Paralyzed

For nearly a week now I have been paralyzed with no words. And then sometimes too many words. I have lost sleep, spent days at work nearly in tears, and shocked myself with how angry I’ve been. This election was so  personal for me because as someone who works in the mental health and social work fields I know the faces of the people that will be most affected by the next four years. I have felt completely helpless wondering what I can do in the face of impending darkness. I am still confused, angry, and overwhelmed but I have found ways to continue to orient myself in an increasingly dark world.

I will continue to sit across from women and young girls and listen to their horrific stories of sexual abuse. I will pass them tissues as I remind them they are brave and so courageous. 

I will continue to celebrate with and share meals with my LGBTQ friends and family reminding them they are so loved. 

I will advocate, donate money, and volunteer for organizations like Exodus Refugees. I will set a welcome mat on my porch and open my arms to you. 

I will acknowledge and advocate for my friends and students with disabilities reminding them I know they are smart and capable and have so much to offer the world. 

I will remind my Muslim and Latino friends and students that I want them here and that our communities would not be the same without them. I will soothe their anxieties and remind them they will not be bullied on my watch. 

I will stand with my African-American friends and students and remind them their lives matter and have so much value. I will use my unearned privilege to demand justice and speak loudly. I will show my students that I see their potential and believe in their future. 

I will tell these stories. I will remember your faces. I will hold onto hope when you can’t. 

Because friends, despite this year's election results, the truth is that love really does trump hate. 

Martin Luther King Jr. said “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” 

I know this to be true. I have been face to face with people’s darkest darkness feeling completely lost and the only next step I know is to reach for love. And it works. Every time. 

Love never fails.  

Palm Sunday Confessions

On Palm Sunday I always hear the comparison of the people on Palm Sunday shouting praises and lauding Jesus as king and then a week later they are the same ones shouting “Crucify” the loudest in the crowds. Whenever I hear about these people I think ‘what wishy-washy, despicable, ignorant, immoral, and downright evil people these must have been.’ Maybe it’s just me and that means I’m a terrible judgmental person, who knows?  But this year the more I thought about those people the more I thought, “yeah, I can see that.”

On Palm Sunday these people were full of hope, anticipation, excitement, and passion. Their king had finally come. They would finally see peace they had only been read about, generations of suffering ended, true justice restored, and the world set right again.

Then their King does nothing. Nothing. He says nothing. He does nothing. Nothing.

And I think these people were hurt.

Just when they had started to open their hearts to even the chance of hope, it disappears in silence. And then, as it often does, this deep hurt turns quickly to anger. And before they know it they are screaming at the top of their lungs “Crucify!”

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it (because on this side of history who wants to admit they could have easily been the bad guy in the story, come on!) but I think that could have been me.

Last year I came into my new job, as a therapist for youth in foster care, with my eyes wide, full of hope, passion, and faith that the love I had through Christ could fix just about everything. Then I came face to face with the darkest dark. And I realized things weren’t quite as easy as I hoped. I prayed and prayed for restored families, healing for victimized children, and repair for the broken systems that compound these problems.

And families still fell apart. Children still faced immense suffering. And systems were still broken and making things worse.

I found myself so angry that justice was nowhere to be found for the innocent. Furious that suffering was not immediately removed. Frustrated at the lack of love and understanding that constantly stood in the way of healing. I found myself doing less praying and more yelling. Shaking my fists and demanding justice now – not next week, not in 6 months, not when they’re older. That’s not good enough. NOW OR ELSE!

Not too far from “Crucify”, right?

It’s at this point that I’m comforted by Jesus’ reaction to the angry crowds. He looks out at their faces, hears their anger and hate, and chooses to love them anyway. He doesn’t call them snakes or taxcollectors or whatever the best derogatory term was then. He sees them, he hears them, and he dies anyway to save them.  It reminds me that He’s big enough to handle anything I can dish out. He can hear my anger and my doubt. He can see my frustration and my hunger for justice. And He can accept it, accept me, and love me.

