PearlS | The Average Pearl

Halloween, the Unseen

Years ago, I walked into a Halloween party at school, excited to see my little kindergartner dressed up for the first school holiday with his buddies. It was far tamer than my own memories. I recall Halloween parades and greasy makeup smeared all over our faces, buckets of candy and sticky fingers on the bus ride home. Back then, we called it Halloween and not Fall Celebration. We sang spooky songs like Have You Seen the Ghost of John and told stories like the one about the girl with a ribbon tied around her neck. There were masks and props, carnivals and cake walks, construction paper ghosts hanging from the hallway ceilings.

Times have changed. So have safety measures. I’m not resentful, especially in the public school arena. It’s nice to avoid the creepies. (And fake blood.) Kids probably don’t need cupcakes and rice crispy treats two hours before they go trick or treating…even if the “healthy schools” initiative seems a tad overkill. You can bet most of the veggie tray–the carrot witch fingers from pinterest some poor mother tried to turn into novelty–will end up in the trash.

On this particular day In the kindergarten room we parents milled about, admiring animal and super hero costumes and coaxing our own kids to eat healthy mini “pumpkins”–peeled clementines with a celery stem poking out of the top. We laughed and made polite small talk, ourselves dressed in our cozy fall flannels, putzing around our little ones.

This is when she walked in the room. I knew who she was, even apart from her garish witch costume and green makeup. She was Evan’s mom, and she bagged groceries at the store. A couple months before I met her as she was loading my meat, eggs, milk into the cart. Her front teeth were gone, either knocked or rotted out, and she curled her lip to cover the hole. “You ready for school?” she’d asked my five year old, and he’d dipped his head, nodding a shy yes. “My son is going be in kindergarten, too,” she told him. She mentioned the name of the elementary school and it was the same as ours. “Maybe they’ll be in the same class!” I offered.
“Yeah…I hope Evan ends up going to that school. Right now we’re staying at the women’s shelter, but I’m trying to get out of it. There just aren’t many low-income options in this town.”

My cart full of kids hinted it was time to go. I promised her I’d keep my eye out and see what I could find available. As it turned out, she beat me to it, finding a room to rent on her own. I prayed that we might not lose contact. As fate had it, our kids were in the same class.

And here she was, decked out as a witch, purple hair topped with a pointy black hat, wart and all.
I could tell she was making the room parents uncomfortable. They huddled a little tighter around their kids, making louder the lighthearted conversation to pry the wondering eyes of small children off the witch in the room. “Oh, I looove your purple pumpkin and orange cat, Joshua!”
Detecting the awkward interference, I walked over to her and welcomed her. “You made it! I’m so glad! We’re just having treats and playing games,” I said, walking her toward the snack table. “Clementines and celery, can you believe it? Everyone is either allergic to the good stuff or it’s been banned.”

It occurred to me that she was equally surprised to walk in a room where none of the parents looked like anything but parents. Where was their Halloween spirit? With false bravado and all the help of a costume and makeup she’d procured, she smiled her toothless smile and whispered to me, “I thought everyone was supposed to dress up.” I waved it off and handed her an orange, pretending it didn’t matter a bit.
“Where’s Evan? Is he the one dressed up as Darth Vader?” I said. She beamed and pointed at the little guy. Immediately he saw her are ran to her, hugging her legs.

Guilt rushed through my veins. I felt my cheeks turn red, ashamed for unconsciously judging Evan and his mom’s neediness. This was a great divide, and I was in limbo. Do I rest on the side of a scary-looking witch or with the well-mannered and well-dressed? Does my desire to fit in create friction when it comes to accepting and integrating people on the fringes?

In a heartbeat, I saw a mama who cared more about what her boy thought than what everyone else around was murmuring. I saw a boy who watched his mama show up for his first school party. I saw the mom I wanted to be, the lowest common denominator, no pretense, a soft place to land.

I saw a hint of something unseen. I’ve been chasing after it ever since, searching for the unknown. The place where I could take my shoes off more often because it was holy ground. One glimpse of it was far more beautiful than anything I saw in the cool, unaffected parents at school. They could have a thousand things: nice clothes, a reliable car, a manageable number of evenly-spaced kids, a flexible work schedule, hobbies–a lot, from outward appearances. They had the advantage of being able to drop in, nonchalant, to the kindergarten Halloween party. But there was some kind of secret sauce in Evan’s mom’s struggle. She held her kids far more precious, because she knew the fragility of life. There wasn’t an ounce of arrogance in her appearance because life had never afforded her the opportunity. Everyone else’s standards could be damned; she’d dress up as a witch and surprise Evan.

I’ve learned a lot from people who don’t have their lives together. People who don’t fake it till they make it. I used to be scornful of this very type, probably because from childhood I desperately wanted to have it together. I thought satisfaction came from upping the ante and anticipating success around every corner. But how many corners does a person have to turn before it is enough? How many ways can I get everything right–my way–but still be ultimately wrong? How could I ever look someone level in the eye when I’m not willing to compromise on my high standards? Entitled living and patronizing words–it’s a ruse–and it’s not kind. It for sure doesn’t fool the underprivileged.
If you are a person who has it all together and hangs out with other people who have it all together, don’t you sense this? That you are missing out on valuable–priceless, even–by avoiding a world of misfits? That perhaps you are your own joy-stealer? Maybe we must first drop the illusion we have something superior planned for our lives.

What about Halloween, public school, poverty–you name it–are we so afraid of? Doesn’t God hide treasures in the unassuming fields and wait for us to find them and dig up the pearls?

