I will choose to linger
on that little face just a little more tonight.
These moments add up.
They are the brush strokes of a bigger picture.
If I choose to rush along, getting things done and forget to linger on those features. They will change and I will have missed them. The way they are, just for today. Tomorrow, somehow
they will be different.
I will deliberately, stroke your cheek and tell you what you mean to me. Look in your eyes for longer than I normally would
as I lay you in your cot tonight.
Your sweet pixie grin and sparkling eyes. The feet that run about all day, so fast
I can't keep up with them.
I will choose to linger
Elongate the time we have on the evening of the 781st day since my eyes first gazed into yours. That difficult birth. You came out blue and barely breathing, your little hand numb from a damaged nerve.
And now, you have so much joy and spirit and energy.
You dance in the sun, and splash in the puddles. You know how to really live!
So now as I sing you a lullaby, I will choose to wait one minute more, take it to another verse.
Because each and every time I let that moment linger.
Time slows down.
And I get the chance to really know who you are just a little bit more.
Yesterday my little girl Emmy became an adult in the church. She got confirmed!
How the tears welled up from my heart, happy tears, till all they could do was roll themselves unselfconciously down my cheeks...
My Father who is very ill made it somehow and what beauty came from that. He had tears in his eyes too. I caught them before he noticed.
The air truly trembled with the breath of the holy spirit within the church. Joy in abundance!
What a wonderful thing to witness!
The Bishop spoke about what it means to truly live with the spirit in your life.
He said, that the way we can best "be" Jesus in the world and give Jesus to others is to truly and authentically be ourselves. Having fidelity to our true nature and the places it leads us.
I remember, years ago, thinking identity was like another layer, something you "put on".
Maybe it was a collage made up of pieces of the people you most admired. Maybe it was a front that protected your heart from being broken by the world. Maybe it was following the rules that help you become popular in school. Or the value you got from being especially good at something.
Maybe, sometimes, it just came down to a new dress and a coat of bright red lipstick.
But those are just billboards. True identity is all about taking the layers off one by one. Becoming at one with your true life, the life hidden in Christ. The real true you!
The you that fragments into others till you can feel their pain, forget to judge, understand and forgive their sin as you need them to yours.
The fragments that turn you into a piece of a bigger picture. A body that goes out from itself again into the world to love and be loved. To fall apart again and to be healed.
When the Holy Spirit touches us, no more do we belong to ourselves, but to something eternal.
And now my child, my dear Emmy (emmanuelle - "God with us") goes out into the world her heart forever changed, enlarged, anointed, and beating now not only for her own life but for His too.
