Friday, February 28, 2014

A Mealtime Prayer

We sat at the table with the usual chaos and disarray inherent in mealtime with toddlers. We were spending a wonderfully relaxing weekend at the lake house with one of my husband’s older brothers, his wife, and their two young kids. Our kids played fabulously well together, laughing, pretending and disappearing for hours without needing intervention. The lake house is a miraculous haven for this very reason and a place I cannot wait to go.

Mealtime, however, is always mealtime and this one was proceeding as usual: kids in and out of their seats a million times, messy hands grabbing at everything in sight and lots and lots of promises for mounds of sugar in exchange for a bite of a carrot. In between all the bribing and grabbing, my sweet niece, Reese, decided it was time to pray. She communicated this by telling everyone to hold hands and then once all the kiddos were in place, she said, “Ok, Aunt Noelle, pray.”

I tried to redirect her by overstating how much I wanted to hear her pray and when that didn’t work I said maybe one of the other kids had something to say. Her insistent demand that I pray became louder and more urgent, so that the other adults in the room now turned their attention to our hand-holding. My husband tried to help, “Oh, Reesey, I don’t think you want to hear Aunt Noelle pray.” Her own mama and daddy encouraged her that she could pray for herself and we could all get back to lunch.

But one of the truly beautiful things about kids is that when they get a good idea in their heads, they stick to it. I love this determination, except of course, when I’m awkwardly the recipient of it. Finally, my own son lowered his head and softly said, “Thank you for this morning”, which is something he heard his Papa say a few months ago and has intermittently repeated ever since. This appeased his cousin enough that we were all allowed to let go of each other’s hands and return to our vain attempts at sitting still and eating vegetables.


The scene stuck with me the rest of the day and began to haunt me as the week went on. I felt so exposed and so incapable as a mama and an aunt in that moment. A flurry of memories filled my mind and I kept wondering why I couldn’t have just said a heartfelt, “Thank you for this amazing family and this time we get to spend together.” Simple, real, Amen.

But, the truth is, I haven’t prayed in over four years. Nothing about prayer feels simple or real anymore.

I used to pray religiously – in every sense of the word. Regularly, routinely, by the Book, to the One, ask and you shall receive, morning, noon and night. I prayed with friends, I prayed for friends, I wrote prayers, I sung prayers. For over a decade, prayer was an enormous part of my days. And when I prayed, I had a secure sense of Who I was speaking to: Part Love, Part Wrath, Powerful and All-ears. I felt my prayers were making a difference and being heard, despite the creeping skepticism and doubt. And so I prayed and prayed and prayed.

Little nicks and cracks started to appear in the walls of my prayer life over time. There were days when it seemed the connection had been lost and I just wasn’t getting through, the answers weren’t being delivered fast enough, something with the formula was off. The first time I remember this happening was when I was about seven years old. I’d been sent to my room for a timeout, by which I mean, I’d pushed long and hard enough that my mom couldn’t stand to be around me anymore. I had one of those school fundraiser catalogues in my room, with all the over-priced wrapping paper and chocolate goodies. I flipped through and found a pile of chocolates that I just had to have. It must have been a Sunday afternoon, because this lesson was fresh on my heart: “Ask and you will receive.” It seemed so simple and so obvious. Why hadn’t I heard of this a long time ago? So I started praying something like this, “God, I heard this morning that if I really want something and honestly ask you for it, I’ll get it. So, I’d like to put in an order for this pile of chocolate, which looks so delicious and would be the perfect hold-me-over while I’m suffering through this isolation up here. Please give me this chocolate, God. Amen.”  It’s amazing how vividly I remember sitting there and waiting with my hands open, half-convinced that real, live chocolate would fall into my lap any second.

As the seconds wore into minutes, I uttered a few more reminder prayers, hoping that my first prayer had just gotten lost in the pile of other requests. I was used to having to wait my turn, being one of five children, so I patiently asked again. Then again. And again. The longer my hands remained empty and that glossy pile of chocolate stared at me from the catalogue, the more hopeless I became. It reminded me of all the other times people hadn’t shown up in my little life. A voice seemed to say to me, “See, I told you it wouldn’t work.” And so, eventually, I gave up. And that’s my very first memory of prayer.

