All Week.

“Document 4.” 

Hm. Yet another document open on Word…maybe I’ll be able to finish my thoughts in this one….so frustrating. I’ve started saying so much, but haven’t finished any of it. Maybe because I’ve begun writing about anything and to anybody but You. Maybe. Fine, so here goes:

Dear God,

I know I’ve been running from You all week. I see it now. I read this book while I was gone and then and You said, “go home and rest in Me.” And so I had every intention of doing that. I was going to fast and “rest.” Instead what have I done? Read. A lot. Also a lot of paperwork, meetings, chiropractor…all of these things I wanted or needed to get done as soon as I got home. It’s been a productive week, sure, but “rest”? I think not.

I can hardly say the word “rest” without a measure of internal disgust—mostly with myself—because when I actually think about it I know very well what it means to physically rest but I have no f***ing idea what it means spiritually and frankly the word just invokes a sense of failure in me:

I suck at this.

But why have I been running from You? The Person, the Thing that fully, completely, and utterly understands me? I think I figured it out today. It’s because I’m afraid of what You’ll say to me. 

No, that’s not it. Not quite. It’s because I think I already know what You’re going to say to me. You know better than I even do what this whole thing is—indeed You made it happen—and I, in my vast wisdom, have the nerve to think I know what You’re going to say to me if I actually just lay at Your Feet and just “rest” (if I ever figure out what that means): I think You’re going to tell me to wait. And I don’t want to hear it.

I already know that, Lord. I have to wait. But YOU know I don’t wait well. I never have. Ever. 

In a perfect storm of the naturally impatient personality You gave me and probably the ADD that I just found out about I have never been a patient person. Little wonder I dread hearing the word “wait.” Little wonder I went running from You this week. I’m not making excuses, though.

But how judgmental of me, really. The irony of me assuming anything about You and judging what You’re going to do before You do anything at all. I don’t really know that’s what You want to say to me. Or maybe I’m also afraid that You won’t say anything at all and I’ll just be at Your Feet wondering what You’re thinking and if I just messed everything up. 

“Perfect love casts out fear.” Right. So none of this, therefore, is grounded in reality. The only thing I have to fear is my own humanity—that thing that is neither love nor perfect. That thing I want You to heal. 

What’s real is that You want me to show up. You’re always there, and You want me to be too. And for me, I want to do instead of be because I find “doing” something to be more tangible than being with You.

It reminds me of that café scene in that Godard movie…maybe if objects are what serve as links between subjects, allowing us to live together in association, then maybe I view doing something for You as more of a link to You than just being with You. I see a task as more as an “object” linking me to You than an ambiguous intangible. Maybe. 

But I need no tangible link to You. Actually, the questions and desire described in this scene—at least for me, it would seem—are answered in You. But to be fair, they are certainly not answered in my knowledge of You, it’s true. No, they are answered in my relationship--rather experience with You. Exactly, yeah, that thing I’ve been running from all week. It’s so crazy the more I live the more I know to the core of me that knowledge of You and a relationship with You are two UTTERLY different things. One is a starting point and the other is the consummation. Still doesn't stop me from fleeing every once in a while, huh?

But anyway, it’s funny because the whole problem that the scene describes, that language “divides as much as it unites” due to the hard (read: human) fact that we can never fully communicate our thoughts within a finite system such as language, is not even a thing with with You: You are not bound by language, nor any form whatsoever, in Your Knowledge and Understanding of Man--indeed, of me. Nothing I ever feel, think, know, or am will ever be outside the scope of expression in You. You don’t just “get it," You invented it. Godard whispers:

“Mais alors puisque la relation sociale est toujours ambiguë, puisque ma pensée divise autant qu’elle unit, puisque ma parole rapproche par ce qu’elle exprime et isole par ce qu’elle tait, puisqu’un immense fossé sépare la certitude objective que j’ai de moi même et la vérité objective que je suis pour les autres….”

