Linchpins

A friend of mine said, "The Gospel is the story of God bringing his children home."

It is an ongoing story, of which we are aware especially at Christmastime. A thousand Decembers ago, the linchpin of God's story was pushed into the axle as a girl pushed God from her body.

The wheel of that story continues to turn as his children await his second and final coming, the climax our Author promised since the first few chapters. I love to page through the chapters leading up to Jesus' birth and look for the linchpins that God poked into the axles of his plan, keeping the wheel turning.

God chooses to bring his children home through a family when he promises Abram a lineage too great to count. Abram believes him. God makes a covenant with Abram and takes the responsibility of upholding both ends, thus lodging the linchpin into place. The wheel bumps over the ruts of Sarai's disbelief, long years of silence, and the couple's manipulation of beginning that family.

But the linchpin doesn't budge.

God brings his children home through a second barren woman, Rebekah, who gives Isaac twins. The second-born, the lesser son Jacob, is the linchpin that allows the wheel to rattle by favoritism and trickery and cowardice.

It is Jacob's ugly, unloved wife Leah whose fruitful womb conceives a host of sons, among whom is Judah, a linchpin of violence, godlessness, and incest. The wheel of God's story turns for five generations to Boaz, the strong linchpin that redeems the wheel from its road of corruption when he spreads the garment of his cloak over Ruth, promising to protect and care for her.

From the line of Boaz comes David, a new king, a new linchpin, a renewal of God's covenant to establish his son's throne forever. David builds a house for God, in conjunction with Samuel's prophecy:

"He is the one who will build a house for my name...I will be his father and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him."

From David's son Solomon come thirteen generations of mostly evil kings, of whom Jeremiah and Zechariah prophesy against, declaring woe to the shepherds who scatter God's flock.

The wheel of God's story appears jammed because of the rust of its linchpin. But God promises a new shepherd to gather his flock together.

He puts a new linchpin in place, and the first people to hear of it are shepherds watching their flocks at night.

That vulnerable baby is the shepherd to replace Israel's leaders. He is the sacrificed lamb given to Abraham in place of Isaac. He is firstborn God who became second-rate man.

Wrapped in garments in the stable, he is the garment that God spreads over us in promise of love and protection, the garment that was gambled away as he bled out, so you and I could come home.

He is the King to replace David when he withstood the flogging for which he did no wrong, endured his own father's love withheld, so you and I could become the home where he dwells.

The gospel is the ongoing story of God bringing his children home. Because of the linchpin of the first Christmas, our hearts become linchpins in the turning of that wheel.

Candlelit Windows

In the quiet of my car I drive down quiet, glowing streets. Christmas light-looking. I haven't done this since I was a little kid. Winding streets are bordered by white icicle-laced homes and trees ribboned with red and blue bulbs.
I slow to a stop in front of a white Colonial-style house. Tall and regal, it is unadorned except for the golden glow of a candle in each of the eight pane-glass windows. My throat closes off unexpectedly; my eyes--suddenly hot and wet. Something deep in my heart thrusts deeper. Roots?
I realize this is my first Christmas with a discovered heart. Nothing leaves it untouched, Christmas light-looking included. I can feel the roots inching their spindly fingers deeper into the soil as they drink, as I stare at the simple elegance of the house.
It is the idyllic setting of a Christmas home. It is straight out of a picture book of my childhood, Peter Spier's Christmas!.
It is Dad pointing out the illustrations to five or six tousle-headed children in footie pajamas.
It is belonging.
It is home.
Oh, Father, I want to see beauty in everything...
I notice the sky: black all around except for the horizon where the moon casts a whitish glow through the growing fog. It reminds me of a scripture quoted in a Christmas movie I just watched with friends: The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. The movie was a cheesy, ABC chic flick that I mustered behind because it was sentimental and nostalgic. It was predictable, whimsical, and the cause of much mocking, especially when the writer threw in John 1:5 (at the moment the two lovers finish decorating the house with Christmas lights).
Yet I loved it. It was another moment my eyes sparked with tears, because the script writer could hardly know the truth of that verse, yet captured precisely why we blanket our homes with white lights.
A friend once told me that a critic sees value in very little. I want to see the value in everything. In that ridiculous movie I saw beauty and feeling, romance and magic. I saw a longing for tradition and legacy, and a hope for the future.
I saw a longing to belong to someone and a longing for home.
I loved it because, in this discovered heart, I have found all of these longings satisfied in the heart of my Father, where the longings originate. When I discovered the heart of God, I found he isn't a critic.
That's why I want to see the value in everything. I want to go on a quest for beauty. I want to see and experience everything as if for the first or last time. I want whatever is in my Father's heart.
As I drive home, I realize why that house brought me to tears. This is the first Christmas that his heart is truly my home, and he has candles in the windows.

Maybe

Maybe it doesn't matter that I can't capture my heart with words. Maybe the heart is meant to surpass the mind, and to try to balance them on the same scale is like trying to level the bottom of a well with the surface of the earth, and then keep the water from spilling over into puddles.

Maybe if the heart causes groanings too deep for words, trying to speak the groans into cognisance will cause me to miss the pleasure of soaking in the deep. There are things too glorious for man to understand, and what causes us to grasp for it when it seems as fruitless as catching clouds? We talk ourselves in circles and after getting dizzy, after finding the tail is attached to our own behind, we start asking questions: the rhetorical, the theoretical, and logical. Gasping like a thirsty, salted sailor lost at sea--

Please...make...sense...

