Up the Sunbeam

-- The hands of the clock were giving their best impression of fan blades as I tried to get She So Sweet to her new school on time. Instead of taking the much faster freeway route, a little trouble with my tires had (for safety's sake) forced us to go through town where it meant navigating about a million (give or take a few) stoplights and the erratic traffic patterns that go with them. I was praying for green lights (I'm sure my girl was too), and things were going along reasonably well despite that still-ticking clock. We had hit 3 or 4 green lights in a row (clearly divine intervention!) when, less than two miles from the school, a car in front of us slowed our roll to about half-speed, and you guessed it, we inevitably hit a red light. Groan. The clock seems to spin twice as fast when you have to sit still at a light. A split second before I was really about to come unglued, my mental GPS kicked in and I thought about the intersection where I was sitting. With s...

--  "Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing Thy grace; Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise." So go the first lines of one of my favorite hymns. It rightly characterizes my Heavenly Father as the "Fount of every blessing." A fountain . . . a  constant, gushing, rushing flow of water under enough pressure to launch it high into the air, making the beautiful arcing patterns we so enjoy watching. What is known, but isn't so easily noticed, is that the flow of a fountain is made up of millions of individual drops, all directed by the design of the fountain. Blessing. I like blessings! Blessings never ceasing? Yes, please! I am so conditioned by my very BLESSED Western culture, and by the desires of my own flesh, to want a constant, gushing, rushing flow of blessings. Whether they be spiritual, physical, financial, emotional, personal, I love to be in a state of obvious blessing. Sometimes, when ch...

-- I arrived in the smaller of the two gyms at my daughter's high school. Thin rubber mats covered the surface of the floor to protect it from the scratchy feet of the long tables that marched in long rows stretching nearly from wall to wall. In this room and several other locations in the school, 700 sophomores were about to file in, pencils and minds at the ready. A couple of other moms and I were there as parent volunteers to help oversee the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). The kids were in a 10 minute morning break between classes and we volunteers took the opportunity to get acquainted. We told our kids' names and ages, talked about how long we'd been at this school, and inquired as to whether any of us had done this before--routine parent volunteer small talk. Just then another mom came in, peering inside to make sure she was in the right place. We assured her she was, and I couldn't help noticing a slight sadness, the almost apologetic expression sh...

-- I've been having a hard time finding my rhythm. That isn't really new. In fact, I think I say that at the beginning of every school year, the beginning of every summer, the beginning of every new season. Motherhood in particular, and life in general, both seem to be characterized by irregular time signatures, and I frequently scramble to adjust to those odd beats. Above and beyond the usual oddities, new things are swirling all over my schedule these days and the tempo has moved up a few notches on the metronome. This has the effect of putting me in a mild state of panic when something unexpected happens. I've just found the beat . . . okay, there it is, I can do this . I'm concentrating like crazy to stay on it now that I've found it, and then, out of the blue, someone throws in an impromptu stop, or points at me for a solo, or the time signature changes without warning and I'm afraid the whole audience will hear me missing beats and flubbing my ...