When God Paints It in Watercolors

It turns out that one of the best places to make metaphors about your life is in a certain wise mentor's living room sharing halves of cupcakes (this time, something chocolate with oreo buttercream and a raspberry filled one with raspberry buttercream) and drinking tea.


My analogy, with the help of said wise person, goes as follows: I love drama. I love hurricanes of feeling and storm clouds gathering at the outer edge of the horizon. A thrill of excitement shivers through me as I hear the rain at first from a distance, pattering on the thirsty dirt, then growing louder and stronger as the cloud passes through me.


But of course, when the storm arrives, I realize that I'm out in a dinghy in the middle of my anguish with one paddle. I get tossed by one wave and then another. I capsize occasionally. I get so stressed or sad or tired or fearful (or all those really all the same - just feelings of storm?) that I lose my paddle and then there's just me and my wooden dinghy in a hurricane of emotion. 

It sounds unwise. It sounds like that bucket of storm cloud I carry around with me. It sounds like chaos. And what is less like peace than chaos? 

So just imagine with me the second half of the analogy, and if you can, picture me looking at my wise and lovely friend and mentor like this as it all clicks into place: 

(Photo: Mandie Sodoma)

I could move through my life like an ocean liner. 

I could let my soul learn God's deep and tender lesson of peace: life in the ocean liner, unshaken by storms, unafraid of clouds on the horizon, unhurried. I could fasten my heart onto Psalm 62 and to the Selah that accompanies verse 8:

 Trust in him at all times, you people;
   pour out your hearts to him,
   for God is our refuge.

And then when a day appears on the horizon too full, wobbling with expectation, when the chaos forms a whirling hurricane veering straight for my heart, I could be like the ocean liner. I could be steady. I could see beyond the storm. I could trust. I could wait. 

(Photo: Mandie Sodoma)

Today I got a taste of how to make your dinghy an ocean liner. I was sitting on the landing outside my office working on a project for work, my face wearing the story of my capsized boat. I was sighing (in my head). I was not leaning on anything, but letting the waves of i-just-want-to-cry! roll over me. And then?

God painted the sunset in watercolors. 

I looked up and I saw the most beautiful splash of fiery pink and orange bleeding into the white steeple of the college chapel. I looked up and He seemed to write a bigger Peace in that sky than all the Chaos a day can conjure. I looked up and behold, the beautiful momentary world stood there, waiting for me. It takes peace of heart to see it. It takes an ocean liner heart. It takes Selah. It takes patience. 

And sometimes He helps us begin to learn by excessively beautiful things. Go look for some, and tell me about them? I'd love to know. 

Love, from my dinghy to yours, 

Hilary

The Particular Joys (A Thank You to Theater)

I crept back behind the rows of packed chairs and hovered in the corner of the black box theater. I knew my light cue. I knew my sound cue. I knew my lines. I smoothed my crinkly blue dress and shifted from side to side with my stack of books. The song right before my entrance sounded strangely echoing from my hiding place, but as it faded away, I took a deep breath. And then came the cue, and trembling, I walked forward and into my scene.

And when I am onstage somehow fear melts into the audience, into the lights, into the floor under my feet.  I become the person who drops her books, who loves the Green Lantern above every other superhero, who knows Calvin Coolidge from their American politics class.

I want to remind myself why there are some very particular joys in life that maybe are just gifts from the good Giver. Like theater. I'm not a theater major. I'm not pursuing it in a formal way. I'm not very good at creating characters who are extremely different from me - but I have a knack for pouring my own quivering heart into the characters on the page.

And that was last night - somehow there is a particular joy hidden for me in the theater. It's this joy of putting myself onto the stage and freeing her from her expectations. She does not need to do what I expect her to do. She can surprise us all - love superheroes with a passion, say "Crap!" when she drops her books, talk to a guy she meets in a park... She can not feel worried about how she looks in the blue dress. She can not feel worried about whether or not she's missed a meeting or a deadline or a paper.

I love creating this character and letting her teach my own self something. I love falling on the stage in front of the audience. I love the joy that surges through your bones when you look around you and you realize you've created a world for these wonderful people and that this world is the point, this collective creation, this trembling in our shoes together.

There is particular joy for me in theater. There is in solving calculus problems. There is in singing "La Vie en Rose" by Edith Piaf. There is in finally solving a stoichiometry problem and predicting the outcome of a double replacement reaction in chemistry. There is in sitting with a group of people and talking about Flannery O'Connor.

(Photo Credit: Mandie Sodoma)

In each of these particular joys I've discovered that all I want when I'm there is to be there. That I'm not yearning for a floodlight into the future. That I'm not trying to meet an expectation. That I'm not (most of the time) criticizing myself for not being good enough at it. That I shed the backpack of insecurities and trip onstage and trust that God is pleased with the simpler fact of me existing.

Gilead taught me this, too. I was reading it before I went onstage. John Ames seemed to look at me in the book and write his words as if he was looking at me:

"So I looked down at the yard and there you were, you and your mother, blowing bubbles at the cat, such a barrage of them that the poor beast was beside herself at the glut of opportunity. She was actually leaping in the air, our insouciant Soapy! Some of the bubbles drifted up through the branches, even above the trees. You two were too intent on the cat to see the celestial consequences of your worldly endeavors. They were very lovely. Your mother is wearing her blue dress and you are wearing your red shirt and you were kneeling on the ground together with Soapy between and that effulgence of bubbles rising, and so much laughter. Ah, this life, this world." (page 9)

Ah, this life, this world. What a beautiful phrase. Can you imagine if we lived aware of its loveliness?

I think that might be what the particular joy is for me - a moment of living, intense awareness of the loveliness of this world and all of its mysteries. A moment when the future and the past fall into silence and the roar of the present, the heart-stopping beauty of the present, the ache and groan of the present, becomes the only thing I can hear.


I wonder, is there a way to make everything that kind of particular joy? Is there a way to live in that heart-stopping beauty every moment?

(Photo Credit: Ryan Groff)

Love,
Hilary

Motherhood Should Come with... (A Five Minute Post)

Lisa-Jo asked us about motherhood this week - just five minutes, like we always play, our words free of all those edits and corrections and insecurities.

Motherhood should come with patient eyes, the ones that wear worry in the corners because their grown up girl, this one blogging late in the watches of the night, is up too late and is working too hard and is too stubborn to listen to you. Motherhood should come with soft hands that smooth away the wrinkles of the day with spontaneous trips to Starbucks for chai and cuddling close even now as feet creak across floorboards and we cling like kangaroo cubs.

Motherhood should come with strong arms that catch the kid turned superhero leapfrogging off the couch into the middle of life. Motherhood should come with plenty of tissues for the final decision to say goodbye, the final moment of moving away, the final moment of doing the brave thing in the quiet. Motherhood should come with lots of good red wine.

Motherhood should come with a bucketful of grace all its own for the moments when daughter and mother look at each other too weary even to make words from their shared heart. Mother becomes mercy. Motherhood should come with an endless supply of tea and mugs. Motherhood should come with the looks of love saved up for the moments when we the children stamp our feet and cross our arms because what we want is to not need you but all we need is you. You and your strong soft arms and your big comforter heart that wraps us up tight. 

Love,
Hilary