I'd rather say goodnight.

I was over-thinking, which probably happens too often and this week it was completely distracting.

Between work, maintaining friendships and making new friends, family, exercise, work, relationship with the Lord, work, personal hygiene (haha, had to put this in here cause it does take time), dealing with this heart, and work (I mentioned that, right?) I am headed for a silent corner in a dark room and foreseeing a very long sigh followed by a quivering chin... my teeth gently biting my lip while i run through all the reasons why crying might not be the best option - even though no one can see, even though this past month has left its mark well on my heart.

All my reasons will lose this battle. Nothing convinces me into sobbing like slow tears. I enjoy tears so much, but the timid, shy tears... those ones are charming, a grand friend of mine. They sit and wait on the rim of my eyelids as if being courteous, careful not to fall too quickly so as not to ensue more damage. And then, at just the right moment they spill over, dampening my eyelids, sauntering down my cheek bone, face, jaw and they hang on waiting to make a grand exit. Then the fall. Those tears are sacred and in so many ways recall to my mind the kindness of the Lord.

It is disconcerting to me that with so much going on in my life I can feel as lonely as I do at times. But I do, and this position of my heart is dedicated to the listening ears of Abba.

So there it is. Maybe loneliness isn’t the depressing monster I dress it up to be.

And there is joy, there is radiant joy. My life is full and my Lover is near. I love "top" lists. And here it is my top list for this month. The roses emerging among the thorns:

1. the cd Explosions in the Sky, recommended to me by such a gentle friend. Specifically the song, "Your Hand in Mine"


2. All things pumpkin. I am addicted! Pumpkin spice latte's. Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin scented candles. Th new pumpkin hershey kisses. YUM!


3. My completion of The Brothers Karamzov

4. WINE. It is offic, I have started to lose my taste for white wine and moved into the sophisticated craving for red wine. Especially cab's.


5. Dinners with Lisa which are a gift from the Lord and prepare me for the week ahead

6. My NEW Mokua Express and French Press (i fear the barista's at Bucks are soon to forget my name)...



7. My TEAM at Compassion. Love the webbies and I love that I still drive into work every morning thinking, "I can't believe I work here."

8. Agia Sophia coffee shop with the Lord and chai tea

9. Truth Project bible study with some of the most amazing women I have ever met

10. The Ingrid Michaelson concert. Not to mention the moment when sweet Katy Michelle blew her nose because of a cold and we got starred down like we were out of control

11. Maryn, Stacia, Jamie and Karla. Some of the most precious friends I have. The ache in my heart for their company is a grand testimony to how the Lord has enriched our friendship and blessed me with their words, presence, prayers...







Ok, if I continued to go on, and I could, I will probably not sleep at all. BUT, I have to sleep because tomorrow I have to cook Thanksgiving dinner.

Alas, there is sorrow and I will not ignore it or dress it up and call it something else. Yet, there is immense joy and I believe I am able to steep in its richness because I can acknowledge the sadness in my heart.

Since being back in America I see I am continuously at a loss of words but I also believe, like I had not believed before, that He understands... that even with my lack of explanations I have captured Him.

Oh please Lord, may it be. How beautiful You are to me.

oh Lover, i'm lost

I remember this moment.

No... I am trying to hold onto this moment. Trying not to forget the burden of obedience, to remember what I felt like as He grabbed my shoulders and held me up, “You can do this Brianne, you can make it through this. You love me, you don’t believe it, but I see it.”

I was at that point in the race where I was climbing the hill, trying to remember why I began running and the only thing louder than my small attempts at encouragement was my heavy, pain-filled breath. The only thing more unlikely than the victory was how unprepared for defeat I was.

But I did, I ran that race. I finished, I saw the end of the tunnel. I clung onto the Lord like I knew my life would be dust without His say, without Him. I called on His name as if I were Jacob wrestling in the woods, David hiding in the cave, Mary shattering the alabaster jar.

And now...I can’t remember her name.

It was 5:00pm, we were split into groups of 2 with one translator. We walked into the red light district together and slowly branched off. 2 would go to that bar, another 2 to this bar and this bar and that bar. Finally Danni and I split off into a bar with a depiction of Satan as a sign to lure in the customers.

I climb onto the bar stool and ask for a diet coke. That was my “in”, I had 5 minutes to talk to the girl serving me. To plant some seed, to love her, to ask her if she wanted the night off. I had 5 minutes to tell my anger and rage to lye down while I delicately surveyed the situation and requested the Holy Spirit to allow me words of life. 5 minutes. But I hear, that can be an eternity to the Lord. So I sat. I listened.

