His Hand, My Heart

“If I rise on the wings of the dawn, You are there; if I rest on the far side of the sea, Your love hems me in both behind and before. You have laid your hand upon me.”

– Your Hand Upon Me, by Eric Grover

My commutes are generally short – a long commute in Charleston is 20 minutes. Pete and I laugh because people here who have never driven in D.C. have no concept of a long commute. I play compilation CDs on random when I go out, choosing the mood I’m in and working from there.

Yesterday, as I drove in to see my chiropractor about the back I threw out while shooting and processing my self-portraits last Friday, the words from the song above filtered through the haze of pain. I caught myself smiling in spite of the pain, thinking how much I loved that about God, that He is everywhere I go, that He hems me in.

I have spent a long time staring God down over things I hate about Him and the way He interacts – or doesn’t interact – with the world, so yesterday’s moment of surprising joy made me blink.

He thinks differently than I do, and He challenges me to think outside my own boxes. He wants me to know Him, and He’s not afraid of my doubts or my frustration or my anger. And He pretty much ignores the silent treatment and speaks into my life anyway.

There ARE things I love about God; His very Person compels my passion. His being brings me to life. Do you know I cry when I read the Bible and hear His voice as I read? Do you know I am furious when people misuse Scripture to fit 3-point works-oriented sermons that speak nothing of grace or the new life that we are given in Christ?

So what if, I thought – What if I look at the things I love about God? What if I dare to speak – laugh, sing, bounce of the walls with – the praise I sometimes swallow because I’m not entirely sure about Him yet? He’s not shy to speak His love over me – even as He covers me in the grace I stand in. There’s no way I’m going to ever make sense out of all the paradoxes of God to prove that He’s worth trusting.

So what if I accept the joy He’s holding out to me instead of pushing Him off until I’m sure He means to give it? I don’t really have anything to lose.

By kelle | January 5, 2012 | Uncategorized |

Villanelle: The Light and the Springtime, A Romance

She sings in color, the alluring Light,
over snow-covered mountains, the water, the plains,
and all the while, Springtime, she dances

through woodlands, under ice,
to the lilt of light’s sweetest refrains.
She sings in color, the alluring Light,

painting music like Renoir on scaffolds of gray,
timbre-toned melodies and warm-tinted rains,
and all the while, Springtime, she dances.

It’s really a romance, the dance and the song.
“We’ll wine and we’ll dine, drinking golden champagnes!”
she sings in color, the alluring Light.

She teases the dancer to spin her red love
to make zephyr harmony over winter’s remains.
She sings in color, the alluring Light,
and all the while, Springtime, she dances.

By kelle | December 28, 2011 | poetry |

Morning Tea

I’m waiting for Joy again.
She has been invited
for tea – and crumpets –
if she’d like to

visit my warm house
this morning. The sun
has already arrived, but
Joy is late; perhaps

the cold night was too
much for her. Tears
do not make tea; she
said she would come,

but her R.S.V.P.
was for the wrong day
so here I wait, considering
how very rude

such a pretty thing as Joy
can be, never arriving
on time, always bursting in
when I least expect her.

© Kelly Sauer (November 2, 2011)

By kelle | November 2, 2011 | from here, poetry |

No.

Keep your chin up. Look at the good around you. You must keep going. God is good, God is good, God is good, God is Good.

These are the things you tell yourself to move forward when your heart breaks.

But sometimes, in the middle of it all, when He’s said yes and the rest of the world says no, things just feel bleak. Like He’s led you on. Like you missed the leading entirely. Like this was all your idea and you were stupid to strike out on it in the first place. Either that, or this is just the result of your not doing it His way. Whatever that is.

The doubts rush in and you look at Him and go, “wasn’t I enough?” “Wasn’t I doing this right?” “I thought I was acknowledging You – where is that direction You promised?” And there is always the little demon on your shoulder elbowing you to chew Him out about all that promised success.

But faith. Faith isn’t about the “yes now.” Living by faith isn’t about visible proof that what you’re doing for God is working. It’s about a tomorrow-yes, a living Hope who has a Name, who said that you could be who He made you to be in Him without fear that a manipulative God is jerking your chain.

