Anne.

Anne Lamott...one of my all-time favorite authors, describes her style of writing and reflects a little bit of herself. If you have not read Traveling Mercies, read it...it is raw and exactly what we are all dying for in a way. And one thing I love the most is that she describes Jesus as a stray cat, who, if she lets him in, will never go away. True, isn't it?

"I'm not laying a heavy 'Come to Jesus' trip on my readers," she says, "but I'm hoping to sow a seed." She would like readers to conclude: "Lamott seems pretty awful, she's made some pretty big mistakes -- yet she believes God loves her in exactly the shape she's in."

And it's the same way for you...and me. I am lovable in this shape. Hard to imagine. But very, very true.

Teenagers.

Do you like teenagers? If you're like me, you can't live without em' and then after a bit of time with them, you feel like you want to move so far away and never share space with them again. It's like that all the time...in the truest sense of the word: a love/hate relationship. I work with teenagers in a private school in North Carolina. I wake up early and spend the day with kids who range from 14 to 18. I teach them, counsel them, and laugh with them.

To be quite honest with you--I absolutely love them.

They think they can change the world, they are inspired by authenticity, and they laugh at themselves, careful not to take life too seriously. We could take some lessons from them as far as I am concerned.

But don't get me wrong...I worry about them. They can't be still. They hate silence. They are owned by what other people think, they want more and settle for less all the time. So this is why I am called here--I am inspiring as much as I am inspired. And they love you back in a way that is not simple to describe....

So here's one story. My kids asked me if they could go around the room and each say something about every member in their class. They wanted to compliment each other, every student in the class. So we did it. And it took many days to get through it but it was worth it. They were able to cross lines of groups and social boundaries. It was right out of a movie, and I was left undone by the way they spoke to one another with such kindness.

We finished. And the next day they spoke up, "We want to all say something about you Miss Poulterer." I have to admit, though it was sweet, it was so uncomfortable. To sit in the front of the room and have each student speak to me things they saw in me, or loved about me, etc...I knew what would happen. I knew I would weep.

It started. And one student after another ...spoke words that changed me. I drifted back in my mind to times I have begged the Lord to show me that He is changing me, making me more like Him and most of all--redeeming me. By the end I was hardly able to speak. Their words drifted around the room and left me humbled, stilled, and speechless. I told them I didn't deserve those words. I told them that I didn't know what to do with them, or how to process them.

And then I knew who it was from. I began to see that the Lord Himself used these honest, loving kids to speak to me what He says about me and to share with me what HE sees in me...and there is nothing like that.

I will forever hold that moment in the forefront of my heart. I will never have an experience like that again, I am sure. It was supernatural and life-giving.

So when they get on my nerves, when they are too needy or too loud...when they do the wrong thing and are rude or ungrateful...I will think back to this time and be reminded that there is far more under the surface than what we can see when we see them in the halls. They are alive and they are worth investing in....

Is Alaska my only hope?

I feel such a lack of inspiration right now. It is the strangest thing for me to actually be on this site when I have not been previously compelled to go. I have no profound thought and nothing that has inspired me to write. I guess on one hand I am happy that I am not just responding to an intense drive...it makes it feel possible to write when I have nothing moving me. And I never think it possible to write when it's not groaning within me, ready to pour out on the page. Progress, I guess in some sort of way.

So I will try to sum up one consistent thought from recent days...I have felt distant from the Creator. I think it is because I have stopped looking for Him like I did in Alaska. He bled from every site...His creation poured forth on me and I was changed. I am afraid to lose that. I want to go back.

The question is so frustrating: How do I find Him here? In Charlotte? In the mundane? In the routine? He is here as much as He is in Alaska. But it is hard to believe that.

I can still feel the crisp air on the deck of the ship, and the low clouds falling all over the mountains; I can still see the ice floating around and the Eagles spreading their wings as they would glide by us. The whales are beyond my words and the atmosphere stays like a fantasy in my mind. I guess I can ask Him to come to me again in this way....here, in another place, but just as much His.

Hope

Hope is a hard thing...it feels at times like trying to balance a spinning plate on your finger. It doesn't feel secure, steady or long-lasting. Often for me I will pick up Hope and quickly set it back down again because it seems to me, on some level, rather dangerous. Scripture says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." It does. There is a confusion for me between anxiety and the temptation to hold on to hope.

I know it is godly. I know that God's track record says we can hope in Him. I know that His promises are true, that He knows best. I know He wants me to have a heart that is alive. I know that He wants me to BELIEVE Him. I know a lot of things. But this is a bit harder than I realized. In quiet moments I strain to hear a voice say to me...

"Hope for it."

Life from hopeless dry bones....

I haven't written on this blog is so long....but summer always seems to open up time and space...and life's circumstances in some way demand for an outlet of reflection and pending hope. So I am here again. Starting and restarting and longing all the while for more than this life has ever attempted to offer.

Here are some words that I have had running through my head...a song by Jill Phillips, really simple and yet like a balm to my heart that is in desperate need of healing, repair and hope.

"When you're so ashamed that you could die, God believes in you.
When you can't do right even though you try, God believes in you.
Yeah, blessed are the ones who grieve,
The ones who mourn,
and the one who bleed, in sorrow you hope,
but in joy you will reap...
God believes in you."

Does this feel fundamentally difficult for anyone else to believe besides me? I was wondering, on a really basic level, how God has been motivated to stick by me. But His Word teaches all over the place that He is motivated and that He even "delights to show mercy." These days have shown me to be a murderer, an adulterer, a liar, a thief, a prostitute, an addict...the "chief of sinners," as Paul put it. And I always wondered how it was truly possible to believe that about yourself. I know it intellectually and according to theological principle. I know it is true because I believe scripture is true. But I have never really looked at myself and considered that I would fit that category. But today, now, in June of 2008, I have hit a place where I see myself as the worst of sinners--and I do not exaggerate and I do not say it with pride to claim what Paul himself said...God has opened a door for me to see the black cavern of my soul and the potential for the worst of choices and the deep selfishness that runs through my veins...and I know I am in fact, the worst, the chief of all the sinners I know.

So...is it possible for Jesus to love me really? Is it true that He can cover what is at the root of my heart and what comes out with each breath? Can He really believe in someone like me?

I read in Ezekiel that God brought to life "Dry, Dead Bones." Lifeless. Hopeless. Disconnected. I have read this passage a number of times over the last few weeks. And interestingly, as I opened My Utmost for his Highest the verse was this very verse...the Lord is trying to tell me something about how He handles death. Here are a few lines from the reading:

"Can that sinner be turned into a saint? Can that twisted life be put right? ...'Behold O' people, I will open your graves.' When God wants to show you what human nature is apart from yourself, He has to show it in you first. If the Spirit of God has given you a vision of what you are apart from the grace of God (and He only does it when the Spirit is at work), you know there is no criminal who is half so bad in actuality as you know yourself to be in possibility"

Ezekiel says the people of Israel are saying that "all hope is gone." And God responds, as He always does, "I will open you graves of exile and cause you to rise again...when this happens you will know that I am the Lord your God." And even as the song by Jill Phillips echoes the words from Matthew 5..."Blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who grieve..." what does it mean to be blessed and to believe with confidence that there is more to come, even when it does not feel like it? This is faith...believing what you cannot see.

Sinners becoming saints...dry bones being brought to life...desert places flowing with new streams of water...rough places smooth....

I guess I fit into the first half of the equation...so I'll hold on to hope that one day I will see the conclusion.