& the Tar Baby.

Surrounded by them I felt a little lovely chill.  Pages to consume, covers to crinkle back, characters to get fast acquainted with… standing in the bookstore yesterday was like visiting the house of a very old and very best friend.

The only problem is that books & I broke up a long time ago.

This now-blonde curly sue was once a permed dishwater brunette with glasses and crooked teeth and a cowlick straight down the middle of her bangs.  She had homemade clothes and skin so pale some might even say it glowed.

She did however, have much the same personality then that she has now.
Loud.
Chatty.
Bossy.

She was in trouble a lot, and despite the spankings that never seemed to teach much of a lesson, there was one punishment she hated more than any other.

Being grounded.
…from the library.

Yes, ’tis true… the kid hated to be separated from her best friends, whether it be a club of babysitters or Miss Nancy Drew or even the far-too-old-for-her-to-really-understand writings of Erma Bombeck, she couldn’t be away from the other worlds and other lives of her books.

In fact, the rule was that on her weekly trips to the local library, she could only check out as many books as she could carry and still see over.  So she’d hang her arms low and stand high on her tiptoes to get out with a dozen or so.

And at age seven she read the unabridged Anna Karenina, at six it was Little Women, and at five, she beat everyone in the 1st grade by reading 103 books in some contest that earned her a free personal pan pizza.

She kept it up through junior high and high school, reading Christian romance novels like they were sustenance, along with the classics of Dickens and Stevenson and Wilde and Doyle.

In college she transitioned to every book about Jesus and the church and the heart that she could get her hands on.  In fact, her favor of alliteration can be solely contributed to the devouring of Mr. Max Lucado’s every word.

Devotionals, memoirs, biographies of faith… there was a turn to the world of non-fiction, but she always read for the same feeling.  Hope.

She wanted the words to wrap up reasonably, for her attention to be kept, but at the end… whether a woman in the arms of a firefighter on the plains of Texas or a lost soul banking on their new belief… she literally craved the hope.

And then, not too long ago, she… I… realized that their were so many unread books on my desk, on my shelves, littered throughout my house. Books I’d put on birthday lists and begged for at Christmas, books I might have even started, but all unfinished.

Because it was what I used to read for, that I simply can’t stomach anymore.
The hope.

And it’s not just the fictional stories and the famed evangelists; there are dinner conversations I avoid and phone calls I won’t answer because I can’t let any more words of someone else’s realized hope into my ears, making their way to my heart.
I started writing letters to my husband at age 11, and steadfastly kept up with it until two Aprils ago.
There are dreams I had for myself and my life and my future that are mired in hopelessness.

I have gotten each limb and my spirit tangled into the blackest, stickiest, soul-sunkenest tar of hopelessness.

Like the South’s beloved Brer Rabbit, I kept swinging, while the enemy hid just behind the brush, rolling in laughter, waiting till I was immobilzed in his trap.

“The Tar Baby, she said nothing. ‘Fine! Be that way,’ said Brer Rabbit, swinging at the Tar Baby with his free paw. Now both his paws were stuck in the tar, and Brer Fox danced with glee behind the bushes.”

The devil is dancing with glee over me, I tell you that.
A girl who couldn’t live without hope now can’t live with it.

And I guess in a way I find myself hollering for the briar patch, but damn that thing’s gonna sting.

I need every prickly needle to tear away the tar of defeat that I’ve been spun into punch by punch.  I don’t want the faith that God will do only the opposite and most hurtful thing in response to my cries and requests and pleadings.  I don’t want the faith that I won’t be loved until I’m pretty enough to be worth loving.  I don’t want the faith that it will always be like this.  I don’t want the faith that I’m stuck in hopelessnes, and safe there.

So I’ve stepped out to be swung into the briar patch.

And it’s a vulnerable, to-be-honest terrifying place to be.
In four days I won’t have a job anymore.  I chose to step out on faith.  I chose to step out with hope.

And I’m praying for an answer and then direction to the faith in a God who designs with a purpose.

 

Hope in a God who doesn’t waste.
Hope in a God who answers.
Hope in a God who pities the desperate.
Hope in a God who wants us to hope.

 

Maybe soon you’ll see me with my arms hung low, up on my tiptoes, with a dozen or so reasons to hope in my hands, gray eyes barely peeking over.

…

Here’s hoping.

More.

This last week saw more than a few days clock over 12 hours at the ol’ grind.
And on the drive home late one night… heavied at leaving in the pre-sunrise darkness & headed back in the post-sunset black, I made the decision to call the person I have not been calling on purpose.  Because I purposely didn’t want to have the tough conversation I knew was waiting for us.

Something about being too tired to fight made it seem like the right time, and I heard gracious words so unlike me start the sparring.
I was inflating the totally defeated and deflated heart in my chest to get the words out that I needed the love I felt was being withheld.  I was trying to express for the millionth time, in yet another roundup of words that this time just might make sense, that I hurt far and deep.  And that I not only don’t want to stop wanting things to get better between us, I don’t know how to not want things to get better between us.

After choking back the awkward kind of tears and trying to hear more of the hard stuff, the voice on the other end said…
“Kate… I want wholer things for you… fuller things… you are more than an injured bird.”

This morning at church, between the worship and the message, I saw a spunky little ponytail-swishing 10-year-old with her coffee mug march with confidence down to the front row.

Before the braces straightened my crooked teeth and the flat iron pulled out my permed curls, I was a scrunchie-festooned, bespectacled kid, and Sunday mornings often found me with a mug of creamed-down coffee too, tromping around like I owned the place, with my little hand raised high to answer every question in the grownups Sunday School class.

My dad took some heat for bringing me I’m sure, but the stickers and coloring pages in the elementary classes weren’t cutting it for chatty Katie.
Afterwards we’d talk God in the car home, at lunch, after lunch, at dinner, and through the week in much the same fashion.  Knowing God and understanding Him might have been ignited by my Frank Peretti books and DC Talk cassettes, but conversation and Bible-reading fueled an insatiable thirst for more.  I was unstoppable.
Obnoxious for sure… but unstoppable.

