Today, and “things used to be better” mentality

I considered being vague at first in this post regarding location, but then realized that a year has passed. This feels like plenty of time for people to stop caring about where we used to live. At least no weirdos will be able to track me down…not that they would, but you never know. Maybe it is only a dot on the timeline, a span of a few marks–nine years to be exact–but if I were a tree it would make a solid, stabilizing ring in the trunk of my life. And now a new ring has already formed.


We moved away from our Durango home to the Denver area almost a year ago. It’s been a full four seasons–well, if you count snow as a summery sort of precipitation.
On the mountain there were always two weeks in June we could declare as summer–it actually was warm enough to detect some small discomfort inside the house. Having no air conditioning unit or swamp cooler, we bore it, knowing it was quite temporary. The windows remained shut until dusk when we reopened them to let the house fill back up with woodsy-fresh mountain air until morning. After these two weeks, thunderstorms rolled in nearly every afternoon, so that we kept our windows open all the time. On the fourth of July we would rush home from the parade, throw on our coziest sweatpants and down-filled jackets, and sit on the deck to make s’mores and watch the downpour. On an off year (of the drought variety) we would pray for rain and feel sorry we couldn’t watch fireworks over the lake while eating buttered popcorn from the back of a pickup truck.

A hardy tolerance of winter, a woeful intolerance of heat and humidity–this marked our mountain conditioning.

It is no longer familiar to me, the born and bred midwesterner, to hold an ice cream cone in my hand and watch it completely melt out of the cone before I even taste it. In Colorado you can lick ice cream at an enjoyable pace instead of spinning the cone horizontally on the tongue, racing to consume it before it disappears or the bugs overtake you. Here at altitude the biggest concern eating al fresco is whether you can finish your sandwich before the bread dries out.


Summer is eagerly anticipated, a warming balm to the weary, thermal-wearing winter warriors. This is doubly true for the non-skiing family (us, obviously, because it’s expensive and our kids are like refrigerator magnets to trees) who bides the cold season mostly tussling in a fit of cabin fever.

When summer finally appears we revel in it. We plant seeds and hold our breath. We roll up our pant legs and wade in icy streams–snow melted straight from the mountains. We build bonfires to share with friends. We spend cool nights camping, food boxes securely locked and hidden to ward off bears. We huddle together and shiver (as opposed to shooing fierce mosquitoes and junebugs out of the tent). We loathe the morning for its chill and pray the kids don’t hear any sounds of squirrels chattering above them. We pack backpacks full of water bottles and granola bars and hike as far as we can go–till the water runs out or the kids on our shoulders become insufferable. Heat doesn’t consume us, only the threat of sunburn causes us to pause and re-apply lotion.

This was our life in the southwest corner of Colorado, till we moved a year ago.

It was beautiful, just like they say, a ‘slice of heaven’.
But we drove back through there a couple weeks ago, and you know what? I wasn’t sad that we’d left. It was exactly the same. Just as beautiful and unchanged. It holds dozens of people I love, yes, as well as our first home. It was the place I was handed the gift of solitude and independence and where I became a mother four times over. But I don’t miss it.

Maybe I’m too practical, or maybe this is proof that I’m terribly cynical, anti-sentimental, and have some childhood anxieties to overcome. Frankly, I think memories can be sneaky, lying little buggars. We can tend to polish them with such reverence that they ultimately no longer resemble their original selves…Were they even ever good? Nostalgia applies a sort of patina that gleams incandescent and luminous. We hold memories as idols…if it is good, it becomes a trophy we point to, over and over. If it is bad, it gets thrown in the compost to rot away. If we get an optimistic hair, we might try and dig it out now and then to polish it for posterity’s sake.

The truth is, we can never again reclaim a trophy (good or bad) because it has already been fairly won. The glory or disappointment was in the moment, and now the moment has passed. The victory will not–must not!–be repeated, for the race is different every generation.

The Israelites had been in the desert for forty-five days (a month and a half!) from their miraculous escape from slavery when they began moaning and groaning, reminicing the good old days…when they were slaves!

If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt!” they said. “There we sat by pots of meat and ate our fill of bread, but you have brought us into this desert to starve this whole assembly to death!”  Exodus 16:3

After two years into the desert, their story was even wilder:

…again the Israelites wept and said, “Who will feed us meat? We remember the fish we ate freely in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our appetite is gone; there is nothing to see but this manna!”  Numbers 11:4-6

Things used to be better! Remember the good old slave days in Egypt? It was LUSH.

