Send ANYONE Else

He told me not to bother. If I remember correctly, his exact words actually were, "Don't bother."

This was around my 27th year and I was less than a week away from launching The Remnant, a Christian service group comprised of adult singles....wait for it...with a twist.

The twist was that singles groups are awkward and I didn't want to attend them anymore. So how does one meet new people and make quality friendships? One starts a group that weeds out any namby-pamby. Here's what I figured: I'd create a service group that specialized in volunteer projects so heinous, so tiring, so draining, so filthy, only the cool would survive.

Anyone left standing would be my kind of person. And we could be friends!

A week before the launch meeting, while I was in the midst of making snacks (the almond bark coated pretzels were a big hit) and organizing my pitch, a friend asked me a question that nearly ended it all: Are you willing to lead?

Define 'willing.'

Matthew - you beautiful boy you - was a friend with a background in ministry leadership. While working on the initial launch, he helped me think of scenarios and issues I'd never imagined. He asked me the hard questions. He took me through the logistics and the reality. Basically, he was my Mr. Miyagi.

Then he asked me that question and I was stumped. What I was comfortable doing was starting the group, not leading it. I assumed God was only asking me to do what I was comfortable doing. Isn't that what God does? Lets us chill in our comfort zones? Can I get an amen?

Matthew wasn't impressed with my answer. "If you can't lead it, don't bother starting it."

But...but...but...

This is what I call, "Being a real Moses." Not the Red Sea division Moses. The earlier dude talking to a burning bush about a speech impediment.

Initially, when God spoke to Moses about His plans to free the Israelites from Egypt, Moses responded with questions. We may think of him as this powerful Charleton Heston type and, with God beside him, he was. But he was also a man with a fear of public speaking he could not face.

So, he threw out any question he could. People will want to know God's name, what was he suppose to tell them? People will question his authority, how could he make them believe him? When God had answers for every excuse, Moses finally got real.

"Oh Lord, I'm not very good with words. I never have been, and I'm not now, even though you have spoken to me. I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled." Exodus 4:10

Oh Moses. I get you, man.

I relate so much more to this Moses than the miracle working one. He saw his own inability and it caused hesitation and fear. I've often given God a list of the things I don't want to do. "Ask me to do anything Lord! Except this list of exceptions I've made into a convenient refrigerator magnet for you."

When Matthew asked me that question, I had a list of excuses, too. But God came with a ready answer.

Then the Lord asked Moses, "Who makes a person's mouth? Who decides whether people speak or do not speak, hear or do not hear, see or do not see? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go! I will be with you as you speak, and I will instruct you in what to say." Exodus 4:11-12

In other words, "You get tongue-tied? So what! Your limitations do not limit me. So get your rear in gear!" But Moses couldn't give God this one fear. He just couldn't.

"Lord, please! Send anyone else." Exodus 4:13

Accepting your ineptitude is liberating.

All those years ago, my friend Matthew gave me a new perspective on stepping into a role where I didn't feel qualified.

"God has trusted you with this project," he told me. "So are you going to protect what God's given you or let someone else step in and, quite possibly, take this group in the direction God never meant for it to go?"

This wasn't about what I was qualified to do. It was about God asking me if I was willing to do anything. Even if that anything freaked me out.

I take it back. 

I did launch The Remnant. And led it.

Not because I felt empowered and capable, but because I wasn't going to let anyone come along and screw it up.

Not only did God use me far beyond my capabilities, but He blessed me immeasurably for trusting Him. That group is where I met many of my closest, dearest, lifelong friends. For three years, we broke bread and sweat together. Lived with more paint in our hair than was culturally stylish. Worked in the cold rain and brutal sun. Ended most projects covered in dust, dirt, sawdust, and, on one particular weekend, cow manure. We also had an unfortunate event in a muddy field with a heavy truck, laughed more hours than we cried, and experienced true brother and sisterhood. All these years later, and I'm still blessed by that time in my life.

I think about that a lot when God comes around again asking me to travel further into my fears, which He does all the blasted day long. It's like He doesn't appreciate that refrigerator magnet at all.

If God is asking you, like He does with me, to do something that freaks you out, here's what we should do:

Right after listing all the reasons we're not qualified and believing anyone else would do a better job, take a breath. Deep inhale. Deep exhale. Get rid of the boundaries we've placed on our life. Forget who we are alone and remember Who is with us. Then, with as steady of a voice as we can summon, say, "Geez. Okay God. I take it back. Don't send anyone else. Send me."

