In which I apologise for yesterday's post

My friends, I apologise for my post yesterday. I feel like it didn't communicate my overall heart very well; it was smug, judgemental and a bit holier-than-thou. It bugged me all day long - I knew what i wanted to say but I knew I hadn't said it well - but then I couldn't sleep last night for feeling like I'd somehow written something that might bring you sorrow or shame and it was everything in me to stay in bed at 2 o'clock instead of coming here to write you this note. So now it's the more respectable 6AM and since Ever is up, I can finally do what I should have done yesterday.

I never meant to cause you hurt. I never meant to act like I have it all figured out because, trust me, I am well aware of how much I have to learn. I write quickly; 20 minutes, 45 tops, when an idea hits. I just bang it out, publish it and walk away. That one yesterday could have used a few days to sit and simmer because I would have seen what a few of you might feel by reading it. Yes, I do believe - and have experienced - that marriage can make you both happy and holy but for some reason, my way of writing it out yesterday just seemed self-serving. Because I also believe in marriage counselling, in fighting for your relationship, in sticking with it when it hurts, in praying and standing and defending each other. The marriages that have weathered massive storms deserve honour and praise and celebration - I honour you, truly, but you wouldn't know that from what I wrote.  Brian and I have been married for nearly 11 years, together for 13, and there is still a lot of life left for us ahead, a lot of unknowns, and I hesitate to give advice; I like to tell stories instead. But instead of yesterday's being a story that built up, that makes us think about what is good, true, honourable, it was the story equivalent of "nanny-nanny-boo-boo" to every that doesn't do it or feel it or experience it the way that I do.

I won't delete it because I feel like that is dishonest but I will edit it to include a link to this apology.

Please accept my apology. I'll try to do better next time. I am sorry.

In which [love looks like] a mirror of the mystery

In some part of my soul, it hurts me when I hear people talk about trying harder, determined to do the hard things, about digging in with their toes and hanging on with their teeth, whether its about my Jesus or about marriage. They preach or write or talk in my living room about working hard at our faith, making it number one, the centre, and showing up every time the church doors are open, about discipline and submission and authority and hell, structures and guards, commitments.

But I do remember when my spiritual life was all about trying harder. When it was all about being "radical" and setting up boundaries in my life so that people would know, oh, yes, here is a girl who loves Jesus, they know her by her works, her quality decisions. It wasn't until God captured my heart, until I understood in some small way what it means to live loved that, oh, everything that was ill-fitting and heavy fell away, so this is what it means to be compelled by love, this is love-as-freedom. I understood, slowly at first and then faster and faster, that God loves, his very nature is love, that he is very, very fond of me and then the exhale.

And here's the funny thing about this, the thing sweet: when I embraced Him, cracked open my rib cage to living loved, to my Beloved, all of those old things? the things that before were filed under Discipline and Accountability and Doing Hard Things For God suddenly became easy responses. There is no routine to prayer when you are talking to your beloved, when it's your place of retreat and quiet, is there? There is no obligation to the doing of things but instead these things help and shape, they put sails up on my little ship, sometimes, sure, but the Holy Spirit is my only wind. Who could move the ship of a life with tiny oars anyway?

And now I notice and witness people around us using the same language of obligation to talk about marriage.

Yes, you can do that, I guess. Yes, many of us can stay married for a good long time, simply by trying harder. Yes, we can holler at others to grow up, to stop being selfish, we can use the language of discipline, submission and authority. We take turns holding on tight, white-knuckling through the years. We can grit our teeth and hang on with our toes, we can make choices all day long and when it's hard, we can mutter under our breath that marriage isn't supposed to make us happy, it's supposed to make us holy and sure, it might help us stay. There is likely value in that and even happy days.


My darling, you taught me that there are choices, yes. But the choice is easy when you are living loved in full mutuality, when both husband and wife love wild. When we etched "I am my beloved's" on the thin white gold of my wedding band and yours answered back, "and she is mine," the stage was set for how we were going to do this thing, conversation, oneness, a slow dance, it began.

It's funny how there is a natural overflow of living loved. When we understand that we are loved by God, when we are secure in that, no conditions, the fists unclench and now here we are, able to love in all areas with that kind of abandon. No worth to earn here. Promises are kept but not because we tried harder, maybe it's because we surrendered to each other, to this.

