I’m sitting on the runway in Denver. An hour late leaving the ground.  I’m. so. tired.  I’m thinking ahead to school in just a few short hours; way too short.  Not how I pictured coming home.  Picturing is a funny business. The image in our heads is like our own little feel good mirage many times.

Recently, I waited for a man to come home from being away.  We greeted him, his family of one and me.  It started out fine enough.  But then the stuff of life creeped in and within minutes father and son were at odds and walked off into the dark, angry and hurt and frustrated with each other; with life.  They left me there in the dark on the porch. Father?  Why am I here?  Why did You put me here?  So, I prayed and sang quietly while they each found what they needed to come back into the light.  I sat under on the steps.  The man sat down beside me and wept tired and sad.  I sat close, not saying words.  Words would have been luggage on his shoulders that he didn’t need.  He put his hand on mine and turned to look at me.  “This wasn’t what I pictured coming home.”  I know, I thought.  Me either.  I hated it for him.  Eventually, I whispered for his boy to come sit between us. And he did.  A silent apology.  That night I’d been put there.  I knew it.  And I stayed.  Committed.

A few weeks later?  Another piece of life blew up.  This time the shrapnel landed in my hair, my eyes, my skin, my heart.  The boy and I exchanged words that felt hot and sharp.  We found ourselves at odds and separated, frustrated and confused.  Only this time?  There was no hand on mine.  No one waiting in the porch light.  No one stayed.  And I was asked to leave.  For good.  Not in so many words.  Just….I turned around to see their backs and the space once made for me had closed up behind them; the gap quickly filled.  “This wasn’t what I pictured.”  Yeah.  Tell me about it.

So, I walk into a year just inhabited a few days in, with no pictures in my head.  I don’t want to be left in my own canvas.  I’ve layed down my brushes and paint.  I’m letting my Creator wipe my hands off. I don’t want anymore “pictures of Egypt”, stories of going backwards.  I don’t have time for splattered paint left for me to clean up by myself.  The Artist is at work and He has wasted no time in using the brightest of colors, slopped big and broad all over my head, my heart, my feet.  I look closer and find a curious thing.  There is a pathway painted right up to where I stand.  It props my door open with a sign.  “Restoration.”

“This won’t be what you’ve pictured, love,” He whispers to me.  I’m okay with that.  🙂  He seems to love to surprise me.

He who began a good work in me, will carry it on to completion-Phillipians 1:6

There are childbirth classes, parenting classes, mothers of preschoolers groups, I found resources on sibling rivalry, setting limits, education, new baby adjustment, mannerschoresaggressionpotty traininghowtotalktoteensgraduationpartyplanning because that’s what life feels like….no punctuation to catch your breath.  The thing is, I couldn’t find that helpful pamphlet on how not to feel all dizzy as you put your hand in the air and wave with a brave smile that you don’t altogether feel when you watch the tail lights of their car leave your driveway.

This month found me sending a daughter off to set sail in the mountains of Colorado, with no job and no definite place to live.  Her sister and brother in law live there but Hannah was still forging her own path.  I swell proud inside that my girl, my lovely soft Cinderella-like girl, caught courage by the tail and formed it into an adventure.  My heart beats steady to hear her put her adventure into the hands of her Creator and ask Him to chart her course.  She called me today, a week from when she left, joy tumbling over onto itself in her words.  She’s found a job, the “perfect job for her” and she’sfoundfriendsandhadlunchwithhersister and….I catch her excitement and wrap myself up in the warmth of watching her story unfold.

On the heels of that, my son, Noah, called.  He’s just settled into his new place in Montana.  The boy who always told me he wanted to live in the mountains someday, finds himself sleeping under his western sky tonight,  quietly satisfied in knowing he made his dream come true.   His voice sounds sure and manly through the phone and his quiet confidence makes me know he will be alright.  I marvel at who he has become and his bravery inspires me to take risks in life; to savor the unexpected more.  He is a person I can admire, and all the more because he is my boy.

I’m reminded of a short story I used to read to my children;  A Christmas Memory, set in the 1930’s about a boy and an elderly woman who is his distant cousin and best friend. They don’t have much money so she gives him a dime to go to the picture show so he can come home and “tell her the stories”.   I find myself now eagerly listening to the “stories” my children call home and tell me.  This business of raising small people to grow up and fly on their own, spins your head right round and squeezes your heart tight in your chest.  And it happensasquicklyasthis.

I savor the yesterdays and miss them for sure; but I don’t live there.  I help them pack and wave brave and breathe in deep as I wipe away the pride that’s spilling down my cheeks.  I cheer loudly when they find their dreams and catch my breath when they unwrap them with me on the phone.  Being a mother of these adventure seekers, these faith filled people who take hold of life leaves me standing in awe.  And now that I have more time to ponder, I’ve found my puctuation!

Oswald Chambers told me this this morning.

“Once the Bible was just so many words to us; “clouds and darkness”.  Then, suddenly the words become spirit and life because Jesus re-speaks them to us when our circumstances make the words new.

The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life- Jesus, John 6:63

Beth Moore taught me this.

Three times a day, Daniel got down on his knees and prayed…Daniel 6:10

Did you know, in Hebrew, the word “prayed” is translated “to limp, as if one sided”?  I found that fascinating.  She then reminded me of something.  When we pray, God doesn’t always provide the sort of help we anticipate, but His method always produced the most glory.

I cherish the quiet times in the morning when the dust and false thinking and tricky emotions that may have settled on me from the day before are wiped clean with Truth.  I am reminded that Jesus words are spirit and life.  May my own words reflect that.  I am, after all an unlikely container of Him.  Trust His forgiveness and covering my sin when I fail.  I am also unnerved, challenged, at the thought of asking God to override anything, anything in me or my agenda that is contrary to His will for me.  That’s a puny sacrifice when I am thinking about the choices or decisions in life on any given day.  It would be one thing were He to have said to my trip to Denver.  But, when it costs or shatters my “should be’s”.  What then?

On this, the third day of a new calendar year, I continue to put less stock in the date on a page, as some sort of artificial “new beginning”.  I more feel Him pressing into my world, my to do lists, my every thought of what I think might happen and sense Him speaking into all of it.

“Will you ‘go out’ in complete surrender to Him until you are not surprised one iota by anything He does because you believe Him to be the God you have always known Him to be when you are nearest to Him?”-Oswald Chambers