Cinderella and the hope of Spring!

I have never been a tidy person. I have too many thoughts and get distracted in the middle of cleaning. I do crave order though, and every so often, I go crazy and clean everything like a fiend. My overwhelming memory of childhood is my mum saying “concentrate on the job at hand” I could not do it. It remains a challenge for us, when we are together, she epitomizes task oriented and I leave things like dishes half done; get partly dressed and then start reading a book. In the months after my dad died, and my relationship ended, it became even worse. There seemed little point in anything, let alone keeping a tidy home. Cups began to grow mold, laundry spilled everywhere, and my bedroom floor was covered in clothes and papers. The fierce grief and loss of the first few months of the process had an almost epic exhilaration. The pain was so raw and so complete that I produced massive amounts of adrenaline to cope with it. As the days passed, and the initial feelings subsided, the euphoria of my ability to cope diminished as well. For a month I kept myself as busy as possible, this became exhausting. I stopped planning ahead and after a massive ice storm, I just stopped. The massive feelings had subsided and I was left with a feeling of nothing, an emptiness; a kind of idle pointlessness. I felt little about anything, happy or sad. A kind of emotional hibernation. I did the things I absolutely had to, and little else.

One day I woke up early, and decided to pass the time by watching a film. I made coffee and settled myself down on the couch to lose myself in the glittering world of the Moulin Rouge. As I was slipping the DVD out of it’s case, I snapped a little too hard and the DVD snapped from top to bottom. The film was unwatchable. I was done for the day. I left my coffee cup on the table and went back to bed. I huddled, still, defeated, under the comforter (a poorly named American term, I prefer smotherer) for several hours. It was an end of winter day and the birds were singing. Honestly, at first I wanted them to shut up. It was the first time I remember hearing them that Winter, the persistent bird song awakened something in me. The Winter was not dead yet, but the birds were singing. It was a reminder, a natural hint, that there could be Spring again. There certainly was not an abundance of Spring joy in my apartment that afternoon; but there was a thought, that perhaps, everything would not always be completely frozen. I would not always be numb. I would not always want to hide. The thought chiseled at my icy, numb heart, melted at it a little.

The birds were singing and much like the Cinderella cartoon they pulled the covers back from my bed. That's not quite the truth, I lay in there feeling warm and comfortable; but I came to realize, I had a need. This was the first time in a while I had felt anything close to an emotion, and it was a completely out of character one. I felt a need to clean the kitchen. I started by gathering the filthy cups and plates from around the house. I took them into the kitchen and made a start. I had a purpose, an objective, and I started. It took me about an hour and a half to bring order to that little part of my world. It was definitely a cathartic experience. This preparation, this I looked at the warmth of my bed many times but the hibernation it offered seemed almost stifling now. An unnecessary protection, like fur coats in July. 

I was in a church choir growing up, so I have been to many, many weddings. We got paid £3 a service for weddings, it seemed like a good deal. Hymns were a staple of the service, and Great is thy Faithfulness was a top 3 choice. I still know all the words. It was fun to see the bride sneaking a smile at her husband and thinking:

“Great! This great thing has happened and great is his faithfulness.”

Maybe it was association, or the delightful way the bride sneaked a grin, or my teenage understanding but it has stuck in my head and in my heart that Great is thy Faithfulness should be written like this

GREAT! Is thy Faithfulness.

In my mind, at that moment, this was a statement of the faithfulness of God in the great things. When good things happen to us this proves God’s faithfulness. This is not incorrect, however, it is not a full picture of the faithfulness of God. It is not always in our triumphs, though He is certainly there, that we understand the vast nature of God’s faithfulness. I find it a little alarming when Christians put a lot of weight on situations ending positively as the hallmark of God’s faithfulness. I am not a prophet of doom, but actually God’s faithfulness is profoundly present when the outcome is unplanned or disappointing. As I was scrubbing the counter tops that afternoon I felt the weight of God’s Faithfulness as vast as mountains in my soul. Here in this moment, as close to depression as I have ever come, I felt his weighty and faithful presence. Great and vast like mountains. Strong and promising in my weakness. In the ability to awaken myself from emotional hibernation, God’s profound faithfulness was ministering to my disappointment and grief. His Faithfulness is vast, it is actually GREAT. There still wasn’t unending joy but the idle pointlessness subsided slowly replaced with a grave delight in the vast faithfulness of God. In short, there was the hope of Spring.

