One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

Ann Voskamp is a young hog farmer’s wife, writes cards for Dayspring, and raises six kids on an Ontario farm.  Nearly three years after its publication, her book is still 7^th in Amazon’s books on spiritual growth, and 269^th in all Amazon books.

Ann’s life has been far from care free.  In eleven insight-and-poetry-laced chapters, she tears hole after hole in the fabric of her life so that she can see God through them.  Sometimes her pain became my pain.  Often her joy became my joy.  Always, it seemed, her insight tore a small hole in my own point of view, and I learned.

I experienced all three in this chapter.  I hope you do too.

 

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, Chapter 7: “Seeing Through the Glass”

The last of the sunflowers stands tall in the kitchen garden right off the porch. It’s early, too early, really. The picket fence gate at the side of the garden lies open. I have scissors in hand and hopes for just a ring or two of fresh petals. In the house, empty vases line the counter. Emptiness opened wide for beauty filling. So I have gone looking, always looking.

The finches, yellow on wing, flit among the high leaves. The ground is damp from the night dreams. I stretch high on the toes to reach a crowning sunflower, perfect. A few lower ones, bowed, still new. I walk the rows of giants and I gather. My arms are wet with dew, full of summer.

In the house, I trim stems, shear off lower leaves, fill the open vase mouths, and I arrange. I set the vases of the golden heads out. One on the side table by the window, another at the end of the hand hewn-mantel, beam from a barn that the school bus drove past all my childhood. I bring beauty in. I take the last to the table, set its bouquet in the middle of the quilted runner of pinwheel stars that Mama stitched for my birthday, thrifted cotton ginghams, old men’s shirts, faded summer work. For a moment, I bend, fingering petals.

I peer into a wide circle of sunflower, a mother searching a child’s face.

My boys come in from the barn.

I lay out bread. They banter, hard, the brother-scrape. I stir orange juice, keep breathing, ask them to be kind. I brought the beauty in: why now smash the vases? One of the boys tosses in slices of bread for toast, careless. I set out plates in sun. The Tall-Son lathers butter on toast, but only his. I notice.

“Son, your brother? Could you butter his toast?” He reaches for peanut butter, fires me a white-hot glare. Morning flashes.

How’d I stumble into shadow and cross fire?

“Please. Might you pass a piece of toast down to your brother?”

“Sure.” His sarcasm slaps. I steady myself on the table’s edge.

Nothing could have braced the gut for what he did next, shrapnel ripping intestines.

He whips a piece of toast into his brother’s face.

Why throw toast in your brother’s face?

His brother rages red and I’m sucker punched and it’s toast, yeah, but isn’t it his heart and I shake the head stunned, losing words, and the child I ripened with, bore down and birthed from the heart, he turns on a Tuesday, tears out a few more of the pulsing chunks and where did I go so wrong?

Who cares about bringing the beauty in when all the inner rooms reek? It’s toast and it’s not toast and I can’t shrug it off because it’s the profanity of it, the desecrating of one made in the Image. I slam hands down on the table when I’d like to grab hold of his throat. Can I exchange the clay eyes shot red for the sacred seeing?

“Why?” My mother-anger could crack vases.

He’s smirking.

“Why would you throw that at him?” I’m too shrill, too gaped, too blind-white angry.

Straw comes in all shapes and the back of a camel can be weak and it’s toast and surely there’s something behind it that I should seek out but I don’t even care. It’s my own face that obscures the face of God. How can I help this son of mine see when I can’t see? The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they’ve held their own peace? Christ incarnated in the parent is the only hope of incarnating Christ in the child—yet how do I admit that people made in the Image can make me blind to God, my own soul contorting, skewing all the faces? Why gouge out your own eyes when crusading for Beauty? Pain drives us to the mad acts.

I am mad. I’d like to will myself out of it but the blood is pounding loud in my ears and the sons slash at each other with the dagger eyes. Why? Can I just go back to the moon and the brazen glory? Wind and trees and sky wake me and I’m Peter on the mountaintop, stirring to see The Glory in all its God-radiance, stammering out that it’s good to be here; let’s build shelters and never depart (Luke 9:28-36). But there’s always the descent from the mount. The meeting of the crowd, the complaining, the cursing. Obvious and immediate transfigurations exhilarate the faith, but the faithful can forget transfigurations, faces that once changed appearances. We betray Who we know. Didn’t Peter?

