healing agents

It's pretty simple.  There are just some things in life with the natural ability to heal your soul.

In a spontaneous moment, my best friend and I compiled a list.  My ideas spawned out of desire -- in this not-so-comforting season, I'm craving some comfort.  All these battle wounds need some healing and well... not all healing is within our control.

But some of it is.

Happy Meditation

Whip my Hair

Mexican food (esp. black beans)

Coffee

Holding hands

Ice cream

Sunshine

Bear hugs

Naps

Blueberries

Sweat

Eskimo kisses

Sand

Hot chocolate

Movie night

Wind

Having your hair played with

Compliments from kids

Sleeping in

New earrings

Home cooked meal

Spontaneous dancing

Second kisses

90's music

Babies falling asleep in your arms

Forehead kisses

Sushi

Breakfast for dinner

First day of spring

First day of summer

Putting on clothes right out of the dryer

Feel free to add to the list.  We need all the healing we can get.

"A"

I think he's an angel.

Something in his eyes.  I've seen it before.  On an elevator last year.  In a man in a blue Chevy at the park.

I caught him.  Radiating.

Reading over spelling words, writing and erasing and rewriting words.

I leaned in.  He looked up.  Said something I don't remember because I was paralyzed by the light I saw there.

As if, in their depths, he was telling me a secret: "I am here for you," his eyes twinkled, "just in case you got confused and thought you were here for me."

He went back to homework, head bent low, eraser shavings everywhere.  But I just stared at him suspiciously.  Knowing in my heart, the only way sometimes we know truths, how often we entertain angels.  The ones who are strategically placed in our lives, who require more, who wear us out.  The ones we are better for knowing.

We are better for him being in our lives.  Every thrown chair, every punched wall, every blank stare.  Stretching us.  Wearing out our hearts and our arms and draining us, so we are empty of ourselves.  So the One who sent him can move in.

Don't you dare smile, we tease.  Thinking we are drawing something out of him he would otherwise reserve.

Don't you dare love me, he responds by shuffling his feet and dipping his chin to hide the truth flirting with the corners of his mouth.

I dare you.  

to tell the truth

Honesty is pulled out of me like the nail I just pulled out of my tire.

Punctured.

Let out all the old air.  Hit the ground.  Useless.  Unbalanced.  Dangerous, even.

To tell the truth, to expose.  Perhaps, like a splinter, only removal will heal.

I still feel sick over it.  Maybe use my words to guide, to heal, to remedy.

Guilty.  Refusing to hold on to shame.  Or accept it from another.

But really.  Nail's gone now.

Plug it up with appropriate material.

Refill with clean air.

Keep going.

the village

Recently I was hit with an overwhelming sense of incapability.  After barreling into the new semester somewhat self-assured and utterly excited.  After almost a month of being horribly physically sick.  I hit a wall.  Physical sickness put me to bed for eight hours in the middle of the day.  And kept me far from par for the rest of the week.

But the next wall I hit was an emotional one.  Of insecurity.  Of self-doubt.  Of fear.  Damn that wall.

I am not a go-getter.  I like instructions.  I don't want you to watch me while I do what I'm supposed to be doing.  And the only thing that makes me squirm more than criticism are compliments.  I am messed up.

I don't get ideas like I used to.  But I can argue and advocate and intervene like my life depends on it.  I give great hugs.  And I listen well.

But sometimes those things don't seem like enough.  I wonder, in the back of my mind, if I will ever do what I do well.  If I will ever make a difference.  Or if anyone will ever want me on their team.

I've been overwhelmed by another realization lately.  A more powerful one.  One with weight and truth.

The organization I work with right now has set up this eco-map for each child involved in our program.  We call it "the Village".  A six-part system constructed to surround the child (the sixth aspect) with the community, support, direction, discipleship, and counseling he or she needs to succeed.  Standing in the office of the elementary school yesterday, I listened to a conversation about one of our favorite boys.

And I got this mental image.  Not of a village.  But of an army.

I am part of an army.  An army who has assembled in order to defend the lives and hearts of children.  One child at a time.  We have surrounded them, shields raised against the world and so much of the bad.

We are advocating for these children in a way unprecedented.

Think about it.  What if five specific, consistent people intentionally loved on, invested in, and spent time with you?  What if you had an army?  An army of soldiers who fought for you behind the scenes.  Who spent hours at night, unable to sleep, because they knew you were on the brink of transformation.  What if you had even one person praying for you?  Two or three of those five who noticed the littlest bit of progress and commended you for it.  What if your achievements, however small, were celebrated?  What if you got bombarded with hugs, and at the end of every argument, or every punishment, you were told you were loved?  That you were special.


I wish I had that.

That wall I hit knocked me out for a while.  Made me want to curl up in bed and hug a pillow and ignore the alarm.  I don't like not being good at things.  I don't like being uncertain.  But whether or not I move, whether or not I continue "doing" directly effects the lives and hearts of the ones I love most.

They don't have time for me to be insecure.

I sat down with "T" on Tuesday.  I had noticed something different in him, something which drew me to him and demanded my slowness and intentionality.  Quickly I explained to the teacher I am certified as a para educator and she smiled, sending me over to sit with T and help him with his free writing assignment.  Today I went back to the lunch room and found T, who carried on a perfectly random conversation about farmers and spoons and pudding.  It was, perhaps, the best lunch hour I'd had in weeks.  Before I left I carefully touched his shoulder and fixed the hood on his jacket.  Quietly he turned over his shoulder and mouthed "thank you" and smiled.  Well.  His eyes smiled.  And I noticed because he was making eye contact.  My heart swelled.

This afternoon I sat across from another one of my favorites.  The consistent theme of our conversation was "choices".  I watched him get rattled.  Brow furrow.  Lips purse.  Jaw set.  I leaned over and whispered, quiet enough so he'd have to lean in to listen, "You have two choices."

