Between the Edges

"Wait!

Something is waiting

and hidden around the corner of next week,

between the edges of two days."

- Anon.

What are you looking forward to?

An upcoming vacation? A weekend with a wide-open schedule?

A better job? Retirement? Your kids to clean their rooms? Your kids to come for a visit?

Summer?

Sometimes, we don't look forward to next week, rather we dread it's arrival - perhaps it's too many bills piling up like so much dirty laundry, or it's so full of appointments and commitments that the days will march away as dutiful soldiers to General Busyness. I find myself counting the passing of time by Fridays -- paydays. The prize at the end of the week is the chance to pay some bills, buy some food and see what's left to save and spend. Sort of pitiful, I know.

But to wait, in breathless anticipation of a surprise?

We tend to leave that sort of thing up to children counting the days to the next birthday or break from school.

What something could be waiting around the corner of next week? The opportunities are endless -- perhaps that something is as simple as

witnessing a sunset

or a poppy silently bursting onto the scene

or maybe that something is as life-changing as a newborn baby, a Thursday morning miracle of fingers and toes, tears and hope and love? Maybe it's a tragedy, or an opportunity, a reunion or an argument. Something is waiting around the corner of next week, tucked between the edges of two days.

We don't get to know until it arrives, perfectly timed and bundled in the wraps of the life we call human experience. I choose to believe nothing happens by chance and circumstance. I believe that each "something" tucked between the days is essential, meaningful and intentional. But who put it there? And why?

These are the questions that the "somethings" lead toward. These are the questions that we must find when we gaze into the truth that the somethings are the most real evidence we have of a God.

There are many somethings, tucked into the pages of my past, that I'd rather not remember. There are many somethings that seem too insignificant to bother recalling. Then there are the red-letter-days when the things tucked between the unforeseeable future and the past that's irrevocably woven into the tapestry of ME shine out with brilliant flashes of purpose -- the somethings that made all the difference.

If I make it to the middle of next week, if I turn the corner and amble onward a few more days, will I notice the somethings tucked in the edges? Will I look for it? Will I anticipate it's arrival? Will I allow it to become a part of me? Will you?

Let's! Just to see what happens?! Just to feel like and eight-year-old, counting on her fingers to the joy of a long-awaited birthday celebration--and let's open the gift that that "something" may be, and accept it with heart and arms wide open. Let's see what happens.

Little Words

August 23, 1930

“All the big words I know are little ones –

Sky is a little word, but it is all infinity,

All of height and depth and blue and air and sun and sea…

If is a little word,

But it is all might have been, might be, was and will be…

All the big words I know are little ones.”

P.K.L.

Don’t we tend to get caught up in big things? Concerts, buffets, tragedies, bank accounts, disagreements, mergers, earthquakes….

Eighty years ago, my aunt copied this poem into a composition book. Perhaps it was an assignment or maybe it spoke something to her. Maybe she saw the lighthearted irony that small words describe great, big things.

Maybe she thought of some that came to my mind, as well:

why,

love,

pain,

hate,

fly,

die,

star,

sun,

kiss,

but,

no,

yes.

I love words. I love to string them along like beads on golden threads and feel the balanced weight of them upon my chest, hear them clatter upon one another making tiny, tinny music.

I love the glorious pause in the silence following the last lexis of a book—to think, all those words strung together along one theme and they culminate in one, final word! I love the truth (or the lies) and the stories that they tell. I love how words give to my imagination a language with which to dream and a voice with which to speak.

We can write them, or shout them, swallow them or sing them. We use them to introduce ourselves, do business, make marriage vows, say goodbye, encourage and teach. We use them to hurt, to manipulate, to heal, to say important things, like yes and no, I forgive you, I love you, I’m sorry, you’re important to me, stay with me, leave now, I believe you, here I am, thank you.

Maybe big things are quite big enough without large words to encumber them. When I consider the sky or the sea, or the immensity of a star, there isn’t much to say – for the great, vast reality of these things speak for themselves. I consider them and one word envelops me: awe.

God is a little word. People wrestle with and even fight about how to describe him, ignore him, praise him and find him. Jesus is described in John 1 as The Word. Jesus used two little words to describe himself that caused outrage, repentance, indeed a revolution: I AM.

Little words that made a big difference.

All the big words I know are little ones.

You. Are. Loved.

Skirting on Edges

“Monotony skirts the edge of boredom and limits begin to seem like limitations."

– Daniel G. Mason, “Dilemma of American Music, And Other Essays”

Have you viewed the limits in your life as limitations? I have.

Have you looked around your life, looked at your daily list, or simply looked at the weather beyond the window glass and turned sighing while the doors of promise quietly shut, one by one?

Have the limits of the day-to-day determined the course of your life, the quality of your existence or the brilliance of your relationships?

Have you chosen to be steered along by the plodding monotony of your perceived limitations rather than be surprised by your ability to syncopate, to change things up just a little?

When Mary Lennox (The Secret Garden, Burnett) discovered a key that turned the rusted knob sequestered behind tangled vines, she pushed open a door that led to a world of… limitations. Yep. An overgrown mess of a garden, overrun with weeds and plants left to go wild awaited her on the other side of that door. It was work, work and more work. It was labor she was unaccustomed to in the dirt of a subject she knew nothing about.

She was limited by the scope of the reality of the world beyond the silent gate.

She was limited by her size, age, knowledge, experience.

She was limited by what others thought she should, could, and mustn’t do.

She was limited by dawn and sunset.

Yet the invitation, carried in the scent of misted moors and small peat cottage-fires, drew her out of the monotony of the life that was already hers in her uncle’s mansion.

And so, she got her hands dirty.

She made new friends.

She changed a life.

And she changed hers in the process.

What limits are you facing today? What monotonous cacophony is holding you in one place, afraid of the possibilities of your limits? Will they be limitations or a doorway to something that is not yet, but promises to be: beautiful.