This comes from a brilliant little moment in a C.S. Lewis book. (Do you know it?) I've got this tiny sentence on my desk at school this year, and I need it so badly because it encourages the life I want to live. I like it because it's simple.
And simple things are favorite things.
I think that whether or not people like to admit it, this courage is what everyone needs. More often than anything else, the strength that follows 'Courage, dear heart' is the answer to what they are praying for. It calms what rattles, and it comes from Jesus, who is so good. I cannot say enough about the goodness of Jesus to me, and how often in the last few weeks and months I have felt that in the core again of who I really am. I always wish I could say it better. Above everything in this world, it is truly the loveliest thing I can think of.
I have needed it, you know...tidal waves of bravery and courage and rock steady thought all week. I am feeling this 'from all sides', which is what I tend to say when I really mean that life is deep and unavoidable and very good. Sometimes I say it when life is so rough it's like the wind was knocked out of me and it's hard to see straight. That's what I mean by 'from all sides'.
Yesterday I saw these pictures, and these too, and again, I saw the brilliance of the world I'm talking about. But also, they were awful, like it took my breath away to see so much of the hurting world in picture form. I know that even something already done, way back in 1945, can tip me over inside. I forget about time and think instead, 'Awful or amazing, it happened to someone.' Then I remember that it always makes me long for a place I call Home, and that is probably the point.
I write about the feeling of life a lot because it fascinates me. Being a person is fascinating, right? To be alive is so good. But it's always more than that. I think life is gut wrenching and beautiful. I see the world and wonder how it got so raw and terrible, and then I cross paths with some sweet stranger and feel the holiness of connection and what God does in people, and life is bright and sincere. Many times life can feel deflating and worrisome, then later, redeeming and illuminating and holy and big.
I want life, unavoidably yes, I want it. But now I feel like I know what living this brave will cost me. I think everyone knows deep down what it will cost to live that sincerely awestruck in such a wave-tossed world. And that is what makes you momentarily afraid.
Thankfully, so much of these real feelings again point to the bridge builder named Jesus.
Let me tell you, the brevity of life as well as the plot line of my own story before God has grown exponentially for me. Never more so than in the last few years. Have I lived? Ouch, yes, wow, I have lived. There's a song out now by One Republic about living. When I heard it on the drive to school this week, I knew exactly what they were singing about.
'Be kind, rewind' thinking must enter the picture for someone like me. (Can you tell? Of course you can.) We all have to do these things that help us cope when we see things with tired eyes, and I confess that I am here. Again. I need to relearn patience with myself because there it is.....a high propensity for empathy and heartache for other people. Aggravatingly so. I sometimes wish I could turn down the volume on my heart, but I know again, that's not the point.
Today, again, music is what helps.
Though I say it a lot, nevertheless, I am new again today with a song. Today I love Ellie Holcomb...music, heart, voice, lyrics. It is so good, and so of my current beating heart. 'Grateful for Your Love' talks about God, who chases people into the darkness to rescue them. Her voice reminds me of how I am a simple, breath-filled glorious ruin right here, right now. No avoiding it. It reminds me of holy things and set apart ways of thinking in a mixed up world. I do feel grateful when I hear it.
Of course I suggest that you listen to it too.
This week in my work though, more than anything else, I am grappling with adolescence. I would be lying and saving face to say otherwise. My students carry so many things, and sometimes I walk down crowded halls at school and just feel it. They're so obvious in some of this pain, and other times scarily secretive instead.
Sometimes, like today, the teaching heart feels like the worst kind of tired and I momentarily want to be rid of the sorrow of it. I don't want 'life from all sides' in my vocation because right now I am in the thick of it with kids who are sometimes difficult, even when they're also perfectly lovely. They're teenagers in the throes of something I've happily left to the late 90s. But I look them in the eye and remember and know. So I have to quell my own sometimes tired heart, choose to be the adult, and deal.
Deal. Swiftly, sometimes fiercely, lovingly.
I pray a lot in those halls at school because teachers are called to correct and encourage. There is so much power in these moments with people who are trying to figure out how to grow up. And half of the art of these years with them is to find the moment when they need one or the other. Or, you know, both. Usually it's both. And how am I really supposed to know which of they two they need first unless I pray and get fierce about the right things?
I find that the most bittersweet times I have with students are in the middle moments. It's not in front of the entire class, 30 people at once listening to me talk about old stories, but in the moments when it's conversation one-on-one. Or when they dare to sass back and give me one of those awful teenager looks, which brings us very immediately to a conversation in the hall. Enter the aforementioned 'holy fire'.
'Courage, dear heart.'
'You chase us into the dark, and Lord, we're grateful
You captured our hearts with your love, O Lord, You are faithful
Nothing we've ever done was too much for you to handle on the cross
We're grateful for Your love'
Breathe, right? Be kind to the frail little heart. Pray for a while without an ache. Or, you know, write at a coffee shop and listen to Ellie Holcomb sing forever and forget it all for a while. Forget the teenager look and the stank eye and the fact the someone today (or a few) didn't wear deodorant in class. March is dealing with kids, being overwhelmed but reckoning and aching and turning the volume down on your own heart. And somehow, miraculously, not giving up on them or yourself.
What I didn't know in a younger time was that I'd have to be all in, all heart, in order to get to this real understanding of teaching. I didn't know back then that I would have to seem tough on the outside and be fierce about certain things but not others. The stuff you need to be fierce about is not what you imagined. And vice versa. That sometimes I would be heartbroken and it would involve me falling on my face too. It would involve grace for myself, because my soul would be tired about my work. But isn't vocation tired in certain seasons? I think it is. A younger self wouldn't have said that so plainly, because she would have cared more about her pride. Well, obviously, no longer.
A lot of life is about bravery and 'courage, dear heart'. A lot of it. Not just for the middle school teacher in the trenches of March, just barely hanging on to a clear-eyed gaze and legitimate sanity, but for everyone.
Sometimes bravery is the steely-eyed gaze that gets you through having to deal with adolescent boys. Sometimes it's facing your tiny little heart. And sometimes, 'Courage, dear heart' is just taking a breath and choosing to live, moving on assured of the happiness that goes along with doing the very next soul kind thing.
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