In one day, two friends gave me bright pieces of sunshine with their words. Like snowflakes catch the light and shimmer and shine, these words, unrelated and seemingly random, reflected light and glory to me:
The best moment of your life is right now!
God has once again baffled me by His exuberance and lack of moderation.
We were girlfriends waiting for a train. It was Christmas time in the city, night, but not dark. The evening had been magic, walking through snowy festive streets and exploring the Christmas market in Warsaw’s Old Town. We became like walking snowmen, coated with falling snow.
Rather than wait for the train in the underground station, we chose to wait above ground in the fresh air. We stood in a big, untracked space where people had obviously kept to the walkways and left the snow untouched. I discovered it made an easy ball, and instantly I knew what to do while we waited.
I handed my bag to my friend, tied my scarf so it wouldn’t get in my way, and started rolling a ball bigger and bigger. Packed it firmly, rolled it some more, and put more snow around it to stabilize it. In maybe ten minutes I had built a snowman just shorter than me. He was nicely proportioned, and his stance showed that he was happy.
But what do you use for a snowman’s face if there’s no gravel or coal or carrot around? You improvise. On the far side of a building I found a pine tree and broke off some little bits. The bare pieces made eyes and a nose, and a twig made a charming smile. With a little greenery, the snowman got some hair. Curved branches formed his arms reaching toward the sky.
I cannot put into words the satisfaction and delight I found in those quick ten minutes. It was almost like celebrating a sacrament or a revival. A bubbling, rollicking joy in making something out of nothing, delighting in the sparkle of the ball as it rolled and grew, giving the face a personality with its smile, and hoping that it would make strangers smile as they rushed to their train.
I bet the world would change if everyone made a snowman.
I’m one of those touchy-feely people. I often find myself touching the person I’m talking with, squinting my eyes in response to what they say, nodding or cocking my head to listen better. I value texture, sound and proportion in full, real-life dimensions. That’s why I can’t believe it when I hear myself say that I share deep, meaningful communication with several ladies I’ve never met. But it’s true.
I met Linda when we were both in shock over the death of Isaac. Linda knows my sister, but not me, and our point of contact was our mutual grief at the loss of a wonderful, gifted young man. As we kept writing, we discovered more mutual points of interest and experience. She was teaching English in Mexico, and I loved her stories of her passion about her young friends and their adventures. We still keep in touch even though our worlds are more dissimilar and I’m amazed at how we understand and identify with each other. What a gift it is!
It was through Boundless that I found Elizabeth. I happened across her article “One Single Day” and liked it alot, but didn’t make contact with her until much later after reading other pieces she’d written. Her articles are listed and linked on the ‘writing’ page on her blog. In the last year, we’ve emailed and chatted now and then. She absorbed some big questions I dumped on her, and was a calm, caring voice that restored my equilibrium. She’s given me alot with her gentle words.
Ann is a extraordinary artist with words and pictures. She has graced me with thoughtful, gentle emails in response to my messages to her. Farmer’s wife and homeschooling mother of six, she blogs with wisdom and honesty that gives me permission to believe again in the power of words. I can’t wait for her first book coming next year!
Dorcas has written several books, and blogs frequently about everyday, earthy, homespun things. We’ve emailed now and then, and she’s been a witty, warm voice that makes me wish we could drink tea together. It was her advice that gave me the final push to self-publish my book, and I’ve been so grateful. She also gave me good counsel and comfort when I was kerflumuxed about criticism about my book. I hope we meet sometime!
Ok, this post has to hold the record of having the most links. That’s the point of these friendships. I only met them through some link. I’ve never heard the timbre of their voices, or seen how tall they are or how firm their hugs. Still, I feel a kinship, an understanding of souls, having only met electronically. For this I am grateful, despite my huge reservations about cyber relationships.
Friendship and communication are complex things. It’s hard to rate or quantify the dynamics. Written words are the only way I’ve come to know these ladies who have given me so much. I’m thankful for their words, even though the words are one-dimensional, and they limit how well we know each other. Despite the limitations of our friendship, I’m very rich for having them flying in my galaxy!
I used to think that when I grow up, I’ll have answers to big questions. I’ll know how to be, how to say the right things, have good answers. Now I’m coming to see that answers aren’t as important as faith. And faith, it seems, is ok with questions.
Faith means being relaxed about the reality that some questions don’t have answers. Faith means asking questions and not demanding answers. Faith means taking the next step that is only dim but has enough light so as to keep me from losing my footing.
These days, when I ask God hard, big questions, He doesn’t shed much light on them. He doesn’t explain everything. He only keeps telling me that He’s with me and everything is going to be ok. Faith is at ease with darkness and questions, not with answers, as I’d thought.
