The Screeching Season.

**this post is inspired by this book and part of my continuation of hunting for more gratitude in my everyday life. I've started a series on Instagram & Flickr called #1000thanks where I am documenting the things I am thankful for, via images, throughout the day! Join me there or on Facebook or on Twitter if you'd like!**

These days have been battlefield days... the kind where every moment feels like imminent victory or imminent defeat, with no middle ground in between. One moment I am soaring high with thanksgiving on my lips, gratitude singing in my heart, joy lighting my face... the next I am hiding in the bedroom- breathing hard and reeling.


There is such a tension in my heart... like a violin string... held somewhere between singing and snapping sharp, coiling back.


I feel like this is all stemming from my dogged determination to dig up gratitude in the hard soil of my heart. It is... extremely hard work. Harder than I ever imagined it would be. But if you think about it, it is sort of akin to throwing a speeding car in reverse on the highway, isn't it? I have been driving so long and so hard and so far in discontentment! I have been wandering the road for 29 years, grumbling all the live long day! To throw my life suddenly into the direction of gratitude has not been easy. The tires are screaming and leaving melted layers on the asphalt. The smoke billows and every heavy ounce of kinetic energy is fighting the shift.

I am pressing against the momentum of an entire lifetime.


I'm in the screeching season.

I remind myself that it is just that... a season. It WILL become more natural, over time. As I do the hard work and hard practice of finding thankfulness in every day, every hour, it will become more like second nature. The momentum WILL eventually shift. Oh, I long for that to be the direction of my life!


But for now, it's the screeching season.

I will keep fighting. I will keep breathing. I will keep framing up these snapshots of gratitude... little memorials of God's goodness to me, to my family... preserved in time so that I can look.

(thanks for this verse, sweet anna joy!)

So that I can look and remember.

When the Jungle Drums Stop Pounding.

There are days when I can totally picture myself having another child. (In the not-so-near future, of cooooourse.) Then there are the other days in which I am thrilled to have my body (mostly) back to myself and I have a hard time picturing the pregnancy/labor fiasco all over again.


I am happy with three boys. I would be happy with four boys. I would be happy with three boys and a girl!

My husband is not ready to think about such things right this second... you know, because he is sane and possesses all of his faculties and whatnot.



I just really feel more and more confident that I was made for this. Not because I am good at it (guffaw!), but because it feels deeply right that I should be laying down my life in this way for this season. It's like a gut instinct that I am right where I am meant to be... in my home, with these boys.


It's not exactly the life I had always pictured for myself in my head while I was growing up... it's not exactly the life that the world and the media are telling me I should fight for and desire...

...It's only about one bajillion times better.

That's not to say that I don't have days where I want to fly the coop for awhile... get in the car and drive until I feel the jungle drums stop pounding in my head...

I do have those moments. But they are becoming fewer and farther between. Because I no longer feel the need to chase anything "greater". What I am doing in my home with these boys IS great! How could I have ever believed that this was...not enough? That I needed to contribute more and be more and do more in order to be... seen? Valued? Worthwhile?


It is a miracle that those jungle drums have ceased pounding through all of my days. They were driving me to a breaking point. I used to wake to them every morning and fight my way back to sleep through them at night.


I don't know exactly when they stopped hammering... those drums of war... but in their absence I can finally hear the truth:

I was made for this. It may not be easy and my life may not be featured on the cover of any glam magazine anytime soon... heck, I live in Oklahoma in a small brick house on a quiet little street... but what my life may be lacking in flash & pizazz, it more than makes up for in richness and depth. This simple life has deep churning oceans of eternal worth.

And there is nowhere else I'd rather be.

Grain by Grain.

Joy is buried down in gratitude, like a treasure chest in the sand.

Some days I find it, this treasure that is rightfully mine. I get down on my knees and dig down into thankfulness until I strike it. The feel of it surprises me every time. Other days I cower in the shade and complain that the sand is too hot... the labor too demeaning... the treasure too deep. The joy is there right under my nose... I choose not to see.

