a heart black and blue (for mothers)

"There ain't a mother with a heart less than black and blueWhen they hold 'em to the light, you can see right throughEvery dreamer falls asleep in their dancing shoesI may say I don't belong here, but I know I do" - Iron & Wine, "Thomas County Law"

Three years ago, I was sitting in the passenger seat of our car, driving up the highway after my first maternal-fetal medicine ultrasound with my son, Jackson. We drove back holding our hearts in our hands, beating mercilessly with the news, the medical lingo, the printout of three-dimensional photo capture. Jack was missing an eye, Jack's chin measured small, Jack had cleft lip and palate. We kept the silence that seemed the only language we could both speak.Somewhere, I imagined as we drove, there was a country of mothers in fields with beautiful baby bumps and smiles, with easy pregnancies, with children ushered into life with no worry or intubation or surgery or possible threat. "Somewhere, on the far side of other hills", I believed, there was a land I was supposed to reach, a place where motherhood looked the way I had always thought it would, where the aches were always sweet and the tears always tinged with laughter.But how to get there, holding this news, this ultrasound? How to win back that song and join the ones singing?--I began to mother in the NICU, I began to mother in the surgical pre-op, I began to mother with a beast pump and an alarm set for every two hours. I began to mother by untangling my son's wires and reattaching his pulse oximeter. And what of my own wires, those images of what it might have been, me perfectly coiffed and only slightly tired, nursing a baby in the dim hours of the morning? The NICU cut them, quick and to the core, and there I was in a nest of broken wires, old expectations, unfinished images. I still had those ultrasounds creased from living in the pocket of my shorts all summer. I still thought I could hear other mothers singing a song of something that had been taken from me.--There ain't a mother with a heart less than black and blue. Three years later, I hear this line as I'm driving to Target, paused at a stoplight. There is quiet in my car, a rare thing, my son looking out the window and my daughter asleep in her carseat. I am only half listening to the song, but the line pricks at me, and as I pull the car into the road I find that I am crying.There was no other country, there is only this one where all mothers, however they became them, live with a heart black and blue with love, bruised with the work of giving and aching and worrying, the work of cherishing and holding up again and again their children to the light, to see the wonder.Our hearts, wherever they come from, NICU or birthing tub, adoption paperwork or emergency c-section, worn with loss or grief, with worry or hope, measuring doses of baby Tylenol or repositioning a tracheostomy, going to physical therapy or solving another math problem-this list that lives endlessly in us and around us,it has worn our hearts to the same patterns, widened them to the same infinite space, made them translucent when held up to the light.--Three years ago, driving up the highway in that poorly kept silence, I believed I would not belong here, in this country of motherhood. I believed that I had no way to reach or understand mothers whose stories were different. I thought I would be forever separated from them, walking hallways alone, signing consent forms and pumping behind a screen, memorizing the procedure to clean and change a trach tube and a g-button.There ain't a mother with a heart less than black and blue. We all belong, no matter how we began, no matter the shape of our aches or the number of our tears. We all belong, no matter the manner of birth or the length of time we've been at this -our hearts are the same color.Held up the light, we can see right through. We can see each other.Love,hilary

my small span of ardent life (guest post at christie purifoy's)

Today I have the huge privilege of sharing a bit of my writing at Christie Purifoy's blog. Christie has been a favorite writer of mine since I discovered her writing a few years ago, and I'm honored to share this post - talking about wisdom, the architecture of our hearts, becoming who we are... I hope you hop on over! 

When I was in high school I was once described by a new friend as doing a kind of “butterflying” – from person to person, subject to subject, leaving conversations half-finished or always to be continued. I had, in the thoughtlessness of a fifteen year-old experiencing peer acceptance, jumped from lunches to free periods and neglected her. I hadn’t realized that she moved more carefully, finishing each thing before taking up the next one. I apologized profusely, and we went on to build a friendship in chemistry classes and after school theater. But I vowed to myself that I would change, I would abandon my butterfly ways. I would be slow, I told myself. I would be wise.Have you ever kept a promise too well? Have you ever been so good at becoming more like someone else that you left yourself behind?Keep reading over at Christie's - and if you want to read a bit more of my writing, you can learn more about my first book, Forgiving God: A Story of Faith over here and even order a copy from your favorite retailer!Love,hilary

when this is the mom I am

I am standing on my front porch staring at some random dead bugs on the concrete. Jack is pulling at my hands to go down the stairs into the sun. I don't know where the sunscreen is and I can feel a mosquito biting my ankle. I try to swat it. I slap myself hard on the ankle and the mosquito buzzes away. Jack laughs. We go down the stairs and he immediately runs toward the road. I run after him and he laughs as he sits down on the hot sidewalk to stare at something amazing I can't see, the sun beating down on his blond curls because I have lost the will to strap his head into a hat and I start to think to myself - if someone sees me right now with my kid's head uncovered in this sun what will they think of me? I think about dragging him back inside to find the sunscreen. I should. I really, really should. I should also buy him some sidewalk chalk and maybe a trampoline, because I think good moms have these things to encourage outdoor play. Or was it that I should move to a nearby creek and let him wade in and befriend a local turtle? Or was it that I should put him in a sun-resistant suit of armor before letting him outside? I can't remember. I tell myself that good moms, whoever they are, must be doing something different.--I have been lurking in the shadows of too many well-framed Instagram photos. I have clicked on the links and noted the hashtags. The start of this summer I found myself knee-deep in jealousy - how does she come up with all those games for her kids? How does she look like that every day? How does she have time to do everything? How does she remember to drink enough water and eat the right proteins?--Here is the truth. I forget to drink enough water. I can't come up with a fun game for an almost-2-year-old to save my life even though I spent years babysitting to earn enough money to waste on Tommy Hilfiger-esque purses and wishful-thinking American Eagle tank tops. I see how much fun other moms can make the summer for their kids and I think about things like going to get ice cream sandwiches from a food truck and I do it once and it's 95 with nowhere to sit and Jack protests being taken out of his carseat only to be put back in it because there is no shade and he won't wear a hat and so we go home with melted ice cream and I click on Instagram and somewhere in another part of the world someone's kids are grinning with their ice-cream smeared faces and I spill my ice cream on the only clean shirt I have left.--I became a mother because someone made me one. I became a mother to that someone and that someone looks at me, at the end of the day in between whatever chaos has been made, whatever has been said or not said or whatever games have or haven't been played - that someone looks at me and his face says safety. His face says joy. His face says love.God let me co-create. God let me in on the work of bones and blood and scraped knees and waiting rooms in day surgery. God let me in on the gutsy glory of my son. What else is more important? What food truck or sidewalk-chalk or photo can keep me from believing this?This is the mom I am. The mom who sometimes faints because she probably did forget to hydrate and standing in the sun can overwhelm the body. This is the mom I am. The mom that doesn't know what to play with her kid half the time and reads the same book over and over, and spills ice cream down her shirt and is pretty sure that Daniel Tiger songs will be the only ones she hangs onto by the time she is 90.And my kid's face still says safety and joy and love. He still crawls up in my lap at the end of the day, if I've been working or I've been with him, if I have managed to eat lunch on time or only at 3pm by standing in the kitchen stuffing my face with Goldfish while he listens to "Satisfied" from Hamilton for the 37th time. He still asks for the same song and the same Where do Diggers Sleep at Night? book and when I read it, my voice scratchy and tired, he still smiles at the same places and turns the pages himself.This is the someone who made me a mother. And this is me, his mom.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

