The Song of Serving in the Empty Places

It’s the cluttery days when there’s no space on my windowsill for one more rock or fist-picked flower, let alone time to deep breathe and stretch for a workout, that I feel like grasping or running. I’m not sure which because if I run away, the children will only cry harder, but if I dare to grasp tighter then I might be the one in puddles in a padded room if I lose it all. It’s those days when I long for a little emptiness and I find myself running away without running away: to my computer, to my books, to my editing, to little escapes from the whining and clinging that seem to fill every breathless moment of motherhood … Then I hear a song like this …


… that I found when I visited my favorite blog, the one by Ann Voskamp that keeps me sane and grateful for the cluttered counters and messy cherub faces asking me to dance. Because I don’t need to run from it. I need to embrace it. Hold it close and slow down, because that’s the fastest way to joy: the naming of what I’m grateful for even when the mess feels so unblessed. When I stop and notice and put on my service glasses like this video snippet that is a more masculine, less motherish look at how we ought to see people … how we ought to see our lives …

The music and the little movie make me mindful of all that I have, yet they also rest and uncoil my frazzled, empty, searching spots. They remind me that it’s okay to yield my emptiness, like a cathedral yawning, to creating acoustics for all the solos that my creator wants to sing into my life. This is how emptiness sings …