If I were a blade of grass on a spring morning, just right before Easter, I’d be this one. I looked out my window early today and recognized myself and grabbed my beat up, cracked screen phone to go capture it.
I snapped several angles, all bent down in the wet grass and shivered cold in my jammies, sweater over them quick so I wouldn’t miss the sun ray. Hurry, I said to myself. I have to go clean a house today. No, I answered back to me. I get to. I told myself to be quiet, to stop tricking my mind into positive thinking, when I didn’t always feel so positive. Be real. Be real, I silently yelled at myself. All the while, I’m snapping pictures of a single blade of grass, because, for some reason, I care about it.
I closed the door behind me, and went back into my kitchen and rewarmed my coffee for the too many timeth, and sat down to edit the picture. As I did, I clicked on Instagram and there it was. A picture. Better than mine. Much better. Because I’m no photographer and I don’t have a real camera and who do I think I am posting anything at all? For some reason, though, the blade of grass begged my attention and I pulled it up on my screen and stared at it hard. It was the drop of dew that got to me. It was the smile of God. It was the mark His fingerprint had left on it; on me. I decided to string words together and hang them up around the picture. To decorate it with what He’d whispered to me. Months have come and gone in my life; months of learning that to be not chosen by someone or for something? Is to be hurt. To be hurt? Is to be alive. To be alive? Means purpose. And I, in this sea of grass world, still have a dew drop on my head that He’s put there and His light has chosen me, to bounce off of me, His reflection. It’s not at the expense of others. But for them, with them. It’s a tiny lighthouse, giving me just enough light, the light I need for the moment to trust Him for the light I’ll need for the next moment. And in the process, it creates a circle of light for the grass around me.
Today I will go to someone’s house and kneel to clean around their toilet because their legs don’t work so well anymore and they can’t. I will shop for their groceries because I am able to do so without a walker. I do it for pay so I am not a saint. But I recognize His provision for me, His provision for them by layering our lives over one another. I will come home and shower in clean water and put on something pretty and sit beside a young man and his family from school that have sown into me and my girl. They invited us to come sing with them; to celebrate what’s been done for us. To be reminded. Afterwards, I will go to my school and dust off where invisible dirt has landed, vacuum up little moons of white paper that have fallen out of hold punchers all week. I’ll take a walk with my girl in the park nearby. Probably take another picture or two with my silly little phone. Because He put that joy in me that notices His world.
And through it all, I will need to be reminded, to constantly be prodded, to not give up or give in. Because I am so prone to wilt, to bruise, to gasp tired. That’s why. That is why this picture captured me. Because sometimes that dew is tears cried private and those rays warm my feet to take the next step. That…it’s not all bad to be a single blade of grass at the base of a toilet. It may be that’s exactly where He’s shining on me.
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