Love is the only law left

Church camp when I was a kid was a place where everyone ran wild. "Safe" in the circlet of forest, our cabins mapped out in alphabetical groups, dirt paths between, our parents let all the kids run wild. They didn't know where we were or who we were with.

The problem was, I wasn't free there. I was haunted there. One person made the grounds a maze of bad memories and new tragedies. Unlimited access in a place where no one heard a little girl saying no, no one heard a little girl crying silent and flying out of body into thin air to escape.

Church camp for my kids will be different, so I say through gritted teeth and tension and anxiety. I watch them like hawks, send them everywhere with a "buddy", panic if someone is left behind. No one goes unaccounted for in a family already touched by the secret sins of a "safe Christian". Church camp feels about as safe to me as an obstacle course in an Indiana Jones movie. Only the treasure I'm trying to get through whole has 8 arms and 8 legs and it is 4 children who are too heavy for me to carry and too fast for me to keep up with and too excited about everything I'm terrified of.

The pastor smiles from the campsite across from ours, but all I see is the smile on another pastor's face smiling as he tells me what a hopelessly horrible person I am. I see the smile on another pastor's face when he taught that adultery was wrong while children were being turned into sexual toys under his very nose. I remember sweating under the heat of his thundering voice as he proclaimed homosexuality the most disgusting sin of all.

What if you were made that way by someone else? What if it wasn't your fault? What if you hated it just as much as the rest of the church? It was easy to hate it, and by extension, easy to hate yourself, so much that you thought the world was better off without you. Understanding our sin is easy, understanding the penalty is clear. Living with it is impossible.

But grace? Grace is hard. It doesn't fit into the nicely wrapped little boxes the church makes for it. "Believe, and you will be saved." That's what they tell you in the beginning. What they don't tell you is that they - as an extension of their "God" - will try to save you from every last inch of yourself. And while the process of sanctification through Christ is a lovely and holy and beautiful thing that is always consensual and incremental, the church does things a little differently. They tear your clothes from your body - those old clothes that stink of sin. They dance around your nakedness, celebrating as if you were a newborn baby naked in their midst. Never mind your arms crossed and spine bent to hide your shame. After that, they give you new clothes, clothes you might hate, clothes that probably won't fit you right, clothes that bind and pinch and scratch. Maybe clothes that are for the wrong season of your life. But those clothes are the only ones you're allowed to wear in church, so you wear them. You call it "your burden to bear" and smile just like them as if it's a mantle of honor and not a reminder of how the church raped you in order to admit you.

"Believe and you will be saved" is followed up by "and you must give up [fill in the blank with x, y, z]" and you find yourself rather quickly shepharded from a place of "acceptance" as a sinner to a place of shame if you continue to sin. As if sin were as easy to turn off as a water faucet. As if anyone, ever, anywhere, anytime, has EVER been able to turn off sin, defeat it entirely.

One day you wake up and you realize that God doesn't make bad people. God doesn't make mistakes. And if religion couldn't beat it out of you with all their tricks and sticks, is it ever going to go away? You wonder if maybe people are made this way. You wonder if maybe God is more opposed to hatred and violence than people and their "lifestyles". This God, the one who opposes hatred and violence? This God you could believe in.

It's just a whisper of possibility, but you hear it: maybe all this has been a great big Wizard of Oz smoke and mirrors play for power by the church. Maybe they don't have the answers, so they deflect and defend and demoralize. Maybe there is no one answer.

This new thing I'm learning - the dialectic - says I can hold two opposites true at once. I can believe that sexuality can be sinful while on the other hand believing it isn't always sinful. I can believe that God granted me a heterosexual marriage with children and that perhaps that won't be his plan for everyone. Did my marriage "redeem" my lesbian lifestyle of earlier years? Am I a "converted homosexual"?

I don't want to be called that. I am redeemed and converted to the way of love. I have the chance to join Christ in loving every. single. person. I ever meet. I have the chance to be the reflection of Christ's beautiful face of love, his open arms, his embrace, his protection.

