When to Trade in "Why" for "Because".

My favorite word is "why". In fact, I think the day I was born, I crossed my arms and looked stubbornly at my mother and questioned pensively: "Why was I born on the 23rd and not the 24th?"

The "why" is the thing. The "why" is by far the most important question you'll ever ask yourself-- it's at the heart of authentic purpose, it's the root of sincere passion and ultimately, it's what will formulate a deeper semblance of meaning and personal satisfaction. 

It's good to dig. It's good to shovel past shallow and insipid assumptions of reality and unfold the rich and curious layers of life's nuances. 

Why am I alive? Why are sunsets purple? Why are lemons yellow? Why do I serve God? Why do I love this or that? Why? Why should I obey? Why do we suffer? Why? Why am I going through trials of pain and tribulation? Why do I finish? Why did this or that happen? Why? 

When we settle for surface level answer, we do ourselves and God a major disservice as intelligent creations endowed with incredible mental faculties. David penned in Psalms to God, "Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law". I am riveted by this plea. I assert humbly that me and David have this trait in common-- I'm calling it a craving for "the more"-- a hunger, a need for richer understanding, a pining for greater intimacy, a longing to sink deeper than what's immediately visible into the oceans of His infinite revelation. It takes guts. As my wise sister says, "People aren't afraid of depth, they're afraid of drowning." I agree with this claim, she's my sister, after all. 

But there is a dangerous temptation that lurks in this notion-- a superficial intellectualism that put my pride at the center of my understanding. 

I've been shook up lately. I've come to realize a few painful truths about myself that aren't so pretty. Here's where God and my "why" met a brick wall. 

David pleaded, "Open my eyes". Why? Because what is spiritual and holy in nature could never be carnally apprehended. It took a revelation from Almighty God to open the eyes of his understanding. And it still takes supernatural intervention to discern His Word today. 

But what happens when we are faced with seemingly gross personal injustices or unreasonable tragedies in our lives? What happens when we grapple with seemingly unfulfilled promises? What do we do when the pain seeks to question God's Sovereignty and our bitterness begs to dismantle His character? What happens when our God-directed "whys" are met with silence and no viable reason is manifested? 

The "why" that once brought fresh thirst for God and His Word now becomes the battering ram against my faith in Him. 

So what do we do?

We grab ahold of this unshakable truth: because God. 

Because the I AM needs no justification to establish His decisions. Because His understanding is infinite, and because, at the end of the day, from here to eternity, He is infinitely good. 

I'm cosmic dust. I fall on knees and repent for believing I could ever back God into a corner of confession. I breathe out my "why" and He breathes out His peace. I lay down my critical thinking and He lays down His love. I open my heart and He opens His hands and walks me through my doubt. 

The answer is on the other side of faith. It's on the other side of consistent obedience. And even if the answers don't come in this life, we will have a million years to dissect every discrepancy with Jesus, somewhere on a green pasture by a river that flows from the throne of God. But by then, will it even really matter?

Friend, dear reader: if you find yourself in a season of questioning, interrogating God and cross-examining your present circumstances that you feel don't "make sense", or add up, don't feel condemned. Please. God isn't scared of your questions, not even a little bit. Our Jesus is able to face every single one. But we have to be able to embrace our "non-answers" with faith. I've learned to hang up my "why" and gunsling my "Because God". And it's awesome because I'm so much happier. Religion says, "If I do x, I will get y and carry on with my self righteousness and selfishness". Relationship says, "I obey. And hey, I love you, God."  Answer or no immediate answer, I am first called to be a disciple, not a philosopher. 

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." 

"If You're Living in the Future, You're Probably Lonely"

There’s a dangerously elusive misconception that’s been plaguing my existence ever since I started to grapple with the concept of the future as a separate dimension from the present. It has loomed over my head and my shoulders, quietly watching my movements like a cat, lingering in heavy black clouds of apprehension and breathlessness. Its bulky uncertainty consumes my joy; it shoves my peace into compact balls of “When” and “If”, scattering their figures across the pool table of “Might Be’s” and “Maybes”. It whispers its inaudible echoes across my heart and invades all my dreams and wishes, taking them captive into the darkness where it resides. It knows all the good things we long for and all the pain and hurt we love to hold on to. It holds the keys to our ambition and our purpose, our love, joy and our hope because we gave them to him, open handed because we were too busy to use in the present or to notice they were even gone. I am talking about those dark words, “When I _____, I will______”. Insert dreams, insert callings, insert any aspiration you have intimately knit together with anticipation and longing.

