One

cake, cooling. little hands helping and this mama grouches, snaps that it's not help.

the phone call, unexpected playdate: why not? it would help to get little feet running and out from under.
she didn't show up.
my heart turns toward bitter and i mutter my perceived worth-less.
how did she forget so soon? how could she plan, then fail?

it's littlest one's birthday. zesty cake waits for siblings and cousins to share, and i foresee smoky birthday song and frosting mustaches and torn bits of paper, surprise beneath. my heart is full for the want to share, invite the whole world to such an occasion! but there is no one who knows. who knows his expressions, his demanding for attention, his belly grabbing laugh? that his existence matters so much and our world wouldn't be the same without him?

we've felt stood up before. we've felt unknown, forgotten. two years in newish place has not yet yielded depth and intimacy.

but He knows today. He knit fibrous muscle and skeleton and soul into my not-so-tiny babe, long before i got the pleasure of meeting him one year ago today. He has not forgotten us, despite our oft-forgetting Him.

thank you, Father, for GOOD GIFTS: for my avery turning one today, and for husband and big brother love. even for lime cake and the best aunt in the world to love on my boys. and above all, for a love that draws me in.

Building for the next generation

my beautiful soul-sister and i cling to each other and this truth: that we choose to be different than our parents, and that we can have victory in Him. it is enough. she and i know the faults buried deep inside that are products of broken parents, and she found a verse as her own new family was forming:
After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, "Don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes." (Nehemiah 4:14)

the significance was that we are not defending or rebuilding the past; we are staking a claim on and protecting the future.
i grab his hands at night and wrap his arms around me, resting in his warmth and dormant strength. we face our children, sleeping loudly, sharing our nighttime space, the respite from trucks and cheerios and dora and "no," and we protect them, weaving prayer lines, staking our claim. it is enough.

i am doubling my entry for this week's ShoutLaughLove as well as tuesdays unwrapped!

come play!

Forgiveness: a conversation

talking to her about the weather
when i really want to ask about Our Winter,
the time when life was untilled &
the future felt infertile.
ask her about the past &
how it wore her down, if at all
but we talk about her garden &
her health, the kids she doesn't know.
she mentioned weakness a luxury
& i secretly disagreed
but didnt' want to rock the boat
so i feigned agreement, "mmmm."
we didn't mention him
or Him
& i know we fear talking both.
how do we move past work & play
to Truth?
how do we move, if at all?
i'm weak, broken,
& it's not luxurious-
it's the weight of the world &
the cross,
today i carry it,
& pray.

The inner circle

If God has called you to be really like Jesus, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put upon you such demands of obedience, that you will not be able to follow other people, or measure yourself by other Christians....but if you absolutely sell yourself to be His love slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and bestow upon you many blessings which come only to those who are in the inner circle....Now, when you are so possessed with the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.

the above is an excerpt i transcribed in my journal years ago, but with no note of who wrote it. i came across it again today, and i'm struck by the resemblance i have with my three year old. he loves to boss and order and manipulate his younger brother, and the futility angers him. so am i towards my own life, like a three year old bossing a two year old in the face of a jealous God. my efforts to control my life give glory to myself, but i'd rather be like Jesus. i want to be pleased that he asks impossible things of me like ruthless trust and the bravery of loving my neighbors when it's easier to love myself than those who've hurt me. this post has had me thinking all week about forgiveness, and as i wrote in the comments section there, i pray that i will be small enough to let him be big enough. i pray that i live my life as if i belong in the inner circle.

Resilient pewter

i read madeleine l'engle's a ring of endless light when i was in middle school. a girl spends a summer swimming with dolphins, and upon her first touch of one, she refers to its skin as "resilient pewter." the phrase has always remained with me, because unlike her uncle (or some such) in the book, i was less keen on the phrase. it was too much an oxymoron, and i, a 13-year old dolphin-expert (ha!), simply didn't agree.

the phrase lingers in my mind, as does its matching title.

he wears a tungsten ring, with pewter's dark hue - none of the dullness and all the ring of light.

the ring is heavy and large. so is his love for this family. he made us into one, accepting all of my baggage and past and insecurities, and he has co-created three, some resemble, one does not except in spirit, and he loves us so full. he leaves us, for work, and the hole is heavy and large.

