CPR For The Weak

She said she was tired and I told her the same. Our conversation last week at dinner, it sprinkled across the table, the lamenting and loving, dusting our laps with the graces and the struggles. My friend and I we go way back, to a time when our bones were strong enough to sit on stadium bleachers without back support. The past, it leaves skid marks on the heart, and this friend, she knows the tire tracks and how they came to be. And I tell her how exhausted I am and she says the same and I know that is the answer that every friend sometimes needs to hear. I understand. I feel the same. You're going to be OK. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it well, "A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud." My friend, she listened and truly heard, and I waited on her life stories too, and we shared this present day journey as only good friends can; with truth swaddling our words. The afflictions, they evaporated in midst of veracious confessions, and a pent-up sigh expelled into forgiving atmosphere. My husband recently lost a good friend to cancer and I draw this friendship closer, hold it like a thousand-dollar bouquet of yellow roses. To possess genuine friends along the journey is a treasure, a gift to count and appreciate. I have a number, and when life is low and heart beats faint, the person He delivers to resuscitate, always, always, arrives exactly on time.

 

 

 

 

There's No Place Like Home

"Have I answered your questions?" He inquired, seemingly searching my face for clues. "Does it make sense to you, what I believe to be the cause of your tooth pain?" I nodded a yes and left the dentist chair that day with more questions than answers. Giving up recent habit of chewing gum would be easy. Avoiding a root canal, mind strumming acapella all the way to work. Am I clenching that tight, gripping life unaware of the transaction taking place, the unconscious gritting through days and nights? News that blared hard through the week, back that pained red-hot. I stood in line at Walgreen's, where another Kardashian commandeered the magazine rack. I am undone! And like a  paratrooper landing on a deserted island, I shot up an SOS prayer. A distress signal for the lost. Please unfurl these fists, this jaw that clings tight when my heart whispers let go. Please help the wounded and hurting this week, please find the guilty and let there be peace. I moved lower jaw in circular motion, an effort to break loose indiscernible tension. A quote brushed my mind and I let it settle, like a rippling creek it bathed the stony part of me that wants to give up. Hubert Van Zeller once wrote: "The soul hardly ever realizes it, but whether he is a believer or not, his loneliness is really a homesickness for God." Maybe that is what causes teeth to grind, in the night when all is dark and stars are mapping a highway of iridescent light. A homesickness that pings distress when life is hard and peace appears farfetched. For now, I declined my dentist's offer for a tooth guard. Is there another way? A foolproof method to loosen the grip? And then I am eight-years-old perched in front of black-and-white television watching Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz . She clicks those famous red heels together, uttering words that is cure to all ills and fears, a soothing balm for all pain and uncertainty, and surely she did not know the visceral truth uttered in those forever lines: "There's no place like home. There's no place like home." A compass for the lost and a constant guard against grinding teeth. A dusting of peace sprinkled across restless soul. There's no place like home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Promise Keeper

The wait was over. Finally, after long, bleary winter, those tulips daughter planted last fall, the earth gave birth and I danced happy. I flipped on camera switch, anxious to capture images, reminders of what comes after the dark, the bleak winter and hopeless feelings that stretch the soul into mammoth yawn. Click, click, click. Feet tapped the damp blades of grass. Our neighbor caught sight and yelled over, "Don't forget my pink one over there," she said, motioning toward her own hot pink tulip standing tall in planter. No, that is your gift. These are mine. Click, click, click.

 

A bird tweeted spring lullaby in nearby tree, a gentle breeze caused blooms to move in unison, mother nature's ballet. Thank you. A song I recently heard played across my mind, massaging the worn part of me, the part that yearns to have everything figured out, comfortable, easy, painless. Adjusting camera angle, inhaling warm, grateful breath, I snapped again, proof of renewal, eternal promise tunneling its way past the fear. Same patch of earth I plopped in my own mother's tulip bulbs eons ago. Orange-tipped blossoms winked at gray sky, oh, how clever God is, the small graces, ones I can so easily miss, the power they have to jump-start weary, tired, spirit. The song, it continued to weave timeless message across ache, and I added a link at the bottom, for all who are worn thin, please don't ever give up. Eyes focused clearly on gifts, they see through the haze, a willingness to thank for small, it must be the key. For all is grace, and I clipped on another camera lens, hungry for a single hint from God. He waxes poetic across the earth, and I scanned spring sky, noticing a swatch of baby blue elbowing through bank of endless clouds. A promise, it appears on time, disguised as green stems and yellow orange blossoms, it kisses gray horizon and the soul, it hums quiet.