The Unexpected Life

I made that Dollar Tree mesh heart wreath this year.  Of course, mine didn’t quite turn out like the YouTube examples, but, still the finished product brought that surge of pleasure and tingle of pride that I had accomplished…well, something.  For me, it’s the process more than the product that proves to be the wonder – always has been.  In measuring, cutting, placing, etc., I fade into a space of iridescent serenity.  My fingers toil, but my mind relaxes into stillness – total, unabashed comfort in creating something with my hands, much the way I feel when I’m kneading bread or knitting. (I can cast on, manage another row or two, then I’ve exhausted my repertoire; unravel the rows and begin again.). 

As I was measuring out the eight-inch lengths of mesh in alternating colors of pink, white, and red, my mind searched the shelves of memory seeking out the volumes detailing impressions of variations of heart themes.  Some of those recollections brought instant and unequivocal smiles of joy, some brought fracases of emotions that I quickly shoved behind me, refusing to untangle the echoes they left because – even years later -I refuse to allow myself to sink into their mire. I flip pages, replace volumes, searching for…what?   Then, at the very edge of the shelves of memory a tiny volume, glimmered with that ethereal childhood wonderment.  Here, I allow my hands to still and close my eyes.

In memory, not quite four years old,  I wore one of my Sunday School dresses though it was Wednesday or Thursday, and I danced at the picture window waiting for my daddy.  I recognized this place, this time: I had been entrusted to the care of my preschool teacher and her family, friends of my parents, while my father had taken my mother to the hospital for the arrival of my baby sister.  Today, my father would introduce my brother and me to the new baby, and it was that anticipation that had sent me to dance at the window.  Finally, Daddy was there, and we were off to the hospital.  

Across the ocean – at least to a toddler’s eyes – of white tiled lobby to the elevators saw my anticipation crescendo.   We rode the elevators up to the newborn nursery. (We’re talking eons before the days of rooming-in.).  Once we stepped through the doors of the maternity ward, the reverential hush of the floor settled over us, and even three-year-old me felt its spell.  

One wall of the corridor was inset with a long window waist height for an adult.  Facing the window was a bulletin board covered with pink paper and edged with that coordinating scalloped paper border familiar from any elementary school classroom.  Stapled in rows across that pink bulletin board were red hearts, the kind children learn to make by folding pieces of construction paper in half and cutting stylized semi-circles.  In the center of each heart was a word written in black block letters.  Daddy pointed to one of the hearts.

“They’ve made a heart for each baby born this month and written the baby’s name on it.  This one right here,” Daddy tapped the heart, “says ‘Leah.’  This heart is for your sister. “  I  stared at the heart, fascinated at the word written on it, always fascinated by the words written. 

Daddy turned away from the bulletin board and crossed to the window.  Daddy scanned the babies in the bassinets.  Matt was just tall enough to see through the window to the babies.  Again, Daddy pointed.

“There she is.  Do you see her?  She’s the beautiful one with all the dark hair,” he said.  His voice buoyant with pride and hope.

Matt nodded, not turning from the window, not making a sound, barely breathing.  He was transfixed by this smaller sister, at the moment, as dark as I was fair.  

Then, Daddy turned to me and hoisted me up to see through the window.  

“Do you see her?” he asked. 

Immediately, I did.  Most of the infants surrounding her wore the tiny pink and blue bordered white caps intended to keep those bitty heads warm, but our Leah had no need of such.  My little heart swelled with pride at this, at her.

And, now more than 40 years later, a whisper to my heart, ‘A name written on a heart.  Remember.’

I sat forward and opened my eyes, smiling at the gentle gift of remembrance, and I made no mistake that it had been a gift.  From experience, I didn’t doubt that if I allowed unhurried contemplation to unfold at the back of my mind, I’d understand exactly what I was being shown.

