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A blessing for weeks when we’re holding our breath
As we go into this new week, there are many of us who feel uncertain. Anxious. Even fearful. May we somehow feel peace in our weary bones and worried hearts. May we remember to be gentle with ourselves this week, and get enough sleep, and drink our water. May we dare to hope. May we dare to dream, and dare to plant good seeds, seeds of forgiveness and friendship, in this world’s thirsty soil. May we be nourished by the ministry of good books, and cozy hot beverages, and gooey baked goods, and friends who text us just to say hello. May we practice one of life’s most difficult lessons to learn–the art of saying, “you first”, not “me first” or “mine first”. May we hold our loved ones near to us this week, either in our arms or in our memories, and may we not be afraid to cry if we need to, because tears are medicine, too. May we take the higher road whenever it is offered to us, and may we keep our eyes fixed on the things that will never pass away. May we keep toiling towards that new kingdom, where things will be right, and things will be just, and the table is wide, and the welcome is for all. May we get glimpses of that great feast, and may it feed us as the days grow shorter and the dark longer. May we feel the warmth of love this week, and may we remember to take deep breaths.
We are a world in waiting, O God. Will you meet us in our unknowns this week, and may we know the gift of your presence with us? And if/when it becomes harder to breathe, may we be restored to the gentle rhythms that will restore us to life.
You are loved this week, friends. This week, and every week.
Amen. -
The Goodness
I lay my head on the pillow, close my eyes, breathe in through my nose. My thoughts wander over my day, stopping when I remember a moment that brought me joy, or a word I wish was unspoken, and I sit with it, that moment; I cup it, stretch it, hold it up to the light. Where were you in that moment, God? I ask. What do you have to teach to me?Thank you, I say. Or sometimes: I’m sorry.
This has been my nightly practice for a month now, and it’s my version of the Examen prayer, an ancient practice traced back to St. Ignatius. It’s a method of prayer in which I learn to look at things as a sum of many parts, and reawakens me to the presence of God in my everyday life, in the moments I’m tempted to call mundane or ordinary. It’s where my social media pillow prayers originated from: bite-sized prayers, lines of poetry, sacred conversations that come to me during this time that I then share with my Instagram followers. I don’t know why I started posting them, to be honest. I guess because I wanted to remember. I wanted something tangible to look back on, to find God in, to say, “Ahh, yes; that’s what the Spirit said to me!” or “Oh… yeah, still working on learning that one.”
It was recommended to me from my spiritual director Nish — the Examen, that is; not the pilow prayers. I came to her a little over a month ago because honestly, I was burned out on religion, yet something inside me still ached to connect with the holy but didn’t know how to do that in my new context. I’ve written about my journey many, many times here, about all the unconventional places I have found God over the years, about the deconstruction and rebuilding of my faith, about my problems with the institution of Church and all the damage it’s done — it’s all part of it. But deep still cries out to deep, doesn’t it? Time and time again, I can only walk away so far before I hear the call to come back home. And so with each new season of my faith-journey, I’ve had to relearn God all over again, and rediscover how to flesh out the truth I believe in. I’ve had to wrestle with all those hard questions, and often, to accept the smallness of my understanding. I’ve had to look back and build my altars of remembrance, to stake out claim and become acquainted with the wilderness, to remind my soul that these desert places are good because they birth an intimacy and maturity that’s simply just not possible to achieve on the mountain-top. There is always goodness because there is always God, and sometimes we maybe don’t see it because we’re still wrapped up in going through the grit. But the goodness remains all the same.
Once upon a time, I was naive, and I was unsure. But mostly? I was ignorant. Back then, the world was very much black and white for me; I hadn’t yet been introduced to the beautiful in-between, the sacred space that exists in the gray.
And then, in a moment, it all changed. Everything I’d built my neat and tidy little life upon crumbled into nothing but dust. I suffered loss after loss, became fearful of holding onto anything too tightly lest it slip through my fingers. I went to Liberia, a place both so tragic and so beautiful that I still scarcely know what to do with everything it showed me, all the hard lessons I had to learn because of it.Yet wasn’t God there, too? Isn’t that the chorus my soul cries out, over and over again? God is in this place; he just doesn’t look or smell or feel like he used to. In Liberia, he was sweat and mud and sea breezes rolling in from the Atlantic. He was hot sun and dust under my fingernails, and he was a gulp of cool water, a blessed reprieve. He was a handshake with snapping fingers, hugs with a kiss on both cheeks; he was toothy smiles and weathered skin and little fingers that claw my legs, stroke my hair. He was hunger, and he was need. He was unmarked graves and children who leave this world much too soon. He was the wailing of a widow in black robes, he was war, he was disease, he was hope. He was my daughter that came home ten years after I first met her.
