Category Archives: Invitations

New Love, or Old?

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Are babies new,
Or just recycled?
Does baptism make
A person new?
The Bible says
God’s mercies are
New every morning.
What is a
New mercy like?
How’s it different
From old mercy?
What is better—
New love, or
Old, wrinkled love?

Today, they say, begins
A new year.
It doesn’t feel
New to me.
My kids are older
And I’m older
And the world is older
And this feels
More like a “keep going” than
A “start fresh.”
But that’s okay.
I don’t need
To be a baby again.
With age comes
Wisdom, and it is the adding of
All my years
That tells me I can
Do this year.
I’ve done 38 years before,
And I know
I don’t need new resolutions
As much as
I need old love.

Now What?

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In a few days, 2024 will unfurl. I’m curious what the year will be like, for one reason I never expected: joy. I’m happy, content, grateful. After years of feeling heavy, taking life seriously, and forming relationships around mutual brokenness, happy is a little scary. My inner child tells me cheerful is good, but not happy. Happy is too … emotional. Cheerful is a choice. Happy is a feeling. God forbid I feel anything.

Boldness rises. I will step away from the heavy hand of survival to the wide open spaces of abundance. I will feel joy. And I will enjoy that joy. I will laugh and smile and say I’m doing great. It will be scary, but worth it.

Scary, because I’ve primarily related to God as therapist for so long. What will we do together if we’re not bonding over my anger, fear, and dislike of myself and my life?

Scary, because I’ve thrived on connecting with friends through a shared journey of personal growth. When I don’t have a problem to employ as a means to vulnerability, how will I connect deeply?

Scary, because I’ve believed that happy is irritating and naive. If I love my life, what will people think of me? What will I write about?

Yes, I’m afraid.

I’m also excited, tantalized by the potential of a tea-sipping life—warm, slow, fragrant. I’ve been dodging bullets and putting out fires, sleeping to avoid the chaos in my mind. What will it be like to enjoy wakefulness?

Here’s to 2023 for being ripe with friendship and love, catalysts for joy.

And here’s to 2024 for its potential to be well-lived rather than well-controlled.

Love Does Not Cover Faults; It Exposes Them?

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With more stops than starts, I’ve been practicing Lectio divina, a meditative reading method I discovered in The Big Book of Christian Mysticism. Although my faith tradition doesn’t go much for Latin phrases or the term “mysticism,” this practice sits comfortably within Christian tradition. It consists of four parts: 1) slowly and carefully read a small portion of a sacred text, 2) deliberately consider the message of the text, 3) respond honestly to God in prayer, and 4) allow prayer to dissolve into restful contemplation in God’s presence.1

To begin this practice, I chose as my “sacred text” the book Reduce Me to Love, by Joyce Meyer. Each chapter is divided into sections one or two pages in length, ideal for slow reading. In the third chapter, Meyer writes, “Love does not expose faults; it covers them.”2 I immediately feel uncomfortable. Covering a fault sounds equivalent to lying. What about honesty and repentance, naming our errors and confessing them? If we cover faults with love, won’t they develop an odor, or grow out of proportion like the rumor-weed of VeggieTales fame? The title of this post feels more comfortable: Love doesn’t cover faults; it exposes them.

The gospel message I learned depends on faults being exposed. It goes something like this: God identifies “right,” and also “wrong.” Once we have right and wrong, it naturally follows to avoid wrong and adhere to right. As wrongs are identified, the way is made for transformation and healing. God is light, light exposes faults, and this is important because if our faults aren’t exposed we won’t pursue a relationship with God. The more we see our bleak character, the more we depend on a Holy God. Who needs God, except as a knight in shining light to rescue us from ourselves?

I’m struggling with this narrative, but I can’t disown it entirely. I do have characters flaws and God is Savior. Maybe it’s both/and more than a division that requires a move from one side to the other. Perhaps black and white—right and wrong—share the same spaces. Could it be that in God’s presence we know our faults, and at the same time know that love is bigger? When the prodigal son returned and looked into his father’s eyes, I think he saw tragedy and pain there—but in small measure compared to love. The father covered his son’s body with a robe and his soiled reputation with the family’s good reputation. A multitude of sins, covered. Love has meaning when it is layered with tragedy and pain.