dear jackson: the work on the ground

Dear Jack,I have begun so many letters to you. Each one drifts away from me in the busyness of joy, this business you set me about, to be your mother, to become your mother. Day in and day out, you set me back on the ground, back at the beginning. You are learning to sit on your own, and you always turn back to me, grin widening to let me in on the secret - that all the work begins here on the ground. You turn back to your toys and you press the button one more time, the music comes back on, you clap your hands, we repeat.All the work begins here on the ground.This was the time, last year, of my first letter to you, named as you are, Jacks, Jackson, Jack. More often we call you buddy. Most often we call out to you with our laughter, and you call us with yours.Last year I told you that you might need a little help breathing and eating. That was true, but last year it was so new and we pricked our fingers trying to hold all the hard words at once, searching the damp and crinkly pages of the ultrasound for answers. It was rushed and we were trying to be unafraid for you. I want to reach back to me then, I want to reach back with you and your laughter, your smile that is wide enough for past and future, for a world good and difficult. I want to reach back through the folds and wrinkles of time to tell her that it is you, learning to sit on your own, who can make us unafraid. That it will be you teaching, not me.This time last year I wrote to you, afraid as I was that we wouldn't begin on the right foot with the right language with the right protections around you. This time last year I thought my skin and muscles and bones weren't enough to keep you safe in the world where most people have never examined a stoma in a neck, where most people don't know how a barium swallow study is performed, where to have only one eye or only one ear is to beg a question - "So someday, will he look normal?" This time last year I thought I was to stand in the gap, stretched far and wide like the thin coils of wire that hold up bridges. I would be the wire and the bridge, I would be the guard and the keeper, I would be safety, salt and light.I imagine someone might think I'm telling you too much about myself, the ways I thought, the things I feared. But transformation's not a work I want to hide from you, not anywhere, and I'm in a chrysalis too, little one, and you should know how much of me God keeps changing.I wrote you a letter May 9 last year, afraid to fail in giving you exactly whatever was right to give you. I was up high above the ground, whispering over and over, making rope and a bridge out of Jesus's words, take heart, it is I, do not be afraid. But here you are, calling me to the ground. All the work begins here on the ground, here where we take off our shoes. I wanted to build you a bridge to keep you from what I feared was a dangerous world, a dangerous life.Instead you have brought me to the ground of your life, you have set me to work unraveling the rope I wove so tightly, fear coiled inside it. You have set me here, among your favorite toys - Sophie the giraffe and the multicolored hedgehog, your zebra blanket, the orchestra turtle - and here I see how you haven't needed me to build you a bridge or carry you away, you've just wanted me here sitting with you, clapping and singing and making animal sounds, doing it all on repeat.It is impossible to write, Jack, what you've taught me, but the closest I can come is to tell you that I am here on the holy ground of your life unraveling a bridge I didn't need to build, neck deep in love with the self you're becoming. You lift up your arms to meet mine and we laugh. We reach back to a year ago, we pull that woman down to the ground with us, to pull her into the holy, into the good. You reach around for another toy to shake. You laugh again.All the work begins on the ground, buddy.Love,mom 