our love has to be resilient. we weather the mundane, but often peppered with impatience and irritation instead of calm and grace. we resolve long distances, but "i need your help" can sound more selfish than "i love you with all of me, and it rips me wide open when you leave me." the dependency can wear on him even as i'm wearing three boys and wishing the thrill in my heart were louder than the din of all this crazy-love, just the sound of his voice at the end of a tired day.

our love has to be strong but supple. we bend as reeds under the weight of grace, for we've worn out our welcome on resentment and pride and self-sufficiency.

our hands lock, my thin glints shiny-white next to his dark slash, our hard metals melding into one, like flesh, like soul-meeting.

i'm joining, once again, ann's marriage series for the month of june. stop by the rest of the community and say hi!

philadelphia story, sort of

my sweet and lovely friend suzannah is hosting a new carnival that i just am too excited to participate in. it's called shoutlaughlove and is a place to share the things that inspire us in our life journeys.
i cherish the many faces of love. i love my husband's embrace and his steady hands and his tireless heart. i love my sisters' infinite acceptance. i love my sons' grubby hands that offer simple gifts and the mystery in which they still view the world and inspire me. i also love the phileo that i share with one of my closest friends, and i cannot imagine journeying without her. despite many miles separating us, i feel closer to her now than ever. she knows most of my faults and she has never once turned me away. she knows what makes me tick, and she encourages me when i'm out of sorts, she makes me laugh, and she inspires me with her creativity and her desire to not just order a house and raise girls, but to make a home and shepherd her children's hearts. we share our weight-loss struggles endeavors, our parenting ups and downs, and our faithwalks. i love her and i pray everyone has a friend as precious and necessary in their lives as she is to me.
to read what inspires others, check out suzannah's shoutlaughlove and join the community!

Beginning to count

i coyly give him his gift two nights ago; he, with little-boy joy, claps and smiles and embraces with big-boy arms. he is the best daddy for our family, truly a man who loves his calling as father, and i love him so much.

- tickets to see FC dallas and inter milan
-for a husband who was meant to be a daddy
-for three little boys to make us both parents in grace


he'll be gone all week, so we will hide our missing him in being out of the house more than usual and visit fun places.
today we fed ducks with the muffins meant for this morning's breakfast, only i forgot to mix in the sugar and they were slightly inedible!

- for laughter at self
- and little boy giggles at mama's yucky face
- for ducks and turtles to eat carrot muffins sans sucre
- for the adjacent park and little boy sweat running down, faces all hot and red
- and the sleep that results soon after lunch and quiet
- the majesty of a heron, it quieted my soul, and i even got the oldest to stop clod-hopping for a moment so we could draw near

-for a phone call with my mom, as we figure things out.

to share as others count their way, join the gratitude community at holy experience.

Dreaming in a foreign language

one of my best friends from high school moved to our rural town the middle of freshman year, and she spoke almost no english. her father's company moved her family from puerto rico to the middle-of-nowhere, tn, and she stuck out like a proverbial sore thumb. my sister and i couldn't imagine anything more exciting and exotic (except maybe to be an international exchange student) so we introduced ourselves--with lots of gestures and lots of giggles, and the three of us formed a tight unit.


beth and i probably pestered poor gilia to death asking her to say such inane things as lizard, 'you killed my brother you dirty rat.' and best friend. we, in turn, offered {too} much english assistance, and by the end of the year, sleepovers were as common to us as being living dictionaries.


i knew upon entering college that i'd continue my spanish, and i became quite good; i even had a trace of gilia's accent that amused my profesoras.


but i've never had a dream in spanish.


after freshman year of college i went on my very first short-term mission trip to romania. while i was there, i found it puzzling that i constantly had this expectation that signs and words would jump out at me and make themselves known. it didn't matter that the words still looked like gibberish, i just kept thinking if i stared hard enough or passed them often enough, that they'd make sense to my english brain.



this morning i met with my counselor, and we discussed reconciliation-specifically with my mom-and what that might look like in a safe way. she said she wanted me to have peace to be able to talk to my mom, or contentment in being emotionally safe and strong. i mused that the mere idea of "peace" seemed like living in a foreign country, and being surrounded by strange sounds, unfamiliar sights, and constantly being amazed. she agreed the analogy was a good one, but also gently reminded that if one lives in a place long enough, acculturation and language acquisition happen naturally. she went on to suggest that one can even begin to dream in the foreign tongue, so inherent does it become.


