Rocks in My Pockets

When I’m out shopping, I look for young moms. Getting much of anything done is hard enough when you have little ones underfoot, but shopping with unsedated children can be a herculean challenge. I remember. And I remember that, if you’re actually lucky enough to cross off everything on your list before meltdown occurs, you still face the challenge of getting home and getting everything— and everyone— settled.
So when I see a young mom in the store, even if she looks sane at that particular moment, I try to say something encouraging along the lines of, “Enjoy these days. They’re exhausting, but they’re fleeting, and you will miss them.” Reactions range from tearful gratitude to stunned silence as their eyes tell me, “You’re obviously crazy. Please move along now.”
Those young moms remind me of my Ralph Lauren blue denim jacket. I bought it when I was preparing to travel Europe alone as a single woman as a statement of independence after 25 years of abusive relationships. I would speak the native tongue of the country I was visiting, and I would not be tethered to tours or reservations. 
I bought that jacket as I was being wooed by the man who would become my husband, and as I simultaneously wooed the little girl who would become my only daughter. I wear that same jacket today as that same daughter prepares to give birth to her own daughter. When I take that little grandbaby for a stroll in the cool autumn air, I will wear my blue denim jacket.
On the surface, it’s an ordinary jacket. And except for a little wear at the base of the zipper, it hides its age better than its owner. However, the manufacturer gave some extraordinary thought to the pockets. Inside it has hidden pockets seemingly designed for cell phones (which, if they existed at all in those days, would have been slightly smaller than a laptop), along with smaller pockets that can hold identification, keys or just about anything else.
But it’s the outside pockets that are most special to me. They’re deep enough to hide your hands inside on a cool day, and each time I stuff my hands inside them, I remember. I remember those early days of my marriage and of the life with our daughter. I remember what it was like when God opened up my womb and gave me two sons after I had been told I would likely be barren. I remember the joy and the weariness and the wonder and the frustration and the sameness and the newness and the impossible bliss of every ordinary day.
I remember the rocks in my pockets.
I walk—a lot—and while our daughter was in school, I would put our oldest son in his stroller and walk for miles. He spent the bulk of his early years sick, so we both would appreciate the diversion. We would talk about all the things we would see— dogs, cars, wild blackberries, work machines. One day, as we walked past a construction site, he said, “Mommy, please give me that rock on the ground.” Once he ensured I had the correct one—I don’t recall how many I had to pick through —he held on to it happily for a while and then said, “Mommy, please hold it.” So I stuffed it into my right pocket and kept walking. Every now and then he would want to see it again, but it had to go back into my pocket. 
A few years later, we would repeat the same scenario with our younger son while the older one rode his bike alongside the stroller. We walked by the same site, where rocks remained strewn from constructions years ago. And the younger son, being slightly less eloquent than his big brother, said, “Wock, peez.” I again found the correct one, which he quickly tired of carrying, so it went into my other pocket. 
Those rocks have remained in those pockets ever since, though the boys are grown and married. If I wash the jacket, I lay them somewhere safe in their correct right- or left-hand positions and immediately replace them once the jacket comes out of the dryer. It is a ritual for me. I must remember, because they remind me of all that God has done in my life, of the winding journey on which He has led me in the years in which I’ve worn that jacket. They remind me of some other stones.
In Joshua 4, the Bible tells of how God dried up the bed of the Jordan River as the ark of the covenant led God’s people into the promised land. But before they could proceed, God told them to gather 12 stones that would be a memorial for the Israelites. These very stones establish that though the ground had been dry, God’s people had had a rocky path before them.
In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ you should tell them, ‘The waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the Lord’s covenant.—Joshua 4:6-7
Someday perhaps I’ll show my grandchildren the rocks in my pockets. And when they ask me what those rocks mean to me, I’ll say, “They remind me that the Lord is my Rock. He has always been before me, beside me and behind me. He will lead you too if you will let Him.”
For now, I’m thankful for the cool weather that allows me to shove my hands deep into the pockets of my old denim jacket. It helps me remember.

 

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