If this is my biggest concern, I have nothing to worry about...

I decided after three years of not wearing my retainers and increasingly crooked teeth and an ever growing sense of guilt over the thousands of dollars my parents invested in braces while I was in high school...to start wearing my retainers again. Now I have a perpetual tooth ache, and a still imperfect smile. Humph.

Bridesmaid Dresses, Baby Birds, and a Broken Heart

..also bluegrass, bicycles, and being home.

Part 2

I suffer from apathy. This is a pretty huge problem on many levels...but especially critical when your job is based on feeling passionate about a need in the lives of other people. And it's not necessarily that I don't care at all. But I definitely don't care enough. I mean, there are lots of things we say we care about. I care about the environment. I care about political activism. I care about homelessness. I care about nuclear warfare. I care about being healthy and buying locally and getting out of debt. But we all have priorities...and things we really, really care about. Things that affect the way we live and the decisions we make.

So when it comes to the kids that I work with, I frequently feel convicted that I don't care as much as Jesus wants me to. I love them, but I know I am usually complacent with my love for them. Complacent with their hearts. And when I really think about it, complacency is not okay.

I don't think Christ is complacent in his love for me. I don't think he's okay with me being where I'm at. I know that he loves me...right where I am...no small print, no strings attached, no prerequisites. But that love -true love- is only love if it desires more for me. A parent loves their child immensely, just how they are in the present, but still desires change and growth and victory over struggles. Therefore, I'm thinking that's how he wants me to love other people. A love that is not content with the current state of affairs.

This is a love that is a bit foreign to our human way of thinking.

So, in the last year, I've found myself praying over and over and over again for God to help me not be complacent. To see people the way he sees people. To love people the way he loves people. To break my heart for the things his heart breaks for.

Just a little tip...don't pray for something like a broken heart without first considering the consequences. That is what I did. Because to be honest, when I prayed for those things...the seeing people and loving people and broken heart stuff...all stuff that sounds quite noble, I prayed for those things for that reason: because they sounded noble. I didn't give any serious thought to what the ramifications of such a request might be. I also didn't take God very seriously...I think I was thinking he wasn't going to deliver.

I was wrong.

Sometimes I imagine what God might be saying when he's working in my life...and this time it went something like this: "Oh, so you want to know what it feels like to love people? What it feels like to really love people who are hurting and broken and running from their only source of hope and freedom and light? Okay. Fine. I'll give you just a teeny, tiny glimpse...because that's all you can handle."

So just for the record...broken hearts hurt. They suck. For the first time in my life, over the last few weeks, I have felt a sincere, urgent sympathy and compassion and broken-ness and love for some of the kids I work with. I have wept and lost sleep and been discontented with their current state of affairs. With their need for Christ. And it has been a very good thing.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not cured of apathy. And I'm not claiming to suddenly have this superhuman ability to love people just like Jesus loves them. Like I said earlier, I think it's just this little sliver of what Christ's love is like. But if this is just a sliver, can you imagine the immensity of his love for us?

"This is but the fringes..." Shane & Shane

Bridesmaid Dresses, Baby Birds, and a Broken Heart

also...bluegrass, bicycles and being home.

Part 1
One of my favorite features of my little house in the woods is the wrap-around porch. From the wicker chairs on the south-facing side of the house, you look across the horse pasture at a grove of aspens, behind which are ponderosa pines and blue spruce covering a hill that rises to where the ridge meets the blue sky. It's pure Black Hills beauty at it's best. When I first moved into the house, I couldn't wait to sit on the porch in the mornings - drinking coffee, smelling the pines, watching the ridge change color with the rising sun, and listening to the birds...oh! It would be divine!

However, I quickly discovered that, though the porch is attached to my house, it is not mine. Nope. It belongs exclusively to a small black and white swallow who set up camp in the birdhouse directly above the wicker chairs. And she is violently opposed to my watching the ridge change color with the sunrise while sitting anywhere near her home. I tried on several occasions to be diplomatic about the situation...explained to her (while she repeatedly dive-bombed my head) that I meant no harm, that it was a big porch, that we could peacefully co-habitate the space. But she would have none of it. So I gave in and settled for the east-facing side of the porch. Fine. She can have the view of the pasture. I'll take the view of the...shed.

Well, after spending most of the month of June away from home, I thought maybe I would try again. With the exception of coming and going, I had not spent any time on my porch in several weeks and thought maybe that was adequate time for little Miss Birdie to reconsider her hostilities. So this morning I grabbed my cup of coffee and ever-so-stealthily slipped out the screen door and into the wicker chair. I maybe had three minutes of peace and quiet and the aroma of pines when all of a sudden, from across the pasture, came the angry bird...chirping and swooping for me to leave. Then I heard it: the tiniest little baby chirps coming from inside the birdhouse. Aha. She was not just an angry bird. She was an angry momma bird...just doing her job. Mmmm. Warm fuzzies. As I was getting up to vacate the premises, I spotted a little ball of gray fluff on the deck below the bird house. It was one of the baby birds who had fallen from the nest, and not survived.

Now, I know that in the grand scheme of things, this is only a minor tragedy, if that. But I felt this strange pang of sorrow over the situation. I suddenly felt like I was six years old...that I should scoop up the baby bird and go running to my mom. And then I felt annoyed. At God. In Matthew 10:29, Jesus said that not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the knowledge of the Father. So, my question is, why do they fall in the first place? If he knows all about it, then why can't he keep them from falling? Maybe it shouldn't matter to me so much, but it obviously matters to the momma bird, who was violently, instinctively protective of her babies.

And if he cares about baby birds, then what about Luke and Mary's baby Josh? If God sees baby birds fall, then I know that he sees the mysterious anemia that continues to plague Josh's little body. I know that he hears the fervent prayers of Luke and Mary, of myself, of friends and family across the country. I know he hears. But I don't know why he doesn't heal him.

I know he sees Riss and Jade...two little girls that he knit tightly into my heart. I know he sees them and their precarious circumstances...being tossed about like little leaves in the wind...never knowing where they will land next. I know he sees them. But I don't know why he doesn't rescue them.

I know some things, but there are many more I don't understand.

I apologize to the momma swallow for being a perceived threat to her precious babies. I apologize for the loss of her little one. And I take my coffee to the east porch.