Dying Well and Living Now

I've been reading the blog of the husband of Joey, part of the husband and wife country duo Joey and Rory that, until very recently, I was not familiar with.  It's breaking my heart, really.  This man and his wife are saying goodbye, one moment at a time.  She is dying.  They have a young child.  They had plans and things were going well in their career.  They had a concert barn right on their property where they were able to live and work together, they way they wanted it.  They loved their God.  And all was right with the world.  And then this happened.

Her friends are coming a few at a time to tell her goodbye and share memories and tears and spend earthly time with her, so fleeting now.  It's rich time, her husband writes.  Her rough cut wooden coffin with a cross on it, handmade by friends to Joey's specifications, sits in a compartment under their tour bus, waiting.  Their focus is narrowed, highly sharpened. And yet the edges are soft and wrap around them, their friends and family.  They are making a difference in people's living, even while she dies.  They're looking into each other's eyes.  Speaking words.  Taking time to notice the details of each other.  Sometimes they're at peace and sometimes they gasp crying to keep breathing.

I think about how easy it would be to panic.  To frantic grab for distraction or denial.  To waste time wringing hands.  But they seize wisely and hold firm.  I want to be like that in the land of the living; the right now.  So that when the dying comes?  I can know I didn't waste time on what didn't matter.

I think about things that hurt me, scare me, disappoint me.  This living, it's not for the faint hearted.  Not to live well, at least.  I struggle some days to keep my face to the wind.  Times are, honestly, when living is not all it's cracked up to be and you reach to find the meaning of the dailies.  But I dare myself to not give up.  To grab hold of others and whisper brave for them to do the same.  To look for the sweet Providence in the bitterest of roots.

To not waste time.

What I Want to Stay....

I'm awake in the middle of the night.  Again.  I feel small tonight in the big dark.  But not in the small way that makes me want to disappear.  At least, not disappear from sight.  I'm picturing being swallowed up by Someone greater than I am.

Yesterday I worked quiet in my kitchen, the afternoon belonging just to me.  I washed dishes and hummed whatever came to my mind.  Sometimes it was Christmas songs.  Sometimes it was an old hymn from sunday school days.  Sometimes?  I was just quiet.  I felt peaceful and safe.  I've had a hard week.  My heart felt outside without a coat on it.  I felt exposed and vulnerable.  I felt called to be there.  I didn't like it much.

I need to be real.  Achy real.  I'm not quite sure why but I sense Him telling me.  There's a boy?  Not my "real" boy, in that he's not "mine".  I've had experience with that before, yes?  I've adopted two children and they are "mine".  This though.  This is different.  This boy seems almost delivered to me.  His path before I met him has been a word I can't find to fit. But he was given a fight inside.  So that he could survive.  The thing is.  Sometimes his fight hits me in the gut and I stumble back, feeling childish and shocked.  Wordless.  There's something about his struggle, though, that seems to be grabbing into me and pulling out slop that needed to be pulled out.  It's causing me to love in a way that feels bigger than what I'm afraid of.  That forces me to forget me.  It won't let me go.

Last night I had a choice to make.  All week, this boy I've grown into love with, lashed out at me.  I felt angry and selfish and petty.  He was dishing it out and I had no bowl to put it in so I carried it in my stomach and wanted to throw it up but it wouldn't come.  "Don't come see me," he'd said.  "I don't want you there."  Anger settled itself in the back of my throat.  After all I'd........."LOVE HIM."  It didn't feel like yelling.  Just like an urgent directive.  But......"LOVE HIM."  There it was again.  What if...."LOVE HIM."  I'll not go, then.  It's too risky. I can't love like this.  Not like this.  I'll just stay home....."LOVE HIM."

I put on my dress.  I put on my makeup.  I looked in the mirror.  "I will love him.  Regardless."  And so I went.   Afterwards:  This.  "Tamara?"  I turned and looked at him full on.  "Will you come over and watch a movie?"  I didn't.  It was late and it seemed a good thing to let him go home and get quiet.  But I leaned in and kissed him on the top of his head like I do; like he hadn't let me do all week.  His fight was gone.  He let me back in.

I will love him.  I will stay.

Longing for More Than Granola......

Sitting in the quiet.......a hungry feeling in my gut.  No granola and raspberries can touch this.  God has walked through the rooms of my heart these past three years, wiping off thick layers of blindness and heavy.  He meant to make me a woman of His, set apart holy and pure.  He did that for me.  He did that.  He created and restored.  He did it by breaking me.

My appetite changed.  I finally understood "and He will give you the desires of your heart." He did that. Not in a pious, churchy way. Not a mystical, "looking for signs" way.  Not a rule book way.  He loved me to His truth plus nothing else.  He changed what I was hungry for.

I sift through His word to me each day, some days more desperately than others.  Some days I know He's there?  But I don't go looking.  I'm prone to wander.  To grab panic instead.  Or cheaper, easier distraction.  He costs me.  He costs me everything I have to get Him.  And He sends me other travelers who banked it all on Him to set me right.

I sing this in my heart today.  Create in me......God?  Create in me....a heart that can't tolerate anything but stained glass truth.....truth that reflects Your color without deceit, Your love without agenda.

