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.

Victim of Love

I once had a student who wrote about her molester.  Raw, tender, beautiful young girl whose deacon touched her in bad places.  Told her not to tell.  My throat screams injustice as my stomach churns with the thought of the injustice she has endured.

She was a victim of child molestation.  But is she really a victim?

Racism breeds its hot hatred year after year, day after day.  Moment after moment we are bombarded with the clashing tension.  Blacks demanding a voice in a world that has historically oppressed and whites screaming back that we live only in the present and cannot be held accountable for the sins of our fathers.  Spouting ignorance about the realities of cultural degradation runs rampant in all of us.  We are all victims of our upbringings, buying into the abcs of our youth.  But are we really victims?

Daniel and I talked about this the other night.  Black, white, rich, poor-so few actually change from what they have known.  Stuck in the cycles of the familiar, we may venture a bit from the nucleus but fail to find implosion that launches us into brand new spheres of orbits.  

I guess I see it like this.  It is pretty easy for me to sit in my comfortable life and throw stones at someone else and tell them their poverty or their depravity is their own fault because if they would only work harder they would rise above their situation when the honest reality is even the richest white man rarely moves beyond his own situation in which he was raised to fill.  We often live impressed under the cultural norms of whatever life has looked like day in day out.  We fail to move beyond what we know because we are victims who lack courage and strength and perseverance to make a change.  But does it have to be like this?  Are we really victims?

As a Christian, my default is to take all questions to the context of how God would answer this question.  And as often happens, he points me to the cross.

Jesus was the ultimate victim.  Bruised and beaten for his perfection, outcast for belonging to God, rejected for refusing to follow the norm, he died for me to pay my price and set an example for me to fall hard into.  From every angle I look, Jesus was a victim.  But He would deny every ounce of that claim.  He says we are only victims if we choose the flesh.  When we choose the spirit, we are never a victim.  Through His Spirit, we step outside the flesh into a life where nothing that happens to our flesh can destroy what He has done in our Spirit, and it is then that all of us-black, white, rich, poor-move beyond victimization and into abundant life.  

Blacks and white alike, if they choose secular over spirit, are all victims and frustrate progression of life because living a victim leaves us unable to make a change, choosing instead to displace responsibility and live stagnantly blaming others with no hope of rising above our circumstances.

My student is no different.  Her flesh was victimized-cruel, heartless beast of a man who took advantage of her.  Every part of me cries sorrow for what has happened to her, but I would do her an injustice if I simply offered a tissue with no hope for something better, especially since I do have something better-hope for a life outside this flesh that draws us closer to death with every passing breath.  I can offer her life in the spirit that rises above all the hell of this world.  

It is only when we embrace the love Jesus offered us on that cross that we can be anything more than the filth of the life around us.  This same sweet promise applies to us all-from the privileged white man residing in a white house to the colored man kneeling on the grass.  We are all victims of the flesh who desperately need to choose to live life in the spirit and be a different kind of victim-a victim of love.

My Alabastard

Allah-bastard of my youth

Teenage angst of sorrow

Speak not love

Dream not of me

Traitor of my youth

Fallen angel from high divine

Mere Mortal, You fell

Hard upon my soul

Crowning you king

O’er my virgin Mother Mary

Perfumed sanctuary

Loves fertile soil

Remembrance of my youth

Times healing balms

Befuddled misplaced divinity

Claims my sin

Resurrected ashes of youth

We are not to blame

Freely take

My Alabaster Jar

A Princess in the Making

When I was a little girl, I dreamt of my prince.  He would come to me, a humble nobody and place his firm hand gently in the small of my back.  I would feel the warmth of his breathe close to my face as my heart would flutter and my head would swim trying to steady my legs while breathlessness whisked me toward a life I could only dream about.  He would bend down, brush his hand across my cheek, and rescue me from a mundane life of toil and misery.  

The dream never came true.  For a long time I relinquished to the idea that it never would.

Today is our anniversary.  Sixteen years ago I stood at the altar in my white dress and swore to love.  That love has been hard to muster at times.  

But still I love, perhaps more today than ever, but not because of anything that is in me or anything that is in you.  Today I love more because God first loved me.  And as I come ever increasingly into His arms, I have begun to realize that Jesus is the only bridegroom that can rescue.  And we two, we are just simple, sinful human messes.  We hurt each other.  We neglect each other.  We forget to realize the other has needs.  We fall into each other only to grow selfish and fall out into a spiraling web of frustration.

