A Life-Changing Sentence

There was once a very religious young woman. For as long as she could remember, she had had an almost desperate desire to please God, but it was a double-edged sword. It drew her to constant spiritual seeking, but it was like living in an emotional torture chamber. She was constantly being yanked between a passion for God, feelings of guilt and spiritual failure, and totally incongruent fits of wandering away from God.

One sentence changed her life. She was explaining her spiritual struggles to a monk who had just spent five years in solitude, and he answered her, “It is, Madame, because you seek outside what you have within. Accustom yourself to seek God in your heart, and you will find him there.”

That sentence was the beginning of a journey for Jeanne Guyon, 17^th-century French mystic. And it changed my life too. I started reading her biography about nine years ago. I gobbled it up during our trips to the pool during theBahrain summer. I sat out with the other black-swathed ladies, sweating buckets under my abaaya, but honestly grateful for an hour all to myself while Steve played with 1-year-old Bethany in the water.

When I got to the section of the book where Madame Guyon has this epiphany, I was puzzled. I didn’t get what was so life-changing about that statement. But I really wanted to know, so I kept coming back to it, reading it over and over, thinking about it, chewing on it, until it finally whacked me over the head.

I tended to pray as if I was reaching, reaching toward God, and never quite catching him. Or sometimes I felt like God was there, and I was experiencing him, but I didn’t know how to hold onto it, or to get to that place every time I prayed. It was a very anxious way to relate to God, and I’m sorry to say that I totally relate to Mme. Guyon’s early neurotic experience of Christianity. To finally see that I was grasping at something that was already inside of me brought me a peace that I had not imagined possible.

It reminded me of my early married days. I would start feeling insecure, and would ask Steve far too often, “Do you love me?” The funny thing (aside from the fact that I already knew full well that he loved me) was that when he would assure me of his love, I never felt better. It finally hit me that reassurance from outside was never going to help me feel less insecure. I had to settle into believing on the inside that I was loved, and then I didn’t need to ask for reassurance. I could rest and enjoy our relationship.

This theme keeps coming back to me like the terminator. As I’m taking my writing more and more seriously, the desire for reassurance keeps poking its head up, and I have to remember to ground myself on the inside rather than hoping for approval. I’m finding the need in other areas as well to not seek outside what I have within.

Where have you seen this advice come to play in your life? Where do you struggle to rest in it?

 Photo by cbanck via Flickr

Memory and the Muses

Did you know that the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, is the mother of the Muses, the goddesses of art, music, and creativity? Apparently Zeus went looking for Mnemosyne, and…dot dot dot…the Muses were born.

For the moment, I’ll overlook the fact that they “hung out” for nine nights, resulting in (a year later), nine babies being born over the course of nine days. That’s a whole different set of birds and bees than I learned. I’m glad I’m not Greek.

The moral of this story is that Memory is very fertile. Puns aside, the stories hidden inside of us are rich soil just waiting to spawn creativity.

Thinking about this myth, I started reflecting on my two most intense times of remembering. One was the time period after my second miscarriage. The other was tied up with a period of deep depression and disillusionment several years ago. Both experiences were characterized by serious questions, allowing myself to look at and feel things from my past, and opening those processes up to a few close friends.

So that turned into prolific creativity, right? Umm, no. Actually, it turned into a really long dry spell where I could barely even write blog posts. I don’t even have much in my journal after that.

Mnemosyne tells me why. After the union of god and memory, there was a long, silent gestation before the muses were born. And I think that’s what happened to me. I opened up my memories to God, and then I had to wait. And now I’m getting to the part where the creativity is starting to come to fruition.

I’d love to hear your stories of how memory has given birth to creativity.

Image by rubber bullets with a CC license

Fighting Guilt With Connection

On Thanksgiving morning I checked my facebook, as I often do. I clicked on a link a friend from the Middle East had posted, and all of a sudden I was face to face with pictures of a man whose head had been blown open during the Arab Spring protests. As I clicked the images closed, I felt almost as violently assaulted with the juxtaposition of this suffering and pain against cheery Thanksgiving messages.

