Monthly Archives: May 2013

Grab the happy!

By Taylor Arthur | 31 May, 2013 - 8:36 am | , ,
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Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. James 5:13

I think sometimes it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. Something in life can be really, really hard . . . BIG things, things we have no control over, things that we cannot fix. The enormity of these problems can overshadow all other joy in our lives. But I refuse to let the mountains define my reality!

This week for my family has been crazy: a beautiful birthday party for our four year old complete with fairy wings and little pirates running around the back yard, my husband’s birthday, great professional news for me, and the confirmation that at some point this summer, Sam is having open heart surgery. It was a week of bliss, heartache, excitement . . . and honestly, exhaustion.

I used to wish that everything could be separated out: could I just mourn in peace, could I just sit under my rain cloud and cry, PLEASE! And, when good things happen, do they have to be sandwiched between fear and excitement and exhaustion, and did I say fear? Can’t I just jump up and down and scream “Praise the Lord,” instead of being distracted by all the mountains I have yet to climb?

I realize now that the rain clouds and the dancing and the singing are all a part of this life dance. We get better, I think, at dancing this dance as we mature. We get better at running to God at the first sign of trouble and giving Him our worries and our fears. We also get better at acknowledging His generosity, loyalty, faithfulness, and provision. And we begin to understand that if we are down, we will get back up again.

So, if you are staring at a humongous, immovable mountain or standing on the shore of yet another unnavigable sea, take heart. You will find a way to climb the mountain; you will stand again on the summit. A boat will be provided; you may even learn to walk on water. Maybe the sea will be parted right down the middle! I am daunted by the possibilities every mountain represents . . .

I am also amazed at how, in the middle of the deep, little joys like kite strings dance above our heads, just waiting to be grabbed. So keep your head up, look around for some happy, and grab it if you can . . . even just for a moment. Remember to sing songs of praise as you feel the wind blow and the surge of joy tugging you down the beach. Remember that you can sing and dance even if your feet feel full of lead. Remember that this moment is your life, and it can be beautiful, full of praise, full of happy, even in the rain.

Grabbing some happy,

Taylor

“Do not worry . . .”

By Taylor Arthur | 17 May, 2013 - 10:27 am | , , ,
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Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well . . . Matthew 6:25-33

I had a very embarrassing moment with God a few weeks ago. Have you ever had one of those moments where you have so justified your sin that when the gentle nudge of the Holy Spirit completely exposes you, pricking you with conviction, that all you can do is nod your head in complete submission? That was me in an embarrassing, private moment with my Lord when I opened up an old Baby wipes box filled with shoes . . . size 3 shoes, in fact. Let me give you the back-story.

There are few things I enjoy more than dressing my boys up. Especially at Christmas and Easter, I thrill to take their pictures in little matching outfits. It’s one of the cheaper joys of motherhood for me: whether they are hitting and biting each other a minute before or after I snap the shot, I will forever have my two little matching boys to trophy.

For Easter this year, I was thrilled to find darling seersucker suits in both their sizes for bargain basement prices. I endeavored to finish off their outfits with new shoes and shirts to match, and was heading out the door to the mall when my husband informed me that new shoes and shirts weren’t in the budget. Now, in my defense, I am a great bargain shopper, and I don’t even shop that much. But to my husband’s credit, we had agreed on a budget, and I had forgotten to leave room for Easter accoutrement. And now, he was proposing the crazy idea of the boys wearing old clothes for Easter—!

I don’t remember anything else that he said because I will confess that I threw a grand mal fit at the very idea of my boys not wearing those adorable seersucker outfits for Easter. I couldn’t believe that he would even ask me to consider something so out of the realm of my reality . . . I pulled out every manipulation and tear jerking memory I could think of . . . I insisted that if I did not complete the boys’ outfits, I would have a break down. It was ugly: spoiled and rank.