Love's a Lover AND a Fighter

I'm repurposing this blog from 2014, with a few added revisions and thoughts. It fits me most Valentine's Days because the fight of life doesn't take a break even for a day beautifully dedicated to chocolate consumption. (I'm a dark chocolate junkie in case anyone is itching to send me some.) If your day is more about warring than loving, know you are loved even when you are called into war. 

X's and O's
Tara Lynn

"Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, 

and endures through every circumstance." 

1 Corinthians 13:7

Love, I've wondered, may be made out of mohair.

It's warm, fuzzy, cute, and when you're wearing it, everyone around you and everything you touch is sprinkled with a little piece. Strands of mohair also stick to your lip gloss and love might do that, too.

That's the cutesy side to love. The flowers and candy and such. The fat, diapered baby with arrows. The rom-coms and date nights. And there's not a bloody thing wrong with any of it.

So it's cheesy. So what?

Revel in it, my friends. Enjoy the ridiculousness. Life has lots of serious moments so never discount the lighthearted ones.

The soft stuff, however, isn't what I'm thinking about today. Today of ALL days I'm thinking about fighting. Real left hook/right hook kind of fighting. No holds barred style. The kind that hurts and usually draws blood.

In other words, today I'm thinking about love.



This song by Switchfoot found me months ago on a day too heavy to live underneath. A day I was driving myself to the hospital, yet again, to get more bad news, yet again, and all I could think about was how I didn't have any fight left in me.  I was tapped out.   

At that moment, I'm not sure I loved anything enough to throw a punch for it. Not even my own life. It was a day after a long siege of days where pain and struggle and uncertainty were the only things on my horizon or scheduled for tomorrow.

I drove, but I drove without hope. And that's when this song came on.

Down but not out

Life at that moment wasn't worth the fight. Neither was my future, my dreams, my faith, or my hopes, which had faded like draperies in east-facing windows. But I had no options but to keep moving forward because, in life, there's no such thing as reverse.

So I drove. And I listened to this song.

This is what the Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman said once about the thoughts behind the song:

"From time to time we all come to those difficult moments of struggle when life becomes a fight. Maybe we are depressed and can't seem to find a way out. Or maybe we're dealing with the loss of someone we love. And maybe in that existential moment we begin to wonder what we're living for, what we're aiming for, what we're struggling for."

Love, he explained, is the only thing worth fighting for.

Take it to the mat 

In the middle of nothingness, when I'd lost all purpose and heart to take one more hit or go one more round, God was showing up to tell me if all I had was Him, then He, alone, was worth the fight.

Not the life I had wanted but didn't have. Not the plans I had designed but couldn't complete. Just God. Just love. That's all I needed. If He was the only thing left about my life, then it was still worth fighting for. And He would be its Savior.

Again.

During recovery, this song became my anthem. I played it A LOT. Still do. And on days when all I can do is put one foot in front of the other, I still put on my headphones, turn on this song, and put one foot in front of the other.

If this finds you in that kind of a moment, or that kind of a month, year, or decade, then all I have is one piece of advice:

Love, all by itself, is worth fighting for. Even in the moments you don't feel it or see it. Even if you think all you have is the hope of love.

Don't give up, my friends. Don't grow cold or hardened or detached from the hope that things can and will improve, that God will answer you one way - one day - or another. Whatever in your life has died, you have a Savior who specializes in resurrection.

Happy Valentine's Day.

The best year yet? Yes, No, Maybe.

"These are the nations that the Lord left in the land to test 

those Israelites who had not experienced the wars of Canaan. 

He did this to teach warfare to generations of Israelites 

who had no experience in battle." 

Judges 3:1-2

I'm sorry. What?

He left them? On purpose?

When I read this chapter recently, I asked God if He was punking me. But, apparently, everyone's Bible says this.

God leaves problems, challenges, even enemies in our path to "teach warfare." He didn't hold a class or send a memo. He created an environment that would guarantee future generations would get "experience in battle."

That seems all kinds of wrong. Why would He do that?

My first thought was because God doesn't raise snowflakes, He makes warriors. Booyah. He knew the experience of warfare would convince Israel that God was with them. That their faith would give them boldness. And that boldness would ensure they wouldn't shrink back from conquering new land.