Hear this, my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters: I will never try to tell what path God is calling you to walk. I will not show you the sliver in your eye because there will always be a plank in mine. I will not decide what things you do in private are sin. I will encourage you to love, not hate. I will show you love, not hate. I will sing to you: "Love; it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free!" If you have kids, I'll send mine over to play. If you invite me for coffee, I'll come. And I will come quietly and humbly, because all of us are walking through different storms, and all I know for sure is the way to weather mine. I will come hushed to the sacred meeting of souls, for our souls are all naked and all beautiful and all made in the image of God, and souls don't have sexual orientations or baffled bodies or scars or shame. And here - two souls touching each other gently in the ocean of life - we can be free and lovely and grateful and peaceful together.

It's all ancient history: Understanding God's perspective on our redemption

Sometimes life is in the details, when you go digging with your spade for joy through the day's dross. Others, it's in the blur, in the painting of the day, the fogginess of retrospect. 

There are a million ways to raise your children, and each child and parent is different. I by no means state that my way is THE way. For this family, though, it is. It is right for these children to be home, even though I fail at homeschooling, and housecleaning, and even getting up at the right time of the morning. Precious has been the verse, "Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:19-20 exc.)

It doesn't come every day, every hour, every crisis, as I beg it would. Now and then, in the cracks of consciousness, in the humdrum and even through chaos, He whispers. Confirmation. Blessing. Direction.

My kids don't learn a lot from workbooks. Homeschool, for us, is about the golden hours of opportunity, snuggled up with a book and Youtube, exploring the universe and listening to the songs of stars. Reading Psalm 148 together. Can you learn about the stars and NOT read Psalm 148? Yes. But to do it all together, mama and kids, eyes wide, tears flowing...that is a gift.

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the LORD! For he commanded and they were created. And he established them forever and ever; he gave a decree, and it shall not pass away. Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds! Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and maidens together, old men and children! Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted; his majesty is above earth and heaven. He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his saints, for the people of Israel who are near to him. Praise the LORD! (Psalm 148 ESV)

That morning, this morning of dancing and the evening of diving into our enormous universe, I woke up and fell asleep and woke up again and went to sleep again. I was buried under my insomnia and my guilt and my depression until 2 p.m. I went through the motions of making meals, I silently walked through rooms straightening up, but then I went back, and huddled in the burn-out sunlight on my bed. That morning seemed like an utter failure.

But the day wasn't over and who can grasp the enormity of the story of redemption? Who can look at the speck of life, the brief time given, in contrast to the ageless, faithful wonders of creation, and say, I must matter? Yet each hair on our heads is counted precious, each of our tears are caught in a bottle, each moment the universe is singing praise to heaven and we are failing...He is pursuing. He is dreaming of that second when you find purpose in the midst of your purposeless day, and think of Him. Remember HIM. Do you believe that? That He's waiting at the end of the day, and if you don't make it back to Him by the end of the day, He's there the next, and the next, and the next? Until you die. Waiting patiently for you to turn and recognize His hand in the painting, His gifting of the details, His fitting and molding of your life.

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Peter 3:8-9)

Beloved. You are more beloved to Him than your children are to you. There is nothing you could value higher than God values your life, your days: your face and your words - He's longing for them! Whether I'm drowning in details or lost in the "big picture", He's waiting for me at the end of the day to whisper that I walked in the path. He's there to smooth the ruffles and to dry the tears and fix the hurts of the day. If I'll only remember to turn to Him.

When I do, there's no disappointment, there's no shame, there's no preamble to love, conditional like we humans love each other and Him. There is no "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" God. He is WAY too big for that. There is only the God who sees the elemental YOU, the one He created for His glory, beautiful, clean and unscathed and totally redeemed. Your redemption is history and the rest of this mystery if your gift. Clean slate. Tabula rasa. A Father who no longer condemns us, but loves us and waits for us and makes our crooked paths straight. He doesn't demand our praise, need our praise, depend on our faithfulness for His grand plan to work. What does He do with our praise? He loves it, cherishes it, delights in it, waits for it.

Once you understand that everything is based on His love, and not His condemnation, you can come to the end of that failed day and simply rest. For you are His beloved, cherished, accepted child in whom He delights.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by our flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. If Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you...those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (excerpted from Romans 8)

"Beloved"

"Cherished"

One Right Choice: A Letter to My Younger Self

I don't know why you were born in the United States to intelligent parents who had decided way back then to raise you earthy in the hippie way, homeschool you, love you unconditionally like Jesus taught them in the few simple verses they clung to even before they really knew Who they were following. I don't know why your childhood was golden, filled with woods and brothers and beauty. I don't know why it shattered because of one person who chose evil instead of good, and bludgeoned you with sexual abuse when you were just a tiny person of seven or eight years. Even now, at 33, I don't know the rest of the story. But I do know now a lot more than I knew then. I have a lot to tell you, the mixed up you of high school and college, the you that couldn't seem to get anything right, the you who didn't even know what Right was for her.

