ask relentlessly

Dear Jack and June,I would begin this with an apology - it has been so long since I've written - but I think, somehow, that you understand. You were with me, both of you. I know that you must have felt in your own way the pace of the fall, before you arrived and our family widened.Together, we studied and defended a dissertation proposal. We graded papers and wrestled. We read Daniel Tiger books and we sang loud the first 8 tracks of Hamilton. I want to tell you something, because our lives are busy and sometimes I have been busy, carrying you alongside me into the busyness. We spend time - you with toys you're determined to eat and me with words and emails and philosophy abstracts and attempts to write creatively.Today I had a moment when I realized that it is hard to want so many different things in a life. To be a parent and a spouse and a philosopher and a writer, to create and to build, to take long showers (a luxury, a luxury!) and go out on dates and to play in the backyard and to have loud dance parties to the Hamilton songs you know so well.But, my loves, I want you to know, that even in the midst of asking for what many will tell you is too much, I remembered something important about this family, this family that was waiting for you all along -we ask relentlessly.We ask God for big things. We ask for wild dreams, for places to be our fullest selves, for the courage to walk outside of our fears and expectations of who we are, moving always towards what lies ahead. We keep going even when we can't quite see the road.I want you to know this from the beginning, for even when it is hard and seems impossible - whether it's balancing playing the flute and taking ballet or playing soccer and basketball or painting or calculus or French or your first job and your first love. Do not be afraid to tell God about the more that you want - the thing slightly outside the realm of what you are accustomed to thinking possible or easy or manageable. Tell God these things, shout them in the car or whisper them on walks.He is not surprised at how big of a life you want.This part of belief is not often talked about - believing in more than we think possible. And there are disappointments along the way, there are dreams to which the answer is no, or not now, or not this way... but I promise you, even those answers are good because you have gathered up your courage to go ask God. You have shown up in the throne room. You have demanded the kind of relationship that God is always looking to have with us: the one-on-one, no-holds-barred, fighting-to-believe-hard-things one.I write this because I want you to be unafraid of asking for a big life. For a life fuller than the one you think you deserve or you think you can bear. Jesus would like to bear it with you, to meet you in it, to make a bold question the reason for a deeper relationship.You have taught me that I can ask this. Your bold entrances into my life, your life-changing-ness, your joy, your willingness to ask a lot of me and the love that is being built between all of us as we grow into the family that we are.I am asking God for a big life. I am asking God for a bold life. I pray that you will someday ask this too.Love,mom

what my mother taught me about miracles

 When I was about 16, I found a $100 bill fluttering behind a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot. It was being blown around mounds of almost-melted snow and the cracked, dusty white spots on the pavement where the salt and sand trucks have left their long footprints. I saw it, a flash of green, as I was crossing to the Italian sandwich and wine shop across the parking lot. I stooped to pick it up and unfolded it to see Ben Franklin's face peeking back at me. Standing in my kitchen thirty minutes later, my mother hummed out a tune that has become something of a hallmark for the memory - "I found a hundred dollars on the street, boom-BOOM-boom!" To this day, we only mention that parking lot and we both burst into song, usually accompanied by percussion on the back of chairs or pulling mugs from the cabinet. "What are the odds?" I remember asking her. She paused, and smiled, reaching for the cheddar cheese in the fridge. "God is watching out for us," she replied.At the time it didn't quite seem like an answer to my question.--My mother sees the world saturated with the wondrous. I think it must be the scientist in her - for the kingfisher, the bald eagle, the mushroom spores, the deepening riverbed, the melting snow pulling back to the reveal a tired but faithful New England spring - these are the stories she tells me of her morning dog walks. These are the reminders she offers to me on Wednesday mornings when all I seem to offer back is worry or fretting, the impossibility of laundry and school and learning ASL and teaching it to Jack.My mother tells me about the mushrooms and the nearby owl she couldn't see but she heard, high up in a tree somewhere between the marsh and the upper field.And my mother sees the most ordinary of stories infused with this same wonder. The God she taught me to love who made kingfisher and owl is the God whose miracles are often unrecognized. My mother taught me that it does not diminish the word miracle to acknowledge that the exact amount of money hiding in the cupholder of your car when you need to pay a toll is a kind. When someone you love shows up unannounced with a McDonald's cheeseburger, just because. When, despite everything working against you, the train is delayed just 5 minutes at the North Beverly station and you make it.--Nearly two years ago, I thought I gave up believing God worked in miracle. The halogen hallways and the broom-closet-turned-conference room on the third floor of the under-construction wing of the main hospital in Temple must hold the ghosts of my old beliefs. I set my face towards what felt safer and more realistic. I said it was too late and I said that this is what we have to do and I signed consent forms and listened to people explain echocardiograms and g-tube placement procedures.I was often a shadow on the walls at church. I darted up to Communion and back, afraid to confront Jesus and afraid to let him see me avoiding him. I prayed by counting the toes on my baby and feeling the weight of his tiny foot in my hands. I signed more consent forms, I learned new hallways at doctor's offices.--And then our car needed repairs.It is so completely ordinary, the kind of thing that my grandpa - my mom's dad - would say, "Well, that just happens, Hillie" as he cracked open a can of pop from the garage refrigerator and reached his hand into a bag of Utz potato chips. I can see him, now, sitting on the back porch of the house where my mom grew up, smiling at the regularity of the things that happen in a life.Our car needed repairs and money is tight. And we made a plan, we figured out what we could do when, we set our faces to the path ahead and put our hands to the plow, as my mother would say. I didn't think about Jesus, or a miracle. I thought of the plan.This is how the might of God comes. In a Mazda service station. In the regularity of car repairs. Preston told me a few days ago that some people on the internet, reading his piece in the Washington Post this week, had asked if they could help. And then he told me that they had banded together and the entire car repair had been paid for. All of it.I want to say this is a miracle. The regular kind. The kind that come disguised in wintry parking lots or dog walks in New England or car repairs that people take care of for us.The regular kind of miracle: women at the tomb bringing spices for burial. Me in that rented SUV in a Mazda service dealer and then in my kitchen pouring Cheerios into a tupperware. The feeling of water swirling through your sandals as you step out of the boat.And from the miracles I sneak a glance at Jesus. We are in Easter season. Jesus looks back from his risen, glorious body bearing all the marks of his life. Still it is not ever too late for me. -- My mother told me ten years ago that the hundred dollar bill I found was connected to God watching out for us. The story itself is faded, except for the song we sang in the kitchen.My mother taught me ten years ago - teaches me still - that in a world so saturated with the wondrous it should not be surprising that God is paying much attention to us, so much that it is not too late to ask to be shown again the kind of love he has: a love of generosity through his friends that make your car repairs possible or bring cheeseburgers, a love of tolls and late trains, of owls and kingfishers and winter that always gives way to spring.I thought I gave up on miracles. I'm sure many days I still live as though they are too far for me to believe. But I keep calling my mother, listening to her tell me stories of this wondrous world and the God who made it. That is a miracle, too.Love,hilary

