Vacation (#SmallWonder Link-up)

We're officially on vacation this week in sunny Florida.  We drove down Saturday in one long haul.  Our kids did amazingly well and my husband drove for long stretches like a champ.  I kept myself awake, driving while he slept, by carving baby carrots into little totem poles with my teeth (whatever works, right?).  

The reward for our efforts came yesterday when the kids ran into the Gulf of Mexico and smiles spread as they discovered the fun of riding the waves.  We dug and dug in the sand and shells, hunting for shark's teeth and came away with a healthy haul of black bone triangles.  

Standing at the ocean's edge as the waves rolled in, I realized they would not end.  Each follows one after the other in a never-ending stream of rise and fall, crest and crash.  Watching, I heard the words of one of my favorite hymns in a new light,

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!
Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love
Leading onward, leading homeward, to Thy glorious rest above!

This - these waves, spacious, incessant, without end - this is what the love of God is like.  

Samuel Trevor Francis' hymn makes prolific use of exclamation points throughout.  Standing at the ocean's edge, I can understand why.  

Do you have a favorite image that speaks to you about the love of God?  I'd love to hear about it!

*   *   *

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 gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post 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.  

Playing With Fire

See the Mama wren? She's fussing at me for being too close to her babies 

who're tucked inside the bird house. 

Discarded shoes litter the grass around the pine tree; two bright blue Crocs, a pair of canvas sandals.  

When the kids are missing for a while, I step out the back door and call to the tree.  Before long, small faces peek out from among the greenery.  They're perched a good fifteen to twenty feet up.

Their faces and arms bear scratches from their climbing, but no one’s fallen yet.  

//

The other night, eating at the picnic table, I asked the kids what their favorite thing is about me.

My oldest son replied, “You let me do dangerous things.”

I had that in mind a few days later when he asked if fire would spread on rocks. 

Fire questions deserve follow-up, so I investigated his plan which was to make a fire on our driveway using his magnifying glass and leaves.  Playing with fire, I guess, is a no-no.  But we’re reading Gary Paulson’s adventure novel, “Hatchet” about a young boy stranded alone on a beach in Northern Canada.  A small hatchet is the boy’s only tool and eventually he discovers how to make sparks by scraping the hatchet across some flinty rocks.  Using the sparks and birch bark he is able to make fire.  

My son doesn’t have a hatchet, but he does have a small pocket knife that he bought with his own money at Lowes.  The other day he came down from quiet time with a heavily shaved pencil.  “I think I’m going to like carving when I get older,” he said, pocket knife in hand.

I imagine he wanted to be like the boy in the book in some small way, so I let him make the fire.  And it worked.  He used flower pots to perch the magnifying glass above a small pile of leaves and bark so he could “watch from the shade.”  The leaves smoked and smoldered and I reminded him not to stare at the sun’s reflection and to keep a big glass of water at his side.

I stayed nearby imagining the fire somehow catching, then spreading.  All it would take is a gust of wind at just the right moment, just the right angle. 

But I let him have his fire while his little brother squatted nearby taking it all in.

//

“Don’t drown in the pool tomorrow,” I announce into the van’s rear view mirror.  Four blank faces stare back at me.  We’re running errands and I’m thinking about their much anticipated day at a friend’s house tomorrow – the one with a pool. 

This is my backhanded way of expressing worry and fear, the by-products of my fierce love for them.

//

The tiniest of wrens built a nest in a small bird house in our yard.  It sits under a metal windmill, in the middle of a round flowerbed.  I love to see her little face peeking out of the small, round doorway.  

When I hang laundry nearby, she flies a few feet away to the Japanese Maple.  From there, she scolds me with fierce chattering – she is trying to get my attention, to draw me away from her babies.  Inside the bird house, tiny voices whirr with excitement as she comes and goes, her beak carrying food.  

In the evening I sit and watch her fuss.  Our clueless tomcat wandered too close to the nest and she is frantically trying to lure him away.  She flits across the lawn, swooping low before resting in a shrub, her machine-gunning chatter calling incessantly.   

“She would climb inside his mouth just to get his attention if she could,” I tell my husband. 

She tends her little ones with love that is both gentle and fierce.  

But a time will come, not long from now, when they will leave the nest.  Then what? 

Maybe she will sleep for a hundred hours, relieved.

The Worst and the Luckiest (#SmallWonder Link-up)

Photo Source.

Only the worst kind of parent hopes that the slow, cold, July rain doesn’t let up in time for fireworks.

Or maybe it’s only the worst kind of parent who decides, even after the rain lets up, not to take the kids to fireworks after all.  And, in fact, declares an early bedtime for everyone.

