30: Hopes and Dreams

Hopes and dreams. Is it not woven into the fabric of every human heart to dream? Is it not part of our human existence to be restless? In the weeks and months leading up to 30 a curious thing happened, which is that all of my more superficial hopes and dreams (travel, fitness, family) became rolled up into one neat little package. As I looked at my life and how it was speeding by, as I examined my tendency to melancholy, as I witnessed tragedy in the life of many near and far, it became clear to me that for all the list making I may do nothing is certain. And so, while it is good to have those dreams and lists, my deep hope for 30 became a dream of being. 

A happy family moment of being last month in Canmore
Oh, how she loves him! How he loves her!

My dream for 30 is to live each moment with a pervasive sense of gratitude, understanding that the joy I so desire is tightly bound to seeing the world with eyes of thanksgiving. My fear of time passing is abolished when I seek to make each moment pregnant with a grateful heart. Mysteriously, the moment pauses and hangs there to be revelled in when it is acknowledged with intentionality. I dream that my own grateful heart can only do one thing, which is point me to the Giver of the gift. May my life in 30 be more and more one in which the Giver is centre of all else.

How can one not contemplate the Giver of such a gift
(in and out of the chariot!).

These ideas have come from two books that I've been reading. Seeking First the Kingdom and One Thousand Gifts couldn't have come at a better time. I highly recommend them both, but for a general audience especially One Thousand Gifts. It is a life changing meditation on the healing power of gratitude.

I wanted to quote One Thousand Gifts to close this simple post. Ann Voskamp's eloquent words about overcoming the fear of time's fleeting nature by holding onto each moment with thanks are a perfect way to start today.

I don't really want more time. I just want enough time. Time to breath deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done - yesterday.... 

Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one. And this, this is the only way to slow time. When I fully enter time's swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all there. I can slow the torrent by being all here. I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment. And when I'm always looking for the next glimpse of glory, I slow and enter. And time slows. Weigh down this moment in time with attention full, and the whole of time's river slows, slows, slows... 

Giving thanks for one thousand things is ultimately an invitation to slow time down with the weight of full attention. In this space of time and sphere I am attentive, aware, accepting the whole of the moment, weighing it down with me all here....Really? Give thanks and get time? Give thanks....slow time down with all of your attention - and your basket of not-enough-time multiplies into more than enough time... 

The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life- in my life - is lack of thanksgiving. I am a mother-tired, but when my soul doth magnify, my time doth magnify....I redeem time from neglect and apathy and inattentiveness when I swell with thanks and weigh the moment down and it's giving thanks to God for this moment that multiplies the moments, time made enough. - Ann Voskamp One Thousand Gifts

Stay moment, stay!

May your Sunday be filled with joy!

With love,

The Best of 20...

30. Today I am 30 and I am excited! People warned me that it would be the worst birthday yet, the hardest. A new decade. Officially "gettin up there." So far that is not true at all!

I was initially thinking I'd spend time in this space writing about the lessons of my 20s. The good, bad and ugly. Looking through photos of the last decade (eeps!), I thought instead maybe I'd share some of my favorite memories of my 20s and write a follow up post on my dreams for 30. As I said, I'm excited and oh, so grateful. While I learned many lessons and certainly had tough moments in my 20s I am more eager to remember the most positively life-changing moments, and focus on the hopes and dreams in my heart for the next years....

You are warned, so many photos!!!

At Ave Maria University I fell in love with philosophy and learned what Christian adult friendships look like....I still love these women so much!

After a brief and very difficult time in Vancouver (focusing on the positives here), I moved to LA to live and work. Again, the people I met, the friends I hold dear in my heart forever, are what stay with me. We had so many happy moments together!

In between my time in LA and moving to Dallas to finish my degree I took a pilgrimage to Fatima, Portugal on my own. It was the trip of a lifetime, and certainly life changing.  I want to go back there with our family!

The same summer as Portugal I moved to Dallas. I will never forget how alone and afraid I felt that first night in my new apartment at yet another brand new university. Fast forward a few months and I was so enjoying my studies, going on my first date with a handsome baseball player, and well....the rest is history! My time in Dallas was so very happy. I feel nostalgic for it to this day!

Our first picture together ever :)

The summer before my last year at UD Joe proposed to me. What a moment that was! Our wedding was simple but sacred, and honeymooning in Italy on the Amalfi coast can only be described as a dream. What a blessed and blissful whirlwind that year was!

One month after our honeymoon ended we moved to Australia with a few thousand dollars to our name, no jobs, and no place to live. Joe was going to pursue basketball and I my masters. What a dream it was to see him play a sport he loves so deeply. We lived so simply, we were so so poor, but still the memories of that time make our hearts full. I hope we can take our children back to visit one day!

