Until it is time

forty each

one of them says

greeting the passerby like

he's known her before

he

just

slows

goes

while i pull

weeds and wonder not

about dirt and indiscretion

but how it is i know

yet stay

sometimes

the ones behind

the lattice weaved i must leave 
till they've grown

so
go

slow

then 

each is known

before reaching to be pulled
out of dirt and in discretion

Gardening one day last year, I overheard an exchange maybe fifty yards away between a female pedestrian and a driver.  Quickly I was conscious of its nature: the young woman and her friend were marketing.  Selling themselves.  For as long as we've lived in this dubbed-destitute place, there are still moments that stun.  The real world of the desperate is right here.  (It's everywhere, mind you.) The cruelest acts are lauded for amusement and the most innocent or vulnerable are handled with contempt.  I am thankful in these moments that I'm still disturbed.

Interrupted.  Stirred up.  Dismayed.

On another day on our old property, I decided - once and for all - to get at a menacing vine.  I started digging to reach the roots, pulling it foot after foot and yard lengths, only to see that the further I dug the thicker and deeper it grew.  Still, I worked: heaving, chafing hands, bent in affront.  I never did rid the root.  Somewhere in the fight I had the picture of a powerful, unseen enemy.  It symbolized perfectly certain things that we'd discerned in our midst at that time, and it has since served me repeatedly.  Whether on individual or universal scales, it's the systems of earth and sky that we battle against here.  Not people. 

Jesus used metaphors for teaching the truths of how this all holds together.  One parable depicts the kinds of soil that determine whether seeds take root and thrive and finally bring a bounty.  In another, there's a story of an enemy who's sown bad seed and the workers have asked to pull the resulting weeds.  The landowner replies, "No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.  Allow both to grow together until harvest."  Let them go.  Until it is time.

I think some weeds aren't weeds at all but life existing where it shouldn't be. 

Two weeks after the soliciting incident, I was tidying up the yard again and couldn't quite reach the saplings growing wildly under my porch.  Even though they're trees and I love trees, they're unsightly and destructive when they grow under there, behind the lattice.  I know now from experience that if I let them go, they'll grow long enough to be easily grasped and drawn out.  The metaphor returned to mind.  How often I wish I could just pluck others - neighbors, family, strangers - from the entangled messes they live in, in the dark.  I'd like to act quickly, forcefully, but my attempts to reach into those places in such a manner would and do prove futile.  (Not to mention the cuts and bruises that might ensue as when I try squeezing my arm through that lattice!)

I may feel disturbed.  I do get dismayed.  If I wait, though, wait on the Lord in supplication, I do get shaken up to hope.  I keep up with gardening, and I beckon with power in prayer for the day when seasons have proven to mature it all.  Many tomorrows may pass, but I pray that even these seeming weeds are found to be seeds that fell on good soil, longing in the end to be pulled from the dirt, from the dark.

-------------------------------------------------

And this is for
anyone feeling they're in the dark
wondering about the ground they're in.








 

Something new

The house quiets because the children are in bed.  I consider going myself, as I get dreamy watching the shadows of snowflakes bounce and fly on the wall.  One seemed to come descend inside, and then they all fall faster and fatter, and distorted through window glass they look more like a fifty Nerf gun attack. 

Every year when we get our first real snow, to me it's like the first time all over again.  Something new.  Something saved, too, because it's all enveloped in white.  That's especially the feeling when it comes on days like today, as I recover from the previous evening's too many loads of laundry and floors to wash in too many rooms after the littlest one puked everywhere.

It's like the new door on the house on our block.  Currently, empty apartments and boarded up homes number more than those that are not.  One house has been under major renovations on the inside but you cannot tell from first glance.  You couldn't until today.  I cannot believe the difference a door can make.  It isn't my taste, but it also isn't quite the piece of junk landlords will slap on only when it's absolutely imperative for their own sake that a door be replaced.  Is something new really happening?

Though I'm always dreaming about what's to come, no matter the time of year, I'm also no stranger to despair.  I need pictures like the snow cover to mirror my heavy prayers and then quiet me with hope.  I know the snow will melt away, and not before it's soppy and sullied!  Winter only lasts so long, and even spring has rain.  Still, I ache for a sweeping in to cover, cover.  Recover.  Whiten, lighten, hush. 