You were all mixed-up inside, an identity of confluence, two rivers so muddy you couldn't tell which defined you better - stoic Scandinavian or earthy Native. Tom-boy or girly-girl. Intellectual or athlete. Sister or daughter, friend or enemy. Straight and narrow or wide and easy. Straight or not straight. In the shadows or in the Son.

You tried to hammer it out in silence, writing poetry under a pseudonym published in the University art journal, yelling in your soul to a God whose very existence you sometimes questioned, beating your body on the ice at late night hockey practices even though your cardiologist told you to take it easy, for heaven's sake.

Sometimes you were obedient, even though it was hard. You didn't touch beer until your junior year, even though you wanted to at all those college parties, warning labels from cardiac meds ringing loud in your ears about sudden death and other side effects of mixing substances and the life-sustaining little green pills you popped like candy to keep you upright and breathing like a normal person. There were boyfriends you'd never had and wondered if you'd ever have. Girlfriends you had and wished you didn't. Confusion roiling where your uterus ached in that empty late teen way, full of latent dreams of babies and sexual perturbation, a womb full of memories of sharp physical abuse and the duller, deeper psychological wounds of the words that your abuser sank into your soul like poison arrows.

You kept classes on an altar because you couldn't go back and erase the mistakes that would derail your lifelong dream of being a professor like your dad. Your dad and your mom...those who sustained you, believed in you even when you proved you couldn't be trusted, who loved you when you weren't lovable, who were your scaffolding to a faith you'd lost faith in...those two people you wanted desperately to be like and desperately to love yet held at arms length, afraid of your secrets, afraid of consequences, afraid of disappointing them again. Afraid of breaking their hearts.

There were places to go and things to see on this great green earth, and you ached so badly with desire to see all of it and do all of it - the paddling, the descending of the mountains on your snowboard, the breathing of the thin air of mountains, the humid air of jungles and the salty air of seas. You were afraid of death just because how could heaven possibly be as beautiful as earth? And so you prayed, long and hard and often, even though you weren't sure He was listening, to live.

There were mistakes almost made, a man almost married just because he was a man willing to marry you, a man who didn't ask questions, who didn't seem to notice that you were a woman confused, a woman who loved other women a little too much, a little strangely. He didn't ask where all the hurt in your eyes came from, or why you hungered after marriage ravenously, as if it was salvation from some invisible curse you never mentioned. In return, all he asked of you was the same - that you ignore pornography and little white lies that really didn't matter, unexplained losses of time that should have been yours, pieces of his heart that should have been yours but never would be. And were you wise beyond all your confusion and your years, or was it just that tiny chip of remaining faith that kept you from peace, kept you begging questions about what love really felt like and whether or not it was okay to marry someone you didn't love that way? No one came out and told you not to marry him. But you remembered a snippet of a verse - the peace that passeth understanding - and one hot summer day, you realized beyond a doubt that you didn't have that, and you handed that little band of gold and glitter back to him and broke your promise and said you just couldn't. Even though you couldn't explain why. Somehow you knew that just good enough wasn't good enough at all and that there was more to life than just enough.

There were days you dreamed of nothing other than moving far, far away and giving up all you knew and giving in. Your heart broke because you were a sinner and you wanted that sin more than anything else you'd ever wanted. Yet at the same time, your heart broke for all the things having that sin would ruin - family, friends, life here in this place and time and space. All the people who would never be the same if you chose the hard and difficult and damning sin instead of the hard and difficult and tooth-and-nail fight of Right.

Because you chose the tooth-and-nail fight for Right, because you didn't throw it all away and flee to a far-off freedom away from the prying love eyes of family, He gave you family, more and more love eyes that pry and see when you falter and hearts that break when you stray - and shout Hallelujah! when you survive, thrive, and get it Right. 

