A few gems from my week

God is teaching me where I'm at, in this awkward, in-between stage of life after college. I would not have chosen the circumstances I'm in, but I'm learning that His love is as the Psalmist states 'better than life', and His faithful presence as Hosea 6:3-as sure as the dawn. I am so thankful for Jesus. 

However, it all makes me not want to write-I'm discovering how little I know, and the more I see the more I feel foolish talking out of such a lack of understanding. So I just thought I'd put down things that keep bouncing around my head, slowly making their way into my heart.

Me:"...and you know, Father, I just really need discernment, because I'm not sure what giving grace looks like. Can You please show me the line between giving grace and being taken advantage of?"

God: "There isn't one."

If the earth is the size of a grape and sits in the center of the room, the sun is the size of a 4 ft. beach ball and sits a few yards away, Jupiter is the size of a grapefruit and sits 5 blocks away, and the Milky Way Galaxy is still 55 billion miles wide, to scale. And the current estimate on number of galaxies that exist hovers in the hundreds of billions range. And you know the most amazing part? It says God spoke-and all that existed. 'No Matter What, Worship'--Hunter Hall

'Doing good for the sake of good is an atheistic statement, and has no place in the church. Do good for God's sake-do good for the sake of the reward.' --John Piper

"...the essential thing in life is not conquering, but fighting well." --Pierre de Coubertin

"...but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in His holiness." Hebrews 12:10

Aspirin, alcohol, and analgesia

To avoid pain.
This, is what our society is bent on.
Because pain is the enemy.
There is a war--on pain and death.
And can I let you know it's a war on the unavoidable human condition?
Do you get that you're human?

Dr. Paul Brand, who is on his way to legendary status in my mind, says this of pain:
"...(speaking of western countries) I have noticed an ironic law of reversal at work: as a society gains the ability to limit suffering, it loses the ability to cope with what suffering remains. (It is the philosophers, theologians, and writers of the affluent West, not the Third World, who worry obsessively about "the problem of pain" and point an accusing finger at God.)"

The problem of pain. If we could only eliminate it....then we could...lose communication.
With our bodies.
With our selves.
Pain and pleasure...both signals from the same neurons. The difference?
How your body perceives it.
Pleasure signals are associated with reward
Pain signals are associated with punishment
'Reward' defined as moving towards homeostasis; punishment, away.
Just what is spiritual homeostasis anyway? The Jews knew. Even named it.  
Shalom.

Imagine life with no sight, no touch, no hearing. Your body can no longer communicate with you, and you can no longer communicate. Cut off inside your ivory skull of a prison.

Here's what our society has done with pleasure.
We've extracted it from it's natural habitat. On almost every level.
Sugar is found naturally, in fruit for instance. And humans like sweet. So we process, refine, pure sugar itself, get rid of the fruit, inundate food with this sugar. 
The longing for adventure, for a wild life of free abandon sits somewhere in your chest beneath your obligations and above your flat-lined pulse. So we pay to sit in a movie theater to have our hearts race and our sympathy wrung and our terror palpable.
Down sugar, overdose on sex, amass money, minimize work.

How is it that coming in first is so much sweeter if there are agonizing months of training behind it?
How is it that a meal tastes so much better with hours of labor and sweat preceding it?
And we never quite value toys that are given to us as much as the ones we painstakingly save up for and buy.

And here's what our society has done with suffering.
We've elevated it to public enemy #1 status.
We've sought to eliminate it from our experiences-now everybody gets to make the team.
Now performance is within injection's reach.
Take the aspirin, down the vodka, squeeze that syringe, drip the morphine.

And what we perceive as pleasurable gives no nourishment.
And what we cannot perceive as painful destroys us.


Someone once told me:
"At the end of the day, I cannot reconcile the fact that a loving God would allow pain and suffering."

And I thought to myself, "They have a point."
I thought that until I realized what the implications of a life without pain were.

And now, the inverse question reverberates through my head.
 I begin to understand a little bit more the excessive depth of God's wisdom.
 To be honest, I am half ashamed to behold His silence at so many vitriolic accusations against Him that stem from such a deficiency of understanding.

How could a good God not allow pain?
To feel pain is to be free.

We are His sheep, and sheep are for the altar

I just finished this book. And it made me cry. Not like, tear up. Straight up cry multiple times throughout the book.

