My neighborhood

I've finally started roaming the streets of East Atlanta with my camera in hand.

Composing through the lens of a camera settles my heart like few other things in this world.

family

I've been meaning to post this video for weeks. For some reason I almost cry every stinking time I watch this.



Renovation Church - Atlanta, GA from Verge Network on Vimeo.

the strength of my heart

Since I moved to Atlanta, I've been deeply burdened by the broken places within the city. It is hard to go anywhere without seeing someone in deep need. And although that forces me to feel, sometimes I feel like it bruises me. The city is raw. I love that about it, but it can be dark. Too dark for me to bear alone.

We lost a member of our church family this last week. A ten year old boy from Trestle Tree was run over by a car outside his apartment. I say church family and I really do mean it. The heart of our church was ripped open. I feel like I lost a little brother. I brother I didn't know well enough but I loved deeply.


I'm angry. The sadness is under my skin and I can't get it out. I went on a long walk today because physical exhaustion is the best way for me to keep it in check for now. I find myself wanting to shatter something, because it feels like the city around me is crumbling and there is nothing I can do about it.


There is nowhere to direct my anger. It was an accident. But I can't seem to let go of the truth that this sort of accident would never have happened to me. It makes me feel privileged and naive. And unworthy of mourning.


I think that is one of the strongest lies I believe in times of grief. I become convinced that I'm not supposed to mourn, when mourning is clearly good. I live in a broken down world with plenty of reason to mourn. If I ignore that truth, I ignore the grace that was given me to escape this place. And, in turn, I ignore the goodness of my God.


In the last three months, my deepest joy has come from my time with the kids from Grant Park. And now, my deepest pain. 
I don't dare ask Him why. I know He'll tell me when I'm ready to know. I don't dare direct my anger towards Him. He has proved to bring the most beautiful hope from my deepest grief. I know it won't be different this time.


But, Lord, this is not what I wanted. I hoped for so much more. I wanted Quay here. I wanted to watch him grow up in the church. Watch him become a man after your own heart. I wanted to know him, to encourage him, to rejoice and mourn with him. I never wanted to mourn over him.


I'm angry at the brokenness in this world. Everything within my spirit rejects this reality. 


But there is a glimmer of hope. I have not been this reliant on my God in a long time. He is the only one that can sort out this tragedy. Without him, Quay fades away. This accident wins and there is nothing left but striving after the wind. Without him, the city crumbles into dust, the darkness rolls into my life and into my soul. But He is the strength of my heart.


He promises hope. He promises that He knows Quay. He watched him grow up. He knew his heart, He encouraged him, He rejoiced with him and He mourned with him. And now He mourns over Quay's death. But only for our sake.


I don't know what the Lord is doing. And I'm finally learning to be thankful for that. Every day with the kids from Trestle Tree is an irreplaceable gift. The Lord is doing a great work in Grant Park. Without a doubt.

Please, Lord, continue to redeem the broken parts of this city. It is darkness in our hands and I can't carry this. We can't carry this weight.

saying goodbye to Quay - sending off his favorite color balloons

You don't need strength to be strong.

I often forget that, even in this shattered world, we are not alone.

There is darkness around us but there is Light within us. He hasn't left us without Himself.

There is this Willy Wonka quote that just popped into my head which seems incredibly relevant all the sudden. "We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of dreams."

I think our God calls us to dream. And I think a lot of the time He brings us great joy by shattering those dreams. Shattered dreams can feel like failure and bring deep guilt, and feel pressure to deny that we ever had them in the first place.We can't lie to each other about pain. Hopelessness. Doubt. When we lie, we are saying that the Lord was not working in the details of the story.

I've written about this before - the power of our own stories. But I can't get it out of my head. So here I am again with the same words and the same heart, urging myself and the people I love to crack themselves open. To share their stories. Because when we don't we say a lot more about our disbelief in God than we realize.