dear jackson: you show me Jesus

Dear Jackson,You're in six month pajamas tonight, and I can see that the feet are far too big for you, the little husky puppy faces on the ends dangling helplessly where your toes can't quite reach. You're growing so much, buddy, that I can't really believe that we were in the NICU all those weeks ago. I just wrote down "months" and erased it, because this is the truth - time has changed for us. Hours are days and months are minutes. I think this is what they try to tell you when you become a parent - time reshapes itself in the midst of you.You'll know this yourself someday, I imagine. For now, you've been out in this wild world with us for 10 weeks, and you're sleeping, hands up by your face the way you always seemed to sleep those long months on the inside. I looked at those ultrasounds again (do you remember any of that? The echoes of strange voices talking to me and Dad about you? Did you ever shake your head, at how little we all knew of the mighty person you already were?) yesterday.There is no picture of you I do not find remarkably beautiful.--In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus. All the world, to be registered. This is one of the beginnings of the story of Jesus.There are many, though. There is the beginning with Mary and Gabriel, the Holy Shadow, the be it unto me. There is the beginning with prophets who cried out in wilderness and desert to make straight a highway for God. There is the beginning song of creation, the Word by which everything was made. This is the season where we begin the story, where we prepare, where we make ourselves ready--I want to tell you something about Jesus, Jack. But who am I to tell you anything about Him? You know Him. You know Him in a way I have forgotten, with your one eye scanning the world, always looking for Him, always eager, always anxious for another sighting, another glimpse.And then there you are, in the midst of the world where you are looking for the answer to your being here and the world being its beautiful self, and everyone who looks at you sees Jesus. You show Him to us.Oh, how you show Him to me. Every minute.Someone might think it's because you show me something about weakness or vulnerability. Someone else might think it's because you needed a trach and a feeding tube and it was so hard and I had to believe that God had good plans in spite of or even in the midst of.But you, Jack, you show me Jesus risen in glory and power. Jesus whose love is wild and unyielding. Jesus who walks the hallway of the NICU. Jesus who reigns in operating rooms and who comes in the might of other children who kneel the afternoon of your surgery to pray.You show me that Jesus is King and always has been.--What can I say to you about Jesus? In those days, a decree went out. An annunciation was made, and a visitation. There was a leaping for joy by John, after whom you're named (your names mean God has been gracious. But you already know this).When you open your eye in the mornings and smile at me, creasing your NAM tape, when you kick your feet up in the crib and toss your body back and forth as you reach for the toy fox, for your reflection in the mirror above your head on the play mat - you show me Jesus.In those days, God announced that He was sending you to us. In those days, God announced that you had been formed differently, that what nature often does it hadn't done the same way in you. In those days we walked, you and me, down many of the streets of downtown Waco, and in those days we caught glimpses of you - black and white, three-dimensional, printed on computer paper and clutched on the long ride home - and in those glimpses we knew. I know you, I would whisper over and over when I passed the fridge where your pictures hung. I know you, I would shout in my heart when the technicians swirled the ultrasound wand around my belly, looking for what makes you different, looking for a diagnosis. I know you. You show me Jesus, Jacks. Risen in glory and power, coming to us palms open, scars lit by the same glory, wound open so that we too can put a hand inside and touch the wonder of His work and rescue. You show me Jesus who comes in those days when the decree goes out.You show me Jesus, who holds you in those glorious scars and pours His love through them over you, and through you over others.In those days a decree went out. This is the season where we remember, where we tell the story, where we prepare for Him who is coming to live with us. And you, Jacks, you are leading me.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

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

this can carry us

I learned to pray when I learned to drive. Those smooth, familiar backroads, at age 17 too hasty in hoping to be older. At the stoplights where even now I do not notice how I know where I am going, I just turn, left, then right, then right again. I learned to pray driving past the old white house covered with vines and lilacs that only bloom for a week, a glorious hidden week in May, the kind that sneaks up upon you and shatters your resignation with joy. I prayed the unconventional hours: early morning requests and questions, the late evening thanksgivings. Often, I repeated this: I love you, Jesus. When I slink into the driver's seat, even now when I go home to visit, I feel the pull of those hours, the richness hidden in rhythm and repetition: I love you, Jesus. I remember the drives, keeping those hours, the expectation, the simplicity. The lilacs bursting forth against the old white house.These hours keep me praying in the long summer of expecting my first son. These hours keep me, my younger self's prayers, ones about God's glory being revealed to me, or the fullness of God's wisdom being shown to me, or the love of Jesus, my younger love of Jesus. These hours keep me, praying somehow still over me from the week of bursting lilacs to the week of driving to Temple, of learning about Jackson, of new glories.I have wanted to write about praying for Jackson, but the truth is, it's really the old prayer I'm praying, that the Spirit is praying in me and for me: I love you, Jesus. I find you so beautiful. My son knows my voice. This overwhelms me, since so much of the day I am quiet. We talk in snatches, I tell him about what I've been reading, I tell him about his cousins, his grandparents, how much love is waiting for him. I tell him about his doctors, too. I tell him that he will love them, that they are helpers, people God gave special gifts to for helping kids heal and grow and be strong. I am telling myself all these things.He hears about this ordinary life all day, carried around inside me with his fierce, strong spirit: he hears Preston read One Hundred Years of Solitude, me proclaiming my craving for red velvet cake and ice cream sandwiches, my laughter with his dad, our plans for crepe myrtle trees and a backyard garden and a library of books just for him. And he hears me on the couch or the bathroom floor, some mornings getting dressed, how those are sometimes hard moments in my expectation. How I cry sometimes because I am new at this, new at even the very act of becoming a mom, becoming his mom.So the old prayer, the lifeline - I love you, Jesus.He hears that, too.May this be the forever thread running through our days together: I love you, Jesus. I love you with the first light slinking through the blinds, with long hours of reading, with appointments and ultrasounds and so many pictures of Jackson as you are forming him. I love you when I pray laughing or weeping, or both at the same time. I love you with the bursting lilacs all those years ago, the first hours set down, that resound now. I love you with everything in me that is unfinished - with the poem that that line comes from, Robert Bly, I think.I love you, Jesus. This is the well-worn prayer. This can carry us.Love,hilary

tonight, welcome the wonder

Dear friend,There is a scene in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead I want to remember with you.

After a while the baby cupped her hands and poured water on her mother's arm and laughed, so her mother cupped her hands and poured water on the baby's belly, and the baby laughed... The baby made a conversational sound and her mother said, 'That's a leaf. A leaf off a tree. Leaf,' and gave it into the baby's hand. And the sun was shining as well as it could onto that shadowy river, a good part of the shine being caught in the trees...After a while we went on back to the car and came home. Glory said, 'I do not understand one thing in this world. Not one.'

I can't read this without tearing up. That sunshine and the shadowy river, the baby laughing, the leaf and the ordinary unconscious teaching of the wonder of the world, in a muddy bit of a river in Iowa. How can I not cry? That sunshine. That teaching. That wonder.--It's the day before Christmas, and I am caught up in the ordinary wonder of today. There is sunshine through trees, and my father-in-law and I spent a morning drinking coffee and looking out big bay windows and talking, our minds wandering new and familiar paths and it is that, the making of memories of laughter and wisdom shared and questions asked, in the unhurried way of daily life - that is the wonder of Christmas. That is the wonder we are welcoming in this moment, in this night. We welcome the wonder of new life, Heaven colliding irrevocably with earth. We welcome a baby, who bears our flesh, our ordinary, who is now in the midst of us and among us and in us.How can I not cry? We welcome the wonder of all wonders. Not apart from the ordinary, but entering the heart of it.--I sing Christmas carols around the house when I clean these days. I don't notice it all the time, but then suddenly I do: the same wonder, the rhythm of the cleaning of the floors and of my heart, too. I sing Christmas carols loudly and without worrying about managing all the right notes in the original key. I sing these stories loud. Something about the soapy water and the quiet and the ordinary work that never ceases: this is the work of wonder. The task of it, to repeat it in the midst of everything.--Tonight, we welcome the wonder of all wonders, the Lord of Heaven come to earth. We do this work of welcome in the middle of being so very much ourselves. I am myself, 24 years old, young in marriage and love and wisdom, me, the desperate seeker of a wilder love. I am welcoming Jesus as me, because Jesus comes for me. I am welcoming Jesus in the midst of my ordinary, singing Christmas carols with the Swiffer in hand. I am welcoming Jesus crying over Gilead. In the heart of the ordinary, the extraordinary enters in.Come with me even unto Bethlehem? Bring your ordinary, your uncertainty, your wearied heart and hands and self? Even unto Bethlehem?Tonight, the wonder of all wonders is born. Come with me, and greet Him?Love,hilary

