deep down things

So the day that Leah was dismissed from the hospital we spent the better part of the morning talking with a respiratory therapist about how to keep dust and mold under control.


And when I get home I finish Alcorn's book, watch a video about a family that lives contentedly in a 320-square foot home, and see the photos of Liliana, and I start feeling like I can't breathe, surrounded by all these things that collect dust and grow mold.


So I go through the house and have the kids go through their toys (It's not that I'm anti-toy, I'm just pro-child) and we load the van up to the roof and make a special trip to Justice for All.


I clear out my blender (I have a Vita-Mix), the larger of my two electric frying pans, the Quik-stir pitcher, the spare bath towels that we've hardly used in 8 years (you can, in fact, have too many towels), and the whole tub of home decor items that aren't decorating anything.   


When we come home we warm leftovers for lunch and pray that the towels and the blender and the plastic food will end up with people who really need them.  And then nap time, and we read about little Christian and Hopeful fleeing Demas and the silver mine.


And as I sort through stuff, I sort through my own sins and the way I've been distracted and my priorities that are all out of whack.  I call my little sister who's marrying and moving soon by the wrong name and I start to cry.  Why?  And where am I going?


All this, and I'm still out mornings, these dewy, crisp mornings, shooting the sky and thanking Him, that for all this, I'm not spent, for:


There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breath and with ah! bright wings.
~ Hopkins

Thank Him, my Companion on this pilgrim road.

Thank Him for these clouds, dust kicked up by His feet (Nahum 1:3).