When You've Never Seen Prayer Answered Like This

This fall, when my husband’s co-worker approached him, it turned out that he didn’t want to talk shop. Instead he asked, low-voiced and private, if my husband would pray for his family. The month would come up short for them, their two incomes wouldn’t be enough. With hardy assurances and thanks, these two men parted from this brief disclosure one knowing well the worry and the scarcity and the other knowing not the role he would play.

My husband wasn’t so much invited to pray as he was invited to recline and watch the show of God. Though he did pray; he did wonder how the Almighty would hear and if his own hands needed to offer the help. Yet, it was more than my husband could provide and it seemed there wasn’t anything he was to do; no risky response, no severe solution. So, he did what he could -- he listened and watched.

At the same time, he had his own private wish, to see for himself the lavishness of God. How long and wide and high and deep could the provision, protection and grace possibly be? For months the question had echoed against the walls that guarded his doubts and God wasn’t appearing particularly arresting or excessive or lush. This is the place where the story met him.  

My husband was also working on crafting a sermon about prayer, about how telling stories of prayer encourages us to pray more. Settled in at the coffee shop where he studies, he took to the restroom and inside that small dark, room he found the response of heaven.  A quiet wrapper of cash, hardly hidden in the hand towels, with a barely legible note: “Do what you want… it’s your choice.”

That day someone we’ve never met, and may never, was listening intently to God. What was it that moved them to so randomly give? An abundance? A sacrifice? A letting go?  Were they giving thanks as they withdrew the fifties and hundreds? Were they mourning a loss as they tucked them into the envelope? Were they tearful as they scrawled the cramped words on the gift? We don’t get to know. We just got to watch. God was there in that restroom; working, renewing, and releasing one need to fill another.

I joined my husband that day, a rare afternoon when our work brought us together instead of apart. I spotted and lifted the envelope to make out the scrawled writing while he told me of his discovery. Immediately, he told me of his co-worker’s request and we knew at once that the money would pass through our hands to his. It was just the amount they were missing.

My husband went to work the next day, pulled his friend aside and said, “Look at how God has provided for you.” Through the joyful tears there were assurances. No, it wasn’t ours. Yes, it was truly found. Yes, it was meant for him. The lavishness of God displayed in the lavatory.  The loving answer for both of them.

Paul tells us in Acts 17 that God isn’t served by our hands. Our contributions are slight compared to his wondrous goodness and grace. He gives us life. He gives is breath and, Acts says, he gives us all things. We are comforted in our unrest knowing he’s placed us in our homes, in our cities, in our coffee shops in order to find his abundance exactly as we grope for it. Keep groping, my friends. He will be found. He is not far from us at all.

The Problem of Hope

We sit together, you and me, at the finishing edge of spring.  Together we are dangling our feet over the bank that slips us into summer – that time of the year which, at least for me, symbolizes freedom. There’s a longing right now, call it Spring Fever, to move into “what’s next,” and leave “what was” behind, to jump in with both feet and land in a cool pool of revel and romp.  But we can’t rush, and so I sit and long and wonder over all the pleasures to come.

I see summer as a gift-giver.  She’s a generous bestower who has planned these next full months with warm surprises. It feels like she has saved and secretly squandered some of the better parts of the year so they can be shared now. With a little extra grace, a little extra time, and a little extra energy, summer brightly invites me to live out hope.

Hope is the expectation of a future good.  But there have been times in my life when I have equated that good with a certain thing.  I have hoped for the right job, the right counselor, the right trip, the right schedule.  I have hoped for a mentor, for friends, for my children to make sound choices, and for my husband’s occupation to satisfy.

I have hoped for a world of things and as I’ve awaited them, I’ve imagined the Giver of all good things working hard behind the scenes, like a basket weaver making a vessel big enough to hold all the final answers to my questions. But each time I received that gift basket, the one that I thought resolved all my problems, I was filled, not with satisfaction, but unrest.

It’s been my continual hope that God was working toward my best end.  And in that misplaced way of hope only lay disappointment.  What I found, when I finally received that thing I hoped for, was that it was never fully satisfying.

That job that seemed just right was a place of emptiness and duplicity. That friend that seemed to want to help walked away. That trip happened and then ended. That dream curriculum was too complicated to use. That schedule made us crazy. When I put my hope in things I found the things lacking.

Hoping in things makes me a slave to that thing and when it fails me, my hope fails with it. But hoping in Christ gives me freedom. These days, my hopes are focused on wanting him to bring about his best end. I hope for the redemption of all things, his creation, his people, his Church, which includes my children, our impact and our attitudes. 

He can work all things together for his good purposes. This inevitably elevates my own in ways I never could have hoped for. Things end and decay and show themselves to be imperfect, but God is consistency, love, justice and peace.

I don’t hope for the next 'thing' anymore.  I reach for new opportunities, but what I hope to grab onto is christlikeness.  I hope that today is brighter than yesterday because God is in it and in me. 

C.S. Lewis says that hope is a “continual looking forward to the eternal world.”  Hope is not a job, nor is it that perfect house, that baby, that achievement. It is the creation of Christ being made complete.  This is true freedom no matter what the season is.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never is, but always to be blessed:

The soul, uneasy and confined from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

-- Alexander Pope

When Teens Say 'Yes' To Adulthood

I'm contributing monthly to the efforts of my inspiring friend Lori Lane of The End in Mind and Artios Academy.  While I'm no longer a homeschooler -- I still have your backs -- I had the honor of posting this over at The End in Mind today. 

Recently, a friend of mine went through the harrowing ordeal of sitting in a hospital waiting room while her father-in-law’s condition went from bad to worse.  In the white-knuckled hours that passed those first shaky end-of-life discussions were had and hospice was called.  He would be going home and they would wait at his bedside and keep him comfortable.

A week into her family’s severe new way of life, her father-in-law surprisingly took a turn for the better, caught a new wind and kept everyone listening to his stories and his spiritual testimonies.  Meanwhile, my friend had a competing engagement; her own son turned 18 and it seemed right to all of the family to lift their heads, put a pause on their trouble and celebrate his coming of age.  This meant that her mother-in-law, the full-time caregiver, found a need to be released for an evening to put on a clean sweater, fresh lipstick and a smile so she could kiss her grandson with pride. 

