Guilt and Wonder Woman

"I feel guilty a lot. I compare myself with the 

women who are home with their kids. I think I'm a little intimidated. 

Every woman feels guilty about the choices that they make." ~ Sheryl Sandberg

I just decided that my most recent haircut has a definite Mrs. Brady vibe going on, which I kind of like—there was a time I wanted to be Mrs. Brady when I grew up. This made me think about other women I admired when I was a kid. I was a girl, so of course, I went through my ballerina stage—didn’t last long. Both Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman were heroes of mine—all the athletics I did as a kid were just me working out my Wonder Woman and Bionic Woman fantasies. On top of that, Wonder Woman wore glasses and she was still gorgeous, which made me feel better about my four-eyed status. 

But my all-time favorite television heroine has got to be…Della Street, Perry Mason’s secretary. Beautiful, smart, witty, kind, just the right amount of friendly and flirty, and indispensable. Of course, she and Perry were always on the right side of the good and evil divide. 

Pondering my Della girl-crush, I realized something—I love being “the person behind the person.” I know, not very modern to admit in this age of “leaning in.” Still, I’ve been the janitor and I’ve been the boss, and of all the jobs I’ve had up and down the corporate ladder in between, Executive Assistant has been my favorite—and I’m good at it. This led to a particularly embarrassing moment at a going away party when my soon-to-be-former boss, with tears in her eyes, told everyone that I was the absolute best thing that had ever happened to her…while her husband stood there, mouth agape.

It’s not that I want to avoid responsibility. Anyone who’s been or had a good executive assistant understands that the assistant is the one that makes it all work—even if no one else is aware of it (and they shouldn’t be, if the assistant is good at what he does.)

It’s like that scene in The American President, where Michael Douglas, as President Shepherd, is grumpily harranguing his ever-loyal Chief of Staff, A.J., played by Martin Sheen:

President Shepherd: Is the view pretty good from the cheap seats, A.J.?

A.J.:  I beg your pardon?

President Shepherd: Because it occurs to me that in twenty-five years I've never seen YOUR name on a ballot. Now why is that? Why are you always one step behind ME?

A.J. Because if I wasn't, you'd be the most popular history teacher at the University of Wisconsin!

But back to not feeling guilty about where we are in life, which is really what I’m getting at, in my meandering way. Women should be the CEO, and men, too, but only those who are called to it. Whether you believe in some cosmic idea of the universe or you fall more on the side of divine authorship like myself, the truth is we all have our own unique gifts and calling. Life is about figuring out what those gifts are and using them to the best of our abilities. But, and this is important, no one else can tell you what your place is, and how we use our abilities and gifts may not fit anyone else’s idea of success—and that’s okay.

I admit, my ideas about this sort of thing are heavily influenced by the Bible. You can find the basis for it in Romans 12:

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them…

In the body of Christ, it’s good to be a mouth. It’s just as good to be an ear or a toe. Not because they are all equal, but because it’s good to be what you were created to be. What’s important is that you’re part of “the body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”

The Apostle Paul talks a lot about the mysteries of the gospel that have been revealed to us. The contentment and peace that comes to individuals in a Christian community walking in step with Christ is mysterious. The world alternates between encouraging us to do anything to come out on top, or trying to make everyone equal, and both ways end up in tyranny. God does community, and we end with each of us fulfilling our unique calling, together we love and change the world, and ultimately there is great freedom and joy. God’s way is always better, but as the state of the world attests, it can’t be done apart from Christ.

I believe God has called me to write, but that’s not all. The kids are growing up and there’s additional work to be done out there. I’ve been praying about where He’s calling me next. I wonder what I’d look like in a Della Street haircut.

Sowing Seeds

Last weekend my men got the tanks in for our latest experiment in urban gardening - our stock tank garden (we couldn't resist the photo op before we filled them with dirt). It reminded me of this essay I wrote a few years back. The boys are older now - a huge help in the garden - and will be doing more manly things this summer than I mention here. But mostly, this essay still resonates. So, back by popular demand (mine!) and "updated for today's English" it's...the spring garden post.