i want to dream in peace, don't you?

the beauty of storytelling

i have absolutely no idea how i ever stumbled onto elora's blog, but i immediately loved her, and it. first of all, she has great taste in books, and if that's not enough to make me swoon, she has a heart for africa and beautiful, simple ideas on simplicity and hope and the fact that "love wins."
elora happens to be in africa with a team of students right now, and she's asked several of her friends to guest post on her blog while she's gone. how i got to join the ranks, i'm not sure, but i was delighted and scared to death to write on her theme of story.
so please, won't you visit with me at elora's lovely space, and while you're there read some of the previous guest posts as well; they're all worth the read!

And yet

sometimes i stare at him as if i don't know him, and the gaze lingers inside. we're just on this side of five years and still young enough to be considered new at all this, and yet we have 3 little boys and life has stretched along with the belly and it seems forever since the sparkle was fresh and the talks lasted a million years into the night.

sometimes i fear he stares at me, unknowing who this softer, rounder, grayer version of me is, this one who has struggled with motherhood and how to be a wife, the balance undoing.

i'm reminded of meg's words, "you'll be making this harder than normal, and marriage even on its best day is still hard," and i think i know what she means.

we never had a married season of just two, of knowing and finding and beginnings. our two started out as three, and we were learning labor techniques and registering for baby goods just months after opening our bridal registry gifts.

and yet.

there is a knowing between him and me. we've known grace, and we've known forgiveness from a God as big as the cosmos, and we've seen love made three times, all look so different and form us so differently and shape how we know each other. there have been adjustments with each babe: seasons of bedsharing turned roomsharing ; the bodysharing that touches me out from little hands and a tiredness that feels eternal; his long hours spent in travel with phone calls that turn into business transactions or temper flaring because i just want him home, with me.

we have an advantage, a would-be-curse turned into blessing. we had to be on the same team, never saw it otherwise. we didn't have the years that allowed us to be intimate, just two, but we had the months to figure out that if we weren't pitching for the same team and shared all the same goal-glories, we'd never make it work. He has been kind enough to show us through many failures and mistakes on our part, that our love for each other can sustain because His love is stamped indelibly in our hearts and to veer away would be to die.


a favorite quote by antione de st.-exupery: life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. our hearts' gaze is fixed upon the Only One who can succeed where we don't. this is the secret to making any marriage last.
please, read over at ann's and her walk with him wednesday series on marriage.

Summer meal

i've been meaning to participate in this weekly carnival and even though tuesday's almost done and kids are finally sleeping, i still want to remember a moment with my boys:
fresh, summer-sweet corn on the cob, butter and too much salt dripping down faces and oldest's delight in this new flavor. a creamed potato recipe i grew up eating, with those summer black eyed peas and yellow-milk ears, this was a summer meal remembered and prepared in love for my growing boys. and while babe eats only mashy things and middle blonde one eats nothing, oldest with the curls eats every last bite of kernel love.

to share or read more about quiet gifts, please visit chatting at the sky

On being torn by beauty and some links

it sounds pretty poetic, "i ache at such beauty." "it hurts to look at it." "it makes me melancholy, but in a good way." but the truth is, beauty hurts sometimes. ask any artist. ask me.
truth is beautiful.
grace is impossible.
these are the things that gut us, through and through.

i see beautiful blogs with words i wish i'd said and photos i wish i'd taken, or moments captured that sometimes i wish were mine, and beauty cuts deeply: am i worth that kind of love?

nails pushed deep into hewn wood and hands-an uglier sacrifice or a more mysteriously beautiful one can't be found. a crown on a king in a land that wouldn't have him, or hearts that refuse still-love that blinds with in-your-face-beauty.

many things have made me pause and think this week.
choosing to believe he wants to look at me like this.
praising him - i am a newish follower of megan, but her gorgeous photos and heart spread vulnerable and the praise in this post had me quiet and full.
counting the fish - ann's words always linger and uplift, but this post has me haunted.

you, my friend, are beautiful.

