bricks without straw: the struggle that leads to freedom

Posted on by June 21, 2023

You wouldn’t think gardening could make you that sore. You pull out seed packets, you put seeds in the dirt, you water.

But no, it’s not that simple because you actually have to move a lot of that dirt and water. Pots go here, pots go there. All the pots need filled with dirt and then you realize, Wait, that spot looks funny. So you go back to rearranging.

A bench is in the way, in the prime real estate of the porch’s sunny south side. You try moving it but no, BIG nope, that’s going to hurt tomorrow. So your husband comes and together you pivot (“PIVOT!” yes, I was thinking that, too) to the other side of the deck. Ahhh, done.

But no, not so fast, because there’s that empty space where the bench was, and you still need to put pots there. Drat.

And that’s how it goes.

bricks without straw: the struggle that leads to freedom

That night in the shower as I scrubbed the dirt off my feet I found a particularly dark spot under all of it, and rubbed at it. Ew, a blister? No, different texture, not rubbing off. Kind of gummy. Ah, tree sap. Gross.

This is how we cultivate life: Hands in the dirt, doing the work, asking for help, making a lot of turns and finding new perspectives, feeling the burn and ache of too much movement when we try too much on our own, and in the end, we still have to trust God for the harvest because we don’t control the weather or what goes on underground. And even if we fence what we can, there are still other critters out there who want to steal the harvest.

(Peter Rabbit, I’m looking at you.)

It’s raining so we are doing inside-the-house things, and I tried something new today: recording audio downstairs. It’s still empty where Iree moved out; we haven’t rearranged rooms yet, and I thought it would be quieter in the basement. Less traffic, less airplane noise.

WHAT WAS I THINKING.

Quail roosters crowing in the bathroom overhead. The furnace and water softener kicking on. And then, so help me, someone flushed the toilet.

(“…John seventeen says, All mine are yours, and–” BA-WOOSH, gurglegurgle pflalbghghghrrr…)

The new quail are almost fully grown, so they will quiet down soon. Our oldest son came over the other day and asked why the males crow so much, and I told him it’s because they feel safe – they can make noise because they know they’re not in danger. When they go outside, they don’t crow as much.

And, well…when they’re in the freezer, they’re absolutely silent.

We make more noise and move more freely when we feel safe, too. We try new things, have room for mistakes, we try again, and get better. We tend to ask for help from people we trust and we get comfortable with the tasks we do over and over again.

And then something changes suddenly: A financial challenge, or a health issue, or a move, or a basic routine gets rearranged, and we’re like…Ugh, now I have to figure this out all over again.

I like (no, love – like, looooove) routines and predictability. I prefer flexible structure with just enough variety to keep life interesting. I like reading new books but I want to choose which ones they are. I want to learn new things, but do it on my own timeline and with my own curriculum.

And to some extent the Lord allows it, but the last few several dozen years have brought plenty of surprises to keep us on our toes and on our knees, trusting Him for what we needed as life shifted under and around us. We haven’t wanted to learn certain things that He’s put in our way. I was happy with the worn trails I was used to, where I knew all the turns and risings and places where you had to step over tree roots that crept onto the path.

But He is constantly forcing us to branch out into new territory. There have been so many times I felt suddenly lost in unfamiliar ground, unsure of how to go on, or how to do what He was calling us to. I have often felt like we were making bricks without straw, and we are there again in this season.

So I’m reading Exodus 5, where the Israelites really had to make bricks without straw.

Or, not without straw, but it was no longer just given to them. They had to go find it themselves. It was punishment from Pharoah – and not just punishment, but it came as a result of Moses obeying God and telling Pharoah to let the Israelites go.

Let’s go back a little bit, because this is often our life, too:

Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the people of Israel. Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.

– Exodus 4:29-31

Then Moses and Aaron went to Pharoah, gave him the message, and he said, No, BIG nope, you’ve clearly got too much time on your hands. Let’s make things more difficult for you.

So, to sum up:

We hear God, we do what He says, we feel hopeful about the future, and wham, the hammer drops. THANKS A LOT.