A covering of love empowers us to offer love. It is out of insecurity—the nagging fear that perhaps we are not worth loving—that we point out the faults and foibles of others. There are two words for this: middle school. Insecure, pubescent young people, feeling suddenly naked in comparison to their younger selves, find solace in laughing at the vulnerability of others, forming cliques, and keeping secrets. It’s a tough time, and even the kids who are covered in love must ask again and again if they really are safe and whole. But, when those questions are answered with a resounding Yes, love becomes a superpower. In finding themselves well-loved they uncover the courage and desire to cover the faults of their peers rather than expose them.

Let’s go way back for a minute and think about about Adam and Eve. Did God expose them and point out their misdeeds? Certainly He could have come in with sarcasm—“Wow guys, way to listen to what I said.” Or anger—“What is wrong with you?! How hard is it to obey one little thing?” Or overblown emotional distress—“I can’t believe you did this to me. How could you seek out the only thing that hurts me and do it? This ruins the whole world!” Or disgust—“I should have known you couldn’t handle this. What a mess. It’s going to cost a fortune to clean this up.”

Certainly, if God was like me, he wouldn’t have come in the evening, allowing time to sew clothes. He would’ve been there at the first bite, to point out their nakedness, ridicule their vulnerability, and mock their lack of self-control—“Do I have to watch you every second?” But God was in no hurry. Nor did He appear angry, arrogant, or distraught. Doesn’t that seem odd? His masterpiece just got spray-painted. It will never be the same again. And what does He do? He covers the perpetrators. He sees their fear, confusion, and sorrow, and provides clothing.

I don’t get this. Maybe I got stuck in the middle-school mindset. I walk into a beautiful room or a put-together group of people and find the one thing out of place. I’m quick to point out faults. The way every smell draws a dog, every imperfection commands my attention. Clean the kitchen and I’ll show you the two spots you missed on the counter. Tell me a memory of last year’s Fourth-of-July potluck and I’ll correct you on the details. To leave a task undone is a liability, and to make an incorrect statement is a lie. Accuracy is more important than love.

The brave souls who love me call this philosophy into question. As friends accept my imperfections—arriving late, overstating things, laughing too loud—I come to know that love is more important than accuracy. My husband, Michael, has opportunity to expose my faults more than any other person. But he chooses to cover with love. When he tells the story of how I plugged our camper incorrectly into our vehicle, causing over $8,000 of electrical damage, he says, “We plugged it in wrong.” When I correct him for the hundredth time on how to straighten the bedcovers, he smiles and teases me. When I get cranky and overbearing, he quietly finds a way to ease my load—fill the dishwasher, spend time with a distraught child, run an errand. My faults have hurt him over and over, but he doesn’t expose them.

Christmas, I think, can be a time of covering. Holidays may bring up painful memories or remind us of broken relationships, and often there’s not much we can do about those things. But this time around let’s find courage to cover up a bit of fault—our own, or the fault of another—with love. In time, maybe we’ll even kill the fatted calf.

Endnotes:
1Adapted from The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, by Carl McColman, pp. 193-194
2Reduce Me to Love, by Joyce Meyer, pg. 30

God Is Not in Control, Epilogue

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I never intended to write four posts about how God is not in control. What began as one question has evolved into piles of questions, most of which remain unanswered. But today I really am going to wrap up with a final post on the topic (at least for a while).

As I’ve reflected on what it looks like to move away from “God has a plan” and “God is in control,” I’ve found those sentiments everywhere—in books, emails, prayers, small group conversation. We are so desperate for control that we have assigned it to God with certainty and force.

Dare I say evangelism springs from a desire to control? We want people to be on our side. We want them to be “saved”—from what? Eternal burning? I don’t believe in that. Pain? We’re all on the pain train. A meaningless life? Okay, but fitness or family or any number of things can provide meaning in life. Are we proving we’re right by convincing other people to think the way we think? Are we earning God’s favor? Trying to avoid eternal separation from people we love?