I knew they were in the middle of all of this, but I did not anticipate their solution.  She sent the most stirring text a friend can send, “Can your son come sit with my father-in-law for a few hours?” 

My son is 15.  He’s never, in his recollective memory, lost a grandparent.  Since our friends and family have thus far been spared the uncertainties of failing health, he’s not even been near the infirm.  He’s never sat at a bedside, never held a feeble hand, never practiced the gift of presence with anyone.  He’s social and quirky and bold.  Sending him into a hospice room wouldn’t have been my first assignment to teach him the ways of compassion.

But my friend saw who he could be. She saw his ability to hold a conversation and to make the speaker feel valued and heard. She saw his kind-heartedness, his bravery and his extroverted nature.  She saw the best version of him and called it out, issuing him the greatest invitation and challenge of his teen life.  

My knee-jerk reaction was to want to say, “No” for him and to offer myself or my husband in return.  Part of a parent’s job is to fill in the gaps for our kids’ deficiencies -- making their forgotten apologies, instructing their thank-you notes, making snubbed friends feel loved.  But I took a moment to reframe my perspective: “He’s not deficient.  He’s capable.”  Reflecting on the wisdom my friend has dispensed in the years we’ve walked together, I acknowledged that she both knew him and what she was doing so I could trust that this request was right just as it was. 

Two things happened in that moment.  First, he was roused to examine his emerging abilities. And I was provoked to see him in the same affirmative and mature way way she did.  My son was becoming himself, someone wholeheartedly distinct and effectual outside of me.

In that moment, I chose not to say no for my son, but to give him the experience of deciding what kind of grown-up he was going to become.  He’ll soon be off on his own in the world.  Would he be taking experiences of extreme compassion and selflessness in his social toolbox? Or had I buffered him from the most acute suffering? Why should I shield him from the practice of love?

He, of his own accord, bravely said, “Yes,” giving my friend’s family the gift of time away.  The three hours he gave to a man whose days are likely few, were spent listening to stories of family and faith.  But, quietly he took note of his swollen hands, and the way his bed creaked when he coughed.  My son, the burgeoning man, encouraged and nodded and made a million mature decisions about how to move and how to speak and what kind of eye contact was just enough.  There in that room, without a television to distract him or an ipod humming in his ear my son shared the gift of a common humanity with a man who still had much to teach. 

One day, it will be a loved one in that bed and my grown son will go prepared with his tools of compassion.  I’m grateful that he won’t walk into that future scene feeling fearful and deficient, but knowing that he’s becoming the adult he practiced to be, full of the competence established by the trusting adults who went before him.

 

When I'm Wrong

On Monday, the sun rose at seven a.m. On that first official day of my children's spring break I stole the early morning hours to go hiking with a friend.  This had been our habit, the way we spent our time together though the fall and winter, schedules and snows, had gotten in the way.

When the light peaked warmly through the trees we stepped out and began our catch-up as we maneuvered the hills around her home.  How was my research job?  How was her writing? We laughed and related over celebrating birthdays, her recent trip to Europe, and even discussed the open-wound challenges of our lives -- my place of ministry and her walk through cancer.

She told me the latest about her treatment and recovery and then I said that stupid thing -- that thing that assumed something I should never have assumed -- that her doctor surely gave her a vision for what her future would be like.  My friend stopped me with a profound and weighty head shake.  "No. She doesn't ever do that." And the solemnity pressed down on me all the way home.

I was wrong to infuse misguided optimism into that moment. When one is fighting a battle each day, we can't jump to an alternate reality, we have to fight for today with them.

#

In winter's middle the sun was setting on an endeavor we'd begun a year prior. Many dear friends had filled our home for weeks on end, dreaming together of building a church that would send a new expression of Jesus into the world. And as we neared that final push toward becoming a worshiping people we saw a breakdown beginning.

I compare it to singing in church next to someone who is tone-deaf; you continue singing knowing you're not exactly together in every way, but because the words and worship are the same it's enough.  While we couldn't quite put our finger on it, we knew we had all grown off-key and were politely allowing each other to sing anyway.

At that point we did a wrong thing.  We examined what we thought to be true and what would best fit the needs of the kingdom and calling and we decided to end our endeavor as church planters.  We hoped we could maintain the community.  We thought there would be a collective sigh of relief and gratitude.  But we misread the signs of what was happening around us.

We were wrong to assume such positive ends could come without a voiced struggle.  We spent weeks speaking apologies, listening to each person's now-expressed need, and trying to realign our perspective to a more accurate, however uncomfortable, truth. Each conversation revealed the different corners our wrongness had taken us and only that realization allowed the next right steps to surface.

#

There in midnight's darkness, our down comforter covering us safe, my mind scrutinized some details of our together-life and I bravely breathed out a question that I'd held back for years.  When he answered in that way that said, "I can only be honest with you," I stopped breathing and prayed in that urgent, grasping way for wisdom.

In every human interaction we have the opportunity to make things better or make things worse. I could initiate an unraveling of something long good or I could bind us together in trust. Having recently been wrong in these other ways, I knew that now was the time to listen and not assume.  Nothing was changing in that moment, I was just becoming aware that the reality I had imagined was simply not real.  I had been wrong.

In that moment I remembered a conversation wherein one friend asked "Why is anyone surprised to discover that pastors, politicians, writers and friends are flawed and mistake-laden people?" To which someone responded a deep truth, "because we'd rather trust in a person we can touch than a God we cannot."  I wonder, when I'm wrong, how much have I ceased to trust that loving God?

#

Years ago I watched a TED talk by Kathryn Schulz on "Being Wrong," in which she said, "The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't." This is one of the reasons why we get things wrong. We see the world as we imagine it to be, knowing what it has been and what God is working to make it into. It's a beautiful facet of our minds, indeed, but we don't always get it right.

Another reason why I get things wrong is because of the way I define and live out love.  I simply say that love is thinking the best of someone.  In doing this I do two things: I assume their best intent and I imagine their best version.  In my opinion, my hiking friend's best version is a woman who is completely healed, my church's best intent was to love one another into a different version of community, my husband's best version is one that doesn't fall into temptation.  The way I choose to love looks through challenges and disappointments to something better that can come of it. It baffles me that loving in this way can be wrong, but it can.

