counting pages

It seems like the only thing I've done this week and last is count pages. I counted three or four pages in approximately seven sets as I worked through a series of short assignments a coworker asked me to proofread on Friday to be returned Monday. Then I counted the six pages that I was sent Monday afternoon to have returned to him by Monday evening. I counted to six after two pages, after three, and after four.

I count the ten pages of Scripture I'm supposed to read every day. I re-count them almost every time I flip a page. I count the pages I didn't read on days I don't read and I count how far behind I am in my overall schedule.

I count the pages of the one hundred-twenty-five-page manuscript I'm editing. I count to the end of the chapter, and to the end of the section. I count my quotas, the quotas I've missed and met. I count the days til the deadline. And I keep counting the pages. I keep subtracting the number printed in the top corner from the number 125.

I counted the pages of the annual report I was asked to proof on Wednesday. I flip ahead often to see how long each subsection is.

I've been counting the pages of the guidlines/overview/introduction documents I was sent by an organisation I just started volunteering with. I counted the articles and counted down; then I count the pages and count down. The final article has been particularly tough slogging and I still have three pages left of nine, something I said I'd have read by this past Monday.


Sigh. I love the work but it's tiring and I'm tired. I don't know what kind of week this is but it's knee-deep and it's weighty. Three times already this week I have found myself mumbling, "it's too much... it's too much," while I wipe tears away. I feel like I don't want this life. I feel like a mess and I struggle with how to handle overwhelming pain.*


I want relief. (But I also want to trust the Guy who can tame Leviathan.)

Blogging has become difficult recently.

Oh, how marvellous! Oh, how wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
Oh, how marvellous! Oh, how wonderful!
Is my Savior's love for me!


I don't know why but that chorus has popped into my head a fair bit since Thursday evening so I thought I'd start with it.

I'm so out of practice with blogging that it's hard to know what level to aim for. One thing I know is that I have already taken my sleeping pill so the countdown is on.

I stand amazed in the presence

Of Jesus the Nazarene,

And wonder how He could love me,

A sinner, condemned, unclean.

I was working on one of my editing projects earlier this evening, trying to kill two birds with one stone: I wanted to out-work the feeling of being a lump and having wasted a day (I had just woken up from a four-hour nap), and I wanted to decrease my frustration with being about 50 pages behind on this particular project. At the time, I wasn't into it. I wasn't into editing, I wasn't in to thinking, I wasn't into sitting upright at a table, I wasn't into being awake, and I'm not sure I was into being here at all. So, paragraph by paragraph it was a struggle.

For me it was in the garden

He prayed: "Not my will but Thine."

He had no tears for his own griefs,

But sweat drops of blood for mine.

But I was determined. I wanted to try to learn something about self-discipline. I also knew that the pile-up of pages would only get worse the longer I put this off. I also felt very much like crying (which would be why I wanted to lie down/sleep/block out). Somehow I managed to stick with the text and meet (then surpass) the quota I had set for the session. But what amazed me was what triggered the tears (few though they were):

"In taking the penalty for sin upon himself, God not only saves us from punishment but he saves us from sin itself. This is very important. God does even more than satisfy justice and remove our legal guilt by paying the penalty for our sin: he also restores us to a right relationship with himself--the relationship that we broke in our rebellion. Ultimately, God brings us back to himself so that we can spend eternity with him in a place that is characterized by perfect righteousness. The eternal state cannot be ruined by evil, because every human being who is there has been saved from both the penalty and the power of sin. Their nature is conformed to perfect righteousness: their desires no longer incline towards evil. They have been saved to sin no more."

There were a few other sentences scattered before this paragraph that similarly described some beautiful things that Jesus has done or that Jesus is and they choked me up, too, but this paragraph was the one that did me in. I was struck. I was struck by the content but I was struck that I was struck. Feeling like garbage, hating my very existance, and close to despair because I don't see relief on the horizon, I find myself brought to tears by the beauty of the gospel. Somehow it doesn't fit---though it really, really does. [If it's not clear from my awkward phrasing, words fail.]

He took my sins and my sorrows,

He made them His very own;

He bore the burden to Calv'ry,

And suffered and died alone.

I mean, what didn't fit was that they weren't tears of joy. They were something like tears of anguished anticipation. I want to KNOW that gospel more. I want to READ the Gospel accounts more. I want to see Him more clearly. I want to read the New Testament this very instant! (In my daily reading I've just finished Jeremiah so I'm definitely feeling a longing for the Messiah to show up.)

