a curator of light

I remember the first time I snuck out of my house. 

I was 13.

When we first moved into my house,my parents wisely put me in the room right next to their’s, however, it had a window that opened to the roof over the porch. As with most things I attempted as a teenager, the distance between the porch and the roof was just enough to scare me and encourage my rebellion with equal measure.

I kept looking at this distance for over a year, and then one night, after my parents had had locked up, I made my break. 

This breakout wasn’t to meet a boy or to go to some clandestine party hosted by a high schooler with naiive parents.
 
It was because I needed to know it was possible to make it off the roof. 

I didn’t even really do anything of consequence with this risky freedom. I took a walk. I skinny dipped in the neighborhood pool. Sat on the dock of our lake. Laid on the grass of our yard and just giggled with glee.

I had done it. I was free.

I had made the jump.

And as pack up my apartment and get ready to snag a diploma, I realize I am that thirteen year old girl again with a heart full trepidation, fear, excitement and determination. I don’t really want to leave the safety of what I have known, but I just have to know. I have to take the jump.

But that’s what college is I guess. Its the coaxing out on the roof.

Its more dangerous out there, but it definitely changes your view from your bedroom window. It lets you take a breath of that night sky. You feel that summer breeze. The stars are just brighter than you realized.

And my stars have been absolutely stunning.

They are the friends that I never thought I would have. The ones who loved me. The ones who have challenged me. Encouraged. Inspired. The ones that have seen me at rock bottom and cared enough to stick around.

The ones who feel impossible to part with.

My stars are the moments of spontaneous joy. Of dance parties and pranks in Church Hall. Of living room worship nights. Of snow-apocalypses. Of days on the porch. Of a perfect week in Hawaii. Game Days. Road Trips. Food runs. Snellebrations. Movie Nights.

My moon is full of heartbreak, love, and growth.

I loved every minute on my rooftop. But it is not the peak of my life.

Because as you stand out there on that roof, you see a lot farther than you could before.  The scenery entices you. And you start to eye the distance between the roof and the ground. And just have to know. If you can make the jump. Leave the ledge. Get your life.

A lot of people, mostly lawyers, tell me law school is an awful idea. Nobody is hiring they say. Its too damn expensive. You will never see anyone outside of school. Ever. Its a toxic environment. The economy.You will be depressed. Likely an alcoholic. Your life will not be one you like.

Maybe.

Or maybe,just maybe, I have what it takes to make the jump. That I will live a life that chooses joy. Seeks love. And runs after God.

That seeking happiness won’t be a chase but a surprise. A consequence of just living out who I am.

It will probably hurt though. To make that distance. And I am sure the landing will be anything but graceful.

But imagine. Imagine the person you are after you take the jump. The business woman. The husband. The artist. The missionary. The mom.

You know that the life you had was one you sought after. Nobody pushed you. And you can go skinny dipping if you want. Swim in the lake. Explore the woods. It might be unknown and fraught with danger, but for the rest of your life, you’ll at least know you didn’t stay on the ledge.

That what you wanted was enough to make the risk. The world was just too big to sit on the roof watching it go by. You just had to know. You had to get your life. Make the jump.

So lets jump. 

“It’s not that she doesn’t like you, its just that she thinks you try too hard to be so ‘un-churchy’, like you have to let everyone know you are so against everything. You know, you have to be the rebel and offensive or whatever”

I have heard a lot of bad things said about me. I have been called every horrible name in the book. I have brushed a lot of them off since, to be fair, I did my fair share in earning them. A few I had to work a while to get out.

Recently however, I hearing this evaluation of me has really set me thinking. Not really because it felt mean, but because it caused me to worry about lot of things.

Is this my impression? Have I become one of those people? The useless kind that does nothing but point fingers?

I don’t think I have. Or at least, I hope I haven’t. I promise this has never been my intention for my life or this blog. I love the church. The church saved my life. It helped me find the One who saved my soul. My home church is the closest I will ever get to heaven on Earth.

But, I also don’t think I have adequately explained why I am sometimes critical of the church. Why I am fired up so much.My purpose for this blog. For everything. And I think that’s important. So here it is:

In high school, I had a best friend. His name was Matt*,(Not his real name). We were an inseparable pair. We talked every day about everything. I made him laugh and he tried to  remind me to think before I did things. Once, he punched a boy that called me fat. I pretended his girlfriends weren’t stupid. Dream team. 

My senior year of high school, Matt’s dad stabbed himself to death in a drug induced hysteria.

Matt’s parents were divorced, so a few days after the funeral and in her typical insensitive manner, Matt’s mom sent him over to dad’s house to feed the fish. 

When walked in the house, we were both well aware that the last time the house had been inhabited was when the coroner was removing his father’s body. It was eerie. It was sad. It was disturbing.

Throughout the entire time, however, Matt seemed fine. As he had during the funeral, he was almost robotic. Picked up the mail. Fed the fish. Watered the plants. 

