The many roads it took to get here

One day long ago I dreamed of being a travel nurse. We were just wed, two nurses, we had adoption paperwork in process and we dreamed of apartments in far away cities; burn and trauma units, children laying in beds under those city lights waiting for our hands, our hearts.

I was up in a deer stand in Minnesota when I felt the Spirit's nudge. I prayed for our first child, whoever he or she was, prayed a long list of dreams and hopes and fears. Six weeks later, I stared down at a miraculously positive pregnancy test. It was the second I'd seen this in 3 months, me with the undeveloped eggs and the atrophied Fallopian tubes and the low hormone levels. I, the infertile myrtle. My husband with the similar diagnosis. How could we conceive twice in 3 months of marriage? Would this baby disappear into the dark shadows of the ultrasound screen like the first had? I turned around to face the toilet, and vomited bile.

We chose the spot, we dug the hole

We laid the maples in the ground to have and hold

As Autumn falls to Winters sleep

We pray that somehow in the Spring

The roots grow deep

And many years from now

Long after we are gone

These trees will spread their branches out

And bless the dawn

~from Planting Trees, Andrew Peterson~

There was no disappearing, and my first baby emerged from my body 2 weeks late and shocking in her awareness and hunger. She pushed up on her tiny fists while lying on her father's chest that first night, her eyes wide and black, as if she were memorizing every detail of his features. In that instant, every dream I'd ever had disappeared into the hormonal mist and this babe became the entirety of my world.

A brief 18 months later, she was toddling and captivating everyone with her adult vocabulary, starting almost all her sentences with "Actually..." And on a cold and bright March afternoon, her sister arrived black-haired and rosy-lipped. I would look at them, sleeping together in the afternoon, their heads sweaty and covered in curls, and they were at once totally foreign and wholly familiar. 

The third and fourth came just as quickly. We had grown used to the fact that the doctors were wrong, and we would produce children by the grace of God, and our world revolved around them, the diapers, the nursing, the bonds like iron bands holding the barrel of our family tighter than any dreams could have.

But I still dreamed. The microscopic visions of motherhood burned my eyes by then, and I squeezed them shut and imagined telescopes into the universe and periscopes up from the underwater grave of home. 

I could hear the highway song

I dreamed that I was

A world traveler

Set me loose to find my way

Just get me out on the road someday

With my sails unfurled

So many mysteries

I wanted to unravel

If I could travel the world

~World Traveler, Andrew Peterson~

I was on two roads, one part of me home with my children and the other on a highway of longing for grand adventure. The distant cities still glittered in my imagination. The mystery was this tether in my heart, the tangle of four of the "least of these" planted right in the very fibers of my being.

Night is falling on a foreign sky

And distant cities are breathing out 

The lights, tangled on a long thin line

Like diamonds shattered on the ground

And the lights call out from distant cities

You come alive, like a melody

And you shine you shine, brighter than a new day

And I sing along, into the mystery

As the lights call out from distant cities

The tears, filling up my empty eyes

Pour like shadows on the ground

What found me here spreads across a million miles

Breaks the gallows, lifts the shroud

As the lights call out

~Bebo Norman~

I was looking for emotional reasons to link me to the life God had given me. But what lay before me was choices, a million tiny decisions. I learned, in that season struggling to stay home,while forcing myself, teeth gritted tight, to keep my focus square on the life God had blessed me with, was the call-and-response of living for Jesus. He calls, yes - but that call is not always an explosion of brilliance that triggers a tidal wave of love from my heart to His. Sometimes it was just a tiny whisper behind me, "This is the way. Walk in it." My response was not often a heart on fire, but simply a soul willing to put the next footstep down on the path He'd laid before me.

As I kept walking forward on what seemed like a dimly lit, poorly marked path, the emotions followed. The heart follows the mind sometimes. The tidal wave of love I heard about in worship songs and testimonies wasn't my experience. It was a soft turning, a quiet and gentle creeping up in the throat. 

Now the world turns again, and dreams and duties co-exist. I am no longer on a divided highway, pulled between east and west. As surely as I kept stepping forward, He bridged the gap between the desires of my heart and the portion of my life.

