The First Tears

Recently I have been reflecting on how so many of the problems I see myself and the people around me struggling with are aggravated by the personal commitment to not cry in front of people.


The general philosophy towards pain people have adopted seems to be one of avoidance:

• We would rather escape our pain then walk through it.

• We choose keep our pain buried inside instead of bringing it to the surface

• We have been hurt in relationship, but we keep smiling and pretend that we are unaffected.

and it is this commitment to an independent, untouchable façade that allows us to die inside without anyone knowing.

I am rejecting the ticket. I will not ride this train. Though I don’t fall apart crying in front of the whole world, I have made a conscious decision to be real and broken with Jesus and with my friends because I believe honesty is setting me free.

This past week I have been considering how I came to the belief that it is okay to cry. It is a long story, a too common story, a story that is still unfolding, but to me it is a story filled with glimmers of a beautiful healing I groan for. I hope you see it too:

The First Tears

In third grade I realized my family was broken and that we would never be perfect on the same night.

It was horrible.

When I think back to that night the picture that comes is in freeze frame and I am able to recall every painful detail:

I was curled up on the bottom bunk of Bubba Chisholm’s bed secretly snacking on cookies while reading a missionary novel loaned to me by his sister Michelle in the room I shared with my Mom and 3 younger brothers.

It was two weeks since my father’s anger had provoked mom to pack up and leave with John, Andrew, baby Peter, and me; and for two weeks we kids had lived in a kind of Limbo. When we left, we hadn’t known where we were going. In the beginning I’m not sure Mom did herself. Just away.

She seemed as disoriented as the rest of us when our family’s white station wagon took us 1400 miles away--- from Salt Lake City, Utah to Champaign, IL; where Mom’s best friend, Frannie Chisholm, lived. She was driving confused. I was living confused…

Since leaving Utah questions had tumbled relentlessly in my 9 year old mind:

• Why did we need to leave Dad?
• Did Mom not know that that whole thing was my fault?
• Were we really here because I hadn’t cleaned my room fast enough?
• Would my parents ever stop fighting?
• Would they get divorced?

In the tension of the unknown the cookies were solace---the missionary novel, escape. When both were gone—I found myself alone with the painful questions. There the answer dawned on me, “As long as my parents live together they will be unhappy,” and some dark place in my heart whispered, “it would be easier if they just got divorced.” I realized then that I was longing for an end, for surrender. I wanted my family to give up trying to squeeze all our pain into one home. Peace at all costs was my prayer.

Of course I hated myself when I realized how I hoped that my parents would “get a divorce and stop fighting.”I dreamed of it, and felt so ashamed because I knew that a good daughter would try to bring her parents back together

like Sharon and Susan in the Parent trap. You know---

“let’s get together. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

But unlike that precocious twosome I had no inner conviction that the problems in my parent’s marriage would go away if they merely realized that they really loved each other.

I felt just awful:

1. Awful that I had not cleaned my room fast enough and my dad had had to punish me.
2. Awful that my punishment had been a catalyst for leaving.
3. Awful that I had not even tried to convince Mom to stay.
4. Awful that I secretly wished for peace at the cost of my parent’s marriage.

I had never wished for anything as dark as divorce before. At nine years old I feared for my soul. I covered my face with my blanket and began to pray, tears streaming down my cheeks,

“God do you see me? I am so sorry. Do you see how I am crying? Please help me. I have never been so sorry. Would you heal my family? Fix us. Bring us back to Dad. Help Dad and Mom stop fighting. God save me. Don’t let me go to hell for the black thoughts inside my heart.”

I cried all my tears that night. I had no tears for the difficult years that followed. No tears for my grandmother’s funeral. No tears for me. I cried rarely, briefly and not about anything that really mattered. I felt empty, disconnected from hurt… numb. Nothing could touch me.

When with puberty the tears returned, I welcomed them [hormones are good for one thing.] Pain upon pain had been piling up through my girlhood had become a lump in stomach and a flood in heart. The day I entered middle school the emotions that had been submerged, hidden from me for years, found their way to the surface. The floodgates of tears re-opened with frightening consequences.

