Wings

December 7, 2012 By

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“Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge.”


Psalm 91:3-4

I’ve heard it said that God meets us in our darkest hour.  I don’t think he meets us there, like two respectable gentlemen before a dual.  It’s not like you call God up for coffee and you both sit on opposite ends of a couch making small talk.   You good?  I’ve been better.  You use two sugars, too?  Get out!

Maybe you and God have coffee.  That sounds very civilized.  I am the messy one who turns my face from truth and ends up worshiping at my own alter, from my bloody birth to dyed roots, running for the edge and jumping off sixteen stories of a hard-fought and so-called-perfect life.  I fall into depths so low I can’t breathe, my chest burning and my mind paralyzed by fear.  The pavement is coming up quick and I wonder if it will hurt but it’s so dark the timing is off and I just want to make the pain go away. Surely this blow will just crush me like the coward I have become.  And yet in this soul-battle I turn to see a wing, just a flash of it as it slows me down and breathes new life into my hyperventilating lungs. How can one see the corner of a wing in total blackness?  How did God know I needed saving?

Jesus was born out of human blood and walked the dusty roads of his chosen people with his God-trinity right under his epidermis.  Such knowledge would have burst out of my mouth like a secret and my heart would have exploded in tiny pieces because I lack patience and restraint and all other things the bible says are revered and godly and good.  I’m just a Gentile sitting in the crowd waiting for Jesus to come take mercy on this fallen soul and I keep looking for wings that never appear.  I scowl at the notion that things fly because all I see around me keeps falling into the ocean, sinking like a treasure ship.  Jesus talks of mustard seeds and yet I am forever searching and running for the ledge.

When God’s stories were laid down like lines in the sand and truth was finally self-evident, when lives were transformed like loaves and fishes, Jesus died hanging limp with a crown of thorns.  And yet wings lifted him, and carried him from the tomb.

God’s truth is eternal and never fails through the weeping darkness and blackest nights.  And when we fall from grace with blood oozing from our tongues and our crumpled hearts are left in a pile of rubble, hate rising to our chests, we cower.  We just allow ourselves to freefall into apathy.

And yet Gospel wings spread out before us wide.

One night, Jesus was born under the brilliance of angels.  Instead of basking in this truth, we flip over in bed, grasping this world with our tight curled little fingers and fretting about money and marriage and health and holiday parties.  We say it’s yours, Lord as we grab our own daily agenda and hold tight.

But in darkness you can’t see who’s holding what and where the bottom is, and God says it’s okay to just let go, uncurl your fingers, and let it all slip away.  He meets us in this bloody blackness because it’s the only place left for us to turn and he says Sweet child, I’ve been here all along, you just couldn’t see it in your own reflection.  God was born of blood and died of blood and washes ours clean with his grace. His feathers tickle our cheek as big hearty belly laughs bubble from our chest and we realize we are new creations, lifted and renewed and can soar like eagles.  We will run and not grow weary, and will walk and not be faint (Isaiah 40:31).

Oh, those brilliant wings.  They were there in a dark night in Bethlehem and they were there in the courts of Jerusalem and they are here in the freefall, in the broken-down trailer in Alabama and the street corners of Midtown and the stench-laden cardboard boxes of Kingston, Jamaica.  Even the girl typing away on the computer in a stone house on a rural road where children are tucked in bad and bibles are laid open and dinner is half-eaten.  In whatever brokenness is dark and hopeless.

God catches us wherever we fall. 

—

photo credit:

Wings of the fallen

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Little Boys

November 15, 2012 By

I cradle his head in my forearm, his droopy eyes and fat cheeks soft.  I lay my cheek against his and smell his quick honey breath.  It’s a small space between love and hurt because sometimes I want to squeeze him so tight the air squishes out and I’m left with a rag doll and I think how can I love this boy until the end of time?  I rock and rock like a ticking clock even though he’s asleep by now because I don’t want to break the spell.  I praise God for this magic who is a blessing.

At midnight I hear his cries, the pacifer, I dropped it, momma, and I run into shush him back.  And when he crawls into my king-sized dreams I welcome him in, even though he kicks and pats my face and says in a whisper are you awake?  Are you awake, momma?  He flips and tucks and pats me to sleep because that is the world of one who is two.

