Mountains of Gold

why can’t someone else don my breasts for awhile and take over the feeding of the little snack monster that is my son?

I’ve heard horror stories of breastfeeding gone bad, and my experience so far has been nothing like that.  But, still, it is difficult – and so ceaseless.  He is hungry every three hours, whether I want to dole it out or not.  This is the first thing I’ve ever done in my life that I can’t just walk away from for a bit or simply decide not to do.

Not that I want to walk away.  In the first couple of weeks of having Asher here in the dry world with us, I cried every day over this thought: “What would I do if I didn’t have what I need to take care of him?  What do mothers do who are too poor or too sick or so unlucky as to live in a war zone where men gone crazy keep them from having even the most basic of their needs met?”  The drive to care for him, to keep him fed and alive and happy was the most emotional drive I have ever felt.  It broke my heart.  It’s still breaking my heart, though my hormones are receding enough that I haven’t dissolved fully in tears in over a week (yay me!).

The point is, it’s ceaseless and repetitive.  The danger is that I’ll get brittle; after all, it’s not the most rested or sane I’ve ever been.  But, each time I have felt that brittleness start to enter my heart, grace has come and washed it away as I think, “I have my son.”  I am so thankful each time that I go get him out of his crib that he’s still breathing, still here with us, still wanting to eat every three hours.  It’s a baptism of gratitude each time I feed him, even when I’m so tired that the tears from yawning are running down my face and my nose is running.  Even when I look at him and think, “I can’t come up with one more creative thing to say or sing,” and I fear that my lack of resilience will stunt his neurological development and he won’t be as smart as he could be.  I had hoped that becoming a mother (!) would help my “crazy” levels shrink, but alas it has not yet happened.

At the close of last year, I asked God what He had for me in this new year, this new chapter of my journey.  This is the verse I heard Him speaking to me:

In repentance and rest is your salvation;
In quietness and trust is your strength. -Isaiah 30:15

But, that’s just the first part of the verse.  The second part says, “But you would have none of it.”  The Holy Spirit spoke to me during those weeks leading up to the new year and into the birth of our son.  The rest and quietness and sweetness that He had for me in this new year and new season were (and still are) a choice.  Caring for a newborn could either be mind-numbingly repetitive or an experience of grace-covered gratitude that encouraged me toward rest, quietness and trust.

My attitude toward having a baby had long been one of not just ambivalence, but distaste, so I had that to repent from during my pregnancy.  Nine months was just about the right amount of time to move through to a place of anticipation and gratitude.  (An aside:  if I hadn’t needed the time for my heart and soul, I’d say the gestation period for a human is WAY too long.)  I knew I needed to repent before I could get to the rest and trust piece.

The amazing part, though, is that God didn’t wait for me to repent – He gave me a taste of the rest and the anticipation and drew me into the repentance (the turning again toward Him) that I needed to get to the fullness of what He was offering.

These are quiet days around here, but in them I’m finding new space in my heart and mind.  Space for rest and trust to grow, and plenty of time to feed my son.

Sweet and Salty

My son is one month old today, give or take a day.  When he was two weeks old, and my mother abandoned us to return to her cold and snowy life of solitude (not that I’m jealous or bitter) up north, I thought, “I’ll never make it through a day alone.”  And now, I’ve made it through two entire weeks and it feels like the blink of an eye; a very tired eye, for sure, but still.  I’m not saying I’m ready to forgive my mom for leaving us, or that I feel like a mother yet, but I’m proud of the way my husband and I have kept our son alive, kept him relatively clean, and haven’t yet started fighting with each other.

I don’t think I can write about the birth yet in any way that wouldn’t feel like a war memoir.  But, I do want to remember certain things about these first sleep-deprived days as a mother, so I’ll be posting (sometimes incoherently, I’m sure) on this blog, partly as a measure of accountability.  When Asher, that’s my son’s name, is ten or twenty years old, I won’t regret not vacuuming the floors often enough, but I know I will regret not keeping a bitty journal of the sweet and salty moments of our first days together.

