When It's Time to Breathe

Like others in this season of politics and tension, I am thirsty for grace. And in my thirst, I realize how much grace I fail to show, how strong my desire that others see things my way, how hard I have to fight my own nature to reflect Christ's character.

But today, I'm asking you for grace.

Grace because I'm far from this place lately, wrapped up in a budding life ahead, a bunch of big changes on the horizon.

I'm going back to college, God willing, and I've brought my kiddos home to learn at the kitchen table again too, navigating a public charter school curriculum program that looks exciting but still has me a little lost and anxious while we get our bearings.

The foster babies are very nearing their own transition out of our home, a home the lot of us are moving out of at the end of November to be nearer to school and other things. I'm neck deep in editing a book and writing another one, and I can count the days until our newly adopted son will be here without having to even turn the calendar page.

Deep breath.

I've had to pull away from blogging and reading blogs for now, and I just thought I'd tell you all why. Soon, the dust will settle and life will look like something I recognize again, and we'll begin to build something new, brick by brick.

Love you friends. Thanks, as always, for grace. 

Rinse (First Rain)

I've been dry as the ground, this season. The grass had turned to straw and twine. Smoke billowed from a new hill every day and even the deck wood and telephone poles looked thirsty on the backdrop of crispy beige foliage, parched.

Crumpled and bitter, I've fought my tongue around every corner. Thirsty, threadbare, and dried in drought, dust was all I could manage to cultivate upon these lips, and from this weary heart, gasping.

And though I had better things to do, things that couldn't wait, I pulled out the paint box and dirtied my brushes and smothered the canvas large as life with paint and longing. It felt like air and space, so I opened windows, then, and dotted frantic with the mix of pink and white, and I was a fish, brushstroke by brushstroke, caught and released, and released, and released, and released.

Children slept and hours passed, one and then another, dark but for the colors on the canvas, and with the music swirling, I smelled it strong and sudden. Struck with alertness like a whiff of strong coffee, I recognized in the dryness the aroma of rain.

The ground opened to receive it and my heart opened to receive it and I could breathe again, breath so full it tasted like color. I swam. And the music and the rain and dust made painted fingerprints upon that canvas where my soul spilled in splats and curves. I laid awake and watched it fall until clouds and trees were backlit with foggy air and it's all still hanging there this morning…a misty linger like even the air doesn't want to let go.

The TV tells me we'll be dry again in an hour but I plead silent with my eyes to the sky like I'm pleading with a lover not to go, not to go. 

Don't go.