I’m guest blogging on the Grace-Filled Blog today, while Erin takes some time off with her family to welcome her new baby boy. Congratulations!
“…The coffee has begun to mix with the air. She turns to run away, and the sun falls through the smudged windowpane and dances across the back of her head…” [continue reading]
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It’s a rare morning, this. Up earlier than the baby, and unable to fall back asleep, I pull the lace-trimmed sheets back up to my chin.
I roll over and reach for my iDevice, and touch the screen to open the YouVersion app. I will my eyes to focus, and read out loud quietly.
“When the Cloud lifted above the Tent, the People of Israel marched out; and when the Cloud descended the people camped….It made no difference whether the Cloud hovered over The Dwelling for two days or a month or a year, as long as the Cloud was there, they were there. And when the Cloud went up, they got up and marched. They camped at God’s command and they marched at God’s command.” -Numbers 9
“I like that the longest time listed is a year”, says Josiah. I smile.
“I’m serious,” he continues. “It’s nice that it doesn’t say, ‘…ten years’ or something.”
I nod, and look back at the passage. I don’t always know why we are here. But I know God’s presence is here. I like that. I like knowing that. He leads us.
I get out of bed, sleepy but happy.
“Let’s have coffee?” I ask hopefully. He always makes the coffee.
I stare out the window, watching the light at the toll booth turn red, green, red. Every so often, a car speeds through without paying and the light stays red.
Words tumble in my mind, as I mentally start sorting sentences for the magazine articles I am working on. I sit down at the table, and start to scratch out words the old-fashioned way, with a pen. I move words around with a ink-drawn arrow, not a virtual one.
Slowly, the words begin to flow. I feel a sudden surge of excitement; I might actually be able to knock these articles out this morning! And then, just a few sentences in, I sneeze involuntarily, and my sneeze is echoed by Aveline’s sudden cry.
I can’t help but smile, even as I shake my head in disbelief.
I close my notebook.
“Good morning, Aveline!” I call out as I walk through the sunshine to her bedroom door.
Until I sit down again, these sentences will be calling to me, waiting for me to pull each of these letters and words into living stories so you can drink them in.
Some days, a migraine and crawling-out-of-your-skin sensation tells you that there was undisclosed corn* in that chocolate you ate the night before.
*one of my many allergies
Some days, your beloved iMac starts making rumbly sicky noises.
Some days, you cry on the phone to your best friend.
Some days, you never write even the first word of that post you already should have submitted.
Some days, your daughter is a crabby pants.
Some days, by the time you manage to get outside to soak in your fifteen minutes of vitamin D, the sun is already sinking behind the rooftops.
But —
O Thou who art my quietness, my deep repose,
My rest from strife of tongues, my holy hill,
Fair is Thy pavilion, where I hold me still.
Back let them fall from me, my clamorous foes,
Confusions multiplied;
From crowding things of sense I flee, and Thee I hide.
Until this tyranny be overpast,
Thy hand will hold me fast;
What though the tumult of the storm increase,
Grant to Thy servant strength, O Lord, and bless with peace.
-Amy Carmichael
I was tempted just to post these photos without explanation, and let you think the perfectly behaved toddler and I reclined on a chaise lounge, poolside, under the sunny sky.
Well, it was a chaise lounge.
And it was poolside.
But the fact is, we only sat there for about seven turbulent minutes. It wasn’t even sunny, and we definitely did not recline.
About thirty seconds after I snapped these pictures (not an easy feat in itself, considering she wanted to poke the lens), she invented a game called “use feet to smash the bowl of crackers”. To my embarrassment, removal of feet from bowl was met by a sudden trifecta of kicking, pinching and yelling, during which time several crackers’ worth of wet crumbs were (deliberately, it seemed) smeared across my white shirt.
We made a speedy exit from said poolside, with a disgruntled toddler and my bruised pride in tow.
And yes, I’m going to try this again, and again, and again….
Words toss and tumble around in my head, and as I pick up Cheerios off the floor and tell the curious toddler to please stop banging her sippy cup on the furniture, I mentally line up the words and phrases.
But then, when it is finally still and quiet, I look at the clock and wonder where all the minutes have gone. I sit down to write, and discover I cannot remember any of the words my mind wrote hours before.
