Staring at the Foreground

I stare toward the horizon a lot lately. 

I just keep staring at it, expecting it to change. The road looks straight and clear in front of me, but I keep thinking that it’s going to turn, to drop off, to lead to somewhere different. 

Am I really going to keep traveling this same path? High school was four years. College was four years. I’ve taught four years. When is graduation? When does the path change again? 

I stare toward the horizon a lot lately. Well, actually, I stare at my computer screen a lot lately. 

I have a secret Pinterest board where I pin articles about teachers who’ve quit teaching and moved on to new careers. I have a folder of bookmarks on my web browser titled “Dream Jobs,” but I don’t think there’s a link to a single truly dream job on it. I’d have to know what my dream job is for that to be possible. 

I’m signed up for email alerts of teaching and tutoring jobs in my area. I signed up one day when I was fed up with teaching, yet even then I couldn’t think of any other categories of jobs to consider than those. I check them every day out of habit now, and I’ve almost sent in my resume for a few. 

I’ve considered getting my Master’s in library science. I always wanted to be a librarian. My elementary school librarian wore sequined tops and animal print and made them look awesome. She smelled of perfume and used her long manicured nails that I admired so much to turn the pages of children’s books that she read from the side, holding them turned for us to see the pictures. I could see myself in sequins and glasses, with my hair piled on top of my head like hers, cataloging and organizing and helping kids pick out books. I can almost smell the books… being a librarian would be amazing. 

I say I wish I could quit teaching. I threaten that I’m going to. Every year, I say it’s my last year, but I think of ideas for next year in the shower, continue to buy books for my classroom, and write notes to myself to remind me how I can teach what I’m currently teaching better next time. I wonder what I would do with all the canvases I’ve painted for my room if I quit, try to imagine not having school to think about all the time and can’t think of what would take its place.  

The truth is my dream job is teaching. I can’t think of anything else to add to my job alert profile because what am I made for but teaching? What else have I ever wanted to do?

I wanted to be a waitress.
I wanted to be a writer. 
I wanted to be a librarian.
I wanted to be a linguist.
I wanted to be a teacher.

That is the exhaustive list of every career aspiration I can remember having in my childhood and adolescence. 

I don’t know if I can add wanting to work at LOFT or Starbucks or being SuperNanny to that list or not. Do those whims I’ve had since adulthood count?

The thing is, I think I’m a teacher. 

I keep staring into the horizon, trying to find an alternate route, something that will fill my heart without the sacrifice, something that will make me feel constantly validated, something that would let me sit with my books and my papers and my journals all the time, something I could do in an 8-hour day without any night and weekend work and see lives change for the better every single day right before my eyes. 

I think I’ll be staring into the horizon for a long time if I’m looking for all that. 

Maybe it’s time to start looking around me instead of ahead of me:
     my scrapbook of notes from kiddos
     my bright-colored classroom, my oasis and theirs
     a girl wearing her glasses because if I can, she can too
     a stack of essays, far from perfect, but better than last year’s stack
     facebook messages from former students, asking for advice
     kids who come back to visit from high school
         and notice what I’ve changed, remember where they sat in the room,
         ask if we still read what we read together their year, 
          say they miss 7th grade the most
     the kid I don’t even have in class who hugs me in the hall
     the 8th grader who brought me a card the first weeks of school
“Thank you so much for everything you taught me last year. 
            We’re already using it this year.”
     the 8th grader who brought me candy for Christmas
 (I can’t believe she thought of me all this time later.)
      nervous pre-teens in prom dresses and ties at a formal dance
      pages of notebooks marked “Please read, Mrs. Coleman!” 
      and written as letters just to me "Mrs. Coleman, what do you think?"

I am a constant back and forth when it comes to this place in my life. I’ve felt good like this about teaching before, and it always seems to fade. Somehow, though, this time, I think I’m going to keep it. I’m going to get tired again, frustrated again, all those negative school feelings again, but I think this new current of gratitude for the amazing privilege of being a teacher, of assuredness that this is who I am, is going to stay, even when it’s beneath the surface, reminding me of who I am and how and why…

I think it’s going to last. At least until something new really does appear on the horizon, all on its own without trying to force it. 

