I glanced up
at Him, as I paused at the threshold today, on the verge of going for a walk.
"Do You
want me to?" I asked Jesus, without words, and I felt His hand, warm, on my
back, and He ushered me out the door.
On the way, Jesus
stopped and reminded me, through the running of my thoughts, that I was wanting
Him, and that I should surrender to that. So I put my thoughts aside and He took me up in His
arms.
I reached the
curve of the road where I had listened to "O Daughter of Zion," and I
reminded Him of how wonderful that had been, that time of uplifting joy and
complete peace and His presence, all bound up in the place itself, in the
beauty around me, and in the words of the song.
Jesus put His
arm around my shoulder.
And I am still here, He reminded me, lovingly, and He turned
toward me and put His face in my hair for a moment.
"So You are,"
I agreed without words, with welling gratitude and contentment.
It's a
gorgeous day, all cool and full of wind and the quiet rustling of new leaves.
The lake was lovely.
From Richard
Rohr today:
When I was
young, I wanted to suffer for God. I pictured myself being the great and
glorious martyr somewhere. There's something so romantic about laying down your
life for something great. I guess many young people might see themselves that
way, but now I know it was mostly ego, but sort of good ego at that stage.
There is
nothing glorious about any actual moment of suffering—when you're in the midst
of it. You swear it's meaningless. You swear it has nothing to do with goodness
or holiness or God—or you.
The very
essence of any experience of trial is that you want to get out of it. A lack of
purpose, of meaning—is the precise suffering of suffering! When you find a
pattern in your suffering, a direction, you can accept it and go with it.
March 27,
2017 Unpublished
I've been
thinking a great deal about becoming a mother. It's interesting to notice the
change in my perception of myself.
I think in
many ways I now process life as though I were at the end of it, coming to many
realizations which I think normally occur after the children have grown and
left the home.
Maybe it’s
when the children are grown and fly the nest that people begin to think about
their mortality and begin to look for meaning, because the role that had so
largely defined their lives has concluded.
I’m doing
this now, though, because the infertility brought me right up against my
mortality. It was a significant death, a death of a part of me that biologically
speaking was my birthright.
Any hope I'd
had, before then, of life ever being free of suffering was killed at that
point. I had had the dream, a mostly unconscious one, that once I became a
mother, my scars and imperfections would be swallowed up by my new, absorbing
role.
I thought,
once and for all, I would leave the brokenness behind and step into the
commercials, into the rosy human ideal. This dream normally recedes as we reach
for it, but I thought I might get there, that for once I would catch it.
Of course I
couldn't. The whole image was shattered like a mirror. At first, I hated God
for doing that to me, for slapping my hand away just as I reached for the
loaded table.
Without the
dream, I was left with merely the present moment, and with what value I could
glean from the suffering, and I was left with God. I had only those things that
are behind the rosy facade and that are of much greater value in the end.
It doesn't have to be infertility to cause us to see life this way. Sickness or death of
a loved one can do this. Marriage can do it. Life itself will, if we let it.
I could have
kicked against the pricks the whole way along. I could have continued to fight
the loss, reached and reached again for what it was I thought I wanted, or
deserved. But He kept closing the doors. Everything I tried ended up going
nowhere.
I wonder what
would have happened if I had gone on like that? Could I have built an entire
life for myself out of denial, outrage, and determination to have what I believed
I deserved- what I thought life was supposed to be like?
Or, when that
finally collapsed, would I have then defined my life by bitterness and grief?
I think it
likely, but who knows. Something else happened. I grieved the loss, accepted my
mortality and found meaning in my suffering. I fell in love with God. But why? How
was I able to do that? Why am I like I am?
I am a mystery to myself. And because of this, everyone else is a mystery
to me. I've felt this all my life, actually- the fact that I simply cannot take
credit for myself, therefore I cannot judge another person.
I don't know
how I'm able to stand, so how can I judge another person for apparently
falling? And anyway, I don't know why they appear to be on the floor. They might
have just made it out of the basement.
(I wrote
about the following in a previous blog entry, also unpublished, and I tried
writing about it here, because it was so much on my mind and I was trying to
understand it. I didn’t end up publishing this either.)
When I was
seventeen or eighteen, I was caught up in a kind of drunken rapture on God,
partly caused by who I am, and partly by the fact that I was attending a
Pentecostal church at the time, and my love for Jesus had gone up into flames
of tongues and singing.
I got prayed
and prophesied over a great deal. This left me with the impression that I was
meant to do Great Things For God. Because I did not know God very well yet,
this prospect terrified me.
