Omnipotent, all-powerful, merciful God,
You, who parts waters, commands troubled skies,
Make ways through the darkness, open these eyes,
For the night is unending, the chasm too broad.

Stand firm in the tower; foundation, be sure.
Hold tight through the winds that threaten my end.
Be the Abiding; be the Savior; be the Friend.
These echoes, though empty, are all promising more.

Forgotten in this torment, hold fast to me still.
Every word unspoken, speak even now.
Every promise broken, renew Your vow.
Faithfully, unrelentingly open and fill.

Glory to glory, new mercies every morning,
With grace everlasting; for me, grace enduring.

Photo by Mahkeo on Unsplash

Swell upon swell, you overtake me;
Corrupting my senses, I don’t know where you start and I begin.

The ombré of sky and sea obscured the horizon, and I faltered,
My stability wrenched by the sudden realization of a great expanse.

In the distance, I saw the mountain,
Tasted the freedom upon it.
I heard it echo with the miles behind,
And the surge of remembrance sent me tilting.

I’m asphyxiated, as you engulf me, errupt me,
Stifle every progress and upturn every root.
You fill my lungs to bursting; they can hold no more.
I suck you in, made weak by your greatness
And the unrelenting tide of your current.

As I give in to the inevitable depths,
The white-hot enveloping from within
And the darkness screaming out,
My being is made whole from every fractured unit.

And without air, I feel the breath of your words inside me;
Without sounds, hear the thunder of your beating.
Life upon life crumbling beneath the deluge of existence,
And I know that you are me.

But am I you?

Photo by Anastasia Taioglou on Unsplash.

Grounded by these burdens one by one,
I remain stagnant.
The journey ahead is too weary with the impediments I bring.
Morning upon morning, I leave them behind
as I choose Your grace over yesterday’s stones.
And evening upon evening, I return
re-bound to the weight of every day gone by.
The sun rises upon me still here once in a while;
Some nights I look ahead not back.

Inevitably, though, when I return,
the mire encapsulates me to the earth
a little more than it did before,

and I grieve:
time lost, battles won,
a war waging that finds me worrying over pebbles
instead of glorying in the Kingdom to come.

And I grieve:
terrified to let go and
free-fall into the open blue above.

And I grieve:
for me,
from You,
every wound opening to weep;
and we weep.

Heaven and earth joined together in screams of agony,
pain bringing forth pains which only bear rancid crop.
I gorge myself on it;
Made sick upon it;
Throwing it over with every ounce of pardon.

And when it is all gone, I shuffle through,
stain over stain seeping into the marrow,
until I too am screaming from the pains
and birthing rotten flesh to nestle against in the darkness,
gasping and grasping and flailing and
obstinately refusing the outstretched.

And the army that surrounds me waits for my surrender.
To fight in my stead.
I am in the way;
I am always in the way.
Bare hands ready to battle against flesh and blood,
leaving the rulers and principalities to consume the tombs within.

I loathe every fragment of myself that is left behind
too much to leave it.
It is too little;
It is too weak;
You are not big enough to make me new.

Make me.
Make me let You make me new.
You make me, re-make me,
retake me and replace me.
Blood breeds white, suffering peace,
and death frees life to breathe again,
into dry bones and into an army of descendants
who will never know my name.

You call me by name
into the holy place,
bare and burdened and clenched
around the torment that threatens to keep me.

Shepherd, keep me.
Physician, treat me.
Lord, bleed me into non-existence
and rid me of every rancor I refuse to put off.
Trade my rags for riches and those riches for the eternal.
Let me gain death and give Christ my life,
one burden at a time.

Photo by Clark yu on Unsplash.

There’s a gentle sway I’ve detected in quiet moments of my recent days.  A pitch so forceful at times that I’m shaken off-balance.  And in those moments, I know – I’m drifting.  The course has been unknown from the start, but have I deviated from it?  Is the yaw working unseen, taking me steadily through uncharted waters or have I ceased striving, being taken adrift by currents, winds, and waves indeterminable?

“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
Proverbs 16:9

Is my life on track?  Am I going the right direction?  Is this heart planning my steps or is my mind taking paths as they come upon me unawares?  I want to live a life guided and directed by the will of the Father.  I long to be known by my love, by a heart shaped in the fashion of my Maker’s compass.  Long has this struggle haunted me.  I come up wanting.  Not measured to be enough.  But when I close my eyes, my prayers assure me that I’m not out of His hands or His control or His path.  Until recently.  I’m off the map.

