Lord, I’m sorry that when we’re together I put pressure on You to fix me, to give me some transfusion or infusion, or end my confusion.
Maybe I could enjoy You instead of holding You at arms length until You make sense to me.
Maybe it’s ok to be sad and confused about pain and suffering, and to have unsettling “nots”— I do not: know what to tell my kids about You feel like I need to “save” people have a church family or a ministry right now.
Perhaps dropping expectations would make way for curiosity.
What was Your resurrection like? Did the angel who came to Your tomb gently shake your shoulder and say, “It’s time to wake up, Jesus”? When did Your wounds become scars and not gaping holes? When You awoke were Your feet still calloused from walking? Did Your beard still have blood in it?
Maybe letting go of what I thought was important will make way for what is holy, for compassion—a sacred way to approach myself, other people, and the world around me.
What is compassion? Entering into the suffering of another.
Could I have compassion for You, Lord? That feels wrong somehow.
Why would I have compassion for a God who has everything? Oh, but You don’t have everything. You don’t have all Your children. Do You feel just a wee bit empty? Do You suffer?
Curiosity and compassion are roomy.
You are roomy.
Thank You for giving me room—permission to: enjoy Your company be sad and confused ask questions try on curiosity and compassion.
Truth be told, I don’t need to be fixed as much as I need to be loved. Thank You for always refusing to prioritize my behavior over me, and for enjoying me instead of fixing me.
I am over-aware that gratitude is a good idea. I’ve read books, heard the research, and mentored others toward gratitude, but I cannot find my own way to it. This leaves me feeling guilty and incompetent. But when I come out of shame, sometimes I see underlying issues feeding my tendency to be a pessimist, a cynic, a realist. One of these issues is survivor guilt. Every person alive today is susceptible to survivor guilt—a condition of persistent mental and emotional stress experienced by someone who has survived an incident in which others died.1 Our world is an incident in which others die. When I consider my life in comparison to most of the world population, saying I’m grateful somehow comes off as superior. Survival guilt leaves me just shy of getting the words “thank you” out of my mouth.
One morning I ponder this while watching birds out my window—hopping on the neighbor’s roof, sitting on telephone wires, strutting in the street, always fluttering here and there. And God whispers, everyone has the birds.
So then I suppose most everyone has sunrises and sunsets, trees and berry bushes, flowers, animals, stars. Even friendship, love, and the miracle of life. The lines of “lucky” and “unlucky” are not drawn between first-world and third-world countries. In all parts of the world we find sex slaves and starvation, abuse and death. There are Americans in solitary confinement, shut off from most blessings, and Americans confined by busyness, who for years haven’t stopped long enough to see a bird or a sunset. Loss or lack of freedom occurs on so many levels in so many places.
I know a subversive God, who “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45) Not only that, “When He died, He died once to break the power of sin for all.” (Romans 6:10, emphasis added)
If God is not selectively blessing and saving people, I wonder why the world looks like it does. Could it be that starvation, loneliness, and slavery are human constructs? If they are constructed by humans, can they be deconstructed by humans? Perhaps I have an incredible opportunity to participate in their reversal. If these tragedies—which distort or destroy the good things God has provided—came at the hands of broken humans, then as a healing human I may participate in restoration.
So where does this leave me?
There are no easy answers.
It seems that God provides for all. My greatest gifts are gifts God has given to everyone, not just to me or those like me. I may feel gratitude in the sacred moments when I notice the sky, see a friend’s deepest heart, or awake to the sound of singing birds, knowing that these pleasures are gifts to all.
At the same time, I may grieve for those who do not experience these blessings, who are locked away physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually—which is all of us, some of the time; and some of us, all the time. For this I cry, and so does God—God whose dream for us is a life characterized by love, friendship, and beauty.
This corporate sense of gratitude and grief gently moves me from cynicism to awe. I am in awe both at the beauty and the pain of the world. I am called to work for the good of the just and the unjust. I am invited to stare in wonder at the sun setting, and stare in wonder at a starving child, and allow both to wreck me. And for this I am grateful.
