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.

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.

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.

What January Did to for Me

I was afraid for the month to come.  Knowing I wouldn't be working, when I wouldn't have the happy distraction of preparing to teach and discuss missional engagement, when I wouldn't have the papers to read and grade. For the first time in over three years, I wouldn't be prepping to teach women another book of the Bible.  These were all the things that had kept my heart pumping, my purpose at the helm.

After eleven years writing out the second semesters' lesson plans, I spent our winter break bracing for the quiet.  When I thought about how the boys would all return to school again, I felt the fear that comes when one must enter what Parker Palmer calls 'unbidden solitude.'

In January we took another step -- do things ever stop shifting? -- and gave full mental assent to our now reality.  The '66 Mustang, that representation of whimsy and joy, was replaced with construction tools and a truck to haul them.  It is a daily reminder that vocational ministry too has been towed away.  For now.  And daily he goes to do the work that exhausts his body but leaves room in his heart for a new thing to grow.

And so I filled up January with anything that would make use of the silence.  I made (and kept) routine doctor appointments, doubled up on classes at the gym, stacked all the books to read in a satisfying tower. I worked through photos, auditioned for a job, and ventured into a new community of activist women.  I invited friends to my birthday brunch, the zoo, cooking club, to coffee, the play place, to lunch out and to dinner here. 

I also did things for my son who, in all honesty, just kept breaking.  First it was his glasses, snapped in two while wrestling with his brother.  Then it was a fall one day that induced a mild concussion and a sprained knee.  But largely it was his heart and in a courageous act of maturity we all began the weekly practice of family counseling.  So many things have transpired and he's taken the brunt of it all.  We want to be better helpers.  Wounded healers, all.

What January did was calibrate what is now regular: his daily work, prayer group, core group, Cub Scouts, youth group -- the regular steps we take each week.  This is the shape of our family now.  Even if this is all there is, can I consider it enough?  January appraised the value of my relationships, tweeked my expectations, fine tuned our existence.

But more profoundly, what January did was carry me more deeply into disillusionment -- which sounds sad and gloomy but isn't.  While there were a few days where the melancholy hovered, January took my hand and led me to real truths about myself, my faults, my family, my past.

There began a stripping away of things I thought to be true:  the family system that doesn't encourage nearly enough, my listening skills that were found lacking, the partners that are really consultants, the sweet boys that have their own emerging faults, the missional endeavor that was really attractional. I learned to respond to disillusionment with joy, knowing that what was happening was what was right.

January was a needed stripping away in which I let illusions die.  I re-examined who could input into my life, relaxed when false motives came to light, reviewed systems and re-entered a sphere where I was just a woman with a nametag.  There was the direction change that needed to happen though I didn't want to admit it. There was the marriage coaching with friends who appear fine on the surface.  And even the bathroom scale reports the 'grief diet' is no longer effective.

"As our illusions are removed, like barriers on a road, we have a chance to take that road farther toward truth." -- Parker J. Palmer

I am grateful for January. For its reminders that this present moment is always grace.  Always gift.  That discovering truth doesn't equal catastrophe.  It just reveals the direction in which to travel.

Ere Long Gaudete*

When my oldest was small and grew frantic about himself, I would wrap my arms around him and hold him fixed and give him time to agree with stillness.

And when I let go of his arms he breathed free from all the self-imposed frustration over people and expectations and self -- a toe-headed leader in 5T shorts newly able to direct his emotions toward meaningful things.

Today, I felt that relief.  When the snow came again, winter white hug from God, it stilled my soul. I quickly accepted the closeness, content to wane, and halted in order to receive.

There, waiting for me to grab hold again, was joy. 

When I watched the cold blanket fall and the inches build up against the stoop, I submitted to the Almighty agenda.  And I grew straight instead of scattered.  Because when I stick with his presence I stay the course of joy.

I remember, right after our world spun out of orbit, that there was a beautiful day when I had peace that was truly beyond my understanding.  For that one day I felt like a visiting sojourner in a place of contentment and faith and knowing; it was beautiful and light and welcome.  Rightly judged, in the following days I was back in the stampede toward grief and pain.  When I asked a friend to suggest what that day of peace was even about she said, "Sometimes God gives us glimpses of what wholeness will look like later."