How to be a contemplative here, seeing the fullness of God with the six children 24/7, the one farm, the six hundred sows, eight hundred piglets, only a whole lot of craziness? I hang my head. A boy pounds a plate with a clenched fist. The other blithely butters toast. How do I fix this? Them? Me? In the messy, Jesus whispers, “What do you want?” and in the ugly, I cry, “I want to see—see You in these faces.” He speaks soft, “Seek My face.” I want to answer with David, “My heart says to you, ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek'” (Psalm 27:8 ESV) but I’m desperate to grab someone, anyone, and shake hard, “How do I have the holy vision in this mess? How do I see grace, give thanks, find joy in this sin-stinking place?”

The moon and the geese fly high, unsullied and wide-eyed, and I’m too twisted.

A boy drives a plate hard back down the table at his brother. And God tries to gently drive the words of Caussade from the knowing of my head to the bleeding of the heart:

You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are. You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies—though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet [God’s] beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is.

A blasphemer.

I pull out a chair from the table, sink down. The sunflower heads have turned low. The Tall-Son is chewing his toast too loud at the other end of the table. What compels me to name these moments upheavals and annoyances instead of grace and gift? Why deprive myself of joy’s oxygen? The swiftness and starkness of the answer startle. Because you believe in the power of the pit.

Really? I lay my head on the table. Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan’s way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus’ way? Why else get angry? Isn’t it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want? When I choose—and it is a choice—to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness? Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective—more expedient—than giving thanks?

Blasphemer.

Blasphemer.

I rake my fingers through my hair. Who’s the real sinner at breakfast on Tuesday, the one with the stinking pig in the temple?

Senses are impaired if they don’t sense the Spirit and somebody, tell me, how do I tear open tear-swollen eyelids to see through this for what it really is?

If there are wolves in the woods—expect to see wolves; and if there is God in this place—expect to see God.

Can I be so audacious? To expect to see God in these faces when I am the blasphemer who complains, who doesn’t acknowledge this moment for Who it is?

“Do you even care what he did to me first?” Future-man is | standing now, hands stuffed hard into pockets, glowering. His stack of toast is growing cold.

I should want to care, and I try to will myself, but I’m hard, so tired. I turn away. See, somehow I’ve got to see, got to feel.

How did Jesus do it again? He turned His eyes. “And looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave …” (Matthew 14:19 NIV). He looked up to heaven, to see where this moment comes from. Always first the eyes, the focus. I can’t leave crowds for mountaintop, daily blur for Walden Pond—but there’s always the possibility of the singular vision. I remember: Contemplative simplicity isn’t a matter of circumstances; it’s a matter of focus.

One boy is turned, shaking his head, angry, at the window, the world; the other is eating another slice of toast, defiant. I take a deep breath, say nothing to them, but I look up to heaven and I speak it to Him here because there are wolves in the woods and there is God in this place and I haven’t done this before and it feels strange but I give thanks aloud, in a whisper: “Father, thank You for these two sons. Thank You for here and now. Thank You that You don’t leave us in our mess.” My heart rate slows. Something hard inside softens, opens, and this thanks aloud feels mechanical. But I can feel the heart gears working. “Thank You for toast. Thank You for cross-grace for this anger, for the hope of forgiveness and brothers and new mercies.” I look for the ugly beautiful, count it as grace, transfigure the mess into joy with thanks and eucharisteo leaves the paper, finds way to the eyes, the lips. This, this is what Annie Dillard meant:

Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it. It is, as Ruskin says, ‘not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen.’ … I have to say the words, describe what I’m seeing … But if I want to notice the lesser cataclysms of valley life, I have to maintain in my head a running description of the present.

I speak the unseen into seeing and I can feel it, this steady breathing in the rhythm of grace—give thanks (in), give thanks (out). The eyes focus, apertures capturing Beauty in ugliness. There’s a doxology of praise that splits the domestic dark.

The sun spreads out across the table, a cloth, and sunflowers | ring light. I see it. All the world is window. No material is opaque. If we are willing to see—people, circumstances, situations, relationships—all is transparent.

