Answers and Angels

At times I'm fairly certain the angels may actually dread ushering me into heaven when I am finally called home.  Deep inside myself I know that I will not be able to speak (which is in itself a miracle!)...will have no breath in my lungs except to sing His praises.  Amazed, in awe at His indescribable beauty, I will fall at His throne, weakened under the weight of it, yet stronger than I have ever been.  I will sing, and it will be beautiful, for the very first time.

But today I can't see myself entering these gates in a perfect body, with perfect and intelligent thoughts....Having no thought but to join with all of creation in worship and praise.  Today I can only picture myself carrying a whole lifetime of questions for God, enough to last for eternity, enough to fill the heavens themselves.

Begging forgiveness.  Only I could even imagine being in your presence; there at Your feet...with any thought in my head beyond praise.  To be in this place You prepared for us as promised, one that all of mankind has spoken of for centuries, trying, but failing, to describe or imagine.  Will I want to hide myself from You, even though You have made me acceptable?  Will I be unable to look into Your face, even though I am now made capable of it?  It is a shameful thing; coming into heaven with an agenda.  My list of questions, even suggestions, as to how I might have done things differently...knowing You would give Your Son for me even now, as I dare to sit at the throne of the King of all Kings....and ask.

You tell us we will know everything there; that this perfect and beautiful place will hold no secrets, no deception, nothing left to wonder about.  We will no longer question.  But as I sit in this flawed and earthly shell I simply cannot fathom this.  Lord, You know me.  I imagine myself on my knees, unable to lift my head, to even move, yet somehow hearing myself asking, and asking, and hearing Your glorious Voice answering and answering....These things were My will...This is why...This I allowed.  Even this was for My glory...

I dream of receiving the answers, of understanding, of relief, joy, acceptance.  But wanting them now, here, where I am, as I am.  A little portion of Your perfect peace.  Open the gates and let it fall down and down into this dark and confusing place.  We raise our opened hands to You, Lord, asking for just a glimpse, a tiny piece of Your heavenly kingdom.  I imagine it like a cherub shaking glitter, reflecting Your light as it falls, or like the rain coming after a drought.  Falling, covering.  Taking our breath away.  Beauty for ashes.

And then You show me again...Heaven came down to live with us, and among us.  Holy, perfect, the spotless and beautiful Lamb...and we refused to see.  In pain beyond bearing, in our sin beyond hope, hateful, dirty, You came to save, to comfort, to caress the very hands who drove the nails into Yours.  Forgiveness and grace, even for me, who could question Your ways.

I know all of this, and more, somewhere inside this heart, things You have hidden there; priceless treasures I so seldom remember.

And yet, I still strongly caution the angels.  I am a stubborn one.  Impulsive, as I said in my last post.  They will need to clear a path for me as I may just push ahead and run straight through, forgetting myself, lost in the Light, lost in His love, forgetting my questions.  Wanting only to remain in His presence forever.  Asking nothing, wanting nothing, needing nothing.  Understanding everything... And finding myself, to my utter delight and surprise, no longer needing to.

And yes, fair warning...I will sing.

"For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." ~ I Corinthians 13:12

Work in progress

Meaning the Blog...and myself.:-)   It's taking longer than I'd like.  You will learn that patience is something I have never had.  I have been called "impulsive" all my life, even before I knew what the word meant.  They tell me that I once dropped a blueberry onto the freshly painted deck of a navy ship, navy servicemen in uniform and at attention, as our family toured their vessel.  In an instant, rather than picking up the blueberry, or allowing my frantic mother time to do so, I raised my patent leather clad foot and stomped it violently, sending a spray of purple blue onto the sparkling white deck.  

I am about to start stomping blueberries.  I sincerely hope that my words will not stain, but bless.  There is something inside me that needs to write, and it wants to pour out of me at an alarming, and yes, even impulsive- rate.  I cannot sing these words, so I must write them down, whatever they are.  I do know that they will be honest, and from my heart....impulsive, impatient, imperfect.  But from my heart.

Can't wait.  Talk soon.

