love stories: the purse - part II

These stories-in-parts challenge me. I leave my thought half-written for a week or two, and mentally continue to write and think through the topic. I can't dismiss it, and the waiting-on-the-writing grows me. Before you read this post, you may want to read Love Stories: The Purse - Part I. I'll be picking up from there.


Need-meeting isn't always love. And it is love that fills us up, that nourishes relationship, that changes a life.

There is a breaking that happens when you love. A shattered vessel, a broken heart, glory poured out into dust, soaked up, spread around.

Love is not need begging need. It is not a well-stocked Purse designed to secure fulfillment - for self or for others. Love is a giving that expects no return and wildly hopes for a response.

Love is not being God to others.

We love because He first loved us. When we do love, really love, we love others as He loved us. It has something to do with falling into His love, with being full up with Him who is Love.

A purse can be dropped, emptied. There is no end to Him.

enough

I woke this morning thinking about grace. I think I fell asleep thinking about grace. About accepting it, living in it, owning it. About how easy it is to lose sight of it.

Easy because I sometimes don't know what is true.

Easy because I don't have courage to stand when I do know it is true.

Because living by faith in the Son of God is harder than trying to crucify myself dead enough to deserve to live.

Christ is either enough or God is a liar.

And I don't think God is a liar.

...

Every other day these last two weeks, I have rammed up into issues with my identity. Part of me says this is because I am not doing something I am supposed to be doing; this is because I am willfully sinning. But the "sin" has no name for me to confess, and the "supposed to be doing" is so vague I wouldn't know where to begin.

I have been living under a burden of undefined expectation.

And it's a heavy one.

I am Eve lately. Believing I can be more. More than God created me. More than I already am in His grace. If I could just grow faster, deeper. Isn't there an acceleration program for Spirit-work?

I want my life to be "Christ plus..."

how does He love me?

Piper is two and a half now. Almost three.

If you have had children, you know what this means. If you have had an independent, spunky, first-born child, you know what this means.

She has a mind of her own - and it runs contrary to everything in my mind. There is a certain measure of predictability in her reactions: she throws a fit over everything. Even the love I try to offer.

The rejection of my love - even from a two-year-old - hits me deep. Really, really deep. Every time Piper pitches a fit at me, I shut down a little more. I grow harder. I push her away.

I respond out of fear and anger. So much anger. I want to train her like a dog sometimes, pick her up, rub her nose in what she has done, over and over, because that is the way it washes over me, the things that can't be fixed.

I don't want to give her grace. And mercy? She still needs consequences.

Because God is a God of judgment. And by the law came the knowledge of sin. And all the sorries in the world don't make things better.

And I HATE THAT I THINK THAT.

But I think it about me too.

sunday morning

He is risen indeed...





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

looking up

God isn't just the things I say about Him.

It is coming on to Easter. I am less ready for this than I was for Christmas, and I wasn't ready then. I hate the calendar. My life isn't happening in tandem with the seasons. The season I'm in is forever and no time at all.

I forget every single day that God lives outside of time. And every day, if I don't remember He lives, I go into a tailspin.

I haven't stopped running since I got back from my parents' house a month ago. And with two kids, I don't have any down time forcing me to think. But I feel. Oh do I feel. It is why I have been taking pictures lately. I barely have time for that, but it is the only way I can try to express some of what is happening in me. I don't write unless I can't sleep.

This is the hardest thing I have ever done. I'm not even sure what "this" is. Being a mother? Loving my children? Holding onto my sanity? Trusting God?

I'm not actively shutting Him out, but I'm barely running to Him right now. I'm barely doing anything beyond the immediate right now. I thought I'd been through it with my health issues before, but this stretching is unbelievable.

I think it is making room in me for love.

becoming - continuing the ramble

it is part of a becoming, isn't it?

i am not now, but I will be.

the words that spill out are so much dross from silver being refined.

