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Three Simple Words

I am broken.  I’ll be quick to admit that about myself. It is no use trying to hide it.  And that is in some part what my blog is about — hoping that I can help someone else.

Most of my adult life has been spent sorting out my broken heart while trying not to let everything fall to pieces.

Eighteen years we’ve been married — I am his second wife.  They’ve been beautiful, and hard, and just yesterday he held my hand, rubbing it tenderly.  And said, “I want you.”  Even so — sitting in the car today with my fingers drumming on the steering wheel, while I wait for the red light to change, — as she says those three simple words my heart hurts.  And my head is spinning.  I knew it!

“Grandma misses Mary.”

His mom.  His ex-wife.  My daughter, innocently trying to sort out who loves whom.  “Do you like Mary, Mom?”

I am quiet.

“Are you mad?”

“Thoughtful.” I say after carefully considering my words, “No, not mad.”  Because I am more than that simply mad, or even shocked — It is so complicated.  My daughter has no idea.  She says, “I always thought I wasn’t supposed to like Mary.”  And, “Molly did too.”  And then I am angry.  Enraged at what feels so unfair. — I tried so hard to be a “good” step-mom.

And I wasn’t.  Good at it – being a step- an other.  I was petty. And fearful. And controlling.  Today, I know how lucky we are, that my step-daughter, Molly, loves me anyway.

But there is nothing step- about her.  She is all mine.  My child.  And yet she is Mary’s child too.

Now Molly is an adult, and these scary and awkward moments that used to invade life with such regularity rarely come up.

Loyalties and love — who’s supposed to love whom — I just try not to think about it.  But, there it was.  The words spoken.  What I knew.  I just knew my mother-in-law still loved Mary.  And misses her.

And why does that hurt so badly? Should it? No.

I felt the air sucked out of my lungs. My heart ached, physically.  I was once again afraid of what it all means.  I know that I am so poor at loving others.  I don’t know what they need.  I fear rejection and fear others’ apathy toward me.  And so, I become apathetic.  I pretend there are no feelings.

I don’t call my husband’s parents.  I don’t initiate in any way.

I don’t even know how to love my own mother and sisters, and mostly do that all wrong; much less know how to love my husband’s parents, since after all I am their second daughter-in-law.  I know they still love her.

I don’t know how to love them, except perhaps to love him.  And love their grandchildren.  Even that — I fear — I know, I don’t do very well.

I am broken.  And yet, still — I — know — I am loved.  Religious people questioned why Jesus would hang out with the people that he did and he said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”

Jesus, I need you.  I am sick.  Help me to love everyone in my life, just as you love me.

Gender is Everything

My curiosity peaked, I read a blog post titled: Fatherhood, Faith and Gender Stereotypes.  As often is the case when you talk about gender, the comments went off topic a bit.

What I wrote:

I believe as a female and a feminist, I am not served by God being perceived as (solely) male, but that doesn’t invalidate the role of Father God or human fathers.  I need God to be beyond gender which is why it is so unfortunate that he is male in scripture.  Jesus was male and there’s nothing we can do about it.

One person in particular didn’t like my statement Jesus was male and there is nothing we can do about it.  He was surprised that being male or female could be a bad thing saying, “Without touching issues of headship or roles or responsibility and so on, is gender that much of an issue?”

I was startled by the thought that some people don’t think about how gender affects everything!

How can one live in the current set of realities in and outside the Church and not think about gender and how it might impact one’s relationship with God, with other believers and with the Church?

Perhaps I have been steeped for too long in the belief that gender is everything.

My daughter certainly accuses me of it, often calling me paranoid about women in the church.

But she needs to know that gender is everything when it is your gender that keeps you from being able to do things, to express things, to know things, and carry out certain roles, especially in the Church.  Gender is everything when your perception of love, and mercy, and justice, and your perception of God is colored by him being a Father.  Gender is everything when your human father was an angry, oft times cruel person, who crushed your spirit and controlled your life to the point that you, the YOU that is unique and created in God’s image, died. [At least I thought for a very long time that I had died.  I felt dead.]  Yes, for me gender is everything as I learn to love, or at least like being female in the Church.  And as I learn not to hate a male image of God.

Slowly my perceptions of God have changed as I listened to different voices than the ones I grew up with.  As I hear in the voices of many women (and sometimes in men) the tenderness and gentle grace of Jesus Christ, who is the son of God.  This is not anything like what I have known from my earthly father.

