The Porch and a Late Night Thursday...a guest post for you and me

I met Lori Harris one evening at Via Cappuccino at a book study for our local homeschool group.  She said hello right away, to ME, a stranger!  And she smiled like she meant it.  And we keep up through Facebook and we are becoming friends.  "Now," I say to my deeply introverted self, "Now, that is how you make friends!" Because clearly, I have forgotten.  Thank you, Lori, for helping me begin to crack my shell.  Lori blogs over at http://loriharris.me/ and I encourage you to take a minute to read and subscribe if you want more!

Kindly, she has written this guest post for you all, and for me. I hope you enjoy this glimpse of truth and how faith is not always sunbeams from heaven but we must sometimes struggle together in the dark and plant seeds anyway, not even knowing when the sun will rise...

The Porch and A Late Night Thursday

She stands on the front porch of my house, the clock ticking in my head, and she says she's not sure about God.

Or Jesus, for that matter.

It's after 9:30 and the porch lights need new bulbs and so we're standing there in the shadows while she unravels herself in a string of words.  I stand, arms by my side, listening and praying for some words to say.

God gives me nothing and so I just listen.

Cars drive by the house and the street lamps flicker and her words keep pace with her broken heart.   I keep pace with her verbal punches.

I stand on the porch with my big bag of nothing and she punches, over and over again.  She's a heap of hurt and I'm a heap of nothing and for a moment, I know that we stand in a place where Jesus likes to show up.

And so I wait.

Camel crickets hop across the steps.

Another street lamp comes to life.

The guy with the pimped out ride, straight down to the Payday logo on the side, thumps down my street.

And still I wait.

It's dark out.

My people sleep and still, we stand on the porch.  She waits for me to come up with magic words and I wait on Jesus to break her.

She keeps up the painful chatter and in her spewing of ugliness, I hear her heart speak the words her mouth just won't let slip out, and the beauty of it all is that she is unaware of her own breaking on my front porch.

I smile without meaning to and she smiles back at me.  There is nothing left to do but smile at one another.

And so we do.

We make small talk and I thank her for being honest with me, for telling me the truth about what she thought about Ann and all that naming gifts business.  She shoves her hands into her pockets and looks at her feet.  I tell her I knew the whole time.  That her body language spoke volumes and that I understood her.

"I get it.  It's OK," I say.  I swallow my own hurt.  My own pride.  I die a little on the inside and I hear Paul whispering in my ear, "To die is gain."

She looks up at me through her lashes and I look at her.

I really look at her.

And it's not her I see, but the person that Jesus died to save and I feel my heart flutter within my chest.

On my porch, moths cling to light and I cling to Jesus and I know what it means to truly live.

For this is His work in her life, to seek her and to save her, and I just so happen to get a front row seat, late on a Thursday night.