Unless there is a high probability of complete disaster, I don’t think you can call it real baking. What I just did: REAL.

Without my mom around to fill in the gaps, her cookbook can feel like more of a riddle book. “Here are the things you’ll need. Good luck turning them into something that resembles the above title.”

Fortunately, my mom had a great love for post-its. If we are lucky, we might find a post-it floating around in the loosely bound heap of stained pages, a post-it that contains clues for the journey.

Tonight’s recipe listed the ingredients and told us (in vague and general terms) what to do with the dough.

At first, I was a little bothered by the lack of information to get me to the dough stage. Fortunately, I knew enough about baking to start by mixing the dry ingredients, continue by cutting in the shortening, and conclude with the addition of the wet ingredients.

After I was pretty committed to my determined process, I found a magical post-it that told me to do exactly what I was already doing. The find was actually rather fortunate, though. It mentioned two ingredients that I had COMPLETELY OVERLOOKED. (Grease-spots all over the pages cause the ink from the reverse side to blend in with the ink on the facing side. I wasn’t being careless. The ingredients were hiding… in their clever camouflage. Not to mention, the rapidly-decaying cookbook necessitates delicate handling, making careful inspection rather tricky. OK… maybe I was being a little careless. Can I blame it on the fact that I was fairly emotional?)

The recipe called for 4.5 cups of flour. It’s probably a good idea to have at least 7 cups on hand if being able to actually work with the stuff is at all desirable. What kind of recipe requires rolling THE STICKIEST DOUGH IN THE WORLD? Oy.

The whole venture was perpetually on the brink of a total catastrophe. My “cat noises” were at an all-time high. And I ended the evening covered in flour. (I really need to invest in an apron. Or at least choose not to wear black.)

And I missed my mom like crazy the entire time. I wish she could have come in and laughed at me as I wrestled with the obstinate ingredients. (Or… ummm… to teach me how to persuade them to adopt a more cooperative posture.) I wish she was here to partake of the resulting super-yum when the timer went off. I wish she was here to congratulate me on my success.

I just wish she was here.

Today has been a miserable day. I know I’ve said this before, but the grieving process really doesn’t make ANY sense to me.

I’ve been occupied with some intense decluttering, simplifying, and letting go in the last few weeks. I guess I should have known how difficult it would be. I probably should have realized that I would be confronted with a million Mom things that were going to be really painful to contemplate releasing.

It’s amazing how difficult it can be to get rid of something that I have in any way associated with my mother.

Today was a big day. And I didn’t even realize it until I was curled up in the fetal position and bawling on the sound booth floor, leaving no one at my screens post.

On one of her last visits to Kansas City, my mom had spent a considerable amount of time hanging these little shelve things in my room. She had sketched out an entire layout for these shelves that were intended to house my Willow Tree figurines. A bunch of my friends (and my boyfriend, who was cooking for us that night) were over so that my mom and friends from Texas could get to know them a bit. We had great difficulty coaxing her to come and join us because she would not walk away from her project. She loved to express her love through giving and serving.

When I moved out of that room into the little basement apartment, I never took those shelves down. I couldn’t do it. So my incomplete wall of stuff decorated a chunk of Des and Jen’s room for the entire time that they lived in the house.

Well, we have a new roommate, now. And I realized that it was a bit ridiculous that pieces of my life are still residing in two bedrooms that I no longer physically occupy in our house. So, I took the shelves down today.

As I was boxing all of the little figurines, I found one that was still in its box. At the top of the box, stuck to the styrofoam, was a note from my mom.

Needless to say, my project for the day experienced a long delay. I couldn’t see a thing anymore, so I just stood there crying.

Fact: I have too much stuff. I value simplicity and the fasted lifestyle. There is a contradiction between my values and my circumstances. I need to let go of some things.

Fact: So many of my things have my mom attached to them. I want to hold on to every little bit of her that I still can.  The most important woman of my life is gone. How can I give up the tiny remnants of her life that surround me? It’s all that I have.

I’m still doing it. I’m not letting go of everything that I perhaps should, but I am letting go of little things here and there. And it is shredding my heart to pieces.

I just want her back in my life. It has been far too long.

I wanted to write a post about the things that are on my mind. I was going to call it “Grateful” because I am full of gratitude right now.

Then I realized that a lot of what was on my mind was really intimidating and I was scared. Change of plans: I was going to call it “Grateful & Scared”.