I have become curious about the things unseen. We live in a physical world, so it’s easy to spend our lives pursuing what we can perceive, that which appeals to our senses. But if we only go after what our eyes can see and our fingers can touch, we’ll only ever understand one side. We will never understand what is unseen, which is equally (or maybe even more) important as what is seen. There is a whole other side to life when the coin is flipped. But none of the unseen things will ever be brought to light if we don’t go out and start digging in the dirt.

One by one He took them from me,
All the things I valued most,
Until I was empty-handed;
Every glittering toy was lost.

And I walked earth’s highways, grieving
In my rags and poverty
Till I heard His voice inviting,
“Lift your empty hands to Me!“

So I held my hands toward heaven,
And He filled them with a store
Of His own transcendent riches,
Till they could contain no more.

And at last I comprehended
with my stupid mind and dull,
That God COULD not pour His riches
Into hands already full!

-Treasures, Martha Snell Nicholson

Beth Moore and the know-betters

One time Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. He asked the man to stretch his withered hand out and Jesus restored it, one-hundred percent, in front of a crowd of people. Instead of glorifying God, a bunch of disgusted Pharisees (who I’ll call the know-betters) called Jesus a prig for violating the keeping of the Sabbath.

“What’s more important?” Jesus asked, “to heal or to destroy?” The Bible says He looked at the Pharisees with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. Then, bam, he healed the guy. In an instant his hand was restored.

This enraged the know-betters. Who did Jesus think he was?

There are so many know-betters today. You might recognize them. They like to tag on all sorts of scholarly and unnecessary labels, many of which confound the every-person. Calvinist, post-millennialist, dispensationalist, southern Baptist, reformed–words I have yet to find anywhere in my Bible.

When Jesus walked this earth he garnered followers. He also gained a following of haters who wanted to trap him every chance they got. Funny, the haters were too blind to see Jesus had come for them, to save them–He was on their team!
They were folks who loved labels. Their Jewish fringe was trendy, their yarmulkes and beards were on point. Their prayers were loud and long-winded. They loved rules and regulations. They hated Jesus because they thought he was a threat to their power, their tradition, their faith, their paycheck. What if he stole their followers?These know-betters had boiled their religion down to a tidy prescription of placebo pills, handing it out like doctors to sin-stricken patients. How dare Jesus inform the Jewish people they had God’s laws written on their heart? How dare he imply that even the Gentiles could know God?

Jesus taught in the temple every day, right where the know-betters liked to hang out. This really irked them. The book of Luke says

…the chief priests, scribes, and leaders of the people were intent on killing Him. Yet they could not find a way to do so, because all the people hung on His words.
Luke 19:47-48

The people were hanging onto his words while the haters looked for any little way to trap him and kill him.
This sounds like a tight spot to be in.

A couple days ago at a conference, a well-respected preacher named John MacArthur said something unkind about Beth Moore, a women’s Bible teacher. It probably should have never been prompted–a few know-betters on stage were playing a game and for no good reason decided to poke fun at Beth Moore. At the crux of their joke was the argument that women ought not be preachers. Moore, of course, hadn’t been asked to play their pithy word game.

It reminds me of a woman in the Bible named Deborah. Before Israel had kings or a kingdom, 1,200 years before Christ, they lived in the promised land with enemies all around them. To maintain a sort of order, God determined judges for his people. Deborah was a judge in Israel. Yes–a woman. Yes–3,000 years ago, long before male preachers were ordained (another fancy non-Bible word) in the Christian church.

Deborah was a judge in Israel because Israel was full of cowards. It seems like God couldn’t find a man suited for the role, and so wise Deborah was given the reins. People came to her from all over to have her hear their disputes. Folks needed her wisdom, they sought her out to help them understand. She led them to victory against their enemies.

Today there are people who want to know God. They want to approach Jesus for healing, but there are often too many know-betters standing in their way, blocking the temple. They are the churchified, the holier than thou, the Bible thumpers who smack sinners on the head with their rules and big words. Jesus seekers want the bread of life, they hunger and thirst for righteousness, but know-betters set up standards that prohibit the starving from being filled. Know-betters don’t want to, as J.Vernon McGee says, “put the cookies on the bottom shelf.”

I’ll admit, I’m not a Beth Moore fangirl, per say. Maybe it’s because I’m jealous of her hair and makeup, but I’ve only ever attempted one Beth Moore Bible study. A friend once gave me a set of DVDs and a workbook after she’d finished teaching the study to a women’s prison group.

Did you catch that? Women in prison. People hungering and thirsting for the Word. People on the fringes, folks we have been called to minister to…Beth Moore’s Bible studies have made it into prison and set captives free. I’d say Jesus wouldn’t tell her to “go home.”
Moore has made knowing God available to the masses. She has passed on her detailed study of the Scripture to thousands of thirsty souls. She has broken it into edible pieces without waxing philosophical. Moore, like Deborah the judge, has become a sort of mother to the people. She has not, to my knowledge, assumed a man’s rightful position in church.

I am not denying that in the Bible God has laid down some rules to protect the Church on the inside. Beth Moore hasn’t denied this, either, as far as I know. There’s a reason behind His direction to men to step up as leaders.There is sovereignty in wisdom to appoint elders of a local church. In New Testament times, asking women to behave modestly (keeping silent and covered) was a way to eliminate confusion among the recently converted in the young Church (the culture at the time was cultish and sex-driven). As Christians, we need to examine these verses closely, but they are meant as clarifications on how to maintain order. They don’t encompass the message what Christ sent us to do: Go and make disciples, he said. Teach them, he said.

I wonder, these days, where the line is drawn. Online, a woman might have a Twitter account, post youtube videos, write books…but if she suddenly stands up in church, she loses all respect? Will we ever stop nitpicking, fault-finding–when our whole lives have been redeemed to reconcile people to their Creator? What is more important, Jesus asked–to heal or to destroy? With two words–go home–John MacArthur drew his sword.

