Small Things.

There are some small things that have become big places in my heart. The student who gave me a basket filled with grieving medallions, books, the smell of lavender, and the softest purple blankets that makes me feel soothed all over... The high school teacher who is a long time family friend who stops by every day to minister to my heart, hearing my tears and knowing what is said and unsaid... The friends who flew in to merely be able to converse for ten minutes, but give me years of knowing their support... The students who have dropped by from years past, extending a hug or a note or a gift after school... And the students who showed up at the funeral home, both from this year, past years. Their support overwhelming to me, my mind imprinted with their faces and their looks of care. Some shown through hugs, awkward glances, ties worn, a circled gift of jewelry, or a note scrawled so personally that I cling to it... The friends who have sent texts, e-mails, and phone calls every day since the night I heard... Those who offer me their schedule and planners through the summer, and understand still when I can't commit... The roommate who made me a personal photo video, and left me a package with all my favorites... The aunts who call me nearly every day just to check on me and touch base... The parents who are teary eyed in the hallways, just wishing to hug and let me know their heart... The friend who chauffeured me to my errands... The teacher who showed up with two bags of groceries and a magazine just for me... The cards scrawled with student names or people from everywhere around the globe... The two friends who I haven't talked to since college, but showed up without my knowing, leaving even their husbands having no clue that they just highwayed to a different state to be a friend in a time of need... The cousin, who in her pain, captured all the memories and photos for us during the week of unreality and non-days... The friend who sat with me and held my hand, and laid with me in the morning in my silent tears... The aunts who cleaned my dad's house, every piece, with sweat on their brow... The coffee pot received, and the many cups it has brewed for comfort... The friend huddled with me in a corner of Barnes and Noble... The family dinners and meals gathered to simply be, together... The powerade given, in my laughter, to follow the craving at the funeral home, ice included... The prayers offered at my church in my duress, and the many hugs received by my body of Christ... Everything, all these little things, are healing pieces. Are mementos of remembrance, of reminders. Of God's goodness, of his people's providing, of my heart. They beautify me and bring a pleasant softness to my moments of need. They are the faces I will not forget, the gifts I will carry forever, the pieces of love given to me.

On Wearing Black.

I was reading a book from a student; one paragraph caught my attention more than any other. Ever since, it has caused me to pause, ponder, and receive comfort that acknowledgement was given. It was the book Grieving the Loss of Someone You Love, by Raymond Mitsch and Lynn Brookside, where in the introduction, they discuss the process of grieving. I write the paragraph below:

There was a time, not so many generations ago, when people routinely expected a family to "go into mourning" for a year or more after the death of someone close. It was tradition for people to wear black for an entire year following the death of a loved one. Wearing black was more than just a formality. It was a way of reminding themselves and those around them that they were still in a fragile state and needed to be treated with special regard.

This paragraph has soothed me and offered me a place to lay my burdens. It has allowed me to acknowledge my hurt, feel the space, and be okay with letting that rest.

It also burrows in me and furrows my brow... because of the needing of people to care, to be there, to not forget. The need for people to come beside, to do something, even if they don't know what to do. To simply not slide away or let me dangle. It is this which causes me to come to this writing, this cry, this statement on wearing black.

So into my mourning, my fragile state, my wearing black. My mother hated black. We had actually just talked about it the week before her death, how we both hate it. We both love color, a sign of life. So on the day of her funeral, us three girls were decked in brights -- whites, pinks, oranges, and an array of bursts even from the boy's shirts. We celebrated life, her life and the life given to us by the cross.

But as I read this paragraph from the book, it made me want to creep back into my closet and clothe myself in black. Not because I like the color, but because I need people to know and accept the fact that I am hurting.

I will continue to do my job. I will offer laughter where needed. I will feel joy where given. I will hug my nephew, swim in the sea, and sing with the chorus. I will not choose sorrow. But I will let it be. I will let it take me at times. I will let myself pause in the push of this world.

We offer 3 days (in American society) for the loss of a loved one. I was offered only until the Wednesday off. I took until Monday. I will continue to do so, to guard myself against this world that expects me to just man-up and robot myself back into function.

There is a pain. There is hurt. But there is joy, and there is laughter. What I need to know is that these are all okay... but that others still understand that, even when I am feeling fine and doing well, right now I am fragile. And wearing black.

My Legs.