Weird things make me cry. For instance, random scenes in Braveheart, and NOT necessarily the ones everyone is supposed to cry in, I mean ones that make your friends double take at you in disbelief and incredulously ask "Why are you crying? He's just riding the horse through the mountains!"
 Or things like reading Shadow of the Almighty. Or like watching sunsets.

 No joke, sunsets. Two days ago I was watching the sun set over the lake. It sank slowly, a majestic orange globe that threw fiery red shafts of light dancing across the rippling water, illuminating everything in its path so even the trees looked alive with gold. Juxtaposed all around were the hills full of solemn green pine trees and quiet shadowed docks rimming the lake. I listened to the cicadas buzz and the birds coo, and suddenly, I began to cry.

Have you ever felt there are things deep in your heart, things you can't put words to, but they're there? Waiting for you to learn yourself enough to comprehend them.
 And something will come along, a passage from a book, a phrase from a friend, lyrics from a song, seemingly innocent, innocuous, and it stirs those things.
Deep inside, you feel something writhing, chained by your inability to assign words and understanding. And you just have this feeling that if you knew yourself enough, if you had the insight into you, those things would bust free and maybe free you a little in the process?


As I was reading this book this morning, I suddenly was able to understand the prayer my heart has been aching to pray for a while now, but my mouth could never formulate.

It's simple, but it's earnest. And what it lacks in profoundness to anyone else it makes up for in how it resonates deep within me and silences some of the stirring that has now found it's name in this:

It is not my prayer that I live a long life, but a full one; that I learn what it means to be a living sacrifice for an Almighty God, and learn what it means to live well.

And perhaps, if God continues to show me who I am, this prayer will come alive. Actually, I'm banking on it.

Newsflash

Disclaimer: I'm not sure I 100% agree with everything in this, but a lot of it certainly resonates.


"God doesn't have a husband stored away somewhere for you.
He has a whole life, one of rich and abundant choices. And it is awesome."

http://theartinlife.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/my-husband-is-not-my-soul-mate/

I owe only to the Giver of all good things

I rediscovered Rich Mullins this summer

It was a good thing. 

There's more that rises in the morning than the sun
More that shines in the night than just the moon
There's more than just this fire here that keeps me warm
In a shelter that is larger than this room

There's a loyalty that's deeper than mere sentiment
And a music higher than the songs that I can sing
The stuff of Earth competes for the allegiance
I owe only to the giver of all good things


So if I stand let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through
And if I can't, let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to You
And if I sing let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs
And if I weep let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home

There's more that dances on the prairies
Than the wind
More that pulses in the ocean
Than the tide
There's a love that is fiercer
Than the love between friends
More gentle than a mother's
When her baby's at her side

And there's a loyalty that's deeper
Than mere sentiments
And a music higher than the songs
That I can sing
The stuff of Earth competes
For the allegiance
I owe only to the Giver
Of all good things

Comfortable death

American Christianity is an odd religion.

It's a different kind of beast, whose goal is comfort, whose jesus is an accessory, and whose god's interest in our lives doesn't really extend past behavior modification.

And this entire generation of bored kids who live for each next high, like church camp or sex (because we aren't really picky about what keeps us occupied) are under the assumption that this is what following Jesus-life abundant-looks like.

The cardiologist I am shadowing recently took his niece (who was also shadowing him that day) and I to coffee while he was on call and there was a lull in patients. So I'm sipping my frappuchino and the entire time halfway expecting his pager to angrily start buzzing anytime and have to run off to the hospital because someone's heart is trying to exit their chest in a disorderly fashion.

Thankfully, that never happened.

He's pretty open to questions, and my mouth is pretty open to asking, so we're kind've the best shadowing pair ever. He freely talks and I freely talk and together we provide a spectacle that the nurses now chuckle at as we power walk through the hospital halls--me shooting questions at him about endocarditis and pulmonary edema as he rapidly fires back at me with finer points of staph infections and capillary flow.

Anyways, I was questioning he and his niece on Syria (their home country), the current civil war there, and all the messed up politics and confusing power plays that go on. And then my mouth that is so fond of getting me up a creek and wrestling the paddle away from me and swimming away, opened, and I said :
"So how did you guys become Christians?"
Which may or may not be socially appropriate, but I am rarely a good judge on those things anyhow.

