Spring's soul thaw

We scuttle and shuffle and clamour down Grandma’s Lane, heading to the trails and woods and all that lays beyond. Boys on rip sticks and bike, girls pattering on foot and piggy back; we weave around each other and the cars driving past.

A boarded bridge spans the first journey leg; broken river lies in slabs under the car bridge. Water runs free and cold beneath our path. We must play Pooh-Sticks here on our return.

We set off collecting twig and branch, further down the meandering path. Woods are still, all washed and brown and ready for the endearing smile of spring’s warmth to coax bud out of hibernation. And we, the persuaded, delight in the light of a boggy March day.

Something stirs in the walking soul: it is wonder. We marvel at weed height and barn preservation and frozen ponds nestled in bulrush. We exclaim over clever stick choices. We laugh at memories made years ago. We listen to stories from movie line and real-life-lived. We tramp through stubborn drift of lingering snow. We try forming snowballs, but most dissolve in flight, too wet for bare hands and zig-zagging chase. I’m hit several times anyway, after scurrying in futile escape.

We turn around and come back to the bridge, hands and arms full of stick and bough and crooked twig. We climb the rails to peer over the side. On the count of three we drop our chosen vessels, gravity cascading them into the frigid flow. We dart to the opposite side to see whose stick comes out first. We whoop and holler and giggle and hurry to pick a new stick and try again. Up, drop, dash; up, look, cheer: over and over, till our supplies at last deplete.

Warmed and merry, the dreary colours can’t dampen our delight; they only prove to increase our anticipation of goodnesses to come.

And so we marvel and make merry in reunion; wondering at all God has done for us, remembering His mercy, recalling what we were like, and blessing Him for loving us anyways. The messy pieces of our lives, strewn across confused horizons, cluttered and dull in winter gardens, He will make to bud and flower. And in this quiet of waiting and resting and living normal life, a spring warmth grips our soul tighter and tighter, and embrace consuming, fulfilling, liberating.

Sticky notes and mud pies

If my brain were an office, there would be file cabinets gaping wide, saying “ahhhh”, waiting to be checked and cleaned and filled and drilled. Papers would be aflutter, seeking a superior filing system that would link them by subject, chronology, urgency, and importance. Carbon copies, relevant to several different compartments, would swell manila folders and cram drawer space. The repeating lists would keep me bouncing from cabinet to cabinet, because items affect multiple facets of the mind’s working. Mental sticky notes would clamour their hurried reminders from available surfaces all over the office.

Yes, there is a good filing system, but sometimes life doesn’t fit inside the neat spaces I create for it. Compartments like “sleep” intensify in importance; “meals” grow urgent, rushed, and nomadic. “Sewing”, “Sketching”, “Writing”, fluctuate between meagre, skimpy, neglected, bingeing, or guiltily remembered.

How do things get in such disarray? Wound into a tizzy, and overwhelmed by the foolishness and poor planning that brought me here, I don’t know where to begin the cleanup.

Life is not static, and cannot be surmounted with just mental systems and organizational rampages.

Life is fluid, boiling to a vapour, creating impressive sculptures of mammoth proportions that disintegrate on a breeze’s whim. How do I handle this fleeting, sticky, slimy, mysterious substance?

I can’t handle it. I’m not made to.

I’m made of dust.

I am dust, and life is vapour.

Dust and vapour mixed makes mud.

Steamed dust, moulded, dried, baked in heat makes bricks.

And what are bricks for but building? And what are buildings for but to live in? And who else but the Maker of mud and steam would want to live in it? Who else could make sense of all the colours, textures, weights, and potentials of my life, of our lives?

So I look up from bended knee, surrounded by the stacks of paper and dust and mold and possibility. I sigh, close my eyes, and know that I am dust.

I breathe in air and breathe out praise to the God Who knows my frame, and remembers I am dust.

Praise is His life in me, making sense of all my noise, making a way though all the piles I can’t conquer, making me new and clean and right.

So God, breathe Your life in me, give me praise, whether I’m being mixed up, blown on, slathered, baking, or drying out. Help me not make mudpies out of life, but yield it to You, and trust Your skill to make something glorious from it.

What could be more glorious than God indwelling us, enabling us to enjoy Him as He intends?

Little One

Little One you were called, before I knew if you were a boy or a girl. Little one you have remained, your extra-petite frame finally filled with 25 pounds.

I remember the tickle of delight that coursed through my heart when she told me you were being formed, told me I was now an aunt. Her eyes sparkled pure blue, revealing her entire delighted soul.

And you came, and I held you, prayed tears over your little life, watched you grow under the deepening rays of summer sun.

Your frame slowly extends, making room for arms and legs and tummy a little bigger than they were yesterday. Life music touches your soul too: it soothed you as a baby, and delights you now. You love to sing in your high soprano, cooing praise again and again. Praise rings perfected in your innocence.

And so you grow, the never-ending miracle of life. You wanted to measure your tummy and hear the stethoscope’s echo when the midwife came to check Mummy’s new baby bump. You saw the next little one right after she came into our world. You love her, and mother her, without even knowing why.