The latest is something called Urban Farming. When we heard that phrase the other night, Sean started to snicker and said, “Grandma Vivian’s plot of land on the farm in Kansas was over an acre, planted to the gills, and she called it ‘a garden’.”

I suppose it’s easier to see the difference between a farm and a garden when you have a real working farm around you as far as the eye can see. Someone once said, “Unemployment is capitalism’s way of getting you to plant a garden.”[i] So I can see, considering the soaring rate of unemployment in our cities, why folks might turn to their shovels. Taking time away from the madding crowd, digging one’s hands into the dirt, using muscles you haven’t used before, I can tell you from experience, this is very therapeutic.

I guess the idea of a garden was just too tame for some goal oriented go-getters. No simple “plot of ground where plants are cultivated” would do. No, they would turn their city bound pieces of land into Farms. A “tract of land cultivated for the purpose of agricultural production” sounds so much more professional, ultra-productive–it’s something you could put on a resume!

But wait, there’s more. It’s not just a farm–it’s the Urban Farming Movement. Urban Farming is “the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in, or around (peri-urban), a village, town or city.” That’s management level stuff, complete with jargon and everything.

So now Aunt Phyllis will be happy to learn that when she drops off that box of zucchini and tomatoes in the church kitchen next fall, she’s not just demonstrating God’s beneficence through a sweet act of kindness. No, she is an URBAN AGRICULTURALIST!! (Can Urban Home Farming federal subsidies be far behind?)

You will be glad to know there is a web-site where you can sign up to join their movement. You can friend them on Facebook, and sign up for their Twitter feed. One wonders when we will have time to water and weed.

How about this? How about just digging up a little patch of lawn in your yard, or filling up a container, and calling your children to come see—not to weed, but to plant. Because, as someone else once said, “Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden.”[ii] Then, send them off to play, or to read, or to swim, or to ride their bikes this summer, and sit for a while. Think about how, in the cool and quiet of evening when the last rays of sun slide behind western hills, you will weed, water, and nurture those little shoots when they appear. No maximizing production. No distribution mechanisms.

In my garden this summer, I will “visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation.”[iii] When the first shoots push out of the ground, I will call the children to smile and exult in great expectation and hope for a bountiful harvest. Because it is “one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.”[iv]

Over the years, I've spent a lot of time in “urban environments,” and I understand the desire to turn a vacant, garbage-strewn lot into a paradise. But why isn’t that enough for us? Watching the way beauty and life can spring from ugliness and death on this planet should leave us awe-struck and speechless. I admire anything that gives children in the inner-city something hopeful and happy to do in between dodging bullets and turning down illegal drugs on their way home from school. To have healthy, well-fed children is a good goal. 

But I’m puzzled by our grinding ambition to make ourselves seem more important to the process than we actually are.

Despite what I do in my garden, some things will flourish, some things will die, and there will be many surprises–both the disappointing and the joyful–along the way. Because “there is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class…”[v]

You see, it isn’t about Production and Distribution. It’s about miracles, and perseverance, character, hope, and joy. In the end, yes, there will be food to share. In the end, we will have more than any of us can eat. Not because we toiled and labored and incited movement.

But simply because The Creator is really good at what He does. “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;/ And though the last lights off the black West went/ Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—/ Because the Holy Ghost over the bent/ World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”[vi]

Happy spring and happy gardening!

---

[i] Orson Scott Card

[ii] Robert Brault

[iii] Nathaniel Hawthorne

[iv] Nathaniel Hawthorne

[v] Alfred Austin

[vi] Gerard Manley Hopkins

Come To The Water

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

On a beautiful June afternoon about ten years ago, I was on my way to a vacation at the Oregon Coast with my Mom, Dad, and my two sons who were under the age of five. Nearly there, we came to a stop behind a line of cars at a construction zone on a narrow, undivided two-lane highway that has a notorious reputation among Oregonians, and for good reason. It was one of the first highways in Oregon to be labeled as a traffic safety corridor in the 1990s. Locals call it Blood Alley.

