lightbulbs

When you live over seas for an extended period of time, it isn't so much the large things that get you, like being a thousand miles from your family.  You prep for those kinds of things and adjust your life.  It's the little things, like the clerk not helping you bag your groceries or not getting ice in your water at a restaurant - the little things you don't prepare for mentally, that somehow have the power to spontaneously and completely unhinge you.

Being a widow and a single mom is somewhat similar.  You expect holidays to be difficult.  You plan ahead and put on your game face.  It is almost surprising how easy they are because of the hustle and bustle.  But changing the light bulbs... Now there's a task that can completely unhinge me.  Shortly after Emmett died, I was wondering why all my rooms were so dim, and I realized that about half my lightbulbs were burnt out.  I'm not sure I changed a lightbulb for the entire time Emmett and I were married.  It's just something he did.  He noticed poor lighting and changed the bulbs.  I noticed dirty bathrooms and cleaned them.  It wasn't exactly equal division of labor, but it worked.  So when I went to change the lightbulbs, I wasn't even entirely sure where we kept them.  And wouldn't you know that nearly every single light fixture in my house requires a different size and shape of bulb.  So when a light goes out, it's another trip to the store for a special bulb.  So when my shower light went out again this week, I sure did want to cuss.  I'm still showering in the semi-dark with the sensor light in the rest of the bathroom turning off every five minutes.  Because I'm awesome.  And lazy.  Mostly lazy, I guess.

Quinn came home from school yesterday, and when I asked him how the day went, he suddenly got very confessional.  "Mom," he said, "I'm sorry. We had to write down what we were thankful for, but I only had room for three things, and you didn't make it on the list, but I really am thankful for you."  I chuckled and asked him what made it on the list.  He looked me straight in the eye with the biggest grin on his face and said, "ME! And the world and God because I love the world he made."

Recently Quinn has been bringing up the world and how God made it and how much he loves it.  On Sunday we talked about what it meant to be a new creation and how God was making all things new.  Last night as we read the last chapter in his Jesus Storybook Bible, which is amazing, by the way.  The chapter is about the letter of Revelations, and it is such a beautiful picture of heaven and God making all things new and right.  At the very end, after this chapter, is a little part about saying yes to Jesus and being made new.  Quinn likes to read that, as I've always assumed to stretch out bedtime a little longer.  He's seen baptisms, and when he brings it up we talk about that passage and how one day he can make a choice to follow Jesus.  Usually we go on about our business and he forgets about it, but last night he was adamant that he wanted to say yes to Jesus right then.

Now having come to faith as a young adult, I have a hearty skepticism that borders on a sinful disdain of people who say they accepted Jesus as a child.  Now I know it can happen, but I sure was surprised to find Quinn so adamant and myself so hesitant.  I caught myself wanting to say he couldn't pray right then because there's no way he was old enough to really choose.  And then I thought, "but that's not the gospel!"  So being the good mom I am, I threw out a caveat knowing how much he doesn't like to pray out loud.  I said "okay, but you have to pray for yourself because no one else can do this for you."  He looked at me without flinching and agreed, though he asked me to help him know how to pray. I also said he'd have to talk with our pastor and let him know how he felt about Jesus, to which he also very surprisingly agreed.  And then totally out of the blue he said, "but I'm only going to get baptized if I can wear goggles."  I'm sure Jesus got a chuckle out of that one.

After praying and finishing bedtime I hopped on the treadmill for a long run to help me process the day and the upcoming holidays.  On the one hand, I was overflowing with joy at Quinn's heart, but on the other hand, I thought, "well, crap, now he's got a big target on his forehead."  I found myself thankful, but mostly terrified about how to shepherd this child without Emmett.  How in the world will I do that when I can't even manage to change the lightbulb in my shower?

hope

Epistemology.  A fancy word that nerdy people like to throw around that essentially means the study of how we know something.

Hope. An expectation of or desire for something good to happen in the future.

At some point last month, I sat among the women of our community group and couldn't think of a single prayer request to offer, even though I felt adrift in a sea of chaos.  I couldn't put my feelings into words until later when a friend from that group asked me how I was doing, the real question, not just the passing courtesy.  It was a hard question to answer.  Luckily it was a friend who expected a real answer, and I said, "honestly, the best news I could get right now would be that I had a terminal illness or that Jesus was coming back tomorrow."  Like the best of friends, she wasn't embarassed by the weightiness of my confession, and so we embarked on a short conversation about hope that stirred new thoughts and feelings to the surface.