God, this resonates so deeply for I know this all too well when it comes to the human relationship. So often I’ve mourned these barriers, wanting to understand the very essence of the person in front of me but held irrevocably at bay by the immutable constraints of the form that human relation requires. But You’re a completely different thing. You transcend this. And then he continues:

“Où commence, mais où commence quoi? Dieu créa les cieux et la terre bien sur, mais c’est un peu lâche et facile, on doit pouvoir dire mieux, dire que les limites du langage sont celles du monde, que les limites de mon langage sont celles de mon monde, et qu’en parlant je limite le monde, je le termine et que la mort un jour logique et mystérieux viendra abolir un jour cette limite et qu’il n’y aura ni question ni réponse….”

Oh dear God, I grieve an unfulfilled existence where it isn’t until death “arriving one mysterious and logical day,” where the relational limits of language are abolished. Sure, he says, God created the sky and the earth…but….” Ugh. “But?!” May I never live in that “but” that represents that terrifying idea that You’re totally removed from that which You created, that You were satisfied to just watch Your Magnum Opus unwind and unravel the very beauty and fulfillment for which You created it. 

Indeed, I grieve said existence because I shudder at how my person would react under such limits; so crushingly complete if I didn’t choose access to You, the only escape from them. These limits are the very nature of being human, their only relief being a Union with You. Dear God, if I already feel the weight of existence the way that I do, even with this escape, who would I be if I had not this respite? 

It’s strange, for while I am often humbled and in awe at the form, substance, and method in which these minds greater than mine pose these questions, Lord, the other part of me just wonders if I settle for a trite and simplistic answer to them in You. Like, sometimes I wonder if I just choose the easy way out and choose You. But then I remember the ink that I have spilled processing the life I have in You and the words “simple” and “easy” flee my vocabulary immediately. Maybe I’m more heart now than I am head and maybe I’m not as intelligent as I think I am (no, that part is definitely true), but I’m led back to Greg Boyd’s book on imagination: “Wondering if Christianity is real is not the same as wondering whether Christianity is true….Remember, it’s not what we believe intellectually that impacts us; it’s what we experience as real. ” Though, I would postulate that there must be a nexus. But I think there is: and I know this is real.

But anyway, if all this is true, and you are beyond the arguably beautiful but frustrating limits of language and communication through “objects” then why in my interaction, no...relationship with You do I limit myself to this idea of expression called language or what I perceive to be a more objective expression of doing for You—whatever that looks like (fasting, reading, even writing)—when all the while You’re just wanting me to move beyond. To be.

Oh.

DEAR GOD.

Is that what this is about?? Is that what “Rest” is? I already know the answer, but I still have to ask-- God: why couldn’t you JUST SAY SO?

So...

So...maybe Rest is actually being willing to move beyond the form and substance of language and “objectivity” (which is only an appealing mirage anyway) and learning to “communicate” with You in ways that my soul aches to they way this man sitting in a coffee shop aptly characterizes…

…and Rest means feeling liberated to be who I am and not feel constrained by form.

Oh. That’s what this week was about???

Again, I’m angry at myself. So “Rest” actually had nothing to do with the word “Wait” and this is what You were actually ironically waiting to tell me and I just wouldn’t let my fingers hit the keyboard to talk to You till now.

Oh....Forgive me, God. 

Oh Father, show me this Rest thing? Show up in my imagination, in my intuition and let’s go beyond any and all of these limiting forms I know (and have learned to navigate to varying degrees of success). If this is about something new for You and me, then I’m surprised to feel a sense of relief and not resentment. Wow, I had no idea all of this was going on in my subconscious.

Maybe Rest isn’t so dreadful, and maybe I'll learn its language someday. If it can even be called that...

Finally, I'm kind of speechless. Which, I suppose, is the point.

Post Script: Even though those of you reading this are so ridiculously few that this forum is hardly "public," and even though this letter to God is essentially a prayer, because I've chosen to make it public in the very technical sense the legal side of me feels that I must cite the sources to which I refer. That said, the film excerpt is HERE, all emphasis on the script is mine (and if anyone is actually reading this then I apologize for not translating the text); and the book by Gregory Boyd is called Seeing is Believing: Experiencing Jesus through Imaginative Prayer, Baker Books 2004. Also, the quote about "perfect love" comes from I John 4:18.

