"Use My Hands to Use My Heart"

Four years ago, I was living in Mom and Mike's basement in York.  Nora was asleep, and I, with my headphones on, was listening to Sufjan Stevens' album "Michigan" for the first time.  I remember how everything in the room was some shade of gray with just enough light coming in from the small, square window to suggest the shapes of the objects but not the colors.  As I listened, I could feel some sleeping part of myself waking, like a person tasting an orange for the first time--the surprised bite of vitamin C and the sweet sun sugars lifting the fog on my tongue.  I was jobless, without a home of my own, the mother of a 10 month old, and wondering...too much, maybe.

All this is to say, I prayed a lot in Georgia and I prayed in that basement in York, Nebraska and even when things didn't go as I thought they should or would, I'm here now living on a farm and teaching at a place that lifts and grows and loves.  And you may know some of the stories from this farm and some of the stories from those classrooms.  You know Nora's heart and you know mine, and tonight it's going to bed early with my hands making the silent "thank you" gesture because this story is good.  Even when it hurts.  And even when it goes better than you could have hoped.  That was today.