Allowing my hands to resume their task, I thought about what inscrutable things hearts are.  As children, our black-and-white brains consider hearts to be solid and immutable.  What we love, who we love, who loves us, will remain steadfast.  Then, inevitably, our hearts get broken.   Sometimes, they are broken during childhood in desperate, tragic ways – ways that children should never see nor suffer, ways that bear neither discussion nor consideration.  Or maybe they’re broken in the softer, more traditional ways of childhood – schoolyard bullying (Although, this, too, should be a foregone byproduct of childhood.), lost ballgames and stage dreams, breakups of friendships, breakups of relationships that we had convinced ourselves would last beyond middle/high school/the week.  

Then, we grow up, even if we don’t feel grown up, and the heart lacerations suddenly become more far more treacherous with fissures cutting far into the reaches of our decades still to come – divorce or abandonment, financial collapse, betrayal at work, betrayal by spouses and friends, even betrayal by our own bodies.  When crystalline dreams shatter now, sweeping up the shards carries that much more effort, starting over with new dreams that much more intimidating.  When accusations from the people we love, or even strangers blindside us, finding the strength to stand up again seems just a little further from our center.  The surety cements then that human hearts are impermanent, fickle things, whose sole reliability is their unreliability, and perhaps, this very realization breaks us when we had managed to withstand the onslaught of the rest.  

And, a whisper, a tap – ‘Pay attention; here it is,’ came to me.  My mind (and heart) reach back to that red construction paper heart with Leah’s name written on it in indelible ink, and a tender tug on my Spirit says this is simply an echo of my name written on His hand.  If my heart breaks in this world – time and again if I’m lucky – the pain serves to remind me that I am still capable of loving at all, something I am able to do solely because He first loved me.  But if my heart breaks, shreds, disintegrates even, regardless of the rinse/repeat nature of this occurrence, the whole of me will not because my name was written on His hand before my heart beat its first.

Amen.

¹⁶ See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.  Isaiah 49:16

Gloria in excelsis Deo. 

Angels called to shepherds tending their flocks, proclaiming that those lowly herdsmen would find a babe wrapped in rags and resting in a trough where animals fed.  Led by a star unlike any ever seen before, those men, dirt crusted, smelling of their ewes and rams, hurried to find that child.  But what to say of that child?

This is not a Christmas (okay, post-Christmas) message.  Let me say that again, so that we’re all clear.  This is not a Christmas message.  Good.  Moving on.  Anyway…that beautiful child was God’s fulfillment of a promise, albeit in a, for some, unexpected and peculiarly magnificent way.  His own Son sent as a frail and helpless human infant birthed by an obscure peasant girl in a barn, of all places, on the wrong side of the blanket.  By all accounts, this would seem to set Jesus up for notoriety and failure, but these exact circumstances allowed the Father, His Abba, to fulfill His purposes.  (Again, not a Christmas message.  Keep reading.)

We don’t get to choose the circumstances of our births.  We don’t get to choose much about who we are or who surrounds us when we come into the world – who populates our life.  We don’t get to choose some of what happens to us as we grow older or what happens to the people we love, who they choose to become.   However, (not being a complete fatalist here) we do get to choose what we do with those things that happen in our lives – good or bad, things that feel like they will bend us or even shatter us, we get to choose to allow Him hold us, calm us, and use those things to grow us to be people He can use to illuminate and shape His world.   The things that should end us, don’t have to.  Maybe the things that should end us are simply our beginnings, are intended by Him to set us on a path He knew all along.  

The world may seem like a cold dark place right now.  Newspapers, new casts, internet – they all cast long shadows, chase away light.  (Please turn off the TV and, for all that is good and holy, shut down the computer, but not until you finish reading this.)  Down to my tippy toes, I believe that babies are whispers of hope to this world, that in Heaven every baby is celebrated by angels.  I believe that babies are miracles, proof of the existence of God.  If in doubt, look at their fingernails.  How can you doubt God’s existence when you look at baby fingernails?

Three years ago, my sister gave birth to a baby girl, her first child, two days before Christmas, her love by her side.  My parents waited at her house, deliciously anticipating the call that Little L had finally arrived.  When the call rang through to me, starbursts in my head showed a world of possibilities for this baby, for the choices she could make to shine for Him in this world, and I’d like to think that somewhere angels called through the crisp December night.

