Don't Make Worship About You

Dear Jacob,

It's Sunday morning and we're all still in our pajamas. I think it's amusing that we, a pastor's family, aren't off with church right now, but over these past years of gathering for worship on another day I've learned to love the rest that Sunday provides, the rest that Sabbath intends for us. While my last letter coached you on the merits of work, we were given a day for rest and I'm also trying to teach you what that looks like. Sabbath may be a letter for another day.

Sabbath isn't just about rest. It's also about sacred assembly. As a family, we're in this in-between time and don't have a regular sacred assembly, or worship, but we will soon enough.  In the meantime, we occasionally visit churches to remember what it is to give God worth, which is what worship means, to take part in communion as an act of re-covenanting ourselves to the story of Jesus, and to have our hearts turned away from ourselves and toward the miraculous ways of God.

On the Sundays that we decide to go somewhere to worship you fight the entire process. You should know that you're not the first person in this family to do that. Dad and I had our own moments of revolt when we were teens too. And admittedly, as a pastor's wife, I've had to force myself in the car on occasion... or for a whole season around the time that Ben was born.  Again, that's another letter.

Your reaction to attending a worship service is pretty similar to how you respond to attending the grocery store or attending the barber. You're a homebody and you don't want to leave, so this isn't unusual to just church.  But whereas you don't have to go to the grocery store and you don't have to cut the Jesus hair, worship is a different experience altogether in that, you're not attending to get something, you're being attentive to give it. I'd guess for most teens that this concept is hard to grasp.

A few Sundays ago, we went to a new church and you were so angry that you sat on the opposite side of the sanctuary and disappeared from our view. I get it. A little. You know these visits are only one-time deals, that we're not going to invest in the people or the program because we're building our own at the moment. I get that some of these sermons we've heard aren't very engaging; I've wanted to slink out of a couple myself. And I get that your insolence is a response to fear of something that you aren't familiar with, namely God. But when we go together we hear the same things, we are in a mutual experience and I'd be interested to find out what you hear and share what I hear and see just how differently one word can be communicated.

We want to be with you. We really don't like being over you or under you. We've always loved being with you. I actually don't believe that children and parents should be segregated in worship. I doubt the tabernacle in the wilderness had a kids' space.

When we went to Vintage Faith Church you had an interesting reaction: you loved to go. We'd stand you up on the chairs between us during the singing and and you'd respond to the music, read the words on the screen, ask us questions. What Dad and I remember most is that you'd get pretty touchy and affectionate. You'd rub on our backs and give us little hugs and you were in a state we rarely saw you: content. After a time of singing the kids would leave to have a lesson on their own and you and Ben were happy to trot off. The next week we'd do it again and you responded the same way.

When we were at The Evergreen Community you're reaction was different still: you loved to help. This was a start-up, a church plant, and we met in the party room of a pub in Portland. We'd move all the tables aside and set up chairs and prayer stations.  We'd light candles and set up guitars. You were all about the logistics of that.  During worship, you'd sit with us, or on the carpet set aside just for you and you'd read and lay on our laps and draw quiet pictures with our friends. When we were done, you'd lead the charge to move the chairs back. You felt like you had a place. You were a part of the community.

Now we're in this place where there really isn't a place. Church for us looks like a lot of dinner parties, a lot of whiteboard discussions and a lot of laughter. Friday night, church looked like celebrating your dad's birthday with bowling and laser tag.  Today we'll go help some friends do some repairs on their house, so today church will look like restoration.  It's hard for you to know what to expect. But you need to know that no matter what church looks like or what it does or how it behaves in the world, we always want you with us.

In wanting this, we are wanting nothing less than God wants.  He's pretty relational by nature and he created us to be in relationship with him.  He doesn't love it when we only live for him or we only get our directions from him.  He loves it when we are with him. Walking in the garden with Adam in the cool of the day had to be one of his favorite things to do.  And he gave Eve to Adam to be with him, a perfect helper for his emotions, his physical labor, his care of the animals. They were doing life together.  He wasn't over her and she wasn't over him.  That was what the fall was all about, but it wasn't what true life was all about.

Much later, in another garden, Jesus prayed that everyone who follows him would be unified, would be one in the way that God and Jesus and the Spirit are all one.  And to me that means that we are to be looking toward the same thing.  I call that thing the restoration of all things, including our relationship with God.  But when we hang out in places of dissention, we are looking in opposite directions.  It's a unity fail.  It's not "with."

