Falling

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“When did you fall out of love? Out of love?” The song lyrics drifted through my car’s radio and the sore spot in my heart twinged in recognition. I’ve been nursing a sore spot in my heart that I couldn’t quite name for a few weeks now. As the weeks of not writing accumulated, the heartache persisted, neither deepening nor easing. Just there.

Although I couldn’t name it I saw it affecting my life. Friendships strained. Little resentments creeping in to projects I am passionate about. Little jealousies tainting my joy. Places where it used to be easy to see the face of God were now empty.  There was an apathy I couldn’t shake and a mounting list of prayers I needed it let go of:

Like ‘Why God?’

and ‘But how God?’

and ‘As-if! God.’

and ‘Why me, God?’

and ‘It’s too hard, God!’

and ‘If only I believed that, God.”

The 100,000 questions I asked over and over in prayer, not really wanting to hear the answer, or to stick around long enough to understand more deeply the wisdom of God’s ways.  Just wanting the comfort of knowing God is still there and I can whine anytime without lessening God’s love for me. Wanting the consolation without really being vulnerable or receptive to the answers. Wanting the sweetness while refusing to pick up my cross.

The hard stuff – I was so over it. Forty days in the desert with Jesus to just check out sounded pretty good right now. Fast from Facebook and avoid those difficult friendships. Take more time for prayer and avoid those projects not going how I wanted. Take time to discern (ie. keep pray-whining) instead of facing the answers to that list of questions.

Then a simple question in a song of the radio, “When did you fall out of love?”

Fall out of love. That’s exactly what I had done.

Sometimes it seems too much to love deeply and generously all the people in my life who God calls me to love.  Too exhausting.  Too frustrating. Too painstaking. Too much rejection.  Too much vulnerability.  I hadn’t stopped loving them, but I was being stingy with my love. Stingy with God’s love, which I am bound to give freely and generously. It will never run out.  I’d already mentally checked out to my own desert place. And here was God inviting me back to relationship with Him.

To all the hard stuff and to the unanswered questions. To the difficult relationships that need breaking open to be set right again. Instead of resting or ‘checking out’ from what’s been bugging me, God is inviting me to face all those things.

God is inviting me to fall back in love.

To love when it is hard to love.  To love those friends who drive me bonkers! To love the work of God, even when I think it’s being messed up by human hands (FYI: It can’t be; God’s bigger than our mistakes.) To choose to actively LOVE MORE, bless more, pray more, when jealousy tempts me to love less. To rest in the Arms of Love when the time is right.

We will face the hard things together, Christ by my side, my stronghold and strength. I will get to rest in this desert place,  near by the side of The One whom my soul loves. But I don’t get to just walk away.

 

Lost

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We walk with angel armies. Think about that for a minute. What does it mean to you?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the past three weeks as my family has been throw head-first into turbulent waters. Helpless, unprepared into murky waves with a wicked undertow.

My child was hospitalized for a week. I don’t know that I had a bigger fear than that before this month. The care of my child was in others’ hands because I don’t have the expertise needed. Back and forth each day to the hospital, bouncing between work, my parents’ house and home, I started to lose track of the hours.  Eating meals at wacky times, emailing updates late at night. Waiting long days in the hospital, at my desk, in my car, I felt lost. Caught in the turbulence. Lost in a battle I didn’t know how to fight.

Mid-way through that hospital week, I answered my front door, car keys already in hand ready to drive to the hospital to be with my child, and there is a man canvassing from one of the neighborhood churches.

“Can we pray for you, ma’am”

A medic for my broken heart.

Emails come in from family with assurances of prayers and love.

Balm for my wounded heart.

Breakfast is passed into my hands by a hospital volunteer.

Food for me; for the body that carries me through.

With great love, others cared for me. These works of mercy made that time bearable as I waited for my child to be discharged; waited to be home.  After that week, I am more keenly aware that my heart longs for home; and God is “Home”.  God is Love. God is Mercy. In my lexicon, God is Home.

But, oh, my heart aches for God, when life gets HARD like it did that week, and works of mercy alone are not enough to comfort me.  Especially when the doubts seep in and the fear takes holds.  That is when I am reminded that we walk with angel armies.

What do I mean by that exactly?  I don’t know a whole lot about what theologians say about angels, but my little Sunday school child’s heart knows this:  Angels serve God. They’re guardians and sometimes, messengers from God. They fight in battles when necessary.  That sliver of knowledge about angels points me back to who God is.

God, Who-is-Love,  God, Who-is-Mercy, is also God, Who-defends-and-protects.  And in that knowledge, there is no more room for doubts or fear.  No matter how lost I feel or how turbulent life gets,

God’s got my back.  And legions of angels at His command, if necessary.  So, I turn to God, Who-is-Home, and I am not lost anymore. I can see Home from here.

Hope

It’s been a tough year. A really tough year. Tough enough to shred my heart. To shake our strong family. To exceed my limits and force me onward by faith alone.

(And exhale…)

It’s hard to see my life so starkly stated, the words blankly staring back at me.

Has it really been a year? It’s been quite a year since I first found myself in this place, with you, launching a blog. It was a Lenten project that gave more back to me than I could have imagined. No matter what your past year has held, I hope you’ll journey with me.

So here we are again, at the beginning of Lent, and I’m tired. I’ve got so much hard stuff on my heart from this past year, I don’t know how to begin. But, it’s time.

It’s time to enter the dessert with Jesus and walk the forty days towards the crucifixtion. Now to take the first step.

Pack light. It’s a long journey. God will provide what we need. I don’t have a map or a clue where I’m going, but I trust my Guide.

Come Holy Spirit.

When I enter the dessert, Love is there.

Love believes, hopes, and endures.

And this is an endurance race we run. It’s not about a finish line.

Have you heard of an ultra-marathon? These extreme long distance races in harsh conditions where success is measured by how close you come to the finish line. Few finish the race. All endure.

This past year has been like an ultra-marathon of trusting in the Lord. I have faced challenges I never imagined I could endure.

Love endures.

And it the hardest moments it was only Love holding the threads of it all together.

It has been a transformation from looking to God in hope to praising God in the moment.

It has been letting (seemingly) all things be stripped away until it is just me and God.

I think I tend to pick up things I think I need for this life as I go; good things like friends, good habits, skills, confidence. Then, I ask how can I use these for God’s glory and find I can’t take the next step toward God. I’m overburdened. They are good things, but not essential.

And in a crisis, in the deserts, on the ultra-marathon, I start to put down the things I don’t really need.

I pare down to the essentials. Pack light.

And try to praise God like Job.

Even when there is nothing left, and I have reached the limit of what I can give, – panting for breath, so far from the next rest point, out of sight of the finish line, – there is hope.

And like the prophet Miriam, I sing praise.

The road isn’t easy and neither the way nor finish line are clear. That doesn’t matter because Christ is my guide. He’s been here before.

In forty days, we will recount how Christ was crucified. What He endured for love of us. Until all but hope was stripped away.

As Lent begins, we can enter the desert, singing and praising God. Because hope leads us on.