Geese, Girlfriends and Graceful Gifts

September 7, 2012 by 49 Comments

It was the serendipity of it all. The way I wrote about the geese collecting outside my cottage window after a storm and then she commented about the book she was reading.  “But this reminds me of that book, and of how little in life goes the way we had planned, and how opening yourself up is the best way of all…” Deidra said.

It was like threading a bead on the necklace of moments with His imprint attached. I wore the words around my neck for days.

Life’s dealt a bevy of disappointments over the past year. Dreams swirl down the drain in the turned backs of the faithful, leaving fragments of soapy bubbles clinging the sides of the sink. And I think about her words. How little in life goes the way we plan, but opening yourself up is the best way of all.

I’m practicing this like a daily sacrament at the altar.

I step into the musty smell of floor to ceiling paperbacks, ask the saleslady with the fuschia lips if they have that book, the one that sparked the comment thread. She tells me it shows up on the computer that they have one copy. It’s not on the shelf. We scour the back of the store, the middle, the back room. Nothing.

She puts me on the list, in case someone brings in a used copy.

And as I place my stack on the counter, behind the tourist with the ponytail and Coppertone perfume, the saleslady holds up the book I was looking for, in the tourist’s stack. “Is this the one you were looking for,” she smiles over the top of our heads.

It’s why we couldn’t find it, it was already on the counter waiting to go home with someone else.

The tourist turns to me and says, “Here you can have it.”

No, I tell her shaking my head. You take it, I have plenty to read.

She insists, pushing the book into my hands. And I take it. Tell her its my birthday and I’ll consider her kindness as a gift. Her children sigh in unison, like their getting a gift too.

And that graceful gesture of a stranger, it was like the play of kindness acted out for an audience of strangers, Jesus in the leading role. That saleslady, she remembers it in her eyes, every time I go to the store.

Because little in life goes the way we plan, but opening yourself up is the best way of all. You never know what the kindness of Jesus might look like on you today.

Joining the Five Minute Friday community with the one word prompt: Graceful. Let’s be honest, it was a tad over five minutes for me today.

 

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The Truth About Friendship Poverty

August 10, 2012 by 31 Comments

When you unplug from the world for two weeks to connect with the ones you pushed into the world and the man who vows to do life with you forever, you wonder if everyone else will forget about you.  Will two weeks of silence with the outside world mean your essence will evaporate into a distant memory for all the others?

The sun still sleeps and I’m lying in bed with my eyes open, thinking about this day, my birthday. We’re in a season of friendship poverty.  The kind that laughs tears, knows what you did yesterday, finishes sentences, reads your sadness without needing words and brings you a latte in the middle of the day.

It’s okay, He told me it would be this way for a while. But I’m preparing for the silence on a day when there should be confetti and noise blowers and cake crumbs laying all over the coffee table.

He asks me the same question I’ve written about all week, the one that echoes over dirty dishes, grocery carts and cut flowers. “What do you want me to do for you . .  on your birthday,” Jesus asks.

I want to know your presence, feel you with me today in a tangible way, I tell him. Because is there a better birthday gift than this?

He answers in phone calls from voices I haven’t heard in months, random conversations with strangers in Ann Taylor Loft and the used bookstore. In text messages about taking walks, emails from distant relatives, and over 100 birthday wishes from friends far away.

And when I end my day couched among gift bags, crumpled tissue paper and the ones that own my heart, I close my eyes and thank Him for the way He connected with me.  Because in friendship poverty comes the realization that He’s the best friend you’ll ever have. He finishes all my sentences.

This post is a bit of an uneditted continuation of posts inspired by the Circle Maker by Mark Batterson posted on Monday and Wednesday.

Linking with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday with the one word prompt: Connect and with Michelle for Graceful Summer.

 

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Why It’s Crickets Around Here

July 20, 2012 by 30 Comments

A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.  The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.

~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“We’re out of bread,” the store manager says with raised eyebrows. “It’s an anomaly. By 10:00am we were sold out of bread and that never happens.” It’s the third place I’ve been to looking for bread for our sandwiches for the road trip. I settle on Sara Lee instead of the bakery.

Today, I’ll spread wheat with egg salad and white with salmon and slather a few slices of doughy with peanut butter and Nutella for the boy who turns up his nose to the others.  Ginger snaps stack inside the Tupperware at the ready.

It’s a tradition, the food we eat on the 22 hours pushing pavement headed north. H’s mom loaded coolers with the same thing for him, when they drove from Phoenix to the family cottage in Ontario, Canada.