the size of faith

"The size of your faith is not measured by the things you ask for."I said this as I watched the spearmint wilt under the heat of the water. Preston and I have taken to steeping the leaves themselves in our teapot some nights; it makes us slow down, at least for the ten minutes we set our timers to. We let water do its mysterious work. We wait.I found myself saying this to someone who was waiting with us for a second steeping of the leaves. We had been talking about big dreams that we all have, and the often insignificant size of the steps we take towards them every day. I am always quick with a sentence of empathy, support - but this one seemed to come from my mouth without me being the speaker. The size of your faith is not measured by what you ask for. We poured the tea, and we all went back to scribbling in notebooks the small next steps we might take towards realizing a big, beautiful dream. And I kept thinking about how it could be that I said something without having thought of it, read from my mind like so much ticker tape. The steam of the tea slowly settled as the cup grew colder in my hands. Long after we went to bed, I was still awake. Who was that speaking? Was that for me?Some days I am a wistful believer, a sideways-glancer, a noticer of those who stretch arms wide in worship and those who get readily, consistently, obediently to their knees every day. I keep a kind of faith envy nestled somewhere near where my collarbone meets my neck. That's where I feel it, a small lump when I see someone whose faith fairly sings, who is a small speck on the horizon of the water, running to Jesus. I screw up my eyes to try and glimpse what they're doing - I imagine them, pants or shorts or dresses soaked, feet pulling deep water up to the surface with each step, eyes fixed on the man who looks like everyone and no one, his arms stretched wider than seems possible in these limited muscles and bones. I imagine that meeting triumphant, full of love. I imagine this in my wistfulness, and I turn back grumbling. I've been in and out of the same boat ten thousand times. I have made it maybe ten steps on the water. I keep thinking I will see Jesus and my eyes hurt from peering in sun and fog and rain and ocean spray and so I turn back again and again to the boat.The size of your faith is not measured by what you ask for. Could that have been Jesus, sitting with us, watching water hiss and steam rise, waiting for that second cup of tea?And if it was Jesus, how can he be the same Jesus who I squint to see greeting the wilder faith of others so far out on the water?Jesus is the measurer, the keeper and maker and beholder of our faith. Jesus is as unafraid to get right up next to the boat as he is to stand back and call out.The size of your faith is not measured by how far out you ask to go.Sometimes, asking just to get one foot in the water is harder than asking to run ten miles on a surface that shouldn't hold us up. Sometimes, asking just to gain the strength to go to the next service, to walk up to Communion, to be held by someone else's prayer or someone else's faith, is a bigger ask than asking to see before our eyes a miracle of feet help up on the open sea.When I realized it was Jesus, I prepared myself for the reprimand. Envy is vice, clinging to my collarbone, keeping me grumbling in the bottom of the boat. I prepared myself with guilt and ashes and shame.Jesus does not come with those. Jesus comes with the same impossibly wide arms and the same embrace. Jesus gets into the boat with me on the days I cannot get out of it, and in his quietness he touches the lump in my throat, the envy at my neck, the same quizzical look in his eyes. The size of your faith is not measured by how far out you asked to go. It is not measured by how far out anyone else goes. I can feel the envy slipping away, dissolving like steam in the air.It is enough to ask for help getting out of the boat; it is enough to ask for help in asking.Love,hilary

grace, a year later (sharing at Christie Purifoy's)

I get the chance to share a piece at one of my very favorite writers, Christie Purifoy. Her book wrapped me up in a new way to see the seasons, in the world, in my life, in this always-beginning relationship with God, anew. It has meant so much to me, and I'm honored to share at her space today. Join me?Here is a little excerpt:I was all grace-less worry the first six weeks of my son’s life. He was born into the bright steadying lights of the NICU. He was born into weeks of poking, prodding, scoped up and down. His first pictures besides our Instagram snapshots were the flickery black and white of heart and head and kidney ultrasounds.Two by two, we would go into that ark, my husband and I. Two by two, and no more than that at a time. In the mornings the attending physicians and residents would form a crescent moon standing around his bassinet, and the real moon would take the night watch alongside us.We are all born into motherhood. The labor is from us, and for us, and so I too was welcomed by bright lights and pulsing blue and red monitors. I too was born into an endless click, click of blood pressure cuffs and kinked IV needles and blanket forts to hide us while we slept.Keep reading, over at Christie's?Love,hilary

a story about skin to skin

I got to share some words over at Lisa-Jo Baker's space yesterday- words about mothering, words about what I had expected from my first pregnancy and how everything and nothing changed when Jack made his grand entrance into the world. It's a day late to be posting but of course, the real work of mothering involves convincing a 14-month-old that it really is raining outside (getting into coats and boots and going outside, then crying, then coming inside...).It's a story about the wondrous hard work of mothering. It's a story that you have all helped me write, as you ponder with me this walk into being someone's mom. It's a story you've taught me to see, in all your comments and prayers and well wishes. I know it's been quiet around these parts, but the semester is ending and there is new space carved into my week to write and reflect.I can't wait to walk through it with you.--I spent a year and 20 days grieving an empty five minutes. They were the first minutes of my son’s life, minutes of quick, quiet NICU intervention hidden from me where I lay, bleeding profusely onto the delivery room floor, the doctor remembering three stitches in that she hadn’t in fact given me an anesthetic before starting to sew me back together. They were the five minutes I had once imagined as the moments of transformation, the moments I thought I would become a mother, the moments when I would begin, if there is such a thing as beginning after nine months of pregnancy...Keep reading over at Lisa-Jo's?love,hilary

dear jack: one

Dear Jack,

Today you are one. You said "mama" to me yesterday, looking straight at me, babbling it over and over and over as you pivoted in your trademark style, tried to turn over the trash can, unplug a light and topple a bookcase. This morning we went outside - the air is finally cool and light against our skin - and you stood up on your own on the sidewalk and looked at me defiantly. You'll take the step when you want to, and you want me to understand that clearly.

Before you were born, there was a lot we didn't know. We didn't know what it meant to have only one eye and ear. We didn't know what cleft surgeries were like, the stiff smell of sanitizer in the room where we waited for you to come out of surgery. We didn't know the particular beeps of oxygen saturation monitors, when they dip a little low, or too low.

But I talk about that a lot, don't I? And today, on your birthday, I want you to hear what we did know. What we have always known.

 You belong.

We always knew that. We knew that in the first search for your heartbeat at 9 weeks, the first ultrasound at 12 and the second that become the next seven. We knew that when I was sweating through the fetal MRI, and when we drove back and forth to the hospital. We knew that through timid genetic counselors and surgeons and phone calls. We named you and we knew you. You belonged from the beginning, and we belong with you.

You know what else we knew, buddy? We knew that a different body doesn't make it a broken one. We told you - did you hear us back then? - that you are the very fullness of the image of God and Jesus rises with his hands and feet and side split and opened and these are what the world calls broken but we call glorious. You have always been the fullness of that image.

We knew it then and we learn it from you every day. And we learn to keep electrical cords and breakable cups out of sight, that the trash can in the bathroom makes the best drum, that it's better to ride in the big laundry basket and that our laughter is funny enough to laugh at.

All this ordinary glory.  One year doesn't seem like enough time to contain it all. Time itself seems to have stretched to make room for all that you've given us.

One year ago, you took your first few breaths. John the respiratory therapist helped you, but you pulled your breathing tube out on your own when the nurses weren't looking. And every day since, you've lived fully and unapologetically and determinedly, and you've pulled out trach and gtube and laughed at me while doing it, you've learned to sit up and stand and crawl and almost walk even though they said you were "disenfranchised" and you never look back unless to check that we're keeping up. You pull us into the gift of your life. There won't be enough words for it, maybe ever.