She turned to get my drink and as she turned she unveiled a very young girl sitting on a box, crying. I could not mistake her dismay or her position, she was hiding. I was shocked, she was young. There is something in me that broke like I never knew could. I had come face to face with a human life about to be bought. A human life about to be used and delighted in as if she were some kind of commodity, some piece of material to be taken and returned. She was no longer seen as “her” but as “it”.

I ask her how old she is.

15.

She tells me (through my translator) that this is her first night. She has no choice, her family must eat and her father and mother agreed.

I act quickly, the sun is going down and we are only given 20 minutes for our protection. I tell the translator this is the girl I would like to take out to dinner with my group. She communicates to one of the ladies. I do not take my eyes off her, I need to see her reaction. Her tears vanish, her face lights up. It was as if someone had come to her and said, “I can save you, I can save your life.” As she grabs her purse and I take out my 300 baht ($8), the bartender (who is the wife of the pimp) approaches me and with rage in her eyes tells me I can take any other lady but not her.

Physical weakness takes over my body, “No Lord, please let me save her, if just for one night. Please let me give her this night back.”

I tell my translator to convey that I will double the price and I pull out 600 baht.
“No, not her!” the bartender asserts.
This cannot be right, why not her? I pull out all my money. It is wadded and filling the palms of my hands.

“Ask her Tik, ask her how much, I will only gladly pay it.” Tik (my translator) asks the bartender with much passion, I know she is thinking as I am. We have joined the fight together. I can see my team coming out of the bars, ready to convene together. I listen intently as if I could understand Thai. Tik turns to me, “We cannot have her, she is a virgin...she will make good money tonight.”

And that was that.
I did something we were never created to do. I bargained for a human life.

I would have kept up the fight until my translator tugged on my arm, “It is time to go, it is getting dark.” I felt more defeated than I ever have in my whole life. This is the essence of human life not valued, the epitome of her value, given by the high and mighty Lord, taken and used to buy her family dinner for a week.

So what is the point? I could have cried all night and if I were not so exhausted from the day I probably would have. I fell asleep imagining myself in the arms of the Lord, the only comfort to such outrage and deep undisguised sorrow.

Though her name is far from me, this is what I can remember: He paid for me too. Only the price cost Him everything, the price cost Him humiliation and shame. The price requested Him to come off His throne... to bow down to weakness. To bow under the burden of all sin and wickedness. The price cost his enemy believing for a time that he had won and humanity was his.

Could you imagine loving like that? Could you imagine pouring yourself out for even one human being? Could you imagine loss of sleep, prayers filled with grief, a fellowship marked with disbelief, a lonely desert, breaking your body, spilling your blood...could you imagine carrying the cross for everyone? EVERYONE.

I did not know this girl, but i can see her face. Her tears will not leave my mind - the hope stolen still catches me off guard and takes my breath away. Any desire I had to release her, any promptness of mind to go and free her only came from the grand Pursuer.

They say He came to heal the sick. And give life abundant. I believe it. I have seen it. Even in what I looked on to be defeat. I know that 5 minutes with her was all I was given and I believe it was all He needed.

~Selah~

Was it worth it? Was it worth me working myself up and taking on her burden? Did I do more damage? I think about it often but I always come to the same conclusion, I always reconcile this grief with this:
For me, I would have risked more by not trying.

I’m so grateful He risked His life on me.

“But the LORD was pleased
         
To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
         
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
        
He will see His offspring,
         
He will prolong His days,
         
And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. 
    
As a result of the anguish of His soul,
         
He will see it and be satisfied;
         
By His knowledge the Righteous One,
        
My Servant, will justify the many,
         
As He will bear their iniquities." -Isaiah 53:10

“As for me, it’s good to be near to You.” -Enter the worship circle

Some Kind of Luminous Blue.

If I sit here and sip on my matte tea long enough i think some idea will find me out.

Something of what I am feeling will reveal itself to me.

It feels like deluded defeat mixed with over-compensation. It sounds like me trying to see me like You do, but backwards. It appears to be inadequacy and longing and my frantic grasping hands trying to get all of “this” under control.

Today I saw a disheveled elderly man that floated about on the cracked sidewalk. At first he looked dismayed, even misplaced - like he had forgotten where he was going. But then I looked again and it was beauty I saw, like wisdom infused with forgetting the weight of this world. He looked like he knew more than I have ever come close to experiencing and he was damn proud of it too.

