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Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

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Life Interruptions

Interruptions

The washing machine is choking on bedclothes and pajamas.  A sour-sick smell languishes in the air, half-heartedly mingling with the fresh herbal scents of the lavender and peppermint I am using to disinfect everything.

My son sits on the couch and watches me through hollow eyes.  Just yesterday, he was bright and laughing.  Today, he has aged a hundred years.  His body holds him captive; he’s a pawn in the fight that rages inside.

He is limp.

Fire burns across his cheeks.

I can’t see him in his eyes; he looks at me, but he is not there.

We have been up all night, we two, one of us huddled around the toilet, the other standing guard with a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle.  He has been dunked in a tub or run through a shower three times already.  My hands are chapped from the washing.

The sun has not yet warmed the sleep out of the earth, but already the plans for the day have evaporated.  The intentions of six are trumped by the sickness of one. 

Jonathan’s birthday—his tenth birthday—is just days away, and for the first time in my mothering career, I actually planned a party.  Not just a party for relatives, but a real party with handmade invitations and too-much sugar and ten high-energy testosterone-dripping boy-guests who are all planning to explode things in the backyard by way of celebration.

But everything halts because this child is ill.  I cannot go to the store to get the last few supplies for the cake.  I can’t get the PVC pipe to make marshmallow shooters.  I can’t even get out of the laundry room long enough to sweep the kitchen floor or pick up the school room.  I can’t…I can’t…I can’t…

Sick Boy

The sudden change in plans, the newly-formed void in my day, opens up a space in me that my heart rushes in to fill.  Gurgling, bubbling, spilling out into me from its excess of good—or bad—my heart shows up in that interruption.

It happens so rapidly, I cannot stop it.  It is just there, like a sudden string of traffic on an already busy morning, and I can do nothing but look and see what has just bubbled up inside of me simply because plans changed.  In an instant, I see the state of things in that hidden room.

Nature abhors a vacuum.  So does the heart.  When the day brings something unexpected, or plans change, or life gets interrupted by God’s intentions, your heart will fill the void. 

It may rush in with hot words and short-tempers, if that is what it has in greatest supply.  Or, if it has enough in stock, it may spill over into your soul with grace and patience.  Either way, the greatest indication of where your heart is at is not in how it behaves when life is under control.  It is in what happens when life is interrupted.  What flows out of your heart then is the surplus, the thing it has the most to spare.

Is it good?

Or is it shameful?

I finally get a moment to stand in the shower while my boy sleeps on the couch with a bowl by his side.  I think back to my grade school days.  Twice a week, we lined up and trotted down the hall to the art room.  We donned oversized shirts to cover up the school clothes we’d already dirtied on the playground and set to work with brushes and pencils and glue that smelled like it should be eaten.

Sometimes, we were given great lumps of clay to work into bowls and saucers and little figurines that our mothers would feel obligated to keep on their dressers until we married.

Those lumps of clay were always gooey and cold in my hands, at first.  If I was impatient and tried to bend it into a bowl, it snapped and crumbled.  But if I held the clay in my hands and worked it until the warmth of my body infused that bit of earth, then I could twist and turn and bend it in any direction, and it would not break.

My heart is clay. 

Sometimes, it is cold and brittle.  Any sudden, unexpected molding causes me to break instead of bend.   It does not matter if I intend to break or not.  It simply happens that way because I was not ready.  My heart was not prepared the way it should have been.

Sick day interruptions

But when I dwell in the hands of the Potter, and His life radiates through every molecule of my little lump of dirt, I cannot help but be pliable.  He has warmed and readied me for His own purposes.

My life was interrupted today.  Was yours?

Did you like what you saw when your heart bubbled up to fill the void in your sense of control?

If not, then take your mind captive to this: Those interruptions are the very things He is using to transform you from a ball of dirt into a holy vessel , sanctified and set apart for Kingdom work.  Those things that seem like interruptions and unexpected annoyances do not take Him by surprise.  In fact, they are His intention for you.

He uses these things to show you what is in your heart.  Then He says, “Now, come into my hands and let us see what we can do with that.”

The interruptions in your day are God’s invitation to dwell in Him.  Let Him hold your heart-clay and make it soft.  Let Him fill you with His radiating goodness so that when life screeches to a halt, His is the One who fills the void.

