Sacred Dust

 

It's been on my mind a lot lately--our last Ash Wednesday service.  Not the one we just celebrated where my husband and I wrapped up our three sons like Ralphie's brother in "A Christmas Story," trudging out through our snow and ice-laden neighborhood to make it to church.  I'm thinking of the last Ash Wednesday service I celebrated as campus minister three years ago.  I hadn't realized at the time how powerful a moment it was.  But now the holiness of that time hits me so hard it takes my breath away.  It has a sacred quality that lifts it out of memory, making it real and alive for me now.  Even now.  When that moment past is so far away, so far out of my today experience, so far out of my grasp.

 

Ash Wednesday fell during our Spring Break.  None of the students could afford to go on a trip that year so we stayed in town, finding ways to be missional in our own community.  And on Wednesday we gathered on the front porch of our campus ministry house for our service.

 

We began outside  because we first had to make ashes.  Most congregations make theirs from the previous year's palm branches.  But ours were made from little scraps of post-it notes folded tightly into tiny packages, love notes offered to God during our worship throughout the year.  College students don't often have much money to put in the plate, but they have all kinds of things on their hearts.  Each week I would encourage them to write down whatever they needed to bring to God that week:  "Thank You", "I'm sorry", "Please help me!"  Each week I would gather the pastel scraps along with the loose dollars and change.  The money would go to support the ministry.  The scraps of paper would be kept for ashes.

 

So we stood on the front porch with lighter, post-its, and an old cake pan, surrendering those needs to the flames, entrusting them to God.  Once all was said and done, those were the ashes we spread on one another's foreheads, reminding each other that we are made from dust, and to dust we would return.

 

Wow.  How powerful is that?  To have the ashes of someone else's need smeared upon your forehead?  To recognize our own dustiness, our limited humanity,  by the need we cannot escape?  To bear one another's burdens by wearing them upon our own skin as prayer to God?  To touch at the same time our own deep need and God's deep mercy by standing in the gap for each other?  All I can say is--wow.

 

But our worship did not stop there.

 

We left the porch, piled into my van, and went to the heart of town to serve.  First serving lunch at the Salvation Army.  Next painting an old building to prepare it for new ministry.

 

 

 

We became the living sacrifices Paul talks about in Romans, carrying our crosses--literally the ones smeared upon our foreheads--into the places that need God's redemption the most.

 

In wearing the sign of our redemption we became signs of God's redemption in the world around us.

 

I remember at the time feeling less than, not enough, because we hadn't made it out of the city for a "Spring Break Mission Trip."  The irony is that now I stand before that memory, so tempted to feel like I am less than, not enough, because the needs and demands of my own life keep me from serving lunch at the Salvation Army or painting old buildings to prepare them for ministry.

 

But Grace asks me for a different response, a deeper one.  God isn't asking me to feel guilty for circumstances beyond my control; God is asking me to receive the gift that memory brings.

 

I am after all, only dust.  But this dust that I am, that all of us are, is sacred.  It is held as infinitely precious in God's eyes.  Oh so fallible, fragile even.  But of inestimable value to the Divine.  It is why God sent Jesus to us, to show us our value, to save us from our fallible, fragile selves.

 

And how we choose to live within the circumstances we have, shows exactly what our attitude toward dust is.

 

Do we live as servants?  Or ego-maniacs?  Do we labor diligently to save our own pride?  Or do we give ourselves to guard the dignity and well-being of others? 

 

I think about my station in life, mostly at home with three sons.  Each one is growing so fast.  And I realize how vast is my influence on the men they will become.  This mission field is so dear to my heart.  I am so thankful for the opportunity to nurture a spiritual harvest in the place I love most.

 

And then I think about my work at the preschool, where I lead chapel.  And where I serve as one who can step in wherever and whenever there is need.  One day when I was helping out in the office it became clear that a little one needed some extra attention.  For this little guy there are legitimate reasons why some days he just needs his own person.   I spent much of that day holding him close, softly singing in his little ears, praying as a shepherd who carries the smallest, most vulnerable lamb.  I'm writing with wet eyes.  I get it now.  This kind of moment is just as sacred and alive and holy as those others long past.

 

What are we to do with our dusty selves?

 

Sometimes we have the means to rearrange our circumstances, to altar the outlines of the life we are living.  And sometimes we can't.  We feel, for all intents and purposes, stuck.  But we can always choose how we will live within the life we have.  We can always choose how we will regard the dust that we are, and the dust that everyone else is.  We can choose to live as if the ground we walk upon is already Holy, just waiting for us to live as dust that recognizes the Hand of the Divine already at work where we are. 

 

We can choose to offer up who we are to the Divine Breath that works within us and through us to redeem the whole world.

 

Right in the very circumstances that we can't seem to change.

