fresh starts

I've been spending a good bit of time indoors lately, sitting in my cozy overstuffed chair, reading, working on the blog transfer and my "correspondence" (a.k.a. emails and facebook messages to friends).  It's been good weather for snuggling into a comfy chair:  cool enough for jeans and slippers, but not quite cold enough for my Farmer to want to fire up the pellet stove too often.  Thus, the warm and cozy chair.

The wind's been blowing, though, and with it came milder temperatures, so this morning I ventured out, determined to snip off the unsightly dying flowers of my once-gorgeous new chrysanthemums.  I was feeling disappointed in how long (or short) they'd lasted.  I'd only bought them a couple of weeks ago, and was hoping their jewel tones would enliven my straggly flowerbeds a little longer.

But, c'est la vie, at least we'd had their color this long.  So out I went, insouciance and flower snips in hand.

If you're more of a gardener than I am (which wouldn't take much), then you probably know what I found about an inch below the dead flowers I was clipping off, but to me it was like finding another ice cream sandwich when I was sure I'd eaten the last one in the box:


                                                     New buds!!

This means more flowers (I hope, I hope - please, veteran gardeners, don't burst my bubble if I'm wrong; I'll find out soon enough).  Just as I was mourning the sure and certain end of beauty, it turns out there was more to come, hidden.  Before the death of the old was complete, before I'd even noticed its inexorable approach, probably, the new was being formed.

So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?"  Genesis 18:12

I know - it seems wildly out of context.  Sarah is delighted - and astonished, and probably not entirely believing - at the thought of bearing a child after decades of being barren, and I'm just talking about a second flush of flowers.  Doesn't it show, though, a God who loves to do the unlikely?  Who makes wine out of water, sends a lame man leaping for joy, gives first sight to the born-blind, grants children to the barren, forms saints out of sinners?

Who gives hope to the hopeless?

I've spun dozens of pots on the wheel.  The raw creation of it never gets old.  (I mean, who walks along a creek and envisions dinnerware in its banks?!)  A lump of clay - mud, really - pulled into a graceful vessel.

Mud -> bowl.
Mud ->  vase.
Mud ->  goblet.
Mud ->  teapot.
Mud ->  piggybank.

Unlikely.

But unlikely's nothing to God.  He took mud . . . . and made a living man!

Oh yeah.  My God?  Is a second-flush-of-flowers kind of God.

rest, redefined?

It's a funny thing.  You'd think with all this resting, the place would be going to pot.  But my house is in order (as much as it ever is) and the flowerbeds have never looked better (which, I caution you, is not saying much).

I keep putting myself on one of those porch rockers to gaze at the trees and the sky, watch the birds and the cats and the boy, air out my thoughts and watch hopefully for cars slowing down to pull in our driveway and ask for a kitten (per our sign:  KITTENS:  free to a good home).

And I keep jumping up to do things.

The other day, for instance, I swept the driveway.  (And hold your "big deal" - we have probably 3500 square feet of driveway - or cries of "OCD" - the driveway is under the canopy of no less than three 60-feet tall mature nut trees & is the constant recipient of twigs, tree flowers, leaves, and nuts, making our driveway less than hospitable to the bare feet that frequent it).

I was going to enumerate the other things I've jumped up to do, but realized that that was borderline ridiculous, because it would no doubt look like an abysmally small list to some of you.  Suffice it to say, not as much resting is occurring as I thought might.

However, I seem to be making some headway when it comes to banishing "should."  So when I swept the driveway, it wasn't because I looked at all the debris and thought (as I normally would have), "I should sweep that driveway."  [insert sigh].

Instead, I was sitting on my rocker, drinking in the colors of summer along with some deliciously unseasonable cool air, saw the driveway, and thought to myself, "You know, I could sweep that.  It would look nice swept clean....."

So, progress.

Also unusual was another day this week, in which I was with company morning, afternoon, and evening.  And if that doesn't strike you as anything unusual, you don't know me very well.  I spread out my doses of social verrrrry carefully.  I love my people, and I love my spaces in between my people.

But this particular day I had three doses of very different people, including some little people (which usually threatens my sanity), and I somehow maintained both composure and calm.  I even enjoyed it - all three times!

