This is What Happens When Your Palm Itches

I fell asleep easy enough.  But, I woke myself up scratching my palm and I thought to myself, "How weird is that?  I wake myself up scratching my itchy palm?  I wonder if I googled that that somewhere someone claims that means something, sort of like if your ears burn someone is talking about you?"  That made me laugh at myself in the dark.  Which then made me wake up further.  So naturally, I thought, "It makes sense that I should blog about this.  People will want to know this."  So I make my way downstairs to fetch my computer.  For the people.

Downstairs, in the dark, my foot met the brick hearth of my fireplace for the "severaleth" time in a month and I wondered why, after seven years of living here, April 2015 was when I would finally succumb to the foot/hearth meeting of the minds, were feet and hearths to have minds.  I grabbed my computer off the table and looked out at the moonlight.  I love the peace of the middle of the night.  It's like the world and I have a secret that nobody else knows.  I think about how when you're worried the night is longer than usual and full of questions that don't have an answer and you wish it would hurry up and be light so you could forget the questions a little easier.  But when you're up simply because your palm itches, it feels like a comfort and you don't care if it lasts a little longer.  It's like savoring the last of the chocolate before anyone else discovers there was chocolate to be savored.

I find my way back up to my bed and fall back flat for a minute into the pillows and look up at the light fixture on the ceiling.  I notice the light bulbs and thought about what a marvel a light bulb even is and how we go for days and days and never think about it  until one day is pops dark and we have to change it.  And what kind of mind did Thomas Edison have to think of that and did he drive his mama crazy when he was a kid wondering all the time?   And how if he hadn't have wondered, where would we all be now and one persons' wondering is millions of peoples' benefit.  And then it occurs to me that lightbulb isn't one word and I have to go back and correct the places where I made it one.

Before I start to type,  I grab a book my friend gave me on the Untold Story of the New Testament church and I open it up to read a page or two and can almost hear the sounds and feel the air around me in their world.  I do that when I read a book; wrap it around me and crawl right in and lose myself in the story.  Biblical times fascinate me.  I wish I could have been there real time.  I'm sure my head would've spun trying to make sense of what was happening around me.  Just like I do now.  And I think would I have believed Jesus, were I to have been there in person?  Or is it almost easier not to have?

I lay the book down and think about people I know and the stories their lives are writing and how our paths weave in and out and around each other and their stories intersect with ours and we find ourselves cast in different parts in each others' plays.  I think about someone saying to me recently that they don't know me well yet and how if you read my words you know me because my words are my heart and soul and I lay them out plain on the page; no tricks or slight of hand.

I start to type and the words come easy because I've got you here with me, held captive unaware as you sleep, and I chatter with you cheerfully, happily, peacefully because I know you'll pick up the conversation when you wake if you care to, if you're interested and have the time to go all the way to the end to find out why my palm itches.

I ponder getting deep here, wondering if I should have some purpose higher than writing what comes to mind; writing just because I can, just because I am awake.  I decide no.  I decide that it's important enough just me writing and you sleeping and then waking up and realizing I was thinking enough about you to share with you.  Whether you knew it or not.  Because, whether you know it or not, I often share things with you in my mind just by wondering what you would think about something or whether you're having a good day or remembering something you or I said that made us laugh.  Or, the fact that somebody I've never met and never will may be reading these words and isn't that just amazing that words can travel to unknown worlds?

My palm has stopped itching, long ago now.  I consider going to the kitchen to get some coconut granola and raspberries with almond milk.  I've just about decided to do that when I realize....I ate the last of the coconut granola before I went to bed.  A major life disappointment.  Instead, I will send these words on their way and think about what you will think when you wake up and realize what I've been up to.  And whether you'll shake your head and laugh.  I hope so.  Making friends is easy when we're both laughing.  It causes our hearts to shake hands.

I'm sleepy now.  Please stop talking. I need my rest.  Turn off the lightbulb; yes I did that on purpose.  ;)

It's been a year......

In 31 days it will be a year since he's gone, my father.  It makes me shake my head to clear it when I realize that.  How could that many days have come and gone?  And so much life has already been accounted for that he's "missed".  Weddings and grandkids setting off on their own adventures. things he'd have thoroughly reveled in, had he been here.  My father knew how to live life by the barrelful.