I have a
clear memory of being on the front porch of the church in which I had been
raised- we were still living on the grounds of the Bible School, though we
weren’t attending the church there. I was reading a biography of a Pentecostal
woman preacher. She had no family- no husband, no children. Instead, she was
filled with the Spirit and had an incredible ministry.
Immediately,
I was struck by the premonition that God would not allow me to have children.
Not because children are a hindrance to knowing Him- but because it was my deepest
desire. I felt certain He would remove my deepest desire from me and put
Himself in its place.
As the years
went by, this thought remained ever in the back of my mind. In my twenties,
every time I might have been pregnant and was not, I remembered, and wondered.
But I kept dismissing it- God is not really like that. That was the fevered
imagination of my youth.
So you can
imagine my outrage when this premonition, despite everything, came true. I can't bear children. He did fill my life with His presence, and He has been using
me.
It's a
mystery.
March 27,
2012 Unpublished
Boy, I have
been introspective today!
I realized, after
writing that whole last blog, that I was certainly not going to publish it.
And I was wondering about life. Still. And still trying to put it into words,
because I'm a writer, and that's what I do. And also trying to put it into
perspective, because I'm philosophical like that. I want the big picture
of everything.
I was
wondering about this two week period (where Keith has gone to military training
out of state right before officially starting the adoption process), and what
it means for Keith and I, and I had to give up wondering, because I don't know.
But I am here, Jesus reminded me, tenderly.
When Jesus spoke,
I knew He was there and I knew where He was; Jesus was standing right beside
me. I was in His embrace and He was bending His head down toward me, His cheek
against my hair.
“That I
always know,” I told Jesus in relief, because Jesus has said and demonstrated it to me so often that I really am starting to know it.
Then my
thoughts wandered away, and then the dogs barked, all of a sudden, and a little
jolt of fear when through me- who was there, what was happening, and the fear
caused me to leap out for Jesus by instinct, and I knew Him right beside me, still where He
had been when He spoke. It was just for a moment, because the fear caused
me to leap out and there Jesus was, like a shield, right where He had been.
This was my
verse:
"But as
for me, how good it is to be near God! I
have made the Sovereign Lord my shelter, and I will tell everyone about the
wonderful things You do." (Psalm 73:28)
March 28,
2012
Yesterday I
got to work on the overgrown flower bed in the back yard and I filled out the
home study application- all but some of Keith's information. There were six
pages of it.
The papers
are waiting now in the expanding file folder that Keith and I bought a couple weeks ago,
just for that purpose.
When he gets
back, we'll mail it in and in seventy two hours, we'll know if we were accepted
or not, and if we are, we'll begin gathering up all the documents to complete
their program.
I've
been resting and slowly moving from one task to another and thinking. Last night I
was reading in Genesis and I was astonished at the story of the Garden of Eden. It struck me
suddenly that Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat of the fruit of the
knowledge of good and evil.
I saw this in
a new way. It meant they could not tell the difference between good and evil. If
you do not know the difference between good and evil, how can you have a
conscience? Isn't that the very definition of a conscience?
This was on
purpose- in fact, it was the Divine purpose. God Himself forbade them to eat
from that tree.
Why? Why
would God do this?
So I asked
Him. Jesus reminded me that, even though they did not know good and evil, they
knew Him.
They were in
intimate relationship with God Himself. They understood the world around them
through God, their Creator, their Father, their Friend.
You might
even say that God Himself was their conscience. After all, God perfectly
understands the difference between good and evil.
But they
choose to take this knowledge apart from Him- to take it for themselves.
I think we
still do this. We want to be like God, we want to make judgments on our own, even if this means
we're secretly ashamed of ourselves and lonely, wearing smelling skins and
eating our bread by the sweat of our face.
But we tell
ourselves- surely it will nourish me, and it looks so attractive, and most of
all, it feels so powerful to have what looks like wisdom!
For some
reason, we aren't satisfied to be His child in the garden, and walk with Him in
the cool of the day, trusting Him completely, without shame, and free to eat of every tree in the
garden, but for one.
Because
didn't Jesus come to fulfill the law- to absorb it back into Himself, as it
were? We are converted, and become, again, as children- His trusting, dependent children.
Then God
Himself becomes our conscience all over again- we need know nothing more than
that we love Him and follow Him and know Him and imitate Him.
March 28,
2012 Unpublished
As I was
walking, I was thinking about my last blog, and how it is not universal- that
is, it is even contradictory to other verses in the Bible, like the fact that we
wear the robes of salvation and righteousness, and that passing from the law to Christ is illustrated by coming of age.
But I realized
that what I had written was merely a story or metaphor, used to illustrate a deeper truth, a
truth that could be illustrated just as well in other ways.
