Let Me Count The Ways

Love can come like raindrops on a spring day, 

pattering down, 

cool on your skin under the scudding puffs of cloud,

the easy breeze touching your hair and lifting your heart 

with the anticipation of possibility and adventure,

your face gradually dampening

with drops that fall thicker through the swirling wind

as the sky grows ever more gray,

until the cold flood pours down in stinging sheets, 

the gusts catch your breath,

thunder rumbles its warning,

and you run, run, run

for refuge.

 

 

Love can come like a sprout,

a young sapling, sprung from a seed planted who knows when,

growing undetected

branches reaching 

roots pushing wide and deep through the rich, loamy soil,

until cool shade draws your gaze upward to see its canopy spreading overhead

as you find yourself safe in its solid embrace,

realization dawns of how you have been growing together

entwined, interdependent,

into tall oak companions, 

constant, enduring, timeless. 

 

 

Love can come like a solitary key along the path,

holding the promise of something undiscovered,

offering its invitation,

waiting,

until you stoop to pick it up

fit its bitting to the keyway

feel the tumblers click as your heart turns,

breaks open

spills over--

surging, cascading, as you're swept away

weightless

drifting

soaring

wondering at its existence,

this key in your hand,

a perfect match. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Know Who You Are

When I came to Bible college that fall as a freshman, I was so vulnerable, and so unwitting. I came from a safe and loving home; I had just broken up with my first and only boyfriend, a sweet and innocent first love, as we parted ways for school; I had been raised in the church to trust God and other believers without question; no one had ever tried to hurt me. I came with implicit faith that I was going to a place where I would be loved, respected, protected. I was so, so eager to please.

I struck out into my new life without hesitation, meeting new people, diving into my assignments, earnestly absorbing the preaching and teaching. I met and started dating another freshman, a local boy from a well-known family. Those first weeks of this new season were a joyful fresh start. But soon, my fledgling relationship took a disturbing turn. My new boyfriend began to act in ways that made me uncomfortable. When we were alone, he started to push the boundaries of our physical interactions. 

This development was not just unwelcome, but unfamiliar. I lacked both experience and education. I'd been taught about sin, but not about consent. Most of what I'd been given to understand about male sexual desire was that it was my responsibility. And yet, in this situation, I was communicating clearly that these actions were undesirable, and things didn't improve--they got worse.

My obvious resistance wasn't an obstacle for long. He blew past it as though he barely noticed. Honestly, I don't even remember the first time it happened, just the way it worked. When I didn't move the way he wanted, he pushed me, or pulled me. When I pulled back, struggled to free myself, he held me. Sometimes he held me just long enough to show that he could hold me until it suited him to release me; and then he pushed, or pulled, again. If I protested, my protests were muffled, overwhelmed, ignored. In a strange way, it felt not just powerless, but like being invisible--like he was in the space with my body, but me, the real me, was floating outside of us and could not be seen or heard. 

He always knew when to stop--short of anything that could be technically considered "sex" or that I would have recognized as rape or assault.

Later, he was sorry. He asked forgiveness for his weakness, he'd gotten carried away. He would try hard to do better, to avoid temptation, and he needed my support and help. After all, it was in his nature to fall, but he was trying to be godly. These were terms I understood. The shared language of our faith was used to gaslight me into submission, compliance, participation.

I forgave, at first, as I'd been taught. I respected him for his honesty, his vulnerability, his effort. I offered a second chance. And that chance was taken, not just once, but again and again. There were arguments, recriminations, reminders of his promises, but they made no difference. I agonized over what to do, but I told no one. I had only been warned that this was a situation I should prevent, but never been told anything about what to do if it happened. I prayed. And after a while, after a handful of frightening, upsetting defeats, I decided I had to cut myself free. I told the boy that I was done with the relationship. I walked away. I was lucky. And I thought that was the end.

Within a week or two, I got a visit from his roommate. The roommate told me, "I know what he did to you. You need to report him to the dean." I declined. I wanted nothing to do with this boy, this story. I wanted to put it all behind me and go back to my normal life. But I couldn't, the roommate said, because "he's still doing it to other girls." I was the only one who could stop him. I could help others who would otherwise have the same experience I'd had. I still refused. I said I had no knowledge or proof of this, and the boy himself had told me that he'd had a "spiritual awakening" and God had changed his behavior. If the roommate was so concerned, let him talk to the dean. He insisted that he couldn't, since he wasn't "a witness"; he had no way of proving what he knew. He pointed to multiple Bible verses that commanded my help for other believers, including the one who was trapped in sin, and once again the faith we shared compelled my responsibility to and for this boy. After a long and heated discussion, I agreed, reluctantly, that if I gained personal knowledge of other girls being harmed, I would go to the dean.

It was a small campus, and it wasn't long before I had two conversations with girls who had gone out with the boy in high school. They had noticed I wasn't spending time with him anymore. Unsurprisingly, I learned that their experiences with him were the same as mine. I told them about my talk with the roommate, and our agreement that I would go to the dean if I heard of his mistreatment of any other girls. They both said they would go with me if that happened. Within days, a girl who lived down the hall knocked on my dorm room door in the middle of the night. She was crying, and I wasn't surprised by the story she told. So now there were four of us.

You know what happened after I went to the dean. Campus was in an uproar. Everyone knew that we were all called to a disciplinary hearing. The boy asked many people to be "character witnesses" for him, even though no such witnesses were allowed. He spread the rumor that I was a jilted girlfriend who was taking revenge on him with false charges, that I had coerced the other girls to participate. I was approached on campus by people who showed me Bible verses about forgiveness, who "confronted" me about "persecution". I sat in classes where people made prayer requests for their falsely accused friend. I was ambushed in my dorm by a group of girls asking me to go to the dean and retract my statements so the hearing would be stopped. You remained silent. No statements were made on campus, no actions were taken to prevent any of this, no protection was offered to us.

When the hearing finally rolled around, the other girls and I sat in the lobby, waiting to be called in to testify before the disciplinary committee. The only other people waiting there with us were the boy and his mother. I guess you didn't see the need to give us a separate space to spend those hours. We were called in one at a time, to sit in a single chair, facing all of you at that long, long table. I don't know what happened to the others, but I was asked the most intimate, personal questions by you, in front of you--my adult male professors and administrators, and of course the student representative who sat on the committee. I was 18. You questioned me about illegal drug use, about drinking alcohol. I had never even tasted alcohol. A college freshman with a 17-hour course load, I was asked about my "unusual" sleep schedule, and how I could explain it if I wasn't using drugs or alcohol. You told me that the boy claimed that all our interactions were consensual, and that in fact I had initiated them, and that his mother was there to confirm this testimony. (Where were our mothers, us four girls?) I was asked, if this isn't true, if all this was really unwanted, why didn't I punch him, kick him, slap him? I could not imagine my 90-pound bookish self punching another person. None of you showed any awareness of the fact that freezing or compliance is a common trauma response of sexual assault victims, and of course I certainly hadn't been equipped to educate you. The president of my college called me stupid--elaborating on the insult by explaining that it was warranted because my actions were too foolish to be called simple naivete. I was carrying straight A's, but I was suddenly in a world where the smart, credible, trustworthy, respectable girl I had always been somehow no longer existed. I felt humiliated, contemptible, a disappointment. Displaced from the me I knew. Fallen.

When the interrogation was over and I was asked if I had any last comments to add, I asked one of you, the professor whose class I was due to attend in a couple of hours, if I could be excused that afternoon. I was granted the absence, and that is the total of academic reprieve I was given for this experience. You offered no additional time off, no followup counseling, no other kind of support. I did get, however, a message from the dean's office notifying me that you all had placed an official disciplinary warning on my permanent record, along with the inexplicable, insulting instruction to stay away from the boy. It wasn't made clear what the warning was for. The boy himself was expelled from school. We were widely blamed on campus for "ruining his life". We had not anticipated anything like this would happen--we had hoped he would be placed on "social probation", prohibited from dating, given mandatory counseling--the only things we knew of in our world that might make attempts to solve the problem, not just move it off campus.

A few days later, Sunday, I went to church, the same church that many of you attended and led, and as I sat in the pew, that boy served me communion.

I didn't want any of this. I didn't want what he did to me. I didn't want to be held responsible for "helping" him, or stopping him, or for determining his future. I didn't want to be part of this group of victims, or to have these conversations with the dean. I didn't want to talk about the intimate details of my shame in front of a roomful of adult men that I respected and whose approval I was desperate for. I didn't want to live with the reputation this earned me; I didn't want to lose the experiences it cost me. I didn't want to have the faith that I cherished co-opted and used to harm and manipulate me.

I was Brett-Kavanaugh-hearing-years old when I realized that what that boy did to me was a crime.

Sexual assault is a reportable criminal offense. It's a matter for the police. It's not something to be handled internally with disciplinary actions by a small group of campus administrators. But of course, you knew that. And if you didn't, you should have. It was your responsibility. I was your responsibility. At 53, I'm still unwinding the ways I was affected by this, not just by the physical offense committed against me, but by the aftermath--to be bluntly honest, by your treatment of me. This incident is the reason I cut off all ties with the school as soon as I was able. It overshadowed the entire rest of my college experience, and carried over well into my adult life. It was the first thing that began to change my view of men at the deepest level. And it altered my relationship forever with the church. 

