Category Archives: Invitations

The Light Between Us

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I’m taking a break this week from Father’s House and The Whole Language, to write about a different small group I’m in. There are four of us, meeting via Zoom to share our experiences through a compassion and wholeness workbook. The author of this workbook is my beloved sister, Dr. Jody Washburn. “Dr. Washburn” doesn’t roll off my tongue right, so at the risk of being an impudent younger sister, I’ll refer to her as “Jody.”

The full title of the workbook is, “Compassion & Wholeness: Engaging with Care and Curiosity on the Healing Journey.” This makes me smile. I love every beautiful word strung together into an invitation. Compassion… my invitation to care for another. Wholeness… my invitation to care for myself. And each of these spaces explored with curiosity, which is the antidote for judgement and shame—a healing journey indeed.

Jody writes about two barriers to belonging: 1) feeling “we have to hide or downplay who we are in order to belong,” or 2) feeling like belonging will come when we can “fix” others so they are more like us. Is there a space in which we can maintain our individuality, allow others to maintain theirs, and experience intimacy, belonging?

I have often felt this tension between hiding me or fixing you. I’m certain I will only be accepted if I meet expectations—not just in the workplace, but in friendship and at home as well. Therefore much of my energy goes into meeting expectations (real or imagined). Yet I know from painful experience that performance does not breed intimacy. People may “like” me, but they don’t know me. They know my performing self, or my “representative,” as Glennon Doyle would say. My real self suspects that if she were known, she would be rejected. Each time I allow my tired or confused or sad self show, there is a real possibility of shame-reinforcing rejection. People need me to make sense, to show up consistently, and to manage my own emotions. I suppose the most awful thing about this is that there is some truth to it. But this truth no longer has my loyalty. I have left it behind for something else.

I suppose my “something else” could be described as discomfort, but it is a discomfort leading to delicious comfort, to an internal wholeness I didn’t know was possible, and an intimacy with others I could not imagine. The discomfort is in losing control (or the illusion of control), receiving my own impossible-to-understand internal experiences, and receiving the experiences of others. No fixing. This is a terrifying freedom and a portal to a new dimension, a tangled and beautiful garden of love.

“Connection with [myself] and connection with others,” Jody writes. Yes, I respond. Yes.

Jody illustrates these two connections with pairs of words from various authors and speakers:
individuation and intimacy
authenticity and attachment
individuality and belonging
and my personal favorite, from Maya Angelou: “I belong to everyone. I belong to no one.”

Jody is a Hebrew scholar (I know, my sister is super cool). She describes the Hebrew word “Shalom,” which we often equate with peace, as “the harmonious working of a complex system”—another way to imagine this space we occupy of belonging both to ourselves and to others. Shalom makes an outrageous suggestion, that the complexities of ourselves and our world are somehow beautifully compatible. My own existence and the existence of each person I know, is an invitation to dance. I am invited to dance with myself, and I am invited to dance with you. Together we find a balance we could not find alone. This balance requires authenticity—a willingness to see and share my own insides, and to see and receive your insides. This seeing shines a lights into the shared spaces we occupy and allows us to dance the dance of intimacy, a miraculous, harmonious duet emerging from what seemed like incompatible notes and unwilling instruments.

As my friends and I talk on Zoom about all these ideas, we are drawn repeatedly to our own desire for an increased capacity to show compassion. As mothers, we lament our bitterness, anger, and attempts to control our children. Yet it is clear that compassion is not a “fake-it-till-you-make-it” prospect, nor is it achieved by trying harder or learning more. How are we to cultivate something that cannot be wrestled or prayed or shamed into being? How do I move from desiring compassion to a real response of curiosity and care when my children are battling for the upper hand in an insult war, or waking me up for the fifth time in one night? I am certain compassion must come from my core, yet I know I cannot surgically place it there. Oh, how I wish for a compassion pace-maker to fill in my glitches and keep me alive.

My sister’s workbook holds hints about what it looks like to move into compassionate space. One hint is embodiment. Hillary McBride writes, “Embodiment is a coming home, a remembering of our wholeness, and a reunion with the fullness of ourselves.” This remembering is the beginning of creating. Before I create, I need to make friends with my body. I answer Jody’s workbook questions. “What messages have you received, growing up and at other times in your life, about your body?” My answer surprises me. I had not put this into words until now: “My body is useful apart from my spirit/emotions/mind. It is useful for showing up where I don’t want to be, doing what I don’t want to do, accomplishing things for other people.” It makes sudden sense that I have felt divided against myself, ill with chronic internal bickering. I have used my body, and allowed others to use it. I didn’t know my body was me. I think this is what “dis-integration” means. Resentment and a lack of agency follow disintegration, and all at once it makes sense that I have been mired in a stinking swamp of resentment.

Another hint about compassionate space is “compassionate witnessing,” which includes the ability to hold space for what feel like mutually exclusive experiences. How can I feel comforted and fearful at the same time in my husband’s arms? How can I desire time alone and long for connection in one moment? How can my friends be both graceful and judgmental? How can my world be crammed so full of pain and beauty that I find the two squashed together in uncomfortable proximity? Jody talks about expanding circles of compassionate witnessing, encompassing self and others. She closes her workbook with these words from Stephanie Foo.