Is this life, though? We try new things in obedience and they don’t seem to work out. Or they get harder, or the circumstances become worse, or the whole situation reveals itself to be more complicated than you realized in the beginning, and if you knew how complicated it was going to be you wouldn’t have taken it on in the first place and that’s probably why God didn’t tell you…because he was protecting you from disobedience.

But maybe things are working out…they’re just still working out.

Because here’s the part of this story that struck me:

[Pharoah said] “Go and get your straw yourselves wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced in the least.” So the people were scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw.

– Exodus 5:11-12

They still had what they needed; it just wasn’t handed to them anymore. Suddenly they had the freedom to find it for themselves. The middle man was eliminated. They could get the straw on their own without the process being controlled by someone else. And that’s significant, because straw comes from grain, which is food for them and their livestock.

Yes, it was more work. Yes, it seemed impossible. No, they would never have done it if they hadn’t been forced to. But do you see what happened here?

The Lord is preparing them to be delivered. They are forced to be resourceful. They have to get to know the land around them.

Because the Exodus is coming.

How many things have you done in the last year or so that you never would’ve taken on if you didn’t feel compelled to? I can think of a zillion things – well, at least seven – that I could’ve easily left on my “someday” list. (Or, honestly? My “never in million years” list.)

For example, I love the chickens, but I probably wouldn’t have chosen to have two coops full of them. And the quail? No way. Also, I never would’ve pursued several business skills we’ve had to figure out and push through. And there are so many things I’ve learned about our government and systemic corruption and history that I was happier not knowing.

But the Lord has continued to say, Dig deeper. Look further. Try this. Get ready for that. Read about this. You need to know the land. This is a time to run faster than you think you can – and trust Me, you’ll be glad you did.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

– 1 John 4:18

When obedience leads to more work, it feels like punishment because we aren’t seeing the promise on the other side of it yet. But the ache and the curveball and the new endeavors aren’t punishment; they’re growing strength. It’s upgrade.

It’s actually preparation for promotion, because God is getting us ready for freedom.

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if you need a break: a kindling post

Posted on by June 13, 2023

I had a dream once where I was speaking to an adoptive mom. I asked about her story and how she was doing, and she tried a few times to speak but finally she just cried.

And I looked at her and said, “You probably need a break.”

if you need a break: a kindling post

It is a word for so many of us. You’ve been going and going, pushing through pain and discouragement and impossible situations, and you are so weary you don’t even have words for it.

You probably need a break, too.

And you might be like, Duh, of course I need a break. If I knew how to take a break I would do it. But do you know my life? There’s no break, no slowing down. No reprieve, no respite, no money, no vacation time.

I get it. Believe me. The need to take a break can feel like one more burden, one more impossible task that you’re failing at and unable to accomplish.

So, here’s the word: The break we need isn’t ours to achieve or figure out. It’s His to do for us.

I am learning that our role in the break — our breaking — is the surrender of the belief that we can and should be able to do everything. I have ran into the wall so many times, feeling like a failure over things I was never supposed to do or control or be responsible for in the first place.

Other people’s choices. The sale of our books. Our kids’ behavior. How people see me. So many things.

Here’s what He’s telling me over and over:

Obedience is doing what He’s told me to do. Surrender is trusting Him with what only He can do.

And it is a breaking of my pride and sense of accomplishment. It’s a good breaking, though.

So maybe you need that kind of a break. Some respite or a vacation would be a good break, too — but that is also His job, and we can surrender to it.

I’ve told you this before: The yarn does nothing on its own. It has to yield to the hands of a maker.

But I’ve been wrestling and relearning and going deeper with this lately: We abide, but He does the work. We seek the Kingdom, but He does the work. We obey in what He calls us to, but He does the work.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

— Matthew 6:33

It’s all Him — but also, it’s us…but it’s Him!…but it’s also us.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

— John 15:4-5

We connect with Him, and we bear fruit, but only because of the Vine. All glory and honor go to Him, but He lets us not only “seek for glory and honor and immortality” but He also lets us have them when we carry the light yoke and yield to His work in and through us.

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

— Revelation 4:11

He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.

— Romans 2:6-10

It’s us but Him but us, with Him.

