He loves us.
…and sometimes the realization sneaks up; not in thunderstorms, but in thudding, slowly pelting rain. The dust grows black, pinned to the ground by dots of water.
He loves us.
…the thought unfolds, anew, like the Morning Glories I planted as a child (awed that anything seemingly fragile could be so consistent and beautiful). This love story does not grow worn with the telling.
I forget so easily. Is it because I consider myself unworthy to be loved by God? No. It’s not because I’m that humble. It’s because I am that proud; I fancy that my own frustrating self will end up being the first in history to completely exasperate God. “Maybe I’ll be the one to run Him dry of mercy.”
But that’s ridiculous. His love runs deeper than anything a mortal soul can concoct to wrench His plans. A few minutes of marveling shifts the truth into view:
He loves you so deep it’s ridiculous. He defends and claims you as His own. He saves you once and forever. He keeps you.
These are just words collected in categories, boxed in with periods…unless we trust them. They don’t resonate unless we stand under them and let their reality slowly soak in.
“He,” the Almighty God who cannot be thwarted. “He,” the Altogether Holy, who has chosen to draw near.
“Loves”—the present tense, the feeling, the decision of will; the sacrifice and the bestowment.
“Us”—the people we are now. The current, embarrassingly-human “us.” Let it all spill down…
Morning buds of May.
(Source: soul-frosts, via jessicamkim)
~ “Oh Lord,” The Valley of VisionNo day of my life has passed that has not proved me guilty in Your sight.
Prayers have been uttered from a prayerless heart.
Praise has been often praiseless sound…All things in me call for my rejection,
All things in You plead my acceptance.
I appeal from the throne of perfect justice to Your throne of boundless grace.Grant me to hear Your voice assuring me:
That by Your stripes I am healed;
That You were bruised for my iniquities;
That You have been made sin for me;
That I might be righteous in You;
That my grievous sins, my manifold sins, are all forgiven,
Buried in the ocean of Your concealing blood.I am guilty, but pardoned,
Lost, but saved,
Wandering, but found,
Sinning, but cleansed…Keep me always clinging to your cross.
Flood me every moment with descending grace.
Wrote this as a reminder to myself the other day…
“You take a deep breath and you walk through the doors/it’s the morning of your very first day…” Songs are written about being fifteen. No one writes on ages twenty, twenty-one or twenty-two, and I know why. This is the Great Unrest, when you are wise enough to know better but still not wise enough. Everybody says this is the time you choose who you want to be, and what you do (or fail to do) determines the trajectory of the rest of your life.
Face-down and eye-level with the ants on your dorm room carpet, you don’t try to smoosh them anymore. You see them flailing and know how it feels to carry three times your body weight.
You get used to the taste of sleep deprivation in your mouth. It tastes like desperation and dining hall coffee. You doubt you will feel nostalgia about this, ever.
Still, around lunch tables, over cups of milk and curly fries, you find kindred spirits. There are the people who dislike you for no apparent reason. There are also the ones who love you, even (and especially) when you can’t tell why.
But, it’s in an empty racquetball court after a most overwhelming day, when you’re all pink and stained and heartswollen, where God finds you. He comes in the form of Mrs. Rienhardt, who asks what’s on your mind, and reminds you of all the things you should know already, but have forgotten.
Then, stressed beyond belief over your sudden lack of motivation, beneath a sky of faded stars you consider collapsing in the soccer field for dramatic effect. You’ve heard of it done before. (Maybe God hears prayers best when spoken from that position?) Don’t do it: ticks.
You never work out as much as you should. You will never unsay all those things you said. You will never be as whole or perfect as you would like to be. You will never be able to rewrite this story. But who you are in Christ is who you are. Your identity in Christ is your real identity. It’s not the future version of you, the perfect Form of you, that He loves.
People do things you don’t understand. They fail you. You can choose to let your educated mind wallow in the safe realm of facts and abstract truths—or you too can forgive as Sonia to an unrepentant Raskolnikov. You can live the poetry of Penelope at her loom, choosing peace and daily fidelity in a world of pyre-frenzied Dido’s.
There may never be Four (discernable) Causes clarifying the particulars of your circumstances, making them manageable. But you know the Prime Mover, and He has told you His name. All-Power has grace enough for your all-frailty.
Remember, love is often the wound, but always the cure.
Remember, remember, remember. Sleeping deprived and fighting to stay on top of assignments, sometimes we forget that one day, we’ll want to remember this. Our troubles are smaller than we think, and reasons to hope run deeper than reasons to worry. We’ll see.
…still be my vision, O Ruler of all.
A repost from a few months ago, by request.