And then I realize it’s okay, because the words have been eaten up by life. Beautiful, vibrant, loud, wonderful life.
[Image taken on a rare cold day earlier this year.]
Sometimes it’s hard to remember how much I need words, until the words of someone who knows how to paint and bend and pull letters into life reminds me. And it’s then, inside the pages of a master wordsmith, that I remember —
Remember that I’ve forgotten what it is to pick up a pen with no purpose other than to let the words untangle themselves. I’ve forgotten what it is to write with no other purpose than to set words free from the confines of my own mind. It used to only take the first scratch of pen against the paper fibers, and the words would begin to flow. As my fingers moved in fluid curves across the page, the words would run up and down the lines, and I would watch as they wrapped around the corners, into the margins, pressed up against the edges, free.
Once upon a time, I wrote as if no one would read it, wrote as if there were no such things as blogs and stats and page views. I wrote without second-guessing my words, wrote without considering my audience (there was none!), wrote without fear. And the words brought joy.
“Oh now the roots are reminiscing
Recurring dreams of minor chords
Metred time
Muted chimes find the beat
And in the pulse there lies conviction
A steady push and pull routine
The cymbals swell
High notes flail into reach.” -Maria Taylor, Song Beneath the Song
Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s time to let the words free again.
“[Writing] is… a kind of leaving of notes for another to find, and a willingness to have them fall into the wrong hands.” –Matthew Hollis
I’m willing.
These are my notes.
Aveline is finally asleep. The house is quiet for the first time in hours, silent except for the raspy motor on the overhead fan and the clink of the spoon against my cobalt cereal bowl.
My eyelids are heavy. I stare, unsure what to do with this pure, quiet, uninterrupted time. The need for sleep tugs at me, but it no longer captures me with the same intensity it once did. In the past year, I’ve adopted a new definition of what it means to be well-rested.
There is a profound peace in this stillness, tonight. I exhale, the sound of my own voice blending with the fan. I watch the blades spin, lifting and twisting the Florida air. I think of how one year ago, I and a five-week-old Aveline flew through the Florida air to join Josiah, who’d been here for a couple weeks already due to an answered prayer — a full-time job.
I think of the fear and hope of the past two years. I think how hope has been woven into our lives, how hope is the shining thread, the strongest cord, the lifeline of who we are — not because of hope itself, but because of God in who we hope.
I think of the myriad of ways our God poured down manna to us, sometimes as a raven in the wilderness and sometimes as a coin in the mouth of a fish. I think of how He always, always, filled our cups and let them overflow.
And I stand here now in the overflow, here in the land of our sojourn, filled with thankfulness and gratitude and wonder because today — today! — we are finally debt-free. I close my eyes and breath deeply. The glory is God’s.
I lower my spoon, resting the silver-scrolled edge against the bowl. I stand up, and walk toward the bedroom. The night pulled its dusky cover over the earth long ago, and sleep calls.
Before the sun burns off the early morning haze, Aveline will awaken, bright eyed. The sound of silence will be overcome by the sound of life, the sound of love, the clink of the coffee scoop. And the aroma of coffee will swirl and mix with the Florida air, Josiah will kiss me on the forehead, and the thread of hope will shine brighter than ever.
The sky keeps changing. The morning’s quiet clouds, marching steadily along for hours, finally collapse under the weight of the gathered rain and spill out over the sidewalk and leaves, over the roofs and birds, over the highways and signs, and over our shoulders.
Aveline laughs.
I sigh and pull the tripod and camera back inside, closing the green front door behind us.
Aveline’s face falls. She looks up at me, tugging at my jeans. “Outside? Outside? Outside?” I love the way she pronounces the ou in “out”. She has a Californian accent that makes me proud and buoys hope in my soul.
On Sunday morning, Josiah read Joshua 1 aloud, “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory.”
I love that Great Sea toward the setting of the sun. I love how my Lord tells me, “only be strong and courageous.”. Four times in this chapter, “be strong and courageous.” I love how He gives me the strength I need to be strong.
The sound of the rain against the windows stops, and we go back outside to walk on this green, Eastern land God’s given us now, “beyond Jordan, toward the sunrise.”
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