Five Minute Friday: Catch!

I know it's no longer Friday. Friday was given to hymns and scripture, prayers and flowers, the fellowship of the body of Christ and the comfort of the grieving. Now it's Saturday morning and I have but five minutes.

Perfect.

And so, on Saturday morning, as always happens after funerals, I find myself thinking about life and the big picture and the deep meanings for the time we have here. 

Lisa-Jo, writing on this week's Five Minute Friday prompt, "catch," says, "I write in this space because sometimes our stories are the best translation of the Bible we’ve got to offer someone else."

Hmmm. Why do I write in this space? Why do I do anything the way I do? There's a great question.

As a rule, Catholics are not encouraged to translate the Bible on their own for someone else;-). It just doesn't come to us as second nature to think in those terms.

Really, though, isn't that precisely the point?

Isn't life--each life individually--our own translation of the Bible? Aren't we supposed to speak His every word and let them become so tangled with our own words that no one knows where His words stop and ours begin?

Catch. Hold.

Breathe Him in and let Him exhale from every pore. Aren't we supposed to know Jesus so well that we know ourselves only in Him?

Paul writes, "For me, to live is Christ and death is gain." To. live. is. Christ. Four words. Nothing extra. The whole point of living right there. 

What is my translation of the Bible as it is lived out in my own home and at the ballet studio and on the soccer sidelines and here in my small corner of cyberspace? Is it Christ? Is that obvious? Can you catch it? Does the way I live toss Christ high into the air in a million sparkling pieces of grace so that they fall about me everywhere and on everyone to be caught, even sometimes unawares?

That is the prayer of my life. 

[Disclaimer after the five minutes are up: When I went back and re-read this piece after the first few comments here and on Facebook, I worried that it sounds like I'm fishing for compliments and affirmations. I'm not. My point was to share with you what's inside my head, the things I'm thinking and asking myself. Usually, I let things rumble around in my head, then I put them in draft and think some more, then I tinker. I genuinely did this in five minutes and I guess there's a bit of danger in that;-) I beg your pardon if it sounds other than I intended. Have a beautiful weekend, friends! I'm off to --ahem--encourage a brood of children to pull more than their weight in weeds.]

Who Knew?

I noticed a few days ago that Christian's hair is looking especially good. His curls are nicely tamed, but not crunchy and not spiky. I didn't ask about it because he tends to grow bright red when complimented. Today, he asked, quite nonchalantly, if we had any more homemade healing salve stashed away somewhere. 

"Oh, I'm sure we do," I replied brightly. "I made lots of it. Why? What hurts.?"

"Nothing; " came the quick reply "it makes awesome hair gel."

I thought about that a moment. Olive oil and a touch of beeswax. Nourishing herbs. Certainly good for his hair. Why not?

It's about time to make some more, so I dug up this post to remind myself of what to do. I figured it's been awhile, so I'll re-run it for you, too. Maybe you need some hair gel?

 Today is the day to assemble gift bags for the dance teachers. In each bag, Mary Beth will place a bar of saintly soap, a sachet of garden lavender buds, and a tin of homemade healing salve. It's a bag in keeping with the handmade pledge. The soaps are not handmade in our home, but they are handmade. I think the teachers will be very happy at this improvement over last year's soaps, which were made in our home:-). Trish's soaps are truly amazing and I think it still counts as homemade. I can only imagine how wonderful her Canadian home must smell. [Alas, this link is not live right now. Trish is taking a break. But maybe in time for Christmas?]
The salve is becoming legendary. Recipients of last year are begging for more. I'm told it heals anything from diaper rash to windburn to hemmorhoids. I'm also told that some northern ladies were coveting some southern ladies' healing salve and I've been encouraged to skip sending teas this year and just send large vats of salve. Alrighty then!
We have a small crockpot that came with my large slow cooker. I think it's intended purpose was to keep dips warm.We've never used it for that. Truthfully, we'd never used it at all until last year when we discovered it to be perfect for making salve.
I put a handful each of dried plaintain, comfrey, calendula, and St. John's Wort in the crock and then fill it all the way with olive oil. I leave the herbs to simmer all day.
    At the end of the day, I drain the oil through cheesecloth, squeezing as much of it as possible out of the herbs. I toss the herbs into the garden. Then, I measure the oil and put it back into the crockpot. When it is warmed, I add one ounce of pure beeswax for every 8 ounces of oil. This seems to give it the right consistency when it cools. While it is still warm, I add a few drops of lavender essential oil, a few drops of tea tree oil, and I squeeze out the contents of two or three Vitamin E capsules. Don't skip the Vitamin E--that's the preservative. Stir it all until the beeswax is melted and it's all blended. Pour into containers of choice. Mountain Rose Herbs sells the dried herbs and a variety of containers. I think these little herbals sets would make nice hostess gifts, too. 

