Author Archives: PearlS

Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted. Fezzik, The Princess Bride

 

Stay at home. Save a life.

We zoomed under the words posted above the highway, intent on making our Taco John Sunday brunch (terrible, to be honest) last us till our next stop, the disc golf course. The kids and the dog whined, no longer used to long jaunts in the car. We passed out fruit and encouraged them to see what they could see out the window.

Joe knew I needed to get out, so we drove an hour and a half to a new course.

Disc golfers seem to be notoriously unconcerned, even with signs warning parties over ten people. Men hold bottles of beer in koozies while putting shots. Dogs run around, thrilled to be in the open. Folks smile. It’s a mask-less oasis. None of us are shaking hands, but we are all breathing the same air.

At the tenth hole, we took off our shoes and waded in the creek. Gretty loaded a sun hat with river-washed rocks. We finished the course and ate Cheez-its out of the back of the car, enjoying a view different than our front and back yard.

I was at the point where I couldn’t look out my front window without stomach acid burning my throat. This week I reported a domestic violence incident in my neighborhood. I held the girl in my arms as she sobbed and recounted all the ways he has hurt and threatened her. I held her baby as the cop took photos of her bruises. For hours I begged her to let me take her to a safe house. She wouldn’t leave.

I am so sick of hearing the jingle: stay at home, save a life.

I’m weary of celebrities in celebrity homes acting like we are all doing our part, baking bread and mindlessly scrolling social media, looking for the next big meme or “challenge”. I am tired of the news assuring us we cannot trust our instinct, our own rationale. In my city, it is becoming, just this week, absolutely required to wear a mask in public or face a $1000 fine. Reporters sit in front of cameras, faces masked, urging us to trust them, to do what they say. They know more than us, they think. Wearing a face mask in public shows we care, they say. Do it because it’s the right thing to do.

Is it the right thing to do? Who says what is right? Dear God, throw us some bread. Open our eyes and show us where we are being deceived.

The Lord nullifies the counsel of the nations;
He frustrates the plans of the peoples.

The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
The plans of His heart from generation to generation.
Psalm 33:10-11

When we lived in southwestern Colorado, our county had the highest liquor stores per capita as well as one of the highest suicide rates in the country. Distraction from hopelessness crowned purple mountains’ majesty. In the past decade, recreational marijuana and same sex marriages have been legalized, redefining sobriety and disparaging the family unit. Who needs a mother and a father? How old-fashioned!
One in four babies in this country dies by abortion; in Colorado, a fetus may be aborted up to birth. As long as she doesn’t breath air before they silence her, it is fine and dandy. My body, my rights.

We are so morally awful that we fail to recognize our choices are leading to our deaths! We are far, far beyond wearing masks. We are sick on the inside, sicker than we care to admit. We cannot rely on the government to fix the problem.

Take, for example, China. One night when I stayed up late, I watched a documentary on Amazon Prime called One Child Nation. Filmed and produced by a Chinese-American who interviewed her own family on the one-child policy and its implementation, the documentary is a heartbreaking insight into the overreach of Communist China.

The government imposed a law to limit the number of children a family might have, promoting its ideology in numerous billboards, songs, dance, and cultural stories. Even today in China are slogans–fading painted reminders on city blocks: One more baby means one more tomb. Induce labor. Abortion! Anything but an excess baby.

For a price, some families might be allowed to expand their family to two children, but only if spaced five years apart. The stories are horrific. Forced abortions and sterilizations, women screaming and pleading for mercy. During the interviews, tears trickle from deadened eyes. They shrug– “We had no choice.”