Jesus said not to worry about what to eat or drink or wear because our heavenly Father knows what we need (Matthew 6:25, 32). He said to seek the kingdom of God first and all these things—what we eat, drink, and wear—will be “added” to us (Matthew 6:33). I’m not sure what that means, and it leaves me with a lot of questions when I look around. Every year millions of people die of starvation and exposure. In the time it takes you to read this post, 15-30 people will die of starvation or malnutrition. Is this because they’re worrying? Or because they’re not seeking first the kingdom? If God sees their need, is He holding out on them? That seems cruel at best and sadist at worst. Yet I cling to the image of a loving Father and the incarnation of a God willing to subject Himself to the worst human conditions.
Why is it that Christians like to tell stories about a single mom praying and finding a bag of groceries at her front door, and atheists like to talk about science? Nobody likes to talk about human suffering. With or without God, it doesn’t make sense, and it hurts.
Is it helpful to wonder what God is up to—to look around at all the people who are trusting God and “seeking first” and still dying? Why does it sound like Jesus is preaching prosperity gospel, when He just said we’ll be reviled and persecuted and lied about (Matthew 5:11)? I see His point that worrying is a waste of mental energy (“Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” Matthew 6:27). But it sounds like He’s saying God “will supply all your needs” (Philippians 4:19). And I have to wonder who He’s talking to, and what He means by “needs.” If He means our need to be clothed and fed—which is what He said—how do I reconcile this with the world? I don’t know why, as a loving Father, He’s not stepping in. Perhaps suffering doesn’t bother Him in the same way it bothers me? I’m not suggesting it bothers me more—I have a feeling He suffers with every suffering person. I guess I’m wondering if it bothers Him different.
Gregory Boyle says we find God in the margins. Maybe if suffering truly bothered me I would show up in the margins—with the impoverished, incarcerated, mentally ill, homeless, illiterate. Perhaps God is richly present there, and if I find the courage to go there I will see Him. And maybe if I see Him there I will get a hint of why He’s not “saving” people in the ways I expect. Perhaps—and I know this idea is really “out there”—He meant for humans to care for each other.
Could it be that “do not worry” is a corporate message, a statement that comes into being as the “rich” and the “poor” press together? Maybe in seeking first the kingdom we do not read our Bibles and pray, we go to the margins; and maybe as we go to the margins we find ourselves—we feel centered for the first time—even as the hungry find food and the naked find clothing, the weak find courage and the homeless find shelter, and the incarcerated have a full schedule during visiting hours.
Perhaps the kingdom of heaven is here when we press together: the poverty of the rich and the poverty of the poor simultaneously relieved as we hold hands. Perhaps starvation is more real than a full pantry and I will only find salvation when I am willing to look depravation in the eye.
I don’t feel any closer to “answers” (whatever those are), but I do have a desire to go to the local penitentiary and ask an inmate to save my life, to change my narrative by telling me his story, and to bring me to the margin to find the kingdom of heaven. I wonder if freedom is behind bars, joy is in hardened hearts, hope is in blank faces, and we find it together.
There are few daily joys more pleasurable than picking my nose. If I don’t have a pinky fingernail long enough to pick the boogers from my nose, that takes some of the fun out of it. (Maybe this is the real reason I have always preferred to keep my nails long.) If a booger comes out dry I usually drop it wherever I am or flick it across the room so I don’t have to be responsible for its unknown landing place. But when the dry part comes out trailing some not-so-dry stuff, I have a real dilemma. If I’m sitting down it’s out of the question to rise from my chair simply to get a tissue. But neither do I want to stick this rubber cement from my nose on the furniture. Sometimes what I’m wearing has a perfect hem to fold the booger in, where it can reside unnoticed until it is washed away in the washing machine. When I’m outdoors the options open up quite a bit. I can hide a booger in grass, camouflage it on a tree trunk, or stick it on the bottom of a picnic table.
