Remembering Life is Not Stoichiometry

I loved chemistry my sophomore year of high school. I loved drawing lines from one element to another, as I imagined how copper could possibly rearrange the molecules of itself into silver, as I watched the beaker burn away gases and leave a smoldering residue of a totally transformed element.

There is cleanliness in chemistry, how it models the shifting shapes of carbon through the Kreb's cycle in our cells, or watching the exploding balloon and knowing that we created water. I remember weighing carefully measured portions of the cement of our cells and our selves, and wondering how it was that this could be true, and how a gram balance could help me predict what would happen in moments or even days.

But lately, and strangely, I've had this temptation to map my life like a chemistry equation. In stoichiometry, you predict how the reaction will run - how much water, carbon dioxide, copper, silver will be made by adding this much, or that little. And I've wanted to predict how much the elements in my life - departures, arrivals, disappointments, plans, fearful and trembling hope - how much is all that going to weigh next week and month and year? Maybe if I can map the strange wayward paths of sadness and confusion and excitement in and out of my heart I can prepare myself, make myself ready. I can stock up on reserves of worldly wisdom. I can hide pithy phrases in the storage room in my mind and wheel them out as summer bends to the pressing of fall, and I won't be sad. I won't be confused.

And though our selves may be built of the periodic table combining and recombining, aligning and rearranging (like Sodium [Na] that binds itself ionically to Chloride [Cl] to make salt [NaCl]), binding and unbinding, I have that sinking feeling I cannot measure out my heart on a gram balance. I cannot make stoichiometry tell me the story of what To Kill a Mockingbird will do to me curled under the blankets late at night. I cannot manipulate the equation to predict with any accuracy the way an idea - an idea about God or about Jacques Maritain or about how to read books or about how to teach on a farm - will root itself so firmly somewhere in my clavicle bone that I can't shake it.

I sit in my office before the day begins, staring at this screen, hoping to make equations sing like muses about me, who it is I'm becoming, what it is I'll find myself doing next week and month and year, how I'll find my footing. I want to know if there are three parts joy and one part fear, and if I add the humming energy of praying and a carefully measured portion of throwing my hands in the air - how much will it yield? And I am now copper and God wants to make me gold, if I am fallen and He wants to make me whole, how much waiting will it take? How much patience learned, how many wrong paths trod over and over, how much stumbling? How many years, O Lord, will I wander in the desert looking at the manna from heaven and wondering if it is food? 

And my heart fears and wishes and longs for measurement and calculation, for the ordering, the penciled Q.E.D. at the end of the equation, the neatly typed notes, the finishing. And who hasn't at some point wanted the delicate prediction of science to make you a promise about how this will feel, and what it will do, and who you will become afterwards?

And there is no stoichiometry anywhere to be found, but the words of the One who watches over the wandering promise:

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you. 


Observe the commands of the LORD your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills. (Deuteronomy 8.2-9)


So I wander on, hands itching for a pencil, hoping instead that the unmeasurable love of God meets His unmeasurable goodness meets my unmeasurable heart - and begins the mystery of becoming.

Love,
Hilary

Because departure is near

I do not know how to write about departure in a lovely way. I want to. I want the right image and metaphor, I want to spin words for us that promise understanding, that promise new light on the hard things. I really wanted this blog post to capture some miraculous, never-before-understood thing about leaving that would make my friend's move the subject of wise reflection rather than twenty-something angst.

But this word, departure, it does not give me metaphors. It brings the hard gravity of loss. And that gravity lines my face and hides in my voice and so when I've talked these last few days, or tried to sit down and write, I echo back my fears that departure means disappearance. I echo the edge of loss, and it sounds like a storm and a cliff and I'm afraid. And as I keep typing and typing it feels more and more like angst, like gravity, like loss, and less and less like a pretty word picture.

But this morning in the early grey rain and the words of Rite I and the promise of praying, I was reminded of a scene in a story I've been reading for years, in the middle of thinking about how I was going to talk about this departure. The funny part is that I've never played the character I now find myself playing, and she is strange and new and fits awkwardly in my skin.