This is who he was; He liked mourning doves and black coffee.  He took walks for miles and spoke to every. single. person. he encountered.  He laughed easily and cried easier.  His heart was tender to anyone down on his luck.  He once loaned his car to a man he'd befriended just out of prison so he could drive and see a friend.  He was a giver.  He loved music and golfing and never failed to find a four leaf clover in the yard. He loved taking pictures and graduated proudly from his polaroid to his digital camera over the years.  He learned to play the trombone in high school and could play it almost until the "end."  I can remember hearing "Stand Up for Jesus" echoing out of his room when I came to visit him at the facility where he was being cared for.

 My favorite memory, the one that says "this is my dad"....I was asleep on a Saturday morning and woke up to the sound of a radio playing just outside my door.  I got up and peered out to find my father dressed in a down jacket, straw hat, no shirt, shorts, knee socks and his dress shoes....painting a wall.  He looked at me, grinned, and kept right on painting.  My father was gloriously imperfect and my first best friend.

 Sometimes?  Sometimes I take walks in the cemetery where we put the outward part of him,  keeping company with big, craggy trees, and I follow the paths that curl around the stones that etch bare details of the lives that they stand for.  I often wish each marker had a button I could push and the voice of the person could tell me, in his own words, what life had taught them; what they would want me to know.  I struggle inside my head at times, thinking about the accomplishments they strove for and won,  the hard things they overcame, the memories they made.  When I'm telling God truthful,  I tell Him how much I trust Him, how thoroughly I know He loves us, and yet......when it comes to the end, it never seems "enough", doesn't quite seem "fair".   What was it all for, God?  And, honest?  I wish He'd taken someone else; not dad.  Not my dad.

I don't fear asking those questions of God.  And even more, I don't fear not getting an answer that pacifies me.  It makes me feel safe, though, to ask it right out loud.  Because the truth is, for me, that most of it just flat doesn't make sense.  I breathe relieved that I can say that.  I don't like pretending.  It wears me out thin and my smile starts to harden.  I feel Him more when, rather than scramble for the "why", I grab your hand and whisper "I don't understand it.  Stay here with me while I try and lay it down?"

When I consider the past year, the past lifetime with and now without my father, the things he taught me, the joy he gave me just by being my daddy, I sift through grateful for what I can tell you.  And when the questions come I remember this and hold fast.  "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.  To Him be glory forever.  Amen.

I love you, dad.

I trust You, God

<3

Loving the Velveteen Rabbits

I notice them.  Almost every time.  I feel them before I see them.  And I start looking in corners.  There's a Velveteen Rabbit in here somewhere.  I know that.  Because I am one.  We Velveteen's, once we've been made free, always want to go back and find the others.

When you're still in your corner, though, your nose wiggles nervous and your eyes peer out with question marks.  "Is it safe out there?", you ask and you don't trust any answers you get.  The Velveteen Rabbit Maker has given me a heart that beats strong for mending the skin of my fellow rabbits.  But I have this thing that I do wrong.  I'm too honest.  Not harsh honest.  Not wounding honest, at least not intentionally.  But when I see their skin is thin and burns, I forget and touch too soon to help sometimes.  Then the rabbit shrinks back and I realize, he thought my hand was there to pull more hair off his skin instead of rub him with salve.  I scramble to step back and hold up my hands to show them clean and safe.  It makes me feel badly to know it was misunderstood.

I'm learning that sometimes it's better to leave a carrot and a bowl of water outside the door and let the rabbit grow new skin.


“Once you are real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.” 
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Cindy

I'm sitting here in my big green chair where God holds me close, watching my fake fire glow in my electric heater and unable to get myself to stop crying.  Today hit me hard in the heart.  I sat close up to a woman tonight I'd never met and she let me into her world, whether I'd proved myself to her or not, whether I deserved to be trusted or not.  She didn't know me.  Didn't have time to.  And she'd right near been scraped clean of anything to hang onto in this world.   But she laid herself bare open because I told her I wanted to know.  It's not like I could do anything to change it.

"You and I.  We both started out as little girls.  How did this happen?  Where did this turn course for you?"

