"If God has come in the flesh, and if God keeps coming to us in our fleshly existance, then all of life is shot through with meaning. Earth is crammed with Heaven, and Heaven, when we finally get there, will be crammed with earth. Nothing wasted. Nothing lost. Nothing secular. Nothing Absurd...all are grist for the mill of a down to earth spirituality."

Paul Stevens

This has been such a long road, I have to tell you. And it is not over, nor will it ever be, as long as I continue walking forward in this strange and beautiful love affair that is my faith. This is my sanctification, my process, this is Him making me holy, one day, one failure, one temptation, one glimpse, one memory, one hallelujah at a time. This is my dance with a loving Father God who has called me forward. It begins and ends with Him.
As you may remember, this journey began in December. I can once again thank my friend S. for catapulting me onto a rough and rocky road of self discovery when he asked me why I was wasting my life. My answer after much thought, was that I had no idea who I was. I didn't know my value, if, in fact, I had any. I was lost. Broken. Left behind. Waiting....for something. And so, in desperation, in heartache, I gambled with the Almighty. The question to Him was simple:

Am I Valuable and can you prove it?

I gave myself a year. I was convinced that this was the question whose answer would transform me, change me, into the steadfast, worthy Christian woman I was supposed to be. You see, I want so much to be whatever it is that I'm supposed to be in order to please this Savior that I am only now coming to know. And regardless of effort, there seems to be nothing I can do to be worthy of Him, try though I might. I can't describe the desperate effort that went into every word from my lips, every thought and hurt and blessing- they were rich in intention and impoverished in result. How can I ever be enough for Him? How can this scarred and wounded soul ever face Perfection and stand?

My triumphs one day would be crushed with failures the next, the proverbial three steps forward. I could never have found God on the path that I was on. That was a road of self worship. Ironically, I never would have found myself on that road either. It was a circular trail of legalistic nonsense; good behavior and worthiness equals God, which in turn equals good behavior and worthiness, which again, equals God...can't have one without the other, and on and on forever. Endlessly, pointlessly. It is absolutely no wonder that my understanding of my value had suffered.

I had been working day in and day out to be good enough for this elite faith to which I'd given my soul. My standing, my inheritance, my blessings and my ability to accept love were based totally on myself and the good works of which I was sometimes capable. I lived every moment for the affirmation it might afford me when a task was finished well, meanwhile reliving a lifetime of failures in my own mind at days end when the lights were out and my family slept. I was haunted by my shortcomings, promising myself and God that I would be different tomorrow, I would be worthy tomorrow, as if sleep erased my sin. It is a heartbreaking nightmare to wake daily and find that you are the exact same person you were when you went to bed.

The reality of sin is that it is not a series of mistakes or bad choices. As S. has said, we aren't mistakers, we're sinners. We can no more be free of this than we can be free of our skin color, the sound of our own voice or our humanity. I can choose not to steal or not to commit adultery. I cannot choose to not be a sinner. It is my souls state. To deny it is to scourn my humanness, to lose all connection with the world around me and in turn, to alienate those among us who would benefit so greatly from seeing His mercy played out to the end.

What I have to this point, failed to understand is that while my value is not increased with good behavior, neither is it decreased with bad behavior. I am not less valuable if I steal or commit adultery and am not suddenly holier if I avoid those things.

My value does not lie in my accomplishments, my beauty, my sense of humor or my talents.

My value, in its entirety, lies solely in my position as a deeply loved, fully redeemed, grace given sinner who has been purchased out of death, swept away by extravagant mercy and placed in the position of a complelety pleasing child of the Most High God.

I have value because of who God crafted me to be and much more in this than in the tiresome braggart I've contrived apart from Him in the role of a striving, grasping, greedy demi-god of a self-worshipping religeon.

It is a beautiful paradox that only when we see how truly UN- God-like we are, how debased and sinful, how spiritually impoverished, how shallow, petty and selfish, can we look to God as the authentic, loving, holy and merciful Creator who designed us. Only then, being firmly grounded in our realistic position to Him, can we see ourselves clearly; as deeply cherished and jealously guarded treasures of the Father.

Our value comes from Him, flows through Him and returns to Him as we come to fully understand His great and impossible love for us, stepping forward from the shadows of self worship and finding finally, the God-given, grace created role we were meant to fulfill: our vocation...

Our deepest Calling.

To. Be. His.

May you know this, too.

M.

Ice floes...part two

My husband and I spent our weekend in the garden. The unseasonal warmth and sunlight brought out the neighborhood children, including ours, and offered a false sense of impending spring. I fell for it and bought plants. I'll never be sorry for hoping too soon, for spring or anything else.

We have talked of my back story and the winter within. We've talked of war and loss. We've visited the weavers hut and heard the faint promise of a season to come, whispered of from far beneath the snow. But even as the narrator, I cannot tell you what is behind the Weaver's smile, cannot look onto his loom and tell you what the tapestry will be- my interest lies beyond his small house, in the garden, under the frozen layer where a tendril, strong and green, has begun to stir and spin and melt the snow around it with the warmth of its hope.

