I pack my life in Prada…

There’s a lot of talk out there about baggage.  Not the kind that you pack to take a trip to Bermuda or even to spend the night at Grandma’s.  Real baggage.  The kind that someone - most of the time, a lot of someones - pack for you.   It’s heavy and awkward.  It’s what makes us the weary and heavy-laden Christ beckons come.

The problem with baggage language is that too much focus gets left on the baggage itself.  The suitcase doesn’t deserve the attention.  The attention belongs to what got packed, the trip you’re taking it on and what you’re going to do with it all when you get there.

I used to think of all the stuff in my baggage as dirty or stupid or irrelevant or a liability.  In general, it was all crap, so I kept it metaphorically in a dark, dingy, duct tape-clad, well-locked 20-year old American Tourist suitcase someone dug out of a dumpster.  I managed to keep it hidden under the bed and simultaneously make it the elephant in the room.

But then one day I got the gumption to open that suitcase up and wade through all the things packed inside.  I found the things I was most afraid of - stained sheets, torn clothes, a brown leather belt.  And there were things I wasn’t sure of - a prom dress, some sheet music, an apron, a tie.  Then, once I had it all laid out, I realized there were things in there that I loved - gym shorts, blue jeans, a swim suit, a book.

Mostly other people had packed that suitcase for me, handed it to me, said it was mine to carry.  So I carried it as a burden.  With it fully unpacked, I could for the first time see that it wasn’t all crap.  Even the dirty, torn-up and bloody stuff wasn’t total crap.  And because it wasn’t all crap as I’d led myself to believe, it couldn’t/didn’t need to stay jammed into a suit case under the bed.  Or be left out in the open for others to uncomfortably ooh and aah over.

The suit case was emptied and now the things had to be put away.  Some things were left out, they were more than worth wearing.  Others were hung towards the back of the closet, within reach but safely, respectfully tucked away for the right occasion.   And yes, some things did go back in the suitcase because that’s simply where they belong.  But this time, I threw the American Tourist back into the dumpster it came from and put all of my precious suitcase-worthy belongings into the glamorous Prada they belong in.

Suitcases aren’t for hiding things.  They are for carrying the things we love from place to place, protecting them and keeping them safe.  They are for our precious things, the things others may have told us to be ashamed of, things that they shoved into the big ugly American Tourist with all it’s duck tape glory.  They are for our pearls, the things we will not cast before swine, the things that make us beautiful.

For the things we shall carry with style and grace.  They are the things I pack in Prada.

Lamentations

Lamentations 2:1-9

Sometimes things fall a part. Sometimes the rug gets yanked out from under us. It takes us by surprise, or maybe we see it coming. A father walks away. Radiation doesn’t work. The vodka’s burn is too good. The ice is black. A baby is conceived but her parents never get to hear her cry.

Life happens. It happens to us and as those called into ministry, we are keenly aware of life happening to those around us. But with that awareness come the burdens of sympathy and suffering. How do we empower others to carry their pain? What do we do with the weight of our hearts in the face of another’s suffering?

The most unfortunate turn is taken when the weight in our own hearts either leads us to flee the scene of disaster or it compels us to tidy everything and everyone up as quickly as possible. I don’t know for certain, but my bet is that the second path is the more destructive of the two.

We meet the daughter whose dad left or the mother who’s dying even after cancer took everything that made her a woman. We stare into a pair of blood shot eyes or look awkwardly at floor beneath a man’s newly acquired wheel chair. We search desperately for something better to say than there are angels rocking her in heaven. We meet these people. We are these people.

Together, we arrive at a place where the flame has gone out. It doesn’t matter if it was extinguished by a mighty wind, a drop of water or the gentle breath of a grandmother. What matters is that where we are, the flame is gone.

It is easy to overlook the emotional and spiritual plight of the Israelites when you have insight into their culture, know the stories of their disobedience and the warnings they had. We know that it was Babylon that destroyed Jerusalem. We know the people were told it was going to happen.

But none of that matters. We are listening to the cries of people who feel as if God has torn apart their lives. We are hearing the account of people, once attended to by prophets, now experiencing the deafening absence of God’s voice. The flame was gone. For them, in that moment, that’s all that mattered.