That confidence in my Jesus waxed & waned over the next few years… seeing upswings in later high school and beauty school, in late nights clearing tables and weekends at women’s conferences.  It’s not steady, this passionate life we’re called to lead.  And while you’d think age would make us stronger and the years that pass would add links to our armor… with every passing minute the messier, the darker, the harder life gets.
This last week a perfectly-ten-fingered-ten-toed 3 day old baby of a friend didn’t make it.
Tuesday will mark the 3rd anniversary of an old friend’s sweet sister going home to heaven.
Next week it’ll be ten years since a beloved’s mom had a Valentine tucked into her cold hand by her little girl before her casket was put in the ground.

Death and tragedy hang in the air.
The sweet moments seem to swing lightly between heartbreaks.  As sugary and as easily dissolved as cotton candy, the ribbon wrapped days aren’t the dates we tattoo or etch into gravestones.

But, but, but there they are! There love is! There kisses and flowers are.  There toddler giggles and glitter is.  There the hands held and the birthdays and the graduations and the triple chocolate cake and the prayers and the songs are.

And after funerals and phone calls full of fear, broken hope and prayers that went unheard or seemingly unanswered, begging and pleading and screaming and weeping, the film of a future wedding and family playing behind eyes filled with cartoon hearts being washed out with enough tears to fill a tub or twelve,  desires dashed and dreams unrealized… we just, well, we just stop flying. Fighting.  Figuring it out.

And I’ll admit, that on many more than one occasion, I’ve just come to a standstill in the middle of the road.  Unsure of which direction I’m going, where the final destination is, why the trip itself is so damn hard.
And I bend my legs underneath me, and just sit down.

And I nod my nose to my knees, wrapped in a tight circle, trying to gather my thoughts… my energy… my bearings.

Here I am. 

Wondering what it means to be more than an injured bird.
Wondering where that ponytail-swishing, at-the-ready-to-answer, toe-to-toe with the grownups little girl is.
Wondering how you mount up with wings like eagles when your heart is cracked and your insides are empty.
Wondering if it’s okay to ask someone to scoop you up and love you well.
Wondering what’d feel like to ask without feeling guilty.

Here I am.
Just sitting in the middle of the road, tight in a tiny knot, afraid that every sweet moment will be met with more of an unyielding enemy, storing up the strength to fight back, and wanting my wasted years returned.

Next week I will twirl the tea roses and the tulips together, tie bows of twine around their stems, and nestle love notes deep between petals… I will buy candied cherries and dark chocolates by the dozen and seal letters with a kiss, I will use gluesticks to adhere sequins to cheesy cards and make sure my loves know they’re loved while longing to sip champagne and kiss softly & deeply the love of my life…
I will let the sugary moment dissolve in my mouth and try desperately not to fear what’s around the corner.

I’ll try to sit up, then stand, then fly.  I will hope against hope that the moments in the middle of the road stored up a strength I can count on.

I’ve seen it done.  I’ve seen faces I know twist into faces I don’t know as they looked on darkness I still don’t understand.  And in the moments and weeks and years since, I’ve seen them sit up, then stand, then fly.

It’s a courageous thing, this living… and I have so many beautiful examples of how it’s done well.
We might have to rest, have to recuperate, have to remind ourselves of how to march with confidence into this life, this every day, not knowing what’s coming.

But we are more than injured birds you & I.

 

 

 

…

Much more.

Afraid to say it.

Button those buttons… pull your skirt down… wipe some of that lipstick off… you look desperate.
Don’t say that… don’t sit like that… don’t stare like that… you look desperate.

Don’t cry like that… don’t pray like that… don’t scream like that… you look desperate.

Desperate.
So taboo, eh?  So much judgement wrapped up in one little word.

We want to be confident… self sufficient… strong… not weak, or needy, or anything but okay.

But what if it was the extended belly of a baby desperate for food? Or a single mom desperate for a job? Or a widow desperate for a hand in hers?
Then the desperation might seem a little more, a lot more, forgivable… even understandable.  Wouldn’t it?

But what if you caught me shaking the vending maching with it’s steel claws still latched to my box of Raisinets with the same desperation that a lifeguard shakes a drowning victim who won’t respond?
How sad it’d be if I couldn’t gauge my desperation for a want over the desperation for a need.

Last week a new friend and I discussed religion, our backgrounds, our simple ideas of faith and what it should look like… and he said to me “My girlfriend & I have had a hard time finding a church.  All we are looking for is one that fits our lifestyle and doesn’t make us feel guilty.”

Gulp.

Someone finally said it.

I didn’t know whether to giggle or raise my palm for a high-five or feel kinda (or more than kinda) bad for him.
I mean, I’d never say it, buuuttttt… maybe we want Jesus to be a little more cool.  a little easier. a little more us.

 

 
I sure would like a church that met when I wanted, with the people I liked, in a restored historical building close to my house, a thriving singles ministry where no one was homeschooled, or wore khaki, or had bad haircuts… where they congregation was comfortable swearing over beers after worship and the kids weren’t annoying. 
I’d like a church that let me teach even though my ordination came from the internet… and I’m a girl.  I’d like the guys to be Godlier… more intentional… better leaders.  I’d also like them to be a hell of a lot better about pursuing women, namely me.
I’d like swells of emotional music that made me cry every week and sermons peppered with jokes as well as real life application, using verses from the NKJV in my hands as well as passages from The Message that I sometimes like better.
I’d like a church that made gay people feel welcome and men who cheat on their wives like the scum of the earth.  I’d like a church that didn’t keep tabs on me, but missed me when I wasn’t there.  I’d like a church that helped me get closer to the God I wish God was and not give me more information about a God I’m not sure exists. 

But, I mean, I’d never say that.

I’ve been bouncing around a bit the last six months.  After four years at the church-of-my-dreams, missing only for family vacations and the swine flu, we broke up for a little while.

The weight of obligation was motivating my attendance to services and small group and worship practice more than the joy of truth & growth & Jesus Himself.
So, I flipped a fat switch and stepped back.  I hurt some feelings along the way and got mine hurt too.  A lot of tears shed & a dozen sighs of relief breathed. 
I wasn’t quitting church or quitting God, I was just giving up on feeling guilty all the time for what I wasn’t feeling.

So I tried the Presbyterian church with the stained glass and the hipsters, I fellowshipped at the megachurch with the vneck-clad, blonde-highlighted, ear-pierced worship leader, I even spent a few months at a well-oiled-machine with alliterated ministries and outreaches by the handful… and an orchestra pit.
Nothing fit.