Stream of Consciousness

I never write this way. I don't know why. I guess I'm afraid to. Maybe because I'm afraid of being told yet again that I need to lighten up. Maybe it’s because I feel guilty about the disparity between what I write on here and the (more) positive, “funny” me the people in my life interact with in person. I don't want to have to explain that both people are me, there's just more than meets the eye. I hate that I often hold back what I’m really thinking. But then sometimes I don’t, I guess. My thoughts are all mine, my at once captive but liberating friends. Anyway, I never write this way. But I think I have no good reason not to. I need to write more, I think.

It’s that moment when you just need to write but don’t know what to say. That is, you have so much to say you don’t know where to start or what to actually articulate or what to just…lascia andare. Then it all becomes incoherent ramble.

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”* Mmm, Hemingway’s been here before. He knew this moment…is that really all you do?

Well then.

It’s that period of time when you see that someone’s face everywhere, in what seems like everyone else. Where your mind is elsewhere, on some other thing, on some other person and your mind desperately wants your current reality to match your internal location—so your eyes play tricks on you. You could swear that you just saw them. But actually, it was just someone else that has a similar height, a similar gait. The snap back to the geographical reality usually comes with a pang of…what is it? Regret? Maybe. More just "tristesse." I think there's no good word for it in English. Or maybe “reality check” just pangs. And then the frustration too: why can’t I get my head out of this situation? Why is my mind so engulfed in this story that I can’t see past it, that I can’t even remember other things or notice when someone is talking to me? Is this normal?

But, so it goes. Isn’t that how Vonnegut puts it? Yeah. “So it goes.”**

It’s that kind of state where all of the sudden you find yourself just staring at a pigeon, wondering what his sentient existence is like. Presumably his existence is without all the complexities of yours, but is it? How can we ever know? Right now the pigeon’s only care in the world is getting the peanut shell out of the cobblestones. What’s that like? Then you realize that someone is watching you watch the pigeon. You get self-conscious, hoping they don’t talk to you…please no small talk. But they want to know where you’re from. They heard your accent when you spoke their language. Yet another reminder of your imperfections. And then you don’t even know where to tell them you’re from...it’s a complicated question. I’ll take my pizza and move on, thank you.

When isn’t it a complicated question? Only when life isn’t complex, I guess. It is therefore probably not a thing.

“This is just crazy!” I threw at my sister, who bent her ear to me yet again.

“Yeah, but from you I expect crazy.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you didn’t get offended by that.”

“No, it’s true.” Another sigh. “But I won’t live any other way. I keep thinking of Moses. Noah. All the prophets….I won’t live less than crazy if this is what it is supposed to look like for me. I refuse.”

It. What “it” is supposed to look like. Such meaning behind those two letters. In this case “it” means everything I’m supposed to be. And two letters are supposed to carry that meaning. I don’t know if they’re up to the task.

But seriously, I do: I refuse. My thoughts then return to a letter I once wrote to Moses:

“What crossed your mind when you saw that burning bush? Did God ever just make you want to cuss? How often did He frustrate you and blow your mind?...I want to know Him like you did. You knew a God more emotional and intimate than I can even imagine at this point. I keep thinking of a molten bush that wasn’t really burning and a torrent of wind flying by a mountain--and you hidden in a strategic crevice so as not to die...Death by contact with holiness, would that be the most truly painful of all?”

He knew a God more emotional and intimate than I can imagine…and I imagine things. Oh, yes I do.

I want to know Him. I want to understand my Maker.

But then there’s that path to getting there.

I love the prophets. I resonate with them. I resonate with the crazy, with the messages, the stories, with the tears and heartache and spiritual--even relational--isolation. The prophets were always on a different wave-length and always asked to do crazy things. I've definitely told God more than once that I wanted that.

