Archive for August, 2011

Book of Quotations: Love Stoops

renaissance art

I keep a book of quotations.  It looks exactly like any other journal, but it’s for a different kind of journaling.  Journaling with the words of other writers, if you will.  Here I scribble down quotations from all kinds of books: poetry, theology, memoir, literary theory, fiction, you name it.  I write down anything I want to remember. 

Sometimes I use these quotations later, in my own writing or maybe just in conversation.  But, it isn’t really about utility.  It’s about beauty.   Language can be so beautiful it stuns.  However, I am generally reading so much, so quickly that I need a way to hold on to those beautiful bits that I just can’t bear to let wash down the stream of words, words, words.

During our recent vacation, I read Ian Morgan Cron’s Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir of Sorts. 

It fully lives up to its title.  Which means that the story it tells is crazy and beautiful, wise and, frequently, very, very funny.

Toward the end of his story, Cron describes the life-changing moment when he hears (or thinks he hears) the voice of Jesus asking him, Cron, for forgiveness.  These words heal an ugly wound in Cron’s heart, but they puzzle him too. 

He knows in his head that Jesus is perfect.  Knows that there can never be any reason why He would need to ask for forgiveness. 

When asked, theologians, pastors, and priests consistently fail to unravel this apparent contradiction.  Finally, a woman named Miss Annie, a woman with no seminary training, does exactly that.  She tells Cron, “Why wouldn’t Jesus humble himself and tell a boy he was sorry for letting him down if he knew it would heal his heart?”  Cron interrupts with what he knows: “But if Jesus is perfect?” 

“Miss Annie ambled the five or six feet that separated us and took my hand.  ‘Son,’ she said, rubbing my knuckles with her thumb, ‘love always stoops.’”

Since finishing the book, I’ve been considering the truth of Miss Annie’s words.  I can remember years where the things I knew about God seemed to stand like a wall between me and His love.  Learn just a little bit about God’s power, his glory, his holiness . . . do that, and it can be hard to fit  your own miserable, tiny little self into the picture.

Maybe there are those who can hear a Sunday School lesson on God’s love and then feel it in their bones.  All I really know is that it didn’t work that way for me.  Perhaps my head and my heart are farther apart than they should be.

I will always be grateful that Love stooped down and came looking for me.  Like Miss Annie said, Love humbles itself, Love stoops, and what this means to me is that Love pursues.  Love chases.  Love makes itself small enough for even our short-sighted, human eyeballs.

Love searches desperately for one lost sheep, and love keeps on searching until that sheep is safe, until that sheep knows and feels that she is loved.

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Why I Love the “Jesus of Prostitutes”

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I’ve been listening to Mat Kearney’s new album.  These words from the song “Hawthorne” keep running through my head: “the Jesus of prostitutes is chasing my soul.”

Those words seem so wonderful and comforting, but it takes me a few days before I stop to consider why.  Why does it feel right and good to sing about “the Jesus of prostitutes”?  Wouldn’t I rather sing about the Jesus of overly-educated-suburban-mothers-of-young-children?  You know, the Jesus-of-me?

No, I really wouldn’t. 

I am not actually a follower of the Jesus-of-me (though, some days, I act as if I am).  I am a follower of the Jesus who loves the least, the powerless, the set aside, the unseen.  I am a follower of the One Who Sees (Genesis 16:13).

Pain.  Injustice.  Small, seemingly insignificant people.  We may look away or keep our eyes closed, but He never does.

You would think that prostitutes would no longer be among the unseen.  Not in our hyper-sexed, anything-goes culture, right?  But, of course, they are.

I am reminded of this when my friend tells me about a group of locals organizing together to show love in practical ways to the prostitutes who work a particular street.  I hadn’t realized there were prostitutes on that street. 

Unseen.

Ironically, God shows us throughout his Word that one reason he loves prostitutes – one reason he is their God – is because they see. 

