The Price of Loving Fiercely

“I’d believed—fool that I was—that because I knew this end was coming, I was prepared, that I would not grieve as hard. As if one can pre-grieve and get it out of the way. It’s not true. Grief is the price I paid for loving fiercely, and that was okay, because there was no other choice but to love fiercely and fully.”

― Patti Callahan, Once Upon a Wardrobe 

Dear Aaron,

The fog of a freezing frost is settling in my valley this evening, friend. I hope to wake to a glittering world of beauty and delight—a sort of Eden splashed over all I can see. Sometimes I think other people want that for grief. . . For some joy to splash over one's world and cover over the grief, leaving only shimmering Beauty where once there was pain. But like hoarfrost, those moments are just that: moments. The pain leaks back through like mud beneath the snow. The ever-present stain of grief is the price paid for loving fiercely and fully.

A while back I had someone whom I consider a close friend tell me that perhaps there was something wrong with me for still grieving you stepping out of life—not just out of mine, but out of your life. To this day that comment still rankles in my soul, because the loss of you will not go away while I'm still living. You will always be gone now. Oh, one day I will cross the Great Gulf and join you in the Kingdom, but who can say when? And until then, we are separated. That doesn't quit or stop or go away. Just like your birthday is always your birthday, even if you're not here to celebrate it. It's your birthday just the same. . .the day before mine, every year. 

It was a full day with an appointment, work, small group, and exhaustion. But I thought of you, of course I did. Each time I had to write the date on every page of the chiropractor forms. When I was running a mailing and setting the stamp date. When I texted your parents and sister. Of course I knew it was your day. And of course I missed you, even if I spent the evening with dear friends. None of them were you.

I miss getting to know you. I have pieces of your thoughts and heart penned in about twenty letters spanning about five years. I have three months (plus a week) of shaky memories of the time we spent in the same place, often together. But I've forgotten too much of those weeks, days, and hours. My mind and my life are full, always edging out memory unless I sit with it, stoke it, tend to it. And yet... There is a hole where you should be. Where I should still be able to write or receive a letter, where we should still be able to talk on the phone or visit one another. We should still be getting to know each other. And we aren't. I miss what we had; but perhaps even more, I miss what we never got to have. 

Lately the pain has been something like a branch beneath the hoarfrost of dating someone I truly love. He's very different from you, but also he reminds me of you in some ways. But even the wonder of a sweet relationship doesn't cover the pain of loss forever. Perhaps the mud seeps through the snow a little less often right now, but I still think about you every day. I still miss writing real letters to you—letters I can drop in the mail and have you receive at the other end of the line. I still raised a mug of tea (caramel-coconut-sesame) in a toast to you on your birthday. And I still believe that if the Lord allows you to see through the veil—to know the love of those who miss you—then you know that already.

Here's to the twilight
Here's to the memories
These are my souvenirs
My mental pictures of everything
Here's to the late nights
Here's to the firelight
These are my souvenirs
My souvenirs

I close my eyes and go back in time
I can see you're smiling, you're so alive
We were so young, we had no fear
We were so young, we had no idea
That life was just happening
Life was just happening

Here's to your bright eyes
Shining like fireflies
These are my souvenirs
The memory of a lifetime. . .

—Switchfoot, Souvenirs 

Though I'm a little later than the day of, happy birthday, friend. I miss you. The mud and blood beneath the snow still surface. But one day the glittering frost will melt into Spring and I will see you again. We can get to know each other more then, my friend. Until the Kingdom comes, I will pay the price of loving fiercely and fully. Until then, here's hail! to the rest of the road.

Love,
Johanna

Messy Christmas

The branches have traded

Their leaves for white sleeves

All warm-blooded creatures make ghosts as they breathe

Scarves are wrapped tightly like gifts under trees

Christmas lights tangle in knots annually

While many people are wrapping up their Christmas lights rather than untangling them from last year, some more traditional churches are just entering into the celebration of the Christmas season. For them, Christmas begins on the evening of December twenty-fourth (since the Creation, days begin the evening before—think of Genesis 1:5: "...and there was evening and there was morning, the first day" etc.), going through to Epiphany on the sixth of January. 

