We have twenty-nine windows and five doors in our home. I know the exact number because I counted them one night. The night a raccoon sauntered off into the woods after knocking the cat dish repeatedly into the backdoor at one in the morning. Jeff was out of town and I counted ready to tell him just how many entries there were for an intruder. A house with three sleeping boys and one wide awake mom. By the time he got home days later I was unafraid and grateful again that there is almost as much glass as there is drywall in this house.Thirty four ways to let the light in. Light that streams in from the back each morning as I fumble to fix coffee and bowls of cereal. The light that pierces through the row of tall pine trees out front to signal the end of another day. The only thing I will miss more than our backyard of clover and woods is the windows that surround me with light.
We are still in a season of wait. Our hands have become much busier. The purging of clutter turning into packing of things to save and store. Jeff is speaking at churches, sharing the heart and vision of Basque while wiggling boys sit too close to me in unfamiliar pews. Letters and thank you notes start each morning and Saturdays are filled with catching up with old friends. But the wait is still hemmed in with the knowledge that the unknowns out number the known.
I still feel my stomach go into knots when someone at the park or in the grocery store asks when we are going and what will we do for schooling for the boys. I still feel my mouth twist into a half-hearted smile as I answer that we are still not sure. I am sure in His provision and His timing. I am completely unsure of me handling it with grace or without some presence of fear heard in my voice as I reply. I am asked these same questions and many more by Luke and Levi. I answer the same but each time recounting all the things we were so unsure of when we moved to Culpeper. Letting them remind me of how each was answered. They were too young to ask questions then, to have fears, or see the messy process. But they have lived the answers through the years. This time we walk through it all together. Each time we talk I feel it shed light in their tender hearts and my aching one. Not a bright spotlight that reveals all. But a soft one that filters through. Strong enough to make it through a thick forest of trees and leaves and cast itself onto us. Strong enough to remind me that spotlights are rarely given when stepping out into the unknown. Strong enough to remind me that our job as their parents is not just to sit on the front stoop and watch the sun sink safely into the pines but to awake each morning trusting the God that raises it. Each day that is filled with family and friends who help cast that same light when fears spill out. That softly point out the lies that confuse and the truth that sets free. I hope you get to see His light filter through your circumstances this week.
