Elders

I owe almost everything I am and everything
I have to the elders who invested in me.
Thank you, God, for those who came before. 
Now I'm 34 and I see many
of those gracious, elderly saints growing
frail and passing away. I mourn. They were
the ones who had walked ahead,
the ones who knew, the ones I could look to. 
Where do I look now? And how do I thank them
for giving me my eyes?

How She Is

It's hard to love an imperfect woman. 
how she's unpredictable for better and worse,
how she goes left
when every good reason goes right.
how she talks clumsy in front of your friends
and bothers the people waiting for the bus,
her dress wrinkled and nose wrinkled,
how she is never all that she could be (yet).
But oh, the evenings together!
how she opens her arms to you and lets you rest.
how she comforts you with words
you forgot that you forgot but needed.
And the days! how beautiful
she is when the light comes over her
just so and in her face you catch his face,
and she is sweeping along with a holy dance
and gathering the children up under her skirts in play
and collecting their laughter in a second alabaster box.
how she cheers with unrestrained volume
for every wet and resurrected saint,
and how she feasts!
how her heart lives enlarged with hope
and speaks a thousand languages,
how her hands are bringing bread to the hungry,
how she sets the table for the poor
and welcomes the rich to sit with us, 
here at the bottom. We feast, we sing, we sing,
we sing, we quiet down and lean back and
look around and see our bridegroom delighted with us
and we know it is hard to love an imperfect woman,
but we thank you, O God, for loving us.
 

good

I held a baby's hand today.
I watched the snow falling.
I ate a warm tamale. 
I heard the cello played.
And at the end of the day
I rested my head in a soft place.

This is the good life.

it was not this baby.

Then There Was Joy

There was a lot of breathing. There were hours of dreaming interrupted by contractions. There was self-doubt, there was gratitude, there was resolve and fortitude, there were the repeated prayers tumbling off my lips, the mantras. There were 21 hours of the body adventure; 21 hours of laboring and intense expectation. 

And then there was her. 

Our daughter.

Bone of our bones, flesh of our flesh, fruit of our love, born from our joy––! Nika Joy was born late on an October evening, and when she came her father and I wept for joy and whispered the words that had helped me labor for those long hours waiting to see her face: "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His lovingkindness is unto eternity." (Psalm 118)

Once she was a whisper,
and now a beautiful, laughing song.

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Day 129