I itched.  I wriggled. I spent a lot of time on my iPhone.

I bet if I would’ve listened to the liturgy of those hipsters, or ignored the Sun-In and listened to the Son, or stopped scanning the theatre style seating for the boys without rings on their left hands, I might have satiated a desperation for the God-hole in my heart to be filled.

But unfortunately, while tapping the toes of my bedazzled suede booties, or leopard-printed calf hair heels, or ensuring that my curls had the right bounce, my lips had the right sheen, my Bible had the right creases, and my left hand had no rings to mislead… I missed my desperation for a need because my desperation for my wants was too loud.

My desperation to get a husband, to get a church that fits, to find a faith that makes me feel good…
…as opposed to the faith that more-often-than-not makes me feel not good at all.

If I took the desperation of my wants and stripped them down, I would find the desperation of needs…
I am desperate to be known.  I am desperate to love.  I am desperate to be loved.  I am desperate to know my God.  I am desperate for an engrossing intimacy in my soul that rivals any longing for touch my skin has ever ached for.  I am desperate to be heard, and understood… and to hear, and understand.

And just like that, I’m not squinting with hateful eyes at the me that wants what she doesn’t have, judging and scoffing and growing impatient as I tell her for the millionth time to button up… but I’m kneeling down to match the eyes of a really empty girl I know all too well that’s desperate to be fed, to grow, to be found.

Where are you itching and wriggling and how do you keep yourself distracted? Who are you attracting and who are you running after? When do we find ourselves turning up hopeful smiles to avoid questions about our irremediable insides? 

What is it about that word… ?  Why can’t we admit it?

Hi.  I’m Kate, … and I’m desperate.

 

***

“She limps on up to the top of a mount,
looks at the faltered harvest,
feels her sweat in the ground and the burn in her nose,
and the knowing in her guts…
Something’s still gonna grow
She ain’t leaving ’till it does.”
Brooke Fraser

 

Oh Isaac.

I don’t have kids.  Which shouldn’t surprise anyone.  I can barely keep the pantry stocked & my jeans ironed.
(Yes. I iron my jeans.  Take your judgement somewhere else Wrinkles McGee.)

No time for reading the uncreased books stacked in haphazard towers on my perfect West Elm Parsons desk, no time to swipe the remnant’s of Essie’s “Bordeaux” off my nails and dash on a coat or two of OPI’s “Chick Flick Cherry”, no time to shuck the golden Indiana sweet corn that’s being snatched from every farmer’s market crate before I can race to get there… I just don’t have the time. 

No time means a cut back on the dinners & dancing, the glittering rock on my hand means no taking my, or someone else’s pants off, and if you do some quick math… that equation will give you the answer for Kate… no kids.

And it’s not even the lack of wedding bells and Pottery Barn Kids catalogues that are keeping me from the interaction with those tiny biters, because there is plenty of opportunity, trust me.  I have twenty-six, yes you heard that correctly, twenty-six toothless grins staring back at me from the refrigerator door and memo board.  Announcements! First Birthday invites! Shower registries for the bundles the stork hasn’t delivered yet!

They’re everywhere. 
And I love ‘em. I do.  (I mostly do.)  But sometimes the screaming and the crying and the inability-to-verbalize-what-hurts/itches/burns/needs/changed/burped/fed drives me crazy.  And that’s when I realize if my someday-husband loves me, really really loves me, then we’ll start with sea monkeys. 
Then a bunny.
Then our bulldogs.
And finally, we’ll make our way to getting our kids from whatever land they were born in.

And by that point, hopefully I’ll have figured out the secret language of kidspeak and how to truly not care about the cashmere that’s now covered in puke.  

…It’s been a tumbly, tired, tear-filled few weeks (months.years.) and it’s funny that we think we can stitch up what’s ripping ragged edges in our hearts, if only we could find the right thread.   (The right 6’4”, tattooed,witty thread…)

2 weeks ago my Friday ended surprisingly at lunchtime and so I spun the Civic’s wheels north towards my best friend’s house for a surprise and a moment to breathe and just be.  We grocery shopped and giggled and made a dinner out of fresh basil from the garden and dessert from a heap of sugar & sweet summer strawberries & hearts cut out of the pie crust. 

After hours of just being us, teasing her hubby and smooching her son, everyone said goodnight and I snuggled into my favorite striped sheets.  The world’s comfiest queen lulled me to sleep quickly but the morning came early with a heat index similar to the surface of the sun and sobs from across the hall.  While Mom showered and Dad got breakfast ready, my sweet baby Graham screamed the day’s arrival like a little Macedonian rooster. 

I threw off the now swelter inducing covers and wiped the blur out of my eyes.  Stumbling the few feet to his door, I told Mum & Pops that I was happy to take soothing duty.  Poor buddy just wanted up & out.  So, my arms reached down and his little hands on mine, we swung around to the rocking chair and settled in for some soft swaying and early morning whispered lullabies.  I sang every word I could think to rhyme with ‘punkin’ & ‘sweetpea’ as I improvised verses that would have made Mother Goose sorely disappointed.  After realizing that the video monitor was still on and Andy & Andrea were probably getting a grand ol’ show, I turned off my freeverse and opted to fill his tiny ears with whatever was on my heart…

“He is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
And I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

And O how He loves us
Oh, O how He loves us
How He loves us all.”

Over and over. and over. and over. and over.

As I rocked, sweet Graham tucked his head between by chin and shoulder, wrapped his perfect tiny fingers around my arm and every muscle in his body seemed to relax. 
And so did mine.

My lashes fluttered down and my toes tipped the chair back and forth at a steady pace while the thread I desperately needed stitched through a ragged hole in my darkened heart. 

I kept singing David Crowder’s words and turned them into prayers for this beloved babe and even tried to muster the will to pray them for myself.
Minute upon minute piled up and still he snuggled in… scooping in even breaths and exhaling in time with me.  I tried to work my voice around the building lump in my throat.

I hadn’t felt so trusted in so long.  I haven’t felt like I have anything to offer.  Unless I’m whittling away at a guest list or mastering the timing of yet another joke, I don’t feel like there’s much about me to love.  But this little life didn’t really need anything from me except to feel safe in my arms and to hear love in my voice.
And the safety and the love I have for him spilled faster than the really, really hot tears that I was keeping locked up while I enjoyed every moment of feeling loved by someone who had no reason to love me if he didn’t want to.

