The Hills are NOT Alive...They are Icy and Impassable!

The weather predictions this week have been a great source of fodder. The main reason is the forecast has included several predictions of inches of snow and ice that have skirted to the north of us 4 out of 5 days this week. So yesterday evening, I and two of my girlfriends decided to ignore the impending weather reports and have a dinner out (to discuss planning VBS, but really it was for the dinner out!). 

 We picked a seat not very close to any windows, didn’t notice the packed store we had entered was dwindling in their patronage, and didn’t even realize the hot bar was being cleared an hour and a half early. The predictions had come true, and we were in for it!

I live the farthest from our dinner place, up two steep hills and winding roads. My three winters driving on the great white roads of Michigan did not prepare me for the elevation changes and ice that southern snow storms like to throw at you. As we started toward the first stop of three to return our dinner pals home, it became quite clear that the roads were slick and as a now minivan owner, I knew the hills of Tennessee were winning tonight! We didn’t even make it a quarter mile into my friend’s sub-division before the backsliding began. She decided to trudge through the snow in her slipper shoes, because we of course wanted to look good when we went out for dinner! And she made it home in good time. That left two of us!

As we continued back toward house #2, the probability of us making it up the necessary ridges were slim to none. And we had to really go the bathroom. So a quick stop at a relative’s further down the hill was necessary and welcome. We would hoof it the rest of the way to the house, the parking spot for my car. At this point, it was clear I wasn’t getting home. This was somewhat frustrating because all this week, I’ve been taking extra precaution to ensure that my family and I were safe in this nasty southern winter weather, but when it really came to fruition, I was the one who didn’t make it home!

So, while my boys watched Star Wars for the first time (I’m sure Bennett will be acting like a Storm Trooper for the next 6 months of his life), I was hunkering down at my girlfriend’s house. I was looking forward to a snow-day with my boys on Saturday, but that wouldn’t happen because the roads weren’t supposed to get better until around 11 or 12 that morning. I couldn’t help but feel guilty because I didn’t prepare enough, because my plans didn’t work out, because I didn’t get to see my kiddos before bedtime last night. And while the adventure of it all was fun and those two other women are the most fun to be with in a snowstorm, I still was the one left out. I didn’t make it home to see my family. Just me.

This whole incident has confirmed that I am a control freak. I like to have a plan and I like that plan to go my way. To the viewing public, I act like it’s all good and I’m so cool because I take change in stride, but on the inside there’s a little voice saying, “I’m losing it! No control=no power=what else could spin out of my grasp?” I cannot control the weather. In fact, thanks to some wise words from Grandmother, my boys have been saying, “The weatherman can’t control the weather, only God can.” And they are right. I have as much control over most things as the weatherman! I can predict ten possible outcomes (all in my favor, of course) and the end result is completely different.

My life has been full of this: my ideals and desires and plans, and God throwing a slippery road into the mix, completely changing the trajectory of my life. I see this constant tug-of-war in my desire to follow God, but also to have a 10 year plan. I want stability and foresight for my children, so I ignore the voice of faith that says, “Come and follow me” and I trudge through the slippery roads trying to follow my own path. I want my future to be clear, not to be called. I want to live with certainty, not by faith. I want to say, “I’m not equipped for this next thing, I think I won’t do it!” and God says, “I didn’t ask for an expert, I asked for you!” I wish so many of us would leave our agendas, plans, and procedures at the door and just go out on the limb of faith a little more. I wish it for myself, I wish it for my church, I wish it for my friends and family. We have been convinced that we can drive on our slippery plans and make it to our destination without any problems. We don’t consider the blessing it could be to stop and rest and wait for the road to clear, to take comfort in the home of friend, or our Savior and allow our plans and power to be turned over to him.

We saw a car do donuts off the highway last night, I wonder how often God watches me spin in circles? I just don’t get why he keeps me on any path, really! I like to do my own thing so often, if I were the parent, I’d be crazy. That’s why God’s God, and I am not! So, instead of just taking it upon myself to tackle the hazardous road conditions of life on my own, I think I’m going to climb into the passenger seat a while, put the trust in the fact that God has navigated me to places that were filled with more blessings than I could have ever imagined on my own, and stop being so concerned about getting home, and just realize that adventure and the journey are part of it too!

