Spring Training

Daffodils burst as my New Year's fireworks.
Time to count another year.

(This spring makes 37...squarely in the "late thirties" camp, as my 40-something husband keeps telling me.)

Since at least high school, they've been my reminder. March-27th-Amy would bring daffodils or buttercups to this March-28th-friend. I'll never forget friendships and fresh starts as long as the spring flowers bloom again.

I feel more like a rusty, used-to-be-purposeful hinge (that the birds have pooped on) these days than blooming yellow sunshine. But daffodils force me to pull out my camera, and now I see in a different light. Beauty, even in the changing, the wearing out and wearing down. Purpose and calling, the courage to be not-enough, poured-out, beyond-the-end-of-myself.

About me

Life is messy. And not just my house...although it usually is. Everything I do feels messy right now. My marriage is a mess of sweet and sarcastic. My mothering is a mess of holy and hollering. My home is a mess of welcoming and war-torn. My serving the church is a mess of worship and why-on-earth-did-I-agree-to-this-?!. My friendships are a mess of sacred and scattered. My efforts to live out Matthew 28:19 are a mess of self-sacrifice and self-absorption. Maybe you can relate?

Most often, I accuse myself of being ONLY sarcastic, hollering, war-torn, why-on-earth, scattered and self-absorbed. I see those as terrible parts of me that will never change. Instead, I'm learning that those are the very places God meets me, reminding me that ONLY in His power, by His grace, is He making me into sweet, holy, welcoming, worshipful, sacred and self-sacrificing Melanie. My prayer is to love the unlovely all around me and also within me. Loving God in a way that radiates out. Trusting Him to teach me to love the least...those the world views as unlovely, but who He wants to recreate in His image, just as He is doing with my own mess.

Faith

In a pew (and a half) bursting with Whites, after an extra-long Love Feast (otherwise I would have missed the whole moment while walking the circus of Cousins to Children's Worship), Josh G led "It is Well" and I sang it down the pew to Avery Anne who stared down every word. Until "And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight!" brought a gummy grin to her face and tears to my eyes. Yes, sister, faith shall be sight. All of Cousins. Lord, haste the day!