MISS ELAINI OUS

What.a.week.  In the past few days I’ve felt like I lived an entire month.  Actually some of the days I lived this last week were years in the making.  They were sacred moments that took my breath away or left me bawling.  They were beautiful, deep, joyful, raw, and real.  Time stopped a couple of times.  Several things switched in my heart and I’m still trying to process.  They were healing things and dream encouraging things.  Since I’m still just basking in it all (and stunned) I think I will just share with you my last two Instagram posts/pictures.

Some background here:  I’ve been going to this house since I was four.  This family was like my own family and Sono was the only real mentor I’ve had other than my sweet mother.  A few years ago Sono passed away and I really have only been to this house twice since then.  This past Sunday my friend came back and there was an open house for friends since they are selling the place.  This is what happened. 

I cried the whole way home. This house. The Harris house. Saying goodbye to it felt like saying goodbye to my childhood all over again. The noisy Thanksgiving dinners here. The ballet classes with Sono telling me to pretend I was wearing a crown and a gorgeous necklace. As kiddos not wanting to go down and use the bathroom lest the parents remember we existed and thus insist we leave. The swing set where we played and talked. The woods. Huge bowls of popcorn and the largest medjool dates you’ve ever seen with people all talking at once. The tree house now tucked away and overgrown and you can only find it if you know where to look. Sundays on the deck playing games. That pond. Where there didn’t used to be a tree in the middle of the “island” but where now a sturdy trunk with hanging boughs stands watch. The lane. The friendship. These memories. Saying goodbye.

The second part of this week came with a lovely friend who I have never met in person.  (I’ll be sharing more about this soon but it needs its own blog post…or two!) 

This week has held many sacred moments. Moments where the world seems to flow around you and you’re rooted in the glory of the script. Hushed moments that stun you and leave a smile stretched across your heart. Moments that only God could orchestrate. Where the past makes the present richer.  Where prayers are answered in unexpected ways.  These moments require you to put away distractions (my phone/fb/Instagram) and just be. One of those moments this week was with my lovely friend Bronwen. I’ve wanted to meet her for two plus years after reading her incredible sorry.  The catch was that she lives in Australia. But this week she came to see me. Me! In Portland! This week! Slightly less than 48 hours but incredible dream stirring, faith building ones. A slice of heaven on earth. I’m incredibly grateful that this beautiful woman came to spend time with me. Bronwen thank you. You’re a treasure.

First thing I noticed in this picture were those smiles.  A close second were those juicy mangoes…mmmm.  Two of my favorite things, my kiddos and mangoes, in one picture.  And right through the picture it was as if they passed their smiles along to me for I found a giant one on my face.  As I studied the picture more soaking it all in I noticed their nail polish.  Shiny cherry red, mermaid blue, and chipping pink and purple decorated their nails.  Sometimes “my” kiddos can seem so very far away.  The 7,814 miles that separate our shores seem more like the distance from earth to the moon.  Yet nail polish makes me feel like I could reach out and touch them.  They are real.  They laugh and cry, they play and sing, they learn and grow, and they care about their nails.  We do the same.

They are our sisters, our daughters, our future mothers, our aunties, our friends.  They aren’t just some people they are someone.  An individual who has hopes and dreams and fears just like you do, like I do.  And if we don’t care we should.  Let’s care about them in the way we would our own friends and family.

Would you please consider giving today?  Even just $5 makes a difference!  My birthday is coming up and I am going to share it with my kiddos by asking people to donate.  Are any of you June birthday people interested in sharing your birthday too? I’m pretty sure it will make you smile and that….well that is contagious in the best sort of way because joy is a beautiful gift.

UPDATE!!! $88,361.19 😀

Another installment of Hands & Tales! If you haven’t read why I started this series you can read about it here. 🙂

What was one of the happiest days of your life?
Spending the day in Tahoe with Jon hanging out on the beach, going on a walk, and seeing the beauty of the lake. Really it was just spending time with him there.

Who’s Jon?
My boyfriend.

What does he do that makes you smile?
I don’t even know if I could pinpoint it…he makes me feel comfortable, like I can be myself.

