Sitting in the Snow

It’s snowing right now. And this snow is everything that snow should be… peaceful and beautiful and abundant. This snow is EXACTLY what I needed tonight.

This week has left me physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. Work kind of sucks right now… and I hate the fact that my mother is not around for my 25th birthday (and Christmas). Once I got some alone time tonight, I spent a lot of time crying.

Eventually, I decided to go outside and watch the snow. I layered up, grabbed some socks, gloves, and a blanket, and curled up in the partially shielded corner just outside our door.

… INCREDIBLE. It was so stilling… so calming. I didn’t cry. I just rested. I just sat there… at peace… loving the Lord.

Eventually, I fell asleep. That’s how soothing the whole thing was. When I woke up, I just kept watching. Just kept resting. Just kept letting Him love me and letting Him be my comforter.

I really do love snow.

Plowed Over by the Grief Train

So… I knew I was sitting on the tracks. I knew the trains came and went at irregular times. But I didn’t see or hear the high-speed train that was coming at me today until it had completely spattered me in little bits across the tracks and the surrounding field.

Last night, I had a dream about my mom. She wasn’t in the dream, but her death was. The way in which it happened in the dream was fairly different from what happened in reality… but it really hurt.

I woke up and was painfully aware of one reality. I am so upset that I never got to say goodbye. I mean, I knew that this bothered me. Of course it did. But I didn’t realize how angry I was at the fact that I didn’t get to see her just one more time.

It was about 9:00. My alarm was supposed to be going off in about 40 minutes. I had a minute or two of transitioning from that waking-up stupor in which I was able to translate the emotions of my dream into the context of reality. I had this futile, fleeting hope that I might just fall back asleep.

And then it began… another session of squirming, gasping, sobbing, tossing, turning, clawing and writhing under the pain of it all.

And it didn’t stop.

Humility and False Humility

I mean this more than my elementary words can adequately communicate, but… humility and false humility are such different creatures.

I’ve experienced it in other people. As I continue to grow and mature, the two seem to become more and more distinguishable. I don’t begin to imagine that my discernment is anywhere near perfection, but the distinctions are becoming more and more defined as I open my eyes and see what is around me. One makes you kind of cringe and the other has an ability to touch you in a deep way. Humility is beautiful. Our hearts were made to respond to beauty.

To see a man capable of acknowledging his weakness and need. To see a man capable of walking in the strengths of the man God has made him without constantly trying to belittle the work which the Lord is perfecting in him. To see a man who knows he falls short. To see a man who knows that he is created in the image of God and that his life is a reflection of that strength and beauty. To see a man who can fail well and succeed well. To see a man who is responsive to the Lord and living in reality.

Another Season of Tears?

(Disclaimer: I typed this very fast and without any preplanning or careful consideration of what I was saying. I just started typing and stopped when I stopped. I kind of quickly skimmed it, pre-posting… but I am up past my bedtime and NEED to go to sleep. I feel ok just posting it anyway. But… read at your own risk.) 

Of God: Abounding in Steadfast Love

So, in my “Of Man…” post, I explained how my pain and frustrations with a friend led me to a place of worship and gratitude.

This primarily happened in two ways:

Sufficient Grace, Patience , and Faithfulness.

As I struggle to choose rightly and keep my heart open, I find myself grateful for His leadership and the grace He has given to enable me to stand. It is a struggle, but I can succeed… because He has made a way. And I am thankful for His faithfulness. The fact that I can trust Him with my heart and simply rest in Him, rather than scramble to put up walls to try to defend myself. Resting in the Lord is a very peaceful place to be.

I love His mercy. I love the way that He gently leads me. Though I struggle, He is committed to working perfection in me.

Also, as I struggle to continue to choose love, I am awed by the way that He continually loves me in my worst moments of unfaithfulness and inconsistency. I am thankful for His patient love.

Contrast — His love is NOT wavering or inconsistent

Something Stuart Said

We had our weekly night watch meeting last night and something that Stuart said really hit me. (That guy can be a genius sometimes. He’s an INTJ, you know. INTJ’s are like… brilliant. They call us them “Masterminds”.)

Stuart was talking about joy. He said that true joy only comes with the presence of God. We can’t conjure it up. We can’t fake it. True joy is the result of the Holy Spirit… God’s nearness… His delight in us… and so on.

As I sat there considering the things he was saying, I realized something about the last two and a half months of my life.

Since my mother passed away, I have discovered a peace and a joy unlike anything I have ever known before. It seems odd. Almost sick, actually. How can I have such an amazing joy when something so unbelievably heartbreaking has just happened? How can I be so at peace when it feels like everything around me (circumstantially) has been violently shaken, leaving only broken shards of what once seemed so solid, stable, and constant?

Loving the Mountains

Right now, I am sitting in beautiful Colorado. Sarah Stroer and I are just north of Denver with a beautiful view of the Front Range from her mom’s deck. Tomorrow, we are headed to Steamboat… where we will be surrounded by the mountains.

This trip was very last minute… and an incredible blessing. Sarah’s dad offered to fly us out to Colorado to spent a few days with him in Steamboat and a few days with Sarah’s mom in Longmont.

I don’t even know how to begin to express how grateful I am for this trip. It is so timely and so perfect. Especially as I am walking through the recent loss of my mother.

Eek!

I’m not sure that I am ready to head back to Kansas City on Wednesday. It feels too soon.

On the one hand, I really miss IHOP. I miss my community… I miss the prayer room. I miss doing what we do every day. The return seems long-overdue.

On the other hand, I am rather terrified. Going back to Kansas City is going to be hard. Really hard. And I don’t want to leave Texas yet. I don’t want to stop spending time with my dad. I don’t want to leave the safety and solitude that I have finally found here in the last few days.

At least I’m used to it

Over the last several months, I have become quite accustomed to crying. Previously, I simply wasn’t a crier. Tears were rare. Over the last year, however, this fact about me has completely changed. For a while, I was actually counting the number of days I DIDN’T cry because they were so infrequent.

In that time, my heart has been opening up in amazing ways. I feel more. I’m not as deadened and detached emotionally as I was most of my life. I feel everything more… both good and bad. It has been a tenderizing and a reawakening of my heart. I experience God more truly. I love more deeply. And I receive in ways that I could not before.

Had none of this changed, I don’t know what the last two weeks would have looked like. Perhaps I would have been more numb and detached. Perhaps I would have pushed the pain away and left it hidden and rotting somewhere deep inside… to be dealt with much further down the road in a significantly messier healing process.

I don’t know what I’m doing!

It’s as plain and simple as that… when it comes to writing blogs, I am utterly clueless.

I’m quite skilled in the art of rambling. (Well, experienced, at least.) But a good blog cannot truly be synonymous with rambling. (Not that most of what I refer to as rambling truly fits the description either. I don’t like wasting my time with idle words. Even when there is no apparent or explicit point to my words, there is always a symbolic purpose behind my long-winded excursions into randomness. My writings can tend to have rather a wandering nature about them, though.)