Walking in fog with both eyes open: Facing temptation armed and dangerous

“We were never meant to be completely fulfilled; We were meant to taste it, to long for it, and to grow toward it... The secret to living life as it was meant to be is... to befriend our yearning instead of avoiding it, to live into our longing rather than trying to resolve it, to enter the spaciousness of our emptiness instead of trying to fill it up.” (Gerald May, The Awakened Heart)

It was just last week that I sat on the porch with my mom in the pre-dawn and watched the fog rolling into our valley. Fog is a lonely weather, slowly, stealthily surrounding us with the mystery of mist instead of the flesh and blood, solidness of our real surroundings. It feels almost like a pillow you could fall into. But if you try, try to have it swallow you completely, you will find it a fickle friend. It will soon leave you to stumble through the harsh sunlight of a real world you no longer recognize.

We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! (I Corinthians 13:12 MSG)

About 9 months ago, just before I walked back into the fog of depression, something began to sneak up on me just like the fog. It was an old and familiar temptation, but I hadn't faced it in over a decade. As the vines grew in and began to entangle, I frantically hacked at the stems wrapping themselves around my feet, my hands, my eyes, my mind. At the same time, I told no one. I was embarrassed. The shame kept me walking in the dark.

Quietly this temptation came to the breaking point. A friend asked me a question deep in the two worst weeks, quietly - as if she were almost scared to ask: "Do you want to walk away from God?" It was almost a whisper through the miles of phone line. My answer, from the deepest places of my soul, buried under all the confusion, was No. And so, with one confession of His name, the Living Water trickled back in, drops at first, and soon a torrent. It washed the twisted weeds from around my limp and lonely form. I was able to move, to speak. To bring those I loved back in. To let the light in.

My mother's voice read with conviction, punctuated by my father's interruptions with another version of the Word, a word that made a difference.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man... (Romans 1:18-22 KJV)

The whole chapter read like a script of what I would be choosing if I chose to revel in temptation, engage it. Almost as powerful as a bolt of lightening came the realization that my choise was really very, very simple. The choice was between darkness and loneliness or light, joy, and my silence peopled by the children, husband, family I've been blessed with.

In that moment, I knew it to the core of my being: there is no one I love more than my husband and children. There is no thing I love more than them. To ever leave them behind to search for happiness in this vast and lonely world is foolishness. I am not alone. I am gloriously surrounded by the ones I love best. Would that I could give that gift to others trapped in the in-between.

And so, easily, the decision was made. The temptation was emptied of all temptation. I was turning around - that sacred act of repentance - from the wrong and toward the right. For me, at least, the path is sure and the choice simple.

Are you dangerously close to walking away from your life or your beliefs in some way? Do you know someone who is? Perhaps you can glean some helpful Truth from things realized through my walk through the valley. Can you ask yourself (or your friend) the following questions?

• Is the temptation threatening the very foundations of your life and routine?
• Why would you want to give up your life as it is now? Do you even want to?
• Do you think you might be able to "have it all", and that's why you keep pondering the temptation? Do you know anyone who has successfully balanced the two things you're deciding between and managed to keep both?
• Are you acting in a way that's congruent with your normal personality or are you acting like someone you can't even recognize (or even someone much younger than yourself)?
• Can you look backward to those "monument" moments of faith in your own life? Is this dilemma congruent to how you've acted in the past or is it contradictory to other seasons of your life?
• When you really get down to the core of yourself, do you think God is in this with you, or do you have that sinking, sick feeling that He will withdraw if you choose the temptation?
• Who will support you in the new life if you choose to change it? Can you manage to lose the people who would leave your life? Would there be anyone left? Would your choice change even those relationships that remain?
• Can you walk away from God? Do you want to? If so, why now when you haven't before?

I feel this will be on my mind for a very long time. That this choice was pivotal to the rest of my life. It will bear fruit. It has changed me to walk through this process. And I am not in the fog any longer but in the bright, warm sun!

"Lonely"

Please treat me like a real taxpayer: Shunning Part 2

I've loved and left two churches in my life. The first, the church I was raised in. The second, a home for 10 years, all of my adult life after coming back to the church after fleeing during high school and not returning until I felt obligated after having children of my own. Both churches practice "shunning", which Webster's defines as "to avoid deliberately, especially habitually", or "avoid", "dodge", "eschew" or "weasel out of". Societal shunning is the type practiced by churches: members who have supposedly stepped out of line are confronted, first by the person offended, then by a group, finally by the church, then barred from attendance, and eventually cut off from all association or friendships within the church membership (per Matthew 18: read interesting commentary on this passage here and here). The culmination of this passage on "church discipline" instructs churches to treat those excommunicated as "infidels and taxpayers" (i.e. Gentiles). In it's purest form, it forever damages the very relationships Christ instructed us to hold dear; in it's worst form, it allows pastors to discredit anyone who dare privately or publicly critique them.

istockphoto.com

Shunning rocketed me into a downward spiral that ended in the deepest depression I've ever experienced. The accusations made drowned out even the voice of the Word as I struggled to believe what God says about me, not men. I Corinthians 2:5 was deeply comforting: "That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." The refrain of Jason Gray's I Am New helped me block out the voices of the most ruthless accusers:

Now I won't deny

The worst you could say about me

But I'm not defined by mistakes that I've made

Because God says of me

I am not who I was

I'm being remade

I am new

I am chosen and holy and I'm dearly loved

Too long have I lived in the shadow of shame

Believing that there was no way I could change

But the one who is making everything new

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 who we are now... 

