And when I finally cross that bridge and see the sign that welcomes me home, “The people of Iowa welcome you,” I smile and feel thankful for this place.

As the old state slogan used to say: Iowa you make me smile. It’s true.

I have often wondered about this very same thing. I never was able to put it into such eloquence, but there it is, what I have felt all along. I always thought it was because I was extroverted and needed desperately to talk about it, process it, tell someone about what I was seeing, experiencing, feeling, noticing. But I think he’s right; I needed to share it with someone else to make it complete and experience the fullness of whatever delight I was taking in.

Maybe that’s why I blog. Maybe that’s why I like cooking and throwing huge parties to celebrate people. Maybe that’s why I feel propelled to take photos (even with a cheap-ass camera). And maybe that’s why I like using words, sometimes too many words, to express myself. There are limits though to using these mediums that can’t even come close to having someone near your side, taking in the same sunset or singing with full gusto amidst 19,000 students at an Urbana convention. Or having someone near your side when you birth your first child. Oh, to stand with another when the first leaves change color and you look up into the most glorious orange you have ever seen. And to share a warm cup of tea in front of the fire with the light catching the warm red hues of the wood and the coziness settling into your bones, together. Oh, how I wished I had someone to share my first thoughts and emotions as the plane set down in Nairobi, Kenya. How my little heart had longed to go to Africa since I was a wee little girl and then the dream was fulfilled.

There are so many spaces and times in our lives where to simply share the moment with another completes our joy.

I think this will be some of the amazing part of heaven. Where we look into each others eyes and with twinkles of happy tears say, “We are home!” And joy will ooze and flood and nothing and no one can ever take that from us ever again. Oh what a happy day that will be!

I used to write letters (the snail mail type) to my friends of old. Hilary and I invested in lovely stationary, special pens, ribbons to bind the thick stack of papers, pressed flowers. I used to keep a live letter of sorts between Ali and I that went back and forth in a little journal. We started it before we both were even dating our husbands. It is still floating between us, somewhere.

It could be that it is just summer time. Kind of like knitting, it lays dormant in a basket at the side of your chair. You look at it from time to time, think about how it might be nice to pick it up, but you choose to do something else.

It could be that I am all out of creative energy. I do feel like I am in a time of transition of sorts. I have finally made a clean break from my Evanston family and am starting new friendships up north. Looking for connection, a place to call a church home, a community to send roots down with. This takes creative energy the way a woman in her first trimester is all sucked up dry of physical energy as her inner womb does phenomenal and mysterious things creating a very small human being.

It could be that I am feeling protective of my inner world. There is much rumbling within and I have many thoughts and reflections. I feel unsure where to process some of it though. And the blog might not always be the most appropriate and, most of all, safe place, if you know what I mean.

I’ve also begun to experience this powerful phenomenon since quitting my job at the Kellogg Center. All the projects and large to-do items I have put off and stuffed in the attic of my mind this past year (or even the last few years) have come falling down from the little trap door. I find myself wanting to accomplish, check things off lists, be productive, move forward. I guess this is a good sign in some ways. I have energy, space, time and creative power to do many of them. It’s stuff like organizing my pantry, transplanting flowers and perennials that are just in the wrong place, painting/decorating Audrey’s room, dusting the blades on the ceiling fans, going through the girls clothes and organizing them according to size, sorting the filing cabinets that are stuffed to the gills and getting rid of all those old IV staff meeting notes and such, washing windows that have never been washed in the course of our history (and probably the previous owners history) of living in this house, sew this adorable dress pattern I have, create a meditation room and the list just goes on and on and on until I am swirling in it and just plain overwhelmed.

I am hoping autumn brings on some creative writing juices. I need to make time for it and schedule it like its a play date with a good friend. Instead it’s a writing date at the local St. Arbucks with an old laptop.