“Someday, when I____.” Insert all your infinite plans, and hopes, all your distant goals that trail off, out of reach and like ethereal ghosts we can’t hold onto, like wandering ships on blurred horizons. “Someday”, the demon of apathetic dreamers and mediocre magicians. And perhaps even more sinister, its accomplice “I am Waiting To____” fills in the gaps where “When I” pours too lightly to mingle it all together into cocktails of indifference and inaction. That misconception is a poison I have been freely drinking from far too long.

Why do we wait to live until it’s too late?

How many infinite conditional statements can we make before we are forced to drink our own bitter regret? My fear is that God, being the gentleman that He is, can only present us with so many “presents” before our continued rejection of our present opportunities are embarrassing. Our Father, whose priceless gifts He has purchased with His own blood, sit idly in the attic of our “intention” collecting dust and disappointment. But even if no one saw the Mona Lisa, or paid thousands of dollars to travel to the Louvre to look upon its creator’s genius, would still be a masterpiece.

I am talking about your life.

 When I was a little girl I remember living right “here”, where my feet touched the ground, firmly planted and blooming in the “right now”. “Here”, where my heartbeat with fresh blood every day and my head swam with galaxies and wonder. No one had told me yet that I would have to be five million different people before graduating college or that I would live a hundred different prospective lives in my head before making a decision about my future.

And what does all that mean, anyway? The Future. Where is it? I don’t think it really exists, have you been there? But the ironic truth is that we talk about it like we are already there, living on remote islands of the future, stuck in our heads and out of touch with where our physical body is and what our eyes are truly seeing on the mainland. And tragically, some people are forever shipwrecked, and what a miserable waste, because everyone else is still here. What wasted love, trampled flowers, shattered porcelain.

This big, ethereal “future”, I think it’s just a silly abstract lie that keeps people painfully unhappy, or worse, isolated and alone. Because right now, at this very moment are where all the endless possibilities are waltzing around us and we cant keep turning down perfectly good dances to be a wallflower in life. I keep telling myself, “I’ll be happy when _____” and “I’ll do this if ____” but that just doesn’t exist. Can you touch it, can you kiss “maybes” and “ifs” on the cheek and be riveted? I am not propagating hedonism nor am I advocating a Godless, reckless life. What I am saying is, that I think it glorifies God when we live in the adventure He has crafted for us. If you’re bored, you’re doing the whole “being a Christian thing wrong.” Living for God should be the most exciting journey you’ll ever take. It requires bravery and necessitates relationships, and dare I say it, risk. We don’t do it alone on islands. He has given us a team and He has given us seeds. Open up your eyes and look around you.

You cant live for God in the future, you wont do anything for Him. It will forever evade you. He can’t and won’t say “Well done”, nor can He pat you on the back and say, “Great intentions, Bob”.

Not even God can actualize your intent unless you give Him your hands and feet.

No. We can only live moment-by-moment, stitch-by-stitch, sewing our souls into the perfect will of God. And someday, when we look back on the vibrant threads of our past, and our present and behold the tapestry we have knitted with those we love, we shall find that we have lived an entire life in the will of God. And it will be priceless, this life we have spun, this quilt we have crafted by grace.

Gardens and Uncooked Chicken Legs: Reevaluating Singleness

So I’m just going to say it: God did not create humans to be alone. 

Let all the single, Christian Millennials panic right about… now. 

I know, it’s awful-- feelings of inadequacy and anxiety wash over you with tsunami like pandemonium, it feels like the end of the world (at least yours), what is life if I don’t have a “significant other”, at the very least a satisfactory “prospective”. Your twelve year-old cousin has been dating the same guy since fourth grade and is still “going strong” with the Junior High Don Juan. You contemplate your ability to succeed at anything, (at life in general), at 2 am while staring at filtered Instagram pictures of happy couples posing in random fields of corn or whatever else is in for this year’s engagement photos… Blah, blah, blah… We feel your pain because we’ve been there. You’re 21 and life is already crushing in on you and any hope of establishing a fruitful marriage is dashed because you’re weird.

