Last night, the new one started clickety-clickety-ing.
So I fixed it.
Now the light won't come on.
And that's how we got here. That's how I know it's time to stop and clear another space before going back to putting the house back in order. [(Which I've been doing for a week at a manic pace.) (Inference.)]
Relatively speaking, I expect this to be a post of few words, which is especially weird considering that this, by necessity, will cover a span of several years' worth of unwritten words.
In various places, at various times, I make references to THE ANNUAL YEAR-END POST that's been so traditional, so important ~ the one with the family picture...
But the truth is that, while I've taken the picture for more than several years now, I've only made the post two times. For each of the last few years, I thought I would do it, and that I'd tie everything - all the missing stuff included - together with some neat-o words of vast importance, something that would stir your heart, inspire you to change your life. blah blah blah.
By now, though, we all know that I do this more for my own self (and gosh, I hope with at least a smidge for Jesus) than for anybody else.
[(I just don't know why that doesn't make me go faster, use fewer words, worry less about sentence structure.) (Never mind, it's me we're talking about.)]
Ready? Ready.
This was the first such picture and post, taken on Christmas Day, 2013. As noted pretty clearly within, A Picture's Worth says much about how little you might know from just a photograph.
The next year, within hours of taking this Trigger Happy picture, I was being diagnosed with pneumonia. The weeks that followed were just plain weird, but the thing I remember most about this particular morning, about this entire span of time, is the wondering if my youngest girl would be with us the following Christmas. These were my Zombie Momma days.
2015. No post for this one. My youngest girl was incarcerated ~ which turned out to save her life! But this Christmas morning was the day after my sister succumbed to her long, though very private battle with addiction and depression. I was with her on Christmas Eve, at home to make breakfast and take this picture the next day.
Christmas morning, 2016, was ... I hate to keep saying, "weird," ... but I don't know what else to call it. It was my first without my sister, and my family was still in the midst of so many battles. That's all I have to say about that.
And now, This Christmas ...
Not everybody is here, but what you can't know just by looking at this is that we're still all together. Ethan, Joshua's brother, is holding a ninja turtle. I am wearing my sister's boots. But these are merely photographic representations. My sister, my grandbaby, all those I've held dear but have lost ~ they are in my heart. No picture can completely show you that.
Still, I will still take pictures. My husband rolls his eyes and huffs nearly every time I say, "hold on, let me get my camera!!" And every time, I'm like dude! bro! brah!
How could I not take the picture?!
And with that, I finished (so I thought) and published this!
⌚⌚⌚
Remember how I said, "post of few words"?
Later, in another conversation (I was having with myself), I noted that I'd really not prepared to write this one. (Forget that I've had the last two years to work it out!)
It seemed to me that I had just collected all these sentences in my head, shlumped them into a pile way back in a corner to gather dust, and that they just needed to be smoothed and laid out, first to last like a train, and that once I'd completed that arrangement, I would be relieved of their weight.
And sure enough, after I published, the pile began to burn off.
2017 was a $#?+ year, to say the very least.
It should have been one of my best so far, being that in '17, I moved from employment (keeping books at home) to vocation with my heart's place of ministry. And truth is: it was one of my best years in that way. And being there, being where my heart is, with people whom I love, and who have returned much care and ministry to me ~ it's a great big part of what got me through the other stuff.
I know that I am not the only one who went through other stuff, who suffered loss or trial or Good God, what is happening?!! in '17. Some of what went on, I saw, even if through a pixelated haze. Some of it ~ honestly, probably most of it ~ I just plain missed. In any case, I owe some kind of apology to those of you to whom I should have reached out but did not. [(excuse, evident.) (but no excuses.)]
In another conversation (I was having with myself), I quipped, "dates don't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. you'll write " '18" on your checks now, but what else has changed, really, if you haven't?"
18
That date matters now. A lot. And always will now.
And it's like everything else, at least for me. I move along through the days; I drink my coffee, do my work, sometimes write things down. It might all seem pretty ordinary on paper. It's just a life. An ordinary life.
But life is extraordinary ~ everything about it! I cannot look at anything around me without seeing the holographic nature of it. This life ~ where numbers and colors and "first to last" mean more than just the first glance would imply.
So, here now.
This will be the end of this.
This pile, cleared and published.
I am changed now.
But not yet done.
I pray the same for you.
1 comment:
I love this. ❤️
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