i begin again

courage: to tell your story with your whole heart.we can't practice compassion with other people until we are kind to ourselves. This. It's this I have avoided and pretended not to know.But compassion -is a result of authenticity -of vulnerability.Nothing less.To have a compassionate imagination, as one friend named my dearest ambition over swirling wine glasses and chocolate cake, to walk into another person's very story- that takes the kind of gentleness we cannot know until we have done it. And we cannot do it without beginning at ourselves.I typed this blog post weeks ago, when I first discovered what felt at the time to be the most revolutionary, inspiring, terrifying, truthful talk I had ever heard. Brene Brown told her audience (and me) on her Ted talk that we cannot begin to be compassionate, to build connection, to grow in love, unless we are vulnerable.Really, she said, the people who live wholehearted don't think about whether vulnerability is particularly good or bad; they simply recognize that it is necessary.But last night I didn't want it to be necessary.I didn't want to build anymore. I didn't want to be vulnerable, to walk around with my thoughts on a blog or in the air against the black sky flecked with a lazy snowstorm. I didn't want to think anymore about whether I tell half the truth or the whole truth, whether there is a window into my heart or not.Sometimes the courage meets the hard place and the messy place and it seems to evaporate. Sometimes the Wednesday night heading home at 10:45 makes you think those words about authenticity and vulnerability are just words on a page without any reality, any connection to you, any roots.And maybe that's okay.Maybe it's okay to begin there. To begin again, there.Some days you hear beautiful and true things and you don't want them to be beautiful or true, and you begin there. Some days, you build bird by bird, brick by brick, and you have to pause and admit to yourself that bricks and birds are not always easy. And you begin there. And if you, wherever you are, find your courage meeting the harder places, find your eyes and arms a little weary, find your beginning in the bird by bird -I'm with you.We begin here.Love,hilary

what mama did: sharing at lisa-jo's

Today I get to share over at Lisa-Jo's blog about what my mom did that I cherish, treasure, remember with all my might as I grow up.And my mama? She laughed. And taught me how to laugh, too.Won't you come join us for the whole series of what mama did?She has offered her life to us in bits and pieces over the chipped mugs for years. Each time I feel a story swelling in the bright and cramped kitchen, I wrap my fingers around the tea (it is always tea) and settle my heart down to the steady rhythm of mothers and daughters who make time. I pray the winged prayer of grateful daughters everywhere: Oh God, thank you for my mom.Keep reading with us, over here?Love,hilary

it is simpler than you think

That is the funny thing about the mornings you wake up in a cold sweat from the fever that broke in the watches of the night: you lie there, and it is simple. Startlingly clear on the outskirts of your mind, in that just-before-fully-waking feeling, and you remember:You remember all the nights you lay in your bed in your small cramped second floor apartment, crying into your pillow that there was no clarity, no plan, no guidance for what "after college" looked like.You remember fighting God on runs around the pond, fighting the hope and the doubt, fighting the talking about the future and the avoiding of talking about it, and how the sunshine and the dirt and the water gathered by wind was beautiful, but you couldn't pay enough attention to it.You remember how when graduation had reached its sweet tearful conclusion, you took your parents' car, the one you'd learned to drive on, and drove in circles listening to Holocene over, and over, watching Rt. 22 go by your windows, silent and fleeting, and you thought of how much, and how little, you understood about yourself.Your remember how even then you didn't totally believe that God had a good plan for you, and how you crept into bed amid piles of half-packed boxes and selfishly, you tried to insist to yourself that you could make it on your own, that you could find a better plan, or make one.You remember how on July weekend days you ran away from your house into the stickiness along the quieter suburban hills, and God told you to trust Him and you didn't know how.But then, in the watches of the night, in February, in waiting for your fever to break, you also remember: You remember all the mornings you woke up and the sun shone through your window and the birds chirruped to each other a song that you just enjoyed, because it meant only that nature was beautiful and worth it.You remember that He gave you a job at the time and walked you down the path towards it, and blessed you by keeping you closer to Him in the months that followed.You remember that on the long drives and walks and not trusting rants in the woods last year, when at 21 you didn't know if you could believe His plan was a good one, He still kept you in His grace. He still gave you wind gathering water and cool breezes and cupcakes on Sundays. He still gave you the words late on a Thursday night from an unexpected person that you saved and wondered over, about being saved as through a fire, and about the wonder that is His grace.You remember that you still knew all the words to sing with you and your mom on Sunday afternoons.It is simple: all of it because He loves you. It is simple: all of it, because He has a plan to draw you nearer to Him.It is simpler than you think, as the morning wind greets you through the rickety panes of glass: all of it, because of Him.Love,hilary

dear hilary: no small work

Dear Hilary,There is a saying, "there are no small parts, only small actors." I think it's meant to tell us that we are all important, somehow, that our one line in a play is not less meaningful than the monologues, our place at the back of the corps de ballet is not unimportant, even if we might never be cast as the lead in Tchaikovsky. But Hilary, is that true everywhere? How can it? Aren't we supposed to want the work to be meaningful? Aren't we supposed to seek positions of influence and do good in them? Aren't there small jobs? And small work?Love,My work feels smallDear My work feels small,My answer is a resounding and beautiful and emphatic no. There is no small work. There is no small work in a world where something as simple and apparently stupid as being the person on the bus who always asks their seat neighbor how they are can change everything. There is no small work in a world where the right sentence in an email, the right amount of foam on a latte, the best swept ballroom or the newspaper print copy edited for the fiftieth time can be an expression of love.And it can always be that.The phrase about small parts and small actors leaves out the truth about small actors. They are not small because they wished for a bigger part - they are small because they didn't imagine how they might love and live wild in their small part. It isn't selfishness, I think, to want and long for meaningful work. It isn't selfishness to fall into the trap that tells us that meaning is attached to power. There is a lot of good we can do when our voices can speak speeches and our hands touch many people and our platforms have followers galore. There is a lot of good, a lot of beautiful, we can do when we can bend the ears and minds of those around us.But we will only do that good if we build, bird by bird, moment by moment, latte and copy edited letter and email and photocopy, a heart that's widened with an imagination for love.We have to build up a heart for love. And then we have to love.Do that, and there will be no small work.There will be days when the work feels small. When you wonder how any of it can be about love, or about influence, or about the big ideas we once had about changing the world. There will be days when the purpose of vacuuming eludes you. When the tenth meeting about the color of the balloons runs you ragged. When answering the phone feels as important as counting specks on the wallpaper. When you cannot think about babysitting for one more second before you think, I have no idea what this accomplishes in the world... I cannot promise you, my sweet friend, that we will always trust that our work matters. We probably won't. But if we do it even then? If we dare to tell ourselves in those moments that even this work (maybe especially this work), is always about the depth and quality of our love, the tenor and passion of our one-liner in the great play? If we dare to imagine ourselves away from the simple chasing after power?Oh, then, I think we will change the world.One latte, one photocopy. One smile, one remembered favorite coffee flavor for a coworker. One promise, one extra twenty minutes of laughter and compassion behind closed office doors, one email at a time.Because there is no small work in a world this hungry for love. I dare us to love it that much together.Love,hilary