As I got older, the let downs got bigger. When I was a Senior in high school, I earned the right to address my entire class and small town as Valedictorian. By this time, I was a devout Christian, attending multiple meetings a week, spending hours of private time in prayer and Scripture reading and serving in several ministries. In April, when it was confirmed that I was ranked number one and would give the class address, I went into prayer overdrive. My heart and mind went wild with visions of people falling on their knees in repentance and weeping at the revelation of Love. All that good, radical Christian stuff. 

Every morning leading up to my speech, I set my alarm for 5:00am. Then I would mount my bike, imagining I was Joshua leading his troops around the wall of Jericho; I rode around and around the school, praying the whole time. I prayed for specific classmates and teachers and administrators, imagining the walls of their hearts falling down and accepting the Good News of Jesus. I prayed for old boyfriends and past enemies. I prayed for a community awakening. I pedaled and prayed for an hour or so and then went home to change before heading to my morning babysitting job, where I prayed some more. I dreamed and prayed and expected all month.

In the afternoons, I turned my prayer focus to the content of my class address. I wrote several drafts, seeing this as the catalyst for the miracle that was about to happen. In my youth group, I shared my dreams and prayers and asked my friends to join me. I really, really believed that what I was praying for was going to happen. When graduation day finally came,  I was so prayed up and hyped up, I think I literally expected God himself to descend from heaven with a burst and a bang.

I was, perhaps obviously, sorely disapointed. I gave the speech without hiccup or stutter, nevertheless, God did not descend. Nobody began weeping or spontaneously fell to their knees. Nobody cried out, “Oh, thank you, God!” or ran to the stage for prayer. To this day, I am not aware of a single change in anyone’s life that came from all that praying and expecting…except my own. It put another crack in my faith, another “See, I told you it wouldn’t work” written on my heart.  God hadn’t show up again and I was confused and hurt. 

I started the summer voicing some of my hurt and confusion, but nobody seemed to have any answers or any interest in sitting amongst the questions with me. 
In hindsight, I think it mattered more to me to be a good Christian than to be at peace with my questioning. 
So, eventually I did what seemed to be the only logical option: I stuffed the questions and the pain down, down, down. When I think about that process of stuffing, I imagine the questions as a balloon and me as a large glass vase with a small opening at the top. Every time I pushed the balloon in, some other part would pop back out, so that there was always this sense of squirming and discomfort and misfit about my faith.

Eventually I did become an avid prayer again. There was a season that I begged God daily for my father’s health; another when I prayed and weeped for the pain I saw in family and friends around me. I prayed they would know God, make good decisions, find friendship and peace. I prayed for orphans and injustice. I prayed for neighbors and foreign exchange students. I prayed for provision and guidance. I prayed often for forgiveness and help with all my own personal shortcomings.
Over the next several years, I prayed and prayed and prayed some more. There were many more nicks and cracks in my prayer faith along the way. More voices taunting “I told you so” and more daggers piercing the truth further into my heart that nobody really shows up. Somehow I kept managing to silence them all, or rather to keep more or less ignoring their nagging, stuffing them down with more prayer and a very busy religious life.
Then, in 2008, my husband and I moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand. For years we had planned and prayed for this move, dreaming of a life overseas, serving the underprivileged and orphaned, sharing our faith with the locals and raising our own family. In many ways, our Christian faiths had built up to this move. It felt like the fulfillment of years of dreaming and praying. And now, with much excitement and anticipation, we were making the move.

Within weeks of our arrival, the dream began to fall apart. I’ve written about much of our Thailand experiences elsewhere – the loss, the betrayal, the disappointment. From a prayer perspective, it was the final crack in an already crumbling foundation. We’d spent hundreds of hours in prayer over relationships and ministry projects that now fell lifeless at our feet in a single day. We prayed for friendships and marriages back home that also withered into lifeless heaps. We prayed for guidance and comfort and found silence and confusion instead. We, and many, many others, prayed in groans and pleas and constant beseeching for our foster son, Makham, only to have him inexplicably ripped from our arms. Nick, crack, shatter...

