Confessions of a former christian blogger: A sense of Pride on Easter

I used to travel a lot. It's one of the shared passions that drew me to Aaron, in fact. He suffered as much wanderlust - if not more - than I, and I thought then it was for the same reasons. We both get wild from being in the same place for too long. He says it is a prairie boy thing. For me, it is the need to blow the dust off and remember who I really am. I have hungered for this my whole life, as long as I can remember. A need for isolation, and unfamiliar vistas, and long periods of relative inactivity of the mind that allows one to drift along through many problems in a short period of time.

I'm driving down the road in the afternoon, on my way back to town to pick up my kids when I stop to take this picture. It's warm, and I'm looking down at the cuff of my chore coat and a sweater, and I'm driving this big truck past the muted fields that seem to go on forever in some places. I am not seeing rural Wisconsin, though. I am seeing somewhere in Wyoming, Montana, Vermont perhaps. All that's missing is the mountains in the distance.

I used to talk to myself in the car when I was younger. It was only by talking to myself out loud that I could unravel my ideas in a time of life that involved a lot of uncertainty and uncontrollable pain. I always tried to stop because I thought it was crazy. I have lived life in fear of crazy, in fear of people, in fear of being shunned and alone...and therefore crazy. Lately, I've taken it up again, along with fantasies of other states and countries. I guess some pain sinks you so deep in the mud of your old self that you start acting like you're 17 again. The inside of yourself is so loud with keening and details and paranoias that you have to say things out loud in order to hear them. You get so lost in the way you're supposed to be, the way that would make other people feel less pain, or accept you, the way that wouldn't change any of your relationships except the one you have with yourself...you get so lost there that you can't remember the sound of your own voice.

And so it is on the eve of Easter on the first year I didn't beg at the foot of a cross to be rid of all this. The first year I have spent this holiday with my very own unredeemed and unabashed self and not needed to join in the scourge that is celebrated at Easter. Like it or not, universe, I don't really have any other choice but to be myself. Even if it takes the occasional trip to the relative isolation of a different place, even if it means talking out loud to hear myself think. Even if it means temporary pain and even if it means losing some things along the way.

Maybe someday I'll go to the mountains just to see them.

When a Christian Blogger Doubts: Permission to Walk Away

All photos today courtesy of Katrina

She reminds me of a time when I had so much hope that even the dying flowers on the sill lit me up with faith. She holds the camera steady, checks her settings; sighs at the image that flashes up on the screen. I've started her off on a joy hunt from the time she was an infant, and it strikes me that she has perfected it in ways I haven't yet.

She tells me, with elation sparkling through her words like bubbles through champagne, that you can get rid of all the mess with your camera. Hold the angle just right, and dusty piano keys glitter and gleam. At ten, my daughter has learned that happiness is mostly a matter of perspective.

I feel the warmth of her candle next to me, and it brings me peace. She is demonstrating a lesson I've worked for decades to learn - one that still slips through my grasp. She accepts imperfections but it doesn't take away from her joy.

I've come up against one giant imperfection in my life story. It has threatened to wreck havoc on the delicate framework of joy that I've built around this yellow house and the people within her four walls. I remember worrying about this at 14, 19, 22. How do you quit living a double life? How will people react when you parade your ghostly and imperfect reality into the light for the very first time?

People around me ask for grace. They ask me to wait. They ask me to pray. I love them, and so I do. But faith has gone like a forgotten misty morning, and with it most of my suppositions about how the world works. What is good and what is bad. What is worthy or unworthy. Beautiful or ugly. Truth or lies.

I try to focus on what I do know rather than what I don't. Every now and then, I wonder if I waited long enough. But 34 feels like long enough to wait for a whisper in the darkness. The logic in me quells the fear: I believed once, so I am giving myself permission not to now. Fighting against my disbelief was just carrying me farther from myself and the very peace I sought. Instead I accept it. Maybe my disbelief has been trying to talk sense into me for all these years.

It's scary to give yourself permission to walk away for a while. It's even scarier to admit - and accept - that you are in limbo. But answers seem much less important than joy. The way I figure it, truth exists just fine without me understanding it.

I live now in the concrete, the measurable, the things I can see or hear or feel or smell. I live in bear hugs from children; in snow angels in the crystalline below-zero air; in lectures that wring me out because I pour everything into them. I am finally meeting the world head on. I am out of my cave and here in the world everything looks just a little brighter and a little more hopeful. You and I? Maybe we are the ones to find hope in.

