I’ve got two days to get ready for our trip to California and this is about the time the panic sets in. The clothes, the bags, the stuff, the travel can get overwhelming but that’s when you just suck it up and do it anyway.

The boys had baseball and T-ball last night and it did not disappoint. Cutest little ball players EVER! The whole “drop the bat before you run to first place” thing, the awesome, “RUN! You hit the ball now get to the base!” cheer from the crowd,  the very excellent moments when the kids run from third to the pitcher’s mound and then to home plate? That stuff is priceless. Loved it.

I ran at the high school track last night instead of along the country dirt roads and wouldn’t ya know I chose the time when a group of high school boys were working out there also? Sixteen year olds have a funny way of shaming you into the slow lane when they continue to pass you in what looks like a sprint, but that’s just their relaxed way of running. There I was huffing and puffing while they lapped me talking and laughing and I don’t even think they were sweating. Oh well, it was kinda funny really.

For now there are only two gigs on my calendar for this summer and one of them is the Open Mic night at Song School. Is it pathetic that I spend lots of time thinking about which one song to sing for an evening three months down the road? Well, I spend lots of time  mulling around the possibilities. I just keep thinking that this’ll probably be my last summer out there so I want to do a good job before saying goodbye. Last year I was impulsive and sloppy with my song choice. This year I don’t want to screw it up. Here’s to not screwing it up!

We weathered another storm last night and we’ll weather another one only with the prayer that we get a little time to recover our strength before the clouds roll in again. And we pray, “Lord, have mercy.” And we cling to a promise that we do not go alone.

I sat on the edge of wet grass and pulled weeds from wet earth and watched as the life left them and they wilted in a sloppy pile beside me.

I put on my church shoes and my church make-up and my church earrings and found a home in faces and hearts and hugs and it reminded me that the storm isn’t as scary when we’re huddled together in the basement. And the storm that threatens to gobble me up subsided long enough for a three-legged race and balloon toss and potluck chatting. We stood together under a clear blue sky, we laughed and cheered on the kids in wheel barrow racing and suddenly I felt right where I supposed to be surrounded by this family in this small town where we live. Like so much of life, I couldn’t see where I was going and what the plan looked like, but today (before they dumped water on me), came a moment of peace/ zufriedenheit where I thought, “Yup. I get it. Thank you.”

Yesterday was the last day of school and a fierce wind blew us into another world where children don’t need to run out the house each morning. It blew us all into the same blank space I’ve been inhabiting on my own for some time. I’m trying to fight back motivated by my little guy holding my hand asking, “Remember when you didn’t feel good and were crying so much?” Buddy, that was yesterday and I’m leaving that behind and together we’ll forge a path through this Nebraska wilderness and see fossils and rivers and wineries and birds in a prairie. That’s where we’re going to color in the white blank space and you will be my guides.

Yesterday were thoughts on love, on unconditional love, on love that gives and gets and walk with Him who created us to love with our best self. How do I do that when I’m not my best self and don’t know when I’ll be that person? There is love that’s easy. Not always easy, but easy mostly. Yesterday I couldn’t receive an abundance because I never thought an abundance was mine to have. Today I wonder if I could receive a love bigger than the one I’m able to give. Could I do that? Could I be OK with getting more than I give?

Today I ran through a wind and my legs burned at the resistance. Today I painted my nails red and today I was healed just a little bit. That’s not to say I might not fall into the pit again, but for now I’m digging up and out to where the wind blows and standing with scarecrow arms extended I close my eyes and let it knock me over. Go ahead.

Tomorrow could be falling further or rising higher. It could be red nails or chipped. Tomorrow will be white dresses and wood floors with a view of the clothesline. Tomorrow will build on the strength of today getting closer to the one who can put me back together. Tomorrow is frightening as hell, but it’s coming and I won’t be alone. I’ve got these little bickering warriors to keep me moving forward into the dirty wind robed in an armor that has its weak spots. And to fight back I’ll sing a song in G as the sun goes down seven miles from this small town and the dreams will color the space that have been these past days and I’ll find the gold I’ve had all along hidden under a haystack of my making in an obsession with rating myself on a scale of one to ten of who I am now and who I was back then and always coming up short. And in the back of my head I hear that whisper once again, “Remember when you didn’t feel good and you were crying so much?” Now if that don’t punch you in the gut….

