On The Verge

I feel like so many things are on the edge. We are on the verge of…something monumental. We are high above years of the unknown and the unexpected, looking down over a world of possibility!

Opening up before us are choices and plans and decisions to be made. We are not alone in all of this. There is shimmering light guiding our steps. While hope lifts us up out of sticky clay, there are road signs and songs that play with our steps. We bounce with a cadence and clap in joy at all that we see.

I am walking along with music in my head and stars in my eyes and I have not even done anything differently other than to wait.

I stepped out of the shadowland toward those things that I love.

I started a Master Gardener’s Course to obtain that title to contribute to my community with the passion I have for growing things. I have been a midwife for humans for forty years and now I am a midwife for other living things. Bringing forth life from seeds and branches and leaves is a sweet past time. And yet, it is more than that. It is a picture of the gift that God has given all of us. The ability to beget life from our bodies, our hands, our minds. The ability to glorify the Creator. The ability to spread beauty and color and LIFE! I am on the verge of being able to share all that with a vast audience of people.

My mom is on the edge of earth and heaven. She hovers there…waiting. I stand watch with her as she waits. We alternate between sorrow and joy. My selfish desire to hold her to earth…her ambivalence about staying and a muted anticipation about going. It’s a great puzzle we all must face; this wrestling. Can I let loose of her? Will she let loose of me? We stand together at the gate.

My first grand daughter is at the beginning of her adulthood. She makes daily choices as a woman child that are laying the groundwork of the years to come. I watch from afar as this beautiful angel of a girl becomes a woman. She runs along the edge with abandon and joy that is contagious!

My second grand daughter, though half as old as the first, is also growing into a woman, right before my very eyes. She is a gentle, compassionate soul who mothers and nurses those around her. She vacillates between tantrum-like tears and mature decisions and reasonings. I love to listen to her logic. She is a bundle of driven energy ready to ignite.

My first grandson…on the verge of manhood. His voice has a crackling boyness to it alternating with a deep quiet baritone. He still lets himself be hugged, but only tentatively returns it at the risk of revealing his tender heart. This boy delights my Mimi soul! He is SO on the precipice of being grown up. I want to hold him down and keep him small and yet, the wings have already grown quite large so I can only stand back and blow kisses as he jumps and flies…

Our world too, is on the verge of…

We, created of God, are salt and light.

We season our world for good. We bring forth the flavors and beautiful character by how we season the culture around us. Will we season for good? Holding fast to the unmovable truth of the Word? Using the fruits of the Spirit to feed those in our lives? Salt that loses its saltiness is good for nothing. We must be SALTY! Let your seasoning commence!

Will we light up the darkest places with our songs and our poems? Will we spill out the shimmering diamonds that light our path so that others may find their way too? Will we reach out, step out, dance out, paint, laugh and cry for joy so that those in the dark will be encouraged?

I bet most all of you would say a resounding YES! That is who we were made to be!

Torchbearers, trailblazers, stage-takers, beautiful creatives!

So those of you who feel it too; that ‘on the verge-ness’. Come along with me.

I’m going for it!!!

Love, Bets

"You are the salt of the earth..."
"You are the light of the world...Let your light shine before all men in such a way that they may see..." -Matthew 5:14-16

"Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person." - Colossians 4:6