We celebrated Little L’s third birthday three days before Christmas this year.  For her part, Little L was most excited by a fairy costume that came with a wand (which she called a “Wish”).  The wand was the draw as it permitted her go around granting those gathered their greatest desires.  If you knew her, you’d understand that this giving to others is just who the child is; when she saw Santa this year, she tried to give him the cookie she was holding.  On Christmas morning, she came down the stairs, glanced at the piles of presents amassed under the tree, and ignored them, bypassing them instead for a hug from my father, her beloved Paa Paa.  Again, totally within this Little Love’s personality.  And the gift is that she is part of my life.  But sometimes those gifts, they don’t quite feel like enough.

This year beginning the first week of January, brought brutal medical and emotional circumstances.  And the hits just kept on coming, but not in the way Michael Nesmith and Casey Kasem meant.  I’d recover and find my footing on the side of the rocky mountain, only to attempt to move, slip on the slick grey shale and slide oh, so far down.  I’d cling to handholds and watch the chunks of my life tumble into the abyss below me.  Breath became perilous, hope nonexistent.  The fog swirled around me until it became impossible to see anything but the ‘nots’- cannot, will not, should not, do not, and the most painful: HAVE NOT.  

The fog is beginning to clear, and my heart is trying to break free from the cyanotic bleakness encasing it.  Part of that breaking free is to breathe and move.  My feet may slip, my life may fall apart, but breathing and moving are essential to the climb.  And so, I reach one hand over the other searching for a handhold.  I whisper a prayer of thanksgiving for knowing my handholds: writing, running, music, Bible study, service.  And I will pursue those handholds relentlessly with His help because, while I didn’t get to choose the circumstances of this past year, I can choose how to respond.  I can choose to sink into a black depression, or I can choose to seek refuge in the handholds He has given.  I can choose despair, or I can choose hope.  I can choose to discount the gifts He has given, or I can choose to live with thanksgiving.

I choose His handholds.  I choose hope.  I choose thanksgiving.

Gloria in excelsis Deo.

Tuesday before last, I boarded a plane that flew to “city” that can likely declare itself to be the farthest north any city and still be considered in the United States.  I use quotation marks around city  even given the University here and the military installations the population this place would be anywhere else I’ve ever lived  we’d call this a town.  But there is a VA clinic, a military hospital, my gym, and Amazon delivers; what else does a girl need? Discovering   Amazon delivered was a raise-you-hand-and cry hands is the air moment because while I packed layers, oh so many layers, in my suitcase, I forgot silk underwear.   And winter arrived here yesterday (YEAH!!!  I know you know how much I love snow.).  I’m told it will thaw here sometime in March or April; so, I have time to really engage with my love of winter weather.

As I watched through the bow living room window the snow poured down outside.  I gripped my mug of Earl Grey, sipped deeply from it, and thought how very different even the character of snow is here. Here it pours like rain; at home it merely falls.   I closed my eyes, and  whispered a prayer of true thanksgiving for this place and the time I have here.  This closing my eyes and simply breathing this place into me is something I find myself doing with peaceful and increasing regularity – even familiarity.  I am aware as I close my eyes that I have arrived here seeking – Him, seeking the  voice I seem to have lost, and seeking the Joy that fell from me somewhere over the past years. Inherently, I  know when I find Him, that He is the Source.  Finding Him, I’ll find my voice again; I’ll find my Joy

I need very much to see the Northern Lights.  I’m told this is one of the best places on Earth to see them.   I feel a soul-desperation connecting me  to the green and purples light up the night sky.  Something about those lights speaks of Creation to me.  And I have been assured this is one of the best places in the world to see them.  I   want to see one of the father most northern national parts and the Arctic Circle.  As I sip my tea, I become aware just how great a privilege I have been granted simply to be here.    And I wait.   The Northern Lights will come just as my Source will come.  But for today, I watch the snow, and I wait.