Doggedly we seek to control how our lives turn out, how other people’s lives turn out, how the world and eternity turn out. We want to do our part. We want God to do His part.

Jesus wasn’t big on asking people to agree with Him before they followed Him. What if we invited people to follow us, to see what life is like for a human well-loved by God, taught by Jesus, and emotionally intimate with the Spirit? What would it look like if evangelism focused on showing what a messy life looks like with God, rather than on cleaning up the mess?

Church people like to talk about being “in” or “out” of the church. “Our neighbors aren’t in church any more.” “Her oldest boy stopped going to church.” When a kid is “out” of church, the parent doesn’t rejoice and say, “I’m so happy I have no control, and so grateful that God gives the power of choice. I can see the spiritual freedom in my daughter’s choice to not believe in God. It illustrates God’s character beautifully.” Nope. We go to battle, employing rigorous prayer and subtle (or not-so-subtle) manipulation; we adjust our theology; we feel sad and helpless; we obsess about it or refuse to think about it at all.

While eager to praise God for free will and the power of choice, we simultaneously do everything possible to control the people She puts in our lives. Is that because we’d rather trust Her control than Her goodness? Would we rather eradicate addition than accept discomfort? “Better safe than sorry,” we say, not realizing that our version of safety insulates us from God. Am I willing to trust in God rather than trust in the safety She provides? Harry Shaumburg put it like this, and it gives me pause:

As I learn to trust God, I acknowledge how little I really know of what it means to rely on God and demand nothing. I’ve seen only a glimpse of what it means to put my confidence in God in a way that goes beyond a demand for safety and comfort. Yes, I have tasted what it means to have faith in God … but I’ve only begun to trust … [T]rust is a decision to enter the reality of a fallen world that is at best disturbing.

– False Intimacy, by Harry Schaumburg, page 87

I used to think trust ought to take me out of reality. Schaumburg suggests the opposite—that trusting God will immerse me in the reality of our disturbing, broken world. Do I really want that? On the other hand, do I want God to control this spastic world into submission? I don’t respond well to the people in my life who control. I move away from them, subvert their efforts, focus on our differences, and even flaunt my choice to not do what they want. That’s not the response I hope to evoke in friends, or strangers. Am I willing to trust God while feeling the discomfort of humanity? Willing to not know what He’s going to do about this mess?

God invites me to exhale the need for life—mine and everyone else’s—to turn out well, then inhale love. Love is spontaneous, annoying kindness; food and forgiveness; boundaries and truth—in all places at all times. When control dies, an unexpected stream of creativity emerges and confirms my identity: made in the image of God who creates.

Rich Notes

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Rich Notes

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
Queen of the Universe,
for music—
the sound of feelings;
the sound of deep knowledge
too meaty, or mystical,
for words.

Blessed are You
for my favorite song,
captivating me still,
aural delight,
richer even than I remembered.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
Queen of the Universe,
for music—
a pile of invitations,
to laugh, weep, dance,
sing in the kitchen,
turn up the radio,
raise our hands, as if reaching
to toast Heaven with a glass
of our best and richest creation,
notes and words,
instruments and voices,
breaking us wide open,
intimacy with You,
our divine Mother.

God Is Not in Control, Part 3

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When one person wants good things for another person, does that lead to a desire for control? In my relationships with my children, my parents, and my spouse, I’d say Yes. I have felt controlled by every family member, and in my turn I have tried to control them—often because I want good things for them. I want my kids to develop skills that will help them thrive as adults. I don’t want anyone to hurt them. I want them to be kind and confident and responsible. I want my spouse to get plenty of sleep and maintain a healthy weight. I want my parents to enjoy life.

But is the basis of all these good desires the fear of what may come if these things don’t happen—if things aren’t this way? Do I want a better marriage for my friend because I fear the marriage she’s in? Do I want better health for my spouse because I fear what poor health would do to our lives? Do I want my friend Alana to have better mental health because I fear her depression will affect the atmosphere of our small group? When life goes off the rails it may cost time, money, reputation, quality of life. Isn’t it better to stay on the rails?

I used to think so, but now I’m not sure. At what cost does a person stay on the rails? What is lost to the god of control? I don’t want to admit it, but likely what is lost is what I was trying to protect—peace, safety, belonging.

