Our longings are made for beauty.
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One morning last school year, I pulled my van of kids into the school drop-off and noticed someone I hadn’t seen in a while. As I attempted to wave, I missed the fact that my foot had not fully engaged the brake. I crashed into a pole that helps support the awning in front of the school. I scanned the area and let out a breath. Minimal damage. Everyone’s okay. From the passenger seat, my daughter gave a flat stare. Then she broke into a smile and informed me she’d be giving Daddy a full report. After I waved off Amayah’s remark, backed up and double-checked that the van was in park, I stepped out to apologize to the school principal who witnessed my mishap. He assured me everything was fine. He just wanted to know if I was okay. Thankfully, everybody was safe and the pole was not bent out of shape. I couldn’t say the same for the bumper on my van. In the words of Amayah, it has a black eye now. Compared to other incidents in my van, I knew this didn’t amount to more than a blip. Leaving the school that day, I did my best to drive with more care. I also wasn’t surprised it happened. While I drove, I imagined what the conversation might be like at dinner and half-smiled. Doesn’t it sound like something I would do? I recalled other driving mistakes I’ve made. My worst blunders happened on days when everything else was going wrong already. Shame piled on shame. I try not to repeat those days. For weeks after my incident in the school drop-off, I got plenty of reminders from Amayah. “Watch out for poles, Mom!” Friends and teachers have asked her about that day, so she has more than one reason to keep an eye on my driving. Several months and a summer break have passed since then. School is back in swing. The second day of the school year, I turned into the school drop-off and managed to keep things peaceful between me and the pole. I pulled up beside it and stopped in line. Within seconds, the van in front of me started backing up in my direction. While I racked my brain for how to respond, he crashed into me. Amayah tapped my arm and spoke with amazement. “I’ll tell Daddy…this one is not your fault!” The man parked and stepped out of the car with drooped shoulders. He looked defeated. With a mess of hair partly hidden by his ballcap, his outfit looked as thrown together as mine. He was deeply apologetic. He wanted to make sure I knew he wasn’t going anywhere, and intended to take care of the damages. His voice wavered and cracked. His eyes looked heavy—like the eyes of someone who could barely hold it together with the one-more-thing to go wrong. While he spoke, I felt deeply conscious of the pole just a few feet away. I told him how I’d already damaged my van. He expressed more concern and eventually gratitude. Coming away from the interaction, I felt less alone in my flawed humanity. I thought of times when I’ve beat myself up over mistakes, feeling like the only one in the world who could be so dumb. When I feel burdened by the weight of my inadequacies, people like the dad at the school drop-off may feel the same heavy load. It struck me how, as imperfect as it may be, we serve each other best when we show up to life. When I feel like a failure, I tend to want to hide away from life. The purpose of sharing myself with others becomes something hard to imagine. I become convinced I’ll be a bother. But on this specific day, I felt encouraged in meeting a man who crashed his car into mine. I saw his humanity and it widened my hope… I am not the only one who is human. This confounds every reason I give for retreating from life when doubts flood me. On my drive into town, I wanted to step into community with trust in God's all-knowing plan. I’ll keep doing my best to watch out for poles. However, even if I accidentally crash along the way, there is more to the story. God’s love is bigger than any human mistake and is able to use each flaw to share the goodness of His grace. ******* This post coincides with point number two in the guide available below. It also connects with the theme of chapter two in my new book, Stepping Home. Available October 14th!
It was the glare of the sun off the icy surface of the pond that held my fancy. My eldest girl and little boy were pushing their toes against the edge to test the strength of the ice. Melting as it was, none of us had ever seen the pond out back of the house sit so frozen. It was new and delightful. Their giggles and awe were the soundtrack, with the glare of the sun freezing the moment too, like a dream. A hand reaching for mine. A question that remembers me, as if the Author of the story stepped in to tap a shoulder, show a smile, invite a heart like a dare - do you trust me? When so much in life feels bleak, that’s when my imagination can feel most eager to come alive , to catch the light and dream of what it’s saying. Lately, it’s a wondering question that keeps bringing itself back to my attention. Is this design on purpose? Maybe the imagination knows that it is a gift that was God-intended to help us hold onto hope for whatever it is that God is doing with the story? And when we’re most discouraged, is that where the imagination knows it has a role to play in helping us to imagine why we could still be hopeful? Perhaps imagination is most deeply intended as a beautiful gift meant to help a heart find hope. Maybe it’s a place longing to point to a God who is able to do more than all we could ask or think. For how would we think to ask for anything, if we could not first imagine the idea that God hears our asking and longs to meet us? And yet I know how much deceit likes to befriend my imagination, as if God’s own enemy wants to possess and distort his good creation. For my heart knows the path to be excruciating, when the story of life is imagined in a way that keeps one deceived about reality, not seeing what is really true inside of actual life. Imagining away the truth of what is real, has kept this heart stuck for seasons too long, exhausting itself for false kinds of hopes. And too, this heart has imagined away such good and real gifts, when its attention was most drawn to the gifts it didn’t have. It was a kind soul who first helped me see how I had imagined away the reality of so many different kinds of love in my life. How much beauty in the world can be imagined away for the sake of what we’re afraid to lose. Arresting is the lure to imagine the worst inside another if it can keep us in the comfort of the self-protections we know. In all the ways deceit longs to befriend our creative minds, perhaps all along what it’s most wanting is to interfere with the way we meet God. At its worst, my imagination would love for me to leave this present moment - the very place where God is waiting to meet me. And at its deepest root, deceit loves to tempt me to imagine God to be