Warrior children

You are my tumbleweed children, hurtling down the gravel of the country road in a fury of dust and dreams and flying off into the dandelion ditches when you hear the hum of car wheels approaching. It is that sweet mix of childhood, the daring-do of your young bodies coupled with the innate sense of vulnerability that scatters you far off the road if danger approaches. We've been vulnerable together, these past years, through the dissolving friendships following a church rift, through the darkness of depression when all your mama wanted to do was sleep, through the deep mid-winter of my cancer and your uncertainty whether I would live or die.

You know vulnerable as well as your own skin. I look at you, the fragile strong, and I wish I had been able to protect you from the knowledge that life is brief if beautiful, wish I had a shield that was impermeable to the dark darts of fear and trembling. We huddle like embattled Narnians on our homestead, lean hard into each other's warmth, and there is joy found in family although we are adrift from civilization. You gather "wish-lions", dandelions gone to silvery seed, and we blow a tornado of trouble off into the spring breeze with eyes squeezed close.

Perhaps it will be the family gift within the family curse, this early understanding of life's difficulties. When you are all grown through the stage of scrambling with fresh tears at night from your bed to ours...grown out of checking that Mama is still here when you wake alone in the dark...you'll be left with the fragile-strong, singing the Psalms as you face the brave new world of your own generation.

Let the weak say I am a warrior. The Lord roars from Zion, and the heavens and earth quake. But the Lord is a refuge to His people...(from Joel 3)

You are my hiding place,

You always fill my heart

with songs of deliverance.

Whenever I am afraid,

I will trust in You.

I will trust in You.

Let the weak say I am strong

with the strength of the Lord.

~Selah~

Linked with Emily for Imperfect Prose