Before we married, God spoke very clearly to me that He intended for me to marry you.  It is that voice alone that has at times carried me through.  But as I sit here 16 years into this, I realize truth to all of this.  

When we first married, I thought we were a match made in Heaven.  I mean, God had actually told me that, right?  But now I realize that was my pretentious lie.  We were never the perfect match made in heaven.  You like it messy.  I like it neat.  You prefer blunt.  I prefer polite.  You speak your mind.  I harbor my secrets.  You love the farm.  I love the city.  But in our boots and pearls colliding, we have still somehow found beauty in it all, and it is for that reason that although we may not be a match made in Heaven, we are a match made for Heaven.  God brought us together to grow us each individually closer to Him as we struggle to find a balance in us so we can live a life together that draws others closer to Him.  I know so clearly now that if you had been my prince, I would have never sought the real one.  

So thank you for your imperfections.  Thank you for continuing to be the rock foundation at the center of my core raging with emotions, to calm me and bring me back to who God needs me to be.  Thank you for being an amazing Father and a Godly husband.  Thank you for sixteen years of leading me closer to the only one who can make me a princess.   For in that, you are my knight in shining armor, a warrior for the King.

A Letter: From a Christian Teacher to the Secular Student

My Dearest Student,

I wish it were time to let you know that if I weren’t your teacher, my voice would sound much different. But for now, for this time and space, I will hold on to the noise that reverberates through my being, the one that wants to speak loudly into your life, because for now I am your teacher and all I can do is hope that somehow what I can say and what I can do today finds a way into the corner of your mind so that one of these days, when you start to clear out the cobwebs towards clarity, you will hear me.  

I will sound different then.  More like the real me.  And I will speak what I really wanted you to know all along. But for now, I will just hope I can show what I so earnestly wish to tell.

To tell you that I see you.  I see the struggle in your eyes and the anxiety in your heart.

To tell you that I understand you.  Believe it or not, I was once your age, walking the dimmed streets of shadows.

To tell you you are worth it.  You are worth every night I sacrifice time with my own family to help you grow in knowledge and in truth.  You are worth every gray hair from deeply contemplating how I could best reach into your heart when I have such limited time each day to whisper some sense of the meaning of life.  

To tell you that I love you . . . not because you are lovable.  None of us are.  But because I have a Savior whose Spirit lives in me, I can know the Truth and it does set me free.  Free to love you even when you miss the mark.  Because we all miss the mark.  But here is where I hope my voice speaks loud and clear, because vague walls build dangerous hearts.  

I believe in God the Father.  I believe in Jesus Christ.  I believe in the Holy Spirit.  I believe in the infallible Word of God.  And I believe in TRUTH.  Not my version of it, but the only real Truth that I believe exists, and please trust me that I have earnestly sought the world over for these seeds.  And because I hold firmly to that Truth, I see how my choices separate me from God’s love, and that great chasm is vast array of utter loneliness, and I don’t want you to be alone.  

So when you trust me enough to ask really hard questions, I have a really hard time not answering. But for now, I am your teacher and jaded avoidance breaks my heart, but I know not what else to do, not because I fear what may happen to me, but because I fear what might happen in you prematurely.  Sometimes, the hardest questions have to wait for a different time.  A time when you can hear me clearly, without those damned walled hearts.  To know that when I consider it a sin, it is because I am building my life on God’s Truth.  To know that it really is possible to love you even in the midst of your sin, fully for who you are, but wishing desperately you would walk with me, as I too am fighting my way up from the pit of me.  

Will you have grown enough when you hear me to be able to love like this?  To allow me to still sit at your table of confidence, even when our worldviews collide?  Isn’t that what true acceptance means? Not that I can accept only those who are like-minded, but that I can invite all to the table where we meet to think.  And will you then be able to think deeply, and widely, and openly enough to entertain other ideas, sharpening your mind against the edge, and all the while truly maintaining love in spite of our differing selves?  For if you think back really hard, this is the lesson I tried to teach all along.

But for now I will love you through the silence, because though I desperately wish I could speak, I am still your teacher.  In time, my voice will change, and I will wait because I understand seasons differently than you do.   And I will hope.  I will pray for the day you can hear me clearly.  But on that day, please don’t look at my age and assume I am archaically outdated.  Even age needs company who will listen to the noise inside.

Deeply and Earnestly,

Your Teacher