Open for buisness

I typed an email to a perfect stranger today. Someone I met once and was curious about. I've never thought so hard about how my words will sound from the other end - did I sound too eager? Did I explain my intentions clearly? Did the whole thing SOUND like I'd rewritten it as many times as I had? Words are so tricky, sometimes.

I had an interview for a promotion at work last week. I decided I would just "be myself" and trust God to place me where he wanted me. (Which, I might add, I assumed would be in the position I was applying for.) I answered all the questions with personality and confidence, sure that I was just sealing the deal. Turns out I didn't get it...and now I'm wondering if it was something I said, or didn't say.

What you don't say can get you into just as much trouble as what you do say. That's the tricky thing. Although I can't lie worth beans with what I say, I have become quite adept at leaving a whole lot of other stuff out of conversations - for various reasons, but by the strict line I've always held to I'm lying. Creating secrets. Every time I think to myself, "Maybe I should tell them..." and fail to do so, I've just made a little hidden pocket in my mind. Something I've made a conscious decision not to show. Too many of these and you've got yourself a lonely life - can't even remember where you were when it started, but you backed yourself into a tiny room of hidden things.

But hiding things isn't always wrong - I realize that sometimes we keep things from people to try to protect them. From what, though? From our own personal messiness? Baby, they've got the same thing going on. Maybe we think they won't stick around if they know what's inside us - that we really can't trust anyone to love us in the middle of it all. Could it be that our deepest heart's desire - the one thing that keeps us breathing - is also the scariest thing we'll ever have to learn to receive? Love is a powerful thing.

I believe that it is the greatest calling we'll ever undertake, to "love and be loved" as a friend of mine once put it. "On this hangs all the law and the prophets," Jesus said. And I have to think that you can't talk yourself into getting any better at it - just like every other commandment in scripture, we must move forward with the bold cloak of grace making it possible to stand in the presence of, and indeed to be a bearer of, real Love himself.

Colossians 3:14 says to "put on love." Put it on.

How does that look? It's just that I think it's an impartation as well as a choice. Love came after all of us before we even knew what it was, and now we've got the chance to live right there - right inside it. It ought to be the very heart of everything we say and do - the motivation behind each thought, each moment. It should be what drives us. It's the only reason we're here anyway. He loved us first - and we must spend ourselves learning how to love him back. And how to love each other.

I think love presses in. Real love is obsessed - consumed with going deeper. Knowing more of what's inside - how much more is there to love in there? And the cool part of loving each other is that we find out what it is Jesus is so crazy about - we get to know more of his heart by falling in love with what he is in love with...us.

So I decide love looks like coffee with a good friend today - I hear what's in her mind and I let God show me all the beautiful places she doesn't even see in herself...and I walk out more in love with who HE is because of what he shows me he sees in her. Amazing, isn't it? It's built to work that way. But none of the really beautiful stuff is on the surface - it's just like the ocean. We're built to want the explosion of color and overall mind-blowing beauty of what can only be found in the deepest parts - but there are so few of us who will actually go through what it takes to see it up close, and not just on the Discovery channel. I've got to learn to scuba someday.

But the kicker is that we have to say what we're thinking. Actually let there be words for what we see in one another, and brace for impact when somebody decides to tell us what they see in us. Love puts it out there.

And when it does come, it sort of disarms you. Your heart sort of rolls over, not sure it's ready to get up yet. I can think of the way I've seen myself react to the most abandoned manifestations of love in my world - most often, I just melt down for a while. Kindness, you know? Just a shocking moment of honesty - clarity leaving no room for doubt, and no way around it. I love you. Man, that can pack a punch.

So let's do it. I mean, let's use the ammo. Stop hiding things, stop rewriting our emails and stop imagining every possible outcome and just live with our hearts out. I have to believe that we need more love, not less, to get what we really want. Living with the fear of repeating past pain (and there has been pain) will keep you from so much beauty in life. The most beautiful people I know have loved and been loved - and none of them seem to have much to hide at all. I'm not suggesting we become foolish with our emotions - or that we forget to have "healthy boundaries" - just that we stop filtering every new scenario though our database of "what wisdom should look like." Let's just consider for a moment that Love himself has always been a shocker. Bit of an extreme sportsman from what I can tell. Hmm. Maybe I've been looking for love in all the wrong places.

Me Llamo Jorge...y yo tengo los libros.

Funny story: I grabbed the wrong name tag at work (Barnes and Noble) yesterday, and walked around as "Jorge" for about two hours.

Wait.

Valentine's Day. Now there was an adventure through time and space. Never mind that a customer (handsome male) gave me his phone number. That's another story entirely - but it certainly led me down what I assume to be a long path, where I wonder if my steady plans for a future romance under my set of rules will in fact have to be abandoned.