As I've prepared Easter sermons for my clients this week I've had the chance to think about Peter. In Matthew 16 he got something so very right when he confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, only to be so very wrong ten chapters later when he said, "Though they all fall away, I will never!" After this, he denied Jesus three times and when the realization of his wrong act and angle occurred to him he wept bitterly.

I've been right there with Peter; the tears over my own mistakes, the pain my own denials can cause, the destined and tremendous change that comes along with repentance.

But Jesus had already given Peter a way of hope.  When he predicted Peter's denial in that tension filled, sorrowful, last supper He gave them all a glimpse of life after death, saying they'd all be together in Galilee.  Even though they'd desert him in all their various ways, he already intended to forgive them, to be with them in relationship and renewal. Nothing was too egregious, nothing was too big for grace.

When I'm wrong I've needed the grace given to me.  My hiking friend sent a sweet text the next day. Many from the church plant are still doing life with us. My husband still sleeps by my side because we believe that's what forgiveness looks like. Nothing is beyond grace. The only thing that gets in the way is us.

I heard Bob Goff ask at the IF:Gathering this year, "What is the next humblest version of you?"  This must be it. I've been wrong. I'll be wrong again, but it won't stop me from love.

Fallor ergo sum.

The Other Side of Lent

I liked her, but secretly.  My professor in seminary was a small Korean woman who spoke into our first-semester lives a host of things, most of which we weren't certain we agreed with.  Each week, as she taught us multicultural ministry, her lectures came out with chopped-up ideas and uncomfortable questions.  I couldn't always track with her but when I did she left me gasping over the profound new way she viewed truth and God and love.  She used phrases like "both/and" and "we are spiritual beings who have a human experience." But I was among students who preferred saying "either/or" and disdained that cultic "spiritual" talk.

Because we were 24.  And evangelical.  And seminary students.  And we lived in the Western World. And we knew so many things, you see.

She made me uncomfortable in my faith but I was drawn to her uniqueness.  So, I kept my mouth shut while the other students fumed and shook their heads.  I kept listening.  Over the years, she encouraged me in different classes and finally nominated me for a "Graduate Who's Who" edition and essentially said, "Don't be silent anymore. You are somebody."

But everyone didn't have the same experience.  Some students took their pent-up anger to the dean of the school to say, "She's wrong" and "She shouldn't be teaching."  He disagreed.  And the wisdom of age and experience trumped the passionate jump of youth whose depth of insight was not deep enough to make a splash in the world.

Sometimes we think we're more than we are. 

Yes, I'm taking up laughter for Lent.  But it's not that haughty, gloss-over the hard stuff, look-at-me-like-we're-in-middle-school kind of laughter.  There's another side, a self-reproaching awareness, a step into the humble.  The other side of Lent is that I am giving up taking myself so seriously. 

Here's what I know: I don't part the waters for any one.  I don't hold back any powers of destruction, see the complete picture of truth, or establish a foundation in any place.  Nothing is truly built on my life.  I like to think that in tandem with the rest of the Church I have a role to play, but I don't make her body move, establish her beauty, or push her blood through her veins.

I have as much opportunity to follow Wisdom as anyone else and equal chances to draw the short stick when I attempt to take hold of her.  In my attempts to be kind, I am not always right.  In my attempts to be right, I cheat kindness.  Nothing sets me apart except the expectations of those around me.  And in this season I'm saying to myself, "You don't save anyone.  Let the expectations be directed to God."

Reading through Job again I suddenly see how self-important Job is and all my prior impressions are now shattered.  Where was the righteous man who was so innocently acted upon?  The sermons and stories and New Testament scriptures over the course of my life painted him so saintly.  "Well, sometimes tragic things happen to the best of us."  But in this read-through all I see is his pride and all I sense is his entitlement.  Perhaps I'm learning to read it through my own heart.

When we take ourselves so seriously ("I deserved something different") we jump into anger and offense.  We demand responses.  We view ourselves as examples of truth.  We can't take a joke or make fun of ourselves.  We dare not be wrong.  Thus, you see, where the need for laughter comes in.

A friend of mine said last week, "Sometimes things falling apart seems like a dreaded unraveling to be avoided at all reasonable cost. Then it happens, usually in more than one way, and the grip I had on my ravelry is laughable. Levity and relief enter, an unexpected benefit. Suddenly I realize: the universe of possibly is now open to me."

This Lenten season, if any new truth is going to open up to me -- and please, God, may it be so -- I need to make room for it lest the ego fill the whole space that was meant for wonder and worship and worth. 

We give up so that we might take up.  They happen together else we fill the void with ourselves.

Lent is for Laughing

Then I [wisdom] was constantly at his side.  I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, 

rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.  

-- Proverbs 8:30-31

I had a great aunt whose faith was the vehicle through which she served the world.  She spent 40 years in ministry, cared for a disabled daughter and loved the same man for 60 years.  Her life's work took her to people on reservations and in prisons, to senior citizens, migrants and gamblers.  When she passed away four autumns ago it was in order to begin a long deserved rest.

When my aunt's health initially started to decline she told her husband that, should she pass on before him, she knew the woman he should marry.  She named for him a woman they'd known some 57 years prior.  A few months after my aunt's memorial, he found the woman she named, widowed now herself, and after many long distance phone calls and a visit, they were married in the spring.

My uncle's resolve demonstrates that there is a way to find joy during times of sorrow and it just might be to let sorrow do its work of leading us to joy.  James says, 'Count it all joy when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance and may endurance have its perfect result that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.'  Count it all can be defined as consider it all.  I've written before about how this is a thinking word... a cognitive assent to think through, process, what the trial just might be doing to bring us to wholeness.  The joy here is not necessarily a feeling, but a hopeful knowing.

In this season of life, I walk around with this mixture of joy and sorrow.  Joy for what God led us to spend the last 15 months doing with people that were inspiring and generous and loyal.  And yet sorrow for the pain of the piercing arrows I've endured, and even caused, in the days since we saw fit to let that chapter close.  Some days I mourn and some days I dance.  And feeling truly 'tossed by the wind' I know finding wisdom going forward will require that I abandon this double-mindedness.