A quarter of an hour later his Dad came to snatch him up and share some sweet time of his own, but I was left with the lump still in my throat and a little more light inside my chest.

The stitches were swung through not with the thread of a towering GQ clad poet-with-a-dark-side, but with the thread of an eleven-month-old who can’t say my name…who weighs roughly the same as a Christmas goose. 

Tonight I turned the wheel back up to Westfield because there was a babysitting snafu.  I was needed for the gap between mom’s commute to work & dad’s commute from.
Happy to do it, my tired eyes turned up a notch when I walked in to find the babe smiling and his beautiful mama dusting parmesan onto a delicious dinner creation.

After my dinner date finished his peas and was wiped clean, I slid him out of his highchair and slid us both out of the back door to a slight sprinkling in the backyard.  The rain barely tapped us as we sat in the grass directly in the stream of golden hour.  As I held tight to the wiggly love of my life and tickled his ears and nose and toes with blades of grass,  feeling more buoyed by his giggles than his limited vocabulary would’ve understood, I started praying out loud over him.  Praying for his growth and health and heart, praying for his mom and his dad that I love so much, praying for him & Jesus to be best friends…

And while I should have probably been concerned with how much I was creeping out the neighbors, you know what sprang to mind so violently it shook me?
Isaac.
Abraham and Isaac.

Abraham walking his beloved up Mount Moriah with the sickest, heaviest heart.
Abraham being asked by God to sacrifice his only son.
Abraham worshipping even though he wasn’t given a reason.
Abraham answering Isaac’s question of “Where is the lamb?”

My locket sans photos of mini-Kates and my arms around a squirming bundle that isn’t even mine and my mind can’t wrap itself around the words from Genesis.

And then, without the Mel Gibson dictated imagery, my head went swimming, mostly unwillingly, to the cross.

His only son.
His love.
His heart walking around outside of His chest.
His boy struggling to stand on broken feet to breathe while he drug his broken skin across bristling beams… pulling up with broken hands to fill lungs behind a broken heart… both in agony to save a broken world… a broken you… a broken me.

And very obviously while I try not to think about what I can’t not think about,  the thread of a Dad is looping in and out of a desperate heart inside a kid who doesn’t have kids.  Who doesn’t really ‘get it” … a daughter who doesn’t remember the grassblade tickling moments with her mom & dad, who doesn’t have someone’s tangible arms tightly keeping her safe now, and who doesn’t trust that anyone ever loved her enough to hurt more than she could just so she wouldn’t have to hurt. 

Maybe on the days I feel patched up enough to laugh, that laugh’ll do for God’s heart what Graham’s sweet giggles do for me.  Maybe someday I will let my breath slow to match His and willingly slow my pace and tuck my head to His shoulder.  Maybe someday I’ll let myself feel safe.

Until I can rally the strength to really, actually believe it’s possible that someone, and above all, Someone, loves me… just a few miles away there is a brown-eyed almost-birthday-boy who has done more to sew the hope of it into my heart than I bet a Junior Mint tinged after-the-first-date-movie-kiss could ever do.

“I would give anything to make you better, I would give anything to point you to free, I would give anything to help you realize, I loved you ’til it killed me.  So my logic wouldn’t hurt you, I know you might blame Me anyway. Well I’m sorry, I’m so sorry you’re not helping yourself to Me.” 
‘Better’ by Brooke Fraser

 

 

Being Written.

“You don’t lick the empty Pottery Barn plates… because the table setting isn’t the meal.”

 

Words from my beloved pastor this morning.

The dishes aren’t the dinner… the luggage isn’t the vacation… the sunshine alone isn’t what makes summer so grand… the building doesn’t make the church… and the roof & walls don’t make a home.

It seemed a very real illustration while driving back to Windsor Park from Broad Ripple tonight, a grin stretched across my face and cartoon-like heat waves rising from my skin.

My forty-something wedding yesterday was the union of a dear friend’s daughter & son-in-law.  It was sweet in every sense; not because of the perfect cocktails, the heavenly frosted red velvet cake, or the delightful company… but because love hung in the air so palpable you could’ve sipped it along with the champagne.
During the father’s dance with the bride, my stunning friend Carrie walked to the head table and knelt behind her oldest & youngest daughters… looking on with a face full of memories and emotion as her middle baby girl danced with the man Carrie’s loved since she was a teenager. 
She laid her hands on her girls shoulders and whispered words of love in their ears.  That love made the moment full & whole.  Every detail was perfect… the meal and the bouquets and the new wife’s lace keyhole-backed gown, but those details alone weren’t the celebration… the family, the vows, the relationships, the dancing, the joy, the toasts full of tears and giggles… all wrapped together, that was the wedding.

I woke up early this morning, my mussed curls a reminder of the dance floor fiend I’d become the night before.  About a hundred yawns and stretches to get me up before the sun… then it was time to primp and priss for church.  The eyelet ruffle of my long white cotton summer dress swung around my feet and trailed behind me on the stage as I practiced with the rest of the worship team.  As I sang, I closed my eyes and let my heart heavy itself at the somber thought of the unbelievers and the broken and the hurting that would have our lilting words in their ears.  Would God move? Reveal Himself to them? Reveal Himself to me? Because the Tomlin-penned words and the drums aren’t the worship.  Worship is the rising of our hearts & hands & words & insides to gift & bless & honor & revel in our Lord.  And He drew my attention to specific faces while we offered our songs, and I prayed for their insides while my own shook with wanting to know His peace.  As I let my baby greys unfocus and tried to see only the cross in my mind’s eye, I struggled to stay attuned to the Savior who made the church.  Not the programs, the communion crackers, or the Sunday School stickers. 

After the morning’s services it was time to jet home & change dresses, grab the gift, and swing over to the market.  After picking up peach salsa and blue tortilla chips and raspberry tarts I drove a few blocks west to join in a birthday celebration for a beautiful friend who bookended her week with accepting the proposal from the love of her life to donning denim shorts for a hot outdoor bash to gather all the loves of her life into one backyard.  We jumped like banshees in her pink & purple castle bouncehouse, we ate sorbet out of lime shells, we watched her blow out the candles on her birthday apple pie and we wished her love & luck in this next year of life.  Today was fabulous, but it isn’t just the birthdays and the parties that’ve made her life her life.  Nor is it what makes our lives our lives.  It’s the whole kit & caboodle of darkness and light, hissy fits and holidays, families and roommates and paying the bills and concerts and tears and accomplishments… all of it. 

