Grace Grabbed

It's the story of ten men who wanted pity and got a miracle instead. And it's the story of me.

I know my leprous spots. I know them well, the loss of feeling, the flesh rubbed raw, the broken parts of me that I want to hide and can't.

All I want is a little pity and He gives a miracle instead.

Last night I remember the ten lepers who were healed and the one who comes back and I want so desperately to be the one who comes back. I want to not forget what He has done and what I could not. But forgetting is what I do well and here is why:

I asked for pity, received a miracle, and am desperately afraid that the miracle was a one time occurrence, so I run. Because what if He sees that He has healed me? What if He takes it back? What if I stumble on this and fall on this and lose this, and He takes back the miracle?

I run instead. Grab my grace, gather my wits and run.

This week I am exercising gratefulness. Because to return to the miracle worker is humbling, to return is to submit that there might be more brokenness to be healed, to return is to say to Him "There is more of me that can't reach You."

Last night our church gathered for the first night in a series of five nights of prayer and praise. I opened my eyes during one song, looked across the room at arms spread wide, voices ringing out, heads thrown back, and I heard the sound of gratefulness.

Gratefulness that says "I was looking for pity and got life instead."

Brian Kershisnik

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.

fight

They don't tell you that all hell will break loose and it will all happen at once. All its fury brought down in one swoop and nothing to break its fall. If there was warning, perhaps, we might have braced ourselves, stockpiled, borrowed tomorrow's manna. But there is no warning for this sort of thing. The only thing it leaves in its path is a series of frozen memories: a boy on the top of a hill at sunset, a girl who holds you close while you sob, a friend who holds your cold hand in the room outside the courtroom, another friend who pulls back your hair while you heave everything you've eaten and felt in a year's worth of time.

We have grown accustomed to ashes and ashes, dust and dust. Everything we were made from and to everything we return. Dust. Man, you are dust.

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: 
Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?   
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
   or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together
   and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (cont)

I take comfort and joy in that. Comfort, because I know my place, and joy, because I know His.

Comfort, because these momentary afflictions are for a lasting glory, and joy, because nothing here is sacred unless it has been broken and poured out for me.

Let it do the work in you--all that brokenness, the fury of hell and its minions and the staggering mercy of the suffering brought on by car accidents and cancer--because how could it be worse? It could.

It could.

(deep inside, where the real fight happens)

Let it shove in, shove around, hurt, hurt, hurt. Break the fallow ground, sift the confusion, let it do the work in you. Because if it does not, this hell, these sobs, these heaves, if this does not happen, then the heart you will be made of will be no heart at all.

To be what you are crafted to be today, all hell will break loose yesterday.

I swallow hard, writing that, because I am not so far from my own hells that I forget the agony of the flames licking my face, my heart, my mind, those I care for most. I am in some ways closer than ever--because I see now. I see these things that threaten to steal my joy and I name them, death, disappointment, divorce, disease. I name them because they are not subject to me (as I thought for so long they were), but they are subject to One who is higher and more grand than I can ever know.

The one who set the foundations of the earth while He thought of me. The One who breathed the creation of the world while He planned for me. The One who stretched the lines upon it while He purposed my boundaries. The One who laid the cornerstones of the earth while He knew that His own cornerstone would die for me.

All hell may break loose, Job, but we're taking it, you, me, and everyone we know. We're letting it come at us with everything, we're dressed for action, we know our place and we know our Maker.

residue

The great tragedy of my generation, and perhaps yours too, is that we cannot appreciate the residue. A few years ago, when I was ready to leave the church, finished with unanswered questions, unexplained theology, and mostly my unchanged heart, a wise man cautioned me. He didn't say I couldn't leave, he didn't even answer my burning questions about tithing and church membership. He simply talked about residue.

I know this residue because I know my family, and the awful and beautiful desperation in each of us to find some resolution in our faith. The thing is, I'm not sure any one of us realizes that every new place is unsoiled in our minds until we walk in there with our past and hand it with trembling hands to yet another person to review.

