Leaves

I have a little prayer rug. It is just a scrap of carpeting in the corner of my study. I put it there when I found that kneeling on the hardwood floor hurt my knees. Our whole house has hardwood floors, except the bathrooms and kitchen which are stone or tile, and the basement which is concrete. So for the benefit of my knees a piece of carpet is essential.

When I was most sick last year I developed a todo list for myself. I didn't want to forget things, and I wanted to accomplish something in a day. Some of the items are daily, and some of those took hold as new habits or routines. I'm sorry to say that some of the daily items never have taken hold and still sit on the list reminding me that I have failed yet again in something I fully intended to do.

First on the list is prayer. I have prayed all my life, but never with the fervency, immediacy and intimacy that I found in the last year. I get up in the morning, stumble up to my prayer rug, open the curtain and look at the tree outside my window for a few minutes, and then give thanks that I'm alive. That I can walk up the stairs. That I have one more day. I offer thanks for the body I'm blessed with, for the healing that has occurred, for hearing and seeing and walking and thinking and feeling. I pray that I can see and smell and hear beauty this day. I pray that I can see the godly, and the ugly, in people. For it is there, both the good and the bad, and it is all part of this life, and I would open my eyes. I give thanks for my wife, who has been by my side constantly, who seems herself to be healthy, and who seems, beyond all reason or sense, to love me. I pray for the wellbeing of my children, Britta and Peter and Chase, each in their work and life. And I pray in intimate detail that I would not speak to another nor would make sense to another, for my bowels to work this day in ways that are intended, and some that never were, where compensation is required.

I have learned that God has more to do with my body than I ever imagined. I always thought of God first with the mind, then sometimes the heart, but never the body. Yet the body may be first, not last, in the catalog of God's concerns and blessings.

Outside my window the tree that I watch every morning has made new little branches which swelled at the end and now have put out tiny green leaves.

It is Spring and the world rejoices in life.