Yes, I bring my experiences to any discussion of God.

On one level it is simple. My perception of God is not enhanced or even helped by God being male. Although I know from scripture that God is not female and I am not trying to make scripture say anything that it doesn’t say I wish God was something “other” than male.

I want to know more fully a God who is not male or female, but greater than anything I might perceive or have experienced here on earth. 

I think that our perceptions of male and female are tarnished by the fall; really everything post-Genesis 1 and 2.  Our conceptualization is broken and damaged (at least in my experience) and so thinking of God as male is (almost) hurtful to me.

A child must know that she is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like her.” (Emphasis and gender change mine)

We are each miracles.  Beautiful individuals who have been given each a mind and heart that is different from the next person.  May we each grow up knowing this!

I would love to hear suggestions of further reading and study on the trinity.  In particular, God the “Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” to figure out what was intended by those names.

The bottom line is that with the fall, with oppression, with the mistreatment of women and girls throughout the ages, there is no easy way to redeem the word Father. At least that is true for me.

— MHH

What do you think about the most?

Photo of the Book of Isaiah page of the Bible
Image via Wikipedia

In reality, the things of God are not on my mind most of the time.  Just when I think I’ve got the material world beaten, I get sidetracked.  Life is full of opportunities to dwell and fixate on things that keep our mind captivated and not thinking about God.

I am not immune to wondering whether my glasses or haircut make a statement—my current fixation is to get thin again.   Possibly your fixations are not material things or wanting the esteem of others, but you have a secret fear or an emotion that overwhelms and makes you do things that you know are wrong.  The Bible clearly tells us that whatever it is that hijacks our time and energy has become an idol to us—whether it is persons, ideas or possessions.

My life is full of idols—everything I obsess about, stupid inanities.  But, God desires that we wholly and fully worship him with everything in our life.  He said that we must choose to resolve in our heart to be different.  We must resolve every day to change our patterns—to choose Yahweh every day.  This is not just an intellectual “making up of our mind” but on some level we must decide every day where we put our affections.

We all have idols.  It is what we do about them that matters most to God.

Isaiah 40 says, lift your eyes and look!  There are moments living in the city that I feel like I cannot see or hear God because I am so distracted by the noise of my life.  So, I drive outside of town and look up at the starry expanse.  It is then that I come face to face with my Creator.  I know with certainty God’s compassion and promise of restoration, that Yahweh forgives me for my idolatry, and I cry, “Oh God, is my heart truly yours? Make it so!”

God is asking for our mind and heart—in our solitude, spending habits, health, body image, need for human approval, self-esteem, reputation, relationships, financial anxiety—in our fixation on anything other than Yahweh.

Let us worship and live for him.

——————————————————————————————————

This is something I was asked to write for Blackhawk Church‘s Fall 2011 teaching series. 

The Illusion of Enlightenment & the Boob Tube

tv

 

My father used to call our television the Boob Tube.  I don’t know where that name comes from, but I always thought he meant if we watched too much we’d turn into “boobs” ie.stupid.

Now that I think about it Boob Tube a horrible name in a house full of women.

He never really said outright that the TV was bad, but we were only allowed to watch four hours a week growing up—yes, that was four hours in a week. Of course we started life in Papua New Guinea with no television at all.  Since I grew up not really understanding what a television was, my first encounter which happened on furlough, was with a small box that showed us the show Sesame Street.

In the early 70s, before remotes, Dad made us one.

It connected to the television with a wire, so technically it was not a remote.  It was basically just a switch to turn off the sound during the commercials.  After all of that sincere effort he was really miffed when my little sister Holly could sing the tunes to the commercials even without sound!  We laughed along with my parents, but really didn’t like it when he turned off the commercials.

I never intended to own a television when I grew up.

Don’t you think it is just what you do?  In the years that Tom and I have been together our lives have been a progression of buying bigger and bigger televisions which then forces us to move rooms around, over and over again, in a desire to create a TV room and the other “peaceful room where we will read, or talk, or listen to music, or make music.”

We’ve called it the Reading Room and the Music Room, but eventually that room, the one without the television, has become a dusty shrine to our lofty ideals and to the illusion of our enlightenment.

We actually spend all of our waking hours in the TV room, other than those spent cooking and sleeping.

