The Wanderer’s Return

The cherry trees behind our house may be old, but they are scattering yellow leaves like overeager flower girls before a wedding.

It isn’t time yet, I whisper.

But it is time. No matter what the calendar says, it is time. I know because I have seen this once before. On August first, we began our second year at Maplehurst, and this, yellow leaves on green grass, is the first return.

The first year is a surprise. The second is a return.

//

glories

//

She is eleven months going on all-grown-up, and I have unpacked some of her older sister’s clothes. Here is the white dress Lily wore in her one-year-old portrait. Here is the rainbow-striped sunhat she wore our first summer in our 48th Street condo.

We no longer live in that city, though it was the first place that ever felt like home to me.

My first baby girl is also lost (replaced by a nearly-ten-year-old whose legs look impossibly long in their roller skates). Of course, she returns in memory, she returns in the soft curve of her baby sister’s chin, and, who knows, maybe she’ll show up again when I unpack this dress for a grandbaby someday.

Nothing good is ever truly lost (which is another way of saying that all is being made new).

//

Today, I reread my journal. I remember the wandering years. Those drought years when the smoke of Florida wildfires was like a pillar of cloud. Back then, I wrote down the words of Zechariah.

Though I scatter them among the peoples, yet in distant lands they will remember me. They and their children will … return. I will bring them back.

Moving to this place one year ago felt like this return. Once again, we would know the rush of four seasons, the familiarity of a good friend’s face, the comforting rightness of the words this is my home. All this while watching another baby girl grow.

But return is not a one-time thing.

One year in, and I know that life with God is all about return. I am returned. And every day I am returning.

The prophet’s words tell the story of my life. Of my rescue. They also tell the story of the world:

Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence (Hosea 6:1-2).

We die so many deaths, but we are never lost. The son of God gives himself up but is returned to us on the third day. And every day this world is made new.

Something new!

If creation sings, then those are the words to her song. It is a song about birth. It is a song about coming home. It is the song of our God and our world.

I have seen these yellow cherry leaves before, yet I have never seen them before.

They have returned. They are new.

 

At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home.

Zephaniah 3:20

the road ahead

Because You Are My Best Birthday Gift

When I turned 29, I ate coconut cupcakes.

They were baked by my mother, in my kitchen, with my daughter. They were brought to my maternity ward hospital room by my pastor and his wife. That day I ate coconut cupcakes and introduced you to my dearest friends.

birthday cupcakes

Tomorrow, June 23, you and I will celebrate.

I made those same coconut cupcakes this week. I shared them with neighbors and sneaked more than a few myself after your bedtime, but, tomorrow, we won’t eat coconut cupcakes. We will share a dairy-free, wheat-free, nut-free birthday cake with Lego-shaped candles.

In the hospital, the day you were born, the nurse looked at the date on my admission bracelet and said, “Here is a son who will never forget his mother’s birthday.”

Tomorrow, I will probably remind you two or three times that it is also my birthday. But you are seven, and I do not mind all that much. Because you are the best birthday gift I have ever been given.

There is a story behind those words. A story to which I return every year on this day.

It is a story first of all about longing. I wanted a baby. I wanted a sibling for our daughter, but my body refused to cooperate. I had thought after our first experience, after the diagnosis and the referral to a good specialist, that the second time would be easy. We understood the problem, we would not wait to pursue the solution.

It was not easy.

It was so much harder. Because the drugs in which I had placed my faith did not work, it was also more hopeless.

Today, I am grateful for every month (months turning over into years) that I waited for you. Because of those months, the words of Job became my own: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” Now when I imagine, like all the parents in this world, every horrible thing that might happen, I am not afraid. I know that God can meet us in the pain and there is nothing else like that encounter.

But our hearts are not so easily untangled from fear. After the miracle of your conception, fears I didn’t even know I had twisted my thoughts. I felt as if I owed so much to God, and I became convinced there would be some price to pay. I became convinced there was something wrong with you.

Until that day. That day, six months along, when a stranger placed her hand on my shoulder and prayed for me. That day a river was unleashed and when I came up for air the fear was gone. I heard God’s own voice whisper: “This boy is a gift. A good and perfect gift. There is no price to pay.”

You’d think I would have known. Your due date was close enough to my own birthday. Why didn’t I guess?

Somehow, I never dreamed I would meet you for the first time on my birthday. God’s stories are so much better than the ones we imagine for ourselves.

Yes, you were born on my birthday. You were a good and perfect gift, given the day I turned 29.

Since that day, I have had reason to be afraid. So have you. I have given you food with my own hand and seen the fear in your eyes as your throat begins to swell. I have called 911 on your behalf too many times to count. I have seen how tiny you seem lying there on an emergency-room bed.

And yet I have never questioned those whispered words.

There is nothing wrong with you. Not really. You are, indeed, perfectly made. The worst thing can happen, but the Love who made you will take care of you. I pray always that you will be healed, but I know my prayers have been answered before I ever prayed them.

We have journeyed from coconut cupcakes to blue marshmallow cakes to gluten-free bakery cakes with Lego-shaped candles, and now I know these three things:

God is good.

There is no need to be afraid.

And this: our lives are stories, and these stories are written by Love.

happy birthday

This One Word: Return

foot prints ~52/4 'soothing repetition'

 

There is a river, and it has washed my slate clean.

New home. New baby. New friends. New church. New weather. The year is new, and my days are full of new things.

Strangely, not one bit of it feels new. These are déjà vu days, and everything in them feels familiar and comfortable. As if I have already worn deep grooves into this daily life.

My baby daughter looks exactly like her sister, my firstborn. Holding this baby, nine years disappear, and I am a new mother again. I sit in the same rocking chair, she wears the same pink dress, and I sometimes can’t tell who is in my arms, the first baby or the last.

I tuck her into the same blue pram, and we walk beneath maple trees on our way to meet the school bus. I remember this stroller cutting through the icy winds on Chicago’s sidewalks, and I think I must have always known, somewhere deep within, that I was headed to this good place.

It is simply too familiar. I am not surprised by any of it. Only grateful. Deeply grateful.

I once wrote that I was living the first half of this verse: “Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down … so I will watch over them to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 31:28).

Now I am living the second half.

My firstborn was a firecracker of a baby, and she broke me. In so many good and necessary ways, she broke me.

My fourth is like gentle rain in spring. One fierce and one gentle, they have both been good gifts.

There were years when all was uprooted. Now new things are growing. Both are necessary. Both are good.

I have been hearing this whisper for months, but now it is a shout: “Return! Return!”

I have said, “Yes, Lord, I am coming,” again and again I have said it until this moment, having just tipped over into this new year, I know I have arrived. I have returned.

And every day of this year, I will wake with one word in mind: return.

The poet T. S. Eliot says “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”

I have journeyed to my own beginning, and there is no surprise in this. Haven’t I always felt most at home with the One who names himself Alpha and Omega?

He is my beginning, and he is my end, and I have come home. I have returned; I am, every day, returning.

 

“My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.”

Jeremiah 24:6-7

 

Pin It on Pinterest