All of this globe is but glass to God.

And eucharisteo washes the glass. Eucharisteo, wholesale worship, its redemptive work wiping away the soot of days cindered.

I look over at my son tearing away at toast. Why am I a habitual reductionist? Why do I reduce God in this moment to mere annoying frustration? Why do I reduce The Greatest to the lesser instead of seeing the lesser, this mess, as reflecting The Greatest? I have to learn how to see, to look through to the Largeness behind all the smallness. Isn’t He here?

The humiliated son can stand it no more, pushes away from the table, pushes past his fuming brother, slams the door behind him. I exhale. Remember: Gratitude redeems, making us the realists. Mouth thanks to the heights and see the real reality. Give thanks to keep the gaze on heaven.

Glass to God.

Eucharisteo always precedes the miracle.

Why do I have spiritual Alzheimer’s, always forgetting’?

I can feel it, the grip on my shoulders, and it’s St. John who whispers it clear too, how to find God in the mess:

We [actually] saw His glory…. For out of His fullness (abundance) we have all received [all had a share and we were all supplied with] one grace after another and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing and even favor upon favor and gift [heaped] upon gift. (John 1:14, 16 AMP, emphasis added)

That’s the mystery map to the deep seeing! We saw His glory … because … we have all received one grace after another. We have all received one grace after another, but we only recognize the glory of God in this moment when we wake to the one grace after another. “If you want to be really alert to seeing Jesus’ divine beauty, his glory … then make sure you tune your senses to see his grace,” urges theologian John Piper (emphasis added). “That’s what his glory is full of.” Grace: that is what the full life is full of, what the God-glory is full of. To see the glory, name the graces. Retune the impaired senses to sense the Spirit, to see the grace. Couldn’t I do that anywhere? Why is it so hard? Practice, practice.

I run my hand across the table, gathering crumbs, and look carefully into the face of my son. His arms are stiff, his jaw set, his eyes near mine and drenched black-blue, like the day I first held him. This day too has bruising of its own. I glimpse Who this moment really is and I’m tender. The swine flees.

I lay a hand on his shoulder, but he bristles, skin grown from this skin and sick of this skin. “Can you tell me more? I’m ready. I really do want to understand.” I climb his eyes down into who he is. He’s echo-black.

He jerks his shoulder to flip away my hand, steps back from my stench. We eye each other and mine beg and his ice. The lips I once traced after the lullabies, they turn surly and hard.

“You never see what he does!” He leans into my face. “But you sure do always see what I do!” He wants to stare me down, shoot me down. This is old pus, infected wounds. This is not about toast. Is it ever all about now? His howl fills the face, his and mine. Heart that once beat under mine, how did we get here? How did I fail you? How did I see things all wrong? I am Hagar lost with boy and the boy bangs the table with his fist and I want to step back, flee. Who can witness the dying, but how can I leave him?

“Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water” (Genesis 21:19 NIV).

Hagar and her boy were dying of thirst with a well less than a bowshot away.

What insanity compels me to shrivel up when there is joy’s water to be had here?

In this wilderness, I keep circling back to this: I’m blind to joy’s well every time I really don’t want it. The well is always there. And I choose not to see it. Don’t I really want joy? Don’t I really want the fullest life? For all my yearning for joy, longing for joy, begging for joy—is the bald truth that I prefer the empty dark? Prefer drama? Why do I lunge for control instead of joy? Is it somehow more perversely satisfying to flex | control’s muscle? Ah—power—like Satan. Do I think Jesus-grace too impotent to give me the full life? Isn’t that the only reason I don’t always swill the joy? If the startling truth is that I; don’t really want joy, there’s a far worse truth. If I am rejecting the joy that is hidden somewhere deep in this moment—am I not ultimately rejecting God? Whenever I am blind to joy’s well, isn’t it because I don’t believe in God’s care? That God cares enough about me to always offer me joy’s water, wherever! I am, regardless of circumstance. But if I don’t believe God cares, if I don’t want or seek the joy He definitely offers somewhere in this moment—I don’t want God.

Blasphemer.

In His presence is fullness of joy. He is in this moment.