Long time, no see

So much has happened in the last four months - good things, and not so good things. But before I can relish in the exciting, happy, ‘all the waiting has paid off’ parts I have to look honestly at the last four months.

I’d like to say the reason I haven’t been writing is because of my busy schedule, but that’s not why. The past four months have been some of the most challenging months I’ve faced in a long time. They brought about a heaviness that I tried to ignore until I could not ignore it any longer. This heaviness silenced me, in so many ways because it’s not the kind of heaviness that pushes the artist to write beautiful poetry or paint a masterpiece. It’s the kind of heaviness that can’t come out in words. It settles deep in your heart, dropping on your chest with a thud, making it impossible to speak. So it comes out in kicking the dirt, in ugly, messy sobs that seem to come from nowhere, and it pushes you into hiding. You can hide pretty well for a good long while if you are a busy person, and I was, so I could.

But not for long because then suddenly you graduate, Christmas time is over, and you are finally alone and forced to be face to face with this heaviness that’s been growing in your heart. You realize how heavy it really is, how carrying the weight has curved the posture of your back and taken you further away then you ever intended to be. You feel confused, angry, desperate, and so drained of life.

You sit in this chaos, in this hurt- until God speaks.

That’s when you hear your husband’s voice singing these words on a Sunday morning:

“Fragments of brokenness

Salvaged by the art of grace

You craft life from our mistakes

Oh Your cross, it changes everything

There my world begins again with You

Oh Your cross, it's where my hope restarts

A second chance is Heaven's heart”

So I start again.

I let God recreate me.

I let Him patch me together like a messy, mismatched quilt.

I remind myself that my hope is not in Christians but that my hope is in Christ.

I remember my God loved me so much He died so I could have this hope.

And I know my God is not a God of confusion and chaos. He is a my handyman God.

This is where my hope restarts.

Discombobulated

“For just as each of us has one body with many parts, and these parts do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.” Romans 12:4-6

A couple weeks ago I did a lesson for the kids at church on this verse. I’m a very visual/experiential person so to demonstrate the lesson better I drew a person on a big piece of paper that was as tall as me (which actually isn’t that tall I guess). He had two ears, two eyes, one nose, one mouth, two hands and feet - he was a normal looking guy is what I’m getting at here. Then I talked to the kids about this verse and about how one of them might be an eye and one might be a foot but we all can work together to do good things just like all the parts of a body function to help us do what we need to do. They seemingly accepted this and snickered a little at the thought of being a foot or a hand.

Then I brought out some extra eyes, hands, mouths, feet, etc. I told the kids how sometimes the mouth gets jealous of the hand and thinks he’s not doing as good of a thing as the hand gets to do and so he wishes he were a hand. At this point I put the extra mouth where a hand should be on our model and the laughter starts to build. Then I say the hand does not see much value in what she is doing either so she really wants to be an ear because ears seem more special and important. A hand goes where an ear should be. This continues until the poor paper model is all discombobulated and the kids are giggling uncontrollably. “Does this look right to you guys?” A loud, unanimous vote of NO!

We talked about what this looks like in our own lives when we know we are good at something but it’s hard to remember that when we see that other people are good at things that we aren’t great at. And inside we wish we were something else because we don’t see how important it is that we all need to be different.

I have been thinking on this lesson a lot lately, as I see more and more articles popping up about pinterest stress and the comparison syndrome epidemics fueled by social media. We all feel it at some point. We are looking at facebook or instagram and seeing someone with a great talent or going somewhere cool and suddenly we forget that we have any talents or ever go cool places. We want their talent or lifestyle because we forget that we are supposed to be different from them. We can’t all be the same thing. We can’t all play beautiful music, we can’t all be business savy, or all crafty or all computer wizards. Just like we can’t have a body made of only ears, or a body of only feet. That’s weird and doesn’t make any sense, any kid can tell you that.