This summer I am all about dresses. Wrap dresses and cozy cotton summer dresses (which I am pretty sure Clinton and Stacey might not approve because I might say the “C” word (“comfortable”) when describing these dresses. Dresses are so easy. And I feel a little more dolled up then in some grungy work pants or Capri’s that are too tight in the ass. Today I wore a well fitted cotton sleeveless dress in shades of burnt red and a warm salmon like color swirled in. My sister found it for me at some thrift store in Iowa City. It works.

I left Ivan and Audrey napping this afternoon and Scarlet and I went to run a slew of errands. All those ones that you ignore and forget about but it would feel [oh so good] to get it off the “to do” list, you know. Like returning library books, taking back the DVD’s, picking up prescriptions, taking the dry cleaning in, picking up those last minute gifts for people. But I got it all done including heading all the way out to Grayslake to my favorite yarn shop for another skein of the cozy yarn I am using for Scarlet’s comfort blanket. [I am having an eery feeling that Scarlet might not find this little blankie so cuddly as I hope she might. Alas...]

We are heading out to Iowa City (for those of you Chicagoans who aren’t familiar which way Iowa is (and you are out there), we are heading due West and a bit South for about four hours until we hit my Alma mater and the home of my parents, Kevin and Trudi Anne. First stop will be a joyous celebration with my ol’ chum Alina who recently brought home her second son from Ethiopia. I am confident I will weep. I get weepy when I hear her story and see the photos of her glittering peaceful face. God is good in providing all these babies.

And lastly, what I have been avoiding for about two weeks now I finally plunged into and just dealt with it: cleaning off my desk and paying the bills. Yuck. Let me say it again: YUCK. But it wasn’t as bad as my denial prone insides were thinking it might be. Somehow, someway we keep paying our mortgage, having food on the table to feed our children, cars that have very little maintenance, and all the other little amenities we might feel we need. It continues to settle in that we are going to be okay. Somehow, someway. But mostly because He cares about us and sees us and is vested in our welfare.

A funny I leave with you…
Last night Ivan and I were partaking in a regular routine of oozing with endearment for our two daughters. It usually starts with something like this: “Scarlet is so cuuuute.” And it is said in a cutesy, cuddly and mama/papa sort of voice. And this starts us off in telling stories of what are children did today to further endear us to them and what funny thing Audrey said. Last night it started as it usually does and then Ivan starts talking about how Scarlet always kicks like some professional swimmer swimming for dear life from a ferocious shark. And then he calls her, “Scarlet Phelps”. And I just bust a gut laughing. I had an image of her seemingly constant smiling face photo shopped over Michael’s body, standing there in his speedo with all his gold metals around his neck. And I guess it just hit a really large funny bone. I guess you have to see Scarlet do her “Phelps” moves on the changing table and it might strike you as funny too. Just maybe…

I love my daughters, very much.

It occurs to me that I am actually making some Waukegan friends sort of moment:
The Waukegan knitting group I have been going to more regularly since Scarlet was born is meeting in this charming fiber store in Grayslake called Prairie Arts and Fibers for the summer (shameless plug). As we all sat around the big oak table tonight, knitting and enjoying one another’s company, one of the women began to share. She began to cry and cry and cry and couldn’t stop crying as she vulnerably shared of her own sort of loss and grief just oozed. It occurred to me that in order for this woman to lose it, so to speak, there had to be some depth of relationship and trust. And I felt honored and thankful. I have nestled my way into this little covert knitting group and I feel it to be a treasure and a blessing. I have longed for friends that live locally. Women I can call up and hang out with, invite over for a last minute dinner, walk to their homes, play with their children, do life together, you know? And I think it might be happening. I have little pop up seedlings of relationship such as these that I am just amazed by as I watch them pop through the soil of my life, my neighborhood, my community of humble Waukegan. And I am so thankful.

And lastly, a delight in Audrey moment:
I walked in the back door into the kitchen this evening and there was a makeshift vase made of one of my small candle holders and a mini boquet of Audrey’s new found treasure: clover. I smile and say to Jesus, “Thank you for this little one.”

