love/parenting/prayer

Still.

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Be still, oh beating heart.

I sidle close after this swirling mess of a day with its tears and tantrums and timeouts. Night has fallen, and with it a veil that softens the rough edges of glaring hours. I find your little body, a slight form under the blankets, and pull tight, hoping to grasp your heart somehow in all these layers. I’m pulling and praying and begging God to make this connection when I’ve gone and frayed all the edges. I fear the hypocrisy of my feeble words, so I put my hope into these breaths that rise and fall with yours, calming, slowing, till I feel this space between us tauten and still.

Still.

My soul, the Lord is on our side and he speaks peace to hurricanes, yes, even ours. One green eye peeks out from under the blanket hideaway, then a hand finds my face, and, oh, a multitude of sins are covered. Let the world somersault around us, I have found the one my soul loves, and we are anchored still.

~lg

church/Easter/faith

Over the Cliff*

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The day he died we all went right over the cliff. Hearts in our throats, lungs screaming noiselessly for air. How could he be taken? He, who carried all our hopes in hands of power – a grip now broken asunder. Now we are left powerless, helpless, without him. The world has been ripped out from under our feet, and this is a freefall of deepest grief and confusion. He is not here, and all is lost, we are lost and flailing.

After the fall, the silence. The silence of empty air, empty promises. We are simply scattered ashes in the vacuum of his absence. Waiting for we know not what.
Has it been three hours? Three days? Three years?
Then, the echo of distant matter. The rumble of some new reality. Is this the bottom of the chasm? Is this death come to swallow us up too?
But what our blinded eyes struggle to see, our faces and fingers begin to feel. Water. Falling with us. The spray becomes a stream, and we are soaked but not submerged. We are landing, if such a term could be used, in a river running downward.
And suddenly, rising up from below us, a figure emerges, as if from an underground spring. We thought we left him at the top, but here he comes, racing up from the depths with the glint of triumph in his eyes, grabbing hold of these trembling hands with the grip of life, and he has caught us. The river explodes around us and for the first time since we fell we can fill our lungs because he is alive and that is the only air we can breathe. He is aliveand those are the only words that matter.
The river carries us all with a rushing buoyancy, and we know that this descent has somehow saved us, because it somehow killed us, but he has brought us back to life.
  

*for Calvary Church

~lg
Easter

Sweet Friday

Posted on by Lindsey Gallant / 3 Comments

Good Friday morning and the ground is still frozen. The sun is out but the earth is slow to wake. Three holes pierce our giant maple, and the sap is running. The season was slow in coming. We’d all wished for warmer weather by now. But this latest dive into frosty nights has meant a resurgence in sap flow. Today the tree gushes blood, clear and sweet, pouring out its spring offering.  We gather the miracle water in buckets, bring it in and boil it up, till the house hangs heavy with the scent of maple.

Not everything is as we wish. Some days are colder than the calendar reads, and some winters are longer than our hearts can bear. But come to the tree, put your arms around its old rugged trunk, and you’ll hear the life rising within. Three holes pierce and water is turned to wine. Taste and see that the blood is sweet. Yes, the earth will turn and the seasons will shift and flowers will blossom from twisted thorns. The tree knows.

The syrup is thick and golden on our tongues. We give thanks for these frozen nights, these dripping wounds. We give thanks for the lifeblood of creation that makes this Friday Good.

~lg
grace/parenting

Cabin Fever!

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Cabin fever has spiked. The winter roars outside. The bears have broken in, and they are my children. Wild things, stomping and raging and growling, upending the furniture and scattering the morning’s broken pieces all over the floor. Snow days and sick days have kept us inside for far too long, and the walls are pushing in. These shaggy-haired creatures are chasing me with whining, irrational demands for kids’ shows!  and softer toast!  and smaller pirates! If their evil plan is to turn mama into a grizzly, it’s working.

I want to roar. I want to toss them out into a snowbank. Or perhaps stuff and mount silent over the mantle?

But then, the littlest cub wanders over, blankie and teddy in hand. He is wearing flannel bear jammies.
“I need uppie.”
“I need a bear hug,” I tell him, scooping him up.
“Bear hug?”
“Yes.”


Somehow in the embrace, we feel human again.  Sticky paws turn to patting hands, the gnash of terrible teeth to a smile. This grizzly mama begins to melt. The fever breaks. Maybe, just maybe, I can see the end of winter after all.


~lg

beauty

Made for Beauty

Posted on by Lindsey Gallant / 2 Comments

I long for beauty. How can my heart ache for something so frivolous, so unnecessary? Isn’t it selfish to want the icing on the cake when so many are starving for bread?

But what if beauty isn’t unnecessary? What if beauty reveals something desperately true about humanity, and about God?
Our God could have made a world of bread and water, of pragmatic production, of sufficiency.
But he created the possibility of chocolate, a riotous spectrum of colour, laughter and fiddle music.
We could have made do with walking, one foot in front of the other, single file please. Get the job done. But he gave us dancing. He made us for dancing. He made us for joy.
He made us to thrill at the first explosion of spring yellow – a daffodil. He made us to gaze at pigment skillfully stroked onto canvas. He made us to relish the wordplay of a master storyteller. He made us to sigh at pretty things all in a row. He made us to be captivated by that particular shade of blue in a baby’s eye.
Are these unnecessary? Well, yes. But they are not any less important for their seeming superfluity.  They reveal a God who delights in abundance, in giving freely and joyously, in a cup overflowing.
Beauty matters because it catches the glint of heaven and reflects it back to us. Beauty matters because it is the laughter of God.
So when we give bread, which we must do, can we also not give wine? When we give blankets, which we must do, can we also not give a lullaby? When we give shelter, which we must do, can we also not give a sanctuary?
We are meant to do more than the necessary, more than the sufficient. We are made for beauty. 
~lg