Good Gifts

God in the Yard: Week Four

Sometimes the thoughts take longer to come.  This week there was a question that lingered in the air with no place to land.  What is celebration?  Under this Crabapple tree, celebration means the apples haven't started to fall.  Yet.  Celebration is a party.  An invitation to others.  The release of a tension.  The elements of celebration:  remembrance, extravagance, familiarity.  What have I celebrated?  I made a short list.  What would I celebrate next?  I came up empty.  

Nothing forseeable to celebrate.  It can't be.  What crowds it out?  Ungratefulness. Entitlement.  Or perhaps humility and trust.  It could be either way.  Was I unwilling or just unknowing?

A friend stopped by, returned an item loaned, shared her current hopes and fears.  Good choices are all around her plate, but which one to partake of?  I said, "Take the path you want."  I know that sometimes there are only good choices, not always one holy and one repugnant to God.  He can give a selection, just gives it, and any one we choose we simply put our fingers around it and smile.  And he puts his arms around us and says, "I'm so glad you like it. Let's enjoy it together."

He has done this for me... given me what my heart longed for.  Given the gifts of answered prayer.  In this season, this home in Denver, he's redeemed an old burdensome job, given purpose in ministry, provided a "boundary of dwelling," helped my son (helped me with him), provided for an anniversary dream, gave me a community of mothers different from me, made our finances sure, provided a husband's love of his job, his wife, his children, took away the fear for the future.  I began to wonder even early on, "Will all things be answered here?  All the things I prayed in that borrowed bedroom with heavy hearts and sighs?  Will he bring them all to the table and settle them?"  He has done that one-by-one.

He is in the habit of giving, loves to give good gifts.  And more are coming.
More are coming!

I will celebrate when the prayers I pray come to fruition.  There are more redemptions. Why shouldn't there be?  He is making all things new.
I made a list.
I await the chance to celebrate.

First Chapter Books

As a parent I'm no different than any other; I have a list of  things that I can't wait to do with my kids.  The hardest part is waiting for them to be old enough to play catch, take hiking, or go to the theater.  Reading chapter books aloud to them was at the top of my list.  We do read alouds during our school year every day, but those selections have a specific purpose, and they aren't always designed with my youngest in mind. 

Their first personal read-alouds usually begin around the time they are five and they have some connection with my own childhood.  J's first read aloud was The Boxcar Children, a book I loved so much that I convinced my best friend to check it out from the library on my card.  She promptly lost it and I paid the fine on her behalf secretly hoping she was really just keeping it because she loved it as much as I did.  B's first read-aloud selections were a little different because he shared a room with his older brother so bedtime stories were for both of them.  But I chose The Phantom Tollbooth with my math-minded, artistic B in mind, remembering when a teacher read it aloud to our class while we made thickly colored wax crayon drawings of the story.  


Now it is summer.  And as I snuggle in with five-year-old S before bed we get to read something together that's just for pure fun.  The first one I picked for the two of us was Stuart Little by E. B. White.  I remember getting the set of books by E. B. White when I was a child and reading them all at least twice.  (My oldest absconded with my set and did the same thing.  Only the tattered, coverless pages are left.)  We both enjoyed Stuart Little though I wonder what he thought about the ending since the story never really concludes.  But then again, maybe it's good for him to know that sometimes our hardest searches will come up empty and what we learn to live with is hope.

The second choice is Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson.  We are only one chapter in, having broken it into two sittings, and the vocabulary is beyond him.  Sadly, I take on the role of dictionary during much of our reading, but most of the time I just let the words hover over his head and see if he shows an interest in knowing them.  I know it's ideal to read above their level, but this one might be just a bit too high.

If we can move through this one quickly enough, I'd like to introduce him to Thornton Burgess' animal stories.  I found an old edition at a library sale years ago and those stories are delightful.  And after that I want him to hear...

Continuity

God in the Yard: Week Three

Most mornings before the children rise, I have been able to be outside in the yard.  Sitting under the Crabapple tree, feeling the acceptance of nature.  I woke up yesterday, shunned the chilly morning and chose the couch.  Book and journal and pen I began.  The crowding started immediately:  stale, gritty, inanimate, lifeless surroundings.  The room did not speak.  Grabbing my sweatshirts, I quickly rejoined the reality that calls.

