Flying

His silhouette flew into my peripheral vision, climbing a long, wide spiral until I could barely see him—just a black dot against a hint of cloud.  Two other hawks caught my attention the same way earlier in the day as I drove into the gentle hills of southern Michigan from the flat Indiana fields.

“So what’s up with that God?  Why all the hawks??”

He often gets my attention with His creation, especially with there’s repetition.  But weeks went by, each with another hawk or two soaring above me, catching the wind this way, then that, without explanation.

“I’m listening God.  What are you saying?”

Nothing.  So instead of looking for more hawks, I forgot about them.  For over a year.

—-

The sun covered me with delicious waves of warmth on an early winter afternoon while I waited in the passenger side of our van in the mall parking lot.  My head rested on the back of the seat giving me a total view of a perfect sky—deep blue with clouds so white they sparkled on the edges.

And there were hawks!  A pair, followed by three more, and another wound in slow circles across the clouds and into blue like a flock of tiny pendulums arcing in time to some distant music.  Time stood still.  Or at least it slowed down a bit as I inhaled slower and more deeply imagining myself soaring with them over the parking lot, a white graph partially filled with neatly parked autos.  The adjacent field, newly sheared of its corn crop—a rectangle of lush corduroy draped over the rises fell into the valleys, fringed with leafless branches.

I fly in my dreams, so I have an easy time imagining the hawks’ view.  Seeing everything at once—a road’s gradual curve almost undetectable on the ground becomes obvious at the height.  Lowlands, though difficult to discern dimensionally, defined by the darker earth spreading alongside a creek’s journey beyond the horizon, exposed in contour.

“I understand, Father.  That’s it, isn’t it?”

One of the hawks dove deeply in a divine Nod.

Perspective from a distance reveals things unnoticeable from the ground where reality bends to distortions like looking through a short camera lens.  Distance, the ability to step back is a key to perspective.

—-

To my far distant ancestors, the Celts, the hawk was the symbol for perspective.  The prudent and wise when hearing the cry of a hawk during a journey would become alert to what might lie ahead in order to face the unknown with boldness and decisiveness instead of being thrown off balance.  Flying with the sun shining through its feathers, the hawk was considered noble and able to inspire progress.

—-

Four years have gone by since God’s messages using the hawks began, and I’m just beginning to understand what He has been saying to me through them.  Appropriate since perspective is built through time!  I am more resilient than I was four years ago as I can look back and have His perspective on where I’ve been.  The road has curved, imperceptibly from the ground view, but obviously closer to His heart when seen from a distance.  The hawks continue to soar above me reminding me to step back and look at the road, then continue in His boldness and in the confidence I have learned.  And ultimately they inspire me to fly.

(For more info on choosing a one-word New Year’s Resolution go to http://www.myoneword.org/)

War & Near

Seeing pastoral nativity scenes every December fills me with a warm Christmas glow and almost lulls me into a sentimental stupor in which I conveniently forget what really happened the night Jesus was born.  What took place in the spiritual realm when God was born as a human baby reads more like the plot of a sci-fi fantasy-thriller than a nostalgic Christmas card:  A red dragon pursued a woman giving birth while his dragon-army fought Michael’s angels in heaven.  The dragon, not able to overpower Good, was hurled to the earth where he chased the woman and her Child.  Then, frustrated that the pair escaped, he turned on the rest of her offspring—“those who hold to the teachings of Jesus”.   His demise, foretold long ago, was accomplished by the Baby who crushed his head, but not before the serpent struck the baby’s heel.

So much for syrupy “Baby Jesus, meek and mild” Christmas stories—this is war!!

Easter is the ultimate triumph, but not the incredibly amazing part of the story.  At least, not to me.  If Jesus really is God, what is so surprising about Him rising from the dead??  I would expect God to be able to do that.  The part that devastates me is that He would set aside all his glory, privilege, and power to become a helpless, finite human baby; that He, the Creator of the world, would so completely reduce Himself to pursue me.

As He entered the world, the time-space continuum and all other realities couldn’t help it; they erupted in strange behaviors.  A supernaturally bright light burned in the sky; prophecies converged in fulfillments; heaven was ripped open; angels spoke to shepherds; and then all was quiet.  But everything was different.

The curse was broken; the dragon defeated.  Hope became tangible.  Our slavery-yoke of sin… shattered.  Light put out darkness.  God was approachable.  And people were drawn to Him.

He came to us so that we could come to Him.  And although He ascended to the Father, He still promises to draw near to us if we draw near to Him.  The book of Job contains a concept of what that looks like: Leviathan, the great creature of the deep, is covered with scales so near one another that no water or air can come between them.  They are so close that the two most pervasive materials on earth cannot sneak in.

The red dragon is still at war with us, but his Vanquisher is our Champion:  Immanuel.

