Heavenly discontent and divine addiction

I see a majestic house, hundreds of years old, still standing and holding life today even while it speaks of a time when elegance, grace, and honor were a part of daily life.

I see a maple perfectly suspended in that moment of fall fullness when its colors are so brilliantly alive but only a handful of leaves have drifted to cover the frozen grass beneath.

I hear a strain of music that, at the same time, takes away and gives back my breath.

I smell winter in the air for the first time, whispers of frost and cinnamon and pine and crisp, frozen brilliance even before it arrives in full.

I read a wholesome, brown-bread love story about old-fashioned honor and pursuit and values and patience and virtue and reward.

I sit inside, warm, safe, and surrounded by comfort while looking at rugged, age-old hills dusted with snow and wrapped around with clouds.

And my heart swells and I feel an urgency to breathe it all in, to gather it and save it and savor it before the moment is gone, and yet I am never quite quenched before the fleeting sensation flickers and slips out of my fingers, and I am left hungry. Deliciously hungry. Rightly hungry. Heavenly discontent.

"If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." -C.S. Lewis

Some days, I try desperately and repeatedly and in vain to be quenched now, within the confines of what this world can offer. Other days, I place all my hopes in things just beyond my reach: when I go to Africa, when I am married, when I have children... But these days, I embrace it. I breathe it in and let it fill me for a moment and remind me of my emptiness, meant to be filled by something so much greater. I take the wistful bursting of my heart and I turn to the One who both satisfies and stirs the hunger. The One who meets every need and every desire, but gives it back again, stronger, with a promise to meet it again. The One who overflows my heart and grows it and overflows it again.

I enter willingly into the cycle. An addiction? Sure, but if I'm going to be a slave to something, let it be the Creator of every beautiful sensation and the giver of every good gift. If I'm going to worship and depend on something, let it be the One who promises and performs, never giving a desire that He will not, one day, satisfy completely. May I never run from the Lover to the gift He has given, but instead appreciate the gift for what it is and enjoy it from the comfort of the arms of Love Himself. May I make my home in His arms and live from that place long before I go there at the end of this little life.

Newness

We are not what has gone before;
we are not what they have spoken
or believed
or failed to believe for us.
We are what is yet to come,
unfolding legacy,
revealing and realizing potential.
We are not bound
by the chains of generations,
but rather propelled onward
by the snapping of age-old bonds,
a slingshot into newness.

Psychology and/or faith?

As a dedicated Christian and a student of psychology and counseling, I am daily faced with a conflict. Much of Christian tradition shies away from the social sciences, claiming the sufficiency of Christ, while psychology tends to view faith as a sometimes-useful placebo, valuable for the mindsets it can create but containing no inherent truth. How am I to walk that line? As a person who believes in both the power of Christ and the usefulness of tested psychological theory and practice, and who believes that God is able and willing to both work through and transcend traditional counseling practices, is it possible to live in the balance of these two worldviews? As a person who will likely spend a lifetime practicing psychological counseling within the context of Christian ministry, I see it as necessary. Rather than choosing one and rejecting the other, I see the value in both. I see them as complementary, able to be combined for a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. And so I step with excitement into a combined field that has largely (and lamentably) been ignored thus far.

Flying

Come fly with Me,
Above all the old dreams we'll soar
on high, I
have for you
a dream waiting to come true
of marvelous stature
if you'll cast
off all the ballast of old dreams
holding you to the ground...
Let's go fly
and you'll come alive
if you fly with Me...
You and I
and you'll own the sky
if you come fly with Me

Oh for grace to trust Him more

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him
How I've proved Him o'er and o'er
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus
Oh for grace to trust Him more
-Louisa M.R. Stead

This one has been running through my head off and on for weeks. Actually, it's been running through my head off and on since I first heard it some number of years ago. On countless occasions, burdened in heart and unable to express what I feel, this has been my song.

I trust You, Jesus. I've tested and You've proven Your faithfulness time and time again. You're precious, Jesus. Give me the grace I need for more trust in You.

Yes, 'tis sweet to trust in Jesus
Just from sin and self to cease
Just from Jesus simply taking
Life and rest and joy and peace

Days like today, I long to set myself and my failings and worries and strivings all aside and just let Him fill me with all He offers-- life and rest and joy and peace, held out freely by a loving hand.

Another thought I often return to is from Thomas Browne:

If thou could'st empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell disinhabited,
Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf,
And say, 'This is not dead',
And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou art all replete with very thou
And hast such shrewd activity,
That when He comes, He says, 'This is enow
Unto itself-- 'twere better let it be,
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.'

I have a vague memory of writing or referring to this poem at some point in the past and having an argument arise over whether Christianity means dying to self in the sense of individuality and becoming an automaton, and whether there is any worth to such a practice. That is not the point that I (or, I think, Thomas Browne) want to make. Indeed, I would argue exactly the opposite, that truly following Jesus means truly coming into the fullness of your specific, God-given individuality. My point is this: if Jesus is life and rest and joy and peace, and I am, at the moment, frustration and worry and work and anxiety, how much would I love the grace to set myself aside, take His self up, and trust Him a little more!

60 Years

"Marry your best friend," my grandmother told me last year. "It works best if you do it that way. That's what we did."

My grandparents celebrated 60 years of marriage yesterday. I love that I have grown up with that expectation as the "norm" surrounding me. In a world where so few people make it through life without divorce directly affecting them somehow, I am blessed and thankful to have seen up close what a real marriage looks like. You marry someone for who they are and who you are at the ages of 22 and 23, but you stay married to them for (or sometimes in spite of, or with hope that they will get past) who they are at 35, at 50, at 80. My grandparents have faced the ins and outs of 60 years of life together. They have survived, hand in hand, through times of war and peace, of sickness and health, of bearing three girls and, nearly half a century later, burying one. They have prayed together, gardened together, fished together, and traveled together. They have chosen, every day for nearly 22,000 days, to share life with each other and to honor the commitment they made to each other and to God.

That's what I want. I want, after decades together, after youth has faded and the realities of life have set in, to still go for a walk hand in hand with my husband every Christmas morning. There will be challenges. Anyone is a fool who believes falling in love is all that is required to establish and maintain a family. But I want to find the gold that comes on the other side of refinement. I want to fall in love and then to spend a lifetime choosing love and seeing the fruit of that choice.

Happy anniversary, Grandma and Grandpa!

New leaves and new life

If I haven't written lately, it hasn't been for want of something to say. The past month has been a time of coming out of the survival mode necessary for making it through the desert and into a time of unparalleled life. How do I put into words the sensation of downpour on parched roots? Of life flowing through long-dry veins and unfurling new leaves and fast-ripening fruit? But I want to. If I could write about theories of knowing Jesus and His peace this past year, I can write now about the tangible press of His presence in my heart, His hands lifting up my head, the surprising joy of walking closely with Him and riding in the front seat of what He is doing in the world. More soon.