Patches of Sunlight

Much has been said about the various merits of ignorance. It is frequently seen as the herald of bliss, as an excuse for why a fool or a child should not be punished for his sins. It’s obvious why not- he knows not what he does. We’re told to fight ignorance through education and that it leads to bigotry and prejudice. Like it or not, ignorance plays a big part of our culture’s psyche.

I’m okay with this. I’ve found my own ignorance to be incredibly helpful from time to time.

For instance, Jonathan and I volunteered to help with the new site our church is launching in January. We went to the planning meetings, signed up for various volunteer roles and tried to lend our enthusiam to the undertaking. It was all going great until Sunday, our first church service in our new digs. It was just a practice, a dry-run to find the holes in the plan. There are many holes because for now we are a turtle church, carrying our home on our backs or, more accurately, in a large trailer. “New Life- North: Where Church Meets Gypsy Camp”.

There’s a lot of set up to do and then, after that, there’s an equal amount of tear down. It’s a lot of work even though there are a lot of people. Someone has to be in charge of all those people; someone has to manage the chaos. It’s a rotating posistion, everyone filling the role once a month. Guess who’s week it was Sunday. That’s right-

Mine.

There was more stuff than I remembered, all my information was outdated and it was 7:30 in the morning. There were carts full of tables, chairs, toys, rugs, rocking chairs, room dividers- everything you need to convert a dance studio and an office into a kid’s church room and a nursery. There was a foam floor that needed to be assembled for the nursery, a fan for the nursing mother’s room that needed to be put together and confusion on a mass scale.

I began to understand exactly what I’d just volunteered for.

It’s big. It’s bigger than I’d thought and it’s not going away any time soon. Come January 8th I will need to be at church at 7:30 in the morning three weeks out of four for the rest of the forseeable future. I might still need to be there at 7:30 on my week off depending on Jonathan’s schedule. It’s madness. How did I get roped into this?

I like that whole concept of blissful ignorance. It spurs people on to do what they’d never considered possible because, honestly, they just can’t see what a big deal it is. A tip sticks out of the water and the iceberg looks very manageable from our vantage point, but there’s more where that tip came from. A lot more. I can see a glimpse of it now and it scares me.

There’s no going back at this point. My name’s on the paper and there’s no backing out so now it’s okay to see the big picture. I needed my ignorance to get me in the door, but now that I’m in I’m committed. I think Gimli said it best. “Faithless is he who turns back when the road gets rough.” Or, y’know, something like that. And he said it all gruff-like so there’s no arguing with him.

This is a longer road than I’d anticipated. It starts earlier in the morning and might require me to learn InDesign so I can construct room layouts. There’s no promise coffee will be provided in the morning and after the first few weeks I can’t see a single soul continuing to say ‘Thank you’.

But if it works… Imagine if it works.

There’ll be another outpost, another lighthouse in the world. New people could come in those doors, people who’ve never heard of the wild, furious love of God for them, just for them. Broken people who need a place to go that feels safe, a place with toys for their kids and room dividers and rocking chairs and fans. The Amazing Traveling Church could take root, could become a known quantity on the ICC campus. God’s name as a blessing, as a kindness and not a curse could spread a bit further into the darkness. It could work. It could actually work.

I think that’s worth seeing a sunrise or two.

New Life- North. Coming to the Illinois Community College Performing Arts Center January 15, 2012, 9:45 a.m. Come all who are weary.

These are three things that I know to be true.

1. People are dying for someone to listen to them.

To listen. To sit in helpful silence without helping, without fixing, without judging or just waiting their turn to talk. Loneliness is an epidemic, a plague that saps the life from our culure’s soul. People people everywhere and no one to listen. I have thoughts, I have hurts and concerns and sorrows in my world and I will die if no one will listen to me. They’ll sit like poison, festering until my soul turns gangrenous.

But if you listen, truly listen, maybe I can be healed.

