The Frame Which Is

Sunlight is wrapped in sunlight. It lays down, tired at summer’s end. I’m standing in it as if framed by sunlight itself.

Maybe it's a mystery, but light frames light just as surely as light frames the One who wraps Himself in it, and as the Son of God is the Light of the world, and as I am wrapped in Him. Light frames light like that and somehow my life becomes a frame through which others see Him.

Light Frame

A gust of wind gathers leaves, and I think it’s odd that they are gathered and not scattered.

It’s a holy moment, somehow.

Leaves roll out a red carpet for autumn’s fame.

God is in this moment. 

His presence frames my heart.

There is a holy language that comes as a breath, and gathers what is naturally prone to scatter within me. His language, it frames the prayers that escape my language. Sometimes words whisper like leaves rustle, and right now that's how I hear it. 

God is present in this leafy moment, and in the words. Something about standing in the presence of the one true Light-framed by Him-redeems time till a moment seems to stand still because God is and I Am is the name of Light.

Stand in the Light and redeem time. 

Is there any other way? Doesn't the Lord say it, something like "Walk as children of light. Have nothing to do with darkness. See then, and redeem the time because the days are dark"? He does say something like this in Ephesians 5:8-16. 

So I'm redeeming time, standing in the light. Walking in it. Saving up moments, to know more God in them. 

More God moments-that's what I want.

I want to see more God in my husband striding through the front door on long legs to kiss me in the kitchen. 

More God in my daughter making me nervous behind the wheel with a driver’s permit in her pocket. 

More God in my daughter becoming a college girl and framing words between laughter over the latest news. 

More God in my son being husband for six months and still sitting so comfortably and familiarly at the kitchen table that I nearly forget he has a place of his own and won’t be staying for dinner.

I want to see light-framed moments.

This is the frame. 

He is the frame. 

There is nothing outside Him that I want. I want only what He frames. Nothing else is worth giving the time of day to, because isn’t He the only frame that can frame time and life and days and eternity? And everything good? 

He is. 

He is eternal and life and good. 

He is good, and I need more moments wrapped in good.

I'm trying to redeem time because God is good, and how else will I know He is good than in the framework of moments wrapped up in Him? And by Him?

Frame

Saving up moments, it's a wide-awake on-purpose sort of thing to attempt. I don't know how much time I loose, or moments I miss. Really, I don't want to know. What I do know, and want to know more, is that redeeming time is something only the Redeemer can do.

It's also something I can take an active part in doing. Thing is, when I take part in this mystery-when I do what He tells me to do, like take my run-away thoughts captive and tame my tongue-it begins to happen. I feel it.

I've hammered nails and pulled nails and hammered again till my hand's frozen to the hammer when life's shaken me up too much to aim right but I'm near desperate to nail something down and hope it looks like a frame of reference when I shake like a leaf in a gust of wind because, guess what? The days are evil and that's why it's important to redeem time as God says to. "Redeem time, for the days are evil," He says in Ephesians 5:6.

I practice. 

It's what I call active faith because a living faith is active just like anything living is active. 

My faith is stronger for the practice, and my hope is surer, too; but even better is this-while I'm swinging the hammer, God is showing me that the frame is. 

The frame is. Period.

The frame of God in the flesh of His Son was nailed and hung up on the cross and somehow I'm in Him and His Spirit's in me and together we make a complete picture in this framework. 

His frame is the only frame, the only reference for life and time and redemption of both-and for me. 

The holy frame, framed by sin and nailed by it, fit joy right into Himself when nails pierced into Him. Somehow He saw joy.  

He saw joy! It was set before Him. He didn't look away from it, but endured because of it, while time itself was redeemed and He gave up His Spirit before His body had the time to die.

Somehow joy redeems time.

I’ve heard it said that when we look down, we can’t see anything in the upward peripheral, but when we look up, we see everything in our peripheral. maybe joy is seen like that, in the searching upward look when the world is calling out, “Save yourself, not time! Come down to earth and forget eternity!" And things like, "Remember, you’re mortal. Let that be the framework of your life!" That's because the world doesn’t know this joy which redeems time. I know of it,a little. I want to know more. 