Letting the light in

I spoke of things this week that I never thought would cross my tongue. Childhood hurts locked away tight and buried after all these years of avoidance. I am nudged - gently - to sift through the secrets and unlock the padlocks and let someone in. To this most horrible part of my self. I shy away, trying to trust.

It is difficult to say "yes" to grief. Especially if that thing you're grieving is nearly 30 years old. Why bother now, I ask in desperation? My friend, my therapist - she says it's important to let the light in. That the truth will set me free. That my fear of the thing is bigger now than the thing itself.

So I open, tentative as a blossom in April, and invite her in. Tears fall, sadness wells up in the throat, water from the lip of a petal. Soft and quiet and aching. For a moment, what was unholiest about me feels holy - sacred ground that was trespassed upon. And for that moment, I see myself as He saw me so long ago - His beautiful child in pain. Only by the power of Christ have I held this pain and all His glory and emerged, somehow, whole.

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. ~Washington Irving

Land of the free

Please remember Memorial Day and it's true purpose today. I enjoy freedom thanks to my Grandpa Al, my great-uncles Bob, Don, Hunny, my dear friends Caleb and Kristy. Take the time to hug or thank a veteran today!

I quit talking when I lost hope of Utopia

I used to be a soapbox grassroots political passionate, from days spent longing for my 18th birthday as I watched a Presidential election pass me by in 1996 to fighting unionization in my 20's at my place of employment. I've always been an "issues" voter: worried more about the morality of government than anything else, I had a short list of issues that determined which candidate got my support. Through the years, those issues remained almost unchanged: women's rights; abortion; and issues of personal freedom and choice such as those defined by the Constitution and it's amendments. When I was 18, I was for the death penalty. Now I'm opposed to it. At 18, I would have voted against gay rights, raised in a Bible-banging fundamentalist cult and still a talking head for what I'd been taught in my formative years. Now I'm much less sure of myself: I'll vote for the rights of gay spouses in healthcare every time, and I don't know how I'd vote on gay marriage.

image credit

But this political season has me silenced. I think mostly because I still desperately dream, somewhat delusionally, of a political arena that encourages balanced, although passionate, debate. Discord? Certainly. But with chivalry, respect, and a chance for everyone to get a word in edge-wise. I've never voted for a candidate I agreed with 100%, nor have I voted against a candidate I disagreed with 100%. Isn't it that way for every voter? Because there is no duplicate of the unique and wonderful YOU in the universe?

image credit

It seems like politics are more polarized than ever this year. Maybe it's that I've never been through a Presidential election on Facebook. Maybe it's that I've finally made enough friends who disagree with me that I'm bombarded with more and more ideas very much other than my own. When we're not facing a major political decision, I love the back-and-forth that is now part of my daily conversations: many of these friends have gently and respectfully helped me expand my horizons and have even helped me work out whether or not my ideas are based on Scripture or just the pipe-dream pulpit-banging of a mouthy pastor.

I'm going to let the cat out of the bag: I won't be voting Democrat this election. But I won't be happy about voting Republican either. Because I am not a party-line voter. I no longer consider myself a "Republican", history in the Young Republicans notwithstanding. What I really believe in is freedom. Personal responsibility. Reaching down to help someone else rise up. Grassroots aid coming from the very communities needy people live in. I don't want to live in a socialist nation. I want to live in a free nation.

There's a big reason I feel this way: my faith. Not only am I commanded to love my neighbor as myself (Mark 12:31), I am told that "religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows" - and perhaps the uninsured? - "in their distress." (James 1:27) Call me a passivist hippie commune love-glazed freak, but what a country we would live in if we could somehow encapsulate Galatians 3:23-28 in a government!

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

I can't make that kind of change happen no matter how I vote in 2012. Maybe that's why I sigh every time I think of the election. Unfortunately, the main issue I'll be voting on this Presidential election will be economics. Our country is in serious money trouble. Someone has to find a way out of it. Our current administration has proven that it doesn't have an answer to balancing the budget, plugging the holes that money is leaking out of, and still accomplishing what the Federal government needs to do. One major reason? It has kept adding to the ever-longer laundry list of what the Federal government "needs" to do. What needs to happen - hopefully before we become the next Spain, Portugal, or Greece - is a long, hard look at that list, and some serious prioritization and budgeting. We've got to quit borrowing to accomplish our goals. We have to make our goals fit into our budget, somehow.

image credit

The Constitution states that we shouldn't overthrow Government lightly, lest we all suffer even greater than we currently do. Yet when a "long train of abuses" and "Despotism" are evident in our Federal system, it is our "right...duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for [our] future security."

