Of Jumper Cables and Helpmates

We weren't having the best of days.  Our big, all-important garage sale had been compromised with cold rains all weekend, we had recently learned that we were only one of ten applicants for the rental house we were competing for in Seattle, and when we were finally about to stop sulking and escape to a friend's house... our car wouldn't start.

And it was the "good" car, too.  Not my husband's fifteen year old Geo Prism that can barely make it up an Arkansas hill, but the big SUV that is supposed to be the one we can depend on. 

I tried to put a brave face on it.  I kept a positive tone in my voice and took Annika to play in the grass while Josh searched for jumper cables.  But if you know us well, you know we both have our weaknesses.  My husband's being a tendency toward negativity in stressful situations and mine being a heightened sense of superiority when others are being too negative.  (It's somewhat of a toxic combination sometimes.)

He grumbled about how the Geo was technically the lesser of the two cars...older, smaller, weaker engine, whatever... and yet it starts every time he turns the key. 

I sat in the grass and harbored my own quiet grumbles on the inside.  Why do I have to be the one to set the tone? Why can't he fight for our positive attitude?  Isn't he supposed to be the spiritual leader? Maybe I'll get all frustrated and mad at life. It's only fair.

And then from my little spot in the grass, I began to hear the neighbors.  It's never good when I hear the neighbors.  They were fighting - again.  And it was awful - like always. And I know they have small kids in that house and I have seen her planting flowers in perfect rows and I have met his eyes when I'm out in the yard and he storms out of the house with a flurry of cursing and hateful promises.

I felt anxiety and sadness like heavy hands pressing down onto my chest.

Annika was running back to me, dandelions in hand, ready to be wished away. Josh was standing by the cars as both engines ran, flipping through a manual and wiping sweat from the back of his neck.  (Now that the garage sale was over, the sun was shining high and hard.)

And my grumbles were expelled as I blew dandelion seeds into the air and Annika and I watched them spin daintily down into the grass.  I met the neighbor's eye again as he pulled his luxury car out of our shared driveway and ran away from the fiery battle raging inside their beautiful home. My heart broke for them all.

I suddenly didn't care if our stuff didn't sell or if our car was busted or where we might live in Seattle. 

Josh was still standing there in silence, reading the manual and feeling the weight of all our issues.  I watched the little Geo pump life through the cable veins into the bulk of the big SUV.  There's not many things the Geo is good at, but this is something it can do.

I walked to Josh and wrapped my arms around him hard.  So many ways that he is strong and dependable, so many ways that he serves our family well.  But sometimes juices run low and this is something I can do.

The engines hummed beside us and he had no idea what I was thinking, but I hugged him hard and imagined that I was transferring life back into him.  Charging him back up.

Isn't it sad and strange how the fights always seem to happen when we just need each other most? 

 We gave the Buick a try and it started perfectly, so Josh disconnected the cars and we loaded back up for our friend's house.  But we made sure we put the jumper cables in a good spot, where they could be easily found next time.  

Because if we don't need them soon, someone else eventually will.

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Playing the Scales of My Salvation

I knew I'd need to rearrange furniture when my husband signed up for piano class.  His dad had a fifteen year old, giant Yamaha keyboard in Texas and it didn't take long before it was in my living room, taking up precious real estate in the light-filled stretch between two windows.

But it grew on me immediately.

It was no grand piano by the fire, but it added a little artistry to the room.  I felt more cultured just by the look of it.

The first time we were alone, me and the keyboard, I slid onto the stool and switched it on. It came to life with a red light and buzzing hum and I stretched my fingers out onto the keys.

I remembered being a smaller me, seven years old, sitting on the hard stool in front of my grandmother's organ in that room where the carpet was always so freshly vacuumed into a perfect pattern that I'd have to scale the wall to avoid making footprints. The organ keys were labeled with numbers and colors so a kid like me could flip through the colored, numbered song book and play anything.  One Christmas I played Greensleeves until my family finally asked me to stop.

The present-time me felt muscle memory longing to have it's way and I played Greensleeves right there in my living room, without missing a note.