The construction zone was on the other side of a hidden rise, an optical illusion that made it difficult to see that there was a line of cars stopped ahead until we were almost upon them. Dad had to apply the brakes firmly in order to stop in time, and my next thought was, boy, I hope the person behind us stops, too.

I looked in the rear-view mirror, and saw another car come over the rise. In the few seconds before that Dodge Dakota plowed into and over Mom and Dad’s Camry at 55 MPH, all I had time to say was, “Oh, no.” When it was all over, what should have been a fatal accident for everyone in our car, actually claimed only one life, my Mom’s, who was sitting in the seat where I had been sitting thirty minutes before the accident.

We’d switched places, because I was getting car sick.

Everyone experiences grief in their own way, and it is never easy to lose a loved one, no matter the circumstances. In addition, most people experience some sort of survivor’s guilt. I experienced the triple threat of loss, trauma, and guilt. But I had two little children (one of whom had been seriously injured), a husband, a life and a strong faith that I hadn’t lost my mother – I knew exactly where she was, and I would see her again.

Life just goes on – even when it feels like it shouldn’t, and so did I. After the rest of us recovered and were released from the hospital, I cried really hard for a few days, and then attempted to go back to my life. I wasn’t naïve enough to think I would ever be the same girl I was before the accident. But I really didn’t have the time or energy to ponder what moving on would mean or how to do it.

When the horror of that accident would come back on me, or I would hear those what-if whispers, or my hands became so sweaty when I was driving that the steering wheel became slick, or I would be knocked breathless by the searing pain of missing my mother, or paralyzed by the logical-seeming fear that my children at any moment could be taken from me – I would just add something else into my busy life. Thus began years of attempting to bury my feelings under a mountain of activity – another Bible study or book group in my home, another community event or organization, another friend or relative in need, another house project, another writing project. That worked for a while.

A few years ago, I achieved critical mass, and it all imploded. I started having full-blown anxiety attacks (driving on a snowy, fog-covered highway one morning was the trigger) and they threatened to incapacitate me.

Chemical substances have never been my friend. You know the “one person in a million” they list on prescription medications who will have a serious adverse reaction? Drug companies could just post a picture of me on their labels – I am that person and have been my whole life. The extremely mild medications my physician prescribed to calm my nerves and slow my rapidly beating heart were no different. Within weeks I had plummeted from a functioning adult, to someone who was breaking down, to someone who was making preparations to have myself committed.

I have always been an optimist, in an almost insufferable, Pollyanna kind of way. So clinical depression was incomprehensible to me. Couldn’t people just decide to be happy? That’s what I did.

The six weeks of my “episode”, before we realized that I just needed to stop taking the medication, gave me a lot of empathy for people suffering with mental illnesses. I was astounded at the dark place I was transported to, simply because of a little imbalance in my brain chemistry. There is that feeling, that whisper you hear during hard times—If God really cared about you, if He was really there, He wouldn’t make you experience this. In that dark place, that whisper is all you can hear, or at least, it’s the loudest voice.

I have extremely supportive and wise friends and family. And all that I had learned of God in the light brought me through the darkness. But if you know someone experiencing that kind of darkness, pray for them now. Call them, and remind them that even though they can’t feel it, God is right there with them, and you are there for them, too. Invite them over to lay on your couch, or sit in your rocking chair, or lie in your bed, or sit on your porch swing – just so they don’t have to be alone. There are a thousand reasons why God wants us to live in community, and this is one of them. Believe me, it helps. Whatever may happen to that friend or relative in the future, know that simply by being with them, in that moment, you helped.

