C is for...

C is not just for cookie (though I have chosen to have no less than 5 dozen to bake - and C is for that choice I have made despite a wonderful sign reminding me daily to "Just Say No...").

C is for the chaos and the circus life of boys. 
C is for the coffee, vital, and C is for the challenges of life that build up and blindside at times.
C, lately, is for cleaning and most especially control.  Control: I am weary of it, but feel almost as though I can't help myself.  If things are chaotic all around me, I can try to buckle down and control the piles of laundry, dishes, and tiny pieces of paper from my children's creative endeavours. 

C is for checking tasks off the endless lists.  I feel like cleaning and clear spaces can somehow remedy the tide that overwhelms me.  But all of those daily things - the laundry and dishes and paper and the endless lists - are just that: endless.  And I know this and yet, even as I type this, I am here to admit that it's not "almost as though" as I've just written above: I cannot help myself. 

Our two household words for December are Contentment and Compromise; it flowed over from a family meeting (this is a new and welcome initiative - a time where we can all sit around the table and talk shop and bring up concerns, discuss manners and how we can help one another and (ironically) make jokes about farts.  Admittedly, I don't make those jokes but I just have to laugh.  These are boys, in my house, after all).  But contentment and compromise - these were selfishly chosen from my own weary discussions and negotiations with my boys.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I realized that these words were equally meant (especially meant?) for me.

Compromise of my personal preferences.
Contentment in the flow. 
Contentment in the lack of flow. 

There's been so much lack of flow... on every level.  For a tangible and tellable example, I present this minor frustration as an allegory for larger issues: a lack of flow of words. 

For as long as I could write independently, I have written independently - intentionally for study or income, in journals, and even on tiny scraps of papers.  Words flowed.  I cannot claim that the sentences any had merit, but the words were a part of me and I couldn't stop the medium or the message.

And then there was (there is - even this entry has been such a challenge as though I am trying to open and use a jar of paint long dried out; I struggle even to gather the thoughts together to knit a simile which isn't a complete cliché) silence.

I have sat with it, feeling nothing for a while, save a certain resemblance of comfort with the knowledge that somehow this has been designed to be a season of silence.  A season that extends far beyond the spring, summer, fall (when did it even begin?) and, in spite of feeling a deep sorrow for my craft (I comfort myself in the words of others), I wait.

Then there's the lack of flow and a lack of contentment when A is for Anger and Anxiety, flowing up in ways I never expected and from situations that are far beyond my control.  These As made their appearance after a weekend of restoration at the end of November - and somehow that is how it happens in life as you come out of a furlough - and if there were places where this empath could be wounded, I was.  Each morning I battle the current, trying to shoulder my hope against the flow. 

I have been thinking a lot lately of B.

B is for broken.

In the midst of news that takes the breath away and relationships in pieces. 

Broken.

It's a refrain.

I hear it in two syllables even as I move things around the house.

Broke/en.

My son works on his haiku for Language Arts at the dining room table and simultaneously the cat breaks one of my ornaments.  Broken.  Two syllables.  And I think of how I am trying so hard to suspend judgement but then there's just something an optimist like me has to declare in order to be able to sleep at night: some things are just broken.

And I could focus on the broken because there's more ornaments to be found in shards and more hurts than lights on my Christmas tree.

The days are darker this close to the solstice and it has felt that way for me this season, in spite of knowing what I know and how I know it, the shadows of pain carve deep grooves in my thinking and the only way I can combat it is by calling it for what it is and then countering by choosing to seek out the joy.  It is truly a process of countering as it's counterintuitive; I just want to curl up around my wounds and the hurts I am carrying.  Choosing instead to plant my feet and face the next wave has been a test.  I falter.

I reflected this week on the fact that of the fruit of the Spirit, faithfulness is by far the hardest.  Don't get me wrong, I wrestle long and hard with self-control and imagine I have and do and will continually need divine intervention to even begin to show any progress in that department.  Undeniably, every fruit is a supernatural gift that I couldn't ever obtain on my own.  But faithfulness: this is the stuff of perseverance.  It's the medium of making the choice that is the hardest when the easiest is available within your reach and it's the medium of picking yourself up and learning from the mistakes that you made when you took the easy route.  It's the semi-colon when you want to put a period. 

Faithfulness in action: being a joy seeker and taking it on as a part of my daily objective.  Looking for joy when it seems impossible - and maybe it is impossible from looking at it from this perspective - to even catch a glimmer of it. 

Sometimes the joy finds me. 

Joy in embracing the silence in the midst of all of the noise and demands; practicing the art of breathing (when times get tough, you have to go back to the basics) these have been the bricks of the wall I have been building amidst all of the regular actions of keeping on keeping on.  And the mortar between the bricks are tiny pieces of paper - the only words that have come of late to be written- prayers, that I have folded carefully and pushed in the cracks - my very own wailing wall for the ones whose lives touch my own.   

There are times like this that I long for Home and for when all will be made whole again.  Home: it's no small thing.

It's no small thing, the encouraging message from a friend who took the time. 
It's no small thing, when I stumble over beauty in the midst of my mess and I am filled with wonder.

It's no small thing to hear small ones belt out "Thank You God for Baby Jesus!" at a Christmas concert... a kindergarten performance can have healing powers. 

Jesus coming in the middle of the broken.  It's no small thing. 

The small things that don't seem to be ever meant to be anything more than small things.  The tiny light of hope that I'm tending.  It's no small thing.  And so even though I see the broken, and I am the broken, I am choosing to change the two syllables I hear as I battle for joy.

I have changed it to Thank You.

It's an effort, this Thank You.

It doesn't come naturally.  Gratefulness is not a natural reaction of the heart which is overwhelmed, of the heart which has been broken.

It's no small thing to rename, refocus, renew in the midst of it all.  It's no small thing to be intentional and to really experience a moment. It's no small thing to discover joy.

I had a moment like of deep intentionality recently.  I really heard the lyrics of a song - really heard them - and it has been an echoed refrain in my heart since then:

You are holy
You are righteous
You are one of the redeemed
Set apart, a brand new heart
You are free indeed

It's no small thing to be reminded who you are.  

It's no small thing to be reminded who God is.

And that is what I would like to recognize in the midst of all of this: I may try to logically draw my own conclusions about the challenges and every other C that comes to mind, but this chapter hasn't been finished yet.  Learning how to faithfully wait for a conclusion, knowing that the ending will be immeasurably more amazing than I could possibly begin to imagine, shifts my perspective entirely.   

I'm not sure where you're at this intense time of the year.  Even in spite of all of what I've processed as I've written, I'm not sure even where I'm at; but for all of the C words that keep on running through my mind, I am writing this for my heart:

C is for Contentment
C is for Compromise
C is for Change
C is for Choosing Joy,
             Choosing to keep the faith,
             Choosing be thankful. 
C is for Conclusions based in truth and wholeness
and, most importantly, I gently remind myself:
C is for Christmas, when love came down, the best beginning to the greatest grace.