3:23 x 3

The confluence of a lot of snot and a date with a plumber were enough to sink my plans this morning for a walk with a friend. I was disappointed that we wouldn't have time to catch up--it's been a while, and I always find time with her deeply encouraging. I probably should have been disappointed about missing the exercise--I haven't regularly been active since taking on teaching Spanish over three years ago. The closest I've come to running this winter is Temple Run 2.

Nutmeg woke up this morning quite soggy and complaining, "Nose! nose!" as if I couldn't see the problem. So when we got home from dropping Wombles off at his super fun class day, I went ahead and fed her early so that she could get back to bed...sleepy, sick (almost still a) baby. So she sat in her chair and I asked her for a music request.

Now, she had just been singing "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" to the best of her ability. So I don't think I can be blamed for trying to interpret her request along similar lines...but while her enunciation has taken great strides, she's still not all that clear. So I'm playing a game (which does not amuse her) trying to figure out what she's emphatically requesting. "by his might?...Jesus Christ?...might anoint?" No, no, more no.  And then... "Dynamite?"

"YEAH!" (really?) We were both so thrilled by our ability to communicate with one another that I had no problem stopping Season One and putting on Bud's birthday song.

She was in her chair. I was in my socks. And instead of unloading and reloading the dishwasher, I got down. As in, dancing getting down. After the first time through the song she asked for more. At which point I hit "repeat" and started pulling out old dance moves--junior high choreography and high school cheerleader routines. Moves I watched my dad do to this song when I was a little girl. Disco moves I picked up during college at the Georgia Theater (back when Late-Night Disco started at 2am). 

And while I was dancing (pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée), Nutmeg watched. And I wondered how on earth I remembered these moves. And the specific sequences of steps. And I was astonished that I also remembered where I was when I learned them, and what it felt like when I performed them. And I thought again of how we are embodied people and how in the psalms we are called upon to worship not only with gladness but with clapping and raised hands and dancing, too. And it is striking to me how potent a vehicle music and movement are for remembering, and how easy it is to forget: to forget God's goodness. To forget that the Holy Spirit is working even this very moment. To forget how my--our--union with Christ means not only that my sins have been paid for but that sin no longer is my master and that this body which was dead in sin has been raised to life--to do good, to seek justice, and to worship.

This January at church we had a series on Union with Christ--and I remember one evening in particular of earth-shattering, heart rending-and-mending truth. I remember it happening because I could hardly keep from weeping. I remember the physical sensation of the brightness of hope the way I can "feel" someone walk into a room even when I don't see them. But I can barely hold onto the specific words that were said.

Perhaps I need to dance to them.

After two rounds of "Dynamite," I got Nutmeg down and we danced together for the third time through. That little girl can boogie. Delighted wriggling, stomping and spinning and mimicking. Three minutes and twenty-three seconds of glee. After which we collapsed onto the couch and read books and snuggled for twice the balance of my dancing time, because I was out of breath and may have pulled something. I'm already sore. But it won't keep me from dancing again.


May you have the joy of the Lord's everlasting love; and may you be built up by him...and may you go forth in the dance of the merrymakers (from Jer 31:3-4). And may we all remember what He has done and is doing.


Happy Thursday,
H

Into My Heart

     In reality, I am sitting at the desk in our office with Spanish texts and Europe Semester notes strewn across it. In my head, I am driving south on I-75 in May, sitting in the back seat of my brother-in-law's truck all cozied up with two baby girls and a dog, watching my sister in the passenger seat laugh and check her iPhone for the nearest Chick-fil-a so I could get my fix as soon as possible upon landing from the West Coast. There is kudzu outside (as well as a tornado-infested storm front heading our way) and good music inside. It's the good music that's taking me back there; that was the weekend I was introduced to the Avett Brothers and The Head and the Heart, catching snatches of lyrics that called to somewhere deep inside ("Darling please come home...")

One corner of Mimi's yard

And so since my brother-in-law is now my music "dealer," it was great this week to see him enthusiastically recommend a new (to me) band--and as I am listening to it now, it is all new, and so lovely, and evocative. It is new and yet I can close my eyes and feel the wind in my hair and see 5 month-old Nutmeg gumming over at her cousin. So it is old and new at the same time, a characteristic which I find is somehow capable of whispering a flavor of what eternity must be like--not a clear picture, but a scent or a snatch of a song of something at once familiar and yet so new. I find these snatches painfully glorious. And they make me mindful:

I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.¹² I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live... (Ecclesiastes 3:10-12)

What a mystery eternity is. Who can fathom? And yet, I expect when we find ourselves fully aware of it,  it will feel disconcertingly and deliciously like something we've known all along.


Oh, and the band? You could check them out: The Lone Bellow.  And may you be joyful and see beautiful things.

The first gingerbread house they were allowed to do entirely on their own.

Playing "push" with my stripey twin

Happy Epiphany,
H