Feathered creatures wake me with singing outside my door, as winter bends and bows to the merging sounds of spring.
“Croak, croak”, the deep throated voice of large toads announce their return from my pond.
And this morning, a train “toots”, from down and beyond the turn below, just barely shooting forth, reminding me that life just won’t hold…
Life keeps moving, uncontrollable, like that train on the tracks.
Daughter number four curls up inside the round Ratan chair, as if tucked in a womb, as if reverting back to something she once knew; warm, safe, secure.
The large looped blanket, soft to the touch…the one my friend made that morning when she called and requested what colors I like…lays on her lap.
And I give thanks for the rest that comes between that membrain that brings life and love that’s stretched out wide, covering us with grace.
The earth weighs heavy, yet clean.
Awake, yet the whole house still sleeping, besides this daughter of grace.
Quiet has a way of pulling apart the layers of our heart; stripping, like a scaple everything our minds tend to run from.
And there in the silence, we commune, just us and God.
Cherry blossoms sprinkle the gathering of ancient trees in my front yard.
My mind runs to beauty, after watching my father battling cancer, paralizing me slowly, on the inside.
My ear bends to still hear his voice, yet it gets mutted with the wild chorus of tree dwellers announcing the break of dawn.
And I wonder how to stay in this moment, yet not forget. Hold the tension between embracing beauty, yet not being stripped of the past that molded me…
Made me what I am.
How do you move on from silence? Reach forward, while not unwinding the memories?
How do you step bravely past the horrors of broken people and broken dreams…
Forgotten visions, swallowed up destinies?
How do you grip it all, when your vessel feels hollow and tomorrow is not promised; bombs explode and nations war so unapologetically?
My fifth daughter tiptoe’s down the windy wood staircase. Daughter four now back to sleep in her Ratan womb, while the blanket moves slowly…
Up and down, up and down, slowly with every breath.
Life is in this youngest daughter, the one that isn’t held back by lots of sisters, a brother or anyone else for that matter.
She is the littlest in the pack, just like I was once, in my childhood.
Life almost bursts with every step, in a four-year-old that doesn’t remember cancers hold, or understand why her “Boppa” has slipped into heaven.
And maybe innocence is a gift. Ignorance not a curse, but something we all should embrace more of. Simpleness, a path that leads us to see only what matters.
And can you turn back time? Erase the clock? Get back the layers of loss and complications, to be like little children?
Somehow re-learn the innocence of our youth?
And yet, our Master commands us somehow to. He instructs us to be innocent, child-like in so many ways…
Still, I cannot even grasp how, now, as my wrinkly eyes struggle to see.
And then, I see my flesh like a costume, the full body costume I put on while teaching Preschool. The kind you zip up, pretending to be someone your not.
And I want to zip off this flesh and walk in the fullness that is power and spirit.
I want to fly with my two-feathered friends, into clouds unrestrained. Sleep like a baby in the womb of my original state, knowing, carefree…
Understanding, only He matters anyway.
I want to strip off all the lies, that I am the center, my purpose is self-centered…
And instead, remember…
There is only one Savior and He lives in the silence.
I want to stand on the edge of the cave, like Elijah the prophet, and find Him; not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire….
But in the silence that often floods in right after the earth has been most shaken in our lives.
In the stillness that floods the valleys of our lives, after noise has drown us, chaos has found us, winds have blown us….Empty.
Littlest one crawls up on my lap as I write this.
I never want my will, my way, my purposes to stop me from open-armed accepting anyone God brings to me.
So, I welcome her up.
She curls up like her sister, a ball in my lap.
Her ear to my heart, her limbs curled closed, as if remember her beginnings, the ones I wasn’t privileged to…
Her second mother, not her first.
I sit in the silence, still, and hold her there…Like God wants to do with me.
Because we all need to be held in a fetal position….Sometimes.
We all need remembering of when our souls left heaven and found their way to earth, before the loud bangs, in those nine months when we rested like an infant…
Wondering….
What is this world really like?
Content, just knowing we’d been given life…
Trusting, someone up above would supply our every need.
Safety, away from the chaos.
That is where I long to be.
As the morning lives, more family members wake and make their way down the turning staircase. I pull my mind away from these words.
I watch, as little one slips off my lap to join her sister in the egg shaped Ratan chair that has now become an oasis.
And I find myself giving thanks.
Knowing, it is not complicated to be innocent. We don’t need to fight to get there.
There is no highway that leads to holiness found on the racetracks of our minds.
True peace and forgiveness, true solitude is found in the remembrance of who we are and where we came from.
Like little children, offered from heaven. Like grace floating down, snowflakes pure and white…
Looking outside, hearing the sounds, being present in the moment…
Feeling the good and bad. Knowing, we are not Saviors who can will our way past every bump in the road…
Instead, we must rest amidst the old, the hard, the things we want to forget.
We must melt with them, letting the difficult be the fertilizer that returns us to our innocence annd dependence.
Feeding the bulbs of our heart that hide underground…
Knowing, Spring is coming.
No one, not even the evilest among us, ever experiences winter forever.
Grace is sufficient. His power is made perfect in our weakness.
So, here with my children all around, I choose to stand in the cave of His goodness, watching the fire and wind pass…
I tune my ear towards His goodness. Listening, so I can hear Him speak.
He is with me, even if my eyes only see children like eggs, curled up and sleeping.
He is near me, now, among the stillness that engulfs my soul.
The earth grows light and bright, ever slowly…
But it is here, I choose to rest. To wait. To trust. To believe…
Spring is coming.
My Spirit has hope. Knowing, here in the silence…
It is there, He whispers my name.
