Nashville Flood is worse than it looks

A. W. Tozer has helped me see that Nashville was already a “national disaster” before the floods hit us last weekend. There was already an emergency situation, and one worse than the flood! I think I have sensed this fact my whole life—growing up next door to a drug dealer can tend to put it in perspective—but I finally want to do something about it. More than just praying…which I don’t really do anyway.

Just like when I went to the Gulf after Hurricane Katrina to help rip out flooded interiors and distribute food: beneath the labor, which put my sympathy and subsequent agitation to redeeming use, I was interceding for souls and seeing the hardness in their eyes soften as we helped with no strings attached.

Except now, it’s my own town. I am living daily and working, even going to coffee with friends, just as if nothing has changed. But I think that deep down, I knew that spiritually, it was already worse than this. And remains thus.


I have felt broken over the city since I saw the real state of affairs in the newspaper. Last night I drove home by way of James Robertson Parkway, which passes at the head of Rosa Parks Blvd. I looked down the road where normally I could turn left to visit the Farmer’s Market, and saw only water. Water for miles. Lights blinked on and off to alert passersby of its existence. A strange, sewer-like reek rose from the street’s pond like a heavy mist, choking out all life around it. That’s the closest I’ve gotten to a real flood in my whole life…

This means that 1st and 2nd Ave., the Farmer’s Market, Opry Mills Mall, The Opryland Hotel, The Grand Ole Opry, my Shelby biking trails, entire neighborhoods…are destroyed. Millions of dollars worth of merchandise has been obliterated. The movie theaters are ruined. The fish at the aquarium restraint are killed (except for the two missing piranhas…). I wonder if the General Jackson floated glibly away?

At least there has been little death. As of yesterday morning, the death toll was at 17 and the missing toll at 1. I saw a picture of two teenagers in a roaring, brown rapid; when I read the caption, I realized they were clinging for dear life to the top of their Jeep! The waters swelled around them as waves breaking on a rock. That means the waters, at Station Camp in Gallatin, in the middle of the road, were at least 10 feet deep. The two were smart and released a backpack to determine the flow of the current, and rather than drown, followed their backpack to safety on the shore. If flood waters rushing down residential streets have shores. The girl in the interview kept asking, “Why did we survive when others didn’t?”


Tozer says, “Men are caught in a disaster worse than earthquake or flood, and the redeemed of the Lord are to work for their rescue.” (That Incredible Christian, p. 106) Exactly! As I go, perhaps to help drag away debris on Saturday, I can know that what I am doing physically is what I do spiritually every day—or at least, could be doing and wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if-I-was doing.

I actually burn to help in some physical manner, yet am afraid lest I get in over my head or something. Mingling of burning passion and fear here. Sigh. I need someone to go out there with me! I don’t want to go alone. I will…but I don’t want to. I can't just live my normal life and sit by doing nothing! I just can't! It's not right. I need to be doing something. Lord, guide me to where You would have me be on Saturday! Open my eyes to see where is best. And bring me someone to push me, please, I need that. Amen.

What Faith looks like without the Law

The Centurion and the mother pleading for her daughter were the only two people Jesus said had the greatest faith he had seen in all Israel.
What did they have in common?

They were both Gentiles—meaning they had not grown up under the law.

Paul’s mission to the Gentiles makes a whole lot more sense.
It makes missions make a whole lot of sense too. When we encounter people who have never heard of the law out there, they jump far more quickly into faith than those who grew up in America in church, yet don’t know Jesus as Savior—because they grew up under the law.

Jesus came to fulfill the law for us so that we don’t have to, and we, being Christians, have put the law back in its place! We rebuilt the temple—but not the temple Jesus meant for us to have (Him); we rebuilt the stone temple with the holy of holies and the curtain separating us from God, demanding acts of righteousness to atone for our sin. We reinstituted the law, when Jesus came to remove it from us for all eternity.

We have thrown His blood back in His face.

I was thinking about it yesterday, how Mary Magdalene (or whoever the woman was Jesus saved from being stoned as an adulterer) was able to go and sin no more after Jesus forgave her. I mean, she was at the Cross when He died and at His tomb 3 days later. She knew the meaning of grace. She did not walk in condemnation. I think that’s why that, aside from the obvious impactfulness of the beatings and cross and blood and holes-in-His-hands-resurrection, the scene where Mary looks up at Jesus after He rescues her is my favorite scene in “The Passion.” If Mary could walk around Jerusalem following Jesus and feeling accepted by Him and free from her sin even before the cross, can I, one born after the Cross, not walk in her same freedom to an ever greater degree?

