Paint God's Big Picture

Dear Jacob,

When we moved to Colorado I had to assimilate. We moved into our house the first day of April carrying in boxes and watching over our shoulders the spring snowstorm that was rolling in over the Rockies. We went from spring to winter in about a minute. That was new. On trash days, the neighbors would pile up can upon can at their curb and I couldn't detect a hint of recycling. This was new. The very first time I went to the grocery store, there was country music playing and I sighed and wondered just how much new I'd really have to endure.

Part of my assimilation came in the things we had to take up and part in the things we had to give up. We took up a renewed hope, a hope that our lives would hold new meaning and effectiveness. We took up new relationships, wondering all the while which of them would be life-changing or even life-long. We took up trust in a new community, one that we thought might help us raise you three.

One of the things we gave up had to do with our parenting structures.  The designs we'd made in our old home and way of life, wouldn't fit will with the structure we were merging ourselves into here. We gave up a habit of worshiping together and let you go to kids' classes. We gave up exclusive discretion of how we presented the gospel message to the three of you. We gave up being your sole teachers and leaned on the community to play a greater training role in your lives.

I taught you the Scriptures from the beginning.  In our daily school time we included Bible lessons. Some had an impact and many didn't which is no different from any other person. But day after day with all the other tasks at hand, I think it became more a part of our curriculum than it became a part of your heart. Despite this, I persevered to teach you the nuances of knowing and following Christ and left you and the Spirit alone to make your connections.

My gospel presentation to you was always one of journey and desire. To follow Christ, you accept his invitation to be like him again and again and again.  As you remain available he guides you and before long, drawn from your very foundation, you'll genuinely identify yourself as a Christ follower. When you understand that he loves you, even died for you and your sins and rose again establishing a new life in order to give you the opportunity to be a dwelling place for God and when your response to that is service and selflessness, you'll know you belong to him.

I never wanted to use that phrase, "ask Jesus in your heart" because I didn't and don't see it in Scripture anywhere as a method by which we are to know Jesus and I didn't want you to think that lasting faith comes in a moment. That was the way I was told to enter God's kingdom and there have been many times in my life that I doubted my own "moment." This led me into some distressing questioning that I wanted you to avoid. I know now, that questioning will happen no matter what set of words we use to bring people to Jesus.

Our new church in Denver held new promises and as such we had to give up some of the shelter we'd erected, the assumption that being "pastor parents" was enough, and the fear that community could potentially fail us. As much as we had to entrust our future to the Father, we had to entrust you as well. I had to consent to let you participate in the children's ministry, with it's balance of well-meaning and flaws. It wasn't my favorite move, but it was one tool that would help you assimilate into our new way of life.

When I released you to go to children's classes at our church I knew that there would be some competing ideas you'd have to grapple with.  There would be some who taught you that you had to pray a prayer to be saved and then try your hardest to be good thereafter. There would be those who explained that God and Satan were equal adversaries who would equally tempt and guide you your whole life. There would be those who would teach you that salvation was necessary so that you could go to heaven one day when you die, like you were getting in on God's IPO and all you had to do was let your investment sit there until you cashed out. I knew these slighted teachings would show up, but I had to trust that God would, even so, invite you to himself.

I have always taught you something different. I have taught you that God is busy about renewing his creation -- a renewal that we can witness when we understand that we are now his temple. You see, God is a tabernacling God; he likes to be with his people. He is not distant. He is not far. He is with. As his people wandered around the wilderness he was with them in cloud and in fire.  He gave them the plans for a tent that would mark a space where he was with his people, a tent that would foreshadow the very lives we would have one day in Christ, covered and full of sacrifice and mercy.

He did similar things as you move through Scripture. In allowing Solomon to build a temple, he established that he didn't want to be transient with them; he wanted to be permanent.  In sending Jesus, Emmanuel, he gave physical evidence of his desire to be God with us.  His final remarkable act in sending the Spirit was simply to move in, to replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh and to be present with us always and forever.  As often as we allow him to take up residence in us, he continues his plan to redeem his creation. We move from being God-fearers to God-followers to God-dwellers. He moves in and he doesn't move out. That's how his glory fills the earth. That's his whole big idea.

