Remembered

            “I really want you to take my upper level English class,” Justin, my English 1310 professor said.  I didn’t understand why he was telling me this; I was only in my second semester of college.  Why would I take an upper level division class?  “Your stuff is really good.  I can tell you’re a writer, Becca,” he said while packing up his things, so nonchalantly.  I was silent, attempting to suffocate the tears in my throat from living.  I didn’t know then why it was an emotional moment for me, but now I do.

            In sixth grade my teacher informed my mom that I was “slow”.  She said that my reading speed was slow and so were my processing skills.  “She turns the pages slower than other students when I let them read to themselves; she’s slow,” informed Mrs. B.  I liked to read and analyze what I would have done instead if I were writing that story.  I wrote in journals.  I made up stories, yet I hated reading back then because no twelve year old should be forced to read books that have no relevance to their life.  Where the Red Fern Grows, A Wrinkle in Time, or The Bridge to Terabithia are what 12 year olds should be reading.  All I knew back then was that I wasn’t just “slow” but that I was stupid.  Slow people are stupid people.  I was never good at math or science, reading and writing was my only hope and I loved it.  I laid my reading and writing to rest that day, burying it never to resurface again.  I remember agreeing that I was stupid and no one wants to read a book or poetry from a stupid person.  I hated reading.  I stopped writing.  I was slow.

            Everyone was terrified of the high school composition teacher, Mrs. Hilger.  She was in her 70s and I remember my older brother coming home with his papers drenched in red ink.  Three years had passed since I had forsaken reading and writing.  Luckily I was in a freshman Greek mythology class, so I wouldn’t be doing any writing.  Mrs. Hilger told us there was no such thing as a bad writer.  That everyone could write what they thought and felt, but as teenagers we have been told that our thoughts and feelings were trivial.  She began to breathe life on the grave of my writing.

            A year later, I was in her sophomore composition class.  I had no desire to write, my desire was overshadowed by distorted beliefs.  I entered the class out of obligation.  She let us write a story for the first piece we ever did in her class.  “Whatever your heart wants to write about,” were her instructions.  I decided I would write a story that no one else would write.  I didn’t want to write about fairies, unicorns, or love.  I wanted to write about reality.  I wrote a fictional story inundated with truth.  I wrote about domestic, physical abuse.  I was never physically abused, but I knew friends who were.  Flannery O’Connor once said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”  So I wrote, digging up the grave of my writing in the process.

            Mrs. Hilger asked me to stay after class a few days after I turned in my piece.  She asked if I was being abused at home, naturally.  I told her I wouldn’t let anyone hit me without them going to jail.  She laughed, “I thought that was more your personality.”  She told me my writing was beautiful.  I can still cry today thinking of that moment.  Mrs. Hilger poured water onto the dry, cracked soil of my heart.  Stupid and slow were overshadowed by the words, talented and beautiful.

            Then I met Justin in college who also cultivated the soil of my heart.  This semester, spring of 2012, I had two professors, one male and one female and totally unrelated to one another, read my writing and offer to help me get published.  “I want to work with you after this semester is over because I can tell that you get it, Becca.  You get writing,” the she professor said to me.  “This is one of the most powerful stories I’ve ever read, Becca.  And I do a lot of reading,” the he professor said. 

            Those professors and Mrs. Hilger will wake up tomorrow and make their breakfast or coffee and not think of me, never knowing their words resonate and fuel my writing.  You see, I was not forgotten, I was not too complicated, and I was not “slow” to them.  I was Becca.  I was talented.  My writing was beautiful.  I got it.  I was remembered.

Aslan and My Mother

I’m not ready to talk about it yet…Sorry.  I’m just not ready.  So, as my reader, just trust me and know there are things you can’t know yet.  I will tell you someday.  For now, just pick up in the middle of this beautiful mess with me.

The phone fell to the ground as my tears and body soon joined.  I don’t know how to do this.  What does this look like?  How do I do this and bring glory to Christ?  My thoughts raced as the culmination of events over the past months began to weigh heavily on my heart.  Do you ever have moments when you are running the race marked out for you, and wonder why people are even cheering you on?  How could they?  I often wonder why this baton was given to me in the first place.  I’m going to drop it.  I’m not a good runner.  Isn’t there someone else who is better for this than me?

I think there are moments in life when you are met with the massive question,

“Does God even care about the state of my heart?”

I’m tired… do You even notice? 

I cried myself to sleep last night.  Did You even see?

This hurts.  Did You know that?

I’ve never had the audacity to directly ask God these questions.  I know Him better than that.  Those are illogical to the mind but completely relevant to the heart.  In that moment, those questions rose to the surface and manifest themselves through tears and sobs.  Where are You?

In that questioning moment, I heard the garage door open… No one was supposed to be home.  My dad was gone all day and my mom told me she wouldn’t see me before I had to go to work.  The door squeaked open.  I was curled up on the floor with a mascara matted face.  My eyes met my mother’s shining face.  My mom knew exactly what was going on.  Then Christ manifested himself through my sweet mother.

I watched as my beautiful mother swooped down onto the floor, took me into her arms, and cried with me.  This was not her burden.  This was not her heartache.  Oh, but it was.  I could feel in that moment that we were crying the exact same tears.  My mother is a mother who hurts when I hurt.  My God is a God who cries when I cry.

“Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.” The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis

I remember the first time I read this excerpt, I wept.  The deep question our heart asks,

“Does God even care about the state of my heart?” is answered.  God knew my heart asked this question, and he answered through Aslan and my mother.

Desiring Desire

My heart has been penetrated this month.  Allow me to explain.  I am so analytical and cynical that I find it easy to shelf my emotions and simply do what is logically sound.  My friend Nick Hoffman’s blog said, “The best questions go directly to the heart…and stay there because they’re asked from there.”

My heart has been questioned this month and those questions have saturated my pores and lingered on my skin.  I suppose for the first time in a very long time, my heart has asked the questions.  My cognitive mind usually does the driving and directing.  My timid heart has so often been silenced by the bellowing voice of my mentality.  I barely recognized the tone of my heart that has long been hushed by my brain. 

“The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” –Luke 6:45

What is my heart full of and why do I often hush her truth?  What is that about?  Why do I feel more secure in the intellect and mystified in the tide of my desires?  I love in the gospel of Mark when the blind man comes to Jesus and cries out to him and Christ responds with, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51)

I picture Jesus and I walking and holding hands as we discuss the state of my heart recently.  His footsteps cease, his body turns to mine as his gaze rests on me, and he says in a whisper, “Becca, what do you want?”  I don’t know which is harder for me to digest, what my heart truly wants or that He’s concerned enough to ask.