...

i half wonder what my readers must think when i leave up posts such as i have written recently, when i so publicly display my questions and worries and doubts about God. if i have so many issues, it seems miraculous that i should believe Him at all.

or, that might be the point.

that i do believe Him, even when i feel i can't act on it. here i live, human, daring His wrath because i dare to trust His love that provides me such grace to fall. not that i want to fall. it is grace to fail too, grace for tired and trying to do too much in my own strength. grace to let me learn to look first to Him instead of wishing Him away.

which i spent much of yesterday doing as He reminded me to be gentle with pip, to not heap burden on burden - oh, how i want to hold things over her right now! i wished God away, wished His love away, because i wanted to be angry.

...

and i spent today in pursuit of an empty hope. it was so stupidly shallow i won't bother writing it here (do you see, there ARE things i hold back for embarrassment!). pete offered me more understanding than i could give myself - he said, "it's something you could look forward to that isn't what you always have right now."

i try not to duck. but i have been ducking. trying to perfect this and that and - did you notice that other thing? i've worked on everything from favicons to icons to buttons to watermarks in between discipline and nursing over the last few days. the shame of it is that i don't feel i've accomplished anything at all.

it is silly for this restless heart to try to force its own rest.

...

i have been shutting things out. trying to still the roaring in my head. trying not to look at ________ or at _________, trying to remember that they didn't start where they intimidate me now, realizing that they must have had some sort of becoming too.

tonight i let it go for a while. quit trying to think it out and make it better. went to "wommuhtt" with my family to pick up some dinner and a "huggabugga" (piper loves going to walmart; she saw a wendy's on the way and asked for a hamburger). i watched some scrubs with pete (when he wasn't policing piper) and talked with bredon for a bit (he loves his conversations with mama).

do you know, b has the sweetest poochie lip i've ever seen? when his daddy is holding him and he sees me, he pulls it out and lets me have it: "mommy, how can you let this man hold me when you're right here?!"

i value my dinner times. they are shorter than they used to be. i'm adjusting.

...

so i am neither here nor there; it has not yet been revealed what i will be when God is finished with me. the seed must fall to the ground and die before it can live again and bear much fruit.

i thought the dying was done. i hoped it was over, anyway. it's so... uncomfortable.

yet it is also beautiful, blown by Spirit-wind from the stem where i cling into the current of God-love known and God-love lived as i test this newest trust.

crucified, yet alive. a piercing paradox from a Master who became a servant, the Life who died, Love Himself who was hated by those He loved.

i don't have a heart for God, not lately, not most days. my own passion waxes and wanes, and i find it waning this week. He requires so much of me, it seems. still, i sense His heart for me, and i feel hope that i matter to Him, that He doesn't simply work in spite of me. i wonder if my prayers do make a difference to Him, if they are more than basic conversation or vending machine access, if He really wishes to take my heart into account in how He works out His plans for me.

you know. the plans for a hope and a future. the plans He has for His people.

plans. not wishes.

plans.

...

i'm not okay with sitting here, deciding i've arrived and this is the end, so i'd better conform to the highest ideals or accept my utter failure.

but i'm okay with becoming.

there's lots of room for hope in that. room for beauty. i feel silly admitting how i want that, how it has nothing to do with my outward appearance and everything to do with a quiet, God-stayed heart He is growing out of scar tissue.

my words seem to spill in what seems a long sigh - sometimes frustrated, sometimes tired, sometimes easing into rest.

He meets me here, too much for me, enough for me to approach Him for mercy, for love, for rest.

I Am who is I Am takes my dross makes me real like Him.

Yes, I am becoming.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

they shall see

Night comes here, again. The evening passes too slowly - and too quickly; I don't have time to capture time that is spinning away from me as if the hands on the clock have come alive. They wave at me, taunting.

I glare.

I can hear the laughter. Time waits for no one. It would define my life in missed opportunities and vague regrets, chain me to its cogs and tell me always of my failures.

It is hard for me to remember that I will not have one moment forever, terrifying to realize that while I am still, the world moves on and it does not need me.

I wonder, does it see me standing, staring, trying?

I am restless tonight.

...

There are too many things I cannot do.

Household chores require many steps; I have a bigger house now. It is not as clean as it should be.

