The Fallacy of the Christian Marriage Mold

A few caveats for this and upcoming posts on the marriage mold:

• **If you haven’t been in actual conversations with me in the last several months, you might be caught off guard by the strong resistance toward religious ideology. Religious language has always been a part of my blogging. The language of faith - through a lens of redemptive love - has been my language. And it is still the language of my heart. For this reason, I feel even more responsible to stand up against some of the damaging things I hear being said in my mother tongue. 
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• **We’re still in the discovery phase. We are not claiming to have it figured out. But this discovery phase is a free one – not limited to a narrow box of answers. So what I’m writing isn’t “air tight” but just some of my (and our) experiences, thoughts and growing convictions about the problems in mandating couples to a generic, homogenous, ancient marriage mold. Your thoughtful comments (even contrary) are welcome and appreciated and will likely help us grapple and account for things we haven’t considered yet. Though, in all honesty, something along the lines of “But God says...” is likely to induce an allergic reaction in me for reasons best articulated here (by Kathy Escobar) and that will become, I think, more apparent in the following posts.
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• **As I considered writing these posts, I gave some thought to who I hoped might read them. Those who consider themselves the cultural guardians of the marriage gates? Certainly not. Those who are lucky enough that they and their partner fit mostly within the mold and won’t get why it suffocates the life from so many others? No. 
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• I know there are others like us who keep trying to fit their marriage in the mold and find they keep breaking. It doesn’t work. Not because you’re doing something wrong (as in, not enough lingere and not enough cherishing -though I definitely like these ideas, problem-solvers they are not) but because the easy formula is flawed. Instead of handing me another book reinforcing the mold, I wish someone would have told me it was okay for us to navigate and create our married life in a way that honored who Jason is and who I am because no one fully fits the prescribed gender roles and ideology created to make the mold in the first place. (For example, I am a highly educated woman with a good career aided by family planning with feminist leanings but am most fulfilled as a stay-at-home mom scheduling my life around the kids, baking and doing all of the traditional homemaker things. I also am wired to wrestle with philosophical and theological ideas. We all tick some boxes and not others). A formula does not allow for unique, fearfully and wonderfully made men and women to freely create a spacious relationship where love can flourish and grow in and between them. 
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• Last year, I wrote this blog post about our very hard season of marriage as our life’s trauma excavated some problems in our marriage. I advocated for older couples to be honest about marriage, to encourage younger marriages to hang in there – not with simple formulas but with honesty and presence. So that when a marriage comes to a breaking point, there is someone down the road that says, “Yes, this is hard and here are some creative ways we navigated it.” Or maybe they offer the wisdom that love is most evident in a necessary ending. At the time, I was referring to couples in the thirty, forty, fifty years of marriage encouraging those of us in the gritty-more-than-a-decade-but-raising-families marriages. I guess it’s what I’m doing here too. Acknowledging what made it more difficult for our marriage to not only survive, but thrive. And trying to articulate some of the creative ways we found to save our marriage. It took me awhile to recognize the religious scaffolding around marriage was a huge part of our problem. I’m hoping it may give others permission to be honest about what their own marriage might need when the mold is cutting off circulation.   

***

I receive you and share myself with you. With deepest joy I join my life with yours. I promise to cherish and uphold you from this day forward as long as our lives last. I promise to love, support, serve, guide, cherish... in prosperity and in adversity; in sorrow and in happiness; in sickness and in health; forsaking any others, be united to you as long as we live.

In August, we celebrated 12 years of marriage. 

My anniversary note to Jason:

Marriage is more than we bargained for in all of the hardest and best ways. That day I put on a white dress and you wore the tux, I definitely did not know how to freely give myself or let you freely be yourself. But the promises we made grow more meaningful as we learn to grow a more whole-hearted marriage, creating space for love to grow wild and free. I want to keep on learning marriage with you.

Thanks for your willingness to create a life where we can be honest, faithful and loving. Thanks for laboring with me to bring new life when it looked like everything was dying in our life and in our marriage. It’s so much more than cliché to say I love you more now than the day I married you. I am grateful for your efforts to show me love, for your willingness to work at knowing me and freeing me instead of binding me to you or binding us to any ideologies about marriage – this is no small thing when my stuff meets your stuff and it’s hard. I feel deeply hopeful about our life together and the life we keep on nurturing.

PS. It’s a myth that love cannot grow wild and free and faithful. More on that in a future post.

*** 

I attended a gorgeous wedding recently. The truest and most honest wedding words I heard in all the festivities were these: There is no formula for marriage.

I wish this was the start of all wedding sermons.

Our anniversary got me thinking about our marriage and the myth of the marriage mold.

Mine and Jason’s vows were the traditional kind. We might’ve tweaked the words, but nothing was lost in translation. They are the same promises couples have been vowing for centuries. 

For better or worse

For richer or poorer

In sickness and in health

Forsaking all others and being faithful to you

Words are deeply meaningful to me. I think it’s neat when a bride and groom write their own vows. And yet, I am encouraged to hear them also go back to these simple, clear-cut promises.

Christian culture has built so much scaffolding around the covenant of marriage, the beauty of it is often hard to find. Privately, I have been writing pages and pages as I wrestle with and deconstruct the religious scaffolding we’ve built around a life of faith and a God of love.

