I wake up while it’s still dark. I reach to my right. My fingers encounter only the widening hole in the sheet. I need to buy a new set today. This is the second time it’s happened. How does a vertical sheet slit start and expand under my husband’s back anyway? What does he do during his sleep? I hear dishes rattle in the kitchen. Susanna woofs softly in her crate. I shush her.
I should get up, let the dogs out, but I lay in bed and pray. I feign sleep so I don’t have to even say, “good morning.” Silence seems good. Dennis rustles in his closet by the light of the hall. Opens and closes his dresser drawer. I hear his shoes clip clop across the wood floor. He leans over me. “Bye,” he says as he kisses my forehead. “See you tonight.”
The dogs are quiet. I scroll through Facebook. More violence in Ferguson. Michigan police departments acquire military equipment. I’m so glad my son did not go into law enforcement. A friend flies to Africa today. A teenager nearly drowns in the Muskegon River. Iraq. Syria.
I pray some more.
I think about the day ahead. I need to take my daughter to pick up her car. Take the grand girl to pick up the computer we had the Geek Squad guys factory reset. I need to get her to cheerleading practice. There’s laundry and bills and cleaning. Promised blog posts to write, and Lord, when will I ever get back to those books. Ever? My son’s in the midst of a divorce, and my daughter’s facing surgery that’ll keep her nonweightbearing for six weeks.
I pray some more.
Finally, I get up. Hit computer, coffee pot, and TV start buttons as I pass. Let dogs out. Brush teeth. Drink water. Take medicine.
I stop for a moment to watch the news. Shake my head.
I pray some more.
It’s been a long while since I’ve simply sat in the yard. So I take my camera out and do just that. I watch and listen and breathe. An oil slick skims across the top of my coffee, and I should probably clean the Keurig. The yard’s not totally quiet, but it’s peaceful. I can’t see the sandhill cranes, but I can hear them. I try to decipher the other bird calls and songs. I hear the highway sounds, though muffled by the towering fence of corn. Is it cicadas I hear? The sun peeks through the branches of the trees, and the wildflowers wave good morning.
I don’t leave the patio. I simply see what I see where I am. I notice that summer is beginning to die.
And then I come inside and shut off the TV.
What are you noticing right where you are?
In the stillness,
Sandy
With Laura, because it’s been a while.
Sandy, I too got up with my head swirling about the news and friends moving to Africa and kids’ new jobs and my mother in law’s slide into dementia (she lives with us). Then I stepped out onto the deck to pray and breathe.
I glanced at the trees and noticed the way they meet the blue of the sky, an outline I wish I could draw, and sent my prayers Heavenward.
Slowing is good.
Thanks for this.
So I think you should take a sketchbook and a pencil out with you next time. See what comes of it. 🙂
I am noticing many things that need to be done and deciding to pace myself when doing them. Time is a guilt producer and I just don’t feel like carrying any more weight today.
Sometimes we’ve just got to let the weight slide, right Sharon? Sometimes our best yes is to say no.
Beautiful photos, Sandy! I always take my water and coffee out to the deck in the mornings for my quiet time in the woods, waking up slowly, and savoring God’s presence in creation.
Blessings!
It’s been harder to do that here lately, Martha. The mosquitoes are ravenous.
Thank you for sharing your life with us. Praying for your family Sandy. For you. For our neighbors far and wide. My favorite part. Going outside and turning off the tv. Sounds like peace.
Don’t you just love the sounds of silence and peace, Kelly?
Love you,
Lynni
Thank you, friend. I know you’re living in a swirl of emotions right now. xo
Sorry to read that your children are going through difficult times, right now. It can get overwhelming, trouble everywhere. Glad you took a moment to enjoy God’s creation, this morning. I try to do that and sneeze my head off – haha
I’ve never had much trouble with the sneezing. But my whole body can easily turn into one big mosquito welt. 🙂
Thank you for this deep breath this afternoon. I think we all need to take some time to do just this. And it has been far too long! You’ve been on my mind lately and I’ve been meaning to message you for days. Life never slows down, does it? Saying a prayer for you, Sandy and sending you a hug.
Thank you, dear friend. I cannot wait to spend some time with you next to our favorite river. Just a couple months now.
