Grace Notes (#Small Wonder Link-up)

I love this image of Christ in the Wilderness gathering Wild Flowers painted by Stanley Spencer.

I decided last weekend that I would try to write 500 words, five days a week for the month of March.  

And I nearly did this past week.  But still, I came up short, not having anything finished enough to post today.  Some weeks are like that for me, lots of planting seeds, lots of beginnings, but no real tangible harvest. 

Yesterday afternoon I took a nap and the sun came out, sending the temperature up above fifty degrees.  The kids swarmed coat-less in the driveway and later in the still-snowy field.  I sat inside by a dying fire working on a poem, then did the dishes and made a cake. 

We met some new friends for dinner and it amazes me always – how new friends can be made when you least expect it.  Since leaving the church we helped plant almost seven years ago, there's been a lot of grieving and letting go.  It's almost been enough to make me forget the life that always follows death - the way surrender opens our hands to receive something new. 

Sitting around a new table with new faces and listening to us talk, I felt keenly aware that we're not the same people we once were.  I heard a spaciousness in our lives, a reaching out beyond ourselves that feels so big and lively. 

“It’s just so much fun,” I heard myself say, over and over again, trying to explain the appeal of owning chickens. 

This weekend we celebrated the one-year anniversary of buying this good and spacious place here in Boiling Springs.  As far as we're concerned, the fact that we live here is a complete miracle, a good old fashioned act of God.  

One year ago we held our breath until the papers were signed, while drinking water out of bottles labelled "Trust Matters".  We left the lawyer’s office like two foxes leaving a hen house – wide grins on our faces, hardly able to believe we got away with it.

I'm learning that this is what grace feels like, this spaciousness, this bubble of joy that rises, this scandalous abundance unearned.  

May you be blessed with grace this Lenten season - 

may your emptying be followed by abundance, 

may your surrender make way for the new things 

already being rooted within you.  

May your grief be fruitful, 

may your joy be full. 

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Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God? 

That's my proposal - that we might gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days. 

You're invited to link-up a brief post of about five hundred words or less about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment. 

Trust Matters

 

It was mid-April 2013 when we sat at the kitchen table with our realtor discussing price points and all of the other details of listing our house for sale. Timing was important to me, I wanted to sell and buy quickly, to have it all said and done by the time school started again in the fall.  That gave us about five months.

But we had to list our house and get it under contract before we could even really start looking for a new home, ie. we had to let go of one thing before grabbing on to the next, and this had me worried.

As the meeting was winding down, the realtor tucking our details into a nondescript manila folder, I let the smallest bit of my anxiety slip out.  "I'm just afraid we won't find something," I said.

I don't know why I said it, I knew no promises could be made.  Maybe I thought saying it aloud would be enough to make the fear go away. 

Our realtor spoke up then, in a move that surprised me.  "Don't worry," he said, "you're in good hands."

(I think he felt like he had to say something.)

I looked at him then, this man a good bit younger than us with no wife and no children and knew he couldn't begin to understand the weight of my concern.

But his words did help.

It wasn't his hands I pictured, but His hands and that was enough to remind me of the One we were trusting as we leaned and leapt toward something new.

//

Maybe you know the story by now, how we didn't find a house in time and nearly missed finding an apartment before that same realtor welcomed us to rent one of his.  I'll always wonder whether he remembered what he said at that table, whether he felt any obligation because of his words.

He was hesitant and we were desperate and so he played the dual role of realtor and landlord while we continued to hunt for houses.

As time passed and we failed to find a home, people felt the need to point out the obvious - that it benefited him for us to continue to rent.  They asked gentle and leading questions like, "Are you sure you trust your realtor?"


//

When we lost the farm house, the one that felt perfect, I sent John an email:

"I know this isn't helpful, but I'm not sure I can work with him any more . . ."

I didn't think he'd cheated us, didn't really think it was his fault.  But sometimes when you can't do one thing (i.e. buy a house) you really want to do something else (i.e. find a new realtor) just to feel like you still have a little power left.

We hung in there though and he drove us to see houses in a wider and wider circumference from the places we really wanted to call home.

//
   
A month later he called with the impossibly good news - the fail-proof deal had fallen through and we now had the exclusive opportunity to bid on the farm house before it went back on the market.  Within days we were under contract and seven weeks later we met at a local lawyer's office for closing.

It all seemed too good to be true, it WAS too good to be true and I felt strangely giddy as the room filled with more and more official looking people dressed to the nines.  Our lawyer, two bankers, a lawyer and realtor for the estate and our realtor and mortgage broker filled the room with quiet chatter while my husband and I signed a hefty stack of papers.

