twenty-two

Thirty-six years, four months, and one day ago I was born into a wonder-filled and broken world. As spoken so well by friends of mine, at that moment the life-line was cut to the safest place I had known in this world, and I let out my first cry of lonliness and disappointment. I've been crawling through this world ever since looking for the entrance so as to get back into that place where every need was supplied. What a desperate life!

Thank God for a plan that involves redemption! Today I mark, with time, the twenty-second year since second birth. When I was fourteen years old I made a very child-like decision to trust that my Creator had certainly provided a doorway back to paradise. In a very limited way, like a newborn, I understood that I needed that doorway back. Thinking about being a "young adult" in my spiritual life has made me curious today to think back on what life was like when I was 22 year old in world years. I wondered if there could be any similarity between how I responded to the expereinces at 22 physical years as I do now at 22 Spiritual years. It was a very interesting exercise. Here are some gleanings:

I was 22 in 1991. The circumstances--I had just graduated from college. I had made a decision to stay in Manhattan for the summer. A first--all other summers in college I had spent at home in Oklahoma. Priority #1 was to find a job. I had two interviews that summer. The first, Manhattan/Ogden, rejected me. The second, Geary County, hired me. Gleaning: it was a time of self-relient (good term) ventures of faith. It was a time when I did not get my first desires, but the side roads I was directed down proved to be amazing.

Another key characteristic was simply my decison to stay in Manhattan long term. I made the decision with as much wisdom as I had, but it was a wisdom beyond my years and understanding. I see it now as a vote for community. Most of my college friends had moved away in May, but I had no desire to leave. I recognized that a community existed--even beyond my college friends--and I sensed that something life-altering had already begun in my life. Gleaning: it was a time for noting the truly important things in life and embracing them without hesitation. A time to value the role of community.

The final most important detail had actually precipitated from an experience two years prior. A painful experience left a wound on my heart. I really didn't realize it, but the master Gardener had planted a seed in that wound. Just like you would use a trowel to plant a row of seeds in the garden. It was about this time--the summer of 1991--that seed began to germinate under the thick layers of my heart. Gleaning: there is a death that will result in life. A season for everything under heaven. You can't see the seed die, and you can't know for sure that it is sending tender green shoots up through the fertile soil. You wait. You believe. You trust. You hope. You live.

If you wonder who I am as a 36 year old body living in a 22 year old life... I'm that girl, just out of college, setting out on her own, embracing community, and on the verge of new growth.

Her eyes are set on the doorway.

The knife's edge

There is a place where the best of who I am meets up with the most depraved and shriveled up portion of who I am. I've been thinking alot about this place. I think it is found in my soul. I liken it to a knife's edge. That imagery initially causes me to wince. But the longer I ponder the image, the more I think of it as the leading edge of a full life.

I'm so grateful to be a part of a seminary experience that is spreading out space for me to sit down and ponder such important images. I'm grateful that my seminary classroom is an actual livingroom in a house. A living room. A living room where I meet with other people in my seminary classes. I'm grateful for a living room/learning room that extends beyond the touch of humans, including my own grip. I go about my daily life in a Holy living room--I believe it is called the footstool of Heaven. In this living room I have to reckon with relationships. I'm beginning to understand that we all have these "leading edges." Through an actual act of grace, each of us in the living room is permitted to bump into one another. This is what L & P talk about when they encourage us to bring "all of our story" to the story of another." It is impossible to accomplish this without pain and reward. They call it "messiness."

And isn't that what the purpose and result of a knife's edge really is (if you exclude using it as a weapon)? A knife is meant to be a tool that accomplishes things we cannot do in our human effort--yet it uses such drastic measures to get such good accomplished. None of us are very happy when we go to cut that juicy T-bone steak and all we have is a butter knife, or worse...a spork! No leading edge. I'm learning to value my leading edge. It seems that, when I do value it, anything of immediate comfort, security, and seen value is lost. When I look at my leading edge as the place of full life, in the process, I am first emptied and then an overriding confidence that comes out of absolutely nowhere surfaces. I experience abundantly full life.

I had an "AHA!" moment last Friday, July 8th. I was having a "knives' edges bumping together" talk with a dear friend. A comment that had been given to me during seminary echoed in my mind and then gracefully floated to the surface of my heart. The comment/admonition: "Allow yourself to have grace on the parts of who you are that you hate." Allow myself to have grace on something bad? I mean really, the bumpy conversation I was having with this friend was actually painful for both of us! I felt responsible. Have grace on that place? It was one of those conversations that we both knew had restored our relationship, but we would most likely be in this place again, facing these same issues again. Probably soon. Mainly because our leading edges don't change in one experience. When you hone a knife you use many repetitive brushes against the whetstone. Even when you are satisfied with it's renewed sharpness, you will have to return to the whetstone over time and with use. So, my friend and I, we left this painful converstaion actually encouraged, but there was a sinking feeling that we would have to feel the pain again.

It was at this moment of quiet contemplation that the admonition popped above the surface of my conciousness and adheared to my present reality. "Have grace on the places in your heart that are so easily wounded." If I can learn to have grace on those places---to sometimes even have to look (and really temporarily BE) defeated by my wounds, and then choose to replace the normal response of loathing wounds/weakness by chosing to have grace on myself. To create space for weakness. The real AHA moment came when I realized that by exercising those atrophied muscles of grace as given to myself, I would eventually have the capacity to extend grace to others--the very ones who bump their leading edge up against me in the living room of life. And isn't that one of the deepest, most fulfilling responses to others and ourselves? Grace and love.