Leaning In

I tilt. Sometimes in pictures it looks as though I am purposefully tilting my head to show I care or am leaning in towards a person. I just went on a trip to Israel without my husband, who normally would be next to me in pictures, so when I saw pictures of me alone, I was again reminded of how crooked I am.

Wounding words from a friend crossed my mind in the middle of the night this week more than once. She was more of an acquaintance, I suppose, and it was decades ago. "Every time I see you, I want to jerk you to the side to straighten you out," she said, as I made my way to a picnic table in our church's nursery playground area. Her words startled me, the strength of them, the emotion in them.

I explained to her I have scoliosis and had surgery to correct it but that the spinal curve was severe and could only be straightened so much. I spoke with a wobbly voice. I spoke apologetically for apparently causing her so much distress each time she looked at me. My head knew she was inappropriate, but my heart once again felt I was less than OK.

I think I am thinking about this because there are situations and people I would like to, with one swift movement, instantly straighten out, situations and people that aren't what I think they should be. And maybe they are crooked and wrong and less than perfect and not OK.

I just know when I am living in a place of "look how wrong I am," I am also living in a place of "look how wrong you are." Faults in myself and others become a source of irritation. But when I am living in a place of "look how loved I am," I am also living in a place of "look how loved you are."

And that's a better place, a place I want to live from,
a place I want to lean into.

Focus

Again it is Sunday, but I am here, and I am recovering from a 16-hour flight from the Middle East. I went to sleep at 4 p.m. yesterday then woke at one o'clock a.m. and made popcorn. The night before that, I woke at 4 a.m. and made stew. I am simply off.

The previous Saturday I was in a hotel next to the Sea of Galilee in Jerusalem, and I wrote a reflection by hand in my journal. I don't know why, and I needn't figure this out right this second, but that reflection was also about ingredients.

As is this one. Brent and I helped Kyle and Destiny move into their new home yesterday. Clothes, cleansers, books, appliances, paperwork, toys, bedding all filled the many boxes we carried in from the moving van. It was a bit much to fathom all the work ahead for this family as they find places for all their stuff. Any help I offered didn't seem to make much of a dent to lessen the workload.

But I showed up, as did my husband, Brent, Zac and Megan, Karis and Andrew, Ryan and Kelley, James, and baby Everly. At one point the whole gang was there. I didn't want to gather everyone for a photo opportunity, as it seemed too much effort. And as it stands, we will be all of us together much more now. While I was in Israel, Andrew, Karis and James moved back to California from Texas, and Kyle, Destiny, Emmett, Sammy and Calvin the day after I arrived home moved from San Diego, 110 miles away, to Fontana, 15 miles away from our home. My family is all nearby now.

When I woke at one o'clock this morning, I got a picture in my head of what it's like to struggle with attention problems. The scene I envisioned is a pharmacist with rows and rows of medications behind him. He is in a photograph. He is front and center but out of focus, fuzzy, while every detail on the shelves behind him is clear. This illustrates what it's like to be in my mind. I tend to miss what is right in front of me because I am overwhelmed with the details surrounding what is in front of me.

Even yesterday, I was thinking about the boxes, the ingredients within them, when what was really the center of it all is, my family is back. Cousins are chasing each other, grown children are encouraging each other and laughing, sharing ideas and experiences. Brent is holding two-month-old Everly, and his gaze catches mine amidst the chaos and through the grandchildren darting back and forth between us. We smile briefly but deeply at each other, unable to believe how rich we really are. For a moment, it's all clear.

I'm glad I had today to look again on yesterday and shift my focus a bit. I wouldn't want to miss it for anything, or a million tiny things.

When Saturday Becomes Sunday

I sat in front of my computer yesterday morning, coffee next to me, my attention on the screen before me. I showed up, as I had promised myself to do each Saturday morning, but this time to edit someone else's words, rather than write my own.

It wasn't even really a choice. I had reported a job Wednesday--a difficult job--in downtown LA. The attorney who hired me let me know on Thursday he wants the job signed, sealed, and delivered by Monday. So Saturday morning I combed through each word spoken on Wednesday, referencing documents that were read from by muffled talkers during the proceedings, adding commas, semi-colons, proper spellings, all to deliver by Monday an accurate record of the deposition given on Wednesday.

Saturday morning was a lot of things, but reflective it was not!

Now it is Sunday, and I am here, and I wonder whether it "counts."

I went to my prayer spot early this morning, the loveseat near a sliding glass door at the back of the house. I saw Junior the Cat resting on the rug near my sitting space. Junior the Cat had not been seen for four days. Brent and I are catsitting two grand-cats for Kyle and Destiny while they and their children are transitioning between homes. Junior had snuck outside under our watch. We had some forlorn grandchildren over their lost cat (the family would have rather lost Autumn the Lesser Cat if they had a say in the matter). My daughter-in-law searched valiantly at the Humane Society and posted about the missing feline on social media. She stepped outside late last night and found Junior in the front yard. I am relieved.

