Category Archives: Relationship

My Love of Children?

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“I don’t like kids.” This is my response when anything kid-related comes up—Vacation Bible School, babysitting, homeschooling, school field trips. Please, please, please don’t put me in charge of a bunch of kids. I don’t know what to do when they fight, or when they won’t be quiet in a group setting, or when they say a bad word, or cry, or have an allergic reaction. I don’t know what to say when one person gets left out or when there’s drama over seating arrangements.

Truth be told, I’m a little scared. I’m afraid of not having the “right” answer to all the little and big things that come up. This is likely a form of decision paralysis. (I didn’t know I had decision paralysis until my counselor asked me if I did, and I was unable to answer yes or no.) I’m afraid I’ll do something a parent doesn’t approve of, or that a kid will ignore my instructions and I won’t know how to enforce what I’ve said.

Simply put, I’m afraid of me. I lack confidence in my ability to relate to and care for children, and I’m scared of letting myself down or letting a kid down or letting another parent down. I watch my friends parent any kid that is in front of them—resolving conflict, redirecting wild energy, correcting selfish behavior—and I am amazed. I feel anxious in those scenarios with my own children, let alone someone else’s.

Imagine my surprise when I accidentally discovered I love children. I was following a writing prompt from Julia Cameron’s book, Write for Life. My assignment was to complete this sentence ten times: “What I’d really like to write about is …”

After my first four answers, the next phrase that came to mind was, “… my love of children.” Surely someone had injected a foreign thought into my vein of thoughts. I almost dismissed it and moved on, but it insisted on being written down. So I wrote, “What I’d really like to write about is my love of children.” Then I added two question marks to make it clear I didn’t take full ownership of that answer. I finished the list without any more rogue thoughts.

The second part of the exercise was to choose one item on my list and write about it for five minutes. I chose number five, my love of children. Here’s what I wrote.

I love the children I know.

I love their faces, their voices, their giggles and tears.

I love the questions they ask, and the answers they give.

I love their trust, accepting help with hair-brushing and snack-opening and shoe-tying.

I love their creativity.

I love the drawings and crafts they give me, and how we can be fast friends after one stick of gum broken in half and shared.

I love their bird-nest hair and their smooth braided hair.

I love how they fart in their sleep, and talk in their sleep, and complain about how “terrible” they slept, just like a grownup.

I love the way they hug, with vulnerable hearts and trusting bodies.

I love the ways they imitate—words, TV shows, other kids, parents, animals.

I had no idea.

This exercise gave me permission to exist in both spheres: the one where I don’t like kids, and the one where I love kids. I experience the same fears of myself and of the countless moments that require wisdom or intervention, but at the same time I enjoy a new awareness that I love the kids I know. I really, really love them. And I like them too.

Husband of a Mother

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6:30 am. One bedroom door slams. Then another. Kids are scream-crying. Mom is crying behind one of those slammed doors, quieter but just as desperate. Dad was hoping to sleep until his alarm rang, but there will be no such extravagance today.

6:35 am. Dad slowly gets out of bed and stumbles across the hall in his boxers to hold and hear his distraught children. When he returns to the bedroom, Mom is in bed, spurting bursts of tears and anger, like a poorly-contained science experiment. Dad sinks back in bed to hold and hear the despair, and to quietly wonder how long this season of life will call on him to be more, always more.

Father’s Day was sweet and satisfying this year. We ate out at The Maple Counter for breakfast, shared gifts, and watched soapbox car racing on YouTube. As I was thinking about my husband, Michael, and how fortunate I am to parent with him, it occurred to me that perhaps as difficult and meaningful as it is to be a father, it is equally difficult and meaningful to be the husband of a mother.

A mother is immersed in emotions she often doesn’t understand. She sleeps much less than advised for mental and physical well-being. She is drenched with guilt and fear, which sometimes masquerade as control. A mother is on call 24/7—for days, weeks, months, years. She is on call for baby cries and soiled clothes, doctor appointments and play dates and skinned knees, temper tantrums and broken hearts, scissor and glue supervision, holding hands and finding shoes and wiping faces that don’t want to be wiped.

