Prize Fighter

locked in a fight
to the death
she
would
win

on her own terms
not before a marathon of sparring rounds

she was too conditioned
her body beaten into everlasting strength and submission
for
any
other
outcome

many before her have duked with Life
they were bested, beaten down
worn down
ground down
grooved and weary faces told of every blow
leathered hands showed every feeble swing

but the only tail of woe
on her young face
was of an ill-kept corner
no one ready at the toll of the bell
to help
to bolster
no shoulder rub
no advice
no water

her face told the brutal reality
in the end, not even
her own cells, her own genetic frameworkers
were on her side

they trained her by accident
never seeing her
or their own hands swinging
toughening and hardening
without intent.
they sold her
down the river
too far


but she could read the stars
but she could sing the melody
hum the rhythm of freedom
chanted by the river

they reached higher up
by stepping on her crumpled body
and when Life threw a punch
the bone that had already exposed
she knew in each cell
that Life held nothing

because she'd already seen
had already survived and
she
still,
would
win.

Shoes

I went walking along the beach trying to find you,

The trials and burdens of this life heavy as the fog clinging to the shore.

I found your shoes by a driftwood shelter

Mockingly standing guard at a life you lived while I was trudging.

The sand seems to ever lay me down, slow me, tire me.

You come running as if oblivious of the dense, sinking sand.

Life shrouding your sure and confident body with uplifted butterfly wings.

Mommy!  Mommy!! Come quick!!  See what I found!!

You flitter close, then turn and run away

In excitement

In eagerness

I will get there my Love-- I am coming.

I fear I will evermore be too late, your shoes outgrown when I arrive

But I always, faithfully, am trudging to you Love, 

Bringing remnants of your past 

Silently bearing witness to the you You used to be, 

Back when I picked up your shoes

Old Turtle and the Broken Truth (It's a children's book, you should go get it, if for nothing else but the pictures are divine)

I'm a bit overprotective of a few things in this world.  Those of you who have ever seen me parent might be a bit surprised.  I'm generally hands-off, free-range, live-and-let-live kind of mentality.  My kids climbed on things (not furniture unless they wanted my wrath, but normal stuff) from a very young age interfered with.  I'll give directives, such as 'stop the rugby-play' but will rarely step in.  So the idea of hovering around and stepping in immediately about anything in particular is, in fact, very rare.  But there are a few things I think are just absolute.

I once saw an interview with a convicted child abuser.  The man said something that has never left me.  "I'm a murderer.  I killed who those girls would have become."

That's an absolute.  I protect, fiercely, the ideology that there is a spirit within each of us that needs to hear whole truths, absolute truths in order for us to become who we were supposed to be.

For example, I've been told that little girls want to be 'beautiful'.  The truth is that every single female alive is simply stunning, wholly captivating, and worth every single effort to shine in the world.  But the broken truths are that she must be a certain way, sound a particular rally cry, drum to a particular beat.  And there are those out there who would perpetuate these broken truths, sometimes meaning to but not necessarily, and that makes me angry...  because any truth that is partial, broken, halved is a wet blanket to a shivering and cold person.  Worse than useless; detrimental in ways the human eye can't always see.

I'm currently going through a Bible study at a friend's church with a group of women.  I don't know these ladies much at all.  Many are brand-new faces to me and since much of the time we are together is in guided discussion and then watching a video, I haven't gotten to know them.  But as we were watching the movie on a Monday night, I wanted to get up, pause the movie and take each and every single one of the young women's faces in my hands, meet their eyes and tell them they were hearing a broken truth deeply veiled in a particular perspective.  You see, each person has a perspective, which means every single person has their own personal truths.  Ones that may or may not transcend to others, but are no less completely accurate for them.  A person who has battled with depression may have a particular perspective on the word "crazy" that doesn't necessarily translate to the next guy, but in the midst of that struggle, "crazy" being offensive, wrong, humiliating is absolute truth... to her. And this is what I'm getting at.  There are absolute truths and then there are absolute truths for each one of us.  Turning my personal truth into universal, absolute truth... that's when the thing gets broken, twisted, maimed into a weapon.

