Faith – Eyes to See

The Reality

I see so much anger and finger-pointing in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic right now. I believe blame requires less effort than looking in the mirror. I remain resolute to not entangle myself in politics and arguments, choosing not to parse or judge people’s thoughts or opinions, actions or inaction. I have thoughts of course, yet I know all those pursuits lead to is division. So instead I’m focusing my efforts within. I’m doing the hard work of looking in the mirror during these days of isolation. Yet the most glaring thing I face during this pandemic is myself.

I see my physical limitations in ways I didn’t recognize only weeks ago. I once boasted about how much I could handle- the many hats I could wear without letting things fall to the wayside. I once considered myself to be a decent and striving wife, Mom, friend, daughter, Pastor, writer, home educator, leader… and here I am, barely holding daily life together.

Somewhere, in the midst of COVID-19, I misplaced my bootstraps. My courage has diminished and my capacity seems to have been drained, as if someone pulled the plug on the pool of busy-ness that kept me afloat. These endless days “safe at home” are hard. I’m floating now, but in a new reality, one that seems to be above the shallow waters, where I am privy to observe my life, without actively participating.

As I gaze down into the telling waters, I see my fears staring me in my face. I find my self-worth threatened unlike other days and find insurmountable doubt arise. Questions come through my thoughts like: Am I really good enough? Am I worthy of love? I have no feedback coming from others, like I normally do. I’m left to mull these things over… alone.

I’ve had to ask hard questions like:
Who am I when I’m exhausted?
Who am I when I am afraid?
Who am I when I cannot serve others?
Who am I when I can’t seem to string words together to write?
Who am I when I can only seem to take care of my immediate family, and have low capacity to shepherd and care for others?

I don’t like the answer to most of those thoughts. I find myself impatient, restless in ways I cannot describe. It’s not for lack of purpose or motivation, either. I’ve had to face the fact that I’m not superwoman or super special in any way. Things I would’ve described myself as seem to fall away indiscriminately.

“The Homeschool Mom” Today, it’s taken all my energy to ensure my children gained education. I love the ability and journey that homeschool has given our family. I love the literature we share, the languages and beauty we study in art and music and nature. We are arithmetic-ing, language arts-ing, reading, and learning, but it feels so much like drudgery instead of freedom these days.

“The Home Chef” It takes all my energy to feed my family these days. I’ve never made so many “easy meals” as I am right now, and I normally love to cook. I don’t even seem hellbent on organic, GMO free products. I’m just happy to get some food in my pantry each time I head to the grocery store.

“The Neat Freak” It takes all my energy to tidy up a room in the house…again. It takes all my energy to keep up with the washing and folding, the scrubbing and cleaning, even though I’ve always liked and maintained an orderly home environment. I see myself turn away from the mess and clutter, writing it off as no big deal and that I’ll get to it when I get to it. I would normally love these stay-at-home moments to reorganize a closet or redo my pantry or some other Pinterest-led project, but I just can’t.

“The Engaged Mom” It takes all my energy to find creative ways to keep my children happy, even with the countless spreadsheets and resources available. My inbox overflows daily with ideas. Normally, I’d delight in playing a game of cards or snagging some snuggles and a story. I love putting together projects or activities my children can do to grow their mind and hearts, but these days I’m letting them do things I’d normally say were off limits, like video gaming. The hours just drag on and on and I can’t seem to fill them without our library visits, museum days, beach walks or hikes.

“The Family Planner” It takes all my energy to cook another meal, light another candle at the dinner table, have another tea time together- usually, uplifting moments in my daily life, but seemingly laborious these days.

“The Serving Shepherd” It takes all my energy to host a few weekly online gatherings to check on the relational and spiritual well-being of many people whom I truly love and care about. I normally love to support and walk with people through hard circumstances. I have many good ideas of ways to show love to others, yet my ability to execute seems null. Prayer is the only thing that seems a companion during these days, an outlet for the daily list of sadness, bad news and sorrow so many of us are feeling.

