Freefall

March 17, 2013 By

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I had a dream a few months back that I was dangling on a roller coaster, my hands gripping the sides of a drop-off that went straight down into blackness.  I was in my car with my children, for heaven’s sakes.  I couldn’t risk their lives letting my clunky Chevy Tahoe loose on these metal tracks.  What kind of mother would let go? I couldn’t tell if my car was strapped in or if I would fly off into the cold air.  Where would I land?  Who would provide for them?  What would I do?  Help, Lord!

I shrieked in fear as I sat up straight in bed in a hot, panicked sweat. I have given my life in service for you, Lord, and this is the payback I get?  This is my reward for all those youth mission trips and church services and solos?  Is this really happening? It felt like I just got kicked in the gut, and yet when I curled over to seek some relief, the blows just kept coming.  All I could feel was hurt.  A deep and immense and crazy hurt that I’ve never before experienced.  Worse than cancer.  Worse than my abdominal infection. Worse than death itself. It was as if all the darkness in the world was hurling toward me at once, and it entered my bloodstream like a bad drug.  I was swept under at the sheer the weight of it and was so extremely uncomfortable that I wanted to peel off my own skin.  But I couldn’t, so I just curled up and clenched my teeth, and begged for mercy, and made no coherent sense for months.  And now I’m dangling off a cliff with white-knuckles and I’m a little pissed about it, if you want to know the truth, because I so don’t deserve this.

I’ve lived my whole life professing my faith in God, that he is the ruler and owner and molder of my soul.  I’ve nodded in response to picking up the cross and following Jesus and felt in all earnestness that I was a good believer.  Kind of like most people do on Sundays, before they go home and continue their natural and sinful natures.  And yet here I am, and now it’s happening, and I’m finally tested.   The stability on earth that I clung to with my bare hands shattered and I was dangling on the edge in fear, not trusting God would catch me.  And not only did I lack faith, but I had the audacity to challenge God’s plan, like I put my payments in the God vending machine all these years but all I got out was this crappy mess.  I was such a damn fool.  Or rather, I was blind to what God was really trying to show me.

Now I see more clearly.   What’s so beautiful is that this is precisely my payback for years of loving Him. A realization that I had it wrong, and I wasn’t fully submitting, and all I have on this earth is a cartoon mirage.   Jesus was holding out a hand in my personal crisis to say “Follow me. ”  I could have just said don’t-mind-if-I-do, or thanks, man, or even Cool. My life on this earth is one empty vessel of saggy skin that will rot into the earth, but my soul exists for Your glory, and this is a chance to live into it.  I could have said all sorts of lofty things, but I didn’t.  Instead, I screamed like a girl and asked God to somehow put my Tahoe in reverse.  I basically said to Jesus, “You’re a great teacher, and I’ll take what I think applies to me, but this total submission thing?  This fall-off-a-cliff dependence?  That’s a good one, dude.  Now let’s quit with all the crazy-talk.  I want my old life back.”

I see now what I could not before.  That my old life wasn’t life-giving.  It was full of decay, and stagnant water, and salt that had lost its flavor.  I was saying all the right words about faith and thinking I was in the right camp, like I could fit God within the walls of my upper-middle class lifestyle and would give God my budget surplus.  I liked to go to bible study and talk about Godly things and sit on the front row to be entertained, but the real lesson of Christ?  The die to self part?  Well I’d find time for that later, after dinner and bathtime and lunches and writing and friends and phone calls and facebook and photo sessions and, well, me.  I’d find time for that after me.

But God doesn’t do surplus. He won’t accept lukewarm, or dependence when it’s easy, or prayers only on Sundays.  He doesn’t believe all religions are created equal or we can just slide by unnoticed or half-ass our way to salvation by putting ourselves first.

We have to let it all go.  Not because our palms are sweaty and we just can’t hold on any longer, but because we want to.  And friends, there is joy in submission.  Joy that envelops fear, and pain, and deep, dark wounds.  Joy that frees us from the beating and torture and darkness that penetrates.  It’s in these moments where you have nothing else to hold onto but God himself, when you see His amazing grace mostly clearly. A smile starts to crack, and then it widens, and joy enters in.

So here I am, starting over.  It’s liberating, in a way, to see how God works.  To see how He uses people and circumstances and turns bad into good for the sake of His glory.  And the fact that I can be of some service in the great commission is fascinating and humbling and makes me want to fall down in reverence with tears streaming down these saggy human cheeks.

