Broken Stories and the Goodness of God

All I know is the broken.

That's all that makes sense to me.

It's not a pleasant thought, but there it is. And along with that thought come the words of the Mumford & Sons song Roll Away Your Stone.

Darkness is a harsh term don’t you think?
And yet it dominates the things I see.

I realize this when I get quiet enough and still enough to look inside my own soul.

I'm realizing it again as I work on writing stories, pushing at new characters to see how they respond, digging deep into backstories to find what makes them how they are. I like writing stories; it helps me understand the real world around me better.

But I don't like what I find as I search for deeper connections, for motives and stories. I knew good characters are broken at points, but they are broken all the way back, and the further I go, the more there is deeply wrong with them.

Because it's what makes sense.

I don't like finding these things about my characters. It's bad enough that they're messy, and that these things fit into the stories -- I wish they didn't -- but that this sort of stuff makes sense in my head. I asked it the other night. Where do these characters come from? Why are they so messed up?

Because you live in a very messed up world, said a friend, or something along those lines.

A world where darkness and brokenness run all the way back, all the way down, to almost the very beginning. And in some ways, past the beginning of my history, of human history, back to Satan's rebellion.

So it makes sense that my characters are haunted by this same radical flawed-ness.

And while brokenness and darkness is all that makes sense to me, all that I know in one sense, I also know that it is not enough and find myself longing for something else so much that tears threaten.

I may know brokenness, know a world dominated by darkness, but I need grace, and I long for a world that is dominated by unfading light.

Mumford & Sons (a very... perplexing... band) offers this line later on in Roll Away Your Stone.

It seems that all my bridges have been burned,
But you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works.

And I wonder: if that is how grace works, do I dare want it?

Do I have an option?

Not really, because hardwired into me, beyond knowing the broken, is the deeper knowledge that things are not the way they are supposed to be. That grace is needed.

I like Lifehouse's song Breathing.

I'm finding my way back to sanity again,
Though I don't really know what I'm going to do when I get there.
Take a breath and hold on tight,
Spin around one more time,
And gracefully fall back to the arms of Grace.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside Heaven's door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.
Where I want to be.

I'm looking past the shadows in my mind into the truth and I'm,
Trying to identify the voices in my head.
God which one's you?
Let me feel one more time what it feels like to feel alive,
And break these calluses off of me,
One more time.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside your door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.

I don't want a thing from you.
Bet you're tired of me waiting for the scraps to fall off your table to the ground.

'Cause I just want to be here now.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside Heaven's door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside Heaven's door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.
Where I want to be.
Where I want to be....

I'm a beggar at His table, sitting at His door, content just to hear Him breathing.

And instead, He makes a me a daughter and bride. Instead, He speaks to me and promises that all broken will be made new, that undying light will come in the end, and that all manner of thing shall be well.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

~ Julian of Norwich

And so I am all undone with awe and glory, broken in His hands and content with the taste of what is to come.

God is indeed good.

Weeds, sin, and hope

Pulling weeds tends to make me philosophical, because there is not a whole lot else going on. That means that I have an abundance of time to be philosophical this summer, as my full time job consists mostly of pulling weeds.

One thing that I tend to think about a lot with weeds is how they're like sin, how pulling them is like sanctification. So here are some thoughts for the week.

It leaves you far more sore and exhausted than you think you should be.

Especially for the first two or three days, I hurt all over. It was awful. I got back to the house where I was staying, went into the bedroom, and fell asleep on the floor for, oh, a good hour. And I felt absurd about it... I mean, all that I did all day was pull little plants out of the ground. It doesn't sound like it should be that hard.

I think I tend to do that with sin too. It can't be that hard to not be selfish. It can't be that exhausting to hold your tongue.

Yes it can.

The little weeds are often the worst.

The big ones are easy to spot and at least have something there for you to grab onto. The little ones are what really exasperate me, because they are everywhere and I can pull them up for hours on end and come away with only a few handfuls worth of green. I was afraid my boss would think that I was slacking, because it doesn't look like much in the barrel. And no one is going to walk past and think, Oh, how lovely, those nasty huge thistles are gone. Because... be realistic. No one even notices the tiny weeds. They certainly won't notice their absence.

I think the less visible, more ordinary -- more "acceptable" sins -- can easily be harder to uproot in our lives, too.

They come out easier after a storm.

After rain pounds the earth and lightning flashes overhead and thunder cracks, the dirt is soft and the weeds come out, with their roots still attached. So they won't grow back.

