Dear Weary and Heavy Laden,

Somedays, I'm organized enough to bring all my things to office with me..including my laptop, my scarf knitting project, my tablet, my chargers....stuff. Other days, like today, I settled on just my tablet...assuming I wouldn't be inspired to write a blog and would be entertained enough just to explain and correct Kolby's schoolwork. 

As it turns out, I've been mulling over some thoughts and I'm left to type them up on a touch screen with my thumbs. Oh well.

Mom says she likes when I write the pictures/ analogies of Jesus because it helps her understand better, and through several Jesus talks with my friends lately, I've been seeing my Jesus at work through the painful stuff.

I was just waking up the other day when my phone buzzed a text message from a friend that implied the day was not off to a pleasant joy filled start. Which immediately launched into a discussion of what Jesus might doing..since we know all crappy days are from The Lord just the same as the good ones. 

I used to think The Lord had made for us a path, straight and narrow and alls we had to do is stick to said narrow path and we'd be on good ground. Any trials we faced came from falling off said path...
No..no no, that's just a farce. In his heart, man plans his ways, but The Lord directs his steps. 

¹ The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
²     He makes me lie down in green pastures, and sometimes I collapse on rocky ground
he leads me beside quiet waters, and is with me when the waters are deep
³     he refreshes my soul. Some how some way when it is too weary to go on
He guides me along the right paths,  though rough and treacherous and full of trials
    for his name’s sake.
⁴ Even though I walk and sometimes crawl and sometimes faint
    through the darkest valley and roughest hardship and most anguishing losses, 
I will fear no evil, I will believe no lie about my identity, I will not despair
    for you are with me; always, even to the end of the age. 
your rod and your staff, are strong and constant
    they comfort me. Because I know you fight for me, and I need only to be still.

⁵ You prepare a table before me sometimes a feast, sometimes a day's provision of manna.
    in the presence of my enemies. Who tell me I am worthless and inadequate and not good enough and too much and reject able and postponable and brush-off-able...
You anoint my head with oil; you set your seal of ownership on me and place your spirit in my heart as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
    my cup overflows. Sometimes with tears, sometimes with joy, but always with you.
⁶ Surely your goodness and love will follow me even if I wander, even if I run...you take off running after me
    all the days of my life, that you ordained for me before time began. 
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever. Because you want me there. You picked me out of 6 billion and said, "I wanna share my heaven with you because you are mine and you bless me. I have prepared this place, just for you. I did not leave you or forsake you, I went before you and was with you. You walked through a valley because I took out a mountain for you. You climbed a mountain because I raised a valley. You trudged through mud and water because I put out a fire. Because I love you. Because I want you. Because I made you. Because you are mine."

There is no straight, narrow, easy path. It's up and down and deep and wide and good and bad and crazy. Like the Israelites wandering their 40years through the dessert, we got our tickets for the long way 'round. Not because of sin, necessarily, but because there are others, lost in the wilderness, unaware the promised land even exists. And in our own wanderings, we find them. We stumble over them in the valleys and we greet them on mountain summits. We tell them, "come with us, you are valuable and precious." And  sometimes they find us and trip over us in the darkness, as we lie crumpled in a fetal position, too beat down to wander any further. And The Lord tells us, "blessed are those who have someone to help pick them up. I am with both of you and together we form a chord of three strands" and he sends us out in pairs of twos, with the same reassurance of being there also.  

And The Lord blesses us beyond that, even. He gives us three friends or four or five or six and says, "here, bless each other, pray for each other, fight for each other, encourage each other and know that I am here with all of you. I go before you and walk beside you and I am your rear guard behind you"

And in the midst of all that, The Lord still plucks our own, individual, unique-to-only-us hearts out of  all of them and works on them just specially. He sits down at his workbench and dismantles them and details them with care and precision. He sees the rough edges of our harden hearts and takes them to his blacksmith shop and hold them in the fire before pounding them out on an anvil. He clips and cuts and remakes and washes and polishes and doctors and repairs day by day by day by day. He loves you too much. He doesn't rest. He says, "I am He who began a good work in you, and I will be faithful to carry it out to completion and I will work on it until the day Christ comes back. So know this, My Love, you will feel it. I breathed life into your lungs and into your heart so that you could feel, and you will not be numb to the the trials, you will be cut to the deepest places so that I may fill in the deepest places with my love."

"My love is big, precious. It is too big for your heart. So I will break your heart and make it bigger. I will fill it fuller and I will grow it stronger." 

"So rest, dear one. For I have called you by name and you are mine. It is not your job to fix or fuss or worry or wonder. You need only to trust and have faith and hold on and cling to me with all of the strength I have given you. And hold on tight...because its gonna be wild" 

"I have come so that you may have life, and life to the full." That is a wild promise. That's a promise that he will take you cliff jumping off rocky mountains and skydiving through inclimate weather and scuba diving through deep waters where sharks and eels wait for their meals. You will go spelunking through lions dens and rock climbing out of valleys. You'll bungee jump off of giant waterfalls and you'll feel yanked around and slightly violated. Your muscles will be sore and your back will ache and you'll be thirsty for water and your hands will be blistered and your legs will be bruised....but you will have lived. You will have breathed fresh, crisp mountain air and you will have drank from sweet springs. And the water will be the most refreshing water you have tasted. You will swim in hot springs and find freshwater pearls amongst oysters and clams. And you will know what it is to live. You will be battered and bruised and rained out and snowed in and caught up in tornados and hurricanes....but you will have lived. 

And it is for this reason that you press on toward the goal. To receive the prize. To receive an audience with the maker of the universe. To climb the last mountain with the last ounce of strength and to reach for the last hand hold, only to find that it is a hand holding yours...pulling you up to eternity. 

Because to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

And "to die, would be an awfully big adventure."