I asked the Lord that I might grow

Tags

camp, faith, grace, growth, hope, summer

Rainy days are meant for pondering, I think.

My favorite days at camp were the rainy ones – the soft summer rain would pound on the tin roofs that covered our open-air buildings. The sweet smells of rain and lake and dirt and pines mingled together and lulled us all into long, easy afternoon naps.

There are few memories I have as vivid as those days I spent growing up and out and in on the shores of Newfound Lake.

It’s easy to look back at days as vibrant and precious as those, when my mind was free of normal distractions and my entire world boiled down to just what happened on the acres of land situated between Bristol and Plymouth along State Route 3A.

Graces are easy to count when the days are long and full, when computers and televisions are nowhere to be found, when my cell phone wouldn’t work except as my oh-too-early alarm.

My tendency to over-idealize the past – and the future – often leaves my present dim and discouraging. “That was so good – why can’t it be like that again?” and “When do we get to what’s next?” crowd these ordinary days and their graces out of my mind.

And I wonder if I can be a butterfly net for grace? Catching it each time it flutters by even in these mundane moments of rising early, sitting at a desk all day, coming home to dinner and chores and maybe a few sweet moments with my husband?

Sometimes I don’t even pay attention, wrapped up in my selfish heart with the straight-and-narrow-focus of goodness in place of grace-full-ness.

It’s easier to be good than graceful.

It’s easier to focus on hope than it is to actually live it out where I am right now.

From the time I was a little girl, everything has been about “what’s next”.

Well, I don’t know what’s next. And I’ve spent the last 25 years trying to figure it out, and I think the answer is grace. Grace in the morning, grace in the afternoon, grace in the evening. Grace in the face of ugly and fear; grace in the places of deep joy and celebration.

It’s not an easy answer. In fact, it’s much harder than trying to figure out what will make me “good” or “better” or “best” (my favorite).

There’s a little hymn that I can’t seem to shake so far in 2012. It’s early yet, I know, but I have a feeling it will stick with me. My soul longs for rest, for peace, for grace everyday. That means more emptying of myself, my heart, my longing for the past and my idol-filled hope for the future. I have a feeling this will be my anthem for this season; it is my prayer every day and the only Hope I have for “what’s next.”

I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith and love and every grace
Might more of His salvation know
And seek more earnestly His face

Twas He who taught me thus to pray
And He I trust has answered prayer
But it has been in such a way
As almost drove me to despair

I hoped that in some favored hour
At once He’d answer my request
And by His love’s constraining power
Subdue my sins and give me rest

Instead of this He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart
And let the angry powers of Hell
Assault my soul in every part

Yea more with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Cast out my feelings, laid me low

 Lord why is this, I trembling cried
Wilt Thou pursue thy worm to death?
“Tis in this way” The Lord replied
“I answer prayer for grace and faith”

“These inward trials I employ
From self and pride to set thee free
And break thy schemes of earthly joy
That thou mayest seek thy all in me,
That thou mayest seek thy all in me.”

A Thin Place

Tags

advent, behold the lamb of god, Christmas, thin place

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of “thin places” … it’s an old Celtic mystical phrase that suggests the meeting of the ordinary and the divine. The curtain is pulled back just for a moment, and we get a glimpse of how things should be.

I remember even as a little girl seeking out what I liked to call “perfect moments” … a sweet night of walking and laughing with friends, driving with the windows down, breaking bread with the people I loved the most, lazy afternoons spent on the dock at summer camp, finally reaching the summit of a mountain after a morning of hard hiking.

I’ve come to understand what those moments really were – glimpses of the divine. The closest we’ll get to perfect here on earth. These days, I find myself missing those moments more – I’m lost in fear and anxiety and cynicism, which pull me further from my creator and push me closer to myself. I clench everything too tightly. I don’t know how to celebrate well … each happy moment is stolen by a vague sense of fear that the goodness I know will be gone in an instant.

And still, God surprises me with grace. My eyes will spill over with tears at the communion table. A hymn will strike me the right way and absolutely devastate my prideful heart. The curtain pulls back. Goodness is there. One day it will all be right, all of the time.

