Joy unspeakable.

Five years ago tomorrow, I miscarried for the first time. It’s still one of the deepest pains I’ve ever known. But tonight as I was writing and praying, I decided to go back to the letter I wrote Anna the day I found out I was pregnant. And I stand amazed again: such a powerful, loving God watches over me. He’s a God who lets nothing, even the laws of nature, stop him when it comes to blessing his children.

Wednesday, 17 April 2013

Dear Baby,

I found out a few hours ago that you’re joining our family. No news ever could’ve made me more excited: you have only existed in my dreams until now. I missed you before I ever knew you, so I can’t even tell you how wildly overjoyed I am that God has blessed your dad and me with the gift of you! You are so loved and wanted there aren’t even words to express it.

The first thing you need to know in life is how wonderful your dad is. Besides Jesus, your dad is my favorite thing about being alive. He’s strong, kind, and loving; in other words, he is exactly what every man should be. And no need to worry, Baby – he’s also unbelievably good-looking, so you will be too. I love your dad most of all in the world because he loves Jesus and he loves me. Love is hard sometimes, Baby, but your dad will do whatever it takes to love you and support you. He was in my heart decades before I knew him, kind of like you.

I don’t know anything about your personality, Baby. I don’t know the choices you will make or what you will be good at or who your favorite person will be. I don’t even know yet if you’re a boy or a girl. But I know this: you are ours, and that means we will love you forever. Even more importantly, you belong to Jesus, who is the source of all power and love in the world, so you are safe forever too. In fact, I’ve already been talking to Jesus about you, and it’s sounded a bit like this: Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.

With so much love,

Mama

Grace like the sea.

You know you’re pregnant when you roll your eyes at the ringing phone across the room and think, “I just poured myself a nice cup of chocolate chips and settled on the couch. Does anyone merit my attention right now?” That only happened once, I promise. And the cup wasn’t full. And I did pick up the call, but it turned out to be Charter Communications, so I had to reel myself in from throwing the phone straight through the window. Joe the Salesman wasn’t ready for that jelly.

That is the picture of pregnancy.

Of course, there is this other picture of pregnancy that I gaze at several times a day. It’s a 13-week-and-4-day ultrasound of the most beautiful developing baby I have ever seen. You guys, she is seriously, staggeringly beautiful. She is a picture of my wildest dreams. She is grace: a gift I didn’t earn and don’t deserve that was given to me anyway, to paraphrase Frederick Buechner. A hundred times a day, the thought crosses my mind, “How did I get this lucky? I am the wife of my favorite person, stepmom to two incredible children, and sixteen weeks pregnant with a grace baby.” Wow. Big time wow. Because when I was guiding my own life, I guided myself right into disaster. Repeatedly.

Barely two and a half years ago, I was in the throes of addiction counseling for compulsive overeating, a disorder that served as my prison warden for over 12 years. I ate little around others – excepting only my best friend, around whom I felt completely safe – but binged later in secret. I lied about how much I ate and how little self-respect I had. I was terrified of painful feelings, like loneliness and rejection, so I ate to smother them. After every binge, I felt ashamed and helpless, which often led me to anticipation of the next one. It was miserable and infuriating and dark.

Just over two years ago, my first marriage was officially ending. Confusion and heartbreak washed over me every morning, and I couldn’t find Jesus. Actually, I wouldn’t find Jesus. I didn’t really think He could help, as none of this was His problem. Everything was a mess, and I remember telling my mom I felt un-tethered, like my air hose had been cut and I was floating through space without anything to ground me.

I finally gave up. I don’t remember when, I just know that I did. There’s no sensational story of sobbing or snake handling or a contract signed in blood. All that happened is one day Jesus whispered, “Give me a try now?” And I said, “Yes, please,” and that was it. Peace. And now, having relinquished the pilot’s controls, I have been redeemed and made pure again. And there’s a life in me – both literally and figuratively – that is so joyful and so foreign that I hardly recognize it. But that’s what Jesus does. Every time, that’s what Jesus does.

