Father, forgive me

Dear Lord,

While I was washing my hands in the kitchen, Clara was apparently trying to unzip and empty my backpack. Please forgive me for taking the time to unlock my phone screen, open my camera, and snap these two pictures before I helped my crying daughter. Next time I promise to help her first. 

Maybe. 

Love,

Jessie 

Happy 1st Birthday, Clara Noelle!

One year ago today I was moaning through some wicked contractions, wondering what you looked like and if I was going to die from pain. I would live that day a million times over if it meant another first year with you. 

I LOVE YOU Smoochie girl! 

Daddy got to come home last night and stay with us for just one day, and guess what?

IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY! 

So let's eat pink pancakes for breakfast and party for a month and stay up late looking through all your pictures and admire the little girl you are becoming, because for goodness sakes...

You're the most clever, obstinate, talkative, smart, beautiful, funny, wonderful baby we have ever met. And I'm pretty sure we have no bias in saying that.

Happy Birthday doll baby!

Parents. I am now one year old and I will decide whether or not I wear my birthday crown, 

thank you very much. 

fire is complicated.

Today was a hard day. Emotionally, I mean. There is an enormous beast of a wildfire roaring through central Idaho right now, and Sam had to leave this morning to go work near it. When fires burn through power poles, Idaho Power has to send up teams of linemen ASAP to get the poles rebuilt. Since Sam is on a project team of linemen, they follow fires whenever they arise.

Confession...and judge how you may... but we pray for a "good" fire season all year long. Of course I would never want someone's house or business to burn, and God forbid anyone being injured or killed by a wildfire, but the truth is that fire season is how I go to school debt-free, how we take fun trips, how we fix our cars and pay for house projects and build up any savings. So yes, we pray for extra money to get us through the leaner times, and yes that extra money comes from the heat of burning power poles. Actually, can we just say "wish" instead of "pray"? We wish for a good fire season. A good fire season that only burns through sage brush and dirt, or whatever. (Please don't persecute me for my ignorance here, I'm sure I know nothing about wildfires and their good or bad influence on the environment, landscape, or economy).

And now we got what we wished for.
Sam left last weekend to work on the fires. He got back this Thursday night, and then unexpectedly got called and asked if he wanted to head back this morning. He didn't have to go- he has a few days off until they have to go back- but we felt like it would be crazy to waste the opportunity for extra work, especially with another baby on the way and one last semester of college tuition due next week.

So anyways, he packed a bag and left, neither of us knowing when he'd be home again, but knowing full well that he would miss Clara's first birthday. I'm actually crying just typing this. I know her birthday isn't an important day. We can celebrate our first year with her whenever we want, not just on the actual date. But I wanted to have a party for her. And I wanted to hold Sam's hand while she ate her first piece of cake, and I wanted to share a look with him that no one else understood. A look that said, "We did it. We got our beautiful baby girl. We kept her healthy and safe. We didn't sleep, we worried a lot, we learned just how much we do not know, and we fell so crazy in love with our daughter that we will never ever be the same. You and me, buddy. We did it."

Sam will be home soon enough. I will survive more time away from him. We've been living like this for 5 years, and we know that God will give us exactly what we need to make it through the hours apart. It's harder now, of course, because a certain wonderful tiny someone makes the distance seem impossibly far, but we can do this. And you know what? My normally quiet little house was full of people all day today. My dear friends, my cousins, my sister, my baby, and my nieces and nephews came through like a revolving door. I was really sad today. But my house was full of love. And cheese sticks. And toys. And coffee. And kisses.

I have a lot to be thankful for. And I am, I am so thankful. But I also needed a smidge of room for sadness tonight. What I remembered as I took a minute to cry was that I worship a God who has an absolute capacity for both: my sorrow and my joy. He is Protector and King, and He can hold whatever I am brave enough to hand to Him.

So here it is, Lord.
A disappointed handful of birthday cake.
A bit of regret for wanting fires to burn;
a bit of relief for financial breathing room.
A thankful heart for the people who love me.
And a few lonely tears.

amen.