I don't like it, but I'm suspecting that sin comes out of our lives more completely and more readily after God has sent huge storms to get us ready.

A break is a wonderful thing.

Lunch break, especially... I come back from that and see weeds I was entirely missing before, and I am in a much better frame of mind to pull the weeds.

Maybe it helps with sin, too, to remember to look at something positive and not keep looking for nothing but the sin until our eyes glaze over.

The ones that look pretty can be the worst.

That one kind of speaks for itself as far as sin goes.

As far as weeds? Well, one word. Buttercups. My landlady and I discussed this... she had a good description of them -- snakey roots. They never all come out.

Weeds seem to like growing near similar looking plants.

Sure, laying mulch and planting other flowers may help to keep them at a minimum, but some will sneak in there. And they will probably be the sort that look nearly exactly like the flowers that are supposed to be growing there.

I'm pretty sure The Screwtape Letters speaks to this.

The stupid things keep coming back.

Enough said.

~~~~

But there is hope. The flowers grow, along with the pile of weeds. People walk past and smile. My supervisor is pleased. He's looking more at how diligently I am working and how well weeded the flower beds are rather than what I've gotten rid of. (I think Dallas Willard would approve of this perspective, because he'd say that Jesus approves. We're told what love is, not what it isn't. A good flowerbed isn't one that has generated a barrel full of impressive weeds. It's one that has flowers and is clean, one that has nice crisp edges.)

When it storms during work, we all congregate in the garage and watch the lightning and laugh together.

We drive down the road and sidewalks to get to work sites, wind in our hair, feet holding us in the cart.

And there is sunshine.

And slowly, with many setbacks, we are working against the curse that the land will bear thistles and weeds, working as God did at creation to divide things as they ought to be divided.

And it is good.

And the class of 2011 graduates...

They have been here as long as I have been here, and so I do not know what to say.

I can't yet imagine it without them.

I've had friends in other classes who graduated, but the class graduating tomorrow morning -- the class one year ahead of mine -- is the class full of people who mentored me. The ones who were just out of the awkwardness of everything being new when I came in and everything was new for me. I was a mess of eager confidence energy and a lot more cluelessness than I realized, and they were gracious enough to not let onto it for the most part.

So tomorrow I am going back and I will watch them graduate. And I am proud of them, because I know the work they have put in. I've spent three years watching these people, and learning from them how to do things, and I am delighted to get to see the beginning of the next piece of their lives, this stepping over the threshold. But also sad.

I will miss them.

I will miss the laughter and the familiarity, the having someone older to run across the hall to when something goes wrong, when I am lonely or tired or confused and want an older sibling. I will miss students who can tell me about the classes that they took before me, and who can tell me the stories of what happened before I came, and who remember what things were like when I first came.

Oddly enough, I cried myself silly over it... not this year, but last year, and closer to the beginning than the end of the year. Even at the time, I felt that it was ridiculous, since I was less than halfway through my time with them.

I think something always hurts about leaving, always hurts about knowing that there will be a time of leaving.

And we all fumble for words, not wanting to say goodbye, not wanting to say have a nice life, not wanting to admit that we won't see each other at dinner that night, or even next fall, may not see each other again ever in this life. Knowing that even if we do, so many things that we cannot foresee will be different, and that holds its own kind of sorrow.

I do not know enough ways to say to them Thank you, you do not even know what you did for me, but you changed everything.

How do you say thank you for advice about professors and meal plans and routes to take and places to avoid and the politics of romance and homework assignments and...

for making me eat and sleep and relax, for making me focus and giving me ideas and checking on me when I was sick and talking when I asked for company and listening when I needed to talk...

for tears and hugs and hitting each other with swords and teaching rules and for all the time spent swapping stories...

for all the stupid things we've said and done...

for all the things taught and learned, for all the beauty offered with no expectation of anything in return...

for the nights spent awake talking, because days are busy with classes and other commitments, for teaching me that it is okay to ask when there is something that I need...

for giving me friends who were often more like siblings than friends...

for being the hands and feet of Christ and graciously pulling me into service, for being a mirror showing me where I needed to grow and telling me over and over that it is alright to be broken, that all things will be made right, that all shall be most well?

And so my tears are all mixed up with laughter. Because there is a document on my computer that is 44 pages long, and a lot of the quotes on it are a tiny piece of situations that never would have happened without this graduating class.