I can just imagine her after Jesus went back to Heaven working with the suddenly bold and fiery disciple-apostles. She was surely part of the glory days of the early church, you know? She was probably just as on fire as the other guys. I wonder if one of them married her? Or if she just hung out with Mary mother of Jesus the rest of her life? Man, I want to be like her…so confident in her righteousness and full of love that she can be a part of the intensely loving community of Believers at the very start of it all, probably even discipling women like herself, telling them the Good News and freeing them from prostitution. All because she knew she was forgiven, and that because she believed, she would never have to walk in shame or go back to her old life.

I want to be like that…I want to be as one who never knew the law, allowing my faith to rise and be known as one of the greatest faiths in all Israel.

Eden.

Night before last, I stumbled upon a clue, a piece, that I have been blindly yearning for, for possibly my whole life.

I wept.

My heart touched God's heart--Papa God--because I understood Him. I understood us. I understood our relationship. When you combine a thinking writer's revelation of humanity's position with the intimate relationship with God my church has been teaching us to foster, you have dynamite ready to blast the canvas of lies that humans believe into oblivion!

It's something I was waiting to discover by soaking; by listening to teachings; by Call hopping; by attending YWAM; by traveling. And it's something I know God has always been communicating to me; what the whole Bible is showing and telling us--

I see Him in my mind walking down the paths, calling to the couple, meeting their eyes for the first time, and Adam and Eve shaking in absolute terror, wondering what had happened, confused at the broken promise of a snake, feeling at once the trustworthiness of their first love and wondering if God would ever love them again, feeling the hot breath of His anger and emotion, hearing Him speak for the first time, not as a friend, but as One who had been betrayed. "Who told you you were naked?" (Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What)

Here I wept, and wept and wept, because I heard Him, too. I heard Him ask, "Who told you you aren't lovely? Who told you men would always betray you? Who told you you were on your own, that you would always have to take care of yourself?" And He went on and direct-bombed many more lies.

I didn't take the fruit and eat it, but I have definitely betrayed God before, wanted to be equal with Him. And now I saw God walking into my soul as One betrayed, and asking me about those lies in the kindest, most concerned manner--without condemnation or anger--that all I could do was weep because I knew; I knew who had lied to me.

Our position to God changed in that moment, and lies came in with the thirst for knowledge. For after all, it was the knowledge of good and evil. The fallout of this, the reason I have been in a surreal daze for two days? Again Miller articulates the birth of my thoughts:

...you and I need for God to be perfectly good, we need for Him to be the voice that did one day, and will in the future, speak pure glory into our lives. But for now, because of this act of war, relations have been strained. And we are feeling it in our souls.

I wept after this statement too--this time, more because I tasted God's heart for us, for the suffering we must endure until the end of time. We feel in our souls the rift, and it burdens us. We try to feed it, to medicate it, to escape it. But only God can aid us.

"Relations are strained." That's what grabbed my heart and shed more light on my heartache and longings: we are trying to get back to Him in all these little dumb ways (religion and formula), or we have given up altogether and joined the world's pursuit of pleasure until it ends, or we search for beauty in the mess and make a god out of it to avoid serving the real One, because we are hurt and mad at Him, like it's all His fault it turned out this way.

He made the sacrifice so that we could come back. He made a way. So few, so few find it. "Relations have been strained." Just like Jews today who live in an empty covenant, waiting for a Messiah who already came, so many humans don’t know that Jesus came to give us Eden back. We are living like He didn’t come, just like the Jews…we keep searching for Eden, mechanically, not knowing why we are urged to discover and create and long for beauty, just as the Jews await a Messiah on every horizon; both are disappointed—when it cannot be recreated (when it is just a fleeting moment), or when He does not come.

And about how God felt being betrayed...I felt His sorrow as I read the words:

All this makes me wonder what God must have felt, arriving on the scene just after the Fall, knowing all He had made was ruined, and understanding at once the sacrifice that would be required to win the hearts of His children from the grasp of their seducer.

How His heart must have raged in grief within Him over the debauchery of Sodom and Gomorrah, over the Amalekites, over the Egyptians--even over the Israelites. How they medicated and found other gods easier to worship, all to find their own way to cope until it was over. Raged over the Greeks, the Romans, the Native Americans, Africans, over the Goths and Mongols and Muslims. And Hindus and and Buddhists and Druids and Celts.

And now, over Americans and Europeans and Japanese, content with our things. How little we all think Him and of Him.

And here He is, big and ancient, weeping over us on the one hand, extending the other hand out in reconciliation through Jesus. Yeshua.