I have been aware for some time of this overwhelming desire to be with Jesus, not because I'm particularly holy, but rather because I have no reasonable hope that my life here will get better before then.  Yet I have also felt this desire to be peculiarly sinful because it is a desire borne from weariness rather than love, a desire more focused on squirming out of responsibility rather than following Christ.  I suspect that anyone who has also seen her future drastically redefined by the illness or death of a family member might feel this way.

So I find myself on a prayer journey towards hope.  At a funeral recently, so many strange phrases were thrown out about deceased loved ones, that I began to realize that people, myself included, have no idea what the Bible says about death, resurrection, heaven, and the new creation.  My heart has always been stirred by passages like Isaiah 54 and Revelations 21 that speak of creation being made new and whole again.  Yet I find myself stumped at how this future changes my life today.

So I picked up a book called Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright.  It's been sitting around for a couple months, and the Spirit finally pressed it on my heart.  In grand Eeyore fashion, I picked it up and said to myself, "Well, maybe it'll do some sort of good because, after all, it does have the word hope in the title."  Big pathetic sigh.

I hesitate to quote the book because I am pretty sure I haven't got to the really good part yet.  I'm still in the opening chapters, where I'm only underlining about half the sentences.  But I will leave you with this tidbit:

Hope, for the Christian, is not wishful thinking or mere blind optimism.  It is a mode of knowing, a mode within which new things are possible, options are not shut down, new creation can happen.

I'm learning that God is transitioning my hope from a small, selfish desire for things to work out for my good in this world to a broader way of seeing the story of Christ unfolding in his new creation.  That maybe he wants to transform not only my actions, but the way I see his story unfold in the world.

how my mother-in-law ruined my life

I mean, did October really have to come with a bulldozer and bury me alive? Sheesh!  I was doing really well as a single mom until Quinn's fall break and a visit from my mother-in-law completely unhinged me.  Now, I know that the phrase "mother-in-law" is almost universally negative because of cultural stereotypes, but I happen to love mine.  She cooks, she cleans, she spoils Quinn but still enforces basic manners, and she made my life much easier during Quinn's fall break the first week of October.  I got to wake up at a reasonable hour, leave for work early, get things done, work out, attend an event on a school night by myself, not do the dishes and find them magically cleaned the next morning, not make the final round to shut things down every night.  All the things you get to do without thinking about them when you have a husband, but none of which you get to do as a single mom.

And then she left.  That's how she ruined my life.

Because I remembered all the selfish reasons I miss Emmett.  Apparently so did Quinn.  He's been dreaming about his dad and asking for pictures and stories.  Add to that Emmett's birthday, which was  yesterday, and we've both pretty much been basket cases all month.

Two days ago Quinn and I went to bed at 7 pm.  Yes, 7 pm.  Now I'm pretty sure I even broke my own record for early bedtime that night because I was asleep by 7:30.  On top of just not being able to get my act together this month, this week has been particularly tough on multiple levels.  A student lost her mom this week and Quinn broke his arm.  So as I crawled in bed Friday night I prayed one of those wordless prayers that come out when you get way down to the bottom of your soul and there's nothing really left to say.

And then I slept the whole night for the first time in weeks, although by whole night I mean until 3 am.  Because let's face it, when you go to bed at 7 pm, then 3 am is a reasonable wake up time.  I got out of bed around 4 am and did what I always do when I'm crawling back from that place at the bottom of my soul; I cleaned my room.  You'd think I would clean my room on a weekly basis since it is apparently such a spiritual event for me, but really it only happens every few months.  Just when I seem to get a little balance in my life, God tweaks it just enough - like that game Jenga - and everything crashes in a heap, and then, I clean my room.

But seriously, people.  I spend time with God.  I pray.  I live a quiet, sober life full of reflection and meditation.  I go to Bible study and try to be nice to people.  I give where and how I can.  I play with my kid and pack him healthy lunches.  And I do these things even when I'm not feeling the Holy Spirit mojo because I know I need these things.  Then SHOULDN'T I BE OVER BEING CRAZY BY NOW?  I thought I was an adult.  Isn't that what being an adult means?  That sensible, responsible living means you get to stop being crazy?