As Hitler rose to control in Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer could not reconcile any Christian peacemaking attempt with the Nazi regime. He had seen the African-American struggle for equality while he was in school in the States, and he felt it eerily similar to the injustice taking place in Germany.
“Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear…Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more than they are doing now.”
D. Bonhoeffer

We are not far off this path of history repeating itself. I fear our pacifistic, don’t-rock-the-boat nature is bordering neglect. Someone is going to have to explain our inaction to future generations–why millions of kids weren’t allowed to learn at school or even play at playgrounds. Where they were held captive, at the mercy of domestic abuse. When mental health issues became the next crisis. When churches and fellowship were forbidden. Why the economy was stifled; why the new Depression began.

 

You may point a finger and say, how irresponsible, how naive! People are dying–doesn’t she care?! Here are my credentials: I am a sober, recycling, thrift-store wearing, tax paying, public school supporting, law abiding, cautious, debt-free, domestic abuse-reporting citizen, yet I am not given the choice to decide on wearing a mask in public. When is it ever my body, my choice?

This is the opposite of civil liberty. This is fear-mongering. This is bullying. This is overreach. This has little to do with sickness or concern for the elderly and health-compromised. If we had cared about the least of these, we would have looked into the nursing home for-profit industry long ago, because it has a history littered with neglect. If we cared, we would respect human life enough to not give handouts to people unwilling to work for bread. If we cared, we wouldn’t collect debt like it was Halloween candy. If we cared, we would not have legalized a drug (marijuana) that damages the brain and exacerbates mental illness. If  we cared, we would not fiddle with and downplay the role of a mother and a father or the family unit. If we truly cared, we would support caregivers. We would be people who honored our parents. We would love our neighbors as ourselves. This is the moral code written on our hearts, yet our minds that have been seared to allow the unconscionable.

Here is where we find ourselves.

You and I–we do not need to be told to keep our germs to ourselves; it is quite the natural way for a responsible, healthy person to behave. But we are no longer healthy-minded, and this is why it is so easy to be tricked into mindless submission.

We live in a country where the death of a celebrity is worth more than the death of a dear one in the nursing home. Kobe Bryant sparked a wave of mourning prior to Covid; twenty thousand nursing home deaths have not. We love pointing fingers and shifting the blame. Politicians fling hate like confetti–they’re ready to throw a party for the death of a president, a candidate, a representative, a speaker.

General Douglas Macarthur said, “In this day of gathering storms, as moral deterioration of political power spreads its growing infection, it is essential that every spiritual force be mobilized to defend and preserve the religious base upon which this nation is founded; for it has been that base which has been the motivating impulse to our moral and national growth. History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual reawakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”

 

Friends, people have always been hurting. People have forever been dying. As with my neighbor, I might not convince you to leave the craziness in the hands of the crazy. I might beg and plead, yet you still find the world an entertaining place and nothing more. Your life will testify for you, your silence, your words, your actions. If you are on the fence, ask Jesus to throw bread in your direction to knock you off of it. Ask him for perfect wisdom in this world, ask what is the will of God in my life? Ask for the Spirit to move in your heart, even as it raised Jesus from the dead. These are days where your seeking and knocking are imperative. It isn’t just about masks.
If you know the good you ought to do and do not do it, for you it is sin.
James 4:17
We must finally stop appealing to theology to justify our reserved silence about what the state is doing — for that is nothing but fear. ‘Open your mouth for the one who is voiceless’ — for who in the church today still remembers that that is the least of the Bible’s demands in times such as these?

D. Bonhoeffer

 

I spoke with my mom on the phone last night. Our conversations keep circling back to these weird times we are living, and she said something I thought was worth writing down: I hope people are taking this time to slow down and think. Maybe it will change the way they live. Maybe it will change everything for them.

Like it or not, she’s right. Everything has come to a screeching halt, and it is the perfect opportunity to pose thoughtful questions. Before we start the engine back up–if that is what happens–question everything. Knock on the door and boldly ask for bread, for understanding and insight. I am posting a small series of some of my midnight conversations–I’d love to hear yours, too.

