31 Days of Giving Permission . . . to LAMENT

October 6, 2013 By

31 days of giving permission 200x130

 I have written about this profoundly important topic before,
just last month, in fact,
and if you have not already read that post,
you can find it here. 

 Over the days that remain in this 31-Day challenge,
I’ll be writing about a whole slew of topics,
some of them sweet,
some funny,
some potentially life-changing.

But here is no other topic that is as close to my heart,
nor as important to the church
as this one right here:

LAMENT.

Lament is a language we all once knew,
and, I believe, we still know, somewhere deep down inside.
But for a long list of reasons,
the contemporary church,
most especially the contemporary
evangelical church,
has forgotten how to speak it.

More importantly, perhaps,
it has forgotten how to hear it,
how to sit with another as they speak it.

We talked yesterday about listening —
about how important it is to listen to ourselves,
to listen to God,
and to listen to one another.

I intentionally put that topic right next to this one
because if we learn how to listen well,
I believe we will re-discover the language of lament. 

We live in a beautiful, broken world.
And we are beautiful, broken creatures.

There needs to be room to affirm that brokenness,
to acknowledge it without losing ourselves to
fear or despair.

When we learn to speak the language of lament,
just like the psalmists did,
just like JESUS did,
we find that room,
and the ability to breathe deeply,
to sigh in recognition and relief.

Can you give yourself permission to lament when you need to?
To weep, or wail, or shake your fist?
God can take it.
In fact, God invites it.
 

Filed Under: 31 Day Blogging Challenge, Blogging, Encouragement, God's gifts, grief, Lament, Listening

The Language of Lament – A Deeper Family

September 4, 2013 By

 

There are days when I feel immobilized by all the pain in this world. I’ve had quite a few of those in the last few weeks. Days when despite the sunshine, I see clouds of gray. Days when I wonder where God is, where hope is to be found, when relief will come.

Sometimes this is personal pain. More often, it’s pain carried by someone I love. And then, there is all.the.angst — the burdens borne by our big, wild, crazy world. I’ve lived long enough to see too much ugliness, too much suffering, too much.

I’ve tried cutting myself off from news sources. And that helps for a while, at least until reality intervenes at some other juncture in my life. You can only hide for so long, it seems.

I’ve tried focusing on the small graces of every day life. And that helps considerably. Counting gifts is good therapy, and a habit that I’ve lived with for a very long time now.

But, in and around the thanksgiving, there are those other days. The days that feel like —

massive overwhelm,
uncertainty deep in my soul,
tears beneath the tears,
knots within knots within knots.

And on such days, words escape me, gratitude is much harder to find, and I sense myself suffering what Madeleine L’Engle used to describe as the flu-like symptoms of atheism, the temporary variety.

          Where are you?
          How could you?
          This is too much!

These are the words that rise, the only words that seem to be appropriate in the midst of the ‘slough of despond.’ And these are also, by some miraculous gift of Goodness, the words that slowly but surely open the door to grace and truth.

These are the words of lament.

Filed Under: A Deeper Family, biblical reflection, community, Confession, Encouragement, grief, hope, Lament, personal journey, prayer

Remembering Helen – Five Minute Friday

August 16, 2013 By

I’m not at all sure how this will come out, as the prompt this week brought to mind something that happened to me a couple of times lately — a memory was stirred. And having that happen twice in a week, well. . . it makes me think this is something I’m supposed to get down. So, I’ll try to do it in 5 minutes and link it up with Lisa-Jo and the gang this week:
Five Minute Friday

The view from that hill . . . a little closer to the sea.

PROMPT:  SMALL

GO:

The road winds up the hill, the hill that opens up to the sea. And every time I drive up that road, I remember Helen. She was such a small thing, dark-haired, pixie-eyed, full of sweetness and light. Byron asked me to go and see her. She was a friend of a friend and she was in Santa Barbara to receive a new treatment in her battle against lung cancer.