when this is two months of gratitude

There are long days. The days where you wake up full of your own self, your own thoughts, your own worries - and there is the other person, the one whom you love, awaiting you.And you brush your teeth and think about what clothes to wear and what work needs to be done that day, and you think you'll fall behind if you don't spend every ounce of yourself in your new work, in school, in all the big bold things God brought you here to do.And you'll eat your yogurt and say something you don't even think twice about, which is the problem, of course, that you didn't even think about it, and then you are caught, not just by this person whom you love - no, you are caught too by that description of Jesus from Philippians 2 -

"In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:Who, though he was in the form of God,did not regard equality with Godas something to be exploited;but emptied himselftaking the form of a slave,being born in human likeness.And being found in human form,he humbled himselfand became obedient to the point of death -even death on a cross."

And it goes on, this kenotic hymn of such clarifying, terrifying beauty, you know that moment you hear something you keep wishing you wouldn't hear?  Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed - not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence - continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose." (Philippians 2.4-8 above, then 12-13)Most of the time, my husband goes first in the self-emptying.I am grateful that marriage is a self-emptying work. One that I fail at, more often than I can accurately describe. Because the work isn't a trick of convention or a sudden blaze of glory. It is smallness made holy, an unbecoming of so much of what we grow accustomed to being - caught in our own worlds, however beautiful they are, however good, however purposeful. We grow used to our largeness, the hero-of-our-own-life-ness, the safety of being wrapped up in ourselves.And then we are charged to work out our salvation, to self-empty, to loosen our grasp of the secure circular thoughts and to love one another. To love another.My husband so often goes first. So often, he asks the first question, calls out for me, insists on knowing what's behind the sigh or the half smile or the look-away or the hopeful side glance. And in the long days, when even your two-months-of-gratitude post is late, that calling out is an aching kind of love.I don't know if gratitude can truly capture it, how it makes me see him, see myself, how often I forget that we live and move in tandem with each other, how it is such work, such hard, gratifying, knees in the dirt work, to love each other.He reminds me to cherish the work that is love.The longest days, when it takes self-emptying, you sense that you are at the very beginning of the work. You eat your yogurt and you hear God tell you again -This work of love is the coming alive of you.To have this mindset, as was in Christ Jesus,to empty, to become small again, to rememberthe terrifying and beautiful fear and trembling,and God, who works in us.Love,hilary 

put on a little emmylou (a letter to preston)

Dear Preston,It's the one-month-mark today, here at the end of the winding road, the one that will so soon become that impossible stretch of green grass between us, aisle to union to marriage on the other side.Tonight, I'm playing songs on a playlist I made called, "h&p" - with everything that's indie and everything that's country and everything that's the way that these last days make me feel. I'm cleaning the almost emptied room, looking at the bags packed, the dresser drawers that creak with their once full life, their own sort of sweet goodbye.I'm playing the first dance song from J&E's wedding last weekend, the one that made me cry, the one where I was leaning against you, feeling your chest rise and fall with the steadiness that belongs to just you, that's more than oxygen entering and leaving, but the very tenderness of being next to each other.I wanted to write you a marriage letter early, the way Seth and Amber have written those, calling out on the waters of these blogs something, I don't even really know what, but something, some echo of the impossible hope that I feel building in my chest when I look over at you, after more than a year, awestruck and comforted all at once.But we aren't quite yet married, and for all its ache, there is something about being engaged that I felt like I had to remember, now at its closing days. So, Preston, here - a last-month-of-engagement letter.Put on a little Emmylou with me?We will move slow across the room, just a sway like that other time, and the time before that, when the work was too much and for a moment we shrank the world to the small steps across the ancient wood floors. We will move in the sticky rhythms of a second summer together, make our way around her voice laughter tickling our ears.Put on a little Emmylou with me, and I will press my hand into yours, we can drink lemonade along the water and you can steal more than one kiss before I duck my head, blushing, as the teenagers walk past in their colorful struts. I will wear your favorite dress and ask you a thousand questions about your favorite kind of pie and whether you think you'd ever live in the South of France.Put on a little Emmylou, Preston, and we will reread our story in the pages of graduate school applications and gall bladder surgery recovery, in wedding menus and Pinterest pages, in my grandmother's lost and now found ruby ring that I'll wear in a month and again, in the smallest whispers across a French 75 or a morning cup of coffee or a birthday present and a made bed. We will remember how we build this, and I'll make a joke that you laugh at and roll your eyes, and I'll make that face and you will laugh again.Put on a little Emmylou, darling, and I will start singing the way you like me to, unafraid, my feet up against the dashboard on the long drives, and I will promise you again and again, there is nothing quite as wondrous as stumbling on another way you've loved me - the boxes you've saved to open together or the the way you remember how much I love the Trader Joe's twizzlers or the way you relentlessly force my hand with Jesus, day after day, so sure that the only way to heal my heart is to ask me to open it again to God. Again, and again, I will sing it out, one year and two and ten and sixty-five, how it wasn't just happenstance, this love, but whole, and maybe even, holy.I'm singing with Green River Ordinance, now, again that line, put on a little emmylou, and we'll dance into the night, singing hold my loving arms, my loving arms are for you. And I remember how much love was singing at their wedding, in this song, in this dance, and so, my not just yet husband,put on a little emmylou,and slow, in the softness of these last days -hold me. My loving arms are yours.Love,hilary