This story was written for my children:
Chad–the Gentle Deep
Nicholas–the Tender Explorer
Andrew–the Kindhearted Affection
Amy–the Joyful Knower
Alexandra (Lexi)–the Shining Power
Matthew–the Becoming Wonder

Doesn’t it kind of remind you of the titles given to the four children in Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia?

King Peter, the Magnificent
Queen Susan, the Gentle
King Edmund, the Just
and Queen Lucy, the Valiant

And maybe, just a little, it reminds me of the tones and impact in the spiritual world as when Peter is declared, the Rock by Jesus himself.

It makes me wonder what my more significant name might be. A name that reflects my true persona and true self, separate from all that is earthly and in tandem with my flesh. And then I get thinking, what might my children names be, who are they becoming, what is emerging within each of them?

Oh, to not just wonder and be curious, but to actually start looking for these new names and then set our eyes a gazing.

We have been praying for over two years now for God to provide a way out for Ivan from this company. I have been pleading with God for this freedom, but I guess I was hoping the door would materialize with a clear and defined path leading from it. Instead, all I see as we open the door is rippling blankets of complete blackness.

The last three years have been a succession of one flimsy card tilting a little too far to the left or right, putting pressure on the rest of our house of cards, threatening to bring it all down. Beginning with a traumatic birth experience and proceeding all the way till now, divorce and implosion of my husband’s family, a bad car accident, depression, and isolation falling in the middle. “When will it all end?” I keep asking myself. I keep bracing myself for the next card to go down. What will be next?

As the mystics describe, I am in my descent, a spiritual place of hiddenness, dryness, and dark times. I do not like it. I keep bucking against it, the survivor in me will not resist the temptation to put my hands up and fight and scream and throw tantrums. However, I feel the tantrum drawing to an end, the way you see it happen with a child, where their muscles are getting more and more fatigued. Their breathing has changed to short little sobs that resemble hiccups. Their eyes are dazed and their will has all but been crushed.

I find myself trying to make the choice to just give up and surrender to it all. Surrender in a way that chooses to believe God is good rather than he doesn’t really care about me after all. Put my fists down and trust that he is not trying to harm me. A place of quiet trust that doesn’t fight to figure it out on my own and make it happen out of my own strength and creativity.

So in an effort to surrender in this way, I have been looking for God’s creative hand and the transforming work of his Holy Spirit in me and my family’s life. What are you doing, God? Please cast some light out the door you have opened, even if it is just one arm length in front of us. I have to believe that he is wanting to do something new and beautiful within me.

As I have been listening, I think I caught a hint of what he might be up to. Just a hint on maybe one of the many things he is percolating within me and my family. Don’t laugh when I tell you the series of events that brought this revelation to pass, this shimmering light of glitter in the darkened door frame.

It all started with a rerun of an Oprah show. The one on “paying it forward”. And then a few weeks later I got the old movie “Pay it Forward” in the mail from Netflix. I really enjoyed the story despite the horribly sad ending. No, I am not inspired to do a replica of this concept; I am getting to the point quickly. About this same time, I was on gmail chat with a chum whom I sent a fun Christmas care package to and she was remarking how generous Ivan and I was. I don’t normally consider myself generous. I definately have seen remarkable generosity in Ivan, but it rarely raises its head in my own heart. I had given another very small gift of some household items, dish washing detergent and garbage bags, to a friend of mine who was in need of some practical things in her home and she seemed short on change.

As I look out this door into the darkness, any subtle ways of generosity seem like a very ridiculous possibility considering we are going to be down over half a salary with Ivan not working. I find my heart tending towards stinginess and control. So when this odd thought passed through my head I took it as a hint: “Give that same friend a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread.” In my stingy state, it seemed like too much to ask of me and that is when I really knew it was a hint from God.

