Saturday, August 31, 2013

The Baptism

The fog surrounds me like a heavy blanket.  I can’t see my feet below me, much less the steps ahead.  I stumble through the grey darkness with tears snaking down my face and a mumbled prayer escaping my lips: “God have mercy.”
And all the while the water steadily rises.
I can hear her crying, the sound of her weeping permeating to my very core, but I can’t find her through the fog.  I call out to her but she won’t trust what she cannot see.  I rush wildly about, hoping that I’ll stumble into her by chance and manage to pull her to safety.
But the more I rush, the more exhausted I become, and the more she too becomes frightened.  And she panics.
I hear desperate splashing.  Cries of fear.  The river.
And then only silence.
Desperate silence.
And then a blinding light breaks through the fog, forcing me to my knees in the rising waters.  Help is here.  As my rescuers pull me to my feet, I see others diving into the river after the one I had lost.  They emerge with her, saving her where I could not.
And I weep.  Weep for my striving, weep for my loss, weep for the salvation that arrived when it mattered most.  Weep for the fog and for the water, for the pain of this baptism.  Weep for joy.
We were lost, and then we were found.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

a mustard seed

This morning I woke up from a fitful five or six hours' sleep a full hour before my alarm in full blown panic mode, desperately wishing I was sick so I could just stay home and frantically practice piano all day.

A few weeks ago, I stupidly agreed to accompany a community musical here in town.  I didn't get half of the music until several days ago, and I've been frantically trying to learn it ever since, at least in the spare moments that I can find between my already overloaded schedule.  By last night, it was clear that I wouldn't be making the deadline, and I gave up and tried to enjoy a game night I held at my apartment.

And then everything else came crashing in, too, and after a brief conversation with a couple friends at the end of the night, I realized just how much of a failure I am at all things Christian-like.  Although I was worried about the musical, I was more tortured by questions of what it means to love those around me, and what it means to point them to Christ in the things I do.  

It may not seem like a big deal, but this question as well as some good ol' fashioned worry kept me from sleeping peacefully and all but destroyed my day today.  I was shaken and anxious and stressed and defeated.

And then on the way home from the island, a friend called and asked me to join him and another friend at Chick-fil-a for dinner.  I was going to not go, because I planned to go home and practice piano all night.  But then I threw my hands in the air and decided that an hour or two of practice standing up by my un-weighted keyboard in my living room may not be that useful anyway.  So I went.

What you have to understand about this particular dinner is that I don't always...jive...with the guys I was going to be eating with.  We're all very different people and it makes us clash like crazy.  Sometimes I find myself disagreeing simply because it's one of them making the statement, not because of any inherent flaw in the statement.  

And yet, as we discussed things of God and the future of our small groups and what it means to follow Jesus and serve Him and love the people He's place in our lives, I was blown away by the God who binds together the three of us in perfect unity despite our imperfections and personality incompatibilities.  God used tonight to speak into my heart the simple truth that He can speak through the simplest of conversations, that He can bring together people with nothing else in common but Him, and that in Christ we are one.  I'm thankful for that, so very thankful.  I'm thankful that God places people in my life who do not see life from my perspective, because it stretches me and forces me to consider things more carefully.  And often the perspectives of others show me just how wrong I am.

We're often so weak.  Our perspective is hopelessly limited, we are blinded by our pride and by our ambition.  We want to be important and have our accomplishments recognized.  Tonight God reminded me that where we are weak, where we are flawed, God is there made strong.

I went to church.  For the first time all day I was weightless.  I put my burdens in the hands of Jesus, trusting that the One who led me to that crazily improbable appointment at Chick-fil-A can move mountains in the lives of my hurting friends, and that this same God cares about my participation in this silly musical that I never should have signed up for.  

Tonight I had faith the size of a mustard seed and I called on God to make Himself known among us.  He promised that our faith, if only the size of a mustard seed, would move mountains.  Mountains of rebellion, mountains of unbelief, mountains of cynicism, mountains of broken hearts, mountains of disunity, even mountains of crazy-hard music.  He'll move it all, if only we will look to Him.

I'm gonna hold Him to that.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

worst of sinners

We are so quick to judge those around us, so quick to anger, so quick to avenge and revenge.  We don't hesitate to allow righteous indignation to fill and consume us, don't hesitate to condemn our [former] friends, don't hesitate to allow bitterness to overcome love.  And tonight as I pondered the failings of those around me, the hearts broken, the lives in pieces, the loneliness and the uncertainty of unrequited love, tonight as I allowed my heart to fill with a mixture of a little sorrow and more than a little anger, the truth of the situation came crashing down on me like a ton of bricks.  All of these things I see and despise in other people?  All of the things that make me swear to defend the honor of my wounded brothers and sisters?  I either am or possess the very real possibility to do and be these things.  I am that which I despise.  The logs I see in others' eyes are distorted reflections of what is in my own.