I was raised on five acres. As an adult, that doesn't seem like much. But from the vantage of childhood, that small piece of property was a wilderness of possibility. I knew every tree and path and crossing and spent a good portion of my youth covered in the dirt of that land.
The house itself sat far back from the winding country road, surrounded by ornamental cherry's and the deep green of cedar and fir. In the winter, the quarter mile walk from the end of our drive where the school bus picked us up and dropped us off, was long and snow covered. My brother and I didn't walk those accumulated miles together. He jumped off the bus and trudged ahead, not wanting contact. I let him go.
We walked in silence, his gate so much faster than mine that soon he was out of sight, down the hill and around the bend towards home. I took my time, kicked the snow, watched the sky change to afternoon gray, went carefully so I didn't spook the heron that sometimes stole the bullfrogs from the duckpond. Down the hill and past the lower pasture where our horses stood ankle deep in frozen mud and manure, breathing in the cold air and letting it bellow out of their great lungs like ghostly apparitions in the late afternoon chill. It was a walk in silence and frost and darkness. A walk alone, the way we both preferred it.
As the years passed, season changing into season, I learned which tree's showed springs earliest growth, which lilies woke first and broke through frozen ground. I learned to watch carefully, and listen carefully, for the signs. A relationship formed between myself and that land, those tree's, the row of weeping birch that ushered the child home, the dignified Iris at the corner of my horses barn, the deep foliage of Hosta beneath the deck stairs where it was shady in summer's heat. When I think of a garden, this is what I know; season after season, when it is loved, it remains faithful. It always returns.
At the end of that stand of Birch along our drive, stood a solitary tree. It wasn't a birch and it stood out horribly against the backdrop of those enormous, towering giants. Small and slim and ordinary, it appeared never to grow, remaining a sapling for what seemed like decades. I don't know who planted it or where it came from, but it sprouted right in line with all those glorious birch, wise with their fifty plus years, casting their shade over the smaller. It never blossomed, never twisted, never did anything other than just stand there and be ordinary. But of all my fathers garden, out of all his specimen plants and roses and Japanese Maples and Lilies, this tree was my favorite.
When all the garden was still sleeping in winters ice, this tree began to grow. It became ritual to stop and examine on my way down the long road towards home, to look in on the little tree where she stood in line, proudly defiant, to pull her branch down and feel along the curve for the evidence of buds, the slight lift of bark. And it would always be there, in early February, tiny breaks that would be leaf and branch and spring. Within weeks those breaks were embryonic leaves, tightly curled against the cold. And then, as if they'd had enough and were just going to face the frost, they exploded into green. And that little tree, alone in a line of older, wiser peers, was life, and breath, and promise. It held my hope in it's branches.

When my father left and I began to move from place to place, I left that tree and all the others, all those relationships, behind me. Fall came, and all the once loved leaves of spring and summer, released and fell to die, and it seemed for some time that spring would never come again. I steadied myself from heartache, from orphanhood, and walked forward into a winter that endured indefinitely. No tears would fall, no smile lay fully open to joy, the heart would sit dormant and chilled and wait for peace or hope to find it, beating quietly in this half breathed life.

For some it's cancer, for others it's death or divorce or Jesus, the thing that awakens them to the life in which they live and walk and speak and are. Something happens and then it's as if they know something that everyone else has missed somehow and suddenly they're flooded with something...life maybe...or joy...or understanding. And they are quite suddenly alive.
For me, it's been different. It's been quiet at times and screaming at me at others. It's been laughter over coffee. It's been Long Island Iced tea's on a dark deck, the smell of a friend's pipe tobacco reminding me of my grandfather and simpler times. It's been running, literally, in the middle of winter when it's fourteen degree's and so cold I lose feeling in my face, running and running, miles at a time, and wondering what I'm running from.
When that first tear fell in November, over something small and delightful, a tear of joy, I panicked, worried that it would be like breaking a dam, the flooding destructive, and I struggled for control. When it happened again, I wrote my pastor a letter of concern and told him something horrible was happening.
When we cleaned our basement and I realized I'd wasted ten years of my life storing away my hopes and dreams and 'valuables' on shelves in a basement and not in the people that I truly care about, I wept. In public. In front of actual people as I told the story at a friends house. And as a sign of loyalty, my friend wept with me.
Behind these moments, there has been a sound, steady, continuing, strong. The sound of ice breaking, that eerie groaning that signals danger. And it does, to some extent, signal that for me. But I'm not standing on that frozen tundra. I'm beneath it. And that sound is freedom, too. It's the sound of life returning to the garden, the rush of the creek, the song of finch, the silent growth of that little tree at the end of the Birch stand, unfurling her leaves in spite of the barren winter around her, the steady drip of melting ice falling away, rushing away, in the light of hope.

I can look back now with peace, into that tiny, childish bedroom where my father used to sit and tell me stories. I can see him sitting there even now, head lowered, voice quiet and the child watching every word with eyes full of wonder. I'm a woman at the door. And I can reach, and slowly close it, can say goodbye to that sweet girl who didn't deserve to be left. And goodbye, too, to the man who hurt too much to stay.
It's usually only with time that I can look back and see clearly, as if I have to get a certain distance away before the past really makes sense. I'm happy to say that I think I've finally gotten to that point, made peace with my old hauntings and let them drift back where they belong permanently. I'm an orphan of sorts, and I've found balance in that. I wouldn't want to change it now, even if I could. It's my story. As much a part of me as that tiny tree.
At this discovery, sunlight spills across the floor and beckons to warmth. To hope.
It's too nice to stay inside. Spring is here. And I want to spend it in the garden.

At the Weaver's hut, the snow is gone. That tiny tendril has grown tall in the corner of His garden and has stretched into a strong sapling, ordinary, but lovely. And still defiant. She is the first to open her leaves in winter. She will never be sorry for hoping too soon. For spring, or anything else.

Ice Floes part one

Too much has happened lately to be able to write it in only one part, so I'm unpacking this one in smaller pieces; for my benefit and for yours.
Understanding ourselves at present is entirely dependent upon whether we understand where we've been, who we've come from, what paths we've walked, and this is my time to look back over my shoulder at the places I've been and the people that have touched my life, the ghosts that still linger.
Such an integral part of our stories are the stories that are told before we come to be, stories that weave themselves into who we are and where we're going like a tapestry in time, a fabric of life and love and moments...

