Wow...I'm almost scared to post here. It's like this new, pristine space and I don't feel like my words can quite measure up. Yeah, I should get over that.
My soul is sad today. Yesterday it was pissed, but today it's sad. Part of it is the missing of each one of you and all of us together, and the fear that we'll grow apart. I keep reminding myself that God is in this, that distance can be something of an illusion, and that nothing negates last weekend.
Another part of me, though, is sad because, after stepping into my life here again after all of our conversations last week, I've realized just how much my life isn't what I want it to be. Like Christianne talked about in her book (and if you haven't read it yet, you should), my life is not speaking my truth. Right now, it's a jumble. Bits of it are about me. Bits are about Dave and Dave and I. All of those bits seem good. It's the other bits that I'm really struggling against. They're the things that seem necessary even though I don't want them to be. They're realities that I wouldn't have signed up for had I known what I was getting into at the time. They're sturdy and hard, and I feel like mud thrown up against them.
Then again, rivers carve canyons, so maybe there's something to the mud thing.
In the midst of all of this, though, I see new light, and it's light that I've only seen since I returned from Bellingham. What I feel is, finally, a permission to start doing something about my situation. For a while now, I've felt like I need to be here, like there's more for me here than I've seen. And, honestly, I still feel that way. But, for the first time, I feel like it's time to take some real, serious, concrete steps toward making my life look more like me.
This change in me is tiny. I might even have missed it, had I not felt so sad yesterday that I went searching for it. But sometimes it's the tiny changes that push me the farthest. Because, honestly, the difference between "almost" and "ready" can be infinite or it can be so miniscule it's almost non-existent. I needed permission to start realistically looking at things in a new light, and I found it.
I don't know if this new permission comes from God, or if something released inside of me, but it's there, and it's new, and I think it's worth celebrating.
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Wisdom. Faith. Grace. Becoming.
For different reasons, we're all in the crucible. We're walking through a season of intensive refinement, punctuated with celebrations and miracles. We wonder and ask, what is God doing? Where is He? And when it hurts the most, we beg for His deliverance. We struggle to open our hands and our hearts to Him even as we question His presence and purposes in this place. We cry out for Him to show us what He intends for our lives.
And then we are challenged to ask:
What if, instead of pleading His intervention, we acknowledge His presence and thank Him for these crucible moments? What if, instead of asking Him to deliver us from this place, we ask Him to deliver us in this place?
None of us knows the answer, but it is clear He has given us each other to lean in on and walk with. Our tears and prayers and questions spill together. We can each find a reason we don't quite belong, but we know all the same that He brought us together for a purpose that as of now, remains hidden in Him.
This is us, walking through it together. This is us, sojourning through a land where the line between faith and crazy is sometimes imperceptible. Reach out in the dark, and you will find the hand of a friend.
Sometimes we stand and wait, trusting that our seeming stillness somehow amounts to best honoring and serving our King. And sometimes we have the chance to open our windows so everyone can see and to say: Even if He does not show up, I will not bend my knee to another.
Dedicated to the glory of God and for the purposes of His kingdom.
Sarah, Christianne, Christin, and Kirsten
For different reasons, we're all in the crucible. We're walking through a season of intensive refinement, punctuated with celebrations and miracles. We wonder and ask, what is God doing? Where is He? And when it hurts the most, we beg for His deliverance. We struggle to open our hands and our hearts to Him even as we question His presence and purposes in this place. We cry out for Him to show us what He intends for our lives.
And then we are challenged to ask:
What if, instead of pleading His intervention, we acknowledge His presence and thank Him for these crucible moments? What if, instead of asking Him to deliver us from this place, we ask Him to deliver us in this place?
None of us knows the answer, but it is clear He has given us each other to lean in on and walk with. Our tears and prayers and questions spill together. We can each find a reason we don't quite belong, but we know all the same that He brought us together for a purpose that as of now, remains hidden in Him.
This is us, walking through it together. This is us, sojourning through a land where the line between faith and crazy is sometimes imperceptible. Reach out in the dark, and you will find the hand of a friend.
Sometimes we stand and wait, trusting that our seeming stillness somehow amounts to best honoring and serving our King. And sometimes we have the chance to open our windows so everyone can see and to say: Even if He does not show up, I will not bend my knee to another.
Dedicated to the glory of God and for the purposes of His kingdom.
Sarah, Christianne, Christin, and Kirsten
8 comments:
Wow, Sarah. I can't tell you how many times I got goosebumps on my arms while reading this because I lost count somewhere around the middle of the post.
Yes, it definitely is worth celebrating . . . in a BIG WAY.
And, I just have to say: there you go, girl, with the word images again! Seriously, feeling like mud thrown up against what's sturdy and hard? Rivers carving canyons? You're amazing, girl.
Making your life look more like you. That's really powerful. And I'm sitting over here at my desk, rooting you on, going "YEAH!!" because, well, you know how I'm all about that.