for when love is desperate

I woke up in the haze of the night, that space where the sunrise is slowly bleeding into the day, where rain casts an enormous shadow, where there are things like jury duty and immediate deadlines and the last plane ride of the man back to Texas.Sitting in the eerie, half empty room with the other wanderers with their bleary-eyed coffee, their newspapers and knitting, their snuck-in granola bars eaten quietly, it struck me that this journey is almost over - well, perhaps, almost begun. Or both.I can't tell you why, but when they dismissed us - justice reached between the hallways and the bank of elevators - and I was driving back in to work, to meet that deadline, it hit me: this is the man I'm marrying.This is him.I started to laugh, but at the same time I started to cry. I was laughing and crying along a 10 mile stretch of road that I have never seen before, with small clumps of pansies blooming in the median boxes, the rain still hesitantly pounding the windshield, and two UPS trucks turning left and right and me in between them. I was laughing at myself, at this beautiful world, at the fact that in that moment I realized it:I'm marrying the person I always and never imagined.I had to tell myself that I was still driving, that this is the middle of the workday, that the world is racing past me and there are places to go and deadlines to meet, because in a moment, I am a heap of tears and shaky breathing and laughter, so much laughter it seemed to rebound off the walls and windows, carrying me.I think this must be what it is like to fall desperately in love.Not a hurricane, no, but the steady second, third, hundredth time falling into love. This is the we've been engaged for a long while now, the we know who does the dishes and sets the table, the ordinary missed words and not missed eye-rolls, who loves hummus and who loves sea urchin, where she always forgets her glasses and where he always puts down the car keys. This is the falling in love again with all the familiar, with all the still-surprising, with the way that love turns out to be eating leftovers on the floor or walking to the pond when the sun finally comes out and warms the earth.I always imagined that it would be as simple as that, the person as inevitable as breathing. I never imagined it would be so good, goodness essential as breathing.This isn't the post where I can say anything profound about love, other than I didn't realize how much you keep falling into it. How you fall into it, again and again, when you realize that this person still thinks you're the best thing that has ever happened when you oversleep and mess up plans and forget things. How the fact that he knows how much I love hummus and steak makes me cry. Or how he never lets a day go by where he says, "Hello, beautiful," and there I am, hopelessly falling into love.This is the post where I say that I spent that drive laughing and crying because I'm getting married to Preston. Because it's the hundredth time I've fallen in love with him, and love it wild, and sometimes I could cry with how extraordinary it is. And laugh.Love,hilary

dear hilary: talk to me

Dear Hilary, Finishing up my Freshmen year of college, I have found these last months to be consumed with the desire to fullfill a definition of beautiful and be the sort of person a boy would desire. Everyone around me seems to be speaking of identity and verses are continuing to declare God's love and claim of worthiness on my life. Yet, I find my self so deeply desperate for the affection of a boy, for a romantic relationship. I have never had a boyfriend and I feel like I have no one pursing me in that way. So I'm really wondering, is it okay to dream of this man? Because I used to believe that God had that man for me, it was just a matter of waiting and loving him first. But now I wonder, that perhaps I am called to that single life or an early death or to not finding that guy until I'm in my 30s or to marry someone that is not like the man I have dreamed of. I just don't feel like I am worthy of being loved in that sort of way or if it is even fair of me to dream of such a guy. How do I approach the Lord in prayer when I don't even know if there is a guy? And can I dream of a guy with particular qualities or is that un-christ like and foolish because the only thing I should look for in a partner is his love for Christ?Love,Just AskingDear Just Asking,I was driving home one weekend from college, in the midst of thinking about and wondering about this one guy who was in my microeconomics class. We sat next to each other, we passed notes about where the supply and demand lines met in the graph and whether that always determined the price. We occasionally saw each other outside the regular Monday, Wednesday, Friday clock. It's funny how you can find yourself in a rhythm of thinking just like the other rhythms of your life. 4:30 on those days saw me turning my thoughts to the what if we dated and the why doesn't he ask me out? and the ever-present am I worth that? There is a certain kind of ache in the rhythm, a certain all-too-familiar. I would overthink what I was going to wear to class that day, I would write those notes in the margins of my notebook and I would walk back to my dorm wondering everything you are wondering, about love and the person and whether Jesus was going to get around to giving me a person anytime soon.And I could write a lot about how this remembering is a work of conviction in the heart but also the practice of grace, the realizing that our past selves are not to be condemned as the worst possible versions of ourselves, but to be loved and accepted as being the people that they were, knowing what they knew... but that is a different story.I am driving home. That's where we are. I am driving home and I am turning left, sneaking around the bend in the road a little fast than I should, and as I swung the car through the turn I found myself saying, "God, what is the deal?"And God said, "I see you've decided to talk to Me."I promptly started to cry. I drove and cried and talked, spilled out the story into the empty car which is not empty because God and I are finally, really, talking. I said everything, the notes, the protests that what if I was not worthy, the questions about if he was ever going to ask me out. I said it, spoke it into being.And that was the beginning of the change for me. Not when the boy dated someone else, or when the other boy and I ended things, or when Preston and I got together. The beginning of the change was this drive home, the fall whispering through the trees, promising winter, promising, further on, spring.God, what is the deal? We do not always begin in a glamourous, beautiful, prayer. We do not always begin in the right words. But if we begin, then we begin. If we are willing to say something to God, then we open our hearts to be changed, to be molded, to be made more.I will not tell you whether you should desire specific qualities in a guy or not, dear one - because I do not believe it is wrong to ask and imagine. I believe only that it is more dangerous when you are not honest with God. I mean gut-wrenchingly honest. I mean on your knees honest. I mean with your Bible open and your pen raging across the pages of God's promises honest. I want you to get real with God so that you can get quiet and hear God.We hear so many times that we should make our worthiness not about guys. Oh, have I heard this and preached this in the coffee shops and along the sidewalks. But can I tell you, across the wires of the Internet, something?I think God is more willing to tell us our worthiness without us trying to make ourselves believe it without Him. I think God wants to tell you you are worthy. I think God wants you to get alone, to get rage-y, to get serious, to ask the question. I ask it, still. Only when we are willing to ask God, who alone can answer our questions with the fullness of His life, can we begin to feel the life moving in us.The point of your life and my life and all the lives that scatter this beautiful world - the point is the real conversation with God. Not whether he wants you to love him before he gives you a guy. Not whether you'll have an early death or be like Paul or find love in college or work 10 jobs or 1. Not whether you are a poet or a preacher or a physical plant manager.The point is always Jesus, looking at us, looking at you, in the beautiful singularity that you are, and saying, "Talk to me." When we start talking, and only then, do we start to make our hearts able to hear God. About boys. About college. About love. About worthiness. About the aches wrapping around our hearts."Talk to me." This, my dear friend, this is our invitation.Love,hilary