I have found an abiding rest among people who laud the character of God more than the work of God. For my oldest brother, he found solace in liturgy and the Orthodox church for a time; another brother finds his sanctuary among people and an adventurous life; yet another one took his to the grave and another one has sworn off religion entirely. The one who was four when he declared he would be a pastor, is a man now and I have no doubt that wherever he goes the gospel is carried. I have yet to see where the youngest two land.

This I do know: were you to gather the doors of every church we have collectively darkened the hallway would go on for a seeming eternity.

The residue my parents left with us (and I'd venture to guess they carried over from their own parents) is a unsatiated curiosity that will not be silenced by the mere telling, but only by the experiencing.

We were the experientially educated.

This meant that while other families were stuck in their routines and normality, rote reasons for what they did every single day of life, my family was on some sort of adventure to figure it out. And sometimes it looked different every year. Because this was our family we didn't know any differently, and I cannot thank my parents enough for the flexibility of spirit they gave each of us. There is not one of our brood who will not choose risk over reward every day. This is what they gave us, this is the sweet residue of growing up in my family.

But it also meant that my parents were sometimes figuring it out in front of us, as we went along. And that residue was left on us as well. It felt like whiplash sometimes, the speed at which things would change, new convictions, new ways of living. It was always an adventure, but not always a pleasant one. And it left us, me at least, with more questions than answers. This is what I mean when I talk about an unsatiated curiosity--I likely won't stop until I understand something as fully as is possible on this dirt-ridden kingdom (regardless of how many things get torn apart in the process).

It also left me with a deep, deep understanding that people everywhere are figuring it out. Democrats and Republicans, Reformed and Arminian, complementarian and egalitarian, churched and unchurched, organic and prepackaged. Deeply in us, we're still figuring it out, still walking by faith, atheists and Jesus-lovers both. And deeply in us we bear the residue of someone else who was trying to figure it out, and on and on it goes.

The great tragedy of my generation is that we fail to appreciate truth regardless of the package or label, and more so, we fail to appreciate the residue it holds and leaves on people around us.

You and I, we're shaped by ideals, ethics, theology, and practices and I guarantee that not one of us arrived there on our own. We all carry the residue of what came before us.

The next time I find myself wanting to rant on something, retweet a clever 140 characters, facebook a quote, or sink into deep thought over an ideal not my own--I want to think about this: who arrived at this thought and what reside were they carrying? And how does my residue read this differently than it was perhaps meant? Or how might my residue lend wisdom to this thought?

I think I would be quieter, less egotistical, and certainly more circumspect if I asked these questions more often.

I think the residue I would leave might be more of a pleasing fragrance than a sticky mess:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.       II Corinthians 2:14-17

Dayenu

It is the method to my step and the life to my spirit and it is not that God is good, but that God is still good.

When my brother died one of our friends wrote a poem called Dayenu. It means "It would have been enough" and it was what the Israelites said after each common grace was given to them: escape from slavery, dayenu; through the red sea, dayenu; manna in the desert, dayenu.

It would have been enough if God had only done this one thing and nothing more, it would have been enough.

David prayed it again with different words: "Bless the Lord, oh my soul." Soul, you're downcast, you're empty, you're sad, but oh, what God has done! It is enough. So bless the Lord.

My soul is a heavy one today, the effects of sin are near and touching people I love and me too. I'm confronted about the words I say, I hug a tearstained girl, I cry my own tears, we're praying for an unanswered prayer and this is what I'm thinking all day: God is good, yes, and so we long for the completion of what we want, but God is still good while the completion is far, far off.

It would have been enough if He had only created the earth and put us here to tend the garden.

It would have been enough if He had brought us out of captivity to settle in the wilderness.

It would have been enough to leave the Old Testament hanging for 500 more years.

It would have been enough to birth hope in a manger.

It would have been enough to have smitten His son and washed His hands of it.

It would have been enough for a resurrection alone.

It would have been enough for me to be born, to enter fighting and gasping for the stuff of earth.

