by

Camp

I took the key down from the nail where it’s hung for decades and opened the door just as I’ve done a hundred other times.  As I took a step inside, my chest felt heavy and I fought back tears, not because it was different, but because it was so much the same. The yard sale finds on the shelf beside the novels, the rugs on the floor, the pillows on the couch, even the silly talking ant from ‘A Bug’s Life’ that the kids love; they were all there. It’s as if they didn’t know things had changed.

I used to find the ‘sameness’ of camp every year comforting. Even when I was a little girl I recognized it. When I was ten years old a dozen things changed in my life.  My two oldest sisters moved out, one to go to college and the other to get married. My mother also remarried and bought a house with my new stepfather meaning a change of neighbors and schools. Even my dog had to be put down. I felt like I had been shaken out of everything that had seemed steady. I remember walking through the same door to camp that long-ago summer, sitting down on the couch and noticing some plates hanging on the wall. They had pictures of a fish and a bear and a deer and I thought about how I had seen them my whole life and with a sigh of relief, I realized that camp doesn’t change.

Before we made the trip last week, one of my younger sisters cleaned and vacuumed. She filled the bowls on the counter with candy and treats so they were just the way they always had been. When I set the key down beside the bowl filled with ‘Devil Dogs’ and Hershey’s minis, the tears broke through.

It’s strange to me how food and grief go together.

The kids all came running in with their sleeping bags and backpacks and chattering voices and stopped short when they saw me. The three year old turned back and I heard her say to my husband, “Mommy’s sad! Mommy’s sad!”

So, I breathed deeply and dried my tears. I reminded them that this was the camp that belonged to my Grammy and they understood and the chattering started again and I got busy helping with all the negotiations of who sleeps where.

I’m thankful for how children and life go together.

The first night at camp was hard.  Jon slept in the middle of the sea of wiggly sleeping bags and told stories into the night so that the baby and I could sleep more peacefully in Grammy and Grampy’s room. I didn’t pull back the covers of the bed that Grammy might have been the last one to make, but slept on top with my head on one of her pillows. I saw some sheets and a decoration left on her bureau like she had been working on something and moved on before she finished.  Her camp shoes sat behind a chair next to the wall, the soles worn smooth. Her hairbrush sat in a basket.  I thought of Grampy, who says that nighttime is always the hardest, and heaviness pressed in around my heart as I closed my eyes and slept.

Many mornings I wake up with something like a theme song for the day in my head. Sometimes it feels like inspiration, sometimes it feels like a little joke from my subconscious. When the baby was teething a couple of months ago, and I hadn’t had adequate sleep for days, and the children had been bickering more than usual, I woke up with ‘a little ditty about Jack and Diane.’ My first conscious thought of the day was, “Oh yeah, you know life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone…” But, thankfully, that first morning at camp, I found myself singing the line of a different song as I woke.

Jesus has overcome

The grave has been overwhelmed

The victory is won…

 Until I got home tonight and searched for it online, I couldn’t remember the rest of the song. (It’s Chris Tomlin, ‘I Will Rise’.) But, those few lines were what I needed that moment. It was the reminder that death isn’t the end. I know there is something beyond the grave because I know Some One that has passed through it. The victory is won.

Last summer some work was done on the camp’s foundation. Grammy isn’t here to help with the landscaping but Grampy said he’s trying to do things the way she’d like them. He planted some perennials and showed me where he had started some flowers from seed. One of the neighbors at camp had included a package of forget-me-not seeds in a sympathy card and Grampy planted them this spring. They are starting to grow, just little seedlings when I saw them yesterday, but those forget-me-nots are making their way up from the soil next to the bleeding heart plants.

Flowers and grief and life seem to all go together.

I cut a little stem off of Grammy’s rose bush in front of camp before we left today. I’ve never tried growing a rose from a cutting but I’m going to attempt it. It sat sticking out of a water bottle in the console on the long drive home. Like a little birthday gift from Grammy.

When I was growing up, I was happy to have a summer birthday because it meant that I got to celebrate it at camp. When I was a little girl some relatives would gather and there would be presents and singing and Grammy’s marble cake. Even when I was a teenager I would invite friends to celebrate with me at camp and we’d play music and swim in the lake and still Grammy would send over a marble cake. This year, I woke up at camp on my birthday, and I knew that there would be no marble cake. This year, even if the camp is the same and sits steady on its new foundation, something has changed. Something has shaken.

But there are still unshakeables.

Jesus has overcome

The grave has been overwhelmed

The victory is won…

This morning the loons were calling as I woke up. I quietly put on a swim suit and tiptoed past the still sleeping bags and made my way out of camp and down to the shore. I love mornings at the lake. Everything is still. It feels sacred to be the first one to break through the glass-like water and send the first ripples of the day into the lake. This morning I waded in slowly, remembering past birthdays and wondering about the year ahead. I stopped when the water was up to my knees and I looked out over the blue to an island and then to some tall pines standing on a hill to the east. The sun hadn’t quite reached over their topmost branches.

I thought of all the people, here and gone and young and young once, that this place has meant something to. And I thought of the One who knows us all. I prayed. I prayed for them and for me and was thankful for Him. The quiet of the water became the quiet of my soul and I whispered the words, “Into Your hands I commit my spirit,” and I dove headlong into the water.  As my face met the surface once again, the sun was just rising over the tops of the pines.

Image

The Farmer Poet
by

The Farmer Poet

Most of the farmers I know are poets. There is poetry in dirt and seasons and calves being born and butchering day and manure and seeds and cold mornings with cows bellowing and the itch of hay chaff in the linings of a pair of well-worn gloves. You need to have some lines scratched on your soul to keep going with the sun rising and rain clouds on the horizon and where the seasons are always changing and before they do you need to have hay in or fields turned or fences up. You have the makings of a poet when something in your drudgery is beautiful to your soul and when your helplessness doesn’t keep you from doing the next thing.

