Portland on the Horizon

So. We’re moving to Portland.

I found this little news as the occasion to dust off the old blog, which I haven’t touched or even really thought about – other than the periodic consideration of deletion – since my last post, which was apparently in January 2013.

If I’m going to continue to write again here regularly, it most definitely needs a facelift, maybe as a link on that website I’m going to finally get to someday…but for now. This will do. I digress.

In May, I was driving from work to pick up the girls, and I was listening to the song Home by Phillip Phillips (can that really be his real name?) on repeat. And sobbing. I knew then that change was coming. I knew but I didn’t really know. I was holding it like a secret at that point – terrifying and exhilarating all at once – but for someone who, like me, resists change – mostly terrifying. And so the lyrics spilled out and my tears with them.

Hold on, to me as we go

As we roll down this unfamiliar road

And although this wave is stringing us along

Just know you're not alone

Cause I'm going to make this place your home

Settle down, it'll all be clear

Don't pay no mind to the demons

They fill you with fear

The trouble it might drag you down

If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you're not alone

Cause I'm going to make this place your home

I’m a girl who isn’t too savvy about or aware of new music, especially of the Top 40 variety. I’m an old school loyalist, most days found listening to the same Indigo Girls and Over the Rhine I’ve been listening to for years upon years now, but last year one of the groups danced to this song in the Performing Ourselves spring showcase, and paired to the little sweeties dancing, it struck me in the heart. It has been an apt song for our lives over the past six months.

In 2005, when I was getting ready to move to Chicago for grad school, and Paul took a job in Madison, I don’t know that we had any idea how much we’d grow to love this sweet college city. How it would become our home. How we’d have our first house, and then our second, and our babies, and build our careers and communities in this beautiful city nestled between two lakes. Alas, that’s where the past ten years have taken us, and the love we feel for Madison and the tribe we call our community here really can’t be described.

So when Paul was offered a job in Portland, Oregon the choice was anything but easy – made over many conversations and tears and car sessions of Home by Phillip Phillips on repeat. But I guess, or so I hear, part of becoming a real adult is making the hard choices. Or maybe realizing that sometimes even the greatest pragmatists have to make choices based on faith, when you’re really not certain in the least but you feel something stirring inside of you, something that must be the Holy Spirit if it’s anything at all.

Thus, come September, we’ll be packing up our lives and our babies and these always Midwesterners will venture into the land of the Pacific Northwest. We feel grateful for opportunities opening, for a church community ready to fold us in, for good friends who are waiting with open arms (which I’ll likely be crying in, while wrapped up in the fetal position, for the first several months) and for my sister Rachel, who will be moving there with her family later this month. Rach and I haven’t lived in the same place since I was 15 and she was 18, and we’re anticipating the delicious opportunity to raise our littles and someday start a movement/wellness/yoga space together and likely drive each other nuts at times, being that we’re cut from the same mold.

Backing up, by the end of June, Paul had accepted this new job, the plans were in place, our house was about to go on the market, and we were starting to feel a sense of peace about the upcoming transitions. Then, brutally, with 8 days between probable diagnosis and dying, we lost Paul’s dad, my dear father in law John, to the beast that is cancer. A brain glioblastoma.

As we sat in the hospital, waiting for good news and waiting for a change and neither ever coming, my body remembered the kind of deep, sinking fear I couldn’t shake – the same I had felt too many times while losing my Dad to cancer 10 years ago. And I was shaking my fists at God, I still am – the cruelty of the disease, the cruelty of the timing – of no chance to really properly say good-bye and having to say good-bye too soon – the loss of the man who had loved me like his own and who had loved our girls so well, the only grandfather they’d ever know. I bitterly realized that we can’t endure our loss quota and then be done, but that loss is a part of life, and the more we live and love, the more loss we know.

During that horrible week and following, I was reminded of one of the only really redeeming parts of losing somebody to something as horrible as cancer – community. The people who show up to say, hey, here’s some lasagna and some hugs and I’ll cry with you but I really don’t know what to say cause this just sucks, and there isn’t much more we can do other than be here with you. The people who hurt because you hurt. Who have made you their own. I was reminded of the community we have in Nebraska from growing up there, the community in Madison who love us so very well, and a community we’re just beginning to build in Portland, not to mention those beloveds scattered throughout the other places we’ve called home throughout our lives. Thank God for community - for the people who bring us strength and light when we don’t have the wherewithal to find it for ourselves.

