Poverty of Spirit

[I was commissioned to write a little thought about Christmas for one of our church's social media outlets, which I'm re-posting here. Thanks, Kathi, for forcing my hand to write what God's been teaching me in this season!]

This time of year, we give a lot of mental energy to gifts. We make lists of things to buy for family, drop subtle hints about things we may like to receive, stalk Pinterest for cute teacher gifts, make generous financial gifts to worthy nonprofits, and generally drain our bank accounts trying to make sure everyone in our world feels loved. To be clear, I love the exchange of presents - there is nothing like the perfect gift to make you feel known and treasured, supported and seen.
And, if spirituality is part of your normal life, you probably turn your attention to the precious gift we were given on Christmas. God's very son, wrapped in humility, was given to us. There is no gift quite like it - both universally appealing and perfectly personal. The Incarnation, Divinity gifted into our very human experience, is surely worth extra mediation during this season.
This year, however, a lot of my thoughts and prayers have been centered around the gifts that I bring to the cradle. Every  Christmas Eve, we bake a birthday cake, light a candle and gather in the quiet to sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. It is a sweet, small way to celebrate the baby who right-sized the world. I want to honor this newborn King with precious, lavish, beautiful gifts - like the wise men, I want to approach Christ with gifts fit for royalty.
But, if I'm being quite honest, I don't feel like I have much to offer. I can be overwhelmingly selfish, impatient, controlling and distant. And even when my sinfulness relents, the fruit in my life still seems too meager to present to a King.
But my Emmanuel keeps reminding me of this truth:

"For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
    you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." Psalm 51

The only gift Christ desires is me ... just as I am. He doesn't want a magnificently orchestrated holiday or a giant donation or perfect patience with my kids. He doesn't want me to muster up holiness or to strive for success - my brokenness and desperation for His presence are the perfect gift. This truth has me crying every time I listen to 'Little Drummer Boy,' because I feel insufficient in the same way, approaching Jesus with only a (metaphorical) drum and not much skill. But, miraculously, my smallness and poverty of spirit are a gift that makes Him smile.

So gift yourself to Jesus afresh today. Set down the piping bag, drive home from the mall, turn off Mariah Carey. Bring your entirety, both sinner and saint, to the cradle. Your empty hands and expectant heart are the greatest gift you can give this Christmas.

Laid Bare

I've been in strange season with God for more weeks than I can number. More months that I can number. Actually, I'm pretty sure we've camped in the same strange space for years.

I've spent this season becoming overwhelmingly aware of my own sinfulness. Obviously, I
understand that this is a vital part of a healthy relationship with God. If I want to be made into the likeness of Christ, then I need to (1) have the Holy Spirit illuminate areas of fault and failure, (2) repent of those ways I've wounded the heart of God and offended the holiness of God and (3) cling to the Holy Spirit to see the fruits of righteousness manifested in my life.

But dang. It feels like my mess is all we ever talk about.

Everyone has at least one friend who wears a particular topic threadbare, hijacking every conversation to discuss their treasured subject. You know, when you are find yourself doing a mental eye roll when Crossfit or lawn care or Trump or essential oils come up in conversation. It's not that you don't care about the person or the topic, but ... really? Again?

My own personal depravity is not a fun subject to constantly revisit with God.

It feels like a never-ending dermatological exam. Me, exposed and vulnerable, laying beneath unforgiving light, clinging to any last shred of dignity. All while God just keeps taking note of every blemish, noting changes in size or depth. Murmuring, "well that's going to have to go" and "here's another one."

A couple weeks ago, during worship, I could feel tears welling up in my eyes as I felt the gaze of God run up and down my soul. Again. And I prayed, "Really, Lord? Is this fun for you? Because I'm exhausted. It takes all my emotional energy (like ALL of it) to be with You, holding back tears. Can I have a break from this so I can breathe?"

And good ole' dermatologist Jesus replied, "I'm keeping you here until you can be here without wanting to cry or run or hide. My grace really is as big as I say it is. I expose your sin to save you, not to shame you. So until you can look me in the eyes, resist the urge to cover up or explain yourself, and you can really just trust my love, here you will remain."

So, of course, my knee-jerk response is to pretend I am so okay with being laid bare, hoping God will buy my act and leave me alone. Which is pure silliness, of course. Pretending to stay present for the sake of running away makes no sense at all. So here I am, a giant mess, fighting to be truly vulnerable and accept that Grace really can cover it all.

I put all this out there just to encourage anyone else who feels the acute eye of Christ - you are not alone. For those willing to endure this kind of relentless examination, I'm believing all the weariness will someday bud and blossom into a display of Glory.

Orlando

When I was pregnant with Phoenix, Josh and I watched all the available seasons of Dexter with amazing speed - to say we binged is really an understatement. One night, after a marathon of episodes from season four (the Trinity season, for fellow fans), I got in the shower feeling really unsettled. I have a high threshold for fictional blood/guts/crime (not really sure what this means about me), but I was deeply shaken by the particular form of evil personified by John Lithgow's character 'Arthur Mitchell.' As water fell from my downcast eyes onto my swollen belly, it occurred to me for the first time that we would be introducing our child to a world wrought with evil and destruction. Why would we bring a child into a world like this? A world where evil seems to have free reign, where one is always at risk of bearing the soul-deep consequences of someone else's depravity? How could we possibly protect a child from such present, subversive, expansive evil?

