Houses may be bought, built, or borrowed.

But homes can only be made, and that with bits of ourselves.

Or so the ducks told me.

They told me without a sound, just simply as they preened and nestled, a painting, oil on canvas. The children press in close too, for a better look at Alexander Max Koester’s painting Ducks, and I read aloud the caption below the brushes of color.

“Mother ducks pick feathers from their chests to line their nests.”

(Koester's painting: Moulting Ducks)

I pause and the children gaze thoughtfully at a clutch of plump white, blizzard of feathers fallen down. But it’s those words that mesmerize me: “pick feathers from their chests, to line their nests.”

Eyes fixed on a duck breast puffed, mother plunging beak in deep, I question wondering self: “How else did you think nests were lined?”

With leftovers. With feathers discarded, the molted, the not-so-necessary feathers. I thought mother ducks picked feathers up from what was laying about, scraps, lining nests with what simply could be mustered after the fact.

But no. (Is that only the way of human mothers?) No, a mother duck plucks each feather out from the heart of her bosom, warm and soft.


She lines the nest with bits of herself. The best of her, from the deep spots.

She cups her young in her sacrifice.

Children pull at the corner of the page, anxious to see the next painting, and, reluctantly, I move on. But for weeks, part of me lives among Koester’s ducks. (Koester, captivated, painted dozens of duck paintings throughout the course of his life. I’ve come to understand.)

Days later, I am scrubbing out the arches of muffin tins after breakfast, the clock ticking insufferably loud in my ears, time running down. Children need books and learning, and I’m tuned for the expected chime of the doorbell, a service personnel’s scheduled visit. And the words rise near to the surface, “I don’t have time for this! No muffins tomorrow morning!”

Pluck.

The words sharply sink. And I, learning, line this nest with a feather. Not a leftover. But one decidedly plucked. The service man meets me with muffin tins still in the sink, and a circle of happy young. Whose tummies next morning fill with another batch of muffins. I will make time.

As the sun’s perfect globe of glow sets nears the horizon, these boys, glint in eyes, recalibrate vacuum cleaner to fire socks. Weary, I have food to find, laundry awaiting escort, math sheets to mark.

They fire sock cannons.

And I Pluck.

Bellies jiggle, peals of giggles, as old mother chases after future men, wrestling them down, tying them up in tickles. We warm here in laughter. It feels good, wild and alive. So again they fire, and again I pluck with feathers of my time, bits of me, and we pile high, one atop the other, nesting down into sacrifice, soft and small.

Some feathers for this nest, the parts of me and time I have sacrificed, have hurt, pain of the plucking lingering long. But why speak of the details? And was it really sacrifice, or just this too-tender skin? It’s done, it was necessary, it was for something better. Some nights, when all sleep, I feel along the hidden bald patches.

There are times, too many, when they call, “Read me a story?” “Wanna play a game with me?” “Can you come help me?”

And this mother refuses to pluck. Something, some task, someone (me?), rates as more pressing, more important. I deem our nest acceptable just as it is. I don't want to sacrifice more of me.

Then comes the pecking, the scratching, the squawking. With feather lining wearing thin, the nest chafes hard. We hurt and cry. Nests need feathers deep.

Someone must pluck.

When will I learn that down sacrificed settles and soothes?

For scraps won’t suffice. Snippets of time, leftover me, a trinket, a diversion, tossed.

Mother ducks don’t line nests with feathers, dirty and trampled, the molted and unnecessary. Why would I? Nests need feathers fresh, warm with mother’s life.

Night descends and calls children to dreams. I lead them to their bed-gate, arms and legs under quilts worn from the ride. I read stories, stroke hair, say prayers. Prayers to Him who plucked hard from His own heart.

A sacrifice, staggering and true, for love of His very own. We learn love from His laid down.

Tired heads nestle into pillows, pillows of down.

On feathers plucked, we rest.

Lord, help me today to pluck, to lay down my life for others. Like You did.

Related: May the Children Eat First

The original Koester painting, "Moulting Ducks," is part of the collection at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle www.fryemuseum.org

a repost from the archives of the CWO column

So we eat and talk and pull out our sheets of verses from the dinner-table book basket and pour over the words, The Word, in between forkfuls. We recite during slurps of desert’s ice cream cones. Tattered sheets are stuffed in pockets to review in between barn feeding chores, doing up dishes, putting little ones down for nap.

We’re slowly becoming a family of mutterers, reciters, memorizers.

Is this what it is to be like Moses: Deuteronomy 31:30 "So Moses recited this entire song to the assembly of Israel..." To be a David: Psalm 119:13 "I have recited aloud all the laws you have given us."

Not as diligent as the Jewish students who faithfully memorized the entire oral Torah , we strengthen our humble efforts with the mantra: “No Child Left Behind”… or Mom and Dad. We spur each other on, reminding each other to daily recite God's Word:

“Okay, while we fold the clothes, wanna all say the verse for today?” ...“Okay, bedtime story after we recite all the verses we know so far this week.”

