Life Lessons from My Gardening Foibles

This morning, I sat on the front steps sipping my morning tea looking out at my little garden I love. Sometime ago when I wrote my Things I Do and Things I Don’t Do list, gardening fell squarely on the things I don’t do side. For all intents and purposes, I still don’t. A couple of years ago, I nearly lost my mind and uprooted our beautiful, healthy, 12 year old irises to plant a food garden. If you know me, you know this is funny bordering on insane. Because really, my indoor plants are an evolutionary experiment: survival of the fittest. I do well to throw an ice cube in the pot now and then (a trick my sister taught me).

It was also an insane idea because the many places of my life require, in truth, probably more than I actually have to give so though fresh garden veggies would be awesome, I probably ought not give my energy toward growing plants when I sometimes find it hard to grow children or my marriage.

I am no gardener.

Case and point: While Evan was in VBS, Cara and I decided to weed the front flower bed at the church. Everyone walking by commented on a beautiful flower growing there. Inevitably, they would ask me what it was (I had no idea). But I marveled at these beautiful flowers that had survived the early summer excavation to shore up the building`s foundation beneath it. Amazing, I thought. Now that’s a hearty flower. Before I could contemplate any deeper meaning ;), one of the ladies from our church came out and marvelled with me about their beauty. Then she told me she planted them. In July. They are annuals. A rookie mistake. Gardening is not in my wheelhouse.

But this little front garden/landscaping we put in lastsummer is manageable. I have come to understand just a little of why real gardeners say gardening is something of a spiritual, meaningful, experience for them. I have watered and weeded and waited for these plants to grow and bloom.  Healthy growth takes time and attention, changing seasons and good soil. When hail came last year, I nearly ran outside and sat with my favorites under tarps to protect them.  I held my breath to see if the worst hit would make it. Sure enough – they all did.

Here is what my little garden is teaching me now:

Gently wait. If you can’t wait gently, at least wait.

I have learned the hard way that grabbing scissors and cutting away what looks dead too early will stunt growth and beauty. The mullet on my potentilla testifies to this.

Potentilla with a mullet

I have learned that pruning away at the right time brings health and luster that would not have come if I had not trimmed away the fading branches. My Korean Lilac (my not-so-secret favorite) is reaping the benefits of my judicious trimming because it doesn’t have to put its energy toward the wrong thing (seeding).

I am learning rash choices that don’t account for the future will be costly down the road. I really wanted a Mugo Pine but the garden centre didn’t have a miniature at the time. So I asked the guy if I could just keep trimming off new growth once it reaches the size I want it. He shrugged his sixteen year old shoulders and said, “Oh yeah.” I didn’t get the sense he really knew what he was talking about but I liked his answer and I bought it. A few weeks after it was planted in a 4x4 spot in our garden, I saw a full grown Mugo Pine in a friend’s backyard. It’s an enormous tree. This little-gonna-be-mighty Mugo also teaches me to be careful who I invite to give answers to the questions of life I am wrestling with. Maybe even more importantly, to not simply look for answers that I want to hear.

I am learning that even when I nurture and care for something, it might bloom in ways totally unexpected and not always to my liking. My hydrangea has always been the most fragile. I have nursed it, watched and hoped it would become beautiful and healthy. Turns out, now that it is becoming heartier, it is ugly. The flowers are green! Green? I don’t actually want any green flowers in my little garden. I have enough green, thank you very much. Can’t you be yellow or white or pink or blue or purple? I don’t care. Just not green. What to do with this plant that I have nourished and protected only to find it isn’t anything like what I want? I read somewhere there are special techniques to change the color of a hydrangea’s blossoms. Possibly. Seems kind of wrong. Truthfully, I am tempted to rip it out and start over. Spend $30 and an hour and plant something that actually looks beautiful to me. Maybe I will yet, I’m not sure. When Jason used to frown at the pile of yellow and orange skittles I threw in the garbage, I would say “It is candy. I am eating it for pleasure. Why would I eat candy I don’t even like?” But I have a hard time letting go of my ugly hydrangea because I have given a little of myself to it and feel responsible for it, I think.

