golden clay

We sit there together, bum prints in the snow. His toque is pulled down over his eyes and he leans his head back, holding it in his hands. The river shoots out from under the ice in front of us, curdling the cold water against the bank downstream. I want to tell him how grateful I am that he took the whole day off to spend with his little sister. I don’t want him to know how much I need him. So, I don’t say anything.

A few days later, I pull open the glass door and run up the stairs in the music building; my backpack makes me hunch forward. Too many textbooks. I meet her blue uniform in the hallway. She smiles at me like she does every school day. She continues to mop the floor and I rush past her. I want to say something about her cheerful smile, her hard work. I don’t want to be sappy, insincere. So, I don’t say anything.

Later again, I pile my layers of coats onto my backpack to keep them off the wet floor of the locker room. I stand in front of a mirror and run a brush through my tangled hair. She comes up beside me and borrows the other side of the mirror to dab her face with skin-coloured cream. I want to tell her that she looks really pretty today. I don’t know her. So, I don’t say anything.

We build our own image, not theirs’. We build ourselves up, not others. Maybe we should take a risk and “in humility count others as more significant” (Philippians 2:3).

I try it out today in the cafeteria. I sit beside her and pick away at my salad, wondering if I should say something. Just as I grab my coat, I turn to her, “You work at Tim Hortons here, right?”

She laughs. I’ve seen her laugh before as she’s filling up our roll-up-the-rims. “Yes.”

“You’re my favourite Tim Horton’s lady.”

Then, we talked and went our separate ways, smiling. A day can be made with six words.

One day the ant was troubled.
He trembled.
He claimed it as a trial.
He trifled.
He claimed it as a tribulation.

His friends came to him.
“Why do you fret?”
“Why do you fear?”
“Why are you frustrated?”

“Oh, friends!”
He wept.
“What if I am not in the will of the Giant of Heaven?”
He whimpered.
“What if he wants me to be at a different anthill?”
His eyes watered.

“Dear Ant!”
They smiled.
“You are an ant,”
They said softly.
“But, he is the Giant!”
They shouted.
“Can He not move you?”

Two years ago and I’m outside the dormitories. The lake glistens in the moonlight. The Rocky Mountains are faint outlines in the distance. I pray for the restoration of their marriage like I have a hundred times before. The wind starts to seep through the pores in my coat. The glassy lake is shattered by raindrops. My words are routine by now. I can do prayer without thinking.

That’s when I realize my error and the rain is mixed with tears. Do I just tell Him? God, I really don’t know how to pray for this anymore. That’s when His words come, flooding my soul like the rain on the lake.

Maybe before, I wasn’t really talking to Him. I was talking out my thoughts to myself, for myself. I was checking off a list. It’s hard to see answered prayer when we don’t really pray.

A week fades. I thought so often of God. I talked so little to Him. I did so much for God. I did so little with Him. Why is it so hard to remember the Person behind the purpose of each moment?

This morning, I read Emily Prentiss’ honest words. One hundred and forty year old thoughts and they’ve burned their way into my 21st century mind.

“I was miserably lonely and desolate without him, not merely because he had been so much to me, but because his loss revealed to me the distance between Christ and my soul. All I could do was to go on praying, year after year, in a dreary, hopeless way that I might learn to say, as David did, ‘I opened not my mouth because thou didst it.’ When you suggested that instead of trying to find out whether I had loved God I should begin to love Him now, light broke in upon my soul; I gave myself, to Him that instant…”

Whatever the past week, give yourself to Him anew.

We are barely over the last snow drift at the end of our long, gravel lane before I start murmuring all of the things I need to do before next week. I list each task, one by one, as she listens patiently. I want to make her understand that I have reasons to be miserable.

She is sympathetic.

I’ve caught glimpses of them on the ice, on the benches, holding medals high. Gold. Silver. Bronze. Athletes practice to make perfect.

I’ve been practicing too: forming my complaints, building my stress, and performing my unhappiness. The problem of practice is that it also makes imperfect.

What if we viewed each moment as training ground? Actions in this moment shape our reactions in the next one. One day, at the end of the race, we want to win the prize. We have the perfect Coach.