I got it that night, that piece of the puzzle that explains my plight--that when Adam and Eve succumbed to temptation, to deception, decided they wanted equality with God even though God did not make them capable of it, I lost something I was created to have and to be.

I was made to walk in a perfect land, full of the delights of my Maker's creation, in perfect, whole oneness with Him. It's not simply that I was made for a Creator to tell me who I am, which I certainly was. But it's more. I was made to walk with Him in Eden, and I got outside of Eden--I got earth.

We are all sick with the bite of the knowledge of good and evil.

The whole infinite universe changed course when humans wanted equality with their authority. Can't you see it? Can't you see it in the infinity of the stars surrounding Earth? It was all made for eternity in Eden. We were never meant for clothes and wooden houses and rectangle beds and processed food. We were never meant for small, green rectangles of paper, or metal boxes on wheels, or concrete or blacktops or machines. We were not meant for guns, germs, or steel. Not institutes or organizations or buildings or offices. It is the thirst for knowledge Adam got us that has brought us this far.

Oh, man can do great things for himself. But the hubris of thinking it's all so great and grand when--he was never made to do it at all! We are so tiny, so minuscule in the greatness of the universe. We want to know it all--I want to know, am driven to find out--but it's the knowledge bug Adam and Eve incepted for us.

They traded Heaven and a complete oneness for knowledge. That's why we usually "don't know what we got till it's gone." We are plagued by the first shadow.

I've been crying out for Eden since I was born. I never knew it until this moment.

That's all. That's the bottom line.

All of it--the search for identity, the overwhelming longing for a mate, the need for beauty and romance and acceptance and a place to fit--all originates there. It's my design. The thirst for adventure, for the woods, for the epic story--I've been running back to Eden in everything!

But...now that Eden is gone, and I know what I have lost, I understand that I was also always running to my Creator. He has worked with us, with our decision, and created a whole new story. It's still wonderful. It's big, and He's the center. We are still the crown of creation. Everything I've learned about Him is still true.

But the bottom line? We weren't made for this.

More on this dream, and why my heart is captivated

I am indebted to Donald Miller--well, really John Sailhamer, but Donald wrote it down--for the following interpretation to my dream, from his book Searching for God Knows What in the chapter "Naked":

That dream was a garden of Eden dream--"flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone," and "nakedness without shame." Eve felt safe and secure. Like I want to feel. Like every human person wants to feel. Like we were, as Eve, created to feel.

And you know what that dream showed me? How much I don't want an earthly man, or at least one who hasn't known depth and ancient timelessness. That man in my dream implicitly and easily knew and understood me. He knew I'd been hurt by earthly men, and he knew how to be the antithesis of their destruction.

But isn't that the female's ideal? Superman? Gilbert Blythe and Darcy and Thornton? ...Jesus?

It's funny, but I can't think of any very heroically romantic Bible men except the lover in Song of Songs, and he doesn't even have a name. I suppose that says something, doesn't it? All of God's heroes were broken and messed up...were unfaithful to Him (ok, not all of them, but quite a few!) and to their families. Most Bible men had plural wives and concubines and seemed to care little of the ways of a woman's heart.

But perhaps this is because of the focus on action and the sin nature all of God's unlikely heroes suffered from....I can never forget the oracle's word in Proverbs 30: "...the way of a man with a maid."

There were honorable men whose marriages we never see, perhaps because they were in fact successful (lack of drama!): Adam, Moses, Samuel, Jesse, Peter, John...perhaps all of these wives felt safe and loved and known and listened to. I'd like to know all of their names and stories.

Back to my dream. I want to marry the man in that dream! He would never leave me...he knew me without having to explain. He protected, covered, and even made my dreams come true. We had the bond of humanity's dream--complete oneness. I don't think I'll find that perfection here.

Which is precisely the point. I'll find it above the earth. I'll find it in Heaven. My heart fairly bursts that the One in my dream is real! Oh! I can hardly breathe!

Last night I chatted with one of the Mexian mamas I met when living in Guadalajara, and she spoke (or typed) a mother's blessings over me in Spanish. She said I am always in her prayers. I wept. The seeds I have scattered abroad do bear fruit--there is Papa's love where I have been, in Albania, Mexico, and Israel. That's where my heart yearns and burns sometimes--out there. Where the adventure lies. Where my Lover meets me in special and lonely yet exhilerating ways.

In conclusion, I am falling for my perfect Lover for forreally really, and kind of the first time in my life.

