Song of Rejection

My heart and flesh cry for you.

Don't leave me.

Great God, when my prayers are all I have

Don't abandon me.

When I've failed more times than I can count

Don't lose me.

When the fruit I produce is rotten and shriveled

Don't cast me off.

When my spirit holds tight to this doubt

Don't reject me.

When my mind is a vacant space

Please fill me.

When my eyes are blind

Please see me

Please don't scoff at my weakness and scorn my shame.

For you are not a God of shame.

Your power is perfect in weakness

Your grace abundant in my depravity.

Because of your goodness, find me.

Thank You

For humor on hot days in the humidity of Houston.

For happy colors at the mexican market and the sound of the accordion, and children speaking spanish with helado dripping off the chin.

For fresh open coconuts with a straw in the center.

For watermelon to feed an army (and getting to finish it off myself).

For life and death and dying to self and finality and resurrection and death again.

For Lazarus.

For weeping for Lazarus.

For deep sorrow that breaks and shapes and changes and holds us.

For babies that breath and beat and live.

For babies that live in eternity, emptying us of our very souls so that we can be consumed and filled and rise again.

For catching my tears and saving them.

For promising to wipe them all away one day.

For roses that bloom and remind us of life.

For markings that never go away.

For mothers and mothers in law.

For extended family and awkward moments, and grace and anger and histories and new beginnings.

For communion and community.

For breaking of bread and drinking of wine and remembering the breaking of body and spilling of blood.

For washing over me.

For faith as a gift that I can not force upon myself.

For plum jelly on a hot summer day.

For theater productions in the open air of the park.

For bright moons and Saturn’s rings.

For daring to hope again.

For continuing to complete a work that you’ve begun.

For sunlight and shadows, long dark winters, silences long and fearsome.

For things that we don’t understand, mysteries and secrets.

For redemption and holiness.

For learning obedience.

For promises.

For reminding me that I am your child.

For freedom that Christ has set us free.

For fruit.

The Future I Like to Dream

They say that the longer I teach the more cynical I will become. And the elusive "they" may be right.
I often feel the dark tentacles of cynicism wrap themselves, closer every day. I know they creep up like shadows each time a student says a disrespectful read, hateful, spiteful, malicious thing to me, or worse, to a fellow student, an equal. Each time enemy's are made inside these walls that are most sacredly "safe". Every time I walk these halls and hear ignorance, see blindness, tolerate intolerance from this future generation. Yes. I will become cynical. Or maybe not so much cynical as just, afraid. Anne Frank said there was good in everyone. I once believed that was true. Then I became a teacher. Maybe not.

But then there is you. And you, each of you are something different altogether.

You are the future I like to dream about. You who endure hardships others find unbearable and you still show up every day looking like you jumped right off the pages of a Judy Blume novel and that, with the optimism of a toddler.

You are the future I like to dream about. When you come to me in humility, considering others better than yourself asking why you were chosen over anyone else. You who were chosen by the others.

You are the future I like to dream about. You, the one that still has the tenderness of heart to see injustice and brokenness in the world and the passion and desire to fight and protest and make this world right. That is a future my children need.

You are the future I like to dream about when in your terror you stand up and do what you never thought you could, because you have a voice to be heard, a story to be told, and a humor to laugh at. You are brave and your future, the one with you in it, makes me brave too.

You are the future I like to dream about. You with your belief that every problem can be attacked and conquered with a poem, and that every human is perfectly capable of writing one.

You with your attitude that every person and behavior can be tolerated except, of course, intolerance.

You who crush stereotypes with questions, prejudices with patience, illiteracy with fascination.

You who step outside what you're comfortable with to become uncomfortable to become better. You who are willing to try new things, new genres, new styles instead of saying it's my way or the highway. You grow, you change, you explore, and our future needs that.

You who surprise me with random acts of intelligence.
And hilarity.
And calm.

You are the future I like to dream about because, you may think you're just kids, but you're just so much more to me.

