Adulteress

adulteress

falling helpless on stones

that sin made

i cower in

my filth.

i am

impure

unclean

cast off remnant of

a dream

raggedy ruin of a gleam

no one remembers.

i reek.

i bawl.

i shiver and crawl

and claw the crazed

thoughts that wreak

vengeance.

i am

faithless.

unfaithful.

close eyes and heart

wrap arms

bow head

welcome

the stone throwers.

arms poised

they pose

self-righteous toes

just touching

the circle of my shame.

they are me.

indignantly

insisting that this fall

is final.

after all,

such outward display

of inward decay

is surely unacceptable.

a scratch in the dirt.

a quiet word, and earth

heaves

astonished.

stones drop

arms fall

murmurs rattle small

i shatter.

You call

my name.

stretch Your arms to the frame

of my faithlessness.

You bleed.

You hang

You cry

You shudder and die

suspended

above eternity.

i am

broken

by beauty.

gathered in

unmade

You touch me unafraid

masterpiece

vessel of Your breath

i surrender.

Rubbish or resurrection?

Grumpy, that’s the only word for it. Tired of the world and all the burdens I can’t carry and all the people I fail. Tired of trying.

I said the wrong thing to a grieving friend. I yelled at my children. I burned dinner. I forgot to pray. I did the things I swore I wouldn’t do and didn’t do the things I should have. I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t want to.

I grip coffee and sigh. I try to tune out the distractions within and without, open my Bible as an act of faith. Philippians 3.

“Yet every advantage that I had gained I considered lost for Christ’s sake. Yes, and I look upon everything as loss compared with the overwhelming gain of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. For his sake I did in actual fact suffer the loss of everything, but I considered it useless rubbish compared with being able to win Christ. For now my place is in him, and I am not dependent upon any of the self-achieved righteousness of the Law. God has given me that genuine righteousness which comes from faith in Christ. How changed are my ambitions! Now I long to know Christ and the power shown by his resurrection: now I long to share his sufferings, even to die as he died, so that I may perhaps attain as he did, the resurrection from the dead” (vv. 7-11).

Inspiring words when held at arm’s length. But let them in and their full weight settles like all the grief and rage and frustration of all the suffering world. And like the psalmist, I beg God, “Be gracious to me, O Lord!  See my affliction . . .” (Psalm 9:13)

The truth is that we lose all things whether we want to or not. The truth is that it is all rubbish, whether or not we consider it so.

But Paul sounds so joyful, so jubilant, even. “Yes, I actually did suffer a lot. I lost everything, in fact. But all that stuff is rubbish, worthless, useless!”

How is this possible? I’m a little miffed.

I suppose it all depends on what we compare our stuff to. And Paul was convinced that knowing Christ was the only thing worth having. He lost, and then he won.

And winning Him is worth it.

His one goal was to know Christ. He called it an “overwhelming gain.” He wanted it so much that he sought to suffer, in order that he might die, in order that he might be resurrected.

Resurrected!

Reborn.

Remade.

What does it take to know Christ that way? So deeply that loss leads to rejoicing and every death births new life?

The same psalmist who begged God to see him started out by praising:

“I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart;
    I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and rejoice in you;
    I will sing the praises of your name, O Most High” (Psalm 9:1-2).

In spite of—or because of?—his sufferings, he was confident enough to say,

“Those who know your name trust in you,
    for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.”

Those who know your name.

Doesn’t His name call out to us every day in the thousand ways He loves us? Are we so accustomed to His love that we forget it is there?

Why is it so much easier to blame than to give thanks?

Instead of listing complaints, the psalmist listed all the ways God had saved him already. He had been brought to the “gates of death” but asked God to resurrect him so he could declare His praises (v. 13).

Paul longed to “come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection” (Phil. 3:10), a power that is not is not simply a past event in history, but ongoing and eternal. And we know it when we “are made like Him in His death.”

Suffering leads to death, and there are many kinds of death. But death brings resurrection, and the power behind resurrection is love.

This is the love that satisfies, that swallows up all the empty places, that wraps around and lifts up and runs within and over and beyond.

“Now my place is in him.”

It is the one thing we all long for.

It is home.

Those who are resurrected, I think, understand that the griefs and failures only point us to God if we let them, and when our hearts yearn upward rather than inward, we see the amazing demonstrations of love quietly bursting all around us.

The toddler who squeals and runs to me, throwing her arms around my neck.

The kitten purring in my lap.

The dust on the floor left by a husband who is working hard to make our home beautiful.

