You know me.

Sorry for Saying Sorry. Shoot. Sorry.

Woe to those who [seek to] hide deep from the Lord their counsel, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, Who sees us? Who knows us? [Oh, your perversity!] You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be considered of no more account than the clay? Shall the thing that is made say of its maker, He did not make me; or the thing that is formed say of him who formed it, He has no understanding? Isaiah 29:15

Mmmmm.

Wow. I have been coming before my Father apologetically. Not because I’m humbly aware of my need to repent but rather because I feel like He didn’t know what He was getting into with me. I feel like I must be a disappointment for not being able to fully and successfully carry out His plans for me. His dreams for me. Man, they feel distant and burdensome when once they felt compelling and ingrained. 

I have tried to be my own counselor. Mending my life back together in order to get back to the place where I can glorify Christ in spirit and truth. But if God created me, knit my inward parts, seen my whole life play out before me... why do I play hide and seek? Lord, I’m tired. I’m tired of subconsciously believing that You are disappointed and getting tired of me. I’m tired of thinking that you couldn’t possibly understand nevertheless show compassion. Yet your word is screaming the opposite to be true.

 “O God the proud have risen against me, and a mob of violent men have sought my life. And have not set you before them. But you O Lord are a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth.” Psalm 86:14-15.

And the cross meets me here and crucifies my self-pity, pride, and passivity. Jesus restores my eyes to see Himself rightly. God, the Author and Perfecter of my faith, is painfully merciful, abundantly compassionate, and ultimately loving. It's news worth hearing over and over again. I'll try to stop saying sorry for You having to repeat it. I know you never tire.

I am fully and deeply known - it always comes back to this. You love me because You love me because You love me. 

Sharing and Sheep

I am always teaching my Kindergarteners about sharing. It is a never ending lesson that extends beyond what I thought I 'd have to explain. It is endless as I repeatedly have to ask for grace in order to effectively and compassionately instruct how to share crayons, how to share talking time, how to share love. I find myself often lacking in patience and grace and trying to hold on to one glimpse of hope or  at least a string of truth. Hoping that string will lead to the place that I can remember the Giver of abundant mercy and endless grace. When I am restless and overwhelmed by the thought of having to remind or redirect one more child or feel the weight of my direction and authority being weak. There are moments when I can barely stand to smile at them because I feel so personally attacked by what they do or simply discouraged by how they behave during my instruction. Then it hits me, they are sheep. I am a sheep. We are sheep. I may be a shepherd in their life but somehow that puts a tension on me to be hyper aware of my sheep-ness and desperate for the Shepherd. It is good and it hurts because it exposes the bad in me in order to refine and glorify the good from the father. It is good because it is eternal. It is good because He is writing stories to be shared with others along the journey. It is good because Jesus does not change. It is good because God already sees how I am the day when I meet Him in Heaven. It is good because as I lose more of my sheep-ness each of my kids gets to meet more of their Shepherd. Oh Lord, for a heart that will continue to let you strip away my impatience and trust the Hand that deals. But for each child to know the love that surpasses knowledge, so be it.

Holding Hands

"Then place your hand in His and follow fearless, til you the riches of His grace behold."

I've been reading Donald Miller books since January and he described one event in his life that changed the way he saw his reflection in the mirror forever. He couldn't forget who he was anymore. Identity redefined. In the same way I won't ever quit looking at the sky as a reflection and remembrance of who God is now because of how He's revealed Himself to me this month.

With any good defining moment about the Lord we learn about our own suckyness, to be profoundly prolific. Wow, am I aware of my sin, my selfishness, and my obsession with things I can see. I'm currently in a position I've never found myself to be in before. I'm the minority. I'm not one in a sea of large tank tops and nike shorts. I'm not one in a crowd of people with families that have come out to support their athletic children. And I'm definitely not one in a congregation of people that worship the same Maker. I am thirsty, I am weak, and I am so naturally wrong. 

God loves everyone. Easy. Done. Got it. Now Elaina... go love everyone because God loves everyone. Okay! Wait.. Hard. Can't. Won't. 

We talk about "loving" on people so much that it has become a part of my vocabulary and mindset similarly to talking about eating brunch. Still I never really know when brunch happens or why it's not more defined and what kind of food it means we're actually going to eat. I want to love people because I know that I am loved and I know that they are loved. But why is it so much harder to love these people than ever before? Because now they don't look like me. They don't think like me. They do things contradictory to what I believe. They've been burned by people like me. They actually should and maybe do despise me. I've been in rooms where the entire point of a lesson is contradictory to what I believe is true about the identity of a person. I believe it is more than who you are attracted to, what groups you identify with, or what country your ancestors came from. I believe identity is breathed into you from the same One that created you. I'm tempted to throw doctrine and scripture and opinions into the room. Then I think to myself, if the Son of Man were sitting at the table across the room during these conversations what's he going to say? It's sure going to look and sound a lot different than what I naturally declare.

I want to get on a soap box and discuss the different theories about identity. I want to expose how sexual identity is destroying the most precious gift we've been given. I want to defend. And then I want to attack. Is this that whole "loving people" thing we always talk about? Is this what it means to be the aroma of Christ? As I look over at the empty seat I hear Him in a gentle way catch my attention. I see Him lift His hands into the air and gently say stop using those eyes. Then I see them. The holes in His hands. The two lenses through which He sees, and the same ones that I don't have to pay a quarter to look through. The grace. The real definition of loving people. To honor and to give grace as Jesus gives grace. It is the only way I can understand what loving people really means. To put the armor down and instead grab a hand that looks different than yours and hold onto it because you know you once needed a hand too. If I can give my hand to hold, to meet them at the hurt, then hopefully they will catch a glimpse of the hol(e)y hands that are calling them home. There is a lot of injustice and a lot of what I'm doing here is working against that, but when I forget that I don't breathe compassion and grace naturally then I am enlarging the gap between each of us rather than scooting closer and closer. 

Brothers and sisters, let us love. But let us love not on the authority of "christianity" or the cause of justice or ministry. Let us love because we did nothing to get ourselves to where we are. Someone showed us the holes in the hands of Christ. So let us move forward and see that He is on the other side of the river giving us the strength to step across as we keep our gaze on Him, and we have no idea whose eyes are seeing the hands that we are sharing.