happy little sigh

I dig my heals into the mattress, feel the sheets wrinkle up beneath my feet like an elephant’s skin as I push myself up to sitting. My legs are cold, so I tug at the quilt my grandmother made me–all polyester and purple and pink, though I have it flipped round so I can only see the back–and the white, nobbly chenille bedspread we bought at a market in Portugal.

I’m tempted to lie still, bask in the white light that’s pouring into my bedroom, let myself drift in and out of dreams. After all, silence is a thing that a mother learns not to waste. Silence is not a thing to waste, I remind myself, and so I reach for it–my black leather Bible–breathe in the sweet smell of the leather. Run my thumb across the gold lettering, faded from those years I read it every day. Those days I underlined verses, scribbled margin notes, added stickers–a shiny pink heart and an ice cream cone. Those days when silence and aloneness were not a foreign thing. Not like now.

And then I flip to the index, search for a phrase our pastor said. And I find it.

for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.   – Romans 8:26

And I read it, and I read it again, and I’ve read those words three dozen times before, but somehow this time they strike me. Stay with me through the day.

The day of noise, and being anything but alone–though I can feel alone in a house with no one else over the age of eight. My day of being followed by Mr. Waddlesworth, his arms lifted, his curly head tilted back, big Charlie Brown mouth wide open as he cries crocodile tears because he’d love to be picked up and carried the day long.

My day of struggling through the times tables with the Professor, and the difference between “puppies” and “puppy’s” and reminding him to be a little ray of sunshine and not a little black rain cloud.

My day of helping the General in and out of his daily costumes–felt super hero masks, and pirate belts, and cowboy hats, and asking him if he needs the potty, and then adding his wet clothes to the laundry basket when he’s been too busy saving the world to take a trip to the bathroom.

My day of crumbs and stickiness–on the worktops, on the highchair, on the walls, on the floor. Crumbs and stickiness that never stay away for long.

My day . . . and yet I found, that during those rare seconds of quiet–or at least a quiet thought–that my mind drifted to those words I’d read that morning. Drifted like it never does, and I felt wonder. Peace. Strength.

Because I knew that every time I let myself become aware of the presence of God, that He was there, also thinking of me,

caring for me,

loving me,

as He always does,

though I cannot see Him

and I do not know.

Though I forget He’s there,

and how He cares,

and hardly think of Him in my busy, noisy day,

He is there

on His knees

lifting me.

Though it’s easier at certain times than others to see the miraculous, the eternal, in the everyday, today JUST KNOW that whenever you think of Jesus, He is already right there, thinking of, praying for, loving you.

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