A pause. Exchanged looks. One pair of brown eyes widened ever so slightly under slightly arched eyebrows.

"We just never became Muslim." His niece was looking at me as if I were the largest joke in the world that she pitied for being exposed in public. He further clarified her comment, "Our family was of the original church. You do know Christianity began in the middle east, don't you? Jesus wasn't American."

I laughed nervously, thinking to myself that I was quickly becoming the poster child for dumb, white children everywhere. I picked up my drink and awkwardly stirred the whipped cream into the top layer of liquid, trying to think of how to respond. Of course I knew Jesus was from the middle east. I had just forgotten amidst the felt flannel board cut-outs of the benignly smiling white man in a white robe.
Cold began to spread around my navel area---
Oh my gosh was all the heat in my body literally rushing to my face right now??
No, I was spilling the condensation from my drink right down the front of my neatly pressed shirt. The Dr. excused himself to get napkins. For me. Ho-lee cow.

His niece was still staring at me because, apparently, she hasn't met many spastic white kids yet (her time will come) and broke the silence with her first question of the day.

"You seem surprised by all that is going on in the middle east-did you not know? Is all you know is the Twin Tower Attacks?

It wasn't a question meant to insult, or even instruct. It was simple honesty, and the answer rushed out of my mouth without any filter applied
"You know, I really don't know much about the situation in the middle east, because it doesn't really affect my life at all."

It's true. That's pretty much how humans operate.

And it makes me think...

...until comfort is no longer the priority, accessory jesus is no longer used as a statement, and God's interest in our life becomes our life, we'll stay ignorant to what following Jesus really looks like.

And we will not know abundant life.

Truth be told.

Life is hard.
 It's harder when you're a quitter.

Hopeless

"She has Gaucher's disease, she's not clotting, her liver is extremely swollen and failing, she has an abscess that is draining staph aureus into her blood, severe bacteremia and septicemia, acute endocarditis, a ventricular septal defect, and a severe aortic insufficiency caused by vegetative puncture of her aortic valve."

Every frustrated word was bitten off through the slant of his thin lipped mouth and shot at me faster than I was able to process.
His brow was wrinkled in desperation that had a faint echo of the disheartened beginning of defeat.

"But...what....what will we....what can....are we going....to do?"

Inexperience is often the most idealistic of creatures, promising mountains and hoping, expecting, to ride the clouds. Doctors fix things, don't they? Doesn't 18+ years of school and practice make you untouchable?

 We'd followed this woman's case for 3 days. He'd diagnosed her almost single-handedly; pieced together the story from confusing symptoms and test results.

An abrupt halt. Shoes squeaked on the glaring tile floor. Sun cut through the window, obtrusive, invading the private conversation, uncaring of the privacy of matters. He looked me square in the face, level gaze, eyes sad, voice firm, shoulders set.

"We can do nothing. Alysa, nothing. This woman, she is going to die. She is going to die within the day and there is nothing we can do about it. She needs an aortic valve replacement immediately; the surgeons will never take her case. Her heart won't make it through the first round of anesthesia. And if it does, her body may most likely reject the implant anyway. She cannot clot and will bleed excessively. And if she makes it through those things, she will still probably die from bacteremia. She is not strong enough to fight this. She will die."

I paused, stuttered, glanced around the hall in my momentary loss for words. Loss for thought. Loss of balance. Looking for a salvation answer, really any answer that didn't include the only one left. I ran to catch up with his stiff stride that had headed for the stair exit.

"Where are we going?"

"To make a call to the surgeon."
We were side by side now, up the stairwell, seizing steps two by two, me grasping at the rail as if it were a lifeline.

"To...tell them she's going to die?"

Thrusting the door open for me, he burst through it behind me and hurried down the hall, regaining that determined look. Intentional walk. Arms swinging.

"To ask them to operate."

Can I tell you something?
He asked.
They operated.
And the woman who wasn't strong enough?
She's still fighting.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

His soft brown eyes widened in an eagerness to explain, he swiveled around to face me in his high-backed, plush chair, corners of his mouth tightened as he remembered gravity of truth. With broad sweeping gestures, hands danced and hovered in the air, giving life to his words.

 "...they say the first beat of a fetal heart sends blood rushing through the vessels, forcing them wide open-causing micro-fissures that permit plaque to begin building in the arterial wall-beginning the lifelong process of atherosclerosis that ultimately leads to vessel deterioration and termination."