It's hard to describe. I didn't feel particularly comforted... but I certainly didn't feel worse. It was like accessing pure joy without feeling a shred of happiness. That's a weird combination! But I'm so glad the story is true. I'm so glad the Truth is legit and I'm SO THANKFUL that God won me.


In the next paragraph "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" was quoted and that stirred me again but in a slightly different way. I have really grown to love Christmas in the past couple years--by God's grace--in the right way. I love the Incarnation. (I also happen to love winter.) I love that He came and I love that we celebrate. I have grown to love Christmas, even through some of our weirder human traditions. It's a brilliant time of year. I also love that hymn. Christmas is another example of that pure-joy-under-real-pain phenomenon. Christmastime flushes out the greatest dysfunctions and insufficiences within my family of origin--BUT THEN CHRIST LOOKS SO MUCH BETTER. I don't know how to describe it. He took me to a painful place during Christmas 2009 to learn this, but every year since has been such a profound worship [experience] that I almost love that pain. Whatever it took to make Him look this good.

When with the ransomed in glory

His face I at last shall see,

'Twill be my joy trough the ages

To sing of His love for me.

 

Oh, how marvellous! Oh, how wonderful!

And my song shall ever be:

Oh, how marvellous! Oh, how wonderful!

Is my Savior's love for me!

I forgot how much I enjoy writing.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Good news!

This is good news:

"The days are coming," declares the LORD,
  "when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
  and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
  I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
  to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
  though I was a husband to them."
    declares the LORD.
"This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
  after that time," declares the LORD.
"I will put my law in their minds
  and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
  and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
  or say to one another, 'Know the LORD,'
because they will all know me,
  from the least of them to the greatest,"
    declares the LORD.
"For I will forgive their wickedness
  and will remember their sins no more."

This is what the LORD says,

  he who appoints the sun
    to shine by day,
  who decrees the moon and stars
    to shine by night,
  who stirs up the sea
    so that its waves roar--
    the LORD Almighty is his name:
  "Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,"
    declares the LORD,
  "will Israel ever cease
    being a nation before me."

This is what the LORD says:

  "Only if the heavens above can be measured
    and the foundations of the earth below be searched out
  will I reject all the descendants of Israel
    because of all they have done,"
      declares the LORD.

Jeremiah 31:31-37

I look forward to having kids.

I look forward with all my heart, and yes, I know it is hard.

I look forward to having little someones to pour my life into. I look forward to giving things up, to listening, to learning about transformers or unicorns... I'm looking forward to it.

I may never have kids of my own. I know that.

There's a dad and a daughter sixteen years of age sitting in my lobby right now. There is apparently love between them. As in, it is apparent* that each loves the other. He apparently loves his daughter. She is well taken care of. He jokes about how many hours she'll have to work to pay for this physio appointment. She mock-whines about how that's her whole Saturday. Her jumper is pink. She has braces.
*apparent (adj.) 1. readily seen; exposed to sight; open to view; visible 2. capable of being easily perceived or understood; plain or clear; obvious.

His hair is full but grey, about an inch long and spiky. Based on his attire, disposition, and type of smart phone, I suspect he's a businessman. I doubt he's going back into the office yet today but even if he were, I wonder if he would mind that his daughter was messing up his hair. She keeps mussing it with her hands, a hair band on her wrist. She's scruffling and swishing it and Dad is squinting and cringing and half-smiling.

He jokes to me about whether he can leave the girl here. She moans about how long it will take to walk home. "That's your problem," he returns with perfect dead-pan coldness. She moans about not having any money. "That's your problem." She moans about not even having any bus tickets. "That's your problem." (Now he's perfected it: it sounds like a recording!) "Daaa-aaaaad...!"

A pop song comes on the radio that she obviously knows well: she sings the first line precisely, but does it like a younger sister would: dramatically and about three inches from her dad's face. Unfazed. Unfazed. He continues with his credit transaction (tiny smirk).

She costs him money. She costs him time. She has undoubtedly cost him sleep (with wailing through the night as a babe, with hockey practice early in the morning, with worry on her first night away from home) and she certainly costs him emotional energy.