Dieting, cutting, burning, binging, purging… anything to release the pain.

The pain would well up in my heart when I was still and alone, waves of tears deep enough to drowned in. No one but God to call to for help.

Faith was the surprising upside of the emotional hurricane of my teens. I found myself too broken to connect with my peers so I clung to God. Sin made me desperate as it had when I was a girl.. Countless nights I lay awake whispering “Lord have mercy on me a sinner.”

And He did.

God has brought that girl, who is me, a long way toward healing. He has never condemned me through the numerous nights where I was Eve expelled from Eden, crying “Mea culpa, Mea culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa [my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault]" and refusing to be comforted by lofty thoughts of love, grace, and forgiveness.

Recently as I have continued to stumble towards belief in grace I have wondered then how Eve felt in the years after she was expelled from the garden.

What surfaced in the mingling of relief over not being obliterated from the face of the planet and the joy of becoming a mother---with a tragic disconnection from God and the pain of losing her home and then her son:

Did she feel crippled by her own guilt?

Did she cry until there were no more tears when she realized things would never be perfect again?

Did she hate her body, her appetite, how quick she had been to trust the voice of her enemy?

Did she blame herself for Able’s demise and wish she had died instead?

How human her story is. How like my own. God reaches out to me and I walk away. I listen and trust in the lies. I choose disobedience and am filled with shame. I feel tied to this first woman… my tears flowing from the same river of pain as the first tears she shed. Humanity is broken and it is we did it to ourselves.

“My fault, my fault, my most grievous fault,”

This is a breaking.

But it’s real.

“God’s on His throne so we shouldn’t ever cry or complain,” is a lie which I have heard subtly preached through my own trite dismissals of others' suffering too many times to count. And it's a lie I've been fed as well-- "how you feel doesn't matter as long as you're living for God." It’s like Christians are afraid that if they ever mention their discontent, the dissonance between the lives they live and the way they long to live God will abandon them for being whinny, ungrateful children.

But for me tears are the first step to grace. I complain about my brokenness. I stumble towards faith in the desperate whispered prayer “God you know how hard this is for my heart to grasp. Only You can change me. Only truth can turn my mourning into dancing.”
As I groan in pain --- pouring out my shame before God-- the Spirit has have baptized my hurting heart over and over in the truth of Romans 8,

Sarah know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.

And not only that,
but you who have the Spirit as the firstfruits —

you also groan within yourself,

eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of your body.
Now in this hope you were saved,
[yet hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? But if you hope for what you do not see, you eagerly wait for it with patience.]

In the same way
the I also join to help in your weakness,
[because you do not know what to pray for as you should, but]
the I intercede for you with unspoken groanings.

And He who searches the hearts knows my mind-set,

because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God:

those who are called according to His purpose.

When this happens I close my eyes and cry… because this life hurts and I want to be with God so much. I cry because my heart remains so broken and I need more of Him. I cling to the words that He “works all things together for the good of those who love Him.” I say them over and over.

Then I am overwhelmed with this knowledge that Christ is with me, and He loves me. I feel that I am being held – safe and tight---

• I cry for the lost,
• I cry for the oppressed,
• I cry for the suffering.

I keep crying until there is relief and I am still…

Jesus is there in the tears. He isn’t repulsed by me. He isn’t overwhelmed by my grief. He is honored by the transparency. He is touched by the groanings of my heart. If there is anywhere in the world where I do not have to suppress my pain or pretend to possess a more righteous heart it is here.

Receiving Love

The second half of June I spiraled into the blahs. It’s been a long while since I’ve really been up to writing. I’ve got no “good” excuses.: I’m wrestling through some tough stuff, letting go of some dreams--- well at least learning to hold them loosely. I'm trying to stop pouting about things I cannot change---


As I look at all I feel I’ve lost this year I’m trying to stay soft toward the Spirit. I’m still asking God, “What do you want to do with my life?”

