Anchors Away... (January 23, 2010)

“Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall.... don’t think about falling” My heart beat out the rhythm of the words as the slight heels of my brown boots teetered on the top wrung. It was the yellow ladder. The tall one. I could see the price tag taunting me from the back corner of the box, just beyond the reach of my scanner gun. The bar code slightly blurred as I contorted and stretched and prayed that my thin red laser beam would capture those stupid black stripes and reward me with its annoying ‘beep’ before my tremulous balance gave way to gravity. Almost..... almost.....

Inventory. Anyone who has ever worked in retail knows the horror of that word. Those who work it are doomed to endless hours of ceaseless counting. Since I am currently employed in a kitchen store and enjoy baking, I thought it would be fun to count the baking items. Silly me. I forgot that the baking section included such joys as sprinkles, measuring spoons, and a million and two paper thin Italian baking cups that, at four a.m., will cross the eyes of any hapless soul who dares to attempt numbering them. I know. I was hapless.

Somewhere between the heights of the yellow ladder and the depths of the cold concrete floor (“fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six... no wait. Is that? Augh! One...two...three...”), I thought about the inventory of my life. From the heights of blessings to the cold depths of trials and discouragements - if I numbered them all, what would I find?

If I let my feelings take stock, the cold concrete would have swallowed me up ten thousand and four Italian baking cups ago. To be honest, a general blueness has settled on my shoulders and when I’m not looking, it soaks right through to my soul. Many days I feel listless, tired, lonely. My heart scrambles to hold onto bright memories of the past, good times with good friends, and I find myself desperately haunting those echoes, trying to live in the vacuum of moments which have faded away.

I think the reason this move has been so different than the others in my life is because I feel like all the anchors of my identity have been removed. My friendships, my responsibilities, my creative outlets, my opportunities to express all my favorite things about myself have not disappeared - they have just been been placed out of my reach, accessible only in small doses, and mostly through ‘skype’. When I look in the mirror, I recognize the hair and chin and eyes, but I don’t know who I am anymore. I feel like everything that defined me is gone. 

There are people I know casually, but they don’t really know me. I hide big chunks of my life because I have been blessed with a remarkable amount of interesting friends, family, and life experiences - so remarkable, in fact, that to speak of them sounds like bragging. I’m not bragging - it’s just my life. I don’t have any other stories to tell. And although the thought of life in the absence of such remarkable people and places feels like a slap of cold, blue concrete, the truth is they are the bits which shine brightest as blessings. 

When I push my temperamental emotions aside and let Truth take stock of my life, building up an inventory of what actually exists (whether I acknowledge it or not), it quickly becomes clear that not all anchors in my life have been displaced. There is one Anchor that remains, one slice of my identity that cannot be stripped, no matter what else crumbles and falls.

“But now, this is what the LORD says...
"Fear not, for I have redeemed you; 
I have summoned you by name; you are Mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. 
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior... 
You are precious and honored in My sight, and I love you...” (Isaiah 43:1-4) 

“It is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to Him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.” (Hebrews 6:18-19).

My God is good and He loves me. I have fled to Him for refuge enough times to know this deeper and truer than I know anything else. When every other anchor in my life gives way, this Anchor holds. He will not allow the waves of weariness to sweep over me, the currents of loneliness to pull me away, the fire of my frustration to set me ablaze. Because He, the Holy God, my Savior, loves me. He calls me His Dear One; He reminds me that the core of my identity rests in the hope He has called me to. The hope that calls me by name. The hope that endlessly confirms I am His. The hope that I am precious and loved, because He is the Lord and He only makes high quality goods. This hope pierces through the echoes of my desperate haunting, whispering that through the best of times and through the worst of times, the very best is yet to come. I have seen His goodness - I will see it still.

It’s winter and all the trees are bare. I’m sure I would have known them if they were wearing their leaves, but now only naked branches rake the crisp afternoon sky, one looking no different than the others. Their identities have been shaken, fallen, and leaf-blown away. Yet it is in their humbling nudity that the strength for winds to come is revealed - each twig, each branch grows upward, contorting, stretching, praying to the sun that gives them life. Their new leaves are there, they are but hidden for a season, swallowed up by cold, rough bark. At the proper time, however, the trees will bloom again, and the seemingly weak winter branches will break into a thousand shades of vibrant green.

My new leaves are there. I just can’t see them right now. They are hidden under a cold rough blueness that sometimes soaks into my soul. This season is important - it is revealing my source of strength for winds to come. When all other anchors, all other defining leaves reside in corners of the earth far from the one I live in, when my feelings tell me that the inventory of my life is coming up short on blessings and long on discouragements, I must reach up to the Hope that is a strong and trustworthy anchor for my soul. The Hope which reminds me this season will pass and I will green again; a day will dawn when I look in the mirror and know who I am. 

He, by the way, has never forgotten. He, the Holy God, my Savior is the One who calls me by name and in my tremulous moments of being off-balance whispers, “Fear not; you won’t fall... you won’t fall... I am with you - don’t think I would ever let you fall”.

