Hither & Yon

It's time. For many years I've listlessly pondered starting a new blog. I love the space this has provided to write and engage and live through my thoughts over and over again. But I also need to grow up (in the blogging sense). I long for more resources to beautify this space and for a refreshing place to re-engage this written world I so love.

Thus, it's time. I'm moving over to a new site, but keeping this one as my own documentation of where I have been in the last 7 years. This is like a yearbook. Full of mental braces and penmanship pimples. Things that sometimes I wish were void of the internet, but they were all a part of me. I might as well embrace the awkward.

So I'm jumping the Blogger ship and I hope you follow! I know it's been many moons and there may no longer be anyone who even sees this, but I'm okay making an invitation to an abyss. That's what this whole thing really has been about anyway!

I make no guarantees. My life is still as incomplete and wanderlust as before, but Jesus is also still active and I want to be obedient to my gifts, wants and musings.

My new blog is called Hither and Yon. I've dreamed about this name for years. It means from here to there, which sums up my reality so well. I am always moving from here to there, most of the time not knowing what "here" is while I'm in it or what "there" is even after i've journeyed. I'm eager to write again. Anxious to put more time and energy into compiling thoughts and wonderings.

Grateful for this space. Grateful for kind people who read. Grateful for the freedom to have no readers at all.

Here's the link: Hither & Yon

Bon Voyage!

Limping

I tend to see my life move in rhythms. Influxes of themes. Repetition in the routes conversations take. Those tend to be what move me, what impassion me and inspire me to dig my heels in a little deeper. To take the moments and just let them settle on my shoulders as important and notable.

The repetition lately seems to be in regards to hearing pain in people. Interactions with people in dark places stumbling beneath heaviness, carrying burdens and reminiscing about seasons of pain, my own or others. At twenty-four, I am by no means an expert, I'm actually fairly inexperienced at dealing with tragedy or crisis. But I hear it often enough and have had my own fair bouts with it to be able to tangibly recognize it quick and empathize deeply.

As I've been reflecting on the pain around me, I sense an overarching desire to overcome pain. To beat it. To achieve renewal that extracts the painful experiences from our story. Like it is some wall that once we reach over, it becomes a trophy of something attained or accomplished.

But the problem is, pain doesn't ever speak to our virtue. And neither does healing.

We know that's true because pain doesn't necessarily come with warning. It doesn't afflict particular people and avoid others. Pain cannot be about virtue because pain cannot be deterred. I have too many friends who are in the throes of infertility or breakups or financial ruin or health problems to ever believe otherwise. These are virtuous people, full of grace and belief and hope and trust in Jesus that I cannot fathom ever possessing myself given the situation reversed. They've just received the shadow of pain without any due.

So why do we believe that overcoming/beating/moving beyond pain boasts any achievement of us then? Even more than that, why do we believe that that should speak to a value in us? Maybe it's because we have some psychological need to believe that there is something in us that can win SOMETHING when we feel like we're losing everything. Maybe it's because we actually believe that we deserve painful things based off of something we've done wrong and we can do penance to right it. Maybe it's just because we are so afraid of hurt being a part of our being that we choose to believe that if we fight hard enough we can leave it behind us and people will notice how strong we are.

I would pose that the most latter may be the most true.

But what if rather than trying to overcome pain, we absorbed it. If we let it rest uglily on our shoulders as part of our story. If we let it have its place in our lives and experienced healing so deep that we were changed permanently.

The word that most comes to mind about what this looks like is limping. Because pain damages us, right? Injuries don't fully heal and there are residual stains over every area of our lives that no prayer, husband, friendship, job, dollar amount can actually remove. And actually, maybe we're better if it isn't removed.

What if our limping actually allows us to make it further than we ever could in full form? The only place a paradox like that works is in the presence of Jesus. He is the one who invites us ugly ones to sit at His table of communion.

Like the parable in Luke 14:16-24 where the rich man invites all his wealthy friends and no one comes, so he tells his servant to grab the homeless people to share a meal with. David Benner talks about this in his book The Gift of Being Yourself. We are the homeless people invited to the table. Our whole persons, the really crappy, self-righteous parts of ourselves included. The parts that experience pain and want retribution. The parts of ourselves that are self-righteous and incredulous. The parts of ourselves that hate who or what has inflicted pain on us. That is the part Jesus invites to the table, not to scold, but to tenderly hear and love through invitation to His kindness. He doesn't look away from our brokenness, He invites us instead to sit around His table and drink deeply.

That's where the healing happens. The good healing, the kind that allows marriages built on infidelity to be healed through forgiveness and repentance, the kind that believes simultaneously in firm justice and unending grace for horrifying wrongs like with Planned Parenthood. The kind of healing that takes time and work and effort and pain and discomfort and screwing it up a bunch of times before getting a little better. But it's the healing I have found to be most true and most worth it; where I have been invited again and again in my life to find real freedom that doesn't confine me to live my life around my pain or my overcoming of pain as a measure of my value. The freedom to walk with a limp for the rest of my life without being afraid of how ridiculous I look.

Because more important than how I'm limping is where I'm limping too. I'm limping to Jesus and His world that redeems pain and heals desecration. His home that welcomes my torn tissue and nerve damage and answers it with a song of deep hope. Restoration for both my body and my soul. And given the choice of experiencing deep pain and knowing deeper healing or never having any of it and not knowing the glory of redemption, I will chose the former every time. Every. Single. Time.

All of this to say, I pray and cry and hug my friends in the dark days and let them do the same for me. Pain is pain and meant to be experienced fully. I'm thankful that I no longer have to be afraid of either their pain or my own. I'm thankful that my story has been one that's been met with deep healing and hope so I can believe in it for other people. I'm also thankful that I'm not responsible to be the healer for any of them. Instead I just get to bear burdens and remind that health is there for us, it just doesn't take the form we thought it did. It's a Person not a position.

Scones and Truth

There's the new bakery in KC I'm quite enamored with. I'm a big fat sucker for pastry and iced americano's, so you add Anthropologie wallpaper and I will declare it my home. They will be my people, their recipes my recipes.

The second best thing to their cranberry orange scone is meeting my friend there for breakfast every other Friday. We've tried other places, but they can keep their crepes, I will be eating muffins like they're going out of style. I digress. These little breakfasts are cherished. It's a steady place for me to say the truth of where I'm at, without explanation, without "why", without pretense. In fact, when those are present it's typically met with a hard stare because who actually has themselves figured out?

My boss has taken his family to Colorado for the month for their July Sabbath. This means lighter work days, reading time, holiday, and lots of time to just look and see. My truth last Friday morning about what I'm seeing was that I am a whole lot worse of a person that I thought I was. Most of my wrongness revolves around the fact that I'm terribly selfish and incomprehensibly arrogant.

As I'm slowing down this month and finding myself feeling through things, part of what I've needed to think about is my busyness. Not just HOW busy I am but how I PRESENT my busyness, I don't think I'm the only one either. I tell people I'm busy like they should be impressed. I pack my schedule then tell people I don't have time because somehow I believe being busy makes me important. And the busier I am, the more important I am, and if you don't understand that then it's just because you're not as important as I.

See what I mean by incomprehensibly arrogant?

And I just doubt I'm the only, mainly because my friend was the one who said it first. I can only bet that you feel that too whether or not you think it. We live in a culture that finds elusiveness endearing. Tenacity and longevity are boring. To be interesting you have to be up and coming and different. Wearing a miniature bun on the top of your head and picking out the essence of acorn in your coffee. Or naming your child Symphony and protesting the gluten in your pasta.

