A Smattering of Thoughts

I feel like there's a lot of grown-up stuff to deal with lately. I suppose that's fitting, in my 29th year, to be dealing with grown-up stuff.

Like lawyers, decisions, boundaries, death, work, parenting and responsibility. I'm not saying I don't learn about stuff like this all the time, but these days it sees to be packed in a whole lot more than I'm used to.

Also, trips back to this valley always do my heart good. Even if they're short, brief, fast.

So we visited the nursing home, and I find it to be the saddest place. It seems everyone is waiting to die. Silence, beeping, nurses sweeping and one elderly woman cries out for someone who is not there. I hold my grandmother's hand and she squeezes it tight. "I love you more, " she says as I kiss her cheek. It all feels so sterile. A whole building of people who just want to leave, one way or another.

And then my day is punctuated with a call that another baby from someone I love is due to arrive in 9 months. Life comes and goes, and I'm reminded that the "dash in between" is so full, so worth savoring.

Recently, after the sun set, we watched a movie and snacked on strawberries and cheeses, and life felt so simply easy. Sometimes I just want life to be easy. Everything can't be fixed, changed, predicted, prevented. But sometimes, at the right moment, in the right place, in a calm living room with berries and cheddar, it can be simple and easy. That seems to cover a multitude of unease. I don't want to be a consumer of drama. I'll take wordless strumming, knowing nods, and pillows of comfort as reminders that below the surface of the waves, the water is still calm.

And then my daughter wakes singing, and she tells me how God is her protector. God is her provider. God is her father. From her own lips, she brings truth into our home. And I'm grateful.

Even when I don't have all the right words, something sinks into her and she repeats how love abounds everywhere we turn. Sometimes it's the hard gratitudes. Sometimes it's the joyful ones. Still, we count, number and keep our hearts and eyes open.