Obviously, it was a little late to ask such an important question. Like it or not, our growing child already had traction in this world, and the question changed from "Why would we raise a child in this world?" to "How will we raise a child in this world?" 

Sunday, upon hearing the news of what happened in Orlando, I was freshly disturbed by the realities of this world. And this evil was not fictional - it was real in the most profound sense of the word. 

Phoenix, now five, is at such an amazing age -- the whole natural world feels like a gift that I get to help her unwrap. She notices all the variations in the clouds, she instantly internalizes the names and habitats of ocean creatures, she overturns rocks to see what she might discover underneath. But those tangible expressions of Glory that she's constantly encountering are only a small portion of the world she will continue to explore. This week, I weep that giving her the world means she will inevitably be hit over the head with pain and grief and tragedy and unspeakable evil. 

Forty-nine mommas lost their babies this week. I wish more than anything that there’s a way I could ease their suffering, ascribe meaning to their loss, or offer small graces like a hug or a meal. But I can’t. There's nothing that can undo or reverse this horror.

What I can do is keep answering “How will we raise a child in this world?” with a resounding commitment to empathy. I cannot bring back lost lives, but I can fight for character in the lives of the two small people in my home. They are my sphere of influence for this season, and I can affect the trajectory of our world by the way I teach them about loving others. It is no easy or small thing to really understand and internalize the experiences of another human being, to see them with your whole attention and value them despite glaring ideological differences. It is no easy thing to set aside agendas, to find the smallest square of common ground and to contruct a relationship built first on love. It is no small thing to intentionally change words, phrases, behaviors and habits for the sake of honoring someone else’s experience. 

None of this comes naturally to me, so thankfully I have access to the greatest example of empathy in the Incarnation. Christ (quite literally) took on the form of those he meant to serve and love, experiencing the spectrum of our temptations, our hardships, our pain and our joy. Setting aside his glory, Jesus humbly walked among us, getting his hands dirty on the front lines of love. With no concern for social norms and no tolerance for religious spectacles, Jesus locked eyes with the misunderstood, the ostracized and the forgotten.

I am praying that my children are leaders in a generation marked by empathy. I cannot gift them a hate-free world, but I can foster the bravery and kindness that will change the tide. 

To the LGBT community - I weep as you weep. 

To the families and friends who lost someone they love - I weep as you weep.

And to the rest of us - let’s fight first in our own hearts and then in the world for the empathy that can prevent such senseless acts of violence.

Mourning in my Kitchen

Not long after receiving the call that my grandma was in the hospital, I found myself in the kitchen. An unfortunate by-product of having a family is feeding them. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Normally there is a fair amount of drudgery in the dinner experience for me; trying to cook amidst squeals and screams, force-feeding my small people, and then immediately cleaning up the inevitable messes. Not my favorite.

But something was different on that particular evening. 

It was almost an out-of-body experience, my senses both heightened and dulled by the news of potential loss. Peeling carrots, shredding cheese, whisking a roux - small moments of normalcy intoxicated with the immanent.

Since that call, I have found myself acutely aware that we live in the “now and not yet.” The kingdom of God was surely inaugurated in the first coming of Christ, but it has not yet found its fulfillment. Death has no ultimate power over those who know God, for we are promised resurrection bodies and eternity with Christ. But that happy truth is tethered to the inescapable presence of Death among us in this present age. 

To love someone on the brink of eternity is a strange and holy thing. It is a stark and obvious intersection of the temporal and eternal, which brings into focus all the other ways that heaven breaks into our everyday. It gives one fresh eyes to see the sacred in things that have become overly familiar. The last traces of baby smell that linger on Jericho’s skin, the perfect turn of Phoenix’s curls on a humid day, the crisp blue of Josh’s eyes … these things became miracles. 

I was in yoga class on a Monday when a YMCA employee came to tell me that Josh was in the lobby. As I quietly rolled my mat and slipped out of the room, I imagined all possible reasons for this interruption. Our minds are amazingly complex … I knew exactly what he’d come to tell me, but I deceived myself in entertaining other possibilities. 

After a lifetime of faithful service to Christ, my grandma took her last breaths that Sunday night, January 10th.

Mourning her loss means allowing Grief to be my ever-present passenger again for a season.  Having been introduced before, I thought I would know exactly how to navigate our relationship. But, as it turns out, grief is not that consistent. Mourning a particular person in a particular season brings a very particular pain. For me, this time, I started stuck in the mire of numbness and emotional volatility, which admittedly made me a miserable person to be around. 

And, for some reason, the loss seems to strike me afresh when I'm in my kitchen. Not every time I cook - only those times where I find a strange balance between focus and contemplation. Grating ginger, carefully avoiding my fingers while simultaneously basking in the sharp, herbal scent that my grandma loved so much. Watching swirls of sour cream slowly disappear as I mash potatoes, remembering all the Thanksgiving dinners where my grandma would stand at the stove whisking gravy. Sprinkling freshly cut tomatoes with herbs and garlic to roast for spaghetti, thinking about how she relished in beautiful produce (and anything else that grew from the Earth). 

The tediousness of cooking for my young family has been imbued with new meaning for me - largely because I know that my efforts in the kitchen would make my grandma so proud. The ways she loved were not grandiose or extravagant; she loved with meals, with presence, with a listening ear, with understanding, with greenery, with prayer. She wasn't changing the whole world, she just showed up every day to care well for her people. I'm learning the eternal significance of seemingly small acts of love, and Grief is a patient, long-suffering teacher.