Faith 7 Comments

{23} Dangerously Beautiful

31 Days: From Enemy to Heir

Dangerously Beautiful: Day 23 of 31 Days

For Day 1, click on the image above

The days after the prince’s departure soon fell into a pleasant sort of normalcy.  Jewel missed her prince, but she was so comforted by the constant presence and guidance of her Advocate that she soon realized that the prince meant it when he told her it was good that he went away.  She hadn’t understood it at the time, and had even argued against him.

Now she knew: some things are best learned in absence.  Trust was one of those.  While he was with her, she did not really have to believe the things her prince said because he was always showing her that they were true.  He cared for her.  He provided for her.  He loved her. 

Now, he was farther away than her eyes could see, and yet his hand had not failed her.  It made his love even sweeter because it was truer than she had known it to be before, and even more amazing.  How perfectly he had perceived her needs, and how abundantly he had provided for them!   It was not only that she lacked nothing; it was that she had everything.

It was a good thing, too, because there was no shortage of work to be done.  Every day, Jewel opened the vault and filled her hands with the prince’s riches so that she would not be found lacking when empty hands reached out for hers.

She surrounded herself with the words from the ancient scrolls and listened carefully as her Advocate explained them to her.  The little children loved to come and ask her for stories about her prince, and she would draw them to herself and talk about him because she loved him.  Each day, she found more to love, and more to share with those who listened.

One day, an elderly woman walked passed just as Jewel was retelling the story of her wedding day.  “Oh!  You sound just like him,” the woman said, smiling a joyful, toothless grin.  “I thought for a moment that he had come back for me.”

“Really?” Jewel asked.  “Do you really think I sound like him?”

“Just like him.”

The old lady wasn’t the only one who noticed.  Soon, people began to come to Jewel, asking for advice or help because she was reigning in his place.  She was the prince’s representative in the kingdom while he was away, and she was growing more and more like him every day.

Jewel’s heart soared.  It was working!  It was actually working!  She was doing just what the prince had told her to do—she was allowing his riches to make her more like him, and because of that, the entire kingdom could see a glimpse of the prince even when he was far away.

They kept coming.  They kept asking for help with so many good and princely things, Jewel found her days filled beyond capacity.  She barely had time to wave to her Advocate as she slipped out the door to teach the children or visit the sick.  Some days, she did not make it down to the treasure room at all.

Thankfully, no one noticed.

Jewel was relived to find she had been so changed by the prince’s love and care for her that she could imitate him well enough.  She did not need to be adorned with his riches in order to be beautiful like him, not anymore.  She could remember his words and his ways, or so she thought, and she could do so much more good in the kingdom when she spent a little less time behind the wrinkles of a dusty scroll.

Besides, the people–the prince’s own people–needed her, and she could not keep them waiting.  What would they say?  They would think she didn’t care, and that was not true.  She cared deeply, so deeply, that she began to neglect the very provision the prince had made for her because she thought she was doing the better thing.  Surely, spending time in the treasure room was selfish when there was so much need outside the door!

The Advocate’s eyes followed her, but he did not say a word.  In fact, he was more silent than ever, and Jewel was grateful because she did not miss the sting of his sword.

In fact, she was happy to think that there was so little to cut away these days.  She thought she was glowing and radiant and busy about the work of the kingdom, just like the prince had told her to be.  What a wonderful bride she had turned out to be!

One night, she looked in the mirror and was caught off guard by her own reflection.  She was stunning.  Only, she hadn’t noticed it before because she had always seen his reflection in the mirror, not her own.  But there she was, so changed from the girl once called Obscurity.

She was no longer a nothing, no longer an outcast, no longer unloved.  Now, she was beautiful.  Dangerously beautiful. 

“Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,” her Advocate said softly.  He had taken to speaking in whispers, and Jewel found it annoying.

She turned away from him and smoothed her dress.  “I think I will have some new clothes made.  These don’t really suit me anymore.”

I am like him now, she thought, and she longed to show off some of the glory.

The Advocate stood in the corner and quietly drew his sword.  She would have noticed if she had remembered to fear him.

Thankfully for Jewel, he did not draw it for her.  His sharp eyes were focused on the door to the bride’s own chamber.  A darkness was growing outside her room.  While she was distracted with her beauty, it stretched under the crack in the door and slowly filled the space between the Advocate and her.