My friends buried their third baby yesterday, a boy this time. It doesn’t matter that they already have five beautiful girls. It helps that they are surrounded with loving friends, but it doesn’t take the pain away. The questions of loss and wasted pain and empty arms don’t have any answers. Not in this era of reality. There is a deeper reality, which is where faith rests. Meanwhile, we hold hands and cry and ask for miracles. Faith believes in miracles, and there are no small miracles. Each one is amazing. Maybe the biggest miracle of all is that He, Immanuel, is with us.
Can I see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief, and not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear, and not feel my sorrow’s share?
Can a father see his child weep, nor be with sorrow filled?
Can a mother sit and hear an infant groan, an infant fear?No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!
And can He who smiles on all hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird’s grief and care, hear the woes that infants bear –
And not sit beside the nest, pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near, weeping tear on infant’s tear?
And not sit both night and day, wiping all our tears away?O no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!
He doth give His joy to all: He becomes an infant small,
He becomes a man of woe, He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou canst sigh a sigh, and thy Maker is not by:
Think not thou canst weep a tear, and thy Maker is not near.
O! He gives to us His joy, that our grief He may destroy:
Till our grief is fled and gone He doth sit by us and moan.
(“On Another’s Sorrow” by William Blake)
I think it’s a little dangerous to be the friend or relative of a writer, because you never know when your story or quote will be grist for their story mill. And so I try hard to respect the privacy of the people in my world, and not exploit them or our friendship.
But I think that if someone has a blog, that’s not a private thing, and I can talk about that here. And so I want to say that my friend Gideon just started a blog here and even though he says that reading blogs is a waste of time, he is happy if people have time to read his musings.
It’s something to think about: blogs and how homogenized they can be. There’s a language people can adopt, a persona they can hide behind. While I love words and want to write and am a bit of a blog junkie, I think about blogging and how it could change the way I think/read/write, and maybe I shouldn’t read as many as I do. I don’t have answers, only lots of ideas and questions. And what’s true for me isn’t strictly true for everyone else.
My goals for my blog are to use words well, and to inspire. To lift readers’ eyes from the mundane to the transcendent. I don’t use photos, though some good blogs do, because I want to learn how to convey thoughts and feelings with words. I try not not expose my friends and family so I don’t use many names (except if they have blogs or books!) and I try not to talk too much about myself because I’m 1)a little self-conscious, and 2) want to retain some mystery.
So everyone has different goals for their blogs. Matt started his blog to update his family and friends about his life in Poland when he moved here a year ago. Gideon just started now because he likes to write. If I would read only their blogs, I wouldn’t get an accurate picture of who they are, their humor and heart. They are stellar, gifted men whom I’m proud to work beside. Both of them know how to use words well, and how to hear and understand people. And they play some mean Scrabble.
Words on a page or computer screen are one-dimensional; you don’t get to know the real person, the whole of their personality, wit, tendencies, and quirks. That’s why it’s scary to write; I’m often afraid that people will be disappointed when they meet the real me because they thought they already knew me through my book or blog. It terrifies me, actually.
Probably sometime I’ll blog about some lady bloggers with whom I’ve had amazing exchanges electronically. I’m convinced that technology changes the fiber and quality of a relationship, but I have been hugely enriched with some friendships with ladies whom I’ve never met.
Meanwhile, while I put a premium on real-life, real-time relationships, blogs are nice too. They give inspiration and peeks into a bigger world out there. So now: Gideon and Matt.
Mark Galli wrote another excellent article here that resonates with truth and convicted me because it addressed things that me and my generation don’t usually like to think much about: servanthood, hidenness, faithfulness.
My Hero washed His servants’ feet and served them breakfast on the beach. It was the shape of His life, to serve. My housemate and I have a neighbor who washes our feet by keeping our coal furnace going. (We call him our ‘fire-making wizard.’) Only two young women find out about his service, but it is still significant. I have not lost the wonder of walking into a warm house late at night.
Eowyn was a woman who was tired of being hidden, tired of the mundane, hungry for significance and making a difference. Her exchange with Aragorn moved me profoundly last week when I read it again, and I found myself wanting to agree with her, taking her side, knowing how she felt. But I can’t disagree with Aragorn’s wise, strong, solid words:
Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.
It is an insidious part of our humanity that wants praise and affirmation, grasps it as if it could sustain our life. But what if it is service that sustains us? Nurturing that nurtures us? Insignificance that gives us life? Because it mirrors the shape and character of our Life-Giver.
I know it’s true, because I know my Jesus, and I know His followers, and they teach me what I need to know.
The group assignment was to take a 20 minute walk together. Enroute, we were to find something that depicts our life at the moment, and tell the group about it afterward.
I knew right away what my symbol would be. When we walked over the little bridge, I left the group and jumped/skidded down the creek bank. With a branch, I fished out a rock half the size of my fist. It glistened a deep reddish brown in my hand.
The analogy breaks down really fast, because I don’t want to be a hard, cold stone. The point of my analogy was that water smooths the roughness and brings out the deeper colors of the stone.
Whenever we walk on the beach in Ireland, we find lovely shells and put them in our pockets. But when we get home, the shells are never as pretty as they were when we found them. The water, in the place they belong, is what makes the shells beautiful.
In a blog post last week, Ann Voskamp said
A photographer had once told me, “You’ll find you will capture some of your best photographs on a grey, wet day. Want glowing, deep colors? Wait for rain.”
Do our tears saturate, intensify the colors of our lives?
Do we begin to see all as gift, when we stare face to face with losses?
Do we only begin to see when the eyes of our hearts are washed clean with tears?
I am beginning to see that in the design of the Master, running water smooths, beautifies, enhances the creation as well as the heart. And then I got a lovely message from someone very dear to me who recently walked through huge disappointment. She also found beauty from water:As we walked we came upon a stream under a stone bridge. The leaves under the water were bright like they were made of light, and just seeing that beauty gave some healing.
I know it’s true. Water soothes, smooths, brightens, gives life and beauty. I want to learn to joy in the rain outside and in my soul, instead of trying to avoid it.
It was an exciting week to live through, watching the development of the trapped miners’ dramatic rescue in Chile.
On the heels of my post last night, I came across this article in Christianity Today. The trapped miners were the springboard for his article. I was heartened to read Galli’s frank questions about prayer, and his conclusions:
First, we are to ask God for things that are important to us, no matter how we feel about God or prayer or the thing prayed for. In Jesus’ theology of prayer, there is no hint that prayer is the way we transcend desire, as if having desire was a sign of spiritual immaturity. Desire is apparently what humans do, something woven into the fabric of our humanity from day one, a divine gift, the first hint that we are made for something outside ourselves, a something that can only be realized by taking the first small step of asking. Prayer is not a way to overcome desire, but the first thing we do with it.
Second, once we announce our desire to God, it’s his job to deal with it. Prayer is not manipulating heaven to fulfill our desires. It’s putting what we desire into the hands of a loving, if inscrutable, God and letting him fulfill it in his time, in his way.
I once asked God for something very specific. I asked Him several times, and eventually, I felt Him distinctly say that I don’t know what I’m asking for.
He was right, of course. But I felt that even in the foolish asking, He didn’t mind hearing what I was wanting. I like that about Him.
I’m learning that it’s ridiculous to try to figure out what to ask God for, as if He will only pay attention to the request that suits Him. He just wants to hear what I have to say, like any good father.
I love what Fledge, the Horse, said to Polly and Digory in The Magician’s Nephew:
“Well, I DO think someone might have arranged about our meals,” said Digory.
“I’m sure Aslan would have if you’d asked him,” said Fledge.
“Wouldn’t he know without being asked?” asked Polly.
“I’ve no doubt he would,” the Horse said (still with his mouth full). “But I’ve a sort of idea he likes to be asked.”
I don’t know how prayer works, or how it moves God. But I love that He likes to be asked. And what’s more, His Spirit prays on my behalf when I can’t even verbalize anything. He really has thought of everything.
We were discussing heroes of faith. Someone pointed out that Sarah actually laughed, didn’t believe God’s promise. And yet she’s listed in Hebrews 11. My friend leaned over to whisper something more to me, and was taken aback to see tears creeping out of my eyes. I wasn’t sad or grieving, just overwhelmed.
Sarah didn’t always have faith. Her idea of Hagar bearing the promised son was blatant unbelief. And yet she’s one of the faith heroes. That means I have a chance to be a hero of faith too. Amazing.
It doesn’t happen often, but now and then a new friend will say to me, “You surprise me–I thought you were one of those people who has it all together.”
So let me clarify here: I don’t have it all together. I have hangups, questions, gaping wounds. I don’t believe God when He says something. I keep arguing with Him. I stratify people and think some are less or more worthy of my love. I have issues, problems, flaws. I am a Sarah, puzzled at God’s words and laughing sarcastically when they don’t make sense.
Those issues don’t define who I am, but they shape how I look at and respond to things around me. And anyone who knows me well knows I don’t have it all together. That’s why I take such comfort in God’s love, because He knows me fully and loves me anyhow. On Sunday, Hebrews 11 let me peek at what can be possible for someone who doesn’t have it all together.
And it gave me hope.
Tis a Gift to Receive 