Ephesians 1:18, Hebrews 6:19

Every woman harbors a secret obsession – books, music, chocolate, or – in my case – shoes.  I adore shoes.  The ‘girlier’ the shoe the faster it draws my eye.  If you opened my closet door, you’d be faced with two floor-to-ceiling racks of gorgeous shoes.  Flats, heels, in-betweens.  Lace, metallic, sequins, silk, leather – oh, my goodness, I swoon.  (I’m Southern; swooning is permissible.).

Shoes don’t care if you gain a few pounds; they’ll still accommodate.  Shoes just care that you wear them.  Shoes just want to see and be seen – sort of like politicians and starlets. I’m happy to make that happen for my footwear lovelies.  I must admit, though, to owning several stunning pairs that have simply been resting in place and awaiting their turn in the spotlight.

My favorite pair of shoes – ones that I have worn several times – are three-inch heels in a muted red silk.  A gorgeous X-shaped ankle strap holds the shoe in place, and a little zipper fastens up the back of each shoe.  You may think that these shoes sound miserably uncomfortable, but au contraire! I could walk – or even slowly run – in these babies for hours.  Did I mention these red confections are my favorite?

The last time I wore them was Christmas Eve a few years ago, and I noticed when I unzipped them to slip them off at the close of that evening, scuff and soil marks crossed both toes. My heart didn’t quite break; after all, never cry over something that can’t cry over you, but my heart did fall just a bit.  I thought then that I’d need to find a replacement, and I looked.  Oh, how I looked, but I could never find something that felt as much like ‘me’ as my original red shoes, even scuffed and marked as they appeared. I considered throwing them in the dustbin, but every time I tried, I physically couldn’t quite make it to the trash.  So, these delectable goods joined the ranks of the other shoes that simply sat on my shelf.

It embarrasses me a teensy bit to admit that it had not occurred to me over the intervening years that cleaning these favorite shoes might be possible.  Then, the other night, while searching my closet for something else, my eyes fell on the gorgeous red silk heels.  Cliché, I know, but a lightbulb switched on in my head, and I my hand sought and caressed those red pumps, then carried them to my laundry room sink where I went after them with Shout stain remover.  Making them look worse didn’t cross my mind as I was actively searching for replacements; remember, please, the alternative to cleaning was the dumpster.  So, Shout became my new best friend.  I cleaned, rinsed, then hung them to dry.  It took three days, but dry they did, and my experiment in shoe maintenance proved satisfactory indeed.  Happy, happy, happy girl!

Why am I telling you about my shoes?  Rest assured, I do have a point.  As I stood over that laundry room sink rubbing at the blackened silk,  I laughed as I realized, even with everything else in my life seemingly falling to pieces, I remained capable of caring for something scarred and marred to such a degree that, by all common sense, deserved nothing more than a respectful farewell, but I couldn’t force myself to discard them.  And, as with most things in my life, my brain translated that thought to contemplations on my faith.

If I could still love a damaged pair shoes, if I could take the time to clean a damaged pair of shoes and restore them to something worth keeping – something worth having – how much more can and does He do that for our hearts?  Isn’t that that He promises?  He will create in us a clean heart if allow it.  Maybe it takes us time – years even – to get to the place where we stare at that promise and realize it was meant for us, for each and every one of us.  He created us for His pleasure, simply, solely because He desired to love us.  He longs for us to come, bare the black marks, expose the scuffs, and ask Him to burnish us back to a state worth preserving.   As I realized this, with the cool water running over my hands, rinsing away years of damage from the red silk, I knew absolutely that my inability to dispense with those red silk pumps had nothing at all to do with me and even less to do with my shoes.  Rather, He had safeguarded those shoes, allotting them space on my shelf until I was ready to remember that my heart has always belonged to Him; so, does yours.  He awaits you, maybe not in your closet, but he awaits.

