“Holy cow!” my father said. “You must have gotten up early!”

I had just told him that I had already driven to the airport and back to pick up my husband from a business trip.

“No earlier than usual,” I told my father.

“What time do you get up?” he asked.

“5 o’clock,” I answered.

I didn’t tell him that he also gets up most mornings right around 5. I hear him on the monitor I have in my room because I worry about him falling or needing assistance.

He needs more and more assistance. The other day he called to me, “Sally? Sally?” with the door cracked open. When I checked on him, he was half-dressed and couldn’t think what to do next. But that was at 9 AM, around his usual time for getting dressed.

At 5 AM, on most days, I hear him get up to use the bathroom, but he goes back to bed. I get up, too, and go downstairs to make coffee.

The next 2 – 3 hours are blissfully mine.

I read. My pile of books changes with the seasons.  Right now, I’m reading a Lenten devotional from She Reads Truth,

The New Christian Year, daily readings following a liturgical calendar, compiled by Charles Williams, (my friend, Africa, who is learning to rebind books would be appalled at the white adhesive tape I used when it started falling apart on me),

Blaise Pascal’s Pensées (a pensée a day keeps the mind at play, I tell myself),

my Bible (5 Psalms and the chapter of Isaiah I’m memorizing),

and my prayer book. (Usually I have Lancelot Andrewes help me out here, but I’m giving him a break for Lent.)

I pray. The list grows longer and longer of the people I pray for by name. It’s rare when I cross someone off, but Antonin Scalia came off when he died, and Richard Hanna, my congressman, came off when he left office. Those girls kidnapped by Boko Haram? I chose one name off that list, and until I see her name in a follow-up story — and I frequently check — I’ll continue to pray for her and her family. Friends and family stay on my list forever. If you’re reading this, it’s highly likely that your name is there.

I moodle. Brenda Ueland defines moodling as aimless dawdling. I find it essential for my mental health.

Something about letting thoughts swirl and settle sets everything right.

Lancelot Andrewes has a prayer that one commentator deemed incomplete, but I find it the perfect way to end my beginning every day.

In every imagination of my heart
In the words of my mouth
In the works of my hands
In the ways of my feet

I give it all over to Christ and ask His blessing on those things — my imaginations, my words, my works, my ways — and then head into another ordinary day.

 

One thing is for sure about Amy — she knows how to rejoice.

Easter with Amy is a joyful celebration complete with silly string, confetti, streamers, caterpillars-turning-to-butterflies, and the Hallelujah Chorus. It’s like glitter.

Anyone who has ever worked with glitter knows how impossible it is to clean. The tiniest bit used in a craft project will show up for the next week on the table, on hands, on clothes, on faces — everywhere!

But Amy — my heart was broken to learn that Pastor Amy is moving on to a new church.

When Bud and I made the decision five years ago to move from the non-denominational church we had been attending to the United Methodist church in town, we sat down with the pastor at our current church to let him know what we were thinking and doing.

“You know,” he said, “Methodist pastors only stay in a place about 7 years. They move them around.”

Pshaw, I thought.

That was not what I was thinking last night.

I can remember the first time I saw Amy. It was at Helen’s Baccalaureate service. Amy was put in an awkward position and handled it with such grace.

Get to know her, God whispered in my heart.

Um, God, maybe you didn’t notice — she’s a woman. A woman pastor? I responded.

Sometimes it’s funny the things God doesn’t notice.

Still He niggled at me — about Amy.

It was probably close to two years later that we started attending the church she was pastoring.

Can I be honest here? Amy and I probably don’t see every issue the same way.

But Amy is like glitter. She got on my hands and in my heart.

I see little sparkles in the darnedest places where Amy has left her mark.

I see many issues differently. I understand them differently.

I am more compassionate because I’ve known Amy.

My pshaw has turned to aww… to sadness. Sadness for a church that will feel her absence. Sadness for me because I like things to always stay the same, and I don’t like change, and I don’t want Amy to ever leave ever ever ever — even though we’re staying in Cooperstown most of these days and don’t even go to the church in Greene. I just want Amy to stay where I knew her forever.

But glitter.

It spreads. It sparkles. Spreads and sparkles, spreads and sparkles — showing up everywhere.

I guess it’s important for Amy to move on. Throw a little glitter around somewhere else.

I, in turn, will not try to get the glitter in my heart cleaned up.

I’ll proudly display it like a Grandma Moses snow scene — sparkling and joyful.

For Amy.