Today I fumble with excuses, mine, theirs, ours. They feel like gravel in my mouth and I repeat them, sure that repetition will make them more palatable.

We were not made for this, I finally land on. This, I know deep within me, is the only truthful excuse.

We were not made for this pain or this reminder. We were not built to be so resilient. We were not created to block these blows, holding out arms in defense. We were made for the shelter of wings and garden gates and fruit kept far away. We were made to endure pain like soldiers, but not for it. It is not the carefully prepared cuisine of our Maker--it is the result of sin and with every sin we creep closer to that which we were not created for.

What feels strained and strange, awkward and alien, is. I am a stranger and an alien and I am unaccustomed to the treatment of a mere mortal. I was created for So Much More.

It is this that I stop on tonight, sitting in the corner of a living room alive with carols from the baby grand and Christmas cookie leftovers. We are singing about angels bending low and midnight clears and we say these caviler words because it is Christmas and we do:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

But I am quiet here because I am hearing. It has been hard, doing that for which we are not created: sin and strife, suffering long, and at war with men; it has been hard living in two thousand years of wrong, rumbling so loudly we could not recognize a real love song if we tried.

I don't know what the angels think of us, those who haven't fallen to Lucifer's depths, those who spend their eternal existence in worship and light doing that which they were designed to do. I think they sing, but they also laugh at us mortals. I think they may mourn, too, and say, "Don't you know? Don't you know what you were designed to do? To spend your life doing?"

We weren't designed for this, I say back to them.

And so we lift our eyes, for two thousand years more, and listen, try to hear what comes upon a midnight clear. What comes so small, so discarded, so Holy. What comes to do what He was meant to do and does it fully. And so we wait for that day, that eternal day, when we will all wake from death and this constant pursuit of holiness.

And hear the angels sing.

I'm trying to not let the weaknesses show. We're human, after all, made of muscle and flesh and all things real. Weakness is real. Equal in value to strength. Without one we are merely phenoms or failures.

The truth is that I am weak in so many areas. And faith is all of them. "Lord I believe! Help my unbelief" seems to me the most trite of confessions and requests. To claim one thing and ask for it in the next breath seems to me that someone had their portion control a little confused.

Did he have it or not? Can you have it and not at the same time?

And so this is what I think about the past few days. Follow my thoughts, if you will:

If I am on a train that seems to be derailing, my first instinct is to jump off of the train, when shouldn't it be to figure out how to just get it back on track?

And why do I feel so often in a state of derailing? Why do I constantly feel as though every step forward means that tomorrow, or the next day if I'm lucky, I feel like I've taken two steps back?

Why do I feel as though this Helper of mine, who I've received through faith and the laying on of hands, is illusive when I need Him most? When I need Help, He stands on the sidelines, arms crossed and cocked eyebrows surveying the scene. I'm derailing, He's observing.

I think about Peter today. Thinking he had it in him to stand on water, to walk on waves. Flailing out of the boat, firmly set on the fluid beneath him, surprised at his faith, his belief. And yet, a second later, in front of an observing Helper, he begins to sink.

But here's what my thoughts are followed with: that observing Helper does more than just see, He says "Come!"

Come! to the sidelines, Come! to the frontlines. Come! be refreshed. Come! get back on track. Come! be rested. Come! be strengthened. Come! and go again. But just come.

Lord, I believe. I do. Today, right now, this second I believe. But every second is followed by another second and, Lord, I need your help to keep on believing. It doesn't come naturally to me, like weaknesses and flesh. It doesn't come easily to me, like grammar and good lemonade. It isn't part of my spiritual make-up and it doesn't make me invincible.

And all this lack makes me aware that trains derail and so we don't put our faith in the train, but in the tracks. They know the way home. They're pointed there, in the direction of the One who says "Come!"

This gift for this day. The life of faith is lived one day at a time,
and it has to be lived--not always looked forward to as though
the "real" living were around the next corner. It is today for which
we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.
Elisabeth Elliot

Originally posted April 4, 2008. But learning again today.