All day I struggled. Physically, I was in the world of turkey and stuffing and apple pie, but mentally I was feeling guilty and ashamed to be celebrating in a safe place with my family when I have friends hurting in other places.

When I talk about this kind of survivor’s guilt, other people’s heads nod in solidarity. It’s a common experience, but not a road that ends well.

Here are some thoughts I have about survivor’s guilt and combating it:

Recognize dichotomistic thinking. When we see thousands of people dying, wounded, and homeless from an earthquake, our brains tend to go to a place where our lives are perfect and their lives are terrible—and why should we have it so good? We separate “our lives” from “their lives,” and we paint a sharp contrast between the two. Not only is the reality is less clear cut, but this automatic way of thinking separates us from those who are hurting rather than connecting us.

Focus on our connection rather than our separation. In truth, our lives are not all good, and their lives are not all bad. Though we may not have experienced the same disaster or magnitude of suffering, we do know pain. Whether we are faced with a large-scale tragedy or a friend who is hurting, opening our hearts to the common experience of loss and heartache allows us to replace guilt with empathy.

Accept our shared helplessness. I think feeling guilty is one way we cope with the terror of seeing the helplessness of the human condition. We cherish our sense of control and the related fantasy of fairness in life. When we are confronted by undeserved tragedy, it helps to allow ourselves to grieve over the powerlessness of both the sufferers and ourselves, rather than mentally fighting to maintain our illusion of control.

Choose actions carefully. Acting from guilt or from separation rather than from connection can do more harm than good. For large scale problems, we may desperately throw money at the tragedy without carefully considering the most helpful channels for those resources. For more personal problems, we may feel inclined to try to fix the problem or make it go away in order to deal with our discomfort. This often ends up coming across as “helping” from a position of superiority, rather than from a place of equality, and it belittles the sufferer. In either situation, slowing down, allowing ourselves to connect and be vulnerable enough to empathize, and waiting for wisdom can lead to more purposeful, calculated, and useful action.

Do you struggle with guilt when you see others in pain? What helps you overcome guilt and move to a more constructive place?

One Mommy Sparrow to Another

I sagged into the pew at church next to Josh’s stroller. He still wouldn’t go into the nursery, so it wasn’t going to be a peaceful service. I was pretty much running on empty physically and spiritually–a plight not uncommon to moms with young kids.

The worship band started playing. “Better is one day in your courts, better is one day in your house, than thousands elsewhere…” I decided to look up the psalm that inspired the song, Psalm 84. Through the haze, one phrase stood out: ” Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young–a place near your altar…” (v.3)

It was like the voice of an angel in the form of a little mamma sparrow. She said, “Just make your nest in God’s presence. It’s okay that your time with God isn’t what it used to be. You don’t have to be busy about the business of the temple. You can just exist with your little nest in God’s presence.”

This became my mommy-mantra for a while. It was a reminder to me that intimacy with God was not a matter of performance, and that reflecting God’s love to others was more about my presence than my efforts. If there was one piece of wisdom I could give to young moms, it would be to dwell on the tremendous gentleness of God toward you, and to treat yourself accordingly.

Now that I’m out of that exhausting preschooler phase and into the immensely enjoyable elementary years, I find myself coming back to this lesson. Apparently life will continue to challenge both our sense of adequacy and our ideas about God’s expectations of us.

At this point in my life, I have more questions than answers about God. Much more than even those exhausting baby-days, I feel that I’ve failed at what I thought following God was all about. But I come back to this: my nest is at his altar. Questions, confusion, and inadequacy aside, I am refreshed by his tremendous gentleness and the belief that he welcomes me into his presence, no matter my state.

Mother’s Day Comes Early

My alarm clock did not go off this morning. That is to say, I don’t set my alarm any more because Josh bounds into my bedroom like Tigger at a predictable hour every morning and monologues until I drag myself out of bed. He also continues talking for about the next hour without coming up for air (I’ve got to find out how he does that!), so there’s little danger of my falling back asleep.