It would have been enough for me to live through today.

Because God knows something that I cannot even fathom with my earth encrusted prayers and thinly veiled attempts to get more of Him by getting more of myself: He is still good and He is faithful to finish and He has already won.

This comforts me because sometimes I hear an answered prayer and my heart jumps inside of me, words on my lips: God is good! But I stop here, because even in the lack of what we pray for, He is still good. He has brought us thus far and He has done enough. He has not left stones unturned or promises unanswered. He is not waiting for you to get your act together or for me to learn one final lesson.

Today I'm asking myself what I'm asking for. Am I asking for meekness? For righteousness? For a glimpse of my heart's desires? For repentance? For gratefulness? What am I asking for that cannot be quieted by one simple declaration: what You have done is enough for you to be worthy of all glory today.

What has God done for you that is enough? If He did nothing more, is He still worthy of your praise? Your trust?

walk on

It's the rhythms of grace that are the hardest for me. I think. The finished work of grace, this I understand. The unfinished work of grace, the kind we have to wait for until heaven, this I understand.

It's the rhythms. The ebb and the flow. The here, so strongly and tangible one day, and gone, so hard and difficult the next. It's not the grace that changes, I know this. It's the inbetweens.

This morning my boss read the end of Matthew 11 aloud in our staff meeting and I felt my heart choke, my eyes well up:

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.

Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.

Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."

This year has been a lot of just learning grace, sitting in it, basking in it, letting the fullness of what it implies wash over me. Bathe me in comfort, love, joy, fullness.

But this passage about rest is full of active verbs and this is what I feel my heart catch on this morning.

Get away with me. Take a real rest. Walk with me. Work with me. Learn the rhythms. Keep company with me.

This seems like an awful lot of work to do rest.

And there's a strange comfort in that. The comfort is this: rest is intentional too. It means saying no to being busy, choosing to be busy being unbusy. It means not answering my phone. It means letting the text messages build up. It means sitting with my roommates when I could be doing other things. It means lighting a candle, laughing, choosing rest.

The thing about rhythm is that the beat doesn't change, it is grace, grace, always grace. But the melody does. And I am learning to fill in life around the steady tempo of grace.

(pinterest)

Say

I say things because I am deeply passionate and fiercely convicted. I say things because I want someone to say them and sometimes no one else is. I say them because I want respect. I say them because I value truth and sometimes I say them because I know if I say them, then I will do them.

I said something the other night, said it quickly, fiercely. But today the conviction I felt then feels far from me. I want to weasel out of something, be non-committal, give the for-instances and in-this-cases. I want to excuse the circumstances because, well, this time, they're different, see?

I didn't read a lot of the bible growing up, but I remember hearing the story of an oathmaker in the Old Testament, a man who promised to sacrifice the first-fruit of his home if God would be on his side for a small thing like war or something. He imagined the bloodshed would be a chicken, I'm sure, at the very worst a goat, perhaps a sheep. But when his daughter, his own flesh and blood, walked out the door upon his homecoming, Jephthah regretted that oath.

But he still carried it through.

It's barbaric to us, see. And I still wrestle with the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jephthah. I wrestle over a sincere oath with barbaric consequences.

God's not asking that of me. I know that. He's not really asking anything of me. We're the children of the new covenant, set free to do what is lawful and profitable.

But He is asking me to be a person of my yeses. To say it because I mean it, but to really, deep down, fully grasp the meaning before I say it at all.

Because something is getting sacrificed.

Some part of me or some action of mine. Some desire or some need. Some thing is going to be tried and true and tested and walk out that door before I can catch it, send it back. Walk out my mouth before I can catch, send it back.

I want to be a person of my word. But moreso, I want to be a person of the Word.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
Psalm 19:14

(pinterest)

Trophies

I keep waiting for the day when disappointment doesn't feel like a sucker punch to the stomach. The day when it doesn't feel like a surprise, when the pinch to my flesh doesn't say "Yes, you're real and this is real and it hurts."