The well is always here. God is always here—precisely because He does care.

God faithfully provides water for His people everywhere.

But how do you make yourself want joy? I look across at my son glaring me down.

When you know you’re Hagar and you finally come to the end of yourself and all the water in your own canteen is gone and you know that you and your son are going to die if you don’t get some joy to the lips and down the parched throat— and now; when you can no longer stand to see those you love die all around you from your emptiness; when the emptiness is so dark you are driven to struggle again for joy, to cry for joy to the Joy God there and you beg, sob—remember: You have to want to see the well before you can drink from it. You have to want to see joy, God in the moment.

I cradle the son’s glare with the beholding eyes.

Thank You, Lord, for that one strand that always curls near his ear, that scar he ripped across his cheek when he was three, those eyes sky like his father’s.

I am praying with the eyes wide open and prayer becomes revelation. My eyes change and he changes in them and I remember, as G. K. Chesterton observes, how “our perennial spiritual and psychological task is to look at things familiar until they become unfamiliar again.” The unfamiliar becomes the real and the real is only seen by the lovers and I count him as grace, I embrace now as love, and I know how lovers alone see the true.

Love is not blind; love is the holy vision.

For a glancing moment, I am Hagar healed, Hagar who had spoken once before in a desert exile:

Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her. She said, “You are the God who sees me.” She also said, “Have I truly seen the One who sees me?” So that well was named Beer-lahai-roi (which means “well of the Living One who sees me”). (Genesis 16:13-14)

Hagar had known God sees for she had met Him before, needy in the sands, yet when sent away the second time, Hagar had forgotten. She had laid her son down to die and couldn’t see any well. In the domestic cloud of dust and family, I too can forget the One who sees me, but in eucharisteo, I remember. I cup hands and all the world is water.

The well, it is still there.

There is always a well—All is well.

I choke out my son’s name. His skin is transparent … glass. And he stares long, brims … quavers … falls. And I cradle him, the Boy-Man, flood over shoulders.

“You wear anger to hide all this sadness?” I lay a hand on his back, whisper words. He pulls away, bites lip quivering, dams it up.

“Where do you find happiness anymore?” I ache for the once-laughing child now struggling into his teens and the man-skin. He stares out the window, away, murmurs it to no one and anyone. “I think I am happy … when I am alone.”

I ache toward him sitting by the window and I am mother searching child’s face and I crack … I brim … I fall … and the tears scald. Oh, son …So thirsty.

There is always a well.

I remember a moon and the face of Him who is happiest of all who wants us to be happiest in Him and oh, son, I know, I know, this peopled life. Jacob wrestled with God and called the place Peniel, meaning “God’s face.” This daily joy struggle, above all, it is a Jacob-wrestle to see God in the faces we face. How do I help my son, so thirsty?

Tell him what eucharisteo is doing. How I’m wrestling to name graces to see glory in the moment, graces to see glory in the faces. I could tell him stories of people like us, living the strain of everyday family life, who tried eucharisteo too. How we tried a ten-day eucharisteo experiment. Ten days of eucharisteo as a stress intervention, eucharisteo as a practical miracle, not on the mount, but in the faces and the crowd. Whenever we felt stress in relationships, we audibly gave thanks. I could tell him how one woman wrote, “I can feel the gratitude starting to soak into my soul. I’m becoming someone else, a new person, one that I like better than the old.”

How another voiced, “I’m learning to express gratitude before stress gets a chance to creep up in a lot of situations…. I’m so thankful for what God has allowed our humble attempt at gratitude to work in our home! I just can’t help but share how life changing this gratitude experiment has been!”

That another’s words make me cry joy because it is my life story?

“Learning slowly to not be so reactionary while inserting verbal gratitude into stressful situations is almost like being healed of mental blindness. I have begun to ‘see’ again.”

My human experience is the sum of what the soul sees and I see precisely what I attend to and what the eyes focus on is what the life is. See the well, son, the well.

He’s sitting now, turned toward the window and fields and gnawing his lip, trying to stem the hollow burn running down his cheeks, and I finger for words.