I had an unexpected moment today—well, not unexpected exactly. It was a hoped-for moment: a hummingbird, blue-gray. It’s silly, but I admit asking God for a hummingbird. I did—last week. I did not ask because I have some sort of hummingbird fascination. I don’t. But hummingbirds, they flap winged blur, yet remain still in the middle of air as if seventy wing-beats racing against one second actually save enough time to sip the sweet from the red. 

I asked for a hummingbird, "It would just be nice, God. That's all." The request perched, fragile on delicate feet. I wanted to see it happen-to see what it looks like to drink the sweetness right out of Him, nectar of strength.

He cares, God does. I wanted to see it happen. 

And I did. I saw it, the hummingbird. She flitted not in June sun, but through fifty-five-degree October morning mist. She darted between peach tree leaves turning yellow. I saw her twice again, as I stood at kitchen sink. She hovered and sipped from a single rose on a cane of rebel blossoms that have turned wild. 

She sips from the wild, my eyes smile in holy prayer. 

Sip long the sweet nectar of God.

Light is frame for this. 

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig 
(adapted from my book, PISTEUO! Connecting with God's Heart)

Glory Like Spilt Milk

Matter heaves beneath the Milky Way, slides a white-hot burn down black sky and skids along the horizon at water’s edge and, just like that, bits of dust and rock flame beautiful and win a grander name for themselves-shooting stars.

It happens fast, the slide and the skid. Silently, too.

I wonder at the silence, “How, Lord? This glory, how is it silent? How is there not sonic boom? How do the humming stars not open their mouths and shout something like, ‘Praise God, all creatures below! See how He makes fallen dust beautiful!’”

I know He’s watching the sky with me. I feel Him beside me, “They don’t because they don’t need to.”

“Because I am?” I remember when He once said that the rocks will shout praises to Him-Peace in heaven and glory in the highest-if His disciples kept quiet.

“M-hmm,” His reply is hum and silence fits awe.

Brilliant trails of debris are made beautiful in the burn. It’s the most awe-full silence without even a gasp.

I watch debris exit from the heavens and leave a trail of glory behind because God is utterly committed to His glory and, something else.

Isn’t He also committed to this grace which consumes in victory all that would otherwise burn out?

And maybe trails of glory in the heavens are as glimpses of the train of His robe, longer than the combined robes of every king ever to rule on earth.

Victory Robe

Doesn’t the length of a king’s robe show how many battles he’s won?

And hasn’t the God of heaven and earth won the war waged by sin and death? Won every battle till even what falls from the battles against powers and principalities in the heavenly places just vaporizes in mid-fall flash?

He has. And that’s a glory my heart’s mapped for.

May my heart be charted by the Word by God, light years high and fathoms deep-while I bob, stern side, on the surface of Lake Texoma feeling as if tucked between the heights and the depths as Moses himself was tucked intot he cleft of a rock where he, too, saw the backside of God’s glory.

“It’s breathtaking, Your glory!” I breathe the words and know that it’s the back side.

Lake water gently slaps the hull of Living Water; and the living Word rises from the wet depths of my heart.

I think back to the beginning, when God thought light before He spoke the word and before darkness knew what would pierce it.

And I think of when love came down from heaven and was seared white hot through with nails to know what sears through me and be able to sympathize.

There is a mighty heave of heart, His and mine. Mine heaves broken trust, deferred hope, and scattered faith—at least, it tries to. Rocky debris is all massed in my heart. But His heaves whole—just all whole.

How do I stop this spin that makes my heart so heavy, this cyclical reminder of why trust, hope, and faith are so scattered in me?

I don’t. I can’t.

I lay back on the seat and light from stars that burned out before I was born leans over me.

     My heart reaches for Heaven itself, just to hold on and never let go of serenity-no matter what burns.

And what does burn? Maybe just whatever doesn’t burn.

Glory. Glory in God’s heart doesn’t burn up or burn out.

Sometimes my heart is heavy with matters-with debris. “If I let go, just let the matters fall, would I see Your victory blaze?” I know I would. And I have.

The Milky Way spills white across the galaxy floor above me. Messy. Marvelous. Wild. Quiet.