Pushed to the edges of her community, Rahab saw the truth.  She knew whose side she wanted to be on.  The woman with the expensive perfume?  She was the only one who truly saw the Beauty-Deserving-of-Worship in that room. 

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I strive to have the clarity of vision those women had.  I accept that one reason they had it was because they were not among their community’s successful, powerful elite.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

This is Kingdom-of-God logic, and it turns the Kingdom-of-the-world logic on its head. 

It isn’t telling us to close our eyes, to accept injustice.  Rather, it says to us: “Take heart!  The Kingdom of God has come.  And all around you, and even through you, the tables of this world are being turned.  The moneychangers are kicked to the curb, and all is being set right.” 

The One who Sees, the One Who is Making All Right: He is a lion, He is a lamb.  He is the Jesus of prostitutes.

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On Weathering the Storms of Motherhood

Lily
 

My love for books is well known.  However, books haven’t always come through for me.  They haven’t always given me the answers I’m looking for. 

In my house, there is a particular shelf of books that have failed me utterly.

I’m honored to be writing over at Lisa-Jo’s  place today.  Won’t you join me there for the rest of the story?

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The View from Mt. Pisgah

(photo by yours truly)

We recently returned from our week in the mountains.  The luggage is still unopened, the mail stacked perilously high, and the backyard pool is green with neglect.  At breakfast, the middle child sighed and said, “I miss the waterfalls.”  We answered him with our own sighs. 

A great vacation is a rare and wonderful thing, but it exacts a high price: the unhappy return to everyday life.

Still, we remember the mountaintop views and know that it was worthwhile.  We have seen something precious.

There is a mountain in North Carolina called Pisgah.  It is named for the mountaintop on which Moses first saw the Promised Land, a fact which surprises me not at all.  Hazy blue vistas and cool breezes are my idea of milk and honey, too.

While I watched my family slide down a waterfall in Pisgah Forest (a feat I was more than content to simply observe), I thought about that land Moses saw.  I’ve been living on promises for a while now, and I considered the view from my own mountaintop.

And then I thought about promises themselves.

Why are promises the currency of our relationship with Him?  From rainbows to revelations, it seems we can’t know God apart from his promises.  Why is that?

In my own life, I’m usually confused about the value of a promise.  So much so that I can never make up my mind whether I should promise some good thing to my kids or let them be surprised.  When the grandparents told us they’d be setting up old bunk beds in the guest room for our Christmas visit, I knew it would be a better gift than anything Santa might bring. 

But should I tell the kids?  Should I wait to see their faces when they realize that their bunk-bed dreams have finally come true?

I decided to wait and let them be surprised and then promptly forgot my decision and, in a desperate attempt to distract them from their argument, their summer boredom, told them what they had to look forward to.  Bunk beds!  For you!  At Grammy’s house!

Oh, wait, didn’t I mean that to be a surprise?

I promised them bunk beds.  Why?

I did it in a moment of forgetfulness.  I was tired of their grumbling.  Why does God do it?

The truth is, I don’t know.  I started writing this post and imagined I’d have it figured out a few paragraphs in.  But, I don’t.

I do think that God’s promises reveal Him to be very humble in His love for us.  My own love for my children is tinged with a lot more self interest.  Give them something to look forward to so they stop bothering me?  Let them be surprised so I have the fun of witnessing?  Me, me, me.

But here is our God writing these incredible stories for us and, as if this weren’t enough, He is reassuring us again and again: you have nothing to fear, good things are in store for you, it all turns out well.

He is a writer who generously gives away the ending.  In humility, He wants us to know that He’s not about to give us a surprise that rewrites the whole story. 

He’s writing, creating, and taking us along for the ride.  Showing us, through his many promises, what it will all add up to some day.

 “Then Jesus said, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’” (John 11: 40)

God’s promises are mountain views.  They are a vision of what will be and what truly is.  Most importantly, they are ours whether we’re standing on the mountain or walking through the valley.

“Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.

Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.”

