UNFETTERED

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At one of the hip, earthy outdoors stores back in Potsdam they sell Life is Good paraphernalia—the grinning, flat-capped stick figurine who somehow gets his skinny behind up all sorts of mountains and down all sorts of valleys in one piece. There's one shirt or poster that reads, "Not all who wander are lost." J.R.R. Tolkien said it first though and I don't know how he'd feel about it being screen-printed with stick figurines on orange t-shirts worn by upper-class, Subaru-driving environmentalists.

When I first moved to Texas I allowed myself one month with my GPS. I think this was less than generous of me, but what's done is done. Now I use it whenever I'm going somewhere completely new, but for that one month everything was new, and I would have pulled my car over at every intersection and cried without it. After that month, though, I pulled the plug, stowed it in my glove-compartment, and got used to getting lost.

It was wonderful.

I was still self-employed at the time, so time was something I could spend as freely as I wanted and I wanted it freely. I wandered all over the Metroplex, mostly in search of nothing except my way. And I think I found it, eventually. I'm at home right now, lying on my bed, with an open window to my right, and my roommates stirring around in the living room, so it would seem I found my way.

There were times when I'd cry out of sheer frustration because the vast majority of the DFW Metroplex is acres of subdivisions; anyone who has ever tried to find his way out of a subdivision depending on his innate sense of east, west, and the direction of the sun knows it is about as impossible as telling any one of the sub-divided homes apart from another, which is to say, nearly impossible. I would pound my fist on my steering wheel and yell cuss words in my car at people who knew their way around and weren't being patient enough with me.

But there were other times when I would make a left turn, when my gut said right, and I would be taken down a lane with a canopy of trees all bowing their heads in welcome like a line of Japanese diplomats. I would return again and again to that wrong turn just to meet those bowing trees again.

Or, to avoid traffic, I would take a short-cut, which was a long-cut more often, but the reward would be finding a park or a subdivision where the houses didn't all look identical. Never in my life did I ever think that I would call anything about a subdivision a reward, but this is how I make lemonade these days.

Tonight my roommate, the one who knows more than anyone else here what I miss when I talk about New York because she misses all the same things too, stood up and instructed me to put down my writing assignment and go sit at this part of Grapevine Lake she'd found. I thought I knew which part she was talking about. Another roommate and I went last summer in August, when it was above 100 degrees, the water was low, the dirt was red and dry, there was someone's picnic garbage rotting nearby, and I was sure, beyond any doubt, that my first rattlesnake sighting was going to happen in that moment. I didn't want to return there. But it was a different place, she insisted, and so I went.

We didn't get lost on our way there, and only made one wrong turn on our way home (in an attempt to find a way to get there that avoided the highway), but it reminded me of how much I really loved my first few months here, when everything felt new, when every day felt like an adventure, and when getting lost didn't mean being late or disappointing someone or missing something important.

I am an unfettered soul, I know that. I used to think that it was my nemesis, to always long for freedom and always find myself bound down, but more and more I know that it's my blessing. I know that not everyone puts away the GPS or makes wrong turns on purpose, whether because they are in too much of a hurry or because they're too frightened of what they'll find when they get there.

At breakfast this morning with a friend we talk for a minute about heaven and the new earth, and how it is a place of complete satisfaction, where all the wandering and wishing we waste ourselves on here will be at last whole and nobody can take that from us.

I stood on a fallen log at the lake tonight, my mate standing in front of me, her head thrown back, the wind whipping her short brown hair, and I felt, for one glorious moment that we were practicing for heaven here on earth, unfettered and free.

 

HOW TO SAVE CIVILIZATION

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I suppose that on St. Patricks Day we should wear green and drink ale and find four leafed clovers. I did none of the above because I don't own a green shirt, ale tastes like socks worn three days straight, and my aunt and dead brother are the only people in my family who ever had a knack for seeing the leaves for the forest, or however the adage doesn't go.

Instead I went to church because it is Saturday night and that's when I go to church.

