Witnessing the Impossible
I am sorry to have left off this blog for as long as I have, but I have been traveling, a journey for my heart. I've been up North-- that vague term that many of us in SoCal use for anything on the other side of the San Fernando Valley, it would seem-- visiting my granddaughter and her parents, and my flown-the-nest son. It is remarkable what solace living into these relationships can bring.
Holding my granddaughter, Lizzie, took me back to the time of holding her mother, who was even smaller at her daughter's age. The look of her is one thing: she the joining of rivers of life with their sources in Europe and China, now come to be in her. And whence the flow therefrom? Who would have thought THAT was possible? Probably not her forebears... Only her parents!
But beyond the singularities of her, she has every infant's impossibly small toes and fingers, feet and hands, lips, ears, and eyes. And her scent is impossibly sweet, her touch impossibly gentle, her weight impossibly light. How is it? How can it be? I am reminded of what Jesus says in Mark, that the other Synoptics preserve: "For humans it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."
Indeed, only in some divine sense was this bundle of impossibilities swaddled in my my arms possible at all. By the Grace of God, there she was!
A similar intuition overtook me during time with my now 21 y/o son. He's his own adult now, truly, and while we may be unaccustomed to viewing the growth and development of our children into adulthood with a corresponding sense of awe, I couldn't help myself. Yes, when he was as fresh into this world as Lizzie is, his features also inspired wonder in me and his mother. But so has his lurching progress since! So that now, to walk the mall with him, and share adult conversation, and to listen to him laugh at an outrageously puerile movie-- all locate him in his own path along this wondrous journey that is Life.
When I came home, I called my mother, who is making her final turns around the mountain, pointing herself toward the Sky, and living every day with the hope that it may well be her last before God lifts her to heaven. Her "activities of daily living" are few, yet her appreciation for what occurs for her in the course of them is great. So in her interactions with her caregivers, in her conversations with her husband, in her too brief phone calls with me (and I imagine, with her other children, and her grand- and great grandchildren), there is this thread of wonder, an awe of what each breath brings, a gratitude for the simplest things.
Nothing is or can be taken for granted in any of this. Not in Lizzie's seeming limitless possibilities, nor in my son's age-appropriate claiming of his own, nor in my mother's allowing whatever is possible simply to be for any given day. Who is to say what might happen next? Who is to know? What will be the turnings of the "winding paths" of each of these pilgrims?
Only God, for whom ALL is possible...
And what of me, here at this point in my own life's journey? I am far from infant, and from 21 y/o, and not yet of my mother's condition. Yet I take from each this lesson: An encouragement to maintain a sense of wonder with each day! To find in the marvel of this moment something awe-affirming. To seize from the confluence of impossibilities from which this time in my life has poured, a greater sense of what is possible than I sometimes feel.
Since with God, all things are possible, I do myself no service to say this or that is "impossible!" Lord, let Your infinite possibilities be in me-- and may I continue to be awed by what comes to be...
Blessings, each and all.
Holding my granddaughter, Lizzie, took me back to the time of holding her mother, who was even smaller at her daughter's age. The look of her is one thing: she the joining of rivers of life with their sources in Europe and China, now come to be in her. And whence the flow therefrom? Who would have thought THAT was possible? Probably not her forebears... Only her parents!
But beyond the singularities of her, she has every infant's impossibly small toes and fingers, feet and hands, lips, ears, and eyes. And her scent is impossibly sweet, her touch impossibly gentle, her weight impossibly light. How is it? How can it be? I am reminded of what Jesus says in Mark, that the other Synoptics preserve: "For humans it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."
Indeed, only in some divine sense was this bundle of impossibilities swaddled in my my arms possible at all. By the Grace of God, there she was!
A similar intuition overtook me during time with my now 21 y/o son. He's his own adult now, truly, and while we may be unaccustomed to viewing the growth and development of our children into adulthood with a corresponding sense of awe, I couldn't help myself. Yes, when he was as fresh into this world as Lizzie is, his features also inspired wonder in me and his mother. But so has his lurching progress since! So that now, to walk the mall with him, and share adult conversation, and to listen to him laugh at an outrageously puerile movie-- all locate him in his own path along this wondrous journey that is Life.
When I came home, I called my mother, who is making her final turns around the mountain, pointing herself toward the Sky, and living every day with the hope that it may well be her last before God lifts her to heaven. Her "activities of daily living" are few, yet her appreciation for what occurs for her in the course of them is great. So in her interactions with her caregivers, in her conversations with her husband, in her too brief phone calls with me (and I imagine, with her other children, and her grand- and great grandchildren), there is this thread of wonder, an awe of what each breath brings, a gratitude for the simplest things.
Nothing is or can be taken for granted in any of this. Not in Lizzie's seeming limitless possibilities, nor in my son's age-appropriate claiming of his own, nor in my mother's allowing whatever is possible simply to be for any given day. Who is to say what might happen next? Who is to know? What will be the turnings of the "winding paths" of each of these pilgrims?
Only God, for whom ALL is possible...
And what of me, here at this point in my own life's journey? I am far from infant, and from 21 y/o, and not yet of my mother's condition. Yet I take from each this lesson: An encouragement to maintain a sense of wonder with each day! To find in the marvel of this moment something awe-affirming. To seize from the confluence of impossibilities from which this time in my life has poured, a greater sense of what is possible than I sometimes feel.
Since with God, all things are possible, I do myself no service to say this or that is "impossible!" Lord, let Your infinite possibilities be in me-- and may I continue to be awed by what comes to be...
Blessings, each and all.
posted by TRXTR | 1:37 PM
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