Simply From The Heart

I am a giving sort of person.  What I mean by that is that one of my 'love languages' is giving things to other people.  I love picking things out with those I love in mind, or just giving something that I know they would enjoy.  I love for them to know I was thinking of them and that I wanted to express that by physically giving something.  I suppose that's one reason (there are more selfish reasons too) why I've been having so much trouble getting into the holiday spirit this year.

Being a single mom, I don't think having an 'easy holiday' is a phrase that enters into my vocabulary.  But at Christmas, it's always been one time where I truly like to 'spoil' my son.  Now, I don't necessarily spoil him with high-end devices or expensive things, but at least in volume, I like him to have a lot of gifts - even small things like a bag of candy that he particularly likes, a book I know he's wanted (which used to be easy working for a book company), a movie he's wanted to see... just something about him coming out Christmas morning to see presents piled high beneath the Christmas tree fills me with warmth.  

But this year... somehow more so than any other year, I just haven't been able to get him even a  lot of those simple little things.  Fortunately, particularly since gift-buying is more difficult than usual with him becoming a teenager and the price of gifts rising exponentially, my son is definitely not the materialist sort - in fact, he used to get bored opening all the little packages I'd wrapped for him and just want to finish and play.  This year, I have just two little gifts for him.  They ARE exactly what he wanted, and they are all  (some might say  more) that I can give.  He doesn't know that yet, but what I've told him several times is, 'We're going to have a very small Christmas this year Briton, just so you know.  I'm doing the best I can.'  Without fail, his response is, 'I know, mom.  It's fine.'  Last night, I was watching a cartoon version of a favorite childhood author's book, 'Papa, Can You Get the Moon For Me?' by Eric Carle. (yeah, I still often watch cartoons) That is how I feel about my son.  If I could get the moon for him, I would, and happily so.  If I were a rich person, I would 'get the moon' for everyone that I cared about - I really would.  But more quickly for my son than anyone else.

Small Christmas?  What exactly does that mean?  Partly because of my sadness over not being able to do what I want to do (ie: buying him a lot of things and even making a nice dinner for him and my mom Christmas Eve), I haven't even felt like dragging out our scraggly little artificial tree and decorations this year.  So yesterday while my son was at school, I cleared our normal 'Christmas tree area' and laid down a simple red velvet covering and arranged our little nativity scene in the middle.  I put a Christmas candle on each side, haphazardly strung one string of lights around it, and that's it.  When he came home, I asked him if we should get out our tree - normally we put it up the day after Thanksgiving, so we're already way behind.  He asked what we'd do with the nativity set then, and I just said we'd have to move it to the side.  Briton said, 'No, I kind of like the nativity set where it is.'  ....  

The more I've thought about that since then, the more sense this makes - forgetting the tree and all the decorations and just making our humble little gift-given nativity set front and center.  God is also one who is a 'giving sort of person'.  Long before we were born, He gave us the world - literally.  Trees, plants, flowers, animals, wind, moon, air, night-time and day, sun, moon and stars.  He gave so much that we mutually take it for granted.  But on Christmas, He decided on one gift.  One gift that would change the world.  He didn't 'wrap it' in a crown and a throne coming with all the trimmings of the royalty that was deserved.  It was very simple.  A baby in a manager in a little stable with a thatched roof.  He gave with ultimate love and total sacrifice; and unlike me, He did not doubt or question the sufficiency of what He had to give nor did He become discouraged because this was not a 'season' where He could give as the world gives.  He offered what He could that was most dear and precious to His own heart, to us.  Without any thought or feeling of 'loss' for how we might think of Him or His gift if we didn't appreciate it.

I had forgotten the true gift behind Christmas for a little while, I am sorry to admit it.  But God, and I daresay even my son, have not.  I think, as time goes on, my son and I will remember this Christmas, and out little nativity scene from and center, more than most others.  And maybe a new Christmas tradition has even been born...


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PS - Now if I could only stop the cat from knocking over the wise men and trying to chew on the string of lights. :)

 

Assignment 5: The Pond

Author's Note: Just began writing to see what came out.  Another grand story idea. :p We'll see if this one goes anywhere.  Still working on it, but putting the start down here.