God’s way of moving in the world hardly resembles mine. He wants good things for us but has no desire to control. He is not fearful, because He is love. He is not trying to guard His resources or His reputation—He already gave both to us. God’s love is a love intertwined with loss and longing. It’s a love that accepts pain, and repeats the same loving action a 100th time even though there was no response the first 99 times. It is a voracious love, eager for more encounters.

Stacey Bess spent seven years teaching transient or homeless children, grades K-12, in a homeless shelter. Many of these children attended The School With No Name for only 90 days, the typical length of stay at the shelter. In her memoir, Nobody Don’t Love Nobody, Bess introduces Karen, a woman she connected with at the shelter through conversation and nights out. Later, when Karen had a baby, she moved in with Bess’s mom, who helped care for baby Liza. Bess and her mother provided safety, midnight taxi service, food and clothing. They did everything they knew to do to help Karen create a healthy life. But things didn’t turn out how they hoped. In Bess’s words:

Karen brought us to feel and know about tragedy in a completely new way. We wanted desperately to fix her. I picker her up every time she called, day or night, and my mother put up with her tantrums and drug use, both of us full of hope and confident in the power of love alone to heal all wounds. But what we learned from Karen was that sometimes the giving has to be enough.

Nobody Don’t Love Nobody, page 42

Karen didn’t lean in to a healthy life. Love didn’t “do the trick.” My immediate response is that Bess and her mom were overly optimistic. They needed better boundaries and a reality check.

But Bess’s conclusion was, “sometimes the giving has to be enough.” In other words, what they did was enough. Nothing was lost.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Love is never wasted, for its value does not rest upon reciprocity.” This feels right and true to me, but … isn’t the value of God’s love that it saves us? What is the point if no one responds? Bess and her mother loved Karen and Liza, but it sure looks like the saving part didn’t happen. It is often said that Jesus would have died to save only one. What about none?

After “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” we have, “so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Everlasting life—even if interpreted as fullness of life rather than living for billions of years and then more—is an outcome. Love does something. What happens if there is no “so that”? Could it be that God’s love affects us even if it doesn’t save us? Is that effect worthwhile?

I have no record of Karen’s inner world, but I’d bet she knew those women loved her. She certainly trusted them. Does God covet our trust more than a change in our behavior? More than a longterm relationship? Does He want us to know He loves us, more than He wants to save us? That could change everything.

A quick look in my Strong’s concordance reveals that the word “plan” isn’t in the Bible. I’m not by any means an advocate of returning to the King James Version of the Bible, but I find it intriguing that much-beloved Jeremiah 29:11, usually quoted as, “I know the plans I have for you,” reads this way in the KJV: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil.” Maybe God’s will isn’t a plan, so much as it is His thoughts toward us. Maybe Jesus showed us what God’s will looked like, more than what God’s plan entailed. Maybe love, the absence of control, leads directly to spontaneous liking, which is the soil of belonging.

Spontaneity is the antithesis of control. It requires presence more than planning, and curiosity more than control. As humans we often forgo belonging in pursuit of acceptance, “the action or process of being received as adequate or suitable, typically to be admitted into a group.” Pursuit of acceptance gives us control. If I can perform or conform my way into a group—if I can make myself suitable—I have some control. Belonging cannot be wrangled, and has a rather slippery definition: “an affinity for a place or situation.” I looked up the word “affinity” to put some flesh on that very short definition of belonging. Affinity is, “a spontaneous or natural liking for something or someone.” So, belonging is spontaneous or natural liking for a place or situation—or, I would add, for a person.

“Spontaneous liking” sounds terribly out of control. But it leaves room for imperfection and it embodies joy. If love is the pain of not being in control, is belonging the joy of embracing imperfection? Maybe I can want good things for a person—work for them, even—but ultimately allow the giving to be enough, and allow trust and belonging to matter more than saving.

Evolution of Joy

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Evolution of Joy

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for happiness, unexpected.
I feel buoyant, excited even.
How did this happen?