I tried to write a simple, heartfelt post for our anniversary but everything I wrote seemed to be missing something. It felt incomplete. So I kept writing to figure it out and kept bumping up against all of the religious scaffolding around marriage and faith.

I realize our culture/society has stereotypes and norms around marriage but I was really wrestling with Christian culture and marriage because it is the one I’m most familiar with, the one I grew up in, steeped in, and the one that dominated my own thinking and experience of marriage for way too many years. 

I’ve struggled for weeks to weave the thoughts together. Getting more coherent thoughts on paper, I owe to Jason, who spent several hours thinking about and critiquing these ideas with me to finally grind out something that felt more whole. I kept getting stuck because in order to write a simple post, the complexities on the other side of the simple must be reckoned with. The more I wrestled with the simple idea we’ve discovered about freedom, the more complex I realized it was. I realized that to critique the Christian marriage mold inevitably touched on the sacred cows of fundamentalist beliefs, some of them passively my own. (Perhaps this is why same-sex marriage has become the ultimate battleground.)

But I wanted to keep trying for a few reasons:

1. Wholehearted living is a core value of mine and I’ve seen it produce so much good fruit in my life and in the lives of those committed to the messy process. The opposite of wholehearted living is fragmented or dis-integrated living. I’ve seen so much damage and brokenness as a result.

2. As our own marriage hit the rocks hard, I began realizing just how much fragmenting, hypocrisy, and/or fakery is required for most people to fit (or at least look like they do) in the Christian marriage mold. While I am plenty of things, hypocrite I am not. So I had to admit something didn’t fit and look for a better way.

3. I am extra susceptible to work-for-worth systems. They are especially tricky to navigate when they are clothed in spiritual language. I am learning to use a careful filter to recognize where these exist because I’m like a moth to a flame.

Part of my filter is recognizing when a noun is preceded by anything like “Biblical” or “Christian”, it is likely I will also find an overly-simplistic formula that promises something it can never deliver in real life. (i.e. Biblical/Christian... marriage, finances, singleness, parenting, manhood, womanhood, counselling, music, writing, homemaking, family, etc.)

Work-for-worth is part of the package? Sign me up. I know how to do that well. Hustling for worth always has a formula attached. And I liked formulas because for so long I was an approval-seeking, good girl and I could plug in all the required numbers. I was an overachieving, people-pleasing, perfectionist who was usually motivated by fear, a desperate need for approval and the need to belong. I loved the comfort, certainty, and self righteousness these types of formulas offered.

Just like many people before me, growing a little older and gaining life wisdom means the certainty formulas simply don’t fit. It was time to outgrow the formulas. Finding a better way in our marriage helped me see this. But more than anything else, having our life and my certainties and abilities overturned by illness has taught me about the formula fallacy. It has highlighted the cracks in the molds that guarantee a homogenous, satisfying product. To hold on to the molds would mean discarding, repressing, denying parts of ourselves, our stories - ultimate roadblocks for wholehearted living. 

Since formulas and molds “worked” for me for most of my life, I’ve been freaked out by freedom.

I was told many untrue things about freedom. It’s hard to deprogram those from my brain. It will probably be the work of a lifetime. 

Marriage, our marriage, has been a place of wrestling with the molds and the formulas and finding freedom. It’s been a place of realizing faithfulness, freedom and love are not only NOT mutually exclusive but are in fact mutually dependant. Real love cannot be found apart from freedom and freedom necessitates risk. 

Blogging/Writing has always been about wrestling, understanding, growing, integrating. Though I haven’t been blogging regularly, I’ve never stopped writing. So I am going to blog a little series about what I’ve been thinking and wrestling with as we are finding a more whole way for our marriage. Thankfully, Jason and I have been wrestling together with the mold of marriage and what it means to throw it out. There’s no prefab map anymore, outlining every possibility or non possibility for our life together. We must remain awake in our marriage, paying attention, seeking and offering connection. No autopilot to the next destination anymore. Yes, it allows for more risk as freedom always does. But instead of a formula, we are seeking and learning the creative beauty of a marriage being recreated with freedom and love, faithfulness, acceptance, forgiveness, mutuality, room for growth and change, authenticity, hope and truth. Throwing out the formula was a desperate move. We weren’t sure where it would lead us. It felt like a risk. But it was that or call it quits. And it is the best, healthiest, choice we’ve ever made as a couple. 

You're welcome to join in the conversation about your own experience of prescriptions (molds) for marriage and how they've helped or hindered you. 

Matter-Matters

Photo credit

When we face loss and grief or fragility and weakness, we miss out on redemption’s invitation if we go straight to mind over matter (though mind matters a great deal).

Here’s how I know... I was queen of mind over matter. And my matter broke under the pressure of my mind’s willful insistence to ignore everything life was saying to me. Now I think it’s something more like Be mindful of the matter.

Even now, three years since everything fell apart (or fell to ground, fell to heart) I sometimes feel scared when my body starts struggling again. It catches me by surprise after all of the lessons and learning...

After the acceptance and changing.

After all of the life-giving words I’ve written (mostly for myself) about the gifts and gains of illness.