When you were born, you took all my old life away with all its old thoughts and fears, all its questions, and those first few breaths, you gave me back a life that's bigger.

I've always loved you with my whole heart. One year in, Jack, I love you with the whole heart that you've made wider.

Love,mom

when this is fifteen months of gratitude

I hear him sing to Jackson over the hum of the suction machine. He gives me the gift of a long shower - take the time, Hil - and he scoops up our growing wonder of a son and they are off, dancing into the nursery, one or two quick passes with the suction catheter and back out to the living room, to the record player, to the lights on the Christmas tree and the windows that look out on the world he insists is more beautiful than I reckon it.I am thinking these days about my husband.I am thinking about how they tell you marriage is teamwork and then you learn it walking hallways mid-disagreement, mid-misunderstanding, and you knock on the door to your son's NICU area and you transform. You pause the conversation, pause the disagreement, and you walk the space of knowing your son. You walk the space of trach changes and whether or not to up his amount of milk per feed. You walk the space of who will hold him, who will suction him, who will prep and clean up after the small extra things we do to love on this growing wonder. You walk the work of language, how we will talk about Jack, how we will ask others to talk about him. You walk the silent wonder at how many more people understand than you ever thought would.I am thinking about how they tell you marriage is a great unfolding, a mystery, how you don't know who it is you married until you are already past the aisle, the vows, and into the world.--The first time I Skyped with my husband I fell in love with him. He was sitting in a bistro, headphone cord dangling, and drinking coffee. I was drinking iced tea from our grocery store terrified that I wouldn't seem casual enough. I was wearing running shorts and an old T-shirt; he'll think I'm very athletic, that'll be good. I talked too fast and not fast enough. One hour became five, the bistro closed, he called me on his cell phone from his driveway.I couldn't have told you then we'd have a son named Jackson who would bring us to the NICU in Temple for forty days. I couldn't have told you then that we would learn how to care for a tracheostomy, that we would number hours and weeks like stars. I couldn't have told you, staring at my computer screen one hot July night, that I would sit in the kitchen the first Sunday of Advent crying because I've never known someone to love so unapologetically.You don't know who you married until you do. And even when you do know, looking at a senior boy from Baylor in your computer screen late on a July night, you learn it for the first time every time.--This is a post about gratitude.He remembers what day the trash collection is. He remembers what is in the fridge and in what order the leftovers can be eaten and recreated. He knows how to make Jack smile as they dance to the record player, to the Christmas tree, to the windows. He knows that this world is more beautiful than I reckon it most days. He knows to tell me that.--It is the first Sunday of Advent. I'm sitting in the kitchen while it rains outside and Jack sleeps nearby.You don't know who you married until you do. And you learn them again and again. And they will take your breath away.Love,hilary

I sing him to sleep

This is the irrational season, where love blooms bright and wild.That's Madeleine L'Engle, about Christmas. We're in November now. I've lived a lifetime in a hospital, a lifetime where the seasons changed, we bought jeans at Target because we hadn't come prepared for fall. A lifetime where we learned to lean hard on each other - I'll prep the suction, you hold his trach - a lifetime of doing this while kissing Jack's head and telling him funny stories, making faces, laughing the dark away. A lifetime of backpacks and diaperbags we can't quite tell apart, of writing philosophy in the dark, reading Til We Have Faces and For the Life of the World while our son sleeps, swaddled tight, a smile flickering across his face as he dreams.This is the irrational season.--When my nephew was born two years ago, I went out to visit him around two months. While my sister took a shower and did some things around the house, I held him. He fussed, as babies do; I did the only thing I could think. I put on Norah Jones and I sang him while I swayed around their kitchen.When I was a senior in college I swayed a baby around the hotel room singing "Winter Song" by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson on repeat for 182 times, according to my computer. Her mom was speaking at the conference, and I was babysitting; she fell asleep after play 68, but I listened on. It was the first time I imagined my own someday dance - the living room, the late night, the baby that would belong to me, I to him or her.And the Sundays after college when I was searching for myself, I returned to be with the littlest ones, scooping them up as I sang the old hymns, stepping between toys, between other children. I sang the words that were my ropes, my anchors on the water. I swayed and sang a year of Sundays.--When I was pregnant with Jack, there were days that I thought the world had left me behind. I used to say that something in me died, that my expectations died, those long 20 weeks after his diagnosis. What could be the same? I remembered singing Sara and Ingrid and I remembered singing Norah and I remembered the old hymns and I once walked a mile along the river weeping because it seemed I would never be the mother I imagined myself to be.I was wrong. A fallow field has not died. It is only being emptied for the fullness that is coming. It is being made ready. And my heart is a field God laid fallow - for there was not enough room in me for my expectations and my son. There would not be enough room for the kind of love I prayed to give him.In the irrational season, God makes the fields fallow. God widens the spaces where love must enter. I never stopped believing that God was good. But only now do I see my way to believing that God’s goodness extends to this work – to widen my heart for the wonder that is my son.--Jack loves when I sing Norah Jones. He looks up at me, grabs at my hair, falls asleep and nestles deep in my arms. I sing him the old hymns, “This is my Father’s World,” and “Alleluia, Sing to Jesus,” I sing him the stories, the songs of meeting his dad and driving through early mornings along route 97. I sing Sara and Ingrid. I sing, my voice catching in my throat. The joy sears along my vocal chords, stitching into me the words, the look on my son’s face, the singing.--I tell God that there is so much I wanted to give Jack that I can’t.God smiles. Nothing was lost that Jack was always meant to have. I tell God that there is so much I thought would be different than it is.God smiles. Your heart is wide enough now. I tell God this is the irrational season.God smiles. Love is blooming, deep and wild. --If you are looking for me, I am singing my son to sleep.Love,hilary

