Moments with Marri

Top to bottom Upside down Inside out Under and over Everything in between Your love covers me When I couldn’t feel any more empty in this pit, my chasm of darkness and pain Your love awakens me anew Patience You woo me with your patience Your lips drip warmth and wonder, hope in the grave of despair and loss When darkness threatens to invade all that I am, all that I have Your love is the flicker of light, dispelling the darkness When I cannot conceive of the light, you sit with me in the dark, groaning and waiting I can feel your warmth beside me, hear the echo of your own lament I could howl this guttural wailing forever but your person settles my soul I am but a shell of my former self, but you love me more than her, your light-hearted bride Why?   Oh how I’ve asked that question  Why? Your pain  You find purpose, calling out into the darkness Those truths that rocked the whole world Top to bottom Upside down Inside out Under and over Everything in between Those are the honey on you

 Haddy’s fake fuss.  He wanted my phone.  I have survived immeasurable yearning for every mundane moment with him for more than 1,000 days.  The touch of his skin, the sound of his voice, the feel of his hand in mine, his disobedience, and all of the training required to bring a two year old to a five year old.  I wanted it all.  I am so jealous for him.  Still.  Time does not heal all wounds.  That is a lie.   For more than 1,000 days, I have been in the furnace of affliction, staring my greatest fear in the face with the challenge in front of me to still live, to offer myself to my children and my husband who all have great need.  Truly, I love them more than my own life. I’m here to tell you.   When you come to the end of yourself perpetually, there is a God who sees you.  His grip is unmistakably strong and gentle, loving and firm.  He knows suffering.  No amount of fiery anger, bitter weeping, or cursing the day that you were born will keep Him away, although the comfort is easier

Love my crew.  I haven’t posted much on this trip or written much either.  Maybe I just needed to disconnect?  From Haddy’s birthday on May 7th to the 4th of July, I feel like I’m trying to grip the wheel and hang on or something.  The world just feels different, darker.  It is, I suppose.  My view of it most certainly is.  I’m thankful the Lord uses every season and every reason to remind us of our need for Him.  I’m learning that my expectations don’t always need to be written in stone and that grief requires me to slow down way more than I’d like to admit and reassess those expectations.   I look at these faces every day.  Man, I desperately want to do this thing well.  I can get fearful and fast for how far I feel in over my head.  ...yes, I know that’s dang near a ‘drowning’ reference.  Life, hardship, grief, anguish...it can feel like a whole lot..a whole lot of the time.  I suppose if there’s something I’m coming home with, it’s this; Hope doesn’t always equate to an outcome tha

What do you see on your fifth birthday love bug?    Do you see what I see?    Do you see our endurance, our gigantic love for you?    Do you feel the immensity of grief we experience as just consuming love?    Or are your days filled with sliding down a diplodocus neck squealing the entire trip down with delight, a blissful unawareness of all that we know now?    Are you memorizing Scripture as you dance to the jolliest tunes with the sound of glorious bagpipes that Knox so enjoys?    Or are you baking cakes with Grandma Hague and constantly tasting the batter?    Does the laughter of God shake the foundation of Heaven when you discover something new?    Are Lydia’s masterpieces covering the walls of a home you’ll show us around one day?    Is there another Hampton kiddo there a little older than your Calvin?    I imagined that dear one a girl with golden curls like Knox and the tender sass of your Selah and Lydia.    She comes from a line of strong women so at least a little bossy isn

  The psalmist begins here with a journey through lament and into a distinct setting of sight on God’s character and beckoning for deliverance.   The psalm ends with praise.     If I’m honest, I’ve been weary of being weary for a long time.  My eyes are often dry and my mind can spin and spin.  The darkness is not merely the absence of light nor is bereavement marked by only sorrow.  I just keep doing the next thing.  I can preach truths to my own soul that still land on a heart that doesn’t always accept those truths stored up in my mind.  Sometimes I muscle through the very next thing, waiting on the sigh of relief or breath of fresh air, only for it to feel as the tiniest pip and trod on waiting for the next.     Darkness doesn’t always beget a redemption story at every turn around the bend.  Darkness is sometimes just dark.  I miss my kid and I struggle to let him linger in my mind in the space of sweet remembrance most of the time.  Most of the time it leads to gut-wrenching t