Because of this, many times I get pulled into television shows without any willful consideration of their merit.  My youngest likes to watch the show Wipeout (quite possibly the most inane television show I think I have ever seen and yet oddly compelling to my son.)  What comes right after it is a show called Expedition Impossible that immediately drew me in.  I’ve watched it now for three weeks, too lazy to pick up the remote and turn it off.  But this week on Thursday night I have to admit I found myself actually watching the clock for it to start and rushing through washing the dinner dishes, because I’m hooked!

I’m drawn to people being pushed beyond what they believe is their physical, mental and emotional ability.

In this show, a dozen teams of three must work together on mental and physical challenges, with the final team making a bunch of money.    The reason I mention this is that although I am drawn to these sort of things and I am the person who would embrace something like that, in everyday life I’m a wus, a scaredy-cat, afraid of my shadow; these days I feel like a weak and ineffectual person.

Cliff jumping in S. Korea
Image by bzo via Flickr

One of the teams on the show has a team member who is blind.  Yes, blind.  I watched him jump from cliff this week, forty feet down into a river.  He had to trust that his friend would find him, after he comes up.  It is no wonder they called the episode Leap of Faith.   I was blown away!

And beyond what that says about his bravery and trust, I was impressed just by the jump.  I’ve jumped off cliffs like that on a boat trip to Dale Hollow, in Kentucky, and it’s friggin scary.  Some of the men were jumping off these cliffs.  Now, I know intellectually that I am capable of doing anything I want; I just have to overcome the fear. The only reason I did the jump was that there were no other women jumping and I’d been egging on, for fun, this friend who was referring constantly to the “girls” at the office—challenging his calling grown women older than him, girls. And so “for women” I found myself at the edge of a cliff looking down.  I took a leap and jumped.  And then I did again, just to prove to myself that it wasn’t a fluke.  I did have the courage.  It was horrible and frightening and amazing!

If I am capable of doing that why am I so afraid today?

As I sat and thought about what it must take for Erik Weihenmayer, the man who is blind, to do this trek in Morocco, I am blown away by his courage and inner will and utterly ashamed by my apathy and fear of failure, and unwillingness to take risks.  And so I have been thinking all week about why I am so afraid.  And why is he so brave?  He could have let his disability keep him from many things (including this show!) and yet he hasn’t.  I ask you to consider this question:

If you knew you could not fail what would you do?

And, back to the original idea that the television is a bad influence on us, I would assert that it is the single worst “idol” in our culture that I wish I had the courage to give up.

There is a Woman: Reflections on Motherhood

There is a woman who makes raising up children and being at-home seem the most gratifying and beautiful tasks in the whole world. I want to believe it is a noble task and I read her blog, if a bit unfaithfully.  When I remember again, I go there and I seem to gorge on her simple, profound theological insights and humble, breathtaking photography.  She reminded me today of Henri Nouwen’s words suggesting that:

“[t]he word patience means willingness to stay where we are and live out the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.”

How can I be so frustrated and impatient in my circumstances?

If there was a sub-theme to my blog it would be that!  If there was a lesson (and there have been so many) I feel I have been supposed to learn from the last decade of life at home it has been to believe that I am where God wants me.  Also, that who I am is more important than what I am doing.  For more than a year, I sought God’s will; I cried and prayed and wanted to know if I should quit my job.  I sought insight from wise people.  I asked myself in my heart of hearts what I should do and then finally made a decision. This is his desire for me right now until he clearly presents the next thing. (And I think he has, but that’s another post.)

I need to ask what is God manifesting today and be humbled by the knowledge of God’s sovereignty.  But even as I do, I can celebrate all that I have learned.  And continue to be a good mother, as best I can. (Now the best homemaker, not so much.)

What makes a good mother is a question all mothers ask ourselves.  Only you can sort that out for yourself.  Every circumstance, each child, individual women and men, make each experience of parenting different.

These are a few things I have learned along the way … about being a Good Mother.   A good mother …

  • Loves always and in everything.  (I cling to 1 Corinthians 13.)
  • Tells her children often and in specific ways how they are unique.
  • Thinks before she speaks and if necessary gives herself a time out.  (I have been told it takes ten positive remarks to “do away” with one negative comment.  Teachers should also realize this.)
  • Admits when she is wrong.  Just do it.  The #1 best thing you could do for your kids.
  • Is accountable to others in her parenting.  I laugh because when heat of summer comes along and the windows are thrown open, the neighbors can hear you yelling at your kids.  That’s accountability.
  • Should be less lazy in keeping kids accountable to their commitments.  (I’m preaching to myself here.)
  • Speaks biblical truth into her kids lives. We are all theologians.
  • Forgives herself for being imperfect.
  • Forgives her kids for being imperfect little beings.
  • Lets her kids see her affection for her spouse.  (I am not a touchy-feely type, but it’s no matter.  My husband and my kids need me to hug my husband more often!)
  • Has her own goals.  (Woops.  But this is important and I’ll have to put aside a whole blog post to it sometime soon.  You cannot set aside all of your personal goals for your kids.  Think of your intellectual and career needs.)
  • And from Ann, “even when you sin and fall, cling to grace.”  And I would add, let your kids see it.

