"Sit Here While You Blog, Please..."

My girl saw me reach for the computer and start to walk out of the room.  "I like it when you're here with me," she said.  So, I sit where she can see me from the next room and it's not lost on me that that is a grace for the day.  To be near one another; to see one another.  It isn't a given.  I silently thank God as I tap out these words.



I got to sit around a table today with my boy and some of his friends. We laughed at silly things and ate delicious food and still I felt oddly like crying at times. It's a rich thing to be a mama and be included in their world after they've finished with the business of growing up. It's like sharing a meal with your reflection. I see my hand print where I've left my mark on him and I silently pray that where I've failed him, a new kind of beauty will grow from the ashes.




I paid to have a small tamarisk tree tattooed onto my wrist today. It is a "very graceful tree, with long feathery branches and tufts closely clad with the minutest of leaves, and surmounted in spring with spikes of beautiful pink blossoms, which seem to envelop the whole tree in one gauzy sheet of color," says my Bible dictionary. " Some varieties flourish not infrequently in salty soil unsuited to any ordinary vegetation." I like the idea of being graceful, a sheet of color and not just any old ordinary vegetation. It says it's a symbol of legacy and commitment and I want it to ink it's way into my actions and words, a mark that makes me His for all the world to see.


We, the girl and I, watched The War Room in a dark theatre today and I came home wearing the movie in my soul and decided my Harry Potter under-the-stairs closet would do just fine as my own war room. I have the walls papered with little yellow post it notes with things I've put into the battle and I sat on the floor in the closet suited up in my armor. Some of your names have their place there on my wall that only God and I see. Some of them have whispered hearts' desires that I've dared to put in writing, taking the risk to ask the wild impossible.


I'm feeling sleepy and glance back into the room behind me. There sits my girl, writing in her journal all that she's taken in today, content in knowing I'm here. I eat one last chip dipped in red pepper hummus and decide to call this a day. I put a song in my ears that He put in my head all day today. It comforts the places that still have question marks in them. He lives. I know it. I trust Him. And go to sleep.