Like a parable? Jesus asked me, teasingly. He put His
forehead against mine and drew me close. I felt His love and tenderness and
possession of me so strongly- I knew He meant: like Father, like daughter.
"Kind of like,"
I admitted, smiling, and leaning in toward Him. The moment
was just full of cuteness.
April 1, 2012
"Today
the goodness of God cries out,
and the
waters come to life with Your saving grace.
Radiant is
Your joy, O God,
and the
splendor of Your love is alive, alive."
-The Monks of
Weston Priory
I got back
from my walk, and those words leaped out at me from the song.
What a beautiful
day it is today! The light shimmered on the edges of all the tender green
leaves. It made a haze of light at the edges of everything.
One could
look down through the lace of light into further vistas of green edged light
and further down into bottle green and dappled shadow.
A lilac tree
grows at the edge of the lake there, and as I walked toward it, the smell of
the lilacs and the smell of the warm water and the smell of fish were all
mingled together, as though to capture the very essence of early summer.
Today is Palm
Sunday, and it seemed as though the very landscape were crying out in joyful
worship. I was caught up in this worship, in the recognition of my Lord, my
Creator, my triumphant and humble King.
As I passed
through my neighborhood, I smelled pancakes and bacon from someone's open
window, which evoked a whole host of memories and longing for my own family
breakfasts on a sunny Sunday.
Maybe one
day, I will be making pancakes for Keith, and children of our own. In the
meantime, I have so much already.
April 2, 2012
Unpublished
I had such an
interesting insight on my walk this morning.
In looking
for meaning in everything, I am going to find lots of fascinating and useful
insights that enrich my understanding of life and of God, and I am also going
to find lots of meaningless nonsense.
That's just
the nature of looking for meaning in every moment.
I remembered
that parable about the Kingdom of Heaven being like a man who was fishing with
a net, and he caught all kinds of fish that he then had to sort through. I thought
again about how Jesus had said to Peter, "Launch out into the deep, and
let down your nets for a catch."
Then I
thought about how one could look for meaning in life in two different ways. One
could line fish on the shore or one could drag net in the deeps.
One day, you
could be squatting on the beach, trying to fix the net, and someone calls your
name. A Man is standing there, a
perfectly ordinary looking Man and He wants to use your boat.
Don’t say
yes, if you value your routine and easy answers.
This Man will
stand in your boat and say what seems to be simple things to crowds of people
you don’t know. You yourself will hardly be able to understand what He is
saying.
But that’s
not all! After He has finished speaking to the crowd, He will turn and look at
you. He will tell you to launch out into the deep.
On the shore
are the boats and the houses, and out in the lake, the water is glinting
and the wind is moving and fear runs like a shiver up your spine, but you do as
He asks.
We don’t even
know why we obey Him, except that all our inexpressible longing is running into
Him, drawing us. It’s the same for flowers turning their faces to the sun.
When we let
down our nets, the catch is so large that the net is breaking and the boat is
sinking.
That's the
point at which one realizes one's previous construct is too small to hold all
of God. It’s very frightening. The illusion of control is gone.
God is huge
and you are small, and much of what you felt was certain is breaking apart
under the weight of all those scattering silver scales, those thousands of liquid
eyes, the fragile gills, that strange and living heap of water and light and
life. You can’t even begin to sort through everything.
That is the
point at which you fall to your knees in terror before God and plead,
"Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man."
And what is
the first thing God say in response? He says, "Do not be afraid."
Why? Because
the lake itself is God, that's why, and in His lake, we are the fish. Who cares
if our boat falls apart, if all that means is that we are plunged into God
Himself?
We are in God
and God is in us, and He is infinite, and large enough to hold mysteries
without end. He is fishing for us, not the other way around.
But until God
Himself steps into our lives, we cling to our ideas. It keeps us afloat on a
small wooden shell, above the infinite mystery and love of God Himself, which
is so large that it is terrifying to acknowledge.
"Here are the boundaries of God," we say. “Here is what is clean and here is
what is unclean. Here is the right way and the right method. This is what my
father did and his father before him. We are suffering in poverty, our catch is
small, but it is correct, and that is enough.”
This comforts
us. We’re unable to let go of the boat, unable to let go of our comfortable
hook, line and sinker.
When God does
step into our lives, things will start to fall to pieces. Our cherished
constructs begin to fall to pieces. We know that we are sinful, small,
helpless.
But God is
right there, right before us and His eyes are full of love. The spray of the
ocean is thrown in the air by the catch of fish, and everything is full of
light and He tells us not to be afraid, now we will be fishers of men.