Even 3 year old Shalom squeals with glee: “Woverbs four nineteen, wenty, teen, one --- I say it too!” Her enthusiasm is contagious, even if his annunciation is....well...indecipherable. And she is learning now the habit of wanting God's Word....

Sunday morning drive to church finds a van full of us reciting in careful unison…and then, after the service, seeking out our accountability partner for nervous, word-perfect attempts at all seven verses in one sitting. Signatures scrawled on the bottom of assignment sheets are rewarded with relieved smiles.

And a changed person….ready to begin another 7 days of verses, life-changing encounters with the living, breathing, potent Word of God.

Photo: a ring of memory cards for 1 John attached to rowing machine: exercising body, soul and mind

Learning the ART of Memorizing:

Attend : Attend to the verse’s meaning. Attend to its context. Attend to its rhythm. Work those brain muscles. If you have to act it out, draw it up, write it down, or tape it on, so be it. Do whatever it takes to Attend.

(For me to attend: Make up Actions and sign-language to correspond with the verse.

For some of the children: Draw the verse in pictures. Record it on tape. Write it down.

For Dh: Close eyes and say the words he sees.) Do what it takes to Attend.

Review to Renew: Repeat. Recite. Recap. Reiterate. And then: Review. Repeat. Recite. Recap. Reiterate. And then…. Recite to an accountability partner weekly.

(A Memory Club with another family at church encourages the efforts.)

Each day, take just five minutes to review verses learned last week. Learning is important...but reviewing is paramount to retention. Repeating God's Word renews.

Tie: Tie Daily Memorizing to Daily Duties. Knot reciting to routines: when you brush teeth, comb hair, make the bed, use the time to savor His Sweet Word. Tie memorizing to meal times. Bind Scripture learning to laundry, labor and living. Tie His Word to your life. Tie.

So goes the ART of Memorizing.
And our motivation to keep memorizing?

"Guard my words as your most precious possession… " Pr. 7:2 (LB)

Lord, “Your promises to me are my hope. They give me strength in all my troubles; how they refresh and revive me!" (Ps. 119:49 LB)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Inspiration to Memorize:
A Five-Year-Old Makes God's Word his life…

Spiritual Benefits of Memorizing:
Motivated to Memorize: Fourteen Reasons from Scripture
Why, When and How of Memorizing Scripture

Intellectual Benefits of Memorizing:
In Defense of Memorization
Memorizing Makes Writers

Scripture Memory Programs:
MemLok with picture cues
Scripture Memory Fellowship (previously known as BMA)

Repost from the archives

As September comes up around the bend and a year of new beginnings, I am thinking about launchings...

In the hallowed cracking of dark, slivers of light from mystical east line the waters silver. The dark of waves lapping from the west, foamy from their night’s ride, roar at last onto white, wet sand.


This boy of mine, tawny and lean, dips his feet in crashing waters. For the first time I see glimpses of a man muscling about under his summer brown skin. The sharp twinge of it—of the emerging man and the fading boy—makes me catch my breath.

I sit on sand, watching. He has come to to carry out his plan. He has read all winter of rafts, he has dreamed and envisioned and now the time has come, here in the glinting of day by sterling sea.

He lugs the driftwood together, legs straining, taut and rippled. He attempts to construct on silver edge, the water crashing and carrying his wood. She deceives him, licking and luring his logs away with her.

Repost from the archives...

I found the evidence yesterday, unexpectedly, on the trail to the woods. It was at the the curve, just before that large made-for-sitting-on stone, where one can see down into the valley of fields from the top of the hill.

Wise writer, deep soul, beautiful friend, Tonia, from study in brown, took wing, flew across the continent, and these days of fellowship with a thoughtful, Christ-ardent heart is life-giving.

That You, Father, would bless our lives with such friendships... Pure grace, all gift... sweet. I am indebted and owe so much in my life to this friend.

Lord, today how can I live in communion with the saints, in intimate fellowship with the Body?

Photo: Tonia reading a book her daughter wrote and illustrated, a gift to these farmkids. Absolutely captivating and luminously beautiful...

I know, Ms. O'Hair, I know. Your question is ours. It's the quest of our lives, that acidic ache for love drives us onward, ever hoping.

And when I keep my eyes open, writing down the gifts of the everyday, cultivating spiritual disciplines of attentiveness and gratitude, I see, astonishingly just that: "He love me! He really, really loves me!"

The answer is Yes, Ms. O'Hair; yes, somebody, right here, SomeOne, does love you.

more common grace from His hand..








~~

May we invite you to make gratitude a way of living?

Consider establishing gratitude as a spiritual discipline and personal soul fixture. Just grab a scrap of paper lying around and begin counting the blessings.

