Lost: Words.

"Bitterness is a paralytic," says the Cumberbatch Sherlock, and I wince a trifle self-consciously.  I can't move.  There is nothing to invite me into living.  I am waiting for something that I don't know, that doesn't come, and doesn't come, and doesn't come.  Waiting for a moment in which I say, "This is why I am here.  This is my reason."  Dragging my feet through a logical plan that ought to be exciting, pulling my sled behind me through mud and ice, weighted down by an unknown gravity.  I forge my chains like Marley, link by link and yard by yard, coiling them around and around me to move too slowly through a fleeting life.

I do what anyone might do in such a circumstance.  I memorize poetry.  I read it before sleep every night, and collect its gems carefully, as if storing away treasure for an unknown future.  It surrounds my desk.  Fawcett, Green, Donne, Southey, Frost, Herbert.  I seem driven to be engulfed in other people's words at the very time that I can't write or even speak my own.  All is a chaotic silence within me.

Sometimes you don't realize what you have, until you lose it.  Now that I can't even write my thoughts, I miss those words I didn't realize I had.  My pen hovers night after night above the page, eager to spill its ink out of my scattered mind and into rivulets of meaning, but nothing.  Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and nothing happens.

I read.  Frustrated, I play Bach faster than I ought, and I play Chopin with all the emotion I can't express in writing.  I look for my words in gratitude, in prayer, in conversations, in music, and I don't just feel that I have lost something precious, but that I myself am lost.  Lost without the words that have become all-important.  Lost without the freshly inked pages of my soul.  Lost without my one human medium of communication.

The solution is laughable, so I laugh at it unrestrictedly.  I am not lost without my one human medium of communication, because there isn't one human medium of communication.  "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!" shrieks a funny little man from years ago, and I grin helplessly but happily as I sit at my little desk and realize my mistake.  I looked for my words in gratitude, in prayer, in conversations, in music, not because they would magically give my words back, but because these things are my words.  These things are my human communication, fragile and eternal.

Gratitude describes the blessing, prayer worships the Giver, conversation fills surprising dialogues, music speaks the very soul.  Words.  And in the middle of this entirely unsurprising yet wonderful discovery, The Word, not my own but of Another, sings.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.  His Glory.  As of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.  Always the abundance.  Always the fullness.

The words will come again.  They never really left me.  Freedom comes with the acceptance of freedom.  I move again, to find that the chains are only in my head.  Marley's ghost is nothing, after all, but a bit of undigested beef.

Seeds and Circus Acts

"If you make happiness or joy or peace your one aim and object in life, it is certain you will never find it; but if you put righteousness as your main aim, and if you become so concerned about righteousness and true living that you can be said to be hungering and thirsting after it, well then, says our Lord, you will be filled with happiness.  It will follow." ~Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

It is not an easy thing to be happy.  I am less than capable of convincing myself that I am happy when, in fact, I am not.  In the parable of the sower I am only too aware of the seed I would be, if not pursued so endlessly by a gracious and all-loving Hound of heaven.  The cares of this world choke my fearful heart.

Joy is not a natural state of being for any, certainly not for me, but I have tasted its tang too often to give up my hope in its revival, when thorns prick me on all sides.  Joy is too alive to be held back, wild, untamed life brimming with laughter and salt tears.  I hate pain, but I welcome the life that is its sponsor. My worst of times is my best of times in the middle of my circus act.  Apathy belongs behind the curtains, the shadows in which it thrives, but I am alive here on the stage and the acrobats throw me and the clowns spin me and I may even get shot out of a cannon, and life is the music playing overlapping strains above a multitudinous roar.  We are life's players, we circus performers, we poor but rich servants of an Audience.

I do not achieve joy any more than I achieve a handspring (which I don't).  I reached my particular brand of rock-bottom before discovering with the help of Dr. Lloyd-Jones, Chesterton, Dostoyevsky, and Romans that the fruit of the Spirit is not reached for from the ground, like an apple hanging above me.  I am grafted into the very tree from which the fruit is borne, and the fruit is therefore not eaten nor collected.  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness...these become my own as I become the tree's own.  Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

"The business of the gospel of Jesus Christ, therefore, is not to reform the individual or the whole world; it is to take hold of us one by one and to bring us out of it, to give us a new birth, a new life, a new beginning.  It makes men and women children of God." ~Dr. Lloyd-Jones

Pursuing by-products of Christ is the world's way of helping: pursuing peace, or health, or happiness.  Meanwhile, thorns threaten to choke out that which is most dear, and I want to taste not just a fleeting savor of joy or peace or patience, but of life fully lived, life fully enjoyed under the Glory of God who lives.

Here is a seed that ought to have fallen among thorns.  Grace threw me into rich soil.

Out I walk along the taut wire, touching the sky with my outstretched fingers.  Next time, I will ride the unicycle.

