Category: 2013

Reading Hebrews: Study Jesus, Grow Up & Run

I read the book of Hebrews through this morning in THE MESSAGE, a translation by the legendary and wise, brilliant pastor and author Eugene Peterson.  All these thoughts come directly from that reading.  When I used Peterson’s words, I tried to give “credit” but this is completely my interpretation of his translation.  Don’t blame him for my ignorance or lack of understanding.  This is written to myself but you can listen in. 

The book of Hebrews likens life to a race.  I’m not that competent at running.  Last summer, I started running trying the Couch Potato to 5k program.  At first I barely stumbled around the block, untrained and unprepared. But it didn’t take long before I was running three miles. Today, after static winter, I’d have to start all over again. I would have to start from the beginning and mature into a runner, again.

Like those listed in the book of Hebrews, our faith Story, should point people toward their true home. We can please God through our Story by believing that God exists and that he cares enough to respond when we cry out to him.

“Be confident that you are presentable inside and out.”

Even with wickedness in our back story, in the book of Hebrews we learn that in the final review this is the point—that we are unworthy and that through the actions of Jesus, we become presentable again.

How are we to live now, today?

The Message translates that we are to “make our way as best we can on the cruel edges of the world.”  That’s dramatic, but I can relate.  Life has felt more than a little cruel of late.

Hebrews holds a roster of pioneers of faith, people like my father, imperfect – whose lives were unfinished and incomplete when they died, even if they were exemplary; or whether they tripped up over and over, even if they had to learn how to run many times throughout their lives. They are all at the last finish line, shouting and cheering us on.

Hebrews says their lives combined with ours becomes The Story—a completed whole.

So, even when you feel inadequate, knowing that you’re broken, feeling you’re too lame to run, you are commanded TO RUN!

But how are we to carry out this impossible feat? 

Key your eyes on Jesus. Know Jesus. Study Jesus.

When you feel most down trodden and unable to run, go back to the basics to who he was and is, how he behaved, how he treated people, how he fashioned his time and priorities and days (and nights). Study him.

And, if you begin to feel life is unfair, that yours in particular is full of suffering and pain. Consider these things to be ways for God to love you.  We are disciplined and corrected by love.

This is growing up spiritually.

Know that your pain is God’s training ground!  Life isn’t hard because you’re bad, or undeserving of good things, or even unrepentant.  No, life hurts because God the father LOVES YOU!  It’s the University of Spiritual Development.

And so, stop resisting. Stop complaining. Wipe your tears. Wake up to God’s love!  These hard moments, this unimaginable pain in your life or those you love, is making you not breaking.

Hebrews is a heavenly warning.  “God himself is fire!” He’s burning, aware of…our immaturity, our gracelessness, our negativity, our tearing one another down.

He’s looking at you and me – challenging us to care for one another.

It is simple things.

  • “Be ready with a meal or a bed when needed.  Why some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it.
  • Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them.
  • Look on victims of abuse as if what happened to them happened to you.
  • Guard your marriage, your relationships.
  • Don’t be obsessed with getting material things.
  • Watch how your pastors live and let their lives instruct you.
  • Share what you have with others.  Worship God with your generosity and love.
  • And pray that God, who put all this together, who makes all things whole, who gave us Jesus, may he train you, put you together—providing you with everything you need—in Jesus.”

Sometimes, truth is so simple that we ignore it thinking that can’t be all.  That can’t be it.  It’s not spiritual enough.  It’s not complicated enough.

But the book of Hebrews makes it pretty clear.  We are to love one another in the daily race of life, look to Jesus as our example for how to live, trust him, be trained by him … Grow up.

And run.

MHH

An Ode To Joy: When Chasing Significance, Ministry, Motherhood, & Alcohol Isn’t Enough

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My daughter thinks she Knows My Dreams, she pushed hard recently trying to get me to admit them. Telling me “Go to seminary and be a pastor that writes, mom. That’s what you want. Just do it.” It’s so easy for her to say, I think to myself, with my incessant dissatisfaction and oh so many fears.

I think to myself: I’m stuck. I’m not worthy. I’ll never Be.

First came sin.

I mean we’re all sinners for sure, but the home I grew up in, I never met Jesus. I never knew Grace.

I didn’t know Jesus who is the Lord of the Universe and Hope for the world, that my Dad was always talking about.  I couldn’t believe, not for decades, that I was loved and that if I were the only Blessed Sinner on Planet Earth, Jesus would have died that grizzly death, for me. No Way.

Work Harder.

I have lived day by day, believing that if I could just be A Better Person.  If I accomplished that much more than other people, worked harder, worked longer, worked better, then, I’d be okay. And so for years that’s what I did. I worked and worked and worked, and I lived a lie.

I was never okay. I was always terrified.

I was a mess inside, deep down where you cannot admit working at a Christian organization that you’re not sure that you ever believed.

Motherhood.

So I quit all that, thinking Being a Mother is noble (enough) and even a very good thing to do.  I mean, who doesn’t find meaning in motherhood?

Never mind that I just wasn’t ready to be at home.

