Moving Mountains

One more time, one last time.

Time ticks tediously into the winds of insanity.  But all you really want is to hold it somehow still in your hands just long enough to feel it, to own it.  But it slips. Oh, how it slips away and away and away and yet you hold it, waterfalling cascades dancing around you as you turn this way and that to just hold on.

Just hold on.  You wonder why you even try.  But yet you do. The very thought of addiction benumbs your soul and yet out of embers and ashes you peer, wishing desperately to grasp one wisp of yellowed shine.  The dawn of a new day never knocks, or maybe it did and you just didn’t hear it.

Why are you addicted to the insanity of normal?

The demons of normality are beckoning to be your best ally.  Grasp hold of their sickening web and then you can break free to live an enchanted life, to unshackle the slave of your thoughts, break free, just be.  

But you sense you are less than enough.  So just this one time, just this one moment, you shall reject the heart’s earnest cry to move mountains and one more time, just this one more time, you shall remain.  Stay the course, hold your head high, be who they want you to be, who they need you to be.

Being for them breaks who you are.

You need more.

You need heights unsoared and valleys unkempt and struggles more real and yet more ensnaring than you can handle, but the chains of being what they expect are more wretched yet.

Maybe it’s time.  Maybe those demons are really just angels who need their own wings; they cannot fly if they cannot unlatch.  

They can’t control you anymore because . . .

Maybe it is time.

One last time for them, one more last time for you.

And as you fly, they shall also forever flight in the foreground because those who wonder are never really lost.

Those who fight and flight are dancing together on the face of their failures, and you can step in time, join the dance, be alive.  

Because how will you ever know what to believe if you don’t go just this one time.

Just this one time.

Even if you fail.  Even if you crash and burn.  It shall still be beautiful. . .

For you can only ever be a beautiful disaster.

Homeward Bound

It almost always hits somewhere in the Dakotas.  Driving hard to make the miles, time rolling slower than paint drying in the hot, humid summer air, and I enter a lengthy haze.  From inside, I am quiet. I have nothing to say. No words could begin to express what is happening in my heart. Nothing in me can muster the energy; all my reserve is pounding away against the flood of endless uncertainty and it is all I can do to just breathe.  Breathe in. Breathe out. Survive.

I would like to stay in the haze.  At least it is better than coming out on the other side ready to tackle another year in the hot hells of southern Illinois.  The endless tasks with little return of effort. Slaving away at work, farm, and home for the tidbits of recompense slowly dispersed like morsels as I eat away at the sticky, messy dough desperately eager for that next text message or email from the student who might reach out long enough to give me a sip of water in my dry desert.  They are always worth it, but could there be more?

A haven of rest awaits just round the corner.  I find it come July, but now it is August, and my heart yearns to return through that haze to the other side, to find my soul in the mountains of Montana where you will plant me.  Will you plant me? I want to grow, but it seems so hard here in the shadows of corn and pork-capital of the world. The capital of comfort lures me to buy into all the things I cannot afford, yet purchase after purchase finds me wasting away yet in this desert land.  The thick, humid air can be so very suffocating; I can hardly breathe.

Father, help me breathe.  Remind me as I replant yet again here in this wasteland that this is the plan You have for me.  Is this the only plan You have? My heart yearns for something more, but something more comes at such a cost, and I only want it if You would have it for me, for us.

Coming out from the haze is so damned difficult.  I stay there as long as I possibly can, heart revolting for the deemed departure that You demand.  By the time we hit Iowa, I have emerged, but with each passing time, it becomes more difficult to gather back up all the pieces of my heart.  I feel like humpty dumpty who cannot quite put myself back together again.

Father, put me back together.  Make me whole so I can tackle all You have in store for me here.  Bring peace and passion and purpose to this next year that lies ahead.  

And maybe if You would think it is okay, grant me a plane ticket come March-to teach, to breathe, to revive this heart of mine.

In all my wanderings and revolts, I really do just want what You want for me.  Show me Your way, and I promise to go where You go.

Trust and Obey.  There really is no other way.  

Trust that I AM

Some days I have it together.  Some days I do not.  And other days, like today, I am Jacob wrestling with God for all I am worth. 

Lunchtime.  I am sitting in my room, door locked, lights off, listening to Bethel Worship.  I play the song You Came.  Tears flowing, I am begging God to please come, pleading for him to whisk his breathe across my cheek, letting me feel His presence.  Speak to me...please........

Suppertime.  I am fixing soup, listening again to Bethel Worship.  With no choosing on my end, a different song plays, and this one reminds me that He is with me, even when I don't feel it. . . Mike drop-walk away.  Tears again.  I know He wasn't actually the one singing, but He was.  He spoke directly to my heart, reminding me that He is alive and well in my soul, so it can be well with my soul.

Trust Me.

I still feel like my hip is out of socket, but my heart can rest anew because He showed up, just like He always does, and spoke His Truth-I AM that I AM.

sHe

She was too young with a veiled clarity for the blackened white in the midst of swirling greys, but we probably shouldn’t blame her-a habit of youth. She blames herself enough already.

You came.  Soft, slow, seducing.  So she gave.  Every last ounce of her heart and soul, and then the final prized token of her unfailing devotion so you would finally know her love.  Her first and final hail mary.

She never was the same.

Times broken pieces to put humpty dumpty back together again, and just when she thought all was healed, you dropped in again.  

Why here of all places?  The teeter-totter of mind over emotion, knowing this is the exact place she wants you to be but your arrival seemingly caused the ground to fall away beneath her and she doesn’t quite know how to get back up.  The jekyl of wanting you to know Christ like you have never known him before but the hyde of wishing you would have chosen somewhere else to take your pursuing heart.  

Why would God do such a thing?

Yes, I know.  You have great plans for me.  Really, You do.  And it is crazy insane how You are doing a good thing in me through all the debased pits of my weeping heart.  So I do hear You.  Really, I do.

You know how I have struggled with this for some time now.  You know how I want so much for this to not be a big deal, but then within seconds it is erupting inside bigger than life and then I just don’t know how to breathe.  Spirit and flesh battling inside for the final victory over how I will go on with life now that his presence is in my midst.  

Life does go on and we live in the here and now.  I cannot recreate the past with all its veiled clarity, but I can use the vivid picture You have revealed today to move past this moment.  I am not defined by my past.  I must trust that You alone can show Him truth and think not of the me he knew, but choose instead to see the me You have made me to be.  But really, it is not me at all he needs to see; it is You we all need.  

I will choose in this moment to step out of my pit of pity, for pity really is the base for my wallowed pit.  And I will live in the spirit over the flesh, knowing You clothe me with righteousness and see not all the wretched shame of my past.  When I stand in Your fathomless glory, I fall to pieces inside because I am reminded of how very unworthy I am.  His presence reminds me of my guilt-choosing his hail mary over the bloodied sacrifice of my Jesus.  But I no longer live that life of lies, and though it haunts me still daily, I am not defined by the veiled past.  Satan would try to tell me differently, but as we sang today, when the lies speak louder than the truth, remind me I belong to you.  

I cried a lot today.  Weeping for the past that I cannot alter and for how much You love me in spite of me.  And if I am honest, weeping also for all the he’s whose hearts I played around with in my downspiralling implosion of youth.   I was a blackened mess.  But You pulled me from the muck and mire and gave me a new name, so I can either sink into the regret of the past or embrace the hope of a future You offer freely, a gift I can never earn but desperately need.

I will take your offering.  I will kneel at the altar of Your love because it is the only place I can be whole again, and I will gladly welcome him to do the same even if it is right beside me, because that is Your desire, and all I want is to have Your heart.