Why begin your own One Thousand Gift List --(drop me a line if you do, and I'll add either your name or a web link to the Gratitude Community)

Read the listing of the endless Gifts

Photos: brother's roses and Shalom tip-toeing out early...

I’m at back door, bag over shoulder, mirror just checked and strand tucked behind ear, and I call to them who mingle here, “I love you! I won't be gone long...”

And a voice comes from the kitchen, high and young, heavy with stack of bowls from crumbed table. “Goodbye, Mom….” Dishes clatter.

“God goes with you!”

And then little lisp from child in her third year calls from somewhere further within, “For the Lord your God goes with you, wherever you go!” Memorized words.




And I linger on the back step, hand curved around door knob, and let unexpected blessing of tender olive shoots wash over bowed head.

They who pray over my going out with Scripture, ancient words scratched onto cerebral matter and felt along again and handed back to me, they anoint a heart with words learnt by heart.

I want to speak more words like that, borrowed God-words.

***Related Inspiration: Words of Life

Memorization aids:
Click to download "An Approach to Extended Memorization of Scripture" (highly recommended)

Memory Booklets
Free, Downloadable Memory Books
More Free, Downloadable Memory Books

Photos: our chapel's summer memorization sheets, children recite to adults, adults to children, and then sign sheet, 13 verses, and John 14 printed on yellow cardstock and hole-punched for a ring, "borrowed-words to-go"...

The lights were all turned out tonight except the dim glow from the hall, when I tiptoed into peek on sleeping Shalom for the last time.

And there he was.

I could see his hunched over shape silhouetted by the light. There, in the night’s quiet, crouched Caleb, my boy-man, bare-chested and ready for bed, kneeling close over the Moses basket, and sleeping Shalom. I stepped back into the hushed shadows, watching.

Sweeping down from the ceiling over the Moses basket is a swirl of white netting, shrouding our babe from pesky flies. And there stooped our lanky boy, the white sheer falling around him, his eyes on Shalom.

He reaches out his hand. He touches hers. In her slumber, she wraps her fingers around one of his. Then I see what he thinks no one sees: he strokes her clinging fingers. His eyes never leaving her face. Mine never leaving his.

This boy-man taken with inventions and dogs and junk piles and bush trails and engines sat here. In Shalom’s crowning canopy of white.

This boy-man who yesterday climbed a roof, rough-housed in the pool, snuck up on unsuspecting targets with precisely-aimed water balloons, and stained up a pair of pants on the soccer field, now kneels wordlessly to gaze upon the beauty of a sleeping babe. His little sister.

There, from the darkness, I see Caleb shed another layer of boyhood. And grow more into his man skin. For a lingering moment, he isn't a rambunctious, testosterone-pumped, reckless boy. He is a young man, who stepped through the falling curtain, bent down low…and touched a babe. To say that he loves her.

And I have the privilege of witnessing. Witnessing what it means to be family.

To reach out across the chasm of age and interests and gender…and say, in the still, “I, who am so very different from you,---I love you----you, who are so very different from me."

That is what ties us to one another. Love. It’s all.

Soon Caleb stands, steps back out of the sheer canopy, leaving baby Shalom draped in dreams.

He sees me there. And speaks, “Her hand is so soft. Mine feels so old and wrinkly when I touch hers..... But it was nice.”

He smiles awkwardly, then steps into a darkened bedroom to find pillow and sleep.

Yes, it is nice, I think. For it transforms us, and the world, when we brush back the curtains that separate us, reach out, and touch someone with the skin of our soul.


Lord, in the end, love is all there is. What curtain can I sweep back today, to reach past that which distances, and touch someone, even in this family? I want to grow into skin like Yours.

Posted from the 2005 archives
Photo: Touching niece Ana, a family walk

a summer of healing hand, without trampoline, or swimming, or bikes...

but there's always frogs!

the shirt he wears to remind me to, regardless...

wholesale gratitude.

the grass got too long at the other farms...

but oh, the smell of freshly mown summer

the end of a long hard wheat harvest...

dewy blades...

bedecked in jeweled necklaces

when everyone goes off to play without you...

there's always the porch swing, a dishtowel blanket, old, quiet friends...

and a wash of golden light.

Lord, today, let me give up. Give up holding on to all that isn't... cause me to gratefully embrace what is. Because in embracing what You've given, I embrace You. Could I know more Joy?

Have you considered establishing gratitude as a personal soul fixture? Counting the blessings of what is. Why begin your own One Thousand Gift List --(drop me a line if you do, and I'll add either your name or a web link to the Gratitude Community) Read the listing of the endless Gifts

(Just a wee note to say that I will be updating the links to the gratitude community this afternoon...
Thank you for your kind grace. I looking forward to joining you in giving thanks--how we are loved!
Check back later to the gratitude community for new links of folks praising Him from whom all blessings flow...)