God was there, has always been there, and because of that, everything is different for me now. God was there, is there even after I’ve left, and at the same time, he’s in my marriage, an ocean away. God is the dinners my husband cooks for the family, the morning cups of coffee I bring him, the way we’re always learning new steps in the dance of “you first”. God was in my pregnancy, in the miracle of cells multiplying. I came to know God as mother in that season, and she was the swell of my belly as my son stretched his legs. She was morning sickness, the swooshing sound of a heartbeat during a sonogram, the exhaustion, the pain of labor. She was the breaking of my body, the splitting open, the blood, the birth, the scar. She was tears and laughter; she was leaking breastmilk, and she was soft lullabies sung against my son’s silky curls. God is my daughter–the miracle and courage and strength. God is leaning into one another instead of pulling away. God is laughter in the living room and tickling toes and jokes about robots and the confidence to speak English aloud to the room. God is both my comfort and my discomfort, my joy and my pain. God is my excess and my lack, my fulfillment but also the not-quite-yet. God is a father who carries his baby on his back and also a mother who prepares daily bread with love. God is the land of my Canaan but also is my wilderness. God is the hard places, the uncomfortable and the mess, where I’m stretched thin and my heart feels heavy yet full.
There is always goodness because there is always God.
That is what praying the Examen has taught me. That is what I’ve learned from coming to the end of all the rules and regulations, of the pride and self-sufficiency, of religious social clubs that sit around and talk about who’s in and who’s out, who’s doing it right and who’s doing it wrong. God is not as complicated, not as demanding, not as angry, not as unrelatable and unreachable as we make her seem. We are never so far gone that we’re unable to find our way home. We are never broken beyond repair, never too much or not enough, never so messy that we can’t still be glorious.So we watch, and we look for what the Spirit is doing in our own little pocket of this messy-beautiful world, in the tension of God’s kingdom here and yet to come, the now and not yet. We watch, and we join in. We listen for what he is calling for us to do, and we do it, and we know full well that our calling might not look the same as someone else’s. The way we are walking out our faith might look differently and sound differently than the way someone else is. And that’s okay, too. God is big enough to be doing a work in both. We can be secure in who we are and how God is living and moving in each of us right now. And we live with our arms wide open, to God, and to our neighbors, because it’s never been either/or. Both/and, remember. Both/and.
I don’t know what kind of Christian I am these days. Some of you might be uncomfortable with that, and it’s okay. I understand. But it’s true. I am deeply connected to my Pentecostal roots; the things of the Spirit will always feel like home. I still raise my hands and cry while I sing. I still tremble when I pray–and I always like to pray while I lay my hands on someone. And I am moving with God in the Presbyterian tradition, too, in how I can feel the divinity of the words in our liturgy roll over my tongue as we recite them in unison, in the knowledge I am taking part in something holy and ancient, a foundation of our faith. I find God in sunshine that warms my shoulders and the way my son’s hair curls up around his ear and the dimples in my daughter’s cheek when she smiles. He’s in how he uses Kyle to ground me, and uses me to challenge Kyle, and how we grow so beautifully together. God’s in my tears over war and racism, our broken planet, the loss of life. He’s in the dark and the silence, and he’s in the light and the noise; the order and the chaos; who I was and who I am becoming.
It is my prayer that wherever you, the one reading these very words, find yourself on the journey, you still believe in the goodness. Maybe you need to take a few minutes at the end of each day to look back and find it, but oh, how I hope you do.Because here’s the thing about the goodness, you see; it’s a bit like yeast in a batch of dough, moving with you, growing, in the tension of the way your fingers dig into the wet, messy dough and shape it. We have the power to shape our messes, remember–it’s not always the other way around.
And there, in the mess, in what started as all those disconnected ingredients, all those separate parts, the goodness grows. It binds them together. It makes something new, something beautiful. And that something beautiful is for you. -
So, A Pentecostal and A Presbyterian Walk Into A Bar…
Alternative title: So, I Have Some Thoughts About Church.
Or: It’s Good to Reflect On Our Faith.
Or: I Think Sarah Bessey Might Have Written a Book Just For Me.///
When I was six years old, I found God. Or rather, God found me.
I grew up Catholic, not in practice, necessarily, but definitely in name. The daughter of two immigrants, I was enrolled in Catholic school because religion was a tie to the old country, so I went to mass, was taught by the sisters. I found God again when I was nine, kneeling on the floor of a basement bedroom in my aunt’s home. I asked Jesus to make a home in my heart that day. I didn’t really understand how it all worked, if we’re being honest. But I was young, and I was scared, and the idea of a savior who could somehow fix my problems appealed to every part of me.
This God looked differently than the one I’d been introduced to just a few years prior. There are some, I suppose, who might say they were two separate entities. I don’t believe that to be true, though. I don’t think that God incarnates himself one way for the Catholics, another for the Protestants, and so on and so forth. Rather, I think we are the ones who craft God into the versions that best suit ourselves. God alone cannot be divided, after all. God is bigger, wilder, more abundant and good than we could ever imagine, so perhaps I saw merely a glimpse of him when I was six, and perhaps I saw another one when I was nine. I think that perhaps it must be God who remains the same; it’s only our vision that changes.
