guess what
“Mom, guess what?!” Riley says. From the living room, I can hear the zip as she opens her bookbag, the rattle of papers as she searches.
“What?” I ask, somewhat dutifully, being both distracted and also fully familiar with Riley’s enthusiasm for ordinary details.
Once, she behaved this way before producing a list of movies a friend had pencil-scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper because, well, it came from a friend. Another time, she had picked up a student’s coloring pages by mistake, but it was, “guess what,” as though somehow even a blunder could be worth a little suspense and attention because it meant she got to admire what someone else had accomplished.
“…small bits of our day are profoundly meaningful because they are the site of our worship,” Tish Harrison Warren writes in Liturgy of the Ordinary, and Riley lives guess-what wonder-full, as if this were true, even when she finds life most difficult. Even the most wearisome days, the ones she begins in tears, Riley describes as amazing. She reminds me to watch and wonder and worship, so I turn to the window as I listen for her response, captivated by burnished rays of late day sun. We have exhausted our usual after school ritual involving a review of my schedule, questions about the people I got to love today, and Riley’s repeated declarations of excitement about each detail. I feel myself growing quiet and introspective as the day fades.
“I got my senior pictures back today!” She means the proofs, which I had expected. “Oooh, these pictures of me are soooo good! I love them!”
She finds me in the living room and passes over a manila envelope upon which our friends at school have affixed her proofs, ten different individual photos and three group shots. I can’t help but grin, thinking no-one-else-ever says these things when looking at their own pictures. These pictures of me are so good. I turn the words over on my tongue, wondering if I could say them. I believe what God says, but then repeatedly I sigh over my own image, critiquing myself destructively, not celebrating that God made me as I am and that He makes all things–even me–well. God has gently used Riley, who routinely credits Him with all the details–“God made me with blond hair, with two hands, with this skin,” and who also routinely affirms kind comments–“Yes, I am beautiful; I am smart; I am wonderful,” to help me take captive my limited thinking. He’s still using her to teach me a new vocabulary; to teach me to find wonder everywhere, even in my everyday self.
“These are good pictures of you,” I agree, thumbing the edge of the envelope, immediately zeroing in on the pictures of Riley in her cap and gown, wondering what it is about these pictures that they seem to be pixelated with snapshots from all the years leading up to this one.
In these pictures, I see Riley at every age; more than see, I hear, I smell, I taste, I relive, I remember. I see Riley at three, sucking the bud of her bottom lip, when she couldn’t talk and only felt safe with an object in each hand, when she couldn’t quite find the boundaries of herself. I hear the jiggle of her doorknob, every night at 3 am, when she woke up frustrated and restless. I see Riley at five, when she moved toward the back door, brassy curls bouncing. I hear her telling me in that halting way that she wants to go outside, and I still feel my own surprise over her first full sentence. I see Riley at seven, standing in her sandals in the woods, hands clamped over her ears, screaming because she heard a bee that still hasn’t quite reached us. I look around, still wondering if the murderous sound of her fear will bring someone running. I see Riley at ten, seizing, head locked horribly in backward glance. I see Riley in eighth grade, pausing at the top of the middle school stairs to wait, shaking because the stairwell is just too loud. I see Riley at eighteen, wearing sparkly eye shadow and sequins, standing with her boyfriend at Night to Shine, both of them are wearing crowns. I hear Riley lamenting, Riley forgiving, Riley laughing at the days to come. I see Riley always, shining and not complaining, enthralled with the valleys as well as the peaks, and from here, I taste and see: the Lord is good. This small moment, it is the site of my worship. The things that God does, even the details I take for granted, are worthy of my watchful attention.
“Guess what?!” I say to her, “You are amazing, you know that?” I look up from the pictures, resting my hand on the slope of Riley’s shoulder.
“Yes, I am amazing,” she says, smiling wide, “because God has done an amazing job with me.”
