by Christie Purifoy | Jul 27, 2012 | Florida, God's Love, Seasons, Uncategorized
When you leave the desert do you kick the dust from your feet? Forget what’s behind and look only toward the future?
I’d be tempted to say yes except for the view framed by my metaphorical rearview mirror.
It’s beautiful.
For two years I felt myself to be living in a kind of prison. Not a harsh bread and water only kind-of-prison. More like these words from Psalm 139: “You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.”
Hemmed in by God, prevented by him from pursuing my usual pleasures, my long-held plans, I was given only God himself. Felt only his heavy hand.
Have you felt how heavy that hand can be?
God loves us, but he can weigh us down till we can hardly bear it. Till we can’t bear it.
But, if his hand is heavy, his voice speaks comfort.
I can remember reading the Bible and feeling like those Israelite wanderers. But I worried – maybe this was no desert? Maybe I just needed to learn contentment? Gratitude?
Perhaps this wasn’t a profound spiritual experience – maybe it was only my own bad attitude?
I sat in church and wondered until a young woman I hardly knew (a woman who did not know the question I was asking) turned around and spoke to me. In the brief space between worship songs she said, “I think God wants you to know that he will not leave you in the desert. This will not last forever, and he will lead you out again.”
Ever since I’ve clung to those words: “This will not last forever. He will lead me out again.”
And those words were true. He is leading me out. I know now that not all prisons are hideous.
This is what I see when I look back: something beautiful. A perfect plan. A gracious way.
And this is what I say to the One who led me there: thank you.
by Christie Purifoy | Jul 19, 2012 | Faith, Home, Jesus, Uncategorized
We’ve signed papers, and, if all goes as planned, we’ll soon move into an old farmhouse in the Pennsylvania countryside. For two years dreams have been our only food, and those dreams are being realized.
Dream is a word I’ve always had trouble with.
When I was a child I learned words like sinner, salvation, and cross, but those good words twisted themselves in ugly ways until all I heard was duty, obligation, and sacrifice. My faith boiled down to what I owed to Jesus. There is little room for dreaming in a life of obligation.
Why dream my own dreams when Jesus might say follow me somewhere I did not want to go?
The Jesus who loves me – me! – and not my life of sacrifice taught me how to dream. I wanted to live in the city, I wanted a PhD, I wanted children. They were my dreams, and Jesus made them reality. Each dream realized was a gift from the One who is Love.
Until the day I came to the end of my own dreams.
Pregnant with my third child and only a few hurdles away from my degree, I saw a future that looked blank. The horizon was right up close, and I had nothing to aim for. The dreams I had chased for years had come true, but I had no dreams of my own left to run toward.
We cannot live without dreams. They are as necessary as bread.
But where do we find them?
I know now that our best dreams come from the kingdom of God.
For too long, I looked at Jesus and saw only the cross: a one-time event that left me in his debt. I saw but didn’t see.
Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection were not isolated events. They were beginning and ending. They unleashed something so beautiful and miraculous words just can’t capture it. But we try. We say, as Jesus did all those years of his earthly ministry, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!”
Frederick Buechner puts it so well. Speaking of Jesus’s first followers, he writes: “One way or another Christ called them. … They saw the marvel of him arch across the grayness of things – the grayness of their own lives, perhaps, of life itself. They heard his voice calling their names. And they went” (from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons).
Yes, we are moving to our dream house, but we are not chasing a house. We are chasing Jesus. It has always been his beautiful voice calling to us in the desert. It was his voice that said NO, and NO, and NO when we pursued familiar things like church involvement, an academic career, a life just big enough for three children, no more.
Now, we are living in his YES and everything that looked like sacrifice and hardship has proved to be the surest and best path toward glory.
Buechner goes on, “[Christ] called them to see that no matter how ordinary it may seem to us as we live it, life is extraordinary. … Life even at its most monotonous and backbreaking and heart-numbing has the Kingdom buried in it the way a field has treasures buried in it. … The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. … The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.”
We jumped into the river, though we had no idea where it might take us.
It has taken us home.
by Christie Purifoy | Jul 11, 2012 | allergies, Family, Food, God's Love, Home, Uncategorized
About a month ago, one of my closest friends had a dream. She wandered down a long, long driveway to find a house for sale. As she explored the property, she decided it was just the right house for us. The wind whispered in the tops of the trees, and it sounded like the word “jubilee.”
In eastern Pennsylvania, we drive down a long, long driveway to explore an old red-brick farmhouse. The owner has left a printout of the home’s history on the desk in the parlor. Reading it, I discover that the man who bought the property about 50 years ago was named Charles Day. I imagine telling my father, Mark Day, and my son, Thaddeus Day, that this house is returning to the family.
We make an offer. We try not to let our hopes rise to impossible heights. We mostly fail.
We walk the quaint downtown just a few miles from the house. Jonathan picks up a flier. In September the local golf and country club is hosting a benefit for children’s food allergy research. It feels like a sign. Your son will be safe here.
That’s when we spot another sign; large, lettered, and solidly real: “Gluten-free Bakery,” it says. We push open the door, hear the jingle of the bell, and wonder, “Gluten-free, maybe, but can they also handle dairy-free?”
We taste the most delicious gluten-free, dairy-free rolls we’ve ever had. Vicky shows me baguettes. Pizza crusts. Tell us they deliver bread to neighborhood restaurants. We can take our boy just down the street for a hamburger with bun. He’s never sat in a restaurant and eaten bread. Never.
Then. Oh, then. I almost cry. Unprompted, Vicky wipes the rice flour from her apron and says, “We can make birthday cakes. Gluten-free, dairy-free. Birthday cakes and cupcakes.”
She doesn’t know about the last cake. All those special ingredients. All the time. For a shared birthday cake that looked lovely and tasted awful. Not even the six-year-old, accustomed to the taste of rice flour and bean flour, liked that cake.
“Where are we?” I ask Jonathan. “What is this place?” Both of us with eyes wide.
It’s time to eat. We decide to skip the hamburger place. We can always go there with the kids, we know. Let’s try the Italian. We’ve never stepped foot in an Italian restaurant as a family, know we never will.
Jonathan opens his menu and says, “Look.”
I stretch my neck, see where he points. “What kind of small town is this? A u-pick apple orchard a few minutes in one direction, a gluten-free bakery a few minutes in the other. What is this place? Heaven on earth for the Purifoys?”
The menu says proudly, “We serve gluten-free pasta!”
Maybe, just maybe, this place is home.