Maybe I can't get Saturday morning back, but we got Junior back, and that just feels good.

Junior in the Guest Room

And I am thinking about space and wanting to write about space but keep writing about Junior and my lost Saturday morning. And I see Junior in my mind's eye, occupying the space of our newly redone guest room. New carpet, new paint, new bedding, a whiter-than-white chabby chic quilt, topped with pillows and a bright pink throw. The room is the best place in the house right now, uncluttered, fresh, and inviting. How does this animal know that this is "the place to be"? And what makes him think he can occupy that place without apology?

I wrote and published a book. My Bunco ladies, with a celebratory spirit, asked about it Thursday evening. I cannot recite the conversations, but the flavor of my responses was to make the accomplishment smaller than it is. "With apology," I said or implied things like, "It's just a little book. You should see how little it is! It's just a little something I had a desire to write for my aunt. Don't think you need to buy it, and by all means don't let it take up space on your bookshelf or space in your life by reading it."

I want to be proud of it. I want to treat it like my newborn babies. I invited others to behold the God-given bundles, to rejoice with me, to gaze upon them, to jump up and down with me in celebration, to be blessed also by my blessings.

An author friend wrote a beautiful foreword for my book. But before doing so, he expressed to me he would love to see me develop each chapter further. "Give us more of YOU," he emphasized over and over. "It's as if you are on stage holding the microphone and starting to share yourself then quickly lay it down." I read through my 108-page creation, and I do see what he meant. But I am proud of myself for taking the stage at all, for daring to hold the microphone for those few seconds. I am proud of me for taking the blankie off my baby's face and showing the lookers-on the beautiful thing God did for me.

And, no, I can't get Saturday morning back, but I can show up on Sunday. And I can't get the Bunco shrinking-my-accomplishments conversations back. But there will be more conversations about my book, opportunities to crawl into and rest on fresh, beautiful spaces, without apology.

Low

I feel like I should receive a free pencil and a sticker, a reward for attending three weeks in a row, a certificate stating I am now an official member of the Diane-Writes-on-Saturdays class, because this morning I again showed up to put a reflection in writing.

I thought yesterday I would write about the line in a song that stuck with me this week. Referring to Jesus' eyes, the song says, "How beautiful the tender eyes that choose to forgive and never despise." I felt my own eye twitch as I listened to those words being sung. It was my right eye, and I knew it often looks despicably upon others. I saw Jesus's forgiving, tender eyes (eyes that have tenderly looked upon me) contrasted with my own.

Then this morning as I was sitting quietly with Jesus, hoping for him to calm my mind and minister to my heart, something told me to sit on the floor. I immediately came up with some reasons to not sit on the floor. "But I would have to push this chest out to make space, because I won't fit otherwise," "Brent will come in an see me and wonder what I'm up to (or down to) now," and I forget the third reason to resist the invitation to sit on the ground, but it was there. The excuses came rapidly, practically overlapping one another, and they were all pretty good. But I lowered myself to the floor.

What came to mind as I sat in silence was a small group I used to be part of. Tammi, Diane C., Charlotte and I were the constant regulars. We were the pencil-bearing, certificate-carrying constant members of the group. Once we met in a restaurant and Charlotte, who had planned to not attend, came. She explained why she almost didn't make it. "I am playing racquetball with the ants," she said. "I didn't want you all to have to get down that low with me."

The opposite was true. We were honored to sit low with her and hear her heart. It's the same kind of honor I felt from Jesus this morning, he and I sitting in the dirt (I was actually on a not-very-clean rug but pictured a dusty road). He was glad to sit low with me. He didn't despise me for being down there. He didn't even hate me for that look he sees in my eye toward others--that unforgiving, you-owe-me look.

I'm thinking that as I let myself be looked upon by those eyes, the ones that choose to forgive, my own vision becomes more clear. Can I see others with Jesus's eyes? Yes! Not without his help, and not without letting myself be the recipient of his tender gaze.

Today I'm attending women's retreat for my church. I need to quickly shower to get over there. But I have the opportunity to "sit low" and listen to some ladies as they share their hearts with me one on one. It's a privilege to witness what God is doing in another's life, to partner with Jesus in letting them sit in his gaze.

Just as I "showed up" to my screen this morning, I will show up at the retreat. Not for a pencil or a certificate (maybe a free t-shirt) but to sit low, to lift God high, to listen, and to learn to see with Jesus's eyes.