Thoughts from the Drawing Board

I am sitting in my friend's art studio. Her sketches and paint brushes are scattered on the drawing table on which I've set up my computer to--to write something. In my inability to be productive right now (not because I haven't tried, but because I've been productive for the past three hours and now the sun is starting to put on its evening clouds outside and the shadows are long and the air is breathing out spring perfume and work is no longer a possibility), I decided it would be better to still write something than nothing.

Hello, blog.

Drawings of faces and architecture on tracing paper are hung against the window in here so that the blue sky comes through them. I would like to have the blue sky come up through my face. I wonder what that would feel like--I imagine it would feel similar to taking a long drink of very cold water. The wall behind me is roughly painted purple with hints of orange pressing through it, like the high part of the sky at sunset. (This whole room right now is the sky to me.)

My friend is very good at drawing architecture. Every sketch in here looks like something I would like to have on my wall.

If I were a painter, I would go bankrupt buying paints and canvases and filling rooms with them.

Is all of this God?

Today I wrote three pages of my story. I was happy with them, and I was also happy to hear my professor say, "Well done" (good and faithful servant). But nothing has made me so happy as my cousin telling me that her experience reading the pages I showed her was the same as her experience reading our favorite book, The History of Love. I hope to write small tremors of that book every time I sit down to write; sometimes, I hope, I succeed for a moment--for a sentence or two.

If I were a painter like I am a writer, I would have only one painting and I would put it in the closet where no one could see it. I would also have lots of unfinished paintings cluttering my studio, and when I went there to work on them, I would get one stroke done in an hour.

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore.

Sometimes God seems more present in the small fleck of sunlight shook from the leaf of that tree I keep looking up at through this third-story window. But the sun is moving down quickly, and the light has already shifted away from the tree. So where is God then?

Can I look to the purple fingers of the clouds and find God there? The darkness will hide them.

I'm learning to find God in the place it seems He would be least likely to dwell--a place more cluttered than this artist's studio and not half as lovely; a place that is not kept very clean and is full of mistakes. I know He's there, more than He is in the pieces of sunlight and the wisps of cloud, more even than He is in the cathedral in my friend's drawing pinned to the wall. I'm working on having the faith to see that He inhabits this dirty room.

Yep: me.

December 22, 2010

Sergei asked me to marry him today.

Who can explain the warmth-soaked minutes, hours, before the event, of just being in his company and conversation? All that led up to it is what I said yes for. The sense of belonging, of knowing who I am, who we are, together, the glowing friendship of two people so interconnected that every word is understood before spoken. The ecstasy of looking into those eyes and seeing that they want me as much as I want them. Hardly noticing the shining white ring for those wanting, accepting eyes. The pure sanctuary of knowing that this one that I now belong to as I accept this ring loves me secondmost, loves Another greater than I, the altogether lovelier and majestic Other—the warm, lit sanctuary of knowing I am second.

I grasped him when he said, “Belong to me, only,” grasped him like one falling because she believed it, believed she belonged and could fall and be caught, “Belong to me, only, forever,” I grasped and fell because he wanted me, imperfect as I am, only me, falling into imperfect him, two imperfections falling onto a great Perfection together, to receive beauty for ashes, to be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified (Isaiah 61). Who can bear so much beauty? What one human merely being can contain it?

I now fold myself to his side, I am bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh becoming, and in this decrease from my own self into his, I feel that the limitless expanse of the sky could not contain what I am becoming.

This, I suppose, is the mystery of the sacred marriage. In this betrothal of myself to him, I know only the foretaste of this mystery, and yet I could fly.

I thank you, Lord, for most this amazing day.

Calling on the Muse...

...or the Holy Spirit, perhaps? A funny and thought-provoking talk:

Turkey and Cousins

There is nothing more important in this world than family. I'm so glad for mine.

"...breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land."

Sometimes I feel like I'm searching for God in a sandstorm, and even though I've never been in a sandstorm I can imagine what it would be like to be lost in one. Blind, stinging, dry, directionless. Just lots of yellow stuff swirling around.

