Comfort, Comfort

Well, a week without quiet times is a week likely to display an astonishing array of sin. This week was not an exception to the rule. In the wake of it, I look back with sorrow and regret on missed opportunities, hurt caused to the people I love most, and dishonor to God.

It hasn't been pretty, but it has been an excellent mirror. And now I am aware, all over again, of how desperately I need a Savior.

Ponder, if you will, the majesty and otherness of God for a few moments...

Job 38:4 (ESV) "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding."

Job 38:12-13 (ESV) "Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it?"

Job 38:16-17 (ESV) "Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? "

Job 38:35-36 (ESV) "Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, 'Here we are'? Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind?'"

Now, ponder anew the heart of man....

Selfishness
Avarice
Lying
Gossip
Lust
Anger
Fear of man
Pride
Envy
Murder
Idolatry
Self-righteousness

The list goes on and on, more detailed at every step, more excruciatingly pertinant to my own heart as I delve further into it. I was selfish yesterday. I was idolatrous the day before. I was self-righteous a few hours ago. I have been proud since I was born. I hated God and shunned human beings from the age of eight to the age of fifteen. I still don't really know how to love either God or people; I fail in it every day, instant by instant.

Why do not the hands of the holy and justly offended God, the righteously angry God, open? Why does He not let me slip through His fingers into Hell?

Compassion. "I am brought very low," I say to God, with the Psalmist. "Let your compassion come speedily to meet me!" And God says, "the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed." He speaks comfort through the prophets, through the psalms, though stories and visions and parables and promises. Never wonder why the Christian says that God's word is life! And it is a lamp, as Christ is the morning star. More than a watchman waits for the morning, I wait for its dawning.

What is it, to be the bride of a star?

You Would Think...

"You would think I'd know the way to my own castle!"

Words from that jugheaded prince in Ever After. I have nothing against the actor, but the character he plays is in my opinion a jughead, and since he's a figment of imagination, I don't feel that it is wrong to go on record as saying so.

I am a worse jughead. You would think, after seven years of being a Christian, that I'd know the way to my own refuge. But, apparently...

Whenever it gets to the point where the lightest touch of temptation is enough to set me off sinning, I know my heart has been wandering again. Wandering, wandering, prone to wander and leave the God I love. Oh, Lord, how I feel it! It's so easy. I miss a quiet time. No biggie, right? Wrong. I miss another. Suddenly circumstances overwhelm, struggles revive, and the old scar I thought was healed is inflamed again. So easily, so soon does my heart wander. You would think it was born restless.

Until it rests in thee, my holy sweetness! How rightly Augustine said, "Da mihi Domine, scire et intellegere." Oh, give to me, Lord, to know and to understand what radiance you are! When I can see you, I would not have the world on a silver platter. When I cannot see you, the world is all I crave. I want so much to be made much of, but what utter foolhardiness that is. Shall I be happy by living to myself? No, no, a thousand times no! I shall only be happy by living to thee, by making much of thee--how could I think otherwise?

You are a consuming fire; burn me. Scatter the ashes of my sick heart and bring the phoenix up from them, a soul pure and white for you: only, ever, in all ways for you! I am faint and dry; be my water of life. A mere brush of your light makes my senses giddy, but I have been wandering in shadows and I do not remember laughter. Subride, subride ad me, donec mea anima tibi ressurexit!

Oh, if there was ever gladness on earth, you were the source of it! And if there ever shall be light hearts in men's breasts, you will be the cause!

Why Gloves?

Thanks to this spree of weeding, I have acquired quite a lot of dirt under my fingernails. I looked at them, frowned, and went for the clippers. They will have to be clipped short and stripped of glosses, unless I want the garden dirt to do it for me.

"Look at this, Mama. I still can't get all the dirt out." Mom smiled. "Honey, you have to wear gloves. That's how a lady gardens."

That's how a lady gardens.

Odd that such an unconnected phrase can throw you back upon an old problem. For two years or so, now, I have been struggling to understand what it is to be a lady, and how I can become one. At every turn I run up against this sticky place: a lady, it seems, must be someone who wears gloves with people, just as a lady gardener wears gloves with dirt. But for me, half the pleasure of gardening is that same dirt--I love the feel and smell of it; I love the richness of it, and I love to touch it. Gloves are a small price to pay for clean hands, perhaps--but can I give up the immediacy of touch?

Just so with people. Handling them with kid gloves is a small price to pay for harmony (at least, external harmony) and peace, but... but "politeness" has always seemed to me drearily insincere. Perhaps that's why I don't enjoy the plays of Oscar Wilde. Though he mocks the forms of his day, the spirit of them is still in every word. "Oh no, Miss ____, I think you are charming." And then he leans out to the audience and makes a snide comment about how her nose is off-center, or some such. That is how Wilde is.

