In My Place

I was making communion bread the other night.  It's something I enjoy doing, something I volunteered to do a while back.  That's where I like to be.  I like baking in my kitchen.  I like playing with my kids.  I like listening to sermons in my pjs while I fold laundry.  That's how I like serving God, serving my church.  I want to be the proper church lady who bakes food for Sunday morning and teaches the three year olds about Moses and listens attentively as her pastor preaches.  That's what I can offer, that's my place.  Or so I thought.

This past year, our church went through a transition and we got a new pastor.  I was excited to meet him, to learn more about him, to hear him speak from the pulpit.  Imagine my surprise when our first conversation involved him asking if I preach.  Um, NO.  Not at all.  So I invited him over to the house for dinner.  So he could see me in my place.  So he could eat the food that I cooked, so he could meet the children I chase around all day.  But he came with other plans, and that night, he gave me a date, told me to get ready.

Well, okay, maybe, I thought.  Maybe I could get up on a Sunday morning and talk about orphans or why it's so important for adults to care about children.  I told my pastor that if he ever wants to address those issues, I'd be happy to help.  A few weeks later, he called with my first topic: giving.  He asked me to talk during the time of offering, something about why we give money at church.  Again, I thought, Um NO.  I don't even have a paying job, I have no income.  What could I possibly say about giving money at church?

Our pastor came over to the house again.  It was after I began talking during the offering; he wanted to make a video about our family.  And once he'd gotten the footage, he turned to me again with a date and told me to get ready.  He wanted me to do a *sermon* (cue fainting and hysterics) on prayer.    All I could think is, Why me?  What do I have to say?  What could I teach?

There are two ways to learn something: school and experience.  I love school.  I love sitting in a  classroom and taking notes and reading books.  I love the smell of libraries and the quiet of study halls.  I went to school for years, excitedly shopping for new folders and notebooks every August.  I went to college and studied political science with an international focus.  I briefly minored in French but dropped it to graduate early.  I never studied the Bible in a classroom.  I was never in a theology class, or even a philosophy class.  When I left college, I started working.  I took a job as a flight attendant and later at a bank, and I received on the job training, since my degree had little to do with either position.  When I became a wife and later a mother, I tried to learn from books.  I studied for these new roles, ones I wanted to badly to succeed at.  But in both situations, experience proved the better teacher.  Our families are ridiculously unique and personal, and we just have to figure it out as we go, what works best for us.

For me, it turns out that life has been a much better teacher about God too.  In the last ten years, He has become real to me in a way that I doubt I could have been taught.  Apparently God has more He wants me to learn, from a new place in His church.  The time has come for me to get up from my seat, and not just receive, but to give, to instruct.  I took the advice of my friend, Mandy, to talk about my experiences.  I don't know the big, theological words for this stuff.  I've never read the Bible in its original languages.  And maybe that's better.  Because no one can argue that my experiences are wrong the way we disagree over ideas.

So I stood before my church, the people who have loved and supported me and become some of my closest friends, and I talked about the changes in my heart.  I talked about who I was before, the events in my life and the reactions I had that put distance between me and God, and how it was hard to pray.  And then I talked about what happened to change my thinking, how Jesus became real to me in my early twenties and over time prayer became an easy and integral part of my life.  This experience is echoed in a book I'm reading called "The Way of the Heart" by Henri Nouwen.  He writes,

 "Real prayer comes from the heart...The prayer of the heart is a prayer that does not allow 

us to limit our relationship with God to interesting words or pious emotions.  By its 

very nature, such prayer transforms our whole being into Christ precisely 

because it opens the eyes of our soul to the truth of ourselves as well as to the 

truth of God.  In our heart, we come to see ourselves as sinners embraced by the 

mercy of God.  It is this vision that makes us cry out, 'Lord Jesus Christ, son

 of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'  The prayer of the heart challenges 

us to hide absolutely nothing from God and to surrender ourselves unconditionally

 to His mercy.  Thus the prayer of the heart is the prayer of truth."

And in this way my experience has taught me and my studying merely reinforces (and much more eloquently so) what I know to be true.

Ready to leap

Lent 4: How Deep the Father's Love

How deep the Father's love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His Treasure

As I spent the past few weeks in preparation for Easter, observing Lent and challenging myself to extend more grace to my children, song lyrics began to fill my mind.  They would come unbidden in quiet moments, they were strong enough to drown out the Frozen soundtrack which has played on repeat since March.  Not the whole song, but sections of it.

