I’m laying here in my bed, blogging from my phone, because I can’t sleep. Why, for the love of all that is tired and holy, why can’t I sleep?

1. I have a mystery pain stabbing deep into my left side that, according to webmd, may or may not be liver failure, pancreatic cancer, or hunger.

2. Last night (let the bells ring across the land!) we decided to night-wean the baby. And it worked. Like, SUSPICIOUSLY easily worked. Like, Clara Horney may have been playing us fools for a while now, worked. But I haven’t slept more than 3 hours at a time since before acid wash jeans came back (which is a sign of end times, btw) and now my sleep schedule is entirely wacked out from the tick-tock of boobie calls the last 8 months. So I’m laying here in the dark, awake and possibly on the edge of extinction, TRYING not wake up Sam and ask him to go get me a bowl of cereal.

Night weaning. Who knew?

Whenever people ask me how many kids I want, or what I want my family to look like, I’m all,
“I want four little girls. But I also really want a son, and he’d need a brother… so two boys? Or actually, I want to have two girls, then four little boys, and then probably two more girls to round it out.” 

And then I’m all, wait, that’s eight kids.

Don’t tell Sam.

Speaking of Sam, he’s out of town this week, so I took Clara to visit him yesterday. I packed our overnight gear and we headed up to the mountains for a quick stay. He’s working in the same small town where my very favorite cousins live, so bam! Two birds one stone, my friends. We invited Cassidy and Amelia along on our roadtrip- one of my best friends and my 2 year old niece, respectively- and HELLO.

A toddler and a baby are a much different beast than just a baby. There were diaper blowouts, a dramatic cheerio incident at the hotel continental breakfast, someone ended up topless at the pool, and I think I might have slept about three hours last night.

And you guys, Clara can’t even really move yet. (She’s almost 8 months old and still doesn’t roll to get places. I would be concerned, until I realize that she’s been carried around like an Egyptian princess the last eight months, and might actually start moving on her own now that we set her down and force her to roll over for toys she can’t reach? I’ll keep you updated.) So it’s not like I had to chase two kids, you know? Although she is perhaps the chattiest baby I’ve ever met, so when combined with her delightful and wild cousin Amelia, it’s one fast and loud party. And one tired mommy (Aunt Boo Boo to some). Our night ended with me, Sam, and Cassidy huddled on the floor in our hotel room, drinking wine by the light of the bathroom and reading news reports about Boston while the little girls slept a few feet away.
Pretty classy weekend, all in all.

After 24 hours with those two girlies, 24 hours that included Cassidy’s constant help, by the way, I think maybe I’ll take a beat on trying for Smoochie part two.
MAYBE.

I was telling Sam we needed another baby before he’d even cut Clara’s umbilical cord, but yeesh. Am I just crazy?

I mean, I want 8 kids. That might be certifiably crazy.
I’ll keep you updated.

Horney hot tub party, hey now!

the girls and cousin Tad- what a boy, always got a stick in hand 🙂

her first swing ride! she found it underwhelming. and delicious.

love these babes!

But as any mom knows, ‘halfway’ through a pregnancy doesn’t happen until about 37 weeks, when body parts are blowing up and you sleep absolutely never.
Ugh.
Anyways, there you are, my own spring chicken. Expanding under my Easter best.

One year later, my chubby little friend, I missed most of the sermon this morning because of your insistent chatter, and also because I still haven’t put you in the church nursery (I know, I know, get over it, Jessie.) You wore your own flowered sundress, and a purple headband, and white sandals too big for your tiny feet that simply do not grow (You will probably be very short, daughter. My apologies.)

We LONGED for you, Smooch, and now here you are. I cannot stop being amazed. And I love being your mom. Even when you scream in your bed at night, and even when you get poop all over my clean sheets, and even when you make me miss church, I LOVE BEING YOUR MAMA.

There is something tragic about a McDonald’s drive-thru window. Like, I’ll take a hamburger and some chicken nuggets and possibly a lecture about healthy living and positive decision making, you know what I mean? So there we are, in the McDonald’s drive-thru, hungry and super irritated with each other. We’re already an hour late to a picnic with my family, and Sam is ordering food because he “can’t make it” to the park without eating something first. This makes sense, mind you, as it happens to be 1:30 p.m. and neither of us has eaten anything yet today. (Also. I would never live like this on my own. I love to eat. Love. Sam eats about once a day, twice if you count a bowl of popcorn.  After 5 years of marriage I sometimes roll the same way, and I can’t believe it, and how long can a girl even GO without an elaborate weekday breakfast? Come on!)

