Welcome Mat

Mid-March rolled in like summer around here, flaunting record high temperatures and trash talking to the other seasons that Spring is where it's at.

Evenings this week have been warm enough to walk.  In boat shoes.  Sans jacket.  And grabbing leash and Weim, heading out under a canvas of stars, my thoughts have jumped and grasped at God.  Clear night skies have a magic about them that clears the mind to enjoy the warm air, the jingling collar of a happy dog, and a neighborhood still, drifted to sleep.

I love being tucked in under the blanket of night-time sky.  Knowing that Creator-God who dreamed up the galaxies blazing above, bends low, listens, even relishes our clumsy attempts to worship Him.  His eyes trace over our lives; every freckle, every scar, every laugh line...memorized.   

He turns on the porch light, puts the coffee on the stove.  His eyes dance when we open the door at the end of the day.  He bubbles over with "Just look at you" and "I love you" and "I've got something to show you."  He can't help himself.  His heart is full.  He:

...richly enjoys you...your company is His pleasure, your fellowship His joy, your face His delight...He hasn't just made room for us in heaven; He has made room for us in His joyful heart. 

SAMMY SMITH, OBJECTS OF HIS AFFECTION

It wasn't always this way.  There was a time we wanted nothing to do with Him.

So the Galaxy-Engineering-God knelt down.  Heartbroken and unwilling to let us run off, to be gone forever, He chased down fugitive hearts with His Son.

He hounded through fear and shame with relentless affection and whispered in the dark and dead places, "Yes, I've seen.  I know.  And you aren't too big for me.  My grace is strong enough.  I am strong enough.  I can carry you home."

God calling yet! shall I not hear?

Earth's pleasures shall I still hold dear?

Shall life's swift passing years all fly,

And still my soul in slumber lie?

God calling yet! shall I not rise?

Can I His loving voice despise,

And basely His kind care repay?

He calls me still: can I delay?

God calling yet! and shall He knock

And I my heart the closer lock?

He still is waiting to receive,

And shall I dare His Spirit grieve?

God calling yet!  I cannot stay; 

My heart I yield without delay;

Vain world, farewell! from thee I part;

The voice of God hath reached my heart!

GERHARD TERSTEEGEN, TRANSLATED BY JANE L. BORTHWICK

God woos even now, heart bubbling over.  I'm so glad you're here.  I love you.  I've got so much to show you.

Take a walk.  Climb a mountain.  Watch a sunset.  All lines of one giant love letter to the hearts of humanity, all pieces of one expansive invitation to explore and discover how big, how vast, how lovely, how tender...this God of the universe is.  This God who bends and kneels and makes our hearts His home.

The welcome mat is out.  The porch light's on.  The places that were dark and dead have been swept away.

Spring in all it's newness has come.

To Silas

Two years ago today I became a momma to a son.  

I had no idea then how fully smitten I would be with you, little man.  The ways your sweet, tender spirit would interweave around in my world, tangling up my heart.  And I have a feeling that in two, ten, fifty more years, I'll say the same thing.  Because love grows, it expands the home of the soul to make room for more...and more and more.  

I squeezed in as many kisses and snuggles and "look at this one-year-old belly...ear...nose..." as you would stand yesterday.  I couldn't help it.  You'll never be one again.

Si-guy, you know we celebrate life at our house.  'Cuz it's presh, yo.  It's a gift.  And it's never guaranteed.  

And it blesses me to overflow that you have been rallied around by those who love you in California, in Dayton, and here, at home.  

Today as we marvel at you - this little boy with the big heart, this God-dreamed-up life - I am thankful for the front row seat I've been given to watch you become two.  To see your personality and spirit unfold.  To observe how you notice and take in your world.  To delight in how it moves you to laugh, to dance, to help.

I love you, buddy.  I'm honored to be your mom, a gift I'll never recover from.  

Happy Birthday.  

No Ordinary People

A sermon, given 70 years ago has lingered in the hallways of my heart like a fragrance.  I have sat with it for weeks now, begging its words to move in and stay.   I don't care that we just met.  It's love, baby.  And I want to wear its truth like a band on my heart for always:

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory...it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature...you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption... 

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people...it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. 

C. S. LEWIS, THE WEIGHT OF GLORY 

I feel like Joshua, hanging out in the tent where the Lord met with Moses, hanging on in that space and not wanting to leave.  And I hesitate to add any words to those above because the weight of them feels so very holy.

And I wonder about the immortal server, the eternal hotel housekeeper, the forever-soul arranging produce in the vegetable aisle.  Do we notice them?  Not their work, their performance...but them?  Their stories?  Their significance?

I think about the woman who tore her family apart with her own adulterous hands.  Or the man who drank, drove, and destroyed life.  Do we embrace them?   Do we see beyond the labels they wear, moved with compassion, hands ready with grace?

And I remember the littles living in my home, entrusted to my care, mindful that my words, attitudes, and arms propel them for eternity.

If we allowed Lewis' words to press true-love's lips upon lifeless hearts, if we let them wake us from the enchantment of soul-slumber, they'd change everything...

We'd be different parents, different spouses, different friends.  We'd be different customers, different employees, different siblings.  It would change how we handle conflict, temptation, forgiveness.  It would change how we come home to our families from long days at the office.  It would change the things we do for entertainment.

When you do things, do not let selfishness or pride be your guide. Instead, be humble and give more honor to others than to yourselves.  Do not be interested only in your own life, but be interested in the lives of others.

PHILIPPIANS 2:3-4, NCV

Today is new, fresh, and ripe with choice to clear out closet space and allow the glory of those around us to move in and stay.

There are no ordinary, unimportant, shrug-off-able people.  

