Where my heart is

Aside from celebrating the Carpenter's first coming to our earth, my favorite thing about Christmas is being home.

I like being home.

I like hiking through our pacific northwest forest and chopping our tree down. I like laying in front of the wood-burning fireplace and reading Oswald Chambers. I like waking up and passing gifts into the open hands of my sisters + my brother. I like knitting with my mother. I like shooting pop cans down in the backyard and working in the shop with my dad. I like sharing tea at the table. I like the big Italian meal. I like the candles burning each night. I like the hidden stashes of chocolate. I like the cold nip in the air even when we don't get snow, because our noses get red anyway. I like the old books, everywhere, piled in piles that I may never find possible of accumulating for many more years to come. I like the china cabinet, just the fact that there is a china cabinet. I like my hens. I like the stain all over my hands because that is the one place I break the rules, I stain without gloves. I like our trees. I like the mountains.
I like it here.
I didn't used to, but now I do. This place grew into me, the marrow of my bones. And maybe it's just the people here and my family here and everyone here or maybe this is just a season that will be over in a year or so, but I'll admit it. I like the familiar. I like my hometown. I like my home. Call me a fool for the years I wasted griping when I could have been loving, but the solid truth of the matter is, hearts are fickle and mine is utterly so.
This place is where I've made my best discoveries.
And while it's true that I'm off having adventures elsewhere now, it is also true that I always want to come home for the holidays.

I am just a small person. I always will be.

Home

Years ago I began to read the Bible. My Bible. And with intention.
I purposed to finish it all, a chapter a day.
There are one thousand one hundred and eighty-one chapters in the Bible.
I confess, some days I forget. Some mornings I don't do it. Sometimes I don't care enough. But this morning I did, and this morning I finished Nahum. Which means that I am five books away from finishing the old testament.
Can I tell you friends, I am changing? I am. It's so clear now, these last few days especially though. I am so different, so much more a woman than I have ever been. I am hidden, hidden in Him, my carpenter.
I am rescued.
And so apparently, so obviously.

I hummed praise songs under my breath as I rode my bicycle home from the grocery store tonight. Oregon chai, peppermint tea, and a package for A underneath my arm. The roads slick with the southern Oregon rain still hanging in the air. The mountains wrapped in thick grey blankets. It was beautiful.
I celebrated.
Being this close to finishing the first part of something I started so long ago reminds me that I have not always been who I am right now. I was kind of a little lost before. But now I am found. Now I have been so gorgeously found. And I am cherished, I am loved, I am adored, I am pursued.
I'm in the cleft of the rock, and if you've never been there, let me tell you, it is a breathtaking place. It is a solace, a have, a safe place, a home.

Loving Jesus is like coming home.

Diving.

On Sunday, an elder prayed for me and my family. We stood in the hot grass in front of the lake and wrapped our arms around each other and he prayed. He prayed something about waking up with eternity written on our eyelids, but what struck me the hardest was when he prayed for me.
That I would go deeper.
I stood there for a second when he said it, my breath caught in my throat as I barely mouthed the word after he said it. Deeper, I whispered. And then I said it again, just to reassure me.

Deeper.

There was a time when that word meant nothing to me. I had no experience with it. It was useless. I was as deep as I could go. At least I thought I was. Depth was a foreign concept to me. Little did I know then, I had only scraped the surface of my carpenter + His grace. There would come a time later in my life when I would suddenly pry my fingers from my face and look and see and then actually dive. Because all that time I had been treading water, and I thought I was standing.
Sometimes the earth we feel underneath our feet isn't really there.

On Sunday, I loved hearing someone pray those words over me, but better yet, I loved more that they meant something to me. I got excited, tears creeping out of the corners of my eyes and sweat making my hair stick to the back of my neck and the sun, the ever insistent sun beating down. The beauty in that prayer was not that someone else prayed for me to go deeper. The beauty was that I knew I could, that I wanted to, that I was capable.
I can go deeper, I said to myself as I went back after he had finished and I sat on a hardwood picnic table that poked splinters into my thighs.

I can go deeper, I said it this morning too.
Because I believe it. I know it.