So this is healing, then, the opposite of ambiguous dread: fullness. I am full of anger, pain, peace, love, of horrible shards and exquisite beauty, and the lifelong challenge will be to balance all of those things, while keeping them in the circle. Healing is never final. It is never perfection. But along with the losses are the triumphs.

Little by little, I find the spaces inside me where compassion resides, and I step into those spaces more often. Compassion lives in my awareness of my body. It comes to life in my imagination and springs forth from my inherent creativity. I am shocked to discover that as I occupy these spaces, I walk out of fear into love. I see without squinting and I touch without recoiling. My life appears before me as a patch of wildflowers to enjoy rather than a blotch of weeds to destroy. An invitation to compassion is ultimately an invitation to joy and pain. It is the wonder of occupying what at one time seemed untouchable—the space between two people. Jody shares the words of Orland Bishop: “Future is the space between two or more human beings.” God invites me into that future, into what Jody describes as an emerging, co-created, relational space, and what I like to call, “the light between us.”

Dr. Jody Washburn’s “Compassion & Wholeness” workbook is available here. All quotes in this post are from her material.

Photo by Ray Bilcliff: https://www.pexels.com/photo/antelope-canyon-arizona-1533512/

Tell My Body I’m Innocent

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Tell My Body I’m Innocent

Reflections – week 3

Welcome to the third week of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language. This is week three of eight. I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

Forgiven Future

“I am fully forgiven forever.”1 This is key #3 in Father’s House.

The exercises in the workbook are designed to walk me through past grievances, but I find myself feeling more guilt and shame for my potential to mess up, than for past behaviors. I feel like a walking liability, a mistake waiting to happen, impatience and selfishness and bitterness piled up on an over-filled plate, waiting to get bumped and spill everywhere.

I believe that forgiveness from God is complete. It doesn’t happen when or because I ask for it. It’s done for all people for all time, and my invitation is simply to accept awareness of it. But I realize I have not allowed this to permeate my present and my future. I see everything in front of me through the filter of my imperfection. And I believe my capacity to act without love means I deserve a diminished life. Father’s House declares, “In Papa’s House your past doesn’t stand a chance.”2 Could I believe that in Papa’s house my future doesn’t stand a chance?

The ability to walk forward is not only dependent on being untied from the past, but also on a clear way ahead. Papa doesn’t expect me to walk embarrassed, afraid, tentative—advancing slowly to improve the chance of catching myself when I trip. I have believed I must hold back because getting things right is more important than anything else. But if my future is forgiven and I am “innocent and pure forever,”3 I can’t possibly make things any more “right” than they already are.

I can walk with confidence, run with abandon, knowing that tripping is expected. God isn’t surprised when I make mistakes or protect my ego or forget to love. All of this is understood and received into His expansiveness. He is not keeping track. He is not expecting perfection. He is not asking me to go back to the starting line and try again. He is not putting his hand up and requiring me to kneel and beg forgiveness before I go on.

I have tried to avoid forgiveness by getting things right. I have believed that if I need to think about forgiveness, something has gone wrong. But Jesus didn’t shy away from forgiveness. He gave it out left and right, and not because people were asking for it. He never suggested we should be trying to not need to be forgiven. Perfection—“rightness”—is a distraction, a black hole, handcuffs.

Tension

A few months ago I began to notice tension in my body. The tension wasn’t new, but my notice was. I first became aware of it when I was lying in bed. I noticed I could allow my scalp and forehead and cheeks and shoulders and arms and back and legs and feet to relax. Five minutes later, I would become aware of the tension again, and again I could relax. After a day or two, I realized the tension was always there, but when I took notice of it I could release it. I don’t know what prompted this awareness, but it became an ongoing invitation to rest. Perhaps it was a result of internalizing freedom in Father’s House, knowing “It is finished”—what Jesus completed is my starting point and my resting place. I belong in Papa’s house. I’m exactly where I need to be. I sit in Papa’s house calm and light, because I’m no longer juggling while climbing stairs and holding my breath.

Holding

Children who have been abused often speak of a moment in their healing when they realize that the abuse was not their fault, not their destiny, not normal, not what they deserved. It becomes something that happened to them, but it is no longer their secret identity, the truth of who they are, or the predictor of who they will be.

Gregory Boyle tells the story of a kid named Sharky, whose father continued to find and terrorize the family, despite restraining orders. One day Sharky came home to find his father hiding there, waiting to interrogate him. When he couldn’t take any more, he ran to a neighbor’s house and called his mom, who arranged a meeting place. When they both arrive, “She just holds him there, in the gym bleachers, as he sobs all the more and her only message is this: ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that.’” Many years later, Sharky is alone in a prison cell, and “comes a message from God… a singular expression of tenderness. God holding a sobbing Sharky and saying only this: ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that.’ Sharky tells me later that this has become the notion of God that holds him still. It fills him enough to say finally to his own father, ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.’ The Tender One… is sorry that we go through what we do.”4 He is holding us in the bleachers. He is speaking the truth that neither “abuser” nor “abused” is our identity, releasing us to healing and wholeness.