I was pleased.  Mostly because my husband was going to be so impressed when he was struggling with his scales and I cleared my throat, said "do you mind if I try?" and played a perfect, effortless tune.  Which I did, exactly like that, but with a little sassy look back at him like, "Oh, you didn't know I played?"

He was impressed, but not fooled.

I don't know a lick about piano. Never have. I've just memorized one song so well that even forgetting it couldn't make me stop remembering it.

My husband, on the other hand, was starting from scratch.  He would sit late nights in front of that keyboard, long after I'd gone to bed, and I'd hear him banging out a simple tune with awkwardly slow tempo and misplaced notes. 

My Greensleeves sounded so much better than his roughly repeated version of Happy Birthday, but my Greensleeves wasn't real.  

He was reading music- deciphering the code marked out on paper and transferring it, slowly and painfully, into a real song.  He was learning at an elementary level, but his was a process that would build and improve and, most importantly, the paper code could change and he would still be able to play the song. 

I had no process at all.  I had perfected a surface-level production of a song through rote memory and repetition, and no matter how smoothly and precisely it was was executed, it was still just an illusion of understanding.

I was just an actress of sorts, he was learning to be a musician. 

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We are alone again, me and the Word, and I crack a match, light a candle, watch the Word buzz and hum to life in the flicker and glow.

I stretch my fingers out over the pages like it's something grand and instrument-like. 

I'm reading something about Jesus, something he has said, and it seems out of place and strange. I've heard sermons about this before and I see even the commentary at the bottom of the page and I feel muscle-memory longing to have it's way- to go with it, to move on, to dance over it nicely with only but an illusion of real understanding.  To just repeat the tune that's impressed deeply into my habit and feel pleased.

It's prettier, less messy.  But it's not really engaging with the words on the page.  Its not really real and I know it.

So I go back.  Way back.  As far back as I need to go, into something more basic and foundational and I start there instead.  For months, I've been starting there instead. I bang out some scales with an awkwardly slow tempo and misplaced notes and thoughts and I struggle through making this real.  

It's not comfortable.  It's offensive to some.

It doesn't sound like real music, not yet anyways.  I know that my attempts at deciphering the words of Jesus and transferring them to my life are imperfect. Some of these notes are going to be wrong. 

That's okay if this sounds a little funky right now.  I'm not after that illusive form of Christianity that sounds pretty and fits easy. 

It's played out.  

I want to learn that realest code, that language of the Spirit in me, that is is real and true and never changes.  I want to to be able to turn the pages of my Bible without that nervous sense of hesitation and inadequacy that feels disconnected from the words and stories inside. 

I want to connect. I want to engage. I just want this song to be real, whatever that may mean.

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Linking up today for a Concrete Words Abstraction on "Piano", with Nacole at Six in the Hickory Sticks! Come see what others have come up with!

The Wine that Almost Never Was

I bought Annika a DVD recently from that big bin at Walmart.  It had twelve animated Bible stories for $5 and it looked pretty cool.  With anything we read together, we love to watch the movie afterwards and had just read the crucifixion and Resurrection a bunch at Easter. So we brought it home, popped it in, and watched together. 

But it was super weird. Animated Jesus was skinny and sad; his cheekbones looked like sideways triangles poking out of his face and all the characters talked more like a bad Macbeth play than a Bible story.  

I tried to return it, but turns out "it was super weird" is not included in their return policy for an opened DVD.  So I took it back home. And just yesterday, we watched again.

We found that every story is done a little differently, and the "Miracles of Jesus" chapter wasn't nearly so bad.  Jesus still had pretty, white skin and soft, flowy hair and blue eyes and looked more like Rachel McAdams than an Israelite, but I still liked him more than Anorexic Macbeth.

Anyways.

What really got me thinking was the Wedding at Cana.

Jesus has been invited to party at this wedding feast, which is already kind of crazy.  The movie showed everyone laughing and talking and drinking, and Jesus was standing there with his friends doing the same thing. As far as we know from Scripture, nothing about his life for the past thirty years has been all that abnormal.

But then they start to run out of wine at the party and that's a really big, bad deal.

And Mary elbows Jesus and says, "Pstt...they have no wine." 

Like: Hey son, do something.  

