letters and lattes

A little while ago I went to an event for a friend of mine. It was absolutely lovely and gorgeous and it was so wonderful to be there and joining in the celebration. Part way through the day I looked around and wondered two things (1) how did I get a seat at this table? (2) everyone here seems to know each other more intimately than I do or I am known here. My little introvert self has these thoughts a lot. I like to break down the big thing into smaller things, interpret and analyse, picking up the tiny pieces and wondering if I see myself in them. There have been a few times where I have done this and I come away screaming I DON’T KNOW! I love these people and want to know them more deeply and I will keep coming because the invitation is there, but I don’t feel any closer or any more within than when we first started. 

I came home and drafted a poem. I wrote these verses – 

Periphery.

I circle along the edges
Familiar with the curves of the periphery
Seeing within but only through
Through the looking glass
Through the lens of the outside
From a vantage point of always
Slightly removed.

I trace the border with my footsteps
Creating the shapes
Of countless Venn diagrams
I weigh into here and there
Filling part of one circle
But never the whole
Never the centre

I reach out and stroke the brick
Of the boundaries we’ve created
To keep in or keep out,
I wonder softly.
The wall itself is not physical
But tangible and impenetrable all the same
The surface rough, uninviting.
I walk on.

I left it there, feeling dissatisfied. How to bring it to a close? It feels so empty and lonely, so hopeless. I wrote a little more – 

Knowing there is a place beyond these walls

A place I am known

A place I am whole

A place I am home.

But it felt dishonest. It wasn’t the end to the poem I wanted and felt like a forced optimistic tack on, because sometimes that is how it feels. It feels like we can’t sit in the sad, lonely, empty place – we have to find the bright resolution, the hope we don’t yet know. 

I did the unhelpful thing of letting other experiences continue to colour this narrative, to allow confirmation bias to rule in my heart instead of the truth. Of allowing overanalysing to inform my feelings and letting disappointment breed in my heart. 

Part of our Sunday routine is gathering at church, which I love. I don’t always love it when my husband is rostered on and I’m wrangling two children on my own who decide to play dead at the front door and tackle on the porch instead of doing the very simple thing of JUST GETTING IN THE CAR. Argh. But he orders me a coffee and it’s there when I arrive and I’m so thankful. I’m so thankful my children are happy to go into the kids programme and they have wonderful leaders and are experiencing the love of God in community. I’m thankful there are new friends and old friends and people I don’t know and hopefully someone to sit next to.

In worship this morning I was struggling to focus. I kept trying to reel my mind in from all the tangents it was looping and the things I forgot to do. I feel I only really got there, you church-goers know what I mean, in the last song, after the sermon, at the close. The thought of the periphery came back to me and I reflected on it in prayer filled worship – the word of the Lord wrote the final verses on my heart –

But look at what you have seen.
Look at what you have touched and witnessed
Where you have been invited in
And seen more
Look at the lives that have changed
It might feel like the periphery
But you are not alone
I am your constant companion

So bear witness
Speak and declare what you have seen
Trace your steps again and again
But look within
Look anew
And see how it has changed

Praise the Lord. Amen.

And how true it is. The faithfulness of friends in unceasing pain and suffering. The miraculous healing that is unexplainable, but so real. The answers to prayer in the little things of life and the life-changing. 

We think of all the things we want and need and the prayers we pray and hopes we have. At the time so overwhelming and uncertain, feeling empty or lonely or hopeless. But when we look back at who we were two years ago, three or five, we can see how we have changed. How the rooms I looked within, now look completely different. Answers to prayer are not always the same and some things are fully broken before they are made whole again, but perhaps that is the point.

This probably isn’t the blog you thought you were going to read when you clicked on the link and read the title. It wasn’t the poem I thought I was going to write, when God spoke the ending. 

And maybe, just maybe, that is the point. We need to let go of our titles and think bigger than our point of view and the few steps in front of us. To relinquish our control and take the long view, seeing it all through the lens of the one who walks beside, our faithful and constant companion.   

So I ask you, dear reader, what have you seen? What will you bear witness to?

Go well,

Steph