Sandra Heska King

daring to open doors

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Outside Inside

October 8, 2010 By Sandra Heska King

This is the penthouse. Where I do most of my study and writing these days. From here I can look out over yard and field and woods.

It used to be my husband’s room. He remembers oven summers and freezer winters. He remembers lying on his bed and peeling away layers of wallpaper, vaguely remembers a cowboy paper. That’s the extent of his memory. He doesn’t remember that he gazed out the windows and dreamed. And he studied in the kitchen.

Jeremy also grew up in this room. Lived here for 21 years. I think the only time the windows were ever opened was when I insisted on airing it out. I don’t know why he kept them shut. And usually left the shades down. He slept with a fan blasting on him, summer and winter. Insulated from the world.

I wondered, looking from the outside in. What made those boy hearts pound with excitement or ache with pain? What thoughts or hopes or fears or regrets tumbled through their pillowed heads?

For that matter, what goes through their man heads now?

And why has it taken me so long to slow down and wonder?

And I think about how as a writer I can get wrapped inside my own mind and dare to spill my insides on the page and how maybe I need to stand on the outside more often and look deep inside others. To see past their masks and through their shades.

Later I look from inside out over a mystery world of changing seasons and a field ripe for the harvest. And I wonder how those boy-men could have missed this. I think of how He told me to consider the flowers and look at the birds. And I think of how the invisible is made visible in creation. If we slow down and have eyes to see and linger long enough to peel our way to the holy.

Yet in the seeing, can I also hear the cries of those who hurt, who stand on the outside? Can I feel what they feel?

And the deeper question. Do I want to?

Might those who live in longing see a glimpse of Him through my own smudged windows?

Might they see Him through my broken words?

It’s another Window View Friday at the Moonboat Cafe.

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Filed Under: stories and reflections

Comments

  1. Brenda says

    October 8, 2010 at 2:05 pm

    I heart you and I love this post. Beautiful.

    • Sandra says

      October 8, 2010 at 6:50 pm

      I heart you back.

  2. Jay Cookingham says

    October 8, 2010 at 3:29 pm

    I believe God writes on our hearts what He wants the world to see in us…surrender to Him is the key. Not sure that makes sense but that is what I thought when I read your post.

    Blessings!

    • Sandra says

      October 8, 2010 at 6:51 pm

      That makes perfect sense. Maybe that’s part of why I’m sitting these days. So He doesn’t have to write on a moving target. 😉

  3. Cassandra Frear says

    October 8, 2010 at 4:30 pm

    I like your musing here, and I like being able to see where you write. Something tells me I’d like writing there myself.

    • Sandra says

      October 8, 2010 at 6:51 pm

      I still think we’re twins.

  4. michelle derusha says

    October 9, 2010 at 6:15 am

    I love your penthouse — seems like the perfect writing spot (with the shades up and the windows open, that is). I also like your musings here about insides and outsides — what we see and what we present.

  5. V.V. Denman says

    October 9, 2010 at 10:02 am

    This is so beautiful. You truly have a gift.

  6. Jennifer@GDWJ says

    October 9, 2010 at 10:07 am

    That’s an interesting point you raise, about getting caught up in our own thoughts as writers. It’s hard work to see inside the hearts of others, and then as a writer, I wonder if I’m betraying something by sharing their stories. I go back and forth on this one. (Even this week, I struggled with this …)

    I so enjoyed seeing your writing place. 🙂

  7. Alex Marestaing says

    October 9, 2010 at 10:11 am

    Looking up from our pages is always a good idea. Nice post Sandra

  8. Carol Ann Hoel says

    October 9, 2010 at 12:33 pm

    Beautiful post and inspiring. Thank you for sharing.

  9. S. Etole says

    October 9, 2010 at 2:11 pm

    Yes … you help us see Him through your wonderful view.