Every single breath, every day of good health, every time my husband bends to kiss my neck... these are things in which I am learning to see God's extravagant goodness.

Grain by grain, a slow and steady unearthing.











































Lord, help me to keep digging. Grain by grain. No matter what. No matter where. For all the days of my life.

I Almost Died in a Tar Pit.

The one and only thing that I can say I am enjoying about this ridiculous heat wave falls somewhere along the lines of "Misery loves company".

I have always hated the heat. I have always dreaded the Summer. I have never liked the feeling of the sun blaring down on my skin. It gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it! bleeegweee!!

I have felt entirely alone in this sentiment for all the years that I can ever remember.

Whenever I would mention the fact that I, ahem, *strongly* disliked the sun, people would balk. They would stare aghast and ask how on earth I could not love the Summer...

What about the pool days?
The beach days?
The sun bathing?
The tank tops and shorts and flip flops?
The ice cream trucks??

No. no. no. no. yes.

I could write passionately about how much I have always disliked the heat and how my very soul seems to wake up and sing when it is cold or overcast or rainy or snowing, but I will spare you my soap-boxy long-windedness.

All I can say is that this heat wave has suddenly made me feel like a whole lot less of an outsider. It has been the hottest two months on record for this state, and we are smack dab in the middle of the worst drought in 90 years. We've had 68 days straight of higher-than-norm temps. It's drier than the dust bowl days here, folks! And just today? It was 113 degrees and my flip flop stuck to the pavement when I hopped out to get Ezra from school.

THE TAR IS MELTING. Hide yo dinosaurz.



Every thing is brown. Everything is miserable. Everyone is grouchy. Yet somehow, I find myself... smirking inside.

It seems that all everyone wants to talk about these days is how awful the heat is. And all I can do is try not to nod so hard that my head falls off and smile and emphatically agree.

It takes all that I have in me not to yell at the top of my lungs, "I TOLD YOU HEAT WAS EVIIIIIIL!!!!!" and dive head-first into the nearest ice box. Or ice cream truck.

Misery may love company, but she also loves her Rocket Pops.

*Slurp*

He is a Page Turner.

Once upon a time...



...and then I cried like a baby.

THE END.

One Million Words.

Ezra told me today, while we were wandering slow-like through the air conditioned mall, that it would take, like, at least one million words to thank God for my love.

The tears sprung to my eyes and I dropped weak to his eye level and asked him to say it again. My heart was hungry for this moment, and I immediately recognized that this hunt for gratitude that I have been on lately has not gone unnoticed by watchful eyes. He has been watching me watch for thankfulness.

The very night before, I had stayed up too late crying out to my husband that I felt like I had "missed the mark" with Ezra somehow. Me and him, we just rub wrong most days. And it feels as if it has always been this way, this feeling of different frequencies. And last night, it all came rushing out- forced upwards by the hard lump in my throat. All my despair over how to parent this child rushed out and pooled onto my pillow. Why do we have such a hard time getting along? Coexisting? Why do we rub so wrong until anger is quick and hearts feel hardened? Why do I feel so suffocated and he so suffocated and where did all the air in this house go to?



I spilled it out. He's a good boy. A GREAT boy. He needs soooo much of my attention, which is a little busy being scattered around the house like stray legos most days. When I try to give that attention, we rub. We fight. We retreat. When I don't make time for the attention, he pesters. We rub. We fight. We retreat.

I had gotten to a place where I was retreating from my own son, just so we could survive, and suddenly, last night, I recognized this truth and it hit me like a freight train.

Does he know that I love him? That I like him?

And what kind of a mother sits up in bed late at night and has to ask herself these things?

My husband soothed. ALL mothers had felt such things, he was certain. In the darkest places where we feel alone- all hunched and monsterly- even there, we are never alone. All it takes is shedding a little light in those caverns to see that there is actually a general assembly of us down there, all under the false assumption that we are isolated cast-aways. The darkness makes us blind.

