Going through old things, I found a picture of myself--roughly age seven or eight--with hands held proudly aloft, each clutching a bright green walnut. I remembered how much my sisters and I loved those things. They were our all-purpose toys: balls, rations for runaway orphans, generic collectibles, gopher-hole-stoppers, you name it. We even used the green rind for a charming addition to various perfumes (mingled with grass and dirt, the results were stunning). An excess of playing with these led to another use: a striking, if unwanted, fashion statement. Those who played with walnuts were made like them--or at least made to wear the juice all over their hands and clothing, for once it sank into the latter it rarely came back out.

Going through old things, I've found so much stuff that, like the walnuts in Newman, I left behind. Many of them were sweet and full of promise in my hands, laden with rich meat. But like the walnuts in Newman, I held onto them a while and then set them aside - and all that sticks with me now are indelible blots on my hands and clothes. I've thrown away the satisfying part, and all I've got are the bitter-smelling stains to show for it.

Jesus, I know you washed the blood of my angry, shameful nature from these hands. Could it be that your mercy extends even to the mundanities of my foolish, girlish vanity? Could it be that you came not only to wash away the blood, but to cleanse me of the walnut stains as well?

Forgive me this post. I'm afraid it's rather bittersweet...like the walnuts in Newman.

[This has been Life's Soundtrack - Ep. 04: Whatever You're Doing (Something Heavenly) by Sanctus Real]

N.B.: I wrote this waaay back in October - I know because I found it sandwiched amidst NaNo plannings - but it seemed fitting enough for the right now. I've been meaning to type it up for a while - particularly for FB. ^.^ And yes, it does come with two TAN songs. See, this moves the fixation along a little more quickly...

[Life's Soundtrack - Ep. 03: Let It Go and You Are by Tenth Avenue North]

There was no precipice.

I had not come, like so many so often describe it, to the edge of some cliff where dwelt the invitation to blindly jump into the abyss of the unknown. There was no opportunity for a leap of faith, only a mostly level ground which sloped a little upwards and allowed me to see a little ways ahead and a little ways behind. The road itself was fairly smooth--a few bumps or potholes here and there, but mostly just a flat, broad path.

I had never taken such a leap. There had been the occasional moment here and there when I had had a swift sensation of being swept up, up, into the clouds and then beyond, where I could see the wind that stirred my hair move the weather as well. I had been minded in those instances of the vastness of the sky, of the many other lives that had trod this way before, and the Way had in becoming so much bigger than myself become my own to me.

Those moments never lasted long enough. All too soon, I would return to being Anna again. Anna was so very small, each step covering little more than a foot, each day's scenery never changing. There was no cliff, no daring call to risk it all for the unknown. All there was was the known, the flat, the visible. Surrender in that seemed impossible.

But then I ceased my plodding stride and looked up to the grey clouds blowing about in a sky that was too big for me and too small for my God, and I knew.

I had to surrender.

Truthfully, I'd have taken the cliff. A couple thousand feet seemed a vastly preferable option to a fall of no more than a few feet. Nobody quite knows what will come at the bottom of the cliff, but it is the ultimate surrender, the surrendering to end all surrendering, and you know it will be amazing. There is no going back to ordinary after the cliff. But I knew exactly what would follow this fall. I should have to get back up and keep on plodding, keep on watching the muted grays and greens and browns passing in my periphery, and then sometime after that I should have to surrender again - and again - and again. What lay before me contained no trace of going out in a blaze of glory. It was a muddled blur of dull colour and surrender after surrender after surrender...

Yet it had to be done. I clenched my teeth, resisted a few more seconds, and then yielded to the plunge.

I dropped to my knees.

There was no instantaneous quieting. I knew there would not be. The questions still assaulted me from every side. But then, though I knew nothing else, though the tears and queries had no answer but an echoing silence of Unfathomable, I knew the rightness of the position. In bitterness I had thought of myself as a dog performing tricks for its master, kneeling when the authority said "kneel," and receiving a paltry treat for my paltry efforts. Yet somehow, in the doing I came to understand that I was loved. It was not because of the surrender that I was loved, but still - somehow - it seemed - through the surrender.

Here is an end to it, I thought to myself. Here it is. I must do what is right and required. I shall lay these questions at His feet and walk away not claiming them for myself anymore. They are not mine, for though they belong to me I do not belong to myself.

I opened my mouth, but something boiled up into my throat then, and the questions would not make it past my tongue. They were a tangle of too many threads, threads of loathing and doubt and despair and fear and sorrow, all snagged on the ragged edges of my treacherous heart. It was beyond my power even to state them, much less surrender them. I had nothing to lay at his feet. I came not as a petitioner, but as a beggar. I could not even give him questions. If I came for anything, I came to receive, for mine was hunger, and thirst, and smallness.

"You - you - " I managed to choke a few words out at last, wrestling to speak still more. "You are!" Those two words hung in the silver sky. I felt the overwhelming conviction of having said nothing and yet there being no more to say. The words said nothing and meant everything. The stranglehold on my voice released slightly, and I gulped in air. It smelled - I thought a bit foolishly - of truth.

