Sunday, November 16, 2014

glitter and glory.

There are many types of sorrow in this world. There is the pain of loss, the pain of defeat. The unspeakable sadness that accompanies hopelessness, of feeling that there is no hope within you. The realization that this life is not how it should or could be. Of recognizing the capacity for evil and how little light there actually is at times. It can be a dark place, this earth.

It's easy to be distracted by the shadows, forgetting that there ever was a sun at all.

Sometimes, we think that we can overcome all the bad and cling to the good. Every time we get smacked down, we pop back up, seemingly invincible. We look our horrors in the eyes and boldly say, "Not today". And so we make it through. With courage and great conviction. We feel like superheroes--as though there is no feat in which we will not achieve victory. As if we could save ourselves.

Save everyone around us.

We get tired. Our souls become heavier with each blow, regardless of whether or not we get up again. We carry the scars with us, a constant reminder of the enemy we face. We try not to look at the wounds, we try to remember the healing. But our hearts cannot forget. Worn and weathered by the sorrow we have encountered, hope begins to feel like a far off dream. As though it is something that once existed for us, but is no longer within our grasp. We become smaller, unsure. We forget. We start to believe that there was never a reason to fight to begin with.

We give up.

We close our eyes, go to sleep. Throw the covers over our heads and refuse to see what is happening around us. Shut the blinds. The darkness becomes palpable, thick and heavy and making it hard to breathe. We become anxious, scared that we are once again alone in the world. Afraid that we are too afraid to go back into battle, that the battle has already been lost. We don't know who we are anymore, who we were made to be. We feel empty and dry, incapable of defending ourselves and those around us.

And so we stay in this place for a few days or weeks or months, becoming familiar with what was once a common way of living. We allow ourselves to give up, to experience the sorrow that so faithfully plagues this world, to remember what is was like to be without hope and peace. Without conviction of love and grace. We roll around in the dust and dirt, believing that all along this was all there was to see, all there was to be. And the darkness wins, just like we always thought it would.

But just when we think the dust has settled, a small speck of glitter catches our eye. It's almost unnoticeable, but something in our memory takes note of it. We carefully pick it up, looking at it from every angle to make sure it's not a figment of our imagination. We are doubtful, hesitant to believe that there can be such pure beauty in the midst of vast, unidentifiable mess. But we hold on to it. We keep it close to our heart, hoping that its sparkling majesty will somehow make royalty of us all.

And we start to recall--to dig deep into our being, looking for the crown and cape we once proudly wore as symbols of our faith. We struggle to look for the glory within us, the hope that we once carried with such confidence. And very slowly, we turn our eyes upwards. We look for the sun shining through the shadows, the light that has shown in the darkness because the darkness could not overcome it.

We remember who we serve, the God who came to save, the God who came in hope and truth. Who understands and is familiar with sorrow, the God of grace who bows low to meet with us. And bow low he does, gently lifting our chin to see all that we were so afraid to believe in. All that hope. All the glory.

The hope that shouts above the calamities that threaten to drown out all the joy we have ever known. And so we hold on to that tiny, small, seemingly meaningless piece of glitter and run with all our might towards the light. Past the shadows, past the darkness, shaking the dirt as we go and covering our ears and flailing our arms and running with all our might for truth that has set us free.

Free from all that can go wrong in this world. From sickness, from death. From insecurity and vulnerability and hurt. Because the light within us was made to withstand sorrow, was made to last beyond this life and into another. Was made to cling to when there was nothing left within us. When there was nothing left around us. It is bright, it is unbreakable, it is Christ in us--the hope of glory.

And so we return to our thrones, our crowns shining brightly in the night, a reminder that....

in this world, we will have trouble.

But take heart.

He has overcome the world.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

mess and majesty

Life moves fast, whether or not we are standing still to watch it go by. We grow up. We change. We become new people without even realizing it most of the time. We think that we have been stationary, stagnant within our day to day living. And often it feels this way. We are waiting for the moment that our life will begin when really we are already within it, living. We are different than before, but not quite where we thought we would be. So we look around at each other, at ourselves, and think about whom it is we were made to be.

We all have roles in life. Mother, daughter, sister, friend—different roles for different purposes. Our relationships reflect this. To some we are the one with all the answers, and to others the one with all the questions. And this is how it should be. We are all learning from one another, building a community that holds diverse gifts and talents for a purpose. We were not made to be alone, and as much as I don’t like to admit it, we need one another.

I am independent in every sense of the word. I like to be self-sufficient. Life is much easier this way, with no worries and no one to be accountable to. It’s also incredibly isolating and lonely. My days become grey and colorless when I push people away. Less prone to miracle-making. I have found that when I open up my heart and loosen the grip I hold on my time, God fills the space with extraordinary things. When I am not busy trying to find life elsewhere or rushing to get to point B, it gives me time to see what is happening in plan A. To enjoy the process and focus on what is being made instead of what I want to be made already.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe boundaries are important. We need them so that we do not become enmeshed, inappropriately responsible for the emotions of others. When we start to blur the lines between our souls and the souls of those important to us, it gets messy. I have always been afraid of this over-connection, this accountability for the emotional well-being of others. It’s both suffocating and terrifying to believe that you and you alone can make or break another’s spirit. What power we have has individuals, what pain we can inflict. Our capacity for good seems overwhelmed at times by the reality of our evil. So we start to believe that we cannot touch anything without it turning to stone.

But our capacity for darkness does not outweigh our ability to create light. It’s quite the opposite. Our darkness allows our light to shine all the brighter, illuminating the fact that there is someone working out beauty from our brokenness. I don’t like perfect people. They annoy me. People who seem to have it all together, who are bright and shiny and think that the world is basically good. It’s not. And no amount of ignoring the ugly will make it go away.

I am learning to engage myself and those around me as we are. In the middle of our mess, in the middle of our majesty. It’s so easy to want to fix. To push and pull until we get the outcome we are looking for. We want ourselves to be as we imagined ourselves to be, and others the same. But we are where we are, and there is purpose in it. We are being created even now, in the midst of our chaos, in the midst of our darkness, in the midst of our mistakes.  And our mistakes do not make us mistake-makers. They make us humans, capable of messing up in a thousand different ways. But I say that the most beautiful people I know, the ones that I believe in the most in this world, are the ones who are riddled with scars and full of grace. The ones that don’t get it right the first or second time, but know how to fail well and move forward. The ones who know they have flaws but allow grace to do what it was meant to do—make saints out of sinners. Because the truth is we are all imperfect, some of us just hide it better than others.

Don’t be afraid to be a container. Our capacity for love will always make us more vulnerable to pain and fear and responsibility. That’s  OK.  We are healers as much as we are hurters. It is inevitable that you will cause another pain. But you also have the chance to be a part of a miracle.

Stand still.

Look around.


Let your mess be your majesty.