Author: kaitpack

I sit on the floor, eating cheese, on a Saturday afternoon. It feels like someone is holding me down and sitting on my heart.

Heavy.

I scroll through a two-page document I typed a few hours earlier with Scriptural proof about why we should enjoy life.

But all I can think about is Job, scraping his boils with bits of glass.

And Solomon, gazing at the beauty of his wives, playing with the golden rings on his hand, and whispering, “Meaningless.”

Paul, writing the Philippians and going back-and-forth in his mind. I want to die. I should live. I want to die. I should live.

I go outside and the snow drenches me.

The sun is shining somewhere else. All I can think is that it’s somewhere else.

Why are there days like this?

“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?” (Psalm 42:11)

There are.

But there is another Day too.

“Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” (Psalm 42:11)

And Hope always exists.

It’s a paradox I can’t wrap my brain around as I listen to sad songs on a Saturday afternoon.

When Joy shows up.

In the middle of sadness.

And Joy carries the heavy burden.

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18

Until all I can think about is Job bowing before the Lord at the news of his children’s death.

And Solomon, realizing that the purpose of life doesn’t lie in gold, but in obedience to God.

And Paul, recognizing that life is Christ and death–death is gain.

Hope (+Sadness) = Joy

In prison. In pain. In death.

Joy.

(Re-posting: A lot of thoughts lately that are hard to get onto a blog, so I’m putting some old ones back up here.)

I walk home from school one night and can’t take my eyes off the stars. My neck starts to hurt from looking upwards. No matter how hard I try, I can’t see the edges of the sky.

Like how my head starts to hurt from the strain of thinking forwards, planning years in advance, thinking of career, missions, marriage, family, and everything else in between.

When only today is real. I have today. I know today. I live today.

Like God’s ways stretch out before me—countless, never ending. Points of light and points of darkness. I can’t begin to count.

But that is exactly what gives me hope.

“Indeed these are the mere edges of His ways, And how small a whisper we hear of Him!” Job 26:14

In church, he shows a video of crowds cheering, screaming, weeping over their teams’ victory. Baseball, football, basketball, hockey crowds.

I think of it as I stand to sing with the congregation. I stand like a statue and mouth the words to Amazing Grace.

It’s like we read in Philippians on a Saturday morning, brushing banana bread crumbs from our lips.

We read that Paul’s imprisonment encouraged the other believers to “speak the word without fear” (Philippians 1:14).

Ripple Effect: “a situation in which one event causes a series of other events to happen” (Merriam-Webster).

When we shout the Victory, others join. When we sing passionately, when we pray fervently…

There are times when I want to dance for joy at what God has done, when I want to break down in the middle of a Sunday morning service and weep over my sin, but I don’t. I’m embarrassed to be too passionate.

Afraid to lead a Ripple Effect.

Afraid that the genuine excitement I feel will be confused with fickle emotion.

Afraid to show I care too much.

Afraid to show that I am entirely, completely, overwhelmingly sure. I am definitely certain. I am fully assured. That my God is God Alone. There is no other. Not one.

He is.

The great I AM.

If there was a gun held against my temples, I know I would stand for that truth.

So then. How do I stand for it in the mediocre moments?

I know the gospel. Do I live worthy of it?

Does my life assure others of its validity?

Does it make them join in applause?

“I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation”. (Philippians 1:27b-28a)

I stop my parent’s CRV in the middle of my favourite back road and step out onto the gravel. Through the frame of my IPhone, I try to capture the fading rainbow and the bushes ablaze. “It’s beautiful,” we murmur to each other.

But all I can think on a Tuesday night is that all the leaves are dying.

I sit in my hotel room, running through the day’s list of blessings. A job interview. A dinner date. A phone call.

I remember how we laugh over breakfast together, that I proved them all wrong, that I proved writers can get jobs.

The search for success has made me a desert wanderer. Every time I see the mirage, I think that it’s water. Success is empty; it leads me deeper into sand dunes.

Is this all there is?

I have so much, but I do not grasp anything I have.