I've participated in the creative process.  I've grown four sets of lungs, 40 tiny toes and eight beautiful eyes.  Each one of those babies was a complete miracle, and completely ordinary.  Both, absolute truths.

Growing up during a time when the machine that was the Evangelical Christian Conservative Movement during and post Billy Graham, I Kissed Dating Goodbye and short-term mission trips, I have a particular perspective.  A set of lenses through which I see the world.  And I'll be really honest, I have a passion for talking about and uncovering that perspective because I feel like I really do share a set of lenses that are very, very familiar to so many of my generation.  The difference for me is that I bought into and believed with every single nook and cranny of my fiber every single one of the broken truths that were fed to me.  And it bit me so hard in the ass I haven't been able to sit for years.

I was trying to explain a topic-who-lacks-vocabulary to a friend who didn't grow up in the The Machine.  To her, "kissing dating goodbye" holds no meaning.  She doesn't conjure up sacred promises made between young girls and their fathers in solemnity and solidarity with other fathers and daughters.  The "purity movement" doesn't make her taste the guilt of wearing soccer shorts that some mother 'tsssk' at because they were too short, too tight, or worse, too big and baggy so that underwear can be seen when the girl slide-tackled.  "Doesn't she realize there are boys around who could see that!?!"  And in all these conversations, I find myself identifying more and more with the Apostle Paul, who was the most Jewish of all Jews, but spent his ministry among the Gentiles.  He knew the words, the terminology but he also had discovered a rooting, a grounding when he saw his world through a new set of lenses, in what was and was not important.  If you look at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, you'll see him calling out the leaders who demand from the Gentiles what they themselves could not deliver.  Broken truths, from the beginning.  And here's the thing, I fully understand how those Pharisee converts completely thought that everyone would come to Christ the way they did, understanding religious words as they did and practicing faith the way they did.  When you're so in the truth of your own perspective, it's hard to see that another vantage point might look differently.  More than hard, it can often be impossible.  Time and time again, across history, we see factions breaking off because personal truth and perspective is taken up as the ONLY perspective, the ONLY truth.

And that space, right there, that's where I get that rubbing, raw feeling.  I have experienced that interaction between personal truth and projected absolute truth.  I see it and I want to protect others from it.  Much like those young women in that Bible study room.  I want to take their faces in my hands, look them directly in the eyes, and say, "Don't be scared, that is her perspective, her truth. Your's may or may not be the same experience."  I once heard a sermon where the pastor kept coming back to the idea of before the fall of the Tower in Babel and after.  Before, everyone did the same thing, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, engaged in the world in the same way because they had to.  Uniformity of faith through conformity of deeds.  You want to paint?  Too bad, we're making bricks.  And after the tower fell, it was uniformity of faith through diversity.  Because we have to remember, after, there were many languages after those bricks came down, so people had to find someone, anyone who understood them.  Factions arose instantaneously because they had to, out of survival.  But that didn't mean the God of their faith was different, it meant that the expression of that faith was.  There's this video that I love going around facebook right now that has more than a dozen artists singing in just as many languages singing the same song of worship.  And some randomly crazed part of me wants to defend every last breath of THE TRUTH that is the whole, not just part.

Give your all to Jesus and He'll see to your every need.  Absolutely, but that means give your all to Jesus, not to a church or pastor or organization or mantra.  Jesus.  Have discernment, excersize it regularly everywhere else.  

Save yourself for marriage.  Yes, absolutely save the best parts of who you are for your spouse! Save the best, most vulnerable side of your heart, the soft sides of your personality, the deeply held beliefs and convictions, not just what's between your legs.  

Fill yourself, your time, your energy with good and holy endeavors.  Fill your life with Beauty and Love and Light and Ebenezer Stones, things that remind you of the awe-some-ness of the creation around you, because it will remind you of the AWEsome Creator who made it.  That doesn't mean only "christian" it means lovely, edifying, beautiful, and revelatory.  Things that make you pause and give glory back to the Father of Lights, even if that's a new relationship with a mom from your son's kindergarten class who speaks so little English that it's a battle to get one thought across but you see Glory in each fight or a five year old screaming the words to "Shut Up and Dance With Me." 

