Possibilities

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”  This is the first and greatest command...

Mark 12:30

What if we just loved God?

What if, just for a week, just for a day, just for an hour, we let go of the ‘coulds’ and ‘shoulds’ and ‘ought tos’, we resigned from the all-consuming business of image-maintenance and expectation management - we sent our religion packing?  What if our focus slid from self to Savior – not out of guilt, or pretentious, pious habit, but because we like it?  We like Him.  We like how it feels to lift our weary busy eyes from this loud and fickle world, resting them instead on the starkly simple beauty of His holiness.    

What if we softened in the Presence of our Maker?  What if we allowed the stress and the tension of daily life to drip out of our shoulders and down our backs, over our shoes and down the sidewalk?  What if we breathed every breath as though oxygen was laced with the potent goodness of God, lifting our chests with life, filling our souls and our lungs with the raw and utter sweetness of living?  (What if we knew the sweetness of living could be so easily tasted?)

What if we enjoyed God?  Not pretended to, as you do with people you chat to politely while waiting for your real friends.  What if we enjoyed Him – genuinely - as though He were the friend we’d been waiting for?  What if we liked to be with Him?  Not to ask, not to question, not to request, not to blame, not to wrestle, not to learn, but, maybe, just to walk.  To settle in to a comfortable rhythm of affection, His steps matching our own, awash in the fondness we share.  To ask His opinion or laugh at a joke. To remark on the loveliness of sunset.

What if loving God was the driving force behind the whole of our existence?  What if we allowed the Creative Genius behind quarks and nebulas and tiny infant noses, the Writer of every mathematical equation and the Author of every good story to tether Himself to our hearts and souls and minds and strengths?  What if we became so enamored with Him, so lost in His love that the line separating our selves from His wavered and blurred, slipping into extinction with each passing day?  What if our time with Him was so easy and common and frequent that we picked up His habits?  Would we find His words spilling from our lips, His hands and our fingerprints reaching out to every creature around us with compassion and kindness?  Would love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control flow not from us but through us, as light from a bulb or heat from a flame?

What if He was the first thought every morning and the last thought before sleep?  What if we let go of our trying and fussing, our fretting and struggling with our admittedly imperfect selves and let the anxiety we bear over pleasing Him melt into simply being pleased by Him?  What if we let perfect love drive out fear?  What if we discovered His yoke was easy and His burden was light?  What if we knew, down deep in the very darkened depths of our souls that He would never, never, never, never, never leave us or forsake us?  What if we believed what God said?

Would loving Him be enough?  Could we live on the sumptuous riches of God’s love, if it meant poverty in every other area of our lives?  Could we have nothing and yet posses Everything?  Would the knowledge of His relentless affection be worth every trial, every pain - the loss of every limb, every lover, every other pseudo-life-giving substitute we hold dear?  In the light of all possible occurrences, good or bad, hedging the road from this life to the next, instead of asking, “Why?” could we simply nod, “Yes – and can I be with You?” 

What if we loved God with ALL our heart and ALL our soul and ALL our mind and ALL our strength?  Could the world resist Him, then?  Could we?

What if we just loved God?

“If you continue to love Jesus, nothing much can go wrong with you, and I hope you may always do so.”

-C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

I Love a Man with Dishpan Hands... (February 5, 2010)

There’s something missing in my kitchen. A hundred years ago, no one would have noticed - fifty years back its presence would have been considered a luxury. Today, people’s eyes widen when I tell them, and they lower their voices with incredulity, “You don’t have a dishwasher?” 

It’s true. I don’t. Well, I take that back - I have two. I’m currently typing with them. They’re a little more chapped and chafed than they were in winters past - winters when the calm of evening was carried along by a soft background hum, the steady pulse of spinning water sterilizing my forks and knives and tableware. I washed dishes occasionally by hand in those days, too. The vestiges of good meals shared were rinsed away before the plates were cradled in their sauna, the ones unable to handle the heat delicately bathed and dried. If I numbered my moments spent elbow deep in suds, the hours could quite possibly stretch into years. 