on living water

It was a year ago this day that I wrote about living water. I told you in my college-aged space with my rushing, hopeful words, that I longed for us to carry this living water to each other. I wanted us to bring each other cupped hands filled with that mighty Ezekiel stream. I wanted us to love the people we didn't yet love with a wild and living water.Because, I typed, sitting cross-legged on my bed with my hair wet from the post-run shower, "Every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live."Do you ever think, while you sit next to the strangers on the bus on the way to work, that they hunger and thirst for a wilder love? That as they walk through their day, they might drink an iced tea and write emails and go to spinning class, all the while wistful for something bigger?And you, do you ever do that? Do you ever walk along a street in what feels like the middle of the night, against the silence of stars and flickering stoplights, kicking the sidewalk with your longing? Do you ever find yourself staring out of a window, almost in tears, for no reason other than you don't know what's next but you wish it to be big and brave and wild and beautiful?And do you ever stop in front of your door, frozen to the sidewalk, frozen in all that you think about admitting, but don't want to? All that you would tell that person, or write in a letter, or sing out to the sky if only you believed you could?Oh, me too.Me, too.In this, my twenty-second year, I stand outside my door. I scuff sidewalks alone after a cocktail or a coffee and think about the possibilities that terrify me. In this, my twenty-second year, I cannot leave church without crying hysterically on the strip of road between the initial right turn and the dangerous narrow left. In this, my twenty-second year, I whisper, "counseling" and "writing" and cross them off and rewrite "history" and "provost" and cross them off again and rewrite, "?" and leave it.And now I sit, leaning late into the afternoon - and I hear His command: Hilary, give away My water. Maybe it is that simple. We are weary travelers all, searching for a drink of water. We thirst for the living water flowing from the temple. We look at each other longingly, wondering, where is the drink of water for my weariness?Maybe it is as simple and as difficult as you and me, traveling along the road, offering each other a drink of living water. In quiet prayers in a cold parking lot. In twenty minutes of laughter in our offices. In dinners and drinks and blog posts and daring greatly for each other. In telling you, dear reader, as scared as I am, that I am vulnerable and new to everything and afraid. In telling each other that some days, you just need to drink deep from a well of living water. That's all.Give away my water. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."Love,hilary

the photograph of my mother

I stole a picture from my parent's mantelpiece in August. It's a rough, 4x6 kind of frame, bent at corners from years of being flung into a suitcase or a box, dust glued to its glass. The back stand of the frame is bent, so it can never stand by itself, solitary against the clean white of a wall or the cherry wood coffee tables of the houses I cut out pictures of in my spare time.I stole it at first because I wanted to fill my office with the evidence that I belonged to something. I wanted picture frames, books on shelves, cute mismatched lamps, a bulletin board with postcards of Van Gogh paintings. I told myself that the old frames would give it a classic, unstudied elegance. I put tea on my shelf and all the mementos of a life still at the beginning: books from my law and ethics class sophomore year next to granola for the days I forget to pack my lunch, glossy prints of faculty art exhibits, my diploma sandwiched between Thirst by Mary Oliver and a bag of Port City Java coffee. I put this picture on my desk next to the larger, shinier one of me hugging my dad at graduation. I almost forgot it.One day when I reached for the phone I knocked it over. It made a sweet, quiet clink onto my desk, a polite cry of dismay. And when I went to pick it up again, I looked at it.And I saw my mother.In this photo she is standing outside in the garden in England, the climbing roses flushed with early spring. The windows behind her are cracked open a bit, to let in the smell of wet, renewed earth - a smell that my dad has always said is in our blood, is good for us. Her arms are folded against her chest in a cable sweater and a pink checked shirt peeks out near her throat.It is the softness that startles me - my mother smiling in such gentle delight, her head tilted and leaning forward, her eyes laughing, but looking through you. She can see me in this picture, even though she doesn't know my name. She can see all the years unfolding between her and Dad, and her gaze has a bigger love than the beginning love of romance. It is mother love and friend love; the love of God and her three year old students in Sunday School. It is the love the house we make as home. It is on your knees love, doing the dishes again love, walking the dog with her twenty-two year old on a Sunday afternoon.There, on my desk, between roses and white windows, between the phone that doesn't ring and a graduation hug, is my mother.The woman I am searching to be already in front of me, smiling at the me that does not yet exist, with a smile that the winery owner will tell me on a Saturday night unites us."I knew right away who you were," he will say, leading me over to where my mom and our guests are sampling reds. "You're the spitting image of your mother."And you will smile, realizing for the first time, that is the biggest compliment someone could pay you.Love,hilary

