When It's Time to Untangle

My heart took a big tumble this week. It bounced around and hit a few sharp corners. It is bruised and bleeding today still, pulse-tender like blistered flesh burned on an electric stove. It is still on crutches today, slathering itself in ointment and retreating to quiet spaces.

And I have a lot of thoughts to work out about what's behind all the brokenness and what God has to do with any of it and what it means for my understanding of The Church at large and my voice and my place in things. I don't know quite how much of the pain is a result of my clumsy tendency to stand up for unpopular injustice with a fierce spirit and too many words, and how much is an answer to that prayer I pray in the dark… the scary, exciting, beautiful, awful one. The one that goes, "Break my heart for what breaks yours."

But it's all tied together like a knotted necklace chain and I'll have to untangle it later, after the ointment works its magic, after the wincing has stopped.

Because I'm still slipping between raging indignation and quiet tears. I'm still racing from corner to corner of my mixed-up mind, from the icy shadows to the warmth of the sun.

Somewhere in the midst of this, truth and love and healing will bring me back. They're already beginning to.

But what's saving my life this week are the soft places, like the crook of my husband's arm…the first place I want to bury myself when the hurt stings sharp and the brokenness weighs heavy and he listens, quietly, and hears. Ryan is my safest place, the corner I retreat to when nothing is sure in the world… when my thoughts about God and friendship and mothering and church and work and life bury me in fear and doubt. And then he sits with me, quiet, and I don't need to speak and he doesn't either, and it's love all the same. Ryan is all I know about love on some days, because the way he does it is really something worth taking notes on. He understands the value of presence and his short words linger long when I'm tempted to ask "Why?" What's saving my life today is gratitude for the man in my bed who taught me all I'll ever know about staying.

What's saving my life today are the tiny miracles… picking up the right book at the right time, communities so full of grace and love that I can't escape from Jesus love even when I try to retreat. What's saving me now is that slowly, hour by hour, I'm reminded that there are others standing up for the kind of love I believe in, people who aren't afraid to listen, to speak up for the marginalized and the wounded, people whose stories and lifestyles make a lot of people squirm. Fear brings out the ugly in some people, but intolerance brings out the ugly in me. I'm working on it.

What's saving me now are people like Tammy and Lindsey and Annie and Emily, praying and loving and sending me emails like grace with skin on all through my day. What's saving me, as always, is wild, extravagant grace, and a Nazarene whose love is making nothing in my world comfortable anymore and I suspect it's exactly the way it's supposed to be.

When the heart breaks open because you prayed for it to happen, because you know deep and raw that there's more than the moldable deity you see in modern American culture, it will mess you up. I'm not all that sure I even know what to make of it yet, or what it's going to mean for me, but I know this. It's time to step into quiet for a few days (a week?), to tiptoe away from social media and politics, from hot button issues and phone calls, to quiet my fired-up soul, listen to the breeze that wraps around in an embrace, and learn love from my kids again, the ones who I overhear in their bedroom in tiny voices saying, "You are beautiful," and "I love you," and "Jesus gave us to each other", because this is the love that washes over and saves us all, the love that is worth stopping and smelling and tasting and grasping with all our grip on the tender, unsure days.

So, friends, thank you for grace as I slip quietly away from this space for a few days to read and bake and pray and paint and swing and slide and laugh and sing and be still.

I promise I'm okay… really, truly. Quite full of joy and peace today after the fog of hurt is lifting and just being mindful that this is a place I need to linger for a beat, a pause to usher in Fall and learn a few things about the nature of love and experiencing God. A sorta-kinda spiritual retreat, if you will, a chance to untangle. 

Love, love, love. 

Be back soon. 

Virtual Reality -or- How to Make a Life

I tend to live too long sometimes in this world in my head, fueled by online friends and brilliant blog wisdom, where hours are marked by hashtags and Facebook becomes a lifeline, where I register a comment count or today's subscriber numbers like a self-worth bathroom scale forever showing a number that leaves me feeling bloated and unsatisfied.

In this neighborhood and since it's my fantasy, my quaint old chippy farmhouse with miraculously leak-less faucets is nestled right in there with awesome neighbors like Emily and Sarah and Lindsey. I lunch with Anne and Ann and Annie and Anna and we break bread and talk about life and God and gratitude. My kids hang on the neighborhood monkey bars next to Shannan's and Lisa-Jo's. 

I camp in the woods in invisible tents with Emily and Suzannah and their beautiful families. Tamára, Preston, Nish, and I debate microbrews at the backyard barbeque. My pretend writer's group meets at the corner bakery where Jeff and Mary and Dan and Shauna, over bites of something buttery, offer brilliant insight on this tricky manuscript, which I can't wait to share with my make-believe agent, Rachelle.