When we arrive in a space where the flame is out, it doesn’t much matter why or how we ourselves or another soul got there. What matters is the flame is gone, God’s voice cannot be heard and it is time to cry out and grieve and lament. Yes, it is important to process and reflect, but those and all other methods of understanding are meant to help one grieve well, not get the grieving over with faster.

Despite what we might think, we are not menders of broken hearts, the solvers of life’s great problems or the healers of really anything that ails. God’s given us all our own unique MacGyver like spiritual skills to contribute to the profound and powerful Trinitarian mission taking place in each of those areas, but God has not called us or equipped us to successfully complete those missions on our own.

If we choose to live into that reality, we will find real relief. It’s not that we can’t mend, solve or heal. We don’t have to. We were made, saved and called by a God who is big enough to handle the accusatory cries of his children in Jerusalem a few thousand years ago and God is big enough to handle the anger, accusations, fear, humiliation and hopelessness that flow from grief stricken hearts today. He doesn’t need us to do it for him.

When it comes to grieving, God does not operate in the ways some of us may have experience grief and loss in our families. Our God will not say, let me give you something to cry about. Our God will not call the teacher or coach or our friend’s parents to try fix our problems for us. Our God will not stay in the bedroom so you can’t see her crying. Our God is big enough, whole enough to handle whatever it is anyone is feeling when they find themselves in a place where the flame has gone out.

God is big enough. God keeps us safe. God will not let the grief destroy anyone. The grief is safe. It doesn’t have to be avoided, or explained away, hurried through or fixed. Instead, it needs to be fostered, tended to, waited on.

My friend lost her fiancé to cancer. As part of his religious tradition, it is the role of the wife to throw the first shovel of dirt on to the casket. When the pastor or whoever it was handed her that shovel, she thrust it into the dirt and tossed a pile down into the hole. Then she did it again. And a third and fourth time. No one said anything. No one did anything. We just stood there, some of us staring at her, others awkwardly at the sky or ground. All of us crying. And she was shoveling. She was grieving. We were all grieving.

This piece of my precious friend’s story has a lot to say about grieving and grieving well. She was grieving, not thinking. She did what in that moment seemed natural. The rest of us, well, we recognized just how foolish, inappropriate and even mean it would have been to take that shovel away. We realized that what we were watching wasn’t something that needed to be fixed, stopped, rushed or dealt with. We realized that this grief had gathered us together to witness something beautiful. And even though this pain was tangled up in our guts and pouring from our eyes and noses, we realized the pain was safe. It would not swallow any of us whole.

My prayer for everyone here today is that we’d come closer to knowing pain won’t swallow us whole. That we can arrive in a space where the flame has gone out, willing to wait and watch instead of analyze or fix. And that we would arrive there convinced that God’s dependability is not subject to the presence of a flame.

Thankfulness Changes

First, thanks for the comments. I’m especially impressed to see my mother piped up. I’m still looking for a different picture that doesn’t have my face in it to use in the header, but for now, this one will stay. And although I don’t think my eyes are too terribly old, I’d agree that it’s a bit more challenging to read white on black, so I think another redesign might be coming. It took a year and a half to do the first one though, so don’t expect the next one too soon.

…..

Something struck me this week. It might have been the midweek sunshine or having to read so much on solution focused care, but I’m not sure. What grabbed me was this passage from Philippians:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

This was one of the first scripture passages I memorized and it has been tucked away in my heart for almost a decade. I memorized it because if there’s a gene for worrying, it runs rampant on my father’s side of the family, and I definitely am a carrier. I memorized this passage to remind myself I didn’t need to be worried or anxious. I could pray and God would ease my mind.

I have always read this passage and focused on what it told me not to do.

This passage never came to mind in a way that reminded me to rejoice or to be thankful. I don’t know why; it just didn’t. But after leading the adult Sunday school class through a lesson focused on celebration and solitude, I suddenly found new connections being formed in my brain between thankfulness and joy and hope and transformation.

If I am not thankful, I will not find joy in my life. Nor will I have a foundation for building trust and appreciation of God’s provision. And I will not have hope. And won’t be transformed.

