imperfect prose on thursdays: the longing to be special

he suggested i take a walk. he saw it in my eyes, this need for a walk, and he suggested i put feet to gravel while he took the kids in the car and we’d meet at oma’s.

and so i did, waving as they passed and the sky a blue cardigan on old-lady earth, her knots unraveling with the clouds and the artist in me studied the knitted blue, and prayed God would fill me with it. the bigness of it all.

i prayed he’d open me wide to the wonder of the earth as donkey brayed from neighbor’s field and yellow leaves mazed their way to the ground. and between my fingers, the kernels of grass and i liked how it felt, how dry and textured.

so ordinary, this grass, yet my eyes lifted to fields of wheat swaying gold beneath blue and it was masterpiece, thousands of strands of seeming ordinary, together, the picture of heaven.

grass falls to ground and my feet trample, grass trampling grass, for i am but one of these strands straggling from soil, my ribs made from his, my skin but dust and even as i walk, i age. the wrinkles deepen and the sands sift and i long to be special.

i’ve always longed to be special, and i remember: the vision of weeks ago, the vision of me kneeling at Calvary’s cross, of tears wetting soil and flowers sprouting from the wet, hiding me, and then, the tallest flower stretching taller until it became Jesus himself, the gardener, emerging and me, nowhere to be found, Jesus in my place.

Jesus in our place, the place of the ordinary, marking his initials in the dust as he did with the adulterous woman. signing, “mine” and the wheat sways, thousands of strands of ordinary making extraordinary the field of gold.

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*prints and original of ‘hummingbird’ available here*