If you'll step inside this great glass elevator

It'll take us up above the city lights

To where the planet curves away to the equator

I want to show you something fine

You can see the roads that we all traveled just to get here

A million minuscule decisions in a line

Why they brought us to this moment isn't clear

Could it be that the many roads

You took to get here

Were just for me to tell this story

And for you to hear this song

And your many hopes

And your many fears

Were meant to bring you here all along

How I love to watch you listen to the music

'Cause you sing to me a music of your own

As I cast out all these lines, so afraid that I will find

I am alone, all alone

Could it be that the many roads

I took to get here

Were just for you to tell that story

And for me to hear that song

And my many hopes

And my many fears

Were meant to bring me here all along

We were meant to be right here all along

~Many Roads, Andrew Peterson~

Is there a disconnect between your dreams and your reality? Do you struggle to hear and respond to God's call in your life? Have courage, and take the next step. Someday, like me, you will step into the clearing and that crooked path behind you will be but a memory, for a time.


Photos today from the irrepressible Amelia.

Cathedral

She dresses just for me, in yellow stripes, a 3 year old niece's way of saying, "I love you". A little sunray of joy, waltzing about my messy house, so proud her message came across clear and beloved.

I've been thinking about my writing, and the life that it reflects, and I think there needs to be more yellow stripes written about here. I learned about a concept a few weeks ago that made little sense to me. So, ever the scientist, I decided to test the theory. The concept is called "mindfulness" and it means fully doing what you're doing without trying to multitask...in your brain or with your body. I know it's necessary for raising children. If you have a fussy child and you try to keep typing while comforting him, or keep stirring lunch on the stove instead of meting out consequences to the group of twisted sisters claiming the same toy, you'll do a poor job at both. However, in other areas of my life, I felt that I was a master of multitasking and that it greatly enhanced my effectiveness.

I tested it, and I was wrong. When I work on one thing at a time, I am faster, more thorough, and more joyful. I never expected the joyful part. There is something about throwing yourself 100% at a problem, at writing a paper, at preparing a meal, that enhances the pleasure in the task and the completion of it.

I realize, slowly, that I've been rushing my whole life. This realization has been dawning on my slowly over a year's time. I wrote about it last year. Rushing to the next entertainment before I hardly finish the first. Rushing from one sorrow to the next, until they pile up in such a stack that they overwhelm me as they teeter in my consciousness, threatening to tumble down. Rushing from one crisis to the next, feeling the next crisis coming long before it begins.

God gives me the weirdest trials. I spent my teenage years fainting, my college years in heart failure, almost died at 22 from a random heart event, spent the last of my 20's on cancer, 31 on more heart problems and a pacemaker, and this year on PTSD, depression, anxiety, "losing" even more weeks to the hospital. And that's just me.

My husband and children have been through all kinds of horrific infections, and always seem to react worse to them than the average person. In the midst of Amy's year of encephalitis and epilepsy, God doubled up our trials and I suffered a traumatic ectopic pregnancy loss in the two weeks she wasn't in the hospital. Then infection upon infection and surgery after surgery.

I've come to accept that my trials often aren't the average ones. I've come to accept that we all seem to have giant targets on our backs when it comes to our health. But I fear I've leaned too hard into martyrdom, leaned into the shocked reactions of others as validation for my sadness, fear, and loneliness through these trials.

God's best for me is not sadness, fear and loneliness when I face trials.

It is easy to get trapped by suffering. It is tempting to throw out half of the Bible and believe promises don't apply to you and yours. Even in the minutiae of life, it's easy to focus on the child who fussed, disrespected, and disobeyed all morning, so that your eyes are so busy seeing through the scars of the morning you are blind to the same child who is cuddly and cute in the afternoon. The memory of a grandma gone all wrapped up in a beautiful moment in the afternoon sun, boy cuddling great-aunt, their laughing like music fills the front room and I watch and I am filled with joy.

In recognizing the cathedral in the moment, the temple in the experience, the feast set out before me by my Father, Lover, Friend and King, the scales are falling off my eyes and His love is breaking through like the morning sun.

Every evening I sit in the dark, listening to the cricket song, and feeling the breeze. It soaks in for a minute, and then thoughts crowd in and I shake off the blessings like raindrops from a wet, shaggy dog, only a moment on my skin and never finding the path deep into my soul.