So why am I sharing this story today? When you first find yourself being shunned, it's a wound so deep and so layered, it's almost impossible to talk about. Then too, you don't want to bring it up for fear of damaging any lingering friendships you still have hope for. When you're accused of gossip, the last thing you want to do is talk about anything. You install a triple filter system on your tongue, scrutinizing everything you say, pray, type. Because it is hard not to believe what is being said about you. You second guess everything you thought was true. It's been almost two years now, and I've felt the growing weight of this story God allowed me to experience and, I believe, wants me to share. I know there are others who've walked the same painful road, some who've hidden their wounds and their shame for decades. I want you - yes, you, hurting and discouraged redeemed sinner - to know you are not alone.

When I left my childhood church, I lost every friendship I'd made in the 15 years I'd attended. Every. one. The same thing happened, although more slowly and painfully, when we left our church of 10 years in 2010. Ironically, while my husband and I were accused of gossip and slander, the pastors who orchestrated the shunning process used not only the recent accusations, but also sought out information about a sin committed when I was a teenager to discredit us, as if God had done nothing to change me between age 14 and age 32.  Wrapped up in that story was the story of my abuse as a child. It felt like that abuse dagger was stuck in my side still, and maybe this time it would be there forever. It felt like the sins God had wiped from His memory were forever emblazoned on my forehead for all the world to see. How my sin of "gossip" - seeking counsel about a reference letter that made accusations about the causality of my choices and our health situations - counted, and their choice to spread stories of my life without me present did not, I will never understand.


Every morning, I got on Facebook to find a few more people had "unfriended" me (oh, for the pre-Facebook days when "unfriend" wasn't even a word!). After an initial onslaught of letters, messages, phone calls, and pleas for our repentance and return, some loving and some nasty, church members were eventually instructed not to interact with us at all, not even online - to unfriend us on Facebook, block phone calls, avoid us in public, and quit reading my blog and other online interactions. When I ran into former friends in the grocery store, some turned on their heal and walked in the other direction. It felt like a slow, 6 month long surgery done without anesthesia. At the end of it, I was paralyzed by the fact that a large number of people in our small city now knew details of my personal life that I had struggled to share within the intimacy of my own marriage.

Clearly, the Bible makes room for discipline of a willfully sinning member. Yet, in the harshest texts (primarily Matthew 18), the instructions are to treat that sinner as a "pagan or tax collector"; apologists point out that Jesus ate and conversed with and accepted hospitality from both (think Zaccheus). Pagans and tax collectors were only disbarred from the most intimate form of house church. Thus, a normal, although less intimate, amount of interaction is surely allowed within the scope of Scripture.

I found it easier to forgive what was done to us than what was done to our children. One by one, they lost every little friend they had, until it was just us - just them, their siblings and cousins. Never before have I been so thankful for the closer, unalienable ties of our close-knit extended families, who were as horrified by the treatment we received as we were. 

One of the few things that brought me comfort through this darkest and most difficult period of my life was reading the stories of others who had gone through the same thing. It made the attack feel less personal, and I was able to see things from my former friends perspective - they were just trying to obey their leaders. I think some of them grieved the process almost as much as we did. We weren't the only victims in the shunning process. The whole body of Christ suffered.

I opened God's Word to the story of David and Jonathan, and oh, how I hungered for a friendship like that! Jonathan, forced by his own father to expel his best friend David from not only the temple but the kingdom, fasts for days, escapes the castle to bring food and weapons to his friends, and weeps endless hours over the fracture in their relationship. Eventually, Jonathan dies in battle alongside his father, and David's grief is boundless. Here indeed, is a friend who loves at all times (Proverbs 17:17). Why was there not even one good friend in the church we left who came after me to bring me food and weep with me?

I read several books that helped me through this time - most notably David Johnson and Jeff vanVonderen's The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority in the Church (available for preview here). A growing forum of excommunicants from the same small denomination we'd been catapulted out of was also a comfort. It also helped to understand the grand scope of the practice of shunning: we are not alone! Even the particular sin we were accused of - gossip/slander - is a very common rationale behind shunning: in a 2008 article on the increase in excommunications trending nationwide, The Wall Street Journal states there is...

...a growing movement among some conservative Protestant pastors to bring back church discipline, an ancient practice in which suspected sinners are privately confronted and then publicly castigated and excommunicated if they refuse to repent. While many Christians find such practices outdated, pastors in large and small churches across the country are expelling members for offenses ranging from adultery and theft to gossiping, skipping service and criticizing church leaders. The revival is part of a broader movement to restore churches to their traditional role as moral enforcers, Christian leaders say. Some say that contemporary churches have grown soft on sinners, citing the rise of suburban megachurches where pastors preach self-affirming messages rather than focusing on sin and redemption. Others point to a passage in the gospel of Matthew that says unrepentant sinners must be shunned.

