In Our Weakness...

I have been keeping up with Kara Tippetts lately.  Do you know her?  I feel like I do.  I just peeked at her facebook page.  Lyle Lovett, U2, The Beatles, Rich Mullins, an "excellent" husband named Jason.  Kara Tippetts is two years my junior.  She has four young children.  She is in hospice care.  If God does not heal her here, He will heal her there in just a matter of days. 

http://www.mundanefaithfulness.com/home/2014/12/29/by-degrees-living-and-dying

I don't want to be a downer, but these are the things I ponder.  Go look at her.  Do you see what's shining out of her eyes?  I do.  And I want it.

Actually, I already have it.  There are just a few too many "things" in the way - too much obscuring the Light.

I recently had a problem.  Something I couldn't fix.  A situation I couldn't redeem.  It all fell apart. In the detritus of that collapse, I couldn't find a way out.  I literally ignored the problem and the relationship.  NEVER has this hard-charger ignored a problem.  Anything that seemed too much could be overcome by a candid discussion, a few days of hard work and maybe a few skipped meals.  A night or two without sleep.  Easy.  There's always been a proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel".  Not this time.  This was too much.

I've delivered all the excuses.  My health concerns.  My daughter's health issues.  Navigating the world of foster-to-adopt, therapists and case workers while deeply troubled over my biological son's reaction to the process.  Would this be a permanent scar on his soul?  My own insurmountable insecurities over a lack-of-ability to care for a special needs child.  A child who has been hospitalized four times in 18 months.  Our lives turned upside down in a matter of a few days in early June.  Everything changed.

I remember dusty afternoons on the playground in elementary school.  My best friend, Jennifer, and I got upset over petty schoolyard conflicts between our friends.  We had a place between school buildings that we would run to, hand-in-hand, and perform our Wonder-Woman twirls.  We changed into little healers of broken relationships.  We would literally divide and conquer, counseling the "injured parties" separately, and instigating playground apologies and hugs all around.  It was easy then.

I'm slow.  I know.  

It was ordained.  At some point on my timeline, it was bound to happen... the realization that I am not a super hero.  

Pride.  Pride obscures the Light.  Yet He is not bound by time.  He is certainly not bound by my time.  A tiny blip. 

He was there to help me when I could not help myself.  I've not exactly been all that quick to let Him help.  I'm still struggling to let Him take the reigns... to turn it over.  He knew that this situation could not be bulldozed by a hard-charger.  It involved fragile hearts... quite possibly another heart much more fragile than my own.  It required, and still requires, the skill of a Love and Grace that does not come naturally to me.  A Love and Grace not bound by flesh.  He had to isolate me.  He had to strip everything away and surround me with the sheer face of a rock on one side and a vast expanse of air on the other to give me a glimpse of His Glory. To show me that I could not stand on my own. I could not escape the ledge without Him.

Full, childish reliance on Him.  That's what's required.  

I'm tempted to entertain the idea that the lesson came too late.
Pride.
I'll repeat it to myself.  He is not limited by time.  He is certainly not limited to my time.  I can only believe that "too late" part if I entertain the narcissistic idea that I'm the only factor in this scenario.  I've been removed, but the work is still in process in others... in me.  The work is likely greater with me out of the way. Just because I can't control the work or do the work doesn't mean that "hidden happenings" aren't fully underway.

Kara got it right.  It is faithfulness and thanksgiving in the mundane that He wants.  It is submission to this place. This now. That's a hard lesson for a gal addicted to runners' highs and views from the tops of 14ers.  Things have been way too easy up to now.

This Love is tough.

I tend to trust the idea that my intuition is infallible instead of allowing Him to test my heart.  Instead of asking Him to help me test a situation.  I trust my own opinions without knowing scenarios from all sides.  I try to put myself in other people's shoes... oh how I try.  Strangers and friends come to me all too often with their life stories and troubles.  I forget that I could NEVER know, even in the telling, the truest version of the story.  I have not lived it. How much pride does it take to venture a weak opinion based on a mishmash of emotional words strung together in the space of a few moments?  Those stories took a lifetime to evolve.  Isn't it pride that allows me to perform a character analysis in a situation involving the glorious heart of another Creation of God?  Am I omniscient?  Am I omnipresent?

He's offered me this gift... this gift of brokenness. The stripping away of a tremendous pride.  The healing of a weak heart.  The strengthening of a tenuous faith. I'm trying hard to take it.

Go and see Kara... Kara-so-close-to-God.  You will likely want to look like her too. She looks a lot like Jesus to me.