But I’m awake and angry at this boy for always yelling and kicking and screaming I want dat and never listening to my incessant pleas.  I want to make it stop as I run him back to the time-out chair.  Teeth are for chewing, not for sister’s arm, I say as I pull him back to a place of reverence.  He pouts and swings his legs and says he’s sorry.  He wraps his arms around my parched throat and says I wuv you mommy and I am suddenly filled, love pouring and drenching and filling what was never really empty to begin with.

Having a little girl is sweet and pink and bubbly but having a son is a different animal and it’s an Achilles heel.  I want to stay hunkered down in his devotion and I place my hand over his little child kisses like I can preserve them there, fossils of when mommy was everything and nothing else mattered. I want them tattooed on my cheek so I can see them there and weep.

This love cripples me so. Someday he will leave – they both will – and it reminds me again that there’s a small space between love and hurt and sometimes they happen at the same time and that’s okay.  So I rock and shush and sing and pray.  Lord help me see the beauty of spilled juice and toilet paper heaps and rocking babies.  It’s so precious and warm and soft.

Hurt or no hurt, it’s more love after all.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Motherhood, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Free the bird

November 12, 2012 By

Not everyone is an artist.  It must be frustrating to be on the outside.  To fail to understand that artists need to create things.  That without the process of creating, their world fails to have meaning.  Artists create to feel.  They create to be sane and stop the ticking and urging and pulsing that comes during the in-between.

For those supporters and wives and husbands, for heaven’s sakes give them a knife to chisel.  Give them a canvas and blank page and stage with lights. Help them be who they were meant to be.  Because artists will create with or without you.  They will ignore reality and drag food to their hovel and make all things work around their craft like a bear protects her young.  It’s primal and essential to their very existence.  Screw the world.  They will stay up all night building paper houses.

 Because to them, it’s the only true thing they’ve ever known.

A sculptor sees an eagle buried in a rock and chips away to find it, smoothing and chiseling and releasing the wing and feather and beak.  If the hammer is broken they’ll grab a rock or a mallet in order to free the poor thing.  Because birds need to soar.  And to the painter who sees the sky as a canvas and clouds bursts of oil, they brush before they speak.  In their dreams they are forever layering and smoothing and adding or taking away.  And to strip them of paint means you’ll find them in fields like savages, beating and rubbing berries against flint to release color.  So they can sort out chaos and form shapes and get the ugly out of their head and onto something.  So they can be real.  Honest.  As true as the clouds that are locked in their minds.

And oh, how the blank page calls.  A writer runs and twitches and hurls himself toward words so he can unscramble the nonsense.  So he can show the world what he sees – the harvest moon plump and drunk.  The dimples of a woman’s lower back and the searing fierceness of mountains that will never be climbed.  Stories are spelled out in furious rhythm while he eats oatmeal or waits in line at the dry-cleaners or takes a shower.  He shakes his head and screams out loud and drives fast.  But they never leave.  He is always forming and creating and painting.   And he can’t breathe until the words are settled.  Nestled down on the page where they belong.  He runs inside and throws down his day, typing to free the bird.

Some think it’s a curse to be an artist.  To be shackled with feelings of creation. I think it’s a gift.  To have eyes that see what others don’t.  To feel for brief intervals a fullness and completeness that you are doing what you are truly meant to do.  What God intended.  What your soul was designed for.

My husband is a brilliant lawyer.  He won’t admit it, but he knows it is true.  He speaks and builds and has the gift of crescendo and cadence that most do not.  The feeling he gets when persuasion draws people in, through a mastery of facts and law and the art of knowing rhythm and timing and when to precisely strike after the strategic pregnant pause– this is magic.  He must feel on top of the world, and he knows he was built for this.   My dear kindred soul, I understand you.  I am you.  We can be nothing but who we are. 

Artists are lonely souls.  They don’t do it for fame or applause or attention.  They are artists because they have to be.  Because their life depends on it.  Because if they don’t do it, they feel lost and weary and worn.  We are all born with eyes to see the needs around us.  To put food on the table and clothe our offspring and develop friendships.  We understand the relevance of making a living and fixing leaky pipes and cleaning house.  And yet to some, God gives a different sort of vision. We owe it to Him to create what he puts on our hearts.  For our own sanity.  For the betterment of the world.   But mostly, for His glory. 

I have but one eye that works, the other ravished with cancer.  So I pry it open with stilts to continue to see, and draw with words, and sing.  To feel creation and music and stories pulse through my veins.  It makes me settled, and strangely alive.  It sets me free.