This Sunday my pastor shared a little of his wife's story. He read a blog post that his wife wrote a year ago, not long after she was re-diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She wrote of the Lord's sovereignty and love, and her love for Him even in her illness. Her words were beautiful and real and I couldn't help but be thankful for the Lord's pursuit of her heart. I am encouraged to know from her faith that the darkness in this world does not win with a God like ours.

My pastor's wife also leads music at our church, and I couldn't take my eyes off her during the last two songs as she sang of the Lord's faithfulness and the hope of eternity with Him. It was like a punch in the face. I left fully convinced that the pain and sickness and hopelessness in this world  speaks more about His love for me than anything else. When this world fails, we have lost nothing. This shattered world was never meant to satisfy.

the whole story

It is easy for me to be cynical in this world. To look at the poverty and broken families in certain areas of Grant Park and believe the statistics. Many young men that grow up without fathers abandon their families later in life. Many men and women that grow up below the poverty line live the entirety of their life beneath it. But our God is bigger.


Today we organized a day camp for the kids of Trestle Tree. We split up into four teams and the kids played football, made crafts, fought over plastic bats....


I spent my day with the red team. A team of delinquents, really. We were the trouble makers, the rowdy ones. By the end of the day I was covered in sweat and melted face paint. But we played hard and I pray that some day, if not today, each of those kids realizes how deeply I want them to believe... even though I lost my temper once or twice.


Walking into the cafeteria for lunch today, I overheard my co-leader Dan talking to a five year old girl on our team. He was explaining the gospel in words she could understand. Speaking of how Jesus took the punishment for us because he loves us. And that taking the punishment meant that he had to die for us.


A few minutes later, Dan and I found the little girl weeping unconsolably. I scooped her up and carried her outside where Dan took her from me, explaining that she was upset because Jesus had died for her. I can't explain exactly where her tears came from -  they could have been joyful because of his love, but they seemed like deep sadness, guilt even. Guilt because she caused the death of someone who did not deserve it.


She sat on my lap during lunch and I was able to ask her a few questions. I asked her why she was sad and she explained that she wanted Jesus with her. I was excited to tell her he's coming back, and she was excited to hear it. She didn't realize that not only did Jesus die, but he also lived. (And yes, I now realize this was the perfect time to insert, "But He lives in our hearts..."Dang. I'm still learning).


Anyway, that got me thinking....


How often do I tell the wonderful news of the gospel without telling the second part of the story? The part this precious girl couldn't grasp. The part where He defeated death, resurrected, ascended, and promised his return.


When you ask a child about Jesus, chances are he'll say, "Jesus really cares about us. He died on the cross to save us from our sins." That is beautiful truth, but if you're listening closely there is a huge problem with those words.  The sentence leaves us with a dead God.


Maybe, we are so used to telling the story that we forget sometimes it doesn't make sense. And that's how you get a five year old girl weeping over a Man she never got to meet. But I think this runs deeper than this little girl's tears. I think it plays out in everyone's life. I know it plays out in mine.


I often live my life stuck on the darkness of the crucifixion, burdened with guilt. I live my life on Saturday, forgetting that Sunday is coming and with it the ultimate victory. The ultimate grace. It constantly surprises me how hard it is to live under grace. To accept the Lord's sacrifice and truly live in the freedom of it. But... that's how we worship, I suppose.

lights will guide you home

There was this beautiful, gracious woman that helped raise me. I lost her to disease over ten years ago, but Tuesday we will put her body in the earth and I am realizing, for the first time, how deeply I miss her. And how blessed I was to love her.

When I think of my grandmother, my mind first flashes to a rest stop, somewhere between Birmingham and Atlanta, where my parents handed me off to my grandparents for a week. I remember there was banana pudding and I remember knowing I was safe.

My grandparents' house was pretty much made for kids. Acres of land and woods with two large vegetable gardens, a chicken coop and a stream cutting through the middle of it all. The first thing I'd do once I arrived was run down to the stream to see if it had been raining and the water level was high. Floating boats down the stream was the best way to spend the afternoon.