In a matter of minutes he had straightened up in his chair.  For the remainder of the day, whenever anger and frustration tempted, all I had to say was "make a choice".  And he would.  Good choices too.

They need me to be teachable.  And brave.  They need me to have open eyes and a healthy mind.  My capacity to hear and understand directly impacts them.

They need me to be humble.  Humble enough to know this story is not about me.  That I may not know the best way to do this.  Humble enough to know that I am not really needed -- the story goes on without me.  I am not important in the grand scheme -- but I must be humble enough to know how to play my part well.

They need me to teach them what humble means.  Maybe only by living that way.

And today, Marcus and I were hit with that realization at the same time.

"Humble -- yeah I know what humble means.  Humble means poor."

I stopped with my hand on his head and looked up at Marcus.  No, no, no.

"What does it mean then?  Sad?"

In a quiet moment at the end of the day, in the middle of the routine of lining up for the bus, truth was revealed to Marcus and me.  A seed, unearthed.  The root of a dirty weed, which has been growing in the ghettos and in the suburbs and up the walls of the high rises and on the concrete steps of the shot gun houses.  We saw it, then.  And I swear we both almost feverishly attacked it with a spade.

They don't know what it means to be humble.

And so we find ourselves here.  A village.  An army.  Fighting a battle, which makes our fatigue make sense.  It's a wonder we don't walk around with bruises and scrapes, from the forces we're up against.

It is in this, we find these children make us better.  In our attempt to rescue them from the hell they were born into, they have propelled us into growth and strength and purpose unmatched.  They require authenticity from me.  Self-examination.  Honesty.   It is because of them I am getting better.

It is because of them I will pull myself away from the shadow of that wall.  I will wash my hands of the self-pity and the insecurity, which threatens to taint everything I touch.  And I will either scale that wall and leave it behind, or hack through it -- damaging it, weakening it, so that one day it will collapse entirely.

Maybe one day I'll be wise enough to be like "A".  Who knows himself well enough that on Monday he said quietly, "I'm not mad.  I just don't want to talk right now."

Hello.  My name is Anna.  I am tired and a little lonely.  Pretty sore from fighting a fight I'm not strong enough to fight yet.  What I wouldn't give tonight for a village of my own.  For the five who suit up in their armor just to fight for me.  But then I smile.  Because my kids don't know that's what we're doing for them.  They just think I'm some bossy white girl who can't play basketball and likes to give them hugs.

I could have an army and never know it either.

real quick

emotions are ridiculous.

one minute, a piece of news has me thinking I'm Jonah and God's sent a storm and I'm fixin to be lunch for a whale.

the next, another piece of news later, and there's a goofy smile plastered on my face.

get it together, anna.  get it together.

Re:

Teetering on the very edge.  Shift weight.  Precarious.

The fear of it is worse than the falling.  The catch in your chest, the adrenaline pulsing in your armpits.  Or the dread, heavy in your belly.  You know.

I know where my decisions lead.

And so I sit, swinging my battered, bruised legs over the edge.  I know.  And I want.  A word whispers around my ears, tickling the back of my neck.  A word I crave.  A word whose echo sounds like more.

The world, to me, will never look the same.  Once you've taken a glance over the edge, once you've felt the air here at the end of all you know, and learn how you can't reach the end of Him.  The words string together.  A language their own.  One I know, salty on the back of my tongue.

I've been thrown off balance.  Thrown by high speed and lack of oxygen.  It's not too heavy, but I've been handed more than I know how to hold.  Rearrange.  Recalibrate.  Repack.

Some should be discarded.  Thrown over that edge, disregarded.  But some newness must stay, must integrate and become part of me.  Settle into the stretched out, hollowed, reinforced places.  You will see this and reject.  What, who, how I am and became at the edges may not fit into the spaces you have.

Identity restored.  I find myself distracted and drawn back towards.  A steady, deep rhythm in sync with the beating of my own heart.  If held still, only for a moment, I will find it again.  Truth beats here.  The truth within.  The truth without.  They match.

I know where my decisions lead.

And the power within the words I speak.

One step.  One muscle contracts.  In the right direction.  In the name, for the sake, of the words tickling my ears.

I am right.  In tune.  Intuitive.

I know people.  And I know this edge.  I know the emptiness hanging below my feet and I know how I could sit forever and watch the shame fall.  But with new scars and stronger muscles and more limber tendons, armed with words the world will try and deflate, I stand up.

The world I will reencounter is not the one I left behind.  I dropped so much.  And the path's leading elsewhere.

On the edge I collided with truth.  In the whirlwind of discovery I lost my breath.

Inhale.


Exhale.

Find me here.  At the edge.  Reclaiming breath.  Restoring dignity.  Redeeming love.

realistic expectations

I'm getting overwhelmed.  I am over-stimulated.  Experiencing sensory overload.  Too many plates are spinning.  I'm losing track and am watching, almost helplessly, as one by one plates begin to spin and teeter out of my control.

As desperate as the sentence even sounded.  This is how I feel.

It's late Sunday and I'm facing another week.  A full schedule.  A hard work load.  High demand and low funds.

How in the world am I supposed to make this work?

Here's to taking it one step at a time.  To setting measurable goals and objectives.  To developing action items.  Completing tasks.

Here's to setting attainable goals (this doesn't always translate to: easy.  But it might.), which I can achieve and then somehow measure the achievement.

So this week my goals are:

1) cook two full meals
2) go to the gym three times
3) get caught up on homework
4) get 6 hours of sleep at night

Simple things.  Important things.  Possible things.

Because the goals I want to set, look more like:

1) Buy a community center
2) Adopt a baby
3) Speak French
4) Restore the ghetto

Sometimes, easier isn't bad.  Sometimes, easier is wiser.  Short term goals versus long term goals. Because deep in my belly, I know that the big things are dependent on the little things.  And it's faithfulness in the mundane, which prepares you for what's next.