Today, I am shaking off martyrdom. I am sick of focusing on the trouble. Although I can't pretend my life is completely normal, I want to quit shaking off blessings to care for burdens. Doesn't He say cast ALL your cares upon Him, for He careth for you? (I Peter 5:7)

A series of verses, very dear to my troubled heart over the past 3 1/2 years of cancer, is written in permanent ink on a card on my windowsill:

Rejoice in the Lord always -delight, gladden yourselves in Him; again I say, Rejoice! Let all men know and perceive and recognize your unselfishness, your considerateness, your forbearing spirit. The Lord is near - He is coming soon. Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and petition (definite requests), with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God. And God's peace shall be yours, that tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and being content with its earthly lot of whatever sort that is, that peace which transcends all understanding shall garrison and mount guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And my God will liberally supply - fill to the full - your every need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (from Philippians 4 Amplified version)

I sit in my bed, typing this, looking out the window at the yellow birches among the green maples and oaks, catching sunrays, grass dripping with dew now burning off in the sunlight, ground mist casting rainbows on wheat. I am content with my earthly lot, of whatever sort that is, and peace transcends all understanding and garrisons my heart and mind.

Cancer, treatment, new depression meds and the fire red hair from a box all collide and my hair falls out in great handfuls, my scalp is raw. My hair has been my crown, truly - the only feature I really believe is beautiful. Now I wonder if it will all fall out, or if it will just be thin, if it will grow back? No one has an answer.

Instead of another calamity, I am wearing my hats and thanking God that I'd started collecting them again in the last six months, for no particular reason. God winks at me and I know there was a purpose in my hat search. I marvel at the magenta pile in my hand every morning, brushed from my pillow. But for once, instead of wondering if He'll heal me, I'm wondering what He's up to. It's a curiosity filled with joy, instead of dread.

Pray help me, Christ, to take my cup and drink it without drowning in it's dregs. Help me be a light, a beacon of one-mindedness, always focusing on your giving and leaving the taking to You to solve.

Cathedral 

Arches of reaching limbs 

Crickets sing secret hymns 

Over all of us 

Fireflies 

Tickle across our palms 

Lit up like diamonds drawn 

From the black above 

Awake my soul to live this moment 

Awake my soul, give thanks and hold it 

Dear now 

God is here now 

Awake my soul 

Day ends 

And brown eyes smile back at me 

She wipes my kiss from her cheek 

After last “Amen” 

Hush away the hurry 

Put to rest the worry 

Come to quell and quiet me 

In this moment given 

Slow and fully live it 

Drink up all the passing peace 

~Awake My Soul, Shaun Groves~

A song of safety

Today was another day in a string of days carrying professional disappointment.  As I sat in my quiet house while the littlest two slept...the elder two spending a week with Grandma up north...I resized some photos from a fun-filled weekend and sat reflecting.  Because I am blessed with a wonderful father here on earth, the use of "Father" as allegory in Scripture is so comforting to me.  In this disappointment, in all disappointments, I can rest content that my Father knows best.  These photos of Rosy and Caleb interacting with their grandfather shows that trust...the trust I am supposed to emulate now, as an adult. (Jesus said, "Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Matthew 19:14)

Suspended ten feet off the ground by ropes Grandpa himself strung in the tree, they fly on the tire swing completely unaware of danger or risk or fear.  It isn't on their radar.  Why?  Because Grandpa so obviously shows them that it is safe to be flying through the air on his DIY swing.

After all, it is his trustworthy hands that built the swing...this world in which they whirl.  And his capable hands lift them up and let them go on this pendulum of rubber and rope.  Why would fear enter into this safe world where Grandpa watches their every move and sends them on each giddy flight?

Sunlight glints like glitter through the cedars at dusk, and lights smiles as laughter floats through the yellow air.  As I look back through the camera lens and the space of a few days time, my own life events are the pendulum set in motion by the Father-figure, my career is being let fly from the capable hands, and instead of giddy flight, I feel trepidation and anxiety??  That isn't the right response.  So this evening, I retune my heartstrings to sing a song of safety in the swing of my Savior.

Nothing about the tens of thousands of dollars of debt changes the fact that I can trust Him totally.  So I walk away from the screen tonight, to housecleaning and cooking and an alphabet lesson for Amelia, and leave career, at this juncture, scurrying down whatever path He has chosen.  I stand at a crossroads and feel the tug, dizzying, of choice impending...yet I do not need to fear this as a precipice.  It is just another swing on the pendulum of life, just like the millions of flights He's directed before, and the millions more He may send me on before calling me home. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God (I John 3:1a).

His love has no limits, His grace has no measure,
His power no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.