The friend who forgave me, the kids smiling at me anyway, the dinner I got to burn and still eat, the God who waits patiently for me to come but who doesn’t wait to love me.

Outside the window the aspen leaves are dying, making way for winter’s sleep and spring’s rebirth. They have turned to brightest gold, and their glory fills the window with shining joy.

Still burning bright

Dear Abby,

In my first week of teaching high school English at a new school, you were the one who turned in your homework early. Days early. I was so surprised that I almost gave you an A just for that. But I didn’t have to. You did your work well. Like it mattered to you. I remember thinking, “This is going to be a good experience.”

A few years later you sat in my homeroom as a senior and I challenged you to find GodStops—those moments when you stopped and saw God’s presence. You actually took me seriously. You always had something to say. I remember the day you came in glowing, joyful about a mentor who was speaking into your life. I was jealous. I wanted to be that mentor.

You were part of the inspiration behind Bring Your Own Chair day. All the kids rolling around the hallway in crazy office chairs or lounging at the table in recliners. Once you got all the kids in class to dress up like characters from Batman.

You were always laughing.

One day I walked into the gym wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and you ran right up to me and told me I looked amazing and I should wear those jeans more often. What student says that to a teacher?

When you were in my class, I looked forward to coming to school. I felt welcomed. Seen. Heard. Students don’t often realize how alienated and alone their teachers sometimes feel, how hurt and frustrated we can be by the lack of response to our efforts. You always saw me. You were always fully there.

On the last day of school one year, you asked if you could use your birthday money to buy me ice cream. You were what, 15?

I will never forget the day I stood in front of homeroom and stared at all the faces, feeling empty and utterly inadequate. And then I just blurted it straight out, told you all of my miscarriage and the death of a dream.

That just isn’t done, a teacher being so vulnerable in front of her students. But you made it OK. I felt good about telling you, because you all had become my family.

And then one day when you were a little more grown up and already far wiser than I, you asked me to be your prayer mentor. And we prayed through a lot, didn’t we? Family, relationships, dreams for the future, needs, hurts, joys. And somehow the prayers always extended far beyond you to the people you loved and dreamed of serving, and even though I was supposed to be the mentor, you somehow always managed to teach me. And I watched you throw yourself into life with such abandon and such urgent love—you needed to be loving someone all the time. And you loved beautifully, creatively, entirely, with no holding back.

You loved God most of all. Really loved Him, like you knew Him. You did know Him, far more intimately than most of us ever have, because you spent so much time with Him. You pursued Him relentlessly. And the more you pursued Him, the brighter your love shone.

And then God let you come home. And after the first shock of grief, I thought, Of course.

You longed so hard for God that He just couldn’t take it anymore, could He? He had to have you with Him. And He knew that your brief life far outshone those with triple your years, and He took you to a place where your life would blaze with His beauty forever.

So we would remember.

You are an arrow pointing straight to His heart. You learned the secret of loving and knowing Him.

So many of us look for reasons to complain. We serve ourselves first. It’s habit. You looked for reasons to rejoice. You lived for others. You wore your selflessness effortlessly, habitually.

You still teach me every day.

Today is your birthday. I checked your Facebook wall and it’s still going strong. You are still burning 

bright. And I know you are having one heck of a party today. I feel I am invited, so I’ll celebrate from here and look forward to seeing you soon.

Happy birthday, Abs. I love you.

The only way to really love

The sky grieves hard today, weeping as if it does not know how to stop. Inside I play music and the girls snuggle up for stories, ride stick horses around the house laughing. In here we are warm and bright.

But out there—I keep thinking of the grieving, the earth continually soaking up all the tears of all the heartaches. It is always raining somewhere.

And I keep picturing the face of my friend, the tears in her voice in spite of her sarcastic smile. “What do you do when he fails to meet all your expectations?” she’d said. When the one who vowed to cherish you leaves you alone day after day? When you long for a kind word, recognition, a touch? Where do you go when your life is chaos and his arms are closed?

And anger builds its wall, brick by brick, closing off the heart to keep it safe . . . and alone.

I agree it isn’t fair and I fret over her weary hopelessness and I wonder what I could tell her about what she should do. I mean, how could one person treat another person that way?

That’s how you treated Me.

His voice whispers but I hear it loud enough.

What did I do when you failed to meet all My expectations? When you vowed to cherish and serve Me but instead left me alone, longing for you day after day? Where did I go when you closed your heart to Me?

To the Cross.

