If I walk down a flight of stairs and knock on the door to the left, I reach my sister’s temporary home. Call it the landing pad, where she’s welcoming the meteorite that is her newborn son. Once she and her husband assimilate this astronomical change —
Is such a thing possible?
Once his paternity leave is over, they’ll go home.
Right now life is bewilderingly simple. They eat. They change diapers. Sometimes they sleep.
They’re in a cocoon.
If I walk up the stairs and take a right, I reach my room — the landing pad for the meteorite that is me, assimilating this astronomical change. Not to my surroundings: Jerusalem is one normal, and home is the other. No, I am the change. A migratory bird, without any clear migration on the horizon. An adventurer, with no visible adventures. The only thing that’s certain is that I certainly don’t know what’s next.
I’m in a cocoon.
I’m reading. I’m editing. I’m enjoying the gift of presence: of sitting in the same room as those I love.
I attended an eight-day Bible conference, studying the teachings of Jesus. While digging into the parable of the sower, one speaker read from a children’s book called Frog and Toad Together. (I love that book: so unassuming and so wise). In it, Toad plants a garden. He waits — scratch that, he does NOT wait. He leans over and yells into the furrowed earth, “Grow seeds, grow!”
He yells it more than once.
That Toad!
I’m Toad.
My relationships, my future, and myself: they will grow, if fueled by prayer. But I’m pretty sure that yelling (even in my thoughts) won’t work.
I’m almost desperate to see what these seeds will grow into…and what will burst out of this cocoon. But God gives the growth. And it’s good for me to be here.
In this quiet, dark spot.
With Him.
Elisabeth Adams 