Deep July

Stream of consciousness. 

And. Begin.

I drove home from NE Minneapolis tonight and I wondered about God.  Words like mystery and provision and humanity were rattling around in me and I didn't know where to put them.  It reminded me that in some moments this year, God has been so real that I feel He is undeniably in my words and heartbeats.  Other times I've been worn and weary and the path in front of me has felt confused and unclear.  But I know that God doesn't change.  And I'm not asking fundamental questions about Jesus.  Sometimes there is a time to dwell in the big picture thoughts.  But not tonight.

I believe deep down somewhere that I am always being molded into something to express the creativity and faithfulness and character of God.  But the confession is that it doesn't feel like that lately.  At all. 



Instead, it all feels dry and dusty and aloof.  I have had lots of conversations with God this summer about hope.  How it happens, where it takes you, and how diverse it is in the human experience.  We live emboldened when we live in it, even during harsh and unexpected seasons.  I've marveled this year in the people who held it with both hands when they marched through the very worst.  And I've addressed the shock that some people have been on the other end of that pendulum and have not lived with hope.  It begs the question....how hopeful am I?

I feel very human and frail and aware of a broken world.  You'd think that this makes me automatically and perpetually devastated.  But that wasn't the final feeling I had while driving.  I know I am in humanity, but I'm not holding the burden of it.  I believe God knows what He is doing, and there are a million things that connect our moments to other unseen things.  And that connectedness feels very real to me.  Even when tough and terrible things happen, I have come to see that I still believe in utter faithfulness from a good God. 

One word tonight thought lingered longer than any other.  It was 'moored'.  I don't know how moored directly connects to anything else I thought about while driving, but that's the sort of abstract evening it's been.  I had no problem accepting it. 

A few months ago I was internally taking stock of what it meant to be moored to good things.  Can something be unmoored though?  It can.  I looked it up tonight.  That word is defined as releasing a ship from all but one anchor.  To release something from its moorings.  

Despite living in the middle of a large country without any direct and tangible understanding of oceans and seas, nautical language makes sense to me.  It feels like a paradox to be surrounded by farmland and want to use language more often fit for the sea.  Maybe I should learn to sail so I can actually use these terms in some part of my own life.  I should at least be taking some vacations to the coast.  (Hello, recently relocated Connecticut friends..?..!)

All of this said, to be moored to something (or unmoored) is a very clear nautical thing.  

I think that deep July for a teacher can be a time when you stop and think about your world in a way that is completely unknown (or at least silenced) in a month say, like, November.  Good heart work is happening in me, and of course it's not always comfortable.  But looking honestly into the things that were good, bad, and ugly about my way of life in the last year is healthy and good and completely imperative for me right now.  In deep July I can think about what I am moored to and what is effectively supposed to be swept away too.  This does not only fall into the life I have as a teacher.  It's more about what Jessica is moored to.  When that is refined and readied, everything else finds a place.  Busy Miss Christians included. 

Feeling frail is never comfortable.  I've already written that, but I felt it twice, in an equally weighty way.  It's a reoccurring theme here.  And frail is probably not even the best word anyway.  Broken?  I guess just very human.  I, teaching history, do a lot of conversing about humanity, but even that is a vastly different word in comparison to the word 'human'. 

Humanity is a different word to me altogether.  It can seem so noble.  I hear lots of people talk about teachers affecting and influencing humanity.  Of course I hope and know this can be true.  But honest classrooms feel human.  I am looking at fallen humans, and am one of those fallen humans myself.  Different story.  What is concise and beautiful about humanity?  It is 'otherness'.  Something removed and beyond that is set apart for analysis.

Just now I didn't mean to claim the nobility of humanity.  I meant to say that I've been feeling very human. 

In this week, I've been cracked open again by grace and knowing Jesus and remembering what it means to be redeemed.  I mean, really remembering it.  Accepting grace is so easy but so monumental.  When we are are honest, don't we all feel this?  We all want to think that we can participate in an earning or striving of some kind that can bring us back to God.  You see the beauty of God and your way back to it seems like it must require some kind of achievement.  It's easier to want to add our little part. 

But it's all Jesus who does this for us, and this conflicts with our upbringing in a world that says 'There is no free lunch.  Suspect much.'   This conflict of two angles always feels steady and obvious to me.  This week it is making me land and dwell happily near the words.....

How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure


Grace is true freedom, peace, and understanding of self.  It's also the truly connected part of teaching my subject matter, because even while I am talking about wars and disease and corruption, God's connected grace-filled presence is seen in history. 

This post is a confession of the good, bad, and the ugly.  It comes from a human vessel I aptly and shortsightedly considered yesterday to be a 'decent little cottage' (until C.S. Lewis set me straight again).  And, despite the world's message of achievement in atonement, it is also the declaration of faithfulness and sufficient grace from Jesus. 

To a wretch who is His treasure.