The Table and Little Hands

 I was raised in a Southern Baptist family and attended Southern Baptist churches into my young adulthood. While I do not consider myself Baptist any longer, there are certain rules/interpretations of church practice that have remained with me, namely around baptism and communion. With each of these sacraments I'm raising my children in a way that differs from how I was raised. It's a heady thing, to attempt to explain God and faith to children, it feels heavy and impossible on good days, more heavy and more impossible on bad ones. 

I grew up with the concept of "being Saved," a phrase that was part of every sermon growing up. It was a question asked and answered. When were you Saved? I was Saved at such-and-such on such-and-such date. How does one become Saved? One asks Jesus to come into one's heart. As a child this seemed logical enough although I do remember wondering how I was supposed to know when was the right time to make that invitation. I knew I loved God. I knew John 3:16 by heart. I was a champ at Bible Drill (that's competitive Bible quizzes for those unaware that such things exist). But when kids in my Sunday School class were celebrated for asking Jesus into their heart, I was always tempted to ask how they knew it was time. I never did ask anyone. But on my Dad's birthday in 1989 we attended a Billy Graham crusade not far from where we lived in Little Rock. I remember very little of that experience except the feeling during the altar call that it was Time. Rev Graham had invited anyone making a profession of faith to come down the stadium stairs to the field. I turned to my Dad and said something along the lines of, "I'm going down." I remember he asked if I wanted him to come with me and I said I was ok. Looking back he may have regretted that as he watched his 8 year old daughter descend the steps. But he found me a few minutes later, sitting next to a volunteer, and his smile felt like the brightest sunshine. I was baptized a few weeks later after conversations with my parents and pastor. Only then was I able to participate in communion, an event that occurred quarterly at my church.

The church we attend now holds communion far more frequently, weekly during special seasons like Lent and Advent, and a couple times a month when we're not in those seasons. As such, communion feels both more and less special. It feels more holy, more deliberate, more powerful because it is such a frequent component of our worship, it's something we share as a community and so it feels truly foundational to our time together. And it also feels less special, not in terms of its import, but because it is so frequent, so embedded in our worship fabric, it feels expected and established, a comfort. When I was taking communion in Baptist churches, because it was less frequent, it always had an air of mystery and (I cannot find another word) superiority. I remember feeling like a grown up, separate and apart from my unbaptized friends, because I now got to take a cup from the plate passed around. I got to tuck that little plastic vessel in the perfectly sized hole at the back of the pew. I had done something, I had believed. 

I do not think I was wrong as a child. I know that what I felt at that stadium in Arkansas was holy and beautiful. I know that the anticipation of participating in communion was itself holy and beautiful, because it helped me begin to understand what it means to participate in a sacrament, even if I was never taught that word, sacrament. I know my parents and pastor delighted in my growing faith and wanted nothing more than to point me continuously toward my Heavenly Father. I want to do the same for my children. But the truth of it is, my children will grow up differently. They will not be taught that a specific, identifiable moment of "Saving" is the goal, although I fully believe that is how many people first experience their relationship with Jesus. They will instead be taught about the continual grace, continual saving, continual joy of the Resurrection, a journey that began, at least as far as worship practice, the moment they were baptized as babies.

And that brings me to the real inspiration for this post: my toddlers sometimes have a piece of bread during communion and my Southern Baptist self feels things about that. Both Chester and I have strong Christian parents from more conservative worship practices and when the kids receive a blessing, eat their little piece of bread, Chester and I frequently glance at each other with the "our dads would not approve" grimace and half-smile. 

Chester is a better Bible scholar than I am so when I asked him what exactly (somebody is a lawyer) the Bible said about communion, he pointed me to 1 Corinthians, where Paul says "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord...". I don't discount Paul's perspective, but I also don't hold his words higher than Jesus's own, "Take, eat; this is my body." "Do this in remembrance of me." So what could be unworthy? Can a 3 year old participating with his parents be unworthy? If baptism begins the journey in the life of the church, isn't participating in communion at different stages of maturity also part of that journey? 

Chester and I discussed and decided on a plan. A 3 and 2 year old are too young for the discernment Paul preaches, but they are not too young to understand quiet, prayer, love, gentleness, importance. They're not too young to feel part of a whole, folded into the family of a church. They are members of this church, baptized into this beautiful community, and we want them to participate in the ways that make sense to their developing minds.  So whenever we celebrate communion Chester and I eyeball each other. Is this a good Sunday for them? Are they listening? If so, we will tell them, "we eat this bread and drink this juice to remember Jesus." And we will hold their hands as we walk down the aisle and afterwards we will say, "I love you, Jesus." This won't be every communion service because they're still 2 and 3. Sometimes the best we can do is to get them into the church, maybe read a book about Noah, coax them into eating fewer than five donut holes. But sometimes they want to go with us when we take communion, sometimes their bodies quiet ever so slightly as they listen to the music, sometimes they point to a painting of Jesus and say his name. I fully believe the Holy Spirit moves in children, and I believe the table is large enough for little hands. 

Because our kids will likely attend a Catholic school in our neighborhood and because they have Catholic and Baptist and conservative Lutheran family members, they'll grow up with different perspectives on communion. And that's okay. They'll ask questions, some of which Chester and I will be able to answer, and some of which we won't. They'll grow in all the ways children grow and someday they will be old enough to decide when and if they walk down a church aisle and receive the bread, the cup. They will have days when they feel unready or unwilling to participate, days and whole seasons when they question whether they believe in this God their parents taught them to love. But in the midst of those seasons, my prayer is that they will never question that the table is laid for them, prepared for them, that they are continuously invited to remember Jesus and the blood He shed for them, not because of anything they did or words they said, but because of everything Jesus is. 

"Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread." 1 Corinthians 10:17

 

Truman Builds Houses

 The inspiration for this poem is Truman's months-long obsession with houses. What are you drawing, Truman? House. What are you building, Truman? House. He's two and our home probably feels like his whole world. But I can make a metaphor out of anything so it also feels like the genius of childhood, recognizing how essential feeling "at home" is for our happiness, and how innate the craving for home in our understanding of love, of God. Making our house Truman and Johanna's home continues to be the joy of a lifetime.

Sometimes his blocks are unsteady, built for speed

but even the tower in Pisa began its days straight.

It was one of his first perfectly-formed words - House

His voice confident, powerful, small, and yet, great.

He builds slowly when it suits him, when the day feels easy

When the ground is solid, the air warm, houses are pure joy.

Sometimes it is daddy's house, mama's house, rarely sister's

He is an architect, an explorer, a destroyer, a little boy.

What shape a house takes when its creation is delight

When the beams lean against the hips of a mother

What comfort warps itself into these spaces, these sturdy and less sturdy walls

When the hand that shapes them crafts only life, only love, only color.

What a gorgeous, Godly world it could be if he built it

All passion, joy, hilarity, and the "watch Mama" yelled loud

How lovely a seat for Jesus, for Esther, for David, for Mary

All welcome, all laboring, all celebrating, all marveling in Truman's house.

My Son

I've stopped and started this post a dozen times.  I'll blame that partly on the demands of a newborn but the truth is writing about my son has felt very heavy.  Heavy in the sense that there's too much carried to lift any one brick for evaluation. The breadth and depth of motherhood (not to mention experiencing motherhood in the context of a pandemic) has swallowed me, made words float far away on a surface I can see but not quite touch. Even my prayers have been stunted, short and desperate (help him grow! protect him! help me!), pleas have been all I could muster under the twin burdens of terror and euphoria. 

While pregnant with Truman, even after he started routinely kicking me in the ribs, his existence seemed tenuous, like any morning I might wake up and it would have all been a dream.  With each week I allowed myself an incremental addition of joy, knowing I was closer to feeling him in my arms.  But even at the hospital, pacing and wincing and generally terrifying my husband, Truman still felt like a cloud of hope, a puff of smoke that a stiff breeze could dissolve. He didn't feel solid until he was placed on my chest after surgery. I couldn't lift my arms on my own and the combination of drugs and hormones made me shiver violently, my teeth chattering as Chester and the nurse helped me hold him. He was warm and sleepy, exhausted by his ordeal, and the first sensation I felt as I regained feeling in my arms was his tiny, wet breath. He was here and real.