 

Snow Day

We finally got snow--the wonderful kind where you forget your 40-something life with its demands and obligations and responsibilities.  The kind that invites the most reluctant hearted grown-up to release propriety, to get out there and romp around a bit.  The kind that reminds us what it is to play.

It was that kind of snow day. 

We got out the sleds and spun ourselves around in the deserted street outside our home.  Proper parents that we are, we laughed like kids, joining in the delight of our children.  And I found much to my surprise that with enough layers even bitter cold doesn't have to be bitter.  Especially when it is filled with joy.  Warmth spreads all around, never melting the fun.

For me it was a true day of rest.  Sabbath.  I relaxed into its easy rhythm, a bit uncomfortable because I quietly fretted that there was perhaps work needing to be done after all.  But really there never was.  At the end of the day I settled my self into the arms of my husband, sharing a smile, relaxing into that hug as if it was okay to just enjoy the gift we'd been given.

This soul season has been a bit like our little break from the ordinary grind, well, minus the romping.  The way a serious snow blankets our southern town with immobility, this season has settled on me as well.  In our house we have battled incessant coughing and viral infections like everyone else.  And my own sinuses have kept my senses fogged.  In the weariness of getting everyone well and just keeping up with meals and basketball games and school assignments, it has become too much to try to keep up my own creative endeavors.   I've gone quiet on the inside, rolling through each day, attending to needs around and within me.  The whole time relinquishing the striving, driving spirit that must get something useful and purposeful and important done.  Relinquishing the need to prove my life has significance beyond itself.  Relinquishing so I can just be quiet, for a change.

 As my heart has quieted my writing has as well.

I've been listening.  Leaning my inner ear close to the ground of my own being.  Getting familiar with my own dustiness.  Seeing how my own feet are made of clay after all. 

I have wrestled for the past three years with identity issues.  God moved me from full time ministry and planted me squarely at home, without title, position, or matching salary.  I've struggled to know my place and my purpose.  I've struggled to know that I'm still the same person when there is nothing on the outside of me that points to who I thought I was on the inside. 

I've wondered at this long stretch of time, of emptiness and quiet.  And then the last few months of an even deeper stillness, where the emptiness around me seemed to seep into me.  I've wondered.  And watched.  And waited.  And listened.

And while situated in this very personal empty space, the snow began to fall, blanketing my outside world as deeply as my inside one. 

Snow and ice are great levelers.  No matter what human you are, you are at its mercy.  For a day or two, all of us in the whole region were rendered still by impassable streets and biting temperatures and hard-packed layers of cold. 

This stillness has the power to reveal, to show us to ourselves in a way nothing else can.

In my stillness this is what I heard--

I'm still the same me I always ever was.  I've been shaped and formed and named and claimed by all my experiences, and even when circumstances change, those markings still remain on my soul.  I look at the world the same way; I interpret life the same way; I move in concert with the Holy Spirit the same way; and God is as present in my life as ever I knew God to be.  And through this time when all the outward trappings of success and identity and accomplishment have been stripped away, I find that I am more.  

In the silence, in the stillness--I have discovered that I never really lost anything at all.

In fact, the outward trappings became my captivity.  I believed in myself simply because I had outward evidence to prove I was worth believing in.  My belief in my own worth never had any real foundation in reality as long as I believed it came from circumstances outside of me. 

So God set this captive free.

By taking away the very things I had built my sense of self upon.

And in the piercing silence, the quiet stillness, I have seen my true self.  The self I always have been.  Alive, vibrant, radiant with the splendor of a child of the Living God.  And in the quiet stillness I have heard God's simple question:  "Who are you going to believe, them or Me?"

 

 

 

 

 

TRUST

 

 



This is the word.  TRUST.  The one that will order my unfolding self in this year--heart, soul, mind, strength.  I chose it--or rather it chose me--at our church's Covenant Renewal Service, the first Sunday of January.  I told God this word was my commitment, an offering of self as gift to Giver, releasing everything so that God's Magnificent Being would have room to do a work.  And I joined my voice with about a thousand others making a solemn promise--tears leaking, voice breaking:

I am no longer my own, but yours.  Put me to what you will, place me with whom you will.  Put me to doing, put me to suffering.  Let me be put to work for you or set aside for you, praised for you or criticized for you.  Let me be full, let me be empty.  Let me have all things, let me have nothing.  I freely and fully surrender all things to your hope and service.  And now, O glorious and blessed God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, you are mine, and I am yours.  So be it.  And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be made also in heaven.  Amen.

I felt so strongly this word in my inner being.  Especially when Habakkuk 2:1 kept coming across my attention--"Then the LORD answered me and said:  Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it."  The vision that accompanied the word was simple, a field of grain, sown by faith, springing forth as a harvest of joy.  The image a message in itself, asking me to trust that what has been sown will come forth, not as barren but as fullness, harvest being merely a matter of time. . . .  God's time. 

