The Feel Good Folder

I keep a secret email folder in my work inbox. It's named "Feel Good" and I tuck away words of encouragement, thanksgiving, and victory. Some of the emails are letters from family of patients my hands got to care for, and some have nothing at all to do with me. I found my way to the secret folder today and let myself stay there awhile because encouragement is good for my self esteem, and I suppose I needed some of that today. What does it mean to say that a person has "low self esteem"? Perhaps, simply, it means that they're a human? Because everyone has parts of themselves that they don't much like, and who ever lived without a single shred of self-doubt? To be alive is to be vulnerable, and to keep choosing a tender heart is to bear boldly the thousand scars that declare your humanity.

It has been a season of wrestling hard with insecurity and discontentment over desires that have not come to pass. A season of self-doubt and questioning and wondering what I'm worth. Desire always speaks lies  when the object of desire is disordered. Today as I searched the Feel Good folder for some self esteem, I remembered with urgency that I am a daughter beloved and that Jesus is the only object worthy of my desire. I don't need the Feel Good Folder anymore to tell me that I'm worth something. 

You are so loved. Child of God, you are the prize, purchased with blood. The cries of a baby born in a stable sound a war-cry of love. And with each gasping breath on the cross, the King of Heaven makes a choice to stay nailed there. To win you back and to have your heart. To truly see the King is to be utterly consumed by Him. He takes His rightful place on the throne as the sole object of your desire not by force, but by love. There's not room for anything else when you're buried beneath this relentless onslaught of perfect love.

As long as there is breath, He will be the only thing worthy of my affection. Desires fall away as the One Treasure comes into view, eyes blazing with love for me. I'm ashamed that I've loved anything other. What will it take for me to get it? It took His death, and I'm already forgiven because He rose. I'm overwhelmed by the gift I've just unwrapped: an inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven, a right to kinship with the King. My heart is like a child's heart, full of awe and wonder that I get to be a Child of the Living God. And so are you. 

On Babies and Airplanes

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To my future self: 

When you're a mom, pack an extra outfit always. Leave your extra outfit at home never. Never leave home without a change of clothes ever, do you hear me? Read: prepare for the worst. 

There is definitely going to be a time when your baby throws up on you on an airplane and you're riding on a bus to your car with partially digested formula on your shorts (because you thought, just this once, that it would be okay to leave home without a change of clothes). And everyone on the bus is tan and giggly because they just got back from their happy (childless) vacation, and none of them have another person's dinner on their shorts. And you start to think that maybe you weren't in for all of that when two little lines on a plastic stick changed your life forever and that being a mom wasn't your best idea, but it was. Because God. Because God made something out of nothing, you. A new life born out of the intimacy and treasure of marriage. A human being made of the stuff of Real-Life Love that mirrors Jesus. And you get to teach and daily live that Love that conquers the deepest, darkest night. A new life. A new generation. A Son or Daughter of the living, ever-loving God, who will one day grow up to live and to love and to change the world for Christ. And no matter how much vomit you have on your shorts on this bus or how splitting your headache, or how not sexy you feel because you're awkward and you've got this baby weight and a sweaty, clammy, crying oven for a permanent appendage, this is the calling of a queen. This is grace. And it's joy. And it's laughter, especially right now. Especially the vomit and the crying, it's all laughter and joy. And Jesus. And Jesus is always good and always worth it. So take a deep breath and live into this, right here and right now. Grow where you've been planted - let those roots bury themselves oh so deep. Smile. Breathe out the heavy and breathe in the light and lightness of life lived with Jesus in the palm of Maker Father's hand under the Spirit's gentle guiding. Your arms are home. They're home and they're an ocean of love. And that's a grace worth dying for. 

The Way of the Wheat

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I'm holding tight to kernels of wheat, 
Gaze fixed upon golden-yellow
Struggling to breathe against white knuckles. 
They are suffocating.

Until with gentle whisper, 
He names Me. Child. Daughter.
Eyes slip upward,
Locked in embrace with King's burning eyes. 
Those burning eyes wear His heart:
One object.
And I'm lost in the burning;
White knuckles turn pink
 And the wheat-cares slip. 
Once fallen, falling.
And falling, and falling, and falling. 