Which brings me to Lent.

Over the past six years, Lent has proven to be the most formative time of year for me.  The practices I've participated in have shaped, stretched and frustrated me.  We've given up things like meat and income. I've taken up things like writing, prayer and presence. This year I wanted to resolutely set out to take up joy and gratitude but I wanted to make that more tangible and more effective for all of us in our home.

So, here it is. This year, I'm taking up laughing for Lent.  And it's a family project.  I heard it said, in a recent interview with April Smith, who lost her two young sons in an EF4 tornado back in May, that to live in sorrow would negate their life.  And in that moment it occurred to me that no matter what the untold stories are of our last year, I needed to move firmly into the joy that comes from the bone-deep gratitude I feel as a result of it. I need to match what I know with what I feel. I think that's Paul's idea of 'making joy complete' -- to be one in spirit and in mind.

Every day I'll practice the abandon that might take the form of play or sport or celebration.  I'll read truly witty authors, the kind that make me laugh out loud.  I'll watch a movie once a week that's funny -- and not in the dark humor or frat party kind of way.  My kids and I will practice levity and irony and watch Jimmy Fallon clips and go to family friendly improv.  Even the people I spend time with need to be okay with calling out the absurdities of life and poking fun at our own faults. This Lent I am committed to laugh and laughter really only works when we do it together.

We tend to look at Lent as this somber time when we whip our own backs and kill our own spirits.  But I believe that God loves it when we love life.  My friend, Margaret Feinberg says, "Joy begins in God and all that exists was born in joy." (By the way, read her newest book. It will form the way you view joy). The book of Proverbs describes a women in this way: "Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.  She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue."   When we're laughing at life we find a way to understand others and the events of our lives.  When we're seeing the joy we're moving into wisdom.  When gratitude is our lens then we can know the strength brought by abandon.  Sorrow can be shackling, but laughter breaks the chains.

At my core, gratitude has already won. Now, for the next 40 days, my body will practice what my soul already knows.  And on this next Resurrection Day I'll celebrate the delight of life. "Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight." -- Psalm 43:4

(**I know what I'm going to read, but I'm completely lost on funny movies.  If you know some good ones, leave me a comment.  Thanks!)

Finishing Sentences for Jesus

There's one person on the planet who holds the title of My Best Friend.  We spent our last year of high school finding one another and knitting ourselves together with honesty and bravery.  We wrote so many words to one another in college, paid for untold long distance minutes, visited, wished, valued.  Her one beautiful life took her to Japan, then California, and then New Zealand and she never came back.  

I haven't seen her in thirteen years.  But when I sign up for accounts on websites and the secret question is, "What is the name of your best friend?" I type in her name.  When I read the story of David and Jonathan I think of her because I still believe we are one in spirit and I love her as myself.  When I was pregnant with my sons, each of them, I toyed with making her name my back-up name in case the baby I birthed was a daughter.  Her impact on my life reaches from my adult beginnings and will persist unto my end. 

This was a relationship wherein we could finish one another's sentences, where it wasn't tricky to have to determine how she would respond, how she'd feel, or wonder what pool of unhealth I might disturb if I was boldly me.  While we had to work through some disappointments and misunderstandings, hers was never a thorny embrace.  

I've been thinking about the disciples lately.  Having found the one their culture was longing for, the fulfillment of all the stories, the hope of all the ages, they must have felt seen and known to be invited into his life. But then they had to learn to relate to him as a person. What must it have been like to see how painfully slow Jesus was at putting on his sandals, how he entered a home and ignored them so he could give the host his attention, how he leaned a little too hard on those he dined with and made his plans for the day that left so much wasted time.  Did it ever bother them when he just disappeared to pray or whistled while they walked all those miles or laughed too loud at John's fishing stories?  Was life with Jesus ever not quite what they were expecting?   

It must have been.  Because so many times Jesus puts them on the spot with questions, "Who do people say that I am?  Now, how about you?" "Why are you talking about having no bread?  Don't you understand?"  or "Where is your faith?"  And over and over again they seemed to be stumped.  How they must have wracked their brain to think of the answer he was searching for. Perhaps they hoped, like my perfectionist brain does, to score the exact right answer.  Being able to finish Jesus' sentences always must have felt like a test. 

Did any of them ever get it?  Aside from the time that Peter said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God," was there ever a gold star for their responses?  What knit them together if they couldn't predict his desires?  If they can't answer the Pharisees when they ask, "Why does your best friend eat with tax collectors and sinners?"  or "Doesn't your teacher pay the temple tax?"  We never hear fantastic answers from these guys.  They cannot speak the mind of Christ.  Maybe they were smart enough to know they shouldn't try while Jesus was still with them.

This gives me great comfort because I'm weary of trying to finish sentences for Jesus.  To the question of, "What does God want?" or "What now?" I can only answer, "I don't know. Ask him yourself." If you know him, talk daily to him on your own.  I cannot give you your answer from Jesus.  Get it from him. Watch his lips.  Carefully notice his cues.  Follow his eyes.  Experience how tricky it can be and then show some grace for each other.

Some days I think I can know the mind of Christ.  And other days I have to submit to the mystery.  Is our Christ fickle?  No.  Does my self-importance get in the way?  Most certainly.  Can I finish Jesus' sentences?  Only for me, but not for you. Only to declare him as Lord. That may be the only time we get it right.

5 Stories that Answer Your Question About My Church

A student of mine, finally breaking past that professor-student barrier, casually asks.  A friend tosses the question out over dinner, months absent from my weekly routine now sitting accepted at my side with bowls of soup and love.  And an acquaintance at the market, someone from the old story caught off-guard, wants to be polite.  We get the question from diverse places, "How is the church plant going?" And to that question I never know what to say because I think the question is really a different one all together.  How is it thriving in my soul?  How is it changing the way I experience God?  How is it a place you might venture into?  

We are planting a church, just a year old this week, in our town, or more specifically from our living room.  It's a small venture at the moment and yet in every way, as C.S. Lewis says, "The inside is bigger than the outside."

When we're asked, "How is it going?" or, "What kind of church are you starting?" we don't share numbers or dates, measures that are irrelevant to our present vision. We don't give locations and times as if we're only the church part-time in certain places.  We tell you stories.

