when you realize you are being carried

A letter to my husband on around Valentine's Day:



I'm remembering you today, honey.  Remembering you as the theme of romantic love bursts in upon us from the Hallmark in our hand and dear Wal-Mart herself decked out in pink.

I remember when we first got married.

That church where you worked, stayed up late at lock-ins with their youth and shivered in that freezing little office on the street side, they threw us a shower, remember?  And at that shower, along with the embroidered towels and pyrex dishes, we received a black and gold plaque.  It was the Footprints poem.

And we hung it on the wall of our small apartment, and thought well of those who loved and gave.  But we didn't read it very much, did we?  We figured we'd read that poem so many times, we knew it by heart.

Or at least by mind.

We have left many footprints of our own these past 14 years.  I know sometimes it seems like we've made forty years worth of laps through the desert, wandering.  Always wandering.  Still hoping to find, but never quite sure we've made it into that promised land.  And so we journey on.

Some days, when I take my walk in the morning, I think of you, driving your little white company truck all over God's green earth (or at least all over the state of Illinois).  I think of what the intensity of the wind, as it whips through prairie flatlands mostly empty from last year's harvest, must feel like when you're driving roads that run north-south, like the road on which I walk.  Because I can feel its force, bare nose and eyes biting, as I step, step, step.  And it frisks me with a great violence.

Then I turn around.

On the way back, the wind pushes me so hard with its gusts I can hardly keep pace.  Assaulted from both directions.

Sometimes I wonder if you can feel it in that truck.  Or if you feel that way in your heart.  Like God, who calls Himself wind, beats you up one direction and then pushes you over when you turn around to go back.  And just when you think you can walk east-west, well, that Wind, He changes direction.  And you are ravaged all over again.

Some days I see it in your eyes.

Staring at your feet, examining the single set of footprints that stretch out behind you.

You feel ravaged.

But maybe the things we think we know are not always what we really know.  And maybe we need to take a trip this February, back to our honeymoon cottage with that black and gold plaque on the wall.  We need to stand there teary and tired and let those words sink into us with all the newness of things once heard, but never really known.

And we need to look behind us, not with questions in our eyes, but with a quiet peace.

For even if we can't see it now, through this dim glass fogged with our own breath,

We will see it someday --

One set of footprints doesn't mean we're alone,

It means we're carried. 

still counting . . .

~ he looks at me, as dinnertime wanes, and holds out his arms, "hold me, mom."
i put down the ginormous spoonful i'm about to cram put into his sister's only-partly-willing-mouth (much to her relief), and grab the jewel this opportunity turns out to be.  because at three, mostly it's "i don't need help" and "i can do that myself" and, especially this one, "no kissing!"

~ she tells me a story, through bites of taco soup.  crunching loudly on those decadent tortilla chips drizzled with melted cheese.  and it's about a family, "like us," she says, "kind of rich-ish/poor-ish."  and i smile.  because i know what she means.

~ wringing my hands together and laughing mischievous as i send a surprise book to a friend far away.  knowing she'll love it.

~ how the destination truly is in the journey itself.  and how this flower blooms in my heart as i savor these moments with my children, not hurrying them from one activity to the next, missing all the life that happens in between, but slowing and sipping the cup of now.  the one that overflows.

~ laughter at the breakfast table.  how good it feels to stretch out that smile for a new day.

~ the way he lingers in the door way.  a pink, crocheted smidgen of a blanket draped over his head, rubbing its worn edges on his cheek, sucking on his binkie.  and he looks at me.  like there's nothing else on earth to see.

~ choosing to be an artist.  not a mathmetician.

“Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.” (Chesterton)

and loving a God who is not only Rock, but Wind, Water, Fire, and all manner of things unpredictable and flowing.  because He is Living.

~ learning how to speak of an "encounter with Love so great that you can’t receive it without letting go of everything else, including your life, your will, your way."  from this remarkable post.

~ the family that bears the name of God.  though so diverse, yet still, our solidarity remains.  though persecuted (mostly by each other), the scars make us strong.  though so broken, yet so beautiful.



Linking with Rachel, Ann, Create with Joy, Heather, Beth, Jennifer, and Laura.
And with Emily -- whose lovely writing community writes today on LOVE.