Lord, thank you for this pain.  With every fiber of my being I scream to the heavens a resounding and echoing thank you, for I have finally let go, and I trust you’ve got this, and I am finally free.   If my luck holds out, I won’t get bugs in my teeth on the way down.

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photo:

Millenium Force

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Setbacks

March 3, 2013 By

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We are a culture of moving forward.  When tragedy strikes, you ask for prayers and nights out and oversized glasses of wine.  You sob and wail and girl, you let that mascara run.  But then, after the shockwave hits, you want to be that person who picks herself up and dusts herself off, bopping and smiling into the future.  You don’t want to be that number who shows up on caller ID and people think “Oh no.  There she goes again with the same sob story.  Move on, already.”

But you can’t.  You need to repeat the hurt and say the same lines over again and hear words of affirmation.  You are strong.  It will be okay.  This too shall pass. It may take months of re-living the same hurt over and over again just to purge it from your system.  It just takes as long as it takes, and not one day less.

The bottom line is that you are strong.  You are healing.  Your future is bright.  But all of a sudden out of freaking nowhere you catch yourself moving backwards, or spinning in circles, and dwelling on some stupid tiny detail over and over.  You just want to crawl in a hole and hide, or put on a good face and shut the hell up.   And yet deep down, you know you need to get the ugly out.

Get it out, friend.  Pick a few very close confidants and a therapist you trust and just keep repeating yourself.  It’s 2 steps forward, 1.75 steps back.  But you’re still moving forward.  It’s just slower than you expected.  Like the tortoise, one day you’ll cross that finish line and not have a clue how you made it so far.

Setbacks are discouraging.  You want to think you’re tough and all that pain is helping establish perseverance. And yet we all relapse.  We have moments that we need to vent and monopolize the conversation and suck the energy out of a phone call.  There are times we just need to relive the hurt and lock ourselves in our closets for three minutes for a best friend to tell us we are going to be okay.  I recently had such a conversation.  It went like this:

“Talk to me,” my friend said. We’re so over hellos these days, because when I call at dinner time there must be a problem.

“Oh man.  The kids’ show is almost over and they need to get in the bath and I’m such a wreck,” I say before inhaling a large anguish-filled breath.  “The pain, it just won’t stop.” I don’t wait for an answer, like respectful people do.  I just launch into a tirade and wait for words of affirmation to come out like a vending machine on the other end.  Which is completely selfish.  And so totally vain.  And yet I need it like a drug fix so I long ago quit apologizing.  Because if the tables were turned I would do the same for her.

“You are strong,” she says.  “And you will get through this.”  And she means it.  She tells me I deserve more than I actually do, and that I’m more incredible that I actually am, and that God’s got this, and I nod and wipe my face and smile through the tears when my son comes busting in the closet.  I sing a bath song and we hold hands and I somehow make it through the next three hours with a half-smile on my face.  It’s a victory when I walk into the kitchen after the kids are down.  I’m miraculously still alive.

Everyone has setbacks.  I’m told they are normal, albeit annoying as hell, but each time they are a tiny bit easier to get over and I can rebound a little faster.  And in the end, I think I am developing perseverance.  I think God is working in the silence.  But being refined by His fire is hot, and it sometimes hurts, and it’s never easy.

Stay in the heat.  Grit your teeth and read the Word and keep burning.  Talk to God when he doesn’t seem to be listening. Because someday the impurities will be gone, and God will restore, and you’ll find yourself thankful for the process. Like down-on-your knees-in-praise thankful. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.

Setbacks happen.  Keep moving forward.

Photo:

Sad beauty

Filed Under: Inspirational, My life, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Was Jesus Beautiful?

January 18, 2013 By

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One of Chris Bohjalian’s characters in Midwives dressed two-clicks above.  You can wear wrinkled slacks and smell like used cigarettes if you want, but I’m showing up in heels, my blond highlights blowing past you in the dust. Being beautiful is the closest thing we know to power.  And in this world, power is life.  So yeah, I get it.  I understood the urge to hide what’s inside and cover it all up with a jacket.  Our insides are dark and insecure, and the meek don’t live long in this bitter place.  You can say all day that beauty is skin deep and only comes from the inside, but when you want a job on 11th Avenue, you shed that fallacy and get with the program.  Bust out the Bergdorf suit.  The black one that makes you look slim and intimidates the competition.  Because you only have one shot and one first impression. Wear quelques fleurs.  Buy Burberry. Make it count.