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. (from the Declaration of Independence, signed by 56 supporters of Freedom on July 4, 1776)

If we are to continue to exist as a free nation, we cannot print money like it is mere paper. We cannot borrow what we cannot repay. We cannot vote individual mandates into law, as we did with the Healthcare Reform Act, penalizing people for inactivity, which is unconstitutional. We cannot be ruled by fear and propaganda, such as the misinformation regarding the uninsured population statistics - which did not take into account illegal aliens and other non-citizens nor those who choose to live without insurance due to youthful ignorance, stupidity, or lifestyle - used to push the Healthcare Reform Act through the House and Congress in 2012.

We have been, historically, a creative breed. We've worn our "melting pot" brand proudly. We've been known to work together enormously successfully on occasion - think World Wars and the Great Depression. We've survived horrible rifts such as the Civil War, Prohibition, and the Civil Rights Movement. Great changes have been effected by large groups of people - women and children, minorities, religious groups, and even political organizations. We've transformed our nation over and over again. Today we look nothing like we did in 1776. If we survive another 200+ years, I imagine it will be a totally different patchwork quilt of people and ideas. Will there be more harmony? The pessimist in me doubts it. But I want to believe it is possible. 

I am more than willing to reach a hand across the aisle and grasp yours in brotherhood. I promise not to be a bad sport if my side loses. I won't quit speaking up for what I think is right - because that is what makes our nation great. But I love you just the same. I love atheists, lesbians, Muslims, liberals, humanists, drug addicts, commune-living hippies, researchers who wear hideous business suits. All kinds of people who don't look anything like me.

Democrats & Republicans hug in Hawaii's House after invocation, April 2012 (image credit) 

Whatever your political stripes, I encourage you to remember that the world will not end on November 6, 2012. We must maintain our relationships as we struggle through these great debates that are coming in the next few months. Because when the dust settles, and a new or returning President claims victory late that night, WE will be what's left of this nation. WE will determine which senators and congressmen get elected in the wake of the Presidential election. We will vote our opinions over and over again. We will spend our money on what we value. We will speak freely as long as we are able. We will build the bridges and come up with the solutions and make amazing suggestions that politicians will grab from Twitter and Facebook and your blog and mine and call their own.

Don't stop talking. But for heaven's sake, don't stop loving either! Perhaps our founding fathers said it best, as they concluded the Declaration of Independence: And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Part of the Faith and Politics synchroblog hosted by Andi Cumbo

Freedom songs and answers that don't fit

My son is 4 years old, and he brings me wildflowers every day. He calls them "early Mother's day presents". One day I asked him to bring a vase to put a daisy in. He brought me a canning jar from the porch, which had already been home to several caterpillars and other bugs this summer. Much too large for a single daisy. I put the daisy across the top and set it on my nightstand, a tribute to the stage this sweet boy is in, simple gifts brought to Mama's bed in a chubby fist, a vase much too big for the flower but not too big for the expression of love.

I feel just so about our nation. My vote is a drop in the bucket, an often childlike expression of simple love for the freedoms I'm allowed here. I feel a reverence for the country I've been raised in, freedom running deep as life blood down from generation to generation, something we couldn't earn with our blood, sweat and tears now but was passed on to us from a different time. The problems we face today are many: poverty, social issues such as the definition of marriage, life and death, integrity in politics and business, and immigration. But to think that our forefathers lived in a time without problems would be to romanticize the birth of our nation as a simpler time. Slavery, social hierarchy, widespread poverty, lack of access to the most basic of human needs such as clean water, food supply, health care and housing, women's rights, worker's rights, landowner's rights, and issues surrounding Native people have all been large issues of our nation's past that still bleed into our modern problems. No one had a clear solution for those problems then, just as we lack clarity as we face the issues of today.

