Saguaros

It is summertime here in the desert.  The Saguaros are flourishing and there are various other small green things growing around on the ground.  The dust is blowing and obscuring surrounding areas.  But it is the Saguaros that capture my heart.  The Saguaros stand tall and proud and have so much character packed in their spiny arms.  The wind whips my loosened hair into my eyes and I brush it back and tuck it sloppily into my ponytail.  The sun touches the horizon and I look up from my sketchbook and wait for the sunset.  My bare feet rest underneath my knees warmed by the desert rock I sit Indian-style on.  A lizard scuttles past blithely unaware of the larger world around him.  I smile as he darts underneath the rock and then out into the desert.  A hawk cries lazily circling above me looking for something to dive onto and devour.  I smile as the sun sinks lower into the horizon.  The colors take my breath away; rich golds, bright pinks, deep purples, light yellows and the fiery dark orange of the sun, all on display for the world to see.  The Saguaros look even greener in this sunset light and I can really see the spikes jutting out from their trunks.  I sketch a few more quick studies and wait for the next phase of the sunset.  The second to last phase of the sunset the yellows and golds and pinks are pretty much gone, but the purples have deepened and are nearly black and they are joined by a dark, sapphire blue and a little jolt of gold from what’s left of the sun.  The Saguaros look nearly black at this point and I can only see the root of the spikes now so I sketch a few more studies and look up eagerly waiting for the sun to finally disappear below the horizon.  I look up to see if I can find the hawk but it appears that he found his dinner and ran.  The lizard is long gone but there is a lazy scorpion doing a scorpion dance in front of me and a sidewinder a few feet from the scorpion winding his way away to somewhere.  I hear an owl hoot in the distance and imagine that the sidewinder is putting a little bit of hast in his gitalong now even if the scorpion continues his dance.  I watch him a little longer to see how much closer he is going to get to my shoes before I have to shoo him away, but he doesn’t get any closer and I go back to watching the sun set.  It dips below the horizon shedding its last colors as I look up and watch the last jolt of gold disappear from sight and watch as the purple and blue blend into the black of night.  I make one last sketch of the Saguaros.  They look like forbidding sentinels now all dark and tall and arms outstretched towards the sky as if warning the traveler to back slowly away.  I tuck my loose hair into my ponytail yet again and slowly unfold my legs.  I set my sketchbook down next to me and bring my knees up under my chin adjusting myself for the best view of the stars coming out to play.  The air grows cold and I feel a few bats flitter by my head.  I close my eyes and breathe in that cool summer desert scent and smile.  The first stars begin to twinkle at each other and slowly they all come out for a game of “let’s see who can twinkle the most.”  I sit there for about another hour watching them in their slow dance across the sky and let my legs down onto the ground carefully.  I grab my flashlight and shine it down onto my shoes, carefully examining them for desert nightowls that may have crawled in their looking for a nice hidey-hole.  There isn’t anything there tonight so I slip them on and grab my sketchbook.  I walk slowly towards my Jeep, shining my little flashlight on the ground in front of me, carefully listening for any of the bigger night-time creatures that haunt this little piece of desert.  I climb into my Jeep and start it up carefully negotiating the terrain that leads back to the main road.  Eventually I find my way back in town and drive blissfully through its empty streets.  The streetlights and the lights shining from doorways add a mysterious air to the sleepy little desert town of Saguaros.

I am not Her

This is what this brought out.  The above video/song by Hawk Nelson just seemed fitting.

I am not her.  I can tell you who she was.  She wasn’t strong yet, she was vulnerable, she was sweet, and she was willing to do anything to BELONG.  She wanted to belong so badly, to feel that sweetness that comes with people accepting you.  She did everything they wanted so she could belong.  They said don’t listen to secular music, she said Ok and destroyed her CDs.  They said believe and anything will happen, she said Ok and believed so hard.  They said be there all the time, she said Ok and was there faithfully.  They said share with others, she said…ok? I guess.  They said find your gifts within this place, she said Ok and searched her heart and soul to try and find her “gift”.  They said live your life for God and don’t care what the world thinks, she said Ok and read her bible in school and yearned to go into ministry.  They said delve into the Word (within our limits) she said Ok and delved.  They said seek after God, she said Ok and sought after them.  They said love God and you will be happy, she said Ok and didn’t understand why she still cried.  They said obey God and good things will come your way, she said Ok and didn’t understand why it didn’t happen like they said.  They said give and you will receive a hundredfold, she said Ok and gave what she had and didn’t receive what they said she would.  They said work hard for us and you will be rewarded, she said Ok and was puzzled when they set up new obstacles.  They said we love you for you, she said Ok and was torn apart when they didn’t understand her.  They said pray and you will be healthy, she said Ok and prayed so hard and was still sick.  They said you are a new man in Christ, she said Ok and couldn’t figure out why nothing felt changed.  They said you are a new man in Christ, she said Ok and couldn’t figure out why she still sinned.  They said the old has passed away and become new, she said Ok and watched for the new to come.  It didn’t.  She just wanted them to accept her.  She tried so hard.  Tried to fit in and be true to herself all at the same time.  She tried so hard. 