Maybe God is chuckling at us. Maybe his brow is creased and the corners of his eyes are tight because he is hurting, waiting, groaning with creation for the day when he can complete us, and maybe there will be no distinction between the top and bottom of a well. Maybe he is sighing because there is something better for us than understanding, and our trying to divine understanding is like trying to know your lifespan by the germy, crisscrossed lines on your palm.

Maybe trying to know it all is the part in us that tried to overthrow God in the Garden. Eat the fruit of understanding and maybe you will attain life. Maybe it is the part in us made in God's image and anticipating fulfillment. Maybe I will sit here all afternoon and scribble until my ink runs out, and sit back and reread my words and feel an ounce of satisfaction that I captured my inability to capture words so cleverly.

Maybe I will come close to knowing; maybe I could be Einstein or Decartes or Solomon and rise in the estimation of men. Maybe I am meant to fly, but I keep getting tripped up on the runway. At the end of my surmising, all I have is maybe.


May you, being rooted and grounded in love, know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Eph. 3

Froth

     The steamer hisses like a defensive cat, spitting froth up the sides of the metal pitcher. I pull the nozzle up gently and the foaming milk eases. For my third shift, the froth isn’t too shabby. I tap the espresso scoop to loosen the old grounds, refill and tamp the fine powder, crank the scoop and watch the filmy stream of coffee gurgle into the cup.

It's still a little surreal to be on this side of the counter. I was always the girl with the book bag, studying at the corner table, watching the baristas steam milk and drizzle chocolate, wearing plaid shirts and sipping coffee from ceramic mugs they probably molded themselves. It seemed so romantic. Probably too romantic to be true, I thought, and lowered my eyes to my book.

I tap the froth with a knife and pour milk into the espresso, topping it with two swaths of the white fluff; cap it and embrace with a Christmas paper sleeve, and relinquish the creation to its owner. Someone wants a soy latte, so I have to use the other steamer, which is fickle and likes to screech like a toddler who doesn’t know what she wants.

It’s a lot like me, actually. For many years my heart felt like gasket about to blow. It bubbled and churned with unpredictable undercurrents, until the pressure pitched at a too-high temperature and issued a shriek of frustration. Anyone standing nearby became the collateral of the spewed, scalding contents. My heart’s fickle mechanism made me flighty, flitting from one job to alight on another. One relationship to another. I didn’t know how to fix it, so I ignored it, and continued sitting at the corner table.

It was probably too romantic to be true, anyway.

The door opens, ushering in a gust of cold air and a familiar face. It’s Eli, a friend from church, here to get a cup of coffee from the new barista. Do I really get to call myself that? That privileged title claimed only by trendy, pottery-making, espresso-sipping college students in plaid shirts? I am grateful to him for coming. It’s physical evidence that I’m starting to belong. In the same way Dena asks when my shift is, and my writing friends meet at the corner table. In the same way Beth asks me to help her make sandwiches, and Han and I fill the backroom with laughter when I mess up counting tills.

Each one a safe nest for my flighty heart to rest.

Snow drifts outside the window and I shake candy cane bits onto drifts of whipped cream. In my typical impulsiveness I applied for this job and had my interview the next day. But before applying, I asked God what he thought. I think you will love it, he replied. It’s truly romantic, having a place to rest and hearts to belong to. Especially when the place smells like coffee and baked goodness, and God has fixed your fickle mechanism, and the hearts you belong to are teaching you how to froth correctly.

This Curiosity Called Pain

I’ve been contemplating this driving force of nature that simultaneously wrenches the earth and fuses it together. Pain, an anomaly that both constructs the heart into a watchtower and shrinks it into a hardened lump of matter until all that matters is the pain.

I know a man who drowns himself at the bottom of a bottle because of his pain.

I know a woman who is wounded with barbs, but instead of plucking them out so she may heal, she bristles like a porcupine to ward off future barbs.

You can get sucked into despair like a black hole and turn endlessly with no gravity to pull you back to ground.

 

I’ve been thinking that the solution to pain is not its absence, but hope. Hope, also an anomaly, is some sense of tangible intangibility that the pain will end. Pain becomes your greatest foe when there is not hope, because when pleasure is sucked from your surroundings and you are left with hopeless pain, what else is left to do but check out, or drink, or put a gun to your head?

 

I am grappling with my own pain. I let it in by the lake, when the sun glittered on the water and my eyes stung with tears and cold wind, and somehow I knew it would lead me to wholeness. Right now it follows me around, riding shotgun while I drive, keeping me awake at night, hovering while I clean and ever-looking for moments to thrust darts at my heart.

It’s been a long time since I experienced pain like this, but I embrace it afresh, because it makes me feel alive. It doesn’t make me grow resilient, or feel diminished. Rather, it heightens my awareness of the blood running through my veins, the throbbing of my heart.

Why does pain make me aware that I am living? Why do I feel a strange sense of thriving amidst it?

I’ve been surmising that the reason I have never been to the hole of despair is because of an eternal hope burning in my belly, a ball of light that never goes out, of which pain can never loom large enough to snuff. I’ve been imagining a world where pain didn’t exist, a world prior to sin’s birth. Pain was never the intention of God. He promises to come back and restore us to the perfection of Eden, to conquer pain with finality. I think this must be the eternal hope.

I stopped thinking. I asked Jesus why I feel alive in pain, why it doesn’t make me want to die.

You always say that where there is life, there I am. The life you feel in pain is me.

Of course. Isn’t that the first thing I do in my pain, cry out to God to come to me? I never realized, all those times I encountered pain, that he came to be in it. Life. Hope.

I am musing about a God who comes to dwell in my pain. Jesus, after all, is not unacquainted with it. He is the life in my sorrow of this world, and the hope of a world restored.