This year, snow fell like shimmering garments on tree arms a week before Christmas. Yet for many of us, by the time the day itself rolled around, the sun had melted the tree robes and we were down to shirt-sleeves and thin sweaters. I love snow, but who decided that it is “necessary” at Christmas? 

Our families huddle closely

Betting warmth against the cold,

Our bruises seem to surface

Like mud beneath the snow

Some kinds of "snow" feel necessary... We want the blanket of "nice feelings" at Christmas to mask the cracks in our families of origin or in our marriages, in our loneliness and in our broken spots. But holidays have a way of hitting our bruised places. An argument in the car on the way to a Christmas gathering reminds us of the scores of fights we've had all year. The question, "So, are you seeing anyone?" (and you know they want to add "yet" at the end of that query) rankles when you're tired of being alone, or you've recently broken up with someone, or you feel somehow lesser because you in fact don't have someone. Sometimes the bruise is cruel and bone-deep: someone is missing in the pew at midnight mass with you; there is only the memory or shadow of someone you dearly love hovering at every crowded table, making it feel incomplete. 

It is a muddy, messy time, this Christmas. Messy Christmas. That is the phrase my phone auto-corrects to instead of "merry" Christmas. I laughed the first time happened. It struck my cynical side as humorous and morosely accurate. The mud of the Fall still lurks beneath the snow of the now-but-not-perfected redemption. But clean slates are coming. . .

So we sing carols softly

As sweet as we know

A prayer that our burdens will lift as we go

Like young love still waiting under mistletoe

We'll welcome December with tireless hope

Hope. Christmas is replete with Hope. God joining to flesh in a miraculous marriage. The Redeemer was born. Happy, sentimental sigh. 

But the crushing reality is that the Redeemer wasn't born as an adult. Things didn't change when He came. Yes, there was the flash of Heaven, opened to the shepherds. There was a great sign in the heavens, leading the wise men. Then, just like the previous four hundred years, there was a lull. Silence. Hope was born...but He wouldn't be revealed for another thirty years. 

I wonder if the shepherds were like fourteen-year-old me: not subtle, hanging around wherever I could—whenever I could—to be around the guy I was crushing on. Or did they cease hoping? Certainly, unflagging hope is hard to cultivate, especially when your hope is placed in the wrong thing, the wrong outcome, or the wrong person. Those shepherds waited for thirty years. Did they continue to hope? Did they connect that awe-filled night years ago with the peripatetic rabbi stirring up the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Jewish people, and the Romans?

Hope can be hard to cling to in the darkness, but that is precisely where we need it the most. Where we need Him the most. Thirty years before the Rabbi began calling fishermen, the ancient, long-awaited seed of promise was sown, becoming a tender shoot in Egyptian and Galilean soil.

"...For you [John] will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways,

To give knowledge of salvation to His people

By the remission of their sins,

Through the tender mercy of our God,

With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us;

To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,

To guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:76b-79)

Hope. It comes in through those very cracks we long to cover. He enters into our broken places. He is gentle with our bruises.

Let our bells keep on ringing

Making angels in the snow

And may the melody [of Hope] disarm us

When the cracks begin to show

Like the petals in our pockets

May we remember who we are

Unconditionally cared for

By those who share our broken hearts

_______

The table is set

And all glasses are full

The pieces go missing

May we still feel whole

We'll build new traditions in place of the old

Cause life without revision will silence our souls

Last year, table after table was set, glass after glass filled. But the gaping hole of grief gnawed at me like an insatiable, unwelcome guest. Every table felt incomplete. There was a strange distance between me and everyone I was around. Like I was in a glass bubble and could see them, but I could touch them, couldn't really hear them. Those layers show up in many ways at various times, but all last Christmas I felt it. I couldn't enter fully into anything, because I wasn't whole. I am still not whole. I will always carry in me a bleeding wound. And it will only grow as the number of empty chairs rivals the number of full ones. And one day, the perpetually bleeding bite from grief, from death will kill me. Then I can fully enter in to the Kingdom come, to the City of God and the Feast of the Lamb. Strange how a fatal wound precedes life. 