I just have to get my eyes off the horizon, quit staring into the distance, and look around. 

Blogging... or lack thereof

Blogging... it's a funny thing how it's different from real writing. 

Added later: real writing? What do I mean by that? I want to edit it because it doesn't seem accurate, but I want to leave it because I'm struck by the fact that that's what I wrote originally. Real writing. Hmm..

Anyway... 

Blogging... it's a funny thing how it's different from real writing. 

Even though there are only 3.5 people, maybe, who read each thing I post on here, there's something different about blogging.

When I look today and see that my last post is from June 7– Hey, I was still 25 then!– I at first feel ashamed, as if I have been abandoning my first love of writing completely. Thankfully, I know that my Day One journal app and my good, old-fashioned paper journals, which I love for their realness and paperness and ink-and-graphite-smoothness, do hold writing since June 7, not as much as needed or wanted, but enough to keep me going. 

I have been writing, but I haven't been blogging, which leads me to this reflection, which no one cares about but that I'm going to post anyway, about how blogging is different.

Writing that is blogged is somehow more final. There could be an audience. I mean, it probably wouldn't happen, especially with this one, but something conceivably could get shared on the internet and become a sensation. I mean it could. So I have to be careful and make sure it's something I wouldn't mind attaching my name to. 

But, in reality, the actual reason it's more final, in my real world of maybe 3.5 readers,  is there will almost definitely be at least a small audience, a few faithful friends who follow the blog and will read out of obligation or curiosity or maybe even excitement since its been over half a year since I last posted– how did I let that happen?!– when they get they email announcing I have written.  (And I really am grateful for my friends who care what I write! I'm not disparaging the 3.5 of you– a group of actually more than 3 or 4 people who won't actually all read at any given time, which is why I've made the average smaller... You are few in number but great in love and importance.) 

But anyway.

Blogged writing is more final. It won't just live in Day One for me alone or stay scrawled in my notebook where only I will revisit it. Someone, at least one other person, will read it, maybe even comment or refer to it later. 

Someone could actually call me out– Hey, remember, you said you were going to love your job this year, remember? (Btw, I actually told someone on Christmas Eve– one of my incredible teachers past, one of the first who inspired me to write and to teach, perfectly enough– that I love teaching. I said it all genuinely and naturally without thinking about it. It shocked me as it came out. It was kind of astounding. I'm still reeling at it now as I relive it. I don't know the last time I said that without planning it or forcing it. It was either a crazy slip or a crazy epiphany.)

Someone could actually talk to me about how ridiculous my number of posts about or referring to John Mayer lyrics is getting and how I need to get it together. 

Someone could see the depths of what I'm wrestling and know that John Mayer's lyric is still true in me– So what? So I've got a smile on? Well, it's hiding the quiet superstitions in my mind. Don't believe me, don't believe me, when I say I've got it down. (Good luck, imaginary person who would tell me to quit quoting John Mayer. Not gonna happen.)

Actually, that has happened. Well, not stopping the JM obsession  or someone telling me to but someone seeing the depths of my wrestling. One of my high school friend's father, a dear friend in his own right, a pillar of our hometown, told me that he reads my blog from time to time. He told me, looking me straight in the eyes, Your struggles are quite– what was the word?– compelling?  

There's something about knowing that the struggles have been aired, that anyone can read them, that someone may feel them along with me or that, even if they're completely foreign to the reader who's never felt anything like them, they've been written and they've been read. 

And they're out there for anyone to see. 

Someone could disagree with what I think are spiritual break-throughs and call me out as a heretic. I don't know who would be so bold in my group of sweet-natured friends. But someone could. 

Or someone could say, Wow, how did you put to words exactly how I feel? Like I want to say to JM and to Sara Groves and to random bloggers and singers out there who've done that for me. 

Someone, a favorite author of mine, could make a comment on a post and start a chain of events that would lead to Jason and me meeting new friends in Nashville and having a new favorite blog to read and maybe even more in the future... Actually, that already happened, and the story isn't finished yet...

Maybe even someone, not John Mayer himself perhaps, but maybe someone close to him in charge of his PR doing Google searches of his name, or maybe a friend, will discover this blog and say, "John, we've found someone you need as a friend, someone who gets you."