If truth be told though, I found plenty of reasons to lose it when Emmett was alive and well.  Maybe it's a good thing he can't tell you the whole truth.  Cause I could get crazy.  All that has really changed is what kinds of things make me lose it.  God likes to nudge me over the edge just in case I might start to feel like I have it all together. And nothing I can do, no matter how holy it is, can prevent God's little nudge from sending me whirling into chaos. I've discovered that I like orderliness and quietness and sensibleness and peace, sometimes more than I like God.  I can carve a life that suits me out of the chaos around me, and I can defend that little space against all sorts of evil.  But then God sends someone like my mother-in-law to be kind and caring and loving, and He completely destroys my little space.

So be careful when you're nice to people, because genuine service and love may be God's way of showing them kindness. And the kindness of the Lord, though it be all sorts of painful, truly does lead us to repentance, but often the road to repentance first passes through the land of crazy.  So when you're kind to people, they may get crazy.

I don't even have words yet to say what I'm repenting of because in the midst of all the crazy, I've felt deeply cherished by God, like he's ridiculously in love with me and well pleased with me.  Maybe that's all I needed, was to feel that again.  Either way, I'm glad my mother-in-law likes to ruin my life and I'm very thankful that she does, even though I'm still clawing my way out of crazy.

tenant wanted

At some point last week I remembered that I had a blog.  It's been several weeks, nearly a month, since I've written.  At first I thought, well, I don't have anything to write.  And then I thought, oh, well, I'll write later because I'm not feeling so much like writing now.  Now I wonder if anyone will even read this one, as it's been so long.  And I find I don't really care about the readers, but I'm drawn back for the words - words that have been swimming in my consciousness, catching bits of light now and then like baubles hung in my grandmother's window.

I'm reading so much and living so intensely.  I found myself weeping over the passages in Exodus about slavery, weeping for the tender way in which God constructed his laws to protect the poor and helpless.  I've driven into a sunset whose brilliant colors were muted by a wispy, almost invisible cloud line on the horizon and thought how perfectly that fits how I see God's brilliance right now.  I've taken a walk on a fall morning after a night of rain and felt poetry drop into my heart, like a little gift that blossomed and grew.  My skin bears numerous scars from the yard work during our service project day where we cleaned up another widow's yard.  The angry red welts looks so much like my soul feels, that I smile at them like they're old friends.

In Phantasties,  by George MacDonald, the narrator traveling through faerie land notes that the irony of sorrow is how it carves out hollow spaces in our soul where we can experience a uniquely deep and abiding joy.  You might even say that we can only experience joy to the extent that we have lived well through sorrow.  I have whole new unexplored caverns in my soul carved out by sorrow.  Joy is poking around, trying the new spaces on for size.  We'll see if it takes up residence.

little by little

Last weekend I attended a conference with a high school friend.  We made a couple new friends while we were there and were blessed by so much laughter that it was deeply good for the soul.  I forget exactly how it came up -- maybe we were arguing about who had to go ask something, I'm not quite sure -- but one of our new acquaintances suggested I go do it, followed by saying something nice like, "because you're so good at meeting people."  To which I laughed out loud.  Then my high school friend said something to the effect of, "I'm glad you laughed because I was going to try to hold my tongue, but you weren't like that at all in high school."  We then regaled the girls with lovely stories of me in high school to demonstrate exactly why that statement was so funny.

When I think about my life and the redemptive power of the Holy Spirit, I just have to laugh.  Recently I started a journey through the books of the law with the idea of looking at the law through the lens of Christ coming to fulfill the law. I thought I would breeze through Exodus on the way to more high brow (aka boring) passages of the law where I would make all sorts of intellectual parallels because I'm awesome like that.  Please read the sarcasm in that sentence because I really was feeling pretty impressed with myself.  But as I got into Exodus where God was talking about the promised land, he pressed on my heart that if we are a new creation in Christ, then we are called out of the wilderness of sin and death and into the promised land of that new creation.  That "new heart" he talks about in Ezekiel so much (see chapters 11 & 36) is just like the promised land where God was leading Israel.  God promises to drive out the nations from the promised land by sending his angel before the people of Israel.  The way God talks it sounds like the Israelites just have to saunter in with a toy sword, kind of like Quinn does every morning in his underwear, and the nations will fall over dead.  But here's what struck me in Exodus 23:

