard in marriage.
It's a miracle you've made it this far.
You almost feel bad for him, that he's stuck with you.
But no one promised him it would be easy either,
so here you are.

And now I love you is less an experience, more an assignment.
To hold him when,
basically, he's promised by his mere existence
to hurt you. And further,
to save him from yourself--
to hate, to kill the ugly in you,
completely losing track of it
in the other. 

Our baby already has a name

Naming things has always been a duty of utmost gravity to me. I named my flip phone in high school (Santiago), each of my cars (Sunny, Sirius, Cherry, Han, Blackavar), my stuffed animals (too many to list, sorry). I nicknamed almost all my friends through middle school and high school (fewer than the stuffed animals but still, I won't bore you). The first time I remember naming something is when we got our first poodle. Her name was Chloe, the name was my suggestion, everyone agreed it fit, and I have been wearing that knowledge like a medal of self-affirmation ever since. 

More recently husband and I have agonized over which name would best fit each of our cats (Pippin, the late Bombadil, Zuko, Princess Peach). Their names are fun and fitting, often literary. But naming a baby is a very different task. Almost a prophetic one.

I don't believe in mantras or manifestation, but I do believe there is something profound about a name. God certainly does. All throughout the Bible He was naming people, re-naming people, calling and commanding and setting apart. It's part of Him knowing us, better than we even know ourselves. That's why naming a child feels different, like it's almost too big a task for my human brain. A person's name is the first thing they claim as a part of their identity; what their name means can inspire and encourage them as they grow up. I learned in elementary school that the name Samantha, translated from the Aramaic, means listener. After that it always seemed to me like a title worth living up to (and here's how we know God has a sense of humor, because it is often a great challenge for me to listen well). 

For the one who does the naming, it creates a sense of connection, of responsibility and pride, that for some reason isn't there until a name is spoken. That's why Zac and I named each of our children while they were still in the womb--to confirm their humanity, their value, their set-apart-ness. That's why we've prayed over each of our children's names, and why we wouldn't just change one on a whim. That's the human explanation for why our second son is named Abraham. 

Abrahamic covenant

The ultrasound didn’t show me

the color of your eyes, the pattern of your hair.

It wouldn’t show those things,

the ones that come with time.

Whether you will like Brussels sprouts 

or playing in the snow.

There is no prenatal personality test,

no questionnaire or list of preferences.

Your existence, enabled in part by my own

flesh and blood,

depends on something else entirely.

Would I take that job if I could?

Pencil in your features like some dystopian geneticist,

gray-green eyes and your dad’s hair.

I’d never have to tell you

not to hit your sister.

You’d never cry over out-of-reach candy.

And I think

you’d end up really boring.

We named you Abraham before we saw you,

a name emanating legacy,

a dream of faith-fed greatness. Abraham.

Presidential, near-prehistoric. Possibility

and promise.

No, I wouldn’t write your story.

The part of me that wants to 

has all the fear, none of the reckless courage

such a name requires.

But God knew you before I did,

he saw your footprints and where they led,

and promised to lead you.

You may not turn out to be

the father of a nation 

but you will be the father of something.

Your life brings forth some newness

some first-print exclusive

never-would-have-thought backstory

written by the only original in the universe.

We chose your name

but I have a feeling

God did that too.

A resurrection story

Last year around Easter, I found myself compelled to poetry by Good Friday, that beautiful contradiction. 

This year, for whatever reason, I was inspired by the time in between Friday and Resurrection Sunday, when all the disciples had to show for all their learning was a dead rabbi and a hostile community. What would it have been like to walk home after Jesus' burial, anything but assured of his resurrection?

In particular I wanted to explore Peter's perspective, and the complex emotions that I'm sure he was wrestling with after Jesus' death. He wasn't just a passive observer of the event. He'd been intimately connected with Jesus, the only disciple recorded as being confident enough in Jesus to say that he was the Messiah. And even after all that drama, all that conviction, in Jesus' time of suffering, Peter had still denied him to preserve his own well-being.

It must have tortured him. Imagine the relief, then, when Jesus came back--not only justifying all the disciples' faith in him, but willing to embrace Peter as a brother and to empower him to share the fulness of the Gospel with anyone and everyone he could. What a comeback story. And what an encouragement to me it is to see Peter's cowardly yet all-too-relatable failure turned so magnificently into Spirit-driven fire. 