Becoming a mama and the magical experience of pregnancy was a powerful chapter in my 20s. I will never forget how I felt about the little ones growing in me...how I would spend hours dreaming of them, singing to them, loving them. Life changing to say the least!

38 weeks pregnant with Liliana

Liliana helped us document Judah's growth

The births of both of our children were beautiful and sacred. The experience of birth is so transformative and so incredibly powerful. To see them baptised shortly after their births and then spend these years learning to be their mama has been such a gift. Two little ones, my hearts, walking around outside of my body and making it so that I must overcome my selfishness and ego to love and learn with them. WOW! I am so glad we didn't wait to welcome children into our marriage!

Liliana's birth at a birth centre in Melbourne

Liliana's baptism

Judah's beautiful home waterbirth

Judah's baptism in Calgary

One of my favorite "new mama" photos...Liliana was 6 weeks old. I can just tell how happy I was!

To see my love become the amazing father that he is...breathtaking. His creativity, fierce protection, tender devotion, playfulness, sacrifice have appeared in a new and pronounced way since fatherhood happened. It sounds cliche but I fall in love with him more and more deeply as I witness him loving our wee ones. In a similar way, to see my children be each other's siblings makes my heart want to explode. Oh the gift that a sibling is.

Joe and Liliana in Maui

Witnessing my parents and Joe's parents become grandparents was a highlight of my 20s without a doubt. Not only has their love for my children deepened my love for and relationship with them, but I see the immense gift their love is to my darlings.  Not only this, but I don't know what we'd do without their guidance. 

As my siblings and I grow into adulthood, our friendship grows as well. I am so grateful for the deep friendships I have with them, and the fun we still have together.  I am humbled by the men and women they are and the way they love me. I am excited to see what the decades bring for us.

Last but not least, my 20s would not have been what they were without our many happy family vacations to Maui. Maui is a place where my soul rests and also a place where it soars. The beauty is palpable and turns my heart to better things. It was such a gift to introduce such a place to my Love and our wee ones and to see them revel in its beauty also. I pray we can go back one day.

Joe's first trip to Maui when we were engaged!

Our last trip to Hawaii, Judah was 4 weeks old

Phew! So there you have it. This exercise has been such a lesson for me in gratitude. Would you believe that I initially felt like there had been more hard lessons than joyful lessons in my 20s? Perhaps if I made a list there would be. But when I look at these photos and read this words, I cannot help but feel that I am absolutely undeserving of all the joy these 10 years have held. I am reminded of the idea that it's not happy people who are grateful, it's grateful people who are happy. Hmmm, a theme for 30? Maybe so!

With love,

Taming the Wild Things

A warm hello to you on this beautiful sunny Sunday. Our weekend has been filled with playtime, popsicles, new flowers, ladybugs, and many many baths. I pray yours has been just as wonderful!

I hope you like the new look and title of our blog! Entering into a new decade of life and a new half-decade of marriage, it just seemed like time for a little update. Lions and Lilies are symbolic and meaningful to our lives in many ways. Hopefully this will continue to be an uplifting space for any who wish to read these simple chronicles.

Oh sweet spring, you make our hearts happy!

As I read Where the Wild Things Are to my two sweeties yesterday it occurred to me what an appropriate and powerful analogy the story is to how I view discipline's role and the journey to emotional maturity. Almost certainly the author had no intention of conveying the message I received. Yet, here I go....

Max puts on his wolf suit and makes mischief of every kind until his mom sends him to his room. When I ask Liliana to remove herself to a quiet place (and believe me, Judah soon), it is not because I want her to suffer. It is because I want to provide her with an environment where she can quiet herself. With her, it works for me to tell her that when she is ready to join us again and speak/act with love she is welcome. As my children grow I'm sure there will be times where an action befits a more harsh sentence of time alone, but for now this works. I send her to her room to seek peace

Max meets the wild things. Wild things! Is that not what our untamed emotions are? Deep within us, these wild creatures who gnash their terrible teeth and roar and stomp? They want to be in charge, these wild things. They want to be the kings of us, of our minds and our behaviour - untamed and without any hierarchy of authority within us.

Mischief makers? I say yes!

Max stares into their eyes and becomes king of the wild things. This is the key, isn't it? When I discipline I don't want to disregard my children's very real feelings. Is it not true that some of the biggest problems people face in their adult lives are due to being untapped into their emotions or believing that their feelings should simply be squelched? What I want to teach (and model in my own behaviour) is the whole "feel and deal" scenario. These are the questions I want to help them ask..."Yes, what I am feeling is powerful and real, but why?" and "I feel like acting this way because I feel that way, but is it appropriate or constructive?" and "what can I do that is appropriate and constructive to deal with this?". (Of course the language is far simpler with wee ones!)