I do believe that this is evidence of God working His Sabbath into me.  (and this, from a not very "thus saith the Lord" kind of girl!)

Seeing this breathes life into me.  I will continue to seek God through rest.

    ...
    ...
    ...

And somewhere down deep, the seed of hope begins to swell with life ....

a new hope

A while back, I read a book by Elizabeth Berg, The Year Of Pleasures.  The reviews on Amazon were indifferent; she is accused of lacking cohesion and indulging in flights of fancy.  I dug in anyway.  The protagonist is a freshly-widowed 55-year-old woman, grieving her husband while simultaneously trying to make a new life for herself, per his instructions before he died of cancer.

Somehow, I could relate.

I still - thank God! - have my Farmer by my side, to love me, and provide a buffer from many of life's bumps.  And I am still far (it seems to me) from 55 years of age.

But lately I am grieving - the passage of time, the dreams I haven't yet realized that I thought I would have by this ripe old age of 39, the immaturity still resident in my personality and habits.  Maudlin, I know.  But what I loved about the book was that the widow's grieving gave her new eyes, to see beauty both in remembrance and in hope.

Her husband left her slips of paper, just a word or phrase on each, to remind her (or sometimes, befuddle her) with memories of things she'd let slip through her fingers, in essence to tell her over and over - say yes!  It's like the one thousand gifts in reverse - the gifts unseen, refused - enumerated not to incite guilt, but to spur the widow on to an acceptance of beauty, of abundant life.

This summer some girlfriends and I were browsing a vintage shop in town.  Upstairs, one of them called my name: "You have to look at this set of plates - they are you!!"  I looked, and they were.  The price was fair, too, but I reasoned the dinnerware away - I have a perfectly serviceable set of dishes [that I heartily dislike] and ... pretty things are not for me.

I'm not sure where that belief came from, but when it showed itself that day, I realized I had believed it many times, for many things.  I'm glad to say that I was able to see truth, that day, and bury the lie:  my household budget allowed easily for the purchase, and the beauty of the plates would cheer us daily for years.  In the end, I bought them, and every time I set them out, they whisper "pretty things are for you...."

A couple of years ago, a group of wives gathered in a different friend's house to talk about how to be good wives, good mothers.  A question was raised about the Bible's call to self-denial versus the world's call to self-care.  We puzzled over it, some in favor of one, some in favor of the other, no one quite sure if the two could be reconciled.

But then I found a paragraph from Lisa Bevere's book Out of Control & Loving It that caught my eye.  She contended that self-neglect is different from self-denial.  I had never before seen that I was confusing the two, that I could deny selfish desires while still caring for basic needs.

Much in The Year of Pleasures is unrealistic, yes.  But like a list of gifts yet undiscovered, it calls to me, like the ocean, like a Japanese maple aflame with autumnal glory, like the opening strains of the Moonlight Sonata - "there is hope .... life can be abundant .... accept the beauty offered."

I will be keeping my eyes open.

I turn 40 in a few days.  This decade will be a new hill to climb, and beauty, and gifts, will be my fuel.

metamorphosis (2)

At the pottery studio, I prefer the wheel.

But there are other ways to shape the clay.  By a bank of windows looking out onto the parking lot, there is a slab roller (picture an old wringer-washer with just one roller bar on a table) for making flat sheets of clay for tiles or handbuilt items.  Just outside the studio, affixed to the wall at the edge of the showroom, is an extruder (imagine a sort of giant pasta- or playdough!- machine) for squishing out clay tubes of various shapes - smooth cylinders, long square boxes, star-shaped hollows, and more.  It looks kind of magical, really:  ball of clay in the top, pull down, tidy shape emerges at the bottom.

I never stopped to think about how the process affects the clay.

On the wheel, the clay is centered, bathed with water, and firmly but gently, slowly - often in three (or more) pulls - coaxed by fingers into a final shape.

Much different from being quickly forced from one shape to another by the strength of unyielding metal.

I'm thinking about the clay, now, feeling the forces of change on my heart.

"O Israel, can I not do to you as this potter has done to his clay? 

As the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand.

Jeremiah 18:6

Am I - will I be - malleable?

Months ago, a woman I trust told me that God is getting ready to shake up my friendships.  She didn't know that some of my friends were then planning moves, both into and out of my life, physically and emotionally.

