Rescue

There are so many things that I aspire to be.  I could count a hundred different outrageous paths that I would like my life to take. I paint pictures of dreams in my head and they are splashed with vibrancy and color, always drenched in laughter.  That’s the most important thing.  I want to always be laughing.  I have all these magnificent ideas about what I hope my life looks like today, tomorrow, next year, 10 years from now.  Mind you, I have no specific web of plans to get there but it feels okay with me to let my creativity flow from the imagination I was gifted.  I trust God to accomplish His dreams in my life with only blind obedience required from me, and I appreciate the invitation He extends to me to dream with him.  Not to mention, my logistical planning skills are sub-par at best.  Even now as I am waiting for my afternoon coffee to kick in, my mind is wandering and roaming - transporting me to days of living wild and free.

I have been doing this since I was a child.  Spinning around in my own little free-spirited world, always expecting and creating the most fascinating adventures wherever I went.  Never mind reality.  Lately though, my dreams are punctuated with an unspoken and hazy feeling of fear. This is very uncharacteristic of the girl who jumps out of airplanes and off of cliffs without permission or hesitation.  My life has always been lived with such reckless abandon, despite pleading from my sweet precious mother who values safety above all.  So, the fear feels like a stranger here.  Real life punches me in the gut and I get stuck gazing at all the ways that the odds are against me, and I shiver. Sometimes it keeps me awake at night, until my piano music is able to lull my emotionally drained body to sleep.

Human lives are usually hard and don’t make much sense, which sometimes erases my dreams or at least pushes them aside.  You cannot look around or read through the bible without believing this.  God answers Job’s question for an explanation for suffering with a long-winded version of “you wouldn’t understand.”  This makes any snappy answer for suffering you come up with to be total crap.  I see that in the face of my divorced mother, the piercing words of my rebellious brother, and deep within the confines of my own scarred heart. I always want to take opportunities to note that amidst the pain from living in a broken world, I often find joy and love and hope. Like I am dating a boy who right now is more important to me than me and that, given all that happened at the fall of man, is a miracle, like something God forgot to curse.

However, try as I might to keep things light, last week a heaviness hung in the air, ready to descend on the first moment of delayed silence, the first inkling of boredom.  And then life handed me practicality, which clashed so hard with my idealistic spontaneity.  My car broke down.  It cost thousands of dollars to fix.  Panic set in.  I missed my sister’s birthday party.  My feelings got hurt.  I failed miserably, in public.  I was humbled to my core.  I lost my keys. I became a needy burden on those around me.  Desperation reared its head.  

Overwhelmed on Friday night, tears welled and my eyelids gave way to a drop landing on Becca’s bedspread; another and then another, until the saline crushed the dam of my resolve.  So fully aware of my own shortcomings, I collapsed into Brittney’s arms and wondered if they would support the weight of my heavy heart.  She's been doing a lot of crossfit lately which was comforting to me.

Failure and humility were the resounding themes of last week.  And provision.  Humility THEN provision.  At the minute that I came to the point at which my heart screamed “help!” God swooped in and rescued me like rushing water.  He made streams in the desert.  After I ignored his steady call, He moved.  Jesus has a long history of keeping me broken and whole at the same time.  I guess it is the way that I am most capable of experiencing the magnitude of His grace, because maybe my version of wholeness and God’s version of wholeness look different.

 

CS. Lewis says:

“Now we cannot...discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, "You must do this. I can't.”

In the midst of my most monumental failures and fear, God is there standing ready to take over the reigns of my life.  Hints of His unfailing love beckon me back to Him.  Usually through Becca’s prompting.  Scripture engulfs me like a warm blanket and reassures me in a way that changing circumstances and a new setting cannot.  God addresses me in my deepest disappointments and declares me His, the battle won. He lifts the great burdens off of my tired shoulders and encourages me to go back to dreaming. He fights for me. He hears me. He rescues me.  He provides.

God gives me a car out of thin air.  He takes a step towards mending a relationship.  He uses those around me to speak truth, comfort, and love. He surprises me.  He wraps me up using Camron’s arms.  He speaks tenderly.  He delivers funding.  He provides the little things that matter so much if you will just be aware of them. He gives reprieve and my pulse quickens with the glimpse of light found when faith becomes mandatory.

I woke up on Sunday with the worst vulnerability hangover of my life, but thankful that all of this allows me to experience God.  The supreme joy of my life.  My most treasured reward.  This week, there is hope where I can rest and dream and play and TRUST that God is who He says He is. That he has got it. He is increasing my faith, step by step, as I choose to climb, to believe. The closer I get, the more certain I become that He is working all things for the good of those who love him. During these times of crippling fear, I always wonder how long I must wait and when the rescue will come, but it always comes.  And in that moment all I can do is laugh, and hold on tight, and walk.