Max has a wild rumpus. It seems to me that Max does feel and deal. He has a rumpus with the wild things. Even though he is king of them he still parties with them. In my analogy this rumpus is like that moment of inner questioning and resolving, maybe even wrestling. I think that people also have wild rumpuses where they are not the kings of the wild things. In my toddlers this looks like body flinging, toy throwing, high-pitched-screaming. In adults it may look like something entirely different! For me, it may involve (non-constructive) sulking :)

I think most of our daytime play would qualify as a "wild rumpus"

But he gets lonely and wants to go back to the place where he is loved most of all. Isn't this the beautiful thing? The journey to emotional maturity frees us to choose love and uplifting relationships. It allows us to open ourselves to being loved and to loving.  Some of the hardest people to connect with as an adult are those who are controlled by their feelings. I suppose we would call these people who are lacking emotional maturity. They are so up-down-and-all-around that connection is evasive and going deeper (which love demands) just can't happen. I see it very clearly when my Liliana has calmed herself and is ready to speak or act with love. She comes out to our arms, always, to give and get some lovin'.

And his dinner was still hot. Because this is the key to discipline, is it not? A non-reactive heart of tenderness and generosity? For me, reactive discipline (yelling and berating) would be  is easier, but so much less effective in the grand scheme of nurturing and teaching.

So there you have it, discipline modelled on Max and his journey to the land of wild things.

I would love to know what some of your philosophies on discipline are or what tactics you have for helping your children "feel and deal." How do you find the balance between firm and tender?

I should leave it at that because I have some crazies of my own to feed dinner to, and hopefully during dinner we don't have to tame too many wild things :)

"Sigh" life is good!

With love,

Gratitude: My Undoers

A rainy Saturday afternoon here. The sky is gray outside and our family room is cluttered with the remains of last week's play. I clutch my steaming coffee cup and think about our week, and I am so very grateful for....

Undoers who Undo all of my Doing. It occurred to me yesterday that my children love playing in clean spaces. As a result, I move from space to space tidying and cleaning, and once that space is clean they move out of the one they just made messy in order to enjoy the order and harmony. Liliana is just at the age where she understands cleaning up after herself, but she often forgets. Judah is at a stage where turning things upside down and dumping them is fun. I am at a stage where I wish I had some system for keeping my house clean but I definitely don't. Yet, who would I be without these darling undoers? Perhaps pride filled that my house was straight out of a magazine, or bored because I didn't have enough to do, or a professional because my perfectly clean empty house felt precisely that....empty. Instead I am blessed with mess makers. In commitment to a #lifeunfiltered I admit that chronic mess despite my best efforts feels nerve-wracking and stretches my patience. However, it is also virtue building and full of meaning. Will I miss the days of opening my fridge to find plush mermaids indulging in salad on the middle shelf? I know I will.

My sweet mess maker and I at beautiful Rianna's bridal shower.

Date nights revisited. Joe and I remain committed to our weekly date nights and we find them so beneficial to our marriage. As I often mention date nights often mean putting the kids down and an intentional "date night in". Sometimes we sit on the porch and look at stars over a cigar and wine, other times we have late night dinner picnics on our family room carpet, and many times we head over to Governor's pub for chicken wings and a cold pint. However, we wanted to shake things up a bit so we enrolled in a wall climbing class. SO MUCH FUN! Oh how we laughed as I learned to belay my big strong husband. As his body came down mine would lift up and I felt like we were being set up for a perfect spiderman kiss. I learned to lean against the wall and hook my foot on a hold if needs be. We are so eager to incorporate the fun into our weekly dates. It was a perfect opportunity to exercise/play/communicate all in one. I wish I had pictures to share but we were way too busy having fun for pictures. A very good sign, I say.

Since we don't have a picture this will have to do. Judah's
face over his blackberries is a perfect reflection of the fun Joe
and I had wall climbing together. Life is good :)

Little Bodies.  I lay there at 2am nursing our sweet boy several nights ago, and as my hand rested on his little rib cage I marvelled at precisely that...the perfect littleness of his body. My children's perfect little beings amaze me often. As I bathe them and see their tiny shoulders, scrub behind their beautiful ears, tickle their pruny feet I can't believe the intricate beauty of their tiny selves. I know I will remember the day when my hand encompassed my son's whole back or my two wee ones fit on my lap for Monday snuggles.

