Of dust and the best sort of magic

Sun is shining. It's a bit of a tease these days, considering the deep collective yearning for spring. If only I could flip the calendar an extra page and coax the sun to follow suit...

No dust particle floating freely can escape these winter rays, strong and true. What kind of magic turns dirt to glitter mid-air, anyway?

The best sort of magic.

* * * * *

Lift the heavy history book down from its place up high, out of sight, out of reach, out of remembrance. Down to earth, to heart, back to mind. Down down down it has been awhile, you think. Exhale and dust flies off the familiar pages. The scar-words. The penned lies written like facts meant only for rote memorization. No, no, you mutter, that is not me. Exhale all the foul thoughts and watch them scatter under breath and light. Exhale you are foul. Inhale you are loved.

* * * * * 

The boy says that Lent starts today anyway so it's a good time to give up all dairy and see if he feels better. Lent is for giving something up, he tells me. Everybody gives up something for forty days. Like chocolate or coffee or video games.

I tell him the old story about ashes, repentance, humility, this tradition of soul-searching by sacrificing bits of self. I feel it again, familiar, ash cross on forehead for all to see. 

I am dust. I am human.

Daily residue builds up. It has built up, I realize again. Today's failures, unspoken dreams, all the agony of watching Hurt fester in others, all the helpless nights and fearful mornings. All of it, dead cells, waiting to be sloughed off.

I am dust and it's getting caught in my lungs.

...because we were created from dust, I tell him, and some day our bodies will be dust again. We remember who we are, that we are The Created. And by remembering our dustiness, maybe we also are reminded of our shine. Reflectors of Light and of a magic turning.

If Lent is about recalling my own brokenness, my dusty self, my handwritten lies and biting past...if Lent is about sensing the need to depend on God to stitch up my open wounds and make me whole again, then I am already there.  I am sitting in it, and there is grace here. This terrible and marvelous year of dependence. This is all Lent, I say.

And God isn't asking me to go on a diet and call it sacrifice. "This is the kind of fasting I want," He says.

He just wants me.

He wants to breathe Life into my dusty corners and let me watch the past turn to diamonds in the winter's sun. Even ashes reflect Life, I hear whispered.

Exhale I am foul. Inhale I am loved.

What kind of magic is this that brings the dead to life?

On Melancholy and Miracles and Waking Up

the melancholy:

Sleep is forgiveness.

It falls, drop by drop, washing the dust of the day as it ushers in a clean slate and the promise of tomorrow. Sleep feels like rain and sounds like poetry.

Except when it doesn't. Except when you toss and turn and can't find comfort, when your mind only finds its form in the dark of night. Sometimes joy doesn't come with the morning and God, forgive me, please.

Let me just admit here that I've been bitter.

Let me say this out loud because it's important to say the hard things out loud- I've been whiny and miserable and exhausted and desperate and sometimes straight up mean. Grace makes it possible to be completely and utterly vulnerable. This time grace tastes bitter.

I feel heavy. And I imagine I'm not alone here, right? We carry it on our backs all day long. The plates we keep spinning. The baggage. The emotions. The failures.

And my God I am tired. 

A numbing melancholy has been my coping mechanism these last months where our lives were turned upside-down, shaken out like change on the floor. I'm not saying it's good. But this happens from time to time, I know. It keep us on our toes. And while I realize down the road we'll look back and see all the layers of struggle woven together as only time can do, right now, today, I'm not exactly counting it all as a blessing. I'd have to squint one eye and let it blur into oblivion to convince myself there's a silver lining.

So I've made the decision to keep both eyes open instead. To call it what it is. Frankly, I don't have the energy for anything else.

It's survival mode in these parts after all.

* * * * *

the miracles:

The holidays manage to show up year after year whether I'm ready to receive them or not. The holy-days. That's what it means. Holy. Advent is a time for hope. And joy. It was so odd this year, if I'd had any energy I would have used it to say it all looked pretty ludicrous to me. Me, with both eyes painfully and begrudgingly open. My heart wasn't there. I hated that it was snowing and -30 degrees and the garden was shriveled up and in hiding. Cold and dead. Nothing holy about that.

I should have known better. I did, I do. But I'm sleep deprived, so give me a break here.

Matt was out of a job and we felt like we were drowning some days. There were layers of other stresses. Layers like a cake when you have no appetite, and the insomniac icing on top is enough to make you turn all sorts of crazy. I'm human and I'm telling you I couldn't do it. So I stayed numb to the twinkling lights and carefully cut paper snowflakes and fancy gift wrap and baby Jesus and talk of hope and joy and why couldn't I just sleep?!

I know it's better to feel deep the pain and grief, whatever it is. I know. Sometimes, though, lives are fractured and it takes a miracle to break through the window so we can be ourselves again- our whole selves.

I don't know how it all started, really. Friends offering help, dinner, cups of coffee, fixing our brakes on the van. Random cards with encouragement or checks in them from loved ones and then a group of strangers who heard about our situation and decided to care and pay most of our bills for the month. Now, people. Hear me say this- sometimes help from strangers is enough to bring you to your knees. It was. It did.