January passed and I did not write the vision. 

The mid-year break ended, and school opened into an ever deepening winter that does not seem to have an end.  Skies are gray, bleak.  My heart often feels the same way.  In seasons past I wondered at the barrenness surrounding me, taking in the beauty of stripped landscapes, lost in wonder because I see nature's inner bounty revealed:  surprising sturdiness hidden behind foliage is suddenly visible and vivid in the pale cold light.  In past seasons I have been enchanted by the bare-boned beauty.  This winter I simply feel bare.  I look at empty branches, and just feel empty. 

The emptiness around me matches an empty gnawing I feel within.

A month in I survey the bleakness of inward soul and outside landscape and remember that I never did write the vision.  I never gave it life so that as my days got busy and ran together and I forgot about God I would have something to look to that could remind me of God's presence when I am blinded by my own poverty.

This Monday was my worst day.  The poverty and emptiness felt overwhelming. 

As the professional theologian I could just say that often when God wants to acquaint us with the Magnitude of Divine Majesty, it is preceded by episodes of witnessing our own smallness.  God will allow us to feel the separation of Presence so that we can truly understand where we end and the Divine begins.  Otherwise we confuse the two, we don't know how to recognize God's Bigness because we are still too big in our own eyes.  In preparing our hearts to receive a Gift we cannot contain, God will clear out space, cutting us off from sensory consolations so that we can recognize God as the source of consolation.  Our addiction to comfort must die so that we can truly know and see the Comforter.

And this is the spiritual season that accompanies the unusual deep freeze of our usually mild southern climate.  My spiritual terrain matches what is happening outside my door. 

Can TRUST sustain me when God really takes seriously the words I prayed on January 5th?  Even though I was just a single face in large crowd of people, it wasn't a public moment for me; it was deeply personal.  It was as penetrating a moment as if I had been kneeling at an empty altar without another soul around.  My offering of myself was total, sending up a big "whatever" to the Heavens. "Whatever You want Lord, I'll be fine with.  In fact, I'll want it too."  I meant those words with everything.  I just never anticipated what it would feel like if God took me at my word.

What if God chooses for me to be laid aside?  empty?  having nothing?  I thought I knew what it was to have everything you believe to give you value loosed.  Those comfortable outward signs of significance had been loosed long ago.  But then God began loosing those internal verifications of my value as well.  It had been a slow process, beginning even before Christmas.  Growing ever so slightly as each day melted into another one.  Gaining momentum.  I woke up Monday with an ache lodged in my chest that was almost unbearable.  Monday was a really bad day. 

On Tuesday I got out the colored pencils, bringing the vision to life. 

I look to my notes, jotted quickly beside the original sketch of my TRUST word:

     What do I most need to trust?
     I can trust God to work this out for my good.
     God will reveal His plans for me at a good time.
     I can trust God's timing in my life.
     God is at work in my circumstances.
     I am moving closer to understanding my destiny.
     God has taken into account my unique gifts abilities and temperament.
     God hears the yearning of my heart.
     God is answering my heart with His plans.
     God is preparing me for my place, just as He is preparing my place for me.
     I am not lost.
     My times are in His hands.

When I look at that colored pencil drawing with TRUST looking back at me, these are the words I hear whispered as the wind blows through the wheat.

My Times Are In Your Hands

I have this collection of watches.  I'm not sure why I keep them.  It's not like I will use them.  It's not like I can even wear them.  Any watch I've ever worn that has hands eventually stops working way before it should.  Never happens with digital watches, only the other kind.  It is a mystery.

I can tell you the precise time when each one stopped, even if I cannot say what day or year it was.  The moments stack up:  2:05, 10:30, 3:10, 1:11, 2:32.  I wonder what was occurring as each time signature came to rest.  What season was I in?  Was I happy?  Sad?  Hopeful?  Depressed?  The time signatures remain, but those forgotten moments are long gone.  I can hold those frozen watches in my hands, but the moments they represent have long since slipped through my fingers.

I am comforted by the thought that they have slipped into God's hands instead.  Those memories are held by the Almighty, the Alpha and Omega, the One who is and was and will come again.  Really, they never were out of His hands to begin with.  I might have lived each one of those moments, but He was holding them all along.

It's a truth hard to grasp at times.  My memories swim in and out of consciousness, some of them forever out of range, some too close for comfort.  But I see how it all turned out.  I am comforted by the imprint of Divine Love touching each one.  It doesn't matter that I couldn't see Grace unfolding in the awfulness of disappointment.  Grace was there anyway, mending and minding the tenuous threads of well-being that I thought were permanently broken.  When I couldn't hold on, God was already holding me.