I was brand new to my job as Associate Pastor and I was pretty new to visitation, especially when the person was unknown to me and critically ill. But I went – how could I not? She was delightful – vibrant, open, seeking, devoted to her family and to her Lord. She wanted someone to talk to, to pray with, to help her face into the realities that were coming at her faster than a freight train.

Oh, how I loved her!

I met with her about a dozen times over the next few months. She would travel back and forth to her home in Arizona in between treatments, staying with friends when she was here. Eventually, she stayed for longer and longer periods of time and the family rented a house up on the bluff, a house with a distant view of the deep blue sea.

Each visit, she seemed smaller, shrinking into herself in some ways, but pouring herself out in others. Her eyes always sparkled, her smile never wavered. Oh, her voice got weaker and finally, she couldn’t walk very far at all, choosing to stay in bed or in a chair nearby. But her spirit? Indomitable.

She died quietly, here in Santa Barbara, and the family asked me to create a memorial service for her in our small chapel so that all those in this town who loved her could come and remember and worship together. 

That chapel was full, I’ll tell you. She was small, yes, she was. But her heart was huge and her sweet smiles and soft words reached out to dozens of friends. 

That was almost seventeen years ago. And every time I drive up that hill, I glance to my left, to the street that sloped up and around the bend. And I remember the gift of Helen, the first of many friends I walked with to the end of the road.

STOP

2 extra minutes

Filed Under: Beauty, death, Encouragement, Five Minute Friday, Friendship, God's gifts, grief, Women in Ministry

A Deeper Family: When Time Collapses

June 6, 2013 By

I am continuing to chronicle the journey with my mom through dementia over at A Deeper Family today. Every couple of months, words about this haunting process seem to rise to the surface. Thanks for your patience and encouragement as we take this difficult walk together. You can click here to read the rest of this essay. . .

Enormous chunks of time are gone now.

How can I watch this? How can I help? How can I say the right thing, do the right thing, be the right daughter?

I am beyond knowing most days. Beyond knowing.

We made plans last weekend for my youngest brother’s two sons and one daughter-in-law to make the long drive from their home to ours. My youngest brother, the one who died in his sleep just over three years ago. This would be the first time these nice kids would see Mom in her new living environment, the one we moved her to in February. The one designed for memory and cognitive loss residents.

The one that reminds me every single time I am there that my mother is fading into the woodwork, that the woman I knew is vacating the premises.

I have learned not to tell Mom about visitors or traveling plans too far in advance. When I do, she frets over it multiple times per day, convinced that NOW is when it all happens. Several weeks ago, she asked me to contact Ken’s boys; she wanted to see them. I was happy to do that.

Thank God for Facebook — connections were made, plans set. One day before our time together, I told mom that we would all go out to lunch together. She was excited and grateful and seemed to understand — seemed being the operative word.

Alarming situation number one: when we arrived, parking in the subterranean lot beneath the wing in which she lives, riding the elevator and turning the circuitous route to her unit, we found her standing outside the building, as cars drove nearby. Maybe that bracelet will be necessary after all, the one that sets off the alarm if she leaves with no one noticing. I dread it. Dread it.

Alarming situation number two: after greeting everyone gladly and expertly, she climbed into our car, while the younger generation climbed into their own, to follow us to the restaurant. “Who are those people?” she said.

Who are those people?

These, dearest mother-of-mine, these are the very ones you so wanted to see. The very ones. How do I answer you without letting the deep panic I feel creep into my voice? How do I DO that?

Please join me over at A Deeper Family to read the rest of this post. . .

Filed Under: A Deeper Family, Aging, family, grief, memoir, personal journey, The Journey with Mom, Uncategorized

The Gift of a Long Life — A Deeper Family

May 1, 2013 By

It’s the first Thursday of the month and time for my monthly post at A Deeper Family. And this one crept up on me, bigtime. Somehow, I thought the first Thursday was next week (duh!) and had set aside tomorrow afternoon to write this piece. Fortunately, truth dawned at approximately 9:00 p.m. for an essay that was due at midnight. 

With the grands at Shell Beach, one year ago this month.