It was like a one-two-three punch knockout strategy. God was showing Israel that their battles scars weren't injuries, they were military stripes marking their rank.

And now, 2017

Well, hello there new year.

One popular phrase I've heard this year has been, "May 2017 be your best year ever." I appreciate the sentiment. But I'm annoyingly future-minded, so my next thought is, "Does that mean 2018 will suck?"

It's not that I wouldn't mind 12 months of bliss. But, let's get real. There's no such thing.

I'd love to believe 2017 will be the year where everything goes amazingly perfect, all my goals are reached, all my hopes are realized, all my pain disappears, and all my days are a balmy 72-degrees with a light southerly breeze. I'd also love to have dinner with Cary Grant on a riverboat cruise, but I'm not going out shopping for water-resistant evening attire.

Sidenote question, is there such a thing as water-resistant evening attire?

Challenges will come

I say lots of things lightly, but not this. To be perfectly honest, I acknowledge this fact with a tinge of fear. Unknown challenges frighten me. As do unknown blessings. Anything unknown, basically. I don't like it.

But the longer I've thought about those verses in Judges, the less anxious I feel about approaching a new year with all those waiting unknowns.

In those verses, God appears to be giving Israel a glimpse into what's to come, as well as encouragement that He was the master planner behind it. He's showing them that the presence of enemies is not the absence of God, nor the indicator of future loss.

He didn't leave the enemies in the land to give Israel something to worry about. He left the enemy behind to give Israel victory.

God had promised Israel blessings. And the battles brought an opportunity for God to show Israel just how big, how monumental, how gracious, how lavish, His blessings would be. The reality of the challenges He left behind was actually evidence of the blessings He already had planned.

Yes? See where I'm going with this? I'm on a roll here, people. Can I get an amen? I'm going to pretend I got one.

All things new

There may be a few problems that followed you - uninvited like - into 2017. In fact, there may be a few problems that have crossed the midnight divide over many New Year's Eves.

When they appear yet again in a brand new year, it can make you feel as if this year will be like all the others - still no victory, still no overcoming, still no prayer answered, still no land conquered.

There's no way of knowing, of course, if this year will be any different. Any better. Any worse. You can't trust crystal balls, positive thinking, or pollsters to forecast the future.

What you can trust is this: God never leaves behind an enemy He doesn't already have a plan to defeat. He didn't for the Israelites and He doesn't for us.

So, take heart and hold on. Victory is coming. Neither the proximity of an enemy nor the length of the battle is an indicator of the outcome. God has a path for you, all He's asking is for you to trust Him.

And, who knows. 2017 really could be the best year, yet.

Your Four-Day-Dead Dream: What if there was a resurrection?

He wasn't suppose to die.

Lazarus had a cure. The cure. An all-access VIP pass to answered prayer. He would live. It was what Martha wanted most. And, because Jesus loved her, He would never deny her what she wanted most.

Right?

Martha believed her story would always be victorious. Imagine her devastation when she realized she had read her genre wrong. She was the protagonist in a tragedy.

This wasn't suppose to be your story

You were so certain. So sure. What you dreamed of having or doing or seeing or being, what you hoped for yourself or your family, would come true. God would answer that prayer. It was a good prayer. A right thing to want. He would show.

Then He didn't.

The time came and went. The moment passed. The door closed and locked. It wasn't suppose to end like this.

Where do dead dreams go when they die? A tomb. Deep and cavernous, cold and black. Only an entrance. No egress.

Not the end but a lengthy third act

A few years ago, while reading Beautiful Things Happen When a Woman Trusts God by Sheila Walsh, I began to view the story of Lazarus differently and, with it, my own dead dream. What I didn't understand in Lazarus' story was the significance of Jesus waiting four days.

I'm not alone, though. Martha didn't understand it, either.

If the point of the story was to illustrate His resurrection power, wouldn't any moment after the last breath do ya? Four days seemed odd. Lengthy. Inconvenience. A little insensitive. Did He not understand Martha's broken heart?

Never doubt. God is always in the details.

From Beautiful Things:

"The Jews, you see, believed that for three days the soul might return to the grave, thinking that it would reenter the body; but on day four it sees that the color of its face has changed and leaves for good.....after three days all hope of recovery was gone." 

