Memories versus moments

The photos of me sniffing my babies are covered in dust, thick as carpet. I remember when life was like soup broth, thin and warm and full of good things, beauty, joie de vivre. Then came the great reduction, the splitting off of people and things and places and beliefs and safety. Life is kind of gravy right now, not in an easy way, I mean the food. It takes time and energy to produce but you don't need much gravy to live on. I've learned to live with less. I'm still learning to love with less.

Through the fog of depression, love leaks out of me in long wails like a wolf at twilight. The children's happiness is as unreachable as the moon is to the wolf. Instead, my mind goes skipping off across the mirrored pond of memories using shards of broken dreams like stepping stones. They are as hard and unyielding underfoot as real rocks born of eons of pressure and heat.

Memories are mirrors because they only reflect ourselves - our perceptions, our truths, our meaning. There is no going back to understand. There is no way to break the mirror and see through to the objective truth. Many are more beautiful than the actual experience, some are even more ugly. The pain of the insults tossed my way in 7th grade? It's like the state of Texas in the nation of my memory. My brain seems bent to crystallize the bad as if to freeze it's power, to breathe in the good as if to swallow the sensation. Those glaciers of the bad times are fraught with danger - sharp ice, gaping crevices, avalanches and cold temperatures. Go exploring there, and you just might get lost forever.

Acceptance slowly leads me to see those sharp and scary parts of my life kind of like Mount Everest. I know it's there. I can see beauty there from afar. I just never, ever want to try to climb it. The view from the top isn't worth the risk. That sense of conquering? I've given that up with my youth. I don't need to be right; I don't need to be the best or brightest; I just want to survive. It would be a fool's game for me to climb up those memories in some quest for understanding or meaning.

The kids come running to cuddle when I say I need to "soak up some love". They know it means I will open the pores of my consciousness to the moment with all my will. It feels quite literally like soaking something right up into the very core of me. The dried out painful sharp-cornered wad there fills and saturates and becomes forgiving and yielding again.

Sometime soon I will master the closing of my pores to the sadness. I will let memories wash over me and bead up and fall off like water on a duck's back. I say this to myself like an affirmation, as if to will it into being. I am learning to speak positive words in the same certainty and black ink I use for the negative ones. All part of changing the voices in my head.

Meanwhile, I soften my arms for hugging. I curl the edges of my lips up into a half-smile. I bury myself in moments, pour my very soul into them. I hope that's what the world sees. I hope you see my love and not just my pain.

For that would be a successful life.

Revisiting confessions

Guilt, shame, despair, grief. Emotions entangle and threaten to drown out hope. Haven't I been here before? Haven't I confessed these sins?

Yes, I have. And He says they're forgotten and washed white as snow. Why, then, does my heart still bleed dark red sin, spewing a history, a litany of unforgivable details onto the fresh snow of today's vista?

But are you living with guilt that doesn't belong to you? You say, "Look at what I did! I deserve to feel guilty. I knew better, but I did it anyway." So you pound yourself with guilt and condemnation. It may be guilt for recent sins or for sins of the past. What does God say about this guilt? Romans 8:1 makes a simple declaration—“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” So why the confusion? Christians live with guilt that doesn't belong to them? We live by our feelings instead of God's truth. When we feel the flood of guilt, we assume God agrees with our feelings. "I deserve to carry this guilt. Look at what I did! How terrible!" Once we have confessed our sin, God will no longer use guilt or condemnation to remind us of our past. He wants us to enter His freedom, His peace-completely free of condemnation. The familiar and much loved promise of John 3:16 is followed by this powerful declaration. Jesus said, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned." (John 3:17-18a NIV) True guilt is designed to lead us to repentance which leads us to God's peace in our hearts. So why do I Still Feel Guilty? The enemy-Satan-wants to rob you of God's peace and joy. He comes with false guilt, which feels exactly the same as true guilt from God. So how can I know if I'm feeling true guilt from God or false guilt? How do I know if I'm living with guilt that doesn't belong to me? You must use God's truth to evaluate your feelings of guilt. You must examine your heart and ask, "Have I truly repented of my sins?" You may want to write down the specific memory that is flooding you with guilt. Then put it to the truth test. Have I already confessed this sin? When did I confess it? Was I truly sincere? Have I been completely honest with God? If the answer to all these is "yes," then you can stand on the promises of 1 John 1:9 and John 8:36. If you confess your sins, He promises to forgive and cleanse you-not 2 months from now-immediately. If you have any doubt about the sincerity of your previous confession-confess it again and then instantly claim God's peace and forgiveness. (from Living Free)
 

Living by my feelings instead of the Truth. Wow. Does that describe the month I've had, or what! Feelings, feelings, feelings. Truth feels like an amorphous fog in a dark room. I can't grasp it. Can't ground myself with it.

