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Younger and Older: Counseling Women

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One morning last week, after tossing and turning and unsuccessfully trying to fall back to sleep, I rose out of bed early and came out to the kitchen with my journal to pray. I wrote, “I feel like I’m too much for people right now. I’m so needy for love and wisdom and healing- desperate to bear my soul and hear words of truth and love. But, I feel like that is just too much- the layers are too deep, too much to burden anyone with. It would just suck the life out of friendships.”

Am I the only one who feels this way sometimes? Or maybe this why we have such a booming counseling business in our country?  Somehow, we know that in order to overcome what is inside it needs to be exposed to someone else. We need to reveal the reality of who we are and we desperately want to find grace and understanding. But we don’t want to risk hurting our friendships by exposing too much neediness or vulnerability. So, we pay to have someone on our side and if we give them money, and make it a professional service, we don’t have to feel guilty about the burden we also hand them.

I think there is a good place and a need for professional counselors, along with their training and skills that give them insight and the ability to teach helpful ways of coping with difficult things. But, I’m becoming more and more passionate about the kind of counseling that I have seen continually transform my darkest days of life into fruit-bearing and light shining seasons.

When I was in college I read a book about spiritual mothering. I don’t remember a lot about it, other than it left me longing for a mature Christian woman to take me under her wing. I wanted someone who would be committed to helping me grow, be invested in my life and a resource to come to with all my questions and needs.  She would of course be wise, and would have likely homeschooled her own large brood of children, could clean, cook, garden, organize and decorate, and she would check in on me frequently and offer her jewels of wisdom and practical assistance at just the right times. As a young wife, realizing that marriage, even to your best friend, was more complicated than I thought, and then as a young, exhausted mother, this longing turned into an idol in my heart. If only I had that ‘spiritual mother’, someone with all the answers and able to devote time to teaching me how to be a wife and mother, then I would be a better Christian. I would grow. I would be healthy.

It’s a misplaced hope to think that one person could swoop in and meet all of our emotional and practical needs. That spiritual mother I was looking for didn’t exist. I felt like God was withholding something good from me for a long time, when really, he had provided something much better that I just didn’t recognize. He made me a part of a diverse, beautiful, growing church. Last week, I once again overcame that fear of revealing my mess and leaned hard into relationship. And, once again, I was left in awe of the wisdom of God in placing us in community. I came away with a better understanding of what was at the heart of my problem, and a deeper appreciation for the friends God has placed in my path as counselors, along with a deeper love of the gospel, which gives insight into human nature, and helps us to not be surprised by sin and brokenness. Not to mention, my friends make me laugh. What a gift from a happy God.

In the book of Titus in the Bible, the church is given a model for how the older women are to teach, or counsel, the younger women. I find that I’m both that older and younger woman now… somewhere in the middle and so blessed to be both walking with women in seasons that I’ve already experienced, while also learning from the wisdom and experience of women a step, or a few steps, ahead. I have something I would love to say to both…

To the younger women:

First, please be brave. As hard and as intimidating as it is, you need to reach out to more mature women you respect. You need to ignore the thoughts in your head that tell you that they are too busy, you are too insignificant, or that you would be a bother. If you are living in a season we’ve already been through, your problems don’t scare us. But, you need to take the initiative and the risk in reaching out. Too often, we as older women don’t assume you need or want our counsel because we don’t always recognize either your need or our insight.

Also, please be open-handed. Don’t let your need for counsel develop into a utilitarian view of women with some experience and insight that you want to learn from. Remember that they are your sisters in Christ, in need of the encouragement and friendship you can offer as well. Look for ways to bless them, especially through your prayers for them. And, as you pray, God will mature your heart at the same time. You will take their burdens, some that you haven’t faced yet– like an empty nest or the care of an aging parent– and your heart will wrestle with these issues on their behalf. You will be more ready to face them yourself someday because of your faithful prayers for older women. Look for ways to bless and care for them even as you let them know how much you need their love and counsel.

And that is so important… let it be known. Be honest. Go beyond the point of comfort. Peel back a layer beyond the one that feels safe and experience grace and love entering into a deeper place.  Even if you feel like you are taking more than you’re giving, keep asking. It will bear fruit and before you know it you will be that older woman yourself, pouring out what you have received.  Be brave.

To the older women:

Please be kind. Please notice the younger women around you and ask them how you can be praying for them. They want to tell you and they need your prayers coming from a place of understanding.

If you understand the gospel, and it is the hope you cling to for all of life, then you are both qualified and needed to give counsel to younger women. The gospel allows you to step in with the truth about hope: that hope comes from God loving us in the midst of the messes. You have no idea how much just the fact that you have survived the season we’re in means to us younger women. There’s hope for us. And, if you’re honest about your failings along the way, that’s even better and gives us even more hope… we aren’t alone in our failures.

Please be careful of how you speak about others. We’re listening, and if we hear you divulging personal information about others or speaking disparagingly, we won’t feel safe coming to you with the things that are closest to our hearts. But, if you let us see your heart for others, and it’s one of grace, and your words communicate your care and concern, we will want to be added to those you know and love. 

Maybe sometimes we try your patience with our immaturity. Please keep being patient. In seasons to come, there will likely be the most fruit hanging from the branches that need the most growth now. Those are the areas the gospel still needs to penetrate and transform. Speak truth into our lives gently but boldly. We younger women don’t want to think we are right all the time about what we are thinking or feeling; we want to know the truth that brings hope- the truth that we are sometimes wrong and messed up but that we’re still loved and that God will keep working in those areas.

Remember, we don’t need perfection. We just really need your presence and availability. Take us seriously when we send you an email or make a phone call to tell you we are struggling and need counsel.  It means the perceived need is significant because it is so intimidating to take that step. Please be kind.

So, those are the things burdening my heart for both younger and older Christian women. They are coming from a passion that continues to grow and longs to see the church –the community of God’s people– thriving as a place where life-transforming counseling takes place in natural relationships being strengthened with His supernatural love.

But, even with that passion growing, I know that these relationships are imperfect. That morning, while I was sitting in the quiet kitchen, afraid to burden my friends, as I prayed I was reminded of another Counselor. One we don’t reveal ourselves to, but One who reveals us to ourselves.

In the sixteenth chapter of John’s summary of the life of Christ, the words of Jesus are recorded for us. He told his disciples that he had to leave, but that it was for their benefit that He would no longer be physically present with them. Shortly after this, Jesus died on the cross, paying with death the cost of sin and breaking its power to separate us from God. His sacrifice and life dramatically changed how God’s people would commune with Him. It was a turning point in all of history. There was a reconciliation so deep that not only can our sins be forgiven, but the Holy Spirit can draw so close that He abides in us and teaches us truth. He is our ultimate Counselor.

When I am feeling lost or puzzled, broken or hopeless, tired or frustrated, insecure or anxious, or any of the other countless emotions we as humans will experience, the first and perfect Counselor I need is God who has made his abode right here with me; He is here, always available, always wise, always pouring out truth and grace and always coming with life transforming, undeserved love. All because Jesus paid my counseling fee in full. I don’t have to worry about burdening Him beyond what He can handle, because He held the burden of the sin of the world on the cross. I don’t have to worry about Him growing weary with me, or giving up on me, because He chose to make me His when I was repulsively stuck in self-centered sin. He says He will stay with me and carry me through to completion. He knew me before I took my first breath, and he knows who I will be after my last breath is exhaled. Isn’t that encouraging truth? We are known and we are loved by the only one who knows us completely and can love us perfectly. That is transforming truth and that is the message of our deepest counsel to one another.

You have searched me, Lord,

and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue

you, Lord, know it completely.

You hem me in behind and before,

and you lay your hand upon me.

Psalm 139:1-5

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What I Need to Say Before ‘Thank You’

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Thanksgiving. I know it’s really important. Not the turkey or cranberry sauce and eating pie all afternoon… not even the Pilgrims and Squanto.  It’s the act of remembering, appreciating and being grateful. Being grateful to Him. It matters; it’s important and it’s good.

But I can’t just turn on thankfulness like a faucet. That deep appreciation and thanks isn’t pouring out of me right now.  And, he’s not an account in the sky where we need to deposit our yearly dose of thanksgiving before we carve the turkey and pass the mashed potatoes. He’s not the universe or ‘The Unknown God’ of the Athenians in the book of Acts. He’s Someone. He says, ‘I Am.’ He tells us about himself because he wants to be known… and he already knows each of us intimately. So, before I give thanks, I need to give honesty. I need to come to him with the questions weighing on my heart and making the thanks feel inauthentic. He’s real and I need to be real as well.

So, God, before I come to you with my thanks, I’m going to be honest and come to you with my sorrow.

Pressing down on me as I roll out pie crust is a weight of sadness for a woman I don’t even know well; we only spoke a few times. But her loss is so significant that just hearing about it has crushed part of me. Less than a year ago, we sat together after Sunday school and talked about her oldest daughter, just nearing school age. She wasn’t sure what she should do this year. We talked about the pros and cons of home, public, or Christian schools. And God, the whole time we were talking, you knew. You knew that a couple of months into her kindergarten year, that sweet five and a half year old girl would come home with a sniffle and be gone a week later. And it doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to get a thank you past the big, heavy ‘why?’. This doesn’t feel right. I don’t understand you in this.

But I keep going today with preparations for Thanksgiving. As I peel apples and make rolls, I’m thinking of another friend. We have her big, goofy dog in the front yard as a reminder that she’s not in a position to take care of him and that the future is unknown. It weighs on me every day; this feeling that things aren’t the way they are supposed to be. I bury my face in the thick fur of her sweet dog, with his tail that wags even when we’re pulling out porcupine quills, and I wish the world was just as sweet and gentle. And I need to tell you, Lord, that it just doesn’t feel right.

