Baseball Bat.

I want a guy who carries a baseball bat.

Not literally... But when I think of one of my best friends, I think of her husband and always think of him with a baseball bat in hand, and a catchers mitt and chest protection too.

Because that is what he is to and for her. He is a guardian. He smashes away things of this world, protecting his wife. Counting things as lies and demanding only that she hear and receive truth so she doesn't have to live in the hold of others, or Satan's, deceit. He stands up for her when situations call for more of her than she could have to give. He fights for her, with her. He is her protector and shield about her. He is like a baseball bat, catchers glove, fielders mitt, and protective gear all in one for her.

I meet lots of guys. I meet no men with baseball bats. I meet guys who shy away from anything that isn't funny, comical, or intellectual. I meet guys who can discuss Biblical truth til the cows come home, but struggle to consistently make choices that reflect a life that lives it. I meet guys full of seminary knowledge, but without the balls to be missionaries on their street corners, much less as a cute girl out (not counting me). I meet guys who will sit across the table and hear a one sentence story about my year background as a response to the posed: "why aren't you nannying?" ... (yes, a definitely pause, and conversation killer right there), and I have yet to have ONE, even ONE respond with anything. Anything.

Perhaps one day, instead, someone could be like a first base coach and draw in closer for an instant. Perhaps one day, someone will say even one thing that will affirm me, or my situation, or the general episode, that let me know that they even heard me.

Or, as I put to my friends Kels and Kate a couple weeks back... "A guy who will just hold my hand." That doesn't even require him to come up with something to say. It simply means he had the strength, the balls, the courage enough to sit there with me and go through that tiny moment alongside of me. I'm not asking to vouch a lifetime, or a next date, or even a first. Not even a romantic notion. Just Christian brotherhood in the form of strength that holds my hand for a minute, or simply just says, "Wow, I'm sorry...."

So in the form of what this means in this season, but also in larger life, I want a guy who holds a baseball bat. Who will fight for me at each plate along the diamond. Who will rejoice with me at home plate. Who guards against the lies that deceive me. The discouragement that hinders me. The people who dishonor me. The world that threatens me.

Like my friend, I want a guy that holds a baseball bat.

~
PS -- No, I don't mean perfect. I mean human. But willing. And strong.

Unrestrained.

If I were cool like my friend Bekah... this would be a click to a You Tube video... but for now, you just get lyrics... or a fun adventure to find it online yourself...

Unrestrained
~ Mandisa ~

Most holy Lord
You have my attention
You know my thoughts
And all my intentions
I want to honor You in every way

I pour my love on You
My whole life belongs to You
I worship You completely unashamed
I give You my heart unrestrained

Almighty God
You have my devotion
With all my mind and all my emotion
I want to, God, I want to know You more

I pour my love like oil from this broken heart
I give myself away unrestrained
I let myself go
You have set me free
I surrender my soul

I bow my heart in worship
Completely unashamed
I give You my heart
Unrestrained

Celebrate & Say Goodbye.

Right now, my mind is screaming "No! No!" and tears come to my eyes and a bubble forms in my throat. I just got a letter from World Vision saying that my sponsor child, Jebii, and her community have neared the completion of the World Vision goals there, so WV is leaving that area.

This should be a good thing. I know. The packet is titled "A Time to Celebrate And Say Goodbye."

But I will miss her. She's become part of my life... I'm not even a 'good' sponsor (rarely sending cards, etc.) but it still feels like she's "mine."

I don't want to celebrate. I don't want to say goodbye.

But may God instead grow in me a heart that sees this as a great thing for her, and an accomplishment for her village, because that is what it really is. Its a huge bright-shinning blessing for WV, her village, and showing exactly what all this was intended to do.

But the person in me, still says, "No, I don't want to say goodbye... I want you to be 'Mine.'"

My love and blessings, Jebii. I will learn to celebrate and say goodbye.

Tentmaker.

Today I decided, I wrote, I posted:

I'll be a tentmaker for You.

Nothing more said, simply a commitment, a statement. A willingness.

Grieve Together.

Couldn't we grieve together? Couldn't we talk it through? Couldn't we cry together? Couldn't we use it as a communication that somehow, you love me as I love you, too?

I was told by a very close relative last week that I think I'm the only one grieving, that I think I'm the only one who has lost someone.

I could come up with a list of things to dispel this, to prove myself, to venture into it... But this broadcasting this doesn't build a bridge to chase the chasm between us.

I cannot do this, I don't want to do this: grieve alone. But you have given me no choice. You say I think I'm the only one grieving, but how can do differently when you are not willing to grieve with me? Of course then, it appears that way. Of course it does, when I am the only one who would pick up the phone in a time of need? Of course it does. I know you are grieving, I contemplate, worry, wonder, and struggle over you grieving, but I cannot show you that when you do not open yourself to let me grieve with you.

Communication is a two-way street. Grieving together is a two-way street.

