To see it, good and glory.

"Lord, let me recognize my life rightly: rightly see, rightly think, rightly thank."  -- Ann Voskamp


1.  When trouble comes a callin' on the kitchen window, a stranger's face or my own face surprising me reflected there as I glance up from dishes, and I must have been choosing some thought to make the brow wrinkle, the face age, the heart cower, the child feel as though she's done something wrong.


2.  She surprises with flowers and with a thought that blooms brighter than bachelor buttons (beautiful though they are): We are God's treasure.


And I read it today: We are His field.  We are the thing He is building.


And I am left with a choice:  To train my thoughts on that which hinders, blinds, freezes, dies, binds, and regrets.


Or to do this:  To simply allow my thoughts to shine, reflecting the perfect sight of His work in me, the work I've found hard to accept as necessary lately.  (But I am asking and praying and reaching for the cup even when I turn my face away afraid to drink what has been poured.) 


3.  I see it in the garden, also His field, the one that reflects to me His wisdom as a process.  Never stagnant.  Never still.  Vibrant.  Living.  Choosing life.  Wisdom as verb.


And this is what I see:  to become ripe, to age, to mature, one must live within, live through the extreme heat and pressure of the elements, of the conditions of one's life.  


The heavy pressure of dirt weighting down the silent, introverted seed who has yet to recognize herself, to name herself through curl of leaf, through blossom and fruit.


The rain that depresses the sun-seeking leaf also encourages the roots to dig deeper, root farther, yearn for that which is stable, firmly established, the fingers of a hand who remembers the dirt from which she came and holds it firmly in rootfingers, absorbing and stretching, pushing downward with a weight equal to the rising hope of the evolving stem, leaf, seed.


And what was in the ground bursts forth as a crown of flowers that firm to seed, released in the breeze that wakes them long enough to fly and live again.