So here is random wisdom from the class of 2011.

"The more you try to cheat God's sovereignty, the worse it's going to get." ~in a game involving dice.

Sometimes you should tell people to think about what they just said.

Other times, you should tell them to just move on.

It's not "banging your head against the wall".

It's leaning against the wall. Rapidly. Headfirst.

Missing papers can only be in a finite number of places.

Unfortunately, you generally only have a finite amount of time to search them.

Guess which finitude is smaller.

"Drink some more caffeine and go to bed!"

Even if you can take files in almost any format, non-existent probably will not work.

"2010 is now history... that point in the space-time continuum is no longer accessible to most beings."

"Chocolate is ALWAYS a better idea!" [when it is good dark chocolate]

Tangles in the Weaving

It's hard to wrap my head around, to know how to feel.

January 24th, Monday, and I was checking my email before going to Dag, and found the breath knocked out of me as I read words on my screen. No, this doesn't happen. Not to people I know. Not to students in the class I TAed. Not here. How do you lose a person? Where could he be? What was going on in his head? Was he okay? The questions seemed to stretch endless.

And the time between then and now seemed endless in some ways too. At first it cuts through everything. We lost someone. There is the oddness of waking up thinking about it, of walking down the sidewalk and wondering when you'll see him next, of seeing that no one is sitting at that particular table in the library. A lot of searches on google.

And then, eventually, there is nothing, and there continued to be nothing. The prayers continue, but so does the rest of life. Searches continue, and classes do too. Winter gradually gives way to spring, and the campus is filled with students whose wrists are marked with red rubber bracelets. We pack in anticipation of going home; I sort through old paperwork and find his name written at the top of a quiz.

Today was the last day of the semester. I finished my junior year; he should have been finishing his freshman year. I got back from my last final and checked my email as I finished packing. And a body was found in the river. This wasn't the first time that has happened, and so we waited for more answers.

Sometimes it is hard even to know what to hope for. An answer? Or more uncertainty and a feeble grasping for a solution that seems impossible? I am tangled in threads that seem to run every way, saying that God can do anything and also that life generally does not work in miraculous ways, that I want to be able to keep hoping and that we need some kind of closure.

So packing finished and I went home for these two nights before I go back to campus to start my summer job. One of my roommates was online and I shot her a message, asking how the project she was working on was going. We exchanged a few lines about that and then she said, I think they found his body.

Those were words I did not want to hear, although I agreed, and it was only a few minutes later that there was confirmation of what she said.

And I still don't know how to feel. All mixed up, especially as it comes with the end of a school year, which is always bittersweet anyway. There are a lot of questions that we won't get answers to, and my mind flips back and forth between songs. Elle G, which I had been afraid would be an answer near the beginning.

Silence all, nobody breathe

How in the world could you just leave?

You promised you would

Silence that evil with good...

Maybe this world is a barren place

For a soul prone to get lost

But heaven still hounds from the smallest sounds

To the cries of the storm-tossed...

Every old demon

Playing back a crime

If they'd needed blood, I'd've gladly given mine...

And Center Aisle.

It was my first time
Won't be my last time
And the questions rise
Expectations fall
In light of it all...

It's not fair
It's not fair...
What crimes have you committed
Demanding such a penance
That couldn't wait for five more minutes
And a cry for help
'Cause this room is so peaceful
And this room is so quiet
And I hate the silence
And I can't walk the center aisle

And a line from Rabbit-Proof Fence, at the very end, when Molly and Daisy are finally home, and Molly cries, "I lost one... I lost one."

That seems to sum it up.

And I leaf through Lament for a Son, because Wolterstorff's words seem to sum up the ache in my heart as well as I could write it myself.

We found lists of things he was planning to do: plans, intentions, proposed undertakings, breathing hope... Now it's all gone. All the rich future he held -- gone in those tumbling seconds. His death is things to do not done -- never to be done.

I had loved reading his plans as I graded his papers over the fall semester.

There's a hole in the world now. In the place where he was, there's now just nothing... There's nobody now who saw just what he saw, knows what he knew, remembers what he remembered, loves what he loved. A person, an irreplaceable person, is gone. Never again will anyone apprehend the world quite the way he did... Questions I have can never now get answers.

But back at the beginning, I wrote, and we sang, It is well with my soul.

And God knows that I hate this answer. But I still pray that it will be well with our souls, that there will be a filling of the hole.

I cannot imagine yet what it looks like, only trust that the God who became man, the King with the hands of a healer, will yet weave even these frayed pieces into a whole.