Busyness, liking how you look, enjoying food, fostering uniqueness in children and being cognizant of health issues are good things to care about. They are terrible things to determine your importance. I tend to lean towards time management, likability, and introversion as being my qualifying factors. These are areas where I squirm and get tense when people try to engage them not on my terms. And when my friend said that about importance and busyness I just found myself saying, "yeah, I actually think that too".

I'm enamored with Dr. David Benner's works right now. This month I have read Surrender to Love and The Gift of Being Yourself. Both about discovery of God through the means of self-discovery. He asserts that God has created us so intertwined with Him that the better we come to know ourselves, the better we will know who He is. One of his encouragements to how to get to know oneself better is through meditation and reflection at the end of the day. Stick with me, it's not as Mother Earthy as it sounds.

He suggests that we practice sitting quietly for five minutes and just thinking about our day, remembering interactions as they come to us and registering how we felt about them. He reminds that this isn't an exercise in determining why we felt what we did, just in knowing THAT we felt it.

For the ten minute meditation he proffers that we should read the through the Gospels in short spurts, no more than fifteen verses at a time, and think imaginatively about them. Consciously putting yourself into the circumstance and wandering there for a few minutes.

Both of these practices have proven themselves extremely disquieting at first, mainly because there's no measurement. I can't gauge the quality of my time when I do this. I can only be there and participate. I am not responsible for or even sure how anything can come of such practices, but as I'm attempting to just show up I'm finding myself seeing Jesus to be a lot more tangible than before. A lot more capable. A lot more.

Right now, my truth is that I'm really bad. Sometimes I just avoid people because I feel like I'm only capable of ruining things. How surprising for me to find out that the truth about MY truth is that I can see that reality and not feel hopeless. Because as I am not responsible to know why I feel what I feel, I'm not responsible to change how bad I am. I just have to recognize it because in sitting with Him, I find it goes immediately and exclusively hand in hand with a need for Jesus. One that sees my horror and says that He's a safe place for me. He will help me to not be a ruiner. He will help me realize that to be busy is not synonymous with importance. He will help me to be present and slow down and rest and not try so hard. This month has revealed that I am actually not gaining any traction by doing so anyway.

I'm taking a lot of time to digest this. And I'm liking it that way. This is how it's seeping down deep in my bones, altering my DNA and redeeming my humanity. These are the moments where everything is the least controlled and I feel the most safe.

Again

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"' and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." 

GK Chesterton

I have posted that here before, probably multiple times. Every year or so though it circles back through my mind singing its song a little louder than before. I read it to my roommate last night as we talked about laughter and the embarrassing things we enjoy but would never share. I live in a beautiful city, full of creativity, artistry, thought, culture. A city that encourages development and growth and change for the sake of betterment. I get revved up when I have that conversation. 

But I realized it's not a conversation I want to have all the time. Devotion to change and betterment is necessary and helpful, but can also lend itself to dissatisfaction and cynicism. Change doesn't have space for monotony, especially the monotony Chesterton writes of. 

I think "monotony" and my mind free associates directly to boredom. It's a short line between the two. Dullness, weariness, lackluster, meh. But what if that's not the true nature of monotony? What if my cynicism and desires for growth have actually tainted the goodness of monotony, tamed it of its fierceness. Disfigured it into a cumbersome burden rather than Chesterton's version that seems to directly associate monotony with joy and belief. 

When did I lose the innocence I maintained and decided to live a "once is enough" lifestyle. One that says God is only capable of achieving good things every once in a while. That He has to reboot and recalibrate before He's able to do it again. Or that He should just stop messing in my life already, I'm just fine. Where in my fight for independence did I stop seeing the His actions towards me as sufficient and decide that I needed Him PLUS what I do for myself? When did I ask Him to stop making the daisies because there are damn well plenty already?

I long and pray for the day when His joy is in me and my joy has been made full (John 15:11). When His joy is in me, THEN my joy is made full. Only then. Cause, effect. Only then will I see Him achieve miracles in my world and immediately say, "Do it again!" because I know He is capable and pleased to do so. I'm often afraid that I tire God out, when in fact I haven't engaged Him remotely close to His capacity. 

Jesus talks often of childlike faith. Growing up I thought that was only about innocence maintenance. But I think it's the opposite. I think it's the actually the return I make from my adolescent independence. The redemption of those of us who posture and pretense and defend and self-sustain. The realization that maybe He's the only one capable to repeat good things and intense things and impossible things. Maybe it's not actually a fluke. I think childlike faith is the redemption of cynicism, not the absence of it. 

It's fierce and it's free. When I return to the place where I can ask again and again, there's a fervor incomparable to any intensity I alone can achieve. Because I don't need to cover up, I don't need to hide my love and enjoyment in the name of saving face. I don't have to be afraid or embarrassed of being unimpressive or naive. I am free to love what's before me and to look to Him to do extravagant things on repeat. 

This week, a weird and inconclusive relationship in my life met resolution way faster and way more beautifully than I ever dreamed could be true. And rather than hiding it, not believing it can be repeated, I want to revel in it and know that God can do it again and again and again. I think something about wanting it repeated and unchanged offers God the glory and me the rest. It reminds me that His glory and my rest is sufficient. He is enough for me. And He does not grow weary in doing good to me or you. 

I resolutely believe that today. Abounding vitality is awaiting us at the end of our geriatric cynicism and disbelief. His delight in repetition and joy is contagious, having a Benjamin Button effect. But we must sit in the fullness of His immediate presence. We must consider the daisies. We must slow down to see it. 

Company

There was wine. There was chicken. And there was Pazookie (pronounce puh-zoo-kee).

And I sat around my kitchen table admiring the collection of girls that sat there. Girls who are new to me but not to each other. Chatter flowed easily, talk of Miles Davis, our community group, if we were boys — what kind would we be, etc. Some of it deep, some of it light. It's wonderful evenings like this where I can just relax into the conversation, taking in the little collective of personalities. Strong and adventurous, meek and gentle, fervent and passionate, everyone a little different but together, a symphony of souls.

Growing older I've noticed how much I belong in a menagerie. Something about being around people who are cataclysmically different than I does me good. It stretches me, comforts me, teaches me how to really see people, and subsequently care for them. People come to the table with their ugly beautiful. With their bad days, bad families, bad attitudes, but also with good grace and good laughter and good riddance of bad rubbish.

When I was young, I remember having company over. It meant a clean room and a good attitude. Sometimes I would grab a notepad and scurry from room to room taking drink orders, pretending it was a restaurant. These were the years I learned how to serve with my actions. Now, hosting my own table, I am learning to serve with my heart. My parent served with their hearts too. But unlike how to keep a clean house and when to refill the ice bucket, hospitality isn't taught, it's caught.

As I've been "catching" community the past few years, I can't exactly define it. It's a welcome to interrupt but never actually interrupting. It's being sacrificed for but never feeling as if you put anyone out. It's being allowed to see behind the curtain, both the gifts and the gross misconduct and having permission to abide there.

It's easy to fall into a rhythm of having company over. Preparing for an event rather than hosting people. Seeing the "to do" rather than seeing the space and souls. A big portion of my job is to host people, and I can easily tell the difference when I am having company and when I am hosting community with a heart of hospitality. One asks to be done perfectly and for acceptance and affirmation, the other doesn't ask for anything.

My heart is prone to only offer things if they push me further into people's good graces. I fail (or choose to fail) to see that Jesus really calls me to serve anyone and everyone, especially those whose good graces matter least. And that only happens when He is enough for me. Left to myself I will always be about company and impressions. I stumbled upon the first C.S. Lewis quote I can recollect, and just like the first time it struck deep:

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think to often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, it at all, only in a nightmare. 

