by Christie Purifoy | Jun 22, 2013 | children, God's Love, grief, healing, motherhood, One Word, Pregnancy, river, Stories, Uncategorized
When I turned 29, I ate coconut cupcakes.
They were baked by my mother, in my kitchen, with my daughter. They were brought to my maternity ward hospital room by my pastor and his wife. That day I ate coconut cupcakes and introduced you to my dearest friends.
Tomorrow, June 23, you and I will celebrate.
I made those same coconut cupcakes this week. I shared them with neighbors and sneaked more than a few myself after your bedtime, but, tomorrow, we won’t eat coconut cupcakes. We will share a dairy-free, wheat-free, nut-free birthday cake with Lego-shaped candles.
In the hospital, the day you were born, the nurse looked at the date on my admission bracelet and said, “Here is a son who will never forget his mother’s birthday.”
Tomorrow, I will probably remind you two or three times that it is also my birthday. But you are seven, and I do not mind all that much. Because you are the best birthday gift I have ever been given.
There is a story behind those words. A story to which I return every year on this day.
It is a story first of all about longing. I wanted a baby. I wanted a sibling for our daughter, but my body refused to cooperate. I had thought after our first experience, after the diagnosis and the referral to a good specialist, that the second time would be easy. We understood the problem, we would not wait to pursue the solution.
It was not easy.
It was so much harder. Because the drugs in which I had placed my faith did not work, it was also more hopeless.
Today, I am grateful for every month (months turning over into years) that I waited for you. Because of those months, the words of Job became my own: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” Now when I imagine, like all the parents in this world, every horrible thing that might happen, I am not afraid. I know that God can meet us in the pain and there is nothing else like that encounter.
But our hearts are not so easily untangled from fear. After the miracle of your conception, fears I didn’t even know I had twisted my thoughts. I felt as if I owed so much to God, and I became convinced there would be some price to pay. I became convinced there was something wrong with you.
Until that day. That day, six months along, when a stranger placed her hand on my shoulder and prayed for me. That day a river was unleashed and when I came up for air the fear was gone. I heard God’s own voice whisper: “This boy is a gift. A good and perfect gift. There is no price to pay.”
You’d think I would have known. Your due date was close enough to my own birthday. Why didn’t I guess?
Somehow, I never dreamed I would meet you for the first time on my birthday. God’s stories are so much better than the ones we imagine for ourselves.
Yes, you were born on my birthday. You were a good and perfect gift, given the day I turned 29.
Since that day, I have had reason to be afraid. So have you. I have given you food with my own hand and seen the fear in your eyes as your throat begins to swell. I have called 911 on your behalf too many times to count. I have seen how tiny you seem lying there on an emergency-room bed.
And yet I have never questioned those whispered words.
There is nothing wrong with you. Not really. You are, indeed, perfectly made. The worst thing can happen, but the Love who made you will take care of you. I pray always that you will be healed, but I know my prayers have been answered before I ever prayed them.
We have journeyed from coconut cupcakes to blue marshmallow cakes to gluten-free bakery cakes with Lego-shaped candles, and now I know these three things:
God is good.
There is no need to be afraid.
And this: our lives are stories, and these stories are written by Love.
by Christie Purifoy | Feb 19, 2013 | children, Dreams, Faith, Florida, God's Love, healing, Home, Joy, Pennsylvania, Stories, Uncategorized, Winter
I want my children to know that God’s love is as real as the cupcakes and green tea we shared on Monday afternoon. It’s as real as this house that shelters us from cold and frames our daily view of the sunset.
But this is actually a hard thing to believe, and my daughter goes straight for the crack in my story: what about the kids who have no cupcakes? What about the student my health teacher just told us about? The one with no money for a visit to the dentist? The one who is about to lose his house because his parents ran out of money to pay the owner?
And I can hear the real question whispering beneath our conversation: isn’t it a terrible thing to suppose God loves one child with a gift of cupcakes while another one is left to starve?
I’ve been listening to this firstborn of mine for years, and one word that always comes to mind is wisdom.
She reminds me that wisdom doesn’t necessarily know the answer, but she does ask good questions.
That is a good question, I tell her. I don’t know the answer.
All I really know are the stories that make up my own life. While I don’t believe in the God of Parking Spaces (in other words, a God who makes my life easier and more comfortable with special little favors), I do know that God loves in big ways and small.
Maybe God is loving you right now with cupcakes, I tell her. Maybe he is loving that other child with a bowl of rice from an aid worker.
