An email received. Venom thinly veiled in terse official language.
The ongoing struggle to understand, to make sense out of inexplicable decisions, actions, words. Maybe it's because of this... Maybe it was that.... Could it have been because of this....?
Scenarios imagined. Explanations speculated. Stories replayed and replayed.
I don't think we're going to get to understand. I think we're to walk in faith and dignity and gentleness in the midst of the fog. We're to find peace in the confusion, peace that flows only from faith. From a faith that is stretched to capacity, but lengthened and strengthened because of the stretching.
But I did read something interesting this afternoon while waiting in the carpool line, something that resonated with at least one of my speculations. Nathan Foster writes in Wisdom Chaser of his experience hiking Mount Elbert, the tallest mountain in Colorado, with his father, Richard Foster:
Somewhere in the haze of our strenuous activity, I remembered a day from the past. After not being allowed to attend my best friend's birthday party, I had thrown the biggest fit of my life. I remember standing on my bed, screaming at Dad. He countered me, doing the stern father thing, and we went back and forth, fighting for power. Then my father did the strangest thing: he knelt down and closed his eyes. This act enraged me all the more. I demanded that he get up and fight me. But his only posture was silence. What was he doing? Was he being weak? Shutting me out? I didn't understand it, but eventually it stopped the fight. (p. 19)
An explanation? A challenge? Merely something to consider? I'm not going to try to know.
No that's not true. When my husband arrives home, I'll read the passage to him. And we'll talk and rehash and try to understand. We'll stay up too late. Again.
But maybe we'll be that much closer to a posture of silence. And peace.
It is a jagged wound. The type that doesn't heal quickly, that smarts at unexpected times even as it heals, that tears again easily.
That is honest.
And yet you wonder why I am not ready to jump off another cliff, to play tackle football, to risk. You see it as an indication that I am not taking responsibility for my own healing.
On the contrary.
I could patch it with a band-aid and a fake-Christian smile, to appease you. But I am not longer interested in appeasing. That's what got me to this situation -- appeasing in this situation, appeasing in life. I intend now to be as honest as I possibly can. Kind. But honest.
If you indeed want me to be responsible for my own healing, you need to allow me the space to be honest, to listen to God's guidance, not yours, to protect healthy boundaries. You want me to be extremely vulnerable, but that would be irresponsible on my part. I will be vulnerable to God, not you. You call me dangerous and immature. You view it as a weakness in my character. Perhaps. But I'm pretty sure God is telling me it's okay to protect my heart, to protect the process.
I will not hurry. That is disappointing to you, I know. I once had a seminary professor who said, "Maturity is knowing whom to disappoint." I am willing to disappoint you.
I am trying to offer you grace. I am offering you grace -- just not as much as you are demanding, as you have demanded.
I am engaging in the process not because of you or your pressure or your attempts to shame me, not even because I am a good person. It is because God continues to show me that He is present here with me. He is with you too. This is not the end for either of us. But neither of us can or should dictate the journey forward.
******************** Isaiah 41:10 Fear not for I am with you. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Psalm 27:13-14 I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.
If you love home grown tomatoes and if you live in the Midwest with a nice sized backyard, you will probably want a summer garden to grow your very own red, juicy beauties.
Quite possibly, you love home grown tomatoes because you grew up with a garden, a huge one, you were expected to help weed and to help pick -- tomatoes, okra, corn, asparagus, strawberries. Maybe you had a dad who loved to garden and a mom who loved the vegetables, but grumbled about all the canning. (Now that you are an adult, you do understand that.)
And chances are, though you remember griping about all the weeding (and perhaps you even remember complaining to your elementary school friends about summer beginning because now you would have to weed the garden all the time), you now understand the beauty of gardening, even the weeding, maybe even especially the weeding. You understand the solitude of the garden. Working alone, sweat dripping down your back, clearing the soil of weeds, creating order. You still feel that childish rush of pride all these years later in knowing the difference between a corn seedling and a weed. You still delight in the pungent organic smell of tomato plants.
You may remember all these things, savor them mentally, and vow to plant a big ol' rural-Oklahoma style garden next summer.
But life will be as busy as ever when tilling and planting time comes... and goes. You will mentally settle for a tomato plant or two and maybe some dill or zucchini. And then more time will pass and your dad will possibly ask when you want him to bring some tomato plants over. He will have started all sorts of varieties in his greenhouse during the spring and he'll be anxious for you to plant some of them. More time will pass. You will probably look out your kitchen window while hand washing a few dishes and you will see the barren garden and feel guilty you've continued to neglect it.
Finally, your dad will relent. You hadn't intended that to be the result, but you won't feel disappointed either. He will till the garden for you. He will plant tomato plants. You wanted a couple of plants. He will plant five. That's okay. You don't have to eat each and every tomato. You can share. Maybe you'll puree and freeze some. Maybe you'll waste a few.