A Roman's Road to Grace

Ever since that fateful day two years ago, when I opened my unwilling mouth to admit sins kept secret for fifteen years, I have loved the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans.  I remember that my reading had brought me several chapters into the book before Grace shattered my carefully constructed world.  When I picked my Bible up again, every verse glowed at me with a life I had never seen in color.  I cried at the beauty overwhelming my tired soul, and laughed aloud through my tears at the sudden freedom.

"Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!"  If my soul could have spoken its reaction to the world during this time, these would have been its words.  Oh, the depths of the riches!  Even as a believer, even as Christ is changing you over the years and opening your eyes to the new and the wonderful, you can still live in a shadow.  It is all too easy to work towards righteousness on your own strength.  With Paul I could boast of my pitiful standards, always deceiving myself into believing that my works pleased God.  Never realizing my works were filth before His glory.  Never realizing that He didn't want my burnt offerings.  Never realizing that He wanted me.

One of the trees outside my window has refused, all this fall, to let her leaves turn color.  She has been nearly as green as in the summer, even after the other trees lost their leaves and stood stark and gray against the November earth.  But it snowed last night, the leaves froze on the branches, and now the ground is carpeted green, leaves fallen all at once.  It was such a November for me two years ago.  Refusing my humanity, denying my weakness, somehow keeping my green leaves long after they should have fallen.  It was such a November for me, fifteen years too long, before the frozen storm thawed my proud heart in a single night.  Die, to live.  No condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

No condemnation!  I, who above all deserved condemnation!  I, who had hidden even from myself the depth of my guilt over the confines of years.  It all burst upon me with curious intensity now, and I was left gloriously shell shocked.  Where sin increased, grace now abounded all the more.  This harlot, who had been forgiven much, learned at last to love much.  For who will bring a charge against God's elect?

Oh, the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge of God.  This grace.  This widening, ever expanding, always limitless grace, separating my clinging sin from me as far as the east is from the west.  I did not understand.  But for the first time I understood.  In one gut wrenching, perfect frame of time and space, I knew both the magnitude of my own depravity and the all encompassing, death defying, astronomical strength of a freedom I had never realized.  

I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  I am convinced of it, because I, wretched woman that I am, was unable to be separated from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord.  The words soared on wings that shielded me.  Abba!  Father!

I read Romans with new eyes that November.  I feasted on the Word that had once become flesh and died for my sin.  I drank deeply the wine that flowed over my guilt, and every word was a gift, and every grace was a miracle, and all things were grace, for from Him and through Him and to Him were all things.

And such they are still.  May I remember the eyes that saw so clearly, that November two years ago.  May I remember the heart that held so tightly onto living words with the desperate joy of one long-starved for this one central truth.  May I never forget the furious grace that destroyed deceptive chains.  Who will set me free from the body of this death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

A Caterpillar's Question

"Who are you?" said the Caterpillar.

Being told all your life to be yourself can be restricting.  Who am I?

I am only too eager to be different, if what I think I am is my identity.  I want to be smarter, wiser, more open, more gracious, always more of what I deem good and less of what I deem bad.  Less private, less awkward, less uncomfortable.  By some God-ordained miracle I escaped from the too common obsession with beauty of a physical and even sexual nature~what could I do about a flyaway shock of red hair and large hands anyway?  Inner beauty is what I have been told to value~goodness, truth, intelligence~and value it I have, to the detriment of all else more grace-filled.

Because of course, constant reminders of inner beauty reminds a young heart that she is filled only with the ugly.  Don't look.  Too dark for holy eyes to see.  "Confidence is the sign of a Godly woman," I heard sharp voices declare, ignorant of the shrinking girl at the edge of the circle.  Already fearful of letting others see, that giveaway lack of confidence grew exponentially, a cloud of anxiety darkening above a young soul.

"You!" said the Caterpillar contemptuously.  "Who are you?"

Who are you? Asked a wise, drugged up caterpillar of a confused girl.  The same caterpillar, this time dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt and carrying books of systematic theology.
Who are you?

Not good enough.
Not smart enough.
Not wise enough.

We fight a battle, not against the innocent others who speak thoughtlessly, but against the merciless, grinning forces of evil who take careless words and spin tales of such worthlessness that battle after battle in this bloody war is lost at a single withering glance.

I seem doomed to failure.  The flaming arrows have for so long pierced my thin faith that I know unmistakably my own wretched ignorance in all that I most wish to be most knowledgeable.  Words continue to come slowly when I most wish for the articulation and clarity to communicate my own thoughts.
Who are you?

Not smart enough.
Not wise enough.
Not good enough.

I don't know how to step outside of my own viewed incompetency into a better understanding of my own skills.  I try to show people what I see and am only frustrated by their dismissal of my sight as warped.  But what is true.  Who am I.  Why do I not understand the truth from outside of myself that others claim to know?
Who are you?

Not wise enough.
Not good enough.
Not smart enough.

Wrestling with my inadequacy makes my shame ever more tangible.  Where is the confident woman of inner beauty who I am supposed to represent?  This fearful specter of some Victorian imagination haunts me with her gentle smile and perfect poise.  She understands the philosophies of ages past, recites all the grandest poetry, argues ever graciously her perfect opinion with easy clarity, and I hate her.  I hate this creature who stands by my elbow wherever I go and corrects my reality with her own falsehood.