Do we, ten years (fifty years?) removed from “bondage” (too harsh a word?!) –recount blissful babyhood while in reality those moments were marked by struggle? What about the morning I spent arguing with the insurance company on the phone while dragging a fit-throwing two year old (clinging like lichen to my foot) to her bedroom?
Is yesterday always preferable to today?

I do think it is a gift to turn old grapes into fine wine (this the gift of storytelling) but it carries the danger of drinking too much, intoxicating the mind with longing and notions of “better” days. Worse yet is compelling others to sip it rather than make their own.
Maybe there have been some good, good times. You won’t forget them. Maybe your babies were the sweetest, funniest, tenderest little love morsels. I’ll be you have pictures galore. But maybe you’ve outgrown some friendships, or something is compelling you to move and change. Maybe you look in the mirror and you no longer see who you were thirty years ago. Can you be okay with that? Can you face today?

In Durango, the bright red poppies I’d sown in the front bed of our fixer-upper home were the most beautiful I had ever seen. I sat on the deck in the mornings drinking coffee, watching bees and hummingbirds gurgle and dive in the garden and tree pollen float through the air like tiny fairies. In reality, this happened maybe a dozen times total.
In Durango, I slept less than I’d ever slept in my whole life. My kids did not sleep. They weren’t sleepers or eaters. They cried and fussed. I so badly wanted a break, some relief from the work. I threatened to leave my husband. I cried a lot and lost a lot of weight. I wondered what in the world I was doing with my life. I had no family within a seventeen hours’ drive of our house. I was lonely on a mountain, scared of bears, mountain lions, and leaving the house at night.
(I actually think I might hate tent camping, but still can’t bear to convince my better senses of this.)

There’s been pain mixed with beauty–I can’t try to sort it out, because they like to walk hand in hand. Memories are not trophies–they need no upkeep.
It’s okay now, because that chapter has been written. Someday, if I get there, I might pass the stories down, stories without strings attached. Maybe I’ll convince my unsentimental self that today’s moments are tomorrow’s treasures.
All I’ve really got is Today, and it doesn’t leave much time for polishing old trophies.

Seasons

We had a little dinner party last Saturday night. In preparation, I raked the who-knows-how-old green turf rug that covers our back patio (believe it or not, the tool for the job is called a perky carpet groomer) and considered getting rid of the old nasty thing. It irks me every time I find ketchup dripped and drying on it, paint and paint brushes, random containers of water, mudpies, crushed rocks (the boys are on an endless quest to find geodes)–basically all the signs of kids enjoying their summer.
I try and remind myself: there is a season for everything, a time for this and a time for that. This is a sincere, unending quest for perspective in my own messy sphere of living. I am not an orderly person, but I sense there must be, naturally, an order to life, because I’m quickly overwhelmed by a lack of peace when I busily try to multitask and ‘seize the day’. Kids have upped the ante when it comes to keeping all the plates spinning. To what lengths, exactly, should I go to ensure their well-being? What must I sacrifice on the altar of good parenting?
For a season, everything. Time, I think, a paying job, and a bona fide resumé. A porch and home swept clean, maybe some dreams. It is not a cheap or sparkly endeavor.

I had a mortifying experience yesterday. I took all the kids to a brand new cello teacher. While my oldest was having his hour-long lesson, my third boy began puking all over the white-carpeted basement. The cello teacher’s dogs rushed to lap up the barf, my little girl began crying because the dogs were no longer playing with her. She hit her head in the drama and began screaming. The cello teacher’s wife rushed down the stairs, I picked up FC and ran to the toilet because he was choking…I wanted to run away and cry. It was terrible. I sort of hope I forget the incident, that it gets wiped from my memory like it never even happened. (If I write it down and force it into a single black-and-white paragraph, maybe it won’t haunt me?!)
God sure knows how to keep me humble. What a lesson in patience and compassion. I couldn’t have hustled my way out of that nightmare, I could only endure it.
This makes me wonder: maybe there’ll be seasons, even whole years of enduring so that God can reap a bounty of righteousness in your life.
Living seasonally isn’t only a natural progression, but a catalyst for God’s work. For things to grow and bloom properly, for the wheat to fall and produce seed for the next generation, we must submit to the rhythm of seasons.
The world tries to fool us into a twilight zone lie…that there are no seasons, that beauty and joy senselessly fades, and we must pour our energy into fighting it. Look around and ask yourself, where am I finding examples of seasonal, fruitful living? Put down your phone–you won’t find any answers on social media or CNN–they are empty cesspools promoting a doctored life. They will tell you that coveting youth is only natural, that you are only appreciating la vida pura, nothing more. Your home, body, wealth, possessions, freedom: this is the tangible, ultimate proof of happiness.

