Summer vs. Science (Spoiler: entropy wins)

After a dismal few months of headlines such as "Seattle Crushes Rain Record", the heavens finally opened up this past Monday and poured forth sunshine and warmth. All day long, my children stalked the outdoor thermometer display, with minute-by-minute updates: "It's already 3.6 degrees warmer outside than inside! Only a minute ago is was 69.9, and now it's 70.1!  Mommy! Mommy! It's 79.6 degrees!" Yes, we even hit the unbelievable 80 degree mark by the close of day.

Nothing is perfect, however, and Monday was but the first day of four weeks of school remaining to the students of our district. As mostly-homeschoolers (my kids go to classes Tuesday and Thursday but are taught at home the rest of the week), we have a greater measure of freedom than many other families. But I felt I should at least make a show of finishing strong, and sat down after breakfast to churn out weekly assignment schedules for my kids.

I succeeded in planning out enough math and language arts to avoid absolute truancy. Then I looked over what remained of our ambitious history schedule, mapped out with great care and intention last fall. I felt profoundly unmotivated. Watching history videos together during lunch would be just fine for this week, I decided. I erased the rows in the girls' assignment schedules for history reading and projects. Finally, I pulled out our girls' physics curriculum and started looking through the week's plans. They required me to pull together materials and supervise a series of labs involving the three classes of levers, fiddly measurements, and critical thinking.

All at once, I was done. Physics just didn't matter anymore. Resistance force, effort force, ideal mechanical advantage, identifying how many and which kind of levers go together to make a pair of scissors - those things were important to me last week. But suddenly, as I sat at the computer and warm, sweet air drifted through the open window, I couldn't care less.

This is more of what I had in mind.

But I wasn't ready to completely abdicate my role as a responsible educator. I erased the girls' science assignments and substituted the task of selecting a science kit from our cabinet and putting it together.

The girls were thrilled at the change, and after a very unfocused day of plodding through basic schoolwork while running outside and checking the temperature every few minutes, they chose a make-your-own-hand-crank-flashlight kit. "Score!" I thought. "Electricity! It even correlates with physics!" I wasn't excited enough, however, to read them the little educational book that came with the kit. I tossed that aside and asked them to just look at the directions and put the flashlight together.

A half hour later, it became clear that the kit components were unbearably fiddly and kid-unfriendly. I made a valiant effort to help the girls get the flashlight working before I released us all from our labors and drove them to their cousins' house. At least, I reasoned, I used the scientific-sounding words "completing the circuit" several times as we struggled with wiring. That was something. Check for science.

Later that evening, Luke picked up the girls from their cousins' house as he drove home from work. Luke is gifted with both a scientific mind and a passion for understanding how and why things work the way they do. His insights and explanations add great depth and clarity to what we study in homeschool, and he was ready to engage the girls in conversation. On the short drive to our house, he asked the fateful question: "What did you learn in school today?" They chose to tell him about their attempts to assemble the flashlight. And succeeded in shocking him deeply.

"The girls know NOTHING about electricity!" Luke exclaimed soon after entering the house, as I dished out our supper. His voice did not carry anger, but rather a combination of shock and sadness.

"Well," I sputtered defensively, trying to sound a little less like a slacker, "we were focusing on - uh - engineering instead of science basics - on putting things together and problem-solving." I regained my verbal footing and executed a brilliant switch-the-responsibility tactic. "But you could explain electricity to them. You'd do a much better job than I."

We sat down to supper, and Luke spent a few minutes valiantly attempting an overview of electricity, beginning with electrons and flow and moving on to---. I'm really not sure where his explanation went after electrons, because I got distracted by the evening sunshine filtering down through the leaves in our backyard and stopped listening. Occasionally, Eliora tried to interject a sentence about her day, but was told to wait until the electricity lesson was over. I was recalled to the conversation by Luke's voice, both incredulous and appalled, declaring, "These girls have absolutely NO interest in electricity!"

At that point, I abandoned any pretense of actually caring about electricity myself, and pleaded the sunshine and impending summer break as excuses for our appalling lack of scientific curiosity. I'm not sure Luke thoroughly understands and accepts this, but he loves us anyway.