Ernest Hemingway said this: The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

I still don't understand what it means, but it stays with me.

This week I've been talking to broken people. I've been a broken person. Sobs that shook me were evidenced the following morning in red-rimmed eyes. I listened to friends tell their months of heartbreak in hour long phone conversations. How do we recap a lifetime of hurt? How do we recap a moment of it? We say that we share in one another's sufferings, pass the cup of brokenness, but who among us knows it acutely the same? It just helps to be heard, I think, it just helps to say.

In the past I've had the words and answers. I've been known as the holder of the words. Not anymore. I say to one who was brokenhearted yesterday that I don't have the words, just that I love her and that's all I know. I used to think that wisdom was worth more than fine gold, but now I'm finding that the poets and apostles were the right ones: Love is the greatest all of these. But such as I have give I thee.

I don't like losing my eloquence and I don't like being broken. I don't understand why we are in a world with pain and suffering and why it only gets worse. But I especially don't understand how we can be strong at the broken places. Hemingway's theology was skewed to be sure, but he may have gotten something right here: because brokenness is a given, Christ became sin who knew no sin so that we could be strong at the broken places.

It is sin that breaks me, mine, yours, and ours. It wrecks my insides and throws me into a torrent of doubt. It is sin that cripples me: pride, jealousy, resentment, fear. My great sin is that I do not see a whole picture. Like Eve, I bank on a tree laden with an instant fix to an eternal hunger. I only see in part and my part is oh so much smaller than His great sovereignty.

I am seeing, now, a piece of what Isaiah saw, in a year of brokenness, among a people of brokenness. Not just a king or a lord, but a Savior, in a time when no one needed one, their merits still rated on a law system. He saw a piece of holiness, just a part. And what this world had broken in him was touched and empowered. Who will go? I will go.

From brokenness to brokenness in brokenness, I will go. Because this world breaks everyone, but we are strangely strong in those broken places.

It would seem that moving as often as I have the stuff allotment would be smaller than most people. And it probably is, really. But it also seems that every time I move I end up sorting through the same things wondering "Do I need this? Really need it?" My general rule is toss first, regret later. But there is a small cardboard box that has seemed to make it through a slew of moves, growing a bit fuller with each one. It's marked "Treasures of this world" and when stacked with other boxes in storage marked "Linens," "Books," and "Kitchen stash" it makes me realize that the other stuff is just stuff. That box, though, really holds the treasures of my world.

On one side is a constantly growing collection of cards. Some kept for their art, some for their words, some for their occasion. A few I snagged from the basket next to Andrew's casket. A few traveled internationally, finding me in far away places. Some shout congratulations and heartfelt pride, some provoke tears and thanksgiving, some regret, one in particular probably shouldn't have meant much--we'd only just met, but I kept it, and now I'm glad I did.

I tell myself to throw them out, rid yet another box to tote around to yet another home. But I justify keeping them by throwing out something else instead.

Here are some things I am having a hard time justifying keeping:

1. A box of CDs--aren't these archaic? Shouldn't I purchase an external hard-drive to save them on and give the CDs away? This poses another question, though, if I give them away, does that mean i don't technically own them anymore and should theoretically delete them from my hard-drive?

2. The bible given to me when I graduated college. I'd have given it away a while ago, except it has my name in gold on the front and a nice inscription from Dr. Conn. So much for regifting.

3. Speaking of things given to me when I graduated: do we keep honor cords and tassels these days? When I younger all I wanted was a tassel to hang on my rear iew mirror, but they're both illegal and completely uncool these days, so? And honor cords? They're pretty all smashed together in a plastic bag, but they stink of a trophy I wish I had worked less to earn.

4. Giftbags. The only time I use them is when I'm really, really in a pinch because I like wrapping presents. I like how wrapped presents look, okay? So I have a slew of giftbags that are very pretty---and very, um, useless. Anyone want them?