I’ve cleaned out the refrigerator, done the laundry, sorted through the mail pile, trimmed and mulched the garden, watered the plants, and asked the neighbor to collect the mail. We got hair cuts, collected dry cleaning, scooped ice for the cooler, made doctor’s appointments and drove a third time to the grocery store.  Deleted photos off my camera and stacked InStyle and Real Simple next to Walking on Water in the passenger seat.  And I think we’re ready.  Right after I fill those little bottles and place them in the overnight bag that we’ll push through the Capital Hilton in Washington, DC about ten o’clock this evening.

The van loads with golf clubs, kneeboards, and suitcases full of swimsuits and suntan lotion and I’m noticing what we’re not taking this year.

No Lego’s, blocks, matchbox cars, polly pockets, fishing poles with plastic fish hanging off the end or Saddle Club DVD’s in the van.  Just American History text books, IPods, To Kill a Mockingbird and gum in the back seat.

And the biggest thing we’re not taking? Our faithful Golden Retriever we lost to cancer in January. Winston’s furry tail wagged in unbridled expecatation of chasing tennis balls, long swims, and quiet walks with us for eight summers. He even pranced through hotel lobbies and rode the elevator.

And while time spins her cyclone around us, we’re clicking our heels like Dorothy and returning to the Kansas of our soul. The place where the trees blink their eyelashes and we remember who we are in the reflection of still waters. The ”earth’s eye” will remember us, even if we have grown up a bit.

We’re going to dirt roads leading to ice cream under sun’s canopy and fire pits by starlight. The place where the arm of the internet isn’t quite long enough to grab onto our thoughts and the phone service is spotty. So, I’m officially unplugging here for two weeks.  And I’ll miss you.

I’m returning to sit in the lawn chair where I wrote my first blog post and had no idea how smitten I would be with the friendship of all of you. So, if I get out of my wet swimsuit long enough to make a run to the library where internet is a lazy resident, there might be a post here and there but I’ll be back on August 6 with regular posting. And while I’m away, I’ll be remembering you in my prayers. I hope you’ll do the same for me.

 If you’re new here, I’m so glad you stopped by and if you want to read more, below is a list of my top five most popular posts:

Surprised by Redemption

Because What You Don’t Know, Can Save Your Life

When Fear Take Over, Take Courage

When My Perception Isn’t Your Reality

Don’t Tell Me, Show Me

The winner of a copy of Grace for the Good Girl from yesterday’s post is Laura Hogelin, a first time commenter. Congratulations Laura!

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Fairy Dust, Fish, and Facades

July 11, 2012 by 57 Comments

Before I was tall enough to reach the kitchen cabinets over my head, I sat on the hump in the back seat of my grandparents yellow Buick on summer road trips. My bare legs stuck to the white vinyl bench seat and I asked if we were almost there yet, every half hour. I couldn’t wait to get to the place of fairy dust, where my life transformed into an imagined tale.

We joined my Aunt and Uncle Brock and their granddaughter Tracy, for a week on the Lake of the Ozarks every summer. Our neighboring rooms with squeaky screen doors and rusty water at the first turn of the faucet nestled deep in the woods. I slept on the pullout couch in the living room, arms touching the kitchen sink, feet at the front door.

On sunny days, I stood next to my grandpa on a dock, threading worms on hooks, learning how to cast and reel the bluegill he cooked for dinner. He spent most of his time pulling floppy fish off my hook while laughing about how fast I caught them.

Even though I salivated just thinking about summer’s first bite of flaky white fish battered cornmeal, I felt compassion over the fate of those fish swimming in that wire basket. I made up all kinds of stories in my head about fishy conversation happening among them below the water line.

When I wasn’t fishing, I swam in the lake with my cousin Tracy. Afterward we held dollar bills in our wrinkly fingers, walked to the property store to buy candy. The trailor with the air conditioner propped up in the window. Sandy, the owner’s retriever with the white furry mask stalked close behind, hoping for a stray tootsie roll.

As we both stretched out of adolescence, they moved the vacation to a more alluring motel. A place complete with a pool slide, television, and restaurant.  The charm of fishing off the dock, cooking our own meals, swimming in the lake and buying a bag full of candy with a dollar became like postcards laying in a drawer. And that’s when I found out.

The auburn headed, lanky girl that I idolized, she wasn’t really my cousin. Not even a family member. She lived next door to my childless aunt and uncle. They treated her as their own for as long as she lived in their neighborhood.

And even though Tracy called them Grandma and Grandpa and remained the same person with whom I shared my adolescent angst, my heart sank the day I found out. My first lesson in, things aren’t always as they seem.

Have you ever discovered something that cracked the shell off your perception, surprised by reality?

My disappointment wasn’t as much about the reality of the truth as my ideal of it. It’s something I’ve grappled with most of my life, the disparity between reality and perception.

But Jesus isn’t an ideal; he is the truth.  And there’s false hope in thinking only those things we can understand are truly knowable.