It hurts, too! My heart aches with lovesickness. My pride and judgement melt. Fear...is deeper seated, but trembles in this place. It has to go. Because my Lover's love hates fear.

Maybe when I can truly receive it is when I can see that fear of man and rejection and discomfort crumble.

Maybe I can love other people better?

I look forward to this transformation of love.

Thoughts on men and women and what we were meant to be

I had this dream the other night. I don't think my life will ever be the same... because in this dream, I met the "god of the mountain," the god of C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces.

But the thing is, this beautiful dream of oneness and faithfulness I had, it raised some questions about what I believe about men and women and the role we have been thrust into. Such as, Why do women long so fiercely for one permanent mate, and men struggle so much with wanting as many as possible? How can these two extremes meet? What man is going to want to sit and knit booties with me on a log cabin porch when there are always younger, prettier girls to woo and touch?

Why is it so hard to believe that something I want so much will never happen? Is it because I have sabotaged myself by breaking up with several young men because I heeded the red flags a little later than I should have? Is it because each of them moved on so quickly?

It hurt when they moved on so easily. Even though I know in my head it was only logical, and was probably what they needed to do. It's just...aside from my father and other healthy folks around me, I've seen so many young men be unfaithful.

How do I know the next guy I let in isn't going to get bored one day and shove off? Decide it's a bad fit after all? Be of low character and unable to remain true to his commitments and vows underneath my perception of him? It has happened before.

And what about all those lovely girls who have never been pursued? Will no one ever discover them? Look twice? Take the challenge and go after one who isn't already chewed up by the other sharks?

Because that's what we feel like sometimes--bait. Raw meat. Bloody slabs of flesh floating like ducks on water waiting for a good sniffer to pick us out of the pile and consume us.

I don't mean to be cynical and morbid. But what I have described really is the way women feel sometimes--prostitutes, sex slaves, rape victims, harassment victims, porn stars, partners of porn addicts, girls at bars, girls near men with lust strongholds...

More often we feel like shells strewn as by the hand of an artist on a beach, lying there, some half buried, some glittering in the sunlight, waiting for a shell-gazer to come and find value in us, scoop us up, and take us home. Seeing as how there are so many to choose from, and most guys like to take their pick, what's to stop him from dropping a few as he sees prettier shells up ahead?

(I realize as I type that there is a redemptive aspect to this analogy; that every young person senses whether or not their friends are the kind of people that understand them, and every person has different preferences; so it kind of stands to reason that a young man would be eager to find that shell that aptly enunciates his personality. We can't fault him for dropping a few in search of the one that truly catches his eye, that most accurately expresses his personality, like a piece of art or music.)

We were made for loyalty; men and women alike. We were made for everlasting. We were made for, "I will never leave you or forsake you." We were made to believe that promise without hesitation, and believe it of each other too.

But...we are hurting. We are weak. Some of us are lustful and shifty and disloyal.

So we have Him--the god of the mountain, the one whom we fear will eat us alive. But He Who is the only one who fiercely and truly loves us; who will not eat us, who will choose us and put us in a special place for all eternity. We were made to let Him choose us and keep us. We were made to trust this in Him.

By trusting Him, we can feel safe again, and safe even from the boys who would give up on us.

By letting His promise into the deeeeeep places--letting it seep past lies and roots of lies and negative experiences--we can trust that people can be like Him, too. I can believe that a man will stay with me and knit booties on a cabin porch if I can trust that the Lover of my Soul, my Miracle Worker, will not go. He will not be scared or bored away.

And like this Lover, I can believe that a man will choose me not becuase I am convenient or expected of him or a even a good match...he will choose because he loves. And willingly "forsake all others."

My heart is afraid to believe he will come.

So I will believe that You have come, Do Di, Beloved. And that You will never leave. It's hard...but I will choose this promise over experience and fear.

Every girl should have a grandpa

When I was a little girl, my grandparents' annual visit always excited inexpressible anticipation in me.

I would plot and plan and dream up all the ways we could possibly spend time together. I would look forward to seeing their 1980s gold station wagon pull up to our Victorian house--in the process of being remodeled--so much, that I would even lose focus at school in my first grade special smart kid group, which I loved.

I loved watching my mother scour the house so that every inch would be pleasing to her parents. I would follow her around the house, wondering which normal item we would have to put under a counter or in a drawer to make room for them to sleep and use a bathroom.