Either way, my daughter proclaimed in bitter tones as she marched through the kitchen, “This is the worst fourth of July ever.”

The worst.

“What did you say?” I asked, my back turned to her.  The comment wasn’t aimed at me, but I took the bullet anyway.

She toned it down, but marched out of the house, tears streaming.  Later, when she came in for a shower, she was still sullen and snarling and I was rolling those words around, that one word in particular, like a jaw breaker. 

It wasn't the worst day ever.  It was cold and rainy and we were all very, very tired.  But it wasn’t the worst, not really.

I was afraid it was, though, and her comment struck at a vulnerable place in me, the one that feels like it’s my job, my pass/fail, to make sure everyone has fun.  What kind of parent can’t pony-up to take their kids to the fireworks? 

The worst.

Sitting on the couch after everyone was in bed, I heard neighbors start celebrating.  Sharp cracks, pops, zings cut through the night and it felt like every single one was aimed at me, the great party pooper.  It felt like hiding inside on Halloween when you’ve run out of candy and little kids come knocking even though you’ve already turned out the porch light. 

I sat on the couch soaking in shame.  The seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness.  When would it all be over?   

We turned on the TV, but still, the fireworks sounded. 

Then I thought I heard my daughter in the hallway upstairs.  I asked John to pause the show and went up to check on her.  She was turned sideways in bed, eyes wide open. 

“Are you ok?” I asked, “I thought I heard you in the hallway.”

“I was cold, so I shut the window.”

I checked the window, made sure the cats were in for the night (they like to wander the roof).

“You know what?” she asked.

“What?”

“I can see fireworks from my bed.”

I crossed the room to the other window and knelt with my head tilted.  Waiting, I was rewarded with sharp sparks of white light rising from a distant neighbor’s house. 

“I get to see fireworks after all,” she said, with clear, sweet delight, “from my bed.  I’m the luckiest girl.”

The luckiest.

“Yes, you are,” I replied, relieved the storm was past. 

Back downstairs I struggled, still, to let go of the day, to allow myself to be moved from the worst, to the luckiest.  The two are not always so far apart, sometimes all it takes is the opening of our eyes in the dark, the turning of one's head toward the light. 

How was your fourth of July?  Somewhere between the best and the worst?

*   *   *

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 gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post 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.  

    

Brave, Like the Color Pink

“What do you think of the pink room?” I ask my daughter. 

“Every time I walk into it I think, ‘Well?’, like I expect it to say something to me, to tell me why it’s so pink,” she replies. 

Snuggled together on a sunny Sunday morning in bed, we laugh because it is so pink. 

She was with me when we picked the paint color at Lowes.   While I gathered a bouquet of pinks from among the paint chips, she made her own collection of beautiful, bold colors in the bottom of the shopping cart. 

“I’m making a color collection,” she said and I smiled to see her perusing the rainbow, listening to her own internal guide as she gathered colors. 

After narrowing it down to three shades of pink, I leaned toward the lightest, but asked her to help me make a final selection.  She picked the slightly bolder middle shade and I thought, ‘Well, why not?”

My husband said he didn’t care.   Even on the way home, when I teased him with paint chips in deep shades of magenta, he held his ground.  But when he opened the can labeled “Pink Taffy,” the words, “Wow! That’s PINK!” shot out. 

Seeing the primered walls begin to blush, even I had second thoughts.  I’ve always leaned toward neutral shades in paint and clothing – tans, beiges, straight up blues and creams.

“There are people,” I said, “who would paint their dining room pink. Why can’t I be one of those people?”

“You are one of those people,” he replied.   

//

I’ve recently developed a thing for pinks and purples, oranges and fuchsia – all of the bright colors.  I bought purple nail polish a few weeks back.  Not long before that, a flouncy orange skirt – the color of sherbet.  Walking the clothing aisles of the local Salvation Army Thrift Store, I pass by the browns, whites and blacks, heading straight for the bright delights of chartreuse, purple, pink and turquoise.  I even bought a pair of pink shoes recently and I'm secretly on the lookout for a pink pair of skinny jeans.

Do you remember the scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz when everything turns from black and white to technicolor?  This change in me feels something like that.  Or maybe like the pink Zinnia I planted on the side of our house.  The first blossom opened this weekend.  The plant, once just one shade of green among many, was transformed by its opening, set apart by a brilliant splash of joy.

As we worked our way around the dining room, hesitancy gave way to joyful delight.  “It’s such a happy color,” I said over and over again. 

//

Last month I sat in my Spiritual Director’s lovely white meeting space – a space filled with the gentle greens and browns of nature. 