Who am I?  Flesh and blood, faulty, hilariously real.  A sinner, bought with Son.  Entirely bought.  No longer slave to mortality and frail faith.

Who am I, asks Valjean in a far grander melody than my own.  Who are you, asks the Caterpillar with obvious scorn.

Who am I?
Not good enough.  Imperfect.  Faulty, but covered in faultless blood.  Once dead, but now alive by Grace alone (around which all other things orbit). I am holy who by her own power is only the chief among sinners.  I stand before all my imagined juries of disapproval and judgment with the grace to be brought to me at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Keep smoking that hookah, Caterpillar.  Keep reciting your classifications and sage advice, flannel shirted one.  Keep pursuing that inner beauty, you sharp but womanly tongues.

I wear the righteousness of Christ.

Under Grace

It is hard to live under grace.  It is hard to accept love without condition, without deserving any part of this favor shown me.  To be loved not because I'm beautiful, or joyful, or good at washing dishes.  To be loved not because I clean without being asked, or that I cook well, or that I am ever patient and kind.  Loved because I am loved is hard to let be.

As I drive to visit my brother, I think hard on Galatians 2, freeing my head from my selfish desires for the first time in far too long.  I try to reason out what it means, these life feeding verses, and how it is no longer I who live.  Sun above me sharply glints against crisply reddened leaves.  The sky spreads its arms wide to embrace my adventure.  How is it no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me?  My sins weigh heavily on me, even as I turn my glad face to the day.

Some people seem born to a holiness beyond what I will ever know this side of eternity.  I have to slaughter myself daily in order to live in any semblance of holy.  Would that I had cut off both hands and feet and ears and eyes and tongue...my mind would still corrupt and boil within me.  Yet I have been crucified with Christ.

I want to deserve the immensity given to me.  To pay back somehow for some small portion of this blessedness.  I try harder, always trying harder, always more prone to fall harder.  I refuse to meet God's eye, angry with myself for falling?  Or is it anger with Him for letting me fall?  I demand my own perfection sullenly, thinking that surely this time I have done enough wrong for many lives.  No more, please.  Take this dish back to the kitchen.  It is underdone and wicked.  The plate refuses to hold it.  My testimony is already padded thickly.  I have been given much, and surely God will require much, but I have nothing to show.  Paul claims that he is chief among sinners, but he and I will fight for the title, and I am confident in my own success.

I live by faith because I have nothing else to offer.  My belief must be counted as righteousness, for I am small.  By law shall no flesh be justified.  Dare I say that Christ's death was in vain?  I must live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.  This is the life I now live in the flesh.

Hills of rock and purple fringed bushes fly past me.  I am still as worlds pass by, this trip by daylight, splashed across a brief word in my history.  My smallness is surrounded.

Some people seem born into holiness, but I know my flesh, born into depravity.  How much has been forgiven me.  Joy rises out of this smallness.  God made flesh.  Immensity cloistered in human womb (Donne).  My life drops from the faucet onto an ocean of saints who whisper softly from pages breathed of Sovereignty.  "Endure for the joy set before you."  In the presence of God alone is fullness of joy.  Sin pushes me to my knees, to His presence, to His joy.

Oh, and doesn't joy fill my cup, my broken vessel, my humble clay.

It is raining now.  It will not stop until I reach my destination, but Christ is in it.  He is here in the rain.  Every drop fallen onto my windshield is a new wave of Grace.

Cry Glory and Fight

It is easy to live in fear of this present time.  This present evil age, as Paul said it, nearly two thousand years ago.  I remember reading Animal Farm years ago with crawling flesh and a sick stomach, recognizing vaguely similarities not only to other countries, but more importantly to my own.  I was unable to put into words my young but very real fear.  I could only say with clarity that it was the creepiest book I ever read.  

There is a conniving, deceptive attitude about things going on right now in our nation that scares me just as it angers me.  Animal Farm fear of something unknown.  The fear multiplies as we live, as we exchange stories with others, as we feel an invisible net being pulled tighter.  Everything in our eyes is always reaching its worst.  I think at such times perhaps we tend to go defensive, protecting our rights and liberties with jagged nail and canine tooth.  There may be a desperation even about our actions and thoughts, as if already being trampled underfoot.  But what need we fear man?  There is nothing new under the sun. 

Is our time really so much more evil than it was in Paul's day? Perhaps this period of complacency is giving way to a period of early church tribulation once again.  Is this a thing to fear?  There may not be another country for Separatists to flee to this time (except maybe Texas), but in the right perspective, won't the future be exciting?  Who knows what God will do in this glorying of His Name to come!  Shoot, our country may go legit communist and be thrown to the wolves.  All the wolves.  We may be threshed like wheat and burned like chaff, but won't God's name be glorified by the proud actions of His humble servants?