We love to be in worship with you because on some level that's where I hand everything over to God again and again and again.  And since I have three sons, that means I hand you over to him every time.  It means I push a little less into my own desires and a little more into his and I'm reminded that his desires for unity are only hindered by my failures to pursue them.  Your resistance to just being with us in that context doesn't break anything anew, it just reveals that it's already, still, broken as it has been for thousands of years since that fruit was plucked from the wrong tree.

Don't be surprised when we say we're getting up and going to worship. Think of it as a parental adjustment, it's about us letting go of something, grasping onto new life again.  It can really only be about you when you determine that there's something you want to take with you and leave behind.

Love,
Mom

Face the Complexities of Work

Dear Jacob,

This is hard work.  Each day I start by considering what is the compelling story and what does that story actually say.  Most of the time what comes out is not what I anticipated and the story takes me someplace else. That's typical when I write fiction and the characters take over their own lives, their sense of agency typed out by fingers that don't feel like mine. But when I'm telling the stories that shaped my real days of breath and gain and toil I'm continuously surprised that they teach what they do.  The hard work comes in not getting in the way.

Doing hard things can physically drain us and push us into weakness and fatigue.  Our hearts can be both filled and deflated at the same time, our minds expanded past their limits, walls of old-thinking crackling down all around. Our brains are actually wired to scout the most efficient pathways, conserving energy for the importance of the beating heart. The body seems to lay the path for us: keep the main thing the main thing.

The past two weeks I've been working.  I've been pushed to my limits of knowledge, skill and relational intelligence. My desire to do my desperate best for the benefit of others has simply knocked up against the ever-present clock and I found myself nightly asking for "just six hours" to rest so I could rise early and start again.  The projects I've completed (so thankful they are past tense) reminded me what it is to be a learner and what it is to be a servant. I don't wish to be that pressed again but I do sense the satisfaction of good work done well.

You have never been one to embrace work.  As a small baby your work was to eat, sleep and poop. You had two of those down pretty well.  The third one left me combing books and websites and mom-friends for ideas to get nourishment into your body without the stress and strain. You seemed fine with the ordeal, falling fast asleep during every bottle. I was the emotional wreck. How could feeding a baby be so hard?  But it was and you endured because I held you near, sometimes splashing water on your naked body, and said this is just what we have to do.

Walking was work. You determined to postpone it entirely until you were fifteeen months old.  One day while we were in the woods you decided to practice your skills for the very first time, propelling yourself across our pastor's camping tarp with wobbly satisfaction.  And we proudly watched all chunky twenty-eight pounds of you and said, "Finally."

Poor Ben had an even tougher experience.  Once he was up and cruising around fairly well, we threw him a curve and took him camping in a plot on a hill.  Every time we stepped out of the truck, he'd go rolling down to the tent.  He'd learned to walk in complete flatness and now he had to adjust for elevation.  We often find that the work we signed up for is not the work that we produce.

Family is exactly like this too.  What we envision doesn't always emerge and we find that living in a family is not actually for our ease.  Some days, yes, there is comfort in being known and protected and enjoyed. But family might be the hardest work there is. When you live in a home with people you didn't choose it feels sometimes like a sinister deistic plot to destroy you.  But the truth is that while it's not sinister, it is indeed deistic and it's a plot to see you rise to a new life. In family we learn to push through hard things and we can be satisfied by the changes they bring. Of course, we can find ourselves unsatisfied but that's a demeanor of our choosing.

There are some days when the socks seem to multiply in corners about the room, bowls half-full of cereal encrusted milk teeter at the edge of the counter, towels lie wet and crumpled on the bathroom floor and the remnants of boys all about the house exhaust me. There are some days when I can't create peace between the three of you for any amount of money or threat or ice cream.  There are days when children empty my account of grace long before they ever deposit a dime.  And I worry and quarrel with myself over how to elevate the situation, hoping that you will magically all go off to college with some semblance of civility and decency and respect.

I read a beautiful memoir last month by a mother who said, "That's what a family seems to be, a team of your biggest fans who are also more work than you could ever imagine."  Here's what a mother knows when she's teaching her middle son to finally sleep through the night long after his first birthday.  Here's what a mother knows when she's washing and folding the same pair of pants week after week, again, finding them crumpled on the floor.  Here's what a mother knows when she's waiting in the dentist's office for the son with the abscessed tooth and two fillings done all in one day.  Here's what a mother knows when she's wishing Mother's Day wouldn't be full of fits and tantrums from the sons she longingly wants to celebrate.  Everything is work. In order to rectify and renew we must work and push and announce and counter and build to that end.  Blaming, resting, resisting, avoiding, denying -- these only move us toward atrophy.

