21
The River

I love rivers. They cut through the earth like mysterious mazes with no rhyme or reason. Buried deep in the mountains and forests, raging and full. Running along the edges of small communities, stream-like, but constant and alive. Dry beds in the heart of summer lying dormant until the winter snow thaws and swollen spring rivers give birth to the land’s beauty once more.

Rivers look like life to me. They are maddening and mysterious, mellow and maniacal. I could follow their winding lulls and twisting rapids for days. Wild and cocky, shy and modest, wise and agile. I am drawn to their banks and captivated by their steady mystery. They break wide open with no warning and just as suddenly shrink into small streams and slow rivulets, as if they have all the time in the world to just be. It has been said that a river cuts through a rock not because of its power, but because of its persistence. Perhaps it is that persistence that feels so familiar. As if the river is not going anywhere, so I might as well let it wash over me. Roads and rivers—they are the markers of my memories.

Ask me about the summers spent at my Mamaw and Papaw’s house in Mississippi, and I will tell you about playing on the banks of the Chickasawhay River—swollen, deep, and murky.

Ask me about my trip through Slovakia and I will tell you of the Danube, nestled beyond the roads leading out of the capital city of Bratislava. The river is dug impossibly deep into the earth, the rocky ledges of its banks dotted by cottages and smokestacks billowing out their warmth high into the mountains that tower over them like a fortress.

Of my trips to Budapest, Hungary, I will tell you of the majestic bridges and cobblestone walkways over the Danube, the mighty river that stretches 1,785 miles across ten countries and tells a story reaching as far back as the Roman Empire.

And of my time living in a graciously slow, bygone world nestled at the foot of the Bârgău Mountains, not far from the legendary Transylvania Mountains in northeastern Romania, I will tell you first of the sweet orphans I got to love on. Then I will tell you of the Bistriţa River, which cuts through the heart of the city and has provided for the people since the early 1200s. From the Slavic word bystrica, which means “serene water,” the town Bistriţa was named. The river is a living, breathing, moving work of divine craftsmanship. When I think of the Romanian people—strong, resilient, peaceful, and artistic—I think of their rivers. When I think of my twenty-year-old self who went to live among them, I think of the Bistriţa River and how it forever calmed something deep in my soul.

God meets people time and time again in certain places. He certainly did in Scripture: on mountains, in people’s sleep, at the altar, in burning bushes. And God is still in the business of meeting and walking with His children, whether that is within the church, at the foot of the ocean, on long jogs, in deserts, or—like for me—at rivers.

Every year on my pilgrimage to New Mexico I end my time by going out to the same river. I drive past Glorieta and the last bar of cell phone service for a good long while. I stop at the only gas station in town and grab tacos, water, and fuel—the only things I really need in life! I head north past the Pecos Benedictine Monastery, simple and unadorned, the word Peace etched into their welcome sign—the word peace inviting me in. And then I follow the curve in the road and begin the long, winding drive deep into the Santa Fe National Forest.

I always end up at the same spot on the Pecos River. A gravel pathway shrouded by soaring pine trees, a quick hike down, and then out to a large boulder in the middle of the icy cold river. Far beyond the realm of cell phone service or human interaction, I return to this exact spot each year to breathe deep, sit in silence, and wait on God.

God meets me at rivers and shows me something about myself and something about His love that I do not seem to hear, learn, or know any other way. It is here that I am most able to fully embrace the love of God. One of my favorite artists, Nichole Nordeman, writes metaphorically about God as a river: “Rolling River God, little stones are smooth. But only once the water passes through.”

I learned to play piano because of this song lyric. I was a senior in high school and the song “River God” had captured my soul. For months I would come home from school, sit behind the ivory keys, and torture my entire family as I searched for each and every note. No small task for a girl who didn’t know the difference between the black keys and the white keys, a girl who flunked out of piano by age four. But day after day I sat there. Searching. Hunting down notes, listening to the song on repeat, listening to a language I did not know anyone else spoke. I was sure the song had been written just for me—the girl who’d met God at rivers since she was big enough to sit by a stream and cry over its beauty and ache over its movement. Like a prayer on my lips, this lyric has guided me for fifteen years now.

At the time I had no idea who Nichole Nordeman was, but I knew she understood a language that few others seemed to speak. She knew the power of a river and a God who made rough things smooth. I imagined she and I could hike down to a riverbed and sit on giant boulders, feet dangling into the icy cold current, and wait while the water made its way down and around us. And at the end of the day we would be a little more holy.

The place where you intersect with Christ’s love for you, that place where you meet God time and time again—that is your river. At the river, I am unashamed to be me. I am free, known, accepted, and loved. Passed over by a current strong, made smooth by the weathering of water that never runs dry, marked by the beauty of becoming something wholly unknown. Someone Holy known. It is here, at the river, that I am most aware of my rough edges. And it is here, at the river, that I am most free. I am not alone. So many rough edges gather on the muddy banks to be made whole. We are many. Stumbling beside one another as we make our way to Jesus. We take delight in the water washing over us and we do not live in shame of our rough edges and deep calluses. If not for them, would we ever make our way down to the river to wait for holy water to wash over us? So we wait for the water to pass through. We are a people of waiting. Waiting for new life. Waiting for water. Waiting to thirst no more. And it is in the waiting that the persistent love of Christ finds us and welcomes us to be washed over, again and again, by His love.

Theologian Richard Foster says, “Under the overarching love of God we receive God’s acceptance of us so we can accept ourselves and others; we welcome God’s forgiveness of us so we can forgive ourselves and others; we embrace God’s care for us so we can care for ourselves and others. . . . Nothing can touch us more profoundly than the experience of God’s loving heart.”1

Unmerited grace and mercy are most manifest when we find ourselves in the place where we finally understand we need grace and mercy. When I have nothing left to offer anyone and I am waiting for new life, waiting for water, waiting to thirst no more, the persistent love of Christ welcomes me to be washed over, again and again, by His love. If I learned nothing else in my season of waiting but to gather at the river and bask in the love of Christ, it was worth it.

In the midst of my perpetual not knowing what comes next, I am trying to do what my friend Shauna Niequist is learning to do. “I want to cultivate a deep sense of gratitude, of groundedness, of enough, even while I’m longing for something more. The longing and gratitude, both. I’m practicing believing that God knows more than I know, that he sees what I can’t, that he’s weaving a future I can’t even imagine from where I sit this morning.”2

When I embrace God’s love for me, I remember that I have enough. I am enough. There will be enough. That type of love makes the waiting possible and enables me to live in the tension of longing and gratitude. I am learning that when I have enough and I am grateful, even in my waiting, it’s hard to feel sorry for myself. The reckless raging fury that I call the love of God washes over me, under me, around me. In my waiting—Christ be all around me.