Washing dishes, at first glance, is a menial task. What I wash today I will wash again tomorrow, and, if I continue eating, next week and the week after that. To alleviate the problem, I could buy paper plates (wasteful), learn to cook or eat without dishes (messy), or give up cooking all-together for restaurants and take-out (tempting).

I used to hate washing dishes. Lately, however, I’ve been coming to terms with my dishwashing demons. A chore I once loathed has now become slightly therapeutic - instead of hurriedly rinsing and tossing utensils into the hotbox, I settle into the task, knowing that a job done quickly will not be a job done well. Each dish, each glass, each mug is acknowledged, gently wiped if the damage is light, scrubbed if the offending scum is a bit more stubborn. Every soapy baptism yields a dish reborn as its sparkling self. It doesn’t matter that I have done this before; nor that in a day or two, I will do it again. The dish must be cleaned in order to be used, and because it is worthy of use, I wash it. Over and over again. And one more time. 

The steady repetition of washing dishes reminds me of so many other cycles in life. A task is completed and set aside, only to be picked up again the next day. And the next. As long as I continue to eat (and can’t afford a lifestyle of restaurant luxury), I will continue to wash dishes.

I often think I would prefer if tasks would stay completed. Almost a year ago I ran 42 kilometers in a marathon. Today my body struggles to run eight. Last week I ate a meal that was so good and so filling I could barely walk. This morning my stomach loudly grumbled its discontent at my pitiful lack of breakfast offerings. I spent all day yesterday drawing oxygen in and out of my lungs, and yet I find myself still breathing today.

The world I live in is prone to deterioration. Without regular maintenance, my car, my body, and my friendships will slide into rust and decay; my dishes will crust over and be useless. Both our vices and our virtues must be fed in order to survive. My relationship with God is no different.

The pages of Scripture are replete with the rhythm of holy maintenance; the Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years received only a daily dose of manna, the Law given through Moses drew them to the Temple for feasts and sacrifices that came around every season. Jeremiah reminds us that God’s mercies are new every morning; Jesus tells His disciples to ask for daily bread. Every Spring overthrows every Winter drawn from the frosted breath of every Autumn left in the wake of every Summer. The world turns, and turns again. Dawn breaks, evening falls. Dish soap is whipped into lather in the sink, moments pass and it dribbles feebly down the drain.

Christian theology teaches us that belief in Christ is what sweeps the eternal consequences of our sins into the depths of the sea, building for us a home in Heaven. The moment our faith emerges, a switch is thrown - the old is gone, the new has come. We become creatures of a new sort, brimming with new life, breathing with new hope. Love takes its place in our soul’s repertoire, as do joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We are the good soil these fruits thrive in, they bud and blossom through our hands and feet and the way we use our voices.

And while the task of our salvation is complete, we are tempted to leave beside it the articles of holy maintenance. We survey our circumstances and wish for a switch to be thrown. We want our lives to be fixed, and to never need fixing again. Looking back at the moments we felt most alive, when joy swept through us like a flood, when the light of freedom blazed through every corner of our souls; we now glance at dried up creek beds and crowds of shadows. Under the gaze of our paper plate vision, we reckon we should give up, toss it away and order take-out instead.

Just because joy does not now sing through my veins, does not mean I will not hear its song again. Just because peace eludes these current moments, does not mean it waits for me along heaven’s shores, determined to remain there until my body is laid down and my soul takes flight. I cannot warm my heart today with the fuel of last year’s fire. I must join the holy rhythm, coming back to my God for His daily bread (out of obedience, if nothing else) over and over again. And one more time.