All. Hope. Gone. Got it. Dead is dead is dead.

Except when it's not.

Jesus waited for a reason. He was making a point. A big one with an exclamation at the end. He was saying, "Death isn't death. Not with me. Not even after four long days when all hope is gone."

Never underestimate the author

Writers are all about plot twists. We're sneaky that way. Besides, a journey without challenges is boring. A clear path from Point A to Point B isn't a great story, it's an instruction manual.

The more insurmountable the obstacle, the bigger the victory. We don't cheer on protagonists that face inconveniences. We root for heroes that face the impossible.

 The worse the odds, the sweeter the win.

"So Jesus moves toward the tomb....He tells some of the men to remove the stone from the grave's opening. Martha is horrified. It was hard enough to bury Lazarus's lifeless body, but to open the tomb after four days and face the stench and decomposition is too much. Jesus senses her panic. He turns to her and reminds her to trust him. He's simple and clear here. No matter how things appear, Martha, believe."

No matter how things appear. No matter. Believe.

Final isn't always final

You may believe there is no hope left. Your dream is four days dead. It's died the death of deaths. It's past revival. And, if you think it's all up to you, that would be correct.


But, with God, the dead rise.

They shake off the earth that buried them. They breathe again. They awaken and start anew. They walk out of that tomb. They shrug off their burial clothes. They call out to friends and family and joy returns. They rescue the mourners. They officiate the celebration. They toast to the new day and the bright future. They restore our lost faith. They revive our defeated heart. They make everything new again.

They live. Even though they were dead.

Death isn't always death

Lazarus came to me today, which is so like him, always showing up when he's not expected. His life, his death, his life again, I woke up thinking about him and his story and, of course, his sister Martha.

What were those days like for her? Those hours sitting by the window, staring down the road, desperate to see a glimpse of Jesus in the distance and seeing nothing. All the while her brother perishes beside her.

Then he's gone. And the days tick by. One. Then two. Three. And finally four.

Did she watch the sun rise on that morning? Did she grieve anew at, yet again, her loss of hope? Did she feel unloved, overlooked, or even rejected by Jesus?

Today, on Good Friday, Jesus' disciples experienced a similar defeat. They dreamed the dream of a Jewish King. That king died on a cross today. It wasn't how the story was supposed to end.

But the story wasn't over. A bigger, better dream was actually beginning. This was the first step. An earthly king? Oh, no. What they thought was death was actually God showing them He could do so much better than what they imagined.

How about a heavenly kingdom that never ends. A house right next door to Him. A love that forgives all. A savior that gave everything. And, just because God is a ridiculous kind of giver, an eternity with no tears or sorrow.

It was all coming. Even when Jesus died. Even when they buried Him in the tomb. Even as the days passed in fear and grief. Resurrection was coming.

No matter how things appear. No matter. Believe.

The Island Syndrome: Not A Good Place to Get Stranded

The thing that's funny when a single person gets sick, and I say "funny" but mean "dangerous," is that we can be quite ill, even delusional, and think we're fine.

Who's to tell us differently?

Fevers, for instance, can go unnoticed until a curb jumps out at you in a Walgreens parking lot when you've gone to restock your Kleenex supply. That's when you finally realize: 1) Curbs are harder to avoid than previously thought. 2) I'm quite feverish.

When I got home, instead of calling someone, instead of asking for help, I stared into space for awhile and then decided sleep could be the answer to all of life's biggest problems, including why my eyeballs were on fire.

An object in isolation will stay in isolation unless an external force acts upon it.

The oddesh thing about this whole scenario was that a coworker had just warned me about my tendency to go it alone only days earlier. A warning he's given me before. This time, however, he wasn't talking about an illness, he was talking about my scheduled move in a week and his offer to help.

"Don't be an Island Tara," he said.

For the record, there isn't an Island Tara. There is the Hill of Tara in Ireland, which is an island, and now we've come full circle. My guess? He meant that with a lower case "i" and a comma after.

The point, of course, is that I tend to do things on my own. Mostly it's because my life requires it. Sometimes it's because I prefer it. All the time it's because I fear dependence. Relying on anyone but myself usually ends in disappointment and me doing it myself anyway. So, who needs that? Not me. I'll take care of everything. I'll handle my responsibilities. I'll solve my problems. I'll move my belongings, right after I've purchased more tissues and nursed myself back to lucidity.