As I sat on my front steps this morning and thought about what I am learning in my fumbling gardening attempts, I realized they apply to my “real life” too. I came away with this self-insight that stuck:

I have always had a hard time giving up on things, even when they don’t please me or bring me pleasure. Especially if I have invested any bit of myself in it/them. I don’t have a clue if this is helpful or unhelpful to my life or others. It means my green hydrangea gets to keep on living and the Mugo Pine stays poised in its place to choke out my beloved Korean Lilac – the thing of beauty I actually LOVE in my garden. And I just wait. Unable to make a decision because I care about that little pine and the hydrangea too – even as its green blossoms continue to irritate me. 

For now, I wait and water and hope.

The Desert, the Gentle Life & Turning 32

Celebrating 32! 

The Journey

Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice—

Though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug

at your ankles

“mend my life!”

each voice cried. 

But you didn’t stop

you knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world (desert)

determined to do

the only thing you could do-

determined to save

the only life you could save

*******

Writing a birthday post has been like pulling teeth this year. My best guess is because I am in a desert: a season where everything is shifting but hasn’t settled yet. It’s hard to use words to describe the landscape and the view from here, things are still dusty.

Last year, I sensed I was entering a spiritual desert. I did not want to be there/here. It felt lonely, long and dusty. I wondered if I was in a desert because I can be drawn to scarcity, fear and hard things. I knew that nurture, love, and real care make me feel vulnerable and nervous but was I not learning to trust in the innocence and goodness of those things? Did I really need a desert to teach me? I wondered if this was a desert of my own making and if I would get trapped here. Back then I wrote,

Will it be a slow death of some part of me as I wander in this wilderness for who knows how long? What might die? My joy? My humor? Relationships? Hope? My thirst to grow and become or my belief that these things are good and worthwhile? I don’t want to be here. How did I get here? How do I get out?

Really, I just wanted out.

In the middle of these questions, I was reading the story of the Exodus. And a couple of non-descript, after-the-grand-story, verses stood out to me and helped me trust:

“When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt (bondage). So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.”

The desert road was God’s good gift to His people. It hardly felt like it to them. He knew their fragile faith could not handle a different route. Their time in the desert was excruciating and long. But it was in the desert that God gave His precious people a new way of living in relationship with Him. Coming out of generations of slavery, even their bodies needed to be purified from their life in Egypt so they did not bring those things with them into new life. He did not leave his people alone in the desert. He was present to them, guiding them in the way they should go by the pillar and the cloud. 

I started praying that I would listen and look for the pillars and the clouds along my desert road.

A year later, I know the desert is necessary and good for me. In my thirty-one years I have accumulated a lot of junk (literally and metaphorically). While I clutch all of the things that make me feel ‘safe’ and ‘secure’, I have been unable to receive other gifts that lead me toward a life of love. So the desert has been/is a gift. I can say this honestly now. Henri Nouwen wrote about the movement from desert to garden. “To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert and change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden … A dry desolate garden can yield endless variety of flowers.” I didn’t go into it with gardening in mind, more like uncertainty and just a little trust. This desert-garden has been a place of learning to let go; to stop clinging to people and their opinions of me, books, experiences, plans, and fears. But along this way, I have found/am finding budding flowers and see the promise of a garden. In this coming year, I am committed to tending the garden in my desert.

It isn’t an easy (painless, pleasant) process letting go of favorite things that have, in many ways, comforted and “worked” for me for most of my life. I learned to mask these in a way that often got me approval from others but when all of that is stripped away, what’s left is this:

Perfectionism

People-pleasing

Silencing my voice

Jealousy

Co-dependency/Being needed

Sugar

Justifying the ugliness of my heart

Insatiable thirst for specialness

Pride

And … did I mention pride?

As I walk the desert road it has become a journey of taking off, discerning, repenting and detaching these from my true heart. It has been and still is (always will be?) messy. But even as I write this, I realize it isn’t just about losing things. It’s about losing these to find real life; life alive to God, others and myself. In place of these old things, I am finding new things. So while I’ve thought this past year has been about dying, I now realize it is about new life, growth.

Listening to and Honoring My Voice

I have been journeying toward this for the past thirteen years but this year I realized the central importance of voice for each of us. Finding and honoring voice - our formation, longings, fears, etc -  is a marker for recovery, for healing. I gave up my voice as a kid. Seemed safer without it I suppose. Silencing my voice went hand-in-hand with working hard to be "good" and lovable. But I lost something vital then and am only now reclaiming it. The neat thing is that as I learn to honor my own voice, it does not make me more stubborn or selfish (as I thought it might), it makes me kind and compassionate and more likely to listen for and honor the voice of others. This does not mean it has been easy for the people around me who are used to a “silent” me or a more-at-work-in-relationship me. It’s been a growing place. I have not lived into it perfectly but I am learning and figuring it out. As I learn to listen to my own voice, I can release the tight hold I’ve had on my self-concept. I am (just a little) more able to see not only the ways I am wounded but the ways I wound others.  