My man and I have to rely on Jesus every minute of every day because we both have gigantic, ugly demons that don’t go away without a fight, even when the proverbial war has already been won. I would say all Christians are to some degree in this boat, since the Bible tells us Satan prowls like a lion, hoping and searching for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). But when I say my man and I have to fight for our freedom, I mean that my man and I have to fight for our freedom. And the worst part of it is that neither of us is perfect, or even holy. We have to borrow our victory from Jesus every single day. But most of the time, that’s what we choose to do. So in honor of our Redeemer, in honor of our testimony, in honor of the blessed-beyond-all-reason life we’ve been given, we’ve chosen to name our daughter grace like the sea. “Anna” means grace, and her middle name means “the sea.” We didn’t earn her, we don’t deserve her, but her beautiful self has been given to us for safe keeping anyway. It takes a powerful, loving, compassionate God to create something like that out of the broken, nasty selves we offered him. But that’s all we had to do. And then there he was, with all the hope and joy and trustworthy love we ever needed.

Also, happy four months of married life to my strong, sexy, incredible man. Thank God for you, my love.

Positive pregnancy tests.

I write my baby letters. Sometimes I speak them to her* when we’re in the car by ourselves. Sometimes I type and save them. Sometimes I pray them aloud so she can hear. There’s no telling what people will say to her when she gets here, so I want to make sure she’s got nine months of truth packed into her tiny brain. I tell her how much her dad and I love her, how wonderful her family is, how she can always trust Jesus. In fact, I never run out of things to tell her. The problem is I can’t seem to write about her. I wish I could tell you how miraculous she is and how much joy and wonder she’s brought us already. But every time I try, it comes out in a syrupy, overwrought voice that doesn’t sound much like mine.

I can tell you this. For a full decade, four medical professionals (three of whom are doctors) in two states assured me I couldn’t support a pregnancy past five weeks, and my body proved them right three times. It wouldn’t produce progesterone, and artificially spiking production didn’t work. PCOS seemed to be the culprit, but no one was certain. After several fruitless months of trying and three losses during my five-year first marriage, I didn’t have a reason to believe the doctors were wrong.

Then on March 8 of this year, I married the strongest, kindest man I’ve ever met. And almost immediately started vomiting.

We went on the honeymoon I’ve always dreamed of – mountains, cabin, fireplace, Jacuzzi, wine. And it was good. And never did “ovulation days” cross my mind because I was so obviously, certifiably, doctor-approvedly infertile. But then sneaky things started happening. A few mornings I felt so nauseated I couldn’t get my clammy self out of bed. And with a passion unrecognizable to me, I craved red meat. As in, I literally salivated over the raw hamburgers at the grocery store one day. I might have torn the package open with my fangs and feasted if the butcher hadn’t been right in front of me, asking from a healthy distance whether I needed assistance.

Then on the 17^th of April, I put on my favorite dress, kissed my husband, and headed to work. I realized I hadn’t menstruated, an odd thing since my medicine keeps me from being even an hour late. So on a whim I picked up a pregnancy test and a decaf coffee on my way. Maybe a few prayers escaped into the air as I did these things, but mostly my mind raced with menstruation math. When I arrived at my desk, I set down my bag calmly. I sauntered to the restroom. My steady hands placed the test on the sink. Less than a minute later, I peered over and saw the two pink lines that had already formed. Two. “Oh, God,” I breathed.

People have asked if we were trying to get pregnant. Of course, the answer is no; not only were we not trying, but we didn’t think we could. That doesn’t mean, however, that my baby is a “mistake.” Even though she wasn’t part of our plan, she has always been part of the Great Design God has for the planet. Our plan is short-sighted and imperfect in a thousand ways. But this baby – the one whose mother has a reproductive disorder – is the one God has chosen. He wants a person created out of our DNA, to be parented by us, to make his compassion and power visible to others. So whether the timing seems right or wrong, whether my body seems capable or incapable, whether other people agree or disagree, my man and I will love and raise our baby to bring glory to God.