All of this, though, is getting me thinking about a lot of things. For another post.

They say you grow used to it, chipping ice and driving slowly, bundling up and waiting for a hesitant spring. But I never have. So it settles in, slips silently invading every crevice. I wake to everydays, routine coffee and routine routes.

I get stuck behind the street-sweepers of winter, the ones who don't clean up garbage, but clean up something heaven sent. And maybe this, too, is heaven sent--this winter of the soul.

But I don't want to grow used to it.

They say that the elderly have more wisdom than the children and I can only trust that it's true. From this vantage I only see myself growing more stupid, not more wise. And perhaps that's what Oswald Chambers meant when he said that "Your growth in grace is not measured by the fact that you haven’t turned back, but that you have an insight and understanding into where you are spiritually." I feel insightless and prone to misunderstanding, but perhaps that's the way to wisdom. Ask me in forty years.

I feel recently like my spirituality is in constant hibernation. Burrowed under folds of safety and wool, hunkered down for a long winter. Insulated and insular. Both/And. Disconnected.

Last week someone handed me a book, part of me grasped for it--maybe this contains what I need--part of me groaned: another book? Another answer? Another reply to this reoccurring problem of sin?

A snippet:

"One of Satan's favorite strategies is to come up with a close counterfeit of an important truth and allow the Christian community to spot the error. Christians then become so committed to staying away from it that they miss the truth it distorted."

"Connecting is not the only necessary ingredient in powerful relating, but it is central. It is the core good news of the gospel. Why? It's what we most what, what we most lack, what we most fear will never be ours."

"When you see me struggling, realize that my worst fear is that I'm nothing more than a struggler, that nobody can see anything deeper in me than my sin and pain because that's all there is, that my only hope is to sin less and to somehow feel better. Don't put yourself under the pressure to figure out what I should do. That will confirm that my only hope is to do more right things. I've tried that. it doesn't work."

And here you have the three bullet points that back me into my corner:

Distorted truths causing unrealistic legalism.
A fear of never connecting with anyone, really.
Pressure to know and do only the right things, over and over again, with no real ground taken.

I am beginning to see, to undistort, to connect. To not do things because I am pressured by myself or others, but because I am convinced that all truth is God breathed. That when He breathed on new creation, calling it good, He wasn't calling the law or the cross good--He was calling life good, new creation good.

But now I've grown beyond the walls
to where I've never been
And it's still winter in my wonderland

Jars of Clay

We sat across from one another, drinking coffee and shifting intermittently--subjects and positions. She is the first person I knew from this cold north, and she is the reason I told myself it would be okay to live in a place like this. I didn't know about things like grace and goodness and death and finality then. I just knew that this family had found simplicity and I wanted a piece of that handpicked blueberry pie made from scratch.

We sorted through the things that have been tumbling around inside of her for years and me for weeks--things I haven't dared to whisper aloud because I've learned the hard way by being a part of the problem and not the solution. We prayed, tender words that felt right, maybe the first right things in a long time. For me at least, I can't imagine for her, she is much better at being right and feeling it simultaneously than I am.

I am just a child, I remind myself. 28 years on this earth have taught me that. I am just a child, I remind myself. Life in Christ has a way of putting that in perspective. Galations 4:1-7.

A few hours later, sprawled on another sofa, she transposing music into different keys, me transposing my day into thoughts, I say "Just please pray." "Well, I'll pray that God's will is done. That whatever is best would happen." And I say back that what would be best is if this lease I just signed would last, that I could live in this new home for a long, long time. That I could unpack and BE. That I could sort out and throw out and invite over and leave unlocked and open wide and secret my life in a home of my own for a season. "Well, I'll pray that you won't move again until it's the right time."

Our lives are full of right times, not wrong times, as I've previously been under the impression of. I have been convinced that there is a ruler reserved for me, that the moment my hand reaches for something, it will be knuckle-slapped back. And hard. Why? Because it has been before and I have no reason to assume that it won't again. It used to be the family joke that the slew of broken wooden spoons in the stone-crock were all because of me. Things haven't changed so much, have they?