"I was 16 years old.  My dad abused me and I had his baby.  My mom took it from me."  She said it with no trace of sadness or shame.  She said it right out loud.  Like reading the news.  And she shrugged.  Oh well.  Those things happen.  "My man.  We've been together 13 years.  I did whatever he wanted to make him happy.  And now he's gone.  I feel....(she searches for the word)....abandoned.  This is hard.  Being on my own?  This is harder than I thought it'd be."  Her look is blank, her eyes go off in the distance somewhere.  "I miss my dog"  And there it was.  There were the tears.  That, she could risk crying for.  That was the one thing that hadn't hurt her, abandoned her.  She could cry for that.  And my eyes filled with tears too.

She wiped away the give away to her pain and smiled at me.  "I bet I'm way older than you," she said playful.  I played back and grabbed a pen.  "Let's write our ages on our hands.  That way we'll trust each other to be telling the truth."  She liked that idea.  1, 2, 3....our hands open to each other.  Turns out, she's a decade younger than I.  And I am shocked.  Harsh wears old on a woman's face.

She turns to go get ready to eat.  What's your name?  I want to remember you.  "Cindy."  I hesitate to find some way to give her something.  Something to leave with her; to put a period on the end of the conversation.  I reach out careful and lay my hand softly on her arm.  "I speak life over you, Cindy.  I speak life into you."  It feels a pitiful thing and yet I sense God heard me and took it up with Him into His heart.  She turned and walked away.

I will never know what happens; how this story plays itself out.  Two women, two complete strangers,  encountered one another today.   Two women who, in different ways, understand the yearning to be loved and cherished, the feeling of having been abandoned.

Her name is Cindy.  And she let me in tonight.  I won't squander that trust.  Remember her with me.

It's 1:42 a.m.......

I fell asleep this Friday night on my couch with my girl, faithfully choosing to keep me company, laying on the other couch nearby. Couches, in the plural, are nice to have.  They're like rectangle friends scattered throughout the house.  I used to have one in my kitchen because I liked the idea of collecting people on them while I cooked, just to have them near in case I needed someone to lick the spoon; or to remind me I cooked for them to love them.

But, at 1:42 I woke up with an alertness that felt like Someone shaking me awake.   This will sound crazy.  I realize that.  I'm willing to be misunderstood.  But as I've "woken up" in my life to God, there are times when this happens.  This whispering in my spirit.  Tonight there is an urgency that says..."I hear you pondering what doesn't make sense to you.  Lean on, trust in and be confident in Me with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding.  In all your ways know, recognize and acknowledge Me and I will direct and make straight and plain your paths."

Tonight, in the quiet, I hear Him talking.  I sense strings trying to be unraveled,  He wants you to know His hands are on yours as you sort them out.  He woke me up to tell you that.  Isn't that a miracle?

The Hardest Conversation

I told him that I loved him.  Not in an "in love" way but in a way that says I know my heart well and I feel it wanting to learn him, to give and not take, to know if I will love him, to know if he will let me, to know if he will love me.  And maybe that only makes sense to me.  I know what I mean.  Every time I type a word I start to cry and I choke on my chicken biscuit.  Not from despair; because the hardest conversation is when you take the clothes off your heart and leave yourself wide open for the truth to hit you like a bullet.  And you do it because you love and you want to do it well.....so it makes you squint your eyes and squeeze out tears like looking in the sun.

The truth is, truth is messy and it colors outside the lines.  Sometimes it hides and leaves little clues behind that you can't make sense of right away.  Sometimes it moves and morphs like a lava lamp and you have to wait and watch it take shape.  You have to trust the Giver of Truth and hold fast.

So, I took this little seed of something tender and planted it in his heart and covered it with my prayer.  His heart is bleeding still from life ripping in so I found a small spot and laid it gentle to leave it quiet.  I don't want to make him bleed more than he already is.  It's no small thing to come alongside someone, for me.  Their pain and their joy splash into my cup.  It doesn't make it heavier but it spills over the side and onto my hands and I can feel it on my skin.  It makes me turn to look for the basin and the towel.