I'm proud for you, as your friend. I feel like I'm standing next to you on a city street with people passing by and I'm holding myself up tall, slinging my arm around your shoulder, and crowing to all the strangers passing by that you are one of the most amazingest persons in this world and that they should really get to know you and be blessed by it.
Wow. You really are on the verge here, aren't you? And as you look at things and assess them, and as you keep moving through the furnace of purification toward that end that He has for you in this, I'm with you, looking on and waiting expectantly with excitement.
Love you, girl.
wow, sarah-girl. i'm with christianne, busting up with pride at even knowing you, thinking wait just a minute. this amazing girl was at my house? i know her?
and yeah, you have such a gift with the images. there's something so visceral and potent about each of them, a sucker punch (don't worry, a good one) letting us feel & know deeply what you're getting at.
i resonate with so much of what you said. i don't want to lose any of what last weekend was. and i too am just how much my life isn't true to me - just like you said so beautifully.
i'm there with you sister. i'll be there with christianne telling passersby to look on you & behold the glory of God illuminating you. i'll take that permission to the bank, making steps (a couple small ones, already) toward the truth of who we were created to be.
it's kind of scary, isn't it, to realize that we were made (in however small a part) to reflect God's glory, to be shining & brilliant examples of Him?
you are shining, girl. you are shining brilliantly. it's so bright, i need to cover my eyes.
"it's so bright, i need to cover my eyes." Mmmm . . . that's so beautiful, Kirst. I love the way you put that. It's tender, and it's so true.
I read these comments yesterday and I knew I couldn't even start to respond. The truth is, I still can't, really, but I'm trying.
I read a quote last night (in a really weird place, actually...God really seems to be showing up in the strangest locations) that starts to sum up how I feel. It's about writing specifically, but I feel it about all of life.
Natalie Goldberg says, "There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it."
I wish it were as simple as that sounds. Then again, I feel like part of what I'm doing is digging myself out of a hole that wasn't that. I don't know. That part is all still so jumbled.
The parts of both of your posts that hit me the hardest was the image of shouting in the streets. About me? Really?
So much of me wants to tell you to scream about someone else, someone worthy, but that's rejecting the gift in your words and I don't want to do that. So I'm working to accept, to see what y'all see in me, or at least to let you see it ;)
Christianne, I think I am on the verge, definitely more than I knew and maybe moreso than I do now.
Kirsten, I'm awed by the part about covering you eyes...wow...now there's a picture for me.
Oh, Sarah, my heart nearly pounded out of my chest as I read your post. I'm kinda at a loss to know what other words to offer. But, I hoorah the sentiments of the others.
I was also once again blown away by your word pictures. So vivid, poignant, true.
And, at the risk of being accused of channeling a certain professor, your comments about freedom coming through fulfilling your function - that's what the whole a rock glorifies God in its rockness is about. I think when we do what we are meant to do, not only do we glorify God, we also find freedom in fulfillment.
Ahhhh! I love you gals!
Benny!
It really is challenging because 1) we have to figure out what it is we are meant to do (no small feat in and of itself) and 2) figure out how that works with real life (no small feat, either, if we have various responsibilities to uphold or other people to consider).
As to figuring out what we were meant to do, this is where I think awakening and attending to our stories can be a powerful way for God to reveal this to us. I feel like I only found my true fit in the life and work of the heart and grace through truly, carefully attending to the experiences of my whole life story. Over time, it started to create a story arc in which an interpretation could finally be made.
Does that sound hokey?
Anyway, the whole "awake and attend" part can take a long time, but it's the last part -- embracing it -- that can cause all kinds of difficulties. That's the place you are right now, right, Sarah? Because I think you have a strong sense of who you are and who you aren't, but you're trying to figure out how to integrate the truth of you into your actual life. And that's where it becomes sticky because there is "real life" to contend with: financial needs and obligations, the work of Dave's life to consider, etc.
That's where I feel like we're sitting here in the crucible or the fog, saying, "Okay, God, this is what you made in me, and I don't get how it works. I'm standing here, waiting for you to reveal. I will not back down, I will not deny, I will not forget . . . but I do need you to show up and show me the way."
Christin--Yeah, after those two get to it, it's often hard to find words ;) I'm awed that those word pictures mean so much here...I guess I'm used to them because they're in my head ALL the time.
And yes, darn-it-all, I'm going to be the best me I can be. Right now it feels like herding cats, but here's hoping it gets easier.
Christianne--NO! So totally not hokey. I hear ya.
And you're so incredibly right on when it comes to the crucible being the place where we try to figure out how who we are intersects with the world.
After I read this earlier, while I was pondering what to comment, I felt some comfort in thinking that *I* am not actually made for this world. I'm not sure why, but it took the pressure off, somehow, like the hardness, the crucibility of it all, comes because we don't fit straight in, and we have to (get to?) figure it out. Ok, so that's more thought-through in my head than it came out here.
Yes! Yes! Yes! That's all I really have to say. (except no to the hokey)
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