To the shock of the secular community as well as many within the Christian church, 10-15% of Protestant evangelical churches practice shunning, which translates to an overwhelming 14,000 to 21,000 U.S. congregations. While excommunication is something we often associate with Amish, Mennonite or Catholic faith traditions, this practice is alive and (un)well in a variety of church movements. The Wall Street Journal report also notes the two dozen lawsuits in the last decade through which shunned ex-church members have attempted to recover damages for defamation, negligent counseling and emotional injury. In 2003, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a pastor for ousting a family in which the woman was charged with gossip, setting the stage for a national tidal wave of such lawsuits attempting to shed light on a painful and often very private episode in the lives of those shunned.

When you're shunned, you often lose everything except for the clothes on your back - friendships, spiritual support, community, and sometimes even jobs and family relationships can be impacted by the very group of people called to love and support you. Singles who are excommunicated may even find themselves unwelcome in their own home, if that home is shared (as it often is) by other church members. For our family, it was a barbaric experience that cut our children off from every one of their friends and their home-school group, as well as exposing my husband and I to torturous accusations that ate away at our spiritual well-being and mental health.

Yet there is such hope as you emerge from shunning! Deeper relationships, richer love for family, a deeper understanding of the personal nature of your relationship with God, strengthened ability to rely on Him alone for your needs, and perhaps even a stronger and healthier church family await you! A year and a half later, we are part of a new church where our children are thriving and we are relearning trust in our fellow members. God has prospered us financially, physically, and emotionally as we've walked as a family into recovery from this ordeal. As hard as it is now to run into former friends, these encounters have a simpler, bittersweet edge to them. Once you've made peace with the fact that these friendships are over, you can begin to look back with fonder memories and more grace for those who hurt you. If we are to be Christ-like in all we do, then we must look on our accusers and abusers with love, as Christ did the tens of thousands who shouted for His condemnation. If the Perfect One quietly and gracefully endured the ultimate penalty for moral crimes He did not commit, we must be quick to forgive and to reach out with the olive branch of peace.

Part of reconciliation is acceptance of wrongs done and the conscious act of moving forward into your emotional and spiritual recovery. Christ does not wish us to be spiritually stunted by the actions and words of others. He desires us to be full, unabashed servants living out the lessons of the Cross in our daily lives, even in our interactions with those who wounded us. And while it is important to recognize that wrong has indeed been done, it is also important to forgive. When you can name something, you can put a label on your forgiveness. Yes, you've been hurt - worse than you ever imagined possible. But you CAN be made new, even after this onslaught. It is the beauty and awesomeness of all-surpassing grace. It is the hope at the heart of Christianity - that we can be transformed by both bad experiences and good. It is how we make sense of all pain in this world: it draws us ever closer to the One who will one day rescue us from this fallen and painful world.

you didn't have to cut me off -

Make it like it never happened and that we were nothing -

Now you're just somebody that I used to know.

Somebody That I Used to Know, Gotye

For further reading, consider 

• this excellent article on why total shunning is unBiblical (keep reading as the author takes you step by step through Matthew 18);
• news of the Mars Hill shunning scandal as well as a personal blog from an excommunicant

This post is Part 2 of a series on Shunning that will include several guest posts from others who've undergone this painful process. Feel free to link up to your own posts, old or new, if you've written about being shunned. You are no longer an outsider - there is a group here waiting to call you "family" and welcome you in Jesus name!

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The joy-seeker and the griever

I have always been the joy-seeker in every flower, every butterfly, every fleeting moment of joy between people, every laugh, every warm bath, every cool of night. This is something that was in me as a small child and has never left me since. No matter how dark my mood, I am still on the joy hunt, the hunt for the ecstasy of discovery, beauty, or love. This habit has not been drowned even in a sea of depression and anxiety.

I have also always been a griever. The dead, the dying, the death of things beautiful. I look forward to grief and back on it, and that is part of how I was made. Perhaps it would be better to say I am a rememberer. I catch all the joys in my net, and mourn their passing. All the joy of a grandpa, for instance, still caught fluttering my net, but now remembered joy with no chance for more until I get to heaven with him. I grieve the little joys I miss because certain people are no longer in my life.

And so, you will find me crouched often in fields and forests, camera clicking, catching memories. The yellow butterflies drifting around on the orange cone of the purple echinacea thrill me even when my mood is grey.

I focus, for a moment, quite literally on these butterfly wings flitting, and click, click, click, my camera is capturing beauty. I leave the field with part of grief shaved off. Yet to have summer flying by so fast this year, me inside more than usual, losing out on the fun trips to town because I can't stand to be around that many people, missing out on pools splashing and kids hooting and hay being cut...I grieve summer's passing as I sit in my swing after dusk, admiring the sky.

She is "brown as a berry from riding the prairie", my brownest, Rosalie. I sit with her in the sun, I with a book, and her with her contemplation. We mourn the summer's passing together, she focusing on the pool now a light green from algae, I as I listen to the faint rustle through grass turning stiff in preparation for it's death in autumn.