Today brought the first breaths of autumn, a brisk wind racing between sunbeams, and as we sat outside Truman would inhale sharply, then smile, when the wind rustled his hair.  I have never felt more firmly tethered to a place than I did in that moment, watching my son feel his first windy day, my feet in the grass of our backyard, my fingers smoothing the edge of his blanket. We exist together, my son and I, his father beside us. Our hearts beat and we feel the wind blow and we watch the leaves make shadows. He is here and real, and I get to love him for the rest of my life. 

Heirloom

Over the last couple of years I've lost my last remaining grandparents.  As the matriarchs of their respective families, their deaths have brought with them the tidying up of homes, categorization of shoebox pictures, exploration of trinkets and recipe cards, and the divvying up of all of the above. Homes and land were sold, and the piecemeal sediment of their lives has been buried, tossed or scattered to new caretakers in the family and beyond.

A few weeks ago I invited several dear girlfriends over for lunch for the purpose of hosting loved ones around a table decorated with some of those heirloom items.  I inherited my Great Aunt Maryann's china years ago and its delicate blue flowers have been packed away in yellowing newspaper dated for my 20th birthday (deep into the Bush-Gore Florida recount, for those curious). I paired the plates with the crystal I inherited from my Grandmother, goblets for water and sparkling dessert ware. I served tea sandwiches, crusts removed and cucumbers smeared with herbed butter, on milk glass from my Great-Grandmother.

The lunch was quiet and kind, littered with laughter, prayer, clinking of wine glasses, and soft tears. Loss was fresh and ongoing to several at the table, and sometimes that rawness was palpable. Not uncomfortable, but a sort of throbbing warning that hearts nearby are vulnerable, newly wounded. I don't doubt that has frequently been the case for those around my table, and that it will not be the last, but I was buoyed by the memories of the women who cherished these beautiful things, knowing the sisterhood inherent in the drying of tears over crackers and egg salad. It's a gentle and unconquerable love.

The lunch was planned early in the year, scheduled weeks before one loss and in the midst of the other. It was simply a date that worked for all, communal crossed fingers that the weather would not do us in. While chopping and toasting and plating our meal in the kitchen, the day felt tenuous, balanced perfectly on the edge of various seasons for each of us. I was struck by how deeply painful, how horribly unfair life could be sometimes, how frequently we walk around with our wounds fully exposed to the elements. But at the same time, these sweet moments together, unwrapping scarves, knocking snow from our boots, pouring wine, squeezing shoulders and hands, the gentleness of those gestures and the fervor with which we want so desperately to love each other through the messiness of every wound, that felt like God. God deeper than, and yet sensitive to, the ache in every heart.

And I think that's what makes these heirlooms, the ring I wear of Mamaw's, the crystal I use for special occasions, the china I unwrap from aging newspaper, so heavy with import for me. I do not know every heartache experienced by the women before me, but I know that they loved well, that they took care of their sisters, their friends, often at a table. I know that they prayed in the midst of loss, teased a smile out of heartache, and dried a million tears in their decades on Earth, and I like to think that some of that comfort, a lot of that laughter, occurred with these plates, these glasses, sitting on tables in Texas, South Carolina, Arkansas. They can carry the weight of life, and they can hold the memory of more tears, more joy, more laughter for years to come.

Between the Trees

Humans love to separate themselves.  We love to judge, define, draw circles around ourselves and those in our tribe, circles that say, "We are superior to You." Even in relationships, we easily find ourselves on islands of our own making, comfortable with our position and independence, at ease with the demarcation we've drawn to keep the World out.

While I believe all people are guilty of asserting their special apart-ness, Christians seem especially skilled at claiming superiority. Our faith traces its roots to the chosen people of Israel, after all, and we really like that mantle, like smiling with our faces to the cross, knowing we are now separate and distinct from those who cast their eyes elsewhere. Christians aren't great at remembering that all fall short and we conveniently forget the gift of grace was extended to every single soul.

Last weekend I traveled North with my husband and father-in-law to the small town where my father-in-law grew up, where both sides of his family raised their families since the 1800s.  A cavalcade of Norwegian names makes up the town historical record, the majority of which my husband is related to either by blood or marriage. There are thousands of such towns all over the world, towns where families built their histories, entrenched their stories.  My dad's side of the family has a similar shared homecoming every year in the mountains of East Tennessee.  Landscapes shape us, the stories follow us.

My husband's uncle showed us around the family churchyard, told stories of the folks buried there.  But it was the story of someone not buried there that was the focus of our visit. Years ago, in the early 1900s, a man in this town committed suicide. Suicide being an unpardonable sin, the man was buried outside the cemetery. It strikes me as the ultimate cruelty to punish a family in such a way. The deceased is no longer present to defend himself or his family, but the church decides his family deserves no marker at which to grieve.  It's a punishment of the living and a final cruelty to the dead.

One reason for our trip to the churchyard was a hunt. It was a search for where they placed that man, no marker, no indication of where they laid his body, our only clues a slightly sunken spot between the trees and the witchcraft-ish crossing of dowsing rods as we walked over the presumed spot. Chester's uncle plans to erect a marker, nothing grand, and likely not a marker many folks will ever notice, but an acknowledgment where one never stood before.

The family of the man is long dead.  Anyone who knew him or knew people who loved him has long since faded from memory.  His story is just a whisper now, and apart from the few who know what lies in the overgrown bramble beyond the cemetery line, his story has the ring of folktale. So there is no person alive to say, "thank you." There will likely be no visitors to this man's marker, no tearful prayers said to his memory, but I believe the carving of a new line matters, the opening of an imaginary gate, welcoming him into the graveyard of his kin.

It matters when we notice the lines we place between us.  And it matters when we, belatedly, erase them. It's what Christ did, bridging the chasm between damned and redeemed. Damnation, not so much that burning cartoon beneath the ground, but separation, from God and from each other, has always been man's deepest ache, deepest worry, deepest question.  Redemption is inclusive, it speaks to an invitation to all, it speaks to markers on unmarked graves, and the belated apology to a man between the trees.

The Rocks We Lean Into

My dearest friend, Megan, is in the process of losing her dad. To say the season has not been easy seems trite. A few short months ago she lost her older brother and her current grief I can only imagine as some sort of heartrending whiplash. I picture a knot of silly putty, slowly stretched to its limit, tiny strands of translucent pinkness waiting to silently break.

We talk often these days, sometimes on the phone but often by text as she goes through the routine of work and having-a-life while simultaneously planning for something that must feel unplannable. And she has said that these days she simply does not feel like herself, which seems fair.  We get so used to ourselves in a known context, when that context changes violently, how do you recognize the face in the mirror? The self she knew six months ago was a self with three living brothers, a healthy dad. The self she wakes up to now has lost and is losing so much.

My parents have lost parents, my mom recently so. As dear as Mamaw was to me, it strikes me that for my mother, she is now a woman living in a world with no mom and dad. To be nurtured and loved and guided for so long, and then to find that presence gone must be jarring. You were once a grandmother with a mother to share in your joys and sorrows, a mother to watch and learn from and listen to.  Now you are a grandmother, you are the one to be watched and learned from and listened to.  Not an orphan, but alone in an important way.

I love a man who lost his mom a decade ago. I can't help but wonder who he was when she was alive, and how losing her changed him. There's a steadiness tied to parents and to lose them before you become a parent yourself seems so disorienting, like a star you planned to guide your ship by goes dark.

