Fear and Dust

Morning rolls in with the gray clouds that now perch at the apex of the volcano. I sip my coffee. Nibble my toast. Admire the bright yellow walls of my new room and say hello to the pictures of friends and family hanging from my walls, reminding me of who I am, of the me I want to be. 

I run my index finger across my great slab of desk, sweeping up a stream of dust, gray like the clouds.

A phrase flashes, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

It’s not Tuesday, but Eliot still speaks, still echoes.

Fear and dust. Dust and fear sit heavy in my room, my mind.

Madeleine L’Engle comes in, pulls up a chair.

"Remember the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker." Walking on Water

We are dust. We are fear. But that is not all we are. We are also image bearers, light carriers, children of God. Co-creators.

Again the fear bubbles to the surface. I swallow it down with a swig of café negro.

It's scary to be a co-creator. It's scary to be responsible. To have the difficult conversations. To fight for truth and love.

Madeleine reminds, "The world tempts us to draw back, tempts us to believe we will not have to take this test. We are tempted to try to avoid not only our own suffering, but also that of our fellow human beings, the suffering of the world, which is part of our own suffering."

Lately I’ve drawn back. You can tell by the silence on the blog. I’ve drawn in. Drawn down.

Few things scare me more than meeting new people and speaking a foreign language. That’s pretty much all I do here, in Guatemala.

And it’s been hard. So I've gone all in and I've held back. I've tried to connect and I've thwarted connection. I've vacillated between fear and trust, bravery and dust.

Madeleine quotes Kafka, “It may be that this very holding back is the one evil you could have avoided."

Holding back my passion. Holding back my heart.

Scared to look like an idiot in a foreign culture. Scared to make a mistake. Scared to put myself out there and get nothing in return. Scared to say no to the men who pursue me for the wrong reasons because so few people are pursuing me at all.

Even scared to admit that I’m scared. That this is harder than I thought it would be.

That the daily throbbing of those I miss threatens to overtake me.

I've always wished I was one of those people who wasn't so scared. Who could glide into a room, any room, and make friends. But that’s not me.

I’m broken and scared. A handful of dust. A fistful of fear.

But that is not all I am. I turn my eyes to the One who drives out fear. Who has given me a name and a hope and an inheritance. Who has brought me here for a reason. Who has promised to restore joy.

God, I give you the broken pieces. I give you the fear I cling to like a handful of dust and watch it fall through the cracks. Watch it spill through my fingers, dissolve into thin air.

Remove the scales of dust from eyelids so that I may see myself as you see me, as your child, your beloved. That I may see beyond the gray clouds, the gray dust, to the fullness of your light and love and to the sun I know is shining behind.

T.S. Tuesday: What Trees and T.S. Eliot Have in Common

The seatbelt cut into my chin and my jellied feet dangled above the floor. If we were coming home from gymnastics practice, my hands and hair would be covered in white chalk and I’d still be sporting a velvet leotard that I would probably not even take off to sleep that night. If we were coming home from the neighborhood pool, we’d still be suited up, seated atop damp beach towels, our shoulders would be pink and the bridges of our noses would boast both a smattering of new freckles and a fresh goggles indentation. If it was any other occasion, I’d probably be wearing my favorite purple sweatshirt with a cat on the front paired with a matching purple sweatskirt—yes, they made sweatskirts in the 80s.

Even if we’d been driving just a few minutes, I’d already be able to hear my younger brother’s sleepy breathing and the punching of buttons as my older brother battled evil forces on the glow of his Gameboy.

As the car swayed back and forth through the winding roads, I wouldn’t be sleeping or playing, I’d be dutifully staring out the side window.

I was still so small, so low in the car seat that I had to crane my neck to see above the child lock and power window buttons to the outside world. And even then I could only see sky, the green-tinged points of pine trees, the triangle tops of shingled roofs on two-story homes, spiky tv antennas, sweeping power lines, and the concave dip of the few satellite dishes that speckled the neighborhood in the early 90s.

It would all pass by in a lightening fast (for a five-year-old) blur of 25mph. We could be anywhere: coming back from a friend’s house, carpooling from gymnastics, or with my dad making the long trek home from Circuit City (which I always thought was a city in Utah). From my vantage point, the scenery was indistinguishable, a blur of meaningless shapes and colors.

We could have been anywhere. Hours from home. Minutes from home. I never knew.

