mercy

Six years ago today, I was discharged from Yale-New Haven hospital after spending a week there in horrible pain after a bilateral mastectomy.  When I got home from the hospital, I was a pale, bruised, scarred, sad, 99-pound girl, and I thought my life was over.

As it turns out, my life, as I knew it, was over. But the new adventure of experiencing God himself — after all the blessings he’d given me were taken away — was just about to begin.  Today I published an essay with Christianity Today, on finding that painful but patient mercy in the midst of suffering.

 

http://www.christianitytoday.com/thisisourcity/7thcity/culturemaking.html

 

 

 

mother’s day

My favorite fact about Mother’s Day is that it was started by Anna Jarvis, a single woman who never married and had no children.  (Sound like anyone else you know?)

Two years after her mother died, Anna held a service to commemorate her mother and the impact she’d had on Anna’s life.

And now every second Sunday in May, we get to do the same.

I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot lately, partly because I miss her (we live 2,000 miles apart), and partly because the older I get, the more I become like her, and the more I understand her.

My four siblings and I used to tease her about her quirks.

She drank inordinate amounts of McDonald’s coffee, which I never understood until I had the opportunity to babysit five little ones at the same time by myself.  I was exhausted after just a few hours, and had a new appreciation for my mom, who was up before 6 a.m. to pack our lunches and get us ready for school, and up until nearly midnight washing dishes, cleaning up after us, and doing endless loads of laundry.  Caffeine comes in handy when you’re pulling 18 hour mommy shifts 7 days a week.

We laughed at the predictable dinner menu, which was usually either tuna casserole, meatloaf, or spaghetti, never realizing what a feat she was accomplishing feeding seven people on my dad’s meager salary.

I also never realized until I was older how wise she was.  Without reading nutrition books or watching health segments on Oprah, she insisted that we eat fruits and vegetables rather than packaged snacks.  She never kept soda in the house.  And she and my dad strictly limited our T.V. time.

But her noteworthy traits go beyond her exceptional parenting skills.

My mom is one of the strongest women I know.  I attribute her physical strength to her family’s genetic heritage of sturdy German stock. The woman has single-handedly rearranged entire rooms of furniture, including armoires and couches, without ever asking for help.

She has the strongest intuition of anyone I’ve met.  When my siblings and I were growing up, we used to tease her for it because it made her seem like she had an internal divining stick, always “sensing” and “feeling” things without being able to explain why she felt the way she did.  But most of the time, she was right.  She was able to meet people and immediately tell a lot about them, even though proof of what she was sensing often didn’t surface until years later.

When I was in junior high and my dad was pastoring a small church in New Jersey, my parents used to walk out of the sanctuary during the last hymn and stand by the back door, greeting parishioners as they left the church.

During one Sunday lunch, after my parents had hugged a few hundred people, my mom said quietly to my dad, “I don’t like the way Mrs. ——- hugged you.  Maybe you should just side hug her or shake her hand from now on.”

When I overheard that, I thought my mom might be jealous.  But years later we found out that the woman was indeed cheating on her husband, and my mom had gotten the vibe.

Now, when I see patients in the clinic and know within 30 seconds of meeting them that they’re in an abusive relationship, or have a personality disorder, or are somatizing their symptoms, I realize what it’s like to live with the blessing and the curse of that kind of intuition.

My mom continues to be an example of strong womanhood to me.  She eschews makeup, women’s magazines, soap operas, daytime talk shows, and retail therapy in favor of character, authentic relationships, and practical demonstrations of compassion.

My mom’s strength also lies in her emotional resilience.  She has weathered more storms than I can count: mothering five children, caring for an infant with multiple congenital heart defects, praying for a son on the front lines of battle in Afghanistan, loving her children through their faults and mistakes, moving more than a dozen times, supporting my dad through many difficult church ministries, and – closest to my heart – walking with me through my breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

When she found out I was going to need six months of chemo and radiation treatments to beat the diagnosis, she dropped everything and flew out to Connecticut to be with me.  We lived together in my tiny studio apartment.  She did all of the cleaning, grocery shopping, and driving.  After she helped me into bed at night, she slept on a mat on the floor.

