Running Under Water

Dear friends,

I miss you. I miss talking to you. Writing to you. Having a moment even to THINK about you and the things we’ve enjoyed discussing here. There’s just no way around it as I type these words.

This pandemic – and all the things that led up to it and all the things that are exposed by it -its all so hard. We are such vulnerable people, are we not?

Recently, I heard a quote from a book that is just the little granule of light and life and wisdom that I want to push forward into the world today. And, I’ll be frank here, every day of my whole entire life.

In An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor says this:

“One night when my whole heart was open to hearing from God and what I was supposed to do with my life.”

God said, ‘anything that pleases you.’ 

‘What?’ I said, resorting to words again. ‘What kind of an answer is that?

‘Do anything that pleases you,’ the voice in my head said again, ‘and belong to Me.’”

Friends, I honestly think this is what I was put on this earth to hear. And then to share.

I told a friend recently, that if I were to die tomorrow, I would want it to be said that Courtney “went after what she wanted.” And I think she knew what I was saying. I think she knows me well enough to know that what I want had surely better be wrapped up in capital “J” Joy or I’m not interested. Joy, in my experience, is a settled and confident delight. Joy is worth fighting for every time. And joy, at least for me, is grounded in the love of a whole-hearted parent or spouse who understands his beloved from the inside out enough to say: “Go do what you feel led to do. Just stay connected to me while you do it.”

There’s a part of me that grows irritated as I consider these things during a worldwide pandemic. I know in my bones that this way of living is what we were created for, and yet so much of the living of it feels like trying to run underwater in these difficult days. Every single thing is difficult. No tiny thing is easy. What gives?

I don’t really have any good answers right now other than an inkling somewhere up in the foggy distance that there are people in the world right now who don’t understand what its like to truly belong, to God or to people. And they don’t understand what its like to belong because its taken a pandemic to realize that they’ve lived among people their entire lives and are suddenly unbearably alone and unknown. Its the kind of alone that can happen in a room full of people. The kind of alone that only God can expose (now, at large, through a pandemic) and that only God can start to fix (through his extraordinary means of grace).

So, while I don’t really have any choice, I do think this makes all this running underwater a potentially valuable strength building exercise for me, and perhaps most importantly, for my community. Maybe we’re just building the strength to hope. Maybe we’re just building the strength to trust this difficult process. And maybe we’re just building the strength and muscle that we’ll need when this crisis finally passes over us and we can start to build our communities back up again. Maybe this time it will be a little more joyful and a little more communal. Maybe this time we’ll know what its like to belong to God and to each other. Maybe this time we truly will be able to do what pleases us with full confidence and great delight because we will belong to the Lord and each other so fully that we won’t have to suspect each other any more. We can just live freely, together, in pursuit of the good things God wants to show us.

Maybe this is all a little naive and its likely good and proper to remain realistic.  But I don’t think I’m aiming for utopia. I understand our human condition a little too well at this point to shoot for that. I think its just that I happen to know what pleases me and what it feels like, if only in moments and brief seasons of my life, to belong to Him. And what compassionate person wouldn’t want that for her neighbors if they could have it too in this difficult and lonely year?

So each morning this fall, I’ll put on my shoes and my suit and wade into the proverbial pool for the workout this season requires. I don’t really get it. I thought we were ready to fly in 2020, I really did. There have been times, and there will be more, when I’ve wanted to pull the plug on this whole endeavor. But God has other plans and I’m willing to stay in the gym if it means we can throw a few more friends into this boat we’re building at the end. I don’t really know what its going to look like when we’re done. I’ll just hold onto the hope that its what we would have wanted if we’d known we could have had it this way in the first place.

Be well,

Courtney