I have a mind like a drill sergeant that screams at me for all the tasks I haven’t yet accomplished and it can be difficult for me to ignore it (unless I have an awesome book to read or an entire bag of chips to eat).  So I want to set myself a goal and a challenge in some sort of public way.  Now, all three of you who occasionally read this blog will know:  I mean to write at least once a week.  I guarantee neither the quality or the entertainment value of said posts, but write them I will.  The glove has been thrown and the gauntlet will be run.

The Purpose-Driven Life

I’ve become really reluctant to make any sort of resolution or set any sort of goal at the inauguration of a new year.  Years of experience have taught me that I’m really bad at staying on course for something that I’ve decided on my own.  I, like most people, I think, have started many a year with the intention of never eating another sugary snack and working out at least 6.5 days per week.   Surprisingly, that kind of resolution has never had the sticking power I hoped it might.

The truth is, I’m more and more aware that almost nothing I conceive of or decide on in my own will is sustainable for long.  I am in most desperate need for transformation and increasingly aware of my inability to achieve that on my own.  I’ve come to view this as a positive thing.  I neither can nor have to rely on my own strength to accomplish anything.

Alan talked this week about the trajectory of life from the perspective of reflecting on 2010 and dreaming/planning for 2011.  What I connected with most in his talk with the idea that I can live more freely, fully and generously when I realize that I have more than just my own resources out of which to live.  I have the full resources of God and His encouragement use them, live out of them, give them away.

I was also struck with Alan’s point that as much as Jesus accomplished during his time on earth, there was so much more he left undone.  I’m someone who can have a really unhealthy, almost co-dependent relationship with my task list; I use it to define my worth for each day not only to myself but to anyone around me who might be looking on.  But now I’m trying to view tasks in a different light.  It’s not that Jesus accomplished nothing, but that he didn’t feel compelled to accomplish everything.  When I look at scripture, I see that he did what the Father called him to do each day, and no more.  He wasn’t driven to over-achievement, but motivated by love.

So, when I was reading in Mere Christianity again today, and read the following passage, it shed new light on thinking about my hopes for this coming year:

We might think that, provided you did the right thing, it did not matter how or why you did it—whether you did it willingly or unwillingly, sulkily or cheerfully, through fear of public opinion or for its own sake. But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character called a “virtue,” and it is this quality or character that really matters.
-C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity: book III – Christian Behaviour”

My “resolution” for the coming year is to have gratitude and look for joy in each situation, no matter how different it might be from what I might have thought I wanted.  I want to live intentionally, and I’m purposing to ask God each day what he has for me in that day and then to be grateful for it; to put aside my own judgments of my life’s worth and ask him to transform my heart to be more aligned with his.  I’m putting aside, for the moment, resolving on a long-term goal or accomplishment other than this, because I learned in 2010 that I can’t really trust myself to set worthy or accomplish-able goals.  The desire of my heart has become to intentionally desire the heart and purposes of God and to ask him to solidify that within me each day.

As Thoreau says, “In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.”  And the scripture sums it up in this way:

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. – Matthew 6:33

Hustle, hustle, hustle

Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”
Matthew 22:37-40, The Message

I’ve been struck throughout the course of this series on “the 100th monkey” that what seems to matter most in how we behave toward God and others is how we think.  Thoughts are incredibly ephemeral and yet have a power beyond what we’re usually aware.

Recently I’ve been reading “Love and War” by John and Staci Eldridge.  I came across this section that stuck with me:

Our thoughts flow downhill like water.  If we are not aware of what we are thinking, our thoughts wander, leading us down windy ways through dark woods.  We lose perspective; we start speculating; we come to terrible conclusions…The scripture urging us to ‘take every thought captive to Christ’ is vital (2 Corinthians 10:5).
What we think matters; our thoughts and imagination pave the way for our beliefs, and then our actions are soon to follow.
Love and War, p145

The Message version of 2 Corinthians 10:5-6 says:

We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.