We are studying Galatians, expository fashion, verse by verse, and it has been very helpful. Also apropos for today, I lean over to my friend and whisper, as the Irish were from Galatia. I don't think she believes me, but she gives a polite nod. After that I wonder if I should believe me too.

But it's true. I read a book a few years ago, How the Irish Saved Civilization, an easily fascinating historical delve that would make any Irishman hook his thumbs behind his suspenders and leap a little higher with pride. I suppose I ought to count myself in that group, but I'm plumb out of suspenders.

Tonight's reading, from Chapter 3, is when Paul goes all mad-professorial on those Galatians, ranting about their foolishness and giving them historical evidence, as well as faith evidence (if such a thing is possible), for the finished work of the gospel. Paul was telling those Galatians that they could not save anything, let alone civilization, and certainly not their own souls.

Isn't it nearly a miracle then, I think on my way home, that those with whom Paul was furious because of their foolish attempts to do, do, do, would be the ones who, in a way, saved the rest of us with what they did?

Inside of me, the Irish part of me perhaps, but the human part of me for sure, there is a nature that does; it checks off lists and tally marks accomplishments and makes plans and rarely truly hopes in God. But there is another part of me that aches so deeply to know the truth of what Paul was telling those in the church at Galatia: what you do holds weight, but only because God, in his grace, has given it to you to hold and steward. It matters, but only because of what He did, only because He counted it as righteousness.

Those foolish Galatians must have finally understood that—understood that they were a people with a work ethic, but also a people with a message worth saving, treasuring, and keeping. And so, because they realized they couldn't save their souls, they saved civilization instead.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Go celebrate some common grace today.

JACOB, the PRODIGAL SON

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There are two prodigal sons in the bible and I am always the first one: Jacob.

Jacob, that feisty thief, manipulating birthrights and blindness for his own gain, and what did he gain? The whole world, perhaps, two wives, at least, and a dozen kids, but what did he gain?

He was a man in search of what was not his, a new name, the name of his older brother; he was a slave to what he would have to work for, the wife of his youth. Everything he wanted was never within his grasp.

I am that brother.

…………………

Last night before the sermon finished out and we began to sing, my pastor talked a bit about how on good days it is so easy to believe the gospel, there are days when his soul is able to spot lies and speak truth to his propensity to walk by the law and not grace. But on the bad days, it is not so easy and those lies creep in that he has work for his salvation, that he has to work for what is not his by birth and only by grace. And oh, I felt that.

I felt that.

Then we sung about restoration, joy, and new names, and I thought of Jacob.

I am Jacob. I am always in search of what eludes me, what is not rightfully mine, and what I want so desperately. I know that wrestling he did at the valley of Peniel, I know that plea, "I won't let go until you bless me!" I know that angst, more than anything else I know, that unrelenting fervor until I have what seems possible. I will resort to thievery, bribery, or 14 years of hard labor if at the end there is something on earth to show for it.

He got what he wanted when he wrestled with God, but the new name was not the name he once sought to take and the blessing was not health, wealth, and prosperity, but a permanent limp.

…………………

The gospel is two things, it is a burden and it is light—Christ says this and I find myself still wanting it to be one or the other, but not both because my mind is simple and can only grasp what is logical. But this week I am seeing all the dichotomies in my faith, and why, perhaps, it is so difficult for so many to believe.

The gospel is full of dichotomies. Full of seeming contradictions. But I think, more and more, that this is why I believe it so strongly: I cannot live under the weight of the burden without the hope of the lightness, and I cannot thrive under the lightness without the weight of what it means.

I think Jacob must have known that. That night at Peniel, I think he must have known it in a way I can only dream about, that the love of God is deep and just and good and painful. That God gives us new names, but he bruises our hipbones in the process because we will run ahead stealing birthrights and wreaking havoc if we haven't got a limp to slow us down, remind us of the lengths to which His love goes.

Maurice Denis: Wrestling with the Angel 1893

SEEing CLEARLY

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I was nine when I wore my first pair of glasses. Poor eyesight runs in my family, but the thing is, I had myself convinced for years that I did not need glasses at age nine.