What are you learning? Who are you learning from?  Who inspires you today?

And thank you Ann. Below is a link to her blog.

holy experience

You are Beloved

This post is about being loved and feeling loved.  And what can happen when you don’t believe you are dearly loved — to your relationships and to your hopes and dreams for your life.

GROWING UP, I was not told…

I never believed that I was “dearly loved.” This was partly because I grew up in a frightening and unpredictable home and because of my father’s angry raging behaviors.  I have always been profoundly unsure of myself.  I remember how important it became to simply grow invisible. 

Invisible was safe.  If you aren’t seen or heard, you cannot upset anyone.  No opinions.  Eventually no thoughts at all at home, where you might slip up and express them.  This was okay if he agreed with you.  But if not, there was no telling what might happen.  You might be lectured at for hours, or berated in front of a friend. Humiliation.  Threats.  Intimidation.  Blame.  It just wasn’t predictable.

When I look at my children I’m appalled by my upbringing.  I want nothing more than to see my kids discover and grow into unique people.  I see incredible things in them and I tell them often, out of love and a wish to affirm those truths.

 “Those are beautiful words you have written.”

“God made you full of joy.”

“You memorize things so easily. That will make life so much easier for you.”

“You are careful and precise and that will serve you well in the future.”

“You make people laugh, what a gift!”

“You care about others.”

“You are gentle and kind and the world needs more men like that.”

“You will grow into someone who washes others’ feet.”

“Yes, that is sexist it pleases me that you saw it.”

  “You articulate yourself so well!”

I speak these truths and other, because I believe children need help to discover their talents and abilities and to experience the spirit of God.  I believe we don’t naturally know.  My place in God’s world, made in his image, is something that I never discovered in that shrouded, hidden place that I disappeared in to for so many years as a child and young adult.

THE CHURCH didn’t tell me …

Secondly the Church sent subliminal, and sometimes outright sexist messages to girls  where I was growing up in the south.  I “heard” that I am a second class person; less valued by God because I (somehow) need men to support me, protect me, and teach me, especially about the Bible.  I was to subordinate myself to men.

Though I heard those things, in my gut I knew it was wrong.  I have always believed that if you believe in the world of Gen 1 & 2, and in the hope of lasting and true restoration by Jesus on the Cross, then you cannot accept the cultural Church practices spoken of in the NT.

MARRIAGE

By the grace of God I married beautiful, ennobling, questioning complex thinking person of faith.  He lives with me in the land of questions and he does not attempt to tell me what the answers are.  Together we began the journey and partnership of marriage in June of 1993.  What he spoke into my life was hope, and goodness, and empowerment. He listened for my voice and I began to heal. 

I was a fanatically hard-working ministry leader when he met me.  I worked for my father (ironically) so at the end of the day, I finally had my father telling me what I was good at by giving me promotions.  The more I accomplished the more responsibility I was given.  I discovered I had many talents, I was a hell of a hard worker and I had a need to constantly be proving myself and my worth.  At the end of the day, week, month, there was always more to be done.  More to prove.  More to do to validate myself as a daughter, as a woman, as a leader, as a human being.

I still didn’t believe I was BELOVED.   Skip forward from my mid thirties to today.

TODAY I am …

44.  I have been out of the workplace for ten years.  I “used” my children as an excuse to leave an acrimonious place where (I felt) I had hit the glass ceiling. I was burned out trying to prove myself.  I didn’t know the grace of God in my life.  I didn’t really believe.

Over the last decade I have walked a painful path but I have discovered that I am beloved.  Oh yes, those difficult lessons (my experience with clinical depression, my alcoholism, losing my parents) were so vital to my becoming human again and the reason that I am alive today.  I got sober, which took courage in the Christian community.  Actually I didn’t get any help from Christians but by God’s grace, my life is living through and beyond being an alcoholic or being depressed.