Honoring my body

The past year, my body offered me a wake-up call. I had no choice but to listen. It sparked a desire to honor my body and what it gives me for life. It’s kind of ironic that debilitating pain, a fragile and falling apart body, helped me see how disconnected I am from my body and offer a place of gently reconnecting to my whole self. So God-honoring. At times I have ruled my body like a task-master, sculpting and pushing it without rest or nurture. Other times, instead of listening to my body and what it needs, I have gulped down sugar or comfort food that allow me to keep numbing out. Since there isn’t a lot going on in a desert (or a lot of StarbucksJ), it has been a time to slow down, learn to listen and take care of this great gift of my body. Several times I have pushed myself, with determination into sugar detox, without success. Its interesting that in this desert, as I have started a less severe relationship with my body, the sugar addiction has faded almost naturally. A gentle rhythm of feasts and fasts. Of moderation. And of nurture.   

Gift of work

A career that is full of purpose and Kingdom work. I have blogged before about my dilemma with work and staying at home. I still live in that tension. But in the middle of the tension I recognize a gift. In the past year, particularly in the hardest parts of my health issues, though I felt desperate to not be working, now I can see it was one of the best things for me. On a practical level, it forced me to pull myself together 2 ½ days a week and go out of the house. It forced me to put on nice(ish) clothes and fix my hair. It also allowed me not to become consumed by myself – my pain and my fears. When I get to my office, I light two candles on the table and do so as a marker that I am transitioning into a different role than that of wife, mom, friend, complicated person. JIn that room, my own stuff is moved aside to hold space for the people sitting across from me. This was so good for me during that really hard time of waiting, aching, depression and wondering.  

Private practice has grown my faith, transformed my understanding and experience of diligent work as something good and central in our God-breathed humanness even if I would rather it all came on a silver platter. It has been a reminder that God’s grace with diligent effort is a beautiful thing. I am humbled and grateful to say that Birdsong is thriving. This beautiful work allows me to see God at work, healing and redeeming broken places in so many lives as well as be home more than at the office - both of these are so good for my heart.

Embracing an ordinary life

My heart has tuned in to a more “everyday spirituality”. Sacred in the ordinary. The desert is teaching me how to notice and look for the sacred in the ordinary, how to be sacred in the ordinary. Somehow it seems this is the antidote to my insatiable appetite for specialness. Dallas Willard writes that most Christians are so ‘ready’ and focused on dying that they are not prepared to live this gift of a life. A life with God is not (only) about a ticket out of here. I want to be satisfied and grounded in an ordinary life, marked by love rather than a pursuit to prove and validate my own specialness. Somehow, I think they are intertwined. So often I have snuffed out the candle of others (covertly, of course) so that my own candle can shine brighter. This is shifting. I don’t know much more than that.

           

A favorite quote: Frail dust, remember you are splendor.

A most beautiful surprise has come in this desert-garden: the beginnings of the gentle life. 

The desert changed my direction; one I thought I would hate. The willfull, determined, self-sufficient way I have lived does not work in the desert. And so I am learning a gentler, slower, way. It’s ironic. Over the past several years, I have blogged a few times about my longing for gentleness, my wonderings about how to craft it with my fierce and typically “effective” determination. Who knew I would discover this beautiful gift (not craft it) smack dab in the middle of a dry and barren desert? I am looking forward to discovering and living into the gentle life Jesus calls us to.

“Many of us long for gentleness in ourselves and others. It is like a treasure lost, buried under the pressures of an achievement society. Gentleness does not exclude strong and courageous stands. I can rest or work, give in to people or fight with them, both gently and violently. Gentleness is more than just relaxation and giving in; it is more than the opposite of fight, work, ambition. It is an attitude which affects and changes the style of my play or work, my fight or surrender, my admiration or rightful indignation. How I fight, argue, study, entertain, work or play then reveals the presence or absence of gentleness in my life…The gentle person is more free. She can take herself and the world as they are because she feels free to be herself and to let all things be with the same gentility. There is a friendly accord between her and her life situation. She does not feel she has to push herself (willful life) forward or hold herself back.” (Spirituality & the Gentle Life, Van Kaam)

As far as I can see, this year holds more desert walking. But maybe I am walking with more hope and joy and trust that this desert-garden is a great gift to me. As I keep discerning, repenting and detaching from the deformed ways I have built my life, I sense I am and will be freer to run the race marked out for me. I am excited at what I will learn and how I will learn to live into the gentle life in year 32. 

