I'm sitting on my couch. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the blinds lowered over the window. Except that they hang crooked. I can never seem to get them even. Those two strings never hold with the right amount of tension. The side that's higher lifts inches above the window sill. Beyond it, a small, insistent glow from the white Christmas lights I left strung around my porch peers through the dark night and into my window. Drops from the first (late) winter rain sit on the window. They catch its light and sparkle. The condensation blurs the edges. Around it all: night.
This is life right now: dark mornings, dark evenings, couch-sitting, small details, mundane details, crooked details that I still can't seem to get right after all these years. Tension held un-balanced. January is all about starting small, slow, silent, a stark contrast to the bright, fast, full December we just paraded through. Hopefully, it's about noticing, about keeping candles lit and lights glowing even if they're small, about the grace that holds a never balanced life -- still whole, and worth living.
These are the first attempts at creative words I've written in over a month. Of the many things I may have learned about myself over this past year, one is that words are hard-won is transition. The un-balance is weeks and months when my head is wrapping itself around how to live. I haven't yet learned to dig words out until I'm on the other side. Something else I've learned, or am learning, is how darkness creeps in after those large, bright full days are over until night is longer than day. But night seasons are part of how the world moves and spins, how it turns over, part of the creation God called "good" (is what my pastor said yesterday, and I am trying to believe him).
Or maybe this is the way I am supposed to write it: after many long nights, day will always become longer than night, and something brighter than twinkling Christmas lights will announce itself through the cracks in my crooked blinds. I'm sitting here. I'm waiting.
[If you are reading, thanks for joining me here. I may or may not be adding more words in the coming weeks... stay tuned.]
photo: sunrise at griffith park