In my chair last night, I watch headlights weave through the ground fog, autumn's chill squeezing down on hot summer fields full of hay bales. The early summer song of the frogs in the pond has given way to the the maestros of late summer crickets in their deafening symphony. I wrap a prayer shawl around my shoulders and try not to count the losses of the summer, only the gains. God grins at me through the Big Dipper, which has floated down from it's high summer position down low over the shadowy line of black hills demarcating the edge of our little valley. Soon the constellation will flip on it's back and look like a dipper again, all through the winter. The kids and I will again talk about the time Laura Ingall's family had cholera and how they got it from the contaminated dipper.

I tuck myself into my blankets at night, like a chrysalis, praying to emerge the butterfly I once was when I unroll into the cold morning. I grieve the person I once was, but also mine for joy as that person re-emerges. My therapist laughs a belly laugh and I know something is changing.

So I hang on a thread between joy and grief, a thread made of prayers and God's Word, the only strength holding me up now. I read Psalm 19, and the joy-seeker with the gathered memories remembers: Uncle Jim (no longer my uncle) and his raspy tenor waltzing through his yellow mustache as he and my dad sang a song from Psalm 19 late into the night in a narrow trailer where we packed seven children and four adults, all floors covered with slumber:

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. ~Psalm 19:7-11 KJV

Grey gold

The sliver of yellow breaks through on a difficult day of research last week. He gives me glimmers - my seashell dull grey and unremarkable on the beach, like an iceberg with it's beauty hidden beneath the sea. He catches my eye, and I lean down, and dig up gold. I open His book and I am surrounded by His promises and beauty. A fairyland with giants and armies, glitter, pomp and circumstance, romance, history, beauty for ashes. Go digging today, my friend, even if you think you've exhausted the Good News and live in the bad. You will be rewarded.

Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. Give me not up to the will of my adversaries; for false witnesses have risen against me, and they breathe out violence. I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27:11-14)

Forced bulbs

We settle into a rhythm at the church of our dear friends, and Katy asks me every week if we are staying. So she can make friends there. With each question, my heart splits afresh for the wounds in the souls of my children. The friends gone, the parents stressed beyond stress, the whole family brought to the brink of breaking, the only saving grace the daily rhythm of home, the safety here.

Wounds not inflicted by those we would call evil, but those we call good. Good people. Faithful people. People reading their Bibles and praying and seeking relationship with God. People building a church. 

Oh, so carefully, I speak of these wounds. But my daughter, my eldest, serious, sweet, caring, compassionate, patient daughter. She like the crocuses who poked their leaves through the melting snow and were covered again by the paralyzing cold of a March snowstorm. To have your heart dashed twice in a season at seven is life-changing.

How I wish it were easy to decide. Easy to find a church "home". Settle into a new routine. But you protect the wounded places. You don't offer the bruised arm to shake the pastor's hand until you're sure he's not holding a bat behind his back. You don't let someone hug that pierced soul until you're sure it's just a hug. Just love. The children's lullaby tape plays during their nap, and I bow head to lament at these simple lyrics, "Love will make my spirit grow. Grow in peace, grow in light. Love will do the thing that's right."

We bring crocuses inside. Protected and warm, they bloom like mad, and we celebrate a glimpse of spring. Purple and gold, and the grape hyacinths little green ellipses ready to pop into bloom tomorrow. And so we feel - like forced bulbs in the greenhouse, being asked to bloom again before our time. Every time Katy asks that question - Is this our home, Mama? - I can't answer, despite the shards of heart shattering for this little child who has lost so much and cannot comprehend why.

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. ~Jesus, Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message)

Taped to my computer monitor is Matthew 18:21-22. Ironically, the verses directly following those on church discipline that have closed off a whole community to us. 

Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Jesus said unto him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven."

I wonder if I have this in me, in this wounded heart, in this battered home, in this shipwreck of friendships with the shrapnel of trust floating on the angry waves. Forgive four hundred and ninety times? Only possible when leaning on the Everlasting Arms that offer grace to all, even I, worst among sinners (I Timothy 1:15).

So we go, Sundays. And hold our hearts hostage for a time, hostage to the peace and grace of a Savior who knows all and loves all and in whom we so fiercely believe. We pray for the melting of snow, and the new running of sap through the trees standing silent and cold in the stand of maples, we pray for hearts melting and closing up wounds. We pray for peace that passes understanding and emergence from this dark winter. We pray hardest for these four little souls shipwrecked with us. Call friends and ask for playdates. Draw close as a family, speaking healing into those wounds from the awesome Living Word.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerers through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 8:35-39 (KJV)

As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God! ~Psalm 40:17 (ESV)

A word for 2011

ὑπομονή
Hupomoné
Strong's 5278

1. remaining under, endurance; steadfastness, especially as God enables the believer to "remain (endure) under" the challenges He allots in life.
2. to preserve: under misfortunes and trials to hold fast to one's faith in Christ
3. to endure, bear ill treatments bravely and calmly

That He may say of me, "and you have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake, and have not grown weary." (Revelation 2:3)

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us..." (Hebrews 12:1)

Not too different from 2010's word, is it?