He didn’t build walls. He tore them down. He didn’t accuse. He reached out in love. He gave everything to one who withheld everything. Who offered nothing.

But He’s God. Isn’t it easier for Him?

But why should I think it is easier for God to suffer? Surely the One who is purest love feels our wounds the keenest.

When His suffering was the greatest, when those who said they loved Him left Him alone, He cried out to His Father. He grabbed onto the only hand strong and sure enough to hold Him.

And then He forgave those who forgot.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus . . .

It is too hard a thing to love those who fail us day after day. It is too much to ask us to let go of the anger we grip so tightly.

Unless. Unless we grab the hand that won’t fail.

To take His hand I must first open my own.

I watch the sky falling and I think about the act of love, the will to choose deed over emotion, and my heart quakes. Choosing love exposes me. It means I have to trust. But when my hand is in His, I can reach out across that fearful and uncertain void. I can be vulnerable. I can love even when I am not loved back. I can let go of my needs, because they are already met. I am already fully loved.

And isn’t true love always selfless? Never deserved? Never earned?

When I make him earn my love, I make a mockery of God’s.

We love because He first loved us.

Period.

It’s a choice, a constant act of will. After all, Christ’s love for me—not His demands—drew me to Him. I already knew I was a failure. Somehow He loved me anyway.

That's the kind of love I want.

The earth keeps soaking up the falling sky, filling up with all that rain and turning it to flowers, trees, life and beauty yearning upward.

When I can open my own heart, turning my yearnings upward, I may be amazed at how much it can hold.  

 

Not seeing is believing

What do we do when it makes no sense? When we don't see what God is doing, can't understand His ways? When we find ourselves wondering if He is really working all things for our good as He promised?

What do we do when we give and give and the results are not what we were expecting? When the sacrifice seems pointless? When it seems all the work was for nothing?

We give thanks. (I'm learning a lot from Ann Voskamp.)

I can't see the eternal results of our efforts, but there are plenty of temporal ones:
* The kids got to witness our faith in action. Our family served and sacrificed together.
* B and I grew closer through this. We are more deeply connected than we ever have been.
* We realized we could do something that a year ago seemed impossible. 
* We touched a few lives for a few days, and maybe they will remember. Maybe our offered love will be seeds sown in fertile hearts.

I will thank God for all we learned and experienced. For using us in a small but significant way. For helping us to become more open and willing to give. For knowing the details so I don't have to. For promising that all things WILL work together for good--and I don't have to see or understand, only rest in trust.

Giving thanks reminds me of His faithfulness. It pulls my mind and heart upward, opens my eyes to Him anew.

Then I remember I only need to abide. He does the rest.

Into the Hard

"Then the King will say . . . 'Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me . . . inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me'" (Mt. 25:34-36, 40).

And does it not follow that whatever we deny one of the least of these, we deny to Him? If we say no to a need He places before us because it is too hard, too scary, too big, requiring too much sacrifice, what are we really saying?

That the God who gave it all for us, the God who receives us with open arms, the God who promises us all the riches of His kingdom, is not enough?

I have spent too much of my life saying no. I do not want to stand before Him one day full of regret for those I turned away from His kingdom. I want to plunge into the hard so I can see what my God will do. I want to open my arms and my heart to receive all He has for me. I want my kingdom to be there, not here. And someday I want to hear Him say,

"Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord" (Mt. 25:21).

 

Open hands

Woke up to the heaviness of anxiety, exhaustion, and fear. My Bible fell open on this passage:

“Do not fear;

. . . let not your hands be weak.

The Lord your God in your midst,

The Mighty One, will save;

He will rejoice over you with gladness,

He will quiet you in His love,

He will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zeph. 3:16-17)

I think I often want the fear rather than the peace. I want to be in control. I want to be allowed to feel sorry for myself, to wallow in poor me thoughts. 

But how can I believe God and wallow in fear at the same time? How can I listen to Him singing over me while clutching the dirty rags of faithlessness?

He does all the work. He comes, He saves, He rejoices. He sings. He quiets. He only wants me to do one thing:

Do not fear.

When I fear my hands become weak. Hands that should be serving Him are instead clenched in anxious fists or rubbing themselves in worry. 

Opening my hands requires letting go. 

If I truly believe He is big enough for these circumstances that overwhelm me, I should be lifting strong hands in praise, reaching out in service. I can only do so when my gaze is on Him and not myself.

Listen to His song of love for you today instead of to your fears. Will you open your hands to Him?