Surrendering to Sabbath: Week Two

January 19, 2013 by 14 Comments

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“What happens when we stop working and controlling nature?” Moishe Konigsberg responds. “When we don’t operate machines, or pick flowers, or pluck fish from the sea? . . . When we cease interfering in the world we are acknowledging that it is God’s world.” ~Lauren Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath

If you lived in my seaside town, you might occasionally see my mini van parked at odd angles on the side of the road. Spot me wandering around in tall weeds to capture the way the light is fingering through the broken window of an abandoned building or capturing early morning fog hovering like a mysterious traveler over the sea. Lost in the wonder of the way the same stretch of beach can be a chameleon canvas of creation.

I walked on sandy shores several days this week, read messages He carved for me in the sand and moaned in mourning over mounds of dead fish. And it all started on Sabbath, when I took the time to stop and listen and see.

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And I’m wondering why it took me so long to get here, to observe a true Sabbath. Maybe that is why He says remember. “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” Because He knows how easy it will be to forget.

Want to join the Surrendering to Sabbath Society? We’re a sisterhood of 42 strong, encouraging one another to rest. It all started here.

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For further Sabbath reading and a podcast on the web, check out these finds:

Monopoly is the Bane and My Sabbath is a Flop by Michelle DeRusha (and I’m not just posting it because she mentions me in the story, it’s honest and funny)

Sabbath Rest {YMCA of the Rockies} by Kristin Schell

Start Small, Start with Sabbath by Sarah Bessey at She Loves Magazine

The Importance of a Stop Day by Ben Tinker, CNN

Praying for Your Family: a podcast interview between James Dobson and Jack Hayford about Sabbath and prayer. What Hayford says in the interview about his father challenges me.

Wherever your weekend plans take you, may you find your sweet spot, that place of fulfillment that comes from knowing His love for you is an endless horizon and a shoreless sea.

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When One Resolution Is All You Need

January 3, 2013 by 29 Comments

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It’s still dark outside. I’m the only one awake in the stillness. Huddled here, writing under the glow of twinkle lights before they return to the attic on Epiphany. The distant growl of the garbage truck sleuthing through the neighborhood breaks up the silence, picking up discarded fragments of yesterday’s joy.

I’ve been quiet on the blog  for a few days. I needed to bask in the Light, break away from the noise of social media and cling hard to Peace. Stare at the manger under the tree for a while; see my place there next to Jesus more clearly.

I’ll admit it; there is a dread that lurks alongside re-entry into ordinary time. Do you feel it?

The celebratory seasons, they cast their glorious glow of communion on the masses. All laying down our agendas, gathering around the community tree of gladness, focused on hope. But in the tearing off of days, we come closer to laundry, lists, and leftovers, their needfulness shadowing us languid.

How do we enter the New Year maintaining perspective and peace?

I’ve noticed it, the clarity that comes from silent clocks, flexible schedules,closed  computer screens, feasting without guilt, and reading. Lots of reading. How the lines around the eyes take their place without defiance when time is slow and hurry waits.

And I don’t make resolutions, but I listen to Peace. And this is what I hear:

Reading is necessary, not a luxury.

Good fiction inspires.

Most things in life come easier on the heels of rest. Choose bedtimes well.

A long walk outside clears cobwebs of the mind. Do it often, every day if you must.

The best way to share a story is to live first, then write about it.

Having a journal ready on your lap during quiet time is not only useful, it’s wise.

Because when God speaks, he wants me to remember it. Not just now, but later . . . when I can’t hear Him as well.

Taking a break from routine helps extract joy in the mundane when you return to it.

Carrying a camera strapped over your shoulder on a walk is always a good idea, even when your children roll their eyes about it.

It’s healthy to throw caution and calories to the wind during the seasons of celebration.

Who I am informs what I do, not the other way around.

When what I do becomes who I am, everything gets messy.

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I threw away stale cookies, bought a new lamp after I dropped my mother-in-law off at the airport and made stir-fry for dinner with leftovers. Tomorrow I’ll get up early, plug in the teapot and sit in the Light while my tea bag seeps into a new year.

I am resolute about one thing: Listening to Peace so I can bloom into being.

Q4U: What about you, do you make resolutions? Did you learn anything new about yourself on vacation?

 

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On Fractured Friendship and Shouldering Hope

December 5, 2012 by 41 Comments

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I got her text a few days after the voting that devastated me. A vote that split our church family wide open. We voted differently. She asked me to lunch.

She and I, we’ve sat among peers in the same prayer circle for three years now, peeking inside our hearts when the Word tore open our ugly, offering consolation and the spoon of friendship stirring up faith. But we didn’t talk about the church vote.

No one asked me how it felt to have your church turn their back on what you’ve poured your heart into for twelve years. The church planting movement my husband helps to lead, the one I’d written hundreds of stories about, uprooted my family to move across the country for.

I said no to lunch. I couldn’t sweep all that pain under the rug and smile over salad. I’ve never been good at pretending. I’m the girl whose mother knew I hadn’t eaten well in college by the tone of my voice over the phone.