Only He knows what that looks like in today. Faith is His business, the growing of it, the deepening of it, the counting of it as our righteousness.

In the moments when everything is falling apart and the rejections are piling up, you say it, “God is good,” and you say this too, “It looks pretty bad right now, God, and I want to walk out on You and on all of this” and you let Him deal with the truth of the whole big mess.

By kelle | November 1, 2011 | from here, God n me |

Burnout

She posted about burnout, and how she got it. I clearing my Reader, thinking I’d skip over her post, but she said, “I worked myself out of being myself…” and I know how she feels. I read her heart and I cried.

I am taking a week off. We are going to drive and drive and drive and talk – and breathe in Virginia air that helps us think.

I need to reset and refocus the direction I am going, let some things go so that I can let other, more important things in. I need to connect again with my heart, to take Virginia photos and let God into the thing I am doing again, because I think I’ve forgotten to acknowledge Him and I have been overwhelmed and moving aimlessly without direction.

Some of it is the tired; some of it is the busy. Some of it is the spiritual exhaustion that comes on the other side of doubt. It is hard to begin moving again after being immobilized by fear. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to move.

: :

My dilemma is one that I think I shouldn’t face, but I do, because I was raised in a culture that said all desire was bad, that believed the heart was evil (instead of renewed in Christ Jesus), and that looked askance at art. Ministry was the highest calling there, and I fight the urge to slap spiritualisms on my photography just to prove that I’m really doing it for God.

I necessarily focus on the things of the world when I do what I do, but didn’t He make them? I’m slowly learning story again, slowly beginning to remember that it is okay that He uses it to speak to me, just as He used parables when He was here. He, more than anyone, knows that I am a point-of-reference person.

He also knows how easy it is for me to slip from my “point-of-referencing” into self-centeredness. At least it feels that way. I learn new things by filtering them through the lens of the old that I know. This is why I learn by doing, because I try and retry. I learn by writing, because I see, and read and re-read, and I learn about myself by the words that fall from my fingers.

I am tired of the branding, of the having-to-know-who-I-am-before-I-make-a-move. I think of life as a discovery, a discovery of myself and of everyone and everything else, and I don’t know why my eyes weren’t open for so long. But they are open now, and I see, and I can’t help seeing.

: :

So I come back here, where I journal about God and my walk with Him, and I don’t feel as close to Him as I have at points past, mostly because I measure my closeness through what I have already known. Yet I have a sense that He wants me to live, that it is okay if I do, and that He is glorified by it, even if I’m not pious and overtly spiritual when I am talking about pictures and color and clients and design.

The brand is what it is – it is a visual of me that I get to share with the world. It is always going to morph and change as I grow – that is just part of my journey. But my identity in Him, that doesn’t change, and whether I’m up or down, He’s not changing either. I’m still His, and He’s promised never to leave me nor forsake me. The guilt I walk around with because I’m not doing enough, being enough, broken enough, glorifying enough – that’s not Him. I know that.

It is just hard to move forward with all that riding on my shoulders sometimes. I have this voice of caution that says “you are not really free” and it stops me in my tracks and makes me question God and His goodness – and His veracity.

: :

I’m burned out right now. I’ve been dealing in depression and walking a very thin line between sanity and madness. A little bit of madness is good – it helps me say yes. But a lot of madness? I am rethinking a lot of things.

I have to be a person from the ground up with this business, and it may mean I don’t get the accolades and the attention that I want. But I will have my family, and my peace, and the ability to go to bed at night and rest without worrying about what is going to hit me next.

Sometimes, God feels like the over arching madness, the Guy who demands everything and all from me – when I’m poured out already. “Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden,” He says, “and I will give you rest.” But I wasn’t trained to rest in God. I was trained to work for Him, to devote all of myself to doing God-things and pouring my life out for Him alone.

“There is no room in all that for me to do anything I want,” I think, feeling cheated because when I was little, I could be anything when I grew up.

I like Him better now, with what I’ve learned about how Jesus did the human things when He was here, how He ate and drank and walked and talked and breathed and had the hiccups even. I’ve learned that my praise is being who He created me to be, and letting Jesus’ Cross-work take care of the sin, shame, and separation issues I incurred under Adam.