What I do see, all around me, are expanding hearts and minds on both the right and left - bloggers, friends, neighbors; Christians and non-Christians - all voicing concerns, empathizing, seeing needs, and trying to address them in whatever way they can. I hope this is a time of revitalization of our country and a turning point in history that we will look back on as a victory in the future. I can feel the shifting sands under my feet and, as I do whenever change is afoot, I feel a little unsettled. I worry about what socialized medical care would mean for my family, because we support our family by working in health care. Yet we pay tens of thousands of dollars every year in medical bills ourselves, so who knows? I watch, and listen, and I hold my canning jar vase in my hands, silently. All I know is the solution I hold in my hands is probably not fitting for the bouquet.

This July 4th, I am just happy to be part of the masses lighting firecrackers, singing anthems, raising flags, smiling wide for freedom and history and shared experience and joy over this great nation. 

I am God, your God. Every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle of a thousand hills. Call upon me in your day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you will honor me. (from Psalm 50)

That magical little word!

I heard the magic words today! I'm in remission! My cancer scan came back completely clean (it always has) but the really awesome news is that my tumor markers have gone from 4.5 in 2010 to 3.5 in 2011 and now 1.1 in 1012!! This is virtually unheard of, as this number is supposed to go up, not down. However, with the advice of my doctor, I started an immune boosting, cancer deadly diet in 2010, and my tumor markers have consistently gone down since then. While I am not "cancer free" because my tumor markers are still positive, I am in remission and have received my green light to start work as a professor and even to adopt (although that is not in our immediate future, as far as we know).

My doctor has never seen someone go all the way back to zero once tumor markers are positive. I will continue to pray and be vigilant about my blood sugar control and healthy food intake, with the hopes that I will be one of the lucky few for whom this miracle occurs.

I will no longer need to take radioactive iodine for the foreseeable future, unless my tumor markers go over 5 at some point. This means no separations from family, none of the nasty side effects, and an end to the rising risk of secondary cancer due to the radiation damage. It means hair on my head, my immune system will be able to finally direct it's healing energy to my other health problems, and an incredible sense of joy as I finally become as SURVIVOR instead of a thriver! I will still have annual cancer check-ups to test my tumor marker level, and will still require the expensive injections to reverse the cancer suppression meds once a year in prep for those labs. Unfortunately, this is the one cloud in the sky: no getting ahead of our health care bills, as we will continue to max out our high deductible insurance every year in January when I get the injections ($25,000 a pop).

Thank you, everyone, for your vigilant prayers and sweet empathy. It has been almost 4 years now...4 years of fighting, feeling miserable, and constantly facing separation from my family. I am out of the woods now, running out into the field of sunshine!

How wonderful, how beautiful, when brothers and sisters get along! It's like costly anointing oil flowing down... It's like the dew on Mount Hermon flowing down the slopes of Zion. Yes, that's where God commands the blessing, ordains eternal life. (Psalm 133: 1-3)

Comfortable in my nakedness

Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. (Revelation 14:12)

We are the tree shaken loose from the snow to feel the warmth with her branches. We meet another, hurting under her burden of the winter of discontent, torn from her moorings and grafted into this field of a loveless church. I see her pain, bathe in it, remember the cold she feels. It is hard work, to enter back through that crooked door, to open eyes to see the crooked roots that can't grow in the rocky soil. I shake her tree with truth, and the snow scatters. The first breath of winter air is painful, burning the lungs. For a moment, we both wish we were still insulated from this brutal air frozen by falsehood and stagnant with intrigue. But then we move those branches, stretch our needles to the heavens, and we feel God's sun warming this quiet field that has grow deafeningly silent from the shunning as we stand naked in the sun. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free (John 8:32). There is no denying it is still winter. But we will never bury our branches again.

The caged bird

When Christ shall come 

With shouts of acclamation 

And lead me home 

What joy shall fill my heart 

Then I shall bow 

With humble adoration 

And then proclaim 

My God how great Thou art

I know why the caged bird sings. Heart free, heart-sick to be barred in by the chains and jails of this world.

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, 

his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, 

When he beats his bars and would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee, 

But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, 

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings – 

I know why the caged bird sings.

~Paul Laurence Dunbar~

I sit in my blue swing, and I watch the birds. They teach me. They play, climbing up, up on a draft of cold air and dancing downward in a spiral of thrill and freedom before leveling out. They are the fighter pilots of the natural world, birds. All birds do this. All birds take time every day, so many times, to sing. They sing to no one, they sing to their lovers, they sing just to sing. They eat, taking the random blessing of seeds and grasses and eating, building nests for their young. They care for their young, but push them out of the nest early, when the wings are just barely ready.

