I Must Know Right Now How To Turn On The Hot Tub!

Do angels have pillow fights in Heaven? Because feathers are falling right out of sky and it’s snowing this still morning.

She’s fifteen but I still sit soft on bed and run my fingers through long tangles light brown and blonde. Still marvel at creamy skin and long lashes resting light in upward curve while she rests on pillow. I just amaze a moment like that.

I touch light her sleep warm cheek. Lashes flutter and, “It’s snowing.” I lay my head gentle on hers and whisper it.

She’s not the five year old anymore. I know because a five year old springs out of bed and pads barefoot race to back door and breathes breath smudge on window pane and would run outside like that except mother stands prepared with boots and coat in hand. No. She’s not five. She’s fifteen.

 
She’s fifteen and it’s really great that it’s snowing because she knows my heart melts faster than Texas snow.

“Wanna play hooky today?” Because isn’t this a day to be glad and rejoice in? To slow enough to hear what this silent flutter is loudly proclaiming, “This is the day that the Lord has made!”

And if angels can have pillow fights then can’t we flap snow angels and have snowball fights while earth spins and clocks spin on classroom walls? Yes, we can. And we are!

She’ll sleep a tad later and that’s fine. But just so she knows. It’s snowing. Later she’ll sled the slope with a plastic garbage bag and her sister and cousins. It’s just a slope. Not a hill. Because this is central Texas, after all. And it’s garbage bag because who has sleds leaning ready against fence here?

And I’m the one who runs barefoot to back door, cell phone in hand, because I must know right now how to turn on the hot tub!

I slip into the nearest footwear. And really? Well okay. I shuffle out in leather slippers twice as large as my feet. Bless that big German who walks tall and leaves his slippers everywhere but closet!

It’s all flutter and feather and angel down this morning. I taste it and this yellow dog walks funny. No running with tail arrowed this morning. Just timid steps and paw prints gentle exploration. Her brow is furrowed question. Her first snow.

 

 

 Hot Tub and Berries

 

Hot tub is one-hundred and one degrees. Bowl of frozen summer berries in one hand, towel in other and I’m so out of season in this hot-pink swimsuit!

There is real feather flutter out here. Red bright cardinal. Black flock. Jay blue. White-tipped some kind of bird. Hawk? Is there such a thing as white-tipped hawk? It’s just all knockabout flutter and I’m tasting it. Sticking berry-stained tongue out like I’m five. Tasting snow.

And angel white and heaven pure, follows seeing magnificence magnified just as surely as today follows yesterday. And that magnification was yesterday. I saw it.

 

Rain drops. Yesterday.  Streamed down every branch and twig and cane and strung together and hung heavy and heavier til tiny drop and teensy splash. Tenacious drops unbound and also strung together, strong and also fragile, held tight and let go loose.

I looked. Not at it. Into it.

Looked into a drop and saw magnificence.

Hanging inside dangling water globe was pure magnification of what it hung from and what was behind it. There! A droplet suspended at leaf tip and I saw large the miniscule sawed edges at tip.

I wondered right there yesterday, “Can hold it? Or would it burst and rivle down?”

I opened finger. Held finger tip close beneath water globe. It pulled stretch and in one single strain detached from leaf tip to finger tip and there must have been a groan in the stretch and a plink in the transfer. I just couldn’t hear it.

But I held this globe up high and, there! Bit of branch and sky hung off my finger all magnified and I felt like Atlas holding the world and I thought how God holds earth and the heavens above it and the depths beneath and my little bubble too.

And how He holds my world together when I groan in the strain.

When I stretch to let go before I drop beneath the weight of too, too much.

When I detach because I’m hanging upside down and God finger is right there to catch me in the transfer.

I feel the pull and let go and He is holding my little world right side up and He holds it together. And His finger print is magnified there in my globe.

His print large in my miniscule.

Nail print too, because without that in His hand my world would splash, break and become puddle.

 

The back door opens and there she is. Fifteen in hot pink bathrobe and snow boots! She is so much like her mother, I laugh pink.

Red cardinal flaps snow at his earth-toned betrothed.

“Is he washing her?”

She is like fallen leaves. He blood red. And I watch it play out. The washing.

Blood red. Washing the color of fallen. White as snow.

And how on earth does that make any sense? It doesn’t. It makes no earthly sense at all. Yet, here it is. Right there on earth.

And all I can say is, “There is One who can wash you.”

And, “Thank You for washing me like this.”

 

 

 

Red Cardinal

 

I’m still earth color. But don’t be fooled. The washing happened.

I held water globe yesterday.

“Ahh,” my brain is bending.

“Surface tension holds wet drops together til they spill out under weight too heavy.” The ponder hangs between me and God as I dip finger tip into hot tub water. Break surface and draw up what? Drops of water bent globe-ish round til they drop spill and tension breaks open.

"Holy tension broke under weight of sacrifice spilt down.”  He magnifies the magnificent.

I see it here. See it all spill and run together. Just see it because what is behind it is magnified. There is magnificence in this little water drop I’m holding.

And there is magnificence in this little drop of life.

God magnified in my life. And I see it. Here.

And it’s His victory that my world is held together in His hand.

Sacrificial print in His hand magnifies larger than my sin.

His victory that His print is magnified in my little world bent like droplet.

He holds this bent lens. Contact lense. It’s bent like that. And I see Him clearer through contact. Through contact. Through “when He holds me and my world in His hand right before His face” kind of contact.

And it’s all victory His.

 

I was thirteen when He held His hand just under my bent world. Holy tension breaks open and I spilt open. Just spilt it at thirteen, “The likes of me is a sinner just like everyone else!”

And God hand scooped up spilt me.

“You cried tear drop. Sweat drop. Blood drop. And all spilt. Under the weight of sin. Under the weight of sacrifice for it.”

“You are cleansed by it.” The snow is so white!

I’m held in this holy tension. And isn’t this the only tension that can hold any of us together? Hold falling pieces and drip and bent spin, in peace hand?

Brow knits. Nostrils flare tear sting. And wet drops spill down cheek and it’s not because I’m in the hot tub

It’s because it’s true.

 

written by: Carolyn Roehrig