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Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

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On Waiting: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood {19}

Duct tape slippers

My husband’s slippers are made of soft shearling.  They were a Christmas present from his mother one year.  He wears them almost always because the thermostat is set on “economy” and that is not nearly enough to take away the chill that seeps into our house with the damp from the rain.

My husband wears his slippers so much, the rubber soles have begun to crack and leave little bits around the house wherever he has walked.  “You need new slippers,” I say as I walk by with an armload of laundry.

“Mmm,” he replies, turning one over in his hand while contemplating the big gaps that have formed where the sole and the leather should meet.  He is barefoot, and I notice the strange patch of freckles around his right ankle that showed up after a childhood cast was removed.

I remember back many years ago when I ran my fingers across those spots and wondered about them.  It was the first time I had ever touched him.  My heart felt almost sick to trace out that little strip of skin where his socks didn’t quite reach the bottom of his jeans.

I still get a little woozy over his ankles.

But it’s not right to let him walk around cold-footed in January, so I think I should set about trying to find him a new pair, maybe on sale.  It’s not really the time to be spending money on shearling slippers, not while he’s still out of work and looking for a place to minster.

But I figure I can find something just to get him through for now.

A little while later, Jeff is at the kitchen table with a gaggle of kids around him.  There is duct tape and a razor blade and the sound of something dangerous going on.  I peek over their heads.  The slippers are undergoing reconstructive surgery.  The cracks in the soles are being sealed up, and the worst places taped together.

When we’re all alone, I ask him about it.  “I can find new slippers for you,” I say, and he smiles.

“I want to make a deal with you,” he says.  “I don’t think this is a good time for me to spend money on slippers, or anything else.”  He lists a few other things that he is going to do without, and even give up, for the time being.

I nod, sadly aware that we need to find a way to make our tiny budget a little tighter.  Jeff takes me by the shoulders and looks into my eyes.  “I don’t think we should spend money on slippers because I want you to spend the money on your blog.”

I am stunned, so stunned I almost don’t hear all the beautiful words my husband is saying to me, all the words about how much he has wanted this for me, how he has felt a shared agony over the fact that this gift—is it a gift?—must remain unopened while the pressing duties of life and motherhood take priority.

“It is time,” he says, “for you to write.” 

I choke back a sob that comes up out of the years of waiting, wondering, doubting.  It is a sob for a dream that has been buried so deep and for so long, I thought perhaps it was dead.  I thought perhaps it had never been real.

But it is a gift, he says, and my eyes fill up with his words.  God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable.  Time and circumstances cannot take them away.

All these years of waiting, of feeling the weight of a gift I cannot use, seem all at once not to matter.  The season of early motherhood, when I couldn’t find the balance between using my gift and loving my children, when I couldn’t keep a home and entertain a dream, was just that: a season.  Not the dead-hard season of winter but the sleepy-cold season of early spring when the ground is almost too cold to plant.

In the dark of the earth, with muddy furrows above and beside and beneath me, I mistook the season.  It was not a season for dying.  It was a season for being planted, for waiting, for growing in strength down in the dark so the gift could grow when the sun came to shine.  It was not the end of a dream.  It was the beginning.

On this beautiful day of motherhood, I am thankful that the dark years cannot diminish who God has made us to be.  I am thankful that the gifts God plants in us do not whither for the waiting.  They are simply waiting for the right time to grow.

rainy hellebore

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Like Bread on the Water

Bread on the water

I hold in my hands a loaf of bread, still warm from the morning baking.  Simple and earthy, it is food for the day.  Fragrant, it is hope that I have enough.

I have come to the edge of the sea.  The water is calm with the morning, misty-eyed and heavy with the waking.  It reaches out over my toes, and pulls the covers back.

Something in the air makes me think the weather will not hold, and it makes me restless with the unknowing.  But I have this bread, and that is more than I can say for the gulls who circle overhead.  They have nothing for the stormy days.

Yet, they fly.  High up into the clouds where I must squint to see them, they touch the hands I cannot reach.   They are free to follow the fisherman’s wake, where even in the storms, they can glean all they want from his nets.

But this bread in my hands keeps me tied to the earth.  I am not free as long as I am holding on to something.

At least I have something.

No, it is more than something.  It is everything.  Everything that makes me feel safe, safely separated from uncertainty, safely veiled from eternity, safely immovable.   The wind can carry the birds wherever it wants.  But it cannot carry me.

Yet, they fly.  I can’t help but wonder at the magnificence of it.  Higher and higher, they rise on wind I cannot see and they cannot control.  They do not fear—they soar.  But I am left here, stodgy and rooted, crushing my vulgar grip into this one thing I can’t release, the one thing that keeps me pathetic and small in the midst of glory.

I wonder where the wind would take me, if I let it.  As soon as I wonder, I know.

With shaking hands, I rip at the crust, releasing a little steam into the chill of the air.  Wholesome crumbs drop down into the sand and melt into the sea.   My hands are full of bread as the waves roll in.  I cast the bread out to meet them—all of it.  I hold nothing back.

But wait!  No!  My very breath escapes me.  I collapse into the sand.  Foolishness.  Stupidity.  Madness!  There it is on the water, my one thing, my very life, now bobbing, now sinking–wasted.

I look up to the sky desperate to rise but more bound by the earth than ever before.  I have given it all!  For what?  For what!

There is nothing left.  I am empty.  I am alone.  Even the gulls have left for deeper ocean as the clouds mount over the water.  The wind rises, blowing sand into my eyes without lifting me higher.  It is stronger than I remember it being, and it pushes me out into the water, deeper and deeper.  The water swirls and foams with the storm, and I cannot fight it.  I sink down into the waves, flailing, desperate.  I look up at the glassy water that keeps me trapped and I see it, the shadow of bread on the water.

The waves are full of it, cast off bread, given in hope, returned in abundance, more bread than I can see.

I fight to the surface, and open my eyes before I even gasp for breath.  It is all there, and more.  “I do not understand,” I say to the no one and everyone as I reach out to touch that which was not wasted at all.  “I do not understand.”

In all my lifetime, I will not be able to gather it all.  I cannot hold it all.  I cannot lose it, or even give it all away.  But there is no need.  It is all around me, this bread on the water.

The wind pushes the waves to the shore, carrying me to back to the very place where I started.  But I am not the same.  I have felt the crushing power of the wind and the waves, yet I stand as one redeemed, bought back, renewed.

My hands are empty, but I feel no fear.  I feel no need to grasp on to something, anything.  Everything I ever had has been given back in ridiculous abundance, but I am not tied to it.  I am no longer immoveable.  Like bread on the water, I am free.

Cast your bread upon the waters, and in the day of trouble, it will come back to you.  Ecclesiastes 11:1

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I believe you can find grace for the mother you are and help to become the mother you long to be—a mom who has the freedom to choose the better things and enjoy her kids right now.

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