by Christie Purifoy | Mar 19, 2012 | allergies, Faith, God's promises, healing, Jesus, Uncategorized
I’ve been so sick for so long that looking back over the past few months is like staring into a dark tunnel. I’m just glad to be at the other end.
I’m a little too worn out to fully analyze the experience. Maybe some things are meant to be endured and survived rather than understood.
Still, I do know that there is a metaphysical, spiritual conundrum that we never quite escape in this life. C. S. Lewis called it the “problem of pain.”
Why do we get sick? Why do we hurt? And, hey, if we’re going to ask these questions why not go all the way … why do our babies get sick? Why do so many children suffer?
Of course, I don’t know how to answer those big questions. Does anyone? Lewis himself offers a bounty of wisdom, but it isn’t as if even he lets us off the hook. We won’t find the ultimate answer in a book. I believe we’ll find it one day in a face. Jesus’s face. But, I haven’t yet looked into those eyes, so, for now, it’s all hope.
Even if we can’t fully answer the “problem of pain” on this side of life, I don’t think we’ll ever get close if we ignore the little problems. The everyday pain.
When Jesus said to pick up our crosses and follow him, I don’t think he was telling us to suffer in silence. To just shut up about it already! Though, I admit, I sometimes picture him rolling his eyes in response to my whiny prayers. But, in my mind, it’s a fond exasperation.
That picture – of someone picking up their cross and following – is kind of nice, actually. As if Jesus were telling us that even our pain is a part of the story. Even our pain matters in some way. Pick it up, bring it along, I’ll take care of it, he says. Maybe today, definitely someday, it will be dealt with.
I won’t forget the tears you’ve cried.
So, what do we do in the meantime?
I’m not sure, but for the first time in months, I’m taking a good look around.
By the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel I can see blue skies. I can feel a warm breeze. And the scent blowing across my face is the heavy sweetness of backyard orange blossoms.
Here is another moment that begs not to be analyzed. It’s meant only for joy.
by Christie Purifoy | Mar 17, 2012 | Faith, Family, God's Love, motherhood, Pregnancy
When we moved from Chicago to Florida, we gave away all of our baby things. There was no reason to bring a bassinet, a baby swing, or a boppy pillow halfway across the country. Our family was complete.
Some friends asked me how I knew. I’m not sure what I said, but I know, looking back, that our decision felt like the most reasonable one. It felt right. It felt wise. I think it was wise, given our circumstances and what we thought we knew about our future.
The decision to try to grow your family is very emotional, and I can remember congratulating myself that I was able to say “no” to the idea so rationally. So reasonably. Of course, I’d always had a hard time getting pregnant and the first trimester of being pregnant was even harder. That may have had something to do with the ease with which I said “no more.”
Here’s something I’ve learned since moving to Florida: God’s gifts are not always rational or reasonable. In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that God is wildly unreasonable. And we – well, we are too easily content to stay within our comfort zones, to respect our limits, to steer clear of obstacles and hardship, while all along God desires to give us more.
I’m not necessarily talking about more babies. Or more money in the bank account. God’s more, at least in the beginning, may actually look like less. The money is shrinking. The troubles are multiplying. The mountains are growing.
Yet, there in our midst, is God, and he is longing to give us more, always more. If he is holding back it is for a season and for a purpose, but all through history his cry is the same: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it” (Psalm 81:10).
I heard those words from God way back in August. I can remember the goosebumps on my arms and the question in my head: “What is God about to do?” I was slightly excited and terribly afraid.
I don’t think I’ve yet glimpsed the full answer to my question. What is God about to do? What is he preparing to give? I know that there is always more. More than I’ve seen. More than I can imagine.
But I have seen one thing … and it is very good.
A small blur of a heart beating furiously on the ultrasound screen.
And I have felt the slightest flutters of new life being knit together.
We have forgotten our “no” and embraced God’s “yes,” and it feels like nothing less exhilarating than a feet-first jump into a rushing river.
“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.”
Psalm 46:4
by Christie Purifoy | Jan 19, 2012 | Faith, Jesus
Wisdom is a treasure, a precious cargo worth seeking, but it can also feel like a heavy weight threatening to sink our ship.
Through wisdom we know that our days on this earth are brief. Like a whisper of mist. Like a flower that blooms and fades. We are little more than grass and flowers, and we know that “grass withers and the flowers fall” (Isaiah 40:8).
Through wisdom, we do indeed learn “to number our days” (Psalm 90:12).
How, then, do we hold on to wisdom’s treasure without sinking under its weight? How do we keep our spirits from tipping over into despair? “For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief” (Ecclesiastes 1:18).
The voice of pragmatism and reason would likely advise balance. Seek wisdom but not too much. In other words, don’t overdo it!
Yet, there is nothing balanced or reasonable about following Jesus. He is a lion and a lamb, not some creature halfway between the two.
