from January 29, 2014... a year ago...I remembered this in my sleep last night

this little one had a very fitful sleep

white breath on the dark window

watching 

snow 

(that has twice this winter cancelled university classes)

accumulate

flake by flake

grateful 

for the silent stillness 

perhaps it is what allowed God to hear 

my quiet desperate prayer

for at some point

morning broke

the doritos, the birthday cake the danny's italian hoagie and chinatown inn egg roll

no longer ravaged my body

and I heard

the voice of truth speak into my spirit

"I made you I know everything about you...I know everything in you..."

 "everything"

"that gush of love

 that just about pulls you

 to your knees

 as you look at your 

 beautiful grown children

 gathered and waiting

 around the dinner table...

 as sensually seductive as they where when they were just little...
 brown from sun and play

 their hair 

 their eyes 

 their skin 

 their smiles

 and how you knew them deep within
 and how you remember what they never will...

the way you want to wrap yourself around them tightly

hold them dearly
touch them gently 

swoop them up

and eat them 

because you love them so much more than so.....

...these that you call yours...they 'just' came through you

you had no idea how to 'create' them...

they grew

as I intended

for they are My making
they are Mine and you...are too"

in the same way that I know and love my little ones

I am known by God?!?!

perhaps in the exact same way I am thrilled by who I think of as 'my' children

I thrill Him

delight Him

maybe

He looks on me and I melt His heart....too

with love

my Lord, my God

You made me

fearfully and wonderfully

You formed me

Your eyes saw me

and You knew me 

before any of my days

You know when I sit

when I stand

when I am fitful upon my bed

You are familiar with my thoughts

and every word

and upon me is Your hand

I cannot escape You by night

or escape You by fleeing to that place by the sea where I long to dwell

my day dream 

my night dream 

my life long dream
                     Psalm 139

thirty years ago when I married

those words of David where sung at our wedding

and even yet

I still remember them and they sing inside my head
  

on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary

with my husband 

close beside me

I discovered myself in a place where my eyes rested upon this wonder of world and man

I had no preconceived conceptions about seeing yet another statue in Italy

I had not done my 'homework' 

studying up on all the art we were to see

I was a typical tourist...

moving in our little group

listening thru our little headsets 
to the drone of our tour guide providing information

about all the statues we were passing 

as we made our way 

to the final destination 

at the end of the long marble corridor of the Accademia delle Belle Arti

in an instant I saw him

a 17 foot tall marble statue

chiseled from a leftover block of 'scrap' marble abandoned by another artist decades earlier

time is suspended and space is transcended

and at some point I become conscious

that I am no longer standing with my group

I realize I no longer know where my husband is

I had broken line

left all parameters of normal decorum

I am overcome

I am mesmerized

I am weeping before hundreds

feeling very small and insignificant

and old

barely standing before something 

that has stood the test of time for over 500 years

created by someone 

when they were a mere 25 years of age

I was fifty years old
celebrating twenty five years of marriage 

and my entire life fell invisible around me 

at David's feet 

I have created nothing that will survive one year after I am gone

I have not accomplished anything to be spoken of a decade later

let alone something hundreds of thousands people flock to and wait in line to see 
over five centuries later

I am a daughter, a wife, a mother 

like miriads of women for millenniums before me

I felt alone in the middle of throngs of tourists
I felt small and insignificant

and yet

I felt like I alone

and only I knew

David 

and 

Michelangelo

and the God they served

the God David credited with the battle as being His...
the rock was all he held in his hand...

....It is seven years later
....it is a year later...
I am again in Italy
and I am still in the battle...militant...

and so I surrender to You oh Lord
and ask You to be my strength 
may this life that You have given me to live...that You created me for
accomplish what You will

chisel away all that needs to be knocked away
until what is left stands beautifully before only You

for centuries and beyond...
for all eternity....triumphant