You are all so weird, and the world needs more weird. Not because we are too conforming or compliant or compromising. Not because government is too big or our art is too small, or the middle class is just too poor. The world needs weird because that is where you come from. You the creatives. The artists, the dreamers, the poets. You who can step outside of the box, no, run from the box and solve the worlds problems with a poem and a prayer. You are the ones to bring life to this world. To save us. And my kids need that future.

You are the future I like to dream about because when I look at you, I don't see kids. I see teachers and lawyers and parents and activists and journalists and politicians and world shapers, and the people that I hope will one day run my nursing home.

You are the dreamers, the poets, the problem solvers, the fighters, the laughers. You are the lights that I like to dream about. When I dream of the future

The Day's Own Trouble

Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:34

“Let the day’s own trouble be enough for the day.” I can’t say how many times I’ve heard, repeated, thought this phrase in my own life.  When I’m anxious about work, or returning to work after a glorious summer.  When I start to concern myself with how my kids are going to college, or if they will have friends. When I try to plan out every second of my life.  When I simply try to plan out my children…. Let the day’s own trouble be enough for the day. What does that even mean?

What if the day’s own trouble is more than enough for the day?

That rainy Wednesday is still crystal clear in my memory.  A worst day. It was the day we learned my baby boy’s heart stopped beating.  The day’s own trouble was more than enough.  I remember the quiet room of the ultrasound.  The cold eyes of the technician. The doctor’s blank stare as she gave news that I’m sure she has given before, but never seems to get easier. I wonder if they felt it.  I wonder if they gave my boy a second thought after I left that office that day.  I wonder if they simply wanted to get me out the door so they didn’t have to wade in my grief, my trouble.  So they could move on to happier women, with better “outcomes”. I’ve wondered this often.  It bugs me. It makes me angry.  It makes me jealous when I hear of women that had compassionate nurses and gentle doctors. And at the same time, I’m so glad that many other women did not meet those cold eyes, but gentleness and sorrow. But it wasn’t their business, It was my day’s own trouble.  And it was more than enough.  

More than enough to process in my mind and heart. More than enough to decide very quickly. More than enough to pay for on a credit card instead of saving for tires for the car. More than enough for my broken heart that day.

I still remember what I thought as I got into my car that afternoon.  Through shallow breaths, “what am I going to do?” I repeated this over and over and over. I’m not sure what I thought I was planning. What do I do next? Do I call my mom? What about my kids? Should I try again? Even in this moment, when the day’s own trouble was more than enough, I couldn’t help but consider the next day, the next step, the next moment.  How in the world was I going to sludge my way out of this darkness?  How was I even going to breathe in this pit, if I was so focused on the next moment?

Even when the day’s own trouble is more than enough for the day, let it be. It seems that we are wired to think of the next day. And I’m not sure how to slow down.  It seems a survival technique for many of us, and at the same time, it crushes us. I do not know when I stopped planning, but I do know of the moments after, when I took a quiet moment, when I listened to the sorrow and allowed my God to comfort, when I stayed in that moment, I was led into the quiet presence of my savior.  It was in that moment, that he held me.

Our lives are made of moments.  It only takes a moment for everything to change. Sometimes a day is made up of a series of terrible, difficult, heartbreaking moments, that seem more than enough. But it is also in those moments, if we live them, that he finds us and holds us, and makes HImself more visible than ever before. I have learned that I can live in a moment, or lose it completely.  And if I lose it completely because of my selfish planning of the next moment, I miss out. In the case of my grief, I would have missed the Savior.  I would have missed my son. I would have missed knowing them both.  These are the moments that I will cherish forever.  Moments where my own child, too small to have gone so soon, led me to Jesus. To a deeper relationship with Him. Because of this tiny life, I was given a song to sing. And while it had a sorrowful, broken, refrain, it is a precious and beautiful and cherished song of a moment of my life.  That is why I named him Jaron, “To sing”.

