The “but” changes everything.

Mar 11, 2013 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality

With an hour’s drive ahead I pulled up Google on my iPhone – on the hunt for a scintillating audio to keep me company.

You might find it hard to believe, but I typed “Walter Brueggemann sermons” into my search bar. An Old Testament scholar extraordinaire, Brueggemann offers brilliant and innovative insight into ancient texts that continues to dazzle me. This was no exception.

He told the story of a young woman who attends his church, bound to a wheelchair, unable to speak, fed through a tube, and completely dependent upon caregivers. He pondered what she must think about on Sunday mornings. Week after week of sermons, liturgy, and ritual – none of which she can talk about or participate in, at least as others around her do. In this context, he then read Psalm 31: 9-15,
positioning her as the psalmist.

Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress;
my eyes grow weak with sorrow,
my soul and body with grief.
My life is consumed by anguish
and my years by groaning;
my strength fails because of my affliction,
and my bones grow weak.
Because of all my enemies,
I am the utter contempt of my neighbors
and an object of dread to my closest friend —
those who see me on the street flee from me.
I am forgotten as though I were dead;
I have become like broken pottery.
For I hear many whispering,
“Terror on every side!”
They conspire against me
and plot to take my life.

I can imagine Brueggemann is right: this must be how this young woman feels so much of the time. And though I don’t begin to understand her plight, I know my own version of these emotions. So do you. Different circumstances, but no less acute, our complaints are allowed and legitimate.

This psalm reminds us that it is normal and even acceptable to articulate such a dirge; to express exactly how we sometimes feel – to a god of our own understanding who can handle it. Indeed, in the face of such injustice and ache, the divine is often the only one who can handle it – and us – raw honesty, complete candor, no holding back.

This, in and of itself, was worth the sermon and the drive. But Brueggemann continued, turning the corner in the psalm and drawing his listeners attention to the “disruptive conjunction” that occurs after the litany of frustration, fear, pain, and emotion; one small word that changes everything:

But…

But I trust in you, Lord;
I say, “You are my God.”
My times are in your hands…

Yes, there is much that threatens to destroy, but…
Yes, there is injustice, but…
Yes, there is heartbreak, but…
Yes, there is misunderstanding, but…
Yes, there is sickness and sorrow and sadness, but…
Yes, there is anxiety and worry, but…
But…my times are in your hands.

This is what changes the psalmist’s perspective. This is what changes our perspective – about ourselves, about those around us, about our world. Not a dismissal or diminishment of any or all that threatens to overwhelm; certainly not a dismissal or diminishment of a young woman’s wheelchair-bound existence. But one simple conjunctive that disrupts lament with something else; someOne else.

The but changes everything.

Is it that simple? Does just saying it make it so? Is it true even if belief is less than rock-solid? Is it enough to repeat the words like mantra without the accompanying feelings?

I do not know. Here is what I do know:

I’d rather cling to even the most doubt-laden and insincere repetition of that but…than to let go of faith and trust.

To hope-to-believe that my times are in the divine’s hands (and my ever-changing definition/experience of such) changes how I act, how I choose, how I behave, how I love, how I live. And that is enough. At least for today.

The last verse of Psalm 31 says this:

Be strong and take heart,
all you who hope in God.

No if’s, and’s, or but’s about it: may it be so.

 

A Lament

Jan 23, 2013 | Sacred Stories, Women's Wisdom, Writing

I’ve been tricked. ‘Tis so Sweet to Trust in Jesus is playing on Pandora. What? It’s an instrumental station – conducive-to-writing music – not old hymns! Aaaaaaugh! Every word cycles through my mind – even though I try to resist; even though not a one is actually sung. All I can do is angrily, uncontrollably weep.

Really? Trust in Jesus? Believe that God is at work in my life? How am I to do so in the midst of such excruciating heartbreak? Is this God’s will? Is this God’s plan? Is this God’s desire?

‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus when I’m getting my way, when things are as I want them to be. Not so much, when life feels like it’s going to hell in a hand-basket. When relationships fail. When wounds penetrate deeper than we thought we could ever bear. When disappointment feels like a crushing burden. When sadness catches in our chest so painfully that wee can hardly breathe. When anxiety nearly consumes all sane thought.

Where is the sweetness? Where is the hope? Where is the love? Where is God?

Thank, God. The song just ended . . . 

*****

At any given time I probably have 20 draft posts sitting in the queue. I think of something, see something, ponder something and jot down just enough to jog my memory later. Sometimes I return to what I started and craft something more. Often, I end up trashing most of it.

