Deborah Spooner
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it might have looked simple, from your side of the screen

six words, one greeting, one uniting thought

hey from the life I choose

the picture showed five students, two leaders. we were supposed to be at a pumpkin patch, but it was closed

there was the drive of questions, of frenzy, stress around me. there was the police car waiting for us to move, the moms trying to find us, us trying to find a new place, a time to turn back

but the place we landed was better than the place we thought. we didn't choose to go, but we chose to stay.

was it right, wrong, could have been better, should have been different? i don't know. but we were present, fully. circus people around, ice cream in hand, sun setting at our backs

i know here i can hear You, and maybe the where doesn't matter as much as i thought. i've wondered inside my wondering, but some questions are too circuitous for even me anymore. i think they keep me from the grounding, fertile ones

i am here, but You were before and will be after. show me You. You are the God of each soul I cross in a divine moment. show me You. i want to wonder no more except at the ways I get to be tucked within your wing, watching you work. show me You.

what do we do for all eternity? worship. who are we for all of eternity? worshippers caught up in a dance of a trinitarian divine love

i want to choose this. i want to be broken into satisfaction in nothing less but everything more

hey from the life i choose.


I finally figured out my pillow arrangement, and for some reason, I think this means my heart is figuring out the piece of home that means here


settled

Isn’t a word I’d ever really use to describe my free-spirited being in a land that can ever only be a half-home for passers through


yet my eyes are being opened to a swap my heart has wrought


slide settled away

for present

and dip present

in the deep of slow


I'm present to the broken buzz of the black fan from my host family now breezing my beach room

present to yellow toes on sheep rugs, warm light from alone isles in big stores, small gold hoops meaning growing, simple joy


I'm present to what’s around, what’s in

slow to the wonder of existence

to being a being of an embodied spirit


a soul in a body, a temporary home

a body in a place, a temporary home


where joy takes on flesh

and pain becomes locked in the time space continuum

and control is maybe at best, illusory 

and I’m freed by wonder of wondering how little I know, but how much air still fills my lungs


free

present slow


I finally figured out my pillow arrangement

and pieces of instability fall into the stable place of temporary hold, hugged by here


maybe that is all I need


written april 16, 2021

fourteen days before I (expectedly unexpectedly) put in a two months notice of quitting my job

three months and three days before I (unexpectedly) would move 2,000 miles across the country

oh (truly) what fun

rewrite: what a plan God was weaving that I had yet to see


__



i hit another mental block yesterday.


thirty-five feet up, i felt my post-california sunkissed back muscles tighten

as i placed my right la sportiva climbing shoe clad foot onto the pink, square-jagged hold


now, left hand crimped and left foot jammed into a three-finger pocket, 

all i had to do was stand up


instead of standing up, my mind locked up

not as much of a “I can’t reach” but an “I don’t want to reach anymore”


in one moment, motivation evaporated

willpower

at lower than gone


i hit another mental block yesterday.


perhaps i block-up, lock-up when I need to feel safe.

safe? maybe. in control? maybe closer.


some say i’m a drama queen, others an adrenaline addict

i think i’ve adjusted to living overwhelmed and understimulated 


one hundred emails, ninety more projects, eighty more assignments, seventy more people i should have loved, sixty more things I should have done better, fifty more dreams left unchased.


i carry all the weight

and none of the wonder


where is the joy tucked within the curves of a life that feels monotonous and born as one mistake and mark missed after another, another?

when will surrendering worried, anxious not breed dark-clad, heavier worried, anxious?

when will peace seem cradled in being grasped by truth?


i don’t know

i don’t know how to slide out from under these complexes i’ve worn holes in their fabrics from three years of trodding 

i don’t know how to go up, reach past their folds

i don’t know how to mental-not-block-up, when it feels that both my effort and my surrender are devoid

i don’t know how to live in the present- lived reality of weighted and wonder free, when the next step seems it needs just a little more from me, dancing closer to taking all of me.


up 

up freed from my ability to go up

up beyond my giving up

up to my finding, energy-living what is beholden farther up

what’s further, further in


i just can’t see the path, 

anymore 


I'm afraid to turn twenty-six.

This isn't new, but it's been freshly rolling around inside, deflating other hopes and hollowing me.

Really.