This isn’t a call to add or delete scripture nor to bend it to our advantage. Rather, it is a wake-up call to see the forest in spite of the trees. For the know-betters, the Pharisees of today–those who lead–may they not forget there once was a Deborah in Israel. Jesus, the Savior, healed on the Sabbath. Beth Moore preached the Word, and men might have listened, might have learned.

…the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles which they had seen.
And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”
And He answered and said, “I tell you, if these become silent, even the stones will cry out!”
Luke 19:37, 39-40

playing Pollyanna

The man at the register rang up my goodies: foam balls, wire, floral tape, cardstock. He chatted to himself as if he were new to his post at Hobby Lobby. I smiled patiently, once more glad to never again (please, Lord, let it be so) work retail.

As he handed me my bag I said, “Thank you, sir.”

Immediately his face twisted into a grimace.
“I prefer ma’am,” he said.

“Ma’am,” I whispered.

I grabbed my supplies, purse, and the hand of my little girl and left, stunned. Here was a guy with a beard, baritone voice, and no shape of a woman. Was I to feel ashamed for calling a man a “sir”? Honestly, I didn’t even know what to think, so delayed was my reaction.

I don’t think I am a fool. I think I am reasonable and kind–the first to acquiesce in any uncomfortable small talk. I avoid politics and lingering eye contact; I try not to act too witty or domineering. I don’t stand in the grocery line, proselytizing, when everyone just wants to get on with their life. It’s a matter of keeping the peace and minding my own business–two things I value in life. But I’m beginning to realize I cannot keep silent, not when the man at Hobby Lobby is claiming to be a woman in front of my children. The fact of the matter is this is the world we now live in, where a trip to the craft store has set us on edge, at risk of offending around every corner. The whole world is telling me I must tread lightly.

However, I am realizing more and more the need to begin looking into this situation, because no longer is it about the neighbor I risk offending. It isn’t about being kind, turning the other cheek, smiling politely to keep the peace. Believe it or not, playing Pollyanna is not our calling as Christians. Our number one job is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. If I get this wrong, game over.

Before I barge into a sticky pit, I’d like to mention that I am a woman, and well acquainted with the woman experience. I have dated men, married a man, carried babies in my womb, birthed children, nursed them at my breast, nurtured them. This is no small feat, no minor duty. This has been pain, anguish, glory and pride. When I stand for womanhood, I am in the company of mothers who have risked death to deliver the whole human race. This statement should not spawn confusion, yet our culture is glorifying the Bruce Jenners of the world who think womanhood is theirs to claim. Ought it not offend me, a woman who, from conception, has been given the honor of being a woman? Why should a pretender be applauded for pretending? For mocking the sacred and degrading personhood?

It is said that in the beginning God created male and female. In his image, God created them. Do we think God did this without purpose or that it was all a mere suggestion?

There is a clear difference between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God, but from what I can tell, many Christians are swimming in brackish waters. They have forgotten that ours is a battle against the wisdom of the world, not an integration of it. It’s a crucial error.

If we fail to understand why blatant disregard for gender, for God’s creation–for God!–is wrong, we will never be able to guide our children in the path of truth. Their futures will unravel, hopeless and futile, swayed by every false notion. They will find themselves on a dark path: depression, worthlessness, mental instability. Chaos, confusion. Look around, friends. It is already happening. Unless we are all drinking the same GMO koolaid and rapidly evolving into the next future step of homo sapien-ism (which, from what I’ve read, takes millions of years, and will be slowed exponentially by gender confusion) there is only one explanation for what we can call this culture, and it is depraved.

Paul wrote,

“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools…” Romans 1:21-22

Francis Shaeffer said,

When the Scripture speaks of man being foolish in this way, it does not mean he is only foolish religiously. Rather, it means that he has accepted a position that is intellectually foolish not only with regard to what the Bible says, but also to what exists concerning the universe and its form and what it means to be human. In turning away from God and the truth which he has given, man has thus become foolishly foolish in regard to what man is and what the universe is.

You see, we have been presented with clear, absolute truth and have turned on our heel to march off in another direction. We aren’t just denying what is true for us individually, but that which is true for every other person. When I address my Hobby Lobby cashier as a woman when he is actually a man, I deny every good thing in him that God created him to be as a man. I diminish his rights as a man, friend, brother, and father. Playing Pollyanna damages people.

What of today? I don’t think there are many Christians today willing to stand up and speak truthfully in the world. We want our God to represent love, and, speaking for myself, we are happy to share that. The best thing I’ve ever been able to do is share hope with someone who feels hopeless. But we’ve become really adept at pulling off a vague sort of watered down love. It looks like minding our own business and keeping the peace–but it sets free no man. It’s a cop out, and it’s related to our misunderstanding of who God is.

We are less than enthusiastic about sharing the character of God that expresses this perfect love–holiness. But here’s the truth–God can’t be Love if he isn’t Holy.
Christians, we have the answers the whole world is looking for! The perfect love we can offer, the hope we proclaim, is that a man can be changed–not into a woman, but into the righteousness of God. It became realized when a perfect, holy man–God in the flesh–he who knew no sin–Jesus! became sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor.5:21).

Shaeffer wrote,

Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless.

Sadly, we must say that this has seldom happened. Most of the evangelical world has not been active in this battle, or even been able to see that we are in a battle. And when it comes to the issues of the day the evangelical world most often has said nothing; or worse has said nothing different from what the world would say…The evangelical church has accommodated to the world spirit of this age…We must say with tears that it is the evangelical accommodation to the world spirit around us, to the wisdom of this age, which removes the evangelical church from standing against the further breakdown of our culture.
The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984)

We have got to bring back humble, loving confrontation that honors God and affirms humanity. We’ve got to stop resorting to snide remarks on things that prickle us or rub us the wrong way. Too often we, as Bob Goff writes in Love Does, “seem to have more opinions about what or who we are against than who we are for”.