On the bright side, the next few weeks of our homeschool may be a brilliant case study of the scientific concept of entropy. I believe Monday marked the beginning of this irreversible process, and I am more than ready to relax into it.

The gift of blessing

When I was 19 years old, my father's colleague secured a last-minute seat for me on a small United Nations plane heading from Nairobi to Goma, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). My assignment was to locate a ride from the Goma airport to the large Rwandan refugee camp on the shores of Lake Kivu. There, I would serve as French-English translator for a short-term team volunteering at a camp orphanage. I was home in Kenya for the summer after completing my freshman year at Wheaton College, and my parents had insured I wouldn't suffer any summer boredom by lining up a couple interesting opportunities for me. This was one of them.

The full story of my adventures getting to Goma and back to Kenya a week later, and the many ways God protected me despite the fact that I had no money, no means of communication, and nobody looking out for me, deserves a blog post of its own. The memory I'm sharing now comes from the days I spent at the refugee camp orphanage.

Rwandan refugee camp near Goma, Zaire in 1994
Wikipedia image

The entire refugee camp was a melange of blue UNHCR plastic, rock, and salvaged belongings, nestled between an active volcano and a once-beautiful lake that was now polluted with dead bodies and cholera. The short-term team and I stayed in small tents surrounding a larger tent complex that served as an orphanage. As I translated throughout the week, it became sadly clear that the orphanage was a bit of a scam operation to extract money from Westerners, and that most of the children there weren't even orphans (the short-term team returned to the United States with their idealism badly wounded). There was no question, though, that the children in the orphanage were victims, whether they were orphans or not. There was no way to know the depth of trauma they had endured, or what their future would be.

I spent hours with the orphanage babies and toddlers, who limply curled up into my arms, laying their heads on my chest. They were not interested in games or interaction, but simply wanted to be held. There was so little I could do for them, and nothing I could give them apart from the comfort of my person. I felt like a useless spectator, with no power to change anything. As the hopelessness of the children's situation and my own impotence pressed in on me, I realized that there was one thing I could do, small though it was. I could bless the children. I began to lay a hand on each child's head and murmur the blessing that Moses pronounced over the Israelites in his final message: "May the LORD bless you and keep you. May he make his face to shine upon you. May he be gracious to you. May he lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace." I said this over and over again, as the children melted ever closer against me. As I blessed the children, I pictured them nestled again God's chest the way they were nestled against mine, and I felt his love and tenderness for them so many times greater than my own. I didn't understand, but I chose to trust in God's care for them, and dared to speak his blessing over them.

When Luke and I married, we asked my grandfather to close our ceremony with the same blessing. At first, I suggested he just bless us as the newly married couple, but Luke's vision was that he open up his arms and bless everybody in attendance. My grandfather died soon afterwards in a car accident, and my memory of the benediction he gave us, and the joy and love in his voice, is indeed a blessing.

A few years later, I became a mother, and spent an exhausting first year attached to my son day and night. Finally, he began to sleep in his own crib, and eventually in his own room. Although I welcomed the opportunity to sleep through the night, it was a little scary to lapse into unconsciousness in a room entirely seperate from my son. It was a small letting go, a trusting that he'd be okay throughout the night even though I couldn't see him or immediately hear him, even though I was relaxing my watch and my protection as I slept.

And so I reached again for Moses' blessing. Before I went to bed each night, I put my hand on my sleeping son and whispered over him. "May the LORD bless you and keep you. May he make his face to shine upon you. May he be gracious to you. May he lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace." I felt my love and God's love surrounding my son, and I chose again to trust in God's care for Josiah, for that night and for his life.

I still visit each of my children every night right before I go to bed. I adjust their covers (or pull them back onto the bed if they're falling off), drink in their beautiful sleeping faces, bless them, and give them a final kiss. More often than not these days, my almost-14-year-old son is still awake in bed when I come in, but he's never yet objected. So I murmur the blessing under my breath while he gives me one last lingering hug. The nightly blessing ritual roots me every night in my love for my children, and reminds me of how they are held in God's arms.

There are few things sweeter than sleeping children.

