Category Archives: miracles

rattle my cage: learning what we’re made of when our safe places are shaken

Posted on by December 13, 2024

Snowy gloves pounded the window while the kids played outside. I overheard Vince yell, “We don’t hit windows!” and someone’s answering protest, “I wasn’t hitting, I was knocking!”

And here, friends, is the irony: We survived a 7.2 earthquake with no major structural damage, only to almost lose windows to children beating on them with Gortex mittens.

rattle my cage: learning what we're made of when our safe places are shaken

Local schools shut down for a while from all the damage, but the earthquake happened on a Friday morning and our homeschooled kids fretted all day about finishing their assignments for the week. I tried to talk to them about priorities – we were all alive, people were working to get the power back on, and everyone we knew was safe. As we waded through debris I kept telling them, for crying out loud, earthquakes are educational – you might forget half the stuff you read last week, but you’ll never forget living through this. You never forget learning that your shelters and safe places can be shaken.

I’ll never forget the feeling of being sifted as the house shook east-west, hearing the ground rumble and the walls rattle and glass and pottery shattering everywhere. I’ll never forget jumping out of bed, racing upstairs to find five of the kids on their beds, then running back down two flights of stairs to check on the other two kids, only one of whom was there. I have no idea how I made it up and down all the stairs while nine months pregnant and the house was still shaking. I’ll never forget seeing the entire west wall of library shelving slanted across the room, books smeared knee-high and spilling across stairs and entryway, and wondering if a cat was buried underneath.

We found the cats, all safe, all hiding under the kids’ beds. We found the kid who was missing; he ran outside when the shaking started. And we found the toilet upstairs, our only significant damage, cracked off its bolts on the tile floor — though the antique mirror and framed prints in the same bathroom were still hanging on the walls, just fine.

Early labor (which can last for weeks) started here around the same time as the earthquake. And it’s weird going into labor as aftershocks diminish; it’s like the earthquake in reverse. Contractions increase in intensity to the final, long-expected big event, while the earthquake shocked us in its suddenness and then decrescendoed to these little shakers that we mostly don’t even feel anymore.

Just in time, we officially decided on spelling Kavanagh with no U, in spite of the overwhelming results in our highly scientific polls on social media.  I almost had it – with a U, I mean – arguing with Vince that this isn’t the first baby we’ve given a last name as a first name to, and we didn’t arbitrarily remove vowels for Chamberlain or Reagan just because they seemed extraneous. And since the man is already familiar with Google, Wiki, and Justice Kavanaugh, I went to the next highest authority on the name I could think of: The Mitford series.

It’s the main character’s last name, and I thought, This will prove the spelling without a doubt, no contest. I’ve read this series all the way through twice – once when Vincent was a baby and again when I was pregnant with Afton – and then blew through some of the books again this year as comfort reading during the gruesome months of morning sickness. I know these stories and characters; this series remains the only modern fiction that I truly love.

So I grabbed one of the books off the shelf, confident of winning my case. Turned the pages. Skimmed the lines. Looked for it…hold on just a minute…lo and behold:

Kavanagh. No U.

WHAT.

Well, I’ll be et fer a tater.

I wanted to put more effort into walking him out in those weeks of early labor but a round-ligament-snappy-action prevented it, in league with a hip socket on strike that kept sending me in a slow melt to the floor without warning. (Yay forties!) So instead of causing alarming scenes in public, I made myself useful by staying home for two weeks and making pitiful requests to people around me: Can you bring me water? Can I have the orange yarn and the blue tape measure? Can you put on my socks?

Vin came over, picked up the pair of socks I brought with me, and briefly inspected them before he threw one of them back on the couch and started putting the other one on my foot.

“What, you don’t like that other sock?” I asked him.

“It’s the wrong one,” he answered, wrestling this one up my ankle, angling the heel just right and straightening the toes.

I know where he’s going with this; it’s one of our oldest arguments. For 22 years, since our college days when we first shacked up in Anchorage, he’s tried to convince me that Socks Are Not Interchangeable. Socks, he says, go on certain feet.

“See?” He holds the other one up. “The big toe is longer on this one, so it goes on this foot.” He commences wrestling that one, too, and I can see that he’s sort of, kind of, maybe a little bit right, though I’d never admit it to his face.

But this neediness and confinement also shook my safe places. I know labor and birth; this is our sixth delivery. We like to think that experience prepares us for what to expect. And sometimes it does.

But other times, it deceives us – not because our expectations are wrong, but because, however much it is, our experience still isn’t enough. Our expectations might not be big enough. Our endeavors might be too safe, or our safe places might be too small. Our priorities might be too narrow, focused on marking tasks off our lists and missing the fact that we can do truly hard things; we can live through and thrive in far more than we give ourselves credit for.