It’s so “funny” how when you ask God for things you just really don’t know what you’re asking for. You feel all spiritual and just in your request but, really, you have no idea what’s waiting for you. No, I really do want it but I think I’ll never stop verbally processing the road this genre of request catapults me onto…so hold on.

When I go back and look at my writing and I’m struck by how often I write about the emotion going on inside of me. Why is that? I value reason, but so often the subject of my writing is about my emotions. Why?

It’s because: internal war. It’s because: dichotomy. The most logical of us maybe are truly those that have learned to strike the perfect, or rather healthy balance of reason and emotion. It's not really objectively logical to live without emotion, so there must need to be some sort of synthesis of the two. That "logical folly," right?

But it's true that I used to be so much more black and white. So much more "sure" of everything and how God worked and what He wanted for my life. And then God, like, happened. Then things got real and I begun to figure out what this crazy, hard, amazing thing is that is an actual relationship with Him that engages every facet of my being. It’s something I can’t just pay lip-service to, it's actually this huge defining thing that I can just no longer ignore. Ever. If I’m to my write the truest thing I know…it’s Him.

But He might be the hardest thing I know, too. Hardest, but truest, and most worth it. I can’t be something I’m not. I can't think differently and I certainly can't and don't want to hold back my thoughts with Him. He gets me, after all He made me the way I am. For some reason. So I now know that I know that I know I can’t live my life ignoring the Voice of this Truest thing I know…I can’t abide it. I’ll keep going.

I hate being misunderstood. Every time it happens it reaches to the very core of me and I find myself, for example, gazing into the life of a street pigeon. I hate being misunderstood. It shakes me more than I care to admit. But that's the faith thing. It doesn't grow without shit like this.

I hope someday this all makes sense, Lord.

But I’ll make it. I always do. Only because the Truest thing I know is so much more than a sentence.

Thank God.

*Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast.
** Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five.

I Shouldn't Be Here

No seriously. I really shouldn’t be here.

To be honest, this last week has been a flood of highly unexpected emotions as I am soon going to be in Italy and I’ll soon be back in Naples with some people that I love so, so much. I'll explain.

Though I’ve had an ongoing relationship with my favorite Neopolitans for years, I haven’t been back since one of my dearest ones left this earth in 2012. (Again, I'll explain.)

And then there’s the fact that 3 weeks ago I should have died. Please forgive the rambling that’s about to ensue, but I promise it eventually has a point. Also, please forgive the raw honestly of this post. It's not really very pretty.

On May 24^th I was in Oregon with my family. I had flown in to surprise my mom for a few days and all of us sisters were in one place for a few days—a very rare thing. We went on a hike that Sunday afternoon and enjoyed some Oregon (terrain and) waterfalls and exhausted ourselves over the course of 6 miles. A dinner later we were on our way home.

Dad was driving us home and the rest of were talking while also living up to our millennial stereotype on our phones. Dad is asthmatic, though nothing too abnormal. He started coughing and asked for one of us to pass him his inhaler as usual. His beloved Jeep was happily loaded with gear and women. I think we were all just really enjoying the rare occasion to be together and the beautiful day we’d had.

But in a moment I heard my sisters yelling at my father and I looked up from the back passenger’s seat to the realization that we were on the wrong side of the road and a vehicle was coming toward us. Providentially, we didn’t hit them but then apparently in the next few moments we hit about 5 mailboxes, nose dove into a ditch which caused us to flip, hitting a telephone pole so hard it was irreparably splintered and then we landed sideways into a ditch. (In the interest of full disclosure, the events happened so fast that I can’t say definitively that what I just described was really what happened. No one knows, we've just tried to put it all together.)

