Summertime

(Picture taken by the talented Sara.)

cancer sucks

A good friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer this week and as I was praying for her I asked God if He wanted me to tell her anything. Immediately, Isaiah 43:2 came to mind:

When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you;

and when you pass through the rivers,

they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

you will not be burned;

the flames will not set you ablaze.

She was encouraged and, while that was the point and I am glad, there is more to this verse than comfort - there is a warning implicit. Nestled between the promise that God is with us is a promise that there will be fire, there will be frightful, painful things ahead. Just because we are not burned doesn’t mean that we aren’t melted down to the very essence of who we are. That can be a scary thing and I fear for my friend, though I know she will be the better person for this eventually because she truly loves our God. I guess you could say that, more than fear for my friend, I fear for other Christians in her place.

So often we hear it preached from the pulpit that God is the smart choice, the easy choice, the happy choice, and for just the price of a prayer we can have peace, joy, and contentment in our lives. It is shameful how the church has turned those valuable gifts into market buzz words and completely lost their intended meaning. We pitch Christ like one would pitch their wares at the market, or a late night infomercial.

Christ didn’t live an easy life. He certainly didn’t live a peaceful life, not in the modern vernacular. He didn’t sell himself, either. He knew that his life was hard and he warned others as they considered entering into it. Ever tried to warn someone against becoming a follower of Christ? Jesus did. "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Mt 8:20)

What would happen if we started getting honest with our friends? Christianity doesn’t make everything better, it isn’t a magic potion that cures all ills and loneliness. Christians get tired, they get sick, they die. While we are tired, sick, and dying we are called to live like He did giving our lives away to those around us. We are called to love God enough to live by His standards and to do it cheerfully, even when we are waiting to learn if we have cancer. We are called to live in this world and love those around us, even after we get a flat tire and the bank deposits our check into the wrong account. We are called to hold our tongues when we are wronged and not gossip in the workplace, or anywhere else. In many ways, becoming a Christian makes one’s life more difficult! The main difference is this: Those who put their trust in God develop the capacity to carry those burdens as if they were 'easy' and 'light' not because they are but because He is our sustainer. He sends something that we call peace: the ability to live through the brokenness without being broken. He sends something we call joy: the ability to recognize the reality of a painful situation and still find happiness in the sunshine and butterflies in spite of the clouds and the wasps. My other friend Kami says it is precisely that challenge that makes living like Christ so attractive. I think I agree.

I really don’t know where this is going, except to say that I’m glad my friend is a woman who understands that she has hard times ahead but, in spite of that, God will sustain her. The waters she is about to enter will try to pass over her head but God will keep her afloat. And when she looks into the fire, she will find who she truly is- stripped down to her elemental behaviors and her default thought patterns and then she will melt into the shape that God has called her because the fire will melt down any last vestiges of HER strength and force her to rely on God’s. Knowing her, she will lean into the process and welcome God changing her with open arms because she trusts Him. Just wait and watch, though - through this and on the other side, she will touch others lives by the way she lives through the storm and praises God for the tiny pieces of beauty she sees when the lightning flashes.

That is the secret strength of a disciple of Jesus Christ.

tap, tap, tap

The little cardinal is back this morning. She comes tapping on the dining room window several times each day. Her persistence is both heart-warming and frustrating. I hate watching her beat her delicate beak against the glass over and over again. At times, my foolish nature overtakes me and I set out a plate of seeds on the table and open the window. The invitation frightens her, though, and she flies away and refuses to return until I shut the window again. I've left the window open for hours at a time but, to my knowledge, she's never ventured inside my home.

This morning as I was watching her, it occurred to me that I am not so different from her. Like the cardinal, I bang my head against a barrier that I can neither see nor comprehend in a desperate effort to enter into the Kingdom of God. I have to wonder: Have there been moments when God's compassion for me overwhelmed Him? Has He opened a window? And have I, like my feathered friend, become suddenly frightened and flown away until the window was closed, the opportunity passed, and I felt safe again?

Dear One, let not fear of the unknown keep me from entering into those places which You invite me!


Matthew 7:7

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

Thoughts on Freedom

Freedom requires courage.

We are never truly free until we can look into a mirror and evaluate ourselves with honest eyes. We must know both our strengths and our faults to understand our limitations. Why do we need to understand our limitations, though, aren't we discussing freedom?

A caged bird might long to take wing and soar the skies but cannot. In a similar manner, a penguin might wish to fly but cannot. The difference is that one was created to fly and the other was not. Understanding our limitations is freedom, in a very real sense of the word. The penguin who understands what he was created for happily dances in the water and lets the other birds take the sky. He doesn't exchange the goodness and bounty of the open ocean for a life of pining away, watching the gulls, or jealous sulking.

