4:45 is too early but the baby is awake and he is hungry, just like most mornings. I think he grows at night and uses up all his stores. He’s kissing my face and my arm and poking his brother with his toes.“Don’t wake him up. Baby, let Mommy sleep, please. Mommy is so tired. Please don’t lay on my face. Please don’t kick me. Stop touching your brother, he’s trying to sleep. Look, the moon is up and the sun is not. It’s sleeping time. Sshhh.”It’s no use. We do this every day and it never works.I tell my self again that I’m going to install the baby gate today, the new one that maybe he can’t climb, on his bedroom door today. Tomorrow, I tell myself, he is going to learn to play in his room and I am going to sleep till 6. I say this knowing it will not happen because I don’t know how to use a drill, I have to work all day, and there will be no time to complete any tasks beyond the obligations of the day. I say this because it helps me not cry like yesterday morning, and I say it even though I know I have too much anxiety to sleep if this fearless boy is awake. I have a vision of him using his bed as a trampoline to catapult himself out of his second-story bedroom window that I feel in my stomach and take a full minute to fade away.“Ok, baby. Let’s go downstairs.”I put him in his high chair and turn on a show but not THAT show or THAT show, he wants THE OTHER SHOW but not THAT other one, THIS one.Peel the banana. Pour the water. Get the raisins, realizing I’ll be scraping them up with a butter knife on Saturday.Pour the coffee. Add the sugar. Add the cream. Clink the spoon.Sit.Scroll.Breathe.Footsteps. Deep breath. Wild card child is awake.“Please be in a good mood, please be in a good mood,” I whisper as a half prayer, half demand.“My stomach hurts. I can’t go to school today, I CAN’T.”“You should go back to bed. It’s early. Still dark. You’ll feel better in a while.” I hold my breath again.“I CAN’T GO TO SCHOOL!”Oh, this is the kind of morning we are having today. I see. Sigh.Ignore the child. Drink the coffee. The child goes back upstairs.Sip. Work on a freelance writing task. Breathe.It’s 6:30. Already late.I go upstairs to wake the big kids. They move slow and I get mad. They move faster.“Wild child, put your school clothes on.”“I’M NOT GOING TO SCHOOL!”I call his dad. Dad doesn’t answer.I cuss under my breath and start breakfast.“Are ya’ll dressed up there? Come down and pack your stuff. Take the dog out.”Fighting upstairs. Yelling. Crying.I yell, loud and mean. I hate it.They come down, big kids dressed. Wild one, not.“I’M NOT GOING TO SCHOOL!”Oh, boy.I call his dad, who answers. Dad talks him into getting dressed. Everyone is crying, everyone is tired, everyone is hungry, and if we don’t get in the car in 10 minutes, everyone will also be late.“You feed the dog. You dress the baby. YOU PUT ON YOUR SHOES BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO SCHOOL.”More yelling. Another call to dad.We are in the car. It feels like it’s already been a whole day. Four of us are wearing shoes, three of us are crying. One of us is still hungry. It’s a regular day in the neighborhood.Wave to the crossing guard, pull up to the door with one minute to spare. Salute the teacher on door duty with his keys in his hand, ready to lock the door in 30 seconds. We made it but just barely.“Good-bye, love you, have a good day.”SLAM. STOMP.Turn left, heading to the next school where I am a teacher and the baby goes to his class.Late, late, late. Always late.I cry a little. Moms can cry without making a sound, did you know? I try to answer the baby’s questions happily but really, I want to put on my noise-canceling headphones.Drop him off. He’s happy to see his friends and teachers and that’s a gift that is never lost on me. If he didn’t release me happily, I couldn’t do my job. I couldn’t take that.Unlock my classroom, take a breath, turn on the lights and the heat and it’s time to go.Sit in a circle. Ask the eighth-graders about their weekends, even the ones who always pass. Look them in their eyes, listen to their stories. Hope my kids’ teachers get a second to look at my kids’ eyes, too. Wonder if they will.Grammar. Literature. “No, you cannot go get your pop tart out of your bag. You know why. Yes, you can go to the bathroom.”Next class. Juniors and Seniors. None of us are sure if they are children or adults. None of us are exactly sure how to behave. Read a short story, try to lead a meaningful discussion. Explain (again) why we won’t read the story with the accent of the Chinese immigrant we are reading about. Send someone to the office for violating the cell phone policy (again). Feel immediately conflicted about that, wonder if I should have let it go. I wonder if he had a stomachache like my own wild child this morning. I wonder if it was less his stomach and more his heart, like my child.Bring my lunch to my classroom to sit with a student who needed to talk about the things kids need to talk about sometimes.I wonder about my own kids. Are they ok? Are they getting Influenza Type A at this very moment? Are they included? Are they being good friends? Are they understanding the material? Did my kids resist the delicious looking pizza lunch and eat the healthy, gluten-free lunch I packed? Are they feeling anxious? Left out? Are their teachers as tired as me? I hope they are kind anyway.Two more class periods. Kids, kids, kids everywhere. All of them brimming with hope and possibility and life and nonsense and excuses and contradictions.Talk to a parent in the hallway, recognizing this means I will be late and my kids will come home to an empty house. Pick up Shep from his classroom and grit my teeth and try to be cheerful while he stops at the water fountain and then to hug every teacher and student he sees on the way out.I realize it’s raining and very cold and neither of us have a coat today.Buckle him in. Buckle myself in. Breathe.Pick up dance carpool friend #1. Drive home, arriving 15 after my kids are dropped off but thankfully, this time, no one is fighting.“Get ready for dance and get in the car! We are going to be late.”Pick up dance friend #2.Drop four kids off at dance.Pull back in the driveway at 4:20. Sit in the driveway and breathe until Shep starts yelling.Send Shep upstairs with Dad and Eli.Breathe. Put on the headphones and listen to a novel on 1.75 speed because the library will take it back in a few hours.Start dinner. Do breakfast dishes. Pick up the banana peel from under the high chair. Leave the raisins.Send big boy out the door to walk to his youth leader’s house for youth group. Feel anxious about that.Put Shep back in the high chair, dance kids come back through the door.Dinner is on the table and the LAST thing I want to do is sit and eat with my family but I do it anyway, even though I’d rather be hiding or doing the dishes. I just want the day to end. I want to be alone.Listen to their stories. Look them in the eyes. Don’t fight with anyone about what they will or won’t eat. Yes, you can have an apple and peanut butter. Argue with Kyle about the apple. Give the kid the apple even though Kyle thinks kids should eat what is served or nothing. Decide to fight about that on Saturday.Take the two little ones from the table to the tub. Cross my fingers that the kitchen is really being cleaned by the assigned child while her dad folds a load of laundry and starts another.From the tub to the rocking chair. Read the books, sing the songs. Lay the baby in his bed, knowing he won’t stay. Think about that baby gate. Wonder how hard it could be to use a drill.Send the big girl to bed. “Don’t forget to put your retainer in. Did you brush your teeth? Is the kitchen clean? You can read but you need to be in your bed, not moving knick-knacks around in your room this time.”I wonder if she is getting what she needs from me. I wonder if she did her homework. We are so busy and she is such a good kid. Does she feel loved? Do any of them? Are we too busy? What would we cut out if we were?Rock the wild one, looking at the big moon outside the window. Think about the morning, about the way I yelled at him, the way I looked at him. I think about how he cried when the anger was all used up and it was clear he was going to school no matter what. I wonder if it’s all my fault that he doesn’t like school. Have I made all the wrong choices? Is he in the wrong school? Wonder if I should burn my whole life down and rock him forever. Wonder if I should quit my job and move to a little shack in the woods and grind my own grain and can vegetables. I wonder if he would be happy then. I wonder if he will ever be happy. I wonder if I am happy. Is anyone happy? Am I allowed to ask that?The front door opens. The big one is home. I tell him he can’t play his game and he has to shower and go to bed. We argue about that. Walk away. I hope he does what I said, knowing I am too tired to stick around and make sure. Go downstairs. Sigh at the halfway job someone did in the kitchen. Feel like that is somehow my fault, too.I take my vitamins. Drink some water. Eat some chocolate.Sit.Breathe.Look at Kyle, eyes half-closed already but trying to read his book about God. His days are wild, too.Think about all the things that aren’t done.I didn’t check to be sure everyone has a uniform for tomorrow.I didn’t write anything meaningful. Probably won’t ever get an agent or a publishing contract.Didn’t make the dentist appointment.Didn’t prepare for the Bible study I’m supposed to lead in 12 hours.The oil in the van still needs to be changed.The dog needs to go to the vet.Did I text my friend back? I didn’t, did I?I was going to go for a walk today.I haven’t talked to my cousin in a month.I should fold that load of clothes that just buzzed. I should tell Kyle to.Should we have gone to church tonight? Are we making the wrong call to opt out of the mid-week small group gathering this year? There’s no way we could do it, I know. How did we ever make it before? How does anyone?Did anyone take out the trash? Waking up to a full trash can is almost as demoralizing as waking up to a full sink.So much grading to do. Am I a good teacher? Am I giving them what they need for the ACT in April? Will they be prepared for their next step?What am I going to pack for lunch tomorrow?Remember we are out of bread.Decide to worry about that tomorrow.Think about my kids. Think about my mom.I think about Ameerah, the one who lived under my roof for most of seven years. I wonder if she is taking her allergy medicine. I wonder if she knows how much she is loved. I wonder what she will do after she graduates next year. I wonder if she is happy.I wonder if I’m doing anything right. Part of me always feels like the hammer is just about to fall and I’m about to realize that everything I thought was ok isn’t. I recognize that’s not normal.Think about being 36. Think about having another baby. Imagine adding first-trimester exhaustion on top of 13-year-old impulsivity. Decide that’s insane but cry a little anyway. Imagine having a kindergartener and a college freshman in 5 years. Cry some more. Put that thought away. Again. For now. It always comes back.I pull open my laptop and work on a freelance project for a few minutes. My eyes won’t stay open.It’s 10.I get in bed a few minutes before Kyle and try to breathe like my therapist taught me, deep and slow.“There is no dinosaur chasing me. I am not in danger. My kids are safe and well. The bills are high, but they are paid, or at least they will be. I am not a cavewoman and there is no dinosaur.”Deep breath. Again.Resist the temptation to look at my phone, knowing that it’s bad for my sleep. I wonder how many hours will pass before a footie-pajama wearing toddler will come looking for comfort. I wonder if anyone will have a nightmare or sleepwalk down the stairs tonight.Kyle comes in, turns the light off, falls asleep easily because he is exhausted, his breath getting steady and slow. I match mine to his. I pray in that twilight way, the same way I’ve been praying my whole life. I fall asleep, but lightly. I’m waiting.Next, footie-pajama feet are padding down the hall toward me.“Mama, I want you.”“Come here, baby. It’s all right.”Finally, we sleep deeply for a few hours, almost to sunrise. It’s enough.

