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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tuesday ushered you in, along with an inside panic alarm.

Today I received yet another wonderful present in the mail from another wonderful best friend, a book that I cracked open as soon as I pulled the FedEx envelope apart.

The rumblings and innermumblings of this third-of-the-way-through crisis jumped up a notch and shouted “ME TOO!” when I read these words today…

“I have always, essentially, been waiting.  Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have.  In my head, I was always one step away.”

Dearest readers…swing some chicken wire between us and don a collar, because I’ve got a confession to make.
I am twenty-seven and…well…sweat on my brow…tug at my sleeve…shift my gaze…gulp…
I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

Many times I’ve bemoaned to friends that I wish my childhood daydreams had danced around being a dentist.
Why?
Because you go to college…dental school…open a practice.  Boom.  You’re  a dentist.

But what do you do when the trajectory isn’t so clear?

What do you do when you want to do it all?

I want to swallow all of life in one gulp.
I want to find the job that tightly squeezes all of my talents and dreams and hopes into forty or so hours a week… I want my passions to come with a paycheck…and health insurance…and vacation days…(not that I’d need them.)

And I have no idea where to start.

Sending another baby brother off to school in the city of angels has broken my heart in more ways than one.
I ache cause he’s out of hugging distance, but also because the swirl of words that come through the phone or the laptop lens let me know that I made the wrong choice.

The $100,000 to crack books open in Ohio wasn’t right.  But it is what happened.  I was so lost, and really hurting… and crossing the state line sometimes was all it took to lunge me into a kind of inexplicable darkness.

I wish I would’ve studied design or photography at Parsons,  or creative writing at NYU, or dance performance or music somethingorother or well…a million other things at a million other places.

But I didn’t.

And now, while I’m living and working and maybe sometimes sort of writing if I have a few moments of energy… it’s not enough, and I’m dying on the vine.

I need a life that wakes me up in the morning.  I need a life that’s more than involuntary lung inflation, and worrying about every penny, and trying not to get sick because I couldn’t afford to get better, and falling asleep in a flat second because I’m worn out… or trying to fall asleep in a flat second so that I don’t spend the night thinking about what the next day won’t hold… and who won’t hold me.

One of my mentors told me that he didn’t ‘get it’ till he was 25.  I held on to those words every one of the 365 days of 2 years ago…and last year…hoping my 25 would echo his 25…or maybe my 26 would…and now fingers are crossed that it’ll be my 27.

But here’s what I can tell you.
There are good things about this life… I just.want.more.
And either that’s called greed and it’ll ruin my life with grandiose unmet expectations or that’s called hoping and it will run me into another two-thirds that build a life that finally makes sense…that finally will take the hills of these daydreamy puzzle pieces and marry them to the dips of the pieces that are my gifts and abilites.

I can tell you one thing… I have to start somewhere.

And maybe that’s just putting out into the universe in black & white some of the aches from my insides.  Maybe it’s jotting down the most ridiculous and the silliest and the scariest, hoping that the push to make those words reality will make it all less ridiculous, less silly, and less scary.

I want to dance on stage again. In sequins. And sky-high Louboutins.

I want to style for the J.Crew catalogue and have a photo filled office next to Jenna Lyons.

I want to live in a Manhattan brownstone in the village.

I want to see Paris and Capri and Scotland and Greece from behind my Clubmasters.

I want to own and run a creative think tank with my brothers that provides the answers and solutions to any creative need.  SNL sketch need rewritten? Band’s new album cover need restyled? Lyrics need rerhymed? Hotel suites need redesigned? Greeting cards need redone? We got this.  I want us to have hammocks in our offices and take tri-annual “inspiration trips”… I want to have a ten-minute mid-day dance party with the phones off, and welcome guests with a candy buffet & a huge hug.

I want to sway to Ray LaMontagne in a dress that sweeps past my feet, and awkwardly cry in the back of a darkened bar while Patty Griffin blows the roof off.

I want to sit in a Nashville diner close to sunrise singing and writing and penning words that will turn hearts.

I want to walk in a room and be the pretty girl.

I want to be able to gift those in need lavishly.

I want to choose the soundtrack. To match the emotion of the moment of a television show or movie to the music.

I want to design bouquets that steal the photo.

I want to design weddings and events that steal your breath away.

I want to have the copper pots and pans and the built in shelves and the watercolored cherry and grassblade mural adorned kitchen that wraps around me as I cook for my loves.

I want to have a recurring column in Relevant magazine.

I want to write books… I want to publish what I’m working on, the children’s series “Francie Frenchbraid & Popover Pigtail”… the fiction-esque novel, “Tricked.  An almost-memoir.  1/3 true. 1/3 hope. 1/3 fear.” … and the non-fiction book “An Unwilling Gypsy.”

I want to offer a screenwriter the ideas that are taking up shelf after shelf of my brain.

