And the lemons have come back after the hard freeze

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.  Psalm 16:6 

One of the pleasant lines that have fallen unto me is the little early morning vuelta across the street.  Who could have possibly imagined twenty some odd years ago when we landed in Tucson Arizona with an orange van with shag carpeting and five duct-taped together suitcases, this beautiful home right across from meandering trails through the sunlit creosote and prickly pear and mesquite.  Besides Nicole’s dream about moving next door to Mrs. Tiggly Winkle’s I mean.  And the fading round moon is up high and the swelling sun is down low, casting sharp shadows on the sweeping Catalinas, which happen to be my “one place that may seem small on the surface but has a profound effect on you.”

And that backyard which was hard dirt and scrabbly oleander bushes with squawking geese nibbling at a few brave weeds for so long.  No longer.  The Friday night group nestled under the now-covered-with-twisty-vines-Marco-arch next to the blazing fire nursed by freshly split logs.  Freshly split logs that came from that very house so many years ago that we cleaned up after one of Jean Doerge’s diabetic patients who lived with a billy goat and four huge dogs and Alan shoveled four fifty-five gallon drums of trash and used needles from the kitchen floor and I tried to paint over the living room walls covered in scrawled poetry and behind every single picture frame packed exact solid squares of hiding cockroaches.  

And we gathered around autumn squash soup and pear cobbler with real whipped cream and of course there were a few loaves of bread to rip up and dip in olive oil and answered wonderful Sophie-questions and Joella is a hermit crab scuttling from slightly too big beautiful shells to slightly too big shell and growing into them and is all dressed up in a professional suit as a bone-fide accountant, except now she is not dressing up, this is real grown-up now and Jackson is a Peregrine hawk.  And Sophie read a bit on community and listening, and Alan talked about community at Wakefield as they face closure and gardens drying up and empty soccer fields and Jackson has a community of men who sit up late at night and talk through big questions.  And what is the efficacy of prayer and how does prayer affect others and how does it affect the person praying?  And maybe we don’t exactly understand it all, but the LORD God of the Universe does understand and He has commanded us to prayer.  And there was certainly something powerful in Jackson’s blessing for the women gathered and in the quiet rest after Alan’s close.  And the warmth and the candles and the fire and the lights swaying in the breeze overhead and the lines have fallen in pleasant places.  

But fallen is sort of a passive word.  And there is nothing passive about life and redemption and digging up caliche and teaching Spanish to middle school students and studying late at night with a little too much coffee and wondering what is going to happen and Alan and Jackson are out there chopping wood even though he has final exams and to meet with the wedding cake lady and sometimes and actually a lot of the time I wrestle long nights learning what Not my will but Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven really looks like.  

And as Nicole and I arrived a little bit late to the airport and packed Jack and MaryAnne’s multiple and very heavy book-packed bags from Colombia into the trunk and as I bent down and picked up glass shards and Wendy’s hamburger foil and crumpled real estate flyers from along Country Club on my way home because I am my father’s daughter, I am very aware indeed of my goodly heritage.  And yes there is much pain and brokenness and sin at so many levels.  But He is in the business of redeeming His creation and especially His beloved image-bearers and He does it well and good.  And may I too be about my Father’s business.