Squeal

My daughter called me a pig last night.

But it's not as bad as it sounds.  

She unrolled the print of Michael Sowa's "Kholer's Pig" she'd found tucked away in a dark basement corner.
 

"Mom, you are this pig," she said.  "You've been pushed off the dock.  But you're going to land in that water and it's going to be really refreshing." 

She's right.  A lake lush with trees, reeds and lily pads.  Humidity softening the horizon.  It's gotta feel great in the water.  That pig's no fool.


Leave it God to use my love of whimsy, plus my tendency to procrastinate (never did get around to framing the print for my office), plus my teenage daughter's wise insight to speak a recurring theme to me.

Freedom.

I wrote about freedom here, but I'm feeling it more and more these days.  Maybe it's the early spring with new flowers emerging by the minute and grass so green it makes the heart ache.  Windows open, verdant evening air, coats left in closets.  The sheer pleasantness of it all.

Hope springs.  Possibilities sprout.  Enthusiasm flourishes.

My husband and I have mostly tried to buffer our kids from the recent painful events.  We've shared a few details with them, but not a lot.  They know we've been disappointed and sad, and they too have experienced transition pains.  But we've tried to shelter them from the brunt of it all.  We don't need them to carry the load for us, or even with us. 

Still, they're rooting for me.  Sweet, kind, encouraging comments.     Like calling me a pig.


It's true.  I am that pig.  I recognize the initial shock, fear, panic of the jump.  The increasing exuberance of flying through the air, weightless, worry-free for the moment.  The anticipation of entering the water, slightly anxious while also hoping to make a big glorious splash.  

Yes, the water is indeed refreshing.

And if you listen closely, you might just hear me suppressing a squeal.

Unexpected surprises

Someday, at the end of a school year, you might flip through your rough-and-tumble son's 4th grade math notebook and come across a few hidden surprises.  Like this:

And this:

And even this:

And you will cut out these unexpected gems and savor them.

Hike

Mountain-climbing imagery.  I've been noticing a lot of it lately. 

Is this truly a pattern to be noticed or is it merely coincidence or the result an over-active imagination?

Really, after the undeniably ubiquitous desert imagery, I am hoping I'm just imagining all the mountain-climbing imagery. After the desert, I want oasis.  Rest, refreshment, shade.  Not a hike, and definitely not one up a mountain.

My husband, king of the Mountain!  At Ptarmigan Pass in 1995

But I do love to hike... up mountains even.  When I was in my twenties (before children) and was spending several summer weeks taking seminary intensives in Colorado, I hiked a few fourteeners.  I even hiked three in one day.  (Actually four, but the dip to the saddle between one of these mountains and the others was not great enough for it to count as a true fourteener.  At the time, it definitely felt like it should count, but I digress...)

These mountains bear noble and slightly intimidating names: Lincoln, Democrat, Princeton, Quandary...  Names you want to work into conversation later.  "Well, when I was hiking Mt. Bross..."  

The reason I like hiking mountains is because it doesn't require a great deal of athleticism and skill.  (Some mountains do, of course, but not the ones I dare to scale.)  More than anything, it demands tenacity and patience and plenty of water.  Camaraderie also helps, as does a readiness to enjoy the journey, even the difficult stretches.

Hiking with small group friends near Breckenridge in 2008

Perhaps this is why I was so captured by Nathan Foster's depiction of hiking with his father in Wisdom Chaser (also mentioned here).  Foster scoffs when his dad speculates that if they hike slowly and steadily, they won't need to stop as often.  So though his father "moved his feet methodically, slow but steady," Nathan recounts:

I brushed off my father's wisdom and raced ahead up the mountain.  After about a half hour of hiking up a steep pitch, I noticed that, with all my painful stops, he was keeping up with me.  I felt exhausted.  Dad didn't stop even once, and he seemed to be gliding up the mountain. 

As is often the case in life, pain made me teachable. That day it was burning lungs and shaky legs.  My father had a lesson to teach about hard work, and I was ready to learn.  I gave Dad's theory a try and joined his ridiculously slow march.  I soon discovered that if I kept going slowly, it was easier not to stop.  I couldn't believe it....

