Waiting.

The word for serve in Thai is rapchai, and it is a sort of reflexive word that means receive use, or accept the use that someone wants you to have. Perhaps, to accept usefulness. I have often wanted to slither out of anything that prescribes people as being used, feeling uncomfortable when people pray, "God, use me." I have wanted to be with God, to walk with God, not to be used by him.

But I am changing and this Thai word works for me, somehow. Rapchai Prajao. To accept the use that God intends for me. 

What is my use, that I may accept it?

I want to lay my heart down. Lay it down where we can see the unbroken expanse of blue sky. Curl up into a small pocket of the world, way down, wait there. I want to learn to serve, even as my soul rejects it, clamoring at me like a very un-calm child. 

We had the most beautiful rains last week, and in a matter of days the grass went from crunchy to springy with new growth. The smoke cleared. We can see for miles. 

Every time I think I accept a life of service, it comes to me in another form. And I resist again, with tiny fists. Like cooking. I have accepted cooking as a way I can serve. I cook dinner for my children, and this is what I offer. I offer a calm home, hopefully clean, healthy food, my company. But I have teenagers now, and they are only a year and a half apart in age. Often, at the very moment I am holding out my offering, ready to serve dinner at the end of a long day, God has another use for me. This one is tricky, as I untangle emotions, to mediate sadness, to enter the fray and look for peace. It is loud, it is frustrating, and I do not want to accept this service. I don't like it. 

And then sometimes I do. Sometimes there is nothing more lovely that working through these strands of hurt and confusion, helping angry siblings move back toward each other. And sometimes I cooked for hours and I want to sit in peace and I end up angry myself. I fail spectacularly and have to ask for forgiveness again and again. 

This past year of loss and emptiness after losing a good friend, has been hard in a way that brings my tiny fists out. Grief has spilled from me in every direction, from shame at not being able to be the friend to Chinua that Ian was, to anger that we lost someone who loved us and it feels, in this world, as though we can't afford it. And then the sheer, heartfelt thankfulness that we got to have him when we did, and that we have so much love around us.

This Easter, reflecting our year, was filled with pain, redemption, and thankfulness. I often couldn't help thinking of Peter, running to the tomb, desperate for absolution. Peter's last act when Jesus was alive was to deny him, and he must have felt that he would never get the forgiveness that he needed. And then a glimmer, a possibility that he might not be unforgiven forever. And he ran. He ran and ran, looking for his friend, looking for forgiveness. He was beside himself in those days. He jumped out of a boat, swimming to shore, and the mere glimpse of Jesus. He received his forgiveness in a more complete way than he could have imagined.

Forgive my unwillingness to serve, to be small. I need to ask this forgiveness of so many people. I want to lay my heart down, to whisper for it to be still. To curl up below that open sky, blue and unmarked by all the wrongs I have done. To wait to understand my use, so I can accept it. And the rain comes, rain comes. It falls on the tallest trees and the tiniest flowers, barely visible in the grass. And I am waiting there.