After the wave of hopelessness gushed out of me, we started to fill it back up with truth. Chris prayed. I prayed. We prayed. Give us a breakthrough with Ezra, Lord! Use this to sharpen my character! Use me to drench him in unwavering love, safe! Help us love well!

Not even 12 hours later, in the middle of a bustling mall, these words fall soft from Ezra's lips. They were handcrafted answers to my prayers. Balm for a frazzled, frustrated heart that wants nothing more than for her child to know he is loved... more than one million words could ever even begin to express.



Today, I am thankful that God is real. And that He hears the deepest cries of my heart.

Fragments.

02. buckets of never-ending possibilities

I've been working on a little project that has the potential to change my achy and weary existence into a straight-up disco ball of multi-faceted joy.


03. tools of the trade

It is nothing fancy, by any means. Quite the opposite, actually! It is a daily photo diary of clumsy gratitude. Gratitude that I hunt for in the wild, unexplored jungles of the mundane.


04. pockets of quiet

I'm learning to slow the shutter speed of my life. To hold still and capture more light. To gather up the things for which I am thankful.


07. candy in the morning

I am DONE with discontentment and grumbling. I am DONE with believing that this life I have, this God I serve, are not good enough.


09. library loot

I have been rescued!! What kind of a story would it be if the damsel in distress turned to the prince and said, "Thanks for saving me and all, but where are you taking me and when will we get there and my feet hurt and I need some alone time and where is my castle and it is TOO HOT here and I didn't ask for this and I'm tired of picking up after you all the time!" The End.


11. truman, the champion sleeper

A story like that would need another chapter. One in which the damsel in distress becomes a delectable dragon treat. Nom nom.


13. clouds that make you crave marshmallows

I am already finding that behind this slowed, deliberate thankfulness, there are deep oceans of joy. Joy that has been whizzing by unnoticed! Oh, I mourn those lost moments... the ingratitude... the feeling like the world owed me something. If it owed anyone anything, it was Jesus, the God-Man, who hung and poured Himself out to make a way. The rescuer who deserves all thanks in ALL moments, against whom alone I have grumbled and followed with shuffling feet.


14. the joy of reading

I am proud of these images that I am gathering. Not because of any composition or "wow factor", but because they are clumsily captured fragments that make up the whole of this life that I've been given. They are an offering. They are an ebenezer. They are a grateful remembrance.

May I never forget again.

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Feel free to follow along and join in using whatever platform you prefer. Let me know here if you do! I am using Instagram (and Flickr), user name emeryjo and hashtag #1000thanks.

Four Months.

He is FOUR months old now, and the absolute sweetest and easiest baby to ever flop around on the face of this earth. He already has two (almost three/four?) teeth. He sleeps 10+ hours a night. (I poop you not.) He smiles and laughs and nurses like a champ.

It's so true what they say about the third, though... they just kind of have to learn to go with the flow. I feel like every single time this poor babe falls asleep, I have to wake him up and plop him in his car seat so I can go get or drop off one of his brothers somewhere! Although, maybe this is why he is sleeping so much at night? If so, I'll take it!! :)

He hardly EVER poops, just like Ezra when he was a baby. He'll go daaaaaays without any action. The doctors just say he is very "efficient". He's using everything that he is getting. He's Truman, the amazing poopless baby!

He only gets bathed once every coupla weeks. hahahaha. Mama has her hands full right now. Baby wipes sponge baths will just have to do! Yet he still somehow manages to smell like heaven...






His brothers adore him. And why shouldn't they? They are the only ones who can get little Tru to laugh. This has endeared him to his brothers like nothing else. Ezra and Myer are proud to be the sole giggle-getters in the household. They wear his laughter like a shiny badge.

