Haikus for Spring

Spring comes, and with it

these silken globes of wishes,

these feathers and seeds . . .

which are carried high,

floating in an April sky

on wings of her dreams.

A Walk in May

It was when I was walking–just me and my camera–that I started looking for the green after the long gray and muddy brown of winter.  Life is everywhere!

At home, my dear ones were sick and hurting, and I had done so much laundry and cleaning, hoping to somehow disinfect everything.  I so needed the fresh air.

I walked and listened.  There were singing birds and trilling peepers–all this chorus of praise.

The fiddleheads were still closed tight, tendrils fuzzy and furled.  Waiting.

The dandelions bloomed in unforgiving gravel.  Dauntless!

The daffodils stood against the rock wall, this juxtaposition of fragile and firm, ephemeral and enduring.

And the trees–they are wild ones that are never pruned– yet there was brilliant array in the roadside ditches.

It has been a week of hard news–hurting hearts and failing flesh.  Yet here in the early days of May, the words of the unlikely Apostle are ringing clear and true:

“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”  Yes,  it is May in my heart!

On paint and promises

I promised we’d paint her room.

We went to the hardware store:  so many choices.  So many color names.  I thought “soft and subtle” would be lovely.  She wanted bold and beautiful.

Is this what it is–to honor my teenager?  It’s just paint, after all.

So we painted the walls and it brought back all the memories of what this room had been.  There used to be a wallpaper border around the middle, until the toddlers in cribs picked and peeled at it.  I cringe when I remember that I got mad.

Then it was repainted and I put a border around the top, out of the reach of dimpled fingers.  But soon enough, more children came and rooms shifted and girls moved in.  We painted it the palest of purple.

So we’ve had a little break in our routine this week.  Enough time to carve a day to paint.  The two of us work together.  We talk about dreams.  We talk about how the rooms will shift again when she goes to college.  We talk about friendship and family and school.  We share the brush back and forth and move the ladder around the room.

And then, suddenly and fully, I know that this is really not about the paint.

Psalm 127:3-5  Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Hiding

Last March, a friend and I set a goal of memorizing the book of Colossians in the space of a year.  I didn’t think I could do it.

This hiding–it has been an undertaking.  For a year, I’ve been plugging away–two verses a week and a cycle of reviewing and reciting.  It has been plain old hard work and perhaps a living sacrifice of time and devotion.

I think about the conveniences of our connected, tech-savvy world.  It’s fun to access different versions of the Bible with a click of a button.  I love to read the blogs of folks who think deeply and write encouraging and convicting words.  I enjoy hearing songs of worship as they stream through my media player.  These things are all delivered in such neat and tidy packages (or pixels, or bytes, or whatever they are).  But memorizing–it is not a tidy process.  I fumble over words and the connections get tangled.

In the end, though, the Lord is using it to forge in me a deeper knowledge of who He is, and of who I am in Him.

Like last fall when I had an appointment in traffic court, and He said to me, “I have forgiven all your trespasses.  I have canceled the record of debt that stood against you with its legal demands.  I have set it all aside, nailing it to the cross.“

Then there are the times when my children are fussing at each other, and I am able to speak the words of life to them:  “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,  bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

My heart is burdened for their salvation, and I pray that the Lord would deliver them from the domain of darkness and transfer them to the kingdom of His Beloved Son.

I am all nerves as I contemplate a public speaking engagement this weekend.  He whispers in my ear:  “I will strengthen you with all power according to my glorious might.” 

And indeed only His strengthening power (and the sweet encouragement of my dear friend!) have I been able to do this great thing.  I pray for grace that this will be just the beginning of an eternal adventure, for His word endures forever!

 

 

Full

The house is empty.  I hear the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the keyboard, but mostly it is a strange silence.  I have not sat alone for many days.

I don’t know how to do “alone” very well.  My life is so full.  So noisy.  And I am forever offering input, filling the spaces with my own voice.

But tonight I dwell on the words of Elisabeth Elliot:  “Silence, as someone has said, is the mother of prayer and the nurse of holy thoughts. Silence cuts down on our sins, doesn’t it? We can’t be sinning in so many different ways if we are being quiet before God. Silence nourishes patience, charity, discretion.”

Yes, I need this.  I long to have my patience nourished through a silent acceptance of the Father’s assignments for today . . . no quibbles about my appointed lot.

I wonder how to do this when the garage door opens and the family bursts in, full of stories and songs and energy.  Can I find a still sort of silence in the cacophony that regularly marks the rhythm of a big family.  And can I cultivate a sense of sanctuary in my noisy home?

The noise fills and runs deeper than sound.  It is the trinkets that I trip over (quite literally) in my house.  It is the catalogs that fill my mailbox.  It is the clutter that crowds the basement.

This throwing off of encumbrances will take some muscle. But I want to run the race well, and in the end, I know I’ll find that in quietness and trust I will find all the strength that I need (Isaiah 30:15).

I’d love to hear how you cultivate quietness in your home or in your own hearts.  If you’d like, share your thoughts as a comment below–I’d love to learn from you!

Come Quickly

Absence gives a gift.  Unexpectedly.  I see his clothes hanging in the closet, unworn and unmoved.  I go about the tasks that are normally his–waking early in the morning to shovel the driveway, taking the trash to the curb.  All these reminders of him.  It has been nearly two weeks since I’ve heard his voice. 

Then there’s our girl.  She’s the one who could run the house–the one who knows where everything is.  I call her name by accident.  She’s not here.

At dinner the rest of us laugh and talk.  About  how Daddy thinks he’s funny but he’s really not, and how in the end, that’s really funny.  About how we’re going to make them a “Welcome Home” poster and fill it with all of our inside jokes and stories.

