Category: Faith

I BELIEVE, HELP!

water 3I cannot see the future. That’s what makes today

hard faith, not constructs, conjecture or speculation. This is faith

in the Present Personal God. And the unknown, unwritten, unlived days ahead,

and today

a (not so) Simple Practice.

Today I have my need, absurdly. My inability to hope

beyond a millisecond, my fear, my lack

of faith in a present and personal God.  For I cannot see

You, but bless me anyway Holy One.

Amidst my perplexities,

from my ambition,

out of blindness,

toward Belief. Today,

I cannot see; help me!

In the ordinary things of today, help

me to hold fast to You.  To see with the “eyes of the soul.” Dazzle

me and scare away the shades of gray.

Do I trust you? No. Do I long to? Deeply, reverently. Can I set aside today ME into

Divine Safe Keeping. For you, for understanding more of you.

A Holy Habit of trusting in the hidden, blinding, dazzling Light;

Even as I cannot believe, make me bright and beautiful.

I’m Already Drowning

SUN_SLIDES_LYR_MHH_10-11 (96)The noise of him rising wakes me, suddenly
aware of morning.  I must have slept, for I am now fully awake.
Before any awareness of the day
a familiar dread pounds inside, stomach lurching.
Life’s burdens stream in, pooling around as the bed floats.
A Swelling river of tears, and fear and heartache.  I’m already drowning.

He’s rushing to work because work put him to sleep, kept him dreaming
and woke him.

All of life, lately is spent reeling and the current
is upstream, I’m grasping
at some kind of Hope, any kind of goodness,
holding on to the bits of sweetness I can find, anywhere.
Rancorous contemplation engulfs the good I long for, for I’m no good
at holding on to hope,
in fact I’m drowning in grief; not yet awake I’m by now clutching the pillows
as the bed floats around me, surrounded by my dreams
and tears.

In a moment the dreams are prayers, my heart’s Beat and Breath joins
into Knowing.
The Holy One searches us, knowing everything so how
can I persistently go on alone?
In the Holy Book the words are written, all our days are Known.

Before she was inside my womb.  This I cannot comprehend

as I’m drowning.

Still, You Know and now I believe again.

Even one so lost, is not so lost to you.

[I Asked God for More] than Motherhood

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I woke up on Sunday full of lament. The depression that had been crushing me was now a throttling choke. I woke up straining. Strangled and gasping for air, for truth, for relief; I woke up.

I woke up on Sunday already giving up. Begging for it, the answer to the question depression always asks:  Why am I here?

All night long, relentlessly; a jangling chorus, a litany of failures, a litany of fears, a litany of shame. Making a list, my brain ordered them into meaningful classifications, one by one, a citation of what’s gone wrong.

Then, I went from listing to knee-deep in real water that came in while we were sleeping.  While he slept and I tossed about listing endlessly my disappointments. They were a song, the cacophony of my failures, singing and dancing in a winged frenzy above the bed.  Those songs have always been there for me, silent to him.

The water is rising around us and soon I forget my question, my list while living the longest day that I can remember. We vacuumed 600+ gallons out of the basement, while it kept coming.

That day, on a Sunday, I woke up, realizing the only one who declares me a failure is me. I am my own worst enemy. Only I am disappointed and angry with me and

I am angry at God.  I thought God and I had big plans.

A missionary kid, I watched my parents traverse each Continent of the world, going where others feared, doing what others wouldn’t, changing things, making good happen, and always leaving us to DO THINGS.  I assumed – I thought I would be a part of this in the end, do something big, significant. Eventually I would do something special.

I thought I was special, when I was doing, making, performing, achieving.  God and I, I thought we had plans.

I woke up on Sunday and realized, failure isn’t at all what I thought – and when life took a detour for me, into shame, regrets, sin, my mistakes, it all taught me and turned me into a new person.

Redeemed, New and Different, I woke up.

And knew, again. And the question changed.

What is success in life if we cannot be there for our family, to be nurturing, teaching, holding, comforting? What I rarely felt growing up, this is my offering now. Even though it isn’t within my control what my children choose to do with their lives, who or what they become, I woke up on a Sunday and realized.

