I want to help.  I really, really do.  It makes my heart happy and I sing when I help.  In fact, I’m probably at my happiest when I am helping.  I’ve always seen myself as sort of a supporting beam.  I look for ways to quietly slip into the structure and hold up it’s arms; figuratively speaking, of course.  The “structures’ are people that cross my path.  So, this time I have in Denver with my girl and her little just made family, I treasure as a time to mama in little ways that I think of.

Today, I was given the task of making lactation cookies.  Don’t ask.  It’s what they’re called.  No breast milk was harmed in the making of these delectables.  However, I found myself in a kitchen I was not familiar with, using ingredients I’d never heard of with a Kitchen Aid mixer, a contraption that I’ve only used one other time.  To top it off,  I had to find the recipe on Pinterest.  I don’t navigate internet too terribly genius.  Because I don’t.  That is why.  So, to begin with, I clicked on the wrong recipe.  I was thrilled to have clicked on anything.  But it turned out to be the incorrect choice.  So, I had to start over.

By the time it was over, I’d knocked the darling little hanging measuring cups off the wall, forgot to anchor down the Kitchen Aid bowl and…..well, that didn’t go well, lathered myself in gluten free flour and worked myself into a sweaty fret trying to find everything I needed.  I was frustrated and felt stupid.  Seriously.  I know how to cook.  What is my problem?  When my daughter came into the kitchen and noticed I’d made the wrong recipe I felt like I’d let her down.  And it was then that I realized, I had been trying.  Trying really hard to be good enough.  To make them glad I had been invited to come stay with them.  To help.  Trying to be valuable.

I don’t handle letting people down well.  When I sense that I have, it wells up in me like a panic volcano.  I start to tremor and look around for somewhere to run and hide.  I want to help.  I want to matter.  I want to be good.  And I didn’t do it right. I wipe my hands on my dishrag and look around close to tears.  And then feel stupid for the tears.  Why can’t I ever grow up in this one?  I take a deep breath and start over, pulling out the Kitchen Aid of Fear and strange ingredients.  I have to reach out and take grace for myself, whether it’s offered or not.  I have to run to Grace Himself and give Him all my failed cookies, my scary Kitchen Aids, my unfamiliar places and bumbling efforts.  When I can hold that grace in my hands?  Then I have some to give away.

In the end, we have two sets of cookies now.  One lactating, one non lactating.  The kitchen is clean and the evening lamps are glowing as the sun sets.  It’s my last night here.  Helping.  I’ve wrapped my head around being a Nana.  I’ve slow danced with her and talked about cutting and cooking and pasting construction paper one day.  And when she feels like she’s let someone down.  I’ll hug her close  and tell her I know exactly how she feels.  And give her a cookie I made from Pinterest.  I’ll call it the Grace Cookie.

I’m on my way to Denver, to meet the new love of my life; Beatrice Haven Hollinger.  I’m taking an airplane. I haven’t been on an airplane in over a year and I can taste excitement like an egg sandwich on sourdough with mustard.  In other words, it’s a pungent and savory feeling.  It’d be easier, I think to myself in line , if public nudity was legal in the airport.  Then we could all dress after security.  Oh.  Wait.  We do that now. A young man told me I was beautiful.  He was operating the full body scan so he may have meant internal beauty.  I don’t know.  I grab my things and head to the large waiting area and settle in.

 It always strikes me to look around and notice the others nearby, getting ready to board the same plane as me.  It occurs to me, if something happened, how quickly we would go from total strangers to dependence on one another.  Adversity does that.  I grab my pen and reach for paper to capture these thoughts writing themselves in my head.  I smile when a “love note” from my girl stayed at home falls out of my book.  Gosh, I love her.

People flying to Denver have a look about them, all woodsy and hiking bootish.  Like they’ll live off the land even in the plane.  Men with graying pony tails and stubbly beards.  I check to see if the women have stubble also.  No.  But there is a certain rusticity to them.  It’s like a people patina.  The clothing 20 somethings can wear and still look good, I note wryly, is very different than a 50 something. That screaming baby is off to a good start, I think.  Please don’t sit by me, please don’t sit by me.  Please don’t. Cute guys never sit by me on an airplane.  Never.  That baby does though.  How old is that kid anyway?  Can you give birth at the airport and then just get right on a plane??

The airport voice begins over the loudspeaker.  Two observations concerning announcements; “It’ll be just another ten minutes.”  That is a lie.  They mean 20.  It’s like football game time.  “There’s an additional charge for that.”  They could be referring to anything from a carry on bag to the air that you plan on breathing while in flight.