I feel awkward writing about love. Maybe I’m too juvenile. Maybe. Probably because writing about love is sappy and when you’re single I think sappy spells “desperate.” Since I’m not desperate (believe me if you want to!) this makes for an obvious tension.
That, and people are too quick to take anything written on relationships as prescriptive. (I don’t claim to speak to every situation, or for any of my words to become a banner for a crusade against anyone’s conscience.) Finally—and this is the deepest issue—my love-philosophy is near and dear to my heart.
Every girl has a love philosophy. Every guy, too, for that matter. I’ve been working on mine for a long time. This article is that philosophy. It isn’t meant to be the next I Kissed Dating Goodbye, nor will this be in any way based on the Song of Solomon. All I intend to do is stir the pot. What’s your philosophy on all this stuff? What would you tweak about mine?
So here it is, my not-so-perfectly honed philosophy on love and relationships, as written by the light of a slivery moon (not silvery) and under the influence of the Tangled soundtrack. You’re welcome.
A Mature Reality. I am not a Disney princess. If I were one, I’d probably be some combination of Belle and Rapunzel. But that’s silly, because there is no such thing as a Bellezel (which sounds like the evil sister of Beelzebub.) There’s a reason they have magic carpet rides, hair-that-heals, and magic wilting roses. Because they’re fairytales.
It’s only rational to draw a distinction between fairytales of our childhood and the reality of life in a pain-filled, bleeding world. If I am to live in this realm, I’ve got to be honest. This is not a place conducive to happy conclusions. But a mature outlook on pain and reality does not necessitate a rigid, depressing perspective on love. Just because there are famines, AIDS and devils stalking the earth doesn’t mean that God cannot be gracious. David wrote of the hope of God being good in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13) Whether or not that goodness translates for a happy marriage for you personally—it shows that God has been kind in the past, and will be in the future. There is such a thing as grace, and God gives it out in the form of relationships all the time. If I have an amazing love story that makes Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe look like shadow puppets, I won’t be surprised. Because that’s just the kind of stunningly gracious God that He is.
For Guys. Re-stating what is coming to be known as common sense in evangelical circles: it’s the guy’s job to initiate and lead. There are pastors who have elaborated on why this is. Mark Driscoll said, “Too many Christian guys are cowards. That’s why so many non-Christian guys pursue Christian women, because those women are waiting for any man who’s got initiative, leadership, courage. That’s why sometimes Christian women are interested in non-Christian men; because the Christian men are cowards.” There isn’t much more I can say beyond that, except as a Christian young woman, I appreciate that someone loud and listened-to spoke that openly. Guys, he’s right. Let Driscoll’s belt-whipping sink in. Now go git ‘er.
For Girls. Oh, girls. We talk about relationships so much. But I wonder how often we’re actually preached to on this subject. Just how solid is our grasp—beyond gossip and the Christian version of Cosmogirl wisdom? We’re told to wait, to be patient, to not throw ourselves at guys. (That, we know, is the best way to be desirable. It’s good sense to wait, but do we adopt this as our motto in an attempt to become more attractive to guys, like becoming forbidden fruit? Is this just the old game of hard-to-get, or is this actual patience birthed in self-control?)
Patience makes sense, because if guys are going to be initiators and leaders, we have to give them space to breathe. But I do wonder if, in all the d’s where we demand them to direct, define the relationship, and decide if they like us right away, whether we’re calling them to a standard of bravery we’ve neglected for ourselves. We call on guys to decide if they wish to spend their lives with us. (And guys, you need to decide this. You really do. As pastor Matt Chandler said once, “Quit playing with their hearts. Fricking grow up…You’re leaving a wake behind you of destruction.”) But I wonder if, when we want all our borders and statuses defined officially (that is, Facebook officially) from the get-go, if we are calling our brothers to a braveness and certainty we don’t have ourselves. Because if we were brave, we’d learn the meaning of self-control; of taking things slow, and of wise evaluation. This leads me to my next thought.
Pain. Let’s just get this off the table once and for all. A friend of mine told me on the phone recently, about how she was hesitant to say anything confrontational to a guy who has given her special attention on-and-off for three years. She’s afraid to do something that may cause her pain. “Okay,” I said something that had been brewing in my heart for weeks but was never verbalized, “let’s just forget this pain thing altogether. It’s not worth being a factor in your decisions. Let’s just face it right now that if you date the guy, and get engaged, and then get married—he will hurt you. In some way, shape or form, he will because he is human and to live a human life is to have pain; and there is no relationship that isn’t messy. And if the status quo continues, you will be pained as well by the ‘what-if’s.’ So let’s just get this pain thing off the table forever, because pain is going to happen.” Thankfully, she took it graciously. She knows I was preaching to myself.
