Conflicted & Confessing

I need a place to confess something, and this is the place I've picked.

I don't understand how God loves all his children, all the time.

I actually do believe He does. ...In my head, where I file all my beliefs.
But in my heart, I am needing to admit I don't always feel it.

Oh, and I should clarify: This is not a question of the "do-badders" or the "do-gooders." I can fathom God loving any & all people, regardless of their actions, all the same. I can allow that God loves each individual person, too, distinctly and by name.

But how can he love *me* just the same as someone else who loves Him more?!

The issue I can't get over, just now, is how little I seem to feel, or work at feeling, for all the important stuff. I know it's just awful, awful, never-a-good-idea to do, but I can't help comparing me to others. (Picture two hands over my eyes as I peek from between the fingers.) I shouldn't look around and judge by the outsides, but some days I do! And other people really seem to love Jesus more. They seem to really want to.

And I seem to want nothing in life harder than watching TV.

My goals for the "right now" are truly so much smaller than I envision anyone else's. Any other person of faith's goals, anyway. ...To seek to PERSONALLY know God? To crave His presence? I just want not to stink-it-up at daily life so much.

And, again, the thing that sticks inside and hangs me up is this big disconnect between my head and my heart. They never seem to be on the same page lately.

In my head I feel *I* want to be one of the people getting to know Jesus more. Or I should want to, definitely. But there's something not quite honest about saying I feel this... because I don't really feel... anything at all (except maybe tired) right now.

It's like my interior life has been reduced to one long, dramatic sigh.

The sigh is a bad sign, I know. I remember. It's like my personal gas meter hitting the red zone, my engine temp gauge going far past halfway. When I find myself sighing deeply and often, I know my soul's machinery is not running well. It needs attention. And so I know that, today, I'm not taking good enough care of myself. I'm not using enough time and space to breathe.

And maybe that's why my feelings aren't feeling anything my head thinks they should.

At least I see where I am, on what precipice I stand. Because, recognizing, I'm much less likely to topple over.

I'm also starting to understand, as I write it all out, that I'm asking the wrong question in my deep confessional. It's not about God loving me more or less, at any given time. It *might* be about me making God smile with my effort to love HIM, with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, with all my strength. It might also be about Him waiting for me to ask, waiting for me to allow, waiting for me to feel more of the joy He's ready to give. Maybe God is smiling at crabby, closed-off me even now? I'm not picturing a shared-joke kind of smile, nothing so large that it threatens to break into a grin... but maybe there's a soft and wistful smile for me in Heaven, to let me know He always feels and always cares, even when I think I don't.

Now this thought I like. I confess, I like it very much...

Photos & Prose

I was just thinking how very much of family life most people's family photos miss. It can't only be me who goes quizzical every time I click to playback mode, eyes narrowing and lips twisting in frustration as I wonder where is the moment I saw when I pressed the shutter?

The real story is so often a little above or below what we capture in a snapshot, just to the left, or out of focus, teasingly beyond the bit frozen for posterity.

(An aside: It may be that I'm simply not a skilled or practiced-enough photographer -- granted! But I've seen a lot of pictures emailed to me and posted on Facebook, and I really think I'm onto something about the difference between what the casual photographer must feel and what the machine captures.)

Most of us get can compromise without too much trouble. We understand we're not pros, and "good enough" snapshots are really OK. "Most of us" are pretty well-adjusted. I, however, am almost always disappointed by my own snapshots. Because I don't like good enough. I want the WHOLE story -- and for me, it takes some prose along with the photos to save the technical failures.

And that's too bad, because I haven't scrapbooked (digitally or otherwise) anything for myself in a LONG time. Like, right now, even, I'm forgetting things that I would hold as dear memories later, if I just found the time to match some daily images to some words.

Tonight, all I can manage are a few inadequate grafs:
* Owen's vocabulary is wide and varied, and his mispronunciations of brand names and household products get funnier all the time. I have pinky-sworn the other Brandt boys not to correct him or laugh (too much) because he'll quickly catch on and start saying everything exactly. I need to keep a notepad out in the kitchen and try to track all the funny words over the course of a week. One common Owenism right now: "I M'AM" instead of "I am." And EVERY WORD used in past tense has an "-ed" sound, even when tacked onto the real (not "-ed") ending. Also, everything that happened not today is "yesterday" -- or, really, "yes-sir-day." (We thought he was saying yes-sir-Dave for a while.) And everything that hasn't happened yet is "tomorrow." Or, well, "to-mard-doe." Oh, and adorable things (like puppies and babies and sometimes my outfits) are "Awwww... coot, Mama! So coot (cute)!"


* Miles has been very slow to lose teeth, and when he does, his new ones are slow to fill in. I find the gaps strangely adorable. It's not the perfect-smile Miles face that we've memorized in years of scanning that face as his parents -- but it is JUST. SO. IMPERFECTLY. CUUUTE! I love to see him at this stage and I only regret that his snapshot images are becoming more "posed" and "cool" than natural. His smile is different in pictures, too. More cheesy grin -- like some manufactured version of the real thing -- than natural bi-product of a laugh. ...But his secret Miles giggle is still pure gold. And he cracks himself up a lot.

God bless these boys for putting up with me, camera in their faces at every holiday and event, as I strain for the right angle and direct them to redo something I don't think I got.

So my images aren't going to be as real as being there?! Well, they just aren't. Maybe all I can do right now is show up, as many days and ways as I can, and trust that when I do get around to writing our stories, the snapshots I got will be enough to spark the memories. And when that happens, the prose will come.