I didn’t know until years later how difficult it was for her to watch me be so sick.  Once, when I was vomiting on the floor of the bathroom after chemo, she called my dad from the next room and told him it was too hard, she couldn’t do it.

But when she came into the bathroom a few minutes later, she was unflinching in her confidence and calmness.  “Let’s get you cleaned up…how does a cup of tea sound?”

As I laid in bed feeling vile after my treatments, I’d watch her making dinner in the apartment’s tiny kitchenette, and I’d rest in her peace, as if we were still attached by an invisible umbilical cord, and I was nurtured by her inner strength.

Like Anna Jarvis, I may never have children of my own.  But even still.  When someone loves you extravagantly, unconditionally, fiercely, you can’t help but be changed.   I’ve seen traces of my mom in the way I take care of patients, the empathy I feel for people who are hurting, and the concern I have for the Somali refugee family I’ve been working with.

When my mom signs cards or e-mails to me, she always writes, “Privileged to be called…Your Mom.”

Today’s my opportunity to let her know what a treasure and what a privilege it is to be her daughter.

Love you, mom.

wisgonsin

The two years I spent working in an urban emergency room in Portland were some of the most interesting days of my life.  The patients were often difficult, the hours were usually long, and the outcomes were sometimes tragic.  But the stories I heard from the patients I took care of made up for all of it.

I took care of people who tried to imbibe alcohol through their eyeballs.  Or jumped out of windows to see if they could fly.  Or took a dare that, contrary to what their drunk friends said, they really could aim a gun between their toes and not shoot their foot off.   And then there were the patients who stuck objects up their — well — you know.  I saw patients who’d tried to insert flashlights, light bulbs and cucumbers where they did not belong.

One man came in after he’d inserted a yellow rubber ducky into his rectum, but it swam away from him, and got stuck halfway up his descending colon.  He blushed while he was telling me what had happened, and then said, “I’ll bet this happens all the time.”

And I wanted to say, “No, no it really doesn’t.  I’ve never heard of anyone attempting this before.”

This week I was walking down the sidewalk on the way to church, and a woman walked up to me.  She was in her late 40’s, with elastic-waisted jeans pulled almost up to her chin.  As she retrieved a camera from her fanny pack, she said,  “I’m just visiting for the weekend.  I’m not really from Portland.”

I don’t know, you look like a Portland hipster to me, I wanted to say.  But instead I smiled and said, “Really?  Where are you from?”

“Madison, Wis-gon-sin,” she said.

“I hear they make good cheese,” I said.

“You betcha!  You really can’t beat Wis-gon-sin for its dairy,” she said.  Then she handed me her camera and asked if I’d take her picture in front of the Imago Dei Community sign.

I waited for her to smooth down her permed hair and adjust her large plastic-rimmed glasses.   When she said she was ready, I squatted down on the sidewalk so I could fit her torso and the sign above her into the same frame.

“Oh, no, please stand up.  If you take my picture from that angle I’ll look huge,” she said.
I stood up and took a few shots of her head, but from that angle, only half the sign in the frame.  As she struck various poses in front of the sign, she said, “I’ll bet your church gets a lot of visitors.”

I nodded.

“And I’ll bet everyone does this.”

And I wanted to say, Actually, I’ve been coming here for four years and I’ve never seen anyone taking pictures of themselves like this before.  But instead, I smiled and laughed and, as I handed her camera back to her, I said, “I hope you enjoy Portland.  It’s a great town.”

At the end of the service, I knelt at the communion table, asking God to forgive me for a load of sins.  For my pride, for my fear, for my doubt, for the snarky, self-righteous voice in my head that mocks people who dress or act or talk differently than me.

I imagined me kneeling in front of God, saying, “I’m really sorry for thinking mean thoughts about an earnest woman who came to visit our church.”  And then I’d laugh nervously and add, “But I’ll bet everyone does that.”

And God would say, “Actually, no one else does that.  You’re a horrible person.”

As I knelt there wondering what God thought of me, I thought about how all of us, at one time or another, end a confession (either to God or to each other) with a self-conscious chuckle and the words, “I’ll bet everyone does that.”