dear hilary: that impossible brightness

Dear Hilary,My question concerns (as most questions seem to) fear and love. For a long time, I was afraid to love, and then I was brave and fell deep into it, and then what I was most afraid of happened: I was too much, or I wasn't enough. The end of it was confusing and tangled and I got hurt again and again, but I held on, thinking that I wanted to show him grace and love and forgiveness. The problem is, I didn't show any of those things to myself, and now I'm so embarrassed and afraid of how hurt I got, how long I held on, and how badly I was willing to be treated. The question is, how do I forgive myself for that? How do I move through the fear of love ending and fall in love again, now that I know how the ending burns? How do I get over the fear of never falling in love again, which is partly what motivated me to hold on to the love I found for so long after it hurt me?Love,The Edge of HopeDear The Edge,"It is not the critic who counts." Can I ask you to go look this up? I won't say more, but I will say click beyond Goodreads, beyond the quote itself (I'll give it away - it's Teddy Roosevelt), and down towards the bottom will be this name, Brene Brown, and if I say nothing to you in this, it's just that you remind me of her mantra. This letter, this act of describing your question, this being willing to be you here in this space - that is what she calls daring greatly.Today all I can think about is this time that Preston asked me something that flipped me upside down. "Are you," he said, pausing over the words and over the rim of his mug (we were sitting in the living room), "always this unkind to yourself?" We were drinking coffee and going through my applications to graduate school and I was telling him with a lot of confidence that I was NOT going to get in and I should NEVER try and I should just quit and not be a philosopher or anything because everyone would find out I was a fraud and... then he asked that question. "Are you always this unkind to yourself?"I got mad. I don't really know why. Maybe because the truth doesn't set you free before it royally pisses you off and arrives at the most inconvenient time and screw up all the plans you had for avoiding it. I hated the question, though, for what it pointed to in me: that my unkindness wasn't towards others in that instance. It was towards me. It was shame and regret and hurt I piled on and on as a way to protect myself from potentially being rejected. "Who am I to apply to school X? Smart people apply there" or "Who am I to have loved so wildly? Only fools don't realize what it costs..." or my personal favorite, "Who do I think I am to be enjoying such a good life? It won't last!"  Unkindness asks that question, tries to protect us in a cocoon of doubt and embarrassment, tries to keep us from making what we think will be a mistake.The cocoon is not where it is at. I mean, we all go there, we all build one, but maybe specifically here, when it comes to love and fear, I want to put up a big warning sign that says, BE KIND TO YOURSELF. I want to stamp it across every sign you see today. You do not need a cocoon of doubt or fear or embarrassment or shame. Because actually, in fact, I believe you are already stronger than the cocoon. I believe you are stronger without it.Here, in love, the critic in you does not count. At all. In any way. You loved, and it ended, and it was terrifying and beautiful and tangled and ugly and hurt like hell and probably still does on some mornings (I have those days too). But the forgiving of yourself begins in a kindness to yourself. A basic, gut level kindness. A kindness that says, "I dared greatly. And now it hurts." A kindness that says, "I was brave. I believed in love. It disappointed me that time." A kindness that does not hide the truth - the real truth - which is not that you should be embarrassed or ashamed of loving, but the truth which is that you dared and even so it is complicated, and no blame or unkindness will clarify that paradox.There is an impossible brightness to love: that paradox of daring and fear, of deep connection and also things not working out every time. That kind of love, falling in it, falling out of it, that is where you tell me you learned things about grace and forgiveness and love. I believe you did learn about those things. I believe now is the time to hold them in your hands and offer them back to yourself, not as warning for what not to do, not as judgment for how long you stayed or what you were or were not willing to do for this person, but as the gifts of that time. As the gifts of daring greatly. As the gifts of the impossible brightness of love.You are already out here in the brightness, love. You don't need the cocoon. You're far too strong.Love,hilary

an unnecessary letter of love

Dear you,These are the long days, aren't they? These ones at the beginning of another month of winter, whatever the groundhog says with his ancient conversation partner, the shadow. This year, I don't know what he told us. It was a Sunday and I was late for church, and I arrived in this half breathing whirlwind clutching car keys but wondering if I had remembered to drive with my license in my wallet. I know you must have those days too, days of too much forgetting, days that you tell the wall that it cannot go on like this as you throw clean socks into a dirty laundry basket just so that you can see the floor again.I don't know what made me think of it tonight, maybe the feeling that this blog was always supposed to be about love, and the lingering squint-eyed gaze in the dance studio mirror tonight at my hip shaking body made me realize it had been a while since I offered some love unbidden and unnecessary and unbounded by a reason.I'm playing Nashville Cast music on Spotify right now. I'm singing it to the screen as I type. This, too, unbidden and unbounded.We don't spend our words on each other enough. I'm so sad about that, when I let myself. I'm so sad that there are millions of words flung into the ecosystem of us and not nearly enough of them have been about this work of loving each other. Not nearly enough for you. We've spent ourselves on the theology on the policy on the philosophy on the worry on the big church and the small and the medium-sized and what we think and must think and should not think about it all. We've spent words like water on all the ideas, thin bridges in the storm, stretched across the miles.What do I even think the work is? But there I go, almost writing about what I think about the work, almost spending more words trying to describe what I want the work to be or how I think maybe this letter is the work. I don't really know, to tell you the truth. I stared in that dance studio mirror and I thought, I want to tell someone the stray thought. I want a bridge of words towards another person's heart tonight, however thin it feels against the storms. I come to the empty screen and I start to write. What do I tell you? What do I say?I'm singing "Believing." This song. I'm singing about how you keep me believing. And it's true. That simple. Writing to you keeps me near to King Jesus, as my dad has been teaching me to call him, and I'm crying while I write it and I'm trying to sing at the same time. Unbidden, and maybe only a little bounded.I don't know if you know how much I love to sing. It's the kind of love I have for writing some days, the good days, where it is the doing of it, the creation of sound and the way I imagine my voice moving through the air, how it might look or feel if you came across it. Do you have something you love that much? Would you tell me about it? Do you sing, too?I was telling you something, I think, about loving and words and this letter. But maybe, unbidden and unbounded and unnecessary though these words seem in the moment when I'm playing the song again - it's all just that loving this, the words, the hope that maybe when you read this you feel like someone saw you today and wanted you to know it, maybe that's the letter.And the love.Love,hilary

