Use Your Words

I'm a words person (and many friends can attest, wordy as well). Surprised? Then you may not know me very well yet. I've been putting things into words pretty much as long as I can remember...even back when I had no idea you were supposed to put space between the letters of separate words. Trying to decipher entries in the first journal of this historically-awful speller, with no spaces and very little concept of punctuation? Hilarious. But if that's what beginnings I come from, I know there's hope for anyone to grow in the giftings and talents God has designed them for.

Recently God's been bringing back up a lot of things I would've thought I'd already learned. You know how sometimes you "know" something but then find your situation where it's like you're realizing it all over again, but for the first time? There always seems to be deeper to go. And I forget that sometimes. Sometimes the student in me mentally checks topics off a list as if having the head knowledge is enough to equip me to handle any given situation. Well, unlike academia, real life doesn't so much work that way. 'Cause when you're in the middle of all the craziness and know what you should do, how things are supposed to ideally happen or be different...somehow the knowing doesn't always translate so smoothly as it would on paper.

Sometimes my words fail. There have been so many moments in my short-ish life that I will never be able to encapsulate in nouns or verbs or adjectives--not even with the best adverbs or sentence structures. The past few days--three in a row, man! It's crazy--have left me floored all over again at the immensity and the precision of a God who is so very much vaster than I'll ever know. And see, I've "known" that--I've known He's bigger than my puny mind can grasp. I've heard and read and witnessed Him do things I never could have come up with, even with the crazy imagination that lurks in this space and is constantly dragging me off into the whackiest and most outrageous adventures and fox trails. I've reminded myself He's big and awesome and mighty. But there is something infinitely different in dwelling on checked-off knowledge, and seeing the truth behind it explode into action before your eyes.

It started, like so many stories of my life have, with the same old frustration: seeing something not as it should be, knowing the right answer (at least to a degree), and being frustrated because my "knowing" didn't elicit immediate transformation. Somewhere around a decade ago, a similar frustration brought me to a series of moments weeping in my bed as the reality of who God is--that all these things I'd "known" about Him were actually true--broke into my desperation and provided the actual answer to what I'd technically "known" for a long time already. That He wasn't far off; He was near. He is near. As near as the invisible bunches of oxygen you pull into your lungs in this very moment.

A little while back, a realization hit me hard enough to leave me breathless for quite a while. A song by Shane and Shane was randomly playing in my head, and the line "Your nearness is to us our good" suddenly collided with a verse that's been tucked into my memory since I had to memorize it in grade school: Romans 8:28--"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." Do you see it? God causes all things to work together for our good, and our ultimate good is not found in some idealistic set of circumstances; it's found in Him--the One we were created for, the One with whom we're designed and hard-wired for fellowship with. That's the good He's working all things together towards. He's drawing us to Himself.

So, back to my recent frustration: Recent situations, one right after another it felt, kept tearing me open at spots where my heart was coming out and it was not pretty. It was repulsive. It wasn't what I ever want my heart to look like, and it was coming out at people, and it was not okay. And I knew that. And I was trying to fight it, but somehow all my knowledge about the state of things was not fixing stuff. I identified the problems, and among them was the gaping lack of His heart for people around me. And I prayed, and I texted my sister and asked her to pray about one situation in particular where my nasty heart was really coming forth. I did all I could think to do to combat it, to force myself into the right state of mind and heart. But it didn't feel like anything was working.

Enter time with some dear, wonderful young women I have the privilege and opportunity to do life with. Suddenly catching up turned into confession, and I was messily spilling forth my observations of my obstinate, ugly heart which as of late had been reluctant if not completely unwilling to channel His heart for people. And in the midst of that conversation, where I found I wasn't the only broken one or the only one struggling, and where each of us began to speak words of encouragement and wisdom and truth into one another's circumstances--another checked-off truth came to the foreground: WE NEED EACHOTHER. I thought I knew that. I've taken notes often enough--right?--about how God uses us in other people's lives? About how He has chosen to dwell with us and in us, and that's us not just me. I haven't been completely oblivious or ignorant in this arena.

But I tell you, no matter how many times I've been in a room with someone and sin has been confessed and the truth has been applied with genuine love and the inhuman strength of grace--that night left me awed of our God who is working in and through us, and thankful to be able to know and cherish these ladies and have opportunities like this to bare our hearts before one another and let His grace do surgery in our midst. Not than anything or everything necessarily changed over night, but there is such strength in having teammates willing to stand by you and push you to press on and support your weight when you're out of stamina.

Fast-forward to last night, when the Holy Spirit wrecked Wednesday-night youth service in the best possible way. Hearts were pierced, challenges uttered, bold steps taken to follow a road of surrender. It was worship. It was worship for those who spoke what God was laying on their hearts to say, and it was worship for those of us listening to that outflow. It was worship when we broke into groups and prayed over one another. We were worshiping the God of broken hearts, the God who is here in the right now and is walking with us through every moment, every situation, every battle. We were worshiping the God who created every single soul there for a purpose, to know Him, and that He will make Himself known through us and through our lives. A dear sister turned to me and spoke words I had no idea I needed to hear, words that sank deep and shook me to the core and broke me with renewed humility and awe at who God is and what He is doing and how He uses what is flawed for His glory. Words that made the tears flow from these eyes that only ever seem to be moved to such by the very deepest or most sudden and uncontrollable emotions.

