A Little Narrative About You & Me

I can't whistle but I can try. Broken tones float through the open window in an early morning shower. The dawn is quiet. Bare feet pat the tile and my Goodwill coffee pot gurgles.

I'm alone but not really. It's a crowded sort of solitude. There's a blue bird in the yard and a cactus on the patio. A live oak knocks on our door because it's too big for our little patch of concrete. These things don't actually bring me company but they prove to me there's someone who does. Someone bigger and stronger.

Back home there's a frog who camps out by the garage door. When I drive back on holidays he's the first thing I see. We've adopted him and honestly he tells me about God.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not sitting in our garden chatting with amphibians. I hear the little guy croak and I remember there's Someone who cares about him enough to reserve room on this grassy ball of earth for his mucus toes.

My friend told me she doesn't believe God really hangs around anymore but I'm not convinced. I've watched people heal on the spot. I've watched suicidal minds filled with joy.

I'm excited to see more. God is pressing in. That stuff is way more than just skin and bones and neuroscience and endorphins.

This is my narrative. The one where the skin cells die off and new ones come to life. The one where there's goose bumps and kisses. Divine breath sinks into my lungs and it gives me laughter, a midnight talk, a long-distance call. I'm stitched together one limb at a time to house a brain and a soul. To imitate the Lover of grey matter and babies that cry at 2am and college students wasted on a beach and artists painting nudes. We are catalogues of love and blood. A natural history of the God who assigns us a bed, a family, a sandwich. He gives us two legs and two arms. Each of us a beloved living breathing documentary of the "let there be light" and the "let there be darkness".

Empty And Then Filled

Photo by Christin Hume

I’ve realized I have an addiction to instant gratification. If it doesn’t cook in three minutes, I don’t want it. If it doesn’t load in seconds, forget it. The world around me caters to this addiction too. My attention and my wallet have both suffered.

I love Starbucks. I usually order a white mocha. It's pretty great.

Though today I realized I wasn’t being served. I’ve been serving. They love my addiction to instant gratification. They get the green, I get the fast coffee. Suddenly the big green mermaid doesn’t seem so welcoming. She’s been getting my adoration and devotion for a long time and instead of being filled with her coffee and cake pops, I’ve been emptied.

It doesn’t seem like a big issue but that’s where we are fooling ourselves. That’s where I’ve fooled myself.

I don’t think five dollars here and five dollars there is a big deal. I don’t think five dollars here and five dollars there is a big deal. I don’t think five dollars here and five dollars there is a big deal.

Now it is. 

I’ve been dumping my dollars at the feet of a million little instant gratifications only to sit in the fetal position on my bedroom floor with snot on my face and tears in the carpet.

The cycle goes on.

I turn to a quick cup of coffee, online movie streaming, fast WiFi and even faster virtual responses from friends to make up for the hole in my chest. I’m going to those immediate sensations to keep myself from the emotional sugar crash that is inevitably going to happen.

It goes like this.

I spend money to get fast service to feel satisfied to be empty again to spend money to get fast service to feel satisfied to be empty again to spend money to get fast service to be satisfied to be empty again to be empty again to be empty. Again. And again.

It’s a cycle that doesn’t end.

Until I look up from my makeshift joy and take the hand of Jesus. I am filled when I serve Him. I am whole. Finally, an escape from myself. The waves calm. The hole is plugged. The tears dry.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open your mouth and I will fill it.”

Psalm 81:10

Sovereignty

Photo by Timon Studler.

I pray and I hope that God will provide. When He does, I am glad and when He doesn’t it can be frustrating.

I forget that just because God doesn’t show up in the way I expect Him to doesn’t mean He has abandoned me. My expectations and preconceptions of the Lord do not verify the gospel or determine the existence of God. My hopes and imaginations are vain and fleeting.

If anything, I am the one who abandons God when I decide He isn’t there after my wishes aren’t met.

I am deeply selfish. The human race is driven by self. Our disappointment with the Father is burrowed inside of this ego. The gospel is solidified by the Living Word of God, what we say or think about it does not change that. Believing it doesn’t make it true and disbelieving in it doesn’t make it false. It is a clear sign of self-absorption to think that things are correct because I’ve decided on my own they’re correct. I’m not God. Despite the claims of humanists all around the world, no one can assume the position of a divine being who curves the shape of earth and chooses to make gravity a thing.

There is only One Heavenly Father and He is sovereign.