I hope you would do better now, if you had this to do over again. I hope your understanding is deeper, that your views have changed, that your hearts have changed. But I need you to understand that what you've done in the past still matters; it's not over and done with. If you are able, though, there is still time to make it right. You can't fix the damage that resulted from your actions; that can never be undone, for me or for all the others like me. But you can acknowledge it, and that would mean a great deal. Acknowledge your involvement, and your failures. Apologize. 

Repent. 

And then, use your privilege. You have always been the ones who hold the levers of power. Use your position to speak out for victims. Teach the leaders who come after you to do better. Give over some of that power to people in positions that will approach these issues differently. Change your culture.  Make this the last story of its kind we all have to hear. There is a path toward healing for all of us. Make a start.

Adventures in Evangelicalism

 # When I was about 16, the adult male sponsor of my Christian youth group asked to speak to me privately one night before our meeting. He said he'd noticed that when our group members hugged each other in welcome or goodbye, I hugged boys and girls just the same. With his wife nodding supportively beside him, he physically demonstrated the "side hug", and made me actually practice the difference. He told me that he would be watching to see that this is the way I hugged boys from now on. The reason, he said, was that giving a "regular" hug to a boy would "cause that boy problems". His vague euphemisms gave me the impression that "regular" hugging was pretty much throwing yourself sexually at a boy. I found this whole instructional episode confusing, as I didn't see anything unusual, excessive, or remotely suggestive about the social hugs occasionally exchanged in the group. I felt weirdly ashamed even though I didn't think I had done anything wrong. I wondered why he hadn't talked to the boys who obviously must have been "regular"-hugging me. 

 # In the first few years of my marriage, my then-husband and I needed to reach out for some relationship counseling. Our pastor recommended a local Christian therapist. When I called him to make the appointment, he said he wanted me to know that he was "not a male chauvinist". Multiple times during our session, though, he asked me questions, and while I answered he just looked me over, obviously not listening to my response, and then when I was finished he allowed a couple seconds of silence before turning to my husband and saying, "She sure is a pretty little thing, isn't she?" Before we left, he pronounced his diagnosis that the cause of many of the relationship problems we were having was my refusal to accept my husband's regular phone calls during my work day, teaching fourth grade. I needed to stop making my husband feel like I didn't have time for him. I protested that I had nothing but time for my husband, any time except when I was actively teaching. I just didn't understand why it was necessary, or even OK, for him to disregard my real and important work--to pull me out of a classroom full of children in the middle of a lesson to say things like, "What do you think we should do this weekend?" But the therapist said that wasn't a good excuse, and that since he was also a teacher (of a couple college classes), he knew that it was possible for me to be available whenever my husband wanted to talk. 

 # Hanging out late with a group of friends after a choir event as a college undergrad, one of the guys in the group suddenly and randomly said to me, "Show me your foot." Curious but not alarmed, I slipped off one of my flats and stood barefoot on the chapel floor for a couple of seconds. At that point he pronounced my feet "not bad", but said that when he got married, he was going to marry a girl with "pretty feet".

 # When my husband told me that he was no longer interested in continuing our marriage, and I asked him why, he said it was because I did not respect him as a man or as a husband, and did not care about the things that were important to him. When I asked for an example of my showing disrespect or not caring about something that was important to him, he pointed out that he had been telling me for several years that I was too fat, and I had showed contempt for him by not addressing this problem.

 # I got engaged for the first time at 19. When we tried to set a wedding date, my new fiance chose a mid-December Saturday during the holiday break. I hate winter and cold; my home church is rural and can be hard to get to in winter; I didn't want to squeeze a wedding in during a short school vacation. But when I said all this, he told me that none of it mattered, as his choice was that we would be getting married at the Chicagoland church where his father was a pastor, and the members of that congregation were busy and important--they could not be expected to travel to the middle of nowhere in downstate Illinois. Not only that, but getting married at a semester break instead of waiting until spring would help our financial aid, which made the date a financial decision, and it's the man who makes the financial decisions. When I said I didn't think this was a workable model for our relationship, and we should put the brakes on any date until we could get on the same page, he gave me an ultimatum, saying I either agreed to marry him on that day or not at all. When I said I could not go forward like that, he demanded his ring back. Afterwards, he let our whole Bible college campus know how devastated he was that I had broken up with him. When he began stalking me, I was universally shamed for "stringing him along". This lasted for three years.

 # Working in a ministry position that involved many community meetings with other ministry leaders, a male co-worker came into my office, shut the door, and began to explain to me why I needed to immediately stop having work meetings with men in public places like restaurants, as these meetings "looked like a date". I was divorced at this time, and he said he knew that I "didn't have a marriage to worry about", but that I needed to be responsible for the marriages of the men who met with me, and this was not good for their marriages. Besides, he said, "you work with the single moms, and we don't want these moms thinking they can do what you're doing."

 # In my undergraduate World Missions class, one of the assignments was to complete a spiritual gift inventory. When I turned mine in with its very clear results showing I was strongly gifted in leadership and administration, my professor returned the graded copy with his handwritten note in the margin--"Sounds like great qualities for a pastor's wife!" 

# The summer that my first engagement was broken, I went on a three-month mission trip to work with a church plant in Canada. The missionary I was working with told me that it sounded to him as though I hadn't "respected" my fiance the way I should. I was offended at this suggestion, but I eventually came to understand that by "respect" he did not mean "have respect for", as a person. He meant "obey," as in the way his wife, for example, would not wear any clothing that showed her arms or shoulders, because he said so. So I had ruined my relationship, by doing things like refusing when my fiance told me to find a new doctor because he wasn't comfortable with me seeing a male one.

 #After my divorce, a lay leader at my church told me how disappointed he was that he'd been fooled into believing we'd had a "real Christian marriage".

# Sitting in a work meeting with a colleague, we were discussing the need for churches to invest in programs that were in touch with the real lives of people in the community, and met a felt need. The only two people in this meeting were myself, a divorced woman, and him, a married man. He posited that churches should hold marriage classes and seminars, because, he said, they have *universal* appeal--"Everyone wants to improve their marriage."

5 Things I Will Never Do Again

 I will never again accept love that doesn't honor and cherish.

I was raised to believe that love doesn't keep score--doesn't look out for its own interests, doesn't draw the line at giving 50%, doesn't count the cost. And these things are true, when love is healthy and reciprocal and safe. However, my commitment to them in the absence of any other concerns has led me to put my own needs and well-being, not just on the back burner, but completely off the stove.

I was lucky enough to get a second chance, with a love that gave and gave and gave. I got something that many people never get, the opportunity to be loved by someone who wanted my best above all else, who rejoiced over my success, who gave me a safe space to live and learn and grow. The fact of the matter is, I'm not looking for love again at all. I've been so fortunate, I've had love like so many people only dream of, and I couldn't ask for anything more. But one thing I can say without hesitation is that if love ever comes into my life again, I will never, ever again settle for less than I've had.

 I will never again fail to stand up for my kids. 

There were a lot of years during which my top priority was to make my family work. In order to do this, I believed, it was necessary for everyone to give and to forgive. I still believe that, and in healthy relationships this dynamic of reciprocal grace is a key foundation. However, like most wise principles for working relationships, this can morph into something dysfunctional and damaging if it doesn't exist within healthy and appropriate limits.

I expected my kids to give and forgive in ways that were harmful to them. I allowed them to experience mistreatment as part of a relationship, when they had no ability or power to knowingly consent to a sacrifice like that. They were too young to understand how or where to set their own boundaries, and it was my responsibility to teach this to them, model it for them, and set healthy and protective boundaries for them in the meantime, and I failed at this. 

One time--once--and only when I felt there was nothing left to lose, I gathered my resolve and stood between my child and his attacker, not caring about the consequences. It was good, and scary, and I felt brave and dangerous and right. But it was long overdue. My kids deserved better from me, and there won't be another time when they don't get it.

 I will never again consider my mental and emotional well-being an unnecessary luxury.

I used to evaluate everything in life based on one simple question--"Do I need it?" By this I meant, can I live without this thing? If whatever was in question was not something I needed to physically live, it pretty much failed the test. I would not invest time and energy, or especially spend money, on anything that wasn't necessary. I wouldn't grant myself margin or give myself any slack for any needs that weren't unavoidable.

A lot of things have changed my perspective on this. For one thing, as a parent, I realized I regarded my children's needs completely differently than my own. This raised the question of why my own wellness would be of less value than theirs. On top of that, being loved by someone who cares for your total well-being makes you start to suspect that your well-being is worth caring for. Having cancer also makes you take a look at your life with a different perspective. And frankly, some of the shift is probably just getting old, and hopefully gaining some wisdom to go with it.