When Josiah was born, a favorite baby shower gift was "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch. In this picture book, a mother sings the same song of love and affection over her son every night as he grows older. Even when he's a grown man, she drives across town, enters his bedroom room via ladder, and rocks him while she sings. Honestly, I thought this book was kind of creepy when I first read it. The picture of the mom rocking her grown son just didn't work for me.

"Love You Forever" is still not my favorite book, but I feel differently about it now. I found that before he wrote the book, Munsch made up and sang that song over and over as a way to process his grief over two stillborn babies. I see the song as a parent's blessing, and I understand the fictional mother's deep desire to want to keep on blessing her son every day of his life. If my son ever protests me coming into his room at night, I won't pull the ladder out of the garage and climb in his bedroom window. But I'll probably still bless him from outside his bedroom door.

Anchoring our Children (A Mother's Day Meditation)

Eliora has been growing her hair long for over a year now, and hopes that it might one day reach to her waist. So I had good reason to believe that she'd be excited to hear I was thinking of growing my own hair out. I was stunned at the vehemence of her response when I suggested it a couple days ago. "No, DON'T!" she insisted dramatically. "Please don't grow your hair out. Please, please, please!"

Eliora forgot that my hair was longer when she was born.

I was flabbergasted that it would matter so much to her. Why is she so attached to my short hair? Then I remembered how I used to feel when my mother permed her hair. Every few months during my early years, my mom would break out curlers and chemicals and self-administer a home permanent kit. We all hated it. Not only did her hair smell terrible when it was over, but the new frizzy-haired Mommy didn't look like the Mommy I knew. It felt a little like a personal offense that she looked so different afterwards. It was a minor shake-up of my secure little world, and I did not like it, not one little bit.

Our young children don't really see us as complex human beings that are always changing and developing. I don't think they want to see us that way. To our children, we are home. They want us to be safety for them, to be a solid, unchanging force. An abrupt change in us can feel like a threat to the stability of their lives. Our children might want to grow their own hair out, to try different looks, to explore themselves and experiment. But it makes them uncomfortable when we do it.

And this is not really a bad thing. According to attachment theory, children need to form a strong attachment to a central caregiver in order to develop in a healthy way. This person (usually their mother) becomes a secure anchor. When there's a healthy attachment, the primary caregiver is a base from which children can go out to explore the world. Knowing that there's always a safe and consistent center to return to, they find the freedom to stretch their wings and fly.

There's a grace and a wonder in this. It doesn't matter that we make mistakes, that we're imperfect, that we're not objectively beautiful. We are the center of our children's world, and ours is the face they long to see when they are hurt, scared or sad, as well as when they're happy or proud. I'm constantly amazed and humbled by how important I am to my children.

Anchoring our children can also be really, really hard. Every mother (or father, or grandparent, or other primary caregiver) who plays this attachment role in her child’s life knows what it is to sacrifice. Although we may not keep the same hairstyle for years on end, we give up big things that are important to us – even more than sleep and sanity (although I don’t want to downplay the importance of those). We hold back on developing ourselves or our careers so we can focus on our children. We spend less time pursuing our own interests and passions and more time helping our children develop theirs. We pull in a little (or a lot) so our children can venture out.

In this, as in all of life, we walk in tension. Sometimes, in order to be the healthy center of our children’s lives, we need to change, develop, and spread our own wings. With a new season of life ahead (this is my last full month of homeschooling), I feel my own wings twitch. It is a delight with terror in it, as I balance a call to new horizons with a commitment to remaining the stable center my family needs me to be.

I love you to the outer edges of the universe and back, Eliora, but I might defy your pleas and grow my hair out. I will still be your mother, though, and you can count on me to remain your anchor. 

Birthdays and Helicopter Rides

"You deliver like a Hopi woman." This is one of the greatest compliments I ever received. It came from a Hopi nurse, and was given to me after the birth of Anna, just a month after moving to Hopi in 2005. Hopi and Navajo women with low-risk pregnancies delivered their babies at the Hopi Health Care Center, and were prepared for natural childbirth. There were no pain meds or epidurals available there, and no obstetricians (it was staffed by family practice physicians). Women who might need pitocin or other interventions were transported to a full-service hospital, usually Flagstaff Medical Center or the Tuba City IHS hospital. Hopi women were known for being stoic and strong in childbirth, and I was determined to be the same.