I've never lost a parent or a sibling so my world has never shifted, turned itself upside down, reordered itself around that new truth. There have been moments of brightness and sorrow that have rearranged my Self, made me more of what I am now and less of what I once was. But those moments provided periods of transition, months of growth, and their destabilizing force was always cushioned by the comfort of parents, siblings, those rocks we lean into out of the wind.

We have no choice but to grow into our new selves. And when we lose one rock, we must find another. For those who live lives of faith, like Megan and my mom and my love, they find comfort in one rock that never shifts, never changes, never weakens. And there's beauty in that dependence, that trust, that choice to root oneself in a Truth that never leaves. I pray I'd have the courage to stand that firm. Or, if lacking in courage, the gift to be surrounded by those who've leaned on the Rock before me.

Mamaw

 When I was in elementary school we did not have a digital thermometer.  Glass thermometers full of mercury are a relic these days but they provided those of us in our mid-30s and above with the perfect tool for skipping school.  I'd feign some vague pains, mom would bring me the thermometer, and when she left the room I'd press the tip against the light bulb for a few seconds and then shake the scary 105 temp down to a reasonable 100 or so.

At the time, mom and dad both worked.  So being sick meant a trip to Mamaw and Papaw, which was really 90% of the reason for my sick day effort. Being sick in their home meant a cozy snuggle on the basement couch with cinnamon toast on command and an orange juice far superior in quality to whatever my mom bought. Being a doctor, Papaw was a bit wiser to my game than Mamaw, I think.  But he never gave me away. I was the first grandchild and I'm sure as a general rule I got away with a few ploys that the later generations did not. I'll get wrinkles first, so I feel like this is a fair trade. 

Sometimes I wasn't faking.  I spent a week at Mamaw and Papaw's when I had the chicken pox. I was an itchy, ornery mess but there was something magical about that cinnamon toast, something medicinal in the bright yellow of that smiley face cup. The wet washcloths on my forehead were cooler in that basement, the pillows softer. And a sick nerd loves nothing better than a pile of National Geographic and Encyclopedia Brittanica. 

My years of sick days with my grandparents were limited, something I can't blame on digital thermometers but must blame on distance when we moved away. While I spent less time convalescing on that basement couch, the years of Mamaw's cool, loving touch and soft kiss on my cheek continued for a total of 36 lucky years, through Papaw's death, the birth of additional grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a dear second grandfather in Onis, multiple moves and adventures, and an impressive number of hurricane evacuations on my part. 

I am the eldest of thirteen grandchildren and the span of years and distance between us has meant that while we've always prayed for and loved one another, we haven't always known each other incredibly well. But we all loved and were loved by Mamaw. We've all felt her hands on our back, we've all shared a Dove chocolate with her, felt her softest of kisses as we said goodbye. We've laughed with her, prayed with her, and heard her "I love you," complimented her lipstick or her scarf, drawn her a million pictures and sent her postcards from faraway lands, and in loving and knowing her, we've loved and known each other a little better. 

Families are full of so many different dreams and personalities and hills and valleys, it's easy to see how the connections of childhood can fade with the addition of years and new families, a new generation. But that's what makes that communal experience of a grandmother's love that much more precious and powerful. Because as the years go on, remembering what it felt like to set the table for Thanksgiving, to go to church together, to smell the cinnamon toast in the toaster oven, to pretend and climb mountains, to dig through drawers for old love letters, to marvel at faded pictures of our parents as children, to tell Mamaw what you wanted to be when you grew up, and listen as your cousin answered the same question, those are memories imprinted on our bones. They're the guts of what it means to be loved, to be a family that loves well, a family that looks heavenward and gives thanks when Mamaw goes Home.

We Drew a Map of the World

I cannot read maps. I get lost in malls. I suffer almost-panic when I'm called upon in the passenger seat to be the navigator. There is a disconnect in my brain between the world I see in front of me and the flat, impersonal scratches one sees in an atlas or by way of dear, helpful Google Maps. It's a mess for me and my mind experiences the prospect of unraveling that mess with a loathing that's hard to describe to the map savvy. I've always preferred directions in written form.  Turn left at the stop sign. Turn right when you take the exit. If you feel the need to draw a picture, you can assume I'll be late.

A common first project for Peace Corps volunteers, especially for those tasked with teaching, is the world map. You have a grid to work from and together with your students, their parents, any number of curious on-lookers, you slowly begin to sketch the world. In training, I was skeptical of my ability to spearhead anything resembling a map. And while I had a shiny new bachelor's degree, I worried I'd confuse the country names in some disastrous, offensive way. But I needed a project.  I needed a way to get messy with my students, connect with the boys in a silly way, and carve out time with my shyest girls, as we wondered how cold Antarctica must be.

This experience strikes me now with a rib-crunching blow. These were students whose families loved me when I was all alone in a country very different from my own. They always knew I was a Christian.  They knew I covered my hair out of respect, not out of any deep understanding of their religion. They knew I fasted for Ramadan out of curiosity, not devotion. They took care of me because of their innate goodness, the joy that permeated their homes, the warmth that made them quick to give and quick to smile, and their faith, which taught them to love and show kindness to strangers. This is what I know of Islam. This is what I know to be true.

When I think of Islam, I think of paint.  I think of a wall in a rundown youth center that slowly resembled the world. I think of tea and laughter. I think of friends who walked me home after a long day. I think of warm bread, mint, cumin, and heaps of golden couscous on Fridays. I think of cool hands on my hot forehead, when I was too sick to get out of bed. I think of babies held and kisses on cheeks and the gut-deep chuckle of old men. And I think of goodbyes.

The recent executive action against refugees, against Muslims, against immigrants in total, has me thinking of that map. How arbitrary those lines seemed once we sketched them on the wall. Some I knew to trace the line of a river, of a mountain range, some soft demarcation made by God. But most I knew to be the creation of men. As if the line built a home, built a place worth living, built space with some superior context. The lines felt unnecessarily powerful, and so unfair. Maybe I should forgive my mind for its inability to unwind that madness.  Maybe my mind fights the lines on purpose, maybe the confusion is a gift.

To see my country, my combination of lines, deepen those divides, draw them with such hatred, wrap them in religious and cultural superiority and call them "security," only strengthens the feeling I had 15 years ago that the lines must be among the darkest of God's heartbreaks. The God I believe in loves without any care of the lines we're born between. God drew the world, drew the color, drew the mountains and rivers full of life, drew the perfection of Eden and the wood of the cross, drew the people that would wander every inch of creation, drew faces of every shade, voices of every pitch, bodies of every strength, minds of every depth, drew love. We drew the map.

Godmother

I became godmother to Ava Ruth, my newest niece, a little over a week ago.  Baptists don't know much about godmothers so I will admit that my picture of such things was colored as much by Cinderella as it was by any understanding of the religious significance.

I am low on fairy dust, Ava Ru. I never had a godmother, so forgive me if I'm clumsy.

The night before I flew down to see you, I read the following in a book I'm reading (The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything): "Seek grace in the smallest things, and you will also find grace to accomplish, to believe in, and to hope for the greatest things." It's a quote attributed to one of the first Jesuits. But it reminded me of a scratchy poem I wrote the first time I held you a few months ago.  We met on the family mountain, you'll grow up there, in pieces, and now seems as good a time as any to write it down.

Someday, when she is young but feeling old, I will tell her
I came to this mountain, our family mountain, laid her on my lap to look deep into her eyes, asked her for advice.
And I felt every itch and sway of my life in the pool of time,
wrapped in arms that carried me as a child.
I will tell her that I can wish no greater wish for her,
that when she lives in the curve of a question mark, she be steadied and windblown by
this blood,
that her fear be lessened by the gut deep din of these trees, these rocking chairs,
and that in her confusion
she find the flicker of a grill's hot coal, the warm weight of a baby,
a wink from God.
My blood is her blood
and these mountains know both of us.
We are mountains, both of us.