 

It’s all of it.  Life is made up of every person, moment, experience, prayer, song, meal, & kiss.

 

The primping and prissing isn’t all of me.  The lonely nights and the pennies aren’t my whole story.  The moment we’re in is all-too-often how we determine our life to be, when in reality what’ll turn out to be comparable to the unabridged Anna Karenina we’re treating like The Berenstain Bears.  I get stuck on a sentence and broken-hearted over a paragraph and haven’t, in a very long time, stepped back to see the storyboard. 

A friend whose heart I envy wrote me these buoying words last week: “…something that God has been saying to me lately is, “I do not waste time.” We do, I suppose, at times, but He does not. He’s developing the plotlines and the characters and the arc of the story. There’s a verse I’ve been loving lately, I think it’s in 2 Corinthians 1:
 
“He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us again. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us…”
 
That sounds like an anthem to me, a testament to the faithfulness of God. He has delivered us, and He will deliver us again. We’re in the middle of the story and we don’t know how it’s going to play out, but on Him we will set our hope, that He will continue to deliver us.”

I’m caught mid-lick of the china while the turkey’s still in the oven. 
In many ways, my table’s set…  the silverware’s properly placed down to the shrimp forks and the soup spoons, but I’m so afraid the plates will stay empty, so quick to assume that this must be it that I look like a fool slurping up nothing. 
The meal’s on it’s way.  Life, in it’s entirety will unfold.  More chapters will be told, God will deliver, people and moments and love will all wrap together and continue writing. 

Yes, right now I am hungry for more… for better… for the page to break and the next chapter to scrawl, but it’s coming… it’s coming…
it’s coming & it’s happened & it’s now.

 

 

Seeya Bo Peep.

“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them.  To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey.  The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more.  So also, the one with the two talents gained two more.  But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.  After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them.  The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’  His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’  The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’  His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’  Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.  So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’  His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?  Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.  ‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents.  For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.  And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”
Matthew 25:14-30

 

We all know that five talent guy, right?   The one with the charm and the focus, the one who stayed in the library while we watched some bound-to-let-us-down-or-confuse-us series finale.  It’s the guy who now has his student loans paid off because of the enviable job he got because of how hard he worked at a great college because he got into that college because of his scholarships because he could gosh darn throw/dunk/kick a foot/basket/soccer ball after wheeling senior citizens around at his job at the nursing home before sharpening his pencils to underline every last hidden meaning in one of the unabridged novels of an author you not only couldn’t pronounce, but only had the Cliffsnotes partially glanced at.  It’s that guy.

We “like” the photo of his new office-with-a-view on facebook, we high-five him at the class reunion, we brag about him to our friend’s friend who thinks they’ve got it figured out… “Oh yea? Well my best friend Mr. Five Talents is saving orphans while climbing the Forbes ladder.” 

Do we want to be him? Eh.  We want the credit score and our moniker carved into a snazzy brass nameplate or etched on the frosted pane of a glass door, but do we want to stay late at the office? Take the inevitable risks? Volunteer away our free time?
Not really.  Or at least not any more than we wanted to chime in at a study group over two-steppin’ at a frat party.

(Un)fortunately I am related to not one, not two, not three, not four, but five “Five Talent Guys” …  that’s right … 5/6 of our clan took Matthew, and the Lord, pretty darn seriously when it was time to take what they’d been given and max out their potential for the Kingdom.
I see it in the faces of my Dad’s patients, Mom’s sons, Bob’s degrees and disarming humility, Dave’s, well, life… and ditto for Dan.

You’d think I’d go sheepishly dig up the talent I buried, and get crackin’ at the roulette wheel… or the job fair. 

 

 

But here’s the thing…

 

 

I don’t think I’m doing it wrong.

 

Not too long ago I sipped a lemon-sweet martini and threw my out-of-control lion mane back in laughter, catching up on the lives of friends who were major players, and sometimes the only good things, in a dark season I choose quite often not to revisit.  Life’s funny, and so, even in it’s sometimes sad retelling… there is humor.  But sometimes… there’s just nothing comical about it.

One of my beautiful friends, a woman angelic in her sincerity and kindness, tipped a brave smile while telling us that the son she & her husband have waited and prayed for, will not be coming home to them from Ethiopia this summer even though they had waited.  And prayed. 

And so while she stared down the barrel of a season without what she’d planned for… she said something to me.
“I don’t think we’re going to paint & prepare the nursery… I don’t think I could walk by it every single day.”

No kidding.
I wouldn’t either.

Nor would I be able to walk into a Pottery Barn Kids, or be able to RSVP “yes” to the eleven baby shower invites latticed into my French board, or diaper tots on my church’s changing table.

 

And while in most ways her situation doesn’t completely match or echo where I’m at with my spade and my covered earth, it did give me an image for why I furiously dig instead of deal.

 

I don’t want to look at a glaring representation of broken hope.
I don’t want to hear the word “No.”
I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to hurt. I don’t want to know for sure that I’m not actually as good at __fill in the blank__ as I thought I was.

 

So here’s my genius plan.  … I’ll keep what you give me safe & sound, Jesus, and I’ll feel pretty proud of myself while I tap my toe over the dirt that covers what I’m keeping safe for you.

I’m most definitely not going to see the missing zeroes in my bank statement and run off to full-time ministry in Manhattan.  I am absolutely not going to quit my job, give up my health insurance, and spend my days busily writing out all that swims in my head and heart to finally finish my book.
Listen God, I’m still styling, I’m still building relationships, I’m still telling jokes, I’m still listening, I’m still typing away on my computer keys… just on a smaller, less fear-filled scale.

tap…tap…tap… dirt’s secure… talent’s safe.