When was the moment you first realized how comfortable it felt?
When I realized that we could spend time together and not feel the need to talk the whole time.

What was the scariest moment you’ve ever experienced?
Finding out that my dad was in the hospital and not knowing what was wrong.

When did that happen?
It was about a month ago.

In the moments you feel most scared what gives you comfort?
Knowing that God loves my dad, and my dad loves him back.

Who has touched your life the most and why?
Besides my parents…my mentor Lisa because she showed me how just listening to people can show more love than giving the best advice in the world.

Sometimes, okay often, I wonder: why do I write?  It doesn’t come easily.  The words don’t slip off my tongue.  My thoughts aren’t fluid like a dancer pirouetting her way across a stage. Words stick in my soul and then, trembling, tumble themselves out.  Right there is the answer to my question though.  I write because it isn’t easy for me. I write because I have a voice and I need to practice using it in a healing, helpful, challenging, joyful and all-good-things sort of way.

Reading through Joshua yesterday I was struck by an interesting passage about Caleb’s daughter.  He proclaims that whoever can conquer a certain city will win his daughter’s hand in marriage.  After Othniel succeeds in this there are these fascinating verses in chapter 15.  “When she came to him, she urged him to ask her father for a field.  And she got off her donkey, and Caleb said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said to him, ‘Give me a blessing.  Since you have given me the land of the Negeb, give me also springs of water.’ And he gave her the upper springs and the lower springs.” (Joshua 15:18-19)

I love that this woman, Achsah, used her voice.  She acted and was blessed because of it.  In this culture it was very rare for women to be given land.  Now add to that the fact that her father granted her request for a particular section of springs of water.  What if she wouldn’t have tried?

Writing isn’t instant gratification for me and in a world that shouts that we deserve it I want to ignore those voices and persevere.  Even if it scrapes up my knees and leaves me a bit bloody I don’t want to give up.  I don’t want to say “I’m not a writer” just because I’m not perfect at it.  Sure it doesn’t come naturally but is that a reason to sit back and be lazy if it’s truly something I want?  While it may be highly unlikely that I will ever craft books like my favorites (think C.S. Lewis) I certainly won’t get any better if I just ignore writing altogether.

While watching my nephew and niece last week my two year old little nephew decided that climbing the monkey bar arch was a good idea.  With him half way up I looked at his older sister and asked her if he could climb it.  “No, he can’t.” Great, just what auntie wants to hear, but here’s the thing.  He didn’t know he couldn’t so he tried.

We hear it so often “I’m not a ………” you fill in the blank.  Just listen to yourself for a day and see how many things you don’t think you can do.  In reality it’s probably just because we’re lazy.  Yep, just went there.  Instead of calling it for what it is though we leave ourselves a back door so that we don’t have to stretch ourselves.  So what is it you “can’t do”?  Will you make steps to try?  I hope you will.  I know I need to keep pep talking myself because I don’t want to get boxed in by “I can’t”.

A few months ago I was telling a friend that I needed an excellent book so that I wouldn’t waste all my free time on completely frivolous things and she said she would lend me one.  When she mentioned the name, Shantung Compound, I wasn’t so sure but then she began to describe it and I was certainly curious.  Maybe it was the fact that I am fascinated by human nature and why people do what they do.  This book certainly gives you a unique slice into the true minds and hearts of people.  You see this book is about an internment camp in China run by the Japanese during WWII.  They took about 2,000 foreigners that were still in China and stuck them together in a camp.  Talk about a crazy experiment.  Thankfully there was no torture or anything of the kind in this book.

This diary of a young 20 something man chronicles the lives of the people, both young and old of all classes and beliefs, forced to reside in this tiny camp for years.  They had to develop their own laws and society from scratch and along the way the moral dilemmas and human nature are vividly portrayed.  What I found especially interesting was how the way the author expected people to act was usually quite the opposite of how they did indeed act or react to the environment.  As the story advances you begin to ask yourself questions about your own life and circumstances.  What happens when the niceties of life are stripped away?  Who are you then?