God gives us trials to act as the 'refiners fires'.  Oh Jesus, I know you have put things in my path (ahem, that crazy biology teacher in high school) to test and prove me, show me gaps in my theology and heart.  But, I also know the arch of so many repeated stories in holy and non-holy books.  Some trials are from above, some are... not.  Yes, trials CAN come from you (just like I can put the trail and inhumanity of cleaning up his toys to my son), but they don't ALL come from you.  You can turn mourning into joy and you can sit in my dark pit, but you are not the source of all my pain.  Some choices would NEVER HAVE BEEN your Plan A for my life.  Never. 

There are a lot of broken truths that I've come face to face with over the years, many of them in the most brutal of ways.  Many, I'm still fighting to find words for.  But I know this, the brokenness in these truths mirrors the brokenness I see in most evangelical churches.  And it hurts me.  I want to protect the Church, the Church's witness... her reputation, but when all the little individual churches and people cling and fight for their truth to be designated as THE truth... I hurt.  I ache.  I bleed.

Not so long ago that I don't still know all the days between here and there, I was pummeled by the very real, very physical reality that nothing lasts forever.  It's not all that I hoped it would be and yet, it was a dream come true.  I have been told from more than a few people that I need to "move on" and "get over it" but MY truth is that I'm glad I can't, I'm glad I haven't, I'm glad I know in my marrow I never will.  I, in a sense, married a church and what happened  was a divorce, a widowhood, a death.  I would never go to a friend and say she needed to "get over" her divorce, she needed to move on from burying her husband.  I'm learning to live and move in a new way, because that is the only way to keep living.  But in the raw space of deep need, I've been confronted with so many of these broken truths.  Much like partially softened sea glass, normally they won't cut or hurt, but when put to new flesh, baby soft, they can and will cut.

Skin in the Game

In June, I got a birthday present.  My birthday is in January, my mother has forgotten it more times than remembered, and presents have always been rare.  But in June, I got a birthday present.  A dear family I've known since I was six... the mom, the dad, the oldest daughter (my age), the youngest daughter (hubs recruited her to our alma mater) and her husband... they let me join them.

I was so excited I went to the house half an hour too early, just for a few extra minutes of hugs and excitement.  We drove to the transit train, went into the city.  All six of us found our seats on the balcony and sat while our very pores soaked up the amazing musical Hamilton.

This is one of those musicals where, if you want, you can really steep yourself in it: the history, the lyrics, the sheer enormity of it all, for a good long time.  I'm steeping.  Have been even before watching.  But there's a line that seems to catch in my throat, almost like a sob.

When you got skin in the game, you stay 

in the game.  But you don't get a win 

unless you play the game. 

-HAMILTON The Room Where It Happens

I'm in the game.  All in.  I spent my childhood trying to mask where I was coming from, trying to be who I thought THEY needed me to be... not my parents, but the ones I thought might actually care. When THEY kicked me to the curb, said I was useless and therefore not worthy of any of THEIR time or compassion, I sat down, reevaluated.  

And here I am, sitting, homeless and with four kids but I see the game.  The Game of Life... and I have skin in this game.  I'm not throwing away my shot.  I wonder how many think they're playing the Game, following the rules and collecting the points, only to realize later, somewhere down the line, the Game wasn't played on the gameboard... and they wasted all their time on the gameboard.

I've got skin in the game, so I stay in the game.  I'm fighting, cajoling, tooth-and-nail-scraping and I'm deeply, deeply satisfied with what I'm turning up.  

Now that I'm not doing life as it's "supposed" to look-- house, kids, car, school, activities... now that I'm homeless by choice, wandering, by choice, with absolutely nothing that on paper ticks any of the boxes of successfully living an adult life... now, now I'm finding contentment again. 

The family stopped at Mt. Rushmore on our way between what we wanted to do and what we had to do.  The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, told the workers who went 'up and over' to chisle the mountain face that they needed to close their eyes and feel with their hands the way the model felt; then feel the rock they were carving until the two matched.  