So the older I get, the more I've changed my idea of what it means to need something. If my kids asked for a mental health day off school, they got it, and if I needed one, I took it. I've re-evaluated my priorities. I do cut myself some slack. I work a lot harder to take care of myself and the people around me in ways that are about more than survival, and I'll never go back.

I will never again judge my body by toxic cultural standards around weight and attractiveness.

Wow, guys. This is a big one. And to be honest, it's hard. I haven't mastered it. I still slip. But it is so, so important.

Something major had to happen for me to get to this place. The messages of fat-shaming and the cultural pressures around women's standards of attractiveness came home to live with me. And in order to survive this, I had to completely detox myself from any form of buy-in. So here's where I'm at today. I don't shame myself around food. I don't ever eat anything because of feelings of guilt or obligation. I choose food that's good for my body, that tastes good, that makes me feel good. I eat in ways that support my relationships and my larger life priorities. I participate and I celebrate and I nourish myself. I'm not afraid of the scale--I weigh myself. I'm not afraid to lose weight if there's a reason--I had a medical issue this last year that I knew I could improve by taking off a little, so I lost 15 pounds. But I reject the idea that losing weight is automatically good and something to be congratulated about. Losing weight is neutral. Gaining weight is neutral. Weight is morally neutral. No matter what that number says on the scale, I can be healthy, happy, beautiful, and worthy of love. And I'll remind myself of that as many times as I need to.

I will never again measure my worth by my productivity.

OK, well, that's a lie. I totally will. But this one is aspirational.

Several years ago, in a blazing hot early September, while camping on my parents' property, my mom asked the group of us if we would pick one of my parents' apple trees. She'd done it herself the year before, she said, but just wasn't feeling into it this year. We quickly agreed and set to it. I will readily admit that I was the first one to quit and go inside for a few minutes' break in the air conditioning. I came back out to find the rest of the crew dropping off as well. Rick was the only one who worked the whole time, completely harvesting every usable apple on the tree. Understand, my mother, in her 70's, had previously done this task herself.

If you know my parents, this doesn't surprise you, because you already know that they're an unstoppable machine. Both in their late 70's now, they are starting to slow down, but the two of them can still outwork people half their age. All my life, I've planned for their visits by compiling a task list of things that would take me weeks to accomplish, because they come, they see, and they conquer. They are really a marvel.

What has also taken me all my life, though, is to learn to view this as my parents' unique gift, rather than the basic standard for all human life. It was great to grow up in a family that attacked life like the Incredibles every day and always came out on top. And to be honest, most of my life I've had a pretty high capacity myself, at least compared to most people, if not to my mom and dad. But since 2019, I've slowed down a lot, and that's brought on a lot of uncomfortable confrontations with guilt, shame, depression, inadequacy, and all the feelings associated with not living up to my own expectations (and what I imagine the expectations of others to be).

I don't know what the future holds for me in this area. Maybe I'll go back to kicking life's ass, and maybe I won't. But either way, I hope I'll make peace with the fact that I don't have to in order to be a worthwhile human, and maybe even be able to know that I'm actually still doing a good job.

Amy Cooper and the Gaslighting of Racism in America

Comedian Ray Romano highlighted many of the events and relationship foibles of marriage and family life in his sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. In one episode that I always found particularly thought-provoking, Ray and his father try to teach his newly-engaged brother how to pretend incompetence at a task, so that he won't have to complete a job his fiance has asked him to do. In predictable sitcom fashion, everything goes wrong, the men get exposed for their pretend incompetence, and a battle between men and wives breaks out. In the end, though, the women lose their upper hand when the men figure out that perhaps their wives have been pretending incompetence at tasks they don't want to do as well. The thing that sticks most in my memory about this entire episode is the dawning look of outrage and vindication on Ray's face when he experiences the sudden realization that Debra actually could learn how to set the VCR.

Everyone's reason for pretending in this episode, of course, is to avoid taking responsibility. If you can't understand what needs to be done, you obviously can't be expected to do anything about it. Both sides in this story rationalize their behavior differently--the men claim that the women "really want to do everything themselves anyway", and the women say they "already do everything else", so both feel justified in their pretense. But then why pretend? Well, that's simple. If everyone admitted that they could understand the needs and were capable of meeting them, they would also have had to admit that they just didn't want to do what was needed.

Racism in America is a longstanding, complex problem that is deeply rooted in our emotions, our identities, our beliefs about and experiences of ourselves and others. Facing it and making attempts to address it can seem overwhelming, especially for white Americans on whom the bulk of this burden must rest. It can require us to see things that are very hurtful and upsetting, about our world, others who we care about, and ourselves. It can cause us to make some painful recalculations about the way we have understood people, events, and stories in the past. It can necessitate that we change our thoughts, ideas, language, and many aspects of our behavior. It is our job, but there is no question--it will make us uncomfortable, and it will give us difficult work to do. It has been far easier, I am afraid, to simply say, "Oh, you know I can never figure out that VCR."

Our black friends, co-workers, and community members have been trying for time long remembered to make us see the need, but as white people, we have been very convincing in our inability to see or understand. We have been so convincing that I believe at times we have convinced ourselves; some of us really do believe that we think the issue is about respect for the flag, or that we are hurt on behalf of other lives that should also matter. No matter how many statistic are cited, no matter how many stories are told, no matter how many videos surface, we have still responded in numbers too large by saying that we just don't see the problem that black people are talking about, or that we can't understand the issues being raised as ones of racism. In a recent survey on race issues, 77% of Republican participants said that this country's biggest racial problem was "seeing discrimination where it does not exist." (I'm not picking on Republicans at all; the survey data is reported this way for several reasons, one of which is to account for the factor of race.)

It has been easier, white friends, to not see the problem. By which I mean it has been easier for us. Our insisted-upon lack of understanding and racial incompetence has allowed us to excuse ourselves from responsibility; it has left our friends of color to bear the consequences and do the work;  it has created the illusion that they are the ones "being crazy", being unreasonable, creating problems.  This is gaslighting at its finest. After all, if we acknowledged to our black brothers and sisters that we could see and understand the problem--if we acknowledged this even to ourselves--we would have to admit that we have simply chosen to do nothing, that we do not want to do what is needed. But Amy Cooper has changed all that.

When Amy Cooper encountered Christian Cooper in Central Park's Ramble this Memorial Day, as the confrontation escalated, most of us have seen that moment on video when she pointed her finger at him and announced she intended to call the police and tell them that "an African-American man is threatening my life." I cannot know what that moment was like for people of color. But I know what I imagined it might be like. I imagined Ray Romano's face, learning that Debra knew how to set the VCR. Amy Cooper's mask came off, both literally and figuratively as that threat was made, and with it, the mask of all white America. It is impossible not to see that she knew her threat was meaningful precisely because of racism. Without meaning to, she stripped the facade from our pretense of incompetence and incomprehension. Amy Cooper pulls back the curtain, and we can no longer escape the discomfort, the work, or the pain by pretending not to see. Amy Cooper proves we have had the ability to see all along.

Saturday

All great stories have a moment when all is lost.

We're drawn to these stories, these tales of narrow victory over defeat, the last-minute success of the rebels just when things are at their blackest and it looks like the Empire has won. Something in them speaks to our soul, I think. There is a reason why we feel ourselves drawn to the underdog, that unlikely champion, who proves in the end that love and truth are more powerful than whatever seemingly inconquerable forces have been amassed against him. The more impossible his triumph appears, the more joyful, the more just it seems.

This Passion week is no exception. As we commemorate that Greatest Story, we remember not just the joy, but that the champion falls, the lion dies, the messiah is in the tomb. Salvation is not just snatched from the jaws of loss at the last moment--it is actually swallowed up in defeat. Death has the victory. There are three days of mourning.

We understand that it had to happen this way because you cannot truly, fully defeat something until it first defeats you. Otherwise, your victory is hollow; there is always the chance that it might be overthrown, should some greater challenge arise. Every true champion must defeat the strongest enemy, must neutralize the greatest threat, must do so at the height of its power. Death must do its worst.

In this Easter season, I sometimes hear it said or preached, "It's Friday, but Sunday's coming!' We hold out the promise that just when things seem darkest, the greatest of victories is just around the corner. How easy it is to see, for all of us Monday morning quarterbacks. As we celebrate now, so far in the future, we have the advantage of hindsight that removes any element of suspense or doubt. We know the end of the story. Even though the battle is lost, the war is not over--the enemy trembles, the table cracks, the King rises up. From our vantage point, where, then, is death's sting? But truly, in that interval of defeat, hindsight is not present. Death has triumphed, and it is the ultimate power in the universe. All is lost. In that time of mourning, between Friday and Sunday, the future is uncertain. We do not know what will happen next--all we know is what has happened now.

The only hope of victory must come by faith--it cannot come by sight. And right now, I find that I can't muster the confidence to be so certain. The immediate truth of loss is so present, so powerful. I have lost my sense of the ancient magic. Sunday may come, with its promise of resurrection, of restoration, of life; but I am stuck in Saturday, and today, I've seen with my own eyes that death has the victory. I wait in the dark, which is always where hope comes. I do not know what will happen next.