 

Plus God… where would I start? Wait… but God, now that I think about it, I do want to start… I want life to start. Wait, God, are you listening? I’m sorry… please don’t let me go wasted.  Remember when we worked as a team? Do you remember the faces of those women when we spoke at the Relate conference? Do you remember the giggles elicited at that styling event? Did you see that e-mail from the girl who was changed from the blog? Wait… wait, please don’t let me go wasted… I didn’t mean to disappoint you, listen, I’m just scared… I’m so scared… God I don’t want to live apart from You and I don’t think I can live unless I use my me-ness, and understand why my pieces were patched together like this.  Quick, help me, I have to get under this sod… but now the shovel seems too heavy and I… no, I, no.  I don’t want to get my hopes up.  I don’t want to try and then realize that apron-strings and undressed mannequins were the best I’d ever do.  Can you help me please? Please? Please God?
I’m so scared.  And so lost. And so tired.  And my life looks like an empty nursery, it exhibits all that’s been hoped for but doesn’t have the gift in it yet so that it makes sense.  My personhood seems like a crib without the babe… just purposeless.

 

 

 

“You’re always afraid to take the first step cause all you see is every negative thing ten miles down the road.”

 

Does anyone else see in Will’s eyes that he’s just so afraid? And that’s why he doesn’t have an answer?
I can bullshit with the best of them too.  I don’t think I’ve ever waxed on about shepherding, but I sure have daydreamed out loud about stand up comedy joke telling, book writing, column contributing, adopted kid parenting, husband loving, and when it comes down to it… I’m not doing any of those things.

Sure, yes, absolutely there is honor in refilling glasses & folding cardigans, but what’s not honorable is doing those things because you are simply too afraid to dig your talent up out of the ground and do what you were created for.

  

 

“Much dreaming and many words are meaningless.  Therefore stand in awe of God.”  Ecclesiastes 5:7

 

 

 

Jiminy Jesus.

Amazing when conviction comes blaring at you online from your British songbird-style Pandora station.
over.
& over.
& over.

And it took Miss Spektor’s warbly vocals and piano pounding to uncomfortably edge out the part, the majority, of me that has been dialing in on occasion to a sometimes-available wish-granter. 
I think I trust Oprah more. 

He’s not a wizard, a schemer, my conscience, or a vending machine.
So why are my one sentence prayers written in a “Dear St. Nick” format?

This Friday marks the day that had to come for Easter to mean anything.
The death that had to come to mark the grandness, the miracle that was the rising.
And the soldiers didn’t nail the Easter Bunny or any other mythical creature to a mega-church crystal cross.

A real man, who was really God, was tortured on a very real wooden beam, with my face behind his eyes.
And your face.

And as much as we want to believe that he’s as unreal and non-threatening as Cupid & the Tooth Fairy… all that does is diminish in every way the power of Him…in our world, in my insides.

If I don’t believe I’m worth a dinner at the Olive Garden with a handsome suitor, I don’t want to wrap my brokenness around the thought that I’m worth death. 
Death on purpose.

…So I just keep inserting quarters and pressing “C7″ for rent money or rest or a hug or safe travel or ease or comfort or any of the hundreds of other fluffy requests I make per day.

And some say “I didn’t ask for this!” and some live as though “He’s there when I want Him to be, but I can just as easily live without Him.”
They, we, live as though we are owed.
We deserve.
We can, we will, whenever, however, with whomever.

But away from the maddening noise that fills my frantically beating heart and pulsing mind and shaking skin, the noise that keeps me from intimacy with the real God, is just that… intimacy with the real God.

Oh how I want to know that when I prayed He’d save me, that that God, that Jesus, that Spirit, that Savior is here behind the noise.
And I hate that He has to wait for me.
And listen to me all but laugh at him.
…until I need Him.

Really need Him.

Really, really, really need Him.

“No one laughs at God in a hospital.
No one laughs at God in a war.
No one’s laughing at God when they’re starving or freezing or so very poor.

No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests.
No one’s laughing at God when it’s gotten real late, and their kid’s not back from the party yet.

No one laughs at God when their airplane start to uncontrollably shake.
No one’s laughing at God when they see the one they love, hand in hand with someone else, and they hope that they’re mistaken.

No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door, and they say we got some bad news, sir.
No one’s laughing at God when there’s a famine or fire or flood

But God can be funny at a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke.
Or when the crazies say He hates us, and they get so red in the head you think they’re ‘bout to choke.
God can be funny, when told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way,
and when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini, or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus.
God can be so hilarious.

No one laughs at God in a hospital.
No one laughs at God in a war.
No one’s laughing at God when they’ve lost all they’ve got, and they don’t know what for.

No one laughs at God on the day they realize, that the last sight they’ll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes.
No one’s laughing at God when they’re saying their goodbyes.

But God can be funny at a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke.
Or when the crazies say He hates us, and they get so red in the head you think they’re ‘bout to choke.
God can be funny, when told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way.
And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini, or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus.
God can be so hilarious.

No one’s laughing at God.
We’re all laughing with God.”

Regina Spektor

 Just so you know, you can cry out now.  You don’t have to wait till the car door is being crushed, the monitor is flat-lining, or the breaths are slowing.

 He is not only the God of death, He is the God of life.

Good Friday. Easter. Rescue.
Not so funny.

 

 

 

Bronze At Best.

According to tonight’s jog, it turns out I can run, cry, lip-synch, & swish my ponytail on the drumbeat all at the same time.
Multitasking at it’s finest.

People say they blog for conviction or change or beauty or the betterment of their fellow man. 
…altruistic.
When mostly I’m almost sure these windows of the web are for venting or whining or  self-pity or the worshipping of oneself.
…pathetic.

And I have no idea which ‘-tic’ we’ll end up with here at the end of these words.

By the time I was 12, we’d moved 6 times, in 5 states.  Army brats have my sympathy. 
Springfield to Havana. Havana to Lubbock. Lubbock to Baltimore. Baltimore to Solon. Solon to Hudson. Hudson to West Lafayette.

Where perms were cool in one, the straight bob was all the rage in another.  Where New Kids on the Block cassette tapes were blasting in boomboxes in one, the Knight brothers were a subject of scorn in another.  Where one school taught the states & capitols in your next academic year, the next school had taught it the year before, and now you’re 27 and still don’t know where Vermont belongs on a map or where their governor lives.

Basically, it was a running game of fitting in, of ’becoming’, of transforming, and a whole lot of crying.
I spent every single 7th grade lunch period on a payphone with my mom.  Something that still burns deep in me when I see the adult faces of my private-school classmates shining back at me on facebook.
Yes, I remember that you spit in my hair and told me the school’d be better off if I killed myself.  Yes, I remember when you told me that it made sense I came from Lubbock “because everything big comes from Texas.”  Yes I remember showing up to a plaid-skirt & polo clad class in the wrong tartan, because my mom made mine.
I hid in the stall to change.  I cut. I threw up my meals. I wrote bad poetry. I cried to Fiona Apple. I walked the plot of every CW dramedy, and I bet you did to… didn’t you?