Just a few feet from where I sit, priceless works of art are stacked in a heap. Fiercely lovely in their monochromatic glory, one buries the one beneath it, hundreds more cover them both in the span of a breath. Stunning in simplicity, unpretentious and unique, these icy drops of heaven are scattered two feet deep by a Creator who feels the beauty of a snowflake is important, even if He and the angels are the only ones privy to such intricacies. Great billowing drifts of suds wash over an earth that has been washed before; it will be washed again.

This is the God I return to, the One who sustains me, who feeds my soul, who sets beauty in places sometimes only He can see. He settles into the task, knowing that a job done quickly will not be a job done well. He gently wipes me clean when I am damaged; He scrubs away offending scum when I am stubborn. It doesn’t matter that He has done this before, or that He will do it again. He doesn’t toss me away like yesterday’s paper plate. He never gives up and orders take-out instead. It seems He finds me worth the effort and when I come to Him with my paltry offerings of obedience and praise, He baptizes me anew; I am reborn into my sparkling self. 

I am glad I’m not a task He has completed. Submitting myself to soul maintenance is not often easy; it is rarely fun. Many times I do wish He would fix my life and leave it fixed. If He did, however, I would not witness the steadiness of His love, the rhythm of His hands molding and shaping, cleansing and renewing me over and over again. And one more time. That is something I couldn’t bear missing.


“Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.  I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.” -Jesus (John 15:4-5)

Purple Chicken (January 1, 2010)

I was trying to be impressive. That was my first mistake. The second was believing that possession of Julia Child’s cookbook and a habit of reading it in a heavy French accent (like thees) somehow bestowed the ability to cook with breezy French flair upon a girl who, let’s be honest, doesn’t know the difference between a cassoulet and a casserole. Julia Child, it turns out, I am not.

It began, as adventures in my life do, with those fateful little words: “How hard can it be?” I won’t take you down all the roads that phrase has led me to; this particular path was lain with cream puffs. Cream puffs! I mean, really - how hard can they be?

I thumbed through the cookbook. Found the puff pastry recipe. Found all the various cream recipes (being a French cookbook, and all). Decided, (quite brilliantly, I thought) to make the cream first so that it could chill while the pastries were made. I spread the book open wide on my counter and dove in.

I whipped the egg yolks, slowly beating in the sugar until it was light yellow and “formed the ribbon”. I added hot milk, drop by drop as per Julia’s instructions, and warmed it all in a saucepan till it was a glorious foam. I painstakingly strained the mounds of golden cream through a tiny tea sieve (it was the only one I had), added the vanilla and whipped it all again over a bowl filled with ice. I felt invincible! I felt impressive! I felt French!

I covered my Crème Anglaise, put it in the refrigerator to set, then collapsed on a kitchen chair, spent but satisfied. My cream puffs were on their way to being perfect. I pulled the book towards me to check in case I had forgotten anything, and casually turned the page. About half-way down, under the heading for the recipe “Crème Pâtissierè” lay some other fateful little words: “use as filling for cream puffs”. I quickly flipped the page back and scanned the recipe I had used. There was no mention of cream puffs. Instead, only words that alluded to runniness, like “pour over cakes and ice cream” and “use in place of cream” met my horrified gaze. The truth dawned like a Paris morning - I had used the wrong recipe. There were no cream puffs to be had that night.

Undaunted, I returned to Julia’s cookbook the next night. Cream puffs? No - they were so ‘yesterday’. Besides, I knew the problem, now. An impressive chef (like zee one in my head) would set their sights on greater, more legendary culinary challenges - like Coq Au Vin! Chicken in a wine sauce - how hard could it be?

I thumbed through the cookbook. Found the CORRECT recipe. Gathered the necessary ingredients, minus one (where do they sell cognac in America, anyway?). Decided, (quite brilliantly, I thought), that the flambé step was probably just for show, and spread the book open wide on my counter. I dove in.

