On this day in recent history:

December 2002:

When we see a flaw in our person, in our humanity [which is one big flaw all wrapped up in slimy skin and internal organs], we recognize our need to change. But when we see a flaw which refuses to be changed, it becomes a vice. Guilt is like that for me, the thing which needs constant tweaking, continual maintenance- grace is the thing that I struggle hardest to remember and need constant reminding of. Perhaps yours is identity; finding your persona not in who you are or what you do, but in Whose you are and what He did. Maybe you struggle with pride; laying aside all of your talents and future aspirations for what you shall be in life and just simply being.

I don't know, but it has been my observation that because [once] we have put our finger on that one thing that demands constant attention, focused realization and continual change, we begin to work hard on it. We begin to become a bit obsessive about it and some might even think too consumed with maintaining a certain spirit. But eventually, this one vice, this habitual sin, becomes indiscernible to the world at large and this is the thing that others look at you and see as your identity. When perhaps it isn't, perhaps you still need to wake up every day and remind yourself that you're forgiven or you still have to count to ten ten times a day, but the fact of the matter is, you've worked at it and it's evident. In fact, you've worked so hard at it, that it has become the thing that people will look at you notice, not as a vice, but as a virtue.

December 2003:

You want everything to be special, after all, it's your last time here. You want it to be different somehow--in some ways commemorate this last time for a threesome to gather together for two years. A threesome. This threesome. You want it to be filled with all the inside jokes you've learned and all the funny stories you've shared. You want it to be focused on the past and how much fun you've had and how much you've learned and how much you'll miss each other.

But it isn't any of that. I mean, it is a little bit, there is always the small corner of your mind reserved for 'leaving' thoughts, but other than that it's normal. You laugh loud. You whisper conspiratorially. You duck your head, blushing in any other group, but not here, not now. Not with these two. It isn't more special than this summer, in the booth pegged as ours in Sergies. It isn't more special than lazy Sunday summer afternoons, watched by strange men on bicycles. It isn't more special than all those road trips with two favorite allies. It isn't better than all of that. It's just normal. Normal and right.

You want everything to be special, and then you realize, it is. Savored and special. Different and distinct. Us together. Yeah, the last time for a long time, but together.

December 2004:

Aren’t there rules about things like this? Feelings like this and thoughts like these? Isn’t there a handbook full of cute anecdotes and catchy phrases and practical how-tos for situations like this? Isn’t there an old wives tale or some soothing salve to make occasions like these somehow a little more bearable, a lot more resolving? And if there isn’t, well then why not? Hasn’t this book been written a hundred times before and hasn’t history repeated itself well enough to leave well enough alone and only pick on the big guys? Or at least someone its own size? Why does it choose to remake and reinvent history with a new batch of unsuspecting prey every few years? Why us and why now?

There aren’t answers and there won’t be, I guess. Trial and error and hindsight and by accidents and mistakes and completion are all part of our lots in this journey. The moment one figures it all out is the moment another one is embarking on that same journey, apt to walk the same path and make the same mistakes.

The only thing that hasn’t changed isn’t a thing at all, but a God who delights in doing new things, looking to old paths, leading with little children and confounding those same children with the crowns of grey hair and ancient wisdom encircling them. He is a God of paradox and promise, sufficiency and surprise. He is a God worth our meager praise and our empty hands. And He is a God who takes our ‘I don’t knows’ and our ‘But waits’ and shushes them with a finger in the right direction.

December 2005:

I delight in your loyalty, more than your sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. Hosea 6.6

Sometimes obedience and sacrifice look like the same thing, or at least they both result in the same thing. Maybe that's why I get so confused, mental elastics playing gymnastics with my intentions. I try to do the right things, honestly, I do. And most of the time I end up doing the right things, which is why, I think, I end up more confused than ever when the results are exactly what I wanted and the accompanying feeling is never what I wanted.

I sacrifice always. I am obedient rarely.

Sacrifice requires careful analysis of material, fuel, and result. Obedience requires careful hearing of the Lord's voice. Sacrifice demands things to be given up. Obedience almost always results in things to be gained. Sacrifice is easy for guilty bystanders to see and note. Obedience is almost never seen or noted. Sacrifice is what those ignorant of God's sovereignty do to reach Him. Obedience is what Abraham did to commune with Him.