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. 

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization, [hospitality] — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. 

Lewis reminded me today that the simplicity or elaboration with which I do anything matters not. The reactions of those that I crave are only my concern for my potential glory. Jesus' desire for my table is for me to bear the burdens. For me to see the immortals and cherish them. To push them hopefully heaven-ward rather than nearer immortal horror. It's a bold proclamation, there is no challenge in it, just reality. I can neglect others immortality all I want, concerning myself only with my own. What would that be worth? Rooting one another on, seeing victory, freedom, redemption. That is the life I long for. That is the life I hope to foster at my table and beyond. I hope the crevices of my world carry this as the torch. People did it for me, in fact they still are. I see how I am changed for it. Grateful for how I am changed for it. 

Praise God from whom all tables flow. 

Foraging Fig Leaves

I spent the weekend at my parents. Walking, cooking, watching more HGTV and Food Network than is healthy. And praying.

The last one I don't do so often. I say I will. I think towards doing so. But in reality, I think a lot more about praying than actually praying. I think a lot more about being better, kinder, wise, listening, gentleness, awareness, love, than actually being any of those things.

The mental energy I tend to devote to concepts is appalling.

The past few weeks Jesus has been revealing to me the processes I have in place in my life that lead me to sin, not just the sins themselves. The distractions I take on, the platitudes I boast, the running and diversions I frequent, all that preoccupies me from actually healing of my sinfulness and learning to love Jesus better.

This isn't better exemplified than through the conversation I had with someone this morning. Conversation is a euphemism in the case for my actually repenting to her because I'm a jerk. I was a jerk two months ago and today I finally sat down and talked about it. Classy huh?

And what my lack of repentance, my distractions, my platitudes, my diversions and preoccupations have revealed about me is my misdirection to avoid exposure. To self-protect. To forage fig leaves. Because if I can hide from myself, then I can actually hide from God too, or at least I think that's the case. If I never admit that I'm incorrect, then I never need to be corrected. I become the director of my repentance, authority over my change, and god of myself and can just stamp "By the Grace of God" on myself once I've autonomously figured out my shit.

The past weeks and especially four days have shown me is how religious I am. I work the system in my favor. Except the favor is just self-sufficiency. That's my god.

When one friend gently prompted me to consider repentance as an option with my other friend, it was like a tectonic shift in my heart. But the opposite affect. The broken plates actually started shifting back into place. The solution was actually to be broken. To admit defeat and wrongness and selfishness. Placing autonomy on a guillotine is where fresh air permeated.

I spend a lot of time placating myself to avoid having to repent. If I'm not mad/hurt/upset, then hard conversations don't have to happen. So I just seek to never really feel anything bad, and subsequently have missed feeling a lot of good too. On earth, there will always be more joy in healing than there ever is in non-brokenness. Just like how my right relationship with the Father came through blood and death, so does right relationship with my brothers and sisters. Except, it doesn't take physical shedding of blood or a physical death. The cost of right relationships here is exposure to the point of spiritual death. Dying to autonomy. Dying to the hunt for leaves.

Rightfully, C.S. Lewis realized and allegorized this much better than I could in Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

"Then the lion said — but I don't know if it spoke — You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. 

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worst than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know — if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place. it hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.

Well he peeled the beastly stuff right off — just as I thought I'd down it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt — and there is was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had bee. Then he caught hold of me — I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as son as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again."

So I find myself today feeling like a "boy" again. Having been stripped and smarted and washed. The exposure was actually what I needed for healing. Letting the wound breathe. Letting the reality of pain and hurt and wrongness cleanse with fresh air. It boils and scabs at first, but coming back to rightness is so refreshingly good. I don't want to forget it.

I pray for the remembrance of my failure and the deliciousness of repentance. I pray this for you too. May we remember healing to be so much better than hiding. May exposure be much more freeing than self-justification. May we rest in the shade of the trees rather than plucking their leaves to hide.

Facebook, Frienemies and Freedom

Last week I deleted my Facebook. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that I kept saying I didn't care about Facebook and then was on it 6 times a day. When I'm being a hypocrite to myself, I know something probably needs to change.

I'll be honest, when my other friends have "fasted" from social media, I always thought myself a bit better than them. "I don't need to do that," I thought to myself, "I have a handle on it....unlike them." Well turns out I don't. I shut down my account and have felt far more uncomfortable than I would care to admit. So for those of you who think you're better than me, you probably are. As for the rest of us, I thought I'd share what I've been learning from deleting my Facebook.

Facebook is the frienemy of introverts. 
I always thought given my introverted nature that Facebook would be a helpful way to keep up on the happenings of people without having to interact with them. While that's absolutely true, I also knew way too much about way too many people and found myself becoming exhausted when it actually came time to spend with real people. Information overload. For being a person who tends to thrive when relationships are an inch wide and a mile deep, I was inadvertently living the opposite. I knew a  lot about a bunch of people who I don't spend frequent, meaningful time with.

I get to make my choices about my time. 
I could spend an entire post blaming Facebook for my distraction, but it can't/won't change its nature. It's an object. I've felt uncomfortable the past week because in the past I spent my down time perusing Facebook, taking inventory of the goings-on of everyone in my inner, outer, and beyond circles. I've been noticing the lapses in my day more and am having to make choices where I spend my mental energy. It still looks like online shopping sometimes, but there's something about removing my reflexive source of entertainment that has caused pause. I'm reading more in the evenings, and during the day am asking my office mate how her day is going when I have ten extra minutes and need a mental break.

I have forgotten how to ask questions and learn about people.
When I removed the influx of information about people via Facebook (what they did that weekend, photos, who their friends are, etc.), I realized I actually have lost some ability to create conversation out of nothing. I have grown so accustomed to referencing information I learned about them online, I have neglected the art of learning about people based off of simple questions (other than "how's your day going"?). I am awkwardly having to remember to ask about people....slowly reverting from always knowing what's going on to choosing to care to ask and realize things I don't know about them.

That which I thought I was gaining from Facebook was measured on a false scale. 
Nothing is wrong with Facebook. I think most people can go on for a lifetime and use it and never have an issue. However, I have far less self-control than most people. I never chose to give it up before now thinking that what it provided me was more helpful than if it wasn't there. It's where I have posted about my blog, how I remember birthdays, where I saw people's names so that in the future when I met them I had a frame of reference. But in reality, I don't care if anyone really needs my blog....so if my "readers" fall off, I'll still be content (plus I can post about it on Instagram), I'll always know the birthdays of the people I'm presently close to, and there's nothing wrong with meeting someone I have no idea about and shaking their hand for the first time without seeing 100 million pictures of them prior to our introduction.

Social media is a great thing, meant for fun, and nothing more. 
I read this Citizen's Press article a few weeks ago. It was just another cog setting this deletion-mindset in motion. Truthfully, I deleted Facebook but I still love Instagram. It isn't an issue for me. Some days I'm on it 4 times, others I forget it's there. I'm not a hypocrite, I just realize that my heart is what matters, not social media or rules I make about it. My admonishment for myself and others is to always examine the sources of entertainment (and all else) in our life, pray and ask the Lord to reveal bentness, repent and change as needed. There should always be freedom to enjoy and nothing more. Facebook had gotten out of hand for me and I'm happy to admit that.