And then he saw his dad’s bed, still unmade from the day he died, and he lost it. He fell into my arms and began sobbing. Deep guttural sobs. The most heartbreaking sounds I have heard come from another human being. I could tell he was mourning much more than his father. It was everything. The consequences of being born into such a hateful,evil world. It was the incarnation of the worst kind of unimaginable pain.

There, as I let that broken boy weep into my arms, something changed deep within me. All I wanted was to take away his pain.To love him in the way he deserved. To show him Jesus loved him in the way he didn’t.

Facing that hurt was a game changer. Seeing that pain is something that can’t be erased. It devastates you.  It takes your priorities and twists them inside out.

It makes you start to realize why God would die to set us free. Because it becomes impossible to just live while others are enslaved.

You become more than empathic, you become compelled.

So thats my dream for the Church. Thats what makes me cry. Thats what makes me angry. That’s what makes me frustrated.

I refuse to accept the excuses that we put up about why we don’t love people who don’t know Jesus.

We don’t love these broken souls because we don’t know them, we only know of them. And if we used to know them, we don’t anymore cause we can’t fit them in between our ministry schedules. We begin to only know each other and thats good enough for us. 

We know social media trends. We know hash tags and profile pictures. We know mass movements that make us feel better.

Our love is a sham barely covering our agenda. They are not real people to us, but boxes on a checklist.

The world is dying of thirst and we have infinite supply of water that we are just regurgitating to each other.

I know these statements are generalizations as well as a mirror for myself, but I truly believe the truth in them. 

Salt is not made to preserve itself. A Light in a fully lit room is pretty useless. 

Getting to know the horrific and broken parts of the world, will inevitably lead you back to Jesus. Mother Teresa said that every time she looked into a dying leper she felt as she was looking into the eyes of Christ himself. That she was touching His broken,bruised, suffering body and it was a privilege to be there. Actually living in the world grows our faith. It lets you know how strong your faith actually is.How much the Christian community has become a crutch for you. I have found that when someone tells you why they want to hang themselves, you can’t feed them a line off of your favorite church group flyer. 

I give rides home from downtown. Clean up vomit. Buy pregnancy tests. Watch bad movies. I talk about sex. And abortions. I know what trak marks on arms look like. I go to house parties. I don’t go to get drunk. I go because thats where non-Christians hang out. Its their version of “fellowship”.

And I genuinely like people who don’t know Jesus. Not because I want to add to my salvation tally, but because the reality they live in is often more honest. I have found the greatest irony is that those who don’t know the Truth are usually the most truthful. They wouldn’t even begin to know what Sunday school answers are. 

You realize what is Jesus about Christianity and what is the culture we have deluded ourselves into thinking is biblical. 

If all you have ever heard and experienced are opinions and lives like yours, you don’t really have much to stake your beliefs in.

 Knowing hurting people is hard. Its not insular. I feel  pain. I feel the urgency. I get scared. I stay awake. I worry I haven’t done enough. I get angry. I become lazy and apathetic.

I have to be careful to be in the world but not influenced by it. And I’ll be the first to admit that I need to work on that. I need to see the world a little more black and white than grey. 

And loving people who are incapable of caring for you in the same way and refusing to listen to you has been one of the most painful and hurtful experiences of my life.

But, every time I want to shut it out,pretend I that I don’t care, I see Matt.

I see Matt crying. Hurting. Needing a solution that the world couldn’t give him. And feeling the pain that the world did give him. And I cannot stop trying.

So I am sorry if I have come across as offensive,critical or bitter. Or that I keep repeating myself.  But the the real pain of those people I love has forever lit a fire underneath me. I am compelled.

But then again, do we really want that to be the definition of un-churchy?

This is a hard Christmas on America. 

A tragedy that seems unthinkable. People struggling to understand. How? Why? What is to be done?

I found my mother, a kindergarten teacher, crying at our dinner table telling me that she would have died for her babies too. I think thats why it hurts so much, we all would have. 
We don’t understand the evil. The absolute non-sensical pain.

Little girls get cancer. Moms die in car accidents. Dad’s die at war.  
20 precious babies have Christmas in Heaven. 

Nothing goes to plan.Its all simply too broken to fix.Its too much.

For those parents running to the school waiting for their children, waiting for children that would never come,

This is their Hell.

This wasn’t the plan. Order is now chaos. Our world is being overtaken by darkness.Evil isn’t supposed to be winning. Jesus is supposed to be here. 

But thats what Christmas means.Evil doesn’t.He is. 

Christmas means He came for shootings. He came for beatings and miscarriages. For the abandoned and abused. The prideful and adulterous. The religious and the pious.

So if He came, why the violence?
 
We cry out its because: “no prayer in school” “Immorality in the media” “Christians are discriminated against” “The liberal agenda has pushed Jesus out of America” “Modern America is more evil than its ever been” “The manger scene is missing!”