My brief foray into clinical depression hardly makes me an expert, and my point here is not to talk about mental illness, but what I started learning during that period of my life. It’s a concept I’ve been grasping at, like something slightly out of reach. I could have explained it intellectually, from a theological perspective, years ago. Recently, it actually hit my heart.

Like most teenagers growing up in evangelical Christian circles in the 70s, I learned the song, The Woman at the Well. The chorus goes like this:

Fill my cup, Lord, I lift it up, Lord.

Come and quench this thirsting of my soul;

Bread of heaven, feed me ‘til I want no more,

Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole.

On a scale that goes from epic hymns to the most insipid “praise” songs you’ve ever heard, The Woman at the Well would probably fall somewhere in the middle. But my sister could play it on the piano when we were teenagers, and I used to sit next to her on the bench and we would sing it together. I have a soft spot in my heart for this song, and the chorus is catchy. I don’t really remember the other verses, which I think have something to do with not being “worldly”. But I find myself singing the chorus occasionally in the shower. I was doing this a few weeks ago, and suddenly a lot that I had been thinking and reading came together like pieces in a puzzle.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Bereft of any chemical assistance to mask my anxiety and grief issues, I had no alternative but to make some drastic life changes. I stripped my life of everything non-essential to my core roles of wife and mother in order to lessen my stress, I changed my diet, and I learned how to deep breathe through an anxiety attack. I tried counseling, but during our sessions I learned more about my therapist than he did about me (I think I really helped him!). Like I said, I have some extremely wise friends and family members who were instrumental in setting me on a healing path. But then, my husband and I took a transfer to a new city where we knew no one.

In his wisdom and mercy, God left me no option but Himself, the greatest mental health professional to walk the earth. A partial transcript of our sessions might look something like this:

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, with prayer, supplication, and thankfulness, let your request be made known to God.

Easier said than done, Lord. Don’t be anxious? Seriously? I don’t think this is your garden variety kind of worry. It doesn’t seem to be a mind over matter kind of deal.

WITH PRAYER AND SUPPLICATION, let your requests be made known to God. You have not because you ask not.

Okay, then. I want to feel better. I don’t want to feel like I’m having a heart attack every time I get into a stressful situation. I want my hands to stop sweating and shaking when I’m in a crowd or I meet someone new. I want to quit having flashbacks and creepy dreams and an ability to sleep all the way through the night would be awesome! And while you’re at it, if you could end pain, poverty, and world hunger, that would make me, and a lot of other people, feel a lot less stressed, thanks.

Why?

I… Huh?

Why? You ask and do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives.

Huh.

Think about that for a while, and also, in this world you will have trouble but take heart, I have overcome the world.

…Still thinking?

Well, I was feeling a little better and then I got side-tracked…but now I’m feeling kind of shaky again…sorry, yes, still thinking.

I’ll be here.

Lord?

I’m here.

Okay, I think I see. My prayers have been all about what I wanted and not what you wanted. I’m wondering, what do you want for me?

I want to ease your restless soul and soothe your troubled heart. I want your life to have hope and purpose. I want you to trust me. I want you to be free from anxiety. In fact, I want you to be free from all the snares that entangle you so that you can join me in overcoming the sin in the world with love and righteousness.

Me, too! I want those things.

We want the same things.

Yes!

How does it make you feel?

Like my heart is full and overflowing.

You don’t feel anxious right now, do you? You couldn’t if you tried.

Wow, you’re right. This is awesome!

Think about that for a while.

So, while I was thinking about that, I was also doing research on the effects of trauma and the causes of anxiety, because I’m a cover-all-my-bases kind of girl. I learned a lot about brain chemistry, enzymes, hormones, receptors, stress, vitamins and minerals and blood sugar and all kinds of things that doctors know exist and that they think affect brain chemistry and how we feel. However, no one really understands how it all works together and why it sometimes goes awry.