Last weekend we sat in a beautiful old Lutheran Church in Washington, D.C. and witnessed the baptism of my sweet 4 month old niece, Greta. My Dad always loved baptisms – at one point, he told me one of the reasons he stayed in campus ministry was because he got to do lots of weddings and baptisms and hardly ever had to do any funerals. I felt him there, rejoicing in this sweet little new life he would have loved so much. I felt John there, reminding me to soak in each and every day because we never know when that day is going to come when our earthly days have run out. And when the baptizing pastor – Greta’s other Grandpa, Bob – called the church to love her no matter what, to be her community, to be the arms of grace in her day to day life, I felt a sad, fleeting yet full sense of peace. A calling to pay no mind to the demons that fill me with fear, even as I wait and wonder if and when it could possibly all be clear.

Irmgard Bartenieff, one of my favorite movement gurus of all time, repeatedly comes back to breath as the base of all life and hence, all movement. She would remind her students of this…

Movement is change. Breathe. And be ready for change.

So we’ll breathe, in and out, when it seems like that’s all we can do. And we’ll keep moving, somehow. And find our sense of home. And carry along with us the people who have been homes for our souls all along.

See you in Portland. Seriously – please come visit.

Love this.

Oh, why, hello there.

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. In a few weeks, Happy Valentine's Day.

(Goes without saying, haven't had much spare time for blogging these days.)

But holy cow, President Obama was inaugurated for the second time yesterday. Big deal. And since the last inauguration, I now have two siblings who live in D.C. and have been able to partake in the festivities in person - ceremony and prayer services and balls and all. Jealous!

So, two things to say about this momentous occasion.

Michelle Obama is one hot, classy lady. Yes. She. Is. I have such a girl crush on her.

And, secondly, I love this article.

Seriously, this author hits the nail on the head.

I loved this especially:

If Barack Obama says he is a Christian, if he confesses his faith in Christ, that's where the conversation ends. The same is true for George W. Bush, or Franklin D. Roosevelt, or even Mark Driscoll. There is a difference between saying to someone "my understanding of Christian faith is different from yours on this issue" and saying "we don't believe the same thing, so you must not be a Christian." I often disagreed with George W. Bush's actions, and struggled to reconcile them with my understanding of Christian faith, but I refused to speculate on the sincerity of his faith. That's not my place. And I've had it done far too often in my life to turn around and do it to others.

Here's the thing - it's not a secret if you read my blog that I was rooting for Obama, and thrilled when he was re-elected. But candidate preferences aside, one thing I reallllly struggle with is when people who don't support him, his policies, what have you, turn their dislike into an attack on his faith. I struggle with this, as the author writes, primarily because I think that a person's faith is between that individual and God, and it isn't either our right or place to judge the "validity" of this faith. But I also struggle with this because I am driven by my own faith when deciding who I will vote for, and it isn't something I take lightly. References that indicate that Obama "can't" be a Christian because of particular policy decisions inherently hint at the fact that I also cannot support Obama and be a Christ follower.

Check out the article. Cause regardless of who you cast your vote for, it's a legit read.

Snowlump.

Snow day today in Madison - just read that we're at 15 inches and counting!  It just isn't stopping. A enjoyed herself outside this morning, building her first ever snow person (er, snowlump). Here they are together...

Adorableness.

And now you know why I so rarely blog. I'm way too busy soaking up every ounce of this cuteness.

Delicious.

The Great Dane pub is a local favorite here in Madison. Every time I go, I tell myself I won't, but I get the same dish - it's called the Inner Warmth Peanut Stew. It's amazing. And every time, Paul says to me, "we gotta figure out how to make this at home." Today, my friends, I came very close. This amazingly easy crock-pot stew is a little bit of heaven. Enjoy. We certainly did and we will again. (And again and again!)