The hardest conversation pulls and tugs at what was bound up comfortable and hidden to protect.  It  lets in light for trust to grow and arrows to be pulled out of wounds.  It causes open space for hearts to stretch out and feel at home; to take a deep breath and try again to sing.  I don't know what will happen.  But, I can tell you, the hardest conversation teaches me to learn to love free of charge.

There's a place at the table for you, sweet man.  If you ever find you need one.

Create, in me, a safe place....Oh God....

This week I had something happen, something that felt like a kiss on my forehead from God.  A friend reached out to me.  She was hurting, she'd made some big mistakes and needed a "safe place" to come and tell the whole sordid mess to.  She chose me.  I hadn't seen her or spoken to her in months.  But she chose me.  As I waited for her to show up on my doorstep, all broken and flat worn out, I whispered to God...."tell me what to say.  And make it be truth.  Your truth."  

I listened to her heart spill out of her eyes and down her face and handed her kleenex and pizza.  I told her..."Tell me.  From the beginning."  And she blurted out the hard and the ugly of it all.  And I was honored to catch it up and hold it safe while she let it all out; too hard to carry by herself.  She'd talked to God but she needed Him with skin on and those she thought were her friends had turned their heads the other way.  And she chose me.

I marvel at that again and again.  You see, I've made a mess of things myself before and thought sure I'd worn out anything God might could have done to help me.  I've lived in a place where no one and nothing felt safe and so I tried to sew up a blanket to shelter me made from scraps I gathered up from people that weren't safe at all.  I couldn't go to God because I didn't really believe He was there for me or that He saw me or that He loved me.  I was sure I was useless.

As I sat there listening to my friend sob out her story, I heard myself say "Go where the grace is."  That was Him.  He'd heard my prayer and gave me His truth to speak.  And I saw the truth change the look on her face.  "You're right," she said and she started to breathe again.  

I watched her car drive off, this friend who needed to be loved back to truth, and I realized.....God had transformed me into that safe place for others that I'd always longed for in my own life.  There is precious little I treasure more than to hear "I've never told anyone this before", to be trusted with someone's heart.  

I cried that night; because I knew that He had chosen to love through me.  He had used my messy to be a safe place to be loved by Him.

Working for a Song

I felt like I "should" be doing something that was more...important; more impressive.  Maybe I lacked initiative to really DO something in the world.  Maybe I was nothing, could do nothing more important than what I did.  Maybe I should be embarrassed.  Maybe.  But I wasn't.  And sometimes even that bothered me.  

This is what I do.  I wash loads upon loads of laundry and have it hanging and sorted for a young mama who works all day and wants to be present for her kids when she comes home.  I go to the grocery store for an older couple who have trouble walking and come back and put it all away for them.  I clean the bathrooms for a woman who schools several of her children at home and her husband wanted to bless her with some help.  I run errands and pick up kids from school and take the cat to the vet for a woman who has it all materially and yet, finds herself watching her mother fade away with dementia and is shouldering the responsibility for that.  I come alongside a woman who needs help reaching and organizing because she hurts everywhere and it's so much easier to not have to bend.  

That is what I do.  None of it uses the college degree I have.  None of it even requires much special skill.  Most of the time I look a mess, all bleach stained yoga pants and no make up. Sometimes I miss getting pretty clothes on and feeling like a lady.  And yet, I noticed a curious thing one day while I was on my knees scrubbing at a toilet.  I was singing without realizing it and it seemed to be coming from my heart.  What is wrong with me, I thought to myself.  Why am I so happy??   No one should be this happy cleaning a toilet!  Perhaps I am too easily amused.  I should find higher ground.

The singing got "worse".  I couldn't seem to stop myself.  The joy and contentment was out of hand.  I was getting worried.  And then, one day help arrived.  I took a "gifts" assessment and received my diagnosis.  There, at the top of the page, shining like the emerald city, was my one word prescription.  "Server".  And then I knew why my little caged bird self sings while I haul someone's cat to the vet....I am finding my joy in doing what I was created to do.  I love by serving and, in return, my Creator loves me by setting me free to do just that.   And all that is within me sings out spontaneously to Him.  

So, if I'm ever serving you, please try to look beyond my messy hair and "robe of splendor" that looks suspiciously like work clothes and know that I am loving you because He loved me and showed me how.