Special tomato-slicing knife
When that first full, fragrant tomato reddens, you will slice it with the special tomato-slicing knife you received for Christmas a few years ago. You will prepare a turkey sandwich on 12-grain bread -- green leafy lettuce, cheese, mayo, celery salt and a fat juicy slice of tomato. It will taste so transcendentally delicious you will make another sandwich. Forget about chips or a cookie for dessert; two tomato-laden turkey sandwiches will do.
You will document your first turkey-with-homegrown-tomato sandwich of the year as your Facebook status.
The summer will progress. You'll savor more tomatoes. Your husband will eat some of them like apples, squirting mustard on each as he goes. (A strategy he learned from you.) Sometimes you will eat so many tomatoes, you'll get canker sores. And over time, you will no longer appreciate the tomatoes quite so much as you first did. You will give away more and more. You will pick less frequently, allowing some to rot on the vine in the blazing summer heat.
When fall arrives, bringing increasingly harder freezes, and the vines begin to droop, you will once again neglect your garden. Now when you look out that kitchen window, you'll see a garden patch in need of clearing. You know it won't be much work, just a few minutes of tearing out vines and dragging them to the compost and a few moments of stacking the tomato cages under the deck. If you've thought ahead, maybe you'll spread around coffee grounds collected from the local barista.
There's a good chance though that even in December, those vines will still be there, black, ugly, sagging, evidence of the difficult months that preceded this one. But one afternoon, you just might look out that kitchen window and see magic.
His song is layered with unexpected sounds and beauty. It soars. It murmurates.
(Yes, I made that word up.)
For the album premiere last year, he and the Secret Siblings projected a jagged-y video of birds flying through a grey sky.
I've been listening to the album on a soggy, grey December day and savoring the flight of birds against barren trees and a bleak sky. Today, I've replayed the song several times because listening to it seems right for the moment.
The Dawn will indeed break upon us.
**************** I wonder if any of those birds have a mustache.
I've been chasing after clarity. Mulling over frustrations in my life, my former job, my head. Thinking and rethinking and rethinking. Driving myself crazy with it. Trying to understand, to pinpoint, to capsulize. Getting nowhere.
This has continued relentlessly for quite some time now. Months.
Running on a hamster wheel. Frantically. To the point of exhaustion. Yet finding it immensely difficult to stop.
There's a certain comfort in the hamster wheel, a familiarity that, though wearing, is also energizing. On the hamster wheel, the fuel of inner confusion, anger and frustration keep me going with boundless spiraling compulsion.
There's a predictability to the hamster wheel too. I may not understand the situation. I may be revisiting the facts and the emotions with little genuine insight. But I know the wheel.
In the absence of true clarity, I lock fiercely on each nugget of fact and emotion. I see each of them clearly, albeit briefly, like rungs on a hamster wheel. They speed by. But for a moment, a fleeting moment, I can see something clearly and then something else and something else. In the absence of true clarity, I've been willing to settle.
The morning after I first came to this realization, my mother-in-law, who had no idea what I'd been thinking, sent me an email with the link below. (Be sure to watch to the end.)
Sheesh!
I'm discovering (through the help of a spiritual director who meets with me periodically) God is not in the hamster wheel. It's not that he's not with me or accessible to me there. But I will not experience him in the hamster wheel. In fact, I will not even experience him in clarity. Sure, he sometimes offers me moments of true clarity, but that is not where I need to look to find him. I am made not for clarity, but for relationship with the Creator. Clarity is nice, but it alone will never be truly satisfying. Chasing after clarity only expends energy and fuels frustration. It does not bring me closer to what I truly and deeply desire.
I'm trying to learn how to step off the hamster wheel. It is not easy, but boy oh boy do have lots of opportunity to practice these days.
"You have been replaying the facts of your situation over and over again in your mind. You want to talk about the facts as you see them, and then you want to set those facts afire and shove them into the faces of those who wronged you. But hear me on this: there may be a time and a place for the facts to be aired, but getting the facts right will never set you free. Even if everyone involved in your hurtful situation instantly agreed with your perspective on the facts, it would not heal the damage that has been done to your insides. So, excuse me while I sidestep the facts -- your version and theirs -- and simply show you the path to wholeness. Then, may God do with the facts of your painful situation whatever he pleases." (p. 17)
It's true, but... OUCH!
And yet, I find the most consolation and feel the most wholeness and freedom in stepping back from my pursuit of clarity, vindication and self-defense, and stepping into the arms of God, as best I can.
Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD you God is with you, He is mighty to save He will take great delight in you. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing.