Without the resurrection, we're all stuck in our failures. But Jesus defeated death so you too could rise up out of it and become his champion. 

Saturday

The world was ending.

more precisely,

the world had ended yesterday

a few hours after noon—

the visible simply took time

to catch up

with the invisible.

The Truth, invisible to so many,

still cloudy, even to his closest friends,

had been marched to his death

only yesterday afternoon.

His body,

heartbreakingly human,

lay lifeless, empty as a shattered vessel.

His blood had been red as it poured out,

no more extraordinary than a loaf of bread.

What was it he had said? 

For you I am broken, drained. 

Remember me always.

And as he passed the bread Peter had thought,

I would sooner forget my own name 

than You.

But he had been wrong. In weakness he’d failed

even while praying for the courage to fight.

Now his one hope, his redemption was gone,

hidden away in a tomb

whose stone, rolling to seal it,

had lodged itself in his throat

and would never be exorcised.

Don’t be afraid, he’d said. I will return.

But it couldn’t be true. 

Even if it were,

surely Peter had soiled his portion.

That wine-red blood was on his hands.

And the rooster had crowed his death sentence

even before they had condemned his Christ.

What sacrifice could cover the shame 

so real to him now, 

so much more piercing than any fable of forbidden fruit?

No, the golden hour had passed.

They had killed him,

and he had died like any man.

The dawn of that Sunday

Peter’s mind was an island,

a sheer, desolate crag.

A place no miracles could grow.

Blasphemer or coward, he’d earned

his reward. 

Someone burst in the door–

doors still existed, even in a world at its end--

Mary had been running.

She stood, eyes bright with tears,

catching enough breath to utter two words.

Two words,

and Peter’s legs couldn’t take him fast enough.

Two words:

He’s alive. 

Happy Easter!

My baby girl is eight months old

She is too big. And too tiny. 

Babies are weird, because time with them is both long and short and they seem both young and old and mysterious and familiar.

Because my children are such a strange phenomenon to me, I think one of the best things I can do is write poems for them. I want to remember how surreal this time is, how fleeting, how surprising. 

For my daughter
You aren't real.
You're from a dream of mine,
a memory of a future that used to be 
unattainable,
far-off and ever-changing
like the many professions I aspired to.
My visions of adulthood,
as real to me as the costume jewelry in our dress-up box,
never included the words "my daughter."
A daughter was somehow
a strange thing,
an impossible thing.
How could I muster dreams of a you
that would inevitably be
so like me?
I'd have to know you,
really know you,
nose-to-nose.

It makes sense now
how you seemed not to fit then
before I knew your shape existed.
Discovering you was like
finding a Delorean in a parking lot.

I say the words
"my daughter" now
and they're shaped like you--
just the thought of your smiling cheeks,
so jolly, so soft
like tiny flans
and I could cry about the you
that is somehow both real
and everything I ever wanted
without knowing what I wanted was
you. 

On Surviving a Car Accident

Yesterday I was in a car accident, and it was rough. Every hour since it happened I've been praising God that no one was seriously hurt (except my beloved car, Han). Somehow we're all safe, and life is so much more valuable than a car. And I am humbled, once again, determined to keep glorifying the Lord for blessing me and everyone else with so many mercies. 

Since I can't seem to help going over the experience and almost none of those thoughts are helpful, I wrote a poem. Maybe it's therapeutic. At the very least it's something to offer. 

Life of a Car Crash

the crash feels like nothing,
like a sound,
like your arms floating up toward the heavens,
like a gesture of surrender.

it feels like blue,
the color of airbags,
it feels like black and white,
like looking through your eyelids.

it feels fuzzy
like losing your glasses,
like the only reality is the baby screaming
like no one and everyone hears you saying
sorry

it feels like shock,
like a moment of invincibility,
like remembering others exist somehow,
beyond yourself.

and then
it feels like a million questions,
like losing consciousness,
like recalling a dream

only later do you begin to sense
your body was in the car with you
and now it's one big bruise

and it feels like relief,
then like swallowed confusion
then like all the fear you should've felt
returning
and again

the crash was like dying
like resetting a switch on mortality
like we could've died and thank God
no one died

it plays over, 
theme and variations
it begs for resolution.
you begin to recover, mind and body
and soul
but that part feels like pain
and why does the pain come now

it's not the losing control
but the trying to find it again
that hurts.