So this morning I snoozed him (told him to come back in 5 minutes), and an hour and a half later I woke up, shocked at what time it was. While I was making my coffee, Josh came downstairs. “What happened to 5 minutes?” I asked. “I got distracted playing withBethany,” he answered. “And I wanted to let you sleep.”

A compassionate alarm clock.

So I made the kids pancakes and sat down at my computer with my coffee. Josh offers, “So I guess we should start homeschool, huh?” “Yeah, I suppose so…” I said. I glanced over, and Josh and Bethany had highly suspicious grins on their faces.

“We’re not going to do homeschool today,” saidBethany. Uh oh…homeschool strike. I wonder what their terms are. This was obviously premeditated, and they have a plan.

But no…turns out they had already done all of their work except for what I had to read to them out loud! A whoop and a holler from me, hugs all around, and I feel like it’s Christmas. I really love doing school with them, but what a nice surprise when I thought we’d be working into the afternoon because of my late start!

The Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy

I’m not saying that the tooth fairy is a ditz. Ok, I kind of am. I hope it’s not libel or anything, but I feel like someone out there needs to tell the truth. And the truth is, the Tooth Fairy is an unreliable character.

More than once she has left my kids hanging when they have awoken early, the hope in their little eyes gleaming, begging not to be disappointed. I have had to cover for her, as I now realize my parents also had to cover for her. And I don’t think I’m alone in this.

When that plaintive, heartbroken cry rings out, “Mom, the tooth fairy forgot to come,” a parent has little choice but to say, “Maybe you just missed it. Here, let me look.” Which is why sleight of hand is taught in parent prep courses right along with Lamaze breathing. Our whole society is enabling the tooth fairy’s untrustworthy behavior.

The reason this is coming up now, on the eve of Easter, is that the Easter Bunny would never be able to get by with the kind of stuff the tooth fairy pulls. I mean, we parents can deal with her slip-ups; we always have quarters around. But it’s not like we hide extra jelly beans in the sock drawer just in case Peter Cottonball is hungover and doesn’t make it.

The fact of the matter is, though, that Peter never does miss an Easter. I suspect he’s an accountant for the rest of the year. All he does is slip on some wire-rimmed glasses, and the chaps at work never notice his tail.

To come to the point, I propose that we fire the tooth chick and let Peter C. take over for her. He can quit his job at the IRS, put his money skills to good work—possibly diverting tax funds for the purpose (think socialized dental plan)—and have the opportunity to follow his passion for making kids happy all year around, and not just at Easter.

Leave comments if you’re on board.

Resurrection Rhythm

This post is part of the April Synchroblog. In honor of Easter, this month’s topic is living the resurrection. Links to fellow bloggers will appear at the end of this post.

As Christians, we wonder how to live out the resurrection. We would love it if Jesus being raised from the dead meant that we would always be in a place of green fertility, newness, and wholeness. But that is just birth, not rebirth. I believe that living the resurrection means embracing the entire cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

We enjoy spring, when things are beautiful and we see life everywhere. Perhaps this is when our faith is new and fresh. Maybe it’s when we first fall in love with someone, or it’s a ministry we’ve begun that we are passionate about, or it’s a new job that we feel like we were born to do. But these experiences will mature and change; it’s as certain as death and taxes, to paraphrase Ben Franklin. Living the resurrection during spring means holding our experiences with a light touch as they change, grow, and emerge, and not grasping at the first excitement as the ultimate fulfillment of our vision.

In summer, our passions are no longer new, but they are thriving. I guess we feel and see God working during this season. We can tell people about the things that God is doing within us and around us. As the season goes on, we go blueberry picking, and we suffer some itchy chigger bites from crawling in the bushes, but it’s worth it because we get to eat and share yummy blueberry pie. Living the resurrection here means persevering through the battle scars and both enjoying and sharing the “fruit” that is showing up. But, again, it means knowing that the fruit won’t last forever.