Jordan Faith (August 28, 2009)

The house I’m sitting in was built in 1918. Its red tin roof sheltered families through the Great Depression, World War II, and my father’s childhood. I have photos of myself as an infant in the room next to this one, and countless memories of coming down the back staircase to the kitchen and my granddaddy’s biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast. He made wine in the basement and had a garden out back. He grew the best corn I ever ate.

This is where I live now. It’s strange to unpack articles from my adventures in other countries here, setting them on shelves and in drawers, finding their niches in this new old place. It seems I’ve travelled the world and come home again. I’ve come to a place I was hoping would be a launching pad for new sorts of adventures.

I thought I knew what they were. Very few of you know that we almost adopted a baby this week. The start of it all was very sudden - one phone call almost a month ago from a woman with whom we’d had a casual conversation about adoption two years back. She knew a young girl who could barely care for the daughter she had, aborted her second pregnancy, and was conflicted about the baby now growing inside her. The young girl was desperate to find someone to adopt her new child. We’d had a day and a half to decide if we were those someones, and although the whole idea sounded crazy, we knew that God has been known to have a crazy idea or two. We said ‘yes’.

A little bit of background. We work for a non-for-profit organization, and every cent we receive, we have to raise ourselves. Moving to the States requires us to double our monthly financial needs. Despite traveling all summer, we had barely managed to maintain our current financial support, let alone increase it. Having a baby would change the entire dynamic and actually put us in jeopardy.

Throughout this entire process, one Bible story kept coming to mind. Everyone knows the story of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, how God held the waters back for the Israelites to cross when they were fleeing from Egypt. Not as many recall that 40 years later, the Israelites again passed through a body of water, finally entering the land promised to them. The water was the Jordan River, and this time, the waters didn’t part until they actually stepped in them. As they walked by faith into a river at flood stage, the waters stopped flowing (Joshua chapter 3).

I thought about this story a lot as I weighed the uncertainty in our lives. We didn’t know how we would live, work, or minister, but we felt that when we stepped out in faith, God would hold back the flood and provide a path. That belief was so strong that it became the name we chose if our adopted child was a girl - Jordan Faith.

Jordan Faith was born on Tuesday night. Her birth mother called her Kirsten and took her home today. That young girl changed her mind about the adoption.

My father grew up in the house where I am sitting. He ate at this kitchen table, stared out these windows, and survived adolescence within these walls. This roof has weathered many storms, and is now enduring the storm blowing inside my father’s daughter tonight.

I don’t know why God asked us to receive a child we would never hold. I don’t know why I’m living so far from the people who feel like ‘home‘ to me. I don’t know how we’re going to afford to live and work and minister to hearts who feel as restless and homeless as mine. There are many, many things I neither know nor understand.

None of those things, however, changes the fact that I am still my Father’s daughter. No matter where my foot falls on this earth, I am still in His house, and perhaps He brought me here, to the place where my own father grew into a good man, to remind me of that.

Trust is a funny thing. We talk about it a lot; people fall back on the phrase “Trust in God‘ when they don’t know what else to say to people going through difficult circumstances. I think although they mean it, they may not know what they mean. It tends to be used as a spiritual pat on the head; a broad spectrum band-aid for whatever ails you. ‘Trust‘ in the God sense (the way we usually use it) almost seems like a different word than what we think of as ‘trust’ in the human sense. Trust in other humans is almost a palpable commodity. It evokes feelings of vulnerability and caution - people must earn our trust, and when they betray it, it usually takes a very long time for us to offer it again.

I’m learning that ‘trust’ (in the human sense) is actually the right word after all when it comes to God. It’s that same quiet confidence in someone you know really well, the familiarity with their personality, the knowledge of their love; the unexplainable sense that they would never intentionally hurt you which has settled at the base of my heart. It was there when we chose to say ‘Yes‘ to the crazy idea of having three weeks to prepare for parenthood. It was there when we said ‘Yes‘ to living only by the generosity of others. It’s there now, when it seems like God is saying ‘No‘ to both.

I’ve known God a while, and even though I’ll never know everything about Him, I’ve seen how He operates, I’ve read what He said, and I’ve experienced more goodness by His loving hand than I could ever deserve. Despite all the uncertainty in my life right now, I know, I KNOW, that God is good and He loves me. Everything that has ever or will ever happen to me is filtered through those two facts.

I don’t know why we went through the whirlwind of this last month. I don’t know why we are without the money we need. I don’t know how to do this job or why I am living here. But I know my God. And that is enough.

It’s dark now, outside this old house. There’s no air conditioning, and I’ve become reacquainted with the blessing of a breeze. The noises of the street have softened to little more than the distant echos of the highway, but the crickets are as loud as I remember them. This house has endured difficult days, yet remains a refuge for those under its red tin roof. Similarly, I plan on weathering the storm quietly raging inside me, enduring difficult days no matter when or how they come. I can because I am still committed to living by Jordan faith, to stepping out when all my eyes see is a flood. The only reason I can is because I know the heart of the One who has called me. He is good and He loves me and I am my Father’s daughter. Nothing will ever change that, no matter where He chooses to launch my adventures.

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.