God does answer prayers

June 24th is the new favorite holiday of all pro-life people. A poem for the occasion:

Finally, an Answer

Is this the first one:
It feels like the first real victory,
the first time we rallied
and overcame the enemy.
It feels like the first day in decades
we've breathed clean air

But is it, really,
when for the light to get here
it had to travel quite the distance,
one point in history to the next,
too far away to see at first,
now blindingly here,
leaving behind
a trail of undaunted footsteps.

Every domino set, a victory.
Every step forward, a battle won.

No,
when God was silent
He was not absent--
He was there, baton raised
breath poised,
kinetically focused,
never hasty.
Our lens is a pinpoint;
our frame too small
to realize how short our time is,
how infinitesimal the gap
between silence and sound,
between earth and sun.

So in the darkness, still I will thank Him
for the speed of light. 

All is vanity?

The past weeks in our communities seem to have been plagued by evil. Maybe it's just my childhood innocence shedding its scales, but it seems to me that the older I've gotten the heavier the weight of grief and loss in the world has become. Some days I sense a burden of things inexpressible by any language. 

Since my children were born, I've only felt this angst deepen. I know this world is passing away. I know that darkness must increase so that when the light finally banishes it, the glory of that moment will endure forever. Though this is true, I also know that even as darkness grows, hope will too. Hope will never be out-shined by darkness.

So this is my charge to you, fellow pilgrims: seek beauty, hold on to hope, have faith, be brave. Go outside in the springtime. And listen to your mom <3 

Solomon's despair, revisited

Mom said write a poem about a rose
when all I can think of is the world's
love of death.
She said,
go outside where things are still green,
somehow,
and be reminded that not all is death,
not all is lost in darkness.
There is a vivaciousness
in the vibration
of the air.
There's a residue that lingers, persistent
long after words have faded
into ink on a page.
There is life amidst this dying,
a new Spirit that brings buds to bloom.
So in the end,
a rose, or a poem, is not a frivolity.
No fleeting beauty is meaningless,
but it comes like a fragrant breeze
through a still room,
stirring whispers of long-suffering hope. 

Easter for the guilty ones

Barabbas is an afterthought in the Easter story, but this year I find myself compelled by his experience. He was guilty of great evil, yet the Jews demanded Jesus be crucified on the cross that had been prepared for him. 

What would it have been like to be the very man who was exchanged for Jesus on that Good Friday? We all are Barabbas in practice, all of our souls exchanged for the one perfect Jesus--but he was granted this intensely personal view of Jesus' propitiation for our sins in a way that no one else has ever known.

I hope he didn't take it for granted. I pray I never will. 

A Good Day for Barabbas

All I can see is the cross.

Lurking behind, looming before me

around and above me,

inescapable.

I know only one emotion now.

Fear.

Fear of dying.

And beyond that, the still more ominous fear

of death.

I know nothing good can await me there.

It is a dead end, the road to it paved

with pain and humiliation

and overshadowed by that sadistic tree.

They will come for me.

They will open the door and speak my name.

Barabbas,

they will sneer. 

They will spit it out like sour wine.

And then will come the real fear,

the slow and masochistic march.

I will see the cross,

feel its crushing weight

cut into my back.

My ears will fill with the sound of my name,

spoken with contempt, with derision.

Never again

will I hear love in those syllables.

I will feel the life within me churning,

writhing as if caught in a snare,

not knowing its escape will also be its downfall.

They will strip me bare

like Adam in the Garden.

The nails will snap shut their jaws

and I will wait to die, blessing and cursing every breath.

The cell door opens.

Barabbas,

they call. The first stone.

But the next ones fall from their hands.

They want him, not you.

Him

not me.

Who is this man, 

condemned to take my place?

Ashamed, I realize

I do not care.

Him, not me.

Not me.

I am a free man, an impossible 

contradiction,

but I cannot go home.