It happened like this: I was a skinny, shy nine year old, somehow left alone in a dark room with a fat optometrist and a dimly lit letter-board. It was a recipe for a myriad of things, not the least of which was for all my fears to rouse their heads.

He stood directly in front of me and asked me, "Can you see this? How about this? How about with this eye? This eye?"

I answered him as surely as I could, but the truth was that his fat backside was in the way and if I couldn't see, it wasn't because I couldn't see, but because I was unable to see around that hulking white-coated posterior.

He wrote my prescription and I picked out frames, ugly pink plastic things, but this was 1989 and ugly, pink plastic things were the thing. I hated those glasses and would lose them frequently, particularly when I needed to practice the piano or do homework.

I could not have known it at that point in life, but it stands earmarked as the first moment that knot in my stomach kept me from telling the truth, to spare the feelings or the possible disappointment of someone.

It's strangulating, this fear. It keeps me sullen and fearful, it eats away at my friendships, it makes unhappy situations last a seeming eternity. There's no way to wrap it up properly as selflessness or humility, as I often try to do. People have accused me of being a floor-mat or codependent, but however they have described it, it doesn't fix the real problem, which is that I cannot tell you the truth.

But the reason is more surprising than I like to admit, and it's because I cannot tell myself the truth.

The truth is that I am not acting in humility or in the best interest of someone (or myself, or God) by shutting down and shutting out when I'm confronted. It is not good when the preferences of someone else go voiced and mine sequester in. The truth is that it is not for anyone's good when they are able to bandy their requests about, demanding that I acquiesce to their demands, while I keep silent about…well…anything.

I say it's because I'm easy-going like that.

But that's fear too.

The truth is that inside I'm broiling over with the fear that I'll never be with someone with whom I can be honest. And that fear turns into angst so quickly and frustration, when it gives way, turns into an ugly green-eyed monster who is a master of manipulation.

Nobody wins.

Poor eyesight runs in my family and so does fear and manipulation and anger and self-righteousness and I suspect it runs in your family too, if we are born of the same Adam. But glasses help turn what is blurry and blocked into what is seen and illuminated. And fear is illuminated by covenantal relationships.

I don't know of another fix for fear but perfect love and I think that's a lifetime search—especially if the people around you are less interested in loving well.

But I know this: Perfect Love says what it believes and it says it so strongly that it stretched out, bleeding and bloodied, and died—even in the face of fear. So I want to let that change how I'm confronted and how I confront, how I tell the truth and how I keep silent, and how I practice humility and not self-righteousness.

SOME OF OUR PARTS

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I had to take Strengths Finder for work a few months ago. I had test anxiety, but it turns out I'm Intellection, Relator, Strategic, Input, & Ideation. I don't know what those mean when teased apart from one another, but together they make a whole and that whole is me.

(And I'm in the .08th percentile with those odds, so I have that going for me.)

(Or not.)

Have you seen the photo of the earth that has been circulating recently?

My computer screen at work is large, as large as the iMac comes, but at the end of the day, it's just a 27 inch iMac screen in a couple thousand square foot office, in one of the smaller towns in the DFW metroplex of Texas (probably the only really large thing in this equation). But I opened those high resolution photos and gasped at my 27 inch screen. I scrolled down to Texas second; New York isn't visible and I know that because it's where I looked first. There, under the cumulus clouds, on January 4th, it was life as usual for some on these parts.

Did you know that when you're looking at a photo of the real earth, there are no border lines or country distinctions? It is just land and sea, every man for his own, a grand and graceful show of glory.

Soren Kierkegaard said, "Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are."

Sitting in front of a 27 inch iMac I am faced with the fact that I am very, very small. And my distinctions are very, very meaningless. And my boundaries and borders are very, very nebulous.

