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

The Night The Poems Came Out To Play

January 8, 2013January 8, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 7 Comments

I told the poems to go away. To play outside and kill some time.
They shouted rhymes and phrases, pulling off the cloak of sleep
Hankering, hungry for attention in the mid-night hour.

I told the poems come again, today is not the time.
If you must know I need sleep and you must get some too.
They huddled around the mind’s blank page and
Staged a sort of coup.

To keep me wide awake at night, playing poetry in my dreams.
The day is yours the night is mine
I tell them rather sweetly
Tomorrow we will write and play, you may not disturb my sleep.

It’s not that I am ungrateful
That you want to be with me at night.
Your lines and rhymes are truly keen
Just hold them over till the light of day. My pen, my mind, my soul needs sleep.

I told them that tomorrow would work well for me
Promised I’d be fresh and playful then,
That if they could just hold that thought
We’d have the light of day in which to play
With words and poetry.

But now it is the day all new, the sun is up and shining
And trouble looms and roars and howls
The cares and troubles crouch and wait
I wish my poetry’d come back
The ideas from the night.

Where laughter, rhyme and whimsy
Were there to calm the storm
And art was there to ease the pain, apply the balm
To all that thunder in my day.

So if you come back again tonight
I promise that I’ll play.
I’ll grab my pen and write you down
I’ll thank you for your playfulness and all you did
To ease my worried mind.

If I could write my nighttime cast of characters for my dreams
I’d invite, you every time
To be with me while I sleep,
Resting peaceful, patient, by my side
A companion in the rocky night, a safe harbor in the thundrous storms of life,

Sweet Poetry,

Now good night.

Joining Heather for Just Write.

Telling The Story In The Middle: A Study in Wait & Pause – Living In The Waiting

December 5, 2012December 8, 2012 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 7 Comments

If there is a protocol for blogging or a template for writing blog posts or a committee of oversight for writing, they may tell me this one is coloring outside the lines too much. Well at least the long and winding title. In which I tried to say too much and didn’t opt for the pithy. The brief. The succinct.

And who has time to read through a long title? Today things should be brief and catchy and short and simple is always better, right?

How incredibly ironic and frustrating and so very timely is the spinning chrome ball forcing me to wait as I write a post impatiently on waiting. Pausing.

There would be no reason to write on waiting and patience and finding myself in the middle of much if I didn’t know in my deep down places that it is a core human struggle.

And in the writing, in the sharing, there is a collective group sigh or exhale or head nod— I know this place too. Or there could be. If you can make it through this long post. If you feel up to waiting for the end.

And yet in the middle of it all are such deeply personal and individual lessons from God for me that it feels like a sacred tutorial. He is sanctifying my heart and soul in a season marked for me. A something I need to really get and embrace and be challenged by. And grown by.

So who tells stories in the messy middle before there is closure and a neat and tidy ending? Who leaves the reader hanging, saying why did you tell me this if you couldn’t also tell me that?

I know only that I write from the heart what I feel lead to share.

And there are things upon which I wait. And it feels like a first world problem, and yet I know He cares to speak to me in all of my living. And He cares deeply about all the details of all of our lives.

As I wait for a return to a call and an email and a text from a woman, I wonder why the delay. The Patient One says I have made her mad. I can’t think how or when or what caused the quiet from her end.

So I will tell you how it ends when I get the return from my call in which I said I need to apologize to you. I don’t know what I have done but please tell me so I can say I am sorry.

I don’t know the ending but I know the peace in the middle. I told her I needed to hear her voice. I hope she calls. I have a measure of peace. I want complete peace. Don’t we all.

I have a child with a desire to be accepted to a specific college. We wait. I pray. We feel like there is a pregnant pause in the air. And God and I are tethered to One another in a way we would not be if a child’s future didn’t hang in the balance. He knows me well. He keeps me hanging. He keeps me waiting. And I know these periods of waiting well.

Of waiting for long cycles of infertlity to end. And being lead to adoption and receiving the gift of another biological child, a daughter after the blessed adoption of a son. He meets me in my waiting. I should long for periods of waiting with Him. They have marked my life with the beautiful. Building my family through waiting, just the way He intended it to be built.

One of the most precious people in my world, my inner inner world, is going through a painful divorce. And I want it to end. I want the pain to stop for her. I want closure and finality and decision. I long for her suffering to end.

She is in the messy middle and she texts me and calls me and I hurt for her. But God will sustain her through the dark period. I reminded her yesterday to hold on to her Joy and not to lose sight of her “what is good”. She has four beautiful children. She texted me thank you for reminding her not to lose sight of the Joy. I wasn’t sure she heard me through her pain. I should listen to my own advise.

We wait for healing in our church family and in my small community. For a new day and a rebuilding of our body after division.

I long to receive a letter from my Compassion Sponsored child in Peru. There are, I believe, long delays in correspondences between Peru and me, typically normally. This will be the new normal through the years of corresponding with her. But much more importantly, she must be waiting on me. I am overdue a letter to her. It saddens me to think I have left her waiting. I have caused her to wonder where the letter is from me.

And I wonder if God is waiting on me too. I want to be obedient in my living and in my writing. I wonder if I haven’t heard Him clearly. What does He intend for me to do and when with this writing. I am working with a friend on a poetry project, Adagio. And we wait to discuss the next season for this our fledgling poetry project. We wait a little.

My daughter wants her room redecorated. Its in process, unfinished. A stark reminder of the physicality of waiting. I walk in to make the bed and its a work in progress. And that is it. That is really a large part of it.

We are in process, we are a study in waiting, we are unfinished business and unfinished creatures and souls daily. God is refining us. And working things out through us and in us.

I lean into the understanding of this and seek to know it all better. We are unfinished until we are perfected by Him. And the right here is full of things to embrace, to learn, to hold to, to study, to enjoy, to celebrate.

On my porch sits a Christmas tree, our second tree. I received a gift which I want to unwrap and use, a box of ornaments from my parents. But there were so many they needed their own tree. And a wide eyed teenage daughter said I really want to decorate the porch.

The tree is lopsided and propped up. I can’t figure out how to “install” the tree in the newfangled tree stand. It is a mess of beautiful. A mess of white lights waiting to go up on the horizontal tree. Maybe the tree could lay on the ground and I could color outside the lines. Hang the ornaments from a laying in wait tree. Maybe that would symbolize the waiting.

We wait for Christmas Day.

But isn’t so much of the joy in the days leading up to the day.

Fining joy in the right here right in the messy middle.

The tree on the porch and I have a lot in common. We wait.

I want to be beautiful in the waiting. And learn from the pauses.

Wait with me, pray with me, learn with me.

It would make the waiting even richer. To wait with one another, in community. As we work through and work out the days of our waiting.

The chrome colored ball has gone for the moment. But I know it will pop back up and make me pause. I hope I rest and pray and find peace in the pauses.

And the disposal is broken and the sink is clogged up and I am waiting on the electrician. Maybe I can spread some Christmas cheer while he is here. While I am waiting for him to fix my brokeness.

Amen? Amen.

Joining Ann, Emily,Emily at Chatting At The Sky, and Jennifer