The missing pieces haven't gaped so glaringly this year, but the numbness is still floating around. My heart, mind, and body are all topsy-turvy this season. The missing pieces can never be filled—but sometimes there is a new friend waiting in a vacant church pew; there is an old friend who remembers the ache with you, and even carries it with you for a bit. 

So, let the bells keep on ringing, making angels in the snow. And may the melody surround us, when the cracks begin to show this messy Christmas.

"Snow" by Sleeping at Last (Ryan O'Neal)

Unbreak My Heart New

Normal life and my normal self died a few years ago. The problem is, I keep expecting my normal self to resurrect—to look out at me from the mirror again, to take up residency in my heart and home. I keep expecting to be who I was. . .and I keep getting surprised when I'm not that person anymore. The carefree, wide-eyed, faithful-to-have-quiet-time, thoughtful person I used to be sustained wounds so deep that she died. That person is buried under a pile of ashes. Cancer. Death. Divorce. Things that weren't supposed to touch my family torched us. Many of my own hopes and dreams have burnt out, adding their ash to the grave of the person I used to be.

i am desperate, 

if nothing else, 

in a holding pattern 

to find myself.

i talk in circles, 

i talk in circles, 

i watch for signals, 

for a clue.

how to feel different. 

how to feel new. 

How do I get out of this dichotomy? I so often behave in a way that I despise. I know the right thing to do, yet shrink from doing it. I want to go back to who I was or forward to feeling—to being—new. . . anything but this horrible stuck feeling, this stagnant 'living' I've been attempting. The holding pattern never becomes a flight plan and I'm getting desperate. Desperation can push us over the edge, can push us to depression, can push us into a rut, can push us into despising who we've become. In my desperation I've made rash decisions—hoping that a change in life-circumstances would change the dull ache, the incessant indifference into incandescent joy. Hoping I could go back to who  was.

[But,] no one can unring this bell, 

unsound this alarm, unbreak my heart new. 

God knows, i am dissonance 

waiting to be swiftly pulled into tune.

The echoes of the Fall reverberate in my heart, my thoughts, my whole life. . .and it can't be unrung. Carefree me has become careworn and careful—careful not to get hurt anymore. The more I try to gather up all the pieces, to hold them and order my own steps, the less disciplined, purposeful, and joy-filled I am. The more I grasp at control, the less of it I have. Life spins at a crazy pace with no stillness. 

I am all dissonance, the wrong sounds at the wrong times. Saying 'no' when I want to say 'yes,' and 'yes' when I should say 'no' has emptied me. I keep running away from the open arms of Jesus, looking for acceptance from just about everyone else. It's never enough from anyone else, though. The more I look for acceptance from others, the less satisfied I am. Their acceptance rings hollow. All I want is for God to pull me into tune, into step with Him. But running my own way, singing my own song, makes it impossible to walk in step with, or be in tune with, God. My life feels like a cacophony in unconnected, chaotic bursts. 

i know the further i go, 

the harder i try, only keeps my eyes closed. 

and somehow i’ve fallen in love 

with this middle ground at the cost of my soul.

C S Lewis once made the observation that “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road, and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.” Indeed, I know that the more I run away, the more I 'try harder,' only plunges me further into the darkness of trying to control what only God can. I've fallen in love with mediocrity, inadequacy, and complacency at the cost of my soul. I've chosen indifference so many times that I can no longer feel. . .and I'm terrified of remaining thus.

yet i know, if i stepped aside, 

released the controls, you would open my eyes. 

that somehow, all of this mess 

is just an attempt to know the worth of my life…

I want to reach back in time and unmake the mess my life and my soul have become. The more I try to experience meaning and depth, the less I can feel. My desire for control—so I can be free, so nothing else can hurt me—has spilled acid-like onto other people, burning them, hurting them, haunting me. I can't feel pain and empathy to much depth anymore—I've burnt myself out. I'm left with hands full of ashes. The ashes of relationships, the ashes of my emotions—a grey film between me and real life. Is this what being a leper feels like? To not feel. . .to not know I'm being burnt when I'm on fire? 

