Bigger Picture Moments: What I Almost Missed

He carefully plucked a tiny violet flower from the Earth and brought it inside as a love offering for me.

At four, not much is done gently, but this gift, he knew, required delicate care.

Here mom! Look! he says bursting in through the patio door, I brought you this beautiful flower so you can look at it inside the house. 


I was in the middle of cooking dinner, my hands in too many pots, trying not to burn and overboil, and I almost missed it.

But then he says,

I'll put it in water, so it can have a drink and stay alive.

And stay alive.

I abandon dinner, turn my back on the too many pots and instead oooohh and ahhh over the flower's  loveliness, its faint smell of spring.

It needs water to stay alive, to revive after the picking, I repeat.



I catch glimpses of its brilliant purple through out the next day.

I marvel over its soft, royal petals and I think to myself, I've almost sold my soul, my heart for supposed gifts that are bigger, flashier but far less lovely.

But this gift?

These gifts that keep bringing more gifts?

They came free, picked just for me by a Loving Hand who seems to keep no memory of the times I've really blown it, the times I've almost sold myself in exchange for what seemed to be silver and shiny.

And I almost missed it all, all of it.



But grace flows, and so I didn't.

Share a picture, words, creation or list; just come to the table with the beauty in the simple moments of the week.. 

Live.
Reflect on the blessings that were apparent to you this week.

Capture.
Harvest them!

Share.
Link up your gleaned moment this week at Jade's! Please be sure to link to your post, not your blog. Your post must link back here or have our button in your post or the link will be deleted.

Encourage.
Visit at least the person linked before you and encourage her in this journey we call life.

Everyday Life: Writing Books

"Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."
-C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

A small, newly-found voice emerges from the top of the stairs at 7:52 p.m., 30 minutes past bedtime. He jabbers away as he one-foot-two-foots down the stairs, mixing up his conversation with words we recognize as well as ones we don't yet know.

His feet runrunthumpthumprunthump across the wooden floor until he reaches the space in which I'm perched trying to write away the day and the thoughts and the growth I've been feeling stretch out across my bones.

Maaameeee! he exclaims and throws his body atop of the couch cushions like a surfer mounts his board. In seconds, I am the wave beneath his body.

He presses his forehead against my own and gently smooshes my cheeks in between his toddler hands.

"Oh, hello," I say. "Isn't it bedtime?"

I silently think about everything that's left to be done, including a book chapter that needs to be written, before I can go to bed and am tempted to scoot him right back to my husband.

He kisses my mouth and says, "O, halllo!" before snuggling his little rear next to my own and finally pressing his body into the curves of my own all while making the time that was my own into ours.

I only try to type for about 30 seconds before I abandon writing my life out loud and shut the lid to my computer instead choosing to write a few words on his heart.

I snuggle him as we talk, deeply converse about the pressing issues of the moment.

No, we're not having a snack.

Sack, he echoes as he shakes his head no.

But we can read a book.

Book, he says crisp, staccato like a short note struck against keys.

We talk a bit more until he begins rubbing his eyes; it's then that I send him back to daddy for good-night snuggles.

He won't remember what we talked about tonight; he is only two and a half.

I probably won't either, and I'm 29.

But I hope that those few sentences translated themselves into the message that I'm trying {oh, God, help me to write well} to continually etch onto his and his brother and his father's hearts --

that they -- these eternal souls -- are the most worthy recipients of my time, my love, my care

and

that the story of this family

is the most important book I'll ever write* during this assignment from the Great Editor and Chief.

*Sally Clarkson gave these words to a roomful of hungry ears during a conference breakout session at Relevant '11, and her words have deeply impressed my heart.

Five-Minute Friday: Grit

She welcomes me to her turquoise waters, the place she prayed to land and live life when she was just a small thing. 

An answered prayer, spoken by trusting lips.

Our feet press against grains of sand as five pairs of little boy legs bound out before us across the stretch of beach, all gravitating to where the waves kiss the shore.

We settle into beach chairs for moments at a time to talk, to try and finish conversations began in the sun-set darkness of the night while my little ones slept.

But with little boys awake, sentences are fragments.

I've only known her through words for about a year, her face for day, a night, but I know her heart from the life details she spoke into the night about how beauty has spread out bright and vibrant across the grittiness of where her feet have tread sand and rocks, fragments of shells along the journey.

She runs after my smallest when I sink into a chair, a bee stings throbbing across the bottom of my now smoothed-by-sand feet.

I breathe in the brilliant blues of water in a moment of solitude while waves break apart at the shore, sun beats down onto water and skin, sand presses into skin.



Beauty doesn't always come gentle and easy.

And I see it clearly now.




{Written this morning in a very, very, very fragmented span of five minutes. How can five minutes be so hard to come by with a two year old?}

Five-Minute Friday: Loss

Summer begs for more.

For more days spent lying faceup on blades of green grass, pointing out ships and castles in the puffs of white clouds.

For more afternoons where little and big legs alike trekking through the neighborhood exploring.

For more lazy morings welcomed by floating in cool Michigan freshwater, digging toes deep into grainy sand.

And for more dusks spent counting fireflies from the porch instead of sheep from bed.

So we play long, hard.

We laugh loudly, in abandon.

We soak in the extra sunlight long-streaking through longer days.

I simultaneously lose and gain time.

As the days boast extra warmth, extra light, I'm constantly transfering minutes spent thinking about life to plainly living.

And sometimes I need that -- to be so immersed in living that words from the day don't find a home in black print on a white page -- but rather, they find a home in the deep layers of my memory, firmly etched onto the walls of my mind.