“I get it, you know.” He doesn’t turn. Brushes his cheek with the back of his hand. What day when I wasn’t looking did his hand become like his father’s? Like a man’s. He’s weeping. My son is crying and he’s letting me in, sharing what it’s like to be behind his eyes. Eucharisteo gave me this … It was just toast. Ugly toast. And He showed me how to give thanks for it. And then the miracle—a soft heart. To let me hold his heart.

“I get how hard it is to live with the people and find the joy.” I lower into the chair across from him. The babe has become me. His hair is darkening, only a few lighter strands now in his cowlick, like my cowlick—one I inherited from my father.

“You see it every day here. How I wrestle for joy, for seeing God in the faces … you see how I fail.” I reach across the table for him. Stretch my hand out to touch his. His knuckle’s cut. From welding steel? From the miter saw? Always creating, designing … dreaming.

He turns slightly—toward me. He lets me touch him. Oh son. He is not alone; I am not alone. I want to hold him in my arms, make my skin, his skin, right again. Return to Eden. I can’t change our skin. Maybe our eyes? I catch his. He doesn’t look away. He lets the eyes hold him.

“Can I help you find the laughter again? I’m looking too.”

My eyes beg. His thaw. He shifts, sighs. I almost miss his murmur.

“I’ve already tried giving thanks.”

Oh.

“You knew? I mean, you knew that giving thanks is the way into joy? Because thanksgiving is the way we enter into God?”

“I hear you doing it all the time.” He slumps into the chair, lays his head on the table.

The thrash for joy can be gory, loud.

Did he see it on the counter too, the constant counting of gifts in the journal under the words “Ugly Beautiful” scratched across the page?

Toppling closets (books!)

Toys all over the floors (boy joy!)

Two-month-old paint tape around trim (someday soon!)

Mismatched socks

Lost library book

Apple cores, apple cores, apple cores

Dusty shelves

Splattered mirrors…

Does he see me doing the hard eucharisteo, counting the ugly as grace, transfiguring the ugly into beauty with thanks? Does he see?

“And?” I pull my chair closer, gently squeeze his hand.

“It’s just so … hard.” He mutters, closes his eyes.

He knows my skin; I know his.

“Hard. Yes. So hard.” He lies with his eyes closed. I feel it too, boy of mine. Days, just close my eyes to it all. “It’s hard, eucharisteo. I am trying, really trying: Practice. The discipline of thanks only comes with practice.” I know, son. So many days, so hard. I want to give up too. But give up the joy-wrestle … and I die.

“The practice of giving thanks … eucharisteo … this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don’t have to change what we see. Only the way we see.” I whisper it to the son with the eyes closed. His chin trembles. Eyes leak tears. Oh, son. So hard. To see all this material world as transparent, glass to God. To practice migrating one thousand gifts on paper to one thousand all eyes to one thousand smiles on lips. To transfigure the principle to the skin.

But if we don’t intentionally commit to the hard practice of seeing, don’t we die in barren wilderness? Anger, frustration, emptiness?

I lay my hand on my son’s cheek, his tear-wet cheek. We are of a piece.

“Son? You can’t positive-think your way out of negative feelings. About your brother, about me, about people. Feelings work faster than thoughts; blood runs faster than synapses.” His eyelashes quiver. “The only way to fight a feeling is with a feeling.”

I stroke his cheek slow.

I move closer, hoping my words might revive. “Feel thanks and it’s absolutely impossible to feel angry. We can only experience one emotion at a time. And we get to choose— which emotion do we want to feel?”

He lies still. Sometimes acknowledging what we really want is hardest of all.

I wrap an arm around him, his back warm in sunlight, and lay my head on his one broad shoulder. Under my face, his shoulder rises and falls, labored breaths. Death sadness. I must still try to give my son water.

“Can I tell you a story?” I can feel his muscles relax. Since the day I first held him, I’ve told stories to this curl of ear. He and I, stories, this is our space.

“There was once a wrestler like us. His name was Jacob. And on a night when he was all alone, staring up at the stars in the dark, unable to sleep because he was scared to go meet his brother the next day, this brother that he had run away from because the brother had wanted to actually take his bare hands and kill him. Talk about taut family ties.”

“Esau.” Ah. He’s listening. His voice, hope in the sands. I smile into his shoulder, squeeze him tight.