The One Thing

There's so much in life, I find, that needs fixing. It seems like every day, there are things that just don't go the way they should. Things break. Plans fail. People disappoint. Life is full of bumps and bruises, pains and problems.

Some of us are problem-solvers. We take joy in fixing these things, both for ourselves and others. Our fix-it impulses pull us into situations all the way from small appliance repair to major life crises, all with the same motivation--to make everything all right. I guarantee you, though, that even those of us who are problem solvers--maybe especially us--also need fixing. And beyond fixing, we need healing, mending. Always, for everyone, the journey of simply being alive in the world has brought hurts, shame, and pain to us in ways that are deep and shaping. Who or what can help us mend?

In most cases, I believe that significant relationships are where we find healing and wholeness, relief from the pains and brokenness of our past. And in my life, Rick was the fixer. He knew how to fix a sump pump, reboot the wifi, unclog a toilet. He could help think through difficult decisions, bring clarity to hard conversations, find guidance in confusing situations. He was always willing to offer his own hard work, practical help, and reflective wisdom. He could stop a whole evening of family fighting in my house, just by showing up. Wherever he went, he brought with him an aura of calm, and left behind a wake of peace.

For me, he not only smoothed the rough edges of daily living, but his healing touch sank deeply into my past, into hurts and griefs and false beliefs that have shaped me in painful and destructive ways since childhood. Listening to him preach every Sunday, listening to him talk in our everyday conversations, just seeing him live in a way that brought lofty truths to intimate life, helped me shape a new understanding of beliefs that have always been a part of me. I learned from him to see grace and love in new ways. Always, I've labored to meet the standards of my own faith, to do well at doing right. But Rick's faith was not about being right or doing right; it had room for failure, room for weakness, room for doubt. The grace I've offered myself has been dispensed sparingly, as a necessity. The grace Rick spoke of and lived out was never grudging, never stingy--it was generous, joyful, more than enough. Love, in the pictures Rick painted, was about others. It was never about how to change anyone, fix anyone. It was only about extending itself out, inviting others in. And most of all, love was for everyone, the ultimate truth. It was lavish and unconditional, welcoming and complete. It was the core truth of our existence, for ourselves, for others, and as the foundation for a community of the Beloved. It was for me.

In my adult life, love and I had not done well together. Love had meant revolving in orbit around someone else and their needs, always in the shadow; Rick showed me that it meant emerging into the light, having someone else rejoice in my happiness and success. All the love I had to give had fallen into a black hole, a chasm that could not be filled, absorbed like tiny pinpricks of light being consumed by the darkness; and so, no matter how much, it had never been enough. I learned now that love can be received with joy and returned; and when it is, it is multiplied many times over, making love increase for both the giver and the receiver, until giving and receiving are indistinguishable acts and there is nothing but more, hundreds and thousands of times more love. In all the broken places where I had lost sight of my own beauty, he found it and gave it back to me, reflecting it back in a thousand truthful glimpses with the simplest of daily interactions. Before, love in my life was like a cactus, its sparse beauty surviving and even thriving sometimes on the tiny streams of water buried deeply in the sand, perhaps able even to burst into flower with the faintest sprinkling of rain, yet with pain and danger always present. Love with Rick was like a lush and spreading old-growth apple tree, green and inviting, fragrant with blossoms, cool and shady, heavy with fruit, bursting with fire. Its peaceful beauty nourished the soul in every season.

And now, I suppose, comes winter, when it lies sleeping, bare and silent in the cold.

Once, after a tearful outburst over some hurt or frustration, with my face buried in his shoulder and his arms around me, I asked plaintively, "Is there anything you can't make better?" With that slow, self-deprecating chuckle, he said drily, "Oh, I imagine there's a thing or two."

I didn't believe you then, my dear. After all, you mended everything in me that was broken. As always, though, I know now that you were right. I've found the one thing that you can't fix. I don't blame you; even your powers had to have their limit. But even though you cannot come this time and make everything all right, rest assured, rick champ--you are still the only one.

How I love you.

New Every Morning

I'm writing this at 9:00 on a Wednesday night. Wrapped up in a cozy blanket on my couch, drink at hand, with the cold wind blowing outside, I feel able to sit in my quiet house and think, reflect, pray, even write. I am able to have everyday conversations about trivial matters with my son as he wanders by. In fact, I feel as if I might be OK. Tomorrow's tasks seem surmountable. I make plans for the day. They start, obviously, with getting out of bed, which seems, at the moment, so easy.

 And then I go to bed, and sleep.

Sleep is what I need right now, everyone tells me, and I'm certainly doing enough of it. I know it's good for both my body and soul, and it is a blessed reprieve from consciousness, if I can say it that way. The trouble with sleep is, it comes to an end with the morning. And in the morning, it's a whole new ball game.

On that first terrible day, when I took to my bed for the first time, I explained to Laura why I needed to re-read Option B, the book on resilience that Sheryl Sandberg wrote after the sudden death of her husband. "I don't remember anything she said!" I wailed, sobbing, "Not any of it! I don't know how to be resilient!" And Laura, always wise, said calmly, "She wasn't resilient on Day Zero. You don't have to do that now."

How comforting--what a relief it was--to know that I didn't need to be resilient, didn't need to be strong, didn't need to be able to get up and start again, there on that first day in the heart of my grief. And Laura was right. It's no longer Day Zero. But still, every morning, I wake up to realize my loss in some ways as if it's the first time. I find that whatever gains, whatever strength, I seem to have acquired the day before have disappeared. I am starting again at square one. It's as if I am caught in a bizarre cross between the movies Groundhog Day and 50 First Dates, where each day repeats itself just like the one before, and on each day there is a terrible truth that I must learn. The pain is new every morning, and every morning, it's just as hard to get out of bed as it was the day before.

Some days I don't make it.

In some part of my brain, none of this makes sense. I grow impatient with myself, uncomprehending of what could possibly be so difficult. Always, I have been a person who kept moving in the face of hardship, who fulfilled my responsibilities no matter the obstacle, and this is what I have come to expect from myself. But always in the past, I have faced an enemy who remains known over time, who doesn't change from moment to moment--never one like this that is fresh with each new look, each new thought, each new day.

In the actual movie 50 First Dates, Lucy does start to adjust more quickly every day. It's not that the terrible truth isn't still there to learn, but learning it becomes easier, little by little, and there's room for it to be seen alongside the joy and meaning that is also present in life. Faithful friends tell me that this is how it will be for me also, in some ways--that loss doesn't change, but it somehow gets easier, makes room for other things. That when I'm ready, getting out of bed won't be so hard.

I'm grateful for people around me who understand this better than I do. I'm grateful for those who have assured me that time will heal, even though from my vantage point that time seems far away. I'm grateful for the prayers offered by friends, acquaintances, and even strangers on my behalf. And I'm hopeful that as grief continues to be new every morning, there will be new grace to meet it.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
(Lamentations 3:22–23 NIV)

All Things New

Come broken and weary
Come battered and bruised
My Jesus makes all things new
All things new

Come lost and abandoned
Come blown by the wind
He'll bring you back home again
Home again

Rise up, oh you sleeper, awake

The light of the dawn is upon you
Rise up, oh you sleeper, awake

He makes all things new
All things new

Recently, at Salt & Light, we had something new happen. Someone who was a part of our community left us. By itself, this isn't unusual. We are creating a motley, beautiful, strangely assorted family here, and it's messy. People often leave for various reasons--some exciting, such as a great move or a new job, and some a little less joyous, such as incarceration, hospitalization, or job termination. This time, though, one of our community departed through death. We lost our longtime volunteer and receptionist, Donna.

Donna was on my reception team, and she and I got to know each other well over the years we have worked together. There is pain in her story, as with many who come to Salt & Light. (If you are interested in hearing more about her journey, the first two minutes of this video will paint a better picture, but I'll warn you, I need the tissues at 1:47 every. Single. Time.)  Her unique experience equipped her with a few of what her son, at her funeral service, lovingly described to me as her "quirks".

It would be easy, if you didn't know the whole story, to see some of these quirks of Donna's as flaws, instead of the remarkable gifts that they were. For example, at first glance, she may have seemed like a fragile person. Even she felt that way sometimes, I think, as we all do. But in her life, the things she had overcome seem nearly insurmountable. She had carried a heavier load than I can imagine bearing. She had endured things that might have ended me. Even now, her own medical issues were overwhelming, and every day, her body tried to betray her in some new way, but no matter how exhausting or difficult her circumstance became, she continued to find new ways to work around, to accommodate, to overcome and keep going. Her strength amazed me--I wish I could aspire to a fraction of it.

She also seemed to be easily frightened, sometimes by small things--it was easy to startle her by appearing too suddenly in the doorway behind her. But in reality, her bravery was astonishing. She had faced terror and death in her own experience; she had taken enormous risks to save her life, herself, her children. She was intimately aware of every way, every day, that danger and harm lurk just out of sight. And yet she faced those odds, on her own, unblinking, every day that she went out to face the world.

