My friend and I rushed outside at breaktime during a particularly soul searching conference.  Mostly I followed her outside.  She loves the sun but lives where the sun is obscured most of the time by thick smog and clouds.  Its so bad that most of the city of millions live unaware that they are surrounded by tall mountains!

We stood in the light and she exclaimed over her shadow with a bright smile on her face.  I hadn’t really thought to be so excited by a shadow!  She rarely saw hers.  I hadn’t noticed whether I saw mine or not most days.

Yesterday I noticed bright sunlight pouring into our enclosed balcony outlining the junk that lives there.  Sharp lines, clearly defined and contrasting struck me.  I began to think that maybe I was too content to live in the gray of a shadowless existence.  Neither light nor dark just cloudy in my daily life and conversations.  Too afraid to be black or white.  Just gray.

But the shadows!  I hadn’t realized they hadn’t been around until I saw them. Weeks of clouds and smog gave way to bright skies and sunshine and I noticed the sharp shadows.  I immediately thought of my friend spinning in the sun at our conference basking in the delight that she had a shadow.  A clearly defined existence.

Fear.  A theme in my life seems to be the root of my complacence.  What will the sharp light define behind me?  What will be etched out in black and white for all to see? Do I want to be exposed?

On those occasions when my kids are called names I like to tell them that if they know who they are it doesn’t have to matter what others call them.  Words to live by myself.  If I know who I am as a precious and well-loved daughter, it doesn’t matter what is exposed.  It has already been exposed.  I am seen already, loved already and paid for already.

Let the light come and cast a clear shadow, a well-defined existence.

A dark void.  An endlessly deep pit.  Unsearchable.  Terrifying.  Knowledge of it changes everything.  Must avoid it.  Only the crazy, careless, or foolishly brave enter it.  The Abyss.

There’s an abyss in my soul.  I side step it.  I try to ignore it.  Erase it. Deny it.  Occasionally I try to feed it (the abyss is hungry) but it always wants more.  Doubts live in the abyss.  The painful soul-shaking fears dwell there.  It looks like a brick wall or a strong fence to my friends who need to be protected.  I’m quite sure they’ll fall into my soul abyss and be lost to me.  Sometimes I tell them there’s something there.  It’s more like a cautionary, non-verbal stop sign.  Most seem to respect it.

I only recently discovered my abyss…those dark thoughts I don’t want to think about.  Thoughts of how maybe it’s me…I’m the problem.  I’m the selfish one.  I’m the demanding, manipulative one.  I’m the one who must win, must be appreciated, must be pleased…or else.

The walls around the abyss concealed it, I thought.  But now I think I’m the only one who didn’t know it was there.  All the terrain around it I carefully cultivated to be pleasing to me and, I thought, to others.  But now I don’t know!  There’s a stench on the peaceful streets of my heart.  It comes for the Abyss.  It smells like anger.  It looks like rage.  I can’t get rid of the stench.  My kids too often get whiffs.  My husband is the one I want to smell it because for a long time I thought he was the source of the stench.  But now I know it’s me.  Oh, he has his too.  Maybe I smelled his before I knew that everyone has the Abyss.

A longing has risen lately in my heart to be brave, to tear down the wall and look at the Abyss full on.  I want to see what’s there and discover what cannot be hidden.  Not alone.  I don’t want to go alone but there is One who has gone before that holds the Light.  He knows my Abyss because He has conquered it.  He can light it up.  I will take a few brave friends who haven’t respected my boundary because I think they know they have an Abyss too.

“For evil to be vanquished there must be a willing victim.”

Two days ago I jumped off the altar.  A pound of flesh was being required of me and I did not want to give it.  Things hidden came into the light and instead of taking the beating, turning the other cheek, I turned around and required the same pound of flesh back.  Payment.  He must pay.  Someone has got to pay!

Sacrifice in times when I am not sacrificing much seems like such a noble and high calling.  I feel my heart swell and I want to be that person.  I want to be that soldier who jumps on the grenade for his team mate.  But when I stand in line at the grocery store I for sure do not want to be the one who has to wait longer when someone cuts.  I don’t want to pay then.  Why?  Because I didn’t get to choose that sacrifice.