The weight of knowing what I am capable of is somewhat crippling.  It takes the proverbial wind out of my sails.  It's humbling to know that I could conceivably become what I despise, that I could hurt those I love most.  And yet, that's the reality of it.  At any moment a series of bad decisions could leave me deeply hurting those I love.  In fact, I know I've done it before, and so often I semi-successfully rationalized my actions as righteous.  I watch others do things I either have done or have the capability of doing and judge them, not seeing that life is so much clearer from the outside looking in.

And so I fight once more to love without reservation or grudge, without judgment or strings attached.  I fight to see myself as the worst of sinners, saved by the wonderful grace of God but proven to be a hopeless sinner.  I fight to see others as beloved of God before all else.

God, have mercy on me, a sinner.  The worst of sinners.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

my cup overflows

I've always been a frightfully open person.  I am that girl who openly announces to everyone what I make per hour at my current job (I should probably not do that as much) and I have tended in the past to blog somewhat unflinchingly about things close to my heart.

And now I don't anymore.  You see, there's a boy.  A wonderful man who has consumed much of my thoughts over the past two and a half months.  Our story is ours alone, and it's not one I want to play out in this space, largely because my blog was so often where I grew, processed things, and changed.  For once in my life, I want this part of my life to proceed in its natural surroundings, among our friends and in the reality of the day to day mundane.  And it's not only my story to tell, it's his, too.

And yet, I miss this blog a great deal.  I miss living my life partially here, and I miss letting this blog influence my thoughts.  I miss the opportunity to write things out and process my emotions.

In many ways, though, there are no words for the season of life in which I walk at the present time.  I walk through territory that is, for me, uncharted.  It's been scary, it's been wonderful, it's been something for which I have had to fight and something entirely natural and mundane all at the same time.

And I've learned a few things in the process.  About him, about me, about us, about God, about life.

I've learned that God's will is impossible to discern unless I am willing to follow and obey and seek God first in the day to day of life.  I've learned to lay my worries and concerns down and live in the moment, because this moment is beautiful.  I've learned that to care about another is something exhilarating and entirely mundane, something far removed from Hollywood and yet so much more real and beautiful.  I've learned that a lot of my disgruntled-ness about relationships or about marriage or about sexism or about gender roles or about what-have-you was completely ridiculous.  I've learned a bit of grace toward those in the dating and/or married "clubs" as my eyes have been opened to a side of life I had previously not experienced.  I've learned that the "good guys" are always the ones worth pursuing and that playing hard to get is a joke.

And I'm thankful.  I'm thankful for the godly man God has placed in my life.  My cup overflows.

So if I'm silent here, it's because words fall short at present.  I'll probably be back some day.

Until then.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

in which i'm a piano teacher

Seven years ago this month, I sat in a small room and, with every nerve I had stretched taut, played First Arabesque by Claude Debussy for my potential college piano instructor.  My performance of a high school solo earned me a spot as a private student of hers rather than in a group class, and in my two semesters studying under her, I learned more about piano than I probably had in the previous five years.  Studying piano at Northwestern College made music come alive for me, and I'll always be indebted to Dr. Juyeon Kang for making me the musician I am today.

Today I sat in another office not unlike that office from seven years ago with my future in piano once again on the line.  The previous years have seen me transformed into a nomad with no real opportunities to further my piano career.  The songs I learned in college have slipped away and I am left with the artifacts of an earlier time.

The job teaching piano lessons was already mine, but she wanted to hear me play something before I left.  And so Debussy's First Arabesque it was.  As I played, I felt as if my life was coming full circle.  Ever since graduating college, I have avoided any full-scale commitment to music, resisting letting music define me.  But now, with my passion for history slipping away in a beautiful sunset of a season of my life I will treasure forever, I realized how much music has always been there, and how much I want it to always be there.

I remember those countless nights when I'd make my way a fourth mile up that South Dakota hill to the church that never locked its doors.  I'd go inside and sit down at the piano and let the music fill the room full to the bursting with the presence of God.  I remember peace restored as I lay weeping at the altar begging God for wisdom and restoration of the broken pieces of my heart.  I remember dancing through the aisles of that little church, singing "I Love You, Lord."

I remember Friday evenings at Northwestern College, when I'd go with my closest friends to the chapel and we'd sing praise songs for hours.  I remember Emily dancing.  I remember Sarah and I singing beautiful harmonies.  I remember God's presence permeating the atmosphere, heaven on earth.

And then there was Georgia, and playing piano on my lunch break.  That old Carnegie piano with badly damaged strings and keys that nevertheless fills the entire house and lawn with the strains of music, a music which I have witnessed restoring the peace of so many park visitors who for a brief time are able to forget the sadness that plagues them, the day-to-day stress that never ends.

I have the unique privilege of imparting to a few of the young people in my town a love for music.  I am a piano teacher...such a ridiculous privilege.  I feel so unqualified and undeserving...for so long piano was something I did only because I was forced.  And now I get to guide students through the hard work of technique and theory and memorization to a place where music comes alive, sustains, and even connects us with the heart of God.

My optimism is foolish and naive, I know, but I wouldn't trade it in for a thousand doses of realism.