Dangerously Beautiful

Dangerously Beautiful

It was the shadow of one who knew, better than anyone, the power of unchecked beauty, and he grinned a terrible, beautiful grin because he knew just what to do with it.

Jewel had all but forgotten him.  But her old master, her old deceiver, had not forgotten her.

He had simply been waiting.

31 Days, Faith, From Enemy to Heir 1 Comment

{21} The Adviser

31 Days: From Enemy to Heir

The Adviser: Day 21 of 31 Days
For Day 1, click on the image above

He was going away.  Jewel’s beloved prince, who had rescued her from the Enchanter’s land and brought her into his own kingdom, was going away.  She did not know when or for how long, but he was leaving, and she would be alone.

Jewel felt sick with tears.  All she could think to do was cling to him and beg him not to go.

“Why are you clinging to me?” he asked, and he would not let her hold him back.  “Trust me.”

Jewel wished she could wiggle out of her doubt and slip back to a very brief time in her childhood when she had not yet learned that trust was too precious to give away.

“You’re afraid,” the prince said, looking at her with kind eyes.  “Do not be afraid.” 

“No one who’s left me has ever come back,” Jewel countered, as if all the hurt in her past could justify the fear and doubt she felt toward him now.

“I know.”  He wrapped her up in his arms and whispered into her hair.  “I’m sorry.”

Tears flowed down Jewel’s face.

“I know your fears, and I’m asking you to trust me in spite of them.  Because you must know this about me: if I did not abandon you when you were outside my gates, I will not abandon you on the inside.”

“But you’re leaving.”

“Yes, but I am not leaving you alone.”

Just then, the door to the vault swung open, and a shadowy figure stepped into the opening.  “I thought you might need a helper, so my father sent the very best one he could think of.”

The man stepped forward, a shock of flaming red hair grabbing the light.  He was not very tall or very broad, but he looked powerful nonetheless.  In one hand, he held a scroll, in the other, a sword.

It was terrifying.

Jewel looked at the prince for an explanation because so far, this was worse than being left alone.

“My people call him the Adviser, although that hardly describes how important he is to me.  He is like my right arm.”

The adviser bowed slightly.

“My kingdom could not run without him!  There is not a stone he has not set in place, or a single person he has not helped to train in the ways of our father, the king.”

The adviser stepped forward and held out the scroll.

“In fact, he has brought you our ancient writings.  Everything you need to know about how to honor the king and live like me—it’s all here.  You don’t ever have to worry or wonder.  All you have to do is read it.” 

Jewel had tried to read the scrolls herself, but with every page, she felt like she had to unlearn everything she had ever known.  “It’s overwhelming,” Jewel admitted.  “I feel like I don’t know anything, and now you’re leaving and I’m supposed to just be you when I’m not even very good at being me.”

“You do not have to worry about being you, Jewel.  Just stay close to me, and you’ll begin to understand who you truly are.”   It was the adviser’s voice in her ears.  As he spoke, his eyes warmed with kindness, as if he could already see her adorned with all the riches in the prince’s kingdom.

With astonishment, she realized he loved her. 

“Why do you love me?” she blurted out, then clapped her hand over her mouth because she hadn’t meant to say it.  But how else could she respond when this man seemed to know and cherish her when they’d only just met?

“I love you because you are his.”

The answer was simple but profound.  The words sucked the breath right out of Jewel’s lungs.  Once again, she realized it was the prince who made her lovely.  It was the prince who made her loved.  And it was because of him that this adviser had come to her side.  Not because the adviser first loved her, but because of the perfect, reciprocal love he and the prince had for one another.

“You are his prized possession, Jewel,” the adviser was saying.  “You are his bride.  Do not fear.  I will use all the resources at my disposal to protect and defend you.  There is nothing I have not already overcome.”  

The Adviser

The Adviser

Jewel noted the sword at his side and was comforted.

She was also thankful she was no longer his enemy.  She knew that if she had met him just a short time before, she would not have been able to stand in his presence.  Surely, she had been full of the very things he was protecting the kingdom from.

As it was, Jewel felt a dividing was about to take place in her life.  There was no doubt in her mind that this adviser—this Advocate–would not hesitate to cut away the things that had no place on this side of the wall.

The sharp edge glinted in the light.  She couldn’t help but wonder how much of her would be left when he was through.

*Join us tomorrow for Day 22!

31 Days, Faith, From Enemy to Heir 1 Comment

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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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