I do not mean the kind of love that ignited cheeks a fiery awkwardness when he caught your eye. Nor the kind that makes you rock a babe through thickening night while the clock marches loudly towards the dawn. Not even the kind that wraps around your flesh and bone in a band of gold, a covenant circle without beginning, end.

I’m speaking of the love you keep looking for.

You know, the love that you surprise yourself thinking about on long walks in the rain, that you didn’t even think you still needed. The kind of love you mean when you say you just want to go home. And you’re already at the address where the mail finds you.

A womb-love.

Isn’t that what we keep questing, craving, driving ever onward, that hope of falling into? The wild hope that we’ll be loved with a smitten, captivated, passionate, fervent, get-under-your-skin-intimate, unrelenting, always pursuing, never ebbing, entirely encompassing, throbbing through your being kind of love?

An unearthly kind of love.

The kind of love we must be meant for because in the unspoken, unexplored dark hinterlands of ourselves, we never give up the dream.

I think it’s that kind of love we are hungering for when we live lives “of selfish ambition or vain conceit” (Phil. 2:3). I wonder, if we peel it back, if we never, really, have selfish ambition for shinier things, never desire, under it all, noted adulation. Aren’t our ambitions, when they stand naked, simply a vulnerable craving for love?

Paul exhorts the searching ones to humility, to “consider others better than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3).

When you look around, that doesn’t seem common. It’s rare to see that kind of consideration: that others are regarded better, esteemed higher. Isn’t that only possible, to consider others better, when you securely know love? No, not merely know love. But feel it. In your marrow. In your every cell. In the firing of your every neuron.

It’s a love you know not from mere mental understanding or assent, but a love you experience. A love that is under your skin, entangled in your sinews.



Susanna Wesley knew a love that satiates and fills the empty crevices in a soul is a love that isn’t merely spoken of with lips or understood cerebrally, but the kind of love you know experientially, a kind of love that moves your heart:

Unless the heart brushes up against, touches, that kind of love, knows God intimately to be her only happiness, we still ache. We still strive and writhe and selfishly, desperately, grasp.

When you feel love swelling your lungs and coursing in your blood and soaking into your skin, when your heart perceives Love’s touch, you aren’t lashed unflaggingly by selfish ambitions. You’ve already arrived; you’ve found that for which you’ve yearned: arms that enfold you, all of you.

You rest. Just lay back into those everlasting arms. Simply, sweetly abide.

How do you know, on the underside of your epidermis, the love of God experientially?

You close your eyes and press your fingertips into the grainy crevices of the Cross, taste the saltiness of the blood that veins down those valleys.

You feel the sun splash your face every morning with cosmic warmth, beckoned forth by His Word, and listen to rain fall through the pines, oceanic waters congregated overhead in vaporous veils and pattering down softly in still grey twilight.

You bite into corn on the cob, hot butter dripping, and revel in the miracle of savoring sunlight. You feel wind in your hair and listen to the cry of the hawk swooping from tip of the maple on edge of woods, and watch an ant scale a blade of grass, and watch a baby breathe in sleep, and you wake up to God and you be.

For that is what He loves about you. Just that you are.

Just that you are and you see how He drenches your life with your supreme good. You listen to His serenade throughout all the earth. You let Him woo you through your hours, He who waves the whole earth like a flag, trying to capture your attention. Your heart.

“The approach of God to the soul… is not to be thought of in spatial terms at all,” writes A.W. Tozer. “There is no idea of physical distance involved in the concept. It is not a matter of miles but of experience.”

We begin to rouse to Lover close when we experience His passionate good for us in each of our moments. When we live attentively, listening to the Voice that choreographs all that we see, sensitive to His movements in our daily lives, in even small things, we realize that the simple pleasures of our days are in fact tender overtures of God approaching.

When we become aware of all that is gift, grace, in our lives, we feel the warmth of very God touching us, there upon on our skin; we experience Love.

When we feel the ambitions strangling tight, the grasp for more flail about, it's time to open the eyes of the heart and see how you're loved.

Is it the kind of divine love that Marguerite Porete (1200s) experienced, “…she melts into the embrace of union from which she receives all love’s delights. She’s convinced there can be nothing higher than the life she now enjoys.”

Why have selfish ambitions for more when there is nothing higher than intimately feeling the love of God? She writes, “Love has given her such pleasure that she cannot believe God has anything higher to offer the soul than this love which Love has spread throughout her being…It is indeed a wonderful thing for the soul to be taken up to these dizzy heights of love.”

Taken up to the heights of love, daily and ordinary and everywhere, we rest.

For is there really anything higher than His kind of love?

I wake to His love.

Overatures this past week, from the wooing God, the endless gifts....

boy and dog and a long summer day

memories rusting as the corn grows

a place for a face in day's last light

old paint, old lines, chipping chair

a girl, her daddy, and a tractor ride in wheat harvest

painted hen warming eggs

aged chair at front door, wisps of what once was

I wake to His Love.
~~

May we invite you to join the Gratitude Community?