dear jackson: the gift of breath

Dear Jackson,We came in early this morning. You had a bit of a rough time falling asleep, your nurse told us, but you found your peaceful spot eventually, and when we came to your crib, there you were, your face tucked up in your hands (you never stay swaddled for long, Jacks). We kissed your head and prayed a few more prayers. There is always time for more prayers, because, you see, breathing is its own prayer.And I want to tell you a little about today, about breathing, about your dad and me and some of the friends Jesus has sent us to be here along the way.Breathing, sweet boy, is a gift from God. God breathed life into Adam in the very beginning - as your Storybook Bible says, God looked at Adam and Eve and said, "You look like me." And you do look like God, Jack. You are the image of God. You are His workmanship. Breathing is a gift that God is giving you.For you, that gift is going to come through a tracheostomy. That's a breathing tube, but there is something cool about the word "tracheostomy" so I'm going to use it for you and around you, and Dad and I will teach others to use it too. God is going to help you breathe through this tube for a while, until you are even bigger and stronger than you are now, until, as your friends help to bring together your lip and your palate, as one of your friends (a favorite of your Dad's and mine) has built up your jawbone, you won't need the trach anymore.Knowing you as we do, we're guessing you'll have already determined not to need it long before your last surgeries.So, Jacks. This is a big decision. Your dad and I sat in a room without windows, my big cup of water in front of me, the vague smell of hospital coffee and hand sanitizer in the air, and we listened. We listened to the medical diagnoses - you've got some challenges with your airway both in your nasal cavity and your mouth, and something of a challenge in the area of your voicebox - but we also listened to some of the doctors talk about you. About the challenges you've had finding just the right place to put your head to breathe easy, how frustrated you get when you can't figure that out, about how, as your friend the trach nurse said, you don't know yet how easy breathing is. And you deserve to know that, Jacks. You deserve to know the freedom of this gift from God.We listened. Some of these doctors talk more about your diagnoses than they talk about you, and that's understandable. But some of them - the ones that we look to most for counsel and wisdom - they talk about you. They talk about your thriving, they talk about your development, they talk about giving you the chance to explore movement and learn to crawl and walk and be in different positions. They talk about making sure you get to run around in a couple of years and cause us so much trouble. As they talk, I see you. I see you and Dad in the kitchen. I see you outside our house with the dog I do promise to buy you. I see you coming to church with us and the grocery store and all the while, you're free. You're free because, with the trach, breathing will be as easy for you as it is for some people who don't have one.So your dad and I decided today that we'll consent to this surgery for you (there is a surgery, too, for a G-tube to help you grow this first little bit but I bet you anything that you are like your dad and you will love food so much that soon you'll be able to eat and eat and eat and you won't need the tube). It's not easy to make these decisions, but today we felt peace. Today we were reminded that you ought to know how easy breathing is.People will want to say you're a kid with "special" needs. They might try to tell you or tell us that you're so brave and we're so brave, because we're carrying all this extra stuff with us. But it's not true. You are Jackson. Your needs are just your needs. And we love to make sure you have what you need.Today God reminded us that He gives breath to us. And for you, He is giving that gift through this trach for a while. But it is the same big, bold, wildly beautiful gift of life. And He is giving it to you no less miraculously or wondrously because He is giving it a different way.So we will go hold you in a few minutes and tell you more about it. For now, I'm writing this down so that you know that from the first moments we decided, we knew that we were only making the path straight so that God could come give you what He longs to give you: lungs full of His breath of life, and a heart full of His marvelous love.Love,mom

i number the minutes

I number minutes like stars. The minutes Jack is in my arms. The minutes he sleeps, oxygen levels resting in the high 90s, that even 100. The minutes between where we sleep and where he is, the minutes of hallway, elevator, distance.And the minutes of prayer.Last night we stood over the giraffe warmer, which my baby doesn't need, feisty and strong as he is, keeping his own temperature, and my eyes fell on the icon Preston brought from our living room - the good shepherd, the lamb on his shoulders. It sits and looks over the edge of where Jack sleeps, and out past him, to the hum and beep of the other beds, the other little ones.Months ago, at the first phone call, at the very beginning, when we didn't know anything but the need for a follow-up ultrasound, the need for a consultation, the need to see a more specialized doctor... I stood at that icon weeping and cradling my belly and asking Jesus again and again where He was. I wept and asked and I told Jesus, again and again, that He could do something, that where there was skin or muscle missing He could build it. Wasn't it His voice at the beginning, singing the world into being? Wasn't it His voice the wind and waves obeyed?Wasn't Jesus the one who spat on tongues and spread mud on eyes and put his fingers in ears and declared, by the words of his mouth, be opened?And wasn't it Jesus, reaching down into death, calling back Lazarus, the widow's son, Jairus's daughter?Last night I looked again - my son has a mark from his IV in his hand that looks just like the mark in Jesus' hands in the icon. The hands that are holding the lamb on his shoulders. The hands that, even in these long minutes, I believe - I must believe - are holding my son.I cannot number all the stars or all the minutes.. But then I remember:To whom then will you compare me,    that I should be like him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see:    who created these?He who brings out their host by number,    calling them all by name,by the greatness of his might,    and because he is strong in power    not one is missing.And I remember, again:The Lord builds up Jerusalem;    he gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted,    and binds up their wounds.He determines the number of the stars;    he gives to all of them their names.Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;    his understanding is beyond measure.The Lord can count the stars.  He can name them all. Who am I, then, to think that Jesus has not been mindful of these minutes? Who am I, then, to think Jesus has not counted each one with me, His knowledge of them far more perfect than anything I could fathom?Jesus has seen each minute of prayer, of worry, of resting, of oxygen and of desperate joy when Jack is in my arms and I feel the weight of him, his hand grabbing my shirt, and Jesus is numbering the minutes with us.Isaiah 40, Psalm 147 - God numbering the stars is hidden among the promise that God comforts His people, that God should be praised for His care of His people. Hidden among the bigger promise is the piece I can cling to: Jesus knows each star, each minute. Jesus holds us, counting each breath.Last night, I held Jack and swayed my first sway of motherhood, singing his father's favorite:This is my Father's worldI rest me in the thoughtof rocks and trees of skies and seasHis hand the wonders wrought. Number the stars, Lord Jesus, number the minutes. I believe I have only begun to see Your nearness and Your love. I believe I have only begun to see the wonders Your hands have wrought, and can, and will.Come, Lord Jesus, number the minutes with me.Love,jack's mom, and your hilary

a life of septembers (a letter to my husband)

Dear P,It's been a long time since I tried to write you something. Today we finished J's nursery, and I was standing in the doorway while you positioned the icons above his bed, staring at the ordinary miracle of it - how we built this space, this child, this ark of marriage. How much has changed in the long bend of years. 3 Septembers ago, beloved, we were arguing on Skype about long distance.And 2 Septembers ago I sat in your parent's dining room, a bit overwhelmed and overjoyed, my first birthday gift to you tucked upstairs. I had put trash bags over it for the plane ride, but I am so terrible at wrapping gifts, I didn't even think to tie a ribbon on them. They're hanging behind me now.And last year we fought and loved and laughed through the first few weeks of grad school, my anxiety unraveling between us, all those things I'd planned to keep safely tucked away from you discovered so soon. Isn't that just the way marriage is?I believe we will measure our lives in Septembers.This year, this September, our first child will be born. We named him and loved him together far before he was the wildly kicking baby he is now. I wanted to write you something, for this September, this moment in our ever-turning world.How you astonish me, P. You're out on the back porch grilling for the family who's coming for dinner. I see you march in and out of the kitchen with that joy of purpose. And you always, always, always have time for a kiss as you pass me on the couch. You always have time to answer some other question from this little corner where I sit, where Jacks kicks me. You astonish me, you know? I've never lacked words except for the words for you.This September we meet Jackson. And we're out here in the water with Jesus, P, hoping wild and trusting big. I wish I could tell you what it's like to drive back from Austin with you in the late afternoon, singing that one praise song, my voice catching again and again and again because I realize that I believe these words - and I look over and there you are, crying too, smiling. Your faith is an anchor in my soul. Your hope in Jesus, as you move through the kitchen, through the rhythm of our Septembers, is a reminder to put my hope in Jesus.I'm more in love with you now than I was any of our last Septembers. I'm in love with your kindness, how you get me water when I don't want to leave the couch, how you champion others, how you remember things so many other people would forget. How you love. You remind me of St. Francis. I think you both understand that if we dared to hope it, if we dared to ask, God would show us that God is far more deeply in the midst of our lives than we imagine. I think you both know how we need only ask and the grace of Christ will move in us, will open us to receive Christ Himself. I think you both pray to the God who loves birds and peonies and a green plum in season. How this creation it is good, very good, and we should pray like we actually mean to see and speak out that goodness. I sometimes praise God for the peonies, for the greenness of the backyard, for the Brazos river where we go sometimes to just be together, hands linked like they have been since that first walk that June. That's you, teaching me.This September, I am in more in love with you than I could have been, because the gift of being married to you is that I have grown, my heart is bigger, my heart has more room for loving. Thank you, for the gift of you, for the daily, gracious rhythm of life together. For how you teach me to sing praise to God. For how you praise next to me when my voice is faltering.Let's measure the turn of the years together, September by September, grace by grace. I believe there will be so many more wonders for us to see. I believe you will teach me to see so many that I would miss on my own.Love,h