Abraham was fully aware that his sacrificing Isaac would not result in a more intimate relationship with the Lord, his somehow attaining a status quo with I Am. He understood that sacrifice resulted in a decrease of him and an increase of God, but that was not the end result, the primary goal. Abraham grasped the concept that God was not a thing to be reached, but a relationship to be had. He understood that obedience would put him into a position where things could be heard clearly and blessing could be had.

We often times fall into the trap that the more we sacrifice to God, the bulkier and greater He looks to others. He is not hungry for our overflow, our meager dinner scraps and pious offerings; He wants to lend to us the whisper which leads us to repentance and brings us to the throne in constant obedience. This is what empties ourselves and it happens almost without conscious thought.

December 2006:

I'm not sure where everything changes, or how. Why it is that I'm really still thinking about the same things I was thinking about four years ago and when I'll think about anything new. Or whether I should at all. Whether we just keep regurgitating lessons and principles until someday the dross is gone and all that's left is a pure reflection of Christ. I wish it were sooner, rather than later.

But I'm ready to meet December of the next year with purpose and humility, and plenty of cleaning supplies. This life doesn't promise to be free of its messes and failures, but He promises to be near to the needy and that is what I remember most in this season.

I leaned against the doorway of his office and listened to him do what he does best, at least with me. He's done it in a myriad of places, a street-corner at midnight, a car by Ives Park, on the phone with me in another country, he calls me out--lifts the veil I've grown so accustomed to wearing that my real face is foreign to me. He listens to me try to articulate what is really on my heart, but hears what really is on my heart in spite of my confusing spew. Every time, one or both of us find tears in our eyes, he because he thinks he's hurt me by telling the truth, me because how can people love me this much?

"It sounds like to me that you've been disappointed and that's the root of this, all of this."

And he was right. Again.

Suddenly the veil was lifted and all the attempts at being holy, being above disappointment, being better and bigger than life's given lemons--I was found out. I am finding out. That's the root of it, alright. I didn't even know I was disappointed. I didn't even know that all these circumstance around me were crushing my soul deeper and more deeply into the ground. And sure, the treasure is deep and the earth is fine, but I feel like ground good for nothing but a cold frost and a long winter. That's the truth. Really.

Today in church the wise men were the topic of discovery. The fact that they found God in the midst of a stable, in the midst of disappointment. That the heaps of straw and lowly habitation of a King didn't dissuade their intentions--they found the Lord in the middle of it all. And I wept, my head in my hands, and my heart on my sleeve. I've been disappointed and I haven't seen the Lord in the middle of it. Instead I've tried to play optimistic, paste a smile and hope that if it convinces others, it will convince me too. And it's worked.

But I've been found out and now I'm finding out.

The achy feeling of the habitual winter flu has touched this person's joints--it explains the mood and tiredness of the past few days a little more easily I hope. So I curl in a fleece blanket, accompanied by a little sister, a dose of medicine and a favorite movie, and wish away the headache and sore throat.

It's not just the cold though, mind you, it's a multitude of things weighing in on a discontent soul. Decisions, circumstances, dreams, desires, talents, responsibility, experience, and hopes--all these things that I know are within the hand of a sovereign God, but feel so heavy in the hand of me. My favorite line from this favorite movie, "I should have been a great many things, Mr. Major," is the line that comes most quickly to my lips these days when presented with question we are all asked from kindergarten on.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

It takes a different shape these days, since graduation is the change most pressing on my schedule. Sometimes it is accompanied by the wish that I should just come home; other times it is accompanied by the encouragement to explore the world and all its depths. A few times it has been sidled next to a exhortation to hear the Lord; sometimes its only companion is a nod and a smile--the questioner has been in these same shoes before.

It's not that I don't know the things that I want, I do. I have clear ideas and plan Bs and Cs and a plethora of options and intentions galore. It's that I've learned the hard way that my plans are rarely God's plans and hardly ever the things I end up doing anyway. It is easier now to, like David, pick up five stones and trust that one will do the job.

But today's job is singular, and tomorrow's too: To do the will of my Father. Perhaps someday I will look back at my life and agree with Josephine March, I should have been a great many things. But if I can only look back and see a common theme of steadfast obedience I think that will be a more pleasing option to the Only One I want to please.