The difference in these designs of how to know God and follow Jesus is simple. One way is man-centered and one is God-centered. In one we do something to secure a position. In the other God does something to secure a relationship. We don't stay the way we are and just smooth a God-colored paint on our walls.  He requires a different kind of a place, like a tabernacle in the wilderness, like a temple in the desert.  He has all the plans and all the ideas for what it should look like. Which means we have to give up our own and take up his if we're going to become his address.

I went to our cousin's funeral this week. All of us in attendance had the honor of hearing read aloud a paper he wrote about salvation when he was in the eighth grade. To this topic of living with God's spirit within us, Josh said this:

The idea of having someone living in me just seemed weird. Now, I consider it my greatest asset—it modifies my worldview. As I've grown as a Christian, I've increasingly seen people more as God sees them: dearly loved, but in rebellion. The Spirit also augments my conscience: I'm still tempted, but I can no longer allow a sin to run rampant in my life. Whenever I do something that saddens God, it also offends me (why would I dare to betray my savior) and He helps me conquer the issue. I also now have a peace, an unnatural, illogical and unexplainable peace, that I can call to whenever life throws something crazy at me. Basically, I did absolutely nothing to earn salvation; I just humbled and gave myself, and asked for forgiveness.

The Spirit envisions for us a way of living that is transformed by love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  I see you as a container in which God can dwell. You're, potentially, one touch point among many where his glory longs to fill the earth.


Love,
Mom

Live a Life Without Regrets

Dear Jacob,

I'm sitting in the Dallas Fort Worth airport writing to you and hoping my battery doesn't die.  This world of finding outlets and charging things at every layover has forever changed the world of travel.  It's humid here, I just spent $8 for a sandwich and Grandma needs to stop texting me so I can focus (Hi, Mom).

When I left home this morning there were four inches of snow on the ground. I put on my coat and gloves to drive to the airport and then I stripped down and left them in the van because where I'm headed it's supposed to be nearly ninety degrees today. Kind of a shock to my system, but the whole reason for this trip is a shock to my system.

For the past several years I've had one guiding principle for the decisions that I make: have no regrets. I don't mean that I say yes to everything, or that I explore all the ways I can have the most excitement every day of my life. I don't mean that I try to have a hedonistic position wherein I yell YOLO while I go jumping off bridges... because you know how I feel about jumping off bridges. I mean that there are times when I just know something inside, or I have a little voice in my head that deposits an idea, or I just feel a physical yearning to move a certain direction and when those things happen I stand at a crossroad.  I can ignore the impulse, push, voice.  Or I can move with it no matter how much courage or cost is required.

When I determined to write you a letter everyday of Lent it wasn't my own fantastic idea.  It was one of these promptings.  Daily, it takes me a certain amount of courage to tell you these stores and make these connections and show you the raw things that make me human.  It costs me several hours of my day and there have been days where many things were pressing on me, but I keep writing.  It's not a comfortable commitment, but it's the right one.

There have been a couple of times in this past decade where I haven't followed that leading, where opportunities have presented themselves and I found a reason not to take them. I had good reasons, but in the end I should have climbed a mountain, or said the thing, or bought the plane ticket and just pushed into it instead of opting out.

When my cousin, Doug, got married ten years ago, our family was in a tough place.  We were in Santa Cruz, living on a severance pay that would be running out soon. We were in a state of emotional gloom that soon would turn into spiritual desperation.  There wasn't room in our bank account to buy the tickets, the wedding gift, the time away from our search for work. Besides all that, he got married on my birthday, and the most selfish part of me didn't want to share the day. That was a minor reason, but it told me something. It told me that if I was willing to scrape the edges of my excuse box to that extent, then I was running from an opportunity I needed to run toward. I regret not going to Doug's wedding. I missed something that day and I'll never know what.

When your Aunt Karen's mother died I shrugged off the nudge again. My first response was "I'll be right there," but then I hung up the phone and looked around at what was happening. We were living in Portland, preparing to move to Denver in two weeks. We had half our stuff in boxes, dad was headed to Denver for some initial meetings already and one of you was sick. I forget which one. I looked at all the things that needed to happen, at the cost of flying four of us to California and the trouble of taking two kids and a toddler on a plane by myself and it was enough to make me back away from the opportunity. When I see your aunt now it's one of the first things that goes through my mind, "You didn't go." While I wouldn't call it self-condemnation, I do call it a signpost to keep me from taking that path again, that path that leads to regret.