A few days later, sitting in my van trembling after midnight, thinking about who I could call for help to navigate the wreck my daughter had with a semi, I scrolled through all those church people in my mind. The families I wrote down on those forms for my children, you know, the people the school should call in case you aren’t available in an emergency.

I hadn’t talked to those people in months.

But I received her text.

So I called her.

She didn’t answer.

It was 1:30 in the morning.

I was relieved I didn’t wake her up.

She called me back, after two hours of sleep in my clothes. Said she saw my update on Facebook and my missed call on her phone and she was in a puddle, and so relieved to know Murielle was okay. And all that church stuff, it felt like chaff in the wind blowing tumbleweed down the street of my soul.

Sometimes perspective plummets like an elevator shaft unhooked from what you’ve always taken for granted.

She came to my door with foil covered containers filled with food, the salt from our tears and the presence of the holy. We sat on my couch shouldering hope under the cacophony of teens consoling my daughter, talking about everything and nothing. And I learned what it means to bare one another’s burdens.

I named the ache of my pain, opened the gift of receiving and I’m looking forward to going to lunch soon.

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In her book, Enuma Okoro says, “A believing community shoulders hope when circumstances seem hopeless. A believing community speaks boldly into despair and longing and suggests that things do not have to remain as they are in the presence of a holy, imaginative God.”

As we enter the season of Advent may we each find a sojourner to share the longings of our soul, one to receive the whispers of our pain in the wait. Not friends for fixing but for shouldering hope and shifting the weight.

Many of you come here with burdens like mountains you can’t see your way through and I just wanted you to know what a privilege it is to intercede on your behalf. Let’s bare one another’s burdens, shall we?

Linking with Jennifer and Emily.

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Hand Over Mouth Thankfulness and Awe

November 22, 2012 by 29 Comments

We’re cozied up together with family tonight, pulling bread apart, pushing the spoon around a skillet of sizzling onions and celery for the stuffing while pumpkin and pecan cool on the counter. Passing the box of cookies sent with love to Murielle as she recovers from the accident. All rubbing our eyes at the end of some fast and furious days of fielding interruptions by claims adjusters and junk yard dogs, ironing tables cloths and standing in line at the grocery store for the third time.

The story I wrote about Murielle’s accident, the way God saved her life that night, it was selected to appear on Freshly Pressed, the WordPress.com home page where 390 million people view 3.8 billion pages a day. When there are 31.7 million new posts each month, I’m feeling a bit humbled. We’ve stood with our hands over our mouths, shaking our heads in the glory of it all. How God can take a horrific event and redeem it into a thing of beauty.

Hundreds say it’s beautiful over and over again in the comments, like a book of days declaring His faithfulness. And you just can’t plan that kind of awe.

Tomorrow, when I scoot my chair into the table of steamy turkey straight from the oven, flayed open white, I won’t worry if the gravy is lumpy, the potatoes undercooked, the decorations perfect. I will remember the day I nearly lost my only daughter. We’ll hold hands around the table and thank him that we have life, that miracles aren’t  just for fairy tales.

And I’ll thank Him for each of one of you too. For the way you’ve buoyed us in bending your knees on our behalf. Giving thanks takes on new meaning for us all this year. I’m not sure we’ll ever be quite the same. At least I hope not.

Happy Thanksgiving Friends!

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When the Way You’ve Always Done it Doesn’t Work Anymore

November 12, 2012 by 35 Comments

He broke through the second act in the play of my life and took the scene in another direction. And I welcomed it the next time. I’ve learned that beauty lies outside the walls of convention.

During my college years I fell deeply in love. He courted me on the grassy knoll next to the library under star dust where we talked for hours without distraction. Like a watchman on the wall, observing the glow of the city beneath, He pointed out hope and future promise. I hurried back to my dorm room before curfew coveting peace and left doubt strewn about the clover.

On a fall walk on crunchy leaves, under a hollow of bare branches, I sat on the bank of a babbling brook with arms wrapped around my bent legs, untangling the knots holding my heart captive. He held up the frayed end of the rope and assured me it didn’t need to be perfect before I showed it to him the next time. Messy and imperfect, He’s okay with that.

Beside my apartment complex swimming pool, face down on a lounge chair, I shed tears behind sunglasses as the sun warmed my skin. Tears dripped onto the pages of Codependent No More lying on the concrete beneath. Healing hovered over me in the stillness. I pulled the gate open on freedom, wrapped a towel around my waist and walked home with a new identity. No longer chained to the consequences of my mother’s alcoholism.

God uses whatever is useable in a life, both to speak and to act, and those who insist on fireworks in the sky may miss the electricity that sparks the human heart. ~Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church

Yesterday, I took a walk with my camera swinging over my shoulder. A stranger asked if he could take my picture, said I was prettier than anything I saw through my lens. And I don’t believe it. But it sounded like God’s voice so I told Him I would try to accept it, and I kept walking.

Down a road I avoided when my dog was my companion. Three years of skirting the collective howl of neighborhood pets so I missed the beauty.