Have you considered establishing gratitude as a personal soul fixture? Just grab a scrap of paper lying around and begin counting the blessings, with your own 1000 Endless Gifts:

Why begin your own One Thousand Gift List --(drop me a line if you do, and I'll add either your name or a web link to the Gratitude Community
-- it's a privilege to join you in giving Him all worship, all praise, all thanks...)

Read the listing of the endless Gifts

~~Photos: my brother's roses, morning strawberry whispering His heart, and snapshots of this past week's serenade...

Thoughts I am thinking on as we gear up for a new school year....

I am by the stove cutting warm loaves of dark bread, and my mother is at the window, gentle drops pattering the panes, sewing new and vintage fabric pieces together. I listen to the hum of the machine, thread lacing down, through, up, through, to the watering of the rain upon the earth, and to her.

“Now you try, Hope. Just slowly. Take your time and really focus.” Her crown of white hovers over Hope’s shoulder.

“Like this, Gram?” I turn to see Hope’s furrowed brow lit by the machine’s glowing light. They are stitching up bibs for the new Carrere baby, the sixth child, fourth son. The needle stitches crisp new cottons to a backing of reclaimed, familiar flannels. Hope’s eyes are fixed on that quarter inch seam allowance, the curving arcs of the material.

“Yes, that’s it, Hope. Now if you’ll stop a moment…” The machine drones to a halt. Butter melts into the steaming warm slices. I ladle garden vegetable soup into a circle of waiting bowls, filling fare for rainy autumn evenings.

“If you’ll look closely, do you see how it puckers here, when you push the material through? Don’t rush, or push the fabric along. If you push the material through, you’ll end up with wrinkled, disappointing handiwork. You just guide….”

“Gently?” Hope offers.

“Yes! That’s it precisely: no pushing…or you’ll wrinkle everything. Just guide gently.”

My ladle hangs midair. Empty bowl waits in one hand. I have ears to hear.

Rain streams in rivulets down the glass. The needle again begins to purr. I close my eyes, breathe deeply, and finger write those words on soul sand: “Just guide gently.”

Push and it will all pucker.

Don’t I know that too well. How many perfectly good days have I wrinkled because I pushed, arms heavy with an agenda? How many happy faces have I wrinkled into distress with pushing words: “Hurry up! We could have been finished this by now if you hadn’t dawdled here…” I don’t even want to consider how many bare, beating hearts I have crinkled and crumpled with my pushing for more.

Pushed and puckered.

I come to, fill the waiting soup bowl, and whisper it again, etching it deeper, “just guide gently.” The Spirit nudges: “This is what I meant the other morning. You underlined it, remember?”

I find black ink marking the words: “Therefore, although in Christ, I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love.” (Philemon 1:8-9).

I could be bold and order you. Push, push, push.


Yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. Just gently guiding. Gently serving. Gently leading by caring, encouraging, edifying.

Wasn’t it Mama who also pulled me up on her lap as a four-year-old and told me the fable of the sun and the wind, arguing over which of the two was the stronger? I can still feel her leaning close to, her voice rich with story:

“The Wind began to blow cold blasts, but the man only drew his cloak closer, tighter about him to keep out the cold. Then the Sun took his turn, shining warm and full. Under the sun’s rays, the man released his grip on his coat, then threw it back, and, at last took it off! The Sun’s gentleness accomplished what the Wind’s force could not.”

She turned me to look me in the eye: “Remember that, girl of mine: gentleness can do what force fails to do.”

I could be bold and order you…yet I appeal to you on the basis of love.

To release a child to be all that he or she was meant to be requires the sun, requires guiding gently with loving words of encouragement. Recent research confirms it. A study of twenty-two grade eight students found that those who were kindled with positive feelings generated significant more creative and problem-solving ability than the group of students in which “a neutral mood was induced.”

Fail to encourage, abandon children to a slush of neutral feelings, and settle for dismal, uninspired handiwork. Sloppy work, dragging feet, shrugging shoulders, glassy far-off glazes. Push, order, and rush will result in worse: puckers and wrinkles. Tears, pouting, stomping, surly sullen glares, and explosions of defiance.

Appeal on the basis of love, with a light touch of guidance and the warm igniting of encouragement, and watch hearts and minds creatively, joyously thrive. The gentle guiding reaps far more than pushing.

Can I take up this mothering fabric, and smooth out the wrinkles?

Bowls served and dinner bell waiting to be rung, I survey the trail of rainy day pursuits: strewn legos, a blizzard of paper snippets, scraps of material flung about for good measure, counters offering up a trifle of smudged markers, pooling glue and a sprinkle of crayons.