I asked God one night in an overwhelmed state, “How did this happen? And why is it happening now?” I got an answer, flashing in my heart like a marquee: For my glory. So I already know how the story turns out: God’s glory will be undeniable. What a perfect reason for a baby to be born.

* I say “her” for two reasons: 1) simplicity, and 2) I believe I’m carrying a girl. The night my first pregnancy ended, which I have already written about, I knew I would one day have a baby girl and her name was supposed to be Anna because “Anna” means “grace.” I believe I am pregnant with that promise.

Bodies.

For the first time ever, I was a mom for spring break. My man and I took the kids to an indoor water park for a long weekend and had an incredible time. Because I am female, I spend as much or more time as the men looking at other women’s bodies when we’re all on display in our swimsuits. My reasons differ, of course: I compare myself to them, see where I fit in the array of physical femininity, and try to decide how happy (or unhappy) my man is with my body, based not on what he tells me but on how I appraise it compared to all the others.

That’s totally sick, isn’t it?

But I spent upwards of 24 hours engaged in exactly that, and it was maddening. Usually those thoughts happen on such a subconscious level that I continue about my business barely registering them, but this time was different. I had my daughter with me, and the thought of her thinking those things broke my heart. She’s dazzlingly lovely, and I want her to know it. I want her to know that she’s perfect the way she is. She so beautifully reflects her dad’s gorgeous Italian traits set on the smooth, olive-toned Native American skin she got from her mother’s side. She can choose to treat her body kindly or not, but it’s a perfect snowflake of a body that should never be disrespected by anyone, including her. Which is precisely what I was doing to mine.

And the thing is, every body I saw was “imperfect” compared to the cinematic, airbrushed ideal. Flabbiness was everywhere. Cellulite passed me every few seconds. Moles and discolorations marked almost everyone. My body is no better or worse than the others I saw. In fact, underneath our skin we all house the same snowflake perfection I identify so easily in my daughter. Some women treat their bodies more kindly than others – I have to work on this too – but God-designed perfection is our common trait. Besides, my body does so many wonderful things: it walks, dances, swims, makes love, stretches, hugs, laughs, twirls, and bends. How could I be anything other than deeply thankful for a body like that?

I hope, down in my core, that my daughter never forgets she’s beautiful. Jealous girls and lonely boys might try to convince her otherwise, whether they use words or not. Her dad’s voice, mom’s voice, and stepmom’s voice will be drowned out on occasion. So for my own part, I’m going to be preemptive. I’m trying to remind myself that I am perfect and beautiful, and I’m trying to listen to my man and my dad tell me the same thing. Maybe if I can remember it for myself, I can role model it and help my daughter remember too. She’s worth it, and so am I.

Cake batter.

I officially became a stepmom a couple of Fridays ago. It is no secret that I am brand-new to this. Yesterday I took my babies to baseball practice. Tee-ball fields and softball fields look exactly the same to me, so our car ended up as far away as humanly possible from the appropriate field – a mistake their real mother would never make. A couple of months ago, I made French toast for my man and his kids that was unrecognizable toast-wise. Or French-wise, which is particularly disappointing, as “French” is literally in my job title. And we’ll ignore the fact that I didn’t recognize the words “iCarly” or “Upward” prior to last summer.

But none of that seems to matter to anyone but me. It doesn’t matter to them that I can’t keep up with the (whopping, massive, unending piles of) laundry or that the tracked-in grass stays where we leave it for days on end. No matter what the house looks like or what dinner tastes like, we all laugh and talk and enjoy each other like families do. No one complains about my ignorance. Come to think of it, no one really notices.