While we are still harvesting, leaves start to change, and we start to see signs that death is coming. Death comes differently for us all the time. Sometimes we don’t see it coming; we are blindsided by a loss of health or being “downsized” from our job. Other times it creeps up on us slowly, like, for me, realizing that it was time to leave Bahrain after 11 years. Then death is upon us.Through faith, we grieve, while remembering that “blessed are those who mourn.” (Matt. 5:4) With one hand we let go of what we have lost, and with the other hand we hold on to the knowledge that there is no resurrection without death.

Then, rest. Watch. Wait. Nothing external is happening. We see no evidence of God’s work in our lives. We have lost what we thought he had given us. Undertaking the spiritual equivalent of “rebound dating” will not be fruitful. Resurrection is not something we make happen. It is something we wait for. For a whole season. It’s quiet. The only things happening are so far under the surface that sometimes we don’t believe anything is occurring. When we live in resurrection, we let it be quiet during the winter. We wait as changes beyond our control take place beyond the reach of our vision.

But the resurrection does come. At last. After a long winter, we start to see new things growing. Perhaps this should be the most obvious season of resurrection, but in some ways it is the most deceptive. Our caterpillar died, and we may be looking for him to be raised as a fresh new caterpillar. But instead he emerges as a butterfly. The seed that was buried does not push out of the ground as a seed; all the potential that was hidden inside that seed is what peeks out of the ground. Living the resurrection is holding open our expectations, because the new incarnation of God’s dreams for us won’t look like what we imagined.

Rather than being a place, or an outward manifestation that we live in, resurrection is something that we carry in our hearts through all the seasons. It enables us to be present with each season without holding tightly onto any of them.

In this metaphorical year of my life, where I have said good-bye to so much of who I was and what I expected of God by leaving Bahrain, I feel that I am nearing the end of winter. I’m starting to see hints that life is showing up again. I still don’t know what that will look like, so I want to keep my eyes open to see beyond my expectations.

Would you share what season you are in and how you are living the resurrection in that season?

Check out the other great posts for this month’s synchroblog:

Phil Wyman at Square No More –  Apocalyptic fervor spurs benevolent giving

Marta Layton at Marta’s Mathoms – Getting Out From Behind The Rock

Mike Victorino at  Simply A Night Owl – Crawling Out From Under A Rock

John Paul Todd at E4Unity - Still Asleep In the Light

Patrick Oden at Ravens – A Resurrection

Brambonius at Brambonius’ blog in english - hiding the Resurrection life like a candle under a bucket?

George Elerick at The Love Revolution – (for)getting the resurrection

Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – I Will Answer That Question In A Minute, But First, I Want To Talk About Jesus

Jeff Goins at Jeff Goins Writer – Resurrection

Tammy Carter at Blessing the Beloved – Rock and a Hard Place

Kathy Escobar at the carnival in my head – little miracles

Alan Knox at the assembling of the church - Living The Resurrected Life

Christine Sine at Godspace – Palm Sunday Is Coming But What Does It Mean

Matt Stone at Glocal Christianity – Living The Resurrection

Steve Hayes at Khanya – Descent into Hell and penal substitution

Bill Sahlman at Creative Reflections – Do We Live Under a Rock of Belief?

Soccer for the Highly Distractible Type (or Where’s the Goal Again?)

Six-year-old soccer is comic relief for the huddled masses of chilly suburban parents who congregate on the sidelines. The game consists mainly of a herd of little guys and gals collectively stampeding after the ball, with various members occasionally stopping to graze, socialize, or demonstrate karate moves. The coaches, who I’m convinced would do better on horseback, encircle the group, lassoing the wayward young ones who take off toward the wrong goal, and shouting reminders that the kids do have positions, the most important position being on the field. They also have to use their timeouts to convince a few of the kids that they can’t be quarterback, because there isn’t one in soccer.

