this, too

Sometimes I blog to record the sweet details of daily life that slip from my memory each 24 hours.  Sometimes I blog because I think and build my understanding of the deep things in life through words- talking and writing.  And bless him, my husband cannot handle me verbally running through five drafts of my thoughts about every. little. thing. So sometimes I come here.

Tonight those two purposes intersect.  My heart is aching with the burden of- how do I put it?  The junk of life?  The just plain sad sin and its consequences that plague us all? The fact that yuck in the culture brings out not our best as believers, but more... yuck?  I found out news about a person I know- secret news, disappointing news, news that knocks me back a little.  And it's one of those things where the news is a rodent in my brain, scrambling around in my neurons, forcing me to pay attention to its nibbling and scratching.  But I can't talk to anyone about it, even though it's filling my head, because it's "of a confidential nature."

Plus there's a friend with a legal issue.  And another who is seeing a counselor for this thing in their past.  And a marriage- that covenant cord that ties two into one- that is fraying.  Which is ironic because I know someone else who is feeling the pain of a long season of desperate singleness.  And when I inventory the list I gotta be honest- I want to put my head down and have a good cry.  And I'm an introvert, a stay-at-home-mom; I don't even know that many people.  But you don't have to know many people to have a reason to taste tears, it turns out.

However.

Tonight I experienced redemption in a painful situation with which I am well aquainted: my own sin.  And it was not a result of my grueling efforts, or my own clever skills at sin-management.  There was no adherence to a 4-part acronym.  Instead, after a week of unbelievable selfishness where the smallest chore sent me to facebook to hide, and the wreck piled up around me, and the sound of my children's voices asking things of me made me want to yell and fume- and I did- after this week, I had a moment of grace.  My beautiful daughter was helping me in the kitchen.  We were unloading dishes, drying them as we put them away. The Rich Mullins song "Calling Out Your Name" came on Pandora. My four year old girl started swaying and spinning and twirling her dish towel around her.  My favorite part of the song came on, the warm lights of the kitchen glowed out the window into the night, and I sang along as she danced and twirled. And we laughed, and talked about how working together was making the job fun and fast.  And I lifted her into a hug as the song ended and held her there, for a moment.  It was all I had hated- my failures as a parent, housekeeper, person- disappearing under a flood of love and worship. And I kid you not, I felt God kick me in the pants, saying, "Get it? I love you. I've got this.  Don't miss how beautiful this is.  This is what is real." I didn't miss the moment because He wouldn't let me.  He was right there, in the music of Rich Mullins and a dish towel.

So I have the Rend Collective Pandora station playing now.  And when the deep sad things come to mind tonight, I am choosing to remember that God's got those things too.  And I don't know how- it's a mystery.  Tomorrow I'll clean and make pipe cleaner animals, and clean again, and probably cry at some point. But for now it's enough to sing along quietly to the words:

It is well with my soul.