After all of the life I’ve found in the midst of things dying off.

After finding a rhythm of resting when I am weakening or doing and giving when I am able...

After all of this, I still feel moments of panic that I might end up back at the very bottom. That bottom is a chaotic, desperate place with all of its uncertainty. I’ll never forget. And though order formed and is forming out of that chaos and births very good things in my life, I don’t want to go back. I want to think serenely, contentedly, confidently, unwaveringly. I want to have stoic certainty about the growth I’ve had along the dis-ease journey and live with stepford-wives-ignorance about how things might play out. But instead, sometimes, I feel afraid of what I cannot know or control. 

It shouldn’t catch me by surprise.
This is the human experience. This is what it means to live inside of our actual lives and not just inside of our head or our armor. This is what it means to live life, to be human and admit that control and self-determinism is an arrogant and fearful illusion we love. The sorrows and joys are inseparable. To grow into love and joy is to grow into sorrow. Likewise, to grow with trust, into sorrow is to grow into love and joy. They grow intertwined. (We actually have some good science to prove it.)

Living inside my life, inside my skin, teaches me with a deeper Wisdom than anything I’ve done with just my mind. (And I’m a fan of the mind. I've always been a thinker and always will be. But my mind... well, sometimes it gets jumbled and confused with everything. But my body... she always tells me the truth if I will really listen.)

When the panic sets in and my mind is racing, instead of clamping down and telling my mind what to do and how to feel (good luck with that), I need to stop and pay attention to the mattered things and to the things that matter.

The fear comes from what my body feels and what my mind does with it, yes, but you can’t just beat information top-down into the body to soothe her or remind her of what is real.

I need to hike or watch the sunset or listen to the birds in my backyard or water my garden. I need to cook something or create something. I need to play with the kids or ask Jason for comfort. I need silence. I need the companionship of a friend, sometimes even a dinner party (though not as often since I’m an introvert :).  I need a good cup of tea, a hot bath with candles. I need sleep or I need to sit by the river and wait. I need to say I need help. And while Wisdom comes near in prayerful silence, or serious study, or a long-ago-memorized passage or verse – she comes nearest to me these days enfleshed – the real, the tangible made alive and healing by the Spirit. It is in the mattered that I hear the Spirit clearest. And why not? From the beginning, matter and spirit came together -  it was blessed and it was good.

Sometimes, if we’re lucky and unlucky at the exact same time, the body catches our attention in such a way that denial is no longer useful or possible. It can be a wake-up call to life. A broken body can take you into despair and fear and/or it can capture our heart’s imagination and open a deep abiding well of healing. For me, it is both. I think it’s a wake-up call the able-bodied can’t hear. (I definitely couldn’t.) Or at least, their snooze button still works. But sometimes all of the buttons break and you can’t shut it off and you have to get up and start walking into life differently.  

In the middle of chaos, it’s a chance for me to come back to the beginning. Back to the place where the Spirit hovers over what seems dark and unknown and brings order out of it, blessing it.  For me, the chaos becoming order now takes shape in very tangible, very real, very embodied ways not just in the realm of ideas or doctrines about life, God, healing or anything else. It is experienced. Being mindful of the matter is the most whole way I have found to hear the still small voice leading me forward in love and mercy and grace. 

How about you? What are your spiritual practices of paying attention to the matter/to the body?

Letting Things Die (Trusting in the Hidden Wholeness)

Would I still

be willing to push up,

break out of this shell

knowing full well

I will meet Light,

dance in it,

turn my face toward it

knowing I am whole –

the flower I’m meant to be

Only to fall back to the ground

become a seed

and do it all again

over and over

Not because

I became the wrong kind of flower

but because this is

how it’s intended to be

*****

I am not an avid gardener. I think this is why our little garden works with me as a metaphor for life.  I learn so much from our little garden. I do not bring many assumptions and zero expertise. I am hesitant to imagine I should control her because I know so little.  I am free to notice and learn. I am free to be surprised.

My little garden is coming back to life. Actually, the winter was shorter and less intense than expected.

No complaints here. Our life, just like our little garden, can’t completely rule out a freak winter storm. There are a few more snows or frost, at least, still to come before we exhale all this winter. But there are signs of spring and I am so relieved. Little bits of green are sprouting up where only dry deadness used to be. The first signs of spring for me are the birdsongs return. Perched high in our massive Blue Spruce, they call me out of my winter while building a nest to hold new life.

It’s just the beginning. Full bloom is a ways off...

As I look at what is mostly still a winter garden with tiny signs of life emerging, I wonder about each one.

Should I fertilize the weak little hydrangea covered in spider webs? I always thought she would grow bigger, stronger with more blooms in my garden. I’m disappointed by her every.single.year.

The Korean lilac looks the same as it did all winter – grey, dry, barren. But if you look close enough, you can see the promise of purple blossoms just waiting to explode from her tiny buds. When she comes alive, it is magnificent. She has always been my favorite. I paid the highest price for her and I’ve never regretted it.

What about the wild, gangly, mangy potentilla? Does she need me to help her toward blooms or do I wait? She might not be the prettiest thing but she has definitely been the heartiest though she still bears the stunted growth from my last premature pruning. So I wait to see what she needs in this new season.