Oh friends.  How petty our grievances against these weak created ones.  Shall we stand confidently, and attack with assurance the deceptions borne to us?  We may be driven like snow from the homes we once owned and the possessions we once worked for, but what an adventure future generations will then read in our pages.  For pages we will always have, stories somehow passed on in the face of persecution.  There will always be a remnant.  Won't our heroic deeds be told in all their weakness and celebrated as God's own victories?  Hallelujah.

We, our human selves, may not live to see this time we foresee gloomily, but We, the Church universal, may and I think will see it in no uncertain terms.  Why then lurk in fear of what may already be coming?  Let the light of battle sparkle in our eyes!  A time is coming and is now at hand when we must stand for Truth in a world run over by the squelching half-truths and slim chances.  Let's live it!  Let's live this time of uncertainty in fierce delight.  Our victory is sure.  

God will be glorified.  All praise His name!

Much Sin, Much Grace

It is surely wrong to wish sin on anyone, but the temptation is there, when I know how sin brought me to realization of grace.  While I tremble in fear to wish the deep and obvious sin of my own heart, I think that surely a more accurate view of self-depravity may be desired.  Still, strange as it sounds, I have had occasion to pity people for not having the power hungry struggle that I have with obvious, degrading, disheartening evil in my heart.  Deception comes easily for me.

I wish people would be able to grasp reality without the pain and fear I have put myself through, but there is part of me that knows: The worst thing in my life was the best thing for my life.  From much sin, I found much grace.

Sometimes people suffer from a righteousness that exceeds their own abilities--a crushing legalism of superiority.  I wish they could be free.  I wish they could have that one shattering moment of confession to dramatic failure of years past and present, and experience the stark otherworldly emptiness of a vessel cracked after a lifetime of stagnation.  I want that moment for them, when they walk under a night sky and look at the stars with the new and numbing knowledge that nothing stands between them and their Creator.  

I want these people to see the world as if for the first time~the world they've taken for granted all these years, because, you know, they're just children of the King and this is their home.  This palace of earth is where we grew up, so maybe the novelty is lost on us until we have that moment of Grace Come Down.  I guess I wish people would know firsthand the absence of honesty, just so they could experience its liberation and health with its sweeping fullness of gratitude.

Dear me.  I want people, these people, us people, you people, to have at least one moment where joy is so overwhelming that there is no response sufficient.  That your face might shine with God's own presence, because, for the first time, God gives you a glimpse of how little you deserve and how overpowering is His love for you.  For you, His child.  How I wish for this to happen for each one of us.

Redemption of an entire life's worth of unconfessed, unacknowledged, fearful lowness...there are no words to express it.  I can only continue to hope for these many others to experience it.  For you, many others.  I can only continue to hope that the worst thing in many lives be turned into the greatest gift~as mine was~the discovering of grace become embodied.  And may we all be stripped of our restrictive false righteousness to find fullness of joy in His presence.

All is grace.

Placing the Counted

I can usually tell when I'm getting a migraine.  Some of them come quickly, but usually mine are slow in advancing.  A morning of sleepy daze slowly wakes up to an ache in my neck and behind my eyes by afternoon, and evening brings worsening aversion to light and sound.  A smell may also bring a migraine faster.  By an early bedtime my eyes hide from the lit lamps and I flee (very slowly and stiffly) to my bedroom in a vain attempt to shut out the world.

It was on such a night not long ago that I mused silently about the hypersensitivity of a migraine.  Curious, how lifelike it is.

Bitterness works the same way, doesn't it?  The same way, in fact, as gratitude.  They both count moments.  As I lay in bed that night I heard clearly each whisper, cough, sneeze, cleared throat, creaking door, kitten's thump.  I could list each grievance with poetic accuracy while holding my dully throbbing temples in an attempt to still the pulsing annoyance, to no avail.  Life was whirling dizzily around me as I lay in the dark, but all I could feel was the nausea of light and sound.  My moments of grace escaping without thanks~because my eyes couldn't see them?  No.  Because my soul refused them.  

It's not just food that you refuse when you're in pain~it's the every moment.  The treasure is no less valuable when I refuse to give thanks for it.  When, in fact, I prefer refusing it altogether.  The complaints can be counted as minutely as blessings, and always more naturally, because my heart is always deceptive.  The Old Sin in me hides my eyes as effectively as a headache.  I shield myself from grace, because who can handle its blinding light with such a throbbing behind their eyes?  

Then here is Jesus to gently open my eyes and take the disappointed bitterness from me.  Isn't that the beauty from ashes redemption of a broken world, that He promised so long ago?  Always new mercies, even when I refuse to open my eyes.

Oh, to have numbered my complaints that night with my blessings.  To have given thanks in all things and grasped the every moment grace with both hands, freely taking and giving of the blessing surrounding me, for such is Christ.  To let go of the acrid soul and reach for the better things. 

718. brother fighting sickness hard

719. closeness of bedrooms

720. sound of yawns across hallways

721. show tunes whispered nearby

722. dog asleep noisily at foot of bed

I can usually tell when I'm growing bitter.  Sometimes it comes quickly, but usually it is slow in advancing.  I guess the difference comes in where I put my counted moments.

