NOTE: The audio of my reading of this post is at the bottom. Thanks for reading (or listening).
It is whole, not a tooth mark on it. This is some kind of magic—because I ate from the fruit yesterday—and every day before. Yet it re-appears, beautiful and enticing, just as it was when Eve first considered it.
She ate it to the core. Why is it still here?
And why do I keep eating it?
It is sweet to the taste, that first bite, exploding with flavor in my mouth, but then it sits, acidic and heavy in my gut, and I regret my choice every time.
Yet, like Eve, I daily eat the fruit. The desire to set my own standards, to be MYSELF (separate from God) and for everything to be about ME, to be in control… oh, it lures me in.
It sounds like it’s promising LIFE, doesn’t it?
False advertising. LIFE would not burn so. LIFE would not eat away at my gut, eat away at me.
Yet I cannot stop myself.
I hunger!
I need. I am not complete.
I am empty.
“Eat it. Be like God. See. Know.” The whisper enchants. It flows with the rhythm of my blood. I cannot tell if it is within or without. All I know is my emptiness.
But this fruit fills it full with dark.
“Take, eat.”
Another voice.
Another food.
A morsel of bread, torn, crushed.
It does not delight the eye. It does not entice the taste.
“This is My body, broken for you.”
I recoil. To take this means I admit this lack within me. I allow Another in to witness it, to fill it—with Someone other than me.
NOTES: 1. If anyone reading this is a poet and has suggestions (and would be willing to share them), I would LOVE to hear them. 2. Because I don’t really feel this is “finished,” I didn’t record this one.
This picture has no relation to today’s post, but I’m reminding myself–as it was only 12 degrees when I woke up this morning–that the time of screen doors and beautiful green crickets clinging to them will come!
I sat on his bed to kiss him goodnight and saw it the moment his head turned toward me.
His lips were pinched, his eyes hard.
“What’s the matter, Bud?” I asked.
His voice had an edge as he reminded me that the birthday party we’d talked about a month ago has not yet happened. “You said we might do it this weekend,” he accused.
Never mind that he has just spent more than twenty-four hours with a best friend.
Never mind that we’d never done more to plan the party than simply talk about it.
Never mind that I’d told him several days ago that the party would not happen this weekend—we simply had too much going on.
He was so focused on self that gratitude and perspective—logic, too—had fled.
I could completely identify.
“You’re miserable, aren’t you?” I asked him.
The flat look stayed a second more but then slipped. He nodded.
We prayed together, and I reminded him of all the “never mind’s.” We talked about all the good he’d experienced this weekend, and the things we could be thankful for in that very moment.
Suddenly his small chest rose and fell with a great breath, and he smiled at me.
I smiled back. “It feels good to let it go, doesn’t it?”
I told him then I have the same, awful struggle, and sometimes I imagine SELF (or rather the focus on self) to be like a coiled kitten deep in my gut. When it slumbers, it seems harmless, so I pet it a little, and it raises its head. I continue to stroke it, and it rises higher, higher. Still all seems well, but then it stands on hind legs and hooks its needle-sharp claws into my heart.
And I am overcome.
“Why don’t they see what I’m doing?”
“It wouldn’t hurt them to be just a little grateful!”
“Well, I did that for her. Shouldn’t she do something in return?”
“All I do is clean up (cook/work/drive/do) for everyone else.”
“Don’t they notice all I’m doing?”
“When is someone going to do something nice for ME? When is it MY turn?”
“How is this going to affect me?”
The thoughts bombard, and I can’t stop them. I am miserable in my self-focus, but I’m also powerless to do anything about it. I try to pull the claws from my heart, but as soon as I get one free, another is entangled, and they keep sinking deeper and deeper! I realize what I thought was a harmless kitten is in actuality a tiger, fierce and strong, with not a hint of give in its eyes.
“That’s why we had to pray,” I told my son. “We can’t fight the tiger in our own power. We have to come to Jesus and tell Him we need Him. I have to keep re-learning this very lesson.”
Dave was watching football while grading papers (a common Sunday afternoon for him). I stopped as I walked by because a commercial caught my eye.