Weariness Is Not The Stopping Point

My favorite Bible verse since high school has been Galatians 6:9. It says “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” These words sound wonderful, but they also hold deep, deep meaning. I’ve grown weary in doing good, trying to be good, trying to live a life that others can look at and say, she’s doing the work of Christ., because it’s hard and tiring. Other people do not always appreciate the good you are doing and it’s defeating. I am a physician assistant and I see poor, needy, and uninsured patients daily. I have long discussions about how to take care of the body you were given. I try to empathize with my patients social issues and to truly understand their barriers to care. There are still days where a patient will say, “Can’t you just admit me? They take such good care of me at the hospital!” The thought crosses my mind, “That’s what I was trying to do!” Doing good isn’t always recognized, actually, a lot of the time it goes unrecognized, but we are not to grow weary!

Being a mother is another one of those thankless jobs. It’s amazing how fast a loving child can turn into a fire-spitter! We have loved, taught, cared for, wiped, cleaned this child and there is no instant repayment for all this investment. In fact, it seems that the more good I try to instill in my little ones some days just ends up with a lot of crying, both on their part and mine! I can only hope, since my children are still small, that their father and I will reap a harvest for the conversations and loving embraces at some point. Nevertheless, every day there are new challenges to parenting and I have to be reminded to not give up. And therein lies the hardness of this verse. We aren’t supposed to stop doing good. Even though the world seems to reject our good deeds, even though our loved ones don’t even say a thank you, even though no one seems to want to do any good unto us, we are not to give up.

Sometimes I let the weariness drive the thought of quitting. It’s easier to just throw in the proverbial towel than to keep up an effort of caring and loving others. But I think the part that has to be clear, the part that has to be tattooed into my memory is the harvest we will reap. The harvest is why we do what we do. It’s that patient that sends a card saying, “Thank you for caring about me!” It’s the day when your child is surrounded by others and they say the most heartfelt prayer and you know they can pray that way because you have been their example. It’s the family member that only calls you because they know you are always there to care and have put up with them through the hard times. The harvest can be a great joy in seeing someone else’s happiness restored or even their faith restored because you didn’t give up.

We can easily make doing things into doing good in our own minds, and it’s important that we are aware of this. Being a yes-man or -woman is not doing good, and boundaries are needed so that our souls stay full. But we are not going to reap anything by ignoring injustices, shutting ourselves from others who are not “in” our circles, or by becoming so intertwined in our own selves that we miss the beauty around us either. Weariness is easy to attain. I can overbook myself in a heartbeat, overcommit in a flash. When he wrote Galatians, Paul knew that interacting with the human race was not a self-serving reward and there are some people out there that can draw the breath right out of you, just by being in the same room as them. However, Paul also knew that God’s kingdom cannot operate by the Holy Spirit alone, and those hard to love people, probably need love the most. So he warns us to not grow weary. Not an easy task! 

It’s so hard when you are weary to look ahead, to “keep the eyes on the prize,” so to speak. But that’s sometimes the only way to get through the pull to give up, to throw in the towel, to stop the goodness. We can’t stop because this world needs the good, we need the good, and we are promised a sweet reward. Maybe we don’t get the chance for the reward until Heaven, but I think if we are focused on doing good, the reward shows up on this side of eternity. Sometimes it is years later, sometimes it’s subtle and sometimes we just have to wait for it. Know the path we trudge is a worthy one, and take the opportunity for goodness to abound, because we know this world is weary and needs some of us to be the doers of good!  

The Sacred Space

The space always felt warm to me, like a good hug, a safe place. It was somewhere that I was able to retreat from the world that was so harsh, so demanding, so overwhelming, sometimes. During weeks when my friends had deemed me unworthy to play with at recess, or when I was feeling like I hadn't lived up to my own expectations, there was a place where those marred areas of life faded. Welcomed always. Judge little. This was my sanctuary. It was the small little Methodist church in the small little sleepy town where I grew up.

I always felt accepted in that building. I'm sure it was the community who made that acceptance real, but even as I sat alone in the sanctuary, I was wrapped in unconditional love. When I left for college, I tried very hard to find or even recreate that space again...to no avail. There were still too many holes in the space I was trying to will into the sacred sanctuary. These holes let the craziness of the "real" world into the space. There was not the safety I had felt as a young child, an awkward middle-schooler and a pre-college overachiever.  It was then that I was made very aware that my sanctuary was rare.