The Sometimes Hardness

What do you say to the sometimes biting hardness of God's always love?  Blessings are given, blessings are taken, blessings are withheld, and it is all Grace.  Every moment.

How do I comfort with the trite and the condescending when all my heart wants to do is break?  How do I tell friends about stately sovereignty when all they feel is the lack of their darling child?  How do I speak of abundance when I watch years roll by within a few short days?

I don't know.  I do not speak well in the first place.  I stumble over the pronouncing of my vast ideas.  I write my love out of the fear of being unloved.  Yet oftener, words must be spoken to be heard and I can't hide behind the covers of my journal forever.  Loving must be verbal even if I do not know what to say.

II Corinthians 1 speaks of a God who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we might be able to comfort those in any affliction with the comfort with which He Himself also comforts us.  As we share abundantly in Christ's suffering, so we share abundantly in His comfort.  Abundantly.

The word haunts me.  Always abundance.  We share this abundance of suffering, of comfort, of Christ.  Our cup overflows.  Goodness and mercy follow us all of our lives, not as passive onlookers but as interested habits clinging to our paths with the diligence of God-sent dignitaries.  Grace is not disinterested.  

I know these things.  I write them out to myself.  I hang them on my walls.  Chesterton and Donne speak to me out of illustrated passages, hung where I am reminded of their truths.  And yet I cannot speak them.  My mind sails upon thought and swirls new ideas into its current but the words will not be right and I am afraid to speak lest I hurt where I most wished to heal.

Oh for the grace to speak what must be said, and to show the love that I feel.  

Blessings are given, blessings are taken, blessings are withheld, and it is all Grace.

And forever and forever,

   As long as the river flows,

As long as the heart has passions,

   As long as life has woes;   

The moon and its broken reflection

   And its shadows shall appear,

As the symbol of love in heaven,

   And its wavering image here.

~Longfellow, from The Bridge

Don't Get Any Ideas.

There is an unavoidable dilemma at 22, in which every young man to whom I speak is seen through others' eyes as a "prospect."  I do not blame people for this.  I fully realize that matchmaking, even if passive, is the most entertaining thing people can do with women like me.  However, this does create a mental obstacle towards speaking to my brothers in Christ as I ought.

Firmly forgetting that someone will be speculating gently as to any future possibilities, I am at last able to speak normally to Obadiah and draw him out of his shell as I would any well deserving person.  [Don't get excited, my dear matchmakers.  I don't know an Obadiah.]  However, fearing opinions and shying from harmless speculations, I find myself refusing to speak to men at all, should they be remotely young and unattached.  

Such was my unvoiced strategy for many years, and certainly through high school.  In a college environment where everyone was the same age anyway, speaking to men became natural and easy for me.  In college ministry, I tried to make people comfortable.  Men, as well as women, like to feel welcome in new situations.  Unfortunately, when I would return to various multi-generational environments, I found myself reverting to old habits.

I became newly aware of this fault in myself when I entered into conversation with a young man who had been visiting the church for several weeks.  Why had I not introduced myself to him before?  I had noticed him before, in a rather scientifically offhand manner, as if his life had nothing to do with mine.  The problem is, it does have something to do with mine.  He belongs to the same God that I do.  We are inextricably linked by the same Holy Spirit who breathed life into both of us, and by the same Christ who took our sins in equal and extravagant measure so that we might die to sin and live to His righteousness.

Yet here I am, fearing other people's opinions, and therefore doing nothing to welcome, to invite, to encourage.  I believe very strongly in protecting reputations and not giving people reason to gossip, but the extremity to which I take these cautions is frequently overdone.  Shame on myself for inattention based on fear, or worse, pride, for isn't it pride that wants onlookers sure of my indifference?  An indifference, in fact, that is unloving, ungracious, and devoid of real humility.

People will always speculate when there are matches to be made.  I find it rather funny.  Meanwhile, people ought to feel welcome.  We are the Church after all.  

Chocolate Chip Expectations

I bit into a chocolate chip cookie today that had no chocolate chips.  I did not realize it at first.  I thought there would be at least one, somewhere, if I kept looking.  But no, no chocolate to be found.  Just cookie.  The cookie tasted good, of course, and had it been called a "Chipless Cookie," or "Vanilla Bread Cookie," or...something, I would doubtless have enjoyed it.  However, I put it on my plate with the expectation of chocolate chips, and was therefore disappointed.

Sometimes life is like that.  I was given the impression that my life would be different now--that I would be confident in my direction, or have an entirely different purpose.  Life is still good, but not what I expected.  It was sold me under a false idea.  Certain relationships were supposed to be wonderful, but ended up being forced and unnatural.  Classes that I looked forward to ended up being ugly. People I expect to like are disagreeable.  Life at home may not be as sweet as I hope.  All the time the world sets up expectations for us without following through, and all the time we let ourselves put hope on things that may not come true.