You're a gift, Ava Ru.  You are too young to express love, to provide encouragement, to lend a hand with the cooking. But you were everything I needed that day on the mountain. In a small, happy moment when you squirmed against my chest, threw up on my shoulder, your face was how God communicated grace to me. God is good, little love, and enormous. He is the mountain beneath us and the familiar creak of stairs and the blanket we reach for when the wind picks up. You can find him everywhere and you are loved, everywhere. As your godmother, I will do my best to show you how very big and very present he is, and I have no doubt you'll do the same for me.

"Seek grace in the smallest things, and you will also find grace to accomplish, to believe in, and to hope for the greatest things."

Advice

I sent an email to my kid sister as she approaches her college graduation. I racked my brain on what advice I would have appreciated 12+ years ago. The email wasn't especially long or itemized. Each sentence was a generality, a summing up of a million moments since I left college.

"...I just want you to know that even in that tough period, you're going to have grand adventures. You're going to meet fascinating people. You're going to find new forever friends, and you're going to figure out which of your current friends are the forever kind..."

Not a bad summation of what we add and subtract over the years, the trouble we get into, the people that link arms with us for an age or a season.  But I think that's the hardest advice to articulate, how to dig into people.  Friends are such a tenuous but vital part of the world we build for ourselves. It's easy to assume certain friends are part of a lifelong picture, and just as easy to take that for granted. It's easy to put up with hurt long enough for it to feel normal, and fail to see the crumbling of the railroad track until the train derails. But even the friends I've lost (by distance, by choice, by death, by silence, by chapters opened and closed) serve as some foundation for my faith in humans as a whole. The way our hearts connect to strangers, the way we intertwine our lives with people who never knew we existed prior to that first meeting, that is the stuff of heaven.

"...You're going to have to ask Mom and Dad for money. And you're going to sob when you ask. You're going to resent them as a safety net and you're going to be immensely, eternally grateful. Your brother and sister are going to buy you dinners and groceries and send you money every once in awhile, and it's going to happen right when you need it. It's going to be one of the many moments where you feel God taking care of you..."

I wasn't a particularly interested Christian for the majority of my 20s.  I played the part well when I came home for holidays but God was a nuisance or a disappointment more often than a comfort. Peace Corps, Hurricane Katrina, loss of friends and poor romantic choices, while I can look back now and recognize the protections and gentleness God provided in those painful seasons, at the time I saw God as inattentive, uncaring, and not worth my time or reflection. But there were moments I could not ignore Him. And those moments were when I felt His love pour out through the hands of my family and friends. It still happens and it will always happen, because I firmly believe people are God's greatest tool for proving His existence. C.S. Lewis said it well, "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one." Recognizing ourselves in each other is a magical thing, and so often that recognition reminds me that God created us in His image. When we move the darkness aside, we see Him looking back at us in the eyes of friends. 

"...I don't have a lot of advice other than this: "Let love and faithfulness never leave you, write them on the tablet of your heart." Proverbs 3:3. When you're in a mess, when you're desperate, when you're sad or hopeful, center yourself on the life God gave you...Commit to being faithful in your relationships with friends, boyfriends, family, and complete strangers...."

I first fell in love with that verse in my early 20s.  It was written on a sachet of potpourri in a friend's bathroom (weird what sticks out to you over time). I don't remember which friend, I only remember that the writer in me loved that image. I pictured my heart as a stone, strong, heavy, but soft enough for the scratching of truths. Etching "love" and "faithfulness" seemed powerful, like those two things alone could provide all the direction one needed for a life of purpose, happiness. I've failed at both many, many times. I've damaged friendships, slung arrows with my tongue, been defensive instead of receptive, and I've cheated myself of connections every time. Committing to the connection, to the bond between us, when our instinct is to respond to surface hurts and insecurities, is very difficult. It's a skill acquired only through practice. That's why the etching into stone is key. It's a slow digging in.  We could so easily etch "self-preservation" or "fear" into our hearts.  That would take less effort, both come so naturally. Reacting to the world, to the people around us, with love and faithfulness, requires muscle that can weaken without use.

My sister's graduation comes in the same season as my 35th birthday, what feels like the very beginning of the middle of my life. It has been a season, for me, of digging into new friendships, relaxing my grip on old wounds, and reflecting on what God has given me as opposed to what He has not. I won't say I have life figured out (laughable), but I have come to a place that recognizes love and gives love with greater gusto than I've thought possible in the past. And that ability only came about through the trial and error of attempting to love God with all my heart and my neighbor as God loves me. It's a commandment I've always thought of as so simple as to be functionally impossible. But the attempt is what makes the road worthwhile. At 23. 29 (you too, little brother). 35. Forever.

Hello

I'm no different than most in that a new year feels like a fresh start.  An easy place to brush off past failures and refocus on any and everything I want to be in the future. Stronger, thinner, faster, healthier, prettier, calmer, more devoted, more ambitious, smarter, kinder, a better cook. And while I have a few solid goals supporting those general hopes, the only true resolution I've made in this new year is to smile more at strangers. Seems odd, maybe. But my undergrad, Washington and Lee University, is well-known for its speaking tradition, a tradition of saying "hello" to everyone you pass on campus. It's done quite resolutely, deliberately. And I was thinking of it a few months ago after an alumni event here in town.

Over the past several months I've become aware of a habit of looking away, keeping my head down, ignoring those who have no immediate influence on my well-being. More often than not it's because I'm in a hurry, or I'm distracted, or I'm with a friend who deserves my attention. But I don't think any of those things is an excuse for ignoring those with whom we share space. What is it in us that makes us so resolutely insular? So quick to shield ourselves from those around us, in favor of those with whom we feel comfortable? It's a normal, human habit, I know. But it's not a habit I want to reinforce, being that it's such a natural tendency.  I don't think Christ looked away from anyone.  I don't think he ever pretended not to see someone.

It's a small, quiet thing, and an atypical resolution. But resolving for the umpteenth time to eat less carbs or do more crunches seems so self-involved.  Yes, health is important, but I resolve and give focus to myself every single day. I channel all my energy into bettering or amusing myself every single day. And in the rush to buy groceries or meet a friend for drinks or run a loop around the lake, I shut out every person who doesn't directly impact that self-centered purpose.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've tried to be more deliberate about smiling, acknowledging others. When I go for runs, I wave at everyone I pass. Sometimes they wave back, or nod their head, or smile, but I don't much care if they reciprocate.  I'm not smiling to garner attention, but to give it. At work, I try to say, "Good morning" more often, even to the crabby folks that speed by in a huff. And when I'm out and about, at the grocery store or church or the movies, I try to remember that every person needs acknowledgement, and a smile is the least I can do in providing that assurance.

It's funny, how exhausting this is, even to an extrovert like myself.  It tires me because I've accepted the fact that people wander by on the sidewalk and we're not socially required to acknowledge one another. That desire to lift one's head, smile, perhaps talk about the weather, is a muscle like any other. Without regular flexing, that desire will wither and weaken. And social contracts notwithstanding, I don't believe that inclination is spiritually sound, at least not for me.

I wonder sometimes what a sinless Earth would look like, how people would interact.  I don't think introversion is a sin, so I can't imagine that a perfect Earth would be one where everyone constantly sought out the company of strangers.  But I do think a perfect community would be one where every individual used their God-given personalities to glorious effect. And because I am extroverted and sociable, in my perfect state, I'd be a greeter, a welcomer, of all who crossed my path.

It is a fallen world, of course, and my extroversion can take sinful turns. It can be attention-seeking and deliberately exclusionary when I define who I spend time with and who I avoid. Those sins I recognize immediately.  I know when I'm boastful, proud, snobbish. But the banality of everyday exclusions, wandering by the old lady at the gas pump without saying hello, saying thank you to the store clerk without the courtesy of lifting my eyes to hers, those are the habitual sins I glance over and ignore.  They don't feel particularly sinful, they don't inflict any obvious wounds. Ignoring the woman next to me as we both poke the tomatoes doesn't seem harmful. But I don't want to acquire a habit of exclusion, of walking amongst others with blinders on, just because it's objectively harmless. Does tilting my head and smiling a silent greeting really cost me anything? What if that smile brightened someone's day by a tiny increment? Wouldn't it be worth the loss of a "harmless" habit?

