Hungry for the sunrise

It is the eve of the Triduum, Maundy Thursday, and I am hungry, starving, ravenous for the Man of Sorrows in Gethsemane. I go first to my church, and it is holy and sacred there. I walk up with head bowed to receive communion, the Bread and the Chalice, and the women serving say it quiet in the dark sanctuary, "The body of Christ, broken for you, Genevieve. The blood of Christ shed for you, Genevieve." I eat and I drink, but I am still hungry, soul-hungry.

I emerge from the dark sanctuary to a glorious sunset that speaks of the holiness of this night. Two thousand years ago, Jewish followers of Christ preparing for Pentacost. Jesus, washing dirty feet, serving bread and wine, speaking of the mysteries of faith.

I go to another church. Recite the Creed, pray on my knees as they do here, take communion. They say again, "The body of Christ, broken for you. The blood of Christ shed for you." In silence at the end, the altar is cleared, the lights are dimmed to near darkness, and most go out in silence. I stay on knees aching and pray for deliverance, as He did that last night.

Good Friday comes, and work is hard and long, but the hunger in my soul remains. I go to another church, not mine, and sit in the dim sanctuary where the cross is now draped with black and the only light is that of the sunset coming through the stained glass windows. Tonight is about the Cross, the moment when Christ took the sins of the world upon His ravaged body and willing soul. A familiar hymn is sung, and I am still singing it still today...

Jesus, Lamb of God,

You take away the sins of the world.

Have mercy on us.

Jesus, bread of Life,

You take away the sins of the world.

Have mercy on us.

Jesus, Prince of Peace,

You take away the sins of the world.

Have mercy on us.

Grant us peace.

Miserere nobis.

~Agnus Dei (sung here in Latin), English translation, based on John 1:29~

Another church. I kneel again. Ask for the continual redemption He promises for our daily lives...so different from the solitary moment of salvation, when we choose to be followers, believers. What I need today is the power of the Holy Spirit who came to dwell in me at that moment of salvation - I need Him to help me resist and to turn away from sin and to count blessings instead of spewing cursing. Continue to work out my salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). A friend's words whisper in my quiet mind, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6).

This, my friends, is the hard road of sanctification...the red road of Gethsemane upon which we are slowly freed from the clutches of sin that so easy crowds in and crowds out...this depression, this spiritual battle, this day. It is redeemed already, yes - but sanctification, like salvation, is entered into by choice, and it is work. Sanctify: to set apart for sacred purpose, to free from sin, to purify.

To work out one's salvation is to be hungry, for we are never filled. It is to ache with emptiness, for we are not yet perfected. It is to count successes and to grieve failures, to be broken over and over again for the sins of self and the sins of the world. And yet...Jesus said it there, hanging bloodied on the Cross, to the thief who had no hope of a lifetime of sanctification: paradise. At the end, paradise. Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we will be free at last! (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

We process through the stations of the Cross, singing as we go: behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Savior of the world. As I bow in the dark church empty of Jesus, even the statue of Him carried out as it was to the tomb, my thoughts turn to His journey in those 3 days between death and resurrection. I am shattered with thankfulness. Filled with hope. Truly, all hope rests in the resurrection, the sunrise of Easter Sunday and the empty tomb. For what have I to fear if not death itself? As I fast in vigil tonight, it is with hope and an expectant soul: for sorrow may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

"Broken"

A puddle in a pew

A girl, a rock, the vast expanse of water that goes on for as far as the eye can see. Here I see God. Here is where I can listen and hear the whispers in the waves and the laughter of children lilting over the windy shore, see Him in the moss-clinging rocks and the millions of brilliant stones cast upon the shore just because. Just for Him. All this beauty. And just for us. A whole world created just for the glory of God.

If I were being perfectly honest, this will always be my church. My family is where I first found God and it is where I meet Him most authentically daily. It is where I work out my faith on my knees, and it where I feel the thrill of Him most often.

Katy receives her 4th grade Bible during "Children's Church", when all the children of the church go to the altar and worship for 10 minutes in front of the congregation, then receive the blessing of the congregation before dismissing to Sunday School.

But for my children, Sunday after Sunday spent at home with family as church was not enough. Pain fades so much faster when you're a child. I was still in the middle of a mental breakdown after our expulsion from the evangelical church when our kids started begging to go back. We found a "hospital church" for a while - a church in our hometown that specifically ministers to people recovering from abuse, broken hearts, and faith crises. There, in the dark of the worship hall, I could hide my panic attacks and hear a few words or stanzas of comfort while my children came back to life in the Sunday School rooms brightly lit and colorfully painted.