I remember an old, blue Leyland tractor, the doors to the cab wired shut for double protection against being bumped open. Four of us could fit when it was time to ted the hay; little boys with baseball caps and t-shirt tans standing on either side of me. I focused on gears and getting the speed of spinning forks just right to spread the rows of hay into fluffy piles to dry without beating them into dust.  The clacks and rumble would put the baby strapped to my chest to sleep and I would feel her breathe and the sweat would stick us into one, round, flesh again. Once in a while a boy would point and shout about a bird or that he wanted to get out the next time we came nearest the house so he could run to the cool basement and retrieve a popsicle from the big freezer.  Mostly though, thoughts just jostled around in our minds and often even there a quiet settled. A quiet that is hard to achieve when you wake up early to pray and you remember about the phone call you need to make before noon and that you are low on milk and maybe the kids will be okay with toast instead of cereal and what will you need to print out for the history lesson today? While the tractor made circles, my spinning thoughts, like the drying timothy and clover, fell into rows of order and rest.

We planted a huge garden in long rows on the farm. At the end of June I stood in the middle of a mass of overgrown weeds and searched for rows and vegetables and paths.  Life was everywhere but it was choking out what was planned and worked for and supposed to be in jars in the pantry come fall. I cried overwhelmed, frustrated, disappointed tears and knew I couldn’t catch up. On the first of July we had strawberry shortcake for my birthday and then headed out to the garden where my husband pulled weeds and chubby hands pulled weeds and I pulled weeds with a baby in one arm. And there was a path and sun on tomatoes and a heap of weeds to compost.

This spring I planted a little raised-bed garden here in the woods. There were ample sticks to mark my rows of onions and hills of squash and even though the soil is rocky, I have hopes for jars in the pantry this fall. This little garden patch feels manageable. But, as I planted seeds in rows I remembered something a friend said recently. ‘Gardening is just another form of dependency.’ We plant seeds but we are at the mercy of the Life-giver to make them grow. I think of how the same brown dirt grows a deep, purple-red beet, a firm white potato, and leafy, green lettuce. This is a deeper magic than can be conjured with a watering can and a hoe.

A little boy asked if he could help and I gave him a row of beans to plant. He took a fistful of seeds and worked his way down the row. There were more rows to plant but he’d had his fill and happily bounded off to ride his bike. I was left alone with the packet of seeds and thought about how this is a hobby. If the beans don’t grow there is the grocery store and they’re cheap to buy and nine year old boys used to plant beans or else they went without. For a minute I wondered if I should call him back.

When I became a mother I didn’t have time to read for pleasure. There were parenting books to read and how-to-have-happy-perfectly-lovely-successful-children manuals. And the sun shone and the rains came and I was crying overwhelmed tears on my bed and I knew that children don’t grow in neat rows and around us and in us there’s a wildness that makes me afraid the harvest won’t be what I had once dreamed. I don’t have the deep magic to make people grow and the manuals don’t hold the right spells either.

Seven times I’ve been handed a baby, like a seed, fresh and new and unknown. And, each time, my heart wanted to break through me and cover them with fierce love like a thick, rich soil blanketing them from the elements. But soil is just a place to grow roots. It is stretched and moved and changed in its nourishing of the new life.  In the love and the breaking and the helplessness, my children have grown me into a mother-poet, leaning hard into the only Life Grower.

There are days when I feel overwhelmed. Like the weeds are going to take over. There are nine of us growing together and there are messes and hurt feelings and school work that sits unfinished along with the dishes. Daily I’m aware of my powerlessness to change hearts or to force kindness or to speed up maturity or to make our lives neat and orderly and safe.

But, a mother-poet leans into the deep magic of the Life Grower.

The lines scratched on my soul are changing from ‘keep them safe’ or ‘’raise good kids” into ‘tend them faithfully’ and ‘love them well’. It’s the knowledge that the only thing I have to offer is the gospel that I still need myself.

The gospel that makes me a mother living moment by moment by moment leaning into grace, offering grace, pleading for grace. It takes me out of the ‘what will be’ and into the ‘what is now’. It is the prayer and the grace to understand the seasons. To know the time to shelter, to plant, to weed and to water; to keep them close and speak truth and discipline and to shower with loving-kindnesses. And to know the seasons to let the plants break through the soil; to bear the pain of release over and over and over again. It’s learning to trust, to do the next thing, to lean hard into the Life Grower.  That Great Poet writing His story, bearing His fruit, reaping His harvest, in each of our farmer-mother-child souls.

The Keeping Strength
by

The Keeping Strength

I’m not altogether sad to be nearing the end of April. This month I’ve been like the weather; the alternating sunny and gray days when we don’t bother to start the fire and yet the sun isn’t warm enough to completely remove the chill.

Last night it was my turn to go to a church service in the evening. My husband and I swap who goes and who stays home with children. These meetings are something new. Our church has grown and like a plant that has to be divided when it is full of life and outgrowing its container, there are plans being made to plant a new church in a new place. Just like the gospel story itself, it feels like a beginning that is a continuing.

Driving there, I’m all alone for the first time in weeks. I remember I haven’t been in the Word. I’ve let endless lists of things to do before the day is done crowd out my time to read and be still. Maybe that is the gray that’s been clouding over me. I turn off the radio and sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness”. I grasp in my weak memory for a verse. I find Psalm 103, memorized when I was in college. “He redeems my life from the pit and crowns me with love and compassion.” And, like it always does, the Word starts reaching in and pulling me back. Redeeming. Too often I see myself still in the pit. Or on the precipice about to fall. But He doesn’t see me that way. He sees love and compassion instead of thorns encircling my head.