“The Confidante” It takes all my energy to have conversations laden with talk of quarantine, disease or what the future holds after this. It takes all my energy to check in with those dear to me, to say “let me know if you need anything,” when I doubt I can really step-up in the ways I normally could. Dropping everything to come alongside a friend seems much more difficult when there is no “everything” to drop any more.

I think this time has shown me that *this* is it; this is reality when everything is stripped away. Who I am when everything is stripped away is not who I thought I was. I am not as strong as I thought I was. I am not as brave and courageous as I thought I was. I am not as needed as I thought I was. I am not as gifted or called as I thought I was. I am not as spiritual as I thought I was.

So as I face myself in the mirror, it boils down to this: I am human. All these mantras I’ve chewed on to find meaning and purpose in life have simply come up to mean absolutely nothing in these days. All the personality tests, spiritual inventories, memory verses, theology… it just doesn’t fill my heart in this time of sorrow.

What I really need is grace. To know that despite my shortcomings, or the fact that every hat I once wore proudly has fallen off, grace makes a way for belovedness. Grace marches me into the truth that I am loved for just being a human. God doesn’t shy away from my mess; instead, He gives me His Presence as a companion. In my need and desperation, in my exhaustion and scaled-down efforts, Jesus reassures me just as He did the doubting Thomas. He gently opens his cloak and shows me his wounds- his humanity.

You see, Jesus was God in flesh and he was stripped down, too. He was shamed. He couldn’t pull himself up by his bootstraps, either. He didn’t rise up in power and show his ability or divinity. He couldn’t put on a happy face and be a stoic hero in the last days of His lives. He wept. He mourned. He felt things in his soul. And while I’m still sorting out what this all means about me, I find immense comfort in knowing He is with me. He’s been here before, and the grace I find is helping me survive moment by moment.

You see, grace isn’t something you “get.” There’s no spiritual practice that gives you the outcome of grace. Grace is the person of Jesus, in all His humanity and divinity. It’s both the mess and the beauty. Life isn’t categorized neatly in black and white, good and bad, right or wrong. There are no dichotomies, but rather it’s both. So when I ask for grace in all my glorious weakness, He gives himself to me freely.

God’s grace is the only thing that redeems our past and gives hope for the future. It’s the hope that in all my mess and failure and doubt, there’s still more to come. Grace leads us to love, but we only get there when we look in the mirror and acknowledge our suffering.

Maybe you need a new heart to live with during these days, too. <3

Beauty School

The tradition of faith I grew up in was full of rules- how to dress appropriately, how to treat people in authority, and the longest liturgy of what not to do. No dancing, no alcohol, no this or that. So, I learned the rules and it made me into a near perfect performer. I could act my way into rightness in most scenarios, mostly because I learned the morals of my community. I was a good, Christian girl and I really liked that label.

As I matured into young adulthood, I went through the normal stages of rebellion- nights full of dancing and drinking and playing cards. But by my early twenties I was back on the straight and narrow, operating by those rules that I learned made me right.

Yet the more I followed this rule-making God, the less alive I felt inside. It felt like being paranoid all the time. Did I forget to pray for all the sins I did today? I carried around a god that fit into my spreadsheets and checklists. It heaped guilt on me over and over again when I didn’t read my Bible for 15 minutes a day, or I didn’t write a check tithing exactly ten percent, or I grumbled about someone instead of devoting myself to praying for them.

I handed these rules out to others, too. It was like a pamphlet- come be like me! Just follow these steps and you can find your way to being a good Christian, too.

After a period of feeling discouraged, I began exploring the idea that the Divine isn’t a rule-follower. God is wholly unpredictable. Just when you thought he was going to punish Israel in the Old Testament stories, God would show compassion. Just when you thought, “Surely, Jesus wouldn’t condone sleeping around,” He spoke life-giving, loving words to prostitutes. Just when you thought the Ruler of the Universe would climb off the cross and chastise the onlookers, Jesus died in quiet humility. And even upon His resurrection, He didn’t appear to every government power and authority to be like “look at me now!” Instead, he connected with his beloved friends.