I keep waiting for that day.

Every time I think it has come, that I'm so clothed in strength and dignity that I can laugh at whatever comes, well, something comes and I'm the last one smiling.

(pinterest)

This week has been a slow sucker punch to the stomach. I saw it coming and didn't even duck, I walked headlong into it. I welcomed it. I probably even asked for it.

But here we are on the swing side of things and all I know is that my heart hurts and I feel like a fool. That sounds dramatic and it probably is. But it's also the truth: that really is how I feel.

I've been meditating on Proverbs 31 for the past week and I'd like to blame my heartsickness on that. I typically stay far away from that passage because all it tells me is that I'm a lost cause. If that's what a man wants in a wife, I'm a certain spinster.

But today I've been meditating on the woman who's laughing at whatever comes. Staying up all night and buying fields are better left to the real trophy wives, I'll be good if I can chuckle at uncertainty.

Today though, when the punch hit my stomach and I had to look away before the tears let loose, I thought: maybe laughing at whatever comes is actually the hardest part of that list of near-impossibilities?

Maybe buying a field and burning the midnight oil are only possible through the strength and dignity which says "I don't know how this will turn out, but let's laugh on the threshold anyway!"

Maybe disappointment is thwarted not by the lack of sad things, but by the expectation that the sad things aren't the end of things?

I don't have much more for you tonight. The sucker punch still hurts and the tears are still near. But maybe this is how strength and dignity are built? One redeemed disappointment at a time.

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.

One of the takeaways for me from the Echo Conference was the Pick Two of Fast, Good, or Cheap concept. I've heard this dozens of times before, mapped out in dozens of different ways, but never really worked hard to make it happen. Or, in my head it was happening as a freelancer, but I wasn't communicating it to my clients the way I perhaps should have. Lesson 1 of freelancing: over-communicate to your clients.

I made this to remind me that everything has restrictions. Especially design.
It hangs above my desk.

When you're employed full-time, the Pick-two concept works even less. Regardless of how quickly I make it or how good it is, it always costs my employers the same. The variables play an important role in this, of course, if I made a lot of bad design slowly, I'd get fired fast. Even if I made a lot of bad design quickly or good design slowly, I'd get fired sooner or later. But if I make fast and good design, I get paid the same. There's not a lot of loss to anyone or thing (except my creativity which suffers under the speed and nature of the work).

I'm explaining that because I'm realizing that the Christian life is like that too.

Sometimes you have to pick two.

And sometimes you feel a bit cornered by the options.

When I left New York almost a year ago, I was climbing out the corners. I was pushing away the boundaries and busyness and I was asking the question "What will I do?" instead of "What could I do someday maybe?"

I was in search of greener pastures, yes. I know that. I knew it then and I know it now. But I wasn't deluded by the fact that those greener pastures wouldn't be fenced in just as much as the other ones were.

We are comforted by boundaries and smaller options. We are built for paradise within gates and being of one house and in one accord. They are pleasant, yes, but boundaries just the same.

The thing is: we often don't know we're fenced in until we bump up against them.

And it usually hurts.

I'm entering a season of busyness again. Meeting girls for coffee, getting involved in connecting people at church, leading small groups,working for a busy and growing ministry, making sure that I'm home and that it is a priority to me. But I hit the boundary this week and I felt it deep in my soul.

Hey, hey you, Soul? Slow it down. Yeah, some things are going to fail and yeah, some pieces will fall apart and yeah, you'll probably disappoint some people. But the treasure, the real reward--listen to me, Soul, the real reward is Jesus and that's not going to change, okay? No matter, how fast or how good you make it, the return is the same. So pace yourself, soul. Run the race well, but run the course, stay in-bounds.

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup,
you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places,
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
Psalm 16:5&6

(Also, I think I'm allergic to watermelon. Watermelon? Really? I'm devastated by this possibility.)

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?

(meg thurlgood)

No matter how healthy our theology, we always come face to face with the God of our reality.

