Last Words Series - Part Five, "Drink"

Drink


“Later, knowing that all was now completed,
and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled,
Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty.’”
– John 19:28


The fount of living water
bellows drought. I want
to lift a ladle, cold and pure,
so you could be relieved.
But I’m deceived with ease.

My cup is sour, dilute
the wine from dirty
cisterns. Nothing I
can offer satisfies.
Are you glad you chose

to filter septic water,
offer your body to be
my purifier? How I love you.
Keep taking this cup:
Drink up, drink up.

----------------------------------------------
 
This, too, was a verse that stumped me.  It's a very human moment - Jesus is thirsty - and what is offered to him is a sponge soaked with wine vinegar.  Commentaries talk about this drink as being one that quenches thirst, but my initial reading imagined a strong vinegar drink as being quite repulsive.  Keeping with the reasons why Christ is on the cross, I imagined myself offering Jesus a drink, but I am unpure, human, and he is the source of living water - whoever drinks of him will never thirst.  Jesus is the great Brita filter for the soul, the city water treatment facility.  He accepts all of my waste, my contaminated life, and decontaminates it. 
 
In light of what Jesus does for me, what baffles me are the same words of Paul, "For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing... What a wretched man I am!  Who will save me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:19, 24).  In spite of what I know to be true in Christ, my offerings to him continue to look suspiciously like chocolate milk.  But, "Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 7:25-8:2).
 
I don't want Jesus to have to keep taking this cup of mine.  But I am grateful that he did indeed take the cup back on that dark day, that God did not let the cup be taken from him, like he prayed in the garden.  And his cleansing and purifying continues in our lives every day, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Twelve Apples and a Blog

Twelve shiny, locally grown apples are sitting on my kitchen counter ten feet away next to the cutting board, apple corer, slow cooker and paring knife. Fortunately, they are all inanimate objects who can only beckon with their glaring presence. But I have a hot cup of apple cider, James Taylor Pandora Radio, and a blog I haven't updated in over a month because I have been TIRED, BUSY, and PREGNANT.

There, I said it. Come on people, if you know me AT ALL you know how hard it is for me to keep anything a secret. In spite of our miscarriage history, I've always announced pregnancies within a week of finding out myself. I just can't keep it in! How women can go without knowing they are pregnant for months is a mystery to me... I feel like every pore of me seeps out pregnancy hormones for any human being to sniff in the air the minute I find out. I have a radioactive glow that shifts to a pale-ish green around 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and then again around 8 p.m. It's so friggin' obvious that I'm pregnant, I don't even need to say anything.

Of course, the people that I did tell early on knew it long before I said anything. And you want to know why? TWO people in different circles said they kind of figured, since I didn't want a glass of wine that one night a few weeks ago. This says something about me that I won't point out because we're not talking about wine tonight.

This is my seventh pregnancy and probably my last. BW and I figured this time, maybe we would spare ourselves and everyone else the uncomfortable, "We're pregnant!/We're not pregnant anymore" fun, so we tried to keep it to ourselves. It was really hard the first few days, for all of the reasons I mentioned above (the radioactive glowing, etc.), but then I got excited about having a secret that only my husband and God knew about. That rarely happens - I'm just not a very private person.

My landmark requirement was hearing a heartbeat on the Doppler stethoscope (no, I didn't remember the name of that device all on my own), because we've never gotten that far and lost a baby. Every night for a week leading up to the appointment, I had vivid dreams about losing the baby - miscarrying here, there, and everywhere. It needed to stop. I'm grateful for the prayers of a couple people that I'm convinced helped the dreams end-- the night before my appointment, I dreamt of an ultrasound showing that it was a girl, and that all was healthy and fine. I needed that.

This past Monday, I heard that fast-paced swishswish. My doctor, who has been through each of my pregnancies with me too, might have been as relieved as me. I'll be 11 weeks tomorrow :)

:)

Hearing that heartbeat seemed to give BW and me permission to breathe again. In the past seven weeks, we didn't talk a whole lot about being pregnant, I think in a self-preservation effort. While I began developing all of the first-trimester symptoms of pregnancy, we carried on with our lives as normal. Now we have enough to cling to in order to give in to hope. And we're ready to share that hope for new life with others, able to rejoice, if not cautiously and prayerfully, together.

So that's why I haven't gotten around to making my homemade applesauce.

Kind of unorthodox for Sarah, but anyway...

I haven't been following the rules of one of the website's prompts, but today I wanted to catch up to my once-a-weekday, so I stopped by and found the prompt to write a poem whose first line or title begins All I want is... and then you need to fill in the blank. So I did.


All I Want is a Martini,


slim and light, a cherry bobbing
like romance in apple pucker,
its stem a curling finger.
Caramel lips the edge
of the glass, locks
sticky sweet, and I lick.

A sexy sip,
cool on my tongue,
then slow rain,
neckline kisses,
silken sheets.