For the first few years of my marriage, all boogers I picked in the car were stuck on the side of the upholstered seat, down near the lever that moves the seat forward and back. My husband protested loudly enough about this crusty collection that I now keep a napkin in the center console for booger-collecting purposes. If for some reason the napkin isn’t there, I can usually find a straw wrapper or a receipt. I may have stuck a juicy booger on a coin once, when that was all that was available. Some people I know eat their boogers, which removes all the trouble of having to find a place for them, but booger-eating has not been one of my secret pleasures.
In addition to picking my nose, I also enjoy picking a guitar. Growing up with a guitar-picking father—who played his classical guitar most of the day and often far into the night—picking was the soundtrack to my life, long before I owned my first guitar at age fifteen. Not long after I learned to strum a few chords I learned different picking patterns. In high school I played around with song-writing, and my dad recorded an album of me singing and playing my songs, titled “Searching.”
My childhood was also chock-full of picking fruit. In addition to the 45 fruit trees, three grape arbors, and bursting vegetable garden, we grew and harvested many kinds of berries: red and black currants, gooseberries, josta berries, raspberries, blackberries, boysenberries, strawberries. I picked everything from green beans (somewhat tedious) to zucchini (a little poky) to asparagus (quick and easy). I picked weeds from rows of corn; grapes from their stems, for juicing or freezing. I picked flowers from our wild flower garden, and from my own little flower plot. Nasturtiums were my favorite, and I gave special attention a miniature rose bush I received for my birthday one year.
I also picked up sticks—hundreds of sticks—every year after my father painstakingly pruned those 45 fruit trees and three grape arbors. Grape prunings were the worst. They twined into a tangled mass under the grape arbor and my sister and I would wrestle them in flailing, unmanageable, rolling piles, to the burn heap. When the sun went down and we were cozy inside by the wood stove, we often pulled out pick-up sticks. I spent hours on the floor in the living room playing games of pick-up sticks with my sister or mom.
There are at least two things I haven’t picked: a lock or a pocket. I’m also not big on picking my teeth. I have occasionally picked someone’s brain, but my passionately curious husband far outdoes me on this one. He is interested in everything from bee keeping to philosophy and enjoys picking brains about almost anything. He is also better than me at picking up his feet, and placing them. I have fallen down three different flights of stairs at our house and my spacial awareness is below average.
I have picked at my food, picked over tables of used books for sale, picked off ticks, picked at lint on my shirt, picked on my children for making messes, and picked up the pieces of broken plates and cups. I have picked my way through the mess on my daughters’ bedroom floor in the middle of the night, and I have picked a bone with my husband over the proper use of a Sunday. Too many times I have been the pick of the bunch—valedictorian, Washington State student employee of the year, rising staff member of the year. I’m sure someone told me this is how it works: being excessively responsible results in a life that is excessively easy. I am disappointed and angry that this has not been the case, and have picked to pieces the concept of responsibility.
I have never picked a fist fight, and I’m not quick to pick a verbal fight, but I have certainly picked at a lot of things that ought to be left alone—hang nails, broken things, people I don’t know well enough to criticize, dried-on gum, sunburns, people I love. I have also picked apart my self until I am riddled with holes, and I have picked apart the human beings closest to me. I have looked down on them, or refused to look at all, forgetting that dignity is not earned, it just is.
I have been free to take my pick, of schools, boyfriends, produce at the grocery store. I have wondered whether this freedom to pick and choose is a really a freedom, or if it’s more like a train wreck. I watch myself choose what feels good in the moment (but not five minutes later), choose to hurt someone else so I can feel better, choose to point out what’s wrong instead of what’s right, choose to leave when staying would be true loving. Who decided it was a good idea to leave the picking up to me?
I have picked a hole in my own heart and then wondered why I find it hard to fully love. I have led an untroubled life in regards to upbringing and circumstances, but I have created trouble by looking on myself and others with judgement, and ruminating in the ensuing shame. I have been slow to pick up on this, not realizing that a life well-lived is lived not in good behavior but in a safe heart. Abundance happens when I let my own heart be a safe place for me to reside, and when I offer my heart as a safe place for those around me to enter in. When I am good company for myself I become good company for others. Love is big enough for all my yuck. I don’t have to pick myself clean. I will be messy, and I will be surrounded by messy people, and I will still pick me, and I will pick the person in front of me.