I am a stubborn woman, born of stubborn stock. When I turn my mind to something, I work toward it tenaciously. I watch those birds, and think of my cages, and look for keys..." a plea, that upward to Heaven I fling..." Every week, in my dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) class, they try to hand us keys. "Coping skills". Most seem silly, but finally my mind caught on one about three weeks ago: "Turn your mind". In other words, repent. When you think suicide, think about hurting yourself, turn your mind around, all the way, 180 degrees, to a life thought. I stop when the thought comes like the raven's shadow in my thoughts, and I picture myself turning around and looking at something beautiful: my child's smile, my husband's back slumbering beside me, a flower just picked for me, the words of a friend.

And so I beat my wings against my cage, looking for the door. God is leading me, slowly, gently, out of this depression and anguish. His truth is soaking deeper into my soul than ever before.

I find myself sometimes rushing to the feeder, a desperate race of survival, expecting anxiety to meet me there and haul me back into my cage. I need to learn to still my soul and to live in this moment, not the next or the last.

Help me, Lord, to soar high, so close to the Son that I am drenched in light. Darkness, flee from this mind. Sadness, soothe thyself. Fear, calm. Reach for the Son and bask in the warmth, please, please, this fall, warmth.

Lord, help me soar so close to the Son that I disappear into His light. I feel the warmth on my wings, this cold autumn day. He is there. Help me fly closer. Help me escape the bondage of this world.

Never again do I want to be a bird of stone. I want to be the moving, breathing, loving, believing, smiling, daughter of the King I've felt myself stretching into these past few days.

I've been practicing this "turn your mind" for about 3 weeks now, and the thoughts are starting to subside. I guess my foe knows that once I've made up my mind, there's no way to get me back to the twisted, rationalized, fear-gripped place he had me in before. His cage can't hold me.

Among my people are the wicked who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch people. Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful  and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not seek justice. They do not promote the case of the fatherless; they do not defend the just cause of the poor. Should I not punish them for this?” declares the LORD. “Should I not avenge myself on such a nation as this?" Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable? Therefore this is what the LORD says: “If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me; if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my spokesman. I will make you a wall to this people, a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue and save you,” declares the LORD. “I will save you from the hands of the wicked and deliver you from the grasp of the cruel." Jeremiah 5 & 15

In His grip, yet free

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:27-28)

10 years ago, I met this amazing woman who was descended from missionaries and had been one herself. It was kind of an "Amy Carmichael" moment for me as a floundering but desperately seeking young Christian. Her son was in the hospital for a bone marrow transplant that would either cure him and give him extra years of life, or kill him slowly and painfully. Her father had just been released from captivity in Eastern Europe, minus a few fingers. As she readied herself for the long season to come, the marrow transplant process that is at least 100 days and often spans years, God gave her a song and words. Be still and know that I am God. And she was - one of the stillest, ever-praising women I'd ever met. Her faith was inspiring and I felt like when I worked with her son, there was a giant electrical cord connecting our two souls and her love and beauty and identity in Christ flowed my way like an electrified burst of power, consuming my soul and even threatening to surge and cut the power cord.

Amy blogged before there were blogs. She maintained a website chronicling her son's progress. And she signed every single letter to her friends, "In His grip". I asked her about it, and she quoted John 10:28 (my favorite eternal security verse). No one can pluck us from His hand. That's quite a grip. Jesus isn't even going to allow me to break that grip when I beg Him go test someone else, put your heavy hand on someone else. I can't learn anymore, and I am grief-stricken and wrung out.

In His grip, yet free. An eternal conundrum. A concept that has God following me around, gripping me despite my foray into sin, when my depression peaks and I just want to bleed dry, when I am weeping into my pillow and feel all alone. He is gripping me. Yet He moves those hands under me, too, when I am on the path He has appointed for me. Lets me walk, always in the palm of His hand, watches with joy and fulfillment as I satisfy His will.

I am "In His grip". You'll see that in my e-mails, letters. I am also free, like Maya Angelou's bird: A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips her wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.

