picture

so we got family pics taken late summer and i wanted to share this picture with you. i also added this email i sent the photographer (wildflowerphotos.com). there is one picture amongst MANY amazing ones that pierced my heart.

joy,
i know i expressed to you the joy your photos have brought me but there is one particular pictures that sings to my heart the most and i just wanted to let you know. it is a picture that embodies so much for me. mothering emersen has been quite the adventure for me. with her diagnosis with lymes at times i feel like i am looking in the mirror and although that is a wonderful gift to have understanding it has been my biggest challenge as a mother thus far. understanding her quirks and pain and will and also struggling with what I have given her...what God willed for her to have. i just loathe that she suffers. when we went through the dvd of pictures, i stopped at this one picture and tears started streaming down my face...jarrod put his hand on my back and said 'i see it.' this picture is ALL my love and ALL my pain wrapped up for her. it is how i see her...how i ache for her and how i get tangled up in her beauty. i hope with all my heart she can look at that picture when she is older and my love screams out at her.

i just wanted to thank you. thank you for taking it...capturing it.
i love you so...

-nicole

perfect

i put so much pressure on myself to have these posts that make perfect sense, have words eloquently woven together and yet when i stop and think about that concept i realize that is not me. that's not who i am . i am not full of perfect sense, quite honestly i have never wanted to be. perfect is boring, perfect means you have no where else to go, nothing more to learn. perfect means the grooves of my heart have nothing to be filled with and that is a kind of void i am not willing to live with. i am a collage of thousands of magazine cut outs and fabric and thread and buttons and all sorts of notions. i am pages and pages of pinterest ideas that are half done. i am ok with that. that is how i want to live. its so much more beautiful on this side.

and in saying that i am a believer in perfect moments. like the first time i saw st mark's square in venice and i had an audible gasp and i had a moment that realized that it was a culmination of all that i had prayed for my entire life. i was in romania...married...spending days with orphans...sitting in fields making daisy chains, burrowing as many snacks as possible in my bag so even if just for that day they weren't hungry when they went to bed. i was LIVING. i was doing what i was designed to do. venice represented the end to me...one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen represented the heaven i am striving for. and in that moment i was at complete peace to stand before God. i was doing exactly what he created me to do. i am a fan of that kind of perfect.

color

"children are not coloring books, we can't fill them with our favorite colors." -the kite runner

my head is spinning around that statement and my heart leaps at the thought of the beautiful colors they have that have nothing to do with me.

thats all.

the me no one sees...

i hide it well. its all i have ever done. i think 90% of the reason for that is for ME. if i stay in bed i am sicker mentally. if i am in pajamas all day i feel like i am giving up in a way...not fighting. not showing my husband and my babies that they are WORTH fighting for. that our lives will not be defined by Lymes. that my deterioration will not be our future. there is so much more to SEE, so much to look forward to, to bask in. to live out what has been given to us.

i officially...

have a child who talks back.

i have cherished each stage thus far...and i really mean it. even the moments of leaving the groceries behind and being THAT MOM who is pulling her child by their arm out of the store. i have tucked them away in my corners...learned from them, ached, cried, questioned myself, doubted and had days when i was not quite sure why these lives were entrusted to me because surely i was damaging them in ways that no therapy plan could treat.

but i am prepared to say something that in essence makes all those last words a bit cheaper because i think that this most recent stage is about to bring out a side of me that my son has not been introduced to yet. the side that tilts my head downward and lifts my eyes from behind my glasses. the side that is left speechless and the side that realizes being dumbfounded shows him weakness so my default will be "go to your room"...really? are we here? the same little boy who takes my order and makes apple bundt cake made out of everything from cardboard to rocks to baseball bats is the same little boy who is becoming quite quick to repeat what i say in a rather nasty tone.

oh sweet little hudson...i am trying to do the very best i can.

so i take a deep, deep breath.... and know that this to, will be tucked in the corners.

the beginning of something..

i write in my head...all day long. i put sentences and thoughts in different file folders....hoping to pull them out of my achieves and use them as my own version of poetry. i have always loved to write. it is how i make sense of what doesn't. i know that even though it makes perfect sense to me it may not actually make sense to anyone else. i am ok with that. the journeys i go on, the places and emotions revisited...its a present i wrap up with brown packaging paper and twine..i slide it across the table andplace it in front of my torn up heart. my heart that beats for nothing more than for MORE.

so here i am...writing...putting pieces of myself on cyber pages.