We are in a battle. The wisdom of the world doesn’t stand a chance.

Friend, who are you for?

Give me neither poverty nor riches

This spring, I went to a professional hockey game with my oldest son and my husband. Talk about a fish out of water: I am the mid-30s mother with my hands over my ears, blocking the pounding music while my nine year old is breaking down orange-justice style in the aisle beside me. I’m crossing my fingers that the roaming spotlight doesn’t spark a migraine, or worse, that the kissing cam zooms in without warning on my get-me-out-of-here face. “I don’t know how much more I can take,” I mouth to my husband over the boomboomboom. He flashes a grin.

“Just try to enjoy yourself!”

What brings us to the hockey game? Business, I’ll say. Quite often the vendors who sell product through my husband’s wholesale work like to reward employees with a slap on the back. Usually it’s breakfast burritos, sub sandwiches, lunch for all the guys. They show up with trinkets and goodies and giveaways. Yeti cooler? Check. There is golf, and of course dinners out. Around Christmastime, stacks of Harry and David boxes arrive at work. Huge tins of popcorn, whiskey, chocolate covered almonds (my favorite). Gift cards to restaurants, whole serving trays of cookies. I’ve ridden a ski train to mountain sponsored by vendors. It boasted an open bar and individual goodie bags stuffed with beanies and scarves. We had the day of our lives, blazing up and down trails on snow machines, then back home on the train with hot toddies and stories all around. Tonight it was hockey, and there just happened to be a few extra tickets, which is why we are here with dad. We are sitting directly behind the goal, up several rows, but in a nice enough section to have our own server. His name is Chad, and he hands us a menu. I order nachos and a coke instead of a beer because I can’t trust the concrete arena steps after any amount of alcohol. My boy, hesitant, asks for cotton candy. “Mom, it’s eight-fifty,” he whispers with concern. “I only have four dollars in my pocket. Mom, look. A bottle of water is four-fifty! I can’t even buy that!” His eyes fill with panic.

“Don’t worry,” I pat his knee to assure him. “Dad has started a tab for his work guys. You can order whatever you want and we’ll take care of it. Save your money for another time.”

He gets the cotton candy.
This is my life, and I cannot even believe it, that I’m telling my son to order whatever he wants rather than hiding the menu and explaining what price gouging means. It is a far cry from my childhood, still not understood in his own nine year old brain, but within our family’s means. Is it wrong to buy cotton candy at nine bucks a pop? I’m sure it is–it’s not even the fresh kind. Is it okay to blow money like nobody’s watching? Well, a certain nine year old is watching.

It is indeed another rich man dilemma, and I’m still thinking it out.

I didn’t grow up with money. When I was a young child, we lived in a house without heat. A ladder leaned up against the stairwell where the steps had been torn out. Rebar poked up through gravel in the living room. The dusty horsehair plaster walls were exposed–another fixer project my dad had on his to-do list. He had framed in a new bathroom, but it didn’t have running water or lights. We took turns taking baths, and every few minutes he’d enter the shadowy room to add a new bucket of warm water to the tub. I’d fall into bed shivering and cold, my hair still wet from bathing.

I was jealous of friends at school with puffy jackets–not because I cared about the Rams or any professional football team–but because the stylish jackets looked warm, and I most definitely was not. Needing and wanting made me feel doubly ashamed. How could I betray my parents by asking for what they couldn’t give? How could I ever be normal?

I learned a way of coping with this. I told myself (quite subconsciously) that I didn’t care. “Toughen up,” my dad liked to say, and I did. I read books to escape. I made myself small and grew a shell where nothing could hurt me, not the teasing at school, not the cold at home. I buttoned my mouth and pretended I was made of iron. I didn’t realize it was hardening my attitude into a peculiar disdain for everyone who couldn’t suck it up like me.

There is a level of pride that coexists with poverty. I realized early on I could acquire other personas to cover up. I could be the little girl who collected hats and owned her own lemonade stand. I could be perfectly obedient and well-behaved. No one would ever have to know: I could secretly justify harbored bitterness toward everyone because compared to them, my problems were always worse. For whatever reason, they were the lucky ones, and if they feigned discomfort, I had zero compassion. I was naturally suspicious of people with money, but still incredibly jealous.

Funny enough, as unfamiliar as I was with wealth, personally, I have to say: it easy to warm up to. As a young girl, I could obviously see the advantage to having money. It is like looking at a chocolate bar from a distance; it’s desirable, delicious, and I knew exactly what I would do with it if I could access it. But once it landed in my hands, once I took a bite, ate the whole bar, found myself satiated–once the chocolate kept coming, all I could do was let it melt in my hands. All it did was leave me sticky and uncomfortable. It gave me the same sort of chest pains I had as a jealous, hateful child. How many Harry and David towers could be unstacked and unwrapped by my own ungrateful children, leaving wrappers scattered all over the floor? Why was it so much work to maintain the facade of having it all together? How could we ever feel happy if we were always spoiling ourselves?

All I wanted was to wash it off, rid myself of the mess.

Contentment–could I ever find it? Did it live in a warm house the suburbs? Could it be bought with a bachelor’s degree or by finding my true soul mate? All you can eat at the hockey game?

The writer of Hebrews urged his readers: Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
Never will I forsake you.”
Hebrews 13:5

It requires practice and diligence to keep one’s life “free from the love of money”. Maybe it takes more awareness if you’re a rich man, but even if you live in a shack with no heat it is hard to not wish for enough money to raise the thermostat. Somehow, some way, my parents unwittingly shielded us from it. Of course it is muddled by memory, but truly, they set almost a spotless example of being free from the love of money. What kept us unaffected for so long was one thing–we had each other. We had no money, but I never felt insecure.

