Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

When you’re waiting for the lightning and you miss the rain (A guest post from Kelli Woodford)

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Today’s guest poster, Kelli Woodford lives in the Midwest, with her husband and her seven blue-eyed children, and in the midst of it quietly chronicles grace on her blog The Chronicles of Grace

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Confession: I hate prophetic posts.

My heart yearns for story. The subtlety of its events, the conflict and resolution, the intimacy of character development. Story tugs at the heart in surprising ways. Ways unimagined and unseen. And I would suggest, produces a deeper, lasting change on its hearers than a prophetic, calling-it-out word, because it engages more facets of the intricate design of the human being: it engages the heart. Prophetic posts just can’t touch that.

But I’m about to write one.

Because I need to remember my size.

So often I labor and get weary trying to wrap my mind around a concept. The abstractions of sin and salvation; the depths of human connection and multifaceted relationships; bigger and bigger the questions, rising from a mind filled with all things notional. Everything from law and grace to faith and deeds to mice and men. I read and research, fill my days with ponderings, bounce ideas off whoever comes to mind – and then suddenly the sun goes down (what?!? how did that happen!) and I realize how much I have missed.

It might be part of my personality, it might be an old addiction dying a hard death, it might be that idolatrous yearning for certainty that we all find comfort in. But there is no life like the one at my fingertips.

And By God, I’m going to enjoy it.

So I’ve put my hands in the dirt and wiped bottoms and made delicious pinterest-quality dinners, only to burn the edges. I’ve tossed a wiffle ball to my kids and run and tagged them and tripped on sticks and felt grass coming alive. Felt me coming alive. I’ve thrown open windows and sucked huge lungfuls of summer wind and fresh black earth, turned over in the fields around my house. I’ve sung loud, old hymns and Mumfords, shower water warm enough to ease the ache of holding up more than I can. Believing hard in grace and choice. I’ve scrubbed carpet stains and toilet bowls and felt the dry tightness of my finger tips that lingers after the bleach is back under the sink. And I’ve missed these things.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have done them all along. But doing them to get them done is different than doing them to relish the moments.

When my mind is afloat in matters too great for me, then I am not there with my kids in our rag-tag baseball game. I am not there to taste the west wind or hear my own voice off shower walls. I am not present for the moments of my life drifting humbly past while I surf the waves.

But, if there’s anything I hate more than a prophetic post (in which you find yourself elbow deep here), it is a guilt-trip post.

So I’ll not make this into that.

I will readily admit that there are times for big issues. There are moments when all the dailies must be abandoned in favor of the lightning bolt that just seared the snot out of my easy answers and left me scorched and smiling. There are times for study, and for prayer, and for solitude, and for mano-a-mano combat.

And there are times to cease.

For me, now is the latter.

Because when time and God have done their thing and I’m smelling the singe and wishing for more fire? I should hold the ash in my hand and call it a very holy thing. But not a predictable one. Perhaps the kind of dirt that rings a soul after an extended time in an ivory tower is harder to wash than a crusty toilet bowl. Perhaps it can only be sanitized by digging my bare digits into earth and pain and Velveeta and lilacs and the radical romance of everyday hope.

And when it’s time for this kind of soul-cleansing, I should walk into my bathroom, scrub brush in hand. I should walk into my yard, dragging the bat behind me. I should walk even into the church (eek!), armed only with love.

I should leave the wrangling words and the draining discussions and go out and plant a flower.

Then I should watch it grow.

Kelli
Kelli Woodford

I live in the midwestern U.S., surrounded by cornfields and love, with my husband and seven blue-eyed children. We laugh, we play, we fight, we mend; but we don’t do anything that even slightly resembles quiet. Unless it’s listening to our lives, which has proved to be the biggest challenge of them all.

I blog regularly-ish at Chronicles of Grace.  You can also find me on Facebook  and Twitter.

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  1. Two of my favorite ladies, in one place! And Kelli? Guilty. How many times have I mused over this very issue? I wonder if it is true for all of us writerly types? Sometimes we need to set down the pen, set down the camera and live the thing, for Pete’s sake 🙂

  2. “…the radical romance of everyday hope” that line is awesome! If we all lived that way, what a world we would live in!

  3. I love that you laugh, you fight, you play and you mend:) 5-sensory living – it is so important – I am learning how to give my boys more space – and make sure my living is still filled-up – that I don’t remain idle while they stretch for independence:) It’s not baseball bats at our house – but cornhole and soccer (though I gave up on soccer when my one son beamed me in the face accidently a few years ago – playing soccer with 6 ft boys is beyond me now – but we’re trying to pick up the tennis racket and drag them to the courts with us – to find new ways to weave into their growing up:)

    • i think i would be done with soccer after an incident like that, too. ugh. no, my kids are still little enough that i can play with them [safely], but i know this will not always be the way it is. thank you for reading and engaging here, friend.

  4. And if your kids were to read this, mama Kelli, I am sure they would whisper, “Amen!” and love you the more for your confession and your willingness to enter into THEIR world with them!! May you be blessed with the wonder of His Presence even in the wonder of theirs!

    • if they see me with eyes of grace at the end of the day, then perhaps God and i have succeeded at something. thanks for your encouragement, Mom. love you.

  5. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all of my years, it’s that God is never predictable! I keep expecting Him to be and He never is! Ha! I love that you are ceasing from striving for more of *perhaps* what you want and simply letting the summer wash over you, even if that means a “muddy wash” in the dirt of your yard. 🙂 Love that you are sensitive to where God leads you, Kelli. It inspires us all to stop and listen for His voice.

    • thanks, Beth, for your kind words.
      and yes, that predictability thing gets me over and over. but it’s a *learning* to walk by faith and here’s to trusting Him to meet me among the lilies.
      so glad you stopped by, friend.

  6. It’s a tight rope of balance for me here. I need both and often tilt too far to the side of pondering and looking for answers to the mystery and forget I need to put my hands in the soil to get them. Living out our salvation, that is where Jesus speaks loudest. At least for me. Thanks for hosting this lovely lady Anita. Two beloved hearts in one place is a symphony.

    • “I need both and often tilt too far to the side of pondering and looking for answers to the mystery and forget I need to put my hands in the soil to get them.”
      Hi Shelly, I am like that too! I am looking forward to hosting your words next! 🙂

    • yes. i am so prone to the abstract that the concrete can be sorely neglected (like laundry … ? heh. not even going there). but it is often in the faithful performance of menial tasks that the greatest lightning bolts strike. and that i remember truly how little i am.

      thanks for being here, sweet Shelly. and i’m excited you’ll be here soon, too!!

  7. Kelli, these words do not disappoint. You do prophetic so beautifully! I’m also busy living right now, I haven’t had the gumption for words or debates or draining discussion or what-not’s. I’ve been taking this time to literally smell the roses and enjoy God’s creation both in nature and the natural that came in the form of 2 boys and a man. Thank you for sharing this.