Scene: a man sits at the foot of his immaculate bed at the end of his day. He slips off his work shoes and then his socks. He sits there, socks dangling from one hand. Voice over says, “Just as Phil is about to drop his socks on the floor, as he does every evening, something occurs to him for the very first time: The clothes hamper is only four feet away, straight across from him.” Phil then leans forward and tosses the socks in the hamper. The camera pans to a woman just about to walk into the bedroom. Voice over: “Proving to Phil’s wife that miracles really can happen.” Her jaw falls slack, the shot holds for another beat and then fades to an Illinois State Lottery logo.
I howled with laughter.
Howled.
Dave raised his eyebrows at me, with a look that said, “Please tell me you don’t identify with that woman because I am NOT a slob, and if you tell me I am, I will have to remind you that I—yes, I—cleaned up after YOU in the early days of our marriage.”
When I finally stopped laughing, I said, “It’s not because it’s the husband. I mean, they could easily do it from the opposite point of view, wife for husband. Plus, for me, this is not really about you. Just think of all the things the kids do that could have been used for this commercial. I mean, if I went in the kitchen and found that someone had actually put the clean pots and pans away, I would think our house had been broken into by someone who was trying to stock their kitchen!”
He laughed then, too, and we brainstormed a couple together, but I decided to journal a longer list that, were they to change, I might just consider that a miracle:
I open the cereal cupboard to find not one but two (and sometimes three) open boxes of the same exact cereal. When I look into them, I see why. There’s a little bit of cereal at the bottom of one bag. Rather than finish it off and have to actually deal with the empty box, “whoever” just opened a new box.
Use #1 above and apply it to the last bit of leftovers in the fridge, the final slosh of milk in the bottom of the gallon, etc.
I open the under-sink cupboard to put trash in the kitchen can and find it is overflowing. No one besides my husband and I seem to ever think of actually emptying the overflowing kitchen trash can—or at least pushing down the debris. Rather they all try to balance trash on top so they don’t have to “touch it—eww!”
Apply #3 to the recycling bin.
I find empty toilet paper tubes on the holder—with a new roll half-unrolled on the floor next to the toilet. (To be honest, they’re getting better about this.)
“Mo-om, where’s my…?” I walk into the room and discover it’s three feet to their left.
I change the kids’ sheets (confession: I don’t do that very often!) and learn the bed has become a dresser. Missing socks underneath the covers, t-shirts between the pillow and headboard, jeans stuffed behind the mattress.
The top rack of the dishwasher is stuffed full—while the bottom is nearly empty, EXCEPT for the first compartment in the silverware container—which is bristling with forks, spoons, and knives stuffed in all directions! Reason: it’s more effort to actually bend over to put things in the bottom rack, and—in the case of silverware, which obviously can’t go in the top—it’s easier to pull out the bottom rack just a little bit.
In the transition time from summer to fall, when the temperature outside is suddenly colder than inside, I find open doors, open doors, open doors. “Close the door!” Don’t know how many times I holler that.
10. Clothes on the floor. Doesn’t matter how often I make my boys clean them up (and I fuss the whole time), they STILL simply drop their clothes onto the floor when they change.
11. I KNOW I did this when I was a kid (and I have to remind myself of this often), but why is it that kids can take something out of its accustomed spot and never, ever, ever think of putting it back there when they are finished with said item. Then, when they need it again, they go back to the accustomed spot and assume that it will be there. (What do they think it is, magic?)
12. Question: “Mom, where are my shoes?” Answer: “Where you left them.” Question: “Where did I leave them?” Answer: “How on earth would I know?” (But I usually do L).
13. Soggy cereal in the sink. Don’t know why—but a pet peeve and one of the few things that gross me out.
14. “What’s for dinner?” I think this question should be banned for anyone who isn’t planning on contributing in some way to the dinner.
Oh, kids! Gotta’ love ‘em! And we gotta’ laugh, right?