“I’m in a period of consolation,” I said.  A friend recently described the spiritual state of consolation as a time in which one feels an “overwhelmed awareness of the love of God.”

She asked me to tell her more, to give story to the definition and I unpacked all of the lovely little things in my life, the places of grace and love, laying them out between us. 

“What does it feel like to be love so well?” she asked.

I closed my eyes and thought. 

“It feels like a bouquet of beautiful flowers.”   

“What color?” she asked.

I closed my eyes and thought, felt, again.  “All of the bright colors,” I replied.

“That sounds lovely,” she said, nodding in recognition of the joy and love in my face.

//

If you come to my house and see the pink dining room, sour apple green kitchen, the purple and turquoise accents, please know that what you are seeing is an extension of my heart. 

I am, like my daughter, making a color collection.  As life deepens and widens, so also does my palette. 

People tell me over and over again that I’m brave to speak about my struggles with anxiety and panic attacks, they tell me I’m courageous.  But for me, talking about the darkness comes naturally.  For me, choosing the light, no matter what its hue, is a far more courageous and vulnerable thing to do.

Sometimes brave is a brilliant shade of pink.  

Have you noticed changes in your color preferences over the years?  What are your favorite shades these days?  What color would YOU love to paint your dining room?   

Small Things and the Nature of Joy (#SmallWonder Link-up)

It fits in the palm of my hand, small and pleasing, like Julian of Norwich’s hazelnut. 

The cover is cut and glued from scrap paper – the same paper that lines my kitchen cabinet.  The pages, cut from printer paper and the binding, a bit of linen cord.  

All in all, it took less than fifteen minutes to complete once I understood the pattern and got my measurements right – in fact, I made two.  Inside I wrote, by hand, one of my own small poems, fifteen lines spread across nine pages, forty words in all. 

I wrote a book, see? 

Because that’s what I’ve wanted to do for a long time now and yet I’ve been afraid, overwhelmed by the enormity of it, unsure where and how to begin.  So I followed my heart to its place of joy – a quiet place where words and pages meet, where a project is small enough, simple enough to be approached.  My love for craft – paper, glue, scissors, color and cord – balanced out my fear, tipping me toward productivity.

I wrote a book, a very small one indeed.

And it made me very happy. 

I was smiling inside and out, delighted in a heart-happy way as I moved about the house.  Then my mind kicked in – not the mind that is restful, awake and aware, but the calculating one, the insatiable.  Before long I was making books by the hundreds, selling them by the truckload, considering buying a printing press – in my head.  And there, of course, the fear set it, what if it didn’t work? What if it wasn’t a huge success?  What if this little joy couldn’t sustain its own multiplication?

Then as I was cutting and gluing, head bent, a voice leaned, whispering in my ear, “If you made a hundred books, would your joy be any more full than it is right now?”

Pea-green paper rested between my fingers.  Linen thread wrestled.  The tiny triangular tab of a cover tucked perfectly into its slot.

No, I thought, it wouldn't be any fuller.  

That’s not how joy is. 

Joy isn't a commodity that changes with increase, it's whole in and of itself, like a ripe berry, or small seed.  Joy needs no addition, no subtraction or multiplication.  Joy can be shared, spread, multiplied, but only as itself, each experience whole like the many seeds of a pomegranate’s flesh.

That question rooted me back in the present, gave me back the joy that arrived like a rainbow, a gift, to begin with.  There will be more books, in many sizes and with them each will come joy.  

But it won't be any more or less than what I held that day in my heart’s hands - pure, simple, sweet.

Is there some small thing that's giving you joy these days?  I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

*   *   *

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 gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post 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.      

   

Grandma's Chickadees

I have my own picture window now, complete with bird feeder.

Grandma fed her chickadees

religiously, for years.  Filling 

a rusted coffee can with sunflower 

seeds, she loaded the feeder outside 

her big picture window, daily.

Seated with binoculars and bird book in hand, 

she watched the window like a big screen TV.

A .22 leaned casually against the window frame.  

She slipped its nose out occasionally, firing a round 

into marauding Blue Jays and other greedy types.

Her letters to me, in shaky script, described 

birds she saw and bears; often

mother bears moving through the old

orchard on their way to the river

with cubs in tow.  

She stopped shooting the rifle, she said,

after she accidentally shot a hole in the floor.  

When a bold bear came and stood outside the window

making eye contact with her, she also stopped feeding the birds. 

I wanted her to feed them anyway,

to stand her petite frame in the wide

window, binoculars in one hand and riffle

in the other, like a sharp shooter in the WWII

movies Grandpa and I watched in her

living room.  I wanted food for the birds,

which were food for her.  I wanted her to keep

feeding them.  

