thanks in the strings

{via pinterest}

i almost didn't blog today.

it's the day after Thanksgiving, and i still feel weary from the length of the day and the busy swirl of family and laughter and oh, so much food.

normally, this is the day of five minute fridays with the gypsy mama. but somewhere between my waking and my resting, i have forgotten everything.

this thing of gratitude -- eucharisteo -- this instrument that i grip between my unquestioning fingers, knowing each twist and curve of the smoothly polish wood...

...it's familiar. i can speak of it with knowledge, share with others in times of need and emotion, feeling truth spring to my lips in the appropriate time.

but somewhere during the year, the violin finds a place in the back of my closet. the curving head cracks from lack of caresses.

i rationalize within my ever-hardening heart

it's only to protect the music 

to make this thing more precious in the 

right time.

and so i forget until the fourth Thursday in November. and then the sheet music lays on the stand again, and my fingers trace the familiar strings so that the music kisses the air again.

my soul floods then, with recollection and resolution to not let things go as they were before, to always dwell in the miracle of gratefulness. 

{via pinterest}

but then comes the conflict that only family closeness can bring. there is some sort of push and pull that eventually tears the music and sends the bow crashing to the floor.

and the music dies 

unfinished. 

is this what i want? year after year after year of the same old broken dance, the same old shattered moments that never reach the finish line?

because each sour note hurts His ears. 

i slap His face when i withhold my thanks.

 when i play my own frenzied melody on broken instruments that no longer hold value. 

there is nothing so great in holding onto all my grateful thoughts until a certain day, and then letting them pour out like water onto the parched ground. 

where is the blessing here?

i refuse to touch the finale's score. i will live in the now, in the yesterday and the tomorrow.  

these melodies. 

these drops of eucharisteo.