I feel kind of like cake batter. All the right ingredients coincide, but it’s going to take some time before I become the real thing. Until then, I’m savoring every moment of this most blessed journey. Every time I see the car seat in my rearview or the butterfly socks in the laundry or even the fingerprints on the window, my heart dances. At work a few weeks ago, I found a lone game piece in my purse from one of our family favorites. When I smiled and mentioned my find to a coworker, he/she said, “Ha, well, you’ll get over stuff like that real quick.” I wouldn’t bet on it; I lost a lot to get here. But God has restored so much, lavished so much. So, as long as they’re willing to walk forever to get to the tee-ball field, I’m willing to give myself the same measure of grace as I evolve into a proper (step)mother. Cake batter eventually becomes exactly what it’s supposed to be. I will too.

Acceptance.

“[Agape love] is a profound concern for the welfare of another without any desire to control that other, be thanked by that other, or enjoy the process.” — Edward Nason West

Two months ago my man and I heard Anne Lamott speak. Every word transfixed me, but one story in particular adhered to my brain. An Alaskan couple, friends of Anne’s, desperately wanted children. By the time they reached their tenth wedding anniversary, they’d tried fertility drugs, IVF, old wives’ tales, and mountains of prayer, all to no avail. Finally, they started the adoption process. With the pressure gone, as sometimes happens, the couple conceived. Joyfully they trekked to the city for numerous appointments due to the wife’s advanced maternal age. Unfortunately, the doctor soon had painful news: the baby was a hermaphrodite. Anne’s friends had three choices: 1) surgically remove the female organs, 2) surgically remove the male organs, or 3) raise the baby as a hermaphrodite. They spent the rest of the nine months in prayer and serious discussion with counselors, medical professionals, pastors, and each other. After the birth, the mother wrote on her blog, “We decided to love the baby that came.”

What a liberating decision. The baby that came to my mother 28 years ago is in turn compassionate and prideful, intelligent and ignorant, wise and foolish, devout and sinful, creative and dull. She has too-large thighs and crooked ring fingers. She’s an avid reader but a terrible athlete. She burns the rolls and still forgets to turn off the oven. But my parents love the baby that came. So do my man, my sister, my friends, my Savior. It’s downright incomprehensible when I think about it—being loved in this way—because I certainly don’t deserve it.

Not that anyone ever does. Last week in French III, I asked my students an unfair and impossible question: Define “love”. A beautiful discussion resulted, but my favorite answer was this one: “Love grows when the space between people is filled with acceptance.” How beautiful. In my experience, we’re all messy, and, screw-ups that we are, we don’t deserve anything, least of all acceptance. But we’re trying our best, however successful or faulty our attempts may be. We’re trying to find community, to breathe in peace, to be a little less lonely. We’re all hoping that someone will accept the—by all accounts, problematic—baby that came. So we accept each other as perfect and imperfect as we paradoxically are, stumbling toward something like love.

I’ll take it.

Stories.

Everyone knows not to pray for patience. Let me tell you what else not to pray for: a story. One icy Colorado afternoon a few Decembers ago, my former sister-in-law, who is a reading teacher, and I were talking about stories as we drove to the city. She and her husband have the most beautiful love story, and I asked her why she thought she’d been blessed with it. She shrugged and said, “I guess because I asked.” Later that night, I prayed a prayer that might have changed the course of everything, if you believe in that sort of thing. I asked God for a story. I asked him for adventure, to be involved in something bigger than I am. I asked him to show his glory through my life. I asked for indisputable miracles.

As all the best writers have proven, if you’re going to set up a miraculous event, you need a seemingly insurmountable conflict. You need something way too big for humans to fix in order to validate a deus ex machina. Well, if you’ve read my sex blog, you know a source of deep pain in my erstwhile marriage. I’ve written about other losses and sadnesses, too; others I’ve kept private. And now I feel like I’m in that part that all the best stories have where you think, “How in the world will this turn out?” But light is pushing through the cracks, just waiting for the moment God turns it loose and crumbles the pain with a season of joy. For instance, my man’s spectacular daughter let me take care of her on Saturday while she was ill, and his son gave me a precious nickname. Light. Last week God sent me the same message from four people who don’t know each other—two of whom don’t even know me well—in a way I couldn’t question. Light. A student gave me a huge and by all accounts undeserved compliment today. Light. More light is coming. God is teaching me joy.

