Still

It's been unseasonably warm in the Salt Lake Valley this season, winter has made a few attempts at showing up, but has mostly failed.  Fall lasted through the holidays and now it seems as though Spring is engaged in a relentless pursuit of the Intermountain West.  Last year Joe and I shoveled our driveway nearly everyday, it was glorious and rugged and somehow romantic. This year the snow shovel has been poised many times ready to perform, not unlike the abandoned and swiftly replaced mop in the Swiffer commercial, 'Baby Come Back' blaring in the background.  I have given up on Winter and am fully embracing the warm temperatures, in my proverbial book, Winter has lost, I am done, bring on Spring. 

So in my full embrace of Spring and simultaneous denial, that Winter could rear its ugly head any hour now, I basked today.  Maybe not a full on sixty degree, limb baring bask, but a bask nevertheless.  As the sun shone on my face, dog romping, children running, skating, biking and basking--I was still.  It seems that stillness has eluded me recently, my mind is ever churning, desperately praying, constantly wondering what is around the next dimly lit bend.  As I sat next to Maddox on our stoop, sun warming our bodies I glanced down at his shoes. Horrified and slightly embarrassed by their tattered state I said, "Maddox those shoes need to be thrown away, they're disgusting." His nine-year-old head nuzzled into my shoulder he said, "No Mom, they are apart of me, I got them at Easter, I can never get rid of them"

You see last year our church community had a magnificent Easter celebration, we ate amazing food sans utensils, drank wine, rented a bouncy house for the kids--it was amazing.  As a part of recognizing the miracle that is Easter Missio Dei (our church) partnered up with Toms shoes--all of the kids got a pair of Toms to decorate and keep.  For Maddox those shoes represent more than just something to cover his feet.  He associates them with Jesus, they truly are apart of him.

As I looked at his feet almost busting through the toes, the fabric frayed, color faded my mind wandered back over the past several months since Easter.  Where we were, where we are, recalling my recent feelings that God is somehow absent most days as I scramble through the motions of life like a spastic child.  Praying that an angel would descend from On High giving me the inside scoop to God's plan for me.  Watching as Joe's body as it continually betrays his mind and heart, stumbling to be a mom of four boys and not screw it up.  In that moment I became those shoes--they represented for me how my soul often feels--destroyed by this world, torn by broken relationships, aching to be back in a moment when life didn't feel so damn hard.  But just as those shoes are apart of Maddox, something he cannot fathom ever being without, maybe that is how Jesus feels about me--that even though I am wrecked by this world I am still apart of Him, someone who is cherished regardless of my scars, pain and sin. 

 I basked.