The year started at the bottom of the world, watching in wonder
in the very place where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans collide. The splash on
the surface was nothing compared to the currents dancing down deep. But I could
only imagine that part – I couldn’t reach it, measure it, or ever know it.
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| Cape of Good Hope - Photo by Carly B |
It was alive down there!
A whole other realm – living, breathing, beauty unfathomable
in the exact places that looked like a dark and scary abyss from above. I
couldn’t breathe down there, but there was life.
Beautiful,
better-than-I-could-imagine life.
Life that made me giggle and glow.
Life that enamored me with childlike mystery.
Life I didn’t need to understand or have any kind of control
over.
Life that God didn’t have
to make in neon colors and that He didn’t have to texturize with His own thumbprints.
The year started with goggles on and with a psalm about the
Deep.
Here’s part of my New Year psalm, inspired by Life under the
surface and in those places I can’t breathe.
Stories and hardships swirl,
but your tide comes in every morning.
Your deep-song comes in for
my deepest cries.
And it washes. And it
cleans. And it makes new.
The stories aren’t lost out
there. They won’t drown. We won’t
be swept away.
Oceans are touching
seamlessly, creating beauty in the collision of their currents.
What does it look like when
you touch me? And when heaven touches earth?
It might not be a beautiful
collision, but it’s my air. I need you and that touch and that current-crash.
Because I could get lost in
stories swirling and lunging at promises, but You won’t let me.
Take this life, and make it
holy.
Make it a banner for the
deep.
For the justice in the Deep.
For the hope in the Deep.
For seeing with new eyes –
for things existing in the Deep that can’t exist outside of it.
The promises are like the
things in the deep.
2013 is like the things in
the deep.
I can’t breathe in there.
But I breathe You.
I scribbled that psalm with an ocean view. With
goggle-vision.
I came back chanting and cheering for goggle-vision in 2013,
for diving to the depths and seeing with Justice-vision, Glory-vision, in the
new year. I came back restored, refreshed and ready to go with God where God
said to go.
I came back in the high tide of reality – where new
beginnings start in recovery mode from the devastation December leaves behind
in rural South Africa.
I wasn’t alone, and I am thankful for that. Because it’s not
easy to switch from January 1st goggle-vision to actually going to the places
of the Deep for the other 364 days.
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| Given - Photo by Carly B |
We came back to a hospital ward full of wailing babies with
unchanged bandages. Tears filled eyes that didn’t deem them worthy of falling.
Apathy proliferating and hopelessness permeating.
We drove through a dark community after leaving screaming
hospital babies. We found Nandi hiding, dirty, weeping and refusing to go home.
And her mother walking away, unmoved by the display.
We spent a late night with that 11-year old in a police station,
listening to police tell us Nandi’s just “mentally off”, trying to convince me
to take her off their hands, to drop her off at the hospital for the next speed
bump in the system.
We spent an early morning at social services, fighting for
justice with placating smiles on our faces while the 11-year old child of the
streets clung to my knees and sucked her thumb.
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| Charity - Photo by Carly B |
We went to the first day of school with some of our most
precious little ones, speaking about hope for tomorrow - and for some sort of
surrogate celebration for Lifa’s first day of school four hours away.
We hugged Neli for making it back to school, and she told us
her dream come true was slightly tinged with worry because her 3-year old
sister was locked in her house with no childcare.
And that was all within 12 hours.
In those 12 hours, I forgot the words and the rhythm of the
psalm. Even as I reread it now, I can’t remember what it felt like to write with
the ocean-song in the background. The goggles are stored out of reach, and
goggle-vision feels further than that.
I feel bags under my eyes, dirt under my fingernails, bug
bites everywhere, and a deep, deep
hurt for hospital babies, social services babies, and one little baby boy who
didn’t start school at my house.
It hurts so deep I can’t really feel it.
But I think I’ve written something before about a Deep I
couldn’t reach or know.
Eleven days into the new year, and I’m having trouble
breathing.
The promises are like the
things in the deep.
2013 is like the things in
the deep.
I can’t breathe in there.
But I breathe You.
HE promised.
“See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert and streams
in the wasteland.”
Isaiah 43:19
I can’t breathe in the middle of the circumstances
surrounding me.
But maybe, maaaayyybeeee,
I can remember how to climb over those boulders, take off my sandals, wiggle up
close to my Creator.
In 2013, can I exchange these eyes on the world for the eyes
that see the Deep? Can I pause the lungs that grasp to get it, and can I plunge
my heart, soul, hands and feet into the Deep and let Him get it?
Not by myself.
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| Photo by Carly B's arm |
Carly B did it with me this week. And I choked and stuttered
and gasped for air.
But, together, we remember the giggling, glowing, enamoring
Life under the deep – the place we couldn’t understand or control. The place we
could only see and be amazed.
I don’t know what this year is going to look like, but I
think we’re going to deeper places. And I’m asking you to come – to at least
believe with me that there is living, breathing, beauty unfathomable in the
places that look like a dark and scary abyss.
Can we do this together?
And believe there’s abundant life when we plunge into the
places where it feels like we can’t breathe…
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| Tommy and Goggles - Photo by Carly B |
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