As we join with the greater narrative of God, that one begun 'in the beginning' to rescue and restore all things, we find that delineating the church from the other domains of our life becomes an impossible surgery to perform. We find that the answers about our impact and mission and viability are intermixed with our accounts of common, daily life with neighbors and with our group and with the 'other.' These are our stories that will answer your question.

#

After I released my students from class on Monday, my life-giving part-time job mentoring future shepherds, I stopped in at the tea shop where my friend works.  Her swearing-in to the state bar was that afternoon and acknowledging important days can be done with a surprise hug. We had walked with her during her last stressful semester of law school. She'd arrive for core group with her notes in hand, having her husband quiz her on the drive over. I'd helped her find a space in the seminary library for a change of scenery during her bar studies.  We'd prayed together the night before the results came out and rejoiced, distracted and dizzy, in the morning to see her name on that laudable list. And Monday was the day her title would change.

The church comes into your labor to share the joy of what's coming.

When I was done working that Thursday during my sons' fall break I went to my friend's home where they were playing.  But instead of rounding them up to go with "thank yous" and "I appreciate its," I sat down in the chair and gathered her small daughter up in my lap and we talked about the kitties in the window.  My friend crept out on her errand while I was present with the kids, familiar and usual; they never knew she was gone.  We were trading off that day: my sons with her while I worked a few hours and then I stayed with all while she met with a teacher. A year ago the distance between our homes wouldn't have allowed that. But this summer they moved into our neighborhood.

The church moves into the neighborhood and splits the load of life.

During a weekend in May we gathered in an ample mountain home and dreamed.  We, our kids, and our dogs spilled over the sofas in comfortable company and made welcoming lists upon which no scribbled idea was bad. We talked of missional ventures, finding the acute suffering, relational ideals and worship. Thereto, sorry and shy, we named what we were not drawn to and nearly whispered it, the elderly.  Yet, four months later when we picked up steam in our service to the community, we gathered at a trailer park and painted the eaves of the smiling gray woman, pulled the weeds of the retired shuffling feet, cleaned the gutters and bagged the leaves where those looking through the windows grow dim. And then we returned again. And soon we'll serve them Thanksgiving dinner.

The church lets Jesus lead them where they are afraid to go.

When she saw the pain in my eyes and the fear of the future she said, "We'll take care of you." For months she did just that with income and presence. Sometimes it looks like she's commanding the universe to bend to her will but when we kill our assumptions and move into the depths of her heart we see she's running for her life after Jesus. She lined up work and a partner for my husband.  Then took her hands off and let it roll.  When that partnership changed, another friend took the reigns.  His faithful pledge to our community sprang forth in an interview and bloomed into a new job for my husband. And now these friends, together, knowingly smile at their creativity that elicited the income that frees us to do the beloved work, that which we can't not do.

The church enters the tension to give food to the hungry and set captives free.

When we met him, he was rough around the edges but fighting for a different kind of life. The record of his life was long with rap sheets and alarming detentions.  But friends said, "God has other plans for him." So we stuck close for this entire year; listening with accepting ears, offering affirming words, working alongside his frustration and doubt, living lives of compassion he could receive.  The other day, he asked a question far more important than any other we've received so far. "Is there room in your church for someone like me?" Yes. And there's room in the Kingdom of Jesus too.

The church intentionally lives so that others will ask.

#

I love that you ask me how my church is going, but I know that you're really asking, cloaked and curious. "How is your life with God?"  My answer is this: come with us and give yourselves to the stories and then you'll know just how much bigger is the inside than the outside.

The Tricky Path of Memory

My memory from a year I had only two sons:

One in 3T cinched-waist painters-pants and the other in red, shiny rainboots better known as 'bike breaks,' they hurried through our last school things: one last link on the paper chain of every book we'd read, the final spelling test and diorama and times-table quiz.  We raced to put the markers in the box, the scraps in the trash, the final folders in their pockets.  We checked the marble jar, cheering for our success, and grabbed the last prizes from the exhausted treasure box.  And then we turned out the light and jumped down the stairs to summer.

Lifting the lid off the sandbox was summer's grand opening event. The cool grit sifted through their tender fingers, shovels flying to dig the tunnel, crash the load, scatter the granules all around.  I put my feet on the deck rail, and penned in my journal what freedom felt like: like jumping in a lake, like standing in a breeze, like love. 

That memory is wrong. 

Because I have this habit of writing down our days I looked back at the journal from that time, that very day.  And very little of it was true. 

The true story:  Youngest Son had woken up sick that morning, throwing up as my husband left the house for the job that killed his soul.  I cleaned the mess, put him back in bed and began studies with Oldest Son.  As we neared the finish, Youngest awoke and I soothed him with a cartoon. Oldest was finishing up some writing, but wanted to watch too.  And there was an explosion over the injustice of, "no." Youngest sipped some water, tossed it back up, rocked. And I sat encumbered with the duty of love: hold one for comfort, hold the other for character.

Slowly, the work was finished.  Oldest made his own lunch.  Youngest went back to sleep.  And later, when his stomach was steady, bananas and water and bread, we ventured outside to the sandbox.  We did sit out there for two hours.  We did sing over summer.  But it wasn't with anticipation. It was with relief. 

#

It's funny how our memories fade, how we create the pasts in our minds that we wish we'd had.  How we tell stories of joy and yet we forget that what brought the joy on was some level of grief.  None of us just hops from joy to joy to joy.  We experience it staccatoed between the hours of tedious toil.  First one, then the other.  But the photo in our mind only remembers the smiles. 

Perhaps that's the grace of God; the suffering's been consoled so let's rejoice in that. We made it through another tantrum, another hard discussion, another stretching strain.  Feel that?  Relief. Gratitude. Hope.

This summer is now a memory.  And I wrote very little, recorded few moments.  I pushed through it with tenacity and resolve. I remember some remarkable moments: one boy shaving, one boy pitching, one boy Scouting, loud and loose.

They pushed themselves into new places, because I had to be somewhere else; a mother working for pay for the first time in their lives. There were days of shooing and shushing and day camps to give them the attention I couldn't spare.  What this summer left me with were a few small but necessary paychecks -- food in the fridge and gas in the car -- and a void in that place where mother is printed first over my heart.

