The Wall

A few days ago, I posted a feel-good, "you can beat this and here's how" write up on the blog, and, as usual, it's mid-February and I've hit a massive, "I can't do winter!" wall. Maybe I made it a bit further into the season this year before having a complete come apart, but I'm not exactly sure about that. I think I'll put it down on the calendar and see how long it takes before I completely melt down and lose all hope for 45 minutes to an hour again next year.

There's nothing new about this. But I do want to be real here. I probably do need the happy light, the extreme citrus tea and some grapefruit essential oil. Maybe I just need to fly to the San Antonio sunshine every year in mid-February. And yes, most of all, I need a good long session with God's Holy Word and my journal.

I missed that today.

I could blame that on the fact that my husband was home sick again and didn't get up at 0 dark 30 like he usually does, so I didn't get up to make his coffee and talk with him before he hit the road this morning. I also didn't build a fire, make some very strong tea, feed the cat and cuddle into the recliner for alone time with my Daddy. I could also blame the very large Dr. Pepper I had yesterday in the late morning to offset day two of a lingering sick headache. Can I just blame the sick headache and leave the Dr. Pepper out of it? Then, thinking I was exhausted enough to be able to have two glasses of tea over Chick-fil-A ice in the late afternoon, well, I had two glasses of tea over Chick-fil-A ice in the late afternoon. Thennnnn, assuming it would be a good joke, my son somehow got into the alarm on my phone and set it for 1:11 am. Caffeine-sensitive individual that I am, I finally fell asleep by about 1 am. When I woke at 1:11 am with the alarm blaring, it was all over. I could also kind of blame it all on the fact that I still can't get this stupid song out of my stupid head. In reality, it is a beautiful, meaningful song  (not stupid at all... just feels stupid at 3 am), written by an amazing lyricist and musician, so, quite naturally for me, it's still haunting my waking and my sleeping hours every single night.

In all actuality, however, this is exactly what I had coming.

I get a little uppity and priggish about making it all happen in my own strength, facing the winter with hope (blah, blah, blah), and then, quite suddenly, my strength is exhausted. And praise God for that. If my own humanness didn't put me in my place from time to time, I'd never learn. And while I'll get a lesson on this again no doubt, there's a lot of cheer and joy (and hope too) in knowing that He's always faithful and, somehow, always available to pick me up, dust me off, dry my tears, and lift my head.

 I desperately need a Savior. I can't purchase salvation with the things that I do or the words that I write. I can't admire His creation enough to redeem the brokenness of His Image in me. Only Christ can do that kind of work.  I just have to trust that he will, even when I'm a sobbing mass of extreme angst in the middle of a very dirty kitchen floor. I can be as creative as I want to be, but it won't get me any closer to Heaven.

I read this line from a little bio. of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to my kids at the supper table tonight...

" Truth must be defended against lies, but it might cost us something."

 Whoa.

I guess I just felt like that last post looked and sounded a little too preachy and a little too perfect. And while it was a pretty close representation of what was going on in those moments and days, this is a close representation of what's going on right now. There are no pretty pictures. It's all one big, fat, muddy, nasty, sticky, dusty mess. It seems a lot more honest to include both ends of that spectrum when we represent to others what life is like in our homes and with our families and friends.

But Jesus loved this mess enough to endure life on this fallen earth with all its fallen creatures. He faced torture, death, and hell too. And so I'm thankful this messiness is redeemable, even when it's all hopped up on Dr. Pepper, iced tea and Andrew Peterson. 

I sure don't want to be guilty of this...

"They traded the truth of God for a lie. They worshiped and served what had been created instead of the God who created those things, who should be praised forever." 

~Romans 1:25

And I don't want to cause anyone else to stumble into that trap either.  While I hope that last blog post was encouraging, I accept this as truth too. We can hide behind a pretty facade of blog posts, facebooks and pinterest boards, but we can't hide our hurt, our weakness, or our messes from God.

Here's a little excerpt from something I scribbled in my journal almost exactly a year ago, right about the exact same time I'd hit the exact same wall. 

"... the Body of Christ... broken for you... the Blood poured out for you. I need. I need. I need. And You are never drained by my insatiable need. Your Grace is never exhausted. Thank you for this grief. Thank You for this breaking and mending. Thank You for putting Your Life in me... for loving me even before I knew You. Broken for me? Poured out for me? Before the foundation of the world... written on the bedrock of time... broken and poured out for the redemption of Your creation. Thank You that You never abandon me to myself and my own devices. Take this death... all these little deaths... and use them to bring Your life to others. My life is in Your Hands. Your Jacqueline"  

 

Awake

Ever been so overwhelmed by something that it kept you at the brink of insomnia for nights on end? An accompaniment to a song, or a chapter in a book?  A quote, a vision, a dream, a poem?

I seem to have inherited this particular brand of obsessive behavior from my father. And typically, for us, those nighttime waking hours involve music. They can be instrumental lines. A rhythm that needs teasing out. Song lyrics, in particular, weave in and out of my waking moments while most of the western world is fast asleep.

And I tend to wonder if it has something to do with the way creativity was intended to work on minds so intentionally crafted to reflect His Image.

"Fair falls the light that hails the dawn,

A frosted, fractal-ed winter's morn."

The above lines are mine... an effort to fall in love with winter. When I say it to myself, a little melody line in my head attaches itself to the words. However, the labor of two years have yielded two lines. Clearly, my love affair with winter isn't going all that well.