Who would sign up to be a support person to a mother? Such a person will be called upon to understand in times that defy understanding. They will bear witness to exhaustion, weeping, anger, and a beautiful body that is tired of being touched. They may endure the pain of watching a once-energetic woman become a hollow, methodical soul who can’t summon the energy to answer a question and has forgotten how to have fun. They will watch a mother pour hours into the planning and executing of a birthday party and have no capacity left for a goodnight kiss. They may stand by feeling helpless. They may step in to help and be criticized or ignored. They will be the object of resentment simply because they sleep a whole night or eat lunch while it’s still hot.

To stand with a mother, to witness her life, to love her, is a difficult prospect indeed.

Michael loved me as his wife for seven years before we were parents. He has loved me nearly 11 years as a mother. The demands on my time and emotions are less now than they were in the early years, but they will never end. I will always be a mother; my loving attention will never be only his again. He will witness the lives of our daughters not only as their father, but as a husband to their mother. He will forever be on this ride defined by unexpected turns and raw hearts, the kind of ride that remakes you with or without your permission, and invites you deep into love. Husband of a mother.

To all the men who love a mother, and to my husband especially: thank you.
Thank you for noticing.
Thank you for staying.
And thank you, too, for being selfish and annoying and knuckle-headed.
I couldn’t bear to be imperfect alone.

State of the Union

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Marriage is inconvenient. I have to check with my husband, Michael, about lunching at a different-than-usual time. I can’t turn the bedroom light on in the mornings because he’s still asleep. If I want to be alone, I have to announce it and arrange for it (children are also culpable for this one). The bedclothes are always in disarray, the toilet a mess, and one word at the wrong time can tip us sideways for a day or three.

Michael has his own list of inconveniences, probably much longer than mine—if he took the time to write them down. But he doesn’t keep track much. I know marriage counseling was (mostly) fun for me, but inconvenient for him—more nerve-wracking and stressful than interesting or inspiring. He participated nonetheless, and we sorted some things out. We talked about allowing ourselves and each other to “just be.” In fact, we talked about this for years. I can’t say exactly when or how it moved from an idea to a reality, but I know that facing our most terrifying fears was a long stop on the way to freedom. Our marriage is buoyant now in a gracious and spacious way that allows for inconvenience. Relational blood pressure is down to a healthy range.

Our counselor had a Gottman Institute resource for everything, including a weekly marriage check-up titled “State of the Union Meeting.” The basic idea is to have a weekly, guided conversation about your marriage. The first bullet item on this handout is, “Start with what is going right in the relationship.” Next item, “Give one another five appreciations each.” Of course we disagreed on whether these were actually one item or two. Were we to start with what is going right by sharing appreciations? Or were we to make some general statements about what we felt was going right, followed by five specific appreciations? We haven’t settled that yet.

Last week I was sitting in my ugly, brown prayer-chair, when God asked me out of the blue, “What do you think is going well in our relationship?” I was surprised and delighted. The question itself, even unanswered, was joyful, even celebratory. I immediately thought of the Gottman worksheet, and began a list:

– There are deeper roots. I don’t have to hover over our relationship like it’s a new transplant.

– We like to be together, especially in stillness.

I paused—peaceful, grateful—and wrote, “I’m just so happy about the question, I can hardly think of answers.” But more answers came.

– We assume the best about each other.

– We at least interlock pinky fingers in the situations that seem to drive us apart.

– Our dialogue is not as one-sided as it used to be. We hear each other better and don’t miss the mark in our communication as much.

– I’m more willing to engage with what is, instead of what “should” be.

– I’m more aware of the fears I bring to the table.

– We don’t always try to make sense of each other or understand everything between us.

– We’re getting better at feeling, together.

Underneath the list I wrote, “I’m blown away. We actually have a better relationship than we used to. And it’s certainly not from trying hard.”

I used to do a lot of what I call “pre-work” in my relationship with God. When I sat down with Him, I’d fret and plan and beg and argue, read or study the Bible, and write long pages in my prayer journal. In most of this I avoided the real issues—albeit unintentionally. I wanted God to make me patient and happy, and show up in a predictable manner. Christian theology had taught me these were reasonable expectations in a relationship with God. But in all of this “work,” I avoided the real work. As I noted in my journal, growth in my relationship with God is “certainly not from trying hard.”

Dealing with the real issues—deep anger, fear, disappointment and depression—was hard, but all I had to do was show up. I didn’t try hard. I accepted hard. I allowed myself to feel a lot of hard things, and learn that I was not in control, and neither was God—at least not in the ways I wanted Him to be. I released my knotted “try hard” mentality and accepted that life is hard, and no amount of trying hard is going to fix that. To my surprise, I found God in the real work of accepting and walking through the stuff I didn’t want in my character or in my life. No holy avoidance or miraculous patience. Instead, a togetherness that gifted me a sense of belonging.