when this is a thought about marriage

Preston starts his posts with that word, "when" - an invitation, I think, to realize the passing of time and the not-passing-of-time, the way when you sit to read his words you remember that you are exactly where you are, reading, in your kitchen or on your iPad. It's funny how the vocabulary of the one you love begins to seep into your own, their words swirled next to yours, the way tea steeps in a mug on an early morning.I've been thinking about marriage - maybe that's not so surprising - and when I think about it, inevitably, I start thinking about the ways we talk about marriage. I think about the advice blogs, the story-becoming-advice blogs, the blogs that remind us that this a great big work, different from anything we've tried before, blogs that remind us that this is also the most normal unfolding of life, the most apparently inevitable thing, the way that they hold your hand or kiss you good morning is the only thing that could be.And my head fills with other people's thoughts faster than its own sometimes, trying to think my way into wisdom about marriage, sewing a patchwork quilt of what other people have done and thought and tweeted and posted and shared. But my stitches fumble, and when I look over at him in the quiet of the morning, the pieces slip to the floor. I can't read my way into being good at marriage. I can't repost or borrow or sew together thoughts to cover us in the moments when we don't understand each other, or those moments, even more surprising, when we understand better than anyone else ever has.And maybe, before journeying down the road of what someone here and there says will make this work, I must close my eyes, lean into what is right in front of me. The way he says hi on Skype, ties his tie when we are going out to dinner, the way we laugh or curl up to watch Game of Thrones together or the way that we  both know when it's a night to stay in, instead of go out, a night to pray, a drive where we will talk about deep things in the church or a drive where we will ask about our favorite praise songs growing up.Once, before Preston and I got together, before the full unfolding that would be this love story, I went for a walk with a friend. It was warm, the end of May in New England, when the world bursts green and the sun plays with the trees, throwing its light on everyone who passes by. We walked, talking about marriage, talking about love, and I remember so desperately wanting to store up everything she said, learn and memorize her words until they sang out from me as if they were mine. But as she talked, and we wandered out of the woods, back into a small cluster of houses around a pond, the afternoon stretched long and we leaned into it.She didn't want me to memorize her stories. She was telling me as a way to push me towards discovering my own. She was sharing about her life, her marriage, not as blueprint but as beautiful, as the wonder of how God led her and her husband into and out of each thing. She was telling me, not because she knew best, but because she knew how much of the story we must write on our own.I don't know if I believed her at the time. But I do believe her, now, in the months that still stretch out before our wedding, in the nights in and out, the jeans and sweatshirts and the salsa dancing club and all the wonder of the in-between every day learning each other.It isn't a blueprint. It's just all, always, beautiful.Love,hilary

all that christmas music

Preston and I were driving to the airport this week (the not fun kind of drive, where we know it'll be a little while before we can see each other again), and he was playing a CD of Advent and Christmas music. It doesn't surprise me that much anymore to discover the things that this man knows and loves are close to my heart - old hymns set to new sound, simple melodies that whisper through the cold drive that we are waiting for the Messiah, that we are anxious for him, that we are hopeful, that we are preparing the way.But since that drive, I've been listening to all that Christmas music - the kind that plays in the Gap and on the Michael Buble Holiday Pandora station, the music that surrounds us with dancing sugarplums and dreams of warm fires and friends and falling in love.And a dear friend was talking on Wednesday about how couple-y Christmas can feel. How that can be hard.All those images of ice-skating on Frog Pond, you know? And the way that the TV seems to tell us Christmas is really about love, and love is really about romantic love, and romantic love is really about Kay Jewelry, and the logic twists and turns around us and we feel trapped in a story we were never writing ourselves, left to ourselves.Last winter I wrote this post for Lisa-Jo, about how I wondered if my skinny jeans would still fit while I ate my way through a bag of peppermint bark looking at all the heart shaped icons on Facebook. How I felt sitting in those jeans and how I didn't believe it would happen, how I told God that it would not happen, how God said, "I have named your life beautiful," and how desperately and deeply that has changed me.This year is the first year I'll have ever had someone to call mine on Christmas.The first year I'll have the chance of kissing anyone under any kind of hanging plant at a holiday party, or clinking champagne glasses with. And I sing along with the holiday stations thinking about love, how to keep it safe from too many commercials telling stories to us in our skinny jeans or our pjs eating our peppermint bark watching hearts pop up on Facebook or another rerun of the holiday love movies.And while I love the Christmas music, the warmth and familiarity of it, while I play the Pandora stations and you might even catch me swaying my hips in time to Lady Antebellum in a store this weekend -I want to tell you that the love I love most this Christmas is the love of the man who took me to Panera and to see Frozen because he knew I would like it. The way he catches my eye and does the dishes and tucks my feet under the blanket on the couch because he knows I get cold. The way he kisses my forehead, just because.And the love I love most is not less than this: the love of my mother, who laughs with me as we curl up under the covers. The love of my father, who wraps me tight in hugs sometimes for no apparent reason, other than he loves me and wants to remind me, right there in front of the stove. The love of my brothers, with their fiercely handsome hearts, the way that they teach me to give more of myself, to listen better, to drink Dunkin' Donuts and watch Despicable Me. The love of my sister, our FaceTimes with the baby nephew, the love of my brother-in-law and laughter over sausage pizza and the quiet of the family gathered together. The love of the friends that call and text and write and give of themselves in the way that teaches me how - the love that teaches me how to love.That's the love I want to sing about, in between Justin Bieber's "Mistletoe" and Michael's "Cold December Night" and someone else's something else that tells us Christmas is only one picture of love.Because Love comes down this Christmas, because Jesus becomes known in the hugs and laughter and making space for each other, passing around the peppermint bark.Because I want the fullness of love for us this Christmas.Love,hilary