The gospel is an honest account of history. It’s written in the pages of humanity, in the cells of our bodies, in the growth of a forest, and in the fire of galaxies. Most of all, in His Book.

I thank Jesus for His boundlessness.

My feelings are varied and my realm of comprehension is limited. My soul stops at the epidermis on my arms and my chest, my heart is caged within my ribs, my brain is bottled up inside my skull.

He is constant and He is alive and He is with us. Even when we misunderstand Him and we run, He will still pursue us and wait eagerly at the gate for our return.

Oh thank you Jesus. What a beautiful thing.

Joel 2:13 "Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love."

Back to Earth

Sometimes I forget that Christianity is more than the tallest church steeple and the prettiest Sunday clothes. I get caught up in the sweetness of notes sung by the choir and the whiteness of the paint along the foyer walls. Is the wine good? Is the bread soft enough to break? Have the organ tuned. Align the pews.

I am brought back to earth by the sound of a blue jay in the magnolia tree. It is the perfect hymn. The dew in the grass moistens my heels. The wind is rough against my face and it stirs the flower beds.

I am reminded by all this where the heart of God lies.

Not only in the caverns of well vacuumed sanctuaries that smell like your grandmother’s living room or in gaudy chapels where Michelangelo once stood. He is here among us.

In my home where my mom hums as she cooks dinner. Wafting through the aisles on the subway. Deep in the ICU of Memorial Hermann. He is close by during the monotonous routines we keep day by day. His sorrow rests on the hearth of my fireplace after I fight with my sister. He listens to my broken song echoing through the tile of the shower. He’s awake in the early lull of dawn before most of the population has thrown off their sheets and flipped their pancakes. At 3 a.m. when I am writhing with sadness and pain, tears puddling on my pillow, He is gentle with my soul. Arms cradling my body, He gives me the kind of peace that nations crave and mothers can conjure with the recipe of hot tea and the creak of a rocking chair.

Every second he is with us burning with love for our souls.

When my scalp is not clean and my church dress is wrinkled, I have a Father who jumps up at my entrance because He sees beyond the scalp and the dress and the soft bread and the taste of the wine during the Lord’s supper, His eyes see the souls behind the skin and the bones. He is in us when we ask Him to be. He is there at our beckoning call.

Zephaniah 3:17 

"The Lord your God is in our midst, a mighty One who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by His love; He will exult over you with loud singing."

The Illusion

Don’t give in to the illusion. The white picket fence life. The women on the front page of magazines. The next iPhone or android that you just have to have. There’s a prescription for how your life is supposed to look on the front pages of journals and books, on billboards and commercials. A model of who you’re destined to be on Instagram and snapchat and Facebook, recipes for how you’re expected to turn out, who you “should” be and how and when.

It’s nice to gaze at on your walls in pictures or in the windows of shops while you’re walking down the street, but it’s not the only way to live. We aren’t made to be the same. None of us are exhibits in a museum for others to gaze at through a glass window, disconnected and unmoving. We’re humans. The world feeds us this constant diet of what our lives need to become, and some of us just surrender. No more yielding to the collective hopes and aspirations of society; if they aren’t yours, find what’s pumping your heart and moving your muscles in the morning. Find God. Tell Him things. Anything. Release the pressures brought upon us by people who don’t care about the well-being and soon-to-come future in our lives.

What does your mind wander to when you’re alone? Talk about it, look around for it. Revive the healthy portion of your personality that has been lulled to sleep by the world. Sink into the mold you were born for.

I’m honestly talking to myself here. I get it. I have to remind myself every day, and I hope this encourages you. If the white picket fence life is for you, then go get some wood and paint, chop it up and put it around your house. This post is simple, it’s just about throwing out all the extras, the scraps that aren’t a part of your personality. Whatever God calls you to do. Do it.

He’s invested a bunch of oxygen and time and space into you and one day the oxygen and the time and the space will run out so just be who He made you to be. Wear the old dress your grandmother gave you because you love it. Speak up about your beliefs regarding utilitarian views in that one philosophy class you signed up for. If you’re a history nerd, then read all the dang history books in the library just because you like it. Every day, every year, people steal this precious, one in a million wealth of individuality that inhabits each and every one of us, the makeup of our hearts. The people who do that are replacing us with some man-made synthetic imitation of whatever they feel is perfect.

Those people are dumb. Do not listen to them. Save yourselves and be free.