A piece of truth for you (and a free printable)

It's been almost a month since I finished school for the summer. Entering the summer has brought forth both excitement and relief to be finished papers, exams, and assignments. But for me this summer has also opened some wounds that feel fresh and raw and achy, which has allowed me to enter a period of healing.

Fear is a constant struggle for me. Even, two years ago, when I started a concept called The Year of No Fear, I still consistently felt afraid. This summer I am focusing on breathing truth into my core, which often circles around to embedding scripture and words Jesus says deep inside of me.

This hunt for truth has revealed to me what the definition of truth really is. St. Augustine said, "All truth is God's truth". If that's the case, I'm starting to recognize just how many things point back to God. 

It has almost become a sort of scavenger hunt. I get into my car in the morning, put my sunglasses on, and search for truth. What will be true today? I think. What truth will I find that will point me back to God? 

When I search for truth, I end up finding it. Sometimes I find it in people and places I never even thought to look. 

"The truth will set you free," Jesus said. And of course he's right. But I'm learning it can hurt to get there.

Today, on Mother's Day, we gave each woman in my church this print I painted. I wanted to also share it with you. I wonder how you are today. I wonder how you are this summer. I wonder how, even when the flowers are blooming and the birds are chirping and the sun is beating down on your shoulder blades, if maybe you feel some sadness entangled within all of that too. 

But no need to fear.

Here you go. 

We can breathe in truth together. 

Click to download a free print

Holy Week: Jesus is going to die on Friday

Jesus is going to die on Friday. 

That's what I keep thinking.

You can go through twenty-two Holy Weeks, and yet each time Palm Sunday comes around you grapple with a gaping, gasping, afresh realization: Jesus is going to die on Friday.

I think about it again and my heart slips into my lungs, making it hard to breathe. It's the beginning of Holy Week, which tends to feel both reverent and loose — as if I'm teetering on the edge of a very large cliff, staring down at my miseries and burdens, all the while knowing the Saviour of the world is deep in the midst of saving me.

We were handed his execution date a long time ago. We break bread and remember him, but this week he's dying all over again. We know Sunday is coming and that there is hope, but Friday comes first and my mourning has already begun.

I mourn my faithlessness.

I mourn my pride.

I mourn my denial of him -- and not just three times like his dear friend, Peter -- but more, so many more. He is my Lord and my Saviour and there are innumerable times where I have cast him aside. Holy Week brings that all back to me.

It is here, during these days, where I am most aware of how utterly weak my fickle human flesh is.

I could've been the girl to sing hosanna and five days later yell crucify him. I could've waved a branch like a flag in praise of him, only to turn my back when the nighttime came. I could've loved him on Palm Sunday but left him on Friday along with all of his friends.

I am a runner. I get scared when times get hard. I deny, I betray — and most certainly I run away. And yet what causes me the most grief is the understanding that he knows all of this, and still chooses to have nails pummelled into the beautiful hands which formed me.

Jesus is going to die on Friday.

For a girl he loves madly, a girl who doesn't deserve him. And yet he wants me, and suffers for me, and forgives me over and over again.

I watched the sun set last night and thought, "this is God in all his glory." On Friday he'll die, and this will be God in all his glory.

On Sunday he'll rise again. And this will indeed be God in all his glory.

I realize how desperately I love him. And I pray I'll love him even more.

"To make of his story something that could neither startle, nor shock, nor terrify, nor excite, nor inspire a living soul is to crucify the Son of God afresh." -- Dorothy Sayers

The nights you can see only your shame

It was two in the morning and I was wide awake. My body was exhausted. It felt as though my lungs were made of bricks, heavy and full. If I tried to get out of bed, I knew I would tip over.

I could see my failures play like a movie in front of me. It was as if there was a projector reeling videos on my white wall beside me -- everything was abundantly clear. There I was: failing, sinning, screwing up again and again. I sat on my bed and watched the movie clips play in my head.

Tears streamed.

"I am a failure," I told Jesus. "Look at all of the times I have failed you. Look at the moments I chose to ignore you. Look at this pile of shame."

I was small and cold and sad. But I didn't feel alone. It was 2 am, and I felt like Jesus was sitting there beside me.

I felt like soft clay. My hardened edges were long gone. I was too tired to carry them with me any longer. In my softness I heard these words, "You have to grieve these moments. See them all and grieve them, Aliza. But once you're done grieving you need to move past them, and know that they do not define you."

