Gifts #21-32

Another one of those nights where the day’s worries lap over into evening dreams. Frustrated still in the morning. But your Word comes through the blinds…”Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.” Ps 143:8. I remember this and call to mind that your mercy starts over this morning. Your loving kindness doesn’t need waking up.
I speak to my soul.
Gifts pour through widow bright
I am redeemed and held to no lists
Letters from Grandma in familiar scroll
Quiet house, still sleeping
Easy remembrance of your great love
Brisk air, hold tight
Sleepovers with girls: pizza eating, boy talking, goofy dancing
Morning yoga that opens my heart wide and muscles feel alive
Painful heart moments where I can only run to my Reliever
Christ pursuing me in loneliness
Flax seed
Lunch with warm faces, laughing over weekend stories

I put my hope in you, my Lord

the now

I feel so broken.
I hate my reality.
I wake up at 3 am and think of the horror of it all.
How I desperately want this body of death reconciled to you.
Come, Jesus come.
I peer out the window.
Though I hate my reality, I so firmly believe:
YOU ARE GOOD.
It doesn’t make for logic and that’s probably why I feel it so deeply in my core.
I cry, Lord, you know the tears.
I feel such pain and my heart is ripped.
It bleeds into my chest and I wrack my brain thinking
Of options out of my circumstances.
Just work to change it and get there.
Your Spirit tunnels me back into the now moment.
Here, whatever is here, is what you, God of gods, have chosen for me.
This is what you want to give me.
Is this where joy and suffering learn to dance: now?
I hate reality
But I give thanks
I see your splendor in the lightning your works at growth through the rain. You call me tenderly into the woods and show me all you’ve gladly made. I taste the cool air and thank you for the blankets. You listen through a friend. You gather my tears and put them in jars.

I stand at the Light Rail and see a ‘woman of the streets.’ She averts her eyes and I want to hug her. She mumbles something about a ‘perfectly good Vicadin.’ Suddenly, she is on her hands and knees digging into the wet, dirty ground. She digs for this pill and pulls it up with a grin. The pill is soggy, patched with dirt. She shoves it into her mouth, desperate for relief.

What do I shove in my soul-to get some relief-find some escape? Christ, now I’m confronted with my desperation. And you blood offers so much more than a Vicadin.