Attending a party or social event can be hard. When I arrive at 5:00 pm for a party and the hosts get around to calling in the pizza order at 6:00, I soothe my hunger pains by judging my hosts. Oh my goodness, I can’t believe they would say the party starts at 5:00 and not even call in the pizza order until 6:00. Why would they do that? Everyone is starving. Is it that hard to plan ahead? It’s also incredibly satisfying to judge the people who arrive later than me, are dressed too nice, or are too loud or too quiet.
It’s refreshing to judge the party hosts and guests because it gives me a break from judging myself. Chances are I’m late. I’m also really bad at greeting cards, so I’m the one saying “Oh! That’s my gift,” while the guest of honor is trying to find a card or see who the gift bag is from. I don’t know whether to sit on the floor when there aren’t enough chairs, and I probably didn’t wear the right thing for floor-sitting. I hate to ask, “Where is the restroom?” And I take big bites, talk with my mouth full, and worry about not getting enough of my favorite foods.
I don’t know whether it’s more rude to interject myself into a group of people who are already conversing, or to sit alone and silent. If I were one of those people who offers to help, that would be awesome, but I really prefer to be catered to at a party, so I can’t cut my social anxiety by getting busy in the kitchen. If there is much unplanned time at a party I get really uncomfortable. At public events I cope with this by reading a book, but in a home, getting a book out and reading during a party would be like flying a “loser” flag over my head.
I am a time optimist, which means I generally think things will take only about two thirds (half?) of the actual time they will take. I persist in this no matter how many times my experience disproves my optimism. I dislike being early—I mean, who has time to sit around waiting? Since we live in a small town where just about everything is 5-10 minutes away, I tend to leave the house when an event is beginning. I cannot pretend I hit traffic on the way, so everyone knows when I arrive 5-10 minutes late that I didn’t leave my house until the event started. I try to pretend this is not true and that something “came up” which caused my tardiness.
I know I look like I’m in my 30’s, but really I’m just a thirteen-year-old inside, and as much as I want to be at this party, I don’t like what it reveals. Parties show me things I don’t want to know about myself, including my fear that others are seeing things they don’t like about me.
If attending a party is hard, hosting one is grueling. For starters, if it’s at my house, I fly around yelling at my kids and making terse requests of my husband in an effort to transform our cluttered and dirty home into a space which will at least be clean enough that my guests are not totally distracted by evidence of the bomb that goes off every mealtime. I move the crochet project that has been on the couch for six months and the art supplies that have been on the sideboard for three weeks, and vacuum the corners. I look out the dirty windows and really want to clean them but I know I do not have the time and also my husband might realize exactly how crazy I am.
Because I am a time optimist, if I am hosting a party, I generally think I can make the punch, cut the veggies, clean up the yard, and change into my party clothes in the last ten minutes before the party begins. This inevitably does not go well. I have been known to change into party clothes after half the guests have arrived, and tend to spend a lot of time in the kitchen doing all the things I didn’t get done before. I don’t like being harried, but “hanging out” with guests is awkward, so there are some benefits to being frantically busy during most of the party.
If you’re remembering that I judge people who don’t plan ahead, then you might be thinking right now that I’m a bit hypocritical, and you’d be right. Basically, I’m going for my own comfort, which at your party means everything should be well planned and on time, but at my party it means I will be busy doing things at the last minute because that keeps me from having to engage in awkward conversation with you. The downside to this is that I usually can’t eat. I get a plate of food, but then I have to do something else, and I put it down and then when I get back to it I’m too stressed out to enjoy it and I end up wishing I had just skipped eating.