I wanted to be strong, not weak. Grieving felt too vulnerable. Couldn't I skip the grieving stage and simply move on to the part where I was fine again?

But it's in these moments -- the 2 am moments -- where my anxiety and shame creep in and reveal to me the state of my heart. I was not fine -- I was ashamed and untethered, barely holding on to anything or anyone. And Jesus knew what I needed: I need to see my shame and grieve -- only so I could truly move on towards healing and freedom. I needed to see all of it so I could finally leave it behind.

When the movie reel had finished playing in my head, I saw another picture: Jesus, taking all of those moments, and wiping them away. He was healing me, slowly. He was healing me, not by my own strength, but through a tenderness I could hardly stand.

I woke up the next morning, tired but not afraid.

I was clean, I was fresh, I had been entirely made new.

And I am healing.

When God meets you in the middle of the drive-through

I was driving home from school today when the woman behind me started honking. We were turning left, and I think the person at the front of the line wasn't moving fast enough. The light went from green to yellow as I turned, and she swerved behind me through the red.

At the next light, she laid on her horn again.

"Holy crap, lady," I said within the safety of my car. "Back off."

I was exhausted from a busy but fantastic weekend, so I decided to loop through the McDonald's drive-through and grab a coffee. Somehow I wasn't surprised when she turned into the drive-through behind me. I rolled my eyes. She was such a pain.

I ordered my coffee, and pulled out my debit card to pay. As my car slowly inched forward toward the payment window, I felt a softness sway inside of my chest.

Pay for her order, I heard.

Immediately I knew it was God. This morning I asked him to start speaking to me, but this was not what I had in mind. I decided to ignore him. There was no way I was paying for the rude lady behind me. She needed to chill.

Glancing in my rearview mirror, I saw her. Her lips were pressed in a tight line, her eyes sunken and hollow.

"She'll probably order something expensive, God... and you know I'm trying to save money because of school."

Pay for her order. 

"She was so rude to me! Who needs to honk that excessively? I was literally just following the flow of traffic." I heaved a huge sigh.

I didn't hear anything again, but my debit card felt heavy in my hands. My car moved along and the boy at the window told me my total.

I looked in the rearview mirror again, then said to the boy slightly begrudgingly, "Can I pay for the woman behind me, too?"

The boy smiled and said, "Sure. Her total comes to $1.15."

"Of course it does," I said. Of course God would orchestrate something like this and only ask me to pay a dollar. It wasn't about the money, I knew -- it was about listening to him, about doing what he asked of me. Being faithful in the small things and all that.

I tapped my card and moved along. Watching her in my rearview again, I saw her face looking surprised, and then her face looking softer, and then she was looking at me. Our eyes met in my mirror. My window was down and I heard her yell in a low, gruff voice, "Hey! Thank you!"

I gave her a thumbs up and drove off. As I turned back onto the highway, I cringed at the prospect of my pride getting in the way of loving her. I speak of love and goodness and honouring God -- but do I apply that to my real, actual life? More often than not, I'm afraid the answer is no.

I hope that lady saw God today. Or maybe she didn't.

But I sure did.

This is what I know for sure

In my semester of learning, I'm unlearning a lot. I keep realizing I don't know many things at all.

When they said college would go fast, I didn't believe them. But tomorrow I have my final exam, and then my first semester is over.

Because this is the way my mind works, I keep thinking: did I learn enough? did I pay attention? am I going to be ready to launch into the world when classes are over in a year and a half?

The truth is, I don't know. This seems to be my answer more than anything these days. Who has concrete answers, anyway? Certainly not me.

"What are you going to do after school?"

I smile. "I don't know."

Or, "What do you hope to accomplish with your choice of major?"

I smile. "I don't know."

And, "What's the endgame, Aliza? Where do you see yourself in the next few years?"

I smile. "I really, really don't know."

That's the truth, and I'm beginning to settle into that now. I don't know much. Four years ago I had a detailed plan of what 22 was supposed to look like, mostly beginning and ending with a published book. But life looks different than what I thought it would, and that's not unsatisfying. I'm in the midst of good, stretching, lovely things. And most of them I have no clue about.

So I focus on the facts I do know: my nephew Noah turning one soon, the Christmas lights keeping me warm, reading books on love and spiritual discipline, painting on ornaments and bread boards, and remembering that Jesus is coming soon.

It's around this time of the year -- just a handful of days before Christmas -- when I normally begin to feel as though I've missed him. I begin to feel guilty and ashamed, thinking that I should have done more, or proven my love to Jesus somehow more tangibly.