Because this is sorta what it really feels like for me to live here in this online space. To wander from house to house and blog to blog, to eat my lunch beside you folks and nestle myself into your reality, make you part of mine, let your words make mine somehow come out a little better next time. Like a fantasy. Like one of those dream sequences on TV marked by foggy edges and a twinkly soundtrack.

It's not merely virtual, though. The real-life encouragement, support, prayer, and tangible love that floats across keyboards and computer screens is not make-believe. It is substance and it is depth and most days, it gives me strength I haven't had before.

But I have a real life too. I carry spare pairs of cartoon underwear and emergency fruit snacks in my purse. I have foreheads to kiss more often than I do, and toilets to clean and filters to change and sunscreen to apply and more book ideas floating around in my head than time to write them all down. I have dirty carpet and friends I need to visit (the kind who knew me when I wore leg warmers and slap bracelets and crimped my hair). I have movies to watch, stories to tell, a husband who keeps me one step ahead of psychosis every day. Somewhere, there is probably chocolate I should be eating too, regardless of what my protesting belly pooch has to say. There are real books with real pages to read and holy moments to be had.

There is life to be lived, and you have one too.

Is virtual reality overshadowing actual reality, in your life?

This is a struggle for me. I'm a writer at heart, and at times, I think I need to set up camp in this virtual space to "make it" and make sleazy flashing billboards to get my voice heard. Everyone is trying to make a name for themselves out there, and the Internet never sleeps.

But flesh and blood does.

It sleeps and cries and laughs long over good wine with good friends. It turns the laptop off sometimes to paint toenails with pigtailed daughters, to play in the rain with fuzzy-haired sons and attempt daring new recipes. It kisses your husband long and sweet, and dips its toes in river water. It leaves the bedroom window open and listens late to crickets and rhythmic breath and cars driving past. It star-gazes and goes out dancing. It eats the moments of life like bites of a sweet summer peach.

Be careful not to miss it.

Don't trade your life for eye-strain and carpal tunnel syndrome. Don't sell your soul for another Twitter follower if you aren't bringing your whole heart into the world beyond the computer screen. Virtual reality has a funny way of reflecting actual reality. If your life is empty, your work will be empty. Live.

As much as I love my fantasy neighbors in my make-believe neighborhood, I have real neighbors I've never met, ones with pet roosters who wave enthusiastically every time I drive by. I have a lonely grandma who could use a lunch date. I have avocados to savor and dandelion heads awaiting the breath of a small boy who doesn't yet know about making wishes.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm off go make a living… and make a life. 

I'm Baaaaack -and- Who Are You Looking For?

Source

He is risen.

And we begin again with a sense of a "new year" at all the rebirth that Spring will bring.

I'm glad to be back.

The Lenten experiment of quieting the social media voices in my life was redemptive, and in retrospect, I see that it was less about my giving up and more about my giving in, preparing my heart for what is upon me yet. In the quiet, I drew closer, I fell in love with words again without being a slave to them, and I also longed for the community of people that has become my extended family here.

I didn't miss the blogging business as much as I thought I would – I missed hearing from all of you, reading and keeping caught up on your lives, but the break was needed and I'm grateful that I heeded the call to quiet. There is much in the air as I come to life with the reminder of resurrection, my soul is stirred and I am always impatient for more.

Our home will be increasing, not with a baby of my belly but an adolescent or maybe three. We are both in the process of (God willing) adopting a teenage boy that we cared for in Texas and finishing up our foster care certification and we are braced and we are ready, as much as you can ever be ready for something like that. We may double the number of children in our home within the next few months, but this is not the first time we've been on this adventure, so it isn't as daunting or scary as it could be. 

Instead, it feels a bit like breaking in a pair of new shoes, this house we've made into a home bursting at the seems with life and chatter and happy chaos and the hard days that mean we're doing something worthwhile in this wonky little life. I want to ramble on and on about this, but it is something I need to tuck close to my heart just now until we have more to share, until there is more certainty. 

There are harder things too about me now – my brother overcome by the throes of addiction and us being powerless to stop what ravages and destroys. My family feeling the pang and sting of all the lies addiction brings like a smothering vacuum void where there is no oxygen. Grateful to have the source of life now and always all around, to be lifted up by holy breath and the learning of what comes supernatural in the midst of surrender. Celebrating beauty in all of this.

One more thought to leave you with today, as we settle into the reality of resurrection, move forward with what new life will mean to us now. The angels that visited Mary in the empty tomb asked her, "Woman…Why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" (John 20:15).

So I ask you and I ask me… in light of the empty tomb, who is it you are looking for?

A lover? A spouse? A person to recognize your talents? A baby in your womb? A prodigal son to return? A person to validate your efforts? An individual to save you from yourself? Are you waiting for you to be who you want to be before you surrender? Are you looking for flesh and blood? Or are you looking for Jesus, who has risen?

Why are you crying, today? Who are you looking for?