So it makes total sense that Jim Caviezel got the part of Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.  He’s stunning, really.   Just peer into those brown eyes and neatly-trimmed beard and tell me you wouldn’t want to listen to that man talk just to see his mouth move.  Who wouldn’t want to see Jesus with straight teeth and soft skin and strong biceps?  It makes us cry quicker and weep more deeply and feel more connected with a man who is attractive. It’s more tragic to see Marilyn Monroe die than some prostitute from the Fifth Ward. Because Marilyn was beautiful, which to us means she was more worthy.

And yet Jesus was not beautiful.   “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces,
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” Isaiah 53:2

I thought of the Sermon on the Mount, where the poor in spirit inherit the Kingdom of Heaven and the meek prevail.  Where we should be less attuned to beauty and its false sense of security. Jesus turned the whole world on its head, and suddenly all we ever saw as value just fades like blood from a cut that bleeds in a bathtub with a champagne glass and a handful of pills.  What a waste of a beautiful life. 

And I stop in my tracks, with my expensive blond hair and a diamond burning a hole in my finger.  I rip the pearls from my neck and they spray around the living room like popcorn in a movie theatre, dirty and scattered.  I stand with my head thrown back and scream at darkness, this dying and rotting skin holding up my broken heart.  Beauty can’t be trusted.  We gravitate like animals to what we believe will breed more cleanly, and will produce a more perfect fruit.  Yet as we click toward this devil, who lures us so strongly in the name of self-preservation, Jesus stands.

He looks at all that caged-in ugly, and we are suddenly free.  And I am filled with awe.  Because I have never before been faced with such raw power.  Something that grips my insides and holds still my heart and quiets my rage. A power to raise the dead and clean wounds and move mountains.  I’m not worthy, as all this darkness pours out at his feet, from my blond roots to my trembling fingers to the buttons on my Bergdorf suit, and there surrounded in pearls on the floor I lay all my shit bare.

I just lay it all out bare at his feet and weep.

We should all strive for “the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”  1 Peter 3:3-4.  Past the skin and the suit and the jacket of insecurity, there is great peace.  I want that peace to penetrate through these blue damaged eyes, two-clicks above this world, walking tall.  As it turns out, beauty is not power.  But God’s power is so exceedingly beautiful.

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Photo Credit:

The Passion of The Christ: Philippe Antonello

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Laugh Until Life Makes Sense

January 10, 2013 By

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I’m not a big fan of bumper stickers.  I find it odd that people want to display their political sentiments on a used Honda for the world to see.  I find it annoying to have to stare at hateful words about our President at the stoplight in front of the grocery store.  And I’m amazed so many people put stick-figure families on their mini-vans to display how many people and pets live in their households.  Yes, yes. Michael plays soccer.  You have a cat.  Riveting stuff.

My own daughter asked that her school name be displayed on the back of our Chevy Tahoe.  But do you think given my poor driving and bad texting habit I want to announce what school we’re affiliated with and have people stare into the car from afar to see if they know me? You don’t know me.  I’m likely to run into you from the rear by accident or be smirking unpleasantly at your family of stick people.

So it might surprise you that I slapped a bumper sticker on the back of my car.  Yes I did. The very woman who is constantly shaking her head at the stupid Jesus Fish / Darwin Fish debacle.  It’s on there, firmly planted square in the middle.

Laugh until life makes sense.

It’s one of my life mottos.  So when I saw this sticker a year ago, I immediately went home, created a (very often unseen) circle of clean with a paper towel and Windex, and stuck this saying on my back window.

Sometimes I check my rear-view mirror and see my daughter lip-syncing to Katy Perry, or notice that my son has used his squeezable yogurt to finger-paint on the back glass.  But quite often I simply catch the word – laugh. It’s written not only for the cars behind me, but for me to see when I need it most.  There are times I don’t feel like laughing. Times when I’m gripping the wheel in prayer that I’ll make it until lunch.  And yet somewhere in there, there’s a silver lining.

Given enough space and distance from pain, life can be funny.  What other attitude is really worth having? Who wants to hang out with people who scowl all day, eat fiber, and gripe about the lack of comfortable pants?  My oncologist said that people who laugh a lot really do live longer.  From one who’s made it through some rough health patches, I can use all the help I can get.