I read these...John 3:16, Romans 8:1, John 8:36; I John 1:9. There is one thing I haven't done, though I've wanted to for over a year. There is one person I harmed that I could not say "I'm sorry" to. Regardless of this, I have to grip the TRUTH that I have been forgiven. I acknowledge the guilt, the shame, the despair - but I will not walk as though they rule my world. They don't. He does. And HE has set me free.

So walk free...
I can put one foot in front of the other...
Someday, I'll truly walk into His freedom.
Today, all I can say is that I'm walking down that path.

I have failed you, I have failed you

I have lost my way, lost my nerve

I’ve failed you

 

But I love you, how I love you

I have turned my back, left you last

but I love you

 

O setting sun don’t sink before I’ve found my heart

Heart don’t give up now while there’s still time

Time don’t beat your old retreat stay a little while with me

til I’ve looked the whole thing in the eye

 

I have waited, I have waited

for the big reveal, the even keel

I have waited

 

But there’s no one who makes it all come true

Just altars gathering dust while we bow to them

O night bring all your shadows and your silence

Silence make a hostage of my mind

Mind bring on your trickery

Black dogs nip on at my heels

til i’ve looked the whole thing in the eye

 

Swing low, sail high

 

All my days will rearrange to say I love you

O setting sun don’t weep for all the things you lose

morning comes as sure as it must die

dying is such mystery

yet I wonder will it be

when I’ve looked the whole thing in the eye

~Swing Low, Sail High, The Wailin' Jennys~
 

Switching strokes

She smiled, but there was sadness in her smile; even now she felt forebodings of the coming pain, the air she breathed was heavy with the storm that was about to burst. (Honoré de Balzac, Le Père Goriot, 1835)

The keys of the piano are heavy, and my heart thrills at the tension between unplayed and played notes and all the richness of resonance and volume and cascade the old brown piano holds hidden inside herself. I run fingers through the chords flowing from my memory, chords to a song of lament. Putting music to the emotion calms me, and there is even a smile hedging it's way into the corners of my mouth.

The front room is dark, the bitter cold grayness of January's sunset casting the children's window decorations in relief. I am the frozen observer, and the only activity about my body is trapped inside the mind.

I had a false hope that the ocean of pain held in my story would eventually soak into the ground, disappear into the bedrock under my feet. As with all false hopes, the destruction of this idea undid me. Six months I've walked on water, with joy insurmountable. Someone suggested I turn my mind from the ocean, forget it's there. For just a second I looked down at the ocean, contemplating. Could I leave this behind? Instead, the hems of my pants were suddenly wet as I felt myself sinking back in. Escape from pain? Possible for some. Impossible for many.

My counselor's voice is a soothing melody over the phone lines. She tells me to swim through it. There's no ignoring the ocean. Now you must swim.

I do, stroke after stroke, those moments coming every now and then when I breathe in a wave of water and panic that I can't make this swim. Oxygen-starved brain cells create a firestorm of anxiety. But instead of trucking on with my poor stroke and my mouth filled with water, I will flip on my back and float for a while. I feel every teardrop that made up this ocean of pain. Still beneath me. But I'm looking up at the sky, and the deeps aren't so terrifying.

Maybe this is how you escape madness: to switch strokes in the middle of the swim, and stare at the clouds moving across the azure. I'm no less sodden, no less in the middle of the ocean. But at least I'm looking up. And up there is the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation nor shadow of turning. (James 1:17)

*Photos from Amelia's play camera

Feeling after Him

It has been well said that the true measure of any man's spirituality is the degree to which he can detect God in the most simple events around him. It is no mere spiritual phraseology when Scripture declares, "They should seek the Lord, if they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live, and move, and have our being. (Acts 17:27-28) ~from Phillip Keller's A Layman's Look at the Lord's Prayer

The sun gleaming through the gray glimmers off their shiny winter jackets as they bend to build a man from the snow. Later that evening, the moon is setting golden over the snowy hills, the frost catching the last reflected spark of sunlight. The moon looks for all the world like a black coin dipped in gold, the sunlight reflecting all along it's rim, the north star fixed just above it. I feel God in the whisper of the pines, the dancing crystals lifted into the air by the breathe of wind, the cats huddled on the porch rail as if to worship in this last light of evening. Feel after Him. What a turn of phrase that is, as if we are groping after a warm presence in the dark, feeling our way through the velvet night towards our reunion with Christ.