“Be still,” He says, and know that “I am God.” “Cease striving…”

I think there’s really not a lot of room for burnout with Him.

By kelle | October 26, 2011 | from here, God n me |

Slow Bleed

It is bleeding into everything, the depression that has ripped my life apart again in the last two weeks. I try to gather my wits, try to do what I know is best for my body, but I can’t work through it. I sit, and I stare into space and I wonder about my life and how it has been shaped.

Someone tells me that I remind her of a friend who suffered and chose joy. I don’t know if I choose joy, but I do write about the light I’m finding in the dark.

I try not to take things too seriously, try to smile, try to breathe while I listen to Him speaking a “hush, be still” into my heart. This is hard. I want to stop the bleeding, but I can only wait, let it roll over me in waves as it does. I try not to plan my future – there is nothing but today, and the rest of the world will have to just wait.

I notice the blood in my posts, in my tweets, in my Facebook and Tumblr, the short bursts of clarity or gloom that come out clearly here. Does anyone else notice, I wonder? How can I possibly be a person people will want to hire or follow or support if I am, well, like this?

I wait for the rain to stop, hope the weather will shift out of its barometric downswing. My life isn’t all about me – I know this. But on days like these last two weeks have been, when I’m hemorrhaging helplessly, I know it has to be about me, at least for a little while. I hug my kids and tell Pete that I’m still me, please remember that when I can’t reach you?

By kelle | October 19, 2011 | depression, from here, health |

I Love – And Why

My Eternal King

My God, I love Thee, not because I hope for heaven thereby,
Nor yet because who love Thee not must die eternally.
Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me upon the cross embrace;
For me didst bear the nails and spear, and manifold disgrace.

Why, then why, O blessed Jesus Christ, should I not love Thee well?
Not for the hope of winning heaven or of escaping hell;
Not with the hope of gaining aught, not seeking a reward;
But as Thyself hast loved me, O everlasting Lord!

Even so I love Thee, and will love, and in Thy praise will sing,
Solely because Thou art my God, and my Eternal King!

By kelle | October 17, 2011 | from here, God n me, His, poetry |

Blue

On the one hand, I know who and what I am. I think I have come to grips with my human capacity for change. I say what I think and think the way I speak. But on the other hand, I am acutely aware of just how fluid the concept of “me” is right now. For my brand, I need to be conscious of me and who I am – but to write and create, I need to be unselfconscious. There are too many voices and too much to do.

I’ve been writing a lot this week, sorting things out, trying to clear my head.

Yesterday I made a decision and did something that needed to be done. As I drove home from it, I stepped into grace, laying my dust out to God, begging His compassion. There are just things in my life that I. Don’t. Know. The. Right. On.

I got a hard phone call yesterday, the sort of call that left me feeling powerless and angry. Why doesn’t God just fix some things? But that why doesn’t get an answer here – God just doesn’t fix some things, even when He could.

Last night, I finally submitted a 350-word article to an editor, after two weeks of work, writer’s block, and lack of inspiration. I am awaiting edits as I write, half-holding my breath, refusing vulnerability over the piece. Which probably means that I did not invest enough of myself in it.

Yesterday, I didn’t do anything I had planned to do. My whole life seems locked up in editing at the moment, and while I have been enjoying “the middle” ever so much, there are days that I feel kicked in the gut for whatever reason – barometric pressure, relationship issues, the messes my kids make – and I just. want. to. quit. EVERYTHING.

Which usually means that I need to STOP.

: :

The writer’s retreat I attended didn’t really feel like a retreat – but then camps with travel and new experiences and staying up late have never been retreats for me. A bed-and-breakfast getaway on my own, with no schedule, no obligations – that’s a retreat. I’ve been on three of them. I think I need another.

Hours before daybreak on the last day of the retreat, I climbed into the car to go home, and I hard-slept the two and half hours from Laity Lodge to San Antonio. I never sleep in the car. I was sick. They checked my computer before I woke up enough to ask them to let me carry it on. I used my pillow on the flight. I slept again.

I returned exhausted, a bit defeated, and resigned. Where was the refreshment I’d hoped to find?