For more than twenty-five years
I thought my life
was a job well done.
For ten more years
I served my life
as a sentence.
Today? Life is
an invitation.
Blessed are You, Lord,
for this evolution.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for inviting me
to a preexisting fullness
and a predetermined wealth,
the pleasure of being me.

Imagine it—joy,
not because I earned it,
but rather,
here it is in front of me—
the sky at dawn,
fleece leggings and slippers,
London fog to warm my hands and belly,
Phiona-cat’s antics,
pomegranates divided into bumpy wedges,
JJ Heller Christmas songs,
the smell of gingerbread in the oven.
Blessed are You, Lord,
for this revolution.

God Is Not in Control, Part 2

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“God is not in control” opens a can of worms. Worms don’t line up neatly or make a sharp illustration, but they are certainly alive. Over the last few weeks I’ve jotted down a number of quotes, and perhaps each one is a worm in the can. In this post I’ll pick them up one at a time to observe and question, before putting them back.
Next week I’ll wrap up with Part 3 of “God Is Not in Control.”

“The God we’ve settled for is red in the face and pretends he doesn’t know us at parties. But the God we actually have is never embarrassed by us.”1

Beginning with my parents, and right on down the line, no human has exactly wanted me to be me. I don’t even want me to be me. But God is cool with me being me, despite the fact that on some level it costs us both. God would rather know me than control me.

“It seems clear there’s no way to manipulate God with how we pray or what we say.”2

This statement feels obvious, but when I came across it in the book I was reading last week, it stopped me. Somehow it doesn’t match what I’ve learned in church and Scripture. Doesn’t God respond to prayer based on our persistence, faith, and asking according to Her will? The Bible tells us to pray in these ways—for what, if not for results? Yet anyone who prays with regularity finds out there is no formula and God is unpredictable.

Do I really want a formulaic God? Although the unpredictability irritates me at times, manipulating or controlling God would put our relationship in a tenuous position. Once I’ve manipulated someone, I no longer know if they’re doing what they’re doing because it matters to them—or because I whined or threatened. I want to know that God does what matters to Her, and I suspect she, too, values authenticity from me. He is willing to accept some amount of pain and chaos as the cost of not manipulating or controlling. He actually wants me to be me.

“… love is wild territory. It’s where people who don’t have control go and linger … Finding the self inside the skin.”

How does a person love when they are alone? What does love look like when I’m awake in the middle of the night? Did the saints in solitude—whether by their will or against it—love while they were alone? Did they love anyone other than God?

Could I give another person my attention when I’m not with them?

Perhaps loving when I am alone is a practice, a lingering in love’s wild territory. Rehearse forgiveness. Remember my favorite things about my husband. Release control of situations I want to fix. Would loving someone while I’m not with them have an impact on them? On me?

If love is attention, could I gift myself my attention? Find “the self inside [my] skin”? Can I love when I’m brushing my teeth and notice my mind overheating, trying to make everything logical? Receive God’s love when I’m alone? This might look like peace or enjoyment—knowing I am centered, enough, delighted in, and aware more of who I am than what I am doing.

That love gets me every time / My heart changed my mind / And I gol’ darn gone and done it.4

Does a heart change a mind, or does a mind change a heart? I suppose it doesn’t matter. God is active in my mind to change my heart, in my heart to change my mind, in my body to mold my spirit, and in my spirit to touch my body. He may not be in control, but He makes up for it by being the thing that wouldn’t quit. What doesn’t yield to control may yield to loving persistence. Like the woman in Jesus’ parable who kept after the unjust judge, God keeps after us. She persuades us, not because of our morals, but in spite of them. He connects to our center, from which everything else grows. She is with us to be with us, not to control the future.

“Then he said to the woman, ‘I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.’”5

I’m not sure I believe in the devil, but let’s assume for a moment that s/he does exist. Is the devil in control? Certainly his character doesn’t preclude control. And if love is not control, I’d say the devil is controlling—the opposite of love. From the Serpent’s first appearance in the garden, she has been suggesting that God controls us—“Don’t eat that.” “Don’t go there.” I can believe the lie and slip into a life attempting to manipulate God and hoping He’ll control me into salvation. Or I can say, “Love’s not like that. Love moves toward me with goodwill, not to force my hand, but to hold it.”

