Humble beginnings

I ate lunch today with six men all at various points of sobriety. One of these men was just hours into his own sobriety. I don't know what makes a person choose this day, the morning of Christmas Eve to get sober, but I suppose in the life of someone struggling with addiction, it is just as good a time as any.

It isn't an easy thing to see, a man sitting amidst a group of people, all of whom are laughing and eating, telling stories, enjoying each other, and appreciating the mystery of what brings them all together. He sits there unable to eat, edgy, raw. There is no way around that part, only through it. And you don't have to be an addict to know how he feels. You just have to know what it feels like to sit with yourself when you'd rather run. To want to seek any of the things you usually seek to make whatever it is you are feeling or trying to avoid, just go away. To be in that state is to be vulnerable. It is humbling and today, it was humbling to watch. But it is a beginning and what better day to begin than today, on the eve of the greatest humble beginning?

I wish him well, this man. I pray healing and wholeness over him as I do those I love who haven't yet chosen that beginning for themselves. And I give thanks for a table full of people with whom I can find hope. They gave me my own humble beginning today.  And I couldn't be more thankful.

Our Boy

We buried our handsome, pup of a friend, Toby this morning. He died early this morning while I sat beside him whispering love and doing the only thing I knew to do, stroking his head. He went quickly, an answered prayer. He hadn't been sick and his last day was a good one. He liked cool fronts and while I worked, he spent most of the day sitting in the sun, his nose to the wind. I snuck him extra treats after dinner, and then he chewed on his bone and snuggled on the couch with Stan. It was a perfect day as far as Toby was concerned. He didn't need much.

I heard someone say one time that they wanted to be the kind of person their dog thinks they are. That's how I feel about Toby. I always wanted to know what was going on behind those soulful brown eyes when he sat in my lap and held my gaze. He loved us with his entire being. Just being with us was enough for him. Beside us or in our laps was his favorite place because we were his favorite people. He showed us what contentment looked like. And tail wagging joy. He was the embodiment of faithfulness.

I found myself saying twice today "I know he was just dog." I'm not going to say that anymore. He wasn't just a dog. As Stan said this morning, bent over Toby's grave, "He was our boy." He was Our Boy. And we were his people. He showed us so on many occasions. When I was in bed recuperating from surgery and he pulled his own bed into the room and held vigil by my bedside. When I found myself a crumpled mess on the kitchen floor, crying, my hopes for children dashed with a simple phone call, Our Boy was there. He came up alongside me and leaned into my grief. Literally. He was there after Stan's surgeries, and a long recovery from a staph infection. Our Boy was there. Always faithful.

I do want to be the kind of person my dog thought I was. Our Boy thought I was kind. And patient. Steadfast and ever loving. And maybe I am. But if I am, it is because I had fifteen beautiful years to learn from him. The love of a dog made me a better human. But he wasn't just a dog. He was Our Boy. And we will miss him always.

Farewell, Sweet Toby.

 

Right now

Last week Stan and I took a quick camping trip to Lost Maples State Natural Area. I say quick because those kind of trips are just never long enough. It took me three days to simply stop asking the time. It took that long for right now to become the only answer I really needed.  There is something about being small in a big place. Standing next to large rocks and old trees. The sound of water bubbling up from the earth. The feeling of Fall in the air. Meals cooked over fire. Feeling the ground under your feet as you stand completely still and just breathe it all in. There is nothing like night sounds and falling asleep stargazing through a tent window. Standing in the midst of that kind of beauty, I can only thank the Artist. We should all be humbled this way more often. 

You know it is going to be a good hike when you see this half a mile in.

The flowers wore their party dresses.

If this picture only had audio.

The famous Lost Maples beginning their transformation.

Whenever we thought we were lost, we came across a cairn. I smiled  every time.

Big rocks. Great big rocks.

This beauty grew on a bed of rock.  And we think growth is difficult.