I’ve been thinking more about femininity and our culture, and how it enmeshes itself with  our modern American version of Christianity. I have touched on this in a previous post, written last year after Rachel Held Evans passed away. In a way, she split hairs for the faith community. She stepped into a gap and bluntly asked the questions we all had but were too afraid of rocking the boat. We differ in many ways, but like her, I have wandered this desert of perplexing “Biblical womanhood” for several years.
It has never felt natural to me to paste myself to the wallpaper or be a domesticated “help meet” to my spouse. I’m pretty independent, sort of stubborn, and embarrassingly low maintenance. I crave uncomplicated routines and despise laziness. At the same time, I am aware of the truth in the statement that beauty fades but a gentle spirit is forever lovely. The gritty sandpaper of the Spirit has had to smooth a lot of my rough edges, and I’m learning to yield a bit sooner as clay in the hands of a Potter.

My husband has pursued a career while I have stayed home and raised children. The feminist would cringe if they heard me declare my love for homemaking (by that I do not mean house cleaning), but I’m afraid they would stand and applaud if I confessed how much I grieved my lost dreams from my twenties. I didn’t even know what those dreams were, but I was sure I could knock them out if given a chance. Then God gave me four babies. It powered up the Holy Spirit sander–they have completely worn me down. Now I am equally at home in my mind mindlessly washing dishes as I am doing anything work or dream-related.

How does one explain the peace that comes with forfeit to a go-getter who has pursued their dreams? This was where I slipped off the train that carried people like Rachel Held Evans to feminist-Christian applause and success. I stopped questioning if God’s ways were higher and if His words held water. Of course they were. Of course they did. In our marriage, it wasn’t an argument that landed me a loser; we simply allowed the money making responsibility to rest on my husband’s shoulders, because he is better at it. It made sense. Likewise, I’m better at home life. Happier, even. I love my kids and am thankful to stay home with them. Some things are no-brainers: our marriage works best when we link arms and humbly take up our respective responsibilities.
Still, I’m no June Cleaver. There remains an unspoken tension when we compare our life to others in our conservative, evangelical circle, because even though things work for us, it doesn’t line right up with expectations. For beginners, we got married and told as few of people as possible just to avoid the gratuitous reactions of people who only slightly knew us. In the Love and Respect class we took, we found ourselves a backward combination: he wanted more love and I wanted more respect. There isn’t a bone in Joe’s body that desires an important, well-spoken, sharp-dressed, influential presence in the church. It makes me uneasy to admit how much I despise small talk and womens’ conferences and table decorations and fussing about refreshments and furniture and baby showers.

We are two oddballs, puzzled over mysteries like the perceived higher calling of being in the “paid ministry” and fellow believers who have no interest in setting a foot in their child’s school or Sunday school class. We are often impatient with a world that encourages us to love our neighbors but has such a hard time realizing that that means here and now and him and her. There is nothing remarkable about us, yet we feel so much on the fringes of Christian culture.
What do you do with folks who don’t fall in step with the crowd? What if they just won’t step in the water and ride the current? What about the system shakers that don’t take a side? I’m afraid I can come off as annoying or impossible to please. But if a person is bold enough to challenge the norms, they risk all sorts of labels.

After studying scripture and asking God to throw more bread, I think mostly everything I was raised to believe about women is only half true, if true at all. Rachel Held Evans hinted at it–I think she was on the cusp. I am finally understanding why my life, my marriage, and our perspective (mine and Joe’s) doesn’t always line up with cultural expectations. The view from the mountaintop looks nothing like the view from the valley. But sometimes in the church, we’re given a perspective that paints a picture only accessible from the top. It cuts out a lot of people who have to climb trees, like Zacchaeus, because they’re at a disadvantage–simply put, they’re too short to see. We’ve been fed a steady diet of what a women or a man ought to look like with little nuance and appreciation for differentiation. Mostly I am thinking on women, because I am one. Specifically in our culture of conservative American evangelicalism, we’ve been alerted to two paths–loud, obnoxious, rebellious (wrong), or gentle, quiet, obedient (right).
It should be simple, but I keep throwing rocks at the foundation of what I’ve been taught to see if it holds up. For example, the husband is supposed to be the head of the home, the spiritual leader. But what about the single woman? What about the woman married to a man who doesn’t want to be a spiritual leader? What about a woman who has lived through abuse and doesn’t trust men? With one-size-fits-all, it is difficult to find a place for the outliers.