Might I remember this-glory is like spilt milk.

God’s glory, it just spills out when He moves till the story of His victories sweeps through my heart and what spills out isn’t for me to cry over, but for God to make beautiful in a blaze of glory.

Milky Way

The sky is draped in a string of silver stars and wears them like a necklace of glory. I recall reading something about silver and glory. I google the key words on my iPhone and find it in Proverbs 25:1, “Take away the dross from silver, and it will go to the silversmith for jewelry.”

“Ah.” I amaze, because I just saw dross so fresh from the fire that flame followed it’s decent to horizon. It was a glimpse of true glory. “You don’t scrape the dross and then splat it onto the ground in disgust, do You?” It’s more amazement than question.

“I’ve taken your shame way,” He reminds me.

“But dross is so ugly.” I say it because I’ve seen my own sin; and I’ve been ashamed.

His eyes tell me He knows what that feels like, and I remember the scars He bears. “Let no one who waits on Me be ashamed” He says with conviction.

The starry veil above me flutters soft light through the thin atmosphere. 

Wasn’t there another veil? A woven veil violently halved in the thick atmosphere when Christ took the shame of sin to the cross and died to take away sin and shame? There was.

“To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in You; let me not be ashamed;” (Psalm 25:1-2). His word is my prayer and sometimes prayer burns like a fire that tears cannot quench when body and soul are tried in the furnace till the dross rises to the top.

 I spill, but that’s okay.

His glory is His, and His victory is mine.

He fingers a necklace that is not dross dull, but radiant as if His glory was somehow a part of the dross and then woven into the necklace. “Wear this as an ornament of grace.” He slips it over my head. The jewelry drapes grace around my neck.

“I am not ashamed.” I look into His holy eyes that reflect the fire that purifies-and touch dross turned to grace.

I no longer wear shame.

The Milky Way disappears in moonlight. There are no more fire skids across the sky, but glory is blazing a trail across my soul tonight.

Serenity hums somewhere at the backside of my soul. 

written and illustrated by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

(adapted from my book PISTEUO! Connecting with God's Heart)

Yellow Therapy Dog

Something about the perfectly still leaves above me this evening. It’s a late night for the yellow dog and me. I brought her home from the pound four months ago as a therapy dog, not for me.

Not for me? No. I’m just the one who has trained her to sit, lie, stay, heel, and come. I’ve curbed her retriever enthusiasm enough that she now walks ladylike through the back door after adrenaline-pumping squirrel chases. I also taught her to greet guests at the front door politely with no jumping and romping as if they were a litter of puppies come to visit her.

I'm also the one who greets her in the morning and waits for her beneath limb and leaf, living canopy and fluttering veil.

Together we breathe in morning air fresh and night air charged.

I feel on my skin first light and night light, air breathing sleepy or panting fast in a windy chase.

Pieces of moon are framed tonight by twiggy and leafy fragments.

Yellow dog disappears in shadows on the far side of the fence.

I squint through the darkness to find her, then find the moon in the dark sky.

I’m not sure why, but my heart is responding to something. I want to know, before God and moon, what it is.

What is the empty frame inside me? I hold my breath and talk to God. Is He holding His breath too? He who is so full?

Moonlight

Moonlight fractions above me, quilts the lawn at my feet, and shadows stitch as night threads itself quietly and just pulls moon-glow through leaves which whisper among themselves, toss then turn till they sleep. 

It’s bedtime, but I’m not ready to pull the covers up.

Something inside me is waking up.

Still as all is, the air vibrates as if it is alive.

Katydids sing burry, wings strumming and shaking out a ch-ch-ch-ch rhythm. Frogs thrum a whirring song from bulging throats and then swallow loud before starting again. I close my eyes and let the whole serenade and peace song wash over me.

A pastor once overlaid soundtracks of stars humming, trees clapping, insect song, and whale song. My youngest daughter heard it on YouTube after school. Amazed, I had wanted to listen to it myself. And I am, right now.

All is orchestra praise beneath my tree.

I fill my lungs with air and sound and stillness and vibration.

Pieces of moon fit my heart-a fragmented mural. Frames. Scenes from the past. Thoughts. Memories. Feelings.

