Lunchbox Haiku and Little Bits of Love

Lately it is like I need to have my eyes wider open than usual, my hands stretched out to receive. God seems to be filling and overflowing my cups of learning and shifting perspectives and creaking and cracking open this stubborn and suspicious heart. This book, these posts, these story-songs, this daily practice, all are speaking, quietly and steadily, and I’m taking notes. And living notes. It feels so good. It feels like an early spring, like those bare sticks above, cut when snow was still on the ground, happy to open in warmth and light, drinking their water.

Little thank yous for little blessings add up to a life lived deeper in the current of grace. Little creative acts, little renegade brushstrokes and keystrokes and shutter snaps swirl into art and making and that cell-level memory of being made in the Image of the Maker Himself. The alchemy of word and music can sing heart-dear thoughts better than either alone sometimes. An everyday image captured and noted is a thread that will make, I believe, with 364 others, a clearer, truer picture of our mundane and marvelous life than pages of only celebration and vacation could tell.

And little bits of love, over the lengthening day and into evening, can wrap a child in a spun soft net of security and cherishing. A loving wake-up, with enough time to silence the hurry, a toasted waffle on a plate. A mama-haiku slipped into a lunchbox, a little bit of silly or beautiful that is a gift coming and going, in the mama-making and the child-receiving. A seat at the table at homework time, not for help but for company. Shooting hoops together, losing every time and giving them the chance to be coaches and encouragers. The same sure gift, most evenings, of the same faces around the table, the telling of the roses and the thorns. Time for pages turned in quiet before sleeping, and bedtime in time for enough rest.

Just little bits, really, I’m gathering and holding to my heart, bits of gratitude and art and song and image. Little bits, enough of them, make a quilt, a book, an album, a life. Enough is feeling like abundance these days.

 

 

 

 

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