golden clay

(Reposting: Looking for the end of the tunnel again.)

It’s one of those weeks when life is pulled taut before me for months on end, stretch marks revealing the stress of its’ weight. Fixing my eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t do any good when the end of the tunnel is nowhere in sight. I realize I’m running on empty; my tank of joy and courage is dried up. Stress does that if you let it. It grabs your mind in its’ iron grip and squeezes it empty of God.

I’m pacing and trying to grasp at prayers I really mean. He slips a sentence into my jumbled mind: “In thy presence is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11). Maybe we need to stop looking for the end of exams, the end of our job, and the end of our grief. Maybe we need to look to the Light that is in our winding, endless tunnel.

The brighter future is sometimes just a mirage. That’s why each moment is for living in His presence where joy outruns the train of our anxious thoughts.

“You’re not my favourite lifeguard anymore, Kate,” he says to me with a grin.

I raise an eyebrow at him and shrug.

The kids love playing favourites with whoever has the biggest candy stash in their locker or lets them get away with the most.

Even careless words can be weapons and I catch myself looking at my reflection in the rear-view mirror on the drive home from work and feeling sorry for myself. Surely, I’m someone’s favourite.

Dusk descends over the deep green fields of corn and wheat; its beauty contrasts with my pride.

Who is my favourite? Christ or myself?

The comparison is ludicrous. Christ to be subject of my thoughts!

By the time I pull onto my gravel lane-way, I’m brandishing joy.

They laugh at him when he goes under water and whisper to each other behind their hands.

I understand a little too much why they do and mumble my complaints about the kid to my co-worker.

Then, I realize what I am doing. I am reminded again how we put people in the corner.

Because she is a little too shy, because he says a little too much, because the only thing she talks about is her dog and he stammers way too much.

I have found, though, that some of the most beautiful people are the ones in the corners of society.

Or the ones who grab them by the hand and pull them out of the corner and say, “You want to play with us?”

(Re-posting because life’s speed is turned up a notch in June.)

I read about it on the plane, stuffed between my mom and the window. The little girl in Mister God, this is Anna said we look at God through pieces of coloured glass. I take off my hipster glasses and rub my eyelid with my forefinger.

We sat on our red couch and prayed for her healing. God is Healer, we said.

Yes.

We sat cross-legged on my bed and prayed for his salvation. God is Saviour, we said.

He is. Yes.

I’ve always envied the owl; the way he can twist his head so far ‘round and see the world without even moving. I can see God in only one way at a time. I put on different lenses. He’s Comforter today, Healer tomorrow, and Judge yesterday. Then, when I really want to grasp His magnitude, I wear all of my lenses at once. Comforter + Healer + Judge = God. Math is limiting. God is not one thing at a time and He is not a sum total of everything.

All these lenses distort my view. I want to know God with the naked eye, see Him in His fullness. One day I will. One day, the glass will shatter.

My metronome pulses a steady beat as I prepare to play a scale on the piano.

Tick, tick, tick, tick.It’s how temptation has been knocking for the same sin, day after day.

Give-in, Give-in, Give-in, Give-in.I wonder why I can’t stop. Why does the fruit look so delicious?

God nudges me to take captive the things in my life that make sin look so appealing.

I complain about struggling, but do I hate my sin enough to be obedient?

I stab a shovel into the grass by the edge of the house, trying to make the perfect line that Mom wants.

Like I try to force my plans into the perfect pattern God has already designed.

It’s a Friday and my brain is tangled in ‘summer options’.

I’m struggling to ignore the pressure rising in my chest and start anxiously saying to myself over and over, “Be anxious for nothing.” (Philippians 4:6)

By Wednesday morning, my plans fall to pieces when I wake up sick and have to cancel a job interview.

It limits my options and makes things simple. It’s perfect…perfectly aligned with God’s plan.

Worry only promises wasted time.

(Re-posting: Another busy week. It’s funny how, a year later, I am struggling with this thought again. God is gracious.)