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I met him again when I was seventeen. I was in a Pentecostal church, listening to a preacher with a slow, Southern drawl. It was a Sunday evening. I sat in a pew near the back, still so young in my faith, so unsure. I listened to this preacher talk about God, and my insides felt hot, my heart like it might thump right out of my chest at any moment. At the end of the night, I made my way down to the altar, and the preacher prayed for me with his hands lightly touching my head, and I cried and raised my shaking hands to heaven, and everything around me was blazing in light, even though my eyes were closed.
I could sit and talk to you for hours about the seasons of life that followed. At first, I had my carefully constructed boxes of what was black, what was white, what was Christian, what was not. I was merciless in holding everything–and everyone–up to impossible standards. I didn’t yet know otherwise, you see. I had yet to be introduced to the glory of the gray areas, the sacred space that exists in the in-between, or even on the fringes and edges of what I thought I knew.
But that wasn’t all it was–there was beauty, and growth in that season, too. I could talk to you about how my faith came alive in those years. I could tell you about poring over the scriptures, praying in tongues I had never spoken before. I could tell you about how the Spirit sometimes made me want to shout and jump, and how there were other times I’d lay on the floor and weep while I felt it heavy on me. I could tell you about hearing stories from missionaries in India and Honduras. I could tell you about grandmothers who prayed over me at altars, at their kitchen tables, over the telephone in the middle of the night.
I could tell you so many stories of the seasons that came next, when I left that church and met God again in small, ordinary prayer rooms and living rooms all across the country, in Pennsylvania and Virginia and Colorado and Missouri and Washington. I could tell you about meeting him when I decided to leave church for a while and spent my Sundays singing and reading and painting and praying. I could tell you about meeting God halfway across the world, and how he no longer looked or smelled or even felt like he used to. He was sweat and mud and sea breezes rolling in from the Atlantic. He was hot sun and dust under my fingernails, and he was a gulp of cool water, a blessed reprieve. God was a handshake with snapping fingers, hugs with a kiss on both cheeks; toothy smiles and weathered skin and little fingers that claw my legs, stroke my hair. I met God in hunger, and in need. God was unmarked graves and children who leave this world much too soon. He became the wailing of a widow in black robes, the cry of an orphan, the ache of lack. And when I met my now-husband, I was introduced to God yet again. He was present in the longings finally fulfilled, prayers finally answered, and he was present in Kyle’s theology, how he celebrated community and communion and felt joy at setting the table for his neighbors.
I remember the first, and only, time I questioned whether Kyle and I could make it work. It was during our first date, actually; we went to Starbucks for five hours and drank hot espresso and told each other our histories. He’d grown up in the Reformed Church in America, a denomination this “happy-clappy” (to borrow Sarah Bessey’s term) charismatic had never even heard of (though he’s started serving a Presbyterian church as of last year). He feels most at home in the order of tradition, the rhythms of the church lectionary and ancient liturgies. He’s had unpleasant experiences with evangelicals in his younger years, and so he spent much time with his spiritual guard up, understandably so. And here I was, talking about things like prophecy and speaking in tongues, and I sat across the table from him and wondered, “Am I going to be too much for him? And furthermore–is he going to be enough?”
In the months to come, I was questioned by others too, dear ones with the best of intentions who gently voiced their concerns about Kyle’s and my differing faith-backgrounds. I determined early on I wouldn’t take it personally, and here’s why:
After that first date, God put me and all of my questions in place. I was reminded of all the seasons of life I’ve walked with him through, and I remembered he was in all of it, every moment. God is no longer found solely on a Sunday morning while sitting in a pew with my head bowed. I’ve come to find him in both my comfort and my discomfort. My joy and my pain. In my excess and my lack. In fulfillment but also in the not-quite-yet. In how my husband fathers our son, and in how my heart has become that of a mother, and how God is both/and. In the land of my Canaan but also in my desert. In the hard places, in the uncomfortable and the mess, where I’m stretched thin and my heart feels heavy and yet full, and in my rejoicing, celebration, the place of my abundance. In liturgy and old-time hymns, in hands raised in worship or folded in prayer. In tradition and the ancient paths, and in the new way which springs up before me. In the past and the future, in our faith’s history and what is still to come. God in all things; I truly do believe it. In him I live and move and have my being. And because of that, everything is changed for me now.
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In Sarah Bessey’s Out Of Sorts: Making Peace With an Evolving Faith (which seems like she could have written just for me!), she writes:
“Jesus isn’t only in your tradition. You get to love Jesus without being an evangelical or a Pentecostal or a Presbyterian or whatever new label you’ve acquired these days or old label that just doesn’t fit anymore.
Your pet gatekeeper isn’t the sole arbitrator of the Christian faith: there is more complexity and beauty and diversity of voices and experiences within followers of the Way than you know. Remember, your view of Christians, your personal experience with Christians, is a rather small sample: there are a lot more of us out here than you think. …
The Church is sorting and casting off, renewing and reestablishing in the postmodern age, and this is a good thing. The old will remain–it always does–but something new is being born too. If It is being born in the Church, it is first being born in the hearts, minds, and lives of us, the Body” (pp. 84-85).