“Yes. Esau. Jacob was terrified to meet his brother Esau. And all night long, he wrestles hard with a man, flailing and thrashing and struggling and he grips his fingers deep into the leg, the torso of the man, and he utterly refuses to let go, right till the sun embers kindle up the horizon. It’s hard. He’s exhausted. He’s confused.” I sit up. Rub my son’s back in slow, wide circles. The midmorning sun’s rays through the window are strengthening.

“And when the man can’t overpower or throw off Jacob, he touches the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh. The man breaks Jacob. Then day breaks. And he commands Jacob to let him go.” I run my fingers up through his hair, that cowlick of mine.

“But Jacob, he refuses to let the man go. He doesn’t even really know who the man is, can’t clearly see his face, but he begs, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” And the man turns to Jacob and gives him a new name. Names him Israel, the God-wrestler. Says to him, “You’ve wrestled with God and you’ve come through.” All that while Jacob hadn’t known who he was wrestling. Just a man in the dark, a man he couldn’t see. And in the black, all that night, it was the face of God over him that he was struggling against. God is behind the faces, son. Can we see?” My hand rests on his head and my chest hurts.

“And you know what Jacob named the place? Peniel— means ‘God’s face.’ He said, ‘I saw God face-to-face and lived to tell the story!'”

I smile. “But there’s more to the story … There’s always more to every story.” His lips twitch a sad smile and I see it. I half grin. “A long time ago, a preacher named James H. McConkey asked a friend of his, a doctor, ‘What is the exact significance of God’s touching Jacob upon the sinew of his thigh?'”

“And the doctor told him, ‘The sinew of the thigh is the strongest in the human body. A horse couldn’t even tear it apart.'”

These are the words I have never forgotten, what preacher McConkey said: “Ah, I see. The Lord has to break us down at the strongest part of our self-life before He can have His own way of blessing -with us.”

Like this morning, breaking us down at the tough parts … Then we see. See the blessing.

I lean in close to my boy’s ear.

“And when Jacob went out the next morning to meet that brother he dreaded? After the dark of the wrestle, and being torn right apart in his strongest part, by a man he didn’t even know was God—do you know what he said? He looked into the face of his brother, that brother who had wanted to kill him, and he said, ‘To see your face is like seeing the face of God’ [Genesis 33:10 NIVj.” I rest my hand on his arm, arm so still.

“Wrestle with God, beg to see the blessings … and all faces become the face of God. See, son?” Water? Do you see the water?

Under my hand resting on his arm, I can feel the drain of his wrestle, mine. I look into his face. His eyelids rest easy. His cheeks have dried. We’ve shaken and the blood has rushed and we have felt the heat of the rage, the fire of the enemy, the flame of True God’s holiness, and we have done war. We’ve dug in our nails and we haven’t let go until the blessings; we have practiced, we have extended, we have clung and we’ve been rung out. We have panted it and we’ve cupped palm to the heavens, “Bless me, Bless me. I won’t let go.”

Like Jacob, we ask, breathless and heaving, where He is, who He is, for His name here, the only real blessing. “Please tell me your name.” We have named the graces and there found His name, Glory, and in the face of man we have seen the face of God. Then Him, the blessing, God, joy-water in the desert.

But wells don’t come without first begging to see the wells; wells don’t come without first splitting open hard earth, cracking back the lids. There’s no seeing God face-to-face without first the ripping.

Tear the thigh to open the eye.

Wrench the socket of the hip, the tough grizzle of the heart, and heal the socket of the eye. It takes practice, wrenching practice, to break open the lids. But the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.

“Son?”

He lifts his head. He opens his eyes and he looks into me and this heart revives. My son … He blurs. There is always a well. All is well.

“You want to—want to practice eucharisteo with me?”

The round of our eyes hold us liquid round and within him I warm, and the love really sees.

“Yeah, Mom.” He smiles slow. “Yeah … we could practice thanks together.”

… Grace eyes

… My hand near his

… The calm after the storm

The moon will rise and those who limp know how to see. Who can live with hand wide open?

Son turns his hand open toward mine. I lay mine down gentle.

The morning light makes halos of the bouquet of sunflowers, their faces all upturned.

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