When You Grow Whiskers

I'm munching a carrot on the deck, reading a book in the sunshine when a young man comes out the front door of the neighbor's house. He's wearing read skinny jeans and has a backpack and a Gatorade, and looks at me as he comes down the steps.

I'm crunching the carrot like a horse because my jaw's gone a little slack, but I can't think of anything to say, so I just stare at him over the top of my book.

Connor? I want to blurt out, but it sounds rude even in my head. More what I want to say is, You have whiskers! but that's hardly any better.

He swigs from his Gatorade and heads down the street.

I sit for a full three minutes trying to mentally fill in a ten-year gap. Last time I saw Connor he was six years old. I was ten, the dirty, barefooted neighbor girl who would build forts in the forest behind the house and make slip 'n slides with a tarp and hose. Of all the boys on the block, Connor invited me to his sixth birthday party at Bunker Beach, where we crashed into each other's tubes in the wave pool and ate string cheese and drank juice boxes. His family moved away then, and only just came back to the house because his great-grandparents died.

And now he has whiskers!

I sit and muse about what a funny thing life is, but hardly get anywhere before another past-life friend is passing on the other side of street. Carl, wearing black socks to his calves and a shirt with a math symbol, was always a rather awkward kid who wore capes and built Legos with my brother Freeman. His family went to the church where my dad pastored. Anytime I see his mother at the grocery store or the library, I try to dodge her, because she talks so much. Mostly about her children, like which math class Carl is in or which science project won in 4H at the fair, and I listen politely and watch Carl stare at his feet, wondering why she won't let him say all this for himself.

Just after Carl passes, Brogan pulls up from work, grabbing shoes from her trunk and texting simultaneously as she goes up the driveway. She doesn't notice me watching her, smiling for the twenty years of friendship she encapsulates. She hasn't reached the door when little Abby Burns comes walking home from school, only she isn't so little anymore, probably fourteen, with thick blonde hair hanging nearly to her yoga pants. I remember all the evenings spent in her basement with the neighborhood girls, dressing up in old dance costumes for fashion shows, or playing round of Truth or Dare--those dramatic years of youth that were so feeling and so fear-filled.

Those were the years where we did not know our hearts, and our hearts were dying to be known.

Now I see past lives pass on the street with barely a glance of acknowledgment, each person absorbed in their own little world, a world constructed by where they've been the last ten years, and where they hope to be in ten. I was thinking today about eternity set in our hearts. How restless I have felt, being home, and isn't that the human condition, to always want to be where you're not?

Because this is not home.
This is the ten-year gap that will one day come to a close, and you'll run into yourself and think, "You have whiskers!"
I'm trying to wrap my mind around eternity. The fact that from the moment of conception, I am. Forever.
I will always exist.
Whether here, or in heaven, or on the perfected earth, I will never cease to exist. It's so astonishing I can only think about it for about thirty seconds before I have to stop.

Then I think about how, because of Jesus, I get to live, not just exist, and that living is an echo of the real thing in Eden, and a foreshadowing of the real thing to come again.
And how you can't live without your heart.
And when you find your heart is the echo of a Father's heart, your life feels like you've been six all along only to wake up one morning and find you've grown whiskers, and there's no ten-year gap to fill in. I think that must be why Jesus calls it "born again."

I've reached the stub of my carrot. A man jogs by and waves at me. Mike, from church.

I grin and wave back.

This Is Love

Nearly two weeks ago I left the hot, humid plains of Texas for the tree-pocketed basins of Minnesota, glorious in all her October chill and rusty-red leaves. The sun glitters on ten thousand lakes and filters through golden trees like portals to other worlds.

Did you know the sun is different here? If it were a kiss, in Texas it is a harsh, passionate embrace that you can't escape. Here it is faint, more like the memory of a kiss on my cheek.

Coming home is a kiss hello, somewhere between the passionate and faint caress.

Do you know what I love about God? He is always stirring in me that wherever my heart is, wherever he is, that is home. Makes goodbyes joyful. And it makes hellos continual.

(Do you know what else I love about God? He is rest in the midst of chaos. Eight weeks in Texas, packing, driving, two weeks of family and friends, adventures of city excursions and apple picking, coffee dates and healing conversations, little time to sleep, and a pressing need to breathe.
Jesus, I need rest!
It's not in sleep.
Jesus, I need rest!
It's not in coffee and journaling on the porch.
Jesus, I need rest!
It's not even in heart conversations. It's only in my love. 
Okay. Okay.

I love that he loves to give me himself when my little world is a blur.)

Coming home, I discovered that I didn't trust God's love (this was why he brought me to Texas). There was also a fear in me that I did not love him. At one point I asked him why he waited until I was twenty to bring me into heart living. I have been in an environment my whole life to live this way--why wait until now?

You would not have believed me that I love you.

My heart stirred uncomfortably. I didn't want to admit that was true. But the evidence that I didn't believe his love was leaking out all over my life--I was going to other people, experiences, and adventure for life and affection. And it just wasn't satisfying.

When he told me bluntly that I didn't trust his love, my heart was in line with the old habits of legalism. I wanted to fix my heart as if I was a broken laptop that just needed the operating system reinstalled. I wanted to prove that I loved him by severing all the things that might steal my love away. That age-old struggle of loving the gifts more than the Giver. There Satan came in with the accusation, You love X, Y, and Z, so you don't love God.

God, what am I supposed to do?

Don't do anything. Sit with me.

I simultaneously hate and love that answer.

As it turned out, there wasn't any time to try to fix my heart in the busyness of being home. We brought two friends with us from Texas and adventured around the city all week. Another thing I love about God is that he is always tilling up my heart. When he knows I'm ready, he pokes me into the plowed earth and waters me with truth.

