Indescribable

Here I sit,
after coming home from a movie.

And I'm wordless.

I get like this sometimes. My tongue glued in.

Because sometimes I'm hit with the indescribable, and my mind is blown, and I start thinking about life, or just stop thinking completely-
in order to become still and realize

that I'm alive.

My breath comes in, a sharp intake as that thought comes to me. It's slow to taste on my tongue, and my insides are fuller than I ever knew they could be.

I feel like the sky, filled with heavy, bursting, full
clouds.

Pregnant with substance, running with thought, touching a little closer to God
in a strange and novel way.

Most people don't get me when I feel like this. Well, they just don't know. Through no fault of theirs, because this kind of thing strips away any ability I might have to explain myself or to just plain speak at all.

So, on this night, I feel different. My head is weighted and stuffed so full that I think
some of it might start coming out my ears.

I hope, if I get married someday, my husband can understand when I get like this.

Because sometimes, it just happens. This ripping away of the veil. And it can seem like it's for no reason at all, because the things that trigger it within me are silly and it comes uncontrollably, at moments rare and unexpected. But it must be God, it must be. Who else could it be?

Because who else can make me see? 

I'm looking, again, at the stars in the deep, night sky.

And, as Charlie might say, "I feel infinite."

Can't live without Your Presence

You say I am nothing without love. I will have lived a pointless life if I never learn to love. If I never offer love or experience it. . .

and I know I am not love.

Your presence is the only thing that can change me. It's your hand, your anointing, your fire that will refine me like gold.

I am nothing without your presence. I can't live without it.

It's the only thing that keeps me alive. It's the only thing that could ever set me apart.

It's the only thing that satisfies my ardent, thirsty soul.

Without it, I can't go on. I'm lost without your guidance.

When I feel your presence walk into a room, I feel alive again. I feel the strength filling my bones. And when you fill me up? I'm never the same again.

I feel your imprint on my insides. My perspective transformed. Life fades away, all my worries are untied like broken shackles. I'm no longer my own master. You are. Your Holy Spirit catches my heart on fire and I'm filled with desire for you. Passionate love rises up inside of me - because when you love me, I can't help but respond.

Without your Spirit, I am filled with despair at the failure I am. When you come and meet me, though? That is when my aching despair flees. It flees like the dark of the night at the coming dawn. And I am filled with hope. Hope that I will never remain in this rut. I will never sit still in my sins for long. I will never remain who I am today, because even if I can't see it,

you change me.

Lord, there is nothing makes me more sure of myself, and my place,
than standing in the
face of your glory.

For I was made to drink of your life.

It's not funny anymore.

It's funny how easily people raise their hands for any old concert. How excitedly they jump up and down, filled with passion, enthralled by the music. How dedicated they are to the writer of the lyrics, following their lives through social media updates. Working hard to learn of this person, to know them.

If they saw this person, they would scream.

If they got to touch them, they might cry.

And oh, imagine, if this person, if their hero,
spoke to them?

They would carry those words with them for the rest of their lives.

And it's funny how fans listen to music over and over again, until their very ears bleed and they can say the lyrics in their sleep. Everything gets memorized, and why? Because they love this music. It touches something inside of them. Those words and the person who made them becomes a part of them forever.

It's funny, too, how these listeners, these worshipers, label themselves as belonging to the group they listen to. They declare how they like them, support them. Their very names are born from their love.

It's funny, how I stuff my hands in my pockets when I feel the urge to raise my hands in church. It's funny how hastily I rush through my nightly devotions, how fast I mutter a prayer before dinner. It's funnier still how my Facebook says I'm a follower of Jesus Christ but I barely think about this God-Man I label myself with. I take the Bible's words too lightly, and when was the last time I memorized a verse on my own? And not because I had to?

But wait, it's not funny. It's not funny at all,
when, for the first time,

I decide to sit before Jesus and pray.

I set up a chair in the dark of my room for him, and I sit across from him in my rocking chair. And do you know what? I see how un-funny it is when I imagine him sitting across from me and see him looking right at me. Looking through me. Here I am,

before him,

and there is no laughter in me when I see the hypocrite and sinner I am. When have my actions matched the words I've written? When have my beliefs been carried out?

I'm sitting, I'm sitting in front of Jesus.

And all I can do is cry,
because I'm not worthy.

* * *

Linking up for Imperfect Prose on this Wednesday. Isn't this post so poignant? It touched me to the core. . .

If-

The wind blows into this room, icy and biting my mind awake.

Today, as I sat through the sermon, I thought,
Why does it have to be so hard?

Why does it have to be so hard to choose Jesus?

Why is it so hard for us humans to finally - or over and over again, rechoose to - believe in God's existence? Why do we have to be born blind? And why does it take us so long, why does it take us a whole lifetime to learn to believe in him?

Why can't we just be born into light?

Why can't it just be easy to step out into the world and still stay on the path? It's too hard, it's too dark out here. It's night, as I sit on my bed. The wind's cold, so very cold.  

But if it were easy. . .

the miracle, the aching beauty of the redemption story, would be dampened. No, it would be
fully
snuffed
out.

If man had never fallen. If we had remained in God's presence from the start. If we were born knowing our Creator. If we didn't have to fight. If we didn't fall away. If we were like the angels, in the throne room, serving loyally, worshiping endlessly.

If all this darkness had never entered us. . .

we would never have tasted the
sweetness
of mercy.

The beautiful, aching desperation of trying to cling to the God that feels so far away. To the moment when we can touch his face.