Perched on the edge of the black and white bohemian stool rested against the half-wall separating the kitchen from our tiny home's living space, I two-finger scrolled past post after post. This week had been full: working on the marketing plans of two major studies while starting a new seminary class after a meeting with my high school students and too-long-neglected-friends, and I was brain-edge-close to checking out.

It wasn't necessarily what I saw in my scroll which deep-bothered me. It was the hollow I felt inside.

Twenty-six isn't intrinsically bad, but I know what I wanted by twenty-six: be in a city I chose, in a job I love, at least engaged to a man where our ministry is strengthened, at a church where I'm fulfilled in serving.

And it wasn't a hollow of having to change those expectations anymore. 

It was the hollow of having surrendered my expectations again and again and again and still facing a deep, resounding empty inside.

I'd surrendered my desires for what I thought I want by twenty-six. If that's not what God has, great. But then, shouldn't I feel something from this surrender? I'm moved from wanting Him to give me what I want to just want Him to give me peace. A deep rest from my restlessness.

It seems that my surrender didn't work. Even my surrender of my ability to surrender (and just asking Him to help me do so) didn't seem to work either. And that's a hopelessness deeper than just not having the desires of my heart. For, I didn't even seem to have Him.

What do we do when we've surrendered our desires, but we still are devoid of the peace He promises?

What do we do when we counted the cost and choose Jesus, but it seems that life became less freedom-filled?

For a season, I became too bone-tired to pray. I'd poured and poured out my heart to the Lord, but nothing inside me (let alone what I was praying for around me) seemed to change. Prayer felt a painful, exhausting wrestling that left me more angry and bitter.

Sometimes, "doing the right thing" doesn't seem to work. And deeper, knowing that we can never do it fully right but need Jesus and trying to live from that, doesn't seem to work either.

Brown, leather-back work-given journal in hand, I tried this form of prayer. Already condemning myself for my frustration at my own "failed Christianity" (and fighting that frustration because I know there's grace), I was hit.

Is my following Jesus dependent on what I feel like while I'm following Jesus (aside from the gifts He does or doesn't give me)?

If I am only content in my faith when I feel peace and joy, my faith is about me and not my Savior. If I decrease my prayers because I don't get the burden-lifting feelings I'm asking for, my prayers are a self-centered bartering.

White-knuckling the idea that my internal peace and freedom is 1) either lacking and my fault because I'm doing something wrong or 2) my right because I'm doing something correctly, is just missing it.

Mine.

What really is mine? Do I have a right to feel the blessing (just inside) of following Jesus? Is it mine to demand that I feel fulfilled in following Jesus, peacefully self-reassured that I'm hitting the mark? Is it mine to insist the Lord surround me with a certain feeling of His presence?

No.

The truest reality of what is mine, is simply that He is mine. And that is only unlocked because I am His.

How much more fragrant does worship become when it's centered only on the reality of Who He is, regardless of how worship makes us feel? How much more beautiful does meditation become when it's not about how much peace we get from reflecting on truth? How much deeper do our prayers grow when we cry out for freedom which the Father promises and then lay down even that wish to simply call to mind Who the Father is?

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28-30).

He says we come, and He gives rest. He doesn't say when the rest will come, but He doesn't say that His rest is any less true.

"And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).

He tells us who He is: a Counselor, a Father, a peaceful Prince. And that will not change whether we feel counseled, Fatherly loved, or under the rule of peace.

Oh Lord, give us the faith and courage to keep coming to You simply for who You are -- and not for how You make us feel or even the peace You can give. Strip us, even as it means pain; reveal in us, even as it is tainted-ugly, the ways we want to good things in addition to the good Giver. Increase our capacity to be overwhelmed by You alone. Grant us courage to for worship, prayer, and meditation--regardless. Move our eyes beyond our finiteness to a trust in your infiniteness, alone.

For, You are mine; He is yours, too. And if that's all, that is all. More than enough.
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About Me

Deborah Spooner is an analytical creative enamored by ideas and addicted to dripping words in candor. Serving as a Marketing Strategist for LifeWay’s Adults Ministry, she loves all things big-dreaming, difference-making, and Jesus-pointing. A pastor’s daughter with a background in communications and theology, you can find her at her local church with her students (and probably way too excited about the color yellow) as she seeks to know Christ more and make Him known.

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