Here I am, healthier, mostly because God and I agree that it’s okay for me to be a mess, and for life and love to be, at times, a long list of inconveniences. I can “just be.” The state of our union is, “spacious enough for inconvenience.”

From Jesus Freak to Evangelism Phobia, Part Two

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In this post—as in last week’s post—I use words like “Evangelism,” “Witnessing,” “Christianity,” and “Religion.” Each reader will have a different understanding of these words, both in denotation and connotation. Personally, I’m in the murky depths, somewhere between a conservative upbringing and an emerging mystical faith, still feeling around for a vocabulary that doesn’t cause pain.

***

“Aren’t you the one with a blog talking about Jesus?” Khalid asked.

I was at the home of my friends, Khalid and Tiffaney. They’d been to a concert earlier that week, which I avoided because of the musician’s evangelistic bent. “I don’t like evangelism,” I said, which prompted Khalid’s question about my blog.

“I certainly hope people don’t think I’m evangelizing!” I deflected the question.

It had not occurred to me that my blog (and my social handle @jesusmyfavoritesubject) could be viewed as evangelism. I have written over 100 blog posts, with the premise that talking about Jesus is one of my favorite things to do. What is that, if it’s not evangelism? Suddenly, I needed to answer this question.

I asked my husband if what I’m doing is evangelism. In his typical style, he looked up the word on his phone and found half a dozen definitions, all of which involved the concept of convincing another person. A Google search tells me that to convince is: to bring (as by argument) to belief, consent, or a course of action; persuade; cause (someone) to believe firmly in the truth of something. Combine this with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and you have evangelism: teaching or preaching about Jesus with the aim to bring about belief or action. Is that what I’m doing? I don’t want to answer.

A gray Jeep with a “Jesus Loves You” bumper sticker kept showing up on B Street last week. I passed it on my way home from school pick-up, and it got me all up in arms. Rather than joy at the sweet reminder of how loved I am, my response was irritation. People have all different conceptions of Jesus; the person displaying the sticker has no idea how many painful ideas he or she is promoting along with the positive ones. “Jesus Loves You” doesn’t see people, it talks at them. It doesn’t have any idea what tragedies or triumphs are on the reader’s mind, and it cannot weep or rejoice with them. The sticker is evangelism. I don’t like that I don’t like it … but I don’t like it.

One Friday afternoon, while chatting with my friend Celina at her dining room table, I brought up the question of whether I’m evangelizing. She asked, “If you’re not trying to convince when you write, what are you trying to do? What do you hope will happen when people read your blog?”

“I want people to feel seen,” I said. “I want them to be able to take a deep breath. I want them to know they’re okay.”

If God is in the picture, I hope people will see God seeing them.

On the eve of my recent 38th birthday, I spent a couple hours making a mental list of 38 people who have influenced me. It included coworkers, authors, family, and friends. Every influence was gentle; not one produced an about-face change in my life. They were quiet but strong: my boss—Jerry Mason—who believed in me, gave me responsibilities I would never have pursued on my own, and whose confidence in me was a steady presence in my life for over eight years; the authors—Gregory Boyle, Barbara Brown Taylor, Anne Lamott—who gave me permission to breathe, to try life open-handed; our mom tribe—half a dozen ladies who see me and allow me to see them. This is the kind of influence I hope for in writing.

I suppose I’m inviting people to be at home in themselves, rather than reject themselves to be at home in Christ. Krispin Mayfield, in his book Attached to God, writes about the Christian experience of sinfulness, and compares it to the pain of disconnection described in attachment theory.

It struck me that the theology I’d been given and the attachment literature I was reading seemed to be describing the exact same thing but offering different explanations. The theology taught that this awful feeling of ‘inner deformity’ was because of things we’ve done—lying to our parents, disrespecting teachers, sneaking extra candy. The psychology suggested that the terrible feeling came from what has been done to us. … (pg. 169)

When we have an insecure attachment, we feel awful inside not because of our sin but because of our unmet needs. It is the feelings of distance and separation that create the intense pain of shame. … (pg. 170)

“We think that if we can get a little bit better, a little less sinful, we will feel better about ourselves. In reality, true connection heals shame. (pg. 173)

True connection. That I might be willing to shout from the rooftops. I want to offer the things I thought I had because I was a Christian, but slowly and devastatingly found out I didn’t have: hope, peace, love, joy. These are almost synonymous with Christianity, but they evaded me for decades. So as I’ve found them, I’ve also found different language. When I share hope, I talk about how it’s okay to not be okay. When I share peace, I talk about disentangling from perfectionism. When I share love, I talk about expansiveness. When I share joy, I talk about coffee and friends.