I’ve learned that the best thing about asking God for a story is that when he gives it to you, you never really have the luxury of heading back in your own direction. You can fling open the door and storm off in a huff, but then he chases you with this crazy, powerful love unlike anything you’ve ever dared to imagine, this grace-full love that is exactly the stuff you were hurting for…and you fall into his arms again. You can’t doubt the veracity of the miracle when you are the miracle, when your whole story is the miracle. The joy and freedom are too real.

I don’t have anything in my story, miraculous or otherwise, figured out except that there is Jesus. Because when I am weak, then I am strong. Someone has to be behind that. Someone has to be writing that, and doing a better job than I could. Someone has to be authoring these struggles, conflicts, and “imperfections” to bring a level of artistry and depth to my character that wouldn’t otherwise be there. Every time I reach a moment of pain or conflict in my story, whether I caused it or it waylaid me, I see more of him and more of me. He develops the character of Amie by adding layer after layer of healing. I wouldn’t give that back for anything.

One of my favorite quotes is something I read on a coffee mug—that I totally should have bought—in Barnes and Noble once: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” I find that biblical: the endgame of my brokenhearted moments will be beauty for ashes. He’s promised me, and all of us, that. And that’s all the resolution my story needs.

Adultery and Murder.

Certain words in the Christian “language” have always bothered me because I felt I should use them, but had no concrete idea of what they meant. “Redemption” is an example. My mind had always roughly equated it with “salvation,” and I didn’t understand the need for both a Savior and a Redeemer. A few weeks ago I started digging around in Scripture to see what else besides salvation might be under the jurisdiction of a “redeemer.”

As it turns out, there once lived a handsome, heroic king who was everybody’s favorite. He was a warrior, a poet, and a musician—a Renaissance man to be sure. Having been anointed by God at a young age and close to God all his life, he was richly blessed with peerless military prowess, a number of gorgeous wives, endless cash flow, and the unshakeable protection of God. One day, after receiving news of another blowout victory, he sauntered up on the roof and looked with pride over his kingdom. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a woman more beautiful than his imagination could have produced. He turned to gaze on her more directly as she rinsed her hair. The water caught the sunlight, illumining her perfect figure with an amber glow. His body ached with desire, and, afraid to move, he whispered to his servant, “Who is this woman?” The latter followed the path of his vision and responded, “Oh, that’s Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife.” The name sounded magnificent as David turned it over on his tongue. Bathsheba. He knew it was fate and sent the servant to bring her to him.

It was every man’s dream followed by every man’s nightmare. The two spent a passionate evening together before David said, “You better get home.” Bathsheba regretfully acquiesced, and the two parted with wistful half-smiles and several lingering good-bye kisses. She was the subject of many a daydream of David’s, and he thought often and fondly of his one-time lover. But eight weeks or so later, his fleeting thoughts of the bathing beauty were halted: David was delivered an unsigned message that simply read, “I’m pregnant.” His heart thudded against his ribcage and he lie back on the bed, trying to figure out the best way to deal with his unwelcome surprise. Finally, he called for his servant and ordered, “Get Uriah out here.”

Uriah was a really good man, serious about both work and ethics. To begin their conversation, David praised this quality and then constructed the pretense of asking for battle news. Uriah gave him a quick rundown and David said, “You’ve obviously had a difficult stint out there; why don’t you go home to your wife and relax.” They shook hands and in no time, Uriah was on his way. But he didn’t go home. He slept outside the city walls with the guards since he knew his fellow soldiers were doing the same. David saw him the next morning and asked suspiciously, “I told you to go home. Why didn’t you?” Uriah explained his commitment to his men, and while David appreciated the sentiment, it was imperative that Uriah sleep with his wife as soon as possible. This went on for a few nights until David realized there was just no convincing Uriah to go home and enjoy his wife’s delightfully perfumed embrace. So he switched to Plan B and wrote a letter to the commander. He ordered the commander to put Uriah on the frontlines where he would most certainly be killed, forever ignorant of the news of the king’s bastard child.

