Focus on the in between.

When I cleaned out my life, I cleaned out my closet.  And as I really looked at the clothes I loved, a pattern emerged. I like black. I like neutrals.  I love teal and turquoise.  And that's an easy combination.  I don't have to think about what matches except textures.  I don't wonder if I have a bottom for that cute gold, chartreuse, purple, blah, blah, blah, top.  

People asked if I was required to stage my closet- that question reveals how completely staged the rest of the house is. Nope, did that before and I'm liking the clean, simple look.  A couple of years ago I prayed for "order"- the lack of structure and the abundance of stuff I had to maintain was overwhelming.  Well, I have order. And what's left of the abundance is all orderly packed in boxes in the garage.

While I'm waiting for my Father to give the order to move on, I escaped to the beach.  The ultimate  "there's no order - hang out and eat fish, lay in the sand and chill" place.  I don't beach well.

The record breaking heat wave hasn't completely spared the eastern shore and yesterday I sat in air conditioning until after dinner. I read most of  Barbara Kingsolver's novel, "Poisonwood Bible", set in the Congo. I contemplated the demise of central Africa under the hands of diamond miners and the CIA and the demise of a American family under the fist of a lunatic Baptist evangelist hellbent on converting  Africa.
Light, escapist reading.  And a great read.
   http://www.kingsolver.com/books/the-poisonwood-bible.html




But this was the day to rise early and go to the beach. I walked along the shore line at low tide. It's a wide sandy beach, held back by sturdy dunes topped with waving sea grass.  Lovely, a great place to vegetate.  So I walked.  And I found my focus for today.


I surprised me to realize that  I have spent quite a few years of my life within a short drive to a beach.  We discovered the Atlantic while Bill discovered the Marine Corps at Quantico.  We marveled at the Caribbean while Bill marveled at flying.  I hauled three babies to the North Carolina beaches as our family grew.

And I found shells everywhere.  With small, eager boys I scooped shells  from the coral sands of the East China Sea. On the Isle of Capri I picked lovely sea glass off the Mediterraean shore.  I was always looking for something. Something to focus on. Something to show for the time spent at the beach. Something to show for my life perhaps.



So while I am not a beach person, today I strolled and I looked for something.  My whole life feels like a search.  A search for me. What a egocentric, un-Christian thing to think, let alone write for the world to read.  I love Jesus. I want to be like Jesus and He didn't seem to spend much time wandering around looking for Himself.  Looking for bits and pieces that would show His identity to the world.  But maybe He never lost Himself. He grew into the fullness that was His from the beginning. He retreated to spend time with His Father and "grew in wisdom, stature and favor with God and man".


Maybe it's not so blasphemous after all to seek. To seek to grow into the fullness that is mine from the beginning.  To look for the parts of me that are buried under the sand, mixed with the crushed pieces of life. Examining what was and what it is becoming.


Over the years, I have collected tiny little perfect shell bodies of tiny little dead sea animals- dozens fit in a teaspoon.  Tiny and perfect. Invisible without careful scrutiny in a handful of common sand.   I also have a collection of tiny little earrings that migrated to the bottom of my jewelry pile. I thought of making a collage and titling it, "Once I Was a Tiny Woman." Maybe I'll find a piece of safe pink polester to unravel- there must be potential beauty in the things that were once safe and are now discarded.

Now I wear  linen because I love the feel of linen and don't care anymore if it wrinkles. I run my hand along the thrift store shirts and find the organic cotton. I wear buff camel oatmeal tan sand biscuit cream ecru mushroom but never beige.  I love black even if I'm not supposed to look good in it.  I buy big, chunky, ethnic jewelry.  I focused and found the pieces of myself that came to the surface. Pieces that God put there and knew in His good time, they would fit me.  They would be me. Fullness.






Today as I walked, I saw... bits and pieces of broken scallops and clam shells. It isn't a pretty shell beach. The shells are common, indistinuishable. Temporary homes of the creatures of the sea being crushed to form the silky sand of the dunes and beneath my feet.  But in the midst of that process, there are pieces "in between".  They are no longer whole. It's hard to see what they once were.  And they aren't what they will be- a particle of anoymous sand.  Right now they are lovely in their in-between-ness. 


They are buff camel oatmeal tan sand biscuit cream ecru mushroom.  They are flat and smooth. They are square, rectangle, oval, round. They call out to be touched, handled, rubbed.  They are lustrous, silky bits of leftovers. And they are beautiful.


They catch my eye. They are my focus. For I too am in the in-between-ness.  I am not an eastern, suburban mom. I am not a western, wandering nomad.  I have two houses and live in neither.  I am a mother of adults who need me less and less. I am no longer what I was; I am not what I will become.  


But I can be lovely in the process. In discovering the fullness in between.