And even though I knew this story and how it played out, I had never thought too deeply about the fact that Jesus says, "What does this have to do with me? My time has not yet come."

Maybe it was just the way Pretty Blond Jesus leaned in and whispered back to his mom in such a shockingly normal, human way. 

Mom. That's not my problem. This isn't the time for that kind of thing.

And even though his words say "no," something about him said "yes" just enough for Mary to know that he's going to help anyways.  She turns to the servants and says, "do what he says." 

Like a boss, right?


She has no idea what he'll do, but I guess he's just never let her down before. I wonder what kind of crazy stunts he pulled off as a kid, supernatural or natural, to give her this kind of confidence in her son as a man that just gets things done. 

But really, he said his time had not come.  This was not the moment to begin doing miracles.  And yet... someone he loves dearly is looking at him for help, wanting a miracle and trusting his ability to perform one, hoping and expecting for him to come to the rescue.

And he just does it anyways, despite the bad timing.  

What might that even mean?  Was their some cosmic shift in the trajectory of events? A heavenly reorganizing of plans and moments - because Jesus just made an executive decision to do this favor for his Mom? 

Granted, the will of Jesus never trumped the will of his Father. They were never in conflict, always unified in purpose. Jesus said, "I do what the Father tells me to do" and "I always do the things that are pleasing to him." 

But then again, he did just say, "The time for this has not yet come" and then did it anyways.

So this miracle was not inappropriate or wrong for Jesus to perform- it just wasn't the initial plan.

In any case, Mary is pleased, the bridegroom is praised, God is glorified and the disciples believe. Jesus said it wasn't the moment he expected to enter into his "hour," into the season of performing miracles and spreading fame, but somehow that was okay with God and that was okay with him and Mary got her miracle.

I just wonder...

I wonder how often God's moving me along in a certain direction, and I'm hitting the milestones and events and deeds that he has prepared in advance, but I'm forgetting that Jesus is not only a man who can meet my needs, he is also a man who likes to. 

Maybe there's more freedom and flexibility to this whole deal than we usually expect.

Like, I'm not totally sure it was God's big will and plan for us to find this sweet, old house that we rent now.  But I came home from California in 2011 just longing for a home like this, praying for it and asking for it and pretty quickly receiving it. And God's done really good things in and through this home.  And I doubt that we need an equally charming old house in Seattle, but I'm asking for it.  'Cause he can do that, and if it's not conflicting with any greater purpose for us out there, then I really think he will. 

Sweet Mary.  She knows that somehow her son is everyone's best bet for a miracle.

And sweet Jesus.  He just can't help himself.

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Talking to Kids about Suffering

I have this memory.

I'm sitting on the floor of the living room in my childhood Georgia home. There's people in the house and they're all watching the television, but they're standing stiffly in front of it, talking in hushed voices. People are sad. There's a woman's face on the television and it keeps being shown over and over. 

I learned later, in school, that the woman was a teacher and an astronaut and she had just died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

As I was thinking over this post and began to slowly retrieve this early mental picture of the television screen and my waist-down view of the grown-ups and the hush of sadness in the room, I googled the incident to check the date.  I was shocked to find it happened in January of 1986, and I was just under a year old.

Which is close to ridiculous, but it's not the first time I've casually asked about some odd memory not found in pictures or videos, and learned I was actually super young when it had happened.

Of course, a one year old has no idea about the complexities of any event or tragedy.  

Our kids today may not know what a marathon is or how a bomb works or why we are all still whispering and shaking our heads today.  

But they get that people are sad.  They get that something is not right.

And I don't know that we're doing them any favors by not helping them to understand what's going on.

Because despite our deepest desire to shield them from evil, they are very much living in this crazy world right along with us. We want those feelings of innocence and security to linger sweetly just a little while longer before the harsh realities of death and cruelty and evil can no longer be avoided. But when we teach and sing about the good things of God, and then turn our heads and only whisper about the ugly, bloody, broken things in this world, are we really keeping them safe? 

I wonder if our hesitation to talk freely about suffering with our kids is really just building a foundation with tiny holes and cracks - building them up for a painful shattering in their understanding of God.

Because there will come a time when they come face-to-face with evil.