In January, I fell during a downhill ski trip. Since then, my leg/hip has hurt. Bruised, swollen, numb, tingly, and tough. But definitely walkable and bothering me little until about two weeks ago. By last Wednesday, I finally went to the doctor. He suggested an injection and physical therapy. I walked out like, "ah, whatever, its not a big deal" but by Friday could hardly walk from my classroom. Then, with 'this whole ordeal' I couldn't hardly stand on Saturday. My uncle (a doctor) sat with me in the back room while the family mingled, examining and talking me through it -- and lots more -- and then we walked out. From that time Saturday night until Tuesday afternoon, my legs were numb. No pain.

When people say they are praying for my family, this is the most tangible story I have to offer. Yes, people are praying. Keep praying. Because somebody prayed for my legs.

His Hand.

People often tell me "God has his hand on your life." To which I agree. I know there is a different, specific calling that God beckons within me. Its something unlike many other people, and I feel him in unique and sometimes tangible ways. Within this realm, the distinct collection of giftings he has given me are profound and sacred in their own ways.

But as I drove home under the April solace last night, after much laughter and sharing with my church's community group -- has anyone seen a fifty year old engineer dance?! it's amazing! -- a new revelation dawned on me. God has his hand on all of us.

No one is more unique in this.

Instead, I think perhaps, it's about whether we are able and willing to submit to the leading of his hand and be softened by his touch and grasp.

Kind of like a child under the parent hand - some fight and wither, some stand in submissive sigh, and others respond to the gentle and yielding touch -- turning and responding, looking to the face of the father and listening for guidance, then taking in the words and tone to follow his leading.

I think we are all like this child. We all are under the hand of the Father. We all respond in different ways, in different times, in different tones. But nonetheless, it is our choice to how we respond to his hand. Will we yield to it, submit to his gentle touch? Will we turn around and look up into his face, acknowledging him as the leader of our lives? Will we allow ourselves to be soothed and guided under the tender touch? Will we let him be the leader of our lives?