- from “Be Thou My Vision,”

8th century Irish hymn, translated by Mary Byrne (1905)

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For One Who Mourns

We’ve been putting it off, but at dinner yesterday we finally told the kids that their dog is dead.  We were able to put it off because Casey lived, not with us, but with faraway grandparents.  Still, they had always considered him their dog.

Because the miles are long, and we cross them so seldom, I imagined frowns.  Concerned questions.  I didn’t imagine tears, let alone heartbroken sobs.

There are some phrases that seem to show up only in books.  They are clichéd, like “sat bolt upright” and “burst into tears.”  And yet, considering it now, “burst into tears” really does seem to get it right.    

Her face crumpled, like a bubble burst, and there was a fierce and terrible sadness pouring out of her.

I was amazed.  Who taught her to feel so deeply?  It wasn’t me.  I have never poured sadness over anyone.  I keep it balled up tight like a painful tumor in my throat.

I am grateful that my daughter knows how to hurt.  Grateful that she will not or cannot keep it all inside (though I wish she had no need for tears; I wish she never would).

Today, I think of someone else.  I wasn’t with her, but I wonder if she looked like my daughter when she understood the news.  When she knew what had been lost.

Once, so many years ago, I sat in a church pew directly behind her.  I can still see her two long braids, perfectly combed and parted.  She shook with sobs. 

We were at the funeral for one who loved us both, for one we’ve missed every single day since.  Back then, I wished I could cry like that.

Remembering that day is difficult, but it also gives me hope.  I hope that she will, once again, have the strength, the child’s wisdom, to grieve.

Our culture rarely talks about grief.  We talk about recovery.  We focus on getting over, moving on.  Surely, those of us who believe in the restoration of all things have no reason to smooth out the emotional peaks and valleys of our lives?  Jesus wept.  Shouldn’t we?

“Now, O women, hear the word of the Lord; open your ears to the words of his mouth.  Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament.”

(Jeremiah 9:20)

(photo by yours truly)

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Greetings from the Land of Waterfalls, Glitter, and Unicorns

 

(photo by yours truly)

Okay, maybe not that last one.  But, really, it wouldn’t at all surprise me to see a unicorn drinking from one of these dappled mountain streams. 

We’re enjoying a family vacation this week.  The air is blessedly cool.  The pools and streams are icy, and when my children come out after swimming they look as if they’ve been dipped in gold glitter.  My husband, who will always carry with him the rock-collecting Boy Scout he once was, could tell you why.  Mica?  Quartz?  I don’t know, but it’s lovely.

I’ll be back in this space next week.  I’m just popping in briefly tonight to say thank you.  I’ve enjoyed one full week in my beautiful new online home, and I am feeling very grateful for the super-smart design wizards who have made this possible.  Thank you, Adam, and everyone else at McLane Creative.  Tech-y, computer stuff seems like rocket science to me and just thinking about it makes me bite my nails, but you made this process entirely painless . . . actually, better than that: it was enjoyable!

If anyone reading this needs help with web design and development, someone to help you take that “next step” online, may I recommend my new friends at McLane Creative?  They are the web design equivalent of a mountain vacation (waterfalls, glitter, and unicorns included).

 

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What, Then, is Prayer?

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I fear that too many of us approach prayer with a mental picture of ourselves making a laborious attempt to come before God.  Or, maybe we have a picture of ourselves trying and mostly failing to get God’s attention.  Either way, the effort is all ours.  The distance between heaven and earth appears too big to bridge, and our burdens seem trivial.  They are dwarfed by God’s vastness, and they are lost in the cacophony of prayers being made across the planet at any given moment. 

I’ve learned that prayer is not about little people waving their puny arms in God’s face.  Nor is prayer like my own small voice pushing aside all others in order to make its way into God’s ear.

Rather, prayer is like a river.  It is always flowing, and we are not its source.  Its source is the Christ “who was raised to life,” for we know that He “is at the right hand of God . . . interceding for us” (Romans 8:34).

To pray is to step into the rushing water.