How great the pain of searing loss
The Father turns his face away
As wounds which mar the chosen one
Bring many sons to glory

I am not perfect--far from it.  And this is the ultimate point of the Lenten season, to highlight just how far short I fall of the glorious standard.  I can't even go for a week without raising my voice, without snapping at a child's incessant repetition of a song (especially sung incorrectly, grr!), without grabbing a wrist or a shirt just a bit too roughly.  How different I am from the One who died.

Behold the man upon the cross
My sin upon his shoulders
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers

I cannot tell you how many times I choked up during prayer, how frequently I opened my mouth and just sighed, because God, I am so unworthy.  Of your love, of this life you have given me, of the people who look at me and think they see you.

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished.

And I remember, in these moments of failure, WHY I believe as I do, WHY I live this way.  I remember that Jesus paid it all, all to HIM I owe.  Because sin had left a crimson stain (and as head laundress for a family of six, I know just how difficult the red stains are), HE washed it white as snow.  I remember how it is that I can wake up each day and start new, how each moment is another chance to get it right.

I will not boast in anything
No gifts no powers no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection

I BELIEVE IN JESUS.  When all else around me disappoints, HE remains.  Eternal, unchanging, full of love and mercy.  When confusion and despair seem to have won, I remember that victory lies at the foot of the cross.

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom.

Let's stop trying so hard to be perfect.  Let's give up this control we imagine we possess.  Let's stop comparing ourselves to each other.  Let's stop thinking we have the answer.  Let's bow our heads and thank Jesus for being the Lamb of sacrifice, and get on with the business of loving and caring for each other.

Happy Easter.

Lent 3: Meditation

"Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked. But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God." Habakkuk 2:4 NLT
 
We are deep into the Lent season now, with Easter Sunday just two weeks away.  My Lent challenge is going well.  Not perfect, but well.  I find myself praying more, stepping away more, being that calm presence for my kids more.  It's interesting that when I decided not to boil over, it became easier to not even let the pot heat up.  I really challenged myself this past week, attempting to braid Girl's hair by myself instead of taking her to the nice lady who does them beautifully for $20.  You hold still while I practice this new skill...and Jesus save us both.

Jim Gaffigan has a great joke about the arrival of a fourth child; that it's like you're drowning, and then someone throws you a baby.  I thought I was ready to become a mom for the fourth time, but our experience was a little different.  It felt more like being capsized by the arrival of a three year old in respiratory distress who fought us trying to pull her to safety.  Unintentionally, I had assumed that a child who was *lucky* enough to be placed in our loving home would realize the lottery she had won and be so grateful that she immersed herself into our lives.  It was a stupid fantasy, and one that was quickly replaced by reality.  Real life is never quite as pretty as a movie.  Orphans aren't like Annie; they sometimes give all their love to the abusive caretaker and kick the person who reaches out to rescue them.

And so, during my time of meditation and reflection, I listened to a sermon from a church in Texas.  The message revolved around that passage from Habakkuk, about the difference between the proud and the righteous.  The people who seek God ALWAYS live by their faith in Him.  ALWAYS.  That means even when things are going poorly.  Even when life is so backwards or upside down that we think God must not even be aware of how screwed up it all is, that there couldn't possibly be a Master Plan at work, or else it wouldn't be this HARD.  Be faithful anyway.  All I could think of is our Girl, and how different these past few months have been from how I thought it would go.  How I wondered if this was really God's will for our family, for us to parent this child who has disrupted everything.  How each day I resolve to parent her anyway.  To do what is best for her, to care for her, to keep the long-term goals for her that we have in mind when dealing with the other kids.

We were having a bad day last week.  Sometimes this happens, and there's literally NOTHING I can do to make the kids turn it around.  All I can do is control how I respond.  Finally, the day ended (Thank you Lord), and I took Girl upstairs to get ready for bed.  As she pulled her covers up to her chin, I asked if we could pray together.  She nodded.  "Okay, I'll go first sweetie," I said.  I bowed my head and wrapped her little hands in mine, and I prayed.  I was honest.  I was real.  I prayed for myself to be a better mother, for our Girl to have good days when she listened and made the right decisions.  And then I prayed for her mom.  I asked God to Please Please help her get it together, so she could be a mother to her Girl again.  And a little voice whispered in the darkness, "Yes."  "We know you love her just as much as you love us, Lord," I continued.  And again, "Yes."  I don't know when the tears began, but as I said, "Amen," I realized my face was wet and they were falling on her comforter.  It was the most beautiful time of prayer I've experienced...maybe ever.  So is God in this moment, is God aware of what life is like for us right now?  Absolutely.  And he's asking us to be faithful.