I actually wouldn’t be surprised if Josh’s team burst into a game of freeze tag in the middle of a game. Sometimes I think certain members of the team forget they are in the middle of a game (this applies to Josh in particular).

Strategy is sophisticated at this age, consisting of stealth tactics and spying on the other team. They aren’t supposed to bring special equipment for this, but….well, there is no body cavity search. It’s very hard to distinguish strategy sessions from distractions. There is a lot of social networking that goes on while the ball is…well, anywhere.

I was particularly amused by one little huddle of kids that were supposed to be playing defense. They were deep in conversation, and I wondered what they would do if the ball came their way. As it turns out, their conversation was actually game-related. After the game Josh told me their strategy session. The basic plan: kick it in the goal 

The real secret to their strategy lay in sending one of their defense players downfield with the ball to try to score. Losing one of the defenders was not a huge loss, because a) the strategy did result in a goal, and b) even if the ball had come to their end, their defense strategy consisted mainly of jumping up and down while the other team scored against them. 

All-in-all, a very enjoyable experience. Would have been more so if the temperature had been above 40. But there are worse ways to spend a Saturday.

Snapshots of the Desert

This is part of the March Synchroblog, multiple bloggers writing on the same subject. In the spirit of Lent, this month’s theme is “Experiences in the Wilderness.” Links to fellow synchrobloggers are at the end of this post.

I have a confession to make. I am one of those people that peeks at the end of a story to see how it’s going to turn out. I don’t go straight to the end before I start the book, but sometimes the tension just gets too much for me and I have to see that everything is going to be ok before I dive back into the conflict.

This does not serve me well in real life, because (shockingly) I never get to flip ahead to the end of my story to make sure things will work out. And being in the middle of the story is hard.

There are times when it is encouraging to look at someone else’s whole story, to see how dark their situation seemed and then to see the good that came out of the darkness. Sometimes that annoys me, though. Sometimes I would rather look at a snapshot of the hero at the height of the drama or the depth of their pain and confusion and feel the compassion, the “suffering with,” of someone else having been there, not knowing what would come next.

It is one thing to look at a hero and conclude that their perseverance in the face of hardship was worth it because their side won, or the situation worked out in the end. I can look at Madame Guyon, 17^th-century Christian mystic, and take courage from her seven-year-long dark night of the soul, where she truly believed that she was going to hell and that God had abandoned her, because I know that that period of suffering ended with great spiritual strength. But can we take courage from those pictures of darkness even when we don’t know the outcome?

While having faith in a certain ending can encourage us, it can also do us harm in our dark nights. If we attach our hope, our reason for perseverance, to a specific outcome, we can miss the gifts of the process. The problem with these gifts is that they are kind of like getting underwear and socks in your Christmas stocking—you need them, but you don’t really want them, especially not as a present. And to be honest, the gifts of suffering are often even less appealing than those Christmas undies.

It is hard to separate the gifts of the suffering from the outcome of our dark seasons because during the night the seeds are planted, and during the following day, the seeds come up and blossom. The seeds transition seamlessly into plants. Once we start seeing the plants, we forget about what they felt like when they were just seeds. And when they are still seeds, we may be blind to them because we are too busy looking or hoping for fully-grown trees.

During the last few years, which have been a desert, wilderness, dark night—whatever you want to call it—for me, the future has been totally clouded. That has enabled me to be more fully in the present. Though I have no idea what will come out of this time, I have been hanging onto the joy of the seeds I see going into the soil.

One of these seeds is that I have been discovering my limits. This is not a fun gift. It has been really painful to lose illusions about my time, energy, influence, and power. But one of the first gifts of this time of burnout was learning that I have much more joy when I accept my smallness and respect my limits.  

Another seed of change is feeling connection with people that I used to think were different than me. Unravelling who I thought I was has torn down walls that I thought existed between me and others. Again, ouch! It’s just a seed, because I know more of who I’m not anymore than who I am, and so I feel homeless, community-wise. I don’t feel that I fit anywhere yet, but at the same time I feel a more universal connection—that I share something in common with everyone, when I used to only feel connection with people like me.

