silver thread of eternity

I think there are little clues, tiny gifts, in life that remind you who you were meant to be.

I don’t know always if God sent them on purpose or if they are simply woven into the eternal world like silver threads through a veil.

They are the signposts we are to follow: This is love. This is purpose. This is home. This is what they feel like, this is what you have been searching for.

I don’t think it has to be like lightning from heaven that changes your life forever. I think it is often the little things.

It is walking into your grandmother’s house, and all is quiet, soft colored curtains blending together and light through the windows, crocheted doilies and the clock that has chimed on the hour for 26 years. And you know what it means to have a home you are at peace in, and you feel the beauty you are meant to see when you walk through your own door. This is what you need to create in your house, this is the home you were meant to have.

It is when you feel the calling on your life, the puzzle-piece place in the world where you were designed to fit. You see glimpses of the things you would die for, the people you wish to fight for, the elements or injustices or visions for this world that keep you awake or bring you to tears or you want to change forever. They are the things that make you feel alive and is the life you were meant to have. This is your vocation; you have found what you love, now let it drive you.

It is the moment you hear from God, visions in your head and words in your mind, and God breaks out of your small rule-bound box. Your friend tells you when a word from heaven saved his life during the war, you speak in a foreign language you were not taught, or the one you prayed for is healed from cancer. Angels whisper to you in that place between awake and asleep, and you let go of religion to see the face of God. This is the touch of God you were meant to know, and the relationship with the divine you were meant to have. Don’t let it go.

There are others. There are moments that show you the love between a man and a woman, the rest available to your heart, the beauty to be found in clothing and paintings and music, the raw power in the art of war. These are the infinite glimpses of eternity.

Hold on to them. Don’t ever let them go. They are the key to abundant life.

For it is in those moments, if we will be quiet enough to feel it and humble enough to accept it, we will feel a sad-sweet longing, a calling to something we do not yet have but know we are created for.

This is our call to redemption, to holiness, and to a world we were made for before evil and pain.

Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said, I will give you rest.

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.
 ― C.S. Lewis

the small frozen bird and the mismatched quilt

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.” 

~DH Lawrence

You long to change your pain into pity.

Don’t.

Feel the pain. Feel all of it.

Let everything happen to you: joy and love, beauty and terror. Feel the weight and darkness, the fear and peace. “Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

When I change pain into pity I do myself a disservice, for instead of feeling, I am fixing. I am saying, I must find a reason for this pain, I must make it Unjust, I must make myself a Victim, I must manufacture a greater story – a Tragedy that will force this to make sense, a silk-patch ending sewn awkward on a denim quilt.

Much would be better in this world if we could feel pain instead of fix it, receive it instead of telling a story about it.

If we could cry ourselves to sleep instead of drink it away.

If we could say, I don’t know, instead of, This is how I’ll change.

If we could allow ourselves to lose our faith instead of holding onto a hope that is dead.

So let us comfort adults the way we comfort children, with embrace and understanding and not words and solutions, in the face of unexplainable hurt.

For once we can admit that life may not make sense instead of forcing a black and white explanation on a Technicolor world, we will become closer to the small bird on the bough, who even in the face of senseless death, feels no need to hate or pity, but simply to live until she is called home.

hope, on sale with coupon

Life is composed of things that are more important than they should be.

You are existing, moving, minding your own business in a black-and-white world, and suddenly something meaningless becomes doused with a bucket of scarlet importance, like a single snowflake on your tongue.

And it feels like hope.

………………

I’m at the front doors of Kroger, shopping list in hand: six apples, some bagels, a bottle of wine. And more I’m sure I’ve forgotten, and more I need that they don’t sell. Where do you buy joy, or happiness, or peace?

Hope. On sale. 50% off with coupon.

For the past year, the colors had been slowly fading from my world like a book in the August sun on a front porch swing. With every day, I had less energy to paint in the color that was draining away or to remember what it was like to see beauty where others saw darkness. Now I was the one who saw in shades of grey.

But sometimes you don’t know what will become color in your grayscale world.

In front of the grocery store doors, a pallet of miniature roses. Cheap green plastic pots and buds wilting from the hot Texas sun, soil dry from neglect and leaves turning brown.

But color.

Green and pink and soft dull white, red-tipped buds that promised to bloom and some that already had. Smeared yellow leaves with purple jagged edges, tips curled down like toes in sand and petals that felt like peace. Long green stems and pink-rimmed buds, bees crawling in dirt like children at play, and as my fingers brush through flowers and leaves, my world becomes a three-dollar rose bush.

And like in the stories you heard as child and you always wished were true, for a moment the curse is broken and my world is drenched in color, and I remember what I used to know: that there is beauty in this world, and to see it is called faith.

That morning, I took a rose bush home.

Hope. On sale. $2.99.

………………

In the end, I believe that life is composed of things that are more important than they should be, like sunsets and love and small red rosebushes.