Now there are new moments. New songs. New opportunities. New troubles. But the day’s own trouble is enough for the day.  And there are still those precious moments, many times in the moment of trouble when I remember my son again. And I remember my Savior. And He is enough.

Peace

John 14:27

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Words quickly fading on my arm the week of the birth.

Reminding me. Revealing me.

Don’t forget.

So I don’t live out the holy days and forget why the baby was there in the first place.

So I don’t walk away from the manger unchanged.

Peace.

For that quiet morning. Silence in the barn.

For the aftermath of the chaos.

When I’m paying off my debt.

For the aftermath of the cries

and the blood

and the struggle on the floor of the barn.

My mistakes, mismanaged life, mangled soul.

Peace

After the dysfunction, the slammed doors, the returned gifts.

After the selfish tears,

The sinful, soulless ache

The acid tongue.

The struggle on the livingroom couch

The brokenness that cannot be repaired.

Peace.

In the grief, the dysfunction, and the breaking.

Perfect peace and perfect gifts.

Good Gifts.

God Gifts.

They - We would never understand.

He said “Don’t be afraid”.

He said it was a gift.

A God gift.

Don’t be troubled with it.

Peace.

His gifts are not like ours.

Good Gifts - God gifts.

Not pretty bows and expensive bills.

Blessings and brokenness and better-ness instead.

Good Gifts.

Peace that will last.

How could we be afraid?

When we struggle, and fight, and don’t measure up.

When we are broken, bleeding, and bitter…

He redeems.

He brings peace.

Just this baby born on the floor of a barn

Placed in a dirty manger

by a teenage mother

to make a life in my darkness.

He says “Peace”.

Its quickly fading from my arm.

Don’t forget.

Lord, may my life this year and forever be a life of peace. Of gentleness.  Show me the way to be guided by the Holy Spirit and the gift of peace that Jesus left for me.  Blind me to my self, and open my eyes and heart to you. Make me an instrument of your peace this year.

Carol's Faith

February 15, 2013

For Carol

Hebrews 11

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  This is what the ancients were commended for.  

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did.  By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings, and by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.

By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away.  For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.  And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.  By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.  By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.  For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God....

….All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.  And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.  People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.  If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.  Instead, they were longing for a better country - a heavenly one.  Therefore god is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them....

...By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones...

...By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the people had marched around them for seven days.

By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.

And what more shall I say?  I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.  Women received back their dead, raised to life again.  Others were tortured and refused to be released so that they might gain a better resurrection..

Others died; they never saw the promises here...

…The world was not worthy of them.  They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.  God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

We are all a part of this magnificent story of faith.  A story that Carol lived out as an example for us.  A story that I can only tell a fraction of...

By faith, Carol married and remained faithful to one man for forty two years.  And by faith she loved him deeply.

By faith, she sought and found homes for orphans and made important those who were neglected.  By faith, she honored those that others had written off.  By faith, Carol welcomed those who were poor, weak, lonely, shy, broken, and unlikable.  She made time for these people, even when the time was all wrong.  By faith she loved us, and we were lovely because she loved us.

By faith, Carol put others first; especially her family.  She refused to give up on her sons, daughters, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, sisters, in-laws, friends, or the love of her life.  She would not, could not give up on us.

By faith, Carol lived; even as she was dying.  She filled every day with life.  She went to ball games, played on the farm, planted seeds, planned meals, celebrated holidays and birthdays, and danced for little things in between.  She told stories, listened to hurts, stayed up too late, shopped too long, laughed too loud, and blessed us all with her wisdom.

In John 11:25, Jesus says “I am the ressurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”

By faith Carol lived, even though she died, and she is commended for her faith.

Hebrews 12

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Its been awhile...

I've been looking over this blog and just thinking, it's been awhile.  I so enjoyed the days when I was able to write freely about the day, the week, or just the most recent song...  So I'm picking it back up.  Its no twitter, or facebook.  But to me, it just works better.