When I was ten years old, I tore out a sheet of paper from my generic Trapper Keeper and scrawled across the top “Should Kate go to a different school?” and passed it to each of my classmates with yes/no boxes to check and extra lines for comments.  (Way ahead of you Mark Zuckerberg.)
Because I was masochistic? …not necessarily.

Because I wanted the rallying cry to be “No! You belong here!”   
The response was about half & half.
I kept that paper for a long time.

I kept a page in my diary called “Best Friends” and I wrote everyone’s name who could possibly fit that description and then marked a tally next to their name if they did or said something nice to me, and erased one if they didn’t.  I had a new best friend at least a dozen times a day.
I think the goal of my life from preschool till now was to be one person’s everything.

The level of my popularity took a drastic upswing in high school & college, but my insides didn’t.
I would never write a best friend’s tally in my journal now, but I mark much more to validate my anything than I ever did at Valley Christian Academy.

Weddings I’ve been in.  Birthday parties I’ve been thrown.  Inside jokes I can fit inside a tweet. iPhone ‘Favorites’ speed-dials I’m listed on.  Funny quotes I’m credited for…framed photos of my face in friends homes…holiday cards on my fridge…dates that’ve picked up the check…Starbucks baristas who know my order…servers who know my name…congregants who compliment me on the way I worship…strangers who admire my style..texts or invitations or e-mails that are responded to in a timely fashion…How Are You Really’s…Thank You’s…I Love You’s…

And between the + & – & x & ÷ there’s breath-holding and wild fear that the grand total will still be the Ginger Spice haired adolescent hunkered down on her bedroom floor alone listening to “Forever is a Promise” & sobbing so hard she forever-stains her peach gingham pajama pants with black mascara drops.

And tonight that sum is a Ginger Spice haired adult hunkered down on her bedroom floor alone listening to “Set Fire to the Rain” who’s forgotten how to gauge how hard she can even cry anymore.

No one’s ever introduced me as their “very best friend” and I’ve cut ties because of it.
No one’s ever made me Maid of Honor despite my wedding-veteran status and I’ve burnt bridges because of it.
No one’s ever referred to me as their “favorite child” … “favorite grandchild” … “favorite roommate” … and I’ve lost sleep over it.

But! But! But! I have a collection of sweatshirts with Greek letters on them!  I have over 100 photo albums online smushed with smiles & good times! I can cook! I can dance! I’m fun at parties! One time a boy slow danced with me! I AM WORTH SOMETHING!

Did I convince you?

Nah.  Me neither.

I joke at work that I “need the affirmation of a toddler.”
No I don’t.  I don’t need it.  I want it.  I crave it.  I live off of it.  I live for it.
And it’s poison.

I can spit it out in Christianese so you can swallow it like sugar. “Connection”…”Fellowship”…”Encouragement”…”Support”
But that’s not it either.
I want to be someone’s #1.  It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

But! But! But!

God’s got his hands full. 
I’m not too sure my parents like me.
The one man I planned a life with got a stranger pregnant & married her.  An ugly stranger.
Friends have bemoaned that my expectations are too high, that my sadness is exhausting, that I’m not pretty enough to take to dinner.
I’m always so sure that the sad text will be the last one my beloveds will want to read, that the sad story will be the last one they want to hear, that the shaking hands will be the last they want to hold.  I can hear it in their voices, and in their silence, when they’re tired of me.  So I tell I joke.  Or ask a question.  And they stick around.

Now what?
Do I want to Miss Havisham my way through the gift of this life with the clocks stopped on the darkest?  Hoard what’s rotting? Swig a swill of death when what’s sunny in me dares to escape?

My life’s too good. 
Those photo albums aren’t all a lie.
And many raw prayers are real.
And many are answered.
And one best friend has reached across not only the counter in her kitchen, but a sea of my shame, to grab my face in her hands and force me to match her eyes so I would know she meant her words of love and commitment.
And another has told me not to bemoan people’s well-intended clichés, but to accept them for what they are… all the healing words someone might know.
And another has warrior-cried to God for my pain and hasn’t let up since we first heard our own stories echoed back from the other.
And no, I’m not anyone’s “In Case of Emergency” or godparent or fiancée or muse or example, but I’m loved.

So, challenge what love should look like with what love does look like, and we’ll see where it ends up?
“I will!”
or
“Will I?”

Could be whole.  Could be free. Could be rested. Could be happy.

Could be a rallying cry of “You belong here!”

 

Could be.

 

 

 

L is for.

It shimmies under our skin in the most delightfully ticklish way.

I caught myself doing it again today, peeking behind open fingers while the romantic lead kissed the girl with a pretty heart and average face.

Love still makes me awkward and flushed and fluttery.

I’ve witnessed a whole lot of it this year, and not just the kind that has you rooting for Meg Ryan, but the real stuff…

I was there the day my best friend welcomed her son into the world, and as much as I love the immediate expansion of her heart, what I love even more is that a hundred days have passed and she still looks at that tiny half-her-half-him babe with wonder, and almost a slight disbelief, that that living miracle is really here and really hers…

I heard it today in my almost-brother’s voice as he told me about the girl he’s been driving hours to see.  I think it might still be awhile till he says that word out loud, to himself or to her, but I heard it in the excitement he gets in talking about who she is, I heard it in his apology to me for “gushing”…

It was expressed in a way that crushed my chest at Ellie’s funeral.  As her sons and daughters-in-law stood in front of family and friends to honor her with words, there was a sense that no amount of hours or syllables could capture who she was, but they sure could wrap up a sense of their love for her in stories and tears and memories.

When my pastor prays over us.
When my brothers hug me longer than they have to.
When soup & flowers show up at the door after you’ve spent 2 weeks home sick.
When everything goes light and prayers feel heard.
When I just don’t feel that special anymore, and I hear that I’m smart. funny. or just might still turn out to be somebody.

When I’m reminded that L O V E isn’t spelled in diamonds and sex and highchairs.

