{ A Month of Thanks } a slight pause

Please be patient with me as I take a break this weekend to go live out my thanksgiving...

I will be spending time with my parents, my husband and my boys
embracing the great joy
that is my life.

{ A Month of Thanks } Creation

My whole body is covered with eyes:   
Behold it!
Be without fear!
I see all around.

-Eskimo poem

Some days, it overwhelms me, all of this beauty.  I will walk in the woods or bend down to touch flowers or stand on toes tipped to feed birds and, suddenly, it will fall in on me.

The beauty.

Crashing and swirling and whistling through my fingertips.  And a whirlwind spins in my core, lifting my soul and my eyes upward, singing with music of the spheres.

He is here.  Always, He is here.

His mark is everywhere.

Everywhere, evidence of the shaping, the molding, the creating.

His tenderness.  His strength.  His fury.  His glory.

All of it melting and blending, one into another, boldly, then quietly.  Brazen, then hushed.

And in everything, a rhythm.

For creation is the very heartbeat of God, pulsating with ripples and shimmers and gold dust.

"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty."

-John Muir

{ A Month of Thanks } Homeschooling

“I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less slowly. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggest that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of colored paper, or plant straw trees in flower pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.”  

~Anne Sullivan

I'm thankful for...

sun dappled afternoons spent exploring the woods with a boy and a dog...

being surprised by new skills acquired and fears conquered...

lifelong friendships forged because of and despite all of the being together...

discovering snow covered islands in the middle of big muddy rivers and, maybe, just maybe, spotting an eagle, too...

listening to the real trumpet of a swan after having cherished the idea between the pages of a book...

building and tearing down...

time enough to sit and realize that the jagged edges of a cut tree stump look just like a city skyline...

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

-John Dewey

{ A Month of Thanks } Grace

I am thankful for grace.

Even though I still don't fully understand its mystery, it is there.
Its very nature is to doggedly
pursue me,
chase me,
find me,
and
bombard me.

I cannot escape, even if I wanted to.

And sometimes I do want to.

Because, sometimes
the stain is so permanent,
the brokenness so profound
that
to be found would prove fatal
so
I would rather run and run until the stitch in my side becomes more real than the pain I face
and
so I simply stumble
and
fall further away from everything.

Crazy that such a choice seems easier
but
in the darkness one does not have clear vision.

And then comes grace.

Quietly,
sweetly,
simply
it comes.

And what defies all reason is that this gift of grace that comes
requires nothing of me.

Nothing.

It comes because it can't help itself.

Wrapped in a raiment of dripping love it
rescues me
and
ransoms me
and
restores me.

It "finds the beauty in everything"
and
I am forever
changed.

{ A Month of Thanks } My parents

How can I really thank the people who's love embrace was so powerful and magical that it spilled over into new life, my life?

How can I even begin to match up my experience of being loved by them with a language that makes sense?

I have never not known love or acceptance or delight or wonder within the kingdom of their love.

Every time that I slap my knee when retelling a story or laugh at my own joke, they are with me.

Whenever the birds nibble on my backyard offerings or sing on the wind, he is there.

When the lyrics to a song fly off of my lips and twirl around my children, she is there.

When the sunrise breaks open the sky and the light shatters the pink veil, the tear in my eye and the catch in my throat, all of it, I realize, is a learned response, having watched his very heart do the same.

And when I sit at my kitchen table, with my head in my hands and the sobs rolling over in waves, she is there, listening and understanding and just being.

Because
for me to be
is for them to be.

And perhaps the greatest way to offer my thanksgiving for the gift of them is to fully live into the person they have helped create.  Live... fully accepting all that I am, embracing all of my triumphs and failings and attempting to flesh out what they began...

Their fingerprints are all over me, tell tale evidence of the generosity of their souls.  May I never wash clean of the proof of them.

{ A Month of Thanks } My husband

"Chains do not hold a marriage together.  It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which hold people together through the years."

-Simone Signoret

I am thankful for my husband.