It's just that my "what's next" keeps turning out to be more hardship.  More testing.  More challenges.

Today there's only so much I can do.  I will do so much.


“Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” - St. Francis of Assisi.

not by myself

My intuition almost never fails me.  Whether or not I listen to it is another issue entirely.  But there is a space in my heart reserved for the warnings, the encouragement, the quiet whispers.  Therein lies the truth and the voice of the Spirit.

Within just a few minutes last night, while washing dishes, I experienced intervention.  In a way long unfamiliar to my heart.  I sat back, forearms deep in dish water, and watched.  Familiarity soothed and unexpectedness startled.  Well, hello.

How dare you?  Come now, after all this time.  Why choose now, tonight?

But I knew the answer.  And I knew the difference.  Between the times before and this one.  I know, even as light rises this morning, why He stepped in.  With words, "I adore you.  You are my daughter.   You are so special to me."

No condemnation.  Just a quick reminding in my forgetting.  Draw the line, write in the sand.

Love wins.

In all my lost hope, I repeatedly lose my vision.  Like a camera, in and out of focus.  My depth of vision is blurred and shallow.  Yesterday, floundering in my own mess, I reached out.  In defeat, I found joy.

"If I can't find anyone to marry me, Dad, will you help me raise little African boys?"

"Sure".

Perhaps I needed to hear that more than anything.  More than from a twenty-something, big, dark skinned boy.  Just tell me, again and again if you must, that I will not have to do this alone.  This life.  This mission.

Just not by myself.

not the end

"I'm kind of hard to handle," I admitted.  "I know that.  And I'm just really not sure any man would ever pick me."

The words came out of my mouth and I immediately wanted to swallow them.  Grab them before they reached anyone's ears.  I had been thinking this thought.  But saying it aloud, forming the audible words, made it real.  What a confession.

Just in the past few weeks, I've let such a confession slip more than once.  The last time I may have even whispered I'm not sure I even believe in love anymore.

These words scare me.  The truth behind them, rocking me and my ever-expanding world.  I was born into a mess.  And now I've made my own mess.  And it's only a matter of time before my heart starts seeping through the forming cracks, drawing attention to my brokenness.  To the way I've changed.  I smile as I say that.  Knowing you already know.

I am independent.  Partially because of my introverted tendencies.  Partially as a survival instinct.  People are not trustworthy.  People will fail you.  The hope and truth I cling to is, people will also surprise you.

I have based my life's work on what I believe to be truths: 1) that people will rise to meet expectations (and usually no higher), 2) that you must teach people how to treat you, 3) that if provided them, a minority will seize opportunities, and 4) that people are wholly unpredictable.

And I wonder if I will surprise myself.  By overcoming this cynicism.  By reaching beyond and discovering myself in a way, which changes everything.  Honestly, I thought this had already happened.  (In my immaturity and lack of wisdom, I forgot it would undoubtedly happen again.)  My word, I've changed so much in the past two years alone.  My level of self-awareness, my confidence, my locus of control.

I was in one place, so sure it'd be different elsewhere.  And in elsewhere, it is different.  It is so very different here.  I have to move differently.  I see the world differently.  I stand differently.  Not unlike myself in this place, but much like a different facet of myself.

But there's another elsewhere.  A place other than the one before and where I am now.  But does it exist?  Can my heart have what it needs?  Can I let my heart even contemplate this place?  Or am I going to have to settle down, dig heels deep, and steady myself in this place.

I don't feel a thing.  I started crying over this the other night -- this unwantedness.  This desirability without this need.  This new level of invisibleness.  Oh, to be watched but not seen.  To sit back and watch a dream unfold, within arms reach, without need for you.  Tears over the way busyness wipes me off the map.  What I thought would be a deluge of tears trickled down dimples and the corners of mouth and dried up on chin.  Stopped.  Dam.  Damn.

Almost cried again over something I can't remember.  Almost.

But I don't necessarily want to cry.  Come, make me laugh.  Terrify me.  Send the heat, the cold, the salty.

Electricity shot down my spine for a split second.  To end in silence and abandonment; the very, which caused the numbness.

To not hurt, in fact may mean to not feel.

And to not feel means I'm hurt deeper.  Far deeper than nerves go.  It means I lose muscle and limb.  And I can only imagine it means I lose my sight.  Lose my ability to reach out to others, who are afraid of feeling too.  Lose my gift to hold a child in such a way that they are protected from the world.

Here I go.  Pressing forward.  Reclaiming a certain power in the name of them.  For their sake.  So that when they come running into my arms, they will both know love and joy.  So they can learn.  The world, after all, doesn't teach those things.

That may be the only reason I am here.

And then I smile.  I am home alone and still I smile -- though no one sees.  Because I know the world does not teach love and joy.  But children do.  Love and joy are children.

So this may be the only reason I am here.

To have dirty feet.  And arms heavy with hearts and ribs and toes.

honest prayer

Larry tells a story.  About a time on his island a few years ago.  When he was a guardian, a security guard, a body guard, a comforter, a teacher, a caretaker.  In a place where children come and bring more world with them than they ever should have had to carry.

One night, at bedtime, one of the boys asked my dad to teach him how to pray.  On his knees beside his bed, he folded his hands and waited for instructions.

My dad told him to tell God how he felt.

And the little boy prayed, "Dear God, I feel like shit."

These are the prayers, which reach the ears of God.

These are the prayers I've been praying.  And I can't help but feel a little bit like Esther.  Currently living out a story where God is not blatantly making Himself known.  And yet His presence in my story is unmistakable.

For such a time as this.  I'm not on my knees, but I'm walking down the streets.  Praying simply.  "This is too much.  Today, I don't have what it takes to make it.  Today, I feel like shit."