As a child, I was given some very profound insight: "When you give a mouse a cookie," explained the author, helpfully, "he's going to want some milk to go with it."  How odd to realize, all these years later, that the author was actually being satirical!  Mice.  We are mice, my friends, who have been given cookies.  Never really satisfied with what we have, always expecting a little more than we have been given, always returning, in the end, to the cookie.

For some reason, we like to think God owes us things.  As if we earned something better than He gives us.  As if Grace is only what we want, not the every moment He gives us.  As if grace upon grace is only figurative for the times we have everything we want.  God has given me life, and I complain that He hasn't given me my chocolate chips.

God hasn't promised us the chocolate chips.  But He did give us cookies.  And more often than not, out of His abundant lovingkindness, He even gives us milk to go with it.

I munch the next cookie, contentedly.  I have found chocolate once again, and this coffee is delicious.

The Search for Profundity

Thinking all the more about what to write next, I have been struck with something akin to stage fright, and have found myself therefore incapable of writing anything.  Apparently I can't discover marvelous things on command.

"Elise! Learn something profound! Gain some particular insight into your own human nature!"

It just doesn't work like that.  I guess when you're looking too hard, you can miss what's right in front of you.  Edgar Allan Poe--no, I must be honest--the dog Wishbone's version of The Purloined Letter taught me long ago that the best place to hide something is in plain sight.  At the time I wasn't greatly impressed, and continued to hide things in carved out books and bed springs, but the significance has since resonated.

The dishes need done.  My room needs organized for the fall.  My two youngest brothers just disappeared around the edge of a barn with a machete, an arrow, and old vegetables from the garden--I wonder why?

Sometimes righteousness isn't a big whiz-bang discovery or dolled up bad day.  Sometimes things just need to be done, like reading that chapter for Bible study, or rearranging my bookshelves for maximum efficiency.  Sometimes we think that if we're not learning something phenomenal and world-shaking, we aren't really close to God.  We don't feel God speaking to us, so we must be doing something wrong.

Before I become worked up, I think I shall just mildly declare these to be cumbersome lies that we need not embrace.  Righteousness isn't a collection of profound thoughts or feelings.  That's called philosophy.  Nietzsche and Freud were philosophers.

When I'm looking too hard for profundity, it escapes my attention.  The written word is surely the most marvelous creation I have ever been incapable of fully realizing, yet I didn't find myself incapable of realizing it because I was looking for something to realize.  Instead I was reading Acts, and the momentousness suddenly broke upon me like an overripe cucumber thrown by my youngest brother at a barn wall.

Life is too profound to give up in a futile search for significance.  I think I shall cease trying to define profundity, and instead, do the dishes.  Lunch will need to be made soon.

Seventeen Syllables

Whole stories to tell,

And seventeen syllables

Are more than I need.

When it comes to communication, I lack brevity.  A sentence, were I able to form it, might say as much as three of my paragraphs.  It is this concise writing quality that I find myself practicing when I scribble in my book of counted blessings.  With only three inches to ramble, I have to say what I mean immediately.  Yesterday, considering this, my eye fell on some old Chopin preludes.

317. delicate notes their own language

A single line of small letters can contain a great deal, I thought.  Inspiration seized me.

These delicate notes

Like their very only language

Music on a page.

There is something refreshingly simple and sweet about a form of poetry as short as the haiku.  I write more.

319. nearly ten years of life in pages

A row of journals,

Ten years of life on pages,

Looks into my past.

320. poetry spilling

Counting my blessings

A door into stronger life

Poetry spilling.

Like oil from the widow's jars, poetry spills out of thanksgiving.  Out of blessing.  Out of the grace I choose to behold.  I look at Miriam, after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea on dry ground--or at Hannah when Samuel was born.  I listen to how Mary sang of her promised child.

My own poetry is humble, imitating the short lines of my 3x4 notebook.

"Jesus wept," it says,

Sadness of the Son of God.

Two words, much meaning.

Whole stories can be known in three short lines.  If I want to write to touch lives, perhaps I must first learn to thank, fully.  If I want to write to touch lives, perhaps I must first learn to put my own life into three verses.  Seventeen syllables may be just short enough to do it properly.

Thanksgiving calls forth

Words from my pen to sparkle

Grateful, the heart sings.

While the Coffee Brews

The last thing I want to do when I am angry is be thankful.  Today, breathing flames, I sat down at the table and opened a small Mickey Mouse notebook, less than the width of my hand, and resolutely wrote, "freckles on a nose," next to the circled number 83.

It was hot.  The day was long.  There had been too many days of too little to be done.  This particular brother and I were beginning not to see eye to eye, and we finally had it out about the vacuuming that was not being accomplished.  I cleaned (because that's what I do when upset) while he finished his task, and when I was sure I was of clear mind, I assigned the extra work that he would not want to do.  He collected the eggs that I required, then ran upstairs to put off the rest of the chore.  I began brewing a pot of afternoon coffee, then sat at the kitchen table with my miniature notebook and one of my favorite pens. 

84. a mind of his own

85. grace to extend

86. temper as red as mine

With those numbered lines came memories of a fiery redheaded girl who, like one young brother years later, said things in hot haste and fought long the imagined injustice of her world.  The coffee maker gurgled peacefully.