I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land. (Exodus 23:29-30 ESV)

 This verse is repeated almost verbatim in Deuteronomy 7, and when I read it, I thought, "Of course! This is my life!"  When I became a Christian I spent so many years being mad at God because he didn't make it easy to be holy.  For a long time, I've clung to the verse in Hebrews 10:

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10:14 ESV)

 This intricately, patient, focused, almost surgical attack on my sinful nature has been going on so long that sometimes I have trouble noticing it.  Honestly, though, if God had changed my heart all at once, I'd have fallen over dead or still be drooling in a looney bin right now.  Because I did not grow up with Jesus, even my issues have issues, and giving me a new heart is more like a lifelong heart surgery that a cheap magic trick that is no more than a slight of hand.  More than just giving me a new heart I need to learn holiness so that I can increase and possess this new creation that God calls me to be.

Lately I have felt the weight of emptiness on my heart.  I found myself grieving all sorts of random things, some valid like the loss of the family Emmett and I wanted to have, and some ridiculous like the   size and shape of my head.  In creeps the worm of Satan, whispering to me, "God doesn't really love you.  He doesn't really want you to be happy or he'd have given you a prettier head."  Just like the Israelites are about to mess things up when Moses goes up to the mountain, I feel the temptation to doubt God's goodness and love pressing down on me, tempting me to turn away.  But that phrase - little by little - keeps haunting me, foreshadowing the new creation God is working in me.  And if He can do this much work in me since I became a believer over 15 years ago, then I'm going to be freaking awesome when Jesus returns. Just sayin.

vector addition and dance parties

I have a class this year I particularly love.  It's the kind of class where you put on a random music playlist for lab day only to look up and see them all dancing in perfect time to "Call Me Maybe."  Even the quiet ones have a little head bop going.  It is a rare mix of students that can mix laughter and work without losing one or the other, and we have a lot of fun doing the strangest things. Yesterday I was teaching vector addition using the component method (aren't you jealous?) because I'm about to begin projectile motion and forces (again, I can sense your jealousy).  It is easily the most difficult and least exciting class because it's all math and we can't quite shoot anything yet.  We basically work three problems in ninety minutes, but at the end of class I look around, and every single one of the students is thinking and wrestling and working together and sort of getting it and learning.  And every single one of us needs a nap because we did more thinking in ninety minutes than most people do all week.  Even if they never really get vector addition (and some may not), I feel like I've given them practice in how to engage in a difficult problem in an energizing way.  That lesson is much more useful to learn than vector addition.  Sweet.  Now I can retire, or at least take a nap while my next class builds robots.

I've been meditating on the topic of desire for some time now as God has been teaching me about the inner recesses of my heart.  It's pretty ugly in there.  Working through Exodus has been eye opening.  For the past few days I've been looking at Exodus 15-17, where God provides water and manna for the Israelites in the wilderness.  There's a strange tension here that never really gets resolved throughout the whole Bible.  The tension between asking and receiving.

Look at the Israelites.  They're stranded in the desert with no water and lots of people and livestock.  It's hot, it's smelly, everyone's thirsty.  It isn't really that surprising that they grumbled and moaned instead of skipping up to Moses and using their best manners with the qualifier, "if it's your will, Lord."  They really were going to die if they didn't get water.  And God came through, despite their lack of manners, yet he continued to point out that his provision was a test to see if they would diligently listen to the voice of the Lord.  And they don't.  They try to hoard the manna.  They go out on the Sabbath to "get ahead" instead of resting.  Anything they're told not to do, they try it like a bunch of mindless sheep, just in case God was wrong.

um... conviction, maybe?

And, if that weren't enough conviction,  then Jesus had to go and call himself the bread of heaven in John 6.  He feeds 5,000 people and they follow him because they want more.  I'm assuming most of them could have gone back home and had something to eat.  It wasn't really a dire situation, but why not follow this dude who just creates food out of nothing because that is way easier than working for it?    Jesus calls them out on it, pointing out they're just following him to get something, and they need to go work for food that doesn't spoil.  Not only does he not give them more food, he tells them to get to work for God, not for earthly food.  And you know what, the people are okay with that.  They're willing to work, but they want to know exactly what to do to get what they want.  They're willing to be plenty polite and respectful, as long as Jesus will give them what they want.  When Jesus tells them the work of God is to believe in Jesus, they're okay with that too...  As long as Jesus is willing to work another miracle (I mean, just one more so I can be REALLY be sure...).  Lo and behold, the miracle they ask for is more bread, "after all," they say, "Moses gave us manna, what can you give us that's better?"  Needless to say the conversation degenerates from there because the people following Jesus here are only interested in whether he can give them what they want.  The crowds end up leaving because they can't get what they want, so they go elsewhere to find it.

ouch.