Today’s inspirational speakers and dreamers argue there are no seasons–there’s only hustle. You can have it all–the hallmark illusion of the American dream–is bound up in your own strength to wrestle it into existence. But we know this isn’t true. If success is only found in your ability to hustle, you will miss whole seasons of your life. Ask any old man who wished he had worked less and spent more time with his kids. Ask any old woman who has nothing to show for her life except bitter complaints that her own grown children won’t visit her. Muscling the dreams of youth to the ground only reaps neglected acres of weedy thorn patches.
We flat out ignore this to match the pace of the world around us. We shamelessly neglect important things. We forget about seasons. We age, and we are shocked when regrets crease and multiply like wrinkles in our soul.

At our dinner party, my newest friend, Mary, a sweet ninety year old lady, sat across from me at the table and matter-of-factly uttered profound observations on living. On traveling to Egypt and Italy in her twenties, “I knew I had to see the world before I settled down.” On quitting her job in her thirties to raise her children, “I just didn’t feel comfortable leaving that job to a stranger just so I could keep my career going.”
She spoke sans regret. I could see her confidence, her joy in looking back on years of trusting God to use her life intentionally. She was peaceful, beloved by her children and husband. Hers was a testimony I long to hear.

The reality of aging, the falling apart of our bodies (vessels we once thought we indestructible)–only crystallizes with each passing year. No wonder we flinch when we see odd hairs sprouting, new bumps and wrinkles and aches popping up…it is the sting of death! Pain is the surest response to puncture. We loathe it, but we cannot halt it. If we deny the law of time, we must make the world our home, the people in it, our temporary audience. We worship our youth and despise our future. It becomes self-fulfilling and bitter, a war to the end. We forget that beauty fades, but there are far more valuable things to treasure.

On Mother’s Day, I took pictures of families at our little church. I printed them off and passed them to all the moms the following Sunday. Ruby, eighty-something–a witty, sweater-and-pearls walker-pushing wonder (and the best friend a three-year old girl could have)–chuckled when she saw her photo.
“Well,” she joked, “I suppose it won’t get any better than that.”
The people who age with the most grace seem to be aware of seasons. “She is clothed with strength and dignity, she can laugh at the days to come.” (Psalm 31:25)

They aren’t surprised by the passing of years. They are weathermen and weatherwomen, anticipating atmospheric change, preparing for the coolness of fall, stocking their cellar for the frigid winter.

Mary’s husband, Richard, stepped from the green turf patio back inside our house after dinner was over. The kids had entertained them with singing and music until it had gotten dark. He leaned on his cane, dark eyes gazing around my kitchen and dining room. He noted how comfortable it felt, how familiar it was to his own home.

“You haven’t updated any of the kitchen since the house was built, have you? Ha, this is the same range and oven I have in my house!”
I shrugged and remembered the crusty patio rug I was sweeping only hours earlier.
“I guess there’s no sense in changing anything if it isn’t falling apart,” I said, because my own ears needed to hear it.
“You have a beautiful home,” he nodded, patting my five year old on the head.
I knew he was talking about more than just the house. His words ring with truth. He is wise–a new friend, an old weatherman, hinting at seasons to come.

Since my youth, God, you have taught me,
And to this day I declare your marvelous deeds.
Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God,
Till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come.

Psalm 71:17-18

Summer class

I am beginning a summer English class in our neighborhood.

This was an obvious response to the need I’ve seen at our local school, the difficulty for non-English speaking parents to communicate without translators. Parent participation in their kids’ school is directly impacted by barriers such as language. I haven’t begun teaching just yet–I’m still waiting for a certificate to appear in the mail–but the last twelve weeks I have been preparing. We all really should do college when we’re thirty-five instead of fresh out of highschool; it’s much more applicable, and no boyfriends are around to distract you.
Ha.

Last fall, I was picking the kids up from school when it occurred to me I had something to offer. After the final bell rings, the boys usually meet me on a big field out in front of the building. Of course I’m always dragging little kids along, and it generally takes us forever to coax them to the school, then off the playground, then to walk back home. What takes a normal person five minutes takes us a half hour. On this particular day, the kids were playing on swings and I was hustling them to go home. Out of nowhere a little boy appeared on the steps. He couldn’t have been more than seven years old. He squinted his eyes and in panicked Spanish said, “Excuse me, excuse me! Do you speak any Spanish?”

