Jesus Came For Us All

Battling some side effects from the new chemo drug, I am sometimes finding myself once again waking up in the middle of the night and struggling to get back to sleep. Often I am nauseated and needing to focus on something (anything!) in the midst of my uncomfortable wakefulness. Sometimes I read, sometimes I listen to music or pray. Sometimes I check in on social media, both to look for beautiful images and to catch up with wakeful friends or those or live in a different time zone.

I was on Facebook in the wee small hours last night and ran across a meme that once again, has me baffled and frustrated over the power of the "culture wars" in our country, as well as worried about the lack of depth in our understanding of the gospel. This was a type of meme that has been circulating for several weeks. A usual version has a picture of the nativity and something that relates the fact that the holy family were refugees.

What gets me every time is not the message of the meme itself (though in meme fashion, it is sometimes presented in less than gracious terms...the one I saw last night was lashing out at some of the responses to earlier, more gracious versions, and basically saying if you didn't believe Jesus and his family were refugees, you shouldn't celebrate Christmas). What gets me is the Pharisaical reaction to the meme, in which commenters, many of whom clearly would identify themselves as Christians, are a) stating absolutely that Jesus and his family were NOT refugees, b) that even if they were, they were a different kind of refugee than those living in our world today, and c) that anybody who posts this is clearly a liberal who doesn't read or understand the Bible and thus deserves censure and mocking. The overall message in the comments, the ones I can stomach when I'm feeling nauseated at 4 a.m., seem to encapsulate that "this is not what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown." In so doing, they seem to be capturing the idea that Christmas is about Jesus' birth, divorcing that instance of the birth somehow from the overall deep theological truth of the incarnation, Jesus taking on flesh and becoming human.

The distinction that critics of this meme like to make is that Jesus and his family were not refugees on the night that Jesus was born. They point out that Mary and Joseph had not gone to Bethlehem as refugees. They had gone to be registered in a census. True enough. Let's look at Luke 2:1-5...

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. ² This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³ And all went to be registered, each to his own town. ⁴ And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, ⁵ to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

  
So Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem to be registered in a census which was decreed by Caesar Augustus. This was the Roman Emperor who pretty much believed he controlled the whole world, and who in some sense, at that time, did control a lot of it. He was the head of a mighty Roman empire whose reach was incredibly long and powerful, so long and powerful that they had eaten up a lot of other people's lands and put themselves in charge everywhere they could. The Israel in which Mary and Joseph lived was an oppressed place. All you have to do is to look at other parts of the gospels, perhaps especially some of the narratives regarding Jesus' crucifixion, to gain a fuller understanding of just how oppressed the Jews were under the Romans. 

Mary and Joseph didn't exactly flee to Bethlehem as refugees, no, but they walked about 90 miles as a young, impoverished couple, one of whom was pregnant (and whom we can easily and truthfully identify with unwed teenagers) to do the bidding of an emperor who had oppressed their people. Their registration in such a census was probably related to the fact that once you were enrolled, you could be taxed (which is why some translations read that way). If we're looking for ways to relate to the people in this gospel narrative, and to understand who they were: poor, tired, oppressed, stressed, and taxed could be some appropriate adjectives.

The difficulty of their circumstances continues as we read on in Luke's narrative. I'm not stopping to get into the scholarly debate here about whether or not they really stayed in a stable (no sentimental 19th century barn, for sure) or a cave or a relative's house that had an open area with an animal feeding trough in it. It's probably enough for us to know that there is no room for them at the inn where they originally stop, and so they have to make do with whatever they can find. And that the only bed they can lay their newborn swaddled son in, happens to be a manger where animals feed. I think we can add unwelcomed and exhausted to the adjectives without having to stretch too far imaginatively. 

Are we beginning to get a picture here? Jesus came to be born to identify with all humanity, to take on human flesh and to experience the difficulties and challenges of living in a broken world he had come to heal. He willingly entered into that brokenness. Although Jesus was part of the Godhead and the true ruler of the world, God didn't choose to send him as a human baby into a wealthy and influential family. He was NOT born the son of Caesar Augustus or even Herod the Great, the Jewish regional leader who was an arrogant, violent man and essentially a puppet of the oppressive Romans. God sent him to be part of a family that was poor and oppressed, but who loved God with all their hearts and were astounded to be part of his unfolding story. Thankfully, any of us who have ever felt poor and oppressed or actually been so in any way, can be amazed that the Creator would send his only Son to live in this way and to identify with our pain.

But (I can hear people who are scared  or scornful of refugees argue) they weren't refugees. Well, no, I guess not technically, not on the night he was born. They became refugees, of course, when Herod, freaked out that there was word that Jesus was born to be "king of the Jews" (a word he got from foreigners who had read the sky and Jewish prophecies and come to this incredible recognition) might grow up to become a political threat. According to Matthew, he ordered the death of every child, aged two and under, in the region where Jesus was born. Apparently it had been a while since Jesus was born when the wise men from the East showed up, and they were not entirely sure of the date of his birth...Herod in a sweeping rage and a fit of panic just decided to kill a lot of children to be sure he had wiped out his political threat. Blessedly, God warned Joseph in a dream what was about to happen. The angel tells him to take Mary and Jesus and to "flee to Egypt," which is what, of course, he does -- Joseph gets a lot of angelic messages from God, and he is always obedient and faithful to follow the instructions.  So Joseph, Mary, and a very young child Jesus go on the run to an ancient land where their ancestors once spent 400 years in slavery, to get away from a violent king who desires Jesus' death and who clearly has no compunction about killing children. 

Are they refugees? Yes. And could today's refugees relate to their situation? I think so. Many of the refugees we see today, some of whom are fleeing areas not too far from where Jesus and his family grew up and lived, are fleeing poverty and violence and are in real fear for their lives. Like the holy family, they are looking for shelter and compassionate welcome.

But (the critics interrupt again) some of the so called refugees who want to get into our country are actually people who want to hurt us! And (they also add) the Holy Family weren't refugees on Christmas! That came later in the story! (Truly...these are the kinds of arguments I have read.)

I'd like to tackle those issues in reverse order. First of all, Jesus' birth, important and beautiful as it is to read about, is not about one night, reverently silent or otherwise. It is about Jesus, the eternal Son of God, whom John calls the "Word" and about him doing this:

The Word became flesh and blood,
    and moved into the neighborhood. 

(John 1:14, in the Message paraphrase...traditional translations say he came to "dwell among us.") 

This is the point. He came to live among us and to BE one of us. He came to be human and to relate to our hardest, most difficult experiences as humans (as well as our joys). And he came because, in John's words again, from chapter 3:  "God so loved the world." The whole world. The entire world. Me and you. People like us and people not like us. People we love and people we find it hard to love. People who need hope and help and shelter, but also people we think of as our enemies. He came to love the lost and the poor and the broken. He came to love the Pharisees who were so confused by their clinging ways to traditional religion that they couldn't easily comprehend the radical light that had come into the world. He also came to love the prostitutes and the tax collectors, those collaborators who actually joined hands with the oppressive Romans (probably out of fear and greed) to collect taxes from their Jewish neighbors, often taking more than was needed so they could get their own corrupt cut of the money. Matthew was a tax collector before becoming a disciple whom Jesus called! Zaccheus was one too, before Jesus got hold of his life by calling him down from his precarious perch in a tree!

We cannot sentimentalize and compartmentalize Jesus's birth away from this ultimate truth of the incarnation. We can't say that Jesus doesn't love and care for refugees because he didn't happen to technically be one on the night of his birth. The entire incarnation matters. Jesus taking on flesh began with his conception and moved on through his entire life, including his death on the cross when he was executed at the hands of fearful Jewish leaders and corrupt Roman rulers (the Sanhedrin wanted him dead but didn't have the political power to put him on a cross; the Romans were only too happy to do away with any political threats by bringing out one of their favorite means of execution).  Jesus' incarnation also included his amazing resurrection three days after his death. These things were all part of his life, and it is his whole life that we can look at, cling to, learn from, enter into, be saved by and be grateful for, not just one piece of it that happens to agree with our picture of what it looks like for God to love us.