87. quiet to soften heart

88. coffee as black as ever

89. memories of my own childish temper

The silence of a summer afternoon fell around me.  I got mugs off the shelf.  I called up the stairs to the boys that I had coffee done, warning them not to bounce too hard off the walls when they drank it.  The first thing that my brother said as he walked into the kitchen?

"I'm sorry I was a grouch to you again."

I told the boys my story about not wanting to do a task, about the temper of a ginger child when she thought she was wronged.  We understood each other.  The tension was gone.

Then one boy used a quarter cup of honey in his coffee and moved extraordinarily fast, the other drank his entire mug before I sat down and said his eyes couldn't focus on anything, and we all three laughed very hard.  I continued to sit at the table after they left.

97. relationship restored until next time

98. coffee hastily swallowed

99. caffeinated young brothers

Redemption doesn't just happen once.  Sometimes, it seems like nothing I do or say is right.  That most of my words in relationships are apologies.  But redemption in relationship is grace upon grace.  Thank God for redemption.  For reconciliation between brother and sister.  For all the emotions of relationship, happening while the coffee brews.

Breaking up the Fallow Ground

I keep Bible verses, poetry, the Nicene Creed, and the occasional hymn taped up on the walls and furniture close to my bed.  I like words that mean something.  A few days ago, as I meditated on what would be closely linked to my last post--namely, the futility of my existence--my eyes fell on a particular index card rendition of Hosea 10:12.

Sow with a view to righteousness, reap in accordance with kindness; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, until He comes to rain righteousness on you.  

At a time when every career seems bent only on my betterment and I question the purpose of such a life, I find this verse a beautiful and challenging reminder.  Sow with a view to righteousness, not survival.  Reap in accordance with kindness, not professional courtesy.  By this time in the verse, I begin to be convicted.  But I read on.

The Google dictionary, which allows me to look up a definition without getting off the couch, defines fallow as, in part, "Plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility..."  Break up your fallow ground.  Loosen the rested soil once again enriched with the minerals essential to strong production.  My sinful heart resounds with fallow.  It is time.

It is time to seek the Lord until, as the judge gave protection to the persistent widow, He comes to rain righteousness upon me.  Jesus asks after his parable, "Now shall not God bring about justice for His elect, who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them?" (Luke 18:7)  A friend lovingly reminds me that weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the morning, and Ecclesiastes proclaims the time for weeping, as well as for laughing.  Do not be afraid of the times for mourning, for there is also a time for dancing.  There is in fact an appointed time for everything.  And there is a time for every event under heaven.

But a time to seek the Lord?  That is every time.  That is now.  For it is time to seek the Lord, until He comes to rain righteousness on you.  "That is your purpose now," I say to a freckly face, which frowns at my reproof.  Righteousness is the purpose.

But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does.   ~James 1:25

As I turn from the mirror, it is far too easy to forget what kind of person I am.  

What Does Man Gain by Toil?

Three weeks before I graduated from college, I looked into the future and saw the emptiness of Ecclesiastes stretch before me.  Three months later, the vanity of existence still looms before me on an ever darkening horizon.  I once hoped that by 22, I would have found my purpose in someone else's.  But my plans continue to be solely self-promoting.  One thousand options, and not one appeals to me without coaxing.  I find little wonder that C.S. Lewis warned of thinking too much of the future and too little of the sparkling present.

“The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time--for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.”    ~Screwtape Letters

As I look ahead now, I find it easy to question the purpose of my existence.  Once I foresaw a life of meaning, of living for others.  Now I find that I must act for myself, and the idea is unattractive and useless to me.  When my life stretches before me, and all I can see is work to keep myself alive, to further my weak ambition, to stretch myself academically, I think I would not mind dying young.  Then, at least, I could make a difference.  When you have no goals, no ambitions, no drive to accomplish for the sake of accomplishing, every step in your career seems made to pay your own bills, to move up your own ladders, and to fight for your own survival in a Darwinian society.  

When I was younger, I used to lose myself in fiction so completely that I forgot the beauty of my own reality.  Now I lose myself in reality so completely that I forget the beauty of life.  I'm a good reformed girl.  I know that my purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  But I am also human, and frail, and there comes a point when I wonder how meaningless my existence really is and will be when I am only ever fighting for myself.

When brothers come into the room to hug me goodnight, I catch a glimpse of why I continue to exist.  But what happens when they leave to start their own lives?  To pursue their own dreams?  I won't always be able to do their dishes a hundred times a day, and vacuum their rooms, and sweep their floors, and play their games.  What happens when loneliness finally catches up to me, and I am forced to admit that I am not needed?

The Prophet says that all is vanity.  I know that hopelessness.  I know the lack of meaning in a life that should be full of meaning.  I know what it is like to plan, but to see your plans only with apathy.  "What else would I do?" is my question as I shrug my shoulders, and nothing comes to mind.  At least here at home I can help others, before I leave and help myself.

I pray for a purpose.  I need one.  