2. A genuine smile that shines out from your eyes can mean the universe to a stranger.

They say smile and the world smiles with you, but we sold off our smiles for busyness and worry, trading it in for a frown and a crease in our eyebrows. Our eyes slide off our fellow man as if he doesn’t exist or, worse, doesn’t matter. We deem him unworthy of our time and so deny the image of God in him. Doubtless you assume you’re used to it as it’s simply the way things are, but we ought not have numbed ourselves to this ordinary pain.

A smile, an acknowledgment of another’s humanity and instrinsic worth- we assume it’s no big deal, but I know that even such a small thing holds power.

3. A cliche, I’m aware, yet still, it can be the smallest things that matter most.

A string of Christmas lights on a porch, holding the door, driving with grace, clean dishes in the drainer and an empty sink- these are the things of eternity. When you act with grace and kindness in the smallest of matters you aren’t just picking up the change someone dropped. You are affirming their connection to the world, their value in simply being made in the image of the Eternal. Holding the door for the least of these in a wheelchair and the one who labors so long and hard to care for them is a line cast out to them wherever they might be. You are valuable, you are important to me though we don’t even know each other. I want nothing in return, am simply extending this small grace to you because you are.

No small act is ever too small.

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This post was inspired by Jeff Goins blog post Three Things I Know To Be True. Do you have three things?

I like being busy. I don’t like the hustle or the hurry pace of busy. I don’t like the way things have to stack just so to make it all work or how life becomes poised like a proverbial house of cards just waiting to come down. I really don’t like how busyness cuts into important things like time with people or eating right. I don’t even like having a lot of stuff to do. So why do I like being busy so much?

Now is the perfect time to evaluate and find out. I am busier right now than I have ever been before. Someone told me he’d call me to schedule something and I looked at him and said with all seriousness, “I have Monday night.” The rest of the week is just simply booked. There’s wedding planning to be doing, premarital counseling to squeeze in, Jonathan’s and my activity with our church ramping up, friends and, let’s not forget, spending time building a relationship with the person I plan to spend the rest of my life with. All of this on top of my Mom’s ministry and writing and eating and sleeping and exercise. Sometimes I crave an empty space in my week. But then when I get it I immediately try to fill it in like a divot at a polo match.

Why?

I was supposed to have this summer off. As I look back on it I really think that was God’s intention. I was supposed to finish my book, get started finding people to serve and chillax. I was supposed to take the summer to end one thing and start something new. There was supposed to be space to think, to process, to close one door for real for true before leaping through the next one. And I spent the entire summer freaking out.

It was all empty space. It was too much quiet, too much stillness. I wanted to be busy, anything would do. I would sit at the library and read a book and feel horrible about it. “Run!” the drill sergeant in my head would yell. Then the summer ended and that was it. I’d wasted my chance for stillness because it scared me. Because I’d left activity and driving purpose and leaving that for stillness and thoughtful repose meant I’d done something wrong. It meant I’d failed.

Failed at what I’m not clear on. Life, perhaps. Life work, most likely. I’d made this momentous move and I needed to prove to myself that it was right, that I’d moved out for good and important reasons. Sitting still and thinking about my life didn’t count as important.

Now it’s later. Fall came and went with more busyness than I’d expected, almost more than I could handle. Winter’s started to blow in from the prairie and already the calendar is groaning under the weight. Less than three months to a wedding, less than three months to a marriage. Church is launching a new site that both Jonathan and I somehow became vital to. I have five moms on my roster, a novel started in my files, a fiancé, and a living situation that feels like a moving target. I feel incredibly busy and for some reason that makes me feel important.

When did a full calendar mean a full life? When did a long to do list come to equal a significant impact on the world? When did thoughtful quietness, space to breathe or a blank day on the calendar come to mean failure?

It was at the beginning of summer for me and now I get to adjust my mindset on the run. It’s one more thing to add to the list.

(I wrote this as a practice. The assignment was to listen to some music that has meant something to me and then write about it. Like most of my practices, I got a little overblown and moody. Enjoy!)