And with the birth of Anna, I was. Everything worked out as I hoped it would. I delivered like a Hopi woman and walked home two hours later, holding my beautiful daughter in my arms. "Don't you feel empowered?" asked a neighbor as we walked past on the way back to our house. Yes, I did.

So when we found ourselves unexpectedly pregnant with our third child two years after moving to Hopi, I was confident I would be able to deliver like a Hopi women again. Way too confident, as it turned out. As we prepare for Eliora's birthday tomorrow and I remember what happened nine years ago, I feel deep gratitude and wonder for God's protection in the face of some really foolish decisions Luke and I made.

At my 13-week prenatal appointment, I struggled to control both my nausea and two rambunctious, noisy kids in the waiting room of the Hopi Health Care Center. When it was finally time to be seen, I put both children (aged 2 and 4) in a chair in the exam room, implored them to be still, and climbed onto the table. My blood pressure was mildly elevated, around 135. The doctor (and family friend) who examined me raised her eyebrows and remarked to another doctor walking by, "Do you see this blood pressure number? We'll have to keep an eye on it." I felt ashamed and conspicuous. Convinced that my elevated blood pressure was caused by the trying presence of my two kids, I decided that staying away from the health care center from then on would be the solution. I didn't want my pregnancy being seen as high-risk.

I never had another prenatal appointment. After all, my previous two pregnancies had been uneventful, and I was young and strong and living a great adventure. I was even married to a doctor, who would be able to notice and catch any warning signs. My life was stressful enough already. Why do something that would cause more stress? I planned to just continue being pregnant until I went into labor. Then, I would labor at home, with Luke or a doctor friend checking me, until I reached a dilation point of six. Then I'd go into the health care center, push the baby out, and walk home with her in my arms. After all, it had worked out beautifully when Anna was born.

As it turned out, Luke and I were shockingly good at ignoring warning signs. At around the halfway point of my pregnancy, I began having vision disturbances - bright auras that would grow to encompass my whole field of vision, often lasting for hours. Stress, we decided. One especially frightening aura began while I was taking the two children on a walk to the tree. It was so bad that I wasn't sure I could get them back, and was beginning to wonder what they would do if I collapsed in the middle of the desert. When I finally got home, I answered the phone to a company wanting to know my address so they could ship something to me. I could not remember it - the part of my brain that stored things like addresses was completely inaccessible. I was scared enough that I paged Luke and he came home in the middle of the day to give me a couple hours to nap and recover. Then he went back to work, assuring me that I was probably just having a migraine.

Every two or three weeks, our family would make a mammoth Saturday trip into Flagstaff to shop and do business. We loaded our car with all our recycling and our children, drove two hours through the reservation, spent the day loading up on groceries and supplies, then tried to make it home before dark. I began checking my blood pressure at one of the grocery stores we shopped at, and worried a little because it was always high - around 150. Luke wasn't worried, though. "Look at you - you're so stressed," he would say. "It will be lower when we get home." But we never checked it when we got home.

In retrospect, I knew in my gut that something was wrong, but I desperately wanted to ignore it. I didn't share my unease with Luke, leaning on his reassurance as proof that there was nothing to worry about. After all, he was a doctor, and he wasn't worried, so I was safe. Luke, on his part, was absorbed in his work (as the physician in charge of scheduling, he solved the problem of understaffing by slotting himself into all empty time slots), and it didn't occur to him that something could actually go wrong with me.

In the middle of the night at exactly 37 weeks, my water broke. Although the timing was inconvenient for us (my mother wasn't due to arrive for another week or two and there was nobody to watch the kids), I felt relieved that the miserable pregnancy was finally coming to an end. We called my parents, who began scrambling to rearrange their plans, then tried to get a little more sleep. Luke even went to work the next morning, promising to come home for lunch and take over childcare so I could labor in peace. It was a long morning, as I found it difficult to focus on both contractions and kids.