Which reminds me– I should write about Dolly Parton more so that could happen with her too. 

Alright, now I've gone and gotten weird.

And I've pretty much forgotten what I'm even writing about at this point. 

So it's time to stop. I just want to say that there's something different about blogging, knowing that the words are going out to the world. Even if no one reads them. The words are out there, gone, and mine. 

It makes me feel like a writer. A real writer. 

So I need to blog more.

Because I am a writer.

A Resolution

I am going to love teaching next year. 

When people ask if I like my job, I'm going to answer enthusiastically that I love it.

I am going to feel the way I dreamed I would feel, the way I felt when I left Glencliff after great lessons about A Brave New World with honors freshmen. 

I am going to see my students as people (through much prayer because I know I can't do that on my own) and be a person myself (through a miracle from God because I struggle to be a person and to be personal and personable). 

I am going to teach things I believe in teaching and be excited about my curriculum. I am going to be brave enough to be the dork I am and call it endearing. 

I am not going to let management be a problem any more. Not a single smart aleck kid is going to ruin it for the rest. I am going to remind myself every day that being in charge and telling myself it's my classroom and not theirs is not a matter of ego but of securing the best learning environment for my best kids and for all of them. 

I'm going to read and write and pray and be happy and be a whole person in my own life so my kids get to be taught by a real person who loves them, literature, and life- not a weary, bag-eyed, impatient shadow of a person. 

I'm going to give myself a break for not moving on to "bigger and better" things and just love what I do and pray that I live in Christ no matter what I'm doing. If He wants me to move, He'll move me. But I have a suspicion the place and the job don't really matter; I think it's mostly a matter of heart and living light. Anywhere and everywhere. 

I'm tired of bring a soulless, life-sucked bag of whining and griping and being discontent. 

I was made to write, read, teach, love, and I'm going to do them. 

Even and especially in my own imperfect little classroom. 

Until Someone Burns Out or has a Breakdown

Jon Acuff, the guy from Stuff Christians Like, put an audio version of his book Quitter on NoiseTrade this week.

You can get it here for FREE: http://noisetrade.com/jonacuff/quitter-audio-book.

When I saw this book on NoiseTrade and downloaded it yesterday, I thought listening to it might give me permission to be a quitter. It turns out the first chapter is called "Don't Quit Your Day Job," so I guess not... It is helping me work through the mess in my mind a little bit, though. 

Here's a part from chapter 3 I listened to over and over tonight to be able to transcribe some of what he's saying that's so true about me:

"That's the lie of perfectionism: We never think perfect is impossible. Perfect always glows from right around the corner... I'm afraid the Land of Perfect is a myth... You struggle with perfectionism more than doing things halfheartedly. The solution to doing something lackadaisically is not difficult: just do it better. The solution to perfectionism is tricky because at first it doesn't feel like something that needs to be solved... People don't normally see it as the poison that it is until someone burns out or has a breakdown."

"Quit perfect. It's an unnecessary obstacle. Chase the idea of your dream being better finished at 90% than perfect and not pursued."

Right now, I have a six page and growing conversation with myself open in a Pages document going through the ups and downs of my dreams and my reality, trying to sort it all out. I don't know what the conclusion is going to be. I don't even know what I hope it will be. I just know I want to be happy and joyful and at peace with how I'm spending my gifts and my time.

I'm not sure what dream I need to pursue, not sure if my day job could be dream job if I could ever truly let go of my desire for perfection and be okay with 90% (or much less, let's be honest) at school. 

Or if there's something else. Some other dream job around the corner if I'd just be brave enough to chase it down and brave enough to quit.

What I do know is that if I'm not in the "burns out or has a breakdown" category yet, I've gotta be on the fast track toward it.

John Mayer, in "Bigger than my Body," as always, puts the cry in my heart in a way that is perfect-- "I'll gladly go down in a flame if a flame's what it takes to remember name, to remember my name!" 

Teacher burnout is not a new concept. My elementary school teachers warned me as early as 8th grade about teaching and what it was becoming, told me that they were glad to be able to retire when they did. That was over ten years ago. In college, we talked plenty about the things that burn teachers out, and we also often talked about "burned out teachers," those near-retirement types, with such disdain, with the idealism that we would never be them. Who knew I'd be there in under four years, well before hitting 30 years old? I always thought I'd be like the John Mayer song-- glad to go down in a flame.