Alright, lets be more holy like the days of yesteryear shall we?

Like during the 1800 when half of america was enslaved by God fearing Bible lovers.

Or the 1950’s when smut was away from our children and everyone went to Church, while African Americans were being burned for the color of their skin.

What about the conservative revolution of the 1980s? When America was infected with the horrible tragedy of Aids. 

Christians, Depravity is not new. Neither is Redemption.

Yes, the bible shows that if culture turns from the Lord that horrible things happen. My argument is that we have are so naive to believe we have been ever been a “Godly” nation. We have been deluded into thinking that Conservatives, mandated Christianity and christmas carols reflect a culture with Him. 

We are satisfied to put a band aid over a disease and walk away.

Are we really asserting that the reason a crazy man with too easy access to guns did so because we no longer say a cursory prayer at football games? That before when children were forced to pray at lunch, they had a better knowledge of the character of the Holy One?

That when all Americans went to church, even if many were just there under social pressure and  had no desire for the Lord, we were all better off?

Couldn’t it be now that people who were simply just going through the motions have given up the charade. Perhaps they are realizing what the Parisees struggled with. Rules are nothing without Him. Why would you follow moral boundaries if you had no knowledge of the One who created them?

I guess we would rather everyone pretend to be a Christian than to have to deal with reality that they were not. 

I don’t want a Religious land. I want a Holy one. 

China is run by a communist government that openly denies Jesus. The explosion of the Spirit and the desire for God there is unlike America has ever seen.  

Jesus is in Newton, Ct. His spirit is comforting. He is more burdened by this than anyone. He is not weakened by our disbelief. He has not lost his power because of the loss of our faith. He works despite our selfishness. He restores even in hate. Heals in death. He mourns with us.

Jesus is the same. He is never diminished. He is not defeated by CNN. 

Perhaps, what really scares us is not what immorality in America says about Jesus, or even non believers, but what it says about us. 

We look at the world and we see crime, poverty, hunger, hate, abuse,immorality. We cry to God asking Him why He let this happen. I think, His answer is ask us the same question.

We see evil and we begin pointing fingers. The Liberal agenda! The atheist morality erosion! The Media! Homosexuals! Muslims! They took away Christmas!

But what if its us?  

 Have we loved? Have we Served? Have we given? Do we know anyone but ourselves? Are we too comfortable?

Christ lives in us. If we claim that  there isn’t Christ in Christmas, isn’t that because we aren’t in the world?

We are telling the world that they are evil and they are doomed without providing the second half. We are the ones not telling the Christmas story. 

Christ in Christmas is not a plastic manager scene in the middle of the town square. Christ in Christmas is rescuing girls from brothels and volunteering at a gay Aids clinic. Its teaching someone about the message of the Lord through genuine love.
What did Jesus want us to do to honor him? Was it making sure we never shunned people who said Happy Holidays or was it do unto the least of these?

Christ in Christmas is radical, life changing, sacrificial and absolutely devastating. You ready for that Mike Hukabee?

You want people to stop killing each other? Give them some Hope to live for. 

Because Jesus is the answer to the world. He is its creator and savior. But we are  His chosen method. We are supposed to heal and love in His name. To take time and actually cultivate relationships. To speak truth with compassion. Jesus has the power to do whatever he wants but the wisdom do it through us.

So why doesn’t America thirst for Jesus? Because we don’t thirst for Him ourselves.

Our world feels like Hell right now. But Jesus said on earth as it is in Heaven. So why not? Why can’t this place feel more like heaven? I, for one, want to be a conduit for His will to be done. 

This Christmas, let us deeply grieve over the children we have lost and learn from their awful deaths. But also, let us not forget to rejoice over the Child we have been given and live a servant life like His.

That, to me, is Christ in Christmas. 

One summer, I nannied the most precious boys. Max,4, and Sam, 9 months, were some of the sweetest children I have ever been in charge of.  

Also, I have an admittedly weird hobby of being fascinated with the different personalities of people on this planet. A collector of glimpses of Jesus. And Max was beyond precocious.Because of this, he always had funny and insightful sayings that I treasured.

I usually nannied them only during the day, but on this particular occasion I was caring for them while their parents had a night out.

“Sarah! We get to do night games this time! You’d make a great Spiderman bad guy!” 

After Max had his fill of webbing me to save Sam from my evil grips, I suggested we catch lightning bugs in some mason jars. (note, if you call them fireflies, you are the reason some of my relatives still want to secede from the Union ).

As I cut holes in the tops so the lightning bugs would be able to extend their already minute existence, Max informed that me Sam would probably need my help catching them and I readily agreed- Sam’s favorite part of this activity seemed to be uninhibited drooling.

As dusk filtered out through the yard, Max became enamored with the galaxy of lightning bugs floating through his play set. I decided to keep Sam entertained by catching as many lightning bugs I could in the jar, so he could just stare at them at an easy distance.