There’s a tightness in my chest that grips so hard I can’t find air.  It threatens to unravel me.  To crush me beneath its reality.  That I regret.  I’ve never felt regret like this before.  I’ve bought into the world’s idea that all mistakes are part of what makes you the person you are today – and the Christian’s idea that everything happens for a reason and is never outside of God’s plan.  But.  But.  Did they take into account me?  And my immeasurable ability to defy the Most High?

“But if they openly curse, what will they gain by spitting at the sky?”
John Calvin

With nothing to gain, I tilt my head and scream profanities to the One who swore I could never be wrestled from His hand.  And now, covered in my own accusations, I find myself cursing every stumbled step I take.  Unable?  Unwilling?  To be still and seek Him.  First.  To look beyond the fire and feel more than the quake – to hear Him.

But.  But.  How do I go back?  No amount of correct steps from this moment forward can recoup the wears of wasted travels.  And this I know, it will never be enough.  Not a single right intention, not a moment of true worship, not a step of the preordained path.

How can I lift my head to the One who gave much when I have so little?  I haven’t even tried to profit more.  I’ve buried my treasure and waited for His return.  Making no gains.  No interest.  Nothing to show for the years entrusted to me.

 “But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
Matthew 25:29

And I feel it slipping.  I feel myself drifting.  Taken away.

If our bodies don’t really mean anything, then we will act as though we can assign them meaning at random. We will act, or others will act, as though our bodies – free of real meaning – can be used, in a given moment, for nothing but pleasure or nothing but power or nothing but selfishness. We will act as though bodies can be disregarded or discounted. We will act as though bodies can be used as commodities, bought and sold on the free market. (p. 15)

We live in a very broken world. Much of our brokenness, many have argued, is centered around the long-misguided views and uses of the physical body. The first national survey conducted of adults regarding sexual abuse published its findings in 1990 with the staggering statistics that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18. Many since then have suggested the rates to be even higher. In his book The Wounded Heart, Dr. Dan B. Allender confesses, “At times, I wonder if every person in the world, male and female, young and old, has been sexually abused.” His musings are not unfounded.

What if sex is not about a list of rules, a set of dos and don’ts? What if sex isn’t, most of all, about us? What if sex is about God and who God is and about God’s good intentions for creation? . . . [T]he way Christians do and don’t have sex is about who God is and the good life God wants for us. (p. 10)

The immediate verse following the sumptuous tastes of a forbidden fruit in Genesis tells us that “then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Gen 3:7a).  From the very first moment that sin entered our world, the human body felt its effects. “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them” (Gen 3:21).  And since man’s first shortcoming, God has been clothing our unrighteousness, covering our shame, and redeeming our transgressions. This is the basis of the book Faithful: A Theology of Sex by Beth Felker Jones. From the marital bed to celibacy, from exploitation to false notions of purity, from a glory once known to a panoptic fall and a redemption unwarranted, Jones’ extrapolation of the Bible’s real teachings concerning the human body are both piercing and refreshing.

What if, instead of teaching that we can “expect to get married,” we taught that everybody’s body matters and that everybody’s body can be a sign of faithfulness to God? (p. 91)

After having several of my friends, both married and single, recommend the book, I added it to my reading list. In just over 100 pages, it is the most profound book on the subject that I have read to date. Without question, it should be required reading for every person with breath in their lungs.

We don’t need a sexual ethics based on fear. God, not shame, is the reason for chastity, and God, not shame, is the one who can change our behavior. (p. 74)

Our world is rampant with pornography, unrealistic romantic expectations, sexual abuse, an idolization of marriage, fear-based coercion of purity, a disconnect of sex from intimacy, impossible standards for body image, the exploitation of human bodies, the degradation of morals, a transient notion of gender, and an overall culture that worships and yet devalues the human body on a worldwide scale. Where is a Christian to turn to find truth about the human body and God’s real purposes for it? How is the Church to cultivate a truly Biblical foundation for her members to build upon as image-bearers of the Most High? These issues, these questions, and so much more are unabashedly confronted in Jones’ book.

