golden clay

I walk across the university campus for one of the last times, keeping my head down to block the rain. The cracks in the concrete zigzag and connect to each other at random points.

From under my hood, I can’t see the basement of the music building where I used to wait outside my music teacher’s door in first year, praying for strength to hold my tears until after the lesson.

Or University College. Third floor. Monday class. We discussed the stories we’d written, but mine were always “too innocent”. Not enough sex or despair.

Or the Kresge Building, where we talked about God as a hypothetical.

The rain continues to fall and I can see the feet of students rushing past me on the sidewalk. I want to connect the cracks in the concrete, but some of them are solitary lines and some of them shoot away in unexpected directions.

I may never know why I met the brown-eyed girl when her mom was dying, or why I had coffee with the professor who agreed that we didn’t get along, or why I kept meeting and re-meeting the boy searching for philosophical answers.

That’s okay because it never was my job to form the lines.

Only to walk in them.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

I’m ten when I take my foam sled to the tip of the barn roof and hurtle off the edge, super-man style.

I’m sixteen when I balance my skis on the brink of the slope and watch the valley light up with an artificial glow, one street at a time. Then, the stars explode across the sky and I inhale deeply and plunge forward.

I’m eighteen when I lean out the door of a small airplane and look at the blurry Colorado fields thousands of feet below. My tandem partner yells ‘GO’ and we jump. It’s what they call free fall, where gravity is our only opponent.

I’m addicted to adventure.

It’s wonderful until I’m twenty-two. I sit on my couch and my eyes read ‘The Tempest’ while my mind imagines hitch-hiking the state of Kentucky, rock-climbing in Alberta, and kayaking in northern Ontario.

It’s the way it feels to dance for three hours straight, exuberant and lively, into the wee hours of the morning. But, the music stops, the excitement dies, and everyone goes home.

The grandest adventures only satisfy for a short time.

When I can’t fall asleep because I am restless, I wonder where my happiness lies.

I redirect my yearning to the One who satisfies.

An adventure that begins on bended knee.

“O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, To see Your power and Your glory. Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips will praise You.” Psalm 63:1-5

(Reposting: I need this reminder again. That this moment is the one that matters.)

I sit on the front step of my porch as twilight envelops me and my study notes. Across the street, two kids chase each other, laughing. The faint smell of damp, green earth mixes with nostalgia. I remember being the little brown-haired girl chasing after the blue-eyed boy. I remember how he’d tease me with a sideways grin and I would punch him in the arm and stick out my lip.

It’s April: change is sprouting.

The setting sun catches between my eyelashes and I wish to be the child lying on the trampoline, red-cheeked and breathless, with only the worry of the lights being turned out when bedtime comes.

The little boy glances up at me from across the street and smiles shyly from under his curls.

Another moment disappears into the shadows of dusk.

I look down at my notes for the exam tomorrow and think how, one day, I may want this back too.

So, I cherish the moment on the steps as the shadows come and remember how God’s mercies will be there tomorrow. Again.

I can’t pray because my thoughts are a nightmare of connect the dots.

The only prayerful sentence I can form from the game of twister in my brain is: “I don’t know. I don’t know. Please, show me.”

I tell them this over 3PM Sunday leftovers.

But they tell me it’s about having the proper heart before God.

“Sometimes, all I can do is think,” she says in her quiet way, “so I think before God.”

So, the rest of the week, I think before God.

It’s like getting a second opinion. The opinion that matters.

I let a thought dance its way inside my head. “I don’t know where that came from, Lord.”

I pick at another one like its old casserole. “I’m not sure what to do with this one, Jesus.”

I look to Him in my thought process. He is the light that illuminates the entire assembly line. He illuminates all my pending decisions.

He connects the dots.

We sit in the middle of the university cafeteria, discussing battle wounds.

Battle wounds from the philosophy class where the professor tells students, “There are absolutely no absolutes.”

Battle wounds from the literature class where the professor tells students, “The question this novel suggests is: how can God still be considered good?”

Battle wounds from the writing class where the professor suggests that we write only what is not noble, not right, not lovely in order to captivate our readers. “Don’t be too good,” he advises.

The two of us sit in the cafeteria, discussing our last two months before we begin new battles.

Discussing how we have watched the Bible prove itself.

Four years. Some innocence lost, some doubts planted.

But…

The light at the end of the tunnel, at the end of the school year, exposes the wounds for what they are.

Healed.

Because our hearts have this new song in them, bubbling up from doubt.