Even the words we say are not our own.  We pray, like Christ, “Abba, Father.”  Instead of distance there is the intimacy of family.

And when we have no words?  We groan, but even in this we are not alone.  Our groan joins that of creation (and who can doubt that creation groans?).  Even better, our groans are echoed in God’s own heart, for the Spirit “intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Romans 8:26).  Our pain, our uncertainty transformed by God himself into powerful, purposeful prayer.

Quieting myself, I can just hear the sound of the river.  It is the sound of One singing over us, and His voice “is like the sound of rushing waters” (Zephaniah 3:17, Revelation 1:15).

How do we find this river?  How do we hear its voice?  And, most importantly, how do we jump in?

I’m not sure that I’ve figured it out.  All I know with certainty is that the river is there and sometimes it finds its way to me.

This week it found many of us at a monthly women’s worship service focused on the arts.  Women sang, women danced, women spoke, and women painted.  Yes, painted.

Some of us took Sharpie markers and wrote our prayers on one of several large, blank canvases.  Of course, I wrote the name of my boy.  I wrote the word Fear.  I wrote the word Food.  And then the painters began to pray and create, and our words were caught up in swirls of color.

By the end of the service, the canvas I had chosen (or the canvas chosen for me?) was covered in a wild rush of water.  The artist’s brush had spelled out across it: “The Healing River Flows.”

How could I ever think that my prayer for healing is mine alone?  Or even that I am its source? 

The source of my prayer is Christ.  The same one who gave me these words when I first prayed for a child: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God” (Psalm 46:4).  Back then, I read those words and knew that my prayer had been answered. 

Now I know that “answered” is not really the best word-picture for what sometimes happens when we pray.  Instead, it is less like being spoken to and more like being swept away by water that was always already pushing in the direction we longed to go.

We don’t need to fight to get God’s attention.  We do need to remember that our Savior with the voice like water has never stopped praying over us.

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb . . .” (Revelation 22:1).

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The Only Thing I Pray My Children Grow Up to Know

christie & thad 

The middle child, the oldest boy, starts kindergarten in just a few weeks.  Not only that, but he will ride the bus (which is, possibly, a bigger deal for both of us even than kindergarten itself).

I’ve been a mother long enough to know that the days are long but the years are short.  These summer days drag (how to fill the time between dinner and bed?), but I will wake up tomorrow and watch my son graduate from high school.  I know this, and it has prompted me to wonder: what do I want this boy to grow up to do?  To know?  To be?

Like most parents in these enlightened days, I say, “I only want him to be happy.  Whatever makes him happy.  If that means becoming a doctor, great.  If it’s an auto mechanic, fine by me.”  Unlike most parents, I suspect, I really do mean it. 

I’ve spent enough time around highly-educated Ivy-leaguers to know that the things which spell success in our culture (straight A’s!  a University of Chicago degree!) are not necessarily markers of either success or happiness. 

Not only that, but I know that there is some kind of Murphy’s law of parenting: whatever I plan for my child, the opposite will happen.  My father gave me only this bit of advice as I prepared for college: “Study anything you want, but be practical.  Don’t major in English or History.”  I was never a rebellious child, but Murphy’s law kicked in and, by the end of college, I was graduating with a double major in English and History. 

What then do I want for my boy?  For his big sister?  His little brother? 

Only this: to know deep down in their heart of hearts that God loves them.  Truly, that is all.

Unfortunately, there is such a big chasm between head knowledge and heart knowledge, between assenting to an idea or concept and feeling the truth of it deep inside.  I tell them over and over: you are loved.  By me.  By others.  But, most importantly, you are loved by the Love who created everything beautiful and that Love is vaster and more intimate than you may ever know.

I heard that too as a child.  I sang these words in so many Sunday school classes: “Jesus loves me, this I know.”  But I didn’t know.  I nodded my head and agreed, but I didn’t really know.

Praying that my children know God’s love is sometimes difficult.  It is as if I am praying that they suffer.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe there is some other way in which this knowledge can travel from head to heart, but the enormity of God’s personal love was only revealed to me in some very dark places.