Max seemed to have an entirely different approach to the whole endeavor, he didn’t really preoccupy himself with the catching part. He was simply dancing through the lightning bugs. Laughing and giggling, he wove his tiny body through their flickering lights simply waving his hand through the glow. Unaware of anything I was doing.He was a boy completely taking in the wonder of it all. 

I envied the ease of his awe. His gleeful freedom. Joy.

After I called to him that it was time to go in, he ran over to me simply ecstatic with what he had experienced. That was, until he saw my jar.

He looked at my jar and then immediately held up his bug-less jar. And promptly burst into tears. 

Oh the anguish! He realized he done it all wrong, its seemed dancing through lightning bugs leaves you with less bugs than catching them.

He continued to cry while I put him in his pjs. Finally the tears stopped, and with the most pitiful face he could muster, he sighed:

“I am just not a bug catcher”

And though I assured him that wasn’t the case, I completely understood what he meant. 

I am not as beautiful. 

I am not as organized.

I am not as dateable

I  am too brash.

I am too offensive. 

I am too sarcastic.

I don’t do things the normal way and then I look around and I realize I have an empty jar.

I am just not a bug catcher. 

 I act differently than most of the girls I know. I do some pretty ridiculous things, usually without thinking. I say everything I shouldn’t and never say things I should. Looking it at objectively, I am a pretty weird gal. 

Don’t believe me? Once, completely unprompted, I stole a mini burger off someones plate and shoved the entire thing into my mouth because I had been wondering if it would fit .(In case you are curious, there isn’t a mini burger mention in Proverbs 31)

So yeah, my whole holding your tongue, gentile,frilly gene seems to be struggling. And that causes me to have a lot of comparison issues. 

Somedays, I want to be like the rest of those girls. So badly.

I want to blend in. I want to be like them. To be different, just hurts too much. Different is single, it isn’t wanted. It isn’t loved.

My Comparison steals my Joy. I see nothing but what I am not.

But recently I have began to understand. 

Jesus knows what He is doing. 

He is confident in His creation. Who am I to doubt what He has made? Am I so arrogant that I choose to tell Him he has messed up? Surely, not.

The thing is, I will never be a bug catcher. 

At least, not in the same way. I will often be doing things my own method. On paper, my jar might not like quite right. And not because I am so unique. But because He is. 

I am made in the Father’s image. He is the complex ,immense and infinitely multifaceted un-created One. And He has chosen to represent a few facets in creating me. 

I am passionate

I love laughter

I am loyal

I am loving

I am creative

I look in and realize He is in me. 

And I am Humbled. 

I am His witness to my world. He has a purpose and a plan with me being where I am. Who I am. Am I selfish enough to deny a specific glimpse of Jesus to those around me because I choose to be someone I was never created to be? Would I really deny the Lord’s plan just so I get my “fair share” of lighting bugs compared to other people? 

Would I rather my life go the way I have planned or the way He has? In those terms, the choice seems pretty clear.

 Of course, there are many areas that I need to grow in and get rid of. Those that cloud His glory and don’t produce fruit. Those that feed my sinful nature. I am clay to the Potter. I have to submit myself to the pursuit of becoming more like Christ with every day.

But the core of who I am? Its time to make Peace with that. To choose Joy. Seek purpose.

I want my soul to feel like that sweet, ecstatic,barefooted boy on his lawn that summer night.

I want to rejoice. I want to dance in awe of world’s lightning bugs. I want giggle with uncontrollable glee at the beauty of how I have been chosen. In absolute wonder that this is my life. 

Unconcerned that there may be another way to go about things. 

I want to lay on down on those blades of grass and look up at the cascade of beauty and realize that its okay to do life a little differently. 

And then spread my arms wide and let my shout echo unabashed to the night sky, that I am, in fact, just not a bug catcher. 

So recently, I have been throwing myself the world’s most pathetic pity party. Seriously.

I have had one of the most unbelievable summers of my life, yet I have managed to come up with some major poor me soap boxes. I have even tried to invite other people to attend this most depressing soiree.

So to pull myself out of the major Taylor Swifting happening in my head, I read a letter I wrote to myself.

Now that sounds weird. It is. I am a weird person.

But, about a year ago I realized a few things. That the things were breaking my heart were cyclical. I was re-learning lessons unnecessarily. I was believing the same lies. over and over again.Everything I would learn about life, about God, about who I was, seemed to evaporate as soon I was hurt again.

So I wrote myself a letter. To remind myself about what was true. What was real. Who I was. I thought I’d share it, it applies to everyone. It actually  somewhat inspired this blog.

Dear me,

Life is going to be hard. Its going to be painfully, terribly difficult. You will experience deep loss. Tragedy. Things you want will pass you by. People will hurt you.

Life is  going to be beautiful. Its going to unbelievably, awe inspiringly glorious. You will experience love like you can’t imagine. Grace. Things you thought could never have you will get. People will amaze you.