I told Dad about my discoveries, that God is everything I hoped he would be--despite my struggle with having no other god before me. He said that the new covenant changes everything about idolatry.

Repeatedly in the Old Testament, Israel prostitutes herself to idols because she simply doesn't trust that God is enough to satisfy her longing for love. There was one king--David--who led them out of idolatry, and even he fell short of the ideal king. Then his greater Son came as the fulfillment of that ideal, saving his people from idols and giving them a new heart and the Holy Spirit so that the deepest longing in their heart is to love God first.

There isn't even a question of idolatry.

You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. I was drowning in it. No one had ever confirmed to me that the deepest longing of my heart is to love God. But Satan had certainly latched onto and twisted that to convince me for ten years that I can't be free of an idolatrous lifestyle. Just before my dad spoke, he spoke in my head, "What you have to say doesn't matter." When I received the truth in my spirit, I felt him flee in anger, ten years of weaving an incomplete understanding unraveled in one truth.

I am walking with new freedom, new power, new joy. He has filled in all the cracks of my foundation. Words are something we use to ascribe meaning to an experience, and the words "God loves me" have never held meaning before. In the days that followed, I have felt a tangible, wonderful weight of that truth. Not just in my head, not even just in my heart. I can feel it physically, like I am a tree in the apple orchard, bowed beneath the weight of so many good things.

I asked God what it is.

This is love.

The Spirit that Preys

This week I was assuaged by a spirit of Fear. Fear to speak, mostly. God has been confirming from one person to another that I have something to offer while I’m here. The relationships I’m forming have sunk their roots deep, and for a while, I was amazed at how much everyone seemed to like me. The majority of them are trying to convince me to stay here permanently. I hadn’t “done” anything to get them to like me, so I guess it’s a testament to the freedom the Father has moved me into. It’s like his aroma is following me around, or his Spirit is hovering around me.

Teri told me she saw me across the volleyball court and thought, “I would like to know her.”

Lauren and I have gone to the deep places in a week’s time. She prophesied that I would be a place of rest and safety for people, that I am needed in the community.

Jordan prayed prophecy over me without knowing me.

Michael shook my hand, saying, “You seem to me to be a pillar.”

They perceive the Spirit in me and are responding to him in relationship.

Satan’s vendetta is against me speaking power, life, and freedom into hearts of those I have come to love. Every time I was in a group of more than two or three with things to say, my spirit tripped up somewhere around my tongue—like it was curling up on itself. Accompanied were whispers of, “Don’t say that, it’s not loving,” or “You don’t know if that’s the right answer, so don’t give it,” or “You are young in this life, how can you offer that?”

I was afraid to rebuke, afraid to disagree, afraid to give answers unless it was assuredly safe to do so.

I caved again and again, until I saw the pattern and rebuked the spirit, which left.

I was speaking again with courage and honesty, and moved on.

 

But the spirit didn’t. The night before last, my host Nate was awakened at 1:30 after a demonic dream in which he cast a spirit out. (For a little context, I had been having bad dreams all week, accompanied by two episodes of sleep walking.) He felt the presence of the spirit in the house, but wherever he went, he heard it flitting in another room. He thought about waking me up to see if I had been sleep walking again. He prayed against it and went back to bed, telling us about it in the morning. I was sobered by the reality of a demonic presence, but felt Nate’s handling of it adequate.  

Last night, the spirit entered me. I can’t remember what I was dreaming, but it was something power-related, because when the spirit swooped down on me, I thought I was receiving spiritual gifting. It went into my feet and traveled up my legs in to my chest, which expanded as it filled. My body was cold and tingled all over, felt light and heady.

I sat up and got out of bed.

I was existing in another dimension, between dream sleep and consciousness.

I was aware, but I wasn’t in control.

I couldn’t see the room, was looking at something else which I can’t remember. The closest thing I can think of to describe it is looking through an infra-red camera lens. Shifting shadows, some sepia color.

I realized the spirit inside me wasn’t from God when I felt its malicious intent. I felt evil and bent on destruction.  

Then I came to consciousness. The room materialized around me, coming into focus. I remembered I was sleeping in the guest room in the Petty’s house in Conroe, Texas.

Then I realized a demon had just left me.

It was Fear preying on me, and my whole body was trembling in a cold sweat. I used the light of my phone and went upstairs. The house felt dark and contaminated. I could sense the spirit flitting around the perimeter of the room. So paralyzed, I couldn’t even think straight to pray against it. I tapped on Nate and Emily’s door. Sent a text to Nate—Are you up?

The time was 1:45am.

Fear was telling me not to wake the men—let them sleep, it whispered, they are so tired.

My spirit’s countering whisper came faintly—don’t be stupid! This is serious. You need to wake them up.

I shook Elijah awake, on the verge of tears.

“Is it morning?”

“No.” My voice sounded thin and strained. “Elijah, I think I encountered that spirit Nate heard last night.”

He got up and guided me back to my room where I had barely finished telling him what I experienced when Nate came in. “Are you alright?”

“That spirit you heard attempted to take possession of me.”

I told it all over again.

And then they prayed. Back and forth, rebuking the spirit, rebuking sin and agreements and footholds and interactions and anything that opened doors for Satan, countering curses set against the household, the rooms and the people. They prayed a blood covering over each of us and Jesus’ resurrection power to cast out demons from the premises.

As they prayed, the fear ebbed and my courage mounted, and soon I was able to pray for myself, sealing off places where Satan had gained access, renouncing the fear, declaring that I have things to give.

We offered up our hearts to God, repenting of sin, and surrendering all the areas of our hearts we were withholding—consciously or not—from him.

