The Good News: This is Only the Beginning
If you walked through my front door today, you would be greeted by three large green splotches. Two on the wall. One on the ceiling over your head. Actually, if you had walked through my front door two months ago, you would have seen the same green splotches.
We were testing paint colors. We even chose one. But in between the choosing and the painting, five-hundred little tasks, and maybe a dozen big tasks, elbowed their way in.
The thing about realizing a big dream is that you will always feel behind. Overwhelmed. In over your head. (Of course, feeling in over your head is generally a sure sign that you are right where you are supposed to be).
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We feel a lot of pressure on Saturday mornings. If not much happens on a Monday, well, no big deal, that’s just Monday. But Saturdays are the days for getting stuff done. Last Saturday, my husband, having just cleaned up all the breakfast dishes, started murmuring about the floor. Would now be a good time to pull out the steam mop?
Loving wife that I am, I shrieked and said, “No! Now would be a good time to get out the paint can!”
Here is one of those ironies about marriage, another of those little things that sound good in theory but mostly annoy in practice: he sees the crumbs and dirt, I see the unpainted walls and the absence of a fence around the garden. On paper this is a match made in heaven. In our house, someone always has their eye on the details and someone else on the big picture.
Unfortunately, the one who is bothered by the lack of a fence is the same one who is not very capable with power tools. But, we’ve learned a few things in our sixteen years of marriage and didn’t waste too much time before I pulled out the mop and he pulled out the paint can.
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When each Saturday (with its ever-growing list of to-dos) comes around, I often find myself repeating these words, “This is only the beginning.” These words remind me that I am exactly where I need to be. They remind me that something good is starting. They remind me that in God’s story, the best is always yet to come.
Though these words are specific to my life here in a new place, I find they are becoming much more than that.
I may be at the beginning of the work God has planned for me here at Maplehurst, but we are all of us at the beginning of things. This is as true for my baby daughter as it is for my older parents.
Our life on this planet is just the beginning. It is chapter one. Or better yet – only the prologue. It is where we begin to experience the work, play, rest, and worship we will enjoy forever.
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I think “the beginning” matters much more and much less than we typically imagine.
It matters more because the world we are experiencing now is not moving toward destruction. It is moving toward renewal.
It matters less because the petty annoyances, the illnesses, the losses, and even the tragedies we suffer are passing away. The sin and evil and general brokenness that leave us breathless with fear and anger? They have already been defeated. They are on the way out.
I’m afraid too many of us believe the wild poetry of the book of Revelation has not yet happened. That we are still waiting for that victory. But here is the Good News: it is finished. Revelation is simply the Cross from the point of view of heaven.
We don’t throw up our hands and say it will all be sorted out when Jesus comes back.
He already came.
He already sorted it out.
And there is nothing to stop us from sowing those kingdom seeds.
“He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.'”
Revelation 21: 5,6
These Farmhouse Bookshelves
Food is my love language.
Isn’t that one in the book? No? Well, I’m convinced food is my love language. I know my mother loved me because she sometimes surprised me during the after-dinner homework hour by sneaking into my bedroom with chocolate pudding. Yes, Mom, I still remember the chocolate pudding.
I show my kids love by feeding them.
Which has, on more than one occasion, resulted in a call to 911 and an epi-pen. Which just goes to show that love is complicated.
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Making something that is healthy, non-allergenic, and liked by all is my holy grail of cooking. Actually, it’s my holy grail of motherhood. But, like any epic quest, mine is marked by failure, disappointment, and only occasional victory. Like the knights of old, I am not giving up.
Books like these inspire me to get up and give it another try. Books like these remind me that food and its enjoyment are among the very greatest gifts of our creator.
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First, (for those whose taste buds have been set dancing by the photo above) is Tartine Bread
In addition to the cookbook, you will need a digital scale and a cast-iron combo cooker (though I think a dutch oven would also work). Then, simply follow directions. Robertson takes us step-by-step from making our sourdough starter through his basic country loaf and on to variations that include everything from pizza dough to English muffins.
I am generally something of a disaster in the kitchen, but this book makes me look like I know what I’m doing.
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Next, is a book I suspect many of you have read. It’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Do you like food? Do you like memoir? Then you will like this book. Kingsolver chronicles the year she and her family spent eating only locally grown foods, most of them foods they had grown or raised themselves. Kingsolver talks politics, global warming, and the state of American agriculture, but at the heart of this story is good food, family, and love.