the light is gentle

The morning light is sweet but I am not. It's 8:58. Exactly 12 minutes from start time in Sunday School, and I am 20 minutes and a full change of clothes and teeth-brushing away from church. I whisper something about being foolish, throw on the only things that I can find in a bleary eyed haze. I run out the door, spit my mouthwash on the side of the steps that have been breaking since I can remember. My car is cold. It shudders and groans as I lurch out the driveway.Tears prick at my eyes. I'm late, late, late. I speed up through the yellow light at an intersection on Route 1. It's been a long weekend, I tell myself, maybe it's okay to just be a little tired. Maybe it's okay to just be a little scattered. My hair is falling out the braids I slept it, and I can feel bits of it tickling my neck. There is a blue stain on my coat. There is mud on my shoes, and I should have worn socks but I forgot. But my protestations about "having a little grace for myself" (even when I say it as the car rounds the curve to 97), they aren't a match for the steady, familiar rhythm of scolding.And all you good girls who read this, I know you know what I mean - how even in the midst of a big smile and a bright laugh, we're usually thinking about something that wasn't quite right, something that fell a little short. Sometimes we joke about this - call it "the curse of perfectionism" or even pray that we might have a little real grace thrown into our life. But most of the time, I'm still counting the number of missed cues. I'm still thinking about an unsent email or text or visit. I'm still thinking about what might have been better. I'm still resolving not to mess it up again.I run into the classroom. They're already at work, and I get nothing but smiles. No scolding, no "where were you?" And my profuse apologies are quickly put aside, as they want to tell me about the good monster they are making with paper, who only eats flowers, about the colors of the liturgical year and the song we sing about them.And a three year old girl stops in the middle of her puzzle and proclaims, "I WAS WAITING ON YOU". She throws herself into my arms, purple and pink fuzzy socks pulled up past her small knees.I am going to come apart at the seams. Instead I trace shapes and cut them out. I straighten. I use small pieces of Scotch tape to fasten a little identification card to each compartment where we keep the elements of the altar work. When we sit in the circle to sing, and to tell Jesus about our birthday parties, about aunts having babies soon, about dads who paint the basement, the boys squirm and fidget.But then the teacher asks, "This word on our prayer table is praise. When I think about giving praise to God, I think about giving thanks. What are some of the things we are thankful for?"They name bunny rabbits and dogs. They name winter and snowball fights. And then that three year old, she looks at me and she says, "Thank you Jesus for you."The light is that gentle and that fierce.I didn't stay to church. I didn't think I could bear it, encountering any more of this story about me and God in the midst of His people (even though that's good and we should).I drove weeping onto the highway. I drove weeping for being 22 and in the midst of such richness, feeling so paralyzed. For my hair falling out of its braids and my bare feet in their shoes. For all of the things that her prayer reveals in its gentle light: that God would rather sit with me weeping in my car in the back of the Starbucks parking lot. That nothing matters more to Him than this strange chapter of the story where I spend most of my time oscillating between fingerspelling words to practice ASL in my car to dreaming about someday I will be wise to wrestling with the answer "not now". God would rather nothing better than me and Him in the Starbucks parking lot. God would rather nothing better than the light creeping in through my shuttered heart. So He sends His children to teach me what I once imagined I would be teaching them.But when it comes to grace, I have everything to learn.And the light is gentle. Love,hilary

He names your life beautiful

Today, I got this chance to share something over at Lisa-Jo's. You know her, I bet - the mama who speaks truth and grace into your heart because she's listening so close to what God says. The one who reminds and encourages, who cheers for us even when we don't understand it...So when she asked me if I would write a post, I dreamed and prayed wide, for words to reach you wherever you are, in this moment of your day."….When I graduated from college in May, I got lots of hugs and kisses. I got fun cards that played “Pomp and Circumstance” when you opened them. I got a nice dinner with two professors I love and Flannery O’Connor books. People showered me with wonderful gifts, with care and congratulations and Starbucks gift cards.But it turns out you don’t get a how-to book for your life...Keep reading over here?Because He names your life beautiful and rich and I want to tell you how.Love,hilary

the day of the blue moon socks

If you ever wondered what it's like to walk around inside my shoes on a typical day?You go to work in the morning, bleary eyed because you don't get coffee until 7:37 at your Starbucks, the one whose baristas know your name and give you extra tea bags and honey when you're sick and sneezing all over their counter and who sometimes slip an extra shot into your morning latte.You arrive at work, do your thing. A few times during the day you'll put your head in your hands and wonder, why am I doing this? Is this even the place I am supposed to be? You'll eat 7 crackers from the whole gran TLC cracker box, then 7 more, then worry for a few seconds about whether that was the right portion size because it's still January and you might want to make this year the year of food awareness or eating right or something... then you'll forget, and eat another 10 crackers while you type furiously because typing fast makes you feel more productive.You'll drive home. You'll pray out loud as you go, rambling prayers, prayers of woods and left turns where you almost forget to put your blinker on. You'll pray that God explain Himself and His plans. You'll pray to see yourself more truthfully, see others more graciously, see God more clearly. You'll pray some things that go deep into your heart and rest there and others that you forget just as you drive through the intersection before your intersection when you're distracted wondering what Dad is making for dinner.You'll work out to Zumba by yourself in your room on the second floor and occasionally wonder if the floorboards might give under your enthusiasm for "Bollywood style" dance routines. You will wear ballet slippers you got sophomore year of college for the ballet class you took. You'll wear these with socks because the toes on each slipper have worn almost through. You'll have your hair in a sweaty bun and you won't really care that you are shaking all your bedroom furniture to music you wouldn't listen to with your grandmother because no one can see you.And then, oh, and then: then you will walk into the grocery store wearing yoga shorts, red TOMS with "Blue Moon" logo socks, a long wool coat, and a T-shirt. I am not kidding. You'll look down in the vegetable aisle and realize this, realize that your coat length plus shorts plus beer factory souvenir socks your mom bought for you when she visited said factory plus hair in its messy bun = disaster.There you are.There, indeed, I was. Not only did I wear that outfit into a public place, but I proceeded to walk around the grocery store holding, now wait for it:grapefruits, iced tea, toothpaste, granola bars , razorsThis assortment of items practically screamed, "LOOK! LOOK! I'm a twenty something! I live at home! I have no clue what my life holds! I cry in my car sometimes to country music radio!"I thought, this can't get any better. Here I am wearing beer logo socks and yoga shorts, lugging around a bag of grapefruits and new razors, looking for my mother...When of course, it does get better.The cute guy from Driver's Ed several years ago, the one who used to (I think, kind of) flirt with me on occasion under the guise of making fun of me? The one who I proceeded to see whenever I went to the local ice cream store or CVS? Oh yes, friends.He works at this grocery store. He works, in fact, directly in front of the Greek yogurts that I was furtively trying to stash under my chin until I could wobble towards the checkout because I hadn't thought to get a basket or a cart.There was that pause. The, "Oh, CRAP." pause. The pause of does-he-see-me-where-is-the-exit-shoot-he-saw-me-too-late pause. I smiled. He smiled. I moved my hand away from the Chobani yogurt. He took in my outfit, my arms full of groceries, said a vague "hey, good to see you," and went back to unpacking boxes.There are these days. These days of blue moon socks and counting TLC crackers in your office. These days of not enough pretty words shared or said to you and by you, and these days of yoga shorts and old ballet slippers and Zumba in your room to a YouTube video and buying grapefruits. Wearing TOMS. With socks. With a long coat and shorts. And the cute guy looking you up and down like he has never seen anything like it (probably true).And you know what? I love these days. They're what make us real. They're what make us gracious, graceful. They're what make us loveable.Love,hilary

