I was drawn to an article this morning: How Celibate Gay Christians Deal With Desire. On Yahoo, of all places. Forget the tabloid fodder, the articles about celebrities or the internet-sensations with dancing cats or crying toddlers. This is what I read while drinking my (third or fourth cup of) morning coffee.

It’s the sort of article that always draws me in, which might seem odd. Me, a lifelong church-goer, a Christian college graduate, a Sunday School teacher, a mother of four, a woman approaching her mid-thirties who has had but one man her whole life, who has never struggled with sexual identity, a happily-married-ever-after sort of woman.

Still. This article (and others like it) speaks to me, because of the words my heart reads in red, not Celibate, not Gay, but: How Christians Deal With Desire. 

And there you see? That’s me.

It might be you too. If I may, How Humans Deal With Desire.

Look, there you are too. Human, like me.

And as a human, as a woman who was raised in a culture of girl-power and who was told to not define myself or my limitations by my gender – I have to ask, why do we so fiercely see the need to identify ourselves by our sexuality at all?

This isn’t a blog for or against anyone or anything. I am not writing this to spark a debate or to take a stand anywhere, I’m just drinking my coffee and thinking aloud, this:

As humans, aren’t we more than who we want to sleep with? I mean, really, aren’t we all at least a little more interesting and purposeful than that? Aren’t we all walking mosaics, each piece, just that, a piece, working toward the creation of the whole?

As a Christian, I choose to believe that I am more than the desires of this body, these bones and muscles and skin, all destined for dirt. This is not me.

I believe I am made for more. You are too.

And I believe that I ought to always see others as more than their human frailties as well.

“Their Christian identities are incredibly important to them, and they would be deeply unhappy if they felt they were compromising those identities,” she said.

It’s the last line of the article, referring to these Side B Christians (who choose to come out as gay, but live celibate lives.) It’s the most important, most convicting line for me. It begs the question, how am I doing at placing my identity where it belongs, how am I at living a life that does not compromise my identity in Christ?

“Every day, Allen wakes up and looks around, and he sees guys he wants to have sex with — and he doesn’t have sex with them because he’s following Jesus,” the male administrator said. “And every day, I wake up, and I see girls I want to have sex with — and I don’t have sex with them because I’m following Jesus. So, we’re both not getting any because we’re following Jesus.”

That could just as easily be replaced with “Every day, Melanie wakes up and has a hundred sinful choices/thoughts/desires before her – but she doesn’t act on them, because she’s following Jesus.”

Or, so I would hope (but in all honestly, I would have failed, more than once. Ever thankful for grace.)

What would be even better:

Every day, Melanie wakes up and desires to be devoted to others in love, helping, honoring, and lifting them up above herself, because she’s following Jesus.

Not there yet. But that will do for a new morning prayer.

Sometimes, your four year old helps make his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, smeared with enough jelly to make a half dozen PB&Js.

Sometimes, the same two year old, fresh from her post-Splenda Blizzard bath, dips her fingers directly into the jelly jar and you realize you’re thankful that you hadn’t yet drained that bath water.

Sometimes, you wander around the war zone of your home and realize that at any moment you could be starring on a reality TV series (unfortunately, one that would air with a promo more along the lines of “Mommy’s Going to Snap!” than “Super Mom Accomplishes It All!”)

Sometimes, you spend forty-five minutes sweeping and scrubbing that sticky kitchen table and floor.

Sometimes, you choose instead to sit and have coffee and stare at it, wondering how you got here. (And you wonder, honestly wonder, if you’re doing a good enough job to get everyone, yourself included, out of the house happy, healthy and mentally well-adjusted enough to face the world as adults in a little over a decade.)

But then, sometimes, you realize your oldest daughter is wearing her new favorite shirt, because it reminds her of you.

And sometimes, that same daughter comes and asks if she can help give her sticky sister a bath.

And sometimes, the look on your son’s face was enough to justify the sticky disaster left behind.

Sometimes, while reaching over the mess on your kitchen counter to pour yourself (another) cup of coffee, you see the flowers that your eight-year old brought in yesterday while delivering you the mail from the box.