He loves her. She knows it. She loves him. He's confident of it. They sit comfortably together. At one point he's holding onto her fingers as she tries to wrench them free for more mussing. Her body is twisted toward him in the waiting room chairs so that her knee is almost in his ribs. They are close.


I look forward to giving and being and loving and close and real. And good.

My Christianly Duty, continued (again)

I made note of these passages on Saturday afternoon in my regular OT reading.

It was a rough start to a morning, a Saturday, a weekend. I slept in without wanting or needing to and I been crying deeply the night before. Lately something new and slicing is sitting on my chest. Or is a small stone in my shoe. I begged for an answer that night and I did hear a whisper that sounded like His response so I clung to it and let myself sleep. And that on its own breathed life into my Saturday. It gave me a frame. It helped me think the day wouldn't go completely down the drain.

But before I got to work [through/with] that "answer", I spent some time in Isaiah. And He found me. He found me, He found me, He found me.

These passages are all beautiful and moving. I hope you can read them and hear them and feel them like I did.

"But you, Israel, my servant,
  Jacob, whom I have chosen,
  you descendants of Abraham my friend,
I took you from the ends of the earth,
  from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, 'You are my servant';
  I have chosen you and have not rejected you.
So do not fear, for I am with you;
  do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
  I will uphold you with my righteous hand."

Isaiah 41:8-10

But now, this is what the LORD says--
  he who created you, Jacob,
  he who formed you, Israel:
"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
  I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
  I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
  they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through fire,
  you will not be burned;
  the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the LORD your God,
  the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I give Egypt for your ransom,
  Cush and Seba in your stead.
Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
  and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you,
  nations in exchange for your life.
Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
  I will bring your children from the east
  and gather you from the west.
I will say to the north, 'Give them up!'
  and to the south, 'Do not hold them back.'
Bring my sons from afar
  and bring my daughters from the ends of the earth--
everyone who is called by my name,
  whom I created for my glory,
  whom I formed and made."

Isaiah 43:1-7

"This is what the LORD says--
  Israel's King and Redeemer, the LORD Almigty:
I am the first and the last;
  apart from me there is no God.
Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it.
  Let him declare and lay out before me
what has happened since I established my ancient people,
  and what is yet to come--
  yes, and let them foretell what will come.
Do not tremble, do not be afraid.
  Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago?
You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me?
  No, there is no other Rock; I know not one."

Isaiah 44:6-8

Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
  over it he prepares his meal,
  he roasts his meat and eats his fill.
He also warms himself and says,
  "Ah! I am warm; I see the fire."
From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
  he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
  "Save me! You are my god!"
They know nothing, they understand nothing;
  their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,
  and their minds are closed so they cannot understand.
Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him;
  he cannot save himself, or say,
  "Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?"

"Remember these things, Jacob,
  for you, Israel, are my servant.
I have made you, you are my servant;
  Israel, I will not forget you.
I have swept away your offenses like a cloud,
  your sins like the morning mist.
Return to me,
  for I have redeemed you."

Sing for joy, you heavens, for the LORD has done this;
  shout aloud, you earth beneath.
Burst into song, you mountains,
  you forests and all your trees,
for the LORD has redeemed Jacob,
  he displays his glory in Israel.

Isaiah 44:16-18, 20-23

"Listen to me, you descendants of Jacob,
  all the remnant of the people of Israel,
you whom I have upheld since your birth,
  and have carried since you were born.
Even to your old age and gray hairs
  I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
  I will sustain you and I will rescue you."

Isaiah 46:3-4

"Come, all you who are thirsty,
  come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
  come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
  without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
  and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
  and you will delight in the richest of fare.

Isaiah 55:1-2

My Christianly Duty, continued

On Friday evening, when I returned to my house around 5pm and found the shroud of You're Worthless descending upon me swiftly and suffocatingly as usually happens when I get home at the end of a day, I thought I should again exercise self-discipline and try the active worship thing.

So, I threw on a well loved album of Hillsong's and by the time we were at the lyrics of the first verse, my heavy heart was ready to sing. Initially I honestly think I sang out of habit but it was also largely out of a new mix of obedience and curiousity. Let's see how quickly He will warm up my heart this time! I thought.

I like that the first line of the entire album is this: "Blessed are those who dwell in Your house, they are ever praising You." I like that it's true. (I know that it's true because the line is drawn from Psalm 84:4.)
Hillsong Church. "Blessed". Blessed. Hillsong, 2002.