The echoes of those words along with so many other shock waves from a refreshed heart taken two steps deeper into the infinite ocean of knowing Him, reverberated in my head and soul today. Work, though draining as usual, was tinged with joy and peace that had been a bit absent there as of late. Because my soul was beholding afresh the wonderful knowledge that He is here.

Earlier tonight I sat in a room as a bunch of friends from campus took turns sharing songs that were special or important or beautiful to them. And I was on the list of "performers." Many of us (myself included) hadn't had much or any time to invest in practicing what we wanted to share, but it was an atmosphere of laid-back enjoyment and encouragement and soft-spoken grace and cheering one another on and just plain sharing life, sharing pieces of our lives through songs, even when many of the songs were written by someone else. Nobody had to earn anything. Nervousness was soothed and wrong frets ignored; it wasn't about the performance but about the sharing.

And isn't that what we're still on this earth for? If it was an individualistic thing of God getting ahold of one heart and another, wouldn't it be just as well for us to vanish straight into the fullness of His presence rather than having to continue to live in a broken and fragmented world where it's often harder to see Him? We're not here for ourselves; I'm not here for my sake any more than you are here for yours. We were meant for fellowship, not just with God, but with eachother.

And our gifts are not for ourselves either. Right around the time I picked guitar back up and started taking it a little seriously, and around the time I started tentatively stepping into songwriting, God confronted me on my desire to hoard it to myself. Not that it was that good--the exact opposite was the very reason I wanted to keep my playing and singing and songs locked away in my room to be just between me and Him with no one overhearing. I remember clearly the first time He pressed me to share a song with somebody, and to my push-back He lovingly and a little sarcastically told me it wasn't for me--that anything He'd given me was not for my own enjoyment behind locked doors. Even back then, He was drawing shy, tentative little me out of myself into community, into fellowship. He was teaching me--and still is--that I didn't have to have some great or fantastic thing to offer, but that He wanted to use my fumbling attempts.

So tonight I found myself sharing two songs that mean something real to me; that both came from a place of desperation to see God move in the lives of people around me, and that He has since on many, many occasions used to break me with the reminder I need Him to move in my life as well. Knowing Him is so not a checklist. Every truth I think I know keeps getting opened  and reopened to reveal new and greater depths. I'm not finished yet. More importantly, He's not finished with me yet. Nor is He finished with you.

I started this post off talking about my relationship with words. The title comes from the image I'm about to share with you...in words. (Surprised?) In that conversation last Tuesday, my confessions shed light on the reasons my heart was the way it was, chief of which was that I had been trying to do a lot of things in my own strength, acting as if it all relied on me and my behavior or anything I could do or control. Reality check: none of it does. All the sudden I felt like a little kid dragging a heavy backpack around by the stretched-out strap. Have you ever seen a small child hand something small like a toy to a parent and ask them to carry it for them? Sometimes we need more childlike faith. Sometimes I'm lugging around the very real stuff God's placed me in the midst of, acting like I have to be strong enough to handle it as I walk beside my Father, rather than looking up at Him and honestly saying, "This is too heavy for me. I don't want to carry it. I can't carry it."

He's a good Father. He delights in carrying our weights for us, delights in us trusting Him with our breakables and our unbearables alike; His burden is easy and His yoke is light. He invites us to share in His sufferings, but the ultimate purpose in even that is for us to know Him more and trust Him to carry the load and do the work, because we can't. I can't. Trust me. Yesterday, this word-girl typed out two or three paragraph-sized posts before hitting backspace until I concluded I just couldn't sum it up. I still probably can't. This has been my attempt, but words can only ever get so far. One of the most irksome things about writing is the reality that words don't always work and they're not actually fully capable of describing or depicting everything. But it's also one of the most beautiful things about writing, because in this like in so many other areas, we see the foreshadowing of the deeper reality that our God is so much bigger than we will ever fully wrap our minds around.

So here I was tonight, feeling like that toddler as it all welled up inside me and I didn't know how to express it. And like the patient, tender, courage-infusing Father He is, God seemed to whisper, "Use your words." These words, these gifts, these flailing attempts to get an idea from inside me to inside you--they're not for me. I love words and I love using them, but I wasn't created to write to myself any more than you were created to only smile at yourself. Go share that smile. Spill your guts to someone who may not fully understand (but you'd be surprised how often people actually do), but who will face your mess with Jesus even if they don't have any more answers than you do as to what steps forward are going to look like. Go ask someone how they're doing and really mean it, and listen long enough to get to the answer. Shoot someone a text to tell them why you're thankful for them.  Pray for someone the way you'd want somebody to pray for you. We're not alone and we never will be. Ask God to show you ways to use what He's given you to bless and encourage and strengthen another member of His Body. Because we're all in this together This earth may not be home, but it's where a good chunk of our family is, so let's love eachother well and remember that not one of us is a self-sufficient island.

WE NEED EACHOTHER.

Over and out,
-Kala