A LOVE STORY

All I asked for the new year was a little less of everyone's drama and a little more of my own.

And I meant it.

This week I realized that it's been a drama free year for me. Not even relatively. I mean, it's been completely drama free. My car has never once broken down. My heart has not once been broken. I have never been short on finances. I have always know what I was doing and where I was going and how I was getting there. I have had the answers at my fingertips and whenever I have not, it has been fairly easy to find answers. I land consistently on the same theologies and haven't once thought seriously about running away from anything.

I'm accustomed to a rocky ride, this life of mine has not been without its waves and storms. Once a friend said to me, "Lore, for someone who loathes drama as much as you do, you're always in the middle of some epic drama!"

A few years ago a man put his hand on my head and said, "The Lord has good things planned for you, not disaster. I see a book, and the title is not a Greek Tragedy. Your life is not a Greek Tragedy. Your life is a love story that ends happily ever after. I feel like your life is a love story. Your love for God and your love for people and people's love for you. And what that love accomplishes and how it triumphs..."

And I'll be honest, my heart scoffed when he said those words. I'll tell you why: because the story of my life has been a laughable Greek Tragedy and my love for God at that point was nil, my love for people was waning, and people's love for me felt like the only thing holding my feet to the ground.

But here I am, looking back over the past year and a half, and all I can see is good things. Love stories. Happily after after. Love for God. Love for people. And people's love for me. And what that love accomplishes.

And how it triumphs.

How it triumphs.

Yesterday's early morning drive sans traffic gave me time and space to think about the -ingness of the gospel—that ongoing work of the gospel. How it's already finished and not yet finished and so we stay the course, walking, running, living ongoingly. I thought about how drama in our lives is God's way of moving heaven and earth into our path, insurmountable obstacles without Him. And just because we spend a year standing arms outstretched on a mountaintop does not mean there is less of heaven to be known and less of earth to be lived.

This morning, though, I sat on our couch, wrapped in a blanket while my two wise roommates spoke truth to me, challenged and loved me, because here's the truth: a drama-free life doesn't mean a sin-free life and oh, how I dearly wrestle with the sinfulness and selfishness of my heart. A drama free life means that the dim glass is a little clearer, but we still don't see Him face to face. And I long for that. I long so deeply for that.

I am grateful for a year of joy, a year where the bigness of God has been evident, a year where the love has been abundant, but I mean it too when I say that if 2012 is wrought with drama of my own heart's making or my own circumstance's bringing, I am ready for it. Bring it on, I say.
 

SECRET GARDEN

We have a quiet backyard, our own secret garden I called it when it first took my breath away a few months ago. This was nestled next door to our flat, empty, brown lot? This quiet haven filled with trees and rocks and stepping stones? And it could be ours? Our own secret garden?

It is a quiet backyard. We have filled it with a hammock, a clothesline, a firepit, chairs and a pedestal table. We are putting in raised beds for vegetables soon. I feel too lucky when I come from work, a mere one minute drive or five minute walk, and can hide out here where the birds chirp and I feel safe.

But to be truthful, we have a train running through our town, its whistle blaring in 15 minute increments. Our neighbors have their own little zoo brewing, made up mostly of barking dogs. And we live inside a triangle of traffic with three main highways bringing the DFWers home in every direction. So though I can imagine real quiet, what I really hear is incessant barking, constant traffic, and a jolting whistle.

I've been thinking about boundaries these past few weeks. Psalm 16 says that the boundaries have fallen for us in pleasant places and I cling to that some days. I'm surrounded by good gifts, this I know, but sometimes the path He's put me on feels anything but pleasant.

Sometimes my soul breathes deep and just asks to be home. Home home. Heaven. Safe and quiet, peace-filled and finished.

Because although the perimeters of my life have fallen in good, true, loving places, outside all it seems is chaos and noise. And that noise gets in my soul sometimes. It starts speaking lies and I feel claustrophobic. I begin to believe things about God, myself, and others that simply aren't true. I begin to feel that my safest and most secret places, the gardens I tend with my blood and tears, are being encroached on by deception and falsehood.

There is that steadiness that remains—that deep knowledge that behind these boundaries, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God, I am safe. Held. Comforted. Known. Loved. Secure.