There are things that are so broken. I need to check in with my sister and find out if a little girl is at her house for Thanksgiving. This little two year old spent the first year of her life in my sister’s home and now comes back for visits. I am thankful that they have that time together, but, God, it still hurts. I know when my sister hugs that little one, they both remember their hearts have been broken a million times and will probably break a million more. The hardness of the foster care system and most of all the hardness of this world breaks people. It seems like you could do something. Like you should have done something already. It doesn’t make sense, Lord.

And God, I’m sorrowful because I’m so lonely this year. This is the first Thanksgiving I’ve experienced without a grandmother somewhere in this world. I want to hear Grammie B ask me what I’m thankful for and hear her say, like she always did, that she was thankful for her salvation and for all of us. I want to know Grammy J is in her kitchen today, sifting flour, baking up a storm of pies and mincemeat bars and getting Grampy to peel the apples. But they aren’t here. I know my grandfather’s heart is breaking today as well and I could just cry and cry. I know I need to thank you, but I want to tell you that I don’t like how this works. Death and leaving and being apart. It seems so wrong and I wish it wasn’t this way.

I also need to tell you about the guilt I feel when I even think of thanking you. I have a five and a half year old daughter as well. She’s so excited about learning how to make pumpkin pie this afternoon. She’s happy and chatty and she’s alive. I am so, so thankful… thankful it wasn’t my daughter you chose to take away. And, tomorrow, my family is going to be home together. Our own puppy will be looking for crumbs on our dining room floor and my husband, who makes me feel safe and understood, will be there with us. My baby will climb on my lap to put his fingers in the whipped cream on my pie and take it for granted that I’m his momma and I will never leave. I have so many reasons to be thankful. You have blessed me in every way. And the contrast between my thanks and others’ sorrows makes me feel those pangs of guilt. I know life isn’t ‘fair’. I don’t understand your ways, Lord.

And, God, I need to come to you with yet another emotion. It’s fear. As I think of all the good things you’ve blessed me with, like a home and family, bountiful food and healthy children, I’m reminded of how fragile these blessings are. They could be gone in a breath, a moment, with a missed stop sign or with a spark from the woodstove. Nothing here is secure. As soon as I start thanking you for these things I hold so carefully, I am reminded that you might take them away. I’m afraid because I love them so much. And, the reality is that when I look around at the hard things in life, I don’t completely trust you. Your ways just don’t make sense to me.

So that is the reality, Father. I have sorrow, guilt and fear. But you knew that. You are acquainted with all that’s inside and even before I say the words, you know them already. You know and you want me to come to you with them. Thank you for caring. Thank you for wanting to hear them just as much as you do my words of appreciation. Thank you for caring about me… right where I am. For real.

And this is when the real giving of thanks begins. We’re real together. Jesus is the ‘image of the invisible God’. We know you because you revealed yourself and your character to us in a way we could understand… as a human. And you were fully human… You wept. You were tired. You asked to be spared suffering if at all possible. And, you trusted, somehow in the mystery of the Trinity, that the character you have shared for all eternity, the Father’s love and justice, was enough to make the suffering, the weariness, the tears all worth it in the end.

You tell me it will all be made right. It is going to be okay.

For now, you are weeping with those who weep.

The reality of that is big enough for my sorrow, my guilt and my fears.

Thank you, Lord.

Yesterday, my baby came up to me and lifted up his arms. I reached down and picked him up and held him close. He wrapped his pudgy little arms around my neck and we rested for a minute, heart to heart. I was filled to the brim with love for the little guy, and with sudden wonder, I realized that he was feeling the same thing. He was in my arms, snuggled in and feeling love for me, too. We just held on for a moment, and thanks filled every fiber of my being.

That’s how I want to be with God this Thanksgiving. It’s good to count our blessings. It’s good to remember we have been given so much.

But, ultimately, the Giver wants to give us Himself.

I am so thankful that God isn’t just a power, but that he’s real and responsive and feeling. It means that I can come to him, lift up the reality of my heart and let myself be held for a while. I can rest in his arms and be thankful. Thankful not just to him or for him… but I can be thankful with him.

For I am sure that neither death nor life,

nor angels nor rulers,

nor things present nor things to come,

nor powers, nor height nor depth,

nor anything else in all creation,

will be able to separate us

from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

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The Provision of Friendship

IMG_0500We had a booming year for cucumbers; there are jars and jars of bread and butter pickles and some experimental dills. Next to them are jars of green tomato salsa, green beans and a long shelf full of little sweet dumpling squashes.  On the floor, five gallon buckets with oats and wheat berries wait to be turned into fresh bread all winter long. This time of year, with nine of us at the table and snow days ahead, there’s a drive inside to have the pantry shelves and freezer full. Just like a mother mouse finding seeds in the brown grasses, I find myself pushing my cart through the grocery store with an eye for what will keep.

I think of my great-grandmothers; Isabella came on a boat from England with a store of knowledge. She knew about finding herbs and roots and how to make people well. I imagine her, with small Charles and little Lucy trailing along behind, studying the Maine woods; an early scientist identifying plants and a doctor tucking her prescriptions away in a basket or apron pockets. When Lucy was a mother herself and held my grandmother in her arms, it was still natural to look to plants for food and medicine. But, as time passed and pharmacies with strong, effective remedies grew, it didn’t seem valuable to hold onto these old ways.  So, this fall I turned to Amazon Prime and put in an order so that the cabinet would be stocked with children’s Tylenol and cough syrup and vapor rub. The pantry has cans of ginger ale and Gatorade for those seemingly inevitable belly hurts with little ones.  I know Isabella and Lucy would have been thankful for a storehouse of these simple things that I can take for granted, like a way to so quickly bring down a fever in a small, hurting child. Still, there’s a wistfulness inside that makes me long for a walk in the woods beside these grandmothers, bent over the leaves and digging in the dirt for roots and being taught some of the old ways.

We had our first snowflakes last week. They came down in intervals with a cold sleety rain. My husband says he’s making an appointment to get snow tires on the van. The children want to know where their snow pants and boots are and we locate tubs and make sure everyone has sizes that fit.  Everyone has grown a size or more since spring.

There’s a fire in the woodstove every day now. And, rows and rows of firewood neatly stacked outside ready for little boys to see how high they can stack it in each other’s arms and still make it up the porch steps and through the house without dropping any; little boys that are strong for their age and grin when I tell them, “thank you for keeping our family so warm.”

I think we’re nearly ready.

I love the sense that we are prepared and can face days of being snowed in and still be warm, with food on our table and hot cocoa in our mugs.

But, even with all the coziness and feeling ready for winter days ahead, the last few weeks have been hard for me. I know there are people who struggle with dark, hard, debilitating periods of depression. I’ve had days of feeling down and melancholy, but never to the point where I would alarm a doctor if I filled out a questionnaire. So, it was surprising to me how heavy I have felt. There were some days when I could barely function. My kids had half-hearted schooling and minimal mothering with movies to keep them quiet. A couple of times, after getting a bare bones meal on the table, I would go straight to bed when my husband got home from work. I had nothing to give, no joy in anything, no desire for anything except to be alone in the dark and quiet.

I think this began with an email I woke up to one morning. The words were from a close friend and her news was devastating. Not only did my heart break and bleed with empathy for her pain and anxiety for her future, but old hurts from my own life were broken open. Old fears resurfaced and the world that had seemed bright and full of kind people seemed dark and deceptive and full of evil. It overwhelmed me. I couldn’t pull out truth or Bible verses to lift the weight because everything seemed so meaningless. Why had God created a world with so much darkness to begin with? The presence of the darkness just swallows any joy in the flickers of light. I was heavy and dark and only desiring quiet.

But, with seven children busting through my bedroom door and begging for snacks or to be read stories, that desire to be still couldn’t be satisfied.  I’m sad to say that it wasn’t with joy that I tended to their needs but it was with a discouraged drag of my feet. It was overwhelming to see, when I stopped feeling the motivation to sweep or pick up, how quickly our house became a disaster of puzzle pieces and crushed food and random sticks and rocks from outdoors. The chaos made me want to retreat even more.

And, it wasn’t just from the kids and the messes that I wanted to retreat. I didn’t want to answer the phone, emails from friends wanting to make plans made me cringe, my husband picked up groceries on his way home, and I started day dreaming of how I would take a six month sabbatical from church. The darkness I was giving into wanted to isolate me. The darkness wanted to drag me into a place where I couldn’t receive love or hear truth.

A while ago I made a commitment to myself. It was shortly after we moved down this long dirt road and into a place where it would be easy to become isolated. I made a decision to listen to that voice that pops up sometimes and tells me to withdraw from church or friends or social interactions; to listen, recognize it and to do just the opposite. If I start hearing lies run through my head like…

You’re just tired… you need to take a break from church or having people over and spend time with just you and God in the woods and quiet….

No one really cares about you so don’t bother them with your troubles… you should be strong enough to handle it yourself, anyway…

Don’t call that friend… she’s so busy… there are more important things on her plate than listening to you talk about yourself… 

When I start thinking thoughts that if followed through would separate me from people, I know it’s time to send an email or pick up the phone. It can feel so humbling to send an email saying, “I am feeling really down this week. I don’t even know why… but if you get a chance to call sometime I could really use a friend to talk with.”

And, just like storing food on pantry shelves or medicine in a cabinet, I try to prepare for times when I barely have the strength to reach out. I try to give stores of friendship to women in my life so that they can call on me when they barely have strength as well. The truth is, this world does have a lot of shadows and murky areas, and we are going to feel the weight of sad things. And, we just weren’t designed to go it alone.