Well, two boys ended their school years yesterday. One left preschool behind and the other had his kindergarten graduation. It was super cute and we were the only family who didn’t take a picture (couldn’t find the camera). Oh well. That’s not really what we’re about- capturing moments.

This morning is our school’s closing chapel and our oldest will walk away from 3rd grade and do a little summer stuff before 4th grade starts. And they just keep getting bigger and bigger. I’m going over there pretty soon to play guitar for that. Later today I’ve got to get my cowboy country song set worked out for the Care Center cookout tonight before then going to Ascension service at church. Big day.

I keep hearing songs I’ve heard before. I put in a CD that I hadn’t heard in a while yesterday and man that voice hit me like a truck  remembering that band up on a Colorado stage and being impressed that the bassist was sitting in an armless rocking chair. Cool. I heard songs on a playlist posted by another and the first band made me freeze in my tracks as I thought, “They sound just like us and they’re finalists in a song competition. Say what?!!” Why didn’t Garrison Keillor have is Talent Show for Towns under 1000 people this year? We coulda rocked it.

The urge for going is deep. The Game of Thrones is a huge book and I need to carve out some hours to tackle it. Wedding dresses are still white these days? Don’t know. Gonna find out on Saturday. Record some songs at my friends house? Sounds good to me. But first, I gotta get out of these jammies.

I’ve been absent from the blogosphere (yes, I used that word) for some weeks because I’ve been too busy sitting in the silence of the emptiness born of openness that leads to an, “I don’t know.”….if that makes any sense.

1. I watched this program on HULU called “A day in the life” and I saw Questlove of The Roots band as the featured subject. It was cool and overwhelming to see someone so deep into a musical career who looked happy, but exhausted. I thought about my music and how it shows up intensely for days and then fades into the background as other things arise and then shifts back to the front again. I kinda like how it can always be fresh that way. I also love the exhausting days of going from one practice to another and playing five different kinds of music almost in as many hours.

2. I did what Amy Speace does not do: I turned down a gig. Not because I was busy and not because I don’t love the place, but because I wondered if I could even do it anymore. My own work has been sleeping for so long that I don’t know if it’ll ever wake up. If it’s going to wake up, then I have to wake up too and I’m not there yet.

3. The only thing I’m practicing for myself is the one song to sing at this year’s Song School. It’ll be my swan song, my goodbye. Now that all the kids are in school, life is going to move to where I don’t know what I’ll do or who I’ll be. My plan for Song School this year is lay low, listen, live it up and then sing my one song. It’ll be good.

4. Life is growing like the garden in my yard, the sun is shining and I’m sitting on the porch watching the clouds float by. I want to move, but I don’t know how or where to go so I feel like I’m waiting for a sign or a something to prompt my feet and my heart beat is a certain direction. Stay tuned.

I’m not counting the days or watching the clock or sitting by the phone anymore and I feel good about that. I mean, the anticipation of something coming down the pike is a good feeling and different from day to day until the moment when I realized that I was hanging onto something I  never had in the first place and then feeling sad about having lost something that was never mine. What is that about? That’s not cool at all.

So instead, I’m freeing myself from the pressure of tomorrow and feeling it’s bigness instead. And as I was loading the dishwasher in my kitchen I was giving a fake interview to an imaginary interviewer and this is how it went:

“We all think about that next thing coming at us. My friends and I talk about this ‘what’s next’ question and wondering where this road will lead. Some days it feels good to keep going and not the not knowing doesn’t get us down, but other days we’re doing so much looking back and kicking up dust right where we’re at that we feel trapped by the path we have like we know better than the builder. We know better than the builder? I don’t think so.

BUt it’s in this present hour of peace where I realize that the story won’t play out in one way because the plan is pointed elsewhere that I remember those friends and neighbors keeping it real. WE’re not wealthy (well, we are), we’re not powerful (not in that way anyway), we’re not noteworthy or famous but we keep moving forward. It can get rough but we keep going and we can be exhausted but we don’t give up and we hold out hope and hang onto promises that never go away and we see where we end up at the end of every day. We give to each other the gifts that we have and nothing could be richer than how we move forward together hand in hand.”