It was a hard time within her family and she loved them but the novelty of belonging to an outside group was too much to stay away from.  And she felt like she was a part of something really important and big and for a girl who dreamed of doing something big with her life and finally not feeling invisible it mattered.  Because she did feel invisible.  It wasn’t her family’s fault.  They tried when they could.  And really it wasn’t them that made her first feel invisible.  It was the school kids.  I’m not sure they did it on purpose either.  But she was awkward and quiet and dressed “funny” and was bored in school and was lacking in courage, so they did their own thing and she was left to wonder why no one talked to her.  All of her friendships up to that point had been things beyond her control.  She’d never had to work at it.  It was God who set up the situations so she could have friends.  And the friendships came naturally and easily.  As if it was meant to be.  But she felt invisible if that friend wasn’t around.  And so when they made her feel like she was Chosen it made her think that finally she had found a group of people where she wouldn’t feel invisible.  It was a heady sensation to say the least.  So she tried a thousand times harder to continue to belong and be visible to them.  It couldn’t last, she was giving up too much of herself, she was giving up too much of what God wanted her to be.  She didn’t see it coming though, she continued to feel as though she was missing something vital but couldn’t figure it out.

Perhaps she was naïve and refused to see what others saw but she wanted to believe she was a part of something pure and important and that others just didn’t understand what she felt.  And some of them didn’t, there were those people who just didn’t think it was possible to see what she had seen and felt what she had felt.  And that hurt the most.

She felt God’s presence in a way she hadn’t before, He became real to her for the first time.  She saw people get healed, heard people speak in tongues and heard others interpret it right there, she saw people fall to their knees because God’s presence was so heavy they couldn’t stand, and I don’t care what anyone says or thinks it was real.  But more than that she felt the power of God flow through her and it was intoxicating more than alcohol ever would be for her.  She learned.  She saw.  She felt.  God. 

But things were perverted.  God became something more like a genie and less like the God she felt.  He was only there to make sure your life turned out magically sickness free, debt free, worry free, guilt free and full of money and insane happiness.  He was no longer God who is without boundaries and wants to make sure you learn how to be the you He sees.  But, wait, it got worse for her.  Because more than that, certain things from the Bible were twisted other than the “give and you shall receive…a hundredfold in return” verse which was used to justify yearning after impossible wealth but the faith concept was twisted and the entire thing was laid on her shoulders, if something she prayed for didn’t come to pass it was because she didn’t have enough faith, it cut her deep because she believed and prayed so hard.  I think I may hate her for believing that because logically it doesn’t make sense but at the same time I want to punch the people who convinced her of this because it hurt her so much that a few years later she would stumble upon verses about everyone being given a measure of faith and shout “Aha!  See they were wrong!”  And it made her mad.  She knew that sometimes things happen beyond one person’s control, she’d seen enough of that so far, with her Grandmother’s illness, problems between siblings and parents, one parent’s nearly fatal car accident…those were things she couldn’t control, they just happened.  In her own life she suffered from sickness a lot, underdeveloped kidneys, damaged tonsils and adenoids and it didn’t matter how hard she believed or how much she prayed those were things that wouldn’t be fixed without intervention from a parent or a medical professional.  God put them there for that reason.  But she still felt like anytime she was sick it was because she simply didn’t believe or have the faith that she could be healthy all the time.  Every time she got sick it was a personal failure of faith.  And she felt God less and less and felt chains more and more.  But she still wanted to belong so she continued to try; she nearly became an extremist, nearly.  One of the few things that she never fully accepted was their policy of sharing with others.  She never felt comfortable approaching people and telling them about God.  It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the gift she had or wasn’t joyful about it or didn’t feel it to the depths of her soul how blessed she was by God’s grace to be saved – she just didn’t understand why she had to share it with strangers on the street.  She knew how those people were looked at and she knew she wasn’t like that.  In her mind it just wasn’t an effective method for her and she had watched her parents for years simply live life and make a difference to others without ever handing them a pamphlet or little Bible.

