The Wrath was the Mercy

A few months ago it suddenly hit me, at 36 years old, what the fairy tale of Rapunzel was actually about. 30 years after hearing the story.

I had always hated the story. I thought the Prince was a real jerk. He didn't rescue her from the tower, but rather, kept her there, and visited her many times, and got her pregnant. She was a peasant. He was a prince. He had more power than her.  The Prince in Rapunzel seemed like he wasn't all that interested in getting her out. (Unless he was abysmally stupid, and didn't know about the invention of the rope.) She didn't even seem to know what a man was, let alone sex, let alone pregnancy, by her asking the Witch why her belly was growing. I thought he sounded like a Uppity boy taking advantage of a naive girl. I found the story icky, because of the Prince. I even thought darkly that the ending was suspicously 'too happy' with the blinded beggar prince finding Rapunzel in the end in the wilderness and seeing again. When I read kiddie version trying to sanitize the unwed-pregnancy part of the tale I saw through them as the weak attempts at retconning honor for a disappointing prince ('they sorta had a secret wedding in the tower before she got pregnant...but no, he didn't take her home'  and "she said to the witch 'you are heavier than the prince' so it wasn't that the witch found out she was pregnant....but then she had babies so um, yeah, she was pregnant....")

When Tangled came out when I was 22 or so, I said "Ahh, they fixed it" when Eugene turns out to be a nice gentlemanly peasant-thief who doesn't trick her or climb her hair. She is the princess, she holds the power, Eugene never takes advantage of her, physically or any other way. He climbs the tower with his own strength, not tricking her into using hair, and she's the one always trying to kiss him. I said with relief that it was "uncreepified" from the original tale.

And then, at 36 years old, out of the blue, slightly sick and in my jammies, I started crying one morning at breakfast, when I realized the whole point of the fairy tale.

The point was that the Prince wasn't being above board. And he also makes an infinite amount of sense. After learning a lot more about both politics and history, in blood-monarchies it was of infinite importance whom a prince married and procreated with. Even in the pagan times. Constantius left both his peasant wife Helena and his son Constantine, for a chance to marry the noble woman and be Emperor of Rome. Alexander the Great had a kid with a political nobody, at 16 before heading off to conquer the world and pick his royal bride(s) at 30. This list could easily fill pages.

Then, in the Christian era, when annulments weren't as easy to procure as Roman divorces, there always was the common-law wife on the side. The "wives the Danish [pagan] way" as the Saxons would say. Henry II did it. Many many princes did it. (even dear Harold Godwinson had his 'danish-style' common-law wife before he got engaged to the Northern Lady/Princess at being made king at 40) Noble men resigned themselves to often having to wait over a decade before the official noble wife was found, at the right moment when they ascended to their full power, and saw the most pressing alliance that their country required. Telling a passionate 17 yr old that he has to wait, perhaps till he's 35, to have sex when he marries the right princess...they tried to find ways to have what they wanted but still keep their future political options open.

And so the prince in Rapunzel, was in fact, acting like a prince---historically, realistically, pragmatically anyways. He knew that there would be political complications to anything he did. After all, bastard sons can figure-head factions for the throne. Civil War and differing claimants to succession was an always a looming threat. And then, suddenly, out hunting, alone, here's his chance. He meets a peasant girl in the woods in a tower, completely unconnected to politics, that no one else knows is even there...and now he can kiss and all, with no political repercussions whatsoever. Perhaps he meant to abandon her when he got his political marriage in the vague future. Perhaps he intended to keep her as his 'danish wife' indefinitely, not abandon her, just have both at once (and hide his secret tower family from his eventual noble bride). Perhaps he told himself he would take her away from the tower and bring her home, when he had the courage to do so. But whatever he intended, in the fairy tale, he kept her secret for some time, while visiting her in a conjugal fashion, which is how he got caught by the witch. Rapunzel asks the witch to help her get her dress on, and asks her why her belly is growing, and the whole thing comes down like a house of cards. 