I found one article particularly compelling. It was a study on populations of people who have been through traumatic experiences. The researchers were trying to determine why some people come through trauma and recover fairly quickly, while others have their lives wiped out by exactly the same traumatic circumstances.

I didn’t keep this article – so I can’t give you an annotated description of the research. What I’ll describe here is what struck me and stuck with me, and it’s possible I’m combining ideas from more than one source. The researchers postulated that we’re all born with something they called a “well of resilience” somewhere inside us. If we have some good experiences when we’re young, a supportive family, a few successes to bolster confidence, a period of relative stress-free living, then that well gets filled up. When we encounter trauma, we dip from that well to recover.  But it takes a long time for the well to fill back up, so people who encounter one trauma after another, eventually end up with an empty well of resilience. The researchers also theorized as to the reason so many people are currently suffering from anxiety and depression in cushy first-world societies. It’s possible that the stress of modern-day life leaves our wells of resilience dry, as if they have a small but persistent leak.

…Still thinking?

I thought maybe if I just rested and kind of, you know, withdrew from life, my well of resilience might fill back up.

“Well of resilience”?

Um, yes?

If you thirst, Lisa, you can come to the water and be filled.

Really? Because, I’m still having all the same issues and it’s bothering me more and more. I’m not feeling very resilient. I would like to feel the way I felt last time we talked, my heart full and overflowing. That was good—

Why?

I… Huh?

Why is it bothering you? You remember my friend, Martha? She used to be bothered by so many things. And sweet Mary, there was a time she was wiped out by grief and disappointment.

Disappointment? I never thought about that…what was she disappointed in?

Me. They both were.

That must have hurt.

It does. Every time.

It does…? Lord, I’m not…disappointed… Oh.

They didn’t realize what they were doing, either.

I’m sorry.

Already forgiven.

Thanks. Still, Mary and Martha? They’re my favorite people in the Bible, except for you. I love them.

Me, too. We love the same things.

I’m having that heart overflowing thing again.

I know. Think about that for a while.

So I thought about it. I realized that when I pray, for myself and for others, I often ask that God would take away the bad things in life. God knows that’s me crying out, “Abba” and He hears. He catches every tear. Those are the cries of a child seeking comfort from her parent, and that’s right and good. Still, as I pray for a pain free, trouble free life, I know I’m not being realistic. If freedom from trouble in this world was what God promises us, Jesus and the apostles would have had very different lives, and deaths. Millions of people wouldn’t be suffering, hungry, tortured or persecuted.

In this world, you will have trouble… that’s the truth of it. It’s not like Jesus lied to us. It’s not like he promised us a rose garden.

And yet…

There’s Mary, Martha and Lazarus, experiencing resurrection, not in the next life, but in this one.

There’s Stephen, being stoned to death, and praising God, thrilled that he gets to see Jesus.

There are the Apostles and there’s Jesus, on the one hand telling his friends they’ll suffer what He suffered, and on the other hand implying that no one can hurt them. Later there they are, suffering, imprisoned, tortured and persecuted – and they’re able to sing their way through it and “count it all joy.”

And there’s the woman at the well.

If you really knew who it was you were talking to, you would have asked me, and I would give you living water. People who drink other water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Take heart, I have overcome the world.

We may not get freedom from trouble in this life, from pain, loss, persecution, sleepless nights, bad dreams and bad choices.

We get something better—the Word, living and active.

Lord?

I’m here.

I know.

Fill my cup, Lord. I lift it up Lord.

Come and quench this thirsting of my soul.

Bread of heaven, feed me ‘till I want no more.

Fill my cup. Fill it up, and make me whole.

I have this recurring dream. I’m on vacation, trying to get to the resort where I have a reservation. My mom’s already there. But things keep getting in my way, and I never make it to the resort before I wake up.

That dream used to drive me crazy.