Our church is really wonderful about providing meals to people who are sick or who have just had a baby. I have had seven babies while a part of this church family and on average have received probably eight to ten meals each baby. Not to mention when I broke my wrist and was delivered lasagna five or six times (I’m not exaggerating… the kids started asking what kind of bread we were having with our lasagna instead of what was for dinner). Preparing meals and caring for people in this way is such a kind, wonderful way to live in community. But, honestly, this was so hard for me to accept. As an independent New Englander, I know I can plan ahead and put meals in the freezer and we can do just fine on our own. I always had the urge to say, “Thank you anyway, but we don’t need help. Don’t put yourself out on our account.” I’ve had to learn and be stretched and to grow in the area of receiving. Receiving meals and receiving relationship. It is so much easier to be the strong one offering a helping hand. But to accept the hand that’s offered, or to reach out and ask for a hand, is so much harder for me. It’s coming to terms with both my need and my worth. It’s admitting that I’m weak and believing that I’m worth helping.

Several times in the last couple of weeks I’ve needed to do both. The ladies in my church have a prayer group where we share requests through email. I sent off a couple of humbling emails. I have had to answer the phone and respond to emails and say ‘yes’ to getting together with friends, some of whom reached out just because I had admitted I was struggling. One friend brought me and my kids into her house for an afternoon and we shared the sweet medicine of laughter. She’s a friend that I have a big store of history and vulnerability piled up from years of truthful conversations, so I didn’t need to say much. She knew why things were hard and we could just spend time together pushing the darkness back and letting in more light.

Today, I just got home from a visit with another dear friend. Earlier this week I couldn’t imagine packing up all the kids and getting us out of the house and being energetic enough to visit. But I said yes. And, I’m so glad I did. More light came pouring in.

I finally feel like I’m coming out of that darkness that wanted to swallow me and isolate me. Some courage is seeping back in and some energy is starting to flow again. As it does, I find myself being so thankful. Not just for the stores of food to keep us fed or medicine to keep us healthy, but the store of community that God has blessed me with; friendships and a connection to a church family that has been tended and preserved through time.

One of the last things Jesus told his friends, after he had washed their feet and fed them a meal, was that he had a new commandment for them. “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. “

For a long time, the mark of being right with God had been holiness.  Jesus was drawing his people together and giving them a new mark. His disciples are known by their love for one another; the humbling, sacrificial, self-exposing, grace-extending love of Jesus pouring from heart to heart.

If you feel alone today, and like there’s a cloud or weight of darkness, please take the one little (though I know it can be so hard and daunting) step of reaching out and letting someone know you are feeling that way. I would love to have a cup of tea with you and hear your story, whether you are feeling strong and happy or whether you are discouraged and down. Since distance is an issue, sometimes the telephone or email has to serve as our virtual tea table. But those thoughts that tell you it’s a sign of weakness to reach out or that nobody wants to hear just aren’t true. God created us with a need for one another. He knew that in all seasons, the joyful bursts in summer, the cold and biting days of winter and all days in between, we do best when we are together. The love and truth and grace he wants to pour on you and me, he so often pours through the words or touch or listening eyes of a friend. My lesson this month has once again led to a prayer… may he give us the strength and the grace we need not only to give, but also to receive this kind of love. And, may He produce in us the commitment and authenticity to work and grow stores of this kind of friendship, which is more precious than any wealth of provision on pantry shelves.

 

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The Cow Lady’s Gift

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Yesterday I shelled our dry beans. I cracked the brown, crinkling pods and dropped the large, purple speckled dry beans into a basin. As I did one after another, my thoughts turned to the cow lady.

We told her we were in the process of moving but that she could keep her two Jersey calves in our barn temporarily. Only the black and white Belted Galloways were left in our pasture and they would be leaving soon. The sheep, and horse and our own little family of Jersey cows had all been sold. We’d already signed papers and knew we were leaving the farm ourselves. It was an aching time of packing and waiting and living in an ending.

Our own two Jersey cows were named Daisy and Buttercup. They were half sisters and the farmer was willing to give us a good deal if we took them both during a January cold spell. We brought them home and fussed and worried and I sewed them fleecy jackets. When that week the temperature hit nearly twenty below, my husband talked about sleeping in the barn with a space heater. Bottles three times a day had us out in the cold. We trudged out through the sharp dawn, later, the sun high and reflecting on crusty snow and still again in the evening to notice each gradual change in the moon’s shape. I remember cabin fever didn’t hit that year like it usually did in February.

Daisy was mine because she was sweet and Buttercup was my daughter’s because she was frisky. Spring brought halter training and romps through the pastures. It must have been the bottles of milk when they were young that helped, but while the beef cows were usually pretty content to keep to themselves, the Jerseys would follow in our tracks as we did chores. To my daughter, Buttercup was a confidant and playmate. For a few precious years the fawn colored girls were part of our family and our future plans.

This was a golden age of our brief stint as farmers and then things changed suddenly. A day came when someone drove in the barnyard and loaded Daisy, Buttercup and their calves onto a trailer. They looked through the bars and money exchanged hands and somehow they weren’t ours any longer. Even though a little girl cried herself to sleep night after night, they were gone.

It was a few months after that when a neighbor called saying that a friend was coming to town and needed a place to keep two Jersey calves. Two little heifers just under a year old. I wanted to say no, and yet, we didn’t have a good reason. It wouldn’t be easy to find a place to board them in our little town and we had the space. So, in a few days, two calves showed up in Daisy and Buttercup’s pole barn again.

I really don’t remember the lady’s name. The kids all called her the cow lady and that’s how I remember her. She’d come twice a day to do chores and sometimes my daughter would join her and walk the calves with her up and down the road. It was bittersweet to see a sight so familiar and yet know that this was a chapter of our lives that had ended. We were just experiencing a long, drawn out goodbye while we waited for everything to be settled and to leave the farm for good.

It was the cow lady that gave my daughter the bean seeds. In February, for her tenth birthday, the cow lady gave her a little box and inside were five large seeds and a note with planting instructions.

By Spring, the cow lady had moved on and so had we. We turned the soil in our little garden patch in the woods and my daughter found a stout pole and planted her seeds around it. Unfortunately, the chickens (who besides the dog were the only animals that made the move from the farm), managed to break into the garden and scratch in the soil until only two bean seeds remained. These two weren’t even left by the pole but managed to grow along the garden fence where they had been flung by the chickens.

By August, the vines had wrapped themselves high and the plants were in blossom. They were a deep orange-red against the green in the garden and bees and hummingbirds were drawn steadily to their blossoms. In the fall, the long pods had browned and dried and my daughter excitedly picked and shelled them and found that she had a jar full of beans identical to the ones she had planted in the spring. From those two, misplaced, dropped in the earth, purple seeds a bounty of a harvest had grown. Each new season, we find at harvest time that they have multiplied again and this year we had a row planted all along one side of the garden, growing tall and winding around the fence and sunflowers.

So, yesterday I stood shelling bean after bean.

We’ll use some for soup but I’ll be sure to set some aside for planting in the Spring. These beans, falling out of the dried and brown pods, are just resting. What seems dead and dry and lifeless, is holding all the potential for tall green vines and the brightest flowers in the garden.

While I stood shelling those beans, I had other thoughts. With my hands busy my mind could wander to situations that needed sorting and loved ones that needed prayer. I turned over the words of a friend dealing with heartbreak and brokenness.  I thought of so many who are dealing with painful, dark days. Days of prayers that don’t get answered in ways that make sense to our hearts and minds. Days when the first thoughts of the day are painful and it’s hard to get to sleep at night.

But as these thoughts and names passed through my mind, my hands held the cow lady’s gift; the gift of remembering grief and death and leaving and the gift of seeing hope and new life and revealed purpose. The gift of seeing with renewed thankfulness the joy of today and the blessing and goodness that came from hard changes. The gift of my daughter’s happiness. The gift of remembering seasons and that spring always follows winter and that what is sown in the ground doesn’t stay there.

After I cast the last of the brown pods into the compost, I took the basin of seeds in my arms and carried it into the house. Before I reached for a jar, I counted out five, large, purple speckled seeds. With a prayer, I placed them in an envelope for a friend.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

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His Old Sweatshirt

I remember the night when I first wore his sweatshirt. He must have felt me shivering on the back of his motorcycle as we were coming back from the ocean. He pulled into the parking lot in front of Kmart or some other store in Ellsworth, Maine.

“You know, I think I need to do a little shopping before classes start up again.”

I followed him in and watched as he found a blue sweatshirt and paid the clerk. No, he didn’t need a bag.

“Would you mind wearing this until I drop you off? It’ll be easier to carry that way.”

And, with a smile, I pulled the sweatshirt on over my short sleeves and climbed on the seat behind him. I don’t know how many times since then that the old sweatshirt has stayed when other clothes have been sent off as donations or to the rag bag.

Tonight I’m wearing one of his t-shirts. It’s the one he was wearing the morning before he flew off on an airplane to Alaska and it still smells like him. Seven. more. nights.

The first night my husband was gone the kids and I camped out in a little cabin. There were kids in the loft and on the floor and two in my bed.

And there was a weight in my chest. I lay awake and listened to noises and wondered if we’d face danger in the night. Bears, bad guys, tornadoes, and UFOs all crossed my mind. My thoughts followed my fears and I imagined what would happen if my husband never made it back. How would I raise seven children alone? Would we stay in our off-the-grid house in the woods or move? Could I learn to plow the driveway and get our own firewood? Before we got married I could change my own oil but I haven’t touched an oil pan since I walked down the aisle. I cut down one small tree using a chainsaw this summer to impress the kids but I had to work hard to not look scared when it started swaying.

And the part of me that was raised in an era of ‘girl power’ is ashamed to say that I depend on my husband for a lot of really practical ‘manly’ things around here. Even as I write this I hear a mouse scuttling in the wall and wish my mouse hunter wasn’t in Alaska.

