The pianist begins to play and she takes that first step through the double doors into the auditorium. A hush falls across the guests. She’s radiant in white. She tries to brush her tears away with her forefinger.
I catch my breath.
A day later, I’m cutting grass at dusk. The clouds break apart for a moment, sunlight streaming through. I stop and watch, waiting. My Bridegroom is returning soon. Joy overflows from my eyes.
I catch my breath.
“Do your front float, buddy.” We stand in the shallow end of the pool, the water sparkling in the early morning sun. I hold my arms out to him.
He looks at me, eyes wide, and throws up his hands, “I drown!”
He voices my recent thoughts.
“I’ll make sure you won’t drown.”
He searches my face. Then, he spread his arms and legs in a perfect star, leans forward and let’s his body rest in the water. He floats, his shadow bobbing underneath him.
I do it too. I search His face and lean forward and let myself go. I know Him well and I know I will not drown.
You sit there quietly while she tells you one more thing that is going to break your heart. You’ve always been able to superglue your emotions together so they don’t explode into a giant public mess. Now you’re in your room crying for no apparent reason; your world is flying to fragments. The reality of all that you have lost over the years is rising to the surface and the waters are murky with misgivings. There is no retrieving the past. Yet, you’re not sure that you want the future. So you’re stuck right here between doubt and fear, your heart empty. You can’t explain your grief. Words will only flatten your pain with their hollow sounds. You can’t tack a cliché onto your present life lesson because you can’t see the end of it and you can’t see the point. You’ve only got the facts. You remember them distantly.
God is…
But that’s enough to keep you hanging on.
“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” 2 Chronicles 20:12
The car is my closet. I shut myself into silence and watch the landscape slide past me. The quiet draws out praise and petitions. Lately, I have shut myself in and turned on the radio. It is easier to live dry, to live soul-starved when the still small voice cannot be heard echoing through an empty heart. It’s Thursday night and I’m craving conviction. I turn off the country music and find the back roads and fill up my heart with His presence.
Two sheep wander into the guard room at the pool and the animal control guy shows up in his plaid shirt. The whole town is talking about it over coffee, how the sheep are sticking their noses in flowerbeds and ambling down the sidewalks.
I chuckle. “Our society cares more for animals then people. It’s kind of awful.”
We’re sitting on benches, watching the pool water sparkle in the sun. He shrugs, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Human life is the most valuable.”
He shrugs again, “Let’s be honest, Kate. If I had the opportunity to save my dog’s life over some people, I would have a hard time letting my dog die.”
My jaw drops open. “Seriously? I think it’s a no-brainer.”
“I don’t know.”
I nod because that makes sense. Today, we know survival of the fittest. Every man for himself. If no one has a soul, then men are animals and we are all dust eventually. Man, dog, bird and monkey. Everything ends up in the ground and stays in the ground if there is no such thing as a soul. We have no reason for morals if we believe there is no God.
Or, we make a god and follow him, a man-made product of our messed up human hearts. Who is really god of false gods?
We really have no good reason for anything anymore.
I look at him, “You know, even if I had the choice to save a human who had done something terrible to me or to save my dog, I would choose the person.”
“I guess I’m not a forgiving person,” he says.
I chew my lip, “I’ve been forgiven too much not to forgive.”
Morality can only continue to exist when there is Someone who defines what is good. I know Truth and He has set me free to be certain. We sit there in silence. All I can think of is the cross and the Perfect Man laying his life down for sinners, for me. How can I not do the same?
I walk into the living room and she runs to me and wraps tiny arms around my waist.
“Hey,” I play with her hair, “it was good to see you last weekend.”
“Was that only last weekend?” She looks up at me. “It seems like a year ago!”
I remember being that high off the ground and thinking the summer was long, long, long. I remember running around my parent’s farm with wild enthusiasm, catching butterflies and dueling with wooden swords. As I get taller, the summer gets shorter along with my enthusiasm.
In fact, summer always dries me out of words. When I live too fast, I miss things. I miss long talks with our feet hanging over the edge of the pool, laughing over a sticky cinnamon bun, dashing through a rainstorm. Everything blurs onto a single canvas. Impressionism fades the lines. Halfway through summer, I wake up with no purpose. I go to work for the money only. I play for the adrenaline rush only. I talk to friends for my own encouragement. I wonder how many days I have wasted with my eyes fixed on survival.
I go to work popping cough candies in my mouth to soothe my itchy throat and realize I have a choice. I can waste the whole day, whispering complaints; I can perform every task sluggishly so that it all turns out to be charred straw. Or, I can laugh with Jaimie, smile at Casey and act like everything is made of gold.