As I write today, it’s been exactly four years since Makham (now Joel) was taken from us. Losing him and experiencing the months of emptiness following that loss was the crack that made the whole foundation of my faith and prayers crumble. In the past four years, my prayers have been reduced to infrequent moans, guttural “Oh, God’s” and “If only’s”. If I've prayed, it's been out of sheer exhaustion and with no expectation of any answer or comfort. These were second-nature moans, with nowhere else to turn, certainly with no understanding of to Whom I might be speaking. 
It's felt as though I had no option but to finally resolved myself to all those whispers and all those daggers that spoke of what never would be. 
And so, it was out of all this that I heard my niece’s sweet, simple request for a mealtime blessing. In a second, all those cracks revealed themselves and all those daggers pierced me again. I sat there and took a 15 year life tour of unanswered prayers, shattered dreams and a mysterious God. I gave all the loss a moment of silence. I couldn’t find the words to explain to my niece why I didn’t have a prayer to voice that day. I couldn’t figure out a way to simplify all those years and all that pain. I couldn't explain to the kids why part of me wept at their cousin's innocent request and I certainly couldn’t begin to explain to them why another part of me welcomed her invitation; why, in some oddly, undefined way, part of me was ready and willing to offer a prayer of thanks that day, to someone, somewhere. So, instead, I redirected and smiled a lot. I encouraged my son when he offered his own little prayer. I squeezed hands tightly and said Amen. 

And then I whispered, "Thank you." 





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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

NBrynn Designs

Some of you know me as writer, some of you as event planner and some of you as that crazy mom chasing those two over-active toddlers around! Another side of me, one that I don't talk about as much, is "small business owner". 

I started NBrynn Designs almost two years ago. Originally, I began with just little girls' accessories, inspired by our new baby girl, Havyn (who will be two this weekend!!). I got some positive feedback from friends and family about the pieces I was creating for her and, really just on a whim, decided to see if anyone would actually pay money for them. A few people did, and then a few more, and I started to see potential. 

In the process of trying to develop products for the girls' headbands, I stumbled across the idea of making bowties for the little guys. The first time I dress my two in a matching headband and bowtie set, they were a huge hit! I realized I was on to something and started listing bowties in my Etsy shop as well. 

I continued to develop the bowtie side of the business, improving construction and increasing fabric selections. By the end of my first year of business, NBrynn had gone through several transitions until finally morphing into what it is today: an established custom bowtie business. I slowly started phasing out most of my girl items so that I could focus on the volume of bowtie sales I was receiving. Other than a couple dozen matching bowtie and hair bow sets, my shop now consists of over 100 fabric options for bowties, sizing from newborn through adult. 

At the beginning of 2013, I set a personal sales goal for NBrynn that would equate to quadruple in sales from 2012. I was shocked when I hit that goal within the first quarter of the year! Needless to say, 2013 was much more successful than I ever dreamed and has been an enormous blessing to our family as I've transitioned to staying home full-time with the kids. When I left my desk job, we had no idea how we were going to pay the bills. NBrynn has been the answer. 

At the start of this year, 2014, I turned my focus to the bridal market. I'd done several bridal parties by custom request, but had never directly marketed for such customers. NBrynn now offers dozens of fabric choices for groomsmen, grooms, ushers and ring bearers, with matching flower girl and bridesmaids pieces also available. I recently started selling at the Wedding Mile and have teamed up with other vendors in the wedding industry to grow sales. It has been exciting to see this side of the business start to flourish!

It is always so amazing to me how many special events I get to be a part of through NBrynn. Whether it's a newborn photo session, a special family gathering, a Christmas party or a wedding, I'm honored that, in a tiny way, I was allowed into those priceless life moments. I always create my pieces with the individual in mind for this very reason. 