On top of my dresser sits a tiny porcelain giraffe.  When fear catches up to me, buckles my knees, and seizes my breath, my fingers seek this perfect replica of my favorite animal.  Isn’t it strange the things that comfort when our world consumes us with its darkness and fragility?

I discover myself at a loss to articulate for you why giraffes make my heart happy.  Maybe it’s their improbable oddity.  Perhaps that oddity is something to which I relate – fabulous creation that proves He has (at least a bit of) a sense of humor: gangly legs; over-stretched necks; tiny ears with small, dull horns; and lovely brown spots meant to help camouflage.  Giraffes are known to be gentle, and these slow-moving giants are mostly defenseless in a veldt full of predators.  Do you feel an inkling of association?

Next to my little giraffe, the one that my fingers trace with more and more regularity, sits a picture of the lighthouse that shines over Ocracoke island on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. If you walked through my house, you’d see this lighthouse represented over and over again on stained glass, in water color, painted on china disks. Why Ocracoke?  My grandmother’s family originated there, but more than that, if you’ve ever travelled down North Carolina’s highway 12 and then boarded the ferry – still the only way to get there – driven Ocracoke’s narrow lanes, sat on the porch of its coffee house, then rested on its pristine beach to watch the tide ebb and flow, you’d immediately understand.  I find Him there, in the island’s calm, in the island’s slow ways, I find Him.  And mostly because of this, lighthouses remind me that in the darkest of fogs, His loving light shines to dispel sorrow and agony, desiring that we not be lost in those moments that threaten to steal pieces of the authentic us.

Over the past few months, my migraine has refused to relent.  And, then you know that this affliction has recently stolen my sight completely in my right eye and partially my left.  I have been on my knees, and not in prayer but solely because I don’t know how to stand again in the face of this new heartbreak.  Perhaps what you don’t know, what I haven’t been brave enough to share with you, is that these horrendous headaches and now my partial blindness resulted from an assault that occurred many years ago.

Would it surprise you to hear that I have never before found myself angry with the desolate, marred man that damaged me?  But now, when I hurt so very much both physically and emotionally, rage bubbles to the surface, and I discover that I am, as yet, incapable of suppressing it. This rage terrifies me as much as the pain in my head and blackness – the blankness – in my eyes, but I also realize that the wrath that writhes inside me is impotent.  And for this impotence I am grateful and recognize in its ineffectualness His grace.

Regardless of the transitory nature of this fury, the anger repels me, and I would not choose it any more than I would the horrifying pain.  So, I find my fingers searching for my beautiful giraffe and my (partial) remaining eye seeking the comfort of the pictures of my lighthouse.  Please understand that the objects themselves truly aren’t relevant; instead the love and strength and mercy they prove remind me that I am treasured regardless of whether I intuit His adoration in the given moment.

I’m wondering what your fingers seek – even simply in your heart – to remind you of His adoration. Hope swells in me as I think of you through your trials, desiring that you possess at least one touchstone; you deserve- and I never use that word lightly – a reminder of Him, a reminder of His unwavering, reckless love.  After all, we live by faith alone.

You are precious to Him. You are precious to me.  Let your hand hold your giraffe and let your eyes seek your lighthouse; find Him there because in your brokenness and fear He awaits. He is there.  He is always there.

My niece, Bibbie, turned two-years old in December.  I missed her birthday; I missed her.  She shines the light into my life.  Children tend to do that; my nephews, though they’re older now, still shine that same light, as does my older niece, who is in her 20s and is a mom herself.  As with Z, Auz, and Kay, I adore this youngest one – my Bibbie – and when she hugs me, when she comes to sit in my lap, when she she calls me “Rae Rae,” my heart fills until it feels like it’s too big for my chest.  Bibbie colors the world more vibrant, and she is the reason I keep going.

You know I’ve been silent so very long.  My words wouldn’t weave together into a tapestry that held strong.  You see, I’ve have some overwhelming events, and in a life full of things I simply do not understand, in a life full of things I can admit my hand stirred and scooped at least a bit, I’ve recently had something occur that for which responsibility could not be laid at my feet. My right eye has failed – I mean, in simple language, that I am now blind in my right eye due to a stroke in the main retinal artery.