Or, perhaps this year, they are the teenage gift of choice. Everyone needs hair gel.

Thinking Big Thoughts with Young People

I started a post yesterday morning. I wrote rapidly and with passion, all about text messages and mean girls and life and death and the drama we create versus the reality God intends for us to live. After days of sitting with Rachael, waiting while her father was dying, Mary Beth was at home at our dining room table, trying to wrap her brain around a math lesson. Her cell phone, her iPod, and her computer were fully awake beside her. Normally, we don't allow electronics during school hours, except for academic uses. But Rachael had been texting pretty much all of the previous 24 hours and I was keeping a careful watch as girls rallied around her, some of them in person, some from miles away via social media. Suddenly, there was silence. In the silence of those morning hours, we all knew that Rachael's dad was drawing his last breath.

I tried to upload my post to Typepad. Typepad would have none of it. It disappeared into cyberspace. I quickly figured that was probably for the best and moved on to the next thing. I gathered my little girls on the couch and read Little Red Riding Hood. Just as the woodsman released the grandmother and little girl from their canine tomb, Mary Beth came toward me, laptop in hand. Rachael's brother had updated his Facebook status with a tribute to his father. There was his birthdate and his death date.

In a few moments, Mary Beth was at Rachael's house.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur. I had seen the very best of social media and electronic communication. And then I saw human touch, unafraid, in hard places, loving with wholehearted generosity. I couldn't be prouder of my daughter and the girls with whom she dances. They were courageous examples of grace and compassion and their witness humbles me.

At home, while Mary Beth stayed with Rachael, we found ourselves on a bit of a rabbit trail. This post had us researching child slavery in Africa. Nicky, already raw from the past few days of watching and waiting with Rachael, was pushed to brink of emotional meltdown. This was just too much! Too much suffering. 

And yet. And yet he woke this morning wanting to know more about poverty in Africa. More about what Jesus calls us to do. More about the children. So, I showed him this article, about living for Jesus among the poor, about being young and acting with wisdom and grace and compassion and wholehearted generosity. And that, of course, led to Kisses from Katie (do watch the video on the Amazon page). 

Nicholas read the free Kindle sample to me this morning while I knit my Katie's sweater. (Yay! we made it to the sleeves!). Then, we downloaded the rest to read to each other a bit at a time. (I add a caveat here: I don't know if this book is inappropriate for children. I've sent a quick note to a friend who read an advance copy and I'm not going any further with Nicholas until I hear from her. I'll update here if there is inappropriate content.)

{the expression on his face as he reads about a sick, dirty, starving little girl the same age as his littlest sister...}

So that's about it here today. It's raining. Everyone who can read is off in a corner somewhere reading. Karoline and Sarah have overtaken the sunroom and turned it into a pancake restaurant of some sort. I'm getting ready to go get Rachael so she can hang out here for awhile before dance. 

And we're thinking. About big things. About suffering and loss and God's generous grace. About what it is to truly be Christ to one another.

{For more knitting and reading, visit Ginny today.}

Daybook: Give the Best

Outside My Window

A bright beautiful day. We're soaking in the sunshine while we can. There is a prediction for an incho or more of rain on Wednesday.

I am Listening to

waffle making in the kitchen. Nick's in charge. It's his narration of this version of The Three Little Pigs.

I am Wearing

pajamas. And it's nearly noon. Go me.

I am so Grateful for

a peaceful weekend; beautiful girls from our dance studio who are ministering to one another in a time of sorrow with admirable tenderness and grace.

I'm Pondering

Give the best you have received from the past

to the  best that you may come to know in the future.

Accept life daily not as a cup to be drained

but as a chalice to be filled

with whatsoever things are honest, pure, lovely and of good report.

Making a living is best undertaken as a part

of the more important business of making a life.

Every now and again take a good look at something not made with hands --

a mountain, a star, the turn of a stream.

There will come to you wisdom and patience and solace and, above all,

the assurance that you are not alone in the world.

~Sidney Lovett~

I am Reading

Becoming More than a Good Bible Study Girl

I am Thinking

about what a gift good health is.

I am Creating

I ordered everything I need for a quilt top. Just waiting for it get here.

To live the liturgy:

The Holy Father's intention for this month: That the terminally ill may be supported by their faith in God and the love of their brothers and sisters. We are living this day by day, hour by hour, as we wait for one of the "dance dads" to go home to Jesus.

Towards a Real Education

It's a public school holiday today. It's not an "our school" holiday. 'Nuff said.

Towards Rhythm and Beauty

We hit a rhythm last week and I'm going to cling to it for all its worth. We are far more creative, productive, and happy once the rhythm has been worked out and life--however busy--is more predictable.

I am Hoping and Praying

for Rachael, her father, and their family and friends. 