For years I taught the short story plot graph to middle and high school students. You first encounter the exposition—where you meet everyone and discover the setting. Then a conflict is introduced—things get exciting. The action rises (called “rising action”—surprise!) and culminates in the climax! (Trust me—I know that high school boys get the innuendo.) Then there is falling action and the resolution. Some stories have a denouement (a French term I was never sure I pronounced correctly), which is like an afterward—the “____ years later” addition to stories. (I love denouements).
Last fall my good friend Susanna visited. She’s in her first job, working as a third-shift ER nurse, and we talked about how she often leaves so many “stories” unfinished when her shift ends at 11 in the morning, before the doctors or social workers or psychiatrists see the patients admitted during the wee hours of the morning. “Often, all I’ve done is stabilize them,” she told me. “I never hear what happens with them unless they come in again.”
We talked about what that does to our souls when we continually leave stories (the real ones that people live) unfinished. Susanna doesn’t like doing this with her patients, and the stress of constantly living in the rising action of her patients’ hospital stories often makes her weary and numb.
But we also talked about the human tendency to exit stories before the ending or to dream about entering other, more exciting stories.
Susanna and I both have this tendency. We like traveling to needy places, and we’re constantly intrigued by the thought of going someplace new/doing something new.
Part of that desire is driven by the instinct to live only the more exciting half of the story, to move on when the action is no longer rising, when a climax is not around every turn.
To live out full stories, though—through the falling action, into the resolution, even past the denouement—requires determination and commitment.
I think of child-rearing—particularly when the child has a special need or illness or trauma;
Nursing older parents—especially when the years of diminishing ability or memory stretch long;
Marriage past the honeymoon stage;
Keeping the same job when the promotion offers begin passing us by.
These long-term stories sometimes seem short on excitement and long on the daily grind.
Until trauma hits! Then we remember the daily grind with nostalgia. “Oh, if I could only have that again,” we think. “I wouldn’t complain about …”
But when we are in the doldrums of our long stories, excitement beckons. We get weary. We long for … something. We forget that God has put us right in the middle of these stories for a reason. We forget that every daily grind moment has purpose and how we live these times affects the Story-at-Large. We may never know the hows or the whys or the specific effects, but we can know these times have meaning.
No connection to today’s post–I just like the look of joy on Mad’s face.
I went to a women’s service at our church yesterday. For two days I’d wrestled with a strange melancholy. I’d tried and tried to understand it, but couldn’t. I’d searched my soul, confessed the self-focus I saw, and asked the Holy Spirit to reveal other issues. I’d looked at the level of my mommy martyrdom—yes, there was some, but it wasn’t high enough to explain my strange sadness. I thought of things going on around me: my renewed research on sex trafficking, a friend going through a very difficult time, the transition to being a mom of a teenager…
Nothing jumped forward as a principal cause.
I tried reminding myself that others were dealing with horrible losses and troubles. They had real reason to be sad. I did not.
That didn’t help.
Is it all right to sometimes not know the reasons for our lows? Is it all right to simply be sad sometimes without clear cause?
I think it might be, if only because of the ways the Lord ministered to me yesterday morning without my ever learning the why and what of my mood.
The speaker for our service had chosen II Chronicles 20 as the text. King Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah knew a great enemy was coming against them. They chose not to trust in their own might or in the might of allies. Instead, they turned to God. They fasted and prayed and cried, and finally Jehoshaphat stood in front of his people and said, “Oh, Lord, we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (vs. 12b).
Well, I’m not really faced with a decision right now, but the not-knowing certainly fits me right now, I thought.
At the close of the service, we sang “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” by Horatius Bonar, one of my favorite hymn writers.
I heard the voice of Jesus say
Come unto Me and rest
Lay down thy weary one
Lay down thy head upon My breast
I came to Jesus as I was
Weary, worn, and sad
I found in Him a resting place
And He has made me glad.
It was as if the Holy Spirit whispered the words to my heart. Weary?—yes. Worn and sad?—yes, yes. I didn’t know why (still don’t) and that’s all right.
Because, finally, when I rested and simply said, “I’m sad, Lord. I don’t know why. Here’s my sorrow,” He gave rest to my soul.
And He made me glad.
