When plain old rocks become altars

When Christians speak of the mystery of the incarnation, this is what they mean: for reasons beyond anyone’s understanding, God has decided to be made known in flesh. Matter matters to God. The most ordinary things are drenched in divine possibility. - Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

We moved this weekend, 3.4 miles down the street, to a lovely little condo situated on a suburban lake, within walking distance of the grocery store and a Greek restaurant and a sports bar where Todd is already planning to be for the Manchester United game this afternoon.

Thursday night before we moved, we asked a few close friends to come over and ask a blessing on our new home. I wrote up a prayer service, borrowing heavily from varying traditions, including our favorite prayers and Scriptures, boldly or brazenly writing down exactly what we wanted our friends to pray. They showed up and we prayed in each room, even in the bathrooms, friends standing in my shower, sitting on the toilet and the sink, crowded together and asking God to make God's presence known even here. In the kitchen we served each other bread and wine, sharing the Eucharist (it means "thanksgiving" which of course it does, you know?) for the first meal in our home.

Friday night people came to help us move. They paraded up and down the stairs and each time there were new people added to the train until thirty-five people were there and the truck was unloaded in as many minutes. Josh likened it to an Amish barn-raising and our new neighbors said "we saw all those people and thought this must be a church." 

I tried to write last week about finding God in pain, in this hard, dry place that is certainly holy. And now it seems that if the worst of it can be holy, the rest of it can surely be as well.

Each box carried down all those steps and back up more was a blessing, sweat poured out for us.

I went to sleep Friday night in a bed assembled by friends who wanted another task, on the spot where 24 hours before people who love us had formed a circle and prayed for our rest.

I will stretch out regularly on my couch, placed and replaced and just two more inches to the left and no, that's not it and yes, there by someone who just gets me and saw me spinning among the chaos and directed me: "come tell us where you want it." 

And I will look through windows that were washed and use bathrooms that were scoured by a friend I have failed before and will fail again and I'll think about grace and whose feet I can wash today.

The shower curtain in the bathroom will make me think of my friend, she who gave up two Saturdays in a row to help me pack and then unpack, who has made nearly every tedious task of the last four years bearable, standing in the shower curtain aisle at Target with me, longer than was reasonable, patiently saying to each one I pulled out, yes that looks good, and saying it again when I pulled the same one out for the third time before I decided.

The hideous yellow stain on my carpet, the mark that threatened to dampen my enthusiasm for my new home, now reminds me of the three women who got down on their knees to scrub, each with their own secret remedy, each laughing at defeat and suggesting that we leave a box on top of it.

The leftover beer in our fridge, intended as a mea culpa for showing up after the heavy lifting was done, but mostly reminding me that we have people who will sit on the floor between the boxes after everyone else has gone home and drink good beer and make plans for living intentionally and well and in the way of Jesus with us.

I don't know where I'm going with this, except that it seems important when we encounter God that we stop, gather up some rocks, and build an altar. A reminder that something holy has happened in this space. Sometimes we just wake up like Jacob did and need to announce, "Surely the Lord is present in this place, and I did not know it!" (Genesis 28:16)

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?

Mercy Like A Waterfall

"You hold my every moment
You calm my raging seas
You walk with me through fire
And heal all my disease.
I trust in you. I trust in you.

I believe you're my healer
I believe you are all I need

I believe you're my portion
I believe you're more than enough for me
Jesus, you're all I need.

Nothing is impossible for you.
Nothing is impossible.
Nothing is impossible for you.
You hold my world in your hands."

This song by Kari Jobe has been my lifeline and my torment this summer. I cling to the words in desperate and sometimes near-certain faith, singing them over and over like an incantation or a prayer. And then other times I can't choke out the words past the lump of doubt and resentment and fear that threatens to strangle me.

We sang it again this morning. And again the grief descended on me, like it does, fast, heavy, mercilessly and I'm gasping with the weight of the shame, hearing a voice that sounds for all the world like truth: your husband would be better off if he hadn't married you.

I fought back this time, struggling toward air and light, repeating, not by faith but by plain, old, unsexy desperation: you can heal this disease.

And then like a waterfall, like someone turned on the tap and let mercy spill down my head, I heard or felt or sensed: Daughter, that is not nearly all.

I can heal your grief.

I can heal your shame.

I can heal your anger.

I can heal your unfaithful heart.

I can heal your pride.

I can heal your loneliness.

I can heal your exhaustion.

I can heal ALL your disease.

And I repeat, my voice and my heart shaking a little bit less, nothing is impossible for you.