Sometimes, you catch a glimpse of the beauty in your disaster.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

I showed him my own elbow, marked with a small haphazard pattern of white lines,  a fall on the patio surrounding a pool at a campground when I was ten or eleven. I remember the feeling of the pebbly texture of the patio, the painful cuts and tears it made as I scraped my skin against it. I remember crying, hydrogen peroxide,  bandages, and then, I remember being like Alex, watching my body heal.

It lasts forever? he asked, squinting at my elbow.

Some scars last forever. They don’t hurt anymore, they just, stay. It’s sort of a part of who I am now. I shrugged. You can bet I never ran around a pool again though.

He ran off to grab his backpack and our conversation ended. Only, today, when I looked down at the back of my hand and saw another scar, this one from our puppy when she was still brand-new-to-us. The strip of skin is still a little pink, all these months later, and I know already that it’s a scar that is not going to ever fade away. It’s another moment of life, etched on my skin forever.

It’s amazing how we carry with us all that has made us. Every tiny moment has the chance to be forever engraved, on our skin or on our hearts. Sometimes we learn (no more running around the pool), and other times, it’s just a scrape from a puppy that you got in your thirties. Oh, bummer. Moving on.

But it does have me thinking of all of the scars that we can’t see, the baggage we carry with us, due to our own mistakes or from friendships or relationships. Passing words that can’t be taken back. Indiscreet moments in adolescence can haunt us twenty, thirty years later. How amazingly powerful our past can be, if we let it. If we often peek beneath our bandages or look for the white marks, the jagged little etchings carved on our souls.

And more so, I realize how powerful and important the decisions that we help our children make, truly are. We tell our kids, don’t run around the pool! to protect their skin should they slip, or to save them from falling in over their heads.

But how often do we remind them to protect their hearts or to choose wisely the friends that they let in close?

The scars we can’t see, they linger longer and deeper and they shape who we are.  How important it is to let our children know to choose wisely. To use discernment. To have patience. That what is SO, SO important right now at the age of 7, 10, 15, 19, 21, and so on, might not be quite so important (or even a desired memory) at the age of 33. (And that what is so important to ME, right now, might not be what’s so important to me ten years from now, or really, even ten days from now.)

Of course, there are certainly difficult experiences that make us better, stronger, more determined. And there are sad experiences that happen that we simply cannot avoid.

There are circumstances that scar you and shape you. I don’t want to protect my children from these. These are the stuff of this life, these are all that makes us.

And yes, scars are only reminders, not definers. None of us our defined by our past. The scars on my elbow remind me my body is fragile, but heals. I have fallen, but I have gotten back up.

Still, in this big lifetime, there are avoidable hurts and escape-able scars.

I want to be more conscious to remind my children that their decisions matter. How they treat one another matters. How they choose to obey, or disobey, matters. How they carry themselves, how they dress, how they respond to difficulty, how they guard their hearts and their relationships. It all matters and it could all leave a mark that they either will, or will not, want, when they’re all grown – scars that stay with them until they shuffle off this mortal coil, so to speak.

Of course, this is all too large of a conversation to have had over a bowl of Cheerios and a trip down to the bus stop. But it’s one that I am going to be listening for, keeping my heart ready with answers and questions to get Alex and Lila (and eventually Asher and Evaline) thinking of themselves as lifelong creations, not meant for just the here and now, but for forever.

While I’m at it, I’m going to remind myself, in my relationships with friends and family, as a wife and mother, to think of myself just the same.

As she struggles against me, as I smooth her soft blankets over her and draw the curtains closed, as we together do our sing-song conversation of no, Mama…yes, Evaline, as I kneel beside her, holding her still, coaxing her to let go of all of the  what-if’s – what could she miss? What wonder will she not see? Was that a car passing by? Did the kids just start playing a game? Will they watch a movie – without her!? As she squirms and as I soothe her through this daily, I envy her.

And I wonder.

How often am I running ragged, rubbing my eyes while editing pictures, snapping at my children who want/need/can’t-live-without their one-hundredth snack of the day, and who ask for it RIGHT as I am just sitting down for the first time in two hours.