January, 2019

On one of those mornings last March when I was feeling like it really ought to be spring, and I was disappointed to open the curtains to snow, again, I got to thinking about how we go about loving the unlovable in our lives. Unlovable seasons, unlovely people, unlovable things that we get kind of stuck with. And that theme won't leave me alone any more than the piano accompaniment that is driving me to distraction... partly because it is a thing of intense beauty, and partly because I can just almost play it... almost.

And I can just almost love winter... almost.

The day after Christmas, 2018, I knelt with my knees on a cardboard pizza box in our muddy back yard. I had a spade in one hand, a pile of daffodil bulbs scattered around me, and a homemade dibbler in my jacket pocket. The dibbler was a gift, turned by a kind neighbor in his garage woodshop. It was presented to us shortly after my stand of prized sunflowers was wasted by a late summer storm. It has become one of my favorite things... mostly because someone thoughtfully crafted it by hand with me and my family in mind.

December, 2018

I was determined to do something full of hope on the day that tends to be the biggest let down of the entire year... December 26th. The word "frivolity" kept popping into my head as I pushed leaves aside to make holes three times the length of each flower bulb. My task was a frivolous one. I hadn't touched the laundry and I didn't have the foggiest idea what we were going to eat for supper. Hungry kiddos would be seeking me out in a matter of minutes, and I was elbow deep in cold mud. There really wasn't time to be in the yard planting forty daffodil bulbs. It felt like a waste... a ridiculous waste of time. The fall of the winter light, the mildness of the solstice evening, the shape of the slender, bare trees, so symmetrical, and framed so delicately by the indirect rays of the evening sun, delighted my mind and lifted my mood. The image of Spirit hands tugging at my chin to lift my head kept filling my mind and transforming my demeanor until happy tears watered my work... a Frivolous Love extended to a beloved daughter in the midst of her desperate, childish grasp for something beautiful.

Incarnation. Ideas enfleshed. Images in notebooks. Notes on paper. Journals filled with prayers and prose. Hands covered in dirt. Flower bulbs in frozen ground. Ink blots on knuckles. Fingers on strings. Candles flickering on a table filled with a homespun feast. Isn't this what we were made for? Isn't this how we love Him?

February, 2019

The first time I read Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" I was spellbound. And then, as a young adult, traveling and studying in Wales, I got the chance to walk among the ruins of Tintern Abbey. I couldn't help but imagine the draftsmen drawing the plans for this magnificent place of worship. I could see their faces wondering at the glory of such a place in such a setting...  and when, years later, I read the following quote, I finally understood why the words of C.S. Lewis have the power to move me so deeply. 

"Anything like the sweetness and peace of the long shafts of sunlight falling through the window on this grass cannot be imagined. All churches should be roofless. A holier place I never saw." 
(C.S. Lewis speaking of a winter visit to Tintern Abbey - from Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis by George Sayers)

How can I love winter? Exchange books on Christmas Eve? Drink a lot of citrus-y tea? Use a happy light? Diffuse oils? Supplement? Work out? Diet?

All those things are good...great even. But I think maybe there's something better.

Love the Creator of winter and love for His creation becomes the logical result.  And in that relationship I learn that every season holds hope.  Every season of the year.  Every season of an age.  Every season of a life. Even seasons that feel like a hard, long winter. The joys so particular to winter are completely unseen... seeds and bulbs silently dreaming beneath the snow... gathering energy from soil and sun to rise again into the gilded atmosphere of spring. Those naked trees hold a multitude of verdant shades hidden just beneath a brownish-gray veneer. Yet even in the depths of winter gloom bloom camellias and snow drops. Bright berries and rose hips adorn prickly boughs. The drear landscape is simply a dull canvas awaiting a deeper glory contained within the Divine.

The Lifter of our heads expects us to hold on to hope, to have faith, to abide the winter... with unlovely people, with unlovely things, with the unloveliness in ourselves, with all the things that seem hopeless in the midst of the coldest and darkest time of year... because we love Him... because we trust Him. We are unwavering in our belief that He will call light and warmth and life back out from winter darkness.

January, 2019

And as we await the spring, maybe we should wait creatively. Maybe we should revel in a big hope. We grow closest to our Father when we join Him in the garden, our hands covered in dirt, when we lift our voices in His praise, when our eyes scan the lyrical poetry of King David, when our fingers sketch, however imperfectly, something glorious in His creation, when we notice and delight in the ability He gave us all to re-create in some way. His creativity is the attribute that truly makes Him I Am. This ability to bring life from death, light from darkness, something from nothing, beauty from ashes.

December, 2018

On any given day, my little girl can be found somewhere at the end of a trail of construction paper, markers, tape, glue and crayons. The trail weaves through multiple rooms as she changes the setting for a story she's writing in her mind. At the end of such a trail, you'll find her muttering to herself... creating cloud castles and rainbow palaces for Calico Critters and stuffed kitties. My boy... well, he's in front of the heater or the wood stove with Legos making swishing sounds as his newest flying apparatus soars through the big, big sky in his big, big mind. You might find him at a keyboard making up a tune now and then too. From our earliest moments we emulate our Father in our need to make something from nothing. How do we recapture what came so naturally then? Creatively waiting in expectation allows us to join Him in incarnation, and it restores our hope in Him.

Awake, again, in the too early hours of a winter's morn, I whisper it like a litany... over and over into a sky embellished with stars, my breath visible in the frigidity, the winter darkness like a shroud...

My hope is in You.

My hope is in You.

My hope is in You.

~Psalm 39:7

December, 2018

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. ² For by it the people of old received their commendation. ³ By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible." ~Hebrews 11:1-2
 

Is He Worthy?