Extraordinary Life

•

We went for a walk, my niece, the dog, two boys on bikes, and me.

The worms were out, scattered across the sparkling, just-rained-on driveway like the longest pink eraser shavings you've ever seen.

We walked, and they curled and uncurled themselves in the sun, seeming to have come from nowhere and with nowhere to go.

Then I saw all the little trails behind them, crissing and crossing over the packed gravel.

Worm trails say: Live above reproach!

A labyrinth of the past. A record of paths intersected.

And I realized that's how my own past looks, crissed and crossed and scattered and directed by the steps and the influence of others. ...continue reading →

• 1 Comment

•

Sometimes what makes life extraordinary is the pure craziness of it. And it's definitely a crazy world I've entered.....

...one of camping out in a guest house till the real house is livable
...one of sharing tight quarters and long days and lack of sleep
...one of open skies and beautiful country just waiting to be explored
...one of one-eyed cats and bear-like dogs
...one of grubby hands holding mine
...one of washing plastic spoons and plastic bowls so they can be used countless times even though they're disposable
...one of drinking tea in my pjs and spending some time with God after everyone else is gone to bed
...one of covering my head with a little boy's long-sleeved shirt since I forgot a bandanna ...continue reading →

• 1 Comment

•

Hope. A longing for and a looking toward something beyond every obstacle there may be against it. A light in the face of darkness. A relentless necessity without which despair would settle in irrevocably.

We need hope. There is nothing to live for without it. Good days would be only that, if even that, and bad days would be so black we might never overcome them without hope to help us find the light again.

Hope gives us a reason to press on. It whispers of change, of better tomorrows. It fuels the strength that lifts weary feet again and again, even through much pain and difficulty. Hope is beautiful, even when it beats helplessly against its obstacle as a bird against the glass. Hope is strong, even when its wings are shredded and night falls before it. Hope is enduring. It is relentless.

Always it is beckoning us forward. ...continue reading →

•

Why do God's people, formed in His image and indwelt of His Spirit, make mistakes? Why does He let them? Does He not realize the pain that failure inflicts upon them? Could He not better reveal His glory through them by making them perfect little specimens of Him?

There's one obvious answer, that being that in creating us in His image He gave us free will, the ability to choose. Even if we choose to do what's right, we are still human. And no matter how hard they try, humans fail. Trying doesn't always mean succeeding. Resolve can vanish in a moment, and before we know it, the tears are falling over an action that looked good at the time but revealed its true and faded colors later.

So God's people fail because in all reality they can't help it. But could there be a purpose behind our failures? A greater purpose that makes even the worst mistakes turn the portrait of life into something raw and beautiful and, yes, even glorious?

Perhaps while we are yet wallowing in our fallenness, the Father is whispering to us to look higher. . . ...continue reading →

• 1 Comment

•

Perhaps it's disrespectful to be sitting out here eating Jelly Bellies and contemplating life on Mary Ann McTimmond's grave. If it is, and if she would have minded in a former life, I know she doesn't mind now. She, and likely those she influenced, has been dead and buried longer than I or my parents or my grandparents have been alive.

In a sense, she doesn't matter anymore. All she's left behind her, to me who never knew her, is a mossy, faded gravestone and a story that ended too soon. She was only twenty seven when she died. Four years older than me.

I wonder if she knew she was going to die, if it was some kind of long illness that took her. I wonder if she feared death. Or perhaps she looked forward to seeing again her infant son whom she'd held and loved for only a day before he was taken from her. She was twenty five then. Two years older than me. Too young to lose a child. ...continue reading →