It’s the word God keeps telling me these weeks. I can’t get away from it. It’s the word written on a block plaque sitting on my classroom window sill. A friend gave me the plaque without knowing that I need it more than any other word right now. I face it every day, sitting in front of my students. Between shoulders and above bobbing heads and beside the crepe-paper flowers in the vase: BELIEVE.

For all that is impossible: believe.

Why do we need to say ‘would’ in this sentence?

For every unwhispered dream: believe.

In grammar, it’s called a conditional.

Buds appear on trees, flowers from seeds: believe.

Could we try a Business English lesson next week?

For all that is impossible: believe.

Can we play Bingo now? Pleeeeease?

For healing for weeping wounds and aches: believe.

The word weaves itself through the minutes of my hours. Believe. For myself and those I love. For my students and their stories. Believe.

I say I believe His words, but my heart holds back, questioning, giving rationales, fearing.

He is patient in His convincing. That, if nothing else, tells me He is worthy of my belief. Can love morph into believing? Then belief will become more than cerebral assent, but firm, glad, heart-deep confidence.

As April’s warming soil births tulips and daffodils, my soul is slowly warming to believe.

Last week, for the first time in nearly a year, I cut out a dress and started sewing it. As I worked, I felt a swirl of nostalgia and excitement and happiness. It wasn’t quite as fun to sew in a different place from my mom’s well-stocked sewing room, but it was still fun. Even if I don’t know yet if the dress will fit.

I remembered how my mom taught me how to sew. Her fingers on top of mine, she’d guide my hands in the tricky parts. She could always sort out the tangled pieces or thread tension. She’d always calm me down when I made a mistake and helped me see that it wasn’t wasted effort even if I had to redo something.

For reasons that I haven’t been able to verbalize, I love working with my hands. I love the feel of fabric or paper or thread in my fingers. It’s in my genes, maybe. I value modesty and simplicity which is the main reason I sew all my dresses, but even if I didn’t care about being modest, I would make some of my clothes just for the pleasure of it.

I like to think that God likes finger work too. The song says stars were the work of His fingers. I bet He had fun with that. (And how big does that make His hands?) Menno Kuhns, a patriarch at Bible school, was fond of saying that God’s creation was the work of His fingers, but when it came to redeeming men, it took the work of His arms–and here he’d raise his arm to bulge the muscles.

Whatever significance is in that wording, I like the fact that God is a creator and that He likes working with His fingers. It’s a strange kind of way in which to feel an affinity with the Almighty. Not that He’s like me, but that I’m like Him.

I haven’t figured out exactly why, but there are no words coming to me. Hence, no blog posts appear. I’m not so desperate for hits that I’m going to talk about what I had for lunch or what size shoes I’m looking for. Maybe this is a season for introspection and observation. I’ve been doing some of that, and it’s been enlightening–esp. the introspection.

I still love words. I still watch what some other people are writing. I still love stories and want to learn what makes an exceptional one. (Recommendation: read “Something from Nothing” by Phoebe Gilman.) But right now I only have energy to live a good story and walk with others in their stories, without putting it all into words.

Hopefully someday the words will come back.

My advanced English student is taking an English Lit. course at university, and wanted me to help her get ready for her Medieval English exam. I always dreamed of studying Lit. and teaching it at high school or college level, but I never had or took the opportunity. It’s something I’m sometimes sad about.

So when she handed me the anthology she’s studying, and wanted me to read some pieces to her, I was in new, deep water. On her study list was Beowulf, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. I’d never read any of them, only heard about them. My student friend wanted practice in listening, so I read aloud, starting with Beowulf.

Recently, I’ve felt starved for words that live, that speak relevance and life to me. So much of what is being written now is clap-trap and trite, canned and smooth, without the grip of something solid for me to hold onto. Not that it’s not speaking to someone else out there, but somehow I need something more.

I started reading the first lines, stumbling over the foreign-sounding, archaic words as gracefully as possible, and came to this line:

…the Lord endowed him,
the Wielder of Wonder, with world’s renown.

So it’s talking about Beowulf, the heir, the son in his halls to ‘favor the folk’ and the alliteration is lovely, but instantly I knew I’d found the rich words I’d been aching for, and who they describe for me: my God, the Wielder of Wonder. The words took my breath away, the alliteration and simplicity and depth.

This week a mentor asked me to think about what God was up to during a particularly puzzling time. So I’ve been thinking about what God was doing, and how patient and solid and persistent He was and is. The phrase from Beowulf, “Wielder of Wonder,” put into words what I hadn’t grasped yet. I can’t fully explain why the words touched me so deeply, why I found them so rich and meaningful, but there they are, because I wanted to share them in case someone else is starved for beautiful words.

Last week something funny happened. It wasn’t funny in a humorous way but in a strange or puzzling way. For the first time, I saw the faces of men whose voices I knew, and it baffled/bamboozled/confused me so much I could hardly watch. I felt most comfortable when I looked out the window and only listened to their voices instead of watched them talk.

It was my problem, not theirs. I’d spent hours listening to lectures by Paul David Tripp and David Powlison and very much like their approach to Christian counseling and how heart change happens in the Redeemer’s hands. Now, after the courses are over, I still often listen to the lectures on my walks. I recognize their pet words like ‘helicopter view’ and that God is ‘up to something good’ and ‘redemption’ and ‘significant life experience’ and ‘vignette.’

But in the listening, I’d formed an idea of how the men look, and when I saw videos of them, they didn’t look anything like what I’d thought! They’re not ugly or bad looking, but just not what I imagined and it messed with my mind.

Some readers of my book have written me that they wonder how I look. I like to keep it a mystery. Maybe it’s a control thing. Could be.

Anyhow, I wonder how it will be how it will be when I see God. I read His words and hear His spirit in my spirit, and feel I know Him and what He likes and wants in the limited way that the finite can understand Infinity. But how will it be when I see His face? I like to think that I’ll recognize Him. I like to think that I’ll know His face because I know His sons and daughters who resemble Him. Maybe it will stun me, but I don’t think it will be puzzling because in that moment, I will know Him as well as He knows me now.