Take a deep breath, O Heart. Push and the day—no, more than the day--- delicate hearts, will pucker.

What if I were to just guide gently? So I try.

“What a day we’ve had, best beloveds! Such grand creations here! Made in the image of Your Creator Father, you are! Come, show me your work!” Books are set aside, scissors left, and masterpieces presented. I appeal to you on the basis of love; true, genuine love.

“Such color! What a design! You made that by yourself?” Hearts embroidered with tender, edifying words shimmer.

“Let’s clean this up together, so your work will be in its best light when Dad comes in.” No bold ordering. Moments gently threaded with positive encouragement. A love appeal.

My hands, their hands, we sort, organize, gather. Laughing, happy bodies pile around the table for soup and bread. I run my hand across the clean counter.

No puckering, no wrinkles. My mother smiles. This girl of hers remembers the fable. This mother in Christ turns from blustery, bold ordering and appeals on the warm basis of love.

Yes, just guide gently. A pucker-free pattern for hearts.

Lord, today let me not rush those around me, pushing, pushing, pushing. Cause me to guide gently. Appealing on the basis of love.

Photo: my mama guiding grandchildren gently...
From 2007 archives of Christian Women Online

Photo: our boy, dog and bike running out under big sky....

Home from church at Sunday noon, we eat out at the porch table, full plates of pasta salad bedecked with green, red, yellow peppers, and the flag flapping gently in the breeze, and this palette of iris blue saturating the sky, and our faces warm in the sun, and we all hurt so bad no one speaks, just oblivious Little One sing-songing softly to herself, that flag clapping along.

It’s hard to sit here, eating Sunday dinner, and not notice how the sun’s mocking. Looking out at soil gilded with wheat, we can’t help but see those kerneled heads hanging low, ripe and ready, under sun’s relentless smirk. Forks move to mouths slowly. A chair shuffles out of blazing heat into shadow’s relief. Someone pours another glass of water, swallows loudly.


“You think it’s really too late, Dad?” Levi finally ventures, his face squinting in the sun.

Farmer Husband looks out at gold fields tarnishing. I watch his eyes weighing, analyzing.

“Maybe not, Levi. Maybe it’s still okay, but it’s just that that wheat has had so many rains on it, it’s got to be a hair’s breath from sprouting. One more rain….”

His weathered hands reach for pitcher of water, fills his stainless steel cup, cools too. “And if that crop sprouts,” he takes another swallow, “if each kernel germinates right there while still on the stalk, then it’s just feed wheat, chop for livestock somewhere.”

“We couldn’t sell it for bread then?” Levi’s eyebrows arch.

Farmer Husband shakes his head, fills glass again.

Joshua doesn’t look up from his plate, just mumbles the words. “Too bad the best drying day of the week has to be Sunday. And all they are calling for next week is rain, rain, rain.”

“Sure, we’ll keep it holy, all right. And lose the whole crop.” Caleb slams down his cup. “Didn’t someone say yesterday that we should just make Saturday our church day this week, so we could harvest on Sunday? Sorta appropriate: Sunday, the day of the week that we have sun.”

Hope’s got her eye on something in a cloud of dust, several farms over. “Are they combining over there, Dad?”

Farmer Husband doesn’t even look that direction. “Yeah, they are.” He can hear the distant growl of an engine hauling in a crop. He tapped my knee this morning during the sermon when he spotted out the church window a combine driving down the road, headed towards some field. Ours sits in the field, silent.


“How much will we lose?” Levi hasn’t eaten much, his face crinkled from the sun’s glare—or is that worry?

Farmer husband’s quietly figuring numbers and I kick him under the table. He looks up. “Not here.” I shake my head.

I force a smile for this table of kids. “So… did everyone recite their memory work to their partner after church?” I happily search their faces and the circle nods. “Good! Maybe we can finish up lunch, clear the table, and sing a few hymns together?”

Fork tines scrape against plates, and he leans over close, lowers his voice, and his words brush my ear. Jab my heart. “You could have let me be honest, let us all work this through. Process together how hard this is.”

I close my eyes, a hardly-there sigh escapes, and I know he’s right. I don’t do this well. I complain well, howl better. But how to genuinely lament? How to let pain ripen to poetry? See the beauty in the ugliness of this moment? That requires attending. That requires slowing, wading into the dirty, pained waters, processing, maybe even slippery wrestling with God in the sludge. That requires something more than superficial praise or spiritual inauthenticity. It requires what Walter Brueggemann deems an act of bold faith.

But as I gather plates off the table, fill kitchen sink with suds, I wonder what it means to experience life as it really is instead of some “pretended way.” What is reality? The way I feel or experience something? Or the way God means for it to be? And yet when I think how laments outnumber every other category of psalm, nearly a third of all psalms being lament, maybe simply expressing the ache of my experience is not only bold faith but necessary.