Grow

i wrote this piece as a creativity boot camp challenge word prompt, but wanted to actually feature it here and not just under my create page.

mama was a natural despite being as northern-bred and citified as they come. she made plenty of mistakes early on, like the time she put a whole cup of sugar in the greens instead of just a tablespoon. granny b sure cackled at that and my dad wore his bemused expression which looks an awful lot like his annoyed expression.

she'd never canned before, but after that garden with more corn and tomatoes than we knew what to do with (and more shucking than i'd ever hoped to do again), she had so many rows of red the color of july, all lined up neat, brass rims a smart salute to her success.

and flowers, too, responded to her touch. she weeded to forget the hour-long commute to work, and she watered to forget the politics of an office. river rocks lined the pathway, and her little pond bubbled and shimmered fleeting gold below. she had primroses she transplanted from meemee's kentucky farm, all the assorted annual color she could find, and a few haphazard succulents for humor. we never wondered at the love she had for that garden.

i didn't love the idea of gardening until i lived with meg--and even then i never really asked her to teach me what she knew. i always assumed there'd be plenty of time to learn by osmosis. she had a different love for the garden, one that reveled in the sheer work of it, of the hands dirty and shade hat pulled tight and low, and the lawn immaculate, not just to HOA standards but to her own.

she shared her garden with gale who lived next door, and they separated too-thick day lillies and let sweet william grow all over the place, and waited breathlessly for the don juans to scent the air. meg always wished the peonies on her side would do as well as gale's, and gale always wished her quince would produce any fruit at all.

she gave me the ficus tree she'd had for years before i knew her, a beloved weeping benjamin. i threw it in the trash heap outside last weekend, its branches dry and brittle from too many forgotten waterings and too many grubby fingers snapping twigs and pulling on roots. the tree had died on my watch. she used to hang the jesse tree ornaments for her boys growing up, and my ornaments are still wrapped away, waiting til the boys are old enough not to tear them up. there's no place to hang them now.

we've always rented, and so i've never really taken time to rake soil and sow tender shoots, but i dream. i dream of a garden that i can fill with edible bounty and find treasure for the three boys that have grown inside of me and are growing outside of me. i pore over burpee catalogs and wistfully sigh at the jackson and perkins roses, but i have no garden, and no one close by to teach me to till the land.

i haven't been to mama's house in seven years. i lived with meg for only three, but we talk weekly and she asks after my little seedlings, those boys of big feet and tall stature and loud laughs that mama has never known. and i wonder what kind of garden i will grow. who will teach me?

Broken

(the picture says, "God can heal a broken heart, but he has to have all the pieces.")

today i read a lovely post on brokenness from a newly found and favorited blog, and many of the comments including my own have been floating in my head. brokenness is a recurring theme here on my blog because it's a recurring theme in my life. in past circumstances, i've flailed at the idea of being broken, but really, it's the breaking that's so hard, because once i'm truly IN that place of painful exposure i realize that there was another who broke first. broke as high and wide as the sky and as far from the east to the west. broke so that the earth trembled, and His own blood poured free.

as i wrote in my comment,

"broken is bloody shards of glass and soul, and it is salve to let the poison out.

broken is healing, and broken is Grace.

broken is the forbidden fruit eaten, and a plan of salvation for adam's children.

there is a promise in broken in broken that outshines the hurts, the doubts, the fears, and the self-focus. there is love inside the broken because Love was broken."

it's easy to write about how wonderful and healing brokenness is, but i've also been where it is ugly and raw and i plead to just continue as i am. when a 2 year engagement ended in a day, the healing was long in coming, and i argued with God as my 3-year-old tantrums "no." but i know, now, well after the fact, that if it hadn't been for that kind of heartbreak, i would never have met my husband and been in a whole place to move forward in relationship, nor would i have had the courage to deal with my broken relationship with my parents. i hated every step of the way. sin, too, has a way of cutting deeply, and repentance is itself a kind of being torn, but without the love of our Father, we'd be undone. i am glad for the breaking that draws me close.