Then I realized that a lot of what was on my mind was…

I could keep going like this for a while. We’ll just stop there and sum it up with this: I am feeling A LOT of emotions right now. (I’m feeling. Let’s just pause for a moment to thank the Lord for that one. My heart is alive. So very alive. That wasn’t always true.)

When I said that I would stop there and sum it up, I didn’t mean to stop the entire post. At least I didn’t think that I did.

I started to write about the things that are on my mind.

I realized that this wasn’t stuff to blog about. Not yet.

I highlighted and deleted huge chunks of text.

I stopped and realized that there was nothing left but a play-by-play skeletal description of an event that was never allowed to… happen. Happening is to events as living is to organisms. It seems that there was no event after all.

The post could not bear witness, itself, to the fact that it nearly existed. It could not bear witness because it did not exist. Nonexistent anythings are nothing at all. Something must exist to truly be or do anything.

I judged it as right to leave this. I saw it fitting to leavesome evidence of a thing that nearly existed but was never allowed.

Here this is. And here that isn’t.

Or is it?

It has been 22 months since the worst night of my life. No, really… the worst night of my life.

I didn’t realize that it was the worst night of my life. I was just enjoying a night off with some friends. Audra Hartke, Sarah Stroer, Kirk Bryson and I were just sitting around Audra’s table and talking when I checked my phone. I had a message from my dad. Weird, that’s REALLY late for my dad to be calling me. My mom wasn’t doing well and we needed to pray for her. It startled me a little bit, but… surely it will be ok. Will it? I couldn’t get worked up about it… I had to just pray and trust. And so that’s what I did… I couldn’t stop praying or thinking about it. I was admittedly rather distracted from what everyone was talking about. I was more or less present, but it was constantly on my mind.

And then I got the devastating news.

February 12th, 2007, my mom passed away. Completely unexpected. When everything SEEMED to be going relatively well.

I have blogged about this a lot in the last 22 months. (Most of it can be found under the “loss” category.) It almost seems like there is nothing left to say. And still, I keep uncovering more pain and more grief, yet to be felt.

It always hurts. I don’t stop missing her.  But sometimes it becomes more painful than the average, day-to-day “my mom is gone” reality.

The last week or so has been especially hard. And, while certain elements of grieving still remain a mystery to me, it’s not too baffling to see why this has been an especially hard time.

The most obvious explanation for my hightened sensitivity to this pain is the simple fact that we’re in the middle of the holiday season. My mom loved Thanksgiving. She wasn’t here. My birthday is in 10 days… she won’t be here. (She was a pretty significant part of the day of my birth, I’d say.) Christmas is in 13 days. She won’t be here. None of it is the same without her.

My dad and I used to go shopping for my mom the day after thanksgiving. Now, we go shopping for her family instead. She’s not here to to receive gifts from us… and she’s also not here to do that Christmas shopping for them. Honestly, we do a terrible job of it. We don’t have a clue what we’re doing!

It has also been snowing. I can’t share that with her. I also can’t share that with one of my snow-loving best friends.

In the months following my mother’s death, this person proved to be an incredible friend to me. He understood grief, and he knew how to support me and how to give me space in the midst of it. Plus… he was just an enjoyable person to be around. The blessing of his friendship extended far beyond “being there for me” after I lost my mom. He is just a really great guy who loves well and who I enjoy a lot. And our friendship profoundly embodied the things that I value most in relationship. I could be myself with him, weakness and all. In fact, I was more easily myself when I was around this person than perhaps at any other time.

Friendships change. Circumstances change. Lives change. And, after months of a truly valuable friendship, we can no longer be friends. That doesn’t really need explanation. I know the story. He knows the story. The friends who most intimately know my life and my heart know the story. And some stories can’t be told in a blog.

In any case, that friendship is also lost. Like my mom was lost.

The final closing of the door on the friendship was actually very recently. And I know that it is a factor in the pain that I am feeling now.

The grief of losing my mom is intense painful by itself. The grief of losing my relationship with this friend is painful enough by itself.  It would be hard to believe how much time I have spent crying and aching and pleading for the ministry of the Comforter over either of those losses.

But the realities of how that friend stood by me in the months following my mother’s death and some of the remarkable things he did to serve me and bless me in that time somehow ties the two deep wells of pain together. Pain that seems as if it cannot be worsened is somehow multiplied when it is met by like pain.