Except when I can't. And that, Houston, is when we have a problem.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

II Corinthians 12:9-11 

Delight in weakness? Other than the fact I can currently hit Karen Carpenter's low D in "A Song for You," I'm not feeling all that delighted. Weakness does not thrill me. It doesn't send tingles up, or down, my leg. It does not draw me toward it like the proverbial moth always panting for that proverbial flame. It is what I wish to shed like a thick orange peel so I can get to the juicy pulp inside. 

Weakness is my enemy. Or so I would have me believe. 

The thing I keep being surprised about by God, and I often wonder if He's ever surprised by me still being surprised, is how often knowing Him better means being the opposite of me, doing the opposite of my instincts. 

Survival tells me to handle things on my own. Survival tells me this is the wise choice. Survival says to pay better attention when driving in a Walgreens parking lot. 

God, however, tells me to unclench my fists, to ungrit my teeth, to ease myself right into the midst of pain, defeat, weakness, and failure and rest there. Without fighting it. Without struggling to the surface. To simply be there. Floating to the bottom. And trust Him to bring me out of the mire, to the shore, with fresh clothes and a hearty meal of grilled fish with a slice of lemon.

He says to be weak. And to delight in it. To be where I am when where I am has failed, and joy in it. To see the insurmountable and to acknowledge it as such. And then, in childlike trust, to ask for help. Specifically, to ask Him. 

My dad recently reminded me of a story from his youth, one where he very nearly drowned. He was age 13 or thereabouts, splashing about in a river with other friends, diving in with gusto, and only then realizing he was over his head and unable to swim. So he went down. Once. Then again. And again. The third time he succumbed, sucking in water and gasping for breath, he knew he could not reverse the inevitable. With the only thing he had left within him, he threw up one arm in a desperate plea for someone to grasp it. 

Like a child. Reaching out his hand in complete need. That caught the attention of an adult nearby who dove in and pulled him to shore. 

He could have kept fighting it himself. He could have decided he would overcome his circumstances on his own. He could have continued with the misguided belief he could handle it, but that's the moment he would have drowned. 

Instead, he reached for help and help reached back. My friends, whether we believe it or not, whether our circumstances appear that way or not, anytime we reach toward God for help, He will always reach back. 

In fact, God dives in to come to us because, I can assure you, our arms are never long enough. 

So about that weakness? As much as it pains me, my throat, my sinuses, and my feverish eyeballs to say, delight in it. Be grateful for it. Joy in the opportunity to be that dependent child. Even sing that weakness a song.

I know a Carpenter tune that would work great here.

God Raises The Dead Even On Your Off Days.

Chauncey Crandall wasn't having a great day. Not horrible. Not great. Work was piling up, people were demanding, and then a guy died on him.

You know. That kind of a day.

Less than an hour later, however, the dead guy would come back to life. So, in retrospect, maybe it wasn't that bad of a day after all.

When Jeff Markin walked into the Palm Beach Gardens Hospital on September 20, 2006, he had no idea he'd be playing the role of Lazarus. Right there on the emergency room floor his life took a very sharp turn, or, better stated, made a blunt stop.

And after 43 minutes of working to bring him back, Dr. Chauncey Crandall, the supervising cardiologist, (who still wasn't having all that great of a day) declared Jeff dead.

Although Jeff and Chauncey were both having days not going according to plan, God wasn't having the same frustration. He had His agenda right in front of Him, spread out on his larger-than-life mahogany desk. And right in the slot that said "raise Jeff Markin from the dead," God was right on time.

(God, unlike Jeff and Chauncey, was having a great day.)

Here's the part of the story that interested me when I heard about it yesterday. Not that men coming back to life isn't a real headline maker, but here's where I started to relate to Chauncey Crandall and his bad day.

Chauncey had a God-appointed task to perform. He may not have started his day thinking he would participate in one of God's God-appointed tasks, but, just like God is wont to do, God decided he'd keep it to Himself until the time of His choosing.

Surprise! 

As Chauncey left the room, a voice told him to go back and pray for that man. The one back there getting prepped by a nurse for the morgue. The one with the appointment with a toe tag. Yeah. That guy. The dead one. Pray for him.

He argued, of course. But God, isn't that just like God, was persistent.