Until I spotted the gnarled branches of an old oak tree that stretched into my line of sight: the Remembering Tree.

The Remembering Tree stood out among the forest of pines that lined the winding roads of my small Northern California neighborhood. Even in the dark, I could make out its distinctive bough clumped with patches of moss and mistletoe, and I would know we were almost home. The Remembering Tree was three houses down from my own house, closer even than the bus stop.

As soon as I saw the tree, I’d breathe a sigh of relief and settle in to my seat. I’d lean my head against the passenger door and shut my eyes in feigned sleep with hopes that my dad would carry me in to my bed.

For years my entire family referred to the old oak tree as the Remembering Tree. It was always there to orient me. To help me remember that I was almost home.

We've long since moved away from the house beyond the Remembering Tree. But I haven’t forgotten the concept. I still seek out signs and symbols for security, safety, and a sense of home.

Now, instead of scanning for scarred branches, I memorize poetry. It sounds pretentious, but I assure you it stems not from a haughty, artistic elitism, but from the childlike need for familiarity in a rushing world.

I've developed the habit of repeating poetry at the end of every long run I take. As I round the corner or approach the front steps to my house, the same words release themselves from my lips, practically unbidden.

When I repeat the words of my favorite poets, like T.S. Eliot (And the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing) or ee cummings (i thank you god for most this amazing day), when I say the same words in the same order time after time, I dwell in the words like I used to dwell in the branches. And, even if I’m miles and countries away from where I started, I’m reminded that home, and the One who makes His home in me, is much closer than I think. 

Our Daily Fruit

I recently read* C.S. Lewis' science fiction novel, Perelandra, for the first time. While I'm not usually a fan of sci-fi, tales of interplanetary travel, or, as my brothers remember all too well from our childhood days of "realistic make believe", anything that isn't probable or true to life, I really enjoyed many aspects of Lewis' work.

In particular, Lewis presents a fascinating discussion on the act of choosing gratitude, choosing joy, as a sign of walking in step with the Creator.


Ransom, one of Lewis' characters, reflects on human's desire to taste and taste again things that are good, that bring joy and pleasure. To not just enjoy the gift the first time, but to want it over and over. To want it in place of lesser gifts, lesser pleasures, that are offered. To scheme and cheat and kill to experience it again. And to sulk and stew when the desire is not satisfied.

Ransom reflects:

"This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards...was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself-perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defense against chance, a security for being able to have things over again, a means of unresting the unrolling of the film." 

The "Green Woman," the innocent Eve of the pre-fall planet of Perelandra, doesn't understand this human feeling of discontent, disillusion, disappointment. Of wanting something that wasn't given.

She asks, "But how can one wish any of those waves not to reach us which Maleldil (God) is rolling toward us?"

How could we not accept His will and his offerings with joy and trust? It seems obvious in writing, when it's staring at you from the page, from the theology books, but we don't.

Ransom tries and tries to explain to her this sense of thwarted expectations, of wanting what we were not given, of mourning what we cannot have.

After awhile of back and forth discussion, the Green Woman, with the dawn of recognition, paints a simply profound metaphor for rejecting joy.

" 'What you have made me see,' answered the Lady, 'is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet is has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one's mind. Then, may it be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before--that the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished--if it were possible to wish--you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.' "

Admittedly, it's easier to rejoice in fruit
when it's mango and covered in chocolate. 

So often we "send our souls" after what we had expected, even hoped and prayed for, while the real fruit, the real gift, rots before us.

The Green Woman had never known she was choosing this joy. In her Edenic world, she has taken each fruit as it came, each wave as it came, with gratitude and trust because she had known no sour fruit, no death, no pain.

She recounts, astonished,

"I thought I was carried in the will of Him I love, but now I see that I walk with it. I thought that the good things He sent me drew me into them as the waves lift the islands; but now I see that it is I who plunge into them with my own legs and arms, as when going swimming."

Even in our fallen world of sin and betrayal and despair, we can choose to dive in, with abandon. Taking, accepting, rejoicing in the wave. Or we can choose to watch it pass us by.

We can choose to set our soul on the fruit He has given THIS day. Or we can choose to yearn for the fruit we had wanted with bitter wishing as the fruit we were given sours in our mouths.