And I wonder.

How different I might approach life, if rather than distracting myself in all of the blessings I find daily at my fingertips, if instead of keeping myself busy with all of the busyness of life, what if I chose to quiet myself? To rest.

What if days, like yesterday, when I found myself overwhelmed with life, even in good and wonderful ways, what if I chose stillness over chaos?

What if, while feeling my heart racing from one busy-thing to the next happy distraction, instead of jumping on the treadmill to try and run it out of me, what if I simply let myself lay down?

What if rather than indulging my own inner voice (which lately sounds more like a toddler-spinning in a disco - Ooh! Shiny! Music! Lights! Weeee!) What if I actually listened for the still small one, the voice seeking to give me peace?

Because there is, if I let myself listen, a calming voice, one that quiets my anxieties and can settle me to rest so that I can have strength to tackle every good task set before me (perhaps without even snapping at my children when they come banging on the bathroom door demanding cheese sticks that they can’t open on their own.)

And I wonder.

Can I even let myself?

Can this phone-in-my-hand, lap-top-open-on-the-counter, calendar-booked-through-November, need to be everywhere, do everything, respond to everyone (Right. This. Instant.) life even be paused?

Shhhhhh.

But there are plans to make, curriculum to explore, portraits to shoot, clients to meet, editing and post office runs, field trip permission slips to find, houses to hunt for, houses to prepare to sell, vacations to plan, contracts to be signed, kids to clean, dogs to feed, and the washer just finished and if I don’t change it over now, I’ll forget and have to re-wash it just to get the damp stink off!

Be still.

But what if I just…

Rest.

It’s Mother’s Day weekend and I don’t want to do sappy, tear-jerky, Hallmark card worthy tribute to how beautiful and trans-formative Motherhood is.

Not that it isn’t. Because it is.

I just really want to send a big High-Five out to all of my fellow mother-in-the-trenches out there. To the moms I pass in Target, to the moms I see at the deli counter, at the mall, sitting on benches at the park (or chasing down their toddler, keeping him safe from the big, big slide.) To all the moms who look nothing like me, and to those who do (what’s up two-days-no-shower, ponytail and Old Navy jeans Mama?) High FIVE.

I don’t care how long you breastfed (or if you breastfed at all.) I don’t care if your kid eats only organic, or if you’re a drive-thru maven. I don’t care if your kids have matching socks and sweater-sets, or if they’re rocking a chocolate-milk-stained t-shirt with a logo that says 2009. High FIVE, Mama.

Because, you see, no matter what we all look like, how we appear to the world, either the Facebook world or the actual one, we’re all really in this together and we all deserve a solid pat on the back for the accomplishments that, to any non-parent, might seem mundane.

For surviving pregnancy. High five.

For surviving pregnancy. High five. (No really, I think that one deserves at least two high fives, in and of itself.)

For learning how to change a diaper in the dark. High five.

For mastering the ancient language of tears – understanding the delicate differences between a cry of pain, a cry of fear, a cry of pay-attention-to-me, a cry of I-need-a-nap. High five.

For cleaning. So. Much. Poop. And from places you never expected. Carpets. Bathtubs. Walls. Beneath your nails. (Wash your hands first, but yes,) High five.

For Target melt-downs. And for ever having to be that mother, walking away from a full cart, with your flailing child, screaming in your arms. (Double, high five.)

For soothing fevers, teething babies, children with boo-boos.

For leaving the nightlight on.

For every hour you spend at a playground, when you have a thousand other things YOU would rather be doing.

High five, high five, high five.

For the moms who work outside the home.

For the moms who don’t.

Give each other a high five.

For ever having to play the what on earth made that so sticky??? game while cleaning.  High five.

For learning how to talk on the phone while stirring dinner on the stove, with a toddler attached to your leg. High five.

For quartering a million oranges and bringing them to soccer “games” (where children basically just run amok, occasionally bumping into a ball, perhaps while bending down to pick the most beautiful dandelion.)

For cheering, encouraging, nurturing. High five.

For literally combing your carpet with a fork to dig up every dried bit of Play’doh. High five.