Tiny Podcast

Episode 10 - A Day in the Life

I wish I had known sooner how hard this would all be, for you and for me.  What I would have done with such information, I’ll never know. Would I have opted out to avoid the pain, the stretch, the breaking it’s required of me?Probably not. I wish I had known how hard I would have to fight for an inch of my own air to breathe sometimes and how many years it would take to realize I was choking. I wish I had realized sooner that even though I would have to fight for a little air, I could have it. I wish I had known how invisible I would feel sometimes.  I wish I had known how insignificant and stuck I would feel on the hardest days.  I didn’t know I would feel this way sometimes and I certainly didn’t know that I would feel ashamed for feeling this way, too.I wish I had known that just about every system operating in the world requires mothers to kill either their instincts or their ambition.  I wish I had figured that out sooner and listened to both better.I wish I had known that I would feel misunderstood so much of the time by almost everyone. I didn’t know how afraid being a mother would make me, the stakes seeming to inch higher with every passing year, with every step they take toward independence. Have I done enough good to counter all the bad?  What has it been like for them, being mine? Will they suffer because of me? Because of what I am? Because of what I am not?Being a mother means making impossible choices and keeping a straight face while you do it, lest anyone see the truth, that is how little you know.  How do I know what to let go of? What to fight for? What to hold onto? Do they know how viscerally I love them and how I can’t breathe without them, even though I need my headphones and NPR  to survive a day surrounded by them? Do they know how I can’t breathe at night because I am so afraid that I’m getting this wrong and afraid of all the dangerous blind spots I haven’t discovered?When my first batch of children were young and I was too, I was convinced there was one path to follow and a single, sure formula I could use to guarantee happy, healthy kids who wouldn’t smoke or drink or chew or run with kids who do.  I know just enough now to know that almost none of us knows much of anything for sure and all those formulas and paths I thought I could trust have disappeared like puffs of smoke before my very eyes. Where once I saw footprints in front of me on the path, now there is nothing left but dirt and my irrational fear of sinkholes and quicksand.There is nothing but these open hands, a little shaky and totally empty and outstretched now.  There is nothing left but the long, long list of all the times when God met me in my lack and grace made up the difference.  Maybe that’ll be enough.  Maybe if I can’t teach my kids how to never be depressed or unbalanced or doubtful or angry or terrified, I can teach them how to hold their own weaknesses and mistakes and fears as loosely as they hold their strengths and accomplishments and Bible Memory Awards.  Maybe if I can’t teach them how to impress everyone all the time, I can still teach them how to press their whole breaking hearts into Jesus, the One who came to be with us and in us.Being a mother is so, so hard.  I don’t know anyone who has really found a way to balance the demands of earning and managing money, caring for a home and a family, being a good citizen of the world much less a faithful member of a faith community or  minding their own soul care. I see some of you trying to make room for yourselves among all the other things that clamor and I have the urge to raise my fist in quiet solidarity. I know how hard and scary it is to start to tell the people around you that you need a little room too, after long years of pretending to be a saint or worse, a martyr.Raising kids is so terribly hard and so consuming and so very good and also brutal and exhausting that I don’t know how any woman actually survives it.  Except I do know how I’ve survived it, and that’s barely and only by the breath of God that has filled my lungs over and over again, amen.December was a mess and the rest of the year wasn’t exactly a glowing success.  Some of the choices and changes I’ve made and things I’ve tried haven’t worked out  like I hoped and I’m licking some wounds and fighting to feel a spark of hope. Today, I feel low. I feel low and lacking and embarrassed and tired and I can’t talk myself out of it, no matter how hard I try. And then I remember Advent, when the nights were starting to get so deep and dark and long that we all found ourselves a little disoriented at 4:45 when the windows made us swear it was midnight. I remember the day, not too long ago, when the light broke through the long darkness, bringing the hope of the whole world.  I remember how the night started its retreat as the days stretched out across the hours again. I remember still.The spark of hope remains and even though it flickers and sometimes it even wanes, I can’t deny it.  On the exhale, in the pit of my stomach, the Spirit of God is with me, near as my next breath. It’s enough for the moment I’m in, I’ll leave the rest to worry about itself while I take myself for a walk, I think.  There’s enough daylight left for that, I think. But if not, I can walk in the dark a while. The light has come and is coming still.A note:This is not the sort of post I thought I’d be sharing today. I tried to write something, anything else.  I wanted to be cheerful and upbeat and write about my intentions for the new year. But then I thought of you, the ones who are in these trenches or perhaps a different type of trench, and I couldn’t offer you anything less than what I know to be most real today. I wanted you to know that I am with you, God is with you, and you are surely not as alone or invisible as you may have thought.  We can talk about resolutions another day. 

