Until the God Light Hits the Road:Guest Posting at (in)courage

I am guest posting over at (in)courage today. This site is such a comfort and a home for me, and I am honored to write there, in the company of so many writers that have changed my heart.



I submitted this post months ago, and it is such a sequel to what I wrote yesterday. It is the answer to all the questions and the dark. It is walking by faith, ocean of grace, until the God light hits the road. Read the whole post at (in)courage HERE.

Good Enough to Make Us Wait

I'm opening up this post, and I see my last post was February 6th. It doesn't feel that long, but also somehow longer. A post from the other side of another life. Depression does that, lets the river run away with you, without you.

And I've been thinking about keystone habits, the changes that make the others fall in like dominoes, and for me that is journaling. My blog always comes right out of my journal, my truthiest place, and even though my journal has been empty I have a hundred pages of words I wrote before. On the other side.

So today, and in days to come, I'll be posting these words that I barely recognize as my own. I'll be, as Ann Voskamp says, preaching to the one who needs it most. Always myself.

This morning as I stood in front of my bathroom mirror I kept thinking of one line I knew I had written: Sometimes love is good enough to make us wait. One of my favorite quotes is, "Love understands, and therefore waits." I don't know why this resonates with me so deeply, except that it seems to echo grace. There is, in the waiting, acceptance.

I flipped through my old pages until I found these words. The message I preach to myself today.


I wish I had known I was capable of making good decisions.

I grew up in a land of hard edges and lines. Things were black and white. Right or wrong. Yes or no. There was always someone willing, too willing, to speak for me, to turn my head. There were too many voicessaying they spoke for a God I couldn't hear from my place in the gray.

I wish I had know I could hear and taste and see or myself, because when I left the voices behind, I was lost. How do you know who you are when everything that defined you is gone? How do you even know how to speak?

I had to build a new foundation, start from the ground up.

If your voice is lost today, sit still and quiet. Be with the uneasiness that rises up. Don't go looking for another voice to speak God to you. Just sit and wait. Let the restlessness rise and the shadows fall.

There is too much talk. Too much chatter and opinion and fence-making. The noise is deafening, but the Voice isn't in the noise.

Stay and listen into the silence.

Sometimes love is good enough to make us wait.

Happiness Heard Your Name

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindsayshaver/3296305617/#

         Ever since happiness heard your name

         it has been running through the streets
         trying to find you.

                 

                   Hafiz

Shining all the Way Down

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michellerlee/6706585659/

The alarm went off this morning, and I couldn’t get out of bed. My husband came in and found me, still there under the covers. He bent over and kissed my forehead and said, “You are so loved.”

And I can barely stand it, because I am falling heavy. I feel sorry for him, for my daughters, because they are so whole and good, and I am just a hot mess. I hide out in the shower while they get ready, and then feel even more ashamed for avoiding them, these beautiful gifts that live in my house. 

On the way to work I drive across a canal and the fog is lying heavy over the surface of the water. That’s me, I think. They are cloud, and I am low-lying fog. 

Anne Lamott writes in her book Help, Thanks, Wow about the glorious surprise of this. We wonder how we ever got so lucky to have such wise and lovely people around us, who tolerate us in all of our screwed up broken mess. And somehow, beyond reason, they feel the same way about us, also wondering how they got so lucky. This is truest love, when each person feels that are getting the better deal. 

This is the great mystery.

Last night we went out walking, bundled up against the dark. The girls rode in the wagon with our dog and we walked alongside. The stars were bright, and we tried to map out their shapes with our fingers. My daughter says there’s a bunny in the moon, but tonight we couldn’t find it; it was hiding somewhere out of sight. Maybe it was sinking too, falling below the horizon. Shining, all the way down.

Armor on? Armor off?

Sandy Hook. I'm just not over it.

I opened facebook yesterday to see a picture of two grim looking white kids with their hands wrapped around weapons taller than they were. "Why Assault Rifles?" screamed the caption.

And I'm still stuck on the first word. I can't get any farther than that.

Why?

I grew up singing about how we are soldiers in God's army. Six years old, we shaped our fingers into guns and spun around firing at the invisible.

I'm older now. Old enough to have wrapped my fingers around the cold metal of a pistol. Old enough to have stared down a barrel and pulled a trigger. Old enough to know I don't want to fight.

I don't want to see life as a battle.

