A girl of four - leaning over her big sister's shoulder as she struggled with her primer - learned to read. The love of story, both to inhale and exhale, was strong from the beginning. The quiet one of six in a busy house could hide contented with book and infuriate older sisters who, because available, were called on for the bulk of the chores.
A girl of seven delighted in the challenge of crafting random elements - person, place, or thing - on paper scraps drawn from a fish bowl into story. Often the story she would try to tell was bigger and faster than her pencil, the resulting narrative making leaps that puzzled her readers (i.e. teacher, Mom, Dad) and later herself.
Girl in adolescence devoured every book she could find and discovered the joy of reading a story again and again, unpacking it - opening it like a gift to discover new layers, deeper meaning - a treasure hunt made possible by the process of growing up. The theme she liked best was love.
Girl in adolescence poured out heart on paper in verse, angst rolling from ballpoint in teen-typical bad verse, bad because its drama begged the reader to prefix it with "melo", and bad because it failed to illuminate the under layers of heart need even to herself.
Girl in adolescence chose suicide for the theme of her four part creative writing assignment. Her work, atypically, was given a B, because, as her teacher said, it was too self-serving. Um...
Girl in college discovers a vast world of words and reads, and writes, and acts, with intensity and joy. She connects the pleasure and possibility of words with the idea of Creator, begins to grasp the significance of world
spoken into being, of Word become flesh. In the beginning was the Word.
She has ambitions - for herself and for her soul. She fails to see the conflict between them. Fails to see the fissures of heart that early scribbles sought to reveal, fissures that yawn open when disappointment shakes her earth leaving her aware of her brokenness.
Broken and aware, she begins to try to get back to Eden. Eden before the fall.
And she rails against the Creator of the tree with its fruit, of her with her brokenness. The emptiness that poured from her ballpoint now stiffens her neck and hollows her heart.
And she longs for HIM all the while.
And still the theme she likes best is love.
Love finds girl. Eden seems regained, at least for a while. But the exchange of vows, the sharing of a life, doesn't take away the emptiness. And the sharing is hard when both are broken. He can't love enough to fill up the empty spaces, and sometimes he can't even love. And his love is no substitute for
HIS love.
Girl wonders where beauty has gone. She used to ache at the smell of fallen leaves after the rain, breathe deep the sky at dusk, wonder at the world and feel it in her marrow. Now it can't seem to penetrate. She feels entombed and wonders if it will always be this way.
A butterfly flits on a bush in afternoon gold, and she tells him, "That's what joy is." But she doesn't feel it and wonders if it is gone forever.
Life finds girl. Emptiness fills up with work and play, ambitions of another sort take shape. Every task, every relationship, every interaction is charged with intention - to get it right, to make it perfect. To make herself right, to make herself perfect. To regain Eden. She comes to HIM with her labors, her offerings, but knows it's not enough. She cringes away to keep trying.
Story still yearns. She sets up a writing studio. And sits down with her emptiness. A poem... good. A story begun. But not finished, because she knows she really has nothing to say. Nothing to offer others who are also empty and broken.
Another life finds girl. A life begun inside her, soon to be born into her brokenness. In the moments it takes to develop the pregnancy test, she knows - she can't get this right, she can't make this perfect. This time she comes with empty hands, crouching in fear and desperation before HIS gentle promises.
"Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and grace to help in time of need." (Heb. 4:16)
HE takes two children in hand, the new mother and her little girl. The mother desperately clinging, not realizing that HIS hand has been grasping her all the while. And she begins to read HIM again and discovers anew the joy of reading Story again and again, unpacking it - opening it like a gift to discover new layers, deeper meaning. She is on a treasure hunt made possible by the process of growing up.
And she begins to see that the theme has always been Love.
The little girl is loved deeply, and not perfectly, and the girl-now-mother agonizes over the weight of her responsibility. She strives to keep the little one in Eden but sees that the fallenness she fears for her daughter is as close as the union which gave her life. And her journey toward HIM is also a journey away from him.
Into a divided house two more daughters are born; as each arrives, the girl-now-mother is less fearful, more joyful.
She begins to write again; the story begun before grows but isn't finished. She thinks she knows how it should end, but it keeps taking on new shapes, and then life gets in the way.
She sees HIS goodness in difficulty teaching her more of Himself.
She sees his anger, his coldness, his distance... and hurts. Soon not feeling becomes easier than hurt.
Grace begins to be understood by her heart.
She makes a choice to love against feeling, and a fourth daughter is born. Her name is Grace.
She prays and waits.
Darkness and his anger grow with her prayers.
The little girl whose beginnings brought the girl-now-mother back to HIM is caught in the crossfire of heaven and hell, and the joy fades, and so does the strength, and, at length, HE leads her with her little ones out for a season.
In that season, he who sat in darkness sees a great Light.
And she who had Light seems to be in the dark.
And it is all part of HIS goodness, HIS redemptive plan, the story HE is writing of us, a story of Grace.
After that season, a divided house is reunited, made one for the first time.
And HE who brought her and the little ones back lays her low in the dust before HIM. The emptiness she had felt before is magnified. The neediness overwhelms. The pain of self discovery is greater than anything she had ever known.
HE is peeling back layers to make room for the treasure.
As she thinks about being in the dust, she realizes that somewhere along the way she had forgotten that she had died with Christ. And she lies down and asks that the only life in her be HIS.
And with the dying, comes freedom.
Freedom from fear,
freedom from seeking the approval of others,
freedom from striving before HIM for anything,
freedom to have nothing, know nothing, and be nothing apart from HIM.
And she knows it is Grace, and it is also grief. And with the grieving, she begins, haltingly, to thank HIM for it.
And with the thanks, comes joy. And courage. And hope. And peace.
A heart open - to joy, to pain. Hands open.
This one who was once in the dark, just as she had been, is now in the light but is at the beginning, just as she was, and stumbles, just as she did, and fails to love, just as she did. She learns not to look to him for the needs of her heart, but to still, and always, look to HIM. And when HIS love fills her, and flows through her, she can give freely. And when she receives, it is another gift of Grace. To be held with thanksgiving and with open hand.
She has these gifts, these desires, to share. Story still yearns.
And she sees these four little girls, stories in the making, little women becoming. And this man at the beginning of realizing Grace. And her greatest work in being a part of their unfolding story... contributing editor? Proofreader?
And she asks HIM to not let herself get in the way. She wants to be an instrument. HE is the Author.
The emptiness she once feared is now a blessing, for through it can flow all that HE is and all that HE gives. Not clinging desperately but grasping confidently HIS precious promise, "Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" (John 7:38)
