Category: Uncategorized (Page 16 of 71)

Yesterday, at school, I felt that plexiglass feeling again….that thing that threatens to take me down at times for no reason.  I remembered something that quickened in my spirit as truth that I’d just heard.  All of life is a battle.  All of it.  Each small moment.  Some in the same room as me, some who heard those words, found it hard to say “yes and amen” to that?  But my bones jumped at the truth.  I get that, I wanted to say…..but I felt quiet and wanted to stir the soup in my soul and take it all in.  I didn’t want to expose my plexiglass, which was already precarious at best, to be examined.  I knew it was true.  I couldn’t explain it.

So yesterday, all school spirit week frenzy swirling around me, I felt the sounds and the sights go quiet, like when you’re about to faint.  I followed my friend around from task to task, she and I who buoy one another up, and don’t wear one another out with talk deep and tears that come and go easy. And even in the companionship, there was a haunting aloneness.  Is this meant to be this way, God?  This vague empty that plagues me?  It seems to keep me seeking, searching to fill a void I don’t have a name for.  It drives us to shopping or race car fast calendars of activity or just race cars literal.  But it drives us all in some way.

For me, it’s what makes me crave community, the mortar in log cabins that keeps the layers together. That wants to create homes for hearts.  So I got in my car and pounded out my prayer on the steering wheel.  I. won’t. give. up. God.  I am grabbing hold of Your hem until You answer me.  Until it kills me, which, as an aside, would be fine with me because loving people till I die sounds like heaven  and it nearly kills me as it is.  I’m waiting, God.  I’m waiting for an answer.  It’s only then I realize I don’t know what I’m asking.  I’m asking for permission to give up.  To stop loving. Make me not care, I yelled at Him.  Because it hurts.  Because the enemy of my soul uses it against me like so many arrows to the heart.  Loving spends me.  Not loving bankrupts me.  You have no choice, He says.  I breathed it into you.

These last few months, He’s taught me to love, as in love anyway.  When it’s retracted.  Rejected.  Ignored.  Love.  How, God?  They don’t know me.  They don’t want me.  They don’t care.  They don’t speak to me.  How do I love when someone walks by me.  What is love??

Stop striving, He whispered.  I will show you when you need to know.  I have learned to hear my Father’s voice.  I  have learned what it means to pray…and not stop.  I turn off the light at night praying myself to sleep.  Some nights I wake up and find myself whispering before I’ve had a chance to open my eyes.  I have learned to love the “sound” of His Spirit in my heart.  I have learned.  So I pray.  And don’t stop.  And then He moved.  And strangers came in and left friends.  “Thank you,” they said.  “You have encouraged me so much.”   And a mama came in and told me that her daughter had come home and talked about me.  “She shines, mom.”  And I cried.  Because He knew I needed to know that He lives in me still and He uses me still.

Today the boy appeared in the school store.  Like an answered prayer.  Alone.  Just he and I.  So strange, Father, I hear myself say in my heart.  To walk alongside someone and know them so well.  And then become strangers.  But here he sat, untwisting his Sprite cap and looking me right in the eye.  Not leaving.  I listen to him as he unwraps his wrist to show me his skating wound.  It pricks my heart.  I used to know when that happened.  I used to be there.  Father?  Is this You?  The boy gets up to leave, to go back to class.

“Hey.  You know what?”  I shake a little in my heart.  This is risky, God.
He turns around.  “What?”
“I really love you.”
He nods his head and walks away.
He came back later.
“Um.  I have money.  Are you going to go get something to eat after school since we’re all staying?”
He used to do this all the time, come to me at the end of the day.
Father?  Help me breathe.
“I’d be happy to get you something.  What would you like/”
“French fries.  And…could you get some for my friends, too?”
“That’s nice of you to think of them.  Yes.  I will.”

I will show you.  I will show you.  French fries spell l-o-v-e.   Who would’ve thought.