The children added their names to the Church's "heart" during Family Worship this Sunday.

Then there came a time when God winked, and we went to hear Handel's Messiah at Christmas at a church we'd never heard of, a Protestant mainline church we normally would never attend, and suddenly, we were home. Under the huge oak beams 150 years old, with the warmth of the pipe organ filling the rafters, and a choir singing hymns I remembered viscerally from my youth, every sinew in my body that was trained to be taut as wire in church relaxed. I was in a puddle in a pew.

There are moments, still, when I am overwhelmed. I live in fear of being discovered. I don't want to be anything but a face in the pew. The children, on the other hand, want to be in everything. Youth choir. The pageants and dramas. Vacation Bible school. Family worship meetings. Ministries to the elderly.

I am happy for them, these little girls in their blue choir robes. Part of me weeps for the fact that I never experienced this rich heritage as a child. Part of me shudders in fear that this blossoming hope they have for church will be crushed someday. I pray that they can be like thousands of people I've brushed shoulders with over the years - people who've been at the same church for 60 years and never missed a beat. I can't imagine that kind of life, that kind of fortune. But I dream of it for my children...pray for it.

That someday, their children, and then grandchildren, will be dressed in these same blue choir robes. That maybe, finally, we've started a new tradition that will last for a few generations.

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I am excited to announce the publication of an anthology on Finding Church: Stories of Leaving, Switching and Reforming, edited by Jeremy Myers. I contributed a chapter on leaving church in the age of social media. The book is available for pre-order through the publisher here, and will be available via Amazon and other major booksellers December 1.

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

Waiting for rain

Squall hat bought in Gloucester, MA hangs in the sun

I've been in all kinds of rain. As a little girl, I remember the sweet freedom of running through the warm summer rain in my underwear with my brothers. I remember being disappointed when I got "too old" for this and had to wait my turn till they were done and I could take my turn. That was independence rain, the rain of freedom.

I've been soaked in the rain of tears when parents lost a child. In the rain of sadness, the rain of despair. I've held on tight as we hugged through the worst, first piercing grief that brings you to your knees uncontrolled, crazy with weeping.

I've prayed for rain for our crops, and prayed rain would stay far away for family reunions and parties and playdates.

Right now I'm down in South Carolina, soaking up sun and waiting for the "big game" to start on Wednesday. In the next two weeks, I will complete two separate studies that together will finish my research for my degree. I'm praying for a flood of subjects to come through the doors of the college. For smooth data collection, and easy analysis.

Will you pray with me?

A wrestling walk

I write this because I assume there are other women who do this, somewhere on God's green earth.

I tell my husband a few minutes after he gets home from a long day at work. Which equals a long day of work for me as well. My neurons are firing all in disarray and I ask him please can I go for a walk while he puts the children to bed. They are sleepy-eyed and already pajama-d, so how badly could it go, right? (Don't ask.)

Late dusk. In the cobalt hews of the very end of the day's light, I start my walk vigorously. Ipod replacing the tape cassette Walkman of my teen years. I need to wrestle over something with God. He knows I've got the gloves off when I wear sneakers instead of flip flops. This is going to be a long walk, pacing back and forth in front of your house, waiting for a call to come through from the on-call husband, pulling you dutifully back inside the house as he leaves in a hustle. You might have a cigarette in hand, pulling deep down as if to draw Truth through your lungs and in to your blood stream. The pain of friends intrudes, and you sink into prayer (because we  have no other way to give). You keep pacing, and saying things like, "Really, Lord? That's what you want to give up? This is what you want me to pick up? Instead of cursing along with me as I host the biggest-know-pity-party-yet, God gently pulls. Through those convictions of the heart.

First fireflies of the season. Moon melting into the top of the large pine. Dark, lonely deserted home on my parent's homestead. A hayfield full of white wildflowers, reminiscent of stars breaking through the mist. People you miss come floating up like bubbles through the night air.

I realize that, at least for me, I can't have one foot in the "she's just a little anxious sometimes" pool and the other in the active, crazy, wild mother who does great and strange things with her children like canceling school for a bike ride to identify wildflowers, or sitting in the middle of the cramped back seat to comfort a child sick with seizures (my kids tell me I still get the most points for just that - cramming my motherly rear into a spot designed for Twiggy 5 year old).

The thing about wrestling is it means you care about the other person's opinion. (Lord, help me remember these words when I have four kids in my house 14-18.) You really don't want to go against them so you're making your case and trying to get around to some kind of compromise.

