by Christie Purifoy | Oct 28, 2011 | Chicago, Community, Faith, Florida, Seasons, Stories, Uncategorized
I believe in stories more than advice. In other words, I believe that a light is shined on our way forward, not when we finally hear the exact, right piece of advice, but when someone shares their story with us.
True stories contain all of the messy, untranslateable details of a life. Somehow, they also point us toward the maker of life.
I wish I could tell you how to live without the kind of community I described earlier this week. I wish I could tell you how to get it back. I even wish I could tell you that developing that kind of community in your own setting is the most important use of your time. But I can’t tell you these things.
If this whole Jesus-following-way-of-life is truly a relationship (as I’ve been hearing all my life) then we need to stop comparing our circumstances with everyone else’s. My marriage to Jonathan is fifteen-years-old (or fifteen-years-good), and it makes no sense for me to look at those still-awkward newlyweds and wonder why our lives are so different. Other than the fruits of the spirit, I’m not sure there are many things we can point to in order to say “that is a good Christian life” and “that is not.” At times Jesus walks us through joy and other times he walks us through trouble, but we can be confident in both that he has not and will not abandon us.
I lived in community for ten years, and it was good and it was painful, and I hope I haven’t said goodbye to that way of life forever. I could beat my head against my Bible wondering why my life no longer looks like that and how to get it back, or I can accept that when God empties our lives he also fills them up again. Not with the things we are missing, necessarily, but with himself.
In this world, we are wanderers. And that is not always a bad thing, not always a sin thing. We can wander quite a distance pursuing the good things of God’s kingdom on earth. Still, there’s little rest in wandering, and God knows we need rest. But where to find it?
God’s people “wandered over mountain and hill and forgot their own resting place” (Jeremiah 50:6).
Sometimes we need silence and emptiness, loneliness and barrenness in order to remember. We need winter.
The four walls of my suburban existence can feel like a prison, but they have been just the thing for feeling the heavy, holy pressure of God’s hand on me.
“You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”
Psalm 139: 5-6
by Christie Purifoy | Oct 4, 2011 | Faith, Family, God's promises, motherhood, Waiting
Taken yesterday by Yours Truly. Ok, it was six years ago. It just feels like yesterday.
I read tall, teetering stacks of parenting books when I was pregnant with my first. Not one told me how much it would hurt.
Oh, sure, they talked about childbirth. The pain of it. I read a lot about that, and I was prepared. Well, as prepared as you can ever be.
But not one of those books prepared me for the pain of loving.
To love a child is to hurt. Desperately. They seem to grow and change by the minute, and this growth is both a good thing and a terrible loss. Every day you are saying goodbye: to the baby you held, the toddler who made you laugh, the brave one who left for her first sleepover. And on it goes. They’re relentless, these goodbyes.
I have never looked at old photographs without an almost physical pain. Of course, there’s pleasure too. But you expect that. It’s the pain that feels so strange. It’s the pain that seems to demand some sort of answer. God, does love have to make us cry?
There’s a song by the group Mumford and Sons called “After the Storm.” My favorite line is this: “There will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears and love will not break your heart.”
Do you believe that? Do you believe that one day love, like everything else, will be perfect and whole? That one day there will be no more goodbyes?
Peter told us that “[Jesus] must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything” (Acts 3:21). And I can’t help but wonder: when he says “everything,” does he mean everything? Will God restore everything that we seem to lose in this life?
Will there come a day when love will not break our hearts?
by Christie Purifoy | Sep 13, 2011 | Faith, grief, Scripture
I slumped down at my writing desk one recent morning, and this phrase floated up to the top of my mind: “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
I was feeling a little depressed, a little overwhelmed, and Solomon’s words came unbidden to justify my dark mood.
For me, it was nothing more serious than hot weather, kids fighting (again), and dirt tracked all over my just-mopped floors. Some days it only takes that little bit and we are carrying the burdens of the world: in an instant my eyes roam from the dirt, sweat, and tears in my own house to the global orphan crisis, drought in Texas, famine in Africa (again!).
