I want to ask you questions and I want to share experiences, only I want to do it in bite-sized forms. I mean, it seems kind of silly to write a whole blog post about how Target’s remodel is throwing off my home-away-from-home shopping experience, and it also seems like petitioning you all regarding “your favorite song to dance and/or run to” won’t actually work from a blog post. You all don’t even know I’m writing this because blogs are—let’s face it–—exciting no longer and hardly anyone checks them. I’m not cut off from communication by any means, but it’s kind of fun to see what new music would be recommended from my childhood friends versus my uncles (who are rocking it at this Facebook thing, fyi).

If you’re reading this, leave a comment with some new music for me, and perhaps you can tell me what genre it is as well. Anything in the last 10 years is considered new to me. Please. Send help! My iTunes albums are a mess of things from college, Jeremy’s classic rock, soundtracks, and seminary classes. I also have old pastoral interviews from years ago when we were looking for a new pastor. Those stir up more than a few emotions when they come on while I’m washing dishes.

It’s crazy how music can affect our moods so greatly. Today I was cutting vegetables for a salad when Philip Philiip’s Gone, Gone, Gone came through my earbuds, and my heart instantly felt a crushing sensation. Tears slipped onto my cheeks as I remembered Livia, Jeremy and I dancing to this music with our two little boys, our foster children for a mere five weeks. These little guys were a really sore bruise on my soul for awhile until I ended up with some information about their family. The soreness has been relieved by knowing that they’re with their mom (that not knowing business is for the birds), but the rush of feelings came back strongly as I remembered how suddenly they left our home.

What happened to them was unfair, and that’s all I can conclude. Their mother was in conversations with caseworkers at the state and once they had enough evidence of neglect to present to a judge they were removed from her care. They lived with a couple who had no children, and no previous fostering experience, and moved to us as they had completely overwhelmed Foster Family #1. We were better prepared to care for two very little boys, and with much fear and trembling said yes to them staying with us. The five weeks here were filled with me learning the ropes of their daycare situation, us taking them to the doctor many times for a variety of illnesses, us getting sick as well, and lots of Dr. Seuss books and bath time games. I envisioned having them stay with us for around a year. They left us to return to mom after five weeks.

What did a preschooler and a toddler learn about life after two months away from their mother in two different homes? What did their mom learn in that time? Why did the judge agree to their removal and then only weeks later return them? I can’t understand it. I also can’t see the bigger picture. How does God see all this and what benefit was it to our hearts and to these sweet little boys’s hearts? Again, I do not know. What I do know is that it has changed me. It has changed me profoundly and I’m not the same woman I was before ___ and ___ came into my life. They have names. They were real and we really loved them. Through weekly prayers and our memories we love them still.

When life leaves you high and dry
I’ll be at your door tonight if you need help, if you need help
I’ll shut down the city lights,
I’ll lie, cheat, I’ll beg and bribe to make you well, to make you well
When enemies are at your door I’ll carry you way from more
If you need help, if you need help
Your hope dangling by a string
Ill share in your suffering to make you well, to make you well

So I would do it for you, for you
Baby I’m not moving on
I love you long after you’re gone
For you, for you
You would never sleep alone
I love you long after you’re gone
And long after you’re gone, gone, gone

**The Christmas-in-July photo shows the ornaments we hang on our tree every year to remember our little guys! We have other ornaments for our first and last foster babies and for the one miscarried Tredway in glory now.

I’m lost in the disorientation of summer time. The sun had been high and bright all day until I slipped under my covers to take a nap, and then the sun, too, slipped under its covers and out came a disorienting afternoon thunderstorm. The sun and I are both up and at ‘em once more, but time seems off-kilter. I move, often motivated by a checklist and a strong sense of duty, but in my shapeless afternoon the checklist seems insignificant. The hours slip by unnoticed, a book in my hand, sounds of music and typing coming from my husband’s office down the hall. My daughter, with her allowed once hour of television per day, has somehow expanded the hour and I can’t muster up concern. She’s two flights below me, engrossed in Star Trek Voyager and I don’t mind. Ah, lazy summer days. My body and brain are receiving a rest that was unasked for but embraced nonetheless.

The rest of today follows the pattern I’ve been feeling in the past several months, and I’ve described it as a lull in life, a “selah” from the Psalms if you will. I’m not sure that the word selah is completely understood, but some think it means to pause or to take a break. Like a little breath, if it’s truly a musical notation. I feel like I’m in a stage of life that is a little uptake of breath, a bit of calm, a period of pausing.

What happens when a duty-bound, responsible, checklist-making woman takes a breath?

I don’t know exactly, but here I am.

Will the world fall apart?
Will I miss out on opportunities?
Will I forget something or, and this is far worse, will someone forget me?
Will I be seen as lazy?
Will I forget to be goal-oriented?
Will I be more content?

Yes. I can answer that last one already. This selah is surrounded by space that breathes of contentedness. I have strived for decades to reach particular goals, and I’ve largely been good at it. So what happens if I’m not immediately in pursuit of something? Can I truly sit here and read a book and then get takeout for dinner and the world will keep spinning on its axis?

Yes to that question, too.

I don’t know how long this break will be, this space of breathing in and out and not always achieving. I don’t know its length but I do know it’s content. Right now it’s making dinner without feeling the pressure of an activity coming right after it. It’s hanging out with my animal-loving kid, carting her from pet-sitting to the zoo and back again. It’s talking with her, and talking with my husband, and watching tv shows together, again without any pressure of significant deadlines. It’s reading a book, finishing it, and picking up another one. It’s reading out loud. It’s listening to podcasts. It’s conversations with friends or family over an iced coffee or a last-minute run to Marshalls.

So for now I march to a different drumbeat that doesn’t feel like a beat at all. Bring on the summer sun, and let the days come.