The World In Between

Holy Spirit,

You've set heavy loads on our backs. Loads that make the burdens of this life feel light - those burdens which before seemed heavy to us. We are soaked through like wood with a dark stain which permeates our everything. We are unchangeably changed, and we cannot return. 

Though I miss the family I knew before, I see you more clearly in them now. I see heaven and eternity in them in a way I never did before. We are more whole and more broken than we were before. The wells of our conscience have plunged deeper toward the great Aquifer, and the river of life that flows out of sight beneath our feet. 

Though we bear the wounds of the devil's wolves, we are now elevated above their lair. We won't stumble into their den because you have scooped us all onto your broad shoulders. You walk high above the wolves, and they scatter at the sound of your footfall. 

Your stride sweeps us through cool meadows, over raging rivers, and up pine-laden hills, heavy with the scent of morning. We are held fast by your great gentle hands as you wade through the ocean; as you sing with the morning stars. You have mercifully kept us, cradled us, and brought us into a country we'd never known before - a country deeper and wider than we'd seen. We had prayed and hoped to be here with you...

We wanted the depth of your thundering voice to surge through us and rattle our bones. Now it has. You are unsearchable, unknowable, and beyond our understanding. We plummeted through fire and sharp rocks to get there, but you've brought us into your country - wise and old, wild and free. 

We've suffered great loss, and still suffer in this life, but you've made us honorary members of your kingdom while we're still on earth. With one foot in eternity, we walk this familiar road. And though our paths on earth have not changed, they've been swallowed up by eternity, and they look more hollow to us. More transparent. They are a curtain which we can't pull back yet - each street and tree and house is a veil. Everything around us is different, and we are changed as well. 

You've brought redemption and mercy to our doorsteps in the midst of our mourning, and your song of freedom to the rim of our ears. The sights and smells of your great banquet fill our world-weary eyes, giving us joy for tomorrow. You've given us a taste of your glory in the center of our hurricane, a peaceful table to recline at while the world trembles and convulses with labor pains. 

We have been broken and freed from desire for this world, fitted with garlands of precious jewels, measured for our priestly robes, bathed in the ruby-red blood of your Son...

...and asked only to receive. 

Receive Christ, receive mercy, receive strength, receive boldness, receive joy. And in the midst of this gray and foggy world, to shine like a bonfire at night, like precious gold under a white hot sun, and to flavor this world with the unheard-of delicacies of your table.

In Which How to Live is Forgotten and Remembered Again

It finally rained last night, and this morning, and I'm sure the grass and flowers and trees are rejoicing. I even felt my own heart drinking up the rain on behalf of the plants that weren't fully quenched yet. It's strange, but I was thirsty for rain too, and didn't realize how thirsty I was until it rained.

When I stepped outside the house this morning on the way to Tabor Space, I was greeted by the wonderful aromas of wood fire smoke and fresh rain. The whole neighborhood smelled like a campground on a wet summer morning. Birds were calling out their good mornings, and the firs seemed cleaner and greener. 

I got thinking about it: how the rain falls when it's told, the grass grows, and continues to grow after it's cut.

Flowers keep coming back year after year and not giving up. The trees don't seem worried or stressed out. They keep adding new growth every spring. The birds keep waking up at 4:45 every morning, and the squirrels are still making plans for winter. I suppose I could take a hint from all of this. I know I need to keep growing as well, and reaching and producing. A lot of the time I feel dormant, or wish I was dormant, just sleeping the world away. In some ways, I've gone into hiding and put my mind out of this world. I don't want to be here...I want to be in God's country. I'ts just not the right time yet. 

I get a little lost in my wishful thinking. I forget how to live. I've experienced so much death that I've forgotten how to live. I find myself envying people who are oblivious to the horrors I've experienced, just as I was once oblivious to the horrors that others have seen. They've got it so good - they literally have no idea how good they've got it. I used to have that beautiful innocence too, and I miss it so badly. I was touched by the pain in this world - the pain of other people - but it was never my own loss. I didn't know what suicide did to those it left behind. Now that I know, I can't un-know it. I can't un-see the horrors I've witnessed. How can I go on as before? Well, I can't. Horror changes a person. (True horror, that is...not the Hollywood stuff that can be switched off with a button - as gruesome and evil as it is).

We, as people, weren't meant to process the unfathomable terrors that are possible in this world, which take place daily. That's why we have words like: unfathomable, unbelievable, incredulous, unimaginable, incomprehensible, unknowable, inconceivable, unheard of, unthinkable, and indescribable. There are a lot of things and experiences in this life that fall outside our ability to reason and understand. We can't do it. We try for our whole lives to understand, and we spend billions of dollars on research, study, medicine, therapies, awareness, and programs, but we're not able to stop it. Each new generation births horrors all its own, and no human hand will ever be able to put a stop to all madness, all confusion, all evil, all disease...all death.

Yet God keeps calling us forward into the next season, the next morning, the next dry spell, and the next rainfall. We are called forward into life despite our inability to meet the challenges which await us. We are forever beckoned forward into night after night, day after day, breath after breath, death after death, and Life after life. 

