Where is Time?

Where is time?
Does it live on the bottom of a well,

the bristly back of an elephant,

or under furry-soft moss along a fallen tree?

Does it crouch in the crevices of caves,

under the eaves of fairy cottages,

or over the smile of the man-in-the-moon?

Where is time?

Is it tucked deep in the heart,

with old memories of lost love,

and ambitions that have crumbled?

Is it hidden in the mind,

trapped in formulae and fancies,

buried under long-unused ideas?

Where is time?

Does it flit, forever beyond our fingers

outstretched, fleet as the wings 

of an owl or the feet of a fawn?

Is it running like swift spring streams,

chortling at us from just over the next rise,

or peering down from the treetops?

Where is time?

Does it hide in an hourglass 

or stuck between calendar pages,

awaiting freedom by the flick of a hand?

Is it waiting to pounce upon us,

springing on our vulnerable souls

to carry us away at the end of days?

Where is time?

Living in the hollows of longing 

and in the halls and homes of dear friends—

in children's laughter and delighted hearts.

It hangs on the tip of the crescent moon,

dripping over us in flickering shade

and sweet scents of summer hay fields.

Where is time?

Deep in the wells of our belovéd's eyes,

blue, yet flecked with one rusty speck

and over-full of sorrow and kindness.

It dwells in worlds pressed between 

the pages of books, and in the notes

of a bird's song, evensong, all song.

Where is time?

In the pockets of jackets worn on 

autumn hikes, full of leaves and pine cones—

and in brimming cups of fragrant tea.

It crowds in cookie crumbs shared

with family and friends, and spills

over our tongue, savouring memories.

Where is time?

Settled in the silence of a misty forest or

with a comfortable friend, and in the cries

of gulls and the sweep of crow's wings.

Under every dew-encrusted blade of grass,

crowning headstones, rippling in sandstone

and in the shore's ever-lapping waves. . .

Where, oh where, is time?

Somebody Loved

  Rain turns the sand into mud

    Wind turns the trees into bone

Stars turning high up above

                 You turned me into somebody loved

— The Weepies

  

Maybe it's the lateness of the hour. Maybe it's the weight of sorrow from the last two weeks finally breaking in. Maybe it's my lack of sleep. And maybe it's just truth hitting my unguarded heart... I stumbled across this song tonight, sitting in the soft twinkle lights of my kitchen. And now I find myself weeping as I listen on repeat. 

So much is held in that tiny line, "You turned me into somebody loved." Not someone lovable. Goodness knows all of us have moments, hours, whole seasons of being unlovable. But when someone loves us, even in in those seasons, well... We become someone loved. Not by anything we've done, but because someone makes the choice to love us. And that choice shapes who we are. 

And maybe I'm weeping in my kitchen because I've lived my whole life with people who love me. Knowing God loves me. Not everyone gets that—always knowing they are loved. And when someone does really, truly love them, it transforms them into somebody loved. 

 

Maybe I'm letting the tears flow here in my kitchen, because I also know that love for the first time. I haven't dated many men, but the ones I dated in the past, while I knew they loved me, never made me feel like somebody loved.

However, those words pierced my heart tonight because they resonated as utterly true. Nick has turned me into somebody loved. Maybe because he sees me for me—not as a project, not as an accessory, not as a sounding board, and not as an ego boost. I don't exist to highlight his story. He just loves me. 

I've always been loved, and I don't even know how grateful I am for that incredible gift...until I see the fractured lives all around me. Until my own world cracks. I've always known my parents' love, my sisters' love, God's love—I've never known life without their love. I accidentally take it for granted. I don't mean to, and I am deeply thankful for that constant love... It has made me who I am in so many wonderful, healthy ways.

But I lived so much of my life without Nick's love that I can see the difference between who I was before and who I am now. There is a different kind of comfort and confidence that comes when you are turned into somebody loved. 

As I listen to this song, I think of a young woman, neglected, abandoned as a child. She is out in the cold, on the streets. She has been used and abused. She is skittish and gauche. And then, someone comes along and loves her, even when she is graceless. They don't love what she could become, they just love her. . .as she is. And through that love, she is changed. Because how can we not be changed when we find that we are somebody loved? And yet, it isn't who-we-will-become that the person loves. It is us, as we are—messy and ridiculous—that they love. Certainly this can happen in non-romantic relationships, too. But there seems to be something sweeter when this change comes though a spouse (or an almost-spouse). 

My my writing skills are dusty, but even if they weren't, I really can't gather into words what that two minute forty-one second song says so simply and profoundly.

All I know is that being turned into somebody loved is a miracle—a gift from God.

____

1. Somebody Loved lyrics © Deb Talan Music, Steve Tannen Music

2. Photo by Tuva Mathilde Løland on Unsplash

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. . .