Many waters cannot quench love

we washed each other's feet at our wedding. water pours and love swells, a physical promise to love each other for always.

i remember a shower together, he laughingly insists i hog the hot streams, his hands wrapped in wonder around my already swelling belly. we begin to know the tickling sensation of those things that can wedge our distractions from another, those little flutter kicks that turn into nursing babe and toddling walker and finally brothers three. those little men who need their mama. the big man who needs his wife.
a woman can feel torn from all the needing.

a discussion with college girlfriend about the book A Severe Mercy, and how sacrificial love could be neatly tied into the phrase "a glass of water in the night."

a more recent discussion with a friend who has observed that staying at home with little ones and fighting her own selfish desires often looks like her husband helping her more than she helps him. yet we were created to be helpmeets, and long for that kind of love to come naturally and easily.

i love that my husband fits my soul so well, he knows me inside and out, woos me even as he rough-houses what our love made. i love that our Father saw fit to give us to each other, rib returning to rightful owner. we are imperfect. we journey on in our Story, but one truth to hold us fast: i am my Beloved's and he is Mine.

to join others in celebrating the spiritual practice of holy matrimony with ann @ holy experience, click the button below.

Reflection

breasts, once touched til my heart
was RAW-
please stop-
flimsy layer of lace no shield,
now sway, stretched with
nurturing
those little red lips
those closed eyes
small hands clutched close
how can i hate these breasts, still?

stomach, once held sucked in a constant POPULARITY
contest
now squishes out, having won 3 times
-MAMA-
but i had no mama to help me push these
little ones out
where was she, then,
and now?

no was meaningless.
hands felt helpless
now cradle sweet, sweaty palms.
voice left powerless
now sings lullabyes
and kisses boo-boos away.

old body, ragged cavern of hate
(don't look, don't want, don't touch)
new body, birth-scarred victorious
nursing love and milk
wombing body and soul
turned inside OUT.

(this was a response to a homework assignment my counselor asked me to do-to look in the mirror in my underclothes and make statements of affirmation. it was exceedingly hard to do, and painful. thank you for letting me share here)

Story

it has taken me years to believe, accept, and find relief in the fact that God had his hand on me from Beginning. he used to simply be something not unlike Santa, big, friendly, "up there," and desirable, but possibly not true. then he was a mysterious cloud to be feared, always on the verge of punishing me for sins committed and unknown. then in academic stagnancy, he was clock-maker, marionetter, distant and solid. but then, slowly, a ray of light shining in a storm cloud, he became Real. not quite the God-as-Father or Friend or Lover, but very, very real. so real i wanted to reach out and touch him. so real i feared i'd never touch him. he created me. he has broken me and molded me. he has Authored me.