One time, I tell her, God loved me with a sofa.
It was just over a year ago, and I had this farmhouse dream in mind. It was a dream about caring for an old house and a bit of land and welcoming lots of people around our table. In my mind, it looked like an antique sofa. The kind with a carved wood frame and pretty little legs. I don’t know why the dream looked that way to me, but it did.
But I was very sick that last winter in Florida. I spent every day in bed trying to breathe, trying to avoid the wicked, golden tree pollen wafting through the air.
Until the day, dear firstborn, when I couldn’t take your cabin-fever complaints, your boredom made manifest in bickering. I grabbed you and my inhaler and took off for some thrift-store therapy. I don’t think I ever felt so far away from my dream as I did then – struggling to breathe and desperate for escape. From pollen, from warm winters, from bickering children, from all of it.
We walked into the thrift store – headed for the twenty-five cent children’s books – and I saw it. My sofa. My farmhouse sofa.
But, we don’t have room for another couch, you said. You’re right, I said. We don’t have room in our Florida house, but I don’t think we’ll always be here. Dear God, tell me I won’t always be here. Desperate for breath. Dying to escape.
I bought that sofa. It sat in our Florida garage for a few weeks until I had enough faith to write the check. That’s when I googled upholsterers.
I chose the one with the coupon and the free in-person estimate. He loaded my sofa into his white van, and I went back to my sickbed. Not even a sofa in the garage to remind me of my dream.
Months went by, and there was no reason to think we’d be leaving Florida anytime soon. The sofa wasn’t ready when he said. Weeks went by, and I emailed. Soon! he wrote back. More weeks went by, and I emailed again. Very soon! he wrote.
I tried not to think about my farmhouse (but all I could think was where is it? And when will we go there?). I tried not to think about my sofa (but all I could think was where is it? And did I pick the right fabric?).
June 23. My birthday. 5 pm and there was a phone call. Your sofa is ready, and I’m in your neighborhood. Can I bring it by?
You and I, we don’t believe in the God of Parking Spaces. You and I, we can’t ever forget that starving child (which is as it should be).
But I know my own story, and I know God gave me a sofa for my thirty-fifth birthday.
Today, I am sitting at my desk in an old, old farmhouse. I can see my sofa from where I sit.
It was made for this house.
Which is as inconsequential as a parking space. And as miraculous as anything I know.
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by Christie Purifoy | Jan 15, 2013 | Family, God's Love, Religion, Scripture, Uncategorized
I often have a face in mind when I write out words in this space. To be honest, it’s usually my own. When most of me is stuck in boredom, doubt, or depression some small part of me still sees the truth. I write to remind myself how beautiful life is. How good God is. And how near he is.
Today I have a face in mind, but it isn’t my own. Technically, it’s not a face at all but a voice – the voice I heard on NPR yesterday morning. A young man spoke of how he found Christianity but eventually gave it up because he couldn’t bring himself to believe that those who reject Christ will be tortured for all eternity.
And my heart broke.
I wished I could put both hands on his shoulders, look him in the eyes and say, “You’re giving up Jesus because of a theological position not even all Christians accept? Oh, honey, don’t do that. Trust me. You don’t want to do that.”
I can still remember my shock as a young woman, sitting down to lunch at the Benedictine monastery where I worked, when I overheard the conversation of two visitors sitting a few seats away. “Won’t people be surprised when they get to heaven and see Hitler there, too,” one woman said.
Personally, I will be very surprised if it turns out she’s right, but, today, I am less shocked at the image of Hitler in heaven than I am awed by this woman’s embrace of God’s very big love.
I also remember my shock, that same year, when a fellow church-goer admitted he didn’t think babies who die automatically go to heaven.
Clearly, we Jesus-followers don’t always see eye to eye.
Usually, I’m okay with this. I tend to agree with Augustine that if the Bible leads its reader to be more loving then the Bible has done its job. Augustine isn’t saying that accurate interpretation doesn’t matter, only that it’s okay if we get a little lost on our journeys as long as we arrive at our destination.
As someone who feels at least a little lost, most of the time, I like this idea.
At least, I did, until my daughter stood at the bus stop surrounded by our neighbors and said this Out Loud: “I wonder if Dr. Seuss is in heaven or hell?”
It was Dr. Seuss’s birthday, the kids were geared up for a celebration, but they also knew that Dr. Seuss was no longer among the living. I suppose one thought led to another, and suddenly my own daughter was broadcasting a question that didn’t reflect my own spiritual preoccupations at all.