In his little manifesto on the Lord's prayer, Phillip Keller states that "In every situation of life, no matter how unusual or adverse, there comes that quiet assurance to my heart that I am His, and He is mine." I recall the somber words of our last pastors, warning us that because our situation was so out of the ordinary, God was not necessarily with us on the path of suffering. Yet I had that feeling, as I groped in the dark for answers, that He was there, ever-present and ever-loving, in the blackness with me. 

Like a sparrow flitting, like a swallow flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight. (Proverbs 26:2)

We are on a grand adventure here on this earth. Our time is short, and it is filled chock-full with God's many small blessings: the wonder of His creation that dawns new every morning and is hidden in every blade of grass and every snowflake falling; the situations of life that affirm our faith and confirm His presence in our daily lives; in the love of His saints that surrounds us in our time of need; in the comfort we receive from His word, the assurance that knowledge and understanding bring through our minds and into our hearts. Our God is an awesome God, who reigns from heaven above, with mercy, power and love! Our God is an awesome God!

God in the tangible

I read the assignment: share a moment you've felt close to God lately.

The cool breeze of a fan in the claustrophobic Southern sun.

The turquoise of hurricane shutters down by the beach.

The criss-cross of the palmetto shrub,

so familiar, the raspy rub of it against palm.

4 years now I've been traveling here to feel this.

Grassy palmetto tops seclude the beach access 

brush hair back with their rough edges

and sing a rustling song in the ocean breeze.

In nature I feel him.

But He is so silent.

He is so still.

He is so far away, other times.

Where are you, oh God, that I cannot touch or feel you?

Where is your whisper?

Where is your windsong?

When is my escape?

Bottled up

Emotions, bewildered and with no home or expression in which to fly outward, get put in a bottle big enough to hold, stuffed down like constricted gas in a container of your own making.

Medicine. Comes in bottles - not so pretty these days in their plastic with sanitary white labels and prescription numbers, but still amber. Temporary peacemaker for the bottled up emotion, temporary relaxation so your shoulders don't turn to stone, loosen your grip so you can hug someone in the deeps of your own emotional winter.

Memories. Memories in bottles too, like a sweet perfume bottle you just lift the lid on to recapture joy, recapture someone long lost, like Evening in Paris brings Fern back to life for my aunt Rosalie. Rosalie with the fragmented memory of all childhood, brought back into the deep squeeze of her mother's hug by the smell of that perfume.

But the sweetest of all - of this picture of my father's amber bottles on the windowsill - is the idea that there is escape from bottled emotions, bottled elixirs that can't do what your doctor promises, the relief from memories bittersweet at best and undoing at worst - in the bottles of tears Christ keeps for each of us.

You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? (Psalm 56:8)

My tears, in His bottle, and written in His book. Not one of them lost, soaked into the pillow, or wiped hurriedly from the face, or disguised under the hat brim or squeezed back with the tight eyelids. EVERY ONE. In His beautiful bottle and sacred in His holy book.

My sorrows are not unnoticed. This sets me free. Free to cry in public if I need to cry in public. Free to melt those granite shoulders and sob into the arms of the hug offered. Free to set memories free from bottles and cry grief that someone is gone...for however short a time before our reunion...that I can only smell them now in that bottle of perfume kept sacramental in the hutch.

The row of amber bottles glows on my father's arched window in his study. The yellow bleeds through in the blazing afternoon light and reminds of this Psalm, the Psalm of promise that He is watching every tear I choose to let slide. Every emotion I allow myself to feel. That my faith does not crumple because it is not made of stone - for He is the Rock, and I am the clay of the Potter.

“Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘He has no hands’? Woe to him who says to his father, ‘What have you begotten?’ or to his mother, ‘What have you brought to birth?’ “This is what the LORD says— the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: Concerning things to come, do you question me about my children, or give me orders about the work of my hands? It is I who made the earth and created mankind upon it. My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts. (Isaiah 45:9-12)

One of the things He created - much to my frequent dismay - is emotion. Men have boiled a whole host of emotion to 5 main categories: anger, fear, worry, grief, and joy/sadness. I feel fear, worry, grief, and joy and sadness. Anger I struggle with. I flare up with temper sometimes, but I am the ice-cold temper, the temper that just raises the voice and slams the doors to get something accomplished, not a red-hot anger, an anger that is involved in the emotion. To me, it's just a tool. Likewise worry - something to fill my time. Something I've long tried to root out, as Paul wrote to the Philippians, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (4:6) Grief - check. Feel it all the time. Grief over cancer, grief over Amy's losses, grief over dead relatives, grief over relationships torn and bloodied. But again it is a detached, no tears grief, just a heaviness of heart, a wonder about what "might have been." Joy, I feel that deeper, like sunlight on warm spring day, soaking into the bones. Rejuvenating. Sadness, I try to stay away from. Try to find the joy hidden in sadness.