I usually feel more kinship with poetry and literature than I do with marriage manuals, I see us there, the language of longing and fulfillment, of how I carry your heart, and it's the thing of the thing.

We do this one thing well because the loving came first and through it all; you first, no, you first, here, let me serve you, let me love you, let me give everything to you because I trust you to give it back even better, let me hold your face every morning and smile at the very sight of you without your teeth brushed.

You have never once told me that marriage is hard. You have never once gritted your teeth and acted like it was taking all of your effort to love me. Instead, this is our safe place. This is where the real life happens. We do hard things, oh, yes, but they are halved for the sharing and then they are our stories, our connections, our do-you-remembers. We give birth and we mourn and we rejoice and we make love and we laugh, we fail. There is an ease to this that only grows with the passing of the years, a comfort.

Those things that could possibly hurt what we have?  We give each other the gift of patience, years still coming up ahead to work through and change, we're walking alongside. My darling, here, let me put my cold feet against your warm legs, I need to be warmed up and its kind of fun still to make you jump.

When you knew that you loved me, there was never another question in your mind, you gorgeous man. Because you lived loved, lived secure and confident in that man that God had created you to be, you were moved to love me well, to forgive, to lay yourself down, no insecurity in how you love. Never once, darling, have you exposed me to ridicule or made me feel like a burden to you. Our secrets are ours alone, not everything for public consumption. You see how easy it is to love you?

There is an ease, a slow-dance rhythm, to us. Maybe it's not a grand-ballroom performance with ringside seats for those taking notes but instead it's free, a moonlit shuffle more about listening to the other's breath and heartbeat. It's not always easy; life is real and it happens here, we make mistakes, we have hurt each other, circumstances can always surround like a creature but here we are, standing together, always standing together, one. You kiss the curve between my eyes and our littlest girl has your mouth and there hasn't ever been a hard choice to make, who wouldn't choose this?

Maybe this then is, indeed, the great mystery, that our marriages sometimes are the greatest mirror of how we see life in Christ.



I write now and then about what love looks like for us. 



EDITED TO ADD: I have written an apology for this post. You can read it here - I hope you do.

In which all is grace

I can't remember the last time I read a book in a day. My life doesn't really allow for that kind of luxury anymore. But I started All is Grace by Brennan Manning yesterday morning and I simply couldn't let go of it. I read during morning cartoons. I read at the lunch table. I read while the tinies could not believe their good fortune and were allowed to play imagination all afternoon long PLUS watch a show in the afternoon (riches unsurpassed!). I read after they went to bed and when I shut the cover, I cried. I prayed. I felt profound gratitude, not for Brennan Manning, but for the relentless love of God.

I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago called "Gratefully, Disillusioned" for Deeper Story. In it, I wrote how being disillusioned about people in leadership, the ones leading churches, ministries, the ones out in front, has been a tremendous gift of grace to me.

Oh, it didn't feel like a grace at first.

Nope, it hurt like the devil. I could not reconcile how people who had been so instrumental in my own spiritual life and growth and change could have been, in that exact same season, also struggling with tremendous sin. I was young enough, black-and-white enough, that I couldn't see how God could be in those moments, not only for me, but perhaps, for them as well.

Surely you could not be in leadership and still be in profound need of grace yourself. (You see how it was all about me? Instead of about the one that truly needed grace, for themselves and for the swath of damage that they inflicted around them, the collateral damage, needing to see Jesus with some skin on in  the unforgiving light of day? Oh, did I need to grow up...)

Brennan Manning's book pulls back the curtain in humiliating, ragamuffin grace. He opens up about the chronic alcoholism, the shame-filled and love-less childhood, his struggles with pride, the collapse of his marriage, all of while he was preaching, teaching, traveling and writing the books that have impacted so many. Myself, grateful to be counted among them: The Ragamuffin Gospel changed my life profoundly, radically, forever.

God loves us as we are, not as we should be.

That counts for the ones preaching, teaching, writing and leading, ministering.