Finally, Luke returned home to check my progress. With him came Anna, a fellow physician and neighbor. Anna brought a blood pressure cuff. She was alarmed to find my blood pressure in the 150s, but I assured her it was only because I was stressed from laboring with kids all morning. Give me an hour to relax alone, I begged, and it would return to normal. Okay, she conceded, but Luke needed to check throughout the hour, and if it was still elevated, I had to come into the health care center.

It remained elevated, to my deep shame. I felt that I should be able to control it, and was bringing needless interventions on myself by my failure. I walked over to the health care center, where nightmarish things began happening. No longer low-risk, I couldn't deliver there any more. A helicopter transfer to Flagstaff Medical Center was initiated, and I was hooked up to an IV of magnesium sulfate, a horrid drug meant to both bring down my blood pressure and to stall labor until I could get to Flagstaff (I was only dilated to a 4, so I had a ways to go). I knew that as soon as I arrived in Flagstaff, an emergency C-section awaited me. I struggled to stifle my sob of disappointment and pain as Anna inserted a catheter. My dreams of delivering like a Hopi woman again were falling in shards all around me.

It wasn't long before I felt so wretched that I was just ready for everything to be over as soon as possible, even if that meant a C-section. The mag sulfate caused intense hot flashes, and my contractions were overwhelmingly painful. I was stuck on my back, which made the pain worse. I dreaded a helicopter ride in this state, especially without Luke by my side.

Suddenly, I was jarred from my misery by a familiar pressure. I instantly knew what it meant. Instead of stalling my labor, the magnesium sulfate somehow accelerated it. The intense contractions I felt had been transition, and I was ready to push. Luke ran out of the room to let Anna know, and all chaos erupted.

Magnesium sulfate is not good for newborns, so IVs were hurriedly ripped from my arms. Anna told me she didn't want me to deliver in the triage room, so I held back the urge to push while a gurney was rushed to my bed. I scrambled onto it and was wheeled into the delivery room just in time to thrust my baby out into the world.

For one wonderful moment in time, the chaos and nightmare ceased and Eliora drew her first breath. She was perfect: five pounds of scrawny, healthy, vocal personhood. (The pediatrician in Flagstaff later told me that mag sulfate babies were usually floppy, but not Eliora. She was alert and feisty.) She was put into my arms and began nursing immediately. Relief and joy filled the room. All was well.

Alas, it was not to last. My blood pressure refused to drop. The helicopter showed up, and I found out that I would still be transported, alone (there room for only one patient in the helicopter, so it would have to return for Eliora). The magnesium sulfate was restarted and my new daughter was taken from me while the medics stood around impatiently, waiting for me to deliver the placenta so we could go. An hour after birth the placenta had still not emerged, so Anna performed a manual extraction (a procedure more painful even than transition labor).

As the medics prepared me for the helicopter transport, I cycled through a crazy mix of emotions - shame, fear, loss, and euphoria. Luke assured me that Eliora would be well cared for, cuddled, and loved while we were apart, that the other kids would be okay, and that he would be safe driving to Flagstaff in the dark.

I was strapped to a gurney and loaded into the helicopter, my face six inches from the ceiling. The medics told me it was a good thing I had delivered already, because you can't give birth on a helicopter, and they would have had to land in a cow field if I delivered on the way over. I turned my head to the window and tried to take in the view, but I didn't have my glasses on, and everything was blurry. A new visual aura began, which made sightseeing even more difficult. The medic next to me swore quietly as my blood pressure soared towards 180, and he and his partner scrambled to hook emergency medicine up to my IV.

I hope this is the worst picture of me that will ever be posted on the internet.
'Cause it's pretty bad.

We safely landed on the roof of the Flagstaff Medical Center, and I was wheeled to the high-tech OB procedure room. Medical staff kept on checking on me, asking where my baby was and showing surprise to find me no longer pregnant. The obstetrician came in and told me he supposed it was good that he could no longer perform a C-section on me. He sounded disappointed. When the intake procedures were complete, I was left alone with a dry sandwich and my mag sulfate drip. I lay in bed and missed my new baby. Every time I heard the phone ring at the nurse's station outside my door, I worried that somebody was calling to say that the helicopter had crashed and Eliora was dead. (Just three weeks later, a helicopter really would crash on the roof of the Flagstaff Medical Center, killing all but one of the occupants.) Finally, a nurse came in and helped prepare me for a shower.