  10. L.E. Fiore says

    October 9, 2010 at 4:03 pm

    Ohhhhh, I like this post. 🙂

    I certainly can get so caught up in my own thoughts/emotions I forget to wonder about other people’s… And SO much goes on in those boy-heads *thinking of my brothers, here* and so often I don’t care to know what it is.

    Ah, glad you have a window overlooking the world. Wonderful for a writer. 🙂

  11. Lyla Lindquist says

    October 9, 2010 at 7:08 pm

    I need to get me a penthouse.

    And to stand on the outside and take the time to look in. We yearn for that from others. Why so easy to neglect to do it for them?

    I’ll be thinking about this post (and coveting your penthouse from my basement) for a long time. Thank you.

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“Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to “Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. . . Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment and bow their heads.” ~ Mary Oliver in “Mysteries, Yes”
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No way could anyone ever convince me that this world in all its beauty and creativity and mysteries is here by accident.
Food truck night with a newcomer—@crepstick. So Food truck night with a newcomer—@crepstick. So yummy! I hope they come back.  But maybe not too often or I’ll have to do double time on the exercise.
“Embrace this day knowing and showing the world “Embrace this day knowing and showing the world that your God is more than enough for you.”
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@tamiheim @tonibirdsong 
In @stickyJesus: How to Live Out Your Faith Online
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the str My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion.” Psalm 73:26 (ESV)
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I’d almost forgotten what quiet mornings on the patio were like. (Quiet except for the birds and the sound of the neighbor’s AC.)
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So the first thing he asks me is, "How's you daughter?" Wait. Isn't this supposed to be about ME?

Then he asks if I've had any symptoms. "Well, I don't know. Maybe. I felt a little dizzy out of the blue a couple times. And felt like I couldn't catch my breath. I wouldn't have paid any attention if I didn't know I was supposed to be watching for symptoms. I DID walk all over Israel and up a bunch of steep hills, even all the way up to the Golan Heights--against the wind--without anything but normal fatigue.

He laughs. "I created a monster." Ummm, yeah.

"Have you been exercising?" 

"Well, yeah. We walk a couple miles a day. I'm back on my Nordictrack Strider." I didn't tell him I'd been lifting some light weights and some very heavy boxes and other items during this renovation, though I was told in December not to.

So he listens to the beating of my heart. Then he says, "Well, I don't think the valve is ripe yet. I don't expect you to have symptoms for three or four years. You don't need to come back for a year."

Wait! So you ask if I have symptoms. But you don't expect symptoms--yet. And when I do have symptoms, someone is gonna do something. And then I'll be older and maybe weaker. Or what if I have some sudden and silent symptom and boom! And now I have to worry about that. 

(In other news, my oldest grand texts me the other day, and our conversation runs like this...
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If not, take a peek at @mlivenews .

My great-nephew, not quite 12, had just gotten home from school when the EF-3 came down the street and left its mark on every home. My niece frantically tried to find her way from work through debris and blocked roads. My sister was 30 miles away visiting my dad in rehab. I don't want to know how fast my brother-in-law drove. 

The house and yard took a hit, worse than some, not as bad as others. A mobile home park was demolished--two deaths there. I heard one person is still missing. So many injured. So much awful. But the town is coming together for each other. Pray for them.

We plan to fly up Thursday--already planned to celebrate my dad's 95th birthday. 

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"This memorial commemorates the Jewish communities destroyed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and the few which suffered but survived in the shadow of the Holocaust."
#Israel2022 #HolocaustRemembranceDay
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"It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.” ~ Primo Levi

From a post I wrote for @tspoetry after a visit to the @holocaustcenter.

https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2016/07/27/regional-tour-holocaust-memorial-center-farmington-hills-michigan/
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Garden of Gethsemane and Church of the Nations

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A "blue preacher" right outside my door, nearly as A "blue preacher" right outside my door, nearly as tall as I am. I wonder what he's wondering. Is he finding the answer blowing in the wind?

"Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness." ~ Mary Oliver in "Why I Wake Early"
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