Too Broken Up Inside, Not Even Knowing Jesus and With a Hole in my Heart, I quit work in ministry for all the wrong reasons.

Then came Despair on a Colossal Level.

Was I ever unprepared for the depth of my anguish. For the loss of meaning without Work. The hole in my soul was frantic with fear, day after day, still.

I thought to myself I must miss My Important Work!  All those years of Chasing Significance and Feeling Important, all that had made life meaningful in the past was gone.

Stripped Naked, the rug pulled out from under me, I fell hard; I fell flat.

Major Depression.

Depression hit just as I was starting to meet the Jesus Everyone Knew and Believed in. We were now attending a lovely church that ministered to my Broken-down Heart.   Just as I began to learn and study scripture for myself.  Just as I was learning that no matter what things I did or didn’t do with my life, I was loved and okay.  Just as a little of that truth sank in,

I slid down into the darkest pit of misery and hopelessness and despair. A place So dark, so bleak, so heavy that I was surprised by this new level of unhappiness.  I never knew that people could feel that lost. (I wrote about that in Not Alone: Stories of Living with Depression.)

Broken by a life that was bereft of meaning, tired beyond comprehension with three babies in diapers, bored by being at home, dissatisfied with my contribution to the world, rejecting Grace still though I had begun to understand it intellectually, then came drink.  It was a respite in the beginning, an oasis.

Alcoholism.

As the years went by what had been a brief escape, a place to go when all else seemed

Worthless, Hopeless and Endless,

I drank.  And drank. And five years passed, and I was

Work-less, Meaningless, and soon a Fallen Down Drunk. I was addicted.  And working through the Depression and All Of The Above, I finally heard the

Sweet

Whisper

of the Spirit.  By this time I knew a bit more, I believed in the Grace of Jesus and God broke in and confronted my

Cycling Toilet of Shame, the hole in my heart leaking pain all over the floor, and

my F E A R.

An Ode to Joy.

A decade has passed and I’ve been sober almost five years.  I’m still

a colossal addict even sober, who wakes up every day on the verge of an existential crisis.  Deep, DEEP within, I crave significance. I crave making a meaningful contribution to the world. I long for Joy, real Joy.

Even now, listening to the mystical, providential, sweeping Spirit of God who Speaks and Holds me every day and quiets my frantic heart, that says:

{Just Be. And wait and Trust me.}

The surrender daily is bittersweet. Because I still don’t know What I’m Doing with my LIFE.  This poverty of spirit within me breaks my heart; I feel I betray Jesus in every moment that I’m

fearful, restless, dissatisfied, and confused.

Because unlike what my daughter believes, I don’t know what I am to DO, more than

Just Be. And so, I wait.  And in the waiting, I am transformed.

Fear’s Come, Knocking

36-DSC_0013I rise early
As pain wakes me, it is impatient to begin.
It’s burning in my leg. I’m despondent, knowing

Fear’s come, knocking
Licking up my tears, FEAR holds me tight,
Comforts,

As I sit with her.  I know FEAR
Like an old friend.
I’ve never known much else, than this devilish companion.

My heart
Aches, as I attempt just for a moment to fight FEAR
With Gratitude.

Drum, drum, drum, like the pain in my leg she’s persistent.
I have excuses.
Family chaos, family pain. My chaos, my pain.

Only I know, again and again and again how ruthless she is,
Relentless, she’s brilliant, she’s all knowing
FEAR’s come knocking and I have welcomed her in.

I listen and I believe
I relent, because
I trust her.

She whispers chaos into my soul, “I am nothing. What if the only thing
I was ever supposed to do was be a mother.
[To comfort, to believe in, to love, to help

Those small souls (my children)
To help them find Life without Fear.
What if, 

There’s nothing else to ask for,
Nothing for me?”
Mothering should be enough FEAR proclaims.

Stop dabbling, FEAR taunts. You’re nothing special.
Let go.
Just be,

A mother.
Seeing Images, collecting Words, Thinking – all meaningless.
You are nobody

Special.
FEAR soars now, for this
Believing gives her strength and power.

She swirls and floats around me
Delighted,
Knowing

For today,
FEAR’s won.
For today, I quit struggling.

FEAR always comes knocking
And today
I made her welcome.

FEAR holds on to me – Knowing I’ll never be
Without her, this is her domain
My heart.

FEAR
Owns
me.

I traded my dreams
For a moment of relief from the panic.
She knows the grooves

Worn in my soul – she made them.
Swiftly
Filling me like wet concrete poured, I begin

To harden.
FEAR swells, it hurts as she grows and strengthens
Within.

My FEAR
I hope she plans to let me die eventually.
As I let go of hope,

Abandoned dreams collect around me
I am heavy, thick with her.
I watch myself drop deeper and deeper

Into the waters dark with despair.
What if I was never meant
to do anything “important”?

