God in the Darkness

It will come as no surprise to frequent readers to learn that I have lately struggled with depression. I'm certain I'm genetically predisposed to such bouts, and that predisposition has been fed copious amounts of environmental stress to trigger a dark season. For the longest time (and it has seemed the longest time), I kept operating under the assumption that there was something I needed to do or say or pray to turn on the light. Slowly, I have begun to recognize that it is better to know that this season isn't one to be pushed away under my own power and that God is with me in the dark. I really am feeling better, but it's still more than a little murky most days, a delicate balance of light and dark. Sharing (in person) with people who walk this way, too, often helps me to understand better myself. We wait together for the sun to rise.

I recently spoke with a woman in her early 30s who was surprised to find herself in an extended period of darkness. She and her husband had suffered a job loss, a pregnancy loss, and a move resulting in loss of support — all in the last two years. She goes through the motions of a practicing Catholic, but she feels as if God has abandoned her.

“When the calendar changed,” she said, “I thought now it will get better. Now God will show up in a new year. Now He’ll make good things happen and we’ll know He’s real and He loves us and maybe we’ll understand His plan. Now, I’ll feel God. Then, something else happened and I felt nothing but alone.”

It is a rite of passage perhaps to learn that life isn’t happily ever after and that extended periods of darkness are just as likely as extended periods of light. Perhaps the dark is precipitated by a series of unfortunate events as in the case of my friend. Or, perhaps, it’s the dark night of the soul that settles when one feels the loneliness that comes with at once knowing God exists and feeling distanced from Him.

Mother Teresa, who will soon be canonized, experienced prolonged bouts of profound feelings of abandonment. She confided, “Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. Love — the word — it brings nothing. I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.” Yet, she is remembered as a woman of cheerful service. How does one reconcile the darkness within in order to bear light to the world?

With that first dark night (and maybe with several that follow), it is entirely possible to stumble around futilely wondering why the Lord of light has abandoned you there. In the black, in the pain, in the unrelenting questioning, the key to survival is to recognize that the times that are hard beyond imagination are not devoid of God.

God is there in the darkness. He’s just as present as He is in the light. You don’t have to know why it happened or how it ends or whether it’s all going to work out in a way you consider favorable. You don’t have to hear answers to your questions. As Ravi Zaccharias so succinctly put it recently, “Having the answers is not essential to living. What is essential is the sense of God's presence during dark seasons of questioning.”

Essential.

When something is essential, it is absolutely necessary. We cannot survive unless we know God is present in the black. Something slowly dies within us unless we can rest in the presence of God even in darkness. What is needed on our behalf is not the wit or the strength to find the switch and turn on the lights so that we can see Him. On the contrary, we can have peace in the darkness only when we learn be still with Him in the dark.

The Best Book of the Summer, By Far

Every once in a rare while, a book comes along that seeps into my soul. When it happens, it's an answer to prayer, a whisper of the Holy Spirit after i've been casting about, begging to hear Him. It is extraordinary.

A few months ago, a draft copy of my friend Colleen Mitchell's new book Who Does He Say You Are? found its way to my inbox. I read it with tears streaming down my face, her good words watering my parched spirit. I know that dear readers here will recognize that Colleen is one of my best friends and that perhaps that makes my endorsement and hearty recommendation of this book somewhat unbiased;-), but  please hear me. This is one that you will return to again and again. You will flip it open at random and trust it to speak into your dark spaces, your wounds, your loneliness. 

Still don't quite believe me? Here are just a few quotes I gathered for myself. There were so many more. I've culled this list to a fraction of what I stopped to record on my first reading.(And truthfully, I chose by eliminating the ones with which Squarespace and I fought over formatting.)

