French Fries Spell L O V E

Yesterday, at school, I felt that plexiglass feeling again....that thing that threatens to take me down at times for no reason.  I remembered something that quickened in my spirit as truth that I'd just heard.  All of life is a battle.  All of it.  Each small moment.  Some in the same room as me, some who heard those words, found it hard to say "yes and amen" to that?  But my bones jumped at the truth.  I get that, I wanted to say.....but I felt quiet and wanted to stir the soup in my soul and take it all in.  I didn't want to expose my plexiglass, which was already precarious at best, to be examined.  I knew it was true.  I couldn't explain it.

So yesterday, all school spirit week frenzy swirling around me, I felt the sounds and the sights go quiet, like when you're about to faint.  I followed my friend around from task to task, she and I who buoy one another up, and don't wear one another out with talk deep and tears that come and go easy. And even in the companionship, there was a haunting aloneness.  Is this meant to be this way, God?  This vague empty that plagues me?  It seems to keep me seeking, searching to fill a void I don't have a name for.  It drives us to shopping or race car fast calendars of activity or just race cars literal.  But it drives us all in some way.

For me, it's what makes me crave community, the mortar in log cabins that keeps the layers together. That wants to create homes for hearts.  So I got in my car and pounded out my prayer on the steering wheel.  I. won't. give. up. God.  I am grabbing hold of Your hem until You answer me.  Until it kills me, which, as an aside, would be fine with me because loving people till I die sounds like heaven  and it nearly kills me as it is.  I'm waiting, God.  I'm waiting for an answer.  It's only then I realize I don't know what I'm asking.  I'm asking for permission to give up.  To stop loving. Make me not care, I yelled at Him.  Because it hurts.  Because the enemy of my soul uses it against me like so many arrows to the heart.  Loving spends me.  Not loving bankrupts me.  You have no choice, He says.  I breathed it into you.

These last few months, He's taught me to love, as in love anyway.  When it's retracted.  Rejected.  Ignored.  Love.  How, God?  They don't know me.  They don't want me.  They don't care.  They don't speak to me.  How do I love when someone walks by me.  What is love??

Stop striving, He whispered.  I will show you when you need to know.  I have learned to hear my Father's voice.  I  have learned what it means to pray...and not stop.  I turn off the light at night praying myself to sleep.  Some nights I wake up and find myself whispering before I've had a chance to open my eyes.  I have learned to love the "sound" of His Spirit in my heart.  I have learned.  So I pray.  And don't stop.  And then He moved.  And strangers came in and left friends.  "Thank you," they said.  "You have encouraged me so much."   And a mama came in and told me that her daughter had come home and talked about me.  "She shines, mom."  And I cried.  Because He knew I needed to know that He lives in me still and He uses me still.

Today the boy appeared in the school store.  Like an answered prayer.  Alone.  Just he and I.  So strange, Father, I hear myself say in my heart.  To walk alongside someone and know them so well.  And then become strangers.  But here he sat, untwisting his Sprite cap and looking me right in the eye.  Not leaving.  I listen to him as he unwraps his wrist to show me his skating wound.  It pricks my heart.  I used to know when that happened.  I used to be there.  Father?  Is this You?  The boy gets up to leave, to go back to class.

"Hey.  You know what?"  I shake a little in my heart.  This is risky, God.
He turns around.  "What?"
"I really love you."
He nods his head and walks away.
He came back later.
"Um.  I have money.  Are you going to go get something to eat after school since we're all staying?"
He used to do this all the time, come to me at the end of the day.
Father?  Help me breathe.
"I'd be happy to get you something.  What would you like/"
"French fries.  And...could you get some for my friends, too?"
"That's nice of you to think of them.  Yes.  I will."


I will show you.  I will show you.  French fries spell l-o-v-e.   Who would've thought.