I boiled the bits of bacon and then browned them lightly in butter. The chicken followed, then salt and pepper, the smell of a gently sautéing dream filling my kitchen. In the absence of cognac and an appreciative audience, I skipped the part where you set the chicken briefly on fire, and doused it instead with a nice burgundy, a cup or two of beef broth and some spices. I covered it, as instructed, and let it simmer for half an hour. I was again feeling invincible! Impressive! French! When I returned, the smell was heavenly. The chicken was purple.

It occurred to me then that the people who write down recipes and have them published do so because they know what they’re talking about. Julia Child knew that Crème Anglaise was a sorry substitute for Crème Pâtissierè if one intended to make non-soggy cream puffs, and that non-flambéd Coq Au Vin would likely turn an unappetizing purple. That’s why she made the recommendations she did. My less-than-impressive French cooking debut was the result of my mistakes, not her direction.

It also occurred to me that each of us makes our debut in the world, hoping that our lives will be happy and healthy. We want to belong somewhere, to someone; we wish to love and be loved. We desire lives that count for something, and long to greet each sunrise with enthusiasm, each sunset with satisfaction.

The problem is that most of us don’t. Our lives haven’t turned out quite the way we thought they would. Oh sure, there have been some delightful surprises along the way, but there have been just as many disappointments - sometimes more. We start each New Year with new resolutions, determined to make things different, but new days have a way of fading into old habits, and by February, most things haven’t changed at all.

Perhaps, the life you were hoping for isn’t the life you’ve got because you started off with Crème Anglaise instead of Creme Pâtissierè - the recipes have gotten mixed up. God’s recipe for living might have gotten a reputation for being harsh and a little bitter, so you decided to pick a different one. One you thought would be a little bit sweeter. The problem is that only one has real substance and any other just dribbles away - it won’t hold up under the demands of real life.

I’m sure Julia Child loved good cream puffs. She tested recipe after recipe and included the very best ones in her book so that those who followed her directions precisely would taste the sweet bliss she knew was possible. I missed that bliss because I followed a different recipe. God loves life - He designed our hearts and minds to love it too, and included the very best recipe for living in His Book so that those who follow His directions precisely would taste the sweet bliss of peace, joy and hope that He knows is possible. If we’ve missed that bliss, it is likely because we’ve followed a different recipe.

There’s a great verse in the Bible that says:

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him” (Psalm 34:8)

I love that! God invites us in to check Him out. He does not command us to follow Him blindly, to follow rigorous rules of conduct on His whims. He does not hide in heaven and crack the whip because He’s bigger than we are. Instead, He leans in and offers us free samples of His goodness - the beauty of a crisp winter snow, the warmth of family and friends, the breathless moments of sunset. “Taste!” He says, “Taste and see!” He’s confident that once we see who He really is, we’ll come running back for more.

When we do realize the goodness of God and pick up His recipe for life, it’s important also to be aware that if you mess with the process you mess with the results. The reason my husband thought he was eating beef for dinner (purple chicken in disguise) is because I thought I knew more than the expert and skipped a step. Turns out, that step was more important than I thought. God doesn’t give us commands because He wants to waste our time or suck all the fun out of life - just the opposite! Each instruction He gives has purpose, each step is necessary if we want to arrive at the intended results. And we are not left to work it out on our own - not only does He give us all the ingredients we need, the recipe is not nearly as difficult as you think...

“This is love for God: to obey His commands. And His commands are not burdensome...” (1 John 5:3)

Finally, my first mistake was my biggest one - I was trying to be impressive. Food should be made to taste good, not to be impressive. My life should be lived according to God’s standards because it’s right, not because I think it will make me look good. Or impressive. Anything good I have ever known is laced with the flavor of God’s love; it has come from His hands, because HE is good, not because I am. I’ve tasted the sweet life because He showed me how, and now I follow His recipe because I’m addicted to living deliciously.

This New Year, as we look back on the highs and lows of 2009, and toward the great potential of 2010, I am reminded of the old phrase, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got[ten]”. There were priceless moments in 2009 that I know came as a result of following God’s recipe, and broken moments in 2009 that came when I followed my own. There are things that I’ve always done, but if I want something new in 2010, if I want to see real change in my life, I’ve got to adjust the recipe. Fortunately, I know a Chef with zee most impressive one around....