“Uh…poquito!” I replied. School had been out for several minutes, the buses had all left, and we were the only ones still standing outside the building. “Que necesitas?”

He began rattling off words so quickly that I had to ask him to slow down. It was his first day of school, he was new here, he had just had eye surgery the day before; he couldn’t see. He didn’t know where his mom was, or how he was supposed to get home. He lived in a tall, red apartment building. His mother drove a white car. He didn’t know her phone number, but he knew his aunt’s. I grabbed my kids and we all walked around the building to see if the front office was still open.

The ladies at the front desk were surprised. They do not speak Spanish, so they had to wait for someone to arrive to phone call the boy’s mother. The little boy was worried and scared. I told him everything would be alright, then I had to leave because my own squirmy kids were hungry and tired.

It made me think about the little boy’s parents. Could something more be done?
It made me glad that we are a boring family that dawdles after school on the playground.

I marvel that Jesus said Love your neighbor, and that was it. He didn’t say to try to eliminate global poverty, stop the North Koreans from blasting nukes, fix the entire immigrant crisis, make world peace, or argue a point to the death on social media. He didn’t even ask us to try and understand the scope of hate, devastation, hunger, cruelty, despair that rocks our world. He just told us to remain in Him and keep an eye on the people in our path that need help (Luke 10). He just said, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31) and expected us humans to trust that this one-step-at-a-time method was His best, most intentional way to love Him back. He left us an example to follow in His Word, and it boils down to the most simple idea ever: to pay attention.

This comes with a price, I have learned. Any mom or dad who has stayed home with a small child and a three day plan to potty train them bootcamp-style knows the stakes. When you assume the task of training your precious minion, your only goal in life is to chauffeur them to the toilet before they puddle up the carpet, sofa, bed or chair. You stretch plastic over the carpet, drag the tiny potty stool into the living room, make a stash of salty pretzels and juice bags. Everything falls to the wayside; microwaved hot dogs become a staple supper fare. You neglect your home, your work, your body, your life. You are on a mission: nothing else is as important as keeping poop out of their pants. You will not get paid a dime to accomplish this, and any thanks will only come in the form of mad dashes to the filthy Walmart restroom right in the middle of the checkout lane.

This is the urgency of paying attention.

Yet we fill up our days with busy-ness to where we can’t see a neighbor in need even if they were pounding on our door for a cup of sugar. We are consumed by a virtual life, the breaking of bread with our iPhone screens. We are too busy to even look our children in the eyes. Too afraid of the ultra-needy sucker fish-type. Too weak to set healthy boundaries. We don’t really want to partake in someone else’s struggle, feel someone else’s pain. We don’t want their failures to rub shoulders with our successes. We assume we know all the hows and whys without first making an informed observation. We filter our love for others through a sieve: Do they deserve my time? Will this hinder my success? What will people think?
In Matthew 6, Jesus declares that worrying about ourselves, our clothes, our shelter, our food–is a silly endeavor. What really matters, He says, what serves as a hitching post in our soul that every other tangible need is tied to–that which sets the believer apart from the unbeliever–is this:
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”    (Matt. 6:33).
Seek first! Paying attention is not passive or an alternate route; it’s the first, most crucial step. Every success hinges on seeking first his kingdom.  
God has excellent foresight. His perfect plan for each of us relies on our faith in Him, only to abide in Him. Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

“Apart from me you can do nothing”–I sort of thought this was a little harsh of him to say, but isn’t it kind? We don’t have to wander around, hoping our ambiguous good deeds somehow serve a nebulous purpose and make us feel happy with ourselves. No, there is a measured effect when we draw life from the Vine–it’s fruit. Things not growing on the Vine are dead, and they don’t amount to much. The only life is in the branches.
I’m nervous about starting something new. What if no one comes? What if people come and they hate it? What if I fail? What if this is a massive disaster?
But then I realize I’m making it all about me, and I get over it. Preparing a way, or “seeking first the kingdom” doesn’t rely on my ability to be awesome or even capable. It relies on my willingness to notice, show up, and believe that God can work with what I’ve got.

I’ll tell you this–I have no clue if teaching English is what God wants me to do. I’ve been working hard, staying up late at night to write papers and pass my certification, and I haven’t felt a sense of this is it. But I do think He is rather fatherly and wonderful and excited about me. I’ve never heard a bossy, celestial voice or seen visions. But He does throw out some fantastical promises in the Bible, and I cling to them. In Malachi 3, the Lord dares His people to go all in, to hang their hat on His goodness.

“Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”
(Malachi 3:10)

Just see if I can’t blow your mind, He says. This seems like a darn good bet. God can use my little investment, my menial mom-job of paying attention, and He is pleased to help me rake in the chips.

I’m all in, Jesus. I’m only, ever, all in.

Tornado

I’ve a massive tornado story under my belt as of Tuesday night. The kids and I had roadtripped out to Missouri for a quick, spur-of-the-moment visit and were on our way back when I headed straight into the storm. To be fair, I didn’t have a clue it was coming. I was just following the sometimes-faithful old Siri on a new route to I-70.
We had stopped for a quick park meetup with my dear friend Megan south of Kansas City. After a quick romp thru the sprayground we set off again. In between the fight over a Pokemon book and a five year old’s complaints of a stomachache, I realized the sky was getting rapidly darker. It occured to me I ought to think about the weather. Cars on the highway were slowing down, their drivers’ jaws dropped wide. Several cars were perched on the overpass, headlights pointed west. That seems like a dumb thing to do if a storm is blowing in, I thought. This was immediately followed by a lightbulb moment: people do really dumb things, I bet it’s a tornado.

I shushed the kids and flipped on the radio. The first words I heard were an automated, “If you are in Douglas county, take shelter immediately.” I wondered if I was in Douglas county, but only for a hot second. It didn’t look like a tornado beyond my windshield; it looked like a wall of doom. I sped up to pass the slowing cars. Fortunately there was an exit, and I took it. We bolted into a Holiday Inn Express. The staff was ushering people into a ground level bathroom. Without shame I took a seat on the toilet. Then I asked a lady squished next to me, “Um, I just got off the highway. Where exactly am I?” She patted my knee. “You’re in Lawrence, Kansas, hon. And you did the right thing getting off the road.”

There were at least twenty people in the room. We prayed for safety, for the tornado to miss us. The moment we said ‘amen’ a guy looking at his phone said, “Huh! It’s moving away from us! It’s missing us by a quarter mile!”

We held on in the bathroom for a bit longer to be safe.

An hour and a half later we deemed it safe to get back on the highway. Immediately we passed a car nose-down in a pond, its windows down and airbags deployed.

This has been my closest obvious encounter with certain disaster. Heaven only knows how many other times I’ve escaped only by the skin on my teeth. I was a bit jittery and snappy with the kids the rest of the drive home, especially when they whined about only having granola bars and crackers for supper that night.
I wanted to shake them, “Don’t you realize how lucky we are to be eating granola bars right now?!” God let a tornado rip across Kansas but He let it miss us by a stone’s throw.
Think of your worst natural disaster nightmare and consider this: God can choose to spare or take a life, and we will have nothing to say about it, only gratitude for the next breath.

I have friends who have told me that religion is for people who are afraid. People who want to control other people by fearmongering. I will tell you this: nothing puts the fear of God in you like a radio PSA to find a hole in the ground quick before a vortex destroys you. You are not in control.

The confused soul today maintains that there is more valor in questioning than in submission. This is interesting, considering how little control we have over our own lives. We are tiny beings who watch the radar so we know when to run and hide from the weather. This is an obvious metaphor for our current cultural climate, and yet we refuse to cry out to the only One who can save us from destruction.

This reminds me of a man named Jacob.
If you know anything about the story of Jacob in the Old Testament, you’ll remember he was a mama’s boy brown-noser. He pulled off one of the biggest hoaxes in Bible history by donning goat skins and tricking his blind old man into giving him his brother’s birthright.
After running away from home (scared that his big brother will beat the snot out of him), he starts down a path of setbacks, one after the other. But he grows up. Hard work and a sneaky father-in-law (arguably more deceptive than even Jacob) are the catalyst for sincere maturation in his life. He develops discernment. He learns how to set boundaries. He learns how to ranch and take care of his children.

There comes a point in the story when Jacob is moving his family to a new land. He first lets his family cross the river, and then he is alone for the night. Genesis 32 says a man came and wrestled with him until daybreak.
They wrestled all night, the two of them. Finally, as dawn was breaking, the stranger said to Jacob, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”


But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” (Gen.32:26)
The man asked him his name. “Jacob,” he panted. Jacob, which means he grasps the heel–an idiom for he deceives.

“Your name will no longer be He Deceives,” the man declared. “From now on you will be Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
Then Jacob realized he had been wrestling not with any man, but God himself. He had lassoed a tornado and was holding on for dear life.

