God is enough.
More than enough.
The Wilderness Song
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Category Archives: grief
Unquenchable Fire
Luke 3:17 (NIV)
His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
God is a patient guy, but we would all be prudent not to confuse patient with impotent or sloppy. He will not wait forever to fix what we have broken.
And it will take a very long time to burn all the trash we have amassed…in our hearts alone.
Make no mistake–
We will all be salted with fire.
Pentecost.
Authentic Friend
I imagine the room is in a church basement. Worn wood, a coffee pot on a table, styrofoam cups, a rows of folding chairs.
Sparsely attended. I cannot see the faces of the other attendees. I know like mine, theirs will be worn, washed of something. Artifice. No room for that here.
I stand and tell them my story. All of it, unadorned, shocking. Only here, in this circle of (imaginary) truth it will not be held against me–my pushy honesty, my tenacious insistence on the whole story. Uncomfortable, impolite. I know. I got it.
Most places now I tell myself, shut up, you know now they don’t wanna hear this.
That is why I return to this picture in my head–a simple circle of truth, where every secret thing is revealed. So no one is shocked when the truth is what it is—
We all
Underestimate
Jesus.
About Pain
Most people have run across CS Lewis’ quote about pain being God’s megaphone. We are risk averse. We don’t really even like to think about pain.
I dropped a roll of (heavy) butcher paper on my big toe. Dumb, I know. The pain was and is intense, binding.
It derailed my plans for a run. This in itself is a sticky issue. Exercise, especially running is my go-to, no-guilt stress reducer. If I could I would eat a lot of chocolate and drink vodka gimlets, but to paraphrase Tobias Funke–I don’t need the calories.
I guess I didn’t need the run.
The truth is my big toe was already a wounded soldier–bunioned, afflicted with frequent stubs, not helped by my penchant for running barefoot and in Chacos. That poor toe was already punished.
I am not really that fixated on my toe. I am fixated on why?
I know God well enough to trust that my clumsy accident is no accident at all. He has stuff for me in the midst of pain. Things like:
Wound care. I wiki toe breaks. Importune my doctor husband. Follow his advice…
Pain management. I take the ibuprofen with alacrity and gratitude. It just takes the edge off. Same with the ice…
Change plans. No run is a bummer. But this also means a real change in my dazzling and exciting plans to work on the exterior trim of our house. I went from looking forward to tackling the high places to envisioning myself doing most of the yard-and-under edges.
The little things. As I said, I was already neglecting this toe. Now I am not. I am grateful for all the thankless weight-bearing it does and very aware of how much I need my big toes.
Need. I am also going to need more help. My kids will have to be my team–helping with all the not-so-fun cleaning jobs.
Empathy.. Most of all I am aware that my small intense pain is nothing compared to the people I pray for–friends battling cancer, families missing loved ones, prisoners in terrible places, women whose lives have been stolen by…it is too easy to say monster.. Too easy to pile a decade of individual blows–each one vicious and deadly into a lump sum.
I would prefer to separate each into a blow of such force that to minimize or forget is to be less human, less alive.
Let us face these terrible things together, these monstrous griefs.
Mother.
I saw a lady in a parking lot
Reminded me of you
Same color
Ride even, champagne
A place becomes a grape
Becomes a beverage
Sparkling…celebratory
Just a vehicle, mind you
The complications of love
Missing you despite
All you have said
And done.
Rise
Mark 9:9-10 (NIV)
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. [10] They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant.
The worst feeling in the world happens a million times a day for at least a year after you lose someone you love. You wake up thinking (for just a second…bad dream?). No. Death.
Death is a terrible darkness. It robs us of comfort and love and a person who cannot be substituted for anything else.
Gone is gone and there is a whiplash agony when a beloved is gone.
The conditions of human existence for the last 6000 years have ground each of us down in the maw of grief. None have escaped it’s power or devastation.
And yet, here is Jesus speaking of rising from the dead.
