Maybe splendor
Is a girl
Rowing her younger brother to the
Far shore
She tells him she he will be
A cowboy there
He asks her how he can be
Without a hat
She tells him
you will make one
From the twigs and branches
And leaves there
And you will have a cow you will name Horse and another named Ted or Fred, he said
Yes.
She says, and a chicken…now get your clothes and race me up the hill.
A chicken named
Get-your-clothes-and-race-me-up-the-hill,
In the years of this drought I have questioned–what if the water does not return?
Sometimes we have gone months and months without a drop.
There are people in my life whose lives are desert-y lives. Not just sit on the couch desert, full-blown felony and addiction desert.
They challenge my faith. So I tell God–I believe, help my unbelief.
And He says–
It is unfair to the desert to judge it definitively when there is no rain.
Rain changes things. Rain brings life and washes away the dust. Rain makes rivers in the desert, streams of water where nothing could grow.
So I pray for rain.
Jesus says he is living water. Living water poured out for us. He does not just bring the rain, he is the rain.
For years, and categorically for the first nine months, I awoke each morning and lay in my bed wracked with dread.
Because the children were so punishing.
Trips to parks, grocery stores, the pool, church were all fraught with the certainty of sturm and drang. Sometimes interchangeably.
I remember waiting in Philadelphia for my husband to return after a medical conference. We had to check out of the hotel so for several hours I walked in downtown Philadelphia with the children.
One would begin to wail and would do so for blocks, eventually losing interest. Then the other would commence. Their verbal displeasure was noted by all who passed us.
Normal people.
I found a square and planted us there. The wailing planted itself with us.
The only pictures I have of them as babies–before foster care, before I met them–survived a fire.
All that remains of before.
It was a beautiful fall day in western Pennsylvania when the caseworker called and asked if I could go down to Allegheny General with the other foster mothers to pick you and your sisters up.
You were all tiny, perfect, beautiful, wrapped in the quiet of the NICU.
They trained us in infant CPR and your apnea monitors then we bundled you up to “take you home.”
I put that in quotes because I believe your home is with your mom. Because I believe she never got a chance.
But I have to focus on the light.
My year with you was full of light. You were a wonderful baby and we loved you dearly. You are a wonderful young woman now, and we still love you.
We miss the years and pray the light always travels with you. And that you know, always know, you are loved.
The story goes something like this: a 50 year old man targets little kids at a water park and takes dozens of pictures of their private areas.
He gets arrested and prosecuted under a law intended to protect adults from non-consensual voyeuristic photography.
Two Texas courts upend the
conviction on the basis that the behavior of the defendant was a form of free speech.
I think they may have overlooked the difference between photographic predation and free speech.
So here are some examples of free speech:
Taking pictures of other people without consent for the purposes of sexual gratification is not free speech. It is a form of exploitation
Free speech.
What ass’s orifice do these people have their heads lodged in?
Free speech.
Have they lost any perspective on the implications for children of allowing them to be exploited at public parks and pools?
Free speech.
The defendant’s lawyers said the law is “Orwellian.” Perhaps all parties need to read Orwell before they drag him into defending a pedophile.
Free speech.
And last but not least–
News feeds are glutted with comments about the actresses whose naked pictures were hacked and leaked. I read this as a stand-alone article from an English news source.
Shouldn’t the lack of concern for the safety of our children be a bigger deal?
Free speech.
We talk about the two roads: (notice there are no others) one narrow, one broad.
I picture the broad one littered with neon signs, carnival-lit and well-paved.
The narrow one is hard to find, off the the side, obscured by overgrown vines and branches. Because, let’s face it: not much traffic.
You climb through the overgrowth to get there and once on the Path the going is any but easy. Rocks, besetting ills, humiliations, and the echoing loneliness of it all.
But always the figure of the Man in front of us. Stick close to Him. After all He is the way itself. The narrow path to life–home waiting at the end.
There we will belong.
I grieve for these lost men
Think about their brokenhearted mothers
Avoid an accounting of the days and the pain and dogs of souls
who could exact such cruelty on…ordinary men
It is easier not to go
To the places these men went
And the place where they were
Cut to pieces
But we must
Ask ourselves what has become of
Us, the Geneva Convention, the boundaries of
Words, only words
strung words together
No guns, no knives, no ammunition
Pictures taken of war
If you can even call it that
They say they got Capone for tax evasion
Not murder
And I wonder if these boys who hide their faces and play “gods and men”
Like a game without a score
Know the second commandment (say nothing of the 6th)
Still applies to their eternal souls:
Forget all else you have done
And understand you owe God for life
For these pictures you have taken
Of Foley and Sotloff
There will be
Forever
Nowhere to hide.
I heard this on Christian radio today, right after they played needtobreathe’s Multiplied, a song I take seriously.
To paraphrase John the Beloved– there are not books in the world to write down all he has done.
Jesus hasn’t just saved my life, he has challenged me to live brave when I am a coward, to love the unlovable because I am one, to see the night sky differently and to acknowledge that
He is not a tame lion.
Having a relationship with Jesus should be challenging. It should abolish our prejudices and take us outside our comfort zones on a regular basis.
It should be bigger than us. A strong, insistent wind.
And it can be quite lonely and humbling and heartbreaking.
I often think that western ideas of “evangelism” are inefficient and strange precisely because we have lost sight of our Main Man.
Having a relationship with Jesus is like having a relationship with your own heart or lungs.
Where ya gonna go? This guy has life, and that more abundantly.
It will cost us stuff. Stuff we will think we cannot bear to pay.
But no matter what that cost, it has cost him more.
And he paid it for me.
Your life changed mine utterly. I can look back at who I was before you and know that I had good intentions and walked the road not as many walk.
I knew I needed to feed His sheep.
But the twin agonies of losing you and worrying about your loss were so harrowing. To lose a baby is a nearly insurmountable grief. To know that you had to question where did mama go? drove me wild with pain.
I clung to prayer, and learned these two things–
You need to stay close to Jesus and prayer must have feet.
I had to push all my maternal love toward these things–you close to Jesus and doing the kindness to others that I asked for you, because someone somewhere was praying for them the way I have prayed for you.
Always.
I would love to send you a real gift–a thing you could hold to know I am there and I love you. But until I am free to send the real to you, I will send you this and this.
Love you, dear heart
Carrying Light 