I am a long way out on the water

"I hope your baby has both his eyes."She tells me this when she can't find the card she made for Jackson. When she comes out for goodnight hugs to the group of women gathered to shower me and this little one with love, she hugs my belly separately from me. I hold onto the card, put it next to my bed. Her mom tells me that she and her brothers and sister have been praying for Jackson, for miraculous healing. I'm not sure there are more powerful prayers in the whole Kingdom than those of these children, who know Jesus with a closeness most of us have forgotten.We are bringing her card to the hospital with us, and I have been praying daily that we might get to show her that God has answered her prayers.--My son's elbows and knees (or feet, or something else) press close to the edge of my skin, and I remember that we are close to his birth. There are only a few weeks left. I have quieted down, my body moving deliberately, slowly. We have come a long way from the first positive test in January. We have journeyed far. And as I have slowed down, I hear something surprising. I hear Jesus ask me to be bolder. Pray, Hilary Joan. Come and kneel with me and pray. --When we first found out about Jackson's cleft, we drove in a stunned kind of silence to the new hospital. We sat in the new, terrifyingly quiet octagon room where we would have ultrasound after ultrasound, blood pressure, weight, the daze of normal and not. We waited, we listened, we drove home. I thought my heart would strangle me in its longing to escape from the car, from the little person nestled so safely, so joyfully inside me, from the news, from the everything-it-now-must-inevitably-be.At 29 weeks, we had an MRI. Jackson was, as he always is, on the move. The results of the MRI showed that the right ear hadn't formed completely. "This is new for us," my doctor said. "But they can repair it surgically. The internal structures are there, so there is a good chance he can hear eventually through that ear." I wrote down words on the back of a credit card envelope. I hung up the phone, and again, my heart and its desperate desire to escape my body, escape the ever-dwindling weeks, the soon-to-be birth. There were only 11 weeks left then. No time for a miracle. No time for Jesus.--'I hope your baby has his eyes." 3 weeks from our due date I meet this little girl, who has a boldness I'm not sure I have ever had. I meet this girl, who prays for something I claimed to be too hard, too late, too impossible. 3 weeks from our due date, I hold a card that prays for what I have been hedging around. I hold the prayer that I have been afraid to admit that I am praying.--The Jesus Storybook Bible includes the story of Jairus's daughter. Listen to these beautiful words:"'We don't have time!' Jesus' friends said. But Jesus always had time. He reached out his hands and gently lifted her head. He looked into her eyes and smiled. 'You believed,' he said, wiping a tear from her eye, 'and now you are well.' Just then, Jairus' servant rushed up to Jairus. 'It's too late,' he said breathlessly. 'Your daughter is dead.' Jesus turned to Jairus. 'It's not too late,' Jesus said. 'Trust me.'"--I know what the MRI says. I know the ultrasounds. I know the plans and the teams and the big words. I know the impossibility that it must seem to be.But week after week, Jesus has shown up. Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid. Week after week, I have been invited to pray with the One who formed my son Jackson. Week after week, I have been invited to ask for something that is hard to believe. Week after week, I have lost my footing in that once-sturdy boat.Week after week, I have learned it is safer on the water with Jesus than in the boat with only my anxious, strangled heart and the crowd that murmurs - it is too late. Jesus stands there: It is not too late. Trust me. --"At Jairus' house, everyone was crying. But Jesus said, 'I'm going to wake her up.' Everyone laughed at him because they knew she was dead. Jesus walked into the little girl's bedroom. And there, lying in the corner, in the shadows, was the still little figure. Jesus sat on the bed and took her pale hand.'Honey,' he said, 'it's time to get up.' And he reached down into death and gently brought the little girl back to life."--Jesus tells me to get out of the boat and get on the water. So here it is:I am praying that God completely, miraculously, heals my son Jackson. I am abandoning the reasonable. I am abandoning the words - "well, whatever God wills," or "if not, then we'll do X" because those are the words that I use to stay in the boat while Jesus waits for me on the open water. I am abandoning the careful attempts to make you think that I am still "realistic" about our circumstances, to reassure a mysterious crowd that I am still seeing things as they are.I am abandoning the familiar strangling anxiety of the boat, the familiar unbelief.Hilary Joan, pray. Come kneel with me and pray. It's not too late. Trust me. --I don't know how Jesus is speaking to you about prayer. I don't presume to know. But if I can ask, if you would, come out here with me on the water for a little bit? Whether it is about Jackson or about something in your life, will you come out here, where the reasonable drowns in the presence of grace, where what is expected  falls at the feet of the one who promised it was not too late for Jairus's daughter? Here, in the middle of the water, there is none but us and Jesus. And we are safer here, in the arms of the one who saves us, in the hope of the one who heals us, in the mercy of the one who loves us.Will you come out here with me on the water? Will you come and pray with me?Jesus is here. It's not too late, Hilary Joan. Trust me. Love,hilary

when I learn something about expectations

We are getting so close to Jackson's birth it seems like I should be able to picture it all. I close my eyes on the couch, thinking - okay, we will go to the hospital. I'll be in pain. There will be doctors, questions about medication, about how-far-apart-are-the-contractions... I can't picture any of this. I sit on my bed and I feel him sliding around, and I am overcome by how much I want to be able to picture it. How I want to see it happening and unfolding before me - how much I want to picture my son.But that's the thing. I can't.I have closed my eyes, input all the information from doctors, from thousands of images, from the many appointments we never expected to have. I try to imagine holding this little guy, watching the NICU people love on him, as I know they will if they need to. I ask God for an image - just a glimpse, Lord? - and my mind is empty.--There are days and hours when I sift through the laundry or look at our statue of St. Francis or a spare pair of shoes lying somewhere they don't belong (because I leave my shoes everywhere), and I am surprised at how God has broken open my ideas about being pregnant. How this was the summer of walking around the broken glass.I had ideas about baby name books, about weekly self-portraits at the bathroom mirror. I had ideas about what growing another person would feel like, about the smiles from strangers and the pride of the hard work that it is to carry another heart around, and not only another heart, but another everything - kidneys and lungs built up from the cells, from the smallness. I was so proud at the beginning, so sure it would be everything I expected or better. I built a lot up on that idea that it would be better - I would look better than I imagined, my child would be the paragon of timely growth and expected physical and mental appearances, I would have the most stamina, I would be one of those moms who never gets tired, never has a hard time doing anything, merely carries her baby along on the inside until it emerges, and everything afterwards is picture-worthy, caption-worthy, other-approval-worthy. I had ideas from the pictures, the blog posts, the stories, from Facebook, from my own head.--And then, there was the 18 week appointment, the announcement that it was a boy, the first time we really saw his fierce being, his beautiful, alive, kicking self. And there, coming along behind him was a diagnosis, a list of names and symptoms, a list of coordinating appointments, new doctors, a new hospital.And my expectations died.--With all death there is grief, there is an ache to return to what you were holding onto before it was pried out of your fingers. With all death, even the death of those things that weren't real (those expectations and ideas, those pictures in my head) that is needed, there is a longing, a wish, a sadness or a patience or both. Some moments I lie in bed thinking, what has happened to us? I feel him move so often, I wish I could tell you. He is shy around other people - he moves for me, for his dad, sometimes for a patient grandparent. But he saves most of it, I think, for him and me, for the quiet of the sleepless nights.He is the life that arrived when my expectations died.He is the better that was standing on the other side of the broken glass.--I do not know what Jacks will look like. I'm not in denial about the words, the list and doctors and symptoms, the thin picture they might try to paint.And I do still put my hand over this boy and I ask God to do something that I would not believe even if I was told. I tell God to remember His promises. I ask, and ask, and ask, for a miracle.Every day since we learned about these things that will follow Jack into the world, every day since, I have asked.Perhaps the real reason that I can't picture what it will be like to have this baby doesn't have anything to do with Jack's cleft, with the mystery surrounding the right side of his face. Maybe the real reason is that Jesus is protecting us from the expectations, rescuing us both from the weight of my attempts to know too much, to see too far ahead.Jesus is saving better for us.And from the other side of the expectations, Jesus walks towards us, arms open. From the other side of Mary's expectation of a body in a tomb, Jesus names her. From the other side of the crowd's expectations that Lazarus and Jairus's daughter can never rise from the dead, Jesus wakes them. From the other side of our expectations that we will drown in a storm we cannot control, Jesus silences the water, the wind.I can't picture what will happen in a few weeks.I am, for the first time in my life, sure that means it is something better than I could imagine.Love,hilary