Breakdown and the Gift of Uncertainty

Over the past couple of years, I have started learning to be okay without tidy resolutions. I am more comfortable with the phrase this is what I know for now. It’s more honest. One woman said that phrase in the class I taught last week as we discussed sexuality and God and faithfulness. And I was moved by the humility, love, trust and vulnerability that comes in a statement like that. No pretending paradox does not exist, no pretending/controlling to feel better in the middle of the tension. This is what I know for now. Not only is there freedom in that statement but there is grace and there is room for each of us.

In November 2011, I had something of a nervous breakdownspiritual awakening as Brene Brown might say. In desperation, I picked myself up off the bathroom floor and packed a suitcase and drove to Bragg Creek as I felt everything I thought held my life together seem to fall apart. Really, it was my false selves falling apart, not my true life, but it sure felt like it. Sitting out under the big Alberta sky, scared to pray for fear of how I might twist or misunderstand whatever I thought I heard coming back to my heart, I wrote a list of the things I could say I knew to be unshakable truth. I wasn’t sure I would have anything. I did, but surprisingly, it was a very small list. I still work off that list scribbled on a tattered piece of notebook paper.

There is a Creator

Who loves me (us) fiercely 

Who is good

Who is Mystery 

Who is Love

I will not break

This is what I felt and knew and held unswervingly. I realized everything else might fall away for awhile or maybe forever but this I knew for sure. 

My life had formed around so much fear. I believed the lie that control could tame/manage fear. I worked hard to keep fear in line but really, it was keeping me in line. This looked like a lot of closed-fisted control in my life. Perfectionism. The gentle life is not possible when our hands are furiously and desperately clutching an illusion of control. This happens with sincere faith too. It is out of fear that we clutch desperately and leave no room for conversation about the mystery of faith and God. Mostly, I am no longer afraid of saying This is what I know for now. Usually, I am just hoping to have the maturity and wisdom to remember this in any given conversation. I sometimes still clutch, but not as tightly, and it is starting to feel foreign to me.  I continue on the path of God-ward obedience without the fear of one/every misstep. All is Grace. Because of this, I am freer to share the ragged, unpretty parts of my story, to become more human. I am also freer to hear and hold the stories of others without needing to control them, give answers or make them fit within my own ‘tidy’ (narrow) theology. It’s messier but it is rich and deep.  

1 Corinthians 13 is a great comfort to me as my heart ponders and wonders and shares experiences that often hold many questions and tensions. It gives grace and permission to not control and distort by pretending we have all of the answers. There is room for the Mystery of God because we know our spiritual vision is blurry. There is room for me to release the perfecting and trust that it is enough to do the best I can to walk with trust and hope in God and living out love the best I know how, even if it is messy or inadequate or wrong. There is grace because God already knows we don’t see things quite as they are so He gives us trust, hope and Love to guide us toward the day when everything will be clear. For now, we’re called to do the best we can with what we know now. When we acknowledge we don't know where every piece of the puzzle should go, there is room for sharing and honoring the stories and wisdom of others.

What we say about God is always incomplete…We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting as through a fog. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright. We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us … But for now, until then, and in all that fog we have three things to guide us toward that time: Trust steadily in God, Hope unswervingly, and Love extravagantly. And the greatest of these is love.

Love this talk  on the faith pilgrimage/spiritual formation.

I know it's been awhile since I've posted. Check back soon for pictures/stories of the past couple of weeks. 

Depression, Desert & Discernmnent

For many friends who are being courageous and practicing authenticity in their own hard places.

I wrote this several months ago but decided to post it today. Lately, I have heard many stories of depression and almost all are woven with shame. 

It’s my worst fear. It’s always been my worst fear. But lately it is harder to keep it far from my heart.

The fear that I will wound my kids so deeply because of my own wounded or messed up places.

Eggshell walking happens a little more frequently at our house these days. Oh how I remember eggshell walking. It confused me. It scared me.