God is wanting to produce a harvest of generosity within me, my marriage, my family in these times of seemingly not having enough. As I caught this hint and it sunk into my heart, my memory swirled back in time to all the ways I have experienced the generosity of God through the hearts and hands of people I have been in community with over the years.

The time someone slipped a $100 bill under my pillow with a note from Jesus. Or the semester 6 students from my InterVarsity fellowship worked 4 extra hours each per week and put the money into a fund for me so that I wouldn’t have to work a part time job and be able to keep up in my studies as a nurse and all my IV responsibilities. I have never gone hungry, slept on the streets and really have had more than enough all my life. Despite all this, in the face of a darkened doorway, I still approach life as a glass half empty and fear seeps in and despair swirls around.

God is wanting to cultivate generosity within me that blesses people all around me, but mostly produces a new strength of faith within my heart.

It’s loaves and fishes time, people.
Watch and see.

Can you tell I am hormonal and let’s just say, angsty? Not a good time to pursuit potty training with a two and a half year old who really has no desire to stop wearing diapers at this point in her life. Sigh.

I have had it in my *black and white* mind that I would accomplish my three goals prior to this second baby coming: lose the pacifier, get her out of her crib, and get those damn diapers off her so I don’t have to change another god-forsaken crappy diaper. 2/3 ain’t so bad, right?

I surrendered.
And I think I am more and more okay with it. At first, I thought I was a horrible mother. What is wrong with me that I can’t pull off this “potty training in one day”? I must be doing something wrong. It shouldn’t be this hard. Maybe I am not being consistent enough. And on and on and on…

I surrendered to even trying to figure it out.
I’m done with potty training (for now).
Much bigger things to think about and tackle right now.
Thanks for all your cheer leading along the way, though; I appreciated it.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the summer Olympics this year, more so than usual. Every evening, LoAnn and I would land on the couch; I would knit; she would sit curled up on the other end of the couch. And as described earlier, the cheering would come out of us, clapping and, inevitably the crying (well, at least for me). I really did try to hate that Michael Phelps, but he simply is a god. My jaw would drop, I would cheer along with the crowd, “USA, USA, USA” and tears would well up watching him kick ass again and again and again.

So these are my thoughts: I cry watching the Olympics because it taps into a place of deep satisfaction I have had in my own life when I have worked my ass off and succeeded. Sheer satisfaction. I also played sports in high school and some in college and love that feeling of pressing your body to do something your mind didn’t think possible. I remember working really hard on a school project for Mr. A’s economics class in high school. He handed out very few A’s in this course. My dear chum, Hilary and I, worked our asses off and gave it all we had and guess who got some of the few A’s. Woot! I had never felt so proud of myself. Planning a wedding might even be in this category. But the experience that trumps them all is giving birth. Seriously. Especially when you have been pushing for five f*%@ing hours and that baby finally wiggles out like a slippery fish and they land her on your chest. I had such a surge of emotions burst up and out of me that I had never experienced before, even with these previous experiences of success. I did it! I pushed a baby out of my body. So just like Michael Phelps is a god, I deduce that I must be a goddess for working my ass off pushing that little Audrey Anne out. My goodness, I felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction, power, and shall we say, relief. And I just cried, laughed and cheered.

Today is my mother’s birthday—July 23rd! I am partial to the 23rd, for my birthday lands on it as well. It was my basketball jersey number in high school and well, it’s just a nice number. Upon leaving our meeting tonight, I used the restroom where they have very earthy scented soaps and lotions in there. In honor of my mom, I put on a generous amount of patchouli scented lotion as I left. Thinking about you, Ma, on a day I celebrate you being born.