When I look at life with my eyes, no matter how hard I try, I can't stop seeing life without the lenses of could and should and would.  But with my eyes closed to the mandates and edicts of society, I feel with my hands the model of the master.  My rock isn't carved yet, but this way of playing the Game, with my eyes closed, feeling with my gut the tuggings and pullings of my own heart... it's working for me.  

Moral Licensing

American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once penned the words, "Wisdom enough... is daily spun; but there exists no loom to weave it into fabric."

Without a storyteller, many parts of history, or humanity, stay stuck as random and misconstrued, or worse still, completely unevaluated events.  Fabric unwoven, disjointed, without purpose.   For me, my truth is that everything IS indeed connected.  Storytellers, loom-weavers, mystics who put context and texture to the facts; these are the people who inspire me.  

During one of the episodes of the Revisionist History podcast, Malcolm Gladwell, the narrator, explains that moral licensing is what can happen when barriers are broken.  In the particular story he was speaking to, moral licensing was being specifically used with women being allowed into a "man's world."  He talked about how getting "in" can be logistically impossible, and also how having one female let into the "club" didn't mean that a precedent had been set.  What can happen is that people feel they have proven their own open mindedness and then feel the moral latitude to go back to a biased and narrow view.  The story is exceptional, but there was a part that profoundly spoke to me.  It connected a documentary I'd watched a few months back on the passing of the 19th Amendment for the right for women to vote.  The connection was in a simple phrase that Elizabeth Butler Thomas (an artist) wrote in her memoirs about how she missed being elected into the Royal Academy by two votes, missed it and "rightly so."  When the ratification of the 19th Amendment came down to one state assembly, in heated debates, many of the loudest voices against women voting were women themselves.  So beaten down and entrenched in the dogma of their culture-- that they were lesser, that these women defended the very institution that held them in half-status.  Modern psychologists might allude to Stockholm Syndrome or some such, but for me, it feels more.  Deeper.

As if the very idea of facing a world where there are two choices, and the lesser of the two choices were taken, was too bleak and too dark a reality to face.  So the loudest defense of the "rightness" of one is made so fervently that the quickened heartbeats and sweat brimmed brows can be ignored.   How can you live in a world that chose to be so willingly cruel to you by gender, economy, religion, ethnic or any other standard unless, of course, you are wrong? Faced with that choice, then, the world itself, it's rules and regulations weren't cruel at all.  That world was right.  That world was just.  That world has the correct answer-- it is as it is because it should be as it is.

Except...

Expect Huckleberry Finn realized his world condemned Jim and he said: "All right right then, I'll go to hell."

Except Atticus Finch sees the "justice" around him and still tells Scout:  "Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

Except Reverend Msimangu sees his world and says:  "But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power."

Except Turner Buckminster III sees the town and it's prejudices and thought:  "I almost touched a whale."

Except Jacob sees his world where the oldest is exalted and the younger forgotten, and crosses his hands and said:  "I know, my son, I know."

Tradition of Daily Bread

To raise children in a land not your own, keeping to your own distinct heritage and traditions, your own identity is pretty brutal.  But when the traditions, heritage, the very identity is less a noun and more a verb, it becomes more than brutal, it becomes nearly impossible.

For three decades, I've had a tawdry affair with the organized evangelical church.  I've put on my best face, the church itself has been showy and loud, but ultimately, the organization has proved cheap, of little or no substance, and easily broken, and I end up with a broken mask and shattered heart.  Thing is, I'm not cheap.  I'm not easily broken.  My LORD is not cheap and He most certainly isn't easily broken.  All the time and energy spent trying to be showy, cheap, trying to be of lesser quality than I really am has nearly crushed my very soul.  But I, for a whole lot of reasons myself and others like me who grew up as a kind of breech in the gap between Billy Graham and his holy crusades and the current reality of the world, have managed to claim and identify with the scattered diaspora of the first century.  It doesn't feel like there are many who are in this Babylon with me, but I know there are.  Like Little Foot in The Land Before Time, there is family out there, somewhere, I just have to muster the energy and courage to find it.