When he’s not here with us, I feel the weight of what he usually takes care of. If there’s a bump in the night he’s the one who gets out of bed to find out what it is. He’s the one who’s out of the house at 6:20AM and gone for eleven or twelve hours each day so that money magically shows up in our bank account. Sometimes when I have a child in the habit of wasting a lot of food or being careless with something we figure out how long Daddy had to be at work to buy whatever it was. All these things filling our home and our table are things he provided.

For all these years of marriage there has been a man in my life feeling the weight of protecting me and my little ones and providing for all of our physical needs. All those years ago he saw my need for a sweatshirt and he’s never stopped seeing needs and going out of his way to meet them.

Recently I sat outside by the pond talking with a friend. As a young mom she told me about her struggle to know whether or not she should keep working or stay home. She said she’s been talking with a lot of women and all of them say that whatever decision is made you always second guess yourself. Plus, it’s scary not to have a fallback. If you are out of the work force for long you lose experience and skills that translate into earning potential.

So many women are making so many different choices. Each situation is unique and those of us who have the ability to make a choice have been blessed with so much freedom.

But, there is also something deeper. Something that doesn’t have anything to do with income or economics. I’ve felt it. There’s something in me that whispers that I’m not a strong person if I want a man to kill the mice and go first to check on the bump in the night and to bring home a paycheck while I stay home. There’s a little shame that can rise when I say that I depend on my husband to keep my car rolling and wood in the fire and my heart beating peacefully in the middle of the night.

But I don’t have to be ashamed; I can be fearlessly thankful.

Accepting provision and protection and feeling a need for someone isn’t weak. I could set mousetraps and I could find childcare and I could go to work. I could be sure to keep myself from needing him and from the danger of experiencing great loss if I were ever to lose him. If we could just live together but maintain a minimal level of dependency we could feel ‘safer’.

But, truthfully, I’d rather be wearing his old sweatshirt.

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A Letter to Me

Dear Me-One-Year-Ago,

I’m sitting down to write this letter just before I start mixing and baking and frosting birthday cake. I remember so well that a year ago you had the thought, “Next year at this time I’ll be baking a cake.”  And here I am. You are just about to start the swiftest year of your life. Really. You’ll take a breath and blink your eyes and you’ll be standing in the kitchen baking birthday cake.

But before you do, get ready. I know the bags have been packed and your kids have been asking every morning for a few weeks if this is ‘the day’. Tonight you feel the disbelief of a woman ten days overdue and it’s hard to imagine that tomorrow really and truly is the day you will meet this baby you’ve been waiting for. But it is. And you are going to feel the most pain you have ever felt. You are going to look at your husband and say, “This doesn’t feel right. It’s taking too long.” You are going to look at your sweet midwife and, with panicky eyes, for the first time in seven labors, you are going to tell her you want drugs. Like now. And she’s going to say you are almost there. And you are going to push and feel like you are breaking and dying and weak even though you’re stronger than you’ve ever been and then he’ll be on the outside. He’ll be the only baby you can only hold for a just moment because you are trembling and weak and your husband will be handed his son. Hands will help you from the birthing stool to your bed and you will sink in and they will give him back to you and place him on your chest, skin to new skin. You’ll do what so few women these days are blessed to experience.  You’ll look in the eyes of your seventh child and you will feel more love than you thought possible and you’ll know that your heart has grown with your family. And your baby will be perfect. Like unbelievably perfect. Perfect little toes and a head full of hair and eyes that study your face like yours do his. They will weigh him and you’ll all be amazed, and suddenly, knowing he’s over ten pounds makes your tough labor make sense. You’ll feel like super woman for a minute and also decide you can never do that again. Ever.

I know you don’t have a name picked out. It would be nice if you did because you are going to spend his first twenty four hours trying to decide. You will want something unique and meaningful but not so strange that it will be burdensome for the little guy. You will decide on his first name after that first night of holding him and getting to know him but the middle name takes longer. Finally, around the time he’s a day old you’ll choose ‘Trust’ for a middle name. You and your husband will remember the third Psalm. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight.” You’ll remember the prayers you prayed and how you wondered if you should have another baby. You’ll remember thinking about how you already felt stretched and limited and how crazy people would think you were. But the trusting path led to this little life asleep in your arms and you will feel thankful and call him, ‘Trust’.

When his brothers and sisters come to the hospital they will be quiet at first with wonder. They will look at him shyly and then as they snuggle him and touch his feet and nose he’ll be one of them. He’ll seem to like their noises and be calm and peaceful hearing up close all those voices that were muffled for months. Your mother will hold him and talk about how handsome he is and take pictures of your new, finally-all-together family and those moments captured will be treasures to you even just a year later.

You’ll stay an extra night in the hospital because they are so nice about leaving you alone and say that since he’s your seventh child they trust you know what you’re doing. And you do. You’ll sleep and nurse and nurse and sleep.

When you get home you will be greeted by cards strung across the house and excited little kids showing you the cake they made. You won’t believe how loud your house is. You’ll wonder ‘Is it always this way?’ Your husband will recognize you’re overwhelmed and he’ll take the children for a long walk in the woods and you’ll sit in your chair with your baby and look at him and whisper, “Welcome home.” And you’ll be thankful for a few minutes of quiet and you’ll take a deep breath and when they come back you’ll be ready with a smile and hugs before you go take a nap in your own bed and it will have never felt so good.

He’s going to grow so fast. The first couple of months are going to be a fog of sleeping and lots of not sleeping and somehow what was new is going to be normal and every day and just the way it is supposed to be.

You will be so glad that he got to meet Ginger the dog, even though he won’t remember her, because it just wouldn’t feel right to have someone in the family not have known her. She will follow you everywhere and finally she will just be too uncomfortable and you’ll know its time.  But, you’ll ask your husband to make the phone call because you can’t bring yourself to do it. When it’s time to take her, he’ll offer to go but at the last minute you’ll think about how she follows you everywhere and you’ll remember bringing her home a decade ago and you’ll realize you owe her. So, you’ll leave your baby for the first time ever and you’ll know it’s his fussy time of the day but you’ll pray and somehow he’ll sleep the whole time you’re gone even though he never sleeps during that time of the day. When you get home with red eyes and an empty collar in your hand, you’ll find him just starting to stir and you’ll pick him up and hold him and feel life in your arms when your heart is aching over death.

He’ll start smiling early. As he grows you’ll realize more and more that he’s less a part of you. It will be a sweet delight to your soul to watch his relationships grow with his daddy and his three brothers and three sisters. None of those relationships will be the same. They will each be sweetly unique and special and have their own jokes and favorite games. You will be so proud of how loving your older children are and amused at how they can make this new little person giggle harder than even you can.

His first solid food will be a goldfish cracker fed to him by a little girl that thinks he looks hungry. It won’t be the last time a sibling thinks he’s ready for something you aren’t sure about and sometimes they will be right. He’ll take his first steps into the arms of his proud ten year old brother; the same brother that tells him stories of what they’ll do when he gets bigger and how he can’t wait to take him hunting. The nine year old will tell him to hurry and grow up so he can take him out to the workshop and build things. The seven year old boy will pretend to wrestle with him and will look proud when you show him how the baby tries to be just like him. The two littlest girls will both want to take care of him and somehow he’ll make it through his first year without injury from being ‘mothered’. They’ll want to carry him and feed him and even though you’ll keep reminding them to give him a little space, as soon as he can walk he’ll be chasing them around and joining in of his own freewill.  And, he’ll hold a special place in the heart of his oldest sister; he’ll be the snuggles and the smiles that melt her heart on days when being twelve isn’t easy.

During his first year, you will say goodbye to both your husband’s grandmother and your own. He’ll only be three weeks old when you drive sixteen hours round-trip to go to the first funeral which was your husband’s grandmother. You’ll be thankful for the family he has and the heritage he’s been blessed with as you hear stories of his great-grandmother’s kindness and courage. You will always regret that during that whirlwind of a trip you didn’t take an hour detour to go visit your own grandmother. You’ll think that you’ll be coming back soon but life will get busy and time will fly by and she will go downhill so quickly. You won’t get to her bedside until her eyes are closed and she is slipping away. You’ll feel so sad that she never really got to see your baby. But, you will be thankful for his weight in your arms as you kiss her cheek goodbye.

She would have loved to see how he runs around with the new puppy, both of them chasing after the same mischief. You’ll find them in all sorts of trouble together. He’ll be unrolling the toilet paper in the bathroom and the puppy will be jumping in it and spreading it around the house. He’ll try to steal dog food from her dish and she’ll try to steal Cheerios from his high chair. And sometimes, you’ll find them both snuggled on her dog bed, his little head on her belly.

You’ll be so thankful.

It’s hard to imagine that as I write this to Me-One-Year-Ago that you don’t yet know the little man that has filled your house with so much personality and joy. You have so much to look forward to as you’ll soon have a heart filled and overflowing from a million toothless and then ever-increasing-teeth smiles.

You won’t be able to believe that you ever, for one moment, let what other people might think cause you to doubt if you should have another baby. You’ll come to see that while you worried about having enough to give to him, he has given to you and the rest of the family more than you could have ever imagined. You’ll look at him, be in wonder of all that you know about him and you’ll realize that you didn’t make him. He isn’t even yours. You were gifted with being the vessel that was his first home on this earth and with letting him grow in and out of your arms. And, he’s growing out of them so fast.

Tonight, on the eve of his first birthday, he’s still nestled in his little bed next to yours. I know that will probably shock you as you have plans to move him into his crib in the other room much sooner than that. But, you’ll use the excuse of our house being small and not wanting to bother the older kids in the night. Really, you just won’t be in a hurry to move him out because you will treasure every moment of his babyhood. You’ll listen to him breathe at night and it will still fill you with wonder.