On Comparison

Yesterday Camron and I were going through a book he bought which has valuable questions for couples to answer before blindly entering into engagement with a stranger whom they find attractive. We answered question after dumb question and laughed hysterically at the other’s answers. This book very often asks us to give 5 of something. 5 adjectives to describe your relationship with your mother. 5 things that you think defines a successful marriage. 5 reasons why someone should want to be with you and 5 reasons they shouldn’t. I find that interesting. Why 5?

Anyways we are daily finding out that we are very much the same, and very much different in all the best ways. Camron makes me laugh harder than anyone and true to form, his darling sarcasm left me in physical abdominal pain from laughing. We imagined a life with each other and giggled at the chaos that it promises. We agreed and discussed and I felt giddy and overwhelmed with joy in the passenger seat of my least favorite car of all time. The world is always the best place when we are together because right now Camron is my most treasured companion.

He is leaving for camp this summer because God has gifted him in youth ministry, so I took the opportunity to deviate from the question book to ask him how he thought our time spent apart would be. Valid question. His answer was long and sweet and well thought out but included the words “I can compare you to other girls.” Granted, that sentence is taken WAY out of context and is unfair for me to single out seeing that I know (rationally) that is NOT at all what he meant. He might have not even said those words in that order, but regardless it is what my broken ears heard.

I blinked away my apparent shock. “Fix your face, Ally” is always the only advice I can muster to myself, knowing full well that I wear every felt emotion on the outside. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit always rushes in hastily during times of my reeling insecurity and protects me from voicing dramatic pleas for acceptance when my heart feels threatened. This is probably the best thing about God the Spirit. Mouth control.

In that minute, my spontaneous and confident self recoiled faster than you could snap your fingers. Walls went up like lightning, and I resolved that Camron would not have the capacity to wound me deeply. Vulnerability left me exposed and I buckled down, and put on my tough girl rouge of nonchalance, once again lying to myself with bold declarations that I wouldn’t care if all my worst fears came true. I wondered if Camron would notice the change in my countenance. I wondered if he could feel the panic in my heart. I prayed that I would not react out of emotion and I preached to myself as Camron went on to say all the sweetest things about his adoration for me that I couldn’t hear.

My resounding fear of being abandoned really cripples me outside of the grace of Jesus. I am faced with this reality more often than I would prefer. Yesterday I felt rejected and helpless, even though my sweet boyfriend was speaking and had spoken so many truths about how deeply he cares for me during our four-hour drive home from Houston. One sentence and I am spiraling into defense mode. It’s ridiculous when you look at it through the lenses of sanity and rationality, both of which I cannot find in my quiet moment of fear.

Brittney pointed out that by comparison there is always going to be someone better than me in any decided area - so many girls who are prettier than me, funnier than me, more Godly, less crazy. Comparison would be the death of me. So, it is pointless for me to find any worth in trying to the best at anything. I already know I am not the best at anything or otherwise I would have competed in this year’s Winter Olympics - a dream I have not fully given up on. This leaves me once again at the feet of Jesus frantically searching for my definition, knowing that I am quite unable to prove myself. I am left looking to the one who created me to tell me that I am enough. Wanted. Loved. Safe. That He is not going to give up on me. I need to be reminded. It is the most beautiful way that I experience the grace of God.

Scripture pours into the cracks of my anxious heart and comforts me in ways that my own words, Brittney’s words, Camron’s words cannot. An Almighty God lifts my face and speaks directly to ME. To his most prodigal and loved daughter. The same daughter who is constantly looking away, running ahead, persistently digging cisterns that can hold no water. He looks directly into my imperfect soul and speaks infinite worth over me to which no one and nothing can compare.

Somehow, this gives me the ability to breathe again. To be able to rest in Jesus and therefore be able to hear what Camron actually said, which is that he likes me. This matters to me and heals me all over again. Because of Jesus, despite my very wobbly and sub-par performance on most days – I am liked and chosen by God, whose opinion of me enables me to be everything I am. I am free to be funny and spontaneous and horrible with details and deeply crazy. It releases me from the constraints of comparison because at the end of the day, I am already so fully loved and filled by the one whose adoration determines my eternity and gives meaning and purpose to my life on earth.

Once again, my dependence and allegiance set fully on my first love. I wonder how many times I will get to re-learn this lesson? How thankful I am for a God who is patient and willing to tell me over and over and over again, that I AM HIS.