Then there’s the wheat grass- tall and beautiful, even in the winter. How long do I wait, enjoying her beauty, before I cut it all away to make room for her new life? I’ve learned the hard way that to wait too long means the new growth gets chopped back with the old.

The dang dog ate some of the daylilies. I had been so careful with them. Of all the plants, I gave them the most attention when everything thawed. I cut and cared. But the dog...  It sucks knowing that I did my best and still that one plant might struggle because a dog was curious and bored.

Most of all, my heart is struck by my littlest boxwood.

Non-descript, one of six, she speaks clearest to my tired heart. The little boxwood that could!

I almost dug her up, you know. It has been three winters since I noticed she was dead. By all signs, no life would come from her. But for once, I was cautious in my pruning. I didn’t want to lose her. So I fertilized, cut her back to the root stems and waited. Nothing. I cleared the mulch around her roots for more sun and food and water. Nothing. I showed her to expert gardeners.  I sent pictures of her to others who know all about boxwoods. They said Wait, she’ll come back yet. I had my doubts. I was all doubt, actually. But finally, I decided she would have to find her own way back to life. I had done what I could. My only promise was to let her live in my garden ugly and dead (quite a promise coming from me). I would leave her and see what happened. So I did. For two years, I walked by the deadest little boxwood and let her be dead. Others noticed and commented that maybe she didn’t belong in my garden anymore. I wondered too. I had mostly doubt mixed with mustard seed sized hope that she would grow again.

But at the end of the second summer when everything was falling away, I realized the littlest boxwood was holding steady with her meagre green leaves that had managed to grow just a little. And now, another winter has passed and here she is, resurrected, despite my doubts and inattention. She might always be smaller than all of the other boxwoods, at least for years until they get a good pruning too. Her smallness means she is closer to the ground. When the fierce wind blows, she is less rattled. And since she was pruned all the way back to her roots, she seems sturdier. She reminds me that all of the unravelling in my life and heart during this past ‘winter’ might just be like my littlest boxwood. Many things have died. I have done what I can to save them. Now it’s time to leave it be, trusting all will be well because there is a Force of Life greater than all of my efforts sustaining it.

What re-grows will not be enviable, likely it will always be smaller, simpler, closer to ground but hopefully it will also be heartier and sturdier. Hopefully it will grow back strong, less moved by the wind and more sure of the delight that comes in the simple things – of sunshine, of water, of life and the gift of growth.

*****

Sorting my soul is such messy work. I really wish it were tidier.

A nice journal? What's that?!?! No matter how many nice journals I buy, growth and epiphanies always looks like this for me - random, messy, scribbled, gathered from here-and-there. Piecing it all together is the hardest part. 

Treatment Update

May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month.

We joined with many in the Lyme community and tied a ribbon (not-so-much lime green:) around our tree and porch post. We also took the kids downtown on May 1st to watch the Calgary Tower and the Langevin Bridge light up green for Lyme disease. We topped it off with milkshakes from Peter's Drive-In. A good night! 

We made lime green rainbow looms. Others had our idea too because a young girl was passing out rainbow looms she made for those who attended the light-up. The kids thought that was pretty cool.

*****

Treatment Update

The Lyme Guy in the States called borellia (lyme bacteria) a sci-fi bug. The bacteria can hide, trick, and evade the immune system. It can morph when needed, it can learn to protect itself from the meds and it can go into a sort of hibernation shell to wait-out medications and then re-emerge when the coast is clear and you think you've killed it all. It is very patient, doing its work slowly but surely. I give it huge props for being smart and resourceful but this just means we need smart, knowledgable, patient, resourceful doctors to outwit, outlast, outplay the borellia. (I do love a good Survivor reference!)

All of this to say, I am happy and nervous about moving into a new phase of treatment. This is my fourth round, fifth month, of herbal abx and supplements. Aside from the first round, I have coped amazingly well. My doc feels confident my body is strong enough to handle the next, more intense, phase of treatment. 

In addition to continuing treatment of borellia and co-infections, this new phase will begin treating the bio-film. Click here for a good explanation of biofilm and why its essential in treatment of Lyme disease. In a sentence, antibiotics can only kill a bacteria when its exposed. If borellia is hiding/living within a biofilm, antibiotics cannot penetrate it and therefore cannot kill it off. Many LLMDs (lyme docs) suspect this is the reason why long-term antibiotics are ineffective for many patients. 

Treating the biofilm can intensify symptoms because the biofilm at least keeps the infection in one place (within the cyst/biofilm) but in treating it, the toxins are released throughout the body. The goal is to release them and then kill them off with the complementary abx. Treating the biofilm is also the first step in treating the cyst form of the disease which can hibernate and wait until treatments are finished then re-emerge, potentially becoming resistant to medications. So biofilm, then cysts. This feels like getting to the nitty-gritty. It feels like progress, forward movement, and this makes me happy and ready. 

I am upbeat and optimistic, hopeful and patient. I also have moments of huge discouragement. Sometimes fear sneaks in too. Discouragement quickly becomes my companion when my memory and mental abilities make me feel like I'm 90. Or when I am not as able-bodied as I want to be. Mostly discouragement becomes fear when I wonder if this is just a little set-back or of I'm on my way downhill again.  

