Hutchmoot 2017 Musings

{I am finally writing about Hutchmoot! About time, right? ;) For my friends who are still wondering what the heck I am talking about - part of me is too. *grin* Hutchmoot is a gathering of people who love story, art, music, and community. You can find a (somewhat) informative video over here. The best part is when Pete Peterson laughs at the question "What is Hutchmoot?" ;) Anywho, I hope you enjoy my ramblings as I continue processing the weekend.}

It's been a month now since Hutchmoot. At this time a month ago, I was sitting in a devotional time - letting the words of morning prayer in Every Moment Holy wash over me. I would go on to a session that encouraged me to create without fear, because my identity isn't in the art I make, but in the Risen King I serve. I would sit in sessions about grief and lament, about who I am in Christ, and about pursuing Him first in whatever other vocation I find myself in. I would grieve, weep, feel deeply the reality that I'll never be the girl I used to be. My pain has changed me. Yet, I was met with such sweet beauty because I walked away with the truth anew that Jesus loves me right here. Right now.

It's taken me this long to begin to realize that Hutchmoot awakened something in my heart - calling to my true self, the beloved daughter of His that I am - and somehow, I feel like I am more myself than I was before. I don't know if that makes sense or not. But, it's how I feel. Over and over again, I've come back to the thought that the Kingdom Jesus is building is true and real and beautiful and among us now. It is also in the not yet. There is a tension held here. It is a Kingdom unshakeable and it is the inheritance of the children of the King. This dispels a lot of fear that I've felt as of late.

While attending this sweet conference, I tasted the present, coming Kingdom in the long tables of warm, scrumptious food, stories of (at the time) stranger friends wafting as sweet spices, and deep laughter. I tasted it in my tears and grief - shedding off the old so that the new could come forth. I felt it in the embrace of a new friend as the sobs racked my body and the truth she spoke over me oozed over the wounds like warm balm.

On the first evening of Hutchmoot, Andrew Peterson took the stage to welcome all of us to the weekend. He shared that, in September, he visited Israel and had the opportunity to go to the Wailing Wall. He learned that Jews pray and weep at the wall because it is the closest place they can get to where God's glory used to dwell. They can't go up to the temple mount anymore because a mosque sits there. So, they press against the only wall left standing when the second temple was destroyed. They weep and slip little slips of paper containing prayers, hoping that, eventually, their Messiah will come. Andrew shared that he held his hands against the wall next to a Jewish man who was sobbing as he prayed. He said that he felt like, in a sense, they were asking for the same thing - that God's Kingdom would come to earth. As Andrew closed the illustration, he said that he also couldn't help but to feel like Lucy in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe pressing against the back of the wardrobe, wanting to get back into Narnia.

Just a week before Hutchmoot, I told Jesus that I felt like there was a wall in front of my heart - blocking my perception of beauty. I told Him I didn't know what to do with it and asked if He would do something about it. After Andrew shared that first night, we had dinner. I shared with a new friend (who, I discovered, lives only an hour away from me! squeeee!) of the wall that I felt. Somewhere along the way, I wondered what would happen if - instead of being afraid of the wall, pushing away from it - I leaned into it...pressing in to the (sacred?) space I may find there.

So, with the help of my King and my new found friends, that's what I did. As the weekend continued, my heart woke up. For the first time in such a long time, my heart felt alive again. Even in the grief and lament, I saw cracks start to trickle down the wall - and buttery, warm light started spilling through. Something was happening. Something that is full of holy magic, beauty, and truth.

Hutchmoot didn't give me answers in neat packages tied with pretty bows. Normally, that's what I want. Somehow, though, this time - I appreciated the gift even more because it didn't tie anything up. Instead, Hutchmoot led me back to the King that I fell in love with 11 years ago now. It reminded me of a Kingdom coming that is unshakeable...immoveable. As Andrew Peterson says (and sometimes sings!) frequently, it reminded me that "the stories are true".

The wall is still standing in front of my heart. I'm still pressing into it. But, there are more cracks now than there were even a month ago. And, I see an army standing with me - pressing into the beauty of eternity found in the present of now. Maybe the wall doesn't fall on this side of the story - but the cracks keep coming, the light keeps spilling forth.

Aslan is on the move.

Seasons of Pain.

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” 

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Pain.

I've been thinking a lot about my pain lately. In recent weeks, I'm beginning to accept that the pain I have walked through these past few years has changed me. The losses of relationships, both romantic and familial, both from death and from choice, have marked me deeply. Sometimes, the wounds still hemorrhage, leaving dull , deep aches in their wake. 

I admit that I have medicated my pain. I have tried to ignore it. I have lived my life as though nothing happened, as though everything was fine. The only thing that got me is depression and anxiety. I've learned in this journey, pain cannot be ignored. We can try to ignore it, but we will fail.

That's the thing with pain - it's a dynamic force that snaps us to attention, even as we crumble to a heap on the floor from it all.

And, if we let Him, God uses this pain as a tool. He takes the things that were meant for evil and uses them for good. He takes the side effects from living in a broken world (broken relationships, death, and a plethora of other things) and brings redemption. I'm finding, though, that this redemption does not always look the way I want it to or the way I think it should.

The truth is, I've been afraid of the changes that have come from my pain, afraid to acknowledge that I am not the person I was two years ago when all of it began. Over the past few weeks, though, with the help of my counselor, I've started questioning my fear.

"Is it a bad thing that the pain has changed you, Miranda?", he asked.

Ah, my knee jerk reaction is yes. Because I'm scared. Because this is new, different, foreign. I am quicker to be silent where perhaps, once, I would speak. I am slower to go back to the familial relationships that broke me, drawing a line where there once was none. 

I am able to better sit in the pain of others because of walking the deep waters of my own pain.

Is it a bad thing?

No.

I'm just scratching the surface of this, just beginning to form my thoughts into some words. This past season was on purpose. And this current place is on purpose.

I don't have much family that I keep in touch with. I am in a season of being alone here in this great big world. (I'm using the term alone in the sense of biological family - parents, grandparents, etc. not in reference to community - I have a stellar community that I am so grateful for.)

The second question that has started coming up is - what if Jesus wants me here, "alone", to be just with Him for this season?  He does that all the time in the Scriptures, inviting the disciples to come away with Him and rest. I can't even dream of the redemption that could come out of that, if I would only come.

This place is strategic. Richard Foster writes in Celebration of Discipline, "Jesus calls us from loneliness to solitude."

There is something to this. In the solitude, we are postured to hear Jesus. We are postured for the silence to come and do the heavy lifting that we try so hard to avoid. We are postured to find that the answer to these painful longings are ultimately found in the One who is familiar with suffering and who has caught all of our tears.

And, this....this is where the deeper work of healing begins.