I also use a bad word. More than twice. I'm sorry too.

My fantastic cousin Margo posted a link to a popular blog yesterday. I like this blogger, mostly because she can be pretty irreverent. (Nothing makes me go weak in the knees about a woman like irreverence. Which is strange, because it's sincerity in men that makes me all swoony. What can I say? I'm a puzzle.)

What was I saying? The blogger. Here's the quote: 

"I believe that shit happens. But that with the right eyes, ears, patience, and perspective, that shit can become Holy. I just read this quote from Robert Frost… “In three words I can sum up everything I know about life: it goes on.” I think that’s so beautiful....Right now, if I had to define life – it would be this: Holy Shit. It’s all holy. All of it, especially the worst of it. I know this. Just gotta keep reminding myself."

Holy shit. Exactly. Besides the irreverence, here's why it resonated:

I was talking to my brother Jason last night. He asked how I was and the litany of complaints began: the move has me feeling unsettled, I don't feel well, I was put in a weird situation at work today, I'm failing as a wife, my heart is dark and uncharitable (it went on for a while. I'll spare you but instead say this: I love Jason Moore beyond words or feeling. It is so sweet to talk to someone who has known me my entire life (minus the first 20 months) and just gets me, you know?).

Jay started to comfort me, saying how sorry he was that life is so hard, but that didn't feel fair. Because, and again forgive me, but I can't find a better way to say it: 

This may be shit, but it is holy shit. 

God is here. 

I stayed home from work on Monday. I had some physical stuff going on that had me in ridiculous pain and evidently that was enough to spark a massive emotional meltdown. It was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I was lying in bed, with a bowl of popcorn, a glass of wine, the TV on, and a brutal post-meltdown headache. 

If a friend of mine were describing this scenario, I'd tell her, "Good for you! You're sick and you've been through an emotional wringer today. Rest. You are loved. Can I refill your glass?"

I said to myself though: you are weak. Look at how pathetic you are. Look at how easy it is to make you crumble. Are you ever going to get over this? Get your act together. You're embarrassing me.

And then again Grace showed up like it does, sweetly and without condemnation, and I remembered: "my power is made perfect in your weakness."

And suddenly the moment was holy. 

It was still shitty, but now it was sacred too.

The Gospels tell us stories of people who were looking for God and missed him when he showed up in front of them because they were expecting him to come in power, with fanfare and trumpets, flexing his muscles and knocking off Roman soldiers. 

Nobody expected to find God in a manual laborer turned itinerant teacher, sleeping on the ground, being run out of town, his family convinced he was mentally ill. Nobody expected to find God being tortured and executed as a criminal. Nobody expected the sacred in a feeding trough. Nobody expects the divine in a grave.

I don't expect God in my weakness. I don't expect God in my loss. I don't expect to find God here in the smallness of my problems, in the smallness of my strength in response to them.

I believe God does still do big, powerful things, displaying strength and might. I saw it happen in a friend's miraculous healing just yesterday.

But I don't want to miss it - I don't want to miss God - if I'm only looking for displays of power. If a baby were to drop from heaven and appear on my doorstep tomorrow morning, I'd shout from the rooftops, "God is so good!" I want the kind of heart that can shout from the rooftops "God is so good" if no baby ever appears (although it terrifies me to ask that and I've deleted and retyped this sentence 4 times. Lord, have mercy).

Richard Beck asked if our insistence on looking for God's power is "hindering our ability to see God in the body of the demented mental patient. In the craving addict. In the senile old person in diapers. In the starving child. In the street walking prostitute. In the homeless man on the park bench. In the queer kid being bullied on the playground."

In my own, well, shit.

King David prayed this: "If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there." I'd probably pray it like this: "If I have my stuff together, you are there. If I am falling to pieces, you are there."

This is a dark place for me - infertility, grief, loss. But I sense God here and I keep feeling the need to slip off my shoes.

Could this be holy ground?