But in both scenarios, you will get to choose the person you want to be. You get to wake  up every day and make a choice about who you are. Of how you love. The mistakes you are willing to make.

Choose wisely. And foolishly.

Here are somethings you have already learned. Things you are learning. remember them.

•  People are the most amazing thing about creation. The way they think. They way they love. What they can create. Jesus is reflected in every person you meet. Dig deep. Find the parts of their soul that uniquely show Jesus. Learn about them. So you can learn about Him. Everyone can teach you something.Understand they have a story.  Love them when its impossible. 

• You are deeply loved and wanted. Always. Live like it. 

• Understand that there is a reason you are alive. Don’t ever a go a day when you aren’t finding out why that is. Live with a purpose. Love with intention. 

• There will always be a moment in your life when you believe you could be somewhere better. Doing something else. Living the in future. You could be richer. Married. A mother.Stop.Breathe. Life happens once. The glorious yet insignificant moments can be overlooked when we always look ahead. Be where you are. Experience everything. 

• Things are not going to go as you have planned. But they always go as He has planned.

• Work hard. But life is not just about surviving. Don’t ever spend so long treading water just to keep your head above that you truly forget, how much you have always loved to swim.

• Its okay to hurt. To be wounded. But don’t let those wounds turn you into a person you  weren’t created to be.
•  Treasure the good parts of life. Understand that even in the darkest of places you have the ability to bring light. See what Jesus does in the world. Seek out the beauty. Curate the light.
• Jesus has given the you an unbelievable honor of working for His kingdom. Its a blessing. Treat it that way. What you do with your life and the choices you make, its not about you. The ramifications of your life, in the end, are about them. Stop being selfish. 

 Those are just few but remember these. Keep adding to the list. Editing the list. Editing to your life. 

But above all those things know, at the core of who you are, that He is glorious. That He is trust worthy. That to love Him, will be your greatest adventure.

Love Him.Never stop hungering to know Him. Learn about every moment you can. Make huge offensive mistakes. Understand that will do a lot of stupid shit.  And try out a lot of the wrong paths.

But also understand that happiness is a choice. Who you are is the sum of your decisions. 

So do it Sarah. Choose happiness. Choose a life that you want. A life you were created to have. Its worth it. 

Because of some people’s desire for Chicken sandwiches and other people’s desire for controversy, the waring cultural landscape of our nation has been on bright display. 

Don’t worry, this post is not really about that. 

Anyway, because of this a lot of my DC friends have been discussing Christianity. Most of them aren’t religious and few are outspoken atheists. All of them are awesome. And much smarter than me. 

One my friends asked me about being a Christian and if being in DC was difficult for me. I was confused by what he meant. He elaborated:

“ I just mean, Christian culture isn’t here. Its not like the south ya know? The Christian expectation isn’t around.”

And that just broke my heart. Devastated me. 

Not because he was right, but because what he associated me with was a culture. A breed of people. A commitment. An exclusive society. An expectation.

Not Jesus. 

Not why I breathe every day. Not the feeling I get when I commune with Him. Not salvation. Not joy. Not love. Not healing. Not even a religion.

A culture. 

Even as I type this right I now tears are streaming down my face. It hurts me so much.

Because, that is the most frustrating thing to me about what Christianity in America. Especially in the south.

Being a Christian has become all about us. Protecting “our family values”. Making a safe haven for us to huddle against the unbelieving masses. Holding on till we get to heaven. Where we can have all the Chicken sandwiches we want. 

We have our politics, our way of life, our station in life, our money. Our culture. And used Christianity as front to protect them. 

We have decided Mike Huckabee will save our world better than Jesus. If all the people in the America praying that Obama would leave office prayed for the neighbors who are hurting, I would like this place a lot better. 

Not only are we fighting a heavenly battle using worldly avenues, we are simply fighting the wrong battles. 

Chick-fil-a will do just fine. But even if it doesn’t, who cares? Dan Cathy said what he believed. And the world might hate him for that. Thats kinda the deal though right? Why are we freaking out about this? 

Why are we so offended when the world doesn’t like us when instead of loving people like we should, we are blatantly hating them?

Jesus was always hated for what he said. Hated for loving. That was the expectation. He was spit on. He was flogged. He was beaten. He never even got to eat a chicken biscuit. 

But he came to serve, to lose all of his friends. To serve those who hated them. To love those who were broken.  

He gave his kingdom for slavery. 

He never came for a culture. He didn’t die for you to have a great group of Christian friends. He died to set you free. So you in turn could set others free.

But we want to be the ones on top. The ones in the majority. Running the show. The world needs to be run by Christians who play nothing but 104.7 the Fish right? 

The world will never be saved by Christians who make “christian laws”. Nobody gets to heaven that way. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. 

We need to stop advertising to people because we want more people in the world like us.   We need to love people until there are more people in the world like Him.

