“Leaves change slow… and they fall fast.“ -The Becoming
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I sit here with reservations to write. Upon the death of my father, I have lacked the ability to write no matter how much intention that I have going into it. Maybe like you, the mountain in front of you is too big and the future on the other side is too overwhelming. And maybe, like me, you are tired of hearing all of the Christian lingo that tells you to have faith… to keep moving… to pray more. This lingo lacks power and empathy when it is not coupled with the other side of the Gospel that tells us how Jesus wept… Jesus lingered with a friend in the death of a loved one… and/or how we take any sort of humanity from Jesus in His stories. I would like to remind you today, He knows and understands the anxieties, pain, grief, and loss of what you bear in your life.
This is part of the Good News. We have a God who came in the flesh. He placed Himself in our utter depravity to feel us, hear us, know us, shoulder us, and touch us despite how dirty we all are.
What a loss we have made when we have the opportunity to help relate the Incarnate God to our pain only to talk about a kingdom of triumph without the middle of the mess. The stuff we are afraid of—even in our own mirror. This takes vulnerability out of the equation.
Ah yes, the middle.
This is where I have found Immanuel. This is where I have experienced “God with me”. This is where I have seen the hold on my life from my Creator and Sustainer, and it is not dependent on anything I try to prove to Him. I cannot prove anything— I do not have it in me anymore. This season has come against parts of my religiosity and “good works” to stay in good graces with Him. He does not want it— it amounts as rubbish and drags His grace in the dirt.
It is grace that makes the leaves change slow. None of it is dependent on you and I. We have nothing to do in the process of leaves changing to brilliant colors. However, we are the ones who benefit from country-side car rides. The work of the Hands of the Almighty to remind us in ways that only He knows how, “He‘s got the whole world in His hands.”
We wonder… well, I wonder, “Do you have my life in Your hands, Lord?” My heart feels so far from transformation. It has experienced a winter that came all too soon with freezing temps. I stay very still to brace the freeze that death has invited into my world… into the landscape of my heart.
How will anything ever transform in a heart that is frozen in time?
It is grace that makes the leaves change slow… and it is grace to watch them fall with ease. They teach us surrender. They teach us to dance on the way to the ground. They teach us that there is a time to let go…
And it is in the ground where new life will rise… once again.
By Grace,
Cortney Rae
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