~ He Giveth More Grace, Annie Flint, 1866-1932

Orchestrated

Finishing up my coursework and successfully passing my comprehensive exams meant a new stress entered for a few days...I now am employable as a professor, and, as school bills pile up in the file drawer, Aaron and I felt definite about my need to find employment.  It has been like pulling teeth to find a job...months of applications, letters of interest, dead-end interviews, and a few carrots dangled before us that have failed to materialize for a variety of reasons.  One day last week, Aaron asked if I'd inquired about job openings at the local university, my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire.  I'd been browsing their online job postings, but hadn't seen a single thing in nursing for nearly a year.  But I sent a two line e-mail to the dean, who had urged me to skip my master study altogether and go straight to the PhD back in 2007 when I'd consulted her.

Funny how the waiting is over in flash when God starts conducting the orchestra!  Within a few hours, I had an e-mail from the Chair of the department, asking me when I could come interview.  A brief 1 business day later...after a weekend spent joyfully celebrating Katrina's 7th birthday...and I was sitting in a delightful interview in the familiar halls of my old school.  Within the hour, I was given a job offer - and not just any job offer, but a dream job!

I remember the musty smell of the old leather couch in my father's dark basement office in Grand Forks when I was about 4.  I remember the green glow of the Apple computer screen and the shelves upon shelves of books.  I remember watching him lecture when I was Katy's age, sitting at attention in the very back row while he paced back and forth, rubbing the chalk like a worry stone between his palms until a cloud of dust followed him and the legs of his khakis took on a type of white-collar dust not unlike the farm dust of his forebears in South Dakota for all the preceding generations.  I remember his vigor and the passion with which he spoke of his endless diagrams of numbers and arrows and mysterious mathematical symbols that looked like so many panels of hieroglyphics in the tombs of the ancients.  I remember the college students that filed into our home, one by one and finally in large, raucous Bible study groups.  I remember thinking that someday I wanted to do that...infuse young people with joy in their chosen profession, integrity, honor, and Love.

Just a week ago, teaching at the same school with my dad...developing collaborative classes and programs of study with him that combine business, finance, accounting, and nursing ethics...seemed like my own version of the impossible dream.  At best, a far-off possibility when my children were grown.  But what was offered is a once a week schedule that includes amazing health benefits that will save us somewhere around $10,000 a year.  The top of the pay scale, comparable to the going rate at some private universities I interviewed at.  Maybe even the chance to carpool with my dad.  A childcare option graciously offered by my parents that will give my children the benefit of a grandmother and experienced homeschool teacher on the day that I am away.  AND the chance to teach clinicals...that's right - I'll be back in the hospital, the place my heart has yearned for since early in my stay-at-home mothering stint.  The place I feel called to be.

Tonight I accepted the job, excitedly, still with some amount of disbelief lingering.

My mother spoke with me today about how compassionate God is.  How much He desires to answer our requests.  How He is involved in our dreams and those unspoken yearnings of our heart.  She gave the example, from her devotions, of the demons in Mark 5, who begged not to be cast out somewhere far away and scattered.  Even the demons...Christ's archenemies, evil beings with no hope of reconciliation with Christ, beings He had absolutely no motivation, in human terms, to help.  Yet He answered their request.  He cast them into the swine at their feet.  Why did He do it?  I probably won't understand until I am sitting at His feet, learning forever in the great University of heaven.  But if He honors the requests of those His pure, just heart loathes...how much more does He long to answer the requests of me, His daughter, His servant?

Particles of sacrifice reveal untold beauty

Northern lights in the middle of the sky above rural Wisconsin

on August 3, 2010; visible due to an explosion on the sun's surface.

A storm opens our eyes to see, our hands to receive the starry nights that follow.  An explosion - damaging, fire-gushing, volcanic, erupting - on the sun's surface sent billions of particles toward earth.  (A damaging, painful explosion of God's wrath above the Cross snuffed the life out of the Son of God.)  As the particles of that great light-filled body in the heavens float through the galaxies down to Earth's atmosphere, the northern lights become visible all the way down to parts of New England where they are never seen.  (So grace fell like a million drops of the Son's light on my soul, revealing hidden beauty beneath the scars of sin as His light reflected there in my black heart for the very first time, and every time since, when I confess.)

