This weekend has been a roar of emotion. And yet in this moment, there is just peace and quite. For in a season when it all is falling apart, the sounds of large concrete slabs of life crashing to the ground can be deafening. The demolition crew storms in with explosions of emotion that tear, drag, and push the soul to desperation. And in it all, so much reaching and crying for an answer. To wake in the morning and have the feeling that you would pay to have your life fast-forwarded even a few weeks; to know that you will already hate the day that is to come.

 But in this place tonight, my soul is light. A small closed-lipped smile perches above my chin, ever so softly sitting on my skin. It almost feels like a day in the early summer, where you feel that if you breathed out too hard you would blow the sun away, and be forced to endure a week more of winter. All you can do is hold your breath and let the the rays of sun float like warm snowflakes to bronze skin of gold. 

This is the feeling of my Jesus. To have all the world crashing around you. To have the roar go silent. The piano keys play through the air, and the warmth of joy floats like the scent of fresh baked apple pie. I sit in his arms. I know that he is with me, even in this. And those words float through my lips again and again almost as if I am searching for their meaning. “God is good, even in this. Even in This. Even in This. …God is good.” If the place where Jesus resides finds itself to be the middle of the war zone, missiles making their way through with ultimate danger, it would make no matter. Where Jesus is crashing in is right where I want to be. It is right where I want to sit. With a soft smile, and the feeling moving through me like a soft warm blanket straight from the dryer. That is what a hug from Jesus feels like you know. I set out when I was young, to physically feel the touch of my Jesus deep in the days of desperation. And here I sit, brokenhearted once again, with my world breaking like puzzle pieces. But the difference is that now I know what a warm blank hug of Jesus is. I know his voice. I know his hand. I sit with him, right in his lap. He touches my face like warm sun. I pay the falling pieces of debris no mind, for I know that they won’t matter. The world is slow. The touches are soft. The bleeding is still falling from my clothing, but I lay my head on his chest and just let it be. It does not hurt here. There is no pain in this place. The war can rage, but my Jesus will not leave. He will not let go. There is no crashing, thrashing or cries of pain. Just soft and light and peace. Lightly flitted eyes, and lightly curled lips. Golden light and cherry blossoms. 

For now I know. I know there is a difference. And though the war may rage around me. I know now, to pay it no mind.

Life is a Monet
Current mood: adventurous

This weekend was especially encouraging for me. And I suppose I should write it all down before I dont see it anymore. 

I have been struggling with the same battle for months. Here is the thing that keeps me flying in emotional circles: it seems that “it is always something.” And I keep coming back to the statement “Happiness is a Choice”. The idea that life is never going to come together in my perfect Hallmark Card. Instead that I have to learn to be thankful for all things in all seasons. Unfortunately this means even in the seasons in which you are waiting for change. Even if that season is much to much, and more than twice as long as you wished for.

Over the weekend I talked to my dear friend, and I suddenly had this grand, very simple realization. Life is a Monet. We’ve all heard guys and girls called Monet’s….people who “From far away look super hot, but up close, their faces are kinda a mess.”

My realization was that life is that way. When hearing adventurous stories of your friends getting lost in train stations half way around the world, not knowing how they were going to get home and being incredibly late for important meetings, life seems like some wild and romantic novel. Sitting on the other end of the phone line, I could help but jealously sob at why I wasnt getting lost at some train station, and instead I feel helplessly stuck in a life that isnt moving.

But the truth is, when you are sitting on the wrong train in a country that you have never been to, and realize that you dont know where you are, and that you ARE going to miss the meeting, where the romantic adventure feelings? You never have any! Anxious, nerves, spinning thoughts. These are the moments where you look at your life and realize “Its a MESS. I’m falling apart. Why can’t it ever be just easy? Why don’t things just come together for me EVER?”

But here is the thing: six months later when you are sharing the story over a dinner table of your closest friends, glasses of wine and appetizers, you dont remember that horrible mess part. You are far away, and dont see all of the tiny dots of paint that never made sense. You see the art and the beauty of the whole struggle. You see the masterpiece that has been created through such abstract movement and fortunes.

So as my friend Liz said “Jenni, life always looks exciting from half a world away. Believe me, you may feel like you are always struggling to choose happiness, but from down here you look like you are the main character of the greatest adventure novel ever written.”

And you know…she is right. And I need to remember that more.

But that is the battle. Getting it one weekend. Seeing the forest for the trees, and understanding why things are the way that they are. And it is just a glimpse. Because in a few days I most definitely will forget the view I just saw. And I will go back to seeing only the trees, and missing the forest. Seeing all of the chaotic strokes of paint and mis-matched colores. Never seeing the portrait that is really being painted.

I will come full circle again and again. I will forget and be reminded. I will choose to be happy today. I will hate my job, and my romantic life, and my car, and my computer, and my social plans. I will hate that I do have to choose to be happy. And some how, struggleing through the mess, and choosing to at least TRY to see the beauty is what makes these seasons not mere chaotic strokes of paint, but real art masterpieces.

This Mountian Is High, Too High For Us

Let me open with some Lyrics that I cannot seem to get out of my head today. And although they are mostly indicative of where I seem to be at this week, there is a sense in them that I am going to attempt to describe. I do not know that I can capture the feeling in words…but thus is the quest of each writter, right?

“Sorrow came to visit us today, was the longest day, was the loniest day. Sorrow came to steal our hope away, only tears can tell of this holy hour.

This Mountains high, too high for us, this mountains high, too high for us, too high.

Sorrow came quicker than a fire, was the longest day, was the lonliest day. I feel your hand, the warmth of sweetest smile; but you slipped away through the great divide.

This Mountians high, too high for us, this mountians for us. Your ways are high, too high for us, your ways are high, too high for us.”

Now let me get to where this puts me at. Don’t get stuck on the second verse. The words are beautiful, but so only under line the chorus. See, if you could hear the way the chorus is sung, it is sung not with dispair and deflation. They are sung with courage, hope, aniticipation, anxiety, and fear, but also conviction.

“This mountain’s high, too high for us”

These are the words that resonate in my soul. And coming from a place that I am axiously holding, not really knowing or how the next few weeks will expose. Not knowing if dreams will work themselves together and be ok, or if it is already a grand mess that is simply just waiting to fall to pieces . There might be new dreams to be formed, bigger notions to harness.

I suppose I am not sure with either. In this moment, the words that are to roll off my tounge are simply said with conviction and hope “This Mountains high, too high for us.” Somehow to catch the coat tails of something grandious, landing me at the summit, giving me an majestic view.

Its a lost feeling. Knowing what I want. Not knowing if what I want is even a wise notion. And if not that, then not knowing where to go.

But in all, I suppose I do know where I want to be in the end. Wanting to be richer, fuller, wiser, and stronger. At the summit breathless, speechless, and with tears streaming down cheeks. Knowing full well that the only way that the uphill battle was endured was due to a God whose “Ways are high, too high for us.”