The pictures are really hard to look at. I remember sitting in the back passenger’s seat and wondering if my mother had just died sitting right next to me. I’ll never forget hearing my sister’s voice—the first to break through the deafening split second of silence and watching her pull my dad out of his daze and shouting at us all to “get out of the car!” And then I heard my other sister and then my mom and watched my dad crawl out the mysteriously broken (none of us got cut) and available sunroof and then followed suit. We then struggle to get my mom out because she had been injured (we later found out it was her clavicle). Thank God, there were so many people that stopped to help. One man checked my ashen mother over to for injuries and called an ambulance. Somehow I had enough consciousness to call my brothers. It’s all kind of hazy, but we rode the he hospital in an ambulance. Seeing my mom in a stretcher wasn’t something I’d ever really imagined before. You just don’t think about that kind of thing until it happens. I hope it never does again.

But replaying this whole thing over and over again grows in me an increasing sense of recognition that there’s no way I should be here right now. Much less all five of us walked away from the scene. I was not only spared my life, but 4 of the most important people to me are also still in my life. There's no non-Divine explanation. None.

Dad's doctor said that what probably happened was that when he took his inhaler, due to the big meal he had just eaten his blood pressure probably dropped drastically after his medication dosed and he blacked out. My Dad has no memory of what happened, and the circumstances that brought about the accident were in no way a result of negligence on anyone's part. This was the definition of a freak accident.

A couple of days later my dad when to retrieve our belongings from the vehicle. He brought back pictures and there a couple of them I can’t get out of my head.

First, my sister Jami who was in the front seat was clearly protected by the airbag, because the windshield was caved in on her side, though not completely broken through. Thank God that windshield didn't go any further.

Then there’s this picture of my seat. I remember leaning forward and the flash of a story went through my mind. I remembered hearing a boy tell a story once of a car crash he’d been in and how it stuck in his mind that the last word he heard his mother say was “Jesus.” I remember thinking that I wanted that to be my last word but also I remember—almost against my will—uttering further…”Jesus save us” and my mother right next to me responding “Yes, Lord, protect us.”

I had curled up into a ball while praying, leaning toward the front seat when the car finally stopped flipping. It turns out it was that fetal position that made the moment not fatal. It seems that the telephone pole impact was right above my head, and it caved in the body of the Jeep. Literally inches from the back of my head.

I think until now I didn’t really understand what people meant when they described things they experienced as “chilling.” Now I get it. It was (and still is, kind of) really hard to look at that picture. I actually got cold when I first saw it.

I guess the hardest part is: the acceptance of grace in the fact that I’m still here. That God has some reason for that. Or is it grace? A part of me would have been really glad to go Home. A huge part of me, actually. But, WHY? 

And here's the hardest question right now: Why am I still here and Marco isn’t???

Marco Gemma was one of those people that grabbed you. There was something about him that saw to the core of who you were and still loved you. He was an incredible, extraordinarily special individual. To this day I cannot put my finger on any other solid reason for this but his immense and lifestyle permeating love for God. I spent a solid summer with him in 2005 at the Mulino camp in Caserta, Italy, where I stayed with the Pund family, my aunt, uncle and a few cousins for about 3 months to help renovate a normally bustling summer camp that had been flooded the winter before. Marco came to help because he wanted to “serve God” with his summer. For as much as I love and use words, I don’t really have any to describe the unique little spot that Marco carved for himself in my American heart. It’s really hard to write this. It was Marco that helped my Italian get off the ground. It was Marco that made me think about my dreams and what I really wanted in my life—according to how God made me—and it was really probably Marco that made me consider that the gifting God gave me would not permanently keep me in the States. (Which, I guess, still remains to be seen.)

I was in Italy a couple of times after that summer, and was always missed each other by moments, it seemed. I never got to hear his English, apparently it was impressive.

It was 3 years ago in May. A car accident. I remember getting the news while I was at work and they sent me home—I was a mess. Frankly, I don’t usually have a problem expressing emotions and I really thought that I had properly grieved this terrible thing. But it sure comes in waves, doesn’t it?

I find it interesting that this car accident at home happened right before I’m about to go back to Italy.

I promised all of this has a point. So here it is, though it’s not a very satisfying one: 

I’m struggling with the reasoning behind the fact that I’m still here and Marco isn’t. Facially, it makes exactly no sense at all. I don't get.