Sometimes I breathe this prayer … “Mothering without wounding. Mothering without wounding.” Sometimes I have the presence of self to breathe it gently. It comes out like a desperate chant from a crazy person on the worst days. What I’m really praying for is help to get my crap together so I don’t crush these tender hearts I’m supposed to be caring for in my exhaustion and newly short-fused self.

Shame calls my name. It says, Look at what you are doing to them!

Who were you to think you would do better?

When Evan gets mad and says, “You’re the worst mother…ever.” it slices deeper than it normally would or probably should.

Meet my shame.

Shame has lost so many avenues into my heart but not this mothering one. It still owns quite a bit of property in my heart when it comes to my kids.

When everything is quiet, shame taunts me with whispers of deep fears, What if you never get better? What if it strangles everything good in you? What if they end up just like you? You are breaking them.

I grew up midwest, charismatic, christian. Sometimes in my family and in my church, there was an unspoken and sometimes spoken idea that if you are faithful, if you take it to God, you will not need counselling. After all, Jesus is called the Wonderful Counselor. The havoc-wreaking shame and stigma say if you are capable-enough, faithful-enough, God-loving enough, you and God will be able to manage it. Shame digs in so deep and we miss God’s tender and healing mercy for our humanity pretending we aren’t like a cat just burying our shit.

Shame tells me not to write this. Shame keeps its slimy fingers around my throat as long as I don’t say it out loud. Shame screams that you will pity me. And ohmygosh…there is nothing that makes me recoil like pity. Shame tells me I have really stepped over the line this time. That this is a private struggle I really shouldn’t share let alone on the blog. Shame is an enemy of my soul in every possible way because it wants me to disconnect out of fear of being seen; disconnect from my own deep heart, my God and my people.

But shame and I have done battle for several years now. And I refuse to let him win and wreck the beauty of my life. For the most part, I recognize his voice now. Mostly I recognize how my skins feels like bugs are crawling. My heart nearly pounds out of my chest. I want to run and hide...or go shopping. It’s my first impulse. I feel small. My people-pleasing instincts kick in. I want to do whatever it takes to quiet the shame and keep him from screaming my secret to everyone.  

But I have learned a little about this enemy over the years. I know that if I do these things, these first impulses – he wins. He gains more ground in my heart. “Shame keeps worthiness away by convincing us that owning our stories will lead to people thinking less of us.” Shame loves perfectionist (raising my hand now, Hi! I’m Shanna and I’m a recovering perfectionist.) because we are so invested in having everything look just right. Countering shame fundamentally requires vulnerability. It is the weapon shame fears. It also strips shame of his power. 

So this post is about stripping shame of its power in my heart. It is humbling. It is good. Life is not all mountaintops. I recently told my spiritual director that this season feels like a desert. Not the kind you irrigate or sight see. But the kind of desert that feels dusty and dry. The days feel long. The road winds and I’m not sure where it ends. It is a desert where you keep walking, one foot in front of the other. I want to be faithful in my desert. What will this look like?

“The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.” Thomas Moore

So I have a new therapist we can’t really afford but really, we can’t afford not to. Not because I’m falling apart at the seams (though some days I am) but because I want to live my life alive to it. I’m a high functioning person. I get out of bed, I make meals, I go to work, I do all of the things most of the things I need to do. I find joy in my life. But it’s harder some days. And I don’t want this season to become my normal. I don’t ever want to go back to the way I lived before – disconnected from my soul and people and afraid of God. I don’t want my short fuse to become my new normal as a mother. I don’t want to wear masks – they suffocate. So I go to therapy. I write this shame-busting blog post. I tell my fears to a few trusted people.

I am working to not be ashamed of the depression.

I remind myself that at least I feel something. For so many years before the kids were born I functioned so far out of my heart. I was calm, cool and collected because my childhood depression became a low-grade constant companion in my life. It grew with me so I never noticed it. I thought I was just very even-keeled.

I also remind myself that I do not everwant to deaden painful emotions because the price for that is just too high. I’ve been there done that, don’t ever want to go back. I have fought hard battles and seen little miracles on my journey out of that.

My neurologist tells me depression is a normal part of illness, expected even. Is it the chicken or the egg, I wonder? Which came first? Does it even matter?

A must-read for me is Weavings: Journal of Spiritual Formation. The last edition was entitled Resilience.

What a beautiful and overused word. Over the past several months, personally and with clients I have come back to one article, Gifts from the Holy Resilient by Steve Doughty. Others have walked this desert road and share the gifts of their journey. Grateful.