When my own life gets hard, I lose weight.  I end up putting the coffee creamer in the pantry and buy multiple cartons of eggs.  My dentist tells me that I might need a root canal and I realize my sobbing cry face looks like a hollowed out whale. So I go to the mall to invest in a quart of face cream but catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.  How did a homeless woman end up at Neiman’s? Don’t they have security in this place?  Oh, wait.  That’s me, wearing a sweatshirt from high school that says Coca-Cola Classic.

And just like that, on my way to the YMCA to choke out a run on the treadmill, I smile.  It bobbles up and down into a chuckle, which erupts into a real belly shaker, and a few cackles later I’m in full-on snort mode.   Did I really go to Neiman’s wearing sweat pants with a hole in the knee?  Am I seriously going to need a root canal?  Why in the world do I have all these freaking eggs?

This life we live doesn’t make sense.  There is so much killing and suicide and death and mental illness.  There’s chaos and disarray and a dusty, cursed earth.  And yet we are made for more than this.  We are not in this place forever.  The righteous will not be moved, and you can only do what you can do in a day’s time.  And when the really hard stuff hits,  you’ll be prepared.  After a night of no sleep, you’ll wake up to discover you’re out of coffee, your kid’s school uniform is dirty, it’s snack day at your kid’s preschool and all you have is raisins, and some wild animal has knocked over your trash can in the night, strewing trash all over your front lawn.  You  have to fight demons and hurt with friends and heal from grief and now this? Yeah, it happens.  And it’s a tiny bit funny.

Ecclesiastes says there is a time for everything.  A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.  3:4.  So mourn and sob and weep and sigh.  Take Advil and Zanax and buy more coffee.  But in the end, realize that you have enough eggs to make quiche for the tri-county area, and that’s just downright weird.

As for me and my Chevy Tahoe, we’re dwelling in this season of laughter as long as we both can, puffing and choking and driving toward the bitter end.

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Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philliecasablanca/2578387623/

Quote “until life makes sense” credit:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Laugh-Until-Life-Makes-Sense/202930039805662?group_id=0

Filed Under: Humor, Inspirational, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Life isn’t fair

December 28, 2012 By

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Sometimes life’s a turncoat. If I had a sling shot I’d just shoot life right between the eyes because I’m David and small and yet this big old Goliath-life barges around like a bully.  I might have little value in this world but I’m a fighter, so someone please hand me a rock because my hands are shaking and I need to throw something.  Patience is a virtue, the Bible says.  It also says the meek inherit the earth and all kinds of other proverbs that are right and true but I’m so mad I could spit. Because the wicked win and the good folks lose and there is nothing I hate more than losing.

I’m not sure where I get the notion that fairness is a virtue, that we should all be getting halfzies and year-end bonuses and that our lives should always bear fruit.  Sometimes we water and tend and earn and then life just rips the apple from our hands before it touches our lips.  We lay down our life and praise Jesus and make tuna casseroles.  We light candles and light up the room and nurse our babies in the thin lamp of morning. We make love and war and fight for what’s right but in the end life turns on you like a liar.  Children are shot.  Marriages crumble.  Cancer invades.

So excuse me, patience, but you are weak and all I want to do is throw hard. 

In Psalm 73, Asaph believed that God surely loved the people of Israel.  But how come they were all sitting around starving and hurting while the wicked suffered no pain? Why are the bodies of the shooters and the sinners and the money launderers strong and well fed and immune from trouble when mommas are losing their babies to sick-headed teenagers with guns?  Why are some women abused and raped and the men get to drink whiskey and disappear? For the wicked do not suffer as other men do.  Asaph tells God, “Take a good look! This is what the wicked are like, those who always have it so easy and get richer and richer” as if God’s busy taking out the trash and can’t see that Donald Trump is eating caviar while the poor kid from Detroit has to sell crack to feed his own brothers. I could feel Asaph’s hand clasp around the rock.

Life is so not fair.

Asaph said that if he were to be honest and publicize his thoughts – if he were to admit that his own feet almost stumbled and he was envious of the wicked and that his “insides felt sharp pain” at this obvious disparity, that he would have betrayed his flock.  And yet we have the benefit of reading his blog entry from thousands of years ago where he wrestled with the same questions we are facing about fairness and justice and why bad things happen to good people.

But then, Asaph entered into God’s temple, and “understood the destiny of the wicked.”  It’s hard to explain this feeling, that God holds our right hand. That His presence is comforting and earthy pain isn’t forever.  “But as for me,” Asaph says, “God’s presence is all I need.  I have made the sovereign Lord my shelter.”  And just like that the grip is loosened.  The rock falls.  And fairness becomes just a whistling in the wind, insignificant and transitory.