God has been preparing us for familiarity to take a flying leap for a long time. Last Christmas, when we didn’t know where He was sending us, He said, When you find yourself where you never thought you’d be, I’m positioning you for something you never could have planned. He kept saying, It’s a surprise, Love. Sometimes the surprise starts off with a shaking.

And then in April when we knew big changes were ahead but didn’t know Kavanagh was one of them, He said, You know how to do this, you’ve done it before. You’ve just never seen it like this. And we’ve been trying to roll with all of the surprises ever since.

So at 3am one morning, when early labor suddenly looked less like aftershocks and more like the big event, and the prospect of waking seven kids up to go to two different places in the middle of the night seemed so much harder than just having a friend come over and letting everyone else sleep, we rolled with that, too. After months of planning on a homebirth at the lighthouse, we threw out that plan and drove to the birth center in the wee hours of the morning. Just like we did for our last two babies.

The highway was snowy, the sky was dark; the midwives had the tub running when we got there because they knew how fast it went last time. And they knew the story of the one kid who was supposed to be a waterbirth but ended up being delivered on the bed while the tub was still filling, before the assistant arrived.

That, too, was the end of familiarity, because no matter how many times you’ve done this or what patterns you’ve come to expect, there’s no guarantee you won’t get your cage rattled. And I did. All our birth experiences have gotten easier and faster, except this one.

And “labor” doesn’t come close to expressing the amount of work and travail put into birthing a human…or anything else. We use the word so much that it has lost its impact as we gloss over the clawing, writhing pain of turning yourself inside out to do the work of bringing something (or someone) into the world.

The heat was terrible. She felt scorched to the bone, but it did not touch her strength. It grew hotter and hotter. She said, “I can bear it no longer.” Yet she went on.

– George MacDonald, The Golden Key

He is our stability, with us, among us, upon us in the heat and the friction and the shaking, regardless of what everything looks like around us or feels like within us.

After twenty-three hours of off-and-on that eventually progressed to hours of hard labor, we met the one we’ve been waiting for. And he is so worth it.

So often we give up on opportunity or calling because we think, I could never do that. That is for other people, stronger people, bigger people, people who are different from me. But what we really mean is, I don’t want my world to be shaken. Our excuse is our inadequacy but what really stops us is fear, or laziness, or a combination of the two.

Because labor is work, and shaking, and life-changing. We pooh-pooh ourselves while putting those who do bigger, harder things on a pedestal, while God wants us to see what we are really made of. We want a simple to-do list, a school chart of basic assignments to check off. But God calls many of us to the earthquake and the aftermath, saying, Hey Love, you have no idea what you’re capable of.

You’ll never forget living through this.

______

Need more encouragement like this? Sign up here to get new posts, right to your inbox.

overtaken: what happens when we let go in surrender

Posted on by October 17, 2022

I didn’t know exactly where to put among non-fiction categories; it’s equal parts memoir, devotional, parenting, and snark. But it’s 100% lifeblood, poured out in manuscript form.

Vin quit his job in May after two months of revelation, preparation and planning. Three days before his last day at work we found out we were pregnant with our eighth kiddo, and there was no going back.

overtaken: what happens when we let go in surrender

The manna ceased. Stopped. All done, finis. There was no going back, no back-up plan – the water was rushing in the Jordan River behind them, and in front of them was a fortified city to conquer. In between, they were all in.

And this is where we’ve lived for the last five months. Learning publishing, distribution, formatting, cover design, formatting, even blankety-blank page numbers. Doing the homeschooling, ministry, morning sickness, home repairs, research, the whole shebang, all the stuff, any seventy hours of the week we want. We’ve been living the dream, but the dream is a ton of work.

We’ve swung up and down the spectrum of, “Oh, God, how can we do this?” to “Oh my word, I think it’s working!” and back again to “I have no idea what to do and I hate this part.” YouTube tutorials were made for such a time as this.

Maybe if the manna had kept coming, some of them might have thought to go back to the river, hoping that God would hold back the water again and let them return. But no, this was a sharp knife, cutting off any hesitation to obey – no manna meant they were invested, they were staying, and the only direction they were going was forward.

And my life needs this. A commitment I need to let go of, an unhealthy relationship that needs firm boundaries, that threshold I need to walk through: I’ve been using the blunt edge of a knife to whack at them every once in a while, but those things have been on the cutting board for a long time. Probably way too long, and we’re not getting anywhere.

Turn it over, He tells me. And I squirm a little about it, but He’s right there, saying, Don’t hesitate to obey, Love. You are invested, you are staying, the only direction you’re going is forward.

Before we were able to turn it over full time, we turned it over in weeks at a time, whenever Vince could take a chunk of time off work long enough to make some progress forward.