For helping new mothers out with good advice based on your experience – when asked. (And for keeping your opinions to yourself, when not) High five.

For the drawer full of marker-scribbled construction paper crafts and “art” that you just can’t seem to let go. (And for the piles and piles that you secretly sneak into the trash after the kids go to bed.) High five.

For learning to laugh off just about everything, because at some point, you just have to. High five.

For every, rare and wonderful, uninterrupted trip the bathroom. High five.

For every time you find yourself sounding JUST like your mom, and then thinking that it’s a good thing.

For realizing that you really need to call her more often. (If only, dinner wasn’t on the stove and your toddler wasn’t attached to your leg. Then again, if anyone understands, it’s her.)

High Five, Mom.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you Moms out there.  Spread the love this weekend. Do a little less glaring when you see a kid who’s screeching in the grocery store carriage. Do a little more nodding and smiling. Maybe even do a little more high-fiving, because, we all deserve it.

But, the truth is, lately, I feel myself slipping in uncomfortable, pit-in-your-stomach ways. In finding less time to be quiet, in finding less time to be humble, in finding more and more things to fill my mind and my heart that won’t ever really fill. I am quietly failing. Daily.

I prayed last night with my children before bed, and as the words came out, for the first time that I can ever remember, I heard them as only that – words. I was tired at the end of a long day and this prayer was just routine, nothing more. I paused, mid-sentence, breathed in and out, focused. But still, the words did not transcend. They clumsily fell out of my mouth, more rushed now, just wanting to get it over with. This uncomfortable moment of talking, without feeling.

In between their bedtime and my own, I passed by an invitation on the fridge. My children are often invited to birthday parties that they are unable to attend, due to my schedule. I noticed the date first, realized that this one, this one party, Lila can actually go to. But then, as I read the fantastical description of the party, like something out of a movie, I felt, in my overtired, empty state, well, snarky.

I was not impressed or concerned with the amount of money being spent, I was not really or truly concerned that Lila would find the party overwhelming.

I was overwhelmed by the realization that there are parents out there, right here, on the bus with my daughter, who have it SO together that they can organize something so grand for their children – and in my barely survived the day mode, and because, in this life of social media and needing to broadcast our every passing thought, I vented a terribly snarky commentary to my facebook page. It was less about them, more about me.

And it was a mistake.

My whole life, my whole job, is to capture such wonderful parties, and here I was, callously commenting on a six year old’s birthday party? When it’s really none of my business, none of anyone’s business.

Oh, the ways an empty heart can find to not be a blessing to people.

Someone, a client-turned-friend, called me out on it. Flat out, boom, gut check. But, even more importantly, a heart check.

I have spent this morning, in angst. Not over this thread on Facebook (though I humbly realize I should not have posted anything), but over the ways I have been failing that I don’t write about, because there is no eloquence in darkness, only darkness.

And so my prayer this morning, my real, heart-felt, tears-in-my-eyes, draw-me-back-so-I-won’t-slip-away, is this: God, I love that you are near, when I am far. I love that you can use my own failings to bring about your will. Thank you for humbling moments, for pit-in-my-stomach moments that bring me to my knees. Because these words, Lord, I feel them. And I know you hear them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

How amazing is it that God can use my terrible attitude and the emptiness of my heart to stop me in my tracks and catch me. Because I have been slipping.

I don’t know that the person whose comments first stirred this will even ever realize just how much of a blessing she was to me this morning. But I pray, real, heartfelt words, that she does.

In the bathroom, she wails for me. First at the injustice of being held indoors while her friends are still running in the yard, but then, as the door closes behind me, it’s fear. She is terrified by some glimpse she caught this morning of an episode of Scooby-Doo, that apparently involved more than silly dog-gibberish, the eating of submarine sandwiches and the unmasking of bad guys (which is most of my recollection of the series.)

I let her wail. I tell her, calmly, she is safe. She is fine. She loves baths. I am here, right here, cooking dinner on the other side of this door, holding your two year old sister on my hip. Nothing is going to get you.

She pleads for me, refuses to bathe, refuses to take her dirt caked shoes off. Now, anger overriding the terror in her tone, she screams at me. And so I go.