Most of the refugees begging for asylum in our world today are not looking to create trouble or to inflict pain. While it's true that sometimes unbalanced and violent people do cross borders to create trouble (the kind of sin we see in the biblical Herod is still alive and well in sinners today) it is not the norm. Most of what we see in the refugee community are people fleeing poverty, violence, and injustice, the kinds of things that Jesus and his family lived under, the kind of violence and injustice that sent the child Jesus fleeing into Egypt and that put him on a cross. So it's not a misreading of the Scriptures for people to say that Jesus and his family should compel us to be compassionate to refugees, even if putting such a sentiment in a meme with a Christmas card picture of the nativity makes that harder for some to understand. And mocking such people for their lack of biblical understanding is wrong as well as mean-spirited. 

Welcoming strangers is hard for all of us because we live with our own sin and fear, just as refugees do. In the affluent west, our fears may look a little different than our brothers and sisters who are fleeing persecution or oppressive governments. We fear people who don't look like us or don't speak our language. We fear people who might come in with violent intentions and try to hurt us and hurt our country. We fear what we don't understand, and in our sinfulness, we refuse to get close enough to learn who others really are at heart. 

But we serve an amazing God who came to identify with all of us, to be one of us because he loves each and every one of us. It's mind-boggling, but that means that God even loved Herod, crazy and hard as that seems. We know for a fact that he loved Saul, a man who terrorized the early church by persecuting and putting Christians to death. He loved him enough to appear to him, give him spiritual sight, turn his world upside down, and call him to follow him. Saul, whose name changed to Paul (showing his brand new identity) became a missionary and one of the main writers of the New Testament.

The story of Jesus' birth is beautiful and true, but it is a radical story that encapsulates not just what happened on one starry night when the angels cried their glorias to a field of shepherds (hmm....an interesting place to make a royal birth announcement!) but the entire amazing news that God had become man. He took on human flesh not only to love us and identify with us during the years he lived, but so he could one day sacrifice that flesh and redeem us from the bondage of sin and death. His whole story, including his eternal life before he became human, is part of who he is from the very start. Saying he technically wasn't a refugee on the night he was born is not really a point worth making. First of all, because he would soon become one, and that is as much a part of his life as the night of his nativity and his ultimate death on the cross. And secondly, or perhaps I should have said this first, in a way that we can almost see as refugee-like, Jesus had already made the most incredible sojourn from one home to another ever, as we read in Philippians (written by Paul!) chapter 2, verses 6-8:

"though he was in the form of God, (he) did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

 In another astounding passage, 2 Corinthians 8:9, Paul tells us:

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." 

This is the Lord we follow, a Lord who humbled and emptied himself to this degree, who left the best home anyone could ever have (a home we will, by grace, one day know too) to come live in a world that was broken and poor and bent, a world that would misunderstand him, mock him, threaten him, and eventually kill him. A world filled with violent, rich, and oppressive rulers; stuffy, arrogant religious leaders; impoverished, oppressed families; refugees who cannot find welcomes, and so many more kinds of people we could name. He came for us all. He loves us all. He desires each one of us to repent and to walk in relationship with him. He longs for us to know him in his humanity and divinity, and he longs for us to love the humanity of our neighbors, no matter who they are, because each one is made in his image. He wants us to reach out to them with the kind of love we have come to know in him. 

The Rhythms of Illness

Yesterday I started my clinical trial. I am one of 127 people in the world taking this particular drug, which targets a very specific mutation I am dealing with in my particular cancer. I felt a little daunted as I started -- trials involve lots of paperwork, lots of hoops to jump through, lots of bloodwork, and lots of "here's how we proceed" talks from various medical professionals -- but so far, so good. I have had two doses, and I haven't had to deal with any nausea or any other notable side effects yet.

The trepidation I feel seems to be at least two-fold. One reason is because this is such a rare drug (I am the first person my hospital has gotten into this trial) and still being tested, so side effects are still partially unknown. Of course, they always are to some extent, even with standard medicines, because each body reacts or responds to things uniquely. But when a drug is still relatively new, the list of possible side effects is long, and the doctors all seem somewhat apologetic because they can't really tell you which ones are usually "common" (not enough evidence yet) and which ones are less likely. The only thing I was told I could expect, with some assurance that it will indeed happen, is fatigue. Cumulative fatigue. Sigh. There are those words again, ones I got to know all too well during my first chemo sessions last winter/spring.

The second reason I felt gingerly going into this whole thing is my exhaustion level is already pretty high. I have been battling this disease for about eleven months. And yes, I just used the active word "battle" though I still struggle sometimes with the idea of cancer being a fight. I still try to hold onto the wonderful word that the Lord will fight for me, and I need only to rest. But eleven months in, I am starting to get why people use the word "fight" a lot more than I did at first. Every time something else happens -- the cancer spreads, you go through surgery, you get put on a new medicine or start a new course of treatment -- you sort of feel like you are taking a deep breath and stepping back into the ring to get pummeled. Quite frankly, it's hard. You want to say "could I have a break? Please?" but there isn't really any way to take a break when what you are racing is a mutation driven cancer that has broken free and spread to several places so far. You know the cancer is not taking a break just because it's advent-almost-Christmas and you're tired and cold and in the midst of a move. Cancer has no awareness and no politeness. It just is, and it's kind of an insatiable monster, and you have to do your best to stay ahead of it.

I am, after almost six months of struggling with neuropathy and about six weeks of recovering from brain surgery (and three weeks or so out from radiation), starting to catch onto my body's rhythms with this illness. Mornings are times when I need to ease into things quietly and slowly -- days I can't are the hardest. Late morning through early to mid afternoon, on my best days, I get some spurts of energy -- that's when I need to plan to engage life most and get some things done. As the sun starts to go down, which right now means around 5:00, I start to go down too. It usually starts with my feet. They are numb all the time, but as the night descends, they start to tingle more, and after a few minutes, they begin to feel stiff and cramped and painful. That just increases as the night wears on and they get worse. My hands begin to get more numb too. Mild to moderate headaches usually kick in around dinner time, though thankfully they are getting better and fewer and farther between. (I am telling myself that once my new kitchen is set up, and I am cooking more regularly, I need to do LOTS of crockpot meals so I can take advantage of the earlier part of the day when I feel better.)

Usually, somewhere between 6:30 and 8:30, depending on the day, I realize I have to fall over. I get into pajamas early and I climb into bed. Reading, even writing, are often still possible, but I can feel the energy leaking out of me as though I am a helium balloon descending from the ceiling. I get weaker and more tired as the night wears on, and I find myself beginning to nod off mid-sentence of whatever I'm doing.

Learning my body's new rhythm is hard from a practical perspective: I never feel like I have enough time in a day to get done what I want or need to do. But it's hard from an emotional and spiritual perspective too. It's hard because I feel like, at the age of 48, I am suddenly much older in body than those digits represent...I am starting to resonate with people much older than I am, and the limits that challenge them. It also hard because the "not having enough time in a day" feeling seems a faint echo of the deeper concern that my whole life is running out of time. That's a hard thing to think about or even talk about, including with family and close friends, but when you have an aggressive, late-stage cancer, it lurks in the back of your mind. On your hardest days emotionally (I've had several of those recently) it casts a long shadow.

I felt that shadow today when I was zipping quickly through boxes of papers, getting rid of lots of old things we don't need, a daily practice right now as we continue to settle in a much smaller space than we had before. I ran across a box that included letters and essays from the years we were discerning our call to seminary. I found papers in which I wrote, at some length, about my longing to become a spiritual director, something I've been re-thinking again lately. My immediate instinct was to want to look up programs that focus on it -- a year and a half ago, I was already starting to consider what my learning path and "second career" might look like once the sweet girl has graduated from high school in 2020. In the midst of smiling over the passionate words my younger self once I wrote, I suddenly found my eyes dimming with tears as it dawned on me that there may be no second career or new learning path on this side of the veil. That I have been praying hard for the Lord to allow me enough time to shepherd my daughter through the end of her schooling. That the "what next" and the vocational calling questions I've grappled with my whole life suddenly feel strangely different.

It's all part of being chronically ill and all part of learning new rhythms. I am grateful that my heavenly Abba walks with me through them. He doesn't just walk beside me, but before, behind, and all around me. I may have changed a lot this year because I'm sick, but his presence and his love for me never change. My rhythms may be different, but my roots are not. For that, I'm deeply grateful.