Today my life is so incredibly rich and full.  And now as a woman, a burgeoning feminist, a feeble follower of Jesus, a sometimes photographer, a frequent writer, hungry student of the Bible, I am asking for others to speak truth into my life now about my unique contribution to be made.

If I let myself, I quickly become focused on what I am, who I am, why I am … and the fact that I am so afraid.  (I think) I want to study and learn and be able to articulate Truth by going back to school. When I look around my community there are needs everywhere.  I see them.  I feel them.  My heart breaks for it.  As a white person with affluence I believe I have a unique responsibility and a unique place of financial privilege.  As a woman, and a feminist and a follower of Jesus I believe my voice is unique.

The Jesus that washes our feet wasn’t a macho oriented, “women should be in the home cooking, cleaning, having babies and bringing me my dinner” kind of man who has been written and preached about in the Church.  He preached that we are to live in peace, he offers us a life full of victory (over our sin), and he makes us generous and loving. We are to speak against injustice. That’s the Jesus I know.   That’s my kind of faith.

But I am afraid and I can no longer blame my upbringing.  I can no longer blame the Church.  I can no longer blame my father.  With no one left to blame, I am here with my convictions and beliefs, greatly needing shape and formation.  It is time to act; to step out in faith that God is with me each step of the way and that there is a reason for each experience I have had.  In some ways I “woke up” just a few years ago.  A late bloomer doesn’t do it justice, but you are never too old to do something.

At fifty, my mother began a process of waking up.  She is now in her seventies and to her credit is a person continuously searching for truth.  I greatly admire that about her.

Andy Crouch, on his blog Culture Making, says disciplines are the key to excellence. Ten thousand hours is a good benchmark—that’s one hour a day, five days a week, for forty years (with two weeks of vacation each year!). If every Christian decided to spend 10,000 hours developing their capacity in a single cultural domain (painting, stress fracture analysis, genomic sequencing, you name it) and also 10,000 hours on the spiritual disciplines that embody dependence on God (solitude, silence, fasting, study, prayer), in forty years we’d have a completely different world. How are you spending your 10,000 hours?

I am a white woman of privilege, blessed by living a beautiful life, a feminist and Jesus follower, who finally knows she is BELOVED and is finding her voice and asking:  How should I spend my next 10,000 hours?

Walk On by U2: A Christian Feminist Cry?

This song is actually about Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese activist who was sentenced to house arrest in 1989 for protesting her government. Earlier that year, while walking with some of her supporters, soldiers blocked their path and pointed rifles at them. Suu Kyi kept walking, despite orders to stop. The soldiers threatened to shoot her, but didn’t. Her actions have been closely monitored by the government, but she remains an influential leader and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Her house arrest ended in 2010 and she was released. (Source)

THESE LYRICS HIT ME HARD!

What I hear in them– for me— is my heartache and pain, and a cry for freedom in Christ.  As a Christian and a feminist and a woman my heart often heavy with the state of women in the evangelical church.  Where is the progress? And although I love and believe in my church and accept, with only healthy reservation, the leadership and the integrity of my pastors as exceptional spiritual leaders (and some are sound Biblical scholars) and I even accept the leadership of the elders of my church because they were selected (by a process even if that process included that you had to be male).

But I am convinced that my church leaders are wrong to put off for a season, or leave out or ignore, or to dismiss the idea of women as Elders and teaching pastors.  And our denomination, EFCA, is wrong to not ordain women.

I am deeply committed to my church and want to help it think about its practices and to help bring change from within so that women will be admitted to ordained ministries and Eldership.  I have no idea what that might look like or how to go about it, but meanwhile I resolve to continue in love, in hope that the darkness of oppression continues to be lifted, even if slowly.

No one can steal my conviction that the evangelical church will some day ordain women and embrace us in every role in the Church.  I don’t know when, but I believe it will happen.

You’re packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been,
A place that has to be believed to be seen,
You could have flown away, A singing bird in an open cage,
Who will only fly, only fly for freedom.