Because when our perception shatters it doesn’t always mean we must abandon the reality. Sometimes He gives new glasses for tired eyes, to see with panoramic clarity.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.  “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.” Isaiah 55:8

And the truth? I did travel to a place of fairy dust in my childhood, and Tracy not being my cousin, it doesn’t change that fact. The story just turned out differently than I imagined.

 Linking with God Bumps and God Incidences, WLWW, Walk with Him Wednesday, Life in Bloom, Thought Provoking Thursday.

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Lost in Summer’s Expectation

June 8, 2012 by 22 Comments

When the bell rings on the last class of the season and tennis shoes walk out the door to summers freedom, expectation greets them at the car door. Of sun-kissed shoulders, sandy toes, and high fives from friends. Airplane rides to crystal seas, boats on still water with fishing line hanging over the edge catching dinner at the end.

But reality feels like a beat up chevy stalled in a wheat field, a map I can’t read laid out on the hood of the car in a spot with no cell service. I’m not sure how to navigate a summer with teens when my expectation is headed to the busy streets of France and they are on their way to a deserted island of slumber.

In the age of innocence we sat for hours at a low table of finger paint and rolling play doh, playing Frisbee in a pool that now feels awkward without friends.  The eyes that met mine eye level laid out horizontal in the bed before the sun peeked through shades, now stay closed long past the cheerios and milk are put away.

And those expectations of summer, they have me wondering how to be a Mother and I can’t find that chapter in What to Expect When Your Expecting.

Joining Five Minute Friday with Lisa-Jo with the one word prompt: Expectation.

 

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Because Imperfect is the Best Kind of Summer Vacation

June 4, 2012 by 66 Comments

“Do you like it here, would you ever want to come back,” H asks me laying on the bed while I look for my swimming suit in the suitcase. A breeze blows cool through the screen in the window moving the hem of my maternity dress. I look up at him and smile, “Yes, I want to come back.”

We’ve been married seven years and it’s my first trip to the family cottage in Ontario, Canada.  A blue shuttered sprawl with her back to the Bonnechere Provincial Park. She faces lavender sky of golden sunsets on a lake of glass, tucked under pines. Her left arm paddles river of sunbathing turtles on limbs of drowned trees. Boats, oars, and life vests lay strewn across her sandy lap.

H embraces summer’s freedom with his grandparents here as a child, where they still call him Sandy, though his hair mottles gray now. The dark paneled walls, mismatched furniture and silverware collect family stories for sixty years.

When mice scurry between our feet, hide under furniture, I scream.  His ninety-year old grandmother traps them on the kitchen counter looking for pie.

It’s twenty minutes to the nearest grocery store. They don’t stock natural peanut butter. However, they do sell warm sticky buns.

There is not cable television, internet access, or cell service.

These things, it’s why he asks me.

Every summer since becoming parents sixteen years ago, the cottage calls us back to join two generations. Two weeks of walks down a shady gravel road for an ice cream cone at the corner store.  To forget what a mirror looks like and wonder why we bother packing more than swimsuits.

Because sometimes you have to let go of the clock and all her to-do lists of expectation, to remember who you are – in God’s time.

Madeline L’Engle says, “In kairos (God’s time) we are completely unselfconscious, and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we are constantly checking our watches for chronological time.”

We shake off should and have-to and weary shoulders transform Cinderella.

Harrison learns how to walk, paddle a canoe, chop wood with an axe, catch frogs and ride a bike during those weeks. While Murielle stands up on ski’s, pulls fish from a pond, gets her ears pierced and finds out a frozen juice box is better than a popsicle.

Two years ago, Murielle’s namesake, her Great Grandmother Muriel, teaches me how to make a pie. Because we follow directions for years but her pies always, taste better.  Murielle decides to film it so we don’t miss a secret step.

We savor every succulent, blueberry spoonful of crusted sweetness washed down with decaf. Then watch stars fall in midnight sky by fire embers glowing like fireflies on still shores.

When grandmother goes to bed, we don’t realize it’s the last time we’ll break bread together, eat from the sweetness of her wise hands. She meets Jesus face to face during a sound sleep in her favorite place, after the satisfaction a good meal, seated around a table with the seed of her womb.

Her prayers linger now in the antique dishes in the china cabinet, on the plastic tablecloth around the picnic table in the gazebo, in the indented seat of the needlpoint chair next to the lamp.

And yes, I will go back again this summer. Because that place, its more than a vacation spot, it reminds me of who I am.

Do you have a special vacation spot or summer memory?

I’m joining the High Calling’s Community Writing Project on Summer Vacations hosted by Charity Singleton and Deidra Riggs.

Linking with Multitudes on Mondays, Playdates with God, Soli Deo Gloria, On Your Heart Tuesday, Just Write.

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