Nearly an hour later, God told me it was safe to rest.

I sang hymns until I fell asleep, deeply and unencumbered.

My friend Lauren believes that the places you are most assaulted are the places where you are most gifted. She has encouraged me to take my ever-present, memorable dream life to God to find out if it is a gifting he would use to speak to me and speak to others. Satan has succeeded the last fifteen years in tricking me into thinking my dreams are all physiological/psychological, and it has always been a place of vulnerability to him.

But the power I have in Christ over his dominion is real and actively battling.

I have consecrated this post to the Lord—from glory to glory I and my words move, invisible to the forces of darkness. I pray you will be sobered and awakened to the reality of warfare, and will rejoice with me that we have been given authority over the power of the enemy (Lk. 10:19).

His reign in my sleep has come to an end.

 

Surprise Beginnings

If I had to pick one attribute of God that I love most, I would pick his love for surprise. He is lavish in it, especially when I let him. The past eight months have been riddled with surprise, as if every week is my birthday. He pops out with a gift, and—to use my friend’s simile—a chocolate cake, and then he ices the cake, and then he tops it with a candle. Such is my life.

I’m writing from Texas, by the way. Surprise! I was supposed to be here for six days, having hitch-hiked with a friend on his way down to a reunion, to visit another friend and his sister’s family. Three days before I’m scheduled to leave, my friend’s brother calls and asks,

“What are you doing the next two months? Want to stay and nanny the kids?”

Six days turned into a possible sixty. Surprise, indeed.

Though not at all to God, who had been orchestrating all the details into line long before the decision was made. Suddenly I was not working, was freed from church responsibilities, and had the remainder of the summer wide open to his plans.

“Go,” he told me.

There is much about Texan culture that is easy to love—the southern hospitality, the “ya’ll”s and “bless your heart”s, Texas BBQ, even the heat. (Less so the constant perspiring, cockroaches, and generally gargantuan insects.) What has been harder to adjust to is the Texas church culture, which seems to tip a scale from strait-jacket Southern Baptist to spirit-hopping charismatics. I have more experience with the latter, and it has been a struggle to discern who is acting/speaking in truth and who is not. Signs and wonders, healings, prophecy, speaking in tongues—it’s the new normal.

I met a guy the other day who speaks in tongues. He gave me the rundown of his own experience, and what the Bible has to say about it, and I believe he is genuinely walking with God and operating from the Holy Spirit. But he took me slightly off guard when he said,

“We can talk about this all day, or we could pray.”

I realized he meant praying for me to speak in tongues. Two things collided in me: a hope that I would speak the language of the angels, and a fear that I would try and it would not happen. I felt like I was being vacuum-packed. Pressure to give into the spiritual culture, and living proof that God does answer that prayer (my friend sitting next to me comes from a similar background and experience, and God answered his prayer to speak in tongues a few weeks earlier).

Should I do it? Could I do it? Did I need to do it?

“I don’t know,” I said. And that was the truth.

Later, this young man observed that I was looking very contemplative. “What are you thinking?”

I had come to my decision. “I don’t want to do it. I know who God is and I know who I am, and I am learning to walk in the Spirit, but I don’t think I need to speak in tongues to experience intimacy. I asked God if I should, and he says, ‘Not right now.’”

It felt huge, claiming to know God, be intimate with him, and hear from him. But it was the most truthful part of my heart. Later I was told this guy appreciated my response.

 

God came to confirm all my claims in the evening. I went to Young Adults, a sort of church small group. During worship, a new acquaintance came to me with a word from God, which I was all too happy to receive. I will paraphrase what she said and insert what the Spirit said to mine in brackets, because every word was dead-on.

“God wants to tell you that you are full of purity and mercy [your desires are pure and your attitude is merciful to the people here who walk in falseness]. You are willing to go anywhere and do anything in following him, willing to give up your life in service, willing to be taught [you follow me out west and follow me down south and follow me in relationship and follow me in the everyday details of life].

“Though you might not have any schooling, he doesn’t care, because your desire is for him [I don’t care if you don’t know how to speak in tongues or can’t prophesy—you only care about knowing me, and I will reveal myself to you]. You are at peace in your heart, peace about who God is and who he has made you to be, and you are a place of safety for others to come and rest [be assured that you know who I am, rest in the identity I have stamped upon your forehead, and remember that I am sending my children to you because you are a safe place for them to find me].”

I was blown away. I started laughing and crying the minute she spoke. I sat down when she had finished and laughed and cried and thanked God, and he said, “I love you.” I saw me sitting in his lap with his arms around me, the way I might hold the little ones I nanny.

Then Jordan came up to me. I’d never met her before.

“I just had an image of Jesus coming up to you and kneeling before you,” she said. “He gives you a Valentine that says ‘be mine.’ I know it’s not Valentine’s Day, but he wants to romance you in ways you’ve never experienced.”

I grinned. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Jordan prayed, asking that I would hold Jesus’ hand when I walk down the street, and when I sit down, that I would sit in his lap.

I laughed even more. We’d seen the same image.

Surprise!

Oh Jesus, I love you. I was wondering why you wanted me to come to Texas. Now I see a confirmation of all the things I have come into, and a prediction of the future things you hold, which, I imagine, will come in varying degree of surprise.   

Giving Ear: Satan the Opportunist

Satan made an attempt on my spiritual life last night while I slept. Did you know he can enter our dreams? He thinks he is sabotaging, but God uses it to instruct our hearts. I've been reading a book by John Eldredge called Walking with God, a compilation of stories that demonstrate a lifestyle of being with God. Much of the book talks about spiritual warfare, which I have been experiencing in droves as God unearths the battle for my heart.