I have cried; my goodness, I have wailed and sobbed, but that has not solved my aching heart, nor has it restored my now shadowed right eye.  My eye is gone, and nothing short of His intervention will bring it back.  I do not understand, and I do not know how to move forward from this; I have wanted to go to sleep and not ever wake.  But, perhaps in this I am a coward, but I cannot end this life He has chosen for me.  Then, last week, my left eye began to fail as well.

Today, I saw my Bibbe girl. I got her up from her nap, changed her diaper, gave her her favorite snack.  I held her close, kissed her, played with her, and, incredibly, I felt my heart begin to knit back together.  You see, watching her, I realized something special, something awe inspiring really. Simply, Bibbie is the happiest child I have ever seen.  She, surrounded by her babysitter, her mother, her grandfather, and me, smiled, laughed, cheered for herself when she did something right.  Watching her, it occurred to me to that she could only feel that expansive joy – contagious joy – because she knew with absolute certainty that she is amazingly, unwaveringly loved.

Being loved – knowing we’re loved – taps into the core of our being.  Into the tap it pours liquid adoration and lights the corners that we are so very afraid will never shine again.  Love, in all its various manifestations, is capable of pushing away the suffocating darkness we (occasionally) aren’t even aware encroach on our souls. Fear threatens the peace He promises, but allowing that love to shine through may be the only thing that restores our relationship with He that loves beyond all understanding, the only thing that restores our ability to move and breathe and dance for Him.

I know He allowed Bibbie into my life.  I know he allowed me to see her today.  He used that precious baby to save my life, and that is enough.  Today that is enough because today He loved me so very much that he allowed me to hold my Bibbie.  Holding her, I felt Him hold me.

Amen.  Again, I say Amen.

Close your eyes for a moment.  Picture your refrigerator.  Is it white or black or stainless?  Walk up to it.  Run your fingers over the handle.  Now grip the handle and open the door.  Feel the cold air on your face.  See the shelves, the food on the shelves.  Can you see it, feel it?  Good. Now open your eyes.

I love full refrigerators, though currently mine is pretty empty.  Refrigerators full of food make my heart happy regardless of the sort of food stacked on the shelves or filling the bins because to me a full refrigerator indicates that a family lives in that house.  A full refrigerator indicates a lack of want.  A full refrigerator says someone cared enough to shop to fill it.

Maybe you’re rolling your eyes.  Maybe you’re sighing, thinking, A full refrigerator is just a refrigerator.  As Freud is often credited with saying (probably incorrectly, as it turns out), yes, sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.  But the value of something is only the value we place upon it. Paper money is really only as valuable as the “paper” upon which it’s printed; forget the denomination stamped in ink upon it.  Diamonds aren’t really all that rare, and concepts of feminine beauty vary depending on the culture. ‘Value’ rises and falls depending on what we hold dear.

So, back to my deal with refrigerators: what is that? Sometimes, simple and ordinary reveal extraordinary. Small blessings – tiny miracles –  deserve recognition.  A family that has stayed together despite overwhelming odds – and, let’s face it, the world itself today is an overwhelming odd – equals a tiny miracle. A parent that has the time to shop in a culture that demands so very much from its moms and dads equals a small blessing.  Simply having the resources to fill a refrigerator with healthy food in a place where a bag of potato chips is often cheaper than a bag of apples equals both the blessing and the miracle.  And so, I whisper words of praise and thanks when I see a refrigerator heavily loaded with fruits and veggies and meat and milk. My heart beats gratitude and hope when I see shelves of yogurt and cheese.  And, yes, I do realize this sounds strange.

I’m guessing you hold your own concept of a ‘full refrigerator,’ something that makes it just a bit hard to force words past the hitch in your throat when you see it or causes your hand to raise to your eye to wipe away an unbidden tear.  What is it that catches your breath?  What is it that makes you feel like skipping, like singing?  That thing is your version of a full refrigerator.  It doesn’t have to be something that anyone else understands, just something that He uses to reach you.  Look around you to find that refrigerator.