We have filled the week with happy distractions.  Time with friends.  Time on the slopes.  Painting projects.  Camping out in the family room.

But each day is filled with a new longing. 

Yes, there are lessons in this and I want to be a good student.  Every day brings a tutorial in trust:  trust that His grace is enough and the He will provide the needed measures of strength.  Each hour brings an admonition to hug often and to speak grace.  Every night when I close up the house and turn out the lights, I think that it’s one day nearer to reunion.

As I type, I watch the flight tracker on another window.  Their plane is edging northward over Africa, this huge continent that looks all Lilliput on my laptop screen.  And I wish that the plane could just go faster.

Oh that I might have the same yen for heaven . . . that I would long for Him with the same sense of joyful anticipation.  Tomorrow my husband will be home.  My daughter will sleep in her own bed.  We’ll be together again and it will be a little picture of forever.

But my Lord has made a better promise–far sweeter than the greatest earthly joy.  He is coming soon.  He won’t forget.  Amen.  Come, Lord Jesus!

Ascent

There were good-byes.  The little one–she wanted to roll the duffle and she learned how to steer wide turns.  She navigated the escalator, all snuggled between the luggage and the warmth of her daddy.  He was going far away.

Then there was Emma, this girl-turning-woman, embracing us all and being brave.

We stood at the gate, six of us circled in prayer.  I listened to my husband’s voice–to his sweet pleas for peace and faith and love.  His prayer was like a song in the shadows.

Then they left, Emma with a bit of nervous laughter and Steve with the calm resolve to bear it all with grace.

Even as I type, they are rising up and east, ascending into the darkening sky.  How I will miss her news of the day, his gentling presence in the evenings.

I look out at a slivered moon, a thin bowl of light in the western sky.  I am reminded of how small I am . . . of how much I need the mercies of the One who is all light.  Especially today.

The good-bye is good.  They are going to Africa.  It is a mission for the sake of Christ and His kingdom, both in Cameroon and in their own hearts.

The good-bye is hard, for it confronts my fears and stretches my trust.  It is a needful dose of iron that I might not have an anemic faith.

The good-bye is full of the hope of reunion–that in a little while, we’ll be together again.

Oh, this is good for me. 

Blessings on you, my dear ones far away.  I know we all will be changed.

My Brother’s Valentine

Every year he sends me a valentine.  My heart leaps when I see his font on the envelope.

I don’t remember exactly when he started sending them to me.  Maybe when he had a wife of his own and understood better the demands of mothering and homemaking and how it can take a bit of a toll.  Maybe when he moved to that far away zip code on the other side of the country.  But for the last many years, they have come–each one bringing light and warmth to the February gray.  

So I pulled down the street after a day of orthodontics and piano lessons.  I opened the little green mailbox door and sorted through the stack and there it was!  I did a little foot dance in the car and squealed,  “He remembered!  Woo Hoo!  Here it is!”  

I suppose it sounds a bit like a Hallmark commercial, but his cards are so much more than a letter in my mailbox.  Each one brings back the memories of childhood, the two of us sitting at the kitchen table signing our school-kid valentines.  Each one reminds me that he as there from the start . . . that he was the one I learned life with.  And I remember him growing up:  his guitar, his silhouette bent over the engine of a car, our cross country road trip on his way home from college.

I tell my boys that they simply must send their sisters valentines, even when they are all grown up.  Especially when they are all grown up.  Because hidden in that envelope will be love enough for their hearts to hold until they are together again. 

A Monday Afternoon

He said that we could come anytime . . . that his was a “community rink.”  We arrived and two high-schoolers were there, shooting pucks at a net.  Anna was undeterred–”I can use the other side of the rink.  They won’t mind.”

And they didn’t.

She practiced and practiced, skated in circles and tried her new favorite trick:  reaching her leg back as far as it would go.

When did those legs get so long and so strong?

I would not be here, outside on this cold afternoon, if she wasn’t here–this one who is all serendipity. 

Memories come back like a flood–those winter afternoons when I would walk the mile down to our neighborhood rink with my skates flung over my shoulder.  It was a sweet hour of solitude after the school day.  I loved the sound of the blades on the ice–I loved twisting and turning the figures over the rink.  I would stay until the shadows were long and my fingers were numb.  A small therapy.

And today, thirty years later, I am here with her, the one whose eyes peek out from under her brother’s too-big hat.  I am taking it all in.  This day, this child, this hour, this life–oh it is all gift. 

Acceptance

So I have a houseful of teenagers.  And a couple of tweenagers.  And a little one thrown in just for fun.  I have to say that we are getting cabin fever and there are days when the tensions and the voices run higher than I’d like.  “Why does this have to be so hard?”  I wonder.  “Why can’t we all just get along?”

Of course we have our “non-negotiables,” those standards of conduct that are simply expected.  But what about everything else?  What about the siren call, “She keeps bugging me and I can’t stand it!”  What about the note in the fridge:  “DO NOT take my oranges!” Where is the grace in the gray?  

I am convinced that the Lord perfectly weaves a family together to reveal our own hearts to us.  And really, our hearts need help.  The “seventy times seven” sort of arithmetic that love requires is counter-intuitive.  The call to humility and gentleness, to patience and forbearance, is not our native bent.  Oh how we need a Savior!

My friend Don spoke some powerful words a few weeks ago:  “Acceptance is the oxygen that love breathes.”  Isn’t that the way of it?  When we struggle to love, it’s because we struggle to accept each other, with all of our little quirks.  Acceptance is hard when we’re convinced that we’re right.  Yet, acceptance becomes easy when we remember the great love with which He loves us.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)!”  Ephesians 2:4,5.