What if the words and images got trapped inside
me, cemented forever?
Surely then FEAR

Would relent, releasing me
She’d fly away from me forever and I’d finally know
Joy. Instead,

We play this slow game together,
An unhurried cruelty,
This daily swim,

Will I finally
Capitulate?
Then I realize FEAR, doesn’t want

me
To relent.
Where’s the fun

In my total surrender?  It is the game
She’s here for
This

Battle,
I call my LIFE,
Cemented in FEAR.

Life is not Pass or Fail: A Mother’s Day Remembrance

020-20120504_0185I have always seen “weakness” as a defect and here on this blog I say a lot about what I consider to be my own weaknesses – the narrative playing in my head and here on these pages for years has been a fear that I am too broken and weak to be useful at all.

This story starts with what has been and where I came from.

My mother has suffered most of her life.  I know this intellectually and because as her children we hurt alongside her in my father’s home.

For most of my life I thought she was weak to stay with him.  I resented her sticking in there with him.  Looking back, I hated the way she propped him up, when his fragile ego quaked and he wanted to quit this or that ministry, or when he felt betrayed by someone, or was sure that so and so was out to get him or them. She was the strong woman behind the ministry “leader.”  Only back then, she didn’t look strong to me.

After being angry at her for most of my life (and receiving a lot of therapy) I now see that she was strong all those years, and is, today.  I can see how much she loved my father and was loyal and faithful and good to him.  I see that she thought that she was helping us all by propping up the ego maniacal and abusive man that was my father sometimes.

But you see it wasn’t that simple.  He was a beloved man who did many incredibly good and important things.  He served well and long, and loyally. He loved his family. He sincerely wanted to please God.  He loved his few close friends deeply. I can see this looking back, even though he came home and took out his internal demons on a fragile and devoted woman, his wife and my mom and on his daughters. 

Apparently, he was only physically abusive to Mother once.  So the restraint he showed to never hit my mother again was … commendable?   And yet she lived with that intimidation and threat for forty-five years, knowing what he was capable of doing she was faithful to him.

Today a woman would have packed her bag the night that, in a fit of rage, he put her head through a wall.  Here’s the thing. Once you do something like that your household is always terrified, no matter how you promise, regret, or apologize.

And he did often, after a fit of raging, make promises and express sorrowful regret.  We experienced his rages.  Things “the public” never knew.  Things you wouldn’t quite believe possible from a man who could also be tender and gentle, who so often eloquently expressed his faith and devotion to God.  Perhaps she should have left him.  I used to think so.  And I would have, I frequently thought to myself in my twenties and thirties as I was learning about feminism and independence.   Though I never did choose to leave him and I even went to work for him for nearly a decade.

She stayed and so did we.

It was complex and codependent.  How he longed to be perfected by God but in his lifetime this never happened.  This skewed my view of men, of fathers, and especially of a Father God, for a long time.

But this is about my mother, who was loyal and strong; yes strong even though all my life I looked at her and thought of her as weak.

What kind of strength is required to endure the unyielding shouting and frequent berating over years,

and years,

and years?

Her depression was not obvious to me then but now, of course, palpable and understandable.  Frequently in poor health, she stayed in bed and that became her place of refuge from the strain and stress of our home.  She internalized his anger and used her illnesses to escape.   She had very few if any personal friends.  Abused women are often very isolated. And, she withdrew from her children emotionally. We got very little physical comfort growing up, though I’m sure there was much she wanted to say and do. She just didn’t.

Or couldn’t.

She’s apologetic now, at seventy-five and expresses openly her love, physically and emotionally, and her regrets which are many. Now that he’s dead, she has chosen to make her life incredibly simple.  She likes her condo, and her health remedies, and baseball or basketball on the television. She plays memory games on her hand-held game.

She’s chosen this unassuming, even guileless life.  This makes sense to me considering that my father dragged her all over the world for most of their married life; as it turns out most of the moves we made (two or three dozen) she didn’t even want to make.  Today her life consists of getting a message or her nails done.  She does energy work.  Much of it I don’t understand completely, but I respect the obvious need for self-care and lack of relational complexity in her life, still.

I’m grateful that she is quick check in on me, if she thinks I’m disappointed or angry with her.   I’m glad that she’s finally content with her life, set up just the way she likes it.  And I respect her for these choices, even if I wouldn’t choose them.   She’s seventy-five and is finishing life in a way she seems to like – justifiably simple and safe.

This Mother’s Day I honor my mother for surviving. I honor her for her quiet internal strength.

I honor her for her loyalty and commitment, even when I didn’t understand it.

As children we watch our parents and want them to be our idea of perfect.  Each time they supposedly fail we have a choice, to be disappointed or to accept knowingly that life is made up of hundreds of these choices.

Life isn’t pass or fail. 

Life is to be examined carefully and closely, to be lived openly and yet with great care for the people in it.

You never know why someone chooses a certain path. 

And in the end, you can only live your own life, embracing your apparent weaknesses as well as strengths, knowing that each one makes you who you are today.

Life is fragile. Love is unimaginably complicated. Parenting is by example but no one is perfected in their lifetime. 

I think life’s purpose is found in how we take the journey, in the small and seemingly innocuous choices that become important along the way.