They may have freed me, but

they will never welcome me. 

My life is tainted by death.

Where else can I go but that inevitable place?

I am drawn to the hill,

the place where he died,

where my blood should have watered the ground.

My blood, not his.

But I am here, I am whole. And he is not. 

Who is he? I look up,

as if Heaven might answer

but when I lift my eyes, all I can see

is the cross. 

Abortion isn't Healthcare. It's a Holocaust.

I can't stop thinking about those babies. 

More than likely you already know what I'm talking about, but if you don't: last week, the bodies of five babies were recovered by Washington D.C. police in the home of a well-known pro-life advocate. For days the pro-life community has been calling out for an investigation into their deaths, which appear not only brutal in nature (as all abortion is), but potentially illegal as well. There has been nothing but radio silence from the D.C. government in response. 

This is our holocaust. 

I do not use that word lightly. Some may think I use it inappropriately, but I don't care. The time for sparing feelings has long since passed, and abortion is a holocaust on a grander scale than any Nazi ever could have dreamed. And yet, so many of us are silent. So many are content to stand by and do nothing. So many are content to keep the truth buried inside.

And what's our excuse? Social ostracization. Unpleasant conversations. Imperfect solutions. The Germans in 1940 had better excuses than we do. 

After a week like this, it can be hard to remember that evil is destined to lose. But I still believe in the God who defeated death. 

Lament for the Five

Five.

Five children dead.

Five sons and daughters mangled, abandoned

to blood and fear, cold and betrayal. 

Five dead faces speak for millions,

and the wicked heart calls this barbarism 

beauty.

These words, these thoughts are poison,

bitter herbs and stinging bites.

But how can I write anything else

when my mind is full of them?

Words of sorrow and rage,

hateful condemnations,

silent screams. 

I am anger,

I am a blunt weapon.

I am fatigue, I am nausea.

I am everything unrighteous. My heart

turns against me.

I hate death and desire destruction.

I desire the destruction of the wicked

yet my own maladies would condemn me.

Pain and death surround me.

The pain of the innocent encroaches on my safety.

With every breath

fear and hopelessness snatch at my joy.

The dead lurk behind my eyelids.

I cry rivers of blood,

never enough to satisfy a cruel world.

But the Holy One of Israel will not be thwarted.

His hands heal their misery,

for them now just a memory, 

while left behind,

we live still, in the echoes.

Come quickly to save me,

Man of Sorrows and Prince of Peace.

Wipe the tears from my eyes.

Let me write of beauty and love.

Let me sing songs of hope,

courageous ballads.

Let me dance and be joyful.

No more songs of lament

will flow from my lips,

no tears then

Except tears of laughter when I see You.

You, always before me,

just in your anger. Eager in mercy.

Perfect in goodness and

inescapable.

Let me rejoice and find in You my salvation.

find out more about how you can fight the evil of abortion at liveaction.org

Snow and what it teaches us

It's almost springtime, and every year as winter slowly edges out the door it leaves behind a reminder of the One who created the seasons.

Even slush is a sign from God

When snow comes down,

crystal-white and clean,

it settles in flawless formation

against the world.

Blades of grass become tiny daggers,

houses turn into gingerbread

and daylight into a galaxy of stars.

No one can say it isn't beautiful,

that first crisp crunch through the sun-hardened crust of frost.

No one can say it isn't just as delectable

as bread new-birthed from the oven

It's the crumbs we regret.

The slush on the side of the road,

the gathered leavings,

stale as the word gray.

The snow turns from glistening diamond to coal dust

blackening our lungs,

the dirt it had covered so cleverly

churned up by the movements of the world

Too soon, we say.

Too soon the snow goes sludgy,

too soon the bread goes stale.

Unthinkable, the idea of a purity

that lasts.

But

if we could have the snow washed clean again

then anything might be possible.

Another poem about washing the dishes (?)

What can I say but that monotony inspires poetry?

Prometheus

Eventually,

it all became routine.

The cliff, the eagle, the blood. 

There was a rhythm to it, a savage kind of defiance

in ceasing to struggle. 

Every day became a small eternity, 

its own cycle of destruction and reincarnation.

Every morning he blessed the sun for its renewal,

the fiery orb that both taunted and inspired him.