Spicy African Peanut Slow Cooker Soup

from Peas and Thank You

• 1 14 ounce can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 sweet potato, cubed (I used 2)
• 1 1/2 tsp. curry powder
• 3/4 tsp. garam masala
• 1 tsp. cumin
• 1 tbsp. minced ginger
• 2 tsp. minced garlic
• sweetener to taste (sugar or stevia, although I actually didn't use any)
• dash of cinnamon
• 1 14 ounce can of fire-roasted tomatoes, in juice
• 1 14 ounce can light coconut milk
• 2 cups vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp. natural peanut butter
• 1/2 cup red lentils, drained and rinsed

Combine all ingredients in a crock-pot and set on high for about 1/2 an hour, then switch to low for an additional 3-4 hours. If desired, garnish with chopped cilantro, chopped peanuts or sour cream.

Just Another *Magic* Monday

Mondays can be a wee bit crazy around these parts. They aren't especially long or full days for us, but somehow even the everyday seems harder to accomplish coming off of the weekend. I actually work just a 1/2 day on Mondays, but it's the fullest half day I could imagine, lots happening with two groups that both require a lot of energy and attention. I get the girls dropped off at their in-home daycare, around noon and then I am off - and first on the agenda is teaching my weekly modern dance class to senior adults. Typically, I arrive just a tad bit grouchy and out of sorts, not very successfully having prepared and geared myself up for the drop off into immediately full afternoon transition. But the second we start to move, it's pure magic. This group of people, they are my heroes - all retired, most fairly new to dance - but committed to not wasting away their later years, and rather filling it with things that bring meaning and light to their lives. And dance does just that. Watching their souls light up as they improv nearly brings tears to my eyes. I wrote a little ditty about them in my Spilling group a few weeks ago, and I thought I'd share. (The italicized sections are actually from the writing prompts, quotes from Rumi.)

This being human is a guest house.

Today, I thank you all. For unlocking the door and welcoming me into your arms.

Your soft, swirling, lanky, trusting, awkward, willing, dancing arms.

The soft sun lays a simple pattern on the smooth floor, the little tips of my toes pressing and rooting into all that is there, all true.

I feel you behind me. Watching, opening, enveloping. You are my heroes. Of today and of living.

I find beauty that is beyond me in your fearless thud to the floor, your long - never fully extended but always and forever reaching - arms, your nymph like and sifting legs gliding across the floor. In the lack of trained bodies that unfurl into willing and joyful hearts.

Your open beauty is rare and unknown. There is no desire to be, only a desire to do. To feel. To be in.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

You do what I have longed for, what I continue to long for. The joy of the world and of the dance perches atop your tense, trying fingertips.

There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

So come, come whoever you are. Wanderer, worshipper, loving of leaving - it doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Two Year Old Logic

Happy long, delicious Thanksgiving weekend. Ours is quiet this year, and that is exactly what we need. After a busy fall and a most recent slew of houseguests, we are totally kicking back and enjoy a lovely, quiet, non-shopping filled Black Friday at this very moment. Girlies are napping, Paul's out seeing a movie with a friend, and I just enjoyed the longest shower I've had in months. Can't complain, not at all.

And in a most charming two year old story of late, A has been extra interested, well really since J was born, in this crazy phenomenon of breast feeding. Early on, J was crying and A told me, distraught, "hurry, hurry mama and open up your boobies!" More recently, she's been very interested in my pump, which really she only sees when I am packing up for work. The kid has maybe seen me actually pump one time, but she doesn't miss a beat. Ever. And the other day she announced that her baby needed some milk, and that she would need to immediately "pump my boobies, quick!" We had to set-up the entire get-up, nothing halfway for this girl, and much to her shock and chagrin, milk did not begin pouring from her body upon turning on the pump. How strange. But no worries - she had a solution. She asked me to get her a glass of milk, and simultaneously drank milk with one hand while holding up the pump with the other, offering, "if I fill my belly with milk, then it will come out into the pump." God bless her heart, I was able to distract her and move on to something else before she got too entirely frustrated.

Then, yesterday morning, she told me that she'd need to pump her boobies again. I offered up, "you know A, it's actually much easier if you just feed your baby from your body instead of worrying about the pump." To this she replied, "oh, great!" and went promptly to fetch and nurse her baby. And her stuffed bear. And her stuffed pig.

Between these two girlies, there's been a lot of milk drinking and feeding around these parts lately, folks...