How to Begin?

Taken by Cally Declan at High School Camp in June

Truly, how? I'm back from camp. I suppose that's where to start. I have been postponing this post... I have been busy, for one, and just don't know if I have all the words to say for another. Camp was... amazing. Actually, let me rephrase that. God was amazing. In ever weakness, He was strong. In every heartache, He was there alongside me. In every triumph...well, every triumph was certainly His.

How can I explain fully the greatness of God? I can't. Yet every moment I was relying on just that. Who is God? I know just bits and pieces even now. God is faithful. I saw that in the millions of stars and seeing Saturn through the telescope, and I saw it as I cried at my incompetence in the bug-filled shower. I saw it in the Spirit-filled discussions, in the laughter of my girls, and even in the bloody knees and broken souls.

I can't say it enough. I couldn't have done it without God's faithfulness. If you ever need to know how incapable you are (and we all should find this out at some point...it's truly humbling), go and be a camp counselor. Because there are questions you can't answer. There are trials you don't know how to deal with. There are emotional and spiritual battles in which you are helpless to defend yourself. But guess what?

God is our sword and our shield, our fortress and our deliverer.

How amazing is that? Seriously. God is so good.

And I cannot fathom it. This stark contrast between the vastness of God and the hollow, tiny, broken vessel that is me is humbling and joyous and full of such grace and power and majesty and God...God, God is the only thing left.

 

That's what camp teaches me over and over again. I can't. He can. I am broken. He is whole. I am empty. He is fullness. I am darkness. He is light.

 

Is that not glorious? I can't bend my mind around this thought. It is marvelous and yet so practical. And best of all? It is unchanging. God never changes. He never fails.

 

And so I sing it, hard, into the star-filled sky, "Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders / Let me walk along the waters / Wherever you will call me / Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander / And my faith will be made stronger / In the presence of my Savior!" 

Skyward

From Pinterest

These days I’m looking skyward

Into the blue of the morning, the grey of the storm,

And the gold of the sunset.

The peak breaks the clouds to let the sun filter through.

Breathtaking.

It was a hawk that I saw, I think.

It cut through the wind, soaring higher than the very mountains.

And I ran and I laughed and I jumped,

But the wind did not take me up to join it.

Still, these days I’m looking skyward.

Because the ground is full of flowers and trees that reach up as hard as they can,

And me, too. I’m reaching up.

I’m ready to fly.

P.S.
I will be gone for a little over two weeks! Candence Declan will be gone as well, so Monday Madness will return probably July 27th. Anyway, I'm off to camp and I can't wait! I will have lots of stories to tell when I get back, I am sure. Until then, as the Guatemalans say, may God richly bless you.

Monday Madness: S1 P7

NO, I DID NOT FORGET!

But I am not searching Pinterest for a picture. So boohoomoomoo.

OKAY ACTUALLY WRITING NOW:

When everyone left me in the interrogation room, in the dark, all alone, I almost cried. But I didn't, because I was so mad. See, now that I had time to get my real emotions out, they all mixed and formed into a bursting rage.

Of course, I had questions. But the questions only fueled my anger. So I decided to do the logical thing and list everything that I was angry about.

#1 I was kidnapped. By a kid. After being hit by a car and witnessing a shooting.

#2 The kidnappers were annoying.

#3 They had my dog.

#4 They didn't know that Beowulf always eats his food with all the human leftovers piled on top and he had grown rather spoiled and wouldn't eat without the leftovers and would therefore probably starve.

#5 They had questions I couldn't answer

#6 They had questions I realized that I wanted the answers to.

#7 The handcuffs hurt almost as much as the duct tape.

I took a deep breath, blowing my bangs up out of my eyes. Then I took in another deep breath, and in frustration, I yelled at the top of my lungs, some inaudible thing that even I didn't know what it meant. But it felt right.

"Would ya quiet down already? You're making this rescue an awful lot harder than it should be," said a voice from the shadowy corners of the room. I started.

"Who are you?"

"Eh, that's neither here nor there, as they say." The shadows moved and formed into the form of a human.

I almost screamed again, but he quickly nixed my attempts, as he clapped his hand over my mouth.

"Shh! I tell ya. Ya'd think you'd be happy for a rescue."

I calmed myself a little bit, then tried to examine my "rescuer", but there wasn't much to be seen, as he was hooded and masked and had sunglasses on and also black clothes.

Red flags galore.

But right now, it was either follow the guy who had just miraculously appeared and picked the lock on my handcuffs, or wait for more interrogation about stuff I knew nothing about.

I stood up, rubbing my wrists. "Can you please just tell me who you are?"

His gloved hand closed over my wrist and we started walking. He put his finger to his lips and opened the door and looked out. Quicker than I could blink, the two guards that were outside the door were on the ground, tied together, with their shoes in their mouths.

Before I even knew it, we were out into fresh air, around a few corners, through some alleyways, and finally crawling through a cellar window. I was panting with the exertion, but my rescuer didn't even seem like he had felt the effort.

As we dropped to the ground, I put my hands on my hips and attempted to look like I wasn't winded either, but couldn't slow my breathing down enough to pull it off. Plus, I was still super impressed by this guy's ability to speed and beat people up and...yeah and do pretty much everything.

"So who are you?" I asked impatiently.

My rescuer pulled his hood off, revealing spiky, unruly black hair. Then he pulled off his sunglasses, took off his mask, and grinned. "Heya, Li. I'm your brother."

He is Faithful

Taken by Cally Declan again

When that humongous trailer started tipping, my heart skipped a beat and I grasped at metal and tugged with all of my petty might and I felt the breath leave me.

Two were on the danger zone side. Two names that were beating with my pounding heart and for a moment there, I thought,

They're gonna die.

And in that abyss of my own thoughts, I saw a dark thing and I found that I could not pull this heavy weight in any way. I couldn't save anyone.

All of this was thought in a split second as the trailer full of furniture creaked and moaned and fell to the left--

And crashed straight down on a jack that wasn't supposed to be there.

And yet was totally supposed to be there.

Isn't it incredible how we serve the God who doesn't make mistakes? Who doesn't have little accidents? Who doesn't turn his back for one instant to let something happen outside His will?

And man, even if that trailer crushed one of us... it's all under His control.

Do I trust that? Not really. Not nearly as much as I should. Instead, my life is a series of cheap, predictable novels--in which the heroine jumps down off of the back of the suburban, puts her weight into pulling the tipping trailer, and saves the day.

Er, well, that is to say, I never actually save the day.

But I always think that I can, for some odd reason. Even though, dude, I don't even work out.

But God is faithful. Always, always, always faithful. And it always looks different. Whether it's a jack in the right spot at the right time, or the fact that He is well acquainted with our grief, or as we live our daily lives in this crazy promise of sanctification day by day.

God keeps His promises. He always has and always will. And boy is that an incredible thought.

To the Girl Who Died Part 2

Taken by Cally Declan

And when the whole world felt like death,

When the heaviness of night fell upon me,

And as I prayed that life might be real to you,

A great flurry of butterflies flew upon the innocence of summer,

And I thought of you.

They sang the song of a Man

Who walked toward death as it hurtled towards Him,

Who was engulfed in blackness as the storm railed on,

Who died,

And from the pit of despair, from the gates of Sheol,

He rose again.

So let me say it with more conviction.

There is light, there is hope.

I have seen it.

I see it in the hills painted with sunlight in the golden hour.

I see it in the fields of wildflowers that host such a great cloud of witnesses.

I see it in the night sky broken by a thousand, no, a million stars.

I see it in the tomb, left empty of its decay.

And in that light there is no more darkness.

In that life there is no more death.

To the Girl Who Died

From Pinterest

The girl was dead.

Not in body, but in soul,

Like the enemy had come in the watches of the night

And destroyed all the good crop that sprouted in her childhood.

And it didn’t cross her mind that anything was wrong.

And it smote me.

A well-aimed knife between the shoulder blades.

She was dead, and I mourned.

Yet she was beautiful, perfectly slender, with beautiful eyes that—

That were windows to her decaying soul.

The world is good at faking life.

It’s cruel.

Can there be hope in the depths of the soul?

Can there be life in the garden that tasted utter destruction?

Because they planted, we watered, but where is the growth?

Why did death overshadow her and plunge her into the abyss of darkness

Deep and wide as the sin that wracks the ribs of the world even now?

Yet is sin any more than an illusion, a fraud?

Christ drowned it in His blood.

So what happened?

What happened, little girl, what broke you?

Because when you broke, you shattered,

And then you got on your hands and knees and

You tried to piece the little girl back together again.

On your own.

But you didn’t know how to, so instead you built walls,

Dungeons and catacombs and pits and snares,

And you grasped your ankle and closed the manacle around it,

And sat in the darkness to hide.

And when sin crouches at the door you call him friend.

You let him strip you of everything and you call it good.

And my soul burns within me and I feel the words pulsating through my veins like fire,

There is light, there is light, there is light.

There is hope, little one, there is light.

Just open your eyes.



Monday Madness S1 P5

From Pinterest

They brought me into an interrogation room. At least, that was what I assumed since it was a creepy little room with no windows and only one light. It was almost like they were trying to make it feel like a movie.

They sat me down in the chair, then handcuffed my hands (thank goodness, no more duct tape. It really did hurt) around the back of the chair. I gave a dirty look to the guy who did all of this, a guy who wasn't with us on our car ride. This guy was tall and buff and basically looked like an army guy. Carl was there, too, and I wondered if Jon would appear as well. I hoped so. I knew that he would be easier to manipulate than either of these guys would be.

Plus, he was a lot less scary.

"What did you do with my dog?" I said coolly.

Army guy looked curiously at Carl, who shrugged and said, "Your dog is fine. He's outside."

"He likes to have a lot of space to run around. Also, he can sense creeps, so I'd watch yourself."

"Never you mind about him. Right now we have something to talk to you about."

I pretended to look surprised. I was, however, genuinely intrigued, especially after Jon's note.

And speaking of Jon, there he appeared. Carl nodded at him, then said quietly, "You're just going to watch how an interrogation is done. No talking, no interruptions, nothing. Just observe."

I rolled my eyes. "What, is this some sort of training thing? I'd really hate to be kidnapped for no reason but to train this nerd."

Jon rolled his eyes, crossed his arms, and leaned back against the door.

Carl and Army guy turned back to me. Army guy spoke first. "What's your name?"

I was a little startled by this question, but I responded, "Don't you know?"

Army guy nodded and looked at the clipboard he had in his hand. "Keilah Rose Fleming, age sixteen, born September 13th in Xuancheng, China. Adopted from China when you were at the age of two by Brendan William Fleming and Melissa Rose (Gardener) Fleming, whose biological children include Joseph William Fleming and Michael James Fleming."

I shifted uncomfortably.

"Birth name, Lian Tan. Birth parents: listed as unknown." Army guy looked up at me with a pointed look. "We have reason to believe, Miss Tan, that the orphanage that you were with for the first two years of your life destroyed your files. Either that or your parents did. Somehow along the line the documents went missing."

I sputtered my lips. I was in way over my head and I knew it. "How am I supposed to know what happened to some papers if I was a baby?" I said in frustration. This was a subject I usually avoided, but it's hard to avoid it if some creep is interrogating you about it. It's different when it's a schoolmate or whatever.

Army guy squatted down to eye level. "Aiguo and Hua Tan," here I started, for I had never before heard the names of my biological parents before, "were high level spies. But it seems that all evidence of them ever existing has been wiped from every database."

I sat in stunned silence for a moment, then said, more quietly and afraid-sounding than I had intended, "Then how do you know about them?"

Army guy shook his head. "As interrogator, I ask the questions."

Stay tuned for part 6 on Candence's blog next Monday!