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I don’t know what kind of Christian I am these days. Some of you might be uncomfortable with that, and it’s okay. I understand. But it’s true. I am deeply connected to my Pentecostal roots; the things of the Spirit will always feel like home. I still raise my hands and cry while I sing. I still tremble when I pray–and I always like to pray while I lay my hands on someone. And I am moving with God in the Presbyterian tradition, too, in how I can feel the divinity of the words in our liturgy roll over my tongue as we recite them in unison, in the knowledge I am taking part in something holy and ancient, a foundation of our faith. I find God in sunshine that warms my shoulders and the way my son’s hair curls up around his ear. God is in the dinners my husband cooks sometimes, and how we hold hands while we pray before eating. He’s in how he uses Kyle to ground me, and uses me to challenge Kyle, and how we grow so beautifully together. God’s in my tears over war and racism, our broken planet, the loss of life. He’s in the dark and the silence, and he’s in the light and the noise; the order and the chaos; who I was and who I am becoming.
///
Maybe you’re like me, and you don’t know where you fit anymore–I’m with you, and you have a place to belong here with me. Maybe you’ve walked away from faith entirely–I love you, and I am not judging you or trying to save you. Maybe you don’t like change, so you stay in what’s familiar–I understand you, and I hope you have life–and life abundant!–in your current situation. Wherever we find ourselves on the journey, I believe God is holding us all together, and I am comforted that the scriptures remind us every path of the Lord is good.
Maybe whatever our label, whatever our denomination or tradition–maybe it’s not a surprise to God, and maybe he even delights in our diversity. Maybe we can think less about who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s got this Christian thing down and who’s doing it a hundred and eighty degrees differently than we think they should. Maybe we can sing hymns and songs of the Spirit, maybe we can listen to both men and women who preach, maybe we can bow low and jump and clap. Maybe being able to tap into every side brings us that much closer to experiencing the fullness of God. Maybe all of this is not better or worse, not less important or more. Maybe we need to remember again that we are the Church; it’s not a separate entity. It is alive and active because we are alive and active. We don’t stay stagnant, we don’t stop growing, we don’t accept a stalled narrative. Maybe “there’s room for all of us.” Maybe “there’s room for all of me” (p. 81).
Maybe it all matters.
Maybe it’s time to “reclaim Church.”
Who’s with me?///
A few notes…
*Image from Creative Commons
*Quotes from Sarah Bessey’s Out of Sorts -
Shame, seatbelts, and shrinking women
The sun was just starting to rise as I walked down a narrow runway to board my first flight. My eyes were bleary from too little sleep and not enough caffeine, a combination of my seven-month-old having woken up at 2:30 in the morning and needing to leave for the airport by 4. In the weak morning light, I swung my green carry-on bag over my shoulder and made my way towards the plane headed for Toronto, a brief 45-minute flight and my first stop during a day of travel out to the west coast.
The first thing that struck me was how tiny the airplane was. A single seat on each side of the aisle, the plane only went about 15 rows back, which was fine, I suppose, since there was just a handful of people on the flight–seven, maybe eight passengers in all, myself included. There weren’t even any overhead bins on board, so passengers were checking their roller bags at the last minute once they realized they wouldn’t fit under the seat in front of them. A quick glance at my boarding pass revealed my seating assignment as 11A. I squeezed my way towards the back of the plane, sat down, and stuffed my duffel underneath the empty seat in front of me. I draped my coat over my lap and glanced around. Not only was the plane tiny, it was also ancient. Everything looked worn and outdated, from the small tears in the seats to the discoloration of the carpeted aisle. I sighed a little and comforted myself with the fact it was a quick flight and would be over soon enough.
The pilot had the engine running, and I could tell we were getting ready to begin taking off, so I reached for my frayed seatbelt to fasten myself in. Only it wouldn’t buckle. I loosened the strap a little bit to accommodate my wide hips, and tried again. Still no. A mild panic began to rise up in me, and I looked around nervously to see if anyone was watching; the woman across the aisle from me was just starting to settle into 11B and was more concerned with trying to shove her bulging carryon bag under the seat in front of her than watching me struggle with my seatbelt, thank God. I loosened it again, this time as far as it would go, scolding myself for gaining that last 10 pounds during pregnancy and replaying the words of my OB who had warned me extra weight can be quite difficult to shed during that postpartum period. I held my fully-loosened seatbelt in sweaty palms, said a little prayer, and attempted to buckle it one more time. It simply Would. Not. Click. Shut. I felt hot tears behind my eyes.
