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.