Of course I knew the facts already- Jesus is a relationship, not a religion. I knew he came to fulfill the Law, but how do you be a good Christian without the rule book or the 10 Commandments?

A glimpse of glory tells me that God himself, in all his fullness, exists as Creator. Creativity never comes with a manual. Artists know this to be true- you don’t create within a set of rules; instead you’re always pushing the boundaries to make more beauty. You try and try and remake and rebuild and reimagine things in ways to make beauty shine forth.

I’ve sat in enough Bible studies the past two decades listening to people debate law vs. grace. I’ve heard a litany of reasons why Christ-followers must have moral compasses, to be a good example to the world. But maybe we should give up those pursuits- the bone-exhausting trying and the nitpicking way of judging others and ourselves. Maybe we just need to get messy and create. Throw the rulebooks away and make beauty. Splatter paint colors of love on walls and floors and our clothes and see what emerges.

Beauty attracts wonder more than a book of rules ever will. Beauty makes us see and connect with awe to a loving Creator. Never in my life have I been more enamored by artistry. The skillful violinist dancing across strings that reverberate within my heart. The strokes of painters who have left us masterpieces to gaze upon. The words that flow like honey through poetry into my soul. The smell of a fresh cut orange as you squeeze it into a dish you’re about to savor. The outdoor world with it’s creatures and waters and plant life that we pass by, often without noticing.

There’s beauty everywhere rejoicing, pointing us to Creator if we would only get our heads out of the rule book. We don’t need to fill our buckets full of knowledge to dump on others, showing them how to perform. Piaget once said “Everytime we teach {someone} something, we keep them from inventing it themselves.”

If we want to see a revival, a people passionate about Christ, living out His love and grace, we must stop rule-making. The buzz word in our community is discipleship, but the way we go about discipling is laden with rules. We can’t make mini-disciples who follow the rules exactly how we do. Being right or being wrong is not what the gospel is about. We believe more in tearing down and arguing than we do in the Gospel. We spend our time teaching disciples apologetics, how to have an answer (read:argument) in all seasons. If defending our faith is all we have, then we’ve abandoned the work and worship of Jesus. We have missed the forest for the trees.

Jesus didn’t die to make us his defenders. He died to give us freedom and peace and joy- true beauty. We must follow Jesus’ lead in disciple-making. First, Jesus taught through parable and story, without giving clear cut guidelines, always giving the hearer freedom to make and create and invent. Secondly, Jesus never micromanaged his disciples. He breathed Spirit fire upon them and released them. That fire awakened them to beauty, as we can also awaken to beauty. Awakened, we see the undeniable Truth staring back at us. It’s in the eyes and heart of another human being where beauty exists. We are all worthy of love- a love that’s messy, creative and wonderful. That beauty and love is the only force capable of changing hearts, and thus, the world. May you have eyes to see…

Blog Military Life

Living In-TENSION-ally

No one can relate to feeling like a stranger in a foreign land more than the military family. While some of us quite literally have moved to foreign soil, we inevitably move to new duty stations every couple of years. We learn to be “Semper Gumby,” ever flexible and adjusting to different communities and cultures, different regions and climates. While it’s pretty incredible the government foots the bill to relocate our families for each adventure, PCS season comes with considerable fear and trepidation.

Boxes galore, paper in every form, little numbered stickers of many hues (because we never removed the last set), more pizza than you want to see ever again in your life. It’s here. Again. And for many, it leaves us bone-tired just thinking about it. Welcome to PCS season!

