YOU, ME, and EVERYONE we know

Imagine with me a kingdom. A palace set on a hill with a town below littered with small homes of people—and a Troubadour making his way from Palace to People, back and forth. In the palace there are servants, kings, footmen, princes, cooks, and taste-testers; there are seamstresses, children, queens, and teachers. In the town there are servants, fathers, children, mothers, cooks, teachers, sellers, and tailors. And there is a troubadour making his way from Palace to People.

In the Palace everyone has a role and no one without a role is allowed in the door. There is a code of conduct within the castle walls and any outsiders are known, and all the insiders have things to say about them when their backs are turned.

Among the People outsiders are common and welcome, travelers pass through, sick people rest for a while, everyone earns his own way and they get there by the sweat of their brow. There is no protection out here and it is every man for himself. No one dares cross the threshold of the Palace.

And there is a Troubadour who goes from Palace to People to Palace to People.

From the People to the Palace he brings his stories, his lore, his songs, making melody from their harmony. He represents the town-people to the palace-people and they all clap their hands, their cheeks red with laughter and strong drink, they point and beg for more, more, more!

From the Palace to the People, he brings his secrets because who doesn't trust the ears of nearby troubadour? Plans and propositions fly mightily across the tables in the great hall when the wine flows freely and the kings toast in the presence of a mere entertainer.

The Troubadour never belongs in either place and carries with him the residue of both places, the People and the Palace. But kingdoms will rise and fall on the shoulders of this Troubadour, this ambassador, he who is never at home wherever he is, he who is just another person to the People and just another participant at the Palace.

Are you from the Palace or the People? Or are you a Troubadour, easily slipping in and out of both places effortlessly? There's no right or wrong answer here. I've just been thinking about cliques and culture and the people we trust to let in and the people we don't trust and, most of all, the people who purposefully don't fit anywhere.

SPEAK

Verb, Adjective, Noun. This is the order in which we speak of walking the fast dog, or eating the good meal, or painting the blue wall. This is our syntax, familiar, but not poetic and it is poetry that stills me this morning and coasts me by all day.

Noun, Adjective, Verb—this is the way David sing-songs his worship in Psalm 19:

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;

His precepts and laws are not millstones around my neck or burdens to slog through, but they revive my soul. They bring life to the ruminations of my mind, the emptiness of my own thoughts, and the deadness of earthly glory.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;

He has done it before and He will do it again. He has brought us thus far and He will bring us all the way in. He has begun and He will finish. This is the testimony He bears and this makes everything else pale in comparison. It is simple, easy, and profoundly wise, what He has done.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;

He gives us a blueprint, a "this is the way, walk in it," and a narrow path, and yet none of this steals my joy but brings me further into it. This map shows me how to lift up my head and rejoice in my heart.

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;

His commandments, though I do not always understand them, why they feel constraining and at times unfair, why they do not fit my western perceptions of righteous, just, and at times emotional desires, they are pure. They are absolutely pure, undefiled, a gift, and this opens my eyes to see His glory.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;

Like Isaiah, I see Him and I tremble because He is so great and I am so, so small. But my fear is clean, without the earth encrusted baggage I attach to my fear of the dark, of being alone, or not getting what I want. This fear is palmed up and free. His awe endures forever.

The rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.

He can be trusted. He is righteous. Altogether righteous. Altogether true.

The kingdom is backwards sometimes and I have to remember that. The world says to love this way or earn this way or be this way or learn this way, and the Kingdom flips our syntax on its head: look this way, it says, look at your King this way and find the fullness of Joy there.

SILENT FIGHT

It is hard to win the battle when you don't feel like fighting.

Depression is no stranger to me, even if he has been the crazy uncle who was ousted from the family a few years back. He was kicked to the curb in 2010—I stood in my doorway and told him to never come back.

But he's been peeping in my windows and knocking on my doors recently. The other day I saw him in the swirls of paint on my bedroom ceiling. I lay there quietly, willing him away, asking him kindly, ignoring him, and finally looking him full in the face and telling him in no uncertain terms he was unwelcome.

He moved to the bathroom, staring back at me from the mirror, in the sad eyes, the straight mouth.

"Where is my joy?" I asked him. He shrugged. He is indifferent, this Uncle Depression.

I've been listening to a sermon from 2006 a friend posted. I've listened three times. It's my own pastor and he's not saying much different than he says in 2012, except a short rant on how ipods are here to stay (seriously?). He's talking about how sometimes we just have to move our feet in the direction of water and trust that wilderness can be where we find hope. 