Since my daughters were born, I have hosted nearly 20 birthday parties for them, all of which have been characterized by frantic activity up to the beginning of the party, and through a good portion of it, until last Sunday. My younger daughter’s 8th birthday was Sunday, and we had a party at a park, with a bouncy house and pizza and water fun. I greeted guests as they arrived, pointing out the coolers of drinks and the scrapbook page to sign, just as I had seen hosts at other parties do. I visited with guests. I served food and cake without once feeling like I was behind. I mostly didn’t worry that people were too hot, or bored, or didn’t have a place to sit. And I’m pretty sure every kid went home with a party favor. After a number of parties where all the favors were left, or the last three kids to leave got one, that was really a crowning achievement.
I can’t tell you why this party was different, but it was nice not to feel like everyone’s happiness depended on me, like I was forgetful and crazy and couldn’t look at anyone long enough to converse for more than a sentence. It was nice not to rush and manage my daughter through her party; to see family and friends gathered and to enjoy their company. It was nice to rely on the kindness of a friend who drove to my house to bring the ice cream cakes to the park, and to return them to my freezer again after we cut the cake. It was divine to come home and take a nap, which was not a luxury afforded to me for most of the years since my girls were born.
I think there is grace for parties. Grace for overdressing and underdressing. Grace for not knowing what to say or what not to say. Grace for arriving late and leaving early, and also for too much food or not enough food. Grace for too few chairs and too much noise. Grace for forgetting the lighter for the candles or the card for the gift. Grace for being awkward, and for forgetting party favors. Grace for not looking each giver in the eye and saying “thank you” as gifts are opened, and for never getting around to mailing thank-you cards. There is grace for rushing my kids through their own parties, trying to control my guests, and supervising housecleaning with pursed lips and furrowed brow. There is grace for all this, because gathering is beautiful, because people are worth celebrating, and because it is humbling to know that forty people would give up three hours of their Sunday to say, “We see your daughter is turning eight and we agree to be a witness to her life and to yours. We choose to celebrate.”
So I will keep on showing up to parties, late, with my awkwardness, and I will keep hosting parties, frantic, with my social anxiety. I will show up to see you, and you will show up to see me, and the world will be a better place, because although there’s a lot we can’t agree on, we do agree to sing the same notes to “Happy Birthday,” loudly and in unison, to the eight-year-old in the pink swimsuit whose smiling face is delighted and shy and beautiful and fully aware that she is worth celebrating.
To stand for or with no one is to be dead; to stand for and with yourself is to take your first breath; to stand for and with another is to realize you have a body and begin to move in the world; to stand for and with all is to reverberate with life, to know at last that you are fully alive.
“Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26, NKJV)
“The early bird gets the worm,” we say; but God provides for all the birds. And Jesus lauded them not for getting up early, but for receiving what they need when they need it; not for sowing, reaping, and gathering into barns, but for partaking in the provision of their Creator. “Look at the lilies,” He said, “they neither toil nor spin; yet even King Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these.” (see Matthew 6:28, 29)
“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles… you have come to need milk and not solid food.” (Hebrews 5:12, NKJV)
Feeling offended by this assessment from the writer of Hebrews, I have rushed to grow up, skipping the part where I am dependent on my Father; the part where I trust because trust is all I know and all I have. I am a toddler convinced that I’m 18. I’ve made it out of the house, onto the street with my bag of snacks, and I’m very proud of myself. When a car approaches, I don’t even know to feel afraid until it has nearly killed me—when I feel the rumble of the engine in my chest, hear the screeching tires, feel the heat.
“How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34b, NKJV)
Perhaps this is when I consider embracing my status as toddler in my Father’s house. Streets can come later. Now is the season of still-warm folded laundry; a booster seat pulled up to a laden table; being carried when I get tired; handed a sippy-cup when I am thirsty. This is a time to relish the dependance that goes hand in hand with abundant provision.
“‘I will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters,’ says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:18, NKJV)
It has been ten weeks since I last posted. I was in a rhythm of writing, Bible study, small groups, and daily responsibilities. Then one of the kids was home sick most of one week, the other kid the next week, and the first kid again the following week. I got Covid and the girls were promptly and unceremoniously sent home from school. Two days later I received a voicemail saying they could come back to school wearing masks.