I learned after my first baby was born that the world stops for no one. Everybody just keeps going, regardless of how my personal world has been – or is being – turned upside down. And in a way, I keep going too; I move on before my heart is ready to stir from its shock. I came home sick, and I sit down and work through it because am I not always sick? And I have deadlines, and people need me to deliver.

What is it that drives us so that we barely look up at the sky when we walk outside? Why don’t I cry when I know I need to cry? What makes me hide my vulnerability away instead of living where I am, unashamed of my tears?

I don’t have a lot of white space in my life right now. I am pouring out so much in so many places that I don’t have time to put anything in that feeds my soul. So I stay up late reading after my computer is off and my family is asleep. Just to turn. it. all. off.

: :

God is the one place I find grace. He’s not shouting His demands left and right, “DO, DO, DO!” He just says, “come, BE. I AM.”

I know that it is only in Him that I am able to be un-self-conscious. He is the quiet reality from which my creativity flows, the Life of my real life.

So I take a day off to hang out with Him. I play the piano, which is cathartic, even though my fingers stick to the keyboard in the humidity that sneaked into the house with this morning’s thunderstorms. I write me out, I don’t do a thing I HAVE to do. I rest. I send a real email, nothing business-related. I pick up a book. I look up at the sky, which came in blue with the sun after the storms cleared off. I don’t think anything but what I think. I don’t try to direct it, or to organize my thoughts, or to critique me.

I sigh. The exhaustion still lingers. The knowledge that I have much to do before I can resume the treatment I’ve temporarily suspended because I can’t just go to bed.

My world blurs around the edges. I drink tea. I hug my babies, glad for the opportunity they’ve given me after I shouted at them yesterday. I remember how Mom told me children forgive. I forget how to be a child. I should try today. Or don’t try. Which might be the point.

I might bake cookies. Just because.

By kelle | October 12, 2011 | from here, grace |

Effect

They call it the “Kelly effect,” my friends who want to take photos like mine. They watch me work to see what I’m doing and squeal over meeting me because they have seen my work. They don’t know the other people I see who take photos I want to take, or how I rarely capture what my heart sees anyway. They don’t know how I cringe inside, wishing I should share the how with them, wishing there was a way to share the why.

Some see my writing and tell me I should write a book, but while I pull the idea out and turn it over once in a while, I know that I probably won’t, that if I do, I will very likely use a pseudonym, because my writing would be deeper than my photography, because what I say about what I see is beauty so much harder to hear than my photos are to the eye.

The “Kelly effect” is what has sent friends running, the “I said too much” and the “I am not enough.” I do not live a life people want to emulate – there is not a lot of glamour in the mess of me. I pray through conversations and walk away knowing that I said what I was supposed to say, and walk away wondering if people will ever speak to me again, if God will speak quickly through the words He gave me to speak or if it will be years and years before I see the fruit of what I’ve shared.

I think you can see it here at this blog, where my struggles and journey get dumped for whoever might see and identify with the person I am and the battles I fight.

When I get behind my lens, I am exploring a feeling, a response to something I see, attempting to capture the reality of a given moment. When I speak, I put words to what I’ve seen, creating a verbal photograph with all its exquisite dumbness through the lens of language. When I shoot, I open my lens and let all the light in – when I speak, it is much the same. But light hung out in words and sound and finite language suspended between hearts – it is often too much for a soul to grasp, and certainly too much for me to teach or explain or to keep explaining.

Someone said last weekend that seeing all the time is too much. Yet this is my gift – and I do still call it a gift.

I see all the time. I cannot help seeing. Taking that gift and pouring it into photography and sharing it with the world is one thing. Using that gift to encourage the Body – that is another. Because it is a prophet’s gift, and that is not acceptable in any circle, because it hurts, because others don’t want to be seen, because people don’t want to hear what the Spirit is saying and how He will redefine the boxes in which they’ve placed Him.

And really? I think too many have used this gift without love, without a breaking heart, without realizing the trust they are given when they are asked to speak into another’s life. Few are willing to walk away from their words and trust God with them, instead of demanding immediate change or resolution. I think few realize that we in His Body are all His first; we are not merely the sum of our habits and sins.

I know I have failed here myself.