Why is my life such a mess? Why is the world such a mess?
Supposedly, we Christ-followers are the bearers of “Good News” (just search the Bible for the phrase “good news”: it comes up a lot). But what can we possibly have to say to those suffering amidst the ever-present darkness of this world?
As a child, growing up in the church, I heard a lot about good news. Maybe the message was simplistic or maybe I was only able to understand a simple message, but I believed then that the good news was all about heaven. The good news, then, was that Jesus made a way for us to go to heaven when we die. That seemed like pretty good news to me, which is strange because I was a lot farther from death than I am now. Today, thirty years closer to my own end, that news doesn’t seem nearly good enough.
You and I and our neighbors on this planet? We need good news now. We need good news for today.
Solomon’s words take me there. He writes, “Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’?” (Ecclesiastes 1:10). I’m not sure, I can’t really answer his question, but then I remember these words in Isaiah: “I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43: 19).
God is doing something new. In fact, He’s been working at it for thousands of years. The Old Testament whispers it, and Jesus embodies it. New life. New creation. New covenant. New heaven. New earth.
God is making all things new (Revelation 21: 5).
I don’t know exactly what that means. But I feel something good deep down in my bones when I hear the word new. New, new, new. All is being made new.
Was there ever a more hopeful, beautiful word than “new”?
In me, in you, and in this gorgeous, broken-down world, God is doing a new thing. Look closely. Do you not perceive it?
by Christie Purifoy | Sep 6, 2011 | Faith, Family, Religion
I spent most of this Labor Day weekend sitting by the pool and feeling the spray of splash after splash after splash. My children don’t swim so much as hurl themselves repeatedly into the water. Even the two-year-old, with a grip on his inner tube that looks entirely too casual to me, gets in on the action. Run . . . jump . . . Splash! Repeat.
I tried it once or twice myself, but even that small drop from side of pool to bottom of pool makes my stomach flutter. Once upon a time, I could jump from the 7 meter diving platform for fun after swim practice. Once upon a time, I pretended to like the free-fall rides at the amusement park.
I have nothing left to prove. I would rather avoid stomach flutters. And so I generally ease my body into the pool one concrete step at a time.
But if a bodily free fall is something I now avoid, I find myself pursuing spiritual free falls with much more regularity. They don’t make my stomach flutter – only my heart.
I don’t think you will find the phrase “free fall” in the Bible, but it seems to me the best way to describe the experience of following God into unknown terrain. To hear His voice calling, to move in His direction . . . well, it often feels like falling.
There we are – in midair – and it is not at all clear that we will be caught, that we have in fact heard rightly, that we will not fall all the way to the bottom of an empty post-Labor Day swimming pool.
I could tell you that He never lets us hit bottom. That our free fall of faith is rewarded every time. But I’m not sure if it always looks like that. Or if it always feels like that.
Sometimes we might just find ourselves at the bottom of the pool, picking up the pieces and trying to make sense of it all. Asking, “Was I wrong to jump?”
Occasionally, we are tested like Abraham, and we are privileged to see, without a doubt, that we have aced the test. Abraham knew that he would have sacrificed his son. God knew it too. Abraham passed the test and was rewarded with God’s provision and with a faith that had been refined by fire.
Abraham made the leap. He landed with both feet on the ground and eyes that had witnessed God’s goodness and glory.
Yes, God tests us, we have read, in order to know what is in our hearts (Deuteronomy 8:2). But even if we find ourselves heart-bruised at the bottom of the pool, we are given this good thing: we have seen our own souls in flight.
Whether we call it falling or flying, it is good to know what we are made of. It is good to know that even the least thrill-seeking among us are capable of leaping after Him.
“. . . acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you . . .” (I Chronicles 28:9).
I hope my kids keep jumping. It isn’t safe, but I’m convinced that it’s the only way to live.