Jesus is better than my perspective on Facebook.
That's the rub. Facebook wasn't always a bad thing for me, it wasn't always a good thing for me either....it was just a website, and like anything else in this world, it can be abused because I'm sinful. For me, this shift has been a quarter turn towards Jesus and away from building my own kingdom. It's freeing me to be more present in my day and to a way to see how I can better abide in Jesus. Creating rules around things that aren't sin issues is unhelpful garbage, so I don't have a rule book to social media. I am only praying for self-awareness and humility to admit when I sense problems for myself. That's my prayer for my life. That Jesus would give me more of Himself and reveal to me the patterns in place that cause me to stutter in knowing Him better.

My Worry

Sometimes I worry about what I do here. I worry about my attitude, I worry about perception of others, I worry for you as a reader. Perhaps I'm giving myself too much credit, or perhaps I am being given a good dose of humility. What I do here really does not seem so important. Typing words into an abyss of millions of others who are typing words. 

But somehow my society really loves to take excerpts and run with them to create perspectives and that's given me pause this afternoon. I am not insecure of how or what I write, but today I feel fear that what actually is happening is not helpful. Is what I'm doing perpetuating the social media frenzy? Is it provoking others to judge or envy or pity or doubt? Am I causing more harm to you than gain? Today, I am experiencing a healthy dose of stoppage. 

The past few weeks my mind has been a flurry of consistently big thoughts. Not-so-subtle shifts in how I'm seeing and experiencing and pursuing my people and my time. A lifelong friend and I ate Indian food and then went for a drive last night. We continued the conversation we've had a dozen different times this month. A conversation about slowness, methodical living, purposeful time, simplification. 

These are words that are constantly rattling in my mind recently. How do I take out more things for the sake of putting in deeper things. Deep things in my life can't live in massive community, they are introverted changes, needing room to breathe and time to latch on. Deeper rest, deeper relationships, deeper attitudes, deeper fun. I've made lists recently of things that can provoke timeliness in my life to let them stew. Things I know I already like to do, but placing them in bulleted form somehow gave them more teeth, a simpler way to decide what to do with my free time. 

And my worry comes from these changes in myself. There is nothing about these thoughts that I don't find helpful or I fear sinful, but what I really fear is that I'm deciding somewhere in this that everyone ought to grow as I am growing. Or said differently, you ought to think and be like me because my thoughts are profound enough to be blogged. I don't think this blog has been that arrogant all the way through, but this week I have noticed this shift of expectation. 

In the slowness I've been pressing into, the depth and moments of change make me want to share. They instill in me a desire to provoke others to experience the same. I start to see my changes as being THE changes. The ways I sin as being the ways EVERYONE sins. And while that may be true, I would be loathe to miss the forest for the trees in learning how to just offer suggestions or anecdotes to those around me. 

Rather than sharing my sanctification in a way that offers rest in the grace I myself am receiving, I find myself offering it as an insinuation, a nuanced but horrible shift. I hope this maybe hasn't been felt by others in the garish way I'm seeing it exposed in my heart, but somehow I think my messiness is pervasive enough that it's been felt by others. 

Amazingly enough, Jesus doesn't just change me, He changes how I change too. I think that's why frustration and a felt lack of progress is often how we feel as we're noticing His work in our lives. He's not just changing the thing in us, if He were, we could just learn the rules and move forward and be better. But He insists that the way I change is also writ with sin and needs to be altered as well. He doesn't leave a stone unturned as He roots out sin in me for my good. It only leaves room for me to lean heavier on Him. 

And that's the part I don't worry about. The "how" of His teaching never actually outweighs His presence. Becoming a "better person" is a garbage pursuit, I will never be better. But in His shadow I can be healed from my worstness. And that progress is often uglier than I'd like it and not very blog-worthy, but perhaps most of all should be shared. 

By His wounds I am healed and you are healed. We are offered healing from ourselves and our selfish, worry-worthy tendencies and each others arrogant and insensitive actions toward each other. I don't have to offer you the list of things He's showing me to enact in hopes that you pick up my sanctification. I can offer you the same thing I'm always offered, grace to be. Grace to hear your pain and mundane and your minor frustrations and your immense joys. To hear them and believe for you and with you that Jesus changed everything this Easter weekend so that we don't have to remain in these places. 

That's what I really hope to be offered by you as I worry that I am ruining all of your lives. And that's what I pray I'm learning to offer you. I'm thankful for you little readers and I'm sorry for my frailties in this outlet--and all the others that I may interact with you. Pray for me and I will pray for you and we can remember for each other that Jesus finds us here. 

Almost Invisible Hospitality

You know those moments when you start to rethink that which you've always known to be true of yourself? Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, sometimes just for the same. I am in a season of rethinking--for what, I'm not quite sure as of yet.

Hospitality has become a familiar thought. A perpetual ambition. A definitive personality trait. And this week I find myself asking--if that is my gifting, do I really even know what it is? 

What is hospitality? What does it mean to experience it? How does one create a hospitable environment? 

Hospitality is most often assimilated with homemaking. A sunny house, freshly baked bread, perpetually fresh coffee, a cozy chair in the corner. I don't deny that the two go hand in hand, but I don't think it's because homemaking is hospitality or hospitality is homemaking. Home is the place we most assimilate being cared for and having needs met. Needs for joy and laughter as well as sustenance and empathy. Most of us think of home, whether we've seen it modeled or it is still an idyllic Norman Rockwell, as a safe place. If that's the case, then maybe hospitality is so naturally paired with it because hospitality is the art of caring for people. 

In my recent endeavors, I am finding the title of "hospitable" to ring a little empty in my heart. I don't feel hospitable, and as I'm questioning why, I am discovering it might be because I am not actually caring well for anyone. 

I grew up a shy child. Shy, chubby and moderately obsolete in social circles. Thus, when I reached high school and started making friends, I was embracing those friendships with much deliberance and intention. I cared about them....maybe out of a selfish, needy heart, but I did care for them and their good more than anything. As I've grown older, I've still cared for the good of those I know, but my method has transformed. I've grown more confident and have been exposed to many more people. Chats have become more anecdotal and surface level as I've learned the art of being a conversationalist. And in turn, also picked up the poor habit of talking too much. I find myself listening to respond rather listening to learn people. 

And I miss the learning. I miss the place that took relationships. The better place where I could care for their souls because I knew more than hobbies and general frustrations. There was a timeliness to relationships when I asked questions. It wasn't about entertaining but about developing. 

Jesus is dissembling some of the falsehoods I've attached to my growth over the years. Which has lead me to this place to reconsider hospitality. Maybe this is such a Christian belief because it is so aptly connected to community. Hospitality says I will invite you into my mental capacity, my house, my realities. You get to take up residence within my personhood. Hospitality connects us to one another because it creates gravitational pull. When we listen well to others, hearing their joy, frustration, angst, confusion, teasing, etc. we are somehow able to also learn their needs. Do they need kind affirmation? Do they need an anecdote? Do they need space? Do they need attention? Do they need to eat? Do they need money? It transcends a physical space into being a holistic reality. 

Hospitality is recognizing needs in others and pursuing them with our means. It's caring about others in ways that a clean house never can. To be hospitable we put effort into understanding one another. And that burden falls on everyone, not just house wives. 

No wonder hospitality is a core value of my church. It says I have been freed from my need for affirmation from our relationship so that I can completely devote my means to providing for you. And Jesus is the one who freed me from that need, and let's be honest--is continually freeing me from that, because I care what you think. 

It's funny that hospitality has become based around pretense, when in fact true hospitality is completely the opposite. Hospitality can be inviting people into your beautiful home for a savory meal or it can be listening to your cubical mate complain about her dogs snoring at night--just so she feels like she matters. 