And judgment comes down hard. He's blinded. He loses everything. Because he was keeping it all a secret, his servants don't even know where he is. He's lost in the wilderness, a blinded prince, no ID cards, no servants, no credentials, nothing to prove who he is. The Politics he treasured, that kept him keeping the girl a secret, now have abandoned him.  Not even with the peasant-wife. He's alone. He's a nobody. He's a blind involuntarily-celibate nobody---less than a peasant. He can't even find work in a manual labor-culture & warrior culture, being blind was to be useless. He is wandering around homeless, perhaps begging, or scrounging, trying to find enough calories to survive another day.

And he gets that for years and years. 

But the story doesn't end there. 

Because in the wilderness...like something out of the book of Hosea...He finds his children and his woman, that he would have abandoned for fear of losing everything. Crying on him, hugging him, kissing him, and miraculously, he can see again. 

He loses everything....and gains everything in the end. Instead of a guilty secret on his wedding to a princess...he can hug his children and Rapunzel no longer abandoned.

So that morning in the kitchen, 25 years of disliking this fairy tale, I now was sobbing to my confused kids (and my Jenny in characteristic epigenetic distaste of the prince) ---at breakfast three months ago....that was the whole point of the story. 

That the wrath was the mercy. 

Life comes in the in-betweens. Living while dying

 I woke up with a vivid dream that involved a nursing home. There were old people who were giving away free violins and violin lessons and food trying to get kids to come, to see kids. I was trying to help them. Harabojii and Halmoni were there. My mother's parents. My Harabojii (Korean for grandfather) died 14 years ago, and my Halmoni has traveled the long road of widow-hood and prayer these many years. In my dream, it was so good to see them together again. But I knew Harabojii was sick and we probably didn’t have long. I hugged him, then remembered I have a cold.

But I was trying to advise the old people to try giving away guitar lessons, broader appeal. Trying to help them find a way for their scheme to see children around to work. Then Badguys were chasing me at one point. There was drama. I don’t remember what happened.

But waking up with the conviction that---why on earth did we sort people like widgets? For energy efficiency, put all the old people in one room, so we can effectively change diapers and provide “care”. Care like lining them up to change their diapers, brush their teeth, and give them all the same nutritionally calculated puddings.

Why?

People aren’t widgets. That kind of life barely sounds like life. Its all the stuff that happens in the cracks that  makes life feel like life. The inconveniences, the people talking in line at the grocery store, the children, always uncontrollable, nuts, with their myriad ideas and fights and stories and sins, running into and out of our lives like tornado.

Life comes in the unexpected, the inconvenient, the in-betweens.

We manage life, by putting all the kids in a room together, so their crazy ideas can be dissuaded en-mass, not to climb the flagpole, or organize a table leaping-off contest. We make them copy down math and memorize mantras and things. Not that there isn’t a place for education.

But seriously, what are we doing????

We stuff the kids into rooms, and then when some boys inevitably won’t sit still, we drug them to make it more efficient for the vastly out-numbered teacher to keep the kids learning. It’s like a prison.

We manage life, by putting all the old people into a room together (or rather, many tiny rooms in one big building) and give them “care” to make sure they have the proper nutrition and diaper changes in time. It’s like a prison.

Prisons are massively efficient ways for society to stuff troublemakers into one building and hopefully try to keep them from killing each-other. (If there is a Purgatory, I hope it is very different than our model.)

I love efficiency. I love batch-sewing dresses, and batch-producing meals.

But boiling life down a life to nutrients ingested, mantras memorized, widgets produced, diapers changed….what happened to the wild morning wind cold and inconvenient, blowing the barely-opened morning-glories against the pale sky brightening in the dawn?

People aren’t widgets. We need the chaos of children, the inconvenience of human contact, the single woman telling you not to leave the top of the chip bag unsealed, the middle aged reflecting on their life and their drama having to pull it together to interact with a surly teenager….. all of it, all mixed up into life.

And what about the childless? Those who never got to have children and grandchildren? They should not be shunted off into an assembly-line style of senior care.

When I lay in the hospital after being gutted and stitched, hovering between life and death, unable to sit without assistance, the tube draining on my side sending spasms every time I had to sit up. Having to hit the nurse button to bring a bedpan…when it was a terrifying thing knowing I would have to sit up in 30 minutes… the fight to hold on to my walker, and make it across the room…they all felt like huge and terrifying obstacles. It was like being suddenly old. My youth---when things like eating, sitting up, walking about---felt far away and impossible. Part of me doubted I would ever be able to do those things again.