If you’re in the throes of this season, the stress and tension PCS creates are real. It takes a noticeable toll on families as we pack up life as we know it, watch our children say goodbye to their best friends, close out our obligations and have Hail and Farewells. We leave one place emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted, arriving at the new place with little rejuvenation. And when we set feet in the new land, we’re stuck between life as we knew it and the unknowns of what’s to come.
The tension of being out of place, in between homes or in a new place leads to varied reactions. First, we can separate from people, feeling the effort to get to know people is worthless since you’ll be ripped away again eventually. Or maybe you’re a “blender-“ you adapt to the people you’re in proximity with for a season, even if they’re totally different from your last crowd.

Problems arise from both dichotomy’s as we transition from one place to the next. Separating from people leads to isolation, which can lead to depression, anxiety and many other issues. Not to mention the practical things, like who’s gonna be your emergency contact at the CDC if you don’t get to know anyone? More costly, we lose our ability to influence our community with our gifts and talents when we isolate. We likewise forfeit this same influence when we blend in, being fearful to step out in faith and be the hands and feet of Christ.

As people of faith, though, we should be quite comfortable feeling like foreigners in a temporary land. We are sojourners together at the foot of the cross.When Jesus walked the earth, he didn’t separate from people and he didn’t blend in. Instead, He lived life in the tension. He loved people in their mess and mire. He engaged with doubters and sinners with humility and servanthood.
The same applies to us in our change of station- we have to get comfortable with the tension if we ever want to find the joy in military service. To live intentionally for us really means living in tension. Jesus, in all his righteousness, still inserted himself into the things of the world- the hurt, the pain, the suffering. And if you take a quick glimpse around our bases and units, boats and squadrons, housing community and clinics, the hurt, pain and suffering is ever present.
You have a mission, dear family, during this PCS and it’s simple: get in the tension of your community and be the hands of Christ.

Who’s sitting around your table, discussing the realities of faith and praying for you? Find those people at your new duty station. Many avenues exist to find them, such as base Chaplain programs, Chapel, PWOC, IF:Table, local military-friendly churches and the list goes on. Gather together with your people often, then go love your community. Be in-tension-al! Let’s change the atmosphere of our bases and be a people known by love, shining bright. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get into the hurt and pain and suffering in our community, while being ever sustained by faith, hope and love of a different Kingdom.

While we may not be pumped up to pack up and leave our friends and routines, homes and schools, we can look expectantly at the new places ahead, where the tension will be. It will be difficult. It might not always feel worthy. But we must find our people to encourage us to remember: this is a temporary home, like all the rest, and someday we’ll have a permanent residence, with no PCS orders to come. And I want the people I spend a few years with here and there to be in eternity with me. Can you imagine that block party? I’m down. Are you?

God knew how hard this calling would be for His people. So when the church was birthed in Acts, He emphasized the importance of community. He gave us his Spirit to dwell within us to enable us to have unity. To sustain in-tension living, we must also be devoted to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers (Acts 2:42). The early church was devoted to one another. They were aware of the happenings in their community because they lived in the tension. They met needs for one another and then they met needs outside in their local community. Sacrificial love happens in authentic community.

Blog Military Life

Hurry Up & Wait

As military families we are well acquainted with many colloquialisms. A favorite of mine is “hurry up and wait.” We understand waiting because it’s woven throughout the necessity of serving our Nation. Waiting goes along with the training, field operations or work up missions for the service member. And it’s no secret that families definitely learn to wait when deployment orders are executed. Four years of my life has been spent waiting on deployment to end!

We are familiar with waiting in lines with a number in hand for our turn to get an ID card, for our commissary deli meat order or for our prescriptions at the pharmacy. Even more nail-biting, we wait to see if we got seats on a Space-A flight! We wait regularly for gate traffic, medical referrals from our PCM, base housing availability or that EAS date.

We are people accustomed to waiting- masters, indeed! And yet most people would say one of the hardest things in this lifestyle is the WAITING. We hate to wait. It’d be so much easier to just *know* when homecoming will be, what’s our next address, if our spouse will achieve promotion, what school our children will transfer to. We like the sense of control knowledge gives to us.