I guess I’ve always wanted people to know they’re loved, and for a long time I thought telling them about Jesus was the best way to do that. But I was “the blind, leading the blind.” Religion created a structure in which I could feel my way around while my eyes were closed. But at some point I started bumping into sharp corners, and I didn’t feel safe any more. God suggested I sit still and open my eyes. In that terrifying posture of stillness, I learned to hold hands with myself, let myself be loved, and let life be both brutal and beautiful—“brutiful,” as Glennon Doyle would say. The structure of religion was an external protection. The beauty of loving and being loved is an internal strength. I’m learning to be strong rather than safe, and that’s what I want share. Is that evangelism? I still wonder about that.

It Has Been a Year Since We Left Church, for the Second Time

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The first time, it was all rather unexpected. Friends invited us to start a house church with them. We could provide a place for people who didn’t feel safe in traditional church, people who had too many questions or doubts or painful memories.

So we left church to create church.

What followed were six years of beautiful upheaval. Often kids outnumbered adults, two to one. Treasures in the chaos were a sense of purpose, relational Bible studies, conversations over lunch.

But, five years in, I got tired. Bible studies irritated me. Sabbaths felt long. My husband and I watched ourselves interacting with people and noticed how empty we were—selfish and short-tempered and irritable.

Uncertainty hovered around our house church commitment for many months, until it became clear to me that fear was holding me there, not love. Quitting would leave us without a church family, it would disappoint our ministry partners, and, quite frankly, it would look pathetic. I really wanted God to call me to something new, so it could be about going there instead of leaving here. But He didn’t.

Last April, after six years in house church ministry, we made an abrupt exit. We left church, for the second time.

We became the unchurched.

At first this unchurched place of neutrality felt unspiritual. But somewhere along the way I accepted an invitation to my own wholeness.

Now I work with God in a never-ending vocation of inviting people into their wholeness. It’s small groups and coffee dates, reading and writing, praying and listening. It’s group texts and play dates and learning that my identity is not in how people respond or don’t respond to me. It’s not empty, it’s full. It’s not certain, it’s curious. It’s not settled, it’s in motion. It’s not so much about leaving church as it is about finding my holiness and realizing that, as Gregory Boyle would say, there is no “them,” just “us.” We’re all in.

What Is God up To?

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What Is God up To?

Reflections – week 8

It’s the final week of reflections inspired by my current small groups. We’ve been exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. I have a feeling I’ll be going through these books again in years to come. They invite me to occupy my own wholeness, to live in my Spirit center. I’m honored to read the words of folks who are truly alive, and to offer my own words into the great expanse.

Many thanks to the authors of these books—to Karen McAdams, Rachel Faulkner Brown, and Gregory Boyle. You are Spirit wind blowing in my life.

I have long been certain that God is crazy. Here’s proof, from the mouth of Jesus: “Whoever believes in Me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). I could write pages on what I think this means, but I honestly have no idea. Regardless, it blows the doors off my measured world and invites me to a wild curiosity.

Gregory Boyle writes, “I hired a homie named Julio once who was in possession of the worst attitude to ever walk through our doors. Julio was not the first homie who told me where to go and requested I do things with myself that I don’t believe can be physically done. I do remember, as I hired him, that I deliberately chose to be intrigued by him rather than get defensive. Instead of dreading his arrival and the implications of his belligerence, I opted for curiosity. Way better. It worked out.”1

I find myself in a place where I’m liable to get defensive with God, so I’m opting for curiosity. Curiosity keeps me from “furiosity” and fear. Father’s House Session Seven is about how we were “made for more,”2 and that “more” may look like healing people and exercising power over spirits of darkness and oppression. Exercising spiritual power feels like one more chance for me to mess things up, in a very public way. If I pray over someone for healing of a physical malady or for the removal of a spirit of fear or depression, it’s no longer private. And I probably need an answer for when it doesn’t “work.” I don’t have one, and I hate all the usual ones about whatever God’s will is and maybe I misunderstood what to pray for, or maybe I needed to pray longer or with more people or with more faith, blah, blah, blah. I’ll pass on looking like an idiot and I’ll pass on making excuses for God not showing up.

