Five Minute Friday: Dive

January 11, 2013 Lindsey P. Brackett3 Comments

“Let go, I’m diving in…”

Isn’t that some Christian song that gets overplayed on my local station? I think so. In fact, now I’m thinking it’s Steven Curtis Chapman, who I do love, so maybe it’s not so overplayed, but rather a repetition I need to hear.

Let go. You have to let go to dive. To get there.

I am struggling with the letting go. With the final release of toes and head and heart and accepting what I am learning about myself each and every day.

I can’t please everyone. I can’t agree with everyone. I can’t make nice in every situation and in every social circle and in every political arena.

Not that I’m surrounded my many of those.

But I can’t. I have to let that go if I’m going to truly dive in to what could be an amazing, beautiful, incredible, surrendered life.

I need to dive deeper into the Word, into the reflection, into the quiet.

I need to let go of insecurity and perfection and the idea that anything that comes to me is something that I deserve, that I have earned.

I’m taking a plunge today at my local MOPS group. I’m telling some of my story, some the most raw parts that I’ve published here, but they’ll probably get an even deeper admission. A true dive into where I’ve really been.

Plunge is our MOPS theme this year….going deeper….letting go. Dive.

I Wonder {5 Min Friday}

November 30, 2012 Lindsey P. Brackett3 Comments

I’m joining with Lisa-Jo and so many others today to celebrate the last 5 Minute Friday of the year. So here it is, five whole minutes of raw writing.

Wonder….

I wonder if Mary ever got frustrated. If she had swollen ankles and if her hair fell out when Jesus was about five months old and if she worried that his teeth were never ever going to work their way through those swollen gums.

I wonder how she stood the whispers and the taunts and the stares and how she made peace with this plan. What happened really in that empty space between an angel’s declaration and this girl’s submission?

I wonder if she ever felt ready to be a mom.

And all those four times I lay in a hospital bed in a sterile environment with IV fluids and epidurals and nurses and ice chips, I wondered about giving birth in a stable. I wondered about the mess and the pain and the sweat and the tears and how she did it.

I wasn’t even strong enough to handle the unexpected after ten years of marriage and three other babies. I caved to the fear.

Maybe it was the absence of all we think we need now. Maybe it was the stillness. Maybe it was the raw, barren, homeliness of the stable gave her strength. Because maybe there was nothing else to do but delight in the wonder of her child.

faith · Friday Five · reflections

Just Quiet {Five Minute Friday}

November 9, 2012 Lindsey P. Brackett3 Comments

I’m no good with quiet. I crave it, desire it, try so hard to find it in the naptime moments and the late night minutes and the afternoon car rides to the parent pick-up line.

But it eludes me because I’m not really in the chase. I don’t really want the quiet. I think I’m afraid that if I slow down and get quiet and listen, I might not like what I hear.

You’re too busy.
You’ve shifted your focus.
You’re escaping into someone else’s story so you don’t have to write your own.

Is any of this familiar?

When it’s too quiet, I look for something to occupy my mind. Doesn’t have to be noise, doesn’t have to be voices, just needs to be something–a new recipe, a novel, this blog, last night’s episode. Anything to keep me from having to sit in complete silence and listen.

Really listen for His voice.

Because there was a wind and an earthquake and a fire, but He wasn’t in those.

He was in the quiet.

Writing for five minutes with Lisa-Jo is a goal I can live with. And right now it’s quiet in my house though I do wish the baby would go back to sleep so I can take a shower.

family · Friday Five

True Roots

November 2, 2012 Lindsey P. Brackett5 Comments

For the first time in my life, I have roots. In my hair. And they are grey.

I’ve always been just a little bit prideful about my hair. My tilted nose like a ski-jump got me lots of teasing in school and my skin had acne and I never learned to apply makeup.

But I like my hair. Even when I kept on blow drying it and trying to tame its frizzes all through high school until I got to college and met this amazing girl who introduced me to gel and mousse and how to deal with natural curlies, and that’s when I really started to like it.

Then I had kids. Now it’s falling out. Insanely. Like handfuls on the shower wall (gross!) insanely falling out. That’s the post-partum thing I know. And it’s growing in a bit at my hairline, but that’s almost worst.

Almost, but not as bad as they grey.

My roots are turning grey. How can that be for a girl who has never even been colored, never been permed, never been anything other than a pair of scissors every so often?

It’s kinky, steely, thick grey sprouting up between brown waves and distinguishing itself along my part. I’m confounded and vain and tired.

Then I remember my grandmother who passed when I was merely ten, barely older than my oldest daughter. The grandmother we called Grandmommy-White-Hair whose heritage gives me lowcountry roots and a love of homemaking and fried chicken.

I wonder if she had a crisis of identity when her roots turned grey?

31 Days to Embracing Motherhood · Friday Five · gus

31 Days Embracing Motherhood: Look {5 min Friday}

October 19, 2012September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett4 Comments

When I look at him he smiles back. Always, invariably, big two little tooths winking at me, smiling. I see his grin that spreads to his eyes fringed in lashes longer than mine and I snuggle him close and kiss and kiss and kiss all over those fat baby cheeks and I look again.

I can’t stop marveling at him. He is beautiful. He is perfectly and wonderfully made. He is mine for this little while.

And for a time I didn’t know how much I wanted him.

I didn’t know how much I would need to have another baby to hold and cuddle and love and I never once imagined that this baby would be my only son, my calming force in the dramatic tirade of strong-willed girls. I didn’t know how much I would fall in love with this baby whose gestation kept me in hiding crying in the shower crying out to God that I could never do this again.

I’m so blessed to have been trusted with this little life.

So I look at him. I drink him in. He folds his hands in prayer when he’s sleeping. He buries his face in the crook of my arm. He looks at me and smiles and there’s a dimple in his cheek.

Just like mine.

I can’t stop looking. I can’t stop seeing the miracle.