That being said, pain is real and will always be present in this body. Instead of running away from it, the Christian call has always been a unique one—that we must learn to view pain as a carrier. Pain carries us to the arms of the Father. Pain brings us to a place where we are moldable, pliable in the hands of God.
Pain is a product of the Enemy, but still subject to our Father, who allows nothing to happen in vain–no agony is by Him wasted. (2 Cor. 4:17) As the poet, Auden said, “…in the prison of his days, let the free man learn to praise.” If the contents of your days imprison you, you’ll find freedom in the learning of praise. Real freedom–the kind prisons can’t keep locked.
With that in mind, rather than fearing pain, wouldn’t it be infinitely better to fear mis-using the pain we’ve been given? If we’re going to be given prisons (we know we are), neglecting to learn joy-amidst-suffering would make the pain a waste. That would be the truest tragedy.
Fate. My Chinese sister, Wei, told me the story of Yue lao (月老), the Chinese matchmaking god. Legend has it that he connects two people together by tying a long red cord to their wrists. They may pass through life and never meet, but for the duration of eternity they will be soul-tied. And gosh, that’s a gorgeous legend, as far as legends about matchmaking deities go.
But hearing her story made me glad that the Christian view of sovereignty is different. Unlike Yue lao, who doesn’t care whether his beknotted earthlings ever meet, God not only plans our days–He guides them. This is not to drift into arguing for an all-too-elusive One-True-Love. That’s another conversation. What I’m saying here is that God outlined our storylines long ago. (Psalm 139:4-5, 16)
Calvinists may not be the people you first think of alongside such romantics as Keats and Tennyson, but my Arminian friends must admit they do have something nifty going on. When you believe that God is sovereign over your life and that means that He guides your steps, plans and puts limits on your wanderings—it is a comfort. Because our God is kind and will bring about His good purpose. (Provebrs 16:1-4) That knowledge frees us to joy, obedience, and eyes set in hope on the Father. And it means you believe that it’s within God’s jurisdiction (seriously? what isn’t God’s jurisdiction?) to choose someone for us to marry. Nice.
How do you know if someone is THAT SOMEONE? Probably the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard a pastor say about deciding whether someone is the one you should marry, “I always say there’s the one you can live with, and the one you can’t live without.”
There are probably thousands of guys that would roughly fit the qualifications I made in my head, even if I my list were arbitrary and choosy (“He must appreciate Mumford and Sons, and a good cup of chai…”). Heck, I could walk into a Starbucks and half the guys would qualify. But it’s not a question of checkmarks on a list. When it’s that person, it’ll be the one you can’t live without. You can’t let go. You can’t bear the thought of separating forever—and half the time you aren’t even sure why. It may not be because your personalities or interests necessarily “fit” in a rational way, but because something does in an irrational way, and you can’t explain it.
Taming. It’s a concept a friend recently brought up. She was re-reading The Little Prince, an unconventional French fairytale that is a must-read for all whimsical and romantic. At one point, the prince comes across a fox in the field. The fox says they cannot be friends unless the prince tames him. “To you I’m nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you’ll be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…”
Ah, that is some truth.
What if we are not perfect for each other because we are perfect people, but because we tame each other? What if, by relationship, we work out each other’s snags and snarls—and even though a half a million other boys would check all the same marks on my list—you become, you, to me? If we were to draw this into the theological zone, I’d say that we sanctify each other. God made me to sanctify you. We fit.
I think my friend’s fairytale stretches deeper than a fairytale, into the realm of the mystery. Love, if it is real, is ultimately not about qualifications or perfections. Qualifications might be guide markers for us, but they cannot cause love on their own. Love is a process, an active, interacting state of being as much as it is a word for Hallmark cards (if not more). To love is to be moved, transformed and changed into the image of love. (Is that not what our Bibles teach us already?) So in the end, I distrust people who have set guidelines; guys who have a “type” that narrows to a specific look, girls who go after guys with a specific sense of humor. Because they do not know yet much of the transforming nature of love.
Don’t choose someone based on a type, because after love comes like a hurricane, they will no longer remain the same person. Maybe that’s just the currently-single romantic in me. But I think not.
Love is LOVE. Finally, don’t forget what it is we’re talking about here. This is a celebration; something to sing about (even if that song is something by “Regrets-and-mistakes-are-memories-made”-Adele). There is grace in that, too. Don’t listen to the break-up’s, the 500 Days of Summer and all the voices that would argue for a “realistic” view of love that is entirely hopeless, faithless, and unexciting. I understand that kind of thinking–the kind that is quick to count sorrows but not to count gifts and blessings. Sure, this world hurts a lot, and the odds against good things happening aren’t pretty.
God is bigger than that.