So I learn this new every day, and I’m learning how to live outside of this too, learning discretion and bearing with others in love, learning how to hurt and trust God with my pain. It is the hardest lesson, and one I suspect I will be learning all my life.

By kelle | October 6, 2011 | from here, His |

Destitute

A brief preface: I’m sorting through a lot of things about God and my faith and church and grace. This post is not aimed at anyone – it is written from my journey, from this place in my journey. If you find something valuable here, please take it and run. Otherwise, please read with grace for a girl who has decidedly NOT arrived.

Does God leave us destitute sometimes, on the days that we’ve run half the day into the ground and feel no hope at all for the other half? How do you begin to pray when you’re a mess, when it’s okay to pray for others, but “good grief, can’t you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and DO SOMETHING about yourself?”

I think He does leave me destitute, leaves me lacking the religious things to say and the ability to just “change my attitude.” I feel like He sits back and He lets me see how little I truly have to bring Him. He lets me see the depths of my own fear and frustration. He reveals all the ugly and opens my eyes to exactly how weak and human and horrid I am.

And I really don’t like Him for that. I know the spiritual thing is to be grateful for it. But I get angry that He expects thanks in all things, that He asks for joy in all trials. HE doesn’t live with my hormonal issues. HE doesn’t lash out as I lash out at my kids with irritation over the smallest things.

I want to know why He doesn’t just make me NICE. Or SWEET. Or GOOD. Or even HEALTHY. I could live with HEALTHY. I don’t feel a lot like a Christian lately. In fact, most Christians annoy me. I have a problem with church people, and I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because I feel that they are always RIGHT, and I gave up being RIGHT a long time ago. At least for the rest of the world. I suppose I still hold onto it for myself. Wouldn’t He like me better if I was good?

Almost everybody I know says the same thing, and it’s not Jesus. It’s not grace, and it’s not real Gospel. And maybe I grew up and church and I’m just tired of hearing the same thing over and over and over, but the things Jesus said don’t grow old. Not like the new law that we’ve created from Paul’s writings in the New Testament, not like the way we’ve constructed and reconstructed our idea of what a good Christian looks like.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I’m a horrible Christian. Or perhaps I should say, I’m a horrible religious person. I can’t stand hearing religious stuff anymore. I can’t even bring myself to say it, and I used to be GOOD at it.

Some days, I walk around and I wonder how it is that I even consider myself to be His – I don’t look at all like the person I thought I should be in Him. If I’d met me ten years ago, I’d have patted me on the back and said “I’ll pray for you” and walked away thinking how far I’d come and how much better I was than the girl who doubted hard and made a real mess with her life waiting for God to change her instead of making up her mind to do it herself.

I keep coming back to an encounter I had with God and legalism in Colossians, the “do not taste, do not touch, do not handle” passage. I was surrounded by legalists like myself who were constantly “encouraging one another” and “building each other up” through a subtle judgmentalism that said “I see this in your life, I love you, you’d better fix that and be like me.” They were rather literally whitewashing each other’s sepulchres. When I hit that passage, reading through Colossians one day, it was as if my eyes were opened to the fact that whether I was told or not, “I would choose the good anyway!”

Having God in my life changes my IDENTITY at its core. Action always flows from identity. But coming into Christ isn’t the same as getting a makeover to transform me into something good. The disciples walked three years with Jesus, and Peter still denied Him. Coming into Christ merely facilitates the relationship that I can have with God Himself, but John makes it clear that I won’t be like Him until I see Him as He is. Paul also speaks of the dark glass through which we see, until we see Him face to face.

I don’t pretend to understand all the ins and outs of Spirit-work, but I know the ugliness in me, the way I feel so strung out and frustrated so much of the time. I KNOW why Israel went after other gods. I do. “How could they?” people accuse, taking into account all that Israel had seen.

It is because religion itself is the idol that all good people serve. If you want to be good, you say religious things and you have spiritual attitudes, and you put yourself into a position to “minister” to others so that they can be like you – er, God. But religion is a product of man trying to do the right thing. It is Garden-grown, cultivated by Satan with his tantalizing offer for us to “be like God, knowing good and evil.” If we know good and evil, we can avoid the evil ourselves. If we know what is right, we won’t do what is wrong.