All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

— John 17:10-11

Jesus, free us from fear and anxiety as we walk in the tension of doing and trusting, seeking and surrendering. Protect us from worries, feelings of not-enough, rejection, trauma, insecurities, compulsions or tics, shame, regret, unforgiveness of ourselves or anyone else. All those things go now, in Jesus’ name, and do not come back.

Help us do the work to keep those things gone. You do the work, but help us maintain it by keeping our “temple” clean and inhospitable to the enemy’s attacks. We choose forgiveness. We renew our mind and read the Word. We examine our thoughts and reject those that don’t line up with truth, instead of letting anything and everything that flies into our mind take root.

We pray for Your peace and freedom tonight in waves, for more encouragement than we thought we could experience in areas we’ve been struggling in. We pray for that peace and encouragement and hope in a way that feels solid, steady, growing, something we can grasp onto and not let go of.

Give us all the holy stubbornness we need to be steadfast in the mission You’ve called us to.

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

— Hebrews 13:20-21

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hatch: thoughts from an emptying nest

Posted on by May 26, 2023

I’m trying to read my notes for you here but there’s melted chocolate on them and I don’t really regret it.

May has been filled with milestones and the month isn’t over yet. We have a boy who left for the summer to go commercial fishing and we won’t see him until September, and we have a girl who is moving out next week. Our home is shrinking, but not really – more like deflating, while my mama heart heaves and contracts in a season that feels blurry with movement and change.

hatch: thoughts from an emptying nest

All these milestones for each kid are major accomplishments in motherhood: The birth, the adoption, breastfeeding, potty training. Learning to read, learning to drive, learning a million things in between.

The nest is emptying, but still pretty full here; even after eight kids, five is no small thing. I threatened to pull over and spank boys who were misbehaving in the back of the Stagecoach last week, so my Mom Bingo Card is filling out nicely for the month and in no danger of being revoked due to inactivity.

Iree plays Nuvole Bianche on the piano and it has been the soundtrack of this season, the background music of these days until she moves out. I love this song; there’s a part in it that sounds like horses running that makes my heart pound even as I put away dishes and wipe the counters for the eighth time, pouring grief into the motions of the dishcloth.

“You’re sure you’ll get along, Mother?”

“Why, of course I’ll get along.” Abbie was outwardly calm and confident, while all the time there was that queer sensation of a wind rushing by – a wind she could not stop – Time going by which she could not stay. Oh, stop the clock hands!

– Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

Before Afton left for fish camp, we hatched quail. It was our third round of quail chicks but our second go at incubating, and as we waited for them to hatch I thought of all the things I might’ve done wrong: the temperature might’ve been off because the cheap thermometers were inconsistent, the heat wasn’t steady the first night, and I didn’t mist the eggs on day 15 like I was supposed to.

What if none of them hatch? I thought. What if it was a waste of time, and resources, and worse – what if I’m just not good at this? It works for some people, sure, but what if I’m just bad at it?

It’s like waiting for breakthrough in anything else. Hold on, let me overthink this for a while, I can come up with a million possibilities of how I could’ve screwed this up and why I might not deserve the success I was hoping for. Stand by. I’ll justify it, it’s okay – I mean, it’s not okay, but I want my heart to be okay with it not being okay because I don’t know what else to do with so much disappointment and I don’t have any other answers for why this isn’t working out.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, and all day we waited for those chicks to hatch, but they didn’t.

But I was a day early. The night we got the incubator going, the temperature wasn’t high enough until after midnight – and I forgot to adjust the hatch date to reflect it. So really, I was looking for breakthrough a day ahead of schedule and frustrating myself needlessly.

They finally did start hatching and the incubator rapidly filled with broken bits of eggshell, confetti everywhere. After two days we had nineteen tiny chicks. They walk on folded toes at first from being curled up so long and it looks alarming, but as they walk it out, their toes straighten. Enthusiastic little buddies, fast and fluffy after just hours of seniority, climb all over the panting newcomers, forcing them to roll and stand up to protect themselves. And the conflict is good for them; their bones need the exercise and it sets their skeletal alignment correctly.