You bounce and play and sing and cry and dream, and we marvel at the wonder of you. How could it be that one who knows so little would teach us so much? How is it that your simplicity confounds our complexity, and makes sense of all our conundrums? How does it happen that we who are busy and flitting and dizzy in the spinning, decaying world, suddenly feel whole and healed when we nestle your round frame in our arms?

How is it that your unspoiled, untrained smile can melt our hearts?

How can it be that one who has seen so little can tell so much with eyes that disclose your whole soul?

How is it, little niece, that two years have passed since you came to us; and that now, I cannot imagine life without you?

So I pause, and I worship the God Who formed you perfect in the secret place, and gave you to us.

You are a masterpiece, and your life is a priceless treasure.

I love you, little Hope.

Wonder in the Shed

We hurry across ploughed yard, scuffling rapid and clumsy in velvet and polyester padding, till we reach the door. Inside, mellow, golden light from ceiling bulb mingles with crimson ray of heat lamp. The homemade delivery suite, equipped with old blanket, towel, pillow, contains our sought-after treasure.

She bends low, cooing love through smiling lips, heart filled with long-awaited delight. This one who suffered scratch and nip and hiss and ignorance and arrogance, she descends to delight in life.

This one who watched and waited for swollen bellies to empty, who embraced and wooed batch after batch of yellow and blue-eyed fuzz balls into friendship; this one who grieved and cried for little ones lost or starved or hit by the milk truck, now caresses wriggling helplessness. These hands, that petted and brushed and scrubbed, applied ointment, stroked friends into purring contentment, now they touch ballooned milk bellies of the newest ones.

In all the books of memory, this has never happened, these kind of friend born on our farm. She cuddles one to cheek, to ear, and he whispers questions, happiness, and love. He whimpers from exposure to cold, and she tucks him into velvet warmth. He quiets, and I know he is smiling. She gives the best hugs.

Of all the ones she has loved: the best friend for sixteen years; then the one she picked from frisky litter; now this one, this music in winter, ebony hair dancing on the white snow. And now we’re given these six treasures of the frost. Black and chocolate, with marshmallow smudges, they squirm and nuzzle and grunt happy in the red light.

How many male? How many female? How will we give them all away? But for now we just enjoy. We listen to their rumbled baby talk. We giggle and exclaim and laugh. We oooh and aaah at the miracle. We shake our amused heads to think of the sire, running eighteen miles through ditch and coulee and fence to visit—five times he came, and now, this.

We marvel at life in the cold. Then we must leave, over the yard on hopping toe, scurrying into warmth of house and fireplace and homespun quilt. We know mother and pups will be safe overnight. God made it so.

And I think I see a twinkle of heaven’s smile in the setting sun over the shed. Here, in the bleakness of our shivering winter, in the deepest part of our half-year cold spell, He makes life. This pup-now-mother tries our patience with her bounding energy, stubborn defiance, and whacking tail. But He gave her life, and made her bear life.

And doesn’t He do the same for us? Calling, catching, stroking, taming us again and again, just because He likes to have us near? He could leave us wild and devilish, but He comes and finds us, and woos us into the warmth of His embrace.

And I wonder what I’ve missed out on, all these years of not being kitten tamer or dog trainer? And I think she, the one with the scars, has more pleasure than I can imagine in this new life.

So does He, the One with our scars in His hands.

Last dance in the lamplight

Last dance in the lamplight

Impeccable quiet, wind calmed to dreamy hum, sun spreading her arms wide, twirling one last, slow pirouette on the hand of earth’s axis. The fabric of her misty dress floats on the air, organza shimmering in the lamplight of the day’s final dance.

The music fades, just the reverberation of bow to string remains. All is hushing, aching, breathing deep and wistful, falling mesmerized in the moment’s beauty.

We glide on the setting sigh, wheels hushing on snow’s rich carpet. Diamonds glitter on every side, the cold air is sweet, and all feels brilliant, deliciously haunted.

So we travel on, somewhere before us gemmed dust gusts into air, dancing, blurring the air like bridal rice, beckoning us to follow. The vehicle ahead passes our corner without a glance, but we slow down. Now, instead of bashful sideways glances towards her peerless face, we turn to look at the sun, and soar in her smile the last five minutes of our journey.

Past the colony, whose lights hem in the vastness of our nights, and dim in the brilliance of sunrise.

Past the dance hall of generations past, with plank walls and broken windows and stripped floor testifying to the community once spawned in it.

Past the last green electrical box buried in ditch’s drift, we drive. And it rises into the setting sun, the homestead, nurtured, tilled, planted, painted, tinned, and trimmed with loving hands.

Sun kisses it goodnight, begging for more time, wishing for one more dance, shedding silent tear for the beauty she must surrender to night’s grasp. But we smile, our own hearts hurting; we sigh, waiting to sing in the warmth of summer’s air; we turn our gaze from heaven to the golden windows of home. Inside, heaven’s echoes reverberate from the walls and windows and floors in the hearts of redeemed people.

We light our fire, quieting our souls in its subdued light, it’s mellow heat, it’s promise of safekeeping till dawn.

And we are home, journeying to our real home, dancing in the echoed light while it is here, till we are swept into grander brilliance, and the smile and warm embrace of our Creator.