To see that is an unreasonable thing, an unreasonable happiness.

But it feels like hope.

One second of eternity

It’s the desire so strong it hurts. It’s so strong you almost don’t want to tell anyone about it. You can try to describe it with words like adventure, battle, longing, calling, but that never quite describes it and you are left with a something that is not a feeling nor a word but a shift of your soul.

It is someone is calling your name over and over and you have to respond or you’ll be trapped in a fog you were never meant to die in.

It’s when you feel life's very core, like how glittering music affects you or the mountains, or great beauty or great pain; when a small child dies or when you hear the stories that meant something.

It is anything that makes you feel eternity for one second.

Just one second.

...

Listen to it.

Whatever it is, this soul of yours, this calling or cry or pain or joy, this is who you are. Somehow, here is the key.

The day God said "I'm sorry."

I see pictures in my head sometimes.

Not like full out visions that play like Netflix in my head complete with sound effects and credits that last too long, but more like memories I knew once and forgot a long time ago. They come and go and I know when I’m forcing them. And when I don’t force them they usually show things I don’t expect. And sometimes I know what it means and sometimes I don’t.

One morning I was lying in my bed looking at my ceiling and I saw one of these visions. Actually I wasn’t really lying in my bed looking at my ceiling at all. I was lying on the floor looking at the wall. I was on an air mattress that had a leak, which kind of made it like a slow-motion magic trick because you started the night on a bed and woke up in the morning on a floor. And I was looking at my wall at a painting that was held up by a Command strip, a pink clothes hanger, and packing tape. Except it was falling down, because I guess I hadn’t used enough packing tape.

It wasn’t that I was poor, exactly, but I also didn’t have any money. Otherwise I probably would have bought a new air mattress. A few weeks ago I had seriously considered becoming a breatharian, because I had read about them on the Internet once and apparently they don’t eat or drink or anything and just live off sunlight and air. I didn’t really know how they did it but I thought it sounded like a good way to cut down on grocery bills.

So I was lying there and looking at my painting and thinking about God. I had planned on talking to him but I guess God wasn’t talkative that morning or maybe I wasn’t listening very well, so I ended up sort of just staring at the wall and thinking about God and my life and the air mattress. The day before I had more or less lost my job and now I had two weeks to find a replacement, and for months, maybe four or six or nine months prior, life had been really hard. It seemed like nothing had let up in any area of my life—job, finances, relationships, health, spirituality, infinitely more. I had moved three times, changed lives how many times.

Lost one of my favorite earrings.

I was tired. Not sleepy tired, though the magic-trick mattress was starting to fix that too. But tired of fighting. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been truly happy. I didn’t feel like myself.

But nothing really bad had happened. I hadn't died and I could pay my bills this month at least, and I had a family who loved me and more packing tape to fix the painting on the wall. I was going to be okay.

But I still desperately wanted someone’s sympathy. Just someone to say, I know this has sucked. You’ve gone through more than a lot. I know you’re really tired and it’s okay to be that way because anyone would be after all this. Not someone to tell me how they were tired too, and their life was exhausting too, and I-know-how-you-feel-when-you-say-you’re-done, but someone to look at just my life, and say, it’s been hard.

I wanted God to say it.

But it hadn’t gotten bad enough yet to earn God’s sympathy. And so I lay there thinking about maybe what would be bad enough to be really bad. Maybe my house burning down or my parents dying or losing my other favorite earring. Certainly not just an exhausting six months or losing my job, because I was supposed to run the good race and persevere in trials and see God’s provision and remember he works all things for good and rejoice in all things.

Which I guess I wasn’t doing.

So I’d failed at that too.

And that’s when I saw the vision.

It was short. God just came up to me, and he sat down next to me and put his arms around me, and he gave me a hug. And he said two words.

“I’m sorry.”

God said, I’m sorry.

Not, fix it. Not, try harder. Not, be more grateful or praise me more or look on the bright side. Not, use this for my glory or pray about it or fast over your next step or remember those worse off than you.

But just, I’m sorry.

Sometimes I think God is very different from who I’ve believed him to be.

When Jesus asks me for a drink

I want to hear his voice.

So I wait, and sit, and stare at the window, determined to stay silent until I hear him speaking, hear what verse I am supposed to read, what life-grace is set out for me from the pages of this Book.

And I hear nothing, and Louisiana sun settles toward the land and shadows from pine trees creep across blades of browning grass. And the world breathes out as it waits with impossible patience for a kingdom we cannot quite grasp, fingers brushing the corners of its power, thrilling down to our soul and tearing our heart in two.

So I wait to hear his voice. What verse, Jesus?

4:07 p.m. this afternoon, and the silence breaks, but he answers with a question instead of the answer—a teacher at heart, my Rabbi. What do you need to hear?

