Re-Membered

Here's the thing, people are a mess.  Don't think that for one minute, this whole wide world isn't aching from the inside out, feeling the depth of depravity and brokenness.  Don't think for one minute that a single person is immune from the pulls of culture and numbers and blue thumbs up.  It's all a mess, and we are all looking for a vaccine to promise immunity from the suffering of it all, the loneliness of it all.

And everyone loses their way.  We get swallowed by the heaviness of it, and we wear the chains around our necks and drag the shackles every moment we live and breathe.  We throw ourselves towards any small glimmer of relief regardless of the aftershocks.  We just want out- all the way out.

 Because it is all decay and disease and hurt and emptiness.

And don't think that there are pastors and leaders, therapists and grandmothers, deans of universities, and bank tellers above it all.  The world can tell you those lies. It promises happiness with certificates and relationship statuses.  It says square footage and double-car garages will cure melancholic hearts.  It begs you to buy plane tickets and mascara and rock-star jeans to post on your Insta, to find perfect quotes and shades and cars with remotes.  It says follow this yellow brick road to Oz, and then, THEN, you will realize you didn't need anyone but yourself to rise above and succeed.  

But the curtain falls, and the double-car garage is empty of any real things.  Oz is a myth, and the cruelest reality crashes into a soul and deprives it of all the vapors of hope that floated around in imagination. And then the empty wraps its hands around the throat, threatening to choke out the very last bit of anything left.  

And where is the rescue?  And does anyone really care, or can anyone even stop it all from happening?

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On the riverbank across town, I walk on the grass, recalling the hurt that gets heaved into my office chairs and on the little characters in my phone.  I want to take that phone and throw it full-force into the water and walk away unscathed.  I want to buy the mascara and plane ticket to anywhere but here and pretend for a while that jumping time zones is the magic to the disappearance of catastrophe.  

I want to find 150 characters to send into the vastness of web lives that will bandage the wounds the world over or hug her just right, so she knows that her worth is more than the offer she got last night. I want to shout at the trees to bend down their branches and scoop up the evil right out of their cars.  I want to be the answer, and then I realize I too taste of disease and depravity and wounds and regret, and what in the world can I do to make any of it better?

I already know the answer.  I repeat it over and over...nothing I am will be enough for any of it.

But somewhere in the current below me and the air swirling above me, my chin is pulled upward out of the mire.  I remember.  I re-member.  I put back together the truth stored in my bones.  I re-member it all.  I know a road that is narrow and tight, but it leads to the hands of rescue.  I know these hands like I know my own because they have pulled me out of the water.  They have called me by a name no other can give me, So-loved.  

So-loved that He wore flesh and felt it rip into shreds by the darkness that's still ripping the world.  So-loved that He felt the cracked earth and wept for its brokenness as His own body broke and poured out life.  So-loved that in that darkest broken moment, the seed of Hope itself went into the ground crushed, extinct, devoid of that hope-life-air everyone needs.  So-loved that Love re-membered and burst forth ripping the chains and the shackles, the curtains of Oz, the lies of the dark. So-loved that his hand reached open to mine and invited me back to the light, the truth, the way out of it all.  So-loved that light poured into my soul that cannot be extinguished despite drenching rains and rip-tide waves.  So-loved that He put hope, Hope, back into my chest and stitched joy into my soul. 

I look at the water that once seemed so violent.  I see the little red dots on my phone.  I hear those voices defeated from earlier, and I say it out loud and louder still.  For God so loved this world that He gave me Himself.  And anytime I think my own chest will burst from the weight of it all, I take from Him that love poured out and say out loud, and louder still...

For God so-loved me He gave me Himself.

--

And for you there on the other side of that blue-lit screen, in shackles wearing desperation like a ball-gown about to let it all choke out the life:

Please, hold out your hand. I know the way.  

Let me take you there.

He re-membered me.

He is waiting for you. So-loved.