Something tells me that a real lady is never insincere, and doesn't wear gloves with people in that way. But, if this is true, it is rare. I, who surely have been blessed with some of the richest acquaintance in the world (through no merit of my own, as the Lord knows) am aware of a few--I have an aunt, a cousin, and a coworker, who all exhibit what I shall call "a sweet and quiet spirit." They care for others endlessly, and always seem to mean it. However, in the world generally, "courtesy" leaves me cold.

Most whom I see blessed with what one might call "graciousness" or "the gift of pleasing" have a corresponding (and often crippling) sin of fearing man (you know, wanting man's good opinion more than one wants God's). And this has always repelled me. Self-righteousness on my part? Yes, quite. My besetting sins are far worse--arrogance, selfish disdain, resentment (and it used to be implacable resentment), the bearing of grudges... but still, insincerity of all kinds has a strong negative impact on me. If we all tend towards some particular evil, then perhaps we all also tend away from some particular evil: my "tend-towards" are many, but my only great "tend-away" is duplicity. This is not to say that I am incapable of it--I wish I were. It is only to say that I hate it, passionately, in myself and in others.

So, then, my Lord, how to be a lady without gloves? What does Scripture say?

I'll let you know. :-)

Willamsburg is Even More Williamsburg...um..."Williamsburgy"

That's not a word, but how do you express....? "Williamsburgesque"? "Williamsburg-reminiscent"? "Even more like Williamsburg"?

Whatever.

Today I pinned up a big beautiful new School of Athens poster on the wall above my station. It fits the space perfectly. In fact, it is the only poster that can safely live in this classical, Christian, art-major-infested environment. Davy is an art major. Jay is a full-fledged artist. Nathan wasn't an art major, but he took extensive art classes against his will. Ergo, we have to pick our wall art carefully around here (not to mention our desktop backgrounds).

Oh dear, I'm happy today. I'm bubbly. I need to get hold of myself.

It must be spring. :-D

Pain and Good Friday

I think I know where I want to end up. We'll see if I get there. I need to begin, however, with the earliest thoughts of this morning....

One of the caregroup girls, Rema, has become a new friend. She and I agreed to read through Piper's "When I Don't Desire God" together, and have already purchased our copies, and compacted to meet at Starbucks on Monday. This morning I began on the assignment: Chapter 1.

Wow.

Piper writes that the doctrine of Christian Hedonism is both liberating and devestating. Liberating, because we are free to pursue joy--and how our souls long for joy! Devestating, because our indwelling sin stands ready at every moment to block enjoyment in God, so that it often seems as though we have not the capacity to enjoy Him as we ought. What do I do when I don't want what I ought to want? How terrible it is, to not want God!

Piper explains that it is the cross which gives us the capacity to desire God as we ought.

I went to work with all this in mind. It was a grueling day. Mom informed me on the way to the office that we would be having a meeting that morning to discuss... well, big doings. We had the meeting, which was a sobering one, though good in every respect. Then I spent the afternoon struggling with the frustration of being unable to find an approach to my material which would do justice to it, and yet wouldn't be too much work for the parent/teachers to whom I was writing. A pounding headache arrived on the scene around 2:30, and encamped in my skull for the rest of the afternoon.

Shortly before dinner, having passed through various medicinal treatments (mostly in the form of a hot bath), I decided to weed our front garden. Mama had asked me to do it if I had time, and it seemed like a good way to bless her. Accordingly, I stepped out into the idyllic early evening sunshine, knelt, and began to grub in the dirt.

I was sad. Part of it had to do with me--I have lived long enough to acquire one or two heartaches which, though seldom near the surface, push through sometimes and fill my thoughts with what might have been. These are the silent temptations that comes to me sometimes when I am tired, these thoughts that lead me to wonder whether God loves me after all.

Part of my sadness, however, was the ache that I called, in the language of my childhood, "the sadness of everything." Sometimes I am gripped with a sense of the pain inherent in a world where sin and evil are daily realities. It is as though, every so often, I become conscious of an enormous shadow, a brokenness. I can only explain this by conjecturing that perhaps the human soul dimly guesses what the world would be without sin's curse on it, and knows that something is terribly wrong, and mourns.

Weeding is a therapy for all this. I worked my fingers slowly through black, dank, crumbling dirt, and plucked thick sappy green weeds, and smelled and tasted the richness of the earth. It is good to feel the sun. It is good to feel my muscles working smoothly. It is good to wrestle with fibrous plants, and see the golden tulips bloom. It is simply good--after all, was not God the first gardener? Am I not in His image? A garden is a lovesome thing.