Because you didn't choose just-good-enough, a husband who didn't ask questions because he really didn't care, He gave you a romance that has lasted 10 years and promises richer and fuller love for decades to come. He gave you this man, this oh-so-much-better than you deserve, kisses that flood your bones with a hunger you didn't know you had.

Because you yelled in your soul at a God you weren't sure even existed, He walked with you out into the light, and He filled the light with dozens of tiny people who proved to you He existed. He swarmed you with love so much greater than the greedy, paltry, carnivorous false love of that sin that enticed you, love that piles right on top of you and clings to you and never, ever lets go, even in the twilight when you'd rather be going to sleep instead of giving more kisses and telling more stories and tucking them in again.

For every beer you didn't drink at those parties, and every obedient swallow of those pills that helped your heart keep beating, He rewards you with crazy joy in oceans and on mountains. Your heart is still sick today, and there are still pills to swallow. A tiny machine in your chest keeps the ticker ticking. You still go to ERs and falter at the ledge of death sometimes. And when you're at the ocean and on the mountains, you aren't young and you aren't strong - all you can do is sit in those waves. But the joy in those experiences is richer because it was almost stolen, and you grip joy with both fists, for you are richly blessed and oh, how deeply you know it!

Even though you can't snowboard down real mountains anymore, hike 14ers, surf the big waves, He gave you little people to show the ways of adventure to. And when they grin at the end of the day when they've mastered a new trick, or when their squeals fill the air as they rocket down hills and flip on skateboards, it's your heart that explodes with glee, because you get to do this. You are still here. And behold, He is Right again - it is more blessed to give than to receive.

You didn't know that all those lessons about living and dying would teach you how to face cancer. You didn't know that fainting in public was your dress rehearsal for the public humiliation of wearing disease in the form of a bald head. You didn't know that when you got cancer at 28, you would skip to the head of the class because you'd already learned so many lessons about sickness and living with it and thriving anyway.

And for all the sacrifices of momentary pleasure for the sake of good grades and a good reputation at your university, He gave you your very own office at that same university. The opportunity to teach thousands of young nurses as they're just starting out. To teach them how to live their faith as they follow their calling. It was worth it, wasn't it?

Every prayer you offered up to travel the world and see every beauty this green earth offered, every prayer to defer heaven just a little bit longer so you could revel in the gift of time on earth...He took it and changed it, and sent you with your stethoscope and your wide eyed dreams to the corners of this impoverished planet.  And instead of a passive traveler, He let you be the hands and feet of Jesus, holding His beautiful, broken people in your hands and healing, and at the end of those days, you were speechless, and you sat in red earth and stared out at the alien landscape and all you could do was breath as tears ran down your cheeks. Because true joy is that incredible and profound - it silences and stills and leaves you completely wrecked.

You had no idea that the real break-down would come in your thirties, and leave you twitching, dead-eyed and afraid in a hospital, trying to find a lifeline in a whole Bible full of words that seemed suddenly empty. You didn't know that all those blessings you'd racked up in 10 years since choosing the Right would suddenly dry up and blow away like chaff in a puff of a hot wind of depression beyond any sorrow you'd known even in the darkest night of your sinning. You didn't know that the path out would once again be one simple choice, one little snippet of one little verse that you would anchor to and haul yourself out on, a bloody mess. 

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

When we name the heroes of the faith, we rattle off Amy Carmichael, Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, Billy Graham, Susanna Wesley, Helen Keller, Martin Luther, Elisabeth Elliot. Those who followed hard after Christ, sacrificing all for His glory, single-mindedly and whole-heartedly soldiering for the Gospel.

But I am not of their ilk. I am the sort who found one small Truth on which to cling in a stormy darkness full of questions...a C.S. Lewis, a Hudson Taylor, a Corrie ten Boom, an Augustine. I can only hope that in my remaining years, my questions will lead me to greater faith and actions that will bring God glory, that I might walk in the path of these great heroes of the faith, not just in their doubts, but in their belief as well.

When you were 20, you thought it was an either/or proposition, this living thing. Happy, or sad. Accepted, or rejected. Joyful, or living in darkness. Sinning, or following Jesus. Believing, or questioning.

