friday poetry (2)

Playing Chicken with a Pigeon

Move! Pigeon, move!
Pecking at the asphalt
(What is so intriguing there, anyway?)
Pecking away.
Startled. Stare
at the behemoth bearing down.
Move! Fly!

Meanwhile I'm behind glass
Debating the ethics of my path.
Move, Pigeon!!
Surely the pigeon will move.
They always do.

What if this one is too slow?
Do I want to start my day with a death
on my hands?
On my wheels?
Nano-second thoughts run the gamut.
Move, Pigeon!

What are the ramifications
of unwitting complicity in
avian assisted suicide?
Unwitting?
No, I could turn.
My nano-second thought betrays me.

Surely the pigeon will move.
They always do.
Move, Pigeon!

Move!
What holds you?!
What is so intriguing there, anyway?

Fly! Fly!
Should I turn? Fly!
Surely the pigeon will move.
They always do.
Move! Fly! Move!!

Oh.
Well then.
Good day to you.

Separation Anxiety

Eliora cried for an hour.and.a.half last night.
All this while being very ably cared for by very loving people. We were out to see 42nd Street.
She calmed a little when we walked in. And was all smiles and pats as soon as I held her in my arms.

Wow.

(4.29) Clarification: That "Wow" does not denote some heartfelt emotion that it is so special to be the chosen one.
More like -- Wow - how will we ever get this kid to CHILL?!?!

Dream of This

http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/nota-bene/marianne-williamson.html

friday poetry

While Feeding Eliora…

God, I want to nestle into You.
So often my hunger -
Emptiness -
Causes me to push and kick even as I try to get in closer.

I want to nestle into You.
Bringing my cold hands and legs to you
You warm them again and bring them to life.
Bringing my hungry seeking to you
You nourish.
Bringing my darting, desperate, frantic gaze
You provide a focal point. Still.
Unmoving.

Gulp.
Sigh.

Muscles loosen and go slack.

There is enough.

Overheard in the bathtub...

Mama, I'm talking about Jesus!
Right now?
No, when I was sitting up in bed.
Oh, when you weren't taking a nap?
Yes. But my barrette didn't have any food!!
Were you telling the story of when Jesus fed everyone?
Yes! Jesus fed everybody!

Tressa's favorite story lately is the story of the loaves and the fish and how Jesus fed everybody. But, apparently, her accessories went away hungry.

Baby Torture 101 -- Medicine every 3 hours and 2 antibiotics twice day.... 

Sick kids

Yesterday = bad day.

Eliora was BLEEDING FROM HER EARS!

Sufficiently alarmed? I was too. But, it wasn't quite so extreme. Eliora woke up with [a lot of] dried blood in one ear. We knew she had an ear infection and had just started on antibiotics. We called the Dr and got another medication for a ruptured ear drum. There was "active bleeding" from her ear late at night.

I totally freaked me out to see my baby bleeding. I can't really get words around it.
She's showing some improvement, fever is down, etc.

Houston

Vulnerability

Wow. Miss it.
Super miss it.
Super super miss it.
Super DUPER miss it.

I wish I had a friend who loved me enough to yell at me.

Beautiful Things

Tonight I lay down next to Tressa and patted her before she fell asleep. I was whispering things to her. Important things. Trying to convey how important she is. Trying to get her stocked up on love and esteem. For her whole life.

"Tressa, there are so many wonderful things about you." Sly look at me out of the corner of her eye. Then she added in her singsong, "And beautiful things about me."

Remember that forever little girl!
Remember that when you're 12 and 13 and can't figure out why your world is changing so much.
Remember that when you're 16 and trying to find your way among friends and choices.
Remember that when you're 20-something and 70-something.

There are sooo many beautiful things about you.
I pray I never forget to tell you. For your whole life.

Side bar

Dang sidebar won't float next to my text.
Working on it....

Alphabet soup

This definitely falls into that blogging category of stupid stuff going on in my day stream of consciousness.

