make of it what you will

on incremental change in hurricane gale force winds

It’s flux season again.

My lilac tree is shedding her final blooms and we planted perennials where there were weeds and rotted bulbs. We put twelve English lavender plants in the ground but the strip in front of our house nestled between the sidewalk and road is a mess of weeds. From the road our front yard holds no appeal, but from our front porch, you can see the beginnings of what will explode into color come heat and time.

It’s all in the perspective.

We all are looking at one another from skewed perspectives. I think we look at everything from a biased point of view, one hand on our hip in judgement, the other in curiosity. But who am I to say that’s how we look at things? I only have my set of eyes, not yours. But I do know that my yard is better than it was, no matter where you stand, and that incremental improvement is better than nothing at all—even if no one else can notice it.

dirt, wind, splinters, hope.

A couple of weeks ago, my itch around Spring turned into something of more of a festering need to be doing. Our yard is hemmed in by raised planter beds around the perimeter, and while that sounds lovely, it has been anything but. In the front yard one side of the bed had completely collapsed and the wood from it was missing, spilling dirt from the center and looking a mess. Shrubs and bushes were dead and last summer, with help from a friend, we pulled out three different completely dead trees. But the weeds took over where there was now space. In Winter there’s little you can do about a ramshackle yard, but as soon as buds formed on trees, I looked at the front yard and decided it was time for action.

In the matter of a week, we had invested in 25 drought resistant perennials and reconstructed the raised bed that was falling apart. Last Thursday David, Sam, and I could be seen sitting on the ground with our hand trowels, digging around the base of old concrete we had to pull up in order to make the repairs we needed. The kicker? There was a full on wind storm happening at the same time. I had my ball cap ripped off of me more than once, we had all suffered from dust to the eyes, and Sam was fully knocked off his feet multiple times from wind. But we were determined.

After having ripped out two rotten posts from their concrete prisons, we made our way inside. We were splintered, wind burned, and tirelessly happy. None of our neighbors had been outside when we were working and I’m sure we looked like loons. But who had dug up two feet of aging concrete from the ground? We had. I think Zeus himself could have thrown a bolt at us and we would have merely wrinkled our brows in annoyed inconvenience. We’re working here bucko, and you’re not a real god anyway.

We were so damn proud of what we accomplished, but to anyone from the outside, it looked like nothing had been done.
Little did they know.

gardening in windstorms, painting on the porch. we’re a real renaissance family.

“bible” study, bible “study”

I have struggled with Bible studies my entire life. My mother loved the meat that came with Bible Study Fellowship but even she was bogged down by the extensive homework. For a mom and wife with an incredibly busy life, it was a lot to ask (it still is—do the makers of BSF not know this?). I knew she struggled under the weight of shame when she showed up to the study with her homework half completed. It was a weight I know Christ would have never intended her to feel.

The same has gone for me. Whether it’s shame, lack of interest, boredom, undiagnosed ADHD, or something in between, Bible studies have never been my jam. But last year I read a book whose author went through a major spiritual journey by reading one chapter of the gospels each day, simply looking to examine the character of Christ. She bought a journal and would title each page the chapter she was on and then after reading the chapter, give it a title that she felt was appropos. She would then journal about what the Holy Spirit was communicating to her about the character of Christ.

I’m not far in to this study and it’s still hard for me to focus (we’ll call it undiagnosed ADHD, ok?), but the biggest thing I have gained from this time is the lack of shame I feel while going through this study. It’s exegetical, contemplative, and wildly colloquial. The character of Christ, even before he was born, is antithetical to how I viewed him as a child. 38 years in and I’m just now meeting him without strings, without weight, without shame. Ok, maybe a little bit of shame, but that’s just me. And I’m ok with it, for now.

It’s progress.

commonplaces

I recently finished reading Leif Enger’s Peace Like A River and am still reeling from the absolute marvel that it is. While the title and even the cover art put me off a bit (I was afraid it was going to be a schmaltzy Christian fiction where everyone found salvation in the end), it ended up being in one of my top ten favorite novels of all time. To say the least, I was shook.

The novel is based on the seemingly mundane life of the Land family who is thrown into chaos when the eldest son shoots and kills two assailants who had broken into their home. And as a good clickbait article would say, you won’t believe what happens next. What the Land family lacked in financial wealth, they more than made up for in creativity, ingenuity, and the spiritually miraculous. I do not to plan to give any more away than necessary, so I won’t divulge anything about the plot, but I recently had a chance to write down a few of my favorite quotations in my commonplace book. Miracles are an obvious theme in the book, a theme that has always interested me, so on page three I was immediately attracted to this quotation by the lead character and first person narrator, Rueben Land:

People fear miracles because they fear being changed […] No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of that what you will.

I usually underline a book I love to death, but in this book I barely underlined anything else. I think I was too entranced to pick just one quote, but I heard Rueben’s 11 year old wisdom ring so true in the quotation above. I too have witnessed a few miracles and that’s about how they happen. You find yourself blinking against the reality of what you just saw, knowing that the divine just occurred—believe it or not.

300 plus pages into the book and I ran across the last quote of the novel which was a perfect chiasm to the beginning. After Rueben has witnessed the miracle to end all miracles, he simply states “Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No sir. All I can do is say, Here’s how it went. Here’s what I saw. I have been there and am going back. Make of it what you will.” (Enger, 311) It was a bit miraculous that I caught the loop around. What glorious writing, but also, what perfect truth.

I garden because I believe in growth. I sit with my Bible in my lap with little to no expectations because I believe in miracles. And as of late, I do it all despite the hand that life has dealt us, because I believe in a longer, better story.

A couple of weeks back my family missed seeing the Northern lights. The next night, a night that the lights were expected to make a reappearance, we loaded up in our car, Sam already in his pj’s, and went on the hunt. Starting at dusk and driving until around 10pm at night, I at one point saw the faintest ribbon of green appear and vanish just as I realized what it was. There were no lights of significance that night so we drove home and collapsed into our beds.

Most of the Western world documented the lights from the night before, but we had missed them. But years ago, on a grief stricken evening in early January, I went to take the trash out and saw a celestial show that threw me into a bit of panic. I went inside, caught my breath and thought I’d check again in an hour, with a witness—I needed to corroborate my story.

So I did. And I brought witnesses. And they saw it too.

What I saw is too delicate and precious a memory to share here (no, it wasn’t the Northern Lights). It was a private moment orchestrated by a good Creator for a girl whose life had just been permanently altered. But it was real, and my belief in the conductor of it was solidified. Since then I have cursed God, denied Him, cried to Him, and asked for His forgiveness over and over again. And He has yet to strike me down. Maybe because He’s gracious, maybe because He sees that I’m still changing, ever growing in more awe of Him.

All I can tell you is this is how it went, and this is how it’s going.
Make of it what you will.

Always,
Emily

P.S. If you are in a reading rut, I would suggest becoming a Leif Enger fan girl with me. He just released a new book and it looks like a real doozy.