Tag: Bible

advent

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I do not feel excited about advent. I didn’t last year either. My instinct is to ask What is wrong with me?

Anticipation and preparation are the two words most used the last week, talking about advent. Instagram is going wild with it. We’re doing a series in church, and even most of my favorite podcasters are talking about it. But I don’t anticipate advent. I picture myself sitting hushed with glowing eyes while we light the first advent candle and whisper eternal promises to Erik out of an old Bible with gilded edges. And when I see that picture I experience no feelings. Hope doesn’t thrill out of the magic-infused candle that is supposed to remind us of hope. I just see a purple candle.  

And preparation? I scarcely prepare dinner for us three at night, much less seasonal fairy lights, Christmas wreaths, a tree that Little E will pull ornaments off. No, I haven’t prepared for advent.

Really I just feel lonely. Like somehow my cell phone to God is out of range. I could dial and wait for him to pick up, but he won’t because I don’t have any reception. I could talk but it’d be pointless. I know it’s not true but sometimes the untrue things feel so very, very true it’s hard to see clearly what they are.  

Perhaps this is my own advent. A season of quiet. Anticipating. Waiting to give gifts. Waiting to receive gifts. Waiting for the feeling of cold December air and warm December hearts to thaw my frosted-over edges.  

Maybe I don’t need to remember the 400 years of silence that Israel experienced; maybe what I need to know that even after 400 years that seemed to never end, God still spoke. God still came. The Time That Felt Like Forever was over with the birthed babe sleeping in soft straw. My own times that feel like forever will be over too. I can cling to the advent promise even when the cheerful advent heart eludes me. I can watch the flickering Hope-candle that doesn’t go out because maybe it will flicker my own hope back to life.  

Advent, this year, is less the remembrance and more the reminder. God is coming. God is coming. God is coming. It is less the lighted preparation and more the steady looking forward. The silence will end. The ache will end. The loneliness will end.  

It will. I will light a candle and remember; the silence breaks, in the end. Breaks into bright scattered fragments made beautiful when the light shines on them.  

when life builds you

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You know the days when your baby takes long, peaceful naps and the sun is shining on the patio? You know the days when everybody’s happy when Dad gets home and there are kisses and giggles; dinner time is a cozy, cheerful affair? You know when you look at those smiling green baby eyes and put down the distractions and go for a walk together, cooing and bababa-ing back and forth at each other the whole while? Those are the days you build your life.

Proverbs 9:1-2, “Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table.” I didn’t really pay much attention to these two verses until a year or so ago, when I read the end of the chapter in the context of the beginning. Verses 13, 16-17 say “The woman Folly is loud; she is seductive and knows nothing.” She calls out “‘Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!’ and to him who lacks sense she says, ‘Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.'”

You know the days where your babe seems to wake up just half-an-hour too soon every time you lay him down? The days when you have a crick in your neck which causes a headache which, you ruefully reflect, will probably mean terrible sleep? You know the days when the terrible sleep means you’re still groggy when the boy wakes and wants a bottle, so you might as well just stay awake? You know the days when the man you love comes home and you just want to snap that you never get to punch out and go home from your job? Those are still the days you build your life.

It’s obvious in Proverbs 9: Wisdom works. She builds the life she wants, the good life. You can’t exclude the bad days from this pretty pattern you want to create. The days when you’ve planned and organized and somehow your life still seems in control of you? The days when you sit down dazed on the edge of the bed and wonder if you managed anything, at all, besides the (too-late) timing of your son’s (slightly healthy-ish…) meals? Those are the days you want a do-over. And those are the days you still need to build – if nothing else, build your responses to the way those hours shove you around.

You can’t – ok, let’s stop masking this in second person.

I can’t create a grace-filled life if I’m not going to have that grace on the hard days.

I can’t lead a loving life if I toss love to the wind when it’s not easy.

I can’t have a heart that serves if I’m not going to serve when I’m tired.

Let me tell you, this kind of life – this kind life – takes a lot of courage. But even more it takes persistence. I need courage and mercy and gentleness this morning? Yeah, well I’m going to need them all again this afternoon, this evening. Again, tomorrow morning. It seems it’s always time to choose. Everything is only ever built brick by brick.

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example

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Morning nap – first nap of the day. Sit you down and read I tell myself. I leave the breakfast dishes, the scattered letter blocks with baby teeth marks, and I begin my mid-morning with scripture. It’s a slow-forming habit. To ignore the sunshine, the messy floors, the urge to spend quiet hours indulging in youtube – it’s not easy. The rewards come slowly, but they come. So I sit with my Bible again.

I don’t like to have a daily time with God unless I have a plan of some kind. Lately, as I attempt to parent well, I have chosen Proverbs as my starting point. I’m reading through the gospels as well, but I start each study time by reading through the chapter in Proverbs that corresponds with the day of the month.

It is four months in; I love the repetition. Again and again I hear the same warnings against adultery, the same urging to seek wisdom, the same need for a fear of the Lord. And again and again Proverbs says “listen, my son”. Each time I’ve read it I’ve thought, What have my parents taught me that I need to remember and listen to right now? Today, God changed what I heard. What do I want Erik to learn from me, and remember?

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That was not a comfortable question.

I want Erik to learn love. I want him to know the “breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,” so that he can love others with that same abundance. So then, that is how I need to live. I am pondering now how I can better love others. I want to be somebody who cares, who remembers somebody’s name, who hears their struggle without condemnation.