For everything my assumed lack of love has broken, embittered, & bruised this year… real, whole, full, buoying, thoughtful, handwritten love has swollen & mended.

On this Valentine’s Day, I’m going to unstaple the half-dozen faces I have tacked to an imaginary dartboard, and try to breathe out the dark and lonely and self-pitying.

I’m going to let the good & glittery & red & sparkly & happy & hopeful carry away all that heavies my heart and absolutely splash around in the love that has spilt into every corner.  Thank you for spilling love into my life.

 

 

 

Happy Valentine’s Day darlings.

 

 

 

We’re Scaring Everyone.

^{“Bo sober, be vigilant: because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” I Peter 5:8}

 

After my mom miscarried, I remember the Devil became a person of constant conversation in our household.  My dad’s red face would surround red eyes full of the hottest tears as he sometimes whispered and sometimes yelled of his hatred for the Devil.

I was little then, but I remember that the Devil wasn’t just a cartoon or a figment of our imagination or a mischievous imp that inspired Halloween costumes; he became our very real enemy.  He had taken one of us, and we would never get over it.

In so many ways he already had a firm foothold in our lives; each of us broken with sin, each of us at times having hurt each other so deeply, each of us at times retreating wounded.  And over the years, since I was first made aware of him, I have watched us fall defeated and I have watched us battle till we were breathless.

Painting a picture of the enemy is difficult without much to go on.  People like to leave him out of lessons, out of conversation, even out of testimonies.  So as I grew up, Frank Peretti, Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, a terrifying Carman concert, and a few movies were about all I had to piece together who this prince of darkness was.   We are a people who believe in what we can see, and the heart of mine that struggled to believe an intangible God could save me is the heart that didn’t want to believe in the power of an unseeable enemy. 

Last night I sat at Applebee’s with one of my closest.  She swiped tears out of her eyes in between bites of her Oriental Chicken Salad and slurps of Pepsi.  I reached across the table and grabbed her hand as we named the Devil’s presence in our lives.  To she & I, he rules our insides with the iron fist of Fear.  And where we fight, where we have fought, where we have felt victorious, he comes in cloaked differently and attacks again.  We’re two girls with straight sparkly smiles, enviable closets, tightly-knit families, and to-die-for friends, and yet our hearts shake & our nightmares riot with constant fear.  Not one known for being quiet, my voice reached over our booth as I ranted against Satan and our hurt.  Before my words could get farther into the ears of the waitress, hostess, frat boys at the table over, and bartender, I stopped almost laughing…

“We must be scaring everyone.”

 

We live as gods these days, don’t we?  We pick and choose our beliefs, our truths, our purpose.  We piece together the bits of the Bible that “work” for us and leave out what makes us uncomfortable when we wake up in a somewhat stranger’s bed.  And we don’t talk about the messy stuff…the ugly stuff…the scary stuff.  We walk boldly into the latest Sunday service at the hippest church, unashamed that our hair smells of smoke and our breath reeks of well rum, it doesn’t bother us in the least that our v-necks dip too low and our skinnies look painted on.  We aren’t afraid to make jokes of purity and holiness and devotions and Bible camp and church as a whole, just as long as we make sure to get our heaven-card hole-punched once a week or so.  Those of us that have been hurt by the “church” or that have watched people we love be hurt by the “church” are quick to wave words and banners of love, to paint lovely sunset-hued portraits of the God we want everyone to know, and to squirm at the word “saved.”

I’m so scared to seem like a salesman, that I’ve lost the boldness that once grew wild in me.
I tiptoe so carefully around what’s true that it’s truth becomes invisible in my life.
I try to bandage a thousand bleeding hurts inflicted by those legalistic fire & brimstoners by buffing the edges of inerrancy to a pillowy softness.

Telling people they need Jesus is a quick way to fall from Most Popular to Most Likely To Be Found In Headgear By The Punchbowl.
And as gods of this day we want to be cool.
There’s a reason my Michael Jackson moves are polished to a Billie-Jean perfection and my limbs are limber enough for a half-dozen rounds of The Cupid Shuffle, I’m good at being the life of the party. 
I’d rather tell the jokes than be one.

A few months ago a dear friend, and staunch atheist, looked at me with an inquisitively twisted brow… “I love that you don’t push God down my throat, but why haven’t you ever invited me to your church?” she queried.  I didn’t have an answer.

Scratch that.

Yes I did.

I just didn’t want to say… “Because I didn’t want to freak you out.  Because I want God to seem cool.  Because I want to seem cool.”

In our “accept everything and everyone” era, most seem fine with the fact that I love Jesus, but they wouldn’t seem fine with the fact that I want them to love Jesus.
And not just love Jesus, but come crawling dirty before Him, begging for needed forgiveness.
And not just come crawling dirty before Him, begging for needed forgiveness, but accept & claim Him as Savior.
And not just accept & claim Him as Savior, but give themselves wholly to Him, His Word, His Will & His Way.
And not just give themselves wholly to Him, His Word, His Will, & His Way, but preach His love and TRUTH to all the world. 

 

Hell is real, but we mostly talk of heaven.  Sin is real, but we mostly talk of sweetness.  The Devil is real, but we mostly speak of anything but Him.  It’s here again, in the hundredth way, that I feel his grip like a vice on my soul. 

If you’ve had a conversation with me anywhere in the last few years you’ve likely heard me say “The Devil comes to devour, not to simply snack.”  I speak that self-coined phrase as often as possible, to remind myself of it’s severity.

If he just wanted a bit of us, he could’ve stopped without breaking a sweat.  But instead he’s filled our world with brokenness, death, disease, hatred, hunger, immorality, abuse, murder, acts too horrid to name, and filled us with so much fear that we are afraid to name him as the culprit.  He’s made pointing the finger at him something we simply won’t do…because once he’s a part of the conversation, then so is hell, then so is God, then so is salvation, and all of a sudden we’re Bible-thumpers, and someone just speed-dialed the ACLU.  So instead, we donate to a George Clooney supported charity and go back to talking about the game.

What if the longings of my heart became the words that filled my conversations?  What if the energy I used online-shopping was thrown into life-saving prayers?
What if I unmasked that son of a bitch?   What if I named him and his hold on my life?  What if I prayed the power of Jesus Christ against him?  What if he got the blame?

What if fear didn’t run the show anymore?

 

 

I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to scare you.