I’m kidding. 

(About the hopelessness part, you might actually be weird, but definitely not hopeless.) And I’m going to tell you why. 

Let’s all flip to Genesis chapter 2 (Hint, hint: it’s towards the front). 

True or false: After creating Adam by breathing the breath of life into his nostrils, God gave him a helpmate quicker than he could say, “Eve”.

FALSE. It’s time for some team building with God, Adam. God is going for dynamic duo right now. *See Genesis 2:7

True or false: God established an intimate relationship with Adam and instructed Adam how to dress and keep the garden BEFORE he was given a partner. (AKA, homeboy learned how to MAINTAIN A JOB FIRST.)

TRUE. I'm just going to leave that there... Right there. *Please see Genesis 2:15

And lastly, (you all are going to hate me for this one): Adam never ONCE begged God to grant him a partner in the first place because he had no conception of a helpmate aside from God anyway. 

That’s also TRUE. Adam had all that he would ever need in God—emotionally, physically and spiritually. Eve was the sprinkles on top. Eve was God's original idea. Not ours. Eve was the wild card. (In more ways than one, as we find out later, but that’s another article/story.) If you don’t believe me—Genesis 2:18.

Now, this article is supposed to discuss “singleness”, which is always going to be an awkward subject to talk about, simply because of the faulty assumptions and misconceptions stemming from both sexes that have permeated popular belief as to why an individual is “single”, and unfortunately, Christians are the biggest culprits and propitiators of the negative connation associated with this word. But now that we’ve seen it in the word of God, let’s give each other break. There are some practical, healthy and necessary stipulations for singles that God requires us to work on and that’s ok if you’re working on them still.

In fact, please, take your time. Your future spouse is dependent on that.

And know this: there will be days that you feel like a penguin in a room full of lions. There will be moments that it seems everyone else in the world is speaking another language than your own and you question if you even remember how to speak yours. There will be times that you feel like an uncooked chicken leg.

Yes. An uncooked chicken leg. I mean that. 

Raw, slightly unfinished, prickly, really, just an overall unattractive piece of flesh.

And the wonderful thing is, (and also, the reassuring truth is) that everyone else feels like butchered poultry sometimes, too. We wander like lost fishing boats on misty waters, knowing there must be other lonely vessels meandering through the fog of unchartered territories, but too unsure to cut through the density to create connection. And we ramble on. So let’s stop doing that. Let's stop using each other to gratify our emotional emptiness. That's just ugly and actually creates more gnawing emptiness than what you started with. 

Wherever you are on your faith journey and whatever place you find yourself working in God’s garden, remember that this body of believers will always be there to work with you. True, you’ve got to maintain your own Eden and cultivate some healthy habits but we all work for the same husbandmen. Build some community and safe, platonic relationships that are motivated purely by edification and encouragement. You won't be as alone as you feel. Really.

So stop panicking (it really only heightens your unattractiveness) and stop using “single” like a curse word and start seeing like it was meant to be seen—a training ground.

A garden.

The Meaning of Life- Seriously.

Here’s the thing. This is it. Are you ready? I’m about to tell you. 

Life, as we might interpret it, like transient reflections of a dimly lit candle flickering on the mirror of eternity, is hard to pin down. We talk about Life like it’s some mysterious person that we met a coffee shop but at the same conceptualize it far more than a personality would be. We talk about Life “doing” this to us and “giving” such and such and performing all sorts of varieties of incredible and not so incredible feats of victory and dilemma in our worlds. How strange that we know “Life” so intimately but yet never cease to be disappointed by tragedy or amazed at galaxies or riveted at sunlight passing through the trees on an afternoon drive. In fact, the more I think about, this Life that we all debate and analyze and talk about and dissect is probably far more active and reactionary than we are, the individuals supposed to be in command (‘supposed’ to be, a term used loosely) of interpreting our own existence, and in my opinion, that would be awful- to have created a concept that dominated our own reality. But that’s what happens when we, the individual, create our own reality, our own rules for how to exist and how to interpret what Life innately is. So this is my fear: that we allow life to “happen” to us and that Life gets to do more “living” than we do because how can we control all of Life’s seemingly random, unforeseen events? How do we attach purpose to purposelessness? How can we pretend to exercise authority over something that we have no real control over? 