God has not made us masters of the rapids, but he calls us into the river anyway. He hasn't swallowed up our death, but he has swallowed up Death. We are not masters of our circumstances, but we are called to walk forward anyway, and to walk with courage. What we are given is the ability to humble ourselves, to grow, to trust, to choose God's path, and to choose love.

I've been having some difficulty in choosing life, but life keeps happening to me anyway. My eyes open in the morning. I feel hunger for breakfast. I want coffee. I want to kiss my baby and my husband. I breathe, I talk, I blink, I move around. Mostly though, I observe life around me; that pull forward (because that's what life really is - a pull forward), and I mimic what I see. I get out of bed, I take my pill, I make old person noises, I stretch and flop around in the blankets for a while. I cuddle my husband and 14-month-old. I sigh.

I think it's in these observations that I'll be able to remember how to live. After all, the forward pull is still there. What else do I really need?

The Most Unexpected Reward of Parenting

Toddler Milestone #23: breaking a glass bottle in the grocery store. 
#iknewthisdaywascoming #myfault

Today, this happened: Broken glass at the grocery store. I flushed pink with embarrassment but kept my cool. Later, as I got my 13-month-old out to the van I relaxed my composure a bit. When he started digging for my phone, I got upset. I whisked it out of his hands and tossed it onto the seat with a very stern "NO." This isn't a new battle, but there are moments when I'm tired of reminding him that my phone isn't a teething toy. 

He looked at me intently, studying my face. I got him buckled into his car seat and we went home, and then it hit me. I was struck by a beautiful revelation, and for me it became the most unexpected reward of parenting so far:

He doesn't cringe when we're angry.

I love, love, love his hugs and kisses and smiles, and the way he curls into me when he's settling down for a nap. I love that he reaches for me, calls me "Mama", and pulls me along by my finger. But the most rewarding thing so far has been the separation he feels between himself and our anger. Our foreheads get squished up, we huff out angry air, we speak in heavy tones and tell him, "No, don't hit me." or "No, don't play in the trash can. Play with this instead." and "Don't scratch me." 

Sometimes he cries with frustration because we set him down (if he won't stop hitting) but he never seems afraid of us. I keep expecting him to cringe, wince, flinch, blink, and try to squirm or run away. Instead, he looks into our frustrated faces without fear. His body is relaxed, his face is calm, and he doesn't associate our emotions with physical harm to himself. This may be something that you take for granted, but it's a total surprise to me. 

I received my first spanking when I was three months old, because I was crying as my diaper was being changed. My dad thought that was a pretty silly thing for an infant to do, and I imagine that he was upset that I wouldn't stop crying "for no reason". I quickly learned that when Dad was angry with me, it meant physical harm to myself. My husband and I were both raised with "anger spankings", and both of us were afraid that we would perpetuate this unhealthy discipline style onto our own kids in the future. Our little guy is now beginning his toddler years (Months? Years?) and has never been hit. We both realize that there are probably healthy and constructive ways to parent with spankings (depending on the temperament of the child and the situation at hand), but it's not an approach we want to take if at all possible.

Our toddler is sometimes headstrong, willful, defiant, and stubborn, but hey that's kids for you, right? And there's a plus side to toddlers' tendency to repeat an action a thousand million times: If they quit so easily, then would they ever learn to talk? Their willful persistence helps them grow in so many areas of their lives, because if they fall, they'll get back up. If they fail, they'll try again. If they get hurt, they'll bounce back. They aren't crushed by failure. So yes, of course there will be times when that gift ruffles our feathers, but we're not going to try and beat it out of him. We're learning persistence, patience, and "stubbornness" too - the good kind. 

Perhaps he's too young to be afraid of us, but perhaps not. He understands cause and effect. He moves his fingers out of the way when shutting doors and drawers. He stays away from the edge of the bed because he has fallen off, and it hurt. He knows that when these things happen, he feels pain.

The gift of his confidence in us is a beautiful thing. The fact that he can ponder our anger and learn to deal with his own (without threat of reprisal) is no small miracle to me. I fully expected him to shrink back or cower today when I got angry, but he didn't. And I'm so glad he didn't. I don't want him to cower before anyone's anger, or to be manipulated by the emotions of others. I don't want him to be controlled by anger (ours, his, or anyone's). 

I guess the reason I'm going through the effort to blog about this (during precious, precious toddler nap time) is because I'm so excited about it. I'm excited that I'm not repeating the mistakes of the past - I'm not bound to recycle bad habits. I can raise an emotionally healthy and strong boy and I don't have be out of control when I'm frustrated or angry. Most importantly, I'm not bound to take it out on him. I thank God for that, because I didn't think it was possible.

Have You Been Hurt by the Church?

If you've been been hurt by the church, you have something in common with nearly every Christian on the planet. If you've left the church because you were hurt there, you've got something in common with me (and probably a whole lot of other Christians, too). My husband and I are currently taking a break that has lasted a year, so far.