"God’s purpose is to enable me to see that He can walk on the storms of my life right now. If we have a further goal in mind, we are not paying enough attention to the present time. However, if we realize that moment-by-moment obedience is the goal, then each moment as it comes is precious." Oswald Chambers

I'm never sure what to write when the things in me are too fragile to touch, let alone articulate. I am consistently honest, a friend said tonight, to my benefit or my detriment, honest still. It's true. I'll always share whatever things pulse through me, with whoever will listen; pride of that sort is rarely an issue with me, I'm far too prone to stumbling to care about blushing anymore.

But sometimes when the thing the Lord is teaching me is fragile and isn't fully formulated or understood, I get insecure. Because maybe even though I really, honestly and truly want to practice what I'm learning, maybe I've got it all wrong--and the goal is to be right, isn't it?

For the past few weeks I've been thinking about the church from Revelations, the one who lost her first love. I've been thinking about the disciplines of the Christian life. I've been thinking about I Corinthians 13. I've been thinking about love. And if that isn't fragile, what is?

I am too often the one who pushes for discipline, for strict training, martyrdom of the intangible kind, beating my body into submission, sort of Christianity. I lose the movies, the music, the party, the dating, the clothes, the lifestyle, the friends and it is no loss at all. I don't even miss them because I'm so earnest in my desire to be radical, above reproach, and a step ahead, that to miss them would hold me back--Hebrews 11, the people who left their country, is my resolution.

But lately, going through the motions, cleaning out the spiritual closet and finding myself motivated by nothing more than discipline and principle, I remembered the people of Revelations, the ones who lost that first and fervent love. And I realized I'd lost it. I turned to what is commonly cross-stitched on every fabric surface in your local Christian bookstore to find it again.

Love is patient. Kind. Not jealous. Not boasting. Proud, rude, or self-seeking. Love is not easily angered, does not keep a record of wrong. Delights in truth, takes no delight in evil. Protects, hopes, trusts, perseveres. Love does not fail.

I am those things, I trust, a good percentage of the time. People tell me I am, so that's all I have to go on--since, if I were to trust my own head, I am those things none of the time. But I am rarely those things because of Love. Whether love for the individual toward whom I am acting, or the Lord. I am those things because it is right to be those things. Jealousy? Root it out with immediacy. Unkind words? Try not to even think them. Delight in truth? It comes naturally. I've disciplined myself to be those things:

But they aren't motivated from a sense of love. And that's what I'm learning recently.

I've returned home, here for a month. In this time I'm attempting to return to some other things too. Like love, for instance. The kind that never fails, even when I am far too prone to doing so.

He asked what I wanted, what I really wanted and I couldn't answer him. It's too complex, too big, too much of everything I can't verbalize. I waxed philosophical and offered specimens of principle and hope and all the things that sound pretty on paper. When I was finished but not ready to wipe the disguise off my face and heart, he asked me again what it was I really wanted.

I want to make paper airplanes and sell them for money on the streets of Brazil. I want to sleep on a park bench, not so I can say I did, but for the experience itself. I want to climb Mont Blanc and swim in Greece. I want to stand in the middle of a field and feel the wind push me back, back, back. I want to live in exotic villages and I want to live in a suburban cottage with two kids and a dog, and dinner on the table by six. I want to brush the hair off the foreheads of children in India and I want to write about the look in their eyes. I want to love not the world and I want so desperately to acknowledge that love calls us to the things of this world. I want to stand on the Golden Gate Bridge and I want to hang-glide off a spoke of Lady Liberty's beret. I want to wake up surrounded by mosquito nets and disease and know it's where I'm meant to be. I want to read voraciously and justify it with perfect grammar and bifocals. I want to sit on a pink vinyl stool and sip chocolate milkshakes. I want to wear calico. I want to speak three languages with ease. Or more.

"Really, I just want to do whatever comes next." I said, thinking that would be sufficient.
It was, I guess. He stopped asking.

