for when you're unsure: these steps

Dear friend,

I'm not sure, these days, if I'm going up or down this staircase of life. If I'm running towards the things that matter. I'd like to think so. Sometimes forward motion seems better than none at all. And it's a constant learning, going up a few, simply to come down a few more.

Panteleymonovskaya-38-12" by Alex Levitsky & Dmitry Shamatazhi
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

I don't know where you fall on the staircase. If you're having sweet triumphs and you're near the top. If you're bruised at the bottom. Whatever direction, I'll meet you in the middle.

Maybe these words will fill you like they did me.

*

She sits one step above me on the staircase. She was on her way down; I was on my way up. That was an hour ago.

"My girl," she says quietly. "You may not feel like you're hearing His voice...but you have His words. Read them. Sit in them and soak them up. Wait for Him."

"Be assured, Elizabeth-

you may not always hear His voice, but you can trust His heart."

*

starting now | when all you want to do is run away

I sit cross-legged, Bible and commentary in lap and marvel at the blue sky beyond my window. It has been a dreadful winter, and I know my heart isn't the only one that feels a bit tattered.

A bit sometimes like it wants to run away.

You see, I'm a collector of coffee cups. misfit mugs. tea cups and saucers. So about a year ago, after I graduated, someone I love dearly got me a new ceramic cup as a gift. It's a swirl of blue and green with tree branches, and the note attached said-

For all your new adventures. They start now, my girl.

Instead of using the cup, I buried it. Because my life didn't feel like an adventure. It felt like I was failing. I didn't have my life together, let alone an adventure.

So I packed this gift away. It sat in my garage for a few months, at the bottom of a box.

--

This week's passage was Jonah 1-2, which is one of my favorite books of the Bible. Psalms, Job, and Jonah. And John.

I feel magnetized to these books because they are blatantly emotional and the people in them are totally messy. I like Matthew Henry's idea that Jonah is "best understood by those who are most acquainted with their own hearts."

Jonah, who was supposed to go to Ninevah, took to the sea instead. In a lit class I once took, we learned that the sea is an incredibly vital twist in most stories. You see: the ocean doesn't trace paths. There's no way to follow someone or prove where they came from. You don't go to the sea just to travel: you go to the sea because you want to get lost.

When Jonah turns from Ninevah to sail in the other direction, my heart beats a little faster. Because he's not just running away from God, he's running away from his entire identity- not only as a messenger, and a man, and a writer, but also as a person who believes in God.

So what does God do?

He sends a storm.

Photo by Leviathan 1983/ CC BY

What I find in these words is that God wants to know Jonah with abandon. Wandering, doubtful, runaway, Jonah because that's not all Jonah is to God. Jonah, whose name means "dove" or "messenger," is God's beloved.

And God, in His great mercy, will use any method to bring us back to Him.

Even if it means using a fish.

Even if it means using a storm.

And even if it means using a cross.

--

I take a minute to sift in these words, of a God who goes after runaway hearts. Who loves people who don't always love Him back. I wonder if I have rejected my Ninevah. If I have not seen today, this day, as a gift.

So I grab a chair and I go to the cupboard and root around until I find it. My blue mug, painted tall with trees, a sign of promise. Because I may wander and go off course, but that's not all that God sees in me. It is sheer mercy that I have been given this adventure, this life. And the Lord will do anything to remind me of who I am [and to Whom I belong]. Even if it means using the storm.

It's time to face this day, and all of my seasons, and not turn from the things I know I'm supposed to be doing. Even the things that seem small.

So I go to work. I read and teach and give what I have. I open up my words and pour them out like water. Because here, now, I'm trying to be present for this moment, convinced that it might just be exactly where I'm supposed to be.

For all your new adventures. They start now, my girl.

when God closes a door | mixed metaphors and not moving

Last September, I almost moved my whole life across the country for a new job.

It's no secret around here that I'm a molasses-slow decision maker. It's a process. I pray a lot. Lists litter every surface. I talk to a handful of beloved friends. I go on long walks and write and write and write until I come out with some sort of conclusion. The whole cycle in itself is kind of painful and by the time I usually arrive at a solid answer, I'm exhausted.

It's not something I ever want to relive, let alone meditate on. Yet that was this week's text. All my longing is before you; my sighing is not hidden from you. David's words, hitting so close to home.

I've thought all week about what I could write about instead of my personal life, and it all seemed a little fake. I had to laugh because I committed to a blogging project about telling the truth, and all I wanted to do was hide mine. Yet here it is.

--

When I finally decided to move, I let myself get excited. I started to pack and plan and prepare. Two weeks before I was supposed to go, a thread snagged my plans. The pipes burst in the home I was supposed to live in. The funding for my new job got cut, and details slid out of focus, and suddenly everything unravelled. I asked God to give me a peace about moving, if that's what I was still supposed to do.

The next day, I woke up more sick than I've ever been. My joints were swollen and stiff. I radiated with nausea. Even my lips were swollen. I was so so sick. It was Psalm 38 in real life. Fast forward a few weeks, and I decided not to move. I'm still here, exactly where I was one year ago, and the year before that. And the year before that.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
By James.

Someone said to me, when God closes a door, He opens a window. I went home and thought about the phrase a lot. I think people say things like that when a situation seems too big, and they don't know what else to say. I think there's grace for that. But sometimes metaphors are too small. They package up a messy situation while sometimes overlooking that pain can reveal big things, if we are brave enough to face the mess.

As I took in Psalm 38 this week, I kept thinking about laying down my metaphors and digging for the raw truth. You see: I would never choose to write about not moving, a chapter from my life that I still don't fully understand and that felt a lot like failure.

And yet, here is what I've dug up: if there's anything to be said about that season, it isn't that God shut a door.

What sticks with me, deep down in my gut, is the truth that He was with me all along. Even when things didn't work out. Even when I didn't "seem" successful. When the dust settled from all that almost-change: He was with me at the beginning and at the end. And you know, He is with me still, and I am thankful.

This Lent, the presence of God seems so precious to me. Of such great value. And if it took moving and not moving, if it takes one hundred unexpected twists in my story to draw me nearer to Him, then so be it. Then bring them. Be not far from me...O Lord, my salvation. Selah.