*The second and third stanzas of the hymn are truly beautiful as well. Here’s the link. And if you’d like to hear/sing it, here’s a Youtube video with words and music.
Sorry for the poor photo quality, but I took this on my phone on an early-morning jaunt a couple weeks ago. The sunrise reflected on a patch of ice in a field. Definitely a moment of awe!
I continue my “crawl” through the Bible, and a phrase from Jeremiah jumps out at me. It’s from the fifth chapter, in which God is reminding the Israelites they have broken the covenant He made with their ancestor Abraham. Verse 24 is but one piece of His evidence: “They do not say from the heart, ‘Let us live in awe of the Lord our God, for he gives us rain each spring and fall, assuring us of a harvest when the time is right.’”
“Live in awe!”
What an incredible phrase.
They didn’t do that.
Much of the time, I don’t either.
The consequences of their awe-less life were concrete and strong. Verse 25 reads, “Your wickedness has deprived you of these wonderful blessings. Your sin has robbed you of all these good things.”
The consequences for my oft-times awe-less life tend to be more abstract.
I have the concrete “good things”: food to feed my healthy children, a warm, snug house, enjoyable and fruitful work. A lack of awe does not always result in the gifts themselves being taken away, but we do lose some of the blessing and goodness of the gift when we do not see it as such, when we let it become commonplace, something we believe we deserve, or something less than a gift—a burden.
So, this day, I am going to practice “awe” for the gifts surrounding me in the moment. I will journal my practice. Here goes…
+++++
As I write this, I am secreted in my bathroom, the one that has one door that opens into my bedroom and another that opens to the den. Patrick and his friend, Ben, are having a rock concert in my bedroom; Jake and his friend, Josh (Ben’s older brother), are in the den playing on the Wii. I can hear both sides.
They’re. Loud.
Much of the time I forget awe at these amazing gifts: two healthy sons with good friends, toys for them to play with when the weather is such that I can’t simply kick them outside all day, more than one bathroom (that’s HUGE!), a warm house, and bathroom doors that LOCK! Woohoo! I am in awe at these gifts of God in this very moment, and the goodness of this moment is revealed, and I can view the chaos and noise as a blessing.
+++++
It is now ten minutes later, and I am no longer in awe.
I am fixing mac ‘n cheese and dishing up bowls for five children so they can go out and play in the snow with full bellies (and not come back in 15 minutes later because they want snacks). I’m feeling hounded by questions of “Is it ready yet?” “Where are my gloves?” and “Mom, I think I left my snow boots at school. What should I do?”
How quickly I move from awe to frustration. It doesn’t even feel deliberate. I don’t remember making the choice to get frazzled: I just slid right into it.
Choosing awe, on the other hand, requires, well, choice, requires acknowledgment of need and cries for help—and then requires the entire process again only moments later.
Awe is clearly not my natural state!
+++++
It is now three hours later—three loads of laundry finished, three loaves of bread made, children out to play in the snow then back in (with another neighbor friend in tow), the two brothers picked up by their mother, two of mine sent to a friend’s house, one quick run up to the high school to pick up Judy, who is exhausted from all-day play practice, and snacks fed to the only two young children left in my house—and they are busy with non-destructive play—Yay! Someone actually remembered to charge my laptop after they played on it during the three-hour interim, and I am sitting down to write this—because writing is how I meditate on truths God is teaching me.
As much as I would like awe to be a constant state, it simply isn’t, and that really has nothing to do with the chaos of my family. If I lived in a monastery, and everyone around me had taken a vow of silence and peace, something would still cause me to slip from awe.
Perhaps that is actually a good thing—not necessarily the slipping, but the struggle it pushes me into (which reveals my helplessness and ends in my crying out). The battle for awe, for joy, for peace—for God, ultimately—strengthens my desire for Him. I see the contrast between awe and “regular life” more clearly as I wrestle my way back to awe time and time again. Is this what James was suggesting? That my ongoing struggles will build endurance, that patient endurance will open my eyes to see God’s “good and perfect gifts” and see Himself as the Father of lights?
