The Trouble With Dry Eyes

Late in the spring semester of my junior year of college, Tony Campolo spoke in chapel. I remember that day because it was the first time since I’d returned from studying abroad that I didn’t get angry with the speaker. I didn’t cringe at exhortations to personal holiness or grit my teeth against “Jesus wants to be your best friend” appeals because Tony didn’t talk like that.

Instead he told a heart-wrenching story about restoring the dignity and childhood of young prostitutes, little girls, in Haiti by buying them ice cream and watching Disney movies instead of buying their bodies.  If only for the night, he showed them love and compassion. 

As he told the story, I cried tears of empathy.  

This tear-stained service signaled the first sprinkles in a series of salty manifestations of the heart movements that ultimately pointed me to God.

From then on, I cried at every story of sacrificial love and restoration and reconciliation that came across my ears.

The first time a friend casually told me about the transformational work of Plant With Purpose, I blubbered like a mother at a wedding.

Eventually this stirring led me back to belief in God, the outrage I felt at injustice pointing to a God of justice and love. My own desire to see things be made new became a testament to the One who makes all things new.

I came to see this passion as the proof of God working in me.

I still see it that way. I still believe God allowed me to experience a bit of His love for the poor and forgotten. I still consider it the greatest gift ever given to me to use my skills and talents and time to support families as they break free from a vicious cycle of poverty.

I know that ending my time at Plant With Purpose does not mean I no longer care about the poor or that I’m selfish awful person (although sometimes I find myself fighting those lies).

But a week out of quitting my job at Plant With Purpose and a year out of feeling burned out by the work that I used to enjoy so passionately, I have found myself perplexed.

Where is God when I am no longer a part of this redemptive work?
Where is God when I’m no longer moved to tears, when passion gives way to apathy?
If my passion pointed to God, does my apathy point to an absence of God?
How do I know He is here when I don’t feel that passion? When my compassion meter feels broken?
Will I ever be passionate again?

Honestly, these last few weeks have been filled with doubt. Not necessarily in my belief in who God is, but in my own ability to hear from God, to decipher His voice. I don’t know how He speaks to me outside of my identity as Aly Lewis, Staff Writer and Grants Specialist. I don’t know how or when He will restore my passion. There are a lot of things I don’t know, and I don’t like it one bit.

I’ve been praying for confirmation and validation that I’m making the right move, that He has good things planned for me in Guatemala, that He will restore my joy. But all I’ve heard and felt has been silence.

And in silence, in isolation, fear festers.

But this weekend, this blessed weekend, I was reminded that I am not alone. That I am not on this journey alone and that I don’t have to hear from God alone.

It was pure gift and that’s all I’m going to say for now. You will have to check back tomorrow to read about the incredible send off my friends-who-are-like-family gave me this weekend, and how I was reminded that—thankfully—“hearing from God” has never been a solitary thing for me.  

See you tomorrow! 

Still Here

I want to write about joy. I want to write about being filled. I want to write about how much I trust God. I want to write about new and exciting and broader intellectual and social issues like Rachel Held Evans' current series on egalitarianism and the ever thoughtful and ridiculously well read and well articulated, Tim Hoiland. 

But I don’t feel it right now. It’s been a struggle to blog lately because my story is the same. My struggles the same. My thoughts the same.

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’m still here. I’m a broken record, a radio tuned to one channel only: the waiting.

I’m still here, enveloped in the darkness waiting for light. Weeping tears waiting for joy. Mourning the loss of burnout and waiting for dancing.

I'm still reminding myself that He will restore my joy. I’ve written about it and written about it and, quite frankly, I’m sick of it.

Bucket List Day 20: Lunch at Boomerangs

I’ve embarked on challenges at work (like today's lunch at Boomerang's where they serve burgers as big as your head--check it out!), a creativity program at home, a Bucket List for my time left in San Diego, yet I still feel trapped, stuck in the waiting, tied to the tension of transition.

Much to my cynical chagrin, I have a habit of turning posts like these around. I’ll write the bad so I can get to the good. I write the beauty into the ashes. I surprise even myself with my optimism, with the hope that will shine its face in the darkest corners of my life.

But today I don’t want to turn it around. I just want to say I’m still here, still waiting. Not farther along than I hoped I’d be. Not reaping the innumerable benefits of my burnout blasters. Not filled with grace and gratitude and every other Ann Voskamp virtue I have tried unsuccessfully to cultivate.

Today I am simply still here.

Maybe the hope I need today, the only hope I’ll ever need, is knowing He’s still here when I’m still here.

He’s with me when I’m stuck and when I’m stubborn. He’s with me when I drag my feet and when I cling to comfort even as I demand excitement and adventure. He’s with me when I can’t move or am waiting to move or simply have become too tired to even think of making a move.

So, friends, I am sorry to admit that I am still here, but I will cling to the hope that He is still here, too.

***

And, because I am still here, I will offer up yet another Psalm with promises of restored joy and of renewed laughter. I will focus yet again on the promise He has given me. I don't know about you, but I definitely need to hear it again. 

Psalm 126 

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dreamed.
 Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
 The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.

 Restore our fortunes, Lord,
like streams in the Negev.
 Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
 Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.

A Call From Grace

I quietly slid the door closed and buried my hands in my pockets, making my way along the maze of sidewalk in the darkness. I paced back and forth in front of the stacked silver mailboxes, like a confined polar bear at the zoo. Finally, hands shaking, I flipped open my phone and scrolled to his name.

I had been haunted with the nagging feeling that I should call him for weeks. And it was getting worse. You know the feeling—the same tug on the back of your mind that exhorts you to finally get your oil changed, switch your laundry, and text your mother-in-law. The voice of should and ought and must.

I thought the voice was God’s, calling me to connect, to reconcile, to be the better person. Calling me to call.

As I scrolled to his name, heart racing, a trickle of sweat running down my back, I froze. I scanned the letters of his name that once made my heart leap, and the tears pricked hard at the back of my eyes, hurt balling up in my throat.

The ought to voice screamed louder, screamed “DO IT!”

I dropped my phone, dropped my body to the sidewalk and yelled back “Just give me a minute!”

Huddled on the curb, I forced the breath in and out of my lungs. Forced my hands to still. And in the stillness, a different voice spoke:

“Aly, I love you whether or not you make this phone call.”

Not the voice of ought, but the voice of Love. The voice of Grace.

I wasn’t accustomed to hearing voices so kind, so clear. I knew it was not my own.

I stared wide-eyed into the sky, the dark, soaking in grace. When, minutes or hours later who knows, I pocketed my phone and walked back to my apartment, the phone call still unmade, all outward signs pointing toward failure, I didn’t care.

I was a different person. A person who was just beginning to tune her ears to the voice of Love, but a new creation nonetheless.

I did eventually call him, and we met up to reconcile, albeit somewhat unsatisfactorily. But that’s not really the point. That night I learned something, knew something, I perhaps had never known before: I was loved in that moment and in all moments. Even if I didn’t make the phone call that night. Even if I never made the call.

Even if I never obey the prodding of his Spirit, I am loved.

I am loved. I am loved. I am loved.

Daily I am a new creation. Daily I am learning to retune my ears. To depend on Grace to call me out of my own ego and frenzied justifications and call me in to relationship with the One who loves.