Today is that later time.  And it isn't cursory.  I've been sitting on it, testing it, seeing if it's fleeting or fast.  It's actually been a succession of days now. A new way of seeing that I've known before.  When we pray so long for wholeness and lightness and satisfaction it feels a tremendous gift when it gallops back over after months afield in someone else's pasture.  A return of something that was always mine in the first place.  I lay it across my shoulders like the shepherd with a hundred sheep again.

The snow doesn't bring it.  It just reminds me that the joy is here whether I want to live in it or not.  Because we can choose to live outside of joy; to chase it with cheating, snap its hindquarter with the whip of obstinance, spook it with entitlement while it's on a loose rein.  But joy is really ever present even when our attention is given to fear and jealousy -- and people and expectations and self.

"For the one who pleases him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy.                              -- Ecclesiastes 2:26

Like all gifts, we receive it. When we open up our hands to joy we get wisdom and knowledge too.  And wisdom says that this is my right way to go: engage the meaningful work in front of me, be present with the small son finally reading, love the new church growing in my living room, light the advent candles, cherish the husband and be still.

I let it fall around me, everywhere, grateful for each flake.  Carefully designed to be my liturgy of joy.

#

*Gaudete, gaudete! Christus est natus                          Rejoice, rejoice! Christ is born
Ex Maria virgine, gaudete!                                            (Out) Of the Virgin Mary — rejoice!
Tempus adest gratiæ                                                  The time of grace has come—
Hoc quod optabamus,                                                  what we have wished for,
Carmina lætitiæ                                                          songs of joy
Devote reddamus.                                                       Let us give back faithfully.


......linking up with shelovesmagazine LinkUP: Joy

In Which I Become New and Present

When the snow came, I could feel the revolution.  Walking through the neighborhood, camera in hand, I was looking for my final moment.  And what I entered was an experience.

Everything was new.

Beneath the white sky, the contrast faded, the comparison dimmed and I could see myself outside the shadows. Sleek, impartial snow covered everything.  All sound -- nonsense and truth -- was muffled.  Every neighbor had to push it aside without exception.  We all began again from the same place.  And I discovered that even my heart at last had equal footing.

The wonderful thing about change is that it happens to us before we're aware of it.  It arrives before we can name it, like a baby born a month early, new and wonderful and so surprising.

The first new sounds came from my heart, "I'm entering this season with joy." There in the snow and frigid cold it was so obvious that this was just how it was going to be.  And I was glad to have that declarative statement signed and done.  Glad that there would be no more in-between.  The success of this season is not tied to the last. This season is new.  "Move into it."

It was like God put his great thumb down on the swirling and questioning and said, "Be still."
And I was.

#

Spiritual disciplines are those rhythms we create in order to conform more closely to image of Christ.  When we sense that we're a bit far from what God has designed us to be, we submit to a practice that forms our character and informs our spirit.  We combine the domains of life so that they aren't all segregated like some elementary school, but integrated so that the physical act can affect the spiritual becoming and the relationship can shape the faith.

When I began this practice three weeks ago Autumn's brightness woke me from my sadness.  I needed to cease from bringing the past into my present.  I didn't need to answer every question, just pry my fingers from the crank that churned the questions out.

This discipline of the present has brought me to that place of feeling whole and hopeful.  Breathing in more of God's design.  Living with open hands.  Ready to receive good gifts.  I want to see and smell and taste the days and know that whatever form they take, they are for me when I am present and pure.

#

We sat in the living room, mugs of coffee and tea, listening to the story of my friend who amazes me with her ability to see the ends of God.  It hasn't been without work.  It hasn't been without pushing hard into the promises of God and testing them to see if they will hold fast and true.  He thinks she's beautiful and covered and so desirable. She knows that now.  Her bones can live.

And all the friends who've said, "We'll go with you into this new wholeness," drank from their mugs and nodded and said, "This is the kind of church we're going to be."  My friend, my season, my church, my wholeness: I was sitting in the middle of all things new.  It was fully formed and breathing before I could call it by name.

He is making all things new.  He's begun, already, with me.