My youngest child had academic testing yesterday. He and I arrived at an office in the morning, and I was ushered into a room and handed three inventories to complete. One had 86 questions; one had 275; the last had 160. Needless to say, they were thorough.
I answered “true” or “yes” to quite a few questions, most of them related to high energy levels and difficulty focusing, and there were others about which I thought, “Well, that doesn’t relate to Patrick but it’s true for Jake”—or Maddie—or Emily—or me! I recognized each of my four children—and myself—in some of the items.
But most of the statements brought me both perspective and gratitude. For every “false” or “no” I checked, that was another issue we were not facing.
I texted some of these to Dave, my husband.
“My child has very low self esteem.”
Um, no.
“My child is painfully shy around new people.”
Definitely not.
Then one of the statements simply made me stop.
#53: “I’m afraid my child is going insane.”
True or False.
And I felt a little sick.
Because, obviously, there must be parents who have to mark “true.”
We each have troubles we can talk about, things like frustrations with our children or our parents, illnesses and actual losses.
But there is also a list of unmentionables we generally keep hidden: addiction, mental illness, rage issues, money troubles, marital conflict…
Our voices literally hush, softened with shame, when we speak of those. If we speak of those.
When the testing finished for the day, Patrick and I put on coats, hats, and gloves to brave the deep cold. Our drive home took us past the middle-class suburban neighborhoods I drive through nearly every day. One after another, the homes presented neat, tidy fronts. Trim siding and smoke from the chimneys proclaimed “All is well!” but I wondered about the unmentionable topics hid away inside. If I slipped an inventory under each door, which ones would come back with “true” marked for #53? Which ones would affirm “I’m afraid in my own home,” “My child is a real threat to himself or others,” or “One of the child’s parents continually threatens abandonment”?
No adults shoveled driveways; no children played in the snow. The cold had driven everyone inside.
Where secrets can be kept, and unmentionables are lived out.
All is not well.
Oh come, Lord Jesus, come.
And in the meantime, help your people to see and speak.
I could say that this picture fits this post because I took a shot of the bottom side of the leaf rather than the top, but that would be cheesy, right?!
Dave and I were Seinfeld junkies in the early years of our marriage. One of our favorite episodes was “The Opposite,” in which Jerry tells perennially down-on-his-luck George that every impulse he has is wrong, and George decides to do the opposite of his impulses. A few minutes later he meets a very attractive woman and tells her, straight up, “My name is George. I’m unemployed, and I live with my parents.” (Usually he said he was an architect [not true].) Amazingly, she agreed to go out with him.
It’s a funny, funny episode (as most of them are), but the reason I bring it up is that I’ve been trying to apply this idea to certain areas of my prayer life lately.
I’ve been practicing “the opposite” technique on my natural impulses of guilt/comparison/criticism.
When I’m reading an article in Voice of the Martyrs (a magazine about the persecuted church) about believers who have lost everything but who are still sharing Jesus’ love with their neighbors, my first impulse is to think, Oh, they’re so much more spiritual than I am. I’m just not strong enough in my faith!
When I hear about people who work for the International Justice Mission, serve in shelters for battered women, deliver Meals on Wheels—you name it—my initial response is, I should be doing more.
When I see a woman who looks like she has it all together, my gut instinct is to compare, and my confidence gets beaten down in the process.
And when I see a woman who’s clearly struggling, deep down in me there’s also a bit of comparison going on—comparison that makes me feel better about myself.
When I’m picking up all the debris my children leave strewn across the floor and every available surface, there’s generally some silent fussing going on. (Sometimes it’s NOT silent!)
I used to read the verse about “praying without ceasing” and think, “How?”
But if I turn all my guilt/comparison/criticism into PRAYER and add to that my daily-sometimes-hourly cries for help, well, then that’s pretty un-ceasing!
So, when I hear the next radio piece about Mary Frances Bowley’s work with survivors of sexual abuse and prostitution, I will not waste my time feeling bad about the work I’m doing or guilty for not doing “more.” Instead I will pray for Mary Frances, for the girls at Wellspring Living’s safe house, for the many staff who work with them, and for those trapped in sex trafficking around the world.