So Chauncey returned. He put his hands on Jeff's chest, the one with no heartbeat, and prayed. And he did so with very little faith. He prayed not really believing it would make any difference. He prayed - not because he felt compelled by a fiery burning of spiritual awakeness in the pit of his stomach that was only completed with a sudden glory light of holiness ringing his head like a halo while the Hallelujah Chorus sang in four-part harmony in his ears - because God asked him to pray. He prayed out of obedience.

"This day that I prayed for Jeff," said Chauncey, "was a day of very little faith. It wasn't one of my big God days."

Think typical daily grind. That's what Chauncey was experiencing.

"And when I walked into that emergency room, to tell you the truth, I didn't want to stay and pray because I was so much in a rush with my work. But I prayed. And I didn't have a lot of faith backing that prayer up that day, but the Lord asked me to do it so I honored the Lord and prayed."

The rest of the story is: Dr. Chauncey Crandall asked the indulgence of one of the attending doctors to shock Jeff Markin one more time. Remember, he had been dead for 43 minutes. His time of death had been called. He was what Miracle Max would call "all dead" not "mostly dead."

Yet he came back to life, anyway.

Jeff came back from a place he described as completely dark. Isolated. And hopeless. A place he knew would be his to live, for all eternity, alone.

What's amazing to me is that, in that moment, Jeff Markin needed an Abraham. Or an Elijah. A Moses. Or a Paul, first name Apostle. He needed men who had big God days everyday.

Instead he got a Chauncey on an off day. And God still raised him from the dead.

I'm not sure what that says about your day. Or your tomorrow. I'm not even sure how to completely equate that to the grind of clocking in every day, not to a job, but to a life that, before we even live it, we've diagnosed as ripe with little God days.

Maybe, like me, most of your days feel like little God days. These are the days that hold no overpowering zeal, no walk-on-water actions, no surprises, not of the good variety anyway. Outside of traffic flow and slight temperature adjustments, these days are so much alike you need a calendar and a muscular alarm to differentiate the passing of one and the beginning of another.

God never shows up on these kinds of days. We know this because we've lived thousands before today and we'll live thousands after. Maybe. And what we discover is that everyday, except for brief stints of vacation periods and times of extreme trauma, are little God days.

Or so we think. 

Here's the problem with little God days: it takes a little god to live inside them. And God, last time I looked at a sunrise, a mountain, or the complexity of my fingernail, is what you would call the antonym of "little." 

So here's my challenge. For you and for me.

I want to wake up tomorrow and have a BIG God day. I want to look for Him. Even more than that, I want to expect Him. I want to stumble out of bed, stub my toe, drop the shampoo bottle at least three times in the shower, have my hairdryer short circuit, melt my XCVI pants with a too hot iron, break the yoke on my morning eggs, run my car until it sputters out of gas, have my first appointment of the day waiting impatiently for me when I get to work, and still have a big God Day.

Or, if I could skip the part about ruining my XCVI pants, that'd be okay, too.

When you're in the desert, don't drink the Kool-Aid.

The 4:55 pm flight to Anchorage didn't have me on it. And I wanted on it.

I wanted an aisle or window or middle seat. I wanted to be cramped and stuck sitting between two severely big-boned women. Or men. I wanted a little turbulence, a harrowing trip to the bathroom, a magazine selling gadgets to flip through, a child crying somewhere in the vicinity, a stewardess who smiled despite her furrowed brow, and a tiny plastic cup with exactly two ice cubes and slightly chilled water to keep me pacified for six to eight hours.

Around 10 am that morning, I had made the decision. Forget this life. Let's try another. So I checked that day's available flights, did a mental inventory of clean clothes, and started making plans. 

By sundown - Alaska. There, I'd start fresh with several hundred dollars less than when I woke up.

Freedom! Spontaneity! I'd chuck this writing gig and learn deep-sea fishing. Or pipelining. Or shopkeeping. Or lounge singing. Or selling souvenirs to people in the Lower 48 who came to God's country seeking an escape.

Stupid tourists.

I wanted on that flight. I wanted that life. I was even willing to pay a ridiculous price tag if it meant leaving before sunset. But, obviously, I didn't go. A friend talked me off the tarmac with a blunt observation, "You're in the desert," he said. "And, yes, it's hard."

Heck yeah it is. There's nothing in the desert but dried dirt. And a few cacti. Maybe a snake.

