May 11, 2008

  • Happy Mother's Day!

    I am home with the three littlest.  They have yucky coughs .  It isn't slowing them down any.  They are up and playing.  I'm just praying they do not get ear infections.   

    Reading this touched my soul (tissue warning),

    "Sometimes I catch myself, this laying a hand on my flatness, over that still cavity, and feeling the pulse of ache’s echoing howl. A woman’s body and soul is hollowed out to create, to weave, to knit in the private spaces. And so the longings come, yearnings to fill, to carry, to deliver.

    I remember where I was when Husband looked into these seeking eyes and tenderly agreed, “It is true. The barren womb never is satisfied” (Prov. 30: 15-16). If only he really knew how it can scald...

    And yet, I have come to think, does the womb need a seed, an unfurling, embryonic soul? Can any soul fill the void? While not necessarily with child, perhaps we may be with abandoned, with elder, with needy. The barren and deserted may become the dwelling place, the fertile home, of souls seeking mother-care.

    “The barren has borne…” (1 Sam. 2:5).

    Hope-girl beside me, she brushes up against my arm, yogurt-dipped strawberry kissing her lips. She's laughing with her friends. How did that babe I once enveloped in watery womb, unfold into this long lissome dreamer? She grows and I lay fallow. And yet…

    We are hardly through home’s door when the phone rings, sister's voice again, her breathing now undetectable.

    “Already?” I glance up at the clock over the table.

    “She’s here.” Her voice is light, wearily happy. “We have four.” I shake my head at the wonder of those four sisters laughing and weaving old together.

    “Ana… after you.” My breath catches. Words scatter, leaving me stilled.

    “Ana Jordan… Jordan cried when we told her. Who knows? Jordan may never marry or have children. And there is always this little one to love.”

    The barren has borne. Both of us.

    And I realize: We never cease to be with child. Those of us who have birthed, and those of us who never have. We may make spaces within us for all of humanity, for their dreams, their stories, their hurts, their lives. Do we not, over the years, line our lives with the stretchmarks of love?

    The privilege of carrying a soul is always ours. We may choose to never let our wombs languish empty. Always we may open and welcome another person to find nourishment and comfort within the empty places we have made just for them.

    Somewhere under this night pinned up with stars, Ana Jordan sleeps near her mother’s face, her warm breath falling, her fists clenched tight. And we of empty uteruses still swell, making ourselves homes.

    It’s my last act on this Saturday before Mother’s Day. To fold a card and write a haiku of feelings for my own who loves and harbors yet:

    Silver-crowned mama
    Still you swell, full with child, an
    Always dwelling place.

    Lord, show me today how I can make space in my life to be a womb..."

    read the entire aricle here http://aholyexperience.com/2008/05/dwelling-places.html