the treasure book.

Let me set the scene for you. I was in junior high. Seventh grade to be exact. 12 years old. I didn't have braces yet, and my teeth were wretched. I wanted to be a professional singer and actress (like seriously. it was no joke for me), and I was unashamedly a teacher's pet. I was ridiculously good at English, and equally as awful at math. 
It was that year that Jesus sparked a fire in my soul. I couldn't get enough of His presence. and I couldn't get enough of His Word. I read my Teen Life Application Bible (it was purple faux leather and had my name on it) like it was fresh, wild air, and I'd been suffocating my whole life. 
I could sit for hours and soak it all in. Reading. Underlining. Circling. I was writing notes in the margins, highlighting entire sections, ear-marking pages. I didn't want to forget that particular Psalm, and I wanted to make sure and come back to that chapter in Ephesians. I kept my favorite verses on neon notecards, taping them up alongside youth group trip photos and cute catch phrases from Brio mag, Focus on the Family's teen magazine alternative. 
I wanted Scripture to be tangible. I wanted to hold it in my hands. 
Then storms happened. Because life is full of thistles, you know. I was starting high school, after all. I was hurt. I was tattered. I was bruised. The mucky water was slamming against doors and windows, and some nights... it would seep into my heart. The water left friendships streaked and wrinkled, hopes and dreams disintegrated and ripped, and the Bible memory verses ran together like some dark watercolor in my brain. 
Everything began to be muddled together, my life somehow a sopping mess. 
Now I'm in college. Nursing school. and as I study the intricacies of the human body and I journey with our incredible little cohort family and I hear patient's stories, I find my analytical voice quieting. Slowly, slowly. I hear more elaborate melodies in most things these days. I see the complexity and hope of a faith in Jesus that is so very much a process, a journey. I see the unmistakeable beauty and the richness of a life that is devoted to worship. 
Except I struggle with something: The Bible. 
And here is where I get brutally honest. 
I've read the Bible in bits and pieces over the last year. A chapter or two here. A verse there. I open the book because I know that it is Truth. Because I know that it is water and I am forever thirsty. 
But sometimes?? I read the words, and they just feel like the old days. 
The words that I know best as bumper stickers and sing-along songs and felt-board Sunday School stories, they are found here first in the tissue-y paper of my ESV. The idea of not being ashamed of your faith that fueled many of my Christian t-shirt wearing, K-love listening, publicly-praying youth days is right there in Romans, clear as day. "Let the little children come to me"? Yeah, Jesus said that first. In Matthew 19. When times are hard, and you hear someone remind the hurting soul that God works all things together for good? Yep. Straight out of Romans, again. 
I spent a long time stacking together carefully chosen Bible verses into brick walls to deflect arguments. 
I was a master at the answers, before I ever really felt the weight of the questions. 
I shrugged away confusing passages with simple statements and knowing looks. 
And then the storms came, the water got in, and nothing was left untouched. 
A while ago, I went to a friend's house. She's older than me. By a decade or two. and she's so in love with Jesus.
I go because I love her and her home, and because she always seems interested in my day. I go because she is so full of wisdom. I go because she always gives me lemonade out of a mason jar, and somehow that feels like careful, thoughtful love.
She pulled out her Bible a couple weeks ago. Before school started. and she asked me if she could just read to me. 
I said yes. 
She starts to read, and I feel the memories. They're tight against my chest. 
This book, oh this beautiful book, so thick and heavy with story and song, full of complexity and mystery and perfect Love. 
I believe it is strong enough and wide enough to absorb all baggage, all fears, all apprehensions accumulated while running this race. I believe that the one true God of the Bible is big enough to handle my huge questions, my small frustrations, and my scarred memories. 
And I believe that it matters. This treasure book that Jesus wrote just for us. 
So part of disentangling myself from discontentment, worry, impatience, fear, or hurt is being willing to sit through the discomfort. To feel it, to recognize it. To pray into it. 
and to stay. 
I am in tears now as she reads. 
The Bible is open in front of her, her countenance open and curious and kind. She reads the passage aloud: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth... and from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." 
It almost takes my breath away. 
That phrase, grace upon grace. 
The rain is falling again. But this time, the words are, too. His Words. It's a downpour of redemption, of glory, of new lessons, of hope. 
And quietly, slowly, all things are being made new.