As I write this morning, as I sift through just the quotes I've chosen and pick a few for you, I find this book ministering to me anew. I got up early (actually the smoke detector awakened us at 4:30--no fire, thank God) and I took the book with me on a morning run. I carried heavy burdens into the woods with me this morning, and a restlessness that miles and miles of running can't seem to vanquish. Now, post-run, in the relative stillness of a coffee shop at rush hour, these words bring peace.

If you read one book this summer, give yourself the gift of this one.

Oh, how I want to be an Elizabeth to our world. I want to be a woman whose faith in God’s promises holds no matter how long there is no visible evidence of it—a woman who uses her voice to bring hope to the weary and to rejoice with those who rejoice. I want to proclaim God’s goodness and faithfulness steadily, with great joy, regardless of what the world around me looks like—because when it is darkest, that is when my voice is most needed.

I forget that my hope is not that things will go as I planned, but that the Lord will make himself known, in the faces of my husband and children, in the unexpected joys of family life that pop up right in the middle of our messy chaos, in the ways he provides for me and shows me his tender care in the most detailed ways.

The courage to live the call to share Jesus with others comes from a hope that gives way to the discipline of prayer. Prayer inspires a life of joyful dependence on the Lord, which allows us to see and recognize him at work in the most surprising of ways. And from a heart focused on God blossoms the thanksgiving that overflows into sharing Christ with a waiting world.

In that embrace, she takes up the same work of all the righteous women we have already seen, that of Anna and Elizabeth, and of Woman herself: Mary. This woman whose life has been lived in anything but righteousness according to Jewish Law becomes their equal, their sister. And she shares in their work of professing Jesus to all she meets, announcing the coming of a Savior. In the eyes of the Lord, nothing in her past prohibits her from taking up her place at their sides.

He doesn’t ask that we compete for holiness or that we mold ourselves into some ill-fitting definition in order to appease him. But he wants us to learn to accept the grace of being loved by him, to learn to be content in who we are in him, so that we can be confident of what he can do for us.

I bet that you, like me, have known what it is like to be the invisible one in your own community, to be so wary of the judgmental glances and the avoidance maneuvers of others that you find it easier just to steer clear altogether

No one knew why the woman in this story kept bleeding. No one knew how to help her. No one knew what to do for her. And over time, no one knew her at all. Do you find yourself in that place? Bearing a pain that no one fully understands, so that no one fully knows what to do with you? And after enough time passes, it begins to seem that no one really knows you at all. You skim the outskirts of your own community, your own family, your own life, hide from the places where people gather, and learn to accept that you will never be fully healed, fully known, or fully accepted again.

We assume that our humanity and our sin are obstacles to Jesus, when, in fact, he has come to the place where we are and waited for us just so he can blow away the lines the world has drawn in the dust, and all the lines we ourselves have drawn too, with the breath of mercy.

He wants to heal us not only from the outside shame that keeps us baking in the public glare, but from the deep, personal shame that keeps us gingerly sidestepping our real wounds while we wither within.

I bow low to kiss the dirt, sure that I have earned my fate, that I deserve to be right where I am, buried under my sin and bruised and broken open by the guilty verdict I cannot rebuff. And more often than not, the fists waiting to cast the stones that will do me in are a million better versions of myself that I have not been, jeering and scoffing and mocking me in my weakness. Yes, the most sanctimonious Pharisee I ever face is the perfect version of myself, who just loves to barge into the heart of the real me—weak, tempted, sinner that I am—and pronounce her judgments with surety: failure, guilty, dirty, tainted, worthless.

First, he forgives. And then, he speaks the words that save—the words we don’t deserve, the words we could never merit, the words that revoke our death sentence and proclaim in its place life, hope, and wild grace.

