trust

Barefoot Peaches

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With knees pulled in close I watched the rain linger on my peach tree branches like diamonds gracing ear lobes. They hung until they were too heavy, held too much and then fell. One by one they went.

Tink. Plink-tink. 

It became a song the likes of Disney could form into a magical illusion. I saw Fantasia. It was creepy. But the way of rain is my tune. A beat of the gutter, percussion on the patio. It was all very romantic save for the permeating smell of trash. Sidenote: why do ripe strawberries and melons stink of garbage? Anyone? Bueller?

***
I want peaches so badly. When I drove home a few years ago with the fresh purchase, peachy tree roots swaddled like a promise, I had visions of overflowing bushels of fruit I’d carry into the house each August. I wanted to brag about my bare feet and sweet bounty. Make jam and stuff.
Yeah, not a single bloom in three years. Because Colorado thinks snow on Mother’s Day is one wild prank. It is, my friends.

Last spring I coerced my husband into wrapping our bushes. We wove frost-resistant tarp around our lilacs and I dug up my lettuce seedlings. It is so much stinking work to garden in this climate. I swear I fret more over a half-inch plant than I do my children’s souls. OK, that’s going a smidgen far. My point is I stress plenty over those stupid things.

The storm crescendoed only to steady again. I’d seen the forecast for the weekend: worst blizzard in decades (my interpretation).
Familiar angst started to rise. I began to make mental checklists of supplies, materials, and gallons of milk.

Until I didn’t.

What if I decide stillness? How will this play out if I drop my shoulders and travel the way of trust? 

Not only did the snow come it sifted all night, weighing heavy on limbs and leaves, breaking branches and giving me a stomachache. An inch would have been plenty but no, we got six for pity’s sake. 

Morning dawned like a war zone. Flowers bent low and trees were pinned to the ground. And a knowing started to invade my heart when I looked at the trees, their trunks still sturdy.

Storms can leave us battered and bruised, but when we trust we are held in every outcome they don’t uproot us.

“A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice.”  -Isaiah 42:3, NIV

Not Enough Spit

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Earthy, a mixture of grass and dirt and sun and let’s face it, manure. That’s what I smell when I’m near a farm. It awakens my senses and pulls me alive. If someone could formulate this into a wax, I would wear galoshes and burn it. I would.

I think horses smell delightful as well.

Did camels? In the dust and sweat of the desert thousands of years ago, did camels emanate this kind of aroma?
I love their lips, horses and camels alike. They are soft in a way that no baby bottom can compare. I’ve run my fingers along their noses, felt the warm exhale as they breathe. It is a risk, this petting of 6 foot, 1,000 pound beasts. Camels bite.

Steel is quite a contrast to this. In early centuries it would have been bone or wood. I’m talking about sewing needles. (Can I pause and just mention that whittling something so small out of bone is incredible. A work ethic unknown in our day.) Now they range from a couple inches to half the length of a ruler. The eye, that stupid opening where a slobbery piece of thread never fits, can be as large as 6 mm. Or 0.23622 inches. I don’t know what this means except to say, teeny.

My feet are propped on a folding chair that doesn’t belong to a table. The wreath on my auburn front door is twingling in the glare of sunshine because it’s mid-morning and I haven’t taken time to unplug it. Debris from Christmas still abounds, and I’m letting cartoons play much too long. Because my heart is landing in the sands of the Holy Land.

“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

– Matthew 19:24 NASB

It can’t happen. One thousand pounds, fitted through six millimeters. All the spitting in the world wouldn’t get that thing slick enough to slide into a hole like that. It’s hopeless. 

But I just need the new model of the 4Runner because if we’re spending that kind of money and keeping it forever, I certainly don’t want to start out with an older body style. 
And my decorations are looking their age because all that we got after our vows is telling a decade-old story and I do not want get stuck in a rut.
Oh, and that bank statement needs higher numbers in the balance column without sacrificing my addiction to overpriced, delicious, so-worth-it coffee. 

“Gimme, gimme, gimme. I need, I need, I need.”

– Bill Murray, What About Bob  

It’s the mantra of America. And I’m guilty of it too.

I write in my journal questions I’d rather not answer. It’s painful to go here.
What is my camel? My eye? What feels like an overwhelming impossibility? 

-finishing a book that seems so beyond my capability
-walking back into relationships that seem dangerous, where heartache has not been absent
-a country that is truly free
-a garden, a shed, a house with a walk-around porch, and kids throwing footballs and sarcastic slurs with their daddy on acreage that is enough to stretch out but still close to town
-telling my personal story
-holding hands with a woman who has recently found a safe place to sleep and a warm meal, and wants someone to shed tears with her
-accepting my deteriorating body, my outdated clothes, my less-than-modern “stuffs” as my youngest says

If He asked me to give things up, could I?
If He asked me to go after it all with abandon, would I?
Am I willing either way?

“And looking at them Jesus said to them, ‘With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'”

-Matthew 19:26 NASB

Giddyup.

 

 

 

Life isn’t meant to be easy, it’s meant to be lived.

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They piled off the bus, dropping pumpkins and scarves, and moving like syrup across a plate. Slow.