Futhermore, in yet another moment of rawness (please bear with this vulnerable confession), to be honest a lot of the answers that my faith brings to the situation just feel shallow and cliché at the moment, though I know they’re true.

God is good.

God knows why but He doesn’t always tell us.

God sees the whole picture and we don’t.

The list goes on.

A part of me feels guilty that I’m here—even though I have exactly nothing to do with that fact.

It’s funny how you can know all of the things you’re supposed to in your head but still have a terrible war going on in your heart over these questions of fact. It’s astonishing how the heart is so often a much more difficult conquest than the mind.

I get it. In the sense that I get these things in my head. But I’m not gonna lie, I’ve had a lot of tears and trouble sleeping this week. 

I’ll get there. But I’m not there yet. I don't get it yet. I still hear the sound of the car hitting the ground, the mailboxes, the pole…and I can still see Marco sitting in front of me asking what my dream was for my life someday.

It will be good to be back in Italy. I guess I need to go more than I realized.

La pioggia

Some days yes, it may look like torrential rain. But it's all about context. In the Fall, that kind of storm is indicative of a colder, more difficult time coming. But in the Spring, the storm is cleansing--it means things are warming up and getting washed away.

The Firm (well, half of it) Goes to Rome

So...I'm studying abroad in Rome this summer. I'm resurrecting my old France blog to write about it (hopefully) so here's the link for the few of you that read this and the even fewer that care! ;)

lafolielogique.blogspot.com

Tickets were purchased yesterday and I'm ridiculously excited!

Things I Don't Want to Do

Things I don’t want to do: Second semester of law school.

A part of me feels adolescent again given all of the emotional ups and owns that I’ve undergone in the last two weeks.

And then being flat on my back sick the last two days has given me ample time to think about this. I seriously don’t remember the last time I was too sick to go to school for more than a day….So I’ve been thinking. I’ve had plenty of time to think about how hard it is to be here right now. And if I’m honest with myself it’s for more reasons than just law school.

Twice in my life that I’ve considered not getting on an airplane. Coming back here after a (glorious) month repose from school of law was one of them.

I sat in the airport and January 15^th, 2015 and thought about all the reasons I didn’t want to come back. In short? This is hard. Just kidding, but half of me wants to jump ship and move back to Paris and study literature again…at least I am good at language and I think living there would be a lot less difficult this time around, right? My law school friends have a theory that I’m a Russian spy. That also sounds good right about now. (Too bad my Russian knowledge is limited to the Cyrillic alphabet and the phrase “I’m not Russian, I’m American”—which, by the way, I think I’m going to retire because I’m not sure that phrase will do me any intercultural good right now.)

The other half of me is so completely convinced I’m supposed to be here and am committed to seeing this through. I’m not going to quit, but I’m not going to hold back on being honest either. Right now I hate this and I just don’t mind saying it.

So, Thursday, January 15^th, I almost didn’t get on another airplane. While I was considering this, I actually walked by the gate at the Portland International Airport where I last wrestled with the issue. Gate C1. It was right before I moved to Alaska indefinitely:

It was the Fall of 2009 and I had just spent another summer working on the train in Alaska felt a strong direction to move there year round and substitute teach. At that point I thought my career was going to take the teaching direction. Alaska had more opportunity for me than Oregon and I was feeling the need to stay one spot for more than 4 months. I was emotionally exhausted from all the traveling I had done at the time and just needed a winter’s respite. God seemed to think Alaska was the place. I had flown home after the train season for my brother’s wedding and now I was dreading going back.

Part of the dread was some drama I had inadvertently been involved in over the summer that I didn’t want to return to, but much more of it was, frankly: fear. Fear because I really didn’t know many people there and I didn’t know how much I really cared to be in Alaska. My dad and my sister had driven me to the airport after 3 wonderful weeks home in Oregon and with tears in his eyes Dad hugged me and said “you know you don’t have to go.” Gut wrenching. As I sat at the gate his words replayed in my head. He was right. I was going to live month to month at a furnished place and there was no signed lease. Substitute teaching was entirely by my initiative. I was going to be driving my best friend's car that she would otherwise just store there for the winter. I actually had no commitments taking me back to Anchorage.