"Pearl" Anniversary

If James ever called me “Baby” or “Honey” we’d both either end up gagging or laughing ourselves into hysteria.  That may be some couples (And it is; we know some of them), but it certainly isn’t us.  Never has been.  I think even when we we young we may have tried these terms on for size and realized they just didn’t fit us.    I am not his “baby”, or his “honey,” although he has indeed “babied” me at times, and once in a blue moon I might have been sweet enough to be dubbed his “honey”, but I can’t remember him once calling me those things, nor have I ever once wanted him to.  No. After 30 years it’s very clear.  I’m his soul mate, worst headache, biggest problem, biggest fan, worst critic, passionate lover, nurse, helper, hinderer, partner, opponent, sister and wife in Christ, very, very, best friend.  His heart.  And he is mine. Forever.  Good, bad, in-between.   And he still calls me Karen.  Just...Karen.  James, do you take Karen to be your lawfully married wife...

In 30 years we’ve seen our share of marriages and divorces,  marriages we never thought should have happened,, and marriages, even, if we were honest, we may have envied a little.  Couples experiencing life, sometimes tragedy,  and coming through it stronger. I don’t know that our bad times have made us stronger.  Perhaps more determined.  I have wanted my husband to hold my hand more often, hug me more, even in public.  I have never doubted his love, even for a minute.  I believe that he would gladly die for me, if given the choice. But I think if I could count the times I’ve cried over the years, most of the time I was alone, or at least, felt very much that way. It is the life we lead;  circumstances so often chosen for us, even God’s call in our lives at times.  I have ignored this call many times, and worse, I have been resentful when James hasn’t.  And I think because we are so often put under a public microscope, I wonder what people think or see.  This worry seed was planted in me long ago, when we were first married.  Most people tend to believe the good.  Far too many want to believe the bad.

  James and I tend to either pull very closely together during trying times, or we pull very, very far apart.  And so we have spent many hours in separate spaces, under the same roof, trying to do alone what in years past I firmly believed we’d have been better served doing together.  But now I think it may have been God speaking to us each alone, protecting our words and hearts until we could come together again when the sun came out. I pray for God to change him, and God shows me the mirror. 

 I have so needed James‘ faith at times.. solid as a rock, mine so weak I feel like a fraud singing praise hymns in church, ...I surrender all...all to Him I owe...  I don’t surrender easily.  I will fight you to the death. Even if I know deep down I’m wrong.  I’m thankful for the many times we have come together in prayer.  James warm, firm hands gripping mine, deep voice in prayer for us all.  I am safe there, secure in both God’s love, and in his.  Our life is not perfect.  It is perfect for us.

  I asked him if he would do it all over again, knowing what he would say, but wanting to hear it.  I don’t know if most women need this reassurance, but I confess that I do, more  than I should.  It may be his long hours away that caused this in me, but I think the idea that I came into this marriage this way is far closer to the truth.  One day soon I will write about what really goes on in this house from day to day, which begins for James, and hence, for us all,  at the quiet hour of 5 am.  I listen to his intensity; see it when he’s warning us all of impending tornadoes.  And know that deep down he feels far more than he reveals.  Even to me sometimes.  God wants me stronger.  James has given me that.

I remember once hearing a heartbroken Princess Diana tell a reporter that there were “three of us” in her marriage.  That it was “a bit crowded.”   The most beautiful woman in the world rejected, tossed aside, unloved, except by strangers.  A princess, who had everything, in the end, never really had the one thing she longed for so desperately all her life.  And I cried for her like my heart would break when she died. 

It’s clear to me that the difference is that there are three of us in my marriage also.  God has been with us and central to our lives from the beginning, and it is He alone Who has held this silk thread together, making it strong enough to hold us, even when it may have seemed frayed and weakened beyond repair. 

And so I thank Him for this gift that has lasted for 30 years, and counting.  I believe that the very best years are ahead for James and me. We really do grow as we get older.  I know our love does.  Thank you, my husband, for this life we have together.  You are so many things to me, although I don’t call you any of those things.  Maybe because there exists no perfect word to describe what is in my heart.  I Karen, take thee James...from this day forward...for always.  

