so is life

Brutal + Beautiful = Brutiful
So is life.


I really, really enjoy Glennon's Momastery blog. I know I've mentioned it  few times, but really. It's the best. This week has been deemed Miracle Week. I just sat and read through many, many comments of readers and their own personal miracles. The brutiful thing is, those miracles were each side by side with grief and pain and sometimes even loss.

This post got me thinking... where are my miracles? What do I consider a miracle to be? I tend to forget about important things that happen to me. Call it memory loss or laziness, but it's something I genuinely struggle with. I receive so much joy from reading about other people's miracles, the beauty in the suffering of their lives. One woman commented, "I love that you embrace the paradoxes of life. Not negative, just real and whole. Continuing to trudge through rugged terrain is a miracle. We are all miracles and it is these challenges that can help our souls grow."
love that.

We're all miracles. My therapist (ha) has told me that several times. "Candice, it's a miracle that you are here and that you are trying to love and follow Jesus, and that your life is the way that it is." The truth is I could have self-destructed a long, long time ago. We all could have. This pain that we deal with, be it physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, has attributes of the impossible. It's too much. How do we possibly go on? And here is where I am so, so, so convinced that we as human beings were created with purpose, intended for greatness, and loved beyond measure. Despite all, we can go on. We are going on. We are living. This is a miracle. Yes, we may drink and we may sleep around, but we are here. His grace is abounding. We are healing. Alive.

I had the immense privilege of showing hospitality to some of my favorite people yesterday: my small group ladies. It was so fun to have them at MY HOUSE. I have a house! This is also a miracle. I honestly had this moment, amidst my running around trying not to burn the muffins and realizing I should probably get dressed and do something with my hair, where I looked in the mirror and paused. Breathed. And thought to myself: You are doing this. You are in Minnesota, renting a house, hosting people. You are a woman. It was a moment of accomplishment and the realization of adulthood. And it was oddly sacred.
We discussed the subject of letting your life speak-- living out of the deep, honest place inside of you and being true to yourself. How do we do that in a world so full of comparison and unreachable  standards of perfection? Of course, this brought out a lot of brutiful things. Fear and faith. Love and leaving. Sadness and excitement. News of babies alongside news of "still no babies" and "no longer a baby." News of "we broke up" alongside stories of "my fiancee and I..."
Brutiful.


Today I am choosing to rest in this brutal and beautiful life. I am choosing to open my hands, even if I have to pry each stubborn finger open, and let go. I choose to let forgiveness break through my hardened heart. I choose to speak up and also shut up. I choose to just be. Be sad. Be heavy. Be hopeful.

Let's hold ourselves to a standard of GRACE, not perfection.
Let's do this brutiful life together.


xo.

poetically acurate

I want to unfold.

I don't want to stay folded anywhere,

because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

And I want my grasp of things to be

true before you. I want to describe myself

like a painting that I looked at

closely for a long time,

like a saying that I finally understood,

like the pitcher I use every day,

like the face of my mother,

like a ship

that carried me

through the wildest storm of all.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, 

current poet obsession

food for thought

I saw Blue Like Jazz the movie-- not a big fan. But I AM a big fan of Donald Miller's writing. I'll stick to books & my infatuation with words.






“It made me wonder if the reasons our lives seem so muddled is because we keep walking into scenes in which we, along with the people around us, have no clear idea what we want.”


“I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims instead of grateful participants.”


 "I wouldn't really know what forgiveness meant for another year, until my pastor, Rick McKinley, happened to spell it out in a sermon. He said that when you forgive, you bear the burden somebody has given you without holding them accountable.”


“It occurred to me, as it sometimes does, that this day is over and will never be lived again, that we are only the sum of days, and when those are spent, we will not come back to this place, to this time, to these people and these colors, and I wonder whether to be sad about this or to be happy, to trust that these moments were meant for some kind of enjoyment, as a kind of blessing. And if feels, tonight, as if there is much to think about, there is much we have been given and much we have left behind. The smell of freedom is as brisk as the air through the windows. And there is a feeling that time itself has been curtained by darkness.” 


“The more I try to impress people, the more I separate myself from them. Vulnerability attracts love.” 








