Sorting

I have been trying to publish this post for almost two weeks. My mind has been all over the place I have had trouble sorting out what it is I am actually thinking about, and what it is I need to say.

I wrote my grandmother a letter today. She won't be able to read it, and even if she could read it she would not know who sent it. My grandmother forgot my face when I was in high school. She forgot my name shortly after that. I wish I could remember the last time she looked me in the eyes and knew who I was. I wish a lot of things. I think wishing is okay- it reminds me of how much love there used to be.

My love can't heal people. I didn't realize I was trying to make it heal people until recently. And now I feel so small.

I can't love my friend into believing there is grace. I can't love him out of his depression. I can't love my sister out of the darkness she feels while working with patients who die everyday. I can't love away the fact that many of those patients won't be with her in paradise. I can't love my friend into accepting that her dad's depression is not her own fate. I can't love her into accepting God's forgiveness. I can't love my grandmother into remembering my father's touch when he holds her hand. I can't love her into recalling my face or my name. I can't love her mind out of its deep exhaustion and the pressure of disease. I can't love my friend's broken family into full restoration. My love can't heal. My hopes can't erase deep pain. My advice can't save, no matter how well-rooted in truth it is.

This isn't really an entry on the power of prayer. It could be... because, yeah, that's the point. But the other point is that its not me. Because if my love could heal those people, it still wouldn't be me. My love isn't that strong. But sometimes, more than anything in the world, I wish my love could change something. Because if it could, my grandmother wouldn't be sick. And the Lord's love doesn't seem to be doing the job.

I am small but prayer feels big. And I owe it to God, for all He has done to save me, to trust that I can't heal for a reason. That things are broken for a reason. And that he has come and will continue coming down into time and space to put all the broken things back together. (yeaaah Christ Church)

I wish I could talk to her right now. I want to know what she'd think of my summer. Of my roommates. Of the fact that I stopped running like my dad, that I didn't go to Auburn, that I don't know what to do next year.

My grandmother prayed for me every morning for the majority of my life. She woke up at 4am to do exercises, prepare breakfast, and cover our family in prayer. It's funny to me that I am just now understanding how necessary prayer is, years after one of the most God-fearing women I will ever know has forgotten my name. She taught me about prayer from the beginning, but I am just now getting it.

I should pray because it is the best way to love. Encouragement is helpful. Gifts are comforting. Compliments, hugs, all those things - the five love languages - they are all good. But praying for someone is the best I can do for them.

The only thing that really matters is sitting at the feet of Jesus.

I will pray huge things for my friends and won't doubt that they can be done.

On the shoulders of giants

These are quotes that made me think this summer. They are in order of awesome, and yet....not. Because words hit everyone differently.


Eustace- "In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
Ramadu- "Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of."
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis

“We must look at reality – look at it hard – ‘til at last we realize that there is no way out; ‘til we realize that we are children, that we are fools, that we are at heart conceited, stiff-necked rebels, who will get everything wrong, unless we are prepared to give up telling God what he should be like and what he should do; ‘til we realize that we can know only what God is pleased to tell us. We must listen and try to understand.”
The Goodness of God, John Wenham

"Not solidarity but fragmentation is the most visible quality of the way people relate to each other."
In the House of the Lord, Henri Nouwen

“When I see myself as a creature and a sinner in the presence of my incarnate creator crucified, I know that I can neither understand nor doubt."
ohh shoot, I forgot to write it down.

“In society and church alike we are heirs of the liberal over-emphasis on individualism.”
The Goodness of God, John Wenham

“When God endowed us with freedom of choice it involved the possibility of sin in all its horror – but even so, no converted man would wish to change his status to that of either an animal or a machine.”
The Goodness of God, John Wenham

"To participate in the real is to engage in something which inspires poetic awe."
Andrew Fellows

"Perfectionism is the hatred of the reality of being a limited person in an uncertain world."
lecture by Richard Winter

“To question is not to be unfaithful.”
T. S. Eliot

“Discipline is the gradual process of coming home to where we belong and listening there to the voice which desires our attention.”
In the House of the Lord, Henri Nouwen