Is this to say that we cannot dream? No! We are dreamers by nature, we need our dreams to challenge us to higher heights or - for those of us who are penguins - to deeper depths. As a girl I dreamed of flying - Top Gun was my favorite movie and I had my sights set on attending the Naval Academy and never mind that women were not allowed to join, that my eyesight was sub-par. I knew I was supposed to be a pilot. Now I am a mother and, while I am still free to remember my girlhood dreams fondly and even pursue a pilot's license, I am not allowed to indulge in the idolatry of regret because freedom requires seeing the landscape before us rather than constantly peering behind us.

So then, freedom also requires truth and freedom without truth is no freedom at all. Truth is frightening, though, and truth about ourselves is the scariest of all. Where do we find the courage for this undertaking, this quest? What force can compel us forward? What power can convince us to uncover the Mirror of Truth and gaze upon that heartless surface? I know of only one.

Who, but the person who understands that they are loved and accepted, can face the truth about herself?

Courage requires love.

The love that courage can stand on is rock steady. The love that courage requires sees a person's faults and doesn't love that person in spite of them but because of them. Our faults make us who we are, too, because what are faults but misdirected strengths? (Don't confuse 'faults' with 'sins' as that is an entirely different matter.) Perhaps this is our primary purpose here on this earth. Perhaps this is how the Kingdom of God sneaks into the world as gently as a sleeping infant and as inevitable as springtime after winter. Perhaps it is our purpose to love those around us so completely that it is nothing to say, "Yes, you are boorish and pushy but that's just because you haven't figured out where to direct all that passion yet. I love you." Perhaps it is our job to love with a love that doesn't excuse sin but understands why it is there, "Yes, I see you drinking and squandering away your life with drugs but that is because you have lost your way. I love you."

If we can love the people around us as God calls us to do, then the Spirit will be faithful to work within them the courage to peek at Truth. Who knows? Maybe they, too, will be set free. We will never know unless we are willing to put ourselves aside and provide a foundation of love for fledgling courage to stand upon.


Freedom requires love.

One Little Mouse

Late one night a few weeks ago the stillness was shattered by a high-pitched squeal coming from my roommate’s room. I wasn’t sure quite what to make of it, especially since I’d never heard her emit that particular pitch before. I thought that perhaps she was excited by something she found online since she’s quite animated when it comes to things like Buckeye football and Glee. To be fair, that was before I found out about the mouse in her bedroom.

Personally, I think mice are adorable when they’re in a pet store. When they are invading your home from the field out back they are, at best, a nuisance, and, at worst, a really nasty health issue. Sara, on the other hand, is terrified of them. That took me by surprise because she is hands down one of the bravest people I know. She kills all the spiders in the house, has held a tarantula, watches my boys once a week, and even teaches high school. I guess I just thought that she wasn’t scared by anything tangible.

As she stood in the doorway to the living room tossing nervous glances behind her, I heard God ask me, “How much do you think I can teach with one little mouse?” I turned my head to hide my smile because I’m not a nice person and, despite Sara’s predicament, God’s question amused me. I remember thinking something like, “God, that’s not nice.”

So far, we’ve disposed of three dead mice. Just when we think we’ve got them all, another one pops up in Sara’s room. Let me tell you, it’s getting old. The other night one of them even ventured into the living room (I guess the little guy likes So You Think You Can Dance). I don’t know what God’s teaching Sara with these furry little professors of panic, but in this fiasco I see an illustration of my own life.

One of my bad habits is something my husband calls ‘stuffing’. That is, when company comes over, I stuff things out of sight so that the house appears tidy. Closets are usually the first casualty of my vain-glorious version of house cleaning. I think that before this debacle the last time I cleaned out the closet in my front room was… January of 2007. It was so bad that no one was allowed to open it (yes, this was an actual house rule) lest someone get hurt by falling debris. When we saw a mouse run back there, I was horrified. Mice might not scare me like they scare Sara but the idea of having to clean that closet so that I could set traps for the mouse absolutely terrified me.

The next day, I pulled out the broken ceramic face mask, the bags of left over Mardi Gras beads, the purple carnival masks, three different backpacks, two mismatched gloves, an entire feather bed (stuffed into the bottom of the closet), two boxes of homeschooling material my mother gave me, a ceramic plate (somehow unscathed), several candles and boxes of chem sticks, Christmas presents for boys, hats, broken hangers, a chess set, a Singer sewing machine, a fold-out sewing board, two bowling balls, an old collection of toy airplanes, 4,837 expired coupons (I really don’t think that’s an exaggeration), an old broken dog collar, 57 VHS tapes (which still boggles my mind since we don’t even have a VHS player anymore), a set of wooden shelves, a woven basket, a bunch of ‘decorative’ spiral willow wands, and a couple coats that I forgot I had- probably because they were actually hanging up where they belonged instead of stuffed wherever surface tension would ensure they couldn’t fall. It was embarrassing. Did I mention the set of surround sound speakers and the phone we’ve been missing for two years were in there, too?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a dirty person. I always meant to clean that closet out. I even had plans to build some shelves in there to store our DVDs and ‘get organized’ (ha!). It just took a mouse in the house to move it up the ‘list’. While I was cleaning that closet out I had plenty of time to think. I thought about how much easier it would have been to catch this one little mouse if I had cleaned the closet out months ago, like I intended, instead of watching old Stargate re-runs on hulu. I thought about the things that God’s been asking me to get rid of in my life: things like anger, pride, ambition, fear, laziness, a lack of understanding of who I am, a lack of understanding of who God is. I thought about these things in much the same way that I thought of the mouse: I know that they are there, I can see the evidence in my life like mouse poop on the closet floor but I can never see them, much less get rid of them.

