Hatched

I read a lot of books last year.

I’ve been reading a lot of books since I was about seven years old, so this is not a mind-blowing statement.

And yet, my mind (and heart and soul) have officially been blown. For whatever reason, an odd assortment of faith-based, mostly non-fiction books showed up along the way last year, like bread crumbs leading this very hungry woman back home.

But the weird thing is, I had no idea I was hungry. Disgruntled at times, yes. Itchy and vaguely unsettled. Aggressively complacent, for sure. But ravenous? Who knew?

(I think we all know who knew.)

These books have so seismically changed who I am and what I believe that I barely recognize myself. I am as wobbly and uncertain as a slimy little chick fresh out of the shell. I am so fundamentally new and utterly reborn, I feel like I should get re-baptized. Or a tattoo.

I hesitate to write about this just yet because, well, I don’t know what’s coming. (Picture God laughing right here.) I don’t even like talking about my thoughts much for fear someone will ask me a couple of smart, laser-focused questions, questions I don’t have answers to, so I hide under the shell carcass I recently called home.  For now, I hold these beliefs, these shifts, mostly to myself, but I’m talking in tiny bits with Matt. With my pastor. With others I suspect may also be very, very hungry.

And baptism? Tattoos? Well, yes, I think so, at least symbolically. Baptism and tattoos, as I believe my life is about to bear outrageously visible marks of a new way. I have some glimmers of what that will look like, but I’m scared to share just yet. But can I just make this radical statement? I’m seeing visions. No lie. They are shadowy and indistinct and frustratingly lacking in the details of a solid project plan.

But they are visions nonetheless.

I see a community (specifically the one I live in) with a quiet group of people, of which I am one, seeing and feeding and loving and giving and receiving in dark, dark places. I see snaggle-toothed strangers at my dining room table. I see fresh cinnamon roles pulled apart and set on paper plates in not-so-clean kitchens. I see someone spooning soup into a crooked elderly mouth. I see an AA meeting on my back patio. I see latchkey kids watching cartoons and doing their homework in living rooms not their own while they wait for their mama to come pick them up after her own long day.

These freaking visions go on and on and on. They will not leave me alone.

Which brings me back to my trail of books. Because it is these books that landed me here, here where my feet no longer feel or even look like my own and the least puff of wind might knock me down. Here where I am both delighted and terrified. Excited and chock full of dread. And relentlessly pursued because, the deal is, these books all manifest the thumbprint of the gospel.

As I read and read and read, my spiritual senses heightened and sharpened and softened, while my attendance in church slowed way down. I kept reading. One book led to the next, which led to the next.

Until I landed here, this bizarre place where I see visions while walking the dog and scrubbing the coffee pot. Where conversations with people I barely know crackle with holiness. Where the small, the backwards, and the upside-down are the places I want to run toward rather than away from.

Weird, right?

I’ll share more. The books I read and why they knocked the wind out of me, what’s happening in my head and in my community, and why why why I think all this matters so much.

But right now, I’ve got to get back to my incubator, which looks a lot like finishing the last chapter of Shannon Martin’s book Falling Free: Rescue From the Life I Always Wanted. It looks like asking Jesus more questions.

And it looks like praying for my sweet Matt because the poor man has no idea what is about to happen to him.

Any more than I know what is about to happen to me.