I was soaping up when the nurse called to me that Eliora had arrived and was being unloaded from the helicopter. Frantic with excitement and relief, shaking uncontrollably (mag sulfate is a powerful muscle relaxant and turned my limbs to jelly), I struggled to get out of the shower and pull on a hospital gown. I emerged from the bathroom just as Eliora was pushed into the room, a tiny and unhappy baby secured in a giant clear incubator/transport box. As they extracted her and did a quick exam, I collapsed into bed and held out my trembling arms.

Receiving my daughter into my arms again is one of those deep moments of joy that mark my life. It's a memory I treasure and relive every birthday. My joy was made complete when Luke showed up about a half hour later, successfully avoiding drunk drivers and stray animals as he sped to Flagstaff in the dark.

Flagstaff Medical Center - in wonder at our new daughter

I wasn't completely out of the woods. My blood pressure remained high, and I endured 24 hours of the magnesium sulfate drip, with hourly medical exams to make sure it wasn't killing me instead of helping me. Eliora was discharged from the hospital a day before I was, since it took awhile to keep my blood pressure at non-stroke levels. I discovered that I could not will my blood pressure lower (although it was through no lack of trying). I had to take beta-blockers for several months before it finally stabilized at a safe level. The sight of a blood pressure cuff still causes a panic response in me.

Another terrible picture of me.
Magnesium sulfate doesn't improve one's appearance.

To this day, we don't know if I was officially diagnosed with preeclampsia or just PIH (pregnancy-induced hypertension). Some day, we'll request my medical records from Flagstaff and read what they say. We don't know if all the interventions I endured prevented a stroke or seizures, or if I would have been just fine without them. What we do realize now is how incredibly naive and full of hubris we were to ignore so many clear warning signs. We understand why doctors are advised not to manage the health of close family members. Luke had to endure an M&M (morbidity and mortality) meeting of the medical staff at the health care center, in which mine was the case discussed. They concluded that prenatal care is always important, and Luke should have insisted on it.

Finally, we see so many ways that God protected both me and our sweet little Eliora. My foolishness could have led to tragedy, but instead I get to write a story with a happy ending. Nine years later, we are both still healthy and strong, in body and mind. Happy birthday, sweet Eliora! You are a miracle of grace.

Eliora, dressed and ready for discharge

Trees in the desert

Road to the Hopi mesas

When Luke and I got married in June 2000, we were wildly in love with each other and eager to begin a life and share a home together. But there was more than that. We also saw our marriage as a mission, in which we would go out into the world and work together to serve God and make it a better place. At the time, we envisioned ourselves heading to a third world country, where we would partner with others to bring full health to a community - Luke through medical service and teaching, and myself through community health outreach rooted in local churches. The day after our honeymoon ended, Luke started his third year medical school clinical rotations. The following month, I began coursework for my MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education. Things were going according to plan.

Five years later, training was finally over and our "real life" together was on the cusp of beginning. Luke was a fully-fledged, board-certified family physician. True, our plans had already shifted somewhat from what we envisioned as we said our vows. Although I earned my MPH on schedule, our subsequent openness to pregnancy was promptly answered (to our great surprise), and we were now the parents of a two-year old, with another baby on the way. I had discovered how encompassing motherhood could be, especially when your husband is a medical resident. My diploma (and all it represented) sat untouched in a file drawer.

In addition, Luke felt that his medical skills and confidence were not great enough to plunge immediately into a third-world situation. Instead, we chose to join the Indian Health Service and move to the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. Although we would still live in the United States, we would be fully immersed in a culture and environment that was significantly removed from mainstream America. Since the Hopi Health Care Center was the only medical facility within a 100 mile radius of high desert country, Luke would have the opportunity to practice emergency medicine, inpatient care, and obstetrics - this would prepare him well for possible overseas service. Meanwhile, he would be serving the underserved, and I hoped that I would find opportunities to employ my training and skills in service to the Hopi. We would be isolated enough that it would almost feel as if we were living in another country.