To want to live---was so hard. And I knew deep down somehow, that I had to want to live if I was going to live. Perhaps it was melodrama, but I felt that if I gave up, I would die. I was in grief over Anthony, and the pain was the worst in my life. Worse than the 7 unmedicated labors. It felt like transition when I tried to poop. But what got me though transition was yearning for my baby in my arms. And this time, I knew my baby was dead. And that there would never be another new baby from me. It was hard.

To be old, is so hard. To know that the days of possibility and birth are behind you…and before you lies pain to just to continue to exist.

Back to my point.

I yearned to see green things, and my children’s faces. The dawn sky. I strained to see that little flap of a green palm leaf in that courtyard, the window facing a stucco wall, and the bed facing the wrong way. Prison cell room. I tried to stare at the fake wood pattern on the door, thanking God for making woodgrain. I needed to see beauty so badly.

 When I was moved into the blue room with the big window, and could see the horizon lit wit the dawn and dusk glow…it was like I could breathe again. The art on the wall of the raindrops clinging to a leaf. I stared at every nature picture I could get. And children's faces. Seeing their faces was like a burst of color in a grey world. I'd stare at their faces...they almost felt like they were shining with LIFE.

When the ileas blocked my intestine, the pain was so intense....begging God not to listen to any prayers to die I might make, that my statement was I wanted to live, and I was tying myself to the mast....hearing that child cry out for his mommy, his daddy reassuring him that wasn't his mom....me getting there, the bowel scan....then coming back...the pain subsiding [had they started the Dilotted at that point?] looking up and thinking there was so much light afterwards...not sure if I was really aware of reality...and I saw this very goodlooking shape of a man's beautiful shoulders standing there in the brightness [If I remember...half of me wasn't sure if I was seeing Jesus in heaven or some person and I shouldn't be thinking this as a married woman....and especially if it were Jesus...it was very confusing]...and then realized it was Josh with the window behind him.....then afterwards, somehow, the pain meds taking enough edge off, the relief. But still having to fight to live. Telling Josh how we were going to have picnics with the kids in Europe. Imagining going to the park with a picnic with the kids. Imagining the children, and nature, out of that hospital prison. Hospital is a prison. I thought of Harabojii, talking about our trip to Korea, and to the beach, and the picnic, how we were going to have it…all those long months in the hospital, when he couldn’t even eat….I understood better. How he felt. So hard. You need to look forward to something. To children’s faces and green.

I thought about the nursing homes for the childless. We need to make every room have a big window, to see the dawn. No prison rooms. Force people to eat together at least once a day. Sing together. Chapel. And put it in an orchard. So families can come and pick the fruit, and hangout with the old people. They need to see children. They need to be part of a community.

Make it a community. Like Rivendell. Host craft nights, dances, etc. Things for children. Old ppl need to see new life. And new life needs the old. We need to be in it, together. Inconvenient and all. It’s life. Somehow, we have to un-divorce the care of the old from the rest of society. Never have we had this much voyeuristic living, distortions of reality, Instagram replacing long hours shelling beans with octogenarians. We watch dramas and cry our eyes out. And don’t know how to talk to our grandparents. [this is me]

We have lost so much. And we have skyrocketing rates of depression. We need to shell more beans. Have that awkward long walk with someone in a walker who needs to pause every 10 ft and have that rambling conversation that may repeat itself. Life is in the cracks. In the in betweens of leaves against a sky.

Because we are humans. We weren’t meant to die in prison cells of efficiency, alone. We were meant to struggle along, inconveniently, often painfully, together.

Even if they’re grumpy. Even if it hurts. Even if its hard. We need to do it together. Because its important. The children need to know how to live, how to reflect on the story of life---one day, their own life---and the children need to learn how to die, how to make peace. How to live while dying. All of it.

Because we're all living while dying. We're all in this strange riddle, put together, to get through it, together.