I've always loved shout-singing the chorus of this song alone in my car, especially with the windows down, loved telling myself, "Someday I'll be so damn much more! 'Cause I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for." (Emphasis on the damn intended because somehow, it just gives it so much more -umph and, I don't know, desperation for it? Desperation to make it, to go down in flames, whatever it takes to do something that you could know in the end was worth it.)

So anyway... what am I talking about?

I'm talking about John's questions--

"Why is it not my time?
What is there more to learn?"

Why am I not there? Why is life not a dream come true every moment? Why haven't I achieved perfection yet? What am I doing wrong? What am I missing?

And the question I have now is--

What am I flaming out for?*

Am I letting the fact that I haven't achieved perfection drive me to "tangle in the power lines," as JM puts it?**

What am I going to lose if I burn out or have a breakdown? Will the burn out, the flames, be worth it?

And how do I prevent going down in flames? Accept the less-than-perfect job I'm doing at my less-than-perfect-job and realize it's what I'm made to do at 85% mastery forever and just relax? I'll be honest-- I don't know that I can ever do that. I don't know if I could do that if I prayed the Serenity Prayer before and after every class period. I am highly affected by what I cannot change, broken by it, engulfed in its flames. 

So do I step outside of this particular fire (Insert Garth Brooks music here.) and go for another one that might be the real dream after all? Is it possible to do something that I actually love every day and actually see enough success and change happen to keep me from wanting to quit every single day?

Alright, I'm going to go back to my Pages conversation with myself... or maybe I'll listen to Quitter some more since the next chapter is called "Fall in Like with a Job You Don't Love" and clean the bathroom or something more productive like that.


* I am an English teacher who just can't bring herself to edit that to be "For what am I flaming out?"

** I'm now making my own meaning out of this song, but that's ok. I think JM would support that. 

A Deeper Desire

People talk about God not letting us have the things we want sometimes because they aren't part of His will for us or because He wants us to grow closer to Him. Usually they're talking about boyfriends, husbands, jobs, or money... things like that. 

I'm in the fortunate and strange situation of wanting none of the typical things people are looking for when they're yearning for the next thing. God has given me all the things people typically pray for without much thought or effort or waiting on my part. Why? Who knows? I feel guilty writing this knowing others are waiting for so much, but I write it out of gratitude and amazement, not boasting, that God gave me Jason, seemingly out of the blue, brought me to Shafer Middle School where I was offered a job by one of the world's best principals on the spot the Monday after graduation, and has blessed Jason and me with an easy and comfortable lifestyle, easily provided with everything we need. There is so little need to worry in our lives. I have a dream husband, and we as a couple have the dream life and dream marriage. Seriously, it's sickening. It's that good. We're not even pining for or worrying about children yet. We don't even have that burden of so many young couples. We are perfectly happy where we are with what we have.

So why have I been so wretchedly dissatisfied and miserable? Why am I always complaining about my job and my busyness? Why am I often so grumpy and ungrateful (always in my mind if not always out loud) about so much of my life? 

I wrote recently in August (what? it was that long ago?) about the rush of my miserable life Speed and how disgusting it is that I have the nerve to be unhappy with my life when I have so many wonderful things.

I have called it a "lack of perspective" and ingratitude, and I have berated myself, and I suppose many people would say that what I have needed to do all this time is to count my blessings. That, of course, is true, but I think I am realizing something even deeper than the need to count blessings...

This may sound radical or it may sound so normal one would wonder why I would bother typing it-- I'm having a hard time telling the difference these days-- but what I'm realizing is that I have been so unsatisfied because none of the "blessings" I have is God. Counting the blessings and looking for the positives has not helped because, honestly, all the positives are mere idols at best anyway. To look at a school day and try to find the good that was in it, for me, is just further idol worship of myself, my craft, and the way I measure my success and my value as a person.