Perspectacles

I can't remember which blogger coined the word "perspectacles," but I love it.

I have been given new perspectacles on a lot of things this year. Having an aggressive/caught late cancer will do that for you.

As we move into our summer schedules, I am discovering new perspectacles on the most ordinary of activities. Here are a few things I feel completely differently about than I did a few months ago.

Walking. 
It wasn't very long ago that I could barely walk at all, and was having to use a wheel chair whenever I went in for treatments at the cancer center. This week I walked to the post office from our home, which is probably about a quarter mile. Yes, I was very slow, and yes, sometimes my leg and feet hurt, and yes, I stopped and took a half-hour break at the seminary before walking back home. But I did it. And it was lovely to do this walk with my sweet teen girl, who danced ahead of me most of the way but came hurrying back when I needed her. Favorite moment might have been when I took her arm as we stopped at a crosswalk. Years of taking her hand or arm when she was little compelled her to exclaim "Mom! I don't need you to hold onto me while I cross the street!" at which point I just chuckled and said, "I'm not holding on because you need it. I'm holding on because I do."

Showering.
I had months where I couldn't shower easily without help. Getting in and out of the shower was painful. Standing up for more than a couple of minutes was painful. Bending down to pick up the soap I dropped was painful or too hard to bother. You get it. I wouldn't shower unless someone else was home in case I got shaky or nauseated and needed help getting out. And I almost always needed help getting dressed. These days I am fine on my own. Still slow, especially the dressing part, but that's okay.

My hair.
Did I used to get stressed about bad hair days? I suppose so, but I can't remember. Right now I am just so happy that my hair is starting to grow again. It is short and fuzzy...for a while I felt like a peach or a cucumber, and then a hedgehog, and now a teddy bear. Years of mostly long, thick hair did not prepare me for no hair at all, and I don't think I will ever forget the day my dear sister Mary bravely shaved my wispy haired head (while both of us resolutely did not cry). While I stayed philosophical about it (hair seemed like a small price to pay for treatments that could help save my life) I have missed my hair and am so  happy to see it coming in again.

Grocery stores.
When I walked into one a week or so ago, it was the first time I had been in a grocery store since January. I was so blessed that, during these past few months, my faithful husband shopped for us, and my precious sisters. And people sent meals. But oh, it was such a delight to peruse the produce aisles. I am even finding myself enjoying meal planning. And I'm cooking a little bit. Didn't I use to complain about that too?

Web content work.
Writing web content is not the most creative work on the planet. In fact, it is often downright boring. I've done a lot of it in the past couple of years, and I have often referred to it as my floor mopping kind of work. I'm grateful to have it, but it's not really fun. This past week, I wrote web content for my favorite client for the first time in almost five months. And you know what? Weirdly, it was fun. It made me happy that my brain and fingers were working well enough together that I could put sentences and paragraphs together in ways that made sense. And cents. Because I haven't been paid regularly in many months either, and earning even a little bit again made me feel very grateful.

Journaling and sketching.
My hands are somewhat numb from neuropathy, and I don't hold a pen or a pencil terribly well, but I *can* hold a pen or pencil, and thank God, I can also type. And I'm awake and energetic enough to spend time both sketching and journaling again. Thank you, God.

School portfolio.
It's June, which means I have to pull together the sweet girl's school portfolio. I dreaded it this year, because the second half of the year was such a difficult and challenging time, and I didn't feel enough work had been done. But you know what? Even though this learning year did not look "normal" (by any stretch of the imagination) a lot of learning happened. A lot. More academic work than I realized (including a whole slew of things I'd forgotten we'd done first semester, before everything hit the fan) but also plenty of life learning.

Lesson planning.
That I am even well enough to contemplate the fall and to begin planning lessons just feels like a blessing. Still not sure how we're going to pay for all we need, but you know what, that's a perennial concern, not a dire one, and even ordinary commonplace worries feel good right now. Weirdly so. This week I worked through a semester's worth of English plans for S' 9th grade year.

Things I've misplaced.
I've misplaced so many things in the past several months it's not funny, but I am starting to find them again, a little at a time. Some of them are things I didn't even know I was missing (a couple of gift cards wonderful people sent when I first got sick, which are actually coming in very handy now) and some of them are things I really hope to find (my blue writing bag and my notebook with all my timeline/background work for my novel, which I hope will soon be my novel-in-progress again). But you know what? The more I clean and organize, the more I keep finding things, and it's such a joy. And I don't find that I am getting overly irritated at myself for misplacing things, the way I used to, because really, who wouldn't have misplaced stuff during all the blurry, crazy weeks of pain and sleep and stress? I am actually amazed I didn't lose more stuff!

Loved ones.
Family and friends have been incredible during this time. The prayers that have been prayed on my behalf and behalf of my family, the meals that have been cooked or bought for my family, the times people have taken care of my dear daughter, the lovely things sent my way -- cards and notes and letters and prayer shawls and checks and gift cards and weekly communion and lovely artwork and Facebook pictures and videos -- all of this has just sustained me (and us) and made me feel so loved. For months, our place had one or more vases of fresh flowers in it almost all the time (I tossed the last dried flowers yesterday).  In the midst of everything, I have had time to contemplate a lot going on in the lives of some friends, and I am really in awe over the compassion and courage and calling of many of the people I know. I feel so blessed by our network of community. Thank you for the church, Lord. Thank you for people who care. 



 

A Feather on the Breath of God

It's been well over a month since I've posted anything here. During that time, I've undergone a round of radiation and two rounds of chemotherapy. I have experienced a good deal of pain and a lot of fatigue. And I am still deep in the midst of a long, hard road, the road I am calling my healing journey.

I am just now beginning to feel as though I can write a little about how I am feeling. Both reading and writing -- my go-to pleasures and habits of a lifetime -- felt too exhausting during the initial days and weeks after diagnosis. Sometimes literally too exhausting -- I would try to read and fall asleep before I reached the end of a page, or I just found it too tiring to sit at a keyboard or pick up a pen. I'm still incredibly tired, but I'm in the midst of an extra week "off" between chemo rounds, to try to build my strength before the next one. And I am thankful that I am beginning to be able to read and write again and find solace and comfort in that.

Re-reading is such a gift in times of illness. For me right now, I am needing the comfort of familiar and beloved stories. I re-read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (a favorite novel I tend to read annually) and am in the middle of re-reading the Harry Potter books. I am thinking I make take a dive into some old Agatha Christie novels soon too, and I've read bits of some favorite Austen books.

While I'm not feeling like tackling anything new and large, I am finding I can read new reflections, articles, and poems, so I've spent some time online doing that, especially some pertinent things for Lent and Holy Week.

Mostly I am trying to rest...not just outwardly, but inwardly. I am resting in God's goodness. I am resting in his loving care for me and in the knowledge that he is the great and gentle healer. I am trying to abide in Jesus and "stay on the mat," as a friend advised me (the image comes from the gospel story where friends brought their parlyzed friend lying on a mat to the feet of Jesus -- so thankful I am that so many people are bringing me to his feet right now)! I am spending time in the Word and meditating on the words God gives me, through the Scriptures and through others.

My friend Erin sent me a FB video the other day that showed a bunch of swirling flower petals on a street. It was lovely -- just a group of beautiful pink petals all caught up in a vortex of wind, swirling this way and that (almost looking like a flock of birds). I loved the image of those petals caught up in the unseen wind, blown about in such an intricate dance. It made me think of Hildegard's "feather on the breath of God" and how I long to let myself be steered by the Holy Spirit.

"Be Strong and Let Your Heart Take Courage..."

"...all you who wait for the Lord." (Psalm 31:24)

Waiting for him today. Waiting for his strength, his courage, his love, his deliverance, his healing, his hope, his peace.

Also from Psalm 31:

14 But as for me, I have trusted in you, O Lord. *
I have said, "You are my God.

15 My times are in your hand; *
rescue me from the hand of my enemies,
and from those who persecute me.

16 Make your face to shine upon your servant, *
and in your loving-kindness save me."

Could there be any better words to pray today in light of the news I received yesterday? I so did not want this diagnosis, Lord. And yet here it is.

I couldn't even make it to the gospel in my readings this morning. There was too much goodness to cling to just in the Psalm. I love how gospel-infused the Scriptures are. We trip over the good news at every turn.