I’ve struggled this Christmas to find myself in a Advent state of mind. Perhaps it’s my day job, which has been full of Christmas since mid-summer. Perhaps it’s the uncertainty that sits in the back of my mind about our future – a future that is staring us in the face and seems to be screaming “figure me out!” in the most idolatrous of ways. Perhaps it’s the busyness and the parties and the never-ceasing baking and the stress over finding just the right gifts. Maybe it’s just that at the end of the day, I know that none of this “stuff” of Christmas will fix the brokenness in my heart, my family, my community, my faith. Because it’s all just so broken, and it clouds my joy like a dense, gray fog.

But then on Sunday night, after I sat across the table from my husband at dinner and whispered “I think I’m just over Christmas,” and exhaustion just dripped from each word, I pulled on my prettiest winter coat and dragged myself to what is normally my very favorite night of the year.

Behold the Lamb of God at the Ryman.

And it didn’t disappoint. It never does.

We sat in our obstructed seats, downstairs, just steps from that sweet, hallowed stage. I love the pews at the Ryman. I love the floors – old, gnarled wood with a million scuffs and scrapes. I hope they never replace those floorboards … each one could tell stories enough to fill a book, of the people and songs and thin moments that they have known through the years.

And as I sat with an audience more full of friends than strangers and sang along with every word of every song, I knew the air was getting thinner. The Lord was rejoicing and singing over us in that place. The curtain pulled back and surely, I thought, this is what Eternity will be like.

I love the way Behold the Lamb works. So many artists on stage shift through the blue shadows, in between and during songs, like a never-ending chorus. Someone moves from one microphone to the next, changes instruments, moves from back-up to lead vocals. It’s perfectly orchestrated. And the stories flow from the stage and weave their way through the old pews and our old, tired hearts, breathing a bit of life into a very tired season.

I love intermission. I spoke through sloppy, sweet tears that streamed down my face during Andrew Peterson’s song to his wife that led conveniently to a break during which I could blow my nose and at least pretend I hadn’t been ugly crying through most of the first half. Because that’s what good stories and good songs do to you. That’s what happens in a thin place. It’s too good not to cry. It’s too sweet not to cry. And thankfully everyone else is crying too.

Those 15 minutes at intermission were so full, so happy … I can’t count the number of friendly faces and hugs and waves and smiles and short conversations that will lead to longer ones at later dates. I smiled. Surely this is what heaven will be like – intermission at Behold the Lamb. Only better, because no one will be missing because tickets sold out too quickly.

And then the night closes with a sweet singing history of our collective story. Of the deep and painful longing of the people of God, traced back through our Bible, and of the joy and mystery of the first coming. We sang every song with the same longing … He’s coming again. He came once. He’ll come again. That’s the beauty of Advent. We live in a perpetual Advent season, with the sadness of the present mingling with our assured hope in what is coming next.

But the night ended and Monday brought with it the same tiredness and readiness for the end of this holiday season. And yet, I carried with me the same hope from the night before … the hope that comes from being in a Thin Place, where we sing and laugh and love with the Body of Christ, where the Lord’s presence always is palpable and always perfect.

Behold the Lamb of God
Who takes away our sin
Behold the Lamb of God
The life and light of men
Behold the Lamb of God
Who died and rose again
Behold the Lamb of God who comes
To take away our sin

Broken hearts–behold our broken hearts
Fallen far–we need you
Behold the Lamb of God

Son of God–Emmanuel
Son of Man–we need you
Behold the Lamb
The hope of man
Behold the Lamb of God

Advent is here!

Tags

advent, Christmas, faith, family, God, love

It’s Advent again.

This is my very favorite time of year. I love dropping degrees and adding layers. I love planning for presents and making menus. I love the sweetness and the anticipation of the birth of the Christ. It’s the one time of year I am encouraged by the waiting.

He’s come once; He’ll come again.

Our sweet little tree went up tonight. Our sweet little Puff is, at this very moment, attacking it viciously. She loves it almost as much as I do.

And as we decorated … untangling yards of lights and ribbons, tying little bows and hanging little balls … we played our favorite hymns on repeat, some with a Christmas-y flair and others that just express the constant longing of our hearts.

