(-Wilde)

That's my emotions right now. One moment, here I am, completely assured that what I am doing is the Right Thing, and then the next ... ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

As many of you may or may not know, I recently handed in my two weeks' notice for my night job (main source of income). I was relieved of my duties (so to speak) a few days later. It wasn't very pretty. There was nothing nasty said, but despite over a year of (I think) good service to someone I had come to love as family, as soon as I handed in my resignation I became a source of paranoia and worry (she thought I wouldn't come back to work), which prompted an earlier replacement than I expected.

It would be a lie to say I wasn't more than a little gutted over that. When I first said I would resign, I had quite a bit of assurance. It was time for a change, I thought, and the reasons for resignation were valid. But as soon as I got the official "don't come back," my thoughts went in a completely different direction. Hurt: I thought we were friends, I thought she found me trustworthy, I thought... Guilt: after all, I had initiated my resignation based on my own scruples. Maybe I got it wrong... maybe I'm being too persnickety... maybe I'm completely at fault here, I'm the ungrateful wretch, and she's right to hate me.

And I'm worried. There are so many questions that having that job took care of. Who's going to hire me next? When is a good time to start working again? Is there any way I'll be able to get a job that will pay enough for me to continue my anti-debt trek through college? How am I going to get enough hours of proper work to keep my certification? Et cetera...

My pastor preached on Isaiah 37 this morning, and in many ways I can see myself as a mini-Hezekiah, with the Rabshakeh of the kingdom of Unbelief pointing his finger at all the ways I fall short and deserve God's abandonment. I don't have the answers to all these questions and accusations. Two things I know: my God is good and faithful, and his promises are applied on the basis of a righteousness not of my own making. If God does radically change my life's direction, it is for a good and glorious purpose; if he doesn't radically change it, it is still for a good and glorious purpose.

Today, I didn't make a bunch of phone calls and get everything sorted out. I took all these questions and doubts, all my shrinking and all the confusing changes, and I spread them out before the Lord, the God of Israel, the one enthroned above the cherubim who alone is God of all the kingdoms of earth, who made both heaven and earth, who will save me from the hand of Unbelief working in circumstances.

I pray that, no matter how or when his arm stretches out in answer to my cry for salvation, it may be not for my own glory, but that all kingdoms of the earth may know: He alone is Lord.

"Who upholds the gorsedd if not You? Who counts the ages of the world if not You? Who commands the Wheel of Heaven if not You? Who quickens life in the womb if not You? Therefore, God of all Virtue and Power, sain us and shield us with Your Swift Sure Hand." (-Lawhead)

This is the product of listening to Fernando Ortega’s “All That Time” and seeing people hurt. S’that simple. This one comes more directly from my heart than anything I've ever written before, I think, so handle with caution and read if you dare.

To A Broken Heart:

Your face is the broken surface of every hurting heart I have ever glimpsed. You might be one of my sisters, a member of my youth group, or a very close and dear friend. You might be all three. You might barely be an acquaintance. Yet I love you with all the love of Christ I have to give. It doesn’t seem like very much in this press of pain.

You are aching—cracking—crumbling before me. I know I ought to say something, something to soothe the hurt and mend the gaping wound. In the onslaught of your pain, the pain in my own life rushes around me. “I’m hurting too!” the words wait behind my lips, ready to leap out into your needful ears. “I know how you feel!” I hesitate, realizing that I don’t know how you feel. I know what it is to hurt, and I could selfishly distract you by diverting your attention to the hurt in my life.

I don’t know your hurt.

Pain is pooling in the place where the heart hears, threatening to spill out like the glass over your eyes threatens to shatter drop-like down your face. I take the words and fling them back into my mind so that you’ll never hear them. Maybe you wouldn’t have heard anyway.

The glass over your eyes breaks and you weep. You’re crying— oh, God! It hurts! —and the aching freshness of tears spilling onto your face clamps something around my throat. I’ve never seen you like this before, never knew you could be so broken, yet somehow the brokenness is the same I’ve seen a thousand times before in a thousand other faces.

The ancient newness of your grief combines into one weight with the strength of a thousand griefs, pinning my heart to the back of my chest. I want to rip it out and show you how broken this frail heart of mine is, but the weight of your brokenness holds me back. It tells me that my role here is to be the strong, comforting one, to hold you and help you back to Christ.

Help you back to Christ? I do not know the way myself!

I try anyway, words working like fingers. Yes, words are clumsy fingers, ploughing into the crumbling walls of your sandcastle heart. I fumble to strengthen you, but my words only seem to speed the oncoming wave of destructive despair.

I should be praying with you. I cannot pray. It is as if my tongue is shackled. I think the weight in my heart has reached its chains far. I can only look at you, begging you silently to understand that although I cannot tread this water and hold you up, I’m willing to drown with you. Even my sincerest look is empty, devoid of compassion. More words come, but they are dry chaff. Empty words somehow pulling us down all the more for their lack of substance. Heavy nothings.

I tell you I love you. I want to tell you the truth: I cannot love you. If I loved you, I would be strong enough to push the weight aside and tell you how unloving and broken I find myself, that you are not alone in any of this.

We hug, brokenness meeting brokenness. I tell you I’ll be here for you. We both know I won’t.

I love you. I’m sorry. Another empty-armed hug, both of us embracing our self-confident lies. Embracing nothing.

We prop ourselves up with wobbly assurances on your part that you’ll be okay. Sleep comes. Water washes away the rest of the sandcastle.