Innocent

“Father God doesn’t just consider you forgiven,” write the authors of Father’s House, “but He sees you as completely innocent—as though you had never sinned.”5 I don’t know what this means. It can’t mean I’m perfect. It can’t mean I’m not human. It can’t mean I don’t need to heal. Surely God sees my wounds, because He touches them and restores health. Ultimately, I think innocence is about intimacy. Innocence is, “There is nothing between you and Father God, for He sees you as holy, flawless, and restored,”6—forever. Innocence is an invitation to uncouple from shame. “Shame and intimacy will never share a seat at the same table. You have to let go of one to have the other.”7

Gregory Boyle writes, “Unshakeable goodness is our royal nature.” When we see this, he says, “We then undertake the search for innocence in the other. We cease to find the guilty party. We no longer divide into camps: Heroes and Villains. We end up only seeing heroes. We look for the unchangeable goodness that’s always there in the other… In this, we find the unbearable beauty of our own life.”8

Intimacy seems fragile to me, a rare treasure—not something that can be promised forever. But God Of The Impossible is promising infinite intimacy, and He is suggesting that innocence and intimacy are inextricably connected. Nothing between us.

Rest

My innocence, and the innocence of every human being, is an invitation to rest. Boyle writes, “It will always be less exhausting to love than to find fault. When we see fault, we immediately believe that something has to be done about it. But love knows that nothing is ever needed.”9 I no longer need to find fault. Instead, I find goodness. There is nothing left to fix, and my muscles relax in gratitude. I am not a tripping hazard. I am forgiven, innocent, whole. I breathe this in and release “fixing” so I can see love. Everywhere, and in everyone, love.

Endnotes:
1Father’s House, page 46
2Father’s House, activation #3
3Ibid
4The Whole Language, pages 23, 24
5Father’s House, page 46
6Colossians 1:22 TPT, emphasis mine
7Father’s House, page 50
8The Whole Language, pages 40, 41
9The Whole Language, page 41

It’s Me! Run!

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It’s Me! Run!

Reflections – week 2

Welcome to the second week of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language.

This is week two of eight. I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

The Paddle

When I was a child, a wooden spatula was the “paddle” at our house—used for spankings. I chuckle now, remembering the occasional days when my mother would carry the paddle in her back pocket. How well I know those kinds of days now that I have kids of my own.

I have two specific memories of spankings, one of which must have happened when I was quite young, I’m guessing preschool age. I don’t know what brought it on, but I had a meltdown of epic proportions, involving kicking, screaming, and the works. My parents put me on my bed to spank me, but I was kicking so violently they couldn’t paddle me. To solve this conundrum, one of them sat on my legs and the other spanked me.

As this memory accompanied my growth and development, it grew into a belief: the proper way to handle big feelings is to punish myself for them. Or better yet, try not to have them at all. I’m certain that’s not the lesson my parents intended. They probably figured they were enabling me to grow up and behave like an adult. (No one appreciates a 30-year-old who still throws epic tantrums.)

Fear of Self

Week two in Father’s House is about being lavishly loved. The authors write, “To live as a fully loved and accepted daughter in your Father’s House, He’s inviting you to let go of your former identity. You are no longer bound to your past, what anyone else has spoken over you or even what you say about yourself. As you journey Home, saturate yourself in who your Father says you are.”1 (emphasis added)

As I read and wrote through each day of the study last week, fear of myself emerged as a common theme. Starting as a young child I learned to fear myself, to fear my emotions and desires, my imperfections, my capacity to make mistakes. The religious community further intensified this fear by teaching me that I was sinful and needed constant spiritual supervision to avoid indulging the unforgivable person that I was. I became afraid of turning away from God. I figured He’s pretty nice—you know, amazing grace and all that—but if I intentionally, or unintentionally, turn my back on Him, He will be pissed off.

So there I was, internalizing my parents’ responses to me, into a belief that my emotional experiences are unacceptable; internalizing the religious community’s sin-message into the belief that I am a walking liability; and what did all that do? For twenty years, nothing. I was so good at being good that these fears lay dormant. It was unnecessary to face them when I managed myself exceptionally and performed well for every person in my life who expected something from me.

If you’re familiar with my story, you know when the upheaval began: stay-at-home momming. Suddenly, with loss of sleep and the demands of parenting, I was reacquainted with my emotional self in the most savage way. My best efforts to control and punish myself weren’t working. Anger, frustration, fear, and emptiness consumed me, and—given my beliefs about emotions and mistakes—it’s not surprising that a dark shame enveloped me.