 

Forty years ago, I was a stay-at-home housewife with three children under the age of five, wildly in love with my kids but often overwhelmed by fatigue and feelings of failure.

Thirty years ago, I had two teenagers and a pre-teen, served as an active volunteer in church and community, loved entertaining large groups of people in our home and was oblivious to the truth that this good, rich time of my life was rushing by me.

Twenty years ago, I walked across the stage to pick up my master of divinity degree from Fuller Seminary after four years of study, all that studying done while managing a small floral business in my home, watching each of my children move into committed relationships and becoming a first-time grandparent.

Ten years ago, I was nearing the midway point of my pastoral life here in Santa Barbara, discovering the harsh reality of death in our family circle for the first time, trying to balance (what is that, anyhow?) home and church, family and congregation.

Today, right now, I am retired from parish work; I offer spiritual direction from my home; I write on my blog, here at ADF, and several other places on the internet and in print; I have children older than most of the people I meet with or write with; I am married to a man I love deeply, a man who stays home most of the day because he, too, is retired; I am mother to my mother as she fades into the dim recesses of dementia; and I am Nana to eight grands, two of whom are college students, for Pete’s sake.

And at this moment, on a warm California evening, I am reading this list and wondering . . . who do I want to be going forward?

If I am blessed by continuing good health and even the moderate level of agility which I currently enjoy, I may live another fifteen, twenty, maybe even twenty-five years at the most.

What will these years look like when I stand there, in the future, and look back at now?

What do I hope for, dream about, pray for, purpose in my heart to do — or maybe more importantly — to be during however many decades remain?

Here, in no particular order of importance, are the things that rise to the top as I ponder that question:

Please join me over at A Deeper Family for the rest of this post . . .

Filed Under: A Deeper Family, Beauty, Blogging, death, family, Grandparenting, grief, hope, memoir, parenting, personal journey, The Grandkids, Uncategorized, women, Women in Ministry

The Sister I Never Had — The High Calling

February 27, 2013 By

 

Celebrating Anita’s Birthday in Choma, Zambia, 1966

About a week before Christmas last year, a wonderful thing happened to me: I was invited to contribute an essay to one of my favorite online magazines – The High Calling. The first idea I had contained the germ of what the essay eventually became. It proved to be an extremely difficult piece for me to write. It’s been 18 years, and the grief is still so strong. I would be honored if you’d follow this link to read the entire piece over at THC . . .

 

I never had a sister. But I had Anita, with whom I shared adventures, stories, dreams, fears, prayers. We logged a lot of life together and made a lot of memories.

She phoned me one day, eighteen years ago: “Are you sitting down, friend? I have stage 3 breast cancer.” We spent that weekend with our husbands, walking the beach, praying about what direction she should take for treatment. After choosing an expensive and controversial alternative course, she enjoyed 14 months of remission. We wrote notes across the miles between our homes almost every week during that time.

But one night in a darkened theater, we came to watch their son perform in a college play. I twisted around in my fold-down chair to see her, standing in the back of the auditorium the entire performance, her face lined with pain. Looking at her, haunted and frail in the dim light, I knew with every fiber of my being that she was dying. And, oh! She saw that I knew! Her eyes brimmed briefly with tears, we said goodnight and she never allowed me to contact her again. . .

Please follow me over to The High Calling to read the rest of this story. . . 

Filed Under: death, friendship. personal journey, grief, Guest Post, Laity Lodge, personal journey, The High Calling, Uncategorized

Girls’ Day Out – Fall, 2008 – Archive-Diving

December 29, 2012 By
Another dip into the draft dumpster to salvage this memory from the month after our son-in-law’s death in October of 2008. This was a lovely, small event that marked an important step in healing on the road to recovery for all of us, most especially for Lisa. And I think milestones need to be noted and remembered.

It was raining Saturday. Enough to keep the windshield wipers in full-time swish mode for the entire drive from here back through the hills to Ojai. 

My two daughters, my daughter-in-law and I climbed into my trusty blue Honda Pilot and braved the elements to visit the world-famous Spa Ojai at the Ojai Valley Inn. 