The old need to be around children. Around new life. We are the human race, the human family. We were made for each other.

****************

After writing this, I want to volunteer at a nursing home or something. I am not sure how. I know these organizations exist.

Or a prison. And make a garden.

Disciplined Schedule for Colder Weather

 DAILY SCHEDULE

The basic idea is that every day should contain the same elements. They will be adjusted to acclimate to our extreme weather swings. 

The twelve essential elements

1.  Morning Prayers [in Prayergarden] Instead, Late Afternoon Service In Prayergarden at 4:30 pm [Set aside a moment for the Holy]
2. Morning Outside Time [if its not cold]
3. Morning PT
4.  Mom's reading time [reading kids books]
5. Breakfast& Chores
6. Bibletime [usually at breakfast]
7. Homeschool
8. Lunch & Chores
9. Afternoon Freetime. Outside or Duplos or Crafts/Art or Computergames. [Mom's downtime]
10. Dinner & Chores
11. Family Fun Time//Evening outside time 
12. Family Songtime and Prayertime 

VERY COLD [for us...] Schedule. UV is low. Nov (4), Dec (3), Jan (3)

• Note: Wait till the sun warms up the air, to play outside. The UV is so low anyway.
•  In the afternoon, the shadow is deep across the backyard, but atleast the air is warmer. In the morning, there is sunlight in the backyard, but colder air.

• 7:00 Hot Tea& Mom’s Reading Time, Prayergarden
•  8:00 am Hot Breakfast& Bible & CHORES
•  9:00-12 SCHOOL
• ü  PT
• ü  Spelling, Grammar, Handwriting
• ü  Math
• ü  Hebrew & Greek Videos
• 12 noon  Lunch and CHORES
• 1-2   Screentime if Earned//Outside Time
•  2-4:45  Outside FreeTime//Maybe go to the Park, Riparion//Playdates with friends
•  4:45 Worship (inside or at Prayergarden)
• 5:00pm CHORETIME
• 5:30pm Dinner & CHORES
• 6:30pm Family Games [inside?] or FIRE
• 8:00pm Bedtime                          

Weekly Meal Plan

 Because I keep misplacing it. 

Weekly Meal Plan

Breakfasts

• Mealprep Breakfast Sandwiches in the freezer for Josh Important note: Let it come to room temp BEFORE freezing, minimize air. Wrap in plastic wrap, then put in freezer bag.
• Kids breakfast 
• m-- 
• peanut butter energy balls OR 
• oatmeal w/ eggs OR 
• custard OR 
• overnight Chia pudding
• t/w/r/f
• Yogurt&Berries&Nuts or 
• Omelet
• Cheese&Veg or 
• Hummus&Veg
• sat---Hash Browns & eggs/Toad in holes/ French Toast/Pancakes Crepes
• sun-- BREAKFAST CASSEROLE [Prep night before, bake morning of] baked grits & sausage & baked egg casserole OR potato-egg-sausage casserole

Lunches

• Send Josh to work with high protein reheatable [Once a month, make 3 batches at once, 8 each]
• Breakfast sandwiches
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TkhvoG05iM&t=161s
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsyTQmiWJ5A
• Home-made frozen Tacos 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88WR2pkSwko
• https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uS2Wi3cCOZc
• Cornish Pasties/Home-made Hot Pockets
• https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-AiR9BCtMuM
• https://www.youtube.com/shorts/c9dMOEi99VI
• container lunches
• https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GDRZk9uXKRw
• Kids Lunches
• Leftovers [Protein + Veg + Carb]
• Stir Fry