Okay, here's the truth:  I found the verse before I found the watches.  Okay, even truer:  the verse found me.  I lay in bed the other night, my head swimming with uncertainties, the open-endedness of my life laughing at me.  I just wanted to let my insecurities pass into the night, to be covered by darkness, unseen and invisible to my heart and mind weary from trying to figure life out.  And then the words came.  From somewhere inside, a reminder that I was not alone in the confusion:

My times are in your hands  (Psalm 31:15). 

Why is it that I can so easily accept God holding all my past moments, even the excruciating ones, yet have so much difficulty grasping that God holds this present one too?

This moment, unfolding itself in my confusion and struggle. 

I love how the Holy Spirit works.  As I laid in the darkness my husband offered a nightly prayer for our family, our growing boys, and our work, our loved ones, and then mentioning me by name:  "Help Sami to know You are with her in the struggle." 

I begin to change my thinking.  Because back then, in all those moments of past tense, it was hard for me to see God's hand at work, holding me in the middle of  holding time.  It was hard for me to imagine that there was greater Purpose aligning what I couldn't understand with all kinds of wonderful that would eventually come clear.  But I see it now--I celebrate now Providence's plan lovingly arranged and arrayed in a past that is beautiful to me on this side of it.  If I can see my yesterday's with that kind of clarity, is it possible to look upon my now moments with that same kind of clarity as well, exercising the faith that knows in a future moment all this confusion will be okay too?

With the discovery came the determination to find all those watches--to put hands upon them, to gather them into one place in full view of my spiritual eye.  Those times and these times are sacred.  And they are Held.  Not even my incomprehension changes that.  They are Held. 

So am I.

Resilience

Sunday morning was a perfect morning for a run--about 35°, no wind, sun shine gentle on my face.  To run in weather like that is bliss: not too hot, not too cold, but just the perfect balance of everything.  Even if my body is not cooperating, I enjoy myself.  And I find my heart and mind open in footfall rhythm; more of me is available to notice what most needs noticing.

On Sunday morning it was the song of birds.  I noticed birds singing, their chirpy refrain a reveille to my early morning grogginess.  It seems they had something to say.  Something important.  "Hey, we are here, silly woman running.  We are awake and welcoming this new day!  Be awake with us and welcome it too!"

I heard it.  And then I understood it.  They were still singing, even after the crazy weather of the previous week, they were still singing.  I see them perched up high, resting blithely on tender branches.  And even though they are so small I wonder that they can be held by something so tenuous looking.  But they greet me still.

The weather last week had become frighteningly cold.  Bitter.  Frigid.  We stayed inside the warmth, shielded from the frozen air and ground and wind.  I wondered about survival in such extreme conditions.  The news even spoke of caring for large land animals.  Without proper care, exposure could mean certain death.

This is the wonder of it all--little beings so fragile, without human hand to shield them from the biting cold, live to sing about it.  They sing, as tiny reminders of life's strength.  My assumptions of life's frailty were wrong; I hear the error in their song.

We too go through the extremes, don't we?  We are so involved in trying to just. get. through. that we sometimes fail to see how those seconds and minutes and hours add up.  We lose perspective because there is no time to not strive; each moment we give ourselves wholly to the surviving of the thing, slipping silently into a better place, an easier place.  And we hardly even notice it because we are still straining against our adversities just tying to make it another day.

I wonder when we will look back at the journey that has been, and pinch ourselves when we realize what we've come through?  When will we realize we are tougher than we gave ourselves credit for?  Which day will we wake up singing and know that the thing we had to come through did not have the power to take our song?

Welcome New Year

I didn't realize until I was well into my adult years that hospitality is one of my core values.  Mostly because I never envisioned myself as the domestic type, and I always assumed that to be any good at offering hospitality a girl had to do it like Martha Stewart.  I mean how can someone as unkempt as me offer anything that could ever put another at ease?

And then I began to understand that unkemptness is gift too, offering something valuable to the weary soul tired of pretending life is perfect.  I am glad to welcome friends into my unkempt life, to provide a safe place to let down their hair, to listen to stories still in the middle, to laugh together at the way God weaves His humor in and out of our imperfect lives.  Having it all together is completely over-rated.  It leaves no room for anything more.  And I have found that God is always ready to surprise us with His More-ness.

More has a way of walking in and setting up shop in the realm of unkempt.

This is my hope for the year ahead.  I would love to say that I have a carefully thought out plan of what I want to do with my life, who I want to be when I grow up.  Yesterday I read a web-page that offered advice on how to systemize one's blog.  You mean there are people out there who have a system for this "I've got to write it so my soul will know it's alive" kind of thing?  Totally blows me away.  My system is pretty simple:  "Write at least once a week whether you want to or not; writing is good for you."  And it is.  I know where my soul is because it peaks out at me in the words.  Without the words it tends to get lost in my unkemptness.  The writing helps me give some order to this mess that I am.  And it opens my eyes to the More of God.