But what we mean is, “Tell me I’m not alone in this.  Tell me I’m not as foolish as I feel.  Tell me I haven’t made myself unlovable.”

And God, in His mercy, looks past the ridiculousness of a rubber duck stuck in an unmentionable place, and sees a lonely man starved for physical affection.  He looks past the tequila poured into an eyeball and sees the teenager who was in so much pain, he’d try anything to get drunk and numb.  He looks past my prideful, judging self and sees the girl who needs daily validation that I’m visible and valuable and that no matter how many billion other people are on the planet, I matter to God.

I stood up from the communion table, thankful for how God sees me, and mindful of how I need to view other people.  I prayed a silent prayer for the woman I’d met in front of the Imago Dei Community sign.

And, as I made my way back to my pew, I laughed as I thought of her grandchildren decades from now, looking at a yellowed photograph of their grandma, trying to decipher what the “Ago Dei Com” sign above her head meant.  Maybe they’d assume it was a clue in a Protestant version of the DaVinci Code.  Or maybe they’d think she’d dabbled in Portland’s occult scene for a brief season before she came to her senses and returned to the safety of the family’s dairy farm, to the security of their beloved Wis-gon-sin.

storyline

There’s nothing like walking into a crowded theater to remind you you’re agoraphobic.    I know, because it happened to me this afternoon.

Last week Donald Miller, who wrote the New York Times best-seller Blue Like Jazz, e-mailed me and asked if I’d talk at his Storyline conference.  The two-day conference encourages people to live more meaningful lives by thinking of their life as a story plot.

Instead of making lazy, selfish choices, what if you lived for others?  What if you took more risks?  What if you made radical sacrifices?  If you saw the world like Jesus does, how would your life change?

Don asked me to come talk about the family of Somali refugees I met on the MAX last year, how I took the risk of showing up at their apartment unannounced to make sure they were okay, how I ended up adopting them as my surrogate family, how I learned to love and be loved after enduring the loneliness and pain of having cancer.

Don called me yesterday.  “Can you talk on the second day of the conference instead of the first?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Okay, but I’d still love to have you come tomorrow as my guest, to get a feel for what the conference is like before you’re up on stage.”

“Perfect,” I said.  “I’ll be there.”

I drove to downtown Portland today, parked my car in a garage, and started walking towards the Armory Theater, where the Storyline conference is held.  As I was walking down the sidewalk, I ran into Don, who was approaching with his chocolate lab, Lucy.

We walked together towards the theater, and I saw that the lobby was full of people, and the check-in line was out the door.  And all of a sudden, I remembered what I’d somehow forgotten:  I hate crowds.  Public spaces make my heart pound.  Navigating a room crowded with strangers makes me frantic with anxiety.  I am agoraphobic.

Lucy looked anxious, too.  She got skittish and started pulling at her leash as we approached the main doors.

“Hey, Don, I have an idea,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.
“How ‘bout I take Lucy for a walk while you speak, and I’ll bring her back later?”

He laughed and said, “No, that’s okay, we actually have a guy backstage who’s going to take care of her.”

I don’t think he realized that I wasn’t offering to do him a favor by taking his dog; I was asking him to do me a favor by letting me use his dog as a device to get as far from the theater as Lucy’s leash and spindly legs would allow.

We walked into the lobby, and I lost Don and Lucy in the crowd.  And I stood there, my head spinning with the sight and sound of hundreds of strangers.   I bolted after about twenty seconds, and walked two blocks to Pete’s Coffee where I ordered a vanilla latte and sat at a table by the window, trying to talk myself into going back to the event.

I texted a friend.  “I forgot I was agoraphobic.  Pray for me?”

He texted back, “Just pretend you’re naked.  They say that helps.”

“I thought you were supposed to picture everyone else naked,” I wrote.

“Oh, yeah, maybe so. I always get that mixed up,” he said.

I finished my latte, and made my way back to the theater, where the session had already started.  I sat in the very back row, while Don took the stage and encouraged the audience to imagine what their life would be like one year, three years, five years from now, if nothing changed.  And then, what could they do now to write a better ending to their one, three, and five year stories.

While his listeners plotted their life maps, I was doing an exercise of my own.  What will happen one, three, five minutes from now if I changed nothing? I wondered.  I jotted down a likely scenario.

