Safe

i cried to you, my heart laid bare
and you stepped close and held me there
for moments there i couldn't speak
no words would come; my voice was weak
when finally i could meet your eyes
i searched them but saw no surprise
just love like none i'd ever felt
so deep i thought my soul would melt
your soft expression seemed to say
my child, give me your thoughts today
i smoothed my hair with trembling hand
inept to help you understand
the ache within, not even i
could word the pain or quell the why
of being left outside alone
to face the darkness on my own
but as i pondered all these things
it brushed me like a monarch's wings
the kindness in your gentle look
as though you wrote me in your book
and somehow even scared i knew
it's safe to give my heart to you

Words

I've neglected coming here for a while. Not because it matters little to me, but because my energies have been spent deeply at Write Where It Hurts. I have missed being here.

In working on yesterday's WWIH column post, I was thinking about words and how our amazing God wired me to love them. It reminded me of a poem I wrote a year or so ago after reading a book entitled Poemcrazy.

i must have created quite a picture
dozing with a giant white bear
in the crook of my arm
Poemcrazy scrawled across the bookjacket
covering my face and making a slight
indentation across my right cheek
it wasn’t a nap, entirely
not even rest, since words danced and floated
through my mind, tempting, tantalizing
like a cummings poem i’d read as a child
(it stuck with me, his style, only i didn’t know then
that something in me was secretly longing for that kind
of freedom; i rediscovered him today in the pages pressing against my forehead)
i must have seemed a taciturn eccentric
hands limp and relaxed as verse took shape
behind the book resting on my face
shielding my eyes from the sunlight of midday
(though not my ears from the whine of a weed machine
wielded by a well-intentioned neighbor)
i recalled lines i’d read moments before
and how i had smiled at the mention of word games
i’d played in my girlhood
how did she know
i dreamed in word tickets of meander and flummox and herb garden
and winery and worthlessness and side-winder
while the whining ebbed and flowed and breezes blew
and my hair tickled me awake
so even though it might appear i’d left behind
lazy susans and black-eyed peas and catharsis
in the land of a people i call the ballantrae
my favorite thing of all is that
i feel a little bit like a poet today

After a long dry spell

When it's been a long time, it can be hard to start again.

I navigate these waters in a boat I keep patching with that pizza man's help because he is always near me. I would be lost without him. Our children, mostly all grown up now, are making their way each their own and it can be hard to keep up with all the twists and turns and rough places.

But we keep patching and we keep paddling and we keep praying. God's grace stays right here with us and holds our patches fast and keeps loving us and giving us more and more grace for the moments that we try to turn around and extend outward to those who might need it at the time. Mostly, I think, it's me who needs it.

This will be our third son to wed. It will be a Sunday afternoon wedding near the end of a beautifully mild Florida November on a day that in the past has brought tears. We are hoping for the coming tears to be good ones.

Today was Thanksgiving Day. It was a confusing day for me, bizarre in its difference with our family gathering and meal postponed a day and all of this day spent cleaning and organizing and trying to make sense of personalities until I fell off to sleep in the afternoon in our big canopy bed. It was nearing dusk when the grandbaby arrived and attention turned to little feet pattering over wood floors and cookie-smudged face and babbled words for everything she sees. She sleeps now, among soft blankets on Pappaw's side of the bed until her mama and daddy come to scoop her up pigtails and all and take her home.

Tonight I am grateful, truly. I am grateful for a rusty but renewed ability to write, the unwordable comfort of being able to pray, and the love that patches all things together.

When it's dark

It feels empty.

Where life spills out on the floor

Maybe it's writer's block. Or maybe it's just that I've been completely overwhelmed, or overloaded, or something.

I still am.

But I'm trying to pull up and out and word again, really I am.

The hardest part right now is that I couldn't talk about what I'm feeling even if I did have words for it because whatever this is, it's too raw, too open to the elements, too private to put out there.

So I keep trying to process it in here, and I'm finding that's a lot more easily said than done.

The Spirit of God loves sinners and dances best where life spills out on the floor.      --John Fischer

Right now I have to leave the dancing to Him.

I can't hear the music.

Why?

I've always been amused by the "Why?" questions little ones are famous for asking. 

What is even more amusing is how annoyed we adults have a tendency to become when asked this popular question incessantly. I've heard some pretty snappy retorts to those questions, uttered in frustration to hush a kid up. Been hushed up like that a few too many times to count, myself.

But what if the little ones have it right? {Imagine that.}

What if "Ask, Seek, Knock" really is a good idea? {Wait...didn't God say something about that?}

Not long ago I read a blog entry by a favorite blogger, Single Dad Laughing, in which he writes about using the why question as a tool to get to the very core of any issue one might be facing. He suggests writing down the issue, and then asking, "And why is that?", then answering that, followed by asking the question again, until the central problem comes into focus and a solution begins to emerge. He gave an example from his own journaling, and it was nothing short of brilliant.

It made me smile to think about how I will respond to the next child who asks me why.

I think I will grin and say, "To make you ask questions!"

And I will really mean it.

Back to Words

I know eventually I have to stop running this all through my head and just write.

I have to stop thinking about why I've been blocked, how to get started again, whether it's worth it or not, whether anyone will even care that I've come back to the land of the written word. Well, except for Jen. I know she cares because she took the time to tell me so.

So if nothing else, I am writing for Jen.

Life has been nuts here at Easterhouse for a few weeks now. That would probably be the biggest reason I haven't been writing--not block at all, but busyness. Imagine life being nuts at Easterhouse. I realized the redundancy as soon as I typed it. Dance competitions, our daughter's Sweet 16, sons turning 18 and 20, a high school graduation...basically the normal kind of crazy for this family.

Life has also been a bit different since Steve's carpool ended and he started having to drive to Tampa to work every day. I appreciate his ride buddy for the past two years even more now. I'm also mad at him for abandoning us. Well, okay, not mad really. He gave us $100. in gas cards at the end of his driving just out of the kindness of his heart, so I can't be too mad. But yeah, that extra $500.+ a month is hitting us pretty hard. Our move back to Tampa can't come soon enough.

Back to life being different. With Steve taking the car every day I am stranded with no car all day. Not that I went very many places before, but I always knew the car was in the driveway if I needed it. And it isn't like I have friends up here that I hang out and do things with. I've never felt quite so alone with regard to friendship. Well, there was one other time, but it was for a shorter period.

And it isn't like I don't have any friends; it's more that I don't have friends who like to hang out--at least with me. I'm hoping that will change when I get back to Tampa nearer where our kids live and closer to some of my long-time friends there. I'd really like to get involved in ministry again. A fish out of water: that's been me.

There is no point to this, other than breaking the ice and returning to the word world.

I guess that's all.