Fairness is never guaranteed.  If you pray and give money to the poor and eat your vegetables, things should work out like magic and sparkles and you’d end up in castles with weddings.  At least that’s what my daughter thinks.  And yet it’s not.  Everywhere I look I’m struck with the unfairness of things.  People who did nothing wrong are struck with fate.  Hit by death.  Ravished with cancer.  Eaten away by evil and left broken and lost with shattered hearts and tear-stained faces.  It seems like the bad get the gold and the good are left with sheet metal.

And yet in the middle of the rubble, we rise.  We step over piles of hurt and pain and heartache, and through our shrieks of loss we keep on moving.  We drop our rocks and loosen our anger and instead cling to the hand of the Father.  Mother Teresa once said that “we cannot do great things on this earth, only small things with great love.”

Life isn’t fair.  Love anyway.

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photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/toolmantim/3308320306/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, My life, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

The man who saved the world

December 15, 2012 By

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News flash: some people smell.  They are dirty and have bad yellow rotten teeth and are downright creepy.  There is mental illness and instability and greed and lust and all kinds of nasty in the world.  People hurt.  People harm.  People leave damage in their wake.  Others cover up their scent by brushing their teeth and shopping at Nordstrom.  But on some level and in different ways, we all have dark sins raging.  We fail to trust and wait and submit. We are told to give up all our wealth and follow Jesus, and yet we balk and twitch.  No Superbowl Sunday?  Nuh-uh.  Crazy fool.

Even way back in Jesus’ day, there were men lying in fields who didn’t choose to lay with their wives and bounce children on their knees like respectable people.  They smelled the same as sheep because they lived with them.  They never cleaned behind their ears or washed out their mouths with soap and chose a dirty profession like animal wrangling over jail to escape the reality of doom that befell them in the real world.  There are always broken people that don’t fit well in the real world.

These people.  These shepherds.  These men without hope and women who sold their bodies and slaves who bore deep red marks of shame?

Jesus came for them.  On a dark night thousands of years ago, he came.  Jesus came for the f*#k-ups. 

Don’t be fooled that you have some sort of special place in line.  That by churching it up and having monogrammed napkins you earned a place.  You are just one of these dirty huddled masses.  God looks at the soul not the skin, so you can skip brushing your hair for Christmas Eve Service because it doesn’t much matter in the long run. Jesus wasn’t born in Upper-Middle-Class Suburbia, in a garden tub surrounded by the glow of an Orange-Vanilla Yankee candle.  I think it’s harder for us middle-class, brushing-teeth types to fall on our knees.  To drop it all and follow.  To hear the heavenly chorus.  We have surround sound, and microwaves, and our hearts are too plugged up to ache.  We have pills for that these days.

Shepherds didn’t ask for Jesus.  They didn’t pay for tickets.  They certainly didn’t earn the right to see him face-to-face.  And yet as they were lying by a smoking fire in the middle of nowhere, angels appeared.  Legions of them shrouded in golden light.  And these dirty travelers?  These jail dodgers and broken hearts? They dropped everything and ran to the child.  They followed the brilliant light to feel peace in the mere shadow of the prince.

Jesus came for the blind and deaf and weak.  The man who hates himself and loathes what he has done and feels inadequate with his life.  The screwed-up mess of a woman who is ripped and addicted and empty.  Jesus came in the night, piercing through clothes and expensive perfume and black mascara straight to broken, aching hearts.  He came for you.  And all at once, it all falls away.  A calm beyond words.  A peace beyond understanding.  The wings of angels cover, and you know.  Sweet Jesus.  There in the street and in the wallpapered hospital room and in the bathroom stall.  He comes to you where you are, smelly or not.

We don’t deserve such love.  And yet God reaches to the farthest corners of the world for us.  There is no field dark enough or prison wall thick enough.  He peers into the very essence of death and pulls out life.  All we have to do is leave the old and follow.  The light is blinding.  The angels are calling.  Jesus is whispering in the night, in dreams and visions and is saying our name right there in front of our bloody faces.  He is born!  Come, and follow.

Merry Christmas.  From one f*#k-up to another.  

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photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/khrawlings/3805370725/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: My life, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Eat Your Peas

December 14, 2012 By
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“Eat your peas,” I tell my kids as a plate of lukewarm food sits in front of them. “They’re good for you.  And delicious.”  But no one really thinks peas are delicious.  They are just placeholders, something I opened from a can to fill space.

