for the single girl, the upstaged girl, the on stage girl

I stopped mid turn and heard her from 2 months ago "Mary, don't be that girl"

Nothing in me wanted to be that girl; the one who notices wedding season and hurricane season conveniently share the same space on the calendar. The one cynical and impatient of and for marriage. So instead of turning to my plus one and bemoan the fact that I was done with weddings and sweet, well meaning, already-marrieds grabbing my wedding attired shoulder, winking and with a mischievous grin telling me I was next or asking if I had met the mysterious and slow-to-arrive "one". Instead of being that girl who noticed the ones better dressed, better life preped. Instead of turning to acknowledge in that moment that I felt I would always be upstaged. I watched the glowing, raven haired  bride carry the ivory/white dress down the aisle on her slender frame.



Monday morning the blogs started showing up and their cry was very similar

“Don’t be that girl”

“I’m glad I wasn’t raised to be that girl.”

“We’re sorry to that girl”

“We don’t want to raise our daughters to be that girl”



We can apologize to Miley, we can apologize for Miley. We can refuse to become her, imitate her or raise daughters like her. We can recognize the confusion she displayed and the brokenness she couldn’t hide.



But can we be honest?



At some point in our female life, we’ve been that girl. You have. I have.



Confused. Broken. That girl who longs for attention and affirmation and acceptance, the girl who will use religion or men or money or the comfort of food or sleep or future plans of a family or a diploma hanging on the wall or deep cuts into red veins to get it. 



Miley has this heart level belief that something on that stage, that night would make her that girl in a way nothing yet had.



You want to blame it on bad parenting, you want to blame it on a broken childhood, you want to blame it on being a Hollywood child star? 



I’m not really into psychology, but it kind of seems to have had its part, doesn’t it?



But I think there’s more; I think it’s something much more common. Something that lives in the heart of a girl raised in Carolina suburbia. Something that momma’s with beautiful babies and educated woman with impressive jobs and the girl married to her high school sweetheart all have the capacity for, the bent towards, the fight for, against.



Maybe we don’t strip our clothes off on national TV. But can I be honest, can we be honest. Miley used the stage she has to get what she wanted.



How often does my 20 something heart look to the next stage of life and say it will give me what I want. “Once I’m that  girl. The married one, the educated one, the self-disciplined one, the mothering one, the beautiful one, the liked-by-people-one.”



Do you know what echo my heart and the girl Miley have in common? That God is not sufficient for the moment. That there is a stage that will satisfy me. A stage of life, a stage of understanding God, a stage of understanding life, or being disciplined enough, happy enough, educated enough. A stage with the right people and me doing the right moves.  Satisfaction will come from being that girl.



And do you know what else? We both wake up Monday morning to critics retelling, rehashing the disappointment of the stage, the disgrace of the stage. We wake up to people saying it was our parent's fault, our childhood's fault, our fault.



The truth? We all started out just broken cisterns trying to hold water, graves dressed up to look beautiful and inviting, whores in wedding dresses. No stage changes that. No stage walked to receive a diploma. No stage succesfully navigated. No stage of life.  



Believe that with me? Rehearse that there was a little girl lost, a little girl who chose enmity with God. And He looked at and chose matrimony with her. We walked out like the king in the emperor’s new clothing, like Miley Cyrus after she shed her bear costume. We paraded naked, and proud. Look back to the beginning; God himself put clothing made of animal flesh on the shamefully exposed. Why, because one day the Lamb of God would himself come clothed in flesh to re-clothe the hidders, the fallen, and the blamers with the garment of rightness and praise and gladness.



Rehearse this; the rebel, the runner would watch God-Son walk a hill carrying wood for his own bloody sacrifice and say “I want her. The one parented wrong, the one parading proud, the one disfiguring my design of femininity, the one marring humanity with her ridiculous sin show, I want that one.What will I do with her? I'll put her in the whitest wedding dress and vow to love her. I'll teach her how to play the background and glorify me in the foreground. I'll be so satisfying that she'll have more joy in me than that girl who's center staged." 

For the Days You Would Rewrite the Story

Sleep crusted eyes open to darkness and I look to see that it's not even 3:30am yet. I see the icon that says you've written me back.  

