God just goes like this

So many times this week I’ve whispered the words—running under stunning blue skies; exhaling beside grassy spaces where dewey spider webs glow like hundreds of silver threaded veils seemingly abandoned by impetuos ethereal brides; in the dying light of the afternoon, when the work still stretches, teasing at the edges of impossible.  I say it not because He needs to hear the words but because I need to remember before Him:

Lord, you are the how.

Because so often the thing that gets in the way of the faith-life I’ve asked to live, the observation of what He alone can do through a rough, cracked-up thing like me, is the I don’t know how, that dull assertion of lack that reminds me like a nag that I really do have human limitations, that this temporary body crumbles.  Sometimes I forget to say, So, what?  Sometimes I forget to smile over the truth that gleams all through my honest cracks:  All my limitations only illuminate the power of His hand, the sovereignty of His intent.

Our friend’s voice drifts full across the table, across the remnants of steamy food, warmth deepening the edges of his words, “When Jesus saddled that donkey and rode into town, and the people threw palm branches down over the dusty street and shouted their praise—was it the donkey for whom they cheered?” No, indeed.  Not the donkey, but the Savior who used the donkey to make his way through the street.

I lift my glass, savoring the feeling as water runs cool down my throat, and my thoughts tumble into the Living river, rushing.  I remember Riley just that morning in the car, the way she taps insistently on my shoulder from behind, when I’ve just been whispering you’re the how, you’re the how, like gasping for ragged breaths.

She says, “Mom, God just goes like this,” but I can’t see what this is because I’m staring at a line of cars in front of me and I’m pumping the brakes, and any minute another impatient soul will pull the wheel hard, as though we’re all not just as thick-stuck and sliding like mud.  Even her comment feels like an assault against my weakening resolve about this mothering thing.  This morning, I’m just tired.  One-handing the steering wheel, I press the empty fingers into my cheek, into the space right over my mouth.  Today, I think even my face hurts.  But Riley, she doesn’t seem to understand that I can’t look, and she keeps tapping on my shoulder as if it will.not.wait.  Tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap, and it might as well be her voice over and over and over calling my name.  I bite my lip.  Hard.  Because if I don’t, I’ll say something that will hurt her.  The words she said just dangle–Where do they even come from, anyway? And I pump the brakes and try to think, try to focus on those words, my own desperate prayer:  You’re the how.  

At a stoplight, I finally look at her, and I know my look is recklessly hard.  We all consider her to be somewhat emotionally immature, and yet she recoils, as though I’m digging my fingers into her shoulder.  “Mom, God just goes like this,” she says carefully again, watching me with sensitivity, slowly lifting her hand, the fingers curled deliberately around some invisible thing—a cup, maybe a dish.  Slowly, she tilts her grip, showing me.  Pouring.  She is pouring.  God just goes like this.  And that’s when I see the silver threads, invisible except for the Light glinting through the dew.  Her comment isn’t random at all, but instead is purposefully placed.  But–she could not have heard my prayer, would not have understood.  And yet.  That’s His how—He fills me up; He pours me out with His own hand, in His own way, at His own time.  And the gift is that I get to experience the truth, that I get to trust.

Sometimes I pray so desperately and then forget God’s listening, like the ones who prayed for Peter and then thought they’d seen a ghost when he arrived and knocked.  It makes me smile, this thought, because the servant girl that went to that door never even opened it the first time.  And so Peter kept on knocking, Word says, and so my girl—who maybe because she is a little too immature for this world is also a bit more receptive to the truth—just won’t stop tapping on my shoulder.   And still—still His gentle reminder isn’t fully written on my soul until we’re sitting at dinner, and I’m chewing a forkful of food, remembering that He’s the bread.

Okay, so I’m just the vessel, the conveyance, the stubborn smelly donkey He’s riding on.  And the point is not what I can or cannot do, nor whether or not a single soul notices that I’m here at all, but that I get to carry the Savior through the street—Living Water rushing through me; Light spilling over all my messy cracks.  He’s the what; He’s the why; He’s the how. 

So maybe, the next time that prayer—you’re the how, you’re the how, you’re the how—rushes urgently—desperately—through my mind, it’s also time to give thanks that I get to live by faith.

*~*

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

~2 Corinthians 4:7