I’m sitting on the bathroom floor. My boy is sitting in front of me. His brown eyes are like saucers with the fear, all round and huge.He whimpers some, cries a little, coughs a lot. Nobody told either one of us that six-year olds should still be getting croup-like-illnesses and yet he does. Coughs that just won’t end. So we sit and even though I am a nurse, I don’t know much else to do but breath deep of the steam, sip on cough syrup and warm apple juice. I hold him some, rock a little, fight with his now long legs that don’t fit where my baby should. I whisper “I love yous” and brush my lips on his sweaty brow.

Mostly I just sit near him.

And it reminds me of the Broken Hallelujah. How, I cry it out all the time. My dependence, my desire for Him to draw near, to join me on the bathroom floor, the sick-bed, the broken heart. And I could tell you of my broken all night long. How I’ve battled fear, waged war with food and my body, how I’m all messed up by duty and expectation and the pursuit of that which I most clearly am not. Yes. If  you’ve ever read here you know all about my broken…I don’t have much time for the perfect.

And I don’t have answers for you either. How the God who sits down on the floor with us can leave us there, wounded, weeping in pain. There are some hurting ones in my life right now for whom I am on the hunt for magic bullets, miracle waters, potions of all kinds. I don’t like the broken parts of life. I don’t know why a good God lets us suffer like we sometimes do. I really don’t get it.

But then.

I feel it when my son curls into and around me. How he calls for me the moment I leave the room. How he is searching only for the WITH him. This time of year, when the scandal in the stable strikes me each year harder. The BIG whys. The GOD WITH US. The one who broke down walls of time and space and heaven and earth for us to be able to say “HALLELUJAH, GOD IS WITH US”. In us. With us.

WITH US.

Hallelujah.

I know you are broken-hearted too. And the secret is kind of out….we all are. None of us escapes this place with the beating heart all in one piece. I hate to be the one to tell you, but this world, this side of glory, will tear you in half completely, maybe more than once.

Will you join us on the bathroom floor, gazing into eyes of love, pulling our limbs in tight, quieting our fear in His promises? I don’t think the story is quite done.

Linking with Prodigal Magazine & She Loves Magazine; synchroblogs on what it means to be broken and redeemed.

Image found here: http://www.spottedbylocals.com/blog/berlin-urban-art-guide/

I can almost hear them drag some days. Jacob Marley across these wood plank floors. It sounds like a slave dance. A dirge. It sounds like death is coming, or is already here.

Sometimes I feel like I am the weighted links that hold you down, hold you back. Other times I am your accomplice, your co-conspirator…we two breaking out of some sort of prison box others want to lock us in. Sometimes I feel locked to this house like the dog on the porch, sometimes…

Sometimes motherhood expectations weigh heavy around my wrists, bind my hands together keeping me from making the choices I would like too. The chaff is almost visible the way, some days, I want to break clear of them with a big rock, how some really hard days I find myself chewing at my own hand…like a bear in trap I think it is the only way to Free.

Sometimes I roll around in the chains myself. I willingly yoke them around my neck. I spend too much time on Pinterest. I read about what all the other people are doing and somehow feel like that is my call too. I loop those heavy links around and around. I chase career and dreams and hip and each coil weighs more than the last and my head hangs low.

But You? You tell me yoke is easy, burden light. You tell me that I am not a slave, but a daughter adopted, redeemed. You lift my head, my back straightens up, the chains all tumble. And in this moment, my breath comes easy. The sudden rush of air feels like wind in my hair, a love song in my ear, it is nothing like a funeral song.

Linking with Amber and Emily as we shake off these chains…

“Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes – The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” –Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Found here: http://piccsy.com/2012/02/make-your-life-a-story-worth-telling/

Last night as the sun set over James Lake and my little people sat and ate wild raspberries, the God of the Sky  lay his splendor across it, all red, blazing glory. I could almost see Him there, enthroned. Rocks crying out. Sky singing praise. I bowed my head too.

This has always been my story. Seeing God where others see only blackberry bushes. Feeling another world as close as my own heart beat, invisible, ever present.  The pulse of His heart keeping pace with the ocean waves, the rolling thunder. I will tell anyone who asks: I never wanted to be a Christian. In fact, I tried to ‘get over it’ several times in my life. At our house, when I was a girl, we never discussed it, we never churched it, and yet still I sat on my window sill and I prayed to the God in the sky. I prayed for strength and triumph over fears that loomed large in my miniature heart. I prayed for healing to my God that had no name and yet he heard me.

Sometimes faith is easy, delicious, tidy.

Mostly though. It isn’t.

There have been many seasons my faith has born for me now. The ones where prayer faltered, where trust waned and religiosity in all its zeal took over my heart where once love dwelled. I’ve watched it over and over…When Jesus love becomes purely academic, an object to discuss, love wanes and it is only a matter of time before faith burns itself out. The men who would lead strong with courage and then falter and trip over themselves, their own brains forming invisible trip lines. The women who preach fiercest about personal purity are oftentimes on the border of falling off a traumatic cliff of betrayal. The youth judging their brother for attending a party will likely be drunk in a ditch by Thursday. When our faith wanes our zeal runs a muck or we burn out completely.

Your story (as all good stories) is based in the conflict of good and evil, light and dark, without conflict there is no plot. Without your story thickening, the great story weaver cannot be glorified. No one has ever written a great novel about someone sitting on a couch. It is in the story that your faith grows feet. It is in the test that character is shown and if I may be so bold…it might also be where you fall in love with Jesus.

“Faith must be tested, because it can be turned into personal possession only through conflict. What is your faith up against just now? The test will either prove that your faith is right, or it will kill it….Believe steadfastly on Him and all you come up against will develop your faith. There is continual testing in the life of faith, and the last great test is death…Faith is unutterable trust in God, trust which never dreams that He will not stand by us”

-Oswald Chambers

Linking with Heather at Extraordinary Ordinary