As I board the plane, I notice a sign above our heads. “Uneven Surface”.  I think how that should be posted at the end of every birth canal.  Sort of airport speak for “In this world you will have tribulation.”  I think it’d be fair warning.  I settle into the land of Seat 8F and the pilot begins giving us our life saving instructions at the monotone speed similar to the disclaimer on an infomercial.  I did manage to make out that our cabin “will be pressurized this morning”, said in a tone that indicated there may have been other arrangements.

Let’s visit the topic of airplane etiquette.   Me being me, usually assume in any situation, that my breathing alone may be enough to bother you.  So, on a plane?  I find myself in my window seat sequestered next to a man who hit the snooze button on seat impact.  I want desperately to read but it’s dark and I don’t want to turn on the overhead light which is, conveniently, located over his head.  No problem, I think.  It’ll be light soon.  Until I remember that we are traveling west and it won’t be light until we land.  So, I try and read People magazine through the braille method.  Don’t judge.  Don’t you even judge.  I also brought my bible and a Beth Moore devotional.  So, I’m entitled to brain dribble.  A bell rings in the cabin, sounding suspiciously like a door bell.  I so want to yell out into the dark cabin, “Will someone answer the door?”

Along comes the flight attendant with the beverage cart.  I ask for coffee and trail mix, thinking right highly of myself for my healthy choice.  It’s spicy, she warns me.  So, here is where I find myself trying to ease a rice crispy treat out of a wrapper it’s clinging to like a baby refusing to be born and the wrapper?  It’s making sounds louder than a plane engine as I paw at it panicked to make it stop and not wake sleeping man.  I consider waking him to apologize.  I swallow the last drop of my coffee and suddenly remember my bathroom anxiety on a plane.  I begin praying fervently for a one time miracle where the liquid in my bladder will just miraculously disappear.  I silently curse sleeping man’s slumber skills and the large smoothie I drank this morning.

The world is a glittering map from the air and I think what a privilege it is to be viewing it from God’s footstool.  I think about how, at the first blush of my girls’ pregnancy I reminded God that if He wanted me there in Denver, He’d have to do His thing.  I had no money for the likes of such an adventure.  I look look out the plane window.  “You did this, Father,” I whisper.  “My times are in Your hands.”  What a thing to have on the first day of a new year.  He has, indeed, made me glad

Sometimes I hear a word or a phrase and it jumps onto the canvas of my mind and paints a picture. This phrase, this “seller of purple” captivated me.  What kind of woman gets that kind of description? Purple was the color of my notebook paper when I was 12,  I was enthralled that my best friend got to live in a house whose shutters were actually purple!  Had I been Dorothy, I’d have rather had purple slippers to wish me back home. It was the color of choice for times when I wanted to feel especially lovely. But, to garner a place in history as a seller off purple;  what did that mean?

Her name was Lydia and she was from a village in, what is now, Turkey,  known for it’s dye works.  They produced the color purple in her region, which was extremely difficult to create and hard to come by.  Because of this, the dye was expensive and largely available only to the wealthy or persons of status.  Lydia decided to set up her own shop in a bustling river town, far from where she lived..  She was on her own, with her own business and known to the most important people in the area.  It was the year 50 A.D.  Lydia was an uncommon woman for her time.

Being a wealthy, well respected business woman would have left her with little need for anyone or anything.  She was woman, hear her roar.  With all that her position afforded her, though, Lydia was known for being a worshiper of God.  She would frequently gather with the other women in town to pray. One day two traveling evangelists came to her town and walked down to the prayer gathering to talk to the women.  Lydia was there.  She listened intently to what was being said and, that day, she and her entire household became the first christian converts on the continent of Europe.  Afterwards, she opened her home to become a center of hospitality for others seeking to believe.

This seller of purple lived a gutsy life. She left the familiar to seek out her future.  She believed at a time when, to do so, often incurred the wrath of the the people, some of them the very ones she did business with.  She extended the hand of friendship to other women and came alongside them without regard to her own status or theirs.  She took the first step, which required making the choice alone, and her courage bred courage in others.  She held her hand open to life and the Life Giver.

I want to be like this woman, this Lydia,  when I grow up.  I want to give away my cheap fear in exchange for expensive faith; faith that costs me more than I have.  I want to be found among the praying women and listening intently with my soul when truth is spoken.  I want to have the courage to step into the water before it parts, and look back to grab the hands of others.  When my race has been run and those lives I’ve touched have gathered to say goodbye, I want them to say, “Ah yes, she lived a life selling purple!”