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”  Genesis 2:24

Offerings

The bill is folded where I can get at easily in my front pocket.  I touch it several times as I am heading down the street, making sure it hasn't fallen onto the pavement or been blown by the wind of the commuter buses.  I would rather risk this than fumble for it when the need arises.  I did not know this yesterday.  Then I was not ready.  You must always be ready.  I know this now, although I wonder about this as I walk, and even as I write about it now.  They hold out their hands asking for it, needing it.  Stand out in the freezing rain or burning heat literally beg for it. Are they also flat broke of pride?  Is the blood pumping through their bodies different than mine?  I beg to be heard, to be loved; God forgive me, even admired.  I do not ask for these things out loud, but I take them when offered, without shame.  No.  They are just like me, and we are both embarrassed for the other.  People shove their hands into their pockets with their heads down and pretend they don't see.  Aren't food and water more basic needs?  Love?  Yet we are not embarrassed to give or receive them.  They don't need to be offered quickly, like passing a pencil to a fellow student who forgot his.  Pass. Grab.  Thank you.  God bless you.  Nobody saw it.  Saved.

I remember handing Christmas cookies through the bars to young men once while visiting them in jail.  This may have been the one time money would have hurt less.  We had to turn each cookie sideways, giving us time to look into the faces of the inmates.  Or worse, them looking into ours.  Pathetic, this ritual.  Stand in line, hold out your hand, grab the cookie, thank you, ma'am.  You are  not my mother; it's Christmas, and you have given me a cookie, and I am no longer a child, and I am no longer innocent,  yet I remember to say thank you, thank you ma'am.   I remember when cookies at Christmas were important.  I remember when I was once important.  I remember.

I have told anyone who would listen that I will never forget those lost boys, but could never go back there, though I ache to at times.  My oldest son was 20 that Christmas.  Every inmate had his eyes, his arms.  It was J.P.'s fingers that curled around each neatly wrapped cookie, and his shoulders that hunched and cowered in cheap cotton prison clothes.  And so after only one or two, I stopped watching them turn and shuffle away like old men.  To this day I ask God to tell their mothers that some of them even smiled.  Even though none of them did.

And so I think it's his mother who most breaks my heart, even though I can only imagine her wondering about her son.  Dirty, hungry, shamed, shunned.  His earthly home a box.  Does she call out to him at night or wrap the blankets a little too tightly to warm him, too?  Does he call to her?  Do they pray to You together and only You know,  their prayers blending together like music?  Does she rail at him and ask why?     Why God has he has chosen to break and run and believe the lies?  God please don't let them hurt him.  Why did he do this... Choose this.. Become this.  Hide him from me, God, I can't look.  Give him back to me, Lord.  I can't bear this.

This child I bore I cannot bear.

And so I reach into my pocket as our eyes lock, and he takes it.  This wadded up bill, all he will ever know, or have of me.  He is strong.  Will he not work?  His grasp is strong.  You aren't helping, they tell me.  Making it worse.  Keeping him down.  I only know to give what I have.  I am my brother's keeper.  Lord, please take and use this widow's mite.  God bless the child.  He is my son.  They are all my son.

"In my Father's house are many mansions.  If it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you." ~ 1 John 14:2

Peace Be Still

We just drove, sun in our faces, until we reached it; the twisted limbs and scattered pieces announcing what was ahead of us. This was the edge of the storm, James told us. We were going in from the side or back of it. I don’t know what was drawing me so desperately to be there, (aside from praying to God with all that is in me that there would be someone I could help, some way, other than just water or food. I think I just wanted to talk and see, and hold a hand. I don’t know.) I don’t know this any more than I know what drives me to write all of this down. If you are reading it, I have chosen to share it. But for now, it is for my own eyes. I don’t understand what I saw today. Black words on white paper may help me to see it more clearly. There has been enough gray.