The pains of change are never gentle. There's a reason to call transition the hardest point in birthing a human; transition creates pain.  When Oldest was coming hard and fast I groaned to my husband that I wanted to just go home.  He wiped my forehead and said, "You can't."  As the baby needs to come out, so our new life needs to emerge, young and incomplete but so full of everything that's possible.

I wonder what my future self will remember? I wonder what my memory will record?  What in the God-hewn story of the summer they were 15 and 12 and 7 will spring forth as waxing, winsome, or worthy?

• Those moments in film school when 15 learned teamwork and editing and tact and won the prize for his efforts. 
• Those days in engineering when 12 found a new love to pursue this year and beyond.  
• Those times in camp when 7 got on a bus, helped a new friend, joined a group, spoke his needs. 

Sometimes the mama has to decrease to see the babes ascend.

The only summer they will ever be 15 and 12 and 7 is now past.  And in the autumn I find again what they will always ever be: charismatic, confident and competent.

May my memory hold fast.  May I never forget.  The path of descent is the path of transformation.

When the Spirit Shows Up

When I breathed the prayers last August, heart breaking from the betrayal -- "Holy Spirit, move your people toward me," -- I envisioned that Spirit, He, coming swiftly, stretching his ear out long, or just turning around to face me.  I also envisioned that he was already there beneath the surface where he'd just pop his head up over the ripples made when the boat sank in my soul.  If he wasn't already with me, then he could redress swiftly, like a Peregrin Falcon.  However, I'd lived for years in faith so I knew that if anyone had really wandered it was veritably me.

I, thus, imagined that he was already with his people.  That he was in the control room and I could cut to the chase by talking to him instead of the person.  He'd provoke them to do the right thing and, daily, as I prayed that prayer, they did. They sent cards, stuffed money in the mailbox, called, asked us our names, and said yes.  They showed up because the Spirit was doing his job and they were doing theirs.  That's how healing happens to us all.

It was the most affirming time I can remember.  It was the time when the Spirit seemed to move to the head of the Trinitarian conference table.  The very first time when I vowed not to keep him silent, kicking my Baptist roots aside to hear his voice and witness his power.  What I've seen of him this year gives me such joy and gratitude.  It makes me want to throw him a party. Turns out, Pentecost is already on the calendar.

In all kinds of places the Holy Spirit is depicted with wings. In Scripture, yes, but poetry and literature too as well as our own delimited minds which make things up until we're unsure if they were ever true.  Monstrous wings, like a dragon; gilded and bright; golden expanses fanning the innards of my soul.  I considered this metaphor yesterday morning, out on the deck, beginning summer's liturgy on a fresh journal page.

And then I saw gray wings above me, alighting on the phone pole. And I heard a cooing that isn't a normal part of our dawn chorus.  For years I've sat on the deck in the early summer mornings watching nature for signs of God and I've seen him in so many ways. But on this morning he showed up as pure an image as my mind could grasp. He showed up as a morning dove.

I shooed him off. "I see you.  Don't sit around here. Go move your people."

You never know how the Spirit will come to you... mighty wind, tongue of fire, feathery wings. But I'm convinced that we ignore him much of the time and wait for some other great sign, as if the transformed human heart wasn't evidence enough.  As if causing the dead to live again wasn't a wave of a brand new ship coming in.

There is another sure sign of his presence though. And this one cut me to the quick.

In John 20:21 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you."  And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld."

The newly risen Jesus sees his disciples for the first time and the first thing he says is "Peace."  Isn't that the symbol we attribute to a dove?  And then he breathes on them and gives them the Holy Spirit, right out of the depths of himself.

When I read this scripture my White Pine tree pollinated right in front of me, blowing a cloud of yellow dust around the yard like I had just waved a magic wand and disappeared beneath it. It was a silent release of all the tree's hopes, a breath of new life.  "Receive the Holy Spirit" happens just like that, in the quiet back yard of a wandering pilgrim mother trying to find the way forward.

Nature is amazing me this week.

I read it again and I didn't have to wonder long, "Who were they to forgive?"  The answer is evident; the people they were hiding in fear from, the ones who had killed their Master Rabbi.  The people they were now sent to.  How hard that had to be -- to move past the crime in order to begin the craft.

I won't be effective if I believe people are defective.  If I believe there is no hope for them, no value, no worth.  If I believe their incompetence is the greatest thing about them and if I can't forgive them for their violent acts that turn my world upside down.

Forgive their maligned allegiances.  Forgive their abandonment.  Forgive their pride and arrogance.  Forgive them for condoning the evil, supporting it, calling for it.  Forgive them for building faulty bonds, for calling something virtuous when it's really cowardly. For their silence, for their absence -- forgive them.  We can't do it on our own, it's the work of the Spirit of God, breathed into us, knowing that the way forward leads to crosses of our own.  I thought I already had, but did it again.  I forgave them.

The Holy Spirit gives us new breath in our stale lungs.  And with that breath we speak new words, the first being the hardest of all, "I forgive you."

And if you can do that, then you know that the Spirit is probably alighted on your telephone pole, cooing at you to go move your people.

Summer Reading: Strong Women

I come from a line of them.  Women who change the world through activism and love. Women who persevere through widowhood and cancer and displacement.  Women who welcome others by opening their lives.  And women who receive their strength from the Lord.  Somehow I find my place; a little bit teacher, a little bit activist, a little bit minister and a little bit creative spirit.  In the second half of life, I want to lean more and more in, as if I'm sitting across from all of them, steaming chai in their favorite cups, straining to hear their own dreams and voices and sorrows.  I come from strong women. This summer is a tribute to them.

My great grandmother, once the national child welfare consultant for the Salvation Army, is quoted in the first one -- I never knew.  The second one was given to me by my aunt after she was deemed cancer free.  The third is an inscribed 1982 Christmas gift from my grandmother -- her favorite stories. The fourth is a woman whom I'm going to go hear tonight so she can sign my copy.

Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade by Rickie Solinger and Elaine Tyler May 

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan 

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 

Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor

Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War by Gbowee, Leymah

Just Lead!: A No Whining, No Complaining, No Nonsense Practical Guide for Women Leaders in the Church by Sherry Surratt, Jenni Catron

Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible, and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society by Dorothy L. Sayers

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine by Sue Monk Kidd

A Prayer Journal by Flannery O'Connor

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott 

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Wonder Women: Navigating the Challenges of Motherhood, Career, and Identity (Frames) by Barna Group and Kate Harris 

The White Umbrella: Walking with Survivors of Sex Trafficking by Mary Frances Bowley

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The Kitchen House: A Novel by Kathleen Grissom

When They Get Sick in the Worst Way

What I noticed while waiting for the call:

• The blossoms on the Crabapple, past bloom, drift to the grass.  Countless petals of white, spent effette, sprinkling an interment of time. Just last week it was full to bursting.  Now fall so the fruit can swell.

• The spots on the rug, half-empty bottles need combining, the chain left in a knot on the dresser, the mending never done.  The dusty details passed over for someday, when there was time. Today I make it.

• The silence.  Each one hoping, reasoning, shoving away the thought.  Wasn't I just writing him letters to urge him deeper into life?  Check the temp, the phone, the water, the phone again.  Keep the silence busy.

• The sorrowful song in my head sings: I know you have a little life in you yet. I know you have a lot of strength left.  Repeat and repeat. 

He's sleeping and wakes when I touch his neck. A long groan. A few weary steps. Back down again. Wretched week; upset piled upon upset. Sleep more, son.  There's nothing here to miss.

We are on the edge. Waiting for the grim.

The symptoms could be.  The signs point.  There were notes and tests in that little room the other night, where the waiting began.  Weary and cold, he laid under the blanket fresh from the warmer, the one with the scent that reminded me of his birth.  And together we waited to hear.

Only that little room knows that we pressed into the silence with settled concern.  That we blithely compared the spotted ceiling tiles to the rash coursing across his chest, his arms, his legs.  No one else laughed with us at the magazine's swimsuits and redundant chai tea products. Or saw that I lingered on the page that said When to Let Go and Move On.  No one was a witness to the banter we maintained even after the doctor left in his first stuffed silence. But no one saw the nurture, when I laid my denim jacket over his shivering frame until a blanket could come.  When I tried to decipher his groans; was it the neck, the stomach, the dread?  And no one was with us when we both released the heavy breath when the doctor left us finally with his bleak suspicion hanging wide-open and heavy in the air.

I asked my boy, "Is this the moment life changes?"  Wasn't yesterday regular quotidian, when we were once all doing homework, slicing peppers, thinking about a birthday?  And then in this one single evening page we wipe it clean and wait, pen at the ready, to write it in a different setting, a different tone.

When you wait for the call that says leukemia or not, you notice things.

The sweat on his head.  How much he looks like his dad.  How the fear dances in his eyes, liquid blue in this moment.  Which is all we really have.

The mistakes, the attitudes, the efforts and cries and persistence.  Silent phone in your pocket, you notice the tension melt away.  What's past is past and what we have can be made new. You notice the messy rug, but you don't speak it.  The verboten wrappers but you don't scold.  He's resting now, doing the right thing. He knows the exact right thing in this moment.  Maybe this is when to let go and move on.

It's been forever since he left his door wide like this, since he asked my advice, since I responded with this level of care, sat with him, touched his skin.  What the dim brings to light humbles the heart.  The moment is honor and fear, tribute and terror.  We walk it together.

The call comes and says just what I knew, deep within.  It's likely not.  It's looking good.  We'll keep checking.  It's not over.

But it's over enough.  We've begun something new.  The fruit is coming.

#

Two weeks ago this was our wonder.  When grim news comes at you like a gale, you stand up to it convinced it won't take you down.  Wasn't this the boy I just spent Lent fixing my heart to?  Wasn't this supposed to be the fruitful time?  It can't come crashing down.  Not now.

God's mercy came through with a different diagnosis. One that he's healed from, that was endurable.  It's all over and done.  All the strength is back.  The vigor is ours again.  What we've won is another chance to see each other in a new way.  We've won more days to learn to see each other as human, not as obstacle.  We win because we have each other.  Still.

He Had Something to Say

I've never shot a gun.  Never liked the sound of them, never liked the threat of force, the very idea that the point of the thing was to steal away a life.  But sometimes a mom has to take aim at the things that creep in to destroy and devour her vision of family.  At every stage of their growth, these boys that turn so suddenly to men, new threats pop-up to which we turn, petrified, and fire.  Eat or be eaten.  How good can that other option be?

When I determined my lenten fast would be to become more like Jesus by taking-up my three boys, to let my days be less of me and more of them, I made commitments to each of them: walking to school every day with one, taking another to lunch each week, and writing another a letter each day -- 40 letters over Lent, over 53,000 words that felt like a million.  This barrage of words was my attempt to reduce the distractions, to focus on the moving-forward story, to put a hedge of hope around the growing one.  The shotgun effect promises that at least some of these words could possibly, hopefully, hit the adolescent heart. And in this resurrection season, it means that the kingdom has a chance.

Today he wrote back.  And he wanted me to share.

#

Dear Mom,

Today I sat down on the bed in the office, laptop resting on my lap, reading through some of the things you’ve posted before I get to my work. And I’m just reading. Reading the stories of the things you went through as a youth. The times to laugh and the times to endure the hardships of life. The life lessons. All of it. Because really, there isn’t anything else that needs to be done except read, understand and absorb.

I know you wanted to do this for me. You heard what I’ve been saying to you for the past little while, and you thought that this would be a good way to communicate to me.

It was, and I’m happy that you put the time into writing these. I knew that I was a messed-up person with a list of flaws that can go around the moon a few times. An adolescent who probably won’t be able to fully comprehend life for the next…I dunno, decade. I don’t really find many ways in which I can love myself for who I am or what I do.

But I just read. I mean, you’re doing this for me, so I don’t want to be rude.

At first, I was resistant to the idea of you taking this much time out of your day to write these for me. I didn’t want you to, because I’ve got two younger siblings that need the attention more than me. And I know that writing is something that sometimes takes you a while. But you said that you were going to do unique things for both of them for Lent as well, so I decided that it was allright after all.

And I just read.

Because you asked me to.