I glanced over my shoulder at him, holding the ropes below. His face was shining with perspiration from the Kentucky sun. “You got me if I fall, right?”

“Of course. Just go for it.”

I could feel the blisters on my heels from my tightly-fitted rock-climbing shoes. I knew if I paused too long, my muscles would get tired. That was always my problem. Stopping. Waiting. Thinking about whether I could do it or not.

I needed to trust the guy with the rope, the guy who picked my route.

Just go for it.

So, I did.

Fear keeps us from going further.

Swing out and grab hold of the Rock of the Ages.

Seven of them sat in our living room on Saturday night, discussing the dilemmas of high school. I blew on my steaming tea, dimpling its’ smooth liquid surface and sending ripples bouncing to the edges of the mug. They talked teachers, bullies, and the broken and agreed on solutions of respect, love, and gratitude.

I envied them and their black and white world. When did mine morph into grey? The professors, the textbooks, the articles—they tell me every day that life is one big question. I cannot see distinct lines anymore and I cringe at truth that is not politically correct. I have been immersed all week in Freud, Winnicot, and Woolf, with a pinch of Scripture. On Saturday night, the girls blew the dust away, exposing my cluttered mind.

It was just the night before, I had blurted out all this heaviness to my roommate, voice shaking with feeling: “I wonder if people our age turn agnostic because they question everything.”

It’s good to question. But they tell us to question and never confidently say what we think if it offends or challenges what anyone else thinks. Everyone’s thesis is valid, they say. I’d rather question in order to find truth. To find Him. To know Him.

We are at school wanting to know more, but we miss what is worth knowing.

There is absolute Truth because there is a God.

“Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4).

I try to type a coherent idea for this blog post, pulled out of the chaos of this past week, but I can’t.

We walk to Starbucks to study on Sunday afternoon. She takes small steps, slipping in the slush on the sidewalks. “I feel like I need to just think for hours, you know, process this whole weekend.”

I nod. “You mean the whole week.”

I’ve been trying to figure it out on my own, put the pieces together. How to prepare for another week? Get in His presence. He has the case for the puzzle.

Sunday morning rush and I almost forget. Today is for rest. Our delight is in worship. Our eyes are on Him. Our souls are at peace.

Despite our crazy week,

His. Grace. Is. Enough.

To bring us to our knees.

Our breath swirled in circles around our faces. The night was a muffled calm; the streetlights cast a foggy yellow glow on the snow covered pavement. Owen stuck a gospel tract out to a middle-aged man limping past us. The man’s stained and worn lumberjack coat was buttoned almost to his neck. “Did you get one of these tonight, sir?”

The man stopped and fingered the tract as he scanned its’ contents, “Oh yes. I’m a Christian, you know, a born-again, Bible believing one. All that. You guys are from that church on Wonderland right?”

We all nodded. Owen shifted his weight from foot to foot to try to stay warm. Right. Left. Right. Left.

The man squinted down at the tract again and then handed it back to Owen. “Yeah,” he paused to look down the street at the giant red brick churches towering side by side, “I don’t really think it’s necessary to do what you’re doing.”

“Why’s that?” one of us asked.

The man shook his head. “It’s not my thing to tell people about Jesus. I went to a United Church for years and it was all ninety year old ladies.” He laughed and gestured to the two churches on the other side of the street. “There’s a church on every corner. If people want God, they can just go to church.”

I held my jaw together, afraid it would drop right open. “You would be surprised,” I tried to keep my voice steady,  “at how many people, especially people my age, have no idea what the gospel even is.” I thought about the blonde-haired girl with hipster glasses who thought you get to heaven with some type of universal energy, the short boy who thought that the Ten Commandments include “thou shalt not drink coffee”, and the girl with the sweet, quivering smile who said eternity freaks her out.

The man looked evenly at each of us and shrugged, “I have enough of my own problems to deal with. I can’t worry about anybody else.”

My chest was ice cold, like someone just knocked the wind out of me. He said what I have thought too many times.

I’m glad that God is not like us, but “he is patient with [us], not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

I go home and try to warm up white toes and whisper: Help me want to want toshare the gospel.