April was our maple sugaring season. It was late this year or maybe it’s always late here in the woods where the feet of snow keep their grip longer on the trees. I’m still finding my bearings in these woods. On the farm we had great, old maples; huge trunks that my arms only reached halfway around. Late in February they would start to send the strong stream of sap from their deep roots and our buckets would be overflowing. Our trees in these woods are young. We’re careful to put just one bucket on many of the trunks as they don’t have as much to give.

While I put syrup in jars I think about my marriage. I think about how we started out like saplings and we couldn’t handle well any extra strain on our resources. Tree rings of time and babies and laughing and fighting and being disappointed in each other and finding that our faults were gifts to mature each other; we are probably one bucket trees now. And what flows when we are pierced is sweeter.

I’ve heard that when someone reaches the same age that a parent was when they passed away, they can experience a sudden sense of their own mortality. I’m near the same age my parents were when they divorced. As I drove alone last night I had not a sudden, but a familiar and lingering, sense of my own faithlessness. I was thinking about a new church and my own weakness and how much I believe. How there are a hundred ways I could fall away, hundreds of lies that I could believe that could hurt my family, my friends, my church, the name ‘Christian’; a strange mixture of being sure of Truth without confidence that I will keep believing.

But I made my way to a folding chair and sat with believers and felt hope stir. A question was asked by someone behind me. “What is going to make this church different from all the others that have disappointed people?”

What does make this different? What makes this church or this marriage or this soul different?

This morning I had a waking dream. Half asleep and half aware, I saw a green bottle that was my ‘growing up’ family, broken on the rocky coast. Shards of glass lay in pieces; my mother, my father, my sisters, and me, sharp and edged and incomplete. And, then I saw waves and sand and time. And years passed and the edges were smooth and rounded and treasures to be found as sand is sifted through hands on a summer day.

The day had dawned with a little clarity and before our school day began, I sat in a circle with my own children and a jar of sea glass on my lap. Glass collected from the rocky shore of Maine on days when I would sit and watch the waves and dream of my ‘today’ family. I placed one of the smooth, still salty, pieces of glass in each of their little hands. I told them the story of a bottle broken and the glass that would have pierced a bare foot and the story of the waves and the sand and the time. I told them how when God created the world he made something beautiful and that it was broken. We are each part of that broken beauty. That sometimes we rub against one another and as broken shards collide we will hurt each other. That sometimes it feels like we are tossed and turned and pressed on all sides. But God is like the waves that continue forever and he is the One who washes us against the sand. He makes us His treasures.

And we read from Romans 8, “For God works all things together for good for those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…”

He knows us and he has always known us. He is doing whatever it takes to conform us… to change and smooth us… to take broken pieces that hurt each other and make them treasures to be gripped in tender hands and gazed upon, pointing to the power and the glory of the sea of grace that is shaping us.

The love of God, the love that He showed us through the death and resurrection of His Son, is not the young love of limited resources. It is the love of the Ancient of Days. It isn’t even the strength of maturity like a husband and wife of many years can find but it is the strength of eternity that can only come from God. So I can rest and work and love, knowing that the one who calls us loves us with a keeping strength.

‘The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.’ Psalm 103:8

by

A Beautiful Church

There’s a little Baptist church in midcoast Maine that makes me catch my breath when I walk through the doors. I’ve never been a member or even a regular attender but there is a powerful wind of memories that meets me as soon as the doors swing open.

When I was a little girl, I would come through those doors once a year wearing a pink, flowery dress and an Easter hat. I would sit close to my grandmother and she would hand me peppermints during the sermon and quarters to place in the offering. I still remember one of the sermons. The pastor enthusiastically told the story of Jesus using whips to drive the money changers out of the temple. Close to thirty years later I can still picture the pastor waving his arms and feel my shock at hearing that the same Jesus holding little lambs in my storybook Bible could use whips and turn over tables.

Yesterday, I didn’t hear much of the sermon when I visited the little church. I paced in the back with a fussy baby and noticed that some extra pamphlets from my grandmother’s funeral the day before still sat on a table. For so long there had been two strong grandmothers in that little town and for the second time in three years I had come home and to this church to gather with family in a goodbye. Beside the table where the pamphlets sat were double doors leading to the sanctuary. I remembered how my sisters covered the little windows with white paper on my wedding day so that my husband-to-be wouldn’t catch sight of me until the wedding march was played and the doors were swung open.

My baby was getting louder so I made my way to a side room where a lady I didn’t recognize was working in the nursery. After we spoke for a few minutes she asked me my maiden name and when I told her, her eyes lit up. “I went to school with your father… I used to be a substitute teacher in your kindergarten class and bring in my guitar and sing. Do you remember that? You were so shy! It’s nice to see you are talking now!” We laughed and I vaguely remembered the guitar and the songs and the shy little girl.

My three year old heard there was Play-do and snacks so we made our way to the Sunday school class in the basement.  On the stairs I met a man holding the hand of his own little boy. There was a greeting and a brief memory of being seventeen and decisions that felt so heavy and confusing. Later, as I saw his sweet wife walk by with a new baby, I smiled and thought how God is kind and forceful and we don’t really choose but He moves and He purposes and He creates.

My little one finally fell asleep so I carefully eased into the back pew.  My husband sat with my newly widowed grandfather and a row of our blonde headed children. I remembered sitting in the same spot one Sunday as a teenager and not being able to hold back tears. I didn’t even know why I cried. A sense of something too beautiful for me to own overwhelmed me and loneliness welled up as the hymns were sung. It was surreal to remember and see through time the pew, both full of my people and the girl that I used to be as she sat in the wave of loneliness.

