Palm Trees and Elbows and Thoughts on Persevering

Back at it, here on my stool in the Straight Up Café where I just met a beautiful young woman from Syria named Niveen. She has only been in America for a short while, but she's working and enduring and plugging into life here with all her heart. Now she has met Tim, who I can see studying in the back office, working on his masters for ministry. It sure looks like there are good things in store.

Glancing around the room at my writers' group I can't help but wonder how many miles we've traveled in the last week? What sort of challenges and trials have we all faced in these seven days? Lord, help us to learn and find strength here as we share our stories with one another. So many stories here and every one has such value in your eyes!   

Coming back to the same sturdy table can be like coming back to touch base in a baseball diamond, or coming to a holy pause in church each week. This is how I feel when I go to sit on the beach at the ocean. There is something that hasn’t changed though I’ve been bouncing around or getting tossed around like the branches of a tree in hurricane season. There is an anchor for the soul.  

I remember the palm trees in the D.R. when I walked there with Frank. He was fighting for his life, his head full of brain tumors and I was blinking back tears. “Oh God, how much longer do we have together?”

We had walked on so many beaches together over the years. I’d known him 34 years since we started dating when I was sixteen. We had traveled in so many places. Cities, towns, school, jobs, having babies, celebrating birthdays and holidays and vacations and…   marking every milestone with a dinner or a party.

Now this?

The wind blows and the palms somehow cling to the sand.

Soft, white, movable sand! How do they do it?

I looked again as we walked and suddenly my eyes were opened. Look at the angle of these palm trees! They lean way out over the water and then suddenly turn at a sharp right angle and grow straight up into the air! What force of nature could make a tree bend in the middle like an elbow and then continue on its path toward the light?

Maybe these trees actually began to topple when they were younger and weaker. Maybe they were ready to be uprooted and let go of their feeble grasp, but the storms subsided and the waves were quieted.

SOMEHOW they hung on and made it through the terrible season!

More winds blew and more sand covered up their naked roots. And so it seems, some storms nearly crush and destroy while others give us just what we need to endure.

Muscles are strengthened in my life too. Faith muscles. A will to keep going.

If meager stems of pulp and palm can do it, so can we.

I will cling to my God. I will trust him no matter what comes my way. Even now, as realtors are walking through my rental, I can turn and face the light once more.

All of us are quiet now, our minds busily scratching out new thoughts. We are digging. Reflecting. Grappling with issues. Feeling so much. Though it’s hard at first, once engaged, we begin to make connections here. Like roots entwining sandy places, Lord, help us find our strength in You.

Dear God, thank you for enabling us to reap and thrive. Thank you for elbow moments of turning after a storm and finding strength to survive. May we persevere, clinging to the hope we profess in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

 

 

 

God of the Monarch Butterflies

I am perched high atop a leather cushioned bar stool with an Italia sports cap on my head, facing South Main Street in Worcester’s inter-cultural neighborhood. Gray skies have been sporadically bursting out with heavy rains and then quieting down to a spitting and now it is dry again.

A stream of men on bicycles and pedestrians join the constant colorful stream of traffic. The big blue WRTA buses whir past intermingled with pickup trucks and women with hats pulled down. It’s raw and muggy on this late August evening.

Here at the Straight Up Café a warm Christian coffee house has emerged in what used to be a bread bakery to waft its unique flavors in this ethnic urban neighborhood. Now a big white and yellow smiley face has been painted on the glass and shelves full of an assortment of colorful team sport caps and books line the walls. This space has been transformed from baking and serving bread to celebrating and serving the Maker and the bread of life!

I wish I could say I can smell or even taste the coffee but the shop is technically closed for the day. The pots are rinsed, the carpets are being vacuumed, and all the food is stowed for another day.

At the big oak table with me sit the diverse members of my writers group, everyone writing eagerly. It’s only been ten minutes but our minds have taken off into a host of dreams and impulses that only God knows.

Writing can be like dreaming. You travel wherever your mind can take you. Past, present, or future, it is a limitless journey that costs you nothing. A clean page is a fresh start as much as any white canvas to an artist! You take your pen to paper or open a clean page on the laptop and take to flight as an eagle begins her journey.
 

The other day I heard about the amazing migration of the monarch butterflies. That something so small its brain would be dwarfed by my tiniest toe nail is able to lift its fragile wings and make a journey from here to Mexico and back is unbelievable!

I am speechless to imagine it. I couldn’t find my way to Mexico without a host of maps and signs and a working GPS! HOW on earth do these little INSECTS manage?

Certainly if a butterfly can make such a journey in God’s will and purpose for its miniscule yet incredibly far-reaching life, certainly I can find my way to where I have to go as I depend on Him. I will not fear the journey ahead. No matter where it leads me, this great God of creation has sworn to provide all I need.  

Not to worry that I just heard yesterday that the house I’m living in is going to be sold. Not to worry that I don’t know where I’ll go or how I’ll pay the rent. God knows.  

The God of the monarch butterflies will lead me all the way. 

Pens down!

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After writing for fifteen minutes, we took turns reading our individual segments in the class—always an enlightening experience. This little exercise exposed a rainbow of unique perspectives and views since we all sat facing different directions around our big oak table as we wrote.

In this particular class however, it was Penny who described a clown on the stage behind me twisting balloon animals the whole time! Isn’t that spectacular? I knew this girl was a trained clown visiting the café, but the entire time I sat facing the street and reflecting on what I could see from that vantage point. I had no idea what was going on right behind my back!   

Though it’s hilarious to imagine a clown behind you making balloon animals, isn’t that a beautiful lesson for life? How much do we miss all around us every day and how much more can we benefit by sharing our varying views and experiences?  

Not only does pausing to write reflectively open you up to the world around you, but by listening to one another’s voices, we open up to experience whole new avenues and perspectives we would miss if we stayed on our own path and journeyed alone.