I’m made in God’s image, with agency and love. This leaves the devil in a difficult position. The thing she wants most is out of her grasp. It is only in deception that he has power. And what better way to deceive than to promote the message that God is in control?

“The one thing all of us—gay, straight, male, female, conservative, liberal, and on the continuum between the absolutes—have in common is the fear that we won’t be accepted, the fear of what we’ll lose if we are ‘known.’… being known is worth fighting for. It’s worth betting everything on. It’s risky. It’s terrifying. But it’s the only thing that matters.”6

God knows this, and it’s why He won’t control. He’d rather know me than control me, and He’d rather be known by me than controlled by me. God is not in control. She’s in something much better. She’s in love.

Endnotes:
1Boyle, Gregory. The Whole Language (page 7)
2Hill, Jeffrey D. Seeking the Triune Image of God in You (page 144)
3Raybon, Patricia. My First White Friend (page 12)
4lyric from Shania Twain’s song, Love Gets Me Every Time, https://www.musixmatch.com/
5Genesis 3:16, NLT
6Davis, Cynthia Vacca. Intersexion (pages 223, 232)

Twilight

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Twilight

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for evening.
Trees slip into black pajamas
as color drains from the sky,
pooling at the edges,
vivid feather boas draping the sun.

Blessed are You
for slowness of twilight,
a dissolving that escapes notice
until I get distracted,
and looking back to the sky,
find it changed.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for those things that spark alive
even as I dim.
Owls and mice open their eyes,
stars twinkle, dew forms,
and streams gurgle night music.
My ears attune as my eyes rest,
kissed to sleep by the softness of twilight.

Get To Know the Couple

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November 20 marked 30 years since Pastor Bryson baptized me at the Milo Adventist Academy Seventh-Day Adventist Church—my home church. I attended that church, beginning in utero, until I moved away for college at the age of 18. An evangelistic series in the school gymnasium pulled me to baptism in an emotional rush. Less emotional were the pre-baptismal Bible lessons. On a cold day in November, my older sister and I donned baptismal robes and took the plunge in a warm baptistry.

I’ve never looked back. Although today I’m less certain about the words on the baptismal certificate I signed, I’m more certain about the relationship.

To celebrate thirty years with a little fun, I’ve compiled questions from “Get To Know the Couple” games and answered them for God and myself.

Where did they work when they met?
Tobi was a full-time child and God was a full-time lover

How long have they been together?
Pretty much forever

Where did they get engaged?
In the Milo Adventist Academy gymnasium

What did they do on their first date?
Go to church (sorry it’s not more glamorous)

Are they cat or dog people?
Tobi is a cat person, God can’t decide

Who said “I love you” first?
God

What is something they have in common?
A desire to create safe spaces where people can share their inner world, their stories

Who is more high maintenance?
Tobi

Are they morning people or night people?
Morning people, although they can have a good time at night too

Who is the most patient?
God

What is the bride’s middle name?
Danielle

What is the groom’s middle name?
He has too many to list. One of the bride’s favorites is El Roi

What is their favorite type of food?
Fruit

What are their pet names for each other?
Tobi’s current pet name for God is Love, and his current pet name for her is Meadow.

What is their favorite place?
Anywhere still and quiet—especially a chair by the window

How old is the groom?
Nobody really knows, but he still looks good

What is their favorite thing to do together?
Write

Who is the better cook?
Tobi

Who is more stubborn?
Tobi, she hates changing direction

Who takes longer to get ready?
God, he has no idea how to hurry

Who spends more money?
God

Where was the bride born?
Canyonville, Oregon

What does the groom do for work?
Still a full-time lover.

What was their wedding date?
November 20, 1993

What is one thing they want to do together in the next 30 years?
Start a nonprofit writing group

As I mentioned, God has lots of names. Also—and this may seem weird—he doesn’t always look the same. So if you see me out with someone you don’t recognize, or hear me talking about a guy with a different name, text me before you freak out. It’s probably God in one of his other bodies or using one of his other names. He’s a dynamic fellow. I’m honored to be his bride of 30 years.