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.