But they told her to pray about it, to pray for God to give her the strength and courage to do that; she prayed that she’d never have to do that.

It wasn’t until another family in that place had a problem with the giving that things began to fall apart for her.  Her parent’s reached out to this family and told this family that they believed the same thing about giving and that despite what they said at that place it wasn’t wrong.  Her parents said that they had never wavered on that belief and had disagreed with that place from the beginning on that principle.  They heard about this conversation and they didn’t like it, they didn’t like it at all.  So their answer was to stop talking to her parents.  Because it was obvious they weren’t going to change her parent’s minds.  She was confused by this behavior and she didn’t see anything negative about what her parents believed.  But the tide had turned and things wouldn’t be the same in her mind.  It was made clear to her by her parents that school was very important and that she needed to give 100% and improve her grades, she agreed with them but they thought that if the doors were open it didn’t matter what homework or previous obligations she had she should be there.  She told them she couldn’t do that.  And she was asked.  In front of all her friends from that place.  They all said yes, she said she was sorry but she couldn’t commit all of her time to what they wanted.  She said no.  That wasn’t ok with them.  It upset her but I only remember her laughing about the sheer ridiculousness of it.  What this place was doing was no longer the most important thing in the world to her, she had begun to realize that in order to achieve what she wanted to achieve (or even reach the level of success they idealized) she needed school.  When it finally crashed all the way down, when the straw finally broke the camel’s back, when they made her feel more invisible than anyone previous to that had and at the same time gave a speech that was clearly aimed at her and all her faults and sins, when the wolf finally got a big enough breath and blew down that house she cried.  She cried so hard.  She cried so long.  She discarded everything.  She cried so hard and so long and so much and was angry.  She was so angry that when someone else brought up that place she found herself spewing hateful and bitter rhetoric all over everything and everyone.  It filled up her little body and tore at her heart.  It’s understandable to me how she could distance herself so much from everything they had taught including things they hadn’t taught.  I don’t blame her for that; she made my faith stronger from that.  But she never quite moved past the hurt and poison and rejection that she received from them.

So when she found a new group and they seemed different she was wary, hesitant and distrustful.  She tried not to be.  At one point she may have succeeded but then she moved.  And things moved on.  They stopped talking to her.  And the first thing she thought was “what did I do wrong?”  She has always blamed herself more than she blamed them.  She always thought it had to have been because something was wrong with her or that she didn’t do what she was supposed to.  But I’m not sure I agree with her anymore.  I’m not sure she did do anything wrong.  She tried to do what they wanted.  She tried to be what they wanted.  Is that wrong?  She wanted to belong, she felt like she was part of something important and she enjoyed it.  That still scares me, the fact that she enjoyed it, was that wrong?  Some days I think it was, other days I don’t think it was, but I can never seem to make up my mind.  She did experience some amazing things there, things that were mind-blowing and were undeniably God.  But they were so few and far between.  And since then she has seen grace so strong that she cannot stand, she has experienced love beyond her understanding, she has felt God so strongly that she would swear all she had to do would be to turn her head fast enough and she would see Him, she has felt His arms encircle her and has cried on His shoulder, she has felt His gentle nudging and His healing and His love, love, love, love, love.  She has seen things happen that shouldn’t have happened they just shouldn’t have happened.  She has seen herself at the bottom of valleys and has marveled at how strong she is through God.  She has marveled at things that never seemed amazing to her before, like waking up in the morning, like writing her stories, like walking, like seeing, like one breath followed by the next, like one heartbeat followed by another, like laughing at nothing.  She has changed.  Can I honestly look at her and say that the experience there didn’t benefit her in many ways?  No I cannot. 

Yes they hurt her.  Yes they twisted things around and she is still working at un-twisting them.  Yes they made it her fault.  Yes they made her feel invisible.  Yes history repeated itself in her life and her next group.  Yes they caused her to question the very existence of God.  Yes they have left a mark that shows itself upon entrance to every church building.  Yes they did things that were wrong.  Yes she could have done things differently.  And having felt her broken heart if I could go back and hold her I would.

But it’s time to forgive her.  It’s time to stop laying all the blame at her feet.  If I can forgive them (and I have) then I can forgive her.  I can forgive me.  I forgive me.