I’m no big shot, except in my kid’s lives and there I am.  And I’ll struggle for this to be

Enough. And I know it’s not forever

Except it will last forever, for them.

adrenaline rush

adrenaline rush

awake these two nights,
washed over with adrenaline. the bad kind
that comes
at the wrong time. lurking, an enemy brandishing itself, harmful.

this energy, so important
to survival, fight my body is saying.
only it’s got it all wrong, just as I lay down.  just as I surrender.

dopamine and endorphins, in the middle of the night are a new low.
i’ve been running on this “drug” for months
my body, confused. i’ve been allowing the high of worry,

to keep me.
my friend who knows, knows and warns. wait for it
the fall.  you’re gonna, crash.  it’s coming.
instead my body has decided
to flood itself.

i’m too old for such nonsense. youth long gone,
life’s grabbed me by the shoulders and shook hard.  so hard my teeth hurt from banging against each other.

so tired late
at night, really in the morning’s dawn that i’ve begun hallucinating.

Be Still, and Know  … i hear.

angry, exhausted perpetually
i look in the mirror and see
caverns, under my eyes.  it’s the ultimate betrayal i’m thinking
youth’s gone and run away

and its replacement
exhaustion.  i am beginning to wonder
how we go on – the fall will come soon.  a crash
a nose dive,
a skinned knees, flat handed
face first
fall down.

then perhaps, then i’ll sleep
or then
admit.

i’m weak.
i’m tired.
i’m afraid.

i feel alone though i know that’s depression talking.

believing the lie,
i pull away.  i fear.  i
honestly don’t know up from down.

day from night,
life’s come to this
adrenalin rush.

The not quite believable Miracle: there is Power to Change

I have a big problem with trust.  It’s as if I’m expecting a colossal

smack down from Life.

The question I’m always asking myself is do I make it happen, with my fear and negativity? This existential question cannot be decided simply, not today.

I do know that I often withdraw from life.

I’m afraid of things, of humans. My long ago voyage into stay-at-home-mother-dom only worsened even determined this quality in me. I’m a hopeless introvert.  I feel like misfit in the world. I hate that I’m afraid all the time. (This is one of the reasons I chose FEARLESS as my word for the year.)

And here’s the funny rub, people like me.  People seem to generally want to be with me.  People find me interesting, worth listening to and engaging with, they even find inspiration in my art.

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Recently, my eighty-eight year old neighbor, confined now to a small 11′ x 11′ room in a retirement home called me.  She’s expecting a visit.  And I don’t mind, but I’ll drag my feet. And when I do call, and when I do finally go, it will be lovely and wonderful.

And I’ll wonder why I didn’t do it sooner.

Friends, acquaintances reach out and I’m scared.

I put on a strong face, as a mother you must. And I don’t really have any trouble keeping up with others since life is being forced into endless interactions, but I don’t like it. Until I’m in the middle and then I’m fine, I guess

Our children cannot know how fearful we really are.  They need our strength. So we are strong, when we feel weak.  It may not be fear for you, it may be something else but there is an aspect of parenting that is simply about white knuckling it through.

My son has asked me, endlessly it seems this week.  “Why am I so afraid to talk to others?” – In class, to teachers, to any adult figures, to grandma, to a stranger, even girls.  And I don’t know.

I don’t have answer. Did I somehow do this?  That’s the perennial question.

I hurt for him.  I do not want him to feel what I feel. I don’t want him to be like me, endlessly afraid to open his mouth out of perfectionism, fear of failure and the judgement and condescension of others.

How can you help an introverted child learn to find their voice?

When I started in the workplace as assistant to the director of missions, I came out of myself, in order to pick up the phone, make travel arrangements, set appointments, and interact with folk. Now some twenty years later, I’m still hopelessly introverted unless forced.  And I don’t know how to help my son.

If you had power to and could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? 

And would you really do it?

