Placing the Counted

I can usually tell when I'm getting a migraine.  Some of them come quickly, but usually mine are slow in advancing.  A morning of sleepy daze slowly wakes up to an ache in my neck and behind my eyes by afternoon, and evening brings worsening aversion to light and sound.  A smell may also bring a migraine faster.  By an early bedtime my eyes hide from the lit lamps and I flee (very slowly and stiffly) to my bedroom in a vain attempt to shut out the world.

It was on such a night not long ago that I mused silently about the hypersensitivity of a migraine.  Curious, how lifelike it is.

Bitterness works the same way, doesn't it?  The same way, in fact, as gratitude.  They both count moments.  As I lay in bed that night I heard clearly each whisper, cough, sneeze, cleared throat, creaking door, kitten's thump.  I could list each grievance with poetic accuracy while holding my dully throbbing temples in an attempt to still the pulsing annoyance, to no avail.  Life was whirling dizzily around me as I lay in the dark, but all I could feel was the nausea of light and sound.  My moments of grace escaping without thanks~because my eyes couldn't see them?  No.  Because my soul refused them.  

It's not just food that you refuse when you're in pain~it's the every moment.  The treasure is no less valuable when I refuse to give thanks for it.  When, in fact, I prefer refusing it altogether.  The complaints can be counted as minutely as blessings, and always more naturally, because my heart is always deceptive.  The Old Sin in me hides my eyes as effectively as a headache.  I shield myself from grace, because who can handle its blinding light with such a throbbing behind their eyes?  

Then here is Jesus to gently open my eyes and take the disappointed bitterness from me.  Isn't that the beauty from ashes redemption of a broken world, that He promised so long ago?  Always new mercies, even when I refuse to open my eyes.

Oh, to have numbered my complaints that night with my blessings.  To have given thanks in all things and grasped the every moment grace with both hands, freely taking and giving of the blessing surrounding me, for such is Christ.  To let go of the acrid soul and reach for the better things. 

718. brother fighting sickness hard

719. closeness of bedrooms

720. sound of yawns across hallways

721. show tunes whispered nearby

722. dog asleep noisily at foot of bed

I can usually tell when I'm growing bitter.  Sometimes it comes quickly, but usually it is slow in advancing.  I guess the difference comes in where I put my counted moments.

The Sometimes Hardness

What do you say to the sometimes biting hardness of God's always love?  Blessings are given, blessings are taken, blessings are withheld, and it is all Grace.  Every moment.

How do I comfort with the trite and the condescending when all my heart wants to do is break?  How do I tell friends about stately sovereignty when all they feel is the lack of their darling child?  How do I speak of abundance when I watch years roll by within a few short days?

I don't know.  I do not speak well in the first place.  I stumble over the pronouncing of my vast ideas.  I write my love out of the fear of being unloved.  Yet oftener, words must be spoken to be heard and I can't hide behind the covers of my journal forever.  Loving must be verbal even if I do not know what to say.

II Corinthians 1 speaks of a God who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we might be able to comfort those in any affliction with the comfort with which He Himself also comforts us.  As we share abundantly in Christ's suffering, so we share abundantly in His comfort.  Abundantly.

The word haunts me.  Always abundance.  We share this abundance of suffering, of comfort, of Christ.  Our cup overflows.  Goodness and mercy follow us all of our lives, not as passive onlookers but as interested habits clinging to our paths with the diligence of God-sent dignitaries.  Grace is not disinterested.  

I know these things.  I write them out to myself.  I hang them on my walls.  Chesterton and Donne speak to me out of illustrated passages, hung where I am reminded of their truths.  And yet I cannot speak them.  My mind sails upon thought and swirls new ideas into its current but the words will not be right and I am afraid to speak lest I hurt where I most wished to heal.

Oh for the grace to speak what must be said, and to show the love that I feel.  

Blessings are given, blessings are taken, blessings are withheld, and it is all Grace.

And forever and forever,

   As long as the river flows,

As long as the heart has passions,

   As long as life has woes;   

The moon and its broken reflection

   And its shadows shall appear,

As the symbol of love in heaven,

   And its wavering image here.

~Longfellow, from The Bridge

Don't Get Any Ideas.

There is an unavoidable dilemma at 22, in which every young man to whom I speak is seen through others' eyes as a "prospect."  I do not blame people for this.  I fully realize that matchmaking, even if passive, is the most entertaining thing people can do with women like me.  However, this does create a mental obstacle towards speaking to my brothers in Christ as I ought.