Courage, Dear Heart. 

So Much Goodness, So Much Grace

"Why is God so good to us?" may have been just about the most beautiful thing I've heard said in a long time. Those were the words spoken to me by the sweet girl last night as we hugged each other before bedtime. They sort of burst from her spontaneously and left me standing there almost limp with joy. (Okay, yes, I was very tired, but the joy was real too!)

My dear thirteen year old daughter has struggled a lot over the goodness of God in the past couple of years, especially with the big questions like "how is God good when there's so much suffering?" To hear her so joyfully affirm her sense of his goodness at the end of what has undoubtedly been the hardest week and a half of her life makes me so grateful.

These days really have been hard....very hard. My sudden swoop into serious illness, the uncertainty and anxiety we're all living under as we await more news on my diagnosis, the way the world felt like it turned upside down as I had doctor appointments, surgery, and have been having to put the brakes on almost everything "normal" in our life routine so that I can rest and heal -- all of this has been hard. It would be hard for any family and any thirteen year old. The fact that many of the challenges tap the sweet girl's most challenging places of anxiety has sometimes felt like another rushing and scary part of this whole tsunami.

And yet....

She is feeling and sensing and KNOWING the goodness of God. As I am. As are we all.

And she is feeling and sensing and knowing God's goodness through God's people. Her question last night: "why is God so good to us?" came on the heels of other exclamations: "I love people. I love God!"  And I knew exactly what she meant. I do too, and I especially love how God loves us THROUGH his people. It's astounding.

Why is God so good to us? Because he loves us, and because that's who he is.

In other good news today...
I had a very broken night's sleep, and finally got some good, healing sleep in the later part of the morning, after taking more pain medication.

When I woke up around 8, I reached for my water (doing a good job of staying hydrated) and my groggy mind started the phrase "this is the day...." I think what my brain was going for was "this is the day you might hear from the oncologist."

But the long engrained habit of Scripture reading and memorization took over. My heart and mind interrupted with the words "....that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it."

Can I just say how deeply, deeply thankful I am for all the words of God that I've tucked away over the years? Beginning at the kitchen table with my own dear Mama and dancing through these last years when I've sung and repeated and taught and rehearsed so many words from the Scriptures with the sweet girl. They are there now, like a treasure house, ready to draw on. Or like a spring welling up inside me and bursting out when I don't even expect it.

Holding onto lots of truth today: that God is good, that he loves us so, that he made this day, that we can rejoice in it. No matter what. 

My View, God's View

My involvement in social media, especially Facebook, has both widened my world and made it feel smaller. It's widened my world in that I am able to more readily connect with many more people as well as learn things about them and about the world that I never knew before. It's made my world feel smaller in that I begin to realize how deeply connected we all are, how much we share in common, even those of us who don't really know each other.

I've been thinking about that this week as I'm a little bit on overload with life. Still grieving my mom's loss at the same time I am celebrating her homecoming to glory -- an unexpected month ago today. Time marching relentlessly on and there's so much to do: homeschooling, ministry, household tasks, writing work. Still hurting and aching and dealing with broken sleep patterns. Deadlines that were graciously extended for me in early January are upon me now, and I am writing, writing, writing to get things done, still not sure I can possibly make them. Our difficult fourth quarter financially has pushed us into a hard one again in this first quarter of the new year, and I am needing to pick up extra web content writing at a time when I don't have the mental space or the physical stamina to do it, but I'm doing it anyway because the bills have to be paid. Hours at the computer, even with stretching and moving breaks, are exacerbating my back and hip issues. I am worn out on almost every level, but I am being very careful to keep taking one small step at a time and to keep holding onto Jesus.

In the midst of all this, I am checking in daily at FB, as I usually do, and finding my news feed so full of things to celebrate and mourn that it can almost be overwhelming. I'm not sure there's really any difference in what I'm seeing in my feed right now and what's usually there -- I'm just noticing more, feeling extra sensitive to what I'm reading. My rejoicing feels deeper and my sadness more intense. It's not a bad thing really, and it's not something that I feel I need to stop doing (I'm trying to be careful not to spend too much time on the trivial stuff, but I do love the ways the things I read there can inform my prayers). But it strikes me, not for the first time, how deeply glad I am that God is God and I am not. I cannot even keep straight the interconnections of my own one life, and yet God, in his vastness and majesty and wisdom is able to keep ALL the web of connections straight, not just in my life but in every life. He not only sees them and knows them and loves us through them, he helps us to untangle the threads and see the pattern. He hears the cries and rejoices with the rejoicing and nudges the reluctant and encourages the weary and gently corrects the ones who are wandering and calls out to those who don't yet know him. It is an amazing thing to contemplate from my own tired and sometimes overwhelmed vantage point. He does not grow weary. He does not faint. He does not stop loving us no matter how gorgeously or sadly tangled and complex our lives grow -- and sometimes the beauty and the sadness are so interwoven we can't see where one stops and another starts.

Just this week I have marveled over the first flower grown in space, contemplated incredible art, looked at auroras viewed from the International Space Station, and watched video footage of waves washing up on the shores of Galilee (taken by friends on sabbatical). I have mourned with a family whose baby died, rejoiced with a friend for whom God miraculously provided all the funds they needed to bring home their fifth adopted child, rejoiced with that same friend in the news that she is ten years cancer free, and marveled over the fact that she is not resting on the joys of being able to bring home her little girl, but beginning to raise funds for wheelchairs for other children in the same orphanage. I have smiled over  the stories told my an acquaintance who remembers praying for a certain country when she was a little girl: a country she is currently visiting so she can get to know her newly adopted teenage daughter, a country where it has been difficult for the gospel to gain a hearing and yet where she saw fifteen baptisms of new Christians this week. I have smiled over the excitement felt by some families, children, and yes, teachers, over approaching snowstorms.

This is just a tiny slice of some of the connections that happen to be passing before my eyes over the past few days. It's amazing to ponder the wonders, moments, and stories that God contemplates each and every day from the vantage point of his almighty view. That he doesn't just contemplate them but act within them and through them for our good and his glory is incredibly beautiful and humbling. I am so thankful to be his daughter.

The Gospel: New and Yet the Same

I had a difficult night's sleep where I seemed to be worrying and fretting about many things (to paraphrase Jesus in speaking to Martha of Bethany). It was one of those nights where I tossed back and forth, never sleeping deeply, my dreams punctuated by lots of things, big and little, that are making me anxious.

It didn't help that I woke up a little before 2 certain that I'd heard gunshots outside. We live in a small city and we're in an area near a now empty lot, so I suppose it's possible -- though it's also possible I heard firecrackers (that happens too) or a car backfiring or just a loud noise that my brain transformed into something much more anxiety producing.

I finally fell a little more asleep in the wee small hours, though I never felt like I slept as deeply as I needed. Which is all the more reason to be grateful for the thoughts I woke up to, which are simply this: the gospel never changes. The same gospel at work in the lives of the apostles, saints, and martyrs is the gospel at work in me. The same gospel that freed my great-grandmother and set the hearts of so many others in our family to dancing in delight is the gospel I get to dance to today.

Isn't that amazing? It's true that God's mercies are new every morning (great is your faithfulness!) and that those mercies are new and fresh in each generation, each person, in a different way. But our hope, while as fresh as the new dawn, is also as old and older than the sun. God doesn't change, and neither does his life-giving word. Our hope is rooted in his eternal changelessness and yet new and fresh as he stirs it into the swirling waters of this day, this me, this life. The gospel that spoke to my anxiety and fears in the night is the same gospel that shines brightly in the light of the morning. We have this sure and certain hope.

Remembering What We Can Do

Yesterday I had a moment where I was completely focused on what I could not do. Have you ever caught yourself in a moment like that? It was humbling.

For years, twenty-three plus of them (ever since we got married) we've sponsored a child through Compassion. We've been blessed to have had relationships with three different children in that time, one of whom is now grown, a wonderful woman with whom we are still in touch.

In recent years, our monthly giving commitments have grown harder, not just with Compassion but with everything else. Our decision to stay in mission and ministry in our small town, and the various work the Lord has led us to (all part-time and self-employment) means we live lean and a bit adventurously. That last part has never come naturally to me, quiet and uncourageous woman that I am sometimes.