This is a book about tomatoes. How we care for them. How we harvest them. How we spoon them out of jars in the middle of winter and remember warm, summer days. This is a book about bread. About what it does for our families when our homes smell of fresh-baked bread.
This is a book about celebration.
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Finally, a new-to-me book I admit I’ve only just begun. Two chapters in, and I’m smitten. It’s An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace
Adler is funny and wise. She begins with the simple act of boiling water, and I am now convinced that a big pot of bubbling, well-salted water is the start of all sorts of magic.
This is a book for those of us who love food but get bogged down in long, complicated recipes. It’s a book to make you believe that you, too, can create, not restaurant masterpieces, but the stuff of life. Good, nourishing food.
Which is, of course, the whole point.
God’s Love and an Old Green Sofa
I want my children to know that God’s love is as real as the cupcakes and green tea we shared on Monday afternoon. It’s as real as this house that shelters us from cold and frames our daily view of the sunset.
But this is actually a hard thing to believe, and my daughter goes straight for the crack in my story: what about the kids who have no cupcakes? What about the student my health teacher just told us about? The one with no money for a visit to the dentist? The one who is about to lose his house because his parents ran out of money to pay the owner?
And I can hear the real question whispering beneath our conversation: isn’t it a terrible thing to suppose God loves one child with a gift of cupcakes while another one is left to starve?
I’ve been listening to this firstborn of mine for years, and one word that always comes to mind is wisdom.
She reminds me that wisdom doesn’t necessarily know the answer, but she does ask good questions.
That is a good question, I tell her. I don’t know the answer.
All I really know are the stories that make up my own life. While I don’t believe in the God of Parking Spaces (in other words, a God who makes my life easier and more comfortable with special little favors), I do know that God loves in big ways and small.
Maybe God is loving you right now with cupcakes, I tell her. Maybe he is loving that other child with a bowl of rice from an aid worker.
One time, I tell her, God loved me with a sofa.
It was just over a year ago, and I had this farmhouse dream in mind. It was a dream about caring for an old house and a bit of land and welcoming lots of people around our table. In my mind, it looked like an antique sofa. The kind with a carved wood frame and pretty little legs. I don’t know why the dream looked that way to me, but it did.
But I was very sick that last winter in Florida. I spent every day in bed trying to breathe, trying to avoid the wicked, golden tree pollen wafting through the air.
Until the day, dear firstborn, when I couldn’t take your cabin-fever complaints, your boredom made manifest in bickering. I grabbed you and my inhaler and took off for some thrift-store therapy. I don’t think I ever felt so far away from my dream as I did then – struggling to breathe and desperate for escape. From pollen, from warm winters, from bickering children, from all of it.
We walked into the thrift store – headed for the twenty-five cent children’s books – and I saw it. My sofa. My farmhouse sofa.
But, we don’t have room for another couch, you said. You’re right, I said. We don’t have room in our Florida house, but I don’t think we’ll always be here. Dear God, tell me I won’t always be here. Desperate for breath. Dying to escape.
I bought that sofa. It sat in our Florida garage for a few weeks until I had enough faith to write the check. That’s when I googled upholsterers.
I chose the one with the coupon and the free in-person estimate. He loaded my sofa into his white van, and I went back to my sickbed. Not even a sofa in the garage to remind me of my dream.
Months went by, and there was no reason to think we’d be leaving Florida anytime soon. The sofa wasn’t ready when he said. Weeks went by, and I emailed. Soon! he wrote back. More weeks went by, and I emailed again. Very soon! he wrote.
I tried not to think about my farmhouse (but all I could think was where is it? And when will we go there?). I tried not to think about my sofa (but all I could think was where is it? And did I pick the right fabric?).
June 23. My birthday. 5 pm and there was a phone call. Your sofa is ready, and I’m in your neighborhood. Can I bring it by?
You and I, we don’t believe in the God of Parking Spaces. You and I, we can’t ever forget that starving child (which is as it should be).
But I know my own story, and I know God gave me a sofa for my thirty-fifth birthday.
Today, I am sitting at my desk in an old, old farmhouse. I can see my sofa from where I sit.
It was made for this house.
Which is as inconsequential as a parking space. And as miraculous as anything I know.
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