My father was fifteen the year he enlisted in the army. The "police action" in Korea was underway and he and a friend stood in line to sign their names and board a bus and take a flight to the other side of the world, to a winter-frozen hell where they would tread in soaked boots through feet of snow on endless marches, huddle together in muddy foxholes while the rain poured down, breathe in the thick air of a Korean summer months later.

As a child, the old black and white photographs of the Korean villages fascinated me, photographs with tattered edges, carrying the faces of people I would never know in a land I would never see. I didn't know then how deeply those other lives, those far distant memories that weren't even my own, those days long past, would carve themselves into my heart, into who I am.
My father rarely spoke about Korea. The hurts were too deep, the scars still present; deep gouges on his legs where the shrapnel remained, where the bullet lodged itself. The scars on his heart were deeper and harder to see. His silence fascinated me, too. Unchartered territory would always draw me.

I can close my eyes now and see his face in the dark, bending over my tiny white bed to say goodnight, to rub his rough face on my cheek so he could listen to me laugh. It hurt, but it was worth it.
Tell me a story, Daddy.
He would sigh and ease his heavy boxers frame down beside me..."Once upon a time..."
"No, Daddy! About Korea! Tell me another story about Korea."
Another sigh.
"My commanding officer was a black man..." He would begin and in his deep daddy voice he would tell of heroism and bravery and courage.

In the quiet dark of my bedroom, with ruffled curtains and an array of little girl toys, with blue moonlight seeping in through the windows of that childish space, my father talked of Korea, of the villages and the people and his company of officers. He talked of the day he was shot and how his African American sergeant carried him for more than five miles to take my young father to the medics. He talked of the day the grenade fell into their foxhole and how another friend pushed him to safety and laid his body over my fathers to protect him from the blast. My father came home with metal in his legs. His courageous friend didn't come home at all. I don't know why he could talk about it then, in the dark of that innocent place, telling it to a child who couldn't really understand, but he did. And I'm so grateful.

I laid very still and listened and loved and was won over by the first hero of a girls heart. Sometimes I fell asleep while he murmured. Other times the stories were too enchanting and I would fall asleep much later, reliving them in my imagination.

I wanted to be just like him.

Those stories touched me and instilled in me a deep sense of patriotism, of pride and also, a deep need for this hero to approve of me. I would spend our remaining time together trying to prove that I was tough enough, strong enough to be his daughter. I wasn't weak or afraid or little. I was a hero, too. And hero's don't cry. They don't tremble. They don't hesitate. Hero's hold their chins up and keep fighting.
Over the coming years I would have plenty of opportunity to practice this hero's mantra. My father would eventually leave without even a goodbye. My older brother, another hero, would also go his own way and I wouldn't see him for almost a decade. That little girl in the dark, quiet room would wait forever for her father to kiss her goodnight, for her brother to come home, but they would not return.
I determined that not a tear would fall for that pain. I wouldn't cry for them no matter how my heart broke. I replaced my brokenness with rage and pride and buffered myself with sarcasm and sharp reposts. At fifteen years old, I could take care of myself, just like my father had. I didn't need anyone now. I wouldn't ask for help, admit weakness, shed a tear, voice a hurt, show love, express joy or come to need another person. Life became a battleground and every encounter was full of possible dangers, other avenues down which my father could walk when he left me again and again and again in memory and in the painful rejections of others. I made the choice to be alone.


And then, as if winter were somehow creeping like darkness into me, the angry cold of bitterness and hurt and utter aloneness formed like a coiling wraith, like ice around my heart. The child was gone. That quaint room with the white bed had faded into dim past and now only the woman remained, a woman who could not weep. Not for pain or joy or beauty or fullness- but who could only live the half-breathed life of self preservation, a life in shadows where the sun never reached, where soil is cold, dormant, frozen and sterile- a life lived in perpetual winter, starving for light.

This is my back story. The history of who my father was and how his life touched mine and made me who I am. This is my tapestry, woven of war, marred by winters frost.

In another room, soft with the glow of candlelight, another Father sits and thinks of his daughter. And he begins to weave, His old hands adding red and green and gold, threads of mercy and protection and grace to a life marred by loneliness and heartbreak. In the soft light He smiles and thinks of how pleased she will be when He's finished, when she finally knows that her father never left her, that He has watched her sleep and held her hand. He has plans for this tapestry of living and his eyes fill as He thinks of them. Suddenly though, he stops, as if listening.
Beyond His quiet weaver's room the snow falls, but beneath it, in the fertile soil of the weaver's garden, something stirs...

growth, it seems.

The weaver nods as if in agreement. Yes, it is time for spring.

Revolutionary Jesus

I want to be honest, and yet it's so hard for me to say this, like this, so publicly; this heresy. But I'm going to do it anyway, because I don't think I'm alone, because it's part of my process and because the very idea that I don't want to do something usually makes me all the more inclined to push through it and do it anyway, if only to say that I completed the difficult task.

I have hated Jesus.

