What Breaks and What Breaks Through

At 6:30 yesterday morning, I was deep in lectio divina (sacred reading), communing with my God through Psalm 105, hunkered down in the phrase Be alert to signs of God's presence.  I imagined Him taking me by the hand and pointing out wonder upon wonder. 

At 7:00, I heard it begin to rain, though the room was filled with the bright, pinkish light of a promising sunrise.  I stepped outside to the unveiling of a rainbow...a complete arch, bursting with color...a hint of a second one appearing as one by one, each robed member of my family came to join me under the umbrella of our giant oak.   Absolute joy on our faces.  Gratitude spilling from our mouths.

Oh, what a morning had broken. 

At 4:00 I got news that a life was changed forever in my family.  My step-Grandpa Bob, dear man, hulking farmer with a barrel chest and twinkling eyes, did not see the semi truck when he pulled onto the highway.  The next thing he knew, he was in a hospital bed, broken all over. 

I spent the rest of the day trying to sort through promises and realities, platitudes and hard truths, assurances and doubts, as I listened to my sweet, little piano students make young music.  I woke up today still aching for Bob, his wife, his daughter (my step-mom), the extended family gathered around his bed in Peoria. 

I want so badly to take him by the fragile hand, ease him out under the oak, and point him to the rainbow.  But it is gray and colorless today. 

Brave

You set out to do the extraordinary,

you brave, homeschooling mother

Armed with the consummate classics:

Tom Sawyer, Little Britches, A Wrinkle in Time

and piles of God's Heroes:

Amy Carmichael, Nate Saint,

and some days you think you'd rather be

on the Amazon with the natives

than in the living room with

your own flesh and blood,

who've got you at the end of your rope,

or is the end of the spear?

The oldest fusses over analyzing sentences

while secretly peeking at football plays

Another disappears from her math lesson

and magically reappears out the window,

a pendulum on the rope swing

And why is the youngest in tears over

their, there, and they're?

All day long you point

to the piano the dishwasher the next problem

the key word the vowel team the pile of towels

the board game spread across the couch

the half done science experiment on the counter

the dog

begging for dinner

You wish you could control their eyes

while your own wander to the

hummingbird at the feeder

and you privately long for wings

The words nag:

Am I enough?

And then you remember...

the first school was in a garden

So you say to the children,

let's go pick the rest of the vegetables

There is going to be a hard freeze tonight

And, blessed, you call it a lesson in

biology, meteorology, home ec, and religion

Suddenly you notice

their roots have eased down a little deeper

and you feel just a little braver

today

Seventy Times Seven

I stood in church yesterday, singing and worshipping at one level, but wrestling at another, trying to be a good soldier and take captive the enemy thoughts.  I was battling feelings of betrayal and rejection. 

It was the most innocuous, indirect kind of rejection you can imagine; I would be too embarrassed to detail in a blog, and yet my mind kept wandering back to it and my body responded in clenched jaw and knotted gut. 

"Let it go," I told myself over and over.  "Forgive.  Forgive.  Forgive.  You are here to commune with the God of the universe who humbles Himself to dwell in you, and you are fixated on the ridiculous." Yet all morning those viral thoughts invaded. 

I think I understand what Jesus meant when he told Peter in Matthew 18, "No, you don't forgive your brother seven times.  You forgive him seventy times seven."  In other words, as many times as it takes to let it go.  Every time the angst rises up, you stamp it "forgiven."  It's not that a brother or sister is going to break your heart 490 times.  It's that your mind is going revisit the hurts over and over and you are going to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and call it forgiven.  Every.  Time. 

Until the healing comes.  And what does the healing look like?  It looks like you walking in his or her shoes, changing your point of view and finally, understanding. 

It is you moving beyond this offense and praying that all those people that you have offended would be kind enough to stamp "forgiven" across every thought of you. 

Life Goes By Like a Blur

I don't wanna be a blur in a picture.
I don't wanna be a busy girl.
I don't wanna be wrapped in the trap of a chaotic world, no, no.

As my fifth album begins to take shape in my head, I found myself singing this song in the car the other day.  I wrote it several years ago as a personal reminder to reject the chaotic lifestyle so many of us lead, to discover and rediscover simple joys, to "dance, sing, lay in the grass." 

This summer had many such moments to be treasured and I'm so thankful for camera's remembering eye. 

But a new season is upon us.  The sparse summer calendar has been replaced by a dense forest of lines and circles forming tiny words and numbers that suddenly redefine our lives.  For example, every Thursday box through May looks like this:  8:30 this, 2:00 that, 3:15 this, 7:30 that.  Every commitment carefully considered, prayed over, agreed to by the family, but multiplied by 5 of us, and I begin to wonder if we will not soon feel like a blur...or worst yet, slaves to the schedule. 

