Five Minute Friday: View

24 Friday May 2013

Posted by Ashley Larkin in Community, Faith, Family, Five Minute Friday, Mothering, Parenting, Perspective

Tags

#fiveminutefriday, community, faith, family, Five Minute Friday, future, Lisa Jo Baker, mothering, parenting, perspective, uncertainty, writing

I know that someday I will look over these years of child raising and adult growing and see the quilt of who we’ve all become.

The this that lead to that. The intense dark pattern alongside the breezy light. The piece that seemed so random leading to that thing which became passion and song.

It might be like the view from the plane — the through-the-clouds patchwork of farms cut through with stream threads. The green and the brown, the rutted rows making such sense from above like, of course you would be placed right there and aren’t you lovely?

Right now in the middle, I can get caught up in the loose thread, want to yank it or tuck it in before its time. I worry about that character issue, that unraveling and the places where the fabric pulls, and I want to make sure I’m doing my job right.

Some days I’m focused on the working dirt under nails and all the planting still to be done. Other moments the tenderness, fragrance and silkiness of growing things nearly bring tears for their beauty.

Drinking from the cup

20 Monday May 2013

Posted by Ashley Larkin in Community, Concrete Words, Faith

≈ 12 Comments

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#concretewords, church, communion, community, concrete words, cup, faith, friendship, Jesus, Nacole Simmons, poetry, prayer, suffering, writing

Finger wrapped steam
curls toward wood
beams, this
holy morning fragrance
mingled with words and some tears
and
knit brows
and
shoulder shaking
gold

Lives, lots,
portions in earthen
containers and
hers
seems more like
folds of linen this morning and she asks where is Jesus in that moment and
how can I be right there and
love

We drink the brown drink and
share her cup and hers
her lonely,
her overwhelm, her edges and remember
she has come far
and so has
she

Five Minute Friday: Song

17 Friday May 2013

Posted by Ashley Larkin in Childhood, Five Minute Friday, Joy, Mothering, Parenting

≈ 33 Comments

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#fiveminutefriday, #fmf, childhood, freedom, joy, Lisa Jo Baker, moments, mothering, parenting, paying attention, song, writing

(Lala shaking the hand of a “Dr. Seuss tree” on her way home from preschool)

Lala’s snuck another bowl of cereal, and I tell her it’s time to be done snacking — the smells of garlicky pizza from school now mingling with layers of cinnamon and milk on her breath.

“I have to do something,” she says, running up the stairs. Minutes later, from across the hall, I see the mess-making in full force.

Blankets are laid flat across every empty space of bedroom floor, stuffed animals snuggled together on the edges. Then she calls that it’s time for FunLand to open.

“If you wanna come, then come here now. If you wanna come, then come here now,” and it’s her song of beckoning.

I tell her I’m almost done getting ready, that we need to go to school to pick up her sisters and that I will be there in just a minute. And then another minute.

And I almost miss my chance.

“FunLand is closing!” she says, pulling the bedroom door shut.

Love that drains, love that fills

16 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Ashley Larkin in Faith, Grace, Imperfect Prose, Open endings, Perspective, Rest, Truth-telling

≈ 38 Comments

Tags

Emily Wierenga, encouragement, faith, grace, Imperfect Prose, open endings, perspective, rest, truth-telling, writing

I am struggling to love well.

This big dream I shared a few weeks ago that felt like a small dream — to do whatever I do with a heart of love — yeah, it’s probably a big no-duh to you, but it’s hard. And I was right the first time: it’s big.

After the retreat high and all the dream talking and the trying to see beauty and accept my human imperfection and receive new mercies, I am worn out. I am limp as the cloth hanging across my sink, as drained as the milk jug that’s dripped its last drop into the bowl of cereal.

Maybe for two reasons, probably lots more:

One, loving is hard work, and so doing it wears me out.

Two, I struggle to ask for what I need, which might mean that, even more, I struggle to receive what I need. When I can’t feel the love coming in, I feel the pull of all the love that’s coming out.

Let me say: I know that I cannot do life with a heart of love without God living in and through me. I know that opening my home and tending my children and teaching and classroom volunteering, or whatever — it’s all filthy rags, a clanging racket if it is without love, and so I am trying (in messy and imperfect ways) to allow love, and not obligation, to be the foundation and overflow of my doing.

And I am trying to soak up God’s words and his encouragement and his adoring and learn what it means to allow Christ to shine straight through my cracks, receiving that it is gift and not failure when he is my strength in weakness.