I don't take for granted the ability to show up for Cara's mother-daughter school tea, or volunteer in Evan's class, or streamline my energy to give our girl a special birthday party. I am grateful for good days strung together in a week. But the truth is, I still wear ear plugs around my house a lot. I still can't handle too much touch or bright lights or loud noises. I still lose my cool when too many people (read: 2)  need things from me at the same time. I am still surprised by how exhausted one activity can make me. My memory is worse than ever. And this scares me the most. Our ability to remember, to know feels like such a crucial part of who we are. It seems important for efficacy, consciousness even. My forgetfulness is alzheimer-ish and this scares me and it worries Jason. I have a zillion alarms on my phone reminding me when to pick-up the kids or make a phone call or meet a repair man at the house. The kids bank on me forgetting a consequences (I write these down too). I have lots of lists. I've left a burner on a time or two. I have to be more careful and respond less defensively when Jason calls to check-in or make sure I haven't forgotten this-or-that. 

My doctor seems optimistic that this is not permanent damage to my brain and will improve by the end of treatment. I'm not as confident but trust her experience. Dr. T has needed to remind me more than once that I am still at the beginning. Slow and steady wins the race. 

But in all honesty, it doesn't feel like the beginning. 

For me, the beginning is when I started walking into walls and laying in bed unable to cope with any light or sound or movement. The beginning is when I called my sister and said I wasn't sure what was wrong with me but that I couldn't take care of the kids anymore and would she please come help me? (For me, asking for this kind of help was the ultimate wake-up call that I was not okay.) The beginning is tremors and no strength to use my arms. The beginning is not being able to read books, grocery shop or put articulate sentences together. The beginning is wondering if whatever was wrong with me meant I was crazy or was going to kill me. That's the beginning. I feel so far from that place even though there are moments of these things still. I feel so far from the fear and despair of those days.

When I hear of others dealing with Lyme (and you'd be surprised to know how many people have emailed/talked with me in the past month wanting to connect about their new diagnosis of lyme), I feel very grateful. 

I am grateful my road to diagnosis was nowhere near as long or painful as many others. 

I am grateful for a strong body that has, for most of my life, kept borellia under control. 

I am grateful for a strong body, even now, that allows me to get better.

I am grateful that we have not been alone with the financial and practical burdens of trying to deal with this illness - The soups, the groceries, fruit, the babysitting, the Thursday night dinners that give me a night off every week, the thoughtful notes, conversations, the GF recipes and cooking... These make this mountain look a little smaller. They help me attend to the present inch. 

And perhaps most of all, I am grateful that my parents have made it possible for us to attend to the present inch - to rest and pour our energy into recovery instead of worrying about how we will pay for treatment. One of the biggest hurdles for treatment to almost all Lyme patients is financial. All treatment is costly and out-of-pocket, even here in a socialized system like Canada. While the choice to stop working brought some financial stresses, I have never had to worry about how we will pay for my/our treatment. I owe this indescribable peace of mind to my parents who have not hesitated for a single second when the medical bills come due. It is impossible for me to articulate how much this has helped us turn our focus toward recovery without the additional, enormous, financial stresses. Its the key piece that allows everything else to fall into place for recovery. I know I would not have the same optimism, patience and hopefulness without it.   

That's where we are right now - still at the beginning that doesn't feel like the beginning. :) Attending to our present inch. Moving forward and making progress, sometimes discouraged and scared but equally (and sometimes simultaneously) optimistic and grateful. 

Ryan & Resurrection: Grief's Container (13 Years)

Easter and I have had mixed reviews since my brother died. I have not always liked this "happy holiday" landing at the same time as his death day. But this year, I am struck again by the possibilities of resurrection to be grief's container. In out of control places and out of control emotions, we often need a containing space, person, place to ground us in the storm that swirls around us. I think resurrection can do all of this and more.

We have these moments of meaning, these moments of substance

these moments when we think "yes, there is a point to this"

And then there are the other moments

The moments of despair

the moments when it doesn't go well

There are the long cold silences

There is that thing that happens when the alarm goes off in this morning and you think "another day"

There is that thing that happens when you are driving to work and you think "why? what's the point?"

There is that small habit that grew and grew until now it's like a destructive pattern

you don't know what to do with it

And so what happens ever so gradually 

if we do not guard our hearts

is that we come to be gradually overtaken 

by this pervasive sense that there might not be a point to it underneath it all it actually is random and pointless

And so what happens is those good, beautiful, true, moving, inspiring moments

the lump in the throat

the tear in the eye

that sense when you embrace somebody and it feels like you're holding the Universe in your hands

Those moments start to feel like they're just little detours

and escapes from how it really is

Which is cold, dark, lonely, and pointless

Resurrection is the opposite

Resurrection says oh, no, no, no, no, no. Those glimpses, those are actually the real thing

They're the thing that undergird the whole thing

Just that moment when that person said that kind word and it ignited a whole new world in your heart