But we can’t live there either- in the grays, I mean. So it’s midnight and I’ve arrived at two possible stations: either Life is fabricated by our own psychology (which is limited by our own mortality, thus meaningless without an absolute foundation) or it was given by an Eternal, Absolute, Creator who could and who had, not only all the power and life to give, but also the ability to set the parameters for our understanding of its reality. 

And if this is true, and the patterns and systems of our rational and logical universe remain consistent, is not in vain but is, on the contrary, saturated with purpose. 

A lot of scholars and figures in higher education would like to make you believe that your existence is nothing more than a fleeting narrative produced by a few million synapses and neurons relaying and sending sensory information from the external world, that’s in turn interpreted by higher functioning regions in the homo sapien brain that reason more complexly and effectively than their past evolutionary counterparts, and that, in short, your life is material, and ultimately meaningless, no matter how advanced our chocolate ice cream engineering skills become (Although they’ll never out rightly disagree, unless they are sold out completely to nihilism-which is extremely braver than adopting Christianity or faith in general for that matter).

So there it is logically. You can decide whether a) swim in a sea of chance and concepts and vague definitions of what you are and why you are and what life truly is and revel in suspension, or you can choose option b) to accept that Life in the human experience is different than just existing, and that Life on Earth was created with certain parameters, purposes, foundations and reasons that will inevitably lead us back to its original Creator like train tracks lead its passengers to a final destination, (not like the creepy horror-death films) but a radiant city paved with the purest gold, exploding with resplendent light. And what’s more, what if I told you we could actually call this Creator by name and even more astoundingly, He actually wanted a relationship with us?

He never meant to confuse anyone. Sometimes we just think we invented Life, and when you stop and really think about it, that’s actually kind of absurd and you really don’t believe that, do you?

So I promise, you will arrive safely home if you acknowledge that the train is the Life God gave you and the tracks were the Words He wrote down to guide you back.

And the meaning of life is this: stay on the train, pick up your map, grab some passengers to take with you, love them and ride that train back home.

He’s waiting and His name is Jesus.

Life is so Sweet and God is a Poet

"So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. (‭John‬ ‭16‬:‭22‬ ESV)"

God is a poet. I say this because as I was driving home tonight I wanted to cry, not because I was overwhelmingly sad but because I was overwhelmingly happy and only poets have the ability to do this. It wasn’t the deceptively temporary “happy” that you might feel when you’re at the highest point of life’s rollercoaster with your hands wildly in the air, plunging into exhilarating freefall. It wasn’t the kind of happy that can be cheaply and artificially induced with syringes of instant gratification or momentary materialism but the kind of satisfaction that takes time to grow like a seed planted deep in the earth that quietly, yet earnestly waits to break forth- like holding your breath under water for a million years and triumphantly reaching the surface to exhale relief.

I had been swimming for so long. I had planted many seeds.

I think of it like this: when you are sick, you are constantly evaluating you’re progress, you incessantly track your recovery, you measure every inch of healing your body makes. But I realized, while I was crossing over a lane, that I was whole. I was healed. And how? Because I had gotten to the place in my journey where I stopped measuring my steps- because I didn’t need to. It had always been such a struggle to march that I marked every inch I advanced ahead. But tonight I had forgotten that I was fighting to move forward and I finally was where I had been pressing to break through. We talk about what might happen when we "will be" but I think I finally was. I was walking, not quite yet running, but my stride was strong.

And it was all very uneventful; no fireworks, no confetti thrown at the end of the finish line, simply the soft hum of the cars passing by me and the warm presence of the Divine. And I am glad. We have grown too accustomed to marching bands and thrill seeking to validate our experiences.

We miss too many sacred moments looking for neon lights and theme park rides. I pray you never miss yours.

I'll wrap this up.

Maybe you are broken and maybe you are sick. Maybe you are looking up at the rippling surface of the ocean and you feel the heaviness of fatigue and the despair of barren fields.

If so, I humbly attempt to pose this dissertation, this hope for you: seeds do grow, seasons change and even whales come up for air.

I was leaving work early. I made cookies that day. The sun had set almost completely into its black and violet folds and the streets were calm like deep rivers.