“But they are cold,” my daughter pouts.  “And you know very well that I don’t like peas.”  The fact that my daughter says things like “you know very well” and “if you don’t mind, I’d rather be excused” and in her free time dreams up song lyrics and imaginary worlds full of sparkles and iron gates with swirls – this alone I should cherish.  And yet all I want is for her to eat her peas because bath time is coming up on the evening schedule.  I toss away the remains of dinner to avoid a fight and allow her to eat applesauce against my better judgment.

I sigh at the waiting times.  I watch peas roll into the trash after dinner and I think to myself – what a waste.  I can’t see joy or light or give thanks and all I want is for bedtime to come so both kids are protected and safe. Sometimes it’s hard to sit through the raw edges of empty life spaces.  It is hard to be grateful for routine, mundane, headache-laden days. My head hurts and my soul hurts and this big world is full of heart-voids that I run around trying to plug up with duct tape, the edges frayed and worn.

Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! Psalm 27:14 

I hate waiting.  The very definition of wait is to remain or rest in expectation. But another definition is to delay, or remain temporarily neglected, like “the vacation we planned for years will just have to wait.”  I can’t just remain at rest with anticipation. I’m not good in this space. I don’t have skills that others have to tolerate it, and I start to get anxious and nervous and pace around like a crazy person. When will it get here?  How can I fix it? Is there a way I can hurry up this process?  Eat your peas already! It reflects so loudly my own anxiousness.  What am I afraid of?  Why am I not able to accept things that I cannot change?

Wait on the Lord.  In everything, give thanks.  It’s a refrain that repeats like an annoying Christmas tune I can’t stop humming.  Yes, yes.  Thanks for children and a home and health and all that business.  Lists and lists of joyful things.  Someday my prince will come and life will turn up roses and patience is a virtue. Jesus gave thanks and Ann Voskamp gives thanks and everything is filled with joy and thanksgiving and waiting for the child to be born under a shining star.  Blogs and books and little plaques with words.  Give thanks!  Find joy!  Tis the season!

And yet life is so full of hurt that it’s painful to sit down on all the tacks.  In my own life, I’m so focused on damage that I can’t keep enough duct tape around, constantly plugging and ripping and mending holes.  Then I pace around and bite my nails to make the time go by faster.  Bath time is a comin, kids.  Let’s get this dinner thing wrapped up.  I guess I don’t trust God’s big enough, or strong enough, to patch me.

And yet God is big enough.  He is powerful enough.  I don’t need to be in charge this time.  I stand up, red and blotchy from the tape marks, and begin to laugh.  Through my tear-stained eyes I laugh and dance to Taylor Swift with my sweet little girl and suddenly find myself offering a thousand little thanks.

Thank you dear Father, for this Christ child, who was half-man and half-God.  Thank you for peas and curling irons and children with big thinking brains.  Thank you for the ability to walk and write and drink clean water. Thank you for love.  Thank you for my warrior friends who pick up my deadweight and carry it on their backs until I can stand again.  Thank you for messages woven throughout the world in signs and emails and articles and dreams.  Thank you for the bible, that instructs me when I need an operating manual.  Thank you for never-ending grace that washes me clean.

The next time we eat peas, it will be a conscious act.  I will buy them split and simmer them with ham and garlic and sautéed vegetables.  I will spoon them in between my hungry lips and I will be grateful for their warm, comforting saltiness.  There is even hope for peas.

Sometimes it’s hard to wait in periods of stillness.  It’s hard to give thanks in those times.  That’s okay.  Keep telling yourself it’s wise and true, so that when your eyes are opened, you can see that angels were carrying you through the dark and warrior friends were shouldering so much of your heavy.  Then you will begin to smile again, and be thankful for God’s far-reaching mercies, and say thanks to the world and God and little green peas. There is no need for me to manipulate solutions and fix my own holes.

God’s bigger than you think.  Wait for him to do his work.  And in all things dance, and sing, and eat your peas.  Because they are delicious, after all. 

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photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/haprog/4002891340/

Filed Under: Cooking, Inspirational, Love, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Wings

December 7, 2012 By

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“Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge.”


Psalm 91:3-4

I’ve heard it said that God meets us in our darkest hour.  I don’t think he meets us there, like two respectable gentlemen before a dual.  It’s not like you call God up for coffee and you both sit on opposite ends of a couch making small talk.   You good?  I’ve been better.  You use two sugars, too?  Get out!