That was just an aberration from how things are

That was a sign, a symbol, a glimpse, a glance of how it actually is

Resurrection says that this is our home and that our home is good

Resurrection says that not only is our home good

but everything about our home that is wrong, twisted, broken, destructive, flawed, and failed

everything about it

whether it may hurt and whether it may be something like cancer that is real

and however big the bruise is

and however much blood there is on the floor

whatever it is

however real it is

and however much it broke your heart

it is, in the end, in some really, really hard to describe way

temporary

That in fact, there is a new creation bursting forth

right here in the middle of this one

and there is a new heaven and a new earth coming together

and that this Jesus, in his resurrection insists that in the conquering of death

he has brought about something new

something you can trust

that whatever is holding you down

whatever feels like it's drowning you

whatever feels like it's a weight chained to your ankle

does not have the last word

That is resurrection

Now, a guy rising from the dead 2,000 years ago

can I prove that happened?

No, no one can

and be very suspicious of anybody who says they can prove that

and be especially suspicious of sermons where people spend 45 minutes proving to you that a man actually rose from the dead

Nobody knows

What we know is there has been a community of people for several thousand years

who insist that something happened

that a tomb is empty

and that when you trust this story something will be unleashed

and unlocked in your heart

and in your life

So yes, it's history

but it's a bigger, better, wider, more expansive understanding of history

So for those who think "What? Come on. How far fetched is that?"

Try it

Try living in this story

Try trusting that all those little glimpses and glances of hope and beauty and truth and light

That they weren't aberrations

They weren't mistakes

They weren't some blip in the system

They were actually showing you what it's really like

That this new life is as close as the breath you just took

and the breath you're about to take

(Taken from The Liturgists - Sunday)

*****

When we experience grief and loss in our lives, we need faith and hope to say more than life goes on. I cannot even count how many times I have heard people shrug off the thing that is strangling their life and say life goes on, not much I can do about it. 

If we are people who believe in resurrection we must learn to offer and trust something deeper, truer, hopeful. But tread carefully. Christians are not known for being safe places for pain be it grief or forgiveness or doubt or... We are too quick with advice, too quick with fixes, too quick with platitudes (see: life goes on, give it to God, you must move on, God's ways are not our ways...). 

Though I usually find it hard to wrap my mind around the possibility of a resurrected God-man and I struggle to see how that impacts my life in a real, human way - Loss and grief make this possible. They are my micro view to understand a macro mystery that really is beyond my understanding. 

Resurrection people must be willing to remain present, conscious of the deaths, the losses, the Fridays in our lives and those around us. The dying places are not a lack of faith, they are the way to new life. Resurrection means life goes on is not what we know or offer. Instead we know that because of this pain, something beautiful will rise from the ashes. Something creative, alive, regenerated, new. We don't offer this assurance with platitudes, we offer it with presence. We stay put with our people in their pain. We trust when they do not. When they have the courage to come clean with their anger, sorrow, doubts - we stay. We stay, we ache, we cry, we make soup, we do laundry, we watch their kids. We say nothing. We say I love you. We say This is so hard. You have a right to this pain. It wasn't meant to be this way. We honor their anger, sorrow, doubts and trust in the resurrection mystery that always brings life out of death. This is our affirmation that we believe in resurrection. It is all that we need. After all, we are not the ones doing the resurrecting. Let's never forget that. We believe in the life breath of God coming into all our broken places and making something new. We stay, we wait and we notice the tiny buds beginning to blossom. Maybe there will be a time when the one we love can't see the buds and we gently and quietly whisper with our presence and our words, something beautiful is coming for you out of this pain. There will come a time when the one we accompanied and maybe pitied will become our teacher about the beautiful resurrection. And then it might be our turn.

There is a catch though. If we want to be the kind of people who point others toward the hope of resurrection in the midst of  their dying, we first have to be willing to see our own pain, Fridays, losses. We have to have sat in our own rubble, devastated and barely able to breathe (there is nothing worse for the broken heart than someone who imagines their own heart whole - so much damage can happen there). Only then can we know and trust that it is not our frenetic efforts to replant, rebuild, quote scripture, or move on that bring healing and life. It is having experienced the surprise and hope of seeing the tiniest buds in the middle of the mess, of reveling in the Mystery of all things being made new. 

When Mount St. Helens erupted, it turned everything around it into a desolate wasteland burned out and covered in ash. But fascinatingly, though the devastation wreaked havoc for months and years on the people and on the land, within only a few weeks, small life began to re-emerge. Not the big stuff. Not mighty trees. Signs of devastation were still everywhere. But looking with hope and trust in the created order of things, you could see signs of life. This is what we do in our own grief journeys and when we accompany others. Yes, we see the devastation, we don't look away pretending it isn't there. Sometimes we sit together in the rubble but as we do, we look for signs of life and nourish them, protect them and wait.

13 Years. 

I see so many signs of life. 

The landscape of my life and heart were forever altered by Ryan's death. But this garden that formed out of rubble wouldn't be here without the loss, the grief, the ashes. 

Resurrection means rubble can become a garden. It doesn't erase it or replace it. The rubble becomes the place where new growth begins. It takes a long time for all of the decomposing and new life to become as full and flourishing as it once was. But we trust in the Creative Nature that holds the world and promises to always keep on bringing life out of death -here and now, not just 2000 years ago. We look for the little promises that life will bloom again and we keep on doing what we do. To keep on is itself an act of faith and hope. 