There were sticky pads in her tub the shape of flowers. The carpet in the living room was orange and all the appliances in the kitchen were avocado. She kept potato chips, bread and ice cream sandwiches in her freezer and we never left her house after a visit without a bag of skittles and m&m's for the car ride. She used to say with complete conviction that ice cream is good for you because, of course, it's dairy. And she is the without a doubt the reason I love coffee ice cream.

I've never thought much about legacy. How when we die we leave a little of us behind in the people that we love. But she definitely did - children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren that long for the Lord largely because of the beautiful way in which she loved Him.

It's hard to write about her and feel like my words hold any meaning in regards to how deeply and how fiercely I miss her. She was there at the beginning of me and she is part of the reason I've known love. But for ten years I've longed for this day, in a lot of ways. And finally, the disease hasn't won. My grandmother is Home.

love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.

In books, when it rains or a big storm hits it almost always means the main character is changing. The rain signals renewal. It has rained a lot in the last couple days and I have found myself hoping that the Lord works that way - that he has written my story like a book and with the rain my heart will soon soften and change, at least a little.
_____________________

Sometimes, I can't help but wonder how much my theology has crippled my understanding of God.

It is easy for me to convince myself that my God is too busy for me, especially when I pay attention to all the ways I don't deserve Him. The truth is that He is involved in every happening in my life. He is there. But I see him too logically - I can't see how a God big enough to cup the universe in his hands cares enough about me to craft the moments of my life into a specific story. But I couldn't be more wrong.
My God is a poet.
My God is an artist.
My God has the time.

Still, this break down in belief can set everything off balance.
I get to believing that I owe God something in return for his son's death. His son underwent the worst human suffering in existence because of me, and I have the audacity to believe in His spare time He planned out the details of my life. Well, I am called to believe that.

But most times I believe I owe Him my happiness.

A number of years ago, I drove to Birmingham to attend a staff reunion for a camp I worked at the previous summer. Late one night, one of the girls I was good friends with asked me if I was happy. I replied, "I'm not convinced I am supposed to be." She laughed and said that was a total "Anna" response and the conversation moved on. But I still haven't forgotten it.

I honestly do not remember a time that I did not fight against my desire for happiness as if it was a weakness or a disease. Happiness seems needless and naive as I read scripture about persecution, suffering, and the inevitable hatred of those dedicated to the cause of Christianity. During the darkest times of my life I have known deep joy that is not of this world. But it is still nearly impossible for me to grasp the authenticity of joy apart from suffering, as if joy cannot exist without its opposite - despair. So... what happens when everything goes right? When I get the job I've have been praying for or I find out that I'm healthy? I feel guilty. Guilty for a life of comfort that my Lord never experienced on this earth. Guilty because I don't deserve it.

What I miss here is that the beauty and depth of Christianity lies in the distinctive ability of believers to feel joy and genuine happiness during times of suffering, persecution, and despair. That is why there is an emphasis on joy in suffering, not because it is the only authentic source of joy. You know, maybe joy can't exist without despair. But it does not have to be my despair. I don't have to earn my right to happiness. He died so I could have it for free. It breaks my heart...but it sets me free.

I rely so much on the beauty and joy in suffering that I forget the beauty and simplicity of blessings. I allow my theology to confuse my perception of the Lord's desires for me, and I get to thinking that when things are easy, when it isn't a battle to believe and to hope, the Lord has given up on me. I start to believe he only teaches me through suffering and during times of rest He has abandoned me.

We have a God who has called us on mission for him. But he has not called us into suffering to pay back the death of his son. He has called us there to experience the joy of his son's victory. And sometimes, he calls us into times of great joy and celebration for no reason other than that he loves us.

There is no shame in peace. There is no shame in claiming the blessings my Savior died to give me. The greater shame lies in denying them.

My God is a poet.