I cried and cried, until I had lost my husband’s attention and was kneeling in our bedroom alone. I knew I wasn’t rational, and at that point I didn’t even know why this was so important to me. I didn’t pray for help, kneeling there. Instead, I filled my mind with justifications and excuses, entitlements . . . blah, blah, blah. The tears kept falling, and I puddled into pitiful.

I finally felt Jack standing in the door behind me. I turned to see the puzzled look on his face. He winced at the tears running down my face, and at Caleb’s memory book open on the floor in front of me. His face recognized that I was just as confused as he was as to what was going on. He sighed. “If it means that much to you, Love, let’s go get your Easter outfits.”

And, even though I could justify disrespecting my husband who is generous and fair beyond reproach, the cute little boat shoes I had fought for and the matching tangerine oxford shirts I practically stole they were such a good deal weren’t nearly as much fun to buy as I had hoped. Something else bothered me: Sam’s miniature feet had grown way more than I had thought they had. In fact, after he had been measured at the shoe store, I wondered if he even needed shoes, or if there may not be a pair at home that may fit? Of course, I bought him new ones anyways.

So, later that week, when I discovered in that old Baby wipes box that there were actually three—3!—pairs of shoes he could wear for Easter, and that he never needed new ones, and that maybe, just maybe God had provided for my family before I even considered that he could, I replayed the ugly scene of my fit-throwing, disrespectful, ungrateful yuck . . . and I knew God wasn’t going to let me justify any of it.

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about Matthew 6: 25-24. We are urged, “not to worry” about our “life, what [we] will eat or what [we] will drink, or about our [bodies], what [we] will wear.” And that all seems so great in theory, but every parent out there knows how real the practicalities of parenting are. Our job is to worry about taking care of our children: to protect and nurture their lives, feed, clothe, and educate them.

But as much as it is my duty to provide for my children, I understand now that there was one thing I didn’t do concerning the whole Easter fiasco. I didn’t go to God! I didn’t pray, and pour my heart out to my Father, and tell him, Lord, I know this may sound crazy in an Eternal context, but I really desire to dress my boys up for Easter. I don’t know where it comes from. Is it pride? Is it a wound I have that I’m trying to bandage with seersucker? Does this, too, have to do with a grief issue? Am I just being a brat? I don’t know, but I do know that You search me and know me. Will You provide for me something more than just Easter outfits? Will You provide a filling for this gaping hole I don’t understand?

And then the veil lifted for just a moment. If every need and desire is brought first to our heavenly Father, then the context of that emptiness may be addressed first spiritually and then materially if need be. He can provide all healing, all filling, spiritual and material. And I wonder if I had approached my Father, instead of charging ahead to consume, would I not have taken the time to look for a pair of shoes for Sam? Maybe I also would have found the darling little shirt Abraham already had? Maybe . . .

I am realizing that most of what I want materially is tied to who I am spiritually. My desires and lusts are always about missing pieces of my heart that I cannot purchase back. Only God can fill my broken spaces. For my real material need, I know “ . . . indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” Matthew 6:32-33. It’s never about the seersucker, really. It’s always about what’s going on in my heart.

And so I am trying to want things less, and when I see a pair of shoes or that cool big toy on display at Costco or a Pottery Barn display that triggers an inner, grand mal fit of lust and entitlement, I am trying to say a little prayer: Lord, here is my want. Will you show me my need, and satiate my lust for this world with your kingdom and your righteousness?

Trying . . .

Taylor

From one Mary Magdalene to another..

By Taylor Arthur | 14 May, 2013 - 7:34 pm | , ,
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For all my sisters out there who think that they are unlovable because of the sins they have committed, I beg you to read this article. I know what it is too feel like you’ve gone further than Jesus’ love can reach…but our God is so much bigger than anything we can do to grieve Him!

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/abby-johnson-if-gosnell-deserves-hell-then-what-do-i-deserve

For the Mamas with empty arms today . . .

By Taylor Arthur | 12 May, 2013 - 10:31 am | , , ,
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Psalm 113

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord, you his servants;
praise the name of the Lord.
Let the name of the Lord be praised,
both now and forevermore.
From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,
the name of the Lord is to be praised.