During our time away from church, we've had lots of discussions about whether we should go back, look for a different church, or not go to church anymore at all. Each of us has family members that no longer attend church because of past hurts, which is a senseless tragedy all on its own, and doesn't sit well with us. We don't want to quit on God's people, but how can we risk being hurt again? 

Here's a bit of my story...

I've been an active part of the church community all my life, participating with my time, money, and various gifts and services.

A little over a year ago, I lost my youngest brother to suicide. That same evening, I sent a text to all of my Christian friends asking for prayer. These are the people we went to church with, had coffee with, spent time getting to know, and served alongside. Some of them never even replied. To this day, I haven't heard a peep about it. Others gave an immediate reply of support, but in the days and weeks that followed, quickly forgot about the devastation that had wreaked havoc on my family and my life. They wanted to "hang out" again, do fun stuff, and go back to normal. For me, that wasn't possible. It became increasingly difficult to go to church, since we were greeted by huge smiles, "How are you?"s and the like. At church, I was not allowed to be broken, ripped open, desperate, forsaken by God, or even mildly sad (let alone depressed). The pastor that met with us (God bless his soul!) rambled nervously through the visit, and it was painfully obvious that he was in over his head and at a loss. He had lots of words, but he didn't know how to walk with us through our valley. So we left.

(Side note: I could write a whole blogsworth on the acts of love and compassion shown to us by a handful of awesome friends and relatives, but for the sake of brevity I'm paring it down.)

Now, over a year later, we're talking about going to church again. Partly because a gracious and generous act of love from a friend opened the door for forgiveness. She apologized - not having personally done anything to hurt us - for the shortcomings of our church and its leadership. Prior to that, I'd been having a hard time forgiving and letting go of my bitterness. Afterwards, the idea of reconciliation seemed a lot sweeter. She didn't have to stick her neck out like that, or even acknowledge it; she didn't have to say anything at all. But she did, and it helped.

So after all of that, here are my thoughts on Christians leaving the church because they've been hurt:

When we leave the church because we've been hurt, we have a couple of options...

1) We can use the time to heal, be restored, rest, forgive, and then return to church (or find a new one).

2) We can hold onto our hurts, nurse our wounds, feed our bitterness, and refuse to put ourselves at risk of being hurt again by opening ourselves up to relationships within the church.  

When we leave the church permanently (Christmas and Easter don't count, by the way), we end up hurting the body of Christ WAY more than they ever hurt us. How? Well, we've amputated ourselves off of the Body, which leaves the rest of Christ's people with a serious handicap. For example: One thing I love to do is help people in practical ways. Since we left the church, we haven't been contributing our gifts to the other members of the body. We've done service related things outside of the church, but even non-Christians do that. 

The other way it hurts the church when we leave is that there are other Christians going through hard times, tragedies, and loss, and they are also looking for people in the church who can relate, empathize, and simply walk through the valley with them. But guess what? They're not there; they left the church. The people (you and I) who could be of the most help (because we understand deep suffering) have left the church because we were let down in our hour of need. 

So if all the the hurting people leave the church because no one there can help them, then the next wave of hurting people are going to find a church body that is missing the very people it needs most.

To put it another way: Let's say my husband and I never go back to church because the body of Christ wasn't there for us. A year later, someone else from our old church experiences a suicide in their family, and reach out to the church for help. Now there's no one there for them, who can relate with their pain, or who can show love in a relevant way and be a lifeline. That person then leaves the church, too. The cycle repeats itself, with more and more hurting people leaving the church. 

So, we're going back. Not sure where, yet, but that's irrelevant. There are hurting people in the church who need us. If we leave the church because we were failed by others, then we in turn fail those who come after us, who need us. It's selfish and destructive to stay away from the church because of past hurts, and we don't want that on our score card come Judgment Day. 

Each one of us is desperately needed in the church, regardless of past failures and hurts. We have no excuse to hack ourselves off of the body. There is no substitute for your presence at church; your story, your love, your voice, your prayers, your compassion, your help, your worship. No one can take your place!

I'll close with this passage from Corinthians:

Certainly the body isn’t one part but many. If the foot says, “I’m not part of the body because I’m not a hand,” does that mean it’s not part of the body?  If the ear says, “I’m not part of the body because I’m not an eye,” does that mean it’s not part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, what would happen to the hearing? And if the whole body were an ear, what would happen to the sense of smell? But as it is, God has placed each one of the parts in the body just like he wanted.  If all were one and the same body part, what would happen to the body? But as it is, there are many parts but one body. So the eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you,” or in turn, the head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.” Instead, the parts of the body that people think are the weakest are the most necessary. The parts of the body that we think are less honorable are the ones we honor the most. The private parts of our body that aren’t presentable are the ones that are given the most dignity. The parts of our body that are presentable don’t need this. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the part with less honor so that there won’t be division in the body and so the parts might have mutual concern for each other. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part gets the glory, all the parts celebrate with it. You are the body of Christ and parts of each other.

1 Corinthians 12:14-27 (CEB)

images sourced from Open Photo (a free photo site) and edited by me with PXLR