Equate this!

I just traveled across the land to be right here-in this bed-snug in the hills of Pennsylvania. I woke up this morning with a cramp in my lower back. It had nothing to do with driving home today but everything to do with a math test that decides if I will graduate or not. It was wake up, pack the car, take the test, and then drive home. While I was cramming the last bit of formulas into my non-absorbent mind, all I could do was pray that God implanted the multiple choice answers into my brain instead of those wary formulas and percentages that kept eluding me. A, B, C, C, D, A, I can remember. But a-bx=34y to the tenth power is something that doesn't quite stick to my brain cells the way letters do... Regardless, I felt like I bombed the test. Each of the ten hours driving from the Springs to good ol' PA were like stepping out of a chilly day into a warm one... like walking across the pages of a boring book and right into those of my favorite book ever. Maybe it was 11 hours to get home (because I had to go the speed limit because I don't have a license... but that's another story all together), all the while I was claiming God as my God, my strength in my weakness. You know that feeling when you're nearing home. I get it every single time. The stores start to look familiar. The roads and turns are an imprint in your head, and for all the messed up stuff that can happen in a life... for all the confusion that goes with growing up, at least your home town is the same old same old... at least there is some kind of truth there. I really felt that tonight. Driving past the ball field across from our neighborhood pizza joint, meandering up my driveway; it all felt so good. So good I can't imagine a test score every dragging me down. Ah, home. I don't think I'll wake up with a knot in my back here.

to the limit

Today I finally finished intermediate Algebra. It sounds so lame, I know, but it took me MONTHS to get here. Tomorrow is the grand finale. THE TEST. Dear God, help me to knock this one out of the ball park.

Girl with the Red Balloon

Check out my new and upcoming site, Girl with the Red Balloon at http://blog.crystalcheatham.com
As soon as I get the page up and running it'll be my new home. Check it out and let me know what you think peoples.

God of the Angel Armies, do you hear us?

For those of you who don't know I work for a Baptist church as their music minister. The title sounds larger than the job, it's just me and Jane (my guitar). Yesterday on the way to the gym I got a phone call. The pastor's wife was in tears. She is a spirited woman, at first I didn't think it would be such an impacting call. It didn't take long for me to register her tones as inflections of grief. And the words that then followed have in fact followed me all day long.

There is a little boy. And Sunday we all giggled inside at his innocence as he scrambled like a wee little soldier up and down the isles on his belly, clutching crayons and peaking out from underneath the pews as we all sat respectfully trying not to ignore the pastor. But it wasn't too hard even for the the Pastor and we all started watching that little boy.

Tuesday night he was tucked into his bed. For some reason he got up, put his shoes on, and slipped out the front door. That precious little boy was hit by a truck and killed. And I think, why? How? Where did THAT come from?

I'm singing at his funeral on Sabbath. He was only three. His family was always at church. And all I can say, as I pout about my life and my needs is why, how, and where did that come from.

My, Faith

My creativity is a worn and dotted line. It’s been stretched out across my life span.
And although it’s been drawn poorly I still aim to use it—possibly to tie up some running shoes; the kind that win marathons and scale tall buildings in leaps so clean and tidy. I aim to use it as a rope; a strong climbers rope snaked through a pulley and hoisting all that weight in muscle and bone. I aim to use it as a wire run across a land so vast no eye has yet to see both coasts; a wire used to communicate messages to far off other lives and lands and worlds and places.
And yet, through all this aiming my wire is still a thin and dotted weakling; a spattering of line and blank page. But I cannot bother with that truth. Because as soon as I start to bother with it another truth is thrust up against it so crisp and towering-huge. This truth gives my faith leave to grow. Because when He is the dot and the stretch between my weakly spattered line, then my line becomes His line. And His line is not a line at all but a lace, a rope, and a wire.