look again,
this month i feel lukewarm,
not hot (not good)
not cold (not bad)
[adj]: only moderately warm, t e p i d
//so because you are lukewarm, and neither
hot nor cold, i will spit you out of
my mouth
-revelation 3:16
everything is b l a h
(&i don’t know why)
because the ministry is great, our host is fantastic & our
students are wonderful (it’s the first time i’ve
enjoyed teaching english)
we have so many blessings this month
but still i can’t f e e l it
going through the motions
and things are o k a y,
struggling to hear God
and stay present.
and then,
y e s t e r d a y.
it started out with a plan just to
head into chiang rai with our host,
drop his wife off at work and hang around
but i didn’t really want to go,
so i put in my headphones and stared out the window
trying to e s c a p e.
but our host’s daughter malachi,
bounced around the backseat
from person to person
quietly making faces at people
doing her own thing
now and then she’d take one of my headphones
listen to music with me & snap her little fingers
and then a little later
she noticed my parakito bracelet
it’s just a velcro band, it holds a little pellet
that is supposed to repel mosquitoes
it’s filthy.
the velcro hardly works
it’s covered and stained in dirt
tori calls it dinky
(but hey, my left arm has never been bitten,
so – )
malachi took the bracelet off and put it
on her own little wrist
and started talking into the pellet
saying all sorts of things excitedly
giggling and looking around,
holding it out to me so i could reply
for thirty minutes we spoke
into the little pellet
sometimes loud, sometimes quiet,
sometimes she put it on her ankle
sometimes she tied it around her shoe
like it was some secret
walkie – talkie
where we could whisper, words wrapping
around the netting of the bracelet, and laughter
catching in the velcro
a reminder of what we once looked like
before midnight came and we turned
back into p u m p k i n s,
pick up that glass s l i p p e r ,
just a little four year old girl
bored in the backseat of a car
finding joy in a mosquito repellent band.
and she reminded me that
when things look b l a h
and lukewarm
maybe i need to
look again.