There are still painful places of my brother's death. I hate looking at certain pictures of him because I see the addiction, the pain and the hopelessness. I miss him. But at the same time, I remember his beauty. 

I remember how artistic he was. He was so incredibly talented. 

He was funny. And sarcastic. But he made me want to be funnier. I tried so hard. This is where I got my knack for a punch line and sarcasm - trying to keep up with him. I see it in Cara too. The total delight when she says something funny enough for even her funny brother to give her props for a good joke. 

He was generous. 

He was loyal and loving.

He was dedicated to basketball. That dream was etched in him even to the end.

He was very tender with the people he loved. 

He often picked the cookie dough out of the ice cream and simply put the rest back in the freezer for the next person.

With me, he was a truth-teller. About what he saw in me and about himself. 

In hindsight, I can see he lived a very real life despite the trauma and his demons. He was never fake. He hated when I was. 

He was a fabulous brother. Couldn't have asked for better. 

You can read my other posts remembering Ryan here.

NECESSARY ENDINGS = NEW BEGINNINGS

Welcome to the new blog!

I am unsure of how often I will post here. But just like with the old blog, if you want an e-mail when a new post goes up, you can enter your e-mail address on the right by entering your address where it says "Follow By E-mail" or just bookmark this new page. Shepherd Snapshots will be made private and the link to this blog will no longer be accessible. 

Finally, I did not allow comments on our old blog but this blog does have an open comment section at the bottom of each post. Feel free to leave your own thoughts and musings!

This phrase, Necessary Endings, has been bouncing around in my head and heart since June but trying to find its way in my life for much longer.

Endings. I think I have seen them as unwanted finality, loss, failure even.
I've written before that leaving or ending is not well-developed in my life. I cling. Hard. In reality, I fight to keep all of the things I have created, built, participated in. I've called it faithfulness. Sometimes it is but sometimes its fear. It is hard to receive anything new (friendships, opportunities, new habits or dreams) when you are so weighed down by every last treasure you've collected over a life.

Lyme has given me opportunities to learn endings and to see they are so very necessary. I am just coming to see that whole endings are maturity not failure. I have had opportunities over the past couple of years to experience endings - some I am proud of and others not so much. My next task is to pay attention and learn how to end well.

Our family blog, Shepherd Snapshots, has mostly been a joy and delight. I have repeatedly said how thankful I am to have pictures and anecdotes to return to with the kids. But our kids are growing up and becoming more conscious of privacy, perception, who they are and how they want to show up in the world. And in a techno world, I want to teach them to be wise with their online profile. They already have this wisdom and hesitation. I want to foster it not correct it. In the past couple of months, when I take a picture, I have heard some version of Okay, you can take that picture but don't put it on Instagram or the blog.  

I started that blog as a way for far-away family to keep tabs on our life. It was fun. I started blogging before we had kids even. Our blog has been a great memory keeper. Shepherd Snapshots also became a place where I learned to use (write) my voice. The power of telling our stories cannot be underestimated in the process of healing old stuff and becoming a more whole human. I am grateful for that little space to write and ramble on about what I am learning and wrestling through and for those of you who have encouraged me in the process. In thinking through our necessary blog ending, I have decided to continue my blog musings apart from our family life. I'm sure motherhood, the kids and a few pictures of us will make their way to this little blog and I'll continue to use my voice as I always have here though separate from telling the intimate details of our family life.

Some of the wordy posts from Shepherd Snapshots have been moved over to this blog and can be found on the right most easily under "Labels". I will move the rest over eventually.

Here I will continue to write and have snapshots (because I still love photos!) of what I am wondering and learning about faith, lyme, motherhood, being human, grief, community, delight, gluten free ... on and on.

Soup

I had a set-back this week. I just came off two weeks of feeling really good. I was feeling happy and peaceful about my treatment, my competency and accomplishments. I dare say even proud (that little stinker of a besetting sin rears its head quite regularly at me). But the start of this week brought something weaker, dependent, frail. And it has brought me back to a question I’ve been thinking about for awhile.

I have been thinking about frail things – in the world, in me, in nature.  

(I like the word delicate but that’s for another time…)

Our culture shields itself from all things frail. We value strength and power. I hate feeling weak.
Maybe it reminds us just a bit too much of our own smallness. Maybe we’re afraid of hurting.

Maybe it makes us face dependency, impermanence, or our need for and responsibility toward others and the Other.

I have been noticing the difference between when I feel frail and when I think I am strong and I had to wonder…

Could it be that my past, present and future would truly be worse off without Lyme?

When I ask myself the question, What is saving my life right now? I am caught off guard but each time the answer is the same: Lyme.   

“Things that happen in my body break the illusion that I am in control of life…The body makes theologians of us all.” Barbara Brown Taylor

Lyme.

Otherwise known as

The undoing of my willful-weaving to create a life that gave me a sense of value, control, power, purpose.