I want to look the whole world in the eye and say, "Hello." The picture attached to this post is of that word, which hangs next to my front door. I've looked at it frequently over the last couple of months as I've tried to strengthen my resolve to greet the world, seeking nothing. The more I look at it, the more I feel like it encompasses everything I want my home to provide and everything I want to give the world. Hospitality, welcome, joy, grace, invitation, comfort, and warmth. A dense meaning for a simple word, and a weighty resolution.

Hello.

Tables

Breaking bread is a profound thing. It has always made sense to me that Jesus broke bread so often with those to whom he wished to show love, and that he chose supper as the foundation of his final demonstration of sacrifice before the crucifixion. Eating is primal, necessary. And eating communally, passing plates, noisily pulling chairs up to table corners, dropping silverware, slurping soup, pouring wine,...it feels no less necessary to me. Everybody eats mac and cheese solo over the sink at some point. But passing a dish down a table of loved ones feeds us more deeply, nourishing the connections that make life sweeter. 

In the process of planning a dinner party for tonight, I thumbed through some recently unpacked cookbooks. Inside Charleston Receipts, I'd tucked last year's Thanksgiving shopping list, written in my Uncle's handwriting, as he provided the shopping directions for a meal he'd shepherd from the couch, chemo exhaustion coming in waves. The bulk of the list is his, but there are small lists elsewhere on the page in my hand, my mother's, my dad's. Dad reminded me to get ice. I reminded myself to get squash. Mom covered everything we'd forgotten. 

We've made lots of grocery lists as a family. Dad makes an impressive one every year we go to Roan Mountain. And I remember a few Thanksgivings in Little Rock, barreling through Kroger for one forgotten item hours before the store closed.  But I kept this particular list because my uncle was sick, and because it was his handwriting, and because we both love to cook. And I'm sure I tucked it into Charleston Receipts because it was a gift from him.  It will be there forever, proof of one meal, one table, one happy mess in the midst of what still feels like a tenuous, if hopeful, battle. 

Tonight is just happiness. Just inviting my friends to see my new home, taste test three new soup recipes, drink too much wine, and wish me a happy birthday in the process. It's just warmth and the smell of butter and onions. Each of my friends are treasures, and of each I'm aware of large and small heartaches. Breakups, job shuffles, illness, family deaths, depression, anxiety, loneliness, boredom. And each of them, at some point, has known of the same for me. Tables seem to lessen the acuteness of those hurts, if momentarily. The lists in loving hands, the old cookbooks, the cake baked in a friend's kitchen, the help chopping potatoes,...it all feels like an echo of what Christ demonstrated to us. To carry each other however we are able, to feed whoever is hungry, to welcome all, to love in the simplest ways, to break bread and give thanks. 

Cabinets

Now that I've painted the cabinets Ultra White and the the walls varying shades of French Pastry, Pumpkin Cream, Porpoise, and Gentle Rain, I can fess up. While I'd debated buying a house for several months, I pulled the trigger for only one reason. My heart was hurting and I needed something new and big into which I could channel all my angst. I needed to do something on my own to remind myself that I could be happy doing such a thing, just in case that's what the rest of my life looks like.

I don't recommend Buying A House as a form of post-breakup retail therapy. It's mildly irresponsible (maybe super irresponsible but I'm cutting myself some slack) and a lot more work than buying, say, an inappropriately priced pair of heels. That being said, while the timing of my decision may have been inspired by heartache, the result has been invigorating.  The work has not eliminated the sadness, but it has put it into context. I have been sad before. This time, I get to be sad in a house with Things To Do.

I always read (and write, but nobody's seeing that!) poetry when I'm sad.  And there are a handful of poets that I reread in certain moods.  Emily Dickinson's A Not Admitting to the Wound is a pretty fantastic I'm-sad poem, in part because I get a bit Dickinson-esque in such moments. I want nothing better than to sit in some corner with my tea and my notebook, pencil scratches the only sound in my head. My extroverted, optimistic self turns inside out, all exposed nerves and skepticism. But this poem doesn't just feed the sadness, it builds a room for it, nails it in, reminds me that God sees it, loves it, and will, eventually, make use of the scar.

A not admitting of the wound (1188)

BY: EMILY DICKINSON

A not admitting of the wound

Until it grew so wide

That all my Life had entered it

And there were troughs beside -

A closing of the simple lid that opened to the sun

Until the tender Carpenter

Perpetual nail it down

I've read that poem a thousand times in my life. It sounds like a slow, steady heartbeat to me, in the midst of moments where my own heart feels shaky, prone to skips and jumps. And as I drilled holes in my wall to attach a bookcase, or reattached cabinet doors one painful screw at a time, I heard the "tender Carpenter" so often, encasing that heartache in a sturdy box, gently asking me to hand it over. And in so many small moments of joy, minor victories of home ownership, I wondered if maybe, irresponsible purchasing decision or not, this might have all been part of His plan. He knew about the heartache, and he knew I'd need a house, a hammer, some cabinets in need of attention. This house. These cabinets. Emily. And a tender Carpenter, always.

A List of Blessings

The last week has been difficult, to put things lightly. A relationship, a very important one, ended, and I've had a hard time regaining my footing since that dissolution.  I'm not an overly dramatic person, at least not when it comes to emotional transitions, endings, or failures.  But where my typical personality would be one of chatterbox and opinionated extrovert, my depressive self is insular, anti-social, and apathetic. I eat a lot of oatmeal, listen to a lot of Bon Iver.

I'm an adult, of course, and can function fine in context.  I can go to work and be as efficient as ever. I can make decisions about the future, cancel things that need to be canceled, inform who needs to be informed, reconfigure what needs to be reconfigured. And most importantly, I can decide what will eventually make me feel better.  Eventually, it will make me feel better to go house hunting, thus, I will now do all the things a person needs to do to prepare for that.  I can find a realtor.  I can gather my W2s and tax returns. Eventually, it will make me feel better to race.  I can research trail races and marathons.  I can weigh my options, the health of my right knee, the likelihood of a marathon in November vs. January vs. March. I can remove myself from what hurts today and set in place all the things that will eventually make me happy. I've always been somewhat impressed with that skill. It's a gift, maybe, to be able to be miserable now and in the same moment be able to plan for future happiness.  It's an optimism I'm grateful for, even if at the moment it just feels a bit like a split personality.

This time around (this breakup, this failure, this falling apart), I felt like I needed to be more specific in my thankfulness.  When the clouds are overwhelming it's easy to forget there's sunshine behind them. So I found an old journal, one I'd largely forgotten, and gave it a new task of detailing my blessings.  It's a beautiful journal, soft leather with a beautiful fleur-de-lis imprint on the cover.  A dear, dear friend bought it for me when I left New Orleans, and she inscribed her love for me and our friendship on the inside cover.  The journal has gathered dust for years, so to open it on a day I'd spent crying and to read her words was a blessing in and of itself, the first one I wrote down, Blessing Numero Uno.

Since that day I've detailed several more, aiming for three to four specific blessings a day.  And I try to be as pinpointed as possible, not blase in stating all of the blessings I'm supposed to be highlighting. I'm not just thankful for a good trail run.  I'm thankful for the give and tug of soft earth as I run up a well-worn path, bunnies scurrying away as I breathe heavily at each footfall. I'm not just thankful for sunshine.  I'm thankful for the warmth of sunshine hitting my bare thigh as I lean against my mother on a raft pulled behind the boat, thankful for the splash of cold lake water as dad speeds the boat around a corner.

