"Yet's Dance!"

This morning, as I greedily check email in a few stolen minutes between breakfast and my other half leaving for work, I hear Will in his bedroom bouncing on the spare mattress, singing gustily, “I’m a pirate! I’m a pirate! I’m a pirate!”


Inspired, I start singing “Zippideedoodah” to Ben, who’s snuggled on my lap staring at my screen and trying to grab the keys. Hearing me burst into song, Will’s feet pound the floor to me quick as lightning: “Yet’s dance, Mommy! Yet’s dance!” And I smile and get up with Ben, and we dance—to nothing? to Zippideedoodah? to nonsensical joy? We dance to Jesus, to Joy that makes sense. On this tired Wednesday morning, when nobody except Ben slept well last night, and the day was stretching interminably before me, my heart is suddenly happy. “Yet’s dance!”


And much later on, when I’m up far later than I should be, and my eyes and brain are begging for sleep, I’m still pecking away at a Word document, saving words and thoughts and images for later when maybe, perhaps, the Internet will work fast enough and free enough to post them online—to free them and fling them out into cyberspace where I pray they encourage just one other heart… someone else who struggles—in the cracks of mothering and living and laundry and dishes and the culture stress of living out of sync with this world—struggles, commits to putting words to reality and making beauty out of mess.


As Ann Voskamp says, “the beauty is the mess.” (And if I lived in an open country and the link button on my blog was empowered instead of blocked, I’d link to www.holyexperience.com so you could enjoy her beautiful mess with me…)


“Time for bed,” my husband says, and goes to turn off the generator that has bought us a few more hours of light tonight in an unreasonably powerless town. (No storm, no wind, what’s the deal?) And I sigh, still feverishly typing, and agree—time for bed. But we danced.


And the house goes suddenly dark and quiet, and with my last few minutes of battery, I push save, and close down my computer to save the battery in case tomorrow has no power and I need an emergency video for Will during Russian lessons. And I obediently get ready to go to bed… and then the lights come back on. James has flipped the fuse, and they’ve turned the power back on. And I think, Power… for the next dance.