We haven’t eaten yet today because it took us forever to get out of our house to meet my sister and mom and some of my nieces at a park for lunch, for which I have packed a sweet little picnic, except now we’re going to be an hour and a half late and WE’RE SITTING IN THE MCDONALD’S DRIVE-THRU.
So. We are not going to the park.
It’s too late, everyone else will leave before we can get there.
No, I say, don’t order me any food. I hate this place.
And I am super mad.

Sam hands me a hamburger.

I devour it. Sheepishly. Wolfishly.
And in a surprising turn of events, Sam makes a plan.
The thing is, I’m the idea guy in our relationship. I come up with grand, complicated ideas, and Sam makes sure all the details get ironed out. When things aren’t working, it’s Sam and Clara whose (ridiculous) tempers run the show, while I rustle around for plan B.

But today,
today,
Sam Horney has a plan.
And I saw that plan,
and I called that plan good.

We gobbled up our burgers, then stopped by our house to grab the camera and the picnic blanket I’d forgotten. We drove 20 miles out of town into wine country, situated deep in the Snake River Valley, on the rich soil of the Bonneville Flood Plain. Our freshly washed car collected the dust of a winding gravel road as we climbed above the sloping patchwork of grape vines. Sunlight filtered through barren trees and looping cirrus cloud trails, warming the shocked white skin that peeked out our t-shirts and shorts.

We unloaded our baby, paid the ladies in the shop for a bottle of riesling, smoothed out our quilt under the bright blue sky, and nodded at each other in surprised satisfaction at our adventurous selves.

It’s been a tough month over here. A tough season, really. School sucks. I hate every minute of it, even though I should be thankful for an education. One of my best friends lost her husband, and there’s just no way to sneak around that boulder of a fact. We must face it every day. It won’t move- we must climb over it. And all of this hellish business can put a strain on our marriage, for sure. I find myself stretching to be kind, having to work to be patient, and losing it way more often than I should.
But God is gracious.
Even when I want to toss my husband into a McDonald’s parking lot,
even when I stomp my feet in cranky frustration,
even when I cannot handle one more change or disappointment,
God gives me peace.
God gives me Sam. And Sam gives me the gift of a good idea.
And Clara attacks a strawberry with the ferocity of a starving zoo monkey, and one more day feels a little bit better.

ps totally nursing in a few of those. you’re welcome, world. 

Dear Clara, 

Sure, sure, laugh all you want, but I love to watch and read about that krazy klan of dark haired women (and their poor, shadowed brother.) Their lives are so bizarrely meta: they appear on reality shows about their lives on reality shows. (humina what now?) Yet, in the midst of contrived situations and post-production editing, something rings true about their family dynamics. You ready?

Here it is:

“This too shall pass.”

Boyfriend gets drunk and embarrasses himself?
Sisters fight over who is shirking their responsibilities?
Mom forces a DNA test on her daughter to prove paternal lineage?
Stepfather finds out about your engagement via the tabloids?

Don’t worry- by the time this episode airs, all of the strife will have passed. Can you imagine? What an amazing gift of perspective: to watch yourself worrying about a problem that was solved long ago. It’s a journal with sound bites and background music.

Lately, around here, life has offered one brutality after another. It’s funny, because ever since August 22nd, when the world exploded with love, I have cursed every moment that passes, clinging with delirious fervor to my baby and her first year of life. That’s hard to reconcile with today, and yesterday, and next week, all of which I am actively wishing away.

How can I want so badly to fast forward time, to achingly wish Cassidy well again, to finish this semester of classes from hell, to MOVE ON from this awful awful time, all the while resigning myself to the sadness of Clara growing and growing and growing? How can I reconcile these deep, powerful, conflicting desires?
This is grown up life; this is living with grief; this is the difficulty of loving a child; this is why a degree is worth something; this is a fallen world; this is humanity.
This is when you pray for peace.