Episode 9 - For the Mothers

The world is funny, isn’t it?One minute, we are all gathered to watch grown men hurtle their bodies through time and space, aiming to inflict enough force to flatten their opponents. We cheer, yell, clap, scream at the impact. We watch these games, knowing that there are precious brains under the helmets that aren’t designed to absorb such brutality. We know that men who spend their careers knocking heads often suffer grave consequences. Such sacrifice is honored in our patriarchal culture. Male aggression is not just normalized, it’s lauded.The second quarter ends and instead of flipping the channel and engaging the family in a round of charades, we all watch the familiar show with some strange, feigned shock at the sight of breasts and bottoms while we clutch our pearls and reach for our phones.The screen is flashing with sequins and there are women everywhere, flipping, turning, rolling, singing, gyrating. It’s a whole production.Small screens flash, too. Christian social media is immediately ablaze.“Trash.”“Don’t they know God didn’t design their bodies to be used this way?”“This is not empowering to women.”“Disgraceful!”“I wouldn’t want my daughter to see a performance like that.”I am not here to offer a moral admonition to Shakira or J-Lo. I’m sure they wouldn’t be terribly interested in my opinion on the matter, anyway. I bet you wouldn’t, either. Enough has been said already.I am not here to pass judgment on any of my dear friends who found the performance inappropriate or even offensive.I am wondering, though, if there aren’t some important questions we should pause to consider.First, why is a free, adult woman choosing to dress and move provocatively on a stage a cause for such uproar? Is it that her body is a temple? Is that why so many of us took to the internet, exclaiming disgust and outrage?If so, why is the violence and injury the players were visiting upon each other moments prior a thing to celebrate and revel in? Are these hulking men’s bodies not temples for the Spirit of God, the same as Jennifer’s and Shakira’s? Do those bodies not also deserve tender care and preservation and protection?What are we really saying about our bodies as temples of the living God when we can’t abide the sight of a woman commanding an audience of thousands with her body for a few minutes at an event where men professionally visit violence upon each other for hours on end to our great glee?  Where is our lament for the bruises, the breaks, the irreversible damage professional football can cause?Here is the NFL player arrest record from 2019. Where is our outrage with the NFL players who beat their women, even their pregnant women? What about the players who abuse animals? Drugs, guns, DUIs, these all get a pass but rump shakers like Shakira and J-Lo we will not abide. We light up the night with our critique of them.I watched the performance again a few minutes ago and I was reminded of the story of the woman who had been caught in the act with someone else’s husband. Now, she lived in a time and a place where women were considered property or dogs and we can’t gloss over that. I think we have a lot of reasons to wonder whether she had actually committed any sin at all or if she may have merely been the victim of a man and the harsh, patriarchal culture of her time. I digress.When Jesus entered into her story, he did not shame or mock her or announce his disappointment in the way she was existing in her body. He did not call attention to her body at all.What Jesus did do, however, was call out the violence and name the secret shame of the men who foamed with the desire to break her will and her body and to beat the flame of life right out of her. He shattered the patriarchy, at least for that moment, simultaneously holding the mob to account and liberating the woman in a way that only the God-man could have.I don’t know what Jesus thinks about rump-shaking, whether the rump belongs to a white cheerleader or a Latina singer. Maybe I’ll ask him about it one day, but I have a feeling when I find myself face to face I’ll think of something better to ask. Maybe I'll ask Him how He felt when J-Lo and Shakira used their platform to speak truth to power in the name of the thousands of little children who have been separated from their parents in the name of America First.I don’t know what Jesus thinks about football. I am positive I won’t ask Him about that.I think I do know, as much as any of us know anything, what Jesus thinks about women and little children and violence and shaming mobs.That’s all I have to say about that.

Episode 8 - We (still) Have to Talk About the Super Bowl

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Bonus Episode - Advent

Here’s the inconvenient truth about pain. It doesn’t actually go away when we hide from it and try to cover it up and act like it’s not there.I desperately wish this weren’t true, but it is. It is true. Not one of us actually makes it all the way through childhood and adolescence without a secret list of wounds and broken places and weird coping mechanisms we use to mask tell-tale symptoms of our deep pain.So what happens when we try to slog through adulthood without unpacking and working through our various odds and ends that have been stacked and packed and carried through our lives? The pain doesn’t go away when we run from it, push it down, cover it with achievements or relationships or any other created thing.Pain, ignored and silenced, doesn’t disappear. You’ve watched this play out, I’m sure.The pain doesn’t go away.It transfers.Usually onto the people closest to us, and often before we realize it’s happening.Each of us, by thirty or sooner, if we're lucky, has a choice to make. Am I going to continue to stuff the assortment of goods I was handed back down into this overflowing suitcase I’ve been dragging?When we choose that option, the people nearest to us will be forever scurrying around behind us, trying to help us contain our messes and surely taking on some of our mess as their own.  So all our grief and pain is still in a suitcase and it’s still being carried, but now some of it is being carried by someone else.There is another way.For some, it looks like committing to clinical help unpacking the burdens and marks we’ve been carrying or handing off to others to carry. For some, it may look like a commitment to introspective prayer, and conscious and slow unburdening in the prayer room with God alone. For some, it may mean accountability or intentional community with people who can see through your messiest messes and see past your best-painted masks. Some of us may just need to start walking in the direction we were pointed years and years ago. I’m figuring out, slowly, what that unpacking process looks like for me. What might it look like for you? Which direction does the still, small voice tell you to place your next step?Hurt people do hurt people, it’s true. But what if it’s also true that people who are committed and doggedly pursuing their own deep, inner healing are the ones who can actually heal the whole world?What if the most important Kingdom work we ever do is within our own hearts and minds and homes? What if by fighting for our own healing, we actually are becoming healing for the world?You are the image of the divine. Jesus calls you the light of the world. Honoring your own brokenness is holy work and I hope you’ll do it. I hope you’ll do it even if you know other people have suffered much more than you by comparison. There is no such thing as the suffering Olympics. Pain is not elite. You are worthy of rest and peace and healing and wholeness, too.Bless you, today and every day.A note: There are many among us who do not have just access to mental health care. Clinical help may be out of reach for some who read this and I just wanted to say: I see you. I honor you. I know I can’t fix what is broken or dismantle all the systems that work against you. But I will leverage my power and my privilege and my vote until we are all covered and cared for. You, uninsured or underinsured friend, are the light of the world and I see you.