So what does unbottling Godly emotion look like? First, your guess may be as good as mine. But this is what God is revealing to me.

1) Anger: join Him in righteous anger. Shake your fists and let the veins on your neck pop out a little in some safe place. There is terrible injustice in this world. Whether it be first-hand - someone abusing you or making you powerless or stealing your voice - or your distress over a far-away tragedy like the one we are watching unfold in Japan - join in God's righteous anger. The anger that flooded the world, sent Sodom and Gomorha up into smoke, smoked cities in the way of Israel's progress. You know that God who breathes hail and shouts thunder? Sometimes we get to join Him in that. Be angry, and do not sin. (Psalm 4:4a)

2) Fear: well, you have two choices here. You can live in fear of Satan and what man can do to you. Maybe you're like me and you have secrets from your past you'd rather never caught up with. Maybe there are things you do today that bring you shame. Your other choice is to live in "fear" of God - this word "fear" coming from Hebrew words like פַּחְדַּת (religious awe) and Greek words like φόβον (literally "fear") - to fear the consequences of your wrong-doing in His sight, and delight in your good works in His sight. To have this fear motivating you to be more like Him and serving like Him...this is Godly fear. It is noteworthy to point out that there are scores more reference to the "fear" of God in the Old Testament, prior to the Grace-giving sacrifice of our Savior on the cross, and very few in the New Testament, where Grace prevails through the cross. Also, we must remember that fear is an emotion given us by God to help us recognize dangerous situations and people and make choices that keep our hearts, souls, and bodies safe.


3) Worry: you're going to feel it sneaking up on you, even if you've got Philippians 4:6 tattooed on your wrist. Let it bring you to your knees in prayer. Let it send you searching to the Father of lights for the answer to the trouble before you. Don't just stuff it down and say you're not going to be anxious. Let it lead you out of that trapped sensation and into the field where God lets you breathe it up to Him in blessed prayer and He lifts the burden quietly from your back and tells you He's got it. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches over me (video based on Matthew 10:29-31).

4) Grief. We all know it. From a job opportunity lost, to a friendship ended, to a death in the family or the loss of a pet; an opportunity lost, a parenting moment gone awry, a  slip of the tongue that yields damage to a precious relationship. Two portrayals of grief from Scripture immediately come to mind here: the story of Job, who sat in ashes and scraped himself with pot shards while wearing torn garments, denoting the utter desolation of his heart after a tragic, inescapable and unfathomable loss. And the example of David, mourning bitterly for his dying son, yet casting off his sackcloth and going out of his castle in apparent joy once his son had died:

When David saw them whispering, he realized what had happened. “Is the child dead?” he asked. “Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.” Then David got up from the ground, washed himself, put on lotions, and changed his clothes. He went to the Tabernacle and worshiped the Lord. After that, he returned to the palace and was served food and ate. His advisers were amazed. “We don’t understand you,” they told him. “While the child was still living, you wept and refused to eat. But now that the child is dead, you have stopped your mourning and are eating again.” David replied, “I fasted and wept while the child was alive, for I said, ‘Perhaps the Lord will be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me.” (2 Samuel 12:19-23)

While yes, we grief past the loss that grieved us in the first place, this incredible example of obedience to God's sovereign will is a signpost in a foggy vale of tears that directs us to act as we face the griefs that descend upon us in this life.

5) Joy/sadness: This is the first emotion we come across that is dichotomous. Do psychologists think of it as dichotomous - one or the other, joy or sadness? For Christians, especially those joining Ann Voskamp on the trail that began in the bloody pool of her toddler sister's death place on the gravel of their farm driveway and has led to the amplitude of a grace-filled and joy-filled farm, through sorrows and happinesses - we, this gratitude community - see the joy breathing out of every sadness, and the sadness leaching out of every joy. It is a different way to see the world. And in this one emotion, I feel grounded and unbottled and free.

Thanks to Ann for helping me unbottle one of the 5. Pray God I feel every one of them again before I die, these emotions, God-given, bottled and stopped up by the pain of a life that seems barely worth the living of it.

Feeling

I sit on the front steps

and feel grief in the dry wind

Coyotes howling

sing my heart's song

locked in long

Remnants of rain drip off the roof

the rhythm of my fear

that life is cold and meaningless

and friends all disappear

Cold night air

washes sweet

over life unfair

I look out at

Woods covered in mist

and know Christ

covers grief with His quilt

tear-stained cheeks and doubt

of a still night

in the blanket of his tears

and I am comforted.