Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh is this child
this woman
who now walks away from me
Always she is walking away…always, she is going
I wish she had come with a note,
like a present with a ribbon tied ’round her wrist
and a card attached
with the words:
“Just passing through.
I will come to you,
into your body, into your home,
into your wallet, your schedule, your dreams
and most of all
into your heart.
But I will not stay.
I’m just passing through.”
I moved 21 times before I turned 12. That makes 22 different homes and no, my parents weren’t in the military. 22 apartments but only two school systems. So actually, all that moving wasn’t as disruptive as you might think.
I mean, sure, it was draining. And we did reach a point where we stopped unpacking the essentials and lived out of boxes.
Boxes. Most of us live in them already: big boxes with doors and windows, divided into smaller boxes with doors and archways. And we live out of them too: cabinets, closets, drawers and shelves. And we create them: boxes in our minds and walls in our hearts. When I was a kid, some of our boxes just happened to be made out of cardboard.
I find the letter. Worn. Faded. The words still familiar.
Melodic whispers of another time, another place. Of two faces, close together, flushing beneath a thousand sunlit cherry blossoms. The blushing trees stretching endlessly in every direction, motionless…as if holding their breath, waiting, listening.
His soft, brown eyes already asked the question. Her heart beat out an answer. An answer. An answer.
He held her in his eyes. She touched his cheek. And for a moment they were one. They were forever. All that was, all that would be, colliding in perfect stillness…
Before I finish reading, I slip the yellowing paper back into its envelope.
I close my eyes and find that moment…crystalized, frozen in time…pink petals suspended in the air. No questions. No fear. No doubt.
No words left unspoken. No letters left unanswered.
Just him. And me. And my heart still beating out an answer. An answer. An answer.
As in, I should be…committed…somewhere quiet, soft, with baby pink walls and no sharp objects. Because otherwise I might hurt myself.
What was I thinking?! Signing up for an online 30 day writing class. And just three days in – three days! – they ask for a commitment. Commit to a writing practice, they say. Ummmm…ok? OK. Yeah, sure. Why not? I can do this. It’ll be good for me. And fun..no, yeah, it’ll be fun, I say. 15 minutes day, I say.
And so I do it. I write pretty freely on the topic of favorite songs and I don’t publish it because it’s rubbish and it was just a free write exercise anyway. For me, at least.
Some days, I miss her so much I can almost feel her next to me, in front of me…taking my face in her papery hands and drawing me close to kiss my cheek.
She wasn’t always old, though.
We lived a number places together: the Green House in the hills of Granby, an apartment in Simsbury and then, later, a raised ranch further up the street. Wherever she was felt like home to me.
To my friends, readers and subscribers. I have been a little “stuck” lately in my writing and so, in trying to get “unstuck” I have joined WordPress.com’s Writing 101. As a result, I may be posting more than usual over the next month. My apologies for clogging up the inboxes of my subscribers. I debated not posting this one, but so many of you are my friends and while I write primarily to understand, I also write to be understood. So those of you who are my friends and family: Welcome to 20 minutes (or a bit longer) of my free-wheeling inner dialogue and thanks for being my friend anyway.
So after hours of agonizing over this “free” write assignment, here I am. Writing. How “free” it is, I’m not sure. The only way I can even do this assignment is to tell myself or at least pretend that I’m not going to publish it. Because the moment I think someone is going to read it, all freedom goes out the window. Which I hate. Because, honestly, I like to think of myself as someone who is rather free-spirited and not burdened by what others think. The reality, however, is that I do care what others think.
Tough. Sharp. Witty. Snarky. Capable. Independent. Powerful. Like super-powerful, machine gun, taser wielding, ninja powerful. In control. Emotionally guarded. Mysterious. Beautiful…in an average-girl-made-alluring-by-her-mystery-and-inaccessibility kind of way. Likes others, even loves others, but doesn’t need anyone.
Then I sat down and devoured season three of Veronica Mars and realized – I am that article. I want, have always wanted, to be Sydney, Ziva, Kate, Veronica. I mean, I even dressed up as theBlack Widow for our Christmas Card for crying out loud:
Photo by nicholeq.wordpress.com
So maybe there’s something to this Amazon woman deal after all. Because apparently I want to be Wonder Woman. (With more clothes on, thank you.)
So what’s that about? Power? Control?
Is it bad? Is it wrong to want to be strong and powerful? Maybe not.
But to want to be always in control? (Eve calling….)
To want to be independent? To need no one else?
There is this part of me that wants to shut out the whole world. To keep my heart all to myself. To keep my love for others wrapped up tightly inside, hidden away.
So that all my love is mine. And all my pain is mine. And all my fear is mine. And all my joy is mine. And all my grief is mine. And all my shame is mine. And all my everything….is mine.
And you can’t have it. You can’t see it or touch it or feel it or know it. You can’t have it. Because you can’t have me.
But I want it so badly. Today, more than any other day, I feel it – how strong it is, this idol that rules my heart.
And so I ride fences and seek pleasures that harm me. Always wanting what I can’t get. Pawing, stamping the dusty earth along the rails…butting against walls that hold me in, chasing freedom. Freedom from pain and people and expectations and false hope.
But walking through this world alone is its own sort of prison…with transparent, icy walls that deceive me into believing that love is safer when it can’t touch me, that seeing is enough. Will I ever be able to let someone love me? Tell me, Don Henley, when will it be too late?