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Chaze stared numbly into the clear pool and wished for a fountain to wash away the emptiness left by the shouting voices still ringing in her ears.  Every so often she could still hear them in the distance when their voices rose particularly shrill.  Willfully blocking out all thought and feeling, she slowly laid down on her belly and laid her head on her folded arms. Idly, she smelled the warm earth, the sweet grass, felt the sun sinking comfortingly into her skin.  She watched the pond move restlessly beside her.  Dragonflies danced and skimmed over the murky surface, minnows darted below.  It seemed a separate world from hers, removed, and in that she envied the pond denizens hurrying about in their underwater life.  No one ever accused a minnow of not doing its chore right or a frog of not leaping correctly.  No one ever told the dragonfly it could not fly as well as the next or would never amount to anything.  All of those things and more (though in different context)she had heard just this morning let alone over her brief life-time.  Unlike the pond creatures however, when she was swatted, she went on living, her heart continued to beat.  For them, they were crushed physically and life just ended.  For Chaze, she was just as crushed, but not so visibly and life still went on.

Wonderingly, but still with little emotion, Chaze extended a hand and allowed her fingertip to pierce the surface of the water.  The water closed around her small digit and she could feel the weighty pull of the liquid against her skin.  There was smooth friction, but also a sort of closeness in the waters texture, almost like an embrace. 

Then, rather suddenly, she felt what seemed to be a wet kiss against her finger and it startled her so that she snatched back her finger and sat quickly upright.  She stared down into the pond and from just beneath a nearby strand of weed, she could make out the nose of a fish.  It was just a plain old gray fish, yet it seemed to be staring up at her rather expectantly.  Brow furrowing in confusion, Chaze stared back at it and saw her own reflection ghosting across the water's surface like a wispy cloud.  A small featured eight year old face with a scattering of freckles on the nose and clear, alabaster skin, waving blond hair flowing down across her shoulders, and blue curious eyes stared back at her and yet seemed to flow around the fish at the same time like a hologram across his watery sky.  The fishes mouth moved; not in the comically foolish way that most fish move their mouths, but in a wider, much more expressive manner that looked so like it was talking that Chaze's heart began to pound in excitement.  "I can't - I can't hear you."  She said to it in her native British accent. 

A bubble exited the fish's mouth in what Chaze took as exasperation and it suddenly wriggled its way up to the surface of the water and pushed its nose through the surface.  "I said,"  It said, perfectly proper.  "That if you're so displeased with the world you have up there,"  It pointed one fin up towards her sky.  "You would do well to try another."

Chaze's eyes widened at this.  "H-How do you mean?"

The fish made an impatient expression.  "Honestly, are all humans this dim?  I mean down here."  His fin pointed down and around him at the pond.  "Down here, among the water lilies and the sand, beneath the water.  It may not all be simple, but sound is much muted down here. You'll not find creatures foolishly blubbering about at each other and making such a clattering racket as all that."  He covered the sides of his head with his fins and grimaced distastefully in the direction of Chaze's home off in the distance across the field.

"But how am I to breathe?"  Chaze asked.  "I haven't gills and fins like you do."

The fish put a fin to its chin and paused thoughtfully.  "I'd...imagine you could breathe down here if you wanted to, just as the rest of us can.  After all, the Swan does grant such privileges to outsiders every once in a while."

"The swan?"  Chaze asked perplexed her gaze instinctively roaming over the water's surface for the large, white feathered plumage.

"No, no.  Not that kind of swan."  The fish said gravely.  "The Swan is a swan fish.  And He's ever so much more personable than those pestilential birds."

Chaze could not help but smile at the disgusted expression on the fish's face.  Still, she thought she'd rather have another minute to think before plunging down into the surface of the pond, and so she asked, "Are you a British fish?  Only, you talk very like me and I'm from Britain.  But this pond and this plantation are in America.  A place they call Georgia."

The fish put its fins to its 'hips' and said indignantly.  "I'm just as British as you.  Don't you remember your mum and dad adding that sack of swill fish from England to this pond when you'd arrived?"

Chaze thought back.  Yes, that was right, her father had taken the small bag of fish that she'd kept and dropped them into the pond.  She had been keeping them as pets, a little piece of home, but her father had grown angry with her at dinner for spilling her drink that second night and had poured out the fish into the pond water as punishment.  "Yes, I suppose I do remember.  That was when we first arrived here from England and daddy still walked around the grounds.  All he and mum ever do now is fight.  Mum doesn't reckon we should have come on this business holiday."

"Yes, I've heard them."  The fish said, seeming a trifle more gentle now.  "Big humans can be awfully stupid sometimes."  Chaze smiled again at his bluntness.  "That's why I thought it high time that someone took notice of you and offered you an alternative.  Now, do you want to come down here for a bit or not?"  He finished, abrupt once more.