I kick the rock again and again, loosening the earth’s grip from around its jagged edges. The ground is crusty and the moisture is buried deep beneath the sprouted corn. It doesn’t take long for the earth to dry. It’s just like she said; her soul is parched. I’m bending over day after mind-dulling day, picking up stones out of the field. There’s no joy in a thirsty soul.

Why do we live waiting for God to send the downpours when the gentle sprinkling is best? We walk with Jesus silently and we never talk and suddenly we’re wondering if he is with us at all. The talking isn’t reserved for quiet mornings. The talking is moment by moment, stone by stone, nail by nail. I get dirt in my rubber boot and I slowly count out words for the promise I found in Psalms. Like I’m saying it back to Him. Contentment seeps in and quenches my quiet sighs.

(Re-posting because it’s busy stone-picking season again on the farm.)

Monday morning begs me to text something to a friend to get her through a messy day. So I type out: “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). I’m the girl who thinks of joy as a requirement though, another hard thing to add onto everyday trials.

We’re back in the fields again, picking stones. I look at the sky, black clouds rolling closer. “I think a storm is coming, Mom.” At first I can count the large drops as they fall out of the sky onto my arms and face. Then, they blur together and we’re swimming in rain. We jump on the four-wheeler and I squint through the downpour on the long drive back to the house. That’s when I realize I have a choice: complain about the drenched clothes and the wet skin or “count it as joy”. I laugh right out loud as we skim through mud. Joy is a person, lifting the weight off the life that I make so hard. Joy makes the moments easy.

When I first climbed into the passenger seat of the shuttle bus, I wondered how I was going to make small talk with my driver for the three hours it took to get to the airport. These are the things introverts ponder.

But, apparently, my driver had plenty of things to talk to me about: the controversy of windmills, farming practices, what I should do after I graduate, how to clean kettles with vinegar, how to clean his amazing thermos with vinegar, and how he makes his smoothies.

Then, he found out I went to Bible College. “I always think it would be a good idea to try to keep one of the Ten Commandments every day,” he said.

I looked at him, “But, none of us can even do that.”

“No,” he said, “that’s why I get so discouraged. It seems so impossible.”

“Yes, it is.”

That is when I should have said, “That is exactly the reason Jesus came.” But, instead, I was thinking about what the lady in the seat behind us was thinking as she listened, so I told my driver to read the book of John to get some answers.

When I get to my friend’s little white house in the middle of nowhere, the Rocky Mountains stretched out wide to the west, I realize I sometimes think the same as my driver. I try to keep a bunch of commandments and forget to love God.

I snap a picture in my mind of my friend and her husband leaning over the crib of their new baby, in awe of how God weaves a human in the womb. They’re not worried about counting the laws they’ve kept for the day. They are simply living the Christian life: loving each other and loving God.

In awe of how God reforms us.

Is it too simple to grasp?

(Reposting: This Easter weekend, please recognize that the cross and the resurrection are necessary because we cannot stand in front of a Holy God apart from the work of Jesus Christ.)

I’m six years old and I walk up to Santa Claus, trying to ignore the crowd of parents and kids who are pressing into the little white picket fence in the middle of the mall.

Santa pulls me onto his lap. “What’s your name?”

“Katie,” I say, trying not to back away from his bad breath.

“Have you been a good girl this year, Katie?”

“No, I’m a dirty rotten little sinner,” I say it as a matter of fact.

Santa Claus forces a laugh, “Oh, no you’re not.

I don’t smile. “Yes, I am.” The plumpness of my stocking does not look promising.

I knew, even then, that no amount of good deeds would outweigh Santa’s scale of bad ones. A year later, I came face to floor and met the concept of grace because Daddy had told me countless times that the only kind of person God will allow into heaven is a perfect one. That leaves out…

…

…

Everyone.

Except Jesus.

You got that?

There’s no counting. There’s no list of good deeds in heaven. There’s no naughty or nice list. There’s just a book.

“And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:15)

When I was seven, I knew I wanted my name in the book. So I stacked up my good deeds, like they once stacked the Tower of Babel and the deeds were “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). So, I threw them all away for Christ.

Ephesians 2:8-9 “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”