Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Words.  I love them.  I have always loved them.  And I don't mean the kind of words that fall out of your mouth often at far too rapid a pace to be thoughtful.  I mean, words.  Written on a page.  Life-giving.  Full of momentum and potential.  I would far rather write than talk.  I like the option to read and reread my words. A chance to be more tender, more honest than I would be in person.  A chance to delete.  To rethink the harshness or boldness of what I said.  I am, after all, a woman gifted with prophecy.  Not look into the future prophecy...but the gift to discern and to see black and white among shades of gray.  The gift is a beautiful gift but it can be a flame which burns and injures if not carefully, spiritually used.  It is why I sit here so often and write what spills from my heart only to hit delete all.  


I feel deeply.  Black and white is so, well, black and white.  And we live in a world turning grayer by the day.  We all possess a paint brush and for some reason we'd rather paint in shades of gray than boldly paint what the Artist puts in our hearts to paint.  I am only coming to realize this for myself.  It seems impossible for me to paint in gray.  I just can't do it.  So I go silent.  I lay the brush aside.  I say nothing.  I paint nothing.  That flame I mentioned, the one that burns and injures, frightens and delights me.  I have a bold heart but, I have a soft heart.  I don't want to injure another heart.  I recognize the struggle that every person is in on this earth.  I know how hard it is.  I have hurts and cracks that run deep.  And when someone assumes the worst of me, I run my fingers over those cracks and I often choose silence.  I have even been entertaining the thought that God wants me to be silent.  But lately, I am confronted.  It is my fear, not my God that keeps me silent most of the time.  And while I do not want to offend someone else and I most assuredly do not want to make anyone's cracks run deeper, I do want God to use me...my words.  


I keep looking at the lives of people who touch me deeply.  People who make me run my fingers over the cracks in my life and contemplate whether I love the cracks too much or if I trust a Potter who mends broken vessels. I read on A Holy Experience this morning~


"You never break apart-you break open..."  


Words!  Life-giving.  Full of momentum and potential.  And she speaks of joy.  Joy.  An elusive benefit it seems.  But she says~


"...you can't get to joy by making everything perfect.  You can only get there by seeing in  every imperfection all that's joy. The joy is in having the Beloved, not in loving what we have."


And I have been creating my eucharisteo.  My list of gratitude and joy amid imperfections.  And I am waiting for God to bring the miracle.  To change the hard rock in my chest to a heart that is pliable and His.  I am so hard.  So very hard.  Life does that.  It takes a little girl full of promise and tosses her headlong into painful circumstances and it makes her hard.  But I am praying it is a hardness like that of a rock or a fruit that when chiseled with precise intent gives way to currents of water or nourishment.  "You don't break apart, you break open..."  Truth is, breaking open scares me more than breaking apart.  I think.  After all, what is open is laid bare.  Gentle Savior...I am reminded.


May you be reminded today too.  ~M.

2 comments:

Natasha said...

I love your words too.... thank you for not being silent.

Dena said...

The last two posts have been good. Real good.