There have been two puzzles in progress on our kitchen table for the past few days; what began as a friendly competition has turned into a mindless task for every casual visitor to our abode. One puzzle was finished in a day, the other, more difficult, still barely has a border completed. Last night he handed me a piece and told me he'd been looking for its rightful home for twenty minutes and still couldn't find it. I took it and began my quest with a little less gusto than he had for his, but still couldn't find its interlocking counterparts. It just didn't seem to fit anywhere.

Sometimes I feel like there are things in me, like that piece of the puzzle, parts that we know must fit somewhere but seem to be ambiguously floating around with no certainty in sight. We spend forever trying to figure out, analyze, discern, where that feeling comes from and how to work it into our sanctification process, and find ourselves at a loss.

I've been thinking about the weak and the wise things of the world, the things that we know must interlock, must work for us and yet don't. I've been thinking about things held to tightly and principles grasped with fervency. I've been thinking about parts of my identity that I know belong, but just don't work with everything else. Sections of my life that help or hinder me, depending on my emotional and spiritual status at the time.

And the more I think, the more I realize that life, like the puzzle, can't be finished and understood in an afternoon; and it requires the presence of more than one person to complete it. Sanctification, in all its glorious personal dependence on God, is actually a communal project. I'm lost without you.

So, there's a puzzle happening at our house. One on the table and one in flesh and blood. And I could use some help.

I realize that the content on this website has been has the consistency of twelve-grain bread and the interest of white bread; forgive me. You would think that there would be a plethora of things to think about, things to notice, and things to communicate. After all, isn't this supposed to be the best time of our lives?

A friend and I met over frozen yogurt last night and I talked about redeeming the time, not waiting for the world to infringe on us, but infringing on them instead. Not wasting time by biding it, hoping for something somewhere to hit us a home run. As I talked, I felt conviction creeping into my soul--as it is prone to doing. I am learning that part of why we minister to others is because we need to minister to ourselves.

I printed out an email from someone last evening, an email I know stirred up her soul as much as it did mine. Reminders of why we walk by faith and in Whom we trust. And I remembered that there is an address that belongs to me, that is my pulpit and my opportunity to communicate and minister to others and to me. There is this page and this page has been neglected. And I'm sorry for that.

Mostly because in its neglect there is the reflection of other neglagations.

It's time to start stirring myself up, reminding myself of the hope in which I trust, remembering that my current state is not a indication of what the Lord has done in me, that He is not satisfied with my sacrifices, no matter how brave or drastic; He only wants obedience. He wants us to preach to ourselves too.

The trouble is
We don’t know who we are instead.
–Jars of Clay.

I guess the truth is that the truth is ugly. The truth is bared and laid down arms. The truth looks less like majesty and more like frailty. And I’ve been afraid to face it. I know that and that’s why I pretend that I’m okay when you ask; because to say that I’m not okay, or preoccupied with my humanity, is to say that I’m weakness underneath the strength I show.

The truth is ugly and I am along with it.

I’m learning about faith. Faith is the sort of thing that lands us on a summit-like experience one moment and the next plummets us to what Anne Shirley famously called the depths of despair. Faith is the sort of thing that restlessly hounds us to give up self and glorifies itself, if only for the brief moments of elation that result from an answered prayer. We forget answered prayers so quickly because there are always new ones to be prayed.

Faith is not the point—testimony is. I am learning that the truth is that I walk according to faith and sometimes that gets ugly, because I am human and because I only see through a dim glass and a somewhat patched veil. I fog up the glass and patch the veil because to see Christ face to face is to see me face to face—I was created in the Imago Dei Christo—I am infused with Christ. And yet the thing that trips me up, falters my step, blinds my eyes and keeps my nimble fingers sewing the veil that was once torn in two, is that I am unwilling to see my image the way Christ does. I am unwilling to see faith worked in my life according to His promises.

The truth is that the truth is ugly when it is just me you see. But the bigger truth is that He wants it to be Him you see when you look at me.

And that, somehow, makes it beautiful instead.

There is the feeling of dryness, like that patch of skin, irritating and mysterious, that labels the place in which I am abiding. What to write about when all the thoughts pulsing through me can't be voiced coherantly and when all the emotions inside of me are tied to something I can't put my finger on? Trying to find rest in a place like this is hard, not just because there is the humidity and the no-car factor, but because I am never far from the thoughts that are my captor.

I think that it is right that we go through seasons of dryness, a wilderness in Christianese. Seasons where every grope in the pitch of darkness around us is just another placebo for our need to be doing when nothing can be done. I feel like that right now, like every attempt on my part to get to a place where I hear the Lord, not even clearly, just a little bit even, is only so that I can be placated for a few moments and not really so that I can hear the Lord at all. I am selfish like that, it is the mark of humanity on me.

And so we wait. Patience has become my friend and I hold its hand lightly, afraid to demand too much of our feeble relationship; I am much too accustomed to doing things on my own and it is much too accustomed to needing humanity through which to prove itself.

Bliss. Sweet bliss.
I'm home.

I had forgotten how it smelled, how it felt, how it is. I say on our way home from the lake last night that I already feel rejuvinated. Refreshed. New. And early this morning, when she came up to lie beside me on my bed, when we went for a walk, when I took a shower, when I sat on the porch with a sewing box and a fly, when I hear NPR from in the kitchen, when I stare at the wonder that surrounds me and realize that to everyone else, this is just a home, but to me this is bliss.