They usually slept on the olive-green pull-out couch in the living room. I loved the sound of it when my grandparents would ask me to help them pull it out, and I loved rubbing my chubby fingers across the red satiny underbelly, which remained the only evidence of the couch's dark red glory days. (I would imagine the couch in those days, looking all Victorian, like the house, and wondered who might have sat there. What parents rocked their children to sleep on it? What tea trays were perched on its broad arms? I never got very far with these imaginations, but even so, I would still endeavor to picture things beyond my experience.)

On Grandparent Arrival Day, as I am sure I had subconsciously dubbed it, I felt as though the queen were coming to visit. I felt no loss of relationship with Merl and Ginger Keefer, despite the four-hour distance from Sikeston, Missouri, to Nashville, Tennessee. I never lamented this in my moments of ecstasy in the anticipation of their arrivals; I simply embraced them for what they were, and generally tried to squeeze every last drop out of them.

I must not hide my eagerness for their gifts. Alas, I'm afraid I did look forward to those things they must surely bring--even if it were only a loaf of bread or a batch of Grandma's famous oatmeal cookies--if for nothing else than for their newness factor. I have always loved new things, and since I was getting both new people and new things, one can imagine why I anticipated these visits with such eagerness.

Close to the time of their arrival, after putting away all our toys and wiping down every dusty surface, my sister, Lydia, and I would hunker down in the floor just inside the front storm door, squatting or sitting on our ankles, excitement bursting out of us like rays of sunshine rushing past a drawn afternoon drape.

From this vantage point, we could best spot that gold wagon as soon as it turned onto Holly Street without getting in trouble for abandoning preparation chores. And even if we weren't finished with chores yet, as soon as that tell-tale gold flashed in the morning or late afternoon sun, we would let loose screeches of deep pleasure, leap up onto red feet tingling with the rush of renewed circulation, and beat down that glass door.

We would race to the end of the concrete sidewalk, flinging arms out in girlish shoves to get to the gate first, be the first to win Grandpa's "Give me some sugar!" or Grandma's "That's my girl!"

Lydia and I would each take the hand of a grandparent and lead them triumphantly back to our parents, expecting nothing less than shrieks of joy from Mama and kindly hugs from Daddy.

We would stand aside to allow the grown-ups their conversation, all the while impatiently rocking back and forth from one foot to another in great anticipation of their always tasteful gifts.

Sometimes Grandma would pull out a dress she had hand-sown for one of my dolls; other times she would withdraw a gigantic bag of the biggest oatmeal cookies I had ever seen and hand us each one, even though it wasn't yet snack or dinner time. (I loved her dearly for this!)

One memory I can never forget is the smell of Grandpa's Old Spice cologne that he kept in his yellow leather toiletry bag. Every time I visited the family bathroom, I would stand close to that bag and just breathe in. Strength, dignity, and the vast mystery of who my grandpa was emanated from that bag. I can never smell Old Spice and not jump back 18 years to those bathroom moments.

I was 21 when Grandpa died of a rare bone cancer. He was 80 years old.

I was living abroad in Guadalajara, Mexico, learning Spanish. Since I had already purchased two plane tickets, I did not have enough money to return home for the funeral.

For the last three and half years, my grandpa has never seemed gone; only four hours away in a gold station wagon--even though they gave that wagon to Mama when they bought a new car when I was about 10, and even though I have visited Sikeston several times since his death.

I still picture that yellow leather toiletry case on the back of my toilet, because it sat there once when they visited when I was in high school. I can still conjure that spicy smell if I stand there too long.

As sparks fly upward

I weep for the epic significance of our brief lives.

I weep, for we waste it.

We squander the time, the people, the decisions offered us each bright new morning in favor of our own pleasure, our own satisfaction.

What else is there to live for? so many humans ask when faced with their own selfishness.

Perhaps if they saw what they could be—really paid attention the next time a movie or novel made them cry, explored why they were moved—they would set aside their own dreams in order to make someone else’s come true.

For what are we here for but to delight in God and each other?

We fear that in making another’s dream come true, ours will never be fulfilled, thus destroying our own happiness.

But what was it Jesus said? “No greater love has any man than this: that he lay down his life for a friend.” Something like that.

The point is, pausing to make someone else’s dream come true is truly loving, and truly loving and receiving love is truly living.

Our lives mean so much to eternity. If we enjoy our lives, those around us may just catch what we have, and the enjoyment spread.

If we all enjoyed our lives and stopped fearing the destruction of our dreams…I think we just might reach our potential.

Each human life may be like a spark flying upwards; but each human spark, each floating bit of ember soaring gracefully up and away into the atmosphere, means something to the other sparks.

Each life on this earth means something epically significant to other lives. And means something epically significant to the Creator.

We are all valuable to Him; may we not be to each other?