Words for Weariness (March 5, 2009)

I’m tired. Worn out. Weary.

It’s my own fault. I’ve always had a tendency to run through life at top speed – there’s so much I want to accomplish and create and experience that I hate letting even small moments dribble away (although I am a very gifted procrastinator). I suspect I also have a skewed sense of reality – I always think I can cram more activities into a finite amount of time, and that if I push hard enough, they’ll fit. I’m not usually right, but that hasn’t stopped me from continuing to try (and may also explain why I am prone to being late).

The result is that I find myself either living full throttle, or plastered against a wall. Today, the wall won.

The thing about being weary is that when your natural strength ebbs away, the hidden monsters lurking behind your walls of activity feel safe enough to come out – restlessness, fragility, self-doubt. They know I’ve been ignoring them, pretending they don’t exist, but when I hit the wall, I know they’re watching. As I peel my numbed brain, glassy eyes and incoherent lips off the crash site, they start circling.

Restlessness rustles through me, irritating every nerve, igniting impatience and frustration with every conversation. Every glance, every word, every move made by everyone else annoys me. It amazes me that I can be bone-tired, but still throw a temper tantrum in my heart, kicking and beating the empty air inside me, many times without even knowing why. I’m just angry, that’s all.

Self-doubt throws punches, as well. They are usually harder and better aimed than my flailing heart. I question my purpose, my effectiveness, my ability to do anything right. I am blinded by everyone else’s successes and deafened by the roar of my own failures. Pity is Self-Doubt’s snivelly sidekick, leaning into all manner of whispers about what’s fair, and who’s right, and who cares anyway. I don’t.

It’s there, in the dim light of my pity party that the harsh truth of my weariness sinks in – I’m fragile. Breakable. I can’t do it all. I can’t be it all. I’ve built my jello castles with sugar hands, and in those stark moments of self-awareness, the rain comes down.

Where do you go when the rain comes down? Where does your soul settle when restlessness flickers through your veins and self-doubt has wrestled you and won? Is there a safe haven for fragile hearts? Where, where, where can I find rest when I am weary?

It’s late. My filter is off. I’m tired. I’m going to tell you the truth.

I need God like I need oxygen. Go ahead and laugh, but it’s true. He is the only place my soul settles. Heaven isn’t just a future hope for me; the home of my Heavenly Father is where my heart turns now when it can’t go on any further. Believe me, I’ve looked for other landing pads – friends, accomplishments, relationships – nothing compares. He patiently waits through my tantrums, letting me tire myself out with wrestling and flailing, and when I have nothing left, He picks up my bruised, exhausted heart, gently nestling it right next to His. And I wonder why it took me so long to be still.

Today when I hit the wall, when I was moderately numb and irritated with the world, the last thing I wanted to do was go running. It’s March and blustery outside. It had rained earlier, and the sky held no promises that it wouldn’t open up and unleash its cold yield on me again. The kitchen was a disaster, there was laundry to do, and it was getting dark. But, I pulled on my running pants and shoes, jacket and hat (more because of the unknown number of oatmeal raisin cookies consumed earlier than of any lofty spiritual goals, actually), and headed out the door.

It’s funny. God has this way of taking my efforts - I got ready, I went down to the river, I started running – and turning them into gifts from Him. Running there, swept along by the winds of evening – in that moment, there was nowhere else I would have rather been. The sky was still gray and pregnant with rain. I was still exhausted and, barring the arrival of pixie-dust bearing fairies in my absence, the kitchen was still a mess and the laundry undone. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed.