One minute: the wiring to one of the spotlights short-circuits and starts an electrical fire.
Three minutes: I smell smoke and yell, “Fire!”
Five minutes: there’s a stampede as everyone tries to exit the door I am sitting next to, and I am trampled flat on the ground.

I told myself that a large-scale disaster like that was unlikely; and so I contemplated personal disasters.

One minute: the large latte I just drank will hit my bladder and I’ll suddenly have to pee.
Three minutes: the door near me will malfunction and lock from the outside, trapping me inside the theater.
Five minutes: my bladder will explode and I will die.

I grabbed my purse and jacket and notebook, and fled from the theater to the lobby, where I ran into the editor of a magazine I write for.

“Sarah?” he said.

“Oh, hi,” I said, trying to act casual, as if I wasn’t panicked at the thought of stampedes and bathroom emergencies.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’m agoraphobic,” I said, as if he’d asked what are you rather than how are you.

“A-gor-a-phobic,” he said slowly.  “Does that mean you’re afraid of lectures?”

I shook my head.

“Of velvet theater seats?”

“No, I’m afraid of people,” I said.  “I’m terrified of being in a room filled with people.  And on top of that, I hate sitting still for long periods of time — so being at a conference with hundreds of strangers is a nightmare.”

We sat down at a table in the lobby and he distracted me by talking for an hour about books and publishing and writing.  When we’d exhausted these topics, he asked if I’d give him a lift home.

“Of course,” I said, intending to drop him off and then return and face my nemesis: the crowded conference.  But instead of heading back downtown, I drove the opposite direction, towards home.

And instead of sitting spellbound at Storyline conference, the guest of a best-selling author, I vacuumed my car and rearranged my room and scrubbed my bathroom floor.  As I created order and cleanliness, I felt the anxiety in me untangle.  The vice grip on my heart began to let up, and after a few hours of methodical scrubbing, I could breathe again.

Tomorrow morning I’m going back to the theater.  I’m going to sit on the stage next to Donald Miller and tell the audience how I met a family of Somali refugees on the MAX, how I wrote a book about them and sold it to the 2nd largest publisher in the world, how most of the money from the advance and royalties is going towards a trust fund for the girls.
But the real miracle in all of this is not that I took the risk of looking in on them, or that I spent a large sum of my own money making sure they had clothes and food and heat and hot water, or that I’m trying to pay for five little Somali girls to go to college.  The real miracle is that God took this agoraphobe and led me to get on a crowded train at rush-hour, where my lap was the only available seat left for a sleepy 3-year-old Somali girl to rest.

As I was scrubbing my bathroom floor tonight, I thought about my one, three and five year plan.  And I realized, I don’t really have one.  My only plan is to go on living and loving — and believing that God is writing redemption into the world’s storyline through the most unlikely vessels, in the most unexpected places.

the good word

Whenever I’m working on a writing project, I eat my weight in Chinese food.  There are lots of  other take-out places close to my house — Thai, Lebanese, Mexican, Texas BBQ, sushi and burgers — but I always get Chinese because I love the fortune cookies. There’s nothing like ending a meal, cracking open a sweet little pastry that looks like bad origami art, and reading,

“This coming Friday will be an exciting time for you.”

or

“Your clever mind will lead you to many rewards.”

or

“Your lucky number for this week is the number three.”

These are just a few of the fortunes I got when I was writing my last book.  I saved them because I remember how I felt when I got them.  When I was slogging through word counts and rewrites and painful memories, these were the bright spots that made me smile — and sometimes wonder, “Three?  Really?  I always thought my lucky number was four.”

This past week there were a lot of pseudoholidays.  March 14th, Pi Day (think 3.14), March 15th, the Ides of March, and March 17th, St Patrick’s Day.  Today I woke up and felt a void.  No holiday or pseudoholiday.  It’s a dreary winter morning with gray skies and I have no plans except to slog through another chapter of my next book.   I laid in bed staring at the phone on my nightstand, willing someone to call me and tell me some good news, or reassure me that I have what it takes to write another book, or remind me that I’m not as fragile as I feel.   Or, at the very least, to tell me that my lucky number is nineteen.   When the phone didn’t ring, I thought, “Is 9 a.m. too early to order Chinese food?”  I’m not really in the mood for Szechuan Chicken, but I could use a good word.