For the first time in a long time, immeasurably long (immeasurable because I can never keep track of time), right now I breathe. I have only half a paper to write, and then it will officially be fall break for me. This half of paper represents all that I throw my hatred and exhaustion and uncertainty into. It represents all the scratching and professor-pleasing that I do to get A's that I don't need. It represents all the resume-building that I used to think was so important. It is a paper for my Honors class, and it is one of the most pretentious-sounding things I've ever written. (I love being able to use words like "thing" and "stuff." It's so liberating.)

Check this sentence out:

Here, my integration of perceptions failed to integrate in another's mind. Or perhaps the ideas presenting themselves to me seem incompatible, and my mind is unable to perform the integrations between them, in which case I fail to conclude at all.

Who would actually want to read something that dry and boring? Nobody. Especially not people who just need a break. (Like me.) Unfortunately, someone's gotta finish this paper. And that someone is me.

--------------------------------------------

I am now on top of Lookout Mountain, looking over the city of Chattanooga. It is dusk, following a red sunset. The moon is a steady sliver hung midway in the sky. I am sitting in Hannah's bedroom five floors up with the windows flung open and no screens barricading me from the mountain air. Sufjan Stevens is singing "Heirloom" to me. I have been reading A Severe Mercy for the past hour and now I am sitting, taking in what is happening to me in these days of rest and peace.

And what can I say now of life and God? Only that he is enough. I read one of the most well-known passages in all the Bible two days ago -- Philippians 4:4-7 -- and for the first time it shocked my heart like a bell struck. I felt so thankful for fear and distress and a certain feeling of being lost, because suddenly the speakings of my Lord became alive in that context.

It's funny how lostness works that way, and distress, and fear. I guess the sandstorm is the place to find God after all. He's like an oasis that fills the entire desert once you find it. I started looking because I couldn't handle the thirst or the dryness anymore. How quickly he found me then! It's not that my confusion is gone, but that while I wait for it to "shake out," as Hannah would say, I'm finding all kinds of joy and goodies in God's presence -- or, to be more poetical, "peace that passes all understanding."

Sometimes I'd like to find a house in a field in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere, with a garden erupting with lilacs and roses and winecups, with a bench in the middle of the garden where I can sit and spend out the rest of my days contemplating Christ. It would be lonely and pretty against how God set things up to be -- in community and everything -- but I think I would be at peace. But then, that shows how afraid of people I am. And of pain.

I guess on that note, because I'm rambling, I'll close with this quote from A Severe Mercy, which I picked up today. In spite of the fear, and because of the beauty, and because I hope that out of all this contemplation and all this distress and all this joy will flow one thing -- a great Love -- here are these words:

“He had been wont to despise emotions: girls were emotional, girls were weak, emotions—tears—were weakness. But this morning he was thinking that being a great brain in a tower, nothing but a brain, wouldn’t be much fun. No excitement, no dog to love, no joy in the blue sky—no feelings at all. But feelings—feelings are emotions! He was suddenly overwhelmed by the revelation that what makes life worth living is, precisely, the emotions. But, then—this was awful!—maybe the girls with their tears and laughter were getting more out of life. Shattering! … What is beauty but something that is responded to with emotion? Courage, at least partly, is emotional. All the splendour of life. But if the best of life is, in fact, emotional, then one wanted the highest, purest emotions: and that meant joy. Joy was the highest. How did one find joy? In books it seemed to be found in love—a great love—though maybe for the saints there was joy in the love of God. … But in the books again, great joy through love seemed always to go hand in hand with frightful pain. Still, he thought, looking out across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain—if, indeed, they went together. If there were a choice—and he suspected there was—a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths.”

"somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond"

Today I went to Dearman's Diner and had a fantastic cheeseburger, all dressed, and an even more fantastic chocolate milkshake. I ate mounds of sweet potato fries. I sat at a table with ten middle school girls who have all become so much to me throughout these long summer days. We were there to say goodbye to one another, they to me and I to them. We sat in red vinyl chairs, sipped our milkshakes, and shared our memories. A piece of me, maybe the piece sipping on chocolate milkshake but I think something deeper down, shriveled up and died.

I saw a cicada shell clinging to a tree the other day, brown and crisp with a great crack down the center. A friend wrote to me in a letter about when we are lifted from our earthly bodies and carried to the paradise of God -- like a cicada separated from its lifeless shell and lifted away on new alive wings.