Encourage artists.  Help them do what they are designed to do.  Because the world needs more beauty.  More eagles and sunsets and books that make us weep. God is using humans to show but a snapshot of heaven.  Let them paint and write and speak and sing.

Honor their high calling.  

—

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/novaskola/3940350178/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Herd Jumpers

October 3, 2012 By

Humans are inherently pack animals.  I think it’s bred into our souls to walk together in groups.  Hillary Clinton says it takes a village to raise a child, and even Jesus chose twelve disciples to hang with.  We all huddle together as families, and units, and choose folks that think and eat and pray like we do.  When we stray too far from the herd, we are weak and vulnerable.  Wolves surround us and start closing in.  It’s safer to stay hunkered down in the middle.

And yet safe is boring.  So I start breaking free. 

I’m writing at (in)courage today, an amazing place where faith and community collide.  You can check out the full article HERE.

—

photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/horiavarlan/4833864060/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Friendships, Inspirational, My life, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Dirt

September 21, 2012 By

It’s so nice to see my children playing with dirt and plants and rocks and sticks.  This what I wanted when I had children – to see them use their little imaginations and explore the world around them. No television for my kids.  Nosiree.  Let ‘em get their hands dirty.

I see my daughter hauling the new Britta pitcher from our kitchen to the front porch to make chocolate smoothies. She’s loading it up with dirt and rocks.  Wait just a minute.

Then my son begins to yank off all the blooms from the plumeria with glee, just ripping and pulling and throwing them all around with wild abandon.  One after another he yanks at them like he’s some sort of flower executioner.  The louder I yell, the more he plucks.

“For the salad! It’s for the salad!” he screams. I can’t do anything about it now, their little heads lying on our front walk like corpses.

I turn around to see my daughter creating salsa with rosemary leaves and sticks, and she somehow weaseled her way past me into the kitchen again for the pottery barn dishes to use as place settings.  How do they do all this so fast?  Do they have superpowers?

“This has gone too far,” I say.  I walk over to remove the plates and I hear my daughter yelling for her brother to stop.  He has turned on the water hose and is spraying her down, trying to aim his hose into the pitcher she’s holding in her hands.  By now my kids are sopping wet and dirty from head to toe and that t-shirt from Janie and Jack is now stained and beyond repair.

I force both of them to the porch and run inside to get the broom, but now that the smoothies are done they most certainly must be tested.  Suddenly they are pouring the goopy mess into little cups, runny mud oozing over the sides and on our front porch to be dried into concrete.  These are so chocolaty, they say.  You simply must have one. I strip them both down and make them take baths before dinner.

After baths, they sit watching Arthur and I’m so thankful for television and quiet and warm bubble baths that make things right again.

It all sounded so good at the time.

 

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.

-Rachel Carson,

Filed Under: Motherhood, My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Letting Go

September 20, 2012 By

my daughter, now six

—-

Being a writer is hard.  I love the feeling late at night when I finish an essay, like I crossed a finish line or finally caught a breath of mountain air.  I like getting positive feedback as a balm to my itchy insecurities.  And when I sent my novel – my baby child that stole nights and weekends and so many rivers of tears– off to my editor, I was grateful when she said it’s good.  It’s actually really good.  And yet agents email me saying “it’s not you, it’s us” and “we are so sorry for this rather impersonal rejection.”  It’s a literary black hole, and you have to hold onto the railing to keep from being swept under.

I wish I could roll up my sleeves and go have a meeting with someone.  I wish I could just go make something happen. I’d curl my hair and put on my heels and pound my fist on a desk.  Progress will be made.  Things will crawl off dead center because I know how to make people jump.  I got a job once by making an appointment with the CEO.  Somehow a job was created.  A job I dreamed up in my head and convinced them they needed.

And yet here I sit alone, eating pistachios and drinking coffee and reading other people’s words.  I try and let writers inspire me, and be thankful for their successes, and try and feed on the natural creativity that follows.  I tell myself that God is listening and my blog followers are listening and these things matter.  And yet my mind wanders off to bad places – dark caves where I’m nothing and my life is insignificant and my words are just cheap imitations.

I think about that time six years ago, when I lay in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling tile.  After a prolonged labor and emergency c-section she was finally given to me, this beautiful gift from God that I didn’t deserve.  She was so white and angelic and I wouldn’t let her go.  But days after arriving home with my first-born they came to take me away, on some damn stretcher that held heart victims and dead people.  There were doctors and surgeons and tests.  There were re-incisions and pains and organs being shut down.  I just kept looking at that ceiling tile, thinking God just wouldn’t do this to me and he couldn’t possibly let me die.  Not now.  Not like this.  I’ve worked so hard, remember, Lord?  I make things happen. Are you listening up there?

