From a while back!

Today, driving around in Halifax I saw a sign that said "It's summer! Come in and celebrate!"  While the leaves are all off the trees, and the mountain of school work I should be tackling right now may be hints that it is infact Fall, here's a little hint of Summer that I found in my drafts.  I'm not sure how it didn't get posted when it was written....but here it is.
Written in early August.

It was a dark and stormy night, and I sat in a circle with my church family, holding an old song book, listening to the accompanyment of an accoustic guitar, worshiping God.

It was a dark and stormy night, and we were the only ones around on a small bit of land between two lakes.  Lightening flashed, lighting up the night, and thunder boomed, rumbling around us, and it wasn'tthe best kind of feeling small.  

Sometime's my heart feels like a dark and stormy place.  And I'm sure the people around me agree.  There are moments and seasons when the fog, rain, dirt and grime of battling emotions and whatever else is going on in there get a little out of control, and the boat starts to rock on the waves, and it's hard to navigate or know what's going on, or focus on anything other than the darkness and the wetness and the coldness, and the bitterness that is hurled towards the weatherman, the mailman, the human...

God.

It's a good thing I love the rain, and I'm mesmerized by lightening, and I can't comprehend thunder.  Because we experienced quite a bit of it.  My years of Girl Guides and camping in the rain were mocking me as we struggled to put up a tent we'd never put up before, and as I considered the extra tarp I'd left in the car, and the rope I'd said I didn't need.

Even when packing light, there are some things that shouldn't be left behind.

But just before Amber, Carla, and I crawled into our soaking wet tent, pitched in a no camping zone on the side of the portage, still half an hour away from our intended camp site for the night, the rain stopped, and the clouds were the warmest, most beautiful grey I can fathom, and the stars were shining. Bright.

Clear.

I have beheld your power and your glory.

Sometimes the clouds have been there so long that your eyes ajust and you forget that the world is actually brighter, that the sky is actully clearer, that the sun is actually warmer, that the night is actually blacker.  But There is always such clarity after a storm. When the rain finally stops, you can breathe clearer and see clearer and be clearer. 

Last week it was like my eyes were finally opened, the clouds, which I'd decided were never leaving, parted, and it was such a tantalizing delicous beautiful kind of scary freshness. 

I love that I am not the holder together of all things - that's Christ.  Christ who is fully God and fully human. God who hurled the stars into place, is entirely sure and entirely in control of where the lightening hits, and when the rain falls.  God who titled the earth, his creation, at just the right angle for life, is also so active in me.    And so as I've struggled and prayed and wondered, he's been there the entire time.  And when he opens the door, even a tiny crack, just enough for me to look through, it's incredible.

I've been praying about the future.  I've been wondering about my role as a woman in the church.  I've been questioning what I should do with my life after one more year of school is done.  And here's what I've discovered about finding my way.

The more dependent, reliant, and trusting I am, the more He opens my eyes, and the way becomes clear.  And so it's more like I just get to sit here, a few unconnected puzzle pieces, and choose to slide around in His fingers properly when he puts me into the right place, rather than trying to wiggle myself in to wherever I see myself belonging. 

I feel like I'm on vacation!

I watch a man, at home in rubber boots, plaid shirt, fleece vest and ball cap as he walks towards an old rusted mailbox.  The Canada Post logo stands out against the old forest green.  Rust, pours over the top and down the sides as though an anointment of age; a distinct marking of time and endurance. 

I’ve seen the newer, sleeker, grey and brown boxes around this quant, autumn town in Nova Scotia too.  I doubt that this box receives the flurry of communication it once did.  If a mailbox were personified, I wonder if it would feel tainted or replaced, or if it would bask in the light of the glorious good ol’ days.  Compartments are now filled with colour evidence of deeply planted capitalism, consumerism; greedy-senseless-needy-ism.  The romantic, elegant ebony curves of cursive, hand written stories poured out on a page of heart and life and history faded into rigid light rows, right to left lines of the typewriter, and then to the stark, Times New Roman, digital life.  And while to me, fingertips tapping on the black keys of my now aging Macbook, a typewritten letter seems deliciously retro, I wonder if there is less heart to paper flow, when words are split into individual characters, and each line is paused and pierced by sound and and forced motion back to the left.

I’ve realized lately that sometimes I don’t make connections.  For example, I just realized the beautiful play on words of “Whit’s End,” home of the incredible imagination station in the stories and radio life of Adventures in Odyssey.  I’m too used to trying to think faster, but in a way that causes me to break my words – thoughts, memories, emotions, lessons – into choppy letters and uniform words.  So life is processed in quick jerky movements as I watch words appear on the page, and try to transfer information as fast as possible. 