In that moment, I felt more embarrassment, more shame than I think I ever have before. I felt enormous, and flushed, and ugly, and disgusting. I imagined what I must look like should anyone be watching: fleshy and frustrated and big, too big. Insecurity after insecurity came crashing down, and I felt nearly suffocated beneath them. If only I had worked harder to lose the baby weight. If only I hadn’t eaten dessert last night. If only my figure was more like those I had seen in the Glamour magazine I’d purchased from an airport convenience store. If only I hadn’t battled my weight since I was 13. If only I was smaller. If only my hips were more narrow. If only I didn’t take up so much space. If only.
An angry “Damn it!” brought me out of my self-pity and back to reality. I glanced at the woman across the aisle from me; she had been the one to utter those two angry words into the atmosphere. She was pretty, about ten years older than me with short, dark hair and glasses. She was thinner than I was (isn’t it tragic that this is what we women do, compare ourselves to others?) and dressed in blue jeans and a thick mulberry wool sweater. “Damn it,” she swore again. I looked down and saw she, too, was having trouble fastening her seatbelt. She’d fully extended it and was furiously trying to force the clasp together, but it just wouldn’t quite make it. She caught my eye and her cheeks flushed. “These old planes,” she said. “They’re too small! I always have trouble with the seatbelts on them.” The fact that she had blamed the plane while I had blamed myself for the exact same set of circumstances was not lost on me. I smiled at her and told her I was having a hard time as well. A look of relief washed over her face, and she laughed, nervously. I found myself wondering just what her inner monologue might have been up until that point. Did it echo my own, brimming with shame? Had she berated herself for being too big, too full, too much? Our world has too many shrinking women, women who suck it in and hold themselves back try to be smaller, inhabit less space.
It was then that I heard a gentle whisper in the secret chamber of my heart, a place where so often truth and healing wait for me. “Who told you?” it asked quietly. “Who told you you needed to be ashamed?”
I remembered reading Jon Acuff years ago and his tragically funny exposition of Genesis 3:11. As he says, that scripture is “one of the saddest and most profoundly beautiful verses in the entire Bible. Adam and Eve have fallen. The apple is a core. The snake has spoken. The dream appears crushed. As they hide from God under clothes they’ve hastily sewn together, He appears and asks them a simple question:
‘Who told you that you were naked?'”
Who told you that you were too big?
Who told you that you were too small?
Who told you that you were too full?
Who told you that you’d always be empty?
Who told you that you were too much?
Who told you that you weren’t enough?
Who told you that you were, metaphorically, naked?“There is hurt in God’s voice as He asks this question, but there is also a deep sadness, the sense of a father holding a daughter that has for the first time ever, wrapped herself in shame” (Acuff, J.).
Shame was attacking me on that tiny plane that early morning, and I was pretty sure it was preying on the woman in 11B as well. “Who told you?” the voice repeated. You see, God still asks the question because he wants us to see it wasn’t him. The voice that made me cry embarrassed, angry tears that morning wasn’t God’s. It wasn’t Truth.
The woman and I talked in hushed whispers about what to do. “I might just leave it unbuckled,” she confessed. “It’s a short flight; I can’t be bothered with this bull(insert expletive here).” I nodded, tempted to do the same myself, tempted to hide under the coat I was carrying on my lap and pretend none of this had happened. But one thing you should know about me is that I don’t go down without a fight, so I took a deep breath, sucked it in, and decided to try just one more time.
That seatbelt clicked loudly into place.
I started to laugh, under my breath at first, then a little louder as I realized the depths of everything that had happened there that morning. The woman across the aisle chuckled a little bit too, then reached out and touched the flight attendant’s arm and asked for a seatbelt extender. “Of course,” the tall blond woman smiled. “I know; the belts on these old planes are just never big enough, are they?”Who told you?
(I am happy to report that on my connecting flight and during my flights back home a few days later, my seatbelt fastened with ease every time.)
//
Photo from Creative Commons
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in this place
sometimes people ask me about when i first got “saved”, and i tell them the story of the old Pentecostal church and a preacher who spoke with a slow, Southern drawl. i was young, not yet 18 years old, and still finding sure footing in my new country, in my new family who had taken me in as their own. i sat in that church and listened to stories about Jesus, and then i went home and prayed like i never had before.
i grew up Catholic, not necessarily in practice but definitely in name. i was the daughter of an Italian immigrant, who went to mass and was taught by the sisters. religion didn’t have much of a place in our home, though; God wasn’t something we talked about or prayed to ‘round the dinner table. still–i believed, even then; it’s just that i didn’t quite know it yet.
i had a large extended family (mainly Protestant, mind you) who cared for me and nurtured me during my early years:: sweet aunts and sturdy uncles, sources of consistency and dependability amidst all the chaos surrounding my childhood. it was in the basement bedroom of one of my father’s sisters that i knelt and “asked Jesus into my heart” for the first time. i didn’t really understand it, to be honest. but i was young, and i was scared, and the idea of a savior who could somehow fix the problems i dealt with on a daily basis appealed to the deepest parts of me.
