i need words
as wide as sky
i need a language large as
this longing inside
and i need a voice
bigger than mine
and i need a song to sing you
that i've yet to find...
i need you
well i need you
i need you
oh i need you...
to be here now...
to be here now...
to hear me now
to hear me now...

david crowder

I told my students today that I love the weather today. It's cloudy and rainy and gloomy and it makes me think of lovely days spent in the library at my dear alma mater, tucked in at a desk with piles of books around me, my winter coat across the back of my seat, my ears crammed with plugs (the only way to avoid distraction-- surrounded by so many precious girls, I had to make myself unable to hear their happy chirping or I would be irresistibly drawn away from my studies). This weather, I told them, makes me feel smart.

They didn't buy it.

They said that it makes them feel sleepy.

I didn't tell them that it makes me feel sleepy, too.

:)

It also makes me sad-- but not because it's gloomy. I'm an artist-- we love gloom. Sorry if you're a sunny daisy artist-- I don't mean to stereotype, but there it is. No, it makes me sad because I find myself slipping farther and farther away from Ben and the months that were his. Right now I am still in the middle of months where I can say, "This time last year I was three months pregnant...." But in just a few months, these months will be no more. That type of connection to him.

But I'll always have the scar. I'm glad. I know, I'm weird.

But also... we've bought a house--I think I mentioned it? In just a few weeks we'll be movin g into it, and moving away from the only earthly home Ben ever lived in, even if his was matryoshka living... The front room is the front room, not "Ben's room."

But as always, I feel the Him of my heart drawing close, cleansing me all the time in a thousand ways. He is whispering to me that He is the center, He is the center. These things matter, but He matters most, and that as I draw Him over me like a warm blanket and as I breathe Him in like perfumed oxygen, He is pouring His life into me. And this deep ache? I offer it to Him daily-- it is not for nothing. And the song that wants to turn into a dirge when I'm not paying attention? He catches it at the minor key and my God, He harmonizes and it becomes something altogether else.

My God redeems.

My God redeems.

This mess is not beyond His touch. I am alive and He is here and this is not the end of the story, bless God.