I do not know. I have too many questions to know which to ask, journal pages full of scribbled inked-out tangles of four-letter words and too many question marks and words blurred down by tears.

So I say, Jesus, tell me what I need to hear—you know—and he says, you need to hear my love.

And that is when I hear the passage.

Jacob’s well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. 

The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?” 

John 4:6-9

And I am back in November seven months ago, at an upper room in Dallas so crowded people were turned away, when the pastor stood and declared, “We wish to be a people who minister to Jesus’ heart.” My pen froze then, like when I would fall asleep in morning college classes (writing slanting off the page), but this time, I am woken up. Does that mean heresy or freedom?

Maybe it means hope.

Maybe it speaks of a Jesus who is thirsty. Who wants to be heard, who wants something far simpler and sweeter than I ever thought.

Maybe it is the love of one who asks me today not for more tears and trials and frustrated paragraphs of I-do-not-understand, but just one thing.

Just a glass of water.

Just a here-is-what-I-have, with dirt under my nails and a frayed rope at the well, no special skills and just a bucket for water at noon on a hot day, and we will sit and you will drink and maybe we will talk about the parts of life that hurt and that I don’t understand while we get sunburned and dig our feet in the dark-flecked dirt.

Because you were thirsty.

And I gave you a drink when you asked.

I am all right with wind

I am all right with wind.

Wind is the breath of God. It says, a storm is coming, there is change and danger larger than yourself.

Though I don’t think I know what is a storm anymore. I used to think it was when things did not go as expected, but too many times the unforeseen led to more blessing.

And I thought a storm was uncertainty, but I began to realize that certainty is a state of the soul and

not of your circumstances. Life moves forward; you lose things, you gain things. One may not be better than the other. Your plans change, your plans go as expected; both end up all right.

You change and move and it’s not what you thought. So you change again. And you find a way to happiness in that place as in the other.

It is a radical peace, to love the storm. It is not safe, and your bruises show it, and today, you may be tired. But when we say, be safe, travel safe, and pray for safety, we lie through our teeth as heretics. We do not need that and we never did; we need pain and danger and change to be driven to the light-slashed glory that reminds us who we are created to be in a kingdom that was never meant to be safe.

Not even heaven will be safe.

Because God is not safe.

But He is good.

So you the see the wind through the window and you step out into it from the four walls that protect you to your death, and the wind hurts, and you remain alive.

When toothpaste is your only strong point

“Well,” I thought dourly, “at least my toothpaste is still the same.”

Five minutes prior, I had been sitting on the floor, back to my bed, journaling and praying about why I felt so unsettled. Was there sin in my life? Was I trying too hard, or perhaps not enough? What had changed from the times I would feel so rooted in myself and in my Lord?

And as I wrote, sentence after sentence, words uncensored, I realized the answer.

It was uncertainty.

Everything was different now, since I moved to Florida a month ago. Nothing had been left to me the way it was—job, home, state, family, friends, coworkers, doctor, church, schedule, income, weather, spirituality, exercise, pets, hobbies, health—and with my mind unable to settle on even one unchanged element of my life, it floated in some sort of land in the looking glass, unable to find a resting place.

It was like my life was saying, Here, be a new person. All at once. Have fun, goodbye.

I got up from the floor, walked barefoot to the kitchen, and pulled out the bread. Was there anything that was still the same?

Home? No. Job? No. Income? No. Good grief, I thought, even my makeup is different.

I put the bread in the toaster. There had to be something.

I pulled out a plate.

Of course!

My toothpaste. My toothpaste was definitely still the same.

I set the plate down. Toothpaste. That had to be the absolute stupidest thing to be encouraged by in history. Toothpaste. What the heck.

Put the bread on the plate, pour my milk, get a napkin.

Toothpaste cannot seriously be the most unchanged part of my life right now. This is ridiculous.

Let there be grace.

Sometimes when I talk to my friends, and we sit across from each other on a sleepy looking couch with our tea in our hands, I hear stories of frustration or confusion or fear, and a decision needs to be made, I ask them—What would make you feel light?

What would take away the heaviness, the burden? Not that there are not crosses to bear, and that those crosses are so often good, but where is the place for your heart that would allow you to move forward in lightness and hope, that makes you feel not just that you can go on, but that you can go on with beauty?

What would be grace to you?

This is a question I easily ask others but so rarely offer myself. They should have grace—I should not. They should be able to hold themselves lightly—I must live with an iron grip.

But if I cannot extend grace to myself, how can I grant it to others? I have fallen too many times to be offered grace yet again, the lies say. But in this is the ultimate danger, for I either give grace or I do not. I cannot pick and choose the recipients, for grace is less a choice of the mind as it is a way of the soul. So let me first offer grace to myself—to the one who has hurt me the most and is the hardest to forgive—that I might be grace to all others in this world.

I step back into my bedroom, toast and plate and glass. I am glad for my toothpaste, as I am for my life, for much can be borne when you hold yourself with open fingers and let there be light between them.