Holidays spent with my family growing up are my most precious examples of this. We kids knew better than to ask or beg for the newest thing (skip-its? TrapperKeepers?), yet Christmas and birthdays were loaded with treasure. There was music and joy and the promise of safety, warmth. My mom was brilliant when it came to creating an amazing holiday from very little. She sewed us homemade gifts from fabric scraps. One year she discovered the thrifty art of blowing up photographs to poster-size. She made entire feasts from seemingly nothing, and we felt–we knew she did it completely for us. She wrapped every present and held them out, giggling, her hands pressed to her face with nervous excitement. One year, maybe for his birthday, my brother unwrapped a gallon of Ranch dressing. It was a typical, hilarious gift from Mom. This is why we adored her. She cleared out a place in the fridge for it to make its home (not a small sacrifice, if you know her fridge). This, we convinced ourselves, was worth a thousand TrapperKeepers.

There is a funny verse in the Bible, one that we like to quote often when we have a deadline, goal, etc.. It’s the one we print on posterboard for the highschool championship football game, mark in permanent marker on our inner wrist when we run a 5k. When we face the inner battle to not eat a second piece of chocolate cake after we’ve already had one. “I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.” (Phi. 4:13 NLT)

We usually skip right past the verses before, because it seems so unnecessarily contingent:
I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.
I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
Philippians 4:11-12

The confounding thing here is that Paul observes at both poverty and wealth as a curse! Who of us in America takes this view–that the pursuit of money is actually a path to ruin? We all despise a trailer park mentality, but do we equally pity the affluent? Hear me out–both are to be endured, both are possible breeding ground for contentment. The only way to survive not having enough or having plenty is by relying on God’s strength to help us hold on–to Him, and nothing else.

Happiness cannot be bought, begged, or borrowed. Contentment–the act of living satisfied–can happen anywhere, but it’s as seldom found as a needle in a haystack. It might be found in the slums, it might be found in a gated community. It is most likely found in the most ordinary of ordinaries, the enough-to-cover-the-bills life. But it cannot be found apart from Christ.

I thank God I grew up in the home I did. If I hadn’t experienced His presence in need, I surely couldn’t have recognized contentment in wealth. At this point in my life, I finally understand what Paul is talking about. The little girl who coveted her classmate’s puffy coat grew into a woman who realized life wasn’t actually any better when she had her pick of store bought, down-filled jackets. It’s nice to be warm–this is what matters. Back when a gallon of Ranch dressing was cause for celebration, I didn’t know there were families who went on Christmas break ski trips. My parents probably knew, but they never pointed it out. I’m grateful for their wisdom: contentment is a far higher road than comparison. If anything lured me out of my hardness and into this better perspective, it was my parents’ visible pursuit of Jesus. Not comfort, which they saw as a trap, but the forever promise we would never be forsaken.

Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with the food that is my portion.
Lest I be full and deny you and say,
“Who is the Lord?”
or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.
Proverbs 30:8-9

The Art of Sitting Down

This weekend, my writing amounted to several questions my five year old made in the space of an hour:

Have you ever thought about hugging your thigh? Can you imagine eating biscuits without butter? Does gorilla glue come from gorillas? What part–is it the mouth? Does it come from a gorilla’s mouth?
Mom, am I a wish that came true? Did you wish for me? Did you want me for a kid?

This, word for word, is far better writing than I can come up with any day of the week. It will suffice; I run fast to my notebook to record it. I have pages full of all the funny things my kids have ever said.
A young child hasn’t learned yet to edit. In his mind and from his mouth come every possibility, every story. It is what Picasso meant when he said it took him four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but his whole life to learn to paint like a child. Childlikeness is a miracle, like a blazing comet we will only ever spot once in our lives.

It doesn’t feel fruitless writing down your kids’ words. Actually, it makes you stand a little taller, especially when you (do you see how I’m using the second person?) have a bad record of maintaining baby books, pictures, milestones and such. On the other hand, when I sit down and try to conjure words–fresh ones from an unedited brain–I feel foolish and mostly useless. It only takes a few minutes to wonder what in the world I’m wasting my time on, when I could be moving furniture or cleaning out my refrigerator. A child doesn’t think work is anything more than dignified play. He dreams up future careers and having a hundred kids. He’ll never think twice about letting a thought rot inside his head. His mind is like a butterfly net, trapping ideas and letting them go for the pure joy of it. His mouth, gloriously and hilariously unfiltered.
As an adult, we have a hard time seeing how art and efficiency can ever co-exist. In our culture, only one thing is worthwhile–the other is worthless. And nothing kills the desire to write like the pressure to do so. Therefore, if I deem it valuable, it can only mean one thing: the ability to create relies on my ceding control of a tidy, ordered life. At the very least, it means humility–reducing oneself to childlikeness.

Annie Dillard, an observer of the microscopic and meaningless (and brilliant writer) says this is where freedom begins.
Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself…The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever. You are free to make several thousand close judgment calls a day. Your freedom is a by-product of your days’ triviality.
The Writing Life, Annie Dillard, 1989

Ah, yes. A costly freedom–tedious, trivial, and totally/maybe fulfilling. I might be playing house, but as long as I enjoy it, it could well be the real thing. I have no book deal, no contract, not anything even close on the horizon. I raise kids and wash dishes, and this is enough to arrest me, to strike panic in my soul. No one but God (and I actually can’t speak for him) cares.

In her book, Page after Page (2005), Heather Sellers urges writers to remember their parents when picking up the pencil.