On Sunday I sat in church listening to the preacher talk about making covenants with God for the new year.  I sit in the tension of opposing desires within.  On the one hand I want to make big promises to God, to dream big, to honor God with dreams so big only He can fulfill them.  But I get overwhelmed with the pressure to decide exactly which dream I should dream.  Instead I think of Mary, mom of Jesus.  She never had big dreams.  But God had big dreams for her.  Her response was simple, profound--"Let it be with me, just as You have said."

Honestly, I'm not big enough, or smart enough, or clever enough to figure out what More should look like in my life.  But oh sweet Jesus I yearn for it--I'm hungry for only the More that He can bring.  I love Mary's words, her invitation to God as response to God's invitation to her--"Let it be with me . . . ."

I believe that this kind of response has a radical nature all its own.  Without demanding it welcomes Holy Initiative.  What if we spent our whole lives welcoming the very thing God wanted to do most?  What would our world look like?  And isn't that hospitality?  Doesn't God need a bit of hospitality too?

Our preacher continues to talk about covenant.  He compares it to marriage.  I think of marriage and covenants and how we bind ourselves to one another in a way that reshapes who we are.  God binds Himself to us in love, through the cross.  Jesus even in resurrection shows the marks of binding Himself to us--we are written on His hands.  Our preacher says that in the binding, God takes the greater portion of promise.  His promise holds our own when our promises perish.  God's takes on the burden of promise when He binds Himself to the broken, those who break promises because of their own brokenness.

I am turning this metaphor over and over in my mind.  I think of my own husband and our marriage and how the years bind us together. We are learning still how to love each other, yet there is a rich depth that marks our lives because of our loving.  I am comforted to know that perfect Love already holds us both.

The scripture comes to mind--Ephesians 5:25-27:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind--yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.

This word washes over me and I realize--I am part of the Bride that Christ loves so much; I too am one whom He is making splendid with His love; I too am one who will be holy and without blemish.  And my radical hospitality, those few and simple words of "Let this be", participate in making this possible.

I go throughout the ordinary parts of my day and another wave of realization washes over me:  He desires to do the More.  He wants to and longs to and watches with anticipation as my life is unfolding, waiting with giddy excitement to do the More.  It is not just an obligation of covenant for this precious Bridegroom; it is His deepest joy.  It's not that He has to.  He wants to.

And when I try to protest because my messy unkemptness will get in the way, He just laughs and asks me who do I think made me this way?

Welcome new year.

Welcome friends.

Welcome Bridegroom.

Welcome love.

Pa-Rum-Pa-Pum-Pum: My Hope for the New Year

Early in December my youngest son and I found ourselves quietly alone in the house.  The big boys were off somewhere with their Daddy, and this little one and I had an evening to ourselves.  We powered up the DVD player and watched "The Little Drummer Boy."  

It seems silly, but the story rekindled in me a yearning I had forgotten.  During my last Christmas as a campus minister I showed the video to my college students.  Before the evening was over I gave each one of them a glitter-covered glass drum ornament, a reminder to give the stuff of who they are to Jesus.  Fast forward three years later to my living room.  I sat holding my little one, watching in wonder as another little boy who had neither gold, frankincense, or myrrh to offer the King of kings simply began playing his drum.  His drumming was the gift.

Tears rolling, heart lurching, mind running, I sat there trying to remember where my ornament was.  After tucking my son into his bed I made my way upstairs to the attic.  The search was on.

I took me a couple of days to find it, but soon it was hanging on my tree with all the other memories each ornament represented.

I find myself singing the song, rum-pum-pumming everywhere.  All this pa-rum-pa-pum-pumming has me thinking about what exactly I have that is of any value to the King of kings.  Even as this year closes the song echoes in me, until even my cells seem to be humming and strumming and singing along.  What can I give that has worth?  What can I offer Jesus?

And my heart keeps beating.  Drumming.  Humming.  Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum, rum-pa-pum-pum, rum-pa-pum-puming.

What I like about the new year is that it gives each one of us a new start, a new opportunity to get something right.  A chance to try again.  I feel like I need that more than anything right now.  I need more than anything to know that my life has meaning beyond myself, that I am a part of God making a difference.

This desire was awakened within me early in December with startling clarity.  I was visiting the elementary school where my husband is principal.  Together we were handing out small gifts for those who worked there.  As we passed through the cafeteria I saw a woman helping a little boy about six years old with his shoes.  She held his sneaker in her hands.  Then I saw his foot resting on the floor while he waited, sock-less.  The image stayed with me, always in the back of my mind, niggling, keeping me awake at night.

