The view from Tuesday

 

Today was a crazy-rainy day.  My Georgia self was inwardly having a temper tantrum as I pulled on a sweater, jeans, and wool socks to go to school for my son's spring field trip.  My ego and super-ego had to wrestle my id to the ground and talk her out of booking a nonstop flight to Atlanta.  

Gray was the day.  But around five the sun made a tentative peek out and suddenly my world exploded into what my husband and I call the "dangerous time of day to house hunt."  You know what I mean...long shadows across lawns and a golden mellow light that transforms even the most trash-strewn empty lot into a potential paradise.   

I glanced out the window and saw this snapshot.  I'll walk you through it...on the lower left, the African violet recently bloomed after months of sulking.  The Ball mason jars were treasures I found in an antique shop while on a ramble with my parents (I won't tell you how much I got them for because you will be jealous!).  The adorable baby shoes came from a fundraiser in which children with special needs filled cast-off shoes with soil and tiny garden plants.  The two miniature peat pots were gifts from my son.  He planted a basil seed in each one because he knows that I like insalata Caprese in the summer.  On the far right is the basil plant I bought to sneak into the peat pots because I can't bear to tell him that the seeds he planted have long since washed away from the lavish waterings they have received.

In other words, bliss.  

Yes, I am still wearing a sweater, jeans, and wool socks.  But the view from Tuesday has revived me.  I take a deep breath and picture the joy resting on my head.  I don't think it is going to far to describe this moment as sacred.  A tiny snapshot of shalom to pull out when I am about to give in to self-pity.   

"For through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can't see--such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him."   -Colossians 1:16
        

 

Charm Bracelet: Part 1

I have a hope that is currently being deferred.  It involves a six-state move.  I am so homesick for the South.  Don't get me wrong...my heart's home is really with my husband and son.  Wherever they are, I am home.  But.....

Every spring it hits, and by early summer the full-blown yearning is well underway.  There is a certain smell, feel, sound, and look to my South during these months.  My sweet mother has started sending me her Southern Livings, and that is special in itself.  But they are treasures to me because as she reads them she has a post-it pad and pen beside her.  When she comes to a part she knows we will both like or laugh at or be inspired by or roll our eyes over, she makes a little comment and sticks it to the page.  I get this "conversation" in the mail a few days later.  I've recently begun responding with my own post-its and sending them back.

I love this newfound tradition, and yet it has inspired tears on more than one occasion.  The latest
started because an article about azaleas.  The photos were beautiful, and in seeing them I could really and truly smell the hot dustiness of my grandmother's front porch in Tuscaloosa one summer.  My grown-up skin could feel the memory of sweat running down my back and the peeling grey paint under my hand.  In another memory I am in the "ladybug room" at my grandparents house, also in Tuscaloosa, lying on the bed trying to read Little Women while scratching the 27 mosquito bites that dotted my legs.  That room was so cool compared to the blistering cicada heat outside.  I had just come in from listening for bobwhites and watching the butterflies who were attracted to the rotting persimmons at the base of the tree.

Each memory becomes one charm on the most loaded bracelet in the world.  That's why I had to revise my title to Part One.  Next I think I will cover Bellingrath Gardens, the trip to Mobile, driving to Destin with my parents and son only a few summers ago, the infamous Summer of Poison Ivy, barbeque, Atlanta's Phipps Plaza, the Seafood Platter, junkyards, my grandmother's heartbreakingly beautiful bearded irises, and the neighbors' neurotic chihuahua who had the ridiculous name of Peanut.  Which brings me to how my uncle always poured a pack of peanuts into his Coca-Cola bottle so as to taste the salty-and-sweet, the time my cousin dropped a wagon tongue onto my toe, and later sitting on the step with her to eat rich vanilla ice cream after my toenail cracked off.  The band-aid was impressive.  That ice cream was so sweet and creamy and good.   

At least that's how I remember it. 

 

           

Peacebirds

I realized something the other day.  I was standing in the kitchen, frosting cupcakes for the birthday party my son wanted to have for his...rabbit.  Apparently, Hunny Bunny's birthday is April 1.  No joke.  Anyway, as I was frosting, this lovely solid feeling came into my soul and I had to pause for a second.  Just like Jerry Seinfeld's "salty discharge," I couldn't immediately identify it.  What is this? 

It felt like the perfection of pound cake, sweet but not saccharine, dense but not heavy.  After a minute, I realized...this is what peace feels like.  Deep peace, frosted with contentment. 

I caught my breath, because I didn't want to scare it away.  This feeling was like a tiny bird, sitting on my head.  If I tried to grab it and hold on, the peace would be gone.

So now I am creating a safe place for the peacebird to land.  I confess, it really is hard for me, because I love five-step plans and to-do lists.  I want to tame it and make it my pet.  But peacebirds don't operate that way.  Instead, I learn to go about my day, frosting cupcakes for a rabbit, and suddenly it is there, sitting on my head again. 

I pause to drink it in with a deep breath.  Peacebirds come and go, and I have no way of creating one or forcing it to land in my heart.  I am absolved.  Free to be blessed.  

 

    

Jesus Loves the Little Children

"Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them.  But the disciples rebuked those who brought them.  Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."  (Matthew 19:13-14)