Risking the Impossible

I love readingOne Thousand Gifts just to get a taste of the voice and tone that Ann uses.  Here is my own take on themes found in her writing.

            What do I risk?  What do I lay out, palms open and stretched forward?  Risk means love and that I care about the consequences of loss, hurt, and pain.  Risking means giving it up and being vulnerable.  Open and undefended.

            I risk very little.  I tuck a hope in my deepest pocket.  I stash a yearning in the farthest recesses of dusty closet corners.  I hold tight, arms crossed and bound around what I love.  It’s mine.  So I hoard it, never allowing anyone else to touch it.  I’m a petulant child who won’t share her toys. 

            God calls me to give.  He wants me palms out and up, arms thrown wide, face up lit.  He wants joy in my grateful smile of vulnerability.  He wants wild abandoned trust like a child from me.  I only tentatively allow Him a glimpse into my cupped hands before snapping them closed tight to my chest.

            I risk little.  I’ll do it.  “What do I do, Lord?  What do you want me to do, God?”  His simple answer, “Let it go.  Risk losing,” is ignored while I continue to plea for something I can do to make it better.  Make it all go away.

            I refuse the cool evening breeze for fear of mosquitoes buzzing and feeding.  Though his blood was shed for me.

            I look away from young sweet faces framed after my own and focus instead on a lifeless world of intangible.  Yet he gave up being God to become on of these for me.

            What do I risk compared to God?

            Release.  Let it go.  Surrender it.  Risk it all.  He can handle the responsibility so much better than I can.  Perhaps, like Satan I am jealous of God’s ability to do all things perfectly.  Well, perfectly for Him.   But I want it to revolve around me.  Perfect becomes relative, fluid, and flowing.  I know what’s best for me.  I know my own mind, don’t I?

            But I only know the present.  The past becomes cloudy and the future is a thick fog.  I only know my place, right here where I am standing with my hand on my hips and my hips cocked to one side.  I only see what’s in front of me, through my glass frames in the spectrum of visible light.  And it goes on. My hearing, touch, smell: all of it fragmented and weak in comparison.

            My idea of best is easy and sunny and warm and joyful, and, and.  My idea of best is limited.  I am confined by “possible.”  Limited by human fault and discord.  If only I could remember that I risk so much more by holding on to my life.  Who am I and what am I capable of that I would risk not giving it all to Him who loves me more than I love myself?

            Why do I drown out His loving offers with a steady, “mine, mine, mine”?  I can claim my fragile human faults or I can embrace them.  One makes excuses then keeps on doing what I was doing before.  The other, embracing…oh, that means dropping everything I have clung to and harbored.  I have to let it all fall in order to open my arms wide and instead hold tightly to my Savior.