Essentially by the end of the book I was wanting to underline every page.  The journey the author takes you on from the early insane days when they were dumped in the camp to the final days of finding freedom are poignant and insightful.  “The question uppermost in the minds of the Labor Committee and the managers was no longer, ‘Has he the skill to do his job?’ but rather, ‘Has he the honesty to be trusted with those supplies?’ For the skill, while important, could be learned, but the integrity could not. However highly developed our technology might have been, a technique was of no real service in the hands of a dishonest man.”  I highly recommend you find a copy of this true life account and read it.  Stories change us and this one I believe will change you for the better.

P.S.  I need a new book to read so what are your recommendations?  Please let me know in the comments below! 🙂

“What is the world? What is it for? It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched. Assess it like that. And when you’re done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe.”  ~ N.D. Wilson

There’s been this inexplicable desire in my heart the last few days to photograph the simple things.  While I was making dinner the other evening I saw my dad working in the yard and I had to stop and take pictures of him.  It was so every day and rather boring you could say but I knew that if I didn’t capture that moment, one of thousands that my dad has worked, I would regret it.  Because as I grow older I realize more and more that the everyday make up the true life.  Yesterday I went outside to take some pictures for the post I was going to write and instead felt drawn to photograph these irises.  For days now they have been opening their glorious fully crowned heads and whispering to me.  Memories float from them.  How the woman who was like my second mother and the only long term mentor to me, besides my own sweet mum, loved irises.  Before she passed away, almost four years ago, I searched to find the last of the seasons irises to take to her bedside.  That was the last time I saw her precious face this side of heaven glowing because the veil was thin.  Even now tears are springing to my eyes.  Irises were her favorite.

Also for some reason they remind me of my grandpa.  I have a set of beautiful note cards printed with Monet’s famous iris paintings.  Did he buy them for me?  Was it that I sent him letters on them?  I can’t quite remember but they make me smile because they remind me of someone I love.

One of those Monet painting prints hangs on our wall with perpetually fresh irises but when the real ones come out I stop for a little longer and linger to see them.  The way they shimmer mesmerizes me.  Don’t even get me started on the hues and shapes.  I’m not surprised that Monet couldn’t resist them either.  I wonder what it was he saw.  I wonder what memory they triggered for him.  Life is art….all of it.  It’s the day in and day out movements and repetitions that matter and that make up such a large part of the whole.  Please take the time today to pause and soak in the beating, throbbing pulse of life all around you.  Relish the moments that seem ordinary.  For there are simply no ordinary moments. 

There are a myriad of stairs like a ladder to all that heavenly blue so up, up, up I go.
We  w~ i~ n~ d  our way through the trees towering above us.

The heat is prevalent.  My pores want to surrender their nectar.  My nose inhales the sticky sweet smelling scent of pine.  It can’t help but make me smile.

Face shining I lift it to the glowing sun that’s pulling something out of all of us today.  I think it’s pure joy.  Beckoning with its sultry rays I want to be all there, to soak up enough light.

As we stroll through the tall pillars of green and bark I look something of a mess with my long dark tresses draped over my bare shoulders and back and my silk dress resembles that of a child’s all full and shapeless.  Blood is pumping through my veins and I don’t care how I look because I’m alive, in fact I feel beautiful.  Vain you might think but it’s not the outward appearance that it is making me smile…it’s the feeling of life dazzling me like a diamond.

Biting into a peach I can taste the spring in it.  It’s a bit unripe but the full blown lushness of summer will come soon enough.  Today has been a taste of that.

~my musings after a day of sunshine in a land often filled with rain drops.

Where has the time gone!?  Today marks the 3rd anniversary of the little black dress project.  As I was contemplating this day and thinking about these photos we took of me in the dress I realized something.  The project was a sprint that turned into a marathon.  I’m still trying to reach the $100K goal.  It’s the day in and day out continuing towards a goal that seems to take longer than I would like.  What started out as a productive style project turned into a lifestyle.

Standing on the beach at the water’s edge in my black dress I thought about how “my” kiddos were on the other side of it.  How I wish that I could shorten the horizon and draw it into my hand just so that I could be closer to them.  Hearts are bigger than oceans though so I send my heart across it to orphans in India.  You have too.  For that I am immensely grateful.  It’s the constant motion of the faithful waves that produces the result of rock being broken into pebbles which turn into sand.  You all have been like those waves.  Faithfully giving and breaking down the goal into smaller and smaller bits through these three years.  Thank you.  I can’t tell you how grateful I am for your giving hearts and care for others.