Sometimes it feels like betrayal, this change, and sometimes like grace.  Sometimes both.  But always, there is pain.  More the extruder than the wheel, is this process.

I've never been a fan of change - at least not change initiated by another.  It's unsettling to me, like someone else pushing my rocking chair into motion, or a child swinging the hammock I'm resting on.

Maybe the liquidating stage of the chrysalis is over, now, and the formation of the butterfly is beginning ... I hope.  I hope there will be something to show for the squeezing of my heart.

No, not hope.  I trust.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

Hebrews 11:1

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, 
since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18

hidden

Something else about the chrysalis
(another swallowtail flew free this morning):
it happens, hidden.  

Isolated,
enrobed in green,
out of sight,
the changes happen.

In darkness,
may be.

Outside our observation.
Beyond prediction,
were I the caterpillar.

Plump green fat-footed body
exchanged
for delicate black-winged velvet beauty,
curling, unfurling proboscis,
tentative touching antennae.

Plodding gravity-bound being
Transformed for flight.

Me?
Improbable.
But, true!

You?


And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.  II Corinthians 3:18

[more on caterpillars and metamorphosis:  here, here, here, here, and here.]

cool breeze

It's still July, I remind myself as I sit in the park getting goosebumps.  A storm is blowing in over our quilt & books, and those who came for the free concert are looking about them, considering.

A man stands at the end of parked cars, hands lifted toward the setting sun, shoes on the grass beside him.  He prays, seeing more than we can.

The clouds lift till we think we're in the clear ... then heavy drops begin to dot our legs.

We fold the blanket and retreat, rolling windows against the rain.  White-haired women raise lawn chairs overhead, folded in lieu of umbrellas as they walk back to their neighboring homes.  The a cappella choir arrange themselves under a pavilion and carry on.  A remnant fills the picnic tables; some stand partly in the rain to hear the hymns.  The singers smile.

"Join in," the director gestures when they start Amazing Grace, and people do, in four-part harmony, effortless.  Mom with tiny daughter.  Young family.  Man with a cane.  Middle-aged couples.  Us.

After another song or two, we leave.  Drive through the country, stop for an ice cream cone with all the locals, the cloudburst over.

It's hot July, but a breeze is blowing through.

stuck

I knew I was stuck when I finally had a chance (encouraged by my Farmer!) to get into the pottery studio and I didn't even want to sit at the wheel.  I dug some clay out of the reclaim bag and smooshed it like a lousy stress ball.  I made a cracked, ugly pinch-pot.  Braided a lopsided braid.

Then I did what I finally realized I'd wanted to do all along:  slam that clay down as hard as I could.  Felt good.

I talked with my potter friend while I mismanaged the clay, and then left.

: : :

I've been waiting on my blog, too, checking in every couple of days to see if anything had maybe changed in my absence.  But with nothing to say.  Nuthin'.  Not even for my "what's for supper", which should be easy enough to keep up to date.

I'm still stuck.

Not sure when I'll come unstuck (or - oh dear - unglued? unhinged?!).  But I'm still here ... wherever "here" is.

: : :

{This reminds me of when I'd call my little sister and get her answering machine.  She used to have one of those machines with an actual tape in it, I think, so that you only had an allotted time for your message, and then you got cut off.  So naturally I'd try to fill it up, then call back and just pick up where I'd been interrupted.  Maybe chastise the machine's bad manners.  Just filling up space, till she'd pick up - or for her to laugh at, later.}

: : :

This post, I'm just marking time.  Documenting the nothingness, if you will.

And I have every confidence that I'll read it later, and laugh - because something better will have come to pass.  The fog will have cleared, and I will see again.

teaser

No time to write a long post, but I am feeling so different from the teary navel-gazer I was last time I posted that I just want to move that one on down the page.


Did I solve the mysteries of mid-life?

Did I learn the secret of connecting to others in a meaningful way?

Did I break the code on how to truly live trusting God?


Well ... yes, and ... no.  What I did do was give up sugar.  More on that, soon ... !

glimmers of hope

Sometimes, when you're too weak to stand, when you're too weak even to ask for help, friends will come and put your arms around their shoulders and lift you up.


Those are God's shoulders.