You see, God wants us to wrestle with him when we are good and ready! Not for us to stand in the ring as a victor, our arm raised in the air by some referee, no. He intends for us to be changed by Him. He wants our full-on, all-night, intimate, cradle-pinning effort. He’s looking for the indomitable spirit of the seeker: I’m ready, God. I’m no deceiver. Change me, change my name. Call me something different.

Proverbs 2:3-5 says

If you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
The story of Jacob wrestling God isn’t a picture of a man throwing shade on the Maker of the universe. No. He knew he had no chance at strong-arming is Creator, nor was this his intention. He knew, ultimately, that God would have His way. “I’m not letting go of You, no matter what,” he thought, and blessing came through his tenacity to cling. The verse says God touched Jacob’s hip socket to wrench it. Jacob was left a limping man for the rest of his life. For years, when people saw Jacob coming, they had a visual of his story, his wrestle with God.
I want that confidence and I want an awesome story like that.

He sought, he stayed.
He submitted.
He met a storm; he took shelter.

May we wrestle wisely (and always watch the weather).

the group

Several years ago I managed the kitchen at a retirement facility. It was the best job I’d ever had, for several reasons. I got to cook while someone else washed the dishes. There was unlimited butter, cream, and wine, and I could make just about whatever I wanted. I loved the residents, and they loved me. It paid enough to cover our basement-hole-apartment rent.

Unfortunately, the director of the facility was a poor manager of people and regularly made his employees feel misused. People were quitting left and right. At one point, I had to hire my mom and brother on as temporary kitchen help because we were so short staffed. I eventually got fed up, too. It just so happened that the week I handed in my resignation, the residents had filled out a survey regarding the activities offered at our facility. I halfheartedly flipped through the pages, sad to be leaving my favorite older folks, curious to see their opinions on paper. The survey was a list of ratings of various things–outings, yoga, weight lifting, dining–and each activity was ranked on a scale of one to five. At the bottom I saw the last category…Spiritual development/services. It garnered a whopping one on the scale. I knew I could do something.

Before I gave my two weeks’ notice to my boss, I asked him if I might be able to start up a Bible study for the residents, citing the “spiritual development” survey rating. He thought it was a super idea. It wasn’t the best timing (he was quite flustered when I quit my job a day later), but I had permission to continue, and I wouldn’t have to cut ties with my older friends at the retirement home.

I talked Joe into leading a Bible study with me, but we argued every time we tried to sit down and plan it out. I printed off the entire book of John in large print copies to hand out to participants. We wrote down a few questions, planning to go through a chapter per week. Then, every Wednesday night, we drove in stony silence all the way to Bible study, me feeling irritated he didn’t care enough (he didn’t), he thinking me an irrational worrywart (I was). We surreptitiously slipped out the door each week so I wouldn’t have to see all my old friends and feel sad that I didn’t work there anymore.
It was a total flop. At least, it felt like it. Only a few residents came. Most of them listened dutifully, glued to their seats, lips sealed. We studied the whole book of John and moved on to Acts. Arthur, a man of about 95 years, was the most vocal participant. He consistently played devil’s advocate, as if we were some seminary graduates who had any idea how to describe the geography of Greece or explain why John chapter 8 includes italicized words.

To promote generosity, we took up an offering for a special project–wheelchairs to send to Uganda. One lady gave ten dollars and wanted me to provide a tax receipt. This boggled my mind. I was crushed. I had anticipated great joy–beautiful fellowship! And here it felt like closed minds, closed mouths, closed hearts. I was twenty-something, a college dropout, working at a temp agency after quitting my favorite job. My young marriage was strained, I was inexperienced with apologetics (sorry, Art) and supremely discouraged.

Still, there were hints of gratitude, old ladies who hugged us and thanked us and worried when it thunderstormed and we couldn’t make it to a meeting. I loved those people. Even Art and his curmudgeonly affections won me over. It was enough to keep us afloat.

We continued the Bible study for a year and a half. Meanwhile, Joe and I both finished college. We found jobs in another state. We announced to our little group that we were leaving.
Before we departed, I called up my friend in ministry at the local college. I told him about our small study group; I did not tell him about the struggle. I said, “We don’t want this to die. If you think you can keep it going, I’m sure the residents would be so thankful.”

I really thought it would die. I had mostly forgotten why we had started it.

It was twelve years ago this May.

Every once in awhile my friend, Lance, gives me updates. It never died. In fact, it grew. It’s growing. Students from Lance’s ministry serve with him. Old people and young people are changed. Lance has told me of generous residents who have given tens of thousands of dollars to grow the work of the Lord in the community there (I’m sure they are able to get a tax receipt, for the record). I can hardly believe it when he writes me the news.

