Surrendering to Sabbath – Week 18

May 11, 2013 by 11 Comments

rbsabbathweek18-1

H and I hold hands along the foot path, stopping every few feet to capture what is new to us. There is something beautiful about misted color and the wisdom of trees holding time in the hollows of their trunks. Vines twist upward, gnarl around her branches creating a holy haven for fowl in winter.

The unmanicured canopy of creation, it lays out like a pile of pixie sticks falling exquisitely random and untouched by human hands.

Canal boats drift steady, snoring sleepily between banks flush with green moss and upside down teacups hanging from stems like crooks of tiny folded umbrellas.

rbsabbathweek18

rbsabbathweek18-2

We’ll remember our twenty-third wedding anniversary in England. The quiet Sabbath stroll we took down the lane, next to a meadow of dandelions. Where we realized we’ve been on a grand adventure with God at the helm since we said, “I do”.

And it’s been a good ride. I’m leaning in. And waiting.

rbsabbathweek18-3

May you look back today and realize that God is and always has been with you, in the silence and grief, in the adrenaline rush of joy fulfilled, the promise of tomorrow, and in the hope of future dreams. He redeems the weeds and makes them beautiful.

Happy Sabbath Friends!

Click on the tab “Sabbath Society” to learn more about the sisterhood.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Hanging By A Thread

May 1, 2013 by 45 Comments

rbroadtrip

Sometimes I feel like it’s all hanging by a thread. Just one tug in the wrong direction and life, it might just all unravel. Best laid plans once worn snuggly around your neck can suddenly become a single strand of fuzzy remembrance. What did my life look like before all this? It’s what I hear myself say, as I back onto the driveway and watch the slow descent of the garage door.

I have forty-five minutes to drive to a doctor’s appointment one hour away; in the car I’ve delayed maintaining. An appointment I made before I knew I’d be travelling to England. Before I knew my daughter would be sick and her car held hostage by a mechanic. Before my mother-in- law agreed to fly from Phoenix and land in the opposite direction.

My suitcase lays open on the chaise lounge in my bedroom, its emptiness heckles me from a distance. I removed its dirty socks and Dayspring trinkets but the smell of joy lingers in the pockets from the trip I took last week.

As I pull onto the highway, the road zips open and evergreens unfold like a children’s pop-up book. My leather van seat is an empty bench at a quiet museum; the horizon, a fine painting hanging on walls of clouded sky.

I can’t stop and I don’t have my camera. But I’m framing each piece of landscape in my mind.

Of ivy hanging on crumbling pylons, water logged tree statues, stark and naked, their bony knees stuck in still waters hued in morning sun. Tuscany’s lavender wild cousins carpeting both sides of pavement, waving southern in the wind. Birds soaring overhead like paper airplanes thrown from the tops of tall buildings, gliding and unaware of time.

Suddenly, I’m breathing slow and thankful for this quiet and solitude. I’m thankful for doctors and praying for those that don’t have access to one. I’m thankful that I’ll celebrate twenty-three years of marriage in a place that feels oddly like home, though I’ve never lived there. I’m thankful that my daughter doesn’t want to miss her chem lab, even if her head rests on the glass the entire way to school. For morning prayers together when she’s usually scurrying off  alone. And for my mother in law, who makes it possible for me to experience a few days of bliss.

What I thought was hanging by a thread is actually a tapestry cupped in His hands. I just needed a few moments of silence to see it. To recognize the handprints of God.

Through praise and thanksgiving, we reflect on the transcendent nature of God – the reality that he is above all. As we look up toward God, we also can’t help but be reminded of our smallness. This shift in perspective softens our hearts, inviting us once again to lean into God’s goodness, to look up for his salvation. ~Margaret Feinberg, Wonderstruck, Chapter 009

When has God redeemed hardship in your life and transformed it into a moment of gratitude?

