day after dreary day

It's been a week since the break, and I still find my mind wandering in abstract ideas and prosaic musings that don't add up to two. It's like having the attention span of a five-year-old because the world is so great and strange and new that you can't focus on the present activity of walking to class or even the future fear of finding a job because look there are fuschia flowers popping out of green buds and the grass is the color of unripened bell-peppers.

This morning I awoke inside a cloud. The branches on the ghostly trees hung silently until the spring breeze began stirring in the deep, sending the flowers trembling with a yawn, cartwheeling across the surface of the silent lake. And then the mist blew away like wreathes of smoke (where does fog go when the wind takes it by the hand and whispers "Run"?) and all that remained was a slight dampness and the smell of fresh grass.

Walking to class, I saw a child with skin as soft as silk and slight, slanting eyes. My mind memorized the way his arms swung out, the way his steps faltered and jerked along in the sporadic movements of a child, still learning to be human. Spontaneous, free, joyful. The world is new to him, and everyone's head brushes the sky.

Jets roared overhead. I stopped to stare, the roar resounding in my ears and for a moment everything was just blue--the blue of the sky stretching over me, flying, soaring over the surface of this spinning ball of mud. And when I turned to walk on, I was flying still.

The world is new and strange, because I am growing. My head is inches away from brushing the sky. I am learning to look at a couple holding hands and smile because He holds my hand and my heart, and a mere fifty years is nothing compared to eternity. They are an echo of the real, a shadow of love, but I have the thing itself, the unknowable, the vast, the magnificent, the glorious. I am learning that suffering is not meaningless, that waiting and waiting and feeling as though I am always sliding backward as day by day my sin becomes more evident in the light of His love and grace is only the fire burning those very sins away, the wine press that is making this bruised and broken skin less and less a part of me.

I am learning to pray for brokenness.

I am learning that only one thing matters in life, and all else is vanity. And the one thing--not only is it the pearl of great price, worth dedicating my whole life, day after dreary day, to serving, seeking, finding, preaching. Not only is greater than any loss I could suffer, greater than any sacrifice I could give, greater than any pit or darkness or despair or depression. Not only is it All, but it is already mine. All the answers to the questions I ask lie in the leather book I carry with me every day, sitting there in the worn backpack beside me.

O, that my heart would be able to say, in complete truth, "You are enough for me!" If only I believed His promises, trusted in His faithfulness, leaned upon His strength instead of blistering my hands digging into this hard clay.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Though you slay me, yet I will praise you
Though you take from me, I will bless your name
Though you ruin me
Still I will worship
Sing a song to the one who's all I need.

-Shane and Shane, "Though You Slay Me"