Soaked All Through

I’m listening to the cows across the way. Whoever said they “moo?” They sound like old men yawning wide open. And dog next door speaks just once every thirty seconds into morning.

It’s warming slow and stinging wind has blown itself away and it rained gentle quiet last night. I see the damp darkened patio stone, but step out in my socks anyway. Socked feet are soaked. The air is soaked. I look up at clouds dancing with the sun and remember reading once somewhere in scripture that the clouds are God’s footprints. Or something like that.

“Are You dancing to the praises lifted by all Your creation?” And silently I wonder, “Even those yawning cows?”

“Even those!” He taps out puffs of laughter all cloud up there.

“Ha! You heard me!” I laugh back and it’s not yet warm enough to melt my own breath. I see it. The breathy cloud from my own lips. And we’re breathing together. Sharing the same air. God and me.

He moves across sun and her light swirls around them. I watch ‘til my eyes are soaked. It’s beautiful. They are beautiful. God is beautiful. The way He dances in and through and with and to His own creation.

Hawk 

  White-tailed hawk draws spirals with ragged wing. Sings? Does shrill “chwriiirk” count? If cows do, the hawk does too.

 

And tree hugging backyard fence scrapes out groans all wooden and dry throated sounding like an old rock star who lost his voice years ago.

I look up, but He’s still dancing! I guess that’s good news for the likes of me who has songs and no one else to sing them. I don’t sound like an old rock star, but I don’t have a voice trained all real either. But still He dances. Because it’s all praise and somehow it comes together in a beautiful I can’t hear. Only He can hear it whole.

It’s His song and it’s alive.

Nothing but living song for the Living Word.

This morning I am silent. My ears are soaked. My eyes are soaked. My feet are soaked. And awe does that. It soaks when we stand silent and let it.

The branch that fell days ago is soaked, too. Soaked at least two shades darker and three times heavier.

 “Soak me ‘til I look it and am heavy with it. It’s all Your kind of beautiful.” I think the prayer and breathe it all out, “Because Your beauty is heavy.”

I turn to go in where it’s dry and warm. But before I go, “You are.”

I hear it; and there is no cloud at my lips. No breath. I hold it all in, “What?”

“You are heavy with My beauty.”

Socks and Frizzy Hair

 

I worship. I don’t care that the patio is wet and cold. My knees are soaked now, too. And I don’t know why I don’t simply lay down like that branch except that I am feeling bare. So exposed. And somehow to lie down would make me self conscious and I want to stay God conscious. Sometimesworship is just all inside quiet like that.

 

“Emmanuel.” I speak His name because it means, “God is with us.”

“I’m heavy with Your beauty,” soaks deep into me. Plants right there where Holy is formed. In me.

“In me!” I call quiet awe because it’s so hard to believe but I can’t doubt it.

“In you. Like Mary. She was heavy with My beauty.” Oh, the things He says! I’m standing in soggy socks and my hair is hanging wild frizz because of damp air and He’s saying such things! 

And  I’m sure Mary was never more beautiful to Him than when she lay down on damp and cold and perspired and groaned and pushed and her hair was tossed and sticking to her face. And when she was exposed beneath the dance happening in the heavens. The dance of Jupiter and Venus, is what I’ve read. Of “Father” and “Mother” planets colliding slow and sure ‘til they became as one and Jesus was born beneath that light.

“Emmanuel! Beautiful, beautiful Emmanuel.” I drip awe.

 

Whoever said that beautiful is "Forever 21?" Or flawless skin that takes a bank account? Or every hair in place and "I'm gonna wash that gray right outa my hair?" Probably whoever said cows "moo" and that "chwiiirl" is hawkish scream and not song.

 

But it is.

 

I go inside now. My soggy socks leave wet footprints across wood floor. I pad sloggy to bathroom and whoever said that mirrors don't lie? Mine is lying to me right now. Telling me I'm not soaked beautiful, just soaked frizzy! Still, I peel socks off and aim the hair dryer.

 

And beautiful God is with me.

 

written by: Carolyn Roehrig