I have a roommate who is a quiet voice of reason in our home full of opinions and personality, and she won't let us put her in any category, box or otherwise. If we say that she is an introvert, she shrugs her shoulders and rebuts with witticism. If we say she is peaceful, she points out all the ways she is the antithesis of peace. If we want to know her love language, she demands that we give and receive them all from her. I am grateful for a girl like her in my life, because aren't we really the sum of our parts?

I have been dividing things in my heart the past week, trying to determine where I land and why I land there and how to communicate it and if it needs to be communicated and this is what I have concluded, just tonight: I am a very small pile of strengths in a very large earth without boundaries, and the God who's adopted me has the whole World in His hands (and who's kidding who? He's got the whole universe on his thumbnail.).

What I am matters very little. Where I live matters less. What I do is a drop in the bucket. Whose lives I affect is minimal. Whose hands I hold is debatable. What strengths I have are susceptible. And what percentage I fall in is pitiable.

Someone said to do what makes you happy and here is what I know: there is no greater joy than being a minute part of a whole that shouts by its very nature of the Glory of God.

Enoch walked with God and was no more.

I could not do better with my own small life.

A LOVE STORY

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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.
 

Know

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 (This bridge I know best, takes me to where I am known best.)

After you have lived somewhere for a year, and lived there well, the roads that once felt foreign, feel familiar. Known.

I take roads that are known last night. Turning mechanically, thinking barely, I find myself home.

There were hugs and cups of tea with friends last night, the Rangers game on in the background, a cider candle lit on the table. I know I am loved here, even if the love is different. Someone tells me that I am here to learn to love where loving does not come naturally to me. My soul balks at that because it points out that I have not chosen the greatest of these, faith, hope, and love, and I have not given it freely. My soul is a choosy one.

Later another friend asks me to think diagnostically: if you say that you do not care about this one thing, but you find yourself caring in this specific situation, doesn't that reveal that you actually do care [and so are lying to yourself]? He didn't ask that part, I added it later because it's true.

I lie to myself.

I think myself bigger and better than I am.

And so I am surprised when being in New York, how well I am known there, where there are no secrets among friends or enemies. And here, last night, when two say pointed things that hit their mark. I am surprised that I am such an easy target for being known. No matter where I go, I wear who I am on my sleeve. I know I wear it not well and sometimes I wear it down, with questions, thoughts, determination. But I wear it, even when I feel I have sufficiently covered my shame with fig leaves and falsehoods.

I cannot hide.

One year is not enough time to know every road here well. And one year is not enough time to know me well. It is not even enough time for me to know myself well. But it is enough time to know the roads that are well-traveled and to know the deep ruts in my soul, the ones I cannot help but continually walk into.

David waxed poetic when he said "Blessed is the man whose strength is in God, whose heart is set on pilgrimage." I think we might have been friends.

It is much better, see, to draw my strength from God and not from what I love. To set my heart on the highway to Zion (another translation says), but to pilgrimage my way there. To know my way, and know it well, but also, to be known along my way and be known well. 

****************

You still have three days to win one of my favorite books (and right now the odds are in your favor). Go for it, I promise if you win, you won't regret it.

foxy

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"Why did you lie to me?" She asked."Because," he answered, "I am a wild animal."

These lines from Fantastic Mr. Fox stick with me this week. The wildness of my sin taunts me, teases me, tempts me. I like to think I am beyond the big sins, but the truth is that it is the small foxes that ruin the vineyard and my sin-foxes are the wildest of them all.

It's the surprise of sin that frustrates and confounds me. I cannot get past the surprise attack on my soul, my actions, my mouth—the things that leap to my touch, tongue, and thought. Did I just say that? Do that? Be that?

The past few weeks I've been thinking about what walking in the Spirit means. What does it mean the walk in what the Holy Spirit has given me for today? He's given me a portion to do and a portion of comfort and help for today. But what am I doing with it? Am I walking in it? Not hording tomorrow's portion, scooping up manna that will mold by morning, but trusting that I have what I need for today?