I've adapted from The Lord's Prayer a new phrase, my new morning prayer:

When I awake to the bright, solemn morning, when peanut butter melts into toast, crunchy along the edges and coffee steams from a white polished cup, when I see the clouds smudged across a volcano sky and my hands open in surrender, I will pray,

"Give us this day our daily fruit. And may we take and eat and rejoice in it."

***

*Be forewarned this blog may see a proliferation of book reflections because of my newly acquired, two hour/three day a week reading time slot, I mean bus ride, into Guatemala City.

Trust The Spark

“You, Lord, keep my lamp burning;
my God turns my darkness into light.” Psalm 18:28

I’m a woman of words. I obsess over them, mull over them, am transformed by them.

I've been relinquishing burnout this last week. Unclinging myself from an identity of defeat.

I know what I’m moving away from. I have a vocabulary for burnout that I've painstakingly compiled over the last year. But what am I moving toward?

In my life, I've shifted from cynicism to gratitude, from despair to hope. But what lies on the other side of the burnout pendulum?

Productivity? Usefulness? Even the joy that I have been promised doesn't quite seem to be the opposite of burnout.

So I've been hoping for a word. A hint of where to go. How to navigate this process of rebuilding. In a foreign country. Away from (most) friends and family.

But I've been scared to ask. Scared that I won’t get a response.

Yet yesterday, while the pastor spoke about the vision of the church and I easily tuned out his Spanish, I dared to close my eyes and ask.

“Please give me a word.”

I thought maybe “baby steps,” “open,” “willing.”

But those words were mine, not His.

And then out of the silence, out of nothing, out of I don’t know where. The phrase resonated, vibrated, crystallized within me.

Trust the Spark. 

Trust the spark? What does that mean?

And then I heard, remember the spark, Aly? The spark within you that loves and cares and wants more? The part of you that can’t help but fiddle with words and tinker with ideas and come up with goals? The part that feels and flies and aches to do something meaningful?

The part of you that is loving and creative and patient and beautiful?
The part that never gives up?
Remember that, Aly?

That spark is still there.

You have a spark that burnout did not snuff. A small flame that will never go out. That still burns within you.

That spark is Me within you.

Trust the spark.
Grow the spark.
I am in you.
I am here.
I have never left you.

I will turn your darkness into light. I will keep your lamp burning.

The Same Old Hang-ups, The Same Powerful God

Every time I try something new, go somewhere new, I am convinced that I will be different. I won't be scared or shy. I won't find myself burrowing into a book in terror or feigning invisible in social situations. Miraculously, I will love meeting new people and suddenly I will become an outgoing, hospitable, social butterfly.

Yet again, this is not the case. Here in Guatemala, in this new place where I want to invest and plant roots and share life, I find myself stuck on the same old hang ups, the same old fears. In this quest for hope, this challenge to find the bright spots, I've found the greatest obstacle is not cynicism or doubt, but my own desire to withdraw, to be comfortable, to remain untouched, unchallenged, and unchanged.

I say I want to know their story, but more often than not, I haven't even asked them how they're doing, much less invited them to share their story. 

Six years ago when I studied abroad in Costa Rica, I wrote the thoughts below, and today I echo this desire to connect with others despite my battle with fear and complacency.

I say I want to know your story, but I haven't even asked. 

When I look into your eyes, I can see your story.

But that's as far as I get.

What is love?

What is kindness?

Where does my story stop and your story begin?

I've spent my whole life writing my own story.

I haven't had time to listen to yours.

Why am I paralyzed in fear?

Why is it so hard to look past my story for one minute?

What is it that I'm scared of?

Am I scared that your story will be different, or do I fear that it will be the same?

I say I want to know your story,

but I haven't even asked.

I can live with you for a semester and not even know you.

I can live with you for a lifetime and never even know your dreams.

I want to know you, I really do.

What story do I believe in?

That this is it, this is all?

Is there a heaven or a God?

Why haven't I learned that your story is my story?

That when I ignore you, I discount myself.

When I'm scared of you, it's really me that I'm afraid of.

If I really knew His love, would I be scared?

His love is supposed to drive out fear.

Today, I resonate with this ache to see past myself, with this thirst to witness the power of God. But, unlike six years ago, I am now confident that Love will drive out fear.  I have seen Him do it. In my life and in the lives of those around me. I have experienced freedom from fear, from self-loathing, from bondage to rules. I have experienced Love and Joy and Peace and the wondrous re-creation of the Holy Spirit on my behalf.

