Again With The Feet?

On silent, unexected feet, she walked in on the mess of me.  Her voice just there on the other end of the line comimg in stealth wise.  Blessed feet that bring good news. THE GOOD NEWS.  Of God in all this.  She held my wrath in her very own hands and took a step away from me.  So I could get a little perspective.  Breathe a little bit, and empty out that tight space in my chest that fights hard not to sin in anger.  Fails. 

She takes me by the  shoulders and turns me around.   To the cross.  The only orientation that makes sense.  She reads to me from the Book.  Our Bible.  The verses she chose seem written for me.  For today.  For now.  Right now. 

And I breathe Him in.  Let Him remake me.  My attitude.  Her baby boy makes gooey sounds in the background making me laugh and flooding my heart with oh so much joy. I know that he is a little messenger from heaven.  And how the sound of his laughter fills my sails with this great hope.  For change.  For reconciliation.  For the new thing. For REBIRTH.  And for NEW BIRTH.  For the harvest, folks.  For the harvest.

And thank God for feet!

Bernadette

Ping Pong...Peace

My shoulders and I lay together last night trying to hold back our tears.  Like ping pong balls bouncing across the net, we volleyed our doubts and fears for this dear son of ours.  My failure. His fear.  My grief.  His tears.  My fear.  His failure.  My tears.  Ours.  Things we wanted to do and say, and didn't.  Things we wanted to warn him about, and now we can't remember if we did or not.  Things we're not sure he heard us say.  And now it feels too late.  Too fast.  And this is so hard.  Ping Pong Balls spoken from the marriage bed, the holy union that brought him life, ricocheting fear and doubt and failure off our bedroom walls.  From the depth of our hearts, to the sacred spoken held in gentle honor, and then gradually.... just released to God.  To His grace.  His mercy.  To knowing that our son knows that we love him. 

I remember how we used to lay in bed and laugh at the things he would do.  Like the time we bought him a forty dollar pair of cowboy boots for his birthday, and how he tossed them aside after opening some ten cent books I got at a garage sale.  The way he would follow me all around the house...silently picking up his little toys to sit on the bathroom floor while I scrubbed the toilet, or tagging along while I cleaned my bedroom, made the bed, worked in the kitchen, whatever.  My shadow.  My little man.  When I sat to read, he would sit space-less, next to me.  So quiet.  Just being together.  But when his daddy got home, boys, look out!  The stereo would blast, and those two boys would dance. Two wild, long legged men, stiff and flat and hilarious.  No shake in the booty.  No grease in the hips.  Cowboys dancing to Fiddler on the Roof's "Tradition".  Makes me laugh still, just thinking about them.  Makes me cry.

We've had some lost years too.  YEARS.  Though I reach to correct and tame and reconcile, they are just gone.  Makes me sick hollow.  I can see it in the pictures of him, and I think, "Where the heck were you, lady?  How could you not have seen all this?".  So I walk that worn path to the cross, where Jesus is the glory and the lifter of my head.  Of Joshua's head.  I go there a thousand time a day.  These days.  Letting go and letting go...putting out nets of hope from this boat full of holes.

He is close to the broken hearted.  Did you know that?  I sense Him in every tear, and I am grateful that He doesn't seem to be in a rush.  He's not in a hurry for me to pull it all together and be okay.  I am at rest in His patient love.  For my dear Shoulders.  For me.  For our Joshua.  His.  HIS!  The paddles go down, and the balls are silent.

Enough said.

Bernadette

Time Travel

Looking across the table at time, it's as if nothing has changed.  She looks just the same, unlike me, and I want to hug her.  Steal her away and sit out in the sun catching up on twenty years of living.  Dear to me, this one, and I wonder what my life would have been had she not reached in.  The way God used her to write the first sentences in the story of my Shoulders and me.  Our love story.  And I smile at the way she calls him Botzey with this great smile in her heart.  She calls our meeting "time travelling".

Her face is lovely, and she is loving in her memory of us.  I wish for more time.  Long for it.  I want to tell her how Jesus raised us.  Up.  How He brought our love story up out of the ashes and the grave to fill it with great shovels full of life.  Love like His.  How He lifted my Shoulders.  Me.  And the entire household of Botz.  These things that we tend to forget after awhile...when we've been in the press long enough.  How He keeps removing those layers of Lazarus clothes.  Death.  How He keeps breathing life and love and resurrection into hearts once held in hell hole. Such a mystery.  Such a miracle.

But she too, has been hurt by religion, and so I just gaze into the loveliness of who she is, and who she is becoming.  I feel overwhelmed at the deep privilege I have of knowing her, and still, after all these years, being able to call her friend.  Dr. Awesome.

Looking forward to time travelling home,

Bernadette

Confessional Run On...and on and on

Confession time because how long has it been since you have spent time with an enemy of God, and do you remember how hard it is to keep your mouth shut, and how you know you're casting your pearls to pigs, but you can't help it, not because you're so holy, but because you want to slap their faces and tell them to shut up because they know not what they say.  Because they strike the head of the One you love, you want to strike them on the head.  Dead.  You become Peter, and you know it's wrong, and that it never works, but you're so frustrated and hurt that you become this sort of sword wielding, run on sentence making idiot.  Agggh!  I'm so mad!!!  Is that blood I taste from the biting of the tongue, and is that heart burning in my chest because I absolutely want to thrash someone?  Some might call it my Irish temper.  Let's call it by its real name.  Sin.  I'm pretty sure this is not righteous anger, and friends, I know I'll get to it, but bear with me in the venting of flesh as it whistles its steam.