I had such little faith–probably exactly the size of a mustard seed.

I’m continually blown away at what God can do when I offer him my few loaves of bread. He has never failed to multiply it.

I wonder about Art, Jane, Max, Ming, and the rest of our core group from twelve years ago. They are all gone now. Those meetings seemed a bit futile, but we still opened the word of God. It wasn’t a waste; it is never a waste. I’m thankful for Lance who knew an opportunity when he saw one. I’m thankful for years that pass, because that’s the only way for roots to grow deep. I’m thankful for a tangible picture of God’s faithfulness in my life. He redeems everything, everything.

It makes me brave.

Salt

Two weeks ago Rachel Held Evans passed on to the other side. I have read some of her writing. It made me laugh. It made me think. I didn’t agree with a lot of her musings–I never “left” the church. But I also hadn’t viewed church through the lens of modern salvation, steeped in American culture and unsaid rules of belonging. I scampered around the edges of steepled buildings, an imposter, clutching onto my legalism for years. Church never indicated fullness to me, only a limping bride, frustratingly imperfect in her desire to serve God. In hindsight, I was never fully immersed in the church like she was, never gave church a chance to hurt me. Her struggle was not mine.

But I still, like Rachel, chucked my copy of Debi Pearl’s Created to Be His Helpmeet across the room when I read it, annoyed with its examination of biblical submission. As if my marriage (rocky at the time) would be preserved if I only called my husband at work to flirt with him. If my resumé only touted some clever acting skills, I could get him to take out the garbage for me. If I only knew my role as a woman, I wouldn’t be so hard to get along with.

It left a terrible taste in my mouth. It felt like a false assumption that all women are powerless, mute Barbies, dependent on men, reliant on sexual prowess, second-class citizens. Obviously, I read too intensely into the purpose of the book–the message was not an indictment on my failures as a wife. But it had me praying for wisdom in my own marriage, because I was a fraud if I thought I could save it with a few coy glances. I prayed for a way to articulate the full spectrum of womanhood in light of who God created women to be.

My own mother is no church lady, though she is the truest Christian I know. She works harder and complains less than anyone I’ve ever met. She isn’t a hugger or a talker. She never concerned herself with appearance, never crossed the entrance of a nail salon, never owned a hair dryer. She has been the primary example of womanhood in my life. It’s no wonder that for the longest time I thought Beth Moore was probably a huge Bible study fraud, with her hair, makeup, and aesthetic perfection. I cannot reckon the two ladies, and yet both are women. Both are followers of Christ. Who can define a woman, define her place at the table?

I think Rachel Held Evans understood this dilemma. She also wrestled through moral questions as they applied to her life. Our lives. She threw salt on meat. With her words she sprinkled the world around her. We need more of it. This is what draws people to the Lord–we crave truth, but sometimes we will only taste it when it’s been justly seasoned.

This makes me think on our modern times. It makes me think on gender equality in America, something RHE was passionate about. There is a good chance this will taste too salty for some readers, but I feel it’s worth the risk. Salt is a key ingredient (even in deliciously sweet things, like cupcakes and iced cinnamon rolls) and I will try to sprinkle judiciously.

To be honest, for a long time I thought things were unfair and unequal.

I used to read my way around some of the letters of Paul in the Bible because it felt too raw, the idea that women should be silent, covered, obedient. I read it with a hard, unbelieving heart, and it only ever felt like glass ceilings. Ceilings that I didn’t mind throwing rocks at.

But here is what I didn’t know, something that takes years of smoothing and turning over and over, like a rock tumbler in my skeptic mind: My Father knows what evil is, and he wants more than anything to protect me. I am precious to him, a daughter whose worth is above rubies.

In the beginning, the man needed a helper, and God created for him a perfect person for the job. This came as no surprise to God that Adam needed major help in the garden. He just waited for Adam to realize it first on his own. (This happens to be a marriage-saver tip: give your man the opportunity to notice.) Men and women complete each other. They are two sides to the same coin; they add dimension to the other. Together, they form the human race.  As a woman, I have a special purpose. Though it will never be realized solely by my union with my husband, it is beautiful to tend to a living, breathing picture of wholeness in a broken world. The opportunity to partake in building life with other human beings is a priceless gift from God.