Our 4-Runner is waved through into the area only because James is behind the wheel. Ryan, aged 13, in the back seat. He had been “briefed” as James had put it–as to what he may see or encounter. I do not know what he told him, and secretly hoped that he did not tell him the things which he shared with me. Things I will not write down, nor will I forget. But things that will forever break my heart and remain with me although I only got to see them through my husband’s eyes. I am grateful that he told me these things, and grateful that for the first time he “broke down” as I will forever refer to it that morning at the breakfast table, when the tears finally came. I have not seen my husband cry in a very long time. Go ahead, I thought. Get it out. But they wanted him on the radio upstairs, and he was gone. You would not have known he was hurting to hear him talk moments later. This is my James.

We had come from baseball practice. “Leave your cleats on.” James had instructed Ryan. “Look down. Always look down when you walk.” Driving is not easy, but as we bump and shake, and gasp at the war zone we are literally driving into, James is amazed at the transformation since he saw it last. I tried to imagine what could be worse. Destruction and ruin as if the very gates of Hell had opened onto the earth and tossed it; spewing death and brokenness everywhere. This thought hung in the air like the odor; stronger at times than others, but ever present. I described it on the way home as the saddest smell in the world; a combination of sickness and sweetness, foul and musty. If we did not know what it was, we might believe that it was the air itself mourning the horror of it all. As if the air, or the sky, which was almost obscene in it’s clear blueness, couldn’t remember it had days ago carried on its breeze the scent of blooming jasmine or freshly mowed grass.

At first, we found ourselves respectfully tiptoeing through the debris. People were there, and I so desperately wanted to reach out to them. But as we got closer to them, seeing them picking through what was left of their home… their lives—hearing them speak to each other in the semi hushed tones your neighbors might use while working in their yard, it became an unspoken necessity to respect the privacy of their home. We did not approach these people. Some we greeted, others greeted us. A few wanted to talk. I remember at one point selfishly wanting to press on. I needed to go somewhere, anywhere, that there may be some help to offer. I am so very impatient. I don’t know why God has not given up on me, but He hasn’t. “This is healing. Stop, and just listen.” He told me. And so we did.

I remember once a few years ago after pulling weeds in my yard for days that I would “see” their spiky green bodies every time I closed my eyes. I believe that some of the things I saw today will forever be burned behind my eyelids. Homes, most marked in white spray paint with an X or an O (like hurricane Katrina) lay open and littered beyond description. Not knowing whether X meant they had found persons living or dead was frankly blissful ignorance. There was no where to start, no where to look, to even begin to take it all in. The horribly twisted and crushed homes and cars. Dishes and chairs and televisions scattered as far as you could dare to look. The books and sinks, toilets and clothing, pictures and papers and purses and luggage. The doll or stuffed animal or hula hoop lying in a pile of broken glass and insulation…what was left of a crib and a bouncy seat that brought tears to our eyes and launched a trio of prayers from our hearts, silently praying the baby was safe in the arms of his mother. There were family pictures and some papers, even a life insurance policy there on the ground as if placed there by some B movie in Hollywood. Strewn on the ground, and all of us walking over it, and finding ourselves, uninvited, in what used to be someone else’s neighborhood.

I took only one picture the entire day, and that was of a magnolia which I found blooming in the midst of a pile of debris. James took a few I believe, mostly of the inside of homes where the “interior walls” and “closets” he continually preaches about, were, indeed left standing. I remember thinking that I hoped someone would get evidence of this. Among twisted metal and bricks literally reduced to dust and ashes, clothes were hung, neatly and on racks, as though waiting for the homeowner to return and put them on. I remember seeing a spring in his step I had not seen in recent hours as he discovered these treasures of hope. Oh, how we hoped that those living there were in one of those “safe” places. Please, Lord, please. Speak to our hearts and reassure us that yes, they were safe in these little places you provided for them. Thank you, thank you, Lord, that you are so much bigger than all of this.

Maybe tomorrow I will have something new and healing to write…something I will “see” behind my eyelids that God wants me to see and remember. I am beyond joyful at the work He will allow us to do as we minister to all those who are hurting. “Do you love me? Tend my sheep…” He is speaking so tenderly and softly, and yet so loudly in all of this. To Him be the glory. “I have told you these things so that you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33