M Leftovers	Josh & Isaiah eat burgers Left Overs	Leafy Chicken Ceaser Salad
T Beef	Smashburgers or Tacos  Shepherds Pie Steak Fajitas n Bell Peppers Chili [white bean or red] BEEF SOUP: Hannah’s Pho, Beef Soup, Meukguk	Leafy Spinach Salad. Fresh Salsa Spinach Salad
W Chicken	Oven Turkish Bone-In Chicken Basil-Lime Chicken Breasts  Fried Chicken Strips Sauce Chicken [herbed creamy sauce, salsa creamy sauce] Chicken Soup	Frozen Broccoli, Green Beans or Peas
R Italian	Fauxsagnia w/ extra Ground Beef Meatball Sandwiches Philly Cheese-steaks wit ONIONS	Garlic Green Beans Tomato-Basil-Cheese Cabbage Salad [Asian, Greek, Chicken Ceaser]
F Cheese Lentils	Mac n Cheese w/ extra Parm. Indian Lentils Tomato Soup + Grilled Cheese Sandwiches Lentil Soup	Peas, carrots Cabbage Salad
S Cold Cuts	Hannah’s Subway [Tuna or Chicken or Beef]	Leafy Spinach Salad Fixin’s
Lord’s Day Beef	Beef Pot Roast. Braised beef. Hobbit Stew.	Leafy Spinach Salad Frozen Veg

Best List of Children's books a little older, first steps into reading and Graphic Novels [first reading etc]

Arnold Loebl's stuff 

•  Frog and Toad stories, (all of them)
• Owl at home                                                      by Arnold Loebl

Ling and Ting  by Grace Lin

•             Not Exactly the Same
•             Together in All Weather
•             Share a Birthday
•             Twice as Silly                                  

*************Graphic Novels and first very simple chapter books********************

American Girl Series

•             Felicity
•             Samantha
•             Addy
•             Molly
•             Kirsten
•             Kit
•             Kaya

Picture Bible  [illustrated by 000000

Sophia Institute Press  Graphic Novel Saints stories  000000

• Vol 1
• Vol 2
• Vol 3
• Vol 4
• Vol 5

Zita the Spacegirl series by   Ben Hatke  [graphic novels]

• Zita the Spacegirl, 
• Legends of Zita the Spacegirl, 
• Return of Zita the Spacegirl]                         

Mighty Jack Series by Ben Hatke [graphic novels]

• Mighty Jack, 
• Mighty Jack and the Goblin King, 
• Mighty Jack and Zita the Spacegirl*

Ninjago graphic novels    by Greg Farshtey

• Challenge of Samukai
• Mask of the Sensei
• Rise of the Serpentine
• Tomb of the Fangpyre
• Kingdom of Snakes
• Warriors of Stone
• Stone Cold*
• Destiny of Doom 
• Night of the Nindroids
• The Phantom Ninja
• Comet Crisis

TRAILBLAZER BOOKS------------- by Dave and Neta Jackson

Flight of the Fugitives

Bandit of Ashely Downs

Captured by the River Rats

Listen for the Whippoorwill

Never Say Die by Cyril Davey

Sundar Singh  by Cyril Davey    

Best list of children's picture books, The ones I would re-buy if there was a fire

Best children's picture books.

The ones I would rebuy if there was a fire. The ones I would keep to read to my grandchildren

CONTINUES TO BE UPDATED

Solo         by Paul Geraghty

The Three Trees     by Angela Elwell Hunt

The Bear that Heard Crying    by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock

Journey

Quest

Return    by Aaron Becker

The Christmas Story

The Easter Story        by Brian Wildsmith

Remy and Lulu       by K

Bernice Gets Carried Away

Extraordinary Jane                 by Hannah E Harrison

I am a Bunny

What do people do all day

Funniest Stories Ever

Cars and Trucks and Things that Go

The Bunny Book/When Bunny Grows Up

Richard Scarry's Nursery Rhymes

Richard Scarry's Best Storybook Ever [compilation]

Best Mistake Ever and other stories                                By Richard Scarry

Anything ACTUALLY by Richard Scarry and not his ghostwriters/ghostartists

I especially love his early works, in the realistic style [I am a Bunny]

Jesus-pictures---Illust. by Chris Molan [Chosen more for their pictures than their text]

Jesus and John the Baptist 

Jesus Begins His Work

Miracles by the Sea

The First Easter

DK  The Life of Jesus

Tattered Sails [rhyming verse] by

Saint Valentine by Robert Sabuda

It's not easy being a Bunny      by   Marilyn Sadler

Very Bad Bunny*                      by   Marilyn Sadler

Street Through Time   [DK]

The Thief who stole Heaven

The Spider who stole Christmas

The Magnificent Mischief of Tad Lincoln                    by  Raymond Arroyo

Our Lady of Guadalupe                           by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand and Tonya Engel

Bread and Jam for Frances

Best Friends for Frances

Bedtime for Frances

A New Sister for Frances 

A Bargain for Frances                                 by ??????