In the years since those seasons in my life, I have developed a tremendous compassion for men and women in pastoral ministry or any type of leadership. I feel moved to protect them, to pray for them, to love them, because I have been on both sides now and I know that I was still me, regardless of being in ministry or the "pastor's wife" label. I was still me. And now, as a writer, I am still me, no better or more spiritual or more anything than you or anyone else. I still have heartaches, sorrows, struggles and, yes, sin, still a deep and profound need for grace. And yet, God still works with me, through me, miracle of miracles, even with my crap and my struggles and my pride, inviting me alongside him to minister life and wholeness to the lives of people around me even in some small measure.

Oh, so this is the truth: God can breathe life through all of us, maybe especially the broken ones, the ones poor in spirit. We see God more clearly because we see our own need of His power, His love, His life clear as light.

If the person that ministered to us is clearly not the one that is perfect, the giver of life, then we are left with only the alternative, the beautiful alternative, that the life, truth, love and wisdom we received came only from God. He can and does use anyone. He can and does use me. He can and does work through us all. Any change, any fruit, any growth, any gorgeous understanding of life in the Spirit came, yes, through a broken and imperfect vessel but ultimately from the heart of God alone.

You see why I am grateful? Grateful that he uses any of us. Grateful to be disillusioned. Grateful for men like Brennan Manning that love and surrender, over and over and over, that are caught up in that furious longing of God for us all.  Grateful to be a small part of God's work in any way because, oh, don't we know how much we all need him?

I cried throughout the book. It's beautifully written. Wise. Heartbreaking. Sorrowful. Repentant. If read alongside his other works, so much becomes clear. It's not Brennan as he really is, no, I think you need all of his work to understand that, but it's the rest of the story, the behind the scenes understanding of God's relentless love.

See what I mean? Grateful. Grateful. Grateful.

All is grace. Write it in ink on your heart. All is grace.

In which I expose the true enemy of the Gospel

(I'm likely violating a space-time-contimuum of some sort because I'm about to invoke The Hunger Games trilogy to talk about Church stuff. But there it is, I find Jesus even in post-apocalyptic novels, it's my one weakness. Also, spoiler alerts!)

I have deadlines and things to do so, naturally, I re-read the entire Hunger Games trilogy this week. You know how I roll, baby.

Source: eonline.com via Mandee on Pinterest

In the second book, Catching Fire, when Katniss and Peeta are headed back into the arena for the Quarter Quell, Haymitch, their mentor, stops her and gives one word of advice: You must remember who the enemy is. She puzzles over this but as the game unfolds, she realises that the enemy is not Finnick or Johanna or anyone else in that arena with her. The Capitol wants them to be enemies, to divide them so that they can conquer the Districts, rule them all. And for 75 years, they have done this successfully. Katniss, in a moment of blinding clarity as the game climaxes, fires her arrow into the forcefield, collapsing the arena and challenging the Capitol outright. Their common enemy, tributes all, is The Capitol.

(Also? Weirdest story ever. But strangely compelling truth-telling as well.)

But here is how I found a hint of Jesus there with Katniss.

I heard one well-known preacher accuse another famous preacher of being an "enemy of the Gospel."

I've noticed that term cropping up more and more. If we don't like someone's preaching or teaching or writing, we brand them an "enemy of the Gospel." The nice thing about that tasty little descriptor is that it means they are not our brother or our sister in the faith and, therefore, worthy of a Full! Scale! Attack! It matters not that they claim Christianity, that they affirm a love of Christ, no, what matters is correct adherence to specific tenets of the faith or doctrines. If that is missing, then you, poor soul, are an enemy of the Gospel and, beyond pity, deserving only of our censure, our anger, our mocking treatment.

In fact, in one instance, I saw a famous pastor put a picture of another pastor up on the screen at his church and then spend a solid hour deriding him, mocking him, dismantling him through soundbites. To my way of thinking, he exposed his own heart more than anything else that day but the crowd cheered and jeered and laughed.

It grieves me profoundly. And part of the reason for that is that I've had my own pride kicked when I realised that a TV preacher was not a "foolish thing" to confound me, the self-proclaimed "Wise One." Rather, quite the reverse. Also? Ouch.

Rooted in our actual Enemy, the enemy is actually the manifested hatred, mockery, slander, bitterness and anger, labels and name-calling, belittling and rhetoric of "I'm-in-you're-out" circles. It seems to me that the enemy is not the person on the other side but the self that we expose when we come in contact with someone that we believe is truly wrong.