Well, I have news for you. In case you have not discovered it yourself, God does NOT tend to compromise. He extends us grace and mercy, but His truth is immovable. Remember when Moses was in front of the burning bush and having his first face-to-face with God? Moses asks,“If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13) In typical esoteric God style (meaning, good luck buddy, you're not going to have much info, you're just going to have to TRUST me and follow my signs along the way), God replies, I AM WHO I AM. Helpful, right?

But when I'm done wrestling, yes, it is helpful. There is rock-hard Truth underneath my feet. I AM WHO I AM. You can stomp and kick and fight over the little piddly details. But I AM WHO I AM. There will be no compromise. If you feel the slippery fingers of conviction sliding up over your heart, telling you that you need to change something in particular, you either do, and obey God, or don't, and end up in a mess. (note: you may also feel like you end up in a mess if you DO obey God - that's happened to me a lot.) I go to bed thinking, I AM WHO I AM. Just like if I asked my earthly Papa, He would say, "I am your Papa". Or my husband, "I am your husband". It demands no more explanation. That is their role in my life. And God? He is who He is. And He is always faithful.

Finding quiet amidst the chaos

As a busy homeschooling mother of four, quiet is something of a rare commodity in my life. In the struggles of winter, I have been forced find more of it, as my soul quivers anxious and the wounds bleed out into my mothering and the flow of my housework (not to mention my work as a student and freelance author).

Quiet is my morning walk to the mailbox. Rest is my prayer time up in the woods near my baby's grave while my children take their afternoon nap. Peace is the 10 minutes I spend every evening after they are in bed, while my husband tends the pets, and I sit silent under the stars, alone with God.

At first, I focused hard on prayer. I have a list of people and needs I pray for daily, and they're filed in my head, permanent stamps of impression written indelibly on a compassionate nurse's heart. But slowly, God has stilled my soul. The needs of others prayed for, yes, but moments He steals back to soothe my soul, to quiet the thrashing spirit.

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah (pause and think about it). Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah (pause and think about it). (from Psalm 46)

He is teaching me slowly - this stubborn mind of mine, this heart that doesn't soak in His water easily - that He is here for me, pursuing me, desiring time with me. I've learned to tip my head back and close my eyes, feel the sun on my face, and simply be. With Him. Without words. Without an agenda. Just be still, and know He is my God.

Spiderweb sleep

A nightmare descends, all twisted up, pains of past and pains of present, and all the fear one length of sleep can heap on you.

You're lost in a maze of the subconscious, clawing up for air through layers of sleep, trying to escape terrors you've repressed, suppressed, redressed.

But sleep hangs on like the last tiny drop of ice melt to the tree branch, bent by the wind of your fear, but still persistent.

And then finally it's over and you're the lone bud climbing for the sunlight of early spring. You wake to memories appalling and chew them over all day trying to wrap arms around the lessons wrapped in the velvet darkness of the night.

Sometimes, after nights like these, the only thing that breaks the spell is the familiar. Verses memorized, prayers holy and hushed, said in unison. This morning, as I woke from my nightmare, it was the Lord's Prayer that pulled me gently back into the sunrise of love, that promise of every day, that no man controls, the orb of the sun pulling herself gently up the eastern sky and the moon putting himself gently to bed in the west.

Our Father, which art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive trespasses against us.

Lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,

Forever and ever.

Amen.

(Matthew 6:9-13)

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~

A prayer and a praise

Oh, God, our Father, give me clean hands, and clean words and clean thoughts; Help me to stand for the hard right against the easy wrong. Save me from habits that harm; teach me to work as hard and play as fair in Thy sight alone as if all the world saw. Forgive me when I am unkind and forgive others who are unkind to me; keep me ready to help others at some cost to myself. Send me chances to do a little good every day and to grow more like Christ. ~A Prayer by William DeWitt Hyde

A quiet and quick moment as we fly off to Lacrosse to greet the newest Holmen BOY! Congratulations to Ben and Megan and big sister Emma as they welcome Kipton Michael Holmen ("Kip"), born just after midnight! Doesn't "Rob, Cal and Kip" sound like a trio of boy cousins who will bring much hilarity and mischief to our formerly very pink clan?

Kip was born with a true knot in his cord, and a loop around the neck. A true knot increases the chances of death for the infant 4 fold. Already preserved, I wonder what God has in store for this little man?

"Kipp" :: Olde English :: "pointed hill" or "glory"
"Michael" :: Hebrew :: "who is like God?" or "humility before God"

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?