It may be when a kid in their school gets killed in a car accident.  Or when a loved one gets cancer. Or they learn their best friend was sexually abused by her own dad. 

At some point, our kids will meet the ugly that we never wanted them to know about.

And then it will suddenly matter what we have invested into their hearts about suffering and pain and death and injustice. Suddenly, everything they have come to understand about God and the way he works in this world will be tested.

If we have fostered their understanding of God's goodness by shielding them from evil, then they will grow up to question if God's goodness is simply incompatible with a world of suffering.

If we have taught them about God's power by leaving them out of our most radical prayers (the ones that may not be answered, i.e. praying as a family for my unborn babies when we knew I might miscarry again), then they will one day be heartbroken and confused when their most fervent prayer seems unanswered.

If we have taught them that God loves and provides for us because we have homes and families and food, then they will wonder "where is God?" when they see the homeless, the orphans and the starving.

Our children need the truth about God as much as we do.  They need the eyes to see him in the midst of pain of suffering, they need the faith to trust him despite the evil. They need houses built on rock, too. 

And I don't think that means we need all the answers as parents.  

It just means we draw them into our laps when we pray and cry and struggle with these questions.  We do our best to be honest and then do our best to answer questions, even when especially when all we can say is, "I don't know, either, baby. This is hard for me, too."

All we can do is show them what it looks like to trust. We cling to faith, hope, and love until the time that Jesus returns and show them that they are strong enough- even now- to do that, too.

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Wholly a mess - or a holy mess?

Being holy seems like such a big deal. Such a big, impossible deal.

Holy.  The word itself has this strange weight to it. Like an all-encompassing, great, big, whole thing that we are aspiring to be. Perfect and holy.

But if anyone else feels like admitting it, let’s just say it together: I feel anything but holy sometimes.

I don’t know where to even begin with trying to be perfect.  I’m so messed up sometimes, so unstable in my emotions and so selfish with my time and so irrational in my thoughts. On a Tuesday night, I may feel full of love and peace and self-control, and by Wednesday morning I am scrubbing bacon grease off a pan and feeling depressed and swearing under my breath about the nail I just broke.

If I am wholly anything, I am wholly a mess.

....(This is my first guest post with the Rediscovered Blog.  Click the image below to read the rest over there!)

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Be Powerful - Wear Your Word

Words have power.

Encouraging words have power.

And I have been encouraged in the most beautiful and empowering way.  

As I spill my soul and thoughts and feelings out onto this blog (I mean poetry- really?!), I keep wanting to quit.  I keep feeling like this is too much vulnerability to share and too much vanity to assume it's all worth sharing and I should just get my feet on the ground and do the laundry.  Or go for a walk and stop staring at this computer screen that I have such a complicated love-hate relationship with. 

Being a writer has always just been part of my description.  I'm a brunette, I'm 5'3, I like cheese too much and I write good well.  It wasn't until my miscarriages and the weird desire to talk about them online that people (besides my mom) started calling it a "gift."  Like I was this powerful girl with a powerful thing to offer.

It was awesome and terrifying at the same time because once we acknowledge that God has given us a gift of some sort, we are suddenly responsible for it. 

So I've been working through what it means to be a writer, and at the same time fighting all of this emotional junk that makes me hesitant to take any of it too seriously. 

A little frightened to take myself too seriously.

But, enter Encouragement. 

Enter the courage-giving that doesn't just pat you on the back and flatter, but speaks something over you and challenges you to do the thing that you know in your heart God is push, push, pushing you to do.  

This woman at my church, she is in it.  She is in the midst of taking these talents of hers, these gifts, and using them well. Making them bear fruits. She takes a strap of leather and stamps it with a word and paints it beautifully and turns it into so much more than just a bracelet.  Now women all over our church and beyond are walking around with these bracelets, bearing powerful words that they have chosen like: Focus, Forward, Truth, Love, Trust, Positive, Tenacious. 

I hadn't asked for one yet, but she made one for me.  

We hardly know one another and I hadn't given her "my word" - but she had a word for me.

That's the kind of encouragement that makes a person feel brave. 

I've been afraid to call myself Writer. But God whispered it to her and she turned around and stamped it deep into a piece of leather.  In big, capital letters that I can't not see and I can't tiptoe around the idea of it anymore.