This is all well, fine, good and easy with the tangibles like finances and cars, homes and roommates and spouses. But when it is applied to my soul and my sin, well, here the needs get blurred. I need to stop sinning, but rarely do I apply the Spirit to those besetting beasts. I'm more likely to rely on my own good works and white knuckles to beat the foxes back to their dens. I don't face the wildness head on with the Spirit and the gospel.

And I'll be honest: it lands me more humiliated in the end and not necessarily more sinless.

I'm learning more and more that the disciplines of this Christian life are not to reach some cycle of peace, some plateau of sinlessness. The discipline is to walk and walk and walk—to pilgrimage, my favorite psalm reads. To walk and walk and walk, to do it with faith and hope and love, to do it in victory and to do it in wild hopelessness. To seek and find the Holy Spirit, the comforter and helper.

Because on the inside we are wild, but He has loved us more wildly and ferociously still.

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I don't know

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You know those people? The ones who have perfect hair and perfect teeth and perfect skin? The ones with the perfect blog and perfect story and perfect tweets? The ones with perfect families and perfect lives and perfect jobs?

Yeah. Me either.

Well, that's not entirely true. What is true is that I think I know them, but I don't really. Not when I put it all in perspective.

The other night I sat on a curbside and talked about feeling like a fraud. I talked about how I don't have the answers and the pithy things I write here take 15 minutes to type and not much more to think through. Most of life is processed inside a circular motion in my head and most of it heads down toward the drain on my soul.

I'm sure that everyone must know this about me because, well, I've never been one of those specimens of perfection you see above. I've never had a manicure in my life, my hair is the bane of my existence, my story is far from interesting or perfect, my family isn't perfect and my job has its perks, but I also sit at a desk in a corner all day. I'm sure that everyone must know that I'm deeply flawed because I know I'm deeply flawed and I wear it well.

But the truth is that sometimes I feel like you don't know that I'm deeply flawed and it's a surprise to you when I reveal that.

This week had a some raw, real writing and it also landed a lot of emails and voicemails from people concerned that I'm not alright.

You know something? I'm not alright.

It's so good though. I mean, deep in my soul, my heart, the parts of me that get bared to God alone--those parts are so good, so healthy, so raw, but do you know why? Because I'm not alright and I'm okay with not being alright. I'm okay with not being the perfect girl. I don't want to be that girl.

So what should I do? I asked my friend the other night.

Write about what you don't know, he said.

You mean like math and algorithms? I said.

He snorted in response.

The hardest things to write about are the things you don't know about.

And I don't know about a lot.

  • I don't know how to write about my grace journey, and not struggle every single day to apply that grace to myself.
  • I don't know how to have a disciplined and orderly life, without inwardly struggling with legalism and a misplaced righteousness.
  • I don't know how to write about being a joy-filled, content, active single, while still going to bed every night wondering if I'll be alone the rest of my life.
  • I don't know how to have physical touch be the primary means of receiving love, and still feel loved in the absence of it.
  • I don't know how to do math beyond college algebra, and even that's pushing it.
  • I don't know make a dress look good. Or look good in a dress.
  • I don't know how to not be self-conscious about the way I look, my smile, my crinkly eyes.
  • I don't know how to be a selfless friend at the same time as being an honest one.
  • I don't know how to not take advantage of grace.
  • I don't know how to do motion graphics.
  • I don't know how to work my camera as well as I'd like to.
  • I don't know how to keep in contact with people well, or do followup well. I'm a bad long distance friend.

The list goes on: I can't explain photosynthesis, lightening, UX or CSS, pi. Don't know all the states and capitals. Still have to concentrate to come up with the answer to 7x7. I have no idea what the population of the world is.

So these are the things I don't write about. And hear me here, I'm okay with that. This post is not me complaining about that. This is me saying, I don't have it figured out and I don't want to figure it all out. I want to trust that other people have it figured out and then make sure you know that I'm not the girl with the perfect blog and perfect story and perfect job.

That girl isn't me.

That's someone else.

Or maybe not.

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What about you? What do you not know about? What are you content to just continue not knowing? 

home(less)

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They say to write what you know best, but I suppose I have transplanted too many times to know anything but my own soul best. And so I write about this.