So, sleep well tonight if you can. Tomorrow is a day you will always remember. And when you hold that precious, newborn son in your arms, breathe deeply and hold him close.

In just a moment, I’ll be saying ‘Happy First Birthday’ to your little, big guy.

Love,

The me he calls ‘Mama’

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Woman at the Well

We don’t even know her name. Ironically, she dreaded the walk to get water and now, even millennia later, we know her as ‘the woman at the well’. One day, close to noon and after the morning crowd had left, she picked up her jar and made her way to the deep well. As she came near, she saw a man sitting alone. He was obviously Jewish and a traveller weary from his journey. Perhaps she hesitated before approaching, knowing that as both a woman and a Samaritan it would be distasteful to a Jewish man to have her near. She was taken by surprise when he spoke.

Someone once asked me, “How do you do it? How can you be content staying home and scrubbing the toilet?” I don’t remember how I answered at the time. It was an honest question from a mother struggling to feel significant when she was home with little children all day. I think of her question often. Sometimes I think of it when I’m kissing the sweet smelling head of a sleeping baby curled up against my chest. Other times, it’s when one of my older children says something beyond their years and we share a smile. Today, it was when an old song came on the radio and my husband danced with me in the kitchen while seven little faces looked on with eyes wide open and laughed when we danced silly. I often think of it and wonder, “How could I want to be anywhere else?” But, I also think of her question when I’m washing the same dishes day after night after day; when I’m folding the same load after load of laundry that may or may not make it to bureau drawers; when I’m mopping the floors a few minutes before a troop of firewood gatherers come out of the muddy woods into the kitchen for cool drinks. Each day has repetitive tasks that could become drudgery. Each night I can fall into bed and think of little that I accomplished that won’t have to be done again tomorrow.

But, he meets me at the well. Whatever our labor is in this life, he doesn’t hold himself aloft. He humbles himself to whatever work we’re called to do and wants to commune with us there.

Right there, in the midst of washing dishes or cleaning bathrooms or reading the same story book or mediating the same squabble between siblings, he meets me. The truth read in the Word in the quiet of the morning is fleshed out in my attitude while I mop the floor or change a diaper in the afternoon. The mundane becomes sacred when I’m aware of his constant presence and intentionality.

Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink of water. She looked at her own jar and realized that to a Jew it would be unclean. She said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”

Once I woke up in the middle of the night with a new thought running through my head. I was thinking of some friends that we’ve gone to church with for years and who are going into pastoral ministry. They are taking seminary classes and preparing sermons. The thought was, “…the difference between you and them is that you are a woman. You can think about God and the church but no one will notice or care. You are seen as irrelevant.” Out of nowhere it seemed I was flooded with thoughts about life being unfair. ‘If I were a man, people would see me as significant and want to disciple me and think it was worthwhile for me to study theology.’ I fell back asleep feeling like a second class citizen in the kingdom of God. A few hours later, I woke to a little blonde head peaking over the side of his bed next to ours. When he saw that my eyes had opened, he gave me a huge ‘just for Mommy’ grin. What had I been thinking in the night? How had I been slighted? How could I have thought for a minute that God had made me something lesser when he made me a woman and a wife and a mother?

God calls us all deeper. Deeper into the Word, deeper into theology, deeper into understanding. “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3) There are no second class children. He wants us all to feast.

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  Her thoughts were racing. Who is this man? He has nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. Where would he get living water? What water could be better than that springing deep from tradition? Does this man think he is greater than Jacob? Who can this be?

“Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’”

Her mind still racing, she remembers her thirst. She remembers the dread she feels as she carries her water jar to this place where all the women come with their jars and tongues wagging.

“Please… give me this water…”

Last week someone told me prayer doesn’t really matter all that much. “It’s not like magic. You pray and circumstances don’t change. Things will probably still  be hard.”

But I don’t pray to change circumstances.

I’m thirsty.

The news comes on the radio and I hear about rockets in Gaza and Ebola in Africa. An email from church shares the news that a friend and brother in Christ went home at forty-nine years old. A text message brings news of the red thread bringing a baby ‘home’ to foster parents who love her as their own and will only get to hold her close again for a few weeks before another heart-wrenching goodbye. A friend says she is losing the hope of ever carrying a baby in her womb as her heart has hungered for. My body is tired and the house is a mess and the moment comes when I lose my patience with a child and yell instead of parent.

I’m so thirsty.

I don’t pray to change circumstances. I pray to drink the water. I pray to let the truth flow into me and through me and well up into something that is life and satisfies and quenches the throat parched by the dirt of the fallen world. I pray because I thirst for Him. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for the living God. (Psalm 42)

Jesus looks at the woman holding the empty jar and asking for water. She doesn’t want to come to this well again with her water jar and her thirst. He looks at her and he knows her. She doesn’t yet understand. He cuts through her desire for comfort and reaches into her heart. “Bring your husband.”

I decide I’m tired of being introspective. It’s not healthy. I’m going to pray for other people and I’m going to think about God and who He is. I don’t need to look at myself anymore. Isn’t that humility? To not even think about yourself?

But then, just as Jesus identified her deepest pain in order to reach deeper into her soul, God seems to want to reveal first, “This is what is keeping you from me.” He cuts deeper into the hidden places; using my own darkness to reveal his light. He shakes false humility by letting me know myself more and then with my heart aware raises my eyes to the light of the glory of Christ.

She’s lived with six men. She has tried to satisfy her thirst and found the drink bitter over and over again. And this Jew is telling her everything she’s ever done. He’s not jeering or throwing stones or trying to use her. He’s talking to her. She grasps in her mind for a response. How does he know these things? He must be a prophet. What can she say to this man?

“Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 

She knows she’s thirsty but she’s afraid. Maybe he won’t mention the men again.

And he doesn’t.

He tells her mountains don’t matter. The time is here and the Father is seeking not to dwell on a mountain but in a people. He looks into her face and answers the question she didn’t dare ask. ‘You can drink. The Father is seeking you; a Samaritan outsider, a woman, a sinner. Come to me, and drink.”

She dropped the empty jar at the well and returned to town with a fountain welling up inside, overflowing with the news of the man who told her all she ever did and let her drink and be satisfied.

How do I do it? How am I content when dinner needs to be made (again) and the news reporter just said someone shot babies in an elementary school and there are floods and tornadoes and crying fathers and seven people that grew in my womb and into my heart are breathing the air of a broken world?

There are times I don’t do it well. I’m anxious and depressed and parched. But he still seeks those who are thirsty. He meets me at the well again. And as I look at him, my grip on the empty jar loosens and it falls to the ground. There’s a peace that surpasses understanding as I leave the still water and drink the water that flows from a place that isn’t broken; a place where a Lamb sits as both King and Shepherd guiding his people to springs of living water. I drink from the river of comfort that flows out of a place where God will wipe away every tear from the eyes of his children.

“The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”                 Revelation 22:17

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Looking Into the Fog

With homeschooling and being together every day, all year long, I wouldn’t have thought it would be such an issue. But, it’s why I almost always start school by the beginning of August. The summertime squabbles had hit our house hard. I stood in the kitchen, the drizzle outside finally slowing down, and realized we had been indoors and I had been playing a referee for the last two hours. I could hear from different corners of the house various children arguing over toys, how many people could fit on the couch and where they should keep their feet and whether or not calling someone ‘mean’ was name calling or just being accurate.

I needed to do something. Fast.

“Everyone out to the cabin! I have something I want to show you.”

The cabin has been my retreat for quiet and prayer.

Walking through the rustic wood door is always something like coming home. Upstairs is a loft with three small beds while downstairs in the one small room there’s a bed and bureau, a small table, a few chairs and a woodstove. A grandmother quilt covers the full bed and a great-grandmother quilt sits carefully folded on a shelf my father-in-law built. The cabin is full of his handicraft made from scraps of wood he scrounged from around the property during his visits. Last time, to make some shelves, he said to one of the boys, “Do you think your father would mind me stealing this board?” In reply, the ten year old said, “Well, it’s not really stealing since you’re just moving it from one spot to another.” He’s taken scraps from one place and made little treasures in another. My mother-in-law carried the chair cushions home one summer and brought them back reupholstered with extra material for curtains and a wall hanging. After each visit I find new little touches of paint or wood or material. There are touches from my own mother as well. One of her oil paintings hangs on the wall along with her sun hat left on a hook. I keep kindling wood next to the stove in an old washbasin she gave me. When I was four and there were hard times and no running water, the basin was where she gave me Sunday night baths. After my mother’s visits, I’ll often find a book on one of the little tables. Last time it was a book about an island off the coast of Maine and after she left, I sat holding it in the doorway while I watched the children swimming in the pond.  As I flipped through pages of verse and photographs, I could almost smell salt water and feel the rocks and sand and I could have been sitting next to my mother in the doorway of another little cabin on a point on Islesboro.

The children all piled into my little sanctuary and suddenly it wasn’t so quiet.

I grabbed the Bible from the top of the bureau and tried to hush the chatter. “I have a story to tell you.” The promise of a story quieted them down though a few arms and legs were still restless and there was the occasional protest from someone close enough to be nudged or thumped.

I began. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She was three years old and lived with her Mommy and Daddy and three sisters.”

I reached up on a shelf and took down two worn puppets. “This monkey and this lion belonged to her. She would sit on her parent’s bed and she believed they were real. They would talk to her (sounding a little like her mother and father) and she would try to feed the monkey bananas.”