Ten days after I tested positive, Michael and the girls followed suit, so the kids were home for an entire week. I cleared my schedule. I felt good about the increased flexibility I noticed in myself, which allowed me to be available to the kids. At the same time though, I’d been distant with Michael all month, and wondered why he hadn’t complained. Should I accept this lack of stress in our relationship with gratitude, or worry that something is brewing?
It has been a long two months, unexpected in so many ways—in my heart, my schedule, my relationships. I feel fragile. I feel courageous. I wonder if I am growing up. I wonder at the beautiful people God has placed around me.
I missed (both meanings of the word) prayer group and Bible study because I was sick; then again because the kids were sick; and now we’ve adjourned for summer. Why is it that the loveliness of spring is often painted in the uncomfortable hues of transition and farewell?
Amongst the sickness and schedule upheaval, I took a wild ride in regard to my identity in Christ, shedding some things, feeling in turn brave, naked, empowered, confused. I wondered how all those feelings fit in gospel freedom. I went into a state of near panic trying to receive freedom in Christ. Then I realized in all the trying I had forgotten to sit down, to enjoy the presence of Jesus in me.
One morning I cried tears of gratitude for a deep sense of hope. A lot of mornings I slept in. Am I struggling with depression? Why did I suddenly stop writing? I noticed I didn’t feel the need to plan anything big for my birthday this year. I wasn’t sure if this apparently casual attitude was a sign of grace or depression. Do grace and depression sometimes look the same?
I have sung, cried, read, prayed, hoped, been held up by friends, and gone on a lot of coffee dates. I enjoyed hours of tender care from Nurse Nature while I had Covid, lying in bed listening to the rain and wind, Mother’s Day weekend. When I ventured out of bed I enjoyed the window shelf full of cards and flowers and treats I received for my birthday and Mother’s Day. Evidence that I married up, and also that I friended up.
If the illness and emotions weren’t enough turmoil for me—ever the avoider of change—I also fasted and prayed for three days, and we stepped down from home-church leadership after six years. That was emotional and difficult, but good. Does change cause discomfort, or discomfort cause change? I suspect it’s both.
As I flounder, I reach for certainty, forgetting that it has been a life-threatening taskmistress. But my body and my soul have not forgotten, and they recoil. They panic; I hold on tighter. Until I become acutely aware of this: the apparent safety of certainty is available only if I am willing to hold still and breathe shallow. About the time I get lightheaded, I decide I’d rather breathe deep, even if it requires that I consider alternatives to certainty—curiosity, rest and unrest, a sojourn in the wilderness.
When I become aware that comfort and discomfort are both acceptable experiences—when I allow myself to receive the wilderness—perhaps then belonging finds me. Fixating on comfort has estranged me from belonging. But there was a time I belonged, a time I remember in feelings rather than facts, before I knew that life is hard and before I reached for control to make it better. Today I cannot pretend any longer that control is serving me well, and I allow myself to remember that long-ago place of belonging, the set-your-bags-down feeling of arriving home.
It’s an unusual homecoming; an arrival initially unapparent to anyone, even me. But I remember as a child the feeling of coming home; remember where the spare key was hidden, in the garage, in the glass jar filled with nuts and bolts and little metal pieces that someone found and didn’t want to throw away in case they belonged to something important. I remember the smell of the garage—cardboard boxes and tires. Funny how even the memory of that smell takes me back to what it felt like to belong. To be a child.
I’d like to return there now, find the jar of metal bits and pieces, and carefully extricate the house key. I would let myself in, grateful the house is empty. When no one is home the feeling of belonging is unmarred by expectations. The emptiness is a quiet invitation to sit in whichever room I choose, or to stare out the window for an unacceptably long time. Being alone in a place of belonging is better than any company in a place of performance.
If I unexpectedly slipped from belonging to performance those many years ago as a child, could I unexpectedly slip back now? Could I close the door on all the houses filled with people and noise and endless expectations? I have been accepted in those houses, but so tired. My childhood house of quiet, softened by the hum of the refrigerator, invites me to return. Yet while I relish this memory of belonging, I know I cannot slip back to it.