Some months we are able to pay our bills and meet our giving commitments, and some months we aren't. In those months, in order to keep lights on and food on the table and medicines paid, we sometimes fall behind on other things that don't seem to have the same immediate urgency. (Sometimes we also squander where we shouldn't...just because we're relatively poor doesn't mean we don't sometimes make stupid budget decisions, or give in to the whispering that tells us we deserve to eat out or we really need more books.) I have been grateful beyond words that even on the months we've fallen behind, Compassion has been willing to work with us. And that the Lord continues to provide us enough work that often, when I am paid for one of my self-employed writing or teaching projects, we are able to catch back up. I always feel better when that is the case.

We are in one of our lean, adventurous quarters right now -- end of the year is always particularly difficult for us -- and yesterday an envelope arrived from Compassion. I opened it, and several pictures fell out into my hand. Pictures of unsponsored children. The enclosed letter asked for generous giving to help them and other children like them who are in need.

The guilt I felt in the first moments when I saw those pictures was palpable. Our bank balance at the moment is at serious low-tide. We've had two recent gifts from friends that have been designated for other things than immediate spending (one is to ensure that we can spend a few days at the end of this month with our beloved parents down in Virginia) for which I am overwhelmingly grateful, but we're behind on bills and have fallen into the hole just trying to cover the month's day-to-day expenses.  In other words, my immediate heart's response to seeing those pictures was an anguished "I can't."

And the "I can't" made me feel crippled. I literally almost put the pictures aside. I didn't want to look at them because, narcissistic fool that I was, I had about seventeen seconds of only thinking about myself. Poor me, not capable enough to support my own family, much less give the way I want and long to.

And then I heard the still, small voice. You know the one! The one that said, simply, "you can pray for them." The one that didn't want to brook my navel-gazing nonsense, and who simply wasn't interested in the fact that I sometimes put justifiers in front of the word "pray," as in "we can only pray," or "there's nothing I can do in this situation but pray." There is nothing mere or only about prayer.

So I started looking at their faces and reading the backs of the cards. I've put them on the kitchen table and I'll go back to them and read more. I will be praying for these children.

Sometimes it's not what we can't do....it's remembering what we can do. I am deeply thankful that God got my attention on that yesterday.

Mrs. B's Centennial

A couple of weeks ago, on the 12th of October, it was the 100th birthday of dear Mrs. Brooks, the neighbor and lifelong family friend who shared Jesus with me when I was a little girl.

Mrs. B, as I grew up thinking of her, is a precious saint. She was not only instrumental in leading me to faith, but in influencing and loving most of my family in Jesus' direction. When my mother, spiritually hungry and looking for help in understanding God, went to her door years ago to find out about the Bible clubs Mrs. B had for neighborhood kids, Mrs. B invited her to come see for herself what it was all about. That invitation, and her gentle teaching and loving presence, made all the difference in the life of our family. I will be forever grateful that she was the one who scattered gospel seeds and helped to water them for so many years.

I have no idea how many other lives and families Mrs. B touched over the years, but I would guess it is beyond counting. She taught Bible clubs for decades. She and her kind husband, Clifton (who always reminded me a gentler real-life version of Fred Flintstone) were known for their loving and generous friendship to many. Just as one example, when I was a pre-schooler, they once took care of me for a whole week during the day-time when my mother was in the hospital and then recovering from surgery. For a child who had not grown up located near grandparents, this was heady stuff. I still remember Mrs B scrambling eggs for my breakfast and adding bacon bits to them, Mr B pushing me in the cart at the grocery store, and Mrs. B laughing as she made me peanut butter sandwiches (hers were the best, I apparently proclaimed, because she spread the peanut butter right to the edges).

Both of my sisters eventually taught during the summers with CEF, the organization Mrs B was a part of. Although I never did their summer program, I did end up working with Mrs B in a Bible club when I was a teenager. She had decided to teach some refugee children from Cambodia who had moved into the neighborhood and she asked me to help. We couldn't speak their language and they could speak only a little of ours, but she loved on those kids with Jesus love and I followed along in her wake, happy to watch and learn.

Loving others in her gentle way has always been what Mrs B does best, and it's why her quiet voice, speaking the truth of the gospel, has always carried such weight. During my first couple of college vacations, I went with my mom and Mrs B to a program that Mrs. B regularly taught in. It was a detention center for juvenile girls who had gotten in trouble with the law, and Mrs B thought it would be good if someone closer to the girls' age could share a testimony with them. Introvert that I am (never a public speaker), I went because she asked, and I did my best to share as honestly and lovingly as she had shared with me. And I watched as those teen girls, hip and cool and insecure and in pain, swarmed around her after the Bible lesson she taught, just wanting to be with her. Some of them called her Grandma.

Mrs. B has outlived her dear Clifton (though he lived to be near 90, I think) and has even outlived one of her children, her pastor son who sadly died unexpectedly of a heart attack several years ago. She now lives in a nursing home where she can get the daily care she needs. It's not hard for me to imagine her bathing everyone there in the same gentle love she's always shone on everyone she's come into contact with.

I didn't know what image to put on the card I made for her birthday. I finally chose this:

I had seen this painting no long ago on the "I Require Art" blog. It's a painting called "Yellow Sycamore in Autumn," painted by Edgar Payne. I thought the wonderful spreading shelter of the tree, and its bright color and stage of life, seemed to capture so much of what I felt when I thought of Mrs B and all the beauty she's shared in her hundred years. Right down to that blue patch of sky...like a window where you can glimpse heaven.

When I went to write down the specifics of the painting so I could put them on the back of the card (something I always try to do when using an artistic image) I almost laughed aloud. Payne painted this in 1916. It's 99 years old...painted when Mrs B was just a tiny girl of 1.

Eve of Eighth Grade

I've had at least three potential posts percolating in my mind this week, but I can't ever seem to let a new school year start without marking it in some way on the blog. It's funny to realize that I have actually been posting on this blog for so many years that our homeschooling journey hadn't even started when I began!

And yet, here we are on the eve of our ninth year of the learning journey together: 8th grade. Ready or not, here we come!

I think I (mostly) feel ready, though I'm not sure how ready the sweet girl feels. She's had a very good summer in many ways and is reluctant to let go of it. I am hoping that some of our new learning ventures will spark her curiosity and her love of learning -- still there, I know -- and that will help to propel us forward.

Here are a few of the things we're using in the journey this year...for fun, I am mixing up the tangibles and intangibles. (And yes, this is just a small taste of our resources.)

• Lots of love and prayer!
• Patience and gentleness!
• Seeds Family Worship Scripture CDs
• Dad taking the lead in history! (Mom doing overviews, literature and church history tie-ins)
• Horizons Algebra 1
• A new location for the sweet girl's desk (in our living room, in what she calls "the thinker's corner")
• High speed internet (coming soon! The installation got delayed a week)
• Forgiveness
• Laughter
• Middle School Physics (and a whole bunch of other great physics resources)
• Word Up! Latin and Greek root words on DVD
• Chocolate 
• More drawing and poetry time (I hope)
• Second year Spanish
• Some international cooking
• Philosophy for Kids 
• Seventh and final year of Writing With Ease/Writing With Skill Program
• Hugs
• Youth group 
• Family read-alouds
• Ticonderoga pencils
• Irish Dance class (out of the beginners! Onto to Group A!)
• New whiteboard markers and new whiteboard
• Old whiteboard turned into place for verses and encouraging/inspirational quotes
• Loving help and support from so many friends and family members
• First day of school muffins (could we start the year without them?) 
• Perspectacles (eyes fixed on Jesus!)
• Lots of love and prayer! (just to bring it full circle) 

Almost September....How? A Gratitude Post

It's so hard for me to believe that it's almost September, though the weather -- and the fact that we're home from our annual mini-vacation -- reminds me that it's true.

It's also hard to believe that I've posted so little on the blog this month. It feels surprising because I've actually had a rich writing month -- it's just all been off-blog. The summer turned out to be a good one for reading, pondering, thinking, and poeming; I also managed the rough draft of an essay I didn't plan to write but like a lot (and am pondering what the heck to do with once I revise it). I didn't get much time to work on the novel, alas, though I managed some good reflection times on the back story with my dear husband/creative consultant. I have a sense of where I need to go -- I just need to find the time to do it.