But in my soul I'm still looking for a new country, a better one.

I'm not sure that that's so wrong.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Hebrews 11:13-16

A QUESTIONABLE BEAUTY

It happened when I was nine, a skinny fourth grader, mousy brown hair and a stubborn soul. I don't know what I was told to wear that morning, but I know what I wore because it is there, memorialized in color, on a 5x7 school photo. Glasses were new to me and I had picked out blue plastic frames; it was the 90s, but still? I wore a patterned blue shirt, blue shorts, sandals with blue socks. I thought this meant I matched. When the photos came, as they did every year, in a big white envelope, I stared back at the face staring back at me and that's when it happened. That's when I knew what I was sure everyone must have known all along: I was ugly.

It was the comparison of the girls beside me, their hair in ribbons and their pretty plaid dresses pressed and flounced. It was the realization that my hair would never be sleek and shiny, or blond. It was the truth that my features would always be bigger or smaller, while the features of other girls would always be more beautiful, more feminine, more anything than what I could ever be. It was a belief that I've carried with me my entire life: I'm ugly, maybe someday I'll be a swan, but today, I'm the ugly duckling.

So when my roommate asks me to resolve to love my body this year, its nuances and its curves, its imperfections and its perfectly crafted parts, I balk. I can't do that. Loving others comes oh so naturally to me, loving myself is always a resolution for next year.

When a friend asks me to write a blog on whether looks matter in relationships, I tell him that I'm probably the last person to write that blog.

When I have a conversation with a friend the other night and I'm talking about the doubt in my soul regarding so many things related to looks (mine and others), she stops me and says, "What are you afraid of?"

What am I afraid of?

I'm afraid of two things: the first is that I'll find what is not beautiful to be beautiful, the second is that I'll never be found beautiful.

So I want to know, really, what is beautiful? And does it matter what is beautiful?

WHAT IS BEAUTY

I say it often enough about nearly every person I know, every piece of art in my home, the spate of days we've been having in Texas, the sunsets that make me gasp, the conversations I have with friends; it is never difficult for me to find beauty in every single thing I know. I'm prone to finding beauty in so many things, my friends just roll their eyes now when another exclamation comes from my mouth.

But what is beauty outside the eye of the beholder?

What is beauty when it can be teased apart from shiny magazine spreads and museum walls and computer screens in a midnight bedroom? What is beauty when it is seen through the lens of the gospel and nothing less?

I only know to start with the fact that Jesus spent his earthly time and energy teaching us to turn a kingdom of classes into a kingdom of completion. His interest was in the poorest, the lowest, the outcast, and the richest, the most corrupt, the most beautiful. This morning my pastor spoke how Christ came to reconcile us to Himself and us to one another, but what most struck me is that Christ came to reconcile us to ourselves.

Ourselves.

Myself.

My self.

IMAGO DEI

Self love is not a topic I want to talk about when I think about beauty. Here's why: I want all the beautiful people to start loving the unbeautiful. I want the perfect people to start loving the imperfect, the unlovely. I want there to be an impact that is measurable, tangible, and I don't know that self-love is the most productive way of getting there.

But here is the argument I'd like to make: if we do not love the self we have been given, we are exercising ungratefulness toward the God who created us in His image. We are, in essence, rejecting God who dwells in our temporal temples.

And I would add this, when we reject what God has called beautiful in others, even if we ourselves do not find it instantly attractive, we are denying what God has created in them.

When I call that fourth grade photo ugly, I look at the imago dei, the image of God, and I blaspheme what He has called good.

When I look with a critical eye at the mirror tonight while I wash my face and brush my teeth, I blaspheme what he has called good.

Hear me when I say that simply because God has called it good does not mean it has not been broken by the fall. It has and this is my great, great comfort on days when I feel the curse of having the body of a woman and all the lovely things that entails in particular times of the month (!).

There is a brokenness that accompanies us wherever we go, hanging on to our backs like a trained monkey. But sometimes we chain that monkey to our own back, buying magazines, feasting our eyes on what is even more broken, in hopes that we can attain what? More brokenness?

DO LOOKS MATTER?