1. But I’m angry.

2. And I find myself half-believing that His answer will make me miserable.

3. So I’m not listening very well.

It’s weird that I get so pigheadedly obstinate with God because besides the fact that Jesus saved my soul by dying on the cross [which ought to silence any complaints that well-up concerning the difficulty of following Him], He has blessed my life in some major ways.

(1) My husband, Tim is the most wonderful man on the face of the planet and (2) work is going great.

“Honestly” I chide myself, “ I ought to be ecstatically happy—I one of those rare people who loves her job and her marriage .“

But often the reverse is true. Every morning I think about how grateful I “ought to be” that I have Tim and my job at Disability Supports and it depresses me. I like to blame it on a chemical imbalance, but truth be told I’m just struggling through plain old impatience, frustration, and doubts about God’s generosity— because I am not satisfied with the wonderful life I have…

This Saturday the sermon was about not wasting our lives and the rewards we will receive in heaven if we become sold-out followers of Christ in this life. I wrestled with it. I have so many passions in me--- I dream of showing the love of Christ in huge ways, in deep ways, but I feel like these passions have been put on pause. God has given me small things:

• Love your husband deeply—be completely honest with him.

• Love the women you serve well --- learn how to communicate my compassion, my value of them, my heart in language that will speak to their hearts.

• Love your church and your community ---leave the prison anxiety has built for you and risk rejection.

• Love me--- trust my love when I hold in my hand the good things you are looking to for life, Wait for me.

My heart responds,

“Oh God- I’m waiting. I’m loving with all that is in me…Is it enough?”

I hurt.

Deep inside I ache.

There is so much grief in waiting on God… there is grief in letting go of smaller dreams to embrace something scary and uncertain…

Something way too big to do on your own.
Something that will require time
and trusting God’s love to cover your broken best effort.

I’m trying to keep perspective. Trying to reframe the circumstances of this process taking place in me:

Could it be possible that the ache—the blah is a part of the grieving stage of faith? Maybe I need to grieve to face what following God in will cost me. Maybe grief will lead to my whole heart embracing His way at all costs. Maybe I am okay today… Maybe God is catching every tear I shed over letting go of my-way in a bottle. Maybe Jesus sees me in the moment of death and weeps…

Maybe God [instead of viewing all this hurting inside me as failure] sees the love that keeps me clingy with desperate hope that “I will not be God’s first failure” as the truest profession of my love.

Here’s hoping right?

Yesterday I listened to a sermon entitled “Obstacles to Receiving Love” from the Greater Boston Vineyard Fellowship that cut me to the core. I made Tim listen again this morning and poured out all the ways that it connected with where I am, “I feel like a heel that receiving love has been such a struggle for me. I make you tell me you love me at least 20 times a day. I have been going off and on to the same church for four years and I am just now getting involved. I don’t keep in contact with friends and family because even when they call me I am afraid that I may return their calls at an inconvenient time. I feel like my skin is protected by a shell of glass and whenever love is poured on it rolls off like rain on the window pain. I’m dying for water, but nothing gets through. I see our marriage changing this, but so slowly…"

The sermon ended with some take home points which I have adopted of as goals for however long this season lasts:

(1) Be open with your pain.

(2) Listen to others pain.

(3) Treat anxiety and self-opposition as problems to be brought to Jesus

(4) Meditate on Scriptures that describe Gods passionate love for you.

(5) Making peace with the circumstances of your childhood.

I desperately want to be satisfied with the Jesus I meet today, but I need His grace to shatter the glass that has encased me. I believe Grace will. I am meditating on truth to ease the pain of waiting. Specifically these promises have become lifelines.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. (Philip 4.6-7)

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. (James 4. 8a)

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. (James 1.2-4)

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. (1 Pet 5.6-7)

And for now this is me. Praying. Hoping. Broken. True.

Jennie & Quandary

Today is my day off and I’ve been spending plenty of time spacing--a quirk of mine which begs to be indulged on lazy afternoons when the mosquitoes are too thick to go out for a walk. It’s simply absorption in a thought to the point of absence. In other words the light’s are on, but I’m out drinking Chai with my BFF two states away.

Sometimes when I space I go into an empty room, a closet or a forest, but often into a memory. It’s different than a flashback because it’s not like I am watching a rerun in my mind. The present me is there --conscious of what is going on, conversing with God about it.

Since I was a little girl I have been able to space out without consciously working at it, and I when I’m alone I mostly like it. I like the lightness I feel when I escape to my own private world. Spacing out in public is troublesome though—and it happens more than I would like. In fact if you’re attentive enough, you’ve probably caught me at. When I am not really here my responses to what happens in the present usually sound strangely fuzzy and mechanical, as if I’m flying on autopilot with one engine out . I hate this side-effect because I know I sound dumb. Fortunately over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at making a quick snap back to the present to laugh at whatever dumb thing I said and hopefully save some face. When all’s said and done I am forced to acknowledge that spacing is my way of processing. I accept it, but wish I had better control over it.

Something happened yesterday that has given my mind plenty of material to ruminate over. So today I’m spacey. I keep thinking about a conversation with my friend Jennie after she caught me spacing out in the way I just described. Her words stuck in my heart and won’t let go of me. The entire conversation keeps replaying in my mind and dangling a new perspective in front of me like a canteen of water in front of a desert nomad. Here’s the jest of what happened:

Jennie and I were talking about some deep stuff when all of the sudden the present world went out of focus, and in my mind I was standing beside God. Then Jennie called me back to the present:

Jennie: What are you thinking? Where are you?

Me: I was thinking of how I used to pray when I was a little girl. God has been so good to me but there were times in the middle of the mess of my childhood when I literally begged God for deliverance. I can see myself nine years old, in limbo trying to care for my mother and little brothers. I was so afraid I cried out for God to rescue us.

Jennie: And it never came?

Me: Maybe it’s been coming.

Jennie: And you’re angry?

Me: It’s just that the deliverance has been so long.

Jennie: And you hurt…

Me: and I just want the hurt in me to stop and I don’t understand why it must keep going … Maybe in the end my taking the long way to deliverance will be the best for everyone.

Jennie: Sarah, what if this process, this long-way, can be the best for everyone here in the middle?

The question “What if this process can be the best for everyone here in the middle?” is nagging me, like a hungry cat. What if my yet-fully-realized deliverance could comfort, could teach, could be a catalyst for hope in my community? What if I could really be okay the way I am?


Initially I found myself inwardly screaming at this dumb-cat’s question:

• I want to be finished.
• I want to be polished.
• I don’t want to face these ugly unprocessed places in me and definitely don’t want to invite others into the middle. No, I’d rather the exodus of my soul to be over before I ever allow people to see it for the mess it was. Thank you very much- dumb cat, but letting people get to know all of me would hinder my ability to show God’s love.

And that was that until later that night I read this passage in Abba’s Child,

If I am not honest with myself, why in the world would I be honest with you? It’s an ugly customer this spiritualizing. It wears a thousand faces, every one of which intends to scare a little child back into hiding.

And I knew at once that was what I was doing. All that hope that I could be okay the way I am--- was a child’s hope--- “I am learning freedom. I am growing. Can I be okay? Can I be loved? Can I do something good?” And I was forcing the child in me to hide once again. I was being pretentious—which I hate because it sends an unspoken vibe to all those around you that who we are as humans should be hidden and controlled. In order to stop the fakeness I needed to listen to the child. So I asked her what she wanted and she told me to invite the cat in. "Just think about it." She asked.

So now I have this the hungry-cat question taking up space in my mind. I am not sure what to do with her, but I am giving this my best shot. I decided to give her a saucer of milk and told her she could stick around awhile. I even named her, “Quandary.” I confided to her my doubt's about her, "I must admit I am still troubled by the long way to deliverance—can this really be for the best right now?" But she doesn't seemed fazed. Instead she has taken up residence on my mental couch.

Thus far Quandary has made a good house guest. She purrs when I pay attention to her, sleeps when I ignore her, and is far more pleasant now that I have let her inside my mind than when I was trying to shut her out.

So I have decided to sit and space awhile--- stroking Quandary and meditating the words of David’s song, “You hear, Oh Lord, the desire of the afflicted; You encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more (Psalm 10:17+18.)”

“You do Father,” my heart resonates in rhythm then in dissonance, “but how long will we wait?”

Love and Dirty Laundry

This Monday the daily reading from Ransomed Heart Ministries quoted Gerald May,

Choosing love will open spaces of immense beauty and joy for you, but you will be hurt. You already know this. You have retreated from love countless times in your life because of it. We all have. We have been and will be hurt by the loss of loved ones, by what they have done to us and we to them. Even in the bliss of love there is a certain exquisite pain: the pain of too much beauty, of overwhelming magnificence. Further, no matter how perfect a love may be, it is never really satisfied . . . In both joy and pain, love is boundless.


It is the 10 month anniversary of my marriage and I am thinking how much of the joy and pain of being a newlywed is tied up in the ways marriage challenges me to love.

Marriage can be beautiful:

I relish the bliss of discovering more and more love everyday

unapologetically.

I find my writing centering around what Love is doing in me because everything has changed. Priorities are shifting. New ideas about Love, God and myself are boring pathways through the scar tissue of my diseased mind.

And this process of changing means Marriage can be painful:

Here’s the latest thought I am trying on for size-

Thin does not equal beautiful.

Though prior to my marriage, I would never have acknowledged the strength of my mental correlation between size and beauty, it was there—lurking in a dark corner of my mind, always vigilant to remind me never to relax around food.

This belief is the desperate woman in me-- thin, beautiful, and grasping. After a week of living with me 24/7 Tim recognized my fear for the life-draining taskmaster she is. One morning as I mutilated my omelet while I mustered confidence to eat it, he called me out on it, “Sarah eating those eggs will not make you less beautiful.”

My heart beat fast.

My head felt light.

Hope stirred inside my stomach.

and the desperate woman in me rebelled against truth’s awakening

I cannot remember a time in my life where upon entering a room I did not feel that I had been thrust into an unspoken beauty competition with every other woman present-- a sick competition where “thinness” was the first category on the judge’s rubric.

A rubric I had failed to pass for the first 18 years of my life.

I grew up in chaos. I coped by vacillating between inflicting bizarre diets upon myself to punish me for feeling and then when I could no longer resist the comfort of food, stuffing the pain with Doritos and cream cheese. I was a thick teenager. Food was my frien-nemy, and

Thinness was my heart’s desire.

being thin meant I would be beautiful, accepted, desired…

Like every girl becoming a woman these are the things I lusted after.

Even when they became my idols and started taking over my life.

I accepted the paranoia as a matter of course until I got married… and it started driving my husband crazy. Right away Tim saw me for who I was, a little girl sitting on top of a hamper packed with a thousand pieces of dirty laundry-- unwashed memories that had attached to putrid beliefs and were only held in check by so many compulsions.

I was desperate to be so grown-up and independent. To have someone see the girl in me was unsettling. Tim was fine with his boyishness. He was both gladdened and confused by the discovery of a girl surviving inside his somber, grown-up bride.

The girl-Sarah seemed nice enough, but why did she insist on sitting on a hamper all day? He invited her eat ice cream and dance. I refused explaining I was forced to sit on top of my hamper to prevent it from exploding dirty laundry around the room and strewing the floor with all my painful stains and memories.

For awhile the girl in me attempted to convince Tim that holding my hands and swaying back and forth while I sat on the hamper could be as fun as ice cream and dancing.


To his credit, he went along. For weeks a befuddled Tim patiently tried to negotiate the hamper—the way I had survived. Nobody had warned him about how confusing girls could be.

I was confused by Tim too. I had thought the hamper would make Tim happy. Compulsion kept my body looking great by almost everyone’s standards, and it kept the dirty laundry off the floor. I thought only I would know inside I was rotting. Desensitized by a over a decade of sitting on top of filth I had forgotten how much the rancid mass of laundry stank.

As I watched the compulsions like knives stabbing his love for life every time his exuberance threatened their control, I saw my future boil down to a choice:

Who would I let love me— My husband or the hamper which had for years hidden all my dirty laundry?

Conviction stung as I acknowledged to myself this hamper I had been sitting on was all about me.

• Me needing to exercise.
• Me frowning as I size up my body in the mirror.
• Me afraid of other women.
• Me requesting that he cook with less oil.
• Me hungry and mean.
• Me crying on the floor.

me, me, Me…

So the next time Tim extended an arm to me and asked “Would you come down and dance?” I swallowed the fear in my belly and rose to take hold of his hand. Immediately dirty laundry flew everywhere. I was crying, hiding my face, because I “always make a mess of things.”

But Tim was picking up the memories all over the floor and loading them into the washer with plenty of strong soap… saying “don’t worry, Sarah. These will come clean in the wash. You’ll see.”

And the reordering of life’s priorities began.

Soon I was taking out clean beliefs to try them on for size.

Starting with the idea that being thin should not be equated with being beautiful. For me being thin is about the dirty laundry and the ugly grasping compulsions. Thinness is not beauty-- it is the most hideous parts of me demanding that I kill myself to remain thin and giving me subtle strokes when I feel that I have beaten other women in the rat race, but I hate it.

Hate the shallow person obsession makes me.

Hate the ways I bow to fear and worship the idol of Thin.

Because of the way Thinness has used my desire to be beautiful as a power card to demand my worship, God has shown me the source of my beauty is the first battle I need to settle in my soul.

In Plan B Further Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lammot reveals two truths that have made it so she no longer feels compelled to compete with the "skinny girls":

(1) When we get to heaven, we will discover that the appearance of our butts and our skin was 127th on the list of what mattered on this earth.

(2) And that I am not going to live forever.

Knowing these things has set me free.

This life is too short for all my energy, passion, adoration, and hope to be tied of in compulsions about my body:

Truth of God,

I beg you to reveal to my soul what is beautiful and pleasing in your sight. Make me a woman who takes your breath away.

Most Beautiful Jesus,

You taught your disciples. “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life (John 6:63)” Feed my heart with your word so that I no longer crave the feeling of beauty thinness can give

… please continue to wash all this dirty laundry.

A professor, a priest, a Kratzer and a king.

I spent this morning sleeping off the weariness of last weekend. As I slept, I dreamed:

It was near midnight and I was driving home from work. Instead of turning on Main Street like I normally do, I drove through the stop and kept going. Nothing was wrong with the car; I was just too tired to press on the brake. Shaken, I decided I would just take 81 bypass home and go straight to bed. I whispered under my breath, “God help me get home in one piece.” Suddenly the 81 bypass merged into a one lane, one-way I had never seen before, and I was going the wrong direction. I was trying to pull over when I hit another car head on

Both cars where totaled. I was emotionally amping, but I could see the other driver getting out of the car. “Thank God he’s alright,” I thought at the same time I thought, “Sarah, this is all your fault. You are a pathetic excuse for a human being. You have screwed up royally this time…” And my with every beat heart was asking, “How will anyone ever forgive me for this?” Though my physical injuries were minimal the emotional trauma of the experience paralyzed me. I remain transfixed in my seat, unable to move to safety.

As the other driver approached my car I recognized him as Dr. Robert Wolcott, my advisor in college. I looked down, so ashamed.
This man had performed the marriage ceremony for my husband and me. If there was anybody’s approval I longed for, it was his. I respect him so much, and my stupidity had threatened his life and destroyed his car. When I looked back up I could see the recognition in his eyes, but more shocking were the tears. Not of anger, but of compassion. He looked straight into my eyes. While he was still too far off for me to hear I could see his mouth forming the words, “Sarah, it’s okay. I still love you,” and he ran to help me.

Then I woke up.

I sat paralyzed in bed, still connecting with the dream emotionally. A shudder ran through my spin as I wondered what the real-world Dr. Wolcott would do if the accident had actually happened. I became deeply convicted that he would have reacted exactly as I dreamed it.

Showing compassion. Offering mercy. Demonstrating love… in the face of all my brokenness…

Christ with skin on.

The dream hit me deeply on many levels:

(1) I felt warned, “ Life can suck life out of you if you don’t take the time to rest.” Burnout can come out of nowhere.