###

If you want to follow my journey through the Discipline of the Present here are the links to each post:
October 30  The Life I've Been Missing
October 31  Following a Nudge
November 1 Courage to Risk
November 2  Marginality
November 3 The Discipline of Presence
November 4  The Table of Loss and Profit
November 5  When Cookies Come Running
November 7  What's Saving Your Life
November 8  A Closing Ode
November 9  IKEA and the Kingdom of God
November 10  He Gives Himself
November 12  Trying
November 13  When Sinking
November 14  Take Risks
November 15  The Success of Love
November 17  Inquiry
November 18  Keeping Score
November 19  The Practice of the Eyes
November 20  Being the Gift

Being the Gift

I nearly forgot the day.  The chance phone call pulled me out of the fog prodding my memory. I would have missed the moment, missed the nerves, the helplessness. What would have been worse?  Enduring the first interview in fourteen years, burning the arm pressing the blouse, quizzing the systematic theology in the bed at night?  Or forgetting it and disqualifying myself, inept and neglectful.

I endured.

That day I tried to marshal from deep within, dormant now waking, the suppressed theologian:  Is salvation ours to keep?   Are the good works even necessary?  How do we treat the homosexual image of God? What is assured about heaven?  This was no easy moment.  

I braved it with more blessing than brilliance.

When the distinguished professor left the room, satisfied to grant the faculty place, I let out my breath, received my instructions and then let my new boss, my old friend heavy with trust and hope, pray over me, my gifts, my students.  

I said, when heads were lifted, "This is the gift. Thank you.  

"No," he named me, "You're the gift to me."

#

The semester has been a series of firsts and fortitude.  With everything else swirling these months, it was all I could do to read the books distracted and write the lessons distressed.  Each week invited me to strip the dare and with its imposing cloak wipe away the dolor.  Each was a savior breathing confidence and purpose into my hollowed out bones.  

But when I sat down with them, I came alive. This group, these students fit just for me, pressed my study of hospitality, compassion, intercession. Let me lead them around negative perceptions, extend their good news and introduce new cultures and conversations.  Missional warriors, they pressed forward, sent, and came out faithful, remade and brave.  I'm amazed at their truth and grace.

Today, I wished them well.  Gifts all.  Thanked them for their fervor and fire.  Asked their final thoughts, more gracious words of affirmation could not have been voiced: 

 "A clear gifting... meaningful...challenged...favorite." 

All the convening grit, all the pushing through had changed, bolstered and surfaced my aptitude, my passion, my grasp and transferred ownership to them.  

What aching homeschool mother deserves such favor?  What jilted pastor's wife receives such grace?  What neophyte writer reaps such pools of expression?  What shepherd teacher merits such impact and weight?

I. No longer afraid to be the gift I was named to be.

A Practice of the Eyes

The morning came when my husband bent down to kiss my waking head.  Fresh from the shower he reminds me of all things new.

Yesterday echoed of illness and stillness -- not by my prediction.  But shouldn't interruptions be seen as invitations? What God had for me was presence and I was grateful.

Today, thinking the young son would return to class, I was midway into my own plan when, surprised, I turned the corner and bent low to rub his back while he let his stomach go. Again. Today would be yesterday in disguise.

Placing my gym clothes back fresh in the drawer, my words to the Father were, "Follow me around today.  You'll need to provide a moment."

More of the same; stories and tissues and bites of banana. What will emerge significant?

James says, when we pray we need to do it with boldness, never doubting the character of God, purely motivated to see him model what it means to be a doer.  So, I asked him, "Do." And he nudged his people.

#

The first knock, my neighbor (my friend) with scones fresh from the oven. Saying, "Thank you" and "I don't know" and "Let's be intentional."  Of course we will.  We've journeyed together these past four years far beyond the titles and positions into that realm of friendship where I am heard and altered and filled up every single time.

When you close a chapter that involves friends, where you've invested and devoted, you don't know what it looks like to be together in a different way.  When do we meet?  When do I know you'll just be there? When will we talk about the dynamic life?  I don't know.  But let's be intentional.

#

The second knock (can this be happening?):  My friend with gifts for a new baby girl that we're showering through the mail.  And then a gift for me. Something perfect, of course.  "Thank you" and "It's not clear" and "I wish."  And then couch conversations about the wrestling over where to find joy and family.  When I closed this chapter it changed things for her. I know. I know. I keep forgetting how connected we all really are.

If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each another. -- Mother Teresa

This friend, she's not so far that I can't call her a neighbor too, is a positive force.  She can push me and question me with all the love and grace I need to see things another way.  She defines things. Thinks the best.  Does the word.  Develops. I won't let go of that kind of good.  I'd be lost without it.  Oh, that we could continue kingdom work together.  It's not clear.  I wish.

