Written because I did write that blessed blog entry, because I do habitually talk to myself (though not quite so much of the chess game in A Bug's Life), and because Audrey Assad is fabulous, and so is Jenny.  

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.

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.