When we brand each other as enemies, we become the enemy of the Gospel.

Is there grace and kindness, gentleness and love in our hearts for the one that we believe is profoundly wrong?  Perhaps the Good News is actually proclaimed when we greet each other with love, unity beyond full agreement in every issue. That act of loving kindness preaches the Gospel more than any mocking blog post or exposé of wrong teaching.

I don't see love in labelling anyone the enemy of the Gospel, no, the good news is God's love and restoring work, his redemption, his kingdom way of life.

But here's the thing: I won't lie and act like I don't do it, too. I may not use the exact phrase "enemy of the Gospel" but there are a lot of preachers or teachers or writers that get my blood boiling. 

I admit that I wonder how someone can possibly identify as a follower of Jesus while professing rhetoric or doctrines that seem as far from the message of Jesus as I can comprehend. In fact, I used to write stuff about other guys that I thought were doing it wrong, wanting earnestly to expose their faults and wrong thinking. That was not good for my soul. (Good for stats, though...) 

So I feel the need to repent, to step into this space and say that I have often forgotten who my enemy truly is, too, who it is that we are overcoming. It is not each other. I may not like what someone does or says, particularly about my own passions like ecclesiology, womens' issues, marriage and so on but I will keep loving you, welcoming you, affirming our connection to one another, keeping my eyes on the truth that you, even at your worst, are never an enemy of the Gospel.

Now I simply want to tell a better story of the God that I know and love so deeply, a story that honours and glorifies God and includes the "enemies of the Gospel," all of us, the ones that are my brothers and sisters (even if they don't want to claim that title) and beyond. 

I'm learning that the family of God is bigger and wilder and more glorious than I could have ever fathomed and sometimes it includes people that I'd rather leave out. Someone else might keep excluding me, telling me I'm an enemy of the Gospel, but I know the truth so I'll just keep drawing my circle wider and pulling them in, loving them, this is the tough love. 

I want my story, my life, to be shaped entirely by God's love.

We must remember who the enemy is.





EDITED TO ADD: My friend, Ed, has an excellent e-book available on this. Divided We Unite: Practical Christian Unity. You'll dig it. Only 99 cents.

In which I am currently...

Listening ... the soundtrack of Midnight in Paris. I blame Stephanie entirely for this. It's my new favourite movie and I can't stop watching it, the soundtrack is divine. (The library late fees will be staggering.)

Watching ... Downton Abbey is absolutely sublime but it makes me sad that it's so popular now. I liked when I had it all to myself for that brief shining moment. Now everyone has an opinion on O'Brien. I'm waiting on Series 4 of Lark Rise to Candleford from the library. And, of course, as aforementioned, Midnight in Paris is on repeat.

Reading ... When I have deadlines or feel a bit overwhelmed, I read books-that-cannot-be-put-down. Hence, I've just finished a rip-roaring run through Harry Potter series and the Hunger Games trilogy. Also reading Introverts in the Church by Adam McHugh; I feel very validated by this book and will probably tell you more about it later. Next up is Brennan Manning's memoir, All is Grace and Jen Hatmaker's, 7: A Mutiny Against Excess.

Eating ... peanut butter on toast, my one weakness.

Drinking ... french press coffee.

Wearing ... maternity yoga pants and an old plaid shirt from my 90s Nirvana days. (Man, I wish I had done this little meme on a day when I had on cute clothes...alas.)

Feeling ... tired after a long night with Evelynn up frequently but rather content. I love mornings.

Weather ... the snow is still piled but it's melting, the mercury is hovering around zero and rain is falling.

Wanting ... a full night's sleep and a back rub and a morning to write write write. Also, a ticket to Blissdom wouldn't suck.

Needing ... to get on with the day but rather content to sit here, watching Ever play while the tinies watch their morning show and I drink my coffee.

Thinking ... of my book proposal (constantly), of Brian who has been working non-stop on call and at school, just missing him so much, what to make for lunch, books I want to read, what's on the docket for school today, laundry to do, does Joe need to pee...

Enjoying ... My new knitting project - I'm finally attempting a sweater for my 6'5" husband so we're talking a lot of stockinette stitch which is perfectly suited for another viewing of Midnight in Paris, this cup of coffee, the stacks of library books scattered around the house, this moment.


What about you? What are you currently up to?