If we didn't know failure, we wouldn't hunger for the day when we'll be clothed in righteousness.

If we didn't fall, we would never look up to see the scraggy cross above us. We would never have seen our God bleed for us. Bear for us. Love for us. Die for us.

If we had never been blind,

we wouldn't have seen.

This is the Great Story.

And all my if's die from my lips because
all I know
is that I was lost.

And he came.

He came
and opened my eyes.

There is nothing more beautiful than this. 

In which Heart must make a Choice

It is so easy to let my mind wander down the road called Ungrateful. It's the natural one, my tendency. The path is smooth and it's like my feet are made to walk there. I'm magnetized, drawn, following. So easy to wander, pleasant to forget, relaxing. I don't have to fight to stay here. I don't have to resist. I can just be conformed; no transformation necessary here. It's an effortless road and the pathway is worn shiny from the frequency of my travel on it. It's a well-worn avenue and (my) Heart holds it in familiarity. It holds it in high esteem. It thinks that Ungrateful is home because that's all it knows, that's all it has ever chosen.

Heart has had a few experiences away from the road called Ungrateful. There's this other path, you see. But its flavor is entirely different.

Heart noticed that immediately when she timidly ventured upon it. It was a bit more unfamiliar, somewhat rockier, definitely skinnier and thus easier to fall away from. Heart's footsteps were hesitant, but she continued on. And once she traveled farther than she ever had before, her pulse quickened. She stopped, realizing she was breathing more deeply than she ever had before, living more fully, and touching the Creator more closely than she had ever done in her existence. And it was so freeing, revealing, enlightening, empowering!

That was her first time.

But she forgot, you see. Heart has a tendency to do so. It was slightly scary, this new road. It required boldness and it alienated her from all the rest. For she had never seen anyone else walk this road. It made her different. Alone, she thought. So she turned back, returned to the arms of Ungrateful. She was quickly enveloped in the ease of Ungrateful, her 'true home', and her new sight hastily faded.

Every once in a while, Heart would gasp in the middle of the night. For a split second she saw that she was sitting in darkness. A rut, even  
a tomb.
A flash of lightning and she remembered:
I'm lost. This is not where I ought to be.

And so she would run away that night, before Ungrateful could notice she was missing. She would dive back onto the gravelly road named Grateful, and remember. She became alive again, aflame with the Holy Spirit.

But always, her cravings would kick in by noon the next day. She couldn't live without Ungrateful, she just couldn't! How could she have thought she could be rid of him for good? He owned her. And Grateful felt too good to be true.

Heart would always return.

As time goes on, though, Heart's expeditions onto Grateful get slightly longer. And she is beginning to taste the true bitterness of life with Ungrateful.

Let's just pray that she'll make it home in the end.

* * *

This story/metaphor just appeared, floating up as I wrote. I know the road names are a bit cheesy, overly obvious, and totally not subtle (even if good metaphors ought to be subtle). But now that I read over it, I think how the roads could be differently named. Maybe Life and Death, or Truth and Lies. Put in what you choose and it may become more meaningful, even more relevant to you personally. Those names just happen to be what I was originally thinking on and I'm just choosing to leave it unrevised.

Set Me Aflame

I was about to eat supper. Dishing up carelessly, living in the day. My food filled the plate and I took my first bite.

Oh yeah. I should pray. Forgot about that.

And with anything but depth, I started to mutter words in my head. What an obligation. What a drag. A bore. A habit that I need to develop. A thing I should do.
To be good.

An airy thought in my head, an itch to be scratched. My emotions blank. My soul numb. Oh yeah. Praying. Let's add that in real fast, like a dash of salt in a recipe.

Then

whoosh

I was shaken awake.

-What am I doing? Oh Lord, what am I doing?
And my heart in the past days? Detached. Empty. Distant. And. . . lost.

And, more than that, I hadn't even realized. 
I hadn't even noticed my state. 

Oh the realizations crashing in upon me, like beating waves, tearing winds,
and my eyelids were opened up like a chest so that I might
see.

And I saw that I was acting just like this was any old religion. An occasional thing in my life to be visited. A meager part of me. A fraction, a slice, not an
all-consuming  
fire,
a blaze transforming every crevice, awakening the deepest love and strongest passion from my depths. 

God, save me from
this
complacency.

Make it my enemy. My dreaded fear. That I may be so on edge, never to stop fighting it, searching for its presence - that if I find a
small hint 
of it, I would leap to snuff it out. May my sword be drawn, senses heightened, mind aflame with the Spirit to never forget.

I want true prayer. Intercession. Communion. A perpetual conversation, a dance of words and love and pouring out. I want this with you, God. I want a remembering heart, an unconformed mind. I don't want to settle. Don't want to sit still. Don't want to lose sight. Don't want to live on my own. Don't want to be like any other person. Don't want to act like you're just another god. Don't want to put you on my mental checklist. Don't want to change our marriage into religion, burden, a pot on the back burner of the stove. You aren't restraint. You are promise. Your grace isn't a perk. It's a pool - that's necessary for me to be saturated in.

Consume me.

Consume me. 

I can't stand my position, my current state. It's not okay. It's muck. And pick me up and 
move me far from here. 
Because I do not want to linger in this complacency, resistance, and lack of 
surrender. 


I need your winds of testing, piercing convictions, life and presence and voice. I need your touch to draw me out of this stupor, out of my death. Raise me from the dead. I need you.