So obviously I have some things to work through. In the meantime, curiosity keeps me present. Curiosity holds open the possibility for things to happen that I don’t expect or understand. Curiosity invites an awareness that God may be up to something of which I am totally unaware. Curiosity lets God out of the box, to see what He’s going to do. I’m not sure why God lets me keep a lid on Him. But I’m kinda ready to take the lid off. Or at least open it a crack and see what comes out. Curiosity allows me to wonder instead of worry. What is God up to?

In the early chapters of the book of Acts, Peter is beginning to inhabit his spiritual boldness. One day when he walks with John to the temple for prayer, they encounter a man begging for money. The man was lame at birth, and presumably made money to help his family care for him by begging at the temple. He asks Peter and John for money, and instead they heal him in the name of Jesus. He gets up on those legs that didn’t even work in utero, and runs around praising God.

So God’s house can be a place for beggars to come, and to receive something different than what they’re asking for. Through His Spirit, God gives us good things we don’t ask for. This is why I want to be curious. What is God up to?

I suppose I was made for this. It’s not like flying to the moon so much as it’s like walking or eating. I am naturally supernatural. The adventurously expectant life is not my posture toward God, nor His posture toward me, but something we experience together. I am a trusted daughter in this partnership.

* * *

As I look back on Father’s House, having now journaled through it twice in small groups, I recall the story I shared at our final meeting last fall. I journaled it that morning, just a couple hours before we gathered for our Father’s House finale.

November 1, 2022

Saturday our family spent the day around the fire pit in our back yard. The freestanding metal fire pit and all the chairs are still out in the lawn now, on a Tuesday morning. Yesterday it sprinkled a bit and I thought about moving the fire pit, but I didn’t make it a priority. As I fell asleep in the evening I could hear it raining more, and each time I awoke in the night it was raining. I wanted to enjoy the sound of rainfall, but I couldn’t help thinking about the fire pit out there and how easily it rusts. When I got up this morning and it was still raining, I remembered that our two favorite lounge chairs rust also, and I started feeling anxious and frustrated with myself.

Then Papa reminded me, “no condemnation.” And I thought, “but doesn’t letting that stuff rust mean I’m a bad daughter? Doesn’t it make me careless, wasteful … and just really really wrong?” And the answer was, “no. Leaving stuff out to rust has nothing to do with who I am.” I faltered as I tried to say that in my spirit. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, but with some effort I said it. I wonderingly turned it over in my mind and as I accepted it to be true I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I felt light. Amazed. Loved. Free. Then, as is my custom on Tuesday mornings, I weighed myself. 114.6 pounds. As I entered it on my smart phone I felt good about keeping my weight in the 113-117 range for several years now. And then I knew in my spirit that weight management says nothing about who I am. If I weighed 200 pounds I would be just as beloved. And I knew it in my heart. And then I just felt spoiled.

I am spoiled by knowing I don’t have to get life right, and I don’t even have to get spirituality right. There is no “right” incantation or posture or actions. There is no deserving. He is the one doing—the Giver, the Filler, the Inviter. My role is to receive (and there is no “right” way to receive) whatever extravagance He extends to me. He elevates me to where He is, and invites me to a life of amazement. In living that life, I extend the same invitation to the people around me who are still trying to get it “right,” or who have settled miserably into the mire of getting it “wrong.”

“God stands with the powerless not to console them in their powerlessness, but to always remind them of their power. … Jesus invites us to this anarchy.”3

Endnotes:
1The Whole Language, page 130
2Father’s House, page 136
3The Whole Language, page 135

A Need to Need

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A Need to Need

Reflections – week 7b

Welcome to week seven (part two) 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: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. Next Wednesday’s post for week 8 will conclude this series.

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

Father’s House. Lesson seven. Myth #41: God turns His back on me when I have needs—especially needs that are annoying or ongoing.

Having needs is a no-go for me, for many reasons. Needing is vulnerable. If I need, I’m giving another person the opportunity to help or ignore me, and that’s way too far out of my control. Needing is weak; it happens because I didn’t plan right, or I made a mistake. In short, needing is never safe. Never. If I’m not strong, I’m worthless. Needs are more likely to create distance than bring connection. I don’t feel safe within my own self to have a need; heaven forbid I need something from my husband or friends, or from God Himself.

