you

When the trees spout buds and showers of pollen. Their boughs shaking and swaying. When the air is cool and clammy. Spring's rejoice and arrival. And I know You are here, but what are You waiting for? 

Splendor

The air lays, thick and sweet. My throat caught with pollen and the dryness of tired tears. Bees and wasps harass the bush, now overgrown and menacing beside me. And I sit. A heavy day. The sun hides, but his presence is known. Clammy cheeked and sweat-mouthed, I let the chills of dehydration and fatigue run through me. What's next, I do not know. For I am here. In this exhaustion. In this crippling pain. In this unyielding unknown. On this God given spring day, full of splendor and surprise. 

The first tints of spring lay, lazy and thick in the morning sunlight. 

My heart begins to open. 

Love

The way I love Steve. The way I miss him from the minute I leave his presence. It's like my dearest dog, Oskar. Or my maw maw. Both dead in the past two years. When I think about going home, there is an ache in my heart where their presence is absent. A longing. To be with them. But more than that, that they knew. And that they still know, from heaven. How much I love them.

I've put my heart in two places. And when I leave these children, this family.

I miss them. My heart aches.

And I hope they know,

How desperately I love them. 

"And he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

II Corinthians 12:9

Presence

On the other side of the mountain, a half naked baby sits contentedly on a pile of white rubble. Babbling and rummaging in the rocks. Men with shovels and axes hack away at rough terrain, building a wall flush with the mountainside. Sweating and grimacing in the dust and sunshine. Chickens flutter and scurry to get out of the way as a boy hustles down the narrow path with a string of goats.

Little boys throw a tennis ball that I gave them, last November. A soccer game is going on between small rocks for goals. Shoeless or clad in flimsy sandals, they laugh and shriek gleefully, the ground crunching beneath their feet. 

Like those plastic homes for ants, so much life is being lived, on this two-dimensional mountainside. A plane.

And I see it all. 

The mundane and the daily.

The exceptional. 

Work ethic and satisfaction. Contentment and joy.

The daily.

They are not waiting. They are living. 

Now. 

Falling

I sit in the early morning, Friday sunshine.

Drinking coffee, waiting for the world to wake me up.

William falls out of the chair beside me. His body taught, and seizing. 

He convulses and is rigid. The cup shatters as I lunge to catch his head before it hits the tile.

I wake up everyday, 

With blessings I don't even consider.

But I want to.