Thing is, shadows have been stitched into a quilt fit for my soul to rest beneath. But it doesn't come easy, the rest.

Maybe soul rest has something to do with what I choose to remember. And how I choose to remember.

"I choose to remember trials as what frames light," I barely breathe the choice; but I remember how the Light of the World was framed.

Music

Do my nerve endings remember the searing shocks of adrenaline shooting fire and jitter through my veins? Yeah, but that doesn't mean I can't choose to remember everything I can think of that's good and right, trustworthy, praiseworthy, and honest. The choice is to remember light.

Do my emotions still pound discordant and race erratic pulse in my ears before I can think straight enough to remember what the leaves sound like tonight and hear God whisper like that to me in my dark? They do, yet still I choose to remember what He has whispered, and proved.

Does a dis-eased past infect the present? It wants to, but the thing is that there is balm in Gilead and maybe this balm is nothing but the blood of Jesus shed for every reason having to do with a glory just feisty enough to outshine the shadows that frame it. 

My heart beats cacophonous loud before it remembers melodious whisper. But that's changing.

It's what happens when I remember what to forget and what to remember.

It's what's happening right here behind my house and beneath the moon. I hear it, the long thrumming and rhythmic strumming. Hush, burr, and vibration.

And I will my heart to memorize this song.

“Help me, God,” I whisper low as I stand on paved patio where I hear the song- “Help me to remember what to remember and what to forget.”

His answer comes as the question falls up into the night praise—in pieces. “Remember," He says, "to count whenever and whatever trials as frames of joy." He translates for me what He's showing me right here-the way shadows frame light and night sky frames the moon's face. He continues, "Remember, count it all joy where you thought there was none-and give thanks at the remembrance of My holy name. Thanksgiving, as moonlight, reaches long across the counting.

It doesn’t come easy, this remembering-but it comes steady on, right now while moonlight and shadows spread as quilt over backyard grass and I think, If I lay down on the grass, this moon-cast quilt would cover me. I don't, but I don't need to.

I'm already covered.

Yellow dog comes and we go inside, she to her bed and I to mine and I don't know about her, but I'll fall asleep to a whisper till I wake and there will be shadows and light come morning just hanging as a quilt hung out to dry in the sun after laying over dewy grass all night.

I'll watch them flutter in the wind as if clipped to a clothesline. It’s the same quilt: light patches stitched together with shadow.

Clothesline

I've hung my heart out on the line before.

I've clipped it there till pain that's cried like nighttime dew dries. I let it flutter its rhythm there till damp shadows pull back and become nothing more than a stitch in time-a morning of joy, marked- and a reference for light.

Isn’t that what shadows are? Reference to light?

Wasn’t the cross a wooden frame displaying the Light of the World?

Doesn’t the cross shadow-stitch together mourning and dancing? Weeping and joy? Pain and healing? Trials and faith? Past and present? Death and life?

I’m seeing it everywhere now-the pattern. It spreads over all earth from heaven, all time from eternity, all galaxy-spun universe from the quilter’s hand.

The quilt flutters and billows over me-kind. It's kind, and is kind soul therapy for me.

The moon is kind light in darkness. 

 My heart hanging out to dry, sun-cast shadows, quilts, frames. Kind.

I pray the word, “Kind.” Repentant-like.

I climb beneath a quilt beside my husband.

My heart is full of kindness toward him. And repentance.

And as I fall asleep, my heart finds a frame for these things.

I choose tonight to remember the song and discover that somehow kind is shadow-stitched to joy. It comes in the morning, joy does, after light has found reference as moon light has pressed out the frame called dark night and found reference. It's therapeutic, kind. And joy, too.

It can’t be helped. Joy is the canvas and music of God’s kind heart.

I reach long across His therapeutic heart.

All of God’s heart is framed in the cross.

Light was nailed down, and the cross was shadow.

Long quilting stitches run through the past, needling and pricking through to the present.

Stitching needle. Piercing nail. Quilt. Frame. I reach for His heart. I want to cover myself in His heart as I would cover myself with a quilt given to me.

I settle here remembering to give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name.

I might forget tomorrow. I probably will.

