Rise From the Battlefield, My Friend

It’s our first spring here and the tree outside our bedroom window started blooming this week. I’ve strained long for those shoots of green, narrowing my vision to examine brown bark, longing for a breakthrough.

The last few springs have been dark ones for me, humid and hot ones and icy cold ones too. They’ve been cast in the shadow of all the wrong places, darkened in the depth and ache so familiar to those landscapes which became spiritual battlegrounds, bloody and muddy, gray like the dented armor of my walled-up heart in those years.

Endless were the midnight games of holy hide-and-seek and I was running in place, peering for God inside heart holes and behind graffiti’d buildings.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

But this spring is different.

This spring there are fat yellow flowers and white petals that trickle from trees and stick to my hair, and there are tulips and strawberries right in my very own front yard, damp with the paint of God’s fresh brushstroke. This spring there are cloudy days too but the low wisps and gusts tickle colorful branches, scattering light about us like a thousand tiny mirrors tumbling from the sun.

This blistering battlefield threatened to evaporate me in those years. I thought I might dissolve into nothing but a puddle of melted-down armor from the weight of it and the intensity of its temperature. Straining hard for grace or maybe deliverance, still searching frantic for my hide-and-seek God, I stumbled hard into patches of white, suspended in tangles of sweet honeysuckle, fragrant and tangy with the taste of grace.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

In the stumbling, I learned to see. To look through eyes that linger long on a dusky pink sky, to twist a child’s hair between my fingers and take in a breath like a whisper, to taste a taste of love Divine.

 It is not midnight hide-and-seek after all but a secret scavenger hunt, our moments and years on this earth. There are millions of tiny treasures tucked away for you. Have you noticed?

Love notes, written straight to you out there tucked inside acorn shells and flittering from tree branches, scrawled on the footprints of a child. They are bound majestically in a single grain of pink sugar, splashed across the foamy coastline, dancing in the filtered lace-light of sunrays through spring leaves and reflect the creative brilliance of our Father.

Rise from the battlefield along with me and smell the honeysuckle, my friend. There is so much to see.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.  

I'm Baaaaack -and- Who Are You Looking For?

Source

He is risen.

And we begin again with a sense of a "new year" at all the rebirth that Spring will bring.

I'm glad to be back.

The Lenten experiment of quieting the social media voices in my life was redemptive, and in retrospect, I see that it was less about my giving up and more about my giving in, preparing my heart for what is upon me yet. In the quiet, I drew closer, I fell in love with words again without being a slave to them, and I also longed for the community of people that has become my extended family here.

I didn't miss the blogging business as much as I thought I would – I missed hearing from all of you, reading and keeping caught up on your lives, but the break was needed and I'm grateful that I heeded the call to quiet. There is much in the air as I come to life with the reminder of resurrection, my soul is stirred and I am always impatient for more.

Our home will be increasing, not with a baby of my belly but an adolescent or maybe three. We are both in the process of (God willing) adopting a teenage boy that we cared for in Texas and finishing up our foster care certification and we are braced and we are ready, as much as you can ever be ready for something like that. We may double the number of children in our home within the next few months, but this is not the first time we've been on this adventure, so it isn't as daunting or scary as it could be. 

Instead, it feels a bit like breaking in a pair of new shoes, this house we've made into a home bursting at the seems with life and chatter and happy chaos and the hard days that mean we're doing something worthwhile in this wonky little life. I want to ramble on and on about this, but it is something I need to tuck close to my heart just now until we have more to share, until there is more certainty. 

There are harder things too about me now – my brother overcome by the throes of addiction and us being powerless to stop what ravages and destroys. My family feeling the pang and sting of all the lies addiction brings like a smothering vacuum void where there is no oxygen. Grateful to have the source of life now and always all around, to be lifted up by holy breath and the learning of what comes supernatural in the midst of surrender. Celebrating beauty in all of this.

One more thought to leave you with today, as we settle into the reality of resurrection, move forward with what new life will mean to us now. The angels that visited Mary in the empty tomb asked her, "Woman…Why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" (John 20:15).

So I ask you and I ask me… in light of the empty tomb, who is it you are looking for?

A lover? A spouse? A person to recognize your talents? A baby in your womb? A prodigal son to return? A person to validate your efforts? An individual to save you from yourself? Are you waiting for you to be who you want to be before you surrender? Are you looking for flesh and blood? Or are you looking for Jesus, who has risen?

Why are you crying, today? Who are you looking for?