Elegant or squat,
satiny, spongy,
slim or speckled,
the overnight toadstools
shoulder through sodden grass.
Beneath thick skirts
undersides flaunt
pale, multi-pleated,
rice-paper gills.
Trouble is, fungi spread like a devilish rash.
Or a rumor.
Or bad news.
Some have erupted—
their fleshy umbrellas
upended, once-plucky
stems torn and exposed.
And my first reaction?
Poison! So says the girl who grew up on Grimm. These toadstools feel personal. Symbolic. Weirdly prolific.
Born of darkness and damp and demise,
they haunt the shadows
along my path
in the way sorrows emerge, one
after another.
Friends, this has been a sad time.
I wonder: Are people you cherish—as well as strangers the media makes you care about—also braving unthinkable woe? Has hope failed them?
There’s much to grieve.
For one: I failed to meet you here, in October. I sorely regret breaking my monthly commitment to you (and myself). My desire is to encourage readers who feel weary. Beleaguered. Jaded and flayed.
That’s why I started this blog, nearly five years ago.
Truth is, I’ve been too sad to write. Guilt, of course, adds its own poison.
This is where
we get the verb mushroom,
we, who cannot number our worries,
rabid as spores, housed in our heads,
we, who launch prayers, seeding the heavens
beyond what the air can hold.
And then, while walking in the city, I chance upon this—although my camera fails to capture the fierce, almost magical shine. One wet leaf glints at my feet, beaded all over with the tiniest convex mirrors. 
The longer I look, the more this leaf seems to offer a portrait. The image suggests my soul, holding in all that is uncried.
The names on my prayer list seem as numerous, and tremulous, as November’s tears gracing this fallen leaf.
In her new book my dear friend Gena Bradford writes: “I have learned to ask the Lord about my fear that He [won’t] meet the needs of others . . .
“[and the nagging fear that] I might disappoint someone . . .”
She speaks for me.
“Lord,” she asks, “have I failed You?”
And God answers, “The only way you can fail Me is by not letting Me love you.”
Friends, I wish to encourage you. And myself. For now, Romans 8:1 reminds me there is “no condemnation in Christ Jesus.”
Bradford suggests a radical strategy: What if we fast from condemning ourselves?
I mean to try.
Perhaps, it always begins here:
in a season of falling
apples, and burgeoning
fears that resemble
creeping rot, we behold . . .
. . . all the little mercies, silently shining along our way.
I wonder: what’s mushrooming around you? What mercies have you noticed?
Is there something you need to fast from?
Click here to access Gena Bradford’s new book: I Can’t Rest Now, Lord! I’m Responsible: 30 Days from Burnout to the Heart of God, by Gena Bradford
You might also like this post from my archive: Kyrie Eleison: Seeking Mercy
I have rediscovered your blog at just the time I need it! As your music still comforts and calms me …taking me back to 1984 …I am 34 years older and exchanging my angst of that time of young motherhood for the angst of an aging body and insecurity of being an old woman who could be irrelevant in our society.
You are a lifeboat in these troubled waters leading me to the One who calms the sea of anxiety.
I love how the Great Mercy directs our attention to what will be most life giving for us in the moment. Such an immense kindness. Ruth, I too have borne the insults and dismay of similar thoughts on aging and well know their haunting, taunting voices —— especially late at night, when sleep eludes me.
And yet.
No matter how our packaging alters (and I mean crumples!), I stubbornly believe the light cast by a spirit in love with God remains ever relevant. Needed. And visible, if only to those God’s Spirit directs our way, no matter how fast the world around us is moving. Just as you were quietly led to a waiting, if metaphorical, lifeboat, you will continue to point others toward calm, toward Him, the One who sleeps in the boat and wakes when we call, and you’ll continue to play the role of lifeboat for others, yourself, perhaps this very day.
Goodness, even when I read your glistening words in belated fashion, they feed my soul’s thirsty thoughts. God has all of our moments–His way and His time for His audience. I love the reminder of your friend that we only fail when we don’t let Him love us.
It is so easy to become encumbered by our own burdens & by the burdened expectations of others. It’s easy to take on the unspoken guilt felt by them because they are so burdened for someone else’s need. Their beautiful love hopes for help to pour from me to them and I can’t right now–for reasons I can’t speak and wouldn’t be understood even if I could. God’s love is trustworthy though — for me, for the burdened, for the ones who need His help.