dear hilary: on old flames

Dear Hilary,Do you think that it's a good idea to get back together with an ex? I'm wondering if it's a good idea, because while we fought, and it was hard, and a lot of us felt difficult and broken, there was a lot of good. And so now it feels like a real possibility, and I'm wondering if it's a good idea. What if we just hurt each other more? What if this is it, but we don't get back together and we leave it unfinished? Where do you even begin to go with that possibility?Love,Old FlamesDear Old Flames,Well, here is an interesting question, and an old one, and a good one. Do we step back into something that we left behind? Do we return to a landscape we have visited before? On the one hand, there is that warm call of familiarity. This person knows you, knew you in a moment in your life full of growth/change/becoming. They understand that habit you got into your 20s with folding your sheets or only ironing shirts the morning you wear them. This person knows your favorite movie when you were 5, what you think about taxes or the environment.On the other hand, there is that list of the things that fell apart - the way you couldn't fight fair, the misunderstandings that started over coffee and ended over listening and whether they cared at all about your feelings. The long nights of counting shadows on your bedroom wall thinking about everything else that might be out there, and could this be it? And the conversations where those thoughts slipped out and it felt like things broke all over again.So there you sit, with your old flame, who is wonderful and difficult and folds sheets weirdly and doesn't like Mexican food. There you sit, you who are wonderful and difficult and don't like parakeets and think James Bond is a total sap. You both come to this moment, and ask, do we go back?But that's not really the question. Relationships are only like places in that we live in them, that we make space in our hearts and minds for another. We cannot make the same space twice; because we are changing, and the person is changing. So you are never going back, if you and an old flame decide to pursue a relationship. You are going to build something new together, because you are meeting again as people weathered by the years or months apart. You are meeting, not as old flames, but as a possible fire.I can't tell you what to do - there isn't a universal rule about ex's and get togethers. Some work wonderfully; some don't. Some build back the patterns they had hoped to learn from; some build something entirely new. But always, I urge you to ask questions not from the perspective of wandering back into the past, but from the perspective of bringing all that you have learned from your past into your present. What did the first falling apart teach you both? What do you want it to teach you about this new possibility? Who have you each become in the time you were apart? Do those people fit together?Don't be anxious, sweetheart. These questions won't be checked off a mental to-do list before you make a decision; you'll ponder them lying awake in bed at night no matter what you do. Your gut will make the decision and you'll step into it, tentatively and boldly, with confidence and trembling. But ponder them with all your might, and listen closely to your heart. It will tell you whether to work out those questions alongside your former lover, or whether those questions are better pondered alone, in preparation for the next relationship.We do this work of love, whether with people we have just met or have known a ten thousand days, whether lovers or friends or teachers, by allowing our hearts to guide and be guided. By asking ourselves about the people we were, and are, and who we would dare to become, and letting those people point the way. In the great unfolding of your life, getting together with your ex is a sparkling silver thread; no matter what you choose, there is bound up in the choice itself such wonderful things to learn.The poet Robert Bly once wrote, "I love you with what in me is unfinished." Does it get more beautiful, Old Flames? Does it get more true?You are unfinished; your ex is unfinished. This choice will not finish or complete either of you or your life stories - it will only help you love with what is unfinished inside you.Love,hilary

to the moms

Dear moms,I'm lying in bed sick with what feels suspiciously like strep throat - a raw ring of red across the back of my throat, a headache that wraps around the back on my neck... all the usual symptoms. I woke up this morning whimpering in a small voice for my mom, for a cup of tea and a hug. My eyes were full of tears, from the feverish dreams, from the tired, from the need to be taken care of. And my mom, she cracked open the door and smiled at me, the smile of understanding that promises a cup of pomegranate green tea and a long hug and a forever kind of love.I don't know how often you get a thank you note for what you do.I don't know if there are good words for it. You see, I want to be a mom. I drive through the long winter afternoons and I wonder about making a home and a family, of learning how to rock a baby to sleep with one song on repeat, how to color with a toddler and how to bake cookies with a seven year old girl who doesn't feel accepted by her friends at school. I dream about that unglamorous life. I imagine how it will weary my bones the way it has wearied you, and how beautiful it has made you.I see you as marvelously beautiful. My mom is, I know that. My mom makes room in her bed for me when I'm sick. She hugs and kisses me when I come home, makes me a cup of tea or a bit of toast, just because she knows that I am lying in my bed sick and sad. She tells me jokes, bad dating stories when I'm lonely. My mom surrounds me on every side with grace and courage.You do that, too. You in the unglamorous life, you are beautiful in your 1am new mom outfit. You are beautiful in bringing chicken noodle soup to your sick kids. You are beautiful folding laundry and watching cartoons and desperately coaxing gum out of someone's hair with peanut butter.I want to say thank you for pouring out so much love onto your kids. When it's difficult. When we yell. When we are ungrateful. When we push against you and demand too much and don't know how to be grown ups and when we do selfish, stupid things. Thank you for pouring so much love out on us that we are surrounded on every side by it.Thank you for holding us tight when we're sick. Thank you for building a nest for us. I am going to guess that the twenty-somethings I know and love, we all have complicated moments. We are grown ups and yet young. We are trying too hard and not hard enough. We don't know where the future will lead us, and we trip over ourselves sometimes.But as we have fumbled, I don't want you to think we forget. We don't forget that you make a nest for us. We don't forget that we are safe in your heart. We don't forget that, for all our fumbling, you trust us to become something wondrous.So thank you, from all of us, for the years and years you poured out love. Thank you, from all of us, for the sick days and the cranky days and the art projects and the road trips. Thank you, from all of us, for that wondrous love.I hope and pray that someday, we'll sit down and share stories about that wondrous love.Love,hilary

though you are small (Advent 4 and Christmas)