Pregnancy Diaries: 16 weeks

If you missed this fun video, you might want to go watch it. 

The other day I was irritated at Sam because he told me:
"You may have set the world record for longest time leaving clean laundry in the basket."

He was folding said laundry so he could go to bed without worrying about it (I think, I don't know why else anyone would fold clothes at 10 p.m.).
So I said:
"Surely you know that I've left clean laundry MUCH longer than this. It's only been like, four days."

His mouth dropped open and he laughed while sorting out socks.
"Four days is outrageous! I can't believe how casually you say that. Four days!"

Alright, so this is just one of the many reasons that Sam does the laundry at our house. He slowly took over this chore because he couldn't handle my way of doing things.

1. How could I possibly remember which t-shirts, jeans, and sweatpants he wants me to hang dry? WHO HANG DRIES SWEATPANTS?

2. I don't mind washing the clothes. I just don't like putting them away. That's what the furniture in my bedroom is for: to hold clean laundry until I'm ready to wear it again.

3. But why, Sam, why do we have to check the lint trap between every single load? And clean it out so often? Let's be reasonable here.

So Sam does all the laundry at our house and he is really good at it, and I am thankful every single Monday when I have all of my clothes clean and put away for a new week. I tell him this all the time, but last week I decided to help a brotha out and do the laundry for once in my life. I got all the way through it, washed AND put away, until the last bit. Then I got tired of folding and just left it in the basket for later. At least four days later, turns out. Which is why Sam takes care of our clothes.

There are a number of things he is just plain better at than I am. Laundry. Car maintenance. Paying bills on time. Making dentist appointments. Remembering meetings. Besides the fact that he's super hot and still has the abs of an 18 year old (seriously, they are tight) (sorry mom and dad) (and sam's mom and dad), Sam is totally my better half. I am creative and imaginative and chock full of feelings, he is steady and good and responsible and wonderful.

Which explains why, after a particularly lousy day of morning sickness, weepiness, and forgetting to drink enough water, I commented that it's too darn bad he can't carry our children. Because he would do pregnancy RIGHT. Down to the actual giving up of coffee and exercising 30 minutes a day. Neither of us were shocked when he nodded yes, he agreed, that he would be the better choice to bear our babies.

Someday, babe. In a much better world. Until then, keep reminding me to take my prenatal vitamins and also... Thank you for taking care of us. We love you and our neatly folded pajamas very very much.

and now for a bath time video

Here's a grand attempt at stop-motion. Enjoy, and happy weekend to you! 

a love revolution.

My heart is in a constant struggle between two sides of my absolute delight in our daughter.  On the one hand, her burgeoning language, movement, and cognitive skills are a fast stream of fun and challenges for me and Sam. Every day she does something new (this is the way of babies!) and every day we just can't believe that she is ours. But then I start penciling in all the August activities on our family calendar and well, well, what do you know?

Clara is turning one year old this month.

We have had an entire year with our little girl, and I would do anything to live it again. From the moment I went into labor to this very moment as I cut her grapes in half for lunch, my heart has filled and filled and filled. Clara's life, her 346 days in our family, started a love revolution in this house, an overthrow of our old way of living. And while I delight in every day that she grows and changes, I dread the days ahead when I wish to hold my baby again, the day that she is grown and I ache to smell her sweet baby skin just one more time. 

Sam and I were married four years before we had a baby, and during those four years I knew I didn't want a family yet. I was certain that children would be a hassle, a constant buzz kill on our self-filled lives. "We're not ready yet," we would dismiss with a wave of our hands. We worshipped our money, our time, and our freedom, I recognize now, and it was wrong.

I don't think everyone should be parents. Parenthood is a heavy responsibility, one we will answer to God for, and it requires more of a person than any other responsibility in the world. But it is also the greatest, most fulfilling, tear-your-heart-apart LOVE that can ever be experienced. This kind of love changes you. It shifts your focus, it alters your perspective, and it reveals more about your Heavenly Father than anything else ever could. I could not understand how God felt about me until I saw Clara and realized how I felt about her. 