And I'm hopeful I can. The autumn is gearing up to be a highly busy one. Sweet girl/Jedi Teen will be in 8th grade (we start Monday). I'll be working as a teaching assistant and doing a good bit of curriculum writing again as well as staying involved in ministry (church school, missions, afterschool arts). It's a full plate, but I am raring to keep writing and determined to try to keep my morning writing rhythm going even once we move into the busier fall schedule. It's frankly feeling more important than extra sleep right now.

Two other blessings I should mention: our long, long overdue technology upgrade is in the works at home at last. Once we're through the transition, I'm hopeful that will free up much more time for writing, both here and elsewhere. And on a final but profoundly grateful note: my medical tests came back with good news last week. I'm still extra tired physically, but knowing that what I'm dealing with is in the "normal" range of things makes me feel incredibly grateful.

Tired and busy I may be, but I feel read to make these next few months count in terms of creativity and faithfulness. May it be so, Lord! May it be so!

Why All the Best Ideas Come in the Shower (An Original Poem)

Why All the Best Ideas Come in the Shower

Because you can't hear the phone ring,
and if you can,
you still can't answer it.
Because no one can expect you
to solve a problem
or take care of an immediate crisis,
real or imagined.

Because the warm rainfall
descending on your head
mimics the flow of inspiration,
pouring downward
in an abundance
that catches you by surprise.

Because water is a gift
so precious
that on good days
when you remember to stand
in gratitude
you're more receptive
to other gifts too.

Because you can relax
taut muscles
and breathe deep in ways
that you don't think to do
if others might see,
and if tears need to flow --
who will know?

Because the sound of the water
doesn't just soothe,
it quickens
and helps your mind
make liquid connections
that suddenly!
create so much beauty,
so much sense.

Because unclothed
feels vulnerable but also free,
the same way you feel
on the best creative days
even you're bundled
into protective layers.

Because --
(oh, wait, there were more reasons,
I know, but they have
gurgled softly
down
the
drain -- )

oh yes
Because being cleansed
makes you feel alive
and whole
and covered by
refreshing waves of grace.

(~EMP, 7/31/15) 

One Child at a Time: Reflections After VBS

We had a tiring but terrific VBS week. This was the fourth year we invited in a local CEF team, recognizing that we don’t have the people power to design, implement, and carry out an original program right now. I also like that it connects us to other churches and a wider community of faith. Yes, there are differences in presentation and emphasis within different Christian communities, but sometimes I think we gain more by working together, even in the tensions, than we would working separately. At least that’s one of the gleanings I took away from this week, in which I sensed the Lord was working in me as much as he was in the kids.

The kids had a great time. With the exception of the first night, when we only had 8 children, we had about 18 coming every night, with a good core coming back multiple times and being there the whole week or at least 4 out of 5 nights. A number of these kids came last year as well. It was a good reminder that, as my dear husband says, when we open the doors, the children come!

There are years (and this was definitely one of them) when I wasn’t sure we were prepared to open our doors; we hadn’t had the energy to do much preparation ourselves and our pool of volunteers to draw on seems to get smaller every summer. Our little family has been feeling a bit burned out lately, and D. and I have been asking ourselves some questions about our ministry call and the best way to carry it out in this season. I have also been struggling a good deal with some physical issues and extra tiredness on account of them.

And yet a marvelous thing happened when we did open our doors and step out in faith. The children came, and God was there to meet them, exactly where they were. God was also there to meet us. He gave us energy, enthusiasm, a renewed sense of realization about how deeply these children need an encounter with his love and a chance to hear and see the gospel.

Since we weren’t doing the heavy lifting as teachers, he also gave us time to just sit and be with the kids during meals (at least some nights; S. and I ended up handling the kitchen for the last three nights) and during the lesson time. That meant time to listen to them and laugh with them and ask them questions (in addition to directing and guiding them…and keeping them out of the bathroom when they shouldn’t be in there…and keeping them from clunking each other on the head or shoving each other around too much when they got frustrated or mad at each other). It meant time to do the goofy hand motions to the songs and to encourage them to repeat the Scripture verses. It meant time to observe and interact with and pray for some of the kids who came with extra special needs: we had a deaf boy as well as two boys who were autistic.

Wednesday night, midweek, felt a little overwhelming. We had a large attendance with no one to sit and be with the kids except us and the CEF team, two of whom were very young this year. Some of the kids got loud, rowdy, and rambunctious and just keeping order became the main task of the evening. In the midst of it all, you could tell there were kids who were doing their best to listen, drinking in what they were given. We quickly recognized that many of them had little to no familiarity with the evening’s Bible story, which happened to be Noah. 

At the end of the evening, I was grateful when two lovely ladies in our church who do outreach to the deaf community came downstairs from the Bible Study they’d been holding. I had contacted them to let them know about the little boy who was attending who is deaf, and they were able to have a conversation with him. One of the ladies was able to come back the next two evenings and really forge a connection with this little boy; she signed the lessons to him and also just spent a good deal of time with him in signed conversation. She also made some beginning connections with his family, who is in need of the some of the resources and personal help she can provide. That turned out to be one of the huge blessings of the week.

Still, by the end of the evening, I felt discouraged. I kept thinking “there is so much hunger here, and we have no real way to meet it. There is so much need for attention and presence, and we have so few people to provide it. Even just attempting to reach the children within a few block radius of our church feels overwhelming.” That feeling persisted for me until the following morning, when I opened the daily intercessory email I get from an amazing mission organization working in India. Guess what the first line read? “How do you transform a nation of a billion+ people? You start with one child.”

Suddenly, our task didn’t seem quite as daunting. Or if it did still seem daunting, God had at least given me the “perspectacles” I needed. Our task is truly not as overwhelming as the task of church planters and Bible teachers in India, but with them we share a common task and calling, a common gospel. And even, in one sense, a common strategy. “You start with one child.”

That phrase changed the whole way I looked at the next two nights, even when they seemed to feel overwhelming. One hungry little boy prayed to accept and trust Jesus the next night. And that night, and the next, there were other opportunities, some of them small, to tell and show individual kids how much God cared for them.

In the midst of all of that, God directed my attention some other words I needed to hear. One was in the book Discipleship in the Present Tense (by James K.A. Smith) which I’ve been wending my way through this month, and the other was in an old seminary magazine.

Let me mention the words from the article first. I’ve been going through old magazines, some of them years old, pulling articles or photos I want to keep and recycling the rest of the pages. I was skimming through a nearly ten year old interview with an alum from my seminary who was talking about his own then-daunting task of a particular ministry, in which he had humbly realized he lacked “tools, talents…and finances.” (Sounds familiar!) But he went on to say that because of that, they had constantly relied on “seeking God’s provision and direction” (also sounds familiar!). He finished with the words “This is a ministry bathed in intercessory prayer.”

The other light bulb that went off for me was in Smith’s book, which is really a collection of essays and interviews. I was reading an interview in which he recapped much of the terrific content from his book Desiring the Kingdom, which I read last summer. Toward the end, he commented that that no matter how small you or your community might feel, it’s important to remember that “you’re in a story of immense cosmic significance.”

Yes.

• Remember you are in a story of great cosmic significance
• Bathe the ministry in intercessory prayer
• Focus on one child at a time

I don’t know entirely what the future of our church’s or even our family’s ministry and calling may look like, but it seems to me that these are wise and important reminders that I know I needed to hear this week.

Caring for the Vulnerable Among Us

Watching someone you love struggle with dementia is never an easy thing. My mother-in-law's challenges in the past few years -- and prior to that, her challenges as a caregiver for her husband, as he struggled with Alzheimer's -- have made me do a lot of thinking and praying. They've also made me recall the years my grandmother lived with us when I was young. How do we care best for people we love who struggle with memory loss and confusion? How do we show our love and care for them from afar, when we can't be with them all the time? How do we support the people who are their main caregivers if we're not?

There's a very helpful and thoughtful article that deals with those kinds of questions posted at the her:meneutics blog on Christianity Today. One the things I appreciate is the honesty of Benjamin Mast, the author being interviewed, when he talks about the vulnerability of elderly people with dementia and memory loss, and how easy it is for the church to overlook them. They are part of what he terms as an almost invisible demographic.