I never thought being still could usher him in. I thought I had to prove it.

But this year, I can feel my insides shifting and changing, and that scares me and excites me simultaneously. There is no guilt or shame within me this year. No thing I have to prove. I've been reading a lot about Jesus, and listening to podcasts that have begun to change the way I view both him and me. Someday I'll share more with you, after I figure out how to articulate the feelings swirling within me.

But for now, I'll say this: I don't know a lot. I don't know about my life, or about college, or about writing, or art. But I know that I have people in my world who love me, and who I love in return. And I know I am getting to know Jesus in ways I haven't fathomed before.

He's coming soon, that empty manger waiting for his entrance. I look at Noah and think, "This was Jesus at one point. An almost one year old with bright eyes and a soul I feel as though I can see through." Soon we'll celebrate that Jesus is born, one of the most fantastical and revolutionary stories we'll ever hear.

But he is here, too. Beside me. Within me. Around me. Tomorrow in my exam, and on Christmas day, and on Noah's birthday, and when next semester starts, and all the days after that -- even when I keep thinking I don't know. 

He is here.

I sit still and breathe quietly for seven minutes.

He is here. I am more fully at peace than I can last remember.

In all of my uncertainty, this is what I know for sure.

Keep the doors open for me

The trees bent over me like a canopy -- ushering me along with their red and orange leaves, some of the tips yellowed from the changing of seasons. It's my favourite drive: the 12 minute back roads from my house to the town of Binbrook.

The windows were down and my hair whipped around my shoulders. The sun was warm on my face, and that's just how I felt inside: warm, filled up, and profoundly excited for what was to come for the town I was driving in.

We're starting a church. (We being my brother-in-law, my sister, their baby Noah, dozens and dozens of other people, and me.) It officially launches October 23rd in Binbrook, Ontario, at one of the local elementary schools. Mountainside, it's called -- named after the place where Jesus made disciples.

To say this is exciting would be a vast understatement. This church has been in the making for a very long time, and as I drove beneath the trees, their colours changing before my eyes, I turned down my music and started to pray -- for the church, for the people, for the trees and the roads and the cars and the children and all of the things that make up this town.

As I drove, I saw something like a movie take place in my mind. The movie went like this:

///

It was just me, alone, and I was in the hallway of the elementary school looking down at all of the doors and lockers and rooms.

Suddenly, each door was swinging open.

I felt safe, not afraid. I watched as each door swung wide, swooshing with a loud breath -- and then, I heard each one click. The doors were bolted open. I tried to close one of them, pushing the door as hard as I could, but it remained wide open. There was nothing I could do to close the doors of this school; nothing I could do to try and close the doors of what would soon be the church.

You're welcome here, it seemed as though God was saying. You can't close the doors because I have opened them -- and I am the only one to make them close. Whoever walks through the doors of this building is welcome here. 

///

I told people, later, about what I had seen in the movie that had played in my mind. I drove through the town, praying for the houses and the people who lived there.

"You're welcome here," I told the houses, although the people inside couldn't hear me. "The doors are staying open for you. You can walk in, just as you are, and you'll be welcome here."

This has become my prayer -- for my life, for my school, and now for my church:

Jesus, keep the doors open for me. 

And please let me keep the doors open for other people, too.

Let us be welcome here.

To grace, and grieving when you are hurt

i.

I preface this by saying that I’m still not entirely sure how I feel regarding what I am writing about. I’ve been talking to Jesus about this recently, and by talking I mean I've been sighing a lot and saying incomprehensible words. I just trust he understands how I feel. As I write this I'm eating cheesecake, hoping it makes me braver. Dessert can do that, right?

I'm scared to write this because I don't have the words perfected. I'm scared to offend people, and although I hate the idea of being a people-pleaser, I think I probably am one. I love people a lot, and I love Jesus more than anything, but I'm still afraid my thoughts and feelings aren't going to come across the way I hope they will. I suppose I just have to start writing and see what comes out of it.

ii.

A few weeks ago I spent the day alone. I felt sick and heavy, as if my bones were weighing me down. If I had gone swimming I surely would have sunk. My stomach was twisting and I seemed nervous and shaky. I thought, if I let myself, I could cry all day. I took a shower and prayed, realizing I had inadvertently spent the day grieving.

I have been a Christian for almost twelve years and somedays it feels like I have just begun. There are days where I feel as if I've hardly moved forward, and days where I feel like I'm doing okay.

