In the Desert with My Tears - Thoughts on brokenness

I wrote these words at the pinnacle of a season of struggle.  Today's rain reminds me of the Truth the Shepherd and I discovered in the darkness.

July 21, 2012
There are times when all we have to offer God is our tears, when the brokenness of the world becomes clear and we grow weary and we grieve.  The healing of eternity feels so far away and every joyful moment we've experienced seems to fade into distant memory.  We live in the desert.  We grow angry with God and try to carry our burdens on our own, and when they become too much, we grow angrier still.  Then we finally drop the good Christian facade that says we're fine, and we cry out to God... and He answers our pounding fist with words of love.  That is freedom.  And so we water the desert with the tears we weep and God in His sovereignty causes a harvest to abound.  Oh marvelous mystery!

In the Desert with my Tears

The dust rises

In  clouds around me

To mock the cloudless sky

As my knees hit the ground

I'd cry

If I had the strength

But my eyes stay as dry

As my parched throat

My muscles ache

As I lie

Crumpled beneath the weight

Of the pain

I carry

Normally

I'd grit my teeth

And continue on my journey

But today

I simply

Can't

The sand is coarse against my skin

The sun is hot

But the anger in my heart

Burns even hotter

As I wonder

Where You are

And why you would call me

Here

To this place of pain

To this desert

When I can still taste paradise

And suddenly

The air grows thick with mystery

My fist hits the sand

There's so much I just

Can't understand

But You whisper to me

Softly

Words of love

And nothing more

I am angry with You, Lord!

And still You love?

The tears cannot be stopped

As they gently, quickly fall

And the weight of it all

Begins to lift

And everything I've missed

Becomes clear

I will water this desert

With my tears

And pray

That someday

A harvest will abound

From this parched and broken ground

For only You can satisfy

And bring fruit

From a land so dry

And hopeless

So here am I

In the desert with my tears.

Stephanie M. Frakes

July 21, 2012

Remember When: Thoughts on Christian Community

Remember When

We climbed a mountain, you and I

It was a sight to behold

Such perspective we would gain

Eternal Beauties yet untold

So we built an altar

From our laughter and our tears

And those words of faith

That we’ve rehearsed throughout the years

Then there came the time

For us to journey down

Back into the valley

Where deep, deep need abounds

I confess I am reluctant

To leave these heights for what’s below

But we’re called to move from heights to depths

Just like the rivers flow

Downward, ever downward

In humility and grace

To live out our altar moments

In the everyday

We’ve spoken of eternal things

That stir us heart and soul

Now we must go live these things

We can’t describe, but Know

So you go your way, I’ll go mine

And we will meet again

Every time we need to hear

Those words:  “Remember when…”

Stephanie M. Frakes

September 18, 2012

Exhale: Why I go to church

Exhale

In Your presence I find

For all my longing

My seeking

My crying out

A quiet place

Of reverence

Humility

Emptiness

Fullness

A mystery explained

But never understood

Realized

Felt

But never grasped

Though I've tried

And failed

My heart rises

My chest falls

I exhale

Emptying

To be made full

Again

And again

And over again

Forever

Stephanie M. Frakes

September 9, 2012

Peace is a Foreign Word

I’m curled up on the couch with Tiny Companion again.  A single bird chirps outside my window and the light creates shadows and designs on the back of the sofa.  I pull the sunglasses out of my hair and settle in.  Such a familiar place… and yet so foreign.  The kitchen sits empty where the table used to be.  Our first roommate has moved out.  The program from a friend’s wedding stands next to my wilting bridesmaid bouquet.  Endings and beginnings.  The framed picture from another friend is displayed close by accompanied by a card with her new address a thousand miles away.  We celebrate the new adventures to come.  The other roommate locks the door behind her as she and her fiancé go to sign a lease for the home they will soon share.  Dreams coming true.

“You’re at peace,” she told me as we sipped our drinks under the tree in the middle of campus.  “I can see it in your body.”  I smiled back at this sister who has accompanied me, and nod, “I am.”  And now that I am alone, the tears fall, for in the midst of all this rapid change these tears of gratefulness, hope, joy, faith, and even a touch of fear of the unknown, these tears say it all: It is well with my soul.  And that may be the most foreign thing for me.  Peace. 

I’ve never been here before.  Waiting without a real plan.  Watching people leave, move on, and yet knowing, most assuredly, it is going to be GOOD.  And if it never gets any better than this… that’s fine with me.  Ann Voskamp, author of the book One Thousand Gifts, says it this way, “I can walk the planks from known to unknown knowing – He holds.”  And so it goes, one step at a time, gathering the manna each day, taking my nourishment from it, wishing I could call it something more than “What is it?,” yet sustained by the fact that it is beyond me.  For what feels like the first time in my life, I’m not grasping.  I’m not reaching and clinging.  I do not have “a death grip on this life that’s in transition.”  Like a child letting her toy sailboat go on the surface of the pond, I feel release.  My life will go.  Our lives will go.  Like that moment at the end of a symphony, I can feel my breath catching, suspended, the moment hanging there, and I wait for the resolution, but I am so captured, so enraptured by the sheer beauty of it, I don’t care if it never resolves.  Let us hang here, suspended, forever.  And yet the moment does come when the final sound wave dissolves and the lights come up and we stand to continue with our lives, when we hug and walk our separate ways to continue our separate journeys.  The experience, however, is written on our hearts, our lives changed forever, eyes and all senses have been awakened to Beauty and the pursuit of grace.  And I cannot limit it all to words as I would like to, but I feel my heart settle, like a bird landing gracefully on a branch, or the last leaf of autumn drifting to the ground, I feel it settle on this fact alone, words from Psalm 23: Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.  His steadfast love endures forever (Psalm 136).  He is GOOD.

