In A Field

I have a complicated laziness that kind of twists its way into every part of who I am keeping me stuck; creating a deliberate foolishness.  Beyond my penchant for the foolish is the greatness of Him. The One Who gently calls me.  When I expect a hammer to the head, he taps my shoulder and takes my hand. His eyes dance with wonder and expectation. Mine are sideways glancing, ready to pounce at any imperfection.  He is grace while I hoard my lists of misdemeanours and missed marks.  I judge with my eyes to the outside; he looks at the heart.  While I am stingy and wretched in the giving of my tepid and impatient love, His is never-ending and free.  His love is for everyone. For the lopsided, the lost, the wayward, the tossed aside, the loveless, the weeper, the cutter, the piercer. The foolish.  He is more beautiful than we can imagine. His hands are gentle but firm. He chooses to carry the whole weight of who we are. No one is too much for him. He speak...

I stepped into the water, sure of your calling voice.  That water, so black and roiling, it took my breath away.  I looked you full in the face and put one leg over the side of the boat and placed my foot on the surface tension of the water.  Waves staining the leg of my jeans.  I stand up on the water, leaning into the wind. But that seems like a long ago yesterday. I want to find myself in your voice once again.  To know the pure joy of just being in your presence.  To want to want to seek you and to know and be known by you.  I don't want to look back on the days of my life and try to recreate my victories.  I want new victories and stories to tell of how you're saving my day and redeeming my life.  But I will stop apologizing for being in this place again.  Instead of looking at this faltering as my failing, I'll look at is as a way of moving from one place of comfort to another limitless expanse of who You are- of who I am....

I can't give a reason why things go this way, why we seem to be wired for suffering.  I can try to explain the truth that I've come to know through the steep ways of my life and the hills I've had to climb.  I  feel like I can bring you hope borne out of my own suffering.  One year ago things changed for me.   I began a new journey that’s made such a remarkable difference I need to share it with you.   This kind of sounds like a sales pitch for a multilevel marketing scheme, but stick with me, I promise it’s not.   However, I should start at the beginning. For the majority of my life I’ve been able to tap into a certain melancholy that never seemed to lift.   Like walking a tight rope over a pit, I felt I was always on the verge of a misstep that would send me crashing to the bottom.   No matter the circumstances I found myself in, that fog of melancholy stayed with me.   Through the ages of 10-11 I experienced the illness and eventual...

Today is kind of an off day.  Sometimes I find it hard to stay in my "day box" and not start poking at the what-ifs of tomorrow.  I know this isn't  just true for me.  I got in my car and drove for awhile and spoke my own Psalms and Lamentations.  I feel lighter now.  Funny how the burden gets lifted when we say the dark thoughts out loud.  Praying them into light for our Father to hear. I hope that's how you are fighting today.  That you're speaking the darkness out of your own weary heart and letting the Father bear the weight of that burden. It's like a balm.  It's like handing your worry over to Him so He can carry it.  He's far stronger than we are, He can take it.  He's happy to.  He adores you.

Faithless with the little. Discontentment is a constant companion. Why is my faith so small and my need so great? I'm tired of my pettiness, my own voice grating on my frayed nerves.  Is there any rest for the one who waits on you? I am tired of lying here in my own self pity and frustration. Please come to my rescue.   I'm desperate for still waters. May I have the sense to sit still. To passionately wait for you in this quiet place. Wait passionately for  God , don’t leave the path. He’ll give you your place in the sun      while you watch the wicked lose it. Psalm 37:34

I'm so tired of living this way.  Tired of giving something to you only to take it back up again when my gaze shifts to the trouble in front of me.  I'm painfully stubborn.  There is no way I can keep this up. I hear you whisper to me -  "Won't you just let me love you?" I'm running around in circles, trying to find the purpose and the constant.  I look to my own vices and solutions, one more feeble than the next.  I can barely put one foot in front of the other.  My back is hunched over from the weight of the monotony of trying to work things out down here. And still I hear your whisper- "Won't you just let me love you?" I'm short on patience and long on frustration.  My wants and wishes pile high around me and I complain that things aren't happening quickly enough.  In vain I stomp my feet and hold my breath like a toddler throwing a tantrum.  My emotions are large and I act out of the sudden rushing impulse, determined that I...

All that I am. What I wish I was and wasn't. My missteps and do overs. My pettiness. My habit for sharing too much of myself. For not sharing enough. For putting myself ahead of everyone. The foolish lies I believe about myself.  Hook.  Line.  Sinker. I will not put up the wall of isolation and fear.  I will welcome You.  Like a child fully aware, dependent and confident in a parent's love I fall on Your G reat G lory.  I will allow Your love to be my security . I will allow who You say I am to fill me up to overflowing.  Living loved and freely. You, Who have  no beginning and no end, call to me.  Stop for me.   Notice me.  That You notice me is l ife .  You say the word and it is done.  Called into existence.  Not a far off, fairy tale thing, but a real flesh and blood truth.  I am the now- not an after or a before- a now.  I can lea...

