And this is what my friend calls "kicking the devil in the diamonds."

I was standing in the kitchen tonight resting my head on the white cabinets facing the alone time of Friday night, some terrifying blank wall.

This is not easy, Lord.  I don't feel like things are easy right now.  I'm not asking for easy.  But I'm not sure how to get through this hard nothing space.

Nora kicking, screaming as I pick her up in the middle of the kiddie pool, my skirt getting wet up to my knees.  She would make an excellent protestor.  

You are not the only woman who has had to hitch up her skirt and pull her child out of deep water.

The busy time when I begin pulling in the harvest.  I can't seem to keep up with Your blessings.

Forgive me for the gaps where things fall through:  the daughter who wants to play while I wash dishes, the poems I didn't respond to, the pint of gooseberries gone bad waiting to be made into a pie.

I don't know how to do half of the things I'm doing.  85%.  Tonight, almost all of it.

Lord, I feel like I'm failing.  A disappointment.    

How easily one can believe the voice of the liar, when he has you convinced there is no point in trying because you've already failed beyond repair.

And I walk into the kitchen, and it's a mess, two big bowls of green beans snapped but not steamed and bagged, dirty dishes, all my canning things, a pot full of salsa that needs to be bottled and frozen, bananas that need to be turned into bread.  And there are tears and shuffling feet and I'm walking in circles looking for the starting point, the one that will pick me up and out of this.  I think I'm too tired to complete this work.

My burden is light, and my yoke is easy.  Will you let Me in?

And the most honest prayer I can think to say with my head resting on the cupboard is, "I need a hug."

Woman, thou art loosed from thy infirmity.

We are walking through her garden, the one we thought dead from spray drift, weeds, animals.  And we find it still growing.  "God put a powerful will to live in all the things He made.   Have you noticed that?"

The infirmity of doubt, of self-worry, of thinking I am responsible for what it is I'm allowed to do, what it is I can do.  Through Him.  Not through myself.  And I am suddenly putting the kitchen in order, finishing what I started, what He started in me.

Take that.