But the quilt is always outside my window and beneath my tree.

And the cross has never stopped framing the Light.

And, yes, the yellow therapy dog is for me after all.

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

(adapted from my book PISTEUO! Connecting with God's Heart)

September Watermelon

September watermelon. Those two words don’t belong in the same breath, but there it is, a remnant ripe on my kitchen counter. It’s an old summer habit.

I heft the melon from bin to cart and roll summer through Kroger aisles to the checkout lane. I forgot my earth-friendly shopping bags again, so all but the watermelon is bagged in plastic. I know the young man bagging. But summer can’t be bagged, not even in September. So he places my September watermelon in the child seat at the front of the cart.

Seasons roll in on wobbly wheels and vibrate out metal carts on parking lot pavement. The young man and I raise our voices slightly to converse. We are acquainted by years of summer-to-summer seasons in which we push cranky carts through blistering three-digit heat and over ice in the winters.

He has a stutter that makes him lonely and a mind that is slow, and like me, he lives a tad out of season.

He loves the sweet, thirst-quenching taste of summer.

He loves the hot air balloon festival each September. And he likes the two together.

Watermelon in Shopping Cart

September watermelon, a remnant of summer, the last hurrah. I want to slice the watermelon right there in the parking lot.

I want to break open summer for the last time this year and share it with him.

I’d like to celebrate his simple love for the one who made watermelon, summer, and September and who understands stuttered prayer.

We would sink our teeth into thick melon slices and wear the rindy smiles, juice dripping down our chins and, for a moment, summer would not be a back road rounding a bend.

We would celebrate it all and celebrate Him who is as sweet as cold watermelon on a thirsty day—not the kind without seeds but with seeds, the kind that plants more sweet goodness and tomorrow promises.

The young man sets the watermelon in the back of my minivan, and I drive slowly along the back road home. I carry summer in arms that aren’t ready to embrace what comes next. I hear the rumble of the unknown that doesn’t take the back road slow but instead accelerates and is in my driveway before I know what season I’m in.

I set my watermelon carefully on the kitchen counter. I own it, and there it balances, a yellow spot off-center on its back side. That's how I pick watermelons. I look for the yellow spot. Sure, I might thump it too, but that's only for the benefit of anyone else at the watermelon bin. Honestly, I have no idea what tone to listen for when thumping, except  for a mushy soft tone. I know that much. But what I really know is the tell-tale yellow spot that says, “I have been unmoved.”


That’s how I feel at times, immovable, when I have no choice but to remain still.


I've lain still while rough shod panic has stomped me near straight into the mattress and I've split open between "Somebody please pick me up and cart me off somewhere other than here," and "What is this strange vine language coming out of me and saying things like, "O Lord my God, in You I put my trust" when I can barely trust the next breath to come. Yet, a deep red heart grows sweet on the vine and matures sweeter still in the Indian Summer.

This is the patch, and I have the vine to cling to.

“I am the vine,” says Jesus, and “I am the Word.” I’m becoming fluent in vine language and, really, it's the only language worth knowing, because isn't plain English too hard sometimes? I think so.

Heart-Shaped Watermelon

Once a farmer in Japan grew a heart-shaped watermelon. Who ever heard of such a thing? But he did. It was in the news. I painted the photo posted there, and remembered the promises given by the Exodus Angel of increased borders.


It means a lot when borders are about the size of a mattress.
I love Texas-grown watermelon, especially the last one in September.


The long knife cuts deep and divides the melon. Two halves roll away from one another, and there are the seeds embedded in the deep red heart. They are diluted to pink by the water running from the melon’s sides.


The juice forms pools in wooden cutting board ridge.


Sometimes this takes my breath away because I recognize Jesus, and me, in this together.


Jesus, full of holy seed, labored on wood cross until blood and water ran down the wood and pooled.



I, full too, labor for the next breath and His word just typed into thinnest wood constructed paper is as long knife cutting deeply till my heart's split wide open and whatever seeds are there-may they be holy. 
It's a little messy in the muddy patches, life. Sometimes it seems to get snagged up a little painful in the thorns of Devil’s vine the likes of what grows rogue up the trunk of the Crepe Myrtle out front. I've tried to kill it, but it won't go away.

