Under That Red Velvet Dress

My Daughter Elaine and Me. 1990.

No Place to Hide

"Let me zip your dress," I said to my daughter as we wriggled into our velvet dresses in the photographer's dressing room. As I ran the zipper up its tracks I marveled at the soft, perfect texture of her seven-year-old skin. Such a beautiful child...

We slipped out of the dressing room and into the studio. The photographer adjusted stools, showed us where to sit. The flash attachment lit the room like lightning in the night.

Contentment overflowed, escaping my lips in a sigh. I'd just completed my master's degree; these portraits were a gift from my parents to commemorate the occasion. My cheerful, cooperative daughter stood beside me, hugged me, leaned against my knee, obediently taking direction from the photographer. She smiled, placid under the volley of exploding lights.

"Up on your mom's lap--that's a good girl," the photographer instructed.

"I don't want to! It's HOT in here!" Tears suddenly welled in her eyes and a deep scowl carved itself a home on her forehead.

"Elaine!" I cried, startled and embarrassed by her outburst.

"I don't want to!" she wailed. I turned to the photographer, apologetic, as my child sobbed into my shoulder.

 I gathered my crying girl to me. She did feel warm. Those lights must have been too much for her. "Well. I think we have enough shots now. Thank you." He dismissed us.

We returned to the dressing room to change into our everyday clothes. By now her sobs had subsided to sniffles. I wiped her face with a tissue, then unzipped her dress.

That beautiful, tender skin had erupted in lesions! I couldn't believe what I saw. We'd been in the studio no more than fifteen minutes, and during that time, chicken pox had popped to the surface of her skin like tiny buoys bobbing on the waters of a still bay.

I took her home and took her temperature. Then I ministered to her with a warm bath, calamine lotion, chicken soup, her favorite blanket. Ensconced on the sofa with her favorite gingham quilt, a few books, and her stuffed panda, she relaxed.

When the proofs arrived, she and I studied them together. "You look so pretty," I told her. "Nobody would guess you were coming down with the chicken pox right there in the studio!"

"I didn't feel good that morning, Mommy. But I knew you really wanted to go make the pictures," she said.

I bit my lip, hugged her hard. "You didn't have to do that," I told her. "We could have gone another day."

"I wanted to make you happy," she said.

YYY

Today is my fifty-third birthday, but when it comes to sharing my real self, I might as well be seven. I want you to see the red velvet dress, not the lesions marring my soul underneath. I want you to think I'm fine, not in need of your ministry.

I still long for you to assure me that I'm a pretty girl. I cling to this childish notion, you see.

I think I'm only acceptable when I'm smooth, unblemished, pretty.


Today, I give thanks to my mighty God, who knows every flaw concealed beneath the party gown, and loves me anyway.

1 O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
3 You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O LORD, You know it all.
5 You have enclosed me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
 7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,”
12 Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.
 13 For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.
 17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.
When I awake, I am still with You.
 19 O that You would slay the wicked, O God;
Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.
20 For they speak against You wickedly,
And Your enemies take Your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
22 I hate them with the utmost hatred;
They have become my enemies.
 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.
Psalm 139 (NASB)

Restoring the Lamps, Part Three

Steady. Steady.

New Finish


I'm nervous as I sit down to paint my grandparents' lamps. I'm not crafty. My hand isn't always steady. I can't always stay in the lines. But the gold leaf has worn from the lamps and I promised my husband I'd touch them up.

I know I can't make them perfect, but I hope I can make them better.

It would be easier if they had but two dimensions: Round, I could see the whole of the task at once. But they're spheres, roughly. I can't see all the surfaces of a sphere at once. So I turn the lamp slowly as I paint, and as one area comes clearly into view, another area slips away, beyond my sight.

And I'm thinking love would be easier if it were round. Round, we could take it all in with a sweep, know all its features with a look.

But love isn't round. It's a ball. It rolls and bounces and just as we get one bit firmly in focus, another surface rotates sweetly away, out of our view.

Renewing the Gold

I turn the lamp and paint, carefully, carefully, filling in the bare spots in the gold. I remember this spot as I rotate the lamp.

My paint pen has passed by here once before.


But I missed a spot. With all this turning, it's easy to miss something. If I stood the lamp up and walked around it, would I see the gaps better?

No. Its shape is meant for turning. I'm not privileged to see it all at once.

The Best I Could Do.

So I roll the lamp through two rotations as I paint. Because I couldn't see it all at once. I know I'm done when the cord is wrapped twice around the lamp's base.

I might have missed a spot the first time.


I'm taking love up now, turning it slowly, examining every arc. It doesn't come with a cord to mark the revolutions. And by the time I return to the beginning point, the contours are new.

God made love a sphere. If we could see the whole of it at once, we'd weep at its magnificence and rail at the pain it brings. We see two dimensions of love at any moment; but there's always more, just beyond the curve.

Maybe this is a secret to love, then:

Keep rolling it gently. Never stop looking.

In Place.

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)

Restoring the Lamps, Part Two

Lamps Under Renovation.

Protection

It's Saturday morning and the day overflows with what-could-be. I clear the remnants of yesterday's living from the kitchen island, make space for a project. My project.

I'm going to return these old lamps to usefulness. Rich will supervise, of course, because I've never rewired a lamp before. He assures me it's simple, but I don't want to burn our house down in the flames of my own pride.

So I cough up humility ask him to show me. He smiles, and he shows me how the pieces fit together to give light. A few of the old fittings are settled so tightly onto their threads, after decades coupled, that my weak hands cannot part them.

He helps me, this strong husband of mine. Then he leaves me space to work, to learn, as I disassemble the lamps. He understands that I need to do this thing, to return these relics of my grandparents' home to life. 

I realize that in my head, I can't separate their home from their marriage. I scoop that thought up, hold it wriggling in my mind for a moment, then release it to swim on downstream. 

I'm thinking about these old lamps who stood watch in my grandparents' living room for so many decades. They witnessed my grandmother's abrupt death, right there in her easy chair, working the crossword puzzle on a Friday morning. I imagine that on that last overflowing Saturday of her life, she didn't guess that there would be no more. And I see the blessing in her innocence. 

It feels like a gift to our union, bringing these lamps to our bedroom. These lamps illuminated love long before we knew one another. Their resurrection says, "your marriage is sound. It deserves these lamps." These old lamps, they know a thing or two about lighting the way of hearts. 

As I disembowel the lamp, I make a dazzling discovery.

Old Cord, Brittle. Old Cord, Supple. 

The visible length of cord, as anyone can see, is brittle, discolored, untrustworthy.

But the cord the lamp has sheltered within for all these years remains fresh and flexible. The years have not managed to wear it, to rob it of its resiliency. 

Now it's time to to tighten on the new fittings, and my hands are weak. So again I call for my husband, and again he comes and he helps me. As he reaches for the screwdriver, I rest in the certainty of his response to my need.

We fix a bulb in the socket, plug in the lamp, flip the switch, and in this light I see:

Faith is our bastion. It shelters our marriage as surely as the lamp shielded the cord from the ravages of the world. 

8 But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with Him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing.
I Thessalonians 5:8-11 (NASB)