On Wednesday night, I sit in my hotel room and press my temples. Extra-strength Tylenol. Water. I can’t get enough water.

And I realize how thirsty I have become. Because I’ve been searching for a mirage.

And I’ve neglected the Fountain. The Real Thing.

“Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.’” John 4:13-14

(Re-posting: it’s been a wild week, so I’m pasting an old post on here for momentum. As always, I pray this encourages.)

I was a wide-eyed seven-year-old, wondering if that shadowy form crammed in the corner between the walls of my bedroom and my armoire was an orc from the animated Lord of the Rings movie. I began to reason that, since I was on the top bunk, no evil monster or kidnapper would be able to reach me. I sank into my pillows and pulled my comforter up to my chin.

I am a wide-eyed twenty-year-old, wondering what monsters are trying to coax me into the slough of despond. I trace the form of each brute. Discouragement injects a sentence someone told me last week into my brain over and over again. Fear has got its hands on my throat, trying to strangle Life out of each moment. Condemnation grips my hair and pushes my head down, giving me a view of the ground and not the sun, the birds, the other people. Shame, Regret, Pride. They stand in line, make up an army.

I begin to reason that if I stay tucked into the hands of God, they will not be able to reach me.

“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.” Psalm 91:3-6

No monster has long enough arms to touch you when you’re covered by the wings of God. The Devil’s only weapon is smoke and mirrors. Turn on the light switch and see your Enemy in true form. A skeleton with wobbly knees, falling at the feet of Jesus. Embrace joy, peace, and strength because you can. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

“Dad, do you love me?” I ask him as I grip the handle on my suitcase, ready to leave my parent’s house.

He laughs. “Of course. Very much.”

I know it’s true, but I struggle to believe him.

The night before, I come home and hug him, press my head against his chest, and listen to his heart-beat. I believe him then.

Because words are either a catastrophic mistake or a babble of brouhaha.

That’s how I feel when I sit across from the girl at Starbucks. She knows it’s true that He loves her, but is struggling to believe Him.

What do we cling to?

The Great Affirmation. How God-incarnate didn’t just say things about love, truth, and justice; He showed them, demonstrated them, embodied them.

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day.” 1 Corinthians 15:3-6

Because words are hard to digest.

Parables are easier.

Like when the tears come as I sit down at the piano and play Chopin, or Debussy, or even the ThePianoGuys. And my fingers stop because I am too overwhelmed at the greatness of God. Something in the music. An expression. A demonstration of awe. Articulating what words cannot.

It’s why I savour C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Because the too-big things can only be addressed to the imagination of children.

Language fails me often.

What do we cling to?

The biggest demonstration. The silhouette of a man hanging on a tree. Golgotha.

The Great Affirmation.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

She looks at me, bags under her eyes. “Pray for me,” she says. “I’m overwhelmed and so worried that I won’t have time to finish what I need to do each week.”

I nod. I’ve had weeks like that.

Where every slot is filled on my planner.

When spare time is really just time to do more things.

The garden to weed.

The laundry to wash.

The people to call.

One hundred and sixty eight hours. One week. Impossible.

It’s those weeks where I’m usually interrupted.

By a knock on my bedroom door, a girl with mascara streaks and wet eyes, asking me to pray for her.

Or that boy I haven’t talked to in months, calling me around midnight when my room is covered with research papers and chocolate bar wrappers.

Or when my alarm goes off at 7AM on a Sunday morning and I’ve barely slept all week and know that no one would know if I didn’t go to church.

One hundred and sixty eight hours. One week. Time that I have been given.

A gift from God.

I crawl into bed and it’s raining outside. I listen to the rhythm it makes against the glass of my bedroom window.

God’s plans are always accomplished.

My tasks each week > 168 hours.

I will not have time to complete them.

But God does not book me for His tasks in time slots that don’t exist.

Worry is useless. I may not have time to clean under the couch cushions, but I will have time to be used for every detail of His tasks.

“It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” Psalm 127:2

Mama drops me at the edge of the paved road and I’m about to start into the field with a crossbow over my shoulder when she laughs, “I love how you just changed from a dress into your camouflage.”