Vince took two weeks off so I could work on a special project while he homeschooled the kids. I cloistered upstairs in the Thinkery – just a small table by a window, covered in books, papers, a laptop, and a full pot of chai tea containing about 10 cups of caffeinated goodness.

This particular project was part of Vince and Shannon’s Christmas List that we wrote in the fall, and completing it directly related to obeying Him with the sharp knife and stepping through the threshold. But I’d been putting it off for over a year, and God sat me down for a talk.

He told me He had something wonderful for me if I would just hold out my hands and accept it. The problem was I was already holding onto something else, and I didn’t want to let go.

And He was patient with me – because He is like that – and He said, Whenever you’re ready for it, Love. But how long do you really want to wait for Me to bless you with this?

I realized I was being an idiot and stopped dragging my feet. I let go, grabbed hold, and hung on.

– Oh My Soul

Oh My Soul proof

I’ve learned since then that letting go happens in phases. He was preparing us then for what He offered last spring – and the letting go we did last spring was the sharp knife preparing us for whatever is ahead.

Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” And he’s right, though I recently read a book where the author trashed Hemingway because he misunderstood, thinking he was saying that writing is easy (sarcasm is totally lost on some people). He proceeded to argue for the same thing Hemingway actually meant, making it obvious that not only did he miss the point, but he rehashed it with more bumbling and less power.

Maybe he could’ve said it better if he’d bled more. Because rattling off a ton of words is one thing, but pouring out your lifeblood onto paper (or screen) for the world to see, judge, and interpret, well…there’s nothing easy about that.

But it’s good.

I went through some old journal entries last week, and came across this one that had been flagged with a yellow sticky note since I wrote it back in July of 2017:

And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God.

– Deuteronomy 28:2, ESV

Overtake. As in, catch up to you from behind, and go ahead of you. Those things you’ve striven for without seeing fruit – those blessings will catch up and go farther than you expect when you are faithful to obey.

I just laid Finn down for his nap, pulling the door shut behind me so the light wouldn’t wake him up. I watched his fluffy blond head disappear in the darkness and I covered him with his blanket.

And I knew he was there though I couldn’t see him.

I touched his forehead in the blackness and he was just as real as when the door was open and the light spilled in.

And God said, Those things you can’t see, that fruit you’ve been praying for, is just as real as Finnegan. The healing for your kids. The healing in your hearts. The writing career, the new home with space for kids who need it, having Vince home and doing work and ministry together – it’s just as real, even though you haven’t seen it yet. It’s just as real as this baby sleeping in his dark room. You can touch him and prove to yourself that what your eyes can’t see is still real.

Keep praying for what you can’t see, He said. Soon the light will come on and you’ll be amazed with what’s been there all along, waiting to emerge with vivid color and beauty.

And now we do see it – or, most of it, at least. Six months after I wrote that, we moved into the Lighthouse, two months later we found out Vince could quit his job to write full time, and as of this week, we’ve each published one of those books that spent years on the back burner. We’re seeing glimpses of healing and growth in our kids who desperately need it. We are working together, and last month we also started doing ministry together in ways we never expected.

It doesn’t look like what we dreamed of, or even what we planned for. And no, it doesn’t look opulent or magazine-perfect – but it looks like He’s had His hand upon us in ways that we never realized.

It looks like the threshold He asked us about several years ago.

A couple of weeks ago I was in the beginning of Acts, and read this:

He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

– Acts 1:7-8, ESV

And then I wrote about it on social media and heard God clearly say, “Do you want the plan? Or do you want power?” 

I have so badly wanted to know the times and seasons – but I am learning to bleed in surrender. When I don’t, I bumble over too many of my own words and miss the point in my efforts to control the blessing. And there’s nothing wrong with planning or preparing when it’s anchored in surrender – but He’s teaching me that, if given the choice between knowing the plan or having the power, I want power every time.

And that’s nothing to be ashamed of or shy about, because when we choose surrender over control, it’s what He wants for us, too.

______

Oh My Soul: Encountering God in Honest, Unconventional (and Sometimes Messy) Prayer is now available here on our site and everywhere books are sold.

losing no time: how we make up for past choices

Posted on by September 27, 2023

The days are long, but the summers around here are short and this one is gone. We were a month late in planting the garden this spring because of morning sickness and all sorts of I-couldn’t-even, so here in the middle of September we finally have zucchini blossoms galore…and three miniscule zucchinis, smaller than my pinky finger.

losing no time: how we make up for past choices

Did we miss out on the growing season? Yes, and no. We did what we could. There’s always next year. And we grew plenty, just not veggies.

My belly is growing. People seem skeptical when I tell them Kavanagh’s not due until December – the other day I almost knocked myself over just trying to put my socks on while standing up.