I am becoming more comfortable in my role as a mother of three boys. Most days by 7:00pm I am way past "done" and working on "burnt" or maybe "charred", but I feel like we have mostly hit the ground running without any tragic hiccups to speak of. We even GO places and survive! VICTORY! What it practically looks like is this: Truman in the sling, Myer walking or in the umbrella stroller, and Ezra opening all the doors for me like a little gentleman. My boys are usually very well behaved, and so things usually go pretty smoothly when we're out & about. :)



(I stole this pic from my friend Harmony who we got to go see in Kansas City last week for my birthday! squeeee!)


I am loving the "all boys" dynamic we have going on right now, and I am feeling more and more sure that the hard work I am doing here day in and day out, though it feels mind-numbing and soul-draining at times, has more eternal value and worth than I may EVER be able to grasp or understand. And yet... I don't believe that means I shouldn't try to grasp it, that I shouldn't try to understand it.

I have been working on being thankful for what I have, for finding the eternal in the seemingly mundane. I mean, surely God is as much in the Grand Canyon as He is in the view from my kitchen sink, right? This practicing gratitude is bringing me surprising amounts of joy. I started reading the book "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp, and recommend it highly. It's been like a breath of fresh air to this parched heart of mine. Go get your hands on it, I know you will love it too.

:)

Restless.

Oh, the restlessness!

Oh, the stretching against the confines of life, like a full term baby in the womb!

These days have been heavy with blistering heat and wretched restlessness. I know deep in my spirit that this feeling is coming from a place of ungratefulness and discontentment... that this is just a symptom of a far more devastating disease- the disease of not satisfying myself in God alone. I look for satisfaction in seemingly EVERY other place, sort of like how my six year old child will look everywhere but my eyes when I am trying to correct him.

Yes, it started in the Garden of Eden... Adam and Eve discontentedly wanting the ONE thing God said they couldn't have... and now here we are, all these many generations later, grumbling and disbelieving His goodness. His sufficiency.

I scour the real estate websites. Denver. Portland. Reno. Seattle. San Luis Obispo. Kansas City... I mean, surely I would find my satisfaction waiting for me in one of these places, right? It's a GEOGRAPHY issue, I tell myself. And just look at all that square footage and those beautiful mature trees! Ooooh, a cul-de-sac! That's what I need! It's just far too hot to find joy here. If I could just live somewhere more beautiful, more temperate, I could feel fulfilled.

It all sounds so riDONKulous when I type it out here. But I have REALLY been thinking and believing these things, as if they were actual answers to the cavernous, carnivorous longing in my heart!

Perhaps a new house here in town would do it. Or maybe one out in the country where my boys could roam for hours, you know... when it wasn't too hot or too cold. Yeah! That's the ticket!

Meanwhile, the Bible that I moved out to my coffee table so it would be physically in my line of sight everyday collects more layers of dust to match my arid spirit. I pace and clean and rearrange and try not to berate my children too often.

I know what the answer is. I just need to lift my chin and make eye contact with Him. Yet I continue to look at my feet and my house and my children and my husband and my book and my TV show and the Internet until I go completely NUMB. I know His eyes would be full of love and compassion and empathy if I could just make myself look there, but I can't seem to make myself DO IT. I choose instead to go to bed numb and wake up numb and dream of far away places.

So... I settle for rearranging my furniture again. I do it every single time I start to feel this way... like life is so monotonous and laborious that, as my friend Bethany so aptly put it the other day, you start to wonder if you've woken up in the movie 'Groundhog Day'.

Lord, save me. Quickly! I repent of believing that you are not good enough. I repent of trying to satisfy myself with the things of this world. I repent of being ungrateful towards you... of basically telling you that what your Son did on the cross wasn't quite enough for me.

It was enough. It IS enough. And it will be enough until the day You take me home.

Happy Fourth!!

When all FIVE of us manage to not only get dressed but also be color coordinated, there is indeed cause for much celebration & documentation.

Hooray America!!

:)