I believe in beauty. I believe in goodness. I believe in the strength of a calm spirit. I believe in encouragement.

I believe in the power of turning: the other cheek, time, curve of the earth.

And yet, the battle finds me.

I fight the steady tug of the dark. I fight small. I fight tired doubt and chest-clenching anxiety and cynicism and fear of the future. I fight it all.

I step daily onto my battlefield, and I see Quiet, Enough, Faith, Community off in the distance. I push forward, trying desperately to protect my only heart, and as I clash against harsh words and judgement and expectations, I think, Armor on? Armor off?

What if I fear no evil?

What if I lay my sword down?

What if I let all that fear run right through me?

The anticipation of the pain might be worse than the wound itself. It might be that the blood and tears will form a river that will carry me out of the dust and the explosions and the screaming, a river that will carry me to myself.

I imagine myself floating down that crimson thread, a white flag of surrender lying over my eyes. Dying to what I know. What I want. What I dream.

All surrender, swept along in a flow of love-grace, come to rest in that distant place my soul desires.


Shared with Michelle-Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday and Laura-Playdates at the Wellspring. and the Soli Deo Gloria community.

For Oldest, on Her Fourth Birthday

Oh my darling, four at last! You've been waiting to hold up that next finger, the pinkie, with anticipation. When daddy and I came in to wake you this morning we sang, "Happy Birthday! Yay!"

You sat up in bed, rubbed your sleepy eyes, and said, "I'm four?" You held out those four fingers and looked at me for confirmation because it seemed so sudden after all the waiting.

The last year has been one of transitions. You've struggled with hearing no when you want to hear yes. You've responded to requests with, "But I want," and "I just." There have been tears and fits, times when you fell on the floor and kicked for the sheer frustration of wanting something you could not name.

I tell you, my darling, that this is just the beginning. Life is full of thwarted wants and unnamed longings. This is a lesson that must be learned early and often. I am learning still, because I want for you to be happy and free, always. To see the world as full of friends to be made. To believe baby Jesus is just a short trip away. My wishes for you are unsayable, feelings outside of words.

You have grown up so much this year. You are tall and full of dancing energy. I think you are close to reading. You love books and sleep with them every night, but you tell me you're too young to read the words. You color in the lines now. You write your name at the top of your worksheets.

I have mixed feelings about this. I want you to make beautiful pictures, my darling, because they do look a lot better when you stay in the lines. And yet I beg you to draw your own lines. Make your own picture, and make it bright and beautiful. Make the sky purple and the grass pink if you want to, sweet girl, and don't let anyone make you feel less for it. Don't let anyone steal the color from your world.


What you're into now:

Sophie-You're a great, if a little overbearing, big sister.

Boz: his Christmas special is your favorite

Helping-sometimes...you put the dog out. You can even clean your room all by yourself, if you choose.

Chapter books-We read alud every night. Books about animals are your favorite.

Doing what I do-art, writing, reading, playing on the ipad, cooking. You are following me close, dear, and making me choose every step with care.

Presents-You love to give and receive.

Bare Soul Winter

Who am I, and who are these my people,

that we should presume to be giving something back to you?

Everything comes from you; all we’re doing is giving back

what we’ve been given from your generous hand.

As far as you’re concerned, we’re homeless, shiftless wanderers

like our ancestors,

our lives mere shadows, hardly anything to us…

I know, dear God, that you care nothing for the surface-

you want us, our true selves.

1 Chronicles 29: 14-17, The Message

I’m struggling. The winter cold and rain has blown in strong, and when I look out my window I see dim light and shades of gray. When I look inward, I feel gray too. These are the times when I wonder, Is it just me? Or do we all have a bare soul winter?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/quimbo/93654202/

I’ve been dwelling a little on where I was last month, the month before. I had a good little thing going, felt totally centered, dropped down deep into the core of my life. I felt holy, calling on holy, walking on holy.

And it still is, holy. The only thing that’s changed is me. I’m going back to Grace for the Good Girl, to Emily’s life-changing questions: “What is the truth? What will you believe? What will you do? Will you give up the right to feel as if God's truth is true?”

I choose to believe what was calling is calling still. I choose to act as if the truth is true.

This is the test of all things-to continue when your head is quiet, heart is still. To get up anyway and sit in the chair anyway, pulling heart through the dust behind you. To do the work when it feels like work.