The more I grasp at life, the more I try to hold onto meaning, the more I want to experience feelings, the more they flee and the less I have. Jesus was right, of course: Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it, but whoever insists on keeping his life will lose it... I keep insisting on life as I think I need it or want it. The more I do, the more enslaved I become. Rather than being satisfied, I am insatiable. Rather than being disciplined I am reckless. Rather than really loving God and others, I run from them and shut them out. Rather than being hurt, I wound—and am insensible to the pain I cause. The more I want to feel, the more indifferent I am. Must I remain enslaved to this dichotomy? Where does change come from? Because it certainly does not come from me or from trying harder. 

Change comes like a breath of fresh air into a musty room—it comes from the hovering, order-bringing, healing Holy Spirit Himself. Change – renewal – can only ever come from God. The more I surrender control, the less chaotic life might be. When I submit myself to God, the enemy has to flee from me, and so I am free. This is the the true paradox: that I must submit to be made free, that surrender leads to life. 

I cannot go back to my normal, carefree self. The quivering of the Fall has shaken my life. I have been rent, broken, and buried. But the Resurrection and the Life is at work in me. He has fallen into the ground and died, bearing much fruit—and He calls me, calls us, to do the same. The breath of life will not fill my lungs the same way it did. . .but perhaps the Breath is a person who will expand my breathing, who will give me deeper life—life etched by sorrow and shaped into something more Beautiful than carefree me could have been. 

I'm desperate for new life. To be a string tightened into tune, no longer wanton but free to be in harmony. No. . . Not desperate. I am confident that there is Hope for new life, for retuning and renewal. That Hope is the Anchor for my soul, to keep me from spinning in the circles of a holding pattern. He holds me steady in the storm—and when the time is right, the Anchor is drawn up and the Wind is given full reign to guide the ship. All things have their times and seasons, their proper channels and right order. When the sail submits to the Anchor even in the storm, or to the Wind under the hand of the Captain, it is then the ship is most free.

______

1. Sleeping at Last (Ryan O'Neil), Mercury

2. C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

3. Luke 9:24 TLB (The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation)

Swallowing Light

i am alive. i am awake. i am aware of what [life] tastes like.¹

It tastes like meteors. Like sunshine spilling warmth over me as I lie on a mound of woodchips. Like black currant tea and dark chocolate. Like thought-full and heart-felt conversations. Like fear from a film—and fear of the unknown. Like crisp autumn air, scented by leaves crunched. Like solitude under the moon. Like sorrow piercing my heart. And it tastes like Hope springing from Truth. 

May I help you taste Hope for a little while? I want to point you toward Hope Himself; to give you Something real to reach for; to write a truer story than fear would project. I want to breathe colour and Beauty and life into you. 

When I first heard the song quoted above, I thought it said, i am aware of what life tastes like. Turns out it says, of what light tastes like. What does light taste like? Does light taste like sorrow, like life can? Maybe. The song goes on to say:

i want to be. 

i want to be at my best. 

it’s bittersweet, it’s poetry. 

a careful pruning of my dead leaves.

Light is bittersweet. Perhaps because light is necessary for seeing, and seeing is wonderful. Yet living in a broken, fallen world means that seeing is also horror-full. I live in the mountains; I think they are the most stunning in brilliant autumn and scintillating winter. But the beauty can be marred by beetle killed forests; by plumes of black smoke, charcoal trees, and ash falling like dead snow. In the same way, human beings can be so intensely interesting or lovely that we can hardly look away from them. But footage of skeletal men being sent to gas chambers, or babies being dismembered—we can hardly look at that inhumane reality. Life under the Curse is exposed by light to be both indescribably beautiful and unspeakably horrific. But the Curse has an expiry date. Light does not. Not the Light of the world Who will make the sun, moon, and stars obsolete. 

