even the darkness is not dark to you

Welcome to Anne's summer of 2018. Well I guess it's July - but as I'm not working (as in NOT making money) time is somewhat fluid. I'm spending my time drinking espresso, praying, studying the Bible, watching episodes of Grace and Frankie (don't ask) and walking a lot. There's been some ice cream. Some roller derby, some tikka masala with friends. I'm also doing little projects that one never does when they work, or at least I didn't do them.

I have this almost 6 pound Reed and Barton sterling silver waiter's tray that belonged to my grandmother. It was under my parent's bed for many years, along with many, many church bulletins. Because doesn't everyone keep their most expensive silver with the church bulletins? Someone thought to look under the bed in the last year - and what do you know? A giant silver tray. 

I inherited this tray and promptly put it under my bed. Just a dog under mine.

I decided this week I would find out what it's worth. Because eBay isn't always the best antique appraiser and the Antiques Roadshow isn't coming to Austin any time soon.  My mom told me I could do whatever I wanted with this tray. It's tempting to think of selling of it - when am I going to use such a giant piece? Wouldn't that be a nice nest egg? Just the silver alone is worth a good bit.

I have been polishing this baby for two days. It is so tarnished, and still needs quite a bit of elbow grease. I've watched Martha Stewart's tutorial on how to use a bath of boiling water, baking soda and an aluminum tray in order to get the first coat of tarnish off.  Then she took us on a video field trip to a silver plater on the East Coast - wow! Amazing craftsmanship. But not my point.

My tray is too big for the aluminum bath.  Even the largest BBQ tray for the largest ribs in Texas isn't cutting it.

Halfway through my effort today, I held up the tray, twirled it in the light and looked into it.  It felt like a "Beauty and the Beast" moment. But I have been feeling more beast than beauty this summer. I immediately thought of this verse:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. 1 Corinthians 13:12

I see myself through my eyes. I can't see what Steve sees, or Syd sees, or my friends see. I don't see what the Nordstrom's cosmetic girl sees. I know I'm supposed to see myself as God does. But I can't. I have the head knowledge and some of the heart knowledge...but I know it's not totally as God sees me, because, I am not God.

I understand this verse in Corinthians a little more. And it's why I want to go home so much. I want the person, the God who knows me the best, to look me in the face and reveal to me what I do not know now.  I'm tired of the mystery. I want to go home.  But I will wait until it's my turn.

I decided to stop the work on it for today, and took it off the beach towel in my kitchen and gave it a place on my table.  Just for fun.  Look how beautiful.

There is no way I can sell this. It's just stuff, really, but as I polished it, I thought about my grandmother polishing it. She loved things like this. My mom loved books more, other things. But my Grandmother Brown loved beautiful things. I thought about her small fingers pushing silver polishing cream into the same lovely curves as I was doing. It made me cry. I don't know. Maybe she had a maid and I'm getting it wrong. But it comforted me, because while I visited my grandmother every summer, I never really knew her.  Not really.  She always had a disconnect going on with me, and sometimes the veil would come down but then it could go right up. 

In looking at this tray and marveling at it's beauty, I think maybe I am getting a little closer to the truth of what God sees when he looks at us. We are that startling, unique, rare beauty he created.  He is buffing out the dirt, making us reflectors of his light.

So waiter's tray, I'm keeping you. I hope the appraiser is just as happy when I tell her. Welcome to the family. Next Thanksgiving you can star in my #turkeydiaries, carry the turkey to the table, after listening to the kitchen gossip. You can hear the laughter and the prayers spoken in the dining room as we try our hardest to be grateful creatures.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

    and the light about me be night,”

even the darkness is not dark to you;

    the night is bright as the day,

    for darkness is as light with you.

For you formed my inward parts;

    you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

 

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

    my soul knows it very well.  

- from Psalm 139