She sings softly confident in worship and her words cut to the quick.  Penetrating bone and marrow, into the deep.  God's very breath calling into the hidden of me, prompting me to step out of this place and into His light. I'm too easily contented.  Happier to be safe and comfortable than teetering on the unknown; heart racing, eyes wide and expectant.  I hear You call.  I sense it in the recesses of my soul that are covered and grown over with thick vine and weeds.  I do long for You to break me free of them and yet there is this stubborn part of me that will not surrender to the rearranging, life-giving, hurt-encompassing, death-releasing grace and love You offer.  I am lulled by my own state, unsure, uncertain, hesitant, blindly believing safety equals happiness. And still You call, gentle and kind.  Not like I've been told, not the god of my childhood, You're so much more than that frightening, demanding, "no-god". You, patient as...

A beautiful thing happens behind the walls of 87 Church Avenue every second Monday. Smiling, giggling girls play with hula hoops, soccer balls fly through the air, adults sit around a table eating popcorn, drinking sugar-laden tea and laughing as another tells us Namaste  is the Nepali word for "Happy Birthday". Communication is not always smooth, stories take longer to tell and strange looks on puzzled faces are the norm. There is always laughter.  Most nights there is homework being done, stories told, games played and English language instruction.  We are from all over the world.  We all come for refuge, finding it with each other in this church building. We are a mishmash of community, a mosaic of different language, skin colour, faith, and tradition.  The things we hold in common create more unity than those things that would separate us. We are family and this building our kitchen table. Recently we have had the chance to see so much more happ...

I wonder if you remember me. I've been present in every instance of your life.  I was with you when you took your first breath; your eyes bright, your life spread out before you. I delight in you.  I love seeing your face, hearing your voice, watching you grow.  I know every little thing about you.  What takes your breath away, what makes you angry, what you're really afraid of and how many times you've given up only to begin again.  There is no mystery in you that I cannot solve. You have a knack for going from one thing to the next, waiting for your life to start.  You want desperately to truly live and you seek so much of who you are in places where you'll never find it. Those places leave you with a dismal contentment that comes and goes with the setting of the sun. I've cried with you in the darkest moments of your life, sat with you when you felt like you couldn't bear to take another step, when you thought you'd come to the end of you...

And he is six and he walks into the kitchen, all tousled hair, sleepy eyes, and sweetness.  And we tell him. His face is so small and dear, so tiny and he doesn't understand the depth of our words.  In that moment I am 11 and instantly have wisdom beyond my years because of that look of innocence and because I know a little more than he. And he is thirteen and he is confused, growing and lonely.  I'm driving us down the road and I'm singing a song of love for a God Who is beginning to fill in my blank and wrecked spaces.  He is dozing beside me, mumbling that I am a good singer, that he likes the song.  Yet I cannot be the arms that hold him because my own grief wells inside of me, by times, that I fear it may consume me.  He is still so small and young and yet he knows too much and has felt too much.  I feel I am his protector and I am not able to fix this.  I cannot be what he needs and there is an ache that I shouldn't know and I do and be...

We live in a fairy world where we think everything should come easily, where things stay calm, no ripples on the water, no contest we can't win, nothing we can put our hand to that doesn't turn out just right.  But this is not the truth of where we stand.  This world is hard.  Relationships are messy.  People grow old and weary or sick.  It infects each one of us.  Nothing we do can protect us from the wear of this earth.  Yet there is such beauty in this place; love and laughter, kindness and hope, joy and excitement. But I cannot have one without the other and so I dance between the two. Sometimes the steps falling into place, one emotion closely behind the other. Other times the separation of the two so vast I cannot see their connection. It's delightful and ugly in the same instance.  I carry the promise of new life in a body that daily is wearing down, the beauty of God working through the brokenness of me. All of this i...

I'm clinging to Your promise.   i won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you This can feel like walking on a beach of sharp rocks in thin sandals, every hard edge is felt underfoot.  A burden deeply rooted into who I think I am- the story I told myself to make it through.  A story full of exaggerated circumstances and victim armour I now find hard to discard.  Lies caught up in a reflex of survival, but that have no leg to stand on. The old life fortifications are being dismantled and I find there's a part of me that's fighting against it. Foolishly.  I've been duped by my own mind's eye.  What I always thought was the truth about myself was a pale shadow of the Wisdom of real, honest to goodness Truth. you'll learn to live freely and lightly About so much more than physical hunger, I am learning how to cope without reaching for a tangible, home-cooked, sugary something.  I'm learning to sit in my own discomfort, insecurit...