And what I'm realizing is that God has been trying this whole time to get my attention, making me unsatisfied with all the unworthy lovers in my life that this world praises rather than calls out for the demons they are. If I were feeling the way I want to feel about school, my job, my importance in the classroom, I would be missing out on this message God has been putting together slowly but surely in my life... that none of the things I have been looking for to reassure me of my value will ever do it. I have thought for so long that I am just broken, the wrong personality for teaching or maybe for anything involving other humans because I am so jaded and so dissatisfied, so unable to see the good along with the bad, so unwilling to look at the bright side. But now, oddly, miraculously, I am praising God, my Father, for keeping those ooey-gooey good feelings away because I know myself, know that if I had been feeling fulfilled all this time it would have not been in Him but in me and my kids and my belief in books and education and a system that is just a human system and nothing like God... 

People talk about turning away from drink and drug and sex and swearing for God. How many talk about turning away from trying to be a good teacher or from wanting to live life right? 

That's what I've needed to do all along, and I am so filled with joy right now, seeing a little bit more of God unveiled knowing that He is holding me saying, "Daughter, I Am all that is good. I Am all that is worthy. You are only worthy because I love you. That is it. You could never be more or less worthy for anything You ever accomplish or don't." 

And I sit here, filled with joy. Joy! Joy? What is this feeling and where has it been?

And the answer is not just that I had a good day at school or that my students suddenly blossomed so much that I got to see the fruit of my labor but that I am crucifying again the belief that I can ever even bear fruit.

Lord, YOU are the vine, and I am the branch. 

Again with these feelings that are either radical or maybe fundamental and commonplace-- I cannot tell because they're sparkling so with so much joy and new light-- There is such joy in looking at Jesus and knowing that He is the only good. So much joy in realizing that it is right not to be happy and fulfilled even in a wonderful marriage, even with wonderful friends and family, even with a wonderful job, not because they are not good gifts from God for which I should be thankful (because they certainly are! All good things come from above!) but because they are only shadowy glimpses of the good that God is, hollow and pale in comparison. So much gratitude in a God who would whisper to me, "There is room for more desire in you because you were made to desire something so amazing and beyond your comprehension-- ME."

I am not fully satisfied-- may I never be!-- because the fall of man has separated me from the only good, has put distance and distraction between me and the only value, the only love, the only light. Jesus has covered the sins that would have separated me forever, and the Holy Spirit has given me birth into a part of Jesus's bride now.

Oh, but now we see only dimly as in a mirror! Now is only the reflection.

What joy! What joy in seeing more of Jesus now, what joy in knowing even a life as good as mine is is only a tiny taste, and even, if it were gone, it would not matter. Only Jesus. I think He is starting to teach me what that means...

And my heart is so full of love for Him, and I just pray that it grows and grows!

He is jealous for me 
(even when the things I love above and in addition to Him are good things, like kids and school, when that love is human obsession and not the Love that comes from Him)

He is jealous for me
(and wooing me back to His heart so beautifully)

He is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane,
I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight
Of His wind and mercy.

Oh, how He loves us
Oh
Oh, How He loves us
How He loves us
Oh

We are His portion, 
And He is our prize--
Drawn to redemption 
By the grace in His eyes.

If His grace is an ocean,
We're all sinking!
Heaven meets earth 
Like an unforseen kiss,
And my heart beats violently
Inside of my chest--


And I realize just how 
Beautiful You are and 
How great Your affections are for me.


Oh how He loves us.

(David Crowder Band)

It's a Hosea kind of love. A death-defying kind of love. So supernatural, so undeserved, so awe-inspiring.

"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow."
James 1:17

Oh, how He loves. Hallelujah!

More Liturgy: You Have the Words of Eternal Life

This is from a children's CD, but it is the exact tune of the liturgy sung before the reading of the Gospel passage every Sunday in the Lutheran church where I grew up.

Alleluia, Lord to Whom Shall We Go? (track 5)

I still freak out a little inside every time I read words from liturgy in Scripture. Originally, every discovery was a surprise. As a kid, I didn't realize how much of what I had memorized from my wooden pew was actually straight from Scripture. As I grew up, each time I found the words I could already sing and recite within the Bible, they would take on more meaning, and I would feel all the layers of the words peeling back and unfolding with new meanings when I would sing them each Sunday, now knowing the Scriptural context too. Even now, seeing them in Scripture thrills my heart, like they're a gift God has planted in me from all those years ago, and like the gift is being reopened and renewed each time the words are read, heard, sung, or said again.