This is the key to lasting change

This morning I was lying in bed, thinking about the coming week, knowing I needed to talk to Jesus, because I could feel my spirit twisted up inside me. It’s the kind of fog that makes you think so unclearly you can feel it, when you see the lies you’re believing and know they have to leave, but only Jesus can free you.

My thoughts: they are the dirty dishes, the spilled puddle on the floor, the back of the tapestry. They are the real life that I hide, and by doing so, I take my own poison.

So I needed to hear Jesus. There are times I can’t stop hearing Him; this often seems to be around four in the morning, when Jesus seems especially chatty, or, perhaps, I am especially silent.

But it was seven in the morning, and there was silence.

Jesus, I need you. I want to hear you. Please don’t leave me alone like this.

And suddenly, He spoke. He spoke with the sort of clarity that I don’t always receive but desperately pursue, the Voice that cuts so deeply and so unexpectedly that you wonder if you heard it out loud.

This is the key to lasting change, He said.

I waited for the rest.

Be yourself.

It is not that anything is permissible. It is not that I was being told to skip off and live willfully blind to responsibilities or people or truth, for that would be a sort of death.

Instead, what had upset me that morning was expectations. There was the person I thought others wanted me to be (whether that belief was rooted in reality or my own insecurity), and, even more, she—the “me” I wanted to be—was good. It is hard to fight a good idea, even if it does lead to death.

For I felt to get there, I had to run until I dropped. I had to work harder. Be more. Don’t disappoint. Don’t be a failure. Follow through. Be everything to these people you respect. Just thinking about it made me want to give up, made me die a little inside.

And yet, in all that, I still knew who I wanted to be.

I wanted to bring beauty and peace and grace. I want to operate out of the overflow.

I want the supernatural, the beauty, the laying hands on people and healing them, the miracles. I want to see more pictures for others in my mind and words for them in my heart, and I want to my joy to infect the world. I want to hear Jesus’ voice and go into the realm of heaven. I want everything, all the gifts of the Spirit, to see angels and release power and be the most radiantly loving person the world has seen.

I want everything Jesus and His kingdom has to offer. I want the miracles and signs and wonders, I want to see His face and hear His voice, I want to bring others before His beauty and to rescue others out of their captivity. I want to act and I want to fight.

But all of that is the power of Jesus flowing out of you.

And you can’t have Him flowing out of you if you’re not overflowing to begin with, and the overflow comes from His heart.

It comes from spending time with Him, it comes from sitting at His feet: the one thing that is needed. I want the heart of Jesus, not just the actions or the power of Him, for without His heart, I am just a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. To become who I want to be, sometimes I don’t have to do anything more at all.

Sometimes, I just have to be myself. I have to go for a walk in the woods, or rest for a day, or read all night. Sometimes I have to try against all logic and perhaps then to fall, for to fail is not to be flawed. Sometimes I have to follow where my heart leads in order to find that He was guiding it all along to His own.

For in the end, even if He never gave me power, if He took away everything I held dear, if I never witnessed another miracle or saw another vision, but if He gave me His heart, I would be content. For out of the radiating glory of my life would come all the beauty and joy and calling I longed for when I was pursuing the power and the kingdom in itself so desperately; in His heart I find the victorious life that, when I pursued it for its own sake, became a freakish carnival maze of mirrors that leads only to confusion and death.

For while all of the power and eternal expanse of glory in the kingdom is indeed part of His Spirit, His heart is always where it begins. It all begins there, and it never leaves. It stays. You stay at His feet. You’ll stay there forever. You stay in His heart as it becomes yours, as He pours out of you—as He pours out into your life and world and kingdom, He pours out in power and love and grace.

This is living in the overflow.

This is the key to loving without getting tired.

This is the way to stand against the evil of the world without getting lost in the darkness.

This is the beauty that sets the captives free.

With His heart, I will be content.

Only one thing is needed.

Love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  
~Jesus 

Guest Post: Surprised by Time

It was my pleasure to write a guest post for the blog Soli De Gloria on time! This is a subject close to my heart and a subject of both personal struggle as well as victory; I loved writing this piece.

.................................

C.S. Lewis once wrote a book called Surprised by Joy. Sometimes I think he should’ve written a sequel called Surprised by Time. He did allude to the thought, once, however: 

If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Of if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (“How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up & married! I can hardly believe it!”) In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal. 

We are constantly surprised by time, because we are made for eternity. 

So in trying to find “enough time” and create the eternity we’re made for out of the time we live in, we never really live at all. It is not your fault you feel rushed, that time moves too quickly: you are an eternal being surrounded by the suffocating fog of time. 