I read a portion about a dream Eldredge had in which he was imprisoned in his old job position. It was one of those heavy, disturbing dreams. The next morning at breakfast his son said, "I had the weirdest dream last night. I was part of a rescue team, and our mission was to rescue Dad from his old job."

Coincidence? I agree with Eldredge, not at all. He quotes Psalm 16: "I will bless the Lord who guides me; even at night my heart instructs me." If Satan's hosts are capable of assaulting us in the vulnerable state of sleep, it makes sense that God will also use dreams to instruct our hearts.

Here's what I dreamed:

I was with a group of strangers (apparently my friends) and ended up making out with one of the guys who had a girlfriend (this is the part where I try to cover by saying, "I had the weirdest dream last night"--hang with me). Wracked with guilt, I kept it to myself (a ploy of Satan, by the way). We all went to a theater, where a different guy, also spoken for, was attempting to touch me, and I was overwhelmed with temptation to let him.

His girlfriend noticed. And freaked in the middle of the theater.

He confessed his sins of infidelity, sending her into conniption. Then I stood up and basically began preaching to the audience, something like, "These are the secrets that keep us in bondage, the things we succumb to and are never freed from." I then confessed kissing the first guy and refused to be ruled by that shame and fear.

Someone from the audience, apparently very resistant, shouted, "Shut up and just go to church."

(Weird thing to say? I don't think so. Isn't that how we all operate in secret sin--shut up about it and hope our moral attendance is sufficient.)

"No!" I shouted back. "I don't want to just go to church. I want to live. I want to be free."

They all started laughing, and then I woke up with a stabbing pain in my right ear. It felt like a drill bit going into my skull through my eardrum. This pain I'd only experienced once before when I first tasted freedom. I listened to a friend talk into late hours and began to see the difference between truth and lies, and as I did, a spirit called Sabotage entered my ear with a fierce pain in an attempt to distract me physically. It was this pain that made me realize I was under attack.

You see, the dream was a construct of my old life. You will not know this, unless you are one of the few I have told, but I lived in sexual sin from age 13 to 16.
Secret, shameful, sabotage of my relationship with my Father.
I have had many sexual dreams, some so explicit it is impossible for my mind to create them. I'd attribute it to things that happened during the day, like a movie I watched, or physiological factors.

Now I realize Satan has been trying to tempt me back into that addiction through my sleep. Honestly, I don't know how I ever got out. It was the grace of God that freed me from that life, and his grace that has kept me from reverting.

So what did I do about the dream? Well I didn't ignore it this time. I asked God what it meant.

"You are still bound to that old life. Satan will not leave you alone until you tell him to."

I have been given Christ's power over spiritual enemies, power over my old life. So I prayed something like this:

Jesus, in your name, your holy blood, your death and resurrection, and the authority the Father has given you, I revoke the spirits of Sexual Temptation and Sabotage and bind them to hell where they cannot roam free because you hold those keys. I pull up the stake of my past lifestyle and break the agreement that I am not pure, because your blood covers me and now I wear your righteousness. I declare freedom from shame and guilt, and hold fast to the future you have promised me, one of purity. Thank you for instructing and protecting me in this dream.

When I finished, I realized the pain was gone from my ear. I am free.

This happenstance is in keeping with what God has been doing in my life--stripping away the patterns and habits of my old life, the old mode of thinking, the operation of moralism, so I can know his heart and live the life he originally designed.

Now we are getting to the battle against outside forces, the subtle attacks from Satan against my spirit and faith. As Eldredge says, Satan is an opportunist--it seems unfair, but the enemy doesn't play fair.

God's grace in this has made a world of difference.

My Father's Daughter

“Look not for the answers, but learn to love the questions themselves.” --Rainer Maria Rilke

 

The river knows its purpose--to move in the direction it was created for, sweeping this bend, bubbling over that rock, and soothing the souls of searching passersby. If the river could answer my question, it would tell me to move with the current.

The animals of the forest know their purpose. As they skitter from my path to the undergrowth, they forage for food and shelter, and safety from predators. If the animals of the forest could answer my question, they would tell me to survive.

My feet follow a beaten path down to the train tracks. I walk the ties to the horizon, under bridges and past construction workers and their machines. The train tracks know their purpose. To carry progress from one end of the world to the other, so the workers and machines can build and develop and advance. If the train tracks could answer my question, they would tell me to achieve.

Halfway down the tracks I get lonely and want a friend. So I call Moriah and tell her I wish she is with me, balancing along the other tie, talking about this journey. Would that she could answer my question, but she doesn’t pick up the phone.

I come to a switch in the tracks, flanked by a swamp where a cacophony of frogs calls my name. So I sit on the ties and wait. A man appears off a path on his bike and approaches, dismounting to cross the tracks.

“Hello,” I say. “How are you?”

“Fine.”

I am going to ask him what he thinks mankind’s purpose is, but he seems to know his, and it is getting on his bike and pedaling away. So I take the rail to the right, along the manicured golf course, where the crack of clubs shatters the silence and polo-shirted men find their purpose in retirement.

I find my Father at the bridge, where the Canadian Pacific Railway posts a sign forbidding trespassing on the tracks. I sit on the rail and my Father sits beside me, and we watch the geese preening in the overflow of the creek, listening to the birds gossip in the trees. My Father, knowing how much I love the sun, asks the clouds to part and bathe us in warmth. Its rays dance silver and green on the water and the tips of the worshipping trees.

“If you asked me the answer to your question,” he says, “I would tell you.”

“Father, what is my purpose?”