Sometimes I say that I like change. And I do. But I've realized the kind of change I have spent my entire life hating is the separating kind. Goodbyes are my greatest untalent. (Sergei can testify.) When I say goodbye to Baton Rouge -- to Sarah Beth, and Sophie, Christina and Christine, Elise (who I watched discover Christ), Madison, Carolyn, and Anna Catherine (with her perpetual shy smile) -- when I say goodbye, something in me closes off again. The fearful part, the part afraid of hurting or dying again. The part that dreads separation.

Have I left pieces of my shell on trees in cities all over the country?

I can't help but think, when at last I am lifted from my earthly body in that final separation, will I be sad to let the earth go? Do I hold on too tightly?

And yet. On that day, when my shell is left clinging to the old world and my soul soars to the new, won't all of the separations that gave my soul small deaths in the old world become the uniting that resurrects my soul in the new? Face-to-face with all the lives that have brushed mine, that I've been so blessed as to brush up against, with friends who fell asleep long ago, with family I never knew, with those whose written words charged and changed me, with old loved ones, in short, with that great cloud of witnesses; face-to-face -- at last, at long long last -- with the Great Lover who Saved me, will I not believe with the faith of all things that all separation is resurrected into union?

Those days (if they can be called "days" when no time can determine their beginning or end) will make today seem like a brief farewell before the long and joyful embrace.

Postscript: Come to think of it, now that I'm all packed with my bags and suitcases piled around me: in less than a week, I'll be reunited at college with some of my best friends in the world. And with my love. :) I'll turn from sadness and look forward to those long, joyful embraces.

Opening Pandora's Box

Hope. It hit me unexpectedly the other day.

You have to be a pretty good liar to not believe in hope. I guess that makes me a good liar.

Here's why I say that:

Hopelessness happens when you are so able to convince others that you are fine, that you create an absolutely solitary environment for your despair. Hopelessness happens when your sin so overwhelms you, yet you hide it so well, that the only part of yourself that you feel is really yourself -- the self so deep that no one but you knows it -- is your overwhelming sin. Most people cry in private. People cut themselves in private. People commit suicide quite privately. Hopelessness is when you meet your darkest side, and you are too afraid to make it public. Hopelessness is you and your dark side, alone, in private, commiserating with one another.

That's why I believe that my friend who cuts herself has hope. Her secret was discovered. The symptom (her cutting) of deeper issues came to light. It's as though the opening to those deeper issues has been discovered, and now a Pandora's box of darkness, hurt, and pain has been opened, and with it -- hope.

Sometimes I wish there had never been a need for hope. If Eve had never bitten into the beautiful fruit, if first sin had never taken place, if the world had remained young and perfect forever, no one would know what hope even was. After all, what would we hope for?

Other times, I scream with gladness for hope's existence. It's like someone said somewhere: How would we know light, unless it had first broken through the darkness? I have a little black box in my soul -- my own Pandora's box of sin and shame that I keep hidden from everyone I know. I can't seem to let go of it because I'm so busy keeping it covered. I think hope exists inside of those boxes. Hope is released only by opening Pandora's box. Hope happens when my despair encounters the Gospel.

Hope is not victory. Hope is faith in victory. Sergei told me, "Life is a wrestling match. Sometimes we win small victories, sometimes we fail. What counts is not winning every round, but continuing the fight. You might fall a million times, or more. What God asks is not that you never fall, but that you never stop fighting. We know already that the ultimate victory is ours."

That's hope: falling, having to tap out, going to the corner to catch your breath and get a drink of water, and returning to the fight. Hope is confident of victory, without yet seeing it. We know that our Coach is not merely watching from the corner, but is giving us the strength to continue the fight, to love the fight, and ultimately, to see the victory He won and continues to win through us.

Similar to faith, a small mustard seed of hope is all it takes to create light from darkness, beauty from despair. That's what I experienced the other day. In the face of all my repetitive sins and old fears and continuing sense of shame, seeds of hope grew into great spreading trees of faith in Jesus Christ who loves me and gave Himself for me.

I hope that next time, I won't go back to the old sin. I hope that I will be the winner of the next round, in the name of Jesus Christ my Lord. "I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams." I hope.