Quote Week: Day #5: "Shelter"

"I felt it shelter to speak to you." - Emily Dickinson

I like to pretend I was named after Emily Dickinson. She's so deep. Emily wrote as a way to connect with a world she didn't always feel comfortable connecting with in any other way. And she put words together in ways that still leaves people pondering life in all its complexities.

I remember being about 9-years-old with my mom at a shop filled with home interiors, knick-knacks, and wall hangings. There was a teeny-tiny, decorative book of Emily Dickinson's poetry. We purchased the teeny-tiny book that day and I remember trying to read it on the way home. I loved that her name was my name. But I was stumped. Her poems stretched my little brain in ways it had never been stretched. Her poems made no sense to me. And oftentimes, they still don't exactly make sense to me.

Check out this fact: "fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime" (Source: Of course - Wikipedia).

Today's quote is taken from a memorial that she wrote for a man named Mr. Bowles. It was a very brief little memorial. But, with a line like that - what more do you need to say? "I felt it shelter to speak to you."

I am longing for shelter today. Shelter to speak to about ANYTHING other than church. I love church. But honestly, I am so overwhelmed by this pile on my desk. The lists in my brain of "to do" items has gotten too long and there is no home in my brain, and I can't keep track of anything. I love organizing, and none of my files are organized. It feels like people's expectations are at a level even Jesus would struggle to meet. Complain, complain, complain. I know. Quit it, Emily. No more complaining.

-PAUSE- (someone just stopped in, be right back)

Well, you won't believe it! A non-church member just stopped in. To chat. About non-church topics. And it was definitely a kind of 15-minute conversational shelter.

God, thank you. That helped. Wow. Creator of the Universe, you are so funny sometimes. I hope I remember this answered prayer when I feel like God isn't reading my blog.

Shelter. Sometimes, I guess we just need to ask.