Annoy-able

"I guess I should probably be praying to not be so annoy-able," Jane says, "instead of praying that everyone else would stop BEING so annoying."

"Huh," I snicker. "Yup. Me too."

"It's not really that tap-tap-TAPPING is so wrong. Or that Joe or whoever is thinking, I know, this will drive Jane CRAZY, which IS what I think. But they probably just really feel like doing it."

"So true," I say. All these days of praying to become patient and kind and now this.

Conversation turns along unseen curves. How to hear the Lord? We trace this anatomy.

All these millions of disciplines -- Bible reading, devotions, praise, worship, hymns, theology, prayers in secret, thoughts and ideas we train to march in time to, to something. And then there we are left waiting. Just waiting. In the end waiting is the biggest deference of all, the loudest statement, the one that actually bows my heart in complete adoration of Christ. We wait on those we prize. Hm. Proof.

Jane and I trace these turns as if completely blind. Textures of ideas memorized by the invisible hands of the mind.

"It's sort of like we climbed on the slide at the YMCA," she says, "and now we just get to let gravity and God do the rest."

A laugh unbidden climbs out of my mouth. Gravity and God. Indeed. May it be so. May we trust God and all he has put in motion.

Gratitude:

6215. We celebrate a birthday in the park with the type of friends that all our children ask to see and always bring peace and joy. Smack dab in the middle of a crazy afternoon, it still does. I marvel at the stillness and slow meaningful celebration.

6216. We visit Craig's grandmother. One hundred two years, white hair and perfectly lovely, she closes her eyes and soaks in Holy, Holy, Holy as Craig, the kids and I sing to her.

6217. Craig, the kids, cousins, and Auntie all head to the farm for raspberry picking. Bliss. Forever memories.

6218. A trip to Trader Joe's and the simple joys of mustard, ketchup, heavy whipping cream, just the essentials.

6219. Jack harvests a few potatoes that dried out and died, then fries them up for Craig and me. They are the creamiest, richest, most smooth and salty morsels. Ever.

6220. I plug away on the chores of life and convince myself that the three drawers I cleaned out of the desk are better than none at all and all the slow attention to waiting a good investment.

6221. In the middle of seven audio books, I relish them all.

6222. I prepare for a surgery on bad veins in my legs. Elated that the painful condition can be remedied, I dread/anticipate the procedure.

6223. I begin to think of waiting as a currency to be spent, a song sung without words, a free-fall proof of love. Let it be so.

The Desk

"You cleaning out the desk?" Jane says. Crouched over a bin of hand-me-down shoes, I look up at her too-tall twelve-year-old self perched there in the stairwell making her even taller. I smile, the sloppy grin of tired endurance.

"Yep," I say. "I finally cleaned out a drawer."

"Huh," she says. 

There at the shoe bin, stapler and office supplies sprawled at the perimeter, I wonder how life can be such an intertwining of circles -- shoe bin, sewing table at my wrist, book with the torn dust cover leaned against bin, three-hole-punch littering tiny white dots at bin's edge. And somewhere there up the stairs, the old herculean desk I'm trying to empty and sell, tasks shattering down, thunder claps of urgency.

"I finally decided I just need to clean out a drawer a day," I say. "I've been so over whelmed I just can't even start."

"Yeah," she says, "better to just do a drawer a day than to do nothing at all and keep reproaching yourself."

"Yes," I say. "Just, YES. I can't seem to get a purchase on it, so -- a drawer a day."

"Good job, Mom."

"Hmm. Thanks, honey." We smile, that softness that releases crinkles at the corners of the eyes. And then we sigh, but really it's more like the very beginning of the next breath, and it's long and deep and patient endurance fills in all the cracks.

Gratitude:

6309. We celebrate the birthday of our country and all the blood shed on our behalf with lovely picnics and family and friends.

6310. I steal away one lunch hour to meed a friend and visit as if heaven itself had opened to to invite us in.

6311. Craig and I enjoy a lovely dinner with a local pastor and his wife.

6212. I catch coffee and errands with my momma, errands really just another word for long streamers of conversation cast across the morning according to whatever the mood will lead. We both end up with wonderful finds at an estate sale.

6213. A dear, dear friend from college visits us with her mother and two children. She brings all the fixings to turn our pleasant picnic into a jaunty feast we will long remember. The children play, and we visit as if 20 years had not passed between us.

6214. I find breadcrumbs of encouragement in each conversations and more as I visit with the children and better yet with Craig. Somehow nourishment fills all the cracks and even burdens and urgencies fail to crush me with their weight.

Lettuce

"Here," Joe says. He flutters a green lettuce leaf on the sling-back lawn chair. Lettuce, from his garden, "Here," he says.

"Oh," I say. I turn in the rotisserie sun and glance squinted eyes at the lace leaf. "Thanks," I say.