I think this is called peace. Life is so sweet.

And God is a poet.

A Million Reasons and a Million Ways

You're not going to feel inspired every single day. You won't. Believe me, if you had already found the secret to rendering on demand inspiration (I'm not talking about cable TV) you would have probably already written a New York Times bestselling manifesto and made millions of dollars on frusterated writers and artists. You would have found the immediate elixir for thousands of years worth of aggravating writer's block. People from around the world would hail you as the greatest sage in the history of the creative arts. You would be the Dalai Lamia of creativity. 

But you aren't and no one is- at least not right away.

Because most us who enjoy pursuing our creative passions also work a 9-5 that's a little more mundane, but that's totally honrable and it's ok (just as long as you don't completely hate what you do. If you hate your job or your life you should stop reading this right now and revaluate your decisions because this post isn't for you. I'm talking to people who are mildly satisfied with their current station in life... Any way, back to the point.)

The daily grind isn't always that directly inviting (i.e washing dishes, brushing your teeth, going to work and crunching numbers, budgeting money and paying bills and slaying the occasional dragon...). That's just life and snapping your fingers and expecting effortless inspiration is naive and slightly sad. You're wasting a wealth of potential. 

And I'll tell you why. 

Inspiration is hard work, not magic. Now, it might feel like magic sometimes and that's wonderful but it isn't periwinkle pixie dust that fairies come by to sprinkle you with that mystically blesses your brain with fresh wonder and revelation. If they existed I would have already tried to pin them down and force confessions from their lips. No, inspiration is a lot more tangible than that. It isn't some ephemeral, fleeting, temperamental occurrence. It is so much more closer to you than you think. I promise. It's sitting right beside you (Or in front of you, whichever illustration suits you best). 

Inspiration is rain on a windshield and the clammer of dishes in a sink and the chorus of grinders in a coffee shop. It's a freckle and an eyelash. It's a strange parting glance from a stranger in the aisle of the grocery store that bothers you before you go to sleep at night. It's the morning light in the quiet still. It's all around and it is your job as an artist is to actively search for it and it's really not that hard when it's all around you. That's your part and a lot of people who want to create something often quit too early after realizing this hard truth. They freak out when they realize inspiration and great leads dont arrive in the mystic experiences they imagined. I think people have this misconception about creating something- they get sucked into that image of some tortured artist in tattered clothing pacing over a type writer drinking whiskey from a bottle, murmuring to himself and writing cryptic symbols on the wall. (Well, actually that might be true).

But it's a lot less romantic than people make it out to be. And that's good because that's a lot more accessible than being a suicidal junkie that's writing the next great American novel.  

Inspiration comes to those who are diligent and to those who are persistent- not idealists who wait for it to magically appear. It's hard work but then again, it's really not because all you are required to do is just live and notice your life. Observe and dissect laughter and leaves. Study everything. Feel everything. Ride the wave. You will be inspired, I gauruntee it. Because God created everything in the world to reflect and point back to Him. And that's the beauty of it- He's infinite. Limitless.

We are looking for a million reasons to praise His name and we are searching for His glory in all of creation in a thousand different ways.

So get off the couch and close your latop (or your phone). Notice the details and notice the clouds. When's the last time you intently stared at the clouds, I mean really stared? You should. I'm not saying they talk back, but if you are listening carefully, their Creator just might.

And what would He say?

So go for a walk. Run. I don't care, make something, may anything. Make a cake. Do 500 jumping jacks and go sit in the park and talk to someone. Listen to music while finger painting. I assure you, Inspiration will flutter on your shoulder like a butterfly, and it will never leave as long as you keep inviting it to come. 

How to Be Human

I am beginning to understand a few principles concerning human relationships. Well, I guess two major principles. The first being, that they are very hard and the second being that they are also very easy. Only after they have been very hard do they ever become very easy. But also I think that maybe after 80 years they can still be pretty hard. There are many different types of relationships but relationships that involve people can typically be the most frustrating and they can also be the most rewarding. Humans are sporadic. Let me clarify.

People are like water and also like stones. They are always shifting and bending against the current of their circumstances, reshaping to fit the contours of life’s flow. It is essential to keep up with the course of the stream. But sometimes they refuse to move at all. Sometimes people are like rocks settled at the bottom of a river and they are not going anywhere for anybody. And what is even more quixotic is that they can be both at the same time. 