Living water

I wasn't born with a demonstrative bone in my body. From Scandinavian and Native American heritage, I come from people who are generally quiet...until you get to know them a bit. But you might not know that if you just met me now. I played softball with some outspoken girls in high school and hockey with a bunch of wild women in college and learned to shout, and hug people I didn't know that well, and give high fives and slap the ice when something really cool happened. Started attending a more flamboyant, rock-band type of church in 2000 and learned there to lift hands in prayer (Psalm 134:2 and I Timothy 2:8). Cancer has been refining me since 2008 and teaching me what is important and whats not...and often social mores mean less to me than showing someone I love them or telling them when, why and how they impacted my life today.

I thought about all this in the shower, of all places. I hop in as quickly as possible when I wake up. By the afternoon, my hands are clamped in claws that won't bend and I hop back in the hottest shower I can stand to thaw them out again from the crippling arthritis that comes part and parcel with severe hypothyroidism. So there I am every morning, and again every afternoon, worshiping in the shower. My hands feel better elevated...so over my head they go. Right up into the hot water stream. And the praise literally is wrung from trembling lips as the pain dissipates in that wonderful, warm liquid plumbed up from 100 feet under the frozen ground and heated in my basement. God is good!! (can I get an amen?) 

Yep. I took a picture of it. That's how much I love my shower right now!

I hop out of the shower and dress as quickly as I can to go cuddle my almost-3-year-old baby son who's waiting patiently for his daily naptime cuddle. And he smells so sweet. You know why? Water. Hot, fresh clear water. Those 12 hours after his bath, it's almost like I have a baby to sniff again (until he gets into all the things that boys inevitably do). I bury my nose in his neck while he strokes my hair, and it's a quiet praise in my heart that brings tears springing to my lashes. Caleb looks up and says, "You dripping on me, Mama." Then we do our little routine: I say, "You're my favorite little boy in the whole wide world." And he replies, sweet and sleepy and heavy-lidded, "And you're my favorite Mama in the whole wide world." And we melt into sleep in mama-baby bliss.

Lovin' the waves in South Carolina just after my pacemaker surgery this summer.

I know why Jesus calls Himself the Living Water, folks.

This stuff is the miracle liquid that none of us could do without. Your body is made up of 60-70% water. About 71% of the earth's surface is covered by water in any given year. If you've ever visited a third world country, you know to what lengths people will go to clean water. I've drunk mine with bleach in it, and I've showered in ice cold gravity showers that left me with a clear understanding of the virtues of bathing once a week. I've washed clothes in a not-so-crystal-clear river and I once rode a kayak on an absolutely filthy garbage-littered beach.

Sediment settles on the Lake Superior shore in May.

Fresh water is one of those things I've taken for granted most of my life. Living water? Where do I find that? Now that's some water to worship!

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. John 7:37-39

A drop of rain "held" by an impatiens petal in June.

The Holy Spirit. Living in me. Streams of living water flowing from within me? It seems impossible. I am coming out of a time when I spent more time looking at flaws and examining my spirit for darkness and dirtiness and filth. It is hard to imagine that, if I just step out of the way, there is a stream of living water waiting to flow right out of my heart. I think on this one I've got to take an A to B approach. I believe in Christ. Therefore the Scriptures said (and Jesus Himself said too) that streams of living water will flow from within her.

I think I forget it all the time. Living Water lives in me. I have the opportunity to yield, at every turn, to Living Water.

Two sisters I love walk down into the water to be baptized.

Just a few thoughts from the girl singing in the shower with new vigor in these pain-wrought days, living with cancer in the Midwest when it is zero degrees out. Tomorrow maybe I'll write about down, wool, or the miracle of electric heaters!

Shadows

I lay in bed a few minutes ago, putting the littlest ones to sleep - a long and arduous process that I mostly resent, but often provides me the necessary 20 minutes of peace and quiet required to reach a state of reflection, my soul quiet and ready to hear a whisper from God. Today I lay in a basement guest room, looking up as the sunlight shafted through a flowerbed casement window. A single strand of spiderweb silk blew in the wind attached to a browning hosta leaf, refracting sunlight against the wall. The beauty of this refraction was what entranced me at first, the gliding light, prismatic rainbow, dancing shadow.

A cloud passed over the sun, and the whole room was plunged into shady gray. The chocolate walls were dark and creamy, and the spiderweb's dancing prism disappeared from view.

I was struck by the difference between these two objects, blocking the sun rays, one from such a distance as the sod of the planet Earth, and another floating 10,000 feet above.  The closer to the source of light, the larger the shadow cast on life down below.

What a potent picture of our walk with Christ! The closer we are to the source of Light, the larger the shadow Satan's schemes cast downward, the more easily recognizable. The cloud is ominous and dark and gloomy - the spiderweb bewitching, blithe, enticing. Both block the light. But the tiny strand of the spiderweb, so many more thousands of feet away from the Son, casts such a different shadow.

I need to dance close to the Light (walk in the light as He is in the light) so Satan's shadows are obvious immediately. (I John 1:7) Beware of the bewitching web Satan spins in the farthest, darkest corner of my soul, the one I've sheltered from God's exposing, cleansing Light.

David Johnson and Jeff van Vonderen write:

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:15-16) Our Father is a sympathetic King who has sent us abroad. The Throne of Grace is the safe place we represent. The church needs to be a safe place for people who need grace to help in time of need. Let no unwholesome [literally, "rotten"] word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear (Ephesians 4:29). Churches where tired, wounded people are given formulas and advice to help in time of need, or are shamed for having a need, do not represent the true King.

