When I was a child, growing up in rural New Hampshire, I always loved lilacs. There was one house in particular which had a yard covered in lilac bushes, and whenever we’d pass it, I’d say to myself, one day I’ll have a yard covered in lilac bushes.
After growing up, moving to Texas and traveling, I’d forgotten about this sweet, delicate, purple flower. Until the other day when I realized the large unknown bushes lining the fence in our backyard had blossomed.
I know it seems crazy to some people, but I still believe Jesus wants to take us on a beautiful adventure, full of wonder, awe, and even danger at times. And I can’t imagine living any other way.
When I was 22, I sat in a stuffy bus that reeked of cigarette smoke, on a dark road in western China. I cried tears of overwhelming joy because I felt God whisper in the stillness,
“I want to give you the world.”
I spent a few years feeling lost and forgetting who I was. I tried so hard to “figure out life,” I forgot the inheritance that is already mine.
I bought this book the other day. I probably would never have if I hadn’t found it on clearance at Hobby Lobby. I don’t really read much anymore, my attention span is shot and my mom-brain seems to barely comprehend anything. But I remembered how reading Shauna’s words in the past felt like an instant heart-connection, like my older, cooler self was writing to a younger me.
Last night I got hit with a stomach bug, so today I am recovering. It forced me to stop, be still, leave the dishes and laundry and get groceries delivered. I sit outside alone in the quiet while my kids rest, and breathe in the sweet lilac sent while reading some life-giving words.
You don’t have to be so busy.
Stop.
Remember who you are.
Remember what you have.
Rest, child.
And I remember it’s in the stillness in each day that I find myself at peace.
I am loved, so deeply
And I’ve been given the world.
Sometimes that looks like a grand adventure in another country, or finding a new home 1,000 miles away. Sometimes it’s my beautiful, frustrating, incredible children, and all the big and small moments with them. Sometimes it looks like the right thing on sale or reading the right words.
In 2009 I self-published a collection of poems I wrote while traveling through China and Central America the previous year. My hope was to raise money in order to move to Asia. Plans changed, as they do, but I was happy just for the accomplishment of getting my words out into the world. Years went by and I toyed with the idea of doing another book. Procrastination got the best of me, as always. After all, it is so much easier just to press “publish” on wordpress. Finally, after many life changes, moves, marriage, a baby and another on the way, I published “What the Water Does for My Words.”
It’s interesting to see how my style and voice have developed over the years. Also, how I really still have no idea what I am doing. I am not a poetry expert. Sometimes when I read other poems I think, “my stuff sounds nothing like this.” I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s just me. I’ve found over the years, it’s the one medium I can be completely free. Despite what experts may say, there are no rules. I like that I can feel the freedom to play with words and not worry about being relevant or cheesy. Either it speaks to you or it doesn’t.
I think poetry is one of the most overrated and underrated forms of writing. I say this because it has a bad reputation in modern society of being sappy or cheesy. Like greeting cards or Christian rap. But throughout history it was the language or lovers and warriors alike, an artistic form that surpassed logic and science and went straight for the heart.
I think that’s why I can find my home there.
I have a hard time categorizing poems, I guess that’s the whole organizational thing that doesn’t really come naturally for me. But I attempted in this book to group them into three overlying themes that came out as I read through them:
Earth.
Wind.
Water.
Many of these poems are about finding peace and contentment in nature. Others explore my frustrations with modern society and myself. Others are more about my struggles with Christianity and my journey from religion into grace.
If you’ve followed my writing at all over the years, I think you will like it. 🙂
I picked up this memoir by Kim Sunee, “Trail of Crumbs” partially because the cover was pretty, partially because it was on clearance for $5, but mostly because of the subtitle,
“Hunger, Love and the Search for Home.”
That subtitle could just as well describe the book I am currently working on, “The Wizard of God.”
Anyways, it’s a beautiful and intriguing life story. Kim was abandoned on a bench in South Korea when she was three, left with nothing but a fistful of crumbs to survive on. She sat there for three days until a policeman finally brought her to an orphanage where she was adopted by an American couple.
Fast forward many years. Kim meets a wealthy French businessman man who is charming and wonderful and gives her everything she has ever wanted. I was swept into the beauty of their life together, living in the countryside of France in a huge house surrounded by orchards and gardens. Kim cooks these fabulous dinner parties for traveling guests, exquisite combinations that made me long for new food and new places. Her lover bought her a building in Paris to open her own book store that specializes in poetry. There she meets fascinating artists and writers from all over the world. Her life seemed ideal. A fairy tale. She came from nothing, and was given everything.
And it wasn’t just money. He loved her too. Passionately, in a way that made all their friends jealous.
That would seem like the end of the perfect story, right?
No. she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stay. She left him and threw everything she had away.
Why? Two reasons stuck out in my mind.
After being abandoned as a child, and growing up in an American family that was emotionally distant, she traveled to try to “find herself,” find a place where she belonged.
She thought she could find herself in a man, in this group of friends who were built around her in France, but it wasn’t enough.
She needed the one she came from to give her an identity.
The other reason was, in her lack of knowing who she was, in her struggling with abandonment and rejection, when offered the wonderful gifts of not only a beautiful life, but the heart of a loving man, she felt like she didn’t deserve it.
It’s impossible to accept grace when we don’t know who we are.
She was left in this world with nothing but a handful of crumbs, and so that’s what she built her identity around. She tried to get professional help, but it never subsided the ache. The more her lover lavished expensive and beautiful gifts on her, the more empty she felt.
I am not trying to psychoanalyze this woman specifically. The reason I write about her story in particular because as I was reading it I was struck with the idea that is perhaps the human condition.
We were born into this world with nothing, naked and screaming. We are often left with nothing more than a handful of crumbs, a few grains of rice, pieces we try to put together to make a life for ourselves, to create a home and a family, to find a sense of belonging.
A little boy in a slum in Chennai India, getting his one meal of the day.
Some of us find grace, find God.
We see He is not angry, we see He has given us good things. But often the more He gives, the harder it is to accept. That sense of debt that was established sometime in the losing of our innocence surfaces.
“Who am I to deserve this?”
The question can really be edited, cut in half, leaving the first three words for us to contend with,
“Who am I?”
It’s easy to see the brokeness, the tragic mistakes we’ve made, the reasons we were left with nothing.
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
So, what then?
Is there some simple formula? Do we do like this awesome girl and repeat in the mirror every morning convincing ourselves that we are really wonderful people?
I love this video. Yet, there are not enough magic words to overcome a lifetime of feeling we are unworthy.
There can never be enough people telling you how brilliant or fabulous you are, when your inner voice that tells says you will never be enough.
It is only in the opening of our ears to hear the whispers of The One who created, the only one with the right to tell us who we are. It is only in believing that we are free
To quote Lewis again,
“And that is enough to raise your thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex forever will also drown her pride… Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
We may see ourselves as having only a handful of crumbs, but there is a veil that has been ripped and beyond that, there is a feast we can sit down and partake in anytime we like.
Once we see this feast, once we understand we are no longer slaves but sons and daughters, we can invite the whole world to come, sit, and dine.
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