OLDER KIDS---HISTORY, PART PICTURE

Peter Connolly's 

The Roman Army, 

The Greek Armies, 

Hannibal and the enemies of Rome, 

History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus [Holy Land]

Greece and Rome at War

The Ancient City

Would you survive series

The Usborne Book of World History 

Little Rangers need to go a'ranging...

 Little Rangers need to get their kits out at least once a month. They need to explore outside, learn valuable skills like tracking, stamina, waking at dawn, building fires, watching the stars....they need SKILLS and they are only going to get said skills by going out and roughing it in the wilderness.

Alas, one skill for a ranger mom trapped in the valley of the Sun, is to reserve campsites far in advance. Five months in advance....

If we were really cool, we'd figure out how to make camp in the site-less wilderness...preferably under bracken where the Crebain of Dunland cannot sight us....but we aren't at that awesome yet. So we'll stick with reserved sites, until our skills are much much better.

Nov--AZ Desert, Lost Dutchman [Hidden Valley, Pioneer Museum? Fat Man's pass, Sears-Kay Ruin (Hohokam)]

Dec--AZ Desert, Lost Dutchman

Jan--Huddle at home and work on our kits.

Feb --AZ Desert, Lost Dutchman

March--AZ Desert, Lost Dutchman

[I need to reserve the Spring and Summer reservations by Feb/March]

April -- AZ Rim-country, Prescott, Payson [Mingus Mountain, Mogollon Campground on Rim, Yavapai, Christopher creek]

May -- AZ Rim-country, Prescott, Payson

June -- AZ Rim-country, Prescott, Payson

July--Mountains or Creeks, Oak Creek Canyon/Sedona [bc of Oak creek. Also Manzanita is COOLER they say, Pine Flats, Bootlegger, Cave Springs], or Christopher Creek in Payson [bc of Christopher creek], Mogollon is 2mi from a lake....OR THE ROCKIES

Aug--Mountains or Creeks, Oak Creek Canyon/Sedona...OR THE ROCKIES

Sept--Mountains or Creeks, Oak Creek Canyon/Sedona...

Oct -- AZ Rim-country, Prescott, Payson

And how to homestead...when we are in a little quarter-acre lot in a desert, and may move in the near-ish future?

Homestead, but not as the homestead being the goal---as we may need to sell, and later owners destroy it. Plant fruit trees, for the future if owners keep it. And always garden with the kids. Involve my little rangers as much as possible...because its about the memories being forged WITH them, and the skills being forged IN them, and not about the physical garden or home so much. We are traveling, but we can make these way-stations along the way as beautiful as we can. As green as we can. As productive as we can. 

But it should always be about the little Rangers, and not the way-station.

Savings

I--80+ 25     [110 saber--?Cool One]

J--  +25   [110 saber] Templar

K-- 26 [110 saber--twin sister]

M-- 23.25      [110 saber---moondust]

S---0.15   [gradient saber? $73 ]

A---          [gradient saber? $73]

Memory of our lives

 

July 11 2024

36 years old. Yesterday was my 14^th wedding anniversary. I have 8 children on earth, 2 children in heaven, and a uterus rotted for a year somewhere in some hospital’s biohazard dump. I know, barring a miracle, that I am done receiving new little souls in my body, to grow and live in the world. It hurts.

I realize how strange memory is. More and more, it feels like my own life is forgotten by me---the only things that remain were pinned down by words. Even things that I never wrote down, but if I described them to myself or others, then I can remember them. But otherwise, they fade away.