Yesterday in church we talked about how Jesus was the incarnation of God to the world.  And now we get to be the incarnation of Jesus to our neighbors.   The first chapter of John says, “In the beginning was the word.  And the word was with God. And the word was God.”  So I was thinking, we could try to do that today.  Instead of making our family or friends order an ungodly amount of Chinese food to hear a good word for the day, we could be the incarnation of the Word to the world.  We could remind people of the Good News.  We could tell the people we love (and even maybe some people we don’t love) that today’s going to be a good day.  The insurmountable problems will work themselves out.   The bleeding wounds will heal.  The sorrowful tears will dry.  The voids will soon be filled with joy.  (Not just because I say so, but because God says so, too.)

Since there are no pseudoholidays on the horizon, I was thinking maybe we could call today the Good Word Day.  Pick up your phone, open an e-mail, or gear up those texting thumbs.   Speak a good word to someone you care about.

It’s March 19th.  You’re going to be okay.  And your lucky number is….

priceless

I swear my surgeons crossed some wires when they were putting me back together in the O.R. after my mastectomy.   I have cried more in the six years since my surgery than in the 27 years that preceded it.  It’s not just the volume of tears that’s surprising to me; it’s the unexpected and inappropriate places where the tears hit.

Shortly after my surgery, I cried for four hours straight on a flight from Chicago to Hartford, Connecticut.  I also cried while getting a $1 massage from a vibrating chair in the center of a shopping mall.  I wept in front of children’s art supplies at Target.  And, after a bartender made a disparaging comment about my post-chemo hair, I sobbed my way through a first date.  (It wasn’t pretty.)

Last week the second-largest publisher in the U.S. offered me a book deal on a manuscript I wrote that weaves my cancer story with the story of Somali refugee children I met on the MAX in 2010.  I’d written the book hoping to use most of the proceeds to start a college fund for the girls.  The evening I got the offer from the publisher, I went to the gym to pound out my excitement and nervousness on the treadmill.  As I was running, Chris Tomlin’s song, “How Can I Keep from Singing” started playing on my iPod.

I will lift my eyes in the darkest night
For I know my Savior lives.
And I will walk with You
Knowing You’ll see me through,
And sing the songs You give.

How can I keep from singing Your praise?
How can I ever say enough how amazing is Your love?
How can I keep from shouting Your name?
I know I am loved by the King
And it makes my heart want to sing.

I kept running, thinking of how dark and empty life seemed when I was going through cancer treatments.  How overwhelming it was to go through a breakup in the middle of chemo.  How fearful I felt when the cancer kept coming back again in spite of aggressive treatments.  How exhausted I was when I almost died of pneumonia after my treatments.

And then I realized that God was redeeming all of it, and years later, weaving my experience together with the Somali girls’ story of struggle and survival into a beautiful tapestry that we can sell to a publisher to fund the girls’ college education.

The mystery and the miracle of the last six years was completely overwhelming, and I began crying.  On the treadmill.  At the gym.  Thank you, God, I prayed as dozens of curious, sweaty people cast sideways glances at me.  I knew they were all going home to tell their friends and family members about the crazy girl crying at the gym, but I didn’t care. (I’ve come to think of crying in in appropriate places as my signature move.)

This week I was reading about the parable of the man who finds a pearl in a field and, filled with joy, sells everything he owns to buy the field so he can own the pearl of greatest price.

As I contemplated the story, I realized that the miracle is not just that a person would surrender all of his assets in exchange for one precious jewel, but that he was able to experience the mystery of finding a pearl in a field in the first place.  Because pearls aren’t made in the dirt; they’re made under intense pressure in the frigid darkness of the sea.

The miracle didn’t begin when a man sold his belongings to buy a field; it started deep in the ocean in the shell of an unsuspecting oyster, with friction and pressure and isolation.  And then, somehow, the end product was transported to a farmer’s field, and then found by a man who was just crazy enough to contemplate the dirt he was standing in, who had just enough faith to believe that a pearl could be found where it wasn’t supposed to be.