When subjected to the fiercest pressures of change, the holy resilient do not just endure or bounce back. They become more: more compassionate, deeper, simpler in their desires, and more focused in how they use their time. Resilience... is not simply about getting back to normal nor is it about adjusting as well as they can. It is about transformation.

My heart says YES! This is what I long for. I can see how my health concerns and depression have become a place not just for getting back to normal but for transformation. Doughty shares a cluster of questions for discerning in our seasons of change. In this season, they are helping me find perspective, to anchor, in this space of life that holds lots of questions, hard days when I feel so unlike my normal self and beautiful gifts in the middle of it all.

Thought I’d share the questions from the article here. These questions are reminder that we do not have to dismiss or pretend hard places/suffering do not exist by encouraging people to simply have more (better) faith. Faith is expressed in the honest heart acknowledging hurting/broken places and inviting faith-filled transformation. 

1.       What must I/we let go of?

Even asking the question can be painful (it has been for me). The answers are seldom better. They point to everything from abilities we cherish (“good” mothering), to  comfortable ways of ambling along, to life itself. Demanding as these circumstances might be, this much is clear: only if we ask the question, and only if we seek God’s grace to act on the answers, will we grow in new ways.

2.       In the midst of this change that is taking place, what abides or what sustains?

What continues when so much is altered? Is it my capacity to love? Is it the Loving One I turned to in prayer, even if my prayers are angry and confused? Do special memories endure and bless me with their presence? Is some larger purpose I long valued now inviting renewed attention? This question, “what abides?” restores perspective. It also opens us to growth.

3.       What of Christ am I invited to put on?

During a confusing change in my (Steve Doughty) life a friend counseled, “What grows within you during this time may be more important than all the changes whipping about you.”

4.       What fresh glimpses of God’s grace do I/we see amid all that is going on?

  We may quickly find answers to this question. We may have to ask for a long time. Either way, as we live with the change it is important to remain sensitive to the tiniest sign of God’s fresh blessings.

5.       What models of faithful change can I/we look to?

This is a good question not just in change but when everything seems settled. What people do we know that grew through change? What lessons do they teach us? If we watch for models along the way, we are more prepared when our turn comes.

6.       How might what I am learning help others?

This question turns us outward. The changes we deal with may consume all our energy while they are taking place. Ultimately, though, the lessons we learn along the way are not just for us. To be attentive to how our experience may help others is not prideful. It is an act of compassionate remember. It is recalling how God has helped us in a multitude of ways and then remaining sensitive to how what we have received may aid others.

Raw Grief: Unravelled Remembering

It was a cloudy day.

A Sunday.

A normal Sunday. 

I remember Jason checking the caller ID and his surprise at the 913 area code.

Weird, I thought, How do my parent’s even know Jason’s number?

I remember Jason’s face tightening as he listened to the voice on the other end. He wouldn’t look at me. He handed me the phone and said, “It’s your mom. I don’t think it’s good.”

I remember my hand trembling as I took hold of that stupid black phone.

My growing dread nearly lifting my feet off the ground.

I don’t remember any words before or after, “Ryan is gone. He passed away early this morning.” She tried to say them gently. In some ways, I hated the gentleness of those death-filled words.

A pain explosion.

The Long Road From Sorrow To Joy

Here’s what I have learned and am learning in grief: It’s a broken hallelujah (see Leonard Cohen).

A few weeks ago, Laura (spiritual director) and I were talking about suffering and the often missing theology of suffering in our churches and in our culture. I told her about this article and my sadness and outrage at the misrepresentation of what it means to believe in a good God while walking toward death or living with grief.

Then I recently read this…

“Today’s (north American) churches and Christians have chosen to become shallow, entertainment-oriented, and therefore irrelevant in the face of massive suffering… the vision of God in today’s churches in relation to evil and suffering is often frivolous.”

In our own ways, we all do this. Hopefully we're trying not to do this. The heart of God must break watching us twist the Gospel to fit how we want to live. 

God is not a candy machine where you put in your fifty cents and choose A6 and out pops a healthy baby, a marriage that lasts, great kids, a big house and 2 cars, or life without loss. But somehow even those of us who don't profess the prosperity "gospel" sometimes reduce it to this

I wondered how have we moved so far from the Christ we claim to imitate? Ghandi said, “I like your Christ…but Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”  

The point of giving up something for lent is not so we can feel victorious in our self-righteous ability to hunker down and be sacrificial. It’s to understand that we are powerless on our own to overcome the things that rule and break us.