We waited a little over 24 hours after the last chicks hatched before turning off the incubator and giving up on the remaining eggs. One chick had died, which is super common and has happened all three times we’ve had quail chicks, and we were down to eighteen. It wasn’t a great hatch rate but we suspected a lot of the eggs were infertile because one of our roosters got injured shortly before we started collecting eggs. So Afton went to clean out the incubator and, lo and behold – there was one more tiny chick, just hatched, still damp, a little piece of eggshell confetti still stuck to its back.

I scooped him up and he was so cold. How he was alive, two days after all the others hatched? How did he have the strength to break out of his hard shell when he was so cold, so late, and the incubator had no humidity left?

But there he was, damp and wriggling in my hand. I immediately held him under the heat lamp to warm him up while Cham found a little box for him.

I wish I had taken pictures for you as he laid there in it, breathing and lolling, trying to get his feet under him. I wanted to but I was afraid; I didn’t think he would make it and I didn’t want another reminder of grief.

Alone in the box he warmed up but he had nothing to climb on to strengthen his neck and get the upright posture he needed. His head bobbled back and forth and his legs skidded on the paper towel, trying to get a grip but rapidly splaying out sideways. Their bones are still malleable, so the longer they do this, the more they set badly and that means the death of a chick because if they cannot walk, they cannot eat or drink. They need conflict and pressure to get strong. They need to develop the right posture so they can stand and walk.

So since he didn’t have it, we created the pressure for him and wrapped him in a paper towel in a tiny cup. We had to do this with a chick from our previous hatch, too, and it works – it keeps their legs under them instead of going out at right angles, and since they want to see out of the cup, they use those tinytinytiny muscles to stand and push themselves up. Their toes start to straighten from the effort, and their necks strain forward to see.

(Why am I going on and on about quail? Because I don’t want to think about our last few days with Afton; I don’t want to think about how he ran out of time to clean out the incubator, or how Mother’s Day was awkward and filled with grief, or how empty his room looks with everything packed up and him not in it, or how Iree’s room will look in a week. So, quail…quail are safe.)

After a few hours in his own box, with the right posture, Afton reported that the little guy was trying to jump out to be with the others. And that’s another thing about quail, they don’t like being alone – as much as they pick at and aggravate each other, they want to be with their buddies. So we let him out and he ran around with the others, several sizes smaller than all the rest, but perfectly flappy and happy.

A couple days later was Mother’s Day, and Afton flew to Kodiak the next day. I wish I had taken pictures of Mother’s Day, or of him before I left. But I was crying and didn’t want that reminder of grief, either.

When we let go of control, surrendering our normal ways of doing things and letting Him nudge us (or bodyslam us, as the case may be) into doing something different, things start to feel a little loosey goosey. We are agreeing to a fast, of sorts, as we relinquish the way life used to be, and we gain the perspective that comes with fasting because we start to figure out new ways of doing things.

Our kids will find new ways of doing things. And we will, too.

Kavanagh is looking at sea glass and shells, asking where some of them came from and if you can hear the ocean in others. The glass is like us; sharp and broken until we’re worn soft from the tide moving in and out, billowing over us, crushing us against each other. We rub the sharp edges of ourselves against each other, and we no longer fit perfectly together all the time. We need the mortar of time and space between.

We have two hens, Molly and Toughie, sitting on nests of eggs that will hatch soon – Molly’s are due this weekend – and life is plenty full with the activity of new endeavors and milestones.

And Iree is playing that song again, and I stare at the keyboard, letters blurring.

“Good-by, dear!” Oh, stop the clock hands!….Stop Time for a while – until she could think –!

“Oh, Mother, do you think I ought to go?”

“Of course you ought to go.” Head up, Abbie was smiling….

Abbie waved and smiled – waved and smiled – as long as they were in sight. Then she turned and ran blindly into her bedroom and shut the door. And, whether she has driven away in a lumber-wagon or a limousine, the mother whose daughter has left her for the first time, will understand why Abbie Deal ran blindly into her bedroom and shut the door.

– Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

A friend of mine in this same season, texted me the other day and said, “Our family feels so small. And our house feels so big.” She’s right, both are true. We have bedrooms to rearrange, and kids vying for empty spaces. And when Iree moves in a week, I’ll try to take photos… but then again, I might not.