What began keeping me awake even more were the memories that image evoked.  Times when I was about six years old, struggling in school, having some needs that others met, other needs that were invisible to the outside world.  My heart woke up to a long buried ache and a deep need to heal it by somehow making a difference for these little ones.

Christmas day has come and is now past.  I am writing this post on New Year's Eve eve.  Tomorrow we will begin the countdown to a new year.  With the ticking my heart keeps pumping, drumming, humming.  I am offering its beating as gift.  I am hoping that God can do something with it, that God can move it and in doing so move me into His purpose, His plan for my life.  I realize I need it to keep beat with a Song beyond me, to make music that heals the brokenness, comforts the loneliness, restores hope to hopelessness, and brings joy to the weary.

My new year's resolution:  to make my heart available to Christ, to offer it as a vessel for Christ to fill however He sees fit.  This isn't so much about giving Jesus my heart so He can take me to Heaven as much as it is about giving Jesus my heart so He can pour out some Heaven on earth.  I feel so limited in what I can do for the King.  I look at the things others are doing, knowing I don't have that kind of thing in my pocket right now.  And so I listen to the song playing in my heart and offer it with the hope that it is enough to make Him smile too.

Happy New Year!

Emmanuel Coming

I am in an Advent kind of mood.  Sorry.  Christmas is lost on me this year.  I don’t feel merry and bright.  I can’t really even explain it, except to say that my heart hurts.  It has been living too long in the tension of what should be and what is.  I ache with the disparity and my own inability to reconcile the difference.

 This Christmas season, unlike any other, I am aware that there are children who will go to bed tonight cold, hungry, feeling very much alone.  The needs are real.  They are intense.  For some children it is not even the physical needs that are so bad, but the sting of being left alone by those who are supposed to love them the most, the emotional abandonment that comes because other things in life are more important.  What can ever be more important than caring for one’s own children?  But here it is, the evidence revealing itself in surprising ways, in surprising places.

It stings because I sit in my warm home, surrounded by my family.  My boys are so deeply loved.  They are surrounded by a network of family that holds them, a safety net that is always there, resting gently beneath the love my husband and I hold for them.  I see the way Tim cares for them, the time he takes, the surprises he plans for them, especially when work keeps him away.  It warms my heart.  I know my life is blessed.  Even in this imperfect life, I know we are so, so blessed.

It breaks my heart when I think of children in other homes, not having what is so easily taken for granted in ours.  And I want to do something.  I have responded to the needs lodged in my chest to the capacity that I can.  And I know it still isn’t enough.

I hate it.  I hate that I have so much passion inside of me to make a difference and I can’t.  And I will say, I’m a little mad at God.  Because I’m stuck in circumstances beyond my control.  I can only do so much.  I can only leverage my gifts and abilities so far.  And the gap between what I want to do and what I can do at this moment is tearing me up inside.  So my Christmas spirit is shot.

But Advent is fitting.  Advent is that season that anticipates the coming of the anointed One.  It is living in the dark place, while leaning into Promise.  The darkness can feel so pervasive.  In Advent one lives quietly with darkness, but holding fast the hope for light in one's heart.  It is the staunch refusal to allow the darkness to pervade everything, even if the corner of hope left is small.  The One we wait for is the anointed One. the Christ, the Messiah, the One filled with Spirit for the purpose of eradicating the darkness.  His awaited Presence touches need, perfectly answering, filling, punctuating, satiating.  He is all we desire.  This waiting intensifies our need, clarifies it, distills it.  Even if we cannot name it, it names us, affecting all that we do, the choices we make, the way we make our way in the world.

The ancient Hebrew people waited for the Holy One in the silence of 400 years, without one word from the prophets.  Even words of reprimand would have been welcome when you wait in silence that long.  They waited as they passed from one hand of domination to another, eventually subdued by Roman rule.  Their waiting was a groaning, a yearning, a longing, stretching into centuries that looked desperately for relief. 

I love the way the hymns of Advent answer this need, this pervasive darkness—

O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.  Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

God answers the world’s deep need by piercing the night with the squalling peals of a newborn.  His answer for a need so huge is a baby.  Israel was looking for something more. 

If I am honest, I am too.  I want the hurting to stop.  I want the ache in my heart to go away.  I want the passionate need in my chest to be quieted by the living out of purpose, to know that I’m spending myself in a way that alleviates the needs I can’t not notice.  To know that I am participating in God’s redemption of the brokenness I see.

I think the thing that the Hebrew people missed, the ones who couldn’t accept Jesus, was that they missed the meaning of His name.  He is called Emmanuel—God with us.

God is with us. 

In the darkness.  In the silence.  In the disparity.  In the paradox.  In the long night that feels 400 years old.