#

They brought gifts so they could say more than just words.  Because what do you say when someone has freely handed you love and loyalty?  When she's demonstrated that what she says and what she does are both equal and congruent.  When you know she's excelled in prayer for you?  How do you express that because of her your vision and direction are forever reshaped? That you've found a deeper part of yourself because she was willing to bring the shovel and help you dig?

The same thing you say to Jesus who does all of those things for us; who gives us this honor of letting us reflect him to other people: Thank you.

The practice of giving thanks...eucharisteo...this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to his presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don't have to change what we see. Only the way we see.  -- Ann Voskamp

Keeping Score

Sometimes the weekend is both joy and sorrow.
Good friends and inspiration and dreaming and defining and then, too, teenage traumas and meltdowns.

A throwing up of the hands and a bending low of the knees. My calisthenics.

Tired from the exercise, my distracted mind can't even do the musts waiting unchecked on the list.  The calendar is unforgiving and the sun is going down.

When the moon rises on Sunday I think, "Tomorrow, I'll reset and do it all."  And then deep in the night, when that moon is mid-stride another son falls ill and I spend hours wishing him well and calling out to sleep that doesn't come.

Reset the plans and make room: for the boy in pajamas, snakes and ladders, applesauce and stories.

Thankful for his sleep when my study can happen.
Thankful for his shows that let me do my work.
Thankful that the fever never came, the storm passed quickly, the blue eyes are brighter at day's end.
Today he knew I was here.
Joy 1.  Sorrow 0

Inquiry

First, there was the Disruptive Librarian: "the purpose of the library is the pursuit of happiness first and education second."  Those big idea places inspire and hire people who are part wizard part explorer.  Yes.

There followed the Creative Maven:  "Creativity is a type of deviance."  When the social norms aren't connection and generosity and aren't moved along by midwives in the marketplace then yes again.

The Insurance Maverick laid out three things for a co-op structure: compelling need, ownership structure and intrinsic values.  My church-planter brain went fast to work to fuse it all.

I nodded with the Work/Life Integrater who said, "Forget balance.  If you integrate you don't balance.  You just live."  Words I've been living by for years already. Why try to be two opposing things?

The Impact Entrepeneur from Bethlehem. The Obesity Physician. The Student Scientist all filled in a night of passion and purpose. Thinking the best of one another opened the door for unity in our city through inquiry.

#

When the women took the stage with galoshes and strings, introduced themselves by their FEMA numbers and played their rustic songs about the September flood waters, I felt that growing sense of the present moment. That lump in my throat, nearly healed up now, reminded me that I still think in victim's language. These women, too, experienced those ferocious moments of "I'll never be the same," of deep breaths and shock.  They were acted upon. Displaced.  Pushed into a new path.  And to heal they wrote music. 

It was a melodic example of that quote that's been guiding me through it all: "feel the hurt and continue to give beautiful pieces of yourself away..."

There I sat, the Medicaid card in my own wallet, the fresh exercise in marginality, drawing inspiration from overcomers to move along. What music was I performing?  What new creation is coming of the destruction?  What beauty?  How much of this resurrection life do I actually subscribe to?  My personal inquiries set me back to finding the answers.  To pursuing unity.

I dipped my fingers into the unknown. I was asking questions my textbooks didn't know the answer to.  Inquiry is what being human is all about.  - Sara Volz, Student Scientist

The Success of Love

I am the mother of three boys.

I'm the mother of wrestling matches and dart gun wars, of broken ear buds and chipped front teeth, of ripped out knees, pocket knives, and half-assembled structures strewn about to pierce my calloused feet. I'm the mother of noise, of energy, of body odor and tears.  Of towels never hung, competition never ending and milk never enough.  I'm the mother of all the toilet seats left up and all the laundry thrown down.  And this is how I succeed -- by loving the people I've been given.

They're alive and they make me also. Their hearts beat for different passions, but they're beating, strong and daring.  Sometimes they argue and fight.  Sometimes they break and bend.  Sometimes they're more wonderful than I can bear.

And sometimes they're crazy loud.

I never knew it; the noise was the water I swam in when they were all home with me, all talking at once while we assembled science kits and multiplied fractions and (on my bravest days) painted paper mache. Three of them calling, "Mom! Mom!" daily was my normal and my base.  It wasn't until life shifted in this great drama, when those voices moved from our home to the schools that I realized the level of chaos I had thrived in.