I have unanswered prayers

I have trouble I wish wasn't there

And I have asked a thousand ways

That you would take my pain away

You would take my pain away

I am trying to understand

How to walk this weary land

Make straight the paths that crooked lie

Oh Lord, before these feet of mine

Oh Lord, before these feet of mine

When my world is shaking, heaven stands

When my heart is breaking

I never leave your hands

When you walked upon the earth

You healed the broken, lost and hurt

I know you hate to see me cry

One day you will set all things right

Yeah, one day you will set all things right

When my world is shaking, heaven stands

When my heart is breaking

I never leave your hands

Your hands that shaped the world

Are holding me

They hold me still

Your hands that shaped the world

Are holding me

They hold me still

When my world is shaking, heaven stands

When my heart is breaking

I never leave you

When my world is shaking, heaven stands

When my heart is breaking

I never leave

I never leave your hands

Wind on skin

Easter is just one of those days of traditional finery I cannot seem 

to squelch with my most tom-boy mom style. 

Shirt and tie, toe the line, proud of our judgement.

As the sun warms the earth now, 

I am like new skin,

 in new wind,

 in new life

Fade, fade each earthly joy; Jesus is mine.

Break every tender tie: Jesus is mine.

Dark is the wilderness,

Earth has no resting place,

Jesus alone can bless;

Jesus is mine.

Tempt not my soul away; Jesus is mine.

Here would I ever stay; Jesus is mine.

Perishing, things of clay,

Born but for one brief day;

Pass from my heart away;

Jesus is mine.

Farewell, ye dreams of night; Jesus is mine.

Lost in this dawning bright; Jesus is mine.

All that my soul has tried

Left but a dismal void: Jesus has satisfied

Jesus is mine.

Farewell, mortality; Jesus is mine.

Welcome, eternity, Jesus is mine.

Welcome, O loved and blest,

Welcome, sweet scenes of rest,

Welcome, my Savior's breast; 

Jesus is mine.

~Jesus is Mine or "Fade, fade, each earthly joy"

disputed authorship

Slaying dragons

Sun don't go down

purple and scarlet and blue

let me pause here

these precious moments are few

When the moon has taken the sky's throne

and turned all the land to shadow

that's when I dream of the little girl

who once was me.

Twirl me around,

and hold me tight,

tell bedtime stories

and kiss me goodnight

then I'd return to the child I've been

The princess who once was me.

High heels, lace veils,

dresses too long and too loose.

In games I was grown up,

a little bit taller than you.

Now that I'm taller, I long to be smaller,

like the gangly, brown-eyed girl

who once was me.

A tattered shoebox

houses my little girl things

Bits of writing,

pearls, fake diamonds, and rings.

A rose that my Mama once gave to me

A picture of Papa by the sea - 

I open it sometimes to have a peak

at the girl that once was me.

Sometimes I go back to simpler days

before the innocence faded away...

how did she escape me, the child I was?

The princess who once was me.

I've asked forgiveness a thousand times if I've asked it once. Still it is on my lips...death dripping, dead deeds rising like bile up from a throat that has long sung the lament and cannot find notes for the joyful song.

How like a widow is she, She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave. Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies...she finds no resting place. All who pursue her have overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gateways are desolate, her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she is in bitter anguish. Joy is gone from our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning. The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned! Because of this our hearts are faint, because of these things our eyes grow dim for Mount Zion, which lies desolate, with jackals prowling over it. You, O LORD, reign forever; your throne endures from generation to generation. Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us so long? Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may return; renew our days as of old unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure. (Lamentations 1 and 5)

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 into piles that would have been hurled my way (John 8). Restoring crowns, and redeeming all of us, sinners, scandalous, scorched and scourged.

Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy. Daughters of kings are among your honored women; at your right hand is the royal bride in gold of Ophir. Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear: Forget your people and your house of old. The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord. All glorious is the princess within [her chamber]; her gown is interwoven with gold. In embroidered garments she is led to the king; led in with joy and gladness to enter the palace of the king. (from Psalm 45)

Fly away

Love can be defined as the free gift that voluntarily cancels the debt in order to free the debtor to become what he might be if he experiences the joy of restoration. ~Dan Allender

I am the harvest frozen under winter's white blanket.

He is the bright speck in the darkness.

I am the girl with her hobo stick swinging, ready for a new adventure.

He is the silent companion in the twilight of this season,
waiting to shine light when the darkness grows impenetrable.

Together we're driving back into town from the windblown prairie.