The Lord is exalted over all the nations,
his glory above the heavens.
Who is like the Lord our God,
the One who sits enthroned on high,
who stoops down to look
on the heavens and the earth?

He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes,
with the princes of his people.
He settles the childless woman in her home
as a happy mother of children.

Praise the Lord.

I woke up this morning to my darling men bringing me breakfast in bed: an array of gluten free cupcakes, strawberries, a box of Shari’s Berries, coffee and cards. Their beaming faces and ardent demands that I share my cupcakes with them brings tears to my eyes as I remember my first Mother’s day . . .

No one knows what to do with a childless mother on Mother’s Day. And yet, these mothers are everywhere. On my first Mother’s day, I woke to a quiet house, instead of to the crying of a newborn. I donned the hot pink dress I wore to Caleb’s funeral only weeks before, and we went to brunch to toast our sweet boy. We were grateful to sit in the bar where there were no children; I couldn’t bear to see mothers with their children that day. We then left brunch, unfettered by the baby car seat that now sat empty or a diaper bag or feeding schedules. WE took a book of fairy tales to the cemetery, I sat down at my child’s grave and read him Peter Pan . . .

My biggest challenge in life thus far has been surviving the loss of my son. Nothing can rival the hole his absence represents. The daily challenges of caring for my living children are sometimes overwhelming, but there is always a nap time or bedtime around the corner. There is relief from the terrible two’s and sleepless nights. There is no relief for empty arms and a grieving heart. That time between Caleb dying and Abraham being born was the most awkward grief of my life. I was a mother, just like the mother holding her child next to me in the grocery store or at church. I had suffered and given and loved . . . and yet, in this world, a mother is defined by her living children. Mothers of dead children are overlooked, forgotten. Mothers who beg for children and cannot have them are passed over.

But I truly hold to the belief that God loves reversals. He sees our hearts, my friends. He grieves with us. After all, His own mother grieved Him. One of the last things He did before He died was make sure she would be cared for. This God who made us to be mothers, heart, soul, mind, and body, is also the God who can take what you think is hopeless and lost and turn it into a dream come true.

I love this Psalm I chose for today because it is hard to praise God with empty arms. But I believe that the more in need we are, the more we need worship. I pinned a quote from pinterest:

And I know that I can’t tell you how it’s all going to turn out. I don’t know if you’ll have a dozen children, adopt some, marry somebody with a ready-set family, or mentor and mother those who need a mother’s heart to love them. But I know something: He settles the childless woman. He settles her–not in a tomb or a mediocre marriage–but in a happy home with children. Take care my friend, He is coming for you . . .

God bless you and keep you. And gosh darn it, have a Mimosa and toast your Motherhood, babies or not!

Love,

Taylor

P.S. If you have lost a baby and would love an opportunity to publicly acknowledge your child, the TEARS Foundation is holding their annual “ Rock & Walk” in Tacoma, Washington on June 15th. The deadline is May 14th, so check out the link I provided. We cherish the picture of all of our family and friends wearing a shirt with Caleb’s name on it! This events provides so much healing and an opportunity to meet other grieving families. If you don’t live in Washington, there are walks all over the country that might be close to you that are on the TEARS website.

Waiting upon the Lord

By Taylor Arthur | 10 May, 2013 - 5:44 pm | , ,
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I have been waiting for a long time. I have been waiting for pay day, I have been waiting to graduate, to get married, to be healthy, to have a baby, to be done nursing, to get back to my pre-baby weight, for Sam’s heart to be “fixed” . . . I have waited on people, I have waited on test results. I have waited for checks in the mail. I have waited and waited and waited.