I think of the way the sacrament of confession works on my own soul, how often I start out afraid to confront my own sin and bring it into the light, forgetting that the goal is not for me to sit shamefaced with my sin but to draw it out so that my own healing can take place. I leave confession, not bowed lower because of facing my sin, but restored by God’s mercy and sent out to live my purpose once again, to serve him with joy and hope. Jesus does not ignore my sin. He looks at it with the tenderness of his mercy and draws me up from it so that I may rise in freedom

The better portion she chose was to set aside the worry and anxiety that comes from measuring our worth by comparing ourselves to those around us, and to instead gaze fully on the face of her Savior who was there in their midst, present to her and offering her a freely given, unearned stamp of approval out of love. Leaning in, she wasn’t worried about what she could offer him, but she focused on what she could learn from him.

We do not have to find a way to be something we are not in order to please Jesus. We do not have to work for his approval. We only have to keep our gaze on him, to lean in and listen from whatever position in which we find ourselves, and to know that he is near. This is the only necessary thing for us to do to find contentment in our lives.

To Create a Home {and a giveaway}

I sat in a college town coffee shop early in January, waiting out the time while Patrick was in surgery, and spent some fortifying hours reading the reviewer's copy of a gem of a book. In the past few years, I've given a lot of thought to the role of women, particularly the role of women in a family. My own motherhood has been influenced more by one woman than any other. That woman is strong believer in home and a great encourager of women to invest their hearts and their time and their talent into the creation of a lifegiving home. She has mentored me and cheered me on since I was a very young mother. Her words, her voice, and her company are treasures of my heart.

That heart is battered these days--weary, worried, wondering. Did I invest too much here at home? Is the pervasive culture the one which will prevail? Will it mock me with the lofty dreams and the careful intentions standing stark against the brokenness of our realities as children grow into young adults? All families have cracked and broken places. I think, perhaps, I thought I could craft a home that would not. 

I believe in home.

Some days, I need to be affirmed in that belief.

My lovely mentor, wise and gentle, has done that so beautifully in her new book. With this book, in carefully crafted prose, Sally Clarkson has taken all the teachings of all these years and said, Yes, I know, this is going to be rough in spots and you will even stumble and fall, but keep going. Keep keeping on. This is worth doing. This matters for eternity.  And when she tells me to keep on, I find myself fortified to tell my children to keep on.

What makes this book really special is the voices of two generations. Sally shares her mothering experiences and all the love she invested in her home, and her daughter Sarah, now grown, offers her perspective. There, in the exquisite language of Sarah's heart, we hear the fruits of Sally's labors. We hear the richness of a young woman raised in an extraordinary home of love and grace. Want to know why this all matters so much? Ask Sarah. She'll tell you. 

During my time in the coffee shop with The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming, I put ink to paper and copied quotes worth keeping so that I can read them again and again. Today, I'm sharing them with you. I think these quotes will give you a glimpse of the true treasure that is this book. Brew yourself a cup of something warm and read slowly. When you're finished, leave a comment and let me know what you're thinking. You'll be entered to win a free copy of the book. I have THREE to give away. Isn't that very kind?

SALLY SAYS:

I reach hearts by cooking meals, by washing sheets and fluffing pillows, by reading a favorite book one more time even though I have it memorized.

It is not the indoctrination of theology forced down daily that crafts a soul who believes; it is the serving and loving and giving that surround the messages where souls are reached.

Food is the universal language that eases hearts to open, tying secure knots of intimacy while satisfying bodily hunger, weaving tiny threads of kindred needs into friendship, camaraderie, and truth.  

When we choose to feast together—take the trouble to make each meal, however humble, an occasion for mindfulness and gratitude—we acknowledge God’s artistry and provision and draw closer to Him as well.

“This is why I came home. I knew you all would fill me back up…” –Sally quoting Joel

 Love can heal so many wounds, and that healing often happens best in a protected environment.

 We never allowed our less-than-perfect house to keep us from inviting people in.

 It’s never quite the way we imagine it will be.

 The lives of most people I know have become increasingly fast paced, and our habits are increasingly drawn into the trivial. We read less and use Facebook more. We spend more time inside than out. We have access to more information than we’ve ever had, and yet we understand less and less. We allow the habit of busyness to replace our habits of prayer and Scripture reading. It is only natural that in the hustle and bustle of family life, craziness easily overwhelms the calm we need so badly. In our modern, consumerist culture, sometimes it seems nearly impossible to find that center.