That’s why, caught up in the slowness of pressing richly coloured oil to paper, or as my paintbrush slowly straitens, vibrant pigments sailing from brain to brush to canvass, I’m in love.  I’m in love with the moment, at once cozy and invigorating, where my heart and my mind and my body are connected, the rigidness is gone and I just soak. Beauty. 

We spent the day watching incredibly beautiful icy blue waves of Peggy’s Cove roll majestically across endless water, then crashing mightily into massive rocks, slow, fluid movement suddenly leaping into the air, as millions of drops of salty cold sea flew into the sky.   I confess that last time I was on the East Coast, it was beautiful….but I didn’t find it stunning.  But yesterday, I could have sat on those rocks, small in the immenseness of creation, smiling and mesmerized by clouds and waves until my hair turned gray, and my face, thick with salt from the sea, was sweetened by wrinkles – the paint of love and joy and peace.

As I lay in bed, talking to Amber for long enough that I’m sure I’ll be ready for a twelve hour nap by four o clock this afternoon, the image of waves was woven through the thicket of thought and conversation.  Maybe my brain doesn’t connect the dots fast enough, but my heart is connected to my Saviour.  And what’s beautiful about the realization that I’m going in circles, creeping forward and then almost pushing myself back to the starting point, is that the story He’s writing in the process is the kind of story I want to tell with my words and clothes and eyes – endlessly.   I think I’m getting over being run by fear, and it creeps back.  I think I’m getting over pride and perfectionism, and it pours out of my eyes in tears that make my cheeks red and itchy.  And I realize, that all of these things that make my heart seem black and dark in the middle of the night, are small.  He is washing me, making me, teaching me, leading me, painting me, molding me; writing me.

And I just get to laugh, watch the waves, be amazed,

And be His.

Cream in my coffee.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend asked me how I'm doing with my crazy life this semester.  I shrugged, not sure how else to describe it.  When he told me I didn't look tired, I laughed.  I felt tired.  "Maybe you've just never seen me when I'm not tired," I joke, with an air of seriousness that is a bit alarming.

Yesterday, I realized that he was right.  I didn't look tired then.   But by nine in the morning,  I looked at my face in the mirror, and saw tired.   I arrive at my home on the fourth floor of the library early. The lights turn on, waking up to my movement as I walk between the shelves, taking the longest possible route too my "favourite" desk.  It's the right shape, one of only a few on this floor that allow me to glance out the window, and there is an outlet ( a rare commodity in our aging library).  I like to look at old, dusty books on my way to my spot.  Classics that I've never read, and maybe never will, but even just from their smelling, fading threaded covers, I have some level of appreciation for them.

I settle in, once in a while hearing the movements of the other two people, also enjoying the morning solitude of this place.

My face feels warm.  My skin feels heavy, like it's pulling my eyes down.  My eyes feel sticky, glassy, and even the world in front of me looks tired as it's revealed through my glazed vision.

I take a sip of coffee.  The same coffee I promised myself I'd never drink, and was so convinced that even University wouldn't make me indulge in.  I know it doesn't wake me up at all, but I cling to the hope that it might.  I limit myself, fighting cravings for it.  If I've admitted defeat in the not-drinking-it battle, I'm definitely not going to be one of those girls that needs her  coffee every morning.
Today I give in.  And I enjoy the smell of it, it smells awake.  Yes, I like coffee.  But some mornings, it's like drinking a bear hug.  It's cozy and warm and lovely, it gets you going, and maybe even smiling...and as wonderful as it is, sometimes it's not so enjoyable.  I remember feeling crushed in my dad's arms...but I'd never say no to another, no matter how much it hurt my ribs.  The coffee seems to poison the back of my throat, and I can taste it all day.  Sometimes I think this makes me even more tired.

Two hours later, I get up to walk around, and realize that the library has filled without me noticing.  I'm glad I noticed the vibrant red popping out of little maple leaves this morning.  I'm glad that as I waited at the bus stop with other early risers, coffee tumblers in hand, eyes just as glazed as mine searching for  the bus to take us downtown, I could each person's breath, as my own disappeared in front of me.

I didn't notice the library waking up, and I didn't really notice myself waking up either.  Or maybe not waking up, but puttering along, brain fooled by the sun into energy.  It's October.  The leaves are changing colour.  The day gone by, I sit on a patch of grass outside the church sanctuary.  The bottom of my shoes, the bottom of my laptop, and the sweater I'm sitting on painted by the earth beneath me.
With all the midterms, assignments, thanksgiving preparations, ministry meetings, and the excitement of having our apartment sprayed for bugs once again...I'm so thankful for the peace of the cooling air this evening, the joy that will come as my voice blends with the voices of some youth who I cherish, singing Praise to the one who holds all things together.

And even if it takes a coffee to get me out of my cozy bed in the morning, I love the place He has me in.  Especially when there's cream: a thick, smooth, and swirling light in the darkness.