Temper Tantrum

A few months ago when I went through Father’s House for the first time, during the activation exercise (meditative visualizing and listening), I had a (visualized) temper tantrum. It was just as I remember from childhood, heels hitting the floor so hard it hurt, as I lay on the ground screaming and sobbing out of control. Papa God lay beside me. I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t engage with Him. I could not receive comfort or accept reason or respond to reprimand. Mercifully, He didn’t expect anything from me. When the waves of emotion began to subside, I rolled into Papa’s arms. I was ready to receive comfort, and He was waiting to comfort me.

Papa God suggests there is no distance between Him and me. He is not cooled by the things that chill the people in my life: turning away, having needs, being impolite, tired, sick, stressed, confused, emotional, forgetful. God is warmly present with me when I am out of control. All of me and my experiences are folded right in, received without question or critique or hesitation. No part of me is a liability.

Holy Imagination

“Visualizing your future as a lavishly loved daughter is critical to your life,” I read in Father’s House. “In fact, it helps engage your heart with your head when you involve your divine imagination. Describe what that life would look like in as much detail as possible. What would you be doing, thinking, or feeling?”2 Here’s what comes to mind:

  • My insides will be still (not agitated). I will be at peace with myself, not warring against myself.
  • I will have energy to create and to love (not compulsion).
  • I will take more risks.
  • Forgiveness will come as naturally as breathing.
  • Suffering will fall into my embrace rather than being held at arms length. It may hurt like hell, but it won’t be fragmenting.
  • Pain, anxiety, depression, fear and anger will be experienced with God, rather than as separating or isolating experiences.
  • I will be whole, not fragmented, not always looking for parts that have been forgotten.

Not As Scary As I Thought

I assumed God was in on the idea that I cannot be trusted with myself. I am shocked to discover God trusts me with me. The shame is lifting. The fear is shrinking.

Lie: I am loved and accepted if I reject myself so I can be what I “ought” to be.

Truth: I couldn’t be better. I am loved entirely independent of my level of responsibility and emotional control. Papa received me first, to clear the way for me to receive myself. He invites me to love myself as He loves me. Now that’s crazy!

Gregory Boyle writes, “Ensuring, then, that we are never strangers to ourselves will give us access to our deepest longing.” I have been a stranger to myself, but I am learning to roll out the welcome mat, receive myself with open arms, and explore my deepest longings.

Endnotes:
1Father’s House, page 29
2Father’s House, page 34
3The Whole Language, page 18

The Evolution of Good News

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The Evolution of Good News

Reflections – week 1

I’m a small-group junkie. I recently started three new small groups, which brings my current participation to a total of six small groups. Some meet monthly, others weekly. Some are ongoing, while others cover specific content and will dissolve when that is completed. In one of these groups, we are studying Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home. This is my second time through this eight-session study, and I will be writing a post relating to the study for eight weeks, beginning today. I am also reading The Whole Language with a small group of ladies, and finding connections with the content of Father’s House. The following reflections are inspired by these two small groups, and in some cases I directly quote the resources.

I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

A Gospel That Speaks

“If it feels too good to be true, you’re on the right track.” This is my favorite descriptive phrase about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Each time I hear it I pause for a moment as my spirit affirms what I hear. Yes. What better way to describe the news of an extravagant God.

I’ve always had a tenuous relationship with the sinners-prayer gospel: I am a sinner deserving of death, God sent His Son to take my penalty for sin, and when I repent I receive Him into my life. I’ve given myself permission to move outward from this version of the gospel. I am curious, open to discovery.

Perhaps the gospel is personal. We call it “good news,” and news may well fit the descriptor “one man’s tea is another man’s poison.” What is pleasant, joyful, or affirming to me may be offensive to someone else. So, at the risk of veering off the beaten path and getting lost in the weeds, I’m on the outlook for a gospel that speaks to me. And I begin to find it—in books, podcasts, quiet time.

Good News

God has returned me to myself, unharmed. I was a house divided against myself, that could not stand. Now I am discovering wholeness and unity, within me and around me.

God did not send His Son into the world—into me—to condemn me, but to rescue me, heal me, and make me whole.

I am perfectly created to relate to God. My heart is wired to connect with Him. My ears are designed to hear His voice. I am made to experience His glory and His extravagant love for me.1

God is not fixing me. He is showing me that I am alive, that what I longed for was not far off, but right here.

I am right where I am supposed to be. I’m not behind. I am open to receive from the fullness of God’s grace.2 His Spirit touches mine and affirms who I really am: His daughter.

It is finished. Jesus completed all the heavy lifting. I begin where He left off, victorious, resurrected, glorious. There is nothing left to do but live together in this finished space They created.

Expanding

I expect my gospel collection to grow and change over the course of my life, as I listen for news that is too good to be true.

My understanding of gospel will be a lifetime hobby, and may well continue into the hereafter. Gregory Boyle repeatedly describes this pursuit in the first chapter of his book The Whole Language:

“At one time or another, we all had a version of God that was rigid. But the depth of our own experience tells us that our idea of God wants to be fluid and evolving. As we grow, we learn to steer clear of the wrong God.”

“We search always to find the deeper current that can finally change our innermost way of seeing.”

“It is our lifelong task, then, to refine our view of God.”

