Intermodal

I’m back in the season of traveling for work, distilling my life to what can fit in my suitcase/the overhead bin or the under the seat in front of me. Everything is on wheels; everything is modal. Everything is reimbursable, as if it never actually happened. I wake in a room that looks essentially the same as the last and look out at a cityscape eerily similar to the one the week before. The skies and walls and floors and counters are unoffending shades of brown or gray. I drink a lot of bottled water. The water needs to be uniform and modal too. I speak in short, direct sentences with immigrants from countries I can’t spell about trivial things, like table placements or just how many cookies need to be displayed. I don’t get to laugh much. I long for depth, for familiarity, for home cooking, for sinks that aren’t sensor activated.  Then I get home and I’m simply tired. 

Most of the time, I like the travel. It’s harder now having a dog (all you moms out there just rolled your eyes, but it really is. The dog is my kid and I unhealthily project all of my hormonal neediness onto her) but I need the feeling of movement, of some little microburst of new beginning.  I sleep better on planes than I do in some beds, the newest issue of Vanity Fair cuddled against my chest, my head resting on the window shade covering Ohio or Nebraska or Colorado or Alberta 30,000 feet below. 

In the midst of my travel I got news that a person who was in my immediate family has cancer. The news always looks bad at the onset. With the prognosis flared the latent emotions that family brings. Pain. Guilt. Anger. Love. Fear. There the bests and the worsts crashing together, two cymbals resonating in that relational crescendo again and again and again, narrating that flip book of stills from 15+ years. 

I have another ridiculous month of movement before July brings the summer quiet. I will want the quiet then.

Hold These Truths

I can’t fully express how genuinely sad I am that Amendment One passed. I knew it would; it wasn’t a surprise and yet my heart aches and I can’t stop thinking about it.  I love Jesus. I don’t think that is a surprise to anyone who reads this. I love Jesus passionately and I like to believe this love translates over all the areas of my life, whether it is immediately evident or not (I’m looking at you, cursing problem). My relationship with Jesus is the most important personal relationship I have. 

And so it is physically painful to see the God I know to be unceasing in love and grace and mercy affixed to a battering ram of hate and judgment and condemnation. The truth gets high jacked and comes back a funhouse mirror version of itself. I think of all those who are turned away from the love that I so personally need and I want to weep. I wouldn’t want to know a God who acts like that. 

And so I speak these truths, to anyone who is listening:

•  You are so dearly loved, exactly where you are.
• You are beautifully and wonderfully made.  You were knit together in love and you matter.
• Mercy casts out judgment.
• Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not the past or the present, not the right or the left, not your orientation or your family, not your highest highs or your lowest lows, not popularity contests, not shame, not Facebook statuses, not Christians, not your best day or your worst night, not your secrets, not addictions, not failure; not fear. Nothing can separate you from the love of God.

Love.
Joy.
Peace.
Patience.
Kindness.
Goodness.
Gentleness.
 Faithfulness.
Self-control.

The writer of Galatians calls these the fruits of the Spirit. These are the traits of someone with in whom God resides, because they are the traits of God. Hold fast to this truth. Please.

I've written about this before here and here and probably elsewhere I just don't have time to look it up.

Be Thou My Vision

I woke with Ecclesiastes 3:11 in my head this morning.

“God makes everything beautiful in his time,” my brain hummed as I boiled the water for my coffee.
“God makes everything beautiful in his time,” my heart sang as I padded around in my bathrobe, my hair still wet from the shower.

“God makes everything beautiful in his time,” my heart hoped as I tied my shoes and grabbed the leash.

It's a big day in NC. The state is voting on Amendment One, a proposed addition to our Constitution that would give a very rigid definition of marriage and the benefits associated with it. Not to get too detailed, but the amendment would harm the medical and end of life rights of both straight and gay unmarried couples and their children, along with several other benefits we currently hold as self-evident. It's a shameful bit of legislation, and most polls show it passing.

And so it's a sad day too.

A clear sense of right and wrong is in the midst of the issue, but just as it is clear—obvious—it's clear—transparent. I'm learning that issues of right and wrong aren't what we see, they are what we see through, saying as much about us as they do about the topic at hand. They are lenses. Lenses change our vision. Lenses can bring clarity or they can make us blind. It's our choice.

“Without vision, the people perish,” Proverbs 29:18 says.

And so I pray to keep my vision. I keep looking, lift my eyes to the hills with the confident expectation that my own lenses will change, but that my vision will remain.

Today, I believe my vote is right. Right in the context of history, right in the context of scripture, right in the context of who I know God to be, right for the people of North Carolina.

And I believe, no matter the outcome, that all things will be made beautiful in God's time.