Sometimes I wonder how I am going to keep going, in the midst of the pain. How I am going to continue to say yes to the Lord… how I am going to choose to keep my heart open and alive, rather than shutting down and numbing myself to the pain. How my eyes are possibly going to continue to function properly after crying like that. And then I see the leadership of the Lord and I am reminded of the indwelling Spirit… and I know that He will see me to the end.

I’ve heard it so many times: pain is an escort. And it is so true. I am sitting in a heap of manure… and it is proving to be an incredible fertilizer. A lot of really incredible things have been happening in my heart. And I know that it is worth it. God really does take terrible things and work them for good.

If you think about it, pray for me. (Like… right now… since you’re thinking about it… pray for me. 30-second prayers count!) I could obviously use a lot of that right now. Pain sucks.

Sometimes I wonder if it will ever become difficult, truly difficult, for me to shut down emotionally. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be so alive that I can’t so easily deaden myself.

More specifically, I wondered tonight.

In our worship team briefing tonight, we talked a bit about solitude and silence. (Popular topic, considering our two months of voluntary 12am-6am silence as a community.) We talked about the way that, in the place of solitude, you encounter your anger and your grief.

Anger and greif… ick. Not tonight. Please, not tonight. I’m too tired for this.

Near the beginning of the set, I was talking to the Holy Spirit and I told Him I didn’t want to encounter my grief right then. I told Him I didn’t want to cry that night. I immediately started crying.

It was too much. I shut it down… as quickly as possible. I then proceeded to do everything I could to keep from ACTUALLY praying (i mean… actually talking to God… my friend, my Father, my comforter… the one I talk to every day). I really didn’t want to cry. I really didn’t want to feel pain.

It was an immensely boring (and frustrating) set. I tried reciting my Hebrews memorization for a while. I tried doing a lot of things… just to distract myself from accidentally talking to God again.

I realized a lot of things tonight. I’ll give you 10:

1. I don’t love Him when I don’t feel pain. I can’t. The only way I don’t feel pain is when I choose not to feel. All the words that I sing become empty… hollow. They mean nothing. I remember when they meant something, but they are just words. Gratitude is gone. I cannot love God when I shut my heart down.

2, Hiding from the Holy Spirit is freaking impossible!!!

3. Just whispering the words or barely forming the though of “I miss her” causes a surge of pain to rise up within me. I don’t understand it. But there is still so much pain there. It still hurts so much. I miss my mom.

4, I really do want to feel. I really do want to love God. I really do want to have an open and alive heart. No matter how desperately I may plead with God that I don’t want to feel. I always end up repenting and confessing truth, in the end.

5. It’s still really easy to fall back into my old “kill the emotion!” habits.

6. I’m really confused. I don’t know how not to be hypersensitive and still have a functioning and alive heart. When someone tells me that I AM hypersensitive, my first instinct (which I fall into even unconsciously) is to shut my heart down and not feel anything. I don’t know what it means to be healthy.

7. I’m scared. Really scared.

8. I always laugh harder after I’ve REALLY cried things out for a while. It feels good.

9. I kind of said this already, but I really miss my mom.

10. There are a lot of painful things in life. A lot of them.

So… it was an interesting night. I did (after much successful pursuit of distraction and lengthy avoidance of the prayer room and, especially, of prayer) eventually stop and talk to God. I felt. It hurt. I cried.

And there’s PLENTY more where that came from.

Our community is ever in a state of flux. Perpetual, significant change is just a norm. The intensity and the facets of the seasons of transition ebb and flow. Sometimes there are simple, gradual changes. Sometimes there are huge changes like death and birth, people leaving the country, people leaving the NightWatch.

We seem to have passed into another one of those high-intensity transitional times again.

First, we have the circumstances of change:

The NightWatch schedule is changing for the first time in several years. We almost shifted a few sets around, several months ago, but that very quickly popped back to exactly what it had been for the last several years. We’ve had worship leaders change. We’ve had complete teams disolve and new teams start. But this is the first time in a VERY long time that the whole schedule is being rearranged. And I’m actually really excited about this change.

Two of my closest friends are leaving the NightWatch. Two of my closest friends… who I love and enjoy and spend a great deal of time with. In the past, I might have joined in with those who grieve as if our friends are dying or leaving the country, to never return. I know that our relationships will change, but I know that they are not completely leaving my life. I have peace about the change.

