A Series of Love Letters

By Valerie Lukens

"Give up and you're going home. They're serious, but so am I. I want you here." - God

Feeling tasked with turning a small hut into a 24/7 Prayer House, an overwhelmed and underwhelming introvert instead turns to it herself for the solace and stability she craves. As she's unable to leave the missions' base that contains it without at least one other team member present, the Prayer House - and the God she meets there - become a regular source of comfort and instruction as she's refreshed and given new tasks:

"Tell them:

I don’t hate you
I’m sorry
I want to be friends
Real friends
Pride has kept me from connecting
I’ve demanded / longed for undivided attention and have pouted when it’s not received
I need Your help
Keep me accountable - call me out - demand my participation."

An intimate exchange between a girl and her God, A Series of Love Letters is just that - an on-going dialogue about fasting, community, and whether or not she's making it all up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Valerie Lukens
• Release date: Jul 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005927226

Book preview

Introduction

Spring 2020

I once dropped an entire stack of journals off the top of a bunk bed as a challenge to the missions team I was a part of for eight months.

Always close in proximity (we couldn't leave our base without at least one other team member present) and usually distant emotionally, I - as usual - was having a hard time connecting and so I handed them a trump card, knowing they wouldn't understand it but hoping it would let me off the hook. Even so, I expected them to fail in comprehending it, or me. In fact, I needed them to fail me in order to justify the severe inferiority complex I refused to let go of - which is actually another form of pride .

By giving them raw, unedited, unorganized scatterings of words, I could check off the vulnerability box while still maintaining a not-so-healthy distance. It was a halfhearted plea for validation and a very selfish thing to do.

In my broken line of thinking, they couldn't get mad at me for not being personable if I had just handed them a tell all - even if it was largely unintelligible. They had my treasured words and should have cared enough to work to interpret them (without my help). Obviously, this reasoning falls extremely short so I hesitate in offering this now in fear of doing that again, but I do believe this is different and here's why:

This is not a tell all. I stripped names and a few sentences that would violate someone's privacy, but mostly what you see here is exactly what I wrote –God – I want to know You, God – how do I know it's really You- type stuff.

I offer this as a gift and not out of any expectation of or from either of us. Take it or leave it - I'm ok regardless.

I feel like God wants me to share this even though I'd rather not (rather than the other way around).

I'm writing this on Apr. 1st, 2020. My first draft was Mar. 14th. On Feb. 15th, I sat down to try to pray for a friend and it turned into a poem, which turned into an illustrated poem and now, roughly a month and a half later, I have a massive poem/prayer/art piece/book that I'd rather be working on because that holds the potential for validation. There's not much to be proud of in here. God met me in my brokenness. That's a fairly common sentiment in Christian circles, but we don't always hear how that is played out. This is just a sampling of what God may be longing for you to hear Him say.

Tonight (written on Pi Day) someone posted on social media that she and her best friend just sat and cried, longing for a hug, six feet away from each other . They had a no touching rule because of the Coronavirus. Another posted pictures of empty grocery shelves at work and thanked his team for working so hard to try to keep them stocked. Another ordered people to stop the hysteria, another to stop bashing the media, another encouraged people to check in on the disabled (/elderly/extroverts...), another shared a story of personal illness, another warned that the over/under-reactors would be really salty next week (/month/year).

A few shamed the price gouger who is now stuck with 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer because even the corporate Titans have consciences and suspended his accounts, another defended him, saying that 'when raised in capitalism, what should we expect?'. Many posted news reports /commentaries about one aspect or another of the ongoing global pandemic, many talked about talking about something else, many did.

Many called for balance - one by quoting C. S. Lewis:

[...Bombs] may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds (from On Living In An Atomic Age, written three years after the bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

That was seventy years ago.

This year, now writing in early June 2020, has been an extremely hard year for a lot of people. I know Dan Carlin asserts that The End is Always Near, but the end just feels near, at least near the end of our collective ropes.

Something has to break - Kierra Sheard and Tasha Cobbs Leonard

I offer this so that you can pray with me: Break the curses that have been over this place and over individuals, including myself. Break those chains that are passed on from generation to generation. It stops here.

I share this part of how I've worked out [my] faith with awe and reverence (Phil 2:12 New English Translation) in hopes that you may do the same - not by writing non-stop but by asking for and expecting personal answers from a personal God.

We have a collective longing to hear something - anything from God - to know what He really thinks of us, even if the groaning seems unintelligible and is not interpreted as such. May our whimpers be heard and validated. May we find hope in both the desperation enclosed and the faithful responses. I say we because when I desperately need hope, I seek out old words and find comfort in not needing to articulate the grief anew.

Many of us are extremely isolated and lonelier than ever, even while closer in proximity to others than ever before. One may feel more desperate to connect and yet feel less equipped to do so than ever. I offer this as a present to those like myself, optimistically presuming that by quitting my practice of perching as an observer, perhaps one person may purposely pursue a parallel path of public outcry and perhaps another will privately pray a more profound plea than previously.

I pray that you would seek and find solitude, that you'd be provoked into quiet recesses to be refreshed and sent back out to help create a community that does not fear grief and pain but loves each other too much to let that be the end.

It was in the solitude of a Prayer House (PH throughout) that God revealed himself to me and then sent me back to the community I was struggling to connect with with specific instructions – once even with a bullet point list of what to tell them.

May He do the same for you.

Be well friends - physically, emotionally, spiritually. Thank you for all that you're doing to try to support each other. Thank you for supporting me - across the decades .

God Bless*

Sincerely,

Valerie Lukens

(* I mean His version - Matthew 5: Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied type blessing not ours. May God change our desires to match His and then bring it on!)

Tues., 2/16/10

Rebuilt from notes from a sermon

Koinonia: Christian Fellowship/communion w/God/other Christians

Seek to understand the Kingdom before seeking to be under covenant, which essentially says I support you regardless and even if you leave the table you're welcome back.

You cannot do anything of real significance without first understanding who God means for you to be.

People who understand each other come together to form a tribe.

Once you strip away your false self then you can find your true self.

Consider how David honored Mephibosheth because of Jonathan.

Contributing to one's calling in life are: head knowledge, hands/abilities, and heart/passion.

Find whatever it is and commit. Run after it wholeheartedly; people don't follow one's title, they follow courage. Everyone has authority.

Work with others.

What is the status quo that you want to challenge?

Find the mess and create a culture that wants to change it – together.

Ash Weds., 2/17/10 9:55 am

Prayer House, El Puente (the missions base), Granada, Nicaragua

"Even if I don't lead

anyone else into

something better,

I feel God saying this is

how He wants to

change me and I just

gotta let Him."

A lady at the nursing home we visit asked yesterday if we were going to celebrate [lent] and I got into a little of that conversation with another resident on Monday.

The base leader talked about how a fast is a biblical representation/symbol of repentance and how a forty day period of preparation for Easter also has Biblical roots. I think I knew that but it didn't really click as something we should do too, but thinking about it this morning, I don't think God is asking me to give up chocolate or peanut butter or food in general but sleep. Proverbs warns not to love sleep and God's told me multiple times to come out here [to the Prayer House aka PH] after dark and I'm either too lazy or tired or both to do so.

At least until Easter, I'm not going to bed before 11:00 but will spend at least an hour and a half out here each night. Even if