And the best news? She is selling these bracelets to anyone that wants one, and the money from these bracelets is sending her to Zambia this year. 

So, what's your word?

Is there something powerful deep inside of you -a word or a gift or a calling or a name- that needs to be drawn out and stamped deep into leather that you can wrap around your wrist? Where you can finally see it plainly and say it loudly?

(If you need help thinking of one, maybe this will help.)

Email dwanalea@gmail.com or contact her on Facebook to place an order. Bracelets are $20-$30 and 50 more sales will send this lovely woman on her way to Zambia.

Let's all wear our words together.

And let's help one another to be brave in living these words loudly! 

This post is linked up to the lowercase letters blog and the One Word 365 community!

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How I Was Wrong About Encouragement

I'm not really an Encourager.

I can sometimes encourage people, but I wouldn't say that I'm one of those people who are totally gifted with that ability.  You know who I mean, right? The ones that we like to be around because they seem to know just what to say and how to say it and we usually aren't afraid to open up to them because they'll probably respond positively. 

I used to think encouragement was pretty low on the Totem Pole of Spiritual Gifts.  It's easy to say nice things, right? To smile and hug and flatter. It was much harder and more important to do things like tell the truth or teach or serve.

But I was wrong about encouragement. Wrong about Encouragers.

Its not hard to look at the word and see that it means en- (to put in) -courage (strength). So real encouragement is that: giving strength where there is weakness and vulnerability. 

The most encouraging people in my life have been the ones who have (1) noticed and cared about a deeper part of me and (2) spoken a God-truth into that place and made me feel brave.

That's no easy thing to do.  

The real Encouragers are the ones who somehow have eyes to see these soft spots in people, these soft spots in the Church, and then have the wisdom and guts to speak up.  To go beyond themselves for the sake of imparting strength to another.

And my thought is this: the Encouragers need encouragement to keep encouraging. 

It takes a little bravery and sometimes even sacrifice to encourage someone.  

A few weeks ago, a woman invited me to lunch just for the sake of encouraging me. (She is most definitely an Encourager, with a capital E!) We were strangers but I am where she has been and she knew the vulnerability of that place. We ate Thai food and talked and I received the bravery that she wanted to give me.

It wasn't until just recently, weeks later, that I even thought to say, hey... thank you for that.

Has someone encouraged you recently? Has anyone shown you a special love or appreciation that made you feel just a little bit stronger?

I say let's return the favor. 

Let the Encouragers know that their gift matters deeply in the Body of Christ and in this world.  

Cause God knows we need 'em. 

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Pickup Trucks and Too Much Passion

school-girl giddy with the last and best boyfriend.

I would peek between the blinds and watch for signs.  Listen closely for the muffled sound of country radio and an engine switching off.

Nothing says "teenage boy" like a pickup truck in the driveway and I wonder if my parents thought the same thing. 

I didn't realize at the time that all parents were once teenagers.  All mothers used to be daughters who were 15 years old, watching and waiting for some boy to come and take them away in a pickup truck.

Come to think of it, every boyfriend I ever had drove a pickup truck. Except for The Last One, of course. The one who'd make me his wife. He was a different kind of boy all together.

We'd all nod our heads to curfew and they'd open my door and I'd slide into the middle of the bench seat, never feeling more like a woman and less like myself and was I really all alone with this boy?

All that freedom to play music way too loud, freedom to not buckle my seat belt because I'd rather sit right up next to him, freedom to park the truck on the neighbor's curb at curfew and make out to George Strait one last time. 

God, what a dangerous age that is.

What a breathless, beautiful, and dangerous age.

Womanhood springing forth like such a tender little shoot. Slowly, cautiously rising it's head.  Seeking. And yet everything else- freedom, passion, emotion, self-discovery -all of that exploding with no sense of time or propriety.  

Seriously, God- how will I ever get her ready for that?

My four year old girl, eternities away from pickup trucks in the driveway and first kisses on the sidewalk, how will I teach her to explode?

Because she will.  She was made to.

She wasn't made to be a little girl forever, she was created to be a woman.