I wrote in my journal during a sermon on John 6 (where the words for this moment of liturgy originate) at Grace Community three weeks ago, "We sang [John 6:68] in liturgy during Scripture reading almost every Sunday of my childhood, and it still gives me goosebumps now. I don't know what it is about it. I think it's the humility of it. 'What else can I do? Who else could answer my need?' ONLY YOU, JESUS. ONLY YOU."

Now, rereading John 6 again (yes, I mean to be redundant), I am looking closely at why Peter uttered these words, "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

Jesus had just asked, "You do not want to leave too, do you?" 

Why were people leaving? People were leaving because Jesus had just called out the crowds for drawing near to Him just because they had eaten of the miraculous loaves and were looking for more food. "Do not work for food that spoils," He said, "but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." Then He went on to say ludicrous things like the work we must do to do what God requires is just "to believe in the one He has sent" and that we are supposed to eat Jesus's body as bread and drink His blood. I can just imagine everyone getting really weirded out and starting to try to slip away unnoticed as He kept saying it over and over and over.

"I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty."
That sounds comforting enough, but He didn't stop there.
"I am the bread that came down from Heaven."
That's hard to believe when everyone listening knows good and well He's the son of Joseph and Mary.
"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day." 
Um, what? The Father has to draw us? Who says we even need to come to Jesus anyway? Are we not sons of Abraham?!
"I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
Wait, what?
"I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."
Okay, this is creepy. Maybe we're misunderstanding something, but, no, He keeps saying it!
"Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me."
Now He brings up manna again, which was all everyone was asking for anyway-- Give us bread, Jesus! Like Moses did!
"Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever."

I don't know how much of the crowd remained after this, but here's what the disciples had to say:

"THIS IS A HARD TEACHING. WHO CAN ACCEPT IT?"

And Jesus's response? Point blank, matter of fact, no sugar coating or breaking it down into easier pieces:

"Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe. This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."

Here, Scripture says "From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him."

"Many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him."

But what was Peter's reply? Good ol' Peter!

"LORD TO WHOM SHALL WE GO? YOU HAVE THE WORDS OF ETERNAL LIFE. WE BELIEVE AND KNOW THAT YOU ARE THE HOLY ONE OF GOD."

I'm not sure I actually get all of this eating flesh and drinking blood stuff. I mean, I know how years of theological study have broken it down into some formula I could spout. But I don't really know that I know what Jesus was talking about. I agree with the disciples that it is a hard teaching!

But I also agree whole-heartedly (Praise God, because if this passage means what I think it does, this could not be without God's choosing it!) with Peter. I believe and know that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

I can turn to no other.

There is no other.

He is bread. Life. God. All.

Jesus is and has the words of eternal life.

Confession and Repentance

Today's Sunday school lesson was about repentance, and all I could think of for the first several minutes of class was the Brief Order for Confession and Forgiveness and the prayers I prayed in my Lutheran congregation for all of my formative years.

If you don't get liturgical services, I understand. If you can name all the pitfalls and point to the fact that liturgy is a part of the structure and hierarchy of institutional churches and not part of the model of the New Testament Church, believe me, I get it, too.

But I will always thank God for the way He continues to whisper to me in the words of the liturgy I learned as a child, fell in love with as a teen and baby Christian, and love to this day as an adult.

If it doesn't strike your heart or seems a little weird, I guess that's to be expected, but my heart burns just rereading this. Maybe it's sentiment or homesicknesses, but I think much of it is because of the simple truth of it:

(I've copied and pasted this from a worship order using the LBW and enlarged, italicized, and underline the passages that echo most in my heart.)

Stand

Brief Order for Confession and Forgiveness
The minister leads the congregation in the invocation. The sign of the cross may be made by all in remembrance of their Baptism.
P: In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
C: Amen
P: Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
C: Amen
P: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Kneel Silence for reflection and self-examination.
P: Most merciful God,
C: We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name. Amen
The minister stands and addresses the congregation.
P: Almighty God, in his mercy, has given his Son to die for us and, for his sake, forgives us all our sins. As a called and ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and by his authority, I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins,
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

C: Amen 

I chose this Bible from Goodwill mostly for the scrap bookmarks inside it.