Two years ago, I had no intentions or expectations of starting a business that would result in hundreds of sales a month and thousands of dollars a year. With some creativity, dedication and hard work, and a lot of encouragement along the way, NBrynn Designs has become a small business that I'm proud to call my own. 











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Sunday, February 23, 2014

Weathered


It’s amazing how the meaning of a word can take on totally different shapes in different seasons of our lives. Take, for instance, the word “corny”. As a young adolescent, it probably was an adjective used for something silly or not at all cool: "God, mom, you're so corny!" As a young mother, it’s one of many descriptive ways of describing your precious little one's bowel movements to your other mama friends. Perhaps as a chef or a foot surgeon, it could be used professionally to describe a dish or a patient. I'm being facetious, but you get the picture.

Today, I realized that faith is one of these words for me. 
In my earliest memories, faith was an invisible connection with a mostly friendly, although also very stern “guy in the sky” - someone to talk to, but also someone who was always watching me. God was a double-edged sword. As I entered puberty and also entered into an active practice of faith, the word itself became a stockpot of stewed ideas... 
A personal relationship 
A lot of rules  
A community to belong to 
A constant repentance 
A reason to live 
A set way of doing things 
A person 
A place 
A label: Christian.
Some ingredients were delicious and others were down right rotten. Together, they’d stew and stew and I’d eagerly eat up each bite. Only later would I realize what an awful taste was left in my mouth and how sick I had become from it all. My stockpot of ingredients had formed perhaps the most toxic thing a human can ingest: Religion. 

Recently, all the anger and sadness and resentment that have defined much of me for the past several years, have started to melt away. Like the icicles hanging from our gutters, drip-dripping from the sun’s glare; like the slushy snow lining the streets as the temperatures rise, I’ve sensed a subtle drip-dripping in my soul. I’ve looked around, but mostly within, and learned a lot. I’ve learned that, for me, faith meant religion. And I’ve learned that religion is just another bandaid over a wounded heart - like alcohol or money or shopping or sex - it’s a temporary fix, an illusory world. It gives the impression of control and a skewed sense of belonging, but really it’s just another way to hide and self-protect.
For years and years, the faith that I admired was a poised, strong, confident stature, with legs bent and arms ready for battle. 
Armor was clean and glimmering in the sunlight. The jaw was strong, the eyes certain. Everything was neat and in order. Swords were sharpened over and over again, arrows added to the quiver incessantly and shields securely held, prepared for the fight. The whole thing had a glossy finish. 
But today, the faith that I admire is weathered and ragged. The stature is on hands and knees, fingernails filled with dirt from clawing at the earth. This is not a stature ready for battle, prepared for the fight - it is a stature of one having faced the battle, one having fought and fighting still. 
Nothing is clean and there is no armor. Instead, cheeks are chapped from the fierce gusts of wind that life keeps blowing; tear streaks are dry, but visible from the dust lines that remain; hair is greasy and disheveled. There is weakness and frailty, instead of confidence and certainty. But there is movement and hope.  

Today, I know that faith doesn’t mean religion. 
Faith means courage. 
It is not a bandaid over a wounded heart; true, weathered faith - faith that has stared the world’s shit in the eyes, faith that has held a dead baby in it’s arms, faith that has said goodbye to a dying friend for the last time, faith that has known loss and abuse and betrayal - it refuses to accept the bandaid-fix, it chooses to walk with a wide-open, bleeding heart, day in and day out, as honestly as possible. And it is the most courageous act I have ever seen. To hope when all seems hopeless; to believe when all is grey; to take the next step when the path ahead is pitch black…
May I be called among the courageous. 
   