What if we taught that men and women are precious? What could we do to make it clear that said preciousness is unconditional, that there is nothing we can do, nothing that can happen to us, that can take away our status as free, image-bearing children of the Creator? (p. 92)

As a godly woman with a broken notion of God’s goodness for and through our bodies, the wife of a husband who is equally broken, the mother of two quickly maturing girls, the mother of a growing boy, and an undeniable daughter of the Most High, this book and the Biblical truths defined in it have single-handedly given me hope for the sexual problems facing our world. The doctrines in Jones’ work can be applied to singleness, marriage, child-rearing, counseling, preaching, and worship. They can be a healing salve for those who are or have glorified their own attempts at purity, thought lost something they never owned, searched for the value of their gender, struggled with their sexual identity, and the 1 in 4 or 1 in 6 who have been sexually traumatized. The declared goodness of God’s created bodies is real. The fallen condition of those bodies is real. But the Jesus of the Bible is also real. And with Him comes a redemption impossible without.

Resurrection works by continuity. The Jesus who died on Friday is the same Jesus who is raised from the dead on Easter Sunday. He still eats fish, and he bears the scars of his crucifixion. The seed that was planted in the earth is the same individual and the same species as the plant that grows from it (1 Cor. 15). God kills all those things about bad sex that destroy human flourishing. God kills all those things about bad sex that tell lies about reality, which fail to testify to the God who is faithful. When God kills pornication , he raises it from the dead as desire redeemed. He raises it as sex that tells the truth about reality. Desire is God’s good creation, and God will not let it go. (p. 56)

Buy it from Amazon: Faithful: A Theology of Sex by Beth Felker Jones

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” – James 1:27 (ESV)

There is little room in the scriptures for a believer to be about the Father’s business and not attend to widows and orphans.  The Old and New Testaments are speckled with charges for God’s people to care for the least of these; most namely, widows and orphans.  It should come as no surprise then, when we read in James that God equates “pure” religion with caring for widows and orphans.  That’s not the shocking or impossible part of the text for me.  It’s that last part.

Because to visit the least of these, the lost, the forgotten, the broken, the forlorn in their affliction is going to take some getting dirty.  The challenge is not just to care for them.  In so many regards, that’s the easier half.  It’s also not just to remain unstained, orphans or no.  The challenge is to advocate in a way that does not stain or spot or tint or blemish you.  You can be changed.  You will be changed.  That much I can almost promise – or I’d argue you’re doing it wrong.  But to walk away without a dark mark seared into your soul is the key – the part that I find impossible.  Though we’re called to do it nonetheless.

The deeper I get into ministry, the more and more I feel stained.  I feel defiled before the Lord.  I find myself unable to love as He loves me.  Unable to ignore the crashing waves.  Unable to sacrifice myself and my will.  Unable to do as He calls me to do and be whom He has called me to be.  The more I try, the less I am.  Seeming to be unstained and being unstained are worlds apart.  And as my facade comes down, I’m left lacking in being.

I know that even as I have been commanded to advocate, there is One who advocates for me.  And just as my religion is sure to be impure, His sacrifice is promised to be sufficient.  It does not lessen the truth, but it lessens the blow.  With or without my service, I would be stained.  With or without my stain, I am called to serve.  It’s a Catch-22 of the worst and best kind.  That though I will never wipe away every tear, He shall.  And though I cannot save a single life, He does.  Though my trust is failing, He is fulfilling.

And even as my stain is growing, He is washing.

Less of me.  More of Him.  Less of me.  Less of me.

Recently I stumbled upon a question that stopped me in my tracks:

“When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just do what you know is right?”

This question sounds like such an easy solution to all of the world’s problems, doesn’t it?  If we apply this simple formula at each bend in the road, wouldn’t we be assured of living a life full of the “right decisions”?  The problem though is God.  His right is not always our right.  His answer is not always so simple.  His plan is full of our wrong decisions, catastrophic mess-ups, and generation-begetting sins.

Don’t believe me?  Crack open that Bible you’ve got sitting on the bookshelf and count how many blessings came out of man’s wrong decisions.  How many promises God made turning our mistakes into His glory & His kingdom’s gain.  How many Biblical heroes turned left instead of right at the fork in the road.  Read through the genealogy of Jesus & think about each person mentioned & the life they led – wrongs and all!