Tears

I’m unsure what these tears mean,

The silent ones

That roll down my cheeks

Gently.

And they strike me

As odd,

Because my heart feels so at ease.

My mind wants to race

With thoughts of fear

And insecurity,

But my soul is quiet,

Still,

At peace.

I’m okay.

I’ll wait.

I’m content to place

My trust in You,

To wait

For Your plan to unfold,

For joys yet untold.

I will place my whole

Broken heart in Your hands

With all the things I can’t quite understand,

And all the things I know

Too well.

Like how weak I am

On my own.

And maybe that’s the point

Of tears like these.

Not so much tears of sorrow

As of surrender and release.

They are the tears of one

Who thought she was strong

And realized,

By the grace of God,

She’s not.

But weakness is worthy of Love.

And that Love

Is where strength comes from.

And she can finally

Let go.

Stephanie M. Frakes

(January 14, 2012)

To China with Love - Part IV: God with Us

 The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”  -Matthew 25:40

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining ‘til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.”  All season long, these words have been ringing in my ears.  I just can’t get past how true they are.  Until Christ appears, our souls do not feel their worth.  It’s been months since I came home from China and, through all the ups and downs that I have faced in those months, I still return to memories of my time there to keep me going.  And I have to wonder… why?

Emmanuel, God with us.  The truth is, sometimes I don’t really feel like God is with us.  Some days God feels distant and silent, and sometimes those days are the days I need Him most.  And it’s hard.  Sometimes I find myself praying for Christ to appear so my soul can once again feel its worth.  And then I remember.  I remember my China story.  I remember how God started it before I even realized.  I remember how faithful God was to see me through, giving me sweet little gifts to build my faith and courage before I left, walking with me through the breaking while I was there.  I remember the faces of those kids.  My precious Le Dong.  My darling Qing Lian.  I can see them changing before my eyes because of our time together.  I remember that God is good and He is with us.  He is with us in the least of these. 

Now, I can take that verse from Matthew 25 in either of two directions.  I can talk about how, sometimes, when we wonder where God is, whether or not He’s still with us, the best thing we can do is take our eyes off of ourselves and go and love the least of these.  In that self-sacrifice we meet God in a way we can’t even begin to imagine.  That’s true enough, but the thing that touches me about that verse tonight goes beyond the idea of service.  It’s this idea that the people the King was speaking to didn’t know that in their service they had created a direct connection to Jesus Christ.  They just saw people.  In reality though, Jesus was right there among them the whole time.  It was Him that they served; it was through Him that they served.  Sometimes it’s not obvious that God is with us.  He doesn’t always show up in the way we’d expect, but if we look, if we ask for our eyes to be opened, if we seek, if we listen, we will find that He really is right there.  He lives in us.  He works through us.  He looks back at us through the eyes of the least of these.  And even when we miss all those things, oh beloved, He lives in our stories!  And that is why I keep going back to those memories over and over again.  May we always remember our stories!

To China with Love - Part III: The Art of Breaking

“While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.”  -Mark 14:3

I have always loved the imagery of this story.  It stirs this sort of passion in my heart, a passion that led me to pen these words just over two years ago: “So I’ll pour out everything that I have, everything that I am, ‘til not an ounce of me is left in my hands.”  I long to live like the woman in this story!  I want to live a life abandoned to the will of God.  I want to give everything over, all the things that are most valuable to me, my life, my time, my gifts, my talent, my dreams, my heart, my past, present, and future...  I want to pour all my treasures out as an offering to the One who set me free.  And so when God asked me if I would say yes to a trip to China, I grabbed my proverbial alabaster jar and chased after Him with all my heart, ready to pour out everything I had to offer.

Reading this verse again after my time overseas, I notice a sequence of events I never noticed before.  “She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.”  I’m thinking back to those first few days in China, to the moment when I stepped off that plane and knew I was stuck alone in a foreign land for seven weeks.  I’m thinking about those nights spent on a hard bottom bunk feeling sick to my stomach because of the new food.  I’m thinking about how inept I felt because I didn’t know a word of the language, had no idea where I fit or what my job was, and couldn’t even use chopsticks!  I’m reliving the culture shock and the homesickness.  I’m remembering those questions of why is this so difficult?  What was I thinking?  When can I go home?  Generally, I try to forget those moments and leave them out of the stories I tell.  But I realize I can’t do that!  I can’t leave those parts out of the story, because those were my moments of breaking.  Those tearful, fearful nights when I found myself completely humble before God, when I realized how little I really had to offer, but still committed myself to giving everything… Those were the nights that broke my alabaster jar so that I could truly pour out.  Without those first days of struggle, I wouldn’t have realized my deep need for God.  I wouldn’t have begged for His eyes to see where He could use me.  I wouldn’t have learned to depend completely on Him and listen for His voice.  I would have missed out on so much! 

And that is my word for you, beloved.  Don’t forget the breaking.  Don’t ignore it.  Don’t be embittered toward it.  Don’t avoid it.  Surrender to it, and then watch what God does with all that pours out from that broken jar.