We go to lengths to eliminate waiting from our everyday lives. We grab Chick-Fil-A from one event to the next because we don’t have time to wait. We snap pictures of life and upload them to social media- hello, INSTAgram. We like days without delays and moments without pause. But waiting will always exist no matter how many remedies we try to create to eliminate it- a reality most felt in the confines of this military life.

God has a lot to say about waiting, too. In fact, the scriptures are full of the theme of waiting. Moses waited40 years in the desert before helping Israel become free from Pharaoh. Joseph spent seven years in prison innocently before being exonerated from a crime he didn’t commit. Jesus even waited 30 years before entering public ministry.

When I’m in the thick of waiting for things, I always question the Lord. The first question is WHY do you make us wait? And most of the Christian answers I’ve heard are because God wants us to grow in trust or faith or endurance.

But what if waiting is less about the end result and more about the process?

Waiting is the ground where we commune with Christ. Jesus teaches about waiting in a well-known story called the Prodigal Son. (Unfamiliar? Google Luke 15:11-32) In the account, the Father prepared for his wandering squandering son’s return home after he cashed in his inheritance and traveled to far lands to have some fun. When the son eventually came home, broken both financially and emotionally, the Father threw a big party and served a fattened calf to the guests! But as the Father waited for his son’s return, He fed that calf, cared for it and helped it to grow until the feasting day arrived. Additionally, he kept his son’s robe and family ring when he left, resisting the urge to take it to Once Upon a Child for store credit. While He waited, the Father lived his life in patient expectation for the hope of throwing his arms around his son to welcome him home, placing his robe and signet ring back upon his beloved.

Maybe we wait because the Father in the story- who parallels God- waits. God wants us to go through seasons of waiting because he wants us to become more like Him. He is known as Patient and Long-suffering.

The season of wait you’re experiencing now, whether it’s your spouse’s return from deployment or work ups, for orders, for household goods, for restoration in your marriage… Whatever you are waiting for- God is waiting with you. He waits with you because He is in the waiting.

Waiting doesn’t have to be approached as fruitless or pointless or annoying- rather, it’s a stopgap in our hustle to encounter God. He is the gift during our times of waiting. Just as He fed the calf and grew it, He can feed our souls and grow us to greater maturity in our faith until the waiting ends and a new story unfolds. Waiting is a place of preparation and growth, where our character becomes less like me and more like Him.

Let’s not be swift in wishing waiting away, instead let’s press in and unwrap the love hidden in the process. We can wait like the Father in the story, because who doesn’t love a good story about a homecoming? Homecoming sings hope to our hearts after the long wait of deployment or training or PCS or rocky marriage seasons. Waiting beckons something deep- an emergent celebration of joy, a glimpse of the everlasting Kingdom. And at the end of the 3 missed anniversaries year after year, the Christmases apart, we can finally say “it was worth the wait!” Because He was with me when I was waiting and waiting made me more like Him.

Blog Musings

Perfectionist

Whether you’re into the Enneagram fad, or any other personality test out there, sometimes having insight into who we are can help to reveal greater truths buried within.

I am an Enneagram 1, and my biggest struggle is perfection, the root cause being pride. I learned young that if I could perform well, it pleased others and I received accolades. I skated through my youth and teen years as a perfectionist and it worked in my favor academically, socially and especially in my faith.

The more experience I gained in life, my perfectionism was just fed fuel to keep up the fire within. I thought highly of myself, my abilities and my place in life.

I was an exemplary wife, despite the fact that I pledged “I Do” as a teenage Bride and walked through some dark spots in my marriage. But my choices led to reconciliation and a changed husband (perfection bonus points, amiright?).

Even after dropping out of college to marry my 18 year old soldier, I went on in my education to earn my Masters degree. I excelled academically, putting forth little effort to write “A” papers and pass exams with flying colors.

I had my moments of waywardness as a young Christian but by my mid-20s I had built a reputation as a faithful woman in my church community. I could lead, teach, counsel and encourage with the best of them.