I have learned and am still learning to see past fear. To push past my normal limits. I am learning that I am loved and that I can turn to Him when I am scared. I am learning to trust Him. I am learning to love Him.

Today I ask this God of Love, the God who is Love, to allow His love to be my story so that my heart may be opened to others' stories. 

Who Cares?

“God does not demand that we give up our personal dignity, that we throw in our lot with random people, that we lose ourselves and turn from all that is not him. God needs nothing, asks nothing, demands nothing, like the stars. It is a life with God which demands these things.” 

--Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk (introduced to me by my wonderful friend and mentor, Kay)

It’s easier not to care. It’s easier to stay hidden, disengaged.

I don’t have to care.

I don’t have to confess.

I don’t have to be a woman of character.

I don’t have to humble myself and turn from all that is not Him.

But if I want a life with Him, I do.

First, I must lose myself. My pride. My ego. My reputation. My dignity.

First, I must admit: I am broken.

I have tried on my own. I have slipped in and out of God-consciousness. I have clutched my desires tight between my fingers, deifying them.

One year for Christmas, my best friend and I took our mothers ice skating. My friend’s mom, a sweet Korean woman who had never before set a skate-clad foot on the slippery ice death trap, was terrified. She clung to the hip height railing on the periphery and scooted her way around inch by inch. She never made it to the center swirl of more experienced skaters. She never felt the sweep of cold ice glide past her. She never hit her stride.

With the same illusory sense of control, I cling to my own desires, my own will, scooting around inch by inch all the while wondering why I haven’t yet hit my stride. 

And in my scuttling and scooting, clinging and clutching, I mess up. I stay self-focused. I act out of fear and convenience and greed. 

I turn from Him a hundred times a day, in my thoughts, my attitude, my actions.

Like Annie Dillard wrote, God doesn’t demand that I turn back to Him, that I confess my sin—or even acknowledge it for that matter. Like the stars, He will shine on whether I acknowledge Him or not.

The question I must ask myself is, what do I want more?

Do I want a life with God? Or would I rather be the queen of my own universe? Float by? Pass through? Scoot along?

Deep down I know I want a life with Him. I want His power and grace and spirit. His purpose and His presence.

If it is life with Him that I crave, I must humble myself, lose myself. Destroy my internal façade of goodness. Shatter my independence. Peel my fingers off the side rail of the skating rink and release my own desires, trusting that His ways are better.

A life with Him demands these things. A life with Him is what I want. 

***

Do you think God demands that we turn to Him or not? Do you think God demands anything? What life do you want? What do you cling to instead of Him?

Teach Us To Hope

In the car, I dim the music and I pray about promises.

Yesterday's message was on welcoming God, on learning to trust His promises. I seek to answer the question, "Is there a promise from God that I need to trust?"

These last few months have held a flurry of promises:

"I will restore your joy."
"I will comfort you."
"You will grow."

I'm praying off-the-cuff, spouting words to my steering wheel, to the silver Chevy Malibu who sneaks into my lane.

I ask God to teach us to hope.

TEACH us to hope? They're my words I've spoken, but still I'm surprised.

It's a prayer I don't think I've uttered before, or a least not often.

Teach us to love.

Teach us to care.

Teach us to follow you.

Those requests spill from my lips, almost of their own volition. But never teach us to HOPE.

Bring hope.

Stir hope. 

I've prayed those lines before. God is the one with the hope; we are passive recipients. 

I've never viewed hope as a discipline to be learned.

All this while, all this year, I've been caught between expectation and entitlement, wondering which promises to cling to, discerning if anything has been promised at all. I've been finagling my way to some kind of spiritually mature sense of hope for the future and trust in His promises.

I never thought to ask Him how. To ask Him to teach me.

I've sensed Him telling me to choose joy and to choose to trust, whether or not I feel hopeful.

As I dodge brake lights, exit the freeway, I sense the missing piece, the forgotten discipline, the unanswered command:

"Learn hope," He whispers. "Let me teach you."

Yes, Father, I want to learn.

Light Floods: Darkness, Dreams, & Daylight

The Darkness

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12 NIV)

The darkness flooded strong and heavy. Torrential.