Notice, though, that light is also a careful pruning of my dead leaves.  If we are like a tree (planted by rivers of living water, as Psalm one says), we need to be pruned to stay healthy. The Morningstar clips sucker shoots, prunes even our healthy branches to keep us growing. He is careful, observant, wise. He does not prune unnecessarily, only what is best—even when it hurts so much it feels like He has cut off far too much for us to keep living.

so i propose a toast: to fists unraveling, to glass unshattering. to breaking all the rules, to breaking bread again. we’re swallowing light, we’re swallowing our pride. we’re raising our glass ’til we’re fixed from the inside. ’til we’re fixed from the inside.

Where does the light get in? Where we are cracked, even shattered. The Light gets in when we raise a toast to the King: through the broken bread on our tongues, the wine burning our throats. We swallow the Light again and again, until we are fixed from the inside. It is a process, like eating daily, it is not a one-time meal that satiates our hunger for only a day. Swallowing the Light is our daily bread (Scripture); it is our weekly feast (the Eucharist); it is our continual sustenance (meditation and contemplative prayer); it is the bitter gall we sometimes taste (weeping over sin); it is the banquet to come tasted a little now (worship and adoration). It is the swallowed Light Who heals us from within, not from shining on us – exposing us – from without. We must be revealed and healed from within. We must be unshattered from the inside.

May I help you taste the Hope that is now, as well as to come? We are a people who are united by our King. We live in His Kingdom now. We build His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven. We get to participate in the Kingdom's colours and tastes and smells, to build and steward and welcome others into His Kingdom. We do this when we create a meal. When we weep with those who are grieved. When we build homes and roads and grocery stores. When we play music to inspire—breathe life into—the souls around us. When we love on others by loving their children. When we give sacrificially of our possessions or bank account; or harder still, of our time and our emotions. We co-labour to construct the Kingdom of Christ in many ways—seen and unseen, big and small. In this, we are the Body of Christ, joined and knit together with Jesus as our Head. God builds His Kingdom through us upon the Chief Cornerstone: Jesus. This is what Light tastes like.

________

1. "Taste" by Ryan O'Neal {Sleeping at Last}, Atlas: Year Two (Copyright 2016, Asteroid B-612)

Glory!

That the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes...

—Sleeping at Last, Saturn

Intimate with Brokenness

show me who i am and who i could be.
initiate the heart within me
until it opens properly.

slow down, start again from the beginning.
i can’t keep my head from spinning out of control.
is this what being vulnerable feels like?
. . .
i’ll run the risk
of being intimate with brokenness.

—Ryan O'Neal
{Sleeping at Last—Son}

Is this what being vulnerable feels like?

Did I need to be broken in the same way—yet different than before—to initiate, to resuscitate, my heart? Does numbness have a deep wound at its root and as the cause for its flight? So often healing begins with kindness or conviction, never with condemnation. It is condemnation that inflicts some of the deepest scars, the broken places I can't heal myself. But conviction is the breath of the Spirit blowing on me, making my stone heart flesh again—like Aslan breathing a stone creature alive.

Conviction is a tearing apart from what I have conformed to, grown around like a vine about a tree, as flesh around shrapnel. It hurts like hell to unwrap from that lie, that action, that cover I've let become part of myself.

Conviction is a tearing-up over my brokenness, my sin, how I have wounded the Father who loves me. The kindness of conviction comes in humbly seeing anew my Lover, Who does not divorce me—put me away from Him—but Who calls me by His name. . . Who calls me Belovéd, though I have played the whore, chasing other gods.

If the broken things have to be healed at the root—have to be met in the brokenness—then I'll run the risk of being intimate with my brokenness. Growth germinates in the ground of healing, in the soil of holiness. Healing takes time. Holiness is a process. Just when I think I'm finally learning, I find that my brokenness is deeper than I ever knew or suspected. I find the healing just beginning in places where I think I should have healed long ago. I get frustrated at all the tiny shoots popping up where there should be at least slender birch trees—if not a steadily-growing oak or two.

Why have I made so little progress in the span of my thirty-some years? I should be so much farther along by now. But I'm not.