dear jackson: it will be better

Dear Jackson,You are growing so much, little man. I am amazed at your hard work - the doctors say you're right on time, even measuring a few days ahead. You move and squirm around a lot, but I know that the space is starting to feel small. The world here is bigger, and there will be much more space for you on the other side. We have a big backyard and sidewalks, we have the river walk where Dad and I go sometimes to talk and sift through our thoughts, where we go to wonder out loud.It's been a little while since I wrote to you about your cleft. We had the MRI, the ultrasounds, the follow-up appointments and there will be a few more before September. You are being such a good sport about letting these strange people take pictures of you. And I know it is a lot, and I think we're both relieved when we pull out of the hospital each time, heading home, the three of us still making our way through.I have been talking about you to God, every day. Lately I've been asking how this is happening to you, this complicated, challenging stuff.  I keep saying that it seems like you're too little to have to go through all of this, that it's so unfair, how much I wish I could be the one to have this instead of you. How much I would give for you not to need any extra help, how much I would give.  And I tell God that I don't understand how this can be happening to someone I love so much, because, little man, I love you so much more than I can explain.But then Jesus asked me while I was standing in my closet, trying to pick out something to wear, in that silence that so often carries the voice of God to our noisy hearts: Hilary, do you believe that I love Jackson? And then Jesus asked me, Hilary, do you believe that what I will do for Jackson is better than what you can imagine? Little man, I do believe this. And I want you to know that I believe it. I believe that when you are born, in those few short weeks that stand between us and the mystery and adventure of your birth, Jesus will be celebrating. Jesus will be rejoicing with us that you are here, that you are finally here in the world with us. And I believe that if you are miraculously healed before birth or if you go through some surgeries, if you come out screeching or if you need a little help breathing from the doctors and nurses in the NICU, if you have some or all or none of what we are preparing for right now, I believe that Jesus will do, and is doing, better things than I can imagine.I could try to trust in ultrasounds, in MRI reports. I could try to trust in miraculous healings or dreams or prophecies or the late night prayers we are praying over you. I could try to predict what will happen, to imagine you, to imagine what is ahead. But I believe, little man, that it is better to put my trust in Jesus.And Jesus has better plans for you than the ones I could come up with. Jesus has better things for you than I can ask or imagine. Jesus knows you and loves you so much beyond my imagining.Jesus led me to your dad - and he is so much better than I could ever have imagined.Jesus led me to studying philosophy, to asking big questions about disabilities and differences, about human nature and the image of God - better than anything I imagined when I was applying.Jesus led me to the right college, to the right high school - both better than I could have imagined when I first set out.And Jesus brought you to us, and you are already so much better than I could have imagined. Carrying you along with me, every day, I remember: what God has in store is always far more than we could have imagined by ourselves.So, Jackson, these last few weeks, I am leaning on this for both of us. I don't know what is up ahead. I don't know where we will be in 8 weeks or what it will be like. But I know, I know, I know that Jesus is with us and ahead of us. He will be rejoicing when you're born, for there are far better things in store than the things we can imagine.I can't wait to see you, little man. Just a few more weeks. We will be rejoicing.Love,mom

this is what I'm waiting for.

Dear Jackson,Your godmother asks what I'm looking forward to about you. She asked as she was holding your soon-to-be friend, her sweet daughter. I was staring, lost for words, worrying, making those lists in my head with big words like NICU and surgery and MRI and cranio-facial team - all those words that if I am honest, just mean the people and the tools that are in place to help you and me and Dad as we begin our life together. They're just words for the friends and things that Jesus is bringing with Him in this wonderful season of your arrival.But I was running short on words, a little scared, and right then, you kicked me. You have such a personality, little man. Mom, I'm here. I'm okay. Every day when I start to worry, and I stop and put my hand over you, you kick back. Mom, I'm here. I'm okay. We have read a lot of the stories of Jesus' healing power these last few months. You know about Jairus's daughter and about the son who Jesus raised from the dead. You know about the woman who reached out in the crowd, just to touch the hem of his robe, and she was healed. And all those crowds, after Jesus walked on water, who just touched him, and were healed.But one of my very favorite stories to tell you is the one about Zacchaeus. Remember him? He was so curious about Jesus - like most of us are - that he climbed up a tree to get a better look. The Bible says Zacchaeus was a tax collector and very rich. This tells us that Zacchaeus was probably not a very just man, who was unfair to others in the city, who did not treat them well. He doesn't really seem like someone that Jesus would hang out with.But Jesus sees him and comes to the tree where he is sitting. And guess what, Jack? Jesus says, "Zacchaeus, hurry and climb down, for I must stay at your house today." What do you think about that? He sees Zacchaeus, hiding up in the tree and he tells him to hurry, climb down, because I'm coming to your house. Jesus isn't just able to see where Zacchaeus is hiding, but Jesus wants to be with him. Jesus is going to stay at his house.Zacchaeus is so overwhelmed and excited that he scampers down the tree and is happy to welcome Jesus. And he says to Jesus that he will make right the things he had done wrong - he will pay back people he had treated unfairly. He will give half of everything he owns to the poor. And Jesus tells everyone there, "Today, salvation has come to this house... For the Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost."There is so much I want to tell you about this story. But right now what matters, Jack, is that sometimes I have been a little like Zacchaeus hiding in the tree. I have been scared to come down from my worrying to welcome you because I have been so scared that I won't be able to be the mom that you need me to be. I have been scared that maybe I won't be good at this or ready, that I will do things wrong.But then I see Jesus standing at the foot of that tree holding you, and Jesus tells me to hurry, climb down, because you two are coming to stay at my house. You are coming to be with me. And when I hear that, and I see you and Jesus standing there, I climb down and realize that I am so happy. I am so excited for you, just like Zacchaeus was so excited about Jesus.Jack, my little man so fully alive:I can't wait to hold you. To sit with you and reading you the books our friends have been sending you - Ping and James Herriott's Treasury and The Going to Bed Book and The Mitten. To sing and dance around the kitchen for so many years that even when you're 22 and you come home after college and you think I'm ridiculous, you'll still join in.To put you in the wrap or the carrier or the stroller or the whatever-baby-gadget-we-get and showing you the world. I'll show you the leaves and their greenness, the water and the ducks that swim along the Brazos in spring. I'll show you the big sky on our drive down 7. I'll show you the cows, the wild orange and blue and purple flowers in April. I'll show you the lilacs in Boston outside Grammy and Granddad's house.To introduce you to your aunt and uncles and cousins - they'll show you the paddling pool and how to toss a football back and forth and probably how to get into mischief, too. I hope they teach you that.To hold you. I already said that. But I'm so excited for that. Just to hold you.Hurry, climb down, for I am coming to stay with you today. Jesus is bringing you with Him, Jack. He is bringing you to me and Dad. I can't believe that we get to hold you, laugh with you, rock you to sleep, teach you about leaves and ducks and cows and the good things Jesus made.I'm not hiding in the tree anymore. You and Jesus, you are waiting for me. You make me too happy, too overjoyed, too excited, not to scamper down.Love,mom