It's snowing here this morning. The flakes swirl just outside my window. It's a lull before the cooking begins in earnest. It's a quiet kind of snow. The kind that makes you quiet inside, listening to the Radiolab podcast while you bake peanut butter cookies for your family, while you give thanks. While you remember that Jesus is born today. The celebration is for something that un-theologically-complicated. For something that big contained within something so small.On Sunday we talked about the prophecy in Micah - "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are of old, from ancient." (Micah 5.2)Though Bethlehem was small, though Mary was young, though the story was on its face all difficulty and pain and uncertain outcomes?Out of that small story comes one who will be ruler over Israel.As I looked at the small faces in the children's service last night, wandering up the center aisle carrying sheep and shepherds, carrying an angel, carrying a star to the manger, I heard it again:but to know me, Hilary, you must become like one of these little children. For it is in smallness that God sends might. In the lonely midst of winter that He sends life. And the children, in twirling reds and silvers, in matching shoes and headbands, in stiff collared shirts they want to trade for fuzzy pajamas - they lead the way to the manger. It is these children, squirming through the one hour service, who know Him in the unashamed deep ways we are so often afraid to know Him. They come to the stable unburdened by our shining theology, our complicated words and objections. They come, small ones to see another small one, in the small town in Israel.Oh, dear friends, have we become too big for this story, with our nuance, with our questioning, with our yes, but...? Have we forgotten that this story does not bring logic, but love?Because my small friends know. They know when they can't sit still while we light, finally, the white candle. They know when they carry breakable Mary and Jesus to the manger with their brother and sister. They know when they gather around to sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" loud and off-key in their parents' ears. They lead the way this Christmas, to the small town and the small baby, to the Love come down bright and everlasting.Don't be too big for the story this Christmas. For though Bethlehem was small among the clans of Judah, from that smallness comes the great miracle.Love, not logic, this Christmas. And the children lead me. Love, always, to bear you up and bring you nearer to the great story,hilary

dear hilary: on extraordinary gifts

Dear Hilary,How do you give gifts to people for Christmas, gifts that mean something, gifts that are treasures, and not just one more shiny wrapping paper token?Love,Confused by AdvertisingDear Confused by Advertising,This is what I imagine giving.I imagine wrapping up your red truck. I give it to you shyly, keys already in your pocket, Dunkin' Donuts cups in the cupholders waiting for us. I give it and we drive, miles on the tires and country on the radio, and some days it's quiet in our hearts and some days it's loud. But you make me this home, brother. You make me this space in your life, this space of welcome even in the late summer evenings and the long thunderstorms. So I give you the breakfasts at the Depot and the kids flying into your arms on your way back from Communion, your steady hug after once again, I've hurt my heart in longing and disappointment. I give you the forever love of a big sister who's in awe of you.I imagine holding out a cup of tea to you, no wrapping paper. We are only at the beginning of knowing each other, and it's only been a little while since we first sat in Starbucks and laughed about boys and swapped stories about our journeys at Gordon and our hopes for the future. But I give you this cup of tea, this promise, because even at the beginning of this friendship I can feel your care radiating out from you. I give you this cup of tea (and maybe a truffle, too) - with a small smile, knowing that we have so much to look forward to. Knowing that the beginning of the story of knowing you is more beautiful and more worthwhile than I could have dreamed.I imagine giving you a framed picture of us on your wedding day. It wasn't very long ago, you know, but that day, I remember giving a toast from a napkin hidden in my pocket and falling down the stairs and all the while I was overwhelmed  by the joy of watching you make those big promises. I want to tell you with this gift that we're always and forever family, and I will love you fierce through these new seasons and this new world that we've stepped into. I will tell you as I give you the gift, that no matter what, when I think about our room and NCIS and baking cookies and not finishing my books because you want to paint our nails, that I will rejoice. Because you are rare. Because the love of sisters is rare.I imagine I would give you a plane ticket to Michigan. It doesn't have a date on it, just the destination, but I'd hand it to you as part of a promise, that distance stretches us and grows us. I would give it to you with the long afternoons that stretch into evenings of macaroni and cheese and Entemann's raspberry danish and tea, and Searching for Bobby Fisher and dance movies, and always the moment when I reach for the blanket I love and look over, and know that you are still there. That no matter what, when I call or worry or doubt again, you hold all my questions next to me and laugh and somehow, the world brightens. I'd give you the plane ticket with that same laugh, the snow outside bright.You see, Confused by Advertising, our hearts know the gifts we must give better than we do - the gifts of the people we've been given to share this life with, these miraculous beautiful heartwrenching friends and family and mentors and inspirations who walk into our lives and transform us.Don't worry about the right iPod case. Don't worry about the better gadget or kitchen appliance or the newest Spiderman movie. Don't worry about homemade chocolate.Look at each of those people, the ones who hold you up when you fall apart, the ones who walk into your office and offer you a word of hope. Look at each of them, and with all of your heart, just say thank you.Because all of this is gift from another Giver. Because when we empty ourselves of the need to impress and dazzle, we find simply that we are thankful.So give thanks.Love,hilary

I made this for you (Advent 2)

This Sunday a six year old made me cry. It was a gut-wrenching week. It was a week where you climb the three flights of stairs to your office again, and again, each time telling yourself you just can't do it anymore. You just can't, can't, can't hold anything else in your heart. You can't hold yourself. You can't hold other people. You can't breathe for all the work and worry, for the whispers about "if you were really truly a good worker and really truly a good person and really truly a good friend you'd try harder..."It was one of those weeks where I think really hard about whether I have forever failed at this work of my life.And one of those weeks where I couldn't face God. Not even slightly. Not even really think about it.But Sundays arrive whether you want them to or not, and with Sunday comes the children. With Sunday comes their presence, their hands sticky with glue stick and stray blonde curls in a frenzy around their forehead. When I got up with my weary heart on Sunday I put on jeans and a blue silk shirt (because it's Advent, and I wanted to pretend I was trying). I put on the shoes that remind me of peacock feathers. I put my hair in a bun secured with a rubber band because I've lost my hair elastics and I can't be bothered to buy new ones.It was a day in a different classroom, this time with 6-9 year olds. It was time to hear God's word to his people. We talked about how prophecies are promises from God to us, his people. I smiled sadly as the children squirmed on their mats, sang half-heartedly the chorus about Christ being the Light. Because when you are trapped in the lie that none of what you do is really good, it's hard to believe God's promises apply to you. In the wrongheaded math of my universe, I couldn't believe that I, in my jeans and blue silk shirt and hair in a rubber band, am the person that God makes promises to. That I'm the person He was thinking of when He thundered His messenger to the world to ask Mary to bear Christ to us.I sat there, but when Ms Kirsten said we should go to our coloring work, I sat with Lily. We cut out construction paper to make an Advent wreath. She was shy at first, and we sat in silence, gluing and arranging the yellow paper flames over the candles. But when she asked if I could pull out a piece of stained glass coloring book paper for her to color, I caught a glimpse of a smile.It lit her face, and mine, too. She had on a red and gold dress, the kind I used to love to wear, the kind that twirls. And I remember how extravagantly loved we can feel in those clothes, as if we are sparkling from head to toe, as if we are the most beautiful and beloved creature to be shining in Sunday school in a dress that we waited to wear. So I told her how much I loved it. And she smiled wide, reaching for a pink marker."Lily! This is so beautiful! Would you like to take it home?" It's the end of class, and we are putting everything away, and she has finished her coloring. But Lily shakes her head, smiles up at me. "It's for you! I made this for you."She giggles, twirls her red and gold skirt, and is off to the next thing. But I sit, my heart thudding out its beat against all the odds, because this girl has made me a picture to hold up against the cold winter light and see myself in it. She has given me the promise again - the very one I can't believe God has in store for me.I made this for you. God wants to give us a gift at Christmas. A promise. A fulfillment, a transformation. He wants to overcome our sin and wretchedness with love. With a stained glass paper picture, colored in greens and pinks. With the relentlessness of His arrival.Do you know what I heard Him whisper, as I sat there, holding my gift, near tears at her generosity and love?I'm not waiting for you to get it right. I'm not waiting for you to become good the way you think you should be able to be. I'm not waiting for you to clean up all the mess and all the worry and all the lies running around in your heart. I'm not waiting, because I love you. Because my love doesn't rely on your perfection, but on your being. Because my love is bigger than your fears about it. Because God so loves this world, and because He loves too much to wait for us to be ready.Lily? Thank you. I'm hanging that picture in the window above my bed - so Mary, Joseph, you and me, we can watch God's love arriving.Love,hilary