It's not. It's a melting pot of all of this, a beautiful soup of all kinds of emotions, experiences, blessings and difficulties. Sometimes you are saved by just a glimpse of Truth that shines on the path and directs your steps. Sometimes you are defined by one little choice that cascades through your life like rain through a canopy of forest - first a drop or two, then a rushing waterfall, and finally the whole forest floor is watered and springing up with new life.

Thank you, Lord, for helping me make the Right decision when it counted. Thank you for this life. Thank you for these blessings. What a life it's been so far!

Celebrating my friend Bonnie's 1st FaithJam in 5 MONTHS!! Be sure to click the link & read some of the other letters.

Dragons and Knights

I hear it like the drum beat of my own heart throbbing for sins I cannot repay. I feel it like the taboo of words of confession long on my lips but never sufficing. But He interrupts me in my mutterings of confession, and a simple image crushes my confessing lips until they are bruised with anguish. For He has bled, drop by drop, for this sin I cannot forgive myself for. He has shed every tear, sweat blood in Gethsemane, and hung naked on the tree to cleanse this sin from the book of my life.  Erased! Erased! Erased! He calls, as I linger on in self-torment. Does my blood mean nothing to you? Would you shed your own, the sinful river of blood running through human veins that cannot repay, when the perfect Lamb has already been slain for this sin you call unforgivable? Would you spend your days in torment in a prison you've built yourself, when everything I own, I, King of Glory, I would give you freely? Joy unspeakable, cup running over, and you trade it for bitter hyssop and a cup full of vinegar and days full of tears?

And as He whispers, deep in the silent night as I sit on the porch steps and watch the storm clouds rolling in, my house asleep, and my sleep destroyed by nightmares. He whispers something of a princess whose crown was ruined long ago. He whispers He doesn't care; He sings of rescue. Something about a castle where that princess was captive. Something about throwing out curses and drawing lines in the sand, and gathering the stones that would have been hurled my way into piles instead (John 8). Restoring crowns, and redeeming all of us, sinners - scandalous, scorched and scourged - the beautiful broken. He has made us whole.

...reposting an excerpt from this post, humbled by my own words from March 9, 2011

Stonehenge

I used to see God just like this. Me, God, two inexorable features locked tightly in a molded sculpture of perfection. This is what I thought God wanted to do in my life. Bend me and shape me, the iron rod, the unforgiving stone of a life, to erode me and form me into something different than I am. After all, it's exactly what I deserve. If He is my constant companion, and sees my defeats and torment, surely He is the disciplinarian, the head honcho, the boss you duck to hide from at work:

Why does it feel like night today?

Something in here's not right today

Why am I so uptight today?

Paranoia's all I got left

I don't know what stressed me first

Or how the pressure was fed

But I know just what it feels like

To have a voice in the back of my head

It's like a face that I hold inside

A face that awakes when I close my eyes

A face watches every time I lie

A face that laughs every time I fall

And watches everything

So I know that when it's time to sink or swim

That the face inside is hearing me

Right underneath my skin

I know I've got a face in me

Points out all my mistakes to me

You've got a face on the inside too and

Your paranoia's probably worse

~Papercut, Linkin Park~

And to that God counters with the sweet, strong courageous voice from the pulpit that reads to me from Psalm 45. I shake while worshiping, penance for years thinking of God as an authoritarian parent I drew back from. Jesus, Lover of my soul? What He pursues is me, the real me? Not to break me, but to love me? This scandalous love affair between Creator and created seems like something we keep under wraps, don't speak about too much in public, for fear of coming across a bit odd. But, like breath in, breath out, intimacy with Him grows, magnificent, holy, supernatural and as natural as that reflex to breath in and out. 

Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear:
forget your people and your father's house,
and the king will desire your beauty.
Since he is your lord, bow to him.
The people of Tyre will seek your favor with gifts,
the richest of the people.


All glorious is the princess in her chamber, 
with robes interwoven with gold.
In many-colored robes she is led to the king,
with her virgin companions following behind her.
With joy and gladness they are led along
as they enter the palace of the king.


