Redemption

One of the very few comforts in life to me is that there are silver threads of redemption woven into the "burlap cloths" of living in a fallen world. A friend of ours often says that "God didn't do a half-assed job of cursing the world, it's a shitty place to live". And it's been so for a long, long time. Just read the Old Testament or the New Testament. Brokenness is the backdrop, but redeption weaves it's way throughout the story...in pretty big obvious ways and in lots of small ways that we don't get to read about. Like God probably providing Mary & Joseph with strength to get up once again when baby Jesus would cry during the night those first early months. Or when He'd most likely give them grace to love & serve each other when they really just felt like ripping each others heads off they were so tired and weirded out by all the adjustments of becoming parents.

Matthew and I were able to drop off Brighton at a friend's house this morning (Thank you Hasses!!) and go spend two hours at a coffee shop just talking and hashing out life. We asked for prayers for this time and Christ heard and was right there with us. We were able to really LISTEN to each other and share about what this transition has been like and really repent for how we've failed each other in the midst of it. It was beautifully raw and achingly rich. For the first time in awhile, we really felt alive together...not just surviving. We reminded each other of why we fell in love with one another, what our passions are in life, where we long to go as a couple, and how we just want to be in the lives of more broken people and share this Gentle Healer Christ with them. Through our time we felt honored to be partnering in this life together. We felt humbled by Christ in each other again. Ah, sweet redemption.

We both realized how resistant we are to accept the reality that this life is not perfection. That we will feel betrayed by our circumstances, rejected by our friends, hurt by our spouse. And that is living in a cursed world. But as much as we "head-know" that, we still manage find ourselves face down in the dirt with the rug just pulled out from under us by a variety of stinky circumstances we didn't ask for...and we're yet again, shocked. As our idols - of having an easy life, faithful friends, adoring spouse, choose you're thing - are ripped away we find our tongue searching for the missing tooth and only find a bloody, empty hole. What I tend to do when I find that emptiness is hole up and get pissed. What Christ is teaching me to do instead is not ignore the emptiness and try to put on a happy face, like I grew up thinking (that's being a really GOOD Christian, right?!), but instead take that emptiness and stumble to Him...knowing He's the only one who can fill it. So why do I keep wanting to find that dead tooth and shove it back in??

At our wedding, Matthew and I danced to these words:

A page is turned in this life, he's making her his wife
And there is no secret to the source of this much life
When the grace that falls like rain is washing them again
Just a chance to somehow rise above this land

Where the God of second chance
Will pick them up and he'll let them dance
Through a world that is not kind
And all this time, they're sharing with the one
That holds them up when they come undone
Beneath the storm, beneath the sun

Little did we know that the grace that would fall like rain would be showering us daily as we learn, through our failures, to return to each other, repent and find Christ leading our partnership again...not our lame attempts. And little did we know how much marriage, becoming parents, walking through a cursed world together would show us even more vividly how we tend to trudge, but are called to dance through a world that is not kind. I'd say even more explicitly, in a world that reeks of death, a world that groans as in the hellish panges of natural childbirth (Hmm, that comes home more than ever now). Not dance with some sort of chipper Christian facade, but dance because we're on our Daddy's feet, our Truest Lover, and every other lover has broken our heart. We can't hold onto his hands as we dance AND our other lovers/idols of having an easy, perfect life. I'm pretty sure I'll always be trying to cling on to both, but thankfully the Spirit is prying my sticky hands loose from the one and pressing me closer to the Other.

Thankfully He's not just a God of second chance, but a God who runs to scoop up his prodigals over and over and over. O the deep, deep love of Jesus. Vast, UNMEASURED, boundless, free.