Zander's 2 small paper cranes can each fit inside the palm of my hand. They are delicate and in bright colors. One is canary yellow the other is jet blue. They sit at my desk at work reminding me every day of a small boy's heart and joy and creativity. He was so excited to give them to me and I with thoughtful care decided not to crush his wish or his prize and placed them inside my wool coat pocket. The reality is they have brought me a tender kind of happiness. Wishes and Dreams can be unfolded from your pockets.
Thinking of pockets, I used to have a small compass in my back pocket, whenever I became lost in this life I'd pull it out and listen to it. Jesus always seemed to point true north. But what if I hadn't lost it? What if I had just misplaced it on the mantle for awhile? Or left it in my other coat? The summer one not the winter one. Seasons of winter make your hands crack, your voice weak in the blustery coldness. Spring seems to be thawing me out... my hands...and... my voice. I think its time I started making paper cranes of my own.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Birthday...
I have this habit of celebrating my birthday's as if they were Christmas. I mean there is only one me and only one God who is the maker of me. Somehow I know he is celebrating and laughing and having joy and dancing and singing about this vagabond lightening child. Oh precious, precious child. I never feel that way half the time but I still know that its true. I'll go home and have dinner with friends far away, then have dinner with friends here, then my parents will visit and we'll have dinner and then my husband will take me out to dinner too. They're will be cake and phone calls and Grandmother's Birthday cards and my brother's "Hey, Happy Birthday." They're all happy somehow that I'm here able to just be me and give them me. I'm old...er today. Growing old with God, being still in love and holding on to God is a blessing more than I could have ever asked for. This year, is gonna be a year of jubilee...when you get back seven times what you lost. Propehetic and creative and peaceful and joyful seven times over and its only ever God. Best be watching out for this waterfall. I dunno how I know but I know. I dunno why but God...my good friend Jesus, closer than a brother Jesus, started talking to me last night before I was drifting off into sleep, and it was nothing but joy and goodness and blessing. I had made him happy in all my turmoil and sad and stumbling humanity and I don't really know how. I will raise my hands in the darkness, in the morning light, when the sun is rising and setting upon me. Tonight, my parents are visiting and were headed to Chicago to see all the museums, eat deep dish pizza and ride the subway. It will be terribly cold but this Birthday will be all warmth and hope and light.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sleep
Dear God,
You taught me how to breathe. You flipped the light switch on the inside of me. And it was a brilliant stunt. You and you’re miracle magician’s son who lent us rest until the Holy Spirit had come. I want to lie down in green pastures and have your hands pass double portions of blessing over me. The good stuff the pure stuff the blessing that’s crushed and poured out in measures greater than half pints. We raise our hands in churches and sing words that say “lift us up.” My voice mingled with them only
I’m singing come rain down. Lift us up and rain down. If we cry out in earnest with any sound of suffering you said you would come. I know it’s there somewhere in your word how a prince shackled and dragged and spent, pleaded with you for his freedom and you heard him and you came to him. And you sing not love lost songs over us. I don’t hear them with my ears but I can feel the reverberations of them somehow when I’m passing untouched golden fields. I feel like my hands are eyes, my throat is golden and I’m dreaming of water so often but never drowning, never drowning by the purposes of man but being molded by the spirit of God as he bathes me with only himself as a lover’s lover. I have lost many days perhaps in this longest night. I never thought it would be this long. You went thru the longest night too in the garden counted the hours, wished your friends would have woken up. it is the way of man separated and never complete I understand them well. You help me to breathe again like it’s the very first time breathing in you. All my worries and my doubts and sin can be redeemed. My rebellion can be taken backwards and every day is a new day. My mother reminds me often Jesus is right here just on the other side of the looking glass waiting to pull us through to that other dimension. I find that you are everything that is everything and yet the soul wanders and wonders. Doubt is as faithful as faith. Two sides of the same coin it seems you can’t have one without the other here on this trodden down Eden. I’m like the father pleading for his son’s sickness to leave him God I believe but help my unbelief.
You taught me how to breathe. You flipped the light switch on the inside of me. And it was a brilliant stunt. You and you’re miracle magician’s son who lent us rest until the Holy Spirit had come. I want to lie down in green pastures and have your hands pass double portions of blessing over me. The good stuff the pure stuff the blessing that’s crushed and poured out in measures greater than half pints. We raise our hands in churches and sing words that say “lift us up.” My voice mingled with them only
I’m singing come rain down. Lift us up and rain down. If we cry out in earnest with any sound of suffering you said you would come. I know it’s there somewhere in your word how a prince shackled and dragged and spent, pleaded with you for his freedom and you heard him and you came to him. And you sing not love lost songs over us. I don’t hear them with my ears but I can feel the reverberations of them somehow when I’m passing untouched golden fields. I feel like my hands are eyes, my throat is golden and I’m dreaming of water so often but never drowning, never drowning by the purposes of man but being molded by the spirit of God as he bathes me with only himself as a lover’s lover. I have lost many days perhaps in this longest night. I never thought it would be this long. You went thru the longest night too in the garden counted the hours, wished your friends would have woken up. it is the way of man separated and never complete I understand them well. You help me to breathe again like it’s the very first time breathing in you. All my worries and my doubts and sin can be redeemed. My rebellion can be taken backwards and every day is a new day. My mother reminds me often Jesus is right here just on the other side of the looking glass waiting to pull us through to that other dimension. I find that you are everything that is everything and yet the soul wanders and wonders. Doubt is as faithful as faith. Two sides of the same coin it seems you can’t have one without the other here on this trodden down Eden. I’m like the father pleading for his son’s sickness to leave him God I believe but help my unbelief.
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