"Yeah," he says.

I pluck winglike green between finger and thumb and crunch the chartreuse stem as it hits my teeth. Bitter. As if the waters of the deep have let loose, sour astringent wriggles rootlike fissures in my mouth.

"Wow that is bitter," I say. "Yikes. Here." I pull it from my lips, the broken stem still a mixture of lime, peacock, and beryl.

"Oh," he says. My hand upraised, he scoops the lettuce from my fingers, and completing a circle, places it in his mouth. "Mmm," he says.

"Does it taste bitter to you?" I say.

"Only a little bit," he says. "The rest is good."

"Oh," I say, the daybreak of his face more radiant than sky.

"I think I might make a salad later," he says.

"Oh," I say again. A salad later. This. Just this. Maybe I'll make a salad later. May all my trials always only ever be a salad later.

Gratitude:

6300. Hot summer greets us the way I always remember it, crinklingly hot where sprinklers splash with only stupendously cold water.

6301. We get the wrinkles ironed out of our insurance policy.

6302. Jane and I take an adventure, the two of us trying new things.

6303. I meet one of my life heros, the brave Dr. Suzanne Humphries. It's like talking to an old friend. "Mom," Jane says as we walk away, "she seems like someone that we would be friends with if she lived here."

6304. I catch up on sleep by acquiring a headache that eclipses half of two days.

6305. I listen to more of CS Lewis' The Problem Of Pain and then just sink back into the logic of it all.

6306. A friend stops by to retrieve her sunglasses, and we visit.

6307. Face cream, a simple luxury that feels like a universe.

6308. Sunday settles like quiet mist. I can't wait to fall into bed.

Stronger

"Lord, make us stronger," Jane prays. A spruce, gargantuan stake half down the lawn, covers us with cool shadow. We pause, small in it's elephantine height.

"Hmm," I sigh, an eyes-open-prayer between us.

"Don't make the task easier," she says. "Make us bigger to handle it. Amen."

Amen settles, a invisible barrier, a hush.

"Amen," I whisper.

****

"Here, we better hurry outside," I say. "Everyone is waiting for us."

"Oh," Joe says, urgency absent from his face.

"Huh?" Jack motions over his shoulder, forehead creased, "What?"

"Hurry, come on, we have to get out there," I motion toward a door at the front of the offices. "Tell the girls to hurry up in the bathrooms," I say.

Jack jaunts two or three steps to the back and calls to them. Hand lightly on Joes neck, I steer him forward.

Finally we emerge in blinking bright sunlight out the front door, a small assembly gathered around the organic farm tour guide.

"Wow," I say, children gathered beneath my elbows like feathers. "That was an adventure." Myra nods, emphatic. Jack sloughs a grin in farmer fashion. "That road, wow," I say. Six miles of the lowest grade dirt road, drained and washed away to ruts that could swallow our whole car. "I wasn't sure we were going to make it," I say.

"I was gripping the handles on the booster with both hands," Jack says.

"I was actually praying to God," Myra says.

"A chance to be brave," I say.

"Yep," Jane says.

And yet a retreat ensues. There on that windblown mountain top of a farm, we let the hours scroll by like braille on our finger tips.

Later Jane leans in and tells me, "Ya know," she says. "It was actually so spiritually relaxing there. It was a chance to be brave and a chance to get away from this inferno." She nods toward the living room, but I see the giant pine out front, and see it's more than the room. It's all the hard assignments.

We nod, quiet observation a bond between us.

Gratitude:

6292. Rotisserie chicken. And twice in one week.

6293. A last minute field trip to a lavender farm.

6294. Dear friends join us for dinner on the lawn and Badminton. Gems of friendship.

6295. We take evening walks as a family.

6296. We mow the lawn and weed the gardens and harvest the first row of radishes.

6297. I save up to buy something special, have it bought out from under me, and then find a different treasure I like more.

6298. Craig finds a new used bbq to be our oven until the kitchen is remodeled.

6299. One by one we settle into patterns of joy. Sometimes it's the hard work of choosing happiness. Other times, and more often than I would even hope, small moments of joy find us and we take them by the hand and enjoy them.

Just Plain Life

"Seems like Betsy's main objective is to go as slow as possible and look at eEEeverything," Jane says.

"Yup," I say. We tritt-trott past a neighbor's shag green lawn, humidity and the smell of dirt wafting off of it, Betsy lagging behind her hand, the one in Jane's grasp.

"And I pull and pull, but pretty soon, I'm going slow too," Jane says.

"Yep," I say, Jane's arm extended back like a fishing line.

"And then I give a tug and she catches up no problem." Jane shakes her head, affection at the corners of her eyes.

"Hmm," I say. "Yup." Sunday afternoon, a walk. We just walk together. Everything else folds into the steps.