But what does it get us, all the rushing? Do we ever really get to where we’re going, ever catch up, ever slow down? We hope we will—we lie to ourselves that we will—but we never do, and meanwhile, our hearts are trampled and Jesus fades to the background. “What makes any of us think that the place we are trying to reach is far, far ahead of us somewhere and the only way to get there is to run until we drop?” (~Barbara Brown)...

Read more here! 

 

When Jesus speaks: stories from my life

And Jesus said, ask about her tattoo. South Dakota sky is the child of eternity, just land and sky and land touching sky, with grass turned gold. The gas station off the highway was the only building from here to the horizon, and outside the door, I licked my ice cream, wiping chocolate from my shirt, and listened to the attendant as she took her break. Her cigarette smoke hung flat. And Jesus said, ask about her tattoo. It’s beautiful, I said—what does it mean? And I heard a story of loss and of pain, every color a different death, and a woman left now alone.

And as I heard her story, I saw a picture of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. We sat on the floor, the corner of the church, after everyone had gone home; midnight streamed through the windows. So much shame and so much pain, with broken marriages and hurtful words, of rejection by the church and of forgetting her own worth, and I hated the cruelty of the world. And as I heard her story, I saw a picture of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, a beautiful creature full of hope and of grace. I told her this, and she cried.

And I said, how can I pray for you? A Wyoming trucker, Vietnam veteran, and his semi truck broken down. The gas station crowded, he sat next to me as I ate my lunch from Subway and heard of a life that had been hard and was not getting easier. People mocking his service, wives now gone, friends eternally lost, war nightmares that would not let him go. And I said, how can I pray for you? And he stopped. His body began to shake—he took off his sunglasses, pulled out his gray-worn handkerchief—and tried to hide all the tears that fell. No one has ever made me cry, he said.

And as cancer was destroying her body, I held her hand and prayed. I knelt by her side as three of us women covered her in prayer, each in turn. The doctor had just told her—bad news. It had been in remission and she had seen the hand of Jesus—finally, she was going to be healed, she was going to be free! But it was back, and it was worse, and she was too young to die. And as cancer was destroying her body, I held her hand and prayed. Please Jesus, give her my healthy cells. What grace has been given me, let it pass to her.

And she looked lonely, so I smiled. She was royalty; I knew because she had gray hair. No longer able to leave her wheelchair, she sat in the bead shop, watching the silence, surrounded by walls and tables of purple and blue, pearls that caught the Colorado sun and silver chains two feet long. And she looked lonely, so I smiled. Isn’t it a beautiful day? Do you like to bead? Making necklaces is my favorite, what’s yours? Though her former stroke left the words up to me, the smiles were from us both. After I left the store, a woman ran up to me. Thank you, thank you, she said, for being so kind—that woman is my mother, and though she can no longer speak, what you did means everything.

And my prayer changed to an unknown tongue, and she began to cry. The room was filled with those trying to find their way—the New Pagans and spiritualists and Pleiadians and those desperately seeking hope and truth. This tiny woman sitting nearby was the hardest, coldest, most closed soul I had ever seen; only six inches from me, her heart was galaxies away, and she would let no one through to be hurt again; the strings of advice from the others in the room made her only more cold. But Jesus said, pray. So I turned to her (meeting still going), and I said—can I pray for you? So I took her hand, and I began to pray, and my words changed to an unknown tongue, and she began to cry. She curled up on her chair and I held her hand tightly, and her soul came back from where it had been lost, and she was no longer hard but beautiful. She sobbed in the agony of finally letting herself feel, repeating—thank you, thank you—this Jesus, He comes to me at night, He’s calling me. And I said, yes, yes, because He loves you.

"Stay with the pain"

I was struggling with something recently, and in talking with Jesus, He told me something critical: “Stay with the pain.”

Stay with the pain.

Jesus’ words related clearly to the struggle I was going through, but the concept of staying with the pain soon spread to so much more for me. Jesus not only related it to beauty—I’m to focus on the beauty while staying with the pain—but also began to show me it as a guide deeper into my inheritance as His child. So I asked Him—staying with the pain, does this make me more into royalty—the shieldmaiden, the queen, the life I always longed to live?

And He said yes.

Staying with the pain is about allowing the situation—the person—the struggle—the fear—to hurt. To not run away, to not “deal with it as those dead people do,” as Tyler says, but to allow it to cut right through your heart and drive you to your knees, and to numb it with nothing. Not people, food, busyness. Not devotions, church, rituals. To anesthetize it with nothing, and to entirely, completely feel the expanse of the pain.

Part of my difficulty in staying with pain—whether it comes through fear, grief, insecurity, confusion—was that I felt I was a failure, that I had screwed up somewhere along the road. Somehow I’d taken the wrong path (or been too weak? too sinful?), and now, the pain was driving me back to holiness; it was a sign I was to fix something and fix it now. Do something. Don't stay here. Pain is dangerous.