And make new.

let my heart sing, my soul dance!

while i listened to Third Circle yesterday, one song hit me right where i am.  i must have left the song on repeat eight times. and though the lyrics ring out promise and the music is jubilant and light, i wept. and wept. every time it played, i wept.

there is plenty to mourn in this earthen existence, and a few of my past and present sorrows surfaced while the song washed through me. but it was the Answer to those sadnesses that made me cry so profusely. consider the verse: 

Lord, I cried out, I cried out to You

You answered me in Your mercy

Your anger was fleeting

And now I will dance in your favor all my life

my heart has been nurtured in the fold of God's people for more than three decades, yet it took a long time before i began to understand this standing that i have, this favor.  it's an unending favor before God only because of the sacrificial love of Jesus.  only Jesus.  when we are faced with pain or grief and our crying out becomes our (sometimes last) attempt at relief, he answers.  in mercy, he answers.  the circumstances may not change, he may not remove the pain, but his presence becomes unmistakable. 

the longer i live, choosing to believe in God's delight over me, the more times i find i'm able to dance through troubles and to sing despite my affliction.  hear me.  i do not pretend all is hunky-dory, put on a mask of happiness and stuff my truest feelings away in a cold corner of my soul.  no, no, please no. i am learning to cry out.  i am learning to accept that my brokenness, my failures, my hurts and my questions are no less important to my Father as my devotion, my triumphs and my personal growth.

this is how God turns our weeping into dancing - not by literally sweeping away the "bad" and promising nothing of sin or destruction will ever infect our lives again.  instead, he declares with promises never-ending, that all that he is is ours.  all of him.  we are chosen sons and daughters, from whom he will withhold no good thing! what better position for experiencing joy than in sad times?  what better way to find life but in the face of death? what better chance does light have to shine than in the darkest of all places? what other way can healing be possible than when there is a wound?

the flood of tears from my eyes was at once both a declaration of hurt, frustration and regret and a song of utter gratitude.  what joy it is to be free to release all of it to the skies!  i live every moment, in the fair and in the unfavorable, under a shower of Mercy and Love.

Let my heart sing for you

And not remain silent

Let my heart sing for you

Turn my weeping into a dance


So dance, dance my soul

There's no reason for you to weep

So dance, dance my soul, 

Make music to your King

------------------

"Dance, Dance" by Kate Hurley, Michelle Patterson.  Registered with CCLI.

everything under the sun

took a lovely walk around the neighborhood with the littles today. R and i chatted. A relaxed in her stroller. we stopped at a park for a while.

taking in all the sights, you can't help but notice the spring paradox. fresh greenery and budding trees with newness in the air, all mingled with burned out, boarded up homes strewn with rubbish and left to decay. what was once pristine and grand lies in wait for exploitation. R and i talked about one house with its gorgeous brick porch. he suggested buying it. i said i wish someone would . . . make it all new.

though the mess is commonplace here, it doesn't feel natural. only disheartening to a heart where eternity has been placed, as Ecclesiates says. the building up and tearing down, the keeping and throwing away, it's a mystery to me. a mystery to be embraced as i look toward the One whose works will endure, like a tapestry not worn.

among other things new, i do get to take part in a little home rebuilding. recently, a contractor began the city's rehab project on the exterior of our house. and i have many hopes for the inside that are bit by bit being fulfilled. the house has surely had its own seasons. i am thrilled to be part of this mending, laughing, planting, healing and gathering time!

like snow in summer...

"like snow in summer 
or rain in harvest, 
honor is not fitting for a fool."

snowing yet again! you won't hear a complaint from me. i asked for it. i even thought it was funny today when i read that first verse from proverbs 26. it wasn't so amusing to realize shortly after: i'd been a fool. a fool a bit like haman, that is. he's the man from the biblical story of esther who enjoyed vast wealth and high position and grand favor but had one complaint: all this gives me no satisfaction as long as i see that jew mordecai sitting at the king's gate.

no, i don't know anyone named mordecai and i enjoy very little money and power. but a bit like haman's, my own dreams have come true. the picture of life that i'd hoped for just a few years back is now a reality. how many people can say that? still, i had chosen haman's response when not long ago i'd said, God, i am just not satisfied with that!

you see, there was a situation i found myself in (to no blame of my own) from which God had released me. instead of accepting freedom, i chose to hold onto it like the stubborn child i am learning i am. there was just one outcome of which i wanted more control. i built my own gallows.

at the end of chapter five in esther, haman shares this one gripe with his wife and friends. i wonder if  they weren't drunk or at least half-joking, but they tell him to have a gallows built and get the king to hang mordecai. then it'll all be great, they imply. it actually sounds like a plan to haman.

do you know what happens the next day?! it's what alarmed me when i realized how i'd been clutching just one thing, one grievance, dissastisfied. that one complaint could have been my own death! and my dreams would have died with me. like haman.

thank my Redeemer, he rescued me. as he always does and promises he will, he saved me by showing me how i'd been the fool. yes, just like that fool i only read about in proverbs. he said it was not fitting for me, his redeemed.

and that's where i'm not like haman.