Armed with new dreams.
Uncovering fresh hope carved with ancient letters.
Lifted by the updraft of healing
Winged with prayer

Heavenward.





Oh I swear this town gets smaller everyday,

and I'm waitin for my chance.

I'm gonna break away.

I'm so sick and tired of being told what's good for me.

People got lots of ideas, of who I'm supposed to be.

Angel carry me, oh so far away.

May my body never touch the ground.

And if I promise you that I'll be back someday,

will you set me free so I can fly away?

Most folks here, they don't dig too deep.

They can't dream too big

cause they've got fields to keep

I could walk away and leave behind my family.

Or get buried alive in this legacy.

I wanna sleep under a different piece of sky

I wanna live a little bit before I die

I wanna be so close to heaven I see angels...

~Sugarland, Fly Away~

Another thought on storms

Seen in the hospital gift shop today:

"Life is not waiting until the storm passes,

but learning to dance in the rain."

That, in a nutshell, is what God has taught my husband, my children and I through this season of our lives. I have a hilarious memory of being allowed - at some ridiculous age like 10 or so - to run in the rain in our wooded backyard in the country, clothed only in my underwear. I will never forget the freedom of that sensation, skipping through the yard, naked, the icy chill of the raindrops and heat of the humidity rising from the grass. My brothers were in the basement, and I'm sure my mother watched me dance from the kitchen window. Now I must dance again, in a new way. He has stripped me of my "clothes" now in a spiritual sense. Instead of feeling fear in my nakedness, I need to relearn the happy dance I did in the rain as a child. Freedom? Is that what it is?  Or trust maybe?  Something you lose when you grow up, when you learn that you have to consider the future and not just the moment.

Oh, say can you see?

I will walk about in freedom,
for I have sought out your precepts.
I will speak of your statutes before kings
and will not be put to shame...
Psalm 119:45-46

I really considered posting something political. It's not that I lack the guts - although there is a time and place for political rants, and that's outside the purpose of my writing here - it's that I don't really know how to frame my thoughts in coherent, readable words. I have a rather amorphous desire to pass on a fierce patriotism, an elemental belief in certain inalienable rights, the drive to pursue a culture and a government that embraces independence, personal fortitude and excellence, and joy in living...the hallmarks of this nation from it's inception in a time when nations were looking for something to hope in. Being nannied by my government does not fit well with those ideologies.

Instead of a laundry list of my concerns for my nation, I am compelled to think about the substance of the legacy I want to leave for my children in this area, as in others. Love. Yes, love. I think that encapsulates my current cognitive meanderings on the state of affairs we find ourselves in today. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you: say, for instance, it was your team that won the election - would you want to hear a bunch of sour grapes from the other side? Love one another: in hard times especially, it is our love for others, our service of others, that will show our true inner colors. In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God: when the political climate favors Christians, and when it persecutes them, give thanks. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God: freedom is relatively illusory here on earth. While we pray for our leaders and pray for the situations that concern our daily lives, we must remember always that worry accomplishes nothing. It won't change the eventual outcome, nor will the outcome change eternity. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself: political pundits decrying incrementalism and relativism would do well to heed this basic truth. For, as Christ said, who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

I pray for this country every day, my children with me. I wonder where the next fifty years will find us. I still think it's incredible that we've come this far past the 200 year mark that has heralded the downfall of many great civilizations of history. Most of all, I believe that the truth this nation was founded upon is never changing. And that is what has me looking up and singing while so many others hang their heads and cry.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
~ 4th stanza, our national anthem, penned hopefully by Francis Scott Key in 1814

Raising insiders or outsiders?

"...those who hide in a separate Christian subculture lose the ability to communicate effectively with those who are outside. We grow more and more fearful and suspicious of those outside the camp, until we slowly begin to think of them as a hostile 'other' whom we must destroy, rather than broken and exiled parts of our own selves, whom we are commanded by God to heal and restore." ~ Eric Metaxas, quoted in Mission to Metropolis

I would argue that the message of Christ is summarily lost if we abandon the culture in which we are planted. Ahh, the familiar tightrope: how to be sufficiently different as to pique interest and stand out from a crowd, yet sufficiently conformist to understand the rules and customs of the crowd and relate effectively within it? What amazes me is that the grace of God, as in all else, blurs the borders of acceptable human choice in this matter.