Porous Souls breathe easy; 
Broken clay jars let light seep through.
Toss me upon the ground
If filtering light inhabits broken jars
And makes respiration possible. 
Gentle Whisper. 
Slow-cracking jar-heart.
Once surrendered, surrendering.
And surrendering, and surrendering, and surrendering.

"And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him." John 12:23-26

 


 

 

Wild, Wild Love

"Unreserved and unrestrained, 
Your love is wild, it's wild for me. 
So I'll respond to give You praise, 
Your love is wild, it's wild for me"

 

His love for me, for you - it's wild and it's violent and it's unrestrained. There's no place He didn't go already, no place He wouldn't go on His grand pursuit of me, of you. Yes, I am His child and He is after me. With His whole heart, He wants us and He must have us. No scheme of the evil one, no power on heaven or earth will restrain this wild love. Do you see it in His eyes, fierce love? Can you feel His blood coursing through your veins? You've been won back from death and now you're free, child of God. And now you're a Son, you're a Daughter, and your life matters because you're on mission to let this wild and unrestrained love pour forth out of you and win lost souls by the power of your Father. That's the power in you, Son. The might in you, Daughter. Do you know it yet? Take a look deep in those eyes, and you will doubt no longer. He is hungry, He is ravenous for your heart. Have it, Jesus. Take all of me. 

Adventure is in the Heart

Image by Jody Johnston

“I pray for you, that all your misgivings will be melted to thanksgivings. Remember that the shadow a thing casts often far exceeds the size of the thing itself (especially if the light be low on the horizon) and though some future fear may strut brave darkness as you approach, the thing itself will be but a speck when seen from beyond. Oh that He would restore us often with that 'aspect from beyond,' to see a thing as He sees it, to remember that He dealeth with us as with sons.” 

- Jim Elliot


My Little Nothing Book

Follow through is not my strong suit. I get really excited about great ideas, but I don't execute well. Excellence in the doing is a practice cultivated and a garden tended, and my shoots are just seedlings. I first tried to keep a diary in Kindergarten. My best friend and I wrote about all the boys we wanted to beat at tag on the playground. When we went to Kenya for a month in the third grade, my mother tried relentlessly to have me write each day about the new things we were seeing and experiencing. I did, for a day. The skeletons of life-recordings are buried somewhere in a drawer. At least ten little books, each with two or three pages written, shoved in the drawer in frustration or boredom after little more than a week. 

I remember the first time writing stuck. It was a Thursday in February my Junior year of High School. Full of too many thoughts to share and disheartened by my inability to articulate them, I started to put them on paper. I loved the way words fit together, and my heart began to sing as my soul found its voice.  Since that Thursday in February of my Junior year of High School, the skeleton drawer has grown flesh and come to life. Writing has become a treasured practice, and no longer just a practice but a necessity for fullness of expression. The words are just mine they're a way for me to tell Him the depths, and it's so sweet. 

I love the way my handwriting feels flowing from my fingertips when I'm in a season of lots of writing. It's as though the letters know where to fall, and they're nothing to look at but they're mine and His and it's home for my soul. I love to watch the letters become words as they seek their own home on paper, to feel the words become expressions of the deepest parts. Oh, how I love my little nothing books. 

Child Hearts and Hospital Lobbies

I'm taken with hospital lobbies. Lately, I'm in the habit of taking a mid-shift wander through the hospital cafeteria and into the lobby, where I sit and gather myself for a breath. For a moment in my day, I'm absorbed into the backdrop and I have no active role to play. And so I watch. The space itself looks like nothing, a holding place for bodies. It's a pleasant space; vaulted ceilings and two-story-high windows lend themselves to natural light. But much is churning just beneath the surface. In the hospital lobby is this confluence of emotional and experiential extremes existing in a space of pristine neutrality. This is the only space in the hospital that feels remotely normal to me, but the normalcy is contrived. A euphoric new dad greets waiting grandparents. Two seats away, a battered husband is taking a breath before saying a forever goodbye to his wife. Patients clad in stained, indecent hospital gowns mill about and step outside for a smoke. And the hospital wheels keep turning as this strange and unnatural rhythm of life marches onward.  