But then I sat there and contemplated all of the conversations I had had with others where I had challenged them to not settle for good, but to aim for best. That is, God’s best. All of those times I had counseled them to not fear and to listen to Him and DO IT. That fear is no way to live.  And I hated the realization that I had to get on that plane if I wanted my life to back up all of that advice that a part of me (at the moment) regretted shelling out. So I, not unreluntantly, boarded the aircraft. I remember that internal wrestling very clearly, a wrestling match that actually continued well into that winter in Alaska.

Then I remembered not just that fight with God in the airport, but also another fight when I met some girls at my new church in Anchorage, acquaintances that were very clearly divinely orchestrated. I cried and banged on my steering wheel on the way home that day and yelled at God that I didn’t want to get to know anybody new. That I was relationally exhausted. That I was going to obey and do it but, since He wanted my candor, I was letting Him know once again how I felt about the whole ordeal and how I just didn’t understand “what the hell He was doing.”

It’s funny to think back on those moments and fill in all of the life that has happened between those raw moments of “candor” and now.

Alaska’s now home. It has become so much a part of me that it’s actually a part of what makes being here so hard now. Funny how that works. And those girls that I didn’t want to get to know—but did? They are indisputably the biggest reasons that place has such a hold on me now, mountains aside. My life is there now. And actually, I had the utter privilege of being in one of those girls’ wedding over break.

All of this kind of flashed to the forefront of my mind and I sort of chuckled to myself while gazing at Gate C1 in PDX. “If you’d only known, Traci, how much you had waiting for you.”

Yeah, it’s true. If I had only known, that fight with God probably never would have happened and I wouldn’t have looked back or second guessed whether or not I should use my boarding pass. But then I never would have known what it meant to truly follow, either. I got on that plane in sheer trust that God knew what He was doing. And I was right.

Perhaps it was a Divine nudge that I had to walk by that gate to get to my flight this time. As much as I still didn’t really want to, I couldn’t help but see and feel the parallel with where I’m at now.

In many ways I find myself with a lot of the same questions that I did in that Fall of 2009: “God, what are you doing? Are you sure I’m supposed to be here? WHY? How long?” But added this time is “are you sure about this law thing? Because so far I’m not good at it. At all.”

I guess this is one advantage of getting older, you have past experience to draw upon. It almost doesn’t even need to be said that both this thing I’m doing now and Alaska were and are obviously new and game changing chapters in my life that were both clearly directed by Someone besides me. The problem is that there’s almost nothing “obvious” about it when you’re walking through it. “Obvious” in this case comes only in that annoyingly perfect hindsight.

I was articulating some of these thoughts to a friend, and telling her the story about how I almost didn’t get on that plane to Alaska and then almost didn’t again this time. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said “looks like you’ve got some of your answers, there.” She’s right. I may not like the answer to the slew of questions that I listed above because the answer sounds more like a non-answer, but it’s the right one nonetheless: “JUST TRUST ME.”

It only really takes but a fleeting moment of painful self-honesty to know to the core of me that if He knew what He was doing last time He knows what He’s doing this time, but it’s okay if it doesn’t hurt any less this time around.

So, there we go. There I go. I can choose to trust and know that God is going to blow me away with all he has in store for me here and in the field of law, or I can keep asking questions that He has already addressed (repeatedly) and live miserably daily. He will provide community, He will weave all this crazy together to make sense—there’s nothing about what’s going on here that Him “improvising” in my life. He’s hammering stuff out of me and working in me all the while He’s carrying out His promised design for my little, crazy, wild, amazing but humble life. Because He’s good. And thank GOD I don’t have to question that. Miserable is no way to live. Fear is no way to live either. But it strikes me how both of those things are often deliberate choices.

