Moments in Grace

This morning I can hear it. The sound of their refrain echoing in the tree tops, breaking the hazy winter morn like a clarion call. And it sounds like Hope. When winter hangs and holds, claws digging, grasping for days, but it's the hope of spring that breaks the frosted yoke and melts the icy fronds. And today, I can hear it ringing from above, spring is coming.  Hope is coming. The sunlight warms her red-robin breast and she turns and cries it loud and clear, "The winter is past, spring is a-coming.  Hope.  Hope." And I, so empty in these cold days of winter, am also feeling the fullness of hope returning.  Of hope proclaiming.  Of hope becoming faith again.  All this hope.  All this life. Returning to warm the cold blood of my winter heart.  This winter of so much weary, weak, heart-wandering, is melting into warm springing hope.  These words call out from the tattered ...

The day was long and difficult.  It started early and jumped straight into chaos and the six kids and I were out the door and running.  Homeschool co-op classes, picking up a friend to come over, then on to the doctor's appointment. I was getting her hearing checked.  She had been having more trouble with her schoolwork and always misunderstanding what we were saying to her.  I suspected an auditory processing problem but ruling out the hearing issue was the first step.  Since my other daughter has had so many learning issues it would seem that this was minor. "Mariah, do you have trouble hearing what people say to you if they are standing behind you?" the doctor questioned. She shakes her head yes. "Do you need to look at people's faces in order to know what they are saying often?" "Yes." "Well, she failed her hearing test in both ears." The doctor says to me.  "She also failed her eye exam. We are going ...

Standing there, under the moonlight, I call to the girls, clad in dance uniforms, to come to the van so we can leave dance. My friend turns to me and says, "How are you?" "I'm...o.k." Liar. "Tired.  Me, I'm tired." He looked tired.  As tired as I felt. "Just twenty or so more years of tired. That's what we have isn't it?  It'll be that long before we get some peace, get some quiet, right?" Him, parked, with his big twelve passenger van next to my twelve passenger van packed full of eight kids, my six plus two carpoolers, in the frantic rush of dance practice and dinner and doing. "Don't tell me that.  There's got to be hope.  Hope?  That's all I've got right now." And all this week, all I've heard running in my head are just these words: Overwhelmed.  Crushed by life.  Unable. And I can't seem to get it together. I've felt it long and deep, this crushing, this breaking...

We were driving home, the snow blowing in white wisps across the icy blackness.  The heater of the car pouring forth hot air to warm our frozen fingers.  And she said it, these words, "How do you trust God?" This black winter night, we talked of God and grace and belief and how do you do this thing of trust? Our night had been spent at a support group for the grieving. Me, the support for my neighbor who lost her teenage son those years ago, the night she almost lost her life as well. How do you trust God? How do you trust, when you've lost everything, when your heart is ripped open, bloody and hemorrhaging, and how do you go on living? How do you? How do you learn to trust, to let go, when your whole life has been one unending day of clawing and clinging to control outcomes, to protect yourself, to keep danger at bay, to create your own world of complete safety.  And that....is incredibly hard work. But working hard, that's all she's ever know...