When the events happened in our family last week I had that same first response, "I'm going." I could have looked at the cost, at the challenge, at the calendar and found good reasons not to give my presence to my grieving family. I could have chosen not to go.  No one asked me to do it, but those signposts of regret remind me that something is always to be gained from being with family, from going through grief together, from being there strong when one less person is now among us.

So, before my battery runs out, I just want to tell you this.  When you know that there is a true choice to make and when it seems like it would be easier not to make the choice than to make it and when that choice will lead you deeper into life, into family, into truth -- take that opportunity, follow that nudge, say that thing and get on the plane.

I miss you. See you soon,
Love,
Mom

Anticipate Getting The Keys

Dear Jacob,

I'm proud of you.

I wanted there to be a record of me saying this. I wanted you to have that moment of staring at words on a page that catch your breath a bit.  And I know that there's usually a follow up question in one's head when they hear this phrase, "Proud of me for what?"  So, I'm going to tell you.

I'm proud of the way you asked some important questions yesterday; of the way you acknowledged that you know exactly where your biggest weakness lies. It was impressive to hear you ask the questions that you did and to hear you do it with maturity and true concern.  You were in a state of openness to learn and you made that time into everything you needed it to be. You did it with respectfulness and civility. I don't know if you saw me smiling, but I was.

I'm proud of the way that you are taking joy in your abilities. You've worked so hard to get your grades up. I'll say it again -- you've worked so hard and it's doing what you want it to do.  It's doing what we all want it to do: freeing you to become the man you're designed to become. You have to know that I don't care about grades as much as I care that you care about learning. A disinterested student is more of a concern to me than a C-level striver. Dad and I are always looking ahead to your future and I'm glad that you're moving toward your future too.

I'm proud of the way that you have taught yourself guitar. You're really good and I love to hear you play.  I love to hear the technical skill you've gained and I love that you can play with friends and perform without nerves (seemingly).  I think this is one of the things you were designed to do.  You have always been rhythmic and musical and I love that you're using this gift to its fulfillment. If music does anything, it grows your heart and it unifies people with a language we can all speak.

I'm proud of you for being responsible to get yourself places.  For walking to youth group, for riding RTD responsibly, for getting yourself back to school when you had to run back for something you forgot.  I know that I can trust you to do the right thing when you're moving about the city.  I know that you'll call me when you get there, that you'll be respectful to people around you. That you'll follow the rules.  This is a great sign of maturity and I have no problem saying, "See you later" when you head out the door.

I did a little survey of some friends a while ago and I asked them this, "When did you feel like an adult?" Interestingly enough, for many of them they felt like an adult when their parents acknowledged that they saw them as one. This told me something that I already guessed, that becoming an adult isn't something you do on your own. It's something that you're led to and given the keys to open.

When you were born, you were a month early. I was expecting you to be late just because I was late when I was born. With first babies there are so many unknowns.  It turns out that my body expels healthy babies early which is such a marvelous gift that it's the one thing I wish I could pass on to a daughter.  No big deal though.

Grandma was visiting with Dad and I when you were born because my baby shower had been that weekend and she wanted to attend.  She had no idea she'd also be attending your birth. She also didn't know that she'd be stranded in our apartment to set up a crib and a nursery and wash baby clothes and cook meals while we were getting to know you that first day in the hospital.  But she did all of that.  The timing of it all was a gift from God.

Of course, Grandma extended her stay by a week. You were the first grandchild and there was great celebration in all the corners of our family. Meanwhile, Dad and I were strapping you into your first car seat in the parking lot of the hospital, latching you into the backseat of Dad's F150 and staring scared at one another. I think Dad said to me, "I can't believe they're just letting us take him home.  Don't they know we don't know what we're doing?"  We had this moment of gravity knowing your life was now our responsibility.

But I had drawn a wild card; Grandma was there from your first moment.  I watched her carefully: the way she lifted you out of your car seat, the way she gave you a bath and dried you off, the way she calmed you and spoke to you and patted your bum while you laid face down on her lap. I didn't just watch her technique, I absorbed her posture. She wasn't surprised by your spit up, wasn't alarmed at your cries. She didn't shudder at your poop or flinch at your pee trajectory when you were naked.  She was calm, loving, and settled.  All her baby skills showed up. She didn't ask me alarming questions, didn't tell me what to do. She just gave me an example of care and I drank it deep into my heart and that week, that one week of my life, made me into the mother that I am today.