Thing is, snagged or pierced, if holy seed-love of God-is in my heart then the real reason I can't be moved isn't because I'm stuck but because His love holds me though thorns make my heart bleed and my eyes water.

Sure, sometimes I can't be moved because I'm too worn out by the messy, but I also can't be moved because the blood and water of the Son of God lay claim on me.

And I can’t be moved because, by God’s help, I don’t want to be.

 So I ripen on my knees.

I really don’t know when it happens, the ripening. All I know is that my knees hurt and that I'm thinking about going to the garden aisle at Home Depot to buy kneepads, but then remember there’s a spare life preserver in the garage from the boat.

Does God laugh delighted, while I rummage for it. Surely. He must delight at stuttered prayer from a child kneeling on her bright yellow life preserver.

Praying Yellow

I will cling to the vine-Lord, make it so-till I'm ripe behind the rind of my soul and till my heart is impregnated with His seed.

I will to be unmoved.

I will to be unmoved on my own patch of earth at the foot of my bed.
My knees are marked with pressure spots. I have my own yellow spot that has borne my weight while I ripen as fruit on the vine, morning hours, high noon, night time.
Still I kneel here; crack open the heart of God.
Still I open His Word; smooth the pages back with the flat of my hand and bow my head over it.

The Word of God magnifies who He is, reflects His heart, and it’s changing who I am and changing my heart.

My prayers have changed.

They've changed because His word is sharper than a double-edged sword and it’s gotten into me-just lanced life on this patch where I ripen. And where the vine conducts His very life into my spirit’s vein, marrow, and heart.

I feel the cut.

Yet, somehow there is exultation and triumph in it for me. I don’t understand how that works. It just does.


“You are like the sweetest watermelon at a hot air balloon festival in September.” It’s my own psalm to Him. “You are to me as cold watermelon on a thirsty day.”




I celebrate Him as I sink my teeth into a thick slice of melon.
 






Juice drips down my chin.




written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

What Fills So Many Holes (Chapter Six)

Dervish wind grabs ancient pecan tree and wrestles it to the ground. Across the street it had stood sentinel of history and witness of time since the Declaration of Independence was signed. It goes down with a fight. There is a hole in the sky and a hole in earth where the tree had spread root and limb. The holes gape wide, open-mouthed, silent.

A Patch of Light in a Dervish

Men armed with chainsaws, ropes, and pulleys step around and climb over mangled limbs. Saws eat and roar for more. Pulleys clang, ropes strain, men sweat, and always the constant roar carves through the battleground. Massive disks of trunk are hauled away. The family keeps one, though, and makes it into a patio table.

Heads tilt back in upward remembrance of what was there, in upward recognition of what is open hole now. They break bread together, thankful because what was there was so good that it is sorely missed now. They are thankful because of Communion promise: “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives. Let not your heart be troubled” (John 14:27).

Peace fills the holes.

Thanksgiving fills the holes.

I stand outside in the backyard while yellow dog sniffs out the morning, and I look up long, rough lengths of pecan tree. My eyes climb woody heights, eighty feet of arms and hands browned as if by age and sun. It’s an old man tree, clapping, swaying, creaking, groaning a shuffling praise dance up and up and up.

I crane my neck back just to watch this worship, and maybe it’s strange, but in the worship I look for holes. Leafy shadows feather across my face and flutter wings of peace, Spirit dove. And, aha, there they are in the shadows—spaces dappled between leaf and branch. Sky itself.

And I begin to see the holes differently. I see them there, between leaf and branch—holes as deep as the Creator’s heart. I see them here behind the living sway and life always in motion—the still heart of God’s holes. His heart searches them out between leaf veils, cloud veils, and the sun veil. His heart probes for holes between the stars, black-hole space, space beyond the end of the universe.

His heart fills the holes.

Prayer Fills Holes

I hear it, feel it. It’s a holy morning in my backyard, a barefoot holy morning, no shoes to remove. I lift my hands high, and sky pieces jig and saw with tree pieces. It’s a fluid puzzle, a kaleidoscope.

I read this morning, “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image."