The kids laughed and said they knew who it was as I put the monkey and the lion in the hands of my seven year old. I reached for something else on the shelf. I took down a picture of the same little girl sitting in an old fashioned baby buggy with her two older sisters standing next to it. I told the kids some stories of the fun these sisters had, including some wild baby buggy rides and of how gullible the little girl was and how she always believed the big sister who tricked her over and over with the same joke. I handed the picture to my oldest daughter and reached for another. I took down a framed picture of the girl a little older, holding a lead rope and with her little sister sitting on the pony named ‘Molly’. I told them stories of these sisters and the pony and they laughed and I could see in the eyes of my little girls that they were longing to be there on that sweet Molly.

Next I took down a cross stitch of a little house and the words, “Joy be with you while you stay and peace be with you as you go.” I told them about the girl grown older and in college. She didn’t know what she would do with her life but deep down inside she wanted to love a husband and children and to have house with a guest room where people would come and stay and she could feed them and make them feel safe and happy. So, in between writing term papers she would sit on her bed and cross stitch and wonder what might someday be.

After putting the cross stitch in some little hands, I took down more handiwork that had a picture of a house and the words, ‘God Bless Our Home’. I told the story of going to Maine for Christmas and my grandmother telling me that she had a neighbor make a picture to match the one she had hanging on her wall because she thought I’d like it. But, then after she got it from her neighbor, she lost it and had been looking for it everywhere. So, she decided to give me the one from her wall and wait until the other one showed up to replace her own. I held in my hands the little gift from my grandmother, and with a familiar heaviness rising, I handed it to one of my little girls.

There was one more child and I looked around the room for what I should have him hold. There were more items that I had placed there to remind me of our family and the history that gives me roots and steadiness as I pray and hope. But, instead of those, I reached up and took the clock down from the wall and placed it in the hands of my nine year old.

I told them each to hold the items I gave them and think about them and the stories I told while I read them a poem. I turned to the book of Ecclesiastes.

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

 

I looked in their little faces and told them how precious each time is. That they shouldn’t waste a moment being angry with each other because this time together, where we live in the same little house and eat dinner together each night, is going to pass away so soon. Every moment together is precious.

I looked at my little boy holding the clock and asked him how much time had passed since I had handed it to him. He did a bit of math in his head and said it had just been some minutes.

“Will those minutes ever be here again?”

Like it usually does, the weight of the lesson fell on me. The kids were soon off again, playing and laughing and bickering, while I stood for another moment in the cabin.

The minutes are moving too fast. 

Before I followed the children outside I pulled out the bottom drawer of the bureau where I keep stacks of my old journals. I reached way down to the bottom and pulled out one with a Minny Mouse cover. I stepped outside where I could watch the kids play, thankful that the rain had stopped.

Opening the cover I read the first date. I would have been thirteen, just a year older than my daughter is now. I remembered opening the cover for the first time, at my sister’s house, after just hearing that Molly the pony had been put to sleep. With a sad smile, I saw that my first entry was a poem.

You were the pony next door

Though to me you meant more

In my heart forever

Remains a great treasure

Which is the memories of us

Of undying friendship and trust.

Though your happy days here are over

I wish you in heaven a field full of clover

I will never forget you

My love and friendship is true

Your kind, friendly eyes

Hid no secrets or lies

Your great heart we could never tame

Though you were kind without shame

You carried us all

Fat, skinny, large or small.

I was both laughing and crying inside as I read the last line of the poem. I still grieve in poetry though I’ve given up on rhyme.

I read the rest of the journal, seeing this little girl that isn’t me and yet was and the stream of consistency in who I have been and who I am now and wishing I could go back and save her from some of the choices she was about to make.

I ‘fell in love’ several times my eight grade year but I never loved any of those boys with the same intensity with which I loved the horses named Thunder and Shawnee or even the dog, Bendyl. I read the page I wrote after sitting on the bleachers talking with a friend. This little girl and I both talked about how our boyfriends kind of grossed us out. We didn’t even really want to hold their hand, especially in the hall at school. We wondered what was wrong with us. I wanted to go back and grab that little girl out of that middle school and give her some Breyer horses to play with and a couple of gerbils. I prayed a silent prayer and thanked God for the gentle growing up my children are getting.

Mostly, the pages were about horses and friends and true love always and every now and then an interesting historical tidbit like the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A few pages were a little harder to read and again, I wanted to go back and snatch her away.

I didn’t remember thinking much about God or ever reading the Bible back in those days. So, it was with surprise that I came to a page and read the words, “I’m not so mad at ____, anymore. I read in the Bible about not fearing man because they may be able to hurt your body but can never touch my soul! Not that ____ ever hit me. He just has no power over my soul. Only the Lord has that key!”

What? How could this little boy-crazy girl that only went to church on Easter with her grandmother have written down, twenty three years ago, the truth that I thought I was just finding now? The very same verse even?

Suddenly, tears were streaming down my face.

He was there.

I had wanted to reach back and save the little girl writing in her journal when she was lost and being used because it felt like she was so alone.

But she was never alone.

In the weeks leading up to my thirty-sixth birthday this month, I often found myself singing a few lines from Stevie Nick’s song, Landslide.

“Well, I’ve been afraid of changing

‘Cause I’ve built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I’m getting older too

Oh, I’m getting older too”

I have strongly been feeling the, “Oh, I’m getting older too” part. I’ve also been afraid of changing. I’m dreading my children getting older. I love it right now.

And, I don’t know that I’ll love it in the future. It’s likely that bad things are going to happen. There are going to be goodbyes and I don’t want to say them. Even if there are good things they might mean bags will be packed and tickets bought and planes boarded. I don’t want any more changing.

I’ve built my life right here.

I can’t see what is ahead. It seems like at some point in their growing up, I have a conversation with each one of my kids about whether or not you can walk on a cloud and what it would be like to be inside of one. A little voice says, “Can you see anything when you are in there or is it all white?”

Sometimes when we’re eating breakfast, since we’re quite high on a hill, we can look out over a valley and see the fog rising off of several lakes and ponds. Some mornings we see a heavy fog settled below us and then head off in the van to run errands. On the way to town, we pass through the ‘clouds’. I remind them of how thick and solid they looked from a distance, but when we’re in them they’re just wisps and we can see ahead of us. It’s just from afar that you can’t see.

And I think, isn’t that just like life?

I’m afraid because I can’t see what is ahead. And, because this is a world broken, there will be things that will break. My loved ones seem so fragile when I look ahead into the fog.

But just like there was someone behind me bringing that little girl the truth she needed to get her through, there is someone there in the fog ahead of me. And, from where he is, he can see clearly. He’s already there.

The only thing that overcomes the fear of the future and the inevitable change is to build my life on what doesn’t change and to fix my eyes on the one who is and was and always will be. There is something solid to stand on because there is something that will never change.

I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.(Romans 8:38)

I am going to savor each precious moment of now. This minute is passing and it will never come again. There is grief in the passing of moments but there is something to cling to with hope and expectant joy as we look ahead. There is a love waiting that has carried us through the past and is strong enough to carry us through whatever lies waiting in the fog.

He’s already there.

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Emptying My Pockets
by

Emptying My Pockets

I had already started unloading the overflowing cart when I realized I had chosen the cigarette aisle in Walmart. Behind me stood a young guy in a tank top and baggy shorts, a little rough around the edges, with nothing in his hands.

“Do you want to cut ahead of us? Please, go ahead… we have a ton of stuff.”

He looked unsure for a minute and then grateful. “No… I mean… really? Well, thanks. Thanks so much. I just want to get cigarettes.”

He squeezed by our cart and kids.

And then, as the clerk turned to get change from the register for the man in front of both of us, I saw him pocket a couple of ‘5 Hour Energies.’

He turned to me again, “Really… thanks so much. That was really nice of you.”

“Uhm.. yeah, well, no problem.”

The clerk got the cigarettes he wanted and I saw him count out his loose change to pay for them.

And, I wondered, what is my purpose right here, right now?

He took his cigarettes and whatever else he had stuffed in his pockets and left.

I kept the inner dialogue going as I paid and wheeled our purchases out to the van.

‘He obviously didn’t have a lot of money. And, what’s a couple of 5 Hour Energies to Walmart? But, would it have been more loving to say something? Maybe getting in trouble for shoplifting something small now could break the path he’s on and keep him from doing something worse in the future. What is the Christian responsibility when seeing someone sin against another, even if it’s a store?’

I said to the kids, “I saw something that wasn’t right in there today. I’m wondering if I should have done something.”

My nine year old quips up, “You mean about that guy stuffing things in his pockets?”

Let me just intersect here- children miss nothing.

The almost eleven year old said, “Yeah, I saw him, too. We should have told somebody.”

I kept thinking as I maneuvered our big van out of the parking lot and started the drive home.

“Lord, what would you have done if you were standing there and saw someone breaking the law? How could I have been more like you?”

And, I knew what I should have done.

If I were there again, (and brave enough), I would have looked that young man in the eyes and loved him. I would have said, “You know, you don’t need to do that. If you knew how loved you were, you would never feel like you have to steal and deceive to take care of yourself. If you take those things out of your pockets and give them to the clerk, I’ll pay for them myself. And, you can walk away free.”

He would have had choices then.

He might have looked back at me and been angry. I was pointing out something he felt justified, for whatever reason, in doing. He might have lashed back at being exposed as a law-breaker. He might have thought of all the ways life is unfair and he’s forced to do what he does. He might have called me a profanity and walked out the door.

Or, he might have felt ashamed. He might have pulled the stolen goods out of his pockets and left them and left the store. He might have walked away feeling depressed that this is what his life has come to; stealing caffeine and paying for cigarettes with nickels. He might have thought of all the ways he doesn’t measure up and of the people who are disappointed in him. Or, maybe, there isn’t even anybody who cares enough to be disappointed. Maybe he’ll decide he should try to do better but the next time he needs to steal he’ll feel the shame all over again.