Before Plant With Purpose wiggled its way into my heart, I wanted to live abroad. I dreamed of Antigua’s cobblestone streets, flowering woven shirts, bright skirts, distant volcanoes, and a day when I would dream in Spanish. I hoped to call Antigua home.

And that hope burrowed down deep within me, determined.

But I was scared. I was content, even joyful, to serve at Plant With Purpose. So I stayed silent. Stayed put.

About a year and a half ago I felt God calling me to ask if it would be possible to work for Plant With Purpose remotely from Guatemala. To ask if my dreams could come true. After an initial yes, I was given a final no.

I. felt. so. foolish. for thinking I could get what I wanted. That I wouldn’t have to choose between the job I loved and the country I wanted to call home.

And so, not ready to leave my job, I stuffed in the disappointment. Swallowed it down. Tucked it into a pocket. And went back to work.

Could I dare to hope again?

Night Vision

I spent one and half years in grief and burnout, trying to discern if the call for Guatemala was God-given or God-thwarted. Was I being too selfish or were my dreams too small?

I learned to name the grief, the ache, the burnout.

I learned to see God in the dark.

As my sight failed, my Hope grew. I learned to don my night vision God goggles, my hope growing wide as my pupils.

At a prayer workshop at my church, I was given a vision of light, of freedom, of joy:

"Someone is running in the dark, past all of these closed doors. But God rushes in and takes your hand; suddenly you are running with him in the light—free."

I was running in the dark, past closed doors. I was running so hard and so fast and so desperate. I couldn’t see the light, but knew the light was coming. I kept running anyway. What else would I do?

I was promised light.

The Light

I know this is a lot of background and you’re probably wondering why I don’t just hurry and up and tell you already how the story ends, how God has made a way, but the darkness is what makes the light so sweet.

In the last few weeks of praying and pleading, of discerning and deliberating, I sensed a calling to let go. To loose my fists that clench too tightly around Plant With Purpose. To silence the voices that tell me I am nothing without my job, without this identity as a social justice do gooder. To quell the fear that Plant With Purpose is the best part of me, the only good part of me. That alone I will unhinge, disappear, disintegrate.

And so I decided to leave. To let go. To step forward.

I have friends who live in Guatemala who have graciously offered their home to me. I have roommates who have graciously agreed to let me leave halfway through our lease. I have a family that has graciously encouraged me to follow my dreams, even if it means I’ll see them less.

And so I told my boss I will be leaving Plant With Purpose at the end of June.

And so I told my roommates I will be moving out in the middle of July.

And so I told my friends I will be coming to live with them in Guatemala.

Just as soon as I made these plans, as I took this step, the light began to flood in. God answered my prayers for confirmation, my heart cry for meaningful work.

I have been given the opportunity to work as a freelance writer for other non profits. Over the last few months, the dark months, God has been building connections and giving me time to cultivate relationships that will allow me to do what I love to do in the country I would love to call home.

I have been running in the dark for so long, banging closed doors, and now I see the light. Like the woman at the prayer workshop told me, it is as if God has rushed up beside me, grabbed my hand, and we are now running in the light.

FREE.

I stand here astonished. My vision flooded with light, with gifts, with promises fulfilled.

Ful-filled. Filled with fullness. Only the Great of Greatness, the Holy of Holies, the true God of True God, the Deep of Deep can fill with fullness. Is Fullness Himself.

The light floods quick, burns pupils. I am left, face unveiled, squinting out the glory, whispering gracias, gracias.

***

Braids, Burnout, and Obedience

I work for an incredible organization. And this week I had the privilege to travel to the field to visit the coworkers and farmers with whom we partner.

On trips like these, the words I crank out from 9 to 5 take on life. Take on faces with wrinkles and smiling grandpa eyes. Take on braids and crooked smiles and school uniforms.

On Monday morning I joined with hipsters and surfers and college students from San Diego to plant trees with mothers and fathers, farmers and pastors and mayors from a tiny, rural town called Zumbador in the Dominican Republic. In case you missed my thoughts on planting trees at Life Before the Bucket or in Relevant Magazine, planting trees with the rural poor is something very close to my heart.

Together, we planted orange trees in what will soon be a thriving agroforestry plot. As Leoncio, a farmer I have written stories about from my desk in San Diego, placed a small seedling, the very symbol of new life, cool and damp in the palm of my own hand, the tears sprang hot on my face.  A holy moment of holy grace. 

