The King in the Cave

The year I was pregnant, I read a beautiful poem by Madeleine L'Engle (here, scroll down to the bottom) at Advent service my church holds for the women of the community. The service was so beautiful and meaningful, that I dreamed of presenting an original piece at it. A few weeks ago, I was asked to write a poem for this year's service. We've been studying David in our various women's Bible studies, so the theme of the Advent service was looking at Jesus through the line of David.

Here's what I wrote:

The King in the Cave
by Anna Carpenter


Can you imagine a boy
who knew less what it meant to be king
Than the ruddy shepherd David?

He knew flocks and fields for sure
He could fling a stone with the best of them
Lions and bears, no problem. 

But ruling a nation?
Out of all his brothers,
Prophet Samuel poured the oil on him!

God chose him!
The least likely, dirtiest,
manure-freshest one of the bunch.

Israel had crowned only one other king.
So what could David
Possibly imagine was in his future?

He probably did not guess giants.
Or being the royal harp-boy.
Or spending years hiding in caves.

Were these hard, dark places
Filled with the lost, last and least
Really where God wanted him to be?

What of that promise and early successes?
What of princes? And princesses!?
Was this what it meant to be king?

What heartache and anger
We know that he felt
As he poured out his words on the page.

“The LORD is my rock
And my fortress
And my deliverer!

My God, my strength,
in whom I will trust
My stronghold.”

That hope kept paving
His humble path to the throne
A long journey he never expected.=

From the cave he emerged
To be king at last
With a heart after God’s very own.

The first in a forever line
Of covenant kings
Started out in a shepherd’s robe.

Is it any wonder, then, that shepherds
Were the first to hear the news?
An angelic announcement of the royal birth!

“You there, with your staffs and sandals
You dirty, manure-fresh bunch
Come! See a king born today in a cave!”

God Himself, King of the World
Stripped out of Majesty’s claims
Wrapped once in flesh then swaddled in rags.

A cradle of stone and pillow of straw
Attended by animals
sharing their stalls.

Jesus, the long-awaited son of David
Born to wear the crown
Found the least-likely way to achieve it.

He fulfilled every prophecy about him
While turning every expectation
Absolutely upside down.

He wandered in deserts
Pardoned thieves
Dined with the last, lost and least

He was challenged and threatened
Denied and betrayed
And finally brutally murdered

The throngs of angels
Heralding his birth in song
Were held silent at his death

Once again God made flesh
Humbled himself
To be wrapped up and laid in a cave.

Where are you now,
O child of the King?
You there, with your pains and sorrows.

Is your promise elusive,
Your path full of stones,
Your dream lost in the darkness?

Is your journey much longer
Than you could’ve imagined
Your foes in constant pursuit?

If you think that the cavernous
Place where you’re stuck is too
Far for the light to break through,

Don’t you dare give up hope,
As you cry to the sky
The story’s not over yet.

My friend can’t you see
The miracle here,
The heart that God’s building in you?

You may be waiting
But He hasn’t stopped
No, nothing about Him has changed.

The King of the Universe
still loves to do
Some of His best work in caves!

(Feel free to share this, just kindly link back to this blog. Thanks!)

Boxes are fun toys

Relevant picture of cute child

When I posted my status on Facebook today about packing, I went back and read the post I wrote about having our house on the market and I realized I'm long overdue for an update.

(short version)
We're under contract! Hooray! Praise God!

(long version)
We (and by we, I mean mostly me) were getting show weary and after 6 weeks on the market with no offers, talked to our realtor about taking it off. She encouraged us to wait until after the election, since people were waiting on big decisions until then and we agreed. That was a Monday.

That Monday was the day after we got home from a wonderful vacation with my parents. It took us a few days to unpack and put things away, but in those few days people kept showing up to look at the house. Now, to back up a few weeks, I had spent several very stressful and long-hour days early in September getting the house "staged" to show. And if you wondered, it is not like the shows where the stagers come and send the owners off and they come back to a delightfully lovely show-ready house. Ha!

If I thought it was hard to stage the house, it was even harder to live in a staged house, being ready at the drop of a hat to have someone come through it. That's why I was show-weary. And that's why I was taking my time unpacking from vacation, because with no appointments to see the house, I was enjoying just getting to live in it and let Ayla play with all her stuff.