The moment I opened the door I knew it was the place of God. Surely nature, too, has omnipresence.  The breeze was blowing already.  The leaves were twittering and whispering.  The birds were mid-song.  The green healing from the hail was in process.  The Coreopsis bloomed without me.  I wasn't the one to create it. I just joined it, wanting to be a part of its story. 

God too is always at work whether we're aware, whether we trust, whether we understand or not.  However, days and weeks go by when I do not enter his reality.  Sadly the inanimate rules my mind and heart. It's not a leaving that I have to do, but an entering. Ever present, ever powerful, ever loving, ever purposeful. Whether or not we choose to take notice of him, he is always there being who he is and we can join his story.  

Opening my book I read this from A.W. Tozer.  "Always a living person is present, speaking, pleading, loving, working and manifesting himself whenever and wherever his people have the receptivity necessary to receive the manifestation."  This was my firsthand experience.  Nature was the object lesson.  

Earlier in the week I had contemplated what it is that nature communicates that words cannot.  Perseverance.  The true-grit nature of it.  The never-give-up-doing-what-is-right aspect.  We humans have a stopping point.  We push through a little of the rough, maybe even a hail-like stoning or a wind.  But we give in when we look around and listen to outside voices.  When we think a disaster has won, we let it. Quit. Move.

Nature stays put. And takes the hit and re-creates the beauty over and over.  The tender leaves might wait a year to return from the hail.  The tree takes on a new form and purpose after the fire.  The bird will learn to fly.  The tree will produce seed though so many thousands were left unfurrowed for naught last year.  The bird will sing when none answer.  

To be consistent in my one thing is to take that image of God and push it out of the soil, expose it to all that is nourishing and let it continually be both the inner and outer covering.  God is continuous. Nature follows suit. I want to be like my maker.  

Read it Again

My summer reading theme this year is "Re-Reads."  Last year I caught up with various sub-cultures a bit as I read through some of the most influential books from the past 10 years.  This year, I'm catching up with my former self and standing her back-to-back with my present self, measuring the distance between.  I'm re-reading those books that had significant influence on me, maybe left me breathless, and asking the question, "Does this book still hold its place?"

These books are attached to moments and experiences.  When I read them I endured a hard/interesting season of life, pondered a question, sought out a perspective.  As I re-read the books, I'm looking back to where I was the first time, seeing where I've changed, how life took turns I wasn't expecting.

The list is significant.  But the moments re-lived may be more overwhelming.

East of Eden

To begin I've picked up the book that began my love of Steinbeck, East of Eden.  I took it along on a roadtrip with my husband up California's Highway 101 through Steinbeck country. Three years into marriage.  One church down.  Seminary educations in full swing. Childless and idealistic.  This story gave me a dose of reality I couldn't relate to and yet couldn't shake.  Have I seen and understood more of this reality in the time in between?  And just when I had my Steinbeck collection all in matching orange spines, why did Penguin go and change the design?

The Pursuit of God

Secondarily, I've re-opened The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer on my Kindle.  This is one that I read during our impossible journey years ago.  When we were packing up everything to put in storage for an undetermined amount of time, I kept this book out knowing I needed what it had for me.  While waiting, praying, crying out to be heard, hoping, sighing, living without a home, without a job, or a purpose  I'd put our two kids to bed in our borrowed rooms at my parents house and go out on the arbor swing and just let Tozer teach and calm my anxieties.  Our current season is the opposite of that one.  Will Tozer still give clarity toward a fuzzy future?


The rest of the list:
Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle
Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright
Men and Women in the Church by Sarah Sumner
Working the Angles by Eugene Peterson
Gift from the Sea by Ann Morrow Lindbergh
Night by Elie Wiesel
Entering His Presence by Don McMinn
The Skilled Helper by Gerard Egan
Native Son by Richard Wright
Sacred Companions by David Benner
Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist