Pepper on the end of the Toothpick

My friend, one of them, is like a sneeze.  Whenever I call her, or she calls me, we get in the ring and box out what's rolling around in our spirits together.  And the calls always come in threes; sneeze, sneeze, ahCHOO; because we sift through and let settle what we lay on the line and as we distill it down, each call seems to crystalize truth for ourselves into small diamonds we can put in our pocket.  These times dig up my dry chunky places, my angry wells, they make me cry, they make me pitch a fit in my bones until I take a dry, heaving breath like after a child cries and crawl up in my Daddy's lap and sit clutching the truth, all crinkled construction paper, in my hand and He teaches me to cut it into the shape of a heart.

These things I grab up hungry inside of me, these life parts that I find lying about my path, and I want to shove them in my mouth crumbling out the sides and hope they fill me.  I get so scared sometimes that I won't get enough, that somehow I'm the step child at the end of the table.  I'm angry that He won't give me what I want and think I know what that is, in fact I'm sure that my veiled mind has it all figured out and I stamp my inner foot down hard at Him.  What if I get something different than I asked for?  Will I die from it?   Maybe I want to die from it, to hold my breath till I go away.  So, I gather up my trick or treat bag and go from here to there, collecting my thoughts and my panic and my inner obssessive and try to sew them into a map I can follow.

Then my friend calls; ahCHOO, and we paw through my bag.  "Lemme see whatcha got, what you're carrying in there," she says to me and I unpack it and throw it at her like word bombs.  She's silent on the other end, listening, because I'd told her to be quiet while I lobbed my grenades.  "Here.  Take THAT, life."  As I machine gunned out my words I was on my knees, scrubbing a spot off the floor and I suddenly lost all my venom and it ran out of my eyes unguarded.  "I'm tired.  I'm just tired of feeling like the Cinderella who never gets asked to the ball.  I feel like He always makes me ride around in a pumpkin," I sobbed, my grown up girl at her best.

"Are you through?  May I talk now?" she asked me.  "Uh huh," I sniff.  "Have you invited your Daddy in?"  There it was.  All quiet.  I sniffed again.  There's an experiment I did with my kids years ago.  A bowl full of water, pepper sprinkled on top.  I'd take a toothpick and dip it in detergent and touch it lightly to the surface of the water and my kids would marvel as the pepper rushed to the toothpick and the surface of the water was clean again.  That was my toothpick moment.  Had I?  I got off the phone and went to my Bible.

"Moses said, give me some time.  I'll find out what God says in your circumstances."  I looked up and towards the green chair where I sometimes picture Him sitting and smiled.  I'd forgotten to ask.  I'd forgotten to invite Him in.

Warning: Emotional Landmines Ahead

In a week's time I've had three different people tell me they struggled with jealous feelings towards me.  That sounds like I'm gloating.  I'm not.  It makes me want to grab all the couch cushions and build a fort around myself in a corner somewhere.  I hear sounds, all modern dance and music, disonant and jagged edge sounds, coming at me.  It feels like that disorienting noise in a haunted house.  I. don't. know. what. to. do.  I don't know what to do.  Idon'tknowwhattodo.  I repeat it to myself incessantly and cover my ears to not hear my own voice.

My church lady voice tells me to smile sweetly and "thankyousooomuch" and feign flattery and  goodwill.  My evil twin licks my lips and drinks the poison that promises to make me feel important, to fill that maddening void that threatens to swallow me if I'm not "seen".  My little girl whimpers.  This feels like being punished for being alive.  I know that feeling.  It causes me to shrink back and apologize for what I don't understand I'm doing wrong.

I'm sending up flares.  I'm trying to breathe here.  My wings are unfurling, all damp and fragile, and I need you to help me.  I want you to write your name on them somewhere and help teach me what you know about flying.  Pedestals are for falling off  of and I've already done that with the scars to show you. It leveled me low and helped me to see better, clearer. Comparing is to decide which is better, which is more, which lacks.  In my own mirror, I've pitiful little to show for my effort.  And none of it matters anyway.

I feel lonely with this jealous thing in the room.  I don't know where to stand or what to say.  I think I hear ticking and brace myself for an explosion, for the death of something.  What I really want?  What I really crave?  I want you to sit beside me and share my sandwich with me.  I want you to like me.  I want you to love me. I want to love you.  I want to know it's ok to be me; and only me.  Just me.  I don't want to steal anything from you.  I don't want you to cut off my legs.  I just want to be your friend.  I want to know who you are.

Repetition is Persuasion

He is black, 19, homeless.  I encountered him one day recently in a park in downtown Cincinnati when a group of my friends, and I, couldn't get the sound of the cold wind out of our ears and grabbed what we had and went.  The first thing he asked for from us, in fact, the only thing he asked for,  was a hug.  We had food, coffee, blankets, basic necessities.  He wanted a hug.

I sat down on the bench beside him and turned to face him square on.  "Tell me who you are," I said to him.  He pulled out his i.d. and smiled big and bright to show me his name and how to spell it.  It lacked an "e" where most people would put one in.  He seemed to feel glad for the small distinction. His joy in that moment made me laugh with him.  And then he said...."I'm lost.  I'm just lost." and looked off in the distance at nothing and nowhere to go.  

That lost man/boy started speaking words worthy to write down.  And I told him I would. "When you have a family, even a bad one, it tells you who you are.  It gives you something.  So I went back to find my mama.  'So what you want, boy?  You want to suck on my titty again??'  "I'm sorry," he said, looking back from what he was picturing as he spoke, and realizing my 15 year old daughter was listening.  "I don't mean to be.....but that's what she said."  No apology necessary. No words to say back.  So I kept looking at him.  I felt hurt inside of me I could taste.

He went back to the street, he said, and started "using" for different reasons; boredom, pain relief, money, survival.   It sounded like a social services pamphlet, that list.  "I know it's wrong.  I don't want to keep doing it.  But right now...."  Yeah.  I know.  No.  I don't know.  I don't really know at all.  "The thing is, when you grow up like I did, you hear things over and over from the street, from the music, and you start to believe them.  "Repition is persuasion," he said and turned to look at me....."Repition is persuasion."  The irony isn't lost.  His gaze tells me to pay attention. Truth sat there between the two of us.  

He is black, 19, homeless.  Nothing in those words describes me.  But in those words, that gaze, there was something I shook hands with.  He felt invisible.  He didn't matter.  And he'd walked into a false truth he'd begun to believe and everything seemed to confirm.  "I know that part," I said tentatively.  I touched his arm.  I was white and I'd driven there in a car, wrapped up in a coat and handing out things I had access to, had more than enough of.  I had a place to go that night.  And I wasn't really sure how that happened or why it hadn't happened to this young man. But I knew what it felt like to not feel seen, to not feel loved.

It was starting to get dusk and it would soon be time for those standing around waiting to go to the shelter nearby for something to eat for the night, for a place to sleep.  "Would you mind....can I......pray with you?"  He bowed his head, without delay.  "Yes," he answered, and waited for my words.  "God.  You're here.  You see him.  Don't let him out of your sight."   "Can I have another hug?" he asked.  With that, we gathered our things and walked away.  As our car drove back by the place we'd sat, I looked for him.  I couldn't see him.  But God did.  

"The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness...and He said, "Hagar....where have you come from and where are you going?....So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, "You are a God of seeing, (El Roi) " for she said, "Truly here I have seen Him who looks after me."  Genesis 16

What happens when "What If" happens.......

What happens when you get up one day and your life is one way and you go to sleep that night another way?  The kind of change in ways that feels like smashing glass?  You're surprised to learn that not everyone in the world heard the break; because it took all your windows out and you were left walking around on shards.  You wonder if you did something that caused the break, if you could have done anything at all.  You figure you need to sweep it up but know that when you do, it feels like losing even more.  You consider keeping a piece of the glass tucked away; that maybe it'll catch the light and make a rainbow you can hold onto.

The sun comes out the next day and the day after that and you notice your blurred heart makes it look like it's raining.  You strain with everything in you to change the ending to this story.  It doesn't make sense.  It. makes. no. sense.  This is not alright.  This is not okay.  And you look up and realize your "But...then God" stories have changed to a question...."But...God??"  You quake a little, a lot, in your shoes and your knees feel weak.  It makes you fall to the ground and you stay there, because somehow you feel safer there where it's not spinning.  "Oh God.  Help me.  This hurts."

The truth is, you want no explanations, no reasons, because none of them rearranges things and some of them make you angry.  What you want is to trust your Father when change is not an option.  You want to hear more than an echo. "Here in exile my heart is breaking, and so I turn my thoughts to Him.To God, my defender, I say,' Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go on suffering? Why am I so sad? Why am I so troubled? I will put my hope in God, and once again I will praise him, my savior and my God." Ps 42 There on your knees, the shards still pricking your skin, you realize He's standing there holding out His hand and you notice the whole world is resting in it.

He's reaching because He loves you........

Counting and Quarreling

Eugene Peterson, the wordsmith who translated the Bible into The Message, one of my favorite places to go to turn life into moving picture shows, says "The people who find themselves called and led and commanded by God find themselves in the company of men and women who sin a lot-quarrel, bicker, grumble, rebel, fornicate, steal....We need help getting along with each other."  This is the time of year when those of us who resolved, at the turn of the clock and the calendar page, to find some sort of "reading plan" with which we could navigate the new or familiar words of the Bible might, I suspect,  find yourselves somewhere in the Book of Numbers. This is a far cry better to me than Leviticus, all goats and absolution offerings and such, that I have to strive harder for to have it reach my world.

This Numbers thing, though, this taking a collective breath and getting our whits about us after we've decided that yes, indeed, we'll walk the road together, sets well in my mind.  I gather around readily at the warmth that the embers of organizing and structure give to me.  I like to know where to stand, what I can pass out to others, how I can help.   Then, when the water rises up to meet the land and the path shakes itself violently, at least I know I'm supposed to be handing out the carefully counted and inventoried life vests.  It gives me my place; my "hold".

It's that quarreling, bickering, grumbling, stuff  that gets the messy in me all stirred up.  Forming myself into community with others is neither sexy or romantic.  It's the compost heap of life, where, if I'm willing,  the shuffling about, the jockeying of  what's real creates the  rich, loamy heart earth in my soul, my spirit, my bones. We bump and jostle each other like so many chickens in a hen house, sqawking and clucking, turning that sharp beady eye on each other ready to pounce.  We can tolerate our own chickeness but we all too frequently seek to sequester ourselves from the dirty business of hen house life and community becomes a four letter word;  Fear.

"God spoke to Moses and Aaron.  He said, "The People of Israel are to set up camp circling the Tent of Meeting and facing it."  Numbers 2:1  I find that an intriguing arrangement.  It puts them, puts us, puts me looking at one another, and at the foot of the tent where God met His people.  He wanted us there together and He wanted to be all up in the middle of us.  This is entirely out of my comfort zone and I feel myself constantly fighting to keep from running to the hills with my own life vest.  It's more than just whether you know that I dunk my cookies in iced tea rather than milk, although that's sometimes vulnerable enough to me until I see how you handle that terrible secret.  The thing of it is, my heart will be broken, roughed up, softened, enlarged, that to run from that is to run from Life.  I will cross paths with people who will hurt me without meaning to and people who will hurt me on purpose.  I will encounter those I can teach and who can teach me. I will have some added to my life and others taken away.  I will learn to share my chocolate with people who I don't agree with and realize that the chocolate tastes better that way.

Community, building a hut for my heart big enough to let others in, it occured to me, is praying without ceasing because when I choose to grasp onto others, I'm drawing them close to my Father's meeting tent.  It's there we can both safely stand, even when we get muddy.

Broken Girl

Hanging on to a crumpled list of "what to do's or else".....else I wouldn't meet the criteria for whomever held the magic wand of approval.......I choked back life like bad medicine.  It felt a curious tangle inside my head,  like leaning in close to a radio trying to listen through the static.  I wanted to, really wanted to be good enough.  I just couldn't seem to find the end of "enough" and the channel kept changing.  I was too much of one thing and too little of another;  too small, too quiet, too silly, too introspective,  too carefree,  too naive,  too untrusting, , too pretty to be funny, too funny to be pretty....I wrote them all down in an angry scribble and read them over and over to myself.

The standard left me tired and I found myself wanting to find a corner and tear up a whole box of kleenex and build a nest with it and stay there.  Because at least it would be soft; softer than the world around me.  So I drew myself a big breath of air and puffed myself up like a blowfish to defend myself against the assessments I couldn't fix and grew barnacles of pride and fear.  Even God, especially God, couldn't fix me, wouldn't fix me, I wagered.  Because He didn't seem to live in my neighborhood and had His back turned to play with the people who made the grade.

Since God had moved away, I was on my own and I would try; try harder and more and better.  Try was what I banked on; bartered with,  because try was all I owned. The truths of what God said wandered around my head like pinballs, clanking loud but never finding a place to rest until I spewd them out and flashed "Game Over" out my eyeballs.  I couldn't see my way clear.  I couldn't see my way at all.  I couldn't see me.  To stave off the sense of falling out of grace with the world, I decided somewhere in my scared heart that I was better than it was and I didn't need their grace anyway.   And there's where Grace found a heartbeat.

It was in the red zone but it was enough for Him to work with, that pulse.  It beat restless and rebellious to grab what it needed to keep a spark.   Grace entered stage "bang open door" and came holding a mirror.  The reflection sparked bright like turned to the sun because the Son held it.  There was blood on the handle.   My reflection had dug into His wrist and twisted deep to the other side.  My depravity sneered back at me and I was laid flat.  I mistook His rescue for a courtroom and clamored off the floor to escape.  I heard the gavel bang down hollow and mean in my ears.  And then there was silence.

ALL RISE.  "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.  Repent and believe in the good news!"  He walked toward me and reached out and I flinched back cowardly.  Out of a small pot of my burnt up self help,  He scooped out some ashes and drew a small cross on my forehead.  "This one's mine," He said quietly and reached for the nothing I had to give Him.  The blood was gone from His wrists.  They'd been healed with scars.  I looked closer and gasped to see my name written on them.

I'd needed grace after all.  And His was mine, unending.