Then there are days where I mourn the fact that we are humans attempting to depict who Jesus is, and that none of us will ever get that right.

I have been hurt by people who love Jesus. Certainly we as human beings are not perfect. None of us, Christian or otherwise, have our lives even somewhat pulled together. This is a fact that I know in my core. But more and more recently, I have been deeply saddened by how hurt I have been by people who love Jesus.

I thought that wouldn't happen anymore. But still it does.

iii.

I have prayed about this a lot. I have shaken with anger. I have said to my friends, "Why do people think shaming other people is an okay thing to do?" I have said to Jesus, "Why does this happen still, particularly coming from people who love you?"

God showed me that most of the time people aren't intentionally trying to be hurtful. I think once in awhile they are, but for now let's give the world the benefit of the doubt. They think that what they are doing is right, but in doing so may accidentally be evoking shame or guilt. Their intentions may be kind, but still we are hurt. I keep asking Jesus how he feels about this.

iv.

In no way, shape, or form am I in a position to judge anyone. None of us are. And maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe I'm too emotional or feel things too deeply. It's true that I'm not a Biblical scholar or theologian, but I am a girl who loves Jesus deeply, and I follow him and take what he says seriously.

I believe that there is nothing we could do or say that could mess us up in the eyes of God. I believe that we are loved, truly. I believe that there is an overflow of grace, an overflow that is quite literally never ending. Humanity has a hard time with grace, but Jesus doesn't.

I was out with a friend last week, a friend decades older than me, and she told me something her spiritual director recently told her: when you have been set free, you are free indeed. Your fear, your shame, your disappointment may return over time for a moment or two, but you don't stay there and you don't own that anymore. When you have been set free, you are free indeed. I kept nodding my head while tears welled up in my eyes.

Yes, I thought. Yes. 

v.

More than anything this is what I would like to tell you: I am sorry if you have been hurt, especially by someone who loves Jesus. I think most of the time the people in this world are trying their best, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way. This I know -- shame or guilt is not something that comes from Jesus. I will never agree with someone who says the opposite.

You are free and you are loved, and there is absolute grace for you.

That's something I have to remember again each day: over and over and over, there is grace.

On the day that I saw Jesus

I wrote this a few years back, for (in)courage. But today, on Holy Saturday, when Jesus was buried and the people thought everything was over and finished and done, we can hold onto the fact that Sunday is coming. That Love is still being redeemed.

I saw Jesus the day my father shaved the hair off my mother’s head.

This was two years ago, back when she had cancer. Jesus was there that day, too.

When my mom asked my dad if he would shave her head -- because the chemo was causing her hair to fall out and it was just too hard to pick up the pieces -- he said yes. When my mom asked my younger brother and I if we would be there when he shaved it, we said yes, too.

Jesus was on her right side, my dad on her left. Eli and I stood behind. I looped my arm through his and watched.

Watched the hair and tears mingle and fall together into the sink.

Watched my dads hand curve gently on the small of her back.

Watched love happen right there in front of me.

And Jesus was there for it all. He saw every hair fall -- and since he knows how many hairs are on our head, he knows when those hairs aren’t there anymore -- and I wonder if maybe Jesus was crying, too.

You see -- this is what love looks like to me:

Love is a husband shaving the hair off his wife’s head. Love is holding the razor steady while watching her body rack with sobs. Love is clinging to her tightly afterwards and whispering, “You are beautiful, you are beautiful, you are beautiful.”

Love is a Groom taking the sins of his bride on his shoulders. Love is carrying her shame to Golgotha, all the way to Calvary. Love is nails hammered to bones, thorns thrusted to scalp, spear stabbed to side. Love is the Groom writhing in pain, bathed in blood, so the bride can dance free.

But Love didn’t end when that last breath was taken. Love rose three days later, and because of that, the bride can say:

I am redeemed.

I am forgiven.

I am set free.

My mom’s hair was all there in the kitchen sink. Long tears streamed steadily down my cheeks as I hugged her closely. But I witnessed love that day.

I saw love.

Jesus holds me, holds her, holds you, and whispers: You are redeemed. You are forgiven. You are set free.

You are loved.

Did you hear that? Lean in closer.

Let those words wash over you, like a balm on your weary, weary soul.

The Groom is whispering to you – to his sweet, broken, beautiful bride.

You are loved. 

Now, we can dance free.  

The beginning of Holy Week

Jesus is going to die on Friday. 

That's what I keep thinking.