Do I have the courage, the bold faith, to sing psalms of loss, the common bills-kids-laundry kind and the kind that rips out your intestinal wall, leaving entrails dripping? Why is it easier to complain like the Israelites, in ungrateful disbelief, than to lament like a psalmist, in unwavering hope of ultimate good? Is it risk? That maybe He doesn’t really hear? Doesn’t really love? Isn’t really good? Or, on the other hand, I am simply bad and deserving of this pain?

I dip hands into hot, soapy water, scour pot face clean, and look out the window to drowsing wheat waiting ready on a perfect day. And yet we don’t gather in the yield. For this is the Sabbath and we honor God by honoring the day, keeping these hours hallowed. Though it may cost us the crop. Cost us necessities, sleep, any cushion. Can I lament to a God who may not honor our honor?


If I am seeking an intimate conversation of the heart, a no-holds-barred dialogue between God’s heart and mine, then it is true: poetry is the language hearts speak. Psalms of lament are simply that, heart language, disappointment wrapped in love.

Or, maybe, is it possible, that psalms of lament are the conversation of even an angry heart?

For at least when we express our anger to God, our wrestling keeps us our skin pressing into His. God is still present. When we honestly expose our inflammation, express our soreness, we are still staking our commitment to our relationship with Him. Choose to give voice to the sadness and you convey what you believe: a still-burning hope in relationship, a kindled expectation for reconciliation. For isn’t what animates angry words not the passion of love? Anger is love’s depths turned inside out. Far more insidious to relationship than anger is the indifference of silence, the unresponsiveness of apathy… the desensitization of soul leprosy.

Our fluid relationship with God slips towards catatonic stiffness when we muffle our heart with bandages, live our pain in gauzed silence. Boldly choosing the poetry of lament, to unwrap our sores, forces us to stay engaged with God, breathing close in the heat of hurt.

Can I be David?

Late Sunday night, Farmer husband slips under summer’s cotton sheets, and my bare toes find his, and I cup close and ask, but hardly daring. “What’s the radar show?”

“I was going to look…” He rolls over onto back, finger winding up strands of my hair, unwinding. “But I decided not to. Better to just pray and trust whatever God has for us. We’ll see what He holds for us this week.” He finds my hand and squeezes. I nestle close and we sleep.

Monday morning splits open with radiant light and hope. We don’t look at the radar. We open His Word, take up and eat, then lace hands, bow heads, and pray. The wheat waits expectant.

We hold off until 10:30 am, long enough for sun rays to mop off stalks wet with dew, and then turn ignitions, nudge engines awake.

Augers wind and kernels flow and wagons fill with dunes of gold. As kernels stream, we dip the tester into the flow, and wait for the digital screen to flash the moisture. 16.6%. 0.6% short of what is considered dry.

“We’re close.” Farmer husband hollers over the roar of tractor, breaks into a smile. “As long as it doesn’t come in overcast,” he glances up, then off to the horizon, “we’ll test dry in another hour or so. We’ll keep pushing.” Warmth of that fireball on bare arms feels promising.

Tractor and wagon whir off to field and I’m back in the house, sorting grimy jeans into a laundry pile, when the back door slams, punctuated with an abrupt “Pray Mom!” I wheel towards the window, braced. Droplets splatter the pane.

Can I be David?

Swooping clothes off the line, a cold drop now and then splattering hard on upturned face, wooden clothespins slip from my too-full hands, hope with it too. I brush tangled hair off wet cheeks, but those are sky tears, not mine. I can only choke out, “Oh, Father…. ”

From the back stone stoop, laundry basket underarm, I watch rain paint the sidewalk. I am too heavy to move. I can see, across the field, the combine, tractor, wagons coming down the hill. Coming towards cover of shed roof.



Wheat heads bow as if turning away from pelting drops. Or is that the droop of defeat?

T-shirts sticking to backs, children wander into the house. Their eyes advert lingering. I know, understand: we can hardly bare for anyone to see the sadness our soul windows can’t hide. Hadn’t we prayed fervently enough? What did that rain drumming on the roof really mean?

It’s like it is calling me.

I walk into rain coming down. I am ready to enter into the grief.

Rivulets slide down the back of my neck. Damp curls cling. Drops wet closed eyelids and I let the lament come. Don’t tears break up the hardened, numb places, rain breaking up cracked earth?


Leaning against the wet steel of wheat wagon, drips pattering hair, I think of St. Therese of Avila’s raw cry to God, “If this is how you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few.” Could I whisper a prayer of such stripped honesty? And yet instead of a rant of frustration, I wonder if I need to simply look in and see how empty and poor I am.