God’s mercy comes in this spiral-shaped unravelling that says, Come away with me. It’ll be a mess for awhile. Some of it might even feel like breaking… And it will take the rest of your life to learn… But come away with me and learn the unforced, reoriented, rhythms of grace…

Of genuine faith

Of delight

Of humility

Of contentment

Of gentle living accompanied by chutzpah

Of valor

Of dependency

Of mutuality

Of simplicity

Of stillness

Of nature

Of giving, serving and loving without binding the other

Of being loved without being bound

Of joy

Of truthful words and truthful living

Of seeing and telling the truth about myself and what I know

Of having the courage to see past what is unreal to what is real

Of facing my addiction and compulsions for the sake of approval, validation, being special

Of trading work to be loved for I loved you first, before any of it

Of experiencing deeply the first Love who stitched and stitches me back together with beloved, enough, good

Of a willingness to live counter to my culture (church and society)

Of a growing desire to stop building up my “kingdom” and embrace what is more whole, more human, more ordinary, more uncertain, less tidy, more honest, more faithful, more loving, more holy.

*****

Could it really be that this twisted Lyme journey is healing me?

We can be healed without being cured. We are offered healing, never promised a cure.

Enter homemade soup.

“To eat is to acknowledge our dependence—both on food and on each other.” Frederick Buechner

There is something inexplicably comforting about the nourishment of soup. I have been trying to figure out what it is about the soups you made that heals and humbles.

Each time I open my freezer, I notice your soups.

Each night, I set out a soup I will eat at lunch the next day.

Each time I gulp down the warm broth, I feel nourished and grateful.

Sometimes as I eat, I even wonder if dependency in community can really taste this good.  I think of you and say a prayer of thanks for you, your efforts and your love displayed in this very practical way. The soups have made a huge difference in giving me more energy for our family needs. 

Eve Ensler writes about her journey through cancer, “The thing that really heals is to know we have not been forgotten.”

When I blogged the request for soup, I did so aware of a very practical, tangible need to help me conserve energy so I could put it toward healing and caring for other basic needs in our family.

In hindsight, I wonder if at some deeper place I was also hoping to be reminded that I am not forgotten, that I am supported, that we are not alone as we live out this hard place.

Your soup is nourishing my body and my soul. I think I can even say it is healing me.  

I shouldn’t be surprised. It seems to be the way of God to use the tangible, material to convey and accomplish the holy and healing.  

“Matter, matters to God…this is embedded in both testaments of the Bible…” Barbara Brown Taylor

Over and over we see symbols – touchable, smell-able, see-able symbols conveying a Mystery we can just barely understand if we are lucky. It allows us to know and to experience the sacred here and now in our human skin and senses, to let the Mystery enter us and change us. (Incarnation, Eucharist…) It’s real matter/material that brings to human reality the Mystery. Another example of this is the sacrament of “anointing the sick”.

Rachel Held Evans in her new book, Searching for Sunday, beautifully articulates the deep significance in this sometimes weird-sounding sacrament.  And because a theology of suffering and healing are typically shallow, dismissive and entitled in north american churches, I was encouraged and comforted by her way with words.

“The slow and biblical work of healing is to enter into one another’s pain, anoint it as holy and stick around no matter what. (Anointing the sick) is an acknowledgement. It’s a way to speak to someone who is suffering without words, platitudes or empty solutions. It says, This is a big deal. This matters. I’m here. Anointing is really a commission, a sending out on a special mission. How significant is it that (for centuries) Christians anoint suffering? Healing is a slow, relational, meandering path. It requires patience, presence, and willingness to take the scenic route [with one another]."  

I have thought about your soup and how it has been an outward sign of an inward grace, much like this idea of anointing the sick. This is how we define sacraments – outward signs of inward grace. The root of the word means “sacred, holy, to consecrate”.  

Seeing your soup sitting in my freezer has felt like you commissioning me to live within this hard place. To make it required your attention, your money, your time, your care, your hands. These are your prayers. In chopping and simmering and delivering you gave me your presence that says, This is a big deal. This matters. You're not alone.

In many ways, the soup has been the best our community has done to see our “suffering” and bless it. No platitudes, no scripturizing (though well-intended), no judgments, no covert advice on how we should be living this out. Just a lot of grace healing me bowl-by-bowl.

So I am healing. I have high doubts about ever being cured (though I do have hopes for becoming physically well).

Not because I don’t have faith it is possible but because I know I have stumbled upon a more faithful life in this weak place. I may never get back what I had before. And in light of all I have just written, you’ll understand why I sometimes wonder if a cure would even be the best thing for my life – the one where it seems to require my frailty and weakness to see and receive the gifts of the unforced rhythms of grace. I do, however, have complete confidence in my healing. For the rest of my life I want to be healed. And what I am learning is that healing is not a single or solitary instance. It is ongoing. It is not about regaining the life I used to live. It is not even just me and God. It is relational, communal. It comes when we enter one another’s suffering and help redeem it by blessing it, carrying it, staying present and patient with a faith-filled heart that trusts in the Mystery of God when healing sometimes looks like dying. I am learning that suffering ceases to be suffering when we are able to find its meaning in the story of redemption. And your soup is one of the ways we've been accompanied and the best way our pain has been acknowledged, blessed, carried. It helps me see and tell our story with a theme of redemption.

With heartfelt thanks!