This passage from both Scripture and the Eldridges’ book has been bouncing around in my heart and mind for a few days now, so when Bruce spoke about person-to-person contact being the only way that impact happens, I thought about that through this filter:  what do I think about telling other people about Jesus?  Do I even think about the impact my life and words may have on those around me?

The truth is, I don’t often think about evangelism or life-impact with focus or intention.  Far too often, I’m caught up in the daily task list, which gets particularly long and ensnaring during the holiday season.  But, as my favorite Thoreau quote says, “In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.”

The reality is, I can only have my mind reshaped and my thoughts cleared of obstruction if I’m allowing God to capture my heart and mind each day – if I’m seeking and willing to undergo the transformation He desires for me.  There’s no possible way I can “achieve” impact in my own strength.  It’s only if I’m drawing near to Him, allowing my heart and mind to hear the whisper of the Holy Spirit over the din of the world, that I can then have something worth sharing with those around me; that I can truly love God and love others.

It’s full-throttle these days, and everything in this world is set up to keep us from quiet, to keep us from listening to God, to keep us from living lives of significance for the glory of God.  My prayer for myself and for you as you eat, drink and make merry over the coming weeks is that you’ll find the will and make the space to answer God’s call to be with Him, that you are bathed in His love and justice and grace, and that out of that you give to those around you the love of Christ.

to sleep, perchance to dream

I’m 26ish weeks pregnant right now.  This means that, among other bizarre and amazing happenings, I’m having really strange and vivid dreams, the contents of which I’m mostly too embarrassed to confess.

When we first found out we were going to have a baby, my primary emotion was excitement.  I started looking at names right away and scheming over whether I’d rather have a boy or a girl…as if I had any say in the matter.  I worried that I didn’t feel sick enough, which was a joke because soon enough I felt sick enough to easy even the most worry-prone mind.  Which is when I stopped being excited and started thinking that nine months (it’s ten, actually) is WAY too long to be pregnant.  I half-jokingly said to some friends that I’d like to negotiate it down to six months with God if possible.  For the next 8 weeks, I bonded so utterly with my couch that it’s literally worn out now and I swear you can see my body imprinted on the off-white fabric if you look closely enough.  It’s like a pregnancy shroud.

During the couch-imprinting weeks, my husband and I schemed and dreamed over all the trips we’d like to take before the baby, known as “the dictator”, arrived on the scene in full-force.  As soon as I felt better, we started getting out and away as often as possible.  Mountain camping, New York City, Chicago…check.  Dinner and a movie on a random Wednesday night?  Yes, yes, yes (even if I’m not in the mood for it)!  This weekend we leave for a some time away at a gorgeous mountain home belonging to friends of ours and next week we leave for our final babymoon to San Francisco.

Utterly grateful is what I am for all these forays into lands we’ll never discover again as a couple, even if we discover them in new, possibly better ways as parents.  But last week this thought swept into my consciousness with the soft reassuring touch of a tsunami:  this baby is going to come – into my house! – soon and I have not one item purchased or prepared to care for him when he does.  Lots and lots of expletives flowed out of my mouth from the very forefront of my reactionary mind.

It was a rough week, full of the fact-facing I tried so diligently to avoid the past several months.  Fact is, I am ambivalent about having a baby.  I miss drinking wine more than I would’ve thought possible and I hate gaining weight.  I hate being woken in the middle of the night so desperate to pee that it’s as if I’ve drunk a full gallon of water and then been taken on a non-stop road trip by a maniacal driver, only to get to the toilet and realize that it’s only about two seconds worth of liquid that’s making me feel as if I could go for a minute and a half.  I have, already, the world’s tiniest bladder, and it’s only going to get more and more cramped.

I’m ambivalent about having a baby because I like to sleep.  I’m sleeping these days as if you can store it up for the future like a 401K.  Sleep deprivation being a form of torture, and an effective one, I’m shocked that people have more than one baby.  More shocked that I’ll probably have more than one baby.

Probably most disturbing is that I’m ambivalent about having a baby because I’m ambivalent about family in general.  My husband and I are happy; frighteningly so at times.  My experience of family has been one of confusion and angst and cheer that’s layered on uber thick so that true thoughts and emotions won’t be as glaring.  To say I have a bad taste in my mouth is putting it mildly.