Easter is profound for me. Lent. Sorrow. Desperation. Sunday morning. Joy. Promise. Hope.

Unlike much pop-christian theology, in Scripture and God in human form, we are shown over and over again that living a faithful life does not mean we will not be broken, but that we are held, accompanied, blessed and journeyed with in our suffering.

The Road to Emmaus is a familiar Easter story. Henri Nouwen writes that it is also a story about the movement from sorrow to joy. 

Jesus invites the travelers, “Tell me about your pain. I want to hear your story.” He doesn’t say “It will all be okay. Why can’t you see that? Look, I’m Jesus, what are you so sad about?” Nouwen writes that the travelers could not see that their losses are what would enable them to receive the gift of life. The grain has to die to bear fruit, loss is the way of salvation, of hope and re-creation. Of redemption! Jesus took their story of loss and put it in the larger story; joy hidden in the sadness.  

A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance: A Meditation on the Movement from Sorrow to Joy by Henri Nouwen.

Jesus came to sing a dirge and say: “Cry with me.” Jesus came to play a pipe and say: “Dance with me.” There is a secret place in us where the Spirit brings new life. There is a crèche where the Child is born in you. There is the broken soil of your soul where the seeds of grace can grow in you. The Spirit of God within us says, “There is a time to mourn and a time to dance.” The spirit of healing that makes us mourn is the same Spirit that makes us dance. The mystery of the dance is that its movements are discovered in the mourning.

A Time to Mourn

Mourn, my people, mourn. Let your pain rise up in your heart and burst forth in you with sobs and cries. Mourn for the silence that exists between you and your spouse. Mourn for the way you were robbed of innocence. Mourn for the absence of a soft embrace, an intimate friendship, a life-giving sexuality. Mourn for the bitterness of your children, the indifference of your friends, and the hardness of heart of your colleagues. Mourn for those who hunger for love brought them AIDS, whose desire for freedom brought them to refugee camps, whose hunger for justice brought them to prisons. Cry for the millions who die from lack of food, lack of care, lack of love….Cry for freedom, for salvation, for redemption. Cry loudly and deeply, and trust that your tears will make your eyes see that the Kingdom of God is close at hand—yes, at your fingertips.

A Time to Dance

To heal is to let the Spirit call us to dance. Can you feel the freedom that rises up in you when you have been stripped naked and have nothing to inhibit your movements anymore? You can dance as David danced in front of the Ark. Can you notice in your innermost being the joy of living that comes from having nothing left to lose? Can you see the soft, beautiful smile that appears in the tearful eyes of your mourning friend? Jesus enters into our sadness, takes us by the hand, pulls us gently to where we can stand, and invites us to dance. And as we dance, we realize that we don’t have to stay on the little spot of our grief but can step beyond it into the unknown, spacious territory, until we finally know that the entire world is our dance floor. Yes! Leave—leave your father, mother, brother, sister, and friends; all the world will be yours, and you will catch people wherever you dance.”

Acknowledging my brokenness allows me to see the Kingdom of God close at hand … in my own life and in the lives of others. For this reason and this reason alone, I want to embrace my brokenness, letting it be transformed by the hand of a loving God who transforms and redeems all things. 

Death: Gift of God?

These thoughts are probably a mixture of tuning my heart into the Lenten season, a friend's dad recently diagnosed with cancer and my too quick tendency to give answers, and the approaching anniversary of my brother's death.

 

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I once listened to a native american storyteller talk about his life and wisdom. He said, "We all earn our wisdom. It don't come cheap, that's for sure."

I have a soul friend who often cavalierly says death is going to happen to everyone eventually ... it's a normal part of life. He implies it's something to simply accept. Each time he says it, I feel myself cringe as if he is scraping his fingernails down a chalkboard. After several times of his off-handed comments, I genuinely and quietly asked, "Have you ever encountered death personally...at your core, with someone you love?"

When I hear a cognitive, tidy, in-the-box discussion about death and faith, I usually start by feeling mystified, then frustrated, until the very end where I realize, "Oh. This person has never felt death's grip around their throat or the throat of someone they love. They are talking about death intellectually." Either because they have not yet experienced it or they have not let themselves feel it. The piece of wisdom I have gained most from my experiences of grief is that death is the total opposite of our God. The comfort of this for the brokenhearted is beyond describing.