My mama was a great one for loving people. She’d invite anyone over for holidays if they didn’t have a place to gather. She’d talk to a stranger in the grocery store or a wrong number on the phone for an hour, just because she cared enough to feel their hurts. I want that heritage to run strongly in Erik, so it will need to run strongly in me. I have heard it said that a mother’s biggest contribution to the world may be those she raises. If that is true, then the only way I can truly magnify that contribution is to lead Erik by my own example.

So, here is to living the large love my mother taught me. Listen well, baby boy.

he dug down

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When I was half-grown, my family got horses. I thought it would be cool. It turned out to be a lot of work. My dad roused our family one Saturday and told us it was time to fence in a pasture for our future horse. He had outlined the perimeter of it, he said. Now we had to fence it. We set out, loading our supplies onto the four-wheeler. One of us took the post-hole digger and started digging. Dad would measure, and tell us to dig deeper. Two of us came behind, one holding the post with thick work gloves while the other slammed a post-pounder down on the top of it, over and over. Behind them we came filling in the holes, snapping on the insulators, stringing the wire. It was a long day. When we finished we could scarcely even see the slim wire fence against the thick prairie grass. It was there, and effective, but practically invisible.

I read the parable of the builders today, in Luke 6. Jesus says of the first builder that “he dug down” and laid a foundation. It didn’t even take having a horse to know that I hate digging, and here’s God, saying you have to keep digging if you don’t want your life to fall over.

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“Do you really think these trees have been here for a thousand years?” Tiffany asked. Jon looked up. We all looked up. Standing there under the towering fragrant forest, we couldn’t doubt that they had seen a thousand years of sunrises, heard a thousand years of laughter. Their roots, I learned, grow up to 6 feet deep and nearly 100 feet out. The Redwoods are anchored for the centuries.

I spent about a year, maybe even more, digging through my crippling insecurity, trying to find the root of it, to dig that out too. You’ve got to dig down into yourself, but dig down into God too. It was only ever after I started with Him and His words as a foundation that I was able to dig up the crap I’d been standing on.

I’m trying to build this life-foundation strong, because I want to stand tall. Maybe it is hidden work, but even if nothing of the foundation shows, then at least the life-that-does-not-crumble will. Perhaps it will take hours at my kitchen table, reading and underlining and praying the scriptures. Maybe it will take years. Maybe it should take years. But perhaps if we stay where we are meant to be, if we dig down deep enough, then in a thousand years we will be as beautiful as this.

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holy Saturday

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Truth, truth. It is like a dye, staining every thought I have this weekend. I have scripture ringing in my ears – a lying tongue hates its victims; Proverbs 26. I repeat it to myself, thinking not just of telling lies but of softening truths. It is so easy to sidestep truth, to just assume somebody knows my beliefs and positions and that I don’t need to clarify them.

I never want to present truth unlovingly. It’s the spoonful of sugar with the medicine. But you can’t be nourished on spoonfuls of sugar alone, and that’s the way our culture has leaned. Religion is suddenly acceptable if love is the only real application. But truth and love are inseparable. That is actually my clearest memory from my recent trip to California.

Redwoods are beautiful, don’t misunderstand me! I loved them. But on the way back to the airport, Tiffany reminded me of the absolute vitality of truth. It’s unloving to not speak the truth she said firmly. She’s right. I’ve been mulling over those words since I reached the airport and quietly circled the terminal with hot coffee.

I read a post about celebrating Easter as a millennial who’s left church culture, and the post was about the spirituality (in a loose sense) of the holiday and the beauty of celebrating newness. I love newness and celebration, but the truth of Easter is so much more brutal, so sin-dyed. And it is so much more powerful, beautiful, so earth-shattering light-filled. Easter is the obliteration of our blackest wrongs through brutal death. Earth is the glory of new life where no life was even possible before.

Tiffany was right about truth. To withhold the glorious beauty of Easter and just celebrate newness? That is no kind of love. I do not want to alienate people who are on the fringes of faith and church, but I’m not going to break the truth into pieces we can consume without fear. Truth in love, yes. Half truth, no.

Those are my thoughts on this Saturday of waiting – the day in between death and Resurrection, a grave day of not celebrating, not yet. And this is my invitation to you: celebrate with us tomorrow. Celebrate life and grace and forgiveness, the truth of the holy day.

quiet

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Today is quiet and I want to keep it that way. I am leaving for Redwood Valley, CA in two days and it’s going to be a bit of a respite from the challenges of daily life as a mama. But I need respite now, not just whenever I can escape to California. So I have set aside my goals for today.

I am an expert at carrying goals. I create mental checklists a mile long and mutter over them internally all day long. Today is not for lists. Today is for quiet.

The sun rose quietly, touching the frozen rooftops first; then she slid down the walls and windows, delicately touching her toes to the icy earth like a timid-eager girl. The house itself seems to be resting; it is half clean/half cluttered, but that could just mean it holds life in a balance of work and rest. Even my heart is finding rest. I read Luke 1 this morning, and chose Luke 1:74-75 as my next memory passage. “…that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”

These words are grounding me. It is for worship and service to God that we are freed. Not to keep our homes clean, not to press forward into to-do lists. For worship, for recounting of his blessings whether we find them in strong muscles, sunshine sliding across the walls throughout the morning, babies cooing and chattering, anything.

Here is to the quiet we need, and cultivate.

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