it was years later–nearly a decade, in fact–that i found myself in that Pentecostal church during a Sunday evening service, and my heart was beating so hard i was sure it’d thump right out of my chest. i don’t know how i knew, but i did. God was real–like, really real. and looking back, i suppose that’s where it all started. i guess it’s where faith became a reality, where God became more than a word to me.
as a “baby Christian”, i was naive, and i was unsure. but mostly i was ignorant, as is to be expected, i suppose, in the early days. back then, the world was very much black and white for me; i hadn’t yet been introduced to the beautiful in-between, the sacred space that exists in the gray areas. i had my carefully constructed ideologies of what was Christian and what was not, and i was merciless in holding everything–and everyone–up to impossible standards. looking back, i cringe to remember how critical i’d become, how far from grace i was living, how little i resembled the Jesus i claimed to believe in. i didn’t know any better, to be sure. still–i’m sure i owe many an apology:: for when i judged instead of loving, for when i criticized instead of caring, for when i was quick to speak and slow to listen, even when the scriptures clearly told me to do the opposite.
and then i got divorced. and everything i’d built my neat and tidy little life upon crumbled into nothing but dust. i suffered loss after loss, became fearful of holding onto anything too tightly lest it slip through my fingers. and then i went to Liberia, a tiny nation i knew very little of but felt drawn to nonetheless. nothing could have prepared me for what was waiting on the other side of that ocean. Liberia was both tragic and beautiful, and i scarcely knew what to do with everything it showed me, all the hard lessons i had to learn because of it.
here’s the thing, though, if we’re going to get right down to the heart of it. God is in this place; he just doesn’t look or smell or feel like he used to. now, here, today, he’s sweat and mud and sea breezes rolling in from the Atlantic. he’s hot sun and dust under my fingernails, and he’s a gulp of cool water, a blessed reprieve. he’s a handshake with snapping fingers, hugs with a kiss on both cheeks; he’s toothy smiles and weathered skin and little fingers that claw my legs, stroke my hair. he is hunger, and he is need. he is unmarked graves and children who leave this world much too soon. he’s the wailing of a widow in black robes, and he is the cry of the orphan, the poor, the oppressed.
God is here, has always been here, and because of that, everything is different for me now. God is no longer found solely on a Sunday morning while sitting in a pew with my head bowed. i’ve come to find him in both my comfort and my discomfort. my joy and my pain. in my excess and my lack. in fulfillment but also in the not-quite-yet. in a father who carries his baby on his back and also in a mother who prepares my daily bread with love. in the land of my canaan but also in my desert. in the hard places, in the uncomfortable and the mess, where i’m stretched thin and my heart feels heavy and yet full.
[Photo by Indigo Skies Photography // Flickr // Creative Commons]
God, in all things–i’ve really come to believe that. for years, i was ignorant, my eyes closed, merely surviving my way through the sacred. and then one day, i became Jacob, feet covered in the dust of holy ground, as i bend low and echo his ancient refrain. “surely God is in this place–and i didn’t know it.”
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when we’ve come undone
can i just be brutally, completely, in-your-face honest with you for a minute? this whole being a missionary thing is no joke. it is hard, you guys. really hard. and there are some days where i would rather be anywhere but here, doing anything but this. some days, i feel so totally, completely done. depleted. empty.
i’m having one of those days. only this day has gone on for the past three weeks. i’ve been struggling–a lot. i’m tired, more than tired, really. i’m lonely. i’m homesick. i’m over the heat, the sweating, the sleepless nights, the fatigue that follows me day in and day out. i don’t feel like myself. i worry i have nothing more in me to give. i know that i only have a few months left and yet, somehow, those few months seems like they’re years away.
i don’t tell you this to play some sort of sympathy card; i’m not looking for pats on the back or pity of any kind. i’m sharing this because i want to show the world that all of us, every single one of us, even (and perhaps especially) those of us in ministry–we have a bad day once in a while. or a bad week. maybe even a bad year. whatever; it happens. it doesn’t mean we are weak. it doesn’t mean we’re failures. it doesn’t mean we’re not spiritual enough, not depending on God enough, or that we don’t have enough faith. it means we’re human. it means we have hearts and souls, and they’re messy and sometimes maybe we come undone.
and it is there that i find myself, in that undone place, where i don’t have the answers and i don’t know how to get out of this and it hurts, but i keep hearing the whisper telling me to just hang in, hang on. and i try, and i fail, and i collapse in a puddle of tears and disappointment and somehow, i get back up again. i’m in that place where words fail me, where my language has become the deep groanings of the heart, and yet i know that even those are some sacred prayer, a holy utterance.
i have come undone, and instead of hiding away all the broken pieces, i’m letting you see them.
i have come undone, and instead of attempting to explain it all away, i’m sitting down in the aftermath.
i have come undone, and i’m talking about it.because perhaps you too know this feeling, know it well, and you wonder if anyone else in the world understands. perhaps no one has ever given you the permission to have a bad day. perhaps you’re stopping yourself from falling apart because you’re afraid that you’ll be too broken to ever be put back together.