In place of your fathers shall be your sons;
you will make them princes in all the earth.
I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations;
therefore nations will praise you forever and ever.
~Psalm 45:10-17~

My gratitude list, excerpted from #649-656~
650. Starting the day with a positive thought for future
652. Matching tattoo with Melanie!
654. Peace in the Bachs home
656. Three little girls with matching pixie haircuts

I don't understand God yet

He is my teacher, he is my friend

pure spotless innocent lamb

He is my doctor

He is my love

Son of God and son of man

Nothing can stand under the power of His hand

But he came here to heal the weak and broken man

He is love, He is love

He is love, He is love

Kind hearted kindred

merciful friend

Compassion extends in His hands

He died to bring life

Magical, lyrical man

He knows our every weakness
He has built our house on faith

He was with us in our darkness

and He loves us all the same

~Love Song, Molly Williams~

I know the God to whom I pray for safety. I know the God I beg for healing. I know the God who is a distant sentinel over humankind. I know the God who judges and disciplines. I need to learn more about the other side of God: mercy, kindness, forgiveness, the God who wants to be my friend.

No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all that I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven. ~Philippians 4:13-14 NLT

Crying out to rise again

"For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again." (Prov 24:16a)

The curbside Prophet there yelling at me

Yeah, he's yelling about my tattoos

But we all live with the scars we choose

They might hurt like hell, but they all make us stronger

~ Take Me As I Am, Sugarland ~

The puckered red leather top on our maple syruping table is a parable of my soul. There is something painful about each crack and line, but there is a hidden beauty as well. Something well worn, well loved, still useful.

The nightmares and flashbacks are intense. Sometimes I emerge crying, the vivid pictures of my childhood abuse and scars from college searing my soul right out of sleep. I am afraid to be alone. I am afraid of the dark again, like I was as a child.

I picture myself the chick under the wings of God, the hen who guards the young. The devil swoops in and out, but nothing penetrates that shield. I may be broken and fragile because of these flashbacks, but through the Cross, I will overcome. I will get better. Christ is a giant compared to these light and momentary trials I face. I see opportunity after opportunity stretching as far as the eye can see, once I am better. I remember being 7 years old and wishing I could see God just so I could be wrapped up in a single hug from the Savior I trust. I feel that way again. Wishing for a God-hug. A bear hug. A hug that infuses me with strength to endure.

The storm clouds overhead won't shed

Any rain to quench your thirst

I want to be the One you reach for first

When your faith is stretched so thin

That you can see straight through your soul

And you can't find a nickel to buy a smile

'Cause your pockets all got holes

You want to shut the door and hide

Before the day can get much worse

I want to be the One you reach for first

Fall into me

My arms are open wide

And you don't have to say a word

'Cause I already see

That it's hard and you're scared

And your tired and it hurts

And I want to be the One you reach for first

Before you turn the key

Before you fall asleep

Before you drift away to fight

those demons waiting for you in your dreams

Fall into me.

I want to be the One you reach for first.

~Fall Into Me, Sugarland~

This Easter

Good Friday: read the crucifixion story in all four Gospels

Holy Saturday: watched the Passion of the Christ

Easter: read the resurrection story in all four Gospels

I think I will make it an annual tradition.

Word became flesh and the light shined among us

His glory revealed

Living He loved me, dying He saved me

And buried He carried my sins far away

Rising He justified freely forever

One day He's coming, oh, glorious day

One day they led Him up Calvary's mountain

One day they nailed Him to die on a tree

Suffering anguish, despised and rejected

Bearing our sins, my Redeemer is He

Hands that healed nations, stretched out on a tree

And took the nails for me

One day the grave could conceal Him no longer

One day the stone rolled away from the door

Then He arose, over death He had conquered

Now He's ascended, my Lord evermore

Death could not hold Him

The grave could not keep Him from rising again

Living He loved me, dying He saved me

And buried He carried my sins far away

Rising He justified freely forever

One day He's coming, oh, glorious day, oh, glorious day

Glorious day

One day the trumpet will sound for His coming

One day the skies with His glories will shine

Wonderful day, my beloved one bringing

My Savior Jesus is mine

~Glorious Day, Casting Crowns~

What else is there to say this beautiful morn?

Note from the wilderness

Close-up of crack in broken tire chock

 We don't think of ourselves as fragile. Especially as Christians. We're strong in the Lord, right? (Ephesians 6:10) Yet, over the whole span of scripture, we read of mighty people becoming broken so that they can serve God in amazing ways: Adam, afraid in his nakedness; Jacob, who wrestled with God, and limped always afterward; Abraham, whose health and vigor failed long before God granted him the promised son; the prophets who retreated to the wilderness to be fed by ravens as they had squandered their last bit of strength trying to carry God's message; the many people Jesus healed, the weakest, sickest, most shunned - the social misfits and pariah.