Sometimes Donna seemed to say just the wrong thing at just the wrong time, in just the wrong way. But in my office, next to the reception desk, I can overhear the conversations with callers and people who walk in to the front desk, and I know how many times Donna's "wrong thing" was just the right thing for someone. She spoke to everyone with a response she thought would be right for someone who was hurting or afraid; she assumed that was true of everyone she spoke to. And isn't it, really? I have heard her throw that lifeline out to so many, and many times she has thrown it out to me, by making that assumption. I envied her the wisdom, sometimes, to have the right words for people who are barely hanging on.

Donna saw the darkness but looked for the light. Every day I saw her we laughed. She knew how to find happiness and gratitude in the smallest things. I believe this is not in spite of, but because she was so well-acquainted with all the ways that pain and loss can come to us in this life. Heartache sharpens your senses for joy. It's a heavy burden to carry, however--this load of suffering that is not only your own, but belongs to others, belongs to the world. That wisdom in grief comes at a cost. Your spirit, however content, grows weary.

I was on a six-week medical leave when I got the call, and hadn't seen Donna in person for more than a month. I didn't get to say goodbye. I miss her. I take some comfort, though, in her last words to me, a text that said, "I know, because you always tell me, that I am so strong." I hope that this small gift I seem to have given her was even a small bit of what she gave to me in the time we knew each other.  She had begun to talk, recently, of moving to Florida, a place she had only visited once, but she spoke with such longing of being somewhere that her soul felt at peace. Donna was not afraid to die, and I admit, my grief at her passing is not sadness for her, but selfishly, is simple pain at my own loss.

I realize that since the moment I heard that she had left, had gone to sleep and kept on sleeping, I have been thinking of this Andrew Peterson song, All Things New, as "Donna's song." I think it would speak to her, my friend who knew so intimately about brokenness, pain, and loss, and who nevertheless celebrated each small joy in the world.  Every day, Donna got up again, no matter how huge the obstacles or how great the cost, to face the darkness and to try, once again, with all her might, to make things a little brighter. And now at last, there is nothing left to do but rise up--wake up to what she hoped and longed for.

My Jesus makes all things new.

White on White

In an earlier post, I wrote about a thread on Facebook, on the page of a popular black blogger, in which she prompted her black readers to ask white readers one question that they'd always wanted to know. In that previous post, I described how, while the thread contained a great deal of good discussion and what seemed to be real discovery for many people, there was also a theme that kept popping up among white respondents who did not find themselves identifying with some of the questions that were asked. Time after time, commenters who were white, but did not recognize themselves in some particular aspect of a question, responded by giving some version of the answer "I guess I must not really be white," or even, "I guess I must be black."

This joke, I wrote, can be a joke for people who have the option of seeing their race as inconsequential. Like other serious subjects, it is easy to joke about if it has not touched you in ways that are painful or difficult. If it is not a matter of life or death.

Today, however, I'd like to pose a different question. And that is, when is a joke not a joke?

I think that most of us haven't reached adulthood without realizing that at the root of all jokes is some kernel of truth, or at least the intention of one. All of us, I imagine, have at some point been on the receiving end of a "joking" statement that hit too close to home, or was knowingly meant to hurt. That's a negative example, but there are positive ones also--in fact, I'd guess that most of the jokes that the majority of us encounter in our lives are well-meaning, and often occur without any conscious intentional subtext. Nevertheless, it's the truth behind the joke that makes it funny, and I also think that can tell us something important about what the speaker is really saying, even if it's not something they are conscious of trying to communicate.

In all these responses where white people joked about not being white, I believe there was an intended kernel of truth that is important to see and name. Despite all the protests admonishing me to lighten up, enjoy the fun, and appreciate the joke when I suggested that maybe the joke wasn't appropriate, I believe that at some level, the joke wasn't really even a joke.

What I heard, over and over, was a striving to separate from whiteness--to say, "I'm not THAT kind of white." Some people even went farther in putting this into words. I saw responses that said, "There is Florida person white and other person white." More than one person adopted, "I am invited-to-the-cookout white and you are I-want-to-see-the-manager white." As a white person, I heard other white people working hard to say two things. First, "I am one of the good white people. No, really. I'm a good one." And second, "I'm like you. We think alike. I know just what you're talking about. All those other white people might be clueless as hell, but I get it."

I believe I can hear these things being said because I can identify with the impulse to say them. I think our shared history in this country, a history of racism and oppression, acknowledged by all, not only has deep roots on which we are all drawing, but casts long shadows in which we are all still living. Racial discrimination and inequality in this country are not things of the past. And while both the marginalized and the privileged may wish it were so, we are coming to that wish with different motivations, and often with different understandings of how to make that reality.

People and communities of color understand that the only way to overcome and move forward from our past is to face it head on. Our legacy of racism and injustice must be acknowledged honestly in order to be reckoned with. But for those of us whose white skin has afforded us generations of privilege at the expense of people of color, there can be a deep desire to move away from the shameful heritage of oppression in our past by a process of disassociation--to say, "I am not one of the people who caused this, I am not one who perpetuates it, I have no desire to prolong it." We feel the need to distinguish ourselves from the bad actors of both the past and the present. This is not only because it is painful to connect ourselves to unjustifiable wrongdoing, but because it is difficult to admit that our connection to it could create feelings of anger, resentment, and animosity, and that it's reasonable and appropriate if those feelings are directed toward us, even if we aren't personally, intentionally, individually responsible for specific instances of this wrongdoing. It would be much easier, much more pleasant, to put all that behind us--not only to expect to be already forgiven, but to expect it to be understood that we don't need to be forgiven, that we have nothing to be forgiven for--and to move on to being friends. We would like to focus on being accepted by each other, on being liked by each other, on being like each other. Instead of doing the hard work of listening, hearing, understanding, we would like people of color to know that we already understand. That we never would have made those mistakes in the first place like our ancestors did, like those other people did. Because we are the cool white people, the woke white people, the nice white people, the innocent white people. We get it. And we hope this will make everything OK again.

The problem with all this is that, of course, it can never make everything OK. Racism and discrimination continue to exist. White privilege is still real. And one of the things that allows these injustices to endure is a persistent refusal by those of us who benefit from them to allow ourselves to be made uncomfortable by acknowledging that benefit, which is the bright dividing line between us, and in which we are complicit. But the line is still there--our refusal to acknowledge it, as with so many things, makes it no less true. Paradoxically, our refusal only highlights the reality of the distance between our experience and the experience of those on the other side of the line. We don't get it. We can't get it, and we won't get it. And the worst thing we could do, under these circumstances, is insist on acting as though we do.

I know all this is difficult to swallow, but if we can make it past the worst of it, there is good news. The good news is, fellow white people, we don't have to get it, we just have to receive it. We need to listen--humbly, and without defensiveness; we need to make our best efforts to understand how our actions have impacted others and continue to do so; we need to take the initiative in finding out how we can be an ally; we need to be open to hearing about our own mistakes. But we cannot gloss over or seek to eradicate our differences by distancing ourselves from our white experience. It's important that we respect the dignity and make room for the voices of people of color, but it is equally important that we own the responsibility and the power of our whiteness. We must be able to see ourselves clearly and come to terms with that truth in order to move forward together honestly and with real humility, not just shame or guilt. The barriers between us can never come down until we learn to accept and appreciate both ourselves and others, just as we are.

White Noise

Yesterday, on Facebook, the source of much of the world's troubles, a popular black blogger posted this query:

Okay black people...

ask white people one

question you always

wanted to know 🤣

The resulting thread was fascinating. Responses were funny, touching, wise, and real. I learned a LOT. Some themes just kept recurring. For example, white people, if you, like me, were under the impression that mac and cheese can be a main dish, we have all apparently made a grave error. Discussions ranged from the absurd--"What is a Hooting Nanny?? Did I spell that right?"--to the sublime--"You do know Jesus wasn't white, right?" 

Soon, though, another theme began to make itself apparent. Not all white people recognized themselves in all the questions. And when that happened, white people who don't let their dogs lick their mouths, or who don't put raisins in their potato salad (WHO DOES THIS, I MEAN IT), or who always use a washcloth when they shower, began responding with a similar comment--"I guess I must not be white!"  White person after white person responded to questions by saying, "I sure don't say, 'I'm just going to sneak by you', and I don't know anyone who does--I guess I must be black!"

At some point, one of the commenters called this out. "What a white person response," she said.  I was relieved, honestly, that someone else brought it up, because I was feeling uneasy. Which is what I said in my own comment of agreement. Maybe, instead, we could say, "This one doesn't apply to me," or "I don't do any of these things," I suggested. But it seemed to me like maybe it's a bit disingenuous to answer by distancing ourselves from our white experience, when the whole point of the post is to elicit honest discussion about it. After all, even if we can't relate to the specific question, we are white. We're not black. So maybe, although it is important to acknowledge what we have in common, it's not respectful to act like we're the same.

You might be able to guess what happened next.

