Her Song Is Mine

This blue plastic crate, it's where I store old rags, spray bottles marked, Household Cleaner and Window Cleaner in black sharpie, and the old standby Comet which has served housewives for about as long as Corn Flakes cereal. Somethings just never go out of style.

After decades of indecision in the cleaning supply isles at Kroger and Walmart and the Dollar Tree, I made a decision I should have made at the very start of my house cleaning ventures. Of course, back then there wasn't google and pintrist. That's where I discovered recipes for a streak-free window cleaning solution which really is streak free, and for all-purpose household cleaning. Indecision in the aisles, confusion over too many products, it's solved.

Vinegar, water, and a nice smelling essential oil. Done. And come to find out it's as tried and true for window cleaning as the old-fashioned Comet is for everything else.

I can't remember the last time I bought Corn Flakes, but I still use Comet for the grit I need in tough spots; though it's inconvenient to clean a counter with Comet and then clean the Comet from the counter. That's one too many steps for this modern woman with old-fashioned in her supply crate. There may be as many recipes for cleaning supplies as there are products on the shelves, but I'm pretty much in the clear as long as I've got vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, an essential oil, and water.

This blue plastic crate and I, and green rubber gloves that casually drape their plastic fingers over the spray bottles, we're the cleaning dream team hiking up the stairs; and I just need to do some cleaning today.

It's therapy.

Corn Flakes and Comet

So, I've been paying attention to the everyday ways God shows His love for me. It's an attentiveness that sort of just happens as I track down demonstrations of faith.

I snap the green rubber gloves sharply in the air and pull them on. I've been a faith hunter for years now. I look for the evidence and substance and the tangible reasons for hope which is not seen, yet; and I document them on scraps of paper or in my iPhone notes which I, eventually, record in my journal.

It goes like this-

"Morning, Lord!" I greet Him as I begin looking around; sometimes in my Bible, sometimes in my backyard. "Where is it?" I turn pages to find the string of yesterday's conversation with Him, and pick up there; or I look up at the sky, the trees, the ground, at the insects and webbing; and I listen to everything till I hear sounds I wasn't aware of, at first. He knows what I'm after. And He knows that I'm not moving till I find the evidence. I've become stubborn like that.

"Well, g'morning Li'l Bit!" I feel His grin. He says that His mercies are new every morning, and sometimes His grinning presence is all the morning mercy I need to anchor my soul.

I feel His grin. My soul is anchored. It's documented.

White paint flakes off the wooden blinds as I draw them up. They've baked in afternoon sunlight for nigh twenty years up here in my daughter's room, and the slightly water-warped wooden sills beneath them catch the paint flakes. An upward yank on the blind strings, I see the flakes filter downward till they rest at sill and, "Ha! What's this, Lord?"

"A Mourning Dove," He states the obvious.

Slowly I move my hand from the blind's strings. Dove and I stare at each other, startled. I hold my breath, and she's probably holding hers, too.  "Yeah, but Lord," my breath returns, "wow! She's beautiful! She's nesting! She's," I don't have words, except for "Thank You for this surprise."

Now I know why He was grinning as I climbed the stairs with cleaning crate full of my therapy tools. I don't dare clean the sill. I don't need that kind of therapy when there's a nesting Mourning Dove just there on the brick ledge.

"Remember what we were talking about yesterday?" He prompts.

I remember.  I was treking through my Bible and stopped where I often stop- Psalm 145. "I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever" (Psalm 145:1-2).

Mourning Dove

Then, a songbird collided with the window pane. She fell just on the other side of where I sat, and a part of me wanted to take my words back. To take His words back. "They're not my words, God. They're Yours." I just want to go check on the bird.

She's fallen and lays beside the barbecue grill on the patio. Beautiful life gone from her song.

Thing is, I've never trusted myself to be faithful enough to be true to the "every day I will bless You" part of these verses. And now even more so. I know He feels my reticence. Feels me pull away.
"Why?" I whisper to Him. "Why? Just as I'm praising Your forever name-who You are-and then this?"

His Spirit stirs mine with no more that the lightest feathered breath, "Her song is mine." That's how I hear Him say it, and I know it's true. Sometimes songs are revealed most soulfully beautiful when transferred away, as hers was.

"I know I'll bless and praise Your name forever and ever, Lord." I do  know this, because I'll be perfected-fully resurrected-in the forever and ever.  But now? Every day? "How can I say this with the same confidence?"

I don't know why I've never come straight out and asked Him this before yesterday morning. I guess I just schlepped by those words, hoped to deny my doubts. But now? There's no denying now. Somewhere between "I will praise Your name everyday," and "Her song is Mine," I ask.

"You can say it because," He began His answer. I held my breath then, as I am now. Because nested yesterday, as Dove nests now on the ledge, with life beneath it. I didn't want to miss His next words.

He paused, gave me room to anticipate His life-giving words, then began again. "You can say it because everything I say of you, I have fulfilled it."

"Ha!" I breathed then, sharp inhale, as I have now breathed. He knew I'd find Mourning Dove with life beneath her, nesting on the ledge today. "I will bless Your name every day!" I said it freely yesterday, and again right here, upstairs in my daughter's room with green rubber gloves pulled up to my elbows.

He grinned then, as He grins now in the morning light.

Song Bird  

Slowly, I reach for the nearest thing to write on. Dove keeps her eye trained on me, and doesn't move a muscle. There's a ripped paper lunch sack from last week and, bless this messy room, an eyeliner pencil on the floor beside it. Symbol of peace nests on window ledge. Hatches life. Faith for hope. Why is she named Mourning Dove? I scratch the broken phrases in eyeliner, then, "Thank You, Lord." He's given my more than faith and hope this morning. He's given me a message of love.

"See how I love you?" His voice is as dove's song.

My own eyeliner smears a little wet. His words wipe the old paint from the weather-warped sill of my soul and I needed His washing like this just now. It's why I'm wearing green rubber gloves and why I've made the cleaning solutions and why I'm in this bedroom unoccupied for seven months because my daughter has a place with her husband, now.

Inside, I'm kind of still curled up a little. Inside, my emotions are still a bit beneath shell. A bit lonely.

His words are my life.

They birth my soul.

"I will never leave you alone in this twiggy world." He assures. "Nothing will scare Me off."


written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig