Our longings are made for beauty.Tracing the eternity set in our hearts
Twelve healing movements for a longing heart—my free guide for subscribers.
If I had an idealized personal backstory, church would be low-drama territory. That’s not my actual story though. I’m thirty-three and church has been the messiest part of my adult life. When I hear people say they love Jesus, just not the church, I have no argument against the pain beneath that statement. It aches to be unseen, dismissed and misunderstood, especially when we, the church, hurt each other this way. It would be awful to go to a hospital with your injury and only be hurt more. When you bring your pain somewhere to heal, that’s when the wounding cuts deepest. Church experiences strike that same nerve. I’ve never felt the ugliness of humanity more (both mine and that of others) than when I’m within the walls of a church. That’s what I know from my story. The church on earth is fully flawed. Because of this, it stops me every time when the Bible unashamedly calls the church the body of Christ. “And he [Jesus] is the head of the body, the church…” (Col. 1:18). “Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually” (1 Cor. 12:27). “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Rom. 12:4-5). What is more physically personal to someone than their own body? How could Jesus identify with the church any more closely? Paul is the biblical author who wrote most about this—the same man who persecuted the church until the day Jesus asked him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). If you love Me, why do you treat My body this way? Jesus asked a question and Saul’s heart broke so completely that he would no longer be the same. With a new name and a new life, Paul took hold of this question. He spent the rest of his life loving Jesus by tending to the dysfunction that happens between the flawed people who make up Christ’s family. In a post-pandemic time when the church in America is reshuffling out of old holding patterns, how does one love the body of Christ in truth and love? Sometimes it seems that one part of Jesus’ body wants to go right and one part of it wants to go left, and each side wants to defeat the other. What in the world does a person conclude? These questions prod me always, asking not to be ignored. Maybe some questions don’t ask for answers as much as they ask to be heard. When I’m overwhelmed, it’s a gift to remember that some answers are not mine to hold. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:9). The broken body of Christ is a mystery too vast for me, yet a heartbreaking paradox that stretches me. Though my ache is for certainty, my need is for trust in the Head. It’s He who leads to each step on the path when there’s grace for even one scar, and mercy to remember who loved me while I wounded Him.
When my daughter Liesel was very small, she wanted to make a robot-like doll. While our girl always kept a creative project going, it felt special to watch her give this robot more care than any project she’d made before. This guy would be her buddy. A cardboard box in the yard became her work station. She gathered air-dry clay, paint, plastic caps, broken toys, and odd pieces of metal. For a four-year-old, she put an immense level of thought into how she wanted to craft him. She painted the pieces, carefully pressing each one into the clay blob of his head. Then, with heartfelt care, she formed his face. Ready for the clay to dry, she showed us her work with utmost delight—the plastic cap eyes painted black and white, the antennae aligned just right. Her new friend was coming to life, and his face lit up her smile. She inserted the piece she would use to form his body and made sure he was comfortable while he dried. But close by hovered the curious toddler hands of Baby Brother. Tragedy struck when he yanked a piece away before the clay fully hardened, damaging her beloved new friend. Tears streaking her face, Liesel’s features twisted in horror. In the awful realization, her voice trembled, hollow and broken. “ Mommy. He is…ruined.” This was nothing like when her towers got knocked down. This was the depths of her heart laid out with love and smashed. I offered all the hugs and comfort I knew how to give, but to her, this devastation seemed more than she could bear. I looked at her robot and thought of pain I’ve known that could never be undone. I told her I was so sorry. And I asked her to not give up on Mr. Robot. With the same hollow quiver in her voice, she told me what she couldn’t ignore. He would never be the same. I agreed and my heart broke too. I longed to see more of the joy her new friend brought her. “You made him, and I know you can re-shape him.” With a half-whisper, half-prayer, I hoped she would keep on. While I worked in the kitchen, I kept an eye out the back door window. She sat in the swing with her head down. Mr. Robot sat a few yards away in his box, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. A half hour later, she had hardly moved. I watched and waited. And I prayed, because this felt big, like a story that would continue to live inside her. Then, I caught sight of a change. While I dried my hands, I moved toward the window to spot the sway of the empty swing. Liesel knelt beside the box with Mr. Robot in her hands, staring into his face—his ruined face. How do you bring yourself to look at the ruined face of what you’ve made? How do you stare at the misshapen remnants of a dream you built with your hands and formed with your love? I’d been reading Elisabeth Elliot’s writing about what helps us find courage for difficult moments. She recalls the rainbow’s end that keeps champions charging forward. “The heroes of the world’s great legends let themselves in for all kinds of fearsome troubles because of the promise of a great reward—the favor of the king, a pot of gold, marriage to a princess. Because there was a shining goal, they entered in with heart and will to participate in the as-yet unseen and unknown hazards of the dreadful journey. Their heroism lay in acceptance—a wholehearted acceptance of conditions other men would avoid at all cost—and in endurance. The dark caves, tunnels, and labyrinths were not problems to be solved but hazards to be traversed, the storms and heavy seas were to be braved, the giants and monsters to be slain. All were accepted and endured in view of the prize. ”* Elliot considers the moments when the hazard we’re given to traverse “is not presented to us in the form of martyrdom, heroic action, dragons or labyrinths…”** But what about the moments when the “dragon” we’re to face is the fear of our own pain when we see the damaged remains of a dream? From the window, it seemed Liesel’s heart must’ve caught sight of a shining prize, because she reached for another piece. With a little time, she found a way to work with that same clay head and reform Mr. Robot’s face. And though it wasn’t the same as before, his eyes brought her even more delight. After she finished Mr. Robot, he claimed a special spot on Liesel’s desk at night and would accompany us on trips into town. When we went out to eat, he sat on the table beside her, fiercely protected from Baby Brother. His presence often sparked questions from passersby, and she proudly showed him off with her biggest smile of all. One waitress shared how her daughter had also made a creature whom she carried with her everywhere. I wondered what lay beneath the surface of that story. When she asked me to tell her more about Liesel and her robot, I didn’t know how to do more than touch the surface of all Mr. Robot represented. I only knew that when I saw Liesel beaming there next to him, my heart felt full with the memory of when she slayed a dragon in our backyard. To watch a child kneel beside a broken dream is a gift. The quiet memory of her courage points me to the One who gave me the joy of life with her. I remember the shining prize of Him. He is the Maker-Friend who can always be trusted to redeem the ruined. *** Years later, I stepped into my kids’ room and noticed the overflowing box of toys. I rummaged through its contents to see what may have reached its time—a doll better suited for a younger child, a stuffy that saw the washing machine too many times. At the bottom of the box lay broken pieces of clay. Not sure what I was looking at, I placed them together on the floor. Then I found a plastic cap, painted black and white—an eye. It belonged with the clay. The remains. Mr. Robot. _______ *Elisabeth Elliot, The Path of Loneliness, pp. 107-108. **Eliot, The Path of Loneliness , pp. 111-112.
A patch of irises sits beyond our backdoor. The iris have grown there longer than I can remember. They may have been planted by my great grandmother, or the Craven family who lived here before her. I know they’ve weathered some hard years. One year, a child picked them all just as they bloomed. Some years, they bloom before the last winter freeze. Before we lived at the farm, I’m told the whole iris patch was mowed down with aims to kill it for good. I don’t believe the iris bloomed that year, but they did grow back to bear their purple blooms. This summer, my girls dug in the dirt beside the patch and uncovered a hidden brick pathway. Somebody gave careful thought to how and where to plant those hardy perennials. Though I’ve yet to learn how to give them care, they still greet me every year with their color. No matter how short a time the iris gets to bloom, no matter how the weather and the hands of others affect them, they follow their design. When the earth gets warm and damp after the cold, they turn beautiful again. My kids’ discovery of the brick pathway gave me more thought to them this year, and how resilient they are. A few difficult years in a row won’t stop them. Even a lawn mower can’t kill them. These trials seem to result in more hearty growth to come. An iris patch will produce blooms for an average of 3-5 weeks a year and the iris are content to stand as bare stalks for the rest of the time. It’s as if the iris is hardwired to know, even if a child picks her the very day she blooms, the whole year was worth it for the beauty she brought that day. So she’ll do it year after year. When I think of the one who planted the iris patch, I think of the human struggle to trust the goodness of what we share with our hands, and with our lives. Some seasons you bloom just before the freeze. Some seasons you are mowed down by life. Perhaps a perennial faith keeps choosing to trust there is purpose in the bloom before, even despite the freeze—so there’s purpose in opening again. Before I was born, hands planted a bulb in the dirt, not knowing who would enjoy it. And each day, hands are at work to share good gifts. In Scripture, Job spoke of the resilience of plants that sprout again after being cut down (Job 14:7). When he remembered them, he remembered hope. And how he needed hope. At the peak of bloom, Job’s life was mowed down. With all his livestock destroyed and his ten children killed, his flesh was eaten by pain, while his friends mocked him and his wife told him to go die. In Job’s grief, he compared his life to a withered flower (Job 14:2). Yet even amidst those thoughts, he remembered the plants which sprout again, and though his memory of hope was a small passing thought, it was there in the growth he’d witnessed before—buried deep within him. Rooted expectations are powerful no matter how softly they rise. Job’s life did bloom again. And perennial faith does not require that one never feel small, though it invites the soul to be awed by the simple memory of hope. “For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grow old in the earth, and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put out branches like a young plant.” Job 14:7-9