I've been wrestling with this a lot since our last family visit to Virginia to see my mother-in-law. She has been part of a moderately large non-denominational Bible church for over forty years. Yes, the same church for over forty years. While I was touched at how warmly she was welcomed to her Sunday School class when we took her to the Easter Sunday service, it was apparent that no one had been in touch with her much at all in the intervening months since she'd last been able to make it there. She struggles a great deal with loneliness, and yet from all I can ascertain, it is very rare that she receives calls from anyone at this church, and much more rare for her to receive an actual visit.

I think there are probably lots of reasons for this. Chief among them may be the contemporary, post-modern mindset that assumes that individuals would rather muddle along privately than rely on others for help. I think there is an assumption that family will do the caring, and absent that, that social services and retirement communities (my mother-in-law lives in one) will plug any care deficit. While it's true that there is a chaplain at my mother-in-law's care facility (maybe more than one?) that person is responsible for a great number of people. It also seems odd and painful to me that the local church, which would seem to be the best representative of "family of faith" there is, would so quickly fade out of the picture, even when someone has been a faithful member of that church for decades.

It may call into question how our churches can lack inter-generationality (is that a word? Well, it is now...) By that, I mean generations spending intentional time together. I don't think this has to be all the time. There are certainly times and places where it is appropriate for people to gather with people of their own age and life experience to learn at levels that fit the seasons of their lives. Young children and teenagers aren't the only people who could benefit from that. I think fellowship groups or Sunday School classes for middle aged people could be very beneficial, partly to learn and pray together over the challenges of aging! But when churches are very age-segregated, that can lead to other challenges. I know for many years that my mother-in-law had felt most at home in her own Sunday School class for older people. More and more, she felt out of place at worship, which had grown more casual and contemporary than she felt comfortable with. The people she was most connected to were her age or older, and now when she is struggling, probably many of them are as well.

All of this has made me feel deeply grateful (again, and for yet another reason) to be a part of a historical, liturgical church tradition. Anglicanism, steeped as it is in the threefold ministerial offices of bishops, priests, and deacons, reserves a very important and biblical role for deacons as leaders in pastoral and practical care for the people of God. (I love deacons! And not just because I consider many of them good friends, and have been blessed to teach in the diaconate study program in my diocese for a number of years.)  My dear husband and I have reflected lately on how glad we are to belong to a church tradition that has a long, historically-enriched, biblical practice of pastoral care. It doesn't mean that each and every church we've ever been part of has always practiced it perfectly...that's not possible. But it means that there is a much greater chance of such care being available and humbly and lovingly offered and practiced than in traditions that are shaped more by contemporary values than by historical and biblical ones.

As the body of Christ, we are to rejoice when another member rejoices and suffer when another member suffers. We are also to carry one anothers' burdens and practice loving care amongst the household of saints. And that's true no matter how old and frail the saints may be. Our love for the most vulnerable and "invisible" among us is surely a mark of our love for God. 

Thankful for the Apostle Paul (and Romans 5:1-11, and the Scriptures, and Grace)

I'm home on this Ash Wednesday evening, working on writing a lesson plan for Romans 5:1-11. This is part of the freelance curriculum writing job I've had since late fall, a job for which I continue to be so thankful, in part because it's such a joy to be able to spend time in the Scriptures, thinking and writing about them for youth and their teachers.

This is my fifth project for the publisher, and only my second New Testament lesson. It's also the first time I've had to tackle Paul for this curriculum. I use the word "tackle" on purpose, because as usual, I find Paul a challenge for my mind and heart.

In general, my story-loving self finds it ever so much easier to write lesson plans and activity guides for narrative or poetic/prophetic passages. Narratives give us characters we can hang our hats on, and poetry gives us concrete visual images. To be fair, Paul sometimes gives us both of those things -- he loves to re-tell Old Testament stories (often with a new twist) and he sometimes provides rich imagery ("clanging cymbal" and the parts of the body talking to one another come to mind right away). But sometimes he's the Paul I tend to think of when his name comes to mind: the pastoral, teaching Paul whose complex sentences can pack what feels like dozens of deeply rich theological words into a very, very small space.

These eleven verses I've been sitting with for the past couple of weeks contain a lot of the biggies: reconciliation, justification, grace, hope, peace, faith, endurance, suffering, rejoicing, wrath. They're all there, and the first few times I read through the passage, as I thought about trying to help teachers unpack it for youth, I found myself wanting to bite my nails. It was hard to pick one over-arching "big idea" because, quite frankly, every single idea in it is big.

So I just kept reading. I'd pick it up at odd moments and read it again. I read it in the ESV (my study Bible of choice these days), in the NIV along with some commentary notes, in the NRSV (which is the translation I need to use for my work). I read it in the Message (thank you, Eugene) and in the wonderfully expanded Amplified version, which interestingly enough, really helped me this time, because with its parenthetical comments expanding on some of those big theological words, it somehow captured the exuberance of Paul.

I think that's what I was missing for a while, as I read the passage with my mind (not a bad thing to do, of course, and needed) trying to understand the import of what Paul was saying well enough to begin to put it into simpler and more concrete terms for kids. I needed to read it with my heart too, to hear the excitement in Paul's voice as he builds and builds and repeats himself...and he does...about the amazing love of God. A love poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. A love shown to us through the death of Jesus on the cross, a death he died while we were yet sinners. While we were a helpless mess and could do nothing on our behalf, reminds Paul, God did it all.

And we who have been reconciled through that act have hope. Real, living, true, confident hope that will never disappoint us, no matter what kind of suffering may come our way. Hope that allows us to rejoice no matter what comes, because HE HAS DONE IT. When we turn to him in trust, when we put our hope in this great good news, he makes us new and sets us right, forever healing our relationship to God which was once so irrevocably broken.

All the big words Paul uses? He's not using them to impress or confuse, he's using them because they're the only ones he can come up with that are rich and deep and brilliant enough to capture at least a little bit of the truth he's trying to sing for us here, preaching it so it can sink deep down into our bones and enflame our hearts and remind us anew of who God is and what he has done.

I am so thankful for the apostle Paul, so thankful for these words and the gift of the Scriptures.

Church School Snippets

One of the things I love most about teaching in our parish church school is how profoundly and wonderfully the kids get the message of God’s redeeming love. Sometimes it can be hard to remember just how much they’re listening…and thinking, learning, and growing….in the midst of the wiggles and the giggles and the bouts of silliness and the endless questions about when we’re going to have snack, but listening they are. And sometimes they do get it.

The kids we teach range in age from 5 to 11. Some of the moments with them are profound, and some are just delightful and funny. I have so many favorite moments on a given Sunday that I can’t possibly recount them all, but here are a few of my favorites today:

• My seventh grade daughter, who assists us in teaching the class, leaning over and whispering to me during opening worship upstairs. She was reminding me that one of the kids had a birthday this week, so we would want to sing to him during church school (one of our traditions). She also reminded me that during church school prayer time, we should remember to ask a girl in the class about how her recent visit with her grandparents had gone. I nodded. Then without thinking, I leaned over and whispered back, “that’s good pastoring.” And it is. I love that my daughter is attuned to the lives of these younger kids and that she’s thinking about ways we can bless them and affirm the importance of the things going on in their lives.
• Of course, the kids can also drive her a bit batty, especially when they are in highly active mode as they were today. She can get easily overwhelmed by all the noise and activity. At one point today, she hauled off and shouted “Silence!” which miraculously did produce a lull. It also made me laugh (inwardly) as I suspect that all pastors, even the grown-up official kind with collars, might not mind doing that on occasion.
• The Bishop was here today, for his yearly visitation and to confirm one of the young adults in our congregation (now in her 20s, and we’ve known her since she was about 6!). The bishop gathered the kids and gave them a little talk about the ABUNDANT life we have in Christ, helping them to understand the word abundant. After the bishop prayed for and dismissed the kids, we took them downstairs and I was about to ask, as I always did, if there was anything in worship upstairs that they had particularly noticed or wanted to talk about. Before I could, a boy waved his hand and announced, “I noticed that the bishop has ABUNDANT eyebrows.” (Which is quite true by the way…our bishop’s eyebrows are most impressive!)
• The kids were listening to a puppet show in which the characters were talking about the verse in Corinthians about how one person sowed, and another watered, but God made things grow. The little boy nestled on my lap looked at me, and said, in a highly intrigued voice, “Does God make things grow? With his POWERS?”
• We were talking about the different gifts that God gives to different people in the church: all kinds of gifts, and all important and necessary. The kids were naming people in the church who did different things and some of their gifts, and I was pointing out that each and every one of them was also gifted and also an important part of the church. At which point a newly turned 10 year old piped up with the profound words: “my dad tells me my gift is that I’m vulnerable to letting God speak through me.” Well….yes. Wow.
• We were praying for our city of the day: Windhoek, Namibia. Most of the cities we’ve prayed for this year (we’re going A-Z) have been in the 10-40 window and have a lot of unreached peoples, but Windhoek has about a 90% Christian population. The kids were astounded…and impressed. “I think missionaries have done a good job there!”
• We were singing and dancing to a very African-inspired version of Galatians 5:1 (“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free; stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”) I called out, “If we’ve been set free by Jesus, why would we want to be slaves again to sin?” and one little boy hollered back, “Yeah, who would want to be a slave again? That’s just dumb!”) Amen, child. Amen.