The words above were one of those drafts. I stumbled across it just today. Excruciating memories flooded as I pieced together the scenes of when I wrote it and why. Thankfully, the circumstances of that particular day have passed, but the reality and rawness of the emotions can still be felt, even now.  I considered trashing it, but then stopped. Here’s why:

It’s all good and well to skip merrily through our days – full of faith in a God who loves and provides. Until our faith fails because God seems to.

How are we to understand God in such places? How are we to hold on to trust? How are we to believe? How are we to hope? And what are we to do?

I wish I had answers. (Well, I have a few, but they just don’t suffoce in such places and those who tell you different are, in my not-so-humble-opinion, lying.) Here’s the best I can do:

Sometimes (if not often) we just need space, time, and frankly, permission to rage…at God.

So here it is: permission.

Take it. It’s yours. No lighting will strike. No coal in your stocking. No plague of frogs (a story from Exodus – or, if you prefer, the movie, Magnolia.) Be furious. Be pissed. Storm. Curse. Rail. Scream. Weep. Whatever. God’s OK with it. I promise. And if you don’t want to take my word for it, how about these? You are in good company:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
(From Psalm 13)

Why is life given to those with no future,
those God has surrounded with diffculties? I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water. What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true. I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest; only trouble comes. (From Job, Chapter 3)

*****

What I shared at the start of this post is hardly the first of such drafts I’ve written, but never published. Many have been trashed. And many more exist on untitled-but-saved files. They show up in journals scattered throughout my house. And had I kept the thousands of pages onto which I’ve poured my heart over my lifetime, we’d be buried; more lament would be present than praise.

It’s not that my life has been harder than others. It’s not that I’ve endured anything even closely resembling the stories of some. Hardly.

But my life is my own – just like yours. And my life, just like yours, is filled with heartache that deserves to be expressed; that must be expressed. There is no other way. Not really. So says Holocaust survivor, Elie Weisel:

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

So pour out your heart. Lament like there’s no tomorrow. And tomorrow will come. I promise.

Pregnancy. Infertility. Faith.

Jan 17, 2013 | Hope & Encouragement, Mothers and Daughters, Spirituality

The Ending:
One day, out of the blue, unexpected, unanticipated, unbelievable, I was pregnant. And again, 15 months later. Emma is now 16, Abby 14. They are miracles.

The Beginning:
I was 31 years old when I got married. Behind the power curve (in my insular opinion) where such a significant life-marker was concerned. Children were up next (and fast) on my make-up-for-lost-time agenda. There would be no leisurely year of nuptial bliss before we began the process of trying to get pregnant. The clock was ticking. There was no time to waste – or for which to wait. I was in hot pursuit.

The Middle:
After a year of trying with no success, the fertility consultations and moderate treatments began. By year two, we’d moved to more intensive, invasive testing. And with still no success or answers that satisfied, in-vitro was the next-recommended attempt. Once. Twice. Nothing. And then I couldn’t bear any more. I was tired of waiting. I was tired of trying. I was tired of hoping. So I stopped. No more treatment. No more planning. Little-to-no conversation. Time for life to move on.

It did, of course. And it didn’t.

In the nearly-three years that followed, no matter how I tried to ignore my longings, those emotions would not be aborted. No matter how I tried to put on a spiritual happy face and quote Romans 8:28 (And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love
God…), I raged inside. No matter how I tried to tell myself that God had other plans for me, that my life would have other “births,” that my world would be rich in unimaginable ways, I was miserable.

But not for lack of trying to summon up any other emotion, any other perspective, any other experience. I tried to pray. I tried to be patient. I tried to let go. I tried to trust. I tried to have faith, thinking that would make sense of things, but every effort was impotent and infertile.

Oh, how I wish I could say that my (im)patient waiting, hoping, and tenacious trust resulted in a profoundly dynamic spiritual life; a seismic and never-to-be-questioned-again faith. Even more, how I wish that I could say to others who struggle with such intolerable heartache that “just having faith” will, indeed and ultimately, engender and enable a hope in God that comforts and sustains.

I cannot. I will not.

I grew up believing that faith was something I needed to (and could, with enough work) attain. It was a developed skill, a worthy goal, a near-requirement for the believer in God. I also grew up believing in some kind of Divine barter system: if only I could have what I wanted, what I desired, what I fervently prayed for, then I would have faith. I ask. God comes through. My faith exponentially grows.

I am still growing, but here is what I believe now: Faith is not ours to work toward, aspire to, or command at will. It will not appear at our beck-and-call.