Replies started rolling in to my comment. I was being too serious, they informed me.  People were just joking. Couldn't I keep things light, funny? Why did I have to ruin everything? It's all in good fun, there is no harm done. Why did I, one person asked me, have to make everything about skin color, when we are all just humans? 

Now, I think it's pretty obvious that the entire point of the original post was to spark discussion between people of different skin colors, so this was hardly a difference being raised by me. Also, on this post, questions have been asked such as, "If you're not a racist, why don't you speak up when you see racism?" So I also don't believe I was personally bringing down all 800K+ commenters with my seriousness. However, if you guessed that all the people who immediately chimed in to tell me that it is fine for white people to make this joke, and I am wrong for suggesting that it might not be OK, are, in fact, white people, you would be correct.

I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about this, and I might be wrong and all those other white people might be right. However, here's what I do know. I'm a single mom. I haven't always been one, just for the last six years. Just while my kids went through adolescence, so no big deal. 🙄  Sometimes, I will hear a married mom, when her husband is out of town on a trip, or is working long hours, or is temporarily physically separated from her for some reason, jokingly talk about how she is a "single mom for the weekend", or some other similar phrase. And I know this. You can't be a single mom for the weekend. Not for the day, not for a month, not for a while. If you have a partner in life, in responsibility, in investment in your children, with an equal share of hope and dread and fear and joy in everything that you carry together, you are not a single mom. 

Before anyone gets all upset (as if that didn't already happen back there when I started talking about white people), I'm not trying to say that every mom's job isn't a hard one. We are all just slugging it out the best we can. But the experience of a single parent is a different kind of hard. And it's a kind that is difficult to understand unless that experience has been yours. It's OK. There's no blame and there's no shame. But it's not all right for you to invoke it so casually. It's an unintended, well-meaning blow to those of us who are just white-knuckling it through the real thing. 

I'm not the first to point this out. There are hundreds of articles, blog posts, and online discussions about it--Google it and you'll see. And it's not the only thing of its kind. Many of you may have just recently seen all the social media posts around April Fool's Day, asking people to realize that it's not a funny joke to read your fake pregnancy announcement for someone who has just experienced their third miscarriage. Another example is the conversation I had with my teenage son about why some girl was "overreacting" to a joke someone (thankfully not him) made, that she called sexual harassment. To you, I told him, it was just a dick joke, because to you, it can be. It can be that way to everyone who never had to hear an unwanted dick joke when they were just being a professional, respectfully doing their job. Those of us who are parenting together can be unaware of the challenges of parenting alone, and those of us who haven't battled infertility can be cavalier about surprise pregnancies, and those who don't feel sexually endangered (largely men) are often unconscious of the constant vigilance that is routinely experienced by women.

We all have some area in which we have been untouched by pain or struggle, and this can make us not only insensitive, but unseeing, to the difference between our experience and that of others. For those of us who are white, our race has often been an invisible experience, seen only by those who don't share it with us. Our whiteness is so taken for granted that it is simply part of the backdrop of our lives, real white noise--constant yet unheard, blocking out all other sound. It seems harmless to us to set it aside, to say, lightheartedly, "Well I guess I'm really a black person!" But when I listen to my non-white friends, race is not something they can jokingly set aside. They cannot un-see their own skin color, cannot, as one of my scolding commenters on the Facebook thread told me, feel free to "identify" with whatever race they choose, black or white. In many ways, blackness defines their experience of the world, and it is a vastly different experience than anything myself and my white friends can identify with just because we might think we share an equal knowledge of how to correctly season chicken or discipline our children.

The bottom line is that jokes are made by people who can afford them--the people who have power, or safety, or resources. But if you feel unsafe, the constant recipient of unwanted attention that invades your space and violates your bodily autonomy; if you are in pain and grieving the loss of something deeply wanted and longed for; if you are struggling just to make it through the day, deeply convinced that you are never doing enough, can never be enough; if you continuously experience a deck stacked against you and the constant invalidation of your dignity, your personhood--it's hard for the joke to sit lightly. As a result, when we are in the power position, the position to joke, we can instead unknowingly hurt, and I think that means we have a responsibility to be more careful. All I'm saying is maybe we should consider it. I'd like to try.

Laura Knows

In one of my favorite pieces of writing, an article called 7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable, author David Wong describes how the number of close and trusted friends that most of us have in our lives is drastically dropping. Most of us, he says, have at most two people we feel we could confide in, and about a quarter of us have no one.

Given these statistics, I've been fortunate in my life to have a number of close and trusted friends, many of whom I've either been lucky enough to know for a lifetime, or hope to know for a lifetime from now. But for the last 20 years, the good fortune that has been a part of my adult life in a way that goes beyond friendship--that has been companion, sister, partner, and soulmate--is Laura.

Laura is the best, in the way that I know that all your best friends are the best. She is smart, and funny, and brave and beautiful. She is faithful, and always has your back. She is the definition of humility, and sacrifices herself for others. She has a list of other good qualities a mile long. But Laura also has a superpower, and it is this--Laura knows.

She knows all the things that I don't know, like how to re-create a perfect replica of Chico's tacos, and how to do math problems that have "infinity" as a possible answer, and how to put a strip of toilet paper over the sensors on those awful automatic flush toilets to keep them from flushing before you want them to. She knows about science. She knows about engineering. She knows about education. She knows about marketing. She knows about pets and shoes and hair and jewelry and how to make tamales without a recipe and how to lay shingles on a roof. She knows the right questions to ask about everything, all the time, even when she's just hearing about that thing for the first time. She knows how to think about things, and how to think about people--how to listen and learn and understand.

Most of all, Laura knows about me.

By that, I mean that Laura knows the real me. There is no part of my life that is off-limits to her, or hidden from her. She knows all my stories, all my secrets. She has been there, not just for me at my best, but for me at my worst, and then some. She doesn't think I'm some otherwordly saint, or wise counselor, or supermom--she knows I'm nothing special. She has seen, and keeps on seeing, all the ways I'm broken, messed up, selfish, prideful, foolish, wrongheaded, and blind. Laura knows exactly who I am.

To be honest, it hurts a little to know that Laura knows all this. I guess I'd like it if she thought I was the most special person, you know? Sort of a perfect person, without all that bad stuff.

But you know what the best part is? Laura does that too. She does that anyway. She believes I am special. The difference is, I just don't have to live up to the impossible standard of being free of all those other things.

Laura has taught me--is teaching me--the most important thing I need to know in life, which is that this is how love works. This is what it means to be the Beloved. She is helping me learn to be less of all those wounded, broken things; and, even when I can't, she is leading me to live better with myself and others. She is doing all this just by loving me as I am--as if I'm the most special just the way I am.

And I am strangely willing to take her word for it, because if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that Laura knows.

Beautiful

Beautiful (adj.) beau·ti·ful \ˈbyü-ti-fəl\: 

Having a quality or aggregate of qualities

 that gives pleasure to the senses or 

pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit

In case you didn't know, I'm a cancer survivor. Every cancer is different, but the particular kind of breast cancer that was discovered at my (fortunately) very early diagnosis almost 10 years ago now is aggressive, destructive, and fast-growing. As a result, treatment for me was comprehensive. Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, drug treatments--whatever we had, we threw at it. I'm luckier than many; my prognosis was good, and my chances of recurrence are low. But my body still bears the marks of the battle.

I've graduated now, finally, to annual follow-up mammograms. It's nice to go less often, but even so, I have been there so much that the routine is familiar. You put on the gown, and answer all the same questions. And then, before the 20 minutes of freezing cold and pain and pressure and holding your breath first because you're told and then because you can't breathe and then again until you hear someone say cheerily from behind the screen of images "Looks good!", there is the moment when you will mark your scar. To clearly identify your scar tissue on the scan, lest it be mistaken for something more ominous, a tiny wire will be shaped and taped along the length of your surgical scar, marking it out for the techs and doctors who will view the films.

At my latest appointment, not that many weeks ago, after the gown and the questions and the rest, the nurse who was prepping me finished her notes, packed up her paperwork, and said briskly, "All right, now let's see your scar."  I lifted the gown in the now-familiar motion, turned and gestured so that she could see, and her businesslike bustle came to an abrupt halt as she drew in her breath and just stared for a moment. "Oh my god," she said. "That's beautiful."

It isn't the first time someone has had that response to my scar. Actually, it's never once been shown to a nurse, doctor, lab tech, or any other medical professional without getting that response, and it's because they know what they are looking at. But if you are not a scar professional, if you don't know what you're seeing when you look at my scar, or at any scar, you might be tempted to look at it as just the opposite of beautiful. Scars are just one of the many things that we often view as physical faults or imperfections--things that destroy beauty.

In my past, I was given that message--that the scar was a flaw, a blemish, something to be ashamed of, something that ruined me. That it made me unlovable. That it destroyed my value. But I am learning, slowly, over time, that it is a thing of beauty. I have had great love and care given to me in my life, have walked through deep valleys, have experienced enormous good fortune. The scar tells all those stories. If I foolishly wished it away, I would erase with it all the power and love its story holds.