The snowflake kaleidoscope is made from a paper cutting of a dragon crafted in Hong Kong. It represents both the red dragon and the scales of Leviathan—a reminder that with Jesus’ birth, the dragon is defeated, and that we can be so near to Him nothing can come between us. Luke 2:8-18; Matthew 2:9-11; Revelation 12; Genesis 3:15; James 4:8; Job 41:15-17; Isaiah 9:1-4

Leaf Music

Swish, swish.  Swish, swish.  The leaves woke up, flying knee-high, while I walked through the overflowing sidewalk under a flaming pear tree as the sun snuck over the horizon.  December 1st.  Even though Thanksgiving leftovers are still in the fridge and Christmas lights are already strung along rooflines, autumn continues here in Indiana.  The leaves’ wonderfully acrid claim on                    the crisp morning air confirms it.

Their pungent scent and the swish, swish around my ankles always remind me of fall when I was young walking on hidden sidewalks in need of raking after school, and running across the blanketed yard toward my dad’s leaf mountain.  Swishy, swishy, swishy, swish!  In one jump his hard-earned mountain exploded leaving an ill-defined molehill.

The penalty for destroying his work?  Helping rake.  Our yard seemed to be the size of Tiger Stadium with every bit of the field concealed under the leaves from first base (a giant poplar), to third base (a small maple), and all the way ’round to home plate (one of two shag-bark hickories, which provided hickory nut snacks for baseball players and leaf rakers alike).

Swish, swish.  Swish, swish.

“Dad, do you hear the music?” I asked, raking my portion of the infield.

“Huh? What’re you talking about?”

I stopped to face him, my head cocked to one side with my rakeless hand on one hip.  “The music!  Can’t you hear it?  Listen.”  I started raking again, this time singing so he couldn’t miss the obvious tune of “The Happy Wanderer” in the rhythm of my strokes.

Such beauty!

This morning an early-raking gentleman already had a waist-high leaf-mountain during my early morning walk through our neighborhood.  We each smiled, nodded a “Good morning,” both enjoying the newness of the day with its invigorating air as we got in some exercise before breakfast.

I heard the music in his raking.  Swish, swish.  And in my long strides through the fallen leaves.  Swish, swish.  Swish, swish.

Approaching the corner at the end of the block, a young lady pulled her car up to the intersection, and my music stopped.  Her music carried well through the still morning air, and mine faded like the mist each breath made as I continued toward her.  She looked happy, bouncing to the beat, singing herself into a new day, her voice lost in the bassy thump-thumping.

My music gradually came back.  Swish, swish.  And I liked it better.  Swish, swish.  Swish, swish.

“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing???”  But it’s still fall!  Where did that come from??

First (and Last) Fruits

LAST FRUIT (Sep 29, 2009)

The last crop of 2009

My ears ache and my nose is running.  Last week I was wearing shorts, and all the windows in the house were wide open.  Today I wore two sweaters and jeans on my morning walk and matched the brisk weather with a crisp pace.  Fall is officially here.

Yesterday I picked what I think will be the last of the tomato crop.  Once the days are cooler and less sunny, the green ones stop ripening.  My mother-in-law picks all the green tomatoes before the last frost and somehow manages to get them to turn red in the house.  I’ve tried her method.  “Wrap them in newspaper and leave them in the cellar, then when they begin to turn yellow, put them on the kitchen window sill, and be sure to turn them daily.”  All I ever got was newspapers soaked with the juice of a couple dozen rotting green tomatoes in the basement.  I left all the green ones on the vines.

The last tomato harvest turns summer to fall for me and sets the “before winter” to-do list into motion.  Gardens must be cleaned out, overgrown perennials split up and moved, and Christmas planning begun.  The cooler temperatures are energizing, but the last tomato crop is always a wistfully sad day for me.

There will be eight months before seedlings begin to appear in the garden from last year’s drops.  Then another two filled with cultivating, thinning, tying vines to the fence, and daily watching for the first ripe fruit.

FIRST FRUIT  (Jul 26, 2009)

Note quite ripe

I’ve been watching everyday for a couple of weeks now, ever since I got a photo from a friend from a warmer growing zone of her first garden harvest.  Just yesterday I looked—no ripe tomatoes yet.  Sigh.  Summer isn’t fully here until the tomatoes are ripe.

And today, I knew there be any ripe overnight, but I looked anyway from across the yard while “taking in the warshing”, as my gramma used to say.  And I saw red!  Leaving the towels draped over the edge of the basket, I had to get closer.  YES!  I had an entire cluster of cherry tomatoes turned bright red and untouched by bugs or birds (quite rare in my garden!)  I picked the two reddest, pulled off the stems, and rubbed the droplets of whatever that stuff is that makes a tomato plant smell weird and gets your hands sticky green. I paused, just briefly in full salivation mode, to wonder why the first tomato of the season taste so good, and then I more than tasted it—I put the entire fruit in my mouth and bit down.

