Where Jesus Sits

Out of my side eye I watched his chest and shoulders heave up and down in happy laughter, as we listened to a comedian crack truths about life.

Because really, isn’t that what makes comedy funny? Connecting to the content and sharing in the reality and humanity and knowingness of it all?

That’s what makes us nod and knee-slap and gasp for air: the universal audacity of this crazy, earthy life.

My husband had snatched the tickets for his bride who needed to bust a few long awaited giggles after a hard season.

As I’ve said in other posts recently, the last several months have been excellent yet excruciating – thanks to a myriad of things including sickness and death and chronic issues.  I feel like I’m mostly on the upswing now, thank the Lord Jesus, but it’s a climb friends. I don’t plan to keep mentioning it, but if I don’t write about what’s square in my face, I can’t write.

Remember those bouncing shoulders I mentioned?

They belong to my Derek.

By disposition, he is light and positive. He’s a solver, a believer, an all around happy and congenial guy. The things that stick to me, roll right off of him. Where I run, he stays. Where I freak, he has faith. He’s fairly steady in emotion and mood and I tell him that it must be nice to live in that kind of headspace.

Sometimes, his optimism is my nemesis. Sometimes I’d rather have him roll around in my woefulness with me rather than stay above the fray and have a fix for it all. “Just feel it with me sometimes” I say, with sincere agitation.

But last Thursday, when I saw him smiling and laughing and wearing his new ironed t-shirt for me, it made me feel overwhelmingly grateful for this genuinely merry man I married. He has a sweetness that runs right through the core of him, an innate goodness that sturdies him, and a penchant for light.

A girl that doesn’t consider this a gift will never he happy.

While it’s true that people of his nature do need to learn how to enter into loved one’s bents and dilemmas, it’s also true that people of my nature should learn how to shrug and beam and adjust a little more often.

Speaking of that, our friend Vernon came to visit this past weekend. He trained our church folk on living a life on mission and preached to our congregation about really living into the smile of God, referencing Psalm 67:1. It filled us.

But he also sat on our back deck and helped me make sense of some of the pain and turmoil I’ve been sorting through. He said this as we talked about difficult events in life…

“They’re significant but not ultimate.”

I felt like my heart started pulling back together right after he said it.

Yes.

The hard things that happen to our hearts are serious and critical and weighty, but they don’t have to be terminal or final or completing. They don’t have to get the final say.

And this….

This is where Jesus sits. 

And I love Him there.

I need Him there.

I thank Him that He undoes, and renames, and creates beauty from dark ashes there.

My husband remembers that his Lord does this more often than I do.

I’m hoping to keep the image before me. I’m hoping to stay under the teaching of God’s face smiling upon my life. And I’m hoping to remember my husband’s grinning body laughing right next to me that night and feeling grateful for it.

Ah, whatever it is the ails and drags and wounds you – may the God of all creation show Himself where He is in it all, and what He can do with it.

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