journey entry #1

(you will need to read the post below to understand why I am writing this.)


I am falling into a memory.
I am seeing a little girl stealing a mellow yellow post it pad from her mother's purse.  That little girl of course was me, but you have to understand,  snooping through my mother's purse was not something I was raised to believe was in any way okay.  It was next to stealing.
But the yellow was so mellow and the little sticky thumbnail at the top was so very fun to explore,  So I started to write.  I wrote like I couldn't fail.  I wrote like God was the ink to my pen, like his creative powers were swimming in my veins.
And then my mother caught me red handed. (or mellow yellow handed).  I had been taught very intentionally to respect other's property and I knew I was in for it, mother was compassionate to the core, but she could be something fierce when we disobeyed.  But instead of a lecture or swift punishment, she asked to read my writings.
I stood there awkward and uncertain as any child would be, contemplating my certain death, but when she stopped reading, instead of a punishment, her eyes swelled with tears and she knelt beside me and held my cheek with one hand while she stroked my hair with the other.  She looked at me like what seemed forever, in a way that simply melted my soul, it was like for the first time she was seeing beyond the child and into the wonder of all that I could be.  I felt love seeping from her the way water seeps into desert cracks, feeling up the dry uncertain insecurities of my self worth.
"You were meant to do this.  This is your calling.  This is your gift."
That was all she said.
And I believed her.  I believed her.  I was just young enough, just innocent enough to hold on to her every word in my heart.  It was a spark from heaven, through her eyes...it was my spark...sent to me straight from God.  I remember her embracing me after that, the way her big wet cheeks felt against my face and the recognition for the first time in my life, that maybe just maybe I really did have a gift after all.
She gave me that post it pad and many more...from then on she made sure that I had all the mead notebooks and fresh pencils I would ever need.  
And when my bedroom turned into a wasteland of my scribbles and loose papers, she announced that I needed an office.  
So together we marched downstairs and made a makeshift desk for me in the food storage closet.  A twenty gallon bucket of wheat was my seat, and my desk was anchored between the green beans and the canned peaches, mom filled old mason jars with fresh pencils for me and tucked paper in between the canned cherries so that I would never run out.
I think I am going to cry.
Not only because I am missing my mother something awful right now, because in this moment away from my children I am wondering if I am the kind of mother she was.
The kind of mother that puts fresh pencils in mason jars.
The kind of mother that sees beyond the child and into their calling...their destiny.
Okay, that is enough emotion for me right now.  I am officially sobbing.
But it feels good to cry like this, it feels good to let myself contemplate the question of my role in their lives, it feels good to hold this thought in my heart where it can remind me to be better...to do better, to have the courage to daily ask God what I can do for my children to allow them to discover the gift hiding within them...how can I love them into their highest self...into their destiny? 
That is enough for now.  Yes.  that is all my heart can take right now.
Good night.