The road directions mapped out my course on my phone even without wifi, and I jammed out to music as I sped down the roads. I knew half of the route after all. No need to worry.
But first, a quick stop at a store to pick out a snack to take with me to the party. I walked through the sliding doors and bouquets of flowers bobbed at me. No, I didn’t need flowers. Two steps towards the food, and I changed my mind.
With five sunflowers clasped in my hand, I checked out.
Back in the car, I navigated the unknown roads, and I was pleased because so far things were going as planned. Even my educated guesses were correct.
Until one time.
Fifteen minutes later, I realized that I was not pulling into my host’s driveway. Fields of tall grass surrounded me and then forest.
A woman exercise-walked up a hill, and I slowed, rolling down my window and trying not to be a creeper.
“Excuse me? Do you know Burnfield Court?” I called out my window.
She stopped her walking and shook her head. “I don’t. Is that in this county?”
My stomach sunk. I was really lost. Where were the road signs? That had been the beginning of my problem. And why didn’t I just turn on my data so the GPS could guide me…Oh, I remembered, I was trying to save money on my phone bill.
“Okaaaay. What’s the name of this road then?”
“Licorice Drive.”
At least now I knew where I was, even if it meant that I was not where I was meant to be.
Does that ever happen with you? You’ve made a checklist, did everything on it, but things still didn’t come together like you thought they would? Or you’ve done all the right things but life didn’t live up to your plan?
Oh, honey, you aren’t the only one.
I think we all get there sooner or later, whether you followed The Plan or rebelled against whatever expectations others had for you. Eventually, we smash into the road rut, spinning out of control and smearing across the pavement, skidding to a stop to stare up at the sky.
What. just. happened?
It’s another type of lost, a scarier kind because it’s not the simple turn-your-car-around-we’ll-be-back-on-track-in-five-minutes.
Maybe it’s the mid-life crisis or the 20s wake up call. I’ve heard the talk about it, where one day so-and-so wakes up from her hit-the-snooze-half-asleepness to say, “How did I get here? I don’t want this life.”
As much as I don’t like to admit that I’m lost and need directions, stopping and asking for help will get me on the map again.
Unless you’re one of those types…who likes wandering around lost, trying to Eat-Pray-Love your way to finding yourself in an unknown field or forest. But why wonder lost…when you don’t have to? When there’s a map with directions?
I’ve been pondering something for a long while. I don’t really know how to write it, how to pack it nicely into a perfect article of truth. But I want you to think about it, too. Please don’t let me headache over this on my own!
When I forget who God is, I forget who I am.
I get lost.
Am I the only one who’s seen this? In myself? In others? Honestly, the only way I can see God is through my very human eyes and I often project my own flaws onto Him. But that’s not how it’s meant to be.
I am not God. Are you? No?
So who is He? Really.
When I ask myself this, I so often fall back on my Sunday school learning, laundry-listing God’s attributes. Borrrrring.
If you’re wondering who God is, I challenge you to look at your life and draw up moments where you saw God in action. What did you see in Him in these moments? I dare you to read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of the Bible and keep a list of what characteristics Jesus showed in his actions.
What have you forgotten about who God is?
It’s More About What God HASN’T Done
The milk frother screamed behind me as it heated liquid to foam, and the cash register drawer rolled open. Conversations wove between the soft pop music.
I sat at a vintage table across from a new friend, brainstorming a piece of her writing. Clutching my chai in its tall green mug, I stared at the creamy pattern in the top of the drink.
“So how’s that going anyway?”
Such a simple question. Why was it so hard to answer? And how did those baristas manipulate liquid to their will and pretty foam?
I mulled over my possible answers: ignore the question, shrug it off, make up a safe answer, deflect the question with a question?
The truth isn’t so glamorous.
How could I say that nothing is as I expected? How could I say that life has been full of disappointments and confusions? How could I admit to stumbling around a bit lot?
GAH.
I don’t remember how I answered my friend, but I remember what popped into my head as I struggled to come up with an acceptable answer.
“It’s less about what God’s done and more about what He HASN’T done.”
When those words sprang up, I wanted to shrink teeny tiny and cannonball through that pretty pattern in my chai foam…explode away the pretty to reveal the depth and darkness below.
How could I think that? How. Could. I?
But it’s the ugly beautiful…spectacular in its honesty.
I look at my life and see the gaping holes.
And with the high-pitched voice that you want to slap right out of a whiner, I say, “God, do you see that? Why haven’t you done something about it? If you loved me, you’d do what I want and give me what I want.”
Eeeeeshhhhh. Are you repulsed? I am. So repulsed that I’m sitting here cringing.
When did it become more about what God hasn’t done? When did I stop seeing what He HAS done for me?
Ugh. I am ashamed to write that out. But, I wonder, if I’ve seen this in me…maybe I’m not the only one. Maybe there are others?
Originally, these gaps were trusting points, but now they’ve morphed into points of contention.
Do you list the holes in your life? Filling them up with weight and piling them high as a wall between you and God?
We’re told to dream and explore the world. The world is our oyster. It’s been given to us to be fruitful and multiply. Ask and it will be given.
But I’ve been asking…and asking…and asking some more.
When you ask over and over with no acknowledgment, is anyone actually listening? Caring?
And then, there’s loss.