But then Jesus said, no, just stay with the pain. Just learn to feel it, to not run, and to let Me touch your heart. It’s all right to feel pain. Henri Nouwen said much the same thing:

It is important that you dare to say with your pain and allow it to be there. You have to own your loneliness and trust that it will not always be there. The pain you suffer now is meant to put you in touch with the place where you most need healing, your very heart…

Dare to stay with your pain and trust in God’s promise to you.

In this age of medicine, of Vicodin and aspirin and Tylenol, we have little concept of what to do with pain other than to try to stop it. But what if the pain meant something? What if shutting it out destroyed its lesson, its beauty, its transformation? At the end of the Fight Club scene of staying with the pain, there’s one last line: “It’s only after we’ve lost everything we’re free to do anything.” Stay with the pain. Lose everything.

Jesus, take everything.

…

Stay with the pain.

Photographer unknown

And breathe. Quiet my mind. Breathe in God. Hear His voice, walk with Him. Breathe. And breathe. And stay present. Think of Jesus, always of Him. Always come back to your breath and His presence. Stay present in His presence… always. My mind rushes and whips around in a panic, all the time, develop the internal discipline of the royal. Breathe into the insanity, the rush, the frenetic panic of what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed and done and proved—and stay with the pain. Don’t rush out or into it. Be present.

This ability to handle pain, the staying present—this is the same feeling I get when I think of the shieldmaiden.

That’s what the Lord is after.

Stay with the pain.

Were you sorrowless, I would still love you

"And Éowyn looked at Faramir long and steadily; and Faramir said: 'Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, Éowyn! But I do not offer you my pity. For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Éowyn, do you not love me?' 

Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her."

~J.R.R. Tolkien

The terrible pain of the kingdom of God

It’s the longing that hurts the most, the beauty so intense it will claw your soul to shreds—or perhaps, make it whole.

We all feel this pain at some point. In horses, I am torn by it most in story—in Shadowfax, Flicka, the Black Stallion. In reading about Tsornin and Bree and Hwin. The longing for that beauty, to be caught up in its transcendence, to reach that place entirely beyond words is so deep for a time I thought of leaving horses entirely: the desire for it was so strong if it couldn’t be fulfilled, I wasn’t sure I could stand it.

It’s odd, you know—a beauty, a longing, a glory, a transcendence so great that it may drive you away as much as it draws you in. I am glad the Lord made it that way, because pain—the grief of having lost something we can’t remember having, of searching for the story we were supposed to live and trying to wake up from the dream in which we seem to be trapped—the pain is sometimes more transformative than the joy.

If you’ve ever felt it, you know what I mean; some of you have, with horses, with why you sought them in the first place. It’s to touch magic with horses. Some feel the beauty, the longing, the touch of the divine in other places: my dad knows it in flying, one of my friends in playing flute. Another is gripped by its power in writing and another in filmmaking. They all agree—it’s the same no matter where in the kingdom you are—the same blinding pain with incredible longing, the insatiable desire for the beauty always just beyond your fingertips, the vision of the way the world was meant to be and the life you always longed to live. The transformative power that drives you straight to the face of God.

That is the kingdom of God, after all.

Voice of the divine in a bareback ride

Off to the west, thunder and lightning, but try as it might, the clouds could not fill up the sky with gray. In South Dakota, there is always more sky.

Today was the third afternoon of my bridleless experiment, riding without neckrope, sticks, whips, or anything but myself and my horse; I’d committed to ten rides in a row of this to see if bridleless long term is possible or should stay closed in the realm of the dreamers.

Maybe I’d keep the bridle off for a month. Maybe the summer. Maybe forever. I wouldn’t put any limits on what the Lord wanted me to do.

We face the west, watch the lightning, and Maia snorts into rain-wet wind. Why am I here, Lord? Why do I ride? What am I missing that is beyond just reins and saddles, trot and canter, oat hay and brome grass? There is more—I know there is—there is a reason we long to ride, to be united with the power and the beauty and the sound of hoofbeats in summer grass.

There is more than one reason, actually, but today, there is a specific one: I want you to hear My voice, He says.

And so I listen. And Maia and I set off again, and suddenly, thoughts flood through my mind—sit up taller, look ahead now—yes! and breathe and breathe and breathe. Maia loosens, relaxes, and in just a few minutes, we had our breakthrough: long and low at the walk, stretching, forward, softly bent, and utterly, completely bridleless. I haven't been able to reach that state of beauty on my own. Ever.

In itself, this is not new—to walk with God, to converse about my day and yesterday’s breakfast and the e-mail I’m supposed to send by 3 p.m.—but this is different, now, a God-guided horse training. I haven’t read about that in my books.

But do you know what this is?

This is hope.