I slowly raised my eyes from clasped hands lying softly in my lap, processing, calculating.

"So then...the moment life begins...death...begins as well?"

Sympathy only born of mutual understanding crossed his kind face; his voice steeled and cautious in appeal to my slow dawning of comprehension that he had already experienced-made his peace with-long ago.

"Of course. We are all born dying. Death is a fact."

So, as any girl who spent four years trying to fit into a sterile engineering world run on pragmatic calculation would do, I spent the rest of my day trying to learn from the kind cardiologist and chase him around the hospital from rounds to new patients to trans-esophageal echo-cardiograms and numerous CT scans as he flitted from floor to floor, moving uncommonly quick and deftly and snapping orders and decisions as if he were born to live on the knife-edge of life and death. But I had this juxtaposition of life and death who are so closely linked-dependent on each other in a way-in the back of my mind.

I thought about that forming fetal heart that sends its first batch of fresh blood
 surging
 tumbling
 roaring
through vessels and to a forming embryo that is no bigger than 1/4 in. No bigger than a raisin. Blood that nourishes, and sustains, brings growth and life to limbs and organs, red essence spreading, permeating, the little embryo-raisin as sentience and viability took flight.

And I thought about those fresh, soft little vessels being violated as they received life, the ripping, tearing and trauma, the first in a line of many future woundings that ultimately lead to disease and death.


It seems that our earthen vessels are just not fit to handle life. Not because life is too repulsive, but because we are too weak. Life surges forward, embracing all it contacts, pulsating with energy and motion, a cataclysm of vibrating dynamism. Ancient, raw, terrifying, not because it is evil, but because it is far beyond frail humanity and eludes comprehension. It rushes and pours, a mighty river, traveling where it pleases, and in its face, any attempts to do anything more than simply accept what comes are as valiant and effective as a moth's attempts to stop a semi the moment before it becomes a permanent addition to the windshield.

This life necessitates death. Doesn't all life necessitate some kind of death? Or is it the other way around--that death necessitates life? After all...Adam saw to it that we are all born into death-demanding a propitiation be made on our behalf. Nothing is free-not even life itself.


Quod me nutrit me destruit. What nourishes me also destroys me.
The old order-this is the world we are born into. One in which we are imperfect, diseased. One in which the very life that sustains us is the weapon that ends us. One in which we cannot experience the life we were intended to because of the inadequacy of our current state. Death is inevitable, because we just cannot stand against the onslaught of life. But it won't always be this way. The promise is coming, the sanctification is set into motion, the Lord is not negligent.

"...They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. 'He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Revelation 21:3b-4

"So then...the moment life begins...death...begins as well?"
The moment blood enters the heart, the body begins its sojourn to death. And the moment we recognize Jesus is our only hope and are born again, our self begins the long journey towards a new order. Answering the call of a living sacrifice, nailing itself to the cross as our heart vows to sing no other name but the name of Jesus. The outward man is perishing. Lose your life to find it. Crucify the flesh and its passions. The new order is coming.

Of course. We are all born dying. Death is a fact. At once an inevitable hurricane and a beautiful fact for some, who can remember the promise, who stand fast in the hope.

Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow. Oh, praise the one who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead.
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling over death by death, come awake! Come awake! Come and rise up from the grave. Oh death, where is your sting? Oh hell, where is your victory?

Salvation is here.

Forget not the hope that's before you; never stop counting the cost

There's joy, you know?

There's joy, and grace, love is slipping in and out of waves. Bobbing up, tumbling down, scaling peaks, riding out valleys.

 Do hard times of life overshadow God's goodness? Does feeling inside out and raw and confused and grating pain, pain, pain take away from the magnificence of the King?


Once upon a time, I had a professor, who had a son my age, who went to engineering school, who was diagnosed with a rare cancer, who fought a hard fight filled with remission and regression and tumors and needles and medication that makes you so sick you'd wonder what was killing you-the cancer or the cure.
And his son-this boy-he died.
He died, after he went into remission and surgery was successful and guards were down and it seemed that relief had come.
And in an email sent to my professor expressing remorse and sorrow over loss, I received a reply-"We have hope for the future because we trust in God. It is our hope in the resurrection that really helps us deal with this. God is Faithful and Good."