the new shape of my heart

I cry in the bathroom some mornings when I think other people are just waiting for me to finish brushing my teeth. I stand stock-still at the sink and look at my reflection, touch the skin so effortlessly joined together over my cheekbones, the same place where the doctors will help my son's skin join back together, scar tissue so much stronger than my own.The days are getting warmer, summer bending around the next corner.I smell the lilacs every time I pass them going in and out.--These past few weeks my heart has been stretched tight like the skin across my belly that pulls as my son grows, sometimes what seems like leaps and bounds every day. It has been pulled deep and hard, the same old words repeated: take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid. Words from Jesus, not just for Peter.. My heart has learned that there are fewer words, not more, that should be anchored in us: perhaps only these:Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.--Jackson kicks often now, insisting on his presence, his being alive. His being, of course, mine and not mine. He pushes at me and sometimes it feels like he is shouting his own annunciation. You are my mom. No one else. And I am your son, no one else, and when I put my hand next to him and there is nothing but skin between us, I know this more than I know anything else:My son is beloved by God. And I must be, too, because God let me wrap my skin and self around him for all these long months of his becoming.On the mornings I freeze in the bathroom, overcome, Jackson still kicks, but more gently. He is brave for me more than I am brave for him.--.I started this post thinking I would talk about the shape of my heart, how it has changed. Then I thought it would be about how grief is a strange, unexpected guest, one that joins you some mornings with the smell of lilacs and toothpaste when you touch your skin and imagine your son. Then I thought it would be about fear, and love, and walking on water.But it is none of those things.It's just a post about my son, who kicks and moves to a music I cannot hear, whose skin will be stronger than my own, who shows me we are both God's beloved.My heart does have a new, surprising shape: the shape of being his mom.Love,hilary

when it has been 20 weeks

Dear Jackson,You have a name! You love to remind us with every ultrasound visit that you are a boy, and the name belongs to you in the best way - it's been yours for so long. I love using it when we're on the go, you and I, grading papers or dancing in the kitchen or sitting on the porch, just being. I love talking to you with your name, Jackson, rolling off my tongue.This week we learned a little bit more about you, Jackson. We learned different things from different places - a phone call and a follow-up detailed ultrasound and a genetic counseling appointment. It's been a lot, but I think you probably know and feel my hand over the place where you're moving, that sense of change in the air, new plans, new preparations.You've got a facial cleft. From what we have learned so far, it extends up from your lip and involves your right eye and that side of your nose, and it goes back into your palate too. It happens sometimes; our bodies do unexpected things.You have some unique things ahead, Jackson. We are so grateful that we know now, when you're still wiggling around showing off your arms and legs, letting us hear your strong heartbeat. We are grateful because we can start to make sure we are ready to take care of you when we finally meet you this fall. And every single person who comes into the world needs taking care of. Me, your dad, the people who will meet you and take care of you in the hospital in September, the people at church, your grandparents. You will need some particular things - you'll need help eating, maybe with breathing at the beginning, and the doctors will do some really amazing things to help you with the cleft so that you can grow, grow, grow - so that you can become your full Jackson self. But everyone needs. Everyone has scars that help tell the stories of their lives - I am praying that you become proud of yours, even as I am proud of where they come from, proud of your mighty self here at 20 weeks, proud of you.Listen to me, my beloved first son: you have been befriended by the Almighty God. God is walking into every room, every waiting area, every surgery, every MRI or ultrasound or counseling appointment or wellness check, ahead of the three of us in the wild journey of becoming the family that we could not be without you. God is walking out ahead of us, and whenever we look around at the waves or the walls or the unknown-ness of it, when we cry out or you cry out, I want you to hear me: Jesus immediately calls back to us, "Take heart, it is I! Do not be afraid." Do not be afraid of needing help in the beginning. Do not be afraid of what could happen. Do not be afraid, he whispers to me as I look at your ultrasounds on the fridge -  do not be afraid of the many statistics that cannot add up to the story of your one impossibly precious life.So, Jackson, you whose name means God has been gracious, and whose middle name, David, means beloved, friend. At this the end of our twentieth week together, I put my hand over you and feel you push back at me, defiant already, sure of your own becoming, and we are making our hearts ready for you. We are making our hearts ready for the bigger wonder of who you are - the wonder of taking care of you, of learning your favorite things, of your discovery of the world.We can't wait for you to be here with us, Jackson. We can't wait to hold you and kiss all these places that bear the marks of being human, of being alive. I can't wait to meet you. Every piece of you.All my love,mom

