beautiful girls

I babysat some girls a few nights ago.

Have you ever noticed how statements like that sometimes seem like frustrating preliminaries? They provoke in you some emotions, because you understand everything that is associated with that sentence, but to others, it is a frustrating preliminary.

Nevertheless, I babysat some girls a few nights ago.

They were beautiful. It struck me. They were each intrinsically, inherently captivating. The kind that melts your heart and makes you want them to only experience the best all their lives and not be tattered ever by the world and its ways. 10, 7 and 2. I think. They all had the same mother, but three different fathers, and even though I have never met any of their fathers, I could see them in those girls.

The youngest they called Tator, a little girl who is as raw in her beauty as two-year-old girls should be. She behaved in such a way that results from the mindset and heart attitude, "Look at me! Look at how pretty I am!" - a mindset us older girls lose grips on much too quickly.

We watched Old Yeller which produced in me, as movies often do, an array of a deep monologue of thoughts and a representation in symbols of concepts deeper than the actual movie (that is worthy of its own blog), but the present demand for attention is one little girl who didn't care much about anything on the tv, but stared at me as I watched it. In her gaze, she reached her little glommy hand over and touched my arm softly. She was enamored as little children often are with new and had a grin as she looked at me. But there was a question she asked by her gesture. Am I lovable? Do you, new girl, do you love me? Am I lovely?

Of course you are, dear one, "Do you want to come by me?" She nodded in response and came next to me where we watched the movie together.

Ever After

I watched Ever After a few days ago. It's funny how movies, more often than not, send me plummeting to an inward - forever inward - battlefield in my mind. There, everything is deep, raw, and life-altering.

As I sank further into myself after watching it, I related to the heroine of the story. In case it's been awhile, Ever After is sort of a Cinderella story. Towards the end, everything is lost. She has been bought by this really ugly, yucky guy. But, somehow, she worms her way out of the whole situation and is leaving his estate. Just then, the handsome prince comes to save her from the ugly, yucky guy, but she's already saved herself from the ugly, yucky guy; yet, she knows that something's still missing. She's saved herself from some things, but not everything. She still needs to be saved from the destiny of filth that's been handed to her and expected from her. She needs to be saved from being forced to settle for the drudgery of everyday life. She needs to be saved from the absence of hope of Happily Ever After.

The handsome prince does it.

I have saved myself from a lot of painful things - wormed my way out of some pretty helter skelter situations, and still, I need to be rescued. I need someone to be willing to openly view the sorrows that this life has handed to me -big and small- and free me from them. I need a prince charming to say to me, "I'm so glad you've waited for happily ever after. You don't have to let go of your dream. You will live happily ever after, and you will do it in my strong arms."

And then the Lord Jesus whispers to me, "Your hopes about happily ever after will not be dashed to pieces nor forgotten. They will not fail. You will live happily ever after, and you will do it in my strong arms."

Ezma

I finished a post a few minutes ago entitled "Ezma". Somehow, it didn't get published, and so now, I am typing its substance again, but not because it was an overly profound post or because it was even mildly great. Mostly, I am posting again because I feel like sitting at my computer and writing.

Last night, I was the last person to bed in my suite. That is no unfamiliar occurrence. Nevertheless, when I looked into the mirror, I noticed a huge piece of food stuck in between my teeth. And what was my first thought, naturally?

"Oh good. I wonder how long that's been there."

I started typing this blog after I finished brushing my teeth last night. Somehow, at 1:30 AM, this whole experience was profound. But as I got sleepier, I went to bed without finishing it.

Perhaps it should have remained unfinished.

Who to blame?

I was writing to a friend some days ago about the intense inward struggle I have been battling lately. It has to do with kids - and the injustice of some of their situations. God's injustice, namely.

You know what he said? Probably not- I'll tell ya. He said, "kt... you're blaming the wrong person."

I thought to myself, "Oh yeah."

Herein lies the beginning of the answer to my struggle with the questions of freewill and power and the like - the questions of evil in the world; and how could a good and loving God allow so much of it?

You know, as a kid, my teachers always told my class and I, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." And the concept of guilt by association was always a dominant theme. Standing by and watching the problem is just as bad as creating the problem in the first place. Like when a kid's being picked on, and ya'll just stand around and watch it happen instead of sticking up for the little guy. So, God's the big guy, and while the little ones here are being beaten unreasonably or given no good discipline, overfed to the point of diabetes, or going hungry, He stands by and watches.

But after being callused over in belief in that very statement and softened again, I have found that that argument really doesn't work. God knew what He was doing when He gave us freewill.

I've been thinking a lot lately of The Matrix. You know, the scene when Morpheus the big black guy asks Neo if he wants the blue pill or the red pill - that all of his future would rely on that one move. If he chose one, he would forget the realization of the Matrix; he'd forget that everything he always knew was a lie. If he chose the other, he would live in truth, but he would experience overwhelming pain and be handed an overwhelming platter of hardship and impossibility.

Let's pretend for a moment that the movie was only a half hour long and there was no trilogy at all because Neo chose the pill that would make him forget. He chose the bliss of ignorance (for those of you who've watched the movie, he chose the steak) for the sake of avoiding the pain of reality. Welp, the big black guy wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. If the choice was ever really there, he wouldn't be able to do anything if Neo chose wrong.

Welp, in an extremely oversimplified sense, that's sort of how I picture God's stance. He sits facing us with a blue pill and a red pill in His hands. Both of His hands are open no matter how much He longs for us to choose one over the other. He holds them out to us and says, "What will you choose? Will you choose My way? It's harder. But it's better. Will you choose your way? It's more fun, but it leads to death. Will you live for this world whose glory is fading away? Or will you live for the next whose glory is ever-increasing."

He gave us power in choice. He reliquished His omnipotence (for a time) in His love. He gave us the freedom to decide whether or not we would give the power back to Him by letting Him rule in our lives. How it must have grieved God's heart as He gave some of His power - the freedom to choose - to us knowing full well the terrors, the injustices, the pain that His move would cause. But perhaps, He also experienced an overwhelming joy that so many would choose Him, that many would also go against the grain. And Oh! He must have experienced the joy of giving a good gift that was not a pogo stick or a balloon. His gift was much more complex; it's use carried and still carries ultimately heavy weight.