As a girl I was haunted by words from the writer Thoreau, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
At the age of 14 I was quietly desperate and growing louder about it by the day. Feeling betrayed by the silence I sensed from my church community, I walked away from everything I was taught, everything I grew up believing, in search of the answers I knew must be out there.
I tried transcendentalism, agnosticism and flat out God hating. Oddly I found myself as desperate as ever.
Tenderly Jesus pursued me despite my aggressive attempts to find ANY other way apart from Him. He is, after all, the only way. I learned after true surrender that His is the great song which sings under and over and throughout everything. Regardless of how off key His people sound at times.
Over the years I have come to believe that what prevents the quiet desperation is not what happens to us or often even through us, the most compelling stories not hinging themselves on action, rather swelling with the characters living inside of them. Who those people are. Who they become.
I glimpse at times what I am certain God wants me to become. It unfolds as breathing pages in a book. Other times it stagnates and stalls, as if the person I am meant to be cannot live here.
So I go on wrestling with my work and heart for the poor in Africa, growing more confused and bewildered with each attempt to help, fighting off cynicism with a baseball bat so that hope can continue to grow.
I go on weeping in my bathroom as unborn child after unborn child slips through my legs and out of my waiting arms.
All the while trusting that if I remain open, if I hope and cling and beat the dirt until it is soft, I will perhaps look a little more human...and a little more divine. A little more like Christ. So when that soft ground finally swallows me in a grave there will be no more song still in me. Only room for the final tune that we'll sing with Him forever.
Read more of my story HERE.
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photo credit Kim Cunningham Photography
