Learning To Stay Open

"My mother was too busy raising a garden to join a garden club." That's the one line I remember from our pastor in Greensboro, NC, at West Market Street UMC. He was a very point blank man who cut to the heart of a passage with a tactless Southern style that left you staring directly at Jesus' words and wiggling in your pew a bit. Pastor Dickson said this about his mother when he talked about all the things we do to create things in our lives and how we struggle to fill voids, almost as if we don't trust God to meet us in them. I don't think my former pastor really had anything against garden clubs so much, just that it wasn't right for HIS mom...he said she stayed quietly in her garden listening.

I think I'm working through learning what is right for ME, for Emily and Eric and for the three of us together. We're re-doing the office, it's a tiny room, Eric's old bedroom but it's been our office for a couple of years since Emily moved downstairs and he tookover her old room upstairs. It's been a catchall for junk and furniture and has the energy to reflect it. I don't precisely know WHY we're doing it now, but it has something to do with creating sacred space and creating an environment where we can each honor Chris in one of the best ways possible, by studying and by stretching our minds and spirits and by picking up his micro-lending calling. And for me, also to write.

Sacred space is what we are after, so we're taking forever choosing even the first thing. And even though Chris drilled it in my head as an undergrad that you add BEFORE you drop, I got rid of the old desk we picked up for free from a neighbor when they moved and the new desk hasn't revealed itself to us yet. So the pc is on the office floor, papers are in laundry baskets and, for some reason, I'm totally content with that. The time simply hasn't come. This is a patience and a peacefulness I've not known so intimately before. I tend to be one that needs to start and finish things very quickly and not be content with mess and disarray. Then it dawned on me, we can't plow through and finish grieving either, I actually doubt that I, personally, ever will FINISH it. And I'm finding peaceful moments amidst the disarray of my life. Being content with a torn up office and my finances in laundry baskets is very un-Leigh like and yet I am. This a God thing...and once again our Lord teaches the bigger lessons by creating smaller examples that I can tangibly see and wrap my head and heart around. Disarray is okay sometimes...waiting and being patient and staying open to what is to be revealed, that's the calling here.

And so, I find myself having a cup of tea amidst pretty regular tears, amidst laundry baskets with bills in them and amidst a big empty space both in my heart and in my office floor. I think I shall buy some more tea tomorrow, this is a God's timing thing...and He will hold me and the kids through it all. That's a really good thing.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh