life at the bottom of the sea

Nothing ever works out the way you think it will, does it?


You should see my list of things I was going to do this Lent, that I made on Ash Wednesday. I was going to be more Catholic than the Pope. And it started off okay. But then...slowly...it tapered...off...

My bed--which is sinfully comfortable--held me like a prisoner when I was supposed to get up for prayer. That whole rosary I was supposed to pray everyday? Like slogging through quicksand. Oh, and fasting from sweets, ice cream? Flocked to it like a crack addict. No alcohol? Ha!

In the last few weeks, I've been stuck waiting to hear back from a big job I applied for. I've been trying to plan out the next year of my life--unsuccessfully. I've been staring down the black hole of all my considerable debt. Planning the next year turned into planning the rest of my life--

       where is that husband I dreamed of?
       when can I get started on the rest of my life?
             building a family? being a wife? a mother?
       oh no. what if....I'm supposed to be a....a....nun?
       should I be going to grad school? will I meet him, or Him, there?
       do they send people who can't pay off loans to JAIL??
       am I going to be stuck here forever? with my 27 cats and Lifetime reruns??

Usually when the 27 cats show up is when I head for that delectable carton of Mint Fudge Brownie Swirl! that holds the answers to all 0 of my problems. Or the tub of cookie dough I'm NOT supposed to know exists. Or (and perhaps more nefarious) I head towards the old steadies of my romantic comedies or romantic fictions (why, oh why, God, can Anne Shirley find a guy and not me?!).

It's once my anxiety has reached a fever pitch that I reluctantly come to the painfully obvious conclusion that none of this is actually making anything better.

Somehow, by the grace of God, while all this drama was going on inside my head, I had picked up my Bible and started reading through Exodus. And I kept thinking to myself, what is wrong with those Israelites? Are they blind? How could they just turn away from God, after all that?

So one day, when I actually did my Morning Prayers for once, I stumbled upon this:

Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

The whole Psalm basically reads like one of my journal entries. The Psalmist is desperate, he wonders where God is, if he's been abandoned, forgotten. But then, he remembers. He remembers that time when God parted the Red Sea. When, through pillars of cloud and fire, through the staff of Moses, God split apart the ocean as with a might sweep of the hand, and let the Israelites walk across the bottom of the ocean to freedom. The insecure, whiny, clueless Israelites who were nonetheless His people. 

Yet your footprints were unseen... 


You were there, walking alongside us, and we never saw you. We never looked down and away from our fears at the sand. If we had... If we had...


My friends, this is what it feels like to be wrecked by Scripture. This verse has tattooed itself onto my heart and stayed there. 

But the children of Israel walked upon dry land 
in the midst of the sea. (Ex. 14:29)

I am the Israelites. I am the one whom God has protected, loved, fed, cared for as the sweetest of shepherds. But I was too busy running for my life, from fear, with the crowd, too busy looking only ahead, running, running, to tear my eyes away from the future, and glance down at my feet, where He was walking alongside me the whole time.

He was there, running next to me, even in my fear. He saw the panic in my eyes. The desperation. If only I can reach the other shore, if only I could just get there...

See, I'm just a little thing. A weak, weary, feeble little thing. My faith is tiny. I forget morning prayer all the time. Some days I just stay in my pajamas. The muscles of my ankles are literally too weak to always keep my feet straight, so my feet constantly in pain. I have asthma. I'm riddled with anxiety. I am a terrible disciple. I wouldn't bet on me; I wouldn't pick me.

But for some reason, He does. He walks with me, gently waiting for me to notice Him.

And I know, I know that I won't make it to that land of milk and honey without Him. This world will chew me up and spit me out.

So for the rest of Lent, I've decided something. My one goal is to notice Him as I walk, every day. Even when I'm running from some pretty gnarly Egyptians.

To fling myself, like the child that I am, like a little bird, into His arms. 

One last thought:

Remember when you were a kid? And you'd go on a swing and you'd get going really fast and really high and you'd close your eyes? Just to feel that rush of fear?

Isn't that kind of like what Jesus asks us to do? To close our eyes and trust.