I will never again be a little child, unconcerned for my safety and unashamed of who I am. But if my childhood won the award for simplicity, my adulthood wins for being brave enough to grow from a seed to a sapling, to risk sun and rain and wind, when they are gentle and when they are terrifying. God’s Spirit was my soil as a child, and it remains my soil. I am okay; I am never alone; I always belong. I belong in comfort and discomfort, known and unknown, well-worn pews or wilderness.
I lost a dear friend six years ago. Not to death, but to misunderstanding. I agreed with someone on a group text, not knowing that person was at odds with another friend on the same group text. It’s amazing how fast something that seems strong can dissolve. My friend’s perception was that I had taken sides against her, and her response was immediate and caustic. I went into an emotional tailspin.
What to do? I wanted to acknowledge the pain my friend was feeling, but I didn’t know how. I bought a potted flower, wrote “I love you” in a card, and bravely went to her front door. Her husband received the gift, and I cried all the way home. Choosing vulnerability has a way of opening the floodgates sometimes.
I had told her once that I deeply valued our friendship and would fight for it should the need arise. I meant it, yet I didn’t know what it meant. What does it look like to stand beside someone when they hurt you? How do you disentangle a misunderstanding when both parties are licking their wounds and yelping if anyone gets close?
My friend didn’t respond to the flowers and card, and I felt lost. I was hurting from her bitter text message and mostly I just lurched along with my emotions. One day I was angry and self-righteous. The next I was practicing gratitude for the years of friendship we did have. Sometimes I made excuses for her hurtful words and ensuing silence. Other times I rehearsed spiteful responses. I thought I wanted reconciliation, but I suppose what I really wanted was for her to apologize, magically leave the pain in the past, and move on. Instead I was left in the discomfort of unresolved conflict, and silence.
A year or two after the one-text-detonates-a-friendship-bomb scenario, I decided that with my therapist’s support I would seek to repair the friendship. I emailed my friend and asked if we could talk about something that was weighing on me. She suggested I see a counselor for anything I needed to work through, and said she would be available in four months if I wanted to talk about only light-hearted things. I had to hand it to her for having crystal clear boundaries!
I wasn’t interested in talking only about rainbows and unicorns—as one of my friends put it—so that was the end of that. I told her I appreciated her honesty and moved on… sort of. I continued to feel uneasy whenever I thought about us. She would text me occasionally about something innocuous, like a local event or the weather. I felt anxious every time she contacted me, and uncomfortable developing what felt like a completely fake “friendly” relationship.
Over the years I have continued “trying” to forgive, and have continued feeling hurt. When someone says they “forgave,” sounding utterly confident in forgiveness as a past event, I am puzzled. What have they figured out that I haven’t? Why is this failed relationship still hanging over my head? Every now and then I pray about it and journal some new angle to the whole mess. But I still feel captive to it. Until I read these words in Anne Lamott’s book Traveling Mercies: “…forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past.”
These words begin to reframe how I think about the loss of safety in friendship. Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past. I can stop rehearsing what I could have done differently, said better, or not said at all. I can stop grieving mismanaged words and allow them to be what they were. Emotional pain is an acceptable human experience. Being misunderstood is an acceptable human experience.
Here’s the thing: forgiveness is not giving up all hope of having a different future. I can sit here, between the past that simply is, and the future that simply will be, and fret about neither. I can release hope for a different past, giving myself and my friend permission to have an unresolved misunderstanding; and I can maintain hope for the future—not because I can force healing, but because when I open my hands to receive the past for what it was, I simultaneously give myself permission to receive the future for whatever it will be.
