A Time to Build...

"To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under heaven..."

-Ecclesiastes 3:1

***

The sun rises on this plot of land,

razed,

primed for repurposing

prepped for pouring out...

...cleared for construction...

My heart heaved with each load,

leveled and hauled away

each heavy letting go

each precious, painful parting with the past...

Now here am I

laid bare, bereft

 this all too familiar baseline

of barrenness

of bereavement,

of loss

of letting go...

I long for this land a new normal

exposed now,

raw,

like an open wound...

...Just then The Carpenter comes on the scene

His footsteps fall gently

like dew on tender ground

He turns,

Takes my hands in His

And there I feel the open wounds...

the pain that precipitates healing

hurt hand in hand

with Wholeness

This precious paradox

These heaven-sent scars

The very Hands that are bruised

Begin the work of Rebuilding...

***

"There is a time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to Build."

-Ecclesiastes 3:3

(photography courtesy of Dan Denardo Photography )

Real

~***~

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you..."...

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful...

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

-The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams

~***~
<3>

Turning

"Thou, Oh Lord, are the lifter of my head."

Psalm 3:3

~~O~~

Today I let the volcano erupt....

The one I'd been keeping so carefully cooped up

The one active with ancient angst,
engorged with grief,

rumbling with endless rumination,

old sorrows stirring in its bowels,

percolating with the pain of the past,

wounds and regrets

my folly and failures

finally becoming too much for me to hold...

So finally I folded

and out it came

In torrents of hot tears

In a ball on my kitchen floor

Beneath the coffee pot,

also percolating away...

I let fly the lava flood

and felt the ache of endings

Days and months and years of yearning

painfully purged

Released

Let Go...

I lay there enfolded

in Invisible Arms

exposed

utterly spent

emptied....

Then came the still small voice

as the lava cooled

and turned to ash at His feet.....

"Leave that here now, my love,

At the foot of the cross,"

(who knew that the foot of the cross could look so like a linoleum floor)

"Leave the tears, the tumult, the dreams long dead

Leave the loss, Leave the longing

Leave it all in My Hands

where Ashes, by and by, breed Life

where dead bones are Breathed upon

and Live

Time to Turn, my Dear One

and Trust

that by and by

all will be Beauty."

~~O~~

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me...
     ...to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound...
       ...To comfort all who mourn,
       To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

-Isaiah 61:1-3 

***