golden clay

I sit in the wedding dress store while my friend tries on dresses.

Another girl comes out of the fitting room beside me in a tight mermaid-style.

Her mom quietly says the things she likes about the dress.

The girl grimaces, “I hate it. I hate the top. It has everything that your dress had that I wanted to cut off.”

The mom tries to smooth things over, but the girl is in mission-mode to find the perfect thing for her big day.

My mom turns sixty this week and I can’t remember all of the little things I have said that must have hurt her over the years, the times I’ve rolled my eyes at her words, how that must have cut deeper than I think.

We sit outside on the university campus, the oak leaves swirling into our faces. We talk about all of the classes we have for the purpose of advancing us—our careers, our finances, our “happiness”.

How all of this isn’t fireproof.

The years waste like the dead oak leaves and I don’t want this: to only remember the lethal words I hissed.

If my words are strong enough to shatter, they must be strong enough to shape. I count the loved ones in my life with ‘thanks’ before I fall asleep.

And thank God that Jesus was not as selfish as me.

His blood paints me Redeemed.

She tells me this as we sit in the cafeteria on the university campus. “The more I show love to him, the more I love him.”

She tells me this, weeks ago. I remember it after I roll my eyes at the pile of dishes someone left in the sink. I remember it after I sleep through prayer time.

The less I show love, the less I love.

In Christ, everything is backwards.

Die to live.

Sacrifice for joy.

I remember how my big brother used to sit in front of our summer campfires. When the flames would die, he would add wood and gently blow the embers back into blaze.

This is the key: to show love to the hard-to-love and to show love to God more and more.

It starts a fire where there were only ashes.

I walk into the kitchen, ready to subtly trump every complaint my roommate might have about her day.

I have to consciously tell myself to remember to treat her needs as more important than my own.

Some days, it feels like my selfishness is progressing.

That is the hardest part, to admit when the struggles we were overcoming have actually crept back in and grown bigger.

But that is where it starts.

Realization. Humility.

And reaching out to accept the grace He pours down.

It’s the weekend of stuffed turkeys, potatoes, and gravy on full-length tables.

On Sunday, we get home from the grocery store. She leans on the kitchen counter. “I just don’t get how we can go to church and then walk right by the homeless man outside the grocery store.”

I’m too tired, too caught up in my own life to listen. But, it rings in my mind all week.

I drive back to the farm for the weekend and stomp through the bush with some boys wearing camouflage. Peace envelops and I praise Him.

There are no homeless people on my road, but there are hurting people at my table. Tired people. Broken people. Lost people.

All of us in need of the cross.

And I can share more than just food.

(Re-posting: May it encourage.)

The country roads pulled me gently away from the city and the university, away from the classes where we had analyzed lust and death out of literature until I wanted to buy some earplugs. I hadn’t realized it until the car was alone on the highway under a canopy of stars; the reality of the battle I had been part of all week came washing over me. And it’s Sunday and we’re facing battles everywhere and Monday looks a bit like the gaping jaws of a lion. So, we’ve got to get our armour on and our hearts unburdened at the foot of the cross, pray our way through every moment.

Every September, I find myself dodging students on the sidewalks of the university campus again.

I bend my introvert’s will into submission and force myself to hold my head up when an intimidatingly tall man walks past me. I use my hands enthusiastically when I introduce myself in class. Fake confidence can be necessary and good.

Sometimes, though, I just want to tell the whole class that I’m scared to death of all of them and their hard-to-read faces and their relaxed body language.

I want someone in the class to tell me something sincere, tell me something they fear.

But, we’re strangers after all. It’s not the land of unicorns.

I get that.

But…

At home, I put on a light-hearted tone with my roommate, not willing to let myself be vulnerable. I realize my class on “networking” and “selling yourself” is easily transferred to my familiar kitchen with the light-bulb illuminating the contours of her face.

How many times do we hide from loved ones?

And I get to my bedroom and I cannot speak to God of my specific sin, as if He doesn’t see it if I don’t tell Him.

Are we made of plastic?

Still in Eden, hiding behind bushes.

Our heart is who we are anyway. There comes a time to be vulnerable.

“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’” 1 Samuel 16:7

I just watch him stand there, at the most easterly point in North America, as the waves of the Atlantic Ocean hurtle towards him and crash into the side of the rock where his feet are planted. He’s been glued there for who-knows-how-long. 

Other people wander down the path on the edge of the cliff, pause, and pause, and pause. It calls for pausing: the ocean stretched out before them and the waves strong enough to break us into pieces within seconds. We are all in awe.

“Wow, God,” I whisper over and over.

People keep walking down the path and pausing.

I see my friend take a seat on a flat rock and watch the waves churn. Later, she tells me her thoughts as she sat there and they almost match mine.

My Saviour made this.

The ocean roars the truth.

And every person, of every religion, race, and gender, stands on that cliff in total awe of what He has made.

The GPS, the food, the maps sit at the door.

Anticipating adventures.

Like, today, when I stopped in the middle of folding the laundry and knelt down on the bathroom floor and asked God for a new start. A sigh of relief washes over as repentance comes in whispers out my mouth.

Anticipating fresh starts.

We sit together watching a couple of kids splashing around wildly in the pool as they attempt to make a noodle raft.

“Yeah,” he says nonchalantly. “I’ll either go to hell when I die or end up as nothing.” He’s a self-proclaimed atheist/agnostic he tells me. “Actually, I don’t know what to believe.”

“Well, it’s an important thing to figure out,” I say.

He laughs as if it’s an impossible thing to do. “Yeah, it’s important to figure out the meaning of life.”

Someone says it at church on Sunday night: the Devils biggest tactic is to trick us into thinking we have plenty of time.

Plenty of time…before we die.

…to become free from lust.

…to become disciplined.

…to make Jesus our Lord.

We wander from distraction to distraction.

Perfected spiritual procrastinators. We’ve made it simple for the Enemy.

We forget the urgency of prayer.

…of each encounter with people.

…of the battle for souls.

We forget that God asks for our obedience today, right now, for a reason.

At the end of the swim, I blow my whistle.

The time allotted ends. But the clock-hand circles endlessly.

Eternally.

Ecclesiastes 12:6 “Remember him–before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well,”