Rocks, trees, and water. These are a few of my favorite things.

I wish you a Fall filled with cool nights, crackling fires, sweet solitude, and appreciation of all blessings, big and small.

Currents

The view from my kayak

A lot can happen in a matter of a day's time. On Sunday, my husband and I decided to take out the kayaks and  head for the river. We spent a few hours mostly letting ourselves be carried by the current of the rain swollen Colorado River. We didn't have to work hard to make our way down river and it was nice to just let ourselves be carried, giving us a chance to direct our gaze to nature. And boy, did she show off. The spring rains provided a lush, deep green landscape full of life. We witnessed turtle after turtle lazily slide off their logs, plopping noisily into the water below them. A pair of baby Teal paddling along the edge of the bank.   Butterfly after butterfly floating effortlessly across the water. We watched a fat Blue Cat rise to the surface, disappearing as quietly as he appeared. And there was the profusion of Morning Glories, cascading down from the very top of a tree, as if a living altar had sprung from the river bank to climb toward Heaven. All of this made me quiet, stilled my soul. I did my best to breathe it all in and exhale thankfulness, trying not to think about the following day. Thankful for an afternoon just to be carried.

Monday's view

Then Monday came. Full of insurance questions and talk of radioactive materials, decay, damage. Risk management. Waiting in admitting. Waiting for a room. Waiting for doctors. Waiting, waiting, waiting. With each step of the process, our anxiety grew. We joked with each other to cover our frustration and fear. I had only to stretch to feel the slight ache in my shoulders, reminding me of the previous day that seemed so far away.   And when I left the hospital without my husband, I sat in the parking lot for a few minutes and cried. Leaving him there to be cared for when that had been my job was harder than I thought. What if they get his diet wrong? What if he has a reaction? What if he is scared? Lonely? What if this treatment doesn't work? Yesterday's gentle current was gone and I was being caught up in the rush of uncertainty. But I stopped myself before I could be swept away by the swiftness of the unknown. Closing my eyes, I breathed in deeply and exhaled thankfulness once again, thinking about our previous day. A gift from a gracious God. Remembering the beautiful blooms of the Morning glories, I was thankful that if we choose to do so, we can carry our altars everywhere. Even when we have to drive away.

Green Clothes

I stood a long time this morning just drinking my coffee and looking out the kitchen window. I had things to do, but I felt as if I owed it to the rain to appreciate it. I watched fat raindrops fall on tender new leaves of the Satsuma tree that I hope will bear sweet fruit this year and I was overwhelmed with gratitude. The image reminded me of  a couplet in The Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda:

Why does spring once again
offer its green clothes?


I know of no answer, but only one response: Thank You.

Look down

 In an effort to cultivate gratitude, I have been making a conscious effort to see and appreciate the little things more than ever. There is holiness in the everyday and I am looking for it. I spent a little time outside on Saturday afternoon and I remembered that to see the miraculous in nature, we often have to bend down and look closely. It is there in the tender buds of the Crepe Myrtle. In the first yellow trumpet of a Carolina Jessamine. The tightly furled fingers of a fern waiting for the right time to unfurl and stretch long and wide. The miraculous is there in the Redbuds that blossom right on time. Their time, not mine. And isn't that the real truth here? There are miracles all around us but we miss them if we expect them only in our time and when we forget to look down. F.B. Meyer speaks this truth:

“I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves one above the other and that the taller we grew in Christian character, the more easily we should reach them. I find now that God's gifts are on shelves one beneath the other and that is not a question of growing taller, but of stooping lower and that we have to go down, always down to get His best gifts.”

In all things, give thanks.

I am grateful. I mean it. Truly, truly grateful. Unfortunately, I forgot it for awhile. And chances are, I will forget it again at some point in the near future. But right now, in this moment, I am grateful.  For the big blessings, beauty in the natural world, the gift of love, all the little things, and even the hard stuff.  This isn't an easy place to get to when you are feeling ungrateful. Sometimes it takes great intention and effort to find gratitude in the everyday. It helps when someone else points it out.