I’m shy.  I come across as aloof.  It’s because I’m a fearful person.  I’m expecting a hard slap from life – and if I’m being totally honest, kind of think the rug will be pulled out from beneath me, by God.  

Especially this last year, when many things in our lives have been hard, even horrible.  It is without doubt, one of most difficult painful years of our lives full of challenge and struggle.  I want to blame God.  I want to be mad

but what I know is that rather I need GRACE, daily grace, AMAZING GRACE.  In me, deep down,

Into my pores, and deep within, where my heart got broken as a little girl, such a long time ago.

Truth is, Jesus loves us,

me.  And gave his life. And Jesus

has the power to do miracles.  The woman in Luke 8:40-49, only and simply

touched Jesus cloak

and believed.  And she was

healed.

I need to touch Jesus’ cloak today.

I need to believe it’s possible to be healed.  I’ll always be an introvert, okay.  But I don’t want to live afraid, a perfectionist, aloof and proud.  This isn’t free.  This isn’t grace.

There’s a song sung at our wedding which has ministered to me for twenty years. It’s words so sweet.

Amazing Grace! (How sweet the sound.)
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
and grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believed!

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine,
but God, who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.

It is not simple.  It is not easy.  It isn’t magical.

It is about touching Jesus cloak and believing.

(This is a part of five minute Friday.)

{Life and Death in 25 Lines}

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His homework was to write a poem.
Tell us a childhood memory. He wrote,
The Week my Grandpa Died in 25 lines.
Over two sautéing onions, tears.  I’m choking on them and the meat and spices,
Mom, is this too hard?
Mom, do you need a hug?
Mom, I need to give you a hug he says coming around the stove. He is kind
like his grandpa, I want to say. A grandpa he’ll never know and I cannot be
the Memory Keeper,
but if not me, whom?

Taco casserole is easy.  I can do this dinner while the world’s crashing,
Spirits and hearts cracked open, still but beating
on and on.
This wasn’t life as I expected, messy and smashed
down like our fifty year old house, neglected
and falling down.  We’re patching souls, daily.
Kissing away tears.

A warm bath washes gone the youngest’s stinky boy smells and the heaviness of weeks and months of strain,
we’re rinsing off sorrow again.
How are you faring, I ask.  His shrug says more than words.  “It’s okay.”
He finishes quietly.
“Sometimes I want to yell, …”

Oh, how I want to yell and holler at God, What are you thinking?  If you’re thinking of us at all.
I’m waiting,
in this mixed-up, broken space
lost in time.
Wishing, sick dizzy from the spinning!
And knowing,
it won’t end. Knowing I must let go my fear, the idea that God
isn’t listening;
fearful that life is
emptiness, pain and endless sorrow.

Henri Nouwen says, we long to be occupied.
We fear our endless emptiness. YES.

The snow outside reflects a cold calm I don’t feel.
Inside I am holding, still.
My emptiness an offering
to the Holy Spaces of In Between
(belief and disbelief)
I do not understand.

He sits down hard by the sink, in the way kids they often do.  Asking
“Mom, do you believe in heaven?”
What he’s asking I cannot know – is there a space there outside of time and cosmos.
A space where we will see Grandpa again?

This, the place
of unknowing, is uncomfortable for me, for him.
It sits down hard between us,
the air thick and heavy with our mutual wondering.

We stop, just for a moment and look into each other’s eyes.
Comforted by the solidity of his teenage boy body, I take from him.
Another hug and wait.

Uncertainty,
pain,
fear,
all a part of the human condition. Not even this
can I keep from him but I long to teach him too.
About trust, surrender and continued openness

to the Unknown.

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{Apart and Away}

I’m worn-out; tired as I’ve never been before.

Weary in a

not sleepy frantic hungry and hysterically wild frightened,

nothing-is-working,

everything

is

falling

Apart and away.

Restless and abysmal

[unable to talk because some problems are not for public consumption.]

I lay arrested, in the midnight hours, whispering

Jesus, what are we going to do? 

Some problems are so profound, causing the scary-monster-in-the-closet

kind

of

fright

that you cannot

cry enough tears.