"What can I - how can I - who can I be apart from you? Every need and fulfillment is from you!" The words rushed out at once and I let them spill out carelessly. My voice felt like sandpaper in my throat but I soldiered on. "Trying to love you is like hunger and sickness. Being loved by you is death - and yet it is food and health. Where - what meat have I found here to satisfy my soul-hunger? What fountain could quench this soul-thirst? Is there a physician I could find among men to cure this soul-sickness, or a lover to satisfy enough past the restlessness? Where am I to be, if not in you?"

I saw myself: grasping, always grasping after things to satisfy me, wondering why the questions never fade. Oh! Why had I never seen? Behind every long-term question there stood not a direct answer or explanation, which may fade in memory or dim in reason and surety, but an eternal promise. And I saw that, though my questions might last a lifetime, they would end with me. But YOU, Unfathomable, Eternal, Existing - You would go on and on, promises never altering or fading, even as it is not within You to alter or fade.

My face fell to my chest. The weight of it - the foolishness of my questions - bowed my head with irreverent guilt. For a moment, I wanted to run. But a breeze stirred somewhere - was it the air around me, or something deep inside - and I felt my face lifted as it were by the touch of Infinite Goodness.

I could not help myself. The tenderness of it was all that of a father's, a brother's, a husband's, and still more in strength and truth and love. I stretched my arms to heaven and murmured again the first two words, thinking perhaps I understood the everythingness of something that seemed to say nothing.

"You are," then, "Friend," then again, "Husband," and still once more: "Abba."

There was nothing momentous about this, in reflection - simply a girl holding her arms up like a fool and waiting for her father to pick her up. I knew it would not be the last time I found myself in that position, and the knowledge gave me great comfort instead of the anticipated weariness. At last I moved my arms back to my side and stood. For a moment, I remained still, surveying the quiet green of the surrounding fields and the rich brown of the earthen path.

Then I took a step, and a dingy campus street reared to life about me. As I continued on my small ant-path to the next class, I fancied I could still feel damp spots at the knees of my jeans, where they might have met with the wet ground of that field.

You are.

Few people like pain, and it's not just because all pain is extremely painful. The general aversion to pain is largely due to pain's universal ability to remind us of our finitude. We have very little control over our bodies and the sicknesses that enter and leave them. Oh, we're quite good at masking pain - if it's drugs you need for that, we have them a-plenty. But in the medical field, almost nobody talks about curing things anymore. They help the body along a bit and hope it takes care of the rest, and in the meantime here's a happy pill to keep you from thinking about the hole we made in your body while we were cutting the cancer out (we really hope it doesn't come back).

I had the oddest, bestest experience today.

I woke up before six, which I hadn't done in a while - not without studying as the primary goal - and went for a ramble outside with my Bible. There wasn't anything extraordinary about that time; it was lovely and cool and the sunrise was just beginning to stain the eastern sky, but beyond that it was just my usual devotional.

Shortly thereafter, I went off to my First Aid (re-)certification classes. Nothing particularly eventful there. On the way home, I wasn't feeling well and was pretty sure I was coming down with something. I was slightly irritated and more than a little frustrated - but somehow (I don't know; I was more inclined to mope than to think lofty, spiritual thoughts) my mind kept coming back to thoughts about conversations I've had recently with a couple people about Godly fellowship and relationships. "Love is like dying," one of my friends has told me. For Christ, love was dying. Dying to his own desire to be glorified on earth, dying to adopt the will of the Father - this was His love for the Father; His love for us.

His love for us? His love for me! And then, suddenly, it seemed clear as the sun above me: God loves me.

I don't know why it suddenly became so real. I didn't hear a voice saying "I love you," or see the words written in the clouds. Money didn't rain down from the clouds like manna to answer my every need, though I've no doubt that God could and would do that if it would answer His good purposes. I didn't suddenly see a way through to the end of my life. And yet I knew - I knew, not just His love for me, but His love for all His children - all the hurting hearts I've ever lifted up in my prayers and all the million more I've never known and never prayed for.

Once that realization struck, God sent me a love song. A cliche way to describe it, but I don't think these things are outside His timing - and at that moment, when I was clutching the steering wheel and trying to focus on the road and at the same time deal with this assault. Tenth Avenue North's Beloved started on the CD I was shuffling in the background. It's a love song from Christ to His Body - not just some nebulous, sappy sonnet from any guy to any girl, but specifically that. A love song from Christ to His Beloved.

You’re my beloved;Beloved, I’m yours. 
Death shall not part us, 
It’s you I died for.
For better or worse 
Forever we’ll be - 
Our Love it unites us 
It binds you to me. 
It’s a mystery...  

Something happened as I pulled into the driveway, triggered perhaps by the song and yet much deeper than a song, where the feeling is lost as soon as the chords die. How can I describe it? I do not know, except to say it shook me so swiftly and effectively that only seconds after I turned the car off, I had to put my head on the wheel and sob. I have never cried so hard over something I could not describe or explain with preceding events. And then--ten seconds later--it was gone. I wiped my eyes and went into the house.

Earlier this morning, I had read in Isaiah 41:

When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive. I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together, that they may see and know, may consider and understand together, that the hand of the LORD has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it.

Or, as the above song puts it: You will drink of my lips, and you’ll taste new life.