Oh My Soul, the book I started four or five years ago and spent the last four or five months finishing, launches October 16th. The Kindle edition just came available for preorder, and the paperback and hardback should follow next week.

(And now it makes sense that so many people teased us about having twins earlier in the summer because, yes, all these babies – it’s just that some of these babies were books.)

We’re ordering school materials, and to Chamberlain’s delight she discovered only three assignments left in her math book and I completely forgot to order the next level, leaving her math-less for a minimum of three weeks until the next ones ship up here. But I made a quick phone call to our umbrella school, and to my delight, we discovered they had an entire set on hand and we won’t miss a beat. Sorry, kiddo.

So much of what we do is not on an academic plan. Reagan’s language arts involves reading story books and picture books, and I document that it’s for “learning sentence structure and speaking in full sentences” but it’s also for understanding the relationships between birds and trees and seasons, how people interact with each other, and constant repetition of simple concepts we take for granted that fall through the holes in her memory.

Andrey has art on his curriculum, and the materials include cross stitch – not because he loves it (though he doesn’t hate it), but because it is good practice at following instructions and obeying, and gives an almost immediate reward or consequence for whether or not he does so. Botched string and knots to untangle are a remarkable illustration of not following directions; clean stitches that match the picture are clear rewards for obeying.

A few nights ago we talked with a new friend who worries that certain choices he made before he was following Jesus were the wrong ones – and he wasn’t talking about the easy, cut-and-dry kinds of choices. These were the kind with no obvious answer, the kind that people still struggle with even after surrendering to Jesus. They were the kind that force us to lean in hard and listen close, and even after the choice is made we wonder what would’ve happened if we’d chosen differently.

Did he miss out on the growing season? Yes, and no. He didn’t have the intimacy with God to move forward confidently when he had to make the call. But is he growing in that intimacy now, and losing no time in his forward progress? Sure looks like it.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

– Psalm 32:1-2, ESV

God is above time, and yet still in time, and on time, and never wasting time. He knows our weakness and where we’ve dug in our heels against correction, and where we’ve been moldable and allowed Him to move us. He’s not a parent like me, looking at a child still dealing with the same stuff from years ago and shaking my head, desperately wanting to say, If you had dealt with this earlier instead of shoving it under the rug – which has long outgrown the ability to hide the pile of detritus underneath it – you wouldn’t be dealing with it now, and the last several years would’ve been more pleasant for yourself, and for all of us.

I’ve been in Psalms. It’s a long book, I’m only forty-some chapters in out of 150, so I’ll be here a while. But last week I was in Psalm 32, and I keep going back to it.

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long. (verse 3)

For when I pushed things under the rug and refused to deal with my issues, refused to repent, to apologize, to make amends, to acknowledge the truth of my actions, I diminished into an ever-shrinking ball until sparks shot out of me from the friction of my choices.

And I’ve been here, too; I’ve dug in my heels and been the stubbornest of sinners. Maturity isn’t shown by perfection, but by the ability to recognize sin and turn from it earlier than we were willing to before.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. (verse 4)

He wouldn’t let me get away with it; He loved me too much to leave me shrinking and imploding. He held my feet to His fire, and when I burned myself with my own behavior He gave me reason to move. And now as parents, He’s teaching us to hold our kids’ feet to the fire, too.

I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. (verse 5)

The pain forced me to admit reality. When I confessed and repented of the ways that had never worked for me, His light broke through and irrigated the stench of infection. Fear, doubt, shame, despair, vanished when I agreed with Him.

Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him. (verse 6)

We don’t have to drown in the fire of our choices; we can yield to His presence before we’re in over our heads. He pulls us out when we admit our need for Him and our inability to save ourselves.

There is no shame in the turning, only in our insistence to keep drowning – to stay tied to the millstone while sinking, to stay behind the gravestone He wants to move out of our way.

Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”  

Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

– John 11:38-40, ESV

Martha is just like us. We look at our hard hearts, our hard situations, our hard children, and we ask, Do You not know how impossible this is?

Don’t you know that we’re out of time?

Are You not aware of how deep this hole is that we’ve dug for ourselves?

Do you not see how his heart is like that stone?

Do You not know that her brain was repeatedly blanched with alcohol while she was in utero and the damage to her memory, speech, cognition, and intellectual and social maturity are said to be incurable?

And He answers, Have you heard of what I can do with stones?

Did you forget that I am above time, outside of time, but never out of time?

Do you not yet know that I’m in the business of doing the impossible?

In spite of everything in her past and every diagnosis against her, Reagan is learning to read.

You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance.

– Psalm 32:7, ESV

He is the shelter, the Savior, and the celebration. And He tells us, Hey Love, the impossible is what I do.

_____________________

Sign up here for new posts, right to your inbox.