I think the worst part of sadness for me is apathy. I hate the grey creeping of "I don't care" that slithers into every decision.  I don't care what I eat so I'll just eat oatmeal.  I don't care what I do tonight so I'll just stay home.  I don't care if my friends want to see me so I'll just ignore their invites. Apathy feels like a lack of God. It feels like an absence of all that is holy and good. And while my faith comforts me that even in those grey moments I am not alone, I can't help but feel forgotten when that thick blanket of I-don't-care consumes me. And that's where the blessings come in.

Even in my darkest moments I can force myself to do a few things.  There are a handful of things and people in my life that, even at my saddest points, I can rely on to tug at and restore me, proof of God in the doldrums. Anti-social I may be, but a lack of activity unnerves me.  And in the woods on a run, after I've warmed up, after I'm good and sweaty, when I'm running down a hill and the wind is whipping my ponytail against my ear, I forget that I'm sad. Momentary and fleeting, but it's enough of a reminder of what Happy feels like to continue running towards it.  And when my mother hugs me, when my dad kisses my cheek, when my sister squeals in delight beside me as we're pulled behind the boat, these are all moments that remind me I was happy before and will be happy again.

My hope is that the list of blessings will not be cast aside when I perk up.  I'd like to build them up, list them one by one as a mighty arsenal of memories and thankfulness to fight the blues when they inevitably creep in. I'd like to read over them, remembering what it took to be grateful for four things on that Tuesday, remind myself of how wrapped in love I was then and am now, how cherished, despite frequently feeling the opposite. It's an armor of protection and love, a blessing in its own right, to be able to recognize the hints of God that surround me when the future feels sharp and heavy. That sadness and malaise and is not of God, I know, so I know that reminding myself of His presence, over time, will push the grey away. And in the interim, I will not only count my blessings.  I will record them for posterity.

A Few Different Windows

I've been a guest or confidante to a host of different families in the last few weeks. And given my Uncle Buck's recent trip to visit us, I can't help but view my own family through the lens of having recently examined the dynamics of others.  Perhaps it's comparative in some ways, but I mostly just come away shaking my head, a bit awestruck, that we humans manage to connect at all on this silly planet, even with those of our own blood.

I helped a dear friend with some catering at a party today.  I just provided some plating, dishwashing, filling of coffee cups, and was happy to pitch in to lessen the stress on her family. She discussed, briefly, the anxiety the day had created for her mother, some stresses with a sibling, the joy of a smiling, oblivious baby. She's an articulate woman, my friend, powerful in her ability to put words to ideas. And I was struck by how plainly she spoke of her mother's worries, her difficulties in communicating with or being understood by other members of her family. It made me thankful I could help and also gave me comfort that I am not the only well-spoken woman who stumbles her way through communicating with some of those she holds most dear.

Despite the ties of blood, we're not destined to be friends with our siblings. There is a shared history there, yes, and a common language with which we address life. We feel the weight of the same family secrets or weaknesses or tragedies. But there's no promise that upon adulthood we will sit down at a table and truly feel spoken and connected to, eyeball to eyeball, one fully formed life to another.

One of my dearest friends recently texted and asked for prayers for her family due to stresses with her own siblings, tensions and frustrations that have been building for awhile. This is a family I've known a very long time, so the tensions aren't new to me.  I tried to provide comfort the only way I knew how, by telling her that the best examples of familial harmony fall outside of our home.  No family avoids chaos or animosity every day. And in the seasons when your own family struggles, we can at least trust that the best image of what a father or mother or brother or sister should be remains steadfast. God hasn't stopped being God, even if your brother is being a punk. And even if the tension is miserable, the wounds deep, God still provides help in our trials with the support of friends, a patient ear, a laughing baby, a shared memory.

I've looked out of a few different windows the last few weeks.  I've looked out the glass door at my parents' home and watched my uncle and dad chatting by a fire, my sister curled up in a seat between them. I've looked out a kitchen window in Montana as my boyfriend played with his niece, far flung but well-loved. And today I looked out another kitchen window as my friend's mom held her grandson, grinning enthusiastically at his adoring crowd. Families seem like such delicate machines sometimes, so tricky to handle, so easy to misuse, so quick to weaken with distance or time, and yet they do seem to continue puttering on. The burdens build, the valleys deepen and darken, and still we press on, brothers and mothers and sisters and fathers and wives and nieces and nephews and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers...

I'm grateful to be surrounded by people who ache when their family aches, who worry when their family worries. I'm grateful to have sat at a kitchen table this morning with my own family, praying for God's continued mercies on my Uncle's cancer fight, praying for continued blessings. And I'm grateful to have stood, a couple of hours later, praying with my friend and her mom, for anxiety-free revelry. The big and the not-quite-as-big, the long trial and the new anxiety, the ache and the burden, God gives us families that create and cushion every wound. And He gave us His example, in hopes that we might love each other better through it all.

The Leash

The analogy is messy, but I spend most days on a leash of moderate slack. On a tighter rein, when food and the anxieties I attach to it jerk me from despair to elation to exhaustion at each meal, I have a tendency to wallow in the brain/body God gave me. But these days, 80 lbs lighter than I once was, a runner, I've loosened that anxiety's grip on my days.  As long as I can run. As long as I control the majority of meals. As long as there aren't too many surprises. There are variables, of course, but that leash has lengthened in the last several years, and I'm grateful. All but my closest friends would likely dismiss the anxieties forever intertwined with the fork in my hand. The dearest ones understand when I say I can't handle a specific restaurant or need to cook for myself for a few days. They don't understand the leash but they respect its power.

I served a meal at a homeless shelter tonight.

My church houses a shelter in the winter. Fifty or so men and women knock on those church doors at 6 pm, eat a meal, and fall asleep tucked out of this bitter Minnesota winter. They bring only what they can carry, which is not much, and they can store nothing for the following day.  If it can't be slung over a shoulder or tucked in a pocket, it's too grand an object for ownership during this season of their lives. For some, the season is obviously long.  For others, they appear new to that floor pallet, shivering and quiet in their realization that this is their best option tonight.

We served a simple meal, taco salads with rice, beans, beef, and the requisite toppings of cheese and guacamole. The leash tightens. I see those spoonfuls and my brain automatically calculates the caloric damage of each choice. There are caveats, of course.  Guacamole is high fat but it's "good" fat.  Beef may be high calorie but it's high protein.  Chips are caloric bombs of no nutritional value.  Don't get me started on the brownies.

I have never been hungry in my life.  Not legitimately hungry.  My stomach has growled, I've grown light-headed, I've torn into a meal with the exclamation that I am starving. But at no point has that hunger been bone deep or anxious.  As an adult, any hunger has been by my own choice, my own timing.  And even in those periods of a gnawing stomach, I know exactly when the feeling will fade.  And the food involved?  It is always food I choose.  It's food I buy, cook, enjoy at a friend's house, or order at a restaurant. At no point have I ever looked at food before me and made my choice based on not knowing specifically what my choices will be tomorrow or if choices will exist.

My first impulse was to think of my attitude towards food as a luxury.  If hunger threatened me, real hunger, the calculation of fat grams in sour cream would be ridiculous.  If homelessness were my reality, my mind would be consumed with too many anxieties to allow fretting over tortilla chips. But perhaps that isn't wholly accurate.  It's less a luxury than a powerful proof that the easiest way to separate oneself from God is to look too keenly in the mirror.

It isn't narcissism. It's some hybrid of the opposite, some combination of self-pity and self-aggrandizement, a sort of self-obsession or fixation on everything that is wrong with me. There's no God in that. Only me. There's a great quote in C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce and over the last few years, as I've been a more deliberate fighter against that leash, I've reminded myself of its truth: "no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God's hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods." Being careful and conscious of the decisions I make regarding food and exercise is neutral in and of itself.  But when it begins that slow and steady slide to self-judgment, when the slightest twinge of self-loathing kicks in, that's when that false god cracks a smile, tugs a bit tighter on my leash.

A leash that not only tugs me further from God, deeper into my own skin, but tugs me away from the world God deliberately placed me in, the people he deliberately placed in my path.