I didn’t even realize how much waiting I had done until Sam was given to us. All of those waitings seemed so silly in light of the new adventure of WAITING we began when he was only 19 weeks in utero. We waited two more weeks for a diagnosis, we waited for he and I to go into heart failure. We waited for the next doctor’s opinion, and then for the next appointment. We waited and waited and waited. I waited in the delivery room as they examined him in the NICU for the first time outside of my womb. We waited to see if drugs or surgery or both would fix his special heart so that he could come home with us.

There was a moment I remember when I was pregnant with Sam, as I was driving up to the hospital for one of so many tests, when I realized that my life couldn’t be about waiting anymore. There was no “until” with Sam. I didn’t want to wait until he died or until—what? He didn’t have a heart condition? I realized that I didn’t want Sam’s journey to be about “untils . . .” Our life now was going to either be a series of “until’s,” framed by doctor’s appointments, or an entirely new kind of journey. I had to learn a new way of viewing my life in a new context: one in which our joy and peace could be constant in the midst of an undisclosed waiting period. Would we waste Sam’s life being consumed with fear? He was alive, kicking inside me, and I had to figure out how that moment could be enough. I had to stop waiting and start living, start living out every moment of my life so that if this day and this moment is the only life my child will ever know, it will be spent in joy and peace and love.

In that moment I realized that this waiting is a problem, maybe even a sickness in my own heart. Why did I think I could wait until? Why did I ever think that the culmination of one set of circumstances would ever lead to my fulfillment? For every hurdle, every mountain climbed or waited out, there was another. Every horizon begets another horizon, and I am forever chasing, waiting.

Isaiah 40:31 is so familiar to me, so comforting. And yet, I have wondered my entire life what it meant to wait upon the Lord ? I knew what it was to love the Lord, worship, praise, and thank the Lord. I knew what it was to trust the Lord. But to “wait on Him”? And so it was as I drove up I-5 with my big pregnant belly and the praise music playing that Isaiah 43:10 penetrated deep into the marrow of my understanding:
They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint . . .

Waiting upon the LORD my God means to be constantly, fervently, deliberately, waiting for Him to appear in each and every one of my life circumstances. Am I looking for Him, right now, in the drive up to meet the doctors who will examine our baby and tell us, for this week or month or quarter, if his heart will continue to beat? Am I putting all of my beliefs and all of my hope into Man’s predictions, actions, or opinions? Who is in control of my life, after all: doctors, bankers, employers, oppressors . . . or God?

Spending a life running from paycheck to paycheck, from appointment to appointment, from person to person is exhausting, an infinite mountain range. But what if instead of running the gammet of my life’s circumstances, I just wait for Him to come? What if I just sit, and trust, and believe that His Glory will flood this circumstance, and the next? What if I wait for an indwelling that fills me so fully that I can scale the mountains, face the fear and the pain and the emptiness, already satiated?

Whoa. And there it is: being a Christian won’t dismiss me from engaging life. But if I am filled—every crack and cranny, crevice and craving—with the indwelling of the Most High, what I face on earth is but one small piece of my reality. I am facing this trial, but I am swimming in glory. I am climbing the mountain, but He is renewing my strength.

What are you waiting on? Join me in asking God to fill our yearnings with His glory . . .

Not fainting today,
Taylor

P.S. Need to Breathe’s “Something Beautiful” brings me to a place of knees on the ground and hands in the air waiting on God. Thought I’d share it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq1H3l7kyYU

What is your yield?

By Taylor Arthur | 3 May, 2013 - 10:48 am | , , ,
1 Comment

What is your yield?
There is something so humbling about sitting in a hospital room next to my child’s crib. I had plans, all kinds of plans. I had the weekly dry erase board filled with all of our activities, dinner menus, play dates. I had just spent the day before stocking the fridge with a week’s worth of pre-made breakfasts, lunches, and dinner-starts. And then, Sam started to cough a little on Monday afternoon. Tuesday—the day we took Sam to the ER because his oxygen saturation dropped to 75%–I had thought I could squeeze in a quick checkup for him at the pediatrician’s while Bram was in preschool. The appointment was scheduled at 9:15. At eleven, I was picking Bram up when Jack texted me, “Sats 75, just called Children’s.” At noon, Sam’s oxygen continued to drop in the ER as Jack and I held his little hands up so that they could X-ray his chest. By the afternoon, we were wondering whether or not he would have open heart surgery the next morning, after an emergency cath that night. There was no date night, no play date, and the food I had prepared ahead for my family sat untouched in an empty house.