He is Faithful and Good, words not synonymous with appeasing and conforming-what we tend to think God should do when we pray. As if prayer is doing God a favor. Painful crises in our lives seem to come when life's circumstances and our idea of God do not intersect-God breaks out of parameters we set for Him.

And as our picture of God is shattered, as we apply our human logic to our life; we come to conclusions that shout God is not good, God is not real, God is a human construction to assist the mind in coping with life and sate the search for personal meaning.

Yes. Most certainly this is true. Most people's god is a construction. And most people's god cannot stand under the weight both truth and life carry. The problem with a god you can completely understand is that life is not completely understandable in any capacity.

Perhaps the words God uses to refer to Himself may only be defined by God Himself. Maybe human definitions are too weak, too small, to address infinity.

Following Jesus may sound pragmatically easy-accept the sovereignty of God as the answer to all questions.   But pain barrels through pragmatism in an awful, ushering trumpeting whirlwind, and in the face of onslaught, logic puts on a dunce hat; takes a corner seat. Pour your life and hope and blood into the good fight and come out with wounds and scars and then tell us about how immaculate a life of obedience is.

But there is a hard learned secret that no one but experience explains to you:

God's sovereignty is both the pain and the joy. His sovereignty is both the wounding and the grace. There's pain in realizing that this life is a passing thing, there's pain in losses that are goodbyes that it seems we were not created to say. But joy comes because morning brings hope-hope that lies in something greater. Something more sovereign than circumstance.
 There's gaping wounds left when things of this life that are shadows of what is to come are taken-but the grace is in the taking. How can we receive permanent if we do not lose temporary?

Perhaps, then, the only response is submission to sovereignty-not a submission that mitigates the pain or the suffering, but a submission that acknowledges that God is who He says He is, more than you can ever hope to begin to comprehend. Pain may be the root of cynicism and bitterness if you so choose, or it may be a reminder. It may be the reminder of hope-hope in the glory of God that does not put us to shame and is the basis for faith's substance. It may be the source of thankfulness-for the grace and joy present in our lives that only true perspective has the privilege to see.

Hard times and pain don't have to challenge joy-they can reveal it if you let them.

Name the grace, own the pain

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord. Is it right that we accept good from God and not accept adversity?

Instead of labeling good and bad in our life-the fruit of the garden that was never ours to eat-should we not instead proclaim the grace and thank the Giver of all good things?

What I lack in ability, I make up in velocity

 God's love is the kind of love that doesn't stop when it's tired, it stops when it's done.
Joy is a verb, and it is the attitude of God's heart towards His people. His own.

"For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace;
And for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest,
Until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,
And her salvation as a lamp that burns."

"And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
So shall your God rejoice over you."

I get the question "So, why do you want to be a doctor?" often.
Often. 
And in general, my usually lame answer is some kind of hybrid between a mutter and a nervous, staccato laugh: "I just want to help people, and I'm really interested in the body. Haha. Ha. Heh....uh....mmmmm".

Which, you know, makes me sound like some feeble wannabe vigilante crossed with a really big weirdo.
But I promise, that's not really why. I mean, kind've, but really, no.

The real reason is because I'm an addict.

I look back at my life (short though it may be), and all I see is a series of jumps from grace to abundant grace. I think back and remember provision; being loved. I see adversity and sin in the midst of beautiful glory, redemption, and all I really can take away is that God is good, and God is faithful, and I am always, ever, being inexorably pulled toward freedom.

The truth is, that I am a little bit addicted to becoming free, just like a bird uncaged. I'm a little addicted to beauty, and this overwhelming grace that continually envelops what I thought was failure and transforms it into light. I'm hooked on this wild joy that comes with abandonment: of self, and of preconceived plans, and of perceived boundaries; I want to spend my entire life unlearning all the ways that I can't. Cynicism is blindingly crippling; hope opens your eyes to what is really possible.

Bondage comes in many forms. Many flavors. Pits can look like whitewashed fences and glaring streetlights illuminating paved trails, or trash heaps and the scavenging forced to abandon dignity. Hell is separation of souls, and hell may begin at any time.

But so can freedom.

The honest to goodness truth, is that I want to be a doctor for the same reason a bird released from a cage soars to the clouds at top speed; for the same reason a candle shoots forth flickering rays of unrestrained light, for the same reason hands clasped with intertwined fingers can sometimes feel like home.