"She was, for the first few moments, fearful of her own lack of skill [to ride Tsornin bridleless], and of the strength of the big horse, but she found they understood each other… She felt almost uneasy that it was too simple, that she understood too readily. But she was too caught up in the beauty of it to wish to doubt it long."
~The Blue Sword

When I fly above the clouds

Flying above the clouds is, I think, something like heaven. Under the clouds is the gray and the rain and the sleet and the snow, smog and car horns, barking dogs and slamming doors; confusion, tears, and we see only dimly through the fog. That is our lives, right now—sometimes the sun tears through the clouds in ransomed glory and we remember, for a moment, what it is to have the sunlight on our face—but for now, we are under the clouds.

We go through lives clinging to those faded threads of glory that trickle through the clouds, and we seek to gather and weave them into things of beauty, to cover others with their peace and the name of Yahweh that is written on each strand.

That is when I think of when I fly. Hurtling forward through winter gray, the scream of engines and ears popping, blinded by a fog of clouds for seeming eternity—then! Ripped through the top to a sun of beauty that blinds and ground made of clouds bleached white as a wedding dress, blue oceaned sky.

And to think—this was always here, even on the darkest days below. The sun always was here, the clouds that glitter always here, the land we were searching for always here, though we did not always remember. Heaven always sends itself down to the dark kingdom of man, the sun does shine, and someday we will see.

When I die, I am not afraid, not for a moment, because I will break through the clouds and see the Son in heartbreaking glory and whisper yes, I know You, I have already seen Your face, because You shone on me when I was not yet above the clouds.

When you've lost your story

Deep within our hearts is an aching longing and desire. It is sad to me how little such longing is spoken of; somehow, it seems wrong or frivolous, yet it is a crucial part of kingdom redemption. This desire is endless longing for a better land, endless aching that you were not meant for this country—an aching that drives you to redeem it, to change it, and to make it a little more like home. We will never quite get there, never "quite get in," as C.S. Lewis says, for we know that ultimately sin runs too deep in creation and can only be removed by having a new heavens and new earth. But until that time, we keep redeeming the land in beauty and glory and in our war against darkness.

I feel I need to defend desire, and it is devastating to me that I need to do so. We have learned to destroy our desire, to hide our heart, instead of guarding it fiercely as the wellspring of life and remembering that true desire may be one of the strongest pulls of the holy within our soul.

Desire is feeling so much longing—the longing you feel when you are supremely happy and yet then aching for the eternal. It is the perfect longing when you see the total glory of this world and the incredible magic in it and love it a thousand times more than you ever did before, yet simultaneously feel your heart is being ripped out for the truer land, the clearer Narnia, the redeemed land where that magic would be made perfect:

When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends or as the landscape loses the celestial light...You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. (~C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

That desire is the reality behind every storybook and every fairy tale. Where do we get the ideas for those places, those lands, those adventures? The desire for More, for adventure and battle, heroism and beauty, and a depth so deep it moves beyond all words cannot just come from within us; we know it is true, somewhere, in some world. It must be rooted in reality, as the feel of it is far closer to memory than to make believe, and we are searching for it with every breath we take. We find it in our world, though dimly, though one day those who have lived in Christ’s glory will see it face to face.

Once, I was snowshoeing through my grandparents’ woods by myself. The flakes seemed the size of cotton balls, eternally silent falling, catching on my eyelashes; it was quiet and beautiful and Christmas Eve. The beauty was so intense, the longing and desire to be within that life I always longed to live so strong, I couldn't speak or even think, and all I could grasp was that it looked just like what I thought Narnia should.

And then, I realized, it was—it is. This is Narnia. That is what I sense sometimes, and this is why people are so drawn to magic and fairy tales and unicorns and fantasy, for it strikes a part of us we think isn’t “real”; we think magic isn't a part of this world, but it is. That is why we love the fairy tales, and that is why we love Narnia—because it reminds us of us—of home—of the story we left but once we knew. Because there is magic in this world, there is something so much deeper; there are miracles and true love and mountains and sunsets and families and dreams that come true. It is truly magic, it is another dimension, there is storybook adventure here in this world, but we close our minds to the dimension of adventure and magic, and we do not see it.

I love Narnia because I love the Narnian dimension of this world. We do not have to search for Narnia and magic and adventure any longer, for it is here, and in the new heavens and earth, it will be perfected; it will truly be magic. Now I see as in a mirror dimly, but then, face to face. I feel wisps of the magic brushing by me, of what life is supposed to be like and was like before we fell, before we lost our story, and what it will be like at the end of time.

Windchimes in the night

I

"I'm not ready to die."

In the glow of my nightstand clock blinking 11:32 p.m., I set down the purple pen and the bedside notepaper kept there to record thoughts and images and prayers that flit at the edges of consciousness, appearing only in the filmy gauze between awake and asleep. I don’t want to forget those words, because they often contain truths I don’t realize when the sun is up and there are friends and bills and books. But just before I fall asleep, I drop my guard for just long enough to, sometimes, hear my spirit like windchimes in the night.

And tonight, I realize I am not ready to die, which means I am not truly living.

