Cultivating Creative Community
All by Anna Tesch
I think back to this Paris trip often. How gracious it was of my mom to not demand the time with me. How focused I was on seeing as much as I could, when the most meaningful and fleeting thing was beside me. The best part of Paris didn’t end up being the Louvre or the Seine. The best part of Paris ended up the time I spent with my mother.
I will grow in the waiting and be stretched in the loving, and I will be there to smile and wave every time she emerges from this process of becoming. I will choose to bend towards trusting a God who is big enough to hold us both. Heart of my heart, flesh of my flesh, Grace will explore this world in her own way, just like I continue to do.
One cold and sleepless night I was suddenly overtaken by a thought that gave me such a panic that I immediately got up, wrapped myself in a quilt, and went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. What if this was it? What if my mother never came back to us? What if all the stories I had heard my entire life went with her?
There, floating with these beautiful newfound sisters in the cool, emerald green water of the Frio River, amongst the tiny flickering fish and the long blades of grass, I felt my heart settle into the deep quiet. I didn’t have an ongoing grocery list running through my mind. I wasn’t worried about the kids and whether or not my husband had remembered the sunscreen. I did not even have to fight the insecurities that normally gnaw at me about my body in a swimsuit. No, for the first time in a great long while, I let go.
