Getting On The Bus

January 30, 2013January 30, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 10 Comments

The phrase stepping off the curb. These cliches are wearing me out. This one I have heard hundreds of times. I have grown weary of the phrase. And yet, there is a thread there that I am pulling at, yanking at for understanding.

It requires an act of the will and movement of some kind. Sometimes I’d rather not. Because I risk getting run over or fatigued or stuck in the middle of the lane unable to cross over or I might change my mind and there is no turning back or the curb may cry the siren’s song for me to please come back to her.

The curb is rounded and safe and protective. Yes, the curb calls out comfort like a womb.

There are strange things to find comfort in as humans. Sometimes it’s routine, the familiar and quiet. Sometimes it’s being surrounded by a false sense of safety and controlled variables.

And then came the buses. For me they were and are some sort of metaphor on wheels. They are rolling worlds on wheels where I am not in control. The bus is moving whether I like it or not.

I got on a bus last year and rode with a group and my daughter a thousand miles or so. You can read about it here and here. It was part of the Art Bus Project. When I got off the bus I cried. The experience branded me, marked me and changed me.

When has the act of stepping off ever left us unchanged. When has walking into uncertainty left us untouched by experience. When has deciding to trust not at least held the potential for an increase in faith.

My accountability partner is going to Haiti in a few days. I thought I was going too. My heart was prepared last fall. But I am not on this team, not on this trip, no flying into the Caribbean blue for mission work.

I am going to Disney World. There is a part of me that says is this a good time to get all four of my wisdom teeth extracted because that would be less challenging.

My achilles heel, my vulnerable place, is a sleep-deprived me. I am vulnerable when I am exhausted, worn out, tired, and foggy headed. So I try to live in a place where I am armored up. I strap on the heavy metal of clear-thinking and rest.

And I seem to think that I can tackle the world guns ablazing when I have had the sleep I need. But what if in my weakness He is made strong. What if when I am most vulnerable He has room to move and shake me from my slumber.

What if when I am wounded broken sleepy lamb He is Shepherd with a strong crook to steer me and guide me.

So I signed up for Dare To Do Disney In A Day with my growing up kids’ youth group. We will board a bus at 10:30 at night, drive all night, arrive at The Magic Kingdom (why do they have to call it that) when it opens, and leave when it closes and drive back all night and arrive at home on Sunday morning. Ok. It makes me tired just to say it and write it.

I am not going on a mission trip to a third world country. So I cannot ask you to pray for me. I would much rather you pray for my friends from church who are going to Haiti. But wait. I can. I will be chaperoning a group of middle school girls. Yes, yes, please pray that God uses this time and blesses it for good.

I have a friend who is deathly afraid of clowns. I wonder if buses are my clowns. I wonder if I will run from all future conversations which involve getting on a bus.

Or will I run, flying off the curb and into the arms of the big bus, waiting to take me off to a place of discovery, adventure and pure joy.

I am trusting the driver. And releasing the white-knuckled grip. At least for a day at The Magic Kingdom. (Why do they have to call it that?)

Please pray for safe travels up and down that road on a bus. Eighteen hours of driving.

And that there would be Joy. And laughter. And that they teach me, these children and that I hear it and get it. And that I would have something for them too. That we would use every minute to learn and love and live fully.

We have to laugh a little about the differences in our travels, H and I, my confidant and accountability partner. My prayer partner and keeper of all my secrets. She will be going up a rocky road to La Gonave, Haiti and I will be on a Charter Bus to sunny Orlando to spend a marathon day at Disney.

Funny thing about God is He will be in both places. Touching children, touching lives. And changing a 53 year old women who likes to stay home. And building memories for a mother and a daughter. I won’t be assigned to my daughter’s age group for the day. And wisely she said, “Mom, you will love being with those middle school girls.”

I seem to learn most of my most important lessons in life from children. I am going into the classroom on Friday night at 10:30, a big rolling classroom of kids. And yes I am packing ear plugs for use maybe on hour eight of the drive.

And maybe in some small way, I am being refined and changed for my “one day” trip to Haiti. Or maybe like Abraham, the Lord just asks me to be willing to serve there. Maybe He needs me to ride a bus down I-95 instead. And be with my daughter and her youth group friends.

And hang out at the other Kingdom.

Don’t Tell The High School Guidance Counselor I Said This

January 29, 2013January 29, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 9 Comments

I bought a calendar.

I thought that there might be some sort of freedom in being without one. Or was I trying to stretch my capacity for memorizing facts and dates.

I struggle with a faint fear of losing my memory one day. The one who bore me has dementia and it could be in me waiting to pounce.

Sometimes I write and I pause at a word and the word comes slower. So I write more and more. It’s as if a muscle is being worked in the gym of my mind.

I want my children to have my words when they don’t have my words any longer.

When I first started blogging I was determined to use the word I in my posts infrequently, verging on the never.

Today I am breaking my rule of no I’s in my posts. It is a selfish pronoun but it is necessary. I could shift to the third person but that would be silly because at this point you know it is me to whom I am referring.

Putting things on my calendar yesterday felt like a good and needed discipline. There is a tension in the space between spontaneous living and purposeful, intentional living out of days.

I see things less poetically if I am strapped down and bound by restraints of time and space. You know there is a quote about that, the poet is working when she is staring out the window. I need to look up who said it because it is true and brilliant. And it helps me understand where poetry is born.