Sometimes, when you're too tired to keep back the tears, and they fall to your shame, friends will see, and wipe them for you, with their own hands.


Those are God's hands.


Sometimes, when your own heart is too weary to know the way, friends will beg God on your behalf, pouring their hearts into their prayers.


That is God's heart.

"For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.  As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.  

"I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy.  I will shepherd the flock with justice.  I will make a covenant of peace with them and rid the land of savage beasts so that they may live in the wilderness and sleep in the forests in safety.  

"I will make them and the places surrounding my hill a blessing.  I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing."  (from Ezekiel 34)

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

(Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice)

For [God] says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,  and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”  It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.               (Romans 9:15-16)

[words from an old hymn I remember my mother singing in church]

There shall be showers of blessing:  

This is the promise of love.

There shall be seasons refreshing,

Sent from the Savior above.

There shall be showers of blessing;

Send them upon us, O Lord.

Grant to us now a refreshing;

Come and now honor Your Word.

There shall be showers of blessing; 

O that today they might fall,

Now as to God we're confessing,

Now as on Jesus we call!

Showers of blessing,

Showers of blessing we need.

Mercydrops round us are falling,

But for the showers we plead.

(Daniel W. Whittle)

"Mercydrops 'round us are falling, but for the showers we plead ..."

a leap!

I just watched someone jump this afternoon, and I must say it was inspiring.  Best wishes, my friend, and I look forward to regularly delivered installments of your cup of tea.

Smile, my readers:  life is not over - oh, not by a long shot - when you near the end of your fourth decade.  In fact, it may just be beginning ... again!  There are always new corners to be rounded, new rocks to be turned over, new pages to be flipped.

Hope is contagious.  May you catch some today!

fuel up

Ever feel kind of empty this time of year?

I don't mean your stomach - if your house is like most, there are plenty of cookies around to take care of that.

I mean your soul.

It's Christmas:   "Joy to the world, peace on earth, goodwill toward men" and all that.  But if reading that leaves you feeling more hungry than happy, if it brings a bitter retort to your lips about
               family feuds
                        and low checkbook balances
                                 and ungrateful children
                                           and harried servicepeople
                                                    and other impediments to peace, joy, and love ....

.....then lay down your credit card and your grievances and hear this:


"Come,  all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
                and you who have no money,
                                              come, buy and eat!
                       Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.


"Why spend money on what is not bread,
                             and your labor on what does not satisfy?


"Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
                             and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
                                 Give ear and come to me;
                                      hear me, that your soul may live. ..."

Isaiah 55:1-3, 6

"whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst."  

John 4:14

"Come to me, 

all you who are weary and burdened, 

and I will give you rest.  

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, 

for I am gentle and humble in heart, 

and you will find rest for your souls.  

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."  

Matthew 11:28-30

waiting for the invisible

I closed my eyes against the stores and homes flashing past my window, head tipped tired against the headrest. A day of morning moms' group, cookie-baking, and transforming a 30-years outbuilding storage space into a play space left me feeling less than satisfied, and despite having time for rest, weary.

We were aimed for a study with friends, and early. We drove past our destination. I entertained a longing to nurse a coffee at the Waffle House with my Farmer all evening instead.

As we rounded a bend in the road, I opened my eyes, and the sky filled the windshield and my heart: weightless banks of clouds lined the horizon, light-filled columns obscuring the beyond. The sun, invisible, was setting. The clouds that stood between us were backlit with gold, reflecting the glory that they hid.

It looked like hope to me.

As if an insufficient reminder of His presence, the next morning repeated hope: the swallowtail, hung waiting 14 days in chrysalis, silent & still, changing unseen, had emerged during the night. It clung damp, still patient with newness, to dried stems, waiting again till its wings hardened for flight.

But twice was not enough.  (my Maker revels in refrain.)

All today day it rained, dark sky and heavy air. All day the lights were on inside. But just before the sun went down, He cleared away the rain to spread the sky with gold. The stormy day ended bright, wet leaves still dripping against a glowing sky.

Who knows what weather tomorrow will bring. It may rain again all day. But this I know: the sun is there, no matter how thick the clouds cluster. The rain will stop, no matter how long it falls. And in the end, no matter how silent the still green sack, the butterfly will emerge.