***

There was a time when I couldn’t read or listen to stories of Plant With Purpose’s work without crying. Literally. From videos to newsletter articles to hearing the Executive Director share his stories from the field, I was a regular waterworks.

The tears were triggered by something beyond me, or perhaps within me, an unconscious reflex. A sign of God at work.

Before I started praying again after I swore off the church and God. Before I even knew how my writing skills and experiences with both rural and urban poverty—and the connection between the two—would line up with the exact needs and role I would later take on at Plant With Purpose. Before any of that, I knew that God was moving in those tears, in the passion behind the tears. I knew that in this passion, this stirring, this calling, was where I would find God. Where I would be used beyond my wildest dreams. Where I would be given the gift, the privilege, of sharing the stories of hope and transformation and restoration that are occurring in rural areas around the world as a result of Plant With Purpose’s work.

Over the last year, the tears have been plentiful. But these tears haven't been the tears of a passion so strong my eyes could not stay dry. Instead they were tears of pain, of grief, of defeat.

Sometime in the last year, I hit burnout pretty hard. Really hard.

If you’ve never experienced burnout, I am grateful for you. It is one of the most harrowing trials I’ve ever gone through as a writer, as an employee, as a person.

An article by Psychology Today describes burnout as “a cunning thief that robs the world of its best and its brightest by feeding on their energy, enthusiasm, and passion, transforming these positive qualities into exhaustion, frustration, and disillusionment.”

I don’t claim to be one of the best or brightest, but I know I once had an energy, enthusiasm, and passion for my job that I could not contain. And I know that after three years of pouring myself into my work, I woke up to exhaustion, frustration, and disillusionment. It seemed overnight the job I once loved, the job I literally lived and slept and breathed, the job that gave me life—that was my life--, became a burden, suddenly unmanageable and simply un-doable.

I tried to push through. I took time off. I changed my job description. I set better work-life boundaries. I changed my job description again. I started this blog. I prayed and prayed and prayed.

I haven’t shared this struggle on this blog because I’ve been embarrassed. I’ve feared the voices that would tell me to just try harder. To just suck it up. To just get over it already.

But even without writing it, those voices were screaming in my head. Telling me it’s a tough economy and I have a job that helps people and has flexible hours and occasionally sends me to really cool places around the world and I must try harder to make it work. 

The voices told me I was entitled and greedy for wanting more.  For wanting the passion to be reignited. For wanting rest and revival.

If you follow this blog, perhaps you can recall my posts on trusting God through the darkness and the storm and the bad days and all of those metaphors of persevering through difficult seasons in our lives. My darkness, my storm, my bad days have been burnout.

And through it all I have been praying, seeking answers, seeking comfort, seeking joy. And God has been silent, mostly.

But He has been faithful. In the darkness He has been moving. Passing by. Making a way.

Ann Voskamp in One Thousand Gifts says, “When we look back, we see God’s back. Wasn’t that too His way with Moses?

“When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back” (Exodus 33:22-23 NIV).”

She asks, “Is that it? When it gets dark, it’s only because God has tucked me in a cleft of the rock and covered me, protected, with His hand? In the pitch, I feel like I am falling, sense the bridge giving way, God long absent. In the dark, the bridge and my world shakes, cracking dreams. But maybe this is true reality: It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors.”

This last year I have felt too many tremors to count. Spilled too many tears to tally. Clutched too tightly to the shards of cracking dreams. 

But He has been faithful. He has been moving, protecting, passing by.

He has been calling me out of the job I love to call me in to something new. And I have waivered, pouted, thrashed, and tried to divine the answer from the rod of my own casting, instead of trusting His divine wisdom.

I have failed and flailed and I cannot do it anymore. I am surrendering to His calling out. In the end of June I will be leaving my job at Plant With Purpose.

Tomorrow I will share where I will be going and what I believe God is calling me into. Tomorrow I will share how God has made a way for joy to be restored. I will write of His faithfulness.

But today I sit in joy and pain, together. Relief and sadness, together.

Today I mourn that I am leaving. I mourn the limits of my brain and body and my own efforts. I mourn the burnout. I mourn that this last week was my last trip to the field as a Plant With Purpose employee.

As yet more tears (I didn’t think I had more to shed) slide down my cheeks, I mourn. I mourn and give thanks together. Give thanks for the time I’ve had, the role I’ve had. Give thanks for the smiling grandpa eyes and the girls with braids and crooked smiles and school uniforms.