I like simple things and kids usually make complicated thoughts seem pretty simple, so I’m trying to remember this lesson for myself. When I see someone whose great at something I’m not and I feel those nasty comparison feelings creeping up I think, ‘they are an eye and I am a hand, and that’s ok.’ We learn and grow from uniqueness, we see things from different perspectives. We appreciate things we didn’t know about before when we have friends that are different from us. And that’s how things should look - ear’s doing ear’s work, foot doing foot’s work and all functioning together to make things right and good, each of us appreciating how we work together.

We are all valuable, we are all essential and we are all different.

Love is heaven on earth.

“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another,

God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.”

1 John 4:12

Every time I read this verse I just stare at the words with my mouth gaping. The weight of these unassuming words is so powerful. Often we glance over it just seeing a string of repetitive verses in 1 John 4 telling us to love other people and we are like, “yeah, yeah we get it – love people” like a teenager being lectured by his parents for the one hundred millionth time. But this is so much more.

This verse is telling me that I am able to bring God into the lives of others and I am able to make His love complete. He lets me do this. Me who works a nine to five job, me who gets frustrated with people, me who needs sleep and food and shelter. The God of the whole universe offers me the chance to bring heaven to earth.

This is every little child’s dream. It would be something like their favorite superhero zapping them to give them their own powers and asking for their help to make the world a better place. What kid doesn’t hope and pray for that to happen to them?

God offers that to you and me. He says work hard to love others because when you do people can see me whom they have never seen and they can feel me whom they have never touched. Love can finally be made complete. With me.

Regardless of the effort it takes to smile at the co-worker you secretly despise, the time it takes to do something unexpectedly kind for your spouse, or the money it takes to help someone struggling - would it not be worth it to know you are partnering with God to bring eternity near? That in those moments you have just worked with God to make His work complete?

We seek meaning and purpose in our lives, we want to feel accomplished and know that our life is ‘making a difference’. But so often we do not have a sense of fulfillment in this way. I have no doubt that it is not because the offer is not there; it is because we have not answered the charge.


This is the cause of all causes. Join in. Make the infinite tangible, bring heaven to earth, and complete the ultimate love.

Why I still do arts and crafts at 25

    Yesterday I was feeling pensive on my drives to and from my internship and I began thinking about how much I enjoy sewing and crafting and generally making things of all sorts.

And I was thinking that sometimes it feels essential for me.

 
    I am entering into a field where progress is often slow, subtle, and difficult. People’s lives do not fix quickly. Hope is there, light is there, but it takes time and great effort to find it. So I celebrate the small victories in people’s lives and continue to hope.

That’s where crafting comes in. 

   
    When I want to make something I have a vision of what it could be, the beauty to be found and then, right before my very eyes I can make it come to be.  There may be small setbacks and frustrations but by the end of the night I can usually see the product of my hopes and vision. I accomplish and see the fruits of my labor. I can create something new. When I often find myself among brokenness and so much darkness it feeds my soul to create. I can mend torn seams, give new love to old fabrics, and display beauty in discarded scraps. And it helps me remember the importance of creation, hope, and vision in working with people’s hurts. 

And you know what else? It reminds me that my God is a crafter. He crafts beauty from ashes, creates joy where there is mourning, and sews together a garment of praise out of scraps of despair.

If dogs could talk

   Tonight mine would tell you that when I'm home alone baking I blast music from the stereo in the kitchen and dance like fool all around the room.

   He would tell you that when it gets to the loudest part of a song I lean down and sing loudly in his face to share the moment with him. He would also want you to know how much this confuses him.

   He would tell you that when I start to get warm from the oven being on I stick my face at the precise angle necessary to steal some of the cool, country breeze coming from the window facing the field. He would tell you the breeze blows and makes the wisps of my hair that have fallen out of my ponytail dance around my face and that I look very much like a dog hanging out a car window.

   He would probably tell you that nights when I'm baking are some of his favorite nights because while all this dancing and singing and face in the breeze is happening I am carrying around a spoon in my hand covered in sugary goodness. He would tell you I get a little clumsy with this sugary goodness at times and that usually means I fling some chocolate or dough or sugary batter onto his face.

   He would tell you he does not mind this a bit.