Here is the plain truth: If you aren’t willing to even make friends with someone who isn’t a Christian and thinks differently than you, you are not sharing Jesus’ heart for the broken. If being around people who share your Christian culture is more important than the salvation of others, you have a lot of priority issues. 

 You get to be in heaven one day and live with Jesus forever. There are so many beautiful, wonderful, sweet, caring, loving people who are drowning in the darkness of this earth.  they are are begging to know Him. To be healed by Him. To know someone is listening. To have their soul come alive.They are fighting everyday just to keep going.

And instead of fighting for them, we are fighting for our right to have waffle fries.  

Thats not a culture that I want.

I received the biggest compliment I have ever received. It was like everything I have ever wanted in life and it came out of one woman’s mouth.

So let me tell you a story.

I am currently in Washington DC interning for a senator. I work in the capital building. I have a badge to get me by capital police. I go to important meetings and scribble unimportant things for important people. I wear suits.

Anyway. I have a cool job. Some would say an impressive job. Around impressive people.And people like to congratulate me on it because it feels like the right thing to do. 

But this life fulfilling compliment came from woman who didn’t know anything about my job. Or me.

It came from a old homeless woman. 

I was taking a break in the shade from the 107 degree heat . As I dipped my feet into the WWII memorial, (which is apparently illegal, BAMF status here) a disheveled black woman sat next to me. 

Now, I’ll be the first to admit, usually when crazy homeless people with tons of garbage bags approach me, I don’t do a very good Mother Teresa impersonation. But today was different, I was too freaking hot to start my long spiel about how I don’t ever carry cash. And she didn’t say anything, she just sat there. So for a while, we both just sat there, silently gazing at the Lincoln memorial. Finally, I made some comment about how I am pretty sure I had sweat through my underwear. (Admittedly, not my best ice breaker)

Laughing, she told me that the heat was always better than the cold. “Live like me and ya knowed hot times are always better”  Bag lady-1, Sarah-0.

So we started talking. About everything. About nothing. She told me about her ex husband. I have found with any woman on the earth, men is always an easy sharable topic. “Dees black asshole men, they will hurt ya heart, baby.”  I assured her that was not a trait exclusive to black men. Her dating advice was some of the best I’d heard in a while. I might just get her to speak at  the next christian women’s conference, it might help.

 Anyway, I got up to go do the things that were super important, and she said, “Now Miss  sally, (the name thing was a bit of a struggle) let me tell ya what I know. You is a funny lady. You got guts that feel.”

And there it was. 

In that moment. 

That was everything I had ever wanted to be. Internships. Law school. Suits. LSAT. Badges. Those were things that I enjoyed. Blessings the Lord had given me.

But who I was?

I wanted to be guts that feel.

To have courage and empathy. To really say what I think to others and really think about what others say to me. Understand who they were. Why they are.

I want the strength to love people the way Jesus did because I actually feel His heart for them. To the be a person who uses her influence with acute awareness of how those around me are affected by it.

To be unafraid to get in the messy parts of people’s pain.

Guts that feel.

To me, the rest is details. 

Not that this amazing opportunity doesn’t matter. It does. It’s an incredible opportunity that I believe is completely God ordained. I have always pushed myself to achieve because I believe we must be good stewards of the opportunities other people aren’t blessed to have. God has placed us everywhere for a reason. Don’t lose your chance because you are too lazy to study. But the resume we accumulate, has no value outside this life.

If you have ever graduated from anything, you have heard the verse that begins:“For I know the plans I have for you……”

Its a great verse. But I think we distort what plans He is talking about. 

I personally believe that the plans He has for us are more about the moments with bag ladies and less than the moments with senators.

“…..plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Because in the end, our life’s hope and future reside in eternal things. Worried about your future? Stop stressing about your major and think about your soul.

Find what you want to do, but more importantly find how you want to do them.

Bag lady and Intern. Garbage bags and Heels. Black and White. Teacher and Student.  

Thats what made that moment so special.

In that moment, that gum covered bench became a Cathedral. A communion with the Lord. A silent reminder of whose I was. Of who I was.

I wish the bag lady had some contact info, because I would love to put her down for a reference. I can hear it now:

“Miss sally, yeah I know her, I aint know anything ‘bout her skills, but damn-she got guts that feel”

 Now that would be a resume.

As many college students do, I have returned home for a few weeks this summer to be with my family. It was a much needed break from the craziness of internships and LSATs.

As I lay in my childhood bed, I think about the significance of this hallowed ground. I laugh at the awful photos that remind me about the horrors of middle school fashion choices. (Why a chubby girl with braces walked out of the house with clogs on, is beyond me). I help my mom make dinner and watch a Seinfeld episode with my dad that we have memorized.

I breathe in the familiar smell. I take in this place.

Home.

These people loved me first. My family is so wonderful. Its such a place of comfort. Of love. Familiarity.