The best way may be the utterly reckless way. Pursue wisdom with everything you have. Hold tight to it and weep. Feel the grief of that knowledge. For here is another paradox: there is laughter in these tears. Lady Wisdom “can laugh at the days to come” (Proverbs 31:25).
This is the laughter of children, the laughter of innocence.
To be like Jesus is to be utterly wise and thoroughly innocent, a serpent and a dove.
To be wise and innocent is to feel grief and joy that haven’t been dulled by fear. It is the wide-awake life he promised us.
“Awake, my soul!”
Psalm 57:8
by Christie Purifoy | Nov 30, 2011 | Advent, Faith, God's promises, Jesus, Scripture, Waiting
The Bible is an often cacophonous, centuries-long conversation with God about the things of God, but some of its most powerful voices have spoken to us out of darkness.
There is Job, who understood that God himself had “blocked” his way and “shrouded” his paths “in darkness” (Job 19:8).
There is Jeremiah, lifelong witness to unimaginable chaos, suffering, and loss.
Both stared into the darkness of their lives, darkness willed by the God they faithfully served, and saw … something good. But also something so mysterious they could not name it.
God spoke to Job from the darkness of a storm, and Job received wisdom, like a spark of light. “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted,” Job responded. “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42: 2,3).
With the sound of weeping in his ears, Jeremiah received a glorious yet inexplicable vision: “The Lord will create a new thing on earth – a woman will surround a man” (Jeremiah 31: 22).
In darkness, they were given Light.
And we who live on the other side of the mystery, we who are citizens of a kingdom Job and Jeremiah could only dream of, who are we to despair? Who are we to lose hope?
We, too, are promise-bearers. For, we know: He will come again.
“And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
2 Peter 1:19
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by Christie Purifoy | Nov 14, 2011 | Faith, Poetry, prayer, Uncategorized
For you on this Monday: a sonnet from Irish farmer-turned-poet Patrick Kavanaugh.
I suppose there are those who might find heresy in this poem. “Pantheism,” they would say.
I don’t defend the idea. If God is everything and everything is God then what good is God, I wonder? And yet, I do not think that this is a heresy strong enough to deserve much disapproval (at least not today in the United States). We have silenced nature very effectively with our parking lots and our strip malls, our corporate ladders and our electronic shadow selves.
This poem reminds me to listen for the voice of God whispering all around.
I can’t prove that His is the voice you hear in water and wind. But, to borrow Kavanaugh’s words, some arguments aren’t meant to be proven.
Canal Bank Walk
Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.
– Patrick Kavanaugh
by Christie Purifoy | Nov 10, 2011 | allergies, Community, Faith, Family, Food, God's Love, grief, healing, Jesus, motherhood
On Friday, our weekly pizza-and-a-movie night had to be postponed (and, yes, for those of you wondering, I make two: one deliciously normal for four of us, one dairy-free, wheat-free and “pizza” in name only for the middle child).
This middle child, our accident-prone five-year-old, had to be taken to the emergency room after a fall onto the cement floor of our garage. He came home late that same night happy to show off his new plastic dinosaur and the half-dozen staples on the back of his head.
I still remember, years ago, the preschool teacher who told me that if any child was going to fall into a puddle or trip on the curb it would be my son. Always. This has never stopped being true.
Twenty-four hours later, three of us kneel to receive communion. We prepare to remember death and taste resurrected life while the boy so recently knitted back together stands behind us. The boy who knows what death tastes like better than any of us. He does not yet receive the elements, but he is always given a short blessing, a gentle hand on his head.
Our servers are an elderly couple unfamiliar to me. They must be Sunday-morning regulars moonlighting at our Saturday-evening service. The husband places his hand on my son’s head and leans in close. He prays and prays until it seems that the attention of a whole room has condensed and fixed itself on this prayer for one small boy. I don’t remember a communion blessing that ever continued so long.
It is long enough for this memory: I am seven-months pregnant with my miracle baby, my-sewn-in-tears-and-reaped-in-joy son. I am filled up with a baby and with fear. Having waited so long for him, I am sure that this gift cannot be given with no strings attached. There must be some price, in pain, that I must pay. Until someone touches my own head and prays for me, and I see … well, I hardly know what I see, but it is as if my unborn son and his maker are alone together. Then I understand that I have only a peripheral role in the relationship between them, and I see that my love is small and weak compared with the love God has for the child he’s made.
Kneeling at the communion rail, I can see that the young couple next to me are also watching my son and the gray-haired man. I can see tears in her eyes and feel them in my own, and I know that this, this, is what it means to live in a beloved community. We have been so well-loved by God that our hearts break for how he loves everyone around us. We are loved, and we are loving, and our hands touching broken heads and fearful hearts are the hands of Jesus, always.
And the heavy burden of love that I carry for my son is shared. It is not, has never been, mine alone. Of course, my husband shares it, the firstborn (who runs to her room weeping as the car leaves for the emergency room) shares it, but Jesus also shares it and his beautiful church shares it.
We are a beloved community.