God is with us.  He hasn’t left us.  He hasn’t gone blind.  He knows and He sees and He loves and He is answering the deep, deep needs we cannot even articulate with His Own Self.

I don’t know why God doesn’t just make the earth shake.  I don’t know why God doesn’t just snap Divine Fingers and solve these needs.  But here is what faith is telling me—

God has touched my heart in a special way in this Holy season, not so that I will be forever lost in a chasm that I cannot bridge.  God has given my heart eyes to see a need, the grace to feel it deeply, so that when He changes my circumstances from lack to abundance I will be ready to serve.  And I will be absolutely clear about how I should do it.

The 400 years of silence was really a gift; it created a hunger perfectly matched to the Salvation God wanted to send.  I believe God does the same thing for us; He stirs in us desires that He is already prepared to fill.  Our waiting just shows us how big the  Gift really is.

Can one timidly rejoice?  The words of the song hit me fresh.  This is my exile, my longing and hoping and yearning.  I feel so deeply the need that only God can satisfy.  I know that He is going to have to move some mountains around for this to be alright.  And the faith part of me says that even though I can't be sure exactly how He will do it, I can rejoice because Emmanuel shall come to me too.  Emmanuel comes for all of us who are weary of living in the darkness and longing for the light:

O come, thou Wisdom from on high, and order all things far and nigh; to us the path of knowledge show and cause us in her ways to go.  Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Does the Baby Need a Blanket?

My youngest son will be in his first concert tomorrow!  The three year olds at his preschool are doing a Christmas program for the parents.  Jeremiah told me, with all seriousness, "If you're bad you can't come see me sing."  Apparently there is a good behavior requirement for attendance!  My friend who subs in his class told me she was there the other day for their practice.  She said he looked so much like me, with his expressiveness and enthusiasm pouring out.  Our third son must be something of a ham.  We will soon see for ourselves!

One of the songs his class will sing is a simple chorus that repeats a question over and over, finally giving the answer--

Does the baby need a blanket to keep him warm?

Does the baby need a blanket to keep him warm?

Does the baby need a blanket to keep him warm?

I’ve got a blanket I’ll share!

It helps the story of Jesus' birth come alive for little imaginations--a stable is not a warm place to be in the winter time.  How will a new born baby stay warm?

I'm sure God figured out all those details on the night Jesus was born.

But I've been singing that song over and over in my mind, and the question will not leave me alone.   Baby Jesus is still cold.  He still needs someone to share what they have.  The details of Christ's need still need to be figured out.

As I reflect on this I realize that my boys have not been exposed to much of the deep need so many live with every day.  They attend a new school, filled with kids from experiences much like our own.  The basic needs are met, and often there is more than enough to go around.  It is not a community categorized by lack.  I am struggling with how to help them see the needs of the world, when the world they live in doesn't seem to have any.

Especially as I realize that as a child, I lived in the need they haven't been exposed to. 

My mom tells me of the Christmas we were so poor that all they could afford was a tree and one present each for my brother and me.  The tree was a bit of a miracle.  The young guy at the tree lot mistakenly sold it to them for the lowest price, not realizing it was the best one they had.  My mom's old photographs show a regal pine--tall and stately, perfectly shaped.  Tucked beneath its branches on Christmas morning was a bride doll and robot.

I remember the bride doll, not the lack.  I remember the gift, not the need.  Because every time the need was felt, God worked out the details of meeting it.  When my mom was figuring out how to buy groceries, God had a choir member give her a $20 before leaving church.  When I needed a winter coat and shoes, God moved the hearts of an older couple to buy them.  When my brother and I needed someone to help raise us, God sent Joe into my mom's heart and our lives.  I've always felt a special kinship with Jesus over that.  We both got great step-dads.

So I find myself living in the question that the song asks--does the Baby in the manger need something I can share?  What is it I have that can help?  How am I supposed to share it?  And even when there doesn't seem to be a lot of extra, is there something within my means that God can use to bless another child? 

Is Jesus cold this Christmas? 

 

How Hope is Born in Dark Places

Just days ago we celebrated my youngest son's fourth birthday.  He is a delight and a treasure and a sweet surprise of Grace that blesses us each day.  I thank God for him often, especially when he presses himself to me in a big embrace for that last hug before we walk out the door.  He is a tangible and sweet expression of God's Goodness in my life.  This truth is not lost on me.  It is the one I make my home in each day.

Yet on his birthday a sadness pressed in on me that kind of took my breath away.  It could be that time is falling away from us, and with it his little-ness.  Soon he will be like his brothers, a big boy out and about in his own world where I cannot follow.  While he will always be my baby, already he gives me a look when I call him my baby.  It is clear to him that he is growing up.  He welcomes it.  I am fitting myself into all this growing up with eyes and heart wide open, so that I don't miss these moments.  I don't want to miss a one.