My parents, raised in the Midwest during the Depression, don’t think they themselves, or anyone they could know (or raise) could be brilliant and famous. My parents, like so many of my students and friends, hold writers in the highest esteem, and secretly want to call themselves writers, and sometimes do….but they don’t write. My parents don’t feel, I think, that they could be writers. They are too scared of being judged. Their pride makes them brittle. My dad is a coal miner’s son. My mom is a blacksmith’s daughter. These people don’t sit around saying, “I’m a writer.” It would be like saying, “I’m God.”

…My parents do everything writers do–worry, make notes, read a lot, fall in love with words, write to writers, watch shows about writers, memorize Mark Twain passages, recite poems from memory. My parents both cut out book reviews from the newspaper that they think their children should read, talk about ideas for books, give other people ideas for their books…They know books are sacred. The only thing my parents don’t do is write.
It was hard for me to realize all of this about my parents. I wanted them to be writers. They wanted themselves to by writers. We all sort of pretended they were writers, and they are, in so many ways. So close.
What keeps me going through the humiliation of writing weak stuff, the horrors of learning how to read my work in public, the long, hard days of feeling lazy, selfish, and strange? I saw the price my parents paid–unhappiness–for not being brave enough to follow their writing dream, to make it real. I devoted myself, early on, to writing. Really writing. Just doing it, no matter how awkward and unfit I felt.

So, every single morning I am on the planet, I grit my teeth and do this hard, embarrassing, abject, thrilling thing–writing–because I want, in part, to count; I want my parents to live through me.
Page After Page, Heather Sellers, 2005

I think about my own parents, whip-smart and worn out from raising kids. Writing was superfluous; it was asking to brag. Missourians are of the show-me state, the land of Question Everything, which I suppose indicates either suspicion or stubbornness. (I prefer the latter.) My own family has a mule as our mascot. He doesn’t even live on my folks’ property (the mule, I mean). Talk about stubborn. We are a breed that leaves little room for dreaming and nonsense. I reckon if Mark Twain had lived in Missouri when he wrote his books, he would’ve been laughed across state lines. I don’t think I could write freely if I lived there now–I’d be far too self-conscious. Still, the burden rests on my shoulders. I am nursing a dream. I’m bringing to life the culmination of everything my folks ever esteemed and feared. It’s sort of scary. And maybe sacred.

There is an art to sitting down. Unfortunately, it seems that coherent words aren’t naturally in my wheelhouse. I’m still regularly taken by surprise when I can make one cohesive, beautiful sentence that looks the same on paper as it does in my head. In general, they are all subconscious material that breaks off, piece by piece, floating to the top of muddy waters to be scooped out and scrubbed clean.
In college, I remember a lasting indentation on my middle finger. A callus pushed my cuticle into the fingernail bed from writing so many papers. It was ugly and I loathed it, but it made it easier to do the work of holding a pencil. I could write for hours. Likewise, I have an eyesore piece of furniture in my house. It’s called a treadmill–maybe the ultimate beast of burden. I’d rather jog outside, but it’s not always possible. So I run on this dreaded machine that makes my heart strong to pump blood, and when the weather is right and my husband can watch the kids–then I am ready to conquer and enjoy the trail.
On the other hand, I have a mandolin and guitar hanging on my living room wall. When I pull one down to strum, which doesn’t happen regularly, I find it hard to repeatedly fret chords. I might last twenty minutes before I put it away because my fingers are sore.
I’ve learned: a callus isn’t pretty, but it causes me to settle into the routine of writing.

In her Newbery Medal Acceptance Speech in 1963 for A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle said,
Do I mean, then, that an author should sit around like a phony Sen Buddhist in his pad, drinking endless cups of espresso coffee and waiting for inspiration to descend upon him? That isn’t the way the writer works, either. I heard a famous author say once that the hardest part of writing a book was making yourself sit down at the typewriter. I know what he meant. Unless a writer works constantly to improve and refine the tools of his trade they will be useless instruments if and when the moment of inspiration, of revelation, does come. This is the moment when a writer is spoken through, the moment that a writer must accept with gratitude and humility, and then attempt, as best he can, to communicate to others.

I’m working on it, but I haven’t mastered it yet.
In the mornings, I trip right out of bed, over the child who has answered my early alarm, straight to the coffee pot, even with the new music of unwhispered words ringing in my ears. I must sit. I must hide! But the child is already talking of breakfast and dreams, rushing these lovely surprise word friends right out the back door of my mind.

There is a flittering, fluttering muse that calls for me to chase her, coax her back. There is also a crusty critic, hands in his pockets, teeth clenched round a cigar. He stamps a foot a mutters, “You fool! What a waste! Look, it’s already gone. Spend your energy on something worthwhile.”

But the muse begs to be caught, and the critic is just a bully. I must write in the space of the cracks of life. I’m catching fireflies as they flicker and dim, just to hold one in my hands and make it light up once more.I’m an alchemist, mixing and distilling, pouring my solutions onto paper before it evaporates.

And shouldn’t I know what a good word or story is worth? Have I not laid in bed as a child for hours, flipping pages, muttering wrath when my mother called me to do the dishes? Who is this coward to tell me to wash dishes now instead of creating chemistry? Brenda Ueland has said, menial work at the expense of all true, ardent, creative work is a sin against the Holy Ghost. She was speaking to mothers like me, the kind caught up in the practical matters of clothes folding and dinner making. Perhaps we must render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but my boys have rarely noticed if their socks are dirty. They thrill at the thought of frozen meatballs three days in a row. My kitchen table makes a handy desk on which to rest a laptop, and so I choose wisely. What word might cure sorrow, inspire laughter, heal memories? This one? The next? Which dream of mine will my children think worth following even as they hover over me, watching words fill pages?