Social Networking, Jesus Style

When it comes to controversy, people are generally kinder and more circumspect in real life than we are on the Internet. I don’t think people are being fake, exactly. On Facebook, we can express ourselves vociferously and unequivocally because we don’t have to see the hurt, anger, or shock in our friends’ eyes – an experience that most of us try to avoid having in real life. But I’ve been pondering this question lately: Who are my friends, really? Are they the ones I experience on Facebook, or those same people who seem so different when I interact with them in real life? Do our stated opinions define us, or do our actions? Are we our “press releases” posted on Facebook, or are our intimate interactions shared over a cup of coffee the more authentic us?

I do know this – human beings tend to be bad at friendship, and Facebook is a glaring example of our social ineptitude. And yet, we all so desire connection and intimacy – it’s one of the driving forces in our lives.

I also know this – Jesus came to completely fulfill that desire we have to be known and loved. He came and said (if I might paraphrase), “I don’t care who you are or where you’ve been or what you’ve done. You were made for something better than being all about your self-centered opinions and your selfish desires. You were made to be something different than being lonely, unloving, and unloved. You were made to love God and to love each other.”

“Now,” Jesus said, “don’t let your hearts be troubled. I know you don’t know how to be this person you were created to be – but I can teach you how, and I will. Just ask me, and of course, I’ll do it! I can make you into someone who doesn’t even have to think about loving, because you’ll just love. This will be who you are: A new creature who loves God and loves others like God loves them. How do you know I’m telling you the truth? Because I was there when We created you. I've come to fix what you’ve broken, and I’m going to do what no one else can. I’m going to make the ultimate sacrifice that one friend can make for another, pay the price that your lack of love demands, and finally, I’m going to defeat death itself.”

And then…Jesus did exactly that.

Jesus told his friends about his coming death and resurrection, all that was going to happen before it happened, and then to comfort them I think, Jesus gave them a little taste of their future. He said, “Keep desiring to know me, and I will know you. I will live with you, and I will nourish you with God’s transformative love, like a vine nourishes its branches, and you will bear the good fruit of love for God and for each other. That love – that’s how you and the world will know that you are not orphans spinning out here all alone, but God’s beloved children. Next, we’ll teach the world how to love, too.” Now THAT’s social networking, that’s our potential in Christ, and Hallelujah! That’s Easter.

The words of Jesus that I have paraphrased above are from The Bible, and can be found in the Book of John, mostly in chapters 14-18. 

Good Yarn

“Given good yarn, good workmanship, and good care, a knitted shawl can outlive its knitter, providing warmth and pleasure to several generations of family and friends.”  - Martha Waterman

“... everyone has to knit when they're here. ... But not every person has to use yarn.”  - Kate Jacobs

There must be hundreds of profound, metaphor-filled essays I could write about knitting, threads, and my grandmothers. But tonight, just this.

Recently, I was ensconced next to the fire with a good book, covered by my two dogs and a knitted throw. Nudging the dachshund to the side, I tugged the blanket up over my shoulders and it occurred to me that my grandmothers’ knitted throws are as enduring as they were.

The blanket that covered me when I had this thought is a generous and beautiful creamy confection of braids, cables, bobbles, and other twists and turns of thread that I’m sure have names. I just don’t know them. It has comforted me or some one of my friends or family every day for the last twenty-five years. It has covered babies just beginning, and old people getting ready to end, and sick kids, sick dogs, and homesick guests.

But it’s a magic blanket. Once a month, I toss it into the washer with a load of towels, dry it in the drier, and it comes out fresh, beautiful and if anything, even slightly cozier than it was before. It’s suffered only one bit of trauma over the years (a bobble chewed apart by a puppy) which was repaired by another of the Grandmothers, the one who had knitted it having gone to be in His presence.