With distance being my friend and time being my lot, I'm given the vantage of a thousand miles and old Chinese proverbs. I'm far from my bedroom, my green quilt, blue sheets, and orange Nepali wall-hanging. I'm far from a group of friends who are finished with finals and work and spent the day playing in the woods. I'm near to a family who burns popcorn and laughs really, really hard. I'm close to a baby I'm glad I get to meet now, when he smiles and coos, instead of when he was a fussy red-faced newborn. I'm far from the familiarity of my own house, its smells and its sounds, creaks of a second-hand washer and dryer. I'm near to a woodstove next to which I am accustomed to standing in the winter months. I am near to a voice on the phone today, someone who is always so excited to know that I'm home, even with a brood of boys clamoring for her attention in the background. I am far from two neighboring apartments, housing a slew of inhabitants who feel like my sisters and brothers. I am far from a three mile radius of Walmarts, Bilos, banks, and Blockbusters. I am close to nothing, really, here.

Except time and thought. And some really great people.

The house has quieted down. Remnants of chimney fires, tree decorating, impromptu cinematography, New York Bagels and family trailing in the familiar creaks of an old and comfortable house. I am home.

I am bundled in a down comforter, freshly done talking to a friend about something the Lord spoke to me about this afternoon while I sat for a few minutes in my favorite Potsdam spot. I think I thought coming home would be a placebo, a band-aid, an answer to the swirling mess in my head and heart. I think I thought that coming home would provide the solutions to the questions and remind me of who I am and Who I am representing. I think I thought that coming home would help me to resettle my foundations and replant my feet somewhere sure.

But I knew Sunday morning, and so many, many, times since then, that none of those thoughts were really the issue at all. And today, walking into familiar places where I once belonged and felt belonging, the library, the halls of the English Department at school, the coffee shop, the park--I realized with a startling clarity that none of it felt like home any more. And in that disconcerting feeling I heard God speak:

It has the stench of the world on it. This, all of this, God said to Abraham, as far as you can see, is yours. It's your home. And still Abraham took the lesser plot and gave the better to his nephew. Because he understood that this world was a meager trade and a mere glimpse of something better. He understood that even the best still tasted of less, so settled for the least of all so that there would be a constant reminder of the goodness to come.

I guess I keep thinking, like the boy in search of an adventure, that stability, home, settledness, and certainty, will be my portion someday. That even a single girl can have a home and dishtowels and company on the weekends. I guess I keep thinking that I can someday have the constancy I see in other's lives. I guess I keep thinking, about the things that the people of Hebrews 11 didn't think about. They thought of Heaven and that's it. And as long as good was attached to the stuff of earth, it would never be good enough to call home.

So. I'm home. Sort of.
Mostly I'm just here.
Passing through.

Yesterday I sent an email to a friend who's on the other side of the world, some city in China better left unnamed. I said something about never staying in the same place twice and post-it note reminders stuck to God's forehead. I said stuff about foreign soil and how everything really is, because none of it is really home.

Last night I swallowed the cost and the time and went to see The Nativity Story. I bawled. Not cried, mind you, but wreaking sobs that hurt my heart. I recommend it for the fresh realization that the King of Kings arrived in the lowliest of circumstances. And what is my life that I think it cannot be useful for the Kingdom?

Today I walked out of my last class of the semester. I suppose it should be this exhilarating feeling--finishing. I suppose I should feel on top of the world and ready to take it on, and ready to spread my wings and fly sort of feeling. Some of my friends were celebrating this class as the last class of their undergraduate career--I have another semester before that feeling traps me.

Tonight a friend called and told me to find the moon. It took a few minutes to find a place high enough, but I roughed the shivers and the walk and it was worth it.

In three days it will be my twenty-sixth birthday. I'm not one for birthday accolades or fishing for greetings and such. The only reason I mention it is to remind myself and every other idealistic person out there that even though really none of the things I thought I would accomplish by this age have been accomplished, all the of the endeavors on which I've embarked have been the sort that cause me to scratch my head and question my ability to see straight and walk straight, but have also caused me to be glad that we can make plans, but our hope is in Him. Hoping in time, circumstances, or hope itself yields fruit of a dissatisfying sort.

This month at home I'm promised that we'll put the heavy on the contents of this Tupperware bin in the corner of my bedroom. It has slowly been filling with options for post-graduation: Grad schools, job openings, teaching positions, non-profit writing opportunities, and the such. Thrilling stuff, I know. It will no longer be a stack of options soon, though, it will be a stack that contains the determiner for the next chapter of my life. Scary.