I honor my mother this Mother’s Day for being both strong and weak – for being human.

MHH

Other Posts about my parents:

Remembering Daddy, Ten Thousand Tears, A Message From my Dead Father, Forgiving is a Miracle, My Father is Dead, When Did you First Believe God is Male, A Good Day Is, Watching My Father Die, Lessons From a Monastery, On Parenting Deeply & Well, On Putting the Dark & the Light Together, Strongest in the Broken Places, Who Needs a Heart When a Heart Can Be Broken?, Parenting by Free Fall, What Kind of  A Mother, A New Way to Be Human, Forgiveness: Expect Miracles, A World Of Possibilities, My Mother.

Stop Being Afraid: A letter to Us All

This will be short,
a letter
to the Artist inside us all
but especially to me,
and the Artist that I’ve been afraid to become.
I’ve been thinking.

I’m electrified
with the current state of affairs, I know
how lucky I am
to have space even a few hours every day to make art.
I’ve decided,  I know
that I want write, but I’ve been sick to my stomach,
afraid.  I know
that I want
to express my soul with images
but I’ve been afraid.

I have assumed
that my words,

my heart, my way of seeing isn’t good
(enough);
isn’t trained,
isn’t schooled.
Doesn’t “know.”

Whatever that means, really, what it comes down to ya’ll is simple
fear of failure,
fear of measuring against others,
fear of being different, and not in a good way, just
so afraid.

I’m going to start
dreaming. It is time to start
thinking
for myself, listening
to my own
muse, casting
aside fear for something better.
I’m going to revel in my own buzz.

But who’s the critic now? Creepy voices
in my head that say, most people aren’t even listening,
and to that I say, perhaps not
yet, and yup that’s

so okay,

for now.  I’m gonna
Just do it.
Stop being afraid

and Jump!

Dancing with the Holy: On Being Broken, Spiritually Mended and Called

Dancing with the Holy

It was holy—it was so intimate, so exquisite and precious, that to put it down in words here for you will diminish it immediately. That is the nature of being Spiritually Mended.

There I was, clinging. I came with a cavernous pain, my need was huge.

I came saying to myself I’m broken into pieces. I’m useless. 

But isn’t that the way we must always come to Him, open?

I’ve been hurting. Life’s been bitter and difficult for a long, long time.  Most recently I thought, I won’t survive this.  But here’s the beauty of what I learned: We are all Broken and the Holy One offers healing.

This weekend was Pulse, a conference for Artists in the Church.  I barely showed up, but there I was breathless and desperate. I sat. I worshiped. I walked amongst other artists and creatives. I sensed the Spirit of God who is always with us, mystically and profoundly, but at times we allow the chaos and rush and performance and pain of life to intervene.  I did.  I had.

I thought this weekend might be intellectually stimulating. In my pride and arrogance, and no small amount of insecurity, I slipped into critique mode where others always come up lacking. Reflexively I began to evaluate and not admit that I was there to receive.

God saw my haughty heart.
God said bring me your broken heart.

And there it was, in tension.

I think I’m too good for this.
I think I’m not good enough.

Both, And. 

Strangely that is the dichotomy of being Spiritual Creatives.

We have to accept our humanity but so many days it is our very humanity that gets in the way of growing spiritually and being able to celebrate – being able to absorb, to revel, to dance and sing with others who are different from us, perhaps even better than us, at least more accomplished and successful and happy.

It is there, in our doubt and weakness, that we must face our brokenness, humbly. And receive from and celebrate others.  And most importantly accept that God has gifted us all in some unique, distinctive way.

I sat, knowing all this and facing that I’ve allowed my broken heart to keep me from Believing, from Creating, from Joy, from Hope. To receive A Holy Call takes brave heart.  We know our brokenness, we’re all too aware of our ugly hearts. 

God was saying to me—I want to use the way I’ve made you, I want your Story.  It has a purpose.

Say What?

I was imprisoned; the bars surrounding me were of my making.  I had built a cage and painted a bold sign on it: DISQUALIFIED. I believed it too.  I came convinced that my brokenness disqualified me from making anything good, from being useful, from my life holding a Holy Purpose.

Life’s psychotic touch had sucked the breath out of me; it felt as if I might drop dead in a moment from the strain of life’s challenges. I was living a lamentation, I was walking dead with Job, and I was crying and desperate on my knees confessing with David.

I came, fraught and anxious, suspicious, daring God to speak.

But I came.  And that’s really all he asked.  Come to me.  I came, doubting.  Worried that if I surrendered there, admitted my weakness, I was already disqualified to create and I’d get a double crushing from God.  How twisted, fearful, and uncertain I was.

And He called me: Beloved. Chosen. Blessed.  

Like Mary when she learned that she was to be mother of Jesus, as she was being told by the angel that this was her destiny — doubt, disbelief, and dismay all ran through her. And yet she did not question it or seek clarification.  She boldly said, “Yes. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said will be accomplished.”  She believed.

