I have to steal this moment before it steals away from me. I sit on the porch, swinging the baby to sleep. His droopy eyelids put me at ease.
Rain is falling, drizzling from the drain pipe filling the ground on this unusually warm weekend after Christmas. Half of the family has gone to church and after some clean up we just swing.
Theres something about this spot that fills the soul and allows contentment to just be. Theres nothing tugging or sneaking around the back of your mind saying "if only" or "but this." Just for a stand still moment everything is fine and right in this tiny corner of the world.
I talked about writing with mom this morning as we sipped coffee probably not as long as we would like.
I told her how my best friend discovered an old journal from middle school and how it was so detailed it was painstaking to read. I told her how the itch to write is always there, how I miss it. How the vulnerability of it is both difficult and rewarding. Then as I swing I have to scratch these words down, hoping they find their way to a screen.
After Christmas as a child, I always remember feeling full. Like all my wishes had been granted. But sometime within a few weeks that feeling would weaken and things would go back to normal. Wanting more, needing to be filled up and looking in all the wrong places.
As I swing my baby and look out over the soggy yard where I used to play years ago I am full and it has nothing to do with the gifts that were under the tree. I look to where the sycamore tree used to be and I remember that place of solitude and peace. Its not there anymore, it was cut down and I'm sad to say I don't know why or when. But that feeling is still here. Its a feeling I try to return to in my prayers when the world feels a little too big. And here on the porch, with the rain coming down around me I find it. So I pause as long as I possibly can (which isn't long, I hear my middle at the screen door now).
So after a season that leaves us feeling stuffed and overfed and maybe even a little guilty I am focusing on a different type of fullness. This is one that has nothing to do with the time of year or how life is going at any given moment. It comes from source I cant see and can't tap into with my own power. Sometimes it catches me off guard on a day like today. I have to remain open to it even tho I never know when and where it might turn up. This unpredictable timing tells me that its always there, waiting to sneak up on me and make me smile and appreciate life that much more.
This secure feeling comes from knowing a good, good Father. Knowing his peace and grace and provision. But yet, it is just a feeling and we all know how fickle those things are. I suppose that is where faith comes in and we lean in despite how we feel or how our circumstances appear. We count all the goodness of his gifts and look for them even when we have to squint. And then somewhere along the way we find we are content with what we have, right where we're at; no more, no less. True, we may forget from time to time and start making lists of things we need or want only to come full circle and realize the reasons behind those things and that we can have fullness without them.
I hope your Christmas was merry and bright and full of the fuzzy feelings we love. As those feelings fade into the New Year and our consumerism rolls into resolutions, I hope we all had a moment or two of true fullness and that we learn the balance that allows us to always come back to it.
From Ours to Yours,
Happy Holidays
Ps - Love this over at Lazy Genius:
Put down that list of resolutions and read this first
(scroll down a bit to find the post)
http://www.thelazygeniuscollective.com/blog/