What am I noticing, Sandy, right where I am? I’m at my computer, viewing the word “playdate,” its rounded edges etching the screen, and pondering when it was that I last had one: a playdate. I’ve recently had dinner dates and theatre dates and artist’s dates and God-dates (where I rendezvous with Him at a sidewalk café, journal in hand), but not a playdate. I played as a child, but never made a date to do it. It came naturally. And I guess I had “playdates” with moms, as we chatted convivially, catching up, while our children played carefreely, but I don’t remember if I called them that—playdates. And besides, my Sheridan will be twenty-two in less than two weeks. Playdates were a long time ago, and sometimes I wonder if they ever were. Somehow, I’ve lost how to play. And I can’t think of playing when my city if falling down and burning up. I live in St. Louis. St. Louis is Ferguson. It’s 10:34 a.m. and what I read here at your blog is the first I’ve learned about yet more violence erupting overnight. I’ve not yet turned on the television news. I’ve not yet read the headlines. I’ve not yetl istened about it on the radio. I’ve done so non-stop since it started days ago, and I just can’t bear to know anymore right now. I’ve had my requisite two cups of strong English tea laced with honey and half- and-half, because it helps me wake up (but I’m not sure I want to). I’ve drunk in God’s Word in my “One Year” Bible—this morning the first chapters from the Book of Esther, part of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, where he talks about examining ourselves before partaking of the “Lord’s Supper,” and not partaking unworthily, and part of Psalm 35 (I don’t like how my One-Year fragments the psalms), and two little proverbs from chapter 21. I don’t like how life fragments and blows up in your face, how it shatters into shards and shouts and rubber bullets sprayed into crowds and real bullets fired into unarmed bodies. I don’t like the fragmentation of peoples and races and mindsets and death-threats. And yes, Sandy, truly summer is beginning to die, and maybe it’s been dead for a long time … the summer of youth and innocence and beauty and peace. Everything feels like winter and hatred and evil and frigidity, even though, pardoxically,tempers and passions are roiling and boiling over like lava. Even with passions erupting, there is still this frigidity and unwillingness to really look and really listen and really understand. Summer may be ending or already over, but there is just enough life in me, just enough warmth to pray for summer anyway—for the resurgence of life and wildflowers and towering corn and flourishing people like you and Deidra and Jennifer and Michelle and Shelly and Pam and Floyd and Kel and Kelly and Kelli, the bloggers I love, who breathe summer into souls and refuse winter, because they refuse to give up hope, who use their words to call us to unity in Christ, not fragmentation in crowds, to summer light, not winter night, to the carefree play of innocent children who love Jesus and not the labored living of sinful souls weighed down in hatred for those He made. I’m sorry that this is such a rambling (and maybe incoherent) post, but this is where I am and what I notice. Thank you so much for your invitation to share it!! I’ve loved every. single. thing. you’ve. said. here. I love how you slow down and notice beauty and call us to play. I love your words and your photos. You are precious, Sandy. (P.S. Based on my Bible reading today, I wonder to what has God called me, any of us, for such a time as this?)
This is not a rambling nor an incoherent post, Lynn. It’s a beautiful spilling of your heart, and I treasure that.
Lillee and I are playing grocery store right now. (Of course, I’m multi-tasking.) She collected items I ordered, then asked for my “card” to run through the cash register. She gave it back and then asked me for my name. “Jennifer,” I said. “It should have been on my card.”
She takes the imaginary card back. “This isn’t your card! It’s someone else’s.”
“Oh no! What do I do now?”
“Don’t worry. Just a minute.” She runs in the other room. Then runs back. “Here’s your card! You left it last time.”
Then she proceeds to tell me how the store was closed yesterday because of construction next door…
It’s good to just become a child and play sometimes.
Maybe our call is the same as it’s always been. To love. Simply slow down and love.
Love you big, Lynn.
I am grateful for your love and acceptance and permission to ramble!! I also love this sweet and innocent story, and it reminds me that children play and God bids us come to Him as children. It also reminds me of playing store with Daddy, with a little red bank that he had had as a little boy. Neither of us had credit cards (real or pretend) when we played together. But I assure you, there was innocence.
God bless you, Sandy.
I’ll tell you what. She’s barely four, but sometimes what comes out of her mouth astounds me! And just the other day, she wanted to pray. The first thing she prayed for was wisdom. Wow.
At one time my mornings started with feet hitting the floor in response to a child’s call, a puppy’s whimper, the alarm’s blare… and I would mutter about the end of my night’s sleep and having to face another day’s chores. Then, one by one, the children grew up, married and left, I sold my home business, hubby retired, and the pace slowed. There’s still lots to do every day, but now it’s of my own choosing. Now I remember to thank God for each new morning and enjoy my changed lifestyle.
I love my quiet mornings, in my housecoat drinking orange juice on the deck, listening for the birds and recording thoughts in my journal. In the years of busyness and hasty living I don’t think I believed life would ever become any different, but it has. Life is very cyclic.
I just exhaled reading this, Carol. Even your words are peaceful. I thought I’d be in that season by now–but maybe God’s going to keep me on this earth for a long while yet until I can enter it. 😉
That I’m not all
of whom I think
God wants
me to
be.
But that I am
whom He wants
me to
be
still
in this season.