i get it. i really do. but may i suggest that, though it may feel like it, you will not be undone forever? i know right now you may not be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel and, to be honest, neither can i. but our limited vision doesn’t change the Light’s existence; that i can promise you.
be gentle with yourself, and remember: you are human. you are beautifully flawed, and that is the mystery of your heart and soul and flesh and bones. if you’re having a bad day, it’s okay. if you’re falling apart or breaking down, it’s okay. i promise you; it really is.
you, dear one, will not be undone forever. and neither will i.
because if there’s one thing i’ve learned about Jesus, it’s that he loves to stitch things back together. -
saying goodbye to Lamie
today, i write to honor the life of a friend. i met Lamie around Easter of
this year, while i was still in Liberia. he was sick and listless, unable to move (presumably because of a stroke he had suffered.) he was sleeping on the ground, in a pile of garbage, directly across from a dumpster. during the day, he was there, baking in the hot sun. at night, he was there, exposed to the elements. he was starving; he was thirsty; he was homeless. he had been abandoned and left to die. upon investigating, some friends and i were able to find out more of his story, and our hearts were broken for this man who had suffered so greatly. we knew we had to help. nobody deserved to have to live as he did.fast forward a few months. Lamie was off the streets, had a roof over his head, and seemed to be improving. it had been a rough go, both for he and those of us involved in helping him. he’d gone from sleeping in the garbage heap to sleeping in his own room to sleeping on my front porch to sleeping in a Liberian-run facility for the elderly. poor Lamie had been tossed around from place to place, and my heart broke as i imagined how badly he ached for home.
then, it was all of sudden august. it was nearing the end of my stay in Liberia, and i knew that i had to walk away from Lamie. i knew i had to entrust him to the care (and i use that term loosely, unfortunately) of the people running the home he was staying in. more importantly, i knew i had to entrust him to God. i had to be okay with walking away, not knowing what would happen, but knowing i had done all i could to love Lamie and care for him as Jesus would have.
this is the last photo i have of Lamie, taken only a week or so before i left Liberia. this is how i always want to remember him:: fat cheeks, bright eyes, and a tender spirit. he never once complained about his situation or all that he had gone through. he would smile wistfully as he remembered his younger years, when he had been a tailor and had a family. he’d get this dreamy look on his face, and i knew he was longing to go back to that time. yet he also accepted the cards life had dealt him, and i believe he really did try to make the best of them.unfortunately, Lamie died last month (and i just found out about it today.) i have no idea what happened, other than he had been sick. i don’t know what he was feeling when he passed away, if he was lonely, if there was anyone at all by his side. and if i let it, the not-knowing will shatter my heart and crush my spirit.
so instead, i choose to join my friend Ashley in seeking the joy in an otherwise terribly sad situation. she says it best in her tribute to our dear friend::
Lamie’s body is whole again. Lamie died knowing that those crazy white people loved him. We fed, clothed and gave cold water. We fought for truth, justice and for what was right. It didn’t matter that we were different or that he was from a certain tribe or that he was a stranger. It didn’t matter that he was physically disabled–his heart was gold! He brought laughter and unity and compassion. He was an example, and a reminder. There is no happily-ever-after for this story and this morning, Lamie’s story came to a close. But, I know that his story and his life weren’t told and lived to be forgotten. He lived his story so that he could be remembered. He faced insurmountable obstacles, but he kept that spark in his eye. [He had] joy in his smile, despite his circumstances. [He was a] literal example for us to be the Good Samaritan. Lamie was my friend–my beautiful, laughter-filled, sweet-spirited (unless he wanted a haircut from Momo) friend. At one point, Lamie had taken everything out of me, but I pressed on because Jesus filled me and equipped me to keep going. Lamie was and is a part of my story…and a reason why I just can’t walk away from Liberia.Lamie was–and is–a lesson to me to love others. to love freely, wildly, without holding back. to love with my whole heart. even when it hurts. even when i think i have nothing left to give. he taught me to love others because sometimes, my love is the only Jesus they will ever know.
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eat the mystery
a few weeks back, i found myself re-reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. Spirit-filled and poetic, her words were like water for my thirsty soul.
and recently, i find myself going back to a particular passage, one i have underlined in ink and even copied into the pages of my own journal::
“when we are despairing, we can choose to live as Israelites gathering manna. for forty long years, God’s people daily eat manna–a substance whose name literally means ‘what is it?’ hungry, they choose to gather up that which is baffling. they fill on that which has no meaning. more than 14,600 days they take their daily nourishment from that which they don’t comprehend. they find soul-filling in the inexplicable. they eat the mystery…and it is ‘like wafers of honey’ on the lips.” (page 22)
they eat the mystery. they choose to trust even when they do not understand. they open their mouths and let Him fill them with what He sees fit.
oh, that my faith were as deep! i so often resent the mystery because it doesn’t fit into my neat little boxes. i strain to understand and, if i cannot, i push it aside, choosing to gobble up instead that which i can explain–even though i know it will not satisfy.