Create in me, a pure heart.

The Value of My Village

I hung up the phone this morning from talking with "Ant", a play on words from years ago that my kids named her.  And a feeling of being soul connected, grounded, nurtured swept over me warm.  Ant has known me since before me was.  She has watched me grow up from deep in the south, via Christmas cards and phone calls from my parents.  There was the occasional visit over the years when I was a teenager.  One time in particular, an offhand comment by Ant that I overheard, laid itself in my heart.  "When we go to Alabama.....well, if the Lord wills that we go...."  That small thing struck me important.  This woman knew where her times lay, knew Who her times lay with.  

"Grammy" to my kids and I, Nancy was a rock planted in my life garden several years ago.  She had the courage to speak hard words to me when I needed to hear truth untarnished.  She nourished me back to health when I was laid flat with divorce and my world rocked violent by making me grilled cheese sandwiches burnt to just the right degree for my taste and packing me care packages of chocolate to take with me to work and giving me a place to sleep at night; sitting on the edge of my bed and praying over my heart that laid sad and heavy in my chest.  

Grandma Judy.  She has come along more recent.  A bright flower that believes in us and showers us with her time and gifts especially picked out because she pays attention.  She is who God used to put us in the middle of God's plan for us at school and she did it unaware at the time.  She moves in quiet and unobserved most times, a solid sure smile, a wink of "that's my girl" that my spirit so misses from my daddy gone to heaven.  

I type these words crying grateful, deep tears.  These women are Him to me.  There is value in leaving the door of your heart open to the wise, allowing them to speak and to pray.  To instruct and encourage.  To shoot holes in your faulty thinking.  They have guarded my heart when I was careless with it.  They've seen danger and called it off quicker than I did.  They have invested in me, in my kids, and sharpened me because of it.  

I am a wealthy woman because of the gold of these women.  

Psalm 95.....Leech Control

I pick up His love letter to me each morning and sometimes, like when a lover says that one thing your heart longs to hear and nothing else after that much matters?  A word, a phrase, a sentence slips into my soul like a velvet dagger and I'm slayed again before Him.

This morning, early in the quiet of my house and my mind, I meandered through His words and stopped short.  Most times, many times, I tell Him what's on my mind before I read....and ask Him to put His hand on the pulse of what's beating and pumping inside of me at the moment. I long to "regard His ways"  So easy, it dismays me, do my fears, my fears that make me want to run full force away from where He's told me to abide, sneer at me.  They trick me into thinking they're my friends. And I start to believe them.  "Surely," they slime into my mind, "....surely God did not say abide?"  It feels and lays heavy and dirty on my spirit.  I want to take a frantic shower and get them off of me, like so many leeches.  There's blood on my skin where I pick them off.  Blood on my hands.  I look closer.  It's His blood.

"In His hand are the deep places of the earth; the heights and strength of the hills......The sea is His, for He made it; and His hands formed the dry land.....Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.  For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.  Today......today.....if you will hear His voice?  Harden not your heart."

God?  I'm standing here, Your blood running down over me.  Abiding.

With a Sound Like Thunder

So shall the word of the Lord be......I'm silenced by His word.  I abide........with only His words in my soul.  I believe.

Listening for Wildflowers......

I love to do that.  Listen.  I looked it up in Hebrew.....to listen, with the added words "earnestly, attentively, closely"....even "obediently".  I find myself awake in the middle of the night.  It used to frustrate my insides and I'd fight hard for my right to go back to sleep.  These days, I've grabbed hold of the gift like a warm hug and hold it close.  It's my listening time.  I search for it like I'm in a fog looking for a beacon.  It warms me and restores me, these listening hours.  It resets my compass.

I found this in my Love Letter from my Maker this morning.  "No more will anyone call you Rejected, and your country will no more be called Ruined.  You'll be called Hephzibah (My Delight) and your land Beulah (Married) because God delights in you and your land will be like a wedding celebration.  For as a young man marries his virgin bride, so your builder marries you; and as a bridegroom is happy in his bride, so your God is happy with you." I believe Him and put it on like a wedding dress and look in the mirror at myself and giggle.  My hair's a mess, my leftover mascara under my eyes.  Only He could love me like that.  I decide to be all whimsy today and buy myself a wedding bouquet of wildflowers because wildflowers seem most unabashedly from Him and they will remind me all week that He has chosen me.   I feel beautiful in His sight. ....because I listened to His heart for me?  It changes the way I see out at the world.

I love to hear someone talk to me.  I grab a pillow if one is close and curl up quiet and sink into their stories; their words become movies in my mind.  It makes me feel invited in and I walk through slowly and turn over what they say like leaves to see what else is under them.  When someone gives me words, I open them, each one, like the tiny presents I used to wrap careful and put in my kids stockings at Christmas.  Listening to others feeds me, teaches me, delights me, entertains me, connects me.  I lean into the time like a campfire glow.  To listen close is to trust and be trusted.  It changes the landscape between two people.  It's passing on what God planted in me.....

when I listened.

This song has nothing to do with listening, necessarily.  I just like it and I'd think the open road would be a good place to listen.  :)

"The best way to show someone you love them, is to listen to them."-Michael Card