I am still going to enjoy home decor and cooking--because I do. But all of the sudden I'm realizing how little weight that actually carries in the world of care. My heart rests in beautiful places, but it moreover rests in feeling understood and known. I would choose that over a beautiful environment every time. When we take the time to slow down--to think about ourselves, become more self-aware, and pray for eyes to see our strengths and our flaws, something happens there. Something sweet and transformative, the presence of Jesus is there. 

I read this poem by Wendell Berry tonight. 

The frog with lichened back and golden thigh

Sits still, almost invisible

On leafed and lichened stem,

Invisibility

Its sign of being at home

There in its given place, and well.

The warbler with its quivering striped throat

Would live almost beyond my sight,

Almost beyond belief,

But for its double note--

Among high leaves a leaf,

At ease, at home in air and light

And I, though woods and fields, through fallen days

Am passing to where I belong:

At home, at ease, and well 

In Sabbaths of this place

Almost invisible,

Toward which I go from song to song

We live in a society that makes us think we have to beg for attention--subtly and slyly of course. You have to demand attention by not demanding it. But as the lovely line from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty says, "beautiful things don't ask for attention". Hospitality is one of those beautiful things. It is more than internet worthy homes and Instagram worthy cookery (though I love them both). There is something Christian about the invisibility of being about the thing without ever noticing if someone notices. It's serene and undemanding. It's where the end satisfaction of joy in Jesus and His provision makes the most sense. Maybe instead of being a conversationalist, I would rather be almost invisible. Still talking to people, but really listening, making them feel seen and heard. Meeting their needs. Letting them matter. I have been given more than enough to do that. 

A Farmer and his Sabbath

Whatever is foreseen in joy

Must be lived out from day to day,

Vision held open in the dark

By our ten thousand days of work.

Harvest will fall the barn; for that

The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled

By work of ours; the field is tilled 

And left to grace. That we may reap,

Great work is done while we're asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood

Rests on our day, and finds it good.

Wendell Berry

Great friends share books and authors. In fact, I find that a grounding tether or trust often secures me to someone when writing is shared and discussed. One of the most distinct culprits of this in my world is my friend Alexa. Over the years, I have mentioned her. Usually because of a quote, book, author that I have befriended through her. Wendell Berry is no stranger in that realm. Mr. Berry is a lifelong farmer in Kentucky who for decades spent Sundays wandering his farm, pondering God and rest and writing poetry. There's something about the practicality of his poetry that just seem so honest to me. He writes what he knows--but transforms it into something Holy. 

And I find myself wondering if that's what Sabbathing does to us. Does it take our work, our relationships, our time, our reading, our chores, and transform them into something Holy? 

Sabbath is for rest. God took His day to stop--not because of exhaustion--but perhaps because by examining the work and labor, it transformed it into something deeper, truer. I wonder sometimes if life is not best lived in the moment but truly marked in our souls by pondering it after. CS Lewis said, "a pleasure is not fully grown until it is remembered." I have to agree. Moments are pleasurable. A taste is pleasurable. But the memory of it, solidifying permanent connection, creates an essence--a scent which one can continually point to as a thread in their lives. 

Something about this winter has caused me to sit back and reevaluate my rhythms. How I've set up my life and routines. I have been taking stock of the value and intention with which I am stewarding my day and it's been disappointing and eye opening. Too much television, not enough reading, too little silence, more than enough dessert. 

And I find myself making quarter turns, not towards perfection or idyllic lifestyles, but towards presence. Or more accurately....Presence. 

I always wish to see beyond the means to the end. Jesus is not the means. He is the end. Thus, rhythms, actions, thoughts, prayers that draw me to Him are not the thing to be repeated for results. They are to be shared and recognized but not glorified. We should always pray to see the forest for the trees when we share helpful thoughts or practices. Legalism dies when I see Jesus' presence as my end goal. I think the ethereality of His presence appropriately and necessarily inhibits us from getting to write a rulebook of ways to love Him better. We love Him better in the moments we remember Him. However we choose to pursue that. 

Maybe that's the thing Wendell Berry understood. He took time to pursue the Presence of Jesus. And in that, he understood that his labor was better than he ever imagined it could be because through came an understanding of grace. Knowing that regardless of his efforts on his farm, the earth was controlled by the Creator. There was rest in knowing he worked hard because he saw the Lord through it. Not because by working harder he was given more crops or money or glory. By his labor he saw growth and death and newness and desolation and came to better understand himself and thus love our Lord dearer. 

The earth is good because it exists--not because it exists in a particular state. That is a grand truth to what the Father says over us. He loves us because we exist. Because in our essence is the scent of the Creator. And joy comes when we choose to breathe...and accept our essence. Some days those breaths are weary sighs, others they are gasps between gregarious laughter, and even others they are slow and methodical. 

I pray for better understanding and practicing of Sabbath. Resting is hard work. Stopping takes effort. My hands clench my routines tightly, but I'm asking for every effort to be for His glory and my good. Better to have that in my life than anything else. 

Ashes to Ashes

Remember, from ash you have come and from ash you will return.

Remember.

How badly I wanted to stay lying in bed today. Knowing ahead was a 15 hour work day and many minutia to facilitate. In finest and holiest fashion, I get up, bleary eyed and grumbling, and make my way to church to be affixed with emblematic ashes and affronted by my sin.

I have been praying for a few weeks now for what to give up or Lent. I grew up Southern Baptist, went to a Southern Baptist college. Let me just tell you, the So Baps don't do this whole Lent thing. In the name of Christian Freedom, it's not necessary. Fair enough. They're right, it's not necessary. My position in Jesus' mind doesn't change because I do or do not do Lent. But somehow, I find myself a little closer when I choose to stop and look. Lent does that for me.

There's something special to me about the tradition other Christians have laid out generations ago, remembering and celebrating. Fasting and feasting. Mourning and praising. Putting concepts into action to help us experience an inkling of the gamut of emotions associated with Calvary. To remember.

"Bind my wandering hear to Thee" we sang. I am the wanderer, the one always searching. So how do I let Him bind me? How do I find the roundabout that leads from the wrong way back to the right? I fast. This is my first year to try it. And I have the openest of all open hands about it. But I wonder, for me, if there is something there. If observing sacrifice and anticipation, there will be better remembrance.

I don't see Lent as a time to get my diet set straight. I don't believe it to be a time to work on self-improvement. It's taking something I find joy in, good, healthy joy in, and letting it go for a few weeks. It is about fostering anticipation for the return of the joy. And in the meantime, knowing that my every effort to be holy is worthless. Lent doesn't save me. The Resurrection at the end--the celebration of my Savior--saves me. So what better way to practice that image than holding off from something I love to celebrate with for a few weeks? How much more tangible will my joy be when I reinstate a joy-giver as I celebrate the Joy-giver.

Lent and Ash Wednesday have this religious tendency to be skewed. They carry with them the burden of self-deceit that Jesus will love us better or we can be made holier through our sacrifice. Bull. Romans so aptly reminds me that "it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy."

Thus far, the discoveries I am making this year are only leading me back to the reality that God is. He is just, He is kind, He is love. And because He is the incarnate of those things, He cannot be more or less of them. Thus, my learning His attributes is for my benefit. It's always about drawing me closer to the Axiom Himself.

I trust in Lent because I trust in Jesus to use Lent for my good. And I pray that for all y'all as well. Whether or not you participate--or care. I pray that Jesus uses this season to reveal Himself to be truer and deeper and more necessary to all of us. Because He is. He is the dear Father and caretaker of us. How overwhelmed I am by the steadiness of Him. He is all that is true. And He proved it by choosing to receive brutality for me. I was the one supposed to be mocked. Whipped. Held down and beaten. They were supposed to make me the helpless one. They ought to have mutilated me.

