History

My intention is to wrap each post around a theme, a snapshot of a season - most often caught up in song. Life as a hymn is the url as a play on words - yes I am in a season of loving traditional Hymns but a hymn simply means praise. I want my life to be a praise to God and I am a person of many words - needing a place for reflection on this journey with Christ.

Have you ever read a history book you couldn't put down?

No?

I doubt it.

Have you ever read a book?

With few exceptions, a book is a story, a resource, factual and fantastical - books tend to be all encompassing. History is defined as the past as a whole. If you read a memoir - you read someone's personal history. If you read a factual perspective on the life of the sail boat - you read a history. If you delved into a fantastical world of wizards and magic - you read an imaginary history. When I say I am a history buff  - I mean I am in love with the story of life. Humanity, rocks, stars, sons, daughters, saints, sinners, billionaires, homemakers - each part of this Creation plays a part of history.

As a child I wished to know everything. Nay, I longed to know everything. I hated the inability to fully know another. If only I could attain the knowledge God has of the other - then I could truly know them intimately and fully. Had I been in the Garden and been offered a choice of that fruit - I don't know if I could have resisted. My father once made that comparison of my desire for knowledge to be similar to the Garden's forbidden fruit. Only God can know everything - and while I knew this to be true it made my heart sad. See the moment I know your history I have a chance at knowing you. Not the fabricated, socially acceptable version that I know now - but the waters that forged the path to where you stand now. As a relational soul this sounds liberating! Fully exhilarating knowing another, and how much better it would be to know every single other that ever has been or would ever be!

Then I went to New York City. I had spent time in LA, lived in Jerusalem, loved London but nothing prepared me for the streets of Manhattan and Long Island. Landing for a business trip, I felt the souls around me - the thousands and thousands, millions and millions of souls searching around me. I called my dad and cried. How could God handle it?! Seeing the brokenness around me, stole my breathe and hurt my heart. How could God hear every cry, answer every need, simply even know each one the way I am known? My desire for history sort of locked up then; and I believe I lost the key.

My husband as always been the prayerer in the family. When I would explain our roles, I'd describe Phil as the one who prays - he's the intercessor I would often say. It was true, being in a very social job (delivering mail on campus) he saw faces everyday and yet would have time alone to meditate in the walks and drives around campus. He prayed the entire time, keeping constant conversation with Jesus. While I never articulated it, I saw his commitment as enough for our family. I didn't need to pray for others, Phil has it covered. He was my crutch to not see people. I'd demand my right at restaurants, justify cutting people off in traffic, use my exhaustion as a means for my temper, ignore the beggar to my left as I felt uncomfortable, and I didn't see the need to know anymore. I was a cynic and skeptic - I wasn't even 23.

My job demands a balance between care and demand. I care about my employees but I have to demand their job performance or so it would seem. The tension of the Spirit and the numbers just never made sense. For the last three years Phillip has been telling me I could do more for God if I just listened to the Spirit in my job - putting God above man's expectations. God cares about me, and my employees He wouldn't put my job in danger unless a soul's salvation demanded it. Honestly I ignored him for the most part, saying you don't understand, yelling that he didn't have to deal with business and he was ignorant. Mostly I didn't hear because I didn't want to know. The individuals histories, the lives around me were to much for me to handle. The brokenness... I can't frame words now - it was too much to ask for, to allow the Spirit to work in my job. Because if God showed up, I may have to know again.

I built relationships with certain individuals - with whom I do believe there as an impact though I no longer have a relationship with them so I hope and pray it was good. But overall it's been a solo act, one on one. Honestly I have reflecting light - but its more like a CD reflecting the sun to blind your passenger as you attempt to shine it in their eyes. It certainly hasn't been like the moon whose sole light is from the Sun and its constant in its purpose.

I say all of that to say this - I'm beginning to see again, beginning to want to know again. Not just the rich and the powerful, not just the professor or the pastor - but the mom, the sister, the crippled, the poor, the lost, the immigrant, the son, the homeless... I want to know them all. And yet my heart breaks at seeing them. My knowledge is no longer dependent on my gaining of factual and sequential events or emotional ups and downs - the Spirit that dwells on every man, woman, and child lives in me and can open my eyes to what no human eyes could see. While I desperately want to know every part of their life, I have the Spirit who can direct my prayers to wounds I may never know. The Spirit of God who was, is and shall be, dwells in me and speaks to my heart the burdens to be lifted back up to the Father.

I want to know your history. Its hard seeing another's soul. Even caring the burden of my best friend and spouse is too much for this soul to bear. But with God all things are possible, and I do not carry this yoke alone - Jesus is beside me walking the entire way, the Spirit comforts me, guides me into all truth and I will see the face of my Father in time. I have only started to see again, desiring to know has just been re-birthed but I pray to never lose that - even if it kills every part of me, I never want to go to a life of spiritual isolation again. I am not a self sustaining oasis in my own transparency, I am a hand, a foot, a mouth, a part of the Body of Christ and I need you, and you need me. Let us carry our history together to the Cross, finding a new life in the midst of this mess - we can't do it alone.

Listener - Wooden Heart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K8k9rD7lx9c