I RESOLVE TO STAY

I believe that if enough women stay in the evangelical and denominational traditions and continue to voice our beliefs change will come.  We need to do the Biblical study and scholarship, to courageously speak out, and to write.  We must continue on, even on the bad days when it feels like we are nagging because there will be good days, when we just might be prophetic!  If we continue to have faith, and exhibit hope and love … perhaps (some day) true freedom inside the evangelical church will come for women.
WALK ON, sisters and brothers.
MHH

WALK ON lyrics, by U2

And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage you can bring…
And love is not the easy thing…
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can’t leave behind

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it’s a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong

Walk on, walk on
What you got, they can’t steal it
No they can’t even feel it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight…

You’re packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
You could have flown away
A singing bird in an open cage
Who will only fly, only fly for freedom

Walk on, walk on
What you got they can’t deny it
Can’t sell it or buy it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonightAnd I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Home…hard to know what it is if you never had one
Home…I can’t say where it is but I know I’m going home
That’s where the heart is

I know it aches
How your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Leave it behind
You’ve got to leave it behind
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you steal
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason
All that you sense
All that you speak
All you dress up
All that you scheme…

Music: U2
Lyrics: Bono
Produced by: Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno
Engineered by: Richard Rainey
Assisted by: Chris Heaney
Additional production by: Steve Lillywhite
Mixed by: Steve Lillywhite
Additional engineering: Stephen Harris
Assisted by: Alvin Sweeneyfirst time played live: 2000-12-05: Irving Plaza, New York, New York
last time played live: 2011-07-20: New Meadowlands Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey

The Act of Sleeping (a poem)

rope
Image by -= Bruce Berrien =- via Flickr

the days of late have been quite enough for my heart, mind and soul to keep up … and so…

I was

drifting off to sleep,

taking an illicit nap in the middle of the day,

when it hit me.

I have always loved the act

of sleeping.  It is a thread

that holds my life together, connecting me

                     to health,

                     to sanity,

                     to strength.

It is safety, a place I have run to all my life.

For life is full of danger and pain.

Life is sometimes more than I can bear.

I do not know if there is anything

I enjoy more than sleep.

What are the 7 Deadly Sins and Why Should we care?

I am no saint.  Most days I find my struggles are so profane and well, human. I don’t want to yell when I am angry at my child.  I don’t want to start smoking again even when provoked by life.  I don’t want spend frivolously, and compulsively, on books or clothes.  I want to be more generous. To be less envious of the success of others.  To respond in love and hopefulness rather than “expect” someone to live up to the low opinion I have of them.  I’m just being honest here.  Life is a struggle!

My children asked the other day if “to lie” was a sin.  “What about to murder?” they asked.  What are the seven deadly sins, they wanted to know?

The only thing that I could remember in the moment was Sloth, probably because I struggle with laziness and lack of motivation at-home.   I struggle to do things that don’t interest me much, like laundry and other forms of housework; to train the dog even though it would make our lives so much better; to be consistent with my kids — book reading before computer, keep your room picked up, clean up after yourself!  I find it easier to just do it myself, than hassle with teaching the kids.

But somehow I could work in the garden all day long, in the burning sunshine, because it doesn’t feel like work.  I could pull a thousand weeds.  Or draw with my kids. 

I might write all day because it feels so wonderful to place one word in front of the other, in a way that I choose.  But sweep, mop, pick up and put away?  I’m loathe to do those things.

I could not remember what the Seven were, so I looked it up.

The Catholic church believes the Seven Sins are:

  1. Pride (or Vanity) is an excessive belief in our own abilities that gets in the way of our ability to recognize and experience the grace of God. Humility is seeing ourselves as we really are and not comparing ourselves to others.
  2. Envy is the desire for someone’s status, abilities, or life situation.  Generosity is letting others get the credit or praise. It is giving without having expectations of the other person. It is love which actively seeks the good of others for their sake. Envy resents the good others receive or even might receive. Envy is almost indistinguishable from pride at times.
  3. Gluttony is consumption of more than what you need, of anything really.
  4. Lust is a craving for the pleasures of the body above knowing and craving God.
  5. Anger (or Wrath) is the person who spurns love and opts instead for fury.   Its opposite, Kindness, is tender, patient and compassionate.
  6. Greed (Avarice or Covetousness) is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual.
  7. Sloth is avoiding physical or spiritual work.

Of course there is no “list” of seven in the Bible, though each of these are there in one form or another  If we truly understood how these qualities make us who we are, perhaps we would understand ourselves better and more importantly our effect on others.

I know this. Sin in our lives deadens our spiritual senses and we become slower to respond to God.  And then eventually we drift into complacency, apathy and even disbelief.

And the sad thing is that I am guilty.  Guilty of this and more.  Aren’t we all?