I go to the bathroom, insist through my (now clenched) teeth, she is FINE. TAKE A BATH. 

But she wants me to check the closet. And so I do, but with a huff, with my mind on the dinner in the oven, with Evaline scrambling down at my feet now. I tell her it’s only a vacuum, some cat food cans, my wedding dress hanging down. Our bathroom closet is nothing to fear.

She sees for herself, but it’s not enough.

Forty-minutes later, the bath water is cold, beyond frustrated, I put her (screaming) into the shower. I wash her hair, put supper on the table for her siblings and then send her, wet and in tears, to bed. At 5:45, with kids riding bikes past her window.

Half an hour later, Asher stirs her while going to get dressed after his own bath. I hug her, look her square in the eye and tell her I’m sorry for all that we just went through, and that no matter what I ever do right or wrong, God loves her better than me. In all every way I’ll ever fail you, God won’t. And I’m sorry. 

Truth is, she was only scared of something that’s nonsense to me, but that should not have mattered so much in the moment. In her wailing for me, in her pleading that I come and sit with her while she bathed, all I wanted was for her to just trust me when I told her that she was going to be fine.

Truth is, while getting dinner on the table and caring for her three other siblings is also important, sometimes, I think I am missing an empathy chip.

As Lila sat down to eat her reheated dinner plate, Asher was still naked from his own bath. He couldn’t find underwear and asked for my help.

I dug through his drawers, found nothing. Follow me, I said to him and marched out of his room to mine, where I knew I had a pile of laundry waiting to be folded, a pile of four-year-old sized briefs and pajamas.

He hung back, which I took as disobedience. In a huff, after the hour spent with Lila, I muttered into the pile of laundry, why don’t my children just trust me when I tell them something? Why don’t they just listen?

Asher arrived, naked still, and stood by my side, ‘cause you didn’t tell me what you were doing. You just said to follow you and I didn’t have any underwear. 

Truth is, half the time that I am wondering why my children don’t trust me, I am not telling them clearly what I am doing and why. I am more action than words, more results than motive.

Truth is, I’m just as guilty of not wanting to move until I know exactly what I am moving toward either.

But God tells me to just trust, blindly and like a child ought to trust his/her parent. Because just as I want what is best for them, he wants what is best for me.

And I have no idea why that message seemed to be so necessary for me to have it drilled into my heart today, but it was. And I’m going to just trust that it’s something I ought to cling to at this moment.

Truth is, with so many decisions looming there on the horizon, it might actually just be nice to let go and follow for a few footsteps.

She meant kids, as they grow. Like, is it a natural thing, to relate to your child as s/he goes through every awkward, annoying, emotional, dramatic, temporary stage?

She asked after Alex came over with a self-made puzzle for us to solve, then marched back to create the next “level” upon our completion.

She has a two year old and a newborn, both daughters, and this eight year old boy is about a universe apart from where her life is at right now.

I wanted to tell her, Oh, sure, of course. Motherhood is just that magical, that somehow I get every knock-knock joke that leaves him doubled over on the floor in nonsensical laughter, or that his need to draw and explain pictures in vivid detail (including the conversation bubbles, which I could very well read myself) is just as endearing now as it was the first 5,000 times he has presented them to me.

I wanted to tell her that, thanks to motherhood, my patience and understanding has grown and multiplied with each year and that, yes, unequivocally, I relate to my children right where they are.

But I couldn’t.

I don’t.

And the truth is, not only do I not relate to where they are now, I sometimes find myself looking past where they are and longing for them to just get to the other side already. Why can’t they just skip ahead and be rational human beings who get my sarcasm without looking at me like a wounded bird every time I try to be a little funny, at their expense, and fail.

And the truth is, as much as I write about my trials with my daughter, it’s my perfect-in-school, wants-to-please-everyone, child I’ve had the longest, my sweet, soulful Alexander, who I have the hardest time relating to (at this exact moment in our family life, that is – which is always subject to change, as we all do.)

