JESSE IHDE

New Years Day feels tender this year. I let myself linger in bed a little longer this morning; not really wanting to move from old to new. The past two years held so much change, so much thrashing, trying to figure it out. On good days we were barely falling forward. So I don’t want to move too quickly. I want to wait there in my bed, holding my breath wishing I knew what the year held.

The New Year seems to always hold this question in her hands, “What now?” I’m staring back at her with uncertainty, doubt, confusion, and also hope. Because as I keep trying to figure it out the only thing I figure out is that figuring it out is not the thing.

So here is the thing: right where I stand or sit – when my face is down in the carpet covered with salt and tears as I beg for a word from God, when I take my third bath of the day to try and calm my anxiety, when I’m hiding from Life, when I’m sitting in between my children at bedtime and we are a raucous of laughter instead of quiet with sleep, when I’m an absent-minded friend, when I’m stuck in people pleasing – I am held by the Love of the world and I hear her voice whispering to me, “Child, you are mine.” Love is the thing.

Right where you are, as who you are, wherever you are, the God of all is whispering, “Child you are mine.” You are held in Love by God. So far as I can tell, Jesus did not have a strategic plan for success. He was not making marks in the wins and losses column of life. He was a rebel who broke the rules that needed to be broken so that every cracked out, beaten up, broken down, crazy person he met could hear the truth: I am Love. Abide in me. Child, you are mine.

After this, when you let this sink all the way down, when they dark night of your soul comes and then this anchor of Love still holds, then there’s the dance. Life starts to take your breath away. It doesn’t get happy or shiny. Don’t wait on that. That shit’s not coming. It gets real. And everything has a place. The tears and the terror hold room with the grace and goodness.

It can be easy to forget we are invited to dance.  Some will spend their whole lives marching when they could be dancing. But as I tell my kids, we don’t need more hall monitors; we need more helpers, more dancers who can dare to walk with the kind of God who broke the rules to love the lost ones in.

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.” “Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion”…”Safe?” said Mr Beaver …”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

― C.S. Lewis

Happy New Year.  See you on the dance floor 2018.