Slightly sweet, and wonderfully tart juice burst into and out of my mouth trickling down my chin, since I couldn’t but help grin, thus breaking the first rule of cherry tomato eating: never, under any circumstances, open your mouth when biting down.  Again, I thought about why these two particular tomatoes are so special.  They really didn’t taste as good as the ones I will let stay on the vine just a little longer, testing my luck with the bugs and birds, until the sun transforms them into the sweet acidic gems in my salads.

But they are the First.  I have waited since last fall for this taste, through the barrenness of winter (surviving on grocery store imitations), the toil of spring, and the anticipation of summer.  The deliciousness, I think, is intensified by the long wait.

Some years I have given a Biblical First Fruits Offering, by taking the first luminous tomatoes to a neighbor.  The sacrifice of waiting just a couple more days for more green tomatoes to soak up the sun’s ripening power is intensely real and acute.  The recipient doesn’t even know the gift they are eating, but that’s part of the sacrifice.

——————–

Waiting is hard in America because we have the economic infrastructure to gratify our desires.  We truck in produce from warmer climes; we have express checkout lanes in grocery stores; Fed-Ex profits from our need-to-have-it-now culture; and if circumstances don’t happen quickly enough, we feel we have a right to complain.  If we don’t have the money for what we want, we buy on credit instead of building a fund from week to week until we put the last dollar in the jar.

Watching my tomatoes this summer has taught me a valuable lesson– I guess I knew it, but never thought about it consciously.  By giving in to my desires and pushing aside the waiting, I rob myself of the sweetness that can only come after the waiting.

There is a bowl of tomatoes on my kitchen counter, but I’m already longing for the taste of the sun-warmed first-fruits next July.

What do you think?  Do you enjoy waiting?  Have you experienced the greater joy of delayed gratification?  I’d really like to know.

FINAL NOTE

You’ve been waiting for over a month (eagerly, I hope!) for this Ordinary Girl to post.  I promise to strive to post weekly, like I said I was going to (barring any computer crashes).  But… if you have to wait a little longer, maybe your enjoyment will be increased with the anticipation.

Peace on the rooftop

Just a couple more photos from today before I head to bed….  and sweet peace.

(Read Uncovered, below to make sense of the pics.)

Very large and spikey frozen missiles

Patient Impatiens

Ripped shingle, rusty nail

Solid panels of honey-colored plywood

Rest and peace

Uncovered

Today it’s our turn to fill the neighborhood with nail-gun syncopation.  In June a hailstorm picked our town to rescue the roofing industry from the recession.  To make sure the honor was bestowed properly and completely, the sky launched frozen spikey stones larger than golf balls at houses, neon signs, windows, and vehicles for an incredibly long quarter-hour.

One of the smaller (1-inch), but more beautiful hailstones

The next onslaught went on for weeks—contractors and sales people rang our doorbell, called on the phone, and left fliers in our screen door.  A pile of literature grew on our counter… and then landed in the recycling “Paper Retriever” at church.

Banging, scraping, and constant machinegun-like firing has been the next wave, and today we are adding to the cacophony.  Yesterday, the neighbor’s roofers punctuated my Sunday afternoon nap.  Today, ours will shorten their children’s naps.  (I imagine they didn’t take naps at all yesterday when the roofers were on their roof!)

Sitting under the destruction is more than unsettling—much like the storm, only longer.  My nerves haven’t recovered from last week when my husband was in the hospital.  Pictures on the walls around me are shaking, and ceiling lights are swaying.  Grandma’s heirloom coffee cup and saucer just gracefully slid from their perch on the bookshelf, thankfully landing without a chip.  There is very little material between the roofers’ feet and my journal here on the desk.  What makes this worse is that I went outside just a little bit ago to see the roof.

After mourning for my flower-friends (which are casualties—again—first the hard, white hail, now the torn, black shingles… sigh) I looked up at the naked roof.  Most of the plywood is still sunny golden just like it was when the shingles were applied.  They had performed well and protected their charge.  A couple panels on the east slope are grayed and black in areas; these the roofers avoided with careful sidesteps.  Falling through the roof into our bed is a real possibility on that part of the roof!  The contractor assured us that they will be ripped out and replaced.

Why those spots?  What had been different there from the rest of the roof?  We didn’t have any noticeable leaks inside, but there must have been a way for rain (and hail?) to get under, around, or through the shingles and damage the wood underneath.

Last week my top layer was torn off as I drove back and forth to the hospital everyday.  Lack of sleep, traffic, weird hours, and irregular meal times caused a chink allowing the uncertainty of the situation to trickle into my unprotected soul.  And now, a few pieces of my plywood need replacing.