Because God's love towards His lost people will never stop;
 He will never hold His peace until we are righteous, spotless, and redeemed.
I care because I've known bondage, and now I know abundant life.
I care because I've known sickness, and I've been healed.
Because I know Jehova-Rapha, Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Tsidkenu, and how grace and glory are shaking inside us, wild to be released and break forth into a testimony of El Roi-our God who sees us.

I want to view magnificent grace and bonds loosed and love revealed along with the same people that are infinitely precious to their God. I want to share the wild and free life that God is waiting to supply with rejoicing and joy to a people whom He has loved eternally.

I'm an addict--to abundant life, and abundant grace; astonishing redemption and wild freedom.

For thought

How many deaths did I die before I was awakened to new life again?
How many half truths did I bear witness to, til the proof was disproved in the end?
How long? How far?
What was meant to illuminate, shadowed me still

And all You ever wanted

Only me, on my knees, singing holy, holy
Somehow all that matters now is, You are holy, holy

Gon' call tha' Po-po

Today at my sister's graduation from Navarro Junior College, I was sitting in an aisle seat in the overcrowded gym waiting for the ceremony to begin.

Well, I was doing much more than sitting.


 I was...

...straining to see Daniele around the overweight woman with arched, stenciled eyebrows, who was nearly falling off the cold concrete steps in her dangerously tall stiletto heels much the same way her cleavage and thighs were falling out of the restrictive leather tube dress she was wearing.

...smelling way too much of the deodorant-deprived foreign man behind me, sweating profusely in his neon colored vinyl pantsuit and rapidly speaking into his cell phone and waving his arms.
That didn't help with the smelling part.

...trying not to be appalled at the two black men sitting beside me with a precious little boy who couldn't have been older than 18 months as he squirmed and writhed in the confines of one man's arms while the other man poked and slapped his head, both muttering threats such as 'boy you bes' siddown an' behave or yo' uncle gonna slap yo' face' and 'son shutup! Shutup fo' I beat you up!'

I'm sure threats like that are super effective against 18 month old little boys that hate being made to sit still in overcrowded gyms that smell like humanity. How completely appropriate.


Parenting criticism aside, I was pretty smitten by the little boy's chocolate colored doe-like eyes, and as he turned from the sharp words and slaps on the head, he snuck a wide-eyed glance at me. I puffed out my cheeks and crossed my eyes at him (which I would think would incite fear, but apparently this kid has moral fiber unspoken. Probably slapped into his head by his large, tatooed uncle).
His giggles spread through the gym, bouncing off the stoic metal ceiling and tumbling down the rows of brightly colored plastic chairs filled with impatient, tired people. The infectious smile that spanned his open, eager face began to tug across my lips as well, and soon we were laughing together, this random antsy toddler and I, uninhibited and unaffected by our surroundings, for a moment.

The man holding him (I'm assuming his dad) shifted him impatiently in his arms as he pulled his expensive cell phone out of his pocket and glanced at the neon screen, muttering under his breath, oblivious to the comedy his son and I were sharing in.
Ain't nobody got time' fo' joy these days.

As my mom leaned over to ask me a question, I turned, breaking the moment the boy and I were sharing. I felt a pudgy little hand on my knee; gentle patting turning into curious fingering of my dress hem. Continuing my conversation with my mom, I soon heard the sharp voice once again, although this time I wasn't sure whether I thought it was supremely hilarious or devastatingly serious.

Dad: "Son! Do you want to go to jail?? Boy you gon' get yo'self thrown in jail boy"
Uncle: "What? What he do?"
Dad: "He all up on this lady's leg!"

I turned, confused, and met the little boy's eyes, just as confused, his hand now uncertain on my knee. I began to speak "Oh no, it's ok, really, he's fine..." but his dad had shifted him in his arms, once again, this time beyond my reach but within arms length of his uncle, who rewarded him with a few more cuffs to the head and an accompanying "Boy whatchu pouting fo, yo' feelin's hurt? Huh? You hurt boy? Huh?"


I have no end to this, and no conclusion, I'm just in a thinking mood.

