Giving and Receiving and Grace

My sweet friend Jan got married on Saturday night. Just a few years shy of my mother's age, Jan has really filled the role of my "Waco Mom" for the past five years. She has laughed with me, cried with me, comforted and encouraged me, given me a gentle dose of unvarnished truth from time to time, and always, always cheered me on. She is positive and energetic and unfailingly kind to everyone around her. She's funny and wise and brave and strong. She radiates so many of the qualities that I desire for myself.

And on Saturday evening she stood in the midst of a small and beaming band of friends and family, face alight, hands clasped with a new love, as they pledged "to freely give themselves to and joyfully receive each other" as the good gifts they are created to be. And I was struck again by her bravery, in turning this new chapter and starting a new life at her age, and with such hope and wonder. And I saw in her eyes, and in his, that they truly are giving themselves freely to one another and freely and joyfully receiving each other as gifts, as good and precious gifts from the Lord, the Father of heavenly lights and the author of their lives.

It's not an easy thing, to give yourself freely. To drop the masks and step around the barriers, to let facades crumble and face one another in naked vulnerability. It's never easy, no matter how much you love and trust. It's something we are only able to do through grace. And receiving can be even harder. There are times when I feel so undeserving of my husband's love, so small, so petty, so flawed, that I can't let it reach me. Just as there are times when he feels so low, so uncertain, so anxious. This takes grace too, to stand awash in unconditional love and to receive it, to know it is ours. To believe it, to accept it, to lean into it, to need it. Only grace can surmount the fear that would keep us from giving ourselves freely, from receiving each other joyfully.

I do think it's helpful, in those times when it's hardest, to remember that we are gifts. My husband has been given to me, a gift. He is mine. To delight in, to enjoy, to receive. I can't cast my eyes down or fear to take hold. I cannot spurn the gift, or the giver. Here is a gift I have not earned. One I cannot earn, any more than I can or have earned life or breathe. A gift entrusted to me. Belonging to me. Mine always. Just as I am his gift.

And this is grace too. This is the essence of grace. That it transforms us. That it takes us, all of us, even with our walls and masks and barriers, even though we're small and petty and anxious and so flawed, and it makes us gifts. Grace makes us good gifts, worthy to be received joyfully, aching to be given freely and completely. And grace gives us good gifts in return and makes us worthy to receive them, and gives us courage to receive them with joy and with all humility. And grace reminds us of that, each and every day in a thousand ways both great and small if we will only have eyes to see it and ears to hear. And hearts to receive, and to give. Freely and joyfully.

Monday Musing

"To encourage, to comfort, to awaken, and to stretch those who find themselves riding this big ball as it screams thru time in the silence of space. To be a bridge, not a barricade. To be a link, not a lapse. To be a beacon and bolster; not a bragger or a bummer. To help bring the corners of life's lips to their summit. To be a friend to those who find their fit a little awkward in this chaos society calls living."

-Vess Barnes

Maybe He Knows Something We Don't?

We have four cats. Ransom, our biggie-sizer, is a twenty pound lapcat. Falcor is a tiny ball of demonic energy and cuteness. I swear she is spring-loaded. Eowyn is the matron. Sophisticated. Aloof. Proper. I'm also convinced that she has Jedi mind powers, but that's another story. Then there's Ajax, who is all beauty and no brains. He's one of the prettiest cats you'll ever see, all creamy with dark brown marking around face, legs and tail and bright, bright blue eyes. But he's also, sort of, hmm.....mentally stunted would be a wildly generous way to put it.*

Keith named Ajax after the famous Greek warrior of the Iliad, hoping that he would show the same strength and ferocity. Alas, no. He's actually the wimpiest of our brood, letting all the other cats boss him around. He has a fractured attention span, very little cognitive skill (even for a cat), and, we suspect, tunnel vision (judging from the fact that he frequently can't discern objects that are in his periphery. He is also devastatingly codependent when it comes to his love for Keith. He follows Keith from room to room throughout the house and if there is a closed door between them, Ajax will sit on his side of it and howl unrelentingly until Keith comes back.

So, needless to say, with Keith out of town all weekend, Ajax was despondent. And being as "challenged" as he is, he couldn't quite grasp the concept that Keith physically left the house and never came back, thus he is gone. Ajax reasons more along the lines of: Keith isn't in this room. I wonder where he is. Maybe he's in the bedroom. If I sit by the bedroom door and howl long enough, surely he will come to save me.


And that's what Ajax did. Saturday morning, I get up, make myself some coffee, settle onto the couch with my book, and suddenly Ajax realizes that something's wrong. I'm in the living room, but Keith is not. He must still be sleeping. Ajax must wake him up. And he proceeded to yowl. For a good 10 minutes he yodeled his little cat brains out. Then he took about a five minute break of prowling restlessly around the house before the yowling commenced again. And on, and on, in cycle, ad nauseam. Until finallly, I let him into our bedroom. I let him sniff around, and look for Keith, and sleep on our bed until he was satisfied. Then I brought him back to the living room and he was happy again.

Until the next morning. When the cycle started all over again. I recounted this to Keith over coffee this morning (he returned late last night). I told him I don't think Ajax grasps the concept that when someone leaves and doesn't come back that means they are not there. Or maybe, Keith countered, there's a teleportation device in our room. And he knows about it. And he just assumes I've used it to travel back home.

Which I suppose is possible. How do you argue with that?

* They're all named after characters from favorite books or movies.

My Reclusive Weekend

As previously reported, I've been sick lately- of the sniffling, snotting, phlegming variety. So when Keith left on Friday afternoon to attend the annual conference of the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta, I settled in for a weekend full of hermit-ing.

I spent almost all of Saturday and Sunday in my pajamas. I ordered a whole bunch of Pei Wei for dinner Friday night, then ate off the leftovers the rest of the weekend.

I watched lots of old movies and new movies about old times, the kinds of things that Keith doesn't like to watch with me. The Duchess. The Young Victoria. Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea. I also watched two seasons of The Tudors, which is basically a medieval soap opera. Fluffy and scandalous and highly entertaining.

I also read a ton. Harry Potter (again for like the sixth time), and glossy magazines, and The Art of Family, and blogs I was behind on, and A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, and celebrity gossip websites. All in all, I feel it was a fairly productive weekend.

Then Monday rolled around and it was back to showering and dressing and going to work. This evening we will make our way south to have Thanksgiving in the valley with my family. Still feeling a little phlegmy. Here's hoping I kick this thing soon.

This Week

I used up five boxes of Kleenex.

I blew my nose approximately 517,001 times.

I coughed up a lung.

I switched from one side of the couch to the other at 15 minute intervals just to give each nostril a chance to clear up for a little while.

I took a day and a half off work to try to make my head stop spinning.

I missed contemplative prayer at DaySpring (something that becomes increasingly more important and essential to me with each week that passes).

I went through an entire bag of Ricola cough drops. Then proceeded to get incredibly sick to my stomach from all the sugar.

I pumped at least 100 squirts of nose spray into my nostrils.

I sneezed 247 times.

Then I braved temperatures in the mid-forties at 10:30 last night.

Sat in an overly-crowded theater for over an hour and a half, just waiting. 

Rolled my eyes 412 times at all the obnoxious people around us.

And finally, finally got to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One.

Which somehow made everything else in this entire snotty week seem totally okay.