However, with familiarity comes the past. In the physical act of returning home, we must return home with our souls. Make ourselves re-visit the past.

Many times, this past holds beautiful memories. Lovely dreams of childhood and a love that cannot be replicated in any other times in our lives. When we are young we learn the wonders of life. And the tragedies.

Most of the time, I find the past is frustrating. It is so permanent. It cannot be changed. I cannot reason it away. No matter how good of a person I become, no matter how many times I forgive, the events will never change. The past never fully leaves your memory. You always have a choice in how you deal with the past, (don’t believe me? check it)  but you can’t forget it.

In fact, I believe the longer we live the more the past plays in our life. We discover hidden wounds. Unveiling the roots of our mistakes. Our pain. As we begin to make important choices for our future, our past ghosts seem to appear more and more. And it is painful. 


Pain.

We hate it. Our culture does absolutely everything to avoid it. To hide it. We believe at all costs we should remove it from our lives. Drinking. Eating. Sex. Relationships. Religion. Success. Our goal is to escape the hurt.

At any means necessary, we bury it as far deep down as it will go. We will do anything to lose it, even if it means losing our selves along the way. We guard our hearts until we have lost them.

As Christians, we beg Jesus to have us never experience pain. Make our lives happy. We lie and tell people that if you just accept Jesus you won’t hurt any longer.

No. Jesus, never said in this world we wouldn’t have pain. In fact, he made it quite clear we should expect the opposite.

Now, hear me when I say that the healing and the joy the Lord will be bring to your life is beyond what we can imagine. Knowing Him will let you avoid a lot of unnecessary hurt. And He is a God who loves to heal. But healing and preventing are two very different things. He takes away our pain, but that doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen. This is not because He is not in control, its because He is wise beyond our comprehension.

I believe pain, as hard as it can be, is necessary. It is absolutely crucial.

Pain is beautiful.

Living with the emotional pain we experience in our past is like having a broken rib. Even though the rib is healing, it hurts like hell every time you breathe. Laughing is torture. Surviving is painful. Simply struggling for the oxygen cells you need to live can cause unbelievable pain. But you do it anyway because you need it. Life is worth it. Survival beats pain every time.

And our lives are like this. Like realigning a cracked rib, once our wounds are distant enough that we can give them the proper perspective-we began the healing process. And it hurts like hell. But Jesus is the purest oxygen. And even though it is excruciating to reveal our hurts to Him, to face the wounds of home, we realize we need Him to survive. He gives us life again. We slowly crawl back to healing. Back to life.

But why is that necessary? Why does it have to hurt so bad? Why cant a cracked rib heal without pain?

Because when your rib is broken, you become acutely aware of every breath. Something that you always take for granted becomes a gift. When we painfully deal with our past, when our wounds are healed, we become acutely aware of the Healer. You hear Him, because you are finally listening. Jesus’s ministry was to the broken hearted. His love flourished in pain. When you are hurting, you realize Jesus isn’t your morphine, He died to be your cure. Your oxygen. He died to be your your life.

He doesn’t do this for His ego, He does it because He knows that He is the best for you. He is glorious and because He love you, He wants you to know His glory.To breathe again.

Pain teaches you about who you are. It takes your heart and flips it inside out, but it gets it out the cage you have been hiding it in. To shut off from feeling pain we have to shut our hearts off. Stop feeling. 

But numbing pain, numbs all of it. Numbing is like too much chemo radiation. It may kill the bad, but it takes too much of the good. 

And trust me, as someone who is no stranger to deep pain and tragedy, suffering is an amazing gift. People who have experienced deep suffering and found their way out of the depths have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding for life that gives them a compassion and rich love that they couldn’t have found otherwise.

How can you recognize the morning if you haven’t seen the night? What is joy without pain?

So feel. It is always worth it to feel. Open the wound and let Jesus heal you. Then don’t be ashamed of your scars.

We can let all the doubting Thomases of the world feel the scars of our hands and our sides. Our healed wounds let them know He is risen.

So tenderly open your heart to the past.

 Find the wounds. Root up the evil that was done to you. Realign the rib. Then let Jesus be your oxygen. Heal. Keep breathing. Learn from your suffering and love those around you who suffer.

Hurt like hell. But love like heaven.

Today, I study for the LSAT

Today, I worry about how my diet is going.

Today, I clean my room and wash my clothes.

Today, I live. 

Today, my friend is dead. She didn’t die today. Five years ago today she took her own life. Everyday that I live, is one more day that she is dead. 

Everyday that I live, I hurt for what she missed. For who she was. For who she wasn’t. For the friend that I wasn’t. For what could have been.

Loss. 

Its so hard to understand. Its so hard to let it in. Usually, I run from loss. I work to keep it at bay. But like constant tides, its waves continue to batter. Sometimes the tide is far from the shore, and others you are fighting to keep your head above.Today, I just keep my head above. 

Today, I let the tears come.

