Pall Mall Blue 100's

It was before nine o’clock in the morning on the back porch of the house. The fall sun had abandoned the Newnan man. On the table lay a folded newspaper, the word ‘prefix’ standing out in six tiny boxes. A half-gone box of Pall Mall Blue 100’s told of thinking and speaking-each sewn within the anesthetic comfort of habit.

A blue haze tinted the timeless scene of lake and trees that sang before me. A somber song, the leaves of the mighty evergreens bellowed at the coming Night. More truth confronted by trees than by men. The crippling shadow of beauty.

I was struck by three Blue Jays, peculiar in their mirth. Refusing to let the funerary cadence stand, they went on gathering their food.

19

I am staying at my mom's house in Yorktown. I love it here: lots of green, lots of animals, lots of quiet. Any place by the water is a winner to me.

Russian Tea cookies made with my momma

What does it mean to fully give myself to something?

What is full life? What is living water? What is to bless? What is being a sold-out, laid-down lover of Jesus?

"No one forgets the truth; they just get better at lying." -Richard Yates

Put your elbows on the table, I will listen long as I am able

I was going to write a post about how one year ago, today, I was laying in the ICU after surgery to remove invasive carcinoma from my pancreas. How it changed me blah blah blah. But, then I reminded myself that cancer is not my story. Depression is not my story. Divorced parents is not my story. My story is a love story, the best one there ever was. It was a patient love as Jesus waited at the altar for me. He still waits ever time I run away because I am scared and silly and human. But he has never left.

For the past two days, I have been listening to “Born” by Over the Rhine on repeat. In the car, in the shower. Laying in my bed, mostly, since I didn’t have work. I have never hit play on a song so many times over and over and over. (You can ask Jess Gump) I don’t know, it’s heavy, but rich. It’s slow and sad-ISH. But it is not sad to me. It is real.

I was born to laugh, I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love, I'm gonna learn to love without fear
Pour me a glass of wine, Talk deep into the night, Who knows what we'll find
Intuition, deja vu, The Holy Ghost haunting you
Whatever you got, I don`t mind
Put your elbows on the table, I will listen long as I am able, There`s nowhere I`d rather be
Secret fears, the supernatural, Thank God for this new laughter
Thank God the joke's on me
We've seen the landfill rainbow,We`ve seen the junkyard of love
Baby it's no place for you and me
I was born to laugh, I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love, I'm gonna learn to love without fear

One of the first scriptures that pierced my heart after starting to crawl with Jesus was John 13. Humility. Jesus washing the diciples’ feet. I picture lots of things when I listen to this song for six minutes and fourteen seconds. And, even though it is "secular," I mostly picture how Jesus loves me. He always talks deep in the night with his elbows on the table.

In the song, you can’t really distinguish the of in between junkyard and love. So for a while, I thought it said junkyard love. And that is exactly what our love is. Yes, Jesus is the Glory of Glories. But he walks around the junkyard with me all the time. Because I am there. And he is with me. And that is life. This world is a junkyard. It is filled with Death and garbage that steals our tears but because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, I can laugh through my tears. Really, joyously laugh. I can love. And he’s teaching me to love without fear.

He is just that intimate. To wander around a moonlit junkyard with each and every one of us. To wash every single one of our feet. That’s what he did on the cross.

This reverie of love that he’s given me these past few days listening to "Born" on repeat has been the sweetest of gifts as I begin fasting tomorrow for Chesapeake Young Life’s trip to Lake Champion and Oscar Smith High School’s first official time at camp! Crazy, crazy. I sat with my one of my very best friends Anna(lisa) Yong in front of my house. We prayed. (I love praying with her, and praying in general J). We prayed big and bold and lovely things. That we would surrender every part of who we are and what we want to I AM. To Yahweh. To Abba. To our Savior. To our Best Friend. 

