As I have been in NC last week and now in VA, my heart and mind and soul have been barraged with thoughts and emotion. Funny how the complete silence beckons internal noise.
While at my uncle’s breathtaking mountain-top cabin, I read a couple really intriguing books. Ones that dig into the dusty corners of your mind and beckon your soul out of hiding. Sometimes I wonder if books and authors of books are my dearest friends. They are honest without apology and yet have a way of speaking the truth right where I need it. Perhaps it is the beauty of being able to set the book down when necessary to jot some notes or absorb a new concept. Or maybe the intercession of the Holy Spirit whispering and applying as only He can. Nevertheless, these books spoke into the deepest places of my present needs and questions.
Namely, The Shack, by William Paul Young. He uses storytelling to introduce tangible ideas about the abstract and “otherness” that is God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Through creative narrative he hangs flesh and features onto the person on the other side of so intimate and important a relationship. The story centers around a central character, Mack, whose daughter was abducted and murdered, her bloodied dress found in an abandoned shack in the woods. This event in his life raised complex questions about God and faith and trust, so Mack became angry and isolated and alone. Until God invited him to come back to the shack.
The book uses this creative dialogue and relationship within this context to strip away Mack’s preconceived ideas about who God should be and how He would operate, both within the trinity and with His human creations. I thoroughly enjoyed the actualization of Jesus lying on the dock with Mack looking up at the stars, just talking about everyday stuff.
After finishing the Shack, I went on to read Blue Like Jazz and Searching For God Knows What, both by Donald Miller (my new best friend, indeed). It felt as though God had sovereignly ordained these books, and in this order, to unpack the many unanswered fears, questions and preconceived notions that I carry around. As I rocked on the porch swing, looking out at the endless mountain view, I pondered this great “otherness” that is God. That is Jesus infleshed. That is love. And I felt a silent wonder that God would lean down into my tiny pocket of the world and would care enough to open His hands and His heart up to me. To allow me to feel peace and presence again. That breath of holy exhale washing through my soul.
Yesterday, I drove down the mountain, wondering what was next. For often the solutions to life’s dilemma’s do not come in Q & A format or in some recipe of steps for happiness. Because, of course, the dilemma was never about my situation or circumstance specifically anyway, but rather about the sensed abandonment or lack of control that was felt. And so I ticked off the miles with a new sense of God’s presence and being and faithfulness, despite unresolved questions about the ins and outs that make up the life I live when my eyes are open.
I was thankful that God had led me to those books. To the mountaintop where I met Him in my own shack of sorts. Then I pulled into Lynchburg.
I wish I had the time and space to tell you all of the principles and ideologies that I learned and confirmed through those books. But you’ll just have to read them for yourself. I thought that, across the miles, I had really internalized some new and freeing truths about our identity before God and in Christ. But within three minutes of entering the Target parking lot (to pick up some last minute camp items), I ran into three different people from my VA past. And as I passed through the rush of cold air into the store, I realized how quickly I had failed such a simple opportunity to apply my newfound freedom. Freedom from approval. Freedom from comparisons. Freedom to just love on others. (or as Donald Miller puts it, “pressing our palms into the wounds and needs of others”) And how quickly I put on my ‘happy face’ and gave everything it’s hollywood, super-fine spin.
I left Target. (after kicking myself around for not applying lipstick at the car - a rookie mistake - and then kicked myself around for being so superficial and immature - and then remembered that, in Christ, I am supposed to have freedom from kicking myself around all the time!) I am staying with a friend who lived next door to me here in the ‘burg. We used to grill out on each other’s decks and let all our girls play together in the inflatable pool. I pulled onto our street and felt a slight punch in the gut as I realized how familiar everything felt. The turns in the road. The shapes and shifts of the landscape. That old pothole that I knew to avoid. I had to catch myself to pull into her driveway instead of mine. Or what used to be mine.
I sat in the car in silence. Watching the lights flicker inside my old house. Shadows making dinner. Music wafting across the freshly mown grass. And I sat. I hadn’t thought ahead to how this would feel. You know, everything would be different if we had a place in Nashville. If we had a house and a kitchen and grass and shadows of any tangible security. But we still don’t. Have you ever heard the pop-beads story? The little girl buys the beloved pop-beads and after a season of wearing them everywhere, her dad asks her to throw them in the fire. She cries. He waits. She cries. He is kind and loving. Finally, out of a desire to please her father, she watches as the plastic melts in the fireplace and then turns around to see her daddy pull a strand of real pearls from his pocket. “I wanted to see that you trusted me and would give up what you prized before I could bestow on you the real treasure.” Well, I am that little girl and my pop-beads are ashes long since swept out with the trash, and I don’t understand why He still withholds the pearls. I don’t have any idea what the pearls even represent anymore. I thought it meant a house to sleep in and a refridgerator with food. But if I still believe that God is good and loving and present, then I have to also accept that for right now, those things are not the pearls.
In this moment as I sit in a house with the exact same floorplan as mine had, with adjoining yards and creeks and shadows of life, I am challenged with new questions and new fears. And I wonder if the cabin on top of the mountain was not my shack. I didn’t have any emotions or struggle attached to it. It was a safe place for me to pray and digest scripture and listen. But it didn’t cost me very much. But everytime I see this stranger’s car pull into MY driveway and sit in MY rocking chairs and live in MY house, I get a little angry and a little isolated and a little abandoned. And in some small relatable way, I feel like Mack.
Perhaps this is my shack. My week alone (while the children are at camp) to dig in and believe God. To release (again) some things that I keep telling myself somehow define who I am or what value my life has. To break free and really apply the principles of uninhibited love. So that next time I run into a friend in Target, I can press my palms into their needs, and really mean it.