Story

Friendship, the true kind with those who join and share and weather with you, settling in like a house on its foundation, is a cadence and stride of lifelong conversation.  A stroll together, with allowances given for re-visitation, clarification, struggle, change, growth.  

And writing a blog, I'm finding, is more like a conversation between friends than a book, published and bound.  I often sit here and struggle with how much more there is to say.  And how I'm no expert in the things I share.  I am often weighed by the stories gifted to me in a week and how to best represent them in this space, if at all.  

But at the end of the day you and I sit and dialog, sharing dreams and ramblings and ideas of the grand...and the small.  And sometimes we are still, quiet, but it all makes for this side-by-side pace of together.

Thank you.  Thank you for reading, sharing, posting, commenting, following.  Thank you for listening as I serve up fragments of this simple life-story.  

And thank you most of all for your stories.  They make me laugh...and cry.  And be ever more thankful for this jointed life, awe-struck by the way vulnerability knocks the wind out of us with ravishing beauty. 

If you had a cape and a crusade, your super power would be story.  And the world needs you to show up. Tights, optional. 

Live your life from your heart.  Share from your heart.  And your story will touch and heal people's souls. 

MELODY BEATTIE

Mmmm.  Preach, Beattie!  And keep sharing your sacred, healing stories.  

From Cali, With Love

We've been California-ing with Jon's family this week.  And it's been lovely.  Sunshine, mountainside, story-tellin' kinda lovely.  The kind that takes me back to being little and wishing my whole, big family could live in the same house and stay together always.

Holy sunrise in the sky, Batman.

And no joke, the locale-Oscar for serious real goes to the Metz fam.  The thank-you list is long and the music is playing, but thanks for being you and for living in such a gorgeous place.  We double-love to visit.  

Maizy meets Great-Grammy P.

Meeting our newest guy, Bennett.

It's Monday, a brand new start to a brand new week.  And as your list of things to do and check off grows, I share some wisdom that has been humbling me in waves:

It doesn't matter what you get done if you've undone a heart.  There are no real accomplishments apart from relationship. 

ANN VOSKAMP

We head home tomorrow, and my list of today's to-do's includes little things like laundry and packing...and soaking up the last bits of California vacationing, drinking in final moments with those we love and see not often enough.

Whatever today holds for you, I hope you accomplish slowing down and taking time.  Notice.  See.  And check off all those boxes with love.

Happy, happy Monday, all.  

Horizons

Take a drive down any country road or highway, white crosses, floral wreaths, R.I.P.s and their weary beacons call through the night, Life was here and is gone.  Plates are scraped and excess discarded while babies sleep hungry in other homes.  Teenagers enter the tsunami of unkindness and cruelty from their peers, haunted by thoughts of ending it all.  Grocery-shop and you'll rub shoulders with P.O.W.s of capsized marriages.  Go to work, a park, the library, out to lunch and you'll converse with those dead-eyed, sentenced to the hollow shell of a dreams-snatched-and-stolen existence.  No matter who we are or where we walk, we soldier the battle for heart.

Circumstance wields it's enchanted axe and cuts away pieces of ourselves.  Slowly, like L. Frank Baum's Tin Woodman, we discover our core replaced by shiny, silvery metal...brilliant in the sun but heartless underneath.  Cynicism and disbelief play king-of-the-castle where love once skipped and sang.

Weary.  Broken.  Hurting.  Angry.  Alone.  Time, oblivious and rude, moves on.  The sun rises and sets and rises again.

...happily ever after fails

...we've been poisoned by these fairy tales.

DON HENLEY 

And just when things look really bleak.  Hope, small and faint appears on the horizon.  Dorothy and the Scarecrow find the Tin Man, oil his rusted joints, and invite him to join them towards Oz.  And the Tin Woodman can't resist.  He wants his heart back.

So we do not lose heart.  Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.  For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.  For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.  

2 Corinthians 4.16-18, ESV 

Opportunities abound to numb the ache or to lie down and die completely in the battle for heart.  I want to carve my initials in this life.  I want to say I was here.  That I didn't lose heart.  That I didn't trade in what matters most - to live a life full of love - with what was shiny and silvery and safe.

Love is never far from danger. 

OVER THE RHINE, "BLUER"

And love can't live and breathe without heart.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. 

PROVERBS 4.23, ESV

Soak up the good, wield the bad, and let it all prepare you, renew you, forge in you the better, the stronger, the more complete.  All the while, keeping your eyes fixed on the One who endured, who suffered, who gave it all.  A cross, a thorny wreath, a weary tomb.....a conquered grave.

Pain is real but it isn't final.  Hope stands guard, watching through the night.  Eternity rises and grows on the horizon.  And so we do not loose heart.

Simple and Small

There is something soul-feeding about noticing and appreciating the small and lovely things about a day.  The way curtains whisper and tell secrets in a breeze.  The way a song can pulse through your limbs and move your feet.   Light in a baby's eyes.   

 

Notes from friends tucked away in good books.  

The way an old record wobbles and warbles around a turn table. 

The way textures diverge and contrast.  

Reminders to tilt heads back and give laughter wings.

And the way words, no matter their age, can still slay your soul.

It's Wednesday.  And you may be smack dab in the middle of a really long week.  Life is hard.  It just is.  We live in a broken place with broken people who break things.  And the heaviness of some seasons seem to last forever.  But life and hope can be found there, too.  Pops of color among the backdrop of grey.

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

ANNE FRANK

The quiet, little beauty of this day is calling to you, waiting to perch and sing it's simple song.  It is not too late to change the direction your heart is heading.  

Go.  Discover.  Breathe it in.  And enjoy.