Pain and Healing

It’s solidly fall now and I have so many mixed-up feelings. The trees on my street are huge and old and they look like they’re on fire when the sun starts to set.  I love it so much that it physically hurts. I am intentional to always notice the beauty all around me as I drive and walk and live in the fall. October has been truly beautiful. But today, November is here, uninvited as ever. The ground was covered in frost this morning and it was a shock to all my senses. I wanted to rebel and get back under the covers when I saw it. The leaves on the wisteria in my front yard are shriveling and falling at this very moment. More leaves are going to fall and keep falling until they cover the yards up and down my street. The leaves that I Iove are going to die and deep down, I’ve been dreading that certain future since I saw the first golden leaf back in September.  Every time I’ve noticed the beautiful reds and golds and oranges up above and all around me, there has been a whisper of warning. “Enjoy it. Notice it.  Remember, it doesn’t last much longer.  Gray is coming, cold and wet and muddy. You are surrounded by the most intense beauty, but remember it doesn’t last.” I could just cry when I think about how short October has been. It’s such a lovely month but way too busy and it’s gone now,  and it’s not coming back again for a long, long time. Everything is going to get cold.  Some of us feel it coming in our bones and others feel it in our hearts or our minds.  The sun is setting earlier and long nights lay ahead. It’s not a surprise but I’m still caught a little off guard. I’ve never been a great sleeper and it’s even worse in the winter.  I expend a lot of energy during the day trying NOT to think about things that hurt and all the many problems I haven’t solved yet and all the problems I know I never will.  During the day, I can light my little candle and raise it up and bring my offering and trust that it’s enough. But when I lay my head on my pillow, all the brutality of the earth knows where to find me.  I fall asleep pretty easily but ever since I was a little child, the hours between two and four am are my personal worrying time. I’m not quite lucid enough to trick myself into controlling where my thoughts wander, but I’m not quite sleeping, either. Maybe one day I’ll learn to pray in that twilight state, but I haven’t yet and so I just worry.  As far back as I can remember, the weather has really worried me on cold, windy, or rainy nights.  When the wind howls, I think about the people and the animals in my neighborhood without shelter and protection. I think one of the reasons I’m really dreading the winter is the assault on the most vulnerable that comes with it.  I know that I am one person and nobody asked me to single-handedly solve the issues of poverty and homelessness or animal neglect or even the cruelty of Mother Nature herself, but when the lights go out and everyone else is asleep, I know I won’t be able to distract myself or steel myself or convince myself that the arc is bending toward justice at all. I’ve been thinking lately about all the things that are broken around me that I just can’t fix.  I am one person, raising a house full of kids, doing a difficult job and trying to stay married forever and be a decent friend to the people around me. There just isn’t that much left over at the end of each day.  The news is almost all bad and it’s really overwhelming most of the time. The risk of falling into the ditch of distraction and apathy is as high as the risk of falling into the ditch of burnout and despair. I’ve been thinking about what I CAN do lately and you know what I’ve decided?  I can’t heal the world. I can’t save anybody, not one single person. I can’t right all the wrongs. But I actually DO have the power to reach for the light in my own life and make the choice to fight for my own deep, inner healing. I have access to five therapy sessions each year and I feel like I owe it to the world to use them.  Because if hurt people can hurt people, can’t we also assume that healed people will be the ones who can contribute to the healing of the world? Maybe my greatest single contribution to the Kingdom of God that was and is and is still coming is to just put myself in the way of healing and rest in every way I can. Will you? Will you rest?  Will you try to practice laying one burden down for a while and then two? Is there a spiritual practice that brings you peace or comfort? Do you ever think about yourself with tenderness and compassion? I wonder what would happen if we offered ourselves a bit more intentional care and a little less numbing out on food or wine or exercise or piety.  A few minutes ago, I turned on a sink and didn’t get a drop.  I turned on another and then another. And then I realized WE FORGOT TO PAY THE BILL!  Here I am, in a house full of dirty clothes and children and dishes and I didn’t pay the water bill and they just came and shut it off.  I’m lucky, you see, because it was just a mistake, a simple oversight that I am sure can be traced the wild ride of a too-busy October.  I made a couple of phone calls and now I’m just waiting for the guy who turned it off to circle back through my neighborhood and turn it back on.  There are so many in my city who live without power or water or gas for their heaters for months on end for reasons too deep and twisty to begin to list.  My college education and hard-working husband and inherited prosperity I don’t deserve would allow me to live in perpetual summer if I wanted to. What was a mild annoyance for me could have been the catalyst for a life-altering cascade of events for someone else.  It’s not enough for me to be mindful of my blessings and simply count them and whisper thanks at dinner time. What if the greatest blessings in this life could come not through emergency funds and 401Ks but through intentional proximity and authentic kinship with those on the margins for whom Jesus saves the seat of honor at His table?  I’m different than I used to be and I don’t think I can just keep going on in all of the old ways. The 2016 election felt like a tipping point for me and it forced me to finally begin to reckon with what my sisters and brothers without my blinding privilege have always known; that this world is not safe for everyone and that really bad things do happen and keep on happening.  Powerful men use what they have to get ever more and their grasping is always at the expense of people at the margins. To see and notice and start to feel a little bit of the deep suffering of so many people makes it hard to hold onto faith in a God who is good and powerful, so those of us who can opt out of the sights and sounds of the suffering often do.  Nobody wants a paradigm shift. I would never use the word “woke” to describe myself because for one thing, I don’t know if any thirty-something, middle-class white women like me should use that word.  It’s not a part of my vocabulary because I have a hunch about how much I still don’t know. I know I’m still asleep in a lot of ways and I have so much work to do in my own groggy heart. I want to be awake to the suffering and marginalization and systemic oppression of my sisters and brothers around me.  I’m waking up, I think, a little at a time. I’m different. It hurts, but I know the middle of the night pain I absorb through osmosis isn’t a fraction of the pain mothers in tent encampments in Tijuana feel. It isn’t a fraction of the pain of mothers in my city feel when they can’t overcome the odds that have been so heavily stacked against them for the sake of their children. And so I read and give and speak when I can, holding the knowledge I can’t fix anything even though  I am altogether unable to look away now.   I don’t want to go back to the way I was before 2016.  I want to keep waking up in every sense, even if it pushes me out of the safe center where I was born and live.  The more I learn of Jesus and his love for margin people, the less I long to see myself centered and the more I actually believe that He meant what He said about the way we treat the least of these. So here we are again, at the end of the warm season and bracing against the cold winds that always come, sure as the leaves change their colors. I can forget to remember that spring always comes on the heels of the dreariest days.  While we hunker down and bundle up and make it through the next few months, good things will be growing silently underneath, preparing to burst back through the earth when we circle back around again. I can let the gray sky come and let the leaves fall, knowing that these long nights won’t last forever. We who hope in Jesus hang everything on His resurrection. Resurrection is such an absurd concept to build a religion around, isn’t it? But just as I have been convinced of the resurrection of Jesus, I am becoming more convinced day by day that resurrection is coming for more than just our broken Savior and these broken bodies. I am holding onto the idea that even though so much is undeniably broken here, the power and the glory of the resurrection of Jesus still goes out into the world, still makes broken things whole, uses the foolish the confound the wise, still calls the dry bones back together joint by joint. Resurrection is coming for me, for you, and for the world. And so, because I believe in the resurrection and I want to be looking for it when it happens around me, I think I’ll make myself a cup of hot coffee and sit out in the cold under a blanket for a while.  It will be my act of holy defiance to sit a while as the leaves fall, knowing that good things still grow. Even when the colors are going away and the gray sky looms, good things are just below the surface and resting up for spring.  I’ll rest. I hope you will, too.And then I’ll light my candle and bring my little light into my little corner of the world where we can see resurrection happening all around us even as we speak, if we have the eyes to see it. 