This week my heart is overflowing with thankfulness (which means, of course, that my eyes are constantly brimming with tears.)  I’m thankful that God didn’t forget me when I was deep in the sea, under untenable pressure, suffering intense pain in the darkness.  I’m thankful that here in Portland, He raised up joy and beauty from Connecticut’s ocean of sorrow, and let me find an infinitely precious treasure in the midst of my fragile, finite dust.

dinner rolls

I didn’t get much sleep on Saturday night, so I woke up on Sunday feeling giddy and spacey. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t find the words I meant to say in conversation, couldn’t remember where I put my car keys the night before.

I had jokingly told friends that I fried my brain while writing the first draft of my book last month, and as I searched under couch cushions and in all my jacket pockets for my keys, and then walked out of the house without my shoes, I thought, “Oh my gosh, it finally happened. My mental screws really did come loose.”

I finally made it out of the house — with keys and shoes — and drove to Starbucks to meet my friend Stephanie before we went to church. I parked my car and realized my stomach was growling. In all my frenzy, I’d forgotten to eat breakfast. I’m morally opposed to paying exorbitant pastry prices, so I looked around my car to see if I had anything edible.

I’d made lunch for a Sunday afternoon dinner party, so in the back seat of my car there was a pot of soup, a bowl of quinoa salad, and a huge bag of rolls I’d gotten on sale from the bakery — two dozen softball-sized rolls for $4.

“That’ll work,” I said, as I opened the bag and put some bread in my purse. As I sat talking to Stephanie over coffee, I reached into my bag and pulled out a roll. “Want one?” I asked.

She blinked. “Did you just pull a roll out of your purse?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Do you want half?”

“But it’s not even wrapped or anything.”

“I know.”

“And it’s not even sexy, like a bagette or something; it’s a dinner roll.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But it’s all I’ve got and I’m hungry.”

“Do you always carry dinner rolls around in your bag?” she asked.

“No, but I should,” I said. And then I pitched the idea like a Sham-Wow rep on the home shopping network.  ”Rolls are perfect for snacking. And you know how there are always homeless people on the street corners begging for food? These would make great hand-outs. They’re even shaped like baseballs, so they have good aerodynamics. You could just do a bread drive by — you wouldn’t even have to get out of the car!”

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to pelt homeless people with dinner rolls?” she said.

“Yeah, I think so,” I answered her. “That could be my thing, you know? My signature. I’ll be the crazy Roll Lady who throws bread out of moving vehicles.” And then I started giggling, because it was a funny mental image, and my sleep deficit made it seem downright hilarious.

I tried to stifle the giggles as I walked into church a few minutes later. I had a hard time concentrating on the sermon, so I ended up letting my mind wander until it settled on the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000. These poor people had been listening to Him talk for days and hadn’t eaten anything, and they were starving. Jesus told the disciples to feed the crowd, and they balked, because where are they going to get the money to cover takeout for a few thousand people? And Jesus said, “Just give me what you have.”

All they had was a lunch bag they wrestled from the hands of a kid, with two sardines and five little dinner rolls. And the disciples watched in wonder as Jesus multiplied the boy’s Jewish Lunchable into a meal for 5,000 people.

As I remembered the story, I thought of how anxious I’ve been about the book I’m writing. Of how my brain short circuits when it’s missing even a few hours of sleep. Of how overwhelming it is to try to solve the world’s problems of hunger and poverty when I can’t even feed all the homeless people here in Portland. Of how Jesus doesn’t isn’t asking me to be a superhero. He’s holding out His hands and saying, “Just give me everything you have.”

So I empty out my bag and surrender some spare change and a dinner roll. And as I hand it over, I apologize for being a space cadet who’s so easily distracted, I sometimes forget to eat breakfast.

And then I watch in wonder as He loves me anyway, and uses sardines and spare change and dinner rolls to change the world.

glimmer

Last week I was riding the MAX to church, and I saw two billboards by the side of the tracks.  Multnomah County’s Cold Case division is trying to solve murders from a few decades ago.  To get people to come forward with information, they’ve begun a public campaign for clues.  There was just one problem – on one billboard there were pictures of four suspects, and they were all black.  And on another billboard, there were four pictures of victims, and they were all white.