As I get older, I realize I’m more aware of how easily I fell into this supposition that people who are able to follow the rules or match pitch must be right, therefore knocking the rest of us out of the running. But womanhood is not only for homemakers and hospitality and June Cleaver. Even if all the audio Bible versions I’ve ever listened to are women actors acting helpless, weepy, pitiful, or emotionally unstable, I know this is not a valid picture of womanhood.

I think I’ve always been a bit aware of the disconnect. The flannel board from my childhood Sunday school memory made Lydia, Martha, Mary, Magdalene, Esther, Ruth and Naomi all look the same. Even Eve just needed a robe in place of her carefully-adjusted hair and fig leaf to look the part. They were beautiful, shallow, Elizabeth Taylor versions of Bible characters, none of whom resembled any women I’d ever seen. None were portrayed as people I actually knew–none except poor Martha–and she was, in church, brushed off as a distracted control freak. Martha, whose work ethic resembled every good woman I’d ever loved and admired, the first to get up and serve, the last to sit down and rest. The tireless mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother who fixed food and cleaned it up with not one nod of gratitude in her direction.

I could read the story, but how was I to really believe it, that love was sitting at the feet of Jesus and not getting the table set for supper? It took years before I put it into context, that at the time Martha’s story was unfolding, Jesus was there–God in person. Poor Martha. She should’ve been using paper plates, not scrubbing dishes.

This is what fooled me for so long–flannel board women, two-dimensional stories. Tales that wrapped women in petty roles. None of them mirrored my mother, grandmothers, aunts, or virtually anyone I knew in the midwest. When I happened upon the chapters describing the roles of men and women in the church, I shrugged and figured they were antiquated. It kept men happy to limit a woman, it made them puff their chest out a bit to keep them quiet.

Let me say, I rarely, rarely saw a man who led his family the way our Bible told us–the “spiritual leader”. My father loved my mother, but did he love her as much as he loved his own body? It seemed pretty apparent that deep down every mother was in charge of the leading.

This is actually what flipped the switch for me.
God doesn’t ask easy things of us. He didn’t ask that a man simply go to work and make money, then retire to the couch for the rest of the evening. He asked him to take care of a woman like it were his own flesh. He doesn’t ask women to sit pretty and keep kids quiet. He asks them to live meaningful lives where not a single word or action is wasted. He didn’t send Jesus to ace some test and prove He was flawless. God held a heavenly list of people who needed to experience love, and He sent Jesus to check off each personality type that has ever represented all of the human race. He hung out with his single friends, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. He loved on women who were abused and tossed to the side. He approached women just to talk with them. He let women touch him. He raised a little girl from the dead and asked for some breakfast. He took the babies from the arms of their mothers just to snuggle them for a moment and smell their sweet heads. He let women be the first to witness his risen self–even though a woman’s voice didn’t count as testimony in the court!

You want to know who has chutzpah, who made the balls-iest move in all of the New Testament? It was a Gentile woman with a demon-possessed child who begged Jesus for help. Those good men, those wonderful, super perceptive, servant-hearted disciples (note my sarcasm) told Jesus he needed to make her go away.  But Jesus pulled her aside and spoke in code. It was a secret language she understood, a pact between just the two of them. Hear this: Jesus pulled a Gentile woman into his circle and spoke her heart language:

It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.

And she shot back the quickest answer only a woman with incredible wit and a lifetime of pain could give:

Yes it is, Lord. Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.