And even Christians, unable to escape our Adam-born humanity, have no hope of escape. And we’re the ones who know MORE right than everyone else, because, come ON – God is on OUR side! Sure religion is more palatable than the mess we make in the wrong we know we do, but seriously? What encouragement is there in “you just have to do more right!”???

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

So this is where I live, in rebellion against “the right thing,” in utter frustration because of the waiting. We DON’T encourage one another to continue waiting on God to work in us to renew our minds and change our lives. We come into church with a “okay, let’s go, let’s get into ministry, let’s get to work on that to-do list of spiritual fruit and make sure we get sanctified good and fast!”

We don’t grow in grace, or in our knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We grow in our knowledge of “the whole doctrine of God” based on this creed or that fundamental principle, or that interpretation of Scripture. We accept that Jesus died for us as our fire insurance, and then we go on living our good lives and patting needier people on the head, hoping vaguely that we will be an example of a good life to them too.

I have serious doubts about some things in Scripture. I, who grew up knowing it all – I could STILL beat you in any trivia competition. I, who went to Bible college for a year and came out with a 4.0. I who wanted to grow to the point where I could be in ministry of one kind or another and walked away from it all because I couldn’t sit in church and be okay with what was being taught.

I’ve got nothing left on my religious resumé that would make me an authority on anything.

If you want to know what I know, it is that Jesus Christ died for me so that I could know God. Eternal life is knowing God and Jesus Christ who He sent. If I love Him, I will obey His commands, which are to love God and to love others. As far as I am concerned, I can spend a lifetime focusing on those things, and I’m STILL not going to arrive until I meet God.

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Jesus did NOT come to complicate our lives. The wisdom that comes from above is pure and peaceable, and full of good fruit. The to-do list that ticks off in my head about being good or doing right or fixing this or that about myself brings only confusion and anger. It is a weighty burden that I direct at God, and He looks at me and says, “who told you to do this? I don’t require more than Christ.”

“But it’s not enough, God, it’s not enough. I still want to be good. I want to be sweet. I want to reflect You to the world.”

And then He reminds me that I am the earthen vessel that houses His treasure and will I let Him worry about His glory already.

This is not a conversation that makes me feel richer. Or better.

I know His grace and what it is for. I know it good, and I know it deep. But I don’t know how to LIVE in it. I don’t WANT to live in it. I want to be able to stand up and HOLLA! I’M THERE! when it comes to God. I don’t want my reward to be Him and His return. I want to be known by others. I want to be respected. I want to be at the top of my religious game and have all my bases covered.

I. Don’t. Want. To. Be. Broken.

But He says it is harder for the rich to come into His Kingdom than it is for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle. We could MAKE a big needle and fit a camel through. The hardest thing in the world is letting go of myself and letting Him choose how I will reflect Him, instead of walking off by my big self and making me look good. No matter how well-intentioned I am in doing good, it just makes it harder to get to my heart, where God speaks and moves and lives and works.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

So yes, I think God does leave me destitute. I can’t circumvent that. It keeps me talking to Him, even in anger. It gives Him a chance to respond to me. I have a bold relationship with Him, and it’s not just about receiving mercy. I can’t flout Him, and He knows I can’t, but He also knows how utterly confused I get when it comes to dealing with “right and wrong” – because these things conflict with my new identity in Jesus Christ. Either I am a new creation, or I’m not. Either Christ died once for all, or my whole Christian life must now be “Christ-plus” – just to make sure I’ve got my bases covered when it comes to pleasing God.

Jesus couldn’t give me rest if He didn’t do it all already, and that, I think is what Hebrews is talking about in the context of “be content with such things as you have.” The very next line is “For He has said ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.'”

On days like today, or the last week, or heck, the last six months, I may not LIKE God. I may not want to be faithful to Him, but I know that He IS, and that He is a Rewarder of those who seek Him, however grudgingly. I know that He Himself is faithful, even when I’m still trying to figure things out in the muck of life down here. And my greatest comfort is remembering that Jesus came and lived in the muck, lived here in the flesh like I do, and understands exactly how hard it is to die in obedience to God, even with the hope of resurrection on the other side of all this.

By kelle | September 15, 2011 | from here, God n me, His |