But instead, I get to sit here with symbolic ashes and remember Him.

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.

Days to Dream

Most days I find my mind wandering. Wandering to the land of books and stories, inviting myself into thoughts of springtide and picnics, imagining myself conferring with the flowers, meandering into mindless wonder....just because I like to see it in my minds eye.

These inklings are often much related to a conception of "home". I quickly knead together this word with others like "gardens" or "spring" or "leisure" or "beauty". Lingering.

I drift here more often in seasons like this that are calendar oriented, wrought with details and appointments. And I love the details. I love the organization and the fullness of my life right now. I have longed for this for years and it is perfect. But some days it's just nice to dream.

Dreaming reminds me that Heaven is not far off. These longings, though beautiful and quite possibly attainable one day, are not going to satisfy. I'm pleased to rest in that. I'm thrilled to remember that what draws me to chase my wanderings is the same thing that satisfies my soul. Jesus loves beauty. And he fills the world with it. And he fills the world with juxtapositions of beauty. And we see beauty deeper and fuller and meatier than we would have if all we ever knew was beauty.

My soul is parched in the harsh winter sun, causing me to be drowsy in my determination to remember good things. As I stare at a tiny cup of daisies on my desk today and saunter slowly back into a world of honeybees on hydrangeas and mid-morning brunch in a tidy sundress, I am glad that my savior invented dreaming for my joy.

Good dreams stir fondness and hope within us, and good fondness and hope are cracker crumbs trailing us to the Fond and Hopeful One. It's a perfectly happy chase.

Good dreams have healthy boundaries. They allow us to love a thing to the point which it is capable of being loved and no more. They have understanding and peace that runs deeper than the object being dreamt of.

Good dreams remind of us a Good Dreamer. He is the one who thought the world into existence. Eden was his grandest imagination realized. How wonderful for our Maker to allow us the ability to share in the wonderment of seeing dreams come to fruition for our joy.

Good dreams delight. And delight is so pure and clean and untainted an emotion. We remember the delightful days.

I hope you make some time to dream good dreams today. It find it's good for the soul. Spring is coming!

Tuesday Thoughts

Give me all the alone time.

Give me Ikea trips in solitude.

Give me single movie dates. 

Give me isolated tables in coffee shops. 

Give me a quiet office. 

These are the scenarios which I prefer. I am an outgoing introvert. I can do social, but I like alone. 

However, as I'm getting older I'm finding how impossible it is to sustain the isolation. I just keep meeting really great people. People who stick with me and listen to me and care about why I like to be alone. There is joy in sharing and understanding. Joy that cannot be experienced in the solitude. Joy surpassed. But the deeper these people seep into my life the less sure of myself I am. Not in my security, but in my sufficiency. 

Affirmation is a funny concept. It says we share with people not just what we like about them, but we share in what ways it attaches us to them. Affirmation is the explanation of lingering. True affirmation burrows and plants relationships with deep roots. 

It makes sense, when friendships dissolve, the most grief is experienced not when remembering experiences, but words. I look back on many friendships in my life and I can't remember where we were or why we were having that given conversation, but I remember exact phrasing of words that fed my soul. I tear up remembering the warmth of verbal affection, often times greater than any hug I could have received. 

Affirmation comes through noticing. It comes through stepping deeply into a moment to hear not just the sentence uttered but the soul-well that it drew from. 

And maybe that's what it is. Maybe sharing genuine words with one another is drawing deeply from each others wells. Satisfying deep parchment for relationship. Sipping the wine of our Father and celebrating complexity of selves. Communion. And in all reality, this communion can turn bitter. It comes at a price. Hence why sufficiency is questioned. If Jesus is not the one filling my own well, I will always be drawing from other people to fill myself and it will leak, diluted and stale. I am only as sufficient as my dependence on the One who knows how to fill me. And He knows because He created me. 

I don't know why this has struck me so deeply 3 pm on a Tuesday, but somehow it has. The sweet memories of Chicago on my mind from this weekend and a friendship that so simply depicts this communion, the growing depth, that can come when I choose to be squirmy and uncomfortable and leave my solitude for bits of time. Don't get me wrong, solitude is good, but maybe, just maybe, I don't need so much as I thought.

Grangst

I'll be honest, New Years resolutions stress me out. The only purpose they serve is to cause me to believe that the life I'm currently living now is subpar and that if I am more self-aware, more disciplined, more confident, more anything, I will be happier. They place a timeline and a structure around conviction, stifling it of it's natural bite. 

Right now I find myself thinking about the opposite of resolutions. I am thinking about grace, and not just thinking about it, sniffing around my life for it. I hold tightly to grace. The grace that Jesus offers me, salvation grace. I press into his willingness, his bloody offering to me over and over again, amazed that He wants me though I am constantly biting it. 

It's humbling and thoughtful to sing that in a hymn. Though I'm finding I'm not so capable to see it in my sin. When repentance grabs a tight hold of me, when I am nakedly taking ownership of my callous nature, how does grace apply then? When I am needing to reconcile with people, how do I believe in the absolution grace offers me? What I'm getting at is, where does grace meet angst?

We know what it's like to have wronged someone. We know what it's like to be a moral failure. And there are consequences to that. Consequences that take days, weeks, months, years or sometimes eternity to reconcile. How does Jesus' grace answer my offense in those moments?

And I struggle. I struggle because I'm prone to seeing my failure as the climax and the grace as the falling action of my story. Grace is the answer to my problem and my problem is the pinnacle. In that belief, grace is only a response, which leaves room for other responses....non-grace living. When truly grace is an alternative plot line altogether. Sanctification sees my sin as the rising action and the grace as the climax. It sees Jesus as it's own hero who defines all falling action therein. Grace isn't a causal response to my failure, it's the reason the story was written. 

I'm asking to see this better. I'm pushing into those moments when I fail, believing grace to not just apply to the angst, but to be the same as it...grangst if you will. What Jesus' salvation offered me was the ability to look at contention as redemption. It is what answers sin with humility, not needing to save face when I repent to people, dissolving shame into appropriate pain and remorse. Grace isn't a happy lifestyle. Grace is a hopeful lifestyle. It says we can fully face ourselves and each other and live deeply. Penitently. Honestly. Gutsy. It's audacious and willing to be wrong and corrected. It's also willing to convict and correct others for their good. 

What the grace Jesus offered me and is instilling in me is really authenticity. Jesus gives me the opportunity to not be self-protective, to be wrong, to be free from my fear of scrutiny. In return, it offers me a life full of relationships I trust with my soul, knowing that they don't save me but Jesus has saved us both and will use us to push each other "further up and further in" as C.S. Lewis says. 

Jesus meets us in the actuality of today, with addictions, disease, hashtags, anxiety, coffee dates, anger, family conflict, to do lists, resolutions, anti-resolutions. He speaks to today. He says he's enough for today. What struck me so profoundly this week was the reality that Jesus doesn't even need my penitence. He's not waiting until I'm repentant enough to change me. I don't have to foster that in myself or in others. He saved me even when I didn't know I needed saving. That's the crux of it all. I am not my own hero. I am not the main character of my story. Jesus is. And that's the real comfort. That's the freedom that makes resolutions dull. His kingdom says I don't need to make lists and changes to live a better life, I just need to pursue His presence because He already did all the work. 

It matters not if I'm skinnier, better read, paleo, craftier, wearing better clothes, in a better job, etcetera before this year is over. I am accepted now, and that's enough for Him....shouldn't it be enough or me too?