I May Need A Tailor

My mom likes to tell stories of her struggle to dress me as a kid. I had no tolerance for anything itchy, constricting, uncomfortable. She'd try to put me in adorable little shoes and I'd cry, "Too tight, Mama. Too tight." Fortunately for me (and my mother), leggings and oversized sweatshirts were all the rage in elementary school fashion in the early nineties.

Even today, nothing works me into a subtly snowballing funk quite as reliably as ill-fitting clothes. By the end of the day, that shoe rubbing my heel wrong, these pants that I have to keep hitching up, this bra strap that won't stay put for the LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY, all guaranteed to take some of the sheen off my normally effervescent personality (hehe).

I don't know a better way to describe how I feel these days except to say this: Nothing fits. 

I don't mean that literally my clothes don't fit, although God knows we could have a conversation about that. I mean that everything feels just a little bit wrong.

I'm about to burst at the seams in this job, which has never quite fit and is a classic example of this age-old truth: if you don't absolutely love it in the fitting room, you'll never love it at home.

My marriage - normally I'd liken it to my favorite pair of Victoria's Secret pajamas, making me feel both comfortable and sexy by some sort of synthetic magic. Lately, it's like someone's washed them in too much Tide. I'm all irritated and itchy and in need of a long hot rinse cycle (which clearly in this metaphor is a weekend at the beach. You see that too, right?)

I feel ill at ease in my faith. The brouhaha last week over chicken sandwiches and gay marriage and freedom of speech and whatever else we managed to work ourselves into such a lather about has made my religion feel like it just doesn't fit. It feels narrow and small and hot.

The Baby Thing is too heavy to wear right now. My feelings on being a mother, being pregnant, hoping, dreading, I don't even want to pick it up, all of it lying crumpled at the bottom of the closet, getting wrinkled and probably starting to smell. And then the grief that I'm wearing instead, I imagine the collective whispers, "When is she going to take that thing off? Is she still wearing that?"

I feel uncomfortable, cramped. 

And yet I can't deny the breathing room when it comes, the safety pins holding me together, as temporarily, as precariously as it feels:

"We pray confidently, but we will not deny in Your presence the negatives that make us wonder. We pray amid our honest reservations, give us patience to wait, impatience to care, sadness held honestly, surrounded by joy over your coming kingdom, and peace while we wait...Come as Your true self and contradict the world, so full of unbearable deathliness." - Walter Brueggemann

"I stand outside, in the wilds, banging my pots and pans, singing loud and strong, into the wind and the cold and the heavens, there is more room! There is more room! There is room for all of us! And then I'll slide right up next to you, I'll hook my arm through yours, I'll lean it, I'll whisper right into your ear, quiet, loud, it will sound like I'm singing or like I'm preaching, and I'll say, there is more room for you." -Sarah Bessey

"And I ask [God] that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights!" -The Apostle Paul, Ephesians 4:17-19 (The Message)

Levity as an act of faith (I'm afraid of the bus)

I just did something scary. I turned in my monthly parking pass. Just walked right up and handed it over. Even managed to stay strong in the face of Richie the Garage Manager's goodbye like I was headed off to war, never to be heard from again. That's right. I am officially a bus rider. Oh man, I will be heard from again, won't I?!

The bus. Marvel at my bravery with me.

Being on someone else's schedule.

No more stops at the miracle that is a drive-thru Starbucks that opens at 5am.

I concede radio control, temperature autonomy, and the privacy I require to sing loudly. Or really at all.

Maybe I should run and get that parking pass back.

No.

I'm strong. I can do this. 

The bus! It'll be great.

No more frothing at the mouth at the absolute morons who take to the road in Northern Virginia.

Think of all the books I'll have time to read! 

I'll save money, reduce my carbon footprint, decrease my stress level.

Picture it with me: I'm calm, zen-like, discussing today's Washington Post that I actually managed to read beyond page A1. Foul words at fellow human beings, dearly loved by God and sharing the road with me? I can't even imagine! I start my day with a (BPA-free) bottle of home-brewed iced tea and a piece of fruit, enjoyed leisurely while watching the tranquil beauty of metro DC pass by my window. Pay $5.15 for what basically amounts to a large cup of water, a tea bag, and a calorie-bomb passing as a scone? You must be crazy!

You won't even recognize me.

The inaugural bus ride is this afternoon. Yes, my man drove me to work this morning. And okay, so maybe I already walked by the bus stop just to make sure I knew where it was. And maybe I had dreams all night long of running after the bus as it drove all over town.

But I promise, I'm brave.

