Category: Uncategorized (Page 19 of 71)

The school store, where I “hold court”, is a clearinghouse of all kids God ever made.  They are bouncy and shy and sparkly silly.  Some of them come in with no words and take a piece of candy silent and slink out.  Others roar the minute they hit the door.  They know I love them.  I take their candy orders and fill up the bowl to the tippy top and watch them gasp happy when they find their favorite kind.  They are rainbows, every one.

Miss Kaitlyn came in quiet at first, so quiet I barely noticed her for weeks.  She’s as big as a New York minute, barely reaching my shoulder and I’m not giant.  When I take stock, I felt a poise that belied her age.  “You’re only twelve??” I bellowed when I looked her right in the eye and asked her to tell me about her.  She giggled, used to the question.  She and I formed a fast friendship from that day.  She comes in and stands in front of my desk most mornings and afternoons; a start to the day and a period on the end of it.  I have come to look forward to our talks.  I try hard to speak truth into people’s lives as I see it..  Sometimes it’s hard truth meant to exhort, sometimes it’s observation.  “I can see your Creator’s hand on you, my dear,” I told her.  There was an “old soulness” to her that beamed up at me.

Today the tide of kids rushed in after lunch, on their way to class and stopping for a hug and a grab into the candy bowl.  But Kaitlyn stood apart.  She had chosen to go all in with a fast at her church.  She could have picked one thing but she picked a deadly three punch combo; no candy, no social media and an eating plan that consisted of primarily fruits, veggies and lots of water.  “So, I won’t be eating any candy from the bowl for the next 21 days,” she said with no hint of boasting or pride.  Just a steadfast commitment she wanted to keep for reasons  between her and her God.

She came back later at the end of the day.  I told her I’d decided to take her lead and I would fast alongside her.  She nodded a quiet smile and strode out of the store.  As she did, these words in my head followed her.  “Do not let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.”  1 Timothy 4:12

Miss Kaitlyn is just exactly that to this believer, much older than she.  I’m glad she is my friend.

 I sit at my desk at school and kids and parents and staff find their way to me.  I was hired to maintain the spirit wear store.  I’ve a suspicion God put me there for very different reasons.  I am quite literally the first person you see when you walk in the front door, unless I am somewhere else in the building, as I’m prone to be, sitting in on classes, doing a prayer walk, helping in the cafeteria, picking up projects here and there to help a staff member out.  I’d live there if I could.  Honest and true.  I fell in love with the family there the minute I walked in the door on that day in June when my girl and I went to take a tour and laughed at ourselves for the audacity of even doing that.  How did we think we were gonna swing this?  And yet, it felt good and right and we somehow sensed we’d just stepped onto a set of tracks we hadn’t seen coming and wouldn’t have even considered we’d been able to afford to get on the train.

Each day someone sits down beside me in a chair I purposely put by my desk and before I can say “tell me a story”, they do.  And I love it so much.  Because I love them.  I love people.  They are the oxygen to my lungs already inflated with His spirit.  I learn from them.  I enter into their world, eager to look around.  I listen for those “me too” moments.  Today a woman told me about her deep loss, one that still brings pain all these years later, and how her wild and nonsense sort of faith has buoyed her when she expected to sink.  It stung my eyes and pricked my heart.  I know someone else like this and it made me remember what I don’t really know.

The boy came in to reach into my candy bowl today, while my new friend was sharing her story.   It’s been four weeks now, a long time to not speak or hug or touch or look one another in the eye.  I’ve prayed for a miracle.  When I saw his face in the crowd of kids that he pushed through?  I knew He’d heard.  I knew He was working.  I’d kept his favorite gum in a bag in my desk.  Ready to have my prayer answered.  I held it over his hands, fishing around in the candy and let it fall like water.  I caught his smile and tucked it in my heart.  His eyes flashed brief up at me.  And then back down again, unsure. He came over to me.  “Smarties?” he asked.  I opened my drawer and put some in his cupped hand.  Smarties.  The first word he’s spoken to me in so many days.  I’ll take that happy.

My new teacher friend and I sat over our chicken sandwiches today, taking turns crying and laughing.  So real, she is.  I feel myself a tree being planted by refreshing waters.  I think my roots can sink here and breathe strong.  I sense something being born.  We spent a lovely evening at her house just being.  How good it is to “be” without pretense, preparation.  It felt like home for my soul.