Pray God that I lend my self - my body, soul, motivation, energy, time, desire - to be an instrument of grace to help in time of need. I am so convicted by Ephesians 4:29! How many times have my lips spilled rottens words, words self-bent, words concerned only with life from my point of view, words NOT good for edification according to the need of the moment. I pray to grow in this area. That I may bless those I love...and those little ones who may be imitating me silently from afar, where I cannot see. May the enticing shadow of Satan's prism never be the one I cast.

A new page for our hymnal

It was a long day of testing. She drew circles, squares, crosses. She stacked blocks, arranged them by color, counted them out loud for the bird-thin woman whose body had miraculously housed three children but seemed hollow now as it bent unnaturally into a "C" around Amelia's small hands. They measured how those coils of brain matter communicated, how they functioned all by themselves, which coils are damaged, which coils show promise, which coils came through the fire of brain infection unscathed.

It is her left brain that is hurting. The part she inherited strong from both parents - the logical, orderly, sequential, analytical, words-and-numbers side of the brain. Her right brain is fine (thus her left hand, her left eye, her left leg). This is why she stumbles to the right, her right hand twitches when she holds the pencil, her right eye glides in to study the curvature of her nose when it should be looking elsewhere.

Those precious curves of the brain, coiling in and out, glistening platinum, bathed in the white vernix for safe-keeping. I am to believe there is purpose in the searing of what is precious in this cursed world, that by this sacrifice He will receive glory.

My mother taught me verses as a child, many, many. Set them to music. Sang them, sing-song through the day, singing a way to a peaceful home, begging God for a peaceful heart, pleading God for rescued children. Two and a half long hard years ago, the doctors told me I might lose my voice forever during my cancer surgery. I bought a USB microphone and sang and read stories long into the sleepless nights, read them and sang them into the person-less laptop computer, with a photo of my children in front me. Children who might never hear me speak or sing again.

How do you mourn these losses, these temporary but oh-so-anguished losses? How to keep the tears from my songs in those recordings, how to make the voices of the stories come alive with the whole spectrum of human emotion, not just the anguish and the pain and the pleading and the grief? Somehow I did it, and the stories have the rasping voice of the crows, the high-pitched voices of fairies, the hilarity of the three singing pigs in Sandra Boynton's classic.

And now those hard, long anguished years have passed. And we are still in the thick of the battle with Satan - the Job battle, the battle where your body is beaten, battered, languishing for a Word from the One who loves, protects, strengthens. I still speak, I still sing (albeit my voice more faltering, projection lessened. I am no longer the singer-in-the-bathroom-corners searching for acoustics to magnify this unsure that is my songbox).  I sing my mother's songs...Not by works of righteousness...For there is one God and one mediator...Search me, O God, and know my heart...And these words which I have told you this day shall be in your heart...Trust in the Lord with all thine heart...

The time has come now. I feel it, pulling, tugging hard at my heartstrings. I am woman now, mother to these four who grow so quick, keeper of this home teetering on the edge of disaster and in the arms of Greatness. I have sung her songs...my mother's...for these three decades. We worship quick in the cracks of the day's work, we worship long in the last lingering moments of the evening with the children huddled under covers and Mama in the blue rocker whispering the last refrains of the day's verses. Now is the time to add our own songs to this hymnal of the generations.

Ten years ago, I worshiped quiet with head bent, eyes closed often, finger tracing the words under the music score of the red hymnal full of centuries-old songs of praise. Then I learned to lift hands, and, slowly still, believe they can be holy hands. They still feel wooden, hypocritical, copy-cat, demanded. Not like holy hands, yet. I wash them daily, hourly, moment-by-moment in the prayer of confession, and I see the blood run off in the Living Water and how they go from scarlet to white, clean hands cleaned by Grace. Maybe if I close my eyes with hands high in worship, faltering voice joining the throng of other believers, maybe I can feel holy hands, with eyes closed.

It isn't enough - Memory Madness drills, devotions in the morning, reading the Word at dinnertime while the youngest splats potatoes on the clean floor and his sister has a seizure and vomits on her plate and the older two try to help - find glasses, get silverware, get towels to clean vomit. I need to sing my own songs. Write my owns songs on my heart. The Scriptures are already written there, rich, bountiful. Now the notes. Please send me the songs, Lord.

May every generation of this besieged family write a new page in the hymnal of Scripture-songs my own mother started, with her song-bird voice and her lilting melodies that pour easy from her right brain.

Amy's left brain doesn't work. Maybe she can teach me to be more right-brained. Maybe we can use her melodies and my memories to write Scripture songs that are the reflection of the broken.






I've attached a few of the mp3 files of the recordings I made before my cancer surgery.  Although I didn't lose my voice, I did suffer vocal cord paralysis (at first) that has now progressed to vocal cord paresis (weakness), and my voice is forever changed.  These days, my kids beg to listen to one of two CDs at bedtime: "Mama Sings" or "Mama Reads".  I would encourage moms everywhere to make CDs like this for your kids.  What a comforting, delightful way to go to sleep - and eases the burden of sitting there to sing every.single.night.

