I Will Wait

I walk in the wilderness
knowing you led me here

I will wait for the rain
You said you would supply

You are the Lord of the wind and the rain
the Ruler of earth and sky
I will trust in your plan to lead me home
even when sand blinds my eyes

Poet's Disclaimer

Poetry means something different to everyone who reads it. This is a good thing.

The problem comes when you know the poet. It is tempting to try to understand the source of the words – pain, joy, anger, hope, loss, amusement. But without explanation, it is too easy to misinterpret the subtext. If we don’t know the when, what, where, who, how or why, it can be tempting to guess. Then the enjoyment of the poem is muddled or even lost.

There is a solution. Approach the words as though they come from someone new. Read it for yourself, for the beauty of it, for the challenge, for the images and the vistas.

If you must know the poet’s context and thoughts, you can always ask. But she might not tell you.

The Flood

Standing below the dam
the river's pulse in my bones' marrow

Once before I stood here
-- full of hope, brimful in confidence

Now
I stand a world apart

another love at my side, but far from him
a river between us
a past life I cannot share with him
     a future neither one can see
                                                 beyond the bend

Even to look at it is to be blinded by brilliance
bewildered by its shadows

And though the river
                                roars
                                      unceasing

In the distance it flows -- living water across soft-worn rocks

Anguish is a river
violent
          and calm
                       steady --
                                   determined to follow its own course

Foolishly
we dam it up
control it
turn it into something tame

But who can tame the heart--or teach love silence?

 
.

Defending My Children

An ugly juxtaposition took place this morning: my little girl started preschool…and a news story aired about a 3-year-old beauty pageant contestant who was dressed – by her mother – like Julia Roberts’ hooker in “Pretty Woman”. I started my day sick to my stomach.

While we moms and dads bear enormous responsibility to protect and guide our children – a responsibility in which I believe this mother failed – we are also accountable as a society.  Corporately, we have gone beyond failure into victimizing and prostituting our children.

While we talk about protecting our kids, preserving their innocence, in practice we are doing something quite different. Little girls want to be like big girls. When grade school fashions resemble the sexier outfits of high school girls (whose styles mimic college-age women), small wonder that young girls end up wearing clothes that startle with their suggestiveness.

Our music videos, song lyrics, CD covers, TV ads and glamour magazines project an idealized and highly sexualized image of women and girls. The singers, actors and models our daughters look up to are often promoting unhealthy images – too thin, sexually promiscuous, physically modified, self-indulgent – that damage how our girls see themselves and others around them. What they see, hear and wear is devouring their innocence.

Our sons, who are more visually stimulated, are bombarded by images of scantily dressed women from toddlerhood. These photos, ads, magazine covers, TV shows and movie trailers are so ubiquitous, that we adults do not give them a second thought. How on earth can we expect our sons to look at women respectfully when they constantly see us in various states of undress? That too eats away at our boys’ innocence.

There is hope and help. My husband and I are reading a wonderful pair of books by Dr. Meg Meeker: “Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters” and “Boys Should Be Boys”. As a pediatrician, Dr. Meeker is sounding the alarm about how our culture is hurting our kids, and how we as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles CAN have a profound and positive impact on our children. I would love to personally thank her someday.

Nevertheless, there are moments when I want to pack up our belongings and move to a Mennonite community.  Then I remember Christ’s admonition that we are to be “in the world, but not of the world”. Hard to do when we are bombarded by billboards, checkout-stand magazines, television, radio, in-store music, etc. We do have choices: restricting the shows our kids see, the music they listen to, dumping cable or satellite, limiting internet time, keeping the computer in a central place, staying on top of the magazines and books they read. Increasingly, I have come to greatly respect the parents who have chosen to get rid of TV completely.

So how do I find the balance of “in-not-of”, particularly where my children are concerned? The answer is not a simple one, but a process. Day by day, I need to keep my eyes open, my ears alert to recognize the dissonance between our culture and Christ. I need Him to define appropriate and inappropriate, helpful and hurtful, wholesome and degrading. I need God’s eyes and ears and sometimes His hands to protect my sweet, funny, little girl and my precocious, imaginative, little boy. After all, I answer to Father God for how I protect the children He has entrusted to me.

I Have Loved You

I have loved you all my life.

As a little girl, I imagined us a family
     whole and happy.

Then mine broke
my world became fragments
the dream, an illusion
and I stopped imagining you

I grew and I began to long for love
I looked for you
     but found cheap and costly imitations

I joined the charade
Mourning as, bit by bit,
     I gave away the rubble of my heart
Soon there were only pebbles left
     Not even enough to build a wall

I have loved you all my life.

From the ruins
     one small winged creature wakened when you called
Her heart beats with a tender fierceness
      and I am changed forever

Sojourn

the Spirit led Yeshua into the wilderness

now you too must go

I stand on the rim of the desert
praying rain for your thirst
shade for your head

I have walked my desert road
but I cannot travel with you

though I would set aside my work
my craft
to be helpmate

that is not what you need

at the oasis' shore
I look for you in the distance
a wavering form against the tawny harshness

but it is not you
not yet

There Is a Girl Who Wants to Fly

There is a girl who wants to fly

On the playground, she swings so high
all she can see is blue
She closes her eyes and the earth vanishes
only clouds and stars remain

In her bedroom, she looks out the window
as gray thunderheads roll above the trees
She jumps through the frame
to chase the thunder and lightning across the sky

Proof God Has a Sense of Humor

“A joyful heart is good medicine…” Proverbs 17:22a

Giraffes. (No, it wasn’t a committee; God come up with them on His own.)

Bed hair. Or, as we call it at our house, chicken feathers.

The tired jollies (or TJs). When one is so tired that everything strikes you as funny.

Bodily noises. Just ask any grade school boy.

Small dogs that think they are big dogs.

Lungs, diaphragms, vocal cords and smile muscles. We couldn’t laugh without them.

My dog who gives up her bed for the cats.

My little morning people who have a night owl for a mom.

Hiccups and sneezes.

Laugh lines.

Little kids who make cross-eyes.

A dog chasing his tail and maybe even catching it.

A chipmunk with full cheeks.

The fact that milk can come out your nose when you laugh hard.

A baby laughing at Daddy’s funny faces. Or a baby’s laugh anytime.

Turbo-crawling. If your child did it, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

People who are tone-deaf usually sing with the most abandon and enjoy enormous lung capacity.

The whale-spout reflex when a baby boy has his diaper changed.

Lion cubs that try to tackle their regal father.

My children.

“[The Lord] will once again fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.”   Job 8:21