em7172's Xanga Site

Weblog

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Driftwood

Your hugs
frightened me as a child.
They were strong and without hesitation.
Now I crave them,
like I’m incomplete without them.
And the way you smash your lips against my cheek
reminds me of an old black and white film.
There’s nothing like harsh and weathered love
that quietly rolls onto my shore
like a piece of white driftwood
escaping its tumbling existence
into the hands of a child
now some sort of instrument
of a vivid imagination.

You’re teaching me how
to be thrown into the waves
to be tossed and turned
to be aware of the kind of love
that loves with a
simple
strong
and smooth beauty.

And now my love isn’t standing on a
branch, soft from green
my love is standing on something weathered,
like a strong, whiter log that lives to be strong
and dies to yield
to the battering waves
withstanding
tests of grandure.

Grandpa,
you taught me that I’ll withstand it all
because that’s what driftwood
is born to do.
Drifting

I like to take several steps back once and awhile, just to see where my footprints are landing in relation to where I want to go.

Usually I haven't noticed my drift until it's happened, then I have to perform the tedious task of retracing my steps.

Sometimes you drift because you're too busy looking around. You become so caught up in the lonely saga of making sure you're on the same level as those who you admire, that somehow, you end up in a swamp or a valley, far from the mountaintop you were meant to climb and conquer.

Sometimes you drift because you’ve simply stopped, and life has begun moving on its own, like those moving walkways updated airports have added to parallel the American, lazy (yet hurried), soul.

Sometimes you drift because you need to. And like I've come to realize, sometimes you drift because you were only meant to go in that direction for a short while.

Now as I stand four steps back from yesterday, hindsight tells me that even if I failed, I’m somehow standing in footprints that were here before time. And this is miraculously, a comfort.
Dating Jesus

My heart caught on something in my chest when He came to visit me at work today.

I tired to ignore him. But it wouldn't do, he came up behind me, and I felt him whisper hello.

He reminded me that all work and no play makes any Emily a dull Emily...no matter how recently blonde.

I smiled, but quickly brushed off his words and glanced around the busy store to see if my manager had noticed the sudden change in my sell-sell-sell pace.

All my heart could do was beat-beat-beat.

He told me he'd wait till I got off work.

I continued to the end of my shift, and I knew he was watching me, which made me fumble and fidget and forget what I was doing and what color in what size skirt which lady wanted. I know he was laughing. Which is comforting, you know? That he felt comfortable enough to laugh at my folly, and that I felt ok with that.

As I walked out the store He didn't take my hand, but he told me he liked my hat, which was was .75 cents, I triumphanty declared.

"What to do? Movie then?" So we did. And I picked.

As we sat through Enchanted, He didn't take my hand. But he laughed deep hearty laughs along with my shrill shrieks. It was an outlandish symphony in two part harmony.

Then we went to dinner, and I think he picked.

We talked. And he told me everything I needed to know.

We sat more then, he didn't take my hand and he didn't tell me I was beautiful, although his deep presence made me feel beautiful.

And I knew he was smiling at me. I knew he was loving me straight through. I knew he was remembering everything I was forgetting and I knew he would bring me into a newer state of being.

My date with my Lord Jesus was just what I needed today.
Out from Under the Sink

Last night I was cleaning underneath the sink in my bathroom and I pulled out a dish of pretty soaps, you know the kind Mom never wanted you to use. Clearly someone didn’t listen to Mom, because one was sort of –soggy and it left a mirey ring around the dish. I went to rinse out the dish, and four hideous looking grubs fell out and plopped into the white sink. With a look of sheer disgust I cringed and whisked them down the drain with the water on HOT. It was revolting, I mean, the nerve of those grubs in a soap dish!

Then I got to thinking, how sometimes, I’m like the soap in the soap dish.

Sure, I’m clean, and I try to make things clean. But if I stay under the sink, I’m not any good. And the longer I’m not being used, the more susceptible I am to unknown sin that can fester, silently.

One of the wisest people I’ve ever met once told me, “Emily, whenever you walk through a door, ask yourself ‘Lord, what my mission right now?’ And Emily, He will show you.”

You’d be surprised how much God will use you once you’re out from under the sink.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

the unseen war

At my old school, I would sometimes sit alone, on one of the seven, white rocking chairs outside of the student center. The Mississippi wind would gust inconsistently, making the empty chairs rock slowly, as if they had some sort of mystical muscle memory of their last “rocker”. I loved sitting there at night.

I remember specifically one rockin' evening I was processing some news...but not the explosive kind of news from Iraq, that I always seem to forget as I live in undisturbed safeness.

No, this was the kind of news that misled into my personal life. I was hit earlier that day with a news that made me fold my arms across my heart and breathe several sighs of confusion.

This was the kind of news that impressed upon me, doubts. I did not doubt His sovereignty that day, but I was doubted my ability to track where He was in my life – and if ever I could the lives of my dear friends.

Just that day I found out about war involving a friend who had been accused. Just that day I found out about war involving a friend who had left school, Just that day I found out about war involving a friend who was dying inside.

It’s so easy to focus on the wars that are physically visible. How easy it is for overlook the unseen war, that is happening right under our noses, with our friends, and even with ourselves.

I was so unmoved in the white rocker on that dark evening. Rocking seemed like the wrong thing to do just then.
We get so worked up about the visible wars. I realized that evening that I needed to get serious about praying for my friends as they are greatly outnumbered in their own wars.