In that time, a man would have every right to kick her in the face for being so cheeky. Jesus applauded the woman and healed her daughter that very instant. (Matthew 15)

Women are essential, elevated, big-time, multi-dimensional characters. We get it wrong all the time because we have the mountain view, the view that values beauty, success, health and wealth. We display our Beth Moores and Ann Voskamps and June Cleavers as the ultimate example of womanhood because they fit our flannel board minds, but we forget we are little shorties who need to climb a tree to see Jesus. The scope of womanhood is an ocean.

Now there are voices all the time being added to this discussion. They challenge our perspective and have incredible sway on our thinking. I listened to a recent podcast of Jen Hatmaker interviewing Glennon Melton-Doyle. These ladies are prominent faith leaders, you could say, and the frustration they expressed regarding this very subject–a woman’s place in society–was palpable. Both authors have recently released books, manifestos, you could call them, regarding the friction caused by unrealistic expectations–the flannel board woman. The conversation was all about feminism, power, the church. However, Hatmaker and Melton-Doyle explained their way out of the fundamental evangelical church, which they felt restricted their freedom. From their perspective, they are breaking chains and the unspoken rules that held them captive participants to life. They describe themselves as teachers of women, as if they are opening doors no one has ever walked through. They say they know the secret to regaining their wildness, untaming the tamed. It begins with hot anger at the system and courage enough to challenge the status quo. There is a sneaky twisting of facts. Do not subscribe to their fake news.

Jesus does not hold women in bondage. He raises a banner of love over us.

Get out of your Sunday school room and toss the flannel in the garbage. God’s love for women is not a thrift store, hand-me-down version. You can’t buy a higher quality, more fulfilling, satisfying, wild and wonderful life than the one He wants to give to you. Power, success, beauty–you’ll forget what you used to want when you run into Jesus.

Climb up into the tree to see Him, let your perspective be changed.

 

I have been sitting on my front porch more than usual. It’s warmer, for one thing, and I’m no longer walking the kids to school. Maybe it is to avoid the dog, who wants to climb up into my lap (she is not a lap dog, nor do I invite or even like lap dogs). She stays off my lap, out of my business, and in the backyard until I’ve had coffee and read or written a bit. Gretty joins me on the porch while two of the boys think about dragging their bodies out of bed and Lu reads upside down on the couch.
It is us two, just girls, and I’ve had a lot of busy-in-the-morning little boys to know to appreciate a little girl doing her little girl thing. Gretty loves worms and roly polies and is often on the hunt for things to add to her orange five gallon bucket. She talks to her little critters like a mother. Oh you precious little guy, don’t you worry. We’ll get you nice and cozy in your bucket. Do you need a pretty flower? You do? Oh, you sweet little thing, we can get you a flower! 

Yesterday, she pressed a tiny ball of a roly poly into my palm and urged me to love it while she prepared its new home. I examined the ball and its neatly plated armor hiding the soft inside secrets that tell it to move. After a moment to decide he was safe, it unrolled itself onto its curved back and squirmed ten or twelve little legs in the air, begging for me to flip it over.

This creature, a walking shell. A miniature military vehicle that cruises my vast concrete driveway and suddenly dries up when death takes over. What makes up its last moments? Does it raise one last leg up into the air, too weak to go on? I bet its wee brain, no more than a spark of instinct, simply shuts down. It halts like a toy whose batteries have run out. You could never convince me that several million years of development separate me from it. Millions of years should have upgraded this life form to its advantage; he shouldn’t just be scooting around on pavement, but rather sitting inside at the kitchen table.

I will never be a person who willingly argues a young earth viewpoint. But I can vouch that for me, only creation makes sense. The miracles expressed in a given day–have you seen how small and frail a dandelion seed is, yet the root of such a weed fixes itself in the dirt like an anchor?–the wonder of creation speaks. Environmentalists, activists, and Greta Thunberg are on the right track, sort of. There is something about this old-young earth worth saving, redeeming, or at least paying some attention. It is profound: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen…so that men are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)

Just by marveling at creation we are testifying we see Him. We see God’s handiwork; we hold roly polies in our hands. We’ve seen babies born. We’ve picked vegetables out of our garden, we’ve eaten food from the ground. We’ve climbed mountains and watched sunsets. We’ve swam in the ocean. We are without excuse.