someone other than who He truly is… even if it’s in the most subtle of ways. For if I trust that God is as good a Shepherd as He promises to be, why would I need false hopes, false narratives, or preoccupation with what is missing? If I can trust God to be the God who provides, why would I need to imagine away the places in my heart that need care and support and healing for broken things? If I can trust that God is the same Love He says He is, who desires good for me, and is a safe place for all of me to come just as I am, why would I need to pretend away the worst in me, or imagine the worst inside my neighbor? Perhaps we are human with imaginations that are broken. Perhaps we all know this plight. We forget, and again we forget, how to imagine hope and beauty in light of our true God. And perhaps a shared humanity is the best gift we have to help imagine a tender world inside each other beyond what we can see. Maybe Love Himself knows each of us in the place where we are all children in need of the most tender Love. Perhaps a shared humanity is where He longs to meet us, a Love in flesh who lovingly wore this skin, grew into it, and cared for it as He cares for us. Imagine Him. See the truth of how He came for sinners (Luke 5:32), feel the truth of how He loved in flesh, and imagine how He looks at us. Maybe a broken imagination renews with healing hope every time it imagines the truth of Who He is. Maybe in the light of a loving Father who restores what things were made for, a broken imagination could rest so deep that it longs to hold rhythms of renewing in all of who He is. I’d dare believe it’s true, that imagination is a beautiful gift meant to help a heart find hope. So glare of Light, catch us up. A hand reaching out. A question that remembers us like a compassionate Author. Do you trust me? “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Eph. 3:20-21. A prayer : Father, give us the grace to turn our imaginations into all of the Light of Who you are. Surprise us with the beauty of the glory of Christ and with it's imperfect, yet lovely reflection in Your beloved church. Practice : Read the stories of the Gospels and let yourself imagine that you are one who Jesus befriends and heals. Imagine how He looks at you, speaks to you, cares for you. Practice using your imagination to connect with your Savior. Consider ways deceit may be wanting to distort what is good and beautiful in your imagination recently. How does the truth of who your Jesus is, change the narrative?
The page of the calendar had freshly turned to November when I zipped up my boots on a cloudy light morning to wander through the evergreens behind the house so I could feel it as real. For it’s one thing to trace across words about your Evergreen God and it is another to step under the limbs of the cypress trees and touch them and take in their scent and remember the One who courts your soul faithfully holding out His branches through every season, like an Evergreen who relentlessly holds out His arms for a heart who forgets how deep she needs them alone. (Hos. 14:8, ESV) And there before the evergreen, a heart could still quiet, a heart that longs for evergreen peace. It was thirst for the quiet that brought me to sit, rest by the water, where the wind had already come to play gentle with the leaves. Almost still, yet moving. It brought them slow, one by one, from the trees to touch down on the water and follow its soft turning. All was still, yet stirring on, as if every last thing was held. As if a heart could trust that while it is resting still, all of the pieces are held, carried along, by a God who has already purposed to work every last thing for good, for those who love Him. The stillness of the water can bring springs up from the soul, to fall down a face and bring relief for everything that the heart has been holding. It can soothe a soul quiet in a world that is all so tenderly held in the mystery of a Love that is beyond our understanding. And when a mind lets go of its smarts enough to simply rest down into what is, a world and a life that is so terrible, so beautiful that it is far beyond the limits of your understanding or control is the most astounding gift to get to be part of after all. It was after the sun set that day that the words found me. “As [Jesus] approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.” Luke 19:41-42, NIV If you had only known what would bring you peace… Sometimes it can feel as if peace keeps flying away, and maybe if you just fight hard enough, say enough words, hold your ground enough, it will bring peace back to you somehow. Sometimes it can feel as if life keeps asking you to step through a doorway that feels like the absolute opposite direction of peace or anything right and everything inside you wants to slam the door. And when Jesus looked over Jerusalem and spoke those words, He knew what was coming (Lk. 19:43-44), how Jerusalem was getting ready to slam a door as if it would bring them peace. Yet Jesus knew, with a heart that churned in ache for them, that this would be their destruction. For they were more concerned over what looked wrong out there, than they were concerned with considering their hearts. Jerusalem wanted peace. And Jesus longed for them to know peace too. The deepest core of what they desired - peace - was the very same thing that Jesus desired for them. Yet, as readily as it was available, Jerusalem wouldn’t have eyes to see the Way that would truly bring them peace. And the image of Jesus’ broken weeping remains in Scripture with longing invitation to all who want peace. Here is a friend, a brother, who is not at war with our desiring hearts, but rather is broken with anguish when our trust in Him fails and we allow our desires to become distorted and twisted by fear into something that could never bring us what we most deeply want. It was Jesus’ Love, broken in longing for our own confused hearts, that carried Him to step through a doorway that felt like the opposite direction of peace or anything right and involved painful separation from His own Father. For the joy set before Him, Jesus chose the way of peace and stretched out His arms in the pain. Those arms stretched out are branches always green with the promise of life and a place where you will never once be without a friend, closer than a brother, who perfectly understands you without fail. While there are many ways we could go in this life and everyone of them will come with pain, here is the gift of an evergreen pain that comes with a promise always alive. And these evergreen trees that we can still live and breathe in the presence of promise us that the gift is here today. Until life passes, it asks us, always, which hard path we’ll choose, and heaven waits for us, longs for us, to look up, reach for the fruit that feeds a heart, and whisper it from a heart unshrinking… Be my Evergreen God.