under siege

Do you ever have thoughts attack you, waylay you, nearly asphyxiate you with their constant proximity and weight? James 2. That's the one that finds me.


When I travel downtown.


Or to the grocery store.


On the way to school.


In city parks.


If I happen to catch a glimpse of the news.


When I see old photos, tell certain stories, or hold memories above the chasm of forgetfulness.


Words I innocently memorized in middle school to appease a teacher who never could have imagined how I would be tormented for what is turning into the rest of my life come back in torrents to flood a mind that is struggling to be made up.


What good is faith that has no deeds?
And again: If you say "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?


How is one supposed to function with words with weight like that pounding, throbbing... burning inside?


It does not matter how I choose to cope with whatever rhythm that pounding creates because the bottom line remains: I am not doing enough. My well-intended words exit my mouth only for those same phrases that always find me to take up residency in the space left over. What good is it...when you do nothing? 


It does not matter that I do not know what to do because those are hollow excuses and I have been burning with the weight of this challenge long enough now. Long enough to feel the urgency and long enough to be friends with despair as she echoes you aren't big enough and there is no way for you to be big enough.


I feel with sudden but thorough certainty the edges of the rabbit hole I stand above. There is a whole world down there; and, if I let myself fall, I may never come back. I will never be who I am right now and my eyes will never be able to see the world the way they do right now. And it is not a fear of being too small and too weak to handle the change (I am both of those for sure), but the knowledge that the way is shut once I enter. 


Did Alice ever really leave Wonderland entirely behind? Or did she take it with her everyday just behind her eyes like a filter or perhaps a buffer that used to exist between her and the world until everything changed?


It is knowing that I have absolutely no control who this will make me if I keep following my white rabbit. But the change is sure to be real, permanent, and terrifying. Oh yes, and I think good. But it is not the only rabbit hole I could choose to fall down. How do I know *THIS* is the one I want? Do I even get that choice? If I don't like it, can I choose another? All of that to say: how much do I give myself to homeless ministry? 


I already know the answers to all of those questions. Respectively: because it's bigger than me. Yes, but no: I already chose a long time ago. Yes and no again: it wont leave me the same even if I leave it. As much as I am allowed for as long as the season stays.


Somehow, these do not bring the comfort that we always expect of answers we do not yet have.

Airplanes & My Dentist

...I was definitely in the process of writing out this long post that I was not sure if I was going to post or not because it was starting to sound...gross. Not like gory or dirty. But gross in the sense that it was a list of complaints I had about life. I was itchy. I had lost my contentment and I was somewhere between giving up and into complacency ...and rebelling against all of my current confines.

Then school got out. Spring break started. I went to the dentist. And my dentist gave me a book. A children's book. Someday I will spend some introspective time on my love for stories and how I believe that children *need* quality stories, obvious myths and challenging legends, to grow up on; but today, just know that I love stories...good stories, real stories all messy and occasionally triumphant.

I am now the proud owner of Violet the Pilot. I was grinning so big that I know I looked like a fool with half my mouth numb from the Novocaine; but I couldn't care in that moment. I am, however, impressed that Dr. Bennett managed not to laugh at me. Instead, she just told me that she believed in supporting strong women with dreams and that the book was her daughter's favorite. I do not have a clue why she gave it to me. We had talked about it while she was drilling on me, but still...she didn't have to do that. And she could not have known what it would have meant to me.

All I want to do is fly...so I joke about leaving everything to go do it and most of the time, I am joking. And then there are times when I do not understand why things must fall in the order that I have agreed to and anything short of leaving to go enroll in flight school is either cowardice or a fool's hope. It is this fire that burns at me and I wonder if it is ok to want something this badly. Then it starts feeling really far away and I realize that I have thrown in my lot with God and airplanes...I do not really have anything outside of that in regards to direction. It becomes a strange matter of fear and trust and one step at a time with the immediate potential to overwhelm me.

Now, the Novocaine is gone and I am so sore...too sore to smile as large as I would like. But I am happy and I know that I am known and loved in a way that I could never deserve to be...in a way that I would not even know how to ask for. I do not know how life will work out this week or tomorrow much less those after should they come, but I hope I can be the person my dentist seems to think I am.

Hurt vs. Harm

I've found myself in this place where the future is so far out of my control that I just have to trust that the God in control isn't sadistic because otherwise...I'm out of luck. I keep coming back (a bit unwillingly) to the ageless Christian response to the future: Jeremiah 29:11. I have brushed it off and tried to push it away. It's in the Bible...I say I believe the Bible, but I really just do not know where to put that.

God has asked plenty of people around me to walk through some terribly difficult things...things no one in their right mind asks to experience. It was His plan...and quite honestly, it sucked. No one can deny that it was just not a lot of fun for them to go through that, and God definitely asked them too. Because they are of older and better faith than I, they did it; but it hurt.

Finally, after I'm not quite sure how much burying, running, hiding and just about every other form of avoidance, I made peace with that bit. God promises that His plans are not to harm you. This is not a statement about pain. Instead, it is about damage.

It will hurt. It will suck. It will be just shy of unbearably difficult. But it will be good. It will not destroy you nor will it leave you paralyzed under a weight that traps you. His plans are for freedom and for hope. And we should not confuse the cost of those with the outcome. He gives us enough and makes us new.