And of course, then, the wind blows.

get on your way

Summer is over.

And I don't know what I feel.  Still, I don't know if I feel anything at all.

It's almost as if I just took a deep breath and pushed my shoulder into the future and just... moved forward.  Despite the resistance.  Besides the fact that I am not strong enough yet.  I am not smart enough yet.  I don't have what it takes to make it.

I have been saying that I hope I make it through this semester alive.  I'm only half joking.  Today in a sheer moment of honesty I told my sister, in not so many words, I could feel the loneliness coming.  That's the risk I'm taking.  Not physically dying.  But that my heart might fail.

Today, without stress, without any level of social anxiety, with an uncommon level of self-assuredness, I walked to class today.  Ten minutes from my new little safe haven, my class was in a familiar building.  And before ever reaching the classroom I ran into multiple people I know.  Familiar faces.  I've done this before.

Every semester I begin thinking I won't make it.

Every semester I do.  I make it.  I survive.  I succeed.

Summer's over.  And I walked into class with my cohort today as a very different woman than when I left them.

So here I am.  At the beginning of another journey.  I thought I'd come here rested.  I thought I'd come back refreshed.

But I stumbled in the door a tired, worse-for-wear older woman.

We'll see what happens.  There's potential here.  For great... something.  It looks too hard now.  But I'll get stronger.

In the words of Dr. Seuss:

There's my mountain.  It's waiting.

I'm gettin on my way.

broken places

I said, "less words".

Laying on a rooftop in St Louis, watching a lightening storm illuminate the mountains on the horizon, the stars above my head too numerous to count... He chose less words too.

I'm still here.


When I was in Africa last year, and in the months prior and following, I was completely wrecked.  Broken.  Shattered.  God used Ethiopia to begin to put me back together.  To catapult me into the ghetto.  Into purpose and boldness.  But from the beginning, I never expected the same experience out of Haiti.

I didn't expect anything out of Haiti.

I was just going.  Because I wasn't going somewhere else.  Because it didn't take as long to get there as it does Africa.  Because it was supposed to be cheaper.  Because I needed to get the hell out of America.

So the time to leave came.  And I just woke up, put my bags in the car, and left.  Like it was no big deal. Like I wasn't leaving for a third world country.  Without malaria meds, without the pre-travel anxiety, without expectations.

When I walked into my bakery that morning, however, I saw the foreshadowings of a divine plan unfold.  I saw a hint of a sweet serendipity that I hadn't seen in months.  And I had a fleeting thought.  An elusive moment of consideration.  Maybe this would be more.  Maybe...

Ethiopia was about understanding what I could do, through Christ.  Overcoming worthlessness and fear, operating in weakness, in strength.  I was broken.  But not useless.

And then here was Haiti.  Cradled on the broken place.

I heard, repeatedly throughout the week, Him say very simply "I am not trying to break you in the same place twice".  Like a broken bone, healed and stronger for the breaking.  I was repaired in that place where Haiti was resting on me.

And so riding through the unpaved streets of St Louis on the back of a rickety old Toyota pick up, dirty feet and sweaty brow and skirt wrapped around my legs, I tested the strength of the scar tissue.

And found capability.

A part of myself I had set aside.  Had bound up.  Pushed down.

Africa was an experience.  A display of the very nature of God, His bigness and His voice.

But I did not touch Africa.  I experienced Africa, the way one might watch a movie.  Or listen to a song. Effected.  Impacted.  But I did not bend low and scoop Africa up in my arms.  Africa did not fall asleep on my chest.  Africa's voice did not whisper in my ear, words strangely familiar but not understood.

Then there I was.  Dark from dirt.  Body tired, smile big.

I didn't even pray while I was there.  Not in the way the others did.  Not in my normal way.  I didn't write words down.  I didn't stop, intentionally, and say a word to Him.  Partially out of spite.  If You're going to be quiet, I'm going to be quiet too.  Partially because I know that sometimes we talk so much He can't get a word in edgewise.

I was sent with the words, "remember, you were made for this".  I asked for a reminder, because frankly, I keep forgetting.  I forget that my heart belongs in the ghetto.  I forget that my heart belongs in simplicity.  I forget that the deep ache in my arms is from being empty too long.  That there's a sweet place between my shoulders where a child's head rests when he sleeps.

Go where I send you.  He said, simply, with a white dove flying outside the Port au Prince airport.

People are the same everywhere.  They need the same things... the things I've taught you.  He began to show me why I have endured the things I have.  What skills I've acquired, which are finally proving useful.

But while He was doing this, I was completely unaware.  Ignoring Him, almost.  For crying out loud, I was tired of trying to figure it out.  I am tired of trying to figure it out.

Less words.

New eyes.

Stronger for the breaking.

less words

I'm listening.

Mine

Today is August 1st.

Today I was supposed to leave the country.  For a whole year.  I was supposed to abandon and empty and set forth and join a race.  A race which would take me to eleven countries in eleven months with a group of at least 60 young radicals who had done and were doing the very same thing.

But instead, today I woke up in a tiny little apartment.  Tucked far back off the road.  With four white walls and space only for me.  Boxes piled high, I am reminded of a strange night in Richmond when I was just a tiny girl:

After moving into a duplex, before Olivia was even born, I remember waking up to the shadows of unpacked boxes stacked high in my bedroom.  From the top bunk of the red bunk bed, I thought my mom was sitting at a desk in my room.  I remember calling her name.  But she never answered. (I still feel like that sometimes.  Just not about my mom.)


This morning I woke up and sunlight poured into my apartment.  Early, I got a text message from my sister, reminding me of what day today was.  Reminding me of the decision I'd made, intuitively confirming that I'd made the right one.

Breath.  Skin.  Dark against light.  I laid in bed for longer than I should have.  Wondering how we get here -- to these places.  Thinking about the plans I'd made back in May.  Plans for sabbatical, plans for rest.

