From Christmas to the Beginnings of Spring

January began with a whirlwind trip to Florida to visit some of the friends who have become family! I got to meet little man Grahame and hug Abbie and Ryan's necks as they celebrate getting engaged!!!  I didn't really take any pictures to speak of but it was the happiest of times and those days brought memories I will always treasure!! 

What a treat it was to get to stay at Lindsey and Alex's new lovely home in Mandarin! 

It wouldn't be a trip to Jacksonville without Friday night pizza and a movie at Mama's house! 

Abbie sent me on my way with the sweetest gift for little Emma, and we got to have a girls coffee at Urban Bean :) 

Our post-Christmas decorations hallway. We were missing our advent wreath and just then, the celtic cross we had picked out together came in the mail!

The beginnings of the penny floor in the bathroom! 

This lovely print also finally came and I find myself sitting and looking at it often these days. It's hard to put into words just yet why it means as much as it does. 

Birthday celebrations at my Mama's house were delicious as always and a fine way to end what was otherwise a normal (long) teaching day!

Sarah Beth's beautifully wrapped presents. 

Some fine last feasts with dear friends before we take a little hiatus from hosting in the coming weeks. 

Homemade Cinnamon rolls have been a favorite tradition of this winter and I have a sneaking suspicion that they will continue to be. 

Emma's Room, growing more and more pink by the day :) 

Thank you notes from the couch on a quiet Friday morning - much needed after a busy week and a long Thursday at RSA. 

"Rune Dates" at home with a current craving - Taco Salad. 

I made Josh a set of Norse Rune stones for Christmas (in the pouch above) and our current favorite date is to light our candles and get out the stones and spend a while digging into the history and meaning behind each of the old runes. Such a beautiful lore! 

I got to have my quartet over for some Mendelssohn and cheese! We had a grand time and boy did that music sound lovely reverberating through these old walls!

The Bathroom with some of the gifts from the shower hung and in their new spots, just waiting now! 

Turns out brownies and John Calvin go really well together. But who is surprised...

This picture seems comically appropriate to follow my brownie picture. 

We found a great, like new jogging stroller for a super great price which was one of the last things on our list! Sometimes those smaller provisions hit home with a special weight of kindness and this was one of those things. It will be so wonderful to be able to explore all over this wonderful but very off roads little world of ours with Emma in the spring and summer to come! 

It just looks so sweet sitting in the back seat waiting for her :) :) 

Josh's recent acquisition: a beautiful bamboo flute! He's making great progress (in his usual way) and enjoying a new world of music! 

Pajama day at RSA with one of my adult students and friends, Ms. Debbie Lawrence, who (as you might guess from the picture below) is a fellow Trekkie. 

This seems to sum up life pretty well these days ;) 

A Sushi lunch for the birthday man! He is reenacting a picture we have laughed at many time of me at Sushi King some time ago. We do LOVE our Sushi :) 

Birthday celebrations

My Viking man with his new drinking horn ;)

A warm Sunday afternoon called for time down by the creek together!

Even the daffodils dared to poke their heads above ground that day!

A fun little trip to Target with a gift card :) 

Lessons with the cutest little banjo player you ever did see

Isn't that the sweetest little swaddling blanket? It was a gift from tiny banjo man's Grammy and I want to squeal a little every time I see it :) 

It's been fun to open this cabinet and think about how different it is than what we might have put in it before Emma was in our lives. A nearly identical armoire in the living room is full of nice Scotch in crystal decanters, old books and parchment paper, carving knives and sealing wax, brass candle sticks and fragile old instruments. This cupboard is full of diapers and wipes and baby shampoo and pumps and bottles and fuzzy little sleeper onesies. Both aspects of life are so treasured and both about to be so much a part of daily life in one way or another. That is delightfully strange and wonderful to me. 

Mama Bear and Emma Bear bags all ready for the hospital...whenever that may be! 

Dear Emma

Dear Emma,

There's an emptiness in the house today. It's been here a while but I haven't been able to put my finger on it. It's not the emptiness left by the sudden absence of the enormous Christmas tree your Papa and I had this year or the lack of color on the walls and banister from which the live evergreen and gold ribbons have hailed the joy of Christmas over the last two months. It's not the incompleteness of a wall begging for a stain to bring out it's raw potential. Trust me, I'd know: staining things seems to be what I do these days when I can't sleep :) As satisfying as it is, it doesn't touch what has been growing in my soul. It's not an emptiness defined by a lack of fullness. I think that's what makes it feel a little confusing. It's as if the house - and your Mama - are holding our breath waiting for something. Today I came back from church with that restless feeling churning and aching for rest. A short night last night allowed me to fall asleep quickly and when I woke up three hours later, it was to the sudden clarity that it's you I'm waiting for.