I’m full of doubt, disbelief and dismay. I keep thinking I’m not good enough, I’m too broken. I am certain I of all people am shattered into so many pieces that not even God can glue them, paint them, write them, duct tape them back into something useful,and in that,

I am wrong.

Jesus called to me: Beloved Sister, I love you.

I thought all my pain had made me self-centered in a gross distasteful way, “curved inward on myself” as Tim Keller calls it, “creating a dissatisfaction, irritability, an envy and brooding, a resentment toward others” whose lives aren’t as painful and difficult as mine.

I resented those whose spiritual walk seemed dreamy, whose day-to-day was so much less complex than mine.  Who seem to create so easily, have less troubles, and live full of joy – I disliked them all!

But I heard Him. He called to me, the Holy One breathed in me an awareness this weekend.

  • Broken doesn’t disqualify. 
  • Honesty and transparency are not shameful when you are living on the way to healing. When there is Grace.
  • God’s work is Restoration; he’s in the work of renewing us.
  • We are made in the image of God for a purpose, to live, to worship, to create beautiful art!

But, all for His Glory not our own.

“Whoever wants to save her life shall lose it, but whoever loses her life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

This is what I see now. We’re all wounded. Some of us admit it.  

In disclosing my story, there is a cost and risk.  Living and creating on the precipice of risk and possibility, that’s petrifying.

But it can also make you gentle and empathetic. It will help you SEE others differently; both their pain and their glorious gifts and you’ll want to dance with them! I don’t naturally dance, literally or euphemistically, so this is a holy uncomfortable realization.

God made me with an inclination to be vulnerable and with a melancholy that aches within me. Many days I resist admitting how much the pain sits on me heavy, thinking it makes me look weak, less than holy, and not good enough to be a spiritual leader.

I’m learning: Confessing our anxious humanity, fraught with our need, perhaps even accepting our brokenness, this living on the edge is accepting the way God put me together.  Have you accepted the way God put you together?

And this is accepting a Holy Call.

She named me—Story Teller.  She didn’t know me or my story but she said it’s important to tell our stories.  To the audience of many, she said our Stories Matter.  As we learn to tell our Stories of Suffering, they become an Offering.  As we set aside fear, we can accept the gifts God has given us.  He didn’t make a mistake.  And this opens a Doorway to a different life.

This song says it all.

Joyful, joyful we adore thee.

God of Glory Lord of Love.

Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee,

Hail the as the sun above.

Melt the clouds of sin, sin and sadness

Drive the dark of doubt away, Drive it away

Giver of immortal gladness

Fill us Fill us with the light of day Light of day!

As Artists we live on the Edge of the Precipice and we have a Choice.  We live between the worlds of What I Am and What is Possible with God.

Because of the Hope we have in Christ, we can lay our inadequacies and fear, our sin, our broken duct taped hearts, whatever it is, we can lay it all down at Jesus feet.

We can accept that we are broken.
We must accept that we are healed, we are useful, our life has a Holy Purpose.

Both. And.

And then, we must listen to Him, with our intelligence and fierce expectation, with our minds and hearts.  This discipline of listening (John 10:3-4) is as important as our confession.

Creatives are you listening? 

How is God shaping your soul?  How did he make you, both the strong and the weak parts?  He wants both. What is he saying to you in your broken places and how is he mending you? That’s your story.  That’s your Purpose and Holy Calling. It is through our Stories that God will renew the world, in the coming together of Us and Him.

The visions are intoxicating and limitless, filling the world with the Light of his Gladness. Frederick Buechner’s challenge is to find “the voice of our own Gladness.”  That’s where we find our Call.

I woke up today, still Broken.  I’ll face this day with my Fears hanging heavy, like most days.  The difference is, today I’m refreshed and relieved to start again.  Mercifully, I’ve found some Gladness.  I’m filled with a little bit of light; the rays are shining through the shuttered places in my heart.  In sharing this I hope, just for a moment that you see it too, as you dance with the Holy that you’ll find your gladness too.

One Day: On Suicide, On Melancholy, On Living … On

359563392_8922d86823_oIt is a silent crucible
brimming with ache,

mostly inside.

If you haven’t experienced true melancholia
be glad. And it’s okay to be glad
for some who have gone through cancer and depression say they’d take cancer over the adversary of depression
which is really astounding.

It is difficult to explain and the only reason I keep trying is that

I want the world to be a more compassionate place for all.  You see,

Some people
kill themselves.  Some people cut or hurt
themselves.
And some shrivel up
like the moldy apple core I found under the bed, sticky

and covered in lint and decay.  But many people,

most

do

the hardest thing of all. They carry on, and
life
becomes a steep climb up a high altitude mountain.

I read, I pray, I try to understand

It. I try to understand myself.

I write.  And no matter how hard I work, and I do

work, very, very hard

I am still

a person who carries melancholia on my back.  I cannot shake it.  And if you’re a longtime reader you know,
I’ve tried.  Oh,

how I’ve tried.
This is something I carry, like Jacob’s limp after wrestling with God. And I can only hope

It sits well in me,

and can be redemptive for others,

One Day.