I asked for the breast pump, my body filled with drugs and steroids and horrible chemicals of all types, and forced that milk out through excruciating tears as each surge of the pump caused my scarred and infected abdomen to seize.  But I was a fighter, and this wouldn’t break me.

See, God?  This is what you’d be saving. 

One night, a nurse came in.  She looked right through me. You need to let go, she said.  You need to let God to take over. I was angry.  I was pissed off at her accusations.  Who the hell are you, all up in my business about faith?  Have you not seen how hard I’ve worked?  Have you not seen my tears and heard my prayers? I am dying here, woman, with the fever and the infection and the chills.  Can’t you see that I’m trying?  Can’t you see I’ve not seen my baby’s face for weeks and this just isn’t working like I planned and I’m so damn sick of this place?  Can’t you see that I have this tube in my throat and my husband isn’t eating and it just never ceases?  Can’t you see that I don’t want to see a picture of her, my perfect three-week-old daughter, because it fills me with rage and sadness? Isn’t this enough?

You have to let it go.

I think about that night when I get this way.  When I think I’m in charge.  When I keep pounding away on the keyboard like the surging breast pump.  When the devil whispers in my ear that my words don’t matter and a book deal is the brass ring and all this is just a big vat of wasted time.

Stand back, Devil. 

It all matters.  My words matter.  My life matters.  Whether it’s typing or living or birthing or dying, we all just have to let go.  We aren’t the one making things happen. God makes things happen. We are just the instruments of his peace.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Motherhood, My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

BUSY, a Guest Post by Melanie Haney

September 10, 2012 By

Hey guys!

I’m honored today to introduce you to my wonderful writer friend, Melanie Haney, who writes over at A Frozen Moon.  Go check it out and read her lovely words.  Although we live in different parts of the country, we still struggle with the same issues: motherhood, faith, joy, and living the best life we can right where we are.  I love her honesty, her flowing style, and let’s not even go there with her amazing photographs.  Her pictures capture the essence of childhood, love, and fleeting moments that we often don’t capture.

We both wrote a back-to-school post and shared it with each other, so to read mine just mosey on over to her blog and check it out.  Have a great week!

Busy

by Melanie Haney

The final damp breaths of August have exhaled and here we are.

We are back to school. We are pencils and backpacks and looking out for the first falling leaves, when really, we are still shaking the sand from our flip flops and sweating by each afternoon in our new school clothes.

We are morning routines that start too early and buses that are never on time.

And me? I am one week in and torn between my love for autumn in New England, and my hesitance to push my family forward another year so soon. I am another year older myself and feeling the middleness of it all, how if my life is a ladder with years for rungs, I am quite possibly approaching the center. Enough behind me to be steady on my course, enough ahead of me to keep me looking forward.

But mostly, I am tired.

Tonight, I am sweating, crawling under the table and sweeping every little unwanted bite from dinner into my palms – partially chewed hot dog, mushy canned peas, sweet potato fries with the ketchup sucked off – and while doing so, I am making my best attempt to meditate on goodness. To focus on the goodness of a meal that can nourish my children, the gift of having a floor to clean, the blessing of a body that can get down on hands and knees and that I am able to be the one home to do this (most evenings.)

All good things, wrapped up into this little life of mine, and I am thankful.

And then, Evie throws up in the bath tub.

While she stands, naked and dripping on the bathmat, I let the water from the tub and find myself (again) chasing partially chewed hot dogs, but this time down the drain in waves of warm soap and other unsavory bits. As I do this, the phone rings and my husband tells me he is just on his way home now. Yes, great, thanks, handful of sopping paper towels and toddler puke, k-bye.

Meanwhile, Alex is poking his head in and asking if I have had a chance to read his school paperwork yet. It’s a story about he and his friends and how one of them used to have brown hair, but the summer sun has turned it blond. It is not Shakespeare and I worry, while handing it back to him with an encouraging smile, that his new teacher won’t encourage him or praise him or guide him as well as his first grade teacher had.

It all just seems so fragile at the moment with him – approaching eight, losing teeth, asking each night if he can stay up later, the disappointment on his face whenever there isn’t time for just one game of UNO or SKIP-BO before bed.

