The Ride

“Would you go to heaven? There is a sign you must stand beside where the man with the cigarette takes the tickets. There is a height you must achieve.

You must be wretched. That is your ticket and your only qualification. It is an exclusive ride, but wild, with weather you’ve never seen, and deafening light. Perhaps unsafe.

…The Lord came to clean the unclean. He brought the taint of Holiness, and it has been growing ever since. He was born in a barn and slept in a food trough.

…He came to be humbled. He came to die.”

– Notes from the Tiltawhirl by N.D. Wilson

My husband says I lack self confidence. I’m sure I do, ridiculously awkward as I am. But it goes much deeper than that, to a longing for betterness. A nagging sense, an overwhelming knowledge that I am not enough. I can not be a good enough mother, wife, daughter, friend or artist. I wish I could be more, do more. Do the best things, be the cool person, make more money, stop stumbling, keep far from failure. Make just one sentence, one image, one day, even a few hours turn out as they should. From time to time I taste the magic and think I have turned a corner. It is in those moments I am farthest from the truth. The first Christmas was not born in magic, it was a wild ride of terror. After years of waiting, our only hope was smuggled into earth as no one would have expected, amongst filth and humanness, proclaimed by beings we would really rather not see. Surrounded by bloodshed, witnessed by the lowliest.

In all this the Good News came. The Word that spoke this whole careening story into being. The One who holds it all together in His very Being, careful with us, His children.

The Good News came and it is this… Blessed are the wretched, because they will see God.

I am wretched and He came for me. My children are wretched and He came for them. My husband, my family, my friends, and those I’ve never met, all are wretched and He came for each and everyone alike. We can not clean ourselves up for this birthday party.

He spilled His blood and broke His body to clean our wretchedness.

That is all the good news I need. And so I whirl and twirl and stumble through the years, my family’s hands held tight. The lights blurring the magic and the darkness together like the night we sailed unsteady around the skating rink, gazing at the lights, laughing. Light and dark at play, at war in each line of our story, until the brilliant end. Until we are home.