The Greater Truth

August 1, 2023

Beloved:

          A delicious break from the heat.  I read that Phoenix, Arizona finally dropped below 110 degrees for the first time in a month.  I used this morning’s glorious air to pick cucumbers and deadhead flowers.  Birdy and I may even go to the dog park later if I get enough work done.  I love high summer, when everything ripens fast and blooms hard.  Farmers’ Market prices are the best they’ll be all year, because they do not want to haul last week’s home where there’s so much more to pick.
          My struggle is to keep my eyes and heart on the bounty rather than the loss, especially when the losses seem requisite.  They aren’t, but they sure seem so, so fundamental, if not for survival then for happiness, for joy.  These losses were fundamental to my happiness in another time and place.  But not now, not here.  At fifty-nine years old my life quest has returned to a starting line I haven’t yet stepped up to, for no other reason than lack of imagination, I suppose, and the promise to be gentle with myself.  These are not easy days, learning to live alone and care for this broken heart of mine.
          Is this too raw a thing to write on a Tuesday morning?  Maybe.  Maybe it’s too personal for a space meant to encourage.  Could be.  Then again, I have found a certain courage in realizing other people also struggle to keep faith when life around them appears bountiful, when it seems they have so much to be grateful for.  We can struggle to keep faith and be grateful for the good, concurrently.  Neither cancels out the other, a truth that comforts me from both sides.
          I am well aware that I am not unique.  Since high summer a year ago you’ve also known loss, the losses of your loved ones’ illnesses and deaths, along with your own devastating diagnoses, health scares, job changes, and family struggles.  And all the while we must earn a living and keep the children fed and the yard mowed, amen?  How we manage would be a mystery, were it not for the faith God keeps in us, moving us along when we cannot move ourselves another inch, let alone another day.  This is the greater truth I lean into when I don’t know what I am supposed to do, when I can’t possibly step up to that starting block today:  that God is carrying me now, that God is doing the greater part, else I would not be functioning at all.  I imagine someday I will have better, more eloquent words for speaking of these days.  Or maybe not.  I only know that faith has become something enfolding now, rather than something exercised.  Faith cares for me, and I know it cares for you too.


~peace & prayers, 
pastor annette

 Oven Baked BBQ Ribs at WedNightSupper last week