And it kept happening, like salvation does, even when you're miserable and it hurts to walk or hold a conversation. It happened every time I looked someone in the eye and knew they actually wanted to help. They listened to me vent. They were kind and gentle when the world had been cruel. They kept my head above water. 

I'm still here, standing with one foot in the muck, still fighting my way through today on 3 hours of sleep. I know my kids don't have cancer, and I know the world is plum full of pain beyond what I will ever know and I should be grateful. But this is my today. It's still there when I want to hide under the covers and emerge in April. It still asks for breakfast and needs laundry done.

* * * * *

The night before Christmas Eve I  pulled into our driveway at midnight, snow crunching, thick and fresh. In front of my bright yellow door sat a massive pile of wrapped Christmas gifts. I sat there and stared them down, confused. An anonymous someone had bought us all presents and labelled them each thoughtfully, and there were so many presents! We're minimalists when it comes to Christmas, and not just out of necessity which was this year. But this- this was a gift all its own. I had never seen my kids so in awe of Christmas and in such wonder!

We all need space to wonder. To be kids again. I needed it.

I could keep going... more offerings, more help, another mortgage paid out of kindness. Friends and family to share meals with and roll out lefse with and community dinners to sit all together, shoulder to shoulder...it all reminded me what it means to be human. I am no island, it turns out. Surprise, surprise.

He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. -2 Corinthians

* * * * *

There's a story about Jesus feeding a multitude of people, who knows the real number, maybe 5,000, with just a basket of a few loaves of bread and two fish. What a joke, right?  Jesus took what there was and started feeding people. They ate until they were full. And there were twelve baskets worth of leftovers.

I don't need to know how this miracle happened. I know it happens. It is my story.

* * * * *

the waking up:

I have seen the hope of healing. I'm watching it ripple out all around me, touching the sick, lifting the weak, feeding the hungry. It is simple and unassuming. It takes human hearts and hands that choose Love. Sometimes I am the weak one, sometimes the sick, sometimes the one too self-absorbed and arrogant to notice the miracle. But gospel is good news for everyone, and it is FOR the weak. That is where I find myself again, at my most fragile. Because what the world calls worthless, our Creator calls his own.

I'm tired. I'm still begging for sleep that feels like forgiveness. Sometimes I lie awake next to my husband whose only full-time job these last months has been taking care of his crazed wife, and I feel guilty for worrying and guilty for all we have and thinking I need something more. I am privileged at the expense of another family maybe oceans away. During the day I can skate right over the top of that deep darkness. Ignorance is bliss, and that isn't a conversation for the dinner table. But guilt is meant to drive us to change. I need to be fully awake, fully alive to this wild world for that part.

I do need sleep and I desperately need healing. I am writing this because you probably do, too. But no man ever died just so I could get a good nap in. Soul healing is rooted deep and true and merciful. HOPE.

There is a time for rest and then there is a time to Wake Up. I will hold the melancholy close, calling it by its right name, for as long as it is a part of me, knowing bits of joy are found even in the darkest places.

I'm trying.

Wake up to the day, stretch out and feel the warm sun shining on your face, feel all the love and all the pain, side by side, bound together as they were meant to be.

Rise and shine.

One Week at a Time...

One week ago today I was here:

Majestic cliffs. Divine hot springs. Walking sticks and exploration. Wildlife and moss and mountain passes that make you hold your breath and the smell of sweet cedar in the air.

Oh, Missoula, I love you!

But then we packed our workhorse of a van full of sunburned but happy bodies and headed back to drop our good friend, Bailey off at her new home in Billings. The time was sweet. The goodbyes sweeter with a touch of bitter, and somehow we survived the trek across the North Dakota nothing and back to our little cottage in the pines. Home.

We desperately needed the get-away, we had been made painfully aware with Matt being treated for stomach ulcers just days before leaving. Stress will do that to a person. Cause you to stop everything and re-prioritize- reset your life. But this, also, is good and necessary.

I had planned on writing about the many blessings found on our adventure to the Big Sky. I had planned on sharing how miraculous it was to have just finished my herbal remedy for Lyme Disease and, for the first time in well over a year now, to have almost no pain. I could write an entire blog post on the rejoicing over this wondrous timing, considering I'm back on another medication/remedy now and the hurt is returning. Still, a glorious week. GLORIOUS.

I had planned on putting words to seeing our Creator in Creation. I did. I do.

But then things rarely go as planned.

I got a frantic phone call from my younger sister the day after we got home. She was pregnant with twins, one of which she had just found out had died. There was already much suffering, but this was a new desperation in her voice- she was only 25 weeks along and in hard and sudden labor. "Please just pray I don't lose this baby, too."

I cried. I stayed up all night by my phone, waiting for text messages from our other sister who was with her. Yes, she needed an emergency C-section.

I have the most precious new baby niece, at 1 lb. 11 oz. She is a miracle- a fighter. I know so many who have gone through these situations, but never in my family. We're new in the NICU. And I get to be there tomorrow to hold her tiny finger.

Somewhere in the middle of these huge life moments there are still dishes to wash and garden to plan and backpacks to fill and laundry piles. The piles. And my mind is somewhere else.

I'm not sure there is any other way today. This is Life. And only one week, at that. Somehow the lows make the highs that much more profoundly special, and rejuvenate the soul just enough.

God, be enough.