shadows and shackles

My dear friends--for the few of you who take the time to read these words, I count as friends--I wish I knew what to write. For the past month I have been belaboring over seven posts, yet none of them are quite right, and some of them I am not ready to post.

I am afraid.

Fear, how I hate thee! Yet I cling to thy comfortable bars, familiar to my callused hands. I hide in the striped shadows, fading into the background. Though I now know fear for what it is, know more of my own fears, I yet feel powerless against it. My cowardly flesh cages my soul, and I long for freedom, yet I do not even reach through the bars anymore.

I love things of the earth too much. I love harmony, and would rather live with subtle discord than vexing confrontation. I love when people like me, when they are not offended by me. I love when people think well of me, and cower from anything that people might misinterpret or read into or make me look like the fool that I am.

Life is not all fear now. There is rest, too. And overwhelming gratitude. An attitude of thanksgiving was pricked earlier this year, and spurred by the words of Ann Voskamp. But the shadows of fear still haunt me, pointing over my shoulder, whispering lies.

I recall the words I read this morning: "When I am afraid, I put my trust in You." Psalm 56:3

Trust.

Again, and again, He asks me to trust. So I will. I will and do trust that somehow, some way He will finish the work He has begun in me. Trust that He will show me how to choose Him over that which I am too fond of. Only He could do such work. For that work, which is oft painful, I am grateful. There is no greater love than this.

{But the greatest thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of these sins at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.} C.S. Lewis

thoughts like scattered clouds

The cool, rough shingles pulled at the skin on the bottom of my dusty feet. Sitting on the roof can feel like sitting in the clouds sometimes. Everything looks a wee bit different from a little farther away.

The light was glowy; the trees shone with newest green, but the shadows fell deeply, in a warm, comfortable way. It was the kind of dark you would want to fall asleep in, those nights when you remember that night is a shadow, the earth's shadow--the nights you remember the sun is still bright and burning on the other side of the globe, you just have to wait until you spin 'round again to see it, to feel its rays.

At that moment, the sun was a sunken light. It fell into the horizon with splashes and ripples of pink  splattering the blue and grey sky. Some drops even landed in the yard, falling almost transparently on the intensely green grass, and the white siding. I was splashed with a drop too, on my arm. Real beauty is like that--it leaves some of itself on you.

The wind gently laughed in my face--which felt a little like a cool version of the wave of air that rolls out of a hot oven when you open it. Momentarily intense, but the cool (or hot--if you are referring to the oven) lingers, your face and neck now used to it, wearing the different air almost like a mask--or did it take away the mask? Sometimes I cannot tell if the mask is on or gone.

He will look so familiar I think. I mean, if His beauty is reflected in sunsets, and mountains, and people's hearts, won't we recognize Him? In an intensely, unfamiliarly whole, unveiled sort of way. Maybe at first it won't seem so. But we'll recognize what we squinted at hazily in this world. That is what this life feels like--slowly coming into focus.

Now the shadow has fallen more heavily. A beautiful scent--it might be honeysuckle--hangs in my room like invisible curtains. They open and close on memories, like a strange old film in shaky black and white. There has been sorrow. There has been pain. There has been joy. There has been delight. Right now there is peace. Easier peace. Still I will say, blessed be the name of the Lord.

finals' rambles

Well, this is a familiar event. I am sitting in Caribou, writing a blog post at a time when I desperately need to be productive. When I say productive, I mean in terms of school. Writing is always productive. Just not always productive for school.

WARNING

the following post is rambly

The toughest school year is about to end. 

Finals loom. 

I'm packing my room. 

I'm tired. Boom.  

And obviously mentally strained. But as I sit here, in my last Caribou "study" session of my junior year, I consider what the past year has brought. 

A lot of exhaustion. 

A lot of tears. 

A lot of fears. 

A lot of questions.

A lot of Grace.

A lot of growth.

A lot of Him. 

Perhaps I could put it more poetically. Perhaps I could take a nap. Perhaps. 

Why am I telling you this? I guess because part of me is selfish and wants people to notice me. I am a member of the human race, selfishness has corrupted me, too.  Another part of me is listening to my Savior--because I could not be this vulnerable without Him. Another part just needs to write something. The last part is to hopefully encourage you. This is as much for me as it is for you and for Him. Probably more for me. 