Father’s House points out that, “Everywhere Jesus went we encounter His immeasurable goodness—healing ALL who came to Him, delivering people from demonic torment, raising the dead, forgiving sinners, loving the unlovely and dining with the disreputable.”2 Yes, but this is all about doing, and I get hung up there. It sounds like Jesus went around fixing things, but my spiritual experience tells me that’s a mis-read. God hasn’t been much into fixing me. I think the Bible, the way people talk about the Bible, and the way I understand Jesus have given me the wrong idea of Father.

There is a God I know and trust, a Father I have encountered in my anger and fear and self-loathing; in music and friends and words and quietness. I have found His abiding presence in my knotted heartstrings, and in the cadence of my day. But there is also a Father who isn’t going to help me live my life, who is okay with me running on empty and doing only what I can do in my humanness. I am terrified to approach Him with deeply felt needs. Does God actually respond to a person’s real, tangible needs? What about the intangible needs I don’t even have words for? How often will God “meet” my needs, whatever that means? If it’s one time out of ten, I’d rather not ask.

I want a loving Father’s help, but the stakes feel high. I always end up angry at Him, at me, or at both of us—probably because I have expectations. I want a contract. In fact, a prenuptial agreement would be nice. I’d like to know what I get out of this when God stops showing up.

But I also want to know what it’s like to be cared for. I want to trust, to settle into what is better than a contract.

Father’s House. Day Two. Page 125: “Now climb up in [Papa’s] lap in His big chair and tell Him what you need from Him. Lay it all out.”3 I’m terrified to admit that I need to be lavishly loved, that I want to be celebrated. But I know I will settle for less if I keep clutching my needs, unwilling to hold them out, to allow someone else to see them. So I follow directions. I make a list of what I need from Papa.

I need You to bless me.
I need You to see me.
I need Your seeing to precipitate action on my behalf.
I need You to remind me it’s okay not to be useful.
I need You to move toward me with interest and intention.
I need You to want to hear from me as much when I’m doing poorly as when I’m doing well.
I need You to like being with me.
I need You to behave extravagantly toward me.
I need to be wedded to You—a forever kind of togetherness.
I need “enough” to be out of the equation—no evaluating.
I need to order takeout and waste time with You, in my pajamas.
I need to hold hands with You.
I need You to ask how I’m doing and listen without an agenda.

My list surprises me. It seems I’m more interested in being seen and loved than being served or dealt a fair hand. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I know relationship is better than rules, but sometimes I want God to follow the rules. Sometimes predictable feels safe.

Maybe predicting is rather like weather forecasting. You end up with a mix of everything, undefined no matter how hard you try to define it. But, every day we know there will be weather. I don’t know how God is going to show up today, but I know He’s going to show up. It might not be the sunshine I prayed for, but I need never fear I’ll wake up to a day with no weather at all. God is alive and I am alive, and there are days when all that aliveness is unpredictable, stormy, maybe even disastrous. But no one will wonder if anything happened that day. We’ll know. So I don’t need God to run my life, or predict my life, or change the forecast to be in my favor. I just need Him to like me and see me and bless me, and keep showing up.

It is safe to have needs in Papa’s house.

Gregory Boyle writes that when we are “held by a no-matter-what-ness” we can “reidentify and accept [ourselves] with a mystical wholeness. You can then discard all those things that previously you held back. The places where you used to get stuck. … After that, it’s not so much smooth sailing as it is resilient and integrated enough to deepen the sense of your own truth.”4 My truth is that God’s Spirit joins with my mine to affirm that I am His child (Romans 8:16). I hear His affirmation, and I make another list.