Firmly forgetting that someone will be speculating gently as to any future possibilities, I am at last able to speak normally to Obadiah and draw him out of his shell as I would any well deserving person.  [Don't get excited, my dear matchmakers.  I don't know an Obadiah.]  However, fearing opinions and shying from harmless speculations, I find myself refusing to speak to men at all, should they be remotely young and unattached.  

Such was my unvoiced strategy for many years, and certainly through high school.  In a college environment where everyone was the same age anyway, speaking to men became natural and easy for me.  In college ministry, I tried to make people comfortable.  Men, as well as women, like to feel welcome in new situations.  Unfortunately, when I would return to various multi-generational environments, I found myself reverting to old habits.

I became newly aware of this fault in myself when I entered into conversation with a young man who had been visiting the church for several weeks.  Why had I not introduced myself to him before?  I had noticed him before, in a rather scientifically offhand manner, as if his life had nothing to do with mine.  The problem is, it does have something to do with mine.  He belongs to the same God that I do.  We are inextricably linked by the same Holy Spirit who breathed life into both of us, and by the same Christ who took our sins in equal and extravagant measure so that we might die to sin and live to His righteousness.

Yet here I am, fearing other people's opinions, and therefore doing nothing to welcome, to invite, to encourage.  I believe very strongly in protecting reputations and not giving people reason to gossip, but the extremity to which I take these cautions is frequently overdone.  Shame on myself for inattention based on fear, or worse, pride, for isn't it pride that wants onlookers sure of my indifference?  An indifference, in fact, that is unloving, ungracious, and devoid of real humility.

People will always speculate when there are matches to be made.  I find it rather funny.  Meanwhile, people ought to feel welcome.  We are the Church after all.  

Chocolate Chip Expectations

I bit into a chocolate chip cookie today that had no chocolate chips.  I did not realize it at first.  I thought there would be at least one, somewhere, if I kept looking.  But no, no chocolate to be found.  Just cookie.  The cookie tasted good, of course, and had it been called a "Chipless Cookie," or "Vanilla Bread Cookie," or...something, I would doubtless have enjoyed it.  However, I put it on my plate with the expectation of chocolate chips, and was therefore disappointed.

Sometimes life is like that.  I was given the impression that my life would be different now--that I would be confident in my direction, or have an entirely different purpose.  Life is still good, but not what I expected.  It was sold me under a false idea.  Certain relationships were supposed to be wonderful, but ended up being forced and unnatural.  Classes that I looked forward to ended up being ugly. People I expect to like are disagreeable.  Life at home may not be as sweet as I hope.  All the time the world sets up expectations for us without following through, and all the time we let ourselves put hope on things that may not come true.

As a child, I was given some very profound insight: "When you give a mouse a cookie," explained the author, helpfully, "he's going to want some milk to go with it."  How odd to realize, all these years later, that the author was actually being satirical!  Mice.  We are mice, my friends, who have been given cookies.  Never really satisfied with what we have, always expecting a little more than we have been given, always returning, in the end, to the cookie.

For some reason, we like to think God owes us things.  As if we earned something better than He gives us.  As if Grace is only what we want, not the every moment He gives us.  As if grace upon grace is only figurative for the times we have everything we want.  God has given me life, and I complain that He hasn't given me my chocolate chips.

God hasn't promised us the chocolate chips.  But He did give us cookies.  And more often than not, out of His abundant lovingkindness, He even gives us milk to go with it.

I munch the next cookie, contentedly.  I have found chocolate once again, and this coffee is delicious.

The Search for Profundity

Thinking all the more about what to write next, I have been struck with something akin to stage fright, and have found myself therefore incapable of writing anything.  Apparently I can't discover marvelous things on command.

"Elise! Learn something profound! Gain some particular insight into your own human nature!"

It just doesn't work like that.  I guess when you're looking too hard, you can miss what's right in front of you.  Edgar Allan Poe--no, I must be honest--the dog Wishbone's version of The Purloined Letter taught me long ago that the best place to hide something is in plain sight.  At the time I wasn't greatly impressed, and continued to hide things in carved out books and bed springs, but the significance has since resonated.

The dishes need done.  My room needs organized for the fall.  My two youngest brothers just disappeared around the edge of a barn with a machete, an arrow, and old vegetables from the garden--I wonder why?

Sometimes righteousness isn't a big whiz-bang discovery or dolled up bad day.  Sometimes things just need to be done, like reading that chapter for Bible study, or rearranging my bookshelves for maximum efficiency.  Sometimes we think that if we're not learning something phenomenal and world-shaking, we aren't really close to God.  We don't feel God speaking to us, so we must be doing something wrong.