So I’ll say it again- relationships are easy and they are hard. I say this because I have been painfully selfish most of my life and selfishness makes relationships hard if not completely impossible. This is because selfish people don’t change unless there is an incentive for them to change, unless there is a chance that they might lose something they deem valuable to their immediate existence or forfeit their comfortable control over the world. My incentive to reevaluate my relationship with God and the rest of world came at a heavy cost. (Or perhaps I had a series of petty fines that I forgot to pay, or refused to pay- that seems more believable and more likely than the sudden debt collector banging on the door).

But it all felt like a sudden banging on the door of my life.

I’ll confess, the process of liberation from the shackles of our own nature is slightly traumatic. Think of it like this: you are in a dark, damp prison huddled feebly in the corner of a dungeon. You have been there so long that you can no longer remember what crime you committed to even become a captive or how long you have been serving your time. You have lost all recollection of light and warmth and human connection save for the sole warden that sits at a desk guarding the door at the end of the hall. The only time that they ever acknowledge you is to slather their slur of negativity across your face and remind you how trapped you are and that you that you will never belong to anyone but them and the prison. Until one day, a flash of light illuminates the jail and the sound of an explosion rivets you from your dreary daze. The door at the end of the hall flies open and Grace walks in, guns blazing. The warden looks up, terror stricken on their face, and for the first time you notice something you hadn’t seen before. The warden is you. Grace walks over, takes out a key and unlocks your bars. “Come out”, He says, “I’m saving you from yourself”.

When you wake up from the nightmare of your own prison of selfishness and narcissism and pride, it can be a little unsettling. But all of this is actually pretty beautiful because now you’re free.

I understand this now.

And since life equals relationships it is important to seek understanding and ironically (and maybe slightly counterintuitive), you need to start with understanding yourself.

But why? Because I think we have to understand where we are, who we are, and most importantly, why we are in relationship to Jesus Christ. He is our compass, the center of all of it. I can always know where I am in relation to Him if I know where He is- safe. I know who I am because He has directed the purpose of my life’s mission in extension from His location and His heart. I know what I am because I have identified Him as the central Creator-Savior of my life- the redeemed creation. And I know why I am because I know who He is, what He is and why He is too. There, we have drawn the borders around the picture and this is where we fill it in, not with our own ambition but with Him. How clear and beautiful the picture can be.

So He is the vine. Everything grows forth from Him and flows from His source. I've made Him everything because He gave everything. I cannot hold back from Him because He never held back from me. And as soon as I make ME the center of my selfish world, I slam the doors shut again and bar myself back in the prison. Because if you are the Lord of your life and you only seek to serve yourself, you will become a slave- a slave to yourself and every fleeting desire and temporal ambition that passes through your head. The only way to truly be free and to ensure your freedom is to make Jesus Christ the center of everything- the prime obsession, the main event. Because even though He is the Master, He is also the Shepherd and even though He is the Father He is also our Friend. He is as much your Lord as He is the Lover of your soul.

I remember when I was the warden and I was the prisoner. I never thought of sacrificing anything for anyone and that's why I would never be free. Even if I could have paid the fine to buy my freedom, I would never have been willing to pay it. Selfish people don't like pain or sacrifice or anything of that sort, even if, in the end, it benefits them in the long run. Selfish people are near-sighted.

And what does this have to do with relationships and them being hard and easy and being selfish and all that anyway? 

Everything. 

Because you cannot freely shake hands with a man whose hands are in chains and you cannot safely commune with a person who wants to enslave you, too. And you certainly won't maintain healthy relationships with anybody if these figures are the same person inside you.

And since the Gospel is about bringing people into a relationship with Jesus Christ, Christ utilizes relationships to bring the Gospel to people. Because life equals relationships and relationships are everything.

When Life Gives You Rancid Almond Milk

I woke up this morning 45 min late. Apparently, in my sleep, I had silenced my alarm clock. Twice. Immediately, a sickening feeling washed over me over me that was more than just the panic induced nausea. I stumbled to the fridge and looked at the almond milk I consumed voraciously the night before. It was expired. By two weeks. Guzzling a bitter cup of coffee, I darted downstairs to print off an essay that was due in ten minutes. The printer was out of ink. Perfect. 