The commander did not make a habit of questioning the king, so Uriah was predictably killed in battle. The commander sent word back to David that the enemy had surged in forcefully, and Uriah was among those who died. Bathsheba appropriately went into mourning, but as soon as her time was served, David sent for her and married her (II Samuel 11).

In the space of one story, David broke half the Commandments: he coveted, committed adultery, lied, murdered, and stole, all because one afternoon he noticed a beautiful woman. But instead of ousting David and cutting his psalms out of the Bible, God used the once-sinful union of David and Bathsheba to bring Solomon into the world, a man whose renowned wisdom in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes still astounds. Furthermore, God used David and Bathsheba and “the child of their child of their child a thousand years thence,”* to bring about the birth of his own Son. So the lineage of Jesus—of Jesus—includes a gigantic, five-Commandment-breaking sin, a skeleton in the closet if there ever was one. But God’s love covered the whole thing and restored it to perfection, just like Romans 8:28 promises (“God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them,” NLT.). To me, redemption is something like that.

*part of a quote from Frederick Buechner’s Beyond Words

Magic.

Oz. Narnia. Wonderland. Never-Never Land. Consider our myths and fairytales, and you’ll see immediately that we humans crave magic. A deep, long-lost part of us must believe in it: decade after decade we teach these stories to our children. At a young age, we learn that if you shove aside the coats in your armoire, you will walk straight into a snowy kingdom where all your courage will be needed to fight the White Queen. Or that if a tornado strikes your house, you will land on a yellow brick road that takes you to the Wizard. Or that if you fall through a hole after being hurried there by a rabbit, you will find yourself in the midst of an epic battle between kindness and jealousy. Courage and magic intertwine at the core of our favorite childhood stories. My own favorite story, Charlotte’s Web, relies on the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief in farm animals’ ability to converse.

How does it happen that gradually such belief fades? Last month my three-year-old niece told me about a pink-and-blue tent she received for her birthday. When I asked her favorite thing about it, she replied, “Probably the lift-up door because I can lift it up and see what’s going on in there so I know if I want to play in it or go somewhere else with Mommy.” While I’m sure my niece knows that whatever might be “going on in there” is strictly her imagination, I’m betting she’d be an easy sell on all things magical. After all, to the young brain, both Santa Claus and rainbows are magical. How did exactly the toys you wanted appear under the tree sometime during the night on Christmas Eve? Somehow Santa must’ve done it. How does light shooting through suspended water droplets cause a bursting forth of colors in the same order every single time? Somehow God must’ve done it.

When it comes to faith, instead of harboring a childlike willingness to believe in magic, we enter into these ridiculous adult arguments about old earth versus new earth, or literal versus figurative. Those conversations might be enjoyable or even faith-building to some, but when they split friendships and churches—as they often do—something is wrong. Consider the words of Jesus in the Book of Mark: Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it (Mark 10:14b-15, NLT). Can you imagine children arguing whether Jesus turned water into wine or grape juice? Whether the Flood actually killed everything except that which was literally on the ark? Kids eat up Bible stories: they’re pure magic. You hear a lot more cries of “Cool!” than snorts of “This is obviously not meant to be taken literally” when you teach children’s Sunday school. And clearly, this is what Jesus is after—unbridled enthusiasm and belief in all things magically God. Luckily for most of us, Jesus doesn’t say, “Anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a theologian will never enter it.”