Unlearning

Equally as exciting as the learning, is the unlearning. I unlearn an exacting God, a vindictive, displeased, embarrassed God, tripping over Himself to save me so He can save face.

As Mirabai Starr said, “Once you know the God of Love, you fire all the other gods.”3

Endnotes:
1See Father’s House, page 23
2See Father’s House, pages 14, 22
3As quoted in The Whole Language, page 7

Uncomfortable Extravagance

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And when Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him having an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil, and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table. But when His disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For this fragrant oil might have been sold for much and given to the poor.” But when Jesus was aware of it, He said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for Me. For you have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always. For in pouring this fragrant oil on My body, she did it for My burial. Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”

Matthew 26:6-13, NKJV

Why do we as humans pride ourselves on being calculated, miserly, scrupulous? Why do we look down on extravagance and take effort to make sure we are not associated with it? What is it about excess that makes us so uncomfortable?

We like to keep things small and controlled. Big makes us squirm. I wonder if this woman who poured oil on Jesus tended to live a higher-risk, less calculated life. Or was this her one moment of letting go, carried past sensibility by love?

Maybe an extravagant way of living—even as we observe it in billionaires and deride it—is not to be changed, but simply to be made beautiful by the grace of God and His leading. We are so eager to change things that seem to us a liability. We are quick to criticize.

Perhaps the extravagant person has a gift, a rare talent. What if, even when I disagree with them, I could begin by recognizing the gift?

Where the disciples saw waste and carelessness, Jesus saw love. His existence as a human being on planet earth was in itself a ridiculous extravagance.

Lord, teach me to see love in the extravagant.

On Being Dead (Part 2)

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June 20, 2022

God, I am so tired of thinking I am bigger than You, and my ability to mess things up is bigger than You. That is a lie and I am choking in its grip. Please show me how big You are. Please, uproot the lie. Show me how small I am. I cling to Your feet. I don’t need You to be what I think You are. Lord, please make me willing to be inhabited by Your Spirit and to release control. The story of Jacob’s wrestle in the night comes to mind. (see Genesis 32:24-30)

I’m asking for a miracle. I’m asking because I know that thinking I’m bigger than You is a fabrication. A sleight of hand. Please take me out from under the spell. Show me how the trick works so that I am no longer captured by it. Take me back to the garden, to the lie, and reverse the damage. You have crushed the serpent’s head, and along with it crushed the lie that You are holding out on me; that You have limited me and excluded me from Your fullness. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” You say.

I’m so sorry that we wanted “to know good and evil.” I am drawn to that tree, that struggle. You remind me of another tree, another struggle, “On a hill far away.” Lord, I receive Your death in me. I receive the silence of the tomb. It’s a long silence, really. The silence of a world in awe at what they have seen. A silence void of struggle, void of taunting, certainly void of trying. It is the moment of silence after a stunning victory before the crowd comes to life and erupts with noise and elation.

The tomb is a quiet place, a place of mystery, a place we respectfully allow darkness and silence. A place where stillness is not a practice, but the truest reality. I lie dead. I have gone from confused delirium to perfect, unruffled peace. Every muscle that was trying so hard to hold me together has now relaxed. Resurrection is not on my mind, because nothing is on my mind. That’s the beauty of being dead. The rushing is suddenly and decisively irrelevant. Not even snoring disturbs this silence. A dead person doesn’t sin, doesn’t worry, doesn’t know anything.

Lord here I am, passed out in the tomb with You, knowing nothing. I can do nothing. My senses have stopped signaling my brain. There is no input, no output. Only silence and stillness. Even breathing has ceased. I am in a holy place of waiting, a sleep of death that will feel the same whether it is one minute or one hundred years. This is the only way to wait without fretting—in death. Death is also where decay occurs—the return of life to the soil, from which new life will arise. Dust I am. This is how I know silence. Death silences the endless chatter, and it is God’s gift to me, though my heart still beats.

“I am crucified with Christ; therefore I no longer live.” (Galatians 2:20) It seems I have tried to be born again without dying. I have wanted to skip over death to resurrection, not realizing how I long for death. Quiet. No expectations. I might have known that in God’s hands even death is a gift. As I permit myself to engage with death, I find treasure: grace, humor, peace.

Nobody expects anything of a dead person. I am gloriously, peacefully dead. Dead people aren’t really good at anything, except maybe lying still. I suppose if their eyelids were open they could win any staring contest.

Also, the band name “Grateful Dead” has taken on a whole new meaning.

The nice thing about being the dead person is that there is no sense of loss. I cannot grieve, because I cannot do anything. I need not try to be still, nor try to move. I need not expect perfection, nor hope for predictability. I cannot hold onto life. It is behind me and beyond me and it animates me only when I am not in this passageway of death.

Trust. Humility. These things I have longed for are here in the tomb.

Perhaps Jesus called death “sleep” because He knew it was the only way for humans to Rest In Peace. Death is not a fitful slumber. It is the child who has fallen asleep in his mother’s arms in a waiting room, every muscle relaxed, dead to the passage of time and to the noise of a coffee machine and crying children and ringing phones.