Hated him and not just a little, but in the depths of who I am. I believed him to be an absolute FAKE. What a hoax! Man in God, on earth, to take my sins, pay the price, ascend into "heaven" to be seated at the right hand of God and someday to return to Earth and establish a perfect kingdom and rule forever. Sounds like a fable.
But the fairy tale qualities of this story were not the root of my avoidance, my anger or hostility towards this kind shepherd who's always pictured in clean, white robes and sandals, hands outstretched, red cloak around his shoulders and a peaceful expression on his tan face. Those were Sunday school images and I knew they were the fabric of imaginations. I know that still.
I couldn't know that picturesque Jesus, that man who never made a mistake, or had a personality, or told a joke. That Jesus didn't solve world hunger, heal my cancer-stricken grandmother even though she believed that He would. The Jesus that so many Christians want to follow didn't always do what he was supposed to do. And He wasn't very real, this marvelous lie, not even real to His own people; not in the churches I've visited. Not in the chancel of my own heart.
Modestly dressed women stood in worship in the sanctuary's of those churches, raised their hands in worship and then bit each other in the backs once they were out the doors, ignoring the desperate needs of other women to be loved without judgment, to talk to someone, to relate, to be free.
The suit clad men stood alongside their wives, looking dignified, sometimes humbled, other times strong and straight, exemplifying traditional Christian manhood, even preaching the 'word of god' from the pulpit, all the while having gay lovers waiting in the wings, a bottle in their desk drawer, pornographic websites bookmarked on their desktops, perfection too heavy to carry, humanity demanding to be released, acknowledged, unavoidable though they try, though we all try.

What are we to make of this modern day church? What am I to make of this ridiculous, pompous display of our "convictions"!? I am shouting this in writing. No WONDER non-believers hate us. No WONDER they don't believe a WORD THAT WE SAY!

WE DON'T EVEN BELIEVE A WORD THAT WE SAY.

What an arrogant church we've become. What an arrogant people. What an arrogant person I am. I look back over my years as a 'Christian' and wonder if I was ever really following Jesus or just putting on nice clothes on Sunday and showing up at the clubhouse for practice. I hate the Jesus that lived in me because that Jesus looked exactly like the worst parts of myself; prideful, judgmental, critical, arrogant and conceited, 'perfect' and proud of it, better than you. And I don't need that Jesus. I can be all of those things by myself, no assistance necessary. And I'll probably get a lot farther in life because I can stop giving my money to causes I don't believe in or really, know anything about.

I didn't believe a word I said, a thought I held, a conviction I possessed. They were all just 'initiation fee's' for the club I was attending at the time. Did I tell people about Christ? About His love? About a change in my life? Well, no. Because I didn't have any idea what that love crap meant, because there hadn't really been a change in my life that behavioral modification couldn't explain and because I hated Jesus. He was so freaking unappealing. Also, the thought crossed my mind that if I talked about my church to whatever person was in front of me, they might attend. And we can't have just anybody you know.

God forgive me, my soul whispers. Forgive me.

Forgive me for avoiding the eyes of the needy, for pretending to be too busy to acknowledge the homeless, the ugly, the bedraggled, the abused. Forgive me for being choosy about the 'kind of people' I associate with, forgive me for my righteous indignation when someone doesn't live life my way, doesn't worship my way, doesn't take communion my way, doesn't look the way a good Christian should look, behave and be. Forgive me, God, for allowing my personal Jesus to come to the forefront; that Jesus who is the mascot for my own desires and prejudices and for taking up my martyr's cross to follow him. Because, yes, I HATE the Pharisaical Jesus of my own invention. No wonder he's unappealing. He's constructed of fantasy and wishful thinking, formed out of pride and raised to life by the breath of self worship.

I want to walk the lakeshore with a God who is real. That God who whispered to me about His delight in who I am, his presence in the darkness calling me forward to know him truly, to abandon this charlatan Jesus of my selfish ideals and become a follower of the man who fed the hungry and loved the poor, who offered water to the thirsty and gentle grace to the adulteress, the prostitute, the lost. The man who's greatest instruction for our lives was to love one another. Who told me to care for the orphans and the widows, those who suffered, those who hurt, those who were lonely and broken. Would I know that Jesus if He stood before me? I'd like to say yes...

I want a faith who's hands are rough and calloused, worn from action, marred with the beauty of beliefs put to use. I want a faith who's feet are covered in the dust of villages with no running water and tired from walking, running, driving, to those who need a friend, a meal, a conversation, encouragement, love. I want a faith who's heart breaks for the children of our worlds orphanages, breaks for China's mothers who are forced to put their daughters to death, breaks for the fathers of Malawi who watch their wives and children starve and waste away to ashes, breaks for the fifteen year old kid next door who's mother is on meth and who's father died last year, breaks and breaks and breaks, this heart of faith that pounds out it's convictions on the inner workings of my soul.

I am done with this ridiculous image of jesus that I've been carrying around all my life. I don't want the tidy god that welcomes the tidy Christian to church every Sunday. I want the messy, dust covered, blood soaked God that walked the streets touching people with healing hands. I want the God who turned over the tables of injustice. I want to follow that Revolutionary Jesus into a life marked by love, marked by change, marked by growth, touched by grace and full of mercy.

What do I know of who He is? What do I know of this God who calls me? I know the call is irresistible, irrevocable, beautiful. And I'm drawn forward into knowing Him and through Him, to knowing myself, another mystery.

"An identity grounded in God would mean that when we think of who we are, the first thing that would come to mind is our status as someone who is deeply loved by God."
David G. Benner
The Gift of Being Yourself

The Forgiveness Challenge

My list was longer than I thought and it's taking some time. I also procrastinated for almost a week, looking at my legal pad, which is practically attached to me everywhere I go, looking at my pen, also attached, and avoiding them like the plague.
In my mind I could easily list the small wounds; there was the girl who's name I can't remember who was mean to me in Kindergarten (I've also realized through this process that I'm incredibly petty), a rude comment made by my grandmother when I was a teen, several years of verbal abuse from a relative that I wasn't that close to anyway, all the millions of mean things my brother did to me as a child which have resulted in a fear of stair cases and severe claustrophobia, etc. Those things were easy.
But when I thought about the truly difficult things; the way my father left, old rejections that truly, deeply wounded, a bitter and recent betrayal by someone I trusted wholeheartedly, and a few others- I came up against a wall which loomed hugely in front of me. It was a wall of fear...and of pride.
Fear because in order to really forgive someone, you have to take an honest look at what the hurt really was, realistically look at your own feelings, and those things are scary. They hurt, so it makes sense that we avoid them.
And pride because I felt I had the "right" to hold onto my anger and resentment like a hot coal in my hand, yelling, "I won't let go! You can't make me!! It's mine!" Well, yes, it is. But it's also continuing to wound me, debilitating me, with each passing moment. And who's really suffering here? Not my father. Not those who rejected me. Certainly not that mean girl from Kindergarten who I'm sure is a lovely individual now.