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Monday, February 17, 2014

You Really Should

Today has been one of those days when I have to constantly remind myself to breathe. My stomach is in knots and my chest is tight. I've been harsh with the kids, short with my husband and unrelentingly judgemental with myself. As nap time approached, all I could think of was writing a to do list in the hopes of easing some of my stress - I always feel better when there are boxes to checkoff. So I started: 

1) Cleanup (straighten, vacuum, laundry) - 20 min
2)

Yes, that's all the farther I got. Some sibling squabble called my attention away and then it was lunchtime and then Kyler needed help going potty and then...well, you get the picture. I rushed around for the next hour and then zipped through our usual nap time routine, desperate to get to my list and away from the kids. I all but sprinted down the stairs and found the scrap of paper I'd started writing my to do list on once the kids were down. I read number one and thought ,"What was I thinking?" 
I'd need to switch into my superwoman cape in order to accomplish all that cleaning within the time limit I'd allotted. I'd failed before even starting. 
I dropped my head, slumped my shoulders and gave a deep sigh. Uugghh...

That sigh turned out to be magical. It caused me to pause just long enough to remember a section of a book I'd recently read*, where Brene Brown talks about moments just like this. She describes her "dig deeper" button and how for years when she'd find herself in that low and depleted state, she'd push the button and keep on going, keep on plowing through and making life work. 
I've always been good at keeping on, at pushing the "dig deep" button. I check off every box, no matter the cost. I often end up empty and resentful and totally exhausted. At least once a year I lose it completely. 
But then Brene talks about the midlife crisis this kind of soldiering on led her to and how she learned to slow down and choose a different way. I could sense that I was in a "dig deeper" moment - that all the shoulds of life were telling me to plow through my to do list and rest later, but that my soul was squeaking from somewhere deep to please, please take a break. This time, miraculously, I heard the soul-squeaks and decided to choose a different button. A kinder, gentler button. 

I wiped most of the macaroni and cheese from lunch off the floor then headed to the bathroom where I took the hottest shower I could stand. I let the steam cleanse away my stress for all twenty minutes that I "should have been" cleaning. 
I finally decided should's are all too often self-induced prisons and my soul needed more breathing room. 
So I let myself breathe and then write and then drink a nice cup of coffee. I sat on the couch and stared at the greasy little fingerprints all over our front window, the crumbs all over our living room carpet, the milk stains all over our couch. And then I kept right on writing and drinking my coffee. The kids were determined to ruin my Zen by waking up every ten minutes and insisting they were done napping. I told them I was just as determined to get my full two hours, then gently kissed them and locked them in their rooms. Kyler responded to this with a half hour of whining and kicking his wall. Havyn fluctuated between crying that she wanted her mommy and screaming out at me in anger. I almost got up to retrieve them a million times. I kept thinking: I shouldn't leave them upstairs. Maybe they only needed a short nap today. I should go get them. Then my mind would wander back to all the cleaning and the to do's and I'd think: I should be vacuuming, I should be prepping dinner, I should...
Should has controlled my life for a long time. 
I've always been a rule follower and a people pleaser. Growing up, I saw authenticity and emotional wholeness laid at the foot of upholding duties; I saw creativity and questioning traded out for following rules; I saw true connection given up to attend meetings. I learned that Me is last on the list. Should sounded a lot like must to me. 

I carried all these lessons into Christianity and soon became the girl who volunteered for everything. I began to find acceptance in conformity and worthiness in sacrifice. I didn't know how to say "No" and never really needed to: I thrived on being able to do it all. I found a hundred new rules to follow and many more people to please. At first, I loved living up to all the shoulds. I loved the attention and the sense of belonging. 
I loved being the poster child, the one others tried to emulate - except that, deep inside, I felt completely worthless and suffocated...even though I knew I shouldn't. 
All the shoulds left me increasingly conflicted and hopeless. I stayed busy, plowed through the fatigue and questions and had lots of good days in between, but there was often a lingering sense of, who am I? I had no sense of a soul inside that may need to rest and breathe once in a while. I defined myself by productivity and thus, I often felt alone and exhausted. Doing what I should always trumped doing what I wanted or even needed.   

It took years of life and loss and reading and soul-searching to even be able to distinguish that there are in fact two separate voices: the nasty shoulds and the true self. I think there's truth to the old adage that knowing is half the battle. That when you know better, you know better. That there is life beyond shoulds and conformity and people pleasing. That sometimes the "dig deeper" button is best left alone and that it's okay to listen to the soul-squeaks from within. 