And it's never enough; none of our domains is safe. Relationships are work. Learning is work. Saving is work. Loving is work. Building, achieving, restoring anything at all is done through effort, intention, passion and nerve.  "Work is so foundational to our makeup that it is one of the few things we can take in significant doses without harm.  Indeed, the Bible does not say we should work one day and rest six or that work and rest should be balanced evenly but directs us to the opposite ratio.  Leisure and pleasure are great goods, but we can only take so much of them."  This is spoken by Tim Keller, a man who has worked hard to bring the kingdom of God to the good people of New York City.  And still there is work to do.  We need more workers to do it.

I thought that I was going to write a different story.  When I looked at that photo of your dad letting you go into your first steps I thought it would be a story of heart-filled love and hope, a story of anticipation filled and of a progeny launched.  Once again, that's not the story that surfaced.  And it was hard for me to let it befall.

Love,
Mom

Let Your Yes be Yes

Dear Jacob,

Today is my favorite day of the year. It's the first full day of Spring, March Madness is underway and Spring Break is upon us.  Those are all great things, but they're not what makes today my favorite day.  Today is my favorite day because 43 years ago a teen-age girl gave birth to a healthy baby boy and walked away from him.  A hospital cared for him for a couple of days until your Grandma Lou and Grandpa Wayne could get to him and name him Chip. Today is Dad's birthday and you know I love celebrating the miracle of his life.

You wouldn't be here without him. You're half him. Which means that half of you is a genetic mystery and the other half of you is pure sweetness and light just like your precious mother, don't deny it. And in the other sense you wouldn't be here without him holding me back on the days that I was at the end of myself trying to get to you listen or understand or cooperate or just get in the car.  Dads are good for their kids' longevity sometimes. Similarly, you also wouldn't be here -- in Denver -- without him.  Here you've found, at your school, a community that fits and a best friend and even have hopes of a college you'd like to attend.  Yes, you've had to tag along for fourteen years as we've lived our lives, but if you've learned any integrity, loyalty and orderliness, the credit goes to your dad because those are the things he's all about.

I met your dad at church.  Big surprise, right?  It kind of was. Dad would come to my church in Fountain Valley, California off and on with his best friend, Phil. It wasn't that Dad was a church slacker and just showed up with his questions sometimes.  Just the opposite.  Dad was a churched kid and he was in college working on a Youth Ministry degree and interning at another church in town.  Because this meant he didn't have his own community, he would sometimes come hang out with Phil and I's college group for fun.

My college group was pretty big, but more importantly we lived life together -- kind of like what you see our Core Group doing now.  It was a really formative time for me and Dad showed up right in the middle of it, and when he did I couldn't stand him.

You heard that right.

He and his best friend were hooligans.  From my perspective they were immature, impetuous and ridiculous. I was dating another boy long-distance, so I wasn't even interested in giving these guys the benefit of the doubt.  In this dreadful sense I guess you could say that I "knew" your dad for three or four years though I hadn't ever said anything significant to him. 

One time our college group went on a retreat.  And though I still had that boyfriend a long-ways away, Dad and Phil showed up on the retreat and that was the first time I actually heard your dad say serious things. We also played a silly game as a group which Dad and I ended up winning and he picked me up and carried me out of the room in celebration.  It was odd and awkward and yet I think I began to see that he was just full of fun and not quite the frat boy I thought he was.

Fast forward -- I broke up with that boy and several months later I was at my group's Saturday night Bible study (yes, we DID that) and Dad was there and he commented on something with uncommon insight.  Right then I thought, "He's not what I thought he was," and right then I also caught him looking at me.  Afterwards, we all went bowling together but Dad and I just talked the entire time.

Your dad and I had our first date on Valentine's Day.  Because you have romantic and cool parents. Our college group was planning to all have dinner that night at the Disneyland Hotel and then watch the water show that has since ended because they put in California Adventure. Dad invited me to be his date. When we were together that night, all of us clinking glasses around the table, we got all these great looks from our friends.  It was as if everyone was thinking, "This thing you're starting, it's going to last."  He grabbed my hand at one point and said, "Oh, you have warm hands." Of course, as you know, your dad's hands are always freezing so it was true, but it was also a total line.  But I didn't care. He was nice.

I dated your dad for a couple of months and then in May he had a bit of a freak-out and said we needed to take a break for two weeks while he figured out what he wanted.  Here's the thing: when Dad decides something needs to happen, he just makes it happen.  He doesn't wait around and think, "Someday."   Just like when he sold the Mustang; he didn't cry over it. He just turned around and bought something else. Your dad gets. things. done. and. moves. on. 