The old me was right, of course: being a mother is difficult, frightening, worrisome work. Clara's needs, especially in this first year, have been consuming and constant. What the old me did not know - could not know - was how much better life would be when our children arrived. Better doesn't begin to touch it, actually. Parenthood is a rush of fresh breeze after a lifetime of sucking up canned air. I have ripped off my oxygen mask and felt the cool wind of beautiful sacrificial love, and I will never be the same.

A child's needs will reveal your faults, your strengths, your grit and your tenderness. It will wear down the bits of you that should not be there, and it will build up part of your heart that you never knew existed. It is frightening and thrilling and lovely, all at once.

I am learning this day after day after day after day, and you know what?

I only wish I'd had children sooner.

Let the revolution roll on, my friends.

Cause there's nothing better on Earth than this kind of love. Nothin'. 

These pictures are from a few nights ago. Clara let me hold her as she fell asleep, which has happened about twice since she was a newborn (the girl has got quite the independent spirit, let me tell you). You should've seen me; I was like a hiker who looks up and notices a deer lapping from a stream. I wouldn't move for fear of chasing the moment away. Especially since she is almost one, almost a toddler, a thought that makes me weepy. I motioned to Sam to please take a picture of the moment for me, in case there are not very many of them left to come. He did, and although I am in my pajamas with no makeup and they are a little blurry because the room was so dim... they have become a few of my favorite shots of all time. 

Thank you, my love, for capturing how I felt. 

Let me tell you why I hate summer.

I hate summer time.
I know, I know, I can hear your gasps.

"How could anyone hate SUMMER? The sun shines all day! The nights are warm and balmy! You get to eat snow cones for dinner!"

My husband is probably the loudest gasper of all, because he can't stand when people wax poetic about the cozy winter season, or their anticipation of cooler fall weather. He works outside, though, and I get it-  it would suck a big one to be climbing a power pole in sub-zero wind chill.
I get it.

But I still don't like summer, for many many reasons.

1. The expectations. It's like, you're supposed to have the time of your life for three months straight. Who can possibly achieve this goal? You can only go swimming and eat corn on the cob for so many days, you know what I'm saying? It gets old. And yeah, the sun doesn't set until 10 p.m. Does this mean I have to be out having FUN until 10 p.m.? What if I want to be in bed at 8? Well, too bad, because the sun is still shining and you should be at a BBQ, or in your swimsuit, or whatever. GO HAVE FUN, we'll meet back here in September.

2. It's really hot. I do not want to be outside when it is 100 degrees. I don't. So instead I am in my house, probably wearing sweats, because that's the another thing I don't like about summer: all of the buildings are freezing cold with air conditioning. So you're either outside sweating your nuts off, or you're inside wearing a sweater. It's so stupid. Sweat gives me bacne, people. Bacne in swimsuit season, for pete's sake.

3. Babies can't be outside very long. The only reason I would ever stay outside longer than 15 minutes would be to get a tan (I can get a great tan) but have you seen my daughter? She's a baby ghost. I can't have that girl in the sun more than 5 minutes without feeling guilty. So, in case you're wondering, my legs haven't been tan since I got back from summer camp.
It's pretty white over here.

4. Everyone is super busy. On vacation. Working long hours to make up for vacations. Camping. Visiting family. Etc, etc, and I am also busy, and I don't like being busy (this is a new thing. I used to love being busy. Now I just want to play with Smooch all day.) So I'm in summer school and directing camps and going on vacations and visiting family and blah blah blah, whatever happened to just watching t.v. every night? What happens at the end of Game of Thrones this season, anyways? We still haven't finished it.

So, a small list of white middle class "problems" that probably earned me a good imaginary slapping from most of you, to which I say:
Bring it on. Maybe your slaps will add a little color to my cheeks, since I refuse to go outside.

love,
Jessie

Bill and Monica grow up.

