Skateland

Gliding around the oval. You have to keep moving or the blood rushes to your head and your hands begin to get uncomfortably warm without the self-made wind.

Slower now. Faulting jerks forward as you endeavor to keep both yourself and a young girl upright. Both of you are laughing as she weaves, bobs, and waves backwards and forwards. Going in and out of pools of black light, your shirt beams and then fade, beams and then fades.

At the beginning of the night, she was quiet, reserved, solemn even. Her story breaks your heart and it's about to get worse. Somehow, out of God's great and abounding grace and mercy, her face began to soften and she started speaking, walking, and opening herself up to more pain. You sit at dinner, mainly silent, but slowly getting louder. More giggles come rolling from both your mouths. You finish the last of her piece of pizza that she has been tearing little bits off of. You scoot closer to her as people leave to continue skating. Sit, talk, giggle, listen, ask if she wants to come out on the floor with you. Surprisingly, she says yes. Turns out she can't skate alone.

Start out with her hand in yours, then take her arm. You don't fall, but it's difficult. Both of you are whooping and laughing louder and louder as the falls get more and more difficult to avoid. Once again feel the deep abiding contentment that has been sitting cross-legged at your feet, waiting for you to notice it.

Another girl comes and takes her arm and then you really start moving. Soon you're only grasping her hand instead of carrying her by her arm. Her smile gets bigger and bigger as her wobbles become fewer and fewer, though more drastic when they threaten to topple all three of you over. Many of her laughs begin to shake her entire body as she laughs for unknown reasons.

In these moments I see God. I see him even clearer now as I look back in my memory at the snapshot sights, sounds, and textures of the moment. To be able to have such a tangible picture of love holding her up, of keeping her going. We would be arrogant to say that it is our love. It is God's love channeled through us. He is the one who has brought us out here. He is the one who keeps us safe from spiritual attack. He is the one who sustains us daily and often quite literally keeps us on our feet. Watching that love overflow out of her...seeing it fill even the emptiness that is inside of her right no, a cistern sucked dry. That she can laugh so hard that she falls over. Great stomach laughs that wobble her wheeled feet.

It is in these moments that I cannot imagine living another life. Seeing God so clearly every day. Watching Him grow His Kingdom one bubble, one laugh, one soul at a time. Being a part of that process. Getting in the grit and thrown up dust of it all. Feeling the tears of it slide down your own face and know that those tears have slid down the face of your own Savior.

Who could go back to the sidelines of such a battle after being in its throws?