1 Corinthians 3:11-13
“For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.”
(Reposting this week. Summer only has a fast forward button.)
It was dark when I opened my eyes suddenly, body tense. I slowly relaxed as I recognized the yellow light from the streetlight streaming through the cracks in my blind. I was alive. I wasn’t trapped in the bottom of a ship about to sink, my enemy waiting to shoot me if I somehow managed to pry out the cabin window. I wasn’t going to drown tonight. I checked the clock on my phone, squinting as the brightness illuminated my face. 4:59AM. Ten more minutes of praying for my heart to stop pounding and my eyes snapped shut again.
What if it wasn’t a dream? What if, one day, the worst happens? My Christian life is neatly cut out and pasted onto my own time frame. Finish school-missions trip-look after orphans-maybe get married-have some kids-attend a nice church-do some nice deeds. What if everything goes wrong and I make a bad choice, I’m persecuted, I’m raped, someone close to me dies, I’m wrongly accused? What then?
Even when we ‘feel’ the foundations shuddering underneath our feet, God is our firm Rock. Even when we ‘see’ the rocks falling down and our plans falling apart, God is our Shelter and our Guide. Even when we ‘hear’ the taunts of those who desire our ruin and ‘hear’ the echoes of silence and loneliness, God has not forsaken us. Even when our understanding of Christianity is confused, God is the Truth.
If you’re already living your worst nightmare, turn to the One who is your Help. If life is full of bounty and blessing, laugh at the future and be at Peace in your Saviour’s arms. He is a faithful as He ever has been and He will be as faithful as He is now. He never changes.
I have too many headlines riding merry-go-rounds in my mind. My brain’s busy with bureaucracy that I’ve created for myself. So I take an hour on a Friday afternoon and run. Run west. Run south, gravel rolling loosely under my feet. Run past the gawking cattle. Raise a finger to the couple in the truck with the canoe. Run until my legs become so heavy that my head becomes light and the mind madness shifts east where I don’t follow. The last kilometre raises my eyes to the thick clouds and I’m grinning because it’s finished. Every last thought is taken captive like He’s raised His hands in the storm and calmly commanded: “Peace, be still.”
I’ve memorized it. I’ve memorized the way to swing off the guard chair without slipping into the pool. I’ve memorized how far to swerve on the deck in order to avoid their teasing splashes. I’ve memorized the evidence of the sun on my back and the white lines it never reaches.
I didn’t get the newspaper job. So, I’m wearing a red lifeguard shirt for the fifth year in a row and wondering why, why, why.
Three years ago, I taught her swimming lessons. She laughed all the time, like laughter is easy. Two years ago, she came to swim sometimes, going in slower than the younger kids, dipping her toes to knees to waist to head. One year ago, she came with her friends and sat on the picnic tables, leaning back lazily, showing skin, and texting. “Hey Kate!” She’d call.
I’d wave. “Come swimming!”
She’d shake her head because she was too old for that. I wondered why, for people like her, growing up is a tragedy.
Then, at Christmas, when the pool was buried under three feet of snow, someone told me about it. How life had gotten too hard for one teenager to handle alone. How her mother’s heart must feel like it has been ripped from its proper place, making funeral preparations for her young, laughing, blonde-haired daughter.
I work at the pool again this summer wondering, why, why, why. Why not, God, send me to Ecuador for three months to clean orphanages? Why not give me a job that would benefit my career? Why not?
I don’t have an answer. But all I see in each kid’s face every day is a blonde girl’s smile and my last chance. All I know is nail-pierced hands. Hope shines through storm clouds as Ben grabs his knees and jumps, yelling “Canonball!”
It’s the long weekend and I sit in the hospital, tapping my foot ceaselessly on the ugly laminate as the minutes exhale. I’m squeezing a dying man’s hand; the Present always writes itself into history books prematurely. I thought death was a fairy tale…until now. It’s like the doctor says, “People don’t think about death enough.” We think we’ll live forever. We will, but it won’t be here. We only have so long to decide where will be home in eternity.
Ecclesiastes is the only thing that makes sense this week: “Meaningless, meaningless…everything is meaningless.” Solomon says to “remember your Creator” because there is no hope in life apart from the cross. The cross turns death into a door for life. I feel a loved one let go of my hand and he walks across the bridged gap and steps into heaven. I’m a witness for only half of the journey.
Whatever was left of my child-likeness slips away with his last breath.
golden clay 