Dear Don, 
if I could sit and drink coffee with you, I would say thank you.
You are inspirational and genuine and raw and you tell it like it is. But not only that,
you help me to imagine what could be: what our world could be, what my life could be. 
I love to dream of ways to communicate in written words the beauty that I feel and see and breathe. 
You ignited that dreamer within me.
I wish we could be real life friends.


Love,
C

tenebrae

Tenebrae: latin; shadows or darkness

[ With a loud bang, He appeared, bent low in agony. Scenes flashed across the screen showing this man, broken and bruised. A story of death. ]

I still cannot explain why this story affects me so. Wasn't he just a guy who lived some thousand years ago and was crucified like so many others under Roman rule? Is his story so different from countless others? Would I weep had it not been my Jesus dying that death on the screen?

No, it is different. And something resonantes in me, in all of us, that this isn't just a human death. God gave part of himself. He united his perfection and our humanity, and as worlds clashed, darkness fell. Despair reigned. Truth was taken. Hope had flown.

[ Candles are snuffed. Silence. Tears. Heavy hearts. ]

Help us to know your pain, Lord.

Oh, He never lets go. The shame speaks from deep within: you aren't worthy of this. My mind reels. Why, God? Why did someone do that for me?

And whispered to my heart are the words:

Because I AM LOVE.

Truth stirs in my belly and thankfulness pours out through my tears.

He. is. love.

Isaiah 53

Who believes what we've heard and seen? Who would have thought God's saving power would look like this?

The servant grew up before God-- there was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We thought he was scum.

But the fact is, it was our pains he carried

our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.

We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures.

But it was our sins that did that to him,

that ripped and tore and crushed him.

Our sins.

He took the punishment that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost. We've all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong, on Him.

On Him.

He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn't say a word. Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered, he took it all in silence. Justice miscarried, and he was led off. Did anyone really know what was happening? He died without a thought for his own welfare, beaten bloody for the sins of my people. They buried him with the wicked, threw him in a grave with a rich man, even though he'd never hurt a soul or said one word that wasn't true.

Still, it's what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain. The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he's see life come from it--

life, life, and more life.

And God's plan will deeply prosper through him.

Out of that terrible travail of soul, he'll see that it's worth it and be glad he did it. Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant,

will make many righteous ones, as he himself carried the burden of their sins. Therefore I will reward him extravagantly-- the best of everything, the highest honors--

because he looked death in the face and didn't flinch

because he embraced the company of the lowest. He took on his own shoulders the sins of many. He took up the cause of all the black sheep.

Help us to know your story, Lord.

absorbed

"suffering either gives me to myself or it destroys me.

if you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people."

Colossians 3: the message

" don't shuffle around, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things in front of you ... "

absorbed. If only I could say those words weren't for me. Truthfully, I am absorbed. I am absorbed in offenses. I am absorbed in anger and "it's not fair" thoughts.

"your old life is dead ... and that means killing off everything connected with that way of death ... "

Never would I have thought I came from a way of death. Truthfully, we all do in one way or another. The evil genius has set us each on self-destruct mode. Oh the joy of realization and insight and the revealing of the path to life. But this pathway is steep, narrow, windy, bumpy, somewhat undiscovered. The hardest way. The best way.

" dress in what God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline; be even tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive & forgive completely; and put on love. "

Truthfully, this used to be my favorite verse. Until I had to start living it in detailed ways, with specific people. I don't want to forgive. I don't want to be compassionate to those who've hurt me. I don't want to love them as freely as I've been loved.

news: I'm dying.

other news: it's a sorrowful process.

other, other news: there's hope for many good things to be born.

from Mr. Oswald (it's been a while)

" Perseverance means more than endurance-- more than simply holding on til the end. A saint's life in the hands of God is like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, but our Lord continues to stretch and strain, and every once in a while the saint says, "I can't take any more." Yet God goes on stretching until His purpose is in sight, and then He lets the arrow fly.

Entrust yourself to God's hands. Proclaim as Job did, "though he slay me, yet I will trust him."

There are areas in our lives where that faith has not yet worked in us-- places still untouched by the life of God. There were none of those places in Jesus' life. And there are to be none in ours.

If we will take this view, life will become one great romance-- a glorious opening of seeing wonderful things all the time. "