I know this is true, because it is true for others besides me. I think of the little one dear to me, and the birthmark that is simply a testimony to the miracle of her existence. Of my own two boys, and all the bumps and scars and faded marks that are the witness to the adventures of their childhood. Of the partner in my life now, and those deep, crinkly laugh lines around his eyes, which cannot come overnight, but tell the story of a life lived oriented toward joy. The marks on our bodies are the marks of our lives. All these things we view negatively, and too often, we can begin to view ourselves negatively because of them, yet all the imperfections that we believe mar us, mark us, are actually the things that illuminate us.

Once upon a time, I was often told that to find me beautiful would require changing the definition of the word; and this, unknowingly, was a profound truth. There is a distortion running deep in our society, a stunted definition of beauty that revolves around an artificial, superficial flawlessness. But if we cannot see beauty in those around us, we are using a faulty definition. A true beauty is found in the stretch marks that tell the story of the birth of our children, the calluses and bruises of hard work done well, and even the generous waistlines that speak of good food, warm hospitality, and time well spent with family and friends. It's found in scars, those stories of battles that have been fought and won, and of those who carried us through them, of things greatly dared and bravely endured, of adventures that have changed us and that define us. These are moments and memories that could not be traded for a superficial snapshot or a slimmer silhouette. These are the beauty marks, the marks of all that matter. This is beautiful.

Monarch

I have never been much of a flowers-and-frills, sunshine and butterfly type of girl, but I love the monarch. 

I first learned to love them from my grandmother, and my mother--as a child, it was simply a routine activity to scout yards and fields, pastures and road ditches, looking for milkweed plants and their tiny inhabitants, the caterpillars that we would take home, house, feed, watch, and eventually release to their new lives. I learned how to recognize the eggs and capture them before the caterpillars had even hatched. I learned how to collect the milkweed leaves and keep them fresh in the refrigerator, and how to use nylon stockings to make the perfect breathable jar lid that doubled as a safe place to attach a chrysalis. Grandma showed me how to use sugar water on a cotton ball to feed the butterflies once they had hatched, until they were ready to leave and fly. 

Once I had children of my own, I passed this part of my childhood on, and my boys became avid monarch caterpillar collectors. The large jars with their homemade lids, the Ziploc bags full of leaves in the refrigerator door, the kamikaze missions to the nearby road ditches for supplies, all became a normal part of the rhythm of our household; and as I've grown older, my love for the monarch has grown and deepened too, as I've come to understand the profound mystery behind its magic.

Often, you will hear people talking about how a butterfly "makes" a chrysalis or a cocoon. But the monarch, like other butterflies, doesn't actually make a chrysalis. (And, a bonus PSA, cocoons are made by moths. Not butterflies. No, not ever.) The chrysalis is not a constructed thing, it is a developmental stage. It is the pupa stage in the life cycle of a butterfly. The monarch, as you can see in the video above, does not make the chrysalis--he simply sheds his skin to reveal it. He has shed his skin many times before, and this last time we see what he has always known, that the chrysalis has been there the whole time, underneath it all.

What does this mean, then, to the story that the caterpillar will go inside a cocoon, this hiding place that he has constructed, and inside, through some secret process of transformation, he will become a butterfly, and then come out? Well, it blows the entire idea out of the water. If the chrysalis is not the caterpillar's construction, but is simply his next stage of becoming, then it is not a hiding place for transformation, but a part of it--what you become while you are becoming a butterfly. We can see that this is true because the chrysalis, far from being a shield that conceals transformation, only to reveal it when it reaches completion, actually becomes more and more clear as transformation takes place, allowing all to see the butterfly inside. And when he sheds his skin, that hard chrysalis shell now thin and brittle, for the final time, there can be no doubt--this is what he has been becoming from the beginning.

So if you are in the process today of transformation, as indeed we all are, understand that transformation is a process that happens from within. We are transformed, as my own Great Story says, by the renewing of our minds--or, as Eugene Peterson puts it in his own translation The Message, "You'll be changed from the inside out." As we grow, we will shed our old skins again and again, and this may even be painful at times, may even require help from those who love us, as in my most dearly loved passage of the Narnia stories, where Aslan's sharp claws dig deep to strip the layers of dragon skin away until only the boy, Eustace, can be seen. But eventually, be seen we will, because what we are becoming is already inside us. The caterpillar skin sheds to reveal the chrysalis, and the chrysalis skin splits to release the butterfly, and by this we know the mystery of the monarch:

The butterfly is inside the caterpillar all along. 

There is no need to worry if right at this moment what is seen may not seem, to the unknowing onlooker, to be worthy--if it looks ugly, or plain, or unfinished, or if it's hard to see the beauty. There is no need to hide our transformation away from the world until it's complete. Everything we will be is inside us, and we are only in the process of becoming.

Eyes Off The Ball

So, as you may have heard recently, I missed my son's school registration and failed to get him signed up for his sophomore year of high school. It wasn't just a one-day thing. I missed the entire two-week period of online registration. And when I was done missing that, I missed the day of make-up walk-in registration.

It's not that I wasn't paying attention. I knew he needed to register for school. It's just that I had a lot of other things going on. His older brother was starting college this fall. I was trying to manage housing assignments, book lists, dorm furnishings, parking permits, financial aid, and all the other things that go along with starting that new venture. Plus, on another front, there were all the things involved in moving a child out of your home. The packing. The cleaning. The organizing. For that whole two weeks, it looked like another house threw up inside of my house. And then there are the normal things that go along with starting school for everyone--haircuts, doctor appointments, new glasses, clothes shopping. Every day, high school registration was on my list. And every day, I thought that in another day or another couple of days I would have the time and money to take care of it. And then it was over.

Moms are supposed to be great at multi-tasking, and most of the time we are. One reason, I think, is because we seem to have been gifted with a brain that is laser-focused on everything that needs to be done. You've heard that saying, "Keep your eye on the ball?" Moms are some of the best people I know at keeping our eyes on the ball, even when there is more than one.

But what happens when there are just too many balls in the air? That saying seems like good and necessary advice if you want to hit it out of the park, which is why it's so often used, but let's face it, folks--it's a BASEBALL analogy. And in baseball there is only one ball. I don't know about you, but I have significantly more than one ball in play at any given time.

All the things I listed above are just the extra things that are happening at a snapshot in time. I haven't even addressed all the balls that have to be kept moving every day, just as a part of living. The house, which has to be cleaned, repaired, maintained. The meals that have to be cooked, the groceries that have to be bought, the dishes that have to be washed and dried and put away. The bills that have to be paid, and paid, and paid. The car that needs fuel and insurance and tags and oil changes and new wipers, tires, brakes.

Oh, and then there's work. Just a minor detail.

And while we are doing all this, there are the children, who need more, so much more, than just being housed and clothed and fed. They need someone to encourage them and comfort them. They need opportunities to have and solve problems, to learn how to have strong, healthy relationships, to find their power and their voice as they increasingly step out into the world. They need to be led, launched, listened to. They need to be loved.

So all these balls I have to juggle are not just the trivia and logistics of living, but also the stuff which makes a life. They are the tasks on my to-do list, plus all the things I need to teach, and model, and pass on. And therefore, of course, all the things I need to learn, understand, improve, and heal--all the ways that I myself need to grow. The spinning, flying, rising and dropping balls represent everything I have yet to do and everything I have yet to do better. So where, I ask you, am I supposed to keep my eye?

It's no wonder the school registration ball was dropped.

I don't know if you've ever tried juggling in real life. I have made a couple of half-hearted efforts at it, just for entertainment, and based on them, I can assure you, I'm not a juggler. But I've recently learned from someone who actually possesses this skill what is required to do it successfully. It turns out you have to take your eyes off the ball.

No one, apparently, can actually simultaneously watch that many moving objects. If you try to keep your eye on all of them, monitor them, catch them and release them all at just the right time, you will inevitably lose track of one, then more than one, then try to go back and catch the ones you have lost, and the whole operation will come crashing down and they will fall.

The secret, it seems, is to pick a focal point beyond the balls.

When you focus your eye on a distant point, rather than trying to watch each individual ball, you're able to see the big picture--it lets you pay attention to all the balls at once. You can know where your hands need to be for each one, the perfect time to catch and to release, because you can see them moving together, making up a coordinated whole.

In my life then, with all the many balls that I have in the air, what is the thing I can keep my eyes focused on? 

It can't be the house or the finances or my work. They are still all just balls. It can't even be kids or family or all the people, places, and causes I love, even though those are the things that I live and serve for and that motivate me daily. None of these things are significant enough, beyond enough, to bring order to the whole picture. I am too close to all of them. And "what is essential,"  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince reminds us, "is invisible to the eye."

Being the Beloved, it turns out, is the focal point.