Wearing this gorgeous flower crown by Fieldwork Flowers reminded me that God gives beauty for ashes.  That is what he has done with those precious children.  He has taken them from a life filled with pain and stress and put them in loving homes.  He crowns our lives with steadfast love and mercy. 

Today will you join with me once more and donate to helping these dear children in India?  Will you give $5, $10, $15, $20, $100 because investing in lives is the most important thing we could do with our money?  Because caring has to go beyond awareness.  At some point we have to stop reading about it and do something.  Please join me today in making these precious lives a bit brighter because of your care and generosity.  I’ve said it so many times and I won’t stop…each little bit matters.

I want to give a very sincere thank you to Fieldwork Flowers for their gracious donation of this stunning flower crown!  It was the perfect beach accessory and I loved wearing it.  Thank you! If you need flowers these ladies are so incredibly lovely and a delight to work with.  They create such beautiful works of art.

Kiersta, I can’t thank you enough for taking a whole day and lending your expertise to take these photographs.  Thank you for being willing to adventure down to the beach and get up early.  Thank you for going with the flow even when lighting was a beast.  You are so talented and I love working with you.  You take amazing photographs.  The end.  Truly a HUGE thank you for making this shoot happen and being so sweet and helpful.  People if you need a photographer this girl is amazing!

Flower crown by: Fieldwork Flowers
Photography by: Kiersta Rhodes Photography

P.S. Wanna see past years?  Day 1, 1st anniversary, and 2nd anniversary!

“Oh so you were an accident?”  All my life people have laughingly/genuinely asked this.  Even though I half expect it now it will never cease to astonish me.  The slightly more tactful people say, “I bet you were a surprise.”  Trust me people, I’m a surprise but not in that way.  You see I’m thirteen years younger than my sister and ten years younger than my brother.  Nope there are no other children in between me and those two.  People find it especially shocking when they find out that we all have the same parents.  I get it.  It is a bit abnormal to have a ten year gap between siblings.  Usually that happens with a blended family or an unplanned pregnancy.  For my part I’m grateful to be able to say that my siblings did in fact ask my parents to have more children.  After praying about it my amazing mom and dad decided to have more children.  They got me… But what if I had been “unplanned”?  What if I wasn’t wanted?  Maybe you feel that way sometimes regardless of birth circumstances.

It’s a miracle I’m here but you know what?  It’s a miracle you’re here too. Just logistically speaking not only did your parents have to get together but your grandparents (on both sides) had to meet and then your great grandparents (on both sides!).  That’s only three generations and it’s blowing my mind and it goes back a lot further than that!  I’m not an accident and neither are you.  You were thought of in God’s heart long before the world existed.  He knows your frame. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.” (Jeremiah 1:5)  You’re meant to be here.  You have a purpose.  Please don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  Your life matters.  “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:16)

You have one beautiful and precious life that was intended to be here.  Your life is precious and has great value.  May you use it up.  “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” (Diane Ackerman)

P.S.  Be sure to check back for Thursdays post! 😀

Sometimes I feel like the only time my brain works is right before bed.  It is only once I am cozily tucked in that my brain decides it has some things I forgot to do.  Last week this happened and as I went to remedy the situation I remembered I had received some messages I forgot to look at.  You can be sure I was not expecting to be crying by the end of the letter I read, but that’s exactly what happened.  Let me take you back just a bit.  Sometime last year a sweet reader contacted me about wanting to paint a picture of one of the orphans in India.  I put her in touch with my dear friend, Paige, and didn’t hear to much after that.  Well lo and behold the message I received was from my reader Sammie.  Here is what she had to say…I know it’s a bit long but this story is totally worth it.

Hi Elaini! This is Samantha Whitehead. Remember when I emailed you pretty much exactly a year ago asking for help for a painting idea that I had for my competitions this year? Well I wanted to thank you for helping me and I wanted to send you a photo of the completed artwork!