"The end of the matter; all has been heard.  Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."    ~Ecclesiastes 12:13

The Other Side of the Mountain

It's easy to get complacent.  We pull ourselves out of one hole, push off in the right direction, drive for a time, and suddenly find ourselves in another hole.  How did my good intentions and positive speeches put me into a place just as murky and hopeless as before?  And then I remember the one day I was too tired to read my Bible, and how one day stretched into a week, and before I knew it reading my Bible was the exception, not the rule.  I recall, ashamed, how I stopped looking God in the eye when my sins became too obvious even to my so deceptive heart.  And the chapter of Romans that was infiltrating every portion of my mind?  It began to be blurry and forgotten when speaking it took more concentration than I wanted to use.

Going up a mountain seems like it would be easy, once you get a good start.  That's when you realize you're sliding backwards.

I'm at war with myself, all the time, every day.  People say it should get easier, over time, to be righteous, but I do not see that yet.  If that is true, then I must certainly be the worst of sinners, without hope of holiness and virtue in this life, and I wish people would stop thinking to comfort me with words that actually chill me.  I know what it is like to feel the sin crouching at the door of my heart, and I can feel helpless, sympathetic to sin that perhaps Cain also felt unable to avoid.  "Who will free me from this body of death?" I cry, hopeless in my state of degradation, every minute fighting a more often lost battle for control over my own mind.  Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ His Son, is what I should say next, but the words choke me, for I do not seem free at all.  Not yet.  My sinning heart aches for righteousness that would be pleasing to God, forcing me to remember Whose righteousness covers my own inadequacy, forcing me to remember Whose humility covers my own pride.  "Hope that is seen is not hope," I remind myself, but meanwhile I clench my teeth in frustration at my own weakness and despair at ever living what I want to live.

I prayed for humility, but I never thought it would come even in my fiercer struggles with sin than ever before.  Silly as it sounds, I envy the people who seem to get by in life with easy, though consistent, trotting toward the prize.  My efforts are ever in need of being redoubled, not relaxed.  As if any moment may see me falling prey once again to that roaring lion, and if I stop my watch for the briefest of seconds my heart will betray me.

I must always be fighting for every step.  So be it.  If my whole life is to be a series of hard battles and fearsome ends, only pushing forward through shamed tears and aching pride?  So be it.  I will keep fighting.  If every step up this mountain is as hard as the last, though it may kill me, I will move on.  Because some day, some glorious day, I will get to the other side of the mountain, and none of the glory I see will be for me.  I will reach the top truly humbled, Lord willing, and it will be all for Him.  I won't have to fight ever again.

I will reach, once for all, level ground, that only ever goes higher.

Blessed, and Laughing

I laugh a lot. I worry sometimes that it's annoying, but somewhere along the way I decided that if something is actually laughable (and so many things are), I should be able to laugh at it unrestrictedly.  One of my brothers pointed out once that he could tell me outright that I laugh at everything, and that I would react by laughing.  I laughed before I could stop myself.  
Right now, you may start laughing about how you have read the word "laugh" so much in these opening sentences, that it doesn't even look right anymore.  You should definitely laugh at the way you have to google words like "laugh" sometimes, just to make sure they exist.  But back to my point.  I laughed a lot before last summer, but a year ago when I read about counting blessings, I began to laugh even more.  When I started to see how surrounded by blessings I was, my joy became fervent.

Blessed.

Ah, what a scrumptious word.  It is, in fact, a word that reminds me of the word "scrumptious."  Blessed is like...a cake.  A gooey cake with warm filling that melts deliciously over your tongue.  It's a different kind of word than "Grace," which is a delicate, beautiful, strong word, hard as iron and soft as a cloud--the meeting of all the Christian extremes that Chesterton has told me so much about in the past two years.  "Blessed" is a word you can bite into.  But they are often much the same kind of thing.

Blessings are like comfort foods, and toast with honey, and a cat sleeping on your lap, and sitting around a fire with friends, and watching both Sherlock Holmes movies with your mom when the boys are all away.

I was back at school last fall, and it had not been a good week.  As I trudged to class, I gave myself a talking to, and concluded by saying sternly to my newly repentant self, "You need to be grateful for what you have.  Look around you."  I looked up to the building I was passing, where funky architectural decisions had been made many years ago.  I pronounced my sentence upon the building firmly:

"Thank you Lord, for triangles in windows."

And, I kid you not, I couldn't help the smile that followed.  

Sometimes, we ask the Lord for good feelings, and joy, and peace, but we don't act like we really want them.  And sometimes, when we just put our feet down and refuse to be dragged into the piteous and miserable, but insist upon gratitude, the joy is certain.  

Blessings are like summer evenings on the front porch, and Red-Winged Blackbirds whistling, and a happy young brother looking like a lost boy in surely the worst clothing he could find in his closet, and a dog that always waits for you to come back home, and old reruns of Adventures in Odyssey while the flower beds get mulched.

The blessing is always there, waiting to be seen.  And I guess that's when you know what you really are.

Blessed.