Life's hard enough. Laugh by faith like it's all gonna be alright someday. - Beth Moore

Not this bus, unfortunately

What is saving your life right now?

Sarah Bessey (please tell me you're reading her) asked this question: "what is saving your life right now?"

At the top of my list? This Cherry Coke Zero, saving me from nights when I resist bedtime like a 5 year old and all these pre-dawn drives to work. Over and over. Rinse and repeat.

The fearless, honest, reckless women I know only through this box on my desk -  Enuma, Rachel, Sarah, Nadia, Alise, Micha, Ann - saving me from feeling alone, saving me to beauty that aches. I open my Google Reader, sip this Cherry Coke Zero, and once again I'm brave. I read words like gifts and whisper "yes, yes, yes" and it saves me.

My husband, a word that can't come within a hundred miles of describing this man and how he saves me every day. This man who sneaks home from work in the middle of the day so my kitchen sink will be empty of dishes when I get home; who tells me he loves watching me lead; who says "I love you" in the middle of every argument, though I can't tell if he's reminding me or him or us both.

My little community of women, they call us infertile, but these women are teeming with so much life. Giving me so much life. Saving me on days when I couldn't find hope with a floodlight. Saving me by letting me point out hope when it's their turn to misplace it. Saving me with plans for a weekend away, just our despair, and our hope, and margaritas as big as our heads.

Reverently removing the Post-it notes on which students have written their burdens from the big wood cross we've laid on the floor and not being able to miss this one: "I'm scared." Me too, honey. But your courage to admit it on this little piece of paper and stick it to the cross saved me last night. The student who came to the Table and when offered the body of Christ broken for him said "I need a big piece" and grabbed a fistful of this bread and there was more than enough. There will always be more than enough for you, brother. For me. That kind of desperation, that hunger is saving me.

The church is saving me. Not the building, or the programs, or even the sermons (though my man can preach a fine one). The people sitting at my kitchen table, saying "I'm lonely and this is hard and I want to quit" and letting me say "I'm lonely and this is hard and I want to quit." I am saved by this authenticity, even though the word has become cheap and overused and uncool in the way all trendy things do. And this "oh, you too?" saves me from quitting for one more day.

I am being saved by this song. And by Burmese food. And the Chronicles of Narnia. Again. And smart people who know their answers and still invite me to my own conclusions and to conversations characterized by respect and grace. And the movie tickets and restaurant gift card someone slipped in Todd's mailbox. And the reliability of my best friend's "good morning" on gchat at 8am every day. And the student who told me I am already a mother because I am mothering him. And by the excessive abundance of answers I have to this question.

What is saving your life right now?

Now linked up with Sarah's synchroblog - these posts are saving my life today. 

Two steps forward, one step back

I've been fighting it. Sitting here trying to find words to make me sound mature and equanimous. I can't find them, so I'll just get it over with and embrace my inner drama queen. I had hoped to write a post today about happiness. About the discovery over the last week or so that a fog I didn't even know I was in had lifted.You know the feeling when you finally get new glasses or contacts and everything is so clear and you didn't even realize how blurry things were before? It's been like that. Or like this scene from Pleasantville:

I know this is all ridiculously melodramatic but I didn't realize how sad I have felt until I started feeling really happy again. And there have been so many stark moments of happiness lately: finding unexpected joy in the over-the-top Americana of a baseball game with friends; bonding with new friends (this extrovert's delight); uninterrupted time to finish a good book; a new Aaron Sorkin show; renewed and deepening relationships with people I am just flat-out crazy about.

This post, however, is not about happiness. Someone said something to me yesterday that has sent me reeling, certain that I'm free-falling back into the fog. Who it was and what they said isn't important. It was crazy insensitive and frankly, almost unspeakable but the thing about it that really bugs me? I feel like it instantly erased the progress toward healing I've made recently. All over again I feel sad and tired. 

And on top of the sadness and exhaustion, I'm angry at myself for letting one horrible comment overshadow so much good. Yesterday contained a chance to listen to my smart, sexy husband preach, a two-hour nap, an afternoon cooking my favorite food and watching How I Met Your Mother, a long evening eating tacos and laughing with friends I adore, and ended with watching The Bachelorette finale with my girlfriends while our husbands cleaned my kitchen. Sure, it also contained the twenty minutes I spent crying in a bathroom stall at church like an idiot, but on the whole, we can certainly call that a good day, can't we?

Maybe this is the way of things. Two steps forward, one step back? 

This kind of halting progress, characterized by feeling sad, tired, and idiotic, makes me want to take this advice:

I just may, but I'm also trying this: May our weary hearts be filled with hope. Amen.