So, Sunday we get home, Monday we decided to stay on the market a bit longer, Thursday a couple shows up to see the house without having called me first. Our place was a mess! Probably not hoarder style mess, but definitely not show ready. I let them come in and see it since they had gone to all the trouble to come, I just apologized profusely for the mess and asked them to please come see it during the open house that weekend when it would be beautiful. They were very kind about it and mentioned that they didn't mind getting to see what it would look like when they lived there.

The following Monday they came to see it again, with an appointment, and the next day they put in an offer! Full asking price with no seller subsidy. This was such an answer to prayer. The week before we put our house on the market, two other houses in our neighborhood went on. Since we're in a townhouse community, all the houses are virtually identical. Ours has a few more upgrades than the others that are (still) for sale, but I think the main difference was the mess. Had to be!

That was about three weeks ago and we close in another three weeks and have passed all the hurdles between offer and closing so far. The home inspection and appraisal came back with expected results and the couple seems really excited to move in and start making this their home.

Meanwhile, we've been looking for a place for us to live between now and next summer. Of course God answered this prayer, too, and provided us with a beautiful rental house in our price range right in the neighborhood we wanted with a landlord who was willing to do a short-term lease. We're moving in over there this weekend, though we can take our time before having to be out of here.

We are still looking for a new family for Mocha. The Virginia family I mentioned before turned out to have dog allergies, which may have been important information to know before they started looking for a dog, but at least they found out before adopting her!

She's got a new best friend, though, who would spend every waking moment with her if we'd let her!

Cute child with new best friend

And in completely unrelated moving news, Ayla's hair is long enough for this now.

A letter to me (now) from me (now)

Hey you/me,

Nice hair (ha ha, inside joke).

I just wanted to let you know that it’s ok. It’s ok that you aren’t pregnant this month and it’s ok that you really wanted to be and it’s ok to be (a little) sad about it.

It’s ok that most of your friends who were pregnant with you the first time are pregnant again or already have had their next round of babies. I promise you, the next time you are pregnant, someone else in the world will be pregnant at the same time.  It’s even likely that you will know one or more of them.

And if you never get pregnant again?

That will be ok, too. Remember how hard it was to lay down your desire to give birth to a baby? To leave it in the trustworthy hands of your Abba Father? I know you still wanted it after that, but you knew life WOULD go on. It was still two more years of wanting after that, but they were FULL, weren’t they?

Your life is full now. You have a kind, brilliant and strong husband and a darling, thriving daughter.

You have friends out the wazoo, and make more daily it seems. I could go on and on about the free country you live in, the amazing technology you have access to, everything that is just right here at your fingertips.

But those aren’t the things that make you full, and you know that. Christ alone fills. He came, lived, died, rose, filled. It would have been enough, as you say at Pesach.  He is enough. Don’t forget it.

Don’t forget about your other friends, either. The ones who will forever carry in their hearts the babies they will never hold in their arms. The ones who are still waiting for even just a positive pregnancy test. Even just that would be a miracle for some of those girls you love so dearly.  Don’t forget about those parents who are waiting simply for words on paper so they can kiss the soft heads of children who have been waiting just as long for them.

If you keep thinking about others like this, you may even remember your friends who are single, who would love to even get to the “WE are trying,” phase. 

You may even get the idea that everyone you come into contact with is waiting on, wanting something. You may have compassion or understanding for them. In fact, you only have one child to hold, so that gives you a free arm to throw around someone else’s shoulder and say, “Me too!”

Oh, it’s ok that you want another baby to hold in that arm, but there’s no reason for it to be empty for now. Ok?

Big, Not-Pregnant, News

When I blogged my pregnancy news, I snuck it in the comments of a post about a Walmart being constructed across the street (It didn't turn out to be of the Neighborhood variety after all). When my husband was deploying overseas for a year, I came up with a cute story about our dog, Mocha, taking a big trip (She didn't end up going with John, but has gone to live with her cousin in Texas).

Well, the news I have to share now is probably equally as big, but I'm just going to straight up tell you.

Next summer, we're moving to "EssAy" for two years.

I know, I said I was going to just tell you, but we do need a little bit of a code. I'm careful with what gets posted here so we don't end up in some crazy search results. However, you are smart enough to get this one easily.

Just imagine the word above is sounding out the initials for a big, oil-rich country where women can't drive and I won't have to worry about pork being in any of our food, and you've got it!

So far away and so hot, you're thinking. Yes.

We're excited though. We've talked about living overseas, especially in that region, since before we were married. Though we've both been deployed and traveled extensively, this will be our first time actually living together abroad. We'll find out for sure if this is the life for us.