Now I walk my own property

toting bags of oiled, black sunflower seeds. 

One by one I lower, fill, and rehang feeders.  

I watch dumpy doves, dapper cardinals, bright yellow finches 

and the greedy squirrel who hangs upside-down by his back toes.

I lift my children to face the window, “Look! See!,” I say.  

We’re a long way from the mountains,

though I can see them in the distance.  

I don’t believe the bears will find me here, 

but if they do, maybe I’ll tell them

about my Grandmother – her binoculars and gun,

her happy, well-fed chickadees.    

A Wink, a Blink, and a Nod (#SmallWonder Link-up)

(Photo Source)

Today, I'm grateful to be hosting the words of fellow blogger, Elizabeth Marshall.  Won't you give her a warm welcome as she shares her heart?

I am measuring beauty and grace in increments of fragmented seconds. Small flakes of wonder, and flecks of time the size of a radish seed are grabbing and holding my attention, turning my chin with fingers, with skin. The hand of God calls me to look.  The Trinity corals me into a hemmed in place for my soul to rest. The balm is of his creation. In this new system of measurement I find lost artifacts. Code them and hold them as sacred – privileged to be awakened to see what was unseen, I abide in him more.
I am an archivist of the now.

The dragonfly in the garden looked like an adolescent. Thin and frail, if he flew slant he would become a line. Fueled by a passion to stay alive, to feed on the nutrients of his world, he left in a blink. A logogram of wonder. A sign of the miraculous. Punctuating the exclamation from my heart of the extraordinary ordinary.
Morning Glories wrap around my patinated back stoop railing. They open and shut, winking and nodding the sweetest of good day’s and good night’s. Slowly going into and out of the heat, they remind me of January’s curtain of dormancy. They cause me to recall - there is quiet, there are pauses. In other seasons, there is a waiting.
My senses awake in a nod. The breath and depth of creation’s unfathomable design, brilliant and alive, is newly paraded on stage. She is a humble peacock. Humility inhabits the folds of her feathered covering. Brilliant and illuminated, her beauty is not hidden easily and it has awakened me. My ears are unplugged, my eyes are re-focused on minutia.

I am awake at the wheel.
In this season, the garden is my sacred place for abiding. God reveals himself to me there. I pluck a flower or pick a berry. Sitting by my newest friends – my rooster and his hens – I settle into the quiet. I study the intricate patterning of their plumage and marvel.

I am both a child and an aging knower.

I see as a child but with the hindsight and maturity of one who is in the second half of life. My life is aging in the flesh and in my bones, but the child in me is present still to share in the partaking.
I am privileged to have a second chance - to see with the lens of grace, to gather and tuck petals and feathers and seconds of life into my place of remembering. I dissect and review and reframe as a poet.  I lean into this living fully present, waiting on beauty and glory. I see glimpses, take sips, drink from the cup of his offering.
I am Rip Van Winkle, awakened to the beauty of the now.

Reacquainted with Father God the creator, I add a dimension to my faith by watching him unveil and reveal a softness and gentleness. Masterpiece after masterpiece says, “I am here and love you. I have made art for your soul. I understand your love for my heavens and my earth. I created you to marvel at it. And it to be marveled at by you.”

In a wink, a blink, and a nod we can see it, savor it and ingest it. Or we can live with a beating heart and flowing blood, alive, but not engaged; here, but not present.

For now, I am awake at the wheel as I live out my days in my fifties. Fifty six years of making memories in this life – gratitude attends my soul as I thank God for calling me into a season of seeing, recording and savoring.

Each second, each wink, blink and nod, there are thousands of signs of God’s love.

Abide with me.

Slow with me.

Find time to see anew with me.

This is my passion.

To find the beauty in the simple and to gather, handful by handful, the overflow of miracle.

Shell.

Feather.

Stone and leaf.

Skyward, a pastel painted sky fades and gives way to winking and blinking stars.

And I nod.

Yes. Thank you. Grace.

At the tips of my toes the Cicada springs up through the grass, joining the symphony of the ebony night.

There are wonders, miracles, and signs of God in every wink, blink and nod.  I have been slow to see, but I rejoice that I am now awake.  Won’t you join me in the partaking?

Elizabeth Wynne Marshall is a writer, poet, and blogger. A lover of grace & the sea, she spends her days living and writing out the beautiful ordinary in a life lived by the sea. Her words may be found at her writing home, elizabeth w. marshall, poetry & prose through a lens of grace. On twitter & instagram, she is @graceappears.

*   *   *

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 gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post 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.