I wonder, if that little boy is hugged often. Or if he is pushed on the swings until his dad's arms are tired and he soars to dizzying heights as he laughs and feels as if he's flying. Is he kissed goodnight? Does he know someone loves him? Will he grow up with this perception that strangers are out to get him, and curious adventuring into unknown places will only get you beat around, and will he be told that everyone is out to bring him down and if he's not a fighter he'll find himself in last place? Those precious brown eyes of his, so window like-open and curious, will those become hard doors thrown up to prevent the walls from coming down around him?

The human spirit is resilient, but it only takes so much. And the wounds we acquire that only Jesus can heal are carried with us. The affect us. They change us. And some of those wounds.

Well, sometimes they start pretty young.

Where else can I go?

You are the source of life
I can't be left behind
No one else will do
I will take hold of You

I need You Jesus, I need You Jesus

My heart is Yours for life
I need Your hand in mine
No one else will do
Lord I put my trust in You

I need You Jesus to come to my rescue
Where else can I go?
There's no other Name by which I am saved
Capture me with grace
I will follow You

My heart is Yours for life
I need Your hand in mine
No one else will do
Lord I put my trust in You

I need You Jesus to come to my rescue
Where else can I go?
There's no other Name by which I am saved
Capture me with grace
I will follow You

This world has nothing for me
I will follow You

Remember

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases

His faithfulness is great

and His mercy has no end

There are better things ahead than behind, striving is in moving forward, and scars are necessary to remind us that change happened


Grace abounds

Truth sets you free

and Jesus came for the broken

Sometimes, things are so painful that you can only breathe out

Morals are internal cornerstones the individual lives by. Ethics are society defined standards. I'm not sure which one scares me more.

For $1600 Dr. Gosnell could help you avoid ramifications of your actions. Or perhaps actions done to you. Either way. The consequences were removed with a corroded suction tube, or a supercoil, created specially such that once injected causes the body to reject the contents of the uterus, or perhaps those consequences were just delivered normally to be sliced in two by a lethal pair of scissors.

According to the Grand Jury Report:
"A medical expert with 43 years of experience in performing abortions was appalled. This expert told us, 'I’ve never heard of it [cutting the spinal cord] being done during an abortion'.

There are laws mandating that cadavers be treated with more dignity. And those 'cadavers' delivered post term and no larger than your palm? By Gosnell's own mouth they were whimpering and moving before they were destroyed.

And I have to wonder, as those scissors sliced through skin and bone and nerve and muscle and broke through so much more than a little human body, was the heart of God being sliced through as well? Was He gasping in agony as the sanctified human life that was hand crafted, uniquely breathed into, was taken by the uncaring, calloused hands of another child of His? 100 times. 100 times. And that's just the estimated.

As the broken little boy or girl was shoved into a box until the post death twitching stopped and the limbs could be cut off and haphazardly stored in grotesque glass jars or freezer bags, was Jesus remembering His agony on the cross? The agony of paying for the kind of debased sin that would desiccate human life?


John tells us Jesus said that the thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. And it is times like this that remind me and relieve me--this world is not my home. May it never be my home, and may I never desire that to be so.


When someone runs around with scissors and slits people's throats or spinal cord, society calls them a pathological killer. When someone inserts a knife into the base of someone's skull and spills out their brains, society says they have severe mental problems and should be locked away. When anyone does this to dead bodies, we throw them in jail and say they have some sadistic tendency and make them go through therapy.
When a man in a white coat does it to an underdeveloped baby, society says it's a right. It's a choice. It's not an issue. And since 'life' has not a moral but an ethical definition, society lets this 'non-issue' slide.


I am so, so deeply bothered. I do not expect morality from a dead world. But I am still horrified by what human beings will do to one another. I am still in shock that this is permitted, and that life and its value is minced and diced  and defined in terms of time and situation and 'viability'. Whatever that means. This is what Jesus came to redeem and to save. And this is what I cannot reconcile.


And mostly, I am so burdened by the taking of so many lives, and the uncaring destruction of what was created so beautifully sacred, that I'm struggling to deal with it.
I hope I don't deal with it, and I hope I don't get over it, and I hope I never move past it.

Because the day I do will be the day I surpass the heart of the Lord, Who has never gotten over the hurting of His children, and Who knows every one by name. Whether we say they have value or not.

I just don't understand

This made me sick. Literally nauseated.

And more than anything, heartbroken.

Ugly

So His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men. So shall He startle many nations...He has no form or comeliness, And when we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief  And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

As yesterday was Good Friday, I read Isaiah 52-55. And that is relevant, I promise.