Resting in His providence is sometimes better than doing what you know is right, especially when the right thing isn’t so obvious.  I’m not excusing sin.  I’m not encouraging you to falsely rely on grace as a ticket to live however you want.  I’m just saying that maybe the better question to ask ourselves is:

“When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just do what the Lord is calling you to?”

Because sometimes He’s calling me to silence when I think words are necessary, to be still when I want to jump into action, to rest when I want to scream, to stay when I want to go.  And sometimes He’s calling me to speak when words are sure to fail, to plunge when I can’t see the landing, to race when I’m too weary, to go where the footing is unsure.

He’s a God of consistent inconsistencies.  He’s a God who revels in our dumbfounded confessions of “only You”.  He delights in our weakness and is made strong in our failings.  He is faithful.  He is just.  And He confuses the hell out of me.

This God of mine is unrelenting.  He nags and tugs and stirs and breaks.  And never when I want Him to.  He is silent and still and quiet and benign.  And always when I need Him.  Yet into the stillness I groan, “Your will be done” as He undoes me, and into the chaos I cry, “Send me!” while He lies in wait.  He is good.  And I am His.  He has hemmed me in.  And with every intake, I’ll breathe life into His plan and surrender my own to His will.

Because risks, rewards, and all; this is where I want to be.

So, you know when someone in your house is sick and then they get better just as someone else gets it and around and around it goes?  And you think to yourself, and probably say to everyone around, “I wish they’d just all be sick at the same time so we can get it over with.”  Well, I’m here to tell you that being sick sucks to the power of the number of total people sick.  Example: we’ve got 5 sick people in our house right now.  That means it sucks⁵.  If only one person were sick it would just suck¹.  That means that with each additional person you add, the sucking multiplies exponentially.  As you may have presumed, it is a scientific fact.

For the first time, ever, our entire family has the same illness at the exact same time.  I would give just about anything to trade the “all in” scenario for a “one at a time” option.  I really thought I was going to beat it; I was the last holdout.  But this morning I woke up and called it official.  Now there’s no one running at full capacity to care for the wounded.  Everyone is having trouble sleeping, everyone is coughing horrifically, everyone is a zombie, and we look even worse than we feel.

I really don’t have a point here.  I’m just wasting space so I can say that I haven’t given up on my goal of writing every day.  Though if pressed in the court of law, I would not, under oath, count this as real writing.  It’s “I’m sick and I’m exhausted and I have a lot of meds in me and need to pee again because I’m drinking too much Echinacea tea” writing.  Which I think, according to the dictionary definition, means it’s rambling.

I don’t want to be sick.  I want to be healthy.  I want my brain to function so I can get back to real writing.  And I want my family to be healthy too, so I can stop taking years off my life worrying over them.  The whole thing, you guessed it, sucks⁵!!

I’m plumb out of eloquence, so I hope the last few days’ posts are enough to tide you over.  I’m just drained.  With the news we received yesterday, 3 kids + 1 husband being sick, rain & more rain today, our fireplace being remodeled, the Republican debate last night (yes, we stayed up way too late watching it), and the regular duties required of a wife, mom, & breathing human being, I just don’t have much more to offer.  Which is really saying something, because even on a good day, I don’t usually have a lot left over.

I’m really enjoying being a writer, though!  After almost 2 weeks, it’s getting less & less scary with each post – and yet there’s more & more pressure to write something fancy, entertaining, and not so stinking depressing.  Though I did warn you.  This is real.

Possibly irrationally, I’m starting to think I can actually do this.  I can be a real writer.  And not just for myself.  I should hedge my hopes, though, because I tend to get really depressed when I’m let down.  Shocker, I know.

I’m dying to write some fictional pieces here.  Just haven’t had the time or energy to start a project like that yet.  And I haven’t quite figured out how to do it.  It can’t be too long – or it would need to be broken into multiple posts, which I think would be fun – and I’m a little trepidatious about other people stealing my work.  I’m utterly vain & unrealistic.  I know.  I know.  I’m still paranoid.

This is the part of the conversation where I say, “So, how are you?  What are you up to these days?  Do you know who you’re voting for?”

Feel free to answer in the comments below 🙂 …