God says,
I’m so glad you’re here.
I love holding you.
I love being with you.
I am and I have all that you need.
Together, let’s rest in what is finished. Let’s rest for a long time.
Let’s be together with no distractions. Let’s have fun together.
Let’s go for a walk, get ice cream, love every person we see.
Let’s enjoy and create.
Let’s take everything that burdens and stresses you and put it on my docket. You’re free.
Let’s do relationships together. Let’s parent together.
Let me spoil you. Let me do more than you “deserve.”
Let me warm you and feed you and provide a feast of beauty for your eyes.
Let’s be alive together. I release you from the identity of responsible servant-child and name you sparkling heiress. I’m your Daddy. I made this world and the people in it. You can’t break anything or anyone in a way that I can’t re-make.
I always have your back (and your front and sides).
I know you. You don’t ever need to hide, or explain yourself to me. You make perfect sense.
You’re exactly where you need to be. Every moment.
You are not bound or caged. You are wild and free and alive.
You cannot lose my favor. I would never think to say that, because it seems silly to me, so thank you for letting me know what you need to hear.
“I’ll love you forever. I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living [which will be a long time], my [daughter] you’ll be.”5

I have believed I am worthy of having what God perceives as my needs met, but not worthy of having what I perceive as my needs met. Now I’m less sure that’s an important distinction. God is listening and loving. He is not measuring and monitoring. That’s about as safe as it gets. So I will practice bringing my needs to the table, and I will take comfort in being “held by a no-matter-what-ness.” In Papa’s house, needs are a point of connection. They are a meeting place for intimate friends. They are safe.

Endnotes:
1See Father’s House, page 120
2Father’s House,page 127
3Father’s House,page 125
4The Whole Language, page 110
5Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch

Mess to Meadow

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Mess to Meadow

Reflections – week 6

Welcome to week six 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: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. This is week six of eight.
I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

“Messy.” This word resonated with me as a descriptor of my inner world for most of the past ten years. Also, “Complicated” and “Untrustworthy.” Being at home with a newborn baby introduced me to my inner world, and brought to light a toxic relationship with myself that had been flying under the radar most of my life. Twenty-one months after quitting work to stay at home, my second daughter was born, and in between cuddling warm, squishy babies and washing loads of laundry that left only pink lint in the dryer screen, I learned to hate myself.

Self-hate is like having the world’s worst roommate, and reading only bad news in the paper. On some level it feels normal, but there is always the hope that things will improve. I had no idea what would be involved in learning kindness to myself. Mercifully, it was not a journey I took alone, but in the company of my husband, favorite authors, music, and God.

I didn’t know it, but I needed to learn what parts of my inner world are truest. What parts can influence or control other parts? Why did I feel powerless so much of the time, and why did I increasingly try to control myself, my children, and my husband to combat those feelings of powerlessness?

One aspect of learning to be friends with myself was practicing acceptance of all the parts. This has been a vital key in finding peace. But I still want to know, when different parts are at war, what is the most real part? In a broader sense, who am I?

Gregory Boyle writes, “When the homies arrive, they have not been properly introduced to themselves.”1 I can relate. While caring for two little ones, I was introduced to myself, but it wasn’t a proper introduction. I got acquainted with what Father’s House calls my soul—made up of mind, will and emotions.2 These always seemed at war with one another. I thought my will was the control center, the part of me that could call the shots for everything else. But it didn’t work. My emotions jumped into control, my mind spent most of its time cowering in fear, and my will unceremoniously shoved me through the duties of each day. After a few years of getting to know myself, I was thoroughly done with being me, and I was madder than hell at whoever said my will was supposed to control my mind and emotions. I was also angry with myself. So angry, from trying to control my emotions with my will, and my will with my mind, and failing. Always failing. Defeated, lying on the ground, exhausted, dirty.

In the video teaching for Father’s House Session Six, Rachel Faulkner Brown introduces the idea of a spirit center.3 The soul (mind, will, emotions) is around the spirit center, and is informed by the spirit center. In other words, everything moves outward from my spirit center. This means I don’t rule myself with willpower. I cannot tell you what a relief this is. Willpower is an unfaithful partner, an accident waiting to happen. I either wield it to the detriment of the soft parts of myself and my children, or I don’t use it, also to the detriment of our most tender parts.

A spirit center changes everything. There is a whole and holy part of me, a quiet place, a finished place. After being properly introduced to myself, the haggling between my will, mind, and emotions took its proper place outside my spirit. The authors of Father’s House write, “In the Kingdom, who you are releases what you do. The enemy tries to convince you what you do determines who you are. That’s why Satan attacks what you believe about yourself the hardest.”4 I have been caught in a vortex of doing, not knowing that being comes first. Spirit is my center, and my center is Spirit. I don’t need to control my spirit.

So, the truest—by which I mean the most unwavering—part of me is my spirit center, around which all the other parts find their places, and the whole becomes a residence of freedom and meaning.

