Lovingly Wrapped

Gentle Readers...

I ache for a simple life. I ache for my grandparents; I ache to sit on the front porch snapping green beans; I ache for wisdom freely dispensed; I ache to be wrapped in love.

So often these days I'm thinking about my parents and grandparents and realizing they were about my age when "x" happened. It feels so strange because I don't feel that it is time to be that related to the generations ahead of me, and yet, here we are. 

If I close my eyes, though, this is what I see.

It's a warm, late spring evening.  It is time to visit the nursery in Clinton which was always one of my favorite things to do.  I loved browsing through the beautiful flowers and feeling/seeing all the bulk seeds.  We would pick out what we wanted and the shopkeeper would put the seeds into brown bags, weigh them, and we would take them to Grandma's for planting. Planting the annual garden was a family affair and no child was left to their devices, each had a task to complete.  The soil would have been tilled earlier in the day so soft, cool earth bid me take off my socks and shoes and dig in my toes. Promptly I would have done so, at one end of the garden, and then later in the dark, would have had to return to try to find what I had so quickly discarded.  

In the same way that I cannot throw a ball, I cannot make a straight line, so marking the hallowed rows with the stick and string was a task that would not be delegated to me. I might be required to hoe; but, often, I got to drop the seeds into the ground, up and down the rows.  I can almost feel those big white lima bean seeds and smell the paper brown bag.  What a joy to be a planter; to know that what you are putting into the ground is going to yield a living thing! Mosquitoes and fireflies would be close companions as the moon began to smile on the family project. A young child cannot resist the draw of cupping a firefly in small hands and it could be easy to be distracted, but Grandma is near and helps  encourage me to stay on task.  If we kids were lucky, we were allowed to have a snack from the sacred drawer before heading home, but it's just as likely that we had to find our socks and shoes and get on home.  

It feels like a simple life, wrapped in security, dirt, and a field of fireflies.

Just yesterday, but a lifetime ago.

I ache for that simple life, but on a deeper level, I am aching for security. The older one gets, the less security is offered and the more it is required to be given.  I am someone else's security.  Someone else will look back in their mind's eye one day and tell a story of the simplicity of childhood and the comfort of love.  I could daydream about what moments would be chosen, but it likely will not be the grand events that would stick out to me.  Our lives are made up of subtle moments that etch, unbeknownst to us, into precious memories. What a treasure!

I think while I was soaking up the comfort of my parents and grandparents during childhood, they were leaning into Jesus for security.  With their parents aging and passing they were left to stand in the gap, but not alone, for the One who keeps the stars, also bows low to the earth and enters our space.  He's in the everyday if we look. I saw Him just the other day in a canceled meeting that I really didn't have the heart to join. I hear Him in the song of the birds that put me down and wake me up each day. (so many birds at our house!)  I see Him in others and I hope that you can see Him in me.  There are many ways our senses can be assaulted with the idea that we should not feel secure.  Our work places, media, schools, sometimes our family, colleagues and even "friends," may promote these feelings.  It crowds the still, small voice and we have to be mindful to look.  

Our God is with us. And those loved ones that left us to stand in the gap..... joined in the cloud of witnesses to cheer us on to the finish line.

I close my eyes and I am lovingly wrapped....in security.