After the service, my eight year old boy asked about the old, cast iron bell that sits in the entry. It used to hang in the old church that burned down. In that old church his great, great, great grandparents used to come and sing and pray. Tucked away at home, I have a poem my great, great grandmother wrote to their beloved pastor when he was ill. She used to pray and write and listen to the bell that my little boy stood longing to ring.

I love history and small towns and feeling like there are roots that twist from the blood in my veins into the buildings and soil and old bells.

Nearly every Sunday for the last twelve or thirteen years, my growing family has made our way to another New England church. This church is in a college town and most of us are from someplace else. When I look around at the congregation I don’t see extended family, old friends or teachers. There are no ghosts of me as a girl. There isn’t even a church building with a bell and steeple, just a high school auditorium rented for the day.

In the Old Testament, before Jesus walked as a man with fishermen and sinners, God’s people built a temple where they could worship. God’s Spirit dwelt in a special room deep in the temple called the Holy of Holies and a thick curtain hung to separate this dwelling from the people. God was too holy to approach. Only once a year the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies in order to sprinkle blood of atonement at the mercy seat.

The day Jesus died on the cross, when He said ‘It is finished’, the earth shook and this curtain of separation split down the middle. Jesus, being holy himself and the only completely sufficient sacrifice, was able to do what no amount of ritual had been able to accomplish. The Spirit drew near. Now the church heard the words, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”  Instead of separate and impenetrable, the Holy of Holies became the Christian heart.  Instead of looking to a physical temple or a church building, we look to the people God has chosen and we see him abiding in their midst.

Some Sunday mornings I don’t want to go to church. I’ve thought it would be nice to worship alone and I would feel more near to God in the woods and the stillness and beauty of the trees. But, God hasn’t made his Holy of Holies out of wood or boards or branches or blue sky.  He’s made it out of people.

Part of me says that there’s no way this can be true. I’m a Christian and I know that I’m not holy of holy. I see other Christians and they aren’t holy of holy either. I still see God in the distance waiting for me to clean up my act. Out of the corners of my eyes I peek to see how other Christians are doing and judge us all according to the progress we’re making. The progress we’re making on the road that isn’t there.

God isn’t far away. He’s with his people.

And Jesus is passionate. The same zeal that made him fashion whips out of cords and throw tables to cleanse his Father’s house consumes him. It’s what nailed him to a cross where the blood flows and gives us something better than roots. He gives us grace and breaks the curtain.

He loves us. He’s passionate about us. When we get that, it changes us. Suddenly we are the holy of holies. His Spirit abides and overturns our old nature so that we love him and we can love each other.

His church is beautiful and it’s not because we’re perfect or because of the white steeple or because of history in the pews or because we like each other.  It’s because we’re His, and He’s in us and we belong to one another. It’s because we’re all dressed in grace and where there is grace and His Spirit, love flows. We are tied by blood that isn’t in our veins but that washes our hearts and calls us to look to the cross. His church is beautiful because we are singing the same song and clinging to the same message.

“And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.” 1 John 4:14-16

by

Waiting By the Door

My husband helped a friend drag his ice shanty off the lake Sunday afternoon. It was cold for March and our friend brought his toddler to play with my kids while they worked. The little guy arrived with his backpack full of extra diapers, snacks and juice and I pulled out trucks and trains from the toy closet. I scooped him up with a smile but he looked back with arms outstretched and wanted to be with his Daddy. There was a goodbye, a closed door and tears. Eventually the distractions of toys, a houseful of kids and snacks dried the tears but every now and then he’d shuffle over to the door, point and say, “Daddy?”

As I pacified the little boy with some goldfish crackers, I looked in his teary eyes and I knew how he felt. He wanted his people and we weren’t them. He was waiting for the one he loved to open the door.

I’ve been feeling homesick myself. I’ve had this vague feeling of separation anxiety. Last week I drove on familiar roads leading to familiar places and a sense of belonging stirred. This was where ‘my people’ lived and had lived for generations. This is where my memories lived and the hills and back roads and houses are brimming with them. Strangely though, one of those memories is that even when I lived there, there was a feeling, even on those familiar roads, that I didn’t fully belong. I was homesick in the only home I ever knew.

My grandfather married my grandmother just a few months short of seventy years ago; just days after they said their vows, he left to fight in the war on the other side of the world. Their daughter was born while he was away and he came home to a little girl almost a year old.

That baby, my aunt, died of cancer several years ago. My grandmother died on Saturday.

I had always heard that my grandmother wasn’t interested in Christianity. My grandfather would have gone to church but she didn’t want any part of it. I stood in her kitchen on Friday and my grandfather told me through his tears that things had changed this past year.  Grammy had prayed a prayer of faith and belief. Her heart softened and she found hope and grace in the message of the gospel.

When doubts enter in, I find that I have a default religion. In our own way, on our own paths, we’re all headed home and will end up in a better place. It’s what we hear over and over when someone dies. This is a familiar road my heart travels. It says that a decision my grandmother made doesn’t make any difference. The love and beauty of my grandmother’s life is enough and she will either rest peacefully or if there is a heaven the doors will be flung open. It says there is no need for what Jesus did on the cross. In some ways this seems bigger, more universal, more satisfying on the surface than my Christian faith. Strangely though, it leaves an emptiness. It doesn’t ring true or complete.

In the kitchen, with my grandmother a room away and the life fading from her body, the cross made all the difference in the world to my grandfather and me. It didn’t just put a mask on the ugliness of death; it faced it head on and said that it wouldn’t have the victory. It opened up the floodgates of hope and it meant that when my grandfather finishes his commission here, she will be waiting once again with my aunt for him in Heaven.

But still there’s a nagging thought in my grief this week. A familiar thought. What if I didn’t have the assurance my grandfather gave me that day in the kitchen? Can I live with a religion that says there is such a thing as Hell? Do I really believe such a place could exist and that someone from this world could end up there?