I threw on some miscellaneous clothes and ran out to my car. While backing out of my drive way,  I looked down at my shirt- its was stained in the shape of Africa with what appeared to be spaghetti sauce. In tow places. This was wonderful because I had a presentation today. This is what I get for fishing it out if the laundry anyway. 

So I'm speeding down the street with spaghetti sauce on my shirt, burping up rancid almond milk and praying to God I make it to class in time to turn in an essay worth 20 percent of my grade. 

And I have come to this realization.

It's good to plan. Really it is, be proactive. Be detail oriented, expect the unexpected. Preparation will invariably spare you from the heartache of public humiliation and the devastation of marinara sauce and the stress of last minute frenzies. 

But sometimes you wake up on a Wednesday and life is weird. 

And you've got to go with it anyways. 

Our First Prayer

I think life is about finding words. I think that we walk down the paths that we do in the hopes of finding and collecting words and fragments of phrases that will help us articulate our existence. When we are born, we are speechless save for the initial cry of commencement. Vulnerable, rebellious and blurry, I believe it is our first instinctual cry for God and it is all we know to do emerging from our red darkness. We hadn't yet known any other saving touch except for the hands of our Father who formed us in the depths of the earth and knit our hearts together with love and promise. 

And then we quickly were silenced and hushed with pacifiers of promises and soothing whispers from figures unknown. "There, there... Don't cry... No more tears..." And from that moment on, we are trained to believe that crying is associated with "wrongness" and tears are highly unfavorable and so our natural inclination to cry for help, or at all for that matter, is waned away. When we fall off our bikes and scrape our knees, we are taught to hold back our tears and muster our courage. Don't you dare cry in public, you'll make a scene. You really shouldn't cry over relationships or people- it's a sign of weakness. You certainly can't cry if you are a man but if you must, you must not cry openly.  

But this whole time, I think we began to lose a vital element of our experience. We started losing our ability to signal our distress and the God who heard our first cries is relegated to a mere assistant and not our sole Savior. And so pride convinced us that we cannot adequately communicate with God unless we found the perfectly fitting phrases to articulate our plea. So we walk through life collecting words in our pockets like treasures forgetting that our first prayer was only just a cry.  

Up in the Air

None of this is actually normal. I was sitting by a lanky, perspiring middle-aged man on a plane to Denver and the only thing I could think was that none of this had any ounce of normalcy to it. He was wearing khaki shorts with a striped golf tee and white Pumas with blue laces and no socks. He wouldn’t (or couldn’t) look at me. Not for one second did he see my face or acknowledge that he was 14 inches away from a human that had a heart that beat at 70 beats per second or that we were travelling in the sky at 600 miles per hour in a machine that ascended 10,000 ft in the air. He ordered an undisclosed alcoholic beverage that he poured over a cup of ice and sipped absentmindedly. He sniffled the entire 3 hour and 45 minute duration of the flight while simultaneously staring at the screen in front of him that played nothing but animated clouds drifting through the Frontier logo. And I knew that one time he had such big dreams of outer space and deep ocean water and maybe when he was still a boy, he had imagined with his creative power entire worlds to explore with fresh wonder. I just knew that one time he used to stay up late talking to someone he had given his heart to before he knew anything about return policies or fractured pieces, and perhaps he had a brush of something like love and what did it feel like? Divinity?

I knew that he had seen a bleeding sunset before that made him question the idea of an ultimate Creator because the world was beautiful and is beauty still art even if it’s accidental? Was God an artist and was he an atheist? He had cried before till his whole body shook from exhaustion- maybe not in the last year or even the last ten but I knew he had had, at one point in his living, shed every tear his eyes could afford. He had been broken by disappointment and bruised by mistakes and I knew that when he went to sleep at night, he wondered if there was anything more to life that had possibly been hidden from him in some sick and mysterious cosmic hide-and-seek game of purpose. But maybe it wasn’t hide and seek, maybe he had found it but it always was a game of tag and he never was fast enough to catch it. Like I said, none of this is actually normal. Because we are spinning 1,000 miles per hour, traveling around a Sun that is 93 million miles away and there are 7 billion heartbeats on this planet with a new cadent addition added every day to the chorus of our drum line and it isn’t normal.

