Part One

Here is the beginning of a very short fiction piece.  I've been wanting to try some different writing styles in search of my favorite way to share story.  This was a fun exercise and though I have yet to write Parts Two and Three, I have enjoyed the perspective of waiting and receiving what the end of this adventure will be as it intersects with my real life.

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He laughed in his hurry.  Despite a pounding heart and anxious sweat, the thought struck him.  Pleasure he denied of himself crept in, and he stopped to catch his breath.  Leaning against the wall in the moonlight, the small town silent, he wondered if…  He knew.  God, he thought, no doubt—no, he felt—how else to explain the wonder of this moment?  It wasn’t like something he now realized.  It was.  He, a religious leader, was scurrying the streets to meet the substance of dreams.  He covered his mouth with his robe to muffle the sound and presently the mirth intertwined with tears upon his face.  A gentle breeze traveled the alley and carried his mind away.

He remembered the longings, as a boy.   The parts of himself that would devour his whole being with fire and ache; nowhere to go, with no one to confide in he would battle his soul and drown from the inside.  He did not understand.  Bound for service from a young age and surrounded by bearded men, their lifeless faces embodied wisdom, he was told.  So what did he do with desire?  Slowly, observing somber and repetition, he took the fiery life within and learned to sacrifice.  His mind a continuous altar building and burning thoughts, dreams, wants, and hopes.  He learned to consume the longing to be surrounded, to be satisfied, to be pursued, with the weight of holiness, honor, and duty: the path to righteousness.  He grew.

They were pleased.

The force of his youth buried and laid to rest within his heart.  He hoped someone had received from his offering, but never felt anything.

And now here it was.  In pursuit, flooded again by a long dormant memory.  The whisper of fullness and its insatiable power was driving him to risk everything he had laid down his life for.  It was almost blasphemous, but he didn’t know what to believe, because everything…  Everything.  Everything was changing.

He had stopped too long to think.  Quickening his step, he was just a few short minutes away from the house where they would meet on the roof.  A midnight tryst, the thought that had stopped him before now even his beard couldn’t hide the grin that spread across his wrinkled face.  How defiant a description!  It contradicted law in humor and truth.  Shaking his head, he forgot himself and broke into a run.

Breaking

“Dear woman, why are you weeping?”

“They have taken away my Lord, and I cannot find Him.”  John 20:13

Driving home from counseling this week, I asked God, “ What’s my name?”  Pushing for a break in the silence that has lasted a year.  He whispers back playfully, “What is mine?”

Seeing my confusion he pushes back himself, “No, literally.  What is my name?”—citing two specifics others have given him… one being ‘The God who sees.’

I’m thrown into the turmoil of starved pursuit.

Holy week is turning out to be remarkably significant each year, more present than a remembrance.  When I last wrote, I thought I would lose the baby I now hold in my arms.  I had just experienced a loss that left my soul bleeding and I was terrified as my physical body threatened to follow suit.  Mercifully the pregnancy complications stopped, but the rest did not.  Little did I know the betrayal of God himself was soon to follow.

Brene Brown’s definition of courage floored me.  It comes from the Latin word cor, meaning heart, and thus courage is ‘to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart’.  Thank God.  That’s me, that’s always been me.  I am courageous.  I share the following about my life, however disjointed, in this truth.

About a month ago, the prophetic spoke over me, “You are in exile, though not because of anything you have done, and God wants you to pour out your heart to him but he will not answer you.”  Great.  At least we are on the same page.

I only heard this in retrospect.

2015

In April we knew we had to move.  In May we prepared. In June we decided where.  In July we scouted. In August we packed.  In September we left a home we loved and arrived to a house in chaos.

Within an hour of walking through the door our daughter began vomiting and going into shock.  The entire place reeked of cat pee (she is severely allergic) and lucky for us we only cleaned the carpets after closing.  I was 7 months pregnant, we were halfway across the country, alone with three kids under 6, a building we couldn’t inhabit and our belongings in a truck.

In September we pulled up carpet.  Painted sub floors with Kilz (our toddler ingested some).  Scrubbed every single surface with hot water and bleach.  Re painted almost every wall, cleaned air ducts, ate out too much, and stuck our kids in front of an ipad, living in a trailer on the street.

October was much the same, but we moved inside, got a 0% Home Depot card and kept working.  Still God was nowhere to be found.  At 5,280 feet and 8 months pregnant I would pray every time I climbed the stairs, only to watch my words fall to the ground.  Sometimes I fell too, weeping on the sub floor, the stumble an opportunity to pour forth my desperation to be heard, to be answered.

In November I gave birth.

There is much more I cannot yet describe, but what I knew of God and Christ and whatever the gospel was, I do not know any longer.  The obediently constructed and reverently defended faith I had has been blown out of the water.

The layers—not just of this last year—of what I, and my family, have endured at the hands and words of those who call themselves his people have driven me to a place beyond belief.  Added to all the physical strain of moving a thousand miles, remodeling an entire home, giving birth to a baby, there were vicious rumors and even hate mail.  It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back, they say.

Amidst the turmoil though, there was the visitation of a few angels, without whom I would not have survived.  And then the word of that prophet, but it still doesn’t resolve things.  I’m exhausted having wrestled and waited in darkness for so long.  But tomorrow is a good day for the questions and doubters.  Who will roll away the stone?

Then it comes to me.  His name.

“Let me go, the dawn is breaking.”

Genesis 32:26

Burial

"We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." Romans 6:4

   Today is not the exact day, but two years ago, on Holy Saturday I woke up and thought my best friend had died.  She had been lost on Mount Hood since Sunday and I didn’t know until Thursday that anything was wrong.  To experience the raw emotion of the possible death of an intimate friend only to find out in three days that she was found alive is probably the closest I’ll get to a replica of the Easter story. 

   This week we celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.  I love how each year it grows more meaningful, like Christmas in reverse.  Getting older means greater joy.  The past few days I’ve been meditating on the burial of Christ.  I’ve always thought about His death and His resurrection, but I easily forget that He was laid in a tomb for three days.  My life this week, in a myriad of ways, has reflected the significance of burial.  Physically, mentally, and emotionally I’ve been brought to the Jesus who lay in a tomb. 

   On this side of the story, the emotions and meaning are radically different than what the disciples must have felt.  They didn’t know ‘He is risen!’ and were burdened with fear, doubt, denial, and despair.  But for us, burial is an invitation to rest and waiting.  And, as CS Lewis puts it so well, “Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead,” it becomes a place of hope, the expectation that all things will be made new. 

   Before burial one is anointed, prepared for a new name and another land.  Dry bones anticipate breath as they lay in the dark or the dust.  Community is gained when we live to die and learn to rest like the saints before and around us.  If we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake that His life may be manifest in our mortal bodies, then Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Resurrection Sunday should become the rhythm of our lives.  Always willing to die, always ready to rest, and always waiting for resurrection.

   Those outside the tomb must grieve and walk away, but if we place our broken hearts in shadow of Christ’s hand we will be the first to see the sunrise.  I will wait in darkness for my Savior to call me out to tread the dawn.

"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." Romans 6:5