I never expected anyone to understand. I thought I’d wander through the fields we know in a haze of loneliness and sorrow, alone and lost in my own soul. I didn’t think anyone would reach me there. Even those who have been where I was were only a little help. They talked to my face and it entered my head, but my soul… my soul still wandered lonely.

Then the song happened. Such a little thing, just a little song. But she understood. She understood and it was like she’d heard everything I hadn’t said and then written a song about me. And it reached all the way through my face and my head, through my heart to my soul. My soul cried when it heard that song because for once there was a crack in the loneliness and the sun came out. I was still wandering in the fields, but now there were some flowers and a soundtrack.

Being understood is overlooked. Being heard is not given priority and our souls go wanting. Our faces listen and our heads hear, but our souls still live thirsty and alone. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your life holds- living in skin is a lonely endeavor. We have to trust words, prose, statements and rebuttals to express the mystery we all carry inside. We are Rembrants with only crayons and old envelopes to work with. Sure, you can make a nice picture with crayons if you’re good, but at the end of the day it’s still just crayon, only fit for the front of the refrigerator.

But music- music is oils and pastels. Music reaches through the crayon marks we’ve made that everyone pretends is a fine piece of work and creates the masterpiece of the soul. It is poetry and notes and something else that no one can define. It’s that something else that is water to a thirsty soul, a phone booth in the middle of my lonely field with a dial tone and someone on the other end.

Music is life.

There is a blog I follow called The Write Practice. It is, shockingly, a blog with various writing practices. Hopefully I’ll be doing one a day for the next while and while I won’t post all of them because some are terrible I will post the ones I like.

Today’s was about wonder. I call it “Sunset”.

A fireball has come to earth. Hanging in the sky, slowly sinking through the clouds it reminds you of distance, frailty. Light streams from the star, bending and warping until it changes color, making the whole sky alight with fire.

A wispy line wavers across the world, separating heaven and earth. The fireball sinks toward that line, on collison course with the frail ball of dirt we call home. The lake catches fires, reflecting the light up and out, back toward its source. We’re too close, too near the eternal fire; how could we escape without getting burned?

Yet somehow it misses us, sliding behind that wispy line once more. We’re safe again, free to watch the fire die down in the sky as night comes. It runs hot on the heals of the fireball, chasing it down, down, down through the sky.

We cheer when it’s gone, when it’s once more hidden on the wrong side of the world. We cheer not for its passing. No, there is sadness in our safety for always lurks the fear that this time the night will last forever. Rather, we cheer for the splendor, the brilliance our beloved fireball cast as once again it passed us by.

Yesterday, or maybe just really early this morning, I bought Plants vs. Zombies for the iPad. Why did I do that? Because the game is amazing and funny and cute. Why am I writing this and not playing the game right now? Because Jon Acuff is evil.

So I’ve been reading his book about following your dream Quitter, been reading blogs about writing that I found through his blog and they all have this common thread. They keep saying that if you want to write, if you actually want that to be a part of your life or to graduate out of ‘novice who’s just screwing around with a word processor’ level you have to… Well, I dunno if I should share this. It’s pretty major, an earth shattering thought for me.

They say you have to write.

Everything I read, and believe me I’m looking for a dissenting view, says that you have to show up and do the work. There’s no secret formula, no magic wand that you can find or buy or quest for. You just have to show up each day and freaking write something.

I keep trying to tell them that I’m moving and that I’m feeling a little fragile with all the changes in my life and that I’m getting married in 126 days and that I really *really* want to play Plants vs. Zombies in the few minutes I have while I’m eating breakfast. Compelling arguments, right?

And they just kept saying “Write”. Well, of course they didn’t change their opinion because I didn’t actually say any of this in a place they could have interacted with, but still, they all should have known. What’s more, Jon Acuff turned up the heat in Quitter and started talking about ‘hustle’. As in ‘you can’t control other people’s part in your dream, but you can control your hustle’. Man, shut up.

