Last night?  I sat around the table with my kids, those in town.  It’s Thanksgiving today and they are going to be with their father so I took last night to celebrate.  My boys, all deep voiced and able to pick me up and carry me, all together for the first time since summer.  They aren’t perfect but they’re mine and I love them fierce.  My girl, China princess, is the only one of my three girls still living near and I marvel at her ladylikeness, her grace.  I look around the table and tell God silently in my head how much I love them.  How much I love Him for creating this family who’ve held together sometimes by cords that threatened to break.  And I am on the moon happy just to be in the same room with them, much less be their mama.  I look across the table at the boy who isn’t mine, all spilled milk 13 and silly, and smile at him, love him, for his mama in heaven. He puts his hand on mine and looks at me and I am honored for it. I get up and go find our young server and ask her about the history of the building and use the time to ask her about her, to wish her a happy holiday.  To brush up, even for a minute, next to another heart and let them be seen.  That’s important to me.

My heart felt pridefully sad when check time came around.  I couldn’t afford to pay for them all this time.  I hated the way it felt, the way it looked.  I would give my kids every single thing I had, except that I keep breathing and so I have to eat and keep warm; except my girl has been given a chance this year with school that still makes me shake my head.  I know she’s supposed to be there?  I just can’t figure out how He’s going to pay for the whole year…..and beyond.  And then there’s Christmas and then there’s my granddaughter’s arrival coming soon….. did I just say granddaughter ??….. and I so want to fly there.  But I’m not sure I can.

That list of “and then’s”?  I’m ok with those.  It keeps me in a “heavenly tension” of dependence on Who my Provider really is in comparison to what I see with my earthly eyes.  It causes me to let Him set my pace, create my agenda, write my adventure, hold my hand up and lay down whatever I think I need and watch him weave into me His desires for my heart.  My price of lack has given me an eternal bullseye.  You can’t buy me away from that.

So when the money gets low, I look for ways to love that nurture the heart.  I speak words so there’s no mistake.  I do laundry for one, send a check to another,treat one to lunch out.  I take the phone call and listen to the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory.  I pray in the middle of the night.  I jump ready to be there when I hear their voices.

There’s a quote from 700 Sundays,  written by Billy Crystal.  It makes me cry harder than I can see every time I read it.  It peels back the skin on my heart.  It gets it right.

“About a year before my mom passed away, it was a Saturday night in L.A., very late, around 12:45 a.m……the phone rings and I panic because when you’re a Jew and the phone rings late at night it usually means somebody is dead.  Or worse; they want money.  But it’s mom calling.
“Mom?  You okay?”
“Yes.  I’m fine, dear.”
“But Mom, it’s 3:30 in the morning there”
“I know.  I just wanted to hear your voice.  That’s all.  I woke up your brothers too, but I wanted to hear your voice.”
“But…you’re okay?”
“Yeah.  I just…..couldn’t sleep.  I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”
Her honesty was disarming.  “Oh.  really…”  I said softly.  “Why can’t you sleep?”
“Oh, I’m listening for you boys.”
I knew exactly what she meant.  The cry in the middle of the night, the nightmares, the fevers, the “pirates” in the room.  Then they get older and it’s the sound of their cars pulling up in the driveway, keys jingling in the front door lock, just so that you know that they’re home safe.  She was 85 years old now, alone in the house, her sons scattered across the country, but she was listening for us.”

I’m not the president of anything, the business woman with pointy shoes and blazers, the one who screams talented or beautiful?  I’m not the one who makes the men want to slay dragons or the women want to be me?   But this much I am……the daughter of a King.  And out of that place, I can love.  To the moon.  And back again.

I went to bed early because I love to rise early.  That’s why I’m awake and writing now.  It’s not because of angst or anything amiss.  It’s just who I am and what I do.  The end of the year is now fully in sight and the proverbial light is at the end of the tunnel of 2015.  The thing is, it’s just a page on the calendar.  There’s no magic in changing year numbers.  We’re one square away from the day before.  But somehow we hang our hopes or regrets on this manufactured sense of “new” and by mid winter we find nothing’s necessarily changed.  Unless we want it to.

  And so, it becomes, not a matter of a newly packaged year, but a new will.  Change can happen on any given Tuesday in July without having to wait until January next.  Choice is the catalyst to exchange truth for a lie; first choice for second best or not at all then, thank you; honesty for hiding; risk for running; moving for stuck; clarity for muddy waters, purity for compromise; new for old.

It can be baby steps?  But forward is forward; not grinding gears.  Not plowing fallow ground over and over.  It’s planting new bulbs.  It’s breathing new air.  It’s buying the ticket and getting on the bus.  And the good news is?  You don’t have to wait until January 1st.  The other good news is, it’s never too late.

Step away from the calendar.

In the words of my favorite Man…..”Today is the day….”- Jesus

I’ve used my Saturday time to visit my mama, to shop for people physically unable to get out,  to restock my own pantry shelves, fold the laundry and speak to friends experiencing life in a big way today, mulling over how to live it with them.  I’m grateful for those talks.  What they go through, I go through with them and they’ve been there for me as well.  It makes a difference, who we sit with in this life.  I can stand next to many people.  But those I take in and linger with?  They make my bones stronger.  And it seems God has being adding extra whipped cream these days with well placed and appointed women that I can grow with.  Women not afraid to sit across from me and challenge me and invite me into their own circle; to speak and be spoken into.  I thrive on that.

So the girl is curled up in her bed, homeworking.  And I am keeping company with Beth Moore, a favorite bible teacher, and my cup of coffee.  She and Christine Caine?  I like them.  They are strong in their faith and bold in their words when it counts.  They are my heroes.  They are women, both with a messy past, who have been put where they are by the hand of their Creator.  They live lovely, honorable lives.  They love their husbands well.  They carry themselves with dignity, dress with beauty that says “I’m worth listening to.”  They are women who show the imprint of the One they follow.

These women have a voice, strong and sure, and something to say with it.  The past few weeks have been a garden tilling for me,, stepping out of a lifelong box and speaking when it pounded in my chest to do so.  He’s had me in a greenhouse these past few years, teaching me how to live brave and honest.  I’ve felt myself begin to bloom new shoots that are unfamiliar to me.  My little plant legs wobble some days and it’s easier for me to find my voice in print.  But here lately? I feel His hand on my back pushing me forward, straining for a prize I’ve yet to fully understand.  It fits like new shoes and I put bandaids on the blisters formed and don’t trust the blister pain for truth.

She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue-Proverbs 31:26, Beth reminds me.  I stop and sprinkle that into my heart soil like fertilizer.  This is the boldness I crave.  Uncompromising; “put in” with kindness that’s neither patronizing, nor does it flinch.  I pour my second cup of coffee and sit by the window to watch the rain for a few minutes.  To let the words sink in and not rush off too quick.  He’s calling me to speak.  I can sense it.  I find a fingernail file to keep in my purse, to remind me to allow Him to file off fear and insecurity that wears itself ragged and covers up my beauty.  I spit that out haltingly, “my beauty”.  I know what I mean.  I know what He means.  Father?  I say to the raindrops on my window.  Make my kindness, Your kindness.  My wisdom, Your wisdom.  Make it beautiful on me.