But finding that family, searching out, especially on days like today, seems monumental.  If I want my children to understand and be brought up into their identity as followers of a rabbi who lived and taught centuries ago, then died a criminal's death and was raised for the redemption of all humanity... if I am to raise my children up as threads in the fabric of THAT story then I have to make it through days like today. I have to cling to the culture and tradition handed down to me, the one I've seen, the one I've tasted, the one that instilled bone-level theology in word, deed, and song.  Theology that, like Abram, understands intuitively the name of Yahweh generations before Yahweh named Himself to Moses.

We lived in South Africa for what was such a short and far-too-brief time.  I have been unable to replicate so very many priorities about the life and culture there that sang the song of my heart, the song of my Savior.  I just didn't have enough time with the stories to memorize them, I didn't have enough time with the beauty and the food and the warmth and the people to retrace each recipe, follow each wrinkled furrow.  Being raised in the evangelical, white, anglo-saxon church in America did not form in me a deep, gut-level theology; it formed in me prejudices and biases that I have spend years and years untangling.  And the last few years have personally been some of the darkest days of my soul. One blessed thing I was given, or rather I think my marrow understood in a way that was impossible for my conscience brain to comprehend, is that I was part of a story, a tradition that went in when everyone else was running out.  A tradition that said it's not enough to just be saved and let God's grace, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart for another time, another place.  Because being saved by grace and then just waiting for death isn't enough.  The holiness tradition I was raised in fell away from itself, it went to the suburbs, it wanted and chased after the pictures of the "good life" being projected by the American culture.  But what my young heart heard, what was formed into me in a way I'm only beginning to scratch the surface of, is that God is BIG and grace breaks out INTO humanity.  It's not enough that we can go behind the curtain. He had to rip it into two and let His goodness break out INTO THE WORLD.

This is the tradition I'm raising my children into.  And like South Africa, I didn't have enough time.  My experience is so limited.  It's not enough to know the songs, say the Bible verses.  It's not enough to sit back and be an observer because "I'm just waiting out the storm until Christ calls me home."  It's not enough to form a holy huddle down in the cellars and let everyone and everything else pursue the visions they have of the Good Life.  It's not enough to just be Abram and be wonderously called out to literally go forth and become yourself.  He had to go, he couldn't stay in the same place with the same expectations as before that holy encounter which took him into his own story and the story of the people of faith, globally.

A pastor I love dearly used to work in Pasadena, California.  He spoke once about some Armenian folk in his congregation and how the body of Armenians would bake homemade pita bread, make hummus, sing the songs, tell the stories, and call their young people into the fabric of what it means to be Armenian even in the midst of living an exiled life in a foreign land.  The word picture was to literally weave their lives into the tapestry of the larger Armenian story.

Donal Trump was elected president today.  There is no doubt in my mind that America can no longer be called a religious nation, and by extension, there can be no assumption of religiosity or faith from anyone.  I don't care what religion you follow, HE is not the one who embodies any of what your religion holds up.  His siren's call is to wealth and power at all cost, taking and taking and taking because it can be taken.  Like a mob who loots stores during a crisis, he doesn't take out of need or to prove an ideological point; he takes because it's there. It's.  There.  He takes money, he takes land,  he uses and abuses the environment, women, he takes dignity.  He takes because IT. IS. THERE.  I know of no religion that says greed by all measures is good, let alone justified. Not a single one.  Which means, whatever religion you follow, this country isn't with you.  

There is a prayer in Proverbs 30 that says, Take emptiness and lying speech far from me, and do not give me poverty or wealth. Give me a living sufficient for me or I may feel satisfied and deny you... or I may become poor and steal and give the name of my God a bad reputation. 