Yes. Oh yes they do. Praise God they do. Praise God that He put us here on earth with a garden to tend and pray to Him that we tend it well. Pray that we tend our own plot well and pray that we are attentive to the plots of others. Praise Him that He created different sizes and shapes and colors and genders. Praise Him for His creativity in design. Praise Him that we find anything lovely at all.

Paul says "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." God help us to find beauty wherever we find these things. If we do, we will find that beauty is found readily.

DO LOOKS MATTER?

No. No, they don't. Not really. Not in the end of the story (which is really just the beginning). No, they don't matter here on earth where we will all either grow bellies or waste away to nothing, where the grey hair eventually goes white or disappears completely, where wrinkles grow exponentially, breasts sag, and strength fails. Beauty is so fleeting, so temporal, a vapor.

Gone.

But, which is more, and so much more beautiful, looks don't matter because one day everything that does not glorify the Lord will be purified out of us. Everything. Every sag, every wrinkle, every mark, every love handle--and, don't miss this, each and every perfect nose, every straight tooth, every sculpted muscle, every six-pack abdomen. Every health nut and every couch potato, every beauty queen and every street child. If it is not proclaiming the majesty of the Only One due glory, it will be consumed by the All Consuming Fire.

My fourth grade me and my 30 year old me. My best version of me and my worst version of me. My joyful reflection of Him and my mirror's sickening reflection of me. All of it will glorify Him. 

THE REAL QUESTION

The question is so much more than What is Beautiful? or Do looks matter? The question is, am I valuing what God values in me and am I valuing it in others?

No matter what my fourth grade photo instilled in me, He is the standard of my beauty.

The real beauty in that is because He is the standard, I know I can't ever measure up.

There is nothing good in me but what He has redeemed for His glory, so I am always the ugly duckling who was picked even in my ugliness. He didn't wait for my inner swan to grow. He's not waiting for some future version of me to materialize. He's not waiting for me to match a magazine spread or even grow happy with this earthly version of me. He's after me seeing the depth of what He's done in me. Through me. With me. For His glory. Alone.

He's after me seeing Him in the mirror.

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Related resources that I've been mulling on:  Do Looks Matter on the Gospel Coalition Blog New Year, New Self-Control by Jen Wilkin January 8th sermon by Matt Chandler (This will be online in the next few days)

This is the sort of morning you don't take for granted. You sit on the back porch and drink your morning cup slowly. You put your head back and breathe sweet air. You inhale fall. 68 days of temperatures above 100 change the way you love your favorite season. You always love fall, but now you are grateful in any number of ways.

We are leaving last night and the breeze gusts in cool air for the first time in months. I say that I am happy to be a Texan, and I am. (Except I'm still not, technically, a Texan. Small things like driver's licenses...)

I say to someone the other day that all I really want on earth is home, that I always feel unsatisfied without it and he says back that it is refreshing to see the lack of satisfaction doesn't keep me discontent.

And this is true. Truer more than it ever has been before.

The angst in my soul for a home is deeper and more pronounced than it has ever been, but the contentment in my heart is more stayed and solid than it ever has been.

I remember living on Hardscrabble Road and every day I would run past this house on the corner, an abandoned house, and I would dream of making a home there. Fixing it up. Having a garden and a porch swing. Hanging laundry on the line and making homemade applesauce.

Because I thought those things made a home.

I've been longing for heaven these days.

Not in a way that ought to worry you, death doesn't scare me but neither do I relish the thought of just not being. I've just been longing for completeness, satisfaction, fullness, a met expectation. Heaven is the only place where I'm absolutely sure that God will surpass my hopes.

Earth always falls short.

A wise man said to me once: you're always going to be an ambassador, never an immigrant. And those words stay with me, define me, challenge me. He was saying that for some people, earth becomes their home and they become part of it, they plant their roots deep and become what it makes of them. But that will never be you, he said, that is part of what makes you valuable to the Kingdom, that you will never be acculturated--never despise that.

And yet I have.
And sometimes I do.

I've put off changing my driver's license. Time, you know? The lines are so long? The cost? Eh. So many excuses. But the real truth--here's the real truth:

I'm not home yet.

And I want as many reminders of that in my life as possible.