What a strange place for such a sweet gift of friendship to be given. Watching the grace filled, articulate, sweet sixteen year old peel away brightly colored paper and pull up precisely placed tissue paper. You offered me the seat to your left and I slid in to watch the array of color pile around the blond I use to tuck in bed at night when I babysat.

I ask about the boy writer gifted with words and you tell me. And you ask about my running and I laugh and tell you the funniness of my ambitions. And your perfectly ringlet curls wrapped in black and strands of grey move with ever head motion as you listen and respond and then hug me goodbye. 

And now, here, I read your words about the story telling you are about to embark on. The monomaniacs task of putting ink to paper and tell of the couple that gave up freedom for Jesus in Iran and long to give more. And you tell me about the story you hope to read on the other side of the border and my heart it stops for a moment. As I read the weariness the warring has brought to your heart. 

And I don't know exactly what to say back. 

I want to grab you flesh to flesh and tell you if I were the story teller it never would have happened this way. I want to tell you that you would celebrate sweet sixteen with both of your daughters instead of only one. I want to tell you that if it had been my plot her beating never would have stopped. I would tell you that she would not have been beaten breathless by words from classmates. 

I would tell you that.

But we are not the story teller and more than I want to tell you I would change the story I want you to know each line, each dot and dash is purposeful.

When you and I sat in those chairs near the edge of the circle and we talked about the king. The king who was dying and asked for more years and God gave him more heart beats more breath. Then his son led Israel in more evil then any other king. Didn't we say that we are not good story tellers at that point? 

And I think about your story and my story and the difference a year can make and the difference words make in creating our story and The Word who came to flesh so our characters could be apart of the kingdom building plot. 

And I tell you these things because my story needs to hear them too. 

That there is no condemnation (why?) because the Spirit of life has set you free. 

The glory that is coming, the place and time and presence that we are longing to be the right now, here, present it doesn't compare to today's suffering. 

And I write that tentative... What weight does a mommas heart hold when she can't hold her baby. Can you imagine a filling bigger than the empty? Can you even imagine that... and can you hold even a partial image of how sweet the days coming will be when you've tasted how bitterly days here can pass. What weight of glory is waiting for the weary that is heavier than what we've carried here? And the despised suffering that brings the desired waiting and longing for the coming glory. And your heart knows this doesn't it?

And your heart it knows this that the God of the whole earth would come and adopt us. How? Through loosing his child to death. Can you soak that in, write it on the parchment of your beating heart. He not only adopts you, renames you 

"my delight is in HER"

"sought out" 

"a city NOT forsaken."

He would do that for us and then would comfort you from a place of knowing, experiential knowing, what it's like to morn the sleeping of a child. 

Would give you hope for your child loss through his own child loss.

Why? So that in all these things we can be more than conquerors; in tribulation, in distress, in persecution, famine, nakedness, danger or sword.

How. How do we more than win? One day when the things that have been conquered come to serve us. When creatures and angels and yes, even death one day serve us, benefit us.

There's this thing I come back to this Isaiah promise "Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save."

So while you work to weave words into a story remember the weaving that is intentionally being done in your story. That in your heart there was this rebellion, the enmity and the author had to put himself in the story to undo our rewriting. And as each person frantically works to leave their mark on the pages of life, desperately trying to not be forgotten. To captivate those reading for centuries to come. We bring brokenness and ruin to the plot.

 I want you to know the author is not only the masterful word arrayer he is also the main character and we are thankful because that means he is the one who will resolve the climax of sin and dying with his own brutal betrail. I want to tell you that because this story is all about him and at no point in the story do we fear being written off or forgotten. See the author, my friend get excited, the author is not only the resolution to our plot twisting he is the redeemer who triumphs. 

But this thing happens and we get to parts of the story and realize there is reading to be done. And I heard about it, about the weeping John did in Revelations because there was no one in heaven or on earth who was found worthy to read. 

And you and I don't we weep sometimes in this story because of the words read and words not read and the unworthiness to put eyes to paper.

But then this thing happened  and the Author steps up and the angel tells John 

"Weep. No. More. because the Lion of the Tribe of Judah has conquered and has been found worth to open the scroll and read from it." 

Worthy to read from it and infinitely sovereign and good in his unfolding of ink to paper in writing it.