It’s like she’s always told me. Being a woman is a balance.

It’s strength plus dignity. Dignity plus strength.

“Strength and dignity are her clothing.” (Proverbs 31:25)

And my mom wears it like royalty.

I’ve watched her wash filth off the floors of the barn, her face speckled with pig poop and her hair in tangles.

I’ve watched her at a party, with make-up, with a pretty gold necklace from my dad, with shoulders back and head high.

Grit.

Glitter.

She’s told me how she clenched her teeth as a little girl, and wished she was a boy. Because being a boy looked better.

But I’ve rarely wished that I was a boy, because I’ve watched her be a woman. And she’s worn it royally.

Like my friend who gets out of bed at 4 A.M. to feed her crying infant.

Or my Grandma coming to the door with her oxygen tank, perfectly dressed, ready to meet the day.

Or the girl by the fireplace in the middle of the wilderness who just carried a canoe on her back for one kilometre.

I sit in a classroom at university and my professor tries to tell me that, to be a successful woman, I have to be like a man. Men are wonderful, but I don’t want to be like them.

I hike behind her on a trail, backpacks filled. Dirt-smudged faces. Greasy hair. She tells me how they have defined what a woman is and is not.

I think it is not so complicated.

“To be a woman is not to be a man.” (Elisabeth Elliot)

Why did God create binaries? I don’t know. He did.

And it was good.

I walk down the dirt road by my house, thinking about it all. The politics, the economics, the connotations to the word “girl”.

None of that matters for a moment.

I whisper thanks to a God who made me a woman. Who gave me this role, in this world, at this time.

I want to wear it His way, the best way.

I want to wear it well.

 

After the sermon ends, she leans across the row and whispers to me, “God encouraged me this week.”

“How’s that?” I ask.

“He gave me a bushel of peaches.”

Her eyes dance as she tells me the story of the miracle peaches. “God didn’t have to, but He did anyway.”

I remember another woman saying those exact words one week earlier as we sat and folded hundreds of napkins together. “Remember that verse in James?”

“You do not have, because you do not ask.” James 4:2

It’s like the first time I put on my glasses and I looked out the living room window and traced the crisp silhouettes of the trees along the driveway.

A few days later, I pray as I walk. The sun begins to set over the fields.

“Lord, please fill me with joy.”

My strides become faster and stronger. I don’t just want the peaches though. I want the whole darn basket of fruit. So, I ask.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control.

I ask for all of it.

And watch the sun slip below the bush line.

“I’m not going to be shy anymore, Lord.”

Not in prayer. There’s no time for that.

I jog through a city trail, slush from January snow soaking through the tops of my running shoes.

“Please show me what you want me to do next.”

Decisions. Like Alice in Wonderland, deciding which door to enter and which key to use.

When only rumours of summer have started, I walk into the middle of a freshly planted field and crouch down in tears. “Please show me what to do. If you want me to do this, I’ll do it. If you want me to go there, I’ll go. Just please make it clear.”

I think the smiling interviewer across from me at Boston Pizza is, perhaps, my clarification.

But it’s really a dead-end.

I forget that dead-end signs are not stop signs. It’s simply a point where the road ends, and you have to change your mode of transportation.

And you walk past the sign, down a hill, to a beach, and swim across the lake to a mountain, and climb both sides of the mountain to a valley, and…

Summer fades into me sitting across the table from more interviewers. Three times in one week. A call from one. A call from another. A deadline. A decision.

“Please just show me what you want me to do.”

I get another call. Everything on the checklist falling into place and clarity filling my heart.

Nine months of waiting for an answer.

I accept a job.

One week later, I get another phone call and another e-mail. Other options of where I could be.

But I’m not there.

I’m here.

And God is sovereign.

Sovereign.

A fancy word that means I can’t screw up His plan.

It’s a week where anxiety flees.

Because God’s sovereignty scares away the phobia of road blocks.

Because I still don’t know anything, but I know Someone who does.

“‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish my purpose,’…I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.” (Isaiah 46:10-11)