 I am learning

well...I was about ready to embark on a furniture painting project, but Mike thinks that the chairs in question aren't well-built enough to merit the investment of new fabric and paint. So, we'll just have to see where that all shakes out. In the meantime, I've been reading  furniture painting tutorials. 

Around the House

It's clean. Really clean. And "the help" didn't clean it. We asked a young woman to come help us clean one day a couple weeks ago. It took her an hour and a half to fold four loads of laundry. Then, she went up to my room. Six hours later, it was time for her to go. My bathroom was mostly clean (except the trashcan wasn't emptied). My bedroom was sort of clean (except for the dust bunnies under the bed and the sheets that weren't changed). Six hours??? It wasn't that dirty; trust me. I randomly asked children who went up there during the day what she had been doing when they saw her. To a man, they all answered texting. It was suggested that perhaps I didn't supervise closely enough.

Here's the thing about that: If I have to supervise the help to keep her on task and make sure she's not texting, I have plenty of that help under my roof. And I don't have to pay them. So much for help.

I cleaned like crazy last week. It's clean.

From the Kitchen 

An autmn menu. I'm thinking about sharing the whole week of recipes, a day at a time, here on the blog. Is that a good idea?

On my iPod:

Mindy Gledhill.

One of My Favorite Things

planting pansies. Tomorrow, I think.

On the Calendar for the Week

Some serious yardwork tomorrow. Weeds are out of control. This rain has really been a boon to overgrowth. And then, bulbs and pansies in the ground.

A local meeting with faraway friends who are here to visit on Wednesday. We'd hoped for breakfast at Bull Run. But rain is predicted.

I have a sense there will be a funeral to attend late in the week.

Fabric on the way. I'm hoping to make curtains for the sewing room and begin that quilt this weekend.

Worth a Thousand Words

 

A totally uncropped, unedited Blackberry picture of Stephen with his trophy after winning a tournament in Philadelphia last weekend. They were outside a kind of cruddy, sort of greasy, utterly delicious Philly Cheesesteak place. Not the best photo ever, but it's all I've got and I'm so out of time!

My heartfelt prayers for you all this week.

Intentional Weekend: Healing

I had planned to go to Pennsylvania this weekend. Three of the boys have soccer games there. We were going to make a family trip of it. But something tugged at me. At the last minute, Mike and I decided I'd stay home with the girls.

We talked as he packed. "I feel like the world has kicked me around in the last month," I remarked to him. "It has," he said, his eyes meeting mine, "and that makes me so sad."

It wasn't just me though; it was my girls. In a very short period of time, those tender-hearted girls have seen more illness and death and disappointment and loss than a strong, healthy adult could bear. The world was kicking them around, too.

I resolved to take this weekend and teach them, show them, how a woman of faith responds to grief, how to heal with grace. I would walk through this with them. Together, we'd heal.

It helps to have a place, a place where we go when our hearts are singing with joy, a place where we go to share with friends, a place where we go when the world knocks us around and we need to heal. Our place is a woodland place. It changes with the seasons. It gets battered by the world sometimes and creaks and is brown and gray. It changes with time, usually slowly, but sometimes drastically. Still, it is familiar, and beautiful, and we are well accustomed to seeing God present there. 

Some families have a beach, a place to gather there to celebrate glorious moments, to share with friends, to make a trip and turn a bad day around. We have a creek (or is it a river?), big old trees, and springtime's most generous flower show. We have rocks to skip across the water and skies so blue they beg to be painted.

This was a place to sit on a blanket and just wait until she talked. Just listen as it all came bubbling out. When it hurts so much and the world feels like it's crushing, come away, girlfriends, to a place where you can clear your head and open your heart, a place where He beats down on you like warm sunshine and you feel grace poured into your soul.

We talked about death, about loss, about hard knocks, about that amazing tree, clearly perched precipitously, commanding our attention in its infirmity. Would it be here next time? Or would it be the newest "bridge tree," stretched across the river, changing currents, inviting children to scamper across its back? 

Nothing stays the same.

 Babies grow into "little big girls." And little girls face big girl hurts.

 Big girls?  Well, sometimes in the life a girl on the brink of womanhood the universe offers an entire curriculum on loss all at once. And it hurts so much that every woman close enough to know can scarcely breathe in the watching.

Take a deep, breath , my girls, after you've had your big cry. Look around. See? He's here. He has a plan for your life. A good plan. And this --all of this-- is part of the plan. Be watchful with Him. Be watchful for Him. Even now, He sends tender mercies, sweet moments of joy. Moments, that wouldn't have been possible without the pain.

We took our fill of fresh air and sunshine. We stayed long and came home late. We feasted on good food and then we discovered a belated birthday present in the mail. 

Fabric!

So, we did something else that girls do when their hearts hurt and the universe has kicked them around. 

We created something beautiful for someone we love.

{{Psst, to my Girlies: I had the best day with you today.}}