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(Much later)

"You didn't want to swim.  You wanted to drown."  He said it so matter-of-factly that Chaze

had to take pause and think about it for a minute... and after an awkward moment, she

realized that he was, in fact, stating the truth.  She *had* wanted to drown rather than

face another day as it had been.

just some working lyrics

The flames that flicker in the water so deep
Black as night in this dark reflection I keep
Dancing in and out of my mind
Why so distant, and why so unkind?
 The face that looks back at me is scarred by the years
Maybe not visible the path of all these tears
Pushing back my lost remembrance of You
You fought to keep hold of me when I ran away from You
Was this just a matter of more print on a page?
Another story to be told by another sage?

Memory holds me to the bottom of a drum
That pounds within my heart till all my soul is numb
Looking over at the ruins of the days
All that was left of me when You left me to my ways
 Am I really so much older now?
Am I really so much colder than time would allow?
I can't keep in time with the rhythm of Your feet
 My heart always did find a wandering beat
 Can't hold on to what I've always known
How swiftly now the breeze has made those ashes flow
And what's left behind is not the fruit but the rind
Can you make blossoms bloom from such a broken life?

Was it really just like flames to the wine?

It took away the potency, and left barely a sign

Fire to refine the soul, to drown away the sweet

Knock me flat upon my back to put me back up on my feet

Push my face into the ground to make me gasp for breath

So I will throw back my head and look to heaven for whats left

And hear again...

CHORUS
I'm all that you are when there's nothing else left

I am the pound when your heart beats in your chest

I'm breath and life when the sun dries you again

I am the river in the wilderness when there's no one else to send

I am the voice in the rain when you are drowning again

I am the force in the wind when your breath is stolen, my friend

I am... I am the Lord of this life

I can only look at me as the stranger that I am
Wandering in a world too deep for me to comprehend
Lost so easy in all the twisting, narrow ways
Trying to find the truth in me for far too many days
 Still so lost, that daily I must be found
Your voice so soft, I can barely hear the sound

Reflection On These Hard Times (not a poem)

Without meaning to sound ungrateful or melodramatic, for the past two years its sort of become unclear to me if these are 'hard times' for us, or if they've just become normal.

Certainly, at any given time for Briton and I to have things 'easy' would be foolish to assume or expect.  It just doesn't usually work that way for single-parent families.  But for several years anyway things were at least 'working'.  Life was hard, but survivable.  While not always knowing how to do things or what reaction to expect, steps forward were definable and relatively easy to take.  Now, having supposedly learned that survival is possible, even for such as we (a single mom raising a son), knowing how things are supposed to work - what I am supposed to do to make it work - (occasional stumbles and mistakes aside) somehow the very fundamental needs for survival that I learned have become so uncertain.  And it feels like God is searching for some sort of strength in me that I don't know if He will find... I don't know if its a grace that I am to wait for expectantly, a trust that I did not know existed, or if if IS a faith that He is trying to grow in me.  But He IS searching me... 

I don't know what I am to understand in this process, what is expected of me.  I don't know where I am headed or what I myself will find.  All I am left with is knowing and trusting in who He is and who He has been to us in the past.  And in the past, He has ALWAYS provided a 'spring in the wilderness', 'a river in the dry desert' like He promised us through Isaiah.  A WAY when there is no way.  I couldn't even count the miracles that He has performed.  I wouldn't even want to try.

Yet I suppose that in every 'child/students' journey it is for the teacher to choose when to remove all sense of foundation and earthly security and see how the child/student flies on their own.  What will they do?  Where will they go when all the normal avenues for help or escape have gone or have been exhausted?

I admit that for myself, even just missing some of those 'secure foundations' has been enough to make me spin.  But life won't stop for an of us to grieve - at least not as much as it feels the matter deserves.  And when we do get 'stuck with our wheels spinning', as patient as You are God, You know the right moment to prod us gently on.  The world is  not  nearly so kind and not nearly so understanding... 

So I am left to trust that You are in control of that unrelenting, unforgiving monster of a world that presses in all around.  But where do I begin again?  Where did the hard-but-survivable stop and the virtually/worldly impossible begin?  And how do I turn it around again?  Is turning it around to 'hard but survivable' again even what I want???  Or is it what YOU want for me???  Somehow - SOMEHOW my heart is saying 'no'.... But what other choice is there for us???

Today, as I look out on a perfect Christmas-Card world, I look back and remember that every step through those deserted wastelands where the miraculous springs were provided has been counted and measured by You.  And how one step - the very next one - has been the farthest I could ever look ahead.  But there have been so many that I can see stretching away behind...