“To be my daughter,” he replies, “as you’ve known all along. Your purpose does not change, though your circumstances do. Like the river, though its banks erode and widen over time, the direction of its current does not change. Like the animals, whose environment changes with season, still survive. Like the train tracks, which rust through rain and snow, still take trains from beginning to end. Like friendship, though they come with goodbyes, the impact of the hello can never be undone. Though your life changes, and the future is unknown, untraveled, your purpose does not.”

“But what does that look like?” I ask. “Being your daughter?”

“Take my heart and fit it to yours. Make it unique. Then carry my love to the hearts of those who have forgotten their purpose. Though they build and achieve, though they hurry by on their bikes or in their cars, though they gorge themselves on recreation and thrills, they can never get away from the hunger in their hearts for fulfilled purpose.”

“I have other questions,” I say.

“I know. And you will learn to love them once you’ve realized that I’ve already answered the most important one.”

My Father kisses me with the sun, and I pack up my bag, turning away from the No Trespassing sign and all my questions, and retrace my steps toward the future.

The Heart of a Hindu

“I’m concerned he might have some romantic interest in you,” Dad told me in the privacy of the hallway.

It was the morning following Good Friday. Dad was referring to my Indian friend who came to the service and then our house for dinner. 

I was skeptical. He was old—mid sixties at least. Dad thought he was interested because he said, “You wait and wait and wait, and then BAM. It happens.”

I thought Ashok was referring to some spiritual revelation. Now I wasn’t so sure. My dad’s theory began to look more and more probable when I got a call from him later. In a panic, I didn’t answer but waited for him to leave a message.

“I was very glad to meet your parents last night,” he reported.

Uh-oh.

“I was wondering if you would like to go to lunch tomorrow after the service. Or I could bring a cake over to your house.”

Like a wedding cake? I had a graphic mental image of Ashok showing up on my deck with a tiered cake and a goat.

What had gone wrong? How could we have missed each other? Ashok and I were coming from completely opposite angles: I wanted nothing but for him to find the true God and he wanted…me. 

Anxiety began to curdle in my stomach, morphing into a fog of fear. I cried out to God in my confusion: Why did you let this happen? How will he come to want you if he only wants me? I wouldn't reproach myself for obeying the Spirit, no matter how silly I felt. I believed without a doubt that God had orchestrated our meeting for his purpose. 

In a crowded Dunn Brothers, I had pulled my laptop toward me—thus making more room at the little table—at the exact moment he looked at me. He gestured and sat down with his Wall Street Journal. I had my earphones in, but he started talking to me anyway.

I had been practicing listening to the Spirit, which usually meant entering some unknown situation, and with that, some amount of fear. So I listened. I learned he was Hindu and promised to buy a copy of the Gita. He gave me his number and, trying to find the balance between following the Spirit and not being naïve, I gave him my email.

To me it was a chance to learn about his view of God. To him it was a courtship invitation.

Two weeks passed in which I experienced Satan’s sabotage. Sickness, scheduling obstacles, sleepless nights, close-shaves while driving. I prayed for protection and fought the onslaught of fatigue.

Two Thursdays later we finally met and talked about his Hindu beliefs. I contrasted them with mine, showing how we actually didn’t believe in the same God. I invited him to the Easter weekend services and he readily agreed. I was pleased that he wanted to learn more about the God of the Bible. I suppose he was pleased that he had more time to spend with me.

When it became clear to me that Ashok was in it for a wife, my hopes dovetailed. I didn’t want to see him again. The spiritual attack ceased immediately, but my own disappointment and fear tempted me to withdraw. I prayed for God to guide me in clarifying our friendship.

I didn’t know what to say to him when I saw him at the Easter Sunday service.

He told me he thought about bringing me flowers. He asked to come to our home again.

I had to muddle my way through an explanation that I would be more comfortable sticking to the Gita over coffee. All morning I wrestled with the desire to run away. He is your guest. You must be in this, no matter how uncomfortable. All morning I asked God, What are you doing with this? How do I go forward?

Imagine my relief when my mom reported that Ashok told her he didn’t realize how young I was (my age came up in a conversation) and certainly wouldn’t have thought of me that way if he had.

“I am looking for a wife,” he told her plainly. “I am looking for a wife like Grace.”

My heart grieved for his loneliness. I remembered spotting a longing in his eyes that first meeting. It was a longing for relationship. And I know the relationship that can fulfill that longing.

In that moment, I felt the Spirit prodding me: Are you going to retreat in fear? Are you going to withdraw your friendship for social decorum's sake? Are you going to reject his soul simply because you are a little uncomfortable? 

I had my answer. 

Snowboarding: Slopes, Spills, and Sitting Ducks

Leading up to my first snowboarding experience, people kept telling me how hard it was. “Try skiing,” they suggested. “It’s easier.” 

Not one person told me I could do it. 

So I set out to prove to myself that my attraction to the sport in general (or was it Shaun White?) might merit some natural skill. I’m standing at the bottom of Wild Mountain slopes, looking like an Oompa Loompa in my oversized snow pants, trying to strap the board on when Han says, “Grace, you’re putting the board on backwards.” It was the perfect start to a day of mishaps.

Eventually I got in forwards, but led with my right foot (goofy style) as I was copying Elijah and Andrew. Because I first led with my right foot, I found I couldn’t switch to my left, so spent the day taking the lifts with goofy footing and riding the slopes with regular. Honestly, the freakiest part of snowboarding is the lifts. One of the five guys in the group started a running joke that every time the ski lift stopped, I must have fallen getting off. “Grace is holding up the line again!” (As it happened, I never caused the ski lift to stop, even though I botched nearly every dismount.)  

