12:12

[joyful in hope

patient in affliction

faithful in prayer]

 

dear friend,

I hope this finds you well.

I haven't written lately because

my words have gone missing, a little.

[hope]fully that they turn up

under a couch cushion somewhere

and I don't have to go

untangle them from the ocean,

which was the last place

I found them

and me

when life got lost

in the tide.

if you think of it-

pray for me?

that I would find

whatever it is that I seem

to have dropped

on the way to somewhere

important.

which doesn't seem so much,

anymore.

I'll be back in a little while,

but for now

I need to go get good and lost

in that stepping off the edge

drawing in the dirt

woman at the well

kind of faith.

the kind that reminds me

of the yank-back feeling

a parachute has

when you're hurling

a million miles an hour

toward an unforgiving ground

and
suddenly

you're safe.

 With hope

-e

 .

the unwritten letters.

Dear friend,

I spent the last half hour writing a really cool post about trusting God and knowing that He's faithful.

As I reread it for typos, my eyes filled.  With one swipe of the backspace, I deleted it.  It sounded so fake...like I was pulling words from a factory line.

Who was this woman who had everything together?
Who was this person that sounded so trusting?
 I, for one, would like to meet her.

Because it's not me.

But nobody wants to write that kind of letter, do they?

Nobody wants to say that things have been hard lately, or they don't know what to do.  I want to say, I'm fine.  God is good.  Everything will be okay.
With love, Elizabeth.  The End.

But the heart of my writing has always been honesty, and the day I stop using my words for the side of truth...I don't think I want to write anymore.  So I trade my eloquent words for the ones tucked away in my throat.

Dear friend, I don't have everything together.  And I write that because maybe you've felt this way before, too.

It feels as though instead of things coming together, they are falling apart.  The specific what's, how's, and why's are really not important- but my heart is tired.  And God feels far away.

A dear friend recently told me that sometimes God intentionally draws away from us to see how much we're willing to look for Him.  In this season of my life, I believe it.

So I get up in the morning and breathe.  I will look and seek and pray.  I pull out my Bible and remind myself of beautiful stories that have started out as shambles- stories like Job, Jonah, and David.

With shaky breath, I find myself in these words.  In these people who are honest with God, even when it hurts.  And you know what?  God never seems to mind.

It's okay to weep.
It's okay to shout.
It's okay to hurt.

God never seems to turn away the brokenhearted.  He doesn't seem to mind if we beat on his chest.  He never rebukes people who come to him with hard questions.  In fact, he seems to show up more in the painful questions than anywhere else.

I think he'd rather us come to him in pain than shrink away from him in silence.

And my heart takes comfort in that.

Even if it doesn't feel like he's near me, I am a child of God.
And I will wait for Him.  I will fight this.  I will be honest.
I will wrestle, knowing that walking with a limp is far better than running away.

This passage was written to Job, a man whose life was falling apart before his own eyes.  His wife and children left him, he was stripped of his land and possessions, and he became ill basically to the point of death.

More than that, I think it's a letter to anyone who has ever come to God with questions.  Dear treasured, wrestling friend- you are not the only one.  He hears us.  I really, truly believe he does.

With love,
Elizabeth

³Behold, you [Job] have instructed many,
   and you have strengthened the weak hands.
⁴Your words have upheld him who was stumbling,
   and you have made firm the feeble knees.
⁵But now it has come to you, and you are impatient;
   it touches you, and you are dismayed.
⁶ Is not your fear of God^[a] your confidence,
   and the integrity of your ways your hope?

 ⁸"As for me, I would seek God,
   and to God would I commit my cause,
⁹who does great things and unsearchable,
    marvelous things without number:
¹⁰he gives rain on the earth
   and sends waters on the fields;
¹¹he sets on high those who are lowly,
   and those who mourn are lifted to safety.
¹⁷"Behold, blessed is the one whom God reproves;
   therefore despise not the discipline of the Almighty.
¹⁸For he wounds, but he binds up;
   he shatters, but his hands heal.

-Job 4: 3-6, 5: 8-11, 17 & 18

just one

"In these bodies we will live,
In these bodies we will die,
Where you invest your love,
you invest your life."

blank.  blank.  blank.

the cursor blinks at me.

my words stop.

To write a good story, you have to live one, too.

That's my conviction.  I can't just sit at home and drink coffee while writing about risk and adventures.  I can't let my relationships deteriorate and write to you about friendship, sacrifice, and love.  I can't write about God without knowing Him and spending time with Him.

Every single word I write here I am genuinely trying to live-
with passion and freedom and purpose.

As I was thinking about my life a few weeks ago, I realized that I'm not always who I want to be.  Sometimes I'm selfish.  Sometimes I use my words to injure instead of mend.  Sometimes I get so caught up in what I'm doing I forget about other people.  All of my "sometimes" could fill a book, if I'm being honest.

I forget that we get one story.  Each of us get one and only one.

It's so easy to get distracted and discouraged.  It's far simpler to just care about ourselves, or even to not care at all.  The path of least resistance is alluring, smooth, and neatly traveled.  And that's where I find myself sometimes.

But I remembered a story last week that reminded me of something better.

Have you ever heard of the Greek myth of Jason and the sirens?

Sirens are beautiful, mermaid-like creatures that sing alluring, bewitching songs to try and make sailors drown.  The sailors become enchanted by the siren's songs and sail so closely to the coast they shipwreck on jagged rocks and tragically drown.

Odysseus, a Greek hero, was curious what the siren's song sounded like.  When sailing past the sirens, he had his crew plug their ears and tie him to the ship.  He writhed in agony while hearing the song, but eventually they passed the island and untied him.

Later, a man named Jason had to sail past the siren's island on the way to Crete.  Jason, though, didn't want anything to do with them.  He knew that they wanted to enchant him to his death.  When they passed the island, he refused to listen to the call of the sirens.  Instead, he had his friend Orpheus play the harp.

The tale says that Orpheus played so loudly and majestically that no one was tempted by the siren's song.  The power of their song was lost in the beauty Orpheus' symphony.  That day, everyone was saved because they heard the call of the better music.

We get one story, you and I, and one story alone.

And I want to live mine.  Not selfishly.  Not out of fear.  Not for bigger and better.  Not to be impressive.  Not for the call of the American dream.  Not even for the call of my dreams.

The sirens song is loud and haunting--and we hear it every day.  It entices us to do the easy thing instead of what we know is right.  It sings to us that that's not our problem.  If it doesn't effect us, it must not be that big of a deal.  It's okay to do things half-hearted...that's how everyone else does them.    Don't over think things.  Just go with what feels right.  Compromise is natural.  Or is it?

The call of better music is beautiful, and yet it propels us to something bigger than ourselves.

The music calls us to live better stories.  Any apathy, unforgiveness, selfishness, need for control -fill in the blank- none of these things belong with us.  We hear something more sweet than the usual rhythm.  We're called to live a life more difficult than our culture dictates, but infinitely more rewarding.

I've been changing things these past few weeks.

I've been talking more.  I've been confronting some things that are long overdue.  I've stopped worrying so much about what others think.  I've been giving more of myself, of my time, and of my heart to other people and it feels so graceful.  It feels like the story I'm meant to live.

Dear friend- don't lend your heart to the siren's song...even for a moment.
You're worth so much more than lesser music.

Open your ears, instead.
Can you hear that, right there?
The soft, lilting melody of better music calls us to live a greater story.