The Iris

Forgiveness is the fragrance

of an iris

Upon the heel

that crushed it.

 

Mark Twain

It’s hard to tell the truth when you’re lying.  Great words for a country and western song.  Not such great words to say when you are trying to explain the incongruencies of your life.  Dreams and pretense create no backbone;  it’s the tough stories, trials, and mishaps of life that do that for us.  I have learned the most important lessons I’ve needed to learn in my life through hard choices, hard knocks, and hard questions.  

Real life requires a kind of consciousness that I have sometimes lacked because of an inherent self-consciousness.  I have asked God over and over to explain this to me; to help me understand who I am.  He has shown me too clearly what I am all about by summarizing the scope and sequence of my life with one word---unbelief. 

I have gone to church with my palms open, ready to receive.  It took me a long time to realize that I must go with my palms open, ready to give. Belief requires something of us;  trusting in the maker and creator of not only the universe, but our universe.  I have struggled with belief.  It confounds me to decode and decipher His will when my own is so strong.  He lives in me.  I have no unbelief about that.  But my obedience, my surrender, my trust are all put to the test pretty continuously.  

Unbelief has haunted my walk as a Christian woman. Is there grace in every moment?  Absolutely.  But grace requires appropriation; and I have missed the opportunity time and time again.  The vernacular of the community of faith gets so tangled up for a new believer:  appropriation, baptism, consecration, discipleship, evangelism, fellowship, grace….an alphabet soup of beliefs that must be digested quickly if we’re to grow as He intended.

I am a storyteller at heart, so I will try to make this a true tale.  In the telling, I hope that you will find some hint of wisdom, some whisper of jurisprudence, so that you may learn from my mistakes.  It is where the rubber meets the road, that place between understanding that God is who He says He is, and not the God we have created Him to be.  

My road’s had twists and turns; dead ends, divergencies, and exit strategies that I’ve ignored.  I’ve driven myself off a cliff and lived to tell about it.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

And so it goes:

Once upon a time…