One day a spider made his way into our house on a log destined for our woodstove. Just as I was putting the log in the fire I saw him start to scurry from his hiding place. As I saw him there, looking for a way of escape, I was overcome with a sense of guilt and of my power. If I tried really hard I might have been able to save him. I didn’t try. I left him to the smoke and the flames and the heat and as I closed the door, I felt wicked. The spider had done nothing deserving of being burnt up. I had made a calloused decision to let him die. I had sent him to his own Hell. It wasn’t fair.

I left, or tried to leave, Christianity once for this reason. I could not reconcile a God of love with the idea of Hell. I decided my empty, default religion was preferable. I believe in love, in gentleness, in beauty. That’s where I want to live. That’s the religion I want to cling to.

So, then, what do I do with what isn’t love and gentleness and beauty? This world is not the Utopia my default religion would like to create apart from God. There is evil. If I existed in a world where there is only love and kindness and children never got sick or were abused or starved, and someone told me about this world, I would say there is no way a loving God could let something like this be. This world with its pain and hate and awfulness could never exist. But it does. And if I’m honest, I know that the evil I see in the world exists in my very own heart. I’m not as innocent as the spider that I left in the fire.

I found myself praying even after I told myself I had given up Jesus. The truth is that I need him more than I need to have answers to all my questions. Who God is draws me back even when I don’t understand His ways. One day as I struggled in prayer, verses about thanking God came into my mind. There was one thing I had never thought to thank God for and that was Hell. What could there possibly be to thank him for about that? But, maybe out of obedience, maybe as an experiment, I said the words, “God, thank you for Hell.” And, then, I found I could keep talking. “Thank you that you overcome evil. Thank you that the things I hate about Hell… like pain and death, hate and suffering… you want to destroy.” God is not neutral or calloused about pain and suffering. He is not going to let evil continue.

There is so much I don’t understand. But I know He is good. I know that what has been revealed about His character means that He is trustworthy.

I’ve been looking at a lot of photographs of my grandmother. In just a few moments I can flip through photos of her as a child, a young wife and mother, a grandmother. I knew her for my thirty five years as her grand-daughter. There is so much of her life that I didn’t experience. Even during the years I was part of her life, there were parts of her that weren’t mine to know. We each knew her differently. Only One person knew her from the time she was forming in in my great-grandmothers belly until the time she lay on the bed in a stream of light from her window breathing her last days’ worth of breath. He knows her now. He knows her completely.

Today, my grandmother is the same woman in all the old photographs, but because her heart clung to Jesus at the end of this life, she is new as well. Grace changes us. Jesus said that when we finally see him we’ll be like him because we’ll see him as he really is. We’ll see reality apart from the evil that is in this world and in our own hearts. My grandmother is more like herself than she’s ever been before.

I can’t wait to see her again in the beauty she wears in Heaven.

And, until I make my way there myself, there will probably always be something in me that feels like the little boy at my house waiting for his daddy. There’s a little insecurity, a little doubt. There are a lot of questions that aren’t answered. But on Sunday, when the door finally opened, the little boy squealed and bounced for joy and was in his daddy’s arms and the reunion was complete. He was in the place he belonged with the one who loved him.

Someday the door will swing open for each of us. What we believe about the one who is on the other side means the difference between running and hiding as from a stranger or seeing him as our loving father and running into his arms. Faith can seem too simple, too narrow. But Jesus said that to enter the kingdom of God, we need faith like a little child. Faith is what knows and trusts the sound of our Father’s steps and waits with outstretched arms.

by

Home and Forever

I’m sitting here as the snowstorm starts and I’m reading messages from home. They say things like “hospice starting” and “deteriorating faster than expected.”

The children are all waking up and getting breakfast and squabbling. The baby nurses while I read and he kicks contently. Life is awake and loud and busy and my grandmother is going to die soon. I just want to be still and quiet and cry. Most of all I want to be on a different hill. I want to walk through an always unlocked door and see a fat dog and a very fat cat and hear my grandfather say, “Well, hello there!” and I want to hug my Grammy.

And as if things couldn’t get any harder, I have to make whoopie pies today. It’s been years and a few weeks ago my husband mentioned he’d like them. My ten year old earned a dessert and game night and he remembered. “Mom, I think I want whoopie pies for my dessert night tonight. I don’t know what game I want to play. Maybe that one with the pile of cards you have to get rid of… what is that called?”

Skip-Bo.  Really, Lord? You want me to make whoopie pies and play Skip-Bo tonight?

I remember waking up. The tick of the grandfather clock was loud and the gong every hour made life feel safe and predictable. No matter how early I walked in the kitchen Grammy was baking. I remember whoopie pies on the counter and then wrapped in plastic wrap and some large ones placed in the mailbox for the mailman. Years later they made their way postage paid to my house too far away.

When Grammy finds out you like something you will have an endless supply. There have been years and years of hamburg soup. We would drive and drive and walk through the door with children dispersing through the house with toys and things for little hands to play with in corners and behind doors and the quiet house would be loud and Grammy would tell me to sit down and there would be hamburg soup and I would be eight years old again and nothing had changed and everything was home and safe and unending.

I don’t want endings. I want home and safe and forever.

The kids are asking why I cry. The baby laughs as he looks at me and pinches my cheeks.

Grammy hasn’t held the baby yet. He was born and I dread the long drive and I should have gone anyway. I have to tear myself away from what should have been and remember what is. He hasn’t been through the door at Grammy’s house but he’s part of there.

My sisters sit and look at photo albums with Grammy. Albums full of parents and cousins and aunts and babies and all of us. There are so many stories. Some to make you laugh, some to make you cry and some you don’t mention. Stories of a family; real and hard and sad and beautiful. There are faces of people that are away now. Maybe I feel especially part of them because I am away. Grammy’s only sister, her only daughter, her oldest grandson, my other grandmother who was her dear friend and so many others. I feel the ache of being away from Grammy and feel myself there even though I’m physically far away and I wonder if that’s how it is for them as well. Only I’m aching a goodbye and they are aching with an impending welcome.