It’s not because I went running. Everything changed because I took steps to spend time with God, even though it was sort of the last thing I felt like doing. I think sometimes God lets me wear myself out so that I’ll stop fighting – it’s only then that I’m weak enough to let Him carry me. There’s a great song by a guy named Rich Mullins and he says:

“I can’t see how You’re leading me, unless You’ve led me here
To where I’m lost enough to let myself be led.
And so, You’ve been here all along, I guess.
It’s just Your way and You are just plain hard to get”

Sometimes I need to get lost enough to let myself be led. Sometimes I need to be weak enough to feel His strength, and sometimes I need to be poor enough to see the riches of His goodness. Sometimes it’s ok to be lost and weak and poor.

I admit that this all sounds like some crazy paradoxical up-side down way of living, and I probably would scoff at it too, if it didn’t actually work so well. Lots of people say that they are following God, but they insist on being right and strong and rich, and I think that they have missed the point. They have missed out on one of the great beauties of knowing God. He is good (good enough for the both of us), and He loves me (in spite of all my monsters) and if I know nothing else, I know that, and that’s enough. Sometimes God is “just plain hard to get”, and that’s ok.

There’s a great story in the Bible where Jesus has just given some really hard teaching. So hard, that a lot of people decide He’s nuts and turn away. The crowds that once swelled at just the sound of His name have dwindled to embarrassingly low numbers. I can see Jesus watching them slowly fade off into the clouds of dust kicked up in their hasty retreat, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads, throwing their hands up in disbelief that they had followed such a renegade for so long. He turns to His twelve closest friends who, themselves, I imagine, are shuffling their feet and trying not to meet His eye. I suspect weariness clung even to Him, at this point - you can almost hear it in His voice. “You do not want to leave, too, do you?” He asks.

Good old Peter looks around and says what my heart says every time my monsters try to get the best of me, when I’m tired and weary and God seems “hard to get”. I imagine Peter shrugged.

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:67-69).

Where else am I going to go? He is the place my heart settles. He is where I find peace in the midst of uncertainties. He is where my restlessness is quenched, my self-doubt vanquished, my fragility tenderly guarded. He leads me when I’m lost and carries me when I’m weak. Why would I go anywhere else?

I need God like I need oxygen, and that’s the truth. I’m too tired to make anything up.

Chasing Sunset (January 22, 2009)

Sometimes, the only cure for a criminal heart is to be arrested by beauty. 

I had something else to say today, actually. Had it all planned out. Reams of outlines and parables have been whirring through my mind, concocting the deepest of meditations, rich with wisdom and wittiness. It was brilliant, in case you’re wondering.

But, then…. well, then….. I was arrested. Stopped in my tracks. Unexpectedly and breathlessly captured by a God who doesn’t play by my rules. When I am discouraged with myself, I expect shackles of shame and “that look” – the one you can feel even when you can’t see it – with lips pursed and eyebrows drawn up in silent disapproval, the unspoken “tsk, tsk” stinging like a whip. But today, for no reason that I can explain, He pulled me close with cords of loving kindness. And I am undone.

When I talked last week about having a criminal heart, I wasn’t trying to be unjustly hard on myself. I was just trying to be honest about who I know that I am. I believe that each of us, deep down, knows who we really are. The thing I’m trying to prevent us all from saying is that overused breezy cliché: “I’m a good person”. What we actually mean is that we think we’re better people than others we know. Being better than someone else (by our own estimation) doesn’t make us good people by default. It just makes us better actors.

If there is a perfect King, who is building a perfect Kingdom to be populated by perfect people (and by “perfect” I don’t mean snooty, up-tight, narrow-minded and judgmental. I mean it in the true sense of the word – delightful, refreshing and pure, people whose very presence softens you, wrapping you in the feel of home), if that’s what Heaven is made of, I don’t make the cut. In fact, I don’t know anyone who does (no offense).

And that is the problem. If left in our hands, the Kingdom of Heaven would be a very lonely place.