So I’m writing. My breakfast is all gone and I still haven’t defended my home from zombie invasion. Now I have to go do other stuff that is not nearly as cute or funny or zombie themed. But you know, I feel sharper now than when I sat down. I feel like my brain has started firing on both cylinders and something in my soul has taken a deep breath and for these fifteen minutes I felt exactly where I was supposed to be.

Stupid book.

There are moments on which our lives pivot. As you look back on your life as a long, winding path you can see the crossroads, but also the pivot points, those moments when you took a 90 degree turn into a new patch of forest. Most of the time I think we miss these moments as they’re happening. They blow by us with barely a murmur and it is only years later that we can look back and see it for the momentous occasion it actually was. These moments like to live in disguise, but sometimes, only sometimes, we can pull back the curtain and see our feet turning.

Saturday I had my mind blown.

Jonathan and I went on a trip with our small group up to Chicagoland. We stopped for breakfast halfway there and then spent most of the afternoon in the Woodfield mall which was a pretty kicking mall if you like that sort of thing, but I don’t so I mostly watched people. After the mall we drove to Willow Creek Church for their 36th anniversary celebration where I had my mind blown.

Almost everything I’d heard about Willow Creek was bad. People said they sacrificed truth for approachability, used gimmicks to get people in the door and weren’t careful with the gospel. Critics used words like “seeker sensitive” with all the intensity of a four-letter word and told tales of a coffee shop on the premises and something about getting your oil changed during church. It was a bad place, was the word on the street, a very bad place.

A lot has happened to me since that time. I’ve rethought much of what I used to cling so tightly to and had a lot of my preconceived notions rubbed off me. I couldn’t remember who it was who’d been talking so badly about Willow Creek or even if they were someone I should agree with, but driving up to the building did not help my senses of open-mindedness or equilibrium. The place is huge, likely bigger than the mall we’d just left.

We ate dinner in the food court (yes, the food court), talking of this and that and then it was time to go find some seats. Walking into the sanctuary was like walking into the Warner Theater- it was huge and grand. There were two, not one, *two* balconies and a massive stage flanked by Jumbo-Trons. I held onto Jonathan’s hand and told myself I was being open-minded. I kept repeating it, too, hoping I’d start believing myself before church started.

It didn’t work.

The service started slowly, with a cute video about the future of Willow Creek. Somebody with a good sense of comedy interviewed children about their thoughts on how to do church. The kids were hilarious and I started to calm down. Maybe if I didn’t think about it like church I would be okay.

While we in the audience were being distracted by the video an entire choir filed out on stage. Four or five lead singers stood in front along with a full band. The music started, the lights flashed, everyone up there took a deep breath and started to sing.

I was not okay.

This wasn’t church-like. What was with the light show? Was I supposed to look at the people on stage or their images on the Jumbo-Trons? What were we supposed to be doing? Should we stand? Should we sing? I didn’t know the song and the words weren’t anywhere I could find. I was lost and, in my confusion, certain that this couldn’t be worship. I told myself to think of it like a concert, but something in the faces of the choir and the singers told me this wasn’t just a concert to them. That was great, but what about me?

Then the song shifted and words appeared on the screens. People rose to their feet and joined in the song. It was a song I knew, something I could grab onto and relate to. I stood up, too, and sang along, still unsure, but willing to give them some time to convince me.

Then we began to sing Solid Rock.

There is something incredibly powerful about hundreds of people all singing praise together. “On Christ the Solid Rock I stand / All other ground is sinking sand / All other ground is sinking sand. The voices blended, merged into one vast shout that threatened to blow the roof off the acoustically solid building. There was power in that room, deep devotion and great love, but not primarily from us. God came to that place to meet with us I know it. We were just responding to Him as best we could. It was the same as always, the same as church across the world; there were just more people trying to respond together.

I still don’t know what I think about “seeker sensitive”, though I do know what I think about a coffee shop in a church (amazing!). At some point during that night I stopped feeling like it mattered. I had my mind blown Saturday with the massiveness of God in a way I hadn’t experienced before. Something pivoted in my soul that night and I think I could be years in understanding what.