People would ask, "How do you do it?"  I'd just gaze back a blank stare. Do what?  Live?  Teach? Breathe?  Isn't it just like you?  One thing at a time.  Intention and Care.   Did it look like I was merely surviving?

The chaos was the proof of the life.  It was the blood in my veins, the wind in our sails that pushed us wildly into the day.  It was unfinished and rough, fluid and full, drive and pluck and verve and vim. And the day I saw them off it stopped.

Today: The hours in my day without them are longer than the hours with. And in those hours I fill space meant for noise and fire and kick with thought and muse and words. I teach to different ears.  I give to different hearts.  And when the afternoon air grows thick and still I can only wait for them to return.

As much as I, abstract sequential, love the quiet, the study, the calm and order -- I love the moment they come back, bags tossed, cupboards thrown open, hunting for bite and bread and way and wont. Throwing off that other day, that other place, and breathing deep the air I saved just for them.

Today I am grateful for quiet moments, meaningful work, for the distraction of purpose.  But greater still are those three voices who can call my name and I know I get to succeed again.

Take Risks

A different board.  A different way ahead.

Today there was a room full of expectant friends.
New and old.  Push and pull.  Invitation and challenge.
Dreaming of the what, thinking through the why, dialoguing the how.

Risk saw a strong foothold today.

"We will have to take risks, to chance failure, to be willing to walk away from the familiar paths that have brought us to this point." - Alan Hirsch

When Sinking

This was a big clue for me.

After our Lenten fast was over and we had a few dollars to spend, we made this board so I could get some of the things in my head out where the family could benefit from it.

During the spring and summer, I filled it.  Religiously. With all the lists and quotes and gratitudes I could think of. The boys added to it a little. They knew what was coming up.  They looked and stopped asking, "What's for dinner?"  It worked well.

It's been empty for a month.

Q:  How do you know you're falling?  Sinking into the past?  Operating out of a former reality instead of moving into the next one?  Stalling out in the mire of grief, unanswerable questions, and pain?

A:  When you drop the things that are most like you.  I didn't weed the beds, didn't check the grades, didn't journal, didn't read. I didn't organize the family's calendar, finances, meals, activities.  I could only do what was in front of me, with strong sighs and weak resolve.

There's the weight loss, the bad dreams, the emptiness; all signs of depression.  And when it lingers into the second and third months you stop talking about it, hiding it because the friends have moved on and you probably should have too.  When you asked me how I was and I said, "Hanging in there," it was as honest as I could be, a lid to prevent the deep well from bubbling up.  Again.

I read this week that mourning is a maturing process. We push through it to recovery, acceptance. But depression doesn't move toward maturity.  It leaves us stuck. And you can only tread water for so long before you sink.

The fourth chapter of James addresses it all.  And, thanks be to God, he says, "It's expected.  It's necessary."

The chapter begins with a fight for control, one that ballooned up into murderous proportions, where spirits were stunted, selfishness reigned.  James knows that the only thing fit to follow the coarse is the curative.  That the way to mend a heart is to exhume it.  Let it out.  Feel it.  Be angry.

Sit in the "second storm" and let God realign the spirit he's looking for. James, like a loving older brother, holds our hand and says, "Here's how to do it."

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.  JAMES 4:7-10 

Submit yourselves to God.  Work with him. Hand in your victim badge. You're not entitled to feel belittled, betrayed, or beaten forever. He's not wasting this. Not for a minute.

Resist the devil.  Use the wisdom from above that James already lined out..look it up.  Put some distance between you and the thing that bubbled into destruction.  Practice virtue.  Make some breaks no matter how hard they might be.

Draw near to God.  This is what the spiritual disciplines are for. I'm engaging the Discipline of the Present.  But there's also solitude, fasting, study, gratitude.  James would suggest controlling your tongue, caring for the poor, practicing peace.

Cleanse and purify.  Because nothing wise will come unless we're first of all pure.  He's said it before and he's saying it again, "Get rid of the double-mindedness."  Are we believing the truth about ourselves or about others?  Get the motives right.  Let go of that vice you've got a death grip on.  That selfish ambition is so yesterday.

Mourn.  It's part of the cleansing. It's the only way to move from being that old kind of human to being new.  Humility is the answer to strife.