I re-wash Evaline and Lila and wrap them in towels and remember that I am trying to slow down and focus. Right. Focus. I unplug the drain and I am thankful for water – for hot water, even – and enough to fill the tub twice. I am thankful for this wriggling baby girl in my arms who I don’t yet need to send off into the world to be assessed or judged or bothered by things like lunchboxes with her least favorite sandwich or who she is going to sit next to on the bus.

I am thankful for the time I have been given, with her and with all of my children. Towel-swaddled Evie and I stand in the mirror and kiss cheeks and touch noses.  What a gift.

And then, she pees on me.

I kid you not.

Deep breaths. Focus. For this fall season, this is my life. And I will be thankful, be present, notice the good all around.

It’s one in the morning and I should be sleeping, but I am typing. Evaline stirs and comes to our bed. Of course, she did not wake in the hours between putting her to bed and when we went to bed. Of course, she did not disturb us while Vinnie was still awake and I was editing pictures while a slow documentary on the history of a board game (Monopoly) played in the background. No, she waited for this moment, for this quiet bedroom and my empty arms.

I put the laptop down and let her crawl all over me.

It’s two in the morning and she is still here, twisting and snuggling some, but mostly kicking. I nudge Vinnie awake to try and take her back to her room.

It’s six in the morning and Alex comes to our bedroom. Evie is here too, again. I think I might have slept an hour or two, maybe.

Lila bounces to the bedroom and informs me that I still need to pack their snacks. And that she likes chips. I blink at her and she quickly adds, but whatever you give us is good because all the food in our house is good!

Yes. All the food in our house is good. I pull the blankets back and here we go again. Four children, three bus stops to wait through, two snacks and lunches to pack, one house to clean, one wedding to shoot (tonight, another tomorrow). But in it all – in all this new routine, this autumn, this back to school madness, you are here and you are good and I will focus on blessings not nuisances.

I walk to the kitchen.

Asher greets me with a sheepish smile and two donuts hidden behind his back.

Oh, and wet pants and a wet bed.

At the bus stop, I sip coffee and people watch while my kids run around the lot with their friends. I notice the absence of our neighbor and his daughter and for a moment, I feel the wisp of death, curling itself back into my thoughts.

But then the bus pulls around the bend and the children all bolt to line up. I smile at the enormity of Lila’s pink backpack on her little girl frame. Alex turns from his place in line to send me a big smile and a goodbye wave. I drive home to poopy diapers and laundry loads and charging camera batteries and client emails and a text from a friend are we still on for a walk (in twenty minutes)? and busy-busy-busy.

Yet, in it all, goodness. In it all, a life, my life, written over seasons and chapters and papers that are scribbled on in cursive, in Crayola, in eloquence and in gibberish – with pages torn, spilled on, scattered on the floor and somehow shoved back into sequence.

And I am thankful. Folding laundry. Changing diapers. Muttering over the damp sheets on Asher’s bed, the spilled Cheerio’s on our kitchen floor. I am thankful for it all, every little thing that keeps me focused on the this place, this page, this season here on this middle-ladder rung moment of my life.

Filed Under: Motherhood, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

A mix tape for my daughter

September 8, 2012 By

One of the reasons I have been drawn to music is the power it has to take you from flat-out normal to exceedingly sad, or from bored to overwhelmingly happy, in less than four minutes.  And when listening to longer, more complicated pieces, like Bach or Puccini or Durufle, you sit in a concert hall feeling arias building and cadences growing, and your heart starts racing.  You find yourself residing in another dimension, and suddenly you can’t even breathe.  And then one day when you are diagnosed with cancer, you are in a Dunlap’s parking lot in Waco, Texas, listening to a scratchy rendition of Eva Cassidy singing People Get Ready live at Blues Ally.  You sob and rock like a child and you think you heart just fell out in front of you.

Music makes all time and space melt around you like butter, and you are suddenly very far away, peering into the very realms of heaven.  Maybe I find the addiction to music fascinating because it puts one face-to-face with strong emotion, and only when you work through the pain and fear and passion that it evokes can you really heal.

So when I peek inside my daughter’s room and see her sitting alone listening to music, it makes me smile.  I want her to have the same elated cries, and find joy in certain phrases, and think she can make through this life.  I want her to have hope, and be confident, and find the joy in all things.