This Christmas season is a funny one for me. Professionally, I’ve been up to my elfin ears in Christmas since mid-August, studying and editing and writing about all of these funny traditions we have and helping to point children and parents and children’s pastors back to the root reason for this most joyful of holidays. “Why the presents, why the trees, what’s with Santa, who is he?” (See here if you want to know more about my 9-5 these past few months.)

And so we’re approaching this season with all kinds of new knowledge. Like how Christmas trees point to Jesus. And so does Santa Claus. And now I really want to put up a menorah this year, because Hanukkah is a pretty important part of our heritage. And I’ve been constantly, incessantly, irrepressibly confronted with one song and one word and one truth this whole season: Emmanuel.

So it’s been an extended season of waiting, of sorts, and I am so very happy to finally be here, in Advent, with a shining Christmas tree and hymns of hope and of being able to celebrate that for which I am so indescribably grateful, often doubtful and altogether unworthy.

Here’s a passage from tonight’s reading in our Advent devotional. This gave me chill bumps. Read and be blessed on this sweet night, and throughout this beautiful season.

The mystery of the Incarnation brings us an eternally new, uniquely real message – a message that points us to the sole fundamental solution of the problem facing all mankind; pure spirit penetrates dust-born life, leaves aside all temptation, accomplishes the whole Passion of the divine Spirit in an unspiritual world. and returns to eternity pure. But we plunge right and left into every temptation, every challenge, every folly – and the wages of sin are paid to us every time, without fail.

{Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster}

 

on mirrors & make-believe

I got my hair cut last week. A lot of it … 4 (and then some) inches of my thick, once-brown-then-darker-brown-now-lighter-again brown locks. I’ve had (as every girl has) a love-hate relationship with my hairs for my whole life. But when I decided to chop it off (mostly because I really hate drying my hair in the morning), I basically stalked my stylist until she finally had an opening for me.

And so I went. And I sat in her chair. And her exclamations of excitement at my chosen style faded into the background as she snipped. I sighed.

The one thing I really hate about about getting my hair cut isn’t the actual cutting, or the slightly awkward conversation and even more awkward overheard conversations, or even the ickiness of the shared hair-washing bowl. It’s the sitting and staring.

When you get your hair cut, you have to sit in front of a mirror for a really long time.

It’s a really uncomfortable experience, at least for me. I get all awkward, because all of the sudden I can see every single one of my physical flaws. My perpetually ungroomed eyebrows (not for a lack of trying, mind you, but because of the one inheritance from my dear grandmother that I wish I could return). My acne scars from 6 years ago and from last week. My too-big nose. My too-high forehead. The folds of fat that appear under my shirt when I sit down.

And then there’s the second level of that mirror-inducing introspection. Is this what I thought I would look like when I grew up?

Is this what I thought I would BE like?

Because when I’m forced to stop and sit and stare in the mirror … to look myself in the eyes … which is what the salon chair forces me to do … I shift and squirm. I reach for a magazine.

I remember as a little girl, I loved to look in the mirror. I loved to put on my pretty nightgown (purple satin with little puffy sleeves) and spin in the mirror. I was a bride, a model, an actress, an ice dancer. (I really wanted to be an ice dancer.)

Then I got into high school. I neglected the mirror dreadfully in favor of schoolbooks and Sonic blasts. I always wanted to be the pretty one, but I became other “ones”… the theater one, the newspaper one, the student council one. The “most likely to take over Donald Trump” one (my senior superlative).

College was a step forward and backward all at once. Outside of my mother’s gaze, I felt empowered to dress with more style … but again, I often power-walked from class to meeting to library in a sweatshirt and old glasses. Beauty sleep was nonexistent; sleep itself was a precious commodity.

I had one focus from the time my ice-dancer-twirls turned into student-government campaigns: good grades, which would lead to college, which would lead to a husband and a job, which would lead to … ?

No one told me what came after that. Nobody told me that then all those ambitions that had been drilled into my head would suddenly become confusing, because with the husband comes the desire for children and for a home and for time and peace and no more busy.

They don’t tell you that when you’re a 10-year-old girl. They tell you you can do anything. They tell you you should do anything – whatever you want! So my deepest-heart-longings … to have a family, to have a beautiful home, to create space and time for conversations and meals and love within those walls … feel unnatural now because they aren’t the great big “anythings” I used to dream about.