What will our traditions be?  What will be the anthem we choose to sing?  What loom will we use to show our children how to weave themselves into the tapestry of their day and age?  What will be the constant undercurrent hemming in all of their decisions? Wealth?? Money?? Power??  The pursuit of taking because it is there?  Or the tradition of poetry in action?  The generations of blessing by being a blessing.  Will the children yearn for the taste of cheap, selfish and flashy or will they remember the simple pita and hummus of their youth?  or for my children, will my lighting candles to remember the God who brings hope and love and peace and joy into the world, will my homemade yogurt and granola... will it be enough??  Will there be enough family members that we find along the way to help raise up my children in the ways they should go?  I'm a kick-ass mom, but I know that I am not enough.  Not even close.  I know that for my children, for any children, to know their own identity and to let that identity inform who they are takes more than me.  For my children to become their own Abraham while still living as Abram, to live into their own inheritance, it's going to take more than cheaply denouncing that they're American, therefore they're Christian.  Will enough people who hold their heartstrings be sitting at the table to make them want to come in, sit, and eat of the broken body, the shed blood?

The tradition I want my children to be raised up in is this-- to act with justice, to treasure the LORD's gracious love, and to walk humbly in the company God.  I'm not Armenian, I'm not an evangelical christian.  I want no part of America. To say I identify with this idea of being a stranger in a strange land would be a gross understatement of reality.  I have no home, and I know I never will again feel safe enough to really put down roots.  Not until I see heaven.  But I'm not waiting for that great and glorious day.  It's too great a thing for my LORD and Savior to have laid down His life for me, so I cannot just sit and bide my time until He comes again.  My focus right now is simply trying to raise my children in the ways of my God, in the ways of my spiritual ancestors, in the ways that seem on this dark day to be lost forever.  Last Saturday, at a Jewish temple nearby, it was the part of the Jewish calendar where the story of Noah was read.  It's a big deal for the community as the children are more present during this particular scripture reading than others because there are animals and boats and, I don't know, it's a kids' story??  Honestly, I still have no clue what's going on most of the time.  Yet I go.  I go because it's beautiful.  I go because it's a safe place to ask questions.  I go because no one there pretends to have all the answers.  I go because my rabbi talks simply, poetically about life and faith and God in a way that my heart finds to be water to my very parched soul.  I go because I get to wear a prayer shawl, which I was once told to picture as a warming hug, from all the worshiping Jews of today, and all the Jews who came before.  A warming hug.  Poetic and yet, so very tangible and powerful when you feel lost, without tethering, without any sense of an anchor to the soul talked about Hebrews beyond the ideological.  Shabbat came with kids everywhere, it was basically trying to herd cats throughout the entire morning and there was a man who was part of the Torah reading, an official part of the service.  He stood, in his Sabbath best, with his kippah and prayer shawl, fulfilling his duty within his community. His small son crawled up to him and started fussing at his ankles.  Without skipping a beat, the dad bent down and picked his son up, enveloping him, head uncovered and shoulders bare, in his own prayer shawl, thus making the child acceptably dressed for the worshiping space he was inhabiting.  When the child started fussing again, the mother tried to get him but it was very clear the only thing this boy wanted was mom and dad together, with him.  So the man once again opened his prayer shawl and covered his family within the confines of his robes... his own snapshot of where poetry, tradition, culture and generations collided in real space, real time.  This is the song I want my children to sing for years and years to come.  This is the tradition I place priority in passing onto my children.  This is the siren I strain my ears to hear the undeniable call of; that there is enough room under the banner of Christ for everyone-- father, mother, young, old, white, black, slave to sin or aware and working out the salvation of freedom through the grace of God... like the Syrophoenician woman intuited, like my heart understood, like so many are coming face-to-face with in light of Tuesday's outcome, there is room at the table for everyone.  Period.  

There.  
Is.  
Room.  

The question is not is there room.  The question is, do you want to sit?  Do you want to keep the story of the culture that is undeniably calling you to take and take and take?  Or do you want the burdens of wealth and fame, security and status to fall away?  Do you want a "living sufficient"... or as another translation puts it, do you want only your daily bread?

The Right to Speak First

There is a critical point in an argument, not an every day argument but the kind that tears at the actual fabric of your being; the point when you know speaking will do more harm than good.  A spouse realizes the only words left to say are, "divorce?" and a parent is left with only a screaming, "get out!!!" to an insolent teenager.  The point where moving, even an inch: one moan, one utterance, and that's it.  Game over.