In fact, the lady who I received this blanket from wasn’t even related to me. She was my father’s brother’s wife’s mother. The anthropologist I married twenty-five years ago tells me some cultures have a kinship term for that relationship, but I called her what my cousins called her - "Grandma Miller." My memories of her are restricted to a few childhood interactions. In my mind she is an older version of her daughter, my Aunt Helen – a country woman, ever efficient, always prepared, with an infectious laugh and a deep love of her family and her Savior.

One day, not long before my marriage, my mother was having a visit with Grandma Miller and Aunt Helen. Mom mentioned my impending nuptials, which were ever on her mind at the time. Though third in line, I was the first of my siblings to take the plunge, so this was a big deal for my mother and she was very anxious and a little excited. I’m not sure if Grandma Miller started the blanket then, or it was already in process, or one that she had finished. At any rate, it appeared as a wedding present and has outlasted the stoneware and the kitchen appliances and the cutlery.

It makes me wonder - what was she thinking? She couldn’t have known how enduring her creation would be, but even so, what an amazing gift. A present for a child that she must have remembered as extremely shy. I'm sure she was one of my many relatives surprised I’d managed a life that would result in a union with a man. Crazy spinster librarian or writer, along the lines of Emily Dickinson or Donna Reed in the scary part of It’s a Wonderful Life, were more my expectations for myself. One only wonders what Grandma Miller must have thought.

Was the afghan a celebration of the improbable? Perhaps. More than likely, given the knowledge of an opportunity to be generous and celebrate the joy and sacredness of marriage, the dear woman seized the moment and claimed it with lavish kindness. That’s the sort of person she was, I think. And this blanket reminds me of her every day, and every day encourages me toward lavishly kind gestures, given the opportunity.

Oh, and here comes a metaphor. When I wrap this blanket around me, I can’t help but think of my wedding day, and all the days after. My marriage - a little chewed here and there, sometimes soiled, cleaned and repaired. But with just a little care, it keeps me warm, reminds me to be generous, and year by year becomes ever cozier.

All Things New

“The journey of discovery has just begun. In many ways this moment is more dangerous than wartime.” – New Old Libya, National Geographic, Feb. 2013

“Reality is not human goodness, or holiness, or heaven, or hell – it is redemption.” – Oswald Chambers

Most of the characters in my stories begin as a reflection of one aspect of me or someone I know. Then I and the story turn them this way and that, build them up, break them apart, add and delete. There comes a point when their traits coalesce and I solve the Rubik's cube of who they are. That's when they come to life. They become real.

Current events remind me that life does something similar to each of us. I was particularly struck by that truth, recently, while reading about present-day Libya. There are many people who would argue that we have no control concerning the direction of our lives. Choice, they would say, is an illusion. Perhaps they are right. But there can be long stretches of time where the narratives of our lives feel plausible. Day follows night, follows day. Choices are made much as they were made before. Natural consequences ensue. Then –

BAM!

The incomprehensible confronts us, spins us around and drops us in a new universe. We find ourselves in a place so implausible we're tempted to think, this is a dream. Often the shift comes as a result of traumatic circumstances – the death of a loved one, loss of a job, divorce, disease, war – something particularly painful or shocking that shatters our world and demands that we reexamine our expectations and beliefs about who we thought we were.

After decades of a Qaddafi reign that was “one of orchestrated chaos,” most Libyans appear to understand that they must seek a different path. A police chief: We can’t do mass punishments the way Qaddafi did. We must act according to law. This is what we’re trying to achieve in a new Libya. A female surgeon: The Libyan women are very strong, very clever. We’re managing… But she goes on to confess a common sentiment, I’m worried about everything – which leads to a common thought – "How does a nation go about cleansing its soul?"

Or for that matter, how do any of us abide in the ever changing nature of existence without losing ourselves? Abide in Me, Jesus said, and also, anyone who makes it their object to keep their own life safe, will lose it; but whoever loses his life will preserve it. When confronted with the tectonic shifts of life, we have two choices: We can retreat into the madness of denial (like Qaddafi) ever attempting to remold this new world into a replica of the old. Or, pilgrim-like, we can determine to trust and to hope one more time and step forward.