I want to take pilates and yoga.

I want to fall madly, deeply, amazingly in love with the one God’s designed for me since I was a thought.

I want to be a wife.

I want to bring my mis-matched kids home.

I want to own the “Edge” stemware from Crate & Barrel.

I want to perform… stand-up…improv…live…on screen…wherever…however… I just want to crack open.

I want to feel the rush of a strong New York city autumn breeze stretch out my long red curls.

I want to work with a ministry focused on purity and it’s purpose… and to travel and speak to those that need a fresh perspective on why it’s worth fighting for.

I want to have coffee, and maybe more, with Donald Miller.

I want coffee to not make me sick, and I want to start ordering cinnamon cappuccinos by the venti.

I want to talk photo with Angelica Glass.

I want to talk lyrics with Sara Groves.

I want to be the kind of person that doesn’t adore the snooze button.

I want to enjoy running.

I want to work alongside of international adoption agencies, and help bring other mismatched kids home to their families.

I want to get to know the God that commandeers my soul.  But not as a grandpa in the sky or a genie in a lamp, but as the Love…Comforter…Physician…Answerer…Warrior…Creator…Refuge that He really is.  I want to have the faith I envy in others…like Bob…and Emily…and Jeff & Inge Cook.

I want to change the world.

…and I doubt I’m the only one.

What if we could swallow life whole? In one big gulp?

What if we really could do it all?
What if we didn’t wait?

Mehopes as I blow out 27 candles, the wisps of smoke hold the crack of a starting pistol.
It’s time to live.

They are painted on my walls and inked in swirls on my skin.
I have letters and journals and scraps of paper etched with my terrible handwriting, and I’m sure if I took my time the loops of my quasi-cursive would swing together much prettier… but I’ve always been more concerned about the words than the writing.

Saturday night I sat in the ocean-hued living room of two dear friends as we chatted about life, love, our hope of love, our sometime broken hopes regarding love, and the conversation turned to where love’s been.

Five and a half years ago, my beautiful friend had an incredible fiance.  A man who loved the Lord well, loved others well, loved her well.  A man who worshipped and witnessed and kept the crowd laughing.  After they graduated from IU, he headed to Afghanistan to protect his country.  He would send home videos that ranged from tours of the bunk that had us crying with laughter to telling her how much he loved her, prayed for her, and dreamed about the day that was coming not-soon-enough where they’d be husband and wife.

And yet, the autumn wedding that was planned never happened, because he died serving his country.
And here was his wife to be, years later, with tears on her freckled face and through the tears over the husband she lost, she smiled just to speak of him.

I never knew him.  And it pained both of us.

She just kept staring at his face on the screen saying “He was really something… he was really something.”

Because words wouldn’t do him justice.
How do you smush letters together…26 options…to create the personhood of the love of your life?  How do you string together sentences to explain the hope of your future being taken away in an instant?  You just can’t.  All you can say is “He was really…something.”

Since April, God and I have barely spoken.  There was a Spring night so full of broken hope that it seems a steel door slammed between us… no, not quite “slammed”, more like slipped in between us silently.  I’ve always been one to beg of Him, love Him, cry out to Him with words.  And words, my constant companion, for months now…have failed me.

Worrying, fantasizing, wondering, daydreaming, crying… they aren’t the same.  They aren’t praying.  And I miss Him.
I would crack open the black leather of my Bible, or sit quietly cross-legged, willing myself to find the words to let Him know about my insides… and the words weren’t there.

The last few days of this August have seemed so sweet, and on a trip to see my bed-resting best friend at the hospital, I stopped in my tracks completely overwhelmed by His romance.

I must have looked crazy.  Stock still in the middle of the parking lot with my eyes closed, I breathed as deep as my lungs would allow, and let the sun heat up my face, listening to the far-off rush of a fountain and letting my pulse slow, and suddenly my insides found big words of powerful love to silently shout at Him, wanting Him desperately to open His ears to my thankfulness.  The jingle of someone’s keys broke the peace, and I opened my eyes and walked into the hospital.

And here I am sitting still, feet propped up on the bedside while my best friend answers congratulatory phone calls after receiving the news that her baby boy will be here tomorrow.  And every few minutes, she looks at me with her one green eye and her one brown eye huge with disbelief that tomorrow the babe in her belly will be in her arms.  And yet again, words seem to fail the moment.

I can’t let words get in the way of my conversations with God.
On a first date it could be difficult to communicate without them, while working on a new chapter it might leave the pages blank, but a willingness to find a new way to crack open with the God I need so desperately is just what’s needed.

My wordsmithing might rust, but it’s time to squeak the steel door open and let Him in, to open His always unlocked front door and let myself in…even if my lips never open … because sometimes the emotion exceeds anything I could say.

Come to think of it, maybe there’s a little something about that written somewhere…

Romans 8:26 “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”