Mekahlia

"You better put these up on your blog!"

"Ummm... I haven't done a work blog for a few years."

"Oh." 

There are some things that only your best friend of nearly three decades can say to you and when they do, you just laugh.  There are at least a million quotes about friendship...


“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” ― C.S. Lewis


“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” ― Elbert Hubbard

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” ― Henri J.M. Nouwen,


“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.” Winnie the Pooh


“We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.
Even longer,' Pooh answered.”


“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh?" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. "I just wanted to be sure of you.” 


Each of those quotes remind me of my friend Jill.  I have been incredibly blessed to call Jill my friend for almost 3/4 of my life.  (I'm going to completely ignore how old this post will make me sound and feel.)  Throughout junior high and high school we were "BBB"  Best Bus Buddies.  We sat together each day on the way to and from school.  It wasn't a long ride.  I only lived three miles from the school but there was just something about knowing that someone was saving you a seat.  Every day she saved my seat and we've been doing that for each other ever since.

Of course we don't ride buses any longer (Thank you Lord!) but that sense of knowing that no matter what is happening in life, like Elbert Hubbard inferred in the quote above, someone in the world gets me.  We don't have to say anything at all and yet, we'll sit up talking and giggling so hard that our stomachs hurt the next day and the bags under our eyes have their own zip codes.  Like I said, I'm blessed to have such a friend.

Well, the blog post she commanded ;) is one I'm just as blessed to share with all of you... even though it makes me feel even older!

This young beauty is her oldest daughter, Mekahlia and she is a high school SENIOR...

Sigh.  I can't believe she's a senior.  This gorgeous young lady was the first person to call me "Aunt" and it's a title I have loved with all my heart!  I was there the day she was born.  It was my first experience with natural childbirth.  Jill is way tougher than me and opted not to have an epidural... and let me tell you, while she is a lovely person on any other day of her life, don't talk to her when she's in labor.  I didn't.  :)  In fact, I stayed in the hall... listening.

I can only imagine how the hospital staff had to laugh at us that day.  Both of Mekahlia's grandmothers and myself stood outside of the delivery room with our ears stuck to the door listening to all that was going on inside.  We didn't know if she was a boy or a girl until that day and I can still see the tears spilling over her daddy's eyes when he opened the door and told us the news. 

When she was just a year old I lived with them one summer break.  It was a different time in life back then and I stayed out much too late and every morning I'd wake up to the same sweet sound "Aunt Da!  Aunt Da!"  She'd come toddling in and wake me up just an hour or two after I'd arrived home.  We'd spend the days singing, dancing and watching Winnie the Pooh. Clearly I didn't need as much sleep back then. 

She has since grown into a beautiful, smart and wonderful woman who laughs at me when I try to keep her in line or treat her like she's still my little girl.  She has a wonderfully ridiculous silly side, a great sense of humor and a kindness that makes my heart so happy.  I don't know that she'll ever be able to grasp just how proud of her I am.

Here are just a few more of the crazy ridiculous number of photos we took over a couple of days.

Just so that everyone knows, my payment for this session was Cashew Chicken at Leong's Tea House on Springfield, MO and it was delicious!!!  I guess I should get a sign that says "Will work for food."    :)

Hey Jill, I put them on a blog.  :)  

Perfectionism

per-fec-tion-ism [per-fek-shun-niz-uhm] - noun

1. any of various doctrines holding that religious, moral, social or political perfection is attainable
2. a personal standard, attitude, or philosophy that demands perfection and rejects anything less

Perfectionism plagues me.  At times it literally keeps me from sharing thoughts, blog posts, and ultimately, myself.  Seriously, I have seventeen blog posts that I have started but haven't published because they just didn't seem right.  This morning I had to make myself take deep breaths because my stunningly beautiful daughter came in to kiss me good morning, all ready for school, and had shoved her hair into a messy ponytail.  Didn't she remember that today was her D.A.R.E. graduation?!  Of course she did.  She just isn't a perfectionist and she thought she looked just fine.  I swear this whole pathetic exchange happened inside my head after she walked out:

It's ok that she doesn't care what she looks like. 

She's not vain and that's good. 

But I really want her to look pretty. 

She IS pretty. You're the one that's a vain perfectionist. She is pretty AND not vain, like you wish you could be. Embrace it and be glad that she doesn't care if she's like everyone else. 