Today I do not feel rested.  Today I do not feel like I've accomplished a thing.

And yet I know better.  I know better.  I know that this summer was not about rest.  It was about removal.  I know that the things I chose to spend my time on, to pour myself into, were worth my time.  For the most part.  The lessons I've learned were lessons I never anticipated learning.  The decisions I've made were decision I never intended to make.  The experiences I've had have been less grand than I had imagined, and made more of an impact than I ever could have anticipated.

Hm.  I suppose we call that life.  The best laid plans ... 


So instead of packing my life into an internal frame pack, I packed it into boxes.  I moved across town, by myself this time.  Deep into the neighborhood I've longed to call home for four years.  Into a small little space that is all my own.  Mine.

Life will happen here.  In Apartment 6.  My own journey.  My own new adventure.

I am pushing back.  Learning about myself and questioning the world.  Finding truth and lies in the tension.

In two days I will leave the country.  Board a plane with a small pack and a camera and I will fly as fast as I can to a tiny little place that most of the world has forgotten.  And I will sit.  Sink.  Melt.

Breath.  Skin.  Dark against light.  My arms are aching to hold.  To feel the heavy trust of a child resting in between my shoulders.  The sweet devotion of his hand in mine.  Tiny fingers.  Big smiles.  Watery eyes.

It's been a long time since I've felt anything.

But today I was supposed to leave.

And I didn't.

Instead, I woke up.  In the 6th apartment.  And in my own way, today, I launched.

On my own race.  On my own adventure.  In my own way I will travel the world.  In my own way I will seek God and love people; in my own time I will discard the things of this world, and at my own pace I will make mistakes.  And learn from them.

August 1st.

After all that's happened, how could I even pretend to know what's coming next?

one question

Just morning.  Windows rolled down to the quiet, dark air; he smells like stale smoke.  He's let the hair grow out on his chin and I wonder if he'll ever look me in the eye again.  I search my heart for what should be there.  But I've mastered this.  And whatever is missing is tucked somewhere deep in my belly, out of reach.

Do you ever feel like you have no idea who you are?


I reached my arm out the window.  Needing to feel something.  Only air.  Right now.


There have been seasons in my life when I have felt tightly connected to myself.  Acutely aware of who I am and what is happening.  What God is doing.  What my role is -- the why's and how's and what's.

This is not one of those seasons.

And more often than not, I go searching.  Turn my face and reach my arm far, deep, grappling for something that is familiar.  Something that makes sense.  Something trustworthy.  Something familiar.

But it's not there.  None of it.  And one more door closes.

I have learned more in the past two months than I have in years.  I have questioned God and He has answered, however vague.  I have questioned the "church", and it has fallen even farther from my graces.  I have questioned the ghetto and found truth.  I have worked hard and slept long and not shed a single tear.

And then in a single moment, over rice and black beans, that last thread holding it all together was cut.

At first, I was not surprised.  But in the recesses of myself I began to hear a cracking.  A splitting of weakened pieces.  And the longer I thought on it, the deeper I swallowed, the more damage it did.

I started connecting dots, creating a channel for the truth to sink low and expose.  Like light, seeping.  What is done in darkness...


With the heavy shut of a Volvo's door, so one more compartment of my heart closes.  Like a dam.  One. By one. By one.  Keeping out.  Keeping in.

Do you ever feel like you have no idea who you are?


A crumbled foundation and ears filled with unfamiliar words.

keep it loose

There are so many people.

You know that, right?  It's kind of like the word table.  Or leave.  Normal, everyday words.  Until you say them.  Over and over again.

Anything you think on too long is capable of becoming strange.  

There are so many people.

And you don't know most of them.  But they're there.  They're real.  One of them just stubbed their toe and felt the sharp pain of it.  One was just born -- a small person with a heart that's beating.  One just did something brand new -- or laughed for the first time in six years.  Someone just lost their virginity.  And someone just went to jail.

There are so many people.

I woke up this morning and pulled myself out of bed.  I am not old.  But sometimes my body feels that way.  It's been beaten up.  It has some genetic disadvantages.  I was born with some hurdles to jump.  And 23 years later, I'm just now jumping them.  

But I went to the gym.  To circulate the pain.  Get the apathy moving through my bloodstream so it doesn't get stuck somewhere.  Keep it moving.  

Keep it loose.  

Keep it tight.

I was on my way to breakfast before the thought struck me.  Like stepping out onto a freshly cut lawn and realizing how strange grass is.  (It is.  Think about it.  Grass is weird.)

So, with a book in hand, I went to my favorite bakery.  With every intention of being alone.  In the middle of all those people.  We who do life together.  Without speaking.  And only occasionally nodding at one another.  

Why do I go somewhere public to be alone?  Perhaps it is the coffee.  Or the comfort of the white noise -- the cash register and the opening doors and the children.  

But then I got there.  And I could barely focus on the pages of my novel for all the people around me.


This is why I go there.

So many people.

There's a woman who is there as often as I am.  She doesn't wear a wedding ring.  And no matter how warm it is outside she's always wearing wool socks.  She eats an everything bagel and reads the paper.  I've never seen her smile.  But she's always there.

I wonder if she lives in an empty house.  If maybe home isn't so much home as this bakery with high ceilings and loud voices.  If so, she's kind of like me.  I am like this woman.  I find comfort then, in the likeness.  In the consistency of her routine, I am at home.

She is one of the people.

I don't know her.  And yet, I wonder silently, if maybe I know as much about her as anyone else does.  The woman with the everything bagel and the glasses perched on her nose.

There are so many people...

Who are living stories I don't know. Who have things to say I don't hear.  Who are saying words I don't understand and going places I've never been.  It's so easy to forget you are not the only one.  When pain or love or anxiety are so real, it's easy to forget you are just one.  One person.  