A most interesting experience – not something that we do with any frequency at all (a first visit to the place for 3 of the 4 of us) – and one that we enjoyed. 

The place was busy, busy, busy. No sign of economic crisis here! Literally dozens of people, all wearing white spa robes, sitting, resting, hot-tubbing, sipping cold water with sliced cucumber and mint or warming up with hot herbal tea. In the women’s hot tub area, every single chaise lounge was filled with a white-robed, resting female. 

One exception to the white robes was a mother/daughter pair, there to celebrate the daughter’s 21st birthday, dressed identically in hot pink tank tops with gold sequined hearts spread across the entire front. 

I must admit to some hesitance in disrobing in a common locker space, no matter how elegant. It’s been a while! All of us remembered high school gym class and the mixed emotions of that entire experience. But as I allowed myself to relax, I began to notice that there were all kinds and types of women around me – every decade, every size, every shape. Not a ton of racial or ethnic diversity, but a little. Most were there to unwind, to step away from the swirl of daily life for a few hours, and that’s a very good thing. Too bad it’s such an expensive thing – at least at this particular place! 

My recently widowed eldest daughter Lisa had received a loving gift from some family members in the form of a gift card for the spa and she wanted to treat us all to a pedicure. We did it in twos, and I must say it was a lovely, indulgent, softly sensuous experience. 

As you can see by the delightfully scrubbed, trimmed and painted toenails above, we all chose different colors, but ended up with the same affect: rested bodies and spirits. I also had a massage – in a beautiful small room with its own small fireplace and a heated massage table. Bliss. 

Then we dined in the spa restaurant for a late lunch, enjoying the outing and the time together. The drive home was rain-free and absolutely gorgeous. Rolling green hills and a leisurely water-side mile or two along Lake Casitas. 

We arrived in time to freshen up, join the men/boys and then dine out together at Piatti’s to celebrate our eldest grandson’s 18th birthday, returning home to yet another intense sensual experience – chocolate cake! – homemade with love and skill by our daughter-in-law. Dark cake, dark ganache, nutella on one layer, hazelnuts on the outside edge and chopped up Skor bars in the filling. Oh my, my, my.


Overall, it was a very delightful and relaxing weekend together – despite a few bad colds and one very sick 3-year-old who coughed so hard, he had to go home from the restaurant to clean up and recover before rejoining us just in time for dinner – which he devoured. Can’t let great homemade mac and cheese go to waste! 

I am more grateful for the gift of family than I can possibly put into words. Each of these women is a remarkable individual – caring, smart and beautiful. We have walked through an intensely difficult time together and will continue to try and find our way through this wilderness territory called grief, dependent on God and one another to make it to the other side. 

And freshly painted toenails are their own strange and wonderful therapy!
Filed Under: Archive-Diving, family, grief

In the Middle of the Mess – Archive-Diving, 2008

December 18, 2012 By
Once again, plowing through the archives to salvage some of the written record of the last five years or so. This was was written in November of 2008, and as I look at this gathered community, I am hushed. One marriage, broken. One infant, now a healthy almost-5-year-old, one dear mother-in-law, now unable to speak and fading, fading, fading. Time is relentless.

You might think this an odd picture to publish with the title listed above. But for me, right now, on a Monday late afternoon, sitting at my desk and prayerfully holding before God so many people that I care about who are definitely in the middle of some kind of mess….this picture is a powerful reminder to me of God’s faithfulness.

Faithfulness in, through, around, and right smack dab in the middle of the mess.

The date this picture was taken? November 16, 2008.

The context? Our Sunday morning worship gathering after the Tea Fire, which had swept through Santa Barbara during the immediately preceding three days. Our church building was still part of the evacuation area for that fire, an area which had begun to shrink some the night before, but which at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday morning still included the access roads to our property.

My husband and I had also been evacuated and had returned home late in the evening on Saturday. And 14 families in our community had seen their homes either destroyed or severely damaged from the ravenous, wind-driven flames of that terrifying time. We were all in the very heart of the most painful and frightening mess most of us could just about ever remember.