I used to think there was some part of my mind that recorded my own life. That all I had to do was access it, like a hidden file on a computer. But it seems that it’s not there. And scariest of all, it seems that people can rewrite their memories, or at least, completely reshape the story of it, without changing the bare facts. Like music to raw footage of a movie. The music changes everything. Especially disgruntled young people in their 20s and 30s, trying to make sense of their lives. Comparing the notes of their childhood with other siblings, other witnesses. Or when reading war-memoirs. The novelist author knew to pick out the really poignant parts, but even he had to pick. The heroism, the horror, little things that stuck out in it. Some guys go on and on about the details of all the fallen buddies---remembering their glasses, their names, their hometowns, as if somehow saving something precious. Some guys rambling on about minute details no one cares about---the rifle type, the little personal altercation with a higher up. And even in the war---the things the men chose to cling to. That one guy dying holding onto the little polaroid of his baby in the dark…even the way we cling to the story of our own life in little pieces of plastic. But it’s the act of recollection---the war memoirs themselves---that is so weird. Like in the Vietnam book, he chooses the framing to be about the lines Chan wrote in his Bible, even at the breakdown at the end. Two siblings so close in age can have drastically different memories or perceptions of the same few years. It seems the story of someone’s life can be utterly changed by the way they remember it---like the music the producers pick to pair with the raw footage everywhere. And picking which cuts to save, to string together in the final production. Our minds—editing the footage of our lives---can make such very different things.

I hope God holds all the raw footage. And the real music to be paired with the story. Only He knows the story He was really making.

Right now, my story doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t get why God took my babies. Why my uterus had to spectacularly fail, when I was pregnant with a little boy who was an answer to thousand prayers of Isaiah, and whom I felt was going to do something important for God’s Kingdom.

Right now, in suburbia, after the trial of Grad-School, Josh stuck with a Job that he doesn’t feel any higher purpose in, other than trying to pay off an overpriced house squeezed into a quarter-lot in a desert….passing the point of the dream of Josh with the torch on the hill in the rain on the bare mountain…..I don’t know what our purpose is.

I feel….lost.

Like I’m halfway through a book and realize it’s not going anywhere. I see wrinkles popping up in  my face. I see a huge scar cut across my baby-stretched belly, holding the skin in strangely. I have passed the point of potential….with careful treatment, optimistically, I may look young for another decade. But I have passed 20 years of doing this—being 16 and the age I could be in an adventure story---now I’m 36 and too old for an adventure story. At least, the kind where its about potential and choices that shape a life. My life is shaped. And in one sense….it feels over.

I know that’s a ridiculous thing to say. Even me writing this, is shaping how I feel. Words are recursive like that. Even our attempts to understand our life re-shape our life. Or perhaps give it shape that can fit into our little finite brains.

Only God knows what true story is going on here.

Maybe when God shows us the final cut of our lives, the final story, the most important parts will be small scene that we didn’t even remember, or that we chose to leave on the cutting room floor.

I have 8 children counting on me. 8 little potentials whose lives are flung in front of them like empty vistas with stormy skies above them. 7 little maidens who will be that beautiful main character ninja girl in an adventure story. 1 young man ripe for his coming of age adventure. I need to help him. I have hurt his confidence so much.

God, help me help Isaiah be a man. Help me. Help me be the mother I never have been.  Heal him where I have let him down.

And please bring him the right woman at the right time, bring him Eve. Helpmeet. Help him become who you want him to become.

I think what has stopped me from writing in diaries for 8 years was how recursive they get. How they seem to reshape (or concretize) my own life and my own thinking. It seemed oddly untrue---squeezing the reality of my life into a mold or a shape, that wasn’t all true---as if I am writing a computer program to program my own brain…it felt artificial, forced, a lie somehow.

But lately, I think about my memories of my own life, and realize I’m always doing that. Always shaping reality with words. I just hadn’t written them down.

And I’m getting older. I’m forgetting my own life. The kids will tell me recent (or 7 yr old) memories of things that Mommy said and did that sound very plausible, but I have zero recall of. Some of them are really good memories too. I wish I remembered them. I’m glad that they do. But I think my aging brain needs some help pinning down my own life. It feels like its passing in a blur….and I have nothing to fill the time that I know lapsed.

I want to write now. Write down the memories, even if it turns out is half-fake and sifting, and artificial. God will save the truest story. I will write my fragments, and He can correct all the errors in the final analysis.

I need to write about losing my babies. I need to write about 2023