I grew up in rural Bangladesh, and remember a plaque on my parents' wall inscribed with a quote from Anne Frank: "I am young and strong and living a great adventure". This became my mantra for our life in Hopi. We moved there in August of 2005. I was eight months pregnant, great with child and hope and expectations. I gloried in the landscape of tumbleweed, buttes, and mesas that stretched in all directions. The logistical challenges of driving four hours round-trip to buy groceries excited me. We moved into a compound of houses attached to the medical center, and I couldn't wait to become part of the close community that existed there. I wanted to immerse myself in Hopi culture and develop close friendships with Hopi women. I wanted my children to grow up with Hopi playmates. We weren't going to be like those families that stayed for a couple years, paid off their medical school loans, then left the community high and dry. We would put down roots, and this would become our home.

Great with child, hope, and expectations
in our new backyard

We lasted three years and eight months. The first year was as exciting and hopeful as we anticipated. During the second year, a lot of our friends with children left, Luke's work picked up, and the isolation began to make itself felt. Some of the air leaked out of our balloon. The third year was marked by a difficult pregnancy and medical emergency at birth. Our last eight months were just plain survival. I spent most of my hours alone with our three kids, and Luke spent most of his hours working in an understaffed health care center. By the time we left, I no longer felt so young and strong. I felt frayed and chastened, in body and spirit. We weren't leaving with a sense of a mission well fulfilled. We were escaping.

View from our front window a couple of weeks before we moved away.
This is how my soul felt, too.

We did not move to a third-world country, where we would minister together while living a simple life in community. We moved to a beautiful town in the Pacific Northwest, near to family, and purchased a lovely house. Luke continues to work for the Indian Health Service, but he now works decent hours in an outpatient clinic, and spends almost every night and weekend at home. We do not live on the reservation. The children are growing up in a safe community, one with many opportunities. We are surrounded by blessing, and I recognize how much we needed these gifts and have been warmed and nourished by them.

But as much as I feel gratitude for all we've been given, I struggle with a sense of failure. What went wrong with our great adventure at Hopi? Should we have been stronger? Are we sell-outs to our sense of mission by living here, where things are easier? Or is it possible that this is the life we're called to lead together, even though it's not particularly difficult or adventurous?

As much I speak grace to others, it's hard to speak it to myself, and even more difficult to hear and believe it. And so I think God sometimes sends me images of grace - pictures and metaphors that go beyond words. These images don't answer all my questions (and I think we're meant to live in the tension), but they give hope. This is the story of the gift-image he's given me this year:

Luke chose our Hopi yard to begin his very first garden. It is difficult to imagine a more challenging place to garden for the very first time. If you look back to the first picture in this post, you can see what our back yard looked like when we moved in. The ground was so hard that the men who installed our satellite internet dish literally used a jackhammer to make a hole. The soil was heavy clay and needed serious amendment. It rained only a few times a year. The only thing that grew easily was tumbleweed, and since it blew everywhere all the time, our yard was filled with millions of tumbleweed seeds that sprouted up thickly with any watering.

Gardening with Anna after a rain. Note the hammer as a gardening tool.

Yes, this is our early garden, and these are some things we planted.

Despite all these challenges, Luke made things grow in our yard. They didn't always grow very well, and a lot of them died. But he brought a lot of beauty to that space, and brought me a lot of joy.

Magic!

Luke's planting efforts included five trees - two cottonwoods, two Navajo willows, and one peach tree. Trees were in short supply in our neighborhood, and when you mentioned jogging or walking to "The Tree and back", everybody knew exactly which tree you were talking about - the lovely cottonwood in the wash a mile and a half away. It was worth the hike because trees were scarce.

I loved the little trees in our yard. Every spring, I would anxiously examine their branches for buds, and it always seemed magical when they put out leaves. One of them died off, but when we left, there were still four that were holding on. We hoped that the renters after us would continue to care for the garden. Knowing how much work that entailed, though, we tried to let it go and hope that something might survive.