 

Mother Mary

It's 55 degrees. 94.9 is back to playing Billy Joel on repeat. And all around me Christmas deflates back into the recesses of basements and closets for another 364 days. 

But I'm not done thinking about it yet. In fact, I feel as if I've just begun. Even though Advent was a time for pondering, the height of momentum happens Christmas day. Contemplation, for me, at its deepest level happens when it's no longer forthcoming but here. 

I spoke the part of Mary for my church's Christmas Eve service. Basically I'm holier than everyone and was offered the privilege to say boldly, "behold I am a virgin" on stage in front of my whole church....twice in one night. I should hope all of you one day are offered that fine joy. 

Besides mortifying my soul in the name of Christmas, reading the part of Mary did something to me this year. It put me in her shoes,  I said the words she said and it caught me off guard. What must have it been like?

"But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart." 

Sitting in her hay-bed. Knowing both her and Joseph's side of the story. Hearing some outcast-shepherds tell their tale of heavenly host, followed by these strange rich men from another country one-up the shepherds, talking about how they followed a star and a hunch to a foreign barn with a teen-mom and her non-baby-daddy to give them presents. 

What must have it been like to hear an angel tell you you're going to have a kid, then hear a story echoed so similarly from strangers who come to see your barn-child? It's as if God decided to give Mary wave upon wave of affirmation. "No Mary, this wasn't all a lie, this little guy who you're going to breastfeed and change diapers for, he is the one your ancestors waited and labored for, He is going to save you. And I will prove it to you by sending vagabond farmers and millionaires to tell you so." 

So while everyone around her swapped stories and ogled Jesus, Mary just watched and put the pieces together. Knowing deep in her soul that life as she knew it had changed for not just her, but for all humanity. 

I wonder how many times in her life Mary came back to their family's beginning. How many times did she have to remind herself that God gave Jesus to the world, not just her? How many times did she have to recall the shepherds manifesto and withhold her own inkling to tighten her grasp of Jesus and let him go? How many times did she have to recall that Jesus was God with us when it seemed he was just a defiant 12 year old runaway embarrassing his parents?

And maybe Mary didn't doubt and that's part of why she was blessed. Maybe when angels tell you something, you don't doubt it again. Even 30 years later.

Recently, the sense of security in my world was violated. No longer naive, I notice fear building in myself as I process through the world not being safe. The world as I knew it no longer is. And I'm having to remember promises that Jesus didn't come as a warrior, he came to bear the unsafeness and offer us security beyond it. Jesus came to eradicate fear from my life, promising peace to those with whom He is pleased. He's pleased by people who believe His Gospel, who believe that a baby who came with such divine intricacies, is who He says He is. 

He is the wonderful counselor, inviting himself into our fear, pain, anxiety, depression, mental deficiencies, to provide respite and healing and strength and courage.

He is the mighty God, He doesn't fear our destructive capabilities because His own abilities  supersede them innumerably. And He will prove it one day. 

He is the everlasting father, he is the Jesus of all the generations before us who bore our names and lineages. The good kind of father that is patient and sturdy. Watching us fail and fail and waiting for us to ask to see the better way, joyfully guiding us there. 

He is the prince of peace, bearing the weight of nobility and honor, he directs us towards peace in our souls. He stands true to peace, always pursuing it and offering it to us. Peace with God, to bear the family name of Redeemed. 

So as my boat is still rocking back and forth, I am remembering all that was meant to be remembered. Jesus was born to be my refuge. Tender and mild and valiant and courageous. He is my good, untamed Savior, capable of withstanding that which I cannot and holding me tenderly as His mother once did for him. 

And I will continue to treasure these things and ponder them in my heart....even though it's the 26th. 

O Tennebaum

We Jacksons do Christmas the right way around here. With lots of Yuletide pomp and Christmas-stance. Friday my mom, sister-in-law and I unpacked the Rubbermaids brimming with stockings, ceramic villages, faux greenery and my moms collections of snowmen and Santa Clauses'. We listened to Amy Grant sing Grown Up Christmas List and Nat King Cole's seranade of O Tennenbaum and lit Spruce scented candles. 

Saturday we gathered in Clan firm and drove to the Christ,as Tree Farm that once was my grandfathers. For 40 years he tended to saplings and fostered cheer through months of sweltering heat and infestations to grow ten acres of pine. We chatted with the new owners, kind as can be and I was just grateful as I chased my niece throguh the memory forest while my sisters little family searched. 

Once we found them just the right one, returning home, we congregated and opened the tins of ornaments that have graced our tree, some for 36 years. Now a flocked, pre-lit wannabe graces our living room, but the effect is much the same as if it were real. And I wanted to share our little tradition with you. 

You see my out-of-place Kung Fu Panda ornament. I would tell you of my sweet dad bringing me this home from his Hallmark job to cheekily foster my love of animated movies when I was in college. 

We may also note that Jacksons are kind but raucous people. And when decorating a tree, the tendency for the most sentimental ornaments to get broken is strong. My brothers baby ornament has survived the fray for 31 years with only a small case of flaking and a chipped top. 

We would all argue who gets to tell you all about the infamous Santa. My dad made this in this Kindergarten class 52 years ago. My mother patronizes our affection for him by insisting he be put on the back of the tree. We'll take what we can get for this little guy to live on. 

My dad would tell you about how for years this ornament was put on as a reminder of my brothers near-yet-far presence while in the army. Now he gets to place it on himself while holding his daughter. 

Someone would share how back in 1991, my parents purchasd this ornament to hold strong to our roots while we moved into Chicago Bears country. It did the job and they raised three very fine Chiefs fans. 

My mom would tell of how she had a lunch pail extremely similar to this growing up, so each year we pull out this ornament and she hooks it on to cherish the memory of childhood. 

And finally, when looking at our tree, you will see these bright bulbs littering the empty space between branches and ornaments and they are their own type of sentimentality. I would explain how my mother bought three boxes of these from Macy's the winter before her and my dad got married. They have met the most liberal demise over the years, but the remnant is still used to fill the gaps. 

This tree tells the story of our family, of births and distance and family jokes. You wouldn't see the raffia my mom insisted on tying to the branches for years, but we would probably express relief at the twine bows absence. But mostly, as I admire the decorum, I am just glad for this emblem that ties our family together. I love that it tells our stories. 

Acquiescence

It's Fall. In fact, it's SO Fall like that it's beginning to tip toe into Winter territory. I don't love Winter because I typically run cold....however, a few years ago I discovered space heaters. And out of my heart blossomed a tolerance for Winter that has blessed me and others, who now have to feign less compassion for my liturgy of complaint. 

This is also the time of year I steep in deep pockets of memory. Four years ago at this time, I was deep in depression and feeling spent and out of control. And God met me there. Nothing changed in circumstance but His presence burrowed deep into my marrow. I haven't forgotten those days and I love to remember them. 

I've began again one of my favorite books. One Thousand Gifts. Pondering gratitude and joy. Asking how Jesus can stitch thanksgiving into my being. I keep being pressed by the same verse inescapably. 

Do not be anxious about anything, but by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. 

Philippians 4:6

Thanksgiving precedes the request and the answer. When we live under the banner of heavy gratitude, the kind with the audacity that thanks Jesus for His death, we are acquiescing. We say that we know He will just show up, and it will be enough. True thanksgiving is capable to withstand cancer, infertility, financial crisis, not by making it easier but by promising His presence. And in the abiding relationship that comes from just knowing God to be God, we can acquiesce. Knowing full well that pain will be pain, but that just as Jesus talked to His Father while sitting on the cross, He will hear us too and draw near. 