If there’s one word to describe my snowboarding experience, it would be vulnerable. 

I was expecting it to be hard, I was expecting to succeed, and I was expecting to have fun—all three of which happened. What I was not anticipating was for my being (heart? pride?) to feel as shredded as my body by five o’clock.

Makes sense upon reflection. I’ve never met a person who jumps at opportunities to feel stupid, inadequate, and needy. I’ve met many people who avoid trying new things for that very reason. I hadn’t passed the initial strapping of the board when I realized I had to dispose of my pride. While I’m not afraid to ask for help, I prefer to do things independently. I relish a challenge, especially when someone thinks I should take the easy road. 

I also have a heart-idol—one that must be smashed every day if not every hour—of people’s approval. Without my desire to gain people’s approval, there would be no desire to overcome a challenge, prove everyone wrong. Neither could I walk away without proving to myself that I could do it. How those desires battled on the slopes! 

Every time I went down, my heart reminded me look how incapable you are. 

I was afraid to try anything bigger or harder than the kiddy slopes because I could barely control my board. I hated being out of control. I was not afraid of the slick ice or the risk or the jumps, but of the fact that I was inadequate to conquer them. I was afraid to let people see me fail. The warring desires and fears threatened to ruin my day.

I prayed, asking God to take the feelings away. He didn't. Instead He showed me how I live under them every day. Trying something new and difficult forced those feelings to the forefront of my awareness, but I was ruled by pride and approval as a lifestyle. My heart gave way like water breaching a dam. I surrendered the feelings to God and embraced the painful transparency of their absence.

Letting go of feeling like an inconvenience allowed me to let Andrew teach me how to stop, turn, and cut. He was patient, encouraging, helpful. Letting go of fearing failure allowed me to let Elijah take me on the terrain park and Double Black Diamond jumps. (I’m still trying to decide if I was giving into peer pressure, stupidity, or my desire to prove that I could do it. I couldn’t do the Diamond jumps, but as he said, once I tried the hard runs, the other hills would seem tame. He was right—I was freed from any fearful reserve.) 

Elijah knew all the right things to say. When I wiped out painfully on the terrain hill, frustrated to the point of tears, he didn’t pamper, or discourage, or even encourage—just cracked a joke. It reminded me that every snowboarder had once been where I was. Wiping out to the point of tears. Falling is the biggest part of learning the sport. A lesson in humility.

I dried my eyes, got on the board, and went down again. 

By the end, I had succeeded a few times in hitting all three jumps, and even the sloped wall at the bottom. Other boys aided me with the tow rope and gave me pointers. They didn’t act superior or scornful toward the nooby girl in the oversized snow pants. I bet they were all remembering what if felt like to have their pride scraped away by the ice.

By five, my body was so fatigued I could not go ten feet without spilling. But I was satisfied: I had succeeded in snowboarding, at least for a first-timer. However, it wasn’t the feeling of proving myself that I latched onto. Rather, it was the conquering of fear, learning perseverance, and surprisingly, that transparency which is more bruising than the ice and more freeing than the perfect run.

That afternoon caught me like an unexpected right hook to the jaw. In the shriveling fear of failure and ridicule, all I could do was depend on God. The act of snowboarding was really an act of smashing my idols. There was nothing I could do to remedy my inadequacy and neediness. I had to trust that God would protect me in my state of vulnerability. He proved Himself faithful. A peace blanketed my chaotic heart, a freedom to embrace the exposure and enjoy the ride.  

Isn’t that what He always intended? For His children to rest in His sufficiency? Didn’t Jesus come for my neediness? If I could feel such closeness with Him during an afternoon of snowboarding, I wonder what my life would look like if I lived every day in the grace of that vulnerability. I want to get to a place where I'm a sitting duck and anyone can take a potshot at me, and any wounds will simply remind me that I am not my own sufficiency. 

I have a feeling—just like the feeling of knowing I could snowboard—that if I did, God would take me on the ride of my life. 

At 20: Twenty Things I Would Tell My 15-Year-Old-Self

(In no particular order.)

1.      Never forget to experience God’s grace and live your namesake.

2.      The world will tell you who you must be, what you must do, how you must act (and all inverses). Live in the truth of who Jesus says you are, remembering that you cannot be any more righteous than you are by Him.

3.      Secure your heart so fully in God that you can offer it to anyone as they might need without fear of misuse.  

4.      Read, read, read.

5.      Do not let one disappointed love embitter your heart.

6.      Pursue the hearts of your siblings—you will need them.

7.      Take to heart the example of Jesus in private prayer, for that is the truest measure of your desire to know the Father and the truest demonstration of dependency on Him.

8.      Do not dampen your heart’s passion in conformity to people’s expectations of you.

9.      People will doubt your ability to “make it” as a writer; remember that writing is whatever you make of it.

10.  Forgive seventy times seven, and then again.

11.  Just remember, when you get that phone, you can never go back.

12.  Do not let two disappointed loves make you doubt.

13.  Know how to defend your faith.

14.  Don’t obsess over your outward appearance, for it will always demand more time, more energy, and more money. When you turn twenty, you will have to make up for lost time fashioning your character.

15.  Wait a few years to read Joshua Harris’ books.

16.  Do not obsess about what other people think of you, but be careful about how they perceive you, for upon that perception your reputation is established.

17.  Cultivate an appreciation for music and practice your guitar. Someday it will be a tremendous tool of expression and worship, if you know how to use it.

18.  Do not let three disappointed loves make you afraid.

19.  Ask Jesus to show you when you are being, and when you are being a moralist.

20.  Give yourself grace to make mistakes and wrong decisions. After all, there will be no twenty-year-old self to give you the right answers.