Every so often, I really struggle with physical beauty. Every so often as in, every time I remember, as in every freaking day. I am shamefully aware of how I do not measure up to the current beauty standards.

 And it is never any help to call to mind the empty words I heard growing up in church about beauty being on the inside, and beauty being about your heart, and how everyone is beautiful because God made them, because not even people of the church live as if those standards are true. I know, because I grew up in it.
 I live in the midst of it.

I remember how it felt to have my heart lift ever so slightly when they'd toss out phrases like 'modest is hottest'. I remember the little bit of hope that flared on being told 'a girl's personality is what really makes her attractive and draws attention' and 'I've always wanted a Proverbs 31 woman'.
 I can recall tentatively daring to believe that what I'm worth is not something that can be taken or given by any physical attribute I do or do not posses.
 I can still feel how I pushed away the shame, and tried to believe that maybe, possibly, I was really beautiful too.

So the heart drowning in self shame grasps onto things such as this, as it floundered in the turbulence of subliminal messages on television, in newspaper ads, in clothing store mannequins.

I remember the despair, the total and complete despair as I realized that people might want to believe those things. They might even intend to.
And the conversation the guys have, right in front of you, evaluating a girl half your size, your antithesis in every physical way possible, determining her worth and appeal to be worth their scrutiny and attention and desire (and probably lust).

 Your heart sinks, you feel a little sick, you realize you look nothing like her and there's no way in hell you ever will.

So you comfort yourself and think 'that's just because guys are simplistic chauvinists driven by their hormones' and you look for someone else to tell you that yes, what they said was true. You are more than your waistline, your hair type, your complexion, and so am I.
And then the glancing comment that doesn't glance, but sinks straight into your chest from the girl who you've always thought was prettier than you in every way, about how her teeth are too yellow, her hips too big, her hair too flyaway, and you realize that if she thinks she's ugly, what in the world does she think of you?

You think surely those things disappear after middle school
then you hope they'll be gone after high school
then you plead with God that after college, then you'll be past this terrible game you can't ever win


Then you read Isaiah. A prophesy, about Someone you know, and who knows you back. And you read about how rejected He was, and undesired He was, because when we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him. And you realize He knows.

He knows. 

And He doesn't dismiss the paralyzing fear of inadequacy, because He too heard the message He was inadequate. And He doesn't minimize the depth of pain you feel upon being silently told you aren't worth attention, because He was rejected too. And doesn't He know every single pang that shakes straight into your bones every time your miserable heart sends blood through your miserable veins and you swallow the message that you are just. not. worth. anyone's. desire. Because He was undesired too. He knew sorrow, he know grief. Maybe His heart, too, constricted under the weight  of the verdict so swiftly and deftly slammed down over His head.


Does He hurt as we all writhe under the agonizing weight of being told our beauty is directly tied to our sex appeal?

Maybe

Maybe it's a little less pursuing the life you want and a little more making peace with the life you have.

Maybe it's a little less worry in the moment, because worry stems from immediate thanklessness, and a little more present thankfulness that there's a moment at all.

Maybe it's recognizing that, really? Life is urgent, but it's meant to be lived slow. There's no rush, because we've got time. We all have time.

And maybe it's a little less labeling the good and the bad, the hard and the easy, the pain and the comfort, the unwanted and the desired, the victories and the failures...

...and a little more realizing that all things are grace, and fall onto us only after being sifted through gentle hands that hold, and steady, and lead, and provide.

Thanklessness does not stem from not being provided for, it stems from refusing to see provision. And to refuse to see God's provision is to refuse to see God Himself, and who in the world ever asked to be made blind?

You have to want to find grace. You have to want to be healed. You have to want to step into joy. The lie from the beginning was that you would ever be able to understand the height and depth of life. The depravity is assuming we do. The insanity is to believe more is required of us than to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.

And the beauty is that all that you need to step into life is already here, and all you ever really wanted is already waiting, and the grace you're trying to buy with your effort and the love you're trying to earn with your behavior is deafeningly threatening to drown. you. out.

So be still. Be quiet. Slow down. Drown a little bit in grace, be overwhelmed by what has been given to you. Ask to see, and try to hear.

Because He is the Shepherd, and He is the Provider, and He is the Healer, and He is your Father. And grace is enough.