Drink of His Living Water…

meringues

I feel as though my thoughts and ideas are being whisked into a froth.  Unlike the airy concoctions I whip up in my kitchen I am afraid my emotional peaks won’t turn into delicate meringues.

I need to take my sorrowing of changes to God.

I need to visit the Shepherd’s Well for replenishment.

Today I am finding empty nest doleful.  I yearn for the common experience that holds a family together.

Where is the mother reading “The Wind in the Willows” to her children at their lunch table?

Where is the mother wiping away tears of frustration that hover over growing up?

Where is the mother smiling when her child’s life lights up with achievement?

Where is the mother saying a night-time prayer over her sleepy ones?

Gone is the security of knowing where my children are, of being privy to their fears, of sharing their dreams.

Gone is the she-cat who selflessly protects her offspring from what ‘ere may come-a-knocking!

Folded into my confection are the final weeks of life in my London flat.

Homelessness, once a clever joke, is now packing my belongings, uninvited.

I wish I could be left behind like a grain of sugar on my counter.

Where are the ones who loved me in the quietness of their hearts, who let me go, who unfurled and laid before me a path of prevenient prayer?

LateSummer

My roots are deep with the wisdom of age.

I will always miss,

the fast encroaching darkness of late summer evenings;

the faintest smell of smoke hanging in the air from bonfires and soughing winds;

the bus stops where pedestrians queue, cold, stoic and united by expectancy;

the tube trains carrying assorted passengers pressed intimately together sharing air;

the culture on both sides of a river spanned by many bridges;

the foxes and magpies sparring with each other on the commons;

the bustle of a doctor’s surgery on a Monday morning;

the rain bringing with it a primeval smell that is at once dank and heady, sodden lawns overhung with sparkling bushes that glint in a flicker of sunlight;

Fuschias

the lonely toll of a bell calling me to accept my gift of salvation, over and over again;

the delicious unpredictability of picnic lunches;

the affectionate breaks over half cups of coffee with my comrade-in-empty-nest;

In a few short weeks my ties, knitted together a lifetime ago, will be stretched like the silken threads of a spider’s web, flexible, soft and resilient.

I will smile with anticipation at returning home to my children.

The unknown will stretch before me drenched with,

“…a fountain of water  springing up to eternal life.” (John 4:14)

My thirst will be quenched at my Shepherd’s Well.

I will look forward to a life nourished with old memories that bathe the new in familiarity.

Although my soul aches today to once again be inextricably entwined with my loved ones’ lives I think of my creator’s decision to give me free will and know,

that whether or not my light and fluffy thoughts and ideas eventually come together in a flawless delight they will express the perfect will of God as I drink of His living water. (John 4:10)

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