I was mortified. Here I had imagined myself a Christian unconcerned with guarding the borders of who’s in and who’s out, but my own unconcern left a theological hole that my daughter filled in for herself.
So now, as hard as it is, and as comfortable as I remain with theological diversity, I know I owe my daughter a little more. I owe that young man on NPR a little more.
I want them both to know that whether you are blinded by God’s love or by his justice you are welcome in God’s family. I want them both to know that I’ve wandered to a spot somewhere in the middle. I think when Jesus said in Matthew 10:28 God would destroy both body and soul in hell that destroy means what it sounds like it means. Not eternal torment but destruction. An end. Justice.
In other words, I believe in this good news about hell: there is a place where evil will be confined and where it will be destroyed.
And the really good news? God’s love is big. Very, very big. I may doubt we’ll meet Hitler in heaven, but I’m sure we’ll be surprised at the size of the gathering. Because God’s love? Well, it chases us down. It pursues us. And frankly, where most of us are concerned, my money’s on God.
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.”
Ephesians 3: 17,18
by Christie Purifoy | Jan 1, 2013 | Blog, Faith, God's Love, Stories, Uncategorized, Writing
Happy New Year, my friends.
Recently, someone I love sat at my kitchen table while I fiddled with pots and pans. She asked me if I love to cook. I told her that despite evidence to the contrary (shelves of cookbooks, dozens of kitchen gadgets), I don’t really enjoy cooking. I’m usually in a hurry to get it over with. But here is the truth: I love food, and I love feeding people.
This blog is like that for me. I love stories, and I love sharing them with you. Without you, there would be little point to all the hours I’ve spent tapping away at this keyboard.
Thank you. I’m so grateful for your presence here in 2012.
For those of you still in the mood for looking back, here are a few of the most popular stories from the past year at There is a River.
When my daughter’s young classmate was murdered, I wanted her to know that darkness does not get the last word. The last word is Shalom.
Half-way through 2012 we went searching for a new home. This is how we knew we’d found it.
This was the year when God led me out of the desert I had wandered in for two years. Now I know that deserts are terrible, beautiful places. God brought me to the desert because he loves me.
In 2012 I received a great gift. Her name is Elsa Spring.
I don’t think I’ve ever looked forward to a new year as much as I look forward to 2013. God has shown his goodness, and I can’t wait to discover what’s next.
“Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.”
– Corrie ten Boom
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 28, 2012 | Community, Family, God's Love, Grateful, Home, Pennsylvania, Uncategorized
Their minivan is stuffed with children and luggage, all the paraphernalia of a Christmas well celebrated. The late December sun is too weak to soften the wind’s bite so we rush inside to wave goodbye from the window.
The kids and I wave frantically, and it is as if we are saying goodbye to good friends, to Christmas, to this entire year.
In a few more days I will look ahead, but now is the time for saying goodbye. For looking back. For remembering.
In one year everything has changed.
One year ago, I had three children and little hope of more.
One year ago, I lived in the south and grieved the loss of northern winters.
One year ago, I dreamed of a farmhouse with room for chickens and vegetables while my single, potted tomato withered in the Florida sun.
On year ago, we spent the holidays alone and wondered if we’d ever again spread a feast across the length of our dining table for a crowd of friends and family.
This year is dying, but it has left me with these gifts: four children, an old farmhouse, a large garden, and the perfect spot for a chicken coop.
And this: hospitality, community. We now live within driving distance of our dearest friends. Hardly a week goes by that we don’t hear from someone we love: “We’ll be in Pennsylvania. Can we come and see you?”
I live in a Victorian farmhouse with several acres of land, but the fields all around have been parceled into home sites. Now that the leaves have fallen I can look out of my windows and see houses. I don’t yet know who lives in them, but one day I will. One day, their children will run up the hill and through the break in the fence to play with mine. One day, I will wave hello through the line of trees with an invitation to help pick blueberries. Or apples. Or tomatoes.
One day, one day, one day …
This is the greatest gift of this year: I have been brought to a place with a future.
In other words, I have been given a home.
“I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.”
Jeremiah 32: 40-41
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 20, 2012 | Advent, Faith, God's Love, guest post, motherhood, Uncategorized
Today, Amy Lepine Peterson returns the favor and shares these powerful reflections with us. There is so much wisdom here, I’m taking my time, reading and rereading. These are words I know I need right now.
Thank you, Amy.