 

Today Duane Scott and I are co-hosting a book club and discussion on Wonderstruck by Margaret Feinberg. Link up your posts on finding the wonder of God in the everyday (they’ll show up on both our sites) and join the discussion in the comments and on our Facebook page throughout the week, Redemptions Beauty Book Club.

BOOK CLUB SCHEDULE

May 1: Chapter 008-009

May 8: Chapter 010-Final Thoughts

Linking with Emily for Imperfect Prose and Jennifer for Tell His Story.



Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

We’re Walking Each Other Home

March 8, 2013 by 33 Comments

rbhome

I’ve heard people say it takes three years to feel at home somewhere.  I think it takes a lifetime.

Lamp light glows from the corner of the family room, illuminating colored plastic bowls holding melted ice cream and brownie crumbs. A battlefield of celebrating seventeen scattered sideways over orange shag. She turned the lights out wearing dolman sleeves full of joy, an owl necklace smiling.

“I have some of the greatest friends,” she texted me from school earlier today.

“Yep, you do,” I texted back. “I’m thankful for that.”

God answered my prayers on the fifth year of our wandering.  Would you give her friends, I asked.

Aren’t we supposed to love our neighbor as our self?

And some may find it strange that He answered with a phone call every parent hopes they won’t get. He saves her from an inch of her life in a collision with a semi and it uncorks the gift of friendship.

But it’s not strange to me. Home is where hearts huddle together and hold on for the meaning of life.  And that takes more than three years, it takes a lifetime to walk each other home. For redemption to hang off your shoulder.

rbhome1

Linking with Lisa Jo for Five Minute Friday with the one word prompt: Home.

 

Filed Under: Five Minute Friday Tagged With: , , , , ,

Listen to Your Tears

February 18, 2013 by 58 Comments

rbtears

Chills form on my forearm as I lean on the door throwing kisses to H and Harrison seated in the car. The cold wind whips underneath the garage door as it makes a slow descent, marking the start of a new day.  Turning around to silence, I pick up my cup of tea steaming on the kitchen counter and sit down at my desk to read the Psalms with a blanket over my knees. And I wipe away the tears streaming down my face.

I don’t remember a day in 2012 that I didn’t cry after my family left the house to begin their day.

After four decades of walking with Christ, my idealistic view of the faithful shattered in the duplicitous actions of leaders I’d grown to love.  It took a year of wrestling with the words of David to heal. He put meaning to my grief, forming sentences from the heap of hollow holiness strewn on the doorstep of my faith.  His laments, they helped me to find hope again.

Last week, as I sat in a conference space listening to Emily Freeman say listen to your tears, I realized that there are an entirely different kind of tears I hadn’t given a second thought.

Unlike tears of sorrow, she spoke of tears that come from a place deep inside, where the heart sings. And now, instead of trying to gather myself during a sermon or wipe off the mascara before it leaves black streaks on my cheeks in a movie theater, I’m paying attention.

“It’s not enough to say a story moved you but think about what it was about that story that moved you.  That is a hint to where you are most fully alive. They are not just tears, they are tiny messengers sent to tell you, here is where your heart beats strong, a hint to your design, your image bearing identity.”  ~Emily Freeman

Days before I listened to Emily, I sat in my pajamas scrolling through the ethereal photos on the website of a gifted photographer, piling up wads of wet tissue on my desk feeling ridiculous. On another day, I used my bed sheet to wipe my face while watching a documentary on a man of faith, living joyful without the use of his legs. It’s not uncommon for me to cry while witnessing a firefighter or policeman do his/her job.

Tears, that’s probably why I’ve watched The Holiday repeatedly. If you’ve seen it, you know Cameron Diaz’ character cannot cry for years until she experiences true love.

And I realized that redemption, it moves me to tears. Watching someone live it out is an act of worship. It’s how I know when I’m most fully alive. Because every time I see redemption present in someone else, it’s a reminder of the gift in my own life. The beauty of redemption, it makes my heart sing.

This year I’m smiling my way through the Psalms and laughing about the pile of tissues on my lap.