In spite of all this and because I am not yet a sleep-deprived memory-less zombie, I am focusing this week on all the grace of God I’ve witnessed in my life.  I’m relatively well-adjusted, though you might not think so after reading all that I just wrote.  I have a husband that I adore, that loves God and me and is humble enough to talk with me about things that are difficult in our relationship and then work on them.   I’ve lived through countless moments of divine protection and Spirit-lead prompting to get me to be an adult who is less afraid of conflict and more confident in my faith than I would think possible if I knew my life-story.

Given all that, I’m choosing to sleep tonight, perchance to dream uninterrupted about the joy that awaits me when this child comes.  About the family that we are building together based on laughter, love, honest conflict, whimsy and adventure.  Choosing to not fret over the “stuff”, but focus on the gratitude I have for this as-yet-unborn child and the fact that we’ll have food and a warm home for him when he comes.  I may not sleep the whole night through, but as I rush to the bathroom to pee for 2.5 seconds, I’m praying God will remind me of his grace and teach me to practice gratitude even in that moment.

Jesus in Paris

There’s this thing we like to do when we travel to a new city, or really any city we don’t live in: we ask people who spend time there what restaurants we should patronize. Food, really yummy, interesting food, is a primary goal of our escapades outside of the Queen City.

Last year we went to Paris, city of lights and love. City of the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and one million tourist cafes. They hound you. You’re walking (and walking), trying to take it all in, to absorb every detail of the beauty and light, history and artistry that surrounds you when suddenly you’re so hungry you don’t care what city you’re in. It’s food you want – and either a noisette or a Leffe to go with it, sometimes both. Monet-schmonet…you need sustenance before you see one more beautiful thing, or even attempt to appreciate one more 500 year-old breath-taking cathedral.

The problem with this scenario is that it often lead us to a less-than-fantastic eatery. Not terrible, you understand, just not totally yummy and satisfying. The bread (French bread for heaven’s sake!) would be just a tad stale, the menu utterly forgettable and uninventive, the vegetables absent entirely. The views were always amazing, it being Paris and all, but sometimes we regretted the food even as we were eating it. It’s just such a lost opportunity.

The times we had great food were the times we had recommendations and took the time to plan ahead to get to those spots. There’s a temptation when traveling to shove as much activity into each day as possible, but that rarely leaves you as satisfied as you think it will. You will never see all the art in the Louvre or walk all the charming streets of Paris. It’s best to take some time just sitting at a cafe, meeting people you’ll never talk to again, and drinking the best espresso ever…you know, time to just “be”.

Bruce was talking this morning about that dirty word, “evangelism”, in the context of living out of passion, and I was particularly struck when he related that the Greek translation of Matthew 28:19 “Go into all the world…” is, instead, “In your going…”.

I’ve never been comfortable with duty-driven evangelism. I went door-to-door one time with a group from a Christian camp I attended in high school and I swear I wanted to die or apologize every time someone answered their door. I would hear tales of people (my husband, for example) who did evangelism on the beach and feel my stomach drop into my flip-flops. “You did what?” is really all I can think when I hear those stories.

To state the by-now obvious fact, I’m a reluctant follower of the Great Commission, and that’s at best. At worst, I do acrobatics to explain away this particular command. But, reading it as “In your going…” rather than as “Go…” lifts something heavy off my heart and adds the flavor freedom for me. “In my going” implies that I can be the me I am rather than trying to be Billy Graham in snakeskin heels. I can talk to people that God has given me relationships with about my life, the good the bad and the ugly. He’ll use that to pursue me and each person with whom I interact, because that’s what He does.

Occasionally, as in “every day”, I forget that I believe that God created me on purpose, with intention and love. I forget that the world we live in isn’t the way it was meant to be. I forget that Jesus chose to live a life of passion and pursuit so that I would be able to know God as closely as I choose to. I forget these things, and most insidiously, I forget that I’ve forgotten, which causes me to forget that this is what I believe matters most, not just to me, but to every American and Parisian around me.