Someone needs help with their word problems. Something about a dog chasing squirrels on a Tuesday and I want to tell the boy that it doesn’t matter. There is life and it is precious and there is Heaven and it will be here so soon and squirrels on a Tuesday and how to add don’t matter. But, I don’t say it. I read the problem and we talk about it and it matters.

I’m going to cry sometimes today and I’m going to wish I were sitting on the couch with my Grammy and that the grandfather clock hadn’t ticked so fast. I’m going to wish that time could stand still and I’m going to wish that it would be over and that it would finally be safe and together and home and forever.

I’m also going to do what Grammy always has done and what mothers and grandmothers always do. My heart is going to ache with love that sometimes feels painful and my hands are going to be busy with love that mops floors and reads stories and laughs at things the three year old says and cheers with the baby when he claps his hands and smile with tears in my eyes. And this afternoon I’m going to get out a recipe copied from a card in my Grammy’s recipe box and the jar of Marshmallow Fluff and baking cocoa and I’m going to make whoopie pies. Tonight I’ll sit down at a table that’s full of somebody’s great grandchildren and play my grandmother in Heaven’s favorite game, Skip-Bo, and eat whoopie pies and think of my Grammy on a hill in the same snowstorm that’s sending down flakes out our window. I’m going to hold close the babies that are part of me and part of them and know that they are both near and we’re together and there is something that is already forever.

by

A Prayer of Surrender

Three years ago my mind was full of plans for our farm and our beloved animals.  Eagerly awaiting calves from our sweet Jersey cows, I had dreams of fresh milk, butter and cheese.  I had big plans for increasing our herd of Belted Galloway beef cows and with the garden, chickens, fruit trees, honey bees and extras like the sheep and horse, we felt close to being self-sufficient.  I loved our two hundred year old farmhouse with all its stories on the edge of the village.  We were settled, full of dreams and putting down what we thought were deep roots. Carrying my newborn sixth child in my arms, I was surrounded by life springing up in our home, barn and fields.

Then, one early morning in June, I found myself in a dewy pasture touching a dead calf and looking into the heartbroken eyes of my daughter and the questioning brown eyes of her cow, Buttercup. This was the first event in a summer that I can only look back on as ‘the breaking’.  Every single day something horrible happened.  Friends and neighbors couldn’t believe our string of ‘bad luck’. Our vet said she had never seen anything like it. During our daily phone conversations my sister stopped saying, “I hope you have a better day tomorrow’ because it never was. There were calls to the vet, calls to the doctor, calls to poison control, trips to the emergency room. And there was so much more.  Suffice it to say that so much of what I thought was solid started to sink under me.   And every night I would sink into bed and sob.  Every day it felt like something was taken away.  Under pressure I would loosen my fist just a little and something I loved would be pulled from me. I would protectively close my hand over what remained thinking I had reached the limit only to have my fingers pried open again by another painful circumstance. It felt like I was breaking.

As Oswald Chambers described, “A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, but our Lord continues to stretch and strain, and every once in a while the saint says, “I can’t take any more.” Yet God pays no attention; He goes on stretching until His purpose is in sight, and then He lets the arrow fly.”

All the while my heart was crying out that I couldn’t take anymore, a compassionate God was weighing out my distress against the purposes He had in sight. He was moving us and He was relentlessness.  Day by day and week by week, my grip loosened and I began to learn the prayer of surrender. I sat alone in the ER in the middle of the night and prayed a prayer of surrender. My feet pounded as I tried to outrun the pain of being cut out of a loved one’s life and I prayed a prayer of surrender. I placed ads to sell animals that were supposed to be our beginning and grow old and be buried at the edge of the field we had planted, and I prayed a prayer of surrender. I answered countless ‘whys’ spoken by little broken hearts while my own heart was torn, and I prayed a prayer of surrender. With each box I packed, there was a sighing prayer of surrender.

Eventually the arrow flew.

Another summer came and the old life had passed away. I felt like I had been weaned of anything unessential and what remained was where my focus should be. I was still a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend.

Also remaining was the prayer of surrender. So far it had been a giving in, an acceptance of what was. It was the same prayer as in laboring when I bury my face in my husband’s shirt and cry and breathe and surrender. It was a reaction to pain.

But driving home one night, alone in my car, I found a prayer of surrender that springs not from pain, but from worship. The summer following ‘the breaking’, I went to a weekly Bible study at a friend’s house. We were going chapter by chapter through the book of John. This gave me just what my soul needed. After the stretching and straining I needed to look into the face of Jesus. To follow his steps toward his own prayer of surrender, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” I saw his heart broken for me and my heart was drawn into deeper trust. I saw his compassion and his power and I was filled with longing. On that dark stretch of dirt road, watching my headlights bump through the night, I asked him to fill me more. I wanted more of him and if it meant less of me then I wanted to fade so that his light would burn brighter.  My prayer of worshipful surrender was an asking to die to self and to be filled with his life.

It was one of those moments, like in the field with the dead calf, which I can look back on as a point of turning.  It was a moment that led to more moments that led to changes. There is still a need for daily surrender, for moment by moment surrender. For not just a surrender to circumstances, but a full, look into His face and worship, surrender.  Not a resignation to fate but eyes fixed on Jesus, ‘the image of the invisible God.’ To behold that God, in all His glory, is gentle and humble. Not a hopeful spiritual exercise but a reply to a known voice saying, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

by

Embracing An Honest Conversation

Though it’s hard to believe, there was a time in my life when I really savored a good debate.  I think it was back when I knew everything (you know, when I was in high school).  These days, if you have something controversial you would like to discuss with me, please submit it in writing and wait patiently for me to get back to you in a day or so.  Or, on the other hand, maybe I’ll just bake you cookies and hope you don’t bring it up again.

