I believe you make all things new.
It’s spring, and though I awoke to drizzle and ice and fresh snow on my lawn, I believe still in the newness of the day, in the warmth of the sunlight, in the hope of new, green, life beneath the slush and muck of my yard.
I believe you make all things new.
I believe you’re greater than cancer, greater than addiction, greater than finances or failing furnaces or houses that will all one day crumble down to the earth.
I believe you make all things new.
Broken things, lost things, mournful, weeping, torn-in-two things.
It’s a Thursday and I sat with my children at the table and felt my mind go blank as they all asked, whined, whimpered over what they were to do for the day. I stared at the piles of curriculum and text books, at the abacus and the pencils and crayons and rulers and learning games.
I felt my world go gray and I couldn’t see what came next. Spelling? Have we finished that for the week? Math? Where’s our math? Who’s on what? Reading? Yes, read, please. What? No, I don’t care what. Read this. Copy this. It’s a poem.
It’s a poem about spring and fresh blades of grass peeping over the lawns.
Can you imagine a world without grass?
I believe you make all things new, even my foggy brain, my tired heart, even myself in these failing moments of motherhood, when I feel like I’m stranded and without answers on an island of misfit people who all need me to be something, someone, I never quite feel I can be.
It’s mid-March and I sat and sobbed on my daughter’s bedroom floor, rocking Evaline, who was crying for no reason, who then pulled back and looked at my tear streaked face and was wondering why I was crying for no reason too.
Just as surely as I can feel the broken places, the jagged edges, I know that you heal. I know that you fix.
I believe you’re doing so, even now.
I believe you can make me new.
The Frozen Moon 
Oh, Melanie, this is good, especially the crying part. I have cried every day for a week, sometimes for no really good reason. Sometimes because I burn a meal. Sometimes because of Vladimir Putin. These are perilous times. Easter, we really need it this year. And we need to keep on believing until it gets here.
You haven’t “failed” as a mother. It’s just that some days are better than others. In parenting, more than in any other part of life, we need to look at the sum of its parts and not just one day, or one moment. It’s a process, and part of our practice for Heaven.
I think my body is smarter than my brain, especially when I’m crying for no reason. In those times I can be thankful that the ever present reasons for real sorrow are below the surface somewhere and I only have the refreshing cleansing of salty tears. I can move on.
You are a beautiful mother with all the right instincts and a mind given to careful consideration. When our children are born we become instantly vulnerable, especially to feelings of never being enough, of never being ready. There’s no reason to overcome that. We all do the best we can in the moment. Nobody has all the answers. We all know that but we are driven to find the way to an impossible perfection. It’s a plan, I think, to miss the mark sometimes, or seem to, so we can have compassion for all the other beings on the planet who know the same inadequacy. We are not inadequate. We are already perfect. It’s in loving one another where we find our perfection.
Love and appreciate you, so much.
Broken things, lost things, mournful, weeping, torn-in-two things.
This is my favorite line from above.