Looking Good....

Speaking of looks, we're going through a little remodel here on the blog.  We're headed to the Midwest this week to visit family and friends.  While we're there eating WI State Fair cream puffs, one of my besties is going to do a little photo shoot of our crazy crew.  You know, it's been a year since Violet joined us and it's time for her to be up top with the rest of us, don't ya think?

Look for the reveal in late August.  I've been asked to do some more writing and I've missed it!  So, we'll be adding some topic pages and such.  I excited for what's ahead...if you're lucky, we'll share the cream puffs!

The Look is Back

The look is back.  The deep, haunting expression as familiar now as my own breath.  She cycles, our first-loved daughter, twirling a dance between whole and broken that leaves me undone. 

The anger.  The bitterness.  The jealousy.  The fear.

One day a happy princess, all smiles and rainbows.  The next, withdrawn, guarded, and closed.  Little issues made monstrous through her lens of neglect.

We speak the truth…HER TRUTH…HIS TRUTH…day in and day out.  Some mothers say, “Did you wash your hands?” a thousand times a day.  I murmur, “You are safe.  You are loved.”  Does she hear me?  In the deep places of her soul where her heart is locked, does the Word reach there? 

There are days my response flows effortlessly, grace pouring out like water in sunshine.  But then there are the days like today when the words are a choice.  A deliberate forcing myself to pause and speak life to her.  There are things to do!  There are meals that need making and jobs that need doing, and clothes that need washing.  Forever there are clothes that need washing!  How can we still be dancing to the same wrong song?

Recently, Mia has had a horribly itchy rash return that took six doctors to diagnose.  Could it be a response to her overtaxed liver?  Possibly.  It’s also very possibly made worse by stress.  She has scratched and picked at her skin until she has scarred.  The metaphor is quite profound.  Her fear has literally led her to physical pain.  Oh but the emotional pain…so much harder to heal!  The skin?  Special soaps, steroid cream, herbal remedies.  The heart?  Therapy, endless hugs and snuggles, words of affirmation, and most of all THE WORD.  Washing over her.  Pouring over her.  Washing her clean.  Filling her soul.

Someday, Mia will love and trust with crazy abandon because the God who shaped her adorable nose and her chocolate eyes did something even crazier…coming here to stop the cycle of pain and hurt by defeating the devil and overcoming the world.  And someday Mia will dance in Her father’s house in fields of grace and these days that feel so long will seem but a moment.  Now we see but dimly.  Then we shall see face to face.  And how radiant she will be!  Until then, we dance.  And Randall and I, we’ll thank God every day for the gift of holding her while the music plays…