Trusting that those of you I’ve wounded will see this.  Trusting the raw that my friend and I talked about this morning blesses us, strengthens us to carry on. Keeps us from sinking.

I drove down the road this week playing this over and over in my car. I was so proud of my boy, soon to be gone for a year weaving dreams into coverings for hearts he’s not met yet..  I glanced down at the lock screen on my phone and my granddaughter looks back at me, all baby pensive, and I marvel that I find myself a Nana.  I wear it unreal right now; because she’s far away, her creation and her birth, from where I live and my head struggles to take it in.  My China girl here with me; my how she causes me to catch my breath.  She’s smarter than me sometimes and I’m okay with that.  She and I, we live next to each other comfortably most days, but we’re so different; one of us all logic and algebra, one of us all whimsy and thoughts on a loop in the brain.  I’ll let you consider who is which.

 My Montana boy, he calls me some days and lets his deep voice roll out of the phone nice and easy and my eyes fill with tears every. single. time.  So proud I am of him.  He makes his way on his own, quiet, steady and doesn’t concern himself with gathering “things”.  He’s seeking.  I can feel it deep in my bones.  It’s like that when you give life to someone in the beginning.  Your veins still pulse with that gut knowing.  He’s rethinking God but he knows that I pray for him and he’s okay with that.  “Keep looking, keep looking, keep looking” my heart beats to him silently.  He’ll find his way.  I’ve been assured by his Creator.

My girl just a mama, so wise, she stills my heart.  Her middle name is Diamond, chosen when I saw it carved into her great grandmother’s tombstone, and she has worn it well.  She turns this way and that and His light bounces off of her.  Her presence makes a room bigger.  Her laugh, the pictures she takes, the fierce determination that washes over her eyes when the big thing happens that she’s been afraid of.  She has plans for her girl already.  She and her man, they live intentional.  They will be strong and good parents.

My boy given me from Korea, takes me out to lunch some Sundays and I listen to him try and find his way.  He longs to put something into this world that matters and has overcome giants in his life that threatened to take him down.  I admire him.  But I don’t think he really knows that because he’s hard on himself and it isolates him sometimes.  Here just recent, a man has taken hold of him and told him firm “I want to teach you what I know.”  I see my boys’ face illuminate.  Someone believes he can do it.  And it has made all the difference.

My girl just home from a year of learning how to walk in blind faith, so much stronger than when she left.  No job, no home, no clear plan but that she knew it was a thing that called her out onto the dock.  And she went and He showed her and she learned to see His hand.  She and I, we laugh the same and I look at her and see my faint reflection in the shape of her face and the thoughts in her head and it startles me.  She walks now next to a young man hand picked for her and it warms me to see her heart safe and sure.

My path at school is so clearly carved for me.  My boy sat with me as the kids came by.  “Mama.  This is perfect for you.”  They come in droves some days and sit at my desk during breaks.  “Let me tell you what God did this morning.”  They leaned in eager.  “Ooooh.  I love these stories!”  And I had to stop and clear my throat before I continued.  My greatest joy; to build their faith.  Thank you, Father.  A thousand times, thank you.

So, I hit the loop button and listen to the rain fall in the song and cry..  Because as it is, I’ve learned to hug the me that is hopelessly introspective, that longs to weave things together into a beautiful pattern that means something.  These past months have been plaid, with hellos and goodbyes laying tracks over one another.  I’ve built up and celebrated and torn down with my own hands and learned to forgive myself.  I’ve passed out words like gifts and stuck some in careless like daggers and grieved. I’ve seen impossible happen and learned to believe in it and He Who creates it.  I’ve learned to embrace the me that seeks to go deeper, and not apologize for it.

I’ve learned how to laugh and cry at the same time because blessed is He Who gives and takes and the maker of this girl raining introspection.  Come and stand beside me.  I will love you till it hurts.  But bring an umbrella.  🙂