I've written often in these pages about knowing ourselves as the Beloved of God, and about the writings of theologian Henri Nouwen that expound on this idea as the core truth on which everything turns. I've talked about how understanding this idea will impact all our relationships and all our actions, how it will change the way we see ourselves and all the others in our lives. So it should come as no surprise that it is also the key to the juggling. Knowing you're the Beloved, Henri says, "you can handle an enormous amount of success and an enormous amount of failure." This is true because your acceptance, your value, your Beloved-ness, will never rest on whether you keep all the balls in the air or you drop some. And, strangely, just knowing this will make it easier to keep them in the air. You can forgive yourself (and others) for the failure to love perfectly, or to do perfectly, and just go ahead and love. You can celebrate what matters, and let go of what doesn't. You can focus on being there for others, just being with them; you can stop experiencing them as another thing on your list of things to do. You can even let go of the list from time to time, and just put all those balls down for a minute--if your worth is not measured by your success as a juggler.

In a photo, bringing one object into focus will make the other things fade into the background, blurry and indistinguishable. Focusing on our Beloved-ness will not work that way. Instead of making all the other things unclear and hard to make out, it will let you see them better, more clearly. Looking beyond will sharpen your vision to see things as they really are. You will be able to know where you really need to be, and what you really need to be doing there, what to catch and what to release; you will see the big picture, the coordinated whole. Some balls might still drop. But they will be the ones that did not belong in the first place, the ones that never mattered.

Tomorrow is a Monday, and Mondays are often the hardest day, when all the things I have to do seem to pelt me unmercifully from every direction, demanding to be held and caught, to be coordinated and managed, challenging me to prove my mastery of them or be beaten down to a shameful defeat. I just hope I can remember, even once the onslaught has begun, to keep my eyes off the ball.

Nerd Night

I know I'm dating myself, but there was a time when being a nerd was not cool.

Some of you are old enough to remember the time I mean. (Some of you may be old enough that you just found out being a nerd is now cool. It's OK. Don't worry. But unfortunately it doesn't apply to us, only to cool, young nerds. It's hard to explain.)

ANYWAY. Back to the time when nerds were lame. My pastor at the time, who was also our youth pastor, told all of us high-schoolers that we were going to have a special event called "Nerd Night". Our instructions were to dress for the occasion, to look as nerdy as possible. The picture above is a bit the worse for wear, but you can see some of us ready to go. As you can tell, my friend and I decided to go retro instead of hard-core nerd, and are wearing some old dresses of my mom's that we scrounged up, with some fairly tacky costume jewelry. Not strictly dorky, but definitely not on fleek. And yes, the biggest nerd there in the middle is Brad, our pastor. I'm guessing there was not a pen left in the church.

Brad came to pick us all up in the church van for Nerd Night. Needless to say, we had never participated in a Nerd Night before, and we didn't know what it might consist of, so we were surprised--and not in a good way--when Brad drove to a local hangout, parked the van, and informed us that we were all going inside, and were going to stay, hang out, and order pizza. Then he got out and went inside.

Easy for him to say, right? At least that's what I was thinking, I don't know about you. He may have had a little bit less to lose by appearing in his nerd getup in front of whichever of our friends and classmates might be inside. It's just possible that it may have taken a few people what seemed like a long time to get out of the van and get inside. In fact, if I were to speculate, I would say that one or two people may have had to make a couple of tries--going all the way to the door only to return to the van and gather courage for a second attempt. It's so difficult, isn't it, especially for teenagers, exposing yourself as vulnerable in front of your peers? Eventually, though, we all made it in.

Once inside, a funny thing happened. At first it was just as you would expect. Mortifying. We shrunk down in our chairs. Glanced surreptitiously around to see if anyone was noticing us. Looked reproachfully at Brad, who was ensuring that we couldn't escape notice, as he employed full Nerd Mode, sitting up as straight as possible with his six-foot-plus frame in the chair and saying loudly to our server, "WE WANT EXTRA DOUGH. CAN WE GET EXTRA DOUGH ON THIS PIZZA?" But you know what? Amazingly, the world didn't come to an end. Maybe some people looked. Maybe they even stared or laughed. But it turns out it wasn't really that big of a deal. In fact, after a bit, it actually started to be....well...fun. Our nerdiness stopped bothering us. We began to embrace it. In fact, in a weird way, we felt kind of proud of it. When we finished eating pizza, we asked Brad if we could go downtown and walk around, and he was only too happy to oblige. We wanted to prolong our Nerd Life--we wanted to see more people and have them see us; we wanted to flaunt the weirdness of our nerdity in the most public space possible. We weren't ready to go home and go back to being normal, non-nerdy teenagers again. (Well, not intentionally nerdy, anyway.)

What we learned was that there was something freeing in it, in this total disregard of the standards we would normally work so hard to observe. The rules of the teenage world often center around striving for mastery of whatever will make us liked, accepted, envied, and looked up to by our peers--and avoiding whatever it is that will cause us to be judged, looked down on, rejected.

The adult world is not so different.

After Nerd Night was over, Brad took us all home, but first, he stopped in the van to talk to us about how the Bible says that we are aliens and strangers on the Earth, how our citizenship is in Heaven. We should not be afraid to be different, he said, because we belong to a different country.

How different it would be, wouldn't it, if we learned to embrace the things that we fear will bring us rejection, judgement, and shame? Our world honors the smart, the strong, the cutting edge, the pulled-together, the always-rising. But what freedom, what joy there could be, I suspect, in no longer being afraid for others to see our weirdness, our brokenness, our imperfections. If only we could know, with the certainty that would set us free, that we belong to a different king, a different country, and in the economy of that kingdom we are valued, treasured, beloved, none the less and all the more for the things we believe we have to bury away. Maybe it would be best if every night was Nerd Night. Maybe if we tried it, we would find that the judgements of others we fear are just that--our own fears, and nothing more. Maybe it's time to try it and see.

Life in the Hub

"Sometimes I think of life as a big wagon wheel with many spokes.

In the middle is the hub. Often in ministry, it looks like we are

running around the rim trying to reach everybody. But God says,

'Start in the hub; live in the hub. 

Then you will be connected with all the spokes, 

and you won't have to run so fast.'"

~Henri Nouwen, in From Solitude to Community to Ministry

 I don't know about you, but to me, that sure sounds good. Not running so fast. In my ministry to my family, my friends, my co-workers, and the people I actually serve in my work every day, I often feel like I'm running a million miles a minute. There is never enough of anything to go around--not enough time, not enough money, not enough attention, not enough ability--just plain not enough me. I can't make it all the way around the outside of that wheel. And I have been thinking a lot lately about what it looks like, how it would look different, to live in the hub.

It's hard to imagine, and I guess that just proves that maybe I've never been there, in the hub, but I sure know what it looks like here around the outside. It's hard to keep up, and doing so is a full-time job. That means all of the focus has to be on accomplishing the next impossible thing, meeting the next urgent need, leaping the next intimidating hurdle. And the worst thing about the inability to slow down that this creates is that there is never time to take a breath, or to gather your strength, or to say, "Whew! Now that that's finished, what do I need right now?" 

This is largely how I've become the Worst Ever, in the world, at taking care of me. I didn't do it all at once. It took me a lifetime to get there. I know what I need. (That actually puts me ahead of a lot of people, I know.) I need sleep. I need to eat food. Actual, good-tasting, nourishing food, that I eat at regular intervals throughout the day. I need connections with other people that are deep and meaningful and real, and I need tiny indulgences like an extra $3 on something at the store that tells myself from me, "Hey, you are worth this!" and I need time, oh, how I need time--time to think, to read, to write, to plan, to pray. But instead, I stay up late, skip meals, spend more time on work and chores and obligations, worry and stress and find myself too busy or too tired for meaningful connections, and even my time in prayer is simply a chore, another item to be checked off the list. 

I have neglected to prioritize the things that give me life. 

I choose instead to sprint on to the next spoke, always hoping that maybe if I'm just a little faster this time I will make it around. Running around the outside means always dashing to the next place and the next task without stopping, without thinking, without hearing what your body and soul are crying out for.

In the hub, I'd guess you stand still.

Around the outside, there's not a moment to spare.

In the hub, there's no hurry.

The last few months have been a time for me to think a lot about that--about how I can walk right down one of those spokes to the middle, and about what changes I would need to make to do that. Tonight, forcing myself to take the scheduled time to sit, read, think, and rest that I put on my calendar a couple of months ago, I opened up to these words:

"He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,

Which yields its fruit in its season,

And its leaf does not wither;

And in whatever he does, he prospers."    ~Psalm 1:3

  

I thought about what it means to prosper--the dictionary says, "to become strong and flourishing; to thrive." I've heard this passage so many times, but it's amazing how different things can sound when you slow down. How I needed to hear those words tonight, to see this picture. The roots drinking deeply from that slow, continuous stream of life-giving nourishment. The fruit appearing slowly, seasonally, in its own good time. The tree that experiences and is touched by everything around it, but is not shaken or moved from its base, and is never deterred from its primary task-- to grow. Thrive. Bloom. Bear. Rest. 

Oh, how I hope I am learning to be like that tree, and how I hope I am leading my sons this way too, leading them to the hub where I am slowly learning to find grace, peace, rest; and may they reach it sooner than me, because it is taking me a lifetime to get there.