Episode 6 - Fall, Privilege, and Holy Defiance

I am still Evangelical.   I wanted to be Catholic.   I tried to be Anglican. I pretended to be Episcopalian for a while.  In my earnest early twenties, I even tried to walk away from the faith altogether for a semester, but that one ended in my world religions professor’s office.  He welcomed me in with tears in my eyes and offered me a seat.  “I don’t even know who I am anymore.  If all the things you are teaching me about the other religions in the world are historically and factually accurate, how can my simple faith in the Jesus of the Bible be justifiable?” This practicing Buddhist saved my faith and maybe even my life with a simple question and its simple answer: He asked me if I had experienced Jesus.  I thought for a moment and had to respond, “Yes, yes I have experienced him.  I have felt Him.”  He responded by telling me that I had to be true to what I had experienced.  If I had experienced Jesus, if I knew Him, I had to be honest about that.   I exhaled for what felt like the first time in months.   Over the coming days, I truly relaxed into my new paradigm.  My experience of Jesus as friend and brother and intercessor was enough.  My seemingly never-ending search for all the answers and all the knowledge and all the puzzle pieces butting up nicely just...ended. The road had run out and there was nowhere else worth wandering.  I was able to pray again.  I was able to sit through a worship service without sneaking away early totally numb or completely gutted.   My brief but painful journey through intense doubt was good for me. In her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor describes her own spirituality as lunar, as opposed to what she calls full solar spirituality, which focuses on staying in the light of God around the clock, both absorbing and reflecting the sunny side of faith.  She describes trying to walk through life with fellow believers who don’t experience doubt and darkness and the absence of the voice of God as often as she does.  She says that her walk into the dark frightened them, that they tried to walk close to her, to protect her from the danger they sensed outside the pool of perpetual light they kept neatly surrounding their toes and filling them with a perhaps false, but certainly comforting sense of safety.  She says that they went as far as they could with her, but when the darkness all but overtook her, they could go no farther.  Her sisters and brothers in the faith stood at the edge of the darkness and yelled for her to come back, return to safety, leave the darkness where danger lives.  But she couldn’t.  She found herself altogether unable to numb out, stay positive, keep on the sunny side and keep up the façade.  I like her. For the last few years, I have really stumbled around a lot in what has, at times, felt like crushing darkness.  The world has always been a harsh place to live; I remind myself of this often.  People have been cruel to each other since the garden, why am I still so surprised by cruelty?  What I would really like to know is why in the HECK I am still so shocked with my own ability to hand out cruelty.   Hate begets hate and so on and so forth, forever and ever, amen.  People are hungry, the earth groans.  Women and children are bought and sold.  Clean water isn’t guaranteed.  Our criminal justice system isn’t just.  People are drowning and risking life and limb to escape violence and famine and they are being met by military and militia, handcuffs, cells, and tents.  Tear gas at the border finding its way into the brown eyes of babies who can’t outrun the plume. A beautiful young man bleeding out in a shopping mall.  Atrocity on atrocity and we are all looking for someone to blame.   For a while, I thought that if my brothers and sisters could just read what I was reading they would see things my way.  My outrage at the plight of our sisters and brothers would become theirs, we would storm the capital and set the captives free.  The midterms came and went and not much of it went down the way I thought.  People voted their consciences and we thanked God for the chance. I was disappointed. I was scared. I approached the table the next week, just like I have year after year, hungry for a taste of bread and a sip of wine, just enough to hold me over until He comes and makes old things new and wrong things right.  I look to my right and I see Jesus in the face of my brother.  We both look to the cross.  We are both longing for home.   Sometimes I still think it would be much easier to just leave, make my final statement of self-righteous dissatisfaction with the Evangelical church and close the door.   Protestantism is, at its core, a rebellion.  There is a rebellious streak in every Protestant heart and mine is heavily striped.  Plaid, even. A good friend taught me that to be Evangelical is to be engaged with the greater culture.  If you want a denomination or a religion that is untouched and unaffected by our culture, you can certainly find it.  But it won’t be Evangelicalism.  For better or worse, we are disrupted, cobbled together, nomadic, evolving, and crying out in the wilderness for a straight path.  Occasionally, I check my email.  Rarely may be a more fitting descriptor, but let’s not split hairs.  A few times I have responded to a request made by my friend who is responsible for finding communion servers and making sure the elements are all in place.  A few times I have found myself at the front of my little downtown church holding the bread and watching these people, some familiar and many not, stream toward me.  I make it pretty well through the first five or six, but after a few rounds of “this is the body of Christ, broken for you, brother” I am barely able to utter a discernible word.  These people are lined up and steady streaming toward me. They are carrying almost visible baggage, suitcases of pain, regret, fear, lack, failure.  They are pouring out of the rows of chairs and toward the front of the church because while it may be hard to believe a little bread and a little wine is enough to sustain a body in the hard, cruel world, we are pretty damn sure at this point that we don’t have another hope.  As they come and keep coming, this refrain pounds a beat in my heart: “The broken and beautiful body of Christ, The broken and beautiful body of Christ.”  I have to fight the urge to hand off the bread and start grabbing people, trying to get my shoulder under a corner of the load I’m watching them limp and buckle under.  My pastor said once that if Jesus says his yoke is easy and his burden is light and you find yourself yoked up to something hard and carrying a burden that seems to crush, you are either carrying the wrong burden or carrying the right burden the wrong way.  This statement has become my plumb line in the last couple of years as the weight and pain of a suffering world has sometimes been unbearable to me.  The Jesus way will be the way of suffering, to be sure.  But I have often suffered as one who is without hope, devouring news and commentary and Facebook comment threads until my eyes and heart are bleeding.  I don’t have the answers.  I don’t have any more arguments or justifications or well-reasoned, bullet-pointed argument outlines.  I’ve exhausted all that, and I have learned that in 2018 if you say things people don’t want to hear they can just...not hear you.  All my talking will become striving after wind.  At the click of a button we can unfollow each other, disengage and disentangle.  I’m not always right, and even when I am, I can’t always make anyone listen. So, what now?  I don’t know. I know I’m trying to be slow to speak, quick to listen.  I am trying to listen to my shoulders as they inch toward my ears as my anger grows wilder.  I am trying to ease my shoulders back down, to talk to my anger before I let it speak, to see things from my brother’s perspective. I’m trying to see my brother.  Because I have tried and failed too many times to keep thinking I could ever leave him.  I want to live and move in the Jesus way.  He flipped tables once, I could flip them hourly.   November is almost here and I know Advent is coming.  I am ready for the waiting more than I can ever remember.  Give me the young mother, her beloved, and the humble straw and stable.  I need the Holy God become tender flesh.  God with us! God entering into the darkness to be one of us, to walk among us and know our secrets.  Give me the fleeing holy family, risking everything to give this baby a chance to live and grow.  My heart has been hollowed out by the last couple of years on earth; trying to make sense of the senseless.  Now there is room for Him here. 