(2)I remembered how this social anxiety was keeping me from meaningful relationship with people I dearly love. [I live in the same community as the Wolcotts, but have not seen either of them since graduation. ]

(3) I felt the words, “Sarah, it’s okay. I still love you,” were the words of Christ to me. The dream was His way of illustrating His promise, “Sarah you will fail and I will forgive.” I felt His Spirit plea in me, “it’s okay. Please don’t reject yourself for the failure,” and I saw how in it all his main interest was that I would be secure in this forgiving love.

Recently I have been meditating on a quote from Henri Nouwen which I am sure planted an idea that gave to this birth dream,

I have come to realize now that the greatest trap of our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap however is self-rejection… Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.

A renowned author, priest, and professor; Nouwen found himself while working among the disabled. Since beginning at Disability Supports I have begun to seek out his later works to provide a framework for describing the way serving is working on my heart.

My work with disabled women gives me a context to connect with Nouwen’s warning regarding self rejection, and has awakened in me a realization that I too must learn to see myself as the Beloved of God.

I believe that one of the greatest gifts you can give to anyone is to truly accept who they are because the human heart was created with a longing to be loved. The disabled have a greater felt need for this love because they are often relationally marginalized in a world that is too busy to listen. Therefore creating an atmosphere of love and acceptance is a primary goal for anyone who longs to see the way the disabled are treated in their community change for the better.

But how can I extend true acceptance to someone else, if I cannot to myself? Can I really choose to see the value in the fact that someone else is created in the Image of God without extending the same mercy to me? In other words, can I value you for who you are, and value me for what I do?

No.

I tried.

It was hollow and fake.

I kept finding myself feeling subtly superior when in my mind I was doing a “good enough job,” or more often, feeling like trash because nothing I could ever do could make up for the ways that I have hurt others.

So desire to offer sincere acceptance became the catalyst for me to pray the desperate prayers of King David that God would:

-give me a way bringing the prayers of my heart to the surface of my mind throughout the day,

-teach me to walk the path of deliverance, and

-completely, finally transform the sick ways I think about myself.

Father,

Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.

Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. (psalm 51)

A first step. for this season, I am fasting make-up completely. The fast was not spurred by moral conviction. I have no religious vendetta against lipstick or mascara. Almost all my friends wear make-up and I see it as artistic--- another form of self-expression. But for me make-up has always been about covering up, and as I pray for God to teach me to accept His love, I want it to be for who I am underneath.

Right now I can see acutely how for me wearing make-up has always been rooted in a subtle rejection of my face-- my skin, lips, and eyes. As a young girl I learned through observation that women paint—foundation, lipstick, mascara--- over flaws to make them better. In my teens I began to mimic this cultural art, but felt unsuccessful. No matter how much attention and time I devoted to my face, I was never satisfied with my “made-up” appearance. I could still see the flaws in my bathroom. All this self-evaluation made me insecure in my own beauty—all I could see was how other girls were prettier. It made me envious because the richer girls had better products and clothes. If I had as much money as they do, I could be one of the beautiful people,” I thought… and my heart began to harden against the way God designed me, because “His dis-generosity made me feel ugly.”

Of course this is a totally skewed way of thinking. I recognize this, but

even as a twenty-four year old [happily] married woman I fall into its destructive grasp time and again.

It’s a daily battle to accept who I God made me to be. Not wearing make-up is a tangible beginning for me. But I dream of the day where I can look in the mirror and not feel “less beautiful.” I dream of the day where I look in the mirror and know that God began weaving his beautiful image into the fabric of my being the day I was born. I want to see my life through the lens of meta-narrative, I long for the vision to see myself as a single yet intergral thread in the tapestry of human redemption.

So my heart may believe every step in Christ’s redemption of my soul has been lovely,

every season of my life has been beautiful in its time.

I was a junior in high school when I left home. Two weeks after I started boarding school I attended a small group led by Shelli Kratzer. It was a season of lostness mingled with desperate hope. I wore long sleeves to cover my scars back then. Shelli read us a devotional about seeing ourselves as daughters made in the image of God. Then she past around a mirror and asked us to look at ourselves and say, “I am made in the image of God.”