You’ve faced it in the light of the day and in the dark of night. Death. Broken Hearts. Miscarriages. Hopes dashed. Dreams shuddering their last breath in your lap.
So when life grinds your face into the gravel and treads your dreams, not even noticing what crunches under its step, what then? Is that when you began keeping your list of have-nots?
I have-not a grandmother anymore. I have-not a child. I have-not a dream…
So that’s the true question:
How do I live in hope without getting my hopes crushed?
It’s safer give up on hoping. It’s safer to be cynical. It’s safer to hide your heart and bury it deep where nothing can touch it. Because we’re all the have-nots, even the most privileged ones watch dreams die.
So how do I live hope?
***
A hammer, screws, and an assortment of other tools scanned into the cash register by two big hands. Tattoos snaked the wrists and hair sprouted from the artwork, but it was there first, I think. A green-inked letter stood on each knuckle, but I couldn’t read it. An H? A?
“What do your hands say?” I squeaked.
“Have-nots.” The man was gruff, but he wasn’t unkind. Maybe he was used to the question from children.
“Why?” I could be just as blunt.
“It’s to remind me where I come from.”
***
A list has two purposes: it can either guide your time for better productivity or it can be your accuser, stretching long and impossible.
To be challenged or to be choked.
Should any list have the power to frame my view of the world? Of me? Of God?
“Part of the reason that circumstances throw us into a frenzied state
is because we simply cannot fathom
how God will provide.
We feel trapped in misery with no exit.
Yet, so much of provision
is a matter of seeing.
If we could but see.”
//a beautiful disaster by marlena graves//
So, my friend, what are you choosing to see? Are you like me? Seeing only what I have-not rather than what I have?
“It’s less about what God’s done and more about what He HASN’T done.”
Is that how you want to live?
No…no, me neither.
To the God of the Have-Nots (and the Haves),
Give me the eyes to see what you HAVE given me. And will you forgive me for my whiny voice and my demands when I get caught up in what I have-not?
I don’t like me when I’m like that.
Remind me where I’ve come from, but help me not to stay there. Remind me of who you are and how you’ve already provided for me.
I praise you for every have and have-not. Thy will be done with my life.
My Grandmother’s Art Class
If any of you grew up with me, you’ll remember how difficult I was…stubborn, fierce, turbulent, rude, and pig-headed. Probably explains why I have so few friends from childhood (those of you who stuck around, thank you). Recently, I’ve been researching painting for a novel series that I’m working on, and while paging through one of the research materials, I remembered the story below from one of my art classes.
“Barbara, mix a little water into the paint.” My grandmother leaned over my makeshift easel. My siblings and I sat in plastic chairs lined up in our front yard receiving an art lesson. My littlest brother for the moment still over his piece of paper.
“I know what I’m doing.”
My grandmother stepped away from me and my painting of a sunrise. The colors brilliant and hard refused to fade into each other. An image so breath-taking in my head threw a tantrum between my mind’s eye and my paintbrush, all hard lines and too bright colors.
Each of the other students in my grandma’s art class (those younger siblings of mine) listened to our teacher’s advice so their work started to look like what they intended.
My grandmother came alongside my painting, and I blocked her view with my arm. I’d do this on my own.
But with every stroke, my sunrise sky darkened. Instead of glorious ombré, I had tree veins of separate colors.
My stubbornness clogged my ability to paint softness.
[Tweet “My stubbornness clogged my ability to paint softness.”]
“I can’t do this!” I jumped up from my chair, knocking it backwards, and fled to my bedroom with tears rushing to my eyes. Through the tear streams, the voices in my head mocked me, you are such a failure, why did you ever think you could paint anything beautiful, you’re such a mean person.
Maybe an hour later, I gathered my courage to step out of my room again. No one mentioned my outburst. But my rocky sunrise paper still set out accused me of my stubborn refusal to accept help.
I think it was my mother who approached me and encouraged me to ask my grandmother for help.
Swallowing my pride. Was it part elephant and porcupine, large and spiked?
“Grandma, would you please help me with this picture?” My tone barely hid my unwillingness to ask for help, but my sweet grandmother responded to my words rather than my tone.
“Of course, Sweetheart.” Once again, she leaned over my painting, scrutinizing its ragged edges and shocking colors. “What if we flip it upside down?”
She lifted my paper and flipped it.
How could my sunrise suddenly look like ocean-beaten rocks? How did she know that would happen? Would I be willing to enter into this alteration of my plans?
But, I couldn’t do it on my own anymore.
Together, we water-diluted the paint. Murky water streaked and puddled on my paper, and I bit my cheek. We scrunched a paper towel and pressed it along the rocky ridge of what had been my sunrise.
When it dried, a misty painting of an ocean beating against rocks hid what I had thought was an unfixable mistake. Behind every success, there is failure. A few months later, that painting won a blue ribbon at the county fair.
[Tweet “Behind every success, there is failure.”]
How often have I failed at something that only needed a different perspective to create beauty again? When have I needed to remember God’s vision for my life is better than my hap-hazarded allegiance to my own plan?
God of the rocky sunsets and misty boulders,
You are the best reminder of what I should be. You offer second chances, redeem stubborn mistakes, and show us new life where we see only failure.
Please forgive me for my pride and stubborn grip to hold onto what I think you should be doing for me. Remind me of who I am in you.
~ your forgetful child