What I mean by this is that reality is the most raw way of showing us what we think about God. I once read Tozer who said something like this: "The most important thing about you is what you think about God." He was a smart man.

Because it is only when we are face to face with the caricature God we've made or the feeble God we imagine or the angry God we're sure He is, that we realize the depth of ourselves.

And our sin of making small.

I might argue that the second most important thing about us is how grand we think God is. Augustine said that the root of every sin is a disordered love and what else is a small view of God but the ultimate disorder?

But why why why is it so easy to assume that He isn't concerned with us? Our joy? Our happiness? Our creativity? Our intimacy? Our faith and our faithlessness?

When my eyes behold what my heart believes and my actions indicate about what I think about God, I am humbled. Because somewhere along the way I've bought the lie that I still have to do this on my own, that I still have to make it happen, and that He will not come through for me.

The truth about God, though, is nothing we're experiencing right now is out of his eye, nothing we're doubting right now is out of His knowledge, nothing we're scrambling for right now is out of His control.

What we think about ourselves ultimately reveals what we think about God.

Growth within a grace context is more easily measured, I am learning, than growth within a law context.

As long as I am measuring my growth by what I do and do not do, I will always see more that I ought to be doing. The more I see, the less I want to do and growth is stunted. In grace, though, I am nearly blind to my doing, waking one day surprised to see the ground that's been taken. Struck by the besetting sins and habits that aren't even hunched in the corners of my closets anymore.

There are new ones, to be sure, but the old ones have taken their leave.

One of the best spiritual disciplines I've been assigned is to read through The Valley of Vision and rewrite prayers in my own words. Sometimes prayer feels stilted or repetitive, and this puts voice to some otherwise stale attempt. This past week I've been reading prayers in my head, praying them with my voice. But I also went back and reread some of my rewritten prayers from some really dark spiritual seasons.

And was surprised.

The Hudson River Valley--Cormack

The same prayers that are yielding such life to me today felt like funeral dirges to me a year, two years, four years ago. Because hopelessness was my bent, hopelessness was all I felt, even in the face of hope.

I meet so many people these days who feel hopeless in the face of their circumstances. God has taken leave of them, if feels and I know this feeling. I know it as clearly as I know the hope I have today. I am well acquainted with the shrugged shoulders and shaking head, the hard heart and weak or non-existent faith.

A few days ago in a study I'm doing at church, one of the questions was "Recall a situation in which you felt humbled by God."

The truth I am finding is that I am most humbled by God when I acknowledge the truth about how I see Him. Not the truth I want to see about Him. Not the truth that everyone else wants me to see about Him.

Just the way I see Him.

And if I am struggling to see His goodness or faithfulness or the hope He offers, I tell Him that.

Because He is not surprised by those feelings and He is not scrambling around trying to put me into situations where I'll be forced to see His fullness.

He is gentle and long-suffering and just and always on time.

And He does not change.

We go from glory to glory, faith to faith, doubt to doubt, and He stays the same. Always good, always faithful, always merciful, always just, always there. He is the best person to whom to confess your valley prayers.

He always abides on the mountains of grace.

The cure for homesickness, she said, is to think of 600 things I like about Texas. My roommate's snarky comeback was that Texans don't need 600 reasons, they only need one: it's Texas. (She also added a second snarky comment to that one about how Texans also can't count to 600. But she's Texan, she's allowed to say that.)

It's no secret that I'm all up and anti everything that feels like calisthenics for the heart, Five Easy Steps to dot, dot, dot and Ten Quick Ways to dot, dot, dot. So counting my blessings (and the things I love about Texas) probably wasn't going to be the fix me up.

Instead I let myself feel a few things and then I did a few things too.

1. I differentiated in my heart the difference between feeling sad and being depressed. For a long time depression has been the corner I've run to for safety. I understood my sadness and I understood how to reason my way out of it, and so I've done this for years. Be sad, embrace my sadness, grow tired of my sadness, reason my way out of my sadness, be happy, until I'm sad again. This cycle has gone on for more than a decade of my life and until about seven months ago, I fully planned on it being the rhythm for the rest of my life.