Fortunately, God found a better place to leave it – in His hands. His hands may be firm, but they are not harsh. In fact, a friend of His made this observation:

“The Lord is compassionate and merciful,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever.
He does not punish us for all our sins;
He does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.
For His unfailing love toward those who fear Him
is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.
The LORD is like a father to his children,
tender and compassionate to those who fear Him.
For He knows how weak we are;
He remembers we are only dust…”
(Psalm 103:8-14, NLT)

I love that He knows how weak I am. He remembers the day He drew the first bit of dust from the ground and molded it into a shadowed likeness of Himself. He breathed into those fragile lungs the first breath of life, a holy respiration that we reenact every moment of every day – it is the very thing that binds us to life.

When I am feeling like a failure, when I know I would not show compassion to someone who had behaved the way I had, when I refuse to forget others’ sins and hold their guilt against them, it is good to know that God does not act the way that I do. And He remembers I am only dust. He does not expect me to be gold, because I am not. I am dust. But in His hands, I am in the process of getting to gold.

Let me illustrate. Today, I went running. I ran through a familiar forest, but a place I had not been for many months. It is a sacred place for me, memories of past prayers and treasured sunsets haunting now cold bare trunks devoid of leaves or life in this, the season of nature’s deep sleep. The sky was grey and heavy; the trail sporadically slick, a sheen of lightly frosted mud brushed on my well-worn path. My thoughts were like the sky, grey and heavy, clouded with frustration, with wanting to be more than I am, with irritation at getting lost. Yep, lost. I had taken a new path, one that I was sure would loop around to where I was accustomed to running, but suddenly there was a Christmas tree farm and beyond it, the autobahn. This was uncharted territory.

Mentally growling and almost literally kicking myself (danged underbrush), I felt like I was getting what I deserved - lost in the cold under a steadily darkening sky. “Please, God”, I panted, “Show me where I am.”

Silly me. I forgot Who I was dealing with. Around the next bend He not only showed me where I was - He showed me who I was.

A few things you need to know about me – I love sparkles on the water. I love sunsets. I love how the light of a setting sun colors the world around it, blazing tangerine beams breathing pink over earth, trees, and sky. Everything is beautiful in the light of a setting sun. Apparently, even me.

As I ran along a now familiar path, the grayness of the sky lifted, fingers of sunlight pushing past the trees and casting their bare branches as sharp shadows against the growing fire of the setting sun. My pace picked up, knowing the beauty that was coming. My heart picked up as I sensed “that look” – the one you can feel even when you can’t see it – with lips spread wide and laughter caught up all about His eyes; His pace matched mine, together chasing sunset.

I could try for days to describe to you the intimacy of those next moments; the sherbet lake, the blushing clouds, the naked winter trees dressed in pink and gold. The sparkles on the water. With each step I was reminded that I am dearly loved, not because I am perfect or lovable or a “good person” (for I am not), but because this good King delights in loving creatures He knows are made of dust. I have never been merely tolerated, I have always been treasured, and when I have eyes to see, the earth itself pulses with His love. A barren winter landscape hasn’t got a chance of remaining dull under the gilded kiss of sunset – and neither does a barren soul.

This criminal heart was arrested by Beauty. And I am still undone.

It's Criminal (January 15, 2009)

Apparently, I have a killer personality. Literally. Recently, I was asked to take a personality test. You know the kind - the ones where they ask you if you’d rather be a goat farmer or a hot air balloon maintenance worker and somehow pinpoint precisely how you act at parties and conclude awkward phone conversations. I felt fairly confident as I read through my results – I am primarily self-directed, prefer creative freedom to strict structural guidelines, and am readily adaptable to changing conditions…no real surprises there. Then I met with the consultant.

The purpose of meeting was to discuss how to use my strengths and weaknesses in my every-day life and career. In fact, part of the results indicated which career I was best suited for. With more than a bit of self-satisfaction, I was pleased to note that my strongest score showed I should be preparing for Law School, as it seems I have missed my calling as a lawyer. When I pointed this out to the consultant, he laughed and said, “What they don’t tell you, is that same score indicates your ability to be a career criminal.”