Like Barbara Brown Tayler, I love the question, “What is saving you right now?” Death is saving me right now. Today I am in the grave. Neither crucifixion nor resurrection are on my mind. Maybe “grave circumstances” aren’t so bad. “Grave” and “grace” are closer than I thought. My tired heart has stopped beating and it lies still in the mystery of death.

Only Jesus. Always Jesus. Beautifully Jesus. Safely Jesus. I will Rest In Peace with You, the only one who can lay down Your life and take it up again.

On Being Dead (Part 1)

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I’ve noticed there are people who catch on to what Jesus is up to more quickly and completely than me. They get the death-to-life thing, the rebirth, the salvation. They speak with confidence about their wholeness and joy, about Jesus and His ways, about life. Meanwhile, I mainly have a lot of questions, I don’t know what to tell my kids about God, and I’m still wondering what in heaven’s name brings about transformation and the fruit of the Spirit in a person’s life.

Over the last year, death has been a recurring theme in my journal. Not the stop-breathing kind of death, but the spiritual one. An awful lot of verses in the New Testament use death as an analogy for … well, I’m not sure what. Something spiritual. In the book of James, which I zealously underlined the entirety of as a teen, there’s this sin-leads-to-death verse: “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.” (James 1:14, 15) As I read this poetic life-cycle illustration—conception, birth, growth, death—I wondered, Do I have desires that “draw me away”? Two came to mind: my desire to appear without fault to everyone (including, and maybe especially, myself); and my desire for life to be happy (or at least predictable). Have these desires conceived and given birth to sin? Heck, it sure feels like giving birth. Conceiving is the easy part. Giving birth is brutal. But, once conception happens, birth is inevitable.

I have enjoyed too much time in bed with a lot of lies, allowing my desire to be without fault to lead me to conceive and birth a child who reminds me every day of my indiscretion. This child is Judgement, Idolatry, Pride (defensiveness), Angry Outbursts at those who inconvenience me, and, well … a bit of Death.

Late last summer I noticed I had a pallor of death. I was seduced by my desires, blind to the fact they fed the lies I tried to stamp out. I made an effort to imprison the lie that my (and everyone’s) value is in productivity and performance, all the while tossing bread crusts into the prison cell. I fought with the sin-child I had conceived—who was growing rapidly—while still getting back in bed with desire.

The thing about dying is that it’s painful and we’d rather not look directly into it. It’s hard to watch death claim anything or anyone—especially when you have carried that thing in your very center for nine months and given birth to it. But when death does take place, there is a sense of finality. When I realize my desires are dead and I have been in bed with a zombie, when I stop tossing bread crusts to the skeletons in the prison cell, then Life leaps to my side almost as if it had been waiting. Words like “spring” and “abundance” move from Biblical vocabulary into experience.

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” Romans 8:1-2

My desire to be without fault has held me in constant condemnation. I have been in bondage to the “law of sin and death,” seeing myself as one giant aberration from righteousness. I have been living always in weakness, meditating continually on all the ways I fall short. I have made life-giving Jesus a sick joke. Hey, you know why Jesus died? Uh, for my sins? No, because God couldn’t legally kill you, so He killed His own Son. That is the voice of condemnation, of damning. Constant meditation on how I fall short siphons Life out of me, leaving me empty and dry. Jesus invites me to Love—a life unadulterated by the habit of constantly looking behind me, keeping tabs on my “progress” and the impression I leave behind.

Living with my mind preoccupied by circumstances—my physical and emotional experience (the desire for life to be smooth), worries about all my interactions with people (the desire to be without fault), and trying to get things right and be in control—is death. And when I say that, I don’t feel I have somehow been naughty for choosing death, but more a sense of relief at having a proper diagnosis. I have felt dead, going through days shackled and gray, a slave to my desires and impulses. I want to be alive.

One evening my husband, Michael, and I read together from Dr. Tim Kimmel’s book, Grace Based Parenting (pro tip: don’t read parenting books). The chapter was about the importance of secure love for children, and what secure love looks like. The next morning I wrote in my journal, “Not only am I a lot dead, I am also blind. I realize I let my kids get away with selfishness and meanness, but come down hard on them for normal kid (human) stuff like making messes or forgetting, because I am blind. If I saw clearly I would act differently.”

Every autumn we have an influx of flies in the house. They start out perky but gradually slow down until you can easily pick them up with your fingers. (I don’t recommend this. I picked one up thinking it was dead, and was scared half to death when it started buzzing in my fingers.) Often I’ll see flies lying upside down, randomly twitching. One morning as I sat praying, I noticed a fly on the windowsill, lying on its back, letting out a spastic buzzing every once in a while. And I thought, My life has been like this fly on the windowsill, alive … but not really. There is no shame in this; instead there is understanding, because that is exactly how I have felt. And just as I have authentically experienced being half-dead, I may authentically experience being fully alive. I was made for this.