Oh yea, I don't want her to be like the world.  I want her to be set apart, to see her value as it comes from God and not other things.... but if she'd just let me do her hair!!!



So, yes, I'm a vain perfectionist AND I talk to myself.  It's scary in my head at times but that's not the point here.  

Aren't we all a little bit of a perfectionist?  Yes, let's put our attention on all of us instead of just me.  Even the most loving parent starts out that way.  

Someone asks, "Do you want a boy or a girl?"

Everyone knows the right answer is:

"I don't care as long as it's healthy."

Perfectionism.  Maybe it isn't as ridiculous as I am with Madeline's hair but it's still there... whispering... in the heart of us all "I just want my baby to be perfect."

But what do we do when God's idea of a perfect baby isn't the same as our idea of a perfect baby?  

Last year a couple of my friends began a journey to reconcile that very thing in their hearts.  They prayed desperately for their third child and due some unexpected medical issues for her, only had a very small window to conceive that child and conceive they did.  

Months of celebration ensued as they planned to bring their perfect baby into their perfect home when all of a sudden, in the middle of their joy, they ran smack dab into a concrete wall.  She was about five months along when they went in for a routine ultrasound only to learn that the baby they had pleaded to receive had a cleft lip.  Doctors were uncertain at the time the extent of the cleft... would it just be a little plastic surgery on the lip or would the palate be involved too?  Would it affect his growth and development?  Are there other issues or syndromes or defects that they would learn later?  Question after question consumed their every second.  

It's not what we want to hear "You're baby's not perfect" because at the heart of everyone is just a little bit of a perfectionist.  I mean, we can have messy kids.  They can totally wear that Spiderman costume to the grocery store WITH their rainboots on and we're cool with that.  It doesn't bother us ONE.LITTLE.BIT that there's cheetos on their face because that's what they had for dinner, YES, DINNER!  Perfectionism does not consume all of us... 

we don't care, as long as they're healthy.  

Brian and Amey began a journey this past year that has taken them up and down, twirling all around a spiritual and emotional roller coaster and they have learned that what God says is perfect IS perfect.  

Meet Bryce.  

 

Seriously, is it even possible to be cuter than he is?!  I could just swim in those big brown eyes and that curl on top just has me UNDONE... and you just cannot miss that sweet beautiful smile!  

I asked for the privilege of photographing Bryce while he was on this journey for totally selfish reasons.  AS I mentioned yesterday, life had kind of stunk for a while.  It wasn't turning out like I'd hoped and well, perfection seemed as far away as Pluto.  I knew that I desperately needed to see things more through God's eyes than through mine.  Lucky for me, Brian and Amey said yes.  

When we first began Bryce was just about to undergo his first surgery.  

 

Everyone had fallen crazy in love with this little man and he was growing like a champ!  Brian and Amey's idea of "perfect" had already changed quite a bit!

 

The hope for that day was to fix everything on the outside:  connect the lip and form a left nostril. Things, however, did not go perfectly.  

Bryce had such a hard time breathing with the tubes in his nose and his lip sewn shut so Amey stood next to his bed to hold his mouth open to help him breath more easily.

Bryce had to be able to breathe and take a bottle or nurse before they could leave the hospital but that didn't go perfectly either.  The tubes in his nose, even the left one that was meant to form a new nostril, had to be removed. 

Once they got home things were still far from perfect and they finally had to go back to the hospital and get a tube put in to feed him directly into his stomach.  Amey has had to change her diet and pump to give Bryce breastmilk and she'd tell you without hesitation that it's totally worth it.  I mean, he's her perfect baby.  And he is. 

A couple of weeks ago I caught up with the family again to capture the prefectness that is Bryce as well as Brody and Mia.  Tomorrow Bryce will have surgery again.  They'll do a little more work on his lip, try again for that left nostril and hopefully even fix the whole palate.  Even though they are confident that God will guide the surgeon's hand and that Bryce will come out of the surgery just fine, Brian and Amey worry and pray and worry and then pray some more. 

Bryce may not have been the baby they had in mind when they were hoping to conceive but he is the perfect baby for their family.  In the beginning they wondered why the journey had to be so hard but now, they know that it's been worth it.  Perfect has been redefined... for them and for me. 

