Danger signs
Black arches up against the pale winter sky, trees stripped bare of leaves standing silently in the windless woods. Black as sin against the purity of Holiness.Sweat trickles down my back under down parka, and my steps are whispering Danger as I trudge through the drifts down to the water's edge.The music thunders in my ears against the silence of this glen. "Cold is the water, it freezes your already cold mind, already cold, cold mind; death is at your doorstep, and it will steal your innocence, but it will not steal your substance." (Mumford & Sons, Timshel) Thin ice, open water.I watch the ducks in the slushy water,...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 22, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: aftermath searching for meaning depression taking a break child abuse when God feels far away PTSD suicide borderline personality disorder Source Type: blogs
Books with empty pages
I read a whole book onthe Art of Happinessby the Dalai Lamaand I learn nothing new.I read Psalms that have watered my souland the words turn to dust in my mouth...for such a time as this...He lit up the cathedral on the farmwith white snow-light,a million crystals suspendedin the windreflecting Grace on a chipped paint tack roomAnd that one thing,the morning light,the horse nappingSara Groves told me in a songyou do your work the best that you canyou put one foot in front of the other life comes in waves and makes it's demandsyou hold on as well as you’re ableyou've been here for a long long timebut hope has a way o...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 19, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: depression when God feels far away hope anxiety time alone the breaking point suicide Source Type: blogs
Space to breathe
My husband, wonderful husband, has given me a break. Time to breathe. To rediscover. To push tentacles into the Solid Rock. Would you be in prayer for me, my friends? That I would find that spirit of peace HE promises, that I would be impenetrable to the lies of the evil one, that I would heal and grow and come back home more whole?Today I am in North Dakota with one of the wisest and sweetest 20 year olds I've known. I've cared for her since her infancy, and now she shrouds me with her grace, her embrace, her understanding. Tomorrow, another day here in the drifts. Next week, peace at her mother's farm. I leave house and ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 17, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: prayer request a husbands love anxiety PTSD loving yourself separation suicide the breaking point salvation depression self-loathing protection redemption Source Type: blogs
That darn rollercoaster again
The ocean is full of swells, whitecapped, surf blown off their creamy turquoise crests like whipped cream. Joy descends pell-mell into crushing sorrow. Sorrow billows up and out and beyond and there is joy again, waiting.The choices seems to be diminishing before me as the doors in a long hall as you walk down it, paths untaken disappearing behind your footsteps. Would He - could He - be the funnel that drives me down to this narrow opening? Has He orchestrated so closely? Or am I falling prey to the mind games of anxiety, the whispers of the enemy hissing hesitation into my soul?Oh, for rest, for rest. Oh for breath, for ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 15, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: choices ocean emotions can I? suffering questions without answers grace God's will Source Type: blogs
Get busy living
Faith is a fragile thing. I close the soft covers of a controversial book with a slam, and dust rises in the sunlight glinting off my bed. Today is not a day to study my faith. Today is a day to live it.Sun glints through the streamers on the rainbows hung from my kitchen windows, crafts left over from a "spring" birthday party, that warm day a memory now as we are buried in another foot of snow this mid-March. As the light gleams through the transparent paper, it is my faith I see, anchored to the rock, but tenuous, translucent, thin.I don't know how to correctly interpret the Old Testament hermeneutically. I haven't read...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 14, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: fragile everyday miracles 1000 gifts worship Praise faith ordinary joys Source Type: blogs
When I am Unlovely: Letters to Aaron
You curl around my back like my parentheses. Surrounding my body, my whirling thoughts, my discontent with a bracket as if this period of my life is just a passing thing, something added to the sentence for emphasis only.You have looked into my wounded eyes and seen clear down to my soul and as you reached down there with your passionate gaze, deep, you dropped a handful of comfort into the empty places. You love me no matter what, in spite of, at all times. I cannot understand it.You weep sometimes because I am weeping. Other times you implore me to see the beauty that you see and to turn away from brokenness. Both I love...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 12, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: sacrificial love healing I am the Beloved letters to Aaron Christs bride a husbands love marriage letters Source Type: blogs
My baby girl is 8!