I know this may irk the stay-at-home mom whose life is a series of ebb and flow normality, or the theologian who feels that the soul is a mere mirror and not worth the time I spend on it. It may bore the businessman or collegiate. But I know no other thing on earth well, so from this I build my stories.

I am jealous of the homesteader, the one who has birthed generations in the same house, who has first steps on the same ground as first kisses and then their own child's miracle steps. I am jealous of dialects and regional habits. I want a language that identifies me instead of the mashup of history, people, and landscape that I call home. I say that everywhere is home, because it is, but partly because nowhere is home and to say this out loud is hard.

Christ is home and in this I take comfort, but it sounds more cliche than true, so I'm careful about how much and to whom I say it. You doubt me even as you read that, I suspect.

Because to be homeless, save Christ, is not popular, not even recommended. So go home, come home, people say. But you should know this, when you say that, my soul answers: I am home. Wherever I am, I am home.

Or my soul asks: where is home?

If it is with people I love or people who love me, then I am home. If it is where I grew up, then it is impossible to return. If it is where I grew most, how does one quantify that? If it is with blood and kin, my home covers the globe. If it is a church, a sanctuary, then I am making my own and building it with others. If it is simply the place where I am most myself, then I will always be homeless.

If, however, it is Christ alone, then there is no matter my dialect or my region, I am home wherever and there is never anything to leave or to come.

And so, I am home.

fraudulent

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After I cried I called a friend back home. She is the mother of nine kids and it was 11pm on the east coast, so I sent a text first, to be considerate. We don't talk often, but there is never chatter about days and weather when we do. More likely we are either about to cry or finishing our crying and the hurried rush of words comes out sounding like "Ineedyoutoprayforme."

She listens and counsels and challenges and asks hard questions like "Well, you say that you're struggling here, but is there sin that you're not repenting of?" and "Where are you not obeying the Lord cheerfully?" I call her because I know she will pray for me, but more than that, she will send me to bed with questions ringing in my mind still.

She is a good mother. I know this because her children love her, but also because despite only four years difference in our ages, she understands that nurturing isn't a season of life, but a way of it.

"I'm afraid," I said to her. "I'm afraid that what life looks like right now will be life forever and that old patterns and old ways of thinking are creeping in again, and instead of fighting the me-monster, I want to curl into a ball, stay home, say no to everything, and pity me." And this is the truth, I'm telling you too.

What you read here, on this nicely package, pretty pastel, alliterated links page is the wrestled, true, but it's also the wrestling and I can't have you forget that. Okay?

But more than that, I can't have myself forget that.

It's a safety net for me, I know, to say that. I am warning you before things get too messy that things will get messy and that my heart isn't sure or certain, and that doubts and fears creep in, strangling hope. It's the cheater's way out, to say that. It's why I'll never write a book because, I said in an email last week:

"I am terrified that the story I will tell will be true only while I am telling it and I will carry the guilt of a half-truth for the rest of my life. It's the fraud that scares me. This is why I write tonight in my post, 'they feel that they know the real you.' They read what we write and it feels like a collective secret to them--things I wouldn't verbalize and barely process beyond sentence structure and pithy lines to draw them in. They feel they know the truth and by the time they've read it, it's untrue already. So you're more brave than most, binding your words in a book. Blogging is hard, thankless work, but it's the weak way out. I know this. I'm not okay with it, but I know it."

Here is what I know: deep, deep within me, I am a fraud.

I know this because when my friend is asking me hard questions about sin and gratefulness last night, my mouth is saying what does not reflect my heart. I think I'm telling her the truth, but later, this morning, I can list the litany of unconfessed sin and unrepentant acts. I live life glancing over my shoulder, trying to stare down the desperation of my heart. I am desperate for righteousness, but only because true righteousness means rest and I'm desperate for rest.

I want to end this on hope, but I need to come out of the closet and my closet feels dark and small today. A friend tells me this week that you keep wrestling with God until God wins and I like that picture. I like it because it is of no surprise to God that we are wrestling or that we want to win, or think we can. But it should be of no surprise to us that in the end (and all the meantimes in between) God will still win.

