Salt.

I'm a hick at heart.  I've decided.  I say "hick" as a term of endearment and love, not in a derogatory way, but I have some tendencies that help me to get a feel my mother's Arkensaw roots.  The way I say thank you sometimes, for starters.  The memories of feeding baby goats & chickens on my MeeMaw's farm.  My love for country music.  My love for Sonic.  (It doesn't taste the same in Illinois, btw.)  My love for red dirt.  My love of the mountains.  My love of farms, and free-roaming livestock.  Tonight I felt like a hick because I was eatin' me some sunflower seeds, and spittin' the hulls out by the second.  Oh man, they are my new weakness.  Every night my parents and I eat them, and they are so good.  The salt that hits my taste buds is such an indulgence even though they always leave me thirsty.

I remember listening to a sermon a while back at a church I visited with my family when we were first moving into the area we were planting a church (Meadowland) in.  We hadn't started meeting as a body yet, we didn't even have a place to live, I don't think, but we were visiting local churches to get to know the people in our area.  The pastor spoke about the salt of the earth, and losing saltiness.  I'll never forget it.  I have never been more confused in my life.  He had a salt shaker, and he was talking to little kids about how salt loses it saltiness, and I was totally lost.  I was 15, and he was addressing 8 year olds.  Did they get it?  Was I the only one that didn't understand how salt lost its saltiness?"  I didn't want to lost my saltiness, man.  I was afraid of abandonment because I wasn't flavorful enough.

I have thought a lot about salt in the last few days.  I think it has something to do with the fact that I eat Barbeque flavored sunflower seeds with my parents every night before bed, and the fact that I just finished watching season two of Man vs. Wild where Bear Grylls walks through a salt flat.  (I love you Bear.)  It made me thirsty just watching him tread over foot after foot of salt. My skin is especially dry because it's been hiding away for a little while, and I think of those cracked salt flats he treks over.

It's kind of weird, huh.  I mean, salt is vital to our life.  Deer and other hooved animals need it to lick it in a funny fashion for entertainment purposes.  The sodium and chloride it contains keeps us alive.  It helps with digestion, enables our brains to send messages, it enables our hearts to contract.  It affects salinity in the oceans, which affects plant growth & microorganism survival.  It made for a not-so-great-looking movie with Angelina Jolie.

Jesus talked a lot about salt in the New Testament.  Jesus is called the salt and light of the world.  It has nothing to do with table salt on your table, in my opinion.  He's not just a seasoning to add a little spice to your life, something to mix things up a little.  He's not that convenient.  But he's also not an additive that makes you bloated; he doesn't make your life miserable.  Or look fat.  Or phat.

He simply makes people thirsty for more.

For something more.  You know?  Life is so much more than us - look at the stars, the galaxies, the universe.  Look at how our bodies function.  Look at a baby growing inside its mom's belly.  (Or uterus if you want to get technical with me.  That was an awkward classroom moment last year...)  Look at how I'm still breathing.

The something more that we are looking for is Jesus.  He is why we are thirsty.  The great paradox is that He alone satisfies our thirst because he is a living well of life.  He is water to our souls, and this water whets my dry lips, my dry mouth, my dry heart.  Always.  This water tastes sweet, and it is forever filling.

Today is the end of one leg of my journey; there's a part of the race that is coming to a close.  I find myself getting thirsty.  I'm pushing into, what I feel, is going to be the brunt of the journey so far.  Some might argue that the hardest part is over, but I just don't know.  I don't know how to feel or what to think.  Part of this confusion comes comes because I'm sleepy, but part of it is because I'm curious.  I'm entering the unknown.  Tomorrow I have an appointment with my amazing orthopedic surgeon, and I'll find out what to expect.  One of my casts will be removed, and another with be re-casted, but beyond that I don't have a clue.

As I'm talking with nurses and doctors tomorrow, and as I speak even tonight, I want to focus on this verse from Colossians 4:6:

"Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone."

When I'm talking with people in a hospital, when I'm talking with my friends on Facebook or g-chat, when I'm talking with my little sisters, when I'm talking with people who intimidate me, when I'm talking to people that frustrate me or humiliate me.  Full of grace, seasoned with salt.  Jesus modeled this well.  He is the same today as he was 2,000 years ago; he quenches our deep thirst.  He is as honest, but gentle with me as he was with the woman at the well.  He saw everyone as someone.  I want to be the same Catie to my sisters that I am to my doctors.  I want to be the same Catie to my enemies as I am to my friends.  I want to be growing and changing, yes, but I want my character & my integrity to stay consistent.  No performance, no faking it, no false images.

I want you to know that everything I say, you need to take with a grain of Jesus salt.  The Holy Spirit has been leading and guiding this blog so far - the Lord deserves all the credit.  Don't forget that I'm a human.  I keep saying this, but no one's taken me up on it yet: correct me.  Discuss with me.  Speak to me with salt so that I may still be thirsty for Jesus when I'm 92.  Tell me how I can pray for you.  Please keep praying for me.  I depend upon it. 

We need to strive to do this for one another, as a community & a body of people.  Thank you to the friends I spoke with today that helped me realize this.  Thank you to the friends that have encouraged me in so many ways throughout the last 48 days.  Thank you, Jesus, for the communities of people that you have moved me through and to.

I want to be the same person everywhere I go; full of grace.  With an answer.  Seasoned with salt.