Perhaps death is what has sobered me to the impermanence and potential good of people leaving the NightWatch. Nights to days ISN’T permanant and irreversible. And their lives will continue, as will mine, and the movements of our lives will not be completely without intersection. Not like the aching emptiness of a life that ends and will never dance in and out of my own life again… until the day when everything changes and is restored and made new.

Death has also weighed in a lot in the last month or so. The kind of change that is utterly beyond our control and jolts everything out of place. Change that is not temporary, except in a far broader scale. Sometimes, the comfort of the resurrection isn’t comfort enough. Sometimes the groan for His return and His justice on the earth become so consuming that it seems impossible to keep going. But the same Spirit that groans within me and continues that perpetual cry for Jesus’ return is the Spirit that quickens me to life… filling me with joy and strength and courage to keep living… living fully.

In the week where death had already thrown everything into question and I was deeply wrestling through the “HOW LONG?” dialog that also appears in many of the Psalms, more death seemed to be around every corner. A couple lost their baby. The beloved Dr. Null passed away. Grief and loss spattered my already doubtful, grasping, desperate, and questioning existence. But His leadership is perfect and He continued to lead me through those murky waters. My hope waned and shifted, and it took on a completely new form once it has passed through those refining fires, but hope endured (or perhaps died and reemerged from) those flames.

New life is also an element of change in our community right now. Several of my friends are pregnant. While we are still months away from meeting these babies, God is already shaping their whole selves. Talk to the Lord about a baby who is not yet born and you begin to understand how real and alive they are in the Lord’s eyes… how much He already has in His heart for them. It’s so moving, as He shares glimpses into those lives. Not to mention the constant physical changes that are happening in the baby and even the woman’s own body. (Just ask any pregnant woman… she is well acquainted with steady change.)

My personal schedule and staff designation are also changing… praise the Lord. My days of operations staff are ending and I am returning to a full-time staff designation. This means that I get to spend more time in the prayer room. The prayer room kind of shifts into a higher level of priority again. I am SO excited about this change.

Our government is also in the midst of significant transition. Approaching elections and the leadership shift that follows. Shifting economy and nationwide financial panic. Constantly changing international climate.

Even my relationship with Richard has recently seen significant transition. We’re still moving at a slow pace, but there are firsts in a relationship that naturally make things different after they have happened. Things like the first REAL fight (of a certain nature, at least)… where I was actually fully emotionally present in the midst of the conflict and the majority of our night off was consumed by tearful confrontation.

Let us not forget marriage. Tom and Natina are married, now. And I am going to three more weddings this month. Weddings are pretty significant transitions, if you ask me.

Also, beginning next week I will be teaching again. At least SORT OF teaching. I am partially teaching a class on the book of Daniel for a group of NightWatch Media Apprentices. We’ll meet for three hours, once a week, up until Christmas. I will be teaching about half of the material and facilitating discussion as we go through Allen Hood’s Daniel class. It’s exciting, but also drags me a bit out of my comfort zone again.

Too many things are shifting and changing right now to name them all. But you can surely see from the list that I have already given that there is a lot of transition in our community right now.

I am going to dedicate another post to my general feelings on change at this time.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am meeting this Silent Siege with excitement AND a little trepidation. (And it’s funny how similar excitement and trepidation can be.)

On one hand, I am in the middle of reading this REALLY obnoxious book called “Invitation to Silence and Solitude”. The book is actually quite phenomenal, it just stings a lot. As I am reading the book and seeking to develop these disciplines, I take the corporate invitation to silence as a welcome gift.

On the other hand, I am presently wrestling through some very intense things. Being alone in the silence with nothing but God, the accusations that are arising against Him, my own tossed-about emotions, and the deep wells of pain that I am stumbling upon is actually quite terrifying.

Something in me longs for distraction, anything that I might hide behind. Idle chatter… anything. Yet I know that I need to just press into this and fight it out until I come out fully surrendered and leaning on God. God seems pretty determined to work these things out in me… and I’m feeling rather hedged in at the moment. This Silent Siege being a pretty significant part of that hedging.

On top of that… we have the season of heightened grieving that I have recently found myself in. And, as it so happens, my mom died during the 90 Days of Consecration that I mentioned in my last post. I actually missed the first days of the consecration because I was home visiting my family. It was the last time that I saw my mom.

So… here I am… in a room full of people… in silence… in solitude… alone in my grief. Unsure about the things that are of utmost importance, unsure about God. Encountering pain that I cannot put into words. Crying a lot… in the silence… by myself.

