the refrigerator

The outside of a person and the inside of a person are often very different things. I’m not talking about muscles and blood and body organs either. Inside of each human, there is a depth that makes them tick, gives them purpose, and defines who they are.

Refrigerators are backwards.

On the inside of a refrigerator, you will find the foods which sustain us, but which also go into the make-up of our external bodies – the foods which nourish us and those which add character to our hips, our waists – our outward frames.

In many homes, the outside of a refrigerator is rife with preschool drawings and family pictures. Our home isn’t much different in its capacity to show the inner workings of the mind – the medium is just different.

There is a chore calendar – laminated in hopefulness to allow a white board marker the freedom to cross off accomplished chores. It bears no marks.

There is an enormous magnetic band-aid perched above the memo pads for recording needed groceries (blank) and telephone numbers for callback purposes (also blank).

There are various free magnets from assorted solicitors by mail.

There is a bumper sticker, held down with an earth magnet, bearing the words Fat people are harder to kidnap.

And there is a new addition.

On Thanksgiving, at my sister’s house, the entire family enjoyed playing with the magnetic words they had on their refrigerator. This enjoyment was obvious enough that my mother gifted us with our own set for Christmas.

While our ponderings varied from silly to profound upon my sister’s cooling vessel, they have yet to gain such loft on our own.

From the freckled boy on Thanksgiving came these haunting words:

Speak the word slowly as though a whisper can be judged.

He is a bit amazed at all of the fuss those words received claiming not to truly understand them himself. I, on the other hand, have contemplated the heritage of assembling text that somehow speaks the inner workings of the soul while remaining only the messenger that carries them to the outside world.

But alas, perhaps our own refrigerator’s surface just as accurately captures the little idiosyncrasies that make us who we are.

The Drama King (9):

Pedal when drunk
and
crush the light

driving could be eternity


The Freckled One (12):

pound, stare, and love a puppy


The N Boy (17):

I as wet of a storm
smell beauty spring and
sausage heave


Spongebob (6):

TV’s purple finger
why love time


The Brat (old):

drool sweet juice there in the dream
music of honey spray


Da Man (older):

Stop leaving a smear


And a bonus anonymous entry (which may be attributed to the Instigator (14)):

Dress in shaking peaches
blood is behind shining pictures


I’m sure the Pink One will be contributing soon, but she has yet to learn how to sound out words. Once she does, I am betting we are all in trouble.

still kicking (and screaming)

I just wanted to let you all know that I am okay. Things have even gotten somewhat better in all of the unmentionable directions. I will certainly try to be back soon with more substance.

-the brat

bread pudding

There is a certain stillness that emanates from the not quite comfortable cushions of the visitor’s chair in a hospital room. It whispers of mortality and importance. It beckons deep thought while the outer crust of awareness seeks distraction. I find myself struggling to evade the level of openness necessary for baking bread. Given the complexity of the situation, my hesitation is understandable. It isn’t a matter of a mere can of worms – more in the order of an industrial sized vat.

There has been a lot of rawness this past week. Finding a balance between searching my soul and maintaining some privacy is no small feat. But bread must be made and ingredients must be measured.

Is it consolation or desolation to have a loved one hit rock bottom? That question still hangs, uncertain, in front of me. For you see, rock bottom is a catalyst for intervention, which is a motivating factor in upward motion. And that motion would be considered consolation…or should be. There is always the possibility that the loved will wish to hang out in the pit for awhile.

Could I be any more cryptic? It is doubtful. Perhaps I will find the words to be less mysterious soon. For now, I hold fast to the consolation that God hears my prayers, and He holds the fragile bits of me in his ever capable hands – much safer than being in my own.

rose colored glasses

So yesterday, shortly after making red kool-aid, I had to blow my nose. Ah, the pinkness! I don't know how to remedy this. I have tried putting a little water in the bottom of the container first to reduce airborn dust among other methods.

The question is, since I have a two paned window directly above the sink and kool-aid is made pretty regularly in the House of Brat, would it be reasonable to assume that I am looking at the world through rose colored glasses?

