looking through me

Tag: wonder

October 27, 2016

hope

I live in a dry land. Years deep in a drought, it’s drier than normal.

Last year the weather was predicted to turn in our favor. But the deluge didn’t come. Water restrictions remain. The landscape wears an earth-tone palette day after day.

Yet hot on the heels of record-setting heat—in the middle of fire season—the skies opened.

I took three walks in the rain. Because I could. Each time I marveled at the moisture falling from the sky, puddling on the ground, running down the streets, seeping into dead lawns and splashing on my bare arms.

As I scribbled mental notes of the sights and sounds and smells, one word kept interrupting me: hope.

Most days hope seems nebulous. An intangible something tantalizingly close but not quite here, not quite real.

But on occasion hope falls like manna.

I watched the rain. I felt it. I heard it. I experienced it. Drop after drop. Hour after hour. Renewing and refreshing a parched land . . . and soul.

Hope.

I can’t chase it down or make it appear. I can’t plan for its effects. I can’t keep it longer by clenching it in my fist.

But when it arrives I walk in it with open hands and a thirsting heart. Because I can.

 

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October 24, 2016

not strong enough

Life is heavy + I am weak = I need to be stronger.

I think that. Sometimes I even pray it: “Please make me stronger. I can’t carry all this heaviness.”

But, what if I’m not meant to carry it?

I’m a youngest child. And I’m small. (And competitive.) I’ve spent my whole life trying to keep up, trying to prove I could do what my brothers or friends or whoever could do, trying to prove I was big enough and strong enough.

But . . . I’m not.

And as the heaviness settles on my heart—from life’s challenges, my friends’ pain, my own loss—I realize the answer isn’t to try to match my strength to its weight. I can’t balance the scales. I will never be big enough or strong enough.

And, for once, my smallness, my weakness, is an asset . . . because the weight shifts from manageable to burdensome in a breath. I sense the “too much” and the “too heavy” quickly because it doesn’t take much weight to buckle my knees.

I cannot stand under this load. My slight frame speeds me to a place of surrender as I remember Jesus promised light burdens and an easy yoke. This soul-straining pressure is not that yoke. When my legs are shaking and my arms ache, I know I have traded His truth for another’s lies.

That’s the problem with my equation: when I pray to be made stronger, I’m praying for a one-to-one solution. I’m asking to break even, to hold my own. But my own strength will never be sufficient, no matter how strong I am.

And I feel my load lighten as I accept the weight of grace in its place.

 

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