Not that I hadn’t happened a couple times…there were a couple old testament resurrections…but…
What did Jesus mean?
They did not understand the impossible yet. Do you?
I don’t, but Jesus’ resurrection spills light and hope and courage all over his followers. They believed in the impossible because Jesus was the impossible.
He’s got this.
Fearless Heart
Had a rough night last night
Looked for the face of God
Thank you, friend I have never met
Her Fearless Heart
For shining light in this dark place
The Witness
It is 3 flipping twenty in the morning and I have written myself out of a paper bag several times recently. But not this time.
This time I give you a picture–our protagonist is at the brink of death when the neighboring Amish descend over the rolling Pennsylvania hillside–their quiet presence ostensibly saving the life of young Harrison Ford.
I am naive to believe in those faux Amish extras. To quote Isaiah:
stop trusting in men
This is the last day of April. Much has happened this month, not much fan fare about the victims of crime and child abuse. Quiet. Too quiet. As I have quipped before–no one wants to be the spokesperson for dysentery relief, too stinky.
I want to say this–I am not sorry I have been a vociferous child advocate. I am only sorry I have failed. My children are not safe. Neither are yours.
When I feel the despair of the freakishly ignored I understand why most victims of child sexual abuse never share their story–it is worse to tell your story and be treated like a freak than keep quiet and attempt to mend alone.
It is as though our children were naturally able to count with their hands but each time they gave us the correct answer we slapped their hands and told them to parrot a wrong answer–like carrot or France.
You might ask yourself how dizzying, confusing, and painful it would be to know that 2 plus 2 is four, not Siberia, but never to be allowed to say.
I don’t have to ask. I know.
3:34 am
Fairy Tale Beginnings
Imagine you are a reasonably attractive young person in your 20s. You are educated and have an interesting job with growth potential.
Then…you enter into a completely voluntary relationship with two fairy tale creatures. Think frog in well, old lady at door of castle material. There is a spell that has been cast over them, you, intrepid young person, must break the spell!
This requires enduring a lot of verbal abuse, physical abuse (fairy tale creatures are small but fierce and sometimes quite wild).
You hang on, barely, telling yourself each day that the humiliation and loss you feel is worth the investment in these small people, I mean enchanted creatures. Someone has to break enchantments, why not you?
Yolo; I know. That is part of the heartbreak. To “waste” your youth on the ungrateful and the enslaved can feel like desert living.
When they get older, larger, and more criminal, it can feel like…well let’s just say not a fairy tale.
The other people in the enchanted woods look a little queasy when you spill your tale–what? No magic reveal? No broken spells? What the heck?!
You can see it in their faces–please stay away from us, we live in this forest and are invested in keeping up magic appearances.
But you know the secret–dark, sad, but unavoidable secret. There is only one happily ever after and there is only one handsome prince.
He was the unlikeliest of Redeemer Princes–unremarkable, a tradesman. Itinerate, shekel-less. He died a miserable death and seemed to indicate there would be rough and uncertain times for his kingdom.
His spell-breaking talisman seemed a little too brief–follow me.
Like we would want to do that. Like that would be pretty. Like hell itself would be a picnic.
But of course, hell was just a place on a narrow road for him. It was not his destination. So keep up, girl, the story isn’t over…
Isaiah 58
The Man who would be King
The Chinese character for king is three horizontal lines connected by a single vertical line. It has a story–
the man who would be king must be able to span heaven, earth, and the underworld.
Each horizontal line represents a location–heaven, earth, hell. The single vertical line is the King.
But there is more–the Chinese character for 10, a number of completion looks like a cross.. There is a perfect cross in the middle of the character for king.
Jesus is this king.
He takes on disfigurement on the Cross to save us, but his power is not in question–
the gates of hell shall not prevail against him.
He has vanquished death and restored our hope. What are we waiting for?
Transfiguration: our first glimpse of Home.
Part 1.5 of 2.
Carrying Light 