i grew up for a while in a single-mom household, not much different from other single parent families, excepting the unavoidable fact of my being a triplet. compare and contrast was a fact of life growing up. we only went to church on easter and christmas, and then only when granny made our outfits (always matching, of course). we were poor, often without electricity and food, though i don't recall much of that. i remember eating blueberry doughnuts and riding the carousel. it wasn't til later that my mom confessed she'd bought day-old doughnuts for a quarter and that we went to the "shady" mall to ride the carousel free on thursdays.
then, she met a man and remarried. this was such a novelty for us girls: we were receiving attention from a father figure for the first time in our lives, and we were giddy with it. we were 7 when they married, and we went to church on a regular basis for the first time. we actually had to, because dad was a pastor, and in the early days he often filled in for various holy-ghost types. it was very new and very impressive to a young sponge, and i made a profession of faith. i was mostly scared of going to hell, but i also wanted to be good. i wanted to be loved. i wanted to be complete.
dad seemed to delight in his new brood, and gladly sat us on his knees and gifted us with goodies we'd never been privy to til then. soon, i smiled shyly and smugly at the whispered favoritism i received and was only mildly alarmed at the lingering hugs and kisses. mild alarm swiftly turned to inner dismay and guilty sadness as being tucked in turned to being touched and caressed in a way i knew was wrong. the touches and provocative words and threats lasted for years, and he preached all the while. i began to hate god, but i didn't know those strong words then.
i learned my sisters were also favorites, daddy's little girls. we told mama. nothing and everything changed. he never touched me again, and our family never talked about it again, but i felt a shell forming.
throughout high school i sought solace in grades and quiet perfectionism, fearing being singled out, but forcing myself to continue to be good, do good, seem good. because i wasn't, you see? i was dirty, and shameful and ashamed. i was wounded and bleeding on the inside and perfect and calm on the outside.
i made it to a small, prestigious private school and i feel my true story begins here. i met christian girlfriends for the first time, a sweetness of relationship i didn't even know existed beyond the bond i shared with my sisters. i attended my first ever bible study and remember my leader crying joy-tears when i asked her so shyly what 'grace' meant? i thought i was pursuing grace; little did i know it was pursuing me. i wrestled with faith for the first time, not ever having faced Doubt before (we were required to fulfill a religious component, and i didn't know at the time that it was going to bible-bash!).
and in all of this: quiet, sick-to-stomach anger. and i finally told.
flood.
i went home, asked them why we never talked about it again. why, if we girls were crazy hadn't we been seen by someone? why, if it was true did we never deal with it? why why why why why?
they told me i was crazy. that i had lied. that i had misunderstood. they tried to pit sister against sister. the anger balled but flatlined into unknowingness. i didn't know how to deal, and i was unequipped. i still talked, though, to a couple of counselors, band-aids.
i found relationship, my first boyfriend at 19, and we were pups, new and excited and it didn't last. i'm not sure i expected it to. i still didn't feel complete. my senior year i met another and he took my breath away. we danced and shared what wasn't ours to give and when that tore apart, i felt the ebb of pain pushing against my fragile-ly held barrier. i seeped.
anger has a way of breaking through the cracks and cracking itself wide. i know exactly how a bullet-pierced windshield must feel, spiderwebbing fissures running til there's no stopping them.
real counseling to help: stringent lidocaine to help me stop. breathe. tell. break. breathe. be. believe. hear. all truth.
i finally met him, and he loved me whole. we, too, awakened love before its time, and this time the hurt came from the Bride, who cut us off and faulted us for the beautiful life we created. tails tucked for a season, we nursed wounds and baby boy. this new life! and the Lover woos again. slowly, timidly, we crawl into lap and pray together and share fears/wants/hopes. we return to the fold.
three boys.
i mourn loss of my mom, no one to teach me to hold these little ones close. no one to show me how to love unconditionally. the fissures still stretch, and i lash out at my babes. i cry with them all too often and i breach that promise, unspoken always, to never harm my child.
my heart has been torn wide, and i have suffered long and i know a hope that burns fire and glory and sadness unlike any other. i know the despair of being broken, of breaking others. i know storytelling and storyletting and storymaking, because i am witness to, character in, and daughter of His story. my story.
new counselor, new tools, new sense of cautious, carefree love. i wrap arms wide around the men, big and little, in my life and i thank Him for writing us. i thank him for being bigger than and infinite. i thank him for loving me and using me and folding me under his wing.
story goes. it sears sometimes. it delights othertimes. it teaches and exhorts and testifies. it is I am.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
my story is one of Redemption. i was born in need of a savior. i have experienced the woundedness of sexual abuse. i have known premarital sex and its precarious hold on the heart. i know the kind of severed relationship that feels forever. i know unhealthy anger. but i also know sins forgiven. healing. evil-for-purpose. and a way of turning to Him, to glorify how much i'm not and how much he Is. i am still in professional counseling to aid me in my control of my anger and to find right and proper channels for it. i have been blessed with 3 beautiful little boys, and i am finding new ways to delight in them daily, as hard of work as they can be sometimes! if you have more questions for me, i'd welcome your email to mistygreen13 AT gmail DOT com.

Pause and privilege

i pause, "consider all the world thy hands have made."
i, just dust, can star-gaze and sea-wonder,
revel in my own ordinary and know that
i was made for this--
beyond this--
of this.
moments to breathe in, savor, hold in, exhale.
i, muddy soul, love-struck and faith-child,
swallow daily pride and try to remember
i was made for Him:
his pleasure,
his worship.
giving thanks in all things, i drink full moments of
stop-don't move-remember this scene
remember in stones and banners
how He paved the way,
i, ragamuffin beggar
wearing white linen Privilege.


grace to you today.

Muddy water

the quote referred to children acting out to get much-needed attention that was being withheld; it suggests that they'd rather have negative attention than none at all:

one will drink muddy water when he is dying of thirst.

oh, the times i've spent drinking at idol/idle fountains, drinking a stale water that is lifeless. much like that woman asking the wrong questions, wanting the right answers.

may i drink of the only water today, truly thirsty

o God, you are my God,

earnestly i seek you;

my soul thirsts for you,

my body longs for you,

in a dry and weary land

where there is no water.

i have seen you in the sanctuary

and beheld your power and glory.

because your love is better than life,

my lips will glorify you.

psalm 63:1-3