be back soon...

Steve has the week off work! Yay! This little blogito is going on breakito!

assurance

{A moss covered plum tree dips blushing blossoms outside our picture window.}


A couple of things have been needling me since I shared the story of my faith in crisis (here). There is, as there always is, a broader scope to the story but things can only be written by bits, as I have time and brain space. Grace transformed me during that time in a way that eludes my attempts to tell. In retrospect, I view the timing of that spiritual free fall as His kindness because it was during a season of safety, when Caleb was still well and before stronger torrents. That slippery mire of despair and doubt His hand rescued me from? Well, it was over. Settled. Not that I wouldn't ,or don't, wrestle with trusting Him but it was as if He reassured my spirit with a rainbow of promise that I would never again be at that place of extreme doubt. No matter how dark the valley, how crippling the hardship, I would not suffer such disbelief. Not because I am faithful, but because He is. And throughout Caleb's great suffering, in my grief, and amidst all other trials, faith remains. God is profoundly good.


In a different post I wrote that He does not give us a stone for bread as we ask of Him. When the answer feels and seems to me very much a stone, I can know there is a more real knowledge that Christ Himself is my bread. He answers with Himself. Poured out, broken, and risen. This is how the gospel goes deeper and deeper into my soul. From impossible stone to living Bread. No pat answer, but a Person. I AM. I don't need to understand, I worship. His beauty, so ravishing, makes even rocks cry out.

peace

Grandpa was in the Pacific Theater in WWII and received a Silver Star and two Bronze Stars. For twenty five years, he coached varsity basketball at Northern Arizona State University while raising my dad and his sister, Patty. After my grandmother passed away, he met Sonya, his darling wife, at the mailbox (we had fun teasing them about this) and she made his last years sparkle with her delightful humor and warmth.

There was brief recognition as my parents held his hand and sat with him Saturday afternoon. For the last three days and nights, my dad stayed at his side, reading, praying and gently talking of life... In the night, he slipped away...

There is everything and nothing to say. What peace that all things are in God's hands.

meeting Emily...

"Who are all these wonderful people in your life?" inquired a new friend the other day. I had to smile. It's true! The frosting of my life is thick, rich friendship. Like a crown of wild flowers, each one is an interwoven story of grace.

Kindly indulge a little reminiscing story then, as I tell of how I met my friend Emily over fifteen (FIFTEEN!) years ago...

It was a meeting of hearts. My mom still claims the credit, and I won't disagree for, indeed, as mothers always are, she was perfectly right. She met Mark and Emily, this "cute couple" on Sunday morning, after their class had wrapped up and a mingling handful gathered around my parents, the missionaries to Russia now home for their grandson's (Caleb's) precarious birth. They introduced themselves and bantered about missions a bit, about Emily's sister, Michelle, who was then in Nepal, also with TEAM (their mission organization). Mom promptly decided to inquire if they had dinner plans. She's emphatic that her match making decision was, in fact, immediate -- before a word was spoken.

Plopping her purse and then herself on the couch, Mom cheerfully (and cheekily) announced that we would be having dinner guests and I might as well not give her that look because she simply knew we would be fast friends. She had a feeling.

Emily surprised herself by tearing up while helping to set the table. Not because our table was grand but the reverse, in its simplicity. Having married and moved from Colorado six months prior, life in Arizona (well, in Scottsdale, an affluent city where they attended church) so far hadn't remotely resembled the nourishing, "earthy" home culture she'd left behind. A pot of white chili and corn bread centered our old oak table like the yellow of a daisy. Something there, amidst honest food and conversation strummed familiar and lovely tears sprung to her eyes. What I adored (and recognized) was that Emily did not hide them but rather expressed her thought and allowed us to enter her feeling. I loved her instantly from the heart. I glanced at my mom. How do mothers do that? That evening we laughed, passed the honey, shared our sweet baby boy's story, passed the butter, learned about their families and ladled more than bowl and belly to the brim.

Lord God of us

"Were our mouths were filled with a singing like the sea, and our tongues awash with song, as waves-countless, and our lips to lauding, as the skies are wide, and our eyes illumined like the sun and the moon, and our hands spread out like the eagles of heaven, and our feet as fleet as fawns. Still, we would not suffice in thanking you, lord God of us and God of our fathers, in blessing your name for even one of a thousand, thousand, from the thousands of thousands and the ten thousands of ten thousands of times you did good turns for our fathers and for us". (Excerpt from The New American Haggadah)

Haggadah means telling --the story of the Exodus that is read aloud every year at the Passover to commemorate the Israelites delivery from slavery.