Breathing Through

The night passes in five, ten-minute intervals.

I am conscious that I am resting, drifting in and out of dreams and silly head-stuck songs, aware of baby-movement, of womb-tightening that has not stopped for hours.

It is an almost-normal night. There is a full moon. Pete wants to rest early; Piper napped at five, so she is awake. She plays with my hair, sticks her fingers up his nose. She giggles when my fingers find her chin in the dark, and I giggle too, and she giggles again, and we both have the giggles. Pete is grumpy. I cuddle her close.

Soon.

The midwife has been called. She is resting too. I am glad not to disturb her tonight, worried that each contraction will be the last, that I will be embarrassed because I did not know - again.

But I know. It will be soon.

Morning breaks quiet, and still they come.

I eat. I drink. I remember another morning like this, so nervous. Mom and Dad came in the thunderstorm the night before. We slept and woke and waited almost all the next day. And then Piper came, and I was a Mama.

I am not less nervous now.

Pete has left for work early, to take care of some pressing things, while Piper sleeps and labor comes slow. I breathe through as I sit, willing the baby to drop a bit, hoping to hold him soon. He was busy last night.

The pain comes low, insistent, then eases. I surrender to it, last night's shock-shivers lifted. I consider how this pain - of all pains - begs me to my knees; I wonder how I will meet God there today.

I hope it will be today. This can go on for days, they say.

I open my hands, mutely asking His nearness, His entrance into this journey of mine. The tears aren't from the labor. They are longing welling up, vulnerable seeking sufficient.

And I can ask this, for the labor of another mother brought God human into our life. Into our death. To bring Life that is God with us.

The full moon sets; the sun rises through clouds.

I wait for Him.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

An Open Letter to My Husband

"Your desire shall be for your husband..."
- Gen. 3:16

................

It is one of those mornings after days of passing like ships in the night, when thorns and thistles have called you early from my side and ground-curse leaves me longing for the sound of your voice, for just a moment - and another and another for a forever that isn't ours. I would never have you leave.

I am almost without function today; the thought brings helpless tears. How did I ever grow into you so much, how did I come to need you so deeply, to want you like this? Why must even the simple things of getting the breakfast and cuddling with our daughter and touching our son within raise such an ache that I pause in the house that is empty without you and look around for you, even though I know you are not here?

I don't even know when it happened, but I am changed, and now I cannot write or think or work without you in my heart, always just beyond my reach, with too-short evenings and weekends and road trips and time that flies into age - and we'll be old tomorrow, you know. Everything reminds me of you, and I see you almost always, but even the hours we are together are not enough to satiate this compelling, and you know I am not a person who settles easily. I can try to be understanding, submit myself to you, to God-who-ordained-this-desire, to wait and cling and worship - but I can never be okay with this ache for what was meant to be, for what isn't.

I have never desired to rule over you so much as I have wanted you, for you are the one with power over my desire, the one I need to give your heart to me - and I cannot demand it and be satisfied with anything I gain that way. My weak vessel is so, so empty when you are not here, and no matter what I try, I cannot resign myself to this sense of loss, the garden-moments we should have had, had I not in Eve tried to secure God-knowledge for myself, risking - no, securing death for us both and for our children, and for our children's children.

I will never understand this, for the fruit we ate gave no real knowledge of Life, and He knew we needed this incomplete to find that Life in Him, the only Source of it. I almost resent Him, except for His gentleness, mercy that offers redemption and mystery that brings us intimate together as one - just as He is One God, wholly set apart.

And my heart desire is set apart for you, my husband, and I pour me out to you and I don't make enough space for you sometimes in my need, and oh how I ache to know that heart I keep missing - though the more I find, the more of you I miss on days like today, when if I'd just get up and get the raspberries I've been procrastinating on for an hour, I wouldn't have to miss your serving love of me so much.

So I make this letter open, with the ache open and the Garden-wound tearing at me while God-redemption offers Enough that doesn't ever feel enough to this Eve. The words tremble out at first, a lump in my throat, then cascade with my runny-nosed tears (how I hate that!) into my confession of desire that cannot be conquered, no matter what we do.

................

All that to say, I really miss you today, Pete.






(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

When I Grow Old

I want to grow old
as October eases into November into
December and back again into Spring,
gracious in gray, clad in winter's first

white

as a bride wears a dream on her wedding day.

....

I want to find beauty
in windswept snow-ridges
on hands that were smooth and smile
at mirror-face
with unchanged eyes
the same soul peering out,

a little wise
a little joyful
a little seasoned with
some Christmas spice and a bit of blizzard passion

invigorated

like peppermint meeting brisk winter wind in the new year.

....

I want not to die
before breath slows - and stops,
leaving flesh wrapped in allspice,
red earth-petals peeled, hibiscus layer of
fallen dust lingering sweet as kisses for
those I have loved alive, while in death

I live anew in
April fullness, in
summer glory, in
autumn memory, my spirit rising on spring

life-breezes

like a kite in a scented wind embraces the whole sky.