From our visit to Turkey this summer. 

I don't know many of the details of us going yet, and I'm trying not to think about the leaving part right now. I'm sure you'll be hearing about it plenty, though!

I do have two big prayer requests regarding the move, if you are into the praying sort of thing.

First, we are trying to find a new home for Mocha. She is such a wonderful pet and we'd love to keep her, but where we're going is not very dog friendly, especially the kind of dog who needs space to run around outside. I've pleaded and bugged everyone on Facebook and we've placed Craigslist ads. Right now there is one family here in Virginia who is interested, but we have to get her here from Texas (where she's been since last February!) first, meet them and be in mutual agreement. Please pray we find her a good home and that she adjusts to them well.

Second, we have our house on the market. This could be a post unto itself and probably will be, but if you've ever sold your home, you know what we're facing. Even though we're not moving overseas until next year, we thought we'd try to take advantage of the slight rise in the housing market our area is having. It's been about a month and we've had no offers yet, but we're going to wait a few more weeks. If we don't sell now, we'll try again in the spring. We just thought it would be nice to sell with no real time crunch. Obviously if we don't sell in the spring, renting is an option, just not our preferred one right now. Please pray we stay in perfect peace throughout this process and keep our eyes on our true Source

Thanks, friends! I'll be sure to report when we see movement on either of these. By the way, thank you for reading after all these months of sabbatical (yeah, I'm gonna call it that).

How are you doing?

A little video to illustrate my last blog

Having a ball dancing

(no endorsement of lyrics implied!)

(Also, you may need to come to my actual blog to watch, may not work in reader or email.)

Eighteen Months

Dear Ayla,
Eighteen months ago, around this time (late at night), I got to meet you for the first time. I was just so excited that you were here, that you were you (a girl I got to name Ayla) and that you were mine, really with no idea what my life would be like with you in it.

It's been a hard year, baby girl, not gonna lie to you (ever), but you kept me going and made it all kinds of wonderful. Now your daddy is home from his deployment and we're learning how to be a family. You are discovering how much fun Daddy is and remembering that his strong arms are the best place to be (whether cuddling or swinging or tickling or dancing).

Even though I've been with you every day of your life, I still look at you and marvel. I love seeing you in a new light as Daddy gets to know you all over again.

You started walking about 4 months ago and now you're so good at it, you aren't content to just walk anymore. You're practicing new styles of walking, such as with a swagger, on your toes, with a little knee bend added in or just running. You're also becoming quite the dancer. I love to watch you stop whatever you doing to do a little boogie when you hear music. It actually doesn't even require music, if you hear pounding, buzzing or the beat in your heart, your feet start a jig.

One of your favorite things to do is slide. You call it "outside," even though you understand that outside is also "outside." You turn anything with the slightest angle into a slide. The back of the couch? Easy. The side of the tub? Yup (not that I let you do this, but you still try). A pillow on the floor? The slight incline between the driveway and parking lot? My bent legs? Angle + you = slide.

You are great at playing games. I think we make up 50 new ones a day, but your favorite is to pretend to go "nigh-night." You're not really picky about the surface, sometimes there's a pillow involved, sometimes it's just the floor of the Women's Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. You lay down on your back, say "nigh-night," then go, "shhh, shhh." It's pretty cute, but your comfort with dirty floors may not reflect well on my parenting style.

As for actual sleep, that's still a moving target, with emphasis on the moving rather than the still. I wish I could record our view on the baby monitor to show you someday how much you move around while you sleep. You dropped your morning nap a few months ago and your afternoon nap is anywhere from 1-3 hours. Or no hours, like today. You do sleep a good 11-12 hours at night and for that you are greatly loved. You're a big fan of getting sung to before bed and now that you've learned to say and sign "again," you get lots and lots of songs. Your dad and I both love that you say "Amen," after we pray. I can't wait to hear what you pray about when you start to say your own.

And, girl, you are saying so much! I counted today and you're at 102 words, and that's not including all the words you sign or body parts you know or animal sounds you can make. You don't really babble, instead you just pick a few words and say them over and over. I can even consider you bi-lingual, since you insist on calling "water" "agua," even to the point of correcting me. You've put two words together a few times, such as "No Mommy," or "Bye-bye Daddy," but no real sentences yet. One of my favorites is how whenever you hear us say "now," you say, "Now-I-Know," (from the ABC song) as if it's one word. Oh, and I also love how when I try to comfort you when you fall, you mimic me repeating as you cry, "I know, I know," as you pat my shoulder.

