harps//strings

A storm does many things, but the one thing it does best is to disorient. We walk through life with a plan to control. Expecting the fall, and what we “should” do after we fall, and what we should do when that first “should” falls through. A storm is just rain and wind if we’re only able to step back far enough. But we can’t. When the rain starts, the drops are gentle and you wonder how it can ever hit hard enough to feel like pebbles hitting the skin. But it does. When the wind blows, the breeze kisses the skin and you wonder how it can ever be strong enough to rip sails. But it does. And we are always taken aback.

We only need to experience a storm once to know how it can absorb you. It grabs every piece of your attention and fascinates you with its brutal force. It scares you. Even if we wanted to zoom far enough to see it in its entirety, we can’t. It has captured us. It has bound itself to us. And now, fear grips us indefinitely. Our vision blurred with just one thought, and that’s survival. Our plans have no meaning here. All the hours we’ve spent trying to thwart something that demands our very existence to be present. All of it is useless now. There is no time to think otherwise because once we let our guard down, we die. Which of our senses can maintain itself in the loudness of everything? The overstimulation of death knocked on all our doors, encouraging us to run. Almost as if we were being hunted, never given time to rest or think. Only responding. Only reacting.

Who is Jesus to me?

Jesus is the death, hunting our insecurities. The fear that grips us to be present and holds us close enough to give us one thought, survival. Our blurred vision in the rain blinds us to our “full-proof” plan of control that defines our daily routines and motivates our being. The rain and the wind render us silent and lost. Jesus is the death of our ship and the death of our inward, selfish need for self-preservation. The sails of our “shoulds” ripped and tattered. The needles of rain pierced our thick skins, calloused by numbness and apathy.

Jesus is our wilderness. Our destined death and the aimless wandering in between. Our lost journey toward an invisible kingdom. One we’ve lost the map to a long time ago.

So what other choice is there but to die? In the deaths of all these things, maybe we’ll find something truer than the doubt that has defined us our entire lives. A survival that has been redefined. I have these moments where I feel like I can peek through. Just enough to see past the gales and the falling sky. Just a bit to see past the end of the world. And I see something. A beauty that puts a new hope in me. Maybe, our tired and dirtied feet that have walked an endless road of sadness and grief were and always have been the streets of gold we’ve read about. These broken hearts of ours are a heartache of something more infinite. A forgotten joy in suffering. Maybe the storm was the only way I could have my chance to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

Of a Jesus who cares enough to bring the confusion and the pain to rid us of the things that will sink us. The Jesus that calls us foreigners to this place we’ve always called home where we’ve been constantly sedated and blurred. The Jesus that doesn’t see us as wanderers of the sea that would destroy us, but citizens of it. Our native home and secret kingdom. Oh, those sweet moments then, when I peek through, and breathe the sweet oxygen of heaven. I wonder, in those moments, does Jesus bring me closer to Him? Am I, in those brief glimpses of purity, closer to who I’m even meant to be? It’s hard to be sure of anything and I’ll no doubt keep building my ship. Like Theseus, replacing its bits and pieces until it’s something entirely new yet old at the same time. Letting go and holding in.

I wonder if He knows this of me? My desire is to forever sail until I reach the end. If He does, is Jesus the call to keep building? Knowing portions never last, He batters my vessel to rid of the already broken pieces of myself. Pieces that would have sunk me if left unattended and unnoticed. Pieces I have kept too long as they cracked due to age and expectations without me wanting to admit it. And knowing me well, needing to force my hand. To pry my fingers open and let go of these pieces I have kept because I thought it defined me.

Jesus, then, is my tough love. The one that tells me to work on myself and shed the very notion that I ‘MUST’ stay how I am. And as painful as the process was, Jesus is the trust that it will work. My exhausted faith and its renewal. The death of who I was and the resurrection of who I am. He is my captain that tells me to tend the ship and He is the storm that destroys it. The golden valley of death and its still waters of rest. My ever-present wilderness and the beauty in between. He is the confusion and the disorientation of my stability. And He is my clarity and my grounding in the aftermath. The history connecting me to a longer journey beyond my sight and the present station lifted for me. He is my invisible journey and destination and the heartache of knowing I still have to walk its road. He is the grace in my times of depression and my encouragement in my times of transformation. He is the gaze of forgiveness when I can’t look at myself and He is my worth when I find none. A persistent grip, refusing to let go. Bound by the single desire to see all of us complete and whole by any means necessary. The rough patch and the reconciliation. The argument in the miscommunication and the desire to not give up in the midst of it. He is our divorce and our marriage. An enemy and an ally. The mystery and the certainty.

I ask “Who is Jesus to me?”.
I answer “He is my friend”.