friday the 13th

It's been a week of falling apart. I don't remember how to live a life that's so busy with things that just don't seem to matter as much. I miss small hands around my neck. I miss singing as I run up and down the hall getting things together for the next project. I miss driving to the projects with a van full of kids and then crying as we left them. I miss praying hard. I miss crying hard. I miss loving more than I thought was possible.

It's exactly the sort of night where I could laugh or cry at any moment. It's the perfect sort of night for dinner with Miriam and Danielle and Rachel. We all put on heels and jackets and listen to the perfect love song as we drive to the restaurant. We ask the waiter for free refills on everything and eat off each other's plates without asking. It's nice to know that's ok. We talk about life and love and random memories from before we knew each other and take pictures of our drinks and our feet.

We run into our rooms and change as fast as possible. Outside Slight, someone's playing music. I dance down the hill in my favorite tennis shoes. It's the kind of night when I feel everything a little more deeply and life hurts because it's so beautiful--it's funny how the more beautiful life gets the more desperately I want heaven.

We hug the squishy tree outside Del Taco and Rachel writes me a love note on a piece of the bark. On the way to Skid Row, I think about dying. It wouldn't be so bad, I decide. My heart is full of hurt for the people I'm about to talk to and the people I've left in Tulsa and Bellingham and Santa Clarita. There's so many big and little things going wrong just in my world. I close my eyes and see the mural at Comanche--"HOPE."

God is sovereign over the blue state of my heart and Rachel and I talk to a Christian named Chris who loves Keith Green and Tozer and knows his Bible so deeply and passionately that I regret wasting so much time in not hungrily studying it the way I ought to. I am encouraged...when I thought I was coming to Skid Row to encourage others.

We drive back to school through a thunderstorm. I love that. I love that about God--how He orchestrates the weather in such glorious ways. I love that He sent that thunderstorm when my soul needed a reminder of His power. I love that He made my Friday the 13th a very lucky day...if by luck you mean sovereignly ordained. I love that every day is my lucky day because the God of heaven holds me in His hand.