He was born on a Monday like this one and now he’s five. The day before he was born was the ground breaking ceremony for the Trinity Life Center and I was huge with two kids beside me in a dirt field and I was exhausted. The next day I woke up and went about my day until around 10am when I just felt like garbage. Well, garbage turned into labor and my mom was there visiting. I had a sandwich and called Jon at work to tell him that after lunch we should probably go to the hospital and we did. And then there was labor and then he born. And now he is five and next year he’ll be in kindergarten and, just like that, they’re not young anymore and neither am I.

And it was one of those days worthy of a thoughtful walk and so I got one. And it was one of those days when I didn’t think I was going to make any huge major mistakes and then I did. And again I’m faced with having to be a fool on the stage and you’d think I’d be used it by now, but it still feels bad.

I sat weeding the playground while the boys played. We live close enough to it that, when the boy falls off the swings and scrapes his knee, I can quick run home for the bandaids and the betadine. I sat in the sun weeding and then there were all five of us outside on the monkey bars and sliding down the twisty slide. It’s a weird juxtaposition to me head in hands on the couch in my jammies wondering how I dug the hole this deep. Dig up! Dig up!

Wait for the timing to be just right and it never is and then there’s a cancellation and more waiting to come. Wait for the weather to turn and the sun to shine or the phone to ring or the anticipation of what’s to come to finally subside so you can sit in the now and forget there’s anything else but this this that you’re living. The wait don’t go away and there you are like a sucker chained to something that don’t care a rip for you so why are you so afraid of letting it go? Don’t know.

And the grey days and the weight of this waiting not yet raining but not dry enough to cut the grass that grows higher and higher just outside my kitchen window. The peace must have blown east with the clouds and the high pressure system and left me here to think  about all those things I don’t have and all those things I just can’t seem to grasp and I think I was there when I saw my contentment pass me by and plod onto greener pastures and happier houses and little further down the line and here I am still shackled to the ticking time and the hope that’s been whiddled down to one thin dime thickness that were it frozen ice on a January pond I woulda fallen right through before you could count from one to two and there it is and here I am and so it goes and the wait of this world only knows how I’m feeling from my head down to my toes resting on too tall grass letting life like a freight train pass. Thankfully, I might get a tomorrow and, with it, another chance.

Green shooting up out of cold cold ground and I watch it by the hour willing it to grow and show itself like I want. I sat at my kitchen window yesterday with binoculars poised at the feeder and the evergreens looking for little creatures that are so beautiful and curious. I’d look at the bird, then refer to the book, then call my brother in law and then curse that the bird had flown away- wash, rinse, repeat.

I put up a chair rail in my kitchen while the rain came down. I sawed the wood at the edge of my table and left sawdust on the floor. It was an awesome feeling to finally do a project that I had feared for so long. And then I remember that last fall I had vowed to do another project that has since fallen by the wayside. The EP feels like a dream and the attempt at recording seems so long ago. It’s one of those jobs where I’m going to have to do some mustering of strength and gathering of spirit to think I have what it takes to revisit it. That’s why I gaze at sprouts and feathered sprites and the wind and rain that falls outside. I can focus on the little and thank God for those minutes and forget that together they add up to bigger things. I can’t see the forest for the trees and that’s a good thing.

Picking up baseball/t-ball uniforms at the old gym. Let the games begin!

Getting instructions from our neighbor on how to replenish the backyard provisions she keeps for the birds. Sammy’s got his first little caretaker job and has made friends with a bird enthusiast (she even leant him her better field guide).

Houswork. Nothing special, confirmation song arranging, dishwashing and daydreaming and that baby bunny was my friend but now that I see it eating all the backyard stuff it has become the cutest little enemy I’ve ever had.

Walking with the Joe to Math with Moms over at preschool, hitting the pool park afterward with the brothers and the friends and while the kids played the moms pulled weeds from the rocks under the swings and talked deep thoughts and everyday things and it was wonderful.

Micro-brew sooooo gooood. Summer plans I wish could come tomorrow instead of a month from now. Sitting with the boys in bed reading some Dr. Seuss I remembered how it had been last summer since the whole family sat reading a chapter book together and my mind started thinking about all the great moments we’ll have reading installments of some tale that will last for days. Summer, I’m ready for ya.