Let’s not ignore the everyday miracles and blessings.  It’s in those places and things that He waits for us to find Him.

 

I forgive you.  I read those words, and I wonder what they truly mean.  My little brain struggles to wrap itself around that phrase because it feels so foreign.  If you give it a moment I think you’ll realize, as I do, that there are the little hurts –  the person who bumps into you on the sidewalk without apology, and then there are the enormous, deep wounds that seem to never heal: the person who rips away the life you’ve built or the life you’ve imagined for yourself.  Are there levels of forgiveness?  Degrees?  I’ve asked this any number of times, and the answer always the same, the one I’ve railed against again and again to no avail: “no.”  Instead, the command is simply to forgive – period, end of sentence.

I’ve been silent for a very long time; I’ve left you without excuse.  You see, I’ve been wrestling with demons (literally if you believe in them, and if you don’t maybe you should reconsider), that haunt my days and terrorize my nights.  Deep inside my soul, I knew that there was nothing inside me to say to you that would lift you up into that higher plain that I so long for us both to inhabit. And then I realized that lifting you, well, that simply wasn’t my job.  Instead, I have been tasked with telling you the truth – all of it.  The truth is, I love you – even when you feel your most unlovable, your most ugly and scarred.  I FORGIVE you (whatever you think that means); I don’t care what you’ve done or contemplated doing.  My answer is always going to be the same.  Nothing will separate my love for you, from you.

It certainly isn’t my love or my power that allows for this forgiveness.  Goodness, I’m human, and I have buried within me the mess of this world. Instead, it’s His command and His ability – a gift working within me.  We are to live with one another the way He would live with us– continually, connected, unbroken. So, here’s my question, and I think perhaps it doesn’t need to even be asked, but ask I will: do you feel broken?  Don’t answer right now.  Contemplate, I often do; truly, it’s His gift to us, this meditation on His word.  And then there’s nothing to it but to find yourself (myself), prostrate on the floor (read that as ‘on your face’), begging for it end.  He hears; he answers.  He’ll always answer you.  If you have doubt, please know that it’s He promise to us to never leave or forsake us. That’s a promise that I’ve found that most people can’t make or keep, because we’re human, but He does.

I’m going share a story.  True it is, but pretty it is not, and if you think less of me because of it, I understand.  I had not been holding His hand – mind you, He never lets go of ours. But, I, thinking(believing), I could do better on my own, let go of His grasp.  I stopped reading His word, I stopped praying; I refused to find a church. And I plodded along.  Just little ol’ me.  And my world, as it so often does when we fail to hold Him close; came apart at the seams’; no Gorilla Glue was going to fix the mess in which I’d found myself embroiled – no, change “embroiled” to created.”  And I wanted desperately to have this life end.  I found myself on my knees, then on my face, begging Him to bring me home to where pain and suffering don’t exist, only His glory and radiance and goodness.

As I am writing this, I’m sure you can guess the outcome of that particular prayer.  I won’t lie and say that sometimes I don’t wish he had acquiesced. But there are things He showed me: chiefly, forgiveness I needed to offer to people close to me that I had believed had in some way, wronged me. The problem lay not in their behavior, but in my response.  No matter how they received my love and forgiveness (because love, is, after all, the foundation of forgives), I found myself, tears streaming down my face, holding out my open hands to Him to fill with the Love, peace, with (you guessed it) forgiveness that I just didn’t (don’t) possess.

I’m not a finished product. We never are until He consents to bring us to His glory, but I am His, and He is mine. That’s enough – will always be enough, and if I forget, please love me enough to remind me.