The universe isn’t large enough to contain these fears. I cannot pray

long and hard enough, for there are no words

for this kind of tired.

Comfort, Jesus

where’s the comfort?  No pithy assurances.

No words.

Except soul weary, bone aching, wretched

tired.

{It Was the Depression Talking}

“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul,

a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain…”

Hebrews 6:19
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it was the depression talking
whispering lies.
my ears so full of its waxy, clingy dishonesties.
I couldn’t hear Yahweh’s sweet voice.
once I stumble into the fog, abruptly
I lose what’s True;
as so often happens when the depression starts talking.

sitting here, eating spicy valentine hearts, little messages of love
I see it – so funny!
He’s waiting, speaking love to me.
I am so prone to wander,
prone to falling down, again
into my old pain, old lies, old old heavy grief.
then I am grateful suddenly for the moment
when I see.
it was the depression talking
to me.

I found this article, Befriending the Darkness extremely meaningful.

What If All Your Life You Believed A Lie? You Are Too Broken.

The morning air is all awash with angels …  – Richard Wilbur

2290843205_d92e123b69_oYou cannot unbreak a broken stick.

This morning, I awoke to a sense of life’s forfeiture.  I am broken.
I’ve lived half my life, if my mother is to be believed I’m only in my middle years, as if I am a broken stick; a lost cause [in my mind.]
Separated from love, undeserving and
Lost to hope, real joy and vigor.

Trudging along beside humanity
Caught in my heartache.
Living in the grays, all color is gone.
Broken, bent, useless; a searing mark of shame,

On me.
I believed the lie – I am too broken.

Yesterday I heard my father talking to me about reconciliation. Oh the irony!

Yes, our family is stuck, stuck broken open in pain, wrecked by sorrow and a narrative we’ve been unable to overcome.  Addictions, the palliative that settles us for a moment; achievements, work, knowledge, studies, alcohol, even religion our swan song.

God is saying that I need to sort things out, that I am not
A lost cause.

But many things have become an immense wall of fear and excuses.
And if I say this out loud, it sounds like blame.

Brick by brick, I have built a wall like Fort Knox around my heart.
A broken stick cannot be fixed, but a branch
Still attached to the vine can be pruned.

Holding on to that image of hope which honors god’s love for us and his forgiveness of us and his promise to make all things
NEW.

Fear is the thing that corrodes my spirit and damages everything good in me.  It is not from God.  God seems to be working on in me,

In my sleep, asking: Do I trust him enough to help us work toward reconciliation? Can I let go of the belief that our family was broken such a long time ago, so broken that it would never heal.

I’m trying to trust that God can heal anything

Even a broken stick

That is me.

God Help Me {Part One}

I can’t figure out why I’m here. And not that evangelical crap about the Good News.  I’ve got a news flash.  It isn’t good, my news. I can’t figure out why I’m here and I can’t figure out how to help myself.  I’m sorry I’m sad and even sorrier that Jesus isn’t answering my prayers.

(Skip to Part Two, where God answers, if you simply cannot bear all this honesty.)

The other day I faced a sorry fact, that  my writing, all that I write about living with the mental-illness of depression and addiction, is stigmatizing.

People don’t mean to, but they can’t help themselves.  They cannot help feeling pity.  Tough break, they’re thinking.  Poor girl, she is a mess.  And they’d deny it to my face, but I am certain they must wonder about the depth of my faith;

I know I do,

Surely if it were deeper, then God help her, God,

would help her? Either way, I’m hurting.

I feel alone. And not because folks don’t care, so many do, care.  But because I have such a short memory.

I forget, when I sink here, mired down, coiled up into this misery, into this bleakness, then. I forget the Truth.

The Truth fades, and in my shadows, in the slum of my core I am filled with shame.   I’m ashamed for being a drunk even if I’m almost five years sober. Of course I am, no matter how often I speak of it. I simply speak of it to stay sober, group accountability of sorts.  I’m ashamed for walking away from an interesting ministry and career, even though I was at a spiritual standstill, I was unbelieving.  And here’s the vilest, most reprehensible, horrid part. I’m ashamed of my half-lived life.