The question turns about in my head each day as I sit in the lobby and contemplate what this world must feel like from the other side. My heart rebels against the pristine neutrality of the space, the aching absence of feeling and the jarring normalcy of its rhythm. I want to push deeper into the irreconcilable. I wonder whether human beings can really operate in this space, backdrop to heights of joy and depths of pain, without really ever giving ourselves the space to emote. It's that very thing we do which makes us humans, creatures after the image of God Himself, Word made Flesh - the ability to feel deeply and know fully and and to express that feeling and knowing in all its raw and fleshy glory. 

I want to for us to be children who know and live into the depths of that which makes us fully human and that which makes makes us whole: our truest identity as sons and daughters of the Most High God. FREEDOM. And I want to be a person who recognizes the meaningful work to be done in moments of helping others to be who they were created to be - beautiful, freed, wild-hearted child-creatures full of feelings felt and submitted to the will of a loving Father who sent His only Son to die. I think that our hearts crave a framework for our feeling. So that's why we build hospital lobbies and create standards and norms. When nothing around us is normal or okay, we adjust our framework. We create a new one. The hospital lobby becomes the new norm and our souls grasp for anchoring. But it's in this identity as Redeemed Sinner made Daughter that my feelings and experiences are anchored, and not in the contrived normalcy of the hospital lobby that I'm sitting in as I ponder. Cross defeated, grave overcome, hope of eternal life all the more real to me. What can shake, what can separate from the love of God (Romans 8)? 

My clumsy heart needs to learn the art of becoming comfortable in the hospital lobbies of life. So I suppose I will keep taking lunchtime wanders and keep sitting and watching and screaming the truth of WHO I AM to myself - you are a daughter of the Living God. 

He's Weaving a Tapestry

I've been reading Genesis with my church these last weeks. As I've read, I've been drawn to the truth that God's ways are so much higher than ours. We can't see in the moment how seemingly insignificant details are weaving a tapestry of redemption, building a Heavenly Kingdom far greater than human eyes can see or imagine. Am I willing to believe that every detail of my story is a thread that He's actively weaving into that tapestry? That every heartache, every passion, every joy, every love, failure or success, each iteration and moment is a piece of that Kingdom-building redemption plan He's formed from the foundation of time itself? 

I want to be in tune with that truth at every moment. I long to have open eyes to see His goodness and truth and beauty in all things. I am His daughter. I am known and my path marched out before me. No striving, but only joy and security overflowing from the sure and certain knowledge that I am His Daughter, bought and redeemed child of the King of Kings. 

Becoming Springtime

The warm, clear air is like a deep breath for my soul. Sunshine is wrapping its welcoming arms around me and whispering new hope of spring in my ear. Spring is rest for tired winter souls and new life for the cracked and barren places of the heart. Spring is a healing balm, green shoot bursting forth from rock and crag. Spring is laughter and joy right where we are in this moment. Spring is unshakeable peace and dauntless hope.

I think that I'm supposed to learn to become like springtime, bringing renewal and restoration to places that are dry and thirsty, crying out for nourishment. I'm choking on a flood of tears because it's so hard to be springtime in a land of stubborn resistance. I'm so rarely unshakeable peace and dauntless hope met by determined joy. How can I be springtime when my soul feels like winter? 

A smile is spreading across my face as the warm breeze of my Savior's love whispers to my soul - "I already have." The answer is, always has been, Jesus. Striving won't bring springtime presence, but only a child-heart rooted deeply in the love of the Father. What can shake me when my reality is Christ, the firm and secure knowledge that I am a redeemed co-heir and that I did NOTHING TO DESERVE THAT KIND OF LOVE?

This land where I'm planted is my Father's farmland, and Christ has called me to till it, to work the soil and tend to fragile shoots - uprooting, weeding, working hard for the good of this city. Oh, show me - wretched sinner though I am, Your power is greater and You are so worthy. Sweep me up in the ocean-waves of Your love. Show me how to be like springtime.