And the winner is.........

I meant to post the winner of the hairclip giveaway yesterday, but I was sucked into a REALLY GOOD BOOK that I could not put down long enough to blog.

However, I just finished the book, and so I now have time to pick a random number and announce the winner. Without further ado . . . the winner of the yo-yo clip giveaway is:

NICOLE!

Just leave a comment telling me if you'd like one or two, and which color/design(s).

More yo-yo hairclips are available for super cheap in my etsy shop. I can also do custom orders. Can we say, stocking stuffers?

first advent sunday

For the third year, I am welcoming in the Christmas season with Mahon by my side. The first year, as a newly-official "couple," Mahon told me about the German tradition of the Adventskranz—the Advent wreath. This wreath has four candles (though in my picture you can only see three . . . oops), one for each Sunday before Christmas. On each of the four Sundays candles are lit—one for the first Sunday, two for the second, and so on until all four candles are lit on the final Sunday before Christmas. The Advent Sundays are a time to celebrate the season, to gather with family and friends and enjoy the rich relationships in your life.

Today is the first Advent Sunday. With one candle lit, we spent the evening laughing and snacking and playing games with Mahon's family, Christmas carols in the background.

I love building traditions with this incredible man.

a walk in the snow

Life is made up of beautiful things:

The smell of Christmas tree in your living room—

One-dollar candles from Wal-mart, in every holiday scent you can imagine—

Sticky, gooey caramel apples—

Fresh, hot southwest eggrolls—

A day spent relaxing—

Collections of Christmas stories—

Christmas music on the radio—

A spouse who makes you laugh all the time (hard)—

And a walk in the white wonder of the park with its tall trees and Narnian lamp-posts, together with your incredible, handsome, sweet, funny, delightfully wonderful husband.

This is what it is to live.

Thankful

All day I have been thinking: I am so thankful that I get to have Christmas in my own home this year.

Last year I was mostly unbothered by the hospital Christmas, focusing instead on the fact that I had two weeks of uninterrupted time with my new husband, the decorations in my room, the excitement of my first Christmas as a newlywed. Now, a year later, I am so much more grateful for the chance to spend this season in my home. It seems like a small thing—but to me, it is a big one. I have already begun decorating my little apartment; tomorrow or the next day we go to get a fresh tree, one of my favorite parts of the season that we didn't get to experience last year because we were in Salt Lake. I think it will be a good month: a season of rest, of joy, of Christ.

And today I am thankful, also, for the abundance in my life. For my husband. I don't think I praise him enough—I don't think I could. Let's make do with saying that he is the nicest, sweetest, most genuinely kind person you will probably ever meet. And I am thankful for his family, who we are blessed to live near.

And I am thankful, more than everything, for a God who has the patience to walk me through the times of shadow and back into the light.

Not long after getting discharged this summer, I wrote about my "soul-therapy" project. Understandably, all of that got lost in the utter chaos of the last month. But I think now it is time to reinstate it: to turn fully to the Lord, to see to the care of my soul as I let my body heal.

I am many things tonight—tired, sore, still more than a little off-kilter. But above and beneath it all, I am thankful.

Losing, Finding

I have felt for the last few days as though I have lost myself. More than anything I feel like a petulant child: restless, unsatisfied, annoying, prone to tears. I think it is a combination of factors, physical and emotional: deep exhaustion, the fact that my system has once again decided to stop digesting things altogether and so I'm sure I'm not getting the nutrients I should be, pain, frustration, a dash of hormones.

Often, I get caught up in what others expect of me: as a woman, as a wife, as a Latter-day Saint, as a person with cystic fibrosis. I never seem to live up to those expectations.

This evening I made the crust for a banana cream pie to offer up at tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner: despite the fact that I've used this pie crust recipe several times before, this time it shrank and scorched on the edges. I still hold out hope that the pie will be delicious—but it won't be that perfect source of housewife pride.

This month has found my handsome husband called on again and again to be my support, to hold me up when I am falling. I feel so inadequate, right now, as a wife: leaning on my husband, going again and again to him for strength, when I want so badly to be the strength-giving one.