We are fragile. Sometimes we envision ourselves as warriors fit for battle, but there is always the thorn in the side (II Corinthians 12:7), the fact that God's greatness is made perfect in our weakness (II Corinthians 12:9).

This is a season of brokenness for me. I don't know what God has ahead. Frankly, I am too exhausted from the recent battles to even care much about what the future holds. I know He has a plan, and I'm sunk back in His arms just waiting for it to unfold. I am sure others who've struggled with depression know this feeling. Wishing there were heaven-sent ravens coming to feed you while you rest in the sand (I Kings 17:6).

Finding the "beloved" in the broken

First bare feet of spring on the wood shavings and gravel.

Cuts and bruises wait to be washed tomorrow.

Two pots of maple syrup kiss in the black and white eye of the camera.

The world goes black and white and I only see black,

the smudge of smoke, the blackened pots, the grill sagging

with years of tending syrup chalky with dust and dirt.

The wind whips and whirls and the steam flows fast out of my pots.

The wind draws the last lonely aching breath from my lips,

and I put down work and sit - slump - in a chair by the fire.

The pain of the past few weeks comes to the surface 

like dross in my syrup pan.

I am drowning in dross.

Yet below, the clear brown liquid, the sweetness of surrendering days

to vigilance and artistry with the works 

of Creator God as instruments in hand.

The dross drifts away and I dip for a sip of reminder that

this too shall pass.

The tears, the sorrows, the terrors of the night,

the torment of the day, the faces floating like a mirage of bitterness

where before were faces of mirth, beauty, simplicity, joy.

Just dross.

Dross I nearly drowned in.

Dross that is forever defeated at the Cross.

And afterward, in the sour way a meal tastes after you've vomited,

joy returns, and laughter buzzes through my lips again.

For He saved me, from this too, a sea of depression

so wide no boat could traverse.

Only on eagle's wings could I mount high above

and see it little, like He sees it,

a blurry mass of blue on a spinning earth filled with green.

I can't lie.

The past few weeks have been some of the worst of my life.

I have to sit down and pray about how to write it out,

what details are important, what sections to keep filed

forever lonely in my own memory bank.

Bear with me

and please keep praying as I continue this slow emergence

~ butterfly from chrysalis ~

from the valley of the shadow of death.

Too long I have lived

In the shadows of shame

Believing that there

Was no way I could change

I am not who I thought I was

And who I thought I had to be

I had to give them both up

Cause neither were willing

To ever believe

But the one who is making everything new

Doesn't see me the way that I do

He doesn't see me the way that I do

Forgiven beloved

Hidden in Christ

Made in the image of the Giver of Life

Righteous and holy

Reborn and remade

Accepted and worthy this is our new name

This is who we are now...

~ I Am New, Jason Gray~

Voicelessness

I wake up with my hair on fire

I need something to water me down

I can’t keep walking on this wire

I gotta move, I gotta come around

~from Only Love, Grace Potter~

I am comfortable with the short end of the stick when it comes to emotions. I am practiced at numb, I am good at comfortable, I've made my peace with distant. I am in a recovery group called "Wounded Heart" for abuse, and the stronger emotions are there on my list. Anger. Disgust. Passion. Delight. Joy. I wake up with my hair on fire, and I need something to water me down. It's not the shower I often forego to tend the children needy around me. It's not some emotional salve I've bought in this world. It's the Word, washing away the torrent of my anger and my fears.

I sit in a friend's church and listen to a sermon on the Beatitudes. And the passage I am memorizing rises out of the red letters like a sentinel flag of freedom:

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5:9-12)

Peacemaker. It's been one of my "labels" since childhood. Always, always I try to find a way to make peace. Even if it means placing contempt on myself, taking blame, shifting it onto my shoulders, freeing others from it.