Sam and I were both sort of a mess when we started dating. We were making bad decisions and living very selfish lives, very "I am in my twenties and have very few responsibilities and it is the world's job to make me happy and fulfilled" kind of lives. It's a wonder our relationship worked at all...oh wait it didn't, he broke up with me six months after we got together (the fool!). So much has changed in these 8 years since we met, but one moment from our early relationship represents what I still love so much about Sam.

Also, we used to wear a lot of costumes.

Yes. Bill and Monica. We won best costume that night!

It was early on a Sunday morning, about a month into dating each other, and we were going to church together. See, when you party on a Saturday night, all is made well by attending some sort of church service the next day...bear with me here, we were idiots. It was early Sunday morning and the house where we'd been drinking the night before was a disaster. I was hustling to finish doing my hair, but I could hear Sam out in the kitchen. I grabbed my bottle of hairspray and snuck through the living room to see what he was doing, and there he was. Broom in hand. Cleaning the kitchen. I asked what he was doing, and he glanced up through the haze of hairspray surrounding me.

"I'm cleaning."
"Yeah, but why? We gotta go in a minute- just leave it for someone else." All the someone else's were still asleep. I decided I would say a prayer for them at church, in payment for them cleaning up. But Sam would have none of it.
"You always leave a place cleaner than how you found it. I'll just do this really quick."

He went back to sweeping, and I decided I would marry him. Right then and there, in the midst of our messy lives, our selfish confusion, and our shaky walks back to the Lord, I knew that I needed to marry Sam Horney. This man who would never dream of leaving a mess for someone else to clean was my gift from God, the anecdote to my chaos. I loved him so much that I needed to spend the rest of my life with him. So I am. And last night he showed me, once again, that incredible part of his heart that still draws me in and startles me.

The last two nights with Clara were hard. During our long trip to the east coast, on midnight plane rides, entire days in her stroller in New York City and Boston, four hour car trips, sleeping in a different place every couple of nights: I gave in to a little bit of guilt parenting. You know what I'm talking about? When you don't want your baby to cry in your brother's one bedroom apartment at night, and you don't want your baby to cry in a taxi, and you don't want your baby to be upset at a memorial service, and your baby threw up earlier in the day because it is hot as hell in this damn city, and your baby is so tired of meeting new people, and so you nurse and nurse and nurse no matter what time it is?

Right. Exactly.

Except then we got home and our sweet girl was still waking up several times a night to eat, despite being night weaned before we left. So we had to start over. Forehead smacks and groans all around, people. We decided to cut her off cold turkey and let her remember how to sleep through the night again, hoping it would just take a little bit of crying. (We're not big into letting her cry. Clearly.)

The first night she cried for two hours straight. Then last night it was about 30 minutes off and on. I did not respond to her cries either time, however. You know why?

Because by the time I blinked open my heavy eyes and stumbled to the nursery to check on her, Sam Horney was already in there. Every time. Rocking her. Applying teething gel. Changing her diaper. Singing a quiet lullabye. He never woke me, he never hesitated in what to do, he just got out of bed and tended to our daughter. And he did it with pleasure.

I love him. He is the calm in my chaos, the broom in my kitchen, the lullaby in my dark. And I am just so thankful to be raising my baby with a man who loves to be a father. GOOD GOLLY that is sexy. Maybe we'll put our spandex bike outfits back on tonight?

Too much, you guys. Take it down a notch.

JUST TO BE CLEAR, if Clara ever asks, her parents met at a Bible study and didn't kiss until they got married. Second base was saved until they decided to have a baby. And we only drink wine for communion.  

Dear Jimmy.

Dear Jimmy, 

Earlier this spring, in my non-fiction writing class, I wrote and recorded a radio piece about aging. In the piece I spoke of you, told your story, shared about the privilege of getting older; a privilege you did not get. On the day my radio story was played in class, another student left abruptly in the middle of my recording. After class she approached my desk with tears in her eyes.