I can’t stop talking to the Holy Spirit. I am so desperate for His counsel… His comfort… His instruction… His tangible nearness. I need to know what He knows… I need the knowledge of God, the fear of the Lord. I need Him to teach me what only He can teach me… I need him to communicate the love of God to me in a way that I can believe it, despite all of my doubt and confusion right now… despite the accusation that the world heaps against God. I need to know that He loves me like a mother. I need to know that I am not forsaken. I need to know that He hates death and hates wickedness. I need to know that Jesus REALLY is coming back and He REALLY is going to bring justice on the earth. I need to know that it’s true.

I have all of the ideas in my head. My experience of God cannot disprove those facts. But the accusation still persists.

I’ve believed before. You might even say that I believe it right now. But I certainly didn’t believe it (not really) several hours ago.

On top of that… we received some really terrible news tonight. More death… more loss. And there the news follows us… into the silence. Here I am… speachless and silent on the outside… but full of tumult, a violently raging storm on the inside. As if I wasn’t already struggling to believe truth about God.

I didn’t sing much tonight. All of the words felt like a lie. So I really did sit there in silence. Save for the time I spent weeping.

All of the things I have been proclaiming and declaring as my hope for the last year… my testimony of the Lord, it’s like it has been turned into a weapon against me. Few phrases have moved my heart like “Your name is Faithful and True” in the last 18 months. But tonight, those words drove me from the room… angry and confused… and desperate to believe the truth. I reached the outside of the little Justice prayer room and immediately was overcome by my emotions. I sat alone, in the cold… gasping for air as I sobbed.

Most of my dialogue with the Lord in these last few days is too personal to take outside of that relationship. God has heard and I have heard. And the conversation isn’t leaving that place. At least right now, it isn’t. But His leadership is perfect and He is violently uprooting areas of offense in my heart. It feels like a contradiction to say that I trust Him as He does it. Since this whole question of trusting Him is really the issue right now anyway.

I know the truth. At least right now I do. But I know that I’m not done wrestling. I don’t fully believe it yet. There are still more questions that I need to keep asking. There is still more honesty to be reached in that place that is only shared by God and myself.

Silence is terrifying. There wait all of the lies. There wait all of my emotions. There wait my fears. There waits the truth. There waits God.

But I have nowhere else to be. So, for the next 2 months, here I go… into the silence.

Shortly after my mom died, I remember several people telling me (if I was even remotely OK at the time they saw me) that I was in shock and it was all going to hit me later.

In case there is any question in this matter, this certainly did nothing to encourage me. It did nothing to help me in the grieving process. It just made me really mad. …REALLY mad.

I was feeling A LOT of pain. I was encountering a deeper loss than I had ever known, and I was exercising that newly-learned skill of NOT shutting down emotionally. I was frustrated by the fact that me being able to rest in the Lord’s goodness and faithfulness (and stop crying for just a few minutes together) necessarily meant that I had a whole heap of deeper pain and sorrow lurking around the corner somewhere.

So, I was annoyed and did my best to ignore them, continuing to keep my heart open and meet the Lord in the midst of the most painful loss I had ever experienced.

And then the last week started up… and I realized that I was entering into another intense season of grieving my mother’s death.

It’s difficult to explain. In fact, I don’t even know how to begin to try. But I know that I am encountering deep wells of pain. I know that I am asking the hard questions (Why didn’t You heal my mom?) and crying a lot.

Right after my mom died, God’s goodness was so inescapable. He was good… He was faithful… I could trust Him. And I knew it beyond a shadow of doubt. I opened my heart up to feel and experienced some of the most horrifying, awful feelings I had ever encountered. But God was so close, so present through all of it.

What I knew about God at that time was certain. I could not question it… I KNEW it. Sometimes, the only thing I could pray (as it felt like everything around me was being completely shattered) was “I trust you.” I would just sit there, between floods of tears, and whisper, “I trust you. Help me.”

But I am presently encountering a doubt and uncertainty within my heart that I cannot ignore. The other night, I was pleading with God, “I need to know why I trusted You. I need to remember why I thought You were good. I need to remember why I thought you were faithful.” Because those realities felt so far from me.

I can’t imagine many things more frightening than realizing that I don’t trust God. I mean… really… if I don’t believe His promises and I don’t believe that He is on my side… that He is the Lord God gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness… then I am completely without hope. If those things are not true of Him, then surely he is going to play sick and torturous games with me, for some twisted sense of amusement, and then crush me like an insect. If I can’t trust God, then I have no hope. Then things will never be better than they are.