My next best trap for the muse is a good book, preferably something old, one that talks its way around a matter without hammering the nail head. I need a stirring, silent voice, one I can kidnap with a pencil and a few spare hours. I have tried to read Anne Lamott in the morning, but her voice is too neurotic in my head. I already have a chatty voice like that, my own, and I don’t need two. I don’t need anyone to rain on my optimism, to expound on the urgency to find certainty in the uncertain. It seems fragile, so I don’t appreciate her encouragement on the matter. I need logic, a layman’s apologetics. Emotional appeals are lovely, but superficial.
I like Chesterton, my matter-of-fact, unapologetic uncle, when I’m fresh. Annie Dillard could be my spirit animal of sorts, except when she loses me. Inchworms and spiders–stupendous. Solar eclipses–far beyond me! C.S. Lewis in the evening when I’m too tired to wrestle. Any fairy tale, every storybook.
As I read, the muse timidly creeps back to the corners of my mind. In the darkness, I cup it with my hands and release it on the blank page.

Yesterday, I sat across from my kindergartner’s teacher for a parent conference. She covered the expected areas of conversation, then she recounted an interaction my child had recently with another student. When the teacher came to the scene, the children were having a small argument.

“My mom’s an artist,” the first child said.
“Well, my mom’s a writer,” my own kid retorted.

It was the best compliment I’ve ever received.

No, I wouldn’t think of planning the book before I write it. You write, and plan it afterwards. You write if first because every word must come out with freedom, and with meaning because you think it is so and want to tell it. If this is done the book will be alive. I don’t mean that it will be successful. It may be alive to only ten people. But to those ten at least it will be alive. It will speak to them. It will help to free them.
Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write, 1938

Washed dishes

Jarrid Wilson took his own life only hours after he’d performed a funeral service for a woman who had also committed suicide. Wilson was a young pastor, one who spoke candidly on his struggle with depression. He was not the first megachurch leader to do so. Andrew Stoecklin, another young man, left this world a year before Wilson. Both had battled anxiety and thoughts of suicide, both were dynamic speakers, both carried a packed Sunday schedule. Both were in the paid ministry. Both ended it all.

I’ve been trying to understand American church my whole life. Part of this is because our culture is so independent-minded and, compared to the rest of the world, wealthy. Part of this has to do with my own heightened awareness of what it takes to fit in. I’ve tasted depression, I know its bitter cup, but there was enough hope to reel me in–I was never living my life on a stage, begging God for the curtains to come down.

I’ve always felt a bit uneasy when I hear people talk about being in the paid ministry. My dad was, for a bit, the pastor of a church. It about did him in, both physically and mentally. He resigned and took up a hammer and nails instead. He came home from a day’s work, sore knees and achy feet. Many weekends he still preached at one church or another, though his name didn’t grace the bulletin. He was (and is) rogue in the pulpit. On Saturday nights he’d pore over his Bible, jotting notes in his neat cursive, outlining a message with his typical alliteration-heavy word puzzles. His heart had been preparing all week as he built houses; the final touch came on Sunday mornings as he nervously scavenged the house for visual aids–the small details that made our whole family marvel at his creativity. He preached like no one I’ve ever known.

As a young teenager I remember bumping into other various ministers–usually through youth groups or church camps. They’d always be praising and praying for the youth that the Lord might call into “full time ministry,” even beckoning us pimply teenagers to come forward and commit our futures to God’s work. I felt this unfair, a sort of emotional trickery. Who didn’t want a divine calling on their life? I’d instinctively roll my eyes a little (because of my dad, I guess). I felt I knew of the drama and behind-the-scenes–the perceived supremacy of the post, the ultimate disappointment of people needed their lives fixed, the wear and tear of trying to help. I’d also been to tent revivals where lost soul-winners were on their knees, confessing to extramarital affairs. Mostly I was suspicious. I didn’t think it a higher calling–I thought a stiff old tradition riddled with potholes.

Full-time ministry, paid ministry, a seminary degree. All unnecessary badges on a puffed-out chest. Perhaps they are a ladder to fall off, adding insult to injury when temptation tips it over. Of course I wanted to be loved, needed, used by God. But why was it necessary for there to be a distinguishable difference, a holy Bible college stamp of approval on my life? What was so wrong with the layman, the fisherman, the tax-collector turned disciple? Didn’t Jesus hand-pick those guys? Why did it seem so guilt-inducing to not sense a Holy Spirit nudge in the direction of seminary? I was always wondering, how do articles made for special purposes and common use (2 Timothy 2:20) correlate with American Christian ministry–those who are useful and those who are not? Was it merely in my own mind, this metaphor for the useful and useless? Should the majority of us assume we are the useless, blinking our blind agreement at the shiny pots and pans in the spotlight?
I don’t think is so–it shouldn’t be this way. We each have assumed our roles quite naively within the church, even the men and women supposedly at the top.

It is obvious in nearly every church–there are shepherds, and there are sheep. Without a word we are supposed to know on which side of the fence we fall: shepherds are professionals paid to run the sheep, and sheep are needy savage little critters. This cripples both sides from the start, sorting out the useful from the useless, as if any one of us had more to offer. You might encourage your flock to show up for a free test to find out their spiritual gifts or love languages, but I can tell you no one, no matter how much they care about children, wants to teach preschool Sunday school every week until they die, as if Heaven itself were keeping tally. Why should they when their superiors are getting paid to do the same thing? On the other end, pastors tire from the emotional grind and posing as the face of the church.

The whole institution develops cracks when we hoist our heavy burdens onto one person and try to even it out by offering a salary. It turns church into a business, something even Jesus despised. No, we cannot commoditize faith or put a price tag on spirituality. We were meant to try and outdo one another in love (Romans 12:10), not greedily live forever in the land of free childcare and pep talks. We were meant to be Church, living stones, flesh and beating heart. We aren’t meant to resemble a Chik-fil-a–packed parking lot, fast food and my pleasure.