Valuable.  Important.

But just one.

I am struck by this.  

This involvement in such a big story.

And the involuntary participation in smaller ones.

What it means when you are dragged by your heels into a story you don't want to tell.  When someone reaches out and begins to write on you and your life without your permission.  Your heart is stolen.  Or the victim of a drive-by.  Just your existence is the cause of another's pain.  Or joy.  

You intervene.  Intercede.  Avoid.  

There are so many people.

Living so many separate, intertwined lives.  

Anything you think on too long is capable of becoming strange.  

These lives we lead are no exception.  It becomes all too apparent, overwhelmingly evident, as you catch the breath of another.  Brush up against someone else.  Interlace fingers or lock eyes from across the room.

You are not the only one.

light up the sky

The whole sky lit up.

No thunder.  No rain.  Pitch black clouds.  And then an explosion of light.

Orange.  And red.  And fast.

Like He was setting the sky on fire.

I knew it was Him.  Not even trying to get my attention anymore, but announcing Himself.  A mighty shake of His head and a whisper I don't need to remind you of who I am.

I drove straight into what should have been a storm.

It wasn't long before the flashes of light were directly over my head.  Yet I kept going.

If it's You, I challenged, I need You to be bigger than that.

My own words felt ridiculous.  Like betrayal on my lips.  I knew it was Him.

Like walking into a room and running directly into the last person you wanted to see, I diverted my eyes.  I'd given Him a wide berth.  Because I know He's there.  Big and imposing and faithful and gracious.  And doing a bunch of crap I don't understand.

Even as the ridiculous words, the test, left my mouth I heard Him.  Why?  Why would I show up for you?   Why would I waste My time... you and I both know it won't change anything.  


The sky remained dark.  And I felt the hollowness some talk about.  The hollowed out place behind your  breastbone.  Not a threat.  Or a foreshadowing.  But the reality that though He may not, we often run very far away from Him.

The sky remained dark.  Until I pulled into the darker parking lot and the sky split in two.  Like someone had lit the almightiest of matches.  And on the tendrils of light, which raced across the sky, I heard Him.  I Am.  And you know that.  I Am.  And you are Mine.


How is that I hear so clearly.  And fail so deliberately.

As if when I walked in and shut the door, I shut the door on Him.  Standing on the doorstep.  Hands in His pockets.  I'll see you later, I said.  And shut the door on His words.  In that very moment, as the latch clicked, I just wished it would rain.

"These days I feel most connected to God when I am alone in a thunderstorm.  I don't know what it is about the rain, except it seems to wash everything away. (Vaughan, 2011)"

I'm not going anywhere.  

Between Two Lungs

I got out of the car and felt Him there.  As if He'd been waiting on me.  I walked past Him like a dark stranger, closed the garage door, and went inside.  I put all my stuff away, let the dog out into the back yard, and ran into Him there too.  


My heart knows.  My heart knows when He's after me.  When He's hot on my heels.  Lingering there, in all the exposure and all the secrecy and all the intimacy.  He aligns His breathing with mine, so what I take in is full and heavy and real.  Too much to hold in my lungs.


I knew He was waiting on me.  And it wasn't that I didn't want to see Him.  It was, fully and completely, that all I was and everything I was about to do and anything I'd done, teetered precariously on the edge.  And all He is would be too much.  


But I walked out anyway.  


Into a night full of Him.  Full in a way I've only known a time or two before.  On a white sand beach at high tide on a warm, October night.  And a small village in east Africa, hot air and low sky and a wind, which carried the sound of their voices.  


The wind was blowing now.  And the stars had dropped low and bright, surrounded by wisps of clouds and dark, blue sky.  


Those mysterious neighborhood wind chimes sang their song.  


I see you, I said, shrugging.  As if I was calling Him out, I'm here.  Now what?  


And the wind blew harder.


I know You're here, I mentioned again.  Standing on the driveway, arms crossed, tears welling.  But I just don't know anymore, what it is I'm looking for.  What is it I'm waiting for?


It is in those moments when He moves.  When you finally give Him room, in your honesty and insecurity.  I see you.  Even when you turn your face from Me, beloved, I still have my eyes on you.  


He sent others to speak truth into me.  Reminding me of the Spirit, which daily speaks into and over my heart.  Listen, I was told.  It's talking for a reason.


I listened.  And I heard.  But I did not heed.  As is often the case.  We are told all we need to know, we are given all we need to use, we are turned and pointed in the direction we should take.  He told me I was getting ready to make a mistake.  I heard the words of doubt, the words of the liar, slipping out of my own mouth last night. 


And I find myself now, sitting on a porch.  Wind gently blowing.  Bluer clouds on a blue sky sailing past me, tinged pink by the setting sun.  And I'm being immersed in grace.  The protection I've experienced over my heart for the past few years is in full force.  


As if I am under His wing.  


What's good, He whispers as though He's sitting in the rocking chair next to me, is that you know about My grace.  You wear it as a bracelet.  And you, my beloved daughter, belong to Me.  Your heart is enough Mine that none other can claim it.  Though you try.  Though you fail.  I do not.  You are mine.  And I love you.

There's not even enough room in my lungs, as I breathe Him in tonight, to feel anything but Him.  

For Your Memory

On Tuesday I prayed a prayer.  After once again having to separate the hurt from the truth, after a deep examination of my heart, I went to the Lord and said, "all I have is love to give.  It's not enough.  But take it.  Multiply it.  Give me a new heart of flesh.  Increase my capacity to love."


These are the prayers He answers.


During rest time at camp I sat in a pew with Que under one arm and De'Andre under the other.  Malipo sat on the other side of De'Andre, holding onto my fingers.  Every once in a while their little bodies would shake with laughter, or one of their heads would fall back on my arm in exhaustion.  I sat still, worried if I moved I might shatter the moment.  The purest moment of innocence and love I had felt in ages.  Something reached deep inside of me and gripped my heart.  And there was no where else in the world I would have rather been.  Contentment.