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be fleshly minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life und peace.” (Romans 8:5-6)

Emmanuel Mystery

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On school picture day I was at the private Christian school my girls attend, waiting with my youngest daughter to get her school picture taken. Friday chapel happened to be at that time, so I sat in on it. The guest speaker told the story of a family committed to Sabbath-keeping who was experiencing a plague of grasshoppers that would devour their fields. They stood to lose tens of thousands of dollars because the company spraying for grasshoppers refused to spray their field when asked to work around Sabbath hours. Amazingly, the power lines the length of their property were covered with solid rows of birds Sabbath morning, which descended and ate all the grasshoppers, saving their fields and fortunes.

Stories like this trouble me. Especially when we share them with elementary school children. What exactly are we trying to say? That if we trust God He will make sure everything works out in our favor? That we can pray and expect Him to take care of things in a way that preserves us? What about all the things that don’t work out? And why would God save a field of grain but not save little girls from brothels, or a wife from her husband’s affair, or a Christian from torture and death?

Often my reaction to my inability to see and understand the ways of God is to reduce God’s provision to a cosmic “everything will be alright in the end” platitude. Clearly He’s not making everything alright now, so He must mean that His care and protection are for the race as a whole over the arc of history, and not really for individuals. He must mean that my soul is safe – not my body, or my possessions, or my relationships. He has redeemed me and I trust in Him for my eternal provision, so at least if I am tortured to death, I know my soul is safe with Him. (Unfortunately, I happen to like my body and my life, and I don’t like the idea of being a pawn in a cosmic game.)

But this really feels like a cop-out to me. How can I possibly enjoy an intimate relationship with a Being who I believe doesn’t care for my well-being today? And how do I explain my own experience, that He does care for things as minute as my to-do list and whether I have time to take a shower? How do I explain the times He has provided perfectly the intimacy I was missing in my marriage, or the words to connect with my distraught child? The longer I respond to Him, the more I am convinced that He desires to be present in every moment of my day, every cell of my being, every thought, every need. But while He does provide for me often, He seems more interested in being with me than in fixing everything. This is puzzling to me, because I place high value on things being fixed. In fact, God and I have had some serious altercations about why He has not made me good yet.

So where does this leave me? Certainly I have not answered the questions that millions have been asking for thousands of years. Truthfully, I think God is beyond understanding. His goodness is beyond understanding and I’m certain He is a little crazy for loving me. And when I think about all the badness that is beyond understanding, I just don’t get it. I explain to my kids the story of Satan’s fall, our own fall, and the importance of humans having the power of choice even though it hurts us. But still the evil in the world is unsettling.

For me, in this season, there are two beliefs that comfort me when I think about pain. The first I have already touched on, and that is God’s desire – and His promise – to be with us. I want to be crystal clear that pain is real, and sometimes so deep and raw it threatens to destroy us. It cannot be spoken away, “faithed” away, hidden away. It is part of our experience, and we will feel it, and we will know that we cannot escape it. Sitting in pain, the most comforting, affirming, burden-lightening experience is to have someone sit in it with us. Most of us have a friend or friends who are quick to offer advice, solutions, and fixes for everything in our lives, and we quickly learn not to share struggles and pain with those people. The times I have felt the most safe in my own emotional skin are the times when I was allowed to be in pain, when my experience was affirmed and I knew someone was with me. This is a rare gift.

God is Emmanuel: God with us. He has an incredible capacity for feeling, and He enters into our feelings as an intimate friend. One of my favorite authors, Ty Gibson, calls Him omnipassionate. He is able to feel deeply with each of us. He is present in our pain. There is no pain outside of His desire to be in it with us. He sits with us in deep sorrows, and He is present in the passion of misplacing my phone for the seventh time today. I’m starting to wonder if this is actually better than Him fixing everything. It irritates me just a little to even say that, but my spirit says yes to a God who is with me just to be with me. A God who holds my pain with tenderness and affirmation, and holy presence. A God who is not immune to my pain, but actually feels it with me because He is one with me by His grace. A God who became human so He actually knows what it is like to feel pain as a human.

The second belief that comforts me is that God can somehow undo our pain in the future. If believing God’s presence in pain is hard for me to grasp, trying to understand His ability to work backwards and “undo” pain is even more of a mystery. In the book “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis, one of the characters says, “That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.” I believe that God’s redemption is for all time. His sacrifice on the cross saved the first humans who breathed, just as it saves us. And if the cross can reach backwards and forwards, maybe heaven can, too.

Consider this passage from Ephesians: “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan.” (Eph. 1:4-11, NLT) 

I am ignorant, sinful, selfish and blind, observing an infinite God through a finite lens. My understanding is weak, but I am drawn by Holy Mystery – a God who is here right now, desiring the intimacy of knowing my own feelings as they emerge naked and timid from my heart; a God who desires to extend His love and grace, passion and power to us in order to bring all things and all times under the healing power of His love. We are not left empty handed, holding only a promise, and neither are we held in the moment with no anticipation of future healing. It’s just like Him to offer comfort right now, and hope for the future. 