 Wilderness experiences leave us parched, and through them God teaches us patience, trust, and compassion for others

 The more we practice remembering the story of God’s goodness, the better we can remember that, in Him, all will eventually be well.

 Our home culture has become richer because of the people we have folded into it.

 When I focus not on performance or perfection but on joy, gratitude, and service, everything seems to fall into place.

SARAH SAYS:

The goodwill of mothers is like the goodwill of God.

Home is the shelter where the lonely find rest and the sorrowing come to be comforted.

…home isn’t a place where loneliness never happens, but a place where loneliness is transformed.

Gratitude, in its very essence, yearns to give.

Through technology we have the ever-present hurry of the unsleeping modern world, and if we do not forge strong rhythms of rest and spaces of sacred quiet, that...frenzy will invade our homes and steal the life within.

The point of home is to be a refuge for the soul, a place where beauty can be encountered, truth told, goodness touched and known.

…home is the place where love makes us welcome, a shelter from which we will not be expelled.

…the cultivation of quiet spaces allows the souls within a home to take refuge in silence.

If you want to hear God speak, you need to have quiet time with Scripture. If you want to write a song, a novel, or a poem, you need to draw away and listen to all that echoes in your soul.

… it is only in the hushed spaces that we can clearly hear all that echoes in quiet skies, in the eyes of children, in our own inner voices.

…the sharing of a story accelerates the comradeship of souls.

When people inhabit a realm of imagination together, it’s inevitable that a bit of each person’s imagination and spirit is revealed to the others who sojourn in that marvelous placeA well-stocked kitchen is life for the body, but a library stocked with stories to share is eternal nourishment for the soul.

How joyous a thing it is to then arrive on the doorstep of a home whose windows are golden with waiting light, where soup is on the stove and the cupboard is stocked against any number of unexpected storms.

God grant that my home be such a shelter, a refuge whose windows are alight in welcome, drawing the lonely and wandering in from the cold.

Imagination is the first step to creation, the instigating spark that drives the actions of a hero. 

{{And if you want some more encouragement to restore your heart and home this Lent, please join us here.}}

He Sees You

There are days (and nights, lots of nights) when mothers feel as if they are toiling in obscurity. Who sees the things that require all our time and attention? Who hears us begging a baby to go to sleep because the clock is ticking into the wee hours of the morning and our sleep time before the other child awakes is becoming increasingly shorter? Who understands the inner-workings of our minds as we drive toward the school clinic in the middle of the day, all the while trying to figure out how we are going to complete the work left behind on the desk before its deadline? Who knows the thought process that went into planning, budgeting, shopping and cooking every meal on a family’s table, all while trying to pay tuition bills? More importantly, does anyone know or care who cleans the kitchen?

Motherhood is, by its very nature, isolating. Life twists and turns and challenges, and mothers meet the new day knowing one thing with certainty: There will be trials. Sometimes the trials are small and easily navigated. Sometimes they are brimming with disappointment and lonely anguish. Quiet and hidden, most mothers will endure at least a season of invisible suffering. 

That’s when we need to lean in and listen hard. That’s when God says, “I see you.” Just as He saw Hagar in the desert, sitting apart, too bereft to watch her son die of dehydration, He is watching, looking, noticing. And you can cast your eyes heavenward and say with confidence, as she did, “You are the God who sees me.” You can reach out in shy but powerful faith and touch His garment as did the woman in Luke 8, and He will know you are there. He will heal you. You might have thought you were all alone, but Jesus stops and notices.

He has heard every plea you’ve ever uttered. He has counted every hair on your head. But even more than that, He has seen every tear you’ve ever shed. He has heard every hurtful word ever said to you. And He’s heard every prayer you’ve ever prayed. He knows them and He treasures them and He will spend your lifetime and then eternity answering every one of them.