Today, I gave up on should. I turned my ear to a faint squeaking and gave my "dig deeper" button the afternoon off. I let my soul breathe. 

*Brene Brown talks about her dig deep button in her book, Gifts of Imperfection. 


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Monday, February 10, 2014

Life's Cycles

I've been so struck by nature's life cycle recently. The bare trees, stripped of all their color and warmth; the sweet birds, flitting around from bare branch to bare branch; the snow-covered earth and the brown grass below; the squirrels, still chasing each other across our back fence, but with less enthusiasm and spirit. I've been thinking about the seasons - in the midst of one of our coldest winter's ever, it can feel like the snow will freeze us all before Spring and it's warmth find their way back.

There's something deeply morbid and richly hopeful about this life cycle. It awakens us to the knowing that all things will pass, if, somehow, we've managed to escape this reality in its darker, starker forms. We see with clarity that, for a season, there is cold and death; shriveling and fading. And we, like the leaves, the birds, the grass, we will die. Winter calls us to embrace our mortality.  

But, likewise, winter reminds us that this too will pass. The snow will melt, the grass will grow. The birds will lay their eggs and find abundant nourishment all around as the trees burst with new life. This is a sure hope: Spring will greet us again, with warmth and rain and life. 

From our front window

And we will welcome her, all the more for the cold that we've just endured. Though she may tarry longer than we'd hoped and though our bones may feel frozen stiff, we will not deny her beauty. We will not begrudge the blossoms for coming forth or shame the birds for singing. We will say, with a calm hope, Welcome, friend. And we'll enjoy the days we have. We'll embrace new. We'll relish the warmth that leads us to summer and breathe deeply of the colors that draw us into autumn. 

Somewhere, we will know that even this will pass; that winter will come again. And so with hope, comes pain; with joy, comes vulnerability; with love, comes loss. Nature tells us this story, our story, year after year after year. It is profoundly demoralizing and unavoidably inspiring. It is life. 

Just lay back & enjoy the ride!

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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Voices

There are a lot of voices to listen to. And it seems the more voices I try to hear, the more voices I discover there are. I've read a lot in the past few months...a couple memoirs, a novel, lots of soul-help, psychology oriented non-fiction. I'm so hungry to learn "what's out there"...both to find writing that resonates deeply inside me and to find thoughts that challenge and elevate. I've read and read, contemplated, drawn, written, read some more...

I laugh at myself when I realize that so much of my reading is oriented toward finding myself, my voice, the "true me". Yes, in the midst of the clutter of dozens and dozens of voices telling me their take on reality, what I'm most desperate for is a deep, restful sense of Me. I guess that's what I mean by writings that resonate deeply inside me. I'm looking for words that I haven't been able to write. 


Only recently have I started to think of myself as a writer. For years and years I journaled quite faithfully - largely prayers of repentance and pleas for more...more faith, more courage, more power, more friends, more divinity, more, more, more. I'm not sure if I was writing what was in my heart as much as I was trying to tell my heart what to be. There was always some rule I had in mind, some shortcoming well within view, and God as the only appropriate audience. But never did I sit down in freedom and rest and think, "I wonder what I have to say today..."  If I wrote, it was within a well-defined agenda. 

I'm not sure I have anything more to say today, but I am finding the freedom within myself to say it now. I'm learning that it's okay to be me, to let my voice be heard. Even if that voice is dissenting or unsure or a little too angry or a little too emotional or a little too whatever...I'm learning that my voice is beautiful. And that it's needed in this world. 


But it's so easy to lose your voice. I've lost my voice way more times than I've found it. I've seen my voice muffled by something as painful as a shallow reply and as distracting as a child's cry. It's slipped under the covers when I have an initimate word of kindness to speak, but not the courage to bear my heart. It's flown with the breezes that carry memories and grief and love. 

Still, I am learning I have a voice. A me that's worth knowing, worth writing, worth being. I think, yes, I say: 
I am a writer. 




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