And so when I’m forced every 6 weeks or so to sit in front of a mirror, all of these thoughts bubble up. What’s real? Were those feminist messages spouted by well-meaning mentors just make-believe?

So here I am, mid-twenties and still not sure who or what I want to be like when I grow up. I told that, laughingly, to a 3-year-old in Sunday School yesterday who had just informed me that he wanted to be a football player. His 5-year-old brother said,”I want to be everything when I grow up.

Everything. Anything.

What God meant by woman
I’m hard pressed to find
I’m chasing paper dreams
And a guilt undefined

Fighting to stay younger
Trying to stay thin and in control
Searching for a magic formula
A thing to soothe our souls

[Sara Groves, Finite]

 

messy

Tags

friends, hospitality, learning

The other night we had a group of friends over for dinner. Our attempts to “keep it small” were delightfully thwarted and we ended up with some 12-14 people over the course of the evening.

These are the nights where my heart is so full I think it could burst. I think I never want to leave this town. I think it just might be my very favorite thing in the world – to feed people, belly and spirit.

This was a sweet night, though not one easily prepared for … all weekend I had been banished to the couch, kleenex and dayquil in hand, fighting off an unpleasant head cold. We had been out of town the week before and nothing was coming together. Add in a few unplanned last minute guests (though quite welcome) and an accident on the interstate that delayed my homecoming by almost an hour, and the evening was shaping up to not play out as well as I had hoped.

And what had I hoped for?

Perfection. Obviously.

I love to open my front door to friends, but I love to open it when the inside is clean and the dust bunnies are long gone, candles are lit and fresh flowers sit on the table. Something yummy has been bubbling away on the stove for quite awhile and a bottle of wine is ready to be poured.

I usually open my front door while my sweet husband scrambles to shove the last of the laundry behind the bed and all the other clutter into the closets …

But that didn’t happen last night. I thought it did, but it didn’t. I walked in the bedroom halfway through the evening to find the coats and bags of our dear friends piled on our bed, but the rest of the bedroom was just as I had left it that morning.

Cluttered. Clean laundry unfolded in baskets everywhere. Piles of books and computers and a half-knit scarf. My shoes spilled out of the open closet doors. I sighed.

I had made an apple pie instead of cleaning my bedroom. The day before, I had spent some much-needed time resting instead of folding the laundry.

And I think I’m okay with that.

I’m learning that nobody really likes a perfectionist. I’m learning that I don’t really like myself when I’m trying to be one. That pretty much everyone in the world would prefer apple pie to a tidied bedroom, and certainly the people who gathered at our table last night would.

One of my favorite authors, Lauren Winner, writes it this way:

But to be a hostess, I’m going to have to surrender my notions of Good Housekeeping domestic perfection. I’ll have to set down my pride and invite people over even if I haven’t dusted. … As Christians, we aren’t meant simply to invite people into our homes, but into our lives as well. Having guests and visitors, if we do it right, isn’t an imposition because we aren’t meant to rearrange our lives for our guests—we’re meant to invite our guests to enter into our sometimes-messy lives. It’s this forging of relationships that transforms entertaining into hospitality.

So here’s to inviting people into our mess … our books on marriage and grad school, our half-knit scarves and empty tissue boxes. Our laptops and gigantic air filters. Take them all!

And take with it my pride, because it causes me enough problems, and my notions of being the perfect hostess. I love to open my home, but it takes a lot of the fun out of it when there is too much pressure to be perfect. I’m anything but perfect. (I’d like to make the perfect apple pie, but that’s a sweeter kind of perfection all together.)

We are lucky to live life with the people that matter, that won’t judge us because our books are piled all over the floor and we just haven’t had time to fold the laundry yet. Tonight I am grateful for each of them. And I’m grateful for this journey of soul-exfoliation that I’m on with Lord … He’s stripping me down to my core and stealing away my pride and insecurity and filling me up with grace. It’s not an easy road, but little moments like this one are good for my spirit. My imperfections are dramatically on display, but it doesn’t really matter because I know I am loved down deep.

because every meal is a present

We finished dinner tonight, curled up on the couch covered in blue fuzzy blanket and nearly suffocated with cat cuddles. Our plates were empty; the screen in front was full of football.

The best kind of Monday night, no?

And I looked I my husband, still slightly sweaty from his workout. I kissed his salty neck and immediately regretted it.