Dear Carol, first of all, thank you for your loyal reading and writerly love expressed through your responses over the years. I am SO grateful for you.
The longings and complex interactions you allude to make me nod and sigh in full empathy. Where, indeed, would we be without God’s trustworthy love to carry us all. I am praying today that your New Year brims with transcendent moments as well as renewed vision and strength.
Thank you.
You have not.
Even this — the breach of a month, the regret over it, the confession of being muted by grief, arriving at the message of no condemnation — is gift. Rupture and repair? Maybe. Or maybe the shared truth that sometimes we can speak only after a silence. Sometimes a blog sits shiva for a month.
That leaf! Face down to cold rock on one side, but look at the beauty it bears on its back. Uncried tears? A tribe of tears, a litany of names, individualities of grief, held up to light’s evaporating mercies, borne on the back of a leaf.
Laura, dear friend, what a wise observation about silence. I am nodding and smiling over “sits shiva for a month.”
I wish my camera had fully caught the other-worldly gleam of those drops. Your perception and description of them moves me. You hear my heart so well. Thank you.
Oh Laurie, you haven’t failed us. You were just needing to take a rest from the blog. Your perspective always encourages me. When I am walking outside, I often try to notice details in nature and appreciate them as you would. Blessings on your during this sad time, dear friend!
Love, Linda
Linda, your understanding is a gift on this Monday morning. I’m so glad you find encouragement here, and that you, too, enjoy tuning into the natural world for possible messages.
I hope all is well in your world. I miss being around your questing mind and laughter and loving heart. Blessings on you and family!
Lovely and thought-provoking post. The part about worrying that we have left someone out of our prayers or not prayed enough put me in mind of this poem from my new book “I Call to You from Time”:
The Gulf
Each night when I was eight
I lay me down to pray:
Bless Mom and Dad and Jen and Jill,
bless Mona and Granddad, bless . . . .
Oh, the list would bore you.
And each night the arms of my prayer
reached farther and farther beyond the cave
of covers, past our house, our city, our country . . . . .
Everything, even the stars, needed my blessing.
My parents were watching the news
when I called out: In a few minutes
tell me to stop saying my prayers.
My fervor frightened them.
Now there is a term for it:
obsessive-compulsive disorder.
But it was order I believed in,
and I was at its center.
Then one day without warning
the fever of my faith broke,
and I was cured. I was grown
and had a life like many others:
husband, job, two children.
And I knew how not to pray.
But tonight on the news there is war:
a broken face I can’t stand to see.
A POW—a pilot—his shoulders
folded in like ruined wings.
There is an enemy. There must be.
They are his torturers.
Or they are my leaders.
Or it is the camera—an eye like God’s
that sees pain and accepts it
Of one thing I am certain:
this man suffers for our sins—
but which ones: omission or commission?
Obsession or compulsion? There must be
some disorder we can name it, and some cure
for how we lay us down, for how we sleep.
Blessings to you, Laurie!
Judith, thank you for sharing “Gulf.” I am sobered and rightly troubled, caught up in these two compelling stories separated yet also joined through time by an ardent heart and mind bearing witness, longing to help, to bless and to somehow heal, a heart and mind probing the self, the system, posing these wrenching questions, The title profoundly names the aching disconnect. And oh, the layers of meaning “sleep” represents! I have no answers, can only sustain, by grace, the stubborn belief that the One who brings order from chaos still calls us to wake, to engage alongside in the work, within the world and within us.
Thank you so much, Laurie, for your beautiful and heartfelt response to my poem.
The poem stays in the mind. I’m still thinking about it.
Congratulations on the new book!
Dear friend,
I too am weary and heavy-laden. You bring solace in your truth-telling and vulnerability. May the tender lover of our souls remind us that love has gone before and will survive long into the future. Love knows all our needs and slimy underbellies of regret and pours itself out all the more. Mercy, mercy, mercy. I’m so thankful for you, Laurie.