When I am tempted to fuss about the messes my children have made, why not pray for them instead? I may still be frustrated, but I will have lifted my kids up to God as eternal souls.
What a better use of my time and energy!
Now I definitely want to avoid making this rote and mechanical, something I “have” to do, but, honesty, “rote and mechanical” often describes my complaining/comparison/guilt.
It’s simply a default pattern, a harmful one.
I need a new pattern to follow.
From ____________ to prayer.
Thank you, George!
And Jerry, of course!
NOTE: I think this kind of “new” practice/pattern is part of what Scripture refers to as the “renewing of our minds.” Here are a few verses that have to do with our souls and minds becoming “new.” Because these are pretty well-known verses, I looked them up in the Amplified version to make their messages fresh.
Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].
Ephesians 4:22-24 Strip yourselves of your former nature [put off and discard your old unrenewed self] which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusion; 23 And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude], 24 And put on the new nature (the regenerate self) created in God’s image, [Godlike] in true righteousness and holiness.
The past couple of days I have been ridiculously dramatic—in some ways approaching the time of mother martyrdom I wrestled so much with when my kids were very small. This time around, though, I’ve given into it with greater abandon and even a bit of flair, and deep down I’ve known what I was doing.
I attribute the difference to Grace.
I’ll explain, starting with the past first: When my children were toddler-stage, I believed that “good moms” loved being with their children 24-7 (along with a host of other bad beliefs). Therefore, I rarely took my husband up on his offers to let me “get away.” Despite his offers, in a deep down, hidden place in my heart, I blamed HIM for my sense of duty, for my unhappiness. But I didn’t come right out and say all this. I was prim and proper in my martyrdom, quietly convincing myself that I truly was right to see myself as the “martyr” who “willingly” (hmm!) took up the slack in her home, in her husband’s busy life, with their children, with her friends, in her job…
I saw that as saintly.
Ugh!
It was truly a miserable time. I was locked in a pious, tight mold of spiritual smugness. It was constricting. It stifled true life.
When God began tugging the log out of my eye, I began to see my “mommy martyrdom” more clearly, and I began to battle it. Not a pretty process! It was tooth-and-claw, hair-pulling, nail-scratching. I remember thinking—wailing at times—“I will NEVER be free of this!”
Fast forward to the present: I’m not going to claim “complete victory in Jesus” over my martyrdom tendencies, but I do have a far greater freedom from it than I did (which leaves me “free” to battle other monsters in my soul.)
So during the past couple days, as I’ve gotten irked with my kids for cluttering up the house (“I’m not your slave, you know! My job is not to clean up after you. I’m not doing you any favors if I do for you what you can do for yourself!”) and with my older daughter for asking me to run her here, there, and everywhere (“She has no consideration for my time,” I’ve thought.), things have been different. I didn’t hold back as I ranted in my journal yesterday about feeling invisible to my children, like a “non-entity.” I let it loose, and I didn’t try to couch it as a prayer for God to change my children’s hearts. And as I was doing it, I KNEW deep down that I was being a bit ridiculous.
After all, just the night before, Dave and I watched a documentary on REAL slavery, about the 27 million people around the world who live in bondage. Just that day I’d read about the Nepalese workers dying at the rate of one per day in Qatar because they are being forced to labor in horrific conditions on the stadium that will be used for the 2022 World Cup.
So I knew I was being dramatic, but at the same time I also knew I was getting a little closer to the honesty that makes me cling to Christ in real desperation. He sees right through my politely expressed prayers of grievance to the far grittier issues in my own heart, and THAT is what He wants to expose. So when I vent to Him (and not to every other person at random—that’s just complaining), I am coming like a little child, without pretense, admitting that I need…something! and I’m coming to Him because I may not know exactly what I need in that moment, but I know HE is the source of ALL I need, and I go running to him.
So, though my rant wasn’t pretty and it will never, ever, ever be published, I’m leaving it in my journal.
Because the difference between then and now is GRACE!
*Here are the links to the End it Movement website (lots and lots of great videos and info on human trafficking) and the news story on Qatar.
Jen Underwood 