I'm thankful that I embraced a youthful outlook on love, threw all caution to the wind, and gave my heart to a younger man.

I was entering my last semester of college and beginning to make plans for what I would do with the rest of my life when I decided to "get together" with you one February evening.  We were to go get Chinese on a Friday but my car broke down on the way home from student teaching and I had to get it towed to the garage and I was exhausted and a bit overwhelmed and...

So we decided to order in and eat on the floor of my dorm room and you introduced me to General Tsu's Chicken and we laughed at our fortunes that spoke of good things to come in the future.

And we talked.

For hours.

And hours.

And hours.

And the next thing I knew, it was too late to still be called night but yet not quite morning and I guess we needed to get some sleep so we stood up to say good-bye.

This wasn't officially a date but it had been a very big something and to just part with kind words seemed inadequate.

So we hugged.  A long, lingering hug that pulled me deep into wonder and possibilities and questions, so many questions, and I found myself so very reluctant to let go because I just didn't want that night. to. end.

But here's the thing.  It hasn't really ever ended.

Because, despite what others might think or what might make the most sense on any given day or what the weather might be, loving you is still like dwelling inside of that embrace.

And even though there are still so many questions and possibilities and cars still break down and I am so exhausted... I still want to choose a youthful outlook on love, throw all caution to the wind and give my heart to a younger man.

Love.  So much love.

"Life is either a grand adventure or nothing..."

-Helen Keller

{ A Month of Thanks } Dirty Laundry

"We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry."

-E. B. White

I'm thankful for dirty laundry.  

I'm making myself say this because I don't really feel that way at the moment.  

Today was laundry day.  Not because it was my scheduled day or anything.  I don't work that way when it comes to laundry.  No, it was more like laundry today or naked tomorrow.  Something like that.

And I haven't enjoyed the task, for some reason.  I used to like this chore.  That was back in the day when I had a six month old who took lots of naps and I also had a lot more free time during the day.  Even though I was washing my own cloth diapers and I had a baby that drooled his way through five or six onesies a day, it was still a task that I found charmingly domestic and I went about the task with a slight lift in my step and a smile on my face.

Not so much these days.  

I am somehow able to find joy in the other household tasks (just read yesterday's post) but that darn laundry, well ...

I think because it just screams of things already done and left behind, messes made, fun that was had but has now moved on...

And it just sits there in those baskets, staring back at me with a laconic look that questions, "Well...?"

But you can't ignore laundry any more than you can ignore the dog and I can't stand it's attitude and so I start sorting.  I've gotten less precise in my sorting lately.  It's less "whites and darks" and more like, "not red and towels."  I'm washing in cold anyway so it should be okay, right?

And then, as with many common tasks, once begun, a calmness begins to descend.

And I love the smell of my laundry detergent and the bubbles that start rising and I start throwing in the shirts and the socks and I find a rhythm.  Once a load is going, I turn to whatever else is at hand because that is definitely ONE thing that's nice about doing laundry..once begun, you can do something else at the same time and you start to feel like you are actually getting things done and that, in itself is very, very nice.

As the soap infuses and the clothes swirl and I move through more of my day I begin to realize how much my soul is like dirty laundry.

I traipse through this life and collect moments and memories and worries and wickedness, all because I am human and I don't always think before I speak or act or move.  And so I become this tangled altered mess of wonderful and not so wonderful encounters and what I really need is have someone move in and sort all of it into its rightful place.

And then wash it all clean.

I know that not everything is a mess but all of it has been rubbing up against each other in my heart and mind and, after awhile, it sometimes can't help taking on a similar smell.  I need to let the water run over and through all the nooks and crannies of my dark places.  And even the light places.  Because all of it is soiled from living in a world that doesn't always know it should wash its hands.  

So THAT is why I am thankful for dirty laundry.  Not because it makes me feel more domestic or organized or special.

No.  

I'm thankful because I don't want to be naked tomorrow and only have a pile of dirty laundry to show for it.