I wanted to giggle (and nearly did) and then I wanted to cry.  Looking up, my eyes came to rest on a water bottle I'd picked up in the waiting area - one of the fancy ones with a special label advertising for the business that handed it out.  Beneath the lawyer's name was their slogan in big, bold letters, "Trust Matters."

I thought back to that evening at our dining room table, to the fear I felt then and the worries that hovered for nine months straight.  We hung in there though, because we trusted.  We trusted our realtor, we trusted each other and most of all, we learned in newer and deeper ways, to trust in God.

Trust matters, my friends, trust in the One who holds us, trust despite the fear and worry.  Trust is the road the leads us on shaking legs beyond the reach of our own sufficiency.

I have dear friend and sister in Christ who's starting a long and difficult journey toward health and healing -  she is being invited to grow in trust.  Click here: Help me be half the woman I am today to read her story, share it, offer words of encouragement or donate.  How is God inviting YOU to grow in trust?  

This post is linked with Playdates with God and Unforced Rhythms.

Sucker-Punch (a story of Openness and Vulnerability)

I was so grateful a few weeks ago to receive an invitation from Amber Cadenas to write something for her blog, Beautiful Rubbish: the everyday art of learning to see.  Amber's running a series of guest posts under the topic "Tales of Beauty from the Rubbish Heap," in which she's asking several writer friends to write about story of redemption or beauty found in unexpected places.  Today I'm writing a little more of the "behind the scenes" story of how we found, then lost, then found again this old farm house.  

*   *   *

We wrote an offer on a big old farm house – a solid, happy looking place with great bones, two acres and a “tenant house” – the day after Christmas 2013.  Then we waited a week for the bank representative to return from vacation and reply to our offer.   

This was the fourth house we bid on over an eight month period.  We'd been through enough ups and downs to be cautious, but this time around we were very, very excited.  We tried to simmer down about it, but one day I brought home a stack of Organic gardening magazines I found on the free shelves at the local library, then my husband started researching chickens on-line.  Soon I was scanning Craigslist for the cabinets and fixtures needed to bring the place up to speed for a family of six.  

But it wasn’t until the last day, the day before we would hear back, that I really let myself get excited.

It felt so right . . .

 

Follow me over to Amber's place to read the rest of this surprising story, won't you? And while you're there, be sure to click around to get a flavor for her writing.  Thanks so much, Amber for this lovely opportunity!

 

Photo credit: www.jeremybinns.com 

This is a Mother's Love

God is the source of all love; whenever we show love, whenever we experience love, we are experiencing an aspect of God.  For me, the role of mother, as one who loves and is loved, has been a revelation of many aspects of God's love.  The following piece, gracefully published by SheLoves Magazinel explores the texture of this mothering love which reveals one small yet important aspect of God's deep, unyielding love for us.

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“...the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” – Gerard Manley Hopkins

Silent and still, like a gray stone nestled inside the evergreen, she is almost but not quite hidden from the world. Tucked in and under, behind the bushy green branches, a Mourning Dove sits on a nest like none I’ve ever seen. Wide and spacious, it opens out around her like a cupped hand holding her body, her warmth, her eggs.

She caught my eye one day gathering sticks near the foundation of our house. Her body, soft and gray, moved with purpose: picking, choosing her wares before flying to the pine tree, then back again for more. Later, my kids confirmed the nest and the eggs it held: her treasure, hidden.

Waiting for the bus with my older kids one morning, chilled by April’s soggy wind and rain, I think of her sheltered there. What wisdom led her, I wonder, to that place of safety, that tiny harbor within the boughs of the evergreen tree?

Click HERE to continue reading and leave a comment over at the SheLoves site.  

Settling in to Spaciousness

I’m still tip-toeing around this place like an uncertain guest.  Stopping to pause at every window, checking to see that the sky is still there.  

Stepping across the road to retrieve the mail, the old corn field opens before me like the ocean.  Waves of grain lap at my feet and the sense of spaciousness is palpable, there in that vertigo moment on the edge.  Walking out across our own field with the twins, I feel conspicuous, exposed, as a hawk glides against the clear blue sky above us.  

One early visit, before the big move, we found evidence of the hawk’s appetites.  A squirrel’s tail, tufts of feathers and fluff scattered under a giant pine tree.  I wonder about the chickens we’ll keep and the kitten (s) I hope to have one day, I picture them crossing the field under that narrowed eye. 

 

//

There’s a Mourning Dove building a nest in the smallest of the pines, a fluffy overgrown Christmas tree.  She lands near the base of the house gathering the exact pieces she needs to build a safe place for her eggs.

