medial // caesura

"Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest ." (Matthew 11:28). This verse has been in my face lately.  On Facebook, a lecture text, an academic orientation verse.  It's been one of my favorites since motherhood, and when I read it recently, I intoned,  "Yes!  I want, no, need, rest."  Then I got lectured.  Well, not me directly, but I heard the lecture.  And when the speaker started with that verse, my reaction again was, "Yes, Lord, that is what I need:  REST!" And then the guy elaborated. He said often when we read that verse, our focus, as mine was, is on what we receive.  And I would add, on what we are.  I am weary.  Everyone agrees that moms are tired. The ubiquitous memes about tired mothers exist because we all relate. We want time to ourselves, so we stay up late. We miss out on sleep, but can't sleep in because the bus comes at 6:40 AM or we wake up at 3:00 AM and can't go back to sleep b...

So much sadness in the news the past few months that I haven't been able to write.  Yesterday, I read the book, Owl Moon , to the boys and the final sentence made me emotional.  Current events have been draining me of my hope. In this beautifully illustrated children's story, the narrator is recounting owling with her dad and what is required to experience that moment of beauty and wonder looking the owl in the face: "The kind of hope that flies on silent wings under a shining Owl Moon." Reading the news throughout the day has almost become a daily blow to hope and vitality: watching thousands of refugees flee, reading of the atrocities committed against those Syrians who attempted to speak out, finding victims of human trafficking dead in the back of a van, watching videos and interviews of those harvesting unborn children, hearing about police officers randomly killed or prisoners killed by officers, reading a detailed article about a beloved star from ...

Andrew Peterson sings of the "many roads that we all traveled just to get here."  It's an apt metaphor for General Assembly.  I've talked to several folks about their roles in ministry and each ministry couple/family has an unique journey; while we are on a kaleidoscope of paths, our spiritual journey is the same narrow way that leads to life.  It's been fun this week to watch serendipitous Providence at work as people meet for the first time and find they are connected somehow. I've seen folks who were a part of my journey at various times, each time the picture shifted, the kaleidoscope colors rearranged; each person, each friendship reminded me of previous patterns some with more blues or vermillion, others when brilliant gold shone. On Tuesday morning, Joan and I participated in the Art Walk, a guided tour of the Hunter Museum with a quick view of a sculpture garden around the Tennessee River.  I learned much from our docent as we discussed different per...

" In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength . . ." (Is 30:15) This week, I had to appear in court to declare my 18-year-old son incompetent--I had filed a three page document answering questions as to his ability to feed and dress himself, understand things like language and money and danger.  I had been dreading this moment for awhile. His geneticist persuaded me to petition the court a few weeks prior to his 18th birthday, so for the past couple of years it has been in the back of my mind, always a reminder of what his special birthday will mean. I guess similar to the way a child's high school graduation settles in the back of the minds of parents of seniors. But the past few months, the thought has been heavy.  It's like my emotional center has been shut down.  I haven't been able to contemplate, to meditate.   I've just been in motion. I've felt a little like the woman whom Oliver Saks in his book, The Man W...

A person can only hold in so much until the bottom drops.  My mom taught me that thing that moms teach, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."  As a generally polite person, my default mode is to hold my tongue, and as a pastor's wife, I hold my tongue often.   Well, yesterday, I did not.  Yesterday, I stood up and said out loud to a room filled with parents, grandparents and siblings of special needs children, "I can't listen to this anymore." The waiting room at my son's therapy center is small, overcrowded.  If you wear your winter coat indoors, your sleeve touches the person next to you.  There aren't enough chairs for siblings, so small children litter the floor with toys, books, themselves.  It's an obstacle course to get my son with his unsteady gait through the waiting area and into the hallway leading to therapy rooms. I usually wait in the car because this is one of the few hours during ...

My favorite gift from Stanley:  my unimug tea infuser "In this way, Papa constructs himself, every day.  I say 'constructs himself' because I think that each time it's a new construction, as if everything has been reduced to ashes during the night, and he has to start from scratch."                                   --Muriel Barbery In The Elegance of the Hedgehog , Paloma, a 12 year old, shares her rich interiority with its timeless wisdom and sharp analysis of those whose lives are entwined with hers.  In her "Profound Thoughts," or journal entries, we recognize her kindred spirit with the building's concierge, the story's "hedgehog" and heroine.  Both are intelligent women who use masks of mediocrity in order to cultivate their extraordinary spirits behind shields of introversion. Another simi...

This year when decorating the house for Christmas, the boys assured me they were much older and could handle the fragile ornaments usually relegated to adults.  So I let my seven- and eight-year-old take the delicate beauties from Mawmaw, who had retrieved them from the boxes, and hang them on the tree.  The result was a Bermuda triangle front and center where we had a parade of antique wooden ornaments, angels clumped with angels, and snowman families happily hanging together.  Individual beauty was lost, but the arrangement told a story of their imaginations and accomplishment at being able to hang the eggs handblown by my mother when I was their age.  The problem was the tree leaned forward, tilting toward their eager hands and busy minds. So once they went to sleep, I did what my mother always did and redecorated the tree.  They were dismayed (when I read this to the older one, he corrected me by saying they were actually appalled) upon awaking the next m...