He blessed the sun,

the bright splash of daybreak,

the inward breath that told him he was whole once again.

He’d learned to number the clouds in their colors,

to lift his face and receive the light gratefully.

He would not blame the sun

though it was the herald of his doom, 

bearing on its rays the swift and hungry eagle.

He of all people should know,

fire brings life as well as death. 

We have a daughter!

The ultrasound confirmed yesterday that our newest family member is a GIRL. She is a stunning little treasure <3

Girl

You have always been precious
to us.
A lyrical sound, a spark of golden light,
a treasure we plucked from 
God's outstretched hand.
To me, your existence is a mystery,
near and far,
illuminated and shrouded,
like meeting a stranger you already know.
Like your mama you will be a girl for a long time,
and then a woman. 
Will you bear your own children
someday?
Will the air deliver lullabies to them
from your own mouth?
The world holds so much new
for you
and it will desire your love,
a love that is already spoken for. 
But you'll see beyond the world
to things unimagined.
In my head you smile beneath bouncy curls.
Wisps of your defiant mane flow outward into thin air,
catching the Sun's beams 
for treasures of your own. 

He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure. Isaiah 33:6

Christmas in August

On the one hand, I wouldn't mind if God took his time with the whole end-of-the-world business. Mostly selfishly, I think of my children and the world they will grow up in. I want them to live in peace, free from the trials I know are coming, whether 100 days or a thousand years from now. I want to play with my grandchildren.

Sometimes I pray God's mercy would extend just a little bit longer, just enough. 

But then I'm reminded that this world, precious though it is, is not the goal. And more than anything I want my children to know that too, to claim their place in the world Jesus is making for those who trust in Him. When He comes to deliver us to that place, no past trial will ever tarnish its shine--all the things we've suffered here on Earth, big and small, will only serve to sweeten our joy on that day. 

May we be ready when He comes. It's going to be something else. 

The Best Day Ever

It'll come on suddenly.
All at once the lights will go on
like the man in the moon just flipped a giant switch
and it'll seem amazing to us, then,
how any of us were able to see before,
how dark and dismal things really were.
The earth will shout,
"There He is!"
and the roar will be a thousand waterfalls,
a million rockets sent into space,
and looking around we'll see each other 
as we always should have been,
dust folded into the shape of life,
everything healed and whole,
all the old things forgotten.
Your whole life has been one long Christmas Eve.
Sometimes the morning seemed
so impossibly far
the darkness so deep
outside your window,
and you don't remember falling asleep
but once you did, of course,
it came in an instant.
And now here you are, on the Christmas of all Christmases,
His light more dazzling than any tree,
and you'll smile so big,
you'll think your face should be hurting.
But of course nothing hurts now. Nothing will ever again.

It's that time of year...

Every summer, it seems, I feel compelled to write a lament poem for the sad reality that I do not live within strolling distance from Lake Superior. 

Through the Wardrobe

I don't live here.
Here I'm just a tourist.

I live somewhere else,
somewhere the morning emerges out of mist,
the air washed clean by crystal waves.
I live there,
crossing the blade edge between this world
and one yet discovered.
I walk in and out of time.
In my little house among the trees
life moves forward
green and warm like a cup of coffee.
But across the way, the hours dissolve into minutes
into seconds and milliseconds
mixed in with pebbles on the shoreline.
Sitting there I can almost taste eternity,
see the light just beyond the clouds,
feel its warmth, even as the chill wind stirs the waters.

God's Spirit moves over Lake Superior. 

More existential poetry

As a historian, it's both hard to believe in destiny and hard not to. 

Teleology

I feel tight somehow,

dough rolled into a spiral and no room to expand. The oven turns on.

I am compressed like a black hole. I am immeasurably tiny

and vastly inevitable. Where is all this gravity going?

and where did it come from

The universe has rules. Everything exists to do just that

and no history could have ever been any different, or else it would have happened.

If things could be different they would

but rules make the world just like they make up our bodies.

We exist in the space between ice and water,

lava and stone

the future solidifying into the past, as quickly as it passes us by

like the cows on the side of the road,

still there in our minds even after we reach our destination. 

Can destiny be applied retroactively?