It is not a good feeling to be a slave to anything but Christ.  You know when you have given up your freedom...it becomes a tightness in your gut; you snap, crackle, and pop at your kids while putting on a carefree face to your peers, you scramble to sweep up the marbles of your day that spill and scatter across the floor. 

The litmus test is food.  The slave grabs for salt and sweet and caffeine to keep her going.  She feeds her family overprocessed, undernourishing foods for convenience. 

She lets her quiet time with God slide so she can respond to one more e-mail and google one more thing.  Her house is disordered.  Her kids fight.  Her husband is lonely. 

OK, that was hard to write.  The mirror is a brutually honest friend.  My interior is scarred from balls and chains. 

I am not at that point, however, nor do I have to get there.  No matter the level of commitments, I can keep the lens in focus by asking myself a few questions each day. 

Fill:  What time do I need to rise to meet with God? 
Nurture: Who needs me the most today? 
Nourish: What am I going to feed my family today? 
Order: What are a few things we all can do to get the house in order? 
Refill:  When can I "lay in the grass," even for the briefest of moments?

God, my shepherd! I don't need a thing.
   You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
      you find me quiet pools to drink from.
   True to your word,
      you let me catch my breath
      and send me in the right direction.   Psalm 23, The Message

When that angry, controlling knot of an attitude begins to tighten like a noose, I can pause, lean into the truth, lighten the yoke, and come back to the greatest of all commands:  Love.  Love Him. Love them.  Love the least of them.  It's what sets the slave free.  It's what brings the subject into focus and let's the rest pleasantly blur. 

Don't Say the S-word on Sunday

These are the words that spilled from my mouth in response to my daughter's comment.  I paused, thinking, how would that sentence be interpreted as a stand-alone?  So I typed it into the title bar of my blog and laughed. 

What are banned s-words on Sundays?

Sin...selfishness...stress...scorn (and, of course, the s-word you were thinking!)  These are words with a negative connotation, worthy of consideration and examination, but ones not to be acted out on Sundays...well, any day, if we can help it. 

For fun, I opened my Bible index and scanned the s-words, in search of positive replacements.  Salvation, sanctification, serve, share, silence, song.  And my favorite:  seamless.  It reminded me of a powerful blog by Ann Voskamp called A One-Piece Life. 

The Gospel, Jesus, comes to say life is meant to be all one piece. Jesus embodied the human and the divine. I can live a one piece life, an ordinary life that is wholly sacred, because the Holy Spirit resides within, this body now being the very house of God. Jesus very first miracle, turning the ceremonial cleansing water into wine for a wedding feast, thundered truth and shattered myth: there is no divide between holy and sacred.  -Ann Voskamp

Really, friends, take the time to read her entire blog.  It is transformational.

Are you wondering what s-word my daughter said to stir up such a response in me?  She said, "Mom, you have a Stain on your skirt."  Every mother neatly dressed for church who was ever trying to hurry the family out the door so they might only be 5 minutes late knows this word is dreaded.  What?  I have to go change my entire outfit?  I don't have time! 

But grace swept in.  I looked down at the "stain" to find it was just a bit of pancake flour, easily brushed away.  We giggled as we headed out the door with something resembling Serenity.

Re-creation

I'm holding a new CD in my hand.  When I picked it up at the bookstore and turned to browse the songlist, I caught my breath and knew I had to have it.  It was another one of those Moses moments that I blogged about recently, where you've returned to the beginning to worship, and feel the urge to remove your shoes right in the middle of the store.

The album...Re-creation.  The artist...Steven Curtis Chapman.  The song...More To This Life.  You see, this is the song that gently, slowly turned my heart of stone into a heart of flesh.  It asked a simple question of my skeptic's mind so many years ago:  Are you waiting for lightning while he quietly whispers your name?  It was like John's voice in the desert, preparing the way for when I would, most certainly, discern His quiet whispers. 

Back then, in college, the CD was a gift from my heartsister, Tracy, in hopes that it would plant a seed.  This time, the CD, which contains many remakes of songs from that anointed disc, was a gift to myself.  A memorial stone.  The cabin of my car, a music-filled altar. 

Now for the cherry on the top....my friend Karmen managed to get us the last two tickets to:  Steven Curtis Chapman, Re-Creation, live in concert, Rochester, Minnesota!  With, pinch myself, Andrew Peterson and Josh Wilson, two of my favorite songwriters. 

And if Mr. Chapman chooses to sing More To This Life on that night in October, I will, indeed, take off my shoes.