Thankfully, I have people around me who remember. People who will tell me, “Don’t eat at that restaurant. It’s not as good as the one around the corner.” I have a God who pursues me every moment in ways I can’t even imagine so that I will know how to live slowly and fully, paying attention to the beauty He’s serving up around me in the people and scenarios of my daily life. I’m praying this week that I’ll be aware of the moments of His pursuit “in my goings” and seize the opportunities He gives to tell other of the life and freedom made possible in Jesus.

By the way, the next time you’re in Paris: eat at Chez Paul.

Habits of the Soul

Doug and I watched the movie “Waitress” the other night. It’s a quirky, off-beat film about a woman facing her dead-end life in any number of ineffectual ways. I find it amusing, insightful and just the tiniest bit relate-able. Plus, it’s highly quoteable. One of the characters, in the midst of wooing a woman tells her, “Dawn, if I had a penny for everything I love about you I would have many pennies.” “Many pennies” gets thrown around a lot in our house.

I am by nature a rule follower and a peace-keeper. The worst thing I could imagine when I was little was the displeasure of my mother, and not because she was a mean mommy. It’s because a number of life’s circumstances had already told me that my role was to keep the peace; my identity was to be a good girl. But what this really taught me was to live in fear of failure. Not catastrophic failure, but any tiny failure. And so I learned to not take any risks.

Everyone who’s ever been great at something will tell you that they had to pursue it with diligence. It didn’t just fall into their lap. They’ll also tell you that they failed – a lot – before they experienced success, if they ever do. It’s true on any level, whether your desire is to have great relationships, be a great teacher, or banker or musician or parent. Becoming great at something requires sticking your neck out; occasionally it’s going to get stepped on, most likely by your own shoe.

C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity” talks about the patterns we build in our lives in each moment and day’s small decisions. He says that we all want to make the right choices and take the right actions in the big stuff that really matters, but most of us don’t realize that it’s all the tiny choices and actions that matter most, because they train and shape our character; they create our perspective.

I couldn’t get that idea out of my head this morning. “The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.” Proverbs 13:4 says it so well. We live in an instant gratification culture that tells us we are special and capable of doing anything, and that we should have everything we want. But, it’s not true. What is true is that if we have the passion, we must match it with discipline.
But the other thing I couldn’t stop thinking about this morning is the reality that we have an enemy who desperately wants to either undermine or subvert our passion and dedication. There’s a great Derek Webb song line, sung from the perspective of the devil, that says, “I’m turning shepherds into sheep, leaders into celebrities…”. And it’s not just the people who have public-oriented passions that get sabotaged. Scripture tells us that the thief has come to “steal, kill and destroy”, so it’s no wonder that if your passion is to love your friends and family well, things will constantly arise to make that as difficult as possible. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that to the full.”

So, is it passion? diligence? fearlessness? Yes. This morning when Bruce was showing clips from “It Might Get Loud” and talking about what it takes to be great at something, I couldn’t help but think about all the ways I avoid even trying to be great at something. The idea from this morning most resonate in me is this: when I live as if I am in control, then I must constantly fear and manage outcomes. I’m still that little girl trying hard to please everyone and make it all okay. When I live resting in the reality that God is in control then I can pursue purpose and life boldly and fearlessly precisely because the outcome is not up to me.

Waitress ends with the main character giving birth. Meeting her newborn daughter for the first time transforms this previously frightened and utterly cowed woman into a tower of strength and resolve. She couldn’t wish her way out of her bad habits, she had to become someone who made different choices. The point I’m making is that we can’t wish ourselves into being people of discipline, passion and significance. It’s only when we choose to allow Jesus to transform us in the day-to-day, moment-to-moment living we’re already in that we can become world-class guitarists and parents and friends and spouses. But even if we never achieve “greatness” in the way we define it, I suspect that’s not really God’s point anyway. He’s more concerned with the habits of our soul.

C.S. Lewis sums it up:

“We may, indeed, be sure that (perfection in any area) will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.”