Small Print

We’re a nation of clammer-uppers (surface-level when it comes to sharing), which evidently is the cultural norm. If we’re here to help and support each other and be God’s vehicles, which I think we are, then why is this the case? We paint these euphoric-looking canvases of still-life-fruit when really the pot is boiling over and there aren’t enough rags to clean up the mess. Or on the other hand, we deny God’s grace and mercy by covertly omitting any conversational evidence of it in lieu of topics like weather, news headlines, hairstyles and diet fads.

Anne Lamott gets to me because she’s an incredibly talented writer, but also because she’s eccentric and odd, observant and submitted to God (in her way): quirky but brazenly real. AND she invites her readers to dive into the Small Print of life where they can be their own version of quirky and real with her. Do I agree with everything she says, or how she says it? No. Sometimes I’m shocked and even a little bit embarrassed or offended. But am I set free to be my own quirky self, one searching for (and discovering) Light in the midst of fallen life in a fallen world? Yes. THAT is priceless.

I wonder if, someday when I’m gone, my great-grandchildren will be curious to know who I was, and if they’ll read these blogs (if they survive, that is, which is doubtful) and/or my FaithWriter entries and/or other stuff I’ve written down in black-and-white. Who would I be, emerging from the woven fabric of these words? Maybe an insecure and tentative but authentic person, someone willing to open up about the pot boiling over and the measures of mercy that show up to counterbalance the spills, someone sold out to God while walking the front lines of her own life.