Am I taking issue with the discipline of theology? Certainly not. Am I suggesting that all sophisticated and/or inquiry-driven considerations of God should be quashed? Not at all. But I do wonder why we can’t go back to our child selves and be willing to accept a little more magic at face value. A fourteen-year-old Middle Eastern girl who’d never had sex in gave birth to God’s child? Let’s just go with it. As we’ve learned from the oft-quoted passage, Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see (Hebrews 11:1, NLT). What is that if not a definition of believing in magic? So what if we can’t see God? Let’s just believe he’s there. We’ve never seen the wind or Neptune either, and we believe they’re out there. Maybe it’s time to peek back in that armoire with the children and see what they teach us about God.

Rainbows.

So when…I'm all by myself / And I can't hear You answer my cries for help / I'll remember the suffering Your love put You through / And I will go through the valley if You want me to.

— “If You Want Me To” by Ginny Owens

I didn’t grow up in a Christian denomination that spoke much about grace. Instead, sermons of sin, God’s displeasure, and the weakness of humans abounded. Once, a pastor informed my youth group that there was a specific formula one must follow when praying: God wouldn't listen otherwise. An evangelist who came to my church when I was barely a teenager suggested that those who weren’t filled with the Spirit might not be saved, and the only way to be sure you’d been filled with the Spirit was whether you’d spoken in tongues. For this reason and others, I grew up doubting the grace of God as frequently as I went to bed at night—and if I were being honest with myself, I’d have to say that I still sometimes have relapses. Every night for years and years, I prayed the sinner’s prayer just in case Jesus came back in the night. I wanted to cover my bases in case the last 24,591 sinner’s prayers didn’t take.

It’s no great surprise, then, that when I was eighteen years old, I was sure that God had revoked my salvation privileges forever. Looking back over my life, there were lots of things I regretted thinking or doing—from saying disrespectful things to my parents to making fun of people at school. Drugs, alcohol, and sex—the trinity of Big Sins—might never have tempted me, but there was still an undeniable sinfulness at my core. I kept praying words like, “I know You’re probably not listening anymore, but even if I can’t be saved, I’ll still try to live like I am. I still believe in You, and I’ll try to send others Your way. I’m just sorry I’ve screwed up so often, and this relationship didn’t work out any better.”

I remember praying exactly that way as my family drove to my aunt’s house one Friday afternoon. I was feeling especially bold that day, and asked God if he wouldn’t mind sending me a sign if in fact I hadn’t quite used up my grace allotment yet. “I know I’m probably overstepping the bounds here a little,” I whispered tentatively, “but if there’s still a little grace with my name on it, would you let me know?” I fell asleep, praying that prayer over and over. When I woke up from my nap, I swear the first thing I saw was a rainbow. Now, a rainbow might not mean much to you, but here’s what it says about them in Genesis: Then God said, “I am giving you a sign of my covenant with you and with all living creatures, for all generations to come. I have placed my rainbow in the clouds…When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will appear in the clouds, and…when I see [it], I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth” (Genesis 9:12-14, 16, NLT). So every time God sees a rainbow, he remembers his covenant with us: he has guaranteed us love, grace, and protection from the perils of life on earth. It only seems fitting that if that’s what’s on God’s mind when he sees a rainbow, the same can be true of me. I spent the next several moments in the car contemplating the mercy of God…until I began talking myself out of the message. “Mercy for others, but no longer for me,” I reminded myself, frustrated that I’d been swept away by the magic of nature. “God is merciful to those who have more self-control than I have and can keep themselves from sinning.”

A few months later, it was January of 2003, and I was in a church service with my then-boyfriend. I don’t remember what the minister preached about that morning, but I do remember the overpowering urge to ask for prayer. I was still struggling (privately) with the feeling of being outside the bounds of salvation, but that rainbow had sent a tiny ray of light into my being, causing me to question if all really was lost. Almost immediately after I walked up to the altar, a woman joined me and began praying for me, praying all the things I wanted to say but didn’t feel that I could. Without ever asking why I was at the altar, she told me that God found me beautiful, treasured, and even holy. She told me that God did not take kindly to his children being terrorized by Satan’s lies. She told me that God roars like a lion against anyone who bullies, mistreats, or harms one of his own. She told me that I was precious and forgiven…and I believed her. I finally believed that I was still accepted and that God was welcoming me to his side. My body crumbled to the floor, and for a long time I sat in the presence of the Lord, letting grace and peace flood me. I belong to Jesus, I belong to Jesus, I belong to Jesus…