I've always believed I'm Lucy in Narnia - the one who believes, the one who adores Aslan and sees Him first. I've always thought of myself as the person who is faithful, loyal to the promises even when they seem far away. So when the scene that appeared in front of me as I thought about departure and my fears about my friend moving away in two weeks, it surprised me that I was not Lucy, but Susan.

Susan? Seriously, Father? I'm Susan? The one who doubts, who is too practical by half, who prides herself on being realistic and thinks that Lucy is crazy for finding a world in a wardrobe? I'm Susan who chases this world and fears change and waits too long to see You?

Literature does not budge. No matter how deeply I want to play Lucy or Peter or even Edmund, no matter how desperately I pass off the moment as, "It's just me being me and reading too much into books again"... Susan and I find ourselves bound to the same moment of fear. Literature will do that to you, find your heart out in its secret hiding places, expose you to yourself, make you read in surprise your own story in other words.

"Then, after an awful pause, the deep voice said, 'Susan.' Susan made no answer but the others thought she was crying. 'You have listened to fears, child,' said Aslan. 'Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?' 'A little, Aslan.' said Susan." - Prince Caspian

And I hear the same deep voice sounding in my own life. Hilary, He says. You are listening to fears. You are listening to the fear of disappearance, the fear of anonymity, the fear that when the car door closes it's like a door locked and bolted on the friendship. A fear of "never again." A fear that you haven't said all the things you want to, and now there is no more time. A fear of no more time. A fear that friendship does not cross borders, after all, but fades and falls apart as the threads are stretched over miles.

And yes, Lord, I am afraid of all these things. I am Susan, and her realistic, unhopeful self. I am Susan, afraid to trust someone else who says they see more clearly than I do. I don't believe that Lucy can see You; I wander through the forest complaining that I'm following blindly the faith of another person, and as far as I can tell this venture towards "Aslan" will get us all killed.

And then there is enough silence in my heart, enough waiting, just enough courage, to see Your outline moving in front me - to see the shadow You cast over my life and my heart. There is just enough pause to open my eyes to see how You must have been walking in front of me all along, ordaining the things that come to pass, parting the seas and calming the storms.

So today, facing the soon departure of my dear friend, I blink twice and strain my eyes to see His outline. And I hear His deep voice resound somewhere in the pit of my stomach, chiding me. "You have listened to fears, Hilary." And then He does something we celebrate at Pentecost, we celebrate in the upper room with the disciples. Come, let me breathe on you. Forget your fears. Are you brave again?


A little, Lord. I whisper. Just enough to keep walking.


Love,
Hilary

Backward (A Five Minute Post)

Lisa-Jo's prompt this morning - write about backwards in just five minutes! Join us, please? It's so much fun!

Some days the world feels like a backwards mystery carved into my heart - I have no idea what is logical, my brain's neatly ordered puzzle pieces are scattered on the floor. Why do I love writing so much? I ask the Lord as yet again I feel like I have stumbled in the back door of vocation. I'm no English major, no history major, and yet what I want more than anything is to breathe deep the language of history and write the books that blaze trails into other's hearts and minds. Isn't this backward?

Aren't I supposed to proceed in a logical, orderly, neat fashion towards what it is you want me to do?

And then the miracle of backwards must be that Love is the only path we must take. When the day makes us forget things - doubling back over the same piece of highway because we didn't plan our errand route, or having to search the same terms in Google over and over because we can't remember what it is we want to know, or when in your senior year of college you discover what it is you want this gorgeously rich life God's given you to look like - when the puzzle falls into place backwards we can see Grace in it.

I want more than anything, friends, to go in order, in what my mind whispers is the right way to do it. I want to make a mark on the world and some days my mind whispers to my heart that it's backwards, falling in love with writing and history so late, falling in love with peace and joy after I gave up being a good debater, and... and... and.

It is backwards but it is gorgeous and it is Life and I love it.

Love,
Hilary