This is totally printed on the kind of preprinted with a picture bulletins we had at Salem as a kid, and the handwriting on the notes are in the cursive writing of a person who grew up decades ago like our grandmothers and the sweet ladies at church. So much beautiful nostalgia of a simple country church and a liturgical tradition.

This one is almost a straight paraphrase of the Brief Order of Confession and Forgiveness from the Lutheran Book of Worship, which I was just reciting to myself this morning during our Sunday school lesson about repentance.

Meandering and Looking for the Word of God

If I ever do write a book, I imagine it will not be the great American novel I hoped for or even a novel at all... probably more of a Blue Like Jazz type of autobiographical meandering, musings on topics far and wide that always come back to God. I don't know if I have anything inside me quite to the level of Donald Miller's reflections, but I think his format is the closest to how my heart works.

Because I am all about the meandering. I've written here before about loving to get lost and my need for meandering before. I even used that word, meander. (Revisit that post here.)

So here's my meandering for today...

I went to Parkway for Sunday school class and second service today with Rachel, ended up at lunch with my brother- and sister-in-law by accident (at least to us), then wandered around Barnes and Noble with Rachel continuing the thinking and talking, looking for books, looking for meaning, and then I went on my own to Walmart and then to every store with dollar in the name between Walmart and my house (There are three.) looking for some inexpensive paperback copies of the Bible. I ended up finding some, finally, where else but Goodwill, where, as I stood at the checkout with four copies of the Bible in my hand, I saw one of my students from Shafer and spoke to her and her grandmother. Then I left Goodwill, full of wondering, wondering if God had a reason to time our meeting there, wondering if she saw all the Bibles in my hand (None looked much like Bibles from the spines.), wondering if there was something more I should have said than what I did, wondering what, if anything, seeing this sweet girl "by chance" in the Hendersonville Goodwill has to do with my continuing questions about whether or not I should be devoting my days and energy endlessly to teaching...

I am so grateful that I do not have to go to work tomorrow because it allowed for a day of wandering and wondering, a day of lengthy conversations and soul-baring, a day of walking around with my eyes, heart, and hands open, looking for whatever God might put in my path that could point me toward His answers for all the current questions of this life. The answers are coming-- I feel them rumbling-- in friendships growing deeper, in lives overlapping a little more all the time.  About 13 months ago, I wandered through the same Barnes and Noble and left with a copy of Revise Us Again by Frank Viola, not knowing if Jason would ever even crack the cover, much less how much it would be an instrument of igniting so much change in our lives, at least in our thoughts and conversations; the actual, tangible changes to our lives are still coming, but coming, nonetheless, I'm certain, and who knows what treasures God has stored up in the books that left in my hands today or in the pages of the musty Bibles I brought home tonight. Who knows but Him the answer to this "To teach or not to teach" conundrum plaguing my mind, but I have faith tonight in those answers and rejoice in the friendships and relationships He is so faithfully building.

And, now, in search of the Word of God in a way much more complete than my search for Bibles this evening... my search for the living Word, Christ.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." 
-John 1:1

A Complement to "Anchor"

This is another NoiseTrade find, and it reminds me of the heart in "Anchor," a NoiseTrade find that is the song of my soul this year and maybe for a long, long time:

Jesus Is My Only Anchor


Home
Robbie Seay Band

Don't wanna live for the rich
Don't wanna live for me
A rich man who's come here to confess my sin

Don't wanna live for the politics
Politics of man
For the hope we seek is never found in the politicians

I wanna live for the King
I wanna live for the King 
(2x)

Don't wanna live in the past
Don't wanna live in shame
For everything I was You exchanged for grace

Don't wanna live for an ideology
Oh I want to know You not just know about a God who saves

I wanna live for the King
I wanna live for the King 
(2x)

Singing whoa
And whoa
Come and make my heart Your home
Yeah

Oh the cross echoes in my heart
The suffering of God
You have made a way for me

Oh the grace
Death has been undone
Love has overcome
My heart overflows to sing

I wanna live for the King
I wanna live for the King
(4x)

Singing whoa
and whoa
Come and make my heart Your home