looking through me

Tag: hope

August 29, 2016

season of quiet

I’ve lived too long in a season-less land: the leaves don’t drop, no flakes of snow fall, new growth doesn’t fight through cold, hard ground.

With a lack of rhythmic cues my ability to recognize signs of subtler seasons has never developed. I overlook internal indicators. I see life’s seasons not as they approach or as they are but as they slip to completion behind me. In retrospect I affix labels to what was, though even then the names are elusive.

But perhaps the long season I sense drawing to a close now can be categorized and celebrated before it’s a memory. Because it’s been a good, hard season. One I knew was valuable as it unfolded, but I didn’t know what it was.

Now I know. It was, and is, a season of quiet.

For almost a year the volume ratcheted down—as if God turned the knob on everything around me, placed His finger on my lips and gently murmured, “Shhhhh . . .”

The noise faded, and I began to learn how to listen. It’s a lesson I may never master, but one I can’t afford to rush through . . . and I haven’t. It’s been a long, slow practice made easier when words weren’t pouring out of my mouth and the internal torrent stilled.

The quiet freed me to listen and watch. For eleven months I spent my lunches alone. In the midday solitude I read words that poured life ever so slowly back into my grief-depleted soul. I learned to rest and wait to be needed, wait to be called.

Instead of pushing for connection, I idled on the periphery and let relationship build slowly. I offered myself in measured moments. I had more to give—and I knew it—but it wasn’t the time . . . it wasn’t the place. I couldn’t explain it, but now I see it was a gift for me to accept and enjoy without overanalyzing . . . and without guilt.

Though it’s still quiet I sense a change coming. The breeze is stiffening. The air is heavy with possibility. Yet I see how active God was in the quiet months as He built my capacity to accept His love and lean hard into His timing and plan.

I don’t know what the new season will be—or how long it will last—but I’ll enter it with deep gratitude for the quiet and the One who needs no volume to be heard.

 

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August 2, 2016

coffee with grandma

I stopped after work to have coffee with Grandma.

It’s been more than a year since she last drank a cup, but I doubt she minds. Whatever the heavenly brew is, it must be better than any she ever savored here.

My head knows I’m no closer to Grandma at the cemetery than anywhere else. My heart knows I’m not here out of obligation or even to grieve.

But it’s here—in the open space, in the relative still and relative quiet—I breathe a little easier. It’s here as I pray aloud through Psalms 16 and 116 that I feel God’s gracious hand of peace not removing the grief but holding it with me.

Here, I can simply be.

I sit still and allow the internal noise to quiet in the simple proximity to that eternal line—here a finishing line, there a starting line.

Here, I remember all the stuff—the work stresses, the tragedies layered over the atrocities, the nagging irritants of daily life—is real but it is tertiary at best. Relationships, with God and people, outweigh all else.

The late afternoon shadows spread but don’t quite make it to Grandma’s headstone or the sunflowers Mom left this morning. A mourning dove settles on a distant branch.

Even in a cemetery, life goes on.

A lone tear lands on the Bible resting in my lap. My coffee cup sits empty beside me. I unfold my legs, trace the dates on Grandma’s headstone and let my gaze linger for a minute longer on the psalmist’s words: “in your presence there is fullness of joy.”

A year into this newness it doesn’t feel normal yet—not at all—but the joy pulsing through the sorrow is full indeed.

 

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