But I know that there are right times and only right times; God is not the author of wrong times, we just can't see it all as clearly as he can. What felt right three years ago and then felt so horribly wrong a few months later, is now, in hindsight, so right. What feels wrong now, so upside down and messed up, I can only hope will be the most right thing I'll ever see. Isn't that what a miracle is? Something gone horribly wrong so that Glory shines brightest?

So then he told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead, and
for your sake I am glad I was not there, so
that you may believe. But let us go to him."

He laughed at them. For their sake he laughed at them, glad that he wasn't present. Because there was so much more. And who would have known had not untimely death visited so blatantly as that?

So God's will? It is that we move in right times. In all times. In every time. We state the unfortunate and move forward, expecting more.

On Sunday morning I arrived late to church, handing out excuses like the seventeen hour drive home from North Carolina making my head spin and my morning slow. I crept to the front row, where I usually sit, and listened to a favorite guest speaker deliver. He titled his message "Christ: The Sabbath Rest" and by the end of the sermon my head was in my hands, tears tracking a path down the length of my brown boots.

I don't cry in public. I shed single tears, when I am praying or when others are praying, when something heartfelt or particularly emotional happens, when I leave people I love or when they leave me, but I don't cry. Whether it is because I disdain crying or because I am jealous of those who do it freely, I don't know. My pillow would tell a different story, or perhaps my car. They know better.

But sometimes my weakness overwhelms me. Sometimes my humanity fences me in, like a cowering pup, and I am left shell-shocked at who I have become. Or maybe who I've always been.

There is a verse in Philippians, chapter 2, that teases me and repulses me simultaneously:

So then, my beloved,
just as you have always obeyed...
work out your salvation
with fear and trembling.

I balk at fear and loathe trembling. I am afraid of being humiliated and tremble at the thought of being made weak. But I am weak. It is this that I am finding recently.

Paul wasn't so concerned about the fear or the trembling, though, I don't think, as the prerequisite to salvation worked over. The preceding verses tell of a Man who obeyed threefold, humbled Himself, became obedient to death, even death on a cross. They tell of a Savior who took every step of obedience to the next level.

I am no fool: I stop when it hurts the first time.

So here we are told to work out our salvation, the great work that was finished on the cross, the ongoing process of sanctification, with fear and with trembling. We are told to keep on keeping on. Because it will hurt. Because it is work. It will be take the utmost of our strength. It will deplete us. It will drive us back to the cross again and again and again.

But fear and trembling are not the mark of the strong, they are the mark of the weak. The one who knows he is weak and still obeys the upward call.

If art is expression of passion, then this piece of work is pure art. It is beautiful. Timely. Encouraging. Wrenching.

And we are part of it.

I Am Second.

When I say that I am doubting things, please believe me when I deliver this caveat: I am not doubting the personhood of Christ or my salvation or the importance of local church in building the Kingdom of God. I do not doubt that the gospel has the power to save or that communion has the power to convict or that baptism has the power to deliver.

What I am doubting and what questions pulse through me all have to do with the practice of Christianity, not the core substance of it.

I know there is kickback when we question these things. A dear girl asked me today, "Did you have any regrets about...?" And I was able to say no. Not about that. In fact, it's one of the first things in my life I don't have any regrets about--and this turns me about face. What made it different?

And the more that I delve, the more I dig for the treasure, the more I see that what made it different was that I had to walk it out by myself. I had to trust that God speaks to me. To me! And that if I proceed from faith, even when it looks oh so bleak, it is not a return that I am waiting for, but a command that I am still ringing from. His voice. His daily bread.

Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

I am beginning to see, to understand this.

I proceed from foundations, beliefs, mine or others. I walk in blind faith, which we're told is real faith. But real faith, I am finding, is not walking toward something we trust is there even if we can't see it, stumbling forward with outstretched arms to bump into it. Real faith is starting with something certain and walking forward even if we never feel something firm in this life.

