I’ve been filling the salt shakers
– pepper shakers, too.
Wiping off finger prints
and dusty build-up,
Crazy Gluing bunny ears,
digging into cabinets
match-making pairs
lost to each other,
finding peace that one snow-woman shaker
found in a what-not box
given when my mother moved to warmth
and wholeness
cannot be reunited with her pepper
snow man
I’ve been filling salt shakers
after the tearing
of growing where I was planted
for a season in uncomfortable
soil
because He called me to it
to be planted there
until right timing
His big and little hands of timing
pull the roots of myself loose
shake out the soil
and carrying me
to a new place where
I am to grow where He plants me.
As He pulls me,
shakes me,
moves me
to a different way to live
the daily
I’ve been left wordless
silent
awed by His faithfulness
His plan
His protection
in this journey
to this place where
filling salt shakers
is so much more than
filling salt shakers
Salt: seasoning, a preservative, a disinfectant, a component of ceremonial offerings, and as a unit of exchange. Salt symbolizes permanence, loyalty, durability, fidelity, usefulness, value, and purification.
“a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak“ (Ecc 3:7)
Store after the poem coming up. Be patient with me. I’m not used to silence. When my 5th son was born, the anesthetist, after the planned C-Section, said if I was in distress to let him know and he would, “take me out.” A few minutes after my son was born, I became quieter and quieter. My husband told the anesthetist, “She must be in distress. She’s not talking.”
I think I’ve been living a situation where God was definitely in the driver’s seat. It was a harrowing time, a heart-bruising time. I held on to Him, kept focused on Him. I still don’t have a lot of words. It’s a time for mending, a time for silence – but there will be a time when the words come – and I cannot wait. Right now, I’m going to immerse myself in this time of silence, in doing things like filling salt shakers, crazy gluing broken things, baking chocolate chip cookies and finding the carpet beneath the laundry, shoes and backpacks, walking Sadie – and, one day soon, following an idea down a rabbit hole to its conclusion.
Blue Cotton Memory 