I give thanks even in the mourning because I trust the One who will turn my mourning into dancing.

T.S. Tuesday: Journey of the Magi: Part 2

Today’s T.S. Tuesday is Part 2—after Part 1--of a three part series on Eliot’s poem, The Journey of the Magi.

My attempted nuggets of wisdom will come from the second stanza, which describes the three Magi’s journey to see the newborn Messiah of the Jews: 

“Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.” 

I’m struck by the line “But there was no information, and so we continued.” Not “and yet” or “but” we continued. No, “and so.” There was no information, AND SO we continued.

Stacking Up Joy

Psalm 73:23

Yet I am always with you;

you hold me by my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel,

and afterward you will take me into glory.

I knew God was going to speak.

I knew he had a message. A promise. An image.

And sure enough, he did.

"Someone is running in the dark, past all of these closed doors. But God rushes in and takes your hand; suddenly you are running with him in the light—free," she said.

I knew the image was for me.

I know the light has been promised. The joy will be forthcoming. The twirls and running and sensation of grass springing beneath my toes will be a reality.

I don't doubt it.

But I can't feel it. Right now--even after prayer upon prayer--I don't feel the joy and I can't see the light. Not yet.

But I don't doubt it.

The one thing I know is that I won't fake it. There is a time when I would have faked it, so hard it would almost tear me apart.

But today I will not fake it. The God who promises me light is smart enough to know that I'm not there yet. He's patient enough to give me the grace to grapple. To say, God I don't feel this joy that you talk about. I trust it is coming. I pray for the strength to ask for it.

I feel it fragments. In moments. In glimpses and hand squeezes and heads bowed and tears pricking.

But this picture of overwhelming light and sun and freedom--I don't feel it yet.

I love the image of stacking up truths. I like the idea of the addition, the stacking, the summation of experiences and truths and ideas.

But lately I've been challenged on this mindset. For what good is truth without love or joy?

I could stack up sad, pathetic truths for days.

1. The world is a place of deep pain and intolerable suffering.

2. God doesn’t always answer prayer.

3. People I love get sick, trapped in destructive patterns, move away, move out of my life.

4. I can't seem to get ahead of this curve of depression and burnout.

…..Etc. etc. until I can't get out of bed.

But where does this get me?

This keeps me in the dark, sprinting, heaving past closed doors.

There is another truth I can choose to see: the light wins.

God grabs my hand and sets me free.

Will I build my life around the darkness or will I build my life around the joy?

In One Thousand Gifts Ann Voskamp writes, "Do not disdain the small. The whole of life - even the hard - is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole ... There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments add up."

The moments add up.

The joy adds up.

I want a life stacked on joy.

God, I ask for the courage and discipline to choose to see the good. To unclench my fearful fists so you can take my hand.

Even in the darkness--in the not yet--I can stack these moments. I will stack the little joy and I will build my life on your promises:

Aly, you will grow. I will comfort you. I will restore your joy. I love you.

I thank you for the glimpses. The fragments. That which I see in part that will one day be given to me in whole.

I thank you God for the hope of most this amazing joy. Please guide me with your counsel and take me to your glory. Amen.

Expect Joy

Lately I’ve been a glass half empty kinda girl. I’ve been feeling defeat and despair and dullness where life and joy once teemed.

But God spoke to me yesterday.

After the tears on the phone to my mom. While washing dishes in the sink. While scraping day old coffee gunk from the bottom of a ceramic cup.

God spoke.

A melody at first. A refrain.

"restore unto me the joy of thy salvation..."

A Sunday school hymn.

And then the words of the living God. Whispered to me. To me?

"I will restore your joy."

Restore. Because something has been broken. Because something has been lost. Because something needs to be mended and tended.

My joy.

Psalm 51:10-12

"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me."

I don't know what that means or when that means. But I believe it. And I want it.

I want a clean heart. A renewed spirit. A heart that expects God to show up. That expects joy.

Because he WILL restore my joy.

I am going to expect joy.

Maybe there is something to this naming of gifts, naming of joy. As I type these words, my heart settles. The panic panic grasping subsides. My fists unclench, open to receive this joy. Expectant. Vigilant in the pursuit of joy.

Vigilant in the pursuit of God.