So, this time, I’m not going to be mad about who I meet or what I have to do, I want to just have eyes wide open and my heart too. God forgive me when I don’t, just know I want to. (And can I please stop being sick?) Let’s do this thing. 

Tertullian

If only the church--in the most broad (read: Biblical) sense of the word truly lived up to this:

I shall at once go on, then, to exhibit the peculiarities of the Christian society, that, as I have refuted the evil charged against it, I may point out its positive good. We are a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope. We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, we may wrestle with Him in our supplications. This violence God delights in. We pray, too, for the emperors, for their ministers and for all in authority, for the welfare of the world, for the prevalence of peace, for the delay of the final consummation. We assemble to read our sacred writings, if any peculiarity of the times makes either forewarning or reminiscence needful.

However it be in that respect, with the sacred words we nourish our faith, we animate our hope, we make our confidence more stedfast; and no less by inculcations of God’s precepts we confirm good habits. In the same place also exhortations are made, rebukes and sacred censures are administered. For with a great gravity is the work of judging carried on among us, as befits those who feel assured that they are in the sight of God; and you have the most notable example of judgment to come when any one has sinned so grievously as to require his severance from us in prayer, in the congregation and in all sacred intercourse.

The tried men of our elders preside over us, obtaining that honour not by purchase, but by established character. There is no buying and selling of any sort in the things of God. Though we have our treasure-chest, it is not made up of purchase-money, as of a religion that has its price. On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able: for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary. These gifts are, as it were, piety’s deposit fund.

For they are not taken thence and spent on feasts, and drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut up in the prisons, for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, they become the nurslings of their confession.

But it is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one another, for themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will sooner put to death. And they are wroth with us, too, because we call each other brethren; for no other reason, as I think, than because among themselves names of consanguinity are assumed in mere pretence of affection.  But we are your brethren as well, by the law of our common mother nature, though you are hardly men, because brothers so unkind.

At the same time, how much more fittingly they are called and counted brothers who have been led to the knowledge of God as their common Father, who have drunk in one spirit of holiness, who from the same womb of a common ignorance have agonized into the same light of truth! But on this very account, perhaps, we are regarded as having less claim to be held true brothers, that no tragedy makes a noise about our brotherhood, or that the family possessions, which generally destroy brotherhood among you, create fraternal bonds among us.

One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives.

Our feast explains itself by its name.  The Greeks call it agapè, i.e., affection. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain, since with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy; not as it is with you, do parasites aspire to the glory of satisfying their licentious propensities, selling themselves for a belly-feast to all disgraceful treatment,—but as it is with God himself, a peculiar respect is shown to the lowly.

If the object of our feast be good, in the light of that consider its further regulations. As it is an act of religious service, it permits no vileness or immodesty. The participants, before reclining, taste first of prayer to God. As much is eaten as satisfies the cravings of hunger; as much is drunk as befits the chaste.

They say it is enough, as those who remember that even during the night they have to worship God; they talk as those who know that the Lord is one of their auditors. After manual ablution, and the bringing in of lights, each is asked to stand forth and sing, as he can, a hymn to God, either one from the holy Scriptures or one of his own composing,—a proof of the measure of our drinking. As the feast commenced with prayer, so with prayer it is closed.

We go from it, not like troops of mischief-doers, nor bands of vagabonds, nor to break out into licentious acts, but to have as much care of our modesty and chastity as if we had been at a school of virtue rather than a banquet. Give the congregation of the Christians its due, and hold it unlawful, if it is like assemblies of the illicit sort: by all means let it be condemned, if any complaint can be validly laid against it, such as lies against secret factions.

But who has ever suffered harm from our assemblies? We are in our congregations just what we are when separated from each other; we are as a community what we are individuals; we injure nobody, we trouble nobody. When the upright, when the virtuous meet together, when the pious, when the pure assemble in congregation, you ought not to call that a faction, but a curia—[i.e., the court of God.]

Tertullian--Carthage, North Africa c. A.D. 200