Countdown to Kindergarten

Two days before Kindergarten!

Glue?  Check.

  Glue sticks?  Check.

     Crayons (24)?  Check.

         Box of markers (10)?  Check.

            Box of McQueen Kleenex?  Check.

Eight dollars and fifty-five cents later we are on our way.

This boy knows how to stick to a list.

I love the smell of crayons, a stack of paper neat and clean, the sound of pencils being sharpened, a new, unmarked datebook full of possibilities.

And that's just it -- brand new school supplies mark a beginning as yet untouched, unmarked, and un-mussed.  

                 The choice of words I used may suggest that: maybe I like brand new school supplies because they have the possibility of perfection.

Yikes.  I've never considered that before, but it seems to hit the nail on the head.

Perfectionism is one of those long-standing values passed down through my family tree.  So that's a tough one to wrestle with for me.

But I'm working on it -- have been for years.

And it's working . . . .

       I'm re-learning to see the beauty in imperfection.  I can imagine the new possibilities of a fuzzy picture or a broken plate or a tattered page.  I can re-shape a mis-shape into something new.

And those things I don't have the power to make new . . . shattered dreams, mis-shapen bodies, bottomless grief . . . 

      

                      are held in the hands of the Mosiac-Maker . . . 

                                          Jesus.

A mosiac is countless times more breathtaking than something "whole" and perfect and untouched -- 

          because the wholeness doesn't come from a lack of marks or cracks or mess-ups . . . 

Wholeness is completeness . . . 

                    peace . . . 

                          fullness . . . 

                               rest . . . 

      in the One whom all things broken are made whole.

How's that for a Kindergarten lesson?