I don’t really have any wisdom. I don’t have analysis. 

Today, I simply miss her. 

I know that the marble slab in the ground doesn’t do her justice. A memorial is not a plaque. Its not a nice bench in a school courtyard.

Its her memory. Her story. Her joy. Her love. Her pain. Her torment. 

But, I also know that her strength gave out. The darkness swallowed her whole.  She lost sight of the good. She gave into the pain.

So today, I mourn. 

But I refuse to give into the pain. To lose sight of hope. I choose to let the love of Jesus be my refuge. I choose to remember her beauty. I will laugh for her. I will love those she can’t. I will see what she couldn’t.

Because today, I live.

In the spirit my current devotion to studying for the LSAT, lets do a little logic. If someone is a Christian, then they should not just accept people. 

Two things are probably offensive about what I just did. The first being that I made you read formal logic. 

The second is I just said loving people is about not accepting. Woah, Sarah Darden, did you skip kindergarten and every lesson on Dr. King Jr. that you had in school?

No, thats not the kind of acceptance I am talking about. I have made friends with every single type of person you can imagine. And I love all of them. (I even wrote about it, here )  

What I am talking about is the popular mentality, among Christians my age, that to love as Jesus as loved we just love people the way the are. We inherently contradict ourselves when we share the Gospel and then tell them they are perfect being “who they are”.

No they aren’t. None of us are.

We are products of our flesh. We do horrible things to each other. We are the children of Adam.Without Jesus, we have no hope of not being evil. 

At this point, you are tuning me out, you have heard this and you understand this. “Sinner saved by grace” is practically the Southern Christian equivalent of  whats up. But here is the thing that really bothers me, we don’t like to apply this principle to non-Christians. “Sinner not saved by grace” doesn’t really have the nice ring to it. 

We are obsessed with being nice. Polite. Accepting. We look at the abusive preachers and the Westboro Baptist churchers and feel like we need to compensate.   We want to be like Jesus, right?

When He was on earth, Jesus wasn’t accepting.

He wasn’t a go with the flow kind of guy. He was a flip tables to get his point across kind of guy.

He was love. 

What do I mean He wasn’t accepting? I mean that yes, Jesus loves everyone, He obsessively and jealousy cares for every human breathing on this planet.  In those terms,  He is accepting. But is He not accepting in the modern convention. He didn’t just tell people about Himself, He changed them. He altered who they were. He told them to go and sin no more. He never accepted the things they did. Because their actions were wrong and those people were going to spend eternity in Hell. 

Loving unconditionally means you love them no matter what they do, not that you love things that they do.

Okay, that still makes sense, “Love the sinner, hate the sin” right? That would be all well and good , if we actually did that. But we don’t. 

We love the sinner and we are “nice” about the sin.  We ignore it.

Thats why our version of “loving” people is crap. Its a cheap imitation of how Jesus loved. It is absolutely the most selfish version of love. It is lazy.

Our version of “loving” people means that we hold them we cry and tell them that “Everybody screws up, I understand. Its okay, you are human “. Yes, they are human but its the farthest thing from okay. Its so far from okay, that Jesus died for it.  He was that not accepting of it. He told us to love thy neighbor as ourselves. Do you love yourself by accepting your compulsive lying?

I have been in Church my entire life, every sunday from fetus to current. And for a majority of that time I was so sumerged in darkness it was horrific. And I didn’t hide it. People knew. My leaders knew. My friends knew. And everyone was really nice about it. They told me they were worried. They told me their similar testimonies. They told me they accepted me for who I was. They gave me a pat on the back and walked away.

Not until I got into a church where people told me the truth: that I was wrong with what I was doing, that I didn’t really know Jesus and that they couldn’t accept my habitual sin, did I begin to really experience freedom. Because as passionate as they were about  not accepting my lifestyle, they were even more passionate about helping get out it. Of loving me. They challenged me. They corrected me. They listened. They called me out all the time. It was really painful. It wasn’t mean but it certainly wasn’t “polite”. But they never gave up on me. They sacrificed. 

And thats how you love like Jesus loved. 

Love is not lazily accepting who a person is. Its understanding they were made for so much more. And not being afraid to tell them that. 

Love is not selfishly keep your mouth shut because you don’t want to feel uncomfortable. 

Love is  not telling someone what they are doing is wrong and then abandoning them. 

Love is active. Love is sacrifice. Love is offensive. Love is real. 

Stop ignoring your friends sin. Stop telling them its okay. Listen to them. Hear why they struggle. Show them they were meant for a beautiful destiny and tell them its isn’t okay. Stop being okay with your friends drowning in darkness. Call them and ask real questions. Be present. Be blunt. Stop sugarcoating. Challenge. Stop making excuses for them

Is your comfort more important then their pain? Is your reputation more important then them going to hell?

Is this generation of Christians okay with lying to those around us, as long as we are liked by the majority? 

Are we okay with nice-ing people right to hell?