After the pause...

In the last couple days I've had two people tell me that they've been missing my blog (which I liked a lot!!!)  I realize that there has been a long, awkward pause these past 4 weeks.  The reason is simple.  I often just don't have words to express the really huge heart stuff.  So I spent time in my journal instead, where my thoughts flow, unedited, like ink flows through pen...sometimes blotchy, sometimes thin, sometimes in orderly cursive, usually in jots and scratches.

Through most of December, I struggled to communicate the deep longing I have to connect with the central character in the true Christmas Story.  Yes....Jesus (not the scrooge or santa).  I want to know Him deeply.  I want to understand how deeply known I am by Him.  (And in saying so, I don't want to scare away those of you who do not relate, at all, to this longing.) This Christmas I wanted the age-old story of Jesus coming to earth - God becoming man- to impact me the way it should....the way a personal, shocking, messy, scandalous, humbling, unfathomable, love-filled story should.

Nicole Nordeman, in her song Tremble, describes my thoughts more eloquently than I could ever begin.  If you are looking for something to contemplate, I urge you to take a moment and soak in the words and melody of this song from Nichole's heart.  Below are some of the lyrics that are especially meaningful to me:

"Have I come too casually? 

Because it seems to me
There's something I've neglected
How does one approach a Deity
with informality
And still protect the Sacred?

'Cause you came and chose to wear the skin of all of us
And it's easy to forget You left a throne

And the line gets blurry all the time
Between daily and Divine
And it's hard to know the difference

Oh, let me not forget to tremble...
Face down on the ground do I dare
To take the liberty to stare at You?
...Oh, let me not forget to tremble

The cradle and the grave could not contain Your Divinity
Neither can I oversimplify this love..."

     -the song Tremble by Nichole Nordeman

And so this December I waited.  I listened.  I prayed as honestly as I could...in my often distracted way.  And as I wrote in my journal:

"I let my soul travel the distance to stillness

to settle into the waiting on bended knee

offering Him the gift of me."

Now, with January 2013, comes the living.  The doing.  The being.  Feet hit the cool, hard floor running and most of us spend our days trying to catch up.  Already?!  What am I trying to catch?  What is this "real living" that is so far out in front of me that I must catch it?

Hmmm....what about right now?  This moment?  This day in all its ordinary, gleaming possibility?  It seems to me that it's all about my vision, my way of seeing.  How will I view the events of my day?  What about the fire alarm waking our family at 6:00 AM and the real fire gaining momentum on my glass kitchen table...the fire that, anywhere else, would have had our home in flames by the time we reached it? (....more on this later!)  What about the news that more than one of my dear friend's marriages are ablaze with the heartache of uncovered deception?

December represented my waiting for God to come to humanity.  January is the reminder that HE CAME.    He came to save us.  Really.  And He does.  Do I have the eyes to see His saving hand everywhere I look?  I keep asking for God to heal my vision.  If only I could see and remember that He came to bring us life -real, true, abundant LIFE.  And He is faithful.   EVEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIRES, HE SAVES.


photos and text by melody armstrong © 2013.