Looked at another way, I am not praying that they suffer.  I am praying that they be comforted.

And this is what I want for my babies?  Yes, this is what I want for them: that, like Hagar, they will one day say, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

This is my prayer:

“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God”  (Ephesians 3:17-19).

I’m afraid that it will hurt, but I promise you: it is worth every tear.

“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42: 5)

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Why Staying in the Moment Isn’t Always Best (Or, Why Southern Summers are a lot Like Midwestern Winters)

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Understandably, winters in Chicago were long and hard.  Still, I enjoyed them more than most of my friends and neighbors.  I’ve always imagined that my Texas childhood created a snow deficit deep inside of me that no amount of Midwestern cold could fill up.  As much as we all longed for spring come March, I was never sad, even then, to see snowflakes fall.

The hardest thing about winter for me was always the thaw.  Those of you with experience living in frigid climates know what I’m talking about.  The thaw is that period (maybe it comes once, maybe it comes and goes repeatedly, every winter is different) in which the sidewalks and streets are impassable.  Snow has melted and refrozen until not even a polar bear could walk the ice safely.  Or, layers of snow have turned to slush all the way through, and it’s impossible to move without icy meltwater pouring over the tops of my boots.  Pushing a stroller through the muck and mess of a thaw?  Absolutely impossible.

The hardest thing about winters in Chicago?  Not being able to (safely) leave the house.

The hardest thing about summers in Florida?  Not being able to (safely) leave the house.

Obviously, we’re no longer in danger of breaking our bones as we slip and slide on the sidewalks.  But when my daughter asks at noon whether we can go for a bike ride, all I can think is “heat stroke.”  It’s 95 degrees and very humid and I actually convince my kids to watch another half hour of tv rather than take them outside.

There are bright spots in both seasons.  Here, swimming pools dot the landscape like weeds and as long as I’m willing to walk the gauntlet of sunscreen application (which always requires chasing the two-year-old around the house and listening to the seven-year-old whine that her face is white), we can enjoy being outside without too much pain.

In Chicago, the compensation came with sledding and snowman building.  As long as I was willing to bundle up three children in snowsuits and long underwear, we could forget the discomfort of cold noses and tender fingers for an hour of fun. 

In Chicago, I loved to sit directly on the warm radiator cover and watch snow fall past our third-story window.  In Florida, I sit on the small sofa and watch that day’s thunderstorm pile up in the west.  Seeing the palm fronds flatten in the wind and sensing the house go dark, I like to imagine that it’s cold outside.  The reality feels more like getting hit in the face with solid swamp, but I keep the door shut and pretend.  It’s very cozy.

More than cabin-fever and long hours spent indoors, these two seasons in these two places share a mood of longing.  In Chicago, I yearned for warmth and color.  In Florida, I want crisp air and sunshine that doesn’t burn like fire. 

I’ve often felt guilty about giving in to this mood.  As if desire is always an altogether bad thing, a temptation to ignore the good gifts right in front of us.

I think that is sometimes the case. 

However, occasionally we only recognize the best things in life because we’ve longed for them and waited for them.  Tulips in spring.  The first day in fall when the humidity plunges.

The goal, I’ve decided, should not be some stay-in-the-moment mental trick we play on ourselves, but a more straightforward acceptance of goodness in the present and desire for something else.  And why should these be mutually exclusive?

I love Florida’s daily summer thunderstorms.  I love the wind, the dark clouds, and thunder rumbling all afternoon.  But I am also eager for cooler temperatures and hours that can be spent outdoors.  Summer, here, is about enjoying and longing.

And when the cooler days come, I’ll say goodbye to the thunderstorms with no regrets, knowing that I loved them in their time, but the thing I’ve really wanted, the thing I am now prepared to enjoy, has finally come.

Hope justifies longing.

 ”But hope that is seen is no hope at all.  Who hopes for what he already has?” (Romans 8:24)

 beach going

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