I yield to this new reality, to Sam covered in wires and on oxygen. I become the mother of a different brand, one who sleeps (not really sleeping at all) next to her son in the Cardiac ICU while he screams and tries desperately to free himself from the tangle of leads and IVs and pulse oximeter. I yield, giving up my privacy, my authority, my dominion to nurses and doctors who know more about what my son needs than I do. I cancel a dozen plans: plans to go on a girls’ weekend, plans to attend bible study . . . plans in normal land. After discussing Sam’s condition with the doctor’s, we pull his brother out of preschool for the remainder of the year.

I ask the ER staff for a Bible. God brings a chaplain; she leads us in prayer, and Jack and I lay hands on our son, along with his nurse, and pray. I read to Samuel all the brave stories of his name’s sake. I read him the 23rd psalm; I play him lullabies. When no one’s around, I cry. I yield, I yield, I yield.

I am humbled by this yielding, this upheaval of my life I call motherhood. This deep calling to mother three distinct human beings has taken me down roads I may never have ventured on my own. I struggle to remind myself continually that although I feel that this is my life and my plans and my will that surrenders to the realities of stillbirth and brotherly love and growing pains and cardiac anomalies, that in the end, this is their story. I am the helper chosen to hold their hands through each of their journeys. I am their helper, for only a time.

Right now they are running around the living room in their pajamas, “powing” each other’s cars, oblivious to my many worries and task lists and the play date we declined for this morning. They may never realize what was required of their father and I to walk beside them, to protect them, to humbly yield all that we had envisioned for our family, and trust in a God who sees the whole picture and how each of our boys will live out their callings once they are beyond our grasp.

I look up the word “yield,” and am surprised by the many definitions. Right now, I am yielding, definition 3:)to give up possession of on claim or demand as a: to give up (as one’s breath) and so die; b: to surrender or relinquish to the physical control of another; hand over possession of; c: to surrender or submit (oneself) to another; d: to give (oneself) up to an inclination, temptation, or habit; e: to relinquish one’s possession of. In other words, I am giving up control, possession of my time and my agenda and my plans for the summer. I am dying again to myself, to my need for control and security. I am trying myself to relinquish my children again and again to their Maker, which literally requires me to be kneeling beside a sleeping Sam’s crib with my hands in the air praying, “I submit, I submit.” And I still can’t sleep.

As Ann Voskcamp would say, this is the “hard eucharisteo.” This is the moment when I want to take my baby and run from the docs and the hospitals and the ultrasound machines, hold him forever, and save him from it all. This is the moment when the fear chokes to gagging. And this is the time to remind myself that God is for us (Romans 8:31), that He will never stop doing good for us (Jeremiah 32:40), that He is with us (Psalm 46:7), and that there is no where we can go where His love and His presence won’t abide (Psalm 139). I submit to giving thanks for the uncertainty and for the fear, knowing I am being molded even through this pain.

Oddly, the first and last definitions of “yield” seem so contrary to my yielding: 1) recompense, reward and 4) to bear or bring forth as a natural product especially as a result of cultivation. So what is this recompense, this reward to be brought forth from my yielding? What is God cultivating as life hoes and tills the soils of my family and my heart? I don’t know. All I know now is that it is difficult to imagine a harvest worth this heartache and Samuel’s suffering. But then I am reminded: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:26-17).

I am laying our Samuel on the altar, in full submission and brokenness, trusting in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to bring forth a harvest from this yielding. And I am trusting in an eternal glory. Glory.

What is your yield?

IMG_0924_2
Newborn Sam and I in the Seattle Children’s NICU, August 2011