Lean (Lake Michigan free write)

11pm

Cool sand runs through my fingers and fills the back pocket of my jeans as I recline on the beach.  My head rests on my son’s chest- he’s not afraid to get sand in his hair, but I’d rather not.

Instead I want to get this beauty, this night, into all of me. I breathe in deeply, open heart and open eyes and open hands.  The clouds break up in patches, and he announces every new star he sees.

“What would you change about this night, mom?” he asks, and I cannot think of even one thing. 

The temperature is perfect, the wind is steady enough to deter all bugs, the sound of the water is the sound I will try to hear again when I close my eyes on my bed and search for calm beauty.

I can’t breath deeply enough to get the beauty IN, but I drink in what I can, and I savor the promise. 

“We shalll get in,” I hear Lewis say.  

Eldon is Lorraine’s pillow while Marcus is mine.

The breeze blows the sand out of his curls as he sits up. So does she, and they face the water together. The wind and the sheer beauty of the night overpower all our conversation. He rests his head on her shoulder as she hugs her knees, and togehter they stare out at the dark water.. What thoughts are going through her mind? And his? She responds to his snuggles with sisterly affection and they watch the waves break, shoulder to shoulder, head resting on curly head. 

The thought comes unbidden:  this sister’s relationship with her brother will outlast her relationship with me on this earth (assuming the normal ordering of things.)

The thought takes my breath away, and drives me to prayer: that they will lean on each other for years to come. I pray for this thing, for an extension of this moment, and the leaning, into the future I will not see.

Behind them I feel the sand running fast through my fingers. 

Marcus offers to bury me, but I say no, son. Not yet.

I bury my own feet a little, and I ponder my Maker and theirs.

I’m not afraid. 

“Look around at how luck we are to be alive right now,” Eliza sings in my head, but I know it’s not luck.  It’s gift, it’s all grace, and it’s passing away. Yet it’s being remade even now: these kids, this beach, my flesh with its wrinkles and spots. “Don’t worry, you’ll get more,” says N.D. Wilson

The heavens declare the glory of God and the stars declare our smallness. The wind and the sand proclaim times of cool resfreshing, and of changes to come.

What would I change about this night?
Change itself, I might have said a few years ago. 

But I am learning to let go, to trust the Lord of the wind and the waves. 

I am learning to lean.

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"Every last material creature on this globe will come to an end. If God has the authority to invent sperm, to invent eggs, to invent DNA; if He has the authority to choose me out of a near infinite number of possible human combinations and call me into existence out of nothing; if He has the authority to choose my parents, my race, my birthplace, my height, my intelligence, the size of my tonsils; if He has the authority to design my teeth from scratch, then He has the authority to choose my end. God has the authority to shape a soul with His voice, bind it to matter, and send it into history. And He has the authority to sever my soul from my body and call it to another part of the stage. He has the authority to reuse the matter from my flesh in daffodils. I’m not worried. I’ll get more."

N.D. Wilson, Notes from a Tilt-A-Whirl