Changing Lanes... Part 1

I’m packing up this office…cubicle…this corporate hermitage…and I’m actually kind of sad. There are memories here and two years spent well and constant. This was a place of incubation where God showed me about hope, faith, trust, Sonship, discipline…and really many more things. I'm going to do this in parts. So part 1...

I’m passing through a year and a half of memories and find that many are woven to a man. It all really started with a pear. It sat on my desk for three days making me feel special. I doubt he realized how that small gift had made me feel but it had melted my heart. He excited me and terrified me at the same time. He was the sweetest, most tender heart and yet there were sides to him I didn’t know how to respond to. Looking back, I know now that it was the control that controlled me. I could not predict this one…make sure he was safe…put him in a box. He is to this moment, one of the most unpredictable and brave men I have ever known.

I spent many of those 18 months afraid to show this man my heart…afraid to reflect his own back to him. I was not ready. And that’s just all there is to it.

I can’t think of this man without thinking of how Jesus knit me closer to his own heart through that relationship. It was a hard little union but it was good. God started it and he worked in it and through it and used it for my good. For our good. That I do know. God opened that door and only he can shut it. And until he does, I’m just standing in the doorway, waiting. And I’m completely okay with that. I’ve never been more content and full of joy in my life.

No matter what, I am convinced that there is only good in store. My God is a good, loving, and kind Father. He works all things together for my good.

It's going to be great. No matter which way others may choose in life...I choose my Jesus, my Savior, my Abba, my Jehovah Jireh.

It doesn't matter to me which happy road my Elohim leads me down...the result of my choices and the choices of others around me... no matter which way... Each path leads to goodness. It is ALL good. :-)

Thank you, Papa!

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot

I miss Corot.

I fell in love with Jean when I was in college. Somewhere between 18 and 23 I met him on a cold rainy day. He was mysterious and brooding with a touch of whimsical and I was delighted by him. It amazed me how he could touch the darkest depths and brightest heights of my imagination with just one glance. He made me laugh, cry, sigh, wonder, dream, dally, determine, focus... He made me feel alive! And the creativity endlessly bloomed from my chest out the tips of my fingers...

When I was around Jean Corot, I could stay up all night looking through his eyes. I didn't like everything he said. In fact, there's a good chunk of his thoughts and impressions that I cared nothing about. Sometimes he talked about his life in the country or people he knew and I was transfixed, but othertimes he droned on in drab tones and blockish renderings that I could scarcely let him continue. Next subject please!

He usually could win me when he talked of trees. No one has ever talked about trees quite like Jean did, except perhaps J.R.R. Tolkien, but that's another verbal obeisance altogether.

I loved the way Jean would talk about trees.

He described the leaves with the utmost respect...the way the sun would shine through them in midday making them bright with color and glowing...in solemn shade...in the wispy ethereal dew of morning. He made the willow sound mostly optimistic as she attempted to stretch her hands into the sky and depicted the poplars as whispering socialites at a ball. I could almost hear their hushed voices.

The first time I really, REALLY saw Jean Corot, in person that is, was in Chicago. It was somewhere around my 4th year (the 2nd Junior year, that is). I remember not expecting to see him there. I was surrounded by all these well-known visionaries and he is so often overlooked. I turned a corner and saw him at the end of the room. I knew instantly it was him. The darkness, the light. All intermingled in a myriad of emotions, thoughts, and expressions on his face. For a moment, I could not breathe. I truly could not.

You know that feeling, I suppose. When you see someone you did not expect to see. Your true feelings come out, you know. If you expect to see them, you have time to think...time to prepare and line up all your thoughts and emotions. But when you're not expecting it...it can hit you like a gale and leave you breathless. You know in that moment not what your soul feels about that person, but how your heart truly feels.

I approached slowly. My eyes wide with surprise and delight, tears forming in the corners. I stood in front of him. It surprised me to feel warm tears, lilting slowly and sweetly over my cheeks. I just couldn't believe it was really HIM. The man who had so captured and spoke my heart over those short years. He had captured it to utter perfection...an exact likeness. And I was forever greatful.

I thought of all the times when he had known me, shown me myself. Gently and without even a hint of invasiveness...like tiny mirrors, reflecting a tiny piece here and there.

I wanted to reach out and touch him but there were guards positioned by the doorway and I know that it could also be his ruin. I rocked back on my heels and drank him in. Tears brimming, heart thankful. A tiny mirror.

Roller - written in 2008

I remember being so small that when I was strapped into rollercoasters as a child, I was never quite sure they would hold me in. I remember one particular time I rode one of those rides that is one giant circle. You climb into this metal bench, and a bar is clamped down over your lap. That's it. Nothing else. Then you climb into the air, looping upside down and doing a perpetual hamster wheel run. Sometimes, they pause you right at the top, so you are pretty much dangling...by that metal bar. That one time I was 6...a scrawny, lanky kid with limp, white blond hair that lay flat and soft on my bean shaped head. I was all limb and bone with no cares in the world. Until this day. The bar didn't even come down to my waist because I was riding with my cousin who was bigger than me.

It's amazing how I can remember being so small.

When we got to the top and every unhaltered loop, my hips would slam against that bar leaving a gaping current of air between my butt and the seat. I would feel my body sliding out of the seat, losing connection with the ride I was on and reaching to fall into air. And then we would careen down with gravity and I would slam back down onto the seat.

I thought I was going to die. But I didn't.

I didn't die.