Lawyer jokes aside, that was a bit disheartening. More than a bit, actually. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I was indignant. A criminal personality? Me? No way! At least I was comforted by the fact that my extremely high score showed I would have a fair amount of success at a life of felony – no light criminal hobbies for me. Apparently, I could make a career out of being a villain.

I shrugged it off and other than a few light jokes with friends (“All this time I’ve been quietly raising support when I could have been doing some serious fund-raising!”) forgot about it. Or tried to. Unfortunately, that little fugitive flaw of mine shows itself more frequently than I thought. Being “self-directed” slides easily into being self-centered; having “creative freedom” means I go around people and boundaries to get what I want, and “readily adaptable”? That just means I’m good at it.

On the whole (before this delinquent discovery) I have generally felt pretty good about my surface self – I try to be nice (because it’s nice to be nice), I try to give people what they need, and not to complain when they don’t do the same for me. I do everything I can to act like a good person.

The problem is that I’m not. If you think I am, it just means I’ve fooled you as much as I thought I could fool myself. And God. Except that I haven’t fooled Him, and if I’ve fooled you, then I’m a much better actress than I thought b/c deep down, I’ve always known my shady little secret. I just hoped that hiding it would make it go away. How could I have known that innocuous questions about goat farmers would have brought it out into the open?

Once my “under-the-surface self” stood blinking in the light, I was horrified. Bitterness, anger, malicious motives, and selfish self-centered self-righteousness clung to her like putrid rags – and all of that was just from this week.

I believe that God is preparing a perfect society that will be filled with perfect people. He is the King of this Kingdom, and in it there will be equality; each member will be valued for their true selves and not for their possessions – beauty, wealth, or otherwise. These citizens will make good choices for good reasons. They will esteem each other and their King because they choose to, not because they are afraid or are seeking an advantage over another. I believe that this life is the “interview process” for that life, and at the end of days the citizens of that Kingdom will be clearly known (suspected all along by those around them), shining like diamonds on a dark cloth, like candle flames at midnight. They will be ushered into the land where there will be no more tears or sighing or pain.

And if I hope to make it there on my own, I am in trouble. I make good choices for bad reasons. Many times I am blind to someone’s true self, distracted by what they have or haven’t got – beauty, wealth or otherwise. Even my surface self wouldn’t fit in, b/c now and then the mask slips, and the putrid rags show through.

Do you know how I feel? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you never have those days when you’re just sick of being you, suffocated by all your secret weaknesses and failures. I don’t know. I suspect we each have an “under-the-surface self”, tucked away behind smiles and right answers and “being good”. If we’re honest, we’re all criminals, con artists to the core; defacing the reputation of others with snide comments, stabbing the truth with lies, raping the purity of an unselfish motive. What is to become of us?

The Kingdom waits. If it were obvious, doors open wide to any and all with eyes open wide, it would become only an extension of this world – full of souls that make good choices for bad reasons, a false layer of loveliness stretched over foundations of filth. If it were utterly unknown, the King would be unfair, choosing on a whim those worthy to live there – judging us by ability, value, or performance, on a scale negated by the existence of the Kingdom itself. In either, I would neither qualify, nor would I wish to live there.

I believe there are hints of the existence of this Kingdom, tucked here and there in our psyches and in our galaxies - rumors of hope whispered to a world overrun by criminal hearts. It is through the discovery of one hint that the map to the next is revealed; the strands of hints and hopes braided into the awareness of our lawless selves form the glimmer of a path, down which some find the courage to take faltering steps of faith.

If there is a King, and if He is good, and if He is preparing for us a place that is unlike anything we’ve experienced but more a home than we’ve ever known, then He might have a plan – He must have a plan - for a girl with a criminal personality. He wouldn’t be a good King if He didn’t.

I suspect there might be hope for me (and you) after all...