MHH

P.S. This, by Christine A. Scheller, is one of the most empathetic articles I’ve ever read on the topic of Depression and Melancholy   I felt understood.  I felt described.  I felt less alone.

Living a Life Worthy of Writing. It’s Complicated

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It is Virginia Woolf who is credited with the notion that for most of history anonymous was a woman. I thought of that yesterday when a friend (who is more like a mentor) was intently praising me on my writing and expressed that I should continue. Then she said, “Perhaps you should write under a pseudonym.” 

That statement made me wonder. I think she felt that without my name or life connected, that I could write my story even more vulnerably— bravely, truthfully.  She thinks

My Story is one that many people Feel, Live, Carry.

One of the many things I like about being with her, and at the same time frustrates me, is that I often go away from conversations without Answers—pondering hard things, wondering, asking myself questions, many questions.

She’s so Open and Free—with her time, ideas, insights, her life, that it compels me and draws me in to the freedom in which she lives life.

I know that I don’t live with that sort of freedom—not yet. I live with fear of reprisal, with sheer guilt over my Life’s Narrative so far.

I live with the Fear Beast.  I live with the Guilt Monster. 

Yesterday, I read from Richard Rohr that the phrase “Do not be afraid” is present in the Bible up to 365 times.  It’s the most common one liner in the Bible.  A command of sorts, DO NOT BE AFRAID.  The imperative when the angel of the Lord told Mary, who was selected to be the mother of Jesus, Do not be afraid.

I breathe deeply, knowing. I can certainly get stuck

in the life I’ve lived so far feeling like it’s impossible to redeem it.  Stuck in Fear.  Stuck in the Shame Story, feeling nothing but Regret. For it’s a story of Redemption (for sure) which means mistakes, sin and regrets.  But that’s not the point really, My Regret.

In Being Human and facing our humanity we aren’t disqualified from the Story of God, but rather

right in the middle of God’s Grace.  I want to learn to trust Jesus’ powerful presence in My Story and believe that somehow all this serves a Greater Purpose.

I have long believed that if I could sort out how to write it down, the poems and prayers of lament in my story, then it would be Redeemed through the Telling. If I write it down. And before then, or even while that’s progressing, I want

TO BE the person Redeemed, Wholly Forgiven, compelled by Grace, driven down on my knees perpetually,

for I want to live a life worth

writing.

A Bad Poem About My Sobriety

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SOBER.

Antonyms: alcoholic, drinker, drunk, lush, souse, wino

I’m Sober today. But I’m clutching at it. And not contentedly. Control is an illusion. I’m powerless, that I can confess. Today, when the whole thing, my duct-taped heart, feels like it’s falling apart and I’m heart racing tired, knowing I should never get.this.way. I think, “If I could I’d smoke then, … What?” But the broken down lungs no longer cooperate. I want a drink less than a smoke today, which is weird when you think about it. Alcohol does help you forget, for a while. There’s not anything to compare with the high of tumbling down out of your head, out of your Frantic Over Thinking, out of your heart, Bursting. Nothing like it. Of course,I’m sober and holding.on.tight to Teetotalling Me. Because even though I’m Scared, and Sad, and sitting here alone, feeling all kinds of Awful, I know

I chose that,

And now I choose this. Yes, I choose Sober every.day.

Other things I’ve written about my five years of sobriety, see My Alcoholism & Addiction.

Free To Love One Another or Afraid to be Free?

“if you loved me you’d let me die…”

I went with a reluctant, heavy expectation to the Maundy Thursday service. My child’s words ringing in my ears. 

My need was great.

It hit me, sitting there.  I was in the middle of the Community of God, but felt utterly alone.  And it was all my fault. For I have built up these mammoth walls around myself, so high that I sat there,

Alone, Weeping in the middle of the Community of Believers.  Some in the crowd of hundreds I know, though most were strangers, I had no idea where my friends were sitting.  I sat alone.

I fled as they began the Eucharist.  I was still in the pain of just moments ago, dealing again with the rivers of sorrow carved into my soul over the last year, it was all catching up with me.

How difficult it has been, and that raw emotion was sitting close, heavy, the madness of my child’s mental health situation, an invisible dagger in a wound that I walk around with these days.

Then suddenly Old Regrets began replaying, again and again in my head—my sin and guilt, my humiliation. I have made so many mistakes.

Even after almost five years of sobriety I still haven’t forgiven myself for becoming a drunk in the first place. I am

clearly not willing to receive the freedom of grace and forgiveness for being sober today. That would take a level of courage and humility that I don’t have, at least not yet.

I am clearly still unwilling to admit how little control I have over my life’s circumstances. Sitting there, facing the courageous, loving sacrifice of Jesus, I couldn’t bear it. I fled.

I sat down in the darkened hallway entrance in-between the lobby and the sanctuary  hiding from the Holy One, now I was really crying and embarrassed at my lack of composure.  When just as suddenly it occurred to me – Jesus experienced every human pain—even mine, even my child’s.  (And much much worse.)

And I cannot run from Jesus because no matter how far I flee, he’s there beside me in this moment of anguish.