It was rare because it was actually a sanctuary in a church building. For so many, the church sanctuaries are cold, lonely places that are dangerous and judgmental. There is no love emitted from those spaces. They symbolize places filled with hypocrisy where love is touted but one feels the undercurrent of hate toward them. I know this is how some feel in church. I have sat in the back of churches and watched as a new person who isn't as wealthy or clean or the same color as everyone else wanders in and tries to find a place of rest among the unspoken assigned seats. I have watched as members lean over and size up this new arrival to each other. And I have wondered, what if I was that brave person who wandered into a church by myself, just hoping to find love, acceptance, and rest and was met with awkward stares, under-the-breath exchanges, and a seat that "belongs" to someone else?

The answer is I have never been that person. I have always had a church to call home. But God's been placing a really strong message on my heart, and it is this: "You have walked into a church and felt my love with no one else around, when you walk into a church and it is filled with my children, this should be a glimpse of my kingdom!" A little Heaven on Earth, if you will. It may sound cliche, but church wasn't meant to be about me, it was suppose to be a place where we learned and confessed and questioned what this kingdom that was the opposite of worldly standards was and is about. Are we doing it church? Are we just showing up in our Sunday best while the world waits to see whether we can keep up the act?

I think about this a lot as I help plan programs and am in church leadership. It surrounds my own life because my husband leads a church. It's his job. And we talk about it constantly. The church, for me, has been true to the verse, "Come to me, all who are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest." But I cannot be happy that I get the warm fuzzy feeling in the church building. I cannot take rest in the fact that church is a sacred space for me while there are so many others who need the church to be that for them and it isn't.

I'm talking about the divorced wife who is reeling from the shot to the heart of losing a marriage, and has not only felt abandon by her husband but also shamed by her church friends because she somehow didn't uphold scripture and keep the marriage alive. I'm talking about all the gay teenagers who are living the tightrope of just trying to survive in a high school setting and also have to wonder if they will be accepted by their parents (Oh Lord! I can't even imagine their struggle and their bravery to be who they are). I think about these babies, these Children of God, because high school is hard, even when you have friends who accept you and parents who would die for you. I think about my black friends who are searching for a church and need to hear from us (I'm speaking about the White Church here) that this world still isn't right, we still have a lot of reconciling to do. And then I think about the church. Is our church a sanctuary for all who are heavy burdened?

I believe the answer is no. I want the answer to be yes. I want someone to walk into a church a feel God's kingdom on this very Earth. So how does this happen? Well first, it doesn't take another committee meeting. It takes people who are willing to show that they are a little messy too. It takes people who study God's word for themselves instead of just taking someone else's word on the matter. It takes a willingness to go to places that don't feel happy or secure or holy to us long-time church-goers (i.e. leaving the church walls). It takes someone being brave enough to extend an invitation. It takes someone taking the time to have a conversation with a person who has never appeared in our pews before. But ultimately all those things are for naught if there isn't a partnership between us and God. We have to be actively seeking God's heart and His urging are what's prompting those things to happen.

As I have shared more on this blog than I usually do in person, I've been so surprised by the outpouring of love I have received back. I think it's because when I've thrown out my raw places, the places I struggle, it gives someone else permission to see that they are not alone in a similar situation. When I am real and honest, someone else resonates with that.

So, I sit here tapping words on a keyboard, struggling to figure out how I create a church where everyone who walks in the tastes and feels the love of Christ emanating from every corner. Then I realize if I would stop being so quick to try make someone else feel exactly how I feel and truly live out a life that Christ is a deep part of, I may already have my answer. What I can be is welcoming, honest, and incredibly generous. I can always err on the side of love and ask forgiveness when I do something that doesn't do the above. But maybe most importantly, I think Home Depot has it right, "stop thinking about it (or writing about it) and start doing it!"

If you're in Chattanooga this Sunday and think you may need to hear a good word, come by the little church next to the veterinarian's office on Ashland Terrace. I cannot guarantee that it will feel like your sacred space, but I can guarantee you there are some wonderful, welcoming people who have hearts in the right places and have lived out Christ's love for more years than I have been on this planet. We are imperfect and we are working on our understanding of Christ and his teachings, but we are trying and you are welcome!