Until I understood grace (and this may seem simplistic to some of you, but feel free to read the archives and believe me when I say I never understood it this way until this past year), I did not understand that the fix to depression was not contingent on me alone.

In the past the only thing I accepted was that depression and discouragement was my lot in life, I believed that I was unrighteous and unworthy of Christ's full covering, and I thought that I would always be outside the pasture of true sheep. But now I see that it is not my job to battle or reason my way out of it, it is my job to accept grace for my doubts and struggles, accept my righteousness under Christ, and then abide in that. Simple.

And still hard. But it's getting easier. The past week or so was necessary, I think, for me to see that.

2. I confessed. In the past I just wallowed. But this week I confessed. And if the situation was at all appropriate, I asked for prayer. It was amazing to me how many conversations this opened the way for. I find that the more we just assume that when someone asks "How are you?" they really mean it (even if they don't), the more able we are to have transparent conversations where Christ is ultimately glorified. Because when I am transparent about my very real, very raw struggles (to the point where tears pooled in the corner of my eyes every single time I mentioned it), it begins a conversation, which is ultimately what creates culture. And I want a culture of confession because it is the quickest way I know to the cross.

3. I asked God in very raw and real ways to help me see that the gospel is for every part of me.

Every cell and molecule needs Him. Every joint and muscle needs Him. Every breath and laugh needs Him. Every word and motion needs Him. Every thought and emotion needs Him. Every part. Christ didn't just die so I could spend eternity with Him (though that was nice of Him), He died so that here on earth we could have abundant life too. That thought is staggering to me. He wants me to feel the deep reaching effects of the gospel in every weakness, every joy, every struggle and every victory.

This might seem like it's Three Fast Steps to Fix Your Depression, but it's not. This is just my story. This is just what I'm learning along the way.

I realize today while driving north on 377 that it is exactly a year since I stepped feet on this part of Texas. I came to visit a friend, to get some space, to reevaluate and say things out loud. I planned to go home with no plans of moving here. Ever.

Texas is ugly, I said, and it kind of is. Texas is flat, I said, and it definitely is. Texas is hot and suffocating, I said, and it is, especially today. But there have been moments of beauty here, small hills crested that take my breath away, and the evening Texas breeze is unlike anything I have ever known.

I began to say it a few weeks ago, out loud, to myself, to whoever would ask or listen: here I am home.

I've moved a lot, always in search of some place to call my own, something that felt comfortable, me, safe. I have never found it.

Until I stopped looking for it.

Texas was not meant to be home and looking back, I don't think any place I have been has been home. I am too uncomfortable with myself to be comfortable anywhere else.

What I mean to say is that the itch of homesickness will always be present. The tears come quickly this week, as my dear friend and I have swapped places, she kayaks on my rivers, sits with my favorite people, takes pictures of the startling blues and greens of my home. The tears are every present as my best friend is climbing new hills with a new best friend of the male persuasion. The tears are there when I remember that the people with whom I have shared my life are graduating with their doctorate in medicine today, having faith and babies named Gideon this summer, being wed this fall. All things bright and beautiful, all things I am missing because I have chosen Texas as home in this season.

It is so hard to miss things. So hard to know beyond a doubt that you are exactly where you are meant to be and yet feel still the gnawing in your soul that says: not home yet.

Not home yet.

When I was 21 a father in my faith explained the Already/Not Yet theology and it is a comfort to me since. We are already finished and not yet finished. We are already saved and not yet fully saved. He has already established His kingdom and is still establishing His kingdom. We know God and yet we do not fully know Him.

We are home and yet we are not home.

So in the meantime, and there is plenty of that, we comfort ourselves with this: everywhere is home until we are home.

Everywhere we plant our feet, everywhere we see glimpses of Christ, everywhere we preach His word with our words and our lives, every door we open and every door that feels closed, this is home.

We are home.

And yet we are still headed home.