And I’m most ashamed that I have written about all of it.

Glued to my bed, unable to move from the weight of it all, I imagine deleting my cyber self.  Just make disappear, all those places where I tell the hideous truth about myself. 

Keep it Good News. Keep it light. Keep it simple. Keep it clear that everyone is okay.  Everything is alright.  Shape and mold a self that is void of issue, trouble or pain.

Pretend.

I used to believe that I am the one Jesus loves but once I sank here

that no longer matters.  That is no longer real.

Where is Jesus?  How can he help?  And the Jesus community, the “Jesus followers” so busy being and doing, making and completing, they don’t see

Jesus isn’t answering my prayers.

Because here’s the Truth.  Here’s the Good News.  “Jesus” is the people.  And they are occupied.

Even as I write those words of anger and resentment I know I’m the one who’s broken.  I’m the one who’s lived an empty voided life vacated a long time ago.  Since then, not sure when it happened exactly, it was a slow trip down.

I’m a weak copy of the sorrow and heartache of my father and of my mum.   I never learned to make my own way.  The question remains, am I too broken?  Are the secrets ‘

now told, too damning?  Is the stigma tattooed on me forever – am I

good news, gone bad?

Part Two: I Asked God for Help (This is much more hopeful, I promise. He answered)

I Asked God for Help {Part Two}

477900781_e07c8a69cc_oI asked God to help.

That is the key, assent;
Letting down.

Holding out and open, my hands. Release.

When everything hurts, when chaos has taken over and I cannot even imagine

Solutions,
That is the key

Letting down, holding out.

When fear of outcomes prevails
I asked God for help,

I ask.
Ask again,

God help us, all.

The answer is in the act of asking.

Parents want, even expect beauty and joy.  As time goes on life becomes
Wrecked
And you face over and over your lack.
Life is sacred, all of it.
The beauty and pain.
The bitter and sweet.
I envy those who don’t seem to suffer, who don’t know this sorrow and sting.

Then, I am drawn in

To Jesus
Who came for
Suffering.

Life is hard.
Life is holy.

I ask God to help.

He is the answer.

Here I am, tethered to soil and grief.
Longing for the eternal, knowing
Holy living isn’t the absence of pain.
It is acknowledging
The pain

With eyes for the kingdom of God.

I asked God for help

For joy.

Here and now

Amongst the living.

This offering up of myself,
This trusting with the hearts and minds and souls of my children,
This becoming someone Good.
This is the answer.

This dark, cold time of year makes me angry.  I have the hardest time believing
In spring.  New life,
Bulbs and buds

The Coming

The forward thrust, this is a Holy Hope.

I asked God for help

And he reminded me

Spring always comes.

I asked God for help

And he promised me this Ache
Doesn’t equal doubt;

Wrestling with him in the darkness of depression
Doesn’t equal sin.

Problems don’t equate punishment.

I asked God for help.
I kept asking.
I shouted, I screamed.
I heralded God with curses,
With my pain and he held me.

WINGS, did you know he has enormous feathered wings and they surrounded me,
As they enfold
They are mighty and comforting.

I asked God for help.

(On Being Human — A Prayerful Poem)

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We will go soon, and I’m afraid.

I laid awake last night, wondering. 

And in the meantime, since.

I thought and thought.  My brain hurt for thinking so hard. When does rationality belay trust in God? Our souls churn, the crushing

Weight of heart ache. We are sore from it.  Sleep won’t come

And it’s 3:30 in the morning.

Then you must pause.

As I waited I said to the Holy One, “So. I’m here now.

This.
It’s just you and me.  What is your plan?”

And now

We will go,

Soon.

Into the future

Yet untold, unwritten, unknown

Looming.
I’m afraid.  I’m undone, weary.

And yet I gave it to God. And my sweaty grasping hands and my heavy heart are open and free.

Still,
There is fear in the uncertainty as I long for assurances

That haven’t yet come nor will they

Perhaps ever.  For that’s the way of it,

Being human.