And right there – in the middle of it all – we saw remarkable signs of God’s faithfulness, of God’s loving presence, of God’s provisional care, even in the throes of a natural disaster. We found amazing evidences of grace everywhere we looked.

No one in our church community, or in the broader neighborhood, sustained serious injury; the wonders of modern technology enabled us to stay in contact throughout the three days of electrical and wireless disruption; the church was spared and immediately useful for community communication and encouragement gatherings of all kinds; staff and lay leadership rallied to plan and pull off a worship service at an alternate site – the local country club, of all places! – and we were reminded throughout that service of God’s presence, deliverance and providential care, despite the enormity of the mess.

So today, as I pray for a wide variety of painful, frightening and messy situations – I am grateful to remember God’s faithfulness in the midst of a pretty big mess not all that long ago.

I’m not a fan of messes. Don’t enjoy them all that much – would, of course, prefer not to have lived through most of the ones I’ve experienced.

But this much I know: God will meet me there, right in the middle of it.

We are not alone, sometimes despite all kinds of evidence to the contrary. So, Lord, have mercy. Have mercy in the mess. And thank you for stepping into the muck with us.
Filed Under: Archive-Diving, Church, community, God's gifts, grief, Santa Barbara

An Advent Journey: Stop, Look, Listen – Day 7

December 8, 2012 By
“God, it seems you’ve been our home forever;
long before the mountains were born,
long before you brought earth itself to birth,
from ‘once upon a time’ to ‘kingdom come’ — you are GOD.
So don’t return us to mud, saying,
‘Back to where you came from!”
Patience!
You’ve got all the time in the world —
whether a thousand years or a day,
it’s all the same to you.
Are we no more to you than a wispy dream,
no more than a blade of grass that springs up gloriously 
with the rising sun and is cut down without a second thought?
Your anger is far and away too much for us;
we’re at the end of our rope.
You keep track of all our sins; 
every misdeed since we were children
is entered in your books.
All we can remember is that frown on your face.
Is that all we’re ever going to get?
We live for seventy years or so 
(with luck we might make it to eighty),
and what do we have to show for it?
Trouble.
Toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard.
Who can make sense of such rage,
such anger against the very ones who fear you?
Oh! teach us to live well!
Teach us to live wisely and well!
Come back, GOD —
how long do we have to wait —
and treat your servants with kindness for a change.
Surprise us with love at daybreak;
then we’ll skip and dance all the day long.
Make up for the bad times with some good times;
we’ve seen enough evil to last a lifetime.
Let your servants see what you’re best at —
the ways you rule and bless your children.
And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God,
rest on us, confirming the work that we do.
Oh, yes. Affirm the work that we do!”
— Psalm 90, The Message
Sounds like the psalmist has had a rough week. More likely, a rough few years. Can you relate to the very real emotions expressed in this remarkable song? These are core questions, aren’t they?
          Must we suffer like this forever?
          Where the heck are you?
          Our lives are like leaves, falling from the trees —
                    swept away like yesterday’s garbage . . .
                    when will you smile at us again, God?
          Have mercy, O LORD. Have mercy.

I’ve been struggling with some very hard news from dear friends as they grapple with a fresh, harsh diagnosis of leukemia for their beautiful toddler boy. And word from another friend, who is struggling to find ways to comfort someone whose child was violently killed. And our own moms’ slow fade from the planet. 

So sometimes, this is a song I need to sing, a lament I need to raise. There is a sense in which Advent is a time of mourning, I think. A time for recognizing that we live in a messed-up world, filled with too many messed-up people, including me. We live in a world that needs saving, day in and day out.

We ache for things to shift enough to provide some relief. I think that’s why the singer has chosen to use the image of God’s wrath or anger in this song. Because in the midst of the muck, it can sometimes make it easier to bear if we picture God as the source of it all. Then we can turn the blame in a clear direction. 