Is this what God meant when He said, See, I make all things new? Somehow, we imagined something different, didn’t we? Which is how we know that this is His imagination at work and not ours.

Each time I embrace new circumstances in which God has placed me, I lose some of the narrative of my future self that seemed so inevitable when I was a child. Letting go of those previous drafts of me starts with grief and ends in freedom . Each time I take that step, I feel less tethered to this world and more deeply grounded in the reality of redemption. And isn’t that the point? This world, this body, this you, this me – is not our home.

There will come a day when He will bring us to our end and we will step into eternity. Finally! To feel the joy of every shattered and remade piece coalesce and settle into perfect place. We will see Him face-to-face, fall into His arms, and know who we are. We will become real.

Read the whole article, New Old Libya, Draper and Steinmetz, National Geographic, February 2013 - and pray for the Libyan people and so many others in Africa and the Middle East who are in a state of transition, a state in which God can do miraculous, transformational things. A note about the amazing photo of a Libyan woman that I shamelessly pirated off the internet. I could find no information about attribution or rights for this photo. If you own the rights to this picture, I will happily remove it at your request, or better yet, provide attribution.

Just Push This Button

       “His mother also told him how the chiming of that old bell had once filled her heart with joy and confidence, and that in the midst of the sweet tones her child had been given to her. And the boy gazed on the large, old bell with the deepest interest. He bowed his head over it and kissed it, old, thrown away, and cracked as it was, and standing there amidst the grass and nettles. The boy never forgot what his mother told him, and the tones of the old bell reverberated in his heart…” from The Old Church Bell, Hans Christian Andersen, 1861

Checking the Facebook page the other morning, I noticed my buddy was on. Like me, she’s a late comer to Facebook. In fact, she’s still learning the ropes. I pull up the chat page – “Hi!” I type. No response…. aaaand….no response.

My eye strays to the latest issue of The Economist sitting on my desk. The magazine is open to a small article about Christian churches in Jerusalem making the move from human-powered bells calling the faithful, to mechanical bells.

Rarely in this fractious holy city do clerics cede rights for which they used to wage holy wars. But from the Abbey of the Dormition to Jesus’s resting place in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the bell-ringers of Jerusalem are abandoning their ropes after a century and a half, and installing automated timers instead.

The computer emits a lilting, gurgle-ring. It’s my buddy. “Hey!” she’s typed. “I had to ask my son what to do because I’ve never chatted on FB before.”

We type back and forth about what they’ve been up to the last few days, how she just took her son to see the Hobbit at the IMAX theatre and what they thought. “It was amazing,” she says. “I’ve never read the book, but I really liked the movie.”

“Confession time,” I respond. “I've never made it through the book either.”

“No way!”

“Way.”

My eye strays back to the Economist article.

…times and technology change. The churches now compete for the latest mod cons, including manpower-saving bells that chime at the touch of a button. “The old way was kind of a hassle,” sighs Athanasius Macora, a Franciscan friar whose church was the city’s first to automate its bells. “You had to be there on time.”

After a few minutes, the computer gurgles again  (I’m sure she’s doing other things, too). “So, this is kind of fun.”

“Yeah,” I type. “I have friends...they spend a lot of time online, and they always stop by and say hi when I get on. It’s kind of the equivalent of chatting over the fence while you’re hanging out the laundry.”

…With their bells on autopilot, the churches can compete with the mosques [who record and broadcast their calls to prayer] and the air-siren that Israelis use to call in the Sabbath.

“I can see that,” she types. “I miss being there with you, though, face to face. It’s not really the same.”

Aesthetes say they can hear a difference between traditional bell-ringing and today’s phoney jingling bells.

“Me too, G,” I smile a smile she can’t see. “I miss you, too.”