Happy 8th birthday to my beautiful second baby girl, my Rosalita!I never got to play with Barbies as a child. Rosy finds it funny that I'm loving it now. (Source: Turquoise Gates)
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 9, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: birthdays celebration Rosy Source Type: blogs
A work in progress
If you are alive today, you are a work in progress. Unfinished. Still being refined. Untangled. Strung with pearls.Sometimes you have to table your doubts like the dust on a working machine. If your faith is still working, maybe now is not the time to clean the cobwebs, read the books about the doubts you have. Maybe you need to lean on just a few words, like I am today: "Lord, I believe. Help thou my disbelief." (Mark 9:24)Maybe there is beauty you can see today. Maybe you can mark it down in your mind on that endless list of gifts, blessings sent down from the Father of Lights.Maybe you are peering into the dark for the ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 8, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: refiners fire depression Pain 1000 gifts loving yourself God's promises trusting God suicide Source Type: blogs
Stepping in front of the lens
It was my 34th birthday. And all I wanted was a picture of the joy we shared as a family. With me in it. It wasn't so long ago I hid behind the camera, the family historian. I weigh more than I want to. My hair never seems to cooperate. My everyday clothes are yoga pants and a t-shirt. Who wants to have photos of a person like that?My husband, my children, my parents, my siblings, my nieces and nephews, my friends. That's who. It wasn't until I was browsing through photos shortly after my cancer diagnosis in 2008 that I realized how few pictures there were of me with my children. And I wanted that to change. I wanted ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 6, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: photography family legacy loving yourself imperfect prose Source Type: blogs
Happy birthday is my victory song
The back of my purple Survivor t-shirt from the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life says, "Happy birthday is our victory song." Surviving cancer has forever altered how I feel about aging. I will never be one of those women who is 29 forever. Every milestone reached is celebrated, because it could have been missed if my cancer hadn't been caught early, or my surgery had gone poorly, or my cancer wasn't sensitive to the treatments I received.Everyday miracle. A birthday. Breakfast in bed from my 4 sweet children, who parade in with bagels and coffee on a cutting board tray, and Clementine slices arranged to make the nu...
Source: Turquoise Gates - March 1, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: joy depression birthdays mycancerstory motherhood celebration everyday miracles children ordinary joys Source Type: blogs
Joy vignettes
She is Esther, the beautiful brave. She walks humbly, asks her brother, playing King, to raise His scepter. I smile. The stories are seeping in.The day is gray and bitter cold, and we pack swimsuits steaming and shorts and tennies and head to the Y. They master the climbing wall, perfect their Tarzan yells on the zip line, swim until they are too heavy to float any longer. I smile. I've done a good thing. They've been happy for hours.It's past bedtime. It's like herding cats. Suddenly they all re-appear after a long silence in their bedroom. Apparently they weren't sleeping, they were staging a Weird Pajama Contest. Rosy w...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 26, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: joy count your blessings ladder God's transformational power everyday miracles ordinary joys Source Type: blogs
Wanted {reprise}
Dancing with abandonEvery daughter of Eve falls down.Heaven echoes with the soundof our crumbling to dust.Her dancing legs grow stillthough she thrashes with her will,Meted consequence for lust.But something's bouncing round her soula whisper that she could be whole,Courage builds as the drumbeat thrills.Will you join her dancing through the crowdNo losing footing in the furrows fear plowedThis is the moment she's been waiting 'til...She's been waiting for love scandalousLove that swallows fistsHere He is, Lover of her soulUnconquerable, inseparable, unwavering, unconditional,She falls into the wispof faith that falte...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 26, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: Beloved I am the Beloved wanted how God sees me me Jesus God's love Source Type: blogs
The next stage, like it or not
My youngest turned 5 the other day. I still think of him as my baby, and I might always. After all, he is my baby, the youngest of my brood.It's easier in many ways, this stage of our family. It's easier to find a sitter without a baby in the house, there's no one peeing on the floor, I don't have to arrange my life around breastfeeding breaks. Yet my arms ache. There is a sense of completeness missing when I look at our family. I wonder how much of it is the one baby, the one who would be my youngest, the one I never got to hold. Am I missing him when I see our family? Do other women who've miscarried feel this way?I talk...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 23, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: incompleteness Theodore birthdays loss celebration Caleb grief family Source Type: blogs
Rising to the occasion
One last thought, as a parent and as a human being; opportunities to love surround us. When we take those opportunities time seems to stop, and in that timelessness is where memories are made and beauty is beheld. We will never regret rising to the occasion. I believe it has something to do with the fact that God is love and we are made in His image. Suffering isn’t what we are made for, but it can be fruitful in ways we could never imagine. We love because He first loved us. (Daisy's mom writes as her 8 year old daughter lies dying at PrayForDaisy.com) Rising to the occasion. No matter how gray the day....
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 21, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: depression celebration opposite action love God's love Source Type: blogs
Soul notes
Behold, I have not given you a spirit of fear, but of peace. (II Timothy 1:7)When I am an old womanand you comemy skin will be as wrinkled as cottonwood barkeach groove a story, a scarbattlewounds of the warand you will see my painlike a roadmap across my bodyand you and I will both wonderhow one could walk through fireand only get this burned......................................When I am an old womanand you comemy eyes will be transparentwindows to the souland in the brown will be peaceforgiveness loveeach wrinkle written on my skintransmuted into blessingand you and I will both wonderhow one could walkthrough firea...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 19, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: forgiveness depression aging beauty for ashes love Source Type: blogs