Getting meals sends me chasing circles around myself in the kitchen. I am often interrupted. I never eat without distraction anymore. I don't always take my pills. This is not a good thing.

I am defined by need. Surrounded with it. Defeated by it. My own needs overwhelm me; how can I meet these others?

Strength perfected in weakness...

I try not to think. It is another thing I cannot do. No - I dare not.

You know how they tell you not to look into the sun, or you will hurt your eyes? It is like that for me with God right now. It is an almost-delicious terror, the awe-struck sort of immobilizing fear produced by an encounter with something - Someone - who lives beyond your control.

I've had the feeling once before: one time before I knew Pete, he refused to let me pay him for something he had bought me. He was immovable. I could not change his mind. I learned early to respect him. He knew who he was.

...

The picture was accidental. I was shooting macro, not landscape - detail, not light. As I clicked the shutter, the camera zoomed past my focus into the sunset.

Here is glory, surrounded by blackened sketches of my inadequate attempts at improvement. Here is glory, exploding uninvited past my defenses. Here is glory, unacceptable, unwanted, filling my eyes, bypassing my control - a lens telescoping to eternal against my will.

...

Piper constantly wants "up, Mommy!" Bredon wants to be held whenever he is awake. I resist their restraint; my heart hurts so.

Do I push God away too because I am touch-tired?

I do not want to push any of them away, but I do not want to embrace them either - not God, not Piper, not Bredon. They ask too much; I am not enough.

I worry that Piper will be scarred for life. I struggle within myself. I should let her know how she is loved, but angry comes easier, and she is always in trouble lately. I can't help berating her. I can't stop berating myself. I love her so.

The days fly by and Bredon is already three-and-a-half months old. I can't stop time.

The hands on the clock spin faster. I am dizzy watching. Where is my rest? Does God even care? I don't want to look at Him. Surely He has cause to castigate me.

...

I think I have never been so stretched. My desires are many and varied. My goals are simpler: "Get through today."

Is this all life is, a getting-through? There are others living now; I know it must be more than I can see right now.

Seeing. I take pictures almost every day, but do I see? Do I really see? It is possible to look and look and look and never see, I think. Did you know even blind people can take pictures?

...

The words, hardly strung this morning, tumble out now, relieving some of the day-pressure, easing heartache and sorting feelings out of frustration.

All this pouring out, this honest - it embarrasses me to write, but I have to write, because keeping it inside is killing me - this pouring out makes for a purer heart. That is what it is, you know, a pure heart. Spread out and open before the Lord, before others.

...

I wrestle now with God, like Jacob. I remember he would not let go until God blessed him. Until God broke him, He did not bless him.

I fight the breaking; I am so tired. It is one more thing - one thing too many. One most important thing.

God is near to the brokenhearted.

...

Yesterday, my friend Anne shared a story with me that I had missed.

Jesus sent Peter and his friends back to sea after a night of unsuccessful fishing. He told them to toss the fresh-cleaned nets over the side again - in full day, when there should be no fish.

The empty nets were filled; the number of fish nearly sank two boats.

Peter looked at Jesus and said, "Lord, get away from me, for I am a sinful man."

Dear God, please leave me until I can bring something more than this...

Jesus replied, "Follow Me..."

...

"Follow Me." Two words follow me into night.

"Come to me, you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Rest for this restless heart.

"My commands are not burdensome..."

There is room now for His voice. Condemning sentences pinging off heart-walls have slowed and quieted.

"He will rejoice over you with singing; He will quiet you with His love."

I chance a look in His direction.

His mercies are new every morning; I am not consumed.

Why am I nothing again today? When did I start thinking I was something again? I cannot be broken. I cannot fail them. I cannot fail me.

He is faithful even when I am faithless. He cannot deny Himself, this God who is not a man that He should lie.

...

Easter is coming; I cringe at tradition this year. I need real. I am real. I need no reminders this holy week.

He is here, the living Word, piercing my soul, offering His hand. "Come, follow Me."

Where?

He does not answer. He knows I know.

To see God.

He waits for me. The clock hands blur out of focus.

...

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)