The Good Week

You know those weeks of runny noses, runny eyes, mamas?  The ones when you dream about tissues and coughs and disappearance of purplish circles under the eyes?  They are the good weeks too. 

This week, this long tired week draws to a close and it has been a good week, but a hard week, full of deep and loving words and "I love you too, Mama"s, and "Won't you read me a chapter of Betsy-Tacy, Mama?" and a ten month old laying her head on my shoulder and learning to wave and say "Hiiiiiii."  Of chickens clustering around my boots, and me feeling cute with pigtails and hat, picking up a chicken to snap a quick silly hen-n-selfie and looking down to discover she has left a white trail of goo down my jacket and jeans in protest at her meal interruption.  And I laugh and plop her back down to join her sisters pecking frantically, where she wanted to be all along. 

A week of "where's that thermometer?" and "when will the bedroom be fully painted and put back together?" and quiet conversation of a morning with my sister Tsennibah who stopped by and ended up painting a tedious section of blue while I brushed blue over the base moulding.  Of squeals of children's laughter from the other room as that same friend comes back by with her five blessings and we make piles of pizza, mixing, kneading, stretching (and the dough makes me think of how we both have been stretched thin, even have holes but are pressed back together by our Maker) and baking all while laughing and talking and making special memories - together. 

A week of wondering where the sweet three year old is and her five year old brother and whether they've had enough to eat and whether they are bored or happy or cold or smiling or lonely or loved and having to answer my four year old who cries when she has a fever because she knows it means her Alma won't be able to come yet and my heart cries too but also rejoices at the tenderness and love in this darling with the dark circles under her eyes and this is the fasting that God desires and His healing will quickly appear and the glory of the LORD will be our rear guard.  He will go ahead of us as a pillar of fire and behind us as a cloud, hemming us in behind and before and we are not alone.

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: 
to loose the chains of injustice 
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry 
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Isaiah 58:3-8