There were other songs that connected strongly and I sang my heart out as much as I could while preparing dinner and preparing my mind/heart for guests that would arrive within an hour.

One song that I heard differently--though I have known this album since I became I believer eleven years ago--contained these lyrics:

[verse] I give You praise for You deserve it,
I give You praise for what You've done,
I give You praise for You are able,
I give You praise til I overcome.

I give You praise when the sun is shining,
I give You praise in the dark of night,
I give You praise when the battle rages,
I give You praise til it works out right.

[chorus] The shout of the King is among us;
God lives here, in our praises.
The shout of the King is among us;
praise Him, praise Him, praise Him in everything!
Hillsong Church. "Shout of the King". Blessed. Hillsong, 2002.

And it was enough. I particularly liked the untils. It was not a lament. It was not a crying-out. It was the end of Psalm 13. It was a declaration to be there. To be found ever praising Him. To be in the right spot while still being in a struggle.

  Oh, selah.

I don't love every song on the album and this is one of the tracks I find least moving and least easy to listen to and engage with. The album was released in 2002 and this particular song is heavy on the brass instruments and has an almost ska sound. So...I don't love it. And in general I am partial to songs of a slower tempo. BUT! on this Friday, "Shout of the King" was right. It needed to be uptempo, almost danceable. It needed to be bright. He found me and He pulled me out.

  Blessed are those who dwell in Your house,
  they are ever praising You.
  Blessed are those whose strength is in You,
  whose hearts are set on our God.

  We will go from strength to strength
  until we see You face to face.

  Hear our prayer, O Lord God Almighty.
  Come bless our land,
  as we seek You, worship You.
   
Praise Him in everything.

My Christianly Duty

It’s hard to say. It’s simply hard to say!

Blessed be Your Name when I’m found in the desert place,
though I walk through the wilderness, blessed be Your Name.

This week has held many days of wind, rain, and cold both within and without and yet when I’ve been able to pop out of the storm, it’s always been the Lord who has invited me or called me or helped me or held me--whatever the term is.

On Thursday, I think it was the most abrupt popping out of the whole week. It has felt like heaviness. It has felt indescribable. Heavy, dark, cloudy, rainy, dead, stupid. Everything is stupid. I’m tired. I want only to sleep and eat and die and find whatever will work to get me out of this spot. Several times this week I’ve felt at the end of my rope, feeling like I would finally “give in” and take that pill the doctors gave me to beat the pain. It felt like defeat and weakness to finally succumb.

But the real trouble was that there is no such pill. I’m taking all the medication I’ve been prescribed, and yet this week I have felt utterly, discouragingly out of options. I'm willing even to cheat! I'm willing to eat junk food (but it seems I don't really want to), I'm willing to watch movies (but they don't take over my mind sufficiently enough), I should be willing to call my friends (but I don't remember who they are). So... I haven't tried everything. So... the pain is my fault. Guilt is stupid.

I digress: on Thursday the day was murky enough but then mysterious trachea pain led me to speak with a registered nurse whose advice cast me into deep frustration. [If I write it out I will re-frustrate myself and that seems a waste of energy.]

But, the noose was tightening. My inner world was apocalyptic. It was the end. It was devastated cities, billowing smoke, wailing mothers, darkened skies...wasteland. Stupid wasteland. I was angry and stuck. I had about a three-percent capacity for social politeness--and I resented that the three percent still remained! I sat like a stone in the passenger seat as a friend and I were given a lift to a lecture/discussion series event.

I sat like a watery stone on the floor at the back of the lecture/discussion series event room because we had slunk in late and I didn't care enough to find a chair or table. I sat on the floor and stared without seeing at the speaker's knees. [This is so much like grief.] When I realised there was no point in me being there if I didn't pay attenion (and that I didn't actually want to go home), I pulled out my journal and robotically started taking sparse notes. Everything was still stupid and watery and dumb and HOWLONGLORD and strangling and drowning and noose and what is the point?

In God's grace I got a little warmer, gradually by gradually. At break time, I took four cookies because I thought I could eat some of my pain but I had no appetite.

Also at break time my friend dragged her chair over to me from the socially appropriate spot she had carved for herself at a table of people. She made me stand up and made me hug her. She asked me what was going on and I found something else to joke about that had happened at the moment of her asking, and the question was successfully diverted. I am a joke.