This is how we get to humble, how we see ourselves through God's eyes, loved and lifted.

Yesterday:  Grieve, mourn, wail.

Today: Cook. Plan. Think. Love.

Trying

He didn't know I was there. This fuzzy picture is my proof.

Proof that I'm trying.

I'm trying to become the kind of parent who can drop everything to be there for the program that means more to them than it does to me. He wanted to wear his Cub Scout uniform because it seemed the right thing to do.  He learned the National Anthem and America the Beautiful.  I'm so proud of him for doing it, for singing it, for being a part of a community that's bigger than himself.

I'm trying to learn this new language of homework and fundraisers and signing in to get a sticker to sneak down the hall just to watch him for a second.   Homework is the easy one.  Because he snuggles up next to me with his pencil sometimes.  Because I get to teach him sometimes.  Because he wants to do it to be a part of all the brothers doing their homework together.  It brings us together in that sense.

I'm trying to become that mother that can with grace and trust let someone else have my son for the bulk of the day.  His teacher is, indeed, a lovely and loving woman.  I can't help but appreciate and support her. And  the reading specialist, the music teacher, the art teacher, the gym teacher, and the principal who smiles at me each morning and tells me to have a great day as I descend the sidewalk sonless.

I'm trying on a new culture that lets go. A culture that says even though we're separate a lot, we can still do parades and picnics and thankful meals together.  A culture that says you, Mom, are the support we need  but if you can't do it then we can still feed him lunch.  A culture that says we're doing some serious work, but, really, come by anytime and get a sticker and sneak down the hall just to watch him for a second.

I'm trying to do this well, to lean in, to be a student and to breathe this second half of life.  This is what's in front of me today.

He Gives Himself

"May the God who reimagined a broken humanity take our gifts and intentions to work with him to restore health, wholeness and beauty to the world."   

Pentecost 26 :: November 10

Today with sons in pajamas long into the day, wishes for the next season being put down into happy lists, I purged the cupboards in our home, made room for the worship, removed the wax, shined the glass.

Tucked in the drawer with the place mats and the birthday candles, empty match books and stray Christmas ornaments I found that first pamphlet; the one from the first day of our introduction. The interview with my husband before our new community: Introductions and Epilogues.  And the deep welled up within me.

Why do we tuck significant things in strange places?  Did my mother do that?  Slip the momentos into the china hutch?  Tuck the memories among the vases and the candles we only pull out at Christmas?  Did I think I would stumble on it at some later date and sigh?  Perhaps I thought there'd be a time when we'd have friends around our table and I'd casually pull it out and gratefully say, "Look, this is what brought us here. This is why we're together like this."  Surely, I never could have imagined.

With everything put to rights I stored the paper with the other items I will cherish sometime out from now. Then, looking out into the yard at the naked grape vines, the breath slowing in the dogwoods, the hostas long asleep, I spoke words from a deeper place: "{our lost brother} did not bring us here. The Father did."  Then I took another breath and filled the deep with hope.

#

These are the last weeks of Ordinary Time.  And in as much as we both have and haven't started a new community we make visits to other places for worship, finding the beautiful people and expressions of this city we call home.  Tonight we went back to that very church we entered right after we first arrived.

That Easter morning, before our introduction to the new friends in the afternoon, we dressed our three small sons (oh, how they've grown) into suitable clothes and found this liturgical community that was a little bit jazz and a little bit Jesus.  They offered sweet busy bags for the boys, a feeling of family, and theology deep and thick.

Tonight, their losses are evident.  They've experienced the hard too.  I wondered, do they go through their own cabinets and find momentos from times of great invitation that turned to great challenge?  Do they ask God for answers or do they just tuck the past away and take the new journey?  In that room I could find many mentors.  We'd tell this same story I think:

God himself does not give answers. He gives himself.       - Frederick Buechner

Advent is coming.  Advent means coming.  And all of us seem to be in a state of preparation for that something new that's really about something very old.  A story that doesn't change; a God who walks with us no matter what.  "I promised that I would always be with you.  I am still with you, so do not be afraid. "  Haggai 2:5

IKEA and the Kingdom of God

Every church has a beginning.  And in the beginning are the visions: The philosophies, structures, and dreams.  There are the first humble conversations, the blank slate possibilities, the all important question of "who."  There are legalities and accounts.  There is information and communication.  There is prayer and struggle, hope and fear.