I could stomp and be angry that all I have are these little shoots. . .Certainly I am disappointed that my crop is so immature. But I will choose to be glad, to give thanks that growth is happening at all. I will give thanks and offer up these tender shoots to the LORD as a firstfruits offering. I will let Him do the pruning and the nurturing of these habits that He is reordering to help me image Him. I will take joy in the work He is doing, not dwell on the years the locusts have eaten.

I'll run the risk of being intimate with my brokenness. . .

Creativity Begets: How Story Inspires

As the cerulean sky bleeds into water-coloured grey storm clouds, my thoughts are somewhere between Middle Earth and Pluto. Ringing in my head is a stunning symphonic melody about Saturn—its strength in Beauty has captured my memory. Reverberating in my ears is the sound of Tolkien's prose—read aloud to hear the simultaneously earthy and heraldic tones played in his words.

Treading the paths of my thoughts are an interesting pair, hand-in-hand. The first is a comment made by John Wain, an English novelist, about the Inklings being a “circle of instigators, almost of incendiaries, meeting to urge one another on in the task of redirecting the whole current of contemporary art and life.”1 The second is the thought I have been mulling over in recent days: one individual's creativity often leads others to create. Or more succinctly, creativity begets creativity. Creativity in something well-crafted and beautiful breathes life into our souls in a way that makes us want to create, too.

This creativity is what spread from one Inkling to the next and the next—and back again. The inspiration, the life-breath, from Tolkien stirred the heart and mind of Lewis. The adamant Lewis argued and challenged the other Inklings—and when an idea is challenged, one must think long on it to see if it is true and worth fighting for or not. Charles Williams himself was inspiring to Lewis, enough to model Ransom after him in That Hideous Strength. These men were each "playing the potter to see what shapes [they could] make of another."2 Even as they moulded one another's thoughts and imaginations, they shaped the minds of men for generations to come.

Living in the wake of these men (and Dorothy L Sayers, often mentioned amongst this set), I find my own views of valour, honour, camaraderie, theology, and of God Himself shaped by the essays and stories of various Inklings. My picture of true friendship is painted by Frodo and Samwise. The image of honour, integrity, and discernment strides forth in the form of Faramir. My heart broke over the death of Aslan, helping me to connect with the death of Jesus in a much deeper way. The Voice in the fog* reminds me that God tells us no story but our own from His perspective. My rich, layered view of Heaven is painted with such real grass that it spears one's feet, and light so real that it crushes one from the shadowlands. Dorothy L Sayers' robust explanation of the Trinity in The Mind of the Maker made such a vivid impression upon me that, though I have only read the book once, much of it sticks with me still. So, I am fashioned by these long-dead hands—much for the better, I think.

Creativity shot through with Beauty has made its impression on me; has breathed its very life into me. I find I am most shaped by images and stories, more than by essays. The essays have moulded my thoughts, certainly, but they are more abstract and intangible. Essay ideas are like trying to grasp a handful of smoke or filling our probing fingers with a bit of soul. But stories are gloriously real—even when fanciful and fantastic. Friendship becomes more than an idea, it is embodied in Samwise carrying the ring for Frodo—by carrying Frodo himself—when he had no more strength to walk toward Mount Doom. Hope is not just letters stacked together, it is Sam seeing a single star through the clouds and realising that the world is bigger than just his or Frodo's bit in the story; bigger and grander than Mordor and him-who-shall-remain-nameless. There was still Beauty outside that transcended, it brought Sam’s mind to the meta-story in which he and Frodo were but small characters. Beauty would outshine and outlive the world of Middle Earth, even if the quest failed.

Creativity begets. Creativity inspires. Creativity gives us a tangible understanding of intangible ideas. Creativity changes cultures—moulds minds.