For it wasn't that long ago really...that I too mocked God.  I said I loved Him and then slipped my hand into sin's.  We walked many miles that way.  Smiling to heaven by day and slipping 'neath the sheets of hell by night.  Drinking in all His glory then drinking myself numb to all of it.  Walking myself up to the prison and locking myself in.  I didn't have eyes to see.  YET!  I had no desire to be free.  YET!  I made God in my own image, and I didn't care to know His Son.  YET!

And, oh, there it is!  If the risen Christ can raise this woman, He can raise others just like me.  (Even the one who's lips I want to rip!)  Even your beloved friends and family.  Mine.  Let us link arms and prayers to lift our hopes for all the prodigals out there.  For the ones not yet brought in.  For the dear ones He is waiting for...His hand remains stayed.  Just.  For.  Them.  Friends, let's pray that the full harvest would come in!

And you could pray for me too, and that Irish "temper" of mine.

Thanks,
Bernadette

Fitting Under His Chin

The Strong Soft and I sit on the back steps watching chickens peck and dog roll and scratch.  Holding on to each other and letting our hearts show.  Letting them air out a bit, as we try to unpack the emotion stuffed into the numbing to get through.  Our tears mute the rumble of that unstoppable train.  We know it's coming, and we here the clickety clack of  wheels on the track.  "He's leaving.  He's leaving.  He's leaving.".  We sit and cry.  "How on earth do you plan a party?  When all that you have given your life to is about to walk?  Away?  How do you celebrate this grief?"

It's a consuming time.  Everyone is functioning at such a strange pace.  I, always, with the thought of his dark head tucked under my chin, diapered bottom-wearing onsie resting on my once slim hip.  Then I turn to see, him, and all this great manhood wrapped up in the tall and handsome of, "Let me go, Mom.". 

I think of the valentine that he gave to me this year.  It said, "I still fit.", and I knew that it meant he still fit under my chin.  Remembering it, I am ruined.  Undone.  Crying great drops of missing him already.  Great drops of memories standing in a line, each one needing to be picked up.  Looked at.  Held.  And I miss my little gravel-voiced boy calling me Mama, and I miss him letting me cradle his warm head under my chin, and I miss holding him in my lap, reading him book after book.  I miss his SilentDeep soul.  Even then.  Watching.  Studying.  Seeing more, and being more than I would ever know.  And I knew it then!   That he was not mine.  That he was meant for more and not more for me.

I fit my head under the Lord's chin.  Rest on His great saving love.  Rest knowing that He has a plan, and that He has known it all along.   I just let the tears roll.  He doesn't mind all this sentimental adjusting to His great plans for freedom.  For Joshua.  And for his mama trying to let go.

As many freedom journal entries as it takes, I guess,

Bernadette

Beginning

Psalm 119:116- "LORD, sustain me as You promised, that I may live!  Do not let my hope be crushed."

Hope shimmers like these new spring leaves hanging from stark branches: babies, quivering in the wind.  Hope in little lamb trying to find the end of its long legs.  Stumbling.  Awkward.  Hope in the new bird building its nest in the crook of the cottonwood outside our bedroom window.  I think if I held my breath, I could reach across the balcony and stroke her wing.  Touch hope.  Look her in the eye.  And try. 

Let Your strength be made perfect in my weakness,

Bernadette

Oh, For The Love Of Feet!

"Why do you always write in fragments?  It's very hard to follow, and why don't you use more nouns so I can understand what is going on?"  She cocks her head at me then says, "No offense."

I smile into her eyes, innocent and dear.  Nothing fragmented.  No broken pieces.  That soul not yet knowing its need to bow with all its strength to Him.  Jesus.  Her arms not quite aching with the holding up of worship and this desperate desire to build Him a throne.  She is precious, and I take no offense.

Writing in fragments because I am one.  Story not fully written, and His good work not yet complete.  Not yet.  I think of that long scar laid down and written in white flesh on my right foot.  Our feet represent our walk with Jesus, and oh, hasn't mine been the broken one?  The flesh opened to sin and shame and just bad choosing, only to be closed by stitches of His deep grace and His great love for me.  Us.  For our walking.  I love that scar.  His reminder that my feet must belong to Him too, and that they must travel the Truth Road or be sliced open again.  Causing panic. Causing Fear. Taking us captive to pain.  Again.

Fragmented feet. (I love feet!) Fragmented life.  Words written down in the unfinished of who we are as we look through the mirror dimly.  Seeing only in part.  Smiling at the screen as I think of the One Who created us, and how the glory of who we are will only be revealed through Him.  His time.  No hurry.  No rush. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.  For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God"  Romans 8:18-19

He writes in fragments too.  Me and You. 

Bernadette