But then, maybe something else would have happened. Maybe he would have accepted the gift. Maybe he would have taken the stuff out of his pockets and put them on the counter where they would be exposed, and let me pay for them. Maybe he would have admitted that he didn’t have what it took to pay the price and that he was breaking the law. Maybe he would have let me pay and he would have walked away feeling cared for and knowing that his life is valuable after all.  Maybe he wouldn’t feel like a thief any longer, but instead, he would have walked away free.

And, I realized, as I was driving home and thinking about what I could have done, that Christ has already done it. This is my story, too.

Saturday, I was stewing over something for a few hours. After I decided to stay home with the baby and not to go to the fireworks with the rest of the family, my husband mentioned something about me having a default tendency to retreat back to the house in the evening. Like I was no fun or something. I simmered for a while. How could he think I’m no fun? Did he forget that I have had seven babies in thirteen years and maybe I’m feeling a little tired at the end of the day? Couldn’t he be a little more grateful that I do the dishes after dinner? Does he really think that I enjoy missing out on the fun things everyone else is doing? I am totally fun. I just have had a lot to do in the house after dinner for the last decade or so.

He figured out I was mad when I started making little passing comments like, “Hmmm, the baby just woke up. Should I go outside and play Frisbee or feed him?” Or, “While you guys are outside playing, I’ll just be in here making dinner, you know, because I love it so much.” I was totally mature about it. And a really great role model for my kids. Just super.

Thankfully, like he has a way of doing, God started pressing in on me, turning me back to the truth, revealing the reason I really was upset. Looking back over our marriage, I don’t remember many incidents of being really angry with my husband for anything he’s done. I married a pretty good guy and I don’t expect him to be perfect. The times I’ve gotten mad are the times when he’s pointed out faults in me. Because he should totally think I’m perfect.

And, I realized, I’m mad because I’m afraid. I’m like the guy in Walmart trying to look innocent when he knows his pockets are bulging with stuff he hasn’t paid for; I’m counting my nickels and coming up short.

About twelve years ago, a friend looked me in the eye and said, “I would just really like to see you grow less fearful.”

I was holding my firstborn at the time, and as she spoke those words, my defenses went up. I didn’t feel afraid. I just wanted to do everything right. And, for another ten years, I searched for the perfect way to do everything. (Though, I didn’t say it like that.) I was looking for the ‘best way’ to raise my children (homeschool for sure!), to eat (all natural, farm raised, no sugar, milk the cow yourself!), to dress (maybe we should be wearing long skirts?), to entertainment (no television, no way! Movies are for special nights at Grandma’s), to toys (please no plastic, but natural wood with beeswax finish would be great, thanks…) and the list could go on…

One thing about trying to find the ‘best way’ is that you have to decide that other ways are… not so good. And, (speaking from experience here), if in your heart you equate things like a diet free of Cheezits with what it means to live as a faithful Christian, it might be hard to rest easy in a local church.

For years I wanted to leave our church. Years and years and years.

‘There just aren’t enough homeschoolers or like-minded families.’ ‘People there seem so… well, nice but compromising.’ ‘We might share a faith in Jesus, but we have different worldviews. I mean, I could just never send my kids to public school. A lot of people there even go trick or treating.’

Every Sunday I would sit in the back of the church with my husband and my row of little ones. I would listen to my pastor share the message of truth and freedom and while consistently hearing the gospel, I would hope other people were listening.

I had no idea how much I needed to hear it myself.

Thankfully, something changed.

God was so kind to reach into my self-protective, fearful, perfectionistic and idealistic world and break it into pieces. I couldn’t hold it together. I failed at living the ‘best way’. He pealed it all back and said, “You are completely insufficient.”

There came a day when I sat on my bed holding the telephone and knew I needed to call someone. I had failed in a lot of areas and I knew if I didn’t shine the light on one area of my life, I could fall further. I prayed. I asked God, “Who can I reach out to right now?”

Ten years earlier someone had looked me in the eye and told me truth I didn’t want to hear. It was her number I dialed.

Now, this friend and I could not have been more different. She was a public school loving mother with a Diet Coke in her hand (sugar! chemicals!), and she not only celebrated Halloween, she hosted the neighborhood party.

But, the truth was, I knew she had something I didn’t. She had something that allowed her to call me back and give me words of truth and grace, even while knowing in her heart that for years I had judged her to justify myself and to protect myself from facing fear.

God, in his relentlessly kind way, started breaking down walls in this friendship. To be perfectly honest, it was humiliating. I started to see that I wasn’t more mature than a lot of people at our church, I was actually ‘the weaker brother’ (Romans 14). I realized that I needed the gospel as much, and probably more than, the person sitting a row in front of me at church.

But, while I was drinking in the gospel message each Sunday, I still wanted to leave. At one point, I wrote to my patient, truth-bearing friend and told her that I’d really just like to sprout wings and fly out of there. I felt hurt and unappreciated and like I didn’t belong.

I think when you have a heart that is searching for the ‘best way’ and comparing yourself to others, you tend to believe that other people have it as well. When I looked at our church, and the women in leadership there, I thought that they would change me if they could. I believed that they would really be happy if I left my kids more to take part in women’s Bible studies and ladies’ nights out and maybe if I put a couple of the older kids in the public school system. I believed that when my friend said she would love to see me less fearful, that she was saying she wanted to see me living more like her. And, I was a total disappointment in that category.

I honestly believed it would be a relief to my friend, and other people in our church, if we left. I didn’t see us serving in any meaningful way and the only thing of value we’d take with us was our tithe money. Our church was getting really full on Sunday mornings and people would probably be really glad to have all those seats we’d be leaving behind in the back row.

While I was begging my husband to agree to visit other churches, and feeling like no one would care if we left our own, I had no idea that my friend was hoping and praying that we’d stay.

One night, she wrote me a letter.

She shared what she remembered about the time my family had spent at our church, starting with when my husband and I showed up newly married, newly graduated from college and only taking up two seats on Sunday morning. Her perspective was vastly different than what I had imagined. She didn’t talk about what I’d done (or not done…). She talked about who I was, and said that our family was a valuable part of our church. Before she ended the letter she even said, I love you.

Something broke in me when I read her words. Here was someone I had assumed was disappointed in me; someone I thought would be happier if we just moved on. I had been watching her for years and it was obvious that her ‘best way’ was very different than mine. I had assumed that she was judging me and that I had been falling short for years.

It was like a gateway swung open. Like a wall crumbled. She was the person in line behind me at Walmart offering to pay my way because she knew the One that had sufficient funds for us both. She pointed me straight to the truth that hadn’t sunk in before.

There isn’t a ‘best way’, there is The Way. (John 14:6)

Jesus paid my way. I am walking free.

My life is completely changed. And, you know what is funny? Outwardly, not much has changed at all. I still homeschool our kids and cringe at a room full of plastic toys. I am still uniquely me. But, my heart has been transformed by grace. I don’t have to try so hard.

On the cross, Jesus said, “It is finished.”

I don’t need to be afraid because there is nothing left to prove.

The last couple of years I’ve felt something completely fresh and new at our church. I belong there. I don’t serve there, or learn there, or attend there… I belong.

On Sundays, instead of standing in the back thinking of how it would be nice to see more people living like me, my heart feels overwhelmed with the love Christ has shown to us all.

A few days ago I ran into another homeschooling mother. She drives a big van like mine and might not have a television. She mentioned how she’d love to get together and let our kids spend time together. She really desires more time with like-minded families.

I also hope we can spend more time together because I really enjoy her and her children.

But, I noticed something about my heart while she was talking. It doesn’t matter to me that she homeschools her many children. The fact that she makes parenting choices that are like mine and that our lifestyles are similar isn’t what gives me the motivation to spend time with her. None of that matters to me anymore.

I don’t know that I am ‘like-minded’ in the way she meant.

Only one thing matters.

My ‘best way’ has given way.

My pockets have been emptied and the price has been paid by Jesus, who saw me.

I’m walking free…

‘Come, see this man who has told me everything I’ve ever done… and offered me living water. He saw my shame and covered me, my insufficiency and loved me, my chains and broke them. Won’t you come and drink with me?’ 

by

Another Beginning

Right Now

I’ve really been struggling with how to begin. This is one of those stories that weighs and pushes and won’t let go and won’t be forgotten until it’s released. So, I am just going to start with right now.

I just did the dishes and made sure teeth got brushed and read ‘Little Rabbit’s Loose Tooth’ and gave seven goodnight kisses. I talked with my husband about work and licensing the dog and made chicken salad for his lunch tomorrow with the leftovers from dinner.

My life is all about ordinary things.

This is a Tuesday, so tonight I gathered my Bible, my journal and this laptop and I made my way across the yard to the cabin; the tiny house for company and for quiet.

And, this is where the ordinary stops.

It’s been almost two years since I stood by the woodpile and felt the pleasure of God. One day I woke up with a letter in my mind that I felt compelled to write. As soon as my feet hit the floor I was writing it in my journal and I would write sentences between getting the kids breakfast and finding shoes and feeding the dog. When it was done I typed it up, attached it to an email and then came the moment when I couldn’t bring myself to send it. It took me over two weeks and some encouragement from a friend and mentor before I could bring myself to hit the send button. Insecurity was bubbling over as I thought about my words showing up in email inboxes. I left the computer and stepped outside to get firewood. That is when an unexplainable feeling came over me. There I was doing the ordinary thing of getting wood for the fire, and I suddenly was wrapped in a new sensation that felt like the pleasure of God. It was like he was smiling at my obedience.

