show me how to die

My favorite recipe is Cook's Illustrated high roast chicken.  Right now it's in the oven, and I'm about to serve it up with some pan seared green beans and fresh fruit with homemade whipped cream.  All for a five year old who would rather have McDonalds.

Sigh.

You butterfly a whole chicken and roast it over potatoes in a 500 degree oven.  500 degrees?  Yeah.  The skin comes out a little charred, but the meat and potatoes are ah-mazing.  Really, you need to fix it for dinner tomorrow.  It's life changing. I swear.

It's not too much to say that I feel a little bit like that chicken in the oven right now.

Never read John Owen unless you're prepared for you sinful nature to regroup and attack with twice the fury.  It's one thing to acknowledge your sinful nature.  It's an entirely different thing to stir up the soil and wrestle with roots that have wrapped themselves so firmly around your heart and mind.  Learning the patterns you thought were healthy, or at least innocuous, are deeply rooted and unflinching in their desire to drag you away from Christ is humbling to say the least.  Seeing these roots rise up and strangle you with relative ease is heartbreaking.

I was reacquainted recently with this little gem by Audrey Assad from her album The House You're Building.  The chorus keeps running through my head,

"Bind up the broken bones.  Mercy bend and bring me back to life, but not before you show me how to die."

 This year has easily been the hardest of my life thus far, but even a barren desert has a certain kind of otherworldly beauty and a deep, rich fullness if you look closely.  I'm learning the lessons of the wilderness right now, the foremost of which is how to die.