i pray you have a wilder imagination

Dear tiny person, 17 weeks alive now,You will start hearing my voice soon - the sound of my heartbeat, loud and steady, the movement and rhythm of my body in the midst of all the ordinary work of these spring days. And you'll hear Dad's voice, the voices of the people around us, the noises of this life you're coming into.I have been hearing a lot of questions about you. People ask me, "but how will you still be a student?" and "will you quit school?" and "aren't you going to need more time off?" and when I say no, they look at me surprised, a little concerned, a little knowing. They let the silence hang between us, the wide-eyed looks that carry the message across the inches of dusty floor - surely, surely, you didn't think all this was possible. haven't you underestimated how hard it will be? I am praying that you never hear these questions from me.I am praying that when your dad and I hold you, we tell you the stories, again and again, that we are a people who never underestimate anything but the power of the Lord Jesus to walk into our lives and unfold the most surprising, most marvelous, most extraordinary things.Your life is the gift that your dad and I never imagined we would be so privileged to see so soon. Your life is the greatest gift God has given us.I pray that I do not ask you questions that say your imagination is too unrealistic. That you can't possibly think you can do this and that at the same time, that you are underestimating how hard it will be, how much work it will be, how likely it is to fall apart.I pray that you will hear me say instead that our imaginations should be wider, and wilder. I pray you will hear what I know in my bones, that we too often live limited lives because we limit our imaginations. We think that motherhood and philosophy graduate seminars can't possibly both be successful; we think that you must choose between art and biology; we think that you cannot travel AND or be married AND or work this challenging job AND or ...and we teach this to each other, with our well-meaning questions and our expectant looks, with our heartfelt, "but how will that work?" Our imaginations grow small in the shadow of what we think more realistic.I pray that your imagination is wilder than that. I pray that you hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, who will call you to get out of the boat, to leave behind what you know, to go into towns and cities, to leave the empty tomb with just the wild hope and these words: "I have seen the Lord!"I pray you know that this is enough reason to rejoice in even what seems difficult or strange in the eyes of the world. It might not satisfy other people. And right now when I put my hand over the place where I know you're growing, and I tell those who ask me these questions that I am not afraid to be a student and a mother, to be a wife and a philosopher and to hold you in the long nights and read to you about epistemology and the Rainbow Fish -when I do this, it probably doesn't satisfy the person who asked me.But if it does not - if the question still lingers, how can she think all this is possible, then I dare them all to take that question and place it before the Lord Jesus. I believe Jesus will widen their imagination. I believe that Jesus will remind them of the stories:Abraham, who left everything he knew to follow God,Moses and the people of Israel, who followed God into the water of the Red Sea and walked safely,Ruth, who left everything she knew to go with Naomi,Hannah, who did not leave God alone in praying for her son,Mary, who gave birth to God Himself in Jesus,Peter, who got out of the boat, and even when he doubted, cried out and Jesus saved him immediately,of the people Jesus healed, and ate with, whose faith, whose wild imagination carried them into the very heart of God.And I believe that you, and me, and Dad, we are one story numbered among the thousands that Jesus tells about those who love Him. They are all stories of wilder imagination. They are stories of people who love, and this love, it casts out their fears, their idea of limits, their idea of what will be too hard and too much and so hard to imagine how it will all work. And so, beautiful, breathtaking tiny human being listening to my heartbeat, I pray that you are filled up all these many years with a wild imagination. I pray that you feel these stories around you, in your bones. I pray that you know most of all that God loves you, wildly, beyond your imagining - and when God calls out to you, you need never fear - it is His love, calling you to Himself.Love,mom

love is the unrelenting muscle

By now maybe you've heard through a grapevine or around the web, the news that Preston and I are expecting a baby. I had thought years ago I would do a lot of blogging about becoming a mom when it happened, that I would want to catalog my daily questions and thoughts in the midst of all the changes and strange cravings and morning sickness, the moments of realization, the moments of gratitude.I don't, anymore. It seems a season for quiet, for listening close, for making silence, as we used to tell my Sunday School students. Becoming a mom is among the most wondrous things that has happened in my life - but I probably won't say too much about it here.But I want to tell you about the sound.I want to tell you about the sound of his or her heartbeat, at 9 weeks, in an ordinary doctor's office on an ordinary Friday, trying to lie still as my nurse practitioner moved the Doppler monitor below my belly button. At first it was just the sounds of searching out the little life that I've been taking on faith is growing inside me, but then.Then, there is this sound, this unbelievable, unyielding, steadying heartbeat. And it isn't my heartbeat. It's hers, or it's his. It's the baby's heart, beating away.The heart is the most unrelenting muscle I have ever heard. The heart is the muscle that begins its work and does not cease, not for one moment. And it begins first. It's already beating as the brain grows and takes shape, begins to assemble thoughts still as mysterious as whatever lies on the other side of this thin place, where heaven and earth are tremblingly close to each other.The heart, beating. It sounds so ordinary and then it sounds so unbelievable. Her heart has been beating for weeks now, without me knowing. His heart began to beat before I knew it, before we tuned in with the monitors and the watches and the steady checking in of doctor's offices.And this matters to you, because your heart, your faithful, steady, unrelenting muscle has been beating in you for longer than you can imagine. It has kept you.I think about how we connect the heart, not the brain, with love. I think how we talk about the heart of God, not the cerebral cortex. And though God is far beyond any attempt to imagine Him having a literal heart, I do not think that we are completely wrong to imagine ourselves, to imagine this world, as in the heart of God.Because God's love is the same unyielding, unrelenting, steadfast muscle. God's love is the patient, ever-present sound echoing through our bodies and our lives. God's love is not too tired to carry us. God's love is the unrelenting muscle that carries us.And this baby, he or she is reminding me that there is something not to be forgotten about the mystery of a heartbeat. About the mystery of how we say that we are close to God, that we are held in His heart, that God loves us.Because love is found in the unrelenting muscle of our lives. And we must love this way: unyieldingly, mysteriously, beginning from before we know it or decide it and continuing long after we think we have done enough, that we are satisfied, that the other person does not love us back or we have given too much of ourselves. We should love this way because it is costly but it is freeing, because it is difficult but familiar, because it is unlike anything in the world and yet it is the foundation of the world.We should love one another this way, because this is how God loves.This baby, he or she has a heartbeat set in motion by God. And this heartbeat, which is different from mine, is teaching me to love again more wild, more free, more unrelenting. Like a heartbeat.Love,hilary

the impossible brightness, again

"It is not the critic who counts." Almost a year ago, I wrote a letter on my blog about that. I was talking about the cocoon we spin around ourselves, one that is supposed to protect us from things failing or falling apart or changing uncontrollably. I was talking about loving, daring greatly, how in that work and wonder the critic in us, the cocoon-spinner, does not count.Far beyond romantic love, I spin cocoons of protection around every paper, every possible declined application, every possible mistake, every possibly possible ... you understand, I think. I spin cocoons of anonymity and safety, of carefully worded posts or no posts at all, of endless caveats of when I become more of ... then, I will do and be and think the braver things.But daring greatly is not about the someday marvelous thing we might do. It is not the moment we suddenly defy ourselves and our cocoons and spite the critic in us. Those are marvelous moments, yes, but they are not all there is to daring greatly.Daring greatly is believing that you carry in you the impossibly bright love of God. It is about entering into the impossible brightness that God prepared for us before we did any marvelous daring thing. It is in all of our tiny revelations, our smallest moments. Daring greatly is saying, "I need to talk to you about this," three fourths of the way through the long flight when you've already argued and made peace and you think, if I say it now I will surely ruin everything. Daring greatly is pressing the "send" button when you're so sure that if I send that, it will be rejected. Daring greatly is getting on your knees when you think every trace of God's calling and purpose has disappeared, and even then, saying, Our Father. And it's showing ourselves to care too much, to be un-aloof and earnest and eager and people of a brighter believing:it's doing the dishes and trying to find the Chinese restaurant in the unfamiliar town so you can do something spontaneous for someone you love, it's making and remaking the same plans as you learn the rhythm of a friend's heart, and it's helping on a logic problem even though you could say you don't have time,it's praying with, not just for, it's being unembarrassed in the restaurant or the bank or the escalator in the mall to pray blessing over the stranger in the grey flannel two steps up from you,it's admitting that we are lights in the world, even in our yoga pants during rainy Mondays when we feel the least influential, admitting that we are lights that God would have put on a lampstand to illumine the house long before we ever thought ourselves worthy.Because love is impossibly bright, and it is already alive in us. Because Jesus has gifted us His brightness, not for ourselves but for the house, for the stranger who knocks on the door, for another's stepping toward Jesus.Daring greatly is not just for the marvelous things that defy gravity - it is for the every day revealing and sharing of ourselves as bearers of the impossible brightness of God's love.That is the impossible brightness. That is daring greatly.Love,hilary