And we know that God is big enough to handle our fussing and fuming and wondering and worrying. And as the song draws to an end, the psalmist remembers the whole picture, the overwhelmingly reassuring picture that God is the God of loveliness and good work, the One who teaches us to live wisely and well. 

Even when it feels as though surely God must be angry with us, else why would we be suffering so much – even there, even then, it is good to come round home again. To acknowledge that God is the God who walks beside us, through thick and thin, through loveliness and horror, through joy and sorrow. In the grand scheme of things, our lives may indeed have the transience of falling leaves, BUT God sees those leaves as they fall, each and every one, and God has assigned each one a value beyond measure.

O LORD, there are days when all I want to do is shake my fist in your face and cry out for ‘mercy.’ And so I do. Mercy, LORD, mercy. Yet even as the words leave my lips, I recognize that they are, in reality, the very same word. For you are mercy, my God. Thank you, thank you.
Filed Under: Advent, An Advent Journey, biblical reflection, church year, daily devo, grief, personal journey

Girls’ Day Out – Fall, 2008 – Archive-Diving

November 19, 2012 By

It was raining Saturday. Enough to keep the windshield wipers in full-time swish mode for the entire drive from here back through the hills to Ojai.


My two daughters, my daughter-in-law and I climbed into my trusty blue Honda Pilot and braved the elements to visit the world-famous Spa Ojai at the Ojai Valley Inn.

A most interesting experience – not something that we do with any frequency at all (a first visit to the place for 3 of the 4 of us) – and one that we enjoyed.

The place was busy, busy, busy. No sign of economic crisis here! Literally dozens of people, all wearing white spa robes, sitting, resting, hot-tubbing, sipping cold water with sliced cucumber and mint or warming up with hot herbal tea. In the women’s hot tub area, every single chaise lounge was filled with a white-robed, resting female.

One exception to the white robes was a mother daughter pair, there to celebrate the daughter’s 21st birthday, dressed identically in hot pink tank tops with gold sequined hearts spread across the entire front.

I must admit to some hesitance in disrobing in a common locker space, no matter how elegant. It’s been a while! All of us remembered high school gym class and the mixed emotions of that entire experience. But as I allowed myself to relax, I began to notice that there were all kinds and types of women around me – every decade, every size, every shape. Not a ton of racial or ethnic diversity, but a little. Most were there to unwind, to step away from the swirl of daily life for a few hours, and that’s a very good thing. Too bad it’s such an expensive thing – at least at this particular place!

My recently widowed eldest daughter Lisa had received a loving gift from some family members in the form of a gift card for the spa and she wanted to treat us all to a pedicure. We did it in twos, and I must say it was a lovely, indulgent, softly sensuous experience.

As you can see by the delightfully scrubbed, trimmed and painted toenails above, we all chose different colors, but ended up with the same affect: rested bodies and spirits. I also had a massage – in a beautiful small room with its own small fireplace and a heated massage table. Bliss.

Then we dined in the spa restaurant for a late lunch, enjoying the outing and the time together. The drive home was rain-free and absolutely gorgeous. Rolling green hills and a leisurely water-side mile or two along Lake Casitas.

We arrived in time to freshen up, join the men/boys and then dine out together at Piatti’s to celebrate our eldest grandson’s 18th birthday, returning home to yet another intense sensual experience – chocolate cake! – homemade with love and skill by our daughter-in-law. Dark cake, dark ganache, nutella on one layer, hazelnuts on the outside edge and chopped up Skor bars in the filling. Oh my, my, my.

Overall, it was a very delightful and relaxing weekend together – despite a few bad colds and one very sick 3-year-old who coughed so hard, he had to go home from the restaurant to clean up and recover before rejoining us just in time for dinner – which he devoured. Can’t let great homemade mac and cheese go to waste!

I am more grateful for the gift of family than I can possibly put into words. Each of these women is a remarkable individual – caring, smart and beautiful. We have walked through an intensely difficult time together and will continue to try and find our way through this wilderness territory called grief, dependent on God and one another to make it to the other side.

And freshly painted toenails are their own strange and wonderful therapy!
Filed Under: Archive-Diving, family, grief
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