golden clay

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.

Gravel crunches beneath my feet as my breathing slows to match my pace. Raindrops sprinkle my hair. The clouds churn themselves into different shades of charcoal. “Amazing Grace” begins to come softly through my headphones, bagpipes slow and stately. Always, at the end of the gravel lane way, I imagine the whole army of saints standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the throne of God. My shoulders are touching George Muller’s. A few rows behind is the North Korean missionary who was martyred for his love for Jesus. We all kneel together, unified under the blood of Jesus. We cry “Holy”.

I flip my finger back and forth under the tap of the bathroom sink. The cool water is warming up slowly. I look at myself in the mirror; half of my face is covered by shadows. Saturday night moonlight. Squinting, I pretend my reflection is a stranger staring back. What would I think of her if it wasn’t me?

I skim through dialogue in my head from when I sat beside her a few hours before. I wonder if he cared that I stepped on his toes during the dance and whether he understood my lame joke. I question the sincerity of her compliment.

If any other human being thought about me as much as I think about myself, they would be labelled and put in a cage. The blog posts, self-help books, and therapists tell us to think of ourselves, take time for ourselves. I’m certain that is already my natural disposition.

I remember when I spent Thursday nights in a coffee shop with her, racking my brain for conversation topics. I remember when I made him lunch and he never said thank you. I remember long talks in a dark car, smiling and nodding and listening and never being heard.

I spend two hours with her. Then, I spend days wondering what she thought of me, whether she noticed my sacrifice, whether I’ll ever get a chance to tell her all about me. “Me” time is stumbling in the dark and not being able to see what He’s doing in front of us, behind us, and beside us. We expect to recharge our low battery by plugging into ourselves. They don’t tell you that the side effect of “me” time is exhaustion; the battery dies without a true power source.

I realize it as I fill my palm with water and splash it onto my face. My greatest selfless moments are the ones I forget or I see in hindsight. They are effortless with Jesus. I am wearing myself out wondering how I can raise my worth in the eyes of others and I am continually disappointed. Jesus is the One who is worthy of our thoughts.

I rub my face with the pink, fraying towel. I ask Him what He thought about my conversation with her. I thank Him for her compliment. Then, I peel my eyes off of my reflection and I pray for Them.

My life in the light of the cross. No one’s going to be distracted by me when I’m standing in the light of His glory, bright and blinding beauty blotting out my reflection in the mirror. It’s like a camera flash in the dark.

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.

She said she needed verses on grace.

He said he needed hope.

I’m shoved against Recognition; I need grace too.

When did I start viewing grace as a word we are asked to define in Sunday School? When did I view it as something that I don’t need?

It’s more than words.

Grace is:

A gift.

For everyone.

Grace is:

A Person.

Christ.

I need it bad.

We’re walking down the sidewalk, debris from winter scattered across our path. We’re stringing the week out in words, trying to make sense of all the pieces and fragments that don’t fit.

“I’ve realized that sometimes you just have to realize that no one cares,” she says.

We’re a depressing pair under the grey sky.

“God really has to be our comfort,” I say, realizing that I should apply that directly to my somber mood.

Ten hours before, crying in the dark turned to crying out to God because, for once, I got it right. The church is built with people. That’s why when fears give way to tears, we have to learn to run to the omnipresent One. Emmanuel. God is with us. We simply can’t hold it against humans for failing to comfort our sorrows, if we have not first sought the ever-available Helper.

Even in the hospital room. Even in the middle of the night.

Psalm 56:8 “You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle.

She says “hi” on Facebook and I’m staring at layers of music theory and the dead skin of the eraser I’ve already used that evening. I actually pause: “Do I have time for this conversation tonight, Lord?” I feel certain that I don’t, so I log off. Five minutes later, my roommate knocks on my door and asks me to pray with her; the matter is urgent. I have time for this.

“The Lord determines our steps.”

I e-mail them to confirm when the event will take place on Tuesday night. My hands shake as I type. I’ll have to stand in front of a lot of people and hear my voice projected to double its’ volume in the microphone. They have asked me to do this and I’ve learned to say ‘yes’ to hard things. Then, they e-mail me again to say they have rescheduled the event; I know I can’t do it that night. I’m a mixture of relief and disappointment.

“The Lord determines our steps.”

They want three hours of my time. I’m about to reply ‘yes’ because that’s my default. I pause: “Is this something you want me to do this week, Lord? Please, show me.” A few minutes later, another lady texts me and says she wants to take me for coffee during the same three hours. I know that is the more valuable choice; God has given me a reason to say that I am busy.

“The Lord determines our steps.”

We make life a crisis filled with decisions that we don’t really have to make ourselves. We close our fist on the schedule we think we should have and end up grabbing hold of stress and busyness instead. If we would just relinquish our plans, we could see the way He works in our lives and “determines our steps”.

Are you looking for revival, for stirring, for change? Remember to pray.

Leonard Ravenhill writes in Why Revival Tarries:

“No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shopwindow to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off.”

“The secret of praying is praying in secret. A sinning man will stop praying, and a praying man will stop sinning. We are beggared and bankrupt, but not broken, nor even bent.”

“In the matter of New Testament, Spirit-inspired, hell-shaking, world-breaking prayer, never has so much been left by so many to so few.”

“Dear brethren, our eyes are dry because our hearts are dry. We live in a day when we can have piety without pity. It is passing strange. When a couple of struggling Salvation Army officers wrote to William Booth telling him they tried every way to get a move and failed, he sent this terse reply, ‘Try tears!’ They did. And they had revival.”

Colossians 2:14 “by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”
Saturday evening, I sift through the week’s moments and I add up my record of failure:

-…

-…

-…thoughts I would never blog

The Judge doesn’t even need to tell me the verdict before I know it. Legal demand: death, separation from God forever.

The truth I base my life upon brings me back to joy in this ordinary moment. “He set it aside.”

Substitute: Jesus.

My sin: nailed to the cross.

My heart rests in His perfect peace as He holds back the battles, the voices, and the demons of the week and of next week and of next year.

“It is finished” (John 19:30). He said.

And it is.