We all hang close to the house, garage, retreat, these things seem more familiar somehow and I work, spiraling through in expanding circles, to make them more familiar yet.  The sound of laundry in the dryer, the smell of peppers, onions and garlic sauteed, these are the twigs and leaves with which I line my nest.

//

Last night, while I swung on the old porch swing, Isaiah found a bird’s egg, a small pinkish orb.  I expected it to feel like air in the palm of my hand, the nothingness that it was, but it carried a weight of its own.  It was cold to the touch and showed just the tiniest sign of impact. 

The egg that fell, lost from love and life was found again with much rejoicing, no matter its sorry state. 

//

Just before dinner we pull out a kite, a cheap plastic red and black ladybug and I watch from the driveway’s macadam as John throws the bright flag wind-ward, tossing it toward heaven until it catches on breath unseen.  The four of them spin there in the open field, faces lifted toward that bright blue while the bit of red soars, dancing.  Isaiah runs in giddy circles, then falls to the grass, rolling, as Levi and I walk out hand-in-hand to join them.  

Something ancient in us whispers there is danger in wide, open spaces, but a deeper voice draws us to the edge.  There is another eye that watches; the hawk is not the only one and we too were made for soaring. 

This post is linked with Playdates With God. and Chronicles of Grace.

Inheritance (Letting Go of Guilt)

 

We inherited several gallon-sized bags of blueberries when my in-laws sold their house and moved to Florida.  I like to think that they were handpicked by my mother-in-law some time ago, back before the brain tumor and multiple surgeries left her partially paralyzed, before we lost her without really losing her in so many ways.  She was a force to be reckoned with in the blueberry patch bringing them home by the bucket-full and urging them onto her grandchildren who wandered her house like a little Blue Man Group, stained with perpetually blue hands and faces.  

After helping his parents load their truck, John can back home with a few frozen roasts and the blueberries.  That was last March and if those berries were excavated from the depths of my in-laws’ deep-freezer, carbon-dating may be required to get their exact age.  

But here’s the thing – I don’t use a lot of frozen blueberries.  

So a lot of those berries sat in our freezer – like two of the three bags – and then got moved with us when we sold our house and moved this past summer.  And now, here we are, preparing to move again and I’m cleaning out our deep freezer and there isn’t room in our small freezer for everything.  So I was getting ready tonight to make some blueberry muffins because – God forbid I throw out my mother-in-law’s blueberries.  

I was planning to make muffins while my husband worked at a mountain of dishes and small children melted-down all around me; planning to make muffins after waiting for over two hours at the Dr with my daughter and getting pulled over on the way to the pharmacy; planning to make muffins I was pretty sure my kids wouldn’t eat.  

Why?

Because I wanted to honor my mother-in-law.  I didn’t want to feel guilty about throwing out all of that hard work and I didn’t want to lose one more connection to the woman she was - I wanted to do the right thing.

Sometime later, after the twins were to bed and the dishes done, after thawing and straining the dark purple juices into the sink, I realized that I don’t really have to make those muffins. 

“It’s ok, Kelly,” I thought, “Let it go.” 

I just don’t have a double-batch of muffins in me tonight, nor do I imagine I’ll have it in me sometime in this next harried month before me move.  And, oh my, I can’t imagine lugging them along with us to the new house like some big blue ball and chain.  So I’m cutting myself loose, cutting free of my own self-induced guilt. 

My mother-in-law’s will, her spirit – neither the essence of who she was or who she is – cannot be found in those old berries, it just can’t.  And my tossing them isn’t any more a betrayal of her than it is a betrayal of people all over the world who’d give their eye-tooth for those berries. 

It’s just a simple act of surrender, another form of letting-go and laying down the ideal self in favor of something more real which looks a lot more like a very tired, worn-out mother of four young children. 

My mother-in-law has four children – grown now – and my husband remembers picking blueberries as a child, bringing them home in buckets and eating more than he picked.  He wants to plant blueberries at the new house, who knows how many, but it’s part of his plan.  I look forward to walking out among them with my kids in tow, picking and eating and maybe even freezing a few and thinking of my mother-in-law from time to time. 

When their hands and faces are stained and their bellies popping, I’ll ask them if they remember how Bunia used to let them eat all the berries they wanted.  I’ll tell them how I dreaded changing their blueberry-filled diapers and how I tried to subtly curb their in-take.  I’ll tell them how much she loved them then and how she loves them now, only differently.   

And it will be enough.    

This post is linked with Playdates With God. 

Photo source HERE.