You can go through twenty-one Holy Weeks, and yet each time Palm Sunday comes around you grapple with a gaping, gasping afresh realization: Jesus is going to die on Friday.

I think about it again and my heart slips into my lungs, making it hard to breathe. It's the beginning of Holy Week, which tends to feel both reverent and loose -- as if I'm teetering on the edge of a very large cliff, staring down at my miseries and burdens, all the while knowing the Saviour of the world is deep in the midst of saving me.

We were handed his execution date a long time ago. We break bread and remember him, but this week he's dying all over again. We know Sunday is coming and that there is hope, but Friday comes first and my mourning has already begun.

I mourn my faithlessness.

I mourn my pride.

I mourn my denial of him -- and not just three times like his dear friend Peter -- but more, so many more. He is my Lord and my Saviour and there are innumerable times where I have cast him aside. Holy Week brings that all back to me.

It is here, during these days, where I am most aware of how utterly weak my fickle human flesh is.

I could've been the girl to sing hosanna and five days later yell crucify him. I could've waved a branch like a flag in praise of him, only to turn my back when the nighttime came. I could've loved him on Palm Sunday but left him on Friday along with all of his friends.

I am a runner. I get scared when times get hard. I deny; I betray; and most certainly I run away. And yet what causes me the most grief is the understanding that he knows all of this, and still chooses to have nails pummelled into the beautiful hands which formed me.

Jesus is going to die on Friday.

For a girl he loves madly, a girl who doesn't deserve him. And yet he wants me, and suffers for me, and forgives me over and over again.

I realize how desperately I love him. And I pray I'll love him even more.

"To make of his story something that could neither startle, nor shock, nor terrify, nor excite, nor inspire a living soul is to crucify the Son of God afresh." -- Dorothy Sayers

Let's meet up in diners

Let's meet up in diners, I think as I wrap my hand around my lukewarm cup of coffee. I've poured in too much cream again.

I'm sitting across the table from an old friend I knew when we were fifteen, when the world literally revolved around having plans on the weekends. Jesus and I were acquainted then, but when I look back I knew I missed him more often than not. He was steady. I was consistently changing my mind.

My friend and I are in a diner, the kind with red vinyl booths and a black-and-white checkered floor. She is honest, she is authentic, and I am so glad we are twenty-one instead of fifteen.

We're catching each other up on our lives. Most of this has to do with Jesus, and if I were to draw out my relationship with him on a map, you'd get dizzy from the ups and downs. I've dropped Jesus more times than I care to admit. Lent is a good reminder of this. I lean into this season of suffering and grief, and mourn the times I've denied him.

Perhaps -- because it is Lent -- I feel more content in my season of waiting. Or maybe God is working in me in ways he hasn't worked in me before. I picture myself a red-orange tulip, still burrowed deep within the ground.

I look at my friend, her hair framed by the winter light behind her, and she tells me how she was in her own season of waiting. She took a job that involved going to high schools and talking to students about how loved they are, and for the first year she said it was the hardest thing she ever did. She kept waiting for it to get better. She kept waiting for it to not be so scary. Instead of quitting, she waited. Instead of quitting, she kept showing up. 

Over spinach and feta omelettes, and rye toast, and soft eggs, something was opening up inside of me that had been closed for awhile.

Waiting -- whatever it is you might be waiting for -- has the capacity to do a few different things to a person. It can make you bitter and sad and longing for what someone else has. (I've allowed it to do this to me before.) Or it can carve and mould and form you into a person who doesn't quit, but instead keeps showing up.

I look at my friend -- and I am so grateful she kept showing up for those high school kids. One year later, her time of waiting is over, and she is a part of a ministry she never dreamed she might be a part of. Those kids needed her to show up for them. I needed her to show up for them, too. If only so one year later she could sit across from me in a diner and tell me she kept trying. Bravery often works best that way, I think. Someone is scared and tries anyway. Then they see someone who's scared and tells them to try anyway, too. 

Let's meet up in diners, I think as I wrap my hand around my still lukewarm cup of coffee. Let's show up for each other, even while we're still waiting and hoping and praying. Let's order coffee and get plenty of refills. Let's be authentic and vulnerable and say: I don't think I'll ever have it all together. Let's be scared and brave, all at the same time. We know it's easier to be brave together. Let's be honest and kind, and thank God for the girl sitting across from us in the red vinyl booth.

Let's not quit. Let's keep waiting. Let's show up.

And let's meet up in diners.