| Amy Ridgeway |
| ������ Once not too long ago, we had a strawberry festival at our house. Mostly it was an excuse to eat 3 desserts in one day because what's a festival without all kinds of good food? My cousin and I loaded up our girls in the van and went to a strawberry field that did indeed seem like forever. We ate strawberries in the field, on the way home, and in shortcake, pie and ice. Yet we will always remember the day not for its sheer beauty and wealth of dessert, but for the snake she transported from her house to mine in the back of her van along with a box of yard sale stuff. And for my then four-year-old who almost stepped on it getting from the house to the patio and was so scared she did it again to get back into the house. We were panicked all afternoon- until we were sure it slithered it's long, black body out into the front yard and far away from a house of screaming females. I would not say that we handled our fears particularly well that day. But a long seeded fear of snakes is a part of how we both are made- and we have made our separate peace with that part of our selves. I could even live without knowing that the body of a snake feels like corn if you rub it one way and the heads of a bunch of pins held together if you rub it the other way. The same child is now seven, and came home with tales of the wonders of a reptile show that came to her elementary school. I did not volunteer to help in her classroom that day. Even with me as a parent, trying with everything that I am and a whole lot of things I wish that I weren't, to instill my own self into her soul, I am beginning to realize that she is somehow a distinct human being, with her own way of looking at the world. Sure, the umbilical cord was cut long ago, but somehow I think I am still looking for something that will forever, irrevocably, tie my child to me with strong unyielding cords. How can she think thoughts I don't have, see sights I can't, live a life outside of my own? Just a few minutes ago, she could not even have existed outside of the safe confines of my uterus, and now here she is touching snakes and making up wonderful word pictures to explain it all. Each spring we have a strawberry festival, each fall a pumpkin party, and in between we have countless other small rituals that we create and recreate each year. Sometimes we bake Christmas cookies, sometimes we buy them from the grocery as we sip instant cocoa. We have discovered that plastic eggs are just as much fun to hide and find as hand-decorated individually stamped ones color coordinated to the color of each basket and corrugated paper grass. Also, if you send Valentines instead of Christmas cards, folks think you are remarkably clever and thoughtful. Come to think of it, those things are way better than an umbilical cord, and a lot more comfortable than a tight, unyielding cord. Matthew 18:18-20 I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be one for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. (NIV) |
| Tied up in Heaven |