a declaration of affirmation
I was up early this morning. There were a hundred and one things to do and I was awake, snuggled down deep under my blankets, trying to calculate the seven things I had time to accomplish and which were the most pressing; my own personal Top Things To Do. One of the things I went about tackling was moving a car seat from one car to the other. I love my car seats. I spent innumerable hours researching them, picking just the right brand, color, all of it. I'm emotionally attached as much to the metal-and-plastic as I am to the crazed and driven person I was in the choosing. That said, I loathe moving them. Every parent does. It's a chore that is just beastly, you end up smelly and sweaty, and when it's o'dark thirty, it's not nice to worry about losing a toe or finger should you allow your mind to wander for even a split second and drop said safety device. My seats are particularly heavy, my sole complaint. As I stepped into the predawn repeating my mantra, "focus Britt, focus and don't drop this" I was engulfed by tiny pink particles that seems to be spun, or rather, spinning sugar. It was as if the sky was trying on bubble gum pink cotton candy, but was fickle and teasing deeper color out of the mixture, settling finally on a stunning coral. I could see it. I kept expecting to be able to stick my tongue out and actually taste the cotton candy, the spun sticky sweetness of my own childhood in the very air around me.
And that's when it slipped from from my subconscious to my lips.
Amen.
I've historically been an early riser and being an athlete helped cement that tendency. There's something mythic about watching the world wake up, the people, the land. all of it. Here I was, perched as our rental is, almost atop what my mother refuses to call 'a hill' because it's simple too steep for that inadequate definition. I stood, breath taken away, imagination completely captured, and I was again reminded that I was, in fact, in full agreement, in firm affirmation with the world around me.
Amen.
Ha Shem, LORD, I agree with everything I see and call it good, just as You did.
Amen.
It was a fleeting moment, the sheer weight of that car seat jerked me back to cruel reality all too quickly. Reality that I am in agreement with very little these days. My body and soul are still groaning, but I, as yet, cannot understand the words behind the sounds, nor can I identify all the bruised and broken places in my soul.
Eugene Peterson, in The Message phrased Romans 8:26-28 so poignantly for me.
"...God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray,
it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us,
making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.
He knows us far better than we
know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition,
and keeps us present before God.
That's why we can be so sure that every
detail in our lives of
love for God is worked into something good."
Maybe it's because I've been pregnant for the better part of the last decade. Maybe it's because I feel something in my bones which I know is so incredibly common and yet so incredibly unique as well, my own quiet, ordinary miracle. Maybe, I just need to believe in impossible things.
I'm battling today, as so very very many other days. I'm battling homesickness and frustration, depression and defeat. I'm battling lessor demons that seem to be much scrappier than their bigger, more ominous counterparts. Loosing faith, belief, God Himself all seem common place. Loosing purpose, community, sanctuary... not so much. I feel today, as I often feel, left without words in a storm, no blanket, no lighted window, no direction. I know I must trek on. A few years ago I was really struck that whatever the reason for embarking on the current trajectory that is my life, I had to be in each step, owning where I stood. I know the journey is a beautiful, holy sojourn. But that doesn't change the loneliness, the cold, the sadness.
After the atomic bombs were dropped on Japanese soil, the Emperor Hirohito, over a crackling radio, called all of Japan to allow the war to end. "The hardships and suffering to which our nation is to be subjected hereafter will be certainly great," he warned. "However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unedurable and suffering what is not sufferable."
This journey of hurt, of wounding, of gut-wrenching sorrow, of "enduring the unedurable" is not unique to me. Having a baby is not unique to me. But each of my babies was their own miracle. And each step of this journey is my own unique, beautiful disaster... pock-marked by spun sugar sunrises and sweet friends at my dinner table.
"... making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans ... and keeps us present before God..."
Amen.
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