Aside from the fact that I will be 26 come next Wednesday, I've been considering the whole long-term goals situation. I've never been able to answer that question anyway - fear of commitment? How am I supposed to have a ten-year plan, when I can't even pick out my socks in a timely fashion? Well, that may be going a little too far. I am much better about the socks these days. I like my friend Laurel's rationale for a sock drawer - just grab and go, don't even try to match them to each other, let alone your pants. Whoever is looking and actually cares needs to get a life.

But 26...still renting, still paying off my parents, still working for an hourly wage that doesn't add up to enough on paper (I say that because somehow God makes it stretch like the loaves and fishes), still kicking myself for racking up any amount of credit card debt, still failing to save with any consistency. And that's just the finances! What about career goals? What about living any of the dreams I've had since I was a kid? And along with all that, what about having somebody to share it all with? I always wanted to marry my best friend, to grow up and grow old together. I want a family. 26...

I spent the first 25 running to get there, and now I want to put on the brakes. Slow down - wait a minute. I didn't even decide on a plan and it's too late to implement it anyway! Well, plans suck. No matter what you plan-y people think you've got on me, you're going to find out we'll both get there, friend. And only one of us will have known the hope and despair of dreams you didn't even try to control. I think waiting is beautiful.

In fact, if I ever make a CD, or write a book, I will probably call it just that: Waiting is Beautiful.

When Jesus looked at his disciples and said "Hang on, boys - I love you and I'm just going to go set it all up for you...just wait for me a bit - I'll be back" I've got to figure that was the beginning of the greatest wait in history. The runner-up was the one for Jesus to get there in the first place...but this was even bigger - every bit of creation is groaning, now. It began with a handful of guys, staring at the sky, wondering what he meant - like, ten minutes? 2 days? A week? And then years went by...they did miracles, wrote about it, taught, and died. The next generation got fired up and did some amazing stuff, wrote about it, and died. Still, this waiting...and the circle spreading out. A whole lot more people staring at the sky. Where is he?

And here we come...stunted by generations of false predictions, crazy people wearing cardboard signs about the END, and our parent's cynicism. We've got a big dose of apathy about the whole thing - just numb over our connection to any of it. It's easier to just to play the "life application" card and figure out how to live better on a daily basis. We've forgotten that we are waiting.

And it's the biggest wait we'll ever have - we are one half of the greatest Wait in all of eternity. We are literally a Bride who discovers herself in a dress and a veil and at the back of a church full of guests with the music starting and a bunch of eyes expecting some motion from our end. Did we forget who we are, and what all the perfection of daily life and relationship with God was for? It's all for this one moment - it all culminates right here - when we see the one we've been waiting for and remember who we are and why we started getting dressed up to begin with. He chose us, called us, said, "Here - I know you'll look lovely in this - learn to wear it and I'll see you at the ceremony" and then...

Well, I've been really thinking how beautiful it is to wait like that. Waiting looks like preparation, but not planning, I think - and I think there is a difference. One gets ready to go, and the other wants to know where and why before packing a thing. One keeps a burning lamp full of oil just in case, and the other wonders why on earth you'd waste all that oil until you know he's about to get there and need a light. It's all over scripture, man. The joy belongs to the one who perfects the waiting - excited, focused on what's coming, ready when it comes. I want to wait like that - not just for the things I dream about for my life on earth, but for Jesus. I want to be a voice in the crowd of all the saints from every end of eternity when we see Him come and yell, "HE'S HERE!! HE'S COMING, MAN! HERE HE IS!!" None of this, "Wait - I'm not ready yet" crap. You've got time now, so pack up and put the dress on.

Maybe not literally. I mean, ain't no woman who got her man by walking around in the wedding dress before she met him. I'd assume that would be a sure-fire "No, thank you" upon approach. But I digress.

26. I will sit on my busy hands and tell myself to just wait - keep waiting. I know the Father's voice better these days, and the kind of sense I get from him when he tells me to "Wait," these days is different. I used to hear it like an annoyed parent would tell an obnoxious child who keeps begging for the same thing over and over and over again without waiting for an answer - "No - just WAIT - you need to WAIT!" But now? It's like a good Dad, planning the best surprise ever - knowing their child so well that they just can't contain their own excitement at the chance to give them what it is that will truly delight the one they love - with great anticipation, "Wait for it...just hang on - wait until you see what I've got for you!"

Waiting well is not easy, but it is what I signed on for when I said I wanted it all. And, in fact, when I said I believe in Jesus. Because, after all, that was one big proposal, and we're part of that betrothed bride. It's been one long engagement, but wouldn't you hold the wedding if the bride couldn't seem to remember where she was or why? Can't even fit into her dress quite right...God, help us.

Boston in the spring?