In the words of C.S.Lewis, "Forgiveness is a beautiful word, Until you have someone to forgive." and he's right, as he so often is. Forgiveness is not a choice we make once. It's a perpetual release, over and over, for what can often be many years or perhaps a lifetime. My father left when I was sixteen and then disowned me in an email because " if you're the kind of daughter I'm going to have, then I'd rather not have one." I remember those words as if they are engraved in stone, which in a sense, they are. They're written on the granite tablet of my heart.
His rejection is probably the most minor in the list of "impossible forgives" which I have been called to do. This is not to say that I have more of a right than anyone else to hang onto my bitterness, because certainly I do not, but only to say that I have a deep and personal understanding of the battle that we all face when asked, either by our God, or by the mere penalties we face in our lives for hanging onto those coals, to release others from the prison we think we've placed them in.
And, as my dear friend Nancy stated in her comment to The Root of Bitterness, Forgiveness is entirely a personal matter. It's not something we will succeed at simply by advertising that we've done it. We can ask and answer that question only for ourselves.
Last summer, I had a strange experience involving my anger towards my dad. Very randomly, on a day when I was busy doing other things and not really thinking about him at all, I felt a very real prompting to write him a letter. To which my response was, "Are you kidding me?! No way!"
I delayed and delayed, that feeling of prompting getting heavier and heavier, the way it does when you KNOW you're supposed to be doing something and you are NOT doing it. When the constant prompting became too annoying to continue ignoring, I sat down with pen and paper, gave myself a pep talk, and tried to write. Nothing happened. I'm a writer. I can write just about anything because for some reason, that's the way God made me, and I tell you, I could not write that letter.
I started over and over, Dear.....who? Not 'dad' certainly. And 'father' was way too weird. I tried his given name and that looked ridiculous, but a better choice than the familial, so I went with it. And then, where do I start? "Hey, nice to finally be writing. Been awhile. How are things?" Nope. I couldn't even put the words on the page without the anger boiling up inside me. I didn't know what to say. I could imagine him sitting there reading it and picking up the phone. I didn't want him to pick up the phone. I didn't want to talk to him. I didn't even want to be writing that stupid letter to that man! I was furious with him and I refused to be polite! I started again and again, but my letter always turned angry and bitter, full of resentment and accusations, and I couldn't send that! My dad had to know that I'd grown beyond that and that he no longer affected me. That would give him too much power and I wouldn't do it. I just wouldn't!
But I'd been asked to write the letter and that feeling wouldn't let me go. In frustration, I tore off the millionth sheet from my trusty legal pad and wadded it up, an action I loathed because it indicated failure, and I started over. My way. Obviously I had writers block and just needed to get the emotions out of the way before I proceeded.
I then spent the next hour writing the most scathing letter I've ever written to anyone. Obviously his given name was replaced in the introduction for a pronoun more appropriate to my feelings at the time. The rest of that literary masterpiece followed suit. Four pages, front and back. Later, I set my pen down and leaned back in my chair.
"Well." I said belligerently to that still, small voice who had prompted me to write it in the first place. "There it is. I wrote a letter, just like you said." and dripping with sarcasm and hurt, I added, "Shall I send it????"
I didn't really expect a response, but He surprised me with one anyway and said, very simply, very clearly, in the way He does that is unmistakably His own, "I didn't tell you to send a letter. I just told you to write one." ............oh.

And there it was. All my anger and bitterness and rage and rejection, all the words the child was never able to say to the parent that left them, written plainly in pen and ink, in my own words, undeniable. I hate it, though it's obviously needed, when The Lord reveals the contents of my heart. Especially when I'm trying so hard to hide them from myself and everyone else. I just hate it.
I hate it because it makes me weep. Because it causes me to look closely and realistically at the pain I feel, and not just the anger. I hate it because it makes me vulnerable to a God I don't fully understand and never will and because looking at who we really are is often gut wrenching and horrible.
I sat there that day last summer and cried for that child that I used to be. And I suppose that was when I was truly brave, when I accepted that he hadn't just wronged me when he left and said those terrible things. He had hurt me. He'd broken me. And part of me was always afraid that I'd never be put back together.

Now, was I supposed to restore the relationship with my father? Nope. Because forgiveness does not always equal reconciliation. Again, it's not about the other person. It's about us. I was only supposed to release him, and I am still in the process of doing that. I'm not where I want to be, sure. But I'm definitely not where I was! That day was a miraculous day in my life and I'm so thankful that The Lord did what He did, though it was painful at the time, because I have been slowly able to release that hot coal from my hand. And as I am able to do so, my heart is changed. My father's hurtful words are not what I want written on my heart when the book of my life is at it's end.
Forgiveness is a life giving process in the same way that it is a life giving process when someone is released from prison. The doors swing open, the light shines in and eyes that have not seen freedom in ages, look to the sun, the sky, the world, and it is full of possibilities, endless roads that may be traveled now that freedom has been won.
I. WANT. THAT.