But today there needed to be something tangible, something to hold and ordain for service. Today there needed to be a communion plate and candles; cushions and carpet for the friends filling our home in order to become a church in our living room. 

Today we walked the aisles and gave our silent thanks.

A Closing Ode

The Journey                                               
One day you finally knew                        Five women began it – this sojourn to renew the mind.
what you had to do, and began,              Then we were six,
though the voices around you                  then eight.
kept shouting 
their advice—                                          Three and a half years
though the whole house                           Eight books of the Bible
began to tremble                                     Twenty more friends
and you felt the old tug                            Two retreats
at your ankles.                                          Brunches
"Mend my life!"                                        Two more groups.
each voice cried. 
But you didn't stop.                                  They told me the effects; I saw with my own eyes.
You knew what you had to do,                  This shaped them, connected them, moved them into mission.
though the wind pried                               We began in a place where we just showed up
with its stiff fingers                                    and we ended in a bond that made us new.
at the very foundations,                            Today.
though their melancholy 
was terrible.                                             Together we filled the canvas with colors
It was already late                                    from the stories of Jesus,
enough, and a wild night,                                        words from Paul,
and the road full of fallen                                         bravery of Esther.
branches and stones. 
But little by little,                                      And then James came and told us all the truth of the moment.
as you left their voices behind,                   “If you know what is right to do and don't do it...”
the stars began to burn 
through the sheets of clouds,                    I scratched out a vision for it, expanding it wider and deeper,
and there was a new voice                        gathered a few of them and said, “Let's do this.
which you slowly                                      Can we do this?” But my soul said, “No.”
recognized as your own, 
that kept you company                             It was never my intent
as you strode deeper and deeper              to create something that broke down walls.
into the world                                           It was my intent to build.
determined to do                                      But the foundation where we all began is gone.
the only thing you could do—
determined to save                                   I thought I could keep my fingers around it.
the only life you could save.                     When everything else was torn away I said, “This is mine.
                                                                 No one can take it.” And no one did.
- Mary Oliver                                             But in the end I chose to give it.

                                                 Because a good shepherd lays down her life for her sheep.

                                                 Because when you delay a death, what is the value of a life?

                                                 It was here that I found them, love inside their warm embrace.
                                                 It was here that I found that teaching voice, the heart beating fast
                                                 over truth. It was here that I struggled through the hard season
                                                 daring the words to find my faults and finally discovered what
                                                  wisdom would say: Above all else, be pure.

                                                 "Oh, the wildness of this night,

                                                  It's already late enough."

                                                  I can only do the next                                                                 right thing.

                                                          

What's Saving Your Life

Entering into the season that came unpredicted, I kept counting the changes.  Gathering them up like crabapples from the grass, amazed at how many I had to collect just to keep things clear.  Behind me another would plop onto the wooden deck.  Deep sigh.  There too?

When all the changes happen at once, seemingly too many to fill our arms or our buckets, we have to take a step back and notice what's still there.

A good friend took me to coffee and let me cry back when the changes were hurting like apples thrust at me by bullies. Her question helped me find my compass.  "What in your life will stay the same?"

I knew a few things: my group, my loves, my role as mother.  Though everything would have a new tint, most of my life would actually keep its color.  Still, it took me until fall to see it.

#

Another good friend looked at me through tears yesterday and said, "I have to tell you, 'no.'"  She couldn't join me in the new thing, the calling that's gone out before us.  It took me until evening to let that one fall to the ground.  Another change.  I thought all the apples were gone by now, raked up by the children weeks ago.

#

We look so intently at what's killing us that sometimes we miss what's saving us.  This is my discipline of the present. What IS the good?  What is the divine surprise of each day?  What is the hope disguised in the common moment? What do I need to breathe in?

Laying in a warm bed helping my tender boy solve his equations, focused on the shape of his nose.

Hugging my giant boy reaching around under his arms like I would a cozy boyfriend.

Walking my small boy to school, a half-mile confab on his seven-year old ideas.

Punching the bag pre-dawn and feeling strength advance from my biceps to my heart.

Silence in a room where there's sunlight and meaningful work.

Meaningful work.

When the changes keep coming (didn't you know they'd keep coming?) I keep digging in to what's real, what's still here, what isn't changing. This is my duty of today.  This is what needs my attention.

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."                             - Socrates.