A deeper truth has been seeking attention though.  The day this sweet angel boy was born was so hard.  And the days following were hard.  His birth demanded something from me that I didn't know I had it within me to give.  The giving of it leveled me in a way that had not happened previously, nor since.  I am hesitant to speak of this. 

My body could kind of tell the story.  It is a reflection of what my soul felt like.  The incision they made to remove him stretched up toward my navel.  What lay beneath the flesh was a mess of scar tissue.  The healing process for such cutting was long, and for a long time looked real ugly.  I guess when God delivers something New into our lives, sometimes the process of  delivery feels anything but life-giving. 

When my baby was so new, I entered an aloneness no one around me could comprehend, an isolation no one could penetrate.  Its dimensions were physical, spiritual, and emotional.  Its walls so high I could not climb out.   I want to say this was not depression.  I've been there before too, and it has its own struggles.  This was not something that originated from within me and impacted things outside of me.  This was something that beset me from circumstances beyond my control, rendering me down to nothing.  I could not fight what I found myself in.  I could not invite anyone to share the burden.  I could not escape the sadness that came with the isolation I felt.

The irony is that this struggle came in the heart of Christmas, my boy being born on December 1st.  During one of the most joyful times of the year, I was trapped in a darkness I could not see my way out of.  Eventually I figured out how badly anger was working to alleviate my heartache.  Eventually I could see that this aloneness was not going to end because I willed it to.  I began to understand that the mess I found myself in was asking me for something that I had not thought to give--relinquishment.

I am not speaking of giving up.  I am speaking of giving over.  To allow this isolation to be changed into something holy.  An offering for God to use however God could use something as broken and empty as that.

I discovered in my surrender that God has a special love for our empty places.  While I was baffled with my abyss, God knew just what to do with it.

I would love to say that everything was instantly better when I began seeking God within my emptiness instead of trying to fight the emptiness.  I would love to say that the darkness I felt within  immediately radiated with light.  But I'm not going to lie to you.  I will speak truth.

At first the measures of peace I felt were incremental.  For a moment here and a moment there, the aloneness didn't matter so much.  Slowly I came to recognize this Quiet, that would settle within me, a gentle Contentment resting gingerly within my soul.  If I tried too hard it would leave.  If I demanded its presence it would vanish.  I had to relinquish my expectations of what healed looked like, accepting instead the healing God would bring.  I found I even had to let go of the isolation itself, choosing to let my heart dwell not so much on the realities only I could know, but to join others where they were, in places where I also could relate.

I had to stop looking at others with the silent demand, "Make this better for me--"  Instead I recognized it was something God alone could do.  When I began resting my need in God's Goodness, this Goodness showed me resiliency within that I had not known was there.  I began to believe in my ability to endure.  And I eventually began to believe that there was once more life outside of my brokenness.

Light came into the darkness, and I found God there.  Not blinding me with Radience, but Holding me until I was brave enough to open my eyes.  I found Grace that allowed my vision to adjust to something beside the blackness I felt. 

Here is my inner dialogue with God at the moment:

"Why would You want me to write about this?!"

"Why, when I have made peace with it, and the blessings of that time are now so evident?!"

"Why should I risk this kind of exposure and the opening of old wounds that have healed?!"

Quite honestly, I rarely think about that time.  There is still pain etched in the memory.  But it pushed itself into my awareness.  Not asking my permission.  And I have looked at it blankly and asked, "Why are you here?"

But the Spirit has been whispering in my heart--

There are some who are sitting right now in that same dark place.  The circumstances are different, but it is that same, dark, isolated place.  They not only feel completely alone, they are completely cut off from human comfort and companionship.   When they say, "no one understands," they are telling the truth.  They are having to walk a road that no one can accompany them on.  They need to know they are not walking alone.

Where human companionship is lacking, the Spirit is able to order their steps.  Where the ache is piercing, the Balm of God's Comfort is close at hand.  There is a genuine need to know that darkness cannot obscure the Light.  And the Power of the Almighty can use this experience to train our eyes to see His Presence no matter where we are.

And when we walk with the Light of God's Presence, everything in the world changes.

I believe this is the true miracle of Christmas.  It's not about tinsel or parades or discounts.  It's about something as sturdy as Hope showing up in unlikely and unwieldy circumstances.  It is the story of how God sees our depravity, our endless uselessness in trying to change things, and how He enters in to lift us up, giving of His Strength to transform the darkness we live in.  The true miracle of Christmas is the story of a Baby born in darkness to reveal to us the Light of the world.  His name is Emmanuel, God With Us:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness--on them light has shined. . . .  For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.  He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore.  The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.  Isaiah 9:2, 6-7