Last week, I went to the bishop of my ward and asked to be released from the Primary presidency (which is really the nursery). I have served to the best of my ability in this calling since the spring, and loved it; but I need for the next little while more rest than that assignment allowed me. There is a part of me that wonders if I will ever be able to serve in the church "for real."

It should not take me a month or more to recover from IVs. I should be able to run, to swim, to function at a near-normal level: but I can't. That is the bald truth of the matter. I am doomed, for now, to the quiet life. The pared-down life.

All of these expectations I let into myself leave me feeling hollow, exhausted. I cannot be everything that people assume I will be. I cannot be like you: I can only be like me.

It is when I lose sight of that truth that I lose myself.

And to find myself, I must reach my roots down into the earth, stretch my branches up into the sky, to find who I am. I: none other. I must turn my face to God, to be reminded of the truths that He has shared with me about my role, my purpose, my self.

Only then can I be found.

I've Been Meaning To Post This Picture.....

By the time I was there, swine flu had officially made its way to the University Hospital.

(Sadly, I'm not sure where the pig ended up after the move away from 2 East . . . just one of the things that was lost, including nurses who had a clue!)

Simeon

They told me I would see the child God,
and so I waited. I waited till my bones
were old enough to crack, until my skin
hung in wrinkles from my frame, dry
as paper. I could not go to death before
I saw the son of God, and so I waited.

Years passed without a sign, without a breath
to hint the birth that I knew was to come.
He did not come. And so, I waited.
My sons grew old themselves, bore sons of
their own, and still he did not come. Some days
I wondered if the promise I had had
was drink-inspired, rather than divine.

At last, he came. I knew him at first look:
held there in the arms of his young mother.
A light to lighten; I took him in my own.
I touched his infant skin with my old hand, and blessed
a God with mercy great enough to grant
the wish of this old man.
And I was saved.

—23 September

Second Shift

I left Rexburg in autumn, and came back to winter.

I feel a little like I've lost time: like the last four weeks of my life should have been outside of time, but they weren't. While I was experiencing my little melodrama, life happened. Leaves fell. Temperatures dropped. Some people gave birth. Others died. Others, married.

While in the hospital I spent half an hour or so one afternoon making a card: a happy autumn card, complete with tree and blowing leaves. I was proud of that card, displayed it on my windowsill for all to see. Eagerly, I anticipated choosing a worthy recipient for my little card, once I got home.

Instead, I came home to half an inch of snow on the ground, and a city already beginning to be bedecked in Christmas lights. Autumn was thoroughly gone, at least in this part of the world.

The card still sits in my suitcase: awaiting, I suppose, another autumn.

. . . . .

On Monday, my first day back in class, my poetry teacher asked me how I am. Unbidden, tears rose to my eyes, to be checked at the last moment by my flippant "Tired, but good." I have become an expert, lately, in getting emotional without anyone noticing. Tears are close to the surface this week: the deep, deep fatigue brings the already-existent emotions to a tipping point, where the smallest inquiry or church talk or passing thought are enough to spill them out.

I am trying to let the emotions run their course, this time. When I do, I find peace. The aftermath of the tears is calm. I can rest, I can sleep, I can let myself heal. When I don't, I become frenetic: cleaning, cleaning, cleaning until I am dizzy with fatigue and struck down with a tension migraine so bad I can hardly stand to open my eyes. I've never been very good at suppressing things.

. . . . .

This is my second shift. Autumn to winter: I am letting go of my glorious autumn, letting go of the orchard at harvest-time and the reds and golds lining the streets and the blue, blue skies. I am letting go of my October, of that time of perfect peace and tranquil calm, the eye of my storm.

It is winter, now.

When I went into the hospital this summer, I thought that was my breaking point. I was wrong; I got over it, stopped caring eventually. But this, these four weeks have broken me. The suddenness, the unexpectedness, the bomb dropped into my tranquil and orderly little life. The pain. The tiredness. The worry.