The first person who loved me did so when I was perfectly full of holes. Unholy. It wasn’t another like me but the one who is perfectly whole—holy. God.

He doesn’t twist me into His own image but fits me into His own image.

He fit me securely in holy breath breathing life into Eden dust. “Let us make man in our own image” (Genesis 1:26–27).

And He is fitting me this morning.

I am fit into His image: barefoot on dew on grass on earth.

And I have Eden wonder.

It’s morning, and all He gave then remains even now.

It’s in my backyard.

It’s a wonder that it was all a gift to fit into the hole of nothingness before He created life. Praise filled every place, I’m sure, when He said, “Let there be.”

At that time holes gaped everywhere.

God’s gift fills the holes.

Moonlight Fills Holes

I’m looking for holes, searching for them in a jigsaw tangle. I glimpse the heart of God in the puzzle, how He fills what gapes wide in what tangles tight. I turn squinting eyes inward. I close them to better see my jigsaw heart—the jig of praise, the sawed holes.

Sometimes holes are sawed open so that they may be filled with praise.

A breath of wind parts leaf from leaf, branch from branch, high in the tree.

There's a pause in its praise. Selah.

But the wind opens a wide-eyed, gaping mouth hole, and it kind of hurts.

I hold my own breath.

Breathless is how I feel sometimes.

But then, I’m learning to look at holes and pauses differently.

The opening above lasts a breath, a Selah pause, and then closes full with whoosh and rush, branches, leaves, and old man tree praise.

Praise fills the holes.

Breathing Fills Holes

There are holes along the path in my garden where I’ve had to dig up dead plants. There is a gaping hole in my rose garden where my most prized bush suddenly shriveled and died within the week. The bush had filled the dining room window and glowed iridescent when approaching lightning storms turned the air itself green.

There are holes, empty chairs, around my kitchen table. I remember filling those chairs one at a time. First I filled the high chairs and booster seats, and then my children sat on the grown-up chairs, chins at table height and plate level. Two sons are now married, and one daughter is halfway out with one foot in college and the other at home. A pregnant pause. Selah.

There are holes of quiet where before a houseful of rambunctious children hummed loud and where dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer sloshed, whirred, thumped off kilter, and spun every waking moment and sometimes into the night.

And there are soul holes. They are weighty.

Who would have thought? That open space, air, too much silence, is heavier than enormous hardwood trees, rosebushes heavy with scent and bloom, an armful of toddler and infant on hip, and the time when two teenage sons swung like Tarzan down at a creek on poison vine. Nothing is heavier to a mother’s heart than brave man-boys fighting tears and losing a little.

Life Fills Holes

I call yellow dog. And I call to God, “So many holes!”

“My peace I give to you,” He says. And then He says what I don’t want to hear: “In all things give thanks.”

I balk. “What do You mean? What sincerity is there in me when I thank You for a shriveled rosebush that I loved? For a house too quiet and a table too empty? Heart of God, will You fill these soul holes I try not to feel?”

“I filled the heavens and the earth when there was nothing, and it was good. I filled empty jugs with water that became wine, and the wedding guests rejoiced. I filled five thousand hungry people with two loaves of bread and five fish, and my servants marveled in amazement. I filled empty nets, and the fishermen recognized Me. And I filled Peter’s sifted, gaping, and wide-open heart.”

“Oh. Well, yes, there is that.”

So that’s what He means.

Holes are fit for what He’s going to fill them with.

Holes are there because from the beginning there was a hole. The very movement of life is holed. And I am holed.

Holes are the weighty pause between empty and filled. The hungry void between too little and more than enough. The Selah pause, the pregnant hope, the holding of my breath. Holes are uncomfortable. I’ll hurt between breaths and in the Selah stillness.

I’m sure I’ll forget most of this when I feel most filled with holes.

But right now I'm remembering.

And right now pauses breathe.

And Selah stills.

And right now I'm barefoot on dew waiting to be fit into His holy image.

And that’s a start for when I fill a soup pot halfway and know that the bread I baked will last three times as long. I’ve taken to giving loaves to my sons’ wives.

Giving fills holes.

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

(adapted from my book, PISTEUO! Connecting with God's Heart)