You kept updating your one Facebook post that you began back in March, and in that time racked up likes and comments across the board. People who saw you post the letters were really supportive of what you were hoping to accomplish. Even Grandma posted a comment. That’s how big it got.

And I was just reading.

You either physically sent me an email with the link to the newest post, or I had to go on Facebook or the blog by myself in order to read. Some of them I skimmed through, others I read all the way. Some had embarrassing moments, which I looked at with a smile on my face and closed my laptop to remember how crazy that moment was. Others had stories from your misspent youth, and I have no idea how much you may have spiced them up to make them worth reading. Others were sad moments that you wanted to revisit in order to make a point, and I could tell from the way you wrote them that it pained you to do so.

There was a life lesson in each story, and I knew it. So did I stop reading?

No.

Heck no.

Each letter was something special to absorb. Each letter was something that you knew that I didn’t, and because I’m still only 14, it’s info that I’m going to be learning in the next few years…mostly likely the hard way.

Without realizing it, you created a mother-son moment with each letter. I looked forward to each day’s entry, wondering what else you wanted me to understand. It’s odd that you were able to speak to me more strongly in this way than you would if we were in a one-on-one conversation about the same topic.

I appreciate that you went and decided to do this. Even if it was just for Lent. It was well worth it.

And know that I’m doing my best to listen to every word you have to say.

I’ll keep reading. I promise.

Love,

Jacob

For the record, Hon -- nothing was spiced up.  Life is full of spice.

Live the Gift of Life

Dear Jacob,

This won't be my last letter to you, just as it isn't my first.  I've written you letters in my journals over the years, unedited and raw and private.  Here are a couple:

May 4, 1999
Jacob, I should have filled up this book by now with thoughts of you . The day of your arrival is coming quickly and I have to say that, spiritually, I am not very well tuned for it.  Physically, I am ready and waiting as sleeping is becoming difficult and my fingers and feet have swollen.  Emotionally, I have been prepared to love you since I learned of your coming. I only wish I could protect you your entire life the way that I can now.  I hope that the choices I've made on your behalf will have been adequate. 

You have no idea what kind of life you're about to embark on, my son, but in order for it to be successful, I pray that you learn to fear God and keep His commandments.  He loves you more than I could ever be able.  Love, Mom

March 27, 2010
Dear Jacob, I'm up in the mountains in a foot of snow practicing silence because I want to be able to hear and know what God is saying to me.  I wonder if that sounds strange or ridiculous to you.  I've never done this before and to be honest, it feels a little strange to me. 

But I'm getting used to the quiet. Everyone here is doing the same thing so it doesn't feel quite so strange after a few hours.  One of the things that I keep asking God about (did you know that you can just talk quietly to him in your head?) is how to be a better mom for you.  You are on my mind and heart and God knows this.  I think he likes that I care so much about you.  He cares about you too. 

So, I keep asking, "God what do you want me to hear?" and "How can I break the bad habits I've formed in the way I relate to Jacob?"  I know that I interrupt you when you talk to me and that you think I'm mean sometimes.  I know that I get frustrated and don't contain it very well.  I know that none of these things make you feel valued.   

I say to you boys a lot, "Just do the right thing." But sometimes I don't do the right thing. I want to ask you to forgive me.  Do you think that you can do that? 

I know that your life is yours and little by little as you grow I let you make your own choices. I'll do more and more of that and I'm looking forward to watching you grow and change and become who God made you to be.  I knew when I was pregnant with you that you were a child of great purpose. I can't tell you what that purpose is, but I can encourage you as you find it.  I'll miss the boy, but I look forward to the man. 

All that to say, I love you so very much.  I want to the be the mom that God wants me to be. I'll fail sometimes.  I ask you to give me grace when I do.  You have not failed me. I am proud of you. I'm looking forward to the future.  Love, Mom

When your dad ended his time at the church he interned at, eight months of youth camps and lessons and post-football events, he had the chance to sum it all up.  There was a wall in the youth room that was sectioned off, one square for each person and you could write anything you wanted in that square, grafitti, poem or collage. Dad chose to give them the last words from the book of Ecclesiastes.

When Solomon summed up all of life, his experiences that had given him wisdom, he came down to this: Fear God and keep his commandments. We can infuse life with all the vanity, all the striving, all the boldness but the worth of a soul is found in this one thing.  Dad painted it on the wall for them to see, washed out the brush and exited the building.

Ecclesiastes chapter 12 is a beautiful final chapter, when all is said and done, finished and settled, everything considered.  Dad used this same chapter when he gave the eulogy at his own father's funeral, the chapter that implores us to enjoy our creator while we're young and have the vigor to do it.  The chapter where it then describes the body of an old man whose capabilities are lessened, his youth blown away like smoke.  It's the experience of walking with God when we're young that carries us through into complete trust and unity with him when we're old.  These were the words your dad said in honor of his father; he knew him, he loved him, he lived him.

David's last words to Solomon in 2 Samuel 23 were, "Be strong;  show what you're made of! Do what God tells you.  Walk in the paths he shows you: Follow the life-map absolutely, keep an eye out for the signposts, his course for life set out in the revelation to Moses; then you'll get on well in whatever you do and wherever you go."

The last words Moses spoke to the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 33, "The God who lives forever is your safe place. His arms are always under you.  He drove away from in front of you those who hate you, and said, 'destroy!'  So Israel lives in a safe place, the well of Jacob is safe."

At the end of his letter to the Philippians, Paul wrote, "Receive and experience the amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, deep, deep within yourselves."

Jesus's final words in Luke 23 are, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."

All of these wise men -- men who changed the world -- had the same last thing to say, God is worthy of entrusting to all of life.

This letter today most certainly won't be my last words to you. But there will come a day when you read this over again and the advancement that life has offered you between readings will shed a new light. I would say the same thing as Solomon, David and Moses. I would nod with assent to Paul and Jesus. What we have, this life, is not ours alone. The Father longs for us to live it back to him, to wear his name as we spend our days, to move as if his arms are always under us.  We live and persist in living because that honors the life-giver.  We don't lay down our life until it is required of us and then it goes straightaway to God to keep. It was and always will be his.

You are a gift.  You have always been loved.  You matter.  You are welcome here.  It is Easter.  God is still in the business of making all things new.

Love,
Mom