When you wonder if you disappoint…

Found via my favorite blog: Aholyexperience.com. Swing over and see what else she has that moves your heart to say "Amen!"


Sat down with my Mama last night, her hair falling like snow straight down.

She had put this bowl of them out on the end table — these dried rosehips.

They rolled between the fingers perfectly, these whole worlds.



I kept popping them between my fingers… between my words.

“So much….” pop…. “I am just not…” pop…. “getting at all right.”

“Like?” Mama sits in the wingback, twists her long hair around her hands, this turning of everything.

“Like what the speech therapist said about how we’re going to have model things differently if Kai’s going make progress.” I don’t look up.

Just pop one dried rosehip …. stir the bowl…. crack another one. Everything turned and stirred… cracked.

“Like the to-do list that isn’t touched and the read alouds I don’t read with children and the memories I’m not making and the intentions I don’t follow through on. Like the decisions I can’t make– and then do make. And wonder if they were the right ones at all?”

I don’t have to look up. I know how she’s listening, how her eyes are simply waiting to hear, understand. A mother can always be pregnant – full of grace. She must feel it, me all stirring.

“It’s about getting it all right?” Did she speak this softly when I wailed through the nights, when she held me and rocked?

“No…” Why do I always have soul amnesia? Why can your head figure things out so much faster than your heart? Why is it that what runs through your veins learns so slow? It’s about praise, not perfection.

The only right is found in His righteousness and grace is always the most amazing of all.

“No… it’s not about getting it all right.” I roll one rosehip between thumb and index. This one withered world.

“I just — I just know I disappoint.”

I need to look into her eyes.

She nods, waiting for me to deliver into the light. She’s waiting for my head to whisper to my heart the rhythm of truth so I can breathe. “And?”

I say it slow.

“God appoints people who do disappoint – to point to a God who never disappoints.”

I’m the one breaking open…

Appointed to be this mama to these children, this wife to that husband, this daughter, this sister, this church member — appointed to this work, to this home, to this marriage, to this relationship, and it’s not about disappointing as much as Who am I pointing to, Who am I turned to and reaching for and seeking after and walking all of my life towards.

I say it again so my heart can find grace’s beat:

“God appoints people who do disappoint – to point to a God who never disappoints.”

I don’t get it right – but my words and my actions and my heart can exalt the One Who is Right.

Mama’s eyes hold me and I don’t feel withered and she’s nodding, her locks falling like a blessing and everything unlocking.

I don’t pop the dried berry between my fingers.

I just turn it in my hand… turn it all around.

And I can feel that — how the mother and Father both smile and how the whole withered world might…