"Jessie, I'm so sorry for leaving in the middle of your presentation. But I have to tell you something- I was sitting there, listening to the story about Jimmy, and something sounded so familiar about him. So I googled his name and there he was. I couldn't believe it- I knew him and his wife."

"Are you serious?" I grabbed her hand. This is when she started sobbing.

"Yes, yes, I just can't believe it. I can't believe he's... I rode home next to him and his wife- Cassidy, right?- this Christmas, on a plane back from Denver. And I have thought about them almost every day since. There was something about them that was so special, you know, and the way they talked with me, and the way Jimmy loved Cassidy...it gave me hope. It changed things for me."

Do you remember who I'm talking about, Jimmy? She's recently been through a nasty divorce that left her defeated, lost, unsure of herself and her value. She wrote about this loss all semester, and I wondered about the pain in her heart. But you know what she told me? She told me that the way you loved Cass changed HER life. She told me how you and Cassidy were so excited about the vacation SHE had just taken, how you both asked questions about her trip to Mexico with her sister, how you kept your hand on Cassidy's leg the entire flight, even while you read, because she is a nervous flyer and you wanted to reassure her. This woman cried and cried in the middle of our classroom, pinned under the weight of your death, bewildered at the depth of Cassidy's heartache.

She knew you for one plane ride.
A few hours in a tin box high in the sky.
And she has never stopped thinking about how you loved your wife.

Sam and I went to New York last week for your memorial service at Columbia, where your Bassett program friends hosted a beautiful time of remembrance. The Dean of Columbia medical school spoke of your qualities as a student and a person. Your advisor laughingly told us about his unorthodox note taking during your interview to be accepted into the program (basically he scrawled across his pages, "We must convince this student to join our program. He's amazing!" And guess what- the other interviewers did the same thing. This happens for exactly no one who applies there, Jimmy.) There was an entire video of students who went to school with you for only 6 months, sharing how you changed their lives as doctors and people. A new tree stands in your honor on the Columbia campus, a constant reminder of the lessons you unwittingly imparted on everyone you met. Your friend Wilson designed a fabulous tribute to your other-wordly powers of love and care, with a pin for people to wear on their white coats, or in my case, their diaper bags.

This was your third memorial service, Jimmy. Third. You died when you were 24 years old and it has taken thousands of people three services to truly begin mourning what they lost when you died.

But in all of this celebration of your life, and in all of the unending grief of your absence, this is the truth that sticks with me:

You changed my classmate's life on that airplane.
You changed her life because you LISTENED. You and Cassidy talked with her about a vacation, you showed an interest in her, you held Cassidy's leg because she gets scared on airplanes, and you changed her life. You gave her hope for a love that is bigger than the pain of her divorce, and you gave her hope for her future. She said it over and over again- "They were so full of love and light. Not just for each other, but for me, too. I have thought about them constantly since that day."

A serviceberry tree grows tall in a grassy square in New York City, a living notice to all who pass that a man came through this world who ascended the muck of life. Beneath that tree lies this plaque with this inscription; a direct quote from your journal; and I just wanted you to know that it has already been proven true.

You, Jimmy Watts, cared not for yourself, not for your own interests; you did not think of how you felt or who hurt your feelings or what people thought of you; you just listened. And you loved. And that changed us, Jimmy. It changed an entire school of doctors. It changed families. It changed churches. It changed me. And it changed my hurting classmate, who needed hope more than anything else on that turbulent flight over the Rocky Mountains. Your work has indeed been made permanent by your Creator. It has been made permanent in the trajectory of our lives without you. It is permanent here, in my own soul: because I want to be that person on an airplane. I want God's love to shine through me effortlessly, simply because I know who I am in Him, simply because I have the freedom to love with abandon. 

When I know who I am, I have the freedom to love with abandon. 
Thank you for (unknowingly) showing me what that looks like. Thank you for ministering like Jesus did: with humility. in the quiet moments. to everyone you met.

Thank you, friend. I love you.

~Jessie

Here we are with your beautiful wife and your beautiful tree.

We will show this picture to Clara one day and explain who you are and why you matter so much.