Lingering

Tonight I have our 3 younger girls cleaning their room, the boys are each in their own rooms, my husband is researching beetle kill and the current High Park fire in Larimer county, and I want to take a few moments to reflect. Father's Day is today. We took the kids to Manitou Springs yesterday and stayed the night in a simple hotel room. Today we went to old town to have our pictures taken in the old fashioned style of the roaring 20s. After coming home this afternoon and eating with the kids, my husband and myself joined my father in law, mother in law and sister in law at Olive Garden for their dinner. As we left the restaurant, my husband and his family stood in the circle the way they always do before leaving somewhere together, or before saying goodbye, and talked. A family conversation filled with comments, pauses, questions, jokes, more pauses, and many moments of lingering.
This is a family trait of my husband's that has been very difficult for me to adapt to, this lingering. A brief, sometimes uncomfortable silence when no one says anything, but you hear an occasional "mmm" or a sound signifying you are still thinking about what was just said a moment ago. It has been a time of intense discomfort for me, as I am always one who naturally has to have planned in my head what I am going to say next. Lingering takes that planned advancement of conversation away. It settles heavy if you are like me and not used to just being present in a social situation.
I am learning, from my husband's family, to linger and enjoy just the essence of being with loved ones. Words are not what always binds us together, nor is a mind that is actively trying to conjure up worthless things to say to avoid the silence. I have learned to find comfort and acceptance in that silence.
I practice this lingering technique wherever I am now; with another woman who I naturally feel uncomfortable with, while talking on the phone, (which I avoid as much as possible), while listening to my husband talk about his day, or my children sharing an experience. I linger now just being in the presence of others, sensing the atmosphere surrounding us and learning more than I ever could by talking.
Silence is golden. I am now partaking of that gold.

Under the Sun

All things come to all that live under the sun. Whether the days are spent in doing good, or doing evil, the rain falls on both alike. Justice does not always come speedily. In fact, justice runs from duty and finds reason to pass over the guilty. The innocent that have had to learn to accept their lot find that simple acknowledgement of the wrong done to them can be found no where in this living land. The rain and the sun to each alike, when the rain should wash and the sun should burn those who take into their hands the delicate life of another and smother it. But in this life we live by contrasts; we learn to ignore the painful words, remembering that we, too, have spoken curses to others. We learn to bless those that hurt us, to offer grace instead of threats, to extend a hand in friendship and forgiveness to one who has cast away our confidence in them. We take in again one who has deserted us; we learn to look beyond the external to the deep, human nature and the heart of all. Instead of wishing devastation for the wrong done to us, it brings healing to pray for gifts to be showered down on the one who has done the wrong. And where does the injured find their peace? Where in this land, shared by all, can trust be found again? Is there a fountain of healing, an oasis in this desert? In being trustworthy, we find the strength to trust again. In loving, we find the will to extend grace. In forgiving ourselves, we find we can offer that shaky, unsure, sometimes bitter hand to the one who has hurt us, and we  learn to forgive others. Life is full of dark and light to all.

Even in this, I find that we do well to seek justice, to bless others in thoughtful acts of caring, to remember our days are judged by One who is altogether lovely; who sees the things done in secret, who has perfect and unerring judgment; who's love for the human race extends any love we have known. And by Him all things will be made right; no evil work will be filed away in a cabinet and forgotten. He will avenge His own, and our hope can be safely rested in this. The works of man will one day be judged and awarded accordingly. Let us give this work to our Creator, then, and seek to win the very ones who have torn away our confidence in the goodness of the human race. Our days will be filled with thunder and floods, with dry, scorching heat, and with the uncertainty of living. Throw our confidence to heaven, then, and know this is a land we quickly pass through. We will soon go home. A home where the sun always shines.

The Prelude

It won't be too long before my children are scattered abroad on soil near and far to each find a new place to plant themselves. They will each adopt their own, custom picked families and communities. They will transform into a man or woman with distinct differences from their siblings. They may cherish values they were raised with and embrace some that were not from their early childhood training,  based on what feels right for them at the moment. I may disagree with choices in friendships or mates; I may wish for more devotion to be seen, or a particular focus to be cultivated. But in the humbleness that naturally comes with being a mother, my variance toward their personal choices must be soothed in the mind set of acceptance. 

The faster my children grow into independence, and the more mellow I become, I learn not to turn the heads of my children to see as I see. I am learning to take in the world even as that one child might be experiencing it. As I give up my narrow beliefs of how it has to be, and allow life to naturally and gently lead me, I gain an insight I would never have had by trying to unduly bend the ways of my children.
As the years dance on I celebrate the slow, ever steady process of growth. I dedicate this blog site to share the charming, sometimes frightening, journeys of my life. Maybe, also, to plant myself within a community all my own so as not to be left behind.