Rachel Faulkner Brown suggests that I ask God, “What do You call me?”5 This is Papa’s response: “Meadow. You are now a place of beauty, stillness, rest, wonder, creative activity. Seasons may change the blooms or the flow of water, but you will always be these things.”

Mess to Meadow.

Wrestling to resting.

Despicable to divine.

The coming hours of this day are not a treacherous trudge over land mines, but an adventurous afternoon in a meadow.

Endnotes:
1The Whole Language, page 94
2Father’s House, page 100
3Father’s House, Session Six video teaching
4Father’s House, page 99
5Father’s House, Session Six video teaching

“Holiness is a contact sport”

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“Holiness is a contact sport”

Reflections – week 5a

Welcome to week five 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: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. This is week five of eight. (Next week’s post will also be based on material from week 5—hence, this is 5a and next week will be 5b).
I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

As a good Millennial, I’m not much for limits. Limits feel like judgements. They make life smaller; make me smaller. Any good proponent of limits would tell you that healthy limits actually open up possibilities. Could be. I’m not there yet. I’m still shedding layers of limits that have gripped me too tight. When I come across this question in Father’s House, it triggers my limit-aversion: “Do you think you can ‘fall from Grace’? Read Galatians 5:1-4.”1 Falling from grace definitely does not fit in my paradigm of an expansive God, a Love big enough to hold everything. But okay, I’ll read Galatians 5:1-4.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

“Falling from grace” makes it sound like there’s a limit on grace. I look for a different angle, a way forward that’s not triggering. I have trouble finding an analogy I like. What if grace is air and not-grace is water? I’m breathing air naturally and it sustains me. But if I stick my nose in water and breath in, things go haywire. Breathing in water compromises the flow of air. In the same way, grace is abundantly available and sustaining, but if I stick my nose in performance and good behavior, I’ll no longer be breathing in grace.

Perhaps I’m not able to partake of grace at the same time I am trying to be good enough, get it right, obey the rules. This “fall from grace” is actually a loss of intimacy, a feeling of disconnect that is inevitable when I try to be good.

Oddly, I’m often “good” in order to connect, not realizing it has the opposite effect. I have settled for false, transactional “intimacy.” When I show up as a performer, it’s the wrong currency for connection. No experience has taught me this more than marriage. There is no way to “get it right.” The only way to connect is to show up as me. Damn, I hate that. The curated, filtered, controlled version of me seems so much better than actual me.

Father’s House puts it this way: “Jesus and Father God only relate to you based on the Covenant that you are in, and that is the New Covenant based on His matchless grace and mercy.”2 I can perform all I want, but when I do I’m not occupying relational space with God. Also, “Grace is not a superpower to fulfill the old covenant.”3 Say what? I thought that was the whole point. Faith and grace and Spirit enable me to do what I’m not able to do on my own, and that is to be good! Or not.

I’m not super clear on what I’m supposed to do, if not try to be “good.” But Gregory Boyle seems to have an idea:

What if holiness is a contact sport and we are meant to bump into things?

If we allow ourselves to “bump into things,” then we quit measuring. We cease to Bubble-Wrap ourselves against reality. We stop trying to “homeschool” our way through the world so that the world won’t touch us.

A homie told me once, “It’s taken me all these years to see the real world. And once ya see it—there’s only God there.”

With any luck, we don’t protectively encase ourselves from surprising tenderness. We announce to each other that we are alive and kicking, ready to be bumped into.

We don’t want to distance the secular but always bring it closer. It’s only then that ordinary things and moments become epiphanies of God’s presence.

God holds out wholeness to us. Let’s not settle for just spiritual. We are sacramental to our core when we think that everything is holy. The holy not just found in the supernatural but in the Incarnational here and now.

– The Whole Language, excerpts from pages 81-82

This view of life is about as limitless as it gets. Bump into things. See God everywhere, including in me, sacramental to the core.

So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

– Romans 8:12-14, MSG

Okay Papa God, I’m ready to shake hands on this. I’ll accept Your deal that self-righteousness and good behavior are a no-connection zone, but everything else is on the table: bad behavior, the moment I’m in, my body, the life of each person I know, the tree outside my window.

Maybe “they” are right after all—a healthy limit is freedom.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

– Galatians 5:1

Endnotes:
1Father’s House, page 89
2Father’s House, page 83
3Father’s House, Session Five video teaching

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/