In the moments before we left for a short two nights away, Alex was in a panic over not being able to find his favorite blanket. In the rush, with the other kids already packed into the car and my eagerness to get on the road, we went back and forth for a moment. When he finally did find his blanket, he made some small remark, a slight against me, pointing out how he had been right and I had been wrong, spoken in uncharacteristically disrespectful tone for him.

In an oh-no-you-did-not huff, I snatched the blanket from him and told him to go get in the car. I put the sad little blanket on the counter and marched out the door behind him.

He sniffled and wept as he buckled himself in the back of the van.

I started the engine and silently reassured myself, over-and-over, as I drove away from our house. You were not out of line. He cannot be disrespectful. He needs to set an example as the oldest. He needs to learn about actions and consequences. He needed to learn that being humble is more important than being right. Besides, he’s too big for a baby blanket anyhow. He needs to grow up.

In the back, he stopped sniffling. He thanked me for his breakfast sandwich. And as I pumped gas, I realized that I had forgotten something of my own at home. I would have to drive back.

And I, of course, would retrieve the boy’s blanket. (What was it I wanted him to learn again? Being humble is better than being right? Something like that?)

You see, at this moment, Alex is eight, heading toward nine, and I sense the coming of the moment when his first footfall out of Neverland, out of all of the innocent magic of childhood, is going to rattle my world.

Will we relate to each other better then? Both of us on this side of the glass, co-conspirators in the magic that will continue for his siblings – will we see one another more clearly? Will he suddenly get my humor and I his? Will we understand?

I do not know.

Just as I did not have an answer for my friend yesterday.

Turns out all that I do understand, so far, is that this whole motherhood thing is just blind love and devotion. It’s laughing when jokes aren’t funny. It’s kissing when you know that boo-boos aren’t so bad. It’s listening to endless tales of mysteries that you know are not real and pretending with wide-eyed wonder each Christmas and Easter morning, no matter how groggy and sleepless you are. And sometimes, it’s turning back home to let your child hold onto the unraveling blanket that has covered him since birth.

It’s remembering that every phase, even every painfully un-relatable phase, is fleeting (and hoping, with every new morning, that the relationship we’re building, is not.)

Our lives are divided by bus routines, cluttered by paperwork, by needing to pass our parenting decisions through the proper channels (I’m sorry, but no, Alex will not be in school today. Why? Because I said so. That ought to be good enough, seeing as I am his mother.)

Thing is, I have always had a beef with public school, or with the powers that be forcing me to conform their ways. I resented having to go to school for such long hours, when most of what I felt like I was ever doing was staring out the windows, watching cars drive past and wondering what the world was actually like.

I tested well. I collected my honor roll rewards from my parents. I received praise on my report cards.

But, the truth is, I have retained approximately zero of what I was supposed to have learned in high school. Sad to say, I believe I have retained very little of what I learned in college either. My brain doesn’t hold information for very long if it is only processed via lectures and notes and test-taking.

I know this, because I cannot tell you much of what I learned in AP American History, but I can tell you, in detail (and even some broken Romanian) about Romanian culture and the country where I spent a semester in college. You see, I did not sit in classrooms, I worked with people, I spoke with people, and I learned out of a true desire and need. As it turns out, I need to live, to learn.

And now, as a parent, I find myself again being asked to conform our very busy, very family-centric lives into this small one-size fits all box that doesn’t seem to have changed at all (for the better) since they first put me in it years ago.

There’s a scene in the movie My Best Friend’s Wedding when Julia Roberts and Dermot Mulroney are on a ferry where she feels the weight of a moment as it’s passing. On one side of the bridge is possibility, the other, a closed door. The moment opened, presented itself, then closed.

I’m feeling this weight more and more so these past few weeks, though not in terms of a lost romance or missed relationship (still quite happy with Vinnie, and expect to stay that way), but in terms of my children.

This coming year feels like a bridge moment for us. We are hoping to be moving and will most likely be leaving this town. Pulling our kids from one school system to another mid-school year doesn’t seem very fair.