When I was very, very young and my family’s residence was in the fair land of Illinois, my father would sometimes ride the bus around Champaign-Urbana. At the time, I was enraptured with anything that was metal, round, and gold colored, and I came to be quite taken with bus tokens. Anytime I learned Papa’s pockets contained tokens, they would somehow—whether directly bestowed or by some more mysterious means—make their way into my hands. To keep nefarious characters from using these tokens as money, each had a star printed on one side and NO CASH VALUE written on the other. If you had approached me and said, ‘nice bus tokens,’ my response would have been: ‘huh?’ for instead of using their proper name, I childishly took that simple statement on the back of the token and turned it into a noun. Thus, the bus tokens earned their notoriety as “No-Cash-Values” (this habit of naming things was common in our household... ask me about the tonsil-poker sometime).

Each No-Cash-Value upon reception was immediately deposited into a somewhat nauseatingly pink leather purse, another prized possession of mine. While my father was buying coffee at the gas station or my mother purchasing her groceries, I would gain the attention of the cashier and, producing a gold coin from my beloved pink purse, solemnly inform them:

‘These are my No-Cash-Values.’

I’m sure there were many suppressed smirks and weird looks at my little act, but I always thought they looked mighty impressed.

Years went by. I had important things to study, tests to pass, dollars to earn. The No-Cash-Values were thrown hastily in with my coin collection and eventually most of them were discarded. I became interested in real money—in both earning it and (sometimes more so in) spending it. One day, I uncovered the pink leather purse, its handle completely worn through in one place. With a fond (if self-deprecating) smile, I threw that away too. I came to understand the worth of things with cash value; no longer was I waving around a pink purse of self-proclaimed worthless metal. I had grown up, or been enlightened, or whatever silly word I occasionally use to convince myself that I’m more mature. The pink leather purse was loved, but old and outgrown.

I found a No-Cash-Value in a box of old things the other day. It wasn’t so shiny anymore, rather dirty and rusted and dull. It made me wonder—not a “them good old days” sort of wonder. The idea of a chubby little girl walking up to a store clerk, proudly showing him her No-Cash-Values, and expecting him to be impressed is laughable. Cute (because she was such a little girl), but silly. She has grown up now. She has learned so well. The connection between ‘worthless’ and ‘no cash value’ was an important one that needed to be made, and I don’t regret learning the difference between what is profitable and unprofitable.

“Look at me, God. I’m so wonderful and smart now. Look how Enlightened I have become!”

At the same time, I realized, perhaps I hadn’t learned so very well. Perhaps I only exchanged no cash value for cash value—or perhaps more accurately, No-Cash-Value for No-Eternal-Value.

As I turned the No-Cash-Value over in my hand, I thought maybe I was still that little girl—not so cute or laughable anymore, but still toddling up to the Maker and Sustainer of the universe and holding out handfuls of dirty rags. Maybe I’ve managed to dress them up with a pink leather purse—disguise them, hide their dirtiness from myself, but rags are rags.

“Look, O Eternal and All-Powerful God. These are my No-Eternal-Values. Aren’t they pretty, God?”

To an unbeliever, maybe the important part of the story is the way I learned real-world facts about money and work and value. Maybe someday, someone will point back to that and say ‘Look how far she came!’ But that’s not the point.

The point is, I haven’t come far at all. I’m still that little girl, toddling around on unsteady feet with my hands full of worthless objects. I couldn't make those No-Cash-Values worth anything as a five-year old; these rags will never merit anything, try as I might in the flesh and old Self.

Yet even as I struggle with the Old Self, at the same time a New Self has been given to me—Jesus Christ. In Him, I strive each day for that which is eternal and will not perish. If I have been Enlightened, or if there is any value in me, it is only as 2 Corinthians 4:6-7 says: For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

This clay pot is holding something far more precious than the little girl with a pink purse filled with No-Cash-Values ever could have imagined.

“Look, God. This is my Christ. Isn’t He beautiful?”

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor. 4:16-18)

Contemplating: a new (short) story idea. So far I've come up with the very uncreative title of "The Unprodigal Daughter," which should clue you into the general idea for this particular story. I've three pages of a very rough draft which came out somewhere between my studies, and I can't get it out of my head.

It's not a nice story. It's rather nasty and black - basically, it's about a lot of the parts of me that I hate. It strikes me as very confessional, actually. But I've never believed a thing should be avoided because it wasn't pretty or nice (for the record, I don't think it should be done solely for those reasons either...)

So here are the first few lines. Bear in mind this is an extremely rough draft with little to none of the usual editing that I try to subject a story to before I show it to anyone (and I usually wind up not even doing that, so this is something of being out on a limb for me...)

The Unprodigal Daughter

I didn’t run away.

That’s the thought that won’t stop flapping its noisy way around my head. I didn’t run away. I’m the good daughter. When people walk this road, they see me in dutiful service to Daddy. They smile, they whisper among themselves what a blessing I am to Daddy, how proud I must make him, and how I must be an example to all who see.

My name is Miri, and I didn’t run away.

Do you think something can be made of the idea, or is it rubbish and destined to flop miserably?

O Socrates!
Yer muddlin' pleas
An' words like fleas
Wit' knotty meanin', twistin' ways -
Yor stoopid book'll take me days.

I'm not reading Socrates, but Ruth came in and saw a book about poetry on my desk and exclaimed "You're writing poetry?!" so I burst out in poetic fashion 'O Socrates!' (it seemed a poetic thing to say) and then felt compelled to finish the rest of it. And since I limited myself to spending sixty seconds on it, I like to think I've followed T.S. Eliot's advice rather well.