I am not a Kardashian, unfortunately. I’d be a good addition, I just know it. (I’ll get a spray tan, guys! Just let me in!) I do not get to sit down wearing an overpriced pair of high heels four months from now and grimace/laugh/cry at the hijinks of my life. I have to live here, and now, and pray for perspective. I mean, I know that this too shall pass. I know that.

The thing is, I’m not sure what I want more:

for time to pass…

or for time to stop.

And that, I suppose- that is humanity.

photo credits: 
top photo, Valerie Davenport Photography
bottom photo, Alene Horney

*note. I am sorry if you’re coming here to read about my Smoochie girl or some other hijinks. When I sit down to write this is all that’s in me. It won’t last forever. But here I am. And here you are. 


There is something so lonely about grief. In a room full of people, full with heavy hearts and downcast eyes, there is an impossible kind of lacking that somehow accompanies such an overwhelming gloom. We come together; we dig through a table full of pictures; we cradle bouquets of flowers, run our fingers down the sharp crease of program papers, read the order of service and prepare our hearts for a time of weighted sorrow. We gather in crowds, in rows, in microcosms of times and places that represent a person and his life; we gather and we hold each other up in our grief, we sigh and stretch the muscles of our devastation against handshakes and hugs. We sing, we listen, we nod, we laugh, we crumple tissues against our raw noses and in our clenched fists, we swell and shrink in our tender, tired bones.

And then we leave.

We get in our cars and we drive away. Maybe we keep our programs, or maybe we don’t. Maybe we cry the rest of the day, or maybe we take our kids to play at the park. Maybe we lost a friend. Or maybe we lost a brother. Or a son.
Or a husband.

There are layers of grieving, I think, even more than there are stages. For some, these layers are thin. Painful, but translucent in their presentation. For others, they are so deep, so intricate, it will take years to sort them out, a lifetime to peel them back and examine their meaning, their demands.

Some of us have leaflets.
Some of us have volumes.

Either way, grief is lonely.
And every time I get in my car and make my way home, away from Cass, away from the epicenter of my mourning, that loneliness threatens to gobble me up, quietly and completely.
It’s been good to be together these last few weeks. If Jimmy left anything behind (and seriously, that guy left a lot behind) he left a trail of community that he and Cassidy have been building their entire lives. This is a testament to the impact of Jimmy’s lifestyle: even in death, he is bringing people together. But still,

but still.

We have to finish this grieving by ourselves. We need each other to get through this-
we probably wouldn’t survive outside of this connection of hurt-
but when the party is over and midterms are due and babies need fed and we have to see our boss on Monday morning, we will have to keep moving.

As much as I’d like the world to stop for one damn minute and let my friend melt in her sadness, let me wallow in my fears of an inadequate life and of losing anyone else I love, the world most certainly will not stop. It will spin on its unforgiving axis and stay faithful to its orbit around the sun, and time will tick on and on and on.

I want to protect Cassidy and Jim and Roseanna and Xochitl from this, somehow. I want to build a bubble that time cannot penetrate and let them grieve in peace, let them figure out just how they are supposed to live in a world where Jimmy doesn’t walk beside them, or call to say goodnight, or laugh at their jokes. Let them ease into this new space that Jimmy doesn’t inhabit, and let them do it at their own pace, with their own coping mechanisms in their own time.

Instead, tomorrow will come too soon.
School will come.
Work will come.
Life will come.
There is not a thing I can do about this inevitable season shifting, and for some reason
this makes me feel
very
very
lonely.

Grief is tricky, you guys. It spreads like a virus, a potent and invisible line of change that settles in at a cellular level. And for me, lately, grief is an overwhelming presence that still leaves me inexplicably alone.

The hope that I have-
the hope that directs my weary prayers-
is that Jesus knows my pain. He knows the loneliness of grief more than I could ever comprehend, and He has not left me alone in this place.
He has not left Jimmy’s dear family.
He has not left our Cassidy.

I cannot build a bubble around the people I love. I can’t even try. But I can trust, and I WILL trust, that God will see them through this devastation. That the same God who gave us Jimmy Watts, the same God who Jimmy Watts knew and loved, has not left us. So even when grief is quiet and lonely, I am not alone. Even when grief is a sneaky painful virus, it cannot defeat the goodness of our King.

I’ll try to rest in that today.