stay, American baby

"I brought this for you." "Oh." The blue plastic jewel case, the flecks of car dust from where it sat in the glove compartment, the smudged playlist taped to the front of the case. "I thought - I mean, I owed you one." He smiled, sheepish. My hands felt the edges of the kitchen table, tracing the chips and cracks from years of family and screeching joy and frustration at each other. He held it out to me, pushing the hair out of his eyes.They were such brown eyes. I'll never forget that - like all the things he hid from the world he stored up in that one, tender look. And I promised myself in my journals that year that I was the one he was saving those looks for, I was the one who caught the secrets hiding in his dilating pupils. So I held the CD case, suddenly more thoughtful than I wanted to be. I wanted to be anxious, heart racing inside its cage. I wanted to feel all that in-love-with-his-brown-eyes-and-secret-sweetness feeling. I wanted to be back to the girl of weeks before, who had declared in the girl's bathroom while poking at her eyelid with a pencil that I liked him. And I was going to tell him.The light was pink outside the window; it had rained earlier. And I sat, calm and quiet, holding his blue plastic CD case. I was still as we laughed about Carrie Underwood, played a song on my new iPod, sat on the fraying couch in the living room, as we pulled on spring coats and walked to the pond."It's not a real pond. I mean, it's just the second bridge from our house." We scuffed at the broken winter pavement, chasing the bits of asphalt with our eyes as we walked. "Yeah, no, that's cool." More silence, more strange calm. I asked him something about college; he asked me something about debate. We answered past each other, eyes fixed ahead. Past the horse farm - "I've always wanted to ride," I said. "Oh, really?" he looked at me - the sudden, sweet tenderness. "Yes." Past the houses of best friends and lost friends, of dogs who barked at bikes and the neighbors who refuse to take down Christmas decorations until March. Past the first bridge, the reeds waving at us from their hibernation. Past the Girl Scout camp, the hidden bend in the road where the cops hid their cars at night to catch speeding teenagers and the haggard father racing home."So this is it." We sat down, feet dangling, a bit of sun offering itself to us on the water. We squinted at it. We looked for the beavers, or a fish biting. "So, Hils..." and still, that calm. "I know what you want to say." "You do?" I did?"It's okay." This became the mantra, the refrain - it's okay. It's all okay. The prayer, the angry shout, the promise - "it's okay," I said. I nodded a lot, he nodded some, too - just to keep moving, to keep from being still enough to hear the world shifting between us. We threw sticks into the pond, catching them on the last bit of ice.We walked back to the house, to the world before it had shifted, before we had said nothing and too much, before the admission that this was it, the point beyond tenderness.He shrugged into his coat, tucked his hands into his sleeves to keep the cold out. I rubbed my arms, hopping up and down in the driveway as I waited for him to say goodbye. But he just looked at me, with that sweet tenderness I'd never see again, and said - "You'll like the first track. On the CD, I mean. It's DMB." And then he got into his car, smiled, and backed out the driveway.I put the CD on in silence, sat on my bed, closed my eyes. "Stay, beautiful, baby." I sounded the words in my head as Dave began to sing. "Stay, American baby." I let the world shift. This was his real secret, hidden in those brown eyes - that despite all of the things we imagine, we remain fixed as ourselves in a turning world. That, despite our wildness, the wonder is not in getting what we thought.It is in the gifts that go beyond the moment: the Dave Matthews song we played in the car and learned to love, apart from him. The gift of memory turned story, softened by time into something like beauty. The gift of silence in the midst of noise. The gift of holding fast and setting free.The gift of a CD on a March afternoon, a walk to the pond.Stay, American baby.Isn't it all gift?

dear hilary: your person

Dear Hilary,You know that thing about "Meredith and Cristina"? You know, the person who you go to with the weird problems that you don't want to tell anyone else about? The person who laughs at your not so funny stories? The person you trust with the secret from eighth grade and from eighty-eight? I want to know how you find someone like that. How do you create that kind of world for and with someone else?Love,Meredith?Dear Meredith,When I was in fifth grade I had a best friend. We drank tea together on picnic blankets in my backyard and played in the forbidden living room in her house with the real tea cups her mother collected from England. We made up games on the playground at recess - rode horses in our minds and saved the world. We swapped secrets, bad haircuts. I modeled my Anglican first communion after her Catholic one, and when she bought a bright white dress splashed with pink roses, I had to have one, too. I can't tell you how many years it was that we rode bikes or walked or begged for rides just down the street - how many times we both wished for a dog, how many boys we first began to like, how many things we imagined together. How we swore we'd be best friends forever.So in fifth grade, when I got onto the bus in October to ride home from school, and this best friend, her hair now in one of those sparkly silver scrunchies that the junior cheerleaders wore, and her tight jeans from the Limited Too or somewhere in the mall I didn't shop, she didn't sit with me? The world shook.She sat two seats behind me, with another girl. She looked at me when I looked back with a look of spite or satisfaction, seeing me in my homemade hat quaking at the sight of her in the back with the cheerleaders and junior football players. She laughed as the girl whispered in her ear. I turned around, bright red. Suddenly everything felt wrong: my hand-me-down sneakers and stirrup pants (yes, I still wore those), my homemade things, my old backpack, my lack of cheerleading, my recorder stuck into my backpack for the private lessons that I longed for and pretended not to want...And all because of that hope that lives inside us (inside you, too) that we will find kindred spirits and homes for our hearts in the people we love.So when you ask me how to find that person, I want to tell the oh-so-obvious-but-nonetheless-true thing: you must be that person. Not always in your daily living with them (you can't be a Cristina to everyone, nor can everyone be a Meredith to you) - but in making your heart a little deeper, your arms a little wider, the space around you an invitation. Don't be swayed by the people who are so dazzling and lovely sitting in the back of the bus. Don't be tempted by the promises of great pictures of you having such a fabulous time that everyone who sees them will wish they were you, having that fabulous time if those people aren't truly warm, loving, anxious to know you. Don't worry about hand-me-downs on you or on the girl two bus seats ahead of you.Instead, listen close to the people around you. Practice love in your conversations with them - practice courage in sharing with them. Let the whole of you be poured into creating space around you that is full of love (yes, that also means full of frustration and wonder and sadness and loneliness and sitting in the midst of crappy situations and not knowing answering but being asked anyway).Fill the space around you with deep love. And then, you'll find, what makes Cristina and Meredith special isn't rare like the AB- blood type: it's rare because it's not always practiced. It's not always chased after in friendship. But we could: and, in beautiful moments, we do.You sound like you want to chase after it, Meredith. I think you won't have to go too far before you find it.Love,hilary

