The surprise gift (a five minute post)

(After the five minutes - I remember to say come join us over at The Gypsy Mama where we write words that fly free and beautiful like flags in the breeze! This week it's on loss...)

I hear her familiar intonation on the phone and I recognize in an instant that she's not here. The line crackles, a reminder in the midst of a hazy July evening that the moment to cry with her about her departure southward passed with rain and humidity and packing clothes to the sounds of The Plain White T's.

And I keep saying it's fine, all the way through the first part of the conversations where I can't imagine what her new house looks like and what fills her days and I hear her, and miss her, and all I can say is it's fine, it's fine...

But it's not, and I never write about it. I keep it tucked away, careful to look at it only in early morning light when I open my eyes to the ceiling and listen to the silence before the day knocks on my door. I hear it {the loss, the missing} breathe next to me as I run through the surprise rainstorm. I run, and run, and run until I ache in places that I didn't know I had, and I keep asking God if this is really the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living or if this is just the harsh wind over a desert.

Last night, the moon perched above the rustling shadows of the trees. And I remembered that there is nothing beautiful like the moon in a summer sky. In an instant, in less than an instant, my heart leapt up to meet the surprise gift of the moon in the sky and my mother driving next to me and the promise that behold He is doing a new thing and behold He will bring us up into the land of the living and behold, behold the moon clinging to the clouds, the familiar smell of salt water rippling past you, the quivering beauty of what seems small.

And behold, though I hear the gravity of departure, though I hear loss, and I worry: He is doing a new thing. He is giving a new gift. And I want to open wide my self  to see it.

Love,
Hilary