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Advent is a season of darkness, of waiting for the light; but I’m warier of darkness than I used to be.
When I was a teenager, I revelled in darkness. I don’t mean that I loved bad things. I loved complicated things, facing the realities of our broken world, anything that seemed deeper and truer than the sparkly cliches I found on tv and in commercial christian products. My teens were when I read Thomas Hardy and Pascal and Kierkegaard, when intellectual doubts were hitting me for the first time, when I first traveled to a third world country and recognized the excess of my own lifestyle. I was in my teens when Dad took me to see Good Will Hunting – despite the language – because of the redemptive themes, and I too wanted to recognize truth like a troubled genius or a holy rebel. I needed a faith that was honest about darkness.
Becoming a mother was what changed me. I first noticed it when I was pregnant with Rosemary. Jack and I started to watch The Road one night- a film based on Cormac McCarthy’s post- apocalyptic vision of a father and son traveling across a barren earth. Though the movie had been hailed as important, haunting, and powerful, and though its bleak, true-eyed vision was something I would have loved in my late teens, I couldn’t make it through even the first half of the film. As a parent, it was too harrowing to watch, and I wanted to sleep instead.
Once your own children enter the picture, the reality of darkness in the world easily becomes overwhelming, your potential for distress growing exponentially with each child you bear.
To be honest, I don’t want to talk here about what happened in Connecticut last week. I can hardly bear to acknowledge that it exists or to read the names of the children who died. I haven’t read a single news story about it all the way through, and I haven’t watched even one news clip, not just because I’m generally suspicious of the reliability and motives of the press, but also because I can’t manage, emotionally, to let myself imagine how those parents feel.
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Tonight before bed, I read to my almost-4-year-old from the Jesus Storybook Bible. We read this, based on Acts 1:
Jesus’ friends and helpers huddled together in a stuffy upstairs room. Even though it was sunny outside, the shutters were closed. The door was locked.
“Wait in Jerusalem,” Jesus had told them, “I am going to send you a special present. God’s power is going to come into you. God’s Holy Spirit is coming.”
So here they were. Waiting. Actually, mostly what they were doing was just being scared and hiding. (You can’t blame them — their best friend had left; the Important People and Leaders were after them; and Jesus had given them a job they didn’t know how to do.)
As they waited, they were praying and remembering — remembering how, from the beginning, God had been working out his Secret Rescue Plan.
I wondered as I read: how much of what I do is just “being scared and hiding,” waiting, in this long Advent season, for the Secret Rescue Plan to be completed, hoping I make it through unscathed? Although for me, unlike for the disciples, the Holy Spirit has already come, already made my heart burn within me, I still cower in fear when faced with the realities of a world in need of resurrection. I know about this Secret Rescue Plan, and I’ve been assured of its success. The Prince of Darkness grim? – one little word shall fell him. I ought not to tremble.
And yet my fear is legitimate; after last week, there’s no denying that even our safest places are vulnerable, that the “control” I think I have over my life is illusory.
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So how do I, with my tender mother-heart, open up again to face the realities of a complex world, where the End is certain, but in the meantime, the ways can be inscrutable? How can I embrace the spirit of love, rather than the spirit of fear? How can I trust God enough to face the suffering of the world – and the potential of suffering for my own little ones – with clear eyes and an open heart?
I know that I need to face the darkness head on and ready to fight. Taking comfort in shiny happy cliches and ignoring reality may feel good for a season, but ultimately helps no one, ultimately turns me into one of the shallow “phonies” that Holden Caufield and I used to despise.
Leaning into the meaning of Advent means remembering that our hearts have to be split in order to open wider. And leaning into the meaning of Advent means believing that because a baby was born, there is a promise that if we lean into the suffering of the world instead of protecting against it, we find love. This is a long wait, but we’re not waiting alone.
I don’t have to watch The Road. But I think I do have to watch Half the Sky. I have to begin by being willing to see the brokenness of the world, and then I have to be ready to fight against the darkness. I have to combat the urge to construct a “safe” life. I have to be willing to acknowledge the brokenness of the world, not just intellectually, but emotionally, if I’m going to be able to help usher a new and better kingdom in.
We wait, this long Advent, for that kingdom to arrive, but we must wait with honest eyes and willing hands, practicing resurrection in the dark.
Amy Lepine Peterson teaches ESL Writing and American Pop Culture at Taylor University, and spends most of her time making a home for her best-friend-husband and their two (frankly adorable) children. You can find her in the cornfields of Indiana, or online at Making All Things New.