Then I asked him, “how was your dinner?”

My tongue still burned from the curry and he dragged himself off the couch to pour me a glass of red wine.

He brought me a cookie. I asked for two.

Two for you, two for me.

“I like to think of every meal like it’s a present for you,” I said.

He smiled.

Pumpkin pillows drenched in sugar and butter and just enough whiskey to make it interesting … just because I love him.

Tonight’s gift was a winner.

Ordinary Time

Tags

Christ, faith, liturgy, ordinary time

I actually feel like writing for the first time in what feels like months.

It’s been a rough 6 weeks…8 weeks…12 weeks? I’m not sure even, really. And I say that not to be dramatic or seek anything other than your patience in my recognizing my own deep self-dissatisfaction, my complete lack of faith and trust, and my own foolish attempts at perfectionism.

I’m learning lots of things about myself in this Ordinary Time.

I found that phrase a few months ago … Ordinary Time. I was not raised in a theological tradition that valued or taught the Church Calendar. Words like “Pentecost” and “Advent” echoed occasionally, but never really stuck with me.

But these days I find myself more and more drawn to old and new liturgy, to discovering a religious rhythm to my days.

And so, as I’ve recently discovered, we are in Ordinary Time. It’s that seemingly eternal stretch between Pentecost (when the Spirit descended upon the disciples) and Advent (my most favorite of seasons, of sweet hope and anticipation and remembering). It’s Ordinary. The days grow much longer and then much shorter. My patience wanes.

I think this is a season of Ordinary Time for us much longer than just the stretch between April and December of 2011. I think this has been a season of resting, of stretching our new adult muscles and slowly unraveling and re-raveling the plans we’re making for the next phase of life.

We are aching for newness, for freedom, for different. And yet, we have so much to love and learn here. So we’re stuck – lingering in what feels like the twilight of this Ordinary Time, asking “what’s left?” with a hope-filled and slightly anxious glance at the future.

And I wonder if this is what the rest of life will be. The already-not yet of this Godward journey, never quite feeling satisfied with the way things are, but not yet ready for what’s to come because what is now is quite comfortable.

My favorite description of Ordinary Time is that is is a “time to celebrate the mystery of Christ in all its aspects.”

I wish I had the patience to do that … to truly celebrate the mystery of Christ, to rest in it, to really trust it. Because this Christ is a mystery to me still, and I hope He will always be until all things are new. But now, I’m struggling through this Ordinary Time. I’m wrestling with the mystery. And it’s anything but comfortable.

 

 

 

to the mountains

Tags

family, love, marriage, mountains

Foamy clouds sat in patches across the trees, sinking into the just-yellow-tinted leaves that hint of fall.

We drove over the mountains we started to climb yesterday, away from a much-needed weekend that awakened so much of our souls – normally stifled by the screens and routines of our daily lives.

And the music of the mountains is still keeping me awake, sings Andrew Peterson in a song that pricks my heart with a sweet pain that I can’t quite name but will never go away.

There’s nothing like time in the mountains to heal.

The last three weeks have been a hazy mess, complicated by a sinus infection I let linger much too long and the departures of some of our dearest friends for new and faraway places.

It’s been three weeks that have reminded me of my infinite smallness … my complete and utter inability to be perfect, which is often my foolish goal.

We said good-bye to my husband’s brother and another childhood best friend, and my husband cried tears that I can’t dry.

There is so much of his heart that belongs to other people and places. I can’t own it all, and I don’t want to.

The longer we’re married, the more I start to understand what it means to be “a helper suitable for him.”

My younger and slightly more foolish self believed that a man and marriage was all I’d ever need. We’d have each other and we’d be set. And while fundamentally, there is nothing and no one I’d rather be than his wife, my purpose is to be his helper, and he mine.

That means being vulnerable. That means accepting that I am one piece – albeit the second most important one – of his beautiful heart. That means knowing that my husband was shaped and formed and sustained by the boys who became men together long before he ever looked into my blue eyes.

And it means helping him be a better man, a better friend, a better servant of the Lord. In turn, he has to do the same for me. And I have to let him.

I have to let him poke holes in the thin veil that hides vulnerable me. I have to let him fight for me (and win most of the time). I have to let him love me, when I don’t come close to loving myself.