Eventually we summited with grace and precision and a slow, steady pace.  The destination proved more remarkable than I had remembered from our last climb.... I took a bruised apple from my pack and bit in.  It tasted delicious.  (pp. 34-5)

A slow steady march up the mountain.  Eyes to see the surrounding, ever-changing beauty.  Patience as the journey unfolds.  Anticipation of even greater vistas to come.  And big gulps of water.


Okay,  I think I'm in.

Not a bad way to descend Mt. Bross after a long day of hiking -- 1995

Sela

"The Sela, which often occurs in the middle of a Psalm, is meant to signal a meditative interlude." 

-- Richard Foster in Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home

According to Martin Luther, the Sela requires "a quiet and restful soul, which can grasp and hold to that which the Holy Spirit there presents and offers."

Perhaps...

And amen.

Relinquish

One of my favorite things about yoga is this: If you hold a pose long enough, particularly a stretching pose, at some point your muscles let go and sink deeper into the pose. You think you are stretching your muscles as deeply as possible, but suddenly there's a release and you're able to stretch even further and more comfortably.  Every time this happens to me, I marvel at how tightly my muscles had been clenched without me realizing it and how much more natural the pose feels after they do relax.

Unfortunately, this is not what I look like doing yoga.

For this reason, my favorite yoga style holds stretching poses long enough for the release to occur.  (I'm not so much a fan of holding strength poses for long, but that's a different blog entry.) Sometimes the instructor encourages us to use sinking breathing, to make our exhales last longer than the inhales. It's amazingly effective in helping those muscles let go.

THIS is what I look like doing yoga.

Lately, it seems God's been holding me in a few teeth-gritting "yoga poses."  I haven't understood why entirely.  I was already flexible (I thought), fairly strong (I thought), somewhat peaceful (I thought).  But after holding these poses for several months now, I'm finally beginning to feel my jaw relax a bit and my muscles loosen.  I'm beginning to give in to the pose.  To relinquish...  


This Lenten season is a time of relinquishment for me.  Releasing...

• Reputation – I want to be well-respected and appreciated.  I hate being misunderstood and misrepresented.  (Don't we all?)  But Christ was misunderstood, misrepresented, marginalized.  Should I be different?  I relinquish my reputation.
• Control  –  Though I've never considered myself a control freak (perhaps I'm fooling myself?), I usually make every effort to ensure results turn out the way I think they should.  But hard work and (what I think are) good intentions can only go so far.  I cannot control others and their actions and should not try to do so.  I take my hands off the reins.
• Consequences  –  Consequences themselves are a grace. (Got that from my spiritual director.) Just as negative consequences eventually brought the prodigal son to his knees and to his true home, consequences do the same for us.  If I were to dictate consequences –  my own or others' – they would not be grace.  I choose to let God choose the outcomes.
• The future  –  My dreams, ambitions, hopes, expectations, speculations.  I thought I had found a vehicle to realize many of these, but that was not the case.  I am free from those false hopes.  Possibly, I am also becoming more free from needing to prove myself to myself and to others.  I do not stop walking forward, but I surrender the lead.
• Ministry  –  My usefulness to God, my purpose, my outlet.  So often when I've left one type of ministry, another one awaited. Now I scan the horizon and see only dim, indiscernible shapes. God will make them clearer in time, but until then He'll let me squirm a bit in my "uselessness" as I learn to relax into his unconditional love.

In his book Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, Richard Foster writes:

The Prayer of Relinquishment is a bona fide letting go, but it is a release with hope.  We have no fatalist resignation.  We are buoyed up by a confident trust in the character of God.  Even when all we see are the tangled threads on the backside of life’s tapestry, we know that God is good and is out to do us good always.  That gives us hope to believe that we are the winners, regardless of what we are being called upon to relinquish.  God is inviting us deeper in and higher up.  There is training in righteousness, transforming power, new joys, deeper intimacy. (p. 52)

*****************************

A creative and artistic friend of mine, who writes a really lovely blog recently hosted a group of moms and daughters for a self-portrait-collage-making session using gel medium transfer.  (I feel a tiny bit impressed with myself for that previous sentence!)  For her own portrait, she used a photograph of herself with her arms out, palms up, and from the photo, she collaged butterflies releasing, flying upward and outward.  

I've thought often about her artwork since then.  Is it possible that as I relinquish my tight grip and release these things, they then become things of beauty and freedom? 

I release with hope.