God sees you. He hears you. He knows you.

The biblical examples are ones of tormented women. Hagar was a mother who was suffering desperately. The woman in Luke had been bleeding profusely for years. Chances are, the challenges of our daily lives are not nearly so dire. Still, we want to be seen. We want to receive, from the Lover of our souls, the blessed gift of attention. 

And He wants to give it. The beautiful thing about knowing that God sees us? It makes it so that we are more inclined to seek Him. 

When we awaken in the morning, whether after a sleepless night with a fussy baby or a vigil beside a deathbed or even (miracle of miracles) a good night’s sleep, He sees us. And He is waiting. He wants to hold captive the first thoughts of our day. He wants us to find Him, to see Him, to know that His mercies are new every morning. 

Give God the first moments of your day. Awaken to the truth that He sees you and then open your eyes to the splendor that is Him. Before social media and that quick check of email, before morning news, even before a shower, check in with God. He’s waiting and watching. He sees you and He wants your attention. You’ve already got His.

Don't Blink

As I try to overcome some of the archive obstacles that happened with my blog move, I'm using Thursday to post favorites that might otherwise have gotten lost in the move. Below is a double throwback that three people asked me to help them find last week. But, this time, there's an afterword (so we're working in three time zones here). It was serendipitous that Katie took some pictures that made me think of the last time I re-posted this one. God had a plan back then, didn't he? All is well. 

~*~*~*~*~*~

I was hanging the lining of Sarah's carseat to dry after the barfing episode and Katie wandered into the laundry room. 

"So, I guess now that it's all clean and beautiful, you'll put it away until we have another baby? Sarah hates that carseat."

And the tears spring way too easily. I lean into the dryer even though there is nothing in there. I don't want her to see.

"No, we'll put it away until we find someone who needs it. My guess is that Mommy's too old to have another baby."

"That's ridiculous. We should adopt."

She skips away to discuss Haitian adoptions with Nicky, who would really rather adopt a boy his age than a baby.

I finish hanging the rest of the items from that offensive load; the Ergo is last to find a hanger. It smells so sweet now. We have at least one more season with my little one nestled against me in this carrier. I remember one of my favorite hugs ever, right around this time last year, when Sarah was asleep in the Ergo just after Paddy won the State Cup. She was sandwiched between us. Life was perfect that day: funny, interesting teenagers; utterly engaging middle kids; twirling, dancing toddlers; and a baby asleep on my chest. My dear husband utterly delirious to be in their company. One more season of the Ergo. I know that it is unlikely that I will give it away. It will end up in my hope chest with Michael's Peter Pan costume and Stephen's and Nicky's matching gecko shirts and Katie's crocheted bunny hat. All little pieces of fabric in the quilt of our lives.

Sarah's nearly 17 months old. She gets sick riding backwards. It's time to move on to a bigger carseat. What the heck? It's a carseat. Why do I care so much?

Because I know.

I've been here before. If I blink--if I dare to blink--the tears that fill my eyes will surely run down my face.

Remember this? 

Don't Blink

For the first time in a very long time, I am neither pregnant nor mothering a baby. My "baby" is now two years old. And with a certainty that takes my breath away, I suddenly understand why wise women always told me that the time would go so quickly. To be sure, I’ve had more "baby time" than most women. My first baby will be 16 in a few days. I still think it’s over much too soon.

This column is for mothers of infants and toddlers. I am going to attempt to do something I never thought I’d do: I’m going to empathize while not in your situation. My hope is that it is all so fresh in my memory that I can have both perspective and relevance.

