Beautiful Things

I heard a song a few months back when we sang it in church before a sermon on forgiveness - an amazing story was told that day that stuck with me.

The song has stuck with me. It is the first words to the book I am writing. It has captured me this year and become the anthem. This doesn't happen often just a few times. The last a few years ago with Blessed Be Your Name.

This year it is the song Beautiful Things by Gungor. I am not sure I can even explain what this song means to me but it touches me deep in my soul.





Here are the lyrics.

All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new
You are making me new

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new

I Have a Blog that Not Everyone Reads

I have a blog. I write some of my most real and intimate thoughts down here. I edit yes, but not a lot, not the heart of the matters. If you want to know me, know me well, know what is really going on in my head you can read my blog and have a good idea. Such a good idea that one friend texted me last week to check in because she could tell by what I was writing that I needed prayer, more than usual.

I write down my thoughts. I give access into my inner life. Yet there are people I love that do not read my blog. Or not regularly. I have a lot of friends that just don't read blogs. Or just don't read my blog. And while I try not to take it personally there is a small, okay maybe a bigger part than I like to admit, that actually is hurt by this. Hurt that the people I love, who claim to love me, don't want to read my words.

And then I look in my notebook where I am jotting down different verses or phrases that have struck me from my reading of Isaiah and realize there are whole weeks without so much as a date written down. Days go by when I don't sit down and open God's words to me.

I claim to love him - God. I claim to want to know him better and yet I don't read his words to me. I have. I have read every word in the Bible. But once is not enough. Sometimes is not enough. Because my life changes, my struggles change, my relationships change, and his words become new to me again. Different passages stand out. I relate to the characters in the story differently. I need to breathe in different words this time.

Yet again, I am part of the problem.

The Book - 5: Home

Here is the next installment of my book. If you missed any, you can find them all using the Take Me To.... the book link to the right of this page. Enjoy!

*****

Matt saw her looking off in the distance, awkward. “You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she replied automatically.

“You sure?” he asked again.

This time his question brought Mia back. “Yeah, I’m good. Just tired.”

“Well it looks like your section is done, why don’t you go home. Get some rest. You work too hard.”

“I’ll try,” she replied before heading to the back. She dropped her apron in the dirty laundry bin and pulled her book bag out of her cubby. She exited the back kitchen door toward home. She then walked the two blocks home to the house she shared with a group of girls she had met in her freshman dorm. It was an eclectic core group of four with another couple changing each semester. They were all studying something different. The front room might be full of fabric for a fashion assignment or a cat cadaver for a science lab. Competing music was often coming from different rooms. Phone conversations were crossing paths in the hallway.

They were all very busy but they tried to meet up for dinner on Sundays, sometimes heading to the restaurant if Mia had to work. Sarah, the ring leader, would call a family meeting if it had been too long since they all sat in the same room together. Most of their conversations though took place as someone was washing their face at the end of the day or trying to find a highlighter that worked.

She liked living with these girls. They were all bright and enthusiastic about their futures. They gave Mia a picture of what life was like for the normal kids, the kids with parents who knew what it meant to be a real parent. These girls taught her about relationships and family. They opened up to her about their hopes, their fears. They talked about boyfriends and future career aspirations. They left a quick note on the bathroom mirror in lipstick or sent a good luck text before a big test. They connected Mia to something, even when she did not know how to reciprocate. She was learning though, she was figuring out how to be a friend from these girls.

The house was dark when she walked in the door. Mia was never quite sure who would be home on any given night. Tonight the house was quiet. Everyone was still out enjoying the warm, Saturday night. She walked through the dark kitchen grabbing a glass of water before heading up the two sets of stairs to her room.

Mia loved her little attic room. She had it all to herself, no one touching her stuff, reading her emails or poking through her clothes. Not that any of her roommates were probably interested in her jeans and plaid shirts or her secrets. She was just so used to her new shoes disappearing at home, only to find them scuffed up after her mom borrowed them. Her mom had adopted a “what’s yours is mine” approach to life. This applied not only to clothes and lip gloss but to Mia’s whole existence. Her mother was always looking over her shoulder as she wrote a paper or read a book. She scrolled through Mia’s text messages and asked about every detail of her day. There had been no privacy at home. No secrets. No moment alone with her thoughts.

Mia knew her mom was doing the best she could. Maggie had gotten pregnant when she was 17. The boy’s family moved away the summer before Mia was born, never knowing there was a baby on its way. She never knew her father. Her birth certificate had no name listed where the father’s name belonged and her mother refused to tell Mia his name. Maggie made sure Mia knew she was father less, that she was utterly dependent on her mother.

Mia often felt like her mother’s doll, someone to dress and move around the scenes of life. Her mother was recreating the life she had dreamed of for herself. Only, now Mia was living it for her. At least that was Maggie’s plan and until recently, Mia had played along.

Trusting Babylon

Today one of the questions accompanying my Bible reading in Isaiah was,

What "Babylon" are you betting on to shelter you from the uncertainties of life?

During Isaiah's time, Judah was looking to Babylon for protection. They were trusting another nation, another set of rulers and armies to help protect Judah, God's people. God's people who saw the Red Sea open for them to cross and then close behind them keeping the Egyptians from attacking. God's people who had manna fall from heaven every day year after year to provide for the daily sustenance of his people wandering in the desert. God's people who saw God tear down a city wall after Joshua and his men circled it 7 times. God's people who lived under David and Solomon.

But they had also seen their world divided and broken apart. They had become proud of their accomplishments and distracted by all the pleasures the world had to offer. They had followed corrupt and evil kings. They had stopped following God. And now they felt unsafe, insecure, and in need of help but instead of turning to God, they turned to their neighbors. They sought safety with Babylon. They bet on Babylon being able to protect them from the Assyrians.

And so the question asks, "What 'Babylon' are you betting to shelter you from the uncertainties of life?"

It's a good question to ask. I think a lot of people do have something they hold to, something they hope on, to keep them safe - physically, emotionally, even spiritually. I think that when life is going well, when our circumstances are good, we start to trust in them, in our life itself.

But for some of us, life was never about constancy. There was no sense of equilibrium growing up, but instead a constant state of flux and adjustment. Not just my circumstances but the very people in my life were shifting unexpectedly, sand beneath my soul's foundation. And so I have never really trusted this world.

I have never really trusted my circumstances. Jobs are lost. Homes move. Schools change.

I have never really trusted people. Friends betray. Family is unable. Strangers surprise.

I learned somewhere along the way that the only thing I can trust - rock solid, firm foundation, always present, never changing, never moving - is God.

And while it is good to put my trust fully in God, to bet on him to shelter me, there is something sad about not being able to trust people. I am trying. But it is hard to let the barriers down.

Which is funny because I am known for being authentic. But there is something very different for me between being authentic and being vulnerable. I can be completely honest about who I am. I can share my struggles, my disappointments, my hurts. But I don't do that from a place of vulnerability. I am able to be authentic because I know who I am as a child of God, I know I am wonderfully made, as are you. I am secure in that so I feel safe, not vulnerable.

And if you don't like me, or hurt me, I am very good at walking away.

See there is where I could be vulnerable. In the staying. In the connecting myself with someone else emotionally, in a way that might actually end up with me being hurt sometimes. In trusting someone else to take care of me, to love me, to challenge me when I need it, to walk along side me. But that all requires me to trust, even to the point of getting hurt. And I'm not sure I'm willing to do that.

There's a fine line between self protection and closing oneself off.

There's a fine line between trusting God alone and not trusting the people God put in my life.

There's a fine line between God being all that I need and only letting God in.