Maybe I feel unsettled about the farmer and the grasshopper-eating birds because I’m focused on the wheat. I assume God is placing value on the wheat and the money, when in fact He is placing value on His child. He is present in the experience of the farmer. His presence could be birds, peace, wisdom, money. It doesn’t really matter how He shows up. It matters that He shows up. Because He loves you. Emmanuel Mystery.

Give and Receive

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I am guarded with God. As much as I don’t want to admit it, it becomes painfully clear in those moments when I try to trust Him and end up exploding in anger. I’m still not sure He’s safe. Perhaps I am in a lifetime of recovery. Just as alcoholics are forever recovering, perhaps so are sinners.

I keep thinking God is expecting something from me – a life of service perhaps – and He keeps saying, “Let Me provide.” Why am I so convinced He wants to take, when all He has done is give? (And how presumptuous to think that I have anything of objective value to offer the God who made me.)

Always He is present. Always He is safe. Always He wants to be with me and love me, even though it makes no sense. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)

Perhaps this giving is an invitation to me to receive. Receiving is different than taking. God is not a shelf from which I can select whatever I need and take it. He is a lover, pursuing me with gifts – blessings – and each time I receive I am entering into intimate relationship with Him. God bless this holy mystery.

Still

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“Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for him to act.” Psalm 37:7a

Stillness and I do not have a good relationship. I am a girl who does. While this has benefited me in the workplace, church volunteer positions, and even friend groups, it can be a real thorn in the side of my relationship with God.

I grew up in a home where hard work, productivity, and efficiency were highly valued. Our family rhythms were built largely around work, with rest and play languishing on the sidelines. More than fifteen years after moving out, I am less a slave to productivity, but still a product of my upbringing. As I sit here writing on the porch swing, a hot cup of tea beside me, I can feel the tension of the un-done things, but I also know the pleasure of taking this time to breathe the fresh air, feel the keys beneath my fingers, and enjoy writing and sipping tea (actually, I tend to let my tea cool and then chug since that is more efficient).

Over the last couple of years I have courageously cleared my schedule and said no to many things I would have said yes to before. I have come to enjoy a day with nothing on the calendar (this was previously terrifying). While I am tremendously grateful for this journey away from doing for the sake of doing, sometimes I am not sure what I am moving toward. Often I feel even the unscheduled days rush by without me in them. I have created space, but I don’t know how to live in it. I don’t know how to be still.

As I wrestled this past week with my monthly allotment of female hormones – which often send me back to the comfort of being productive – God invited me to be still. The word “invited” is intentional, because for do-ers like me, advice or requests ruin intimacy. I will run off to perform and miss the opportunity to connect. Jesus knows me, and He speaks words of invitation to my trembling, ready-to-please soul, that allow me to be still: “Let Me be your provider. My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. (2 Cor. 12:9) You don’t need your kids and husband and other people around you to keep you happy, or your performance to be your reward. Bring everything to Me. Let Me be your provider. Be still. Wait on Me. Give thanks. Hold fast. Find contentment in watching me provide.”

There is something about believing God will provide that frees me to be present. If He is providing, then I don’t have to get everything right. If He is providing, worrying and planning can step down from their positions as chairman and CEO in my brain. If He is providing, I can be still. Stillness is still a discovery for me. Sometimes it is sitting in the quiet of the morning, in front of an open window, listening to the leaves rustling and the birds chirping. Sometimes it is recognizing my brokenness and talking to Jesus about it. Sometimes it is singing “He’s got the whole world in His hands,” and replacing “whole world” with whatever it is that is worrying me. Often is remembering that He loves me. For no good reason, really. And He even likes me. There is something restful about being loved and liked.

Maybe faith is letting God be God. He loves me crazy. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. (Psalm 50:10) What makes me think I need to exercise or manipulate Him? My part is to thank Him, praise Him, worship Him, watch Him, and be still. Still so I can feel the wind of His Spirit whisper against my heart. Still so I can hear His voice. Still so I can watch my children playing. Still so I can sit beside my husband and not be doing something. Still so the intensity of God’s love for me rises above the intensity of the unrelenting problem-solving and rabbit-trailing and ugly-worrying going on in my head. Still so I will know when He begins to move. Still because it is the strongest stand I can take against wearing the rags I have earned by my own righteousness. (Isaiah 64:6) Still because sometimes the Lord wants me to have a front-row seat as He fights the battle for me. Still because I don’t need to catch up with God. He is right here. Still because if God isn’t using both hands to hold me strong from my flailing performance of doing and striving, maybe He can do something else for me. Still because running ahead is lonely. Still because squirming and fighting is getting tiresome. Still because He is God and I am not, and what a relief!

Stillness may be the antidote to my perfectionism. Even the voices that scold me for not being present in the spaces in my life must be silenced by stillness. Stillness allows me to feel, but not to be overwhelmed by my feelings. It allows me a measure of comfort in the tension of living life in a broken body in a broken world. It invites me to hope in the good things my Provider has spread before me. It allows me to be as I am. Stillness in the presence of God is safe and holy and intimate.