Then she let me sit in silence and a vacant stare. Then some well meaning girl came up and tried to be friendly. The red light was still flashing on my dashboard: my social capacity had dropped to two-point-five percent. How I struggled! It's not her fault. I tried, and then I tried to incorporate my other friend into the convo so I could duck out. (It worked.) I used the diversion to muster some more social courage and managed a fake smile along with fake lightness. Phew. A shield.

Five minutes later, ready to explode, I told my friend about the piles of frustration and about the week of murkiness. I told her how often I had thought about strangling and hanging--not that I am serious about it but that this is the image and the action that my mind keeps presenting as some kind of solution. I told her how it feels like drowning to be like this. I told her that it's Psalm 13 all up in my mind. It's the How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? My tone betrayed me: I spoke with real weariness. My tone was sharp as I said that it's one thing to deal with a month of rehab, but it is quite another to never know the end. Healing from a bad burn is one thing but chronic pain? I don't know how those people do it. I don't know how they keep their sanity with pain that seems gratuitous and like it will never end.

The evening wore on; I warmed up a little here and there because the content of the lecture was good. By the time we were leaving, a smile had broken through on my face as I interacted with the lecturer (whom I have known since my undergrad). I don't know what it was but a sneaky smile broke through and I let it.

Then it was time to leave. Yes, let's leave. Let's go home now. As soon as we exited the building, all smiles were gone and dark-heavy-swirling came back.

And then, thirty yards up the sidewalk I started listening to the song that had been passively playing in my head since we left the building. It started at the first verse and then I guess when it was the refrain, it was that thirty-yard spot up the path.

A [different] smile asserted itself. It wasn't huge but it was sure. And, because though there's pain in the offering blessed be Your Name, I turned and started spilling to my friend. I didn't even give my introverted brain time to process and privately worship.

"You know how I told you that sometimes God will speak to me through songs in my head, like how it'll just start playing and then BAM, I know what He's talking about?" Before that sentence was done, a knowing smile was creeping onto her face. "I just got the song Victory in Jesus."

"Huh," she replies and then asks me what the words are. A tiny, rebellious part of me resented this question because if I have to say it out loud I have to say it out loud.

I fumbled through the first verse because it's tangled with the second in my mind but then I skipped to the chorus, the meat.

  Victory in Jesus, my Savior forever;
  He sought me and He bought me with His redeeming blood.
  He loved me ere I knew Him and all my love is due Him.
  He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.

She says with a twinkle in her eye, "'He plunged me to victory'!". I like that this hymn seems new to her.

"Yeah!" I affirm, wheeling around with a light bulb. "Talk about feeling like you're drowning...!" and we're both silent for a minute. I like the Lord. I like His creativity. I like that He turned my images around like this.

He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.

It's all good. That hymn is all good but all I needed at that time was to hear "victory in Jesus". All I needed was for the Lord Himself to remind me that He will do it. He will win it. He will be victorious.

  Selah. [Author's note: I legitimately forgot where this blog post was going because I'm so Selah-ed.]

I was out. I was out! The Lord--in His mercy--had broken through. He changed the weather. And I remember the distinct moment I decided not to try to sleuth out what had done it. I wasn't going to bother with the magic recipe because I think this was just Him. This was just from His hand. Just His mercy, just His love, just His goodness. Me, I can't replicate bupkiss. (Though I did make a very strong note to worship no matter what--my Christianly duty.)

When we got to the bus stop a few minutes later I asked my friend if she wanted to hear the third verse. That one I know because (as I later explained) I have developed real soft spot for the the "death verses" of hymns. So many of them capture the poignant longing of a Christian to leave this sin-filled world and be with the Lord forever. We long but we wait. We yearn but we work.

Sigh. Oh, selah.

  I heard about the mansion He has built for me in glory.
  And I heard about the streets of gold beyond the crystal sea;
  About the angels singing and the old redemption story
  And some sweet day I'll sing up there the song of victory.


Some sweet day. And since I just looked up the lyrics to be sure I had them right (which I didn't), I'm going to write out verse two.


  I heard about His healing, of His cleansing pow'r revealing,
  How he made the lame to walk again and caused the blind to see.
  And then I cried, "dear Jesus, come and heal my broken spirit,"
  And somehow Jesus came and brought to me the victory.


I don't know what all is wrapped up in that "somehow" but I cherish the thought of it.

 Selah.