And once I became a Mom, I prided myself in being good at that, too. I eventually lead a local MOPS group and taught the other Moms how to be good, too.

In those moments I did the best with what I knew about myself. I did these things wholeheartedly, striving to love people and serve the Lord. But the truth is, I did it all in my own strength. I misrepresented the humble, loving, serving, giving Savior I proclaim. Because I was serving in my own strength, I’ve perpetuated lies the ”church” whispers- to wear masks, to act perfect and to give absolutely no grace. I counseled using theology and dogma and doctrine I believed to be RIGHT. I did biblical exegesis from a place of absolute certainty and not from a place of humility.

The hardest thing for a perfectionistic, prideful person to do is to make right wrongs. It’s a daily struggle still to just say sorry when I know I’ve hurt someone. Because the tape playing over and over in my mind tells me one truth: I’M AN UTTER FAILURE. And admitting that out loud, when I do indeed fail, is truly frightening.

Sure, you might see what my life looks like on the outside. You may have even benefited from my serving or loving or giving in the past, But I owe lots of apologies for not being surrendered in humility. Pride truly does come before the fall.

Reflecting on these moments in my life, I’m filled with shame. I remember sitting across from a friend broken by an unfaithful husband and saying the “Christian” thing was to stay married. I didn’t sit with her devastation. I didn’t encourage her worth as a person, apart from being a wife. I gave her a solution. And the more I know Jesus, I know this was dead.wrong. I didn’t weep with her as she wept. I did eventually apologize, but this was one example among many I could write about.

I’ve used perfection and being right to cover up the inner dialogue that tells me time and time again that I’m not good enough. That I am a failure. I’ve boasted in being ”not much of a worrier.” Who was I kidding? My entire inner life is fraught with fear.

Fear has kept me small. It’s kept me trapped to the inner dialogue that says I’ll fail. It keeps me wearing masks and giving pat Christian answers because it’s safe…because I’m afraid I’ll alienate or offend… because I’ll look dumb or uneducated. Because honestly, it’s easier than being vulnerable, spread wide open and having a bleeding heart. It protects me and keeps me safe.

My fear keeps me quiet.

But over the last year and a half, things have been changing in me. I unpacked some truth about who I really am. I looked at my darkness. I shut the shame tape off. My worth and value as a person has more to do with who I am than what I do. I am a human BEING, not a human doing. And I realize as I look back and see the dark moments, that those same experiences fuel the power of my light.

You see- I’m different than I was a couple years ago.

I’m more interested in humility than pride.

I’m more interested in sitting with someone coming from a heart of empathy than judging them with theology.

I want every message and teaching I lead to leave people feeling valued, and not ashamed.

I’m going to love and lead and create safe places for people by being vulnerable. By letting myself actually NEED Jesus instead of just being so self-sufficient.

I want to REHUMANIZE my life, my love, my relationships, my service. I stopped being so “Christian” and start being human. Jesus was FULLY God and FULLY human. For three decades every sermon, teaching, conference and revival message has told me how to be more GOD-LIKE. It’s time we start talking about how to be more human. Jesus entered our humanness, and I think there’s lessons and light to learn from being authentic instead of trying to be supernatural all the time.

Being human means I don’t have the answers to every doubter, theologian, apologist or relative. I’m finally at a place in life where I care more about relationships than I do about being right. I care more about people finding freedom, love and belonging than I care about being perfect.

My conclusion is simple: It’s time to rehumanize faith. There are countless hurting, broken, devastated people. Sitting in a pew on a Sunday morning isn’t enough to remedy the border crisis, the refugees, the wanderers, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the addicts, drunks and abused. We need to embrace who they are- humans made in the image of God- before they even come near to the cross.

We love because He first loved us. Let me- and you- go and do the same. Love first. Be vulnerable first. Know our own worth first. You cannot love your neighbor until you love yourself.