His hand is on all of us. None more unique. Just more profound in our response.

~~~
Its a day later than I wrote this post, and I have been thinking and wondering on it... does God call us all the same? Or does he still work like the Old Testament where he specifically called and gifted prophets? Or is the New Testament and more based on our response to him, like the disciples being ordinary men?

Exhausted my gift.

Sometimes I wonder if I have exhausted my gift. How to put this to words is past what my being is able to make visible, but in these words I grapple to adhere to the things I have thought and felt in the last years, especially the last two.

One night my freshman year at Taylor, I spooned Ivanhoes with a friend and poured out questions, asking again for direction and this friend to pray for me to pick my major -- social work or teaching. As you know by now, I went with teaching, and it was because of this night. Because God came down and anointed and called me so particularly it was undeniable.

But here I sit, five years later, and wonder if it is time for me to pack it away in a beautiful box, and put it at rest for a while. I charged into teaching full of creativity, enthusiasm, and spirit. Ready to serve, to be a catalyst of new ideas, to chime into the chorus of activity in my room, and bring love and life to my students. But now I am tired. Weak-boned. Exhausted. Ready for the chair, the corner of the room, and the sheltered place to hide.

I leave the day with a heaviness often weighting my heart. I feel myself grow an arms length from my students. I am exasperated at the thought of doing "one more thing" -- one more duty, one more class, one more study hall, one more meeting, one more activity, one more leading. I am spent. I don't know if this is just personality, or if it is me altogether. Perhaps I need more quiet in the storm, more shade from busyness and more personal time to digress. Perhaps it is me, but either way, I am spent.

In the book "Echoes" by Kristen Heitzmann, she prints the phrase "Used up by God" to adhere to the man giving everything of himself to God... and then needing time and space to heal again in the quietness, safety, and communion of God and his people's presence. He wasn't backing away from his gift, but simply spent for a time.

I wonder if this is me. If I am simply spent for a time. I am "used up by God"; I know it, I feel it, I touch it. He has juiced me with bursting colors, but also suctioned my well dry. Like Jeremiah's bones. So I wonder if it is time to step away for a while. To let my gift rest.

My gift could display in so many forms. In the classroom, the campground, the women's focus, the home, the Young Life stage, the Kenyan plain. I don't know what form next. But I know it needs a rest. Another place? Another classroom? Another setting altogether?

I am mulling in these thoughts, mucking through scenarios, and scratching through for hope. I leave my broken bones to the Lord. His breath, his spirit, may one day blow through again. But these days I am tired, my 'soul sags' (my personifying phrase echos it best), and I wait. Perhaps I have exhausted my gift for eternity, perhaps for a time, perhaps not at all and it just needs a new field to fly in. But exhausted it is, still.

Jesus Felt.

Jesus felt. He felt sorrow for the widow, knelt at his feet. Frustration for the Sanhedrin gathered to devour. He knelt with compassion next to children and softly spoke to the woman at the well. He welled with sorrow for Lazarus and cried aloud for others. He gulped and engulfed himself in a sea of tears and weeping the night before his death. He clung to and hugged his friends. He also saw them walk away. He felt the nearness of his mother, but also the stab of betrayal. Jesus was surrounded in friendships of twelve to hundreds, but alone in the desert, of Judah and the soul. Jesus felt the laughter of Peter casting his net, the assurance of doing his Father's work, the anger of seeing injustices and the defiling of the temple, and the beauty of a lame man walking. Every emotion, on every scale, the Son of God felt. It is his humanness that connects me to him. It is his humanness that makes him understand.

I know people that seem to rarely feel. Or at least have tried so hard to bury their waves of emotion that it seems a straight line penetrates the monitor of their life. I look at them flex my brows. At times I catch myself frustrated with them. With their plaster face and pride that nothing phases them.

And other times, I feel jealously, that they are released from the ups and downs. Still others, I feel concern. What is it we achieve by not feeling? We achieve the control, the hiding behind our walls, the professional distance. But we do not achieve true connection, true breath of intimacy -with people or with God. It is God who creates and who takes the roller coasters of our heart. It is he who forms them, who works in them, who works through them.

Somedays I hate my feelings. Somedays I am frustrated that I feel so much at all. But other days I am glad. Other days I allow myself to feel, and experience every feeling of feeling.

Because if you don't feel, then you don't stand up against injustice. You don't burn towards excellence. You don't reach out to touch the hurting in the way that meets them in their need. You don't strive towards being all you can. You don't stand in the gap with courage, strength, and dignity. You, instead, simply be. You exists, but little more. One blown and tossed by the wind. One who watches wrong happens and doesn't have the passion, the guts, the gumption, or the conviction to stand in the way. One who sees people exuberant with laughter, but stands watching from the outside.

So I'll take my feelings. I'll wrestle with them, I'll roll with them, I'll try to unravel them. I'll take them. I will be frustrated with them at times, stand up to them in others, and still hid them too when selfishness prevails. But I'll take the burning, the passion, the anger, the hurt, the frustration, the deep love, the commitment, the conviction, the animation, the hope, the worship.

I'll take my feelings. Because Jesus felt. In his humanness, he felt.

Surrender.

The more I know Jesus, the more I know surrender.

I often ask myself what I would answer and what I would speak of if my church asked me to stand and gift what the Lord is doing in my life and what he has been teaching me. I have mulled over and wrestled and wondered. I listen in, lean in, and absorb those who share which such raw honesty and genuine humility, that it causes me to dig into the roots of where the Lord has met me the last few years and unearth all that he has given me, through the planting, the pruning, the harvesting of my years since life 'on my own' began.

He has taught me surrender. He has taught me open hands, open life, open roads, open wounds, open pages, open gifts, open words. Open of everything and all that I am. Surrender.

Surrender of my hopes, of my dreams, of all that I am. Surrender of the things of myself, the things that make me, me. The things I thought I could be, the things I think I am, the things I throw myself to be. The surrender of all that is good, of all that is real, of all I hold dear. The surrender of everything until I feel like the sackclothed woman begging at his feet with a murmur asking for even the crumbs from his table that are given to dogs. I have met him there, at the table, at the crucifix of his feet, just staring up with tears asking for any small crumb as a reminder of his goodness. I have been there, in his arms, feeling the warmth of all that is good and embracing myself like a child in his arms, surrendered to him. I have been there, enhanced in the full glow and sunshine of surrendering to the dance of bright rays sprawling through wide-open, flower splotched fields of light.

Surrender is not easy, nor has come easy. It has come through the hurt, the crushing spirit, the millions of times I have tried and failed. It has come through the striving, the wishing, the pushing.... the endless pursuit. It has come through the plans I've made and never saw rejoiced in, the promises I clung to but see dashed otherwise, the very clearly composed 'dark night of the soul' that took years for my heart to repair from... and still learn today to walk out of fully. Surrender has come through the final offering of my hands, empty and open, knowing I have nothing left, but to surrender.

And I still live surrendered. Surrendered of my hopes and dreams. I leave my road map and travel plans in his hands, and I wait. I wait to see if any of those desire, now hidden deep within me, will ever come to fruition again, someday. And I wait and wonder, wondering if he'll just break it all open some day, like a flood dam of pure joy embellishing all my ever-expected dreams to so much brighter and beautiful than I can ever imagine. And I wait and hold fast, preparing and releasing myself and my life into the known desert that may always be the path I walk. Because either way, in any of these instances and scenarios, I must and will live, surrendered.