Family Night Takes Flight

by - September 15, 2010

The push of the days, they crash into one another. The busyness speeds minutes into hours, into seasons, and life spreads wing and fies. A new video game, a stop at two stores on the way home from work, homework in three progressions, and I hurriedly add the details of dinner. How much activity can be crammed into one evening, without the lid blowing off?

The plan was for the work to be done by 7pm to make way for family movie night: the fourth installment of Love Comes Softly. But life often happens to the best laid plans these days. It was 7:45 before we began, and after bedtime by the end. But how else will family time happen, if we don't just squeeze it in?

The demands and the desires press down hard against me and the clock mocks me with its tick-tocking. The toilet overflows, and the man-child erupts, and the showered girl needs a towel, and a momma simply tries harder, runs faster to hold it all together.

The other day, we visited friends who had experienced a healing that just may have save his life. The wife sat quiet beside him, with the dog who thinks he's a lapdog taking up two. And Steve spilled forth his joy, and thanksgiving, and with humbled inability to put words to any more, he spilled the rest from his eyes. As we listened, I watched a magnificent hummingbird through the picture window behind him. The petite gracefulness nothing short of a work of art. She perched on a branch for a while, then motionless hovering over the necter, then perched again quiet and effortless.

I think of the bird tonight. I have not hovered motionless and perched, effortless quiet. But I want to be the beautiful bird that sucks necter from life with the poise and elogance of ballet. Instead I am an ant, who scrurries helter skelter after the boot drops. Right up and over those who are closest - but in my way, the crazy madness of a mosh pit, biting, stinging in the flesh. The high-pitch is because I'm not breathing from my diaphram. And my chest aches and my ears ring, and my shoulders are a tight-rope. I speak too many words, unable to dam the floodgate. And I need Thee, O I need Thee. Every hour I need Thee.

While I mop up the contamination from the bathroom floor, I wonder how I will clean the contamination that overflowed my heart. And the words from Haggai that flowed into that heart only two days ago bite and sting my spirit now. Because the impure indeed defiles what is pure when it touches it. And I have presented my members as an instrument of unrighteousness, and sown discord, not peace. I have looked into the mirror and walked away and forgotten Who I am to look like.

God disinfects with mercy and grace. Forgiveness, too. And a new day dawning tomorrow. He lifts me up--I am not an ant trampled under foot. And He humbles me--neither am I the hummingbird, beak dripping stolen sweetness. The bird God watches is the sparrow.

And I sing because I'm happy and I know he watches me.




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2 comments

  1. I sing the sparrow song to myself a lot! You're not just "Dawn"...you are always "Dawning" OK. ...that's corny I guess! : ) ....Remember "I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." Jesus is making you all you should be. Thanks for sharing it with the rest of us who need to be disinfected as well!

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  2. I remember singing this with Gram and Gramp and the harmonies were like none other. The gift of music stirs us like as nothing else can. And oh how we need to need to be cleansed and then step out in that GLORIOUS light and Sing and proclaim to all the world that we are free and He watches over us.

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