The contractor said the roofers will be done this afternoon.  Peace is not far off.

Steering

“He is NOT going to pull out into BOTH lanes of traffic,” I hoped out loud as I took my foot off the accelerator.  Yep.  He did.

It was all over before my head could take it in.  I had to rewind the video in my mind to make sense of what had just happened.  Pumping wildly, my heart increased the amount of blood to my brain, which helped me remember.

I had been driving downtown for a meeting and decided to take a more direct route instead of the interstate.  Looking at interesting houses and driving through neighborhoods make the trip more enjoyable.  So I was on a four-lane, 45 mph artery driving in the left lane when a sedan pulled out into the right lane causing the SUV ahead of me in that lane to stop.  I slowed, wondering what might happen next, when the sedan’s headlights pulled into my lane right in front of me.

There was oncoming traffic to my left and no time to hit the brakes or lay on the horn.  As the video in my mind played, I let out a hoot!  Just like in the movies, I had deftly steered my way through the obstacle course, tires squealing, at 40 miles per hour– in what now seemed like slow motion!!

My reaction had been automatic—coming from the part of my brain that doesn’t have to think about what to do; it just took over.  Not waiting for explanation or reason, it saw what I needed to do and made it happen before I could have a conscious thought or make a plan.  My survival instinct must have been steering, because I don’t have any experience dodging cars—except for bumper cars at the fair! 

Thinking about what happened last night has made me a little philosophical this morning.  I’m asking myself some questions:

What are my gut reactions, especially in relationships?

Do I default to self-preservation or the other person’s best interest?

Is there a way to modify my default settings from self-interest to others-interest?

What do you think?  I’d really like to know.

Invisible Fur

A couple of weeks ago, the two cutest dogs in the entire world were here.  Two long-haired furry (but very loving) beasts +  hot temps = dog fur shed everywhere.  Each time I vacuumed I found a small (lifeless) puppy in our bagless vacuum!

Before people guests came to visit this past weekend, I didn’t have time to vacuum again, so I bent over– down-up, down-up– all over the house, picking the black tufts from our light-colored carpeting.  Several days with our company went by, and all was well until the video-playing guests moved from the couch to the floor after I was in bed one night.

The next morning when I walked into the living room to open the curtains I was a bit confused.  There were fur clumps scattered on the floor again.  Since the dogs hadn’t been in the house and I don’t believe in spontaneous generation I used my highly-developed powers of deduction (I’m a mom!) and figured that all the moving around on the living room floor during the video game the night before must have consolidated a light, coating of un-vacuumed dog fur into tufts.  The guys’ movements forced the previously invisible fur into view.

Picking up tufts by hand + vacuuming the same floor = twice as much work as it would have been to vacuum the floor in the first place!  That’s why I don’t usually take shortcuts.

Happy Apple Birthday

This morning after sleeping in on a luxurious day off, I had a late Birthday Breakfast.  Nothing special—two rice cakes with unsweetened peanut butter and an apple.  But in that ordinariness a blessing was waiting!

Several days ago I left a note for our son to buy milk, eggs, and a bag of apples at Aldi on his way home from work.  He did, but I’ve been so busy with work (early mornings/late nights) I hadn’t been in the fridge to see if he had remembered.  This morning as I began gathering my breakfast, I noticed the five gallons of milk and three dozen eggs.  The bag of apples was also where it should be, in the fruit drawer, and I retrieved it and set it on the counter.

As I turned to get a plate, the label caught my eye:  Chazy Orchards.  “NO WAY!” I laughed out loud!  ‘The largest MacIntosh Orchards in the World’ were just a few miles from our previous home in West Chazy, New York.  My imagination walked back to our home there, and I smiled.  Not a clear-across-my-face grin, but a wistful nod.  Troubles and heartache have continued to bombard us since moving to Indiana several years ago.  Thoughts of home in West Chazy during a simpler time surrounded me—like an ample cloak, heavy with familiar comfort.  Yet as I remembered more realistically, I realized that even after 16 years, it still hadn’t really been home.

So I asked myself where home is for me.  Working backward through the places I’ve lived, I came up empty.  Both my family growing up, and now my married family, have moved into towns and cities and not been able to become a part of the “home town” circle.  My roots go down quickly and deeply, but they have always been stunted by the clay of long-established associations.  There are places, however, which have seemed more like home than others—and it’s always been because family was nearby.

For me home=family, whether or not I have felt included in the lives of others around me.  The sadness that no place feels like home is an emotional cord that grows stronger with each heartache, tying me with growing longing to my True Home and Forever Family.  That is my home where I belong—truly belong.  That is where real family lives and loves.  That is where every good and perfect gift originates… like a bag of Chazy Orchards apples!