Perhaps it was not dismay I saw, just freedom grabbed up and worries laid bare into the care of another. I wonder what he saw in me?

Tomorrow seems like it could be most solemn, a rejected kind of dull day. I can see the sun marching behind the mountains and my body is pulling me into accepting its marching orders as well, into bed.

There is a grand joy that is beckoning me out of this already accepted defeat. The joy is succeeding and my mind is conforming to remember I am still in this day, not to look ahead, especially not in disgust. Alas, the desires which are blood red and bring me to my knees turning them blush pink from rough carpet, well they will be there tomorrow. And the burdens which puff my hazel eyes and illuminate my freckles, they will be there too. So will perspective, so will the proper and right yoke.

I remember, as I listen to the sun crash into the mountain, that something in my spirit is irrevocably broken, consumed and awaiting the burial in its appropriate tomb. But I won’t, no - i don’t know how to put it down. I want to live in Thailand, I want to be around the Aussie’s, I want to be near my family always, at my desk with Compassion, in the arms of my lover, in the arms of my Lover...I want to be here and there.

My heart is a picaso shaped mess. With yesterday’s experiences and tomorrow’s expectancies...all of them trying to converge and meet to produce a work of brilliance. A light that is drawing you near, a mystery that goes before me and leads me only into Your presence. A place I could not withstand because my unworthiness would suffocate me, my ugliness would bow me down.

Pursue love. Pursue love.
Pursue love and righteousness and godliness and purity. And just be...be someone who pursues love and loves Him and loves well.

Into the labyrinth

Even to the point of fatigue have I undertaken the task of appealing to all my senses in order to eradicate some string of words, some kind of poetic thought.

I have lazy, misconstrued paragraphs lying about on scrapes of paper, throughout my journal, in my heart. Nothing is coherent and nothing will transition into some kind of lovely art.

I grow attached to the beginnings of everything I have given birth to and hate them all the same because they will not be paired with endings.

Oh MIND! You never deliver as I suppose you are capable of doing. So of course I have set aside tonight to get to the bottom of this – to dig up as much as I can before I am left with all things fossilized, left to chip and flake away with each new day.

Anyway, isn’t this always my problem – I am the most unfocused writer I know. Yet here, here are some of the riots playing out in my heart…

AND if you read this and think, “Why that makes no sense at all, has she gone mad?” I will only, in all amiableness, agree with you…

WAIT! (mmm, stalling) This past weekend at the Tour de Fat I was able to see a glimpse into Ian Cooke as he performed live, sporting his dusty brown overalls – it was brilliant. Oh why have I not known of him before?! So if you would like, I am listening to his song “Music” while writing this. Play on…

Saturday, September 7th
1 Corinthians 13 beckons me through and through. Each time I read it a weight of responsibility draws heavy and heavier within. And my eyes will not move on when I rollover these words, “It (love) does not insist on its own way…Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:5, 7).
Oh Lord, what burden is ours?

When I was younger I would read this and think of the most adorable and wonderful man who would exhibit such attributes and of course, I would demonstrate them too – mmm, to fall in love. Of course with growing older my romanticism over these verses decrease. I swear I die each time I read the "great love" chapter. I think it is beautiful in a most disquieting and horrifying way.

And then there is 1 Cor 14:1, just the first two words are enough to leave me paralyzed: Pursue love. And there you have it, can you feel it? has the incredible call and command not shaken you to your core?


Tuesday, September 9

In the Polaroid’s I see hazel eyes, blonde strands, freckles too many to count…My eyes linger and I recognize me, outside me, inside me too. I hear me say, “Come on, if you walk away then I’ll walk away too.” But I’m too tired and I can’t tell if I am asking for the separation of my physical self from my emotional self or separation of my flesh from the One I cling so desperately and unbecomingly to.

I see pieces of me die everyday. Parts that are withering because I am becoming more like Him. Parts that die because I do not know how to grow and expand those areas of creativity and ideas and dreams. So death is everyday. Everyday is the first and it is also the last.

My despair creeps in as if it were a welcomed guest, approaching calmly and pleasantly – where is the storm of attack? But as I hear the footsteps saunter and almost dance nearer, I know what to say, “Lay it up in the Kingdom child, walk it out in love and keep what is precious in the Kingdom.” (I say this to myself of course).

How appalling to know that possibly today I did not spill my cup out on the weary, the poor..the neighbor.

(End of contemplations I am allowing you into)

So there are two round-abouts that will not soon decipher their exit point. But, as it turns out, I love analyzing and I would not desire their swift retreat.

The only other item that lays burden upon burden (and not a straining burden, but more of an urgency – a desire to attain such love) would be:

“…bear with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:2-3).

Do you see it? What my heart feasts on for every meal? as if illness will come from any other delicacy.

It’s love, advancing in, walking on in, cultivating and accepting love. And not the lovesick, romantic love- do not be fooled! Oh no, this is the everyday with everyone "love" that I, in my messiness, am trying to portray to others in the midst of their messiness. What a mess…truly.

“Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep. And all their tearful words will turn back to steam… I never thought this life was possible, you’re the yellow bird that I’ve been waiting for” –Bright Eyes

“Music can make meaningless things seem so significant and I don’t use other ways to say the things I mean because, I know it may not matter that I think you’re magnificent but I hope this music makes it seem as if it does. After the words are sung you are the same” –Ian Cooke

“I want to tell you how much I love you.” –Cat Power

A New Way to be Blind

It is time for an update.

I would like to blame my delay in writing on the fact that I am so busy - and it’s true, I am incredibly busy, but I have also allowed my words to drop at my feet and seem only to react to the tears I never see coming.

Everyone asks me about my transition phase and honestly I seem to not even understand the concept.

I daily look at my suitcase, which is still off to the side of my room, and wonder how rational it would be to pack my bags and go back to Mae Sot. I don’t care about the mosquitos, I don’t care about getting malaria, I don’t care about encountering my selfishness, again, daily.

The Lord gave me the best gift He could give me while I tarry this earth weary and scarred. He gave me perspective, He gave me His perspective. I sincerely miss Mae Sot yet, while I was there I experienced a sorrow that could have had me on my back dwelling in some kind of “all is dust in the wind” complex for months.

I felt uncomfortable in my skin. Emotional disconnect was a constant desire, to shut down and see how far auto-pilot could get me. There were times, and I admit this shyly, I didn’t want to be there but I knew I didn’t want to be back in America either. The discomfort of a foreign land caused me to ache so wretchedly and at the same time the prospect of going back to comfort terrified me. Deliverance from either scenario was but a wish, a small prayer in the midst of too many truths. I knew for the first time, I knew with certain clarity, that home was no longer a house I described as, “Right next to the frisby golf course.”

My home is inside, my home is my Savior. It is the one place I can’t see and the only place my heart beckons me to. I am a nomad, a sojourner, a foreigner to this earth. A place I have known and a place I cannot wait to escape.

When I was a little girl I knew that home was where my parents were, when I started to grow up I began to dream of my home. Would I live in New York? Or Venice? Maybe I would go Hollywood style? But when the dreamer wakes up and realizes the dream does not satisfy, what hope is there? And that is what I felt in Mae Sot when I woke up and I ached for a warm bed and at the same time the hug of a precious orphan. On this earth a sacrifice will be made. Five months ago my desire for the hug from such a precious little girl was fulfilled, now the desire for the warm bed is realized.

I am not home. And when Jesus opened my eyes I am sure He knew that the swell in my heart would, in a way, leave me paralyzed to my original ideas of this life.

So, how has the transition been? On Saturday morning I pulled over because I could only think of the Karen people, the Agape village. Tuesday morning I woke up filled with more joy than I knew I could handle, the majesty of the Lord had taken me over.
It is one thing to bear the burden of a sorrow, quite another to bear the burden of the Lord’s kindness.

This transition will never end. I am not in the process of transitioning from a poverty stricken land to a land of freedom. I am heaven bound, at the feet of my Savior bound, and that transition will last the rest of my earthly life.

Now I see dimly, but one day...

John 14:23 “Jesus answered him, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.’”

Exodus 23:9 “You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”

Ecclesiastes 12:8 & 13-14 “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity...The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

Nothing can break quite like He can...

It'd be hard to say exactly everything that has presence enough to alert me, to appeal to my cluttered mind; fervently requiring all of my attention in some moment of some day amidst all the "somethings" I'm already attentive to. It is safe to assume that anything energetically beckoning me into an act of emotional labor will catch the focus of my eye.

There is always the Orchestrator pursuing me into Beauty and Truth and most days there are always the questions that are brought to my mind, the ideas that jolt me into a counterfeit reality and leave me thinking I am not worth much at all.

There are a lot of times I have been sad in my life but very few times I have staked claim to the overstated and under-healed entity that this “thing” is. I don’t think I’m even quite there yet - but if you stand close enough, if you look at me long enough you’ll be able to hear the breaking. It is not like the earth shattering, whole body collapsing, tear escaping, “breaking” most people are used to. This is not hollywood bound, not even suitable for some dramatic French indie... and that is why it was so deafeningly alarming, so subtly catastrophic.

Nothing can wake a distracted, emotionally charged, young lady quite like this thing can.
Checking-out of this life and finding a welcoming hiding place, a room dark enough to make even the hider unaware of the tears streamlining down their almost dried and cracked face, is no option I am aware of. And I am coming to think hiding is nor even something I want to embrace. My desire for authenticity does not just beckon me to be vulnerable but it also leads me into the shattered places of my heart - resurrecting those quick fix heartaches I wanted nothing to do with.

This type of sadness is the most evident suspect once it has unveiled itself to the target. I bet I would have seen it in Hannah’s eyes when she realized she was barren. I bet you could have felt it in the presence of Joseph as his brothers stripped him of his coat. And what of Elijah, when the Lord warned him that He would suffer the greatest loss and yet he was to move on and continue to be a prophet to the people of Israel.

This sorrow does not force me into a melancholy withdraw from life mostly because of the rose petals that will be picked up from where the ash used to lay. There will be the “when Adam first met Eve” feeling. When “Jesus left the desert victorious and focused” feeling. When “Sarah felt the first kick” feeling.

These are the unfathomable plans I can’t seem to imagine - the prospering, not lacking, realities that I will one day experience.

Until then I am in no other state than to inform myself that this breaking is the slow process of the pot realizing it is only the pot. I can feel the breaking, myself inching toward the ledge with each piece of knowledge, with each unconceivable sunset, with each tender word. I’m on a path that leads to the ground and I’ll shatter.
Albeit, I can’t seem to think of a better work of art to present to the Maker than a completely broken and humiliated self. I imagine the first words I’ll want to say will be, “I'm broken for you.” but He’ll probably beat me to the punch, He’ll probably speak up and say, “My delight is in you, beauty. Beauty.”

I’ll look back and think of this sorrow that wakes with a vengeance. That wakes commanding, “Let’s start writing this script. You’re believing lies He’s not speaking. You’re accepting fears that are conquered. There are plans for you to be sowing and reaping."

I can see the chisel in the hands of my Savior and right now I feel like I am in pieces but one day will see that I am just in Peace.


“Dear brokenness...You stand quite close to me... your breath is heavy within...you’re starring down my heart. You seize my life in an attempt to allow Him to seize all of me. Welcome to my muddled, calloused, inconsistently steady, permanently passionate heart. I’d like to ask you to make haste, but I think it is best you take your time.”

“She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.” 1 Samuel 1:10

“For He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that He might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”
Ephesians 2:14

“I Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.”
Col 4:18

It's a mental paralysis

It’s when the doubts forget how to leave you.
When the lies are no longer a distant voice
but a tyrant out for your freedom…repressing your choice.
They’re ransacking the soul.
Destroying you, contorting the truth, making room for control.

The repetitive fight for beauty and value moving into the defensive.
No longer a testimony rhythmically and passionately aggressive.
You’re now just the monotonous and lulling sonnet that has lost its writer.
Faded not vibrant, reckless not tracking, wavering as this army’s grip seizes you, you who were once a fighter.

Still your mind is trying not to rely on these tears
All the while your voice has collapsed and rotted over, no longer keeping at bay those damning fears.

Weary
This valley too lonely
This heart has forgotten its beat

His voice sounds like a roar.
Your bones crushing under His will. Accepting the burden you wait for the ending, a time to restore.

You try to keep it but it escapes your care: you draw your last breath…
Submit and let Him know you accept your death.

The metaphorical ground cracks and breaks.
The dressed up sheep watch their accusations become as ash and soak into some unknown deep.

Into the Holy room you saunter
Your feet weak but knowing no stumble or hidden falter

You must have seemed like a misbehaved beast.
His acceptance molds you – a softened clay, you become the least.

This blessing is not what you’d think
But His voice keeps the tempo
….your heart has regained its beat.







*And just to think, that was only the death of today.



And there it is. I found my poem.
I always had my inspiration (His pursuit and grand love) - but it takes time to put something like that into some kind of coherent and honoring thought.