Red

Confession: You already know this about me–sometimes I write about caterpillars when I can’t write about cataclysm.

My grandfather is dying today (my only grandpa, pillar around which my earliest memories twine), and my sister is in the ER for the third time in a week (my only sister, oh my sister). I hold this at bay with words about little things, and pray that when I need to write the big ones, grace will come. Remember me and the people I love to Jesus today.

*****

Confession: I didn’t know how to do it.

Visiting a new church, I sat with other mothers chatting in the nursery, my two-year-old playing around my knees. The door opened. A woman and a man entered, the first holding a silver plate, the second a silver chalice. “Would the mommies like communion?” They turned first to the regulars, then looked to me.

Gladly I reached for His grace.

“The body of Christ, broken for you,” said the woman softly, and I took a piece of wafer from the bits on the plate.

It was a large piece. I put it in my mouth and began to chew the hard, dry cracker, thinking of Jesus.

I looked up and saw one of my new friends receiving the juice—dipping her cracker into the cup, then putting it in her mouth. Oh no. No!

The man with the chalice turned to me. “The blood of Christ, shed for you,” he said.

Red stained my cheeks, red stained the cup. Mutely, I shook my head. Mumbled around my crumbling cracker. I already put it in my mouth. Hand to my face, eyes on the floor, I stood there shaking my head at the blood of Christ, as though I wanted no part of Him.

But my mouth hurt from wanting Him, from the cool juice of washing that did not touch my lips, until at last in the evening He came to me and I cried against His shoulder. He took the sting into the wounds that held the sin of the world, carried it in the wounds that filled the cup.

*****

What can Jesus carry for you?