During our 2 AM set on Friday, I was experiencing a moment of profound honesty… in my own heart and before the Lord. The team was singing, “I trust You. I cast my cares on You. You have not withheld any good thing from me. Why should I be anxious for anything? I trust you.” But this was not the declaration of my own heart. I sat there, screaming internally, “I don’t trust You! You have withheld good things! Of course I’m anxious!”

Fortunately, God is confident enough in who He is that the acknowledgment of those realities couldn’t shake Him or drive Him away from me.

At church Sunday morning, I completely lost it. I was lightly crying or on the verge of tears through much of the service. But it was after the prayer at the end that the dam broke. “God… who loves you like a mother.” Ouch. I don’t really believe that right now, do I? (Oh… and our closing song was Joyful, Joyful. Certainly not the emotion of the moment, for me. But, more than that, there were all of these piercing lines in the song that were hitting on areas of accusation and unbelief within my heart.

I know His leadership is perfect. Ultimately, I think I still trust Him. I’ve had brief respites where I am declaring that trust with confidence before God, where I am singing with all of my heart that I trust Him, His leadership. But then the uncertainty and the questions arise.

I have a fair degree of confidence concerning how this whole thing is going to end. But I know that I am really wrestling with truth right now. I am really fighting to believe those things that are most central to my being. I am struggling for the faith that carries my hope. I am encountering the questions that arise out of situations like this. We are working this thing out… until the truth is residing deep within my soul… where I am living and breathing out of that place of trusting God and knowing who He is. When I rest again in Him.

Is this what they’re talking about when they call something a crisis of faith?

The mess of 2007 is gone. I don’t live in it anymore.

Now, when I say the mess of 2007 in this instance, I mean the disaster that my living space became as my emotional chaos began to manifest itself in large-scale physical realities.

When I lost my mom, I couldn’t “keep it together” anymore. In some ways, I think that was actually a good thing for me to finally lose control. I encountered the realities of my weakness. I became utterly dependent upon the Lord and the incredible community that He put me in. I found the freedom to let go… to breathe… to live.

Of course, things did get a little out of hand. And the mess I had made was quite overwhelming as I began to fight my way out of it.

Adding to the state of “Hold on! STOP!!!!!!!!!!!! Can we keep it at maybe just 10 things that are rushing at me all at once???”… I was beginning to take my first steps out of the prison that I had been living in, that I had willfully walked into. The silencing of my own voice. The concealment of my own self. The resignation and dissipation of what God had created. The relinquishing of the life and joy that God had set before me.

Cleaning my room was an emotional task. The whole process was VERY tied to my mom. It involved a lot of sitting and crying.

Without Richard’s unrelenting “encouragement” (or, shall we say, prodding and threats) to clean my room, it would have taken a lot longer before I gave that any real attention. It was such a daunting task.

There’s one thing about that Richard: He harasses me. He assails me–he goads, prods, pokes, nudges, urges, and spurs me–with uncompromising persistence. He agitates me out of my resignation. He disrupts my “blissful” friendship with the status quo. He provokes me to press into freedom. He calls out realities and disturbs my “contented” delusions. He exposes the hideous truth behind the apparent utopia that I am subscribing to. He alerts me to the actual. He sobers and awakens me, setting the truth before me in such a way that I CANNOT linger in my groggy, intoxicated state. He challenges my cowardly acquiescence to “the way it is”.

He’s a little bit like hope, in that way (per Jurgen Moltmann’s remarkable explanation of what hope is and does, as articulated in his Theology of Hope). It’s actually rather annoying. An annoyance that I am extraordinarily grateful for.

So, disillusioned and newly incapable of being “content” with chaos, I began to clean. I made significant progress in the task. I had to… or Richard was going to help me do it (an idea that I was decidedly against).

It was a mess like none I had ever created before. But I was beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel–my room was beginning to approach clean. I had only two remaining sections to complete… my bookcases and my kitchen things.

And then my sudden constant-out-of-town-ness happened. And it’s REALLY hard to keep things clean when you are in a continuous state of coming and going. Constant travel is not particularly conducive to maintaining a clean room. Especially when you are emotionally and physically exhausted because you are so incredibly busy. I lost a significant portion of the progress I had made.