(Please excuse me if it feels like I’m jumping all over the place in these next paragraphs )

So yesterday you put up a post on Meghamala’s story on your blog and believe it or not I painted Meghamala for my project and yesterday was the final day of competitions! Hahaha oh it was such a blessing being able to see how perfectly God times everything with the blog post and competitions. So I attend a Christian school and there is a national association of Christian schools called the AACS and they hold annual competitions for the school nationwide. I live in Virginia and there are so many schools that we have to subdivide the state into regional competitions. If you get first in your category you then move onto the state competition and if you get first in states you go onto Nationals. This is no easy feat since from my freshman to junior year I’ve never even gone past regionals.

Anyways, for my painting I needed to fill out an “artist statement” which explains the process and inspiration for your artwork. In this artist statement (which I’m also emailing you) I wrote about Meghamala, Hosanna, and these beautiful children in India.

Now the reason I told you all of this is to tell you this: Meghamala not only won first in the acrylic category for regionals, but she also won first in states, and was able to travel all the way to the national competition where more than a thousand people were able to meet her. She may not have placed in the top three in nationals, but that’s not important; her story and all of these kid’s stories are important. No words can describe how much their stories touched the lives of the people who read them. I exaggerate not; dozens of people were left in tears (even a few guys ) and it really affected every person who read it. So here I am writing an email and I can barely see the screen because my tears are fogging my vision and my large smile is making me squint, just to say: God is good. God is good because these precious children and their stories were introduced to hundreds of people, and maybe, just maybe their was a seed of love and compassion for these children planted in at least one person’s heart.

So thank you Elaini for introducing me and hundreds of others to the stories of these children because it is making a difference in my life as I’m sure it is yours.

And as you rush around doing what ever needs to be done just remember, God is always good. God bless.

I was blown away and crying…and then I read her artist statement below and was just floored.

This project has a lengthy backstory to it, but it really began taking form when I was introduced to a ten year old boy named Hosanna last year.  Hosanna lived in a home (part of Covenant Children’s Homes) for orphans, semi-orphans, and neglected/abandoned children in India.  In November 2012 he was diagnosed with leukemia.  After several months of intense treatments, Hosanna’s condition only worsened.  My prayer was that the Lord would either heal Hosanna or bring him home.  On February 20, 2013 the Lord answered my prayer and chose to bring Hosanna home.  When his mother found Hosanna on his bed after he had passed away, Hosanna had written on his arm in marker; “I love my Jesus!”

Even with all of the reform taking place in India in the past few decades, there is still a large group of people, specifically children, which are forgotten and ignored simply due to their birth.  If a child is born into a low caste then they must remain in that caste throughout their life without the hope for change.  The focus is then shifted to providing these children with an education with the hope they can change their own future.  But I believe that these children need more than an education, they need real hope.  They need to know of a Great and Loving God who sent His son to die on a cross so that we may become a part of His eternal family.  God’s promise is available to all, even to those the world labels as “Untouchables”.  Once the children are able to break through the bonds and restrictions their culture has placed on them through salvation, then education will provide them with the tools necessary to rise to a position that their parents could never hope to attain.  God’s love is the only reason a child such as Hosanna went from living in destitute conditions where others would say he had every reason to grow up with hate and bitterness to a ten year old writing, I love my Jesus, in his last moments of life.

That’s how my idea took form.  I wanted to paint a little girl sitting Indian style on a dirt floor with a bouquet of really bright flowers, popping out from the bleak surroundings.  The flowers would symbolize hope in a world with little to no color.

With the idea in mind, I contacted a friend of mine who then directed me to the head of Covenant Children’s Homes and asked for permission to use one of their pictures for my art project.  After receiving her permission I settled on a picture of a six year old girl named Meghamala, a semi-orphan living in S.N. Padu.

Doesn’t this all just give you chills?!  I love, love, love how God works.  Our lives are all so intertwined and God is on the move and working even when I/we can’t see it.  I hope this story and letter that Sammie shared with me and her beautiful painting of Meghamala will encourage your heart as it has mine.

(Photos/painting by: Sammie Whitehead)