"For where the Spirit of The Lord is, there is freedom..." 2 Corinthians 3:17

The Root of Bitterness

The Root of Bitterness

It's been a week and I'm already hoping I can survive this search for Value. In many ways I feel like I'm in rehab, learning my 12 steps to a full recovery from not really knowing who I am or what I'm about. This is going to be more than learning cute little lessons and then writing about them, I'm discovering. It becomes clear that as I ask God to teach me where my value truly lies, he surprises me by showing me where it is not, as I wrote last week. And this week, revealing the condition of my own heart in response to people who've hurt me, showing me my lack of response when someone does or says something which causes me pain.
I assumed that those behaviors; the calm acceptance of others rudeness, the silence with which I met comments that demoralized or humiliated me, the way in which I picked up everyone's image of me, especially the negative ones, and placed them squarely on myself, absorbing them totally, would eventually fade away or perhaps even be snapped away in an instant the moment I realized the origin of My Elusive Value. All I had to do was figure out the One Word answer to why I don't value myself and that would instantly solve these little annoyances.
However, it becomes evident as I proceed, even in these early stages, that while Christian doctrine would give a simple, decisive and cliche answer to that question; which is obviously, "you must find your identity in Christ!", the answer in my own life is more complicated than that and cannot be defined in one single word, even if that word is Jesus.

Quite possibly, the answer to this quandary shares characteristics with the quantum sciences in that it is many things at the same time, all equally possible yet wholly individual and happening simultaneously. And my responses to people who have hurt me are just one tiny facet in the gem of self evaluation. This is incredibly frustrating.
You see, I assumed that my answers would be found at the end of my search, packaged neatly and ready for printing by the end of the twelve months I've predestined for myself to finish this endeavor. As I said, it becomes clear to me that my answer, indeed my many answers, are going to be found within the journey itself, within the God who leads me through this maze, and will never be neat, tidy or even really ever 'finished'.

I watched my life carefully this week, waiting for another 'basement breakthrough' to occur so that I could quickly grasp it, write it, and add it to the file of research I find myself doing daily. The element that I didn't expect, perhaps stupidly, was that when examining my own life, I would find things that deeply hurt me. I assumed this project would be all about research, interviews with other women, mass amounts of reading. But apparently, the search for True Value is my own individual search and is between myself and my Creator, and has little or nothing to do with the experiences of anyone else. It is not comparable. This weeks lesson has been centered on the contents of my heart, something only He can advise me on.

I have always thought of myself as an outspoken person. But I don't think that's an accurate statement. I can be outspoken, but more often than not, I opt to just take people's rudeness or insult and say nothing. Again, this begs the question why? Perhaps the solution is not in whether or not I address their rudeness or criticism or insult, but in whether or not I accept it internally and what I do with it from there.
My habit has always been to take their words in, mull them over, allow them to sting and then to harbor a deep and perpetual dislike for that person forever after. I marry this reliable tactic with gossip, avoidance and withdrawal, which is really a form of assault as it's delivered with the same intention, which is to hurt.
I can guarantee with eerie certainty that I can remember every insult or bullying remark I've ever received. I cannot remember my responses, probably because there were none, at least outwardly, but the names of those who hurt me will be forever engraved on my heart. I carry them still, those old wounds, and they never fail to reinfect the other areas of my life, other relationships, with their poison.

If you had asked me a week ago if I was a bitter person, I would have given a resounding "NO!" in response. After all, it's not like I constantly think about those incidents or even really remember them unless I try. But bitterness is more than persistent emotion at remembered pain, it's all the ways we allow our life to be different, in ways it otherwise would not have been, ways that harm or otherwise inhibit us and take away our freedom, as a result of that pain. Under this new definition, I must look back and reexamine. Am I a bitter person? Yeah, I think I am.
I have considered that perhaps changing my response to people when they are critical or rude or judgmental and simply telling them off might be successful at deflecting what they're saying. If I could just snap back at them then I'd be good to go. Unfortunately, my hang up here is that when we're openly rude or critical or judgmental to others, we look really, really ugly. And I would rather be the one who says nothing in response to the person who looks so ugly rather than the sort of person who gets sucked in and responds in kind. But it still hurts and I still want to say mean things to them and you can bet, I can still remember everything they said to me years later. So I don't think my silence is really working for me.

How in the world does this interface with a search for Value? I asked myself that question as well and even questioned whether or not this was worth writing about. But after experiencing FIVE different people saying or doing openly rude or humiliating things just this last week alone, a record high even for me, I had ample opportunity to examine my responses and my heart. I was disappointed and surprised to find bitterness there.
It appears that cleaning up my life, sorting the garbage from the treasures, is going to be happening internally, too, not just in the basement. And it's going to have to start with forgiveness.
My value isn't expressed or honored when I choose to respond to someone's rudeness or insensitivity with rudeness of my own, even if that rudeness and pain are kept to myself. It's not just honored, but also radiated, when the only response my heart is capable of offering is one of love.
In Renovation of The Heart, Dallas Willard states that
"Actions are not impositions on who we are. They come out of our heart and the inner realities it supervises and interacts with."
What's he's saying here is that we behave exactly like the kind of people that we actually are. My responses to people are not accidental, they don't have excuses to justify them, they aren't just 'bad choices' as our culture is so fond of saying. We choose them because we are the kind of people that would choose them.

And my response to that is; uh oh.
And my prayer along with that is, Lord, change me. Make me the woman that you want me to be. Because I can't just magically stop being bitter and I certainly won't pretend that those feelings aren't there if they actually are. What good would that do me? My life would still express who I was in the choices I'd make, according to Willard. So the only solution is that God himself do the work required to transform my inner person into Christlikeness.
But I can be obedient. I can choose forgiveness. And, one memory, one hurt at a time, "take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ." I can make the choice to love God and love others (and there's a reason that love for God comes FIRST here.) sincerely, from the depths of my heart and not just in shallow action occasionally.