The good news is that the Grace of God offers me hope that not in my strength but with the power of the Holy Spirit I can forgive myself and I am forgiven.

No, Not Seven.

“… forgive, from your heart.” Matthew 18:35

So often, when I think of my parents, I know that I need to forgive.

Truth be told I am afraid, even though I know that letting go of the past is the only way to move forward.  But I fear the unknown of living looking forward—a life of trusting, giving, loving, even hoping.  You see, most of the residual anger, I think, is simply a sense of disbelief that a mother and father could do that.

To say that we lived in constant fear is an unfair exaggeration.  But we were scared all the time (of my Father.)  What did Mother do, you may wonder?  What is she doing now?  My mother detached. And continues to be isolated and aloof from me eight years after my Father’s death. And though she “loved us very much” she let him rage on, and on. And he still has the power, even in death.

She let him rage on and became a passive perpetrator of his crimes.  And to a child growing up in his home, my Father was highly irrational, often cruel, hopelessly aggressive, and in a constant state of potential irritation; to the point that when I was in my early twenties and head over heals in love I found myself saying of the boy in question: “Treat me well. Or treat me poorly. I don’t care. Just be consistent.”

It is far too easy to wander from the point which is my inability to forgive. 

Perhaps it is because I cannot fully embrace the forgiveness I have received–just when I think that I do get it. Do I fully appreciate the mercy and grace in my life — there is no way that I can say I do — with lack of forgiveness in my heart.

I face my lack daily. But even amidst the doubt, questions and distrust (of God and people) I must remember that I am forgiven and because of that I want to know Jesus more. Jesus says, forgive as you have been forgiven.

In the movie Helen of Troy, Agamemnon the commander of the Greeks killed his own daughter to appease the gods.  My step-daughter who is agnostic and I were discussing sacrificing your life for another. Abraham was asked to sacrifice his child. Jesus.  Questioningly, she said, “Doesn’t it take away from what Jesus did that he knew he would end up in heaven with God?”  How revealing that statement is.

Would you give up your life for another even if you knew it would end well?  Would you forgive?  In the parable of the unmerciful servant in Mt 18, Jesus challenges this very thing that I am understanding about myself–my inability to forgive and give up my “rights,” the power of my anger toward my parents and Jesus says, “No, not seven times, but seventy times seven…” (Matthew 18)

Henri Nouwen reminds us that Jesus’ primary concern was obedience to his Father, to live constantly in his presence.  “Only then did it become clear to him what his task was in his relationships with people.” 

It is clear to me.  I need to seek to forgive.  I may not know how, but I know that I must move toward it by seeking the presence of God.

And a life of

trust, love and even hope will come.


My baby girl is hurting!

This is my beautiful daughter Emma. 

She’s upstairs right now–trying to sleep away a possible migraine and sinus infection that she has had for three weeks.  The doctor has just suggested another ten days of antibiotics, after five days of taking one antibiotic and ten days of another stronger one already.

Emma has had chronic sinusitis for at least four years.  She misses up to thirty days of school a year because of it and the very worst part is that she lives with nearly constant pain or pressure in her face and head.

Right now I feel like screaming.  Punching something (I did not punch the doctor as he is only trying to help.)  I am kicking and yelling internally because my baby girl is hurting!

Some would say that living with chronic pain tests your character, and well, I would agree.  I have watched friends who live with chronic pain and it has revealed even more so the incredible strength and beauty of their souls.  But when you are thirteen you don’t even know yet who you are and this seems a cruel test.

It is wrong to allow a child to live with so much pain.

But there is nothing to do.  Unless we go hardball with pain medications for the headaches in the short-term, which will undoubtedly cause her quality of life to suffer with all the side effects.  And so, she is resting quietly trying to make the headache dissipate so that she can return to a mission camp.  She is involved in a camp at our church, of service in the community.  Some forty teens and a dozen adults together for five days and nights.

She called me the first night, in pain.  “A 9.5.”  What she didn’t tell me is that she sat in the first aid office alone, crying the pain was so bad. When I picked her up today to go to the doctor, it had subsided a bit and the Ibuprofen was helping “a little.”

She wants to go back and I am hoping that she can, that she will choose to go despite the pain.

What do I need to learn from this powerless place of watching my baby suffer? 

As I analyze my response, I am suffering because of my daughter’s pain.  I feel many emotions.    Anger at the doctor for years of suffering without relief for Emma.  Weariness of the situation.  Regret and shame wondering if it has been our mistakes (with her diet, exercise and general health) that may have caused this or at the very least contributed to it.  And fear that we will not find out what is causing it and find a solution!