Gen sings Proverbs 3:5; recorded June, 2008, just before surgery for aggressive thyroid cancer


Fern's Song: I Timothy 2:5-6


Search Me, O God (Psalm 139:23-24)


Teach them diligently unto thy children (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)


Reading Sandra Boynton's "Moo, Baa, La la la!"

Waking up is hard to do

At the conference I recently attended, a writing workshop yielded the suggestion that using Wordle might lend insight into our language skills, vocabulary, common overuse of certain words.  This service creates a cloud of your most commonly used words; you do have to click "do not exclude common English words" if you are using it as a tool to see where your writing weaknesses are.

Suffice it to say I was pleased with my word usage...except for one word, that showed up nearly as large as the word "Jesus".

That word was "BED".  Ouch.  How embarrassing - and telling!

I have always had a problem getting out of bed - ever since my heart condition slowed me down at around 16.  It's no different now.  With a tendency to burn the candle late into the night in that blissful quiet that surrounds like a dark starry night, the wee morning hours, now still dark as daylight savings looms still far off, are painful and achy and completely and totally a matter of self-discipline.  Of which I am in incredibly short supply.

My little boy wakes up hard. His cries are the first thing to crack my sleepy lids open, jarring me awake in a flurry of, "What's wrong? Is the house on fire? Did someone try to kill my baby?"  And then, as lucidity returns, I realize that he is just being himself and nothing is wrong and once I help him, he will quiet. He has woken up crying since the first day of his life outside the womb. He just does not like waking up. And his request is always the same.

My son wakes up thirsty. Every. single. morning.

Do I?

The very first thing he wants - the thing he is begging for through a sheet of hot tears and the squalling of his cries - is water. I need drink, Mama! Over and over and over again until his lips are wet, his throat is soothed and cool, he's consumed a few tiny glasses. And when his thirst is quenched, he always rewards me, eyelids squinched in his best and sleepiest smile. And then falls back asleep in my arms.

Some mornings we repeat this drill three or four times before he is actually ready to get up and move out of the bedroom and on to little boy activities of the morning: building a set of train tracks, clocking his sister a time or two just for good measure, and reading one of those annoying books-with-sound that chirps electronically and annoyingly all the way into the kitchen where I fry the eggs.

Do I wake up thirsty?

In hard seasons of life - the time surrounding my cancer diagnosis, when Amelia was in the hospital near death, when I was losing my 5th child to ectopic pregnancy and feared that I was laying myself on a senseless altar to carry that child - in those times, I woke up parched and moaning and begging for a drink.  A drink of the only water that matters, the Living Water.  

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

I want to wake up every morning craving the Word. I have found, in practical terms, that this means I need to be disciplined about reading my Bible when it isn't easy. I've heard it argued that you can supplement with a devotional book when the Bible seems daunting. I would argue that is only true if there is Scripture in that devotional book, right at the top of the page, and it is speaking to you loud and clear every day. There is something about reading more than just 1 or 2 selected topical verses that will speak to your soul deep in ways a pre-selected verse may not.

My accountability? I keep a Bible as a journal for 5 years at a time, pairing my notes and thoughts with the passages of Scripture. When my kids turn 16, they will each get a Bible with a love letter from Mama in the front, and years worth of notes and strugglings and lovings and thrashing about in the margins. I don't want them to see any noticeable span of time when I wasn't keeping notes. Some mornings, that is enough to get me to crack the covers and grab a pen, scribble a few thoughts by some random Psalm, even if inside I am tired, moaning, angry, brutish, dark, unloving. 

On the days I don't get a shower, that Living Water is what washes my soul clean and allows me to sparkle through my dirtiness for my kids through the longest days. Hasn't God chosen the poor (and dirty) in this world to be rich in faith? (James 2:5)

On days when the laundry is piled and the dishes are dirty and the kids want to fingerpaint instead of help me clean, that Living Water is what quietly urges me deep that they are what matters, not the sticky floors or the dining room table piled deep.  Whoever can be trusted with little can be trusted with much (Luke 16:10).  Whoever welcomes a little child such as this welcomes me (Luke 9:48).

On days when Amelia is sick and I am on vomit and poop-scoop duty, the Living Word washes the floors with me and it is Christ's tears of anguish in Gethsemane that pour down my arms and fill the sponge as we scrub together. He whispers, It is okay to beg take this cup.  It is okay to say why have you forsaken me in this?  It is okay to wonder when will rescue come?

On days when I myself barely have the energy to drag cancer with me around my home, when I lie in bed to read stories to the kids, and sleep long through their nap, and the guilt eats worse than cancer over the neglected housewifing and homeschooling, the Living Word flushes it away and the scald lessens as Jesus whispers, Whoever finds her life will lose it, and whoever loses her life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:39).

His Living Word is the only water worth searching for in this world.  Find it, read it, memorize it, pray it, believe it, live it, love it.  You will never, ever regret it.