So, I'll be spending some time this week making a list of those individuals who have wounded me in various ways. And then I'm going to choose to forgive them and let it go. I'll do this for as long as it takes until forgiveness moves in to the place where bitterness used to live because, apparently, finding value is more than introspection at what's already there, it is the willing participation in the change and growth from what's already there to what we will become as He changes us.

"I am confident of this; that He who began a good work in you will carry it out to completion until the day of Christ." Phil 1:6

A One Year Search for True Value

The Great Purge

As many of you know, what started as a fun travel blog (and a place to randomly post pictures of my life when NOT traveling), has morphed into a weird, sporadic sort of journal centering on my personal journey...to....somewhere. I've gotten multiple emails, phone calls and comments about my writing and what I'm finding is that this as yet unnamed process of self-discovery is really pretty common among women. I'm also realizing that other people find it entertaining to read about someone else going through it so that they all feel more normal. So, why fight destiny?
The truth is that I don't really know who I am. The truth is that I don't have it all together and probably never will. The truth is that I struggle with understanding who God is to me, what having faith really means, what my calling in this life is to be and what kind of woman I really am. The honest to God truth is that I experience times of deep loneliness and isolation and don't always know what to do about that. My role as a mother and wife is not ultimately fulfilling and quite often I feel very wasted and taken for granted. In short, my life thus far has been pretty unsatisfying and I refuse to live like this for one more minute.
Unfortunately, my identity up until now has not supported this new philosophy of accepting truth for what truth is, and admitting that my roles do not fully satisfy me. My identity and actually, my religious views too, have confined me to this strange and scientifically unfounded expectation that I should be utterly joyful doing the laundry and wiping little noses and that searching for more than that is a betrayal of some kind.
Well. Sorry. But I'm doing it. I might be a stay at home mom. I might not have finished that degree I started on all those years ago. I might be living in a tiny orchard town in the middle of nowhere, but that doesn't mean that I can't have an amazingly fulfilling life, full of richness and beauty and one which will be deeply satisfying to me, regardless of the season of my life. I want joy. I want happiness. I'm going to get my six thousand dollars worth out of these braces and smile more often and with actual sincerity.
My first step a few weeks back was realizing that I'm captive to the opinions and expectations of others and that I can't be free to love God or myself or anyone until I find freedom from those chains. This realization begged the question, why? Why do I allow myself to be taken captive by these things? And the answer is value. Or rather, a lack of value, a lack of meaning.
And so for the next twelve months I'm pursuing true value, where it comes from, what it means and what difference it can make in the life of an ordinary woman. I'll be posting my experiences here weekly, partly to share my thoughts with you, but also to help me keep my goal in mind. I not only welcome your comments, but I hope you will comment. Comment, criticize, encourage, make suggestions, share your own experiences, tell me what books you've read that have helped you, give your opinion. I'm deeply curious about any and all information I can gather on this subject.

My journey has begun already, and unexpectedly, with a surprisingly profound purging. For those of you who have basements or garages, or God forbid, perhaps you're like me and you're cursed with both, this post is going to terrify you. But at least you'll have the benefit of having had warning whereas I went into it naively, thinking I was simply organizing the store room.
My husband and I committed this last weekend to finally go through the boxes we had placed on the storage shelves in our basement three years ago when we moved into this house. We're planning on remodeling our unfinished basement this next year and needed to get the useless stuff out of the way and sort the things we wanted to keep before the usual remodel calamity strikes.
And so, in our stupidity, we blithely made a pot of coffee, filled our respective mugs, and headed belowstairs to conquer our foe bright and early Saturday morning. The plan, and this only showcases our lack of foresight, was to sort out the boxes, tidy up a bit and then head outside to take down the Christmas lights. We assumed this little 'Salvation Army Donation' project would be finished up by noon, the Christmas lights would be down by one and we could be happily tinkering with our remaining electrical work (left over from last summers rewiring project) by late afternoon. Yeah. Not so much.
We enter our storage area, which had become a catchall for everything that was displaced when we started the LAST remodel in August, and are faintly surprised by the sheer amount of stuff we've accumulated in the 12x8 foot area. Not to mention the other storage area on the other side of the basement which is equally full of our prized possessions, which we could certainly not inventory if asked to do so by memory. The reality is that we had no idea what was down there, nor did we care. It was our stuff.
You know, the legions of things we keep just for the sake of keeping. Our old elementary school papers, stuffed animals that meant everything to us when we were five, ugly old candles that I would never use, but couldn't justify throwing away because they'd never been lit, pots and pans who's non-stick coating was scratched away but might still work if I used enough oil and if I had nothing else and was in a pinch, Ryan's karate trophy's and awards from FedEx and all the kids baby clothes that someday I might want to look at again. And on top of all of this was an enormous pile of toys that hadn't seen the light of day in possibly years; Megan's old rocking horse, plastic children's chairs long outgrown, every HappyMeal toy that we'd ever received and never thrown out, all in bags and boxes and crates, collecting dust and housing arachnids.
We began happily enough. We strung up work lights and got the broom. Ryan turned on the stereo and we chatted and sipped our coffee's and pulled down one box at a time and started to sort. After the first box I realized I was going to need a garbage bag. I was delighted that that box had had next to nothing in it! Hurray for me, at least this one was easy. I fetch the garbage bag which I believe will be far too big for this job and sit back down with another box.
Broken tile pieces, ugly Christmas ornaments that I'd never put out, old grapevine wreathes that were long past their glory, broken lamps, picture frames with broken glass, rickety tables, an old chair, a clock that Ryan made in shop class when he was in high school which is now missing it's works.
I went for another garbage bag. And several boxes to put all the things that were too good to throw away and could be donated to charity. Soon, I had cleared an entire shelf and felt so proud! I turned around to start replacing all the things that we'd decided were worth saving and would go neatly back on the storage shelves...but there was nothing to put back.
I shrug. On to the next shelf and probably to all the good stuff, I think. But box after box after box were empty of anything worth keeping. At first this process was liberating. The space! I think. The storage for all the good stuff! I am someone who likes things simple and tidy, but it has been very easy for me to avoid dealing with the basement because, well, because it's the basement and I don't have to look at it unless I purposefully go down there. And why would I? The place was a mess!