Earlier this evening, we were driving down the Amstutz–a mini little expressway of sorts in Waukegan and North Chicago–and right before my eyes the SUV blazing ahead threw out of their window not just one piece of trash, but a whole handful of debris. What the hell is up with that? I wanted to get out of my car so badly at the next stop light, stomp up to their window and chew their ass out (I know…kind of bad ass living in the hood like of me), but who the hell taught them to do that? Who gave them the right to just throw their garbage out the window driving down the expressway? It is one thing to be walking down the street and see litter and choose to not pick it up. Or another thing to be getting out of your car and a gum wrapper sneaks out of your car as a gust of wind takes it away and you choose not to go chasing after it. But to purposefully say to yourself, “Um, I think I am done with this cheeseburger wrapper…um, I guess I will just pitch it out the window.” What the hell? Do I live among such hoodlums and riff raff that don’t give a rats ass about their neighborhood, their city, their world? Can you tell I have a little angst about this? The only reason I didn’t get out of my car at that stoplight is that it might be very likely they would have a gun in their car and would use it on me. Well, maybe not entirely likely, but possible. One of these days I will get out of my car…you just wait and see. Hurumph!

I spent another day trying to stay out of the politics of other peoples affairs at work. Does any one else find this hard to do? I am such a caretaker to a fault that I have this serious over-responsibility muscle (as my massage therapist likes to call it) and I feel a strong urge to take care of other people’s problems. I have to consciously keep my nose out and let them feel their own problems, stand up for themselves, hash out their own disputes, resolve their own conflicts. And some days I just feel dragged into it and have to consciously say, “NO! Mind your own business, Shanel. Look straight ahead, keep your mouth shut and do your work!” Kind of silly, but necessary. Even today, this one nurse tried dragging me into the affairs of another stressed out, can’t say no, in a tizzy sort of a nurse. She comes up to my desk where I am happily minding my own business and says, “Shanel, can I ask you a favor?” I look up at her, wary, “Sure.” She says in a whisper, “Could you offer to help Dory*? She seems overwhelmed.” I shake my head in unbelief. I won’t get into the rest of the story, but it proves to illustrate how easy my over-responsibility muscle gets flexed. [And a word to the wise, if you have one of these muscles, don't let the massage therapist apply any pressure to your armpits cuz that is where it is located.]

Audrey and I drove to school and to work this morning in the “new car”. It has a sunroof which was open considering it was an absolutely stunning morning. And AA was in awe every time she saw the moon. Well, she calls it “moona”–like she is some Italian or something. She pointed out moona at least 50 times driving to school. No exaggeration.

Lastly, I realized tonight some of why going to church is hard for me. I thought it had mostly to do with being reminded of all that I have lost in being a part of the Martens’ family. Seeing all the siblings and wives and little Elliott. Seeing dear LoAnn. Not seeing Roy. But I am recognizing that there are many more layers of the loss of family I am experiencing. Not just the Martens’; sure, that is the biggest sore spot right now. Being a part of the Martens’ used to be this thing people in our church held up as an honor, a coveted position, a family where people wanted to be included—and it was that. But that has changed and I feel pushed further to the edges of our church community because…well, I think a lot of it is people feel uncomfortable, like maybe they don’t know what to do with us or how to understand what has happened. This is not the point I am wanting to make; I feel myself digressing. The point I wanted to make is this: the other layers of losing family started before the uprooting of the great ol’ oak of the Martens’ tree. Before Audrey was born, I found myself pulling out and back, some out of necessity, some out of instinct (women do this right before they give birth) and then when she was finally born, out of self protection. And over time, with the birth of my daughter and the uprooting of this marvelous tree I have found myself on the outskirts of a family I so dearly treasured and loved belonging to, one where I felt myself gravitating to the center of. I have been propelling like a flywheel with all sorts of pain and grief to the outer corners of my church family. Tonight, I am simply feeling the multiple layers of loss of my church family. Just feeling it. Not trying to fix it, sort it, understand it. Just feeling it.

And lastly, the little things. Glad for sparkling water with a wedge of lime in a lovely glass.

Sweet dreams, little ones.