Like newborn infants, thirst for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. (I Peter 2:2)

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. (Matthew 5:6)


Resources for Bible Study for the Thirsty:

• Online parallel Bible offering many translations, verse by verse comparisons, commentaries, and Greek and Hebrew lexicons: http://bible.cc/
• Easy-on-the-eyes English Standard Version online: http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/
• King James Version online: http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/
• An excellent Bible study on thirst that will help you determine whether your own spiritual thirst comes from an empty soul, a dry soul, or a satisfied soul: http://biblicalspirituality.org/thirst.html

Whispers

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
...you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. 
But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie — just as it has taught you, abide in him. And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.
~ I John 20: 1-2, 20, 27-28 ~

I hear the whispers in the quiet communion between these two amidst the rustling of the leaves in the park on a dewy morning.  Cousin-twins, two giants, born 10 days apart and joyfully expected for 9 months together, leaping side by side in my belly and my sister's while we talked over coffee about their lives together, just up the road from each other.  This, too, is what I lost...what we lost...when Theodore grew in the wrong place and died in my body last October.  This is communion, fellowship, love like little children. Kisses, cuddles, wrestling each other down on the leaves in laughter; learning obedience side by side, making mistakes, and making up; forgiveness and blessing through forgiveness.

The events of life can be so confusing, so muddled, the chaos of the days so clanging it drowns out the little whispers of the Holy One who never speaks aloud.  When I don't force my day into rhythm and read His Word in the morning...when I don't take time for a prayer before I correct a child...when I hustle through dinner prep...when I cram work into every corner of the day...those days life becomes a cacophony of error as the little mistakes add up to big ones.  And when life is filled with pain, the noise is deafening.  The pain of this world like a Niagara Falls of tears overwhelming the little trickle of the Holy Spirit speaking truth from within.  How important, in these times, to first remember that we have an "unction" (annointing) from the Holy Spirit, that He is in us, we believers; and second, to bend our ears to hear, to still our lives to listen, to slow our days to study.

We do not need to be afraid of the Big Bad World...He who conquered death has promised us - has given us - an internal link to God Himself (John 16:13).  No mediator or priest required.  We can pray directly to God and through the Holy Spirit, who interprets even our wildest and most unintelligable prayers and carries them personally to the Throne of God (Luke 12:12; Romans 8:26; ).

I repeat it, when I am confused and sad and scared and worried and anxious...I have an unction; He says He'll guide me in all truth; He is groaning for me.  And if He's there, inside you...if you've accepted the free gift of salvation...you have an unction; He is guiding you in all truth; He is groaning for you.



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For a thorough exegesis of the I John 2 passage, click here (note: this is pretty deep stuff!).  For an excellent, short piece on the power of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life, click here.

Looking back on beginnings

She stands, a modern day Eve in miniature, beneath the tree dripping with apples.  Surveying the starchy husks rustling like sandpaper on the ears of corn across the road.

{When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.}

It is her brother who reaches for the hanging fruit, body in motion and apples out of reach.  The Bible says we're living dust and we will return to dust some day not of our choosing: his full-of-life towhead already melts into the yellow of the dusty gravel road.

{By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.}

He proffers up his hard-won fruit, looking for approval.  Can I eat this, Mama?  Even though you said green apples make my tummy hurt?  One bite, and the rest is flung on the ground to be picked up as windfall for the animals.

{There is a way which seems right to a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.}

She is dusty and tired, lips drawn and dry, eyes the large and luminous life left in her face.  She has an apple, too, and the same question.  Is it worth the pain?  Her eyes search mine.

{Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief.}

{...the Lord Almighty says, "Give careful thought to your ways."}

Her lips open wide for the juicy fruit, and teeth nip the ripe, hard peel.  The apple crunches and pops as she tastes.  She reaches the same conclusion as her brother, and the apple flies across green lawn to join the pile of windfalls under the tree.  A few moments later, her belly aching, too, she heads for the farmhouse, regretting her choice.  Curled up with arms clutching middle, she lies on the couch and scrunches eyes closed as the cramp there bathes her in pain.

{To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.  Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."}

The rest are gathered in skirts for horses.  The children plop them one by one, red and green alike.  The horses won't mind.

{All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.}

They tumble out of skirts onto the harsh rasp of the cement chute.  Horses clatter reluctantly from a shady shelter to have a nibble.  Children dance about and save their toes and fingers from the eager teeth.  The girl in the brown dress flits out to join siblings in the pasture next to the barn.  Pain is destroyed by distraction as she gathers apples her brother tosses recklessly down the sloping cement.  She holds his hand in hers and helps him gather apples into a pile in the sun.

{...speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.}

Fingers pulled back, palms flat: the apples are like tentative gifts as horses breathe warmth on wrists and lift lips to grasp the sweet orbs.  A few crunchy rolls of the jaws, and they're consumed.  A harvest of soon-to-be rotten fruit plucked from the moist ground and horses plod back to the shade to roiling bellies.

{My soul, too, was plucked from the moist ground where it lay dead.  The corruptible has passed to indestructible. The Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin, so we receive God's promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ.}

Their toothless elder, old back bent by wisdom, gums his mash and nods a knowing head in the direction of his younger pasture mates.  His belly full...and theirs aching...they head back to whisper in whinnies and neighs while the long light of evening sends sun flaring over corn tops, yellow in the late summer wind.

{What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away...Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is.}