It's strange how our sense are dulled by the pollution of the world. A train whistles across the golf course and I've never heard it before; I've worked here for a year and a half. I rarely notice trees or weather or nature anymore. They blur into the rest of my daily landscape, morning coffee meshed with morning commute meshed with checking email and checking voicemail meshed with evening activities and driving home. Someone asks if I am busy and I answer no, just mashed up.

Squeezed inside exact folds, like an accordion gathering dust, everywhere I look is sameness. I used think that I was too in love with the idea of sameness that boredom would never plague me, but boredom is my nemesis these days. I still exalt discipline, though, and routine. I cling to it like a blind man to his systems of success: I can't see, so I feel my way through life.

We were sitting in a booth at Sergi's a year ago, squeezed shoulder to shoulder, they dragged me out on a cold night for a slice and some laughter. He said to me some words I haven't forgotten. I say them back to him two weeks ago, call them prophetic even if they simmered under my skin for weeks afterward. He said more words that I'll call prophetic too, even if it was just smart rhetoric:

"Living in the world, not touching it with the self-righteous gloves of picket lines or christian rock or bread kitchens. Living there... Like Mother Theresa in a slum.. so close you have to scrub it off at the end of each day."

I wrote yesterday that there's some dimness shrouding me, places I haven't been scrubbing off and seeing through. But the truth is that all I've been scrubbing off at the end of my day is just a day. All the grime I wash off is righteous works and good stuff. All I'm dirtied by is the scum of the American Dream, or at least the Christian one. I listed my heart's desires to a visiting minister recently and he asked me what I'm doing to realize it all now. And my answer was a list of my heart's desires, albeit on different soil. His reply? Sounds like you're already doing what you dream about doing. Just keep being faithful.

But my hands aren't getting dirty, they're just getting tired.

And I know there's truth to being faithful, to just doing. But cleanliness isn't next to godliness and I don't know who said it was. Cleanliness is next to righteousness and perfect works and all the answers lined up like leatherbound theological texts. I don't want a clean life or an ordered one if that's the end. I want mess and disorder and interruption and, please, something mess me up! (But not too much. I am timid, you see, and tired of pain.)

I just want my senses to be piqued by the world and the nations and God's voice and the seasons and the color of my office walls.

Doubt is normal, we are told; confusion is par for the course. Growing up is hard to do and I'm not even halfway through. It's not that I've stopped believing, but I have. I say I haven't, but my actions are speaking louder. I doubt.

And the answer, I suppose, is to just keep on. Keep on doing. Keep on saying. Keep on obeying. Trust that what looks like night is giving way to day and that what feels dead is waiting for resurrection. That's all. I'm no stranger to this--this darkness, this circular game where we don't hold hands and collapse in a pile of laughter at the end. I keep thinking that the old answers must be the same answers because 2+2 is always 4 and it isn't up for discussion.

In the past year I've been practicing the art of methodology. Figuring the addition of practicals and principles and summing them into arbitrary ideals of what this life is supposed to feel like, and always coming up short: 2+2 = 3.7 and sometimes only 1.9. How is this strange math possible?

I'm learning what it means when Paul says we see but through a glass dimly: we see only in part. Our answers are still conjugated by decimal points, portions of a bigger whole.

I'm not saying that there aren't absolutes and that we must laud question--it is right that we should know the whole truth and as much of it as possible. But I am saying that my dim glass has kept me from wiping it clean and seeing more. I've grown content with fuzzy ideas and parroting blindly.

There is truth to be had and I don't have it all. I've been judgmental and frustrated and consumed with righteousness, with getting it right. And I'm finally finding that if this part is only one part, and that there is so, so much more, then the old answers might not be the only right answers. Maybe they are just part of it, too.

The earth is hard
The treasure fine.
Dig--Jars of Clay