So I do find rest in this. I find rest in His righteousness, His final win.

you

in , ,

Hey listen, you. You hiding behind your litany of projects and your mountain of responsibility. You, with your put together persona and your perfect bouts of transparency. You, who reveals little to everyone but lets the world unveil herself to you because you are perceived as trustworthy and wise. You who picks up the burdens and carries them to the next rest stop. You who goes about your duties, shirking love and fearing commitment because it means you are needed and being needed is grounds for running away.

Yeah you.

You're the one I'm talking to.

And I'm saying this: you can't hide.

You cannot hide.

Because you slip away, drive away, pull into a parking lot and put your head in your hands. You don't cry because crying doesn't help, but you sigh and you ask what's wrong with you? Why is it so hard to be needed? Be wanted? Be loved? And how can you be those things and still feel like none of them?

You tell yourself the lies and then you tell yourself they're lies and then you lie to yourself again and say it will be okay, that you'll try harder next time, that you'll say no next time, that you won't feel the weight of the world next time.

But you do.

You stub your toe on the "too close, too long, too much" line and you back away slowly, desperate to grab your favorites parts of you back. You're an introvert in an extrovert's kingdom. You feel upside down because you're called to decrease (which you like), but you're also called to preach and make disciples and be discipled (which you don't like). You feel inside out, like you're walking around with your insides out and no one points and stares, they just expect it from you. They feel that they know the real you.

Here's my heart, you say, it's on my sleeve.

Here's the only thing I have to say to you:

You cannot hide because I know where to find you, you're always near me, like a second skin, like my own breath, my own heart. You're like me.

And once, I was like you.

You cannot hide because I emptied myself for you, taking on your form, obeyed the sentence of death on my head, for you.

And you're not beyond me. Trust me. You, with your litany of projects and mountains of responsibility: you still need me.

in ,

The world is telling me I need to find myself and the gospel tells me I need to lose myself. I know who to believe, but it is hard in the day to day, the seeking and finding, the doing and being. It is hard to remember to be lost. To not need to be found.

To not need to be found.

The bible teaches that the last will be first, that the least is the most, and I don't care much about being most or first, but I care about being known.

I care about existing. Being. And being known.

Joy is tangible and everywhere if I am looking for it, and so I do. But the opportunity to be known is scarce and I am scared because of that. I worry little about little, but I worry much about the possibility that no one will ever delve into my soul, pick around, ask the right questions, leave me speechless, unable to articulate a defense or diatribe. I care too much that no one cares enough.

When I was small and the bible was only a book of wicked stories about prostitutes and lion mouths and genocide I would snicker at all the knowing that was going on between men and women. I didn't know the significance of that sort of knowing, but I knew it was hushed and quiet, a secretive sort of knowing that resulted in pages of genealogies.

I worry that I will never be known like that, that my genealogy stops with me.

Enoch walked with God and then He was no more. Another story that left me questioning. But one thing was certain, God knew him. He knew God. They knew each other. They were companions and friends.

Moving a lot teaches me one thing and I learn it over and over and over: being known isn't as important as I think it is; being unknown is far more important.

The world says to search for significance. God says seek insignificance and find my only significance in Him.

Relinquish the mere possibility of ever being known. Walk with God. Be no more.

I wonder sometimes if the reason it was phrased that way, "then he was no more," is because God was trying to teach us even then about being less, decreasing, emptying, walking with God and becoming less, not more.

Someone tells me yesterday that even now, in my short time here, I have made an impact on lives. I stare back at her, still feeling so unknown, insignificant, unimportant in this land of people with plans and lives and schedules. "You know people," she says. "You know them. So many of them. That matters."

I wonder if we find significance, if we are only truly known, when we become less, unknown. When mattering is less about being someone, and more about being no one. When we're not defined by dreams or genealogies, but by how significantly we loved and knew.

Is that what matters?