For All That Is Not Yet Green
a short story on the coming of spring (and what I'm currently reading)
Thunderstorms woke us all up a bit early this morning. We all clanged and clamored for breakfast, grumbling when we came to the last of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch and settling for a mini bagel. I caught myself trying to put the carafe of hot coffee into the fridge. And despite rising early, we somehow managed to become late, scrambling at the last minute for backpacks and tossing butterscotch puddings into lunch boxes.
Time came and went for us to load up, but I couldn’t find one of our youngest boys. My bellowing was met by silence, so I went hunting and opened the door to his bedroom, only to find him looking up at me weepy with a book in his lap. I knelt down beside him, and he put his head on my shoulder, recalling through tears the story of a boy who got left out. My heart ached, both for the boy in the book and for my son. I remembered being his age and crying all the way through Harriet the Spy, hating the way she was so misunderstood. So I held him and he cried a little and we were just let ourselves be a little later than normal for school.
But on the way there, the clouds broke just long enough for the moody blue sky to reveal that the ground had become a little greener. It was as if overnight life had returned to the dormant earth. While we missed the clear blue sky of yesterday, we also thanked God for the way rain nourished the ground.
And silently, I thanked him for the tears and for the tending and prayed that one day we would see green in all the places that felt so brown.
What I’m Reading
Books seem to beckon me with an urgency as of late. All I want to do is curl up in my moody blue leather chair with a blanket and grab a book off the stack. But time is a luxury these days, and I spend many moments feeling behind or late. Maybe that’s why I want to read. I don’t think it’s escapism, not exactly. More like a stubborn resistance to what seems urgent and all that is prone to striving within me.
My current stack of books in process:
Hello, Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (a novel about love and the truths we carry within us…and basketball, which feels appropriate for March)
Sacred Thirst: Meeting God in the Desert of Our Longings by M. Craig Barnes (picked up from the library after a friend read it and texted me “this reminded me of you…”)
Start with Hello (And Other Simple Ways to Live as Neighbors) by
(reading alongside Human Together Book Club for the month of March)
I’d love to hear what you’re reading (or would like to be reading) in this in-between season.
I'm nearly done with Barbara Ueland's incredible book called "If you want to Write" and I cannot recommend it enough. So many excellent ideas in it for everyone, especially writers & creators.
This is really beautiful, friend. I'm reading Bittersweet by Susan Cain, The Evangelical Imagination by Karen Swallow Prior, and I just started How to Walk into a Room (of course). I also have How Far to the Promised Land checked out and I want to read it soon since I didn't get to it last month! :)