Faith grows in chasms of doubt. It is nurtured in the darkness of pain. It slowly, silently, almost imperceptibly multiplies in long, wide, and deep spaces of waiting, of questioning, of aching, of asking.

Faith is not a sense-making activity, quality, or attribute. It is a crazy, defiant, and nearly certifiable choice – made an infinite number of times within one day, one life, one heart. It does not come in miracles and breakthroughs, but in the pregnant spaces of life that are more-often filled with desolation than hope. Still, an occasional tinge of awareness that something is growing and will be birthed, but a complete and helpless inability to will it to arrive any sooner. It is a mysterious, un-navigable, impossible-to-(pre)determine journey.

Faith is much like pregnancy: experience more than event. And faith is much like infertility: despairing, but waiting-hoping-trusting anyway.

Faith is living one day after the next. One foot in front of the other. One wish-and-a-prayer that is too-often dashed, but whispered yet again. One broken heart that somehow mends and loves again. One longing for success that decries a dwindling bank account. One more blog post when creativity wanes. One more load of laundry. One more commute. One more prayer. One more push.

Faith is not the ending of the story, nor is it the beginning. It is the way in which we be; the way in which we live in the middle.

Naturally, the gift of my two daughters – then and now – nearly takes my breath away. Naturally, I am deeply grateful to God for their presence in my life. But I have learned that faith that spikes in such places rarely sticks. The faith that stays – and sustains – is that which is nurtured in the well-worn path of worry, the sleepless nights, the inconsolable heartache, the insatiable desires. In between the lines. In
the middle.

I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me–that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. ― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith 

364 Days

Dec 31, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Women's Wisdom, Writing

364 days have now passed in 2007.

I woke up early this morning for a vacation day and no alarm. I found myself lying there thinking about the past 364 days. There is much to ponder. I got up and made coffee instead.

It’s hard to spend time in a past that is painful. It’s also tempting to just look back on all that was good and choose to overlook the tough stuff. For me, at least, there’s a lot of both. I can’t, nor do I want to escape either. The irony is that the things that have been most painful have also been rife with beauty, growth, love, and life.

The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief
But the pain of grief
Is only a shadow
When compared with the pain
Of never risking love.
(Hilary Stanton Zunin)

I have risked much. I have loved much. These past 364 days, pain has been rife in both.

I have never known the levels of sadness that have accompanied this year. And I have not been overwhelmed.

In the midst of circumstances and realities I was certain would drown me, I have kept afloat.

The tears I was sure would keep me from ever getting out of bed again have not been uncontrollable torrents, but gentle and kind reminders that I do feel, that I do care, that I do desire, that I do love.

The endings that I imagined as incomprehensible and even impossible have brought understanding and possibility I couldn’t have imagined. I feared death – not physical, but nearly every other sense of the word – and have known life.

Despite a large aspect of the past year’s reality and reflection: I am not alone. Neither death nor pain have conquered me.

Life returns.

Love wins.

364 days have passed. At the end of today 2008 will begin. I am grateful for both.

Time to pour another cup of coffee…

“It is finished.” (My divorce is final.)

Aug 23, 2007 | Sovereignty, Women's Wisdom

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending. (Lazarus Long)

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. (T.S. Eliot)

“It is finished.”

Yesterday I spoke these words. The final, court-approved, attorney-certified documentation arrived. I am no longer married.

It’s an end, to be sure. The end of meaningful, something beautiful, something painful, something
rich, something deeply significant.

All endings bring a sense of grief (even when you’re the one who has chosen such). There is a finality that is weighty and cannot be escaped.

Endings also signify new beginnings. That reality feels weightless; one that is unbounded, unrestrained, unknown, and unfettered. And I find myself, at least today, more compelled (and comforted) by others’ words instead of my own…

You’re searching…for things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings – there are no such things. There are only middles. (Robert Frost)

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, about having to change, about taking the moment and making the best of it – and all without knowing what’s going to happen next.

Delicious Ambiguity.
(Gilda Radner)

My life – yesterday and today – feels like a book. Yesterday I ended one chapter, even somewhat tragically. Today, I am anticipating what is yet to come, I turn the page and find the next one blank. A clean slate. White as snow. Anxious and excited for the pen to hit the page and create a new text, new plots, new characters, new experiences. What will this story yet tell?

The secret to a rich life is to have more beginnings than endings.(David Weinbaum)

There is a woman at the beginning of all great things. (Alphonse de Lamartine)

Every day is a fresh beginning, Every morn is the world made new. (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

“It is finished.” And…it is just beginning.

May it be so.