2016) MIDDLES

Written on June 29, 2016.

In the very center of a vast garden, fingers finding petals and toes tracing blades, I realized something. I am in the very middle of the novel of my days. There is much now to go back and read again, letting it’s add change the sum of it all. And yet there is much to be written, with words yet to be created and defined. Those words will bring multiplication to the story like loaves and fish in baskets on a grassy mountainside.

Though I find myself in the middle of the overall telling, another chapter, paragraph or sentence can be beginning or concluding in the messy, marvelous mix of it all. But no matter where a day discovers me, the truth is, there are many, many middles.

Middles are planted by starts and harvested by finishes.

The middles of our story can seem like nothing much in the moment, but they are where His absolute goodness is found. For they are where the choice between mundane or marvelous is made. They are where we choose not to wait for untils and afters, but to simply live, now.

Middles are where every seed, stroke and seam magnifies who He really is to us. They amplify the every day “yes” we say until we perceive the symphony of them.

For middles gather us to significant truths as we…

Change endless diapers and wipe up countless spills and realize we are sowing into tiny ground that sprouts tantamount temples. And it started with hands that were never too weary to touch what was before them.

Have the same hard conversation again and a gain and realize how much we actually love just talking to that person.

Inhabit the same work space day by day and realize that when we weren’t looking we changed the world of it and found His heart in it.

Cook many, many meals for people of varied tastes and pallets and realize how much it allowed us to create and how many were fed.

Sing the same song, dance the same dance or paint the same picture and realize someone is singing along, dancing with or meeting our marks, because we let our middle bare His message.
Life is worth living, have is worth having and truth is worth telling.

In middles, He often asks us to stay when we want to go and to go when we want to stay. They are the places He asks us to walk when we want to run and to run when we want to walk. They are where He asks us to do the same thing when we want to do something different and something different when we want to do the same thing we always have. Middles are where we spin and spill with the truth that He is not only all we need but all we have every wanted. They are where we started desperately trying to obey and ended up desperately in love.

Lots of little threads make up middles and we can fight to keep a tight grasp on them all or attach some balloons and gather the beauty of them. With fingers entwined between the threads we become overwhelmed by how heightened and deepened we are by that middle and that we have all we need to fly right into the climax and conclusion of that part of our story. From meadow to mountain. From planted to harvested.

And then we know. That middles are magical.

JOURNAL JUBILEE:
Let Pappa reveal the magic of one of your middles. A place you did the day to day but may have missed (or be missing) His pleasure and purpose in meeting you in the middle.