Two years ago, Anna and I became friends and sisters and continued on this wonderful race together at Lake Champrion. We got serious about what is means to give it all up. So tonight as we prayed and talked about how far. He’s taken us both since those canoes in Glen Spey. Though cancer and heart break and fear and depression.  Through joy and laughter and victories and love. From the bottom of the pits to the tops of the peaks, I started crying. I never in a million years think I would be getting to lead girls from Oscar Smith at Lake Champion. The place where I first got serious about running hard after people. To get to sit next to them as they hear the Gospel for the first time. To see them go from death to life. My dear friend reminded a few of us that it is not our concern who ends up at Young Life camp and what happens in their hearts there; it is all God. But man are we blessed to get on those big charter buses at 12:30 am and ride along. I started crying in the car; these girls get a chance to experience the most beautiful love that their Jesus has given to them. It doesn’t matter that their dad has been in jail their whole life or they barely have enough money to eat or whatever else they think is their story but is not. Because this coming week at camp, they get a glimpse at what their real story has been about their whole lives. They get to know the junkyard love, and to that I say, amen.

"Naked As We Came"

I walked into the Carr family kitchen. A special Sheville with women in many different stages of life gathered to break bread and share life. We sat and reflected on the past year as Iron Wine played at the perfect volume for background music to be playing. Like a movie, the sauntering of Sam Beam’s voice matched my very exhausted state. Spiritually, emotionally, physically. When asked about anything, my response, “it’s, well, really, hard, honestly.”

We moved to the very same patio on which I sat talking about the man I had only just begun to fall in love with 3 years ago. As others spoke, I couldn’t help but drift in and out of a bitter-sweet nostalgia. Walking with the Lord has brought me to my knees time and again, especially since last June.  This year has taken many tears from me. But, as we sat, and talked, and were honest with each other about our failures and fears and victories and joys, I was reminded, again, of the man with whom my hope rests.

In another post, I will delve deeper into what I’m about to touch upon. But, my exhausted state, tonight, was merely a physical symptom of my spiritual state. I’ve recently been diagnosed with depression. As I’ve been going to the pits-deep, scary, impossible pits- I am utterly compelled by one idea: hope. Nothing in this world will ever, ever be enough. Will ever, ever bring me life. Maybe some futile, pseudo-life. But not what my soul knows and longs for. I believe that, while depression may well be a physical manifestation, it is just that: a manifestation of my soul desperately yearning for another world. The trials of this year have changed me. Cancer, failure, depression. They have cracked open the dome of my protected little world, and flushed heaven in with no restraint. Amidst all these labeled prescriptions, one name has supplanted the rest. It is the name of my abiding Identity, the master Prescriber. I know what hope is and I have been called to ring in the king as we await his return. Oh what a glorious day that will be. I have called thee Abba, Father. I have stayed my heart on thee.

"He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow; in his quiver he hid me away." [Isaiah 49:2]

What I am listening to:

"High and Dry" -Radiohead

"Green Arrow" -Yo La Tengo

"And It Stoned Me" -Van Morrison

Also, watch this video and revel in the grandeur of my papa!

Wounds

“I was more broken than you on the Cross.”

A few months ago, the Lord whispered this to me. I drew a picture of a wound with blood pouring out. Divine Blood. Eternal Life. 

I’ve been learning a lot about wounds lately. How very important they are. From Jesus’ wounds sprang eternal life; ours are important as well.

When we try to heal wounds ourselves, dirt and mire finds them. I think the Lord wants to do so much more with our brokenness. I have felt Him calling me to sit and soak in His presence, to let Him touch and heal my griefs. To allow His Spirit, His eternal life to pour of them out into the lives of those surrounding me. The reason I tend to shy away from this, I believe, that we all tend to shy away from exposing the wounds that the sin of ourselves and the world has inflicted upon us, from being real with our hurts, is because it... hurts. Like when putting hydrogen peroxide on a cut, allowing His Spirit to restore our rawness stings and pulls and brings us to our knees. But, in that place on the ground, in the space where prayers turn to tears, when Jesus holds us and turns our gazes heavenward, His light shines the most.

Jesus’ wounds saved us all. And He wants to keep pouring out into the world through ours, healing them as His glory passes through, giving us beautiful scars to share His testimony. 