During this two weeks he was deciding just what he wanted out of his relationship with me. I respect him for walking away for a bit so he could think straight.  When he came back around we had this mature discussion and then less than two months later he proposed to me.  Dad doesn't mess around.  

I'm the wishy washy one.  I caught wind that Dad was going to propose to me the next day and I honestly didn't know how I would answer him.  We'd only been dating for five months.  My parents hadn't met him. I had another year of college to finish.  How did I know that he was the right one?  I had a zillion questions and I sat up all night and asked God all my questions and made a list of pros and cons and talked to my best friend in Japan (that was when long distance calls cost you about $200). I second-guessed everything and I loved everything and I was kind of a mess.  

The next evening Dad and I picked up some take-out and went to Huntington Beach.  We sat and ate dinner on a lifeguard stand and then we walked on the beach to the pier. At the end of the pier he put his arms around me, said some things and then he opened a ring box.  He'd called Grandpa and asked him for his blessing and I was dumbfounded because I can imagine how that conversation went.  Grandpa's not much for talking on the phone... to a man he doesn't know... who's asking if he can marry his daughter... poor Dad.  Heck,  poor Grandpa.  I heard later that Grandma made Grandpa watch Fiddler on the Roof after that because apparently Grandpa didn't know that this was a tradition, for a boy to ask a girl's father if he could marry her.  You haven't seen Fiddler on the Roof either, but it's all in there.

And so my words to Dad when he proposed weren't, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" or a more gorgeous, "Of course, I will."  My first words were more of a sniggered, "You called my dad?!" So he had to tell me about it but I got the really short version of it because Dad was still waiting for me to answer him and had to remind me that there was still this question hanging in the air there. That's when I said,  "Yes."  He put the ring on my finger and we giggled in his truck all the way home. 

I asked Dad later what he would have done if I had told him, "No." And he said, "I'd have taken you home and that would be the end."  I was shocked.  "Really!?  You'd have done that?!"  He said, "Babe, I was certain that I was supposed to propose to you. If you weren't certain then that would mean that I had it all wrong. And if this thing that feels so right was really all wrong then I'd just need to start all over somewhere else."  There have been a few situations in Dad's life that have been like that. When someone says, "This just isn't going to work out," Dad doesn't sit around and ask questions.  He just says, "Thank you very much." And he leaves. Dad's not easily paralyzed. Dad moves on. 

You probably have a lot of friends who don't know their parent's story, don't know the deep and powerful love that was established before they were even born.  I think that you need to know that you come from a pretty determined Father and a mother who sometimes needs reassurance and convincing. You need to know that we've never been together without also being in the Church. This thing, this body, this people is part of how we do marriage. You also need to know that I'd marry your father over again, any day, any time; that he has captured my heart and I am stuck to him like glue. Your dad's love language is "acts of service," he'll eat any kind of pizza you put in front of him and he doesn't play mental games; he says what he means.  And to him when he said, "I do" it meant "until the day I die."

When he does weddings he says, "Love is an act of the will accompanied by emotion that seeks the best of its object."  Your dad epitomizes this definition.  He loves me unconditionally, some days by pure will--  as messy as I am -- and some days by simple emotion that he lets peek out in his texts and in his touch. But the thing I notice most consistently is he always thinks the best of me.  He never acts jealously or suspects I'm doing something behind his back. He doesn't think I'm his problem when life gets tough.  He doesn't remember the incompetent things I do and he's very willing to forgive when I ask for it.  That's what it looks like to think the best of someone. That's what it looks like to love.

When you commit to love, you commit to a good thing.

Love,

Mom

Live into Compassion

Dear Jacob,

When you were growing up homeschooled, you missed out on something.  It was called "invite everyone in your class to your birthday party because you can't leave anyone out."  It's a ridiculous rule and yet I completely understand it.  It seems very compassionate on the part of the parents who make their kids follow this rule, but it's not so compassionate on the kids who show up and realize they're just there because everyone had to be invited.  Demoralizing. You know what? You actually didn't miss anything important.  Carry on.

When I was in first grade I went to the birthday party of my friend, Kathy. She was in my class and I don't remember if everyone in my class was invited because it was about a thousand years ago now, but since that was the generation of the Birthday Party Invitation Rule, she must have. We were rule followers in the 70's because those 60's kids were complete rule breakers.