By the end of the day, we were exhausted. We never did make it outside to take down the Christmas lights and we certainly didn't 'tinker' with the electrical work which is also long overdue for attention. We collapsed into bed and knew we weren't even halfway done with our 'little project'.
Sunday morning we stayed home from church and headed back to the basement, coffee in hand again, but with less determination, like the last day of a battle that has not gone well thus far. We were losing heart and a deep sense of loss and frustration was settling on me which, at the time, I didn't understand. I thought I was just sick of being down there. Sick of the dust and the spiders and the mess and the hopeless pursuit of tidy.
We finished the store room by mid day on Sunday and slowly made our way to the 'storage area', i.e., the other side of the basement where we dumped all of the junk we didn't want to deal with right away. The better junk was kept here; old greeting cards that were too meaningful to toss, books we hadn't read in a decade or more but can't get rid of because someday we will build a library somewhere in our tiny house, the fishbowl now devoid of fish, the telescope that Ryan loves but has used exactly once in our entire marriage, stacks of our old love letters and boxes and envelopes of pictures.
I sat down in the middle of the mess on Sunday afternoon and started sorting every loose piece of paper I could find. That sense of loss and frustration got heavier and heavier. I made a pile for recycling, a pile for the shredder and a pitifully small pile of keepsakes. Ryan, meanwhile, sorted through his own things and the kids toys and finally tackled the monstrosity that was his workbench.
We worked until well past evening and in the end gathered together twelve boxes and/or bags full of garbage and five boxes and/or bags of things good enough to donate. What was left was an apple box of keepsakes, two medium sized rubbermaid containers full of baby clothes, some of which were antique and passed down generations, and a respectable pile of camping equipment.

I look around in confusion. Where is all of our stuff?? I ask myself. I look at Ryan. Where's our stuff?? He too is depressed about getting rid of things he cannot justify keeping any longer, things with no real meaning that he has hung on to for lack of things that did have real meaning. I'm shocked at all the garbage and the piles of donations, things I don't even recognize, things I don't even care about anymore.

I've been harboring a bad attitude all morning and it finally gets the better of me. I bite Ryan's head off about something trivial and stomp up the stairs. He finds me in the car a few minutes later, engine running. I'm leaving.

"What's the matter?" He's deeply concerned and thinks perhaps two days in a dark basement with a woman who is essentially solar powered might not have been such a good idea. "Do you need to get out for awhile?" He thinks he's struck a chord here even though I'm gazing like a catatonic person out the front window. "I know! We'll all go. Let's just get out for a bit. I need it too." At this he rushes back inside and comes out a moment later with our kids in tow. They all pile into the car, I move into the passenger seat so Ryan can drive, and we begin the trek westward. We're not sure where we're going, but we need some space from the project and the emotions it tills up. I still don't know what my problem is but am so desperately sad I can hardly stand it.
We weren't yet to Hood River when the tears came. I just sat there in the front seat, weeping soundlessly. Ryan says nothing. He's waiting and knows I don't want him to bother me about it. When I've gotten enough distance from the dark clutter of the basement and had enough time to process what's happening in me, I can finally diagnose the cause of my grief and I say to Ryan,
"There's nothing left! All those boxes were supposed to have our life in them and they were just...empty. Where did our life go?"
But the reality of the situation is that we have spent the last ten years of our marriage investing in things that don't matter and then storing them on the shelves in our basement. We've hung on to things that weighed us down for fear that giving them up would leave us without our memories, without our pasts. And when we went back to look at those things, it was a bit startling to come to understand that everything we thought we had was meaningless junk.
I saved the most important things, the love letters, the pictures, some of the greeting cards that meant something to me. But we are, more or less, starting over.
This is, at once, terrifying and exciting. We have purged our house of all those old trappings. Now to purge the idea that our value is in what we possess. Easier said, I'm afraid, this idea which is so thoroughly ingrained in our western way of thinking. Even this last Christmas serves as an example of how consumerism has put it's slant on my thinking.
I don't even want to know how many thousands of dollars worth of stuff will be housed on the shelves of the Salvation Army by the end of the week, and all from my house.

In his book The Call, Os Guiness states, "The overall lesson of insatiability is that money alone cannot buy the deepest things we desire. Money never purchases love, or eternity, or God. It is the wrong means, the wrong road, the wrong search."
I suppose the same thing can be said of all the stuff we acquire with our money. It will not bring us closer to loved ones, give us satisfaction or bring us meaning. It's just the junk in our basement.
And so, on my search for true meaning, January's lesson for me has been one of materialism, finding value by discovering what has no value. It's also been one of finding room for what's really important. It's not the telescope, it's pouring a glass of wine and spending an easy evening in the backyard with my husband, gazing up at the stars and hearing him talk about the constellations.
It isn't the photographs, it's an afternoon with Megan, building them into an album of her favorite memories.
And it isn't even about de-cluttering the basement, taking loads of used goods to the salvation army. It's about putting together a basket of our best stuffed animals and taking them personally to the kids at the Providence Children's Hospital and spending some time with people who aren't fortunate enough to be able to go about their day as we do.
Lesson #1. It's not about things. It's about life. I want less of the former so that I can have MORE of the latter.