Anyway, back in those simple days, there was one guy in all my classes that loved a good debate as much as I did.  We’ll just call him Jimmy.  Since we happily and energetically argued about anything, it was no surprise that when I decided that I believed in Christianity this became the ultimate source of fodder for debate.  I thought that I really needed to convince Jimmy of the truth that I now held as of eternal importance and he was delighted to find a topic that he could get me really riled and emotionally distraught over.  As a new Christian I took some interesting approaches.  I wanted to show him how much it hurt God’s heart to have his name used in vain.  So, the lucky day we were paired as partners in chemistry class I decided to exclaim, “Jimmy!” or “By Jimmy, now you’ve done it!” whenever something would go wrong just to let him see how it felt to have his name used as a swear word.  So he could, you know, empathize with God.  He thought God would find it very amusing.

The challenging thing about Jimmy was that he asked really good questions.  There were the classic questions like, “What about the people in the jungle that never heard of Jesus?  Can you really say that they are going to be damned to Hell?”  Then, there were some surprise questions like, “Why do Christian girls wear fancy underwear on dates?”   Let’s just say the conversations were unpredictable and lively.  And, since I had gone to church consistently for maybe three months and I started every day reading a chapter of the Bible and ‘Our Daily Bread’, I believed I should have an answer for every single question.

Somehow I convinced my friend Jimmy to start reading the Bible.  As much as he enjoyed the debate for debate’s sake, I think he also really did earnestly desire to find out what was true.  When he came back with his assessment after reading the Gospels (the four books that tell the story of Jesus’ life) and some of the early letters to the church from the apostles (they didn’t have blogs or mass email back then) I was really taken aback.  Jimmy said, “I really liked Paul.  He was a nice, humble guy.  Jesus seemed so arrogant, though.”  Jesus was arrogant?  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  Or could I?  Deep down inside, though I would never have admitted it to Jimmy, I knew what he meant.  It was much easier to read what other people said about Jesus than to read what Jesus said about himself.  Some of the things he said made me feel uncomfortable.   In the first century those things made the religious leaders of the time so uncomfortable that they decided to crucify Him.  There wasn’t much I could say to Jimmy about Christianity after that.

After what I saw as my evangelistic failure with Jimmy, I was happy to meet people in college that were excited about sharing their faith.  I started attending a Christian group that met on our campus and found some older women (they were like twenty two or something) that taught me how to use a little booklet to share the basics of Christianity and hopefully lead people to say a prayer when we got to the last page.  I lived with my sister in an apartment off campus my freshman year.  She was not a Christian.

I came home armed with the booklet and asked sweetly, “I was just learning something, can I, umm, practice it with you?”  An older sister always eager to see me learn something new, she good naturedly agreed.  So, we sat at the table in our little apartment and I shared each point thinking that this would be the moment it would all make sense.  We got to the last page.  She didn’t say the prayer.

I did keep trying with other people though.  This actually led to some good conversations and it was kind of fun to approach strangers and ask them if they wanted to talk about spiritual things.  Most people actually do like to discuss big questions and big truth.  Do most people like being read a booklet?  Not so much.

I didn’t give up on it completely though until I went on a summer missions trip to an inner city.  I was helping with children’s programs and kept a bunch of the kiddie version stuck in my purse to easily pull out and share.  I did share it; a few times to a few precious children.  And, then I realized I was lying.  You see, in the adult version, one of the essential truths is that ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.’   I hadn’t thought about what that was really saying until I saw the way it was simplified for kids.  There were two drawings of the same child.  In the first, before he knew Jesus, his life was a mess.  I think they had him doing poorly in school, missing the ball in soccer and his parents were mad at him.  In the second picture he had asked Jesus to become the center of his life and everything was wonderful.  Good grades, happy parents, goals in soccer.  Really?  This is what I was going to tell the little girl who lives with her grandmother probably because her father is in jail and her mother is on drugs?  The little girl that didn’t speak to me for the first week and now won’t let go of my hand?  The little girl who snuggled next to nineteen year old me and whispered that she wished I was her mother?   Was I going to tell her that if she prayed a prayer to ask Jesus into her heart that her life would be wonderful?  I trashed the booklets.

You see, I realized I had a problem.  I thought I had to protect Jesus from the truth.

The truth is not always so pleasant sounding.  It goes something like this: God loves you and you might get cancer.  God loves you and you might struggle with infertility.  God loves you and you might get in a car accident and end up paralyzed.  God loves you and someone with evil intentions might break into your home.  God loves you and your child might die.

God loves you and you are going to suffer.

The truth also is that there are some really hard questions that I don’t necessarily have good answers for.  How can God be completely powerful and still be completely loving when there is so much pain in this world?  Why does He let suffering continue so long for the sick and dying when we can barely cope with seeing an old dog suffer and we try to give it a peaceful end?  Is God less humane than His creation?  What about Hell?  What about the unending, painful, crushing, tormenting punishment for still aware, thinking, feeling souls?  Can we brush that off?  Should we as Christians say that it shouldn’t give unbelievers pause when they think about the validity of what we believe?  There are hard questions.  I don’t have all the answers.

So should I just lose heart?

I still believe there is a beautiful, freeing, exhilarating story to tell.