When Grandma left for the airport. She was getting into the car and I hugged her and cried a little. I don't typically cry when I tell people good-bye, but in that moment I felt like my teacher was leaving me to take a test I could never pass.  I felt vulnerable, stripped of my confidence to ever be anyone's mother. Without even asking me what was wrong she said to me, "You can do this. You'll do just fine."

She may have said more than that, but those were the words that I needed to hear. In that moment, she handed me the keys.  I had been living on my own since I was twenty.  I had held down a job, finished college and paid for it.  I had met and made a wise decision to marry your dad.  I had been married for five years, paid my rent, worked full time, cared for other people's kids, purchased two cars, turned twenty eight and had begun seminary.  You would think that I felt like I was an adult by that time.  But it wasn't until my mother said those words and kissed my baby boy and said that she believed I could mother you well when I walked through that door into adulthood.

Parents have this amazing power over us. You'll spend your whole life trying to please us, whether you think you're doing it or not.  It's just the nature of the relationship.  Here's the thing I didn't know though, that I would spend my whole life trying to help you become your best version of you.  It begins now, by helping you make decisions and learning new relational skills while we're together, being concerned for your health when you aren't, and sending you into experiences that will grow and challenge you.  But I'm sure it will still come out later in your life in the the form of sending you money, giving you my ear, and showing you how to keep your own baby boy from peeing on you while you bathe him.

I can't even tell you how full my heart is in writing this to you today. I have this picture of you as a man with a satisfaction that you've yet to feel.  I have a vision that your ingenuity will work its best for you to build you a brilliant career that lets you do the most good in the world.  I believe that you're capable of being a communicator that can change things, a creative that will think outside all boxes, and a man that lives his life by the laws of integrity, and grit, and justice.

You have an amazing life ahead.  You'll be a great adult.  I'll keep the keys ready.


Love,
Mom

Redeem Yesterday With Today

Dear Jacob,

Here is the rough draft I made for this letter:

April 1st

Despair.

Hope.

Luck.

Home.

Redemption.

Betrayal.

Forgiveness.

When I think of April first these are the words that come to mind. It's a collection of the events and emotions of a decade. Tumultuous as it was, it was a decade that left me wondering many things.  Mostly this:

What's wrong with me?

That's not an adolescents-only question. It's actually been the bulk of my internal dialog for months. It goes along with, Will I ever understand my teen? Why is it next to impossible for us to have a stable life? Why have some people found it so hard to get along with us? What needs to change? At the beginning of the decade I asked similar things:  Why has God led us here? When will he lead us again? What do we do now? Where do we belong?

The truth is, the only thing that's similar about those questions is their level of complexity.  It's been a complex decade, one that has taken our entire family for a ride. It leaves me solemn because there are only so many decades in life and less than two in childhood.  

When I was growing up my dad always had the same employer. In fact, he had the same employer for four decades and then he retired. When I was a kid I remember thinking how normal that must be. To me, life was supposed to stay the same, to be predictable, to service me and my feeling of stability.  But none of those assumptions are true. Life doesn't have rules to follow. 

In contrast, your dad's growing up was largely different. His father had several employers and a few bouts of unemployment and failed businesses and failing health mixed in-between.  He was a kind, generous and God-fearing man.  So I can't assent that our character is a dictator of our stability. I can't embrace that what we throw out there is what we get back; that there is some formula that will acquire me the good things in life and a formula that will only acquire me crap. 

But I think that's the tape that's been playing in my head my whole life. I think that because I grew up in such a stable state (not that I'm ungrateful for it) that I hit this adversity, this uncertainty, and I get a little wobbly.  I want to be able to keep the boat from rocking because I think that's what I'm supposed to do. In the middle of the hard things my heart keeps saying, "This isn't right." But my head knows, it knows, that everything is always shatterable. Life is a shatterclub, to borrow your word.