When I went to Kathy's party I won every game; musical chairs and pinning something on something else and games like that. I have to say, winning all the games was exhilarating. The first couple wins were a complete surprise but then I was starting to track with the universe and so when I won the next game it was like, "Well, sure.  What did you expect?"  The winner's circle was a fun place to be in and when my mom came to pick me up, I remember proclaiming snobbishly that I would need help carrying all my prizes out to the car because I'd had such a wonderful time winning all the games. Thank you, Kathy, for inviting me to your lovely party. I had a delightful time. Cheers.

I'm sure my friends were highly unimpressed.  I think they got over it.  I, on the other hand, grew a tad bit more conceited and it stuck with me for an entire year.

The next year when Kathy's birthday rolled around I was invited again (Kathy and I were real friends because that year she wasn't even in my class and I still got an invitation). This time I was smart.  I didn't want to do that same complicated juggling act with my plethora of prizes this year.  And so I went to the party prepared.  I went to the party with a bag.

When the first game began, musical chairs again, I promptly lost.  I was humiliated and for the rest of the party I believe I sat in the corner and sulked.  My friends insensitively called me things like "sour loser" and "cry baby" though I don't think I actually cried so that was a little unfair especially since they were taking home all my prizes -- which should have been enough.  I was angry; the universe had tricked me and left me the victim of utter injustice. I took my empty bag and went home.

A few years ago, there was this unbalanced actor who coined the term "winning."  He'd say it sarcastically in his character role on his sitcom show and then he carried it over into real-life interviews as well.  Every time he said it people mocked him because he was never winning. He, or his writers, started it as sarcasm but when he forgot that his fake life wasn't supposed to be the same as his real life was when the term took a turn.  Now people say it when you're being an idiot.

If you have to declare that you're a winner, you're not one. If you feel the need to always come out on top you're going to hurt some friends, destroy a party and make it completely obvious that all you care about is yourself. If we have to win an argument instead of show someone love and compassion, we've completely missed the point of living like Jesus.

Think about it.  Jesus was a pretty likeable guy.  He traveled all over being kind to people.  He wasn't a blowhard.  He didn't go around saying, "Hey, I bet I can light that bush on fire faster than you." Even though he was God and he knew it, he thought other people were pretty important and he showed it in how he treated them. The Bible says that God's kindness is what brings us to repentance -- which is a fancy word for change. When we force change, no matter how that appears to play in our favor, we'll still never get wholeness.

I understand the drive to win. Competition actually is our primary posture in life.  I read a book by a great guy named Henri Nouwen last year and he pointed out to me that we are much more likely to define ourselves by what makes us different than by what makes us the same. Imagine introducing yourself to another guy in your class and saying, "I'm the one who wears jeans like you and I have glasses like that and I always sit on the right side of the room just like you."  Adults usually say what they do, "I'm a writer" or "I'm the mother of three boys" or "I'm a professor." And we don't really expect anyone to say, "Cool, me too!" We define ourselves by what makes us different.

The things that make us different from everyone else could be good things like virtue and integrity and excellent guitar skills.  They could be the good things that we do like financing micro businesses in Africa, housing a homeless friend, or serving meals at the Rescue Mission. But they could be things that get us rejected like racial conflict and class confrontations and criminal tendencies.  The point is that competition is all-pervasive.  Nouwen said, "Competition reaches into the smallest corner of our lives and relationships and prevents us from entering into full solidarity with one another."

There's the rub; that big word -- solidarity -- means unity, harmony, or teamwork. And that's really the goal of life. Rugged individualism may look cool on the Discovery Channel, but it's actually antithetical to our reason for living. We won't get anywhere as a people, as a nation or as a family as long as some of us think we're better off alone.

The opposite of competition is compassion. Compassion means "to suffer with"  which is more than just feeling sorry for someone, or giving them money to fix their own problem, or even visiting their country to observe first-hand how they live. Compassion moves us to do more, to actually participate in what their lives are like, to enter into friendship and relationship and be okay when that whole effort displaces you or changes your priorities. It requires that we view people with reverence and respect.  It requires a lot of us.  That's why we usually default to competition.  It's hard.

But it's not impossible. Jesus proved that it's not. And all the people in the world who are following him who actually demonstrate compassion prove it too. We can be empowered to demonstrate compassion but we have to face our own broken places first.  We have to deal with our posture of competition and selfishness and disunity or we'll never be able to walk with someone into their own brokenness because we have enough of our own.

If we could care less about the victories and more about the struggles, we'll go a long way toward developing a posture of compassion. I can tell you this; as long as you think you should win everything -- and even carry a bag around to collect all of your prizes -- you have a ways to go. When we identify with the struggles of others and die to our own desires for the fun of the party that's the real prize.

Love,
Mom