I felt the tug of that leash tonight, at a time when I should have been selflessly serving. I felt every inch of my skin, felt every calorie, and was thankful for none of it, despite being face to face with those who beamed gratitude in the midst of so much defeat. But the tug meets resistance in the best scenarios.  Perhaps it was because I was in the basement of a church, or because I chatted with Norm, who runs the shelter, about running another marathon, or because I sat next to another server who let a homeless man ramble in mind-clouded half-stories while her food grew cold. The tug loses its ability to derail me when I can remember that the moment is not about me. It's about the man weary of the cold. The pallet on the floor. The warm smile of those who serve day in, day out.

Most leashes fall apart over time.  A chink in the chain. And if tonight taught me anything, it's that the chink in my own leash, the weakness in the things of The World that separate me from God, is simple acknowledgment that the child of God across from me is hurting, too. And the moment is about them. About serving them in God's name. And not ever, ever, about me.

Lenten Days

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and thus begins the Lenten season. Raised Baptist, I didn't really hear about the "give up something for Lent" concept as a kid.  I'm sure the word "Lent" was used in my childhood churches but I didn't really grasp the idea of Christ's last days until I was much older. And while I would sometimes half-heartedly (and, more often than not, belatedly) give up a certain activity or food for a couple weeks, I'd usually mistakenly fall back into it at some point. Out to dinner with friends, I'd remember I'd given up dairy midway through cheese pizza slice number two.

I think I struggled with the sacrificial concept in the past because it just seemed like such a ridiculous comparison. Giving up cheese to mimic my Savior's pain on the cross?  Am I really comparing these two things? Or, I'd commit to doing a particularly grueling workout everyday for Lent, telling myself it was all for the glory of God, enduring something arduous, just like Jesus. Please. Jesus had zero to do with that. I wanted to lose 10 lbs before prom. I'd last maybe a week, chide myself for being a poor, ineffective Christian, and then console myself with the knowledge that Baptists don't really care if you give anything up anyway. Leave the sacrificing to the Catholics, I'll take my sola gratia, please.

I'll admit, it's a sloppy relationship with a legitimate concept.

But what makes it a legitimate idea, a potentially encouraging spiritual exercise, has nothing to do with comparisons. The beauty of "by Grace alone" rests on this idea that we have nothing to offer capable of echoing Christ's sacrifice.  What we do have, what we are capable of, is obedience. Not perfect obedience, hence the need for Grace, but we can look to Christ and do our best to emulate Him, do our best to follow his teachings, and do our best to remember Him in every moment.

And that's how Lenten changes began to work for me, began to make sense.  Not when they had anything to do with sacrifice, but when their purpose was  to remind me of Grace, remind me of how big Grace is and yet how specific it is in its embrace of me. And so I try to make changes that I must revisit and remember multiple times a day. The easiest way to do this for me is with food.  One of my most effective changes was when I made a rule that I would never read and/or watch TV and/or play on my computer while eating.  This seems like it would be easy.  But I live alone, and with nobody to talk to across the table for many meals, I found myself reading the paper, emailing, or watching TV during almost all meals.  At work, I ate at my desk, typing away between bites.  Forcing myself to just sit and eat was excruciating for the first couple of weeks. I broke down a couple times and "cheated" by allowing myself to call a friend and talk while I sipped my soup. But for the most part, I held fast. And every time I sat down, I remembered why I'd turned all that extra noise off, why the action was important. That change actually became a fairly solid habit so it's no longer something I'd consider for Lent. But food changes work for me so I'm sticking to that genre.

I've been a vegetarian before, for several years actually.  And I can easily go a week without eating meat, although fish is almost always in the equation.  But I'm giving up meat (red and white) and fish this Lent because removing it as a possibility will require thought. I will have to think about it when I make my lunch each night.  I will have to see the meats in my freezer and remember that they are not an option.  When I try out new restaurants, something I love to do, I will have to review menus with an eye as to what my meatless self can eat.  This will rarely feel like sacrifice to me, but it will always require planning. And it's the planning and the thinking that I desperately need where God is concerned.

Because the sacrifice I can take for granted.  The Cross, the Grace, all of it.  If I do not force myself to remember what has been done for me, I will ignore that sacrifice because it is so easy to do so. I will go to work, I will see my friends, I will date, I will write, I will explore the world God gave me and I will never think of Him. This is how I am programmed, my easiest temptation, to wander away not because I'm angry or disappointed in God, but because I stopped caring enough to remember Him. And Lent is the season I try to reel my wandering self back in and remember several times a day, that God is in my life, in my heart, and on the Cross for me.

Before You Were Born

This last month has not been my favorite.  I'd say, actually, that since the end of October I've been certifiably bummed out, low, exhausted. I'm not one to mope for extended periods of time, so I haven't been curled up in bed reading Anna Karenina or anything that dour.  But my generally incessant optimism has been a bit clouded of late, a bit less blind, a bit less sunny.

That this mood coincided with my birthday is, at first blush, unfortunate.  Nobody would want to greet the new year with a grey haze on the horizon. But I can recognize now, the day after my 32nd birthday, how much easier it is to overcome a season of disappointment when surrounded by every evidence of love.

In January I made a quasi-crazy decision to run at least a half-marathon every month of 2012. I signed up for races, most of the 13.1 mile variety but a few of greater distance, and found myself lacking in only one month, the month of my birth.  November/December are not prime half-marathon season up North. I took this as a divine sign that I needed to fly to  New Orleans in December for a half-marathon but that still left November race-less.

My dad gave me the idea of crafting my own race, and I sent out invites early in November detailing the proposed craziness.  13.1 miles (13.4, actually) around the lakes near my apartment, hopefully supported by a few friends here and there and culminating in beers and burgers at a bar downtown. When late October ended with the end of a relationship, appropriately enough right after my October half-marathon, I contemplated canceling the race.  I could run the distance on my own, no need for additional festivities, no need to highlight my depression with glaring requirements for jubilation. The support was really superfluous anyway, I ran longer on my own all the time.  I listed a lot of justifications internally for calling the whole thing off.

The reasons I felt I could not cancel came in the form of friendships. Text messages and the occasional tease about my silly race, questions about where the mulled wine station should be located, inquiries into my sanity, requests for where an intrepid bike rider might join the fray, what my preferred snack might be around mile 5. I didn't have the heart to be less than the bubbly woman most of my friends expect, and didn't want my 32nd birthday to be the one I remembered as "Canceled Due To Sadness."  So I faked enthusiasm for this race, and crossed my fingers that it would feel legitimate eventually.

A dear friend ran the length of the race with me and we chatted about work and church and general gossip, the way women do.  We were joined for 6-7 miles by two other dear friends, one on two wheels and the other my first and biggest cheerleader of this marathon nonsense. The run went quickly, not only because we chatted and laughed the whole way, but because I was greeted by friendly faces every few miles.

I don't think anyone ever outgrows the grin that accompanies clapping and cheering of one's name. My friends, Sharon and Amy, were the first pit stop, manned with gatorade and twizzlers and gummi bears and hugs.  Sharon cheered me on at my first half-marathon several years ago, and I was reminded of that when I heard her call my name. Still "Go Rachel", still running, still smiling, still one step in front of the other, still surrounded by friends, none of this has changed.

Other friends, along with my parents, peppered the rest of the route.  Mile 12 held the added bonus of girlfriends in brightly colored jackets and silly hats, offering a thermos of mulled wine to cushion that last mile. With each hug and high five and smile, I mirrored the same.  And my smiles were borne largely out of surprise. I just kept wondering why all of these folks showed up, why my friends ran and biked with me, why my mom brought those pretzels, why my dad would tell stories about me, why anyone would carve time out of their weekend to do something this ridiculous. The race was a purely self-serving endeavor. The goal was unimportant for everyone but me, and yet I was important enough to support on a Saturday morning. It seemed nuts. Are all of my friends nuts?