So many times during my life in christendom I heard story after story about how "God was silent" in the pain and the hurt and the suffering.  I heard the anger and bitterness behind those moments of silence.  But in the last few years, my God has been silent, and for that, I'll be forever thankful.  No grand displays of splendor and omniscience, just the tide of life ebbing and flowing-- waxing, waning, constant and always changing.  As if He knew that a whisper would send me over the proverbial edge, past the point of no return.  As if, in building and forming my soul He memorized each of the kill-switches in their exact order, and once a particular chain of events was set off that landed me here instead of there, He knew.

Silence.

No sudden movements.

Everything else is moving, everyone else screaming, shouting.  But from Him, no noise.  No words.

Don't.

Spook.                                                                           

Her.

I struggle every day to scratch and claw my way out of the dark depression that is my reality.  It is very rare for me to wake up and have a good day, to be able to get out of bed without fighting a dozen battles before my feet even touch the hard wood floors.  And this morning, I woke up happy.  I woke excited.  My whole house was quiet, the kids still asleep, Todd blissfully snoring, and I was looking forward to a moment.  Life in christendom (think Stepford Wives here folks, christendom as the place you move into where everything has a specific way it should and shouldn't be) is prescribed.  For a thousand reasons that I mostly understand and generally feel can be helpful and beneficial, they are prescribed.  But just as quoting to someone who has just lost a baby Jeremiah 29:11 isn't helpful, might even be harmful; sometimes, those "prescribed" advanced directives aren't always helpful, might even be harmful.  And today, as I woke early, grabbed my Bible and my new women's Bible study book to sit and do my "devotional time with Jesus" that's "highly recommended" and part of a "spiritually disciplined life" my joy, my happiness, my fleeting moment of feeling like ME evaporated like a puff of smoke in the coastal breezes.  It all felt so cheap, so sterilized, so out of the big, messy context that is my reality, my life.

I'm trying, ever so hard to get my stuff together.  To do the things I'm supposed to do.  My therapist and I made a check list.
1. Feed children when they're hungry
2. Clean underwear for the family
3. Make friends
4.  Do normal things- go to the park, make coffee dates, hang a picture, plant something, etc

I've worked through my check list.  My kids are always fed, I do the laundry, I've gone through the agonizing process of making friends, not just acquaintances but good friends.  I go to the park every day during the school year and most days during the summer.  I go out.  I decorate my house.  I've even planted shit.  But my life isn't any more put together right now than it was the moment I stepped on that plane to leave my country and my people and myself.  My life LOOKS fine, but it's not.  My Bible study LOOKS fine-- every blank is filled in, all the answers and thoughtful questions dutifully written down, but it's not fine.  Because I'm still in that argument.  I'm still standing on the brink of no return.  I'm still in a yelling match between myself and my faith family, with Jesus caught in the middle.  My faith is too simple, too basic for most of mainstream evangelical christendom.

I love Jesus because He loved me first.

That's.

It.

And no one else seems to get that.  No one else seems to understand, and in that lack of understanding, harm is being done.  Except the One who created me, the one who knows I need to speak first, I need to ask the questions, I need to make the first move.  Don't distract from the task at hand.  The battle against the Powers and Principalities is vicious and brutal, and sometimes, looks an awful lot like a staring contest.  And He knows me, He knows that, and He's staying quiet... and that gives me permission to stay quiet; stay quiet and fight with everything in me to no look away first, not blink, not give in to the bitterness and anger and rage that would be able to consume me, heart and marrow.

He gave everything for me, including the right to speak first.

And He sits quietly, not moving, not speaking, letting me BE in the midst of my battle.  So I can focus and fight, not being distracted because He knows and I know that if left to the two of us, He and I will win.  So I quiet the anger at the simplistic and categorical Bible study that reduces the God of the universe to a simple one-liner.  I linger in the silence of the song that says I'm a "friend of God" when I don't want a friend, I want a thousand things, but friend is not one of them.  He sits, quietly, and lets me be quiet... because He knows the plans He has for me... and He will work all things to His good, according to His will, and right now, that means Brittany gets to chose when it's time to speak, and He'll stay silent until the time is ready.