Cracked Apart

Good Friday. I woke up thinking of the song called 'Beautiful Scandalous Night'. About how it's hard to understand just fully what Jesus has done for the world. About how grace brings you to it anyway, and enlarges your little Grinch-like heart and makes you really alive with the fullness of it.


In the last week I have been reading The Screwtape Letters once again. I read them before and was shocked to my core. Last week I knew I needed it again. Talk about eye opening. And heavy. And real.  It has also reminded me of the brilliance or writers in the past, of God's character and how astonishing it is that He loves us, and of the indignation you feel when you see you're being tricked. And what it does to you when you see it and know it and change your life's thoughts because of it.


I've said it before, but I'll say it again. God is cracking me apart. It's bewildering, and surprising, and just like God and no one else to seep into the cracks of my life in this way.



 And to want everything, every part of a life. I am once again seeing God in art and history and writing  and life outside and people. I am thinking about change, and how you have to face your qualms about what is before you. I am thinking about the steadiness required to do things in the world and how you extract yourself from those moments at times and take care and refocus. I am thinking about cynicism and idealism, and wondering where the middle ground went there, at least a little.


It was an intense week, a short one, a 'minute-by-minute, help, thanks, wow' week. In which many things were happily done, but not without some measure of frustration. Yesterday I got out of the car, and was carrying a load of papers that had been furiously graded the night before. And I didn't like it. And I said, really loudly in the parking lot, 'THIS TEACHING LIFE...' in some sort of exasperation, though the parking lot is really not the place for that. I was not loving the teaching life in that moment.  I like to stay present as much as possible, but let me tell you I was dreaming about summer and sitting on a patio instead. Or at least the outdoors with the kids in the spring.


After school, I talked with a colleague who has been in the business for 30 years. And we talked about what is built into a teacher that sort of inspires and wrecks you all at once. And what you do with it so that you stay human and take of yourself. He told me I was in a dangerous time, this 6th year of teaching, but I already knew what he meant. It's the time in the job when you wonder if you should do something else or if it will be your career. I think I've gone through this span of time and discovered I'm career here. I could do this for a long, long time.  I like it. 


But if you know that you have to step away from it and respect the seasons. He said his wife won't let him make any big decisions about life in March. He's just too depleted. And then another friend walked by and said, 'I'm in this place too' and I shared my metaphor about standing in a trench, looking at the sky, but standing in the mud.  My life is NOT a WWI trench in France, but every year I think of this anyway.  And it was a happy thing to close the door and hear him say, 'This too shall pass'.  I know it now too, now that I've done this for 6 years.  This job and this life of grace and challenges all at once makes, once again, the word bittersweet especially special.


'When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. And when life is bitter, say thank you and grow.'


I am celebrating the sacrifice of Jesus today, and hope you join me in this wonder about what this has done for a broken world. All around us life can be big and astonishing and 'hard to catch your breath' real. And Jesus is with us. And has come to lift up our heads and make us see more in this world than we could have thought to imagine or know.