I have learned.

Listening to your places of pain as a believer in Christ is both mystical and sacred—attending to the Soul’s Ache. It cultivates the depth of understanding that can only come when we slow down and feel.  Although last night I was running away, in general  lately, I’ve been listening hard, in good ways  … And what I hear, finally has been a discovery seen through my photographs …

for a long time I’ve been on the inside looking out at life.

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This has built up an inner turmoil that requires sorting and reconciling and answering this question: Where does all my fear come from?

I’m not petty but I get insecure,  Still, I feel sincere joy at others’ success, and friendships, and connections.

All my life, I have felt alone.

I just don’t think I deserve that sort of thing: a Community who is Free To Love One Another; it’s too beautiful, too holy, and too wonderful to experience the hospitality and community of people. It’s a blessing I’ve never felt worthy of, and I have my bag full of excuses and reasons: I’m too broken and useless, unwanted, undesirable, and therefore, I deserve to be alone.

Even here.  Even now in this Holy Place on Maundy Thursday with hundreds of people around.

And worst of all, I cannot sort out if I made this happen, this Place of Lonesomeness.  But I think I did.

Henri Nouwen expressed so often in his writing and often lamenting:

Even as we need solitude—I know I crave it, seek it, relish it, because it is where I listen for the Spirit and learn—when I finally poke my head back up into the world (go on Facebook or something) I realize that the world went on and people have enjoyed one another  suddenly I feel rejected.  And Alone. And the heartache and feelings of rejection that come are unbearable at times.

Sitting there last night physically alone but in the presence of hundreds of Christ followers, knowing the Saints of Old are there too, with Jesus, surrounding us.

—I laid the last six months down.  Months of being wrapped up in caring for both a sick child and my aging mother. Months of fear over lack of solutions.  Still knowing we don’t have them.

— I laid down my recurring depression which feels like my personal screw-up, a failure I cannot conquer.

— I laid down the isolation and loneliness that comes from shame and fear of rejection by others.

—I remembered all the good people that have reached out to us, asked how they can help and faced my confusion over not knowing what to say.  How many times I said, “thank you but no, we’re managing.”

—I accepted that I don’t know how to receive from others, whether it is because I don’t feel like I deserve it I wonder?  That just might be true.

Jesus’ mandate of Maundy Thursday is a challenge to us to love as we have been loved BY HIM.  Last night, shattered and broken, flooded with all my regrets, I just sat by him and knew, I don’t have to have the answers.

I don’t know how to let people love me.

In Hebrews it says, along with Faith, one must believe that God rewards those who seek him.  (11:4-6).

I’ve had enough looking out of windows, watching others live joyfully and only dreaming of entering into Community while refusing to risk, fearful of the messiness and imperfections of humans.

Jesus said: Love one another ya’ll!  That is so hard to do when you’re on the inside looking out.  When you’re so afraid of being hurt that you continuously push people away.

I heard him, there, Jesus said to me:  

Stop turning away. Love as you are loved, enter into hospitality, healing, wholeness and love—this sort of devotion is made up of my compassion and hope!  There’s no fear when you are abiding in me.

If we allow it, the power of fear dominate us.  What others think of us, fear of failure, fear of intimacy, fear of God, fear of ourselves and what we might actually do for him, even  fear of success.

As Nouwen said, “All our thoughts and actions proceed from a hidden wellspring of fear … but we were loved, before we were born we were declared BELOVED, and that should make us Unafraid.”  

We can walk through the world Free To Love One Another.

—May it be so, friends, I pray.

The Writing Life, the Power of Voice

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Life is pathways that become our Story; where we meet the Holy One and God renews us.  These realities run parallel to one another, making life unbelievably complex.

I am a woman, a mother, daughter, and sister while being a life-partner and friend.  And I’m a writer, a creative photographer, a poet, bringing logic and imagination together here, all which engender Me–this follower of Christ. I am also a sometimes runner, forever an alcoholic who is sober with gratitude and Grace, I am so many things.

I’ve been thinking a lot about God’s hand all these roles and trajectories, this my first year of being an intentional writer, finding my voice, my story, my purpose.

For me, one pathway has been as a stay-at-home parent and homemaker, a role I haven’t liked, more like suffered through, but that’s a part of my story of resistance to what is.

Another part of my story is working solidly on perfecting writing as a craft, including relentless reading and writing; finding and accepting my style, my voice, which is different from others, but these are the ways and words that God puts in me. Again, I resist this discipline. 

I’m also a person drawn to studying scripture and this year I’ve been rethinking How I read the Bible, learning the big Story of the Bible, reluctantly accepting both the patriarchy of organized religion, and the most incredible fall-down-on-your-knees awe for a good and loving God.  Time and again the stretches I spend, the more of a contemplative I become, brings a craving for the quiet whispering voice of the Holy One. I have sought the life of the Spirit in new and ancient ways. This is discipline.

Another path I have been on is learning what it means to be a woman in the evangelical church and being healed; coming utterly unstuck from years of bitterness over women’s roles.

