To Replenish

    What I need now is quiet time.  I have brain-rushing time and sink-splashing time and clothes-spinning time, but I rarely have soul-searching time.  When mornings were shared by me and God, my father offered some advice--advice passed down from his father: "Two hours to study the scriptures?  Relish that.  Because I'm lucky if I can find ten minutes."

    I never thought I'd have to limit myself that way--my precious two hours cut to ten minutes.  But now, I check off my personal devotional time if I can squeeze in an ear-plugged talk on my walk to school.  

     I miss mornings waking up to the Indian sun, chipmunks crooning outside my windows.  I would stretch my arms to the untainted air and then fold them gently at my chest.  After a short conversation, study time was mine: Never have I searched and pondered so fervently.  Flipping and fumbling and scrunching and scribbling, me and my books worked hard.  Sometimes we answered tough questions and sometimes we sat, still as silence.  After one hundred and twenty minutes, I was always replenished.

    Nowadays, it's hard to find such time for stillness.  And when the cherubs start descending, the quiet will only run farther.  Though I may never get her back, I might learn to find soul in the stridency.  

There is spirit in the social as there is spirit in the soft. 

There is wisdom in the working as there is wisdom in the word.

There is heaven in the hubbub as there is heaven in the hush.  

    

Clinging to Peace

Lately, my husband's been feeling the pressure of the future.  Clinging to his neck, the future droops on his back, loaded with mortgages, car payments, dirty diapers.

    He's a tall man, my husband, but the future takes a few inches off here, adds a few there.  He thinks only of cubicles and the crowded house he'll come home to.

    My husband is full of color, really.  He draws and he doodles, whistles and writes.  He has a creator's heart.  But the future hangs heavy on him and he gives into gray.

    I wish that he'd look a little bit closer at the future.  I wish he'd stretch back his arm, scoop the future off his back and swing him around.  The future would twist and spin and fill with the air of hope--a drooping diaper bag turned to a rising parachute.  Waving the future high above his head, he'd create an elevated path.  Sunlight streaming, windows opening, we would both reach forward and upward.

    We're both worried about the future--about gaping mouths and starving minds.  But I want him to see the future that I see:

    I want him to see the two-toothed grins and the messy trips in the family van.

    I want him to see the photographs with friends at his novel signing, to feel the warm hugs.

    I want him to see the tears of a co-worker who needed him for his strong words, for his message of optimism and faith.

   Lately, my husband's been feeling the pressure of the future.  I want him to feel peace.