Before I become worked up, I think I shall just mildly declare these to be cumbersome lies that we need not embrace.  Righteousness isn't a collection of profound thoughts or feelings.  That's called philosophy.  Nietzsche and Freud were philosophers.

When I'm looking too hard for profundity, it escapes my attention.  The written word is surely the most marvelous creation I have ever been incapable of fully realizing, yet I didn't find myself incapable of realizing it because I was looking for something to realize.  Instead I was reading Acts, and the momentousness suddenly broke upon me like an overripe cucumber thrown by my youngest brother at a barn wall.

Life is too profound to give up in a futile search for significance.  I think I shall cease trying to define profundity, and instead, do the dishes.  Lunch will need to be made soon.

Seventeen Syllables

Whole stories to tell,

And seventeen syllables

Are more than I need.

When it comes to communication, I lack brevity.  A sentence, were I able to form it, might say as much as three of my paragraphs.  It is this concise writing quality that I find myself practicing when I scribble in my book of counted blessings.  With only three inches to ramble, I have to say what I mean immediately.  Yesterday, considering this, my eye fell on some old Chopin preludes.

317. delicate notes their own language

A single line of small letters can contain a great deal, I thought.  Inspiration seized me.

These delicate notes

Like their very only language

Music on a page.

There is something refreshingly simple and sweet about a form of poetry as short as the haiku.  I write more.

319. nearly ten years of life in pages

A row of journals,

Ten years of life on pages,

Looks into my past.

320. poetry spilling

Counting my blessings

A door into stronger life

Poetry spilling.

Like oil from the widow's jars, poetry spills out of thanksgiving.  Out of blessing.  Out of the grace I choose to behold.  I look at Miriam, after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea on dry ground--or at Hannah when Samuel was born.  I listen to how Mary sang of her promised child.

My own poetry is humble, imitating the short lines of my 3x4 notebook.

"Jesus wept," it says,

Sadness of the Son of God.

Two words, much meaning.

Whole stories can be known in three short lines.  If I want to write to touch lives, perhaps I must first learn to thank, fully.  If I want to write to touch lives, perhaps I must first learn to put my own life into three verses.  Seventeen syllables may be just short enough to do it properly.

Thanksgiving calls forth

Words from my pen to sparkle

Grateful, the heart sings.

While the Coffee Brews

The last thing I want to do when I am angry is be thankful.  Today, breathing flames, I sat down at the table and opened a small Mickey Mouse notebook, less than the width of my hand, and resolutely wrote, "freckles on a nose," next to the circled number 83.

It was hot.  The day was long.  There had been too many days of too little to be done.  This particular brother and I were beginning not to see eye to eye, and we finally had it out about the vacuuming that was not being accomplished.  I cleaned (because that's what I do when upset) while he finished his task, and when I was sure I was of clear mind, I assigned the extra work that he would not want to do.  He collected the eggs that I required, then ran upstairs to put off the rest of the chore.  I began brewing a pot of afternoon coffee, then sat at the kitchen table with my miniature notebook and one of my favorite pens. 

84. a mind of his own

85. grace to extend

86. temper as red as mine

With those numbered lines came memories of a fiery redheaded girl who, like one young brother years later, said things in hot haste and fought long the imagined injustice of her world.  The coffee maker gurgled peacefully.

87. quiet to soften heart

88. coffee as black as ever

89. memories of my own childish temper

The silence of a summer afternoon fell around me.  I got mugs off the shelf.  I called up the stairs to the boys that I had coffee done, warning them not to bounce too hard off the walls when they drank it.  The first thing that my brother said as he walked into the kitchen?

"I'm sorry I was a grouch to you again."

I told the boys my story about not wanting to do a task, about the temper of a ginger child when she thought she was wronged.  We understood each other.  The tension was gone.

Then one boy used a quarter cup of honey in his coffee and moved extraordinarily fast, the other drank his entire mug before I sat down and said his eyes couldn't focus on anything, and we all three laughed very hard.  I continued to sit at the table after they left.

97. relationship restored until next time

98. coffee hastily swallowed

99. caffeinated young brothers

Redemption doesn't just happen once.  Sometimes, it seems like nothing I do or say is right.  That most of my words in relationships are apologies.  But redemption in relationship is grace upon grace.  Thank God for redemption.  For reconciliation between brother and sister.  For all the emotions of relationship, happening while the coffee brews.