let the words spill out honestly

I'm trying to find my voice.

Yes...in my fifties, and trying to find my voice...still.  

In having a reserved and cautious personality, I have often found it difficult to say out loud my true thoughts and feelings, especially in the moment, but I have grown and become stronger and learned to speak up.  I am proud of some particular moments when I've stood up, to the surprise of some, and spoken out my thoughts and said out loud what I really felt.

A few months ago my husband sent me a link to a video on Facebook that was circulating and it so resonated with me and struck such a deep place within me that I sent it to my daughters and to my close friends.  It was me--in so many ways, it was me.  Everything You Ever Wanted is on the Other Side of Fear.  Then, a few weeks later, in a completely coincidental event, I came across a video that I would not have otherwise sought out and that again struck such a deep place within me that it brought tears to my eyes and I found myself watching it over and over and over again in the days and weeks that followed, turning up the volume, listening with earbuds, taking in the message, over and over.  I was embarrassed to tell anyone--it was a video by a young, beautiful, pop-star diva--and it was bringing me to tears.

Someone was trying to tell me something. 

Then a close friend at work sent me an email with another link...you have to hear this, she said--another young, beautiful, pop-star singing about bravery and saying what you want to say--it was all adding up. Find your bravery.

Find your voice...say what you mean to say...ROAR if you have to...but find your voice. 

It's a challenge so many of us find ourselves up against, especially as girls and women.  So here's to us--we who are challenging the world with our voices.  Here's to my 81-year-old mother speaking up for herself in ways she never has before and learning to manage a checkbook and pay bills for the first time in her life.  Here's to my daughter who has found a peace and centeredness she didn't know she had--within her very own heart.  Here's to my shy, quiet 8-year-old granddaughter who wants to sing like Adele.  Here's to my step-daughter and my daughters-in-law who are changing their lives for the better by being brave, speaking up for themselves, and challenging the world with their voices, thoughts, and feelings. Here's to my friend who finally spoke up for herself and told the truth--and then made a very difficult and risky decision that will change her life forever.  Here's to me for speaking back to the vulgar customer at work, for speaking up in my family and with my friends.  For not remaining silent anymore.

Clearly, even the young, famous, rich, and beautiful among us have not escaped this great challenge either. Pop star, working mom, old, young, rich, poor, beautiful or homely...let's link arms and re-courage each other.  Each of us is facing great battles--within and without.  Let's find our voices together.

divine strategy

The last several years have been marked by battles and breakthroughs--some of the most significant and most difficult thus far in my life.

So much of what we battle--and how we battle--will never be known by anyone else. It's internal and known only by ourselves and by God. 

I continue to dive deeper, to try to strike my roots further down, to conserve and refocus energy, to wait when there seems little reason left to keep waiting, to fall back and regroup.  Hope, it seems, is meted out in war-time portions, but then some unforseen breakthrough occurs and I think that the entire war might be nearly won.  And just as in physical war, there is more than one front. 

This morning I am thinking that I will lead with what may appear to be folly--I will lead with vulnerability.  I will lead with vulnerability, but my plan is to surround the enemy. 

                                      But Love and I had the wit to win: 
                                      We drew a circle that took him in.

                                                                    --Edwin Markham
                                                                     "Outwitted" (1915)

Is it not the divine strategy, somehow, for every battle? 

What does it look like today?

journal entry for today

homely mysteries

The gospel of grace calls us to sing of the everyday mystery of intimacy with God instead of always seeking for miracles or visions.  It calls us to sing of the spiritual roots of such commonplace experiences as falling in love, telling the truth, raising a child, teaching a class, forgiving each other after we have hurt each other, standing together in the bad weather of life, of surprise and sexuality, and the radiance of existence.  Of such is the kingdom of heaven, and of such homely mysteries is genuine religion made...Grace abounds and walks around the edges of our everyday experience.

                                                             --Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

free wandering life

real re-creation

meditation

Art is often a form of meditation for me, the act of forming the letters with my fingers allows the meaning of the words to penetrate my mind and heart.

fellow travelers

I don't know how to express what I experience on Sunday mornings at the church I now attend.  Sometimes I feel completely overtaken and I cannot find any words.  Sometimes I'm afraid that if I try to put it in words, the depth of the experience and the meaningfulness might be lost.  But I sit through the services with tears dripping, dripping...I can't explain why, except that all that is burdensome wells up and floats away and all that is good washes in and over and so the tears drip.

I enter the building like everyone else.  I bring with me the cares and concerns of the week like everyone else.  We sit in gray, padded folding chairs from Costco.  Most often there are lit candles and there is a warmth and comfort in the way the people gather.  I look around and see gray-haired seniors, teens, parents with little ones, middle-aged adults...an assorted and mixed bag of travelers. 

Sometimes it's the very small things...the way the pastor stands with his back to us when he prays over the communion table.  He stands as one of us while he prays, not apart from us, not grander than us, but with us. It's that the seniors seem ok with the teens being there and the middle-aged adults seem ok with the couples being there with their infants and the fact that the teens want to be there at all.  Sometimes it's the simplicity of the services and the worship and even the building...it doesn't feel like a show.  Maybe that's why the tears come...I feel a part, I feel at home...it's not a show, it's a band of followers showing up together and remembering what we have in common...our great need and God's great provision.

