The day is done

but in Many Ways it has just started.

I’m sitting down in that half way attire of the nighttime.

Pajama pants, shirt from the day, earrings off, feet tucked up under myself at the kitchen table.

Dishwasher humming, Ryder asleep on the threshold, the spiral notebooks with tomorrow’s school lists stacked to my left not quite ready for the students to do their work but I know they need to be before the pillow greets me.

I don’t know where I am supposed to be in life but I’ve got a decent handle on where I actually am.

The house is basically tidy and that certainly is enough.

The world wants to crash in, doesn’t it?

I was reminded tonight – there is a very real enemy.

And it’s not one another.  Not your spouse or your boss or your child or your mother-in-law.

This enemy is uglier and stronger and more devious and his intentions are always evil, all of the time.

Sometimes we feel left out and unprotected.  Fiery darts and dragon’s breath and no shield or rock to hunker down behind.

But that is never true.

 

Just as certain as there is tangible wicked and poisonous intentions, there is adequate shelter and a safe barricade.

I sat in a room so familiar tonight with people as close as my family and it wasn’t weird at all to talk about the sorrows and the heavy and the fear and the black and all the parts of all of that that long to take up residence inside my own weak heart and all of that that longs to track us all down and hold us under the water for just long enough to drown us and we sat in a room and we talked to the only being that offers any hope at all and we sang a song that was all the truth we can ever handle in this rise and fall what do we cling to life that every one of us is living whether we admit our precarious positions to ourselves or hide behind some version of us that is paper thin but much much prettier.

I need Thee every hour, most gracious Lord;
No tender voice like Thine can peace afford.

I need Thee, oh, I need Thee;
Every hour I need Thee;
Oh, bless me now, my Savior,
I come to Thee.

I need Thee every hour, stay Thou nearby;
Temptations lose their pow’r when Thou art nigh.

I need Thee every hour, in joy or pain;
Come quickly and abide, or life is vain.

I need Thee every hour; teach me Thy will;
And Thy rich promises in me fulfill.

I need Thee every hour, most Holy One;
Oh, make me Thine indeed, Thou blessed Son.

_______________________________