There's something different about this visit with Depression—different than his previous occupancy in my heart. Before he felt like he was there to stay, unbidden, but there to stay. This time he's just teasing me but he's also leaving room for me to still see the water. This time I know where the water is and I want it, I'm thirsty for it, and I know where to find it.

I just don't feel like it.

It's hard to win the battle when you don't feel like fighting and I guess that's where I am today. Everywhere I look, Uncle Depression is lining up his battalion, setting up a formation of fighters who will accost my soul and threaten my joy. And I feel alone. I know I'm not alone. But I feel alone. And no amount of people on my side will change that, I know. I've been down this path before.

What's different is formerly I'd fill my army up with doing, doing, doing. And this time I feel I just need to be still, trust. He will fight for me. I know it. I don't feel it. But I know it.

"The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent."

Exodus 14.14

KISSING FEAR

People are worried about me, it seems. One post about sleeping alone and suddenly the world cares about who you're sleeping with.

Or not with, as the case may be. 

Intimacy with a man isn't the only thing missing in my life, if you want the real junk on me, you should know this: I'm feeling less than intimate with God these days too. 

The 'worship movement' send kisses to Jesus thing has always made me uncomfortable because I can count the sum total of my kisses on two hands and probably less than that. And also because I'm probably one of the few people in the world who thinks that when Solomon was songing about the kisses of his lips he really meant literal kisses and literal lips and not this pseudo expressive  moment we imagine we're having with Jesus. 

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I've never been one to wake up in the wee hours to have Jesus, journal and Jamba Juice, and so my version of 'time with God' has always been more of 'meditate on the same verse for three weeks until I have it so deeply in me I couldn't forget it if I tried.' This system has worked well for me in some seasons and not so well for me in other seasons. We are in a good season for now. 

The verse of the season is Psalm 130:3-4, "If you oh Lord should mark iniquities, Who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared."

I've been camped here precisely because of that last word there: feared.

I stay far from intimacy because I fear it. 

This is the same reason I hesitate to ask forgiveness from God (or anyone else), because I fear. 

So how is it that David is saying here, "there's forgiveness with God, so you can fear Him."

You see why I need to camp out here for a few days?

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I'm a fairly gentle sort of person, amiable, easygoing, I try not to cross people and when I do, I try to make amends quickly. But it is not because I want their forgiveness, it is because I fear that they will not give it to me unasked. 

But God? God grants me forgiveness so that I may fear Him? It doesn't seem to add up at first. But:

How grand is it that the God of the universe, the Creator of everything created, the Provider of everything given, and the Good of all that is good would grant forgiveness and how much more grand is it of Him to guarantee it to His children?

I find it is the guarantee that is more difficult for me to believe than the actual forgiveness.

I am the child who doesn't believe her parent heard her the first six times she asked for another quarter for the gumball machine. I keep asking because in my heart there is no guarantee. 

David is saying to us, "Hey, listen, there's a guarantee of forgiveness for you children of God, which means that He can be trusted, which means that He is more grand, more holy, more spectacular than you can imagine. Worship. Fear. Be in awe. Draw near. 

He's not marking your iniquities, so stand close, stand near, be intimate, He can be trusted." 

STANDING STILL

Eight months ago when my car went in for an oil change, something happened with the stereo, and since then the options have been limited, as in, there are none. This has worked for me amiably. I use the inordinate amount of driving time that it takes to go anywhere in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to think or, if I am feeling generous or anxious, pray.

Once, when I was stuck in construction (which is about as usual as not being stuck in construction), I pulled out my car's manual and paged through to see if there was a fix for the stereo situation. My guess is that they write those manuals for engineers and not artists. I stuffed it back in the glove-compartment beside chapstick, mechanic receipts, and (don't tell anybody) thirty dollars in cash that I keep there for emergency gas or toll situations.

The car has always been my thinking place, my best and most descriptive writing has been scribbled out on the backs of receipts and the fronts of anything else available. I see best when I'm in my car, figuratively and literally. I think it's because I'm moving.

I've been feeling discouraged recently, creatively dry, emotionally zapped, and academically stagnate. Nothing challenges me except the sort of challenges that mostly feel frustrating and not exhilarating. I think it's because I'm not moving.

A friend of mine here is the very loyal, very steady, very dependable sort, and she is always cocking an eyebrow at me and asking me if I'm "running away." What she means is, am I getting cold feet, feeling hemmed in, too safe, too comfortable, and too bored. To which I reply, most of the time, in the affirmative.

One of the most oft quoted lines from that set of fantasy penned by CS Lewis is also one of the lines about Aslan that I have recalled since I was seven, "He is not safe, but He is good." And I remember that nearly every time my soul yearns to be outside of what is safe, predictable, normal, and still.