dear hilary: stay at the table

This is a new kind of dear hilary question - but one that I care a lot about, and I'm excited to share.Dear Hilary,As Christians, what, if anything, do we stand to gain from political disputes?  Should we just throw up our hands and agree to disagree, even on emotionally charged issues that matter deeply to us?  Or should we dive in headfirst and fight the good fight, even when it starts to poison our relationships and hurt our ability to love those with whom we disagree?Or is there a third option?Sincerely, Swing State of MindDear Swing State,When I lived in the bright chaos of DC, I remember wondering how people "did it" without losing their minds. The mantra of "it's who you know, it's the connections you have," or the walk along K Street with the power houses and the promise-makers-and-breakers was a lot to take in. And it seemed like the longer I spent time there, the more I realized the immense complexity of political life. The process of getting a bill to the floor alone is long enough and complicated enough to want to throw up your hands. And sometimes, when you hear one more report on the 7 o'clock news or one more newspaper headline about gridlock and insider Washington and the stalemate of government and this or that filibuster fight - you think this can't be what it is meant to be. And I don't think it is. I don't think we are intended to sit at tables and yell at each other over nicely arranged water pitchers and smoothly swiveling chairs. I don't think political conversation is meant to be so defensive and so positional that everything we hear the so-called "other side" saying we treat as an attack we must vigilantly rebuff.But here is the thing. A conversation only dissolves when people leave it. It might be a loud cacophony right now, it might sound like chaos, it might make us want to give up - but it still has life in it. If we withdraw, if we become so dissatisfied that we simply cease to participate, we might send a signal of our dissatisfaction, but we won't have a better conversation. We won't get to be agents of that change.I don't want Christians to be in politics simply because we represent an important philosophical perspective on matters of political and community significance. That's true. We care a lot about highly charged issues and our reflections can add a lot to policy-making. I want us to be there because we are fundamentally people of peace and justice. I want us to be there because, if we claim Christ, then we claim a kind of approach to politics, to conversations, to decisions about our common life, with the fiercest kind of commitment to listening. Peacemaking has to begin with listening. Justice has to begin with listening. If we leave the table, how will we hear?That means if we sit at the table, if we model for others and for each other (because we need that, too) we can make the conversation itself, the very way we go about deciding these things and weighing different opinions, one that is peaceful rather than punishing. We can ask questions and sincerely listen. And yes, maybe the philosophical opinion on one policy issue won't become law the way that some of us in this wild knit-together family wanted. Maybe it will be less than our original vision.But we can be a people who don't retreat into a silo of the like-minded. We can be a people who disagree within themselves, but who know that to do this common life, we have to listen. You say that sometimes our opinions hurt our relationships and makes it difficult to love those with whom we disagree? But whether it's in politics or families or workplaces or third-grade classrooms this was the charge we were given by Christ. We were told to love. So we have to get down in the dirt with each other and practice it. Couldn't it be, in fact, that participating in this political life is a part of how we learn to love?Can we imagine together that this politics thing doesn't have to be fighting the good fight and hurting those we love? We do that no matter what, so we'll bring it to politics. But can we imagine that politics could be the kind of chasing after justice with our whole participation at the table, disagreeing with care and attention, being the first to stay at the table when it gets difficult, being a people who listen?If we leave the table, how will we hear? Love,hilary

love on a sunday afternoon

It's Sunday afternoon and the haze of sleep is settling over us both. I feel my limbs heavy, asking for a moment or two to close eyes and breathe deeper and rest, find a moment in the chaotic joy of seeing him again to sleep. At first I fight it - we only get so many days, and I want to be awake for them, I want every moment with this man who in the airport late on a Friday night makes my whole heart swell in my chest at the sight of him, who catches me and kisses me in baggage claim, in front of everyone, and pulls away only to hug me closer to him. Because that embrace is home.But two days later and the cold I've been trying to ward off won't budge, wants time to move through and around my body, and my body politely insists on sleep. We sit on the couch on the porch, in the cold October sunshine, and I put my feet across his lap and he sits reading a commentary on Genesis and he piles more blankets on me to be sure I'm not cold, to be sure I'm peaceful. I feel his steady breathing, the rise and fall of it. There is a silent joy among the birds and branches, the leaves descend towards their winter resting place and a car pulls in the driveway and someone goes to the grocery store and someone else comes home from a different church activity, and we sit on the porch and I fall asleep.I think this must be the look of care - how we become unhurried with each other. How there is enough time to take a nap on a Sunday afternoon in October, despite my protest that long distance makes every moment of closeness to him seem impossibly short (so why would I sleep it away). How it is his voice that tells me, tickling my ear, that I am, in fact, tired, and I do, in fact, need to sleep. And it is his hand that drifts across my ankles in the gesture of care. Reminding me of his presence, reminding me that there is enough time in the long journey together.I don't know how to describe it, or why I would try to fill words with the unutterably beautiful feeling of falling asleep next to him on a Sunday afternoon late in the day when the sun is dripping gold across the tops of the trees. Perhaps all I wanted this to say was that the look of care, the way care moves, is not what I expected before I met him. Before I might have told you that care was bold and grand and sweep-you-off-your-feet, that it was a wild trumpeting kind of thing, that everyone saw and noticed and gaped at. And I do run towards him and kiss him in the airport and we do laugh and cry and hug each other -and then on a Sunday two days later he astounds me by sitting on the porch with me and reading while I take a nap. He astounds me with the gentleness of care, with the simplicity of it, with the way that love moves, unhurried, from one to another and back again.Care is quiet and full and this morning, I close my eyes and miss him and remember the slow Sunday afternoon. How this must have been what I was longing for:  such astonishing every day love.Love,hilary