With all my heart (and mind) I believe that the Bible really is true.  It’s a collection of reliable books that tell the history of the world, of the ancient Jewish people and the accurate history of Jesus and his church.  I believe that Jesus lived and was murdered and that he was resurrected so that we could be saved from the disease of sin and the terminal diagnosis that comes with it.  I believe that God hears and answers prayer.  I believe His love is so much greater than we can fathom.  I believe in a lot of hard to understand doctrines like the trinity and the sovereignty of God and the reality of Hell.  I believe in the Holy Spirit working in hearts and his church to spread a powerful message called the gospel.

And, I totally get why a lot of really thoughtful people think these things I believe are foolish.

The apostle Paul was a highly educated, respected religious leader.  He wanted to see the followers of Christ wiped out.  And then, he met Jesus.   The message he once thought foolishness became a great treasure.   He left his respectable position behind and spent the rest of his life sharing the message.

It was Paul who said, “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.  But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.”  (2 Corinthians 4:2,3)

Like Paul, I want to renounce underhanded ways and embrace honesty.  I don’t want to soften what the Bible says to make God look better as if I could have written a better story.  In the story God authored, Jesus suffered great humiliation and the shame of the cross.  Why?  Because of his love for those he had come to save.

Do I love others enough to be thought a fool?

“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”2 Corinthians 4:7

God places His story, the treasure of the knowledge of the gospel, in jars of clay. Remembering that it is the surpassing power of God that transforms his message from foolishness to shining light, I’m suddenly free to trust Him with His own message.  I’m free to give up the debate and really listen to other’s stories and also to their questions, sometimes admitting that I have the same ones.  And ultimately, I can love others enough to plainly share the truth even if it makes me a fool in their eyes.  

I really don’t enjoy a contentious debate the way I did in high school but I’ve come to really love an honest conversation.  I’d love to hear where you are in your own journey of faith.

by

The Path Home

I’m sure I first fell in love with my husband on a walk in the woods. Which walk I can’t say because there were so many that first summer. We’d pull on long sleeves and pants over our shorts before climbing on his motorcycle (no need to mention the motorcycle part to our kids!) and then be off. Most often our trip would partly consist of being jarred uncomfortably along a dirt road leading to a far part of the woods in northern Maine (north of Bangor anyway). There was the memorable ‘appliance graveyard’ hike where we wound ourselves through a plot of old refrigerators, ovens and other remnants left to rust in the woods and ended up on a boulder in the wilderness as the sun set and darkness settled. Then, the coyotes started howling and we howled back in a conversation only they understood.

Often on our adventures we would look for a mountain to climb and then sit victorious at the top, looking west as the sun set and watching the stars come out. We’d see the distant glow of light from a town far away and feel like we were somehow separate from the rest of breathing, drudging humanity; closer somehow to the coyotes and stars. Maybe it was the effect of sitting with someone who was gently being revealed as the man I would be united with for life, or the stillness in the cooling air, but those moments after the sun set seemed to stand still. They were miniature eternities where time seemed peeled away and I felt that all that had come before in my life and all that would follow, even for generations, was surrounding us as we sat together. They were moments when we would speak in whispers even though there were miles stretched between us and any other listening ear.

But then, a breeze would break through with an extra chill, or a mosquito would bite and one of us would have to look at our watch and time came back.  We would have to make our way back down the mountain.  Always without a flashlight we’d start back down the rocky, often unfamiliar trail.  He always led the way and I remember being thankful for his white t-shirt reflecting the little bit of moonlight on a particularly dark night.  Ours was an unordinary falling in love.  He didn’t hold my hand until the following winter when he placed a diamond on one of my fingers.  So instead of a finger grip, my eyes stayed fixed on this man as we made our way down.  With the night closed in around us, in a far and unfamiliar wood, I just kept moving one foot in front of the other.  There were stumbles, branch scratches and the occasional fearful shiver when I thought about the dark trail behind me. But my eyes kept searching and fixing themselves on the man I trusted leading me home.

Years have gone by, babies born, boxes packed and unpacked and here I find I’ve followed him into the woods once more. The trees surround our cabin-house and we can watch the sun set over distant hills in the west. Instead of just two adventurers there are nine of us now and someone often speaks the words, “Let’s go for a walk in the woods.”

This is a sweet, happy, busy life we’ve been blessed with. But this isn’t all.   I have unwrapped countless gifts in this life.  I have been blessed with the fulfillment of nearly all the dreams I had as a young girl.  But strangely I’ve found them wanting.  The greatest joy in this life is dulled by the brokenness of living in a world where sin and death have entered in.  Its the pain of holding a great treasure in your hand only to watch it fading slowly away.

This life, with all its blessing, is being used up.  We can grasp it only to have it slip through our fingers. My hope isn’t found by looking at the great gifts in my life though I am deeply thankful, beyond words, for each one.  My hope comes from remembering that I’m not really home yet.  I’m on a path where even my dearest, most beloved friend can’t blaze the way. 

Ultimately, the journey my soul makes through this life is not one I make as a wife or a mother or a sister or a friend, but I am journeying on this path as a follower of Jesus.  He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”   His road home isn’t always what I would naturally choose for myself or for those I love.  Sometimes I think there must be some other way.  I start looking for hope in some other place but always there is emptiness and a darkness when I turn my face away from Him.  Its like trying to satisfy my thirst by eating sand.  I get more parched and long again for the life giving water.

I can’t escape that I am a believer.  A questioning, praying, stumbling, fumbling in the dark, believer.

But he keeps calling and there is grace.  “Light is sown for the righteous and joy for the upright in heart.” (Psalm 97:11)  He calls me, covers me with his own righteousness and lights my way.  This gospel is simple and hard and so often I feel like I can only see a glimmer.  It’s a bit of light springing up along the path like a seed that was sown.  It’s the encouragement to keep following.  It’s the seed of light that grows into faith and blossoms into joy.

So, here I am, just starting to share my journey, hoping that those little seeds of light in my life might send a glimmer of hope to another soul like me, in a far wood but on the path leading Home.