I write with a score of good thinkers, theologians, historians, fathers, mothers, friends, and fellow Believers. I firmly believe that many of them are shaping, and will shape, the minds of the next generation(s). Yet I posit that those who will shape hearts, imaginations, and minds in this and future generations are the prophetic poets. These are the story-weavers and song-writers who both let us feel and give us the embodiment of ideas and ideals. They intertwine Truth and Beauty naturally, artfully. The story is the main thing and Goodness drips out, unforced. The creativity of past poets, painters, and musicians is still life-breathing into us. Let us create in whatever way our hands and minds find to do so. Who can tell what story we will encourage or inspire in someone else...

_________________

1. Wain, John, as quoted by Bianca Czaderna in "Who Were the Inklings" at firstthings.com

2. Bradbury, Ray,  Something Wicked this Way Comes (New York: Harper Collins, 2013) 18

* Aslan in The Horse and His Boy

Undone...

'Thread by thread I come apart, 

If brokenness is a work of art

Then surely this must be my masterpiece. 

I'm only honest when it rains,

an open book with a torn out page 

and my ink's run out. 

I wanna love you, but I don't know how...' 

—"Neptune" by Sleeping at Last

I get hung up on these lines, because they make sense of me, of life in this season. I often feel like an open book, but one missing pages—or the ink for the empty pages. I need that ink to explain myself chronologically—or just logically—to folks sometimes, and it has run out, run dry.

Yet it was the last line that stabbed my heart, because I've been feeling like that with God in this season of life. I want to love Him, but I don't seem to know how. I just know I keep failing. And if I don't love God well, how will I love people well? Doesn't loving—for the creature—begin with being loved? And doesn't that mean being humbled by Love enough to receive that precious gift from the Giver of all good things? 

Really, when all is known, isn't He the only One Who can prepare us to receive the love He gives? Do we ever do anything? He makes us vessels to be filled. He fills us. He runs out through our cracks—over the lip of us earthen jars—onto others. It isn't us. It never is us. It's all Him. Always. 

But He chooses us to be those ready vessels. He chooses us to be conduits of His love and creativity. Even though the echo of love, creativity, and Beauty is dim—poorly reflected through us—somehow He seems to delight in that reflection, no matter how grubby it is. 

Does that ever amaze you? It amazes me. It humbles me. Because I know myself... How could He be pleased with the flicker of an echo of Himself that shivers through me? But He is. 

Woe is me!

I am undone...I am flying shrapnel shards. O God, hold me together! I come back to Him. Because He is the Love that creates us to hold love—and to be held together by Love. 

Such a mystery and a joy, this. He is our Great Lover, meeting us in mystical union—the weaving of our body, soul, and spirit into Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I want to throw my hands over my head, over my face, over my sacred places to shield myself from this invited invasion of the realest One splintering my shadow-self. Finity cannot contain Infinity. Time has no hold on the Timeless. Flesh as frail as mine cannot contain a particle of the Spirit of God. 

How can His Spirit dwell in me? I must cramp, confine, and frustrate Him. I must necessarily shatter as He enters, my ink spilling out, dripping all over. And then He re-forms me; makes me new. He doesn't rebuild me as I was, all fragile and wispy—He begins to make me a solid home. He makes His dwelling, finity expanded to hold the Infinite. Not contain, but hold. 

I cannot contain another person, but I can hold their soul. A soul can be knit between two distinct persons. I cannot contain another person, but I can hold their hand. O God, make me strong enough to be empty hands, cupped to receive the outpouring of Your Spirit! It is the Spirit of God who empties me; shatters and re-makes me; heals and makes me whole. It is the Spirit of God Who is the fluidity of Love pouring Himself into me, over me, through me, onto others. 

'Thread by thread I come apart...' And He makes my brokenness a work of art—makes me His masterpiece, though I don't know how to love Him. Though I try and fail. Love takes me apart, stops my striving, hushes me... He unwinds my threads and weaves me into His tapestry, His story, His art—into Himself. 

I am undone.  

                            I am remade. 

I am still me, but woven so tightly into Him as to be both found and lost; a piece, yet so intertwined that I am inextricably linked to the whole. 

                                                                    I am made whole.


O Love Who will not let me go—though I let You go so often—I want to love You. I just don't know how. O help... I don't know how. But I want to.