david

this little one had a very fitful sleep

white breath on darkened window

watching 

snow 

(that has twice this winter cancelled university classes)

accumulate

flake by flake

grateful 

for the silent stillness 

perhaps it is what allowed God to hear 

my quiet desperate prayer

for at some point

morning broke

the doritos, the birthday cake the danny's italian hoagie and chinatown inn egg roll

no longer ravaged my body

and I heard

the voice of an Other

speaking a bit of truth somehow into my spirit

"I made you

  I know everything in you

everything

the gush of love

that just about pulls you

to your knees

as you look at your 

beautiful grown children

gathered and waiting

around the dinner table

just as sensually seductive as they were when little 
brown from sun and play

their hair 

their eyes 

their skin 

their smiles

and who they are within

you want to wrap your arms around them tightly

touch them gently 
hold them sweetly

swoop them up

and eat them 

you love them so much more than so.....

and these they 'just' came through you

you had no idea how to 'create' them...

they grew

as I intended

for they are My making
they are Mine

and you...are too"

I am known by God, created?!?!?

perhaps in the exact same way

I thrill Him

delight HIm

He looks on me and I melt His heart.....
with beauty and with love

my Lord, my God

You made me

fearfully and wonderfully

You formed me

Your eyes saw me

and You knew me 

before any of my days

You know when I sit

when I stand

when I am fitful upon my bed

You are familiar with my thoughts

and every word

and upon me is Your hand

I cannot escape You by night

or escape You by fleeing 

to my favorite 

day dream 

night dream 

life long dream

....the sea

and thirty years ago when I married

those words of David where sung 

and even yet

I still remember them and they sing inside my head

on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary

You walked me 

with the husband You have given

close beside me all the way

to a place where my eyes rested upon this wonder of world and man

I had no preconceptions about seeing yet another statue in Italy

I had not done my 'homework' 

studying up on all the art we were to see

I was a typical tourist...

moving in our little group

listening thru our little headsets 
to the drone of our tour guide providing information

about all the statues we were passing 

as we made our way 

to the final destination 

at the end of the long marble corridor of the Accademia delle Belle Arti

in an instant I see it

a 17 foot tall marble statue

chiseled from a leftover block of 'scrap' marble abandoned by another artist decades earlier

I am transported

at some point I become conscious

that I am no longer standing with my group

I realize I no longer know where my husband is

I had broken line

left all parameters of normal decorum

I am overcome

I am mesmerized

I am weeping before hundreds

feeling very small and insignificant

and old

barely standing before something 

that has stood the test of time for over 500 years

created by someone 

when they were a mere 25 years of age

I was fifty

celebrating twenty five years of marriage 

and my entire life fell invisible around me 

at David's feet 

I have created nothing that will survive one year after I am gone

I haven't accomplished anything to be spoken of a decade later

let alone centuries

I am daughter, wife, mother 

like miriads for millenniums before me

I felt alone 
and lonely

and yet
like I alone

and only I knew

David 

and 

Michelangelo

and the God they served

the God David credited with the battle as being His