Later on Thursday I was standing in an open field, listening to the testimony of half a dozen men who are following Jesus.  Who have dedicated their lives to glorifying our Father with their art.  


I realized, standing there in the heat, how long it had been since I had explained the gospel to someone.  How long it had been since I had taken a moment to let the reality of sacrifice and atonement sink deep into my heart.


It is sacrifice, after all, which leads me to do what I do.  If not for Jesus, all this would be worthless.  It wouldn't mean a thing.  


Standing in that heat, I whispered some dangerous words.  Words I know He hears.  He always hears them.

A few minutes later I was standing beside the stage, listening to a man share the beauty and truth of the love of Jesus.  Calling us to stillness and honesty.  The wind started to blow, offering sweet relief to our hot, sweaty skin.  I was watching a young man I had just met -- I was watching him listen.  He is quiet, shy.  I think he already knows the truth.  But I wonder if he feels it.  I wonder if he knows what it means to have the spirit of the Lord grip your heart.  


While I was watching him, I saw Another.  Standing against the fence.  Dirty feet in worn out sandals.  Dark, cracked skin.  Sunglasses.  I lost my breath for a moment.  On the wind was carried the sweet words I knew to be true.  "I am here.  I see them.  I am here."


Yesterday was the last day of camp.  As children poured into the church, they would race down the steps and run up to me with arms open wide.  Some would jump up into my arms, others wrapped their arms around my waist and squeezed as hard as they could.  Yesterday, as much as I reprimanded, I hugged twice as much.  One of the prophets stopped me as I walked past him at lunch.  "Miss Anna," he tugged my shirt and began to tell me how he had asked Jesus into his heart in the bathroom that morning.  "Now I don't have to worry about everyone else, because Jesus is on my side."

During small group, Que climbed into my lap.  He leaned his face against mine and whispered, "I forgot to take my medicine this morning, Miss Anna.  I have anger problems."  I wrapped my arms around the little eight year old and didn't want to let go.  I whispered in his ear and told him I thought he was good and that I loved him.  And every part of my heart meant it.


The last day of camp was almost over and we were in art class.  Se'Vion, who had made it his mission all week long to make sure I didn't get lost in the church, handed me a rock.  He had painted it and he put it in my hand.  "This is for your memory, Miss Anna."


I stared at the rock, my heart all kinds of torn up.  "What do you mean, for my memory?" I asked him, pulling him in for a hug.  

"Miss Anna," he just shook his head, as if I should have understood what he meant.  "It is the last day of camp.  And I made this.  And I'm giving it to you.  So you don't forget me."


Good grief.


We went to worship one last time.  And during worship I repeated the dangerous words again.  With children singing and dancing on either side of me, my heart whispered:


"I have not felt very loved by You lately," I accused cautiously.  "I try and I try to feel You.  But if You've been trying to love on me, I'm not getting the message.  I feel like I've been doing all the work.  All the pursuing.  All the talking.  All the loving on others.  And all you freaking say is to be quiet." 


The children started singing.  "You're the defender of the weak / You comfort those in need / You lift us up on wings like eagles".


And I started crying.  Even as I write this, tears are welling.  Because in that very moment, He bent low.  Scooped my heart up in His hands.  Thank you for loving them as much as you can.  If you only knew, if you only realized, I love you just as much.  I am their Defender.  I am their Provider.  I am their Protector.  You are mine and I am yours.  It is through them I show you My love.  And it is through you I show them My love.  


Camp ended too soon.  I had to be at work at 5, which meant I left earlier than everyone else.  I held it all together until I pulled out of the church parking lot.  Then the tears started flowing uncontrollably.  I tried to repeat Colossians 3:23 over and over again: "Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people."


But in that moment, frozen yogurt didn't matter.  In the moment, my heart cried out to God the Father.  Reminding Him, just in case He forgot, that it was HIM who gave me this heart. HE was the one who led me straight into the lives of these children.  HE was the one who put them in my arms.  HE was the one Who had set my soul on fire.  Had He forgotten HE was the one who had put this mission on my heart?  


Why in the world can I not be one of those people who gets to do that for a living?   Had I not found enough favor with Him?  Was I not doing my job well?  Was I not good enough?  Why am I not one of the lucky ones whose work is also her passion, her job is also her calling?  The tears didn't stop.  My heart swelled twice its size in my chest.  Did He not realize how it felt to be separated from them?


With that thought, the tears only got worse.  Of course I do.  That is what this story is about, beloved.  Why do you think I've been trying so hard to get them back?  To get you back.


A friend heard this story last night, and with a smile on his face he whispered, "well, well.  Aren't you loved, Miss Anna."


Had I had any tears left, they would have come.  But I was fresh out.  My heart knows this to be true.  My heart knows this to be the kind of truth that sets you free, that gives you life, that comes straight from Jesus.  He is calling me to be faithful.  To Him.  To His children.  


This is what happens when you ask for a greater capacity to love.


He will stretch your heart.   Pull at its edges and stretch out the seams.  He will give you more to carry, so you will grow in strength.  He will send you more, to fill up the hollowed out spaces.  He will pour Himself into you, even as you are pouring yourself out for Him.  And although He continues to whisper "now" and "not yet", the "now" is sticky and sweet and strong.


He will give you new words.  And new eyes.  And new ears.  He will permeate all you are with His boldness and His grace.  He will whisper truth into you about what it means to hurt and heal.  And in those places you remain weak, He will ever be strong.


Anna, He whispers, this is for your memory.  I made them.  And I'm giving them to you.  So you don't forget Me.  

Enough

I am getting ready for camp.  Day camp with urban kids here in Lexington.