I guess that is what I have learned. My motives are mixed, my faith is tattered, and yet He still uses me. He still pours through my words. Because it really isn't about my words, it is what He does with my words. Really it is about what He does, whether through me or through that dude with the pink bendy straw at the table across the room. He is who He is. That idea becomes more incomprehensible every day. He is Him, always. Me? I am not me all the time. I do not act like a child of God. I screw up, I lie, I fail miserably, I pout, I wallow, I hide, I run away. He sees "beloved" regardless. And because of that love, I am lifted, freed, every single day. I don't always believe it, and I certainly don't always feel it or see it. Blindness is not just physical. And is not as rare as I once believed. 

Finding out that I am a coward was one of the most devastating moments of this year--of my life, until I realized that it is in my weakness He works most. Because that is when I let Him.  Life is a lot messier than I once believed. I anticipate that to be proven for years to come. Yet, He is immensely more beautiful and terrifying than I once believed. I anticipate that to be proven forever.

"We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten branches of self-reliance, and to root us firmly in Christ." Charles Spurgeon

"When you talk to honest saints, who have been through real hardship, they will say things sincerely like 'I never wanted it, I would never have chosen it, I wouldn't want anyone else to go through it, but I wouldn't trade it. because I learned so much about Jesus and I became more like Jesus and so I cherish whatever it is I have gone through because of what I have learned and how I've changed.' Is that true for you? It beats bitterness. It beats wasting your suffering. I mean if you and I would keep these things in mind, God could actually use the hardest parts of our life to be the sweetest part of our life, to use the most painful parts of our story to be the most encouraging parts of our story for someone else." Mark Driscoll

"Redemption was born on a far darker day than this one, so bring the chaos. Bring the madness, Do whatever you've got to do to recreate my heart. After all, it's me that needs to change, not my circumstances." Mike Donehey

And so I am being changed. 

True Love

Ask someone, anyone what the love of God is like. Depending on the person asked, the answers are going to differ. Common ones may be: "God loves me for me." "God's love is unconditional." "God loves everyone."  "God's love is accepting." "God's love does not depend upon our performance." "God's love is beautiful. Unending. Wonderful. Compassionate. It does not condemn."

Most of these are true. The love of God is compassionate, unconditional, not based on our performance, and beautiful. He takes us we are. Yet, these definitions, I find, are incomplete. We love to picture this warm, gentle God who holds us. He does. Yet there is more to His love than rainbows and sunshine. We have diluted the love of God.

{When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some "disinterested", because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly  invoked, the "lord of terrible aspect", is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host
who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.}

The Problem of Pain

C.S. Lewis

He loves us so much, not only did He sacrifice His son, a widely accepted fact in Christianity, but He will do whatever it takes to heal us. He doesn't want us to simply live and be happy. He wants more for us than that. He wants us to live empowered by His love, and free from ourselves. Think about it. What is more freeing than forgetting about ourselves? We all think freedom-giving-love helps us to be who we think we are. No, it helps us to be who we can be, and to forget about that person more often than not in thinking of others and Him. He loves us too much to let us remain as we are or think we are. More often than not, we know ourselves less than anyone else. 

So when it looks like God is trying to ruin our fun, He is really trying to heal us and make us who we were meant to be--more than anything we could be on our own. This life is not about finding ourselves. It is about becoming our true selves--creatures made to be loved by God, love Him, and love others. Not with a diluted love, but with the determined, furious love that is true love, love in all its actuality. A love that sacrifices, does not give up and isn't afraid to "do whatever it takes to give me Your heart." (Tenth Ave. North, Don't Stop the Madness) Read the Old Testament. His love is not an easy love and yet it is. Hosea, Jeremiah, David. They can all tell you about His crazy, hard, beautiful love. 

As Lewis says of Aslan, "He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion." His love is not tame. In some ways it is a bit scary. Yet gentle, too. This is the paradox of His love. I know it will change me, make me uncomfortable, oust my fears and insecurities that have become as comfortable as my favorite sweater or shoes. It is going to hurt. Yet I have never wanted something I fear so much.