****




"If I was really scared," Myra says, "know who I would go to?" Her face leaner than even six weeks ago, I look into blue eyes too large for the average face. She blinks at me.

"Who?" I say.

"You," she says, "or Daddy."

"Hmm," I say, her red hair a wild racket around her face.

"Or Jack," she says, "'cause he's really nice and really strong."

"Hmm. He IS really nice," I say.

"Yeah," she says, " SO nice."

"What do you like about him?"

"Well, lots of things," she says. "He's always so excited about his garden. And he shows me stuff." She blinks, pauses. "And he likes to play." A smile ripples over her face. Drawn at the corners of her mouth, it moves upward over her eyebrows. "And when Lucy plays tag," she says, "he's on my team."

"Hmm," I say. "He is really nice."

"I don't know why," she says, "I just really like him."

"Yup," I say.

"Yeah," she says. 'I'm gonna go see what he's doing."

"Ok."

The years tic on, tiny increments of time, pennies of time. The uneventful stroll down the street, the game of tag out back, this is where it happens. Such small installments, and then one day we wake up memorized and loved, the embodiment of those penny deposits.





Gratitude:

6287. Craig and I celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary. The children make us breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We talk gardens and plan the bean trellis. We visit a greenhouse, the nine of us. Then then Craig and I take a thrifting date. We talk less than I ever imagined we would, but we understand each other more. Devotion blooms. We settle under its wings.

6288. We tear grass out of a garden bed, weed the 500 square foot vegetable garden, plant miscellaneous annuals, and build the bean trellis. Saturday unfolds in gentle steps, each one time together.

6289. We take a walk Sunday afternoon. I spend the evening playing badminton with Jack, Betsy, and Myra.

6290. End of the year testing finished, we plan a summer liturgy. We weave chores, disciplines, and pleasures into routine.

6291. And life goes on, the clippity-clop of everyday things. Devotion in the small things. We work to live out faithfulness.

"Jesus, Jesus," Betsy croones. I watch her from my bedroom just down the hall. She reaches through George's crib and holds his hand. He chirps. "Jesus, Jesus," she sings, jesting at Jesus Loves Me. She pulls a clumped wad from her elbow, blankie, and pushes it through the bars. "Jesus, Jesus, Georgie."

There moored on my bed, the smooth blue quilt an ocean of comfort, I watch her watch George. It's grace, a small grace, and enough.

Just Joking

"Sometimes the other kids are like: Just JOKING. When their talking and trying to be funny," Jane says. She screws up her face, one shoulder drawn in a shrug. Our morning run done, once again, we lull in conversation, coast like marbles, our legs effortless glides, residual momentum ebbing as we near our driveway.

"Yeah," I say, our strides slowing in tandem as we pass the behemoth silver-gray pine holding down our yard.

"And I'm like: GUYS, if it were a JOKE, you wouldn't have to say JUST JOKING."

"So TRUE," I say, the corner of my mouth curled to match her shurg.

"In Proverbs it says if you have to say JUST JOKING," she continues, "You're a LIAR, worse than a FOOL." She arches her eyebrows, just barely shakes her head. "A liar."

"Huh," I say and suddenly there before my eyes, all those sophomoric attempts at humor, the embarrassing and horrifying attempts at town jester, the budding gyrations of each child trying to BE funny.  "So true, Jane." All that grasping punctured with a proverb.

Just be. And there we are, the two of us, just being together. A bond stronger than humor encircles us.

Later, as I page through my day a quote from CS Lewis comes to mind:

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”

And so the day carries on in merriment.

Gratitude:

6275. A friend brings us a basket of organic apples, watermelon, and chocolate. It's dew from heaven and we enjoy every drop.

6276. A new scarf. Blue, all the azure, cornflower, and cerulean you can weave into a scarf, white accents, perfectly soft.

6277. Swimwear. The kids match the lovely weather with swimsuits and sprinklers.

6278. Craig's Grammie turns 102.

6279. Time in the yard with friends. Swings, chickens, garden plants make all the props you would ever need. "Now let's talk about Jesus," one of them says as the adults visit half listening to childish play.

6280. We set up yard games and spend the weekend just being with the kids, let the weekend unroll as if we were really spending every moment.

6281. Jack and Jane make lemon bars from scratch, even squeeze their own lemons.

6282. I teach Lucy how to brush her hair out all silky smooth.

6283. I get the chance to pray with a couple of different people, the world paused, we bow our wills to Jesus. It's like stilling a storm.

6284. I let loose of some things I need to sell. Freedom ensues.

6285. Craig clears and plants 100 square feet full of potatoes.

6286.  Mostly, the days unfold full of flaws and missteps, but the music just keeps on. The tempo pulses on as if it could carry the whole song, as if just playing the next note were enough.