"handprint of God on the small of my back"

  i have lived within a six mile radius my whole life.  this definitely has its pros and cons.  but one interesting thing is that almost everywhere i look these days, i am reminded of some past time in my life--whether thriving, lonely, lost, or sweet.

 maybe it’s the time of year, looking ahead to a new year and reflecting backwards.  maybe it’s that alan and i will be married 25 years this summer.  (Twenty.  Five.  Years.  have i even been an adult for that many years?) maybe it’s the fact that i am in a new season of life with the half-empty nest and all-teenager household (as i look at some of my friends who have young kids and are doing the car seat, preschool, playdate, high-intensity, high-delight thing day after day, I wonder, how in the world did I do all that?)

it happened yesterday.  on that beautiful, sunny, new year’s eve day, we all went to Clark Park to play some sand volleyball.  i hadn't been there in a long time, and as i walked the sidewalk paths, so many images flashed through my mind.  this was the park alan and i used to walk to after dinner in the summer to play tennis--when we were first married, lived in a 600 sq. ft. place, had no kids and no TV.  then, years later, after getting a few kids and a TV, it's where we brought the kids to learn how to ride their two-wheelers.  and now, today, it is where, my daughters play volleyball better than i ever did, better than i ever will.

  it happens when i take maddie to school in the morning.  i drive right by the sidewalk, where, at five years old, i pushed my baby brother in his metal stroller, feeling grown-up, feeling maternal.

  it happens when i drive by the old pediatrician’s office on whittier blvd.  he was both mine and alan’s doctor, and we took our first two children there when they were babies.  the office was the same for them as it had been for me when i was taken there as a child, fevered and coughing. the all-white, sterile room, the cold table, the sharp smell of the alcohol on the cotton ball swabbing the chubby thigh just before the injection.  it comes back to me like it was yesterday.

  but it isn’t just about mental pictures, or memories of the senses.  it goes deeper than that. maybe i'm strange, but a memory of a particular time invokes all the flavors, colors and textures of where i was at that moment in my emotional life, my spiritual life--my struggles, my sin, my insecurities, my confusion, my faith, what my relationship with God was like.  it is a photograph of my soul.

   as i have the privilege of staying connected to my life past lived through the familiar places in my world, i am thankful that i have broken free from some of the chains that once held my heart.   and i am saddened by the things that still constrain me.  but most of all, i am thankful for a God who is not bound by time, who leads me through every season of my life--sometimes gently, and sometimes in a way that feels so terrifyingly violent that i cannot ignore that He is on the move.  but always, always, with His handprint "on the small of my back." and always, with a patience beyond reason, He grows me in His time, in His way, by His sweet grace.