I could not bring myself to utter those words that night… but now I know I was. I was lonely. I had dark secrets. I had gained 50 lbs trying to stuff the pain in me, but…

I was beautiful to God. Because of his goodness, His image shined through my brokenness.

and it does.

and it will.

Walking in the Rain

This weekend when a co-worker went on vacation for the 4^th of July, I picked up three overnight shifts. The problem with this was that on my 13^th birthday my brain self-imposed a 10:30pm bedtime and I’ve turned into an intellectual pumpkin promptly at 10:31pm every night since. Since this circadian rhythm has been set from middle school, my weekend has been spent in “the crazy-making cycle:” go to work, fight to stay awake all night, come home exhausted, sleep all day, go to work…

It’s 3:01 am on July 5^th. I’ve stayed 3 nights in succession.

Needless to say my brain is now completely numb.

Why do I inflict these overnights on myself you ask--- since I have such a “sleeping-at-night” rut? Two reasons:

1. My job is about being there for someone when she needs me. I care about the all women I work with, so I do usually agree to work--- unless for some reason I really can’t.

2. Tim and I are still poor enough to be grateful for the work despite the unfortunate side effects—cabin fever and communication skills on par with a zombie.

On the 4^th of July I got home at 9:15am and slept till 1:07pm. I woke up with a severe case of Need-Tim-near-itus [since my husband I are on completely opposite schedules this weekend] and cabin fever. Thus after lunch I insisted that we go on a walk regardless of the fact that it was raining cats and dogs. Armed for the weather in Tim’s XL hooded jackets we set out down main street, McPherson hand in hand. In five minutes we were drenched--- embarrassingly so. Clothes clung to skin and sagged with the weight of the water.

Water-weight pulled the long sleeves of my husband’s jacket over my fingertips and the rain soaked hood all but swallowed up my face. I looked like a kid, playing dress-ups in grown-up clothes. I began to feel small. I started to worry that someone we knew might see us and think that our frolic in the rain was foolish and immature.

My fingers stretched beyond the fabric of too-long-for-me sleeves, and pressed into the warm hollow of my husband’s palm for reassurance. We walked this way in silence for a long time--- me too tired to sustain my normal chatter, and Tim deep in thought about how much he enjoys holding my hand [touch is definitely his love language—its electricity consumes his mental energies.]

After a while of holding my husband’s hand, what people might think stopped mattering. At the same time we both started laughing. We sloshed right through every puddle, since we were soaked to the core anyway. We smiled at each other and drank in the rain. We enjoyed the loneliness of the outdoors. For twenty minutes more--- we owned McPherson. We kept the sidewalk all to over selves, and kept on repeating to each other over and over- “I have missed you this weekend. Oh how I love you.”

It didn’t matter that onlookers might find our frolic gratuitously affectionate because our hearts knew this moment was ours. In the crazy-work weekend God had sandwiched a sliver of time to reveal to us the ways He is at work in our marriage, and we were going to savor every minute He gave.

Towards the end of the walk I turned to Tim, happiness swelling in my heart, and announced, “ Rain feels like God forgiving the whole earth. Washing. Nourishing. Bringing forth life…” Then I looked to the cloud-filled sky and whispered under my breath, “May you do it in me too Father—make everything new.”

As I sent up this prayer, a snapshot of a conversation Nic, Liz, Tim, and I had on the way home from Revolution flashed into my mind. I was trying to share with Nic and Liz, our couple friends, the difference between my concept of love before getting married and now:

Before I got married, no matter what I said, I really believed that love has to be earned. Tim’s sticking with me on my black days blows the top off my concept of love. He doesn’t want me to hide my real feelings and struggles; He enters them with me. Finally the Jesus I have followed since I was little girl has skin on… and it’s like my heart can begin to fathom Him loving me broken for the first time.

Even as I spoke I felt my explanation seemed gushy and wasn’t capturing the power of the transformation that God was working in marriage. My friends—who are also married and very much in love--- just smiled at my rambling, and I thought they might understand what