It’s tiresome that life feels bracketed again. This time, it’s life before my friend’s death, and life after.

I feel like I’m floating in between worlds, or maybe, rather, bumper car-ing into them, where I think I am enjoying the ride and the drive until I smash violently and gleefully into the next thing with a shocking peal of laughter, and then I’m off again, with undiagnosed whiplash and a snow cone that spilled all over my shirt front.

Snow cone food coloring is so hard to remove.

There is all this collateral damage that I’m only partly aware of.

I keep picking up little shattered pieces of glass.

But even as I’ve been thinking about collateral damage, I wonder if there is collateral goodness, plain-clothes civilians of sweetness who smile and give me pats on the back as they walk by.  I’m usually staring in the wrong direction, and so when I turn to look back at the strong and loving grip on my arm, it’s already passed by.

I need to start looking at these side swipes of grace, focus on the blessed brushes, the sweetness of small dreams, of seeing reconciliation and grandparents, running dogs and enjoying silence, feeling like a local in my homestate and yet an honored guest at lunch.

Here is my tension again, of having to pick what I see even though both exist. Death is real, and Jesus is true, and so maybe it is where I place my eyes that really matters.

 

Come, Warlord Mighty King.

I do not want sweet, comforting, gentle Jesus. I do not want to see Precious Moments Jesus or smooth, thoughtful and faceless Willow Tree Jesus. I am annoyed by them, even disgusted by them in their incompleteness, and in the wake of my friend’s death, viciously tired of them.

Sweet Jesus, I do not want you right now. I want the all-encompassing, revengeful, righteous Jesus, who storms out of the pages of Revelations on a white horse to the sounds of trumpets, with eyes of fire and a mouth of swords. I have now come to realize that there is not “righteous anger” but just pure righteousness. Come, righteousness, that rights all brokenness, that dies death, that brings life and sheds pain. Come, King, come, Warlord, come, rushing Lion who savors the ruin of Lucifer, come, Pure Judge of eternal courts. I cannot stand the idea of comforting hands or soothing words, of anyone cooing at me or even telling me that they are sorry. I just want vengeance, pure death and destruction upon the head and hands of Satan. I want your sword, the sharpest tool in existence to cut with the precision of the world’s best brain surgeon and slice the death out of us.

I know, I know, I know, that I am asking for the incomplete picture again. I know I am asking for the justice without the mercy, the righteousness without the gentleness. But in all the violence of death, I want you to be violent back, I want your trumpets, your scorn, your perfect lightning to strike even the hand and heart that thinks they can balance the ark when you already told them not to touch it. I know I should want the full picture of you, God, but I cannot wrap my arms around it, and I do not want your arms wrapped around me. I cannot stand the idea of gilt silver crosses that are not crucifixes. Be the Christ Victorious, displayed full and bleeding on the cross, not robed or sandaled or surrounded by cute children. I want your violence to bring peace, I want your brutal death to bring death to death.

He Does Not Waste.

Dear Twenty-Year-Old Jess,

It’ll work out. By the time you get here, five years later, Mom will be on remission.  She doesn’t have cancer anymore, but keep celebrating her life, keep celebrating your family, keep celebrating your friends.  As for boys, for your immediate thought of, “Did I just waste 3 years of my life on that jerk,” the answer is no.

God doesn’t waste. If I could tell you anything, continuously, every five years, every five minutes, is that this is not waste. It might not be good. you may not be strong. you may have the entirely wrong end of the emotional stick, and you might be about to make the wrong decision, but God, in all of His strange goodness somehow doesn’t waste it, and MORE, He uses it.  It still blows my mind. It blows 25-year-old-jess’ mind, and I think it will blow 35-year-old-jess’ mind too. God doesn’t waste mom’s cancer.  He doesn’t waste that horrible relationship and all the bad decisions that came with it. He makes it perfect.

you will get the dog you’ve begged for since you were three. you will continue to be single and loving it. you will one day, actually find that lipstick isn’t just for old ladies. and you won’t be as scared of old ladies anymore; even the ones that speak english. thankfully, you’re sense of style improves.

you’re going to move, a few more times, to a few more places. you won’t like them. that’s okay. but i can promise you that the taste of disobedience is disgusting.  that in some funny way, it is just so much easier and more fun to relax into the plan that God’s given you, instead of butt your tiny head against His and pummel your fists and demand that you want better things and you deserve more. so keep moving as He tells you.  you’ll get explanations later, which is why i’m writing this now. there was purpose in all that pain, and all the pain you’ll have, and all the Glory that will be.

Love,

you.

P.S. your sense of smell will still suck, so it’s okay that you still don’t like perfume, and having a dog isn’t as bad as people want to tell you.

P.P.S. maybe you should keep track of your finances better.

little girl lost

my feeling are 

too tired for words to make sense

my words are

too useless for voices to speak

my voice is

so lost like a little girl who uses fists instead of feelings
instead of words 
instead of voice

and so i stay little girl lost, confused, emotions struggling for verbs and nouns to get around them, begging for my Translator to come, to take the ball of twisted yarn that is my brain and make it all straight.

 

clutter

there is a king who knows me so well i cannot breathe
and so in my overwhelmed state
i wrap my mind around smaller things
petty jealousies, exercise, a leaving date.

 

chink in the armor

one afternoon in 6th grade, a boy stood in the aisle of our yellow school bus. he put his arms across the row, blocking me from getting a seat. “No chinks on the bus,” he said. i swung around, and walked 15 minutes to the bus station. i never took the school bus again. i have never forgotten that scene, of his swinging legs or of the other students laughing. this is what i heard: because of my race, i wasn’t worth a bus ride. i had no place there, and there was no one to defend me.

I’d like to share two blogs from the Poon family, two staff members that I met a while ago.

the first is from the husband, Jason, who is asian. http://jasonandtjpoon.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/my-ethnical-dilemma/

the second is from his wife, TJ, who is caucasian. http://jasonandtjpoon.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/a-hard-look/

i don’t have an answer about what is right or if someone should have been fired for ESPN’s seemingly racist headline. this is a hard discussion for me, and in many ways, i long to separate myself from the hurt in this world and skip to the known future of worshipping in Heaven with every tribe, tongue, in nation.  since 6th grade, i have grown in my understanding of the language of hate and racism, of separation and misunderstanding. but this is where are we called, and here is where God can be glorified: in a land of hurt people, harmful people, and people who just don’t understand.

Storage lockers #1

standing over our gathering ready to pray for anyone who walked up, i had a picture come to my mind. across the dark room, storage lockers rose up like little talk bubbles over peoples’ heads.

so many had them, these storage lockers with orange doors and metal sheeting of all sizes and in different places. they represented all the hidden, locked away memories and things that we, i, need to unlearn, or want to pretend never existed. even though i had forgotten about my storage locker, it was still costing me; my savings account was regularly being charged for the space that my items took up.

we’re all familiar with the term baggage. it’s the junk we carry constantly, that we’ve been building up over the seasons of our life, the purses of information that we lug into our relationships and work and thought processes.

but this new idea, storage lockers, seemed worse to me.  i can acknowledge my baggage.  i know of it’s existence. it’s nameable and understandable, heavy, dirty weight of a vagabond that we bring with us because it’s all we know. my storage locker is a unit not on my person- it’s in a separate place, a forgotten section of my mind, that is taking much out of me and causing me loss, without me even knowing it.

and so i sat and prayed that the Lord would reveal some of the things in my storage locker, things that have been locked away that are still making charges on my heart’s account.