Yet, friends, all this trying, and I still feel wrung dry and confused.

In the midst of lots of other stuff that sits in my head bowl with the clarity of fog, I’m starting to think that in my desire to be “used” by God I may have been praying a prayer and thinking a thought that needs a little tweaking.

The Frame

13 Monday May 2013

Posted by Ashley Larkin in Concrete Words, Family, Just Write, Mothering, Perspective

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

#concretewords, #tellhisstory, art, art museum, concrete words, eternity, family, Heather King, Jennifer Dukes Lee, just write, mothering, Nacole Simmons, perspective, writing

We zoom in. We squint. We tilt heads and thrust necks forward.

We walk to the next case, the next frame and hold hands behind our backs so as to notice without touching the strokes of oil, the blended hues creating glen and chin and river and belly.

We look intent at the dark and light contrast revealing the sheen of the family photograph, the sorrow and glory, steadfast.

We count mysterious objects pinned to the wall and examine beadwork and see again the way color becomes new.

After church and Mother’s Day brunch at our table and homemade cards and squeezes around the neck, we visit the art museum, and it’s the first time with all three girls, and I remember my smallness and how I hunger to share beauty and mystery with the ones I love.

The inside of these frames doesn’t tell the whole story, nor does the white curtain in my living room nor the chartreuse leaf in your garden nor the arching brow on the face you know so well, but they are no less true for only being part.

White curtains

07 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by Ashley Larkin in Family, Grace, Gratitude, Just Write, Perspective, Truth-telling

≈ 28 Comments

Tags

curtains, family, God's mercies are new every morning, grace, gratitude, just write, mercy, perspective, The Extraordinary Ordinary, truth-telling, writing

Last night, I flopped myself into bed at 8:30 after prayers with the girls and final tuck-ins. It’s so hard to get them to stop with the beautiful sunshine streaming through windows, and I felt bone spent weary.

Michael kissed me good night and left for Home Depot to get a replacement toilet handle. The crack I’d made in the old one last week with some inexplicable power flushing had finally done its work.

My body ached, and I felt the residual frustration of justice buttons pushed by adults who should know better and remembered how I’d been like a character in a movie with all the one-liners and the I-could-have-told-them’s flowing from my lips into the kitchen, hoping the girls couldn’t hear me as they played in the backyard.

I’d been trying to hold the frustrations down, and they’d made their way out in ugly fashion, and even though I’d said to Michael, “I’m just mad, and it’s not your fault,” I’d closed the door behind me without saying good-bye to him anyway.

I walked and the air felt thick and hot, and I tried to imagine burdens falling from shoulders, but they clung. I saw people gathering on porches and wondered if I looked as mad as I felt. I saw a dad from school riding his bike and longed to not see another person I knew.

Then I heard my name, sun shining in my eyes. And this friend and her sweet little girl walking on the bike thoroughfare, they are navigating through some first-class pain and fear, and they were so dear and gracious — their words so gentle — that I left feeling a shift to my perspective and questioned what I’m entitled to anyway.

So much so that when I came home and dinner was ready, I felt some kind of thankful. And when we sat around the table, I had enough energy to initiate talk of the day’s cherries and pits and not grow too frustrated that the girls kept talking over each other.

Five Minute Friday: Brave

03 Friday May 2013

Posted by Ashley Larkin in Fear, Five Minute Friday, Risk-taking

≈ 28 Comments

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#fiveminutefriday, #fmf, brave, fear, Lisa Jo Baker, risk taking, writing

I see the word prompt, and I feel the dread rise because how do you write brave? For that is the stuff of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Corrie Ten Boom and Mother Teresa and those putting themselves in the way of harm and releasing slaves and risking life and laying it down to speak and to save.

If I’m honest, I fear that I will minimize bravery by talking about everyday types among the relatively comfortable. The kind of bravery that is sometimes more about simple truth telling and kindness and ordinary acts of love.

I look up the definition of brave and see two from Merriam Webster: the first, having or showing courage (courage being the ability to do something that frightens one) and the second, making a fine show.

That second one makes me feel a little sick because I want nothing to do with the type that’s veneer and bravado (bravery gone puffed up with self), but that first definition seems the heart of brave and for all of us.

To do something that frightens. Yes, I’m guessing we all know a thing or two about this.