....

I want finally to dwell full alive
in I AM who is

Beginning
and
End
and
Eternal,

passing like the seasons at winter's end
from shade-limitation into full exposure,
bathed in new God-glory,

beginning

as a wizened babe breathes first breath on its birth-day.

....

for this I was born, for this
I live.

-------------------------------

Written in response to L.L. Barkat's poetry prompt - Fruits, Herbs & Spices (and the occasional snap pea & golden beet). A bit of a play on words took this from spices to seasonings to seasons, but I thought I would submit it anyway. Just something I've been thinking about.






(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Daybreak: I Recognize Desire

For background to this post, you may want to read Friday's post, Trusting Love: A God-ramble from a Broken Heart

-----------------------------

I didn't always doubt love.

Once, I trusted easily. Too easily, it seemed.

That was before God let my heart break...

He let it break like a wave on the shore, leaving sand and shells and foam and litter behind to fall back into the sea and break again against Him, tide flowing in and out, a restless broken heart always seeking rest, never still until He stills me.

By the time I finished, the realization that I'm still aching for His love - in spite of everything I've been through with Him! - left me bemused, disillusioned.

I think I should have noted that I have been here before; I am always here again, because I do not do the things I want to do, and the things I don't want to do, I do.

I assume that even His "yes" will eventually become "no," so even the good gets rejected, and I am afraid to accept what He gives. The bad lesson pain too often teaches.

My surface-grievance is become habit, and I ramble and bumble my way through feelings and theology and what-I-know-that-I-know. I share the scribbled questions without resolution.

Faith doesn't require my answer - but I look anyway.

I ran across this last week, and wondered if God was trying to convict.

There I was minding my own business, relishing some bitterness about my grandmother, and the Holy Spirit broke into my thoughts with an unusual assertion... that I was being an idolater, putting myself up on a pedestal in an act of self-worship over and against my grandmother.
- L.L. Barkat, excerpt from an interview at Holy Experience

Nothing moved in my spirit. Just a still and quiet "wait."

A friend left this in her comment on Friday's God-ramble. Surely, this must be His confirmation of conviction.

One of the most telling Scriptures in support of this fact is "You shall have no other gods before me." If I say, "God, I can't be happy without such-and-such," I am essentially telling Him there is something I want more than Him.

- Excerpt from Christy's comment

Again, I looked inward, searching, asking God to search. But no. Still the quiet, "wait."

"What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."

- Phil. 3:8-11

I read, and reread, and something soft and real and alive with joy pinged in my heart, ringing like a clear bell through the too-familiar clamor of the questions. Something that had nothing to do with "He gives and takes away" and everything to do with "blessed be the name of the Lord."

A year ago, I didn't want Him at all. Oh, I had no choice but to believe He was there, being God. Some things just are; He is one of those undeniables.

But I. couldn't. choose. Him.

My reasons were many: perhaps then it entailed some of the idolatry detailed above; perhaps it was my humanity, sin striving against Spirit for an assumed right.

Thus my heart was grieved,
And I was vexed in my mind.
I was so foolish and ignorant;
I was like a beast before You.
Nevertheless I am continually with You;
You hold me by my right hand.
You will guide me with Your counsel,
And afterward receive me to glory.

- Ps. 73:21-24

I tried to push Him away. He was too much for me, for my heart. His kindness seemed only to hurt me more. He could not be my greatest treasure, the object of my desire.

Do you remember how Hezekiah laid his enemy's letter out before the Lord? Sometimes, I have to do this with the questions, with my feelings, say "this is what is here, God. I can't figure it out."

In Jesus, "sin shall not have dominion over [me], for [I am] not under law but under grace." (Rom. 6:14) As I acknowledge His Life in me, I know I have done - and can do - nothing to earn this grace to doubt and fail. I lay me out in front of Him, and sometimes in front of the world, embarrassed at my humanity, my foolishness, my easy disillusionment.

Finally, on the heels of the wait comes a phrase from a prayer, a quote mixed up in the whisper of desire... "how high, how wide... the love of Christ."

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

- Eph. 3:14-19

He is not holding out on me as I have feared. He is granting me Spirit-strengthening. Love-grounding. The questions I have shared are the beginning of comprehension - of width and length and depth and height - the beginning of knowledge of the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge...

And the ping of joy ringing in my heart?

I actually want to know it. To know Him. To be filled with it - all the fullness of God.

Somewhere in the struggle - or in pushing the struggle away and being still and letting Him be God - my desire has changed. Somewhere in my quest for relationship with Him, He has become the object of that desire. Knowing Him means finding a Person at the end of my questions, learning to trust His heart instead of my experience-concepts of the God of the universe.

It is the most surprising thing to me, this awakening realization of desire. I no longer own a "want-to-want Him." I almost don't want to want Him, because it leaves me so vulnerable. But like a woman who has fallen in love, I just know He's the One who is meant to hold my heart.

And here I am, being invited into His.

I think He expects to take my breath away.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)