I have made brave baby steps. I haven’t turned myself into a successful writer, but I have put my writing out on this blog and submitted some web-content articles. I still struggle with being vulnerable and open, but I have shared scary things with close friends and still been loved and accepted. Steve and I don’t know our direction in life yet, but we made the step of acting on what we did know and moving back to America. In these things, the gift of darkness is the status quo growing so uncomfortable that I become ready to move into a new stage of growth, even when the way ahead is cloudy (or pitch-black).  

Even though this is not a complete story with a glorious wrapup, I hope that the middle of my story is encouraging to some of you. I would love to hear some of the things that are being planted in your lives in the midst of hard times.

• patrick oden at dual ravens – musings
• katherine gunn at truth makes freedom – a voice in the desert: what is wilderness?
• wendy mccaig at view from the bridge – a voice calling in the wilderness
• emma nadine at life by list - life in the wilderness
• tammy carter at blessing the beloved –  put down the axe
• jeremy meyers at till he comes – the gaping chasm of suicide
• Steve Hayes of Methodius –  Anatomy of exile
• Marta Layton at Marta’s Mathoms - On Sabbaths, Mountain-Tops… and Brothers’ Keepers

Yoga, Vulnerability, and Life Lessons

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
–C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

 You may be wondering what this quote has to do with yoga. Brené Brown (another one of my heroes) posted this quote on her blog on the day that I finished the 30 Days of Yoga  program.

I was feeling puzzled on that last day. As you know, if you have been following this series of posts (starting here), I felt like I got a lot out of the 30 days. However, it had not gone at all like I expected, what with the strained hamstring and falling-domino-like pain travelling from joint to tendon to muscle.

I had to face the loss of my illusions of what my body can handle and the death of my expectations of how quickly I would be able to get back in shape. Our ideas and assumptions about our bodies amount to a good chunk of our identities, so unravelling these expectations did not leave me totally groundless, but I did feel off-balance (a little ironic during a yoga program).  Coming to the end of the commitment did not mean that the lessons of the month had coalesced. I felt more like I had been gathering manna than as if I had bought a warm loaf of bread. All these pieces—what to do with them?

I logged in to my email and saw that Brené Brown had a new post on her blog. When I opened the post, I read the above quote.

I suddenly saw in my yoga adventure an amazing metaphor to the journey my heart has been on over the last several years. I’ve been a committed Christian for as long as I can remember, and I threw myself heart and soul into relationship with God, self, and others with the belief that Jesus was the healer of our souls. I got my heart broken.

The quote talks about how guarded we feel when we have been hurt, and about the high cost of carrying that protectiveness to the extreme. In my zeal to get in shape, I pushed a little too hard and found my limits the hard way. One response would be to stop exercising for fear of hurting myself worse. I did not want to do that. The cost was too high. So I kept getting gentler and gentler with my physical movements, trying to find the place where I could keep my body active and moving without causing damage that would take much longer to heal.

If I can approach my body with this gentle experimentation, trying to find movement that fits the reality of where my body is, then I can bring the same attitude to dealing with my heart.

After all the spiritual, emotional, and relational upheaval of the last few years, I feel cautious about making friends. I am fearful of allowing myself to be authentic because I feel so very vulnerable. (That, and because having my identity unravel makes it hard to know how to even be myself!) I still feel guarded with God and very mistrustful of everything I thought I knew about him. But I can approach all of those places gently and experiment with the balance of how to love, stay engaged, and risk brokenheartedness while working with the reality of where I am.

I learn lessons about the unseen so much better when my body demonstrates those lessons for me physically. That is what happened through the 30 Days of Yoga program. Thank you for allowing me to share the story with you. I look forward to taking C.S. Lewis’ encouragement to heart—to take greater risks in loving—while also listening to the story my body is telling me, and taking those risks gently.