On dreaming and the good of contradictions

01 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by Ashley Larkin in Faith, Fear, Hope, Risk-taking

≈ 35 Comments

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faith, fear, God-sized dreams, hope, Jumping Tandem retreat, risk-taking, writing

So, I’ve been home for a week and a half from Nebraska and a retreat I do not flippantly call life changing and a game changer and whatever other words mean monumental and encouraged and a little undone.

I am living my regular life of soccer, dance and gymnastics, house work, volunteering at school, church, work, child care. Yesterday morning, I almost succumbed to the scheduling monster — it was touch and go for a while there — and then Lala and I went to story time at a quaint little book store, and the reader’s voice was like a tinkling mobile over a crib, and I felt my heart slow.

Since returning, I am changed, and I am the same.

I am filled up and empty. I am energized and weary. I am enough and not enough.

Maybe you know what I’m talking about.

And, friends, I am beginning to accept the fact that I will not be able to put into quantifiable words the entirety of my Dreaming a God-Sized Dream experience, nor do I think most of you would like to embark on a 50-Part Series as I try.

As is true of many game changers, my weekend was built by profound words and quiet moments. By ever-so-slight shifts in perspective and yeah-me-toos with nodding sisters and brothers. By not only the great bigness of God, but seeing myself as his little lamb, as the child who sings loud and clear the words of the song, “Jesus loves the little ones like me, me, me.”

I learned over the weekend that a God-sized dream is filled with some contradictions. It’s mine, but God’s. Filled with the great and seemingly impossible, yet touched by the small. Asks me to be brave, yet knows I will feel afraid.

The God-sized dream in me and you isn’t about what we’ve designed after all, but about the life song the Creator’s placed within.

Where do you see beauty?

Where do you see need?

Where do you feel closest to God?

What are the absolute yeses in your life?

Where do you brush up against the eternal?

The answers to these questions and the journey to find the dream aren’t like the world’s. For in this God-sized dream, success isn’t ours to make, and it’s so different than the messages that circle around our heads, flash across our screens. It’s not about numbers and accolades and dollars, nor about posting the right inspirational posters in front of your face or reaching out to the right people.

Five Minute Friday: Friend

26 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by Ashley Larkin in Community, Five Minute Friday, Love

≈ 35 Comments

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#fiveminutefriday, #jtreat, Alexandra Kuykendall, community, Five Minute Friday, friendship, Jumping Tandem, love, writing

Alex and I at the Denver Airport

She and I walked around the room at this holy reunion, and I hugged long and hard those I’d never met, but already knew. I squeezed them like I’d been waiting my whole long life to see them — these dear ones I’d met through words across a screen.

Here they were now in jeans and little tops, and the hair that covers her face in her picture has two sides, and her smile is so radiant.

Here they came from Indiana and Missouri and D.C. and Alberta. And I learned again what I already knew. That these words released into internet air are heart pulses and flesh and blood, and they are human sisters and brothers bigger than a thumbnail.

And my long time friend, Alex, who used to live in Portland with me — each time I heard her asked, “What brought you here?” her answer was the same.

“Ashley.”

Anxiety’s antidote

25 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by Ashley Larkin in Faith, Fear, Trust

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

airplane travel, anxiety, dream, fear, fear of death, Jumping Tandem retreat, letting go, trust, writing

I woke at 4 am Friday and felt the same heavy nagging I’d felt all week as I prepared to leave my family — the feeling that this preparation is really for the end.

The end of me.

In the early morning dark of the girls’ bedroom, I kissed them good-bye, and thought I am really saying good-bye, as I tried to memorize each detail of their faces, the smell of hair and skin.

I hugged Michael hard at the passenger drop off area, and I tried not to cling, as I saw hints of tears forming in his eyes. Rolling my suitcase into the compartment of the revolving door and into PDX, I felt alone.

Over the week, I had prayed and joined with others in prayer. Over and again, tried putting fear out of my mind to stand on what is real and true. Yet this, this felt not just of the head, but of the body and heart. A steady ugly spiral knitting itself into the very fibers of me.

I knew I might possibly return home after the weekend away, but prepared myself that I might not. God is my safety and protection, but that doesn’t always mean people make it back home.

Peace, I told myself, as we readied for departure. Peace.

Draw Near

Five Minute Friday: View

Drinking from the cup

Five Minute Friday: Song

Love that drains, love that fills

The Frame

White curtains

Five Minute Friday: Brave

On dreaming and the good of contradictions

Five Minute Friday: Friend

Anxiety’s antidote

Follow “Draw Near”