But the sadness, the sense of gravity, remained. I took my tour of the yard just before dinner, and thought where I wanted to put a new long narrow bed for climbing roses or something, perhaps wisteria. I thought of the immense growing, the energy, the wealth of this spring season. I was called in to dinner.

After dinner, I put on dark clothes, no jewelry, nothing decorative. We were all going to the Good Friday service at church. Everybody was to enter the auditorium silently. It was dim. The music filled that great space, at once solemn and sweet. In a while, the congregation was permitted to sing with it. The first song left me pensive; I was pondering Christ's suffering. During the second, I thought suddenly, "there would not even be the capacity to enjoy God, without that suffering." Tears immediately came, and I let them spill, the overflowing of brimful heart. Nothing in all my life has ever stirred my soul so consistently and so deeply as those words of Christ: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Oh, I know why! For me.

I wept without shame, and sang through my tears. It was right, it was right, it was inexpressibly dear, to mourn my Savior's pain. Nothing less can give due weight to it; nothing less recognizes the cost. And all the more astonishing it was to me for this--that suffering purchased for me a capacity to enjoy God, which I formerly lacked, and in which is all my gladness. I would be utterly unable to even desire enjoyment of God, if Christ had not pursued this death, and then my wandering heart. The wonder of it swept me continually throughout the evening, and I feel now as though rain has been to patter in soft spears, and pierce my garden soil. The fruit thereof, I feel sure, will be golden and fragrant.

Honey, I'm Home

"I'm feeling rebellious," I told Charity tonight. "Let's skip food shopping. I'll take you to Macaroni Grill."
"Well," said Charity, "I guess I could go food shopping tomorrow..."

In an effort to keep up with my little sister's busy life, I have instituted a habit of taking her out to dinner once a week, on the night when Mom and Dad have their date (read: we would be scrounging for food and not having a proper family dinner if we stayed home). These occasions are always fun, and I'm learning, piece by piece, all that I've missed about her in the last four years of college.

Tonight, the subject of dinner conversation ranged from her sketch class (she is an art major at Montgomery College) to the art of good conversation, to caring for people who are in self-destructive sin patterns. She explained to me why she always orders a lime with her coke (apparently it is a cultural byproduct of the six months that she spent in Mexico), and added our waitress's name to her collection (Charity is a waitress when in her professional capacity, and has an interest in keeping up with her colleagues). Hillary, the waitress, was a fun young lady who made our dinner enjoyable and thoroughly deserved her tip.

Ye Ancestral Domicile is quiet without Mom, Dad, and Burgee. My room is more like a seashell than ever--someday I'll post pictures--and the moment I entered it, something dropped back into place.

The last two weeks have been strained.... strained on every level, stretched and beaten and scratched and bruised. It's like coming home from the front. But the stretching was good; I think I've grown more in the last two weeks than in the four or even eight before that.

Perhaps I will be able to sleep tonight. I want to sleep. I want to heal.

I'm so glad to be home.

"Oh, yes, I always like news"

For the Emmas in my life....

Jane Austen continues to invade my mental space at every opportunity. Just now she is rather pungent and paint-smelly, since the set has gone up and is being given its coat of many colors. We spent all day Saturday in makeup, curlers, and costumes. Lizzy asked me this afternoon "how I thought the run went on Saturday".... and I smiled weakly. We have a LOT of work to do. "But you," I assured her, with perfect sincerity, "were uniformally charming."

Living with Elizabeth Bennet for a week has been rather like living with my roommate and one of my best friends, Brittainy. Since they are (for the nonce) the same person, this is not surprising. We have agreed that I am her French maid, Gennette, Mistress of the Curlers. I am sometimes also her Russian maid, because for some reason Brittainy finds my Russian accent hilarious. I do my best to keep her laughing as the pressure mounts towards performance.

I have not been sleeping well for the past four or five days. This is normal, since Mom and Dad are out of the country. My sleep is always disturbed when they leave on a long trip, and I'm grateful not to have had any of my worse sort of nightmares this time around. They return home on Wednesday, and cannot come soon eough for me. If you were looking for a word of wisdom in this post, here it is: loving hurts, and it's worth every throb.

Of course, the storm of controversy which has blown through our campus in the past two weeks makes me long for them even more. Concerning that it is not prudent to say much here, except that I'm so grateful for the pastors at Grace, and for those who have counselled both myself and others wisely throughout a painfully grievous situation. I will also take the opportunity to thank God for our new president-elect, Dr. Graham Walker. I believe him to be humble, and know him to be God's provision for us.

So, in sum, I shall be very, very glad to get home. I have missed my family, my coworkers, my friends, my peaceful bedroom and busy office, all much more than I had supposed I would--and, though this time has been fruitful both relationally and spiritually, I will not be sorry to return to the people who love me best.

Love to all,
Me