And in the dear times, when we celebrate well, when we sing a merry tune and revel, holding tight the moments which carry the sweet aroma of things being most well, we know Him to be present too. And isn't that the fundamental difference? We choose to see God in joy as opposed to seeing joy from God. His capability to transform all things to being good and helpful far exceeds our barometer for happiness. It is there that our perception for thanksgiving that we can foster space for it to break our gauge.

In these days of remembering the despair of loneliness of my 20th Christmas, I am incapable of severing that from remembering the hope He gave through being there. It changed everything. It gave me the ability to acquiesce the responsibility to fix and resolve to His shoulders and to just be present in my hurt so I could truly heal. 

As we are about to step into Advent, I am looking forward to this time to think with weighty expectation and joy of the weeks that lead us to the night of our dear Saviors birth. 

To Love and Do

My mom and I took a walk the other day. As the cacophony of leaves created a noisy, yet soothing soundtrack we talked much as we usually do about many of the same things we usually do. One of which is journaling. As I already have elaborated on this week, my mom has taught me many things as she herself has learned them over the years. Besides quilting, she has also shared journaling. 

Writing in that manner is probably one of the greatest sources of spiritual development in my life. In the deep recesses of my childhood closet hide more than a decade worth of spiral bound thoughts. And while there is much less complaining about youthful woes, chores, homework and groundings, not much else has changed. I still choose to go there to contemplate first. These pages are filled with recognition of faults, expressions of sin, repentance, stubborn defiance, mourning over friendships and relationships, but also of wonderful discoveries, impassioned ideas, stories of God's faithfulness and fairness, new friends, newfound dreams, and really happy memories. 

As I'm on the brink of closing another journal, I look at the slow growing stack and love these penned moments of myself. They are imperfect and messy and not very eloquent, but they are the truest expressions of my thoughts and it's important to me that they have a place of their own. There is a reflection in those scrawlings where I take ownership of myself and Jesus meets me there regularly to point me back to Him. 

While I hold an affinity for journaling myself,  I don't see journaling as some grand value everyone should agree to...in fact, it's the opposite. I am first and foremost a proponent of people finding things they like to do or find helpful and meeting Jesus there. Painting, home decor, horseback riding, brewing coffee, restoring a car, trail running. Jesus meets us in creativity because He Himself is the Creator. And in that we are free to do what we love and experience Him in it. 

"The moment good taste knows itself, some of its goodness is lost," CS Lewis wisely wrote in Surprised By Joy. Inevitably because of sin everything we do is already only half good, and we but continue to lose more when we look to the thing in itself to give us substance. The sharpness and beauty of all creative things comes from its innocence. To follow the path of ability and knowledge with abandon, not expectation, is the only way to truly experience creativity the way it was intended. The ambition to create a beautiful thing is not a problem, it is when we lose our love of creating that turns it into something less good. We search for beautiful results because we enjoy them. If we stop enjoying the search or the result, then beauty in its essence has no purpose. 

I also hope to convey that the creativity I am talking about is not in the absence of hardwork and patience but the absence of futility and vanity in the name of attention or self-satisfaction. In fact, when we are truly doing what we love and enjoying the One who enabled us to love it, we are free to work hard because we are uninhibited by laziness, insecurity, comparison, or fear of rejection. We stop doing what we love in the name of impressing people and actually end up finding the most freedom to just like doing it. 

I journal because it is a form of beauty of me. It may not be blog or novel or Kinfolk worthy, but our creative endeavors aren't always meant to be shared. Sometimes they're just for us to know with our Creator, and that, my friends, is the whole idea. 

Quilts

My mom is currently resurrecting my high school graduation quilt from the grave. There was a cataclysmic incident in college with my roommates dog where she forewent manners and destroyed a corner. As we were formulating a plan to bandage the poor thing (the quilt, not the dog), I just was glad. Glad that my mom did this for me. Glad that we could share in the vision of the quilt 2.0. Glad to be with my mom. 

There is not a couch without a quilted cloak, or a bed without a sock-like shroud in my moms house. My mom has always been a sewer and quilter. Some of my earliest memories are of her sitting in her basement chalet surrounded by a moat of cotton and twill. Many nights I remember going to sleep in my pink room with the duet of my mom singing while her Bernina hummed harmony rising from the air ducts below my room in a soft lullaby. These quilts are one of many of her offerings of hospitality to us.

Quilts are not the only way I see this etching of hospitality on my childhood. When I was 8, my mom began to sacrifice some of her alone time at Whistle Stop, a local coffee shop, to me. There I learned what it is to enjoy simply the presence of another without conversation, her with a Beth Moore study, me with American Girl and Junie B. Jones novels. Over the years, we shifted to Starbucks and we progressed to C.S. Lewis, Timothy Keller and art journaling. The silence remained but were also shared with occasional punctuations of conversation for me to share an interesting quote or to inquire about her reading for her Counseling classes. 

My mom has always welcomed me and my siblings. We have always been invited into her world to share time, knowledge, questions, a snarky comment, or her bread. She has portrayed hospitality in the most vivid way possible. Not just inviting us to her home, but into herself. The older I get the more I find these little nuances in my life and I just want to pause and remember them. To pen them and hold them dear to me because they are unique to my family. And let me be honest, while I share a lot of things with my mom, I don't share her love for quilting....which is why I write about it instead. 

The Only Anniversary I Celebrate

I'm a few days shy of the anniversary of my blog. If I were more patient and organized, I would wait until the 28th, however this is my blog and I'm going to do what I want. 

Four years of blogging. I remember writing my first post in my college dorm room, not really knowing how far this would go. I am really bad about finishing what I start, and something open ended like a blog is just an excuse waiting to happen. But here I am, four years later. I've been perusing old entries this morning and find myself smiling, remembering the various locations some were written, and more importantly I vividly recall how I felt as I penned every one. 

I may not be a brilliant writer, and I'm certainly not a great blogger, but I am so glad I do it. It is a joy for me to have a yearbook of sorts to catalog my process. To remember. To see how far and from where I've come. I started this blog in the crux of a confusing relationship that turned into a difficult breakup. I walked through a season of depression here. Many of my favorite quotes and books are littered throughout. I have written on here from North Carolina, Florida, Hawaii, Dallas, Bolivar and Kansas City. If you dig deeply enough there are some really attractive pictures in here too. But really what I see is Jesus coming into my reality, inconsistently and clumsily in my words but so faithfully in His presence. 

As I read my favorite blog this morning by Jami Nato, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for this obscure world of words. I have been able to share bits of life with this woman for six years, and although I have never actually interacted with her (and we both live in KC) I am grateful to have been a benefactor of her transparency. And I hope in some small way I have offered that to others. Even if I haven't though, I am still so glad I have done this for me. 

Jesus has become truer and dearer to me in the past few years than I ever thought possible. He is my consistent comforter, he directs me in an about face from my sin and into joy and gently reminds me of His care for me in the process, He gives me good gifts and hard realities. He is my companion and I hope to see Him as ever gooder and kinder and more trustworthy as the years go on. And this is where I place those thoughts to tumble around. 

I will leave you with the quote from my first post that inspired this whole mess. It still rings so true to my vision. I wish I had a glass of champagne (or better yet, a mimosa since it's 9 am) as I close to celebrate my insignificant-to-most-but-joyful-to-me anniversary. I'll pretend for now and just have two glasses later. 

"Spirituality is not about competency, it's about intimacy...Messy spirituality has the audacity to suggest that messiness is the workshop or authentic spirituality, the greenhouse of faith, he place where the real Jesis meets the real us."

-Mike Yaconelli

                                    

Cheers friends!