“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the intrument as one goes on.” Samuel Butler from Chapter 10 “The Life of a Storyteller” from Annette Simmons “The Story Factor.”
She cuts hair and her words cut my heart. And I listen to the story. Someone has released a colony of bees in my insides, the buzz and sting compete with the sweet honey making in one stirring moment.
I hear the happy. But I process the other.
There is a man who has walked this earth for close to a half of a century. He just connected with his birthmother. Worlds and emotions collide. And the telling is a beautiful mix of God and man and life and living.
In a flash of living a man with a mother now has two.
Hearts and life and souls and God are on a course moving foward and the lines of grace and redemption criss cross like the tracks of zipper teeth.
A forward moving narrative.
She cuts my hair. Her words cut my heart. Because I have a child with a birth mother. And so I release the possibilities of circumstance and discovery in his life. She cuts my hair and the story cuts deep my momma heart.
And the story is being written.
There are chapters and pages and lines with hurt, in my own. Wet smears the line of the ink still wet. Dries in a blur. But dries nonetheless. And the pages stay in. There is no ripping or removal. It all stays in.
The beautiful bound spine can contain both and.
Remember, praying, while healing.
And the violin solo, played in public only gets more beautiful with each note, with grace like resin on the squeeky bow. With grace like resin smoothing the out of tune and the parts that sound off key, seeming beautiful in the learning of the living. Seeming beautiful in the practice done on the life stage. There is no rehearsal.
And yesterday’s story and today’s story are bound in guilded gold, saved and savored, while remembering, praying and healing.
The same salt that enhances flavor and adds to, can rub in a wound, or help make an icy road passable. Or bring a non-believer toward a Jesus Follower questionning the beautiful, questionning the story, seeking to know more.
Or in excess make us thirsty, with a thirst that feels unquenchable in the longing for wet to hit the parched, the dry, the brittle.
Releasing the thoughts of my adoptive son seeking his birth mother in a one day page of his story, and hoping that when that chapter is written on our pages, we will pray, while remembering, pray while healing, and pray in our forward living.
And God, tosses mercy, like coins in the velvet-lined violin case of the sidewalk city soloist. His gentle affirmation, His constant love. He listens in love. And finds the story of the soloist, beautiful. And sings the chorus of grace.
Amazing, how sweet, it saves.
Linking with Heather and Jen and Eileen and Jennifer, Duane, and Ann. As well as Courtney
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elizabeth w. marshall 