Thankful Day

After the exhausting week and the icky Saturday (which probably came through loud and clear in my curmudgeonly post yesterday) I just have to say how thankful I am for this Sunday. The temperatures moderated into the low 30s, which did wonders for my morale.

Morning worship was lovely, infused with a lot of music that paid tribute to the late Andrae Crouch (an amazing gospel singer and musician who passed away last week). D and I both dearly love Andrae's music, and our family has been praying for him for quite some time in his recent months of illness. I loved the fact that our congregation is Anglo-Baptist (grin) enough that today we got to celebrate Andre's legacy, especially with the final rollicking strains of his "Soon and Very Soon, We are Goin' to See the King."

Sunday School and missions committee meeting were both full of challenges, but today challenges felt good, as did loving and serving as wholeheartedly as I could. Despite my inadequacies everywhere, God's love sure does make up for all I'm not.

A walk home in those more moderate temperatures, fifteen minutes of pure quiet to enjoy before the rest of the fam got home from grocery shopping, and a lunch made of fresh strawberries, Robert Frost poetry, and time with my 12 year old -- thankfully in much better space herself today! -- were also blessings. D. had to go back to work (it is, after all, still January) but S. and I proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon baking bread after she built a quick snowman on our sidewalk, courtesy of the slight melt that had come to the snow mountains.I snuck in a little bit more reading on Charles Marsh's new biography of Bonhoeffer, and even managed the first chapter of my new P.D. James.

I know I may rue the fact that I didn't work on deadlines today, but sometimes rest, in all sorts of forms, is even more important. Very thankful for this day!

Teach Us to Number Our Days: A Few Thoughts on Aging

“Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12

This advent season I’m thinking about aging. It’s not just because my middle-aged body and mind are both tired these days (I find myself getting really excited about sleep, in ways I never used to!) but because we recently visited our parents.

My husband’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s this year, a diagnosis we’re still not entirely sure about, though one thing is clear: her memory and physical strength have both plummeted alarmingly in the past year and a half. Although she is a little stronger now than she was in late summer, before the family had her current care situation in place, it is still very difficult to see her so frail and easily confused.

My own mother, five years older than my mother-in-law but always constitutionally more vigorous, fell two days before Thanksgiving and broke her hip. We spent our time there mostly in hospital, as she was recovering from surgery. She’s spent the weeks since in a rehab facility, learning to walk and carefully handle stairs with her new hip, and Lord willing, she’ll be home in just a couple more days. She’s worked hard, determined to get back on her feet, but she’s battled anxiety, depression, and loneliness too. This has been the longest time my folks, married for 60 years, have been separated from each other for many years. Probably the last time they spent this much time apart was over 50 years ago, when they made a move from Tennessee to Virginia with two little ones in tow, and my father had to move ahead of the rest of the family to find a place for them to live and to start his job. He’s visiting her every day, of course, but they still miss each other a lot.

Observing all three of these people (so dear to me) handle huge challenges has been encouraging, worrying, thought-provoking – and more besides. I am amazed by their courage. I don’t use that word lightly. Just getting into your 70s and 80s with the will to get up each morning, to keep moving in spite of pain and discomfort, to keep a sense of humor in the midst of growing daily frustrations, takes a tremendous amount of courage.

I love these people. They have so much wisdom and experience, and they’ve poured so much of their lives into ours. And right now, they all face so many daily challenges. Physical faculties have begun to fail them. Mom doesn’t hear as well as she used to, Dad’s eyesight is challenging him (night driving has become a real anxiety, reading more of a chore) and my mother-in-law’s vocal strength is failing her, so it’s almost impossible for her to be heard. Both moms struggle with balance issues. My dad has to monitor his pace or his blood-pressure drops significantly (he has congestive heart failure, from which he has recovered wonderfully, but still). They have more aches and pains and their bodies need more rest.

The friends and loved ones of their youth have begun to die, and there are fewer people left who share their memories and can connect with them on deep levels of heart and soul. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget my mom flourishing a newspaper open to the obituary section (while she lay in her hospital bed) and saying with total snark: “Every once in a while we like to check in to make sure we haven’t died yet.” Then my dad, a few minutes later, in a much more sober frame of mind, telling me that “some days when I read the obituaries, everyone listed there is younger than I am.”

I’m sure there are times when they feel overlooked or dismissed because they can’t “keep up the pace.” They’re slower on their feet. New technology passes them by. Popular cultural trends seem more inane and faddish and lightweight to them (I already get that, and I’m only 46). Yet they’re still susceptible to the fear and anxiety pumped regularly through the media, just like everyone else.

I appreciate seeing the ways they handle their growing infirmities and frustrations: sometimes with panache, sometimes with humor, sometimes with anger and defiance. I’ve begun to realize that no two people handle the arduous hills of aging quite the same way. And I’ve begun to see that there are certain things I not only hope and pray I have in place if I ever attain to eight or nine decades of living, but certain things I want to actively work to have in place if and when I get there. Not that I’m banking on these attitudes or attributes necessarily and always making things easier – unexpected challenges will arise, and the likelihood of D & I ever having the level of care our parents are experiencing is slim.

Still, here are a few things I want to begin to put into place for myself now as I think about those years to come. They are good life skills and attitudes to have in the here and now, not just investments for old age.

·        I want to cultivate an attitude of gratitude, the kind of gratitude I see in my dad when he tells me that every day he still enjoys is a gift.

·        I want to keep my mind as active as possible for as long as possible: with reading (including slow, thoughtful reading of material that challenges me), with prayer, music, creativity, and even occasionally tackling new skills. I want to try to be open to the new as well as the old for as long as I can.

·        I want to remember that “activity” does not equal value. A ministry of presence – even if it means, in the end, simply being kind and loving to caregivers (who may or may not always be kind themselves) is still of value. A ministry of prayer matters. There may even be times when I feel I have nothing left to give at all, but I pray that I will still somehow know, deep down inside, that I am always a beloved daughter of God. That starts with me remembering it now, and treating others with the respect and dignity and care with which I hope to be treated one day.

·        I don’t want to be afraid to ask for help or to show I don’t have it all together. I want to stay open to receive. To me, this is huge. My parents have been givers, do-ers, caregivers, their whole lives. It has sometimes been very hard for them to be on the receiving end of care. I think this is a tough one for all of us actually. We all like to be the strong ones who give. But it’s been dawning on me lately that as Christians, our whole (healed, whole, saved!) lives are due to having received grace upon grace we couldn’t have ever earned or scraped up or managed on our own, and that needs to mark our inner disposition in other ways. We need to be open to receive what we can’t possibly do for ourselves, and to see it not as a sign of weakness, but a blessed part of God’s economy and the communion of the saints.

·        I want to view even the really, really hard stuff in life as part of the adventure God has me on, remembering that I am in his hands and in his care.

·        I want to savor simple gifts. And laugh more.  

·        I want to get to and maintain a healthy weight, as well as maintain better exercise routines and healthier eating habits. I’d like to stay as flexible and limber as possible for as long I can!

“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” Isaiah 46:4