Then she asks me to buy Party in the USA on my ipod.  Ugh.  I’m suddenly thrown back into reality of her 6-year-oldness.  We’ll work on her taste a bit.  But the yearning’s there.  And that’s a good thing.  She already owns The Best of John Denver, so at least there’s that.

So I put together a little mix CD for her of songs that are joyful, and express my love of life, and of her, and the south.  These are songs I don’t mind being etched into her little brain, for her to recall in her later years.  They are but a few of great inspiring songs to come.  What a lifetime of music lies ahead.

  • Strip Me, by Natasha Bedingfield
  • Come To Jesus, by Mindy Smith
  • The One I Love, by David Gray
  • Summer Dance, a flamenco guitar piece
  • Dreams, by Fleetwood Mac
  • This Old Porch, by Lyle Lovett
  • You Know I Love You Baby, by Mindy Smith
  • Southern Kind Of Life, by Kasey Chambers
  • Bridge Over Troubled Water, by Eva Cassidy
  • Grace, by Saving Jane
  • I Know You By Heart, by Eva Cassidy
  • Over the Rainbow, by Ingrid Michaelson
  • Shake It Out, by Florence + The Machine
  • The Way I Am, by Ingrid Michaelson

What songs have you always wanted your daughter to know?

Filed Under: Motherhood, Music, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Cluttered and clean

September 2, 2012 By

Our front porch is sacred.  It’s a place where we sneak off to in the mornings for coffee and hope the kids don’t notice.  It’s a place where we drink beer on Friday nights and watch the setting sun.  Our porch is peppered with a red tractor or a plastic fire truck or a plate of chopped up mint leaves and rosemary. My husband wants to screen it in due to all those nasty mosquitoes, but they live on this earth too and I just hate to have any barrier at all between me and the oak branches, or the sound of the cicadas, or the breezes that blow in from the west.

Our porch is where I cry, laugh on the phone with girlfriends, and pray.  It’s where I watch my children haul rocks around in wagons and listen for their sweet voices in the distance.  I wave at neighbors and watch horses and peer up at the sky for rain.  I wonder now how I ever lived in a house with only a door.  Or a portico.  Or a small entry not big enough for our large white rocking chairs.

This porch is becoming a part of my soul, big and open, sometimes cluttered and sometimes clean. Oh, my dear friend, please always be my refuge.

—

Joining others today for a link-up at:

Filed Under: My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

broken mirrors

August 31, 2012 By

The other night, I spent hours writing an article on inward beauty, and how a gentle spirit matters more than True Religion jeans.  We place so much importance on our appearance that we let the true elegance of our spirit go both unnoticed and unrecognized.  I stayed up late editing the piece, and was happy with how it turned out, and hoped that the national magazine where I submitted it would publish it.

The next day, my six-year-old had a play date.  I had been slumming around all week in workout attire, so I finally fixed my hair, put on a frilly top, and wore a necklace.  I sat poolside and shared with another mom how sad it was that someone I know seemed to stop caring about herself, and how she is just too pretty to let herself go like that.  The vitriol speech flowed like warm honey out of my mouth.  I didn’t even bat an eye.

Let me recap.

  1. I wrote an article on how outward beauty is overrated.
  2. I felt all slap-happy proud of myself for writing it.
  3. I dolled up for a bunch of moms who didn’t really care how I looked
  4. I totally slammed on some poor hapless victim about her lack of outward beauty
  5. I went home singing show tunes and eating popsicles

Sometimes I want to poke my own eyes out like one of the Three Stooges.  How can I possibly be such a screw-up?  Can I not go 24 hours without being so downright hypocritical?  I texted the mom I was talking to and apologized for my words, but it fell flat.  I lowered my head to ask for forgiveness.  I realized how flawed I am as a human being, and I wondered why God keeps giving me second chances.

Peter promised Jesus he wouldn’t betray him.  He felt with every fiber of his being that he wouldn’t. And yet he did.  Because left to our own devices, we say one thing and do another. We fall asleep and say hurtful words and fill our lives with vanity.  We give to the church but ignore the poor.  We pray for hours, and then walk out spewing vinegar from our mouths.  It’s a disgrace to our Creator.  It’s a disgrace to others who see us as examples.  It’s a disgrace to ourselves.  Our lives are but a broken mirror with past mistakes and shattered weaknesses strewn around on the floor.

But God repairs, and cuts heal.  I’ll regroup as the new day dawns, as Peter did.  Not due not to my own strength, but of His.

—

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matte0ne/6328100019/

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

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