The Shoreline of the Invisible

As far as you can hold your confidence.

Do not allow your confusion to squander

The call which is loosening

Your roots in false ground

That you might come free

From all you have outgrown

What is being transfigured here is your mind,

And it is difficult and slow to become new

The more faithfully you can endure here

The more refined your heart will become

For your arrival in your new dawn.

                                                                                  John O’Donoghue

I love to look at the ocean, being near water brings joy to my soul. I love that game of standing on the edge of the shore line. Inching yourself closer and closer to get a little bit wet and then running away. That waiting and running, falling and giggling. Pretending you can predict the rhythm and power of the vast water. It is the bread and butter of holidays. If you haven’t played that game and got soaking wet you are doing something wrong.

A few months ago, I sat on a beach, in England and looked at the immensity of the north sea. It wasn’t a particularly bright or sunny day. I had a coat on. I sat and drank an amazing cup of coffee, and ate a delectable brownie. I felt, in a good way, very small, as I looked at the ocean. It contains so much power and rhythm. I looked at the beach and journalled for several hours. The space, distance and disturbance between here, the very real right now of our human experience and the Kingdom of heaven, where the real and the right now, are perfected seemed to grow smaller and smaller. There was something transcendent in the rhythm of the ocean. Knowing the unknown moment exists, when the energy of the tide will shift, and waiting in anticipation for that moment. There is an exquisite anguish in that transitory expectation. It refines away the roots that no longer nourish, and the patterns that now cause harm, and the armour somebody else tried to put on you. It is the moment, where if we can endure faithfully, rather than rushing to fix things, our hearts will be refined in a way that constant activity cannot accomplish.

I have been through some transitions in  my life. Big ones, and small ones and they are never easy. It isn’t easy. The waiting is terrible. The unknown, is challenging, nobody likes a cliffhanger and yet that is what keeps us watching and waiting. I tuned into Lost faithfully every week for seven years, mainly because the cliffhangers, thank you J J Abraham, were enthralling. I have begun to realise that when the bible says our hearts are restless till we find our rest in Him. It’s because He is the only constant. We crawl, walk or run through life along a shoreline of experiences. An invisible sea washes over us. In this constant interim, we call life, with an eye on heaven and our feet in the very real, actual world we find our rest in the one who calls us to walk, as closely as we can to the shoreline of invisibility.

An ache of discomfort grows in the interim, some of the roots we are familiar with no longer nourish. The next moment is what we are waiting for. The next moment comes and then transition follows again.

So the interim, is a place where God dwells, a place where God calls us to dwell also.

We live in a constant interim, a constant understanding of waiting on God, understanding that what our hearts yearn for, more than anything else, is a place we can only glimpse in this life. I have become increasingly comfortable with the mystery of God’s will and at the same time more assured than ever of the goodness of his heart. This tension is the interim where joy and contentment dwell. This causes me to be at peace when relationships hurt, when work has failed and everything seems to be falling apart. One of my favourite poets penned these immortal words and they ring true in this interim

No Coward soul is mine,

No trembler in this world’s storm troubled sphere.

I see heaven’s glories shine

And faith shines equal arming me from fear.

There it is, right there! The truth that our world is storm troubled, but the greater reality that the heaven’s shine brighter. Emily Bronte walked along that invisible shoreline and left a trail for me to follow!

The constant interim is the call of the Christian. Abraham lived his entire life in Faith, longing for a building whose architect was God. He completed decades of faithful service in hope for something he would never see. As Christians, we live on the shoreline of the invisible. Knowing that what we see is barely a pin prick in the tapestry of eternity. We are desperate to make our pin prick count. That the shoreline of the invisible might be visible to one who walks behind us.