Because our hearts are strangely warmed by a burning-bush-fire inside.

Because our hearts are clean.

No One else can give us that.

No education, religious titles, or wealth can offer us what Jesus has already completed.

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26

“The weather just can’t make up its mind,” the cashier says and hands my change to me. “I’m sure we’d all be happy whether it’s winter or spring, as long as it makes up its mind.”

I highly doubt everyone would ever be happy about the weather, but I don’t tell her that.

I’m back to university after spring break and feel like the next five weeks are a race to an invisible finish line.

I scroll through job descriptions: “We are looking for a senior level applicant who is able to pull off a super-hero cape while typing a 500 page screen-play and pedaling a unicycle backwards.”

Unqualified for that one too.

My heart feels restless, like it’s working off a dozen shots of espresso.

I read Paul’s words: “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.” (Philippians 4:11)

While I wait: content.

While I plan: content.

Despite circumstances: content.

Because Christ is always in me.

Though the mountains “be moved into the heart of the sea.” (Psalm 46:2)

Though the fields “yield no food.” (Habakkuk 3:17).

Content.

I wake up and spring vanished again; snowflakes swirl outside.

But everything is warm where I watch from behind the window. Unaffected.

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.” (Psalm 62:5)

My parents leave for warmer weather for a week and leave me in charge of two barns full of pigs, a farmhouse, a dog, and 200 acres of land.

On Sunday, friends ask how everything is going on the farm.

“Great!” I say, proud of my self-dependence. “My parents check in way too much.”

I’m the little girl who would stick out her lip and say, “I do it myself.” Even when I couldn’t.

On Monday, two water pipes break and I’m staring at my Dad’s work bench and a smorgasbord of broken parts. I can do this myself. I can figure this out. I will be a good plumber whether I am or not. I will not call my dad.

I call my dad.

He tells me to ask the neighbour for help.

Why is asking for help one of the hardest things to do? I do not want to need people. Or want people to know I need them.

Self-dependence takes away my confidence to call for help.

My pride balloon slowly deflates when I cannot solve the problem.

By the end of the day, two different neighbours come over to help and we laugh about the bad day together.

I realize it’s true: “Two are better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Mid-week comes with the feeling of tiny people running sandpaper across the back of my throat. The inability to swallow. A trip to a walk-in clinic and white-coats poking sticks down my throat.

And it’s really hard to put it all in flowery terms, wrap it up in a bow and say, “This really is a terrific way to spend a Wednesday!”

Because it’s just not what I had in mind.

My regenerated heart is strange though. It’s turned inside out or something.

Because I find myself spraying my throat with medicinal things and thanking God for another reminder of how much I need Him.

Thanking Him for sickness to show my frailty. My lack of control.

He gives me what I need.

Shows me all I need.

Him.

“Ecclesiastes and Job are my two favourite books,” I tell her.

Because I’m a pessimist.

Or…

Because the books strip human nature to its bare flesh and show us for who we are.

I see my classmates getting it. When you put twenty writers in a room together, you inevitably get desperate attempts to decode human nature and purpose on pieces of lined paper.

“Ecclesiastes and Job are my two favourite books.”

Because they have helped me get through the weeks and years that end with question marks and the days that end with tear-filled prayers.

I nod along with Job: “Man who is born of woman is few of days and full of trouble.” (Job 14:1)

And Solomon too: “What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 2:22)

I get what they are saying. My classmates get it. My friends get it.

But not everyone knows what Job says between groans. What has my heart filled with joy every morning and restless evening…

“For I know that my Redeemer lives.” (Job 19: 25)

(Re-posting: I tried to write a blog post yesterday and again this morning. When I searched through old blog posts, I found this was what I was trying to write again anyway. Sometimes we re-learn things and that’s okay, right?)

I hear it every day from one of the shivering, bundled up students at the bus stop, “It’s so crazy cold.” I see them scrolling through pictures on Facebook during class, comparison pictures of snow-covered Ontario and green Florida. We are all talking about our next vacation and where we will escape because that is what one does when the green grass is on the other side of the globe.

I find my thoughts enclosing around the things that I do not have, not just green grass and sandy beaches. I cannot fall asleep at night, wishing. My mind spins out of control. I cannot rest while I am striving for the things I will never possess—or I will not possess yet. My eyes are filled with pictures of what I desire and they block my view of everything I have been given.

Until I wake up and whisper, out of habit, “Your mercies are new every morning.” I breathe in the smell of coffee and watch the snow fall outside, like each flake is some glorious gift of love.