On a carpenter.

Sometimes I think we rob ourselves of Jesus. The real Jesus. I know I do.

I am in love with a carpenter. He lived long ago in many places, with many people. Fishermen's villages. Jewish synagogues. Tent-makers. Dry bones and empty vessels. A Roman dictatorship. Legionaries. Lepers. Olive colored skin. Another language. Another time.
A different story.
When I was little, I imagined Jesus as a prophet. You know the one. The teacher on the hill in Jerusalem. With the white skin and the brown hair and the clean beard and the perfect diction. My Jesus when I was little spoke with a smooth, sweet voice that lilted across hills where hundreds of his followers sat. He was worshiped daily. He was loved. Even when we watch him tear the temple apart, there is just something so right and righteous about our Jesus. He was perfect.
Humanity's idea of perfection.
Jesus was not comely though. The Bible says that, very clearly, very obviously. He was nothing special to look at. It never says that he had the gentle voice, or that his hands that barely touched people and they were healed were smooth and unmarked. It never says that it was all wonderful. It never talks of whether he was clean or dirty or what he wore or how he held his back and shoulders. It never says any of those things.
It never says that it was all wonderful.

I am an adult. I grew up with a wrathful God and a sweet Jesus though. Then I started to make discoveries. I discovered that God is gentle and loving too. And that even though Jesus was perfect, it is not necessarily the perfect we all see or want. It is not necessarily wonderful. When I stepped hesitantly from youthfulness into adulthood, I found a lover. A carpenter. A pursuer.
It is hard to explain to people that you are in love with a dead man. A dead man who you never knew. That you write him letters and seal them, but keep them in your journal. In your drawers. Under your bed. Pressed between the lines of your favorite books. That's difficult to explain. Because my fairytale is just that. It seems so unreal that it must be a fairytale. But it's true. It's happening, every day. I am pursued by the perfect man.
I am in love with the perfect man.

I didn't actually know what perfect is until recently though.
I've come to see that I rob myself of Jesus. I romanticize the story. This is the truth.
My carpenter was thought to be a bastard child. His life was unbelievable from the beginning. He told his brothers to worship him, but he was nothing beautiful. He was probably dark-skinned, nothing fair about his appearance. His hair, his eyes, his lips, all were dark. He was dark. He spoke in a language I only know a handful of words in. He was despised. He was loved too, but by few. He learned his trade, and left it. He spoke in stories; he was a storyteller, and who thinks a storyteller wiser than the wisest man? He touched the sick, the poor, the rejected, the shunned, the maimed, the addicted, the helpless. He touched them. And he was hated for it. He had a following, but that soft voice we imagine was probably not how he spoke to them. I imagine the things he used to say, and they are nothing like the way I grew up hearing them said. Inflections mean more than we know. Pauses are part of languages too. My carpenter hid. He lived a Robin Hood life. He wasn't a thief, but he was a wanted man. His own people denied him. No one embraced him in the end. His very own friend betrayed him. And he died. My carpenter died.
He died the death of a murderer.
There's something about the cross that we have made meaningless. We have changed it. We are dead to it, in our souls. But here is the truth.
My carpenter died of a broken heart. The man who pursues me, he already died of a broken heart.
And it's my fault.

Jesus Christ lived a perfect life. But not wrapped in white robes, walking along dusty trails, and with children on his knee.
Jesus Christ lived a perfect life in the world we live in. The one with prostitutes and drug addicts and liars and rebels and lovers and husbands and wives and kings and poor men and abuse and neglect and new mornings and cold nights and dirty faces and olive branches and normal sounds and accents and hunger and convictions, just and unjust, but all in God's will.

I think my carpenter had hard hands. Beaten, weathered by the middle eastern sun, worn by work, blistered and cracked and dry and ugly.
Perfection is not a physical quality. It is not an appearance.
I think this is one of the most important things I have learned in my adult life.

Because I hold the hand of that man.
I am pursued by him with a ferocity unmatched and unequaled.
I am in love with him.

And I killed him.
I killed my savior, my friend, my grace, my perfect man, my lover, my hope. Mine.
I killed mine own.

It's not all wonderful.