And I'm struck at how God gives us what we need, no matter how much grumbling we do, but he will not give us everything we want no matter how polite we ask or how much we conform to a set of outward rules.  But even his provision is a way of testing us to see if we are faithful.  Do I hoard what he's given me today? Do I try to get ahead when I should be resting?  Do I grumble because the manna he gives me today is the same as it was yesterday?  Do I turn away or grow weary or complain because he hasn't given me what I wanted today?  The answer to all of these is yes, of course.

Later in Numbers 11 it talks about how the people of Israel grumbled about how boring the manna was, and they were longing for the cucumbers and melons of Egypt.  I may have laughed a little out loud at that verse, but I'd pay serious money for Quinn to fondly long for a cucumber.  I've noticed in my heart that I have been complaining the same way lately.  I am grateful for the Lord's provision.  I am aware of the Lord's provision, but does it really have to look like this? Couldn't it be more exciting, romantic, adventurous?

When I first began to know the Holy Spirit, he was doing a lot of work on my outward attitudes and words.  And though he still has a long way to go, I can now blend in pretty well in Christian circles.   The state of my heart is a different story, as it has been largely neglected through self-delusion and blindness.  It's like God is rubbing his hands together and saying, "It's time to get down to business."  Because what I say and how I say it doesn't concern God nearly as much as whether the desires of my heart are aligned with his desires for me.

Because my awesome class is teaching me that when I teach something mind numbingly difficult like vector addition with components, it helps to be a good teacher with good lesson plans, but what really matters is that my class is ready and willing to go there with a good attitude.  Am I willing to jump into my life and engage with the difficult parts because that is what God wants me to be doing right now?  Or will I grumble and complain to get what I want?  Or maybe retreat into my exterior conformity and argue that I deserve something better?  I think today I've decided to join my awesome class for a brief dance party in the midst of a mind-numbingly difficult life, rejoicing in every last circumstance God has given me, especially the tough ones.

parallel universe

Pretty sure I woke up this morning in a parallel universe.  I mean, everything was technically the same and I couldn't really point out any meaningful differences in my life, except for a number of odd interactions.  Finally when Quinn looked at me over dinner in complete seriousness and totally unprompted says, "I really should be making my own lunches."  I thought, "Sure, why not? And let's just apply for college while we're at it.  Where did I wake up this morning?"

I was reading in Exodus about Israel's journey from Egypt, and I never quite realized before that an alternate route through the land of the Philistines existed (check out the end of Exodus 13).  By leading the Israelites to the Red Sea, God was leading them to an apparent dead end.  It seems that the ten plagues weren't sufficient.  God wanted to make sure the Israelites knew that they had no part in their own deliverance.  Then when the people are stuck and see Pharaoh coming, they cry out to Moses, who in turn cries out to God, and God replies, "Why do you cry out to me?"

Um... hello?  You led us to a dead end and Pharaoh's chasing us.  Thought that was obvious, God.

So God rescues them and then the Egyptian chariots get stuck in the mud.  I mean, what a great picture.  The most technologically advanced culture of the time is chasing the Israelites with their fancy schmancy chariots that no one can beat, and God takes them out with a little mud.  Gotta love his sense of humor, except when it's aimed at me, that is.

And I was reminded of Psalm 46.  You should go read it now.  The mountains are falling into the ocean, the earth is melting, wars are raging, and he commands us simply to behold and be still.  I suppose that's where I feel like I am, standing on the edge of the chaos and simply beholding.

So as I was beholding Quinn trying to make his PB&J with what he considered the appropriate peanut butter to jelly ratio, I felt like today was a beholding day.  I've spent a couple weeks beholding the depth of my sin and powerlessness to change myself, and today I felt I was beholding something a little different, only I'm not quite sure what He's up to.