Luke in scrubs with the backyard cottonwood

This past February, Luke had a conference in Phoenix, and we decided travel to Arizona as a family, take a few days off after the conference ended, and return to Hopi. We wanted our daughters to see where they were born and wanted all three children to experience the place that shaped our family so profoundly. I'm so glad we went. The trip back was fun and intense. The beauty of the reservation was still just as profound, and so was the sadness and hardness.

We didn't know what we would find when we revisited our house. It had been almost eight years since we left Hopi. Would anything remain to honor the hours Luke spent working on the yard and creating beauty from dry clay? As we rounded the corner and our house came into view, the first thing I saw was that our trees were still there. Three our of four remained. And they had grown! No longer were they baby trees, but they were strong and hardy. Although it was February and they were winter-bare, they were undeniably alive. The peach tree in the backyard had spread its branches wide, shading and protecting the bedroom window behind it. And the cottonwood in the front yard - the one planted outside the dining room window - was at least ten feet taller than the house. To make my joy complete, its bare branches held the remains of a bird's nest.

Baby peach tree

Grown-up peach tree

This is God's gift-image to me. In our dry, brown, unforgiving yard, we planted something of beauty that outlasts us and continues to grow and bless others. Our trees did not die, but are flourishing in the desert. They provide shade in the summer, the color green, the soothing sound of wind blowing through leaves, maybe even sweet peaches in the fall. And they provide homes for birds.

Baby cottonwood in our front yard

Grown-up cottonwood with bird's nest

When I picture our trees, I dare to believe that our sojourn at Hopi produced more than two lovely daughters. Maybe, in the dry and hard desert soil of those years, something of lasting beauty was planted in us, and has been growing, watered by the generous rains of our life here. Maybe it will become tall and strong enough to bless others and make the world a better place. Maybe it already is.

Returning from The Tree 2006 (two children)
Hopi Health Care Center, our house, and First Mesa in background

Returning from The Tree 2009 (three children)

Returning from The Tree February 2017

Inexorable

Last month, Luke and I stayed in downtown Seattle for a few days. He attended a conference, and I was gifted with much-needed time to walk around, explore, and not be productive. In the evenings, Luke and I would find a fun restaurant, then walk around Seattle a bit before heading back to our hotel for an early bedtime (we were a tired couple).

Our final night in Seattle found us strolling across a plaza landscaped with Japanese maples. Their leaves had just begun to open, and every tree was covered with a gauze of spring green. And I felt something happen inside of me.

Over the last few days, I had discovered numerous gardens during my rambles through Seattle. I gloried in trees covered with white and pink blossoms, I bent down to make acquaintance with countless varieties of spring flowers, and my heart leapt up at the explosion of color and newness that signaled spring. But when I looked up at the maple branches becoming alive and full again, I felt more than just delight.

Our own Japanese maple (in our backyard)

Often, I don't understand how hungry I've been until I finally eat a good meal. Then my whole body begins to relax, my muscles unwind, a warmth floods through me, and I recognize my previous tenseness. Or a medical test comes back as normal, and I realize, with a flood of relief, how much my anxiety about the results had permeated all of my life and thoughts throughout the time I was waiting.

That's what happened to me as I gazed at the Japanese maples in that concrete plaza. My soul untensed, opened up, and released a deep sigh of relief. I didn't realize how much I had longed for the greenness and fullness of leaves on trees until I saw them again. This happens every spring, but then in the winter, I forget. (Perhaps this is part of why living in the desert was so hard for me.)

Spring is late in the Seattle area this year. We smashed records with our wettest and darkest winter ever. Not only did we record the most rain ever between October and April, but also the greatest amount of days with rain. Temperatures continue well below normal, and we've only topped 60 degrees a couple times this year.

But the extra-cold temperatures and the clouds' refusal to allow the sun to shine more than a couple hours at a time haven't stopped spring from coming. It is inexorably pushing through. It's spread from Seattle to our neck of the woods, to our yard, to our trees. Everywhere I look, I am enfolded in waves upon waves of fresh green, and my soul is almost overwhelmed trying to take it all in. Spring wins.

For some reason, the triumph of spring in the face of our ridiculous weather delights me deeply. Spring does not give in to the discouragement of yet another cold, gloomy day. It quietly pushes through with its magic, and our world is transformed.