I don’t think of myself as charismatic in my worship of God. I like things that are solid and orderly. I like to read and study, to be still and ponder, to hear wise people; to find truth and know it before I feel it. I don’t put a lot of stock in feelings or dreams or impressions. I love Christianity because it is verified by history and great thinkers and you can savor deep, satisfying theology that comes in heavy books and is laid out in letters and words and chapters. I love truth that can be found and sorted out and lined up and applied. Its orderly, it’s trustworthy, it’s solid.

But, God isn’t a theory. He isn’t a philosophy.

He says, “I Am.”

So, that is why I’m here tonight. Because I have another story that is pressing up and in and won’t let me forget it even though I keep trying. I have to remind myself why I’m writing. It isn’t to convince anyone or to teach or to promote myself. It’s to pour out my journey of faith the way it really is regardless of whether or not it sounds sane to others. It’s not to be right but it’s to be honest. It’s peeling back the self-protective skin and exposing the raw reality of my experiences of seeking and being sought. It’s because I believe that ‘He is’ and the pleasure of God is more satisfying than accolades from any other voices. So, this is the story that wants to be shared, and it begins with the same letter I sent two falls ago.

The Letter

To my precious sisters in Christ,

Since we moved to this hill in the ‘wilderness’, I’ve spent more time with my eyes turned skyward. Our home is open and full of windows facing the west so I find myself pausing often in my work to gaze at the sky. During the day the expanse calms my spirit. The sky is so big and my worries so small. At night when I pause to look up, a billion lights peering back make me gasp for breath. For a moment I feel exposed, finite and vulnerable. There is something about seeing this space between me and the stars that reminds me of our Maker’s power- that even makes me afraid.

And then I remember, “As high as the Heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.”

This God who is so powerful that it makes me tremble to look at his creation, let alone himself, actually loves me with a love as great as the height of the heavens. Just a taste of this love does something to my soul. I hunger for more!

When God created humanity He breathed into us His life; He made us in His image so that we could be vessels that hold and reflect and delight in his glory. Even in this fallen, shamed woman there is something calling out for restoration- that part of me made to delight in God and to be delighted in by him longs to have its purpose fulfilled. And that is the beauty of the love of God… that it is not a passive love. It is a love that reaches down from its holiness and enters into our darkness. That fear when I look into the night sky is the feeling that I deserve to be crushed by the weight of that glory. I am condemned by the way the image of God in me has been broken and turned inward so that it seeks to find and reflect glory in myself instead of in the only worthy God. Jesus, being in the very nature God, let himself be crushed in my place.

How great is the love of Christ to allow that condemnation to fall on Himself so that I can stand and gaze uncondemned. Instead of feeling the shame of exposure I can surrender to his covering. He makes my heart a habitation for his spirit, wraps me in his righteousness and beckons me to draw so near that I am drawn into oneness.

My soul longs for me to abandon myself to this truth and to abide there.

And my confession?

The truth of what he has done should make my knees bow before him and my mouth confess he is Lord. My response needs to be prayer. But I have so neglected the privilege of prayer. “I’ll pray for you,” is too often a polite response instead of an honest promise of action.

Recently, as the leaves have turned, mostly fallen and our first year in the woods turns colder, I’ve had some days of loneliness. I started thinking of activities that could fill my time and connect me to others. I decided I was really lacking vision concerning why God decided to place me here. So, I prayed that he would give me purpose and a vision and that he would show me how to avoid the pitfalls of loneliness and connect to others, especially to my sisters in Christ.

His answer was different than what I expected- it was simply “pray”.

On our property is a little cabin. In the little cabin is a wood stove. What I need to do is to kindle a fire in that stove and to expect God to kindle a fire in my heart.

So, practically, I asked Jon, “Can I go?” He said, “Go.”

So, I’m committing.

Tuesday nights you will know, Lord willing, where to find me. I’m going to kindle a fire in the stove in the cabin and at 7PM I’m going to head out and pray he lets me be an offering on the fire of his Holy Spirit. That He would meet with me and burn his love for others into my heart and that I would offer it back in intercessory prayer.

Will you pray with me? Will you pray for me? I know my little cabin is too far away on a little dirt road in the wilderness to ask with expectation that you would join me physically (though you would be so, so welcome!). But, regardless of that, I so desire to have you a part of my communion with Christ. I want to pray with you in spirit and to pray for you. You are going to be in my heart as I strive to seek his presence more intentionally than I ever have before. Please let me know if you have a burden I can carry into that presence.

And, please pray for me to be consistent. One night a week… just a few hours… but I know how hard it is to pray for even ten minutes. ‘My spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.’ It is a battle. But I am so convinced that this is real… that He is real… that he wants to be with us. His love is what arms us to fight self and the enemies of human souls. His love is what is calling out, “Come… bring your small spark and let me light the fire!” Jesus, please fill us with the faith to call back, “Here I am, Lord, bring your flame!”

With expectation!

Lara

Experiencing God, Experiencing Fear

That first Tuesday found me in the cabin, having kindled a fire in the old woodstove. I sat on the bed with my Bible and my grandmother’s hymnal and I began to pray. Not many words came out before I had to stop. I have had times when I’ve felt overwhelmed by God’s holiness or his love or his comfort. I’ve experienced feeling his nearness when going through something challenging or even beautiful times like the births of my children. I’ve been comforted by the knowledge of the presence of God many times. But, this was different.

I was afraid. I was overwhelmed, not with the intellectual belief in the omnipresence of God, but with an almost tangible sensation. There was a presence that was as real as if a friend had walked in and settled himself in one of the chairs. Instead of comforting it was terrifying. My first prayer that night was for this to stop. I didn’t want to offer myself on the fire of the Holy Spirit. This meeting was too much. I felt like I was going to die. But, as I cried out for distance, it felt like my prayer was answered. It felt like the Spirit drew back and I could breathe. I still experienced a more real and powerful sense of his presence with me in that place but it was gentler. I spent the next few hours in prayer and it felt like a conversation with a living, hearing, present Jesus. I poured out my heart the way I would to a trusted friend. My Bible was open and while I never heard an audible voice there were times of quiet when I felt like he was impressing things on my heart.

I left the cabin and I still felt overwhelmed by my experience as I climbed into bed beside my sleeping husband. There was a lingering fear.

Long before these days, shortly after I became a Christian in high school, I had a dream that has always stayed with me and brought me comfort. I can’t say whether it was from my subconscious or from God but it was beautiful and memorable and a gift regardless. In the dream, I stood on a sloping hill next to a large tree with overarching branches that were full of green leaves. I was either praying or singing or both and there was a feeling of complete satisfaction and joy. I was worshiping God and it felt like I was doing what I had been made to do. It was as if I was completely well. I’ve thought that the dream was a little taste of what Heaven will be like. That worshiping God in a pure and complete way will be the most satisfying thing possible.

But, the dream after the first night in the prayer cabin was different.

I was dying. It was hard to breathe. I was lying in a hospital bed with my two oldest sisters talking quietly on either side of me. Somehow I was also the tree from the ‘Heaven dream’ of long ago. But there was a steady, strong wind blowing through the branches. I was dying and simultaneously, the leaves were being blown off the tree.

I woke at 2 AM and was sure that I was going to die. I felt like the presence of God that had been in the cabin was going to take me with it. I was going to be pulled out of this life.

A New Invitation

Our church has a women’s prayer group that exchanges requests by email each week. Several weeks ago, when facing some things that were making me anxious, I asked them to pray for me concerning fear.

And, that is when this story started unexpectedly stirring in my heart and mind.

For a long time, I didn’t understand my experience of fear that first night in the cabin or the dream and so I pushed them to the back of my mind. I thought I had been naïve to ask for such a deep level of intimacy with God in prayer. I wondered if it really *was* God or if it was my imagination or something darker. And, while I like to think I don’t put any stock in dreams, the dream did leave me shaken and I didn’t want to think about it.

I had been reading through the book of Luke and shortly after my friends started praying for me I found myself in the 12th chapter. In it, Jesus has a lot to say to his disciples about fear. He said we don’t have to be anxious about our physical needs being met or about defending ourselves before others or about preserving our lives. He said there is only one thing to be afraid of. “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” The only thing to ultimately fear is the judge of our souls.

But the very next sentence Jesus spoke tells us more.

“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

And again, he tells us, “Fear not, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”

The only One to be afraid of is God. According to the words of Jesus and through what he accomplished for us, we don’t have to fear God. He will never forget us, we are of great value to him and he has been pleased to let us call him ‘Father’ and give us the kingdom.

There is nothing left to fear.

I thought I understood this when I wrote the letter to my prayerful sisters in Christ. I didn’t realize that I was expressing the battle of my life. God answered the cry of my heart that night long ago, and gave me the gift of opening my eyes to what holds me back in my relationship with him.

John Piper, in ‘Desiring God’, wrote, “The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God.” There is a draw, a longing, to experience God in the way I did in the worshiping dream from long ago. There is something in me calling out in response to his call and wanting to be fully surrendered; to be made whole and complete and to experience the ‘deepest and most enduring happiness.’

But, in order to do that, I need to be like the tree in my second dream. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35) Like the wind in my dream, the Holy Spirit will work steadily and powerfully to blow away all of the pride of self, the fear of man and the panicked desire to cling to safety and comfort that is my grasping effort to save my own life.

I am such a fearful person. And, if it was just the discomfort of living with fear that was its affect then maybe it would be easier to just push it to the back of my mind and live with it simmering rather than face it.

But, I am convinced that what is keeping me from a more intimate, sure and faith-filled walk with God is not that he is unwilling to show himself to me. It’s that I am holding back. My fears are keeping me from drinking in the great, lavishing love of God toward his children (1 John 3:1).

Once again, I feel him calling me deeper and calling me to invite you to come along; to face fear and battle against it with truth. I’m praying for the faith to hear him calling out ‘fear not’ and the grace to trust, deny fear, and follow after him.