I probably take the falling harder than you do. Oh, I know you're tough and maybe like me you're a little clumsy, but I just hate to see all the bruises and scratches marring your beautiful baby skin. You're so bold and adventurous, like your daddy. Other parents comment about this when they see you on the playground or in the soft play room. Usually that's right before you tumble off a step or climb right over their child on your way to go down yet another slide. I hope we can add some thoughtfulness to that courage soon.  You'll really be unstoppable then!

Like most kids your age, you love climbing on anything, opening and closing doors, putting lids on and taking them off, stacking things and then knocking them down. You love balls, bubbles and balloons. You're learning about sharing your toys with your friends, although right now sharing to you means, "give that back to me."

"Sharing" with your birthday buddy, Behr. 

You do throw your fair share of tantrums, but you snap out of them pretty quickly. We haven't started time outs with you yet because usually a simple, "No!" or smack on the hand gets your attention. I'm not really looking forward to the discipline phase, but I know it's one of the most important aspects of my job, so we'll get through it.

Every day I thank God for you, and today I thank Him for eighteen months of awesome joy with you.
You are my jewel, today and always!

Thoughts near the finish line

Hello, my name is Anna. It's been 120 days since my last blog.

Wow. That's a long time. It's as long as Air Force deployments used to be. At least I blogged while I was deployed (back in the MySpace blog days). While I could spend this whole post giving excuses and explaining why it's been so long and what I've been up to, I won't. Not now anyway.

I'm writing now because my year "alone" is almost over and that seems to call for a blog post. I've been doing quite a bit of reflection on the past year, trying to sift through all the excitement of anticipating John's homecoming and just everyday busyness of raising a toddler, to find nuggets of what I learned or how I changed or the meaning in it all.

I imagine I'll be sorting a lot of that out in the next few weeks, and hope to write about it here. I will tell you a few of the things I'm aware will be different once John gets home. While it's been hard in so many ways to have lived separately for the past year, we have done as most humans do and found coping mechanisms to help us through it and most of those will be irrelevant once we're together, so we'll have to unlearn them. For me, I'm thinking about:

* Where I focus my time and energy
I've had the luxury (?) of being able to devote almost all my time and energy to Ayla. I hear that most new moms do this anyway, but I haven't had to feel torn about it since John hasn't been here to remind me that he needs me, too. On our last vacation together (Turkey. 3 weeks in May. It was awesome. Yeah, I'm really behind here.), it was very obvious who gets most of me. It was very hard for me to remember a time when I wasn't thinking about her schedule, what she needed to eat, how much sleep she had, where potentially dangerous objects were, what sounds what animals make, more sounds more animals make, how dirty the floor was that thing had fallen on before being in her mouth, and so on. Oh, husband, what?

* How I take care of our home
John is not a husband who judges or complains when the house isn't spic and span, and he certainly does a fair share of the housework. That said, I'm kind of in charge of stuff getting done here, since I am here more, and I have given myself a lot of grace this past year. For his part, he's had a house guy taking care of his laundry, cleaning, and cooking. We both know I'm not that guy, but we'll just have to figure out what this all looks like, at least until Ayla can start pulling her own weight!

* How I take care of myself
Yes, I know John will love me no matter what my hair looks like or how late in the day I wear my pajamas. However, what he is attracted to and what Ayla is attracted to are very different things, so I just need to consider that.

Really, these are issues all, if not most, couples and parents work through. This is the work of marriage, which has looked different for us over the past year.

So, yes. I am excited about him coming home, about him discovering the wonder that is being with our daughter every day, and reconnecting with my best friend. I'm excited about having his help, his insight and his presence. I'm excited about the season stretching out in front of us that has no looming departures or separations from each other. Remember, we knew he was leaving for most of my pregnancy, so everything since then has been tinged with his impending or actual absence.

But I'm also so aware of how intentional we will need to be to do the needed repairs and maintenance to our marriage for it to continue being the healthy, safe place it is. I know we're both selfish, sinful people who need tons of grace as we settle back into an "us."

 I'm more and more convinced every day that healthy marriages that last don't happen accidentally. I'm blessed beyond belief that I'm married to a man I love and am excited to be with, who loves me and is willing and ready to do this work together.

Now, I just need him to step off that plane and into my arms!

We're almost there, people, almost there!