I walked through the halls today smiling at kids, fielding hugs from those who ran up to me, high fiving others.  I sat with a young person, listening to their struggle and praying to be a safe place that calls them to a higher place.  God?  You have ordered my steps.  You have crafted new desires for me and are delighting in giving them to me.  You have given me stories to hear and stories to write.  You have written the greatest story of them all straight onto my heart.

that last part was just a nod to Dr. Seuss.  But I’ve just had an epiphany, thank you to my friend who doesn’t know me, Beth Moore.  I’m sitting in my kitchen, first discernible snow of the season falling, my girl fast asleep on the couch from waking up early in search of Advil.  I’m assuming church is out of the question so I go on a hunt for “food” for my soul.  Because I’m hungry in a way that you are when you want something and you can’t figure out what it is but you know it’s not in your fridge, except for the gluten free waffle I found and now eat slathered in almond butter and pepper jam.  But I digress.

I am committed to making what I say, what I write,  be honoring to who and what I write about.  I am equally committed to throwing out my tether.  I chafe at hiding, at pretending, at avoiding, at covering, at running. It feels chicken.  Dishonest.   I don’t like it.  It makes me angry.  I’m angry here a lot lately and have to bundle it up in gauze that leaks bloody mess and lay it at my Father’s feet, sometimes several times a day.  I say this to you because I don’t want this green dress and big dimpled smile to fool you into thinking I’m any different than you are.  My writing is a slice of who I am and I use it to try and create an accurate picture of a girl growing up still into who Her Daddy intends her to be.  I open my window so you can hear my life.  I do it for hope for us both.  Because while I’m angry?  I’m still laughing real laughter and grocery shopping and washing my hair and planting seeds in kids’ lives and checking the mail box and getting irritated at my girl and the point is this.  Car wrecks, emotional or otherwise,  feel purposeless and cause damage to fenders and legs and you find yourself looking up and informing God that, in fact, you disagree with what just happened and why didn’t You keep it away from me??  I have this feeling I’m not alone in that.  And I wanted you to know I’m right here with you.

So back to Beth, my friend from afar who so many times cracks me over the head with that not so velvet hammer of hers, has a series on living audaciously.  This morning she tells us about a man who was exhausted and came in to demand his stew right here, right now and yes go ahead and take my birthright and give me my bowl, which, in bible times was no small thing.  Mind you, this man wasn’t hungry.  He was tired.  The desperate kind.  The kind that makes you lose sight.  And here’s the clincher.  My friend, Beth, looks me right in the camera’s eye and asks….”Tell me.  What’s your stew?”  What is is that distracts you, trips you up, makes your car tires burn rubber?  And here friends, is why I’m angry.

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by Whom we cry, “Abba!  Father!”.  I got scared.  And scared exhausted me.  And I shackled myself to that fear.  And sold off my ‘sonhood’ to eat some leftover stew.  I allowed someone to steal my audacity, my audacious living that I had when I crashed into their path.  Their opinion of me, their fear, their hiddenness, their denial became my stew and it shut my mouth and I found myself cowering under their porch rather than standing on the shoulders of Who put me in front of their car to be the Him in me.  

And I am angry about it.  I’m angry at me, angry at my lost friend for treatment undeserved.  But I’m most angry at my enemy, who is the secret, scoffing, snickering, drooling author of the fear that drives this anger.  I look in the mirror at my still wet hair, no make up,  my hoodie hiding my tiny frame, making me look like a sniveling little ferret. I laugh at myself.  And then I’m angry again.  Just like that.  And I go in and snap at my girl, just woken up as I type this.  Over nothing.  Over everything I’ve written here, which has nothing to do with her.  I will listen ten times over, if I have to, to Beth reminding me to seize audacious living for the One Who rescued me.  Wet ferret head and all.  I will not be silenced or intimidated or punished or shunned into living less.  I will not be shackled to fear.  I am adopted, once and for all.  I will fall all over myself stupid and bumbling but I will continue to invest and risk it.  I will live;  not for my kids or my animals or good causes or what others think or don’t think at all about me, not for the sake of spite.  I will live.  Because I am audaciously His. I will not rewrite my stew recipe again.  And I will keep my dimples.

Beth Moore, Living Audaciously