If you have been reading here for awhile you know the focus on poetry. If you haven’t you can read the title of the blog and then you would know. I think poetry is saving me and giving me new eyes. Both.

Therefore, poetry is important.

There is a way of seeing the poetic in life which comes from breathing deep and walking slow. Of staring long into the places and moments of a day.

If I look out the window long enough I see the beautiful, not the dirt. And I long to write of the beautiful rather than reach for the Windex.

Yesterday I met with my daughter’s guidance counselor to go over her graduation plan. She was doing her job and she does it well. We were making her schedule for next year and picking courses. This planning of my youngest’s senior year is heart wrenching work.

I starred at her blue eyes and drowned a little in the talk of college.

We talked of AP Spanish Four and of AP English too. Of her plans to be a Pediatric Dentist, of GPA’s and SAT’s and Class Rank. And I felt really hemmed in that office. And thought a bit about how things change.

And we are making plans so far ahead and so much can change. And I know that we need this dance of the deliberate and the planning out of a life.

But where is the dance of the poetic. And what if the dreams change or crash. What if her heart changes her mind.

We would walk in and write out a course change slip and off we would go to a new dream and a new class. Plans and changes of plans. The now and the surprise of tomorrow. The dance of uncertainty and the plans for a life well lived.

There is so much beauty in the savoring of now. And intentional living keeps wandering minds from going too far off track. And we need a plan and a dream and a schedule.

I dance between these two worlds daily.

I am off to work on my calendar and write down some important dates and plans and appointments and a writing schedule of sorts.

And I hope that I don’t lose my poetry along the way. I hope my dancing shoes don’t fall off. It has taken me a lifetime to learn to dance in a place of the poetic. And I don’t want to stop now.

The high school guidance counselor does important work. I am grateful for her and her ability to keep folks like me on track.

I wonder if she saw my mind wander a bit. But don’t tell her I said that. Sometimes the mention of SAT and Class Rank cause me to glaze over a bit.

I am writing now like there is no tomorrow and I am finding great relief in doing so. I knew I was really drawn to the words of my favorite poet Billy Collins.

I wonder how he feels about the use of the word “I”. I have used my quota for the month here. I wonder if my mind is fading and how long I have with it.

I will be writing a lot in the months to come. And there I go making plans. Maybe I was listening to the guidance counselor after all.

If you subscribe you may want to stop following as it may get a little too verbose in these parts while I exercise my mind in the gymnasium of my heart by lifting the weight of the words.

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joining Eileen and Heather

Lean On Me

January 28, 2013January 29, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 14 Comments

{Joining Amber at The Run A Muck for her concrete word prompt writing series on Monday’s. Today we are writing on the word, rock. Join me at Amber’s where a wonderful community is gathering around the abstract.}

When the air is hot, steamy humid southern summer style, trademarked by its moist heat, they hold the cold.

They bear relief.

Stone cold stares of people I have known, revealed again in the smooth strength of boulders. Unwavering. Unflinching. Heavy, solid mountain variety.

Slate grey’s and shale ash, cool their colors. Relief found in the sight of them.

And on that mountain porch, the one on the front of that house built in 1908, we tip back on green chairs. In a line like the Rockettes we rock back and forth to the rhythm of the crickets. Music from the valley calms the night. Black night air blows in cool from over the rock laden mountains, bringing relief from the heat of the day.

He tips back and forth, stares straight out with the calm cool stare, the mountain stare, all worry and anxiety gets left down in the lowlands. This place offers relief. He puts his cares on ice. Once his bags are packed and the altitude changes to something well above the sea level life we live, he chills.

Twenty-fifth anniversary looming ,the rock of all these ages of my life still bears up the burden of the four of us. We lean hard on him.

The chip off the old block, first born is gone. He learned of life from the rock at the mothership, how to anchor a life on hard work. How to avoid running aground, steering clear of the rocky coast lines. And one day soon there will be someone leaning hard on him. And they will lean on Him.

The getting up and rolling out on four wheels in the morning to support a trio of kids, growing, going, gone. One gone and another one’s on the way out. Rolling out and on to college in a few more months. I lean in hard and bear all my weight on his strength.

Those green chairs on that porch wait for him to prop up and cool down and stare again into the valley. The flinty stares into the fog help clear the mind of the rock on which I lean. More of a boulder really on most days.

But we stand on Him together. And when our footing gets slippery, like the sliding rock we go down with the children to the pool of moutain water waiting at the bottom, we stand again, straighter, taller leaning on Him and standing on His rock.

And now some days he rocks, or sort of sways and it looks child-like. Self-calming, a slow and steady back and forth.

The worries fall, like an avalanche, off of men and man.

We’d crumble, crack, roll down the mountain if it weren’t for this firmament, the foundation He gave and gives, in the new of every day. I can see the days of the way ahead in the now. Rocking off into the sunset of our years.

His words a lullabye to the weary. We rocked those babies endlessly at night, noon and morning. And it soothed us too. Calmed the mother and father of the babies as we fell asleep with them on our laps. Rocking away the cares of a day. While rocking a baby or two to sleep at night.

This man who put a white rock on my left hand nurtures babies like a woman. He brings home the bacon, cracks the eggs, rocks babies and cooks the bacon too.

We stumble, we fall, we roll Humpty Dumpty off the wall of this life, but unbreakable is he.

On solid rock we stand.

With the soundtrack of our life playing The Reverend Al Green, always.