Mercy Me

   How did I get here?  
   Standing across the street from the Dekalb County prison, feeling the vibrations of cars whizzing past onto the I-285 ramp, the August heat drenching my t-shirt.  I’m here with my camera, in my flip-flops.  The stay-at-home mom.  The eternal seminary student.  Photographing from every angle possible a resplendent… mound of mulch.  Compost in colossal proportions.  It’s a fenced-in, sanitation truck dumping site filled with ground up leaves, trees, and nutrient rich dirt from the Seminole Road landfill.   
       And I’m thinking how truly amazing that I can haul off a load of this stuff for free in my Rubbermaid container.  The container that I will fill with a shovel that blisters my pale, typing-acquainted hands and then load into my SUV, just behind the row of car seats. 

       Who am I?  What am I doing?  I’m not sure.  I’m a different person in August 2013 than I was in May.   My hands are a little dirtier, my vision a little clearer, my heart a little fuller, and my smile a little wider.  
      I’m going to plant seeds.  
      Really little ones, like a mustard seed.  The hilarious thing is that I know absolutely nothing about seeds or dirt or weeds or vines or rain or shine or ANY of it.  And I have this deep and abiding feeling that God is going to show up in the waiting and in the tending and in the watering.  And there will be so many birds nesting and finding comfort in the branches.  And all the neighbors on our street will get a plateful of fresh arugula.  And I get to witness to the abundance from the Table – greens, onions, the laughs, and the joy.  I’m more certain of this than just about anything.  I think this is what they call hope.