I hope so. I can use all the help I can get.

breaking the fast

sleeping with bread







airing the laundry

It is hard to start a post when you know you are going to fight yourself over hitting the ‘publish’ button.

I have been lauded in the past for being open and honest about trials and tribulations in my life. I have taken those praises like a guilt-slap. For you see, it is very hard for me to write or speak anything emotionally searing, open, or honest until sufficient time has passed to allow me some distance. I can be brutally real as long as I am talking about something that has, largely, already been neatly categorized, dealt with, and filed under “loss” or “depression” or “mistakes to learn from”.

In April of this year, I wrote a poem. It wasn’t a particularly good poem, but it was an honest expression of how I was feeling at the time. In a fit of bravado, I posted it to my blog. It stayed there for all of 1 ½ minutes before I took it down – too raw to risk.

I have posted many things about the loss of my son Caleb – deep and personal things, but I didn’t manage to work up the courage to write online (even among a group of women experiencing the same loss) until almost a year after his birth.

I think I had hoped that with a blog, I would have a canvas for those raw emotions. As a teen, I carried pen and paper with me everywhere I went in case the need to write encompassed me. Much of what made it to paper in those days was, quite honestly, horrendous, but the very act of releasing it onto the paper was a salve.

I don’t feel free to write like that anymore. There are too many people that could be impacted by it. The newest emotions are often jagged-edged. Their barbs stick into vulnerable bits of exposed flesh. They are the gut-reaction, pre-school tantrum, “Woe is me” cries of uncensored id. Yet, this very aversion to writing it out may be affecting that same vulnerable flesh in everything I say and do. Without release, those emotions tend to leech into the unrelated actions of day to day life.

the should principle

Some of them are little things which slowly build into seemingly enormous piles. Some of them are birthed from self-doubt and insecurity. Some of them are selfish desires unmet. Still others are legitimate reasons for irritation. All of them act as catalyst to churning emotion. I know for a fact that I should feel freedom simply by releasing these things to God in prayer. And largely, I do, but there is ingrained in my pores the need to physically release them too.

When I write of consolation and desolation, the desolation is always drawn from the deep well of emotional necessity. The consolation? Most frequently the high notes are tacked upon the end because my mind recognizes them as truth. Often, I have yet to develop the ability to “feel” that truth. It is an act of will to place them in front of my eyes as the goal, the joy, the ideal. It is true that this very act does help to refocus my vision, but I wonder. Am I holding onto a small seed of resentment when I choose to hold up the silver lining? Am I wishing that, somehow, someway, someone would simply notice the little desolations and scare them away so that consoling would not be necessary? Am I holding back a portion of each desolation in order to pull it out later for use as a weapon, a brooding point, or an excuse?

I have often said that I am trapped in Romans 7: 14-25.

14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. 16 If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 17 But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 19 For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. 20 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

I repeat verse 25- drilling it into my brain. I do thank…I do. But, I have so much trouble moving on to the first verse of Romans 8.

1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

I believe it. I do. But I don’t usually feel it.

And today, as I continue reading Romans 8, I notice that it talks of being spiritually-minded, not spiritually-feelinged. It sparks a small hope in me. I guess, sometimes, I just wish acknowledging that would make the battle go away without me having to actually put any effort into it. How’s that for honesty? Like the grasshopper, I want all of the benefit and none of the work. I am sick of the work. I want to curl up and be cared for and coddled. I want to be without responsibility. I grow tired of being the one in charge – especially when viewing my shortcomings.

And perhaps the need to write it all out stems simply from my repeated attempts to fill a place in my heart (that will only tolerate perfection) with fallible humans - myself, my husband, my children, my family and friends. When will I rest in the knowledge that the spot is already filled with a perfection found only in God?

I set my mind to the goal.

I pray my feelings learn to follow.

that poem from april:

subdermal

trapped by the ankle
pulled forcefully into fissure
camouflaged by underbrush
as silent scream rings out and pierces
nothing

passing frames
seek only
what is directly in their line of sight,
or the limitless tasks
waiting to be prioritized
by their mind’s eye.

inaudible pleas,
beseeching eyes,
mere inches away -
grasping
for anything
to slow the slide.

solitude of thought.

-tle 4/14/07