Author: Tamara Belanger (Page 13 of 74)

See that tree there?  All blurry and leaning to one side rained on soggy and heavy?  That’d be me after today.  All joy living that I blogged about this morning?  Drained out of my flat this afternoon.  I was plum tired physically.  That made the filter for interactions sticky and muddy and they got caught and pulled at my head and my heart till they were both frayed.  I found myself disappointed in the actions of some, frustrated with others, sluggish in my spirit and flustered at the wind.  I just wanted to go home and sleep, mainly.

My friend and I, we talked cartoon animated early this morning before it all began.  We were eager to live this joy, to find out what it looked like on us, how our Creator meant for us to wear it and walk it out.  We listened and understood each other, barely using words and then walked into the ring to duke out life.  That’s where I found myself picking up the weights and flexing my pitiful muscles; the “love keeps no record of wrongs, does not take offense easily, sees the best in others, bears up, fadeless under all circumstances….”; those muscles.  Truth be told, they strained stringy and stretched out.  “You look like you’re not in a very good mood,” came the young voice of one in the school store.  It rubbed like a carpet burn.   “Yeah.  No.  No, I guess not.  I’m just tired.”  But I saw the distance it created written on their face.  They’d gotten used to my smile and the bin was empty today.

I sat parked in my car and looked out the windshield at this water color tree and snapped a picture quick.  How quickly expectations,  small irritations, being human can gouge at our beginning of the day blank slate.  I hum to myself words that resonate with me:

So take up what we’ve been given
Welcome the edge of our days
Hemmed in by sunrise and sunset
By our youth and by our age
Thank God for our dependence
Here’s to our chasm of need
And how it binds us together
In faith and vulnerability

This chasm of need, this vulnerable weakness that binds us to each other and reminds us we’re just us, dependent on our God for breath and grace with each other and rest that makes it possible to smile when I feel like a wet tree.

Last night, just before I pulled the chain on the antique lamp just above my head my friend pushed a question through the airwaves at me.  It wandered through the catacombs of my brain while I slept and nudged me awake early, still perched.  “How is one to focus on being truly joyful in life when others say that ones life is to be localized? To be completely focused on “the mission” God has given all of us?”  I answered quick off my head and then fell asleep.  When I woke up and looked around the dark room, I found the question looking at me.  And then I asked myself, “What does localized mean?”  But first, coffee.

“Limit, restrict, confine, contain, concentrate, circumscribe.”  That sounded heavy, harsh, burdensome.  No playing in puddles in the rain.  I needed more coffee.  Circumscribe?  I came back to my computer, steaming coffee rising in my face.  “To draw a figure around another, touching it at points, but not cutting it.”  Ah, there it was.  There came the answer flooding into my mind.   If we are “localized”….we need to determine what we are localized for.

As my mind goes, I have helicopter thoughts, one trail swirling into another and before you know it,  I’m in a forest of fabulous pontificating.  My phone dinged around midnight, reminding me to silence it, rather like being woken up in a hospital to take your sleeping pill,  but by then?  I was awake and flying in my helicopter.  I wrapped myself up in warm fluffy purple and padded into my kitchen, quiet and content, not fighting against the wakefulness.  These times?  They’ve become a gift to me; uncluttered, settling.

I briefly turned on public television and watched A Year in Space with astronaut Scott Kelly, which made me wonder how his brother’s wife, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was doing, after being shot in the head 4 years back, which sent me to google.  She has made huge strides, it turns out, and the question was asked.  Do you find yourself still pushing to get back the ‘old Gabby’?  There was a pause.  “The new Gabby,” and it cut to a video clip of her walking with a cane, her right side much weaker than her left.  But her humor, her push forward perspective on point.  And naturally (??) , from there I found an interview with singer Linda Ronstadt talking about her life after parkinson’s disease and how it has silenced her career.  “I just don’t have the colors in my paintbox anymore.”  And there she had me.  What captivating words.

The world is full of color.  So are people.  So are you.  The thing is, a paintbox has just so much color in it.  The palette is limited.  And so is your time.  There will be the day when the colors can’t quite be found anymore like before, when your hand can’t hold the brush steady.   Seize hold now, while the rainbow is available, even those mixed with the dark rain.  Paint it true and honest, paint it noble and blend it willing with others.   But paint.

I pass out candy to kids at school.  All colors.  It is a small token, full of sugar.  I get that.  But yesterday, one boy came back to me.  “Some kid told me you give me things because you feel bad for me.”  The sun went down in the room for a minute.  No.  I do it because I love you.  Because I want to encourage you to paint your canvas while you can.  Because I don’t want you to put your brush down too soon.  I give you things because that’s me…..painting my own picture and hoping you’ll paint yours back.

“People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and its ends, but to me it’s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors. Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darknesses.”–Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Coloris Corripiunt!  Seize the color!