So it comes. And goes. This story of ours. One day at a time, one arch, one curve, one crossing and dotting. Our story is being written. Only snatches captured in places like here. The whole thing though, the minutae, the apexes, the flourishes and the failures, all of it, is recorded there in His book, the one He keeps endlessly, faithfully, purposefully.
All we get to write here is short stories. Painfully, blinkingly brief, short stories. No novels. No series. No epics. Time, this slice of reality, only permits short stories. The rest, the never-ending stories, are written outside of time.
Short and sweet is all we have.
But is it? Happily sweet, that is.
I walk through the snow today and wonder. I look over the white spilled across the fields, the slipping of the hills, the trees stripped silent and still. Ahead of me, that husky blaze of canine lunges through land flowing with milk, splashes of white catching in his thick coat of blonde. He leaves tracks. Deep, snow blue tracks.
I finger coal blue beads on a bracelet circling chilled wrist. Tracks. Thread, clasp and color remind me of the tracks I am pressing into the pristine white of everyday. Each time I complain, criticize, exhale negativity–oh me, of unclean lips—I’ve been slipping bracelet from right wrist to left. And then, when I grumble again, left to right. And back again. And back again. Can beads adorn the same wrist all day, these lips touched with live coal? The same wrist for 21 days, lips offering only praise and gratitude?
I carry someone with me through the snow, a memory, a woman, a short, short story. Marisa of thirty-three years and three Dutch-blonde children, Marisa with courage to suffer, and with Christ indwelling, Marisa of breast cancer and nine years of sacred matrimonial oneness, sojourned Home yesterday. Passing from here of fleeting pages, into the forever story of Father’s forever love. Tears well, throat stings, fingers press beads. Cold tears on a cold day, tromping through cold snow. Leaving tracks.
The children slide, tumble, laugh down the hills, filling all this empty white space with a joy I am groping for, simply must have. Levi’s black hat wears a veil of delicate lace, a sprinkling on his flaming red nose. He stretches his tongue, long and searching, to lick up the flakes. He sees me, seeing him with silly tongue, and his belly laugh throws him back with a puff into powder snow. Malakai and Joshua pile on him with rooting howls that only children and snow and a stretching afternoon can compose.
Levi’s tugged a smile from me. He shouldn’t have to tug. What story to be known for, remembered for but a light-hearted, rompously deliciously fun short story? Marisa’s last blog entry? Of the hilarity of her son wearing underwear backwards for school’s “backwards day.” Tears, yes. Honesty, certainly. But it–God– is all too good not to be happy. We have now, here, happily, wondrously, together. We have yesterday’s memories, swelling with full-bodied love. We have up ahead, the hope of Home without end. We have it all so good.
I pull Levi’s hat down over his eyes and tussle him and his brothers down with laughter. Fenelon’s words cheer on:
“Those who are wholly God’s are always happy…Happy are they who give themselves to God…Happy are they who throw themselves with bowed head and closed eyes into the arms of the “Father of mercies” and the “God of all consolation”….Those who are God’s are always glad, when they are not divided, because they only want what God wants and want to do for him all that he wishes….The more one loves God, the more one is content…
What folly to fear to be too entirely God’s! It is to fear to be too happy.”
I am not afraid anymore. This short story could write its last page today. Why not write a wholehearted comedy, thrown into the arms of God? Not mindless schtick, but comedy as it was meant in the middle ages, “a story with a happy ending.” Derived from the Classical Greek κωμῳδία, comedy has its roots in a compound of either of κῶμος (revel) (or κώμη (village)) and ᾠδή (singing). Comedy: Gather together. Revel in God’s wonder. Sing. For don’t we know this story has a happy ending?
As the flakes fall, I wander in from our snow romp, lump in throat reflecting on Marisa’s last pages, fingering this bracelet reminding to refrain from negativity, to join the singing revel. I walk through the snow in a sad, yet happy, aware place. A knowing place, that I am but a happy vapor, and He is the love song I’ll sing forever. Words come, revisiting, from our read-aloud time this morning, lines from Hind’s Feet on High Places:
“Lord, what place is this where we have been resting and refreshing ourselves during these past days?He answered very quietly, “This is the place to which I bring my beloved, that they may be annointed in readiness for their burial.”
Much-Afraid did not hear these words, for she was walking a little ahead, repeating over and over again, “He said, ‘Dare to be begin to be happy, for the time is not long now, and I will give you your heart’s desire.’”
Yes. So it is. The time is not long now. Not long at all now. So Marisa knows. He is preparing us for our burial, readying us die to self. Die to this world. Dare I begin to be happy? Wholly God’s? Thrown happily into whatever He wants?
Marisa’s husband wrote yesterday that “She went to a mansion. With many rooms. Probably pianos.” Probably pianos. The singing revel. Our happy short story has a forever sequel.
Today is Day One… again… of a singing-only day, a happy day of no complaining. The coal blue beads my reminders to let the live coal touch these lips.
For this is the preparing for the mansion with pianos and the happily ever after.
Lord, make me wholly Yours. Wholly happy. Leaving happy tracks… right off into the happily ever after… singing with You.
Related:
Allowed Two
Cup
Before the Song is Over
Perspective
Photo: happy beads in snow…leaving tracks…