I bend over, pick up a wheat kernel from the gravel, roll it between my fingers. The rain falls harder. I claim David’s words: “Why, Lord?” (Ps. 10:1) Is lament like a lawsuit, an approaching the bench of the Sovereign judge with an unwavering hope? I choke it out, “You do “not forsake those who seek [You]” (Ps. 9:10). You do “not ignore the cry of the afflicted” (Ps.9:12). The beat of rain in the empty of the wagon pummels my words. The wheat field blurs in the spilling lament. “How long, Lord?” (Ps. 13)

I look down and see I am empty. And so full of hunger.

True, lament may be a kind of lawsuit, an appeal to He who is just, an appeal to God’s own righteousness and reputation. But it is more. Lament takes our resentments and our hard, numb places, our places of private pain that we cannot speak to others and may have not even have acknowledged to ourselves, and washes them in tears. Sorrow breaks up the crusted, thickened surfaces. Learning to lament is to give voice to our longings. To accept the vulnerability of longing. To move from the sharp edge of pain to a humble petition of neediness. To hold out empty hands and cry please.

I cup mine there in the rain falling. I can only mouth the word.



It’s the way of God’s people throughout His Word, throughout history: we must first articulate the pain before God, before we can bend the knee in submission before God, before we can open our hands and simply relinquish all to God.

Drops from heaven’s heights tear down my cupped palms, washing. Washing me clean like Namaan, washing the hard places soft to the way of His will.

This is the supreme beauty in ugliness: to see God in the seemingly deadened places.

That He fills empty hands, hands open for Him to have His way, with more of His tender presence. And I have to ask myself: does earth have anything I desire more? (Ps.73:25)

David’s psalms of lament move from pleas to praise, a praise that says, like Shadrach, MesShadrach, Meshach and Abednego, “the God we serve is able to save us…But even if he does not,” (Dan. 3:17-19) still will we bow low before Him; David’s laments end on a note of lament resolved.

I walk to the edge of the wheat field, and feel the rain on my face, in my hands, and I wonder if lament may sometimes be resolved simply by knowing, feeling, the hunger pangs of our longings fill with Emmanuel, God with us….

And so He is as I walk back towards the house through the rain.

Lord, remind me today to voice my lament not as disgruntled frustration, but as longing, the language of the heart. The authentic language I speak to You. Who fills.

(Sun came later in the week and we gathered the harvest in and gave thanks...wholesale, indiscriminate gratitude, regardless of sprouting of kernels or not. Learning, slowly: articulate the lament, bend in submission, open-handed relinquishment...)

Related:
Learn how to lament, Part One
Ugly-Beautiful
Photos: from the farm this week...

"Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares?
Then go,

plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea;
be lost in his immensity;

and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest,
refreshed and invigorated.

I know nothing which can so comfort the soul,
so speak peace to the winds of trial,
as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead."

~ Charles Spurgeon

Lord, today let me lose myself in Your immensity. And therein rest.

"Union with Christ is really the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation not only in its application but also in its once-for-all accomplishment in the finished work of Christ." --John Murray

I had felt like a fool out there in our garden right off the front porch.

A picket fence frames the rows of tomatoes and peas, lettuce and beans. Sunflowers march along the periphery. Standing at attention in the garden’s center, a miniature windmill silently whirls, morning glories entwining up it sides. And there I bent over, twist ties in hand, tying the pole beans’ sprouting runners to rough wooden stakes.

“Smile, Ann. This is fun!” Darryl grinned as he drove in another of the branches he had cut from the woods.

I frowned. “I feel like a fool. I envisioned the pole beans climbing up bamboo poles…or the swirling steel stakes from Lee Valley. Not these…” I gesticulated, fumbling for the right word… "not these trees!” I glanced over the fence to see if any of our neighbors were driving down the road.

Darryl laughed and picked up another limb. “Oh, c’mon! This is an experiment that hasn’t cost us a dime. Let’s find out what happens!?”

I muttered something about there probably being a reason why I had never seen any Mennonites with tree limbs staked for their pole beans…and waved limply at the passing Mennonite neighbor who drove by slowly, neck craned.

Our breakfast ritual soon included Darryl and I checking for any progress on the pole beans. Would they entwine such thick “trees”? Were the neighbors thinking we were preparing to burn multiple guilty parties at the stake?

This morning I leaned over the porch railing and shook my head. The “trees” were completely curtained in verdant leaves; the bean and the stake becoming one. The runners had wrapped themselves the full height of the 6 foot “trees” only now to be arched in mid-air, stretching, reaching, seeking to climb even higher.


There is an old rugged Tree I seek to wrap my life around, with which to become one. The world may slow to stare and think it foolish.

But entwined around this stake of death, I discover bountiful new life. And find myself stretching, reaching, seeking to climb higher up and deeper in.

To Him who hung on a Tree for me.

Lord, forgive my preoccupation with appearances. May I be a fool for You. For a life wrapped around the Tree finds itself seeking to grow higher up into the Son.

1 Corinthians 1:18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Photo: Caleb snapping our heaps of beans
Post from the archives, July 2006