I’m just wondering, have you thought about your tears as tiny messengers giving you hints to the way God made you to bear His image?

Linking with Michelle, Laura, Heather and Jen.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

What is Saving Your Life?

December 20, 2012 by 42 Comments

rbleavingchurch

“Sometimes [salvation] comes as an extended human hand and sometimes as a bolt from the blue, but either way it opens a door in what looked for all the world like a wall. This is the way of life, and God alone knows how it works.” Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church

I stood in the middle of my narrow walk-in closet, like a child in the forest under rows of sweaters bowing their branches to inspect the crown of my head. My skirt crumpled to the floor around my ankles, I grabbed an empty hanger and I heard these words, “Blogging is saving your life right now.” And the folding chair of my frame collapsed on the floor with my skirt. While my family made sandwiches for lunch after church, I sobbed under the fluorescent cadence of my salvation.

Six months earlier, I lamented over leaving a writing job I loved. And started blogging.

That day in my closet, I realized my reasons for walking away from writing relationships with leaders and their stories wasn’t just about stepping out in faith to fulfill calling. God was providing a way of rescue.

My life built around the pew snagged on deep disappointment, unraveling my Pollyanna point of view. And the new friendships I made on-line with you here, in this space of my blog, they saved this season of my life.

rbleavingchurchfinal

Beginning this series six weeks ago, I was pregnant with expectancy. I asked the question, “How do we walk out our faith in the midst of pain, suffering, disappointment and loneliness,” and just like that unexpected experience in the middle of my closet, I was blindsided by the answer.

He revealed salvation anew, in the protection of my daughter in an early morning collision with a semi; that true Thanksgiving celebrates the gift of breath around the table of plenty.

Grief in leaving the only church I’d known in my seaside town found redemption among hundreds setting sail for new land, leaving wishful thinking strewn on shore.

And I’m echoing Peter, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16)

I stood among strangers on a Sunday, raising my hands in Alleluia. With tears streaming down my face I realized that just like my relationship with God, I need church more than it needs me. Because death is cheap and life is costly. And in the communion of the saints, I stand eyewitness to His majesty.   

In the last chapter of Leaving Church, Taylor responds to this question posed at a speaking engagement, “What is saving your life now.” For her, the answer was teaching school, living in relationship with creation, observing the Sabbath, encountering God in other people, committing herself to the task of becoming fully human.

My answer?  Jesus’ loving me when I don’t deserve it. Redemption, it’s what is saving my life. That revelation found me crumpled in a heap in the bottom of my closet.

What about you, what is saving your life?

Thank you for joining this six-week journey of walking out our faith in the midst of hardship and difficulty. I have seen the face of God in your comments and emails; they give me strength for the journey. 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On Fractured Friendship and Shouldering Hope

December 5, 2012 by 41 Comments

rbfracturedfriendship

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.

rbfracturedfriendship1

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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why Healing Can’t Be Hurried Up

November 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

Sitting under the square hole in the mud wall, a window without glass or screen, I prop my voice recorder on the meager table and begin asking questions. I’m unprepared to hear the answers. How does one describe the horror of seeing their entire family mutilated and then go on to forgive their perpetrators?

Young Rwandans take turns on the couch across from me. Sit next to an interpreter and describe being orphaned, captured, beaten, raped, pillaged and wandering during the 1994 genocide. Then they share the redemption, how living in Hope Village changes their lives.

A five year effort fund raising for this child-headed village of 80 children brought me here. I can’t swallow their suffering stuck in my throat. I barely hold the recorder steady for the trembling emotion ready to tumble out.

I’ve never known this kind of suffering. Their stories cast light on the shadows of my own experience. Yet how do I feel more at home with my Rwandan friends than those in my own seaside southern community?

Please join me at Thorns and Gold to finish the story. I’m Tanya Marlow’s guest today on her series God and Suffering: Our Story and would be honored to see you there in the comments. I have a board on Pinterest called I live in England, in my heart and she’s one of the reasons I do.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
«Older Posts