Letters, Quotes, Memory,
& Recipes.
This season of Advent can start to feel pressurized until I remember that Jesus didn't make a grand entrance. He was content with small places, and I can be too.
I don't have to make big plans or buy big gifts or cook big meals. I don't have to do a nightly Advent devotional with the kids or make homemade anything.
I was at my friend Becky's house on Saturday morning and she told a story that I can't get out of my head. In the context of a conversation on what we mothers do, Becky mentioned that a kid was at her house recently and noticed the colorful baby quilt belonging to Becky's baby son Arthur. The boy asked whose blanket it was, and Becky told him it was Arthur's magic blanket. Becky then asked the little boy if he had a magic blanket, and he said "No, but my mom is magic."
I have been thinking often lately on the smallness of my life, and on the unassuming ways I can touch heaven in spite of my smallness. My life is nothing and everything.
The girls have been asking me lately if they can hold hands with me when it's time to go to heaven. It seems they don't want me to be in heaven without them, but I tell them I will go first and I will wait for them. I tell them they will find me. With moments like this, it's a wonder we are not all walking fonts of tears over the beauty of our bane existence. How can life feel so hard and so heavy, and yet so desired and so dance-worthy at the same time? It is mystery and it is mundane, and it is mine.
When I find myself in a mood, swept away by feelings of despair, lack, and hopelessness, I get out the broom. I am thankful that I haven't felt burdened with difficult emotions very often lately, but I have learned from past experience that sweeping the floor is a way to sweep away the dusty dark layers in my heart. I don't know how it works, just that doing something small and physical transfers light and hope.