Then there is the explicitly expressed reassurance from the pastor that there is room in this church for introverts.   Really?  Have a ever heard this in church anywhere?  In a culture that applauds the go-getter, the confident, the out-spoken?  Do I really not have to convince you of my spirituality by being outwardly demonstrative in worship and the first to smile and greet strangers?

Sometimes you don't even know how heavy your burdens are until someone lifts them from you and you find yourself in tears because of the wave of relief that washes over you.

It has also been the absence of expectations...no need to apologize for life, the associate pastor told us when we tried to explain why we didn't show up for his mid-week group.  It was that the entire church was invited to a baby shower for a pregnant teen in the youth group with no need to mention how she might have ended up in her circumstances, just that she was in need and that was all that mattered.  It was when a new round of small groups started up and all were invited to a potluck meal on Wednesday nights and it was also announced that if you weren't in a small group and just wanted to come eat, you were also welcome, and, in fact,the pastor announced, if you're just too tired after work to fix dinner, come join us...no need to stay for the group.  You're welcome here...just as you are...just join us, won't you?

It has been the messages on Sundays that remind us that what the people around us really need is genuine friendship (and that includes ourselves), that connecting with others over a meal is a form of worship, that a couple raising two autistic children is supported and is as respected for their calling in life as the couple who has decided to be missionaries overseas; it's that the pastor often explains that there are questions that he simply does not know the answers to, it's the respect for and valuing of people in real-life jobs (divinely appointed, says the pastor) as teachers and waitresses and government workers and university professors and stay-at-home moms where they live out their faith and values and sow peace like flower seed on the rocky roads we're all traveling together.

It's the raw honesty of the youth pastor who can get up in front of the congregation and say he's wondered if God was really real or not, how he's been in a valley so low he's written his resignation letter, that he's felt abandoned and alone while in church and on staff, that some of the most biting criticisms have come from people he least expected it from and yet he still has hope.

Anne Lamott says the greatest sermon of all is, "Me too."  I've felt for a long time that the church could learn a lot from the lowliest of twelve step groups...groups where the emphasis is not on our differences but on what we have in common, where it's assumed that God can speak to any of us through any means at anytime, where great courage is sometimes found in just getting out of bed the next morning and being willing to try again.  The vast majority of people will never be applauded for their greatest sacrifices, but it's a great comfort to find myself among so many of them on a Sunday morning in my town, in my corner of the world.  So I'll keep showing up and if the tears keep dripping that's ok with me...the experience makes life rich and deep and meaningful and allows me the chance to touch those thin places--the places where heaven and earth meet.  I'm pretty sure that's what church is meant to be.  And so I sing along with the other travelers...

Earth has no sorrow
That heaven can’t heal...

So lay down your burdens
Lay down your shame
All who are broken
Lift up your face...

So lay down your hurt
Lay down your heart
Come as you are

companionship along the way

Tonight we will have friends over for a simple dinner and a light-hearted game of dominoes.  It could seem superficial unless you believe that true spirituality can be found in the mundane, in the simplest of shared pleasures, good food and companionship.

I know enough, just enough, about their lives to know that it's an arduous journey, a journey that often leaves them isolated from others, a journey that takes it's toll financially and emotionally and psychologically.  In a great act of love, they embraced two little boys, brothers abandoned by a young member of their extended family who was caught in a web of self-destruction.  What came in the years that followed no one would have willingly chosen for themselves.

So maybe the most spiritual and meaningful act of love and mercy would be the simple act of sharing a meal and some laughter, a little companionship along the journey. 

show me the currents that carry the sea

As I grow older, I continue to face challenges to my thinking and to my faith.  I must continually ask myself when I feel intense anxiety over faith issues or life's disappointments, "Is God bigger than this?"  The challenges of my earlier years were very different...not less than...just very different.  The challenges of these later years are broader.  The questions seem to cover more ground.  The answers have to cover more ground too. Shallow answers do not suffice.  Answers that bubble on the surface are not enough.  Give me the rivers that well up from the depths.  Show me the currents that carry the sea.

strangers and friends

Thy will be done.

We sat in an Al-Anon meeting in a rented room at the Episcopalian church with strangers all sitting in folding metal chairs sharing their heartbreak and struggles. They had all had to let go of someone. One young man toward the end of the meeting shared that he was the one who had to be let go. His father sat beside him. He went on to say to us all that there is hope for us all because he was living proof. If God could turn his life around like He had, He could turn your loved one's life around too, he said.

When our allotted time for the evening was up, we all stood and held each others hands standing in a big circle, all of us strangers and friends at the same time. We stood their holding each others hands--touching each other--and we recited the Lord's Prayer together...Thy will be done. God, you get to be God in all Your indescribable power--this is beyond us to solve. And forgive us, give us, don't test us, deliver us-- without you we are nothing and can do nothing.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.  In me. In all of us who stand before You yearning for heaven and wholeness.

I felt like I had just been to church.