This idol…this me wanting me all to myself…it has to go. It has to go.
But how? How do I surrender who I am? The only thing I have…me?
But do I even have me or is it just an illusion, a lie? Because who am I anyway? How did I get here and how will I go?
I am not my own. I didn’t make me. I can’t keep me.
Or more astutely:
It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, then I first begin to have a real personality of my own…There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given yourself to Him you will not have a real self…Your real, new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. – CS Lewis
And I feel tired. And I don’t want Him to love me or comfort me BECAUSE I AM ANGRY. Angry like a 6 year old girl who just realized that someday she will die. That this life – this awesome, beautiful, terrible, wondrous life – will end. Will be snatched out, like a carpet, from under her feet, knocking her hard on the floor and stealing the breath from her lungs. No more blue sky and green trees and grass to tickle the feet and beaches to wander and dreams to dream and futures to plan.
And she lies there thinking, “Who is this God that gives and takes away?”
And the pain and betrayal run deep. So deep that even nail-scarred hands that gave everything burn. Because this place is raw. And the healing hurts.
And I wonder…who am I? Why did You make me? Why did you make me a girl? What does it even mean? Who should I want to be? How should I want to be? Is it safe to want to be anything? Or will you snatch that out from under me too?
Or will you take this broken, wounded, angry girl…and remake me into something beautiful? Something strong? Something good? Something free?
There are so many things I want to be, but Lord, can You make who I am?
I hate being weak. I hate that I am not enough. I want to be more. To do more.
God, so much of what I want to do is for You.Why do You keep holding me down beneath Your mighty hand? You say You will lift me up in due time. When will that be? Can You point to a date on a calendar? Or give me a general idea? If it’s a long way off, my iPhone goes ahead like 20 years. And Due Time has got to be within the next 20 years. Right? God? Are you there?
In Jesus Calling, I’m instructed to rejoice in my weakness which, like a lodestone, draws me ever closer to God. Once upon a time those were encouraging words, but lately they sound a lot like this: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
What happens when I am aware of my desperate need for the Lord but I don’t feel any closer to Him?
What happens when He doesn’t answer my prayers? When I ask for strength and yet have so little? When I beg to feel Him, plead to hear from Him and yet…nothing?
I go to His word for nourishment but everything tastes like dry grass. Parched, I drag myself across burning sands only to find an empty creek bed. I wrap myself in the love of friends and family but my heart shivers through the sunless night.
And I recollect a truth carved in the walls of my soul…but it’s like recalling the lyrics of a song without remembering the melody.
I know He is with me but I can’t feel Him.
And so I recite the words, even though I can’t remember the tune:
Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. Isaiah 41:10
And I believe…even though I don’t feel. And I hope even though I can’t see. And I choose trust instead of fear – trust in the God who promises to uphold me with His right hand.
His right hand – a symbol of strength in the scriptures. Not His left, but His right hand. Because God only gives us His best.
And I keep reading:
For I am theLordyour God who takes hold of your right hand
and says to you, Do not fear; I will helpyou. Isaiah 41:13
The Lord my God who takes hold of my right hand. Not my left, but my right hand – my strength. My best.
And I consider what life would be like with God holding my right hand. I imagine cooking without my right hand and typing without my right hand – and the imagining comes pretty easily because with chronic pain and tendonitis, I am sometimes forced to rest my hands, and wow…even in those brief hours, I hate it.
(Did I mention I hate being weak? Because I do. I hate it.)
Honestly, God taking hold of my right hand doesn’t sound particularly helpful. Surely, it would be easier if He held my left hand.
But then…would He even be helping me at all? Or would He just be something I hold onto to make me feel better – like a security blanket or the cross I wear around my neck?
Like an unsteady toddler who cries for help after falling down and then pushes her father away as soon as she’s back on her feet, I want Him to help me do it on my own.
But that’s not quite how it works, is it? God is not raising us to be independent. Rather, He’s calling us back from independence, into the freedom that comes in total dependence on Him.
And that means that sometimes He must take hold of us at our strongest places, limit us, slow us down.
Perhaps it’s the only way He can get me to stop trying to do it all on my own. In taking away the things I rely on – my endurance, my abilities, my intellect, my creativity, my spiritual insight, my energy, my confidence – He reminds me of the one thing that really matters: Him.
And I remember His strength that called light out of darkness, igniting the fire of countless suns and flinging them across space and time.
His strength that hurled the planets into motion with perfect precision, summoned beings out of the earth and rushed the wind of life into man. His strength that bore the crushing weight of humanity’s doom and under it, through it, forged a new way. His strength that ruptured the tight and binding prison of flesh, birthing new life in a dry and barren wasteland.
His strength. Which has always been….will always be…enough.
And so, confused and frustrated, weak and exhausted, I stop tugging and pulling and fighting and trying to wrench my hand away from His.
And in this moment, I surrender my best – which is never enough – so that He can give me His best. Which has always been….will always be…enough.
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The morning after I completed this post, Leroy Case preached about our God the “Star-breather.” His message was incredibly relevant to me, to this post, and at the end he shared a song with us. And now I am sharing it with you.
![By Euphronios (User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2007-02-10) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://nicholeq.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/amazon.jpg)
Lightning Bug 
![By Euphronios (User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2007-02-10) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons#mediaviewer/File:Amazone_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_8953.jpg){kind=link}