It was waiting there, like art hanging on the wall expectant in the unbridled surprise of joy on the face of the beholder. Illumination.  Of color shouting change is coming. Leaves floating on the surface like fairy dust dripped from wings before passing the curtain of trees.

The line between heaven and earth is a thin place and His portals of presence, they are vast.

I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called – his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance. ~ Ephesians 1:18, NLT

Can you remember when you fell in love with God? Have your ideas about God changed as you’ve grown to know Him?

For six weeks, we’ll be exploring the question, “How do we walk out our faith in the midst of pain, suffering, disappointment, and loneliness,” with a book club discussion on Thursdays about Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor. Join the conversation in the comments and at Redemptions Beauty Book Club. Start here for more information.

Joining Ann today in counting thanks for the shift of seasons that introduce a new season of the soul, for standing room only worship, renewal of vision, sadness turned to joy, despair into hope, chicken pot pie, a newly painted front door ready for welcome and books, lots of books.

Linking with Michelle, Laura, Jen and Eileen.

 

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When Loneliness Is More Than Being Alone

November 7, 2012 by 42 Comments

We were both wearing sweaters, hopeful in the shift of Fall apparent in summer’s bounty left strewn and withered on the lawn. The sun radiates overhead, I pull my sleeves up and look down at her tawny boots, void of scuff marks as we walk on the narrow sidewalk. I didn’t realize she was freezing on the inside until we walked into the church.

We stop in the foyer like being sprung from the end of a rubber band and stuck on the floor, unaware of the crowds gathering for Sunday worship filtering like ants around us. She tells me she had a hard time coming back from a trip. How she couldn’t find reasons to return to an empty house, a job she didn’t like, no family nearby. She went on to describe the loneliness. Friday nights at the gym, eating dinner and watching a movie alone, week after week. A rare invitation for dinner with a friend, cancelled at the last minute.

I ask what is keeping her here in our small seaside community. “I know I’m supposed to be here,” she says nodding her head. “Maybe I’m trying too hard to make it work.”

And even though I’m married with two kids to share life, she describes how I’ve felt many times since moving away from long-term friendships and family nine years ago. A silent phone, empty calendar, leaving church lonelier than you came; there is a difference between knowing people and being known by them.

God created us to be known.

Sometimes He takes us through a season of isolation to understand that.

Loneliness Has Purpose

Like wallpaper stripped away after years of use, He reveals who we are underneath, during seasons of isolation.  Reveals the scars still open, the glue that we counted on to hold everything together, the cracks in the foundation we couldn’t see with that façade in the way, the one we got used to looking at and barely noticed anymore.

Most of what we find there, it’s way beyond our capability. And that’s the point. Instead of hanging new paper on the old wall, He wants to do something different. And the only way to know what that is, is to trust Him for the outcome. Because He wants to know you will be trustworthy to do the work.

While loneliness lies in the hollow whispers of inadequacy and needing to know why, Jesus invites you to scoot in close to Him, partake of the view on the veranda. He’s pointing out the future. And when you see it, it won’t matter that it doesn’t match the color you picked out for the wall.

(For biblical examples on the way God uses isolation in order to learn the deep lessons of life look at the lives of Job, Paul, Habakkuk, Elijah, Moses, Jesus, Joseph, and Jonah.)

Over the next six weeks we’ll explore answering the question, “How do you walk out your faith in the midst of pain, loneliness, disappointment, and suffering.” We’ll sit around the community table of this blog and hear stories from Tara Pohlkotte, Deidra Riggs, Danelle Landry Townsend, Darrell Vesterfelt, Kelli Woodford and others that help us see Him more clearly through our struggles.  And we’re inviting you to join us on Thursday for Redemptions Beauty Book Club, a community discussion on the book Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor.

How can you be part of the fun?

Linking with Jennifer, Duane, Emily, Joy, WLWW

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When Letting Go Seems Foolish

October 20, 2012 by 18 Comments

Perform impossibilities

or perish. Thrust out now

the unseasonal ripe figs

among your leaves. Expect

the mountain to be moved.

Hate parents, friends and all

materiality. Love every enemy.

Forgive more times than seventy-seven.

Camel-like, squeeze by

into the kingdom through

the needle’s eye. All fear quell.

Hack off your hand, or else

unbloodied, go to hell.

Thus the divine unreason.

Despairing now, you cry

with earthy logic – How?

And I, you God, reply:

Leap from your weedy shallows.

Dive into the moving water.

Eyeless, learn to see

truly. Find in my folly your

true sanity. Then Spirit-driven,

run on my narrow way, sure

as a child. Probe, hold

my unhealed hand, and

bloody, enter heaven.

 Luci Shaw, The foolishness of God, 1 Corinthians 1:20-25

May we each remember the unfathomable ways of God cannot always be explained and often seem foolish to the hearts of men. And perhaps sometimes, and most of the time, and always, we must let go of what feels counterintuitive. 

Welcome to the Weekend Friends!


This is #20 in the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. If you are a writer, I invite you to link up any post you’ve written on the theme of letting go in the comments here on Friday. Subscribe to receive the series in your inbox or feed by adding your address in the side bar under Follow Redemptions Beauty.

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