but what if i welcome the mystery? what if i stop asking why and how and when and instead let Him fill me?
i may not always understand that which God gives me. i may not be able to explain ache and the pain, the longing, the discontent. i may not have answers for the things i have seen and experienced and walked through.but if i trust that He is good, i can trust that what comes from His hand is as well. if i choose to see His goodness and His grace instead of the circumstance or feeling, i too could eat the mystery. and it shall taste sweet.
in the book of Ezekiel, God gives him the mystery, feeds him the manna::
then i looked, and i saw a hand stretched out to me. in it was a scroll, which he unrolled before me. on both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.
and he said to me, “son of man, eat what is before you…” (2:9 – 3:1)Ezekiel’s manna came in the form of a scroll. it took on the shape of lament and mourning and woe. and God still asked him to eat of it.
so i ate it, and it tasted sweet as honey in my mouth. (3:3)
Ezekiel trusted that God was good, and so he decided that what came from Him was good as well. even a scroll filled with sorrow.
Ezekiel chose to eat the mystery, digest what he did not understand.
and God made it good.so much of this life is mystery. we walk through days and circumstance and emotion, and some of it hurts, and we cry out “why, Lord, why?”
and though i believe He has compassion, and He understands our human hearts,
i also believe there are times when the only answer He gives is to hold out His hand, offering us the scroll, the manna, that which seems to make no sense.and if we listen closely, i believe we will hear Him saying, “eat the mystery, child. trust me. i make all things good.“
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when there are no more words
as my time in Liberia comes to a close, i look back and reflect and remember. i know people back home are going to ask questions. they’re going to want stories, want to hear of my life for the past six months.
the problem is::
for the first time in a long time,
i don’t have words.maybe i haven’t fully processed all i’ve seen and heard and felt here yet. maybe once i do, the words will come.
or maybe some things are simply so full of raw…feeling that they exist outside of language.
i don’t have words to speak of grieving families who have lost loved ones too soon.
i don’t have words to speak of fear that grips in the middle of the night when you realize your neighbors are being robbed.
i don’t have words to speak of lifeless bodies in the aftermath of a car accident, bloody and broken on the road.
i don’t have words to speak of how guilty it feels to have a full stomach when so many around you go hungry.
i don’t have words to speak of children starved of affection, desperate for human contact.
i don’t have words to speak of a crippled man sleeping in the garbage and the dust, abandoned and left to die.
i don’t have words to speak of the vacant look in a child’s eye who is merely existing and doesn’t know how to thrive.
i don’t have words to speak of thirteen year old girls raped by men in their twenties.
i don’t have words for the silenced voices of so many children who have been told they’re worthless and that they don’t matter.
i don’t have words for the dozens of amputees wandering the streets, victims of a war that is over, and yet they still bear the scars.
i don’t have words for being sick in bed with malaria while at the same time realizing how many lives have been lost from the same illness–simply because they didn’t have access to the medicine.
i don’t have words to speak of children laid out on a table to be whipped or pushed up against a wall to be hit.
i don’t have words for little girls literally starving, for bony shoulders and skinny legs and how frail they feel when you hold them.
i don’t have words for an education system that has failed so many of its children, for fifteen year-olds in the fourth grade or a second grade student who can’t even write the alphabet.
i don’t have words.
i have a heart that bleeds
and tears that fall
and knots in my stomach
and hands that wring.but more than that,
i have hope.because while this place can be filled
with pain and poverty and sorrow,
i have also seen::
seen that Jesus lives here.i’ve seen Him in the prayers of a mother for her children.
i’ve seen Him in the grateful look in a dying man’s eyes.
i’ve seen Him in the healing of kids who were once frighteningly sick.
i’ve seen Him in the sheer joy of the Church praising Him.
i’ve seen Him in kind eyes and warm handshakes.
i’ve seen Him in a nation full of people looking forward to brighter tomorrows.
i’ve seen Him in students who realize they’ve been given a chance, who start dreaming for their futures.
i’ve seen Him in the whispered prayer of a teenage girl who has begun to recognize her value.
i’ve seen Him in blazing sunsets and soft sunrises, in blue sky meeting green tree meeting red earth.
i’ve seen Him in children who cling to the leg, rest heads on the shoulder, intertwine fingers with mine.
i’ve seen Him in the faces of little boys and girls who finally understand that they are loved.
i’ve seen Him in the dreams of those who want to grow up and transform their country.
i’ve seen Him in the innocence and excitement of children who, for once, are just allowed to be children.
i’ve seen Him in unity and brotherhood and acceptance.
i’ve seen Him.
i don’t have words::
but i have seen.and because of that,
i have a heart that hopes
and eyes that look up
and a growing faith
and a tongue to encourage.it is in the ugly that i have found the beautiful.
it is in despair that i have found strength.
it is in the hard places that i have found new life.i don’t have words,
but Jesus is here.and so i know that one day,
somehow,
(because of He and not i)
everything is going to be alright.
