I tend to write what I’m learning. What I am being convicted of, or truths God is putting before me over and over until my slow processor at long last recognizes the patterns and repetitions as the pictures they were meant to be, or in the very least that they are pictures. Sometimes beautiful pictures, sometimes ugly ones — ugly in that they capture weakness or brokenness or messiness. Though stirring I suppose, in the way that they are snapshots of something real and unfiltered and I am grateful for the glimpse of something as it is, rather than how I’d like it to be.
I then attempt to study and organize and string together these various snapshots into clear and meaningful strands that convey something truthful and useful and practical. It helps me attach meaning to those raw segments of life and emotion. It motivates me to seek God for answers and look for his providential thread being woven in my life. It excites me to share those fragments all sensically strung together in the hopes that others might appreciate the masterpieces God is slowly weaving in my life and more easily identify the ones being woven in their own.
It’s a craft I enjoy and see the utility of, but the more I do it, the more I’m starting to realize the limitations of it. I’ll have seasons and bursts of productivity when I feel as if I can barely write quickly enough to capture and properly organize all the pictures God is putting before me, like one of those old-fashioned slide projectors being advanced way too fast to really savor and experience the fleeting images. And then nothing. Though nothing isn’t quite the right word, because so often I’m thinking and feeling more than ever, but I feel as if I’m staring at a messy pile of snapshots, that aren’t particularly lovely or related and I just can’t quite figure out how to string them together into something logical or useful. Not as a lack of transparency, or a desire to only show the pretty things, because I’ve never been one to shy away from sharing my hard things or my struggles — more so a desire to share them in the most useful way possible. Isn’t it what we do with those ugly things that makes them beautiful?
And that’s often my problem, for as deeply as I think and feel about so many things, I’m hopelessly practical — even utilitarian at times. As if I’m stuck at the extreme ends of all the personality profiles and can’t figure out how to consistently migrate to the middle of any of them, which is where you feel like everything is supposed to mesh and all the magic happens.
Like when you realize you haven’t posted on Instagram in ages, and you flip through your photos and all you seem to have are utilitarian screenshots and grocery lists and things you’re selling on craigslist, or else those blurry shutter clicks of weeping babies or shattered coffee mugs sitting in puddles of never-sipped coffee, merely meant to quickly communicate life as it’s happening to your husband at work. In ways that effortlessly convey the depths of your emotions at that very second without necessitating words you don’t feel like (or probably shouldn’t be) forming. And you realized you haven’t documented anything in weeks that isn’t either sterile or blubbering — no feelings or all of them.
But I’m starting to realize that maybe I’m missing out on the value of trying to see God in those individual and unrelated snapshots. Maybe those micro-moments in life are meant to be lessons in and of themselves, and while I don’t know for sure, I do know that the uncertainty and unknowingness of it all is doing things to me that I think I need, even though I can’t quite articulate exactly what they are yet.
Perhaps I should start writing more often without having outlined exactly where it’s going to go and how it’s going to end. Maybe I need to practice and learn how to look and listen for God and his truths in all the little moments when I haven’t yet figured out the point or the lesson, or if there even is one.
That one paragraph I’ve re-read five times, in the book I’ve been trying to read for weeks but keep getting interrupted.
Those intense discussions about politics that bring out so many thoughts and so few answers.
The moments when I hate these culturally tumultuous times for revealing so much ugliness in the body of Christ, and yet I catch glimpses of realness and truth and feel like something better is just maybe beginning to emerge, albeit slowly.
That great dinner date I finally get to have with my husband where we at last share some food and drinks and excitement that God must be doing big things, but we can’t figure out for the life of us what they are.
Those conversations that are equal parts hard and frustrating and deep and true. And I can’t tell if we’ve moved forward or backward.
That acknowledgment that I’m struggling in so many areas of parenting, and I’m ready to make big changes, but can’t quite make them stick.
That realization that we’ve been “moving” for six months now and still have no forwarding address and still can’t figure out what God has for us in a town I don’t really want to be in, but I know it’s just gotta be something.
Those moments when I profoundly miss the community and ministry and relationships I had to leave, yet I know I’m being purposefully altered by the deep lessons God is carving out in my soul in all the quietness.
Those days when I have to fall to my knees over and over again because my ugly sin keeps re-surfacing and my knees are sore and I’m tired, but I feel profoundly impacted by all that time I’ve spent before a holy God.
Those few words of scripture that will pierce my soul unexpectedly, though I couldn’t even tell you why.
Those hours that string into days and months, and I live them feeling as if nothing is happening and nothing is changing and yet I feel like a completely different person than who I was half a year ago. Maybe in good ways, but I don’t feel quite ready for that adjective yet — more so, deep ways.
And if our God is the Lord of our lives, he’s also the Lord of our minutes and our seconds.
He already sees every single snapshot of my life from beginning to end. From the time he called me into this world to the time he’ll carry me out. And even the times I am unable to picture how they’ll all fall out into lovely arranged collages, or identify the chapters or even guess tomorrow’s pages, I know they are not haphazardly placed. Each one has a story and an aim and significance, even if only for the fingers that placed them there and the one who was with me as it was taken. There is value right then and right there in the things not fully understood, regardless of what is made of them later.
And I find comfort in words written long ago, reminding me of our wise and loving God who is directing all these mixed up snapshots of my life, as he soothes my heart into patience, lifts it in hope, and floods it with courage for the times ahead, whatever they may be.
“The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain; but its groans shall not disturb the music of their life, nor its travail cloud the brightness of their little day. In contrast to this Pagan temper the Christian method is to look elements in the face, and see in them the promise of blessing. Christianity does not simply declare the inevitableness of sorrow, or merely lay down rules for lessening its bitterness. It discovers a wise and loving God directing all the mixed processes of life to a beneficient issue. And thus it soothes the heart into patience, lifts it into hope, and floods it with courage.” ~T. Hammond