But, at least, it has ended.

It is done. My room is clean. And I cannot describe how amazing it feels.

My room (actually a new room, which I will explain some other time) is clean… organized… peaceful… calm… and blue. I walk into it and my heart swells with that inexplicable light, and free feeling. It has become a sanctuary. It has become a place of rest and meeting.

I can’t wait to get back home… to that beautiful symbol of my gradual coming-out-of-the-muck-and-mire. I can’t wait to step into that space again and just breathe.

In my delirious ramblings about knuckle crunchers, I mentioned some potential bad news concerning a friend. Well, the negative report we feared came later that night. I don’t really want to blog about my friend’s painful circumstances, so please forgive me if I am a little vague.

The friend who had initially alerted me to the circumstances was supposed to let me know when he heard something. As it turns out, bad news is hard to pass on. His text message was never sent, so I found out later that night, when he was at my house.

Unfortunately, a bunch of my friends were over at the house when I got the news. Not the greatest timing. I tried to finish eating. I tried to continue to be present and celebrate-y with the people in the room. I tried. But it wasn’t going particularly well.

I felt the look on my face. Do you ever have those moments when you realize that you probably look really angry? That was me. And I was beginning to feel it, too. I had that tense, angry feeling I get every time I am trying to push something down, every time I am trying NOT to feel.

Well, I decided a couple of years ago that I don’t want to do that with my heart anymore. So I had to leave.

I went downstairs and talked to my roommate (who was stuck in bed, sick) for a bit. I just needed to talk to someone about what was happening. I sat there, expressed my unbelief, and cried for a while. And then I realized that, as much as it sucks to be sick, it probably sucks more to be sick and have a crying person sitting on your floor. So I transitioned to the stairs. (I’m not sure why, but my room just wasn’t an option.)

After a little bit, I heard the door open. I wonder if someone just left or just arrived. And then I heard Darin’s voice. Darin and Kacie are here! Oh, Darin and Kacie are here!

I quickly cleaned up my face and excitedly made my way up the stairs. I really love them… and seeing them was somehow going to magically make things better.

OK, so maybe I wasn’t quite ready to come up the stairs again. Darin mentioned that he hadn’t seen me at work that day. Of course, the reason he hadn’t seen me was my sleeplessness in waiting to find out about my friend… the sleeplessness that led to my fun with knuckle crunchers. As I opened my mouth to explain, I lost it again and barely squeaked “I’ll be back” as I turned around and escaped into the bathroom.

I couldn’t stop crying. I knelt on the bathroom floor and the tears streamed down my face… a saline flood. They just kept coming… and coming. Crying is exhausting. Trying not to be heard by people just on the other side of the wall when hit with a tidal wave of emotion is also exhausting.

Fortunately, there was an eventual end. I spent some time talking with the amazing Holly Snow. And then I rejoined the festivities. Still hurting for my friend. But I at least wasn’t crying anymore.

Here’s the thing that gets me about all of that. 3 or 4 years ago, I would have gotten the same news and been like, “Wow. That sucks.” At most, “Wow, that really sucks.”

My heart was so dead, so dull. And I had worked hard to get it there. I couldn’t even feel the pain of my own life. I can hardly convey how little I was living… how incapable I was of feeling… how completely I had shut myself down.

And then, two years ago, I got a wake up call. A friend wrote something that really struck me… and I began to realize the state of my heart. And I was determined to say yes to the Lord in His invitation to revive my heart again. Determined and desperate.

I am still learning. I’m still becoming acquainted with my heart, with my emotions. But things like this, this week of little sleep and excessive tears, stand as evidence that the Lord is working. They show me how drastically the Lord has tranformed my life. I never could “weep with those who weep” before that gradual reawakening began. I never could feel. I couldn’t connect to my own pain, let alone mourn with someone else.

In the midst of that, I don’t think I could ever really long for Jesus’ return, either. I was detached from the reality of how desperately in need of Him we are. I didn’t realize how painful this existence has become. I was completely disconnected from the groan of creation. I had reconciled myself to injustice and concluded that things weren’t really that bad. I was agreeing with subtle lies. I didn’t think I needed a savior. I didn’t think I needed justice. I didn’t really comprehend just how wretched the present evil age truly is.

Well, thank the Lord for restoration… and for His gentleness and kindness as He restored me to reality. And… once again…

Come, Judge of the Earth! Come quickly, Lord Jesus! Hasten the day!