the great light (Advent 1)

The most exciting moment of Sunday morning: Miss Hilary rolls the brown packing paper across the windows, and the sunlight disappears for a moment. They scramble to hold something for the procession: the wreath, the candles, the Bible, the beloved snuffer, the purple cloth. We wait, in the darkness, and then we begin to sing,The people who walked in darkness,have seen a great light. Just those words, in a melody I remember from a different song many years ago. The words last us through the small legged march to the other side of the room. We sit on our small woven mats as Miss Andrea lights the first candle on the wreath. This one bright candle - the one for hope - burns against the dim brightness of the packing paper.The darkness - that's the question for these wise young ones - what is the darkness like? How does it feel?They answer with the truth: "I don't like it.""It's hard to see.""But now we have a candle!"I catch myself almost laughing, but in an instant, I realize: theirs is the first hopeful answer I've heard in a long time. But now we have a candle. Now we have light. The simplest of answers, in some ways not even a direct answer to the question - but still, the hope. That beautiful, rich hope.Now we have a candle. The flame leaps and flickers shadows over the prayer card, the verse from Isaiah 9.2 - "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in a land of deep darkness, a light has dawned."Oh, don't you see? This is the hope, the final, ultimate, gut-wrenching reality that we who spend so much time in shadow, cling to? The light has dawned. This deep darkness is overcome, flooded and filled. We have a candle, and more than a candle. We have the light.I wonder who that light is, Miss Andrea asks. And my heart twists and turns, because even though I long to hear it, even though I know in my heart there is an answer to this question, on Sunday I'm all torn apart with my own inability to say it. So Charlie says it for me. "I think the light is Jesus." The strap of one of his overalls is twisted, and I can see that his left shoe is coming untied. And then Lily adds to the beauty: "Do you see the brightest part of the candle? I think that is Jesus." And my heart is undone by these hopeful faces watching the brightest part of the candle, thanking Jesus for birthday parties and Christmas and presents.Because that's the answer sometimes we need a child to say for us. That Jesus is the light. That we are the people who have dwelt in deep darkness, and now have seen a great light. Between the packing paper over the windows, the procession to the prayer table, the lighting of this first candle of hope, and the small hands that find mine, the red coats that twirl outwards, the voices that sing out the truth, I find that Jesus has a surprise for me this Advent:"At that time, Jesus said, 'I thank you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, and revealed them to little children." (Matthew 25)And with them to guide me, I journey towards the light.Love,hilary

you are home to me

The house was always cold. British stone is like that - giving its heat and light back out to the wet lawns and sheep fields, welcoming the damp in return. When we woke up that morning, I felt the end of the heated blanket with my wriggling toes, daring to put my feet against the frozen edges of the sheet beyond. It was hard to believe that I was there - I always felt that in this house - and I hated mornings because they promised another day closer to leaving again. I squeezed my eyes shut against the patch of sunlight.The kettle sounded below, and I heard water running from the rickety tap in the bathroom. The bathroom was even colder than my bedroom at the end of the hall, and I knew my mom was chattering her teeth against her toothbrush as she sighed into the smudged mirror. I should join her, begin the day. But I didn't want to wake up from my dream, from being for a brief glorious moment a nine year old in England with carrot-colored hair and freckles, beautiful in her moongazing, climbing ladders and being kindred spirits.Mom poked her head around the heavy white door, the one with the handle lower than my hip. "It's time to get up - breakfast is almost ready. They're waiting for us." I sat up, the warmth from my back against the blankets immediately evaporating. I dressed in a purple sweater and jeans, pulled on socks and shoes. I was too young to brush my hair, so it hung in curtains on either side of my round cheeks.The stairs were my favorite part of the house. They were narrow and deep, covered in thick and dusty red carpet. The smell going up those stairs promised me every morning that it was real, that this was my grandparents' house in England. The smell - a combination of my grandmother's rose water, the dust and smoke from the downstairs fire, something like spring... I closed my eyes every morning, breathing it in, promising myself, someday.We ate eggs with their yolks running across the white china. We ate toast printed with small squares from the Aga griller. We ate orange marmalade, dripping off the crusts of our bread. I drank tea out of the fine china, holding the cup with both hands. It was silent, and I watched my grandmother bend low over the stove, her hands shaking as she lifted heaving pots of potatoes and carrots, making room for a turkey. I saw the carefully peeled apples in the sink. Granny never made apple pie, but it was Thanksgiving, and Mom and I were Americans, and she wanted to offer it to us. She wanted to bring home to us.I wanted to tell her she didn't need to bake an apple pie. Home was the smell of her staircase, the cold stones, the not-yet-blooming garden. Home was the hedges along the road. Home was the big tree in the front where I named snails, kneeling on the wet ground with my too-big black wellies stuck out behind me, my voice a high-pitched gleeful squeak. Home was the stamp collection we played with, Mom and I, at the table in the corner of the room, beneath the picture of Dad meeting President Clinton.I wanted to tell her, you are home. This house, tall Granddad and his pipe, his wink and the book he always bought me in the Castle Cary bookshop, no matter how old I was, all the Roald Dahl and their bright soft covers, the special illustrations by Quentin Blake. You are home, the pictures I sneak glimpses of in the parlor with the piano, the pictures of you with horses and with Granddad young and in love. You are home. You are home.I wanted to tell her those things, my heart bursting with them, but I ate the crusts of my toast instead. I drank two cups of tea in the kitchen while she baked the pie. At dinner that night, gathered around, I ate the first piece - let it slip down my throat and settle in my stomach. I drank more tea than Mom liked me to. I smiled, and smiled, and told her in the American accent that it was a wonderful Thanksgiving.That night, lying in my cold white sheets, waiting for the electric blanket heat, I closed my eyes and wished. But I didn't wish for Anne, for the heroes of my lopsided book pile. I didn't wish to be big like Abby. I didn't wish for more books at Christmas. I wish I could stay here forever. But wishes are thanksgivings, our hearts cut open by longing and love. I was nine years old, wishing for England, eating an apple pie and naming snails, my hair hanging like curtains around my face. All I wanted was to stay forever.And now, thirteen years later, that wish softened and bent with time, I close my eyes against the New England sun, and whisper, thank you. You are still home to me.