I like to choose my sacrifices.  Don’t surprise me.  Prepare me in advance and we’re A-ok.  But I don’t get to choose some and those are the ones that really hurt.  The ones that require so much from me…all of me.  I want evil to be vanquished but I don’t want to be the willing victim.

The day I jumped off the altar (had I really even been on it though?) preceded the day I heard about the willing victim and the vanquishing of evil.  Would it have changed anything?  I don’t know.

I wish I had offered more to my husband than payment when his sin demanded my flesh.  Tears?  Shared grief over something we both hate?  Maybe next time…  Maybe next time I’ll hand over the pound of flesh.

Yesterday, Saturday, I was forced to drink the cup of no electricity.  On Monday, I drank the cup of no electricity for a while.  It was more like waterboarding.  On Tuesday I drank a bit of the cup of no electricity.  On Thursday I smelled burning wires and greatly feared I would be drinking the cup yet again while my husband was out of town.  On Saturday, for some reason, the cup of no electricity I greeted with a spirit of adventure.

Conviction hounded me most of the week by my childish responses to my upheaved plans formerly in the week.  Elisabeth Eliot’s book continued to barrage me with passages about how nothing in life is an interruption but interrupted electricity certainly felt interrupting to my days.  So what happened on Saturday morning, the day I looked forward to being in my pajamas with my family in a warm, lighted, and movie-producing home?

At first I credited a sunny day, warmer temperatures, and no plans to be interrupted.  Quite godless but probably a little practically relevant.  God orchestrated the power outage in such a convenient way, I mused!  The coffee pot had just finished brewing!  I had even ignored my alarm and slept instead of getting up and tripping the breaker a whole hour earlier!  The hot water heaters still had enough water to yield 2 showers!  So many reasoned ways to explain away a completely different reaction to a stressful situation I had actually prayed the Lord would strengthen me to persevere in.

How quickly I forget.  I forget my keys, my bags, my books, my lists, and my God.  I wait and wait to see the Lord act and when He does I have forgotten what I asked Him to do and so am blind to Him in my life.  How sad.  I am thankful for the gentle way He looked after us Saturday by providing all those comforts for me.  May I be thankful even when He does not.

Naming, I’m intrigued.  The whole process and act of naming appeared a second time on my radar when I read One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  Ann without an e.  Apparently it was disturbing to her too and you should always name your Ann’s with an e.  Her name led her on a journey of naming, though,  naming the gifts and the graces God gave her. She calls it a practice as old as the garden.  In naming the gifts, she discovered the meaning of her name “full of grace” and began living it out more fully.

Now, this counts the second time this concept of naming startled me.  You see, I hear people talk about naming and I have the bad habit of being inclined to think something different is wrong until I discover it for myself.  Don’t be like me.  Naming seemed like a fancy way of being deep, articulate, and super-spiritual.  “It is what it is!  Why be so fancy?” my heart would rail.

To Be Told started the blip a blinking on my radar.  Name.  What is in your name?  Why did your parents name you the name they did?  I’ve named 3 children–naming children is quite revealing.  I’m not very creative is what naming revealed about me.  Some of my friends are very creative.  After naming 3 children and then finding out that each time I’ve inadvertently picked a top 10 name challenged my view that I was original.  It pretty much describes my husband and I.  Prone to play it safe, blend in with the crowd, all the while having rather lofty aspirations that we would be significant.

Adam sat in the garden and God caused the animals to file past him and he named every one of them!  Was he laughing when the giraffe walked by?  “Wow, God, that sure is different!”  Was God delighted to hear what man, His highest creation, came up with?   I delight in the way my kids name things, was God delighted to hear Adam name his parade of creativity?  I think so.

God has created us to name things.  Maybe He still parades creation past us and grins as we ponder it, name it, and hopefully give thanks for it.  The very act of naming requires the very characteristic of man that is different from all his other creations–our uniqueness in perspective and thought.

Naming encourages me to write.  It dispels that thought that what I write is just a drop in a large bucket of sameness.  I am just saying something old in a new way.  Nothing is new under the sun and that is true (because its in Ecclesiastes) but naming reveals my heart and stokes my relationship with God and others so I will write and reveal and speak.  I think God might be grinning as we look at life together and I name it.