I saw a vision of His Kingdom. We were all covered in bruises and scrapes and dirt and blood. His blood. We were following Him Whose blood gave us life. Our raggedness made all the more powerful at His divine touch. He had conquered death and was leading us home. And one day, we will be clothed in fine linen, white and pure, behind the Faithful and True Rider on a white horse, who will wear many diadems and Whose word is like a double-edged sword. Our wounds will be healed. But the same Rider, with eyes like flames of fire, called King of Kings and Lord of Lords, He it is who we are following now. Who wants to touch and heal our wounds. The Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. The Lover of your soul wants to heal you and He wants to revive the world while doing it, will you let Him?

"But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities: upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed." Isaiah 53:5

Revelation 20:11-15

What I Can Do

When I was worshipping at the beginning of the year, the Lord gave me the word ‘endure.’ As time has gone on, nothing outwardly catastrophic has happened, but he has been disciplining me in ways that make me say ‘endure.’ One thing I have felt the Holy Spirit tell me to pray is that the Lord would break me down. Asking for the him to break you is a scary thing because he has ears, people! And he answers us. But, here, we experience immeasurably more than we could ever ask for.

Early on this year, He kept giving me a vision of waves ceaselessly crashing over me (he knows I love the ocean). I had ideas, but I did not know exactly what He meant by this. But as the months have progressed, he has been calling me back to my failures, to observe my sin and not run away from it. To know, I mean really know, how wretched I am.

He has been calling me to places at the end of myself. Where my sinful, sinful heart has no more love or mercy to give.  I was worshipping and ended up in tears, “I hate this world.”

I had come to the place at the end of myself. I had poured out all that I had and the lord whispered, “keep pouring.” “POURING WHAT?!” I quipped. And this was it. This was exactly where he wanted me. This is exactly where he wants us all to be. The Lord loves to make beautiful things. He LOVES to make beauty out of brokenness. I had hit rock bottom right beside me. I looked beside me, “Do you get it, daughter? Do you get it?” Jesus said.

 During a night of worship at Regent, the Holy Spirit came and poured out big time. Singing and wailing and sobbing prevailed as we soaked in prayer. Normally, I am a HUGE crier in the Holy Spirit. But the Lord had me laughing all night as I felt him healing the room and he rejoiced, “Look what I can do. Look what I can do.”

Tonight I went to the release of a local Christian musician’s EP. “Love does not grow on trees,” he sang. I remembered an article I read on the physical death of Jesus: what nerves the nails in his wrist obliterated, the way his lungs felt, his body so severely scourged that he was dead in three hours. I remembered the scriptures: the Pharisees hating Jesus, the disciples rebuking Jesus, the pupil betraying Jesus, the masses killing Jesus. Jesus suffered excruciatingly (late 16th cent.: from Latin excruciat- ‘tormented,’ from the verb excruciare based on crux, cruc- ‘a cross’) in this world. And He suffered by his grace. Gracegracegracegracegracegracegracegracegracegracegracegracegrace.  Tears streamed down my face. “Grace, Anna, grace.”

I remembered a speaker talking about Matthew 5:7 who explained that we can only give love, mercy, and grace if we receive love, mercy, and grace. They are not currencies that we accrue on our own. The reason God wants us at the end of ourselves is because it is there that we let our souls receive these things from their one, true Source.  Grace is not a one-time deal. We must perpetually let ourselves receive it, every single moment. We must LIVE in grace.

I am lying at the spot on the beach where broken waves rush over me. The water is the perfect temperature, the perfect color; the water is indescribably perfect. It runs through my hair. It abounds around me. It pervades the deepest parts of me. I realize that I should not be able to breath. My lungs expire. I panic. I open my mouth, but… I breathe. I tepidly try another breath, then another, until I am making joyful noise to the Rock of my salvation. “Exist here. Exist in my grace. Let it cover you like this perfect water covers you. Rest in grace. Be immersed in grace. Live in grace.”

 

In our helplessness, we are sustained by ceaseless grace.

1 Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! 2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! 3 For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. 4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. 5 The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. 6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! 7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. 10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, "They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways." 11 Therefore I swore in my wrath, "They shall not enter my rest."

[Psalm 95]

"Suffer Not" -Ian Thornton

"These Are the Days" -Natalie Merchant (picture yourself running through a field of buttercups with Jesus)