And their ages now seem to be perfectly aligned to start. At eight, Alex is responsible, a good learner and a good teacher for his siblings. At six, Lila has the basics down and does well when working with Alex. Asher is four and will just be starting preschool, he pulls himself up to the table whenever the kids do their homework, curious and wanting to participate himself. And Evaline, well, she could do with some more structured family time as well.

To have more control over our family, over how and when and where they learn, would be wonderful. That they could learn more in a few hours here than in the seven that they spend away from home, that they could still participate in any social clubs or sports teams, that we could structure our lives around, well, our lives, sounds perfect.

In fact, it all sounds well and good and daydreaming of the fall, being free from the strings and logistics of running on the public school’s plan, it all makes me eager to just get there. To start. To jump off into this adventure, arms wide open.

Then again, not so fast.

Because the reality is this: I am not a teacher. I do not have the skill set or the patience to do the job of a public school teacher. I am terrified of messing up. I am nervous about being forced to sit down and go head-to-head with my strong willed daughters. I am anxious about being lazy, about being busy, about all of the hundreds of thousands of ways I could make a complete mess of this entire situation.

Not to even mention that most days, I count the minutes until my husband comes home, clinging to whatever shred of sanity I have left after hours of trying to cram my full time job and mothering and general household duties into every moment of the day. As irritating as it is to get my kids onto that bus, It’s just so easy at the same time. And sometimes, let’s be honest, easy sounds pretty nice.

Yet, when this paper arrived yesterday in my son’s backpack, my heart was moved again. 

What is the “best fit” for my child? For my children? It’s a fantastic question. It’s THE question. They are certainly not one-size-fits-all, and I believe they deserve a better, broader understanding of what life-long learning means, of what education means.

And while if we do go ahead and do this homeschool thing, I am certain we will have many, many failing moments, and that my children will be leading and educating me nearly as much as I am them, I cannot in my heart find a better answer to the question of what is the “best fit” for my child than wherever God leads.

And flawed as I am, terrified as I am, I want to be obedient to whatever it is that He places on m heart as best for my family.

I was in the car ten minutes later, listening to whatever station the radio had been left on earlier, when the announcer came to the air between songs. She did not tell me about the artist or giver her station ID. But she did say the words: Boston, explosions. I did what I do when something startles me, I called my husband, tried to. After four attempts with the cell service failing, we spoke briefly before the phones went to silence again.

We spent the afternoon together, but separate. Our kids running around the yard, blissfully unaware, we scoured social media, watched news clips, prayed. To distract myself, I began editing the images from my session, found myself smiling at the smooth newness of the baby’s cheeks, the impish grin of his older sister, remembering goodness is here too.

In the grocery store last night, my husband held his phone to me, showing his twitter feed, the confirmation of an eight year old, dead.

At the checkout, my eyes fell to Alex. I looked at his skinny arms, his fidgeting feet stepping side to side, the smudges of dirt still on his cheeks from an afternoon of play. He looked up and flashed me an awkward toothed grin, his giant front teeth, the small space beside them, where he lost a tooth yesterday at school.

My son is eight and yesterday, he lost a tooth.

Somewhere, close to my own home, a mother has an eight year old who, yesterday, lost his life.

How does your heart not break?

I am not a runner, I am not an avid Marathon Monday fan. (Truth be told, if the waitress at the Union Oyster House had not asked my children if they would be there, cheering on the runners when we were visiting the city on Friday, I would have not even realized it was happening.)

I am not even a Bostonian, truly. But, I am a New Englander and it’s the city closest to my home. It is the city I visited growing up, school field trips, special occasions. I have lived off the Red Line, spent long nights that fade into mornings, walking the streets, but I would not say I am any more tied to Boston than my neighbor here in my small over-the-border of MA town. I have no hard claim to feel this hurt.

But I do, I feel it. And not because I am local enough that my cell services were disrupted in the chaos that immediately followed the bombs. And not because I am a New Englander. Not even because I am American.

I feel it, because I am human and we have been designed to crave love, fellowship, and justice.

And this, this is not justice. This is not fair. This is not ever going to be an comprehensible act.

This is evil, this is darkness. But, it will not swallow us whole. This is evil, carving our goodness out from the blackness, hoping to consume, but defining instead.