It is for my good that He wants a man to lead a house and shoulder my burdens (Eph. 5:22-24). Not because I can’t (all the single moms raise a hand), but because my husband needs to be strong, steady, courageous, and I ought not hinder him. God is more pro-equality than we humans can even hope to attain to, and he is doling out justice with complete, sovereign wisdom. Just as a pair of oxen is yoked together, we are to pull equal weight in a partnership. And yet, the man is tasked with the heavier order: to shield and protect his woman. He is to love her in a way that sacrifices his own life to serve her (Eph. 5:25). Actually this is terribly unequal, unfair, and dreamy.  A woman who is loved in this way doesn’t mind being called a helpmeet. Chivalry, we call it. We swoon over it.  At least, we used to.

Along those lines, it is for my good that I am called to be a teacher (Eph. 4:11) but not a teacher of men (1 Tim. 1:12). This actually elevates the woman’s position in society by relieving her of the burden of training men to be men. We want men to be real men, and yet we’d like to still be in charge. This gets labeled regularly as misogyny when it is possibly the kindest way to bear one another’s burdens. Women refraining from teaching men encourages men to step up and valiantly defend and prove themselves. Real men become men by learning from men. To this point, fathers aren’t throw-away authority figures–they are crucial in the development of future generations.

It is for my good that He requires modesty (1 Tim. 1:9). Not because I don’t have a body, but because I do, and it is worth paying attention to. However, if I am constantly drawing attention to my flesh, it overwhelms my voice, my heart, my mind, my soul–when all should merit proper attention. It doesn’t mean a life sentenced to turtlenecks and culottes and timid eye contact. Rather, the Lord raises the standard of respect to a level of purity that is unpretentious, attractive and lovely. It doesn’t invite dishonor; it secures it.

Do you see how corrupt we are in our old nature, how quickly we pervert God’s ways when they are for our good? We will bristle at every boundary because we doubt Him. Did God really say…? the serpent hissed in the ear of the first woman. Are we today guarding our hearts from the same old lie?

The modern feminist opposes herself when she holds her idea of liberation as superior to men. She is mixed up: she wants there to be no visible difference. Equal, but not different. If equality were the goal, she would play fair. She wouldn’t use her “different” body as a tool for fighting, or vulgar parades as an example of freedom. She wouldn’t oversimplify femininity by making it a sexual argument. She wouldn’t degrade womanhood by demanding something that is already hers and that no man will ever be able to take or replicate.  She wouldn’t tape shut the mouths of other women by assuming her single-minded voice speaks for them all. She wouldn’t elevate her sexual rights above that of the unborn woman’s right to live outside the womb. She wouldn’t corrupt the beauty of sisterhood and brotherhood by raising her cause above all causes. She wouldn’t divide rather than unite.
It is bizarre. She wears a vagina cap on her head in an era where men and women are encouraged to challenge their sexuality. If feminism wins, then LGBTQ loses, because only one party can, in good faith, wear the hat. Modern feminism, in a sense, misrepresents freedom.
Examine this and consider: what other lies have we believed?

Oh friends, we have strayed too far from the Father. In Him there is no male or female, black or white. This is not the picture of a transgender Jesus or a She-God, no. This is a picture of our sin in light of the Holy One. He has created us as life-givers and we have scattered to the dark corners to wallow in rage, stir up hate, and mock His holy ways. We think it unfair that his creation is so flawed, when we were the ones who walked away from God.

They are three billion shades different, lovely, strong, resilient and true in the form of woman. Not one looks like anyone else, and God himself has stamped his creation with one word: good. He is satisfied in our differences, in all our colors, sizes, languages, cultures. Our varied interpretations of deep communication, nurturing motherhood, laser-focused determination, hospitality and beauty does not shame or embarrass Him. He created us: we belong to Him. He doesn’t despise our affection for babies, clean houses, or Monday night football. He doesn’t hate our attention to detail, our tender heart, our tough-love parenting, our need for quiet time. He doesn’t look at you and think, I wish she could be more like Adam. He adores you. Your resilience amazes Him. You fill Him with joy. You are enough.

There are many on this earth who do not have voices to cry out under the oppression they are facing. We are forgetting our privilege, parading around in pussy hats. This is a global disaster. We ought to be lifting these far-flung sisters up, elevating them in a time of need. Women who sit in tents in refugee camps, praying for relief. Women whose children are starving before their eyes. Women who are slaves, their bodies used by men and discarded as if they have no soul. Consider your power, my fellow women, to be alive in America, to have a voice and be able to use it. To serve, to listen, to speak, to change lives.

Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:38)
We will not throw gas on a fire of hate that rages out of control, no. We will douse it with living water.
We will fill up our salt shakers like our friend, Rachel.
We will season the world.