The storms of the spring and summer where suddenly eclipsed today in a dark doctor's office that has held nothing but sorrow for me since March, 2008.  Storms eclipsed, for once, not by more storms - but with a heaping pile of good news!  He took my neck in his hands, and felt no tumor where there has been one since November of 2008.  He looked at my lab work, and discovered that, for the first time since cancer struck back then, my body is fighting back.  I have lost weight, almost miraculously and effortlessly, on my no sugar/no starch/no alcohol/no over-the-counter meds diet.  That is why my thyroid hormones are out of whack - I need less medicine than I did before, because my liver is functioning at 100% and I have gotten a bit smaller.  (Less medicine is, at least in my case, a very good thing!)  My tumor markers are slightly more elevated, but that is probably because my own immune system attacked a tumor in one of my lymph nodes, one in a very inoperable location, and exploded it into a million tiny pieces that now float in my bloodstreams, innocuous because of the new antibodies my body is making.

And so I dance (a quick jig before getting back to work on my exam) and thank God for good news on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday.  For lighting the night sky with green and red, for sending dancing light last night as a harbinger of dancing feet today.  For helping me find better health, for using better health to trounce cancer, at least for the moment.  For keeping me with my family until my next scan, which won't be until October or November now!  God is great!  That is all.

Click on the little images to see bigger ones - the lights are faint,

but they are there!

The dark path

But that was a long time and no matter how I try

The years just flow by like a broken down dam.

There's flies in the kitchen I can hear 'em there buzzing

And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today.

How can a person go to work in the morning

And come home in the evening and have nothing to say.

Just give me one thing that I can hold on to

To believe in this living is just a hard way to go
~John Prine~

Searching.  I am sure I have questions answered, so positive I practically skip instead of walking.  And then, in the darkness of a new time of testing, I turn my ankle in the same holes.  One minute, I have the clearest sight and surest perspective, as a worshiping woman confident in her faith.  The next, I am blinded by my ignorance and my tears as I struggle with the weight of the world and wonder from where help will possibly come.

Last week was Amelia's worst week.  I was suffering the worst heart rhythm issues I've had since last summer, and it was demanding my attention so that I might employ the limited means I have learned to prevent major catastrophe.  And I failed my comprehensive exam in my doctoral program.

I've been told that the testing and the agony and defeats are all signs that I am on the wrong path.  That the spiritual path planned out for me is a smooth one, with only an occasional divot...not like this one I am on, riddled with dents, rocks, and sticks on which to stumble.  I used to picture my "life path" as a mowed path through one of those ethereal forests I read about in books.  A smooth path, perhaps a short growth of grass, clover or wildflowers.  Filtered sunlight dappling the landscape.  Bird song lifting the spirit as I danced and twirled through the life God planned for me.

This place is very different.  It is a real forest.  The path is just a footpath trod by a few before me.  The thick underbrush hides the stones on which I turn my feet.  I constantly bend to push the branches away from my face.  The air is thick and close, and the sun shines through only rarely.  The light is a strange, dark and hallowed green.  There are thorns that scratch my legs, and the trees and brush on either side grow so thick they are impenetrable to my eye.  Am I navigating correctly?  Should I turn and go back, revisit some milestone to be sure I am still headed the right way?  What dangers lurk in the forest surrounding me?  I feel exactly how I feel coming home down the long valley behind my house, on a footpath just like the one I've described.  I have "peace that passes understanding".  If you are a stranger to my path, to my home, your only response to my sureness will be consternation.  But I am sure this is the path home.  I know it in my bones.  It doesn't matter a whit what the path looks like, nor how many stumbles, scratches or bumps attend my way down it.  It leads home.

There is so little I am sure of right now.  I am not sure how life will go for my sweet Amelia.  I don't know how epilepsy will affect her siblings.  I have no comfort for my tears at night.  I don't know how God is expressing love and mercy in my life right now.  I don't know with what clarity I will reflect back on this time in 5 or 10 years.  I don't know if the tens of thousands of dollars I've spent on a doctoral degree I have been called to study for will be wasted or not.  As my heart flips awkwardly in my chest, I don't even know what the next seconds hold.  Life is uncertainty, at best.

But I do know that the words of John Prine in the song I quoted above - however achingly beautiful and reflective of the struggle that is this uncertain life - are not my life's song.  I have found that "one thing that I can hold on to, to believe in this living is just a hard way to go".  Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, who have set their hearts on a pilgrimage, in the valley of weeping (Psalm 84:5-6).  God - the one who "will be who He will be" - the one I cannot understand...He is my one thing that I can hold on to.