Ann Voskamp writes about the idea of practicing eucharisteo in her book One Thousand Gifts. And the more I listen to people talk--myself included--the more I realize that the practice of giving thanks in our words and actions on a daily basis seems to be absent in our culture. And I have to ask, if we aren't expressing that thankfulness on the outside, do we even feel it at all? Please understand that when I am using the collective WE, I mean specifically, myself. Me. I have spent the past couple of weeks feeling pretty ungrateful. So I started looking for a way out of it and I began to notice that when we don't speak with gratitude, the only other option is a lack of gratitude. Most of what we are privileged to call problems, are nothing more than inconveniences at best. Ask the rest of the world. We've just lost perspective.

It is only in the hard eucharisteo that I am learning once again, to count the smallest things as blessings.  And maybe I need to stop complaining and get a grip. Or a sense of humor. Or remember that I am not the center of the universe. I need to lighten up and look around. I need to be reminded.  And when I feel perspective slipping away, I go spend some time with James and Nicole. There are bigger problems in the world than the barista getting my order wrong. Maybe I just need to learn to thirst again. I think it is probably safe to say that when Jesus called us to take up our cross, He wasn't talking about a grande nonfat caramel macchiato with one splenda.

The Waiting Place

This month, in celebration of Advent, our Sunday morning conversations have revolved around the theme of waiting. So far, specifically, what it means to wait with hope and wait with peace. It is a sticky subject, this idea of waiting.

These past two Sundays have brought forth memories of specific moments in my life when I have had no choice but to wait. And "the waiting places" as Dr. Seuss calls them, are not always happy places. I know what it feels like to wait with hope when my brokenness tells me I should be hopeless. I know what it feels like to sit very, very quietly when circumstances scream chaos. I'm not saying these were my finest moments, moments that prove me to be the woman God calls me to be. I'm just saying I kept breathing. And somehow found people and moments in which I could find great beauty. And I held faith in a God who was keeping me alive for something I couldn't quite see yet.

I had a conversation with some students tonight about why my husband and I don't have children. I've learned that conversation is just a natural occurence when people are trying to get to know me--us. Tonight, it went much differently than it often does with adults. These young people sought to understand--the process of how I got to where I am today--sharing hope and peace with them--after reconciling myself to the fact that I would not be a mother. Hear me say: They simply sought to understand.

I wish I had a dollar for everytime an adult thought I misjudged the meaning of hope when we were unsuccessfully enduring surgery, treatment, physical sickness, debt beyond our capacity to pay without damaging our financial future, and heartache and disappointment beyond our capacity to share verbally outside the privacy of our home. Enduring those things and being sad, scared, and confused, yet still moving forward was nothing if not an act of hope. Prayerfully deciding to stop subjecting ourselves to those same things was not an act of hopelessness, although many people said they were sorry we gave up hope. There are people still saying that. I choose to think of it as a tremendously hopeful act. It was an act of hope with a heavenly perspective. When we stopped waiting to see what the next month would hold, we started waiting to see how God was going to heal our hearts. That is a faith healing of the miraculous sort and I find that it many ways, it is still happening. But while I wait, I do so with hope, and by sharing peace, I am receiving it, as well.

You see, I know what it means to wait. I have known season after season of waiting. Weeks that seemed like months, months that seemed like years, and years that seemed like one long, painful, unending present. I have waiting down to an artform. But tonight, I knew that without learning to wait with hope, I would not have been standing there among beautiful young people who are learning what it means to live a faith that is so new for them. A faith that will be challenged. A faith that at some point will teach them about waiting with hope and peace. A faith that can be damaged when someone tells them the wrong story about their own hope. I told them a little bit about my story and then later, while waiting at a redlight, I thanked God for keeping me alive.