Episode 5 - Evangelical

My marriage is 13 years old today, an awkward adolescent with limbs too long and a face full of acne, but showing some potential and promise now.  Bless it.  Here is my anniversary story, a brief history of mistakes and graces. We got married way too young, by most thinking people’s standards.  I was 21 and he was 20 and we had about $80 between us unless you count the student loans, then we had about negative $39,920 between us.   He was a junior in college and working retail part-time and I was a recent graduate making minimum wage with no plans and no pressure to make any.  We were broke, but we felt free.  Our days were filled with tacos, beer, and friends.  Our little apartment and 15-year-old cars were all we needed in the world. Did you know birth control only works if you remember to take it?  Spoiler alert, I did not know that.   About a year after our wedding, Eli was born.  What a sweet gift he was for two idiots who clearly didn’t know what they were doing!  At two minutes old, he picked up his little head from my chest and looked straight into my soul before bobbing it around to survey the landscape.  I can still remember his fingernails on my skin as he tried to figure out exactly what I was. The next year was hard.  It was really, really hard.  Fresh motherhood can be treacherous sometimes.  Kyle worked long hours and worked hard on his degree.  I worked at a daycare so that I could be with Eli and we just squeaked by, with a lot of help from people who loved us.   Hannah Kate was born the next year during Kyle’s final semester of undergrad.  Two babies under two years old is a precious and harrowing experience for anyone, and most of us survive it...but I have to admit, there were times I thought I might not.  Those first years of marriage and parenting are extraordinarily exciting, no doubt.  So much possibility!  But it would be a cruel trick to pretend there weren’t some really hard times, too.  We both came into this new family with a lot of expectations and when life didn’t measure up, our tendencies were to dig our heels in and protect what we thought was ours.  It didn’t take very long for us to realize we were actually on two separate teams, and we often found ourselves at odds. We moved to my hometown after Kyle graduated and rented the kind of old house that scares your mother when she sees it.  It was the kind of house that is full of character, charm, ghosts, and asbestos.  We made it about 5 months.  Our rent was $650 and when we received a $700 utility bill, we called a realtor.  We bought a little house in a little neighborhood we thought would fit us just fine for at least 5 years.  After renting for several years, you could not imagine how excited I was to go to the paint store and choose colors for the walls of MY OWN HOUSE.  The year was 2009, so clearly, I chose deep red for the kitchen (really popped against those builder grade oak cabinets, let me tell you) and a deep avocado green for the living room.  I was someBODY ya’ll.   Kyle taught high school English and coached football.  I taught preschool music classes and wrangled babies.  It was good and hard. Then we met a Mama who needed help and in a matter of days, a 7-year-old named Ameerah joined us.  Her mom had made the difficult decision to join the military to give her family a chance at a better life and we wanted to help her do that.   Six months later we were making plans to pack her little things back up and transition her back in to her mama’s care and my heart was in pieces.  I had done the thing I promised I wouldn’t and gotten very attached to another mama’s child.  I knew I couldn’t keep her, I knew she wasn’t mine, but it was like my instincts took over and panic set in.  My family was about to shrink and it felt so wrong.  I didn’t want my family to get smaller, we were supposed to be in the growing phase, not the releasing.  So I did what any level headed, rational person would.  I got pregnant, on the first try, just like the other times.  I packed all of Ameerah’s things and I did hand her back to her mama, which seemed right and good to my mind, but my aching heart didn’t understand.   We settled back into our old routine, with two little ones instead of three.  We held our breath through the first trimester, like all parents do.  Right around week 11, I remember breathing a sigh of relief. Our friends and family all knew about this baby and they all thought we were nuts but we were used to that by now.   And then, in an instant, everything wasn’t ok.  Spotting and cramping and heading to the doctor’s office, I cried and begged God for this baby.  I was making promises and bargains and apologies and holding onto fading hope.  I think I knew in my soul it wasn’t all going to be ok.  Not this time. We got to the ultrasound room and the technician found the tiny baby with the tiny, too slow beating heart.  We watched and cried as the life seemed to be fading from this terribly wanted baby with each thump...thump.  We suddenly felt very young again or maybe we just felt our age.  The doctor told us there was a small chance the baby could be ok, so we held our breath and each other's hands and scheduled a follow up appointment for the next day.   The baby was not ok.  Sometime in the night that slowing heart beat faded out. I felt like death personified. Like a tomb filled with sorrow and dread.  Everything went grey. We went home and I pulled into myself, cocooning around this baby that would not be, all at once wishing it was over and wishing it would never be. No one tells you miscarriage can be slow.  No one tells you much about miscarriage, at all. We told our family and friends and kids, and I survived the worst week of my life.  I pulled back, hid, suffered this deep hurt alone, because how do you even begin to engage with a story like this?  Looking back, I realize that I was grieving more than just a baby.  I was grieving my whole understanding of the world.  Really bad things really will happen and not one of us will be able to prevent all of them.  Babies really do die, no last-minute stunts can be pulled to save them.  It was like a free fall into a different universe where I was suddenly just like everyone else and really bad things could happen to me, at any time. I didn’t think I could ever do it again.  I knew a lot of women who had opened themselves up to the possibility of loss again and again, but I couldn’t imagine it.  Time marched on.  Ameerah came back when her mom’s military job required it and we felt a little more whole. That baby ache, though.   Eventually, the ache outgrew the fear and we jumped off the cliff again, this time knowing it could really kill us this time. It didn’t.   This time, we waited a little longer to share the news and we proceeded with caution. This time, we brought home a healthy baby boy named Abe.  This time, unfortunately, we also brought home quite severe post-partum depression. New vocabulary like Enfamil and failure to thrive and prozac became very familiar.  Again, we survived.   Kyle completed his master’s degree, we bought a bigger house and a bigger van.  We also got a big dog and each took on more demanding and stressful jobs, while navigating family life with 4 kids now and always always always just barely enough.  Barely enough rest, barely enough money, space, time, barely enough grace for each other.  But look at us, we made it. A few years later, in 2016 we really bit off a huge bite.  We sold the shrinking house that had at one time seemed so big.  We bought the house we had driven by countless times, pointing, saying THIS ONE. If this one was ever on the market, man, we would snatch it up.  We shook hands with the owners and watched them yank the homemade sign out of the yard after our 20-minute walk through.  We are impulsive, what of it? We packed up our belongings and stacked up boxes for what we swore would be the last time.  And then, one night as I was getting dinner on the table I started doing some mental math.  Ok, so today is the 15th...hmm...that’s odd...oh my gosh...wait a second.  A quick trip to CVS and a bottle of Aquafina later and I was staring at TWO LINES. TWO.  Pregnant. Positive. Again.   The next day we closed on our two-income dream house.  There were exactly zero ways we could afford the house we literally just bought if I didn’t continue earning money, so I convinced myself that I could do it all.  Work through this pregnancy and get right back at it after a short maternity leave.   I couldn’t.  I didn’t.   Shep’s birth ushered in a period of buckling down, doing hard things, and expecting the God of the universe to intervene that I hope I never recover from.  Kyle worked himself quite close to the brink of exhaustion trying to make enough money to keep it all spinning, and it was the greatest gift he could ever have given me.  I got another chance to mother a newborn, and this time without the dark cloud of depression.  He worked and worked and worked and never complained.  I spent all my time with my baby in my arms and running my big kids all over town and it was a good season.   And then one day it wasn’t.  It became abundantly clear this was not the life we wanted.  There was no house worth working that hard for, even if we did have the very sweetest neighbors who we miss every day.  We quickly decided to sell our big house and move into a much smaller one a few streets over.  One more time, we grabbed some boxes and got to packing and stacking.  The big house sold in a couple of weeks and we breathed a sigh of relief.   But life keeps rolling doesn’t it?  A few months after the knots untangled and we broke free from the burden of a house we couldn’t afford we had to buy a new car.  And then three kids needed braces yesterday and we couldn’t keep putting it off.  And then I needed an expensive surgery.  And soon, it was clear that I needed to get back to income earning, at least for now.  Selling that house bought me precious months one on one with this gift of a baby and I’ll never regret it.  It also got us off the more, bigger, better train we had accidentally hopped aboard.  We learned we don’t really need 5 bedrooms, and we could learn to be happy with less than we have now.  So now, in this moment, life is looking a lot different than I expected 13 years ago and even 13 months ago.  I’m teaching school again, Kyle’s the assistant principal of a middle school.   He is still teaching English online on the weekends so we can do fun things together sometimes and it’s been really beautiful to watch him sacrifice himself.   While many dads are watching tv or reading or sleeping, this one is at the dining room table, investing in the lives of children across the world and our life just sort of rotates around him.  When he isn’t at one job or the other he is taking someone to scouts or church or dance, folding laundry (not putting it away very often, but we are overlooking that for now), or working on his doctorate degree.  We are in an “all hands on deck” season of life and it would have buckled the original us.   Marriage, man.   We jumped in with all four feet because it’s what we wanted more than anything in the world.  A family, a future, a purpose.  We brought our unrealistic expectations, our experiences, our insecurities, our hopes, our DNA, our weaknesses, our lack, our bad habits, our gifts, our weapons of war, our selfishness and rigidity, our favorite cuss words, our addictions, and we laid them all down at the altar of something bigger.  Something better.  This has been really, incredibly, terribly hard and absolutely the best thing that has ever happened to me.  Over the last 13 years we really have died to ourselves for the sake of the other, and that death has been sometimes extraordinarily painful.  But I can tell you this without qualification: what has been resurrected in our home is a new life, a oneness I can’t describe or dissect.  We have messed up, said the worst, done the terrible, gone to bed livid and far apart, a few times for a string of many nights in a row.  We have taken huge risks, failed together, experienced regret and triumph.  And have learned, finally, that we don’t actually have to say everything we think all the time and that if we hold on and stay through the night and resist the urge to hide away or walk away, joy really can come in the morning.  We didn’t write our own vows because do people really do that?  But if I had the opportunity to say a few words in front of everyone today, this is what I would say...  Thank you for doing your best.  It’s enough. Thank you for being so humble and kind.  Thank you for showing our kids what repentance looks like.  Thank you for doing whatever it takes to be better and do better and for keeping your eye on the prize.  Thank you for doing hard things for a long time, and never giving up.  Thank you for making me laugh more than cry.  Thank you for being brave enough to ask questions lesser men shrink from, what you are gaining in return for the asking is the stuff of broken chains and legacy.  Thank you for calling yourself a feminist before I could call myself one.  Thank you for being so intense about clean, unwrinkled sheets...I’ve secretly come to love it.  Thank you for buying me things because you know I like them.  Thank you for listening to me and believing in me and saying the nicest things about me that probably aren’t accurate but still nice.  Let’s keep going, ok?  I think it’s all going to be all right. 