Do you care for someone who is in constant pain? How do you resolve all those conflicting emotions? How do you offer comfort, even relief? Or, are you in constant pain?  What things have others done that bring you comfort and relief?    What have others done that may not have been helpful?

Can I get a Witness?

I must confess.  I am not a witness. 

I have never understood those people who speak frankly and unreservedly about their relationship with God.  In fact, the only person I have ever met who did that with complete integrity was a friend I made in the last ten years.  She speaks out of her love for Jesus, with a passion and a need, a pure desire that makes me hungry for the same.  Whenever I am in her presence I want to know this Jesus she speaks about, know him more and more.

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said: ‘…eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God…’ (John 17)  

When I was a child I recall often being afraid that someone might ask me what I believe. 

I had not put it all together yet.  As a teen, I recollect, on more than one occasion lying in bed late at night after a youth event at church, rehearsing what I would say about my faith if I was ever asked.  I whispered the words out loud, under the covers, uncomfortable with the sound of my voice.  An extreme introvert, I was overly burdened with ideas and thoughts that I was afraid to express.  They remained jumbled up in my head.  And there, under the covers I became sweaty and slightly breathless, as I whispered my thoughts–my imaginings.  There was nothing that I could say with certainty. It was the beginning of conviction. 

In my twenties, I found that if you keep your mouth shut no one would know what you thought.  Genius, huh?

A quiet person is not going to be the one thought to be a fool.  And I am not a fool.

I rarely said what I thought.  I still had little idea what I believed.  I was going along.  It was in college that I discovered a passion for the words in the Bible.  In a rare moment of clarity and conviction–and vulnerability–I blurted out to my professor that I’d like to study the Bible!  I wanted to learn the original languages, so that I could read (for myself) the true meaning of these texts.  I finally knew what I wanted to do.  I had an intensity for it, which up until that time I hadn’t found for anything in college, or in life. I knew that what I wanted to do was to study the languages of the Bible.

My male professor, with a cruelty I now recognize said, “What would you do with it?”

What would I, as a woman, do with a special knowledge of scripture?  Um, right, the implication was clear.  Nothing.

I had no understanding of the possibilities.  I didn’t believe that I was capable of pushing back.  I didn’t know that I was allowed to disagree with him, because no-one had ever given me the example growing up in a conservative Christian sub-culture.  Women were taught it was good, even Godly, to submit. I did not know that I might have something unique to say.  So I stayed quiet. And for the next two decades more or less, I continued on that path, mute.

I was already tragically insecure.  Melancholy and hopelessness were things that I wrestled with and over time I came to believe that I had nothing to say.  Though I was good at thinking and writing, I got the message from my professor, and my parents, my youth pastor and others, that as a woman I had no message.  That is what I thought.  That is in the end what happened—that professor spoke a negative prophesy for my life.

I didn’t find my voice again until my forties. And coincidently, parallel to that, I began to discover my own belief.  Don’t they run hand in hand?  Parallel growth that only comes out of gaining personal power.  By beginning to believe in myself and knowing that I am, now, a person with something to say. I still love the word of God, the Bible, as much as I did when I first discovered it.  I want to lose myself in the real meaning of the original texts.  I want that for myself. I quickly become frustrated by others telling me what it means, mainly men making judgment calls about what the Bible says, and wanting me to take their word for it.  I cannot accept it.

I study, but I lack discipline.  I think, and then I doubt myself, my audacity, to think I might find some truth there that other scholars have not. And yet, the spark that was ignited many years ago still burns.  The legacy of that question rings as loudly after two decades as it did that day in college.

What would you do with it?

I will leave a different legacy for my daughter.  That is why, much to her embarrassment at times, I constantly point out to her the places in the Church and in our church where women still do not have a voice.  Where women are not able to be totally free in their passions, talents and callings.

I have told her what is possible!  That is it okay to push back.  That she is allowed to disagree–with me, with her Father, with her Youth Pastor, even her Pastor.

The evangelical Church is still sending women the message, submit. Wait.  In time, things will change. 

The Spirit will witness to the unconditional love of God that became available to us through Jesus. — Henri Nouwen

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I highly recommend this article titled Women in Ministry: Between the Pulpit and the Kitchen from the Center for Women of Faith in Culture.