Dear Sarah, you speak Mercy—my favorite language. And once again you speak it over, and into, my soul (and my oh-so-finite understanding). You know, even more than I, the way (and weight) of compassion as it weaves through wildly divergent terrain. It’s so good to be reminded that Love blazed (and blazes) the way, walks alongside, and waits up ahead, ever-pouring “itself out all the more.” Thank you!
May Mercy knock on all your doors, at home, and at work. May it awaken new resilience and vision, surprising as the patter of little stones against your favorite window.
Well, obviously you’ve hit a spore with your readers… I guess we’re encouraged to embrace the hard truth of where we are walking. It’s in our broken-ness we are softened for great crops of seeds to be planted. And your shining, glimmering, words and photos bring hope. Blessings, treasured friend!
Pacia, you always lift my spirits and make me smile. Thanks for your wise words and far-seeing outlook. Thank you for following along with these posts, year after year. So many times your words have come exactly when needed. May your creative work and vision and health thrive beyond all you could hope for! xoxo
It does seem to have been a season of struggle this autumn. So glad for God’s mercies. Your leaf and what you said about it is beautiful. His gift for you. Then you shared it with us – encouragement. I loved it.
Your mushrooms look pretty (even though what’s underneath isn’t, as you said). Mine look like something a big dog left behind in my lawn. Lament. Lament. Lament.
Linda Jo, thank you. I’m glad it was encouraging.
We also see six-inchers out here, brown, flat, and slimy. They did not make the photo-op.
Maybe it wasn’t actually a failure to meet us – Maybe you were just on sabbatical…
Maybe so. But I think they pay you for those. 😉 Great to spend time with you today!
Both grief and shame have a way of isolating us. Just when we need others, including the Holy Spirit. I’m praying that you have streams of living water form God and people close to you during this time. Us? We love you no matter how often you do or don’t post.
Isn’t that the truth. I so appreciate that image of clear, cascading, restorative water. And the love and acceptance. Thanks, Kathleen. I wish I knew how to make that heart icon appear right here X.
Are you missed? of course. Are you allowed to be weary, of course.
You’re worn down – you’re a need magnet, remember, you’re not responsible for everybody, well, except most of us. because you are genuine, and kind, and real, and sometimes that just wears you down. So, little one, feel free, take a break. Come back to us when it feels right. You have a good soul; don’t be wearing it out.
John, thank you for generous, ongoing friendship, and your every-ready sense of humor and proportion (always appreciated!).
Few can put words together as artfully as you, Laurie. And you always see things most of us miss–in nature, yes, but also the inner thoughts that hide until you bring them to light. It grieves me that your sorrows have multiplied like mushrooms. I pray that the right time will be imminent for God to answer those concerns closest to your heart. And thank you for sharing Romans 8:1 and Gena Bradford’s wisdom to fast from condemning ourselves. AMEN to THAT!
Nancy, I sure hope I get to meet you someday, this side of the vast (or is it merely a breath away?) beyond. Thank you for that prayer. I like the word imminent! I’m glad that fasting idea resonated with you, too. Gena’s book brims with insights and loving wisdom.
I’m encouraged every time I read theses post, I love it when we “people” speak of the things of God and his amazing ways . It’s like the beginning of our eternal conversations to come.
Mike, that is such a fresh outlook! I’m grateful you’ve found encouragement here, from my musings as well as those who comment —— cyber-vibrant voices that continually surprise and delight me, and make me think more deeply. Big YES to eternal conversations starting now . . .
You always speak about truths; the ones we tend to walk in, around, and on but not acknowledge. Hope lies in all the ways we reach out to others because your words breathe life into those truths. ❤️
I’ve never thought about it this way. Thank you for putting words to that observation. It makes me want to be all the more aware of opportunities to reach out in honest, breath- and heart-worthy ways. What a gift you are to me.
Beautifully told. Thank you for the gift.
Beauty
Donna
Donna, thank you. And, you’re welcome.
Your words and eye for Beauty have enriched me many times.
I could only dream to express myself the way you do.. What a wonderful gift. Love the heartfelt message…. Lord did I fail you….. and His response… priceless! If only we could live that way everyday. Love you Laurie, thank you for sharing such a wonderful gift.
Susie, those words in Gena’s book bowled me over. Priceless, indeed. Now if I can just remember them daily!
Love you, Susie. So glad to be connected again!