Standing there in the middle of the living room, surrounded by all the junk I pulled out of the closet, I had a quiet epiphany. If a real living and breathing creature was this hard to find, how much harder would it be to track down the intangible things God wanted out of my life? I’ve been dismayed in the past because, every time I think I have one of these ‘critters’ taken care of and thrown out with the garbage, I yell at my kids or have an ugly thought about my husband. You might say that I get a glimpse of something that’s not supposed to be there from the corner of my eye and turn my head just in time to see a tail disappearing under the closet door. Honestly, I think I’m more afraid of opening that closet than I am of tracking down these things in my life, too. Who knows what I will find if I really start to look around in there?

Psalms 139: 23-24 says,

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

You see, I am too easily distracted and clumsy to effectively search out all the hidey-holes of my heart -the places that sin escapes to when the lights come on. Thank goodness I can trust God to take care of that part. I just need to listen when He comes to the living room and tells me that He found another mouse. Of course, listening isn’t worth much without obedience and, at the risk of carrying this analogy too far and becoming –ahem- cheesy (sorry, I couldn’t resist), I imagine the spiritual disciplines are ‘mousetraps’. We sit silently before God to see if there are any mice hiding in the walls and we fast and pray to learn how we might get rid of them.

Mostly, though, God is teaching me that I need to put things away. I need to take care of the small things as soon as He tells me about them instead of stuffing them into a closet (As if I can hide things from God!) and smiling at my cleverness.

Next time God finds a ‘mouse’ in my house, I plan on having a clean closet.

Message in a Bottle

Sometimes, I get the feeling that I am a message in a bottle. I have no control over where I go, when I am discovered, and who opens me, but I know that God is in control and that I definitely have a message burning in my heart. I wish I could read it, I really do.

Tonight I went with some friends to give away bags of groceries. It is the end of the month and the economy these days makes it difficult for my own family near the end of the month. There are times that I cancel with people simply to make certain that I have enough gas to get through the rest of the month. The people we were seeing weren’t sure what they were going to eat –what they were going to feed their children – the rest of the month.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, to be honest. Would people, like so many I encountered, be reluctant to accept what we were offering – no strings attached? I’m thinking ‘out loud’ right now but I think that one of the most difficult things to overcome in ministry is the cynicism that shouts, “Nothing in life is free.” It’s really no wonder, too, when even we asked if we could pray for or with them. About half of the people I spoke with accepted both the groceries and the prayer but it was mostly because they were being polite. I could hear in the back of my head what they were thinking, “I knew there was a catch!”

I met a woman tonight. She said she didn’t want prayer but everything in my heart cried to pray for her. When the guys with me walked away, I whispered that I would be praying for her anyway- all week long. She started crying and I asked her name. As she sobbed her story in between apologies and my assurances, I ached. I ached because there was nothing I could do. What was a bag of groceries against an injury that stole her job? Against the untimely death of her father? Against the knowledge that, in less than a month, she and her three children would be homeless? Against the knowledge that she wasn’t, in fact, a citizen (though she grew up believing otherwise until she applied for Medicaid to fix her injured shoulder)? Nothing, that’s what. It is nothing.

I prayed. I prayed that God would heal her shoulder, restore the favor of her employer, breathe peace on her, and some joy to get her through.

“I want to die,” she said, “but it’s a sin.”

“It’s a sin I’ve struggled with, though, I understand.”

“I won’t do it. It’s a sin.”

“Hang on to that.”

“It’s all I’ve got.”

I prayed that God would help her through this dark night and into the dawn of a new morning. I prayed that God would love on her and begin to show her He has a purpose just for her, if she wanted it.

“I’m sorry. I don’t even know you.”

“I believe that God brings us the people we need. You didn’t know me yesterday. Now you do.”

“I’m sorry.”

I realized, on the drive home tonight, that I don’t like this door to door flesh meet flesh ministry. It makes me want to whither up inside when I don’t have something more to give these children that God places before me. God heals. God does miraculous things. I know this. I want to live there. I want to be the one who says, “God loves you and wants you whole. Let’s pray for Him to heal you.” And He does. I need the power of God or I need to do something else. Anything in between is too painful.

My prayer is simply this: God, go with me or don’t send me.

I don’t know exactly what this has to do with the feeling that I am a message in a bottle, but I know it is related. God’s told me to stop asking what this vision inside me looks like, what it sounds like, what it reads as but He keeps instilling this hunger in me. Sometimes I think this process will kill me before I understand what is happening. And yet, and yet.... something is happening.

Sachi