One time I met a rocket scientist during cello lessons. I was sitting on the couch, waiting for Jubal to wrap up his session, a massive textbook spread on my knees. Nerdy draws nerds, I suppose, and the man across the coffee table stopped strumming his guitar and asked me what I was studying. We fell into an easy conversation, pondering the pros and cons of various educational systems. I asked him what he did for a living. He began describing solar flares and how to measure them, and then he told me of a three million dollar machine prototype he would drive next week, strapped in his car like a baby, to Washington DC.

As usual, I felt pretty out of place talking to someone so qualified. Obviously he was important–though I’m not sure I know why solar flares need to be measured. But finally, at the ripe old age of the mid-thirties, I don’t feel threatened and I don’t mind asking foolish questions. Astronomy, rocket science–it’s not in my wheelhouse. I hardly know anything, not about the stars and sun, not about how to measure them, or even why man tries. I have enough faith to believe there is a God who holds it all in balance, who has a plan I’ll never even understand. I’m not curious about how solar flares work, at least not until it applies to me in an existential way.

I will not spend my life questioning how the universe has been put together. Eventually, we will know it–science is simply the mystery of God being distilled in a way humans can comprehend, with our limited tools of comprehension. It’s like the miracle of life itself, how several years ago we couldn’t imagine the secrets of the unborn child within the mother’s womb, yet now we can see the babe by ultrasound, sucking its thumb and dancing, patiently waiting for her day to be revealed. The more we uncover, the more we are without excuse. Science is a marvelous mechanism in the hands of the Father, but speaking for myself–I don’t think I need it. I live with a moral obligation to trust that even in the things I cannot see or understand, God has my best interests in mind. This is the security of every believer. Our eyes are fixed on Him.

But oftentimes, as I am in the habit of writing, an idea plagues me until I must fiddle with it until I understand it. I don’t need to know why I’m here anymore–I’m solid. What  I need to know is how to answer questions for people I love. It is the question, as Francis Shaeffer put it, How Should We Then Live?
I am desperate to know, determined to put it on paper. Thank goodness we’ve got the Bible, but even the Bible is read through our human lens and often misinterpreted. I grew up sandwiched between scare tactics and midwestern work ethic. Grace rarely figured into the equation. I need better vision. I lack wisdom, I am cynical. I fall into rhythms of hopelessness and doubt.

God, help me, I plead, and He never, ever ignores me.
Most people know the Lord’s prayer, the template Jesus offered when his disciples asked Him how they ought to pray. We all have it memorized, as simple as reciting a nursery rhyme:
Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…

But after Jesus taught them, he gave a little story. He talked about a guy who was at home, asleep in bed, his kids snuggled up around him. All of the sudden, there is a knock at the door. It’s his friend who lives down the road. His buddy yells through the window, “Hey man, sorry to bother you. Can you lend me three loaves of bread?”
The man inside is slightly annoyed. It’s the middle of the night, his kids are asleep, and he doesn’t want to be bothered.
Jesus says, “I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.”
This, apparently, is what God wants from us. Boldness in asking questions.

“I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
(Luke 11)

These words of Jesus are life to me. Lord, I can ask questions. I’m at your door every night and all day long. God, lend me your ear. I am not leaving till you throw me some bread.

As Gretty gently puts the little roly poly back into the flower bed–“he just loves my crazy flowers,” she giggles, referring to the wild flower seeds she’d sown the day before–I stand on the doorstep and knock. I’ve got questions that need answers–for Gretty, my early morning bug hunter, my future teenager, my forever baby girl.

God, how should we then live?