So Brave, Young & Handsome

Say what you like about melodrama, it beats confusion. The truth is we ought have a chance to say a little something when it's getting dark. We ought to have a closing scene.

So Brave, Young and Handsome, Leif Enger

A few years back several of us at church read the first novel by Leif Enger called Peace Like A River, the story of Rueben Land and his family as they embark on a cross country search for an outlaw older brother who is questionably charged with murder.

Occasionally I have looked to see if he had written a second novel. Recently I discovered that he had in fact done so. So Brave, Young and Handsome was written in 2008. It is the story of an aging train robber seeking redemption for his past choices.

The quote I wrote above is toward the end of the book. One of the characters in the book, who has lived his whole melodramatic life trying to appear a much "bigger" man than he really is, has had a stroke. It appears that he is at the end of his life. The author then states, "Say what you like about melodrama, it beats confusion. The truth is we ought have a chance to say a little something when it's getting dark. We ought to have a closing scene."

Something struck me when I read those words and at the time I wasn't really sure what it was. I remember looking at the page number and thinking that I needed to revisit those words.

I think there is a part of me that longs to be seen as successful and capable. When I don't feel either of these thing, I begin to create this melodrama around me so I can feel like it is true of me. I feel like much of my ability to look good is dying and much of that dying is being done quietly without fanfare or recognition. Much of the dying process is happening completely within my confusion.

I am crying out because I really think I should be able to get a word in edgewise, to somehow control my own fate, to actually even choose what should die. But God doesn't see it my way. He chooses what needs to die and what needs to live within me, based on a larger picture I can't see. Often I am not even sure what has been dying until after the death occurs.

I hate the confusion caused by the unknown, but it is the unknown that saves me again and again from my own melodramas. It is God bringing reality into the confusion. He is constantly at work redeeming the dead parts of my soul; dousing my confusion with mercy.

God is Good Even When I am Angry with Him

Christ offers hope, not relief, in the middle of suffering.

Finding God, Larry Crabb

I wonder how important getting out of the struggle and pain of my life is to me right now. I do know that it has been getting in the way of my finding God lately. It is apparent to me that relief has become my main goal; relief from the terrifying fears I am feeling right now.

Where is hope? Is having hope in God and having hope in finding a job soon related at all? Where is my allegiance, to what am I giving my energy? My heart?

Is my hope in God or is my hope in myself? Hope in God should bring rest to my soul, while hope in myself brings about this frantic effort to get my act together. How do I rectify the two? How do I keep faithfully looking for a job and still be faithful to only God? What if God never provides me with a job? What then?

I know deep down that God is good. I know that God is faithful to provide me with what I need to make it through today. So why is there so much doubt right now? So much fear? What is this angry fist that I am swinging at God? Am I saying that God owes me more than he is giving me? That God must somehow be holding out on me?

I am realizing that my current pain has really become a "friend" to me. My pain wrongly justifies my choices. It wrongly justifies my angry fist at God. I know that the knowledge of that should bring me to my knees pleading for God's mercy, but I am not quite there yet. I seem caught between my pain and brokenness; between my dear "friend" and God.

There is a feeling of hope as I write that, a hope that has recently felt absent to me. It is proof to me that deep down I really do believe God is good. I know He will win my heart in the end. So for the moment, I am free to live caught between pain and brokenness; free because the breaking is not something I can do even if I tried, it is the Spirit's work. I trust God to bring me to my knees.

To believe Christ (faith), to serve Christ (love), and to wait for Christ (hope): that is what it means to find God.

Finding God, Larry Crabb

They are Way Cool!

I was so excited to finally get the chance to see the bald eagles that have migrated through Winona Lake, Indiana over the past few years. I usually hear about them days after they have moved on and each year I have totally missed out on the experience. I was able to see two perched high up in a tree, although someone else from my church posted a facebook picture of three eagles earlier today.

I would have loved to have been able to see them stretch out their wings and fly but they sat there unbothered. In fact they barely responded to the flock of noisy honking geese that I irritated while I was trying to get a closer picture. It was still way cool for Indiana!

Simple Beauty of Creation