Little body and little bunny. Too sweet!

How long will they both fit on my lap?

Sweet little apron clad girl making mommy a carrot cake...
Daddy's idea and boy was it delicious!

Work. As many but not all know Joe and I had an extended period in which we were bringing in almost no income. As sincere as our efforts were, paying work just didn't seem to find us. Joe has been employed for a couple of months now and the difference it has made in our overall sense of well being is staggering. I also got a job as a chef's assistant for a cooking school close by....it is nighttime/weekend flexible and simple work, but the ability to assist in the stability and forward motion of our family is a gift.. We are blessed. Thank you to those who prayed for us in our times of difficulty.

My love to and prayers for you in this beautiful springtime season. What is filling your heart with gratitude? What gives you joy in these May days?

xoxo

Choosing Love, Embracing Suffering, and Joy's Victories

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” - CS Lewis

A few weeks ago I was at the park with our children on a warm and glorious day. We played and played! I remember thinking, as we played, how happy I was and how in love I was with them, my blond darlings. We were going up and down the slides over and over, with Judah on my lap and Liliana holding my hand, and time was running away from us as we were lost in fun. At one point I laughed and in that moment I seemed to remember what laughing, really laughing from my soul, felt like.

Such a happy day!

I've been wondering for a while if I should share some of the sufferings I've experienced after Judah's birth. I've decided to because when I think about it, it seems as though it is unfair to share the good moments without sharing the hard ones. Perhaps it sets people up to have unrealistic expectations from their own lives. And so I share my simple story. The beautiful thing is that all of the little chapters that are making up the story of my life teach me over and over what love really is.

Judah's birth was absolutely beautiful. Peaceful, holy, happy, and surrounded by love. However, as any of you who have been reading for a while know, very quickly things started to feel hard. The inevitable baby blues a few weeks after baby stretched out, and I was so sad. Now, in context I didn't allow my self time to be in bed and recover like I should have, and on top of it we were dealing with some relatively intense financial and business realities. 

Perhaps it was mild postpartum depression, but really the only way to describe it was that in my very soul there seemed to be a fog of sadness that permeated my days and nights and was a lens through which everything was filtered. It wasn't terrible, by any means, but I felt confused that the intense joy I had being a mama and a wife seemed to just disappear over night. I looked at my children and loved them with every fibre of my being, but still I just coped. I was, in every sense, surviving and not thriving. I had an intense fear of becoming pregnant again, I didn't want to socialize,  I was distracted and distant from Joe, and every little thing made me feel anxious and worried.

Now, the beautiful thing about having two little lives and one big life that depend on you in a constant way is that there is no time to wallow. I look back at pictures and I remember how sad I felt but I don't look it! To learn to be present, to the best of my ability, and with a smile was a gift. Still, in retrospect now that I can compare how I feel with how I felt then, it seems as though it was an out of body experience. Today, here I am, in my body and present. What a difference!

What is the lesson in all of this? There are many and I think that I will process this experience for a long time....almost 16 months of sadness. It seems silly to say when I think of the deeply suffering world around us, and here I am in this beautiful life, with suffering that was very real. But so it was.

The first lesson for me, which I've mentioned before, is to have a big, soft, tender heart of mercy towards those I encounter daily. Who am I to judge why they behave the way they do, why they struggle when it seems they have no reason to, why they act angry or distant? Certainly I've been guilty in the past of a prideful naivety that assumed I had the answers and therefore things went right for me. Not so. I am humbled to say that I have no answers, and without Grace I am so very weak. May I walk through my days with eyes that see the beauty of a soul before anything else.

The second lesson is that really loving opens you up to really hurting. Of course, I knew this in my head but to live it moves such a truth down to my heart. I have seen so many stories lately of stillborn babies, unexpected passing of young husbands, cancer battles for mothers. It is so easy to be exposed to the suffering and think that it is senseless.....but upon following the stories beautiful legacies of love are seen to unfold. The truth is that when we choose to love, not the feel-good-love but the love that opts to remain when the feelings go, we choose to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and to experience pain. It may be small daily pains, it may be one tragic pain, it may be a small season of pain, or a long marathon of pain....but to choose to really love is to make your heart fibres so exposed that they will most likely be singed, burned, stretched, weathered, and worn. Yet we also know for certain that ultimately joy is victorious and there are always moments of respite for a heart that has been weathered in the storms of Love's sufferings.

It feels risky to love so deeply that you will certainly be hurt. Yet, while the days are long the years are oh so short and then, before we know it, sometimes sooner than we ever guessed, it is over. 

My prayers for you, that you may always opt for love and that even in your sufferings joy may always triumph.

xoxo