A Breeze and a Song

Today is a sad day. It’s a morning for praise music and quietness. I have a whole schedule planned out for the next three weeks of this blog. But life has invaded this week.

Yesterday morning at church a friend handed my dad two of those rubber bracelets. They were meant to serve as a reminder to pray for a member of our church family struggling with very aggressive cancer. Just after he handed the bracelets to us my mom lead the band in the song Fail Us Not by 1000 Generations. These words hit me in the gut every time they sing them. In light of what is happening with our friends the Coles and in our own family this week this song has become something of a safety blanket for me. If you’re the praying kind I know our family and the Cole family would greatly appreciate your prayers.

Fail Us Not

Failure doesn’t phase you.
Worry doesn’t win.
Loss doesn’t leave you afraid to start again.
Our sin doesn’t shock you.
Our shame doesn’t shame you at all.
Mistakes do not move you.
Terror doesn’t tame.
Death doesn’t doom you to life in the grave.
Our suffering doesn’t scare you.
Our secrets won’t surprise you at all.
At all.

There is nothing above you.
There is nothing beyond you.
There is nothing that you can’t do.
There is no one beside you.
There is no one that’s like you.
There is nothing that you can’t do.
Whatever will come, we’ll rise above.
You fail us not, You fail us not.
No matter the war, our hope is secure.
You fail us not, You fail us not.
You fail us not.

Hatred doesn’t hide you.
Evil doesn’t ail.
Despair can’t disguise you and tell you that you fail.
Our doubt doesn’t daunt you.
Our darkness won’t defeat you at all.
At all.

There is nothing above you.
There is nothing beyond you.
There is nothing that you can’t do.
Whatever will come, we’ll rise above.
You fail us not, You fail us not.
No matter the war, our hope is secure.
You fail us not, You fail us not.
Whatever will come, we’ll rise above.
You fail us not, You fail us not.
No, You fail us not.
You fail us not.

You fail us not.

Pain & Hope/Light & Dark

When I heard Rob Bell speak late last year I had my trusty journal in my lap the whole time, armed with a pen, so that I could write down the many things he would say that I knew I would want to remember later. There are days that I’m grateful for my bizarre love of journalling… today is one.

I was just flipping through the  bound home of my errant thoughts and found the transcript from Drops Like Stars and stumbled upon this bullet: Michelangelo said – David was inside the marble the whole time clamoring to get out. The quotes I’ve found online from that famous sculptor range from, “I just chipped away the pieces that didn’t look like David” to “I saw an angel in the marble and chipped away til I set him free.” But something about the way I wrote down what Rob said seems more poignant.

This week has been an interesting one. At times I’ve felt very much the pain of the chisel chipping pieces away from me. Other times I’ve been grateful for the release of dropping something that is not really a part of me. The release has come in several forms: talking to precious friends, focusing my heart and mind on positive things, reshaping personal goals.

Sunday morning, in the midst of an Easter service a quote from Nietzsche popped into my brain – “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.” This reconnects with another idea from Rob Bell via DLS when he talked about the first century Christians knowing Christ as the God who put on flesh and suffered alongside them, I thought of Garden State when the three scream into the fault. I imagine Jesus, in a raincoat, screaming with me.

Pain is real and scary. Sometimes it is easier to shove it down, use anger as an outlet, and pretend that everything is fine minus the irregular outbursts. A good friend urged me not to settle with this solution. So, I’ve been trying. And it’s tricky, but baby steps are taking me forward. I’m not a Theologian yet, and I’m not close to understanding the mysteries of God, I just try to make sense of the themes I see in my life. So, there was Good Friday and then there was Easter, and I’m somewhere a little bit in between.

To add a quick turn to this post, that sounds pretty bad, I will say that today was awesome. I got to spend time with a friend of almost a decade: Adam Darragh. We went to see the play he wrote Married and Ravenous in New York performed by some students from his alma mater which was awesome. And we talked for a bit and watched Cool Runnings and watched a bunch of students do team-building activities. I suggest you read about his adventures & musings. And I still managed to keep this under 500 words….