dear hilary: make something beautiful

Dear Hilary,I don't know what to do. I love people with this fierce love. I love their stories, coffee with them, wine with them, crying and laughing with them. I love how terrible they are, and how miraculous. But you can't make a career of that, can you? I don't think it's counseling, exactly. I don't think it's social work or psychology. I don't fit in the traditional higher education boxes. I'm not quite philosophical enough or theological enough to do that kind of work. When you ask me what I'm working on for 10,000 hours, ask me what I want to be an "expert" in - I tell you it's listening. It's watching. It's carving out spaces and times for others. I want to spend 100,000 hours listening. But who does that for a career? No one.Love,Out of the BoxDear Out of the Box,The other day I did something thoughtless. I pushed my way into a conversation where I very, very clearly did not belong. I did it because of a bunch of things that are only half relevant to the situation: jealousy and desire and insecurity and the laundry list we always list for each other and ourselves. And, so very graciously, I was reminded of that.But something miraculous happened when I did that. Something that I have to tell you, Out of the Box, makes me believe that you are in the right place, wherever you are, doing the right thing, whatever it is. The miraculous thing is that I learned something from it.Out of that awkward situation, and the careful grace of the people who reminded and called me to account, I learned something about boundaries. I learned about what my jealousy/desire/insecurity can yield. I saw lived out in front of me the reality of our careless movement in the world being chaos and hurt to others.It shook me up. It worried me. It gave me the knot in my stomach, the one I get when I fear that I am, after all, just a disappointment. But I learned. And this is the kind of miraculous, mysterious, beautiful alchemy that happens when we take what happens to and around us, and we build with it. We expand on the inside. We build bridges. We are opened wider and, as a consequence, we are filled with more. And, as a consequence of that, we pour out more.So. You say this is what you want to do? You say this is your 10,000 or 100,000 or 10 million hours. This listening. This alchemy. This making beautiful the things that happen to people. I say, Love, what are you afraid of? You are in the right place. Because that is a big freaking dream. Because it isn't a dream that you achieve by graduate schools or meetings or promotions or raises. It isn't a dream that has a ladder.You will only begin to realize that dream if you live out everything in front of you so forcefully, so laughingly, so achingly wrong and right and wrong again, that you learn from it. You will live inside this dream only if you expand on the inside. You will live inside this dream only if you make beautiful things of your stories.Spend 10,000 hours listening, yes. But spend it listening to yourself, alongside all those others. Spend it striking out in an attempt to write down these beautiful things and failing miserably. Spend it watching the world and telling us what you see. You have to practice this work inside yourself if you want to pour out for others. You must take that stupid thing you did and accept it inside yourself and listen to it. You must take that situation you refuse to acknowledge is happening and accept it into yourself and love it, and listen to it.To make a life of this (because it's a life you want, not a career), you must be willing to do it for yourself. To offer a candle to others, to share your vision of all that could be, of all that might be, you have to have that kind of vision for yourself. Stop worrying about the ladders and labels, the unknowing, the strikeouts of what you are and are not and what jobs and what cities and what barely-paying-the-rent stories you live. And go make something beautiful of it. When, and only when, you are willing to believe that this very story you are living in is right, because it is yours, because it is bigger than you: then you will live inside that dream. Oh, and how we will be blessed.Love,hilary

to the gypsy mama

Dear Lisa-Jo,I'm writing quick because there is always another email or another call or another worry, and I wanted to put something in my space, reach out across these clicking computer keys to tell you, like I told you the other week - your book is a beautiful thing. It's beautiful in all the unexpected ways you taught me to think about beauty. It is the beauty of brave, of encouragement, of moving outside yourself to give something real and living and true to the people that you love, to the people God calls you to. I'll never forget how I first met you - my heart racing and worried about what you would think, since you know my dad and I didn't want to disappoint. And you opened your arms to me. You hugged me onsite.You took this 20 year old lost sheep in DC inside your heart, told her to hold fast to Jesus, to hold fast to the heart she hoped to have, to love bigger and wider. And then you lived it out for me.You lived it in Himalaya (turned Tandoori Grill, but still with that lunch buffet).You lived it when you let me marvel at your pregnant Zoe belly in November at Family Night Dinners.You lived it when you brought me to Relevant (now Allume I think) and let me learn the dip and sway of afternoon naps, and I still hear you and Zoe when I hear "Winter Song" and "Poison and Wine".You lived it, this big, bold love of Jesus when I got to meet Ann and Holley and I about fell over with amazement, that such women could look at me instantly with love, me, "the baby whisperer," as you called me. It might be the best title I've ever had.You live it every day, gypsy mama, and now there is going to be a book about it, about this marvelous rich love, about this parenting journey, about how God breaks our hearts open with His good gifts. And every time I look at you, my eyes full of uncertainty about those boys, you know the ones, and the longing to be with them and the not-sure-how-it-will-ever-work-out - you give me back a gypsy mama love.You give me a love that believes God calls us to a bigger life than just a job. That God calls us to a bigger love than just quid-pro-quo. That God calls us to dance silly in our kitchens at 22, drink caramel mochas without thinking about calories, to listen to one song on repeat 1,009 times.I love you, Lisa-Jo. I love this book of yours, this beautiful idea. I love this bold new step. I wanted to tell you, so that you knew it from my words to yours, from my heart to yours.Someday I hope I am a gypsy mama too, all bold love and wild grace. Someday, I hope my love looks like yours.Love,hilary