I don’t make it easy. And he doesn’t always make it easy for me.

I feel like I need marriage to be my full-time job, because there is so much of him that I still long to learn, and then learn to love.  But 40-plus hours a week we spend apart, pursuing separate careers that we can speak about over dinner but not really share. And then there are dear friends who fill our evenings, and requisite sleep, and then we’re at the weekend having only spent a few truly meaningful hours together.

It seems so sad, when it’s all written out like that.

But there are weekends like this, when we steal away to the mountains. We were joined by his brother, who rounds out my husband in ways that I can’t, and we laughed and ate and drank and played in the mountains.

Right now, little trips like this to the mountains are still keeping me awake.

One day, will life be all-awake? Will we live life focusing completely on the things that matter most? I just don’t know. I have to believe that we will.

here & there

Tags

faith, family, friends, going away, heaven, hope, life, love, sin

We were driving home late last night, from yet another going away party.

I looked over at Price in the passenger’s seat, cradling the now-empty plates of food we carried and the leftover whiskey sour we made from scratch. We both had tears in our eyes and our voices heaved heavy sighs as we talked again of the change and the difference and the far-awayness of our friends.

It’s not supposed to be this way, he said. It’s like we’ve had a little taste of heaven. It’s been so good. People aren’t supposed to move away. We’re not supposed to be apart.

The Fall wrecks us, again and again, day after day, moment after moment.

Would we have done it differently, had we been the first? I have more sin in me than Eve ever dreamed of, I think.

And then, he said, even when we’re together, we hate each other. We love each other and we hate each other.

Those words seared me. It’s so true. We’ve lived and laughed and loved in community for so long, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve fought – out loud or in my heart – with everyone I call friend. We love each other desperately, but no relationship in our midst is spared pride, envy, fear, possessiveness, anger, misunderstandings, gossip, lies.

It’s all so broken, he said. It’s all so sad.

It is broken. It is sad. But it’s not without hope.

We’re clinging to hope now. We have to, because without it, none of this makes sense. And my wise, wonderful, profound husband is so right.

We’ve had a little taste of heaven here.

And that’s why all of these good-byes are painful but not heartbreaking. Not only are these names and faces and relationships burned into our hearts in ways that will never, ever change here on earth, but we can together rejoice and hope for the day when it all will be redeemed – when these broken relationships and these distances won’t even exist in our memories. Because we aren’t just earthly family.

We have hope and we have faith and we have love.

And as our wise pastor told us just a few weeks ago, we’re going to a place where we won’t need hope because everything will be fulfilled, and we won’t need faith because all the promises will have come true, but we’ll still have love, because it’s the greatest of these things.

I am so grateful tonight to have been made for another world, but so thankful for the tastes of it that we are enjoying now.

If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. {C.S. Lewis}

 

 

on family

Tags

family, friends, home, love, thanks

Change is stealing away the last of this so sweet summer.

And I really wish that I could find the words to say everything I want to say now, but I don’t know that I can. I’ve started this essay a hundred times in my head in the past week … the week since our best friend, our brother moved across the state line and into a whole new world.

I am grateful tonight for the family I married into, the family that sucked me up and took me as their own … the word “in-law” doesn’t fit. We’ve blurred that line, as my frequent foot-in-mouth and frustrated self could tell you. But I’m a lucky girl, to have joined a family that accepts me as their own – flaws and fears and failures and all. And to have a sister-friend like the one I have, and to have the brothers I’ve always wanted … it’s a gift. And oh, we fight like the best of families. And we have fun like the best of families. But is there a better, stronger, more true word than that?

Family.

It’s a name for us, our little nuclear unit of me and Price and sweet little Puff. It’s a name for the broader clans, the ones that birthed us and carry us and love us and will always be there. And it’s a name for the family we’ve created in Nashville over the past 5 years. The family that fights and follows and cries and laughs and sings and plans and dreams together.

The family that gathered, with tears in our eyes and laughter on our lips and gratefulness in our hearts, to send off a best friend and a brother with feast and song and prayer.

Best wishes and all the love my little heart can hold to the ones who have gone already, are going soon, are staying, and are still trying to figure it out. The Village will always be. It’s not going away anytime soon.