An hour later, my flowered sheets are nearly ripped off my bed with continual tossing and my Bible lies open to Psalm 61 and outside, a blizzard sets more snow on top of 7” already fallen.
And if I can rouse myself from the trance of what’s wrong to find something stable in this world, something either awake or asleep and not this place of in between, perhaps I will be all right. The snow is falling harder now, at 12:43 a.m., and as a child on Christmas morning I need to be out in it, within the beauty I see. Or within its war, or pain, or fighting, or longing, I don’t know.
I unlock the sliding door, push back the curtain (soundless, now, with roommates asleep), and without thinking, abandon my socks in a heap on the carpet.

Outside. The purple sky is a halo to the glittered white world; if I am trying to be asleep, I can pretend I’m Alice down the rabbit hole, but if I want to be awake, then it is just city lights on city clouds with smog, sometimes, and sirens.

The patio soaks cold through my bare feet, but just wet, not snow, and in one more step, I am barefoot in the storm. The snow over my feet is not as cold as expected; it wakes me from my fog to focus on one thing: ice, slush, April, and what it is to stand in your nightgown barefoot in the snow in your apartment by County Road D.

I wait to hear from God, in the snow, as if somehow it is more holy to be there. And in a way, perhaps it is: it is more holy because I can hear. In the parking lot are seven lampstands, twenty-three entombed cars. I feel snow turning to ice water under my toes and wonder how many millions of snowflakes I have just melted by standing there; each one unique, they say, and I have destroyed them. And the wind blows my hair from its braid, and I wait for God’s voice.

Nothing.

And the silence is beautiful.

There is no less of God in silence than there is in words; there is no less beauty in mystery as there is when all is known. The grass withers, the flowers fade, not one sparrow drops apart from Him, and are they not all clothed more beautifully than ye?

And God does speak.

Because as ten trillion million snowflakes pour from the sky in sunbeams of snow and a thousand land in my hair and my hands and on bare feet and I behold infinity, I hear Him say, “This is how much I love you.”

Standing barefoot in the snow is my small act of rebellion against a normal life. Pathetic, vulnerable, alone, and not enough, but tonight, at 12:43 a.m., it’s all I can do.

And at the end of my path from bed to snow perhaps I’ve walked the way of God.

Waiting for your story

If someday I ever decide to live in one place for more than three months (maybe the nursing home?), there is really just one thing I want in my house.

A window seat.

My grandmother had one in the green-papered room I stayed in as a eight year old, and I’d always clamber up on top, look out at the birch and maple woods, and make up stories of valiant adventure. I was a princess—I was a Jedi—I was a princess and a Jedi. I was being rescued through the glass-paned window—I was fighting some great dark evil—I was riding away on a unicorn.

This window seat was different, Room 220 of Owatonna Microtel Inn and Suites (the room with the Tempur-Pedic bed! the receptionist crowed). The second-story view was of the Fleet Farm gas station and the truck drivers’ parking lot instead of the magical woods with the scrabbling turkeys, but of course I didn’t care, because you can make up adventures about Fleet Farms and truck drivers, too, if you’re practiced enough (and I am quite experienced).

Only I wasn’t making up stories this morning—I was asking the Lord about my own.
Waking the Dead lay next to me, scribbled all over in Barbie-pink pen, bent open to the section on the healing prayer, chapter 8, page 142. The pen marks had paused here as I set the book back down, swirly green cover against flat white sheet.

Lord, what part of my heart is still broken?

I received an instant answer, one word, unmistakable. I continued to question, to search, to let the Lord reach into my heart and tell me why I had not allowed healing there. It had to do with something I deeply wanted, had dreamed of for years.

Why? When will it come? I twisted my fingers into the sheet.

The Voice sliced into my mind.

It will. You’re just not at that part of the story yet.

Sometimes what you want is beautiful and true, a longing the Lord has deeply set within you, and that is holy. The longing for it is real, and it is good. Maybe it has to do with horses or music or marriage, or perhaps a friend or a skill or a dream. Don’t be afraid if it hasn’t yet come. It still may.

Perhaps, you’re just not at that part of your story yet.

Eternity

Footprints through snow, eight inches deep, but the air is too cold to allow water to pool. Just snow—plain snow, old snow—to step through, sink in. Six footprints press from arena gate to ATV-plowed path, and I arrange my feet in them as I go.

Maia steps behind me, chooses one path as I pick out mine. Braided mane, loose rope, and a sparrow picks through hay on the ground.

What are you doing? she asks. Walking to the pasture gate, what else?—but that is the wrong answer.

That is what will happen, but what am I doing?

I am stepping into footprints in the snow.

And when I become present to stepping through snow for no other reason than to be present to stepping through snow, I realize Maia’s breath on my neck and jewels glittering on ice and boots sinking deeper and the weight of the rope on my glove and that someone once said that forever is composed of nows.