It's the place of lowlands and low expectations, when trials stop having an end and take up permanent residence. It's where you give up anything will ever change. You accept that life is simply a disappointment. This is how it turned out and there's nothing to be done about it.

A few days earlier, a friend and I had been talking about my circumstances, all of which I'll spare you. After a discussion on fried apples and leadership principles, the two have connections you know not of, he said something that must be truth because it resonated with me as if my mind had been replaced with a tuning fork and struck against a wall:

Your family, your friends, me...we all wish we could short-circuit this in some way.  To rescue you and to hand you a satchel with all of the answers.  But then, you would not become the person you are supposed to be, the writer who moves multitudes, a woman of destiny.

You mean, all of this pain has a purpose? You sure? I just thought everything kind of sucked right now and that's just life. I figured my path had simply bottomed out in some kind of sinkhole. I'd made a mistake somewhere, chose the wrong toothpaste brand, veered left when I should have pivoted right, signed a two-year contract with Sprint when I should have gone with prepaid Boost.

Whatever I'd done, it was irreversible.

And I bought it. The desert's whole elevator pitch. God, for whatever reason, had chosen to blot me out like a drop of water on Teflon-treated pants. And I don't even own a pair of Teflon-treated pants. Mostly, those are for men.

But God, as God so often does, told me to snap out of it. Lovingly. It went something like, "I'm lovingly telling you to snap out of it."

A few days later, while thinking about how much sun destiny requires, my friend threw the "desert" idea at me. Then he hammered it home. "When God uses someone for His purpose, He'll often take them to the desert first." Like Jesus. Or Moses. John got to know the nightlife on the Island of Patmos pretty well. Abraham became a card-carrying member of the God Relocation Program, too.

Being in a place of life, or even a physical place, where you are completely out of your element, isolated and overwhelmed, over your head and under pressure, is how God gets our attention. Here is where we hear Him best, even when we can’t hear Him at all. This is the moment we trust, when all around us is blistering sand. Now is when we stand still and believe, the most demanding physical strain we may ever endure.

I don’t have this desert living figured out. That Alaska idea was only a week ago. The fact I’ve made it nearly a full seven days without running for the border is progress. Tomorrow I may gaze into the north and sway in that direction. But, for now, today, I’m taking it one moment first. Then another after that. I’m ignoring the hopelessness shimmering on the horizon because hopelessness is a mirage. I’m waiting and trusting and hoping and taking lots of deep breaths.

If you’re there, wondering around the desert, too, let’s meet up when we get out of this place because we will get out. We’ll have a couple of those frozen fruity drinks with umbrellas and compare tan lines.

the Watson to my Sherlock

I mean to start my day, everyday, with prayer.

But I get busy. I get distracted. There's breakfast to eat. Emails to return. Blogs to write. Wrinkles to iron out. I really dislike wrinkles.

So this morning, I awakened to a computer that did nothing but run that silly round "processing" icon over and over and over. It sucked me in like a trance. It wouldn't move. Wouldn't begin. Wouldn't cough and hack and kick itself into gear. It just processed and processed and processed, around, around, around.

The motion sickness forced my eyes away.

That's when I started praying. I prayed rather heavily. I found time to pray as I worked on getting my gimpy computer to awaken. I found time to pray while I typed out long emails on my blackberry. I found time to pray as I waited without patience for the dang screen to do something, anything but nothing.

I've had my computer for five years. It's a good little thing. A white thing. A shiny, hard plastic and some kind of filmy screen thing. It's been a good companion, the best of all the laptops I've owned coupled into one, since it's the only laptop I've ever owned. We've laughed and talked and stared at each other for hours. It's possibly the best dang relationship I've ever had.

And today it got a new life. A fresh start. It awakened, yawned, and, with heavy lids, asked me what all the fuss was about? I'd kiss it, except I won't. I'm rather particular about mixing my personal life with my professional one.

It shouldn't have taken the near loss of the only tool required for me to produce an income to scratch a morning prayer out of me. But it did. Are computer glitches really required before I notice my Creator is there and wouldn't mind a simple "Morning! Sure are glad to see you! Thanks for the sunshine and stuff."

Tomorrow, I think I'll fix God a cup of coffee. We can sit back, exhale and chat before the deadlines start tugging at my coattails.