Maybe you and God have coffee.  That sounds very civilized.  I am the messy one who turns my face from truth and ends up worshiping at my own alter, from my bloody birth to dyed roots, running for the edge and jumping off sixteen stories of a hard-fought and so-called-perfect life.  I fall into depths so low I can’t breathe, my chest burning and my mind paralyzed by fear.  The pavement is coming up quick and I wonder if it will hurt but it’s so dark the timing is off and I just want to make the pain go away. Surely this blow will just crush me like the coward I have become.  And yet in this soul-battle I turn to see a wing, just a flash of it as it slows me down and breathes new life into my hyperventilating lungs. How can one see the corner of a wing in total blackness?  How did God know I needed saving?

Jesus was born out of human blood and walked the dusty roads of his chosen people with his God-trinity right under his epidermis.  Such knowledge would have burst out of my mouth like a secret and my heart would have exploded in tiny pieces because I lack patience and restraint and all other things the bible says are revered and godly and good.  I’m just a Gentile sitting in the crowd waiting for Jesus to come take mercy on this fallen soul and I keep looking for wings that never appear.  I scowl at the notion that things fly because all I see around me keeps falling into the ocean, sinking like a treasure ship.  Jesus talks of mustard seeds and yet I am forever searching and running for the ledge.

When God’s stories were laid down like lines in the sand and truth was finally self-evident, when lives were transformed like loaves and fishes, Jesus died hanging limp with a crown of thorns.  And yet wings lifted him, and carried him from the tomb.

God’s truth is eternal and never fails through the weeping darkness and blackest nights.  And when we fall from grace with blood oozing from our tongues and our crumpled hearts are left in a pile of rubble, hate rising to our chests, we cower.  We just allow ourselves to freefall into apathy.

And yet Gospel wings spread out before us wide.

One night, Jesus was born under the brilliance of angels.  Instead of basking in this truth, we flip over in bed, grasping this world with our tight curled little fingers and fretting about money and marriage and health and holiday parties.  We say it’s yours, Lord as we grab our own daily agenda and hold tight.

But in darkness you can’t see who’s holding what and where the bottom is, and God says it’s okay to just let go, uncurl your fingers, and let it all slip away.  He meets us in this bloody blackness because it’s the only place left for us to turn and he says Sweet child, I’ve been here all along, you just couldn’t see it in your own reflection.  God was born of blood and died of blood and washes ours clean with his grace. His feathers tickle our cheek as big hearty belly laughs bubble from our chest and we realize we are new creations, lifted and renewed and can soar like eagles.  We will run and not grow weary, and will walk and not be faint (Isaiah 40:31).

Oh, those brilliant wings.  They were there in a dark night in Bethlehem and they were there in the courts of Jerusalem and they are here in the freefall, in the broken-down trailer in Alabama and the street corners of Midtown and the stench-laden cardboard boxes of Kingston, Jamaica.  Even the girl typing away on the computer in a stone house on a rural road where children are tucked in bad and bibles are laid open and dinner is half-eaten.  In whatever brokenness is dark and hopeless.

God catches us wherever we fall. 

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photo credit:

Wings of the fallen

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Billboards

November 9, 2012 By

I loathe hypocrites.  I hate them so much I wish I could spit on them and tell them that they can’t love Jesus on one hand and say they hate Democrats on the other. These people raise their arms on Sunday and wish the Mormons would move to Canada.  They tsk, tsk their way to Monday by whispering that gay people are harmful, rotten folk.  It’s a black-and-white billboard that screams “Don’t believe me!  I’m a walking double standard!  My God is only as good and powerful and forgiving as I allow!”

It’s no wonder why so many people shun religion.

I’m just as bad. I might not hate Mormons or hold picket signs at abortion clinics, but I have my own brand of ugly.  I accept that Christ can wash clean a heart, but it’s so terribly hard for me to forgive.  I nod my head that we should love freely and give of self, and yet I’m as self-centered as they come. I see the world through my own eyes because they are mostly right.  I mean come on.  If I ruled the world, it would be a much better place.  No one would contradict me, we’d all agree mushrooms are icky, everyone would listen to folk music on Wednesdays, and coffee would always be served hot with two raw sugars.  Can I get a hell yeah?