Created to crave intimacy and desire sex and long for her freedom.  Created to step out from under our authority and household one day and into her own. And I want all those things for her.  Those good and perfect things.

She was made for growing up and somehow... I was made to help her do it.

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Linking up with Nacole at Six in the Sticks for Concrete Words, a challenge to describe invisible things with words you can touch. This week's prompt is "Truck." Click the link to join - or just see what everyone else is saying!

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There is Such Thing.

There is such thing as a soul birth.
A pushing, pulsing, downward drop towards light.
A quiet, sloppy, slipping into life
with new eyes and clean hands.

There is such thing as a soul stretch.
A scratching, cracking, dry skin-
a groaning, moaning, ache of sinewy-strength
winding into flesh and bone.

There is such thing as a soul scream.
a fall-to-my-knees, jerk of control from under my feet.
A pounding, bleeding, question
like a God-knife at my throat.

There is such thing as a soul cry.
A joy cry.  A dead-is-risen, resurrection cry.
A rescued-freedom chant beating out
of me like Hallelujah.

There is such thing a a soul song.
A throbbing, rising, love song.
A weaving, winding of voices into one song.
A this-is-finally-forever song.

There is such thing.

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Joining SixInTheSticks for #concretewords!  

Wild Honey for Wild People

The world is changing fast and we feel passionate about our faith - we know that inside of it is truth and peace and life and we desire to see all men know God.

So we put these passions to work and do what we believe is fighting for the Gospel, taking a stand for Christ. Our sword is drawn and we are ready to be "Kingdom Warriors" in this world.  

But here's the thing... our eyes and our swords are turned outwards.

We're not wrong to be warriors, maybe we're just worrying about the wrong war.

Somewhere in this evolution of Christianity since the time it was born at the dirty, dusty feet of Jesus 2,000 years ago, we have developed this mentality of "us against them" when really I think there are more verses that call it more like "us beneath them."

That if we aren't loving people, serving people, then it's worthless.  Our efforts and our words and even our message is an irritating, clanging gong in people's ears.

(Dang, Paul. Tell us how you really feel.)

So, we may hear ourselves speaking in the beautiful tongues of angels but we are really just clanging out an awkward, annoying, dissonant noise.

We think we are taking a stand for Christ when we stand firm and push back but don't we know -don't we really know?- that our biggest problem is inside of us and not out there?

That whether or not God's glory will be seen in this world is whether or not it's being seen in us?

Fighting hard for the truth of the Gospel probably looks and feels a little more like dying than winning. Taking a stand for Jesus should probably be less like standing tall and more like face-in-the-ground humility and washing-their-feet service.

We die to ourselves, friends.

We sharpen our sword and then turn it inwards, where the ugliest battle is really raging.

That's the war that shines so bright in the darkness and these are the wins that draw people to Jesus.

Because Jesus is coming, we know.  And we want people to be ready, yes. But this has happened before and there was a man that wanted the same thing.

But he didn't actually go into the temples and the religious courts and the public streets and try to educate the people about the Truth of the Messiah that way. He didn't bother with arguing interpretations of prophecies and religious law.  

In fact, he avoided it.  

He ran as far away from all that as he could so that he could be a lone, clear voice in the wilderness.

And he was actually kind of put out when the religious snobs even came around.

He lived a wild and culturally radical life in the desert preaching the coming Kingdom and calling for repentance, and people came. And he had a message, alright: one about a winnowing fork and a threshing floor and an unquenchable fire.

But he wasn't afraid to turn the sword inwards.  His passion and calling transformed his way of life and people drew near to hear and repent and be baptized.

I'm not saying we need to be like John the Baptist.  (This blog is about milk and honey, not locusts and honey.)  But when we feel great zeal for Christ, when we want to prepare the way of the Lord and call people to repentance and warn them that the Kingdom of God is at hand, maybe it's our life that get's turned upside down first.

We live it out in whatever wild and beautiful way that God has made us for.

And then people draw near and hear our message and we won't be clanging gongs anymore.  

Suddenly our words and the gospel inside of them are ringing out clear and true, in harmony with the saints and the angels and I really believe that is when the lost will enter the song to say, "What must I do to be saved?"

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