To Mend a Broken Heart

Flowers help, cut or wild

blooms of vibrant hue,

also time rolled out in long

stretches like bolts of cloth.

Air is essential, as well as stories

that name in some way the sharp

corners of your pain.

You will want to lay down

on the floor, to feel something

solid beneath your brokenness,

like a hand holding the pieces

of a shattered vase. 

Be gentle: offer yourself 

a cup of tea, a book, a candle lit

in silence. Tuck small 

moments of beauty and joy

into your heart like a poultice 

to draw out the pain.

If you're able, wake up

before the sun rises.  Allow

your day to begin and end

in the quiet dark.  Then watch

for the way the light breaks

through differently each day; 

witness the miracle

of night’s passing until 

you believe it's true.  

(Photo Source: Here. ) Linking today with Playdates With God.

To Love What is Passing

I watch the sunrise each morning.  Reading, writing, I pause to turn toward the window.  At first all is black, night’s heavy velvet stretched.  With every glance the scene changes, like clicking through slides in a view finder.  Fog shifts, blue spreads wide one day, then purple or even green the next.  Mist rises off the river I cannot see from here, ghostly lines of white revealing the river’s path.

In the evening I bend and twist while washing dishes, watching the light change again through the kitchen windows.  The sun sets out one side of the house morphing clouds into relief, filling spaces with yellow, etching outlines in gold or pink.  On the other side of the house the light also changes.  

“Rainbow, rainbow,” my son shouts and we all run out the closest door like a crowd fleeing a burning building.  Scurrying around the yard, we search for openings between the tall pines, the out buildings, where the biggest arcs of red, yellow, indigo and all the rest can be seen running like a road through layers of clouds and light.  

The sky’s show changes quickly, morphing like trees in fall.

None of this lasts for long. 

//

My little boy gives me twelve kisses at bed time each night, rapid-fire smacks one right after the other, an exertion of pure love on his part.  He lays his claim of love on me, pressing lips to my cheek and I count to hold them close, these kisses like shafts of light buried in my heart, memories of this passing season of such open love and affection.

The other night, he woke to go to the bathroom and sat waiting for me on the hallway floor, cross-legged, his head bobbing and weaving like a sleepy kitten.  Standing in the bathroom, unsteady, he makes it known, “Me love everyone.”

His heart is open wide like the sky, filled with light and shifting colors that wash across his face with every changing emotion.  This boy of mine moves so quickly soaking in the joy and light of each moment, no matter the shade. 

Last night he marched happy through the kitchen with a giant bowl of plain rigatoni tucked under his arm.  He didn’t get to go to the Halloween parade with Daddy and his older siblings and when his twin brother asked about the plan, he replied, “Me stay home with Mommy . . . and the noodles.” 

When I asked what he loved more – Mommy or the noodles – “Me love noodles,” was his smiling reply. 

//

 

To love what is passing, to open one’s heart to what is in each moment, is to live deeply, fully.  No one pleasure or delight lasts for long and in its passing we expose ourselves to potential loss and grief.  But to live closed off from each moment for fear of its passing is to rob ourselves of much that is truly precious in this life.

Knowing this, I bend my cheek to receive the kisses, I turn my head toward the window, I run toward the rainbow, toward each passing moment to embrace it with arms open wide as I teach my heart to say, "Me love," over and over again. 

This post is linked with Five Minute Friday on the prompt "long." 

Panic Attacks and Unexpected Grace

 

I’m sitting on the couch when it comes, cycling through my usual websites with a growing sense of dread.  I feel frozen, unable to move on to something else even though I know I need to. 

A wave of heat washes over my body, rising up my back, my neck, engulfing my head and then searing with an intensity I find hard to believe.  Is this what a hot flash feels like?  My heart rate jumps and the heat is followed by fear; fear of panic, a fear so dark it’s like the fear of fear itself.  

“Maybe nothing has changed, maybe it will never get better,” these are the words the darkness whispers. 

This is the beginning of my first full-on panic attack since leaving the psychiatric hospital. 

I sit frozen, afraid to move, trying to stay calm, afraid I won’t be able to move.  My children are upstairs resting in their daily “quiet time” and the time I have to deal with this is limited. 

I shut the computer, place it on its shelf.  I get up and head to the kitchen to busy myself washing dishes or moving laundry from washer to dryer.  

Passing a window I see the vegetable garden, nearly spent, a riot of decay sitting at the bottom of the yard’s gentle slope.  Waves of squash beetles tore through our zucchini and cucumber plants then moved on to the winter squash and watermelons, their destruction leaving me furious and overwhelmed.  The tomato plants, poorly staked, lean and sprawl, hap-hazard yet clinging to their heavy fruit. 

The garden draws me through the kitchen, past the laundry and out into the wide open green laid out beneath a sky of blue.  I walk among the tomatoes picking their luscious fruit, some over-ripe, some not yet fully red.  The plants are broken and bent, but bearing still and moving among them I’m surprised by the yield.  A pile of red grows in the green grass as I work my way around the garden, the picked fruit creating a border to the chaos and decay. 

Bending, breaking vines, I feel the shadows of anxiety moving still around the edges of me, like wisps of a spider’s web.  

The sky is blue, the sun is warm and there are too many tomatoes to carry, so I fetch the red metal wagon, pulling it down to the garden’s edge.  It fills with tomatoes like the disciples nets were filled with fish, unexpectedly.  God is there with me in the garden, in the abundance of the soft red fruit, in the overflow of sunlight and sky, this much is easy to see. 

But I cling to the truth that God is also with me on the dark leather sofa, in the heat and darkness, in the fear and the fear of fear itself; God’s love displacing the fear.  

This vine will not be cut down despite whatever decimation may come.  Though broken and bent, I will cling to the fruit that this season also may bear witness to the One who planted me, who tends my life through seasons of both abundance and decay.  And when this season also passes, I will be surprised by the fruit that comes, like always, as unexpectedly as grace. 

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

 

Even More Undignified (a Poem and a Playdate)

What is serious to men is often trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as "play" is perhaps what He Himself takes most seriously. At any rate, the Lord plays and diverts himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. . . . we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds, and join in the general dance." - Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation

“I will become even more undignified than this.” - King David regarding his dancing half-naked in the streets (2 Samuel 6:22).  

You ride in large loops circling 

the L-shaped curve of the driveway. 
Perched on your tall, blue bike,
it's pedal, pedal, pedal, coast and turn 
in that small space under the Indian-summer 
sky.  There’s a kitten zipped into your hoodie, 
black face and whiskers peaking out as you 
pedal, pedal, pedal, coast and turn. 

Right there, between the green grass 
and ceiling of blue, you feel the freedom 
and joy that has been missing for too long.  
Not only do you feel it but, for once, 
you value it, holding it as a prize, 
a pearl of great price.  The Day Care parents 
come and go next door, moving from work 
to work and you – soaring under the golden 
sky, the soft fur of a sweet being warm 
against your chest – you don’t care who sees.   

Laura Boggess' new book Playdates with God: Hvaing a Childlike Faith in a Grownup World was released this week.  Are you ready to meet God with the heart of a child?  Visit her blog where she is blogging 31 Days of Playdates  for the month of October.

 This is our other kitten, all zipped up happy and snug in my hoodie while I work on cooking dinner.  The other night she sat on my shoulder for a long time watching me peel potatoes.  The joy of kittens is restoring, for me, some of the joy of my childhood and for that I'm deeply grateful.