In a way, I think I've always been waiting for you. I've wanted to be a Mama as long as I can remember - far longer than any other passion that now courses through my soul and fills my days. The ache to nurture by creating a space - physically and emotionally - for a little one to grow in where Love and Truth and Beauty are the constants of life has been growing in my heart for so long. But for years - most of my life so far - motherhood hasn't been the right channel for those desires. So in the grace of God, my life became full and rich with music and stories and family and dear friends and church and my students. Then two years ago, I met your Papa and fell quickly, deeply in love with this man who I hadn't believed could exist. Our heavenly Father is so, so kind, my sweet Emma. Only He knows how many sleepless nights I cried myself to sleep longing for the kind of companionship and knittedness of soul that I have with your Papa and not believing that it was something God could or would provide. Never doubt Him, my love. He has good, good things for you.

And now you are part of that love. There are some who may never understand or agree with your Papa and I's decision to throw wide our hearts to you from the very beginning of our married life. What many of those people don't know is that, although that was a conscious and confident and joyous decision, it was not one that had been finalized until a few weeks after you were already secretly growing beyond our knowledge in the safe, warm depths of my womb. If the doctors are right about their dates, God wrote you into our story on our very first day as husband and wife, despite what the charts and medical probabilities say should be possible. You are the bright delight of our long held hopes, the shape of our dreams and the first fruits of our love.

I think it's precisely this coming to fruition of so many long held hopes that has been beneath the restlessness I've been feeling lately. It's the cracking open of a very full life to make room for the old, dear, divinely planted seed which is pushing it's way up into the center of our Garden. It's the loosening of that top soil and perhaps the displacement of quite a few smaller plants that have been keeping the soil rich and the garden fruitful until you came along. So perhaps this emptiness I've been feeling is because your Papa and I have been fumbling about our lives trying to prayerfully loosen the grip of the roots our smaller passions have put down over the last 28 years. Some we are transplanting to slightly less central parts of our lives. Some we are chopping up and adding to the compost heap of our soul which we will need to keep our life soil rich for you to grow in. And some we are guarding and mulching in to withstand the change that will come to their environment as you grow up and share the soil and water and sunshine in which we live.

I'm thankful to say that there has been little real fear in this process. I'm not sure why other than that the Lord has graciously guarded us against it. But there has been quite a bit of feeling disoriented and tumbled up and confused and restless as the bare earth has widened and all our life plants are sitting in their new soil feeling a little dizzy and looking rather dirty and wilty. And then there is the welcome but poignant sharpness of those parts of our life that are sitting on the top of the compost heap waiting with varying levels of willingness and patience to cease to be the distinct things that they have been and become one with the new soil the Lord is cultivating in our hearts. Though there isn't really fear in that, there is some stubborn selfishness that is clutching at pleasure and rest as if they are about to be stripped away forever. I think it's the uncertainty of what motherhood will really look and feel like that is rearing it's ugly head and the old discomfort with change that has gotten into my blood and bones a bit in the last few weeks. There is perhaps a little shame in it too since this a time of such looked for joy, though I know many a wise old soul would say that this isn't necessary except as true repentance for ways that I've reached outside of the will of God to various gluttonies of soul or body as cheap salves for these growing pains.

I suppose the last element of this restlessness is a sort of wary circling of my motivations and desires as the day of your arrival draws so wonderfully near. I see in my heart what I do believe is a real danger in the intensity and depth of my longings to be a mother. Though I do believe that it is a vocation God has called me into and prepared my longings and even abilities for since I was very young, I also know that every desire in this fallen world is tainted thoroughly by a tendency towards possessiveness. There is the danger of looking to you to fill a space long held open in the depths of my heart for you, but in a way that should only be filled by the grace and love of God. This I do fear. I tremble to think of the ways you might suffer over the years as God burns this out of my heart. But tonight as I stare it in the face again with so many words of wisdom and warning echoing in my mind, I offer even this weakness up to the Merciful Father who has allowed me to be the vessel of your becoming. It is He - not I - who will really be watching over you, nurturing you and forming you into the woman you will become in and under his Love. With tears of joy and wonder at the privilege of being the unworthy vessel of his will coming to life, I echo tonight (and by the grace of God every day hereafter) the words of the blessed mother of our Lord: "Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord, let [all these things] be unto me according to your word."

With love for you deeper than any words I'll ever find,

Your Mama

The Rest of Advent and Christmas!

Baby Lowencaed!! We can't wait to snuggle with him in just a few weeks!!!