My oldest went with her great-grandma and cousin to a farm yesterday. They bounced along in a wagon pulled by a tractor. “It was a hayride with no hay. We said, ‘Why do you call it a hayride then?'” They ate hot dogs, drank chocolate milk, and “visited” all the way back.
This is being recounted in the lobby of the Senior Center while the kids are playing Pass-The-Skull, a new, unofficial game that can arouse a fierce competitive nature in even the shyest of personalities.

As you may have guessed, I am more interested in the elderly hovering around the glass entryway than the triangle of kids on the floor. I study their interactions through the smell of cafeteria food and moth balls. It’s a potpourri all its own, and it’s my future.

“I didn’t know that was your husband until he said, ‘Thanks for helping my wife.'” Hunched Shoulders is smiling, the words coming out intermittently. “I was surprised because you two are so different. You are quiet and he is very talkative.”
Black Tennis Shoes and High-water Slacks is smiling back, shifting her feet. And I’m thinking, Simmer down you sweeties. One of you is still wearing a ring.

I spot another couple. They are mingling, working the social circle of this wrinkle parade I find so unbelievably adorable. I start to wonder if they have the same conversations they’ve always had, just evolved.
“Herb, does this fanny pack look OK or does it make my butt look more saggy?”
“It’s fine, Maude, but why are you wearing those pointy shoes?”
“Well, I don’t want to look like a square. I may be old but I ain’t dead yet. Here, put your tie on. I’m not going to the potluck with you dressed like that.”

This morning I’m talking generations of behavior with my husband. Wounds, traditions, and memories passed through the ages, contributing to the potluck that is us. What things are we keeping? What will we start in our family? What do we not want to keep going down the line?

“Oh, I worry for our kids. I don’t want them to struggle so hard and I just feel like what we do isn’t enough.”
“I know.”

It isn’t. It never will be. It Can. Not. Be.

All of it hits me faster than I want to accept it. This parenting, it will never be enough to keep them from making mistakes, from pain, or from hardship. Because life isn’t meant to be easy, it’s meant to be lived. And that entails the aforementioned.

Dang it.

It’s a perfect design, really. At some point we have to choose. We have to do our own seeking, our own learning, our own discovery of who am I and who is God.
Where do I find the most peace, contentment, connection? Where do I learn the most about how I relate, where I fail people, how I love or don’t love well, the lies to which I cling, my hopes, my longings, that I’m actually quite capable and good at some things, or that time and again no matter the journey-I find myself back on the lap of God? In the muck and mire of the day.

Am I willing to be the kind of parent that wants this for her kids?

Yes, no, yes, but I don’t think I mean it, OK yes, I don’t know, ultimately…yes. It will rip my heart out, I can only say it in a weak whisper, but yes.
And they’ll need someone who can go through it with them.

So here I am, ticket in hand for the rollercoaster that’s ahead.

A place for the ugly and inadequate

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The end of my nose is as cold as my toes while I sit on my bed, laptop on my legs. I’m feeling uninspired, disconnected from myself and pressured to blog. It’s been a couple days, I should keep up. But what to say?

If Natalite Goldberg were here she would tell me to just start writing. “Junk,” even.

So that’s what I do. A list of sorts, the words staggered like the black and white of piano keys, down the binding of my journal.

Talk to Mom in the car.
Tears.
Psalm 34
Rabbit food for dinner.
Sore throat.
Meeting.
Dark when I get home.

It seems so pointless. How do I ever find anything about which to write?
Dig. Deeper. Deeper still.

I start to realize I’m holding back. This public arena, it’s a place to be honest and vent and explore, but with everything? How do I know what I give here will be handled respectfully, delicately, or honored? I don’t. It is unsafe.

And isn’t this the waltz of relationships? (I’m not really a waltz kind of gal but hokey pokey didn’t really flow)

“Healthy relationship is defined by commitment,” I heard recently. “I can show you everything because I know you aren’t going anywhere.”

Ah, a place for the ugly and inadequate parts of me. Yes, that is a risky place. I often do this backwards. There’s coffee in the hands and friendship in the works and I dive right in. The good, the bad, the ugly. I pour out, tell it all, because that’s how you make friends, right? No one wants to hang out with someone who is nicely sharpened all the time. But it’s around this time when  I hear the force of an uneasy laugh, see the twist of a wrist as the person across from me checks their watch. I recognize these signs from before, and it’s a palm in my face that says: You, are too much. And instead of getting commitment, I get rejection. Instead of connection, a void. It’s left me cut and careful.

But they need to be known, these less-than-sparkling pieces of me.

“We hide our truest selves and offer only what we believe is wanted, what is safe. We act in self-protective ways and refuse to offer what we truly see, believe, and know. We will not risk rejection or looking like a fool. We have spoken in the past and been met with blank stares and mocking guffaws. We will not do it again. We hide because we are afraid. We have been wounded and wounded deeply. People have sinned against us and we have sinned as well. To hide means to remain safe, to hurt less. At least that is what we think. And so by hiding we take matters into our own hands. We don’t return to our God with our broken and desperate hearts. And it has never occurred to us that in all our hiding, something precious is also lost- something the world needs from us so very, very much.”                               -John Eldredge, Captivating

So I tread lightly, until I know you are safe. And then I vomit my heart all over you. Consider it a privilege.