Is forgiveness in this relationship done and in the past? No. It could be one day, but at this moment it’s still a work in progress. Perfectionism begs to take center stage and rehearse the un-done “right” past and the unlikely “right” future. And I fight back, learning to forgive myself and others, and live openhanded. I begin to think about this new definition of forgiveness—giving up all hope of having had a different past—as it relates to parenting. When the kids hit and scream, ignore me, make messes, dawdle: in those moments could I release the hope of a different past few minutes? Could I forgive them and myself this way? Could I embrace both friendship and parenting as the freedom to love in this moment, giving up all hope of the last moment being different?
I realize that I have invested much in hoping for a different past, grieving my behavior and the behavior of others. But I am not my behavior. This could change the way I look at the last six years and the last six minutes. I am not what people say or think about me, and I am not what my behavior says about me. I don’t have to revisit the choices I already made today—like when to get up, how many shows the kids can watch, looking at my phone before prayer time—and wonder if they are “right.” Or wonder what they say about who I am. I can release those moments and face forward. My hope is not in a different past, but in living this moment open-handed, loved by a wild and lavish God. Living now is lighter.
God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
Matthew 5:3, NLT
Soft patting from my six-year-old woke me up at 3am. “I want you,” was the reason she gave. I tried to fix things and send her back to bed, but she wasn’t having it. I gave up and made a blanket bed on the floor in my room. She settled in and slept. I felt resentful, trapped, overwhelmed… and angry that I can’t seem to make a parenting decision without feeling all those things. Such a simple decision, but just look at me make it complicated. I lay in bed anxious, dialed up to ten, and I prayed for God to provide. For help. And I slept.
The same little hands woke me a few hours later—too early, but not early enough to send her back to bed. She wanted help opening a door. We have an old house and most of the doors slipped out of alignment long ago. They require a firm hand to actually latch, and make a popping sound when opened. The early-up daughter opened four doors, and my irritation dialed right up again—first at her, and then at myself. Again I prayed for help, and I slept.
I have conflicting feelings about these moments of struggle. Sometimes God helps me and I feel so ashamed for needing help. I want the stories of God showing up in my life to be more glamorous and less highlighting my selfishness. I’ve been reading about a young woman who dedicated her life to the marginalized, and I feel so stupid for the smallness of my stressors. Her struggles seem saintly; mine feel embarrassing.
But my feelings have forgotten the truth, which I whisper to God: You show up in each of our moments without discrimination. The “saintly” young woman is loved. I am loved. I am here, feeling paralyzed by fear, tantalized by control, and tempted by selfishness and scarcity. And You, You show up with the embrace of a friend who feels the tiredness, gives me a knowing squeeze, and sits beside me.
Another morning: I woke up a little earlier than usual. I got up, drank a glass of water, relieved myself of the previous evening’s glass of water, and sat down to pray. I felt heavy and snappy, and was grateful for a few extra moments of quiet time. I opened the window a crack to smell the fresh morning air, then closed it again to keep out the cold. I opened my hands and closed my eyes.
Then I heard the girls, up early this morning. They came in my room to ask, “Can we get up now?” They left the door open and Phred (our cat) jumped on the bed where my husband was still sleeping. Sigh. Two minutes later Kyli came back because they had a fight (already?!). She climbed on my lap. Kayt came in repentant: “I’m ready to apologize.” I mediated, and finally they left me to the quiet.
I was losing. The quiet time I felt I desperately needed was being riddled with holes. I prayed, Help. I asked God if I could spend today finding contentment in watching Him provide. And in a sudden turn of thoughts, I imagined how stressful it would have been to wake up to the girls having a fight, not having had those first moments of quiet. Ah, the sweet relief of gratitude for provision already made.
The kingdom of heaven is mine. “Blessed are the poor in spirit—those who recognize their spiritual poverty—for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3). The kingdom of heaven is mine because I am poor. If I were rich I wouldn’t need it, and if I thought I was rich I wouldn’t know I needed it. It is precisely when I know I am poor that the kingdom of heaven is mine. I may rejoice in the poverty that lands me exactly where I want to be—a place of receiving. Finding contentment in watching Him provide, and knowing that every moment of apparent poverty is an invitation to great wealth. Thank you, Jesus, that there is no shame in receiving Your help.
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