The Here & Now

I roll out of bed this morning early and we make a special birthday breakfast for my mom. I am already all gloriously-happy from sweet time with family and cinnamon rolls and strawberries when I open the window and discover that today is the perfect bike-riding day. So after the dishes are done I'm out the door pedaling along the path I've pedaled so many times before. Yet today is especially glorious: and I can't help noticing little intricacies I too often miss: the way spring-morning air smells like roses, and how fluffy white clouds make delicate curlycues in bright blue sky, and the little flutterings of tiny yellow godfinch in a pink-blossom rose bush. And I smile the whole ride, thank my Jesus for these little blessings.

Suddenly I remember something, something rather absent-mindedly forgotten in the midst of birthday-celebrating and blessing-counting: Today is Memorial Day.

And in the midst of rose-smell and blue sky and yellow birds, I stop smiling. Men, young men, are fighting right now. Dying for me. Dying so I can have this bike ride. So I can notice flowers. So I can live life free.

Suddenly, I feel ashamed of my joy, of my happy little bike ride. Joy, yes, easy for me today, girl living in wealthy America, free to spend her day as she chooses, to spend her life as she chooses. Girl whose worst problems are stress and arguments. But if I lived as those men, soldiers, do? A world where daily I must watch my friends, brothers, die around me? A world where I must kill another woman's brother, friend, husband? Could I possibly be joyful, find blessings, then?

I, fragile girl, girl who can't bear to watch her dog get a shot at the vet, who gets queasy at the site of roller coasters, whose knees shake every time she gives a speech, joy might be difficult there, on a battlefield.

This answer, my own fragility in joy, dismays me. My own struggle to find joy seems so childlike in comparison to the quest others must make.

Yet, I realize something. Because this world is broken, full of sorrow and death, should I be broken also? My Jesus commands joy, and this joy, joy in my Savior, is what will heal a broken world, not more brokenness.

Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world.

~Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts (page 58)

 This is my Here and Now, a world of bike rides and freedom and flowers. What an incredible gift, to be able to learn joy here. My task is to be faithful here, to practice joy daily. And through this, my Jesus will prepare my heart for joy in a world of bigger brokenness, a world where fragile me is at the end of herself. I trust in His promise to prepare the hearts of those faithful in small tasks:

You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. ~Mathew 25:21

My job is the Here and Now.

Eyes wide open

*This post was inspired by probably the most beautiful book I've ever read, Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, which I just finished reading*

Today, I wake smiling. The sweet chirping of birds drifts through my window, I read a chapter of Lord of the Rings while I eat the parfait-and-toast breakfast my sweet momma prepared for me,  I plant little pink Impatiens, cool brown earth on my fingers, and wind through my hair. I wear my favorite shirt, look forward to a weekend up north with family….Today, joy is easy to find, always waiting for me.

Today, I want to live long. I write Bucket Lists, laid carefully on my desk. Ride a gondola in Venice, see the Eifel Tower…there is so much I want to do, so many things to see.

Today, I get to live.

Isn’t that enough to inspire joy in me?

Yet ever the  daily struggle of Now, not often as joy-filled as today….Now where I can’t see beauty, only unfinished schoolwork, high school drama, petty conflicts….and too often I wake frowning, dreading the day to come. Now where mommas in Africa watch their babies starve to death, where little children are abused, where fathers with many mouths to feed die from cancer. Now where often, all I can see is life’s disappointments.

In Philippians 4:11-12, Paul writes, “I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything.  I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.” Joy is not just something we find on good days. Joy, thankfulness, must be learned, practiced, daily, in the good and the bad, in the disappointments.

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?
~GK Chesterton

This living, this is grace. Why do I feel I must see the splendor of Venice and Paris to fully grasp the world’s magnificence? His grace is here, now, in little pink Impatients and a momma humbly serving. In receiving another day to live! I am still learning to recognize grace, to feel joy, on days without flowers and favorite shirts. On days of clouds and arguments and stress. He is always God, and isn’t His grace also evident in chances of new mercies and the healing of brokenness?

All is grace. Praying without ceasing is praying with eyes wide open, looking for this grace, thanking Him for it. Won't you join me, with eyes open wide?