In the morning, when I rise

Give me Jesus.

You can have all this world,

Just give me Jesus.

When I am alone,

Give me Jesus.

And when I come to die,

Give me Jesus.

Take time to watch this video. She says it better than I.

An unexpected joy

Katy commented we'll have the unexpected joy of hosting back-to-back

babies adopted from Ethiopia - this sweet girl dropped into our laps unexpectedly

on Tuesday, and the Glovers bringing their sweet girl on Thursday!

Busy days ahead - planning for VBS, doing last minute clutter cleaning,

taking some more photos (planned this time!) and picking the Glovers up

at the airport.

So I leave you with some of the shots I snapped of our dear little friend,

and the substantial, significant, long-awaited, yearned-for news that

Amy has not had a seizure for an entire week!

Perhaps the Keppra is working...regardless, I burst forth with songs of

praise tonight, instead of songs of mourning.

Give thanks to the Lord

Our God and King

His love endures forever

For He is good, He is above all things

His love endures forever

Sing praise, sing praise

With a mighty hand

and outstretched arm

His love endures forever

For the life that's been reborn

His love endures forever

Sing praise, sing praise

Forever God is faithful

Forever God is strong

Forever God is with us

Forever

~Psalm 136 paraphrased by Chris Tomlin

A girl day

A city scene etched in loose leaf paper at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Art echoes life: I take text messages from my mom, who is ferrying my dying grandfather home, and stand in front of gilt-framed old bones waiting.

My burning bush

Blessed is the man

who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,

nor stands in the path of sinners,

nor sits in the seat of the scornful;

but his delight is in the law of the Lord,

and in His law he meditates day and night.

He shall be like a tree

planted by the rivers of water,

hat brings forth its fruit in its season,

whose leaf also shall not wither;

and whatever he does shall prosper.

~ Psalm 1 ~

Across the road, down the valley, where the trees grow tall next the little silver thread of Big Elk Creek, there is one lone birch that shimmers every evening in the sunset. Through March and April, this tree of diamonds delights my soul every day as I go through the hard work of keeping children content and cooking dinner, all at the same time. It is by far the most difficult hour of the day for me as a young mother. Yet, in these muddy months where there is little of beauty or refreshment on the spring horizon, God has lit up one tree like a jewel to bring me joy.

He says that His mercies never fail. By His mercy, we are not consumed. (Lamentations 3:22) To the ancient Jews, this probably meant something wholly different than it does to me today: then, it meant deliverance from armed enemies, food provided to the family table during a drought, safe passage to new grazing grounds. Because I have food on my table, a fully-equipped medical world at my disposal, a large house in which to live, no enemies at my doorstep...many would argue that I am no danger of being consumed by anything. But every day that danger lurks...through the difficult dinner hour, when I would much rather blunt my children's senses with a movie instead of conversing with them in their tired and hungry state. Depression, complacence, despair, irritation, over-scheduling, drifting through life, lowering my expectations. Those are the enemies that threaten to consume me as a 21st century Christian housewife and mother.

Many years have passed since those summer days

Among the fields of barley

See the children run as the sun goes down

Among the fields of gold

You'll remember me when the west wind moves

Upon the fields of barley

You can tell the sun in his jealous sky

That we walked in fields of gold

~ Fields of Gold, Sting ~

The whole field of corn husks in front of my birch tree sparkle as if you dropped nuggets of gold there. Just husks. Lit by sun. Somehow strangely beautiful. This is one of those visions of glory in our everyday world vista that plucks the heartstrings, and they vibrate to a bittersweet melody of joy that is so sweet it aches. Somehow this vision condenses for me all that has happened in my life:

friendships ruined,

heart failing, somehow healing,

hugging children who were dying,

feeling their last months soak into my soul like honey;

marrying my best friend,

birthing babies,

that painful, joyful metamorphosis of body and soul;

cancer, the cutting of surgery,

the years of living with it's specter;

baby girl slipping away,

baby girl coming home,

baby girl forever different;

another spring.

A glittering field.

A thousand sorrows;

a million joys.

Through it all, serving a Savior who takes my husks and turns them into glittering gold. A God who takes the last bit of my strength, energy, willingness, and infuses me with this sudden, thundering thing of beauty that lights up my kitchen night after night. The God who speaks through a burning bush, and tells me He is still there...and no, He is never silent.