I remember that a life with God is not safe, but it is sure. I remember that this life makes no guarantees about anything, but that we are held and known in the process. And I remember that the gospel prevents us from ever feeling truly comfortable, but always feeling truly kept.

I have to remember that especially when I find myself to be simply standing still in the silence.

IN THE SECOND PERSON

You can stare at a blank page for an hour and not write anything.

Or you can just start to write, push past the fear, whatever it is, and just start.

You can conjure up memories from when you were nine, writing stories with your best girlfriend, or you can tell another story from when you were in your teens, mourning the loss of things held dear. You can tell anything you want, but you're always telling yourself this: the story you're telling has already been told, and probably better than you can ever tell it.

You should push past that fear and encounter the worse fear: that the story you're telling won't be true in six months or six years and you will disappoint everyone who wanted it to be true.

And everyone else who already knew it wasn't true will gloat, hook their thumbs behind their suspenders and say "I told you so." Only they won't say it to you, to your face, they'll say it to themselves and anyone else who is waiting around their table for a morsel of self-importance.

After that fear there's another one and it's the fear that what you write will change someone's life so dramatically and drastically that they tear the page from the book, fold it into small pieces and carry it with them in their wallet or their journal. And that fear is accompanied by the reality that you know you don't even believe half of what you write, not, at least, until after you've written it. And if that makes you a hypocrite, well, at least it's not retroactive.

But deeper still you're afraid that what you say won't matter at all. That no one reads or cares, despite how facts might say otherwise. You're afraid that your small voice in a clamoring crowd is just noise and then you're afraid that that's not enough for you, even though it should be okay.

You scribble short fiction, four paragraphs or less, because anything longer takes you places in your mind you'd rather not go.

You're afraid that if you let your mind take a foot, it will take a mile and you've gone down that road before and the scenery left something to be desired.

But you can't help but wonder if this time it will be different, if this road, this book, this piece, might set free that fluttering, flightless bird stuck in the depths of you.

So you try. You stare at that blank page. You stare at it for ten minutes. One hour. You stare at it and then start writing, in the second person, because to say I is to own fears you don't want to own.

"Be without fear. This is impossible, but let the small fears drive your writing and set aside the large ones until they behave – then use them, maybe even write them. Too much fear and all you'll get is silence."AL Kennedy

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Natural Born Fearer

I am a natural born fearer.

Hard conversations scare me. Heights scare me. Bills scare me. Risk scares me. Being too much scares me. Not being enough scares me. Traffic scares me. Being alone scares me. There is no happy medium in my soul—if it can be done (or done to me), I am probably afraid of it.

2010 was a year of risk for me. I did things I swore I'd never do, I got rid of things I wanted to keep forever, I moved to a state I hated upon first sight, I quit things that hurt to quit and I left somewhere that is branded on my heart as home. I stared fear in its face and gave it the bird. It was risk born of desperation and I recommend this risk. I think that sometimes the only thing to do is to do it big or not do it at all.

Staring fear in the face and moving ahead anyway, though, didn't alleviate the fear, it was just shoved aside for a bit.

So when I embarked on 2011, my word was fearless.

I wanted to take all the same risks, live just as flexibly, with open hands, but I wanted to bolster those actions with a full-bodied faith and confidence. And I didn't want my confidence to be in the fact that I could do all the things that I'd been afraid of doing before, I wanted my confidence to be in the character of God and His faithfulness to His word.

Our little home spent all day outside yesterday. God gave us a home with trees and a deck, and a December 31st for the books. It was 72 degrees, warm, clear, perfect. We perched on hammocks and chairs; I spread my notebooks and bible out, put my ear-buds in, and ushered in 2012.

Fearless, I read, in my notebook from January 2011. Right there. Penned into the page, I read a word that seemed so impossible last December 31st. I was eeking by on pennies, making art to my heart's content, joy-filled, peace-filled, but I'll be honest with you, I was shaking in my shoes every time I walked through the door of my church and I felt panicky at the slightest bit of interaction with people outside my roommates. I was doing it, but I was doing it shackled by a fear that stuck to me like bad cough at Christmas.

I checked my heart yesterday, and checked it again. I gave myself a few hypotheticals, a few scenarios. Wait for it, I told myself, wait for it. You'll find that fear somewhere.

And yet, I couldn't.

The vestiges of it, the residue of it, and the hints of it were gone.

He is faithful to His word. This year He showed that faithfulness by being faithful to my word. He imparted fearlessness in me. For now. For today.

And that is the miracle of 2011.