I have no expectation that broken hearts heal overnight, or that a string of happy moments adequately guard one's mind from venturing down darker paths on occasion.  But I think God takes care of people in ways fashioned purely for that individual.  I think He knows how to wrap us up and heal us in ways we don't even imagine as necessary.  When I crafted this race a couple months ago, I had no idea that I would need it.  It was a silly way to celebrate a birthday. But after that run, shoes removed, sitting on my couch and waiting for the sitting-on-the-couch-sadness to take over and make me feel small again, I instead was struck by how many people hugged me that day, who gave me flowers, who brought me cupcakes, who brought me a rosemary bush, who bought my lunch, who wished me a happy year, who signed a card.  And despite a month of feeling unimportant and easily discarded, I felt God hold me closely and whisper, "I made this day for you, before you were born."

God Bless Anap

I try not to berate myself for my anxieties too often.  Anxiety is a curious beast and the stressors that creep into my life on occasion are best dealt with in a loving way (because being anxious about being anxious is one of the most maddening exercises on the planet). And Love being what it is, the author of it (God) routinely reminds me of how big He is in comparison to my occasional bouts of I-have-too-many-student-loans-I-really-need-a-bigger-apartment-I-hate-paying-my-law-license-fees-when-I-don't-even-practice-money-is-stupid-I-wish-I-were-skinnier-how-the-hell-did-I-burn-the-eggs-twice-work-makes-me-feel-like-a-moron-sometimes anxieties.

Anap is one of the students I'm often paired with when I tutor on Monday evenings.  She's perhaps a decade my senior and she's slowly, painstakingly learning English.  Tonight we were working on a rewrite of a paragraph for a course she's taking, a paragraph she titled, "Why I Want to be a Doctor." Each sentence is a struggle. Her vocabulary stretches with each week, but crafting a fluid, cogent paragraph does not come naturally. And the substance of the paragraph, her desire to go to medical school, just makes the writing and rewriting of simple phrases that much more heartbreaking.  The rewrite was instigated in part due to her teacher's red ink comments of, "do you understand how much schooling you will need to be a doctor? Do you enjoy science and math? Is this a realistic goal?"

I can't blame her teacher for having these thoughts, I have them myself.  How can she go to medical school when I'm having to reteach adverbs each week? But the uber-American upbringing in me screams, "put your mind to it and you can do anything, Anap!" The hurdles facing such a dream are mind-boggling, and at present I'm only thinking of the educational hurdles.  The financial would make medical school seem somewhere just shy of miraculous.

After we'd worked for an hour, I offered to drive Anap home, which is a common occurrence. This time, however, she asked to be dropped at the hospital, where her aunt is currently recovering from lung surgery. And "recovering" may be painting too rosy a picture.  Anap has lost her mother and brother within the last year.  And this aunt came to her side in her mourning.  Anap now keeps vigil beside her, two women far from their birthplace, ensconced in a culture that must fascinate and terrify them in equal part. As she stepped out of the car I told Anap I would pray for her aunt and she smiled, thanked me, and said, "God bless you," before waving goodbye and walking briskly through the emergency room doors.  Anap always has the most beautiful head scarves, and the red and pink of tonight's variety matched the glow of the lettering above the hospital door.

On the wide spectrum between Surviving and Flourishing, wrapped up as I am in my own minor earthquakes and struggles, I so often forget that there are those around me whose lives lean heavily towards Survival in comparison to my inch-by-inch pursuit of a Flourish.  I lament budgeting for trips to DC, wishing I could spend money profligately on fancy drinks and new purses, when Anap is struggling to make sense of American History coursework and the often curt explanations from her aunt's doctor. I am in the process of paying for the dream I was privileged enough to pursue, and Anap will be lucky to pass a class where she's learning to write sentences about a dream that will, in all likelihood, never come to fruition. How am I owed any level of comfort beyond what Anap is given? I am a firm believer that God does not love me any more than Anap, or desire Anap's happiness any less than my own. We are equally loved by our Creator, and yet my struggles look like blessings beside her day-to-day life.

Comparison is a tricky thing.  And no one but the Almighty can explain why I was born in this country, to these parents, in those school districts, and why Anap is struggling in her late 30s to learn a new language, and losing family members left and right in a country that isn't even Home. But when Anap said, "God bless you," in the car, I simply wanted to scream my prayer.

No, not at all. I am already overly blessed. Blessed beyond my ability to recognize said gifts.  God bless you, Anap.  God bless you.

Epiphany #2: Superior Hiking Trail "Race"

Epiphany #2 was a bit more personal. Another gift, and also a recognition of what the rest of my life is lacking.

I've never been one to love my body.  I would say that the vast majority of my life, from age 10 or so, has been spent putting up with (that's putting it kindly) the body God decided should be mine.  The bulk of this ill will was wrapped up in the same errors in perspective that other women struggle with in that I always wanted to be smaller. Always thinner.  I prayed for the willpower to starve myself properly, which must be such a saddening prayer for God to hear from one of his children. Much akin to a drinker praying to be a better alcoholic.

This relationship worsened throughout my teens and 20s and then started to improve, ever so slightly, in my late 20s.  I would say now I coexist with this flesh in a sort of emotional detente, doing my best not to hate the only body I'll inhabit.  Part of that is likely exhaustion, part of it is maturity, and part of it, honestly, is running.

While I struggle sometimes, and imagine I always will, with feeling below average on most aesthetic scales (except for dressing, I do dress quite well), I escape that battle completely when I run. The battle evaporates. It simply doesn't exist and never did. And, more than that, I love every inch of the body I routinely tear apart. I don't want to sound depressive, because in most areas of my life I'm quite content, enthusiastic even.  But this is an ancient struggle as far as my psyche goes, and I'm realistic in my acknowledgment that it's not one that's likely to go away. It has its benefits, as I think it keeps me humble and also empathetic.  I know how consuming self-doubt and self-judgment can be, and so I can encourage and offer advice from the perspective of one that walks a similar road. But escaping the struggle, eliminating the temptation to base my self-worth on whether or not I had bread with dinner, is a constant desire.

People ask me often why I do the distance runs.  Why 26 miles? Why 10? Why not stick to 5Ks? Because every minute of those runs is a minute I do not judge the skin I'm in. In fact, I praise it.  I thank God for it, instead of asking him why he had to give me such ridiculously large calves. And the more I run and the longer I run the better I get at recognizing that the legs I think of as too big and the hips I think of as too wide form a body capable of amazing things. A 5K only gives me 33 minutes (roughly) of that feeling.  Distance runs give me hours of freedom.

Unfortunately, and this is the epiphany, I lack the ability to remember that gratefulness after the exertion has passed.  If I loved my skin half as much as I love it at mile 17 of a trail race, I'd be dangerously close to Pride. Trail running, especially, reminds me of how intricately stitched together this body is, and how perfectly it is formed for the task of adventuring into woods and up mountains, for stumbling over tree roots (ankles are amazing contraptions), for falling and rolling and grasping tree branches to steady next steps.  It's a body made to experience the Earth beneath my feet, whatever square of Earth I happen to be trekking through at a given time. And the body that leaps over creeks is the same body that puts on a suit and redlines a contract, the same body that tries on jeans at the mall, the same body that refuses to wear t-strap shoes for fear that they make her legs look fat, the same body that walks to the gas station for eggs, that wanders around the Lake with a friend, that claps her hands in church, that stands in front of the mirror and wills her thighs to shrink.

If I loved myself, or remembered that I have the capacity to love myself, in those moments to the same degree and with the same fervor as when I'm willing my right knee to press on for another mile or two, I'd have conquered a large army of demons in my lifelong struggle with physical acceptance.  And every race makes me better equipped to do so.  I become a better runner, yes, with each mile.  And every mile gives me a chance to embrace the runner God built me to be, with no caveats about losing 10 lbs or tightening my core. And that embrace is well worth the muscle tightness after 29 miles.