What you are doing, what you are living, is very difficult. It is physically exhausting. It is emotionally and spiritually challenging. An infant is dependent on you for everything. It doesn’t get much more daunting: there is another human being who needs you for his very life. Your life is not your own at all. You must answer the call (the cry) of that baby, regardless of what you have planned. This is dying to self in a very pure sense of the phrase. And you want to be with him. You ache for him. When he is not with you, a certain sense of restlessness edges its way into your consciousness, and you are not at complete peace.

If you are so blessed that you have a toddler at the same time, you wrestle with your emotions. Your former baby seems so big and, as you settle to nurse your baby and enjoy some quiet gazing time, you try desperately to push away the feeling that the great, lumbering toddler barreling her way toward you is an intruder. Your gaze shifts to her eyes, and there you see the baby she was and still is, and you know that you are being stretched in ways you never could have imagined.

This all might be challenge enough if you could just hunker down in your own home and take care of your children for the next three years; but society requires that you go out — at least into the marketplace. So you juggle nap schedules and feeding schedules and snowsuits and carseats. Just an aside about carseats: I have literally had nightmares about installing carseats. These were not dreams that I had done it wrong or that there had been some tragedy. In my dreams I am simply exhausted, struggling with getting the thing latched into the seat of the car and then getting my baby latched into the carseat. I’m fairly certain anyone else who has ever had four of these mechanical challenges lined up in her van has had similar dreams. It’s the details that overwhelm you, drain you, distract you from the nobility of it all. The devil is in the details.

You will survive. And here is the promise: if you pray your way through this time, if you implore the Lord at every turn, if you ask Him to take this day and this time and help you to give Him something beautiful, you will grow in ways unimagined. And the day will come when no one is under two years old. You will — with no one on your lap — look at your children playing contentedly together without you. And you will sigh. Maybe, like me, you will feel your arms are uncomfortably empty, and you will pray that you can hold a baby just once more. Or maybe, you will sense that you are ready to pass with your children to the next stage. 

This is the place where nearly two decades of mothering babies grants me the indulgence of sharing what I would have done differently. I would have had far fewer obligations outside my home. Now, I see that there is plenty of time for those, and that it is much simpler to pursue outside interests without a baby at my breast. I wish I’d spent a little more time just sitting with that baby instead of trying to "do it all." 

I wish I’d quieted the voices telling me that my house had to look a certain way. I look around now and I recognize that those houses that have "that look" don’t have these children. Rarely are there a perfectly-kept house and a baby and a toddler under one roof. Don’t listen to the voices that tell you that it can be done. It should not be done. I wish I hadn’t spent 16 years apologizing for the mess. Just shoot for "good enough." Cling to lower standards and higher goals. 

I wish I’d taken more pictures, shot more video and kept better journals. I console myself with the knowledge that my children have these columns to read. They’ll know at least as much about their childhoods as you do. 

I wish I could have recognized that I would not be so tired forever, that I would not be standing in the shallow end of the pool every summer for the rest of my life, that I would not always have a baby in my bed (or my bath or my lap). If I could have seen how short this season is (even if mine was relatively long), I would have savored it all the more.

And I wish I had thanked Him more. I prayed so hard. I asked for help. But I didn’t thank Him nearly enough. I didn’t thank Him often enough for the sweet smell of a newborn, for the dimples around pudgy elbows and wrists, for the softening of my heart, for the stretching of my patience, for the paradoxical simplicity of it all. A baby is a pure, innocent, beautiful embodiment of love. And his mother has the distinct privilege, the unparalleled joy, of watching love grow. Don’t blink. You’ll miss it.

*~*~*~*~*

It is 2015. Yesterday, Katie captured these moments of another baby and a beautiful young woman whom I didn't yet know when I wrote the words above. She's wearing my granddaughter in my beloved Ergo.

I do remember how hard those young mothering days can be and I can empathize. These days, we've fallen into a rhythm of multi-generational friendship and support that I could never have even imagined. Grace upon grace. And this time, I'm thanking Him all the time.

Top of the grateful list: every once in awhile I still get a turn to wear the Ergo.