My heart sank as I thought of the damage this suggestion would do to the black community –  that a race that makes up less than 10% of Portland’s population would have committed 100% of the crimes.

On my way home, I was waiting on the platform for the train to come.  It was cloudy and cold, and a five minute wait turned into nearly half an hour.  As I was standing there, trying to stay warm, I noticed a black man beside me.  He, too, was blowing on his hands and stamping his feet, trying to ward off the cold.

I complimented his yellow shirt and purple tie.  He said, “Yellow’s my favorite color.  I wear it during the long Portland winters to remind me of the sun.”

“I’m glad you’re my brother,” I said as he boarded his train.

“Sister,” he smiled, “I feel the same.”

The next morning, I prayed for my brother.  While I was praying, I thought of Martin Luther King Jr, who said, “A lie cannot live.”  And I gave thanks to God, in whom truth cannot die.

Even in our disparity, He is uniting all colors and languages and nations in Himself.  He is tearing down the walls — and the billboards — our sinful hearts have raised.  And He is reminding us with glimmers of hope and splashes of yellow that our black-and-white world will soon see the splendor of Kingdom Come.

holy

Today I woke up feeling like someone took a baseball bat to me while I was sleeping.  My whole body ached, as it does every now and then, a side effect from the medicines I’m on to prevent a cancer recurrence.  I groaned as I climbed out of bed.  Ouch.  And I groaned again when I realized I’m due for a new round of treatments tomorrow morning.  No way.

I washed down a handful of Ibuprofen with my morning coffee, and then drove to church.  At the beginning of the service we commemorated Martin Luther King, Jr. and we prayed as a congregation that God would bring restoration to Portland – which, in spite of its progressiveness, struggles with deep racial divides.

I thought of what it would take for reconciliation in our community.  The white people letting go of their blindness and pride and hate, and the blacks relinquishing their right to feel wounded by the injustices they’ve suffered.

Both sides have to commit to pressing in until the broken parts are whole.  Both sides have to let go of their darkness and create space for reconciliation – a space that may not be filled for a long time.

 

But sometimes the darkness has to go before the light can ever come.

During his sermon, Pastor Rick said that hard things in life aren’t easy or painless, but they’re holy.  Often the work God’s called us to do, the trials He’s called us to go through, the people He’s called us to love —  and the ways He’s called us to love them –are unsavory and unfair.   But all the pain we suffer in our bodies and in our relationships are tiny mirrors of the way God suffered to love the world.  Not just the world in general, I realized as I was kneeling at the Communion table, but the way God has suffered to love me.

For God so loved the world….in its aching to be made whole.

For God so loved the world….in painful nights and empty spaces.

For God so loved the world….in a million sacred moments.

For God so loved the world.

Wholly, holey, holy.

mary’s christmas

At the front of Notre Dame cathedral there’s a statue of a cross. 

 But unlike other crucifixes, Jesus is not hanging on this cross.  Instead, his lifeless body is lying in the arms of his mother Mary, who is kneeling at the foot of the cross weeping over her crucified son.

 It’s easy to remember Mary as the virgin who received the good news from the angel…

    witnessed the arrival of the Word made Flesh …

     who knelt by the Manger watching Emmanuel take His first breaths… 

 But Mary’s life was not always so enviable. 

 For the rest of her life, people who didn’t believe in the Immaculate Conception accused her of lying about her relationship with Joseph or, worse, of selling herself to Roman soldiers.

She listened to people call her Son a charlatan and a lunatic.  And finally, she watched as her Son was killed by the ones He’d come to rescue.

 Mary was the conduit through which God poured His love for the world. But that love cost her everything.  And, as she watched the world reject her Son, it broke her heart.

 When God appears in our lives, we anticipate the blessings of joy and hope His presence will bring.  But the Notre Dame statue of Mary reminds us that God’s work in our lives also brings conflict and struggle and pain.

Today – in our joy and in our sorrow – we worship the Messiah in the manger.

 We kneel in awe of the God who is Love.

And we remember that this Love cost Mary dearly, and it broke her heart.

 

                                But in the end – it saved the world.