I keep catching my engagement ring on things. When shelving at work, reaching into the fridge, rifling through a drawer. I haven’t yet figured out how to put my left hand into my pocket. The ring doesn’t stick up that much- I specifically asked that it not and my man is awesome so it doesn’t- but it’s always there, a beautiful reminder.

I know there are lots of reasons the tradition of a man giving a woman a ring began. It was a symbol, it was fall-back money if he died or welched out. There are reasons, but I’m not planning on any of those applying to me. I just like having the constant reminder.

I keep forgetting I’m actually getting married, that this magical thing I’ve always wanted is actually happening. I keep forgetting that I’m gonna to get to spend the rest of my life with my Jonathan, the most perfect man for me. Somehow engagement turned into now we have to plan a big party and the reason, the whole point of that party keeps slipping away from me. Married. To him. For reals, yo.

So I try to put my hand in my pocket and fail and smile to myself. It’s not about the bling bling, though that is a fantastic perk, it’s about the reminder. I’m gonna get another ring on that finger. After so many years of purposefully not wearing a ring on that finger I’m not just allowed to, but supposed to and soon I’ll wear two. It’s really happening. It’s not just a dream I had, though it is my dream. My life isn’t just going to putter along as it has been. It’s going to undergo a huge, substantial, fundamental change and I can’t wait. I’m getting married!

So, I totally promised ya’ll an engagement story, but I think I must decline. I decided that anyone I wanted to know had probably already asked me and everyone else probably doesn’t read this blog. I’m not a very private person, but I’m gonna keep this beautiful story of the most perfect proposal ever for the girl living the quirky indie romance to myself.

Did I just make it worse?

Oh good.

Instead of a proposal story I will now regale you with my thought process as a bride.

Hang on. Bride? What bride? Who? Am I the bride? Isn’t someone else supposed to be the bride? I’ve never been a bride before. I’d never seriously believed I’d ever be a bride. Wait, wait, back up. Go over this again. When I was having a wedding conversation with my Jonathan, Seth and Crystal and I said that the bride was kinda freaking out over details did I mean me?

No, no, of course not. No, the world is as it should be and I’m just another random fool, not a BRIDE. Pfffft! Like that would ever happen.

But what’s this bling bling on my finger? Who’s this dude who looks at me and says, “Fiancee” like it means something and isn’t just another funky French word we’ve co-opted? Who’d he talking to? I know it isn’t me. “Bride” happens to other people, not me.

And so on and so forth. And then I realize again that it’s me who’s engage, that I’m getting married, that this fabulous guy loves me and actually suggested he was up for the task of spending the rest of his life with me, my sense of humor, my quirks and foibles. I’m the bride!

Maybe I should start wearing a name tag to help me remember.

God is an unexpected sort of God which I should have gotten used to by now, started expecting the unexpected, but God delights in being tricksy and mysterious so just when I think I’ve gotten a handle of things He switches it all up.

This has been both an awful summer and the best of my life. I was stepping out of my comfort zone in all directions, stretching and doing a lot of growing up. It wasn’t comfortable, but that’s life, right? It was good. At the same time I was in a constant state of frenzy, panicked that this ‘getting married’ thing was just a game God was playing with me. I was sure it would never happen, constantly going to my Jonathan and saying, “Soon, right?” I struggled with just being able to enjoy him as a gift and us as a special thing because it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to be married, not dating.

I don’t know what brought the change, but I felt it in every pore, every cell of my body. I took a deep breath and stopped fighting, stopped freaking out. Well, at least it wasn’t a constant state. Jonathan said he wanted to marry me, but it wasn’t time yet. The right time was coming, but it wasn’t now. I started believing him and just relaxed.

Which apparently meant it was the right time.

Friday, September 23, Jonathan Worent asked me to marry him. I said yes.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Engagement story to follow.