Case in point: I was raised without a TV or popular music exposure, reading the King James Bible, singing hymns centuries old, in a house devoid of immodest clothing, contemporary gender roles, tattoos, or alcohol. Yet the joy of the Spirit shone through brilliantly: my mother's impromptu operettas while housecleaning, head banging without music in the woods with my brothers as we celebrated the wind through the trees, my father's jazz instrumentals floating on the summer wind as he typed a paper, or the crack and fizz of a ball game on the radio to the rhythm of his maul while he chopped wood. I was on the edge of that fine line, the different edge. Homeschooled, long haired, meek and mild, shy, passionately opinionated, aggressively evangelical. Somehow that upbringing translated easily and seamlessly to who I am today: blues-loving, beer-tasting, pants-wearing, dancing at weddings and blaring French hip hop for our morning dance-off in the living room - and loving Christ, passionately, wholly, through all those joys and pleasures.

Indeed, His grace is sufficient (II Corin. 12:9). Although I don't think we should isolate ourselves in the hallowed enclaves of our temples (or our homes or communities of faith), we must remember that we serve a great, tenaciously soul-seeking God who will not let us stand in the way of His glory. He will use the loose-living Christian and the strict fundamentalist to reach totally different groups of people, most likely. Mark Driscoll, the "cussing preacher", boasts a following of tattooed machismo that would never be caught dead in the quiet halls of the Lutheran church down my country road. Yet the seventy year old farmer's wife who attends there would never sit quiety by while her pastor swore from the pulpit. I am reminded, as I contemplate how to raise my children, that Christ has a purpose and plan already laid out for these young ones I tend. He knows whether their mission field is blues festivals or the Navigators, family members or the far-flung poor in some distant nation. As I live out my faith in the confines of these four walls, illuminate an example of grace for their innocent eyes, I hope that they learn both the power of Christ in my weakness as well as the freedom of Christ that redeems us from silly human ideals.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1

Thorny blessings

Back from the sea. We hauled a few pounds of white beach sand back with us in the bombed out mini-van. Along with about a pound of sugar of various colors strewn about from discarded Pixie Stix and Fun Dips. A brief 24 hour drive brought us all the way home from the ocean to the cool July in the Midwest.

On the very last day before we left for vacation, I sewed three travel pillows, one for each girl. I had seen them on display at a ritzy shop for $30 apiece - fleece, filled with buckwheat..."naturally cool". I made a few alterations in design, most notably doing away with the fleece (too hot!) and replacing it with quilter's cotton. That first day in the car, the girls were so excited to use them: Katy's yellow with dachshunds, Rosy's a heathered pink, Amy's covered in strawberries. A few minutes into the nap attempt, they started to complain that the pillows were uncomfortable. In true traveling mother form, I insisted they quit complaining and go to sleep. Not another peep issued forth from the back end, although there were about twenty more minutes of discontented rustling.

Next day, I decided to use one of the discarded pillows. So comfortable and cool when I draped it around my neck! Then I leaned back against the seat back. And was rewarded with a circlet of intense, sharp pain - were there burrs in this pillow? I threw it off my neck to inspect it. My design improvements were to blame: the thin quilters cotton didn't cushion the sharp points of the buckwheat barbs! Those kids weren't kidding...these pillows were like a pillow of thorns! I laughed quietly to myself, after apologizing profusely for forcing them to use the pillows the day before. "You think life is bad now? Here, I'll give you something to complain about - have a travel pillow!"
How often that happens, in both a literal and proverbial sense: something meant to bless us becomes a thorn in our side. Vacation/residency week was sort of like that, for me, at least. Work hard so I could play hard. Hit the pillow incrementally more exhausted each day. The power of the sun, the sand whipping in the wind, the salt stinging, the tug and crash of the waves against legs unused to that force...all added up to an inexaustible storehouse of memories deep within, and fatigue of body, mind and soul as well. I feel a surge forward in my school work, a renewed sense of focus. I enjoyed the freedom I've gained through this whole cancer journey, this truer and deeper sense of the value of the small moments of joy: running headlong through waves with my girls, doing jumping jacks in the grass at various restaurants and gas stations across the country, catching fire flies in a Coke bottle for the ride home. Unaware of uncomfortable stares from other, more grounded and sedate adults. Cancer has freed me from that sedate way of adult living, and from the ungainly adolescence of my longing to be free of cultural and peer restraints.

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. (Galatians 4:1-7)