I was feeling ignored, unheard, and even unimportant – lacking a voice, while being gently chastised for being so outspoken and for clinging to Feminism.  I was simply keen to talk with others about their experiences as women.  I felt alone, except for some community I found online.  Writing “Why I Stay” (as essay in Finding Church by Civitas Press) brought a healing that I couldn’t  have experienced any other way.

Being at home, being a contemplative, being hungry for the Bible, being a women, being a writer, I have had years of feeling very alone in all respects of my spirituality—Joining Redbud, I experienced the affirmation and community of women. It is a place of healing, growth and affirmation for me if I allow myself to enter in.

More than a year ago, at a time when I was crying out for my life’s purpose (or even just a job) what I wanted was to believe that my life could make a significant impact. I was challenged by my husband and a pastor friend to write, ahem, TO BE A WRITER as my vocation.

I remembered all the others over the last year or two, and over the course of my life, who affirmed this in me. I was full of arguments “I don’t know how.  And you cannot just do it. You need a plan, a proposal or idea for a book or two, and connections eventually to an agent or a publisher.”  This was more of my resistance.

But I also knew, before all those lofty goals, if you want to be a writing you must simply write—write often, write everything, write it all down learning to collect words and ideas, putting them together in your individual way, finding your voice.

I have learned this year too, that you must occupy your own Story and portion out your life experiences with care and discretion.  You will be exposed and vulnerable, and yet you’ll learn to trust yourself and your story to others, as you engrave your story on the “page,” sharing it with a community of readers, it deepens your character.

There is an excavating of the soul as you stay vulnerable and open to the Holy Spirit, to evolving in your faith journey, to sighting places where God’s work in you—and God does and it is the most miraculous, deeply challenging thing. 

There will be times of feeling abysmal, but always the promptings and the difficulties that seem to come are a part of life and if you allow them they will be your writing life. 

Writers must grow!  Lean in to your troubles, to your pain, to the heartache and write it all.   This year of intentional writing has been one of the more difficult of my life and yet, I thank God for the panics, the gaffes, the worry, the heartache and the pain.

Even as I often feel alone in a desert of fear and solitude, and worry that perhaps my writing will be forever done in obscurity, I know that God doesn’t ever turn away from me and my story.  The story still matters with or without the accolades. If you believe that you are on the right pathway.

This writing life has become about remembering and living My Story, no one else’s, and acknowledging the power of God in Me.  Believing deeply and knowing with certainty in the midst of heartache, that God is good, and God is Present and God is okay with the fact that I’m quite imperfect.

And as each of  these paths run parallel, of being a writer and living this imperfect yet Spirit filled life, the challenge is to not allow the writing to overtake the emerging  of your Life Story.

I cannot let my writing out shout the Holy Spirit’s whispering and the narrative of scripture’s truths and all that God is doing inside me.

This is the tension filled place of living the writing life, which is less a place of perfection and more a place of being perfected into the image of God.

The writing life does this in me.

My Crazy Slow Surrender to Life’s Beauty

1-DSC_0038-001Life is worn and tearing, and this makes me profanely angry.

I hear a baby cry in the distance, just a simple need for succor and in an instant, I’m filled with Memory—Grief for What’s Lost. For when it was my breast, feeding the cry, when mine were young, I did not understand The Wonder.  A baby cries in the distance for its mother’s breast, and then quiets down, a need met.

For me, I gave, and gave to three babies, nursing for what seemed like years. Those moments, now a memory, I could not take them in, not fully, I was not wholly there. It’s Long Gone, that feeding.  I can never do again.

Sitting here, a decade later, there’s a grieving inside me, even here in this public place with a stranger’s baby crying, my heart tears apart, breaks with the memories—it is worn and tearing, rending.

I sit in a library waiting for my teen child, and appreciate the people getting old slowly before my eyes.

I think hard. I want to take in this Moment of Solitude, receive the slowing of time.

Be here, In This Moment.  Breathe it in.  I sense that I am becoming a better person, sitting amongst these Saints, the tomes and verses—Wisdom is everywhere to be found if you are listening.

I wonder at it all.

Why do we appreciate what is Magnificent and Beautiful, only when it’s Too Late? What is happening now that I need to Take In, Understand and Catch before it is too late? Before I am one of the aging, Watching Time Ticking, like them.

Life, is worn. I hear it tearing apart—Or is it my heart breaking.  Can I hear callouses accumulating on my soul?

Life is worn and tearing, I see the Zigzag of Age on my skin. I’m Breathing In my Life,

Its Beauty

Passing Quickly,

Knowing Suddenly

I’m here. I’m—still—here.

Grateful for a second chance, to Know Things Differently, Again.

Be Here, Be Here. Breathe in, I whisper to myself, to the Aging, to the Baby, to the Mother, to them all.

All isn’t all lost yet.

I Read.

I am the lily, beautiful. You are the lily
Life is the lily, consider it.
Full
Of the One
Who Made Us All.

I am worn. I am tearing.

But I am going to stop worrying, if I impossibly can.

Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. — Luke 12:2 7