Countertops and Cliff Edges

Welcome to the beginning of a completely new journey. To those of you who will periodically or regularly read my blog, I deeply appreciate your care, prayers, and support. As I prepare to step on a one-way flight Monday morning, your standing behind me and keeping watch on the wall unspeakably strengthens my spirit.

I named the web address of this blog "holding by the edges," because in so many ways, I am. Below is a poem I wrote last fall that holds the original idea of this phrase, but as a reader, I want you to understand what this notion means to me. As I return to Romania, I feel that I am going with the spirit of a child.

Holding by the Edges What Measures Me

My hands smooth over

the Formica, fingers curling down

beneath the counterop ledge,

supporting this weight.

I am standing in the sunrise,

and the fields are running up to the horizon.

By what I see

I am held against other mornings,

when the sunbeams were just falling

upon my head and years later

descending over my shoulders.

I used to wait for the sunrise, here,

fingers clinging

to the cool countertop.

My head barely reached

the kitchen sink, but I had

wanted to see those undulating fields,

ribboning up to the brink

of the world just

beyond the window.

Straining on little toes,

pulling up my feather-light

understanding with a fingertip grip,

I held by the edge

what measured me.

I wanted to change

the world. My mother

had read to me their stories --

Amy Carmichael,

Corrie Ten Boom,

and others who had

lived the meaning of

grace. When my chin

could rest on the counter,

I stared into

the glass-framed sky

waiting for my chance

to go, to be

something of what

they were.

And finally -- I went and

watched the ways of the world.

Edges jagged and crumbling,

I saw abused and starving

children, the oppressed

suffering affliction, lives leeched

by addiction, devastation the

prediction. Need and grief

and why -- and I was a child again,

fingertips slipping

from what I had wanted

to hold in my hand.

Now, home again,

my palms pressing down against the countertop,

I am taller, and smaller,

gripping more, and less,

learning from each day's turning

and from warmth upon my skin

that I will always be a child,

reaching for the edge

of something far

above my head.