If He’s God, and He started it, then He’s not the Founder alone, but He’s also the Perfecter. Which means, the highest highs and the lowest lows in my life are God’s begotten moments meant to perfect what He began.~ Matt Chandler (via oh-thejourney)
(via awakenthebride)
I want to catch life with all of me, hurling myself into its way. I want to run hard and run fast—but I also want to feel the ridges in linoleum as the million nerve endings of my fingertip slowly glide over them, as the horizon fades to black and I rush to scrub the floors before my dorm chore is due. In each moment, being there. Kerouac said the only people for him were the mad ones, who “burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…” I want to be mad, if madness means being the kind of person who sees the glory of living. That is, if madness means being truly sane. I want to be quiet; wonderful in my wondering, too. Isn’t part of the grandness of being human the opportunity to perceive the grandness of our contexts? Victor Hugo wrote, “In the vast cosmic changes, universal life comes and goes…rolling everything up in the invisible mystery…” He saw the big scheme, how parts relate to the story of the ages. Everything “blossoms” for God: “The evolutions of the comet in the firmament to the circling of the protozoa in a drop of water.” I want to note these things. I want to embrace the whole, and the sum of the smaller parts. Bring on the wonder.
On this anniversary of the death of John Keats (“A thing of beauty is a joy forever…”) it’s appropriate to re-evaluate one of my primary hobbies.
Either writing poetry makes things better, or it makes things worse.
On the “Makes Better” team, we have…
A) Reduces a circumstance to meter, grammar, spelling, words and vocabulary
B) Helps us process situations, vent, and altogether become more acceptable, emotionally-controlled human beings
C) Distracts from life’s problems
and on the “Poetry Makes Things Worse” team, we have…
A) The life experience of every great poet who ruminated through the written word on their unhappy lives and experienced early deaths. (Donne? Byron, anyone? Sylvia Plath?)
To worsen matters, the BBC agrees that poets generally die young. A psychologist was quoted as saying, “What I found was pretty consistent…[that] female poets were much more likely to suffer from mental illness than any other kind of writer and more likely than other eminent women.”
At least my poems are amateur, to say the least.
I’m not sure I believe in negative numbers.
If zero is really zero,
that is, nothing,
then how can something be less than nothing?
“Nothing” is the absence of thingness.
How can one be more absent a thing than another?
“We are both nothing, but I am more nothing than you.”
To be more nothing…does that not
make “nothing”
a thing?
Thingness defies zero.
Either you are zero—and absolutely nothing
or very secretly
you are something.
by em martin
(via cemeterylikeastage)
You will treat the weaknesses and failures of others with grace when you humbly admit that you’re more like them than unlike them.~ Paul Tripp (via flavoredlatte)
(Source: katiecrosby, via flavoredlatte)
Tumbling out of bed (literally),
leaving warm blankets behind
knocking over my roommate’s stockpile of macaroni
the sound of noodles in boxes
(ugh, like maracas…falling everywhere)
hitting the floor
shattering morning
a dream, interrupted.
It’s hard to believe in beauty, and an underlying pulse of glory and grace beneath our lives, on mornings that start with falling macaroni (and no coffee). My left shoe has warped overnight and (for some reason) keeps wanting to fly off when I walk. And I keep daydreaming about road trips, because it’s Monday and winding roads are far away. It’s a bless-your-heart, but-I-hate-your-guts sort of day.
We ache for the beauty, the perfect, the gift. We want wholeness—soul embiggenment. Today, I’m pretty sure my soul looks like a four year-old raisin.
I am not quite brave; not quite awake; not quite even myself. Stealing words from Amy Dryansky, “I’m still standing here, half in the light.” Shy, half-made; insufficient and hollow.
But my denseness does not negate the glory. Just because I feel this way does not mean God is working any less exciting, wonderful, fantastic things for His glory today than He was yesterday.
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning wrote,
“And I said in underbreath —
All our life is mixed with death, —
And who knoweth which is best?
And I smiled to think God’s greatness
Flowed around our incompleteness, —
Round our restlessness, His rest.”
I can bear infinite weight (of far sterner frustrations than tumbling macaroni), because the Infinite bears me. That in itself is the beauty of this day. Abject weakness, filled by strength that is not my own.
If God is the One Necessity and we are Contingent,* how beautiful is it that He loves us? More than a lion loving a lamb; more than angel loving mortal—this is all-power loving all-frailty. What then did the universe hear screamed when the Necessary, who cannot be destroyed, submitted Himself to bear the weight of our destruction? There is glory here that finite beings cannot see…because we don’t know how to feels to be both First Mover, and moved.
*essentially, unnecessary for the universe’ existence, and dependent upon the prime mover to set everything in motion.