I like to think of my own ideas as far superior to most like-minded people.  So what if my plan has actual deficiencies, or that another human being can actually make a point that is equal and as valid as my own.  If it differs from my own ideas, I pout and demand and bring up my version at every possible opportunity.  Like a tiny sword a millimeter long, it might not kill.  But it scratches and itches and penetrates a tiny bit of skin over and over until the victim just caves in from the torture.

I suppose I am also one of those billboards that must sound to God like nails on a chalkboard.  Please do it my way.  I have the answers.  Sweet people around me, you are so cute and lovable but quite simply wrong.  I need to control something to make my life feel important.  I don’t show this interior self to everyone. I like to think of myself as magnanimous and loving and accepting of differences.  And yet in the hole of my own little world I’m a selfish being who likes to direct outcomes.  I use a lot of “I” and not a lot of “us.”

You and me?  Well we are all in this together. 

We are all hypocrites.  Human beings are remarkably great at some things and so pitifully bad at others. And as it turns out we can’t label others with this title because we’d only be marking on ourselves.  My 6-year-old told me over breakfast today that we all have “the sin sickness” that came from Adam and Eve eating the apple.  It’s true, sweet girl. We all have the sickness that comes from sin, and to some extent we all say one thing and do something else so insanely off-course.

But it’s never too late.  We can always change direction, and apologize, and forgive. We can lay down our picket signs and realize that without mercy we are all just broken-down hypocrites, screaming loudly and yet saying nothing.  To witness, we must serve.  To praise, we must be quiet.  To change, we must break down our old selves and admit we are wrong.

We don’t need to control the world.  We submit it all to Him, and accept the outcome with grace and humility.  He is the master and orchestrator of all that is good.  We are just innocuous players, along for the ride with the top down, laughing at the billboards along the highway.

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photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/codyr/234976867/

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

When sin puts down roots

October 9, 2012 By

I think it’s a disservice to teach our children that good rides around on a white horse and evil lurks in shadows.  When they grow older, they will be attracted to what is sparkling and beautiful.  They will think that church always means goodness and prayer pills are popped for headaches and sour stomachs.   They might think that shiny happy people would just naturally have pure intentions, and fail to see truth.

Because evil lurks in beautiful things.

Sin is alluring, my sweet children, pushing a small seed into a pure heart, surrounded by warmth and lifeblood and privacy. A woman’s breast and curved back.  The shiny feel of money.  A message that tickles your inner euphoria and make you think, just this once.  It’s harmless.  No one will ever know.  The devil sticks his tentacles around the vessels and grows ever stronger, wrapping and leafing and blooming into a great darkness. And for a moment, during the pulsing and the beating and the loving and the looking, there is a sense of power.  Everyone is on even footing. No one is sanctimonious.

And just like that the heart grows hard, choked out by all the weeds and guilt and shame.  Out of it flows tainted blood and it’s no longer full of grace.  Because the heart is the key to power.  Sampson was stripped of it.  We are all bound by it.

It’s where evil grows best.

Jesus said that what comes out of a person is what defiles them, not what’s put in.  “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come – sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Mark 7:21-23. But what if darkness has grown so deep and so intertwined that the flesh is rotten underneath?  How can one ever crack open their chest and pull it from the roots?

I honestly have a hard time answering that question.  I hear things like be washed in the life-saving blood of the lamb, but try telling an adulterer this odd phrase as a helpful pocket tool of wisdom and watch them run for cover.  Try to find a way to explain the power of Christ or how hearts can be healed or how darkness abhors the light. It falls on deaf ears, because old habits die hard.  Humiliation and addiction are so strong that it’s hard to pull against them long enough to get a word in.

But the truth is more powerful than evil.  My daughter attends a Christian school, and last year I heard many renditions of Psalm 139. I remembered these words being uttered from my six-year-old’s tongue and they suddenly took on new meaning.   You have searched me, oh Lord, and you know me.   For where can I go from your spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light becomes night around me.  But even the darkness will not be dark to you.

God knows the heart.  He sees the trunk of sin.  There isn’t anyone too broken to kneel down and pray those words in Ezekiel that a heart can be renewed.  There is no sin too great and deep to be forgiven.  Jesus did it over and over.  Put away your stones.  Walk away from judgment.  Accept the grace and mercy and new blood that so naturally flows from a pure heart.

Evil is everywhere, my children, and we must simply be strong enough to recognize it.  To pull it toward the light.  To ask God to rip it from the roots with humility and honesty.  And then we are finished.  Our jobs are done.  Our prayers are laid bare.

God can handle the rest. 

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