The heart of an eleven year old girl still beats in an adult.  Somewhere.  She's alone.  Lonely.  She feeds her to keep her quiet when her crying gets too loud.  Her heart is broken and she can't find her way to fix it again.  She thinks if she could just keep everyone around her happy, the pain will dull somewhat.  Truth is, she only loses more of herself when she edits her character and her opinion to keep life at an even keel for everyone else.  She is tired of holding up her world, while time marches on and the wound gets deeper.  Her heart is tender but she makes allowances for those whose ways are a little harder than hers.  She keeps quiet because it matters more how she appears than what comes from her heart and mind.  She loves even more to be helpful with a smart idea if the moment presents itself.  She'll replay the conversation over and over when she is the hero and does the same whe...

The five contently munch on waffles and cereal at the kitchen table as I leave and make my way uptown for a few hours. Entering the kitchen of the cafe, I find my companion already putting day old donuts and bagels onto plates. She is flying through the kitchen, stopping to say good morning and giving me a quick hug. I can never go faster than she does. The pots of coffee ready to be poured.  Our customers stand outside waiting to come in. Looking impatiently in the windows as we move through the kitchen preparing to open. Hot water is making mountains of bubbles in the plastic wash tub.  We'll wash the same cups and spoons multiple times this morning.  Refill after refill.  Bottomless cups of coffee.  The sound of the cups being filled a familiar sound even as this place has become familiar. Pouring just the right amount.  Can I have a sweetener?  Can I have a plastic bag?  Do you have any bread? Small notes are written on brightly coloured...

1977 Not all that long ago I stood at my mother's dresser shuffling through the things she left behind.  Searching for remnants of her in the small bottles of perfume, half used containers of cream, and her favourite brown leather gloves.  All things that were once so ordinary now held much wonder and charm.  I would wander into my parent's bedroom when no one else was around and look through her clothes.  Leaning in to her closet, desperate for any hint of her familiar scent, still able to hear her voice when I closed my eyes.  I spent many hours in there, sitting on her bed, looking in the mirror, crying myself weary.  Even now there seems to be just a small amount of myself left back there in that eleven year old girl.  I knew then, as I do now, that God was near.  That He would not walk away from me even when the time came that I'd try to walk away from Him.  Through the ...

There will come a time when you won't care so much what your hair looks like when you leave for a few minutes of alone time to get a prescription filled.  You won't even care that you'll wear clothes that you've slept in.  You'll find days when you won't want to do much, when just being upright in a chair will be enough.  You'll have long stretches of time when you will bask in the thankfulness of a full night's sleep only to find it will be taken from you again the following night.  You'll love to stand and watch your children sleep.  Your heart will well up with incredible love and fear all at once for who they are and what they will endure.  You'll hurt for them.  You'll cry for them.  You'll stay up at night praying for them.  It will be hard for you to wrap your head around the love you'll feel for your children and also for the increasing love you have for your husband. There will be battles that you will want to win becau...

    Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one who walks this way.  You are not my everything.  Oh, how I want You to be.  This isn't Your fault, but mine.  I struggle to keep You at the centre of my everything, to carve out just a bit of time to give You.  I have this deep need to love You.  I believe in You with everything I am.  I can't stop it, I am compelled.  But how I struggle with my flesh.      There are times when I don't think I want to move beyond this place.  It's one of blissful ignorance.  Or so I choose to stubbornly, foolishly believe.  Truth is, I can't sit here and remain unmoved.  You, Redeemer, are constantly pulling everything forward, in a direction of restoration, not stagnation.  But You do not force me.  You woo me with Your love.   You show up in wonderful moments of clarity, gloriously to my sur...

I've grown tired of flat prayers spurned on by the need of temporal things and crave those spoken to a God who I've known to bring me through.  He hears me.  I know I am not just spouting empty words to invisible ears.  He is with me.  Down here in the trench of my life.  Into the mess I create and the one created by others.  He never leaves.  His love envelopes who I am and molds me into who I was meant to be from the moment of my being.  I am loved.  I am loved.  I am loved .  He doesn't let me go, he never walks away, he doesn't leave me empty.  He doesn't stop speaking to my heart that aches to hear.  He doesn't grow tired of me the way I tire of myself.  He doesn't give up when all I can see is what is in front of me, not what will be or what can be.  He doesn't lose sight of love.  He doesn't let up.  He cannot stop loving.  He is love....

  I struggle to know what the right choice is when it comes to you.  Do I walk close to keep you in my constant care or do I let you step ahead a little and watch as you walk farther and farther away?  The moment you were born was a letting go.  You breathed your first and I held you close, suddenly so aware of my own inadequacy.  Your sweet newborn smell would quickly fade to the scent of fresh air, good clean dirt, and independence.  I'm caught in the middle of this.  You imply "Stay close enough so I can still hear you singing, but walk back there so I feel like I'm doing this on my own".  Motherhood is a funny thing.  I have nothing to gauge how I'm doing.  You have good days and bad just like me.  Someone could judge one way or another at any given time.  I judge myself.  Most harshly, I am sure. Sometimes I am too caught up in myself to really look at you.  Insecurity nip...