I don’t think it can keep going on this way. I consider these two young men, Jarrid and Andrew, and know there must be thousands more. It is said that for every successful suicide (if you can call it that), there are twenty-five attempts. Something is dreadfully wrong with the way we are running things. For one person, the pressure to be dynamic and wise. For the rest, a peanut gallery that isn’t invited to do anything else but agreeably fall in line.

If there seems to be increased pressure on the people in the pulpit, it is because we have placed them under increased stress. We urge them to go to Bible school or make a vow to the clergy. We pay them to inspire us and complain when they don’t. We depend on the man up front to assume our tithe, our responsibilities, our own spirituality. We’ve elevated their authority near deity levels.

Just this weekend I sat next to a man in church, a new fellow attending for his first or second time. After the service we shook hands and I welcomed him to the church. He pointed to the preacher and asked me, “Does this guy always speak? I mean, like, every week?” He simply wasn’t interested unless he was getting his money’s worth. He was scoping out the field, recruiting a quarterback. Such a man will not feel the need to go home and read his Bible; he will feel entertained and fed at church, substantial enough of a meal to hold him over until next Sunday. I’ve got to get home; the Broncos are on at two-thirty.

Now, it is terrific and exciting to listen to an inspiring, hard-hitting speaker, but have you considered them often as a fellow human? It is foolish to ever assume another human could feed another’s soul the exact diet they require. Still, we beg for a proper minister, one who won’t stammer, one who flawlessly skates in and out of funny, reverent, relatable. Someone who looks good on a big screen and has a clean record. Back in their day, the Israelites begged for a king when they had the very breath of God in their tabernacle, fire from heaven. We hold Bibles in our hands, the Word, the wonder, and then only crack them open on special occasions.

The apostle Paul said he spoke with a tremor in his voice, not eloquently. He said he didn’t even use big words to impress the crowd. He showed up shaking in his boots (1 Cor. 2:1-5). Who at a job interview hires a such a coward? In this day, it’s inconceivable. Especially not church-goers–we want power in the pulpit!

Is it any wonder a minister begins rolling this burden like a snowball that becomes too heavy to pick up, too massive to even articulate? Tack on culture’s standards of looking a certain way, living a certain lifestyle, maintaining their cool, making a million choices that have nothing to do with preaching, showing up for every little function as if they are the MVP, elevating their employment above their family, minimizing healthy boundaries.

We might push a man off the very precipice even with a paycheck in their hand. They might cease to function for the standard we hold to them. Could it be that one man wasn’t ever meant to assume a singular role of authority within the church? Could it be that–hear me out–a preacher could be a layman? Physical work might be the highest form of meditation, yet we don’t give it the credit it deserves. We don’t allow pastors to enter into this holy space–either because we deem them too “set apart” or because they themselves enjoy being seated at the head of the table. Most of the time we common utensils point to the silver platter and say, isn’t it grand! Isn’t it doing just exactly what it was made to do? But actually we were all made for functional living. We were all made to serve.

What if the teacher stammered his or her way through a message? Would we throw stones? I have a feeling we might–sticks, stones, words, and whatever other ammo we conceal in our heart of hearts. We’d fire them (graciously, like Christians do) and try to find someone else. Someone more suited to the job. Someone we think fits our mission better, someone worth our money and Sunday morning time.

Could not God wash and rinse all the dishes in his house and decide to use a paper towel holder instead of a silver platter? Shall the other dishes have any say in the matter? But the following verse says,
So if anyone purifies himself from anything dishonorable, he will be a special instrument, set apart, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.
2 Tim. 2:21

There is no difference in the pots and pans, be they gold, silver, earthenware, wooden…There is only a difference in what they are used for, and all can be made clean and useful. All can be set apart.

Jarrid Wilson and Andrew Stoecklin both left beautiful families behind–single mothers who must raise their children on their own. These men, both known for their mental health advocacy, lost a battle to the whisperer of lies. It shouldn’t have happened–the Church should not have been their pressure cooker. The curtain should not have fallen on them–they should have never been in the spotlight in the first place.

Kay Warren, the wife of pastor Rick Warren (and no stranger to suicide in the family), wrote of her pastor-cousin who also took his life,
Who besides his family could he turn to for counsel? Who would provide a safe place to listen nonjudgmentally to his story? Who was there to hold his hand and reassure him that he would be okay?…Who would pastor the pastor? The same spiritual leader who had been there for thousands of church members over the decades now wrestled in secret, feeling despondent, hopeless and utterly defeated.
(Kay Warren, Washington Post, April 21, 2017. Who Pastors the Pastor?)

When we speak of removing the stigma around depression, mental health, suicide–we might seriously consider what we are trying to say. Stigma, after all, indicates an ugly mark, and there is no despair uglier than a clawing, nagging voice inside a person, telling them they’d be better off dead. Let it keep the stigma; we must beg God to renew our minds and clothe us in his full armor. We must not beg for a pastor to the pastors, but for more laborers in the harvest. We need God to rinse us all–cups, plates, platters–and put us to use.

Perhaps one way to begin is by reevaluating church leadership and our natural tendencies to elevate people within it. It begins with the kids we’re recruiting–are we pushing God’s “sovereign” plan when we really just want to see them play out the holiest version of the American dream? Do we hasten to put power in the hands of a few when we’ve all been called to the field?

Not one of us is useless, not one of us ought to be overused. What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Jesus once asked. I dearly hope the answer isn’t the pulpit. Perhaps we should think about the way we do church and how we treat people. In the end, it’s all the same, and it’s all that matters.