See, God doesn't answer our prayers the way we expect sometimes.  Sometimes He says "yes" but more often (at least for me), I hear "wait" or "I have something different in mind."  The Bible says that our ways are not His ways and little could be more true.  Believing that God's plan is perfect and subsequently, that your plan is not, requires trust and humility.  Trust that God is almighty and all-loving.  Trust that His ways are higher than our ways.  Trust that His plans are to prosper us and not to harm us, even though, sometimes, it hurts...a lot.  Humility to accept not just that our plan wasn't best but that we are ultimately powerless to fix anything at all.... 

But sometimes... if we'll stop trying to fix things ourselves... sometimes we just might catch a glimpse of what God says is perfect and we're blown away. 

I saw it last week when I was editing.  I sent Amey a screenshot of that first photo and a text that read:

"As I am staring into his big brown eyes and smiling back at his beautiful smile, I just wanted to tell you that whatever they do in his next surgery, one thing they cannot do:  they cannot make him any cuter or anymore perfect that God made him.  He takes my breath away!"

God's "perfect" gives us everything we need at the exact time we need it. ALWAYS...especially when it looks drastically different than our view of perfect!

Please pray with me and everyone else who loves Bryce that tomorrow goes smoothly, that the doctors are able to do everything they need to do to help Bryce as he grows up and all transitions post-surgery go smoothly as well. 

Here are a few more of this beautiful family from last week:

Aren't they perfect?!

Brian and Amey, He was born perfectly beautiful.  Thank you for sharing him with me!











 

Finding life...

Day after day I struggle to feel… to feel joy or sorrow or pain or contentedness… nearly anything at all would be fine with me.  On good days the joy does come.  A smile from the boy as he leaps to my arms or the sound of the girl's deep laughter filling the space and then some or a twirl in the kitchen in the arms of the one I love, they remind me that I am still alive.  Breath fills the alveoli of my lungs, only to be pushed back out again.  Blood courses through my veins and so often my heart pounds loudly enough that I hear it with my ears.  Physically, I am alive.  Yet I strive to live.  I strive to feel.  I struggle to be more than just alive.  On good days the joy will come and it rolls in like a summer storm, filling the places so dry, cracked and lifeless… quenching the thirst of the drought wrecked land… and then it blows away as suddenly as it arrived.  

"I'm alive even though a part of me has died." says the lyrics of a song and each time the words touch my ears I'm certain that a part of me has died.  The harsh judging words of a friend left me beaten and unsure that I held any value at all. The betrayal of another left me questioning whether I could even hear His voice.  The unexpected passing of my sweet Papa, the biological father I'd known for way too short a time just left me absolutely undone... in the worst possible way.  The brokenness, the selfishness and the rejection of all that is good, of all that has been redeemed surrounds me at each turn and has left me wounded, broken and bleeding on the spiritual emergency room floor… I gasp for breath, flailing, reaching desperately for my throat as the wailing scream climbs from deep within my soul and fills the room as I cling to life.  I am that drought wrecked land. Barren, exhausted and unable to produce anything that resembles life.  No matter how hard I try, no matter what new thing I commit to my days… my heart wastes away wondering why in the world I am here.  

Why?  Why am I here?  

Surely it isn't just me.  Knowing the truth but not feeling it in my bones.  Believing that I am a new creation, not in my image but His… yet, finding a tired, depleted and weary reflection in the mirror each morning.  Acquainted with the sound of His voice but overcome by the silence penetrating the depths of my soul. 

It is a season of drought... a time in the valley... a time when grief is a constant companion. 

Yet, if I open my eyes, turn them away from myself I can see, off in the distance, the tiniest of flowers growing from the crack in the dry ground... there in that deep valley is a creek... it was the water in that creek that made the valley.  It carved out a space in the ground, washed away the dirt and in the bed of that creek are moss covered rocks big enough to climb, fish swimming upstream... it's there, can you see it?  Life.  

The last couple of years of my life have contained more loss than any of the prior almost four decades, combined.  I've lost pets, friends, family members, passion, hope, dreams, health and the list goes on.  A part of me has died but I am alive.  So, I get up each day and I kiss my babies and my husband.  I find something to be grateful for, every day.  I call (or text) my friends and family.  I pray constantly.  Tullian Tchividjian said something about life being harder more than it is easy.  That's not a direct quote but it's the best I can remember it.  It's so true.  God never promised that life would be easy and it's not, just that He would be with us wherever we go and He does.  It's up to us to acknowledge Him.  So, I choose to open my eyes and see Him...  EVERY.SINGLE.DAY... I look for Jesus... 

                                   ... and I find Him.