I am also an expert at compassion. I learned it as a nurse, but built brick walls between the compassion I felt and the tragedy of others. Sparing my own heart. Keeping my wounds silent, secret, fulminating in their dark places where only God and I could see the depth of the pain in my soul. I have known compassion as a mother, and I've gone about it methodical - what is your problem and how can I fix you? I haven't sat in emotion with my kids. I regret the moments I've been nurse/mother instead of mother, the hen who gathers her chicks and dries tears as tears slide down her own feathered face, regretted the ache of my children that I cannot join, for fear of cracking open a box grown pregnant and dangerous with years of keeping the lid on it.  I don't join in emotion with my husband, except for those God-given moments of married oneness when often it is tears, tears I know not whether they are of joy or sorrow or repentance or miracle. When he is angry, I am calm. When I feel rejected, I pile it onto my shoulders like the embers of the past, burning but burning on calloused skin, skin leathery and impenetrable from years of piling on embers and scarring the shoulders.

I've heard the whistle in an empty bottleneck that breathes life into the truth that I cannot comfort myself. I've bathed myself in the carcinogenic smoke billowing from my cigarette, a sorry patch for the anxiety of spirit deep within. I've seen the despair in the empty bottom of a pill bottle, knowing the false peace offered there has expired until the next refill date.

Now, I watch the man stumbling home from the bar where he nurses his wounds, and I wonder if he hears the empty whistle of the bottle just emptied, if the wounds are already seeping darkness back into his soul as he staggers home incoherent.

I watch the smokers huddled in groups outside buildings where their self-medication is not welcome, and wonder if they feel like rejects, know that this quick kill of pain will dissipate in seconds and leave them marooned on their island of no hope.

I take my antidepressant faithfully and wait for the monthly refill.

In the midst of it, my hair is on fire. I feel angry. I feel grief, deep grief like the grief when someone dies and you cannot be with them and it kills you second by second as the wracking sobs herald your powerlessness. I've felt passion unfulfilled and hatred at those who won't fulfill it.

I am on fire.

Your pain seems insignificant in the grand spectrum of the world, of reality, of history. Japan washed over with waves of devastation, and you bring your paltry sorrow to the Mercy Seat? You ask for justice when others mourn what was taken by a force of nature, something they never saw coming, the grief penetrable, visible in every picture emerging from a nation wracked with grief? You cry over your miscarriage. You ask for justice in your city. You beg for Him to take your cause in a meaningless dispute? Yet He is God who hears all, loves all, and is forever the protector of justice and love.

Yet silent. Hand over mouth, trying to put the cap back on the bottle of emotion, trying to figure out where God intends me to spill this. Where does this emotion fit, in a world of Godly mothering, wifing, friending, daughtering?

It comes to me like an epiphany through the mist on the roadside and the mournful drip of the snow through the trees as winter breathes it's last mournful foggy breath into the warm wind of spring.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of need. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. Be still, and know that I am God. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. (from Psalm 46)

I remember the song sung in clear sweet soprano at the funeral of a child for whom I let down the brick walls built to protect my compassionate heart, a child who walked fearlessly through the gates of death and into the arms of Jesus, right in front of my eyes.

Be still and know that He is God

Be still and know that He is holy

Be still, O restless soul of mine

Bow before the Prince of peace

Let the noise and clamor cease

Be still and know that He is God

Be still and know that He is faithful

Consider all that He has done

Stand in awe and be amazed

And know that He will never change

Be still

Be still, and know that He is God

Be still; Be speechless

Be still and know that He is God

Be still and know He is our Father

Come rest your head upon His breast

Listen to the rhythm of His unfailing heart of love

Beating for His little ones

Calling each of us to come

Be still, Be still

~Be Still and Know, Steven Curtis Chapman~

When you feel powerless. When you feel rejected. When you feel like you have completely lost your voice. When there is nothing you can say to fix it, to make it better, to make it right. When there is nothing you can do to destroy the lies being spread around. When you feel vulnerable. When you feel weak. When your passion brews up a smoking, billowing fire of anguish deep in your soul.

You have a voice.

You are not powerless.

You are right. You can't fix it.

Sit there. Feel it. Let it sink in.

And know there is always someone listening.

Always someone who will have His revenge for the righteous.

Always someone standing for the victim.

Always someone participating in your pain.

You are not alone.

Your voice cries loud to heaven, to the One who hears. Your spirit groans when words fail you, and the Holy Spirit transmutes those wordless depths to the One who hears (Romans 8:26). The One who cares. The One whose holiness takes your speechlessness and turns it into the power of life itself (II Corinthians 12:9).