"Wait, wait," you say.  "You're supposed to be resting!"


Somehow, I knew you were going to say that.


I've tried to come up with a few excuses you might accept to justify why I'm getting ready to spend most of this week working.


The best one I've come up with is: I want to.


Yes.  That's right.  Plain and simple.


Six weeks away from these children and my arms just ache for hugs.


Two weeks ago I drove through the streets of the neighborhood I have come to love.  I drove through on  a Tuesday night just to show a friend from out of town why I had chosen to stay in Lexington instead of leaving for the Race.  I turned onto Second Street with a subtle tinge of apprehension.  I was afraid the east end, on some level, wouldn't want me back.


But my car was bombarded by small children -- hands came through windows, my name was shrieked.   They asked me to come with them to a baseball game the following Friday.  And something in my heart resonated with their request.  Yes, yes.  I could do that.  Not only could I do that... I wanted to.


They still wanted me.  After a month of being gone they still loved me.  Perhaps this time I believed in the authenticity of their love more than ever before.  In that moment I knew the love I have for them trumps almost all else.


Over the last six weeks God has been exposing the unhealthy aspects of my ministry, the areas from which I need to continue to rest.   I have worried I would forget a lot of what I've learned over the past few months.  I was afraid these children would lose their respect and affection for me.  I didn't abandon them.  But I bet they feel like I did.  I would be mad at me too.  

But the other night, only one displayed such emotion.  He tried to hide it for a good, long while.  He even jumped up and gave me a big hug when I first walked up.  Later, one mistake on my part set his temper off and Marcus gave me the worst kind of silent treatment.  I almost resorted to begging with this one.  This sweet, teenage boy who wants to be a pediatrician; who hit a growth spurt this summer and went from a scrawny little boy to a young man who will soon stand a head taller than me.


Another boy told me to quit trying to make Marcus talk to me.  "He doesn't like you anymore," Ehmaud ruefully pointed out, shrugging.  Marcus punched him.  The first words to come out of his mouth all night were, "I did not say that".  Then he turned and looked at me, "Miss Anna, I didn't say that."


I've been accused of a lot of things.  I have a laundry list of names I've been called, negative qualities which have been attributed to me, accusations thrown my way.  I have a longer list of the things about myself I want to change.  There is a short list too, of ways I have changed.  A short, but growing list of what I have learned and what I have overcome and what I have to offer.


At the very top of that list, is Love.  


Is it enough?


Is the living, breathing Love inside my heart enough to make up for all the ways I fail?  


-


I pulled into the parking lot at Broadway yesterday.  Ironically, the camp is called "Can-I-Go".  Verbatim the prayer I lifted up to the Father on Monday.  "Father God, can I go?  I want to go to camp.  Can I go?"  For the children it was the second day of camp.  For me, it was the first.  An SUV pulled into the spot beside me and I caught a glimpse of small, dark faces behind the windows.  One of the little boys caught my eye and a grin split his face in two.  My spirit swelled inside me.  I had never seen that smile before.  But my heart immediately belonged to him.


- 


I call them "my" kids.


I do it subconsciously.  I'm sure it comes from a not-so-subliminal desire for my own family.  I think it also comes from avoiding the impersonal "the" (the children, those children, the kids).  I know it comes from a love; rooted deep in my belly and intertwined in my heart and the very marrow of my bones.  


You may not see or understand, because I don't express this love the way some others do.  I'm still very unsure of myself.  I am still very wary of grown ups and I often forget boldness is required for the risk taking.  


I've told you this story before.  About sitting on Kat's front porch and having the five boys run past us on the sidewalk.  They were on their way home at midnight.  Home was five blocks away in the wrong direction.  I was overcome then, with my mission (the mission God had imprinted on my heart at 15 years old).


Since then, I've struggled with a wanting.  Wanting to do it all.  Wanting to move, to operate, to function far beyond my abilities.  My wisdom and my skill set have not been enough to tackle every single battle I have stumbled across. 


Not enough to cause radical change.  Not enough to break the cycle.  Not enough to stop the abuse, the neglect, the stealing, the trafficking.  I kick myself for not being everything they need.  I feel inadequate. Useless.  Unworthy.


But often I find myself in quiet moments.  Bathed in all my inadequacy.  Shrouded in all that is not good in me, about me.  And inevitably, a gentle wind will come.  Ruffle the feathers of the lies the enemy tells.  Blow back the curtains of all his treacherous efforts.  (Even as I write this, sitting on my front porch, a gentle wind just blew.)  


I am enough.


That is what I hear.  


When I find myself there: standing on hot asphalt with the same little boy with a huge grin standing with his arm around my waist, his perfect shaved head resting against my belly.  That's all he does.  Just stands there.  Watching the others shriek and run and splash each other with cups of water and wet sponges.  


His hug is enough.


My Love is enough.


And I know my story will never be about what I can do.  About the way I can help.  About the things I can fix or remedy.


If Ben's sweet, warm hug is enough to heal my heart, maybe, just maybe my love will change him too.


I hope so.  Because it's all I have to give.


In my rest, I have heard this answer.  It perfumes the wind and is like warm and sweet sunshine on my shoulders.  


It is not about what you can do for them.  


-


I will go back to camp in the morning.  What I thought I had forgotten has, in fact, grown intertwined into myself.  I cannot separate this from that.  As I am called, I have been created.  As I am called, I am being equipped.  


In humility, I will love.  May every shoe I tie, every tear I wipe, every reprimand I give, every hug I share, every word I whisper make a way for True Love.  For the One who is enough.  May it be seen as the washing of feet.  May everything I have be poured at His feet, given to them.  May I reach beyond myself.  Who I think I should be, who I want to be, who I can't be, who others say I am -- and live there.  In that place where I can't.  Beyond myself.


In that place where I am not enough.


But He is.


-


Oh, what a love story.