Yesterday afternoon, I turned off my pump and de-accessed my port for the last time. It felt, as I took my first steps without the pump bag on my shoulder, like forever since I had walked freely. Three weeks of IVs are normally not a big deal; I've done it before, it's something I can handle. But this time I was unprepared, and that lack of preparedness—of warning—has undone me.

. . . . .

But here is the thing.

I walked to church alone this morning, in the cold, dry greyness: last week's light snowfall had, finally, melted. When I walked out of the chapel, it was snowing. Thick and heavy, the flakes fell to coat the ground, the cars, the roofs: everything in softness, in whiteness. The snow fell and fell, until it had covered all the grass and all the world in white.

It was a beautiful snow. Renewing. Healing. Now the winter outside my window is the sweetest kind of winter: gentle, still.

It will be a long winter. Winters in Rexburg, after all, always are. I do not look forward to the constant chill, to the daily sore throats, the fevers, the tiredness, the burn in my lungs when I step outside. There will be hardships, unpleasantness.

But I do look forward to the winter. To the lit candles, the Christmas decorating, the warmth and coziness and sanctuary of my little home. (Well, once I get it clean, anyway.)

To the white, white snow.

The hairclip giveaway is still open, for another few days. We've graduated the eenie-meenie-minie-moe stage, but seriously, if you enter I can guarantee your odds will be good!

Some of you will understand this.

As far as I'm concerned, there are few feelings more miserable than getting 2 minutes into your Vest treatment and realizing that you desperately need to pee.

The end.

Writing "The Thing I Cannot Write"

So, there is an interesting story about this poem. I thought I would share it before posting the actual poem itself.

During the first week of the semester, one assignment for my writing class was for each student to write their "writing credo"—what we believed about writing, what we wanted to gain from the class, how we planned to go about it. Two or three students mentioned in their credos that one of their semester goals was to learn to become more "honest" writers. In response to that, my writing teacher suggested that one way to become a more honest writer was to write on this prompt: Write the thing you cannot write.

I thought that was an interesting idea. For the next several days, I pondered it, and decided that I was pretty sure there that prompt wouldn't work for me. After all, I write about everything: health, life and death, marriage, sometimes (to the chagrin of at least one reader of this blog) even my menstrual cycle.

The next week in class my teacher closed the hour by reading a poem from the summer edition of Poetry magazine. One line in the poem hit me like an anvil, and suddenly I knew exactly what the "thing I cannot write" was. I managed to make it across the street to the semi-privacy of the gardens before letting loose my tears, and there I wrote this poem.

For several weeks I debated whether or not I should share it with my class on a workshop day. I wasn't sure I was okay with this particular poem being workshopped. I wasn't sure I could even read the poem out loud without crying in front of my entire class. A few weeks ago I uploaded it to our class forum, so that if I got brave enough at some point I would have the option of pulling it up and workshopping it.

I was pretty sure that day would never come.

Last Wednesday was a day I had signed up to workshop one of my poems in class. Since I obviously wasn't able to make it to class that day, I figured they would just skip me and pick someone else. To my surprise, that evening I got an email from one of my classmates with notes from that day's workshop . . . of one of my poems. To my even greater surprise, out of the three poems I had posted in the last few weeks to the online forum, they picked—you guessed it—the one I had never intended anyone in my class to actually see.

Since everyone in my writing class has now read and reviewed this poem, I thought I might as well post it on here, as well.

The Thing I Cannot Write
21 September 2009

I dreamed
this morning. A straw
between my teeth, I fought
for breath. I woke,
and it was true.
The pain was real, lodged
there where throat met chest.

This, then, is the thing
I cannot write. Some
questions, I am not
brave enough
to ask. Someday
when my child throws
her mortar board high
into the air, will I
be there? When she comes
hand sparkling in the sun, will I
be there to hold it?

All the time people tell me,
“your husband
is a courageous man.”
It's true: I only wish
they did not have
to say it.

Scroll down to enter the giveaway. Seriously, people, have blog giveaways lost their charm? If nobody else enters, I'll just have to settle it by playing eenie-meenie-minie-moe, since there are currently only two entrants!