That might seem awfully simple, but really, it’s a big, BIG deal. Think about Philippians 4: 4-7 above. I don’t know about you, but I do not rejoice and I am not thankful during most of the times that I am experiencing worry or anxiety. I may be able to calm myself into a strangely neutral emotional place, but that place is neutral. There is no movement; I’m just sitting and waiting and trying not to freak out.

It’s during those times that I am commanded to rejoice and be thankful. It’s not a suggestion. It’s also not an insensitive piece of advice from some shallow baby-boomer who’s led a fairly sheltered life with relatively few problems or who’s never had enough balls to really stare his/her problems in eye. The word thankful is also NOT being used as a synonym for ‘be grateful’ or ‘quit feeling sorry for yourself’. No. It’s a command written by a man who has experienced legit worry and suffering, on behalf of a God who is not full of crap. And they command the joy and thanksgiving because they know what they are talking about.

In those times, what I desperately need is for things to be different. Who gets anxious because they really, really want life to stay just as it is forever? What I want is transformation, but transformation cannot happen if it is not fueled at least in part by hope. I’ve got to believe it can happen. If I’ve gotten out of the habit of recognizing and remembering the awesome thing our God has done - sunsets, Cabernet, friends, whatever - I will have absolutely no reason to have any hope. If I am not thankful for what I see and hear and taste, I won’t notice it long enough to remember it. And the only way I’ll ever be thankful for anything is if I can freely experience it with joy.

When I worry, I don’t experience things with joy. I am also too busy creating plans a, b and c for solving whatever problem is at hand. I’ve got other important things to pay attention too, so I miss the joy and don’t see the sunsets and don’t believe that the same God that came up with my friends little baby came up with me.

It’s amazing, maybe even revolutionary to me. Thankfulness rooted in real joy breeds hope, and hope opens the door to transformation. Thankfulness changes me. Thankfulness, fueled by joy makes a difference unlike any difference ever made by a single plan I’ve made or any advice I’ve ever been given.

Thankfulness changes everything.

Come Just as You Are

Discovering that I could freely and frequently come before God just as I was – a disastrously imperfect perfectionist – was what ultimately convinced me that the whole following Christ gig was a worthwhile endeavor. Following Christ gave me the freedom to take rest from the battle I continuously fought between trying desperately to be good enough for anyone (God, parents, friends, coaches) and being fatalistically convinced that I should just screw it all because I’d never be good enough anyway.  Jesus steadied the wildly swinging pendulum in my heart and gave me permission to come just as I was. 

I go to worship on Sundays now knowing that I have arrived just as I am, a week’s worth of burdens crammed into my brain and pockets and purse.  I stand before a couple hundred people and tell them they are free to do the same.  Come just as they are.

The last several months have been, mildly put, a major spiritual journey for me.  I’ve arrived at the conclusion that while almost eight years ago I felt Jesus steady that erratic pendulum of my heart driven by some kind of warped perfectionism, my mind still swirls with the same ridiculous lies and I even pull the same crap that I did when the pendulum was swinging away. 

It absolutely kills me.  It pisses me off.  What’s my deal?

Well, I’m pretty sure my deal is that once Jesus convinced me I could come just as I am, I learned to love myself just as I am.  It’s a good thing to love myself.  My life is a whole different ball game because I do. 

But when I show up on Sundays and we sing, “Come just as you are to worship…,” I know I for one don’t always hear what I think Jesus may be saying in response. 

 But leave here different than you came.

I started loving myself just as I am, and got really good at naming, accepting and loving every inch of me that wasn’t quite right.  Too bad for me and others in my life that in my eagerness to embrace myself just as I am, I have neglected to spend much time loving myself into becoming someone more.  When it comes to transformation, I talk a great talk, but don’t seem to live it.  It’s almost as if Christ stopped the pendulum, but because there are areas in which I have failed to believe and respond to his work, the pendulum just dangles there half way in between.  I came just as I was and in many ways, I’ve stayed just as I was. 

So I’m challenging myself this week to make sure I call myself, my friends and those in my congregation to come the same BUT leave different.  When I find me loving myself despite my sin and trials, I’m going to keep on loving myself, but I’m going to try to pause and imagine what it might be like to love the transformed version of myself.