Why do we fight so hard to keep the confines of our “ordinary” in tact when this life is anything but common? Miracles are born every second and in every moment there is the flutter of angels wings.

I was tempted to hit him on the head, just so he would notice that I was human and that I could, in fact, move the extremities of my body with the sparkle of a thought, electric impulses of neuron and nerve.

It wasn’t until I stood up to exit my seat and pass him that he looked me straight in the eyes and motioned with his hand for me to go before him. His smile was like the sunlight passing through the trees on an afternoon drive- a transient flicker.

And his eyes were blue.

Restaurant Revelations

We were in the corner of a hole in the wall Vietnamese restaurant slurping pho and dissecting our lives on the table like cadavers. She was sitting in front of me fervently communicating her ideals on love and life and God in between sips of tea and bites of spring rolls.

She said, “Everyone knows that God is love but it’s deeper than its surface value… Here’s the thing- it's going to blow your mind, are you ready?” she asked giddily. “Love mirrors the attributes of God.” She stared at me with her icy blue eyes, like a chemist who anxiously awaits for the reaction to transpire before him in breathless anticipation.

I took the bait.

“Because people make the mistake of making Love their god. But Love is not a god. It can’t be,” I expounded. “So what is love? If you try to define it, you will inadvertently describe God. That’s the beauty and brilliance of it,” I exclaimed. “We reflect Him through love. Love is sacrifice; love is forgiveness. Love is mercy. Love is Light. Love is just. Love is a perfecting force that not only perfects the lover but the beloved. God is every good thing. Nothing that is good can be separated from Him. God is Love. But love is not a god. Love is the shadow of His goodness- what He always was and always will be.”

“I call it “stupid love”, she declared. “Because it isn’t supposed to make any sense. Because you’re not supposed to be able to rationalize it. You will never be able to earn it. There’s no formula you can plug in that quantifies your “work” to equate your “love earnings”. Love is forgiving and not just forgiving to say, ‘I forgive you and here is a closer look at my wound.’ It’s, ‘I love you. So I forgive you, and what wound?’ There’s no keeping score, no desire to.”

We both took a simultaneous sip of our tea. I coiled the noodles in my soup with my chopsticks, observing how the basil intertwined into a conglomerate mass of noodle and vegetable.

“When I meet people, I only feel comfortable around the weirdoes, the offbeat humans, the people on the outskirts… They’re the people I naturally gravitate towards,” she confessed, without even looking up from her bowl. “I judge people. Really quickly. I only accept the individuals I feel I can identify with.”

“Me too”, I confessed. “We all do. We don’t want to be around people that make us feel unaccepted. We don’t want to feel the sting of rejection. So we filter our love to those that are deemed as deserving, those that we have stamped with a big red “safe to love” stamp. But real love breaks down walls. People are begging you to liberate them from their confines. We are all the same, really. People are looking for that one person who will walk up to them and courageously declare, “I love you and I am not scared of your walls, even the ones you built yourself- your walls of impossible expectations and sharp insecurities. Your walls of fear and shame, pain and pride. I love you and I am not leaving until I have chipped away at every stone that restricts you. I don’t care if I’m bad for your image. I don’t care if you have been living in such a suffocating superficial state that you’re used to the shallow end and now you don’t know if its fear of depth or comfort that has kept you up top. I love you. And I am not leaving you the same way.”

“That’s convicting”, she whispered as she grabbed her chest.

“I know. And the trick is that you can’t have any walls yourself. You have to embrace all of your hang-ups, your quirks- all of it. You have to pull them down in order to give the love you wish to receive,” I professed. “You have to courageously love yourself to in order to courageously love others. You have to risk vulnerability. You have to be willing to get hurt. It’s the only way that it works.”

“Because God is love”, she surmised. “And the only way to define love and to truly live it, is to reflect Him.”

“And what is more vulnerable, more painful than self-sacrifice? Than laying down your life on a cross? He embraced shame. He embraced rejection. He shattered walls."

The waiter placed the check on the table. We both looked at him a little more sincerely and I think this time we actually saw him.

“No walls?” she said.

“No walls,” I smiled.