1Peter 4:8

 

Christmas stopped in for a visit this year without much fanfare.  New Year’s Eve barely waved as it passed by the house.  I didn’t mind.  I bet you could guess this about me, but I am generally a Holiday-Over-the-Topper.  I deck the halls, fa-la-la-la-la, bring a torch for Jeanette Isabella, etc., from Thanksgiving all the way until the Three Kings join us in January.  This year, however, my heart just couldn’t find its way.  I experienced a brief moment of panic as I contemplated having lost all zeal for this season.  And, then I relaxed and reminded myself that this year has been a bit, uh, hectic.

I’m going to refrain from the specifics of my year, and just say that life doesn’t look a bit as I’d expected, not in the where, the what, the who, or the how.  In fact, most days, I’m a bit speechless still, but I am here, and register that in itself is a major accomplishment.  These days, it’s the little things: I opened my eyes – woohoo!  I made a cup of really good coffee – yippee!  I did laundry – yay!  (You think I’m joking…)  I try to take life minute by minute, and when I get to the next day, well, all the better.  Can you relate?

Recently, someone said something akin to the idea that they couldn’t imagine how I’d made it through life this long as I wasn’t really that strong.  I smiled, turned away and left them to their own misunderstanding of strength.  I’ve come to know something of strength, intimately, personally.  I’ve turned it inside out, spun it around, cut it down the center, swallowed it in jagged pieces.  You see, what I have learned is that strength expands from the interior outward, pushing aside the fragile bits of ourselves to allow the resilient to bask in the sun.  I may be little; I may be blonde; I may be quiet, but I am one tough cookie.  And I have become such through bending, breaking, shattering; repeat.

But, “God never gives you more than you can handle,” right?  This phrase is extrapolated from a Biblical passage to be spun in a way Paul never intended.  Instead, 1 Corinthians 10:13, refers specifically to temptation.  I’d venture to say that He piles it on us, layers upon layers, until we stagger, until we topple, until we crumple to our knees and crumble to dust.  He does this again and again and again until who we end up becoming resembles the people with whom He began the process not at all.  If He did not, we’d never grow beyond where we exist in our own stubborn stagnation.  After all, what motivates better than pain?  (i.e. references to the refiner’s fire).  And He does this for the best reason of all:  He adores us.  He desires only for us to be the best versions of ourselves possible, desires us to live the lives He planned for us from the beginning of time.

Maybe you’ve experienced devastation this year.  Maybe you are broken and feel razor sharp edges every time you breathe.  Maybe this feels like I’ve axed into your chest and poured acid over the wounds.  I’ve lived there; you know I have, and I don’t intend this to ring callous or cold.  Maybe I am a bit “Pollyanna-ish” to attempt to view everything that happens, even the horrific, as a gift; I can live with being Pollyanna because, after all the debris is shoveled aside, I want only to live the life He planned.  I dream of that for you, too.

He loves you.  I love you, too.

Happy 2018.

I’ve been quiet, silent really, for months.  I don’t have much to say these days.  I spend time with my niece, and I run by the river, feel the sun on my face and thank God with every footfall – every exhale – that I am able to do something that last year the doctors said I would never do again.  Most days running is my prayer.

I couldn’t do it today, couldn’t run because before I’d tied my laces, I turned toward the TV, coffee cup in hand, ready to listen to the morning barbs aimed at Washington, D.C., ready to snort in disgust at our narrow focus.  And then, well, then you already know what I saw and heard.  Probably much like you, I froze, then sank to the sofa in disbelief thinking, Not again.  Not in church where we are supposed to feel safe. And, Dear God, not children.  But then I guess, we are supposed to feel safe in schools, in movie theatres, in restaurants, at concerts.  And I guess we are supposed to be able to trust that our children in this country will not be cut down by violence.  I did not rant; I did not rave. Instead I cried.

Are tears powerful?  Will tears change anything?  Ranting and raving never does.  If enough of us weep, if enough of us say we are broken, that we cannot go on like this, maybe something that is desperately wrong, horribly dark in our collective soul will be pushed aside by the Light that lays buried, waiting to be invited back into the places it is meant to live.

Let’s remember who we are; let’s remember who we were created to be.  Then, let’s be that – together.  Only together can we remember that all lives matter.