I want to grieve with you. I want to talk it through with you, to cry together, to hang on together, to talk through it all together. But I cannot do it when you don't allow me to enter your grief. When you keep your world intentionally separate from mine. When you run to everyone else, everywhere for your grief and support, but me. You console with business people and in-laws and people in your circles. But I cannot walk my way into them. I can only be invited into them. Closed doors cannot be opened unless the one the inside is unlocking them.

I will keep standing at the door. I"ll keep knocking. I'll keep being willing to cry and share my grief. But now, I will still struggle in my own grief alone, by myself, because you don't give me the access to do so with you. I cannot see or hear your grief unless you are willing to offer access to it.

One of these days, open the door. I want to grieve together. I want to go through this together. I want to be, together. I don't want to grieve alone.

Simply Sara.

Sara Groves Inteview in Christianity Today:

"When Sara Groves sings, you know she's about to speak truth—about life, faith, and herself. On her ninth album, Fireflies and Songs, the acclaimed songwriter further demonstrates what she calls "confessional living" in hopes that others will do the same..."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/music/interviews/2009/saragroves-nov09.html?start=1

She gives me courage and permission to be willing to share, to confess, to be open, to be honest, to be exposed.

My New Best Friend.

My new best friend sits with me, curled up in this freezing hotel lobby in Asheville, North Carolina... And no, it's not one of my roommate here with me, or the cute baseball boy who's staying down the hall... It's a book. A book that walks and marks this woman's soul with empathy that only it and the given perspective, insight, and healing it gives.

It's Motherless Daughters: the Legacy of Loss. An Amazon shipment I ordered for me, after picking it up at Barnes and Noble a few weeks back and thinking, wow, this is exactly what I've been needing to read. When you add that half a million copies are in print, and was a New York Times Bestseller, you know and understand the sprawling need for woman to have this new best friend. Because it's not just me grabbing it off the shelf, but it's thousands of woman grappling for any kind of knowledge, insight, relief, and moreso, genuine understanding of someone who has walked this road and speaks into it.

Shall I add that I'm only on page 5? :)

Already back that first weekend in April, a constant string of words was like a thread stitching through me: I am the "Girl Without A Mom." And its all I could see myself. It's label was stamped on me and seemed to bounce around the inside of me like the old screen savor one-liners I remember friends having in neon in college.

And then I read A Grace Disguised, and found that truly, one whole chapter was devoted to Loss of Identity, and how the person you were seems misplaced. Ie. You are no longer a husband, a daughter, a spouse, a best friend... Because though that insignia has it's roots, its humanly, stripped from you in reality and leaves you dangling and wondering and recalculating, and no longer assuming. And that who you were, what the sign of your identity was, is now removed and it leaves the survivor reeling with what is lost and what is supposed to be, as regards to identity. The opening paragraph of this chapter was like fresh water, water-fountaining over me with relief in it's direct empathy... and that I wasn't crazy for feeling the depression and confusion of this new label, this consuming loss of identity. Who I was, was no longer. How I lived and spoke, was no longer... No longer was it mom as my best friend, mom as my daily phone call, mom as my "she is..." because now "she was..." Which left me, the Girl Without A Mom... Empty and misplaced.

And now, a pencil lies in my hand and traces lines on every page, communing with her words and story and research. And wishing everyone who knew and loved me would also pick it up and read these chapters, because then, maybe, they would 'understand' they would 'get it' they would be able to see that this grief isn't over for me. It cycles. And it's going it. My whole life. It's seasons of joy and sorrow. Both laced with the covering of who is the new Me.

As I always deeply love my real best friends and share about them so the others I love, also learn to love and know them, I also do so with this book... inviting you in with just a few of the lines and phrases that warm and extend to me. That put words in a form that proves them. And that in it, I'm not the only one.

"I feel guilty about this unhealed wound I carry..."

"How do I convince my daughters that I will always be here for them, that I won't die before their ready?... I know it wasn't true for me."

"My mother died when I was nineteen. For a long time, it was all you needed to know about me, a kind of vest-pocket description of my emotional complexion: 'Meet you in the lobby in ten minutes -- I have long brown hair, am on the short side, have on a red coat, and my mother died when I was nineteen.'"

"When someone asks about her parents, she tries to answer without using the words 'mother' or 'died.' Putting those two words together, she has learned, is a guaranteed conversation stopper."

"....dividing [life] into a permanent Before and After."

"You have to learn how to be a mother for yourself. You have to become that person who says, 'Don't worry, you're doing fine. You're doing the best you can.'"

"Tragedy was supposed to pass over a home such as ours, not burst through its door."

The book tosses out the stages of grief, remarks on its cyclical motion, messiness, and unpredictability.... And remarks how others still live on "time... But mourning requires a certain resignation to the forces of time... It's impossible to undo fifteen or twenty years of learned behavior with a mother in only a few months time. If it takes nine months to bring a life into this world, what makes us think we can let go of someone in less?"

I love her, I love my new best friend. I love being able to write about her and share her and know her this morning. Her words are a way of empathy, a way of reaching through pages and holding my hand.