That night I ate dinner at my boyfriend’s house, and then we all took our regular spots in the sunroom. His mom sat on a wicker chair in the corner, and he and I settled onto a glider. In moments, the sun was setting in the most unbelievable way: the sunset was quite literally a gigantic rainbow that spanned the entire sky. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet…they were all there in order as the sun slipped below the horizon. We marveled; none of us had seen a sunset like that ever before. (And while I can’t speak for them, I can say that I haven’t seen anything remotely like it since.) Remember? I heard the word echoing somewhere within me. Remember? God reminded me that we had a covenant, he and I. He’d painted both rainbows—skywriting, really—to remind me of the immense love he harbors for me. If I hadn’t already believed that God had power even over the colors of the sunset, I certainly did then.

Ever since, I have sought rainbows. Although, I usually don’t even have to: if I am going through a trying time, if something is weighing heavily on my mind, a rainbow will inevitably appear. God always reminds me of his ultimate control over the situation and of my privileged place in his family. Just yesterday I tearfully returned to my apartment in Virginia after spending a fabulous week of respite at home. I begged the Lord to tell me why I’m having to go through this—being away from home, family, and friends—in order to get a degree I’ve fallen out of love with. He didn’t answer, but did send a rainbow to meet me along the interstate. I love you more than words can express, remember?

Kaleidoscopes.

There’s something deliciously confessional about a blog, isn’t there? Things I would never actually say, for fear that it’s just too corny or insignificant, I feel free enough to present to the entire cyberspace world to peruse at its whim, should it so desire. Case in point: the reasoning behind naming this blog “The Kaleidoscope.”

It’s a great word.

Well, that, and the word kaleidoscope comes from two Greek roots: kalos, meaning “beautiful,” and eidos, meaning “form.” Don’t ooh and ahh just yet; the word gets better. The suffix –scope means “instrument for viewing, observing, or examining.” Therefore, a kalos-eidos-scope is an apparatus specifically designed to show the viewer everything beautiful in a particular design or shape. A kaleidoscope’s raison d’être is to suffuse beauty into someone’s immediate vision. Which is kind of our mission as responsible humans, right? Isn’t the Golden Rule all about upping the world beauty quotient a little?

So this blog is The Kaleidoscope because being a kaleidoscope is my goal. (I know that sounds cheesy, but hey, I’m in confessional mode here.) My life ought to consist of a shifting and colorful design of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I ought to be living beautifully.

I must admit, though, living beautifully has proven enormously challenging up here in Virginia. My days are filled with nothing but reading and writing in my second language, which is shaky even on my best days. I work my derrière off and make decent, but not great, grades. Those factors (and others of which I will spare you) add up to major discouragement a lot of the time, and to make it worse, I’m not sure why I’m doing it all. My life’s dream is not moving to a Francophone country or being a scholar of French literature.

But here’s what I do know about language: it’s a kaleidoscope. Language is an instrument that lets you see the beautiful forms of life around the world. You don’t learn a language so you can speak it; you learn a language so you can hear it, so you can appreciate the beauty that is other cultures, other colors, other designs of life. And here’s what I know about God: he’s the power behind the kaleidoscope. He shifts people and their talents around to create intricate and lovely designs that saturate the world in beauty. His grace allows us to see the magnificence of the world; indeed, his grace is the magnificence of the world. The changing colors of leaves and flowers, the prisms tucked away in dewdrops, the rainbows spread from east to west: it’s all kalos eidos, beautiful forms.

It may be years before I know why God opened the door for me to study French at the University of Virginia; by all accounts, I don’t belong here. But until I get my next set of marching orders, I’m just going to try to live like a kaleidoscope.