A few years ago, in the middle of the glory days of Tuck In, part of my daily routine was to drive all over two counties dropping off huge meal deliveries. I’d begin deliveries around 3:30 in the afternoon and finish up around 6:00. These hours behind the wheel of the car gave me a front row seat to the liturgy of life-the setting of the sun, the changing of the seasons, the coming home of families, the closing up of the day. This daily practice of driving all over my community served to satisfy my need to behold beauty because I was in fact, beholding beauty with every curve of the road- eastern North Carolina is glorious. But this practice also awakened a deep sadness within me that I could not name.
I guess you could say the beauty I was beholding was rimmed in sadness, like a halo, illuminating that which I could not yet see.
Over the course of a year, as I made those daily rounds around the community, I named the beauty I was beholding— vast fields of green, sprawling family homeplaces, red barns sighing in the side yard, abandoned tree houses, once loved swing sets, dusty dirt paths, flowers growing in every measure of container, tractors tilling soil, families priming tobacco, fresh arrangements on mounded dirt—and I intentionally leaned into the sad, welcoming the ever-brimming swell of deep emotion and inviting it to bring to the surface that place within me that longed to be named.
A year of luminous, golden hours were arrows pointing to both joy and sorrow, but it was the halo of sadness that held my steady gaze—a golden ring, an opening, in that thin space between heaven and earth.
Nine days ago, I named that halo of sadness. It came to me on a road trip through eastern North Carolina, on the way home from visiting a church some forty-five minutes away. It was sticky hot, the air dripping with humidity, the terrain lush, and bright green. I was staring out the window, seeing things I’d seen before, trying to diminish the swell of sadness that I could feel rising up. It was Sunday and I had a car full of people; there was no air to breathe. I was not looking for an answer, a name, for the sad, but in God’s unexplainable, unpredictable timing, the name came to me and rather than weep, I found myself unfurling into the vast land of unknowing, knowing one singular thing.
In the last twelve years, as I’ve grown in greater knowledge of myself and God, I’ve become well-acquainted with the broad stroke of sober thoughtfulness within me. I don’t wear it on my face, but it is present within me, calling me to take notice, to pay attention, to look deeper into the world before me and name the ways in which things are not as God intended when God spoke the cosmos into existence.
I dwell in the thin space between heaven and earth, between light and dark, between life and death as we all do. But I not only dwell here, I commune here. It is the place God passes me by, revealing a bit of glory that I can scarcely capture with my finite mind. It is where the Spirit breathes fresh life into my dry bones and then blows fresh wind into the fire called yearning within me, and beckons me to tend it. It is where Jesus stands so near to me I can feel the heat of his skin on mine, his hands stretched out with mine, holding the tension of Not Yet.
This thin space is where I commune with a Triune God and where I invite others to join us. It is where I practice the gift of sober thoughtfulness, of making space for others to let Jesus remove the scales from their eyes so they may see the halo of gravity around every good thing and remember there is more. It is where I tune my ear to hear the groans of humanity and it is where I turn that groaning into something beautiful and redemptive, an arrow pointed true North.
I tell you all of this to tell you this:
For most of my life, I have imagined that my way of being in the world was a state I needed to overcome. I have imagined that if I could just get emotionally and spiritually healthy enough, I would no longer exist in a body bent towards melancholy, towards the inner realm of grief, open to receive the deep longing of the world with a posture of welcome. I have imagined that what was in me was something to be worked out in prayer and solitude so I could offer the body of Christ a more joyful, abundant life-giving version of myself.
I now know that my way of being in the world is a gift to the world.
I now see with the eyes of my soul,
and I do not chastise what she thinks she sees;
instead, I gaze upon the view, with holy curiosity, communing with God,
biding time until I see what God sees,
and returning to the world
a gift received from this thin place in the wilderness,
where heaven touches the earth like honey,
golden, for a million years.
I love how this reflection on your own experience of melancholy and longing - your bending towards the here but not yet, reflects the longing of God. Things are not as they should be. All creation groans in anticipation of the coming redemption and restoration of all things. And you feel this and see it so deeply, and the holy unrest it stirs up in you becomes like an arrow pointing heavenward through your words on these pages. Grateful for you my friend.
This is beautiful. Often, over the past year or so, as I’d be out driving and take to the wilderness I’d be drawn to pray. For you. Simply. “Lord. Keep meeting Lori in the wilderness. Help her see not only the greatness in You, but the goodness in the wilderness”. It was always something short. But just a covering over your time with Him there, as you’ve mentioned “wilderness” during the past year or so.... Praise God for His faithful patience and your obedient endurance, that you BOTH kept showing up.