Tressa has this toy. I just spent about 5 minutes looking at it and now I’m spending even more time writing about it. What a waste.
But here’s the deal – it bugs me.
It’s a puzzle with the letters of the alphabet on a board. There are 4 colors. Here’s the part that kills me. The colors are random.
They are not a repeating pattern. They are not all vowels are one color, etc. They are not colored so that where they fall on the board makes a design or a pattern.
Pure random.
That’s why I spent 5 minutes just looking at them. The toy has bugged me since we got it, and just now I decided I’m going to figure it out. I will know why the colors are in their particular order.

There isn’t one.
I’m pissed.

Here you go:
BGYRBGYGYRBGYRYRGYRBRGYRBG
BLUE: A,E,K,T,Y
GREEN: B,F,H,L Q,V Z
YELLOW: C, G, I, M, O, R, W
RED: D, J, N, P, S, U, X

Wow – am I a good procrastinator, or what?

How much crap is too much for Jesus?

One of my favorite authors has disappointed me.
She’s a writer of real things and real feelings and real people – messy people, messy feelings. With Jesus included in the mix.
So, what gives. Why am I disappointed?
In the book I’m reading now, the people are TOO messy.
Its not that they were messy, and now they’re better.
Its that they are still sitting in the muck -- filthy.

I can’t handle it. I want Jesus to clean up all the grime and leave them squeaky clean and crowing about it.

Here’s the deal – I can handle messy people pre-Jesus, they’re fun and genuine and not pretentious. I can even handle and enjoy the messiness as part of the process of coming to know Jesus. The thing I can’t handle is the people who know Jesus and in some sense pursue Jesus and still live in the muck.

So here's the book, with it's messy people. When I say "messy" - its egregious – adultery…big stuff. Its not the oops-I didn’t really know it was a sin-and it just happened once-and now I’m contrite variety of sin.
I would say that the lack of contrition is the hang up for me. But, it's not. The protagonist is aware of the things she doesn’t want to do, and the things that she’s asking Jesus to help her not do. In a sense there is contrition and a real sense of loss at the ways her life is not as it “should” be – even “should” in her own worldview. But after asking Jesus for help, she still does those things!

This says a lot about me – this disquiet at my quick-read novel by my favorite author.
I know its personal about my belief about lost, saved, and where Jesus is in all of it.

My increased pulse as I wrote “she still does those things!” gives me a clue on where my feelings are wrapped up in this. I think part of the deal is really not the presence of sin, or absence of contrition. Its the utter weakness of the character. I want her to step up. Pull herself up by her bootstraps and QUIT SINNING. Take charge and clean up a life.

Oohhhh…..

Pretty sure that Jesus said that apart from Him we can do nothing. I translate that as we don’t have the strength to quit sinning.
Pretty sure that Jesus said that none of us is righteous.

Oohhhh….

I’ve known for a while that this is my deal – that I continually come back to Jesus utterly crapped-out after realizing that I was trying to put myself together and make myself presentable and keep myself cleaned-up from the muck of life. (“Thanks, Jesus, glad you came to save the world, but I really want to be “sin-free” before I grace you with my presence.”)

I don’t know that its ever been so clear that what I really want for other people is that they emulate my own sin. – That they would try to save themselves and purify themselves without Jesus. That they clean up and “buck up” and get it right. How horrific – totally denies why we need Jesus around.

Okay, maybe I’m not so disappointed with my author.
(And, of course, a part of me is screaming – but these people better “straighten up and fly right” before the end of this novel”!)
What an interesting book….what an intriguing God.

And, its not lost on me that the "egregious" sin that I point out is adultery. While an even more disturbing sin of the character is her serial-selfishness. That one is too close to home to highlight.

The girls at Easter. 

Now you see me...now you don't!

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4 of 5

Eliora Crawls

Eliora started on the rug in the kitchen by the cup. Then the next time I looked, she wasn't very close to the cup. Then, she was definitely further away from the cup.

She was like a ninja-baby. Moves undetectable to the human eye. Now she's here, now she's there. You don't see her actually move, she just does.

Pictures to follow for your edification.