This first day of April has been significant to me for ten years.  It was on this day ten years ago that we drove away from our home in Santa Cruz, and drove away from that church plant we knew God had moved us toward. We packed everything we owned into a storage unit in Scott's Valley, California and didn't know when we'd see it again. We put you and Ben in the car with duffel bags, a few toys, our computer, a file box of school supplies and a cooler. At that very point we became homeless.  

We made our way up to Grandma and Grandpa's house in Oregon and were quiet much of the way. It was a day for lumps in the throat, tears in the eyes, for feelings of utter defeat and uselessness. I wish I could pull my heart out of my chest and show you how it still skips a beat when I think of that day, of the heavy weight we felt, the culpability we bore for you guys. It was the only time in my life that I didn't have a clue of what to do, where to go or who to even be. It was almost a complete identity negation, but you and Ben were the only things that made us something; we were still parents. I think you saved us.

Life moved so slowly that next year.  Six months at Grandma and Grandpa's and then a move up to Vancouver to the free house your uncle gave us. Dad did get a job at Target after a year of not having one, after using up the savings until we were down to $26 to our name. For the rest of that year we slowly chipped away at the mountain in front of us, trying to carve out a purpose.  We slowly began again to establish something of a life.

When April first rolled around again we were breathing and eating and learning and growing.  It was a basic life, but it was happening. I determined that we needed to remember what God had done. We needed to have a personal way to remember that his hand was continually guiding us.  So I called up a friend who had begun a church for people in Portland who live outside and I told her our story. I told her that because we had packed everything we could into the trunk of our car a year ago that we now wanted to fill it with things for other people who didn't have homes, that we wanted to give it all to her and that we wanted it to be an act of praise to God. She gulped and said a grateful thank you. This began our family tradition.

Each year we've done something similar: given to my friend's church, furnished a shelter for women who are victims of domestic abuse, donated items to a shelter for homeless families to use in their first homes, packed a suitcase full of clothes for an orphanage in Jamaica, and given money to your best friend who was squatting in his house because his mother had stopped being able to pay the rent. April first has been our family's Ebenezer stone. On this day we don't forget God's goodness.

Four years into this, when Dad was done with his doctorate and Sam had joined our family, we were at a point of being able to decide just where we wanted to be. With all our hearts we wanted to be in Portland. We looked for months for a house to rent until we found the one that was a great fit. It had a big backyard, room for community dinners with our church, and a perfect space for schooling you. It was close to the library and the rec center, the grocery store and the freeway.  Grandma and Grandpa were that much closer and our church could actually be part of our daily life. The day we heard it was ours, it was April first. 

Five years later, to the day that we had to leave our home, he was giving us a new one. We had a new future, a community we loved, and three sons we adored. I was starting a co-op for you guys to grow up in and on the horizon was a great new job for dad at a local college.  That April first rocked.  And then the bottom fell out again when that job didn't work out for Dad. That year we searched long and hard for what God wanted Dad to do next. 

When the church in Denver called and said, "Come," we were ecstatic and we pulled up to our home here on April first, ready for the next thing. But, God didn't redeem this day when we moved to Denver. He redeemed it when we moved to Portland; when he gave us a home after that long wandering period of complex questions and he placed us in proximity to a community that loved and cared for us, even when we were perplexed and melancholy. The kind of community that even said, "Come on back" when our time at the church in Denver was done.  He redeemed the day, bought it back from despair, when we found our home in him.  He never redeems us so we can stay in our old life.  He redeems us to launch us into a new one.

The ensuing years have allotted to me some difficult April firsts. I've had to deal with some of those tougher words from my rough draft list. I never imagined we wouldn't be where we aren't right now at this time on a Tuesday. Never imagined that we'd learn more about forgiveness out of community than we ever did while in it. Never imagined that God wouldn't agree with me that this was a high holy day to be observed perpetually. Sometimes, spiritualizing days can take our eyes of the Ancient of days.  

God is free to move on any day he pleases. We like to box him in and say, "It'd be really nice if you could show up by this time." We like to ask him complex, unanswerable questions when he doesn't.  I've found that I'm pretty good at doing all of that.  But what I'm getting better at is just letting him be God -- knowing that he rains on the just and the unjust -- moving out of the way so he can care for all seven billion of his people because we're all connected.

He's good every day, somewhere. This is the day he made. Be glad

Love,
Mom