Episode 4 - 13 Years

When I was around 15 or so I went to Evansville, Indiana with my best friend to visit her grandparents.  We could go to the mall, but we had to be very careful because Evansville had been experiencing an epidemic of vampires.  I realize now that the sight of 6-7 goth kids probably jump started the vampire rumor mill,  but at the time I kept looking over my shoulder in the food court because my mama didn’t raise no fool and I was not about to go down like that.  I don’t remember much about that trip, but I do have one memory that has been permanently embedded in my mind.  Since we were super cool kids and cappuccino felt like a very upperclassmen choice, we found our way to this little coffee house that probably played Steven Curtis Chapman or Michael W. Smith or maybe Amy Grant over the boom box.  As my friend Kara found her place in line, I wandered over to a framed drawing and my breath caught. It was a pen and ink drawing of Jesus with the woman caught in adultery from the Gospel of John.  There was no title that I can remember, but I knew immediately who she was.  Her face, the tension in her body, the tilt of her eyes betrayed the emotion she felt.  Her face spoke the universal language of the broken and I had lived just enough life to recognize the words. Her shame was palpable, her pain transferred into my body as I studied her.   The perspective of the artist allowed me to see her face but also, His face.  His eyes were closed, his shoulders soft.  His hands gripped her shoulders tightly but without force or fight.  His face was calm, determined, committed, sure.  He loved her, he offered liberation, restoration, freedom.  He kissed her forehead. But her face... Her eyes were wide open and stricken with fear.  Her years had taught her who she was and what she was worth.  The insults that had been hurled at her clearly lodged in her soul.  She was panicked, desperate, still looking for a place to hide.  She had heard them tell her who she was and what she deserved.  She was every girl, every woman who had lived on this broken earth.  The odds were stacked before she drew a breath.  She would hold up her half of the sky with a boot on her neck.  The ancient world was a dangerous place for women and girls.  The fall had its way. They were being quite Biblical, following the code of the day, the letter of the law, when they pulled her into the street and tried to end her life. The group of men who drug her into town and wanted to stone the life right out of her got more than they bargained for.  A few scratches in the sand and their eyes lowered, grips loosened, faces reddened.  Jesus turned the world upside down in an instant and nothing was the same.  The tormentors dropped their stones and the oldest led out.  Their plan to use the word of God against the son of God betrayed them.She could not see what I saw. She could not see that Jesus’ life and ministry would blow cannon ball holes in the sinful patriarchy that left her exposed to the abuse of strangers.  She did not know what I know, that every time we open our Bibles and read the red letters and find Jesus with a woman, he is speaking words of liberation, broken chains, power, justice, and freedom.   I have the benefit of transcripts of his life’s work at my fingertips to tell me exactly what he thinks of me and what he wants for me.  She didn’t.  All she had were the scratches in the sand and a pounding heart, fight or flight fully activated.   I think of her when I am face to face with a woman with a story to tell.  People tell me their stories.  I’m not sure why.  Many times the stories come from familiar women, but just as often, near or complete strangers unload their guilt and shame and fear with very little prompting.  When I type that out it sounds like a complaint, but I assure you nothing makes me feel more alive than being near people making sense of their pain and finding the path of the sacred in the midst of their mess.  Barbara Brown Taylor describes her call into ministry as a simple desire to be near the really real, and I think I know what she means.   Very often, when I listen to the stories of women, I see the face of the woman in the drawing.  Jesus came to make straight the crooked paths, but we are still spinning on the same planet and that old serpent’s tail still whips around, leaving real destruction in its wake.  One in four women report sexual assault, but my conversations with the women I have known tell me unreported abuse would press that number skyward.  Women are working hard and bringing home roughly seventy percent of the bacon their male counterparts can expect and the percentage of the pie for women of color is significantly lower than that.  Many churches and whole denominations make quick work of silencing women using a handful of often misapplied verses. (I can tell you from experience that you absorb a special kind of shame when your faith leaders and co-laborers tell you, explicitly or implicitly, that you don’t exactly fit in the box you’re supposed to according to our plain reading of Scripture and could you just pipe down, you’re scaring the children and causing the old ladies to clutch their pearls and making some bros feel kind of uncomfortable. I digress.) Women are keeping the earth supplied with a steady stream of fresh, new, beautiful life and barely recovering before returning to their jobs, both paid and unpaid.  Women and girls across the world are spending their days hauling water and taking up slack. I listen to women and I hear the stories of lack, of want, of never enough.   I go to a church where the leaders took a year to study the Scriptures on women in ministry. I think I held my breath the whole time. My pastor and friend has stood in front of our church and repented publicly and privately for the ways he held to the old ways too long. Healing is coming and making it’s way and I’m grateful to have been able to stick around and wait. But you know what? Twice now, he has had to stop me after communion and point to someone praying at the altar alone. I had seen the person and felt the tug of the Spirit and I froze. I am still hesitant to use my gifts, even though I know the path is clear and the way is made. I’ve internalized so much shame. Sometimes, I’m asked to deliver a short assurance of grace around the middle point of the service. It sets my soul on fire like no other thing and I always say yes. I pull from Scripture and life and experience and the Spirit but I can’t end my assurances with “This is the Word of the Lord” like most people at my little church do. My mouth won’t form the words. I have so much work to do in my own heart, identifying and dismantling the walls between us our sometimes troubling brother Paul tore down in Galations 3.Jesus came to set women free from the old ways and give them abundant life, yet the struggle lives on.  We are living squarely in the already not yet and we ask again thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Jesus, show us the way of your kingdom and your will for your children, and strengthen our arms as we hold the torch to light the path to wholeness for those crushed by the stones of disappointment, regret, shame, and fear. I will never know who drew that picture, but I know seeing it changed my life.  In it, I saw the good news in black and white. What the hard, cold world meant for harm, Jesus meant for good.Because of the trustworthy account in Scripture, we know that she didn’t stay in that fearful posture forever. Jesus drew her into conversation, “Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?” And she answered, “No one, master.” He treated her, perhaps for the first time, like a human being. He freed her to the abundant life with the power to go and sin no more. I am her and she is me.  That’s the kind of life I want, a life marked by transformative proximity to the One with authority to send the accuser running and to give me life and peace and purpose. I will train my eyes to look to the hills, knowing where my help comes from.  I will speak words of life and hope and healing and restoration and in that Holy work participate in the kingdom coming.  

Episode 3 - Jesus and Women

Weakness.  I hate the sound of it, the smell of it, the notion of it, more than anything I hate the feeling of it.  I hate needing people, help, love, affirmation. I don’t want to need anybody.  I don’t even want to want anybody.  I’ve lived years trying to fool myself into believing if I just tried hard enough, I could avoid weakness altogether and I would never know brokenness or pain. My last baby boy, Shepherd, was born at home.  I had several emotionally traumatic hospital births and I knew if I wanted a different experience, I would have to choose to do things differently for myself.  So, I did.  I called the midwife and put my head down and tried to just keep going, minute by minute, through my pregnancy.  I taught until I could hardly stand. Fear of the unknown could just about take my breath if I sat down before I was so tired I could fall asleep sitting up. I was afraid that if I tried to prepare myself with books, or DVDs, or mantras, or conversations, I would give up on myself before I gave myself a chance to have my baby the way I wanted.  So, I just didn’t prepare.  There were supplies on the required list that I literally never ordered because I just couldn’t face the fact that I was about to do this.  Myself.  I don’t go into labor on my own, I just don’t.  Not a week after my due dates, not ten days, not two weeks.  My body holds onto babies just like my heart, we just can’t let go of them.   Twelve days after my due date seemed as good a day as any, so my beloved red-haired midwife came over late in the afternoon to break the water that stood between my baby and the wide world.  Labor began, with it came my first experience with the full scope of the anticipation and pain and fear and internal fight that mothers have breathed and rocked through since the beginning of time.  I walked and prayed until I could no longer do either.  My hand-picked few took their cues from me and gave me space and quiet and stillness and dark.   I was desperate for relief from the pain but also afraid of the respite the water would offer.  What if I am reaching for help too soon?  What if I am weaker than everyone else, my body more broken, less capable?  What if I am using the warmth of the water to catch my breath before I have even entered the realm of what billions of women know of birthing babies?  What if the strength I need isn’t there when I need it?  What if I’m just not strong enough and He doesn’t answer my cry? I let go a little and stepped into the water. I got scared. I felt alone. Incapable. I finally cried out for my midwife Sheryl, realizing deep in the back closet of my mind that there was no way back now, only through.  Her voice cut through the voices in my head telling me I couldn’t and she told me I could.  And then she told me how, as only her experience attending 1,000 births could inform her.  It took a gift of impossible strength to get from the floor to the bed.  Minutes later, I heard my baby’s cry mingled with triumphant joy from the mothers in the room.  They knew there was a death and a resurrection happening in my spirit in those minutes, and they knew we were all here to birth more than a fresh newborn babe.   I was changed.  God met me on my way, and He changed me. I learned how weakness is transformed into strength in the company of wise women.  I learned that there isn’t anything particularly particular about me.  My body breaks and bends, rebels, and relents, and recovers.  In that moment, in that room, my crying out couldn’t have been deciphered from anyone else’s.   Mothers have always cried out like that.  Mothers who never got to hold their children, or never will again.  Women whose empty arms ache for their own babies to mother and to whom God has said not now, or not the way you thought.  Spiritual mothers, laboring in prayer and fasting over the broken and beautiful body of Christ on earth.  Raw, newborn mothers broken by our way of life, isolated, depressed, overwhelmed.  I have sat with mothers weeping over another mother’s child, far away and out of reach.  I have wept with foster mothers as they breathe and rock and weep through their own labor; working their way through inadequacy and old wounds, being born again into the cracked jars God fills to pour out Living Water for the thirsty. Women have a unique way of pointing straight into the heart of God with their lives as they live and move and suffer and breathe for the tender new life shooting up around them.  This mothering life, spiritual and physical, has been my path to the Holy time and again.  This life giving, from beginning to end, requires of us more than we have to give and points us to the source of life.  How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who brings good news, the good news of peace and salvation, the news that the God of Israel reigns!  Remember the feet of Jesus’ friend Mary, running to preach the Gospel of the risen Christ in joy.  Remember the mother Mary, preaching good news of mercy, justice and strength.  Open your mouth, O woman, and speak forth what He has done for you!  Beat back the flames of hell with your songs of praise. The suffering of women is a bit of a recurring theme in humanity, isn’t it? We have an enemy who knows too well the power of women who know God and the gifts he gives.  He hates to see mothers operating in freedom, with strength, dignity, and power.  He works through the systems of humanity to cut mothers and daughters off from clean water, education, agency, voice, and joy and bind them in the cords of poverty and violence.  He knows the life givers threaten his kingdom of death and so he attacks women strategically.   I have been in the room to see the enemy of women banished by the prayers of a mighty mother-warrior, praying the kingdom of darkness down to set another mother free.  In congregations where the voices of women are silenced or warned against or shamed into hiding, you’ll find women quietly making their way from doorstep to doorstep, bringing the Good News, the Great Joy, the healing of the whole world to each other.  They will never seek recognition for their secret priesthood, and they likely won’t receive it.  But the God of the universe is watching, supplying the power and authority these women walk in. I have seen women walking in freedom, joy, and quiet confidence; full of gentleness that earthly language can’t explain in a world that only understands the language of power and aggression.     It can be terribly tempting to shed the quiet and gentle Spirit we see modeled in our Savior in favor of a way that seems safer to women, who are so often used, hurt, left, and in danger.  When the chains of people pleasing, self-obsession, comparison, misogyny, brutal patriarchy, victimization, fear and doubt are broken, brand new women are raised up to carry love to a hurting and broken world in unique and beautiful ways. The fruit of the labor of women is all the beauty in the world.  And tonight, I remember her. Mary, the mother of God, knelt down in the straw bringing Light to the darkness.  When God could have spoken life into the world any way He chose, he chose this way.  The way of the woman, quiet and gentle, strong and courageous.  He was sufficient for her and she was sufficient for us. And the weary world rejoices, the angels sing, time stops, and we are never the same!  

Bonus Episode - On Women, In Light of Men Who Say "GO HOME"

I have this little church.A few months ago, we made some changes and made sacred room in our pulpit and in our leadership for the voices of women.  Some faithful people couldn’t make the shift and they left us for other places. It broke my heart a hundred times over because I love them so very much and miss them deeply.  Such is life. On we go, but never quite the same. And so my little church is a bit littler than it used to be, but at the same time, in God’s miraculous loaves-and-fish kind of way, it’s still bursting with stories and songs and babies and other good things, too. We take communion every week. This is an uncommon practice for a church like mine.We aren’t liturgical, not really.  We don’t use the Book of Common Prayer and we don’t follow the church calendar the way Anglicans and Episcopalians do. I secretly wish we did all those things because their steady, cyclical nature can be such a comfort to a fearful, wandering soul like mine, but I know who my people are and I’m not turning loose now.  I want to know them when I’m old and so I stay with them. We are all messed up, but we are with each other. It’s not perfect but I don’t have a better idea.At the end of the service every week, there are two people on each side of the modest pulpit.  They’re holding the bread and the wine and we stream toward them, a few at a time.   When it’s my turn, I wrap my hands around the hands that offer the meal to me. I plant both my feet and claim all the space and time I can.  I try to breathe deep and look right at her eyes while she speaks, trying to believe her words more than I often do and desperately hoping to be shifted by them again. “This is the body of Christ, broken for you.” I take my piece, no more and no less, always enough.“This is the blood of Christ, poured out for you.” I dip my bread in the cup and raise it to my lips, wishing I could circle round and have another go before the service ends and I have to face the world with its lack and hurt again.   I turn, savoring my portion, blinking back tears that always press in anyway. I walk past the people praying at the front, the ones who stand ready to receive and pray with anyone who pauses there.  I hardly ever make eye contact because I know if I do, I’ll be sucked in. And what will I say if I’m sucked into the beloved embrace? It’s too tender for me, so I don’t know. There’s too much to say, and I can’t say any of it.  That’s the truth. If I did make eye contact and find myself enveloped I think it might go this way. “The Kurds, brother! The Kurds are suffering and dying and it’s our fault.  The hospital’s been bombed!He shot her in her bedroom.  Right in her own house! Did you hear me? There are people who won’t accept that privilege exists, and that they have it.  There are people who are afraid of equality because of what they stand to lose. They won’t hear the truth and it’s hurting everyone.We are still separating families, still imprisoning people for profit.  It’s so big now I don’t know how we will ever dismantle it.I keep finding these seeds of racism everywhere I look, including in me.There’s another election coming and I am so afraid I don’t know what to do!  And people still tell me I’m too political and I’m worried they’re right.The people I love the most are hurting, suffering, struggling to bear up under the weight of their own brains that don’t work the way we wish they would, their marriages that are crumbling to dust, their children who are wandering, and the doubts and fears that plague them at night.And I can’t stop this guilty panic that slides into my brain as the moon rises each night.  My family is relatively safe, our school is well supplied, we have health insurance and a two-story house, and I don’t think I can live with the guilt of it all for much longer!  What do I do with the world when nothing is fair? What do I do with God when some of us are out here in the full sun and some of us are freezing? How do I live with my eyes and hands open and still hold onto some scrap of my mind in this world where so much is broken and sliding around?”I won’t say all of that, though.  I’ll blink back my tears and make my way back to my seat.  And it will be enough, because those people at the front don’t have the answers I want.  I know them and they’re already giving me what they have.Maybe we stand at the front of the church and offer the bread and the wine to each other each week because it’s still the best thing we have.  Maybe we do it because we know it’s really the only thing we have. Maybe I resist the urge to grab onto somebody and demand answers because I know the body and the blood are the answers to all the questions I won’t ask.  Maybe leaning into the questions at the altar would help. I don’t know. I wish I could tell you that I have a firm ethos, like I used to.  I wish I could tell you that I understand how human will intersects and co-creates with God.  I wish I could stop thinking about it altogether, actually. At least sometimes, I really do. I wish I could tell you that I always find the Bible a delightful read and that it answers my questions and soothes my soul every time I read it.  Of course, sometimes it does. But other times, it unsettles me, throws me off course, wears me out. And I know I’m not the only one.  I often return in my imagination to the day I found myself standing in my religion professor’s office,  a breath away from throwing in the church towel and calling the whole thing off. I remember that he didn’t try to offer me any logical arguments or long-winded reasons why faith in the God of the Bible, in Jesus, was something I could hold onto.  Instead, he asked me a simple, quiet question.“Have you experienced Jesus?”That was it.  I had, I knew I had. I had experienced a lot of confusion and doubt too, but I couldn’t claim I hadn’t experienced the risen Christ.  I don’t know how to explain the experience of Christ in black and white, but if you want to know what I mean, maybe you should ask me. I think a lot about what the Bible says that Jesus said to his followers at the very end about going to His Father and what we could expect in place of his living body among ours.   In The Message translation, Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as our Friend.  He assures us that our Friend will make everything plain to us, and remind us of the things that He said. It’s almost as if Jesus knew that we would be exactly who we are.Jesus knew things weren’t terribly plain.  Jesus knew this would all, at times, seem a little far-fetched.  He knew that we would need help to remember the way home.  He knew I would need my people, standing in the front, offering me the bread and the wine over and over again.I don’t often volunteer to be the one to stand at the front, receiving the people and offering the elements.  The body of Christ, broken for you. The blood of Christ, poured out for you.  I can hold steady for the first half dozen or so people.  And then they just keep coming, each dragging a load behind, or with weights tied to their shoulders. Some of them don’t make eye contact.  I don’t take it personally but I wonder what presses their eyes downward. I say the words and offer the bread. I have nothing else to offer. The body of Christ, broken for you. The blood of Christ, poured out for you. Pretty soon, my eyes can’t hold the tears back anymore and I start to choke on the words that ring truer each time I hear my own voice repeating them.  Maybe my Friend knew I’d need to say them, too, not just hear them said.The body of Christ, broken for you. The blood of Christ, poured out for you.There are mysteries. There are questions. There are arguments for and against a life of faith. There are as many camps as there are steeples and lots of people hold their nitpicking convictions more closely than their neighbors. I know I’m not right sometimes and I’m sure they’re not right sometimes, too. The only thing I know for sure some days is the simple experience of the risen Christ and the people, down at the front with the wine and the bread.And for a little while at least, it’s enough.

Episode 2 - Communion

Today, I'm sharing what I wrote on the blog this week while my family was on a trip to the beach. I'm calling it a trip and not a vacation because I have 4 kids. While I am eternally grateful to have had the opportunity to get away and make memories with my people, a week in a hotel with all of them is NOT a vacation. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

Episode 1 - The Ocean

Each week, I write a few words that bring the light into my corner of the world that has often seemed to be going dark. Tiny Podcast is a five to ten-minute weekly podcast I created for people who need words of hope and light and love, but who don't always have time to sit down and read. I'm glad you're here and I hope you'll subscribe and stick around.

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Tiny Podcast

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