Where I Am

Hiatus over.  Hiatus done.  I have returned to things public, because vulnerability in this lens is actually very good work for the soul.  Sometimes, as you know, I agree with a lot of people who feel that the internet is overwhelming and strange. 

But I am compelled to write for God, for myself, for others.  That's more of a heartbeat in my life than most things.  When I pay attention to this, things flow.  When I don't, things get stale. 

To date in January I have filled 114 pages with single spaced thoughts.  In a word document.  There it all sits, in a word document that waits for me alone.  There is something exceptionally comforting about typing thoughts and ideas and words into such a small, reserved space.  You edit yourself for good reason.  You are not all things to all people. 

But there is also something brave and undeniably true about sending them out into the world as well.

Often in my life I have linked my most core, real thoughts to imagery of the sea.  Why?  I never know.  I did it last year at this time A LOT and this winter season is no different.  It’s winter, but sometimes I think about rain and storms.  It’s winter, but there are days when words come to mind that speak of what is really far away. 

Anchored things.

By the shores. 

Being wave-tossed. 

Shipwrecked thinking. 

Floating instead. 

Navigating. 

The furious love of God (an idea from Brennan Manning) as this calming and wonderful thing, even as the boat is tossed across the waves.   Hold on tight.  God loves you.  That’s what I hear when the world wants to crowd me out and God still wants to talk to me.

Your ship coming into port.      

‘He stilled the storm to a whisper. The waves of the sea were hushed.’  I cannot tell you how many times those words have been on my breath and in my heart as I live out these recent days. 

God is in me.  God is in the sea.

All of this speaks to me, and of course if you’ve read anything in these posts, you’ve seen this before.  But I heard it again at Hiawatha last weekend.  Repetition is so good.  The Gospel repeated, repeated, repeated.  It is life and breath and peace.  It is so good.

So today, on a ‘fairly-wracked-with-questions-and-thoughts-and-ideas’ kind of a Tuesday, despite the affairs of the day all around me, I am here, and I’m thinking about water and the sea.  Mostly this morning it came to me in a song. (See above.) 

Poppy, yes, but still really comforting. 

Somehow today I am on the edge of a precipice looking down, and it’s a little scary and sobering and still also very good.  It’s life in a very real form in front of me.  (All this from someone who is unavoidably afraid of heights.) 

Or this.  Lately in the life I am doing, I also feel  that I have just finished climbing a very large mountain.  And there I am at the very top, and it’s brilliant and almost too good and too much.  And the wind is whipping all around me, and there’s a big, wide feeling of being very small and that I’m still somehow, right there, despite the chilly wind, going to be ok. 

In these places I am looking for God.  And I am finding Him. 

God is wild and free and adventurous and certain.  God follows through on his promises.  That’s how I felt about Him this morning. I woke up with a thousand things in my mind, and ‘Hurricane’ came to mind, and the day loomed large, and I felt like the good little mess that I am. 

I think we also call this a ‘glorious ruin’?  Yes, that’s right.  We definitely do.

 I am in a little school all day, telling kids about history, and I am thinking about the brilliance of God through time.  He marks time though he is eternal.  He meets us in frailty, even though He is the strongest thing I can imagine.  He finds you in the hurricane.  Hence, I love the lyrics of this song.

It is very refreshing and ‘keeping-the-soul-aloft’ and perspective giving for me to write about God and what He does.  When I don’t write words about life happening and how God is in it, I become stale.  I become afraid of things that are really just me.  (‘Do you really know what you want in life?’ ‘Do you really want to write?’  ‘Something’s not ordered enough’…)

Enough of that.

I, after 114 pages of single spaced typing into a word document, realize my own frailty.  And it’s good to say it here, and to say it to you.  I, like everyone else in the world, am a mess.  I wasn’t trying to hide it overly much, but I certainly wasn’t trying to SHARE it.  And there’s a noticeable difference there, let me tell you.  It opens up your life and your world when you live more freely that way.   It points to the things you're all about, and the things that have changed you.  Messy is good.

I’ve experienced it many times and I’m experiencing it again. The Gospel needs to be lived out on repeat because people like me are frail and need to hear it over and over again.  I find this so relieving. 

  There is a side of me that is formal.  There is a side of me that is not.  Sometimes, when I am too enmeshed in the world, I become a pretty crappy version of a perfectionist.  (Seriously, I'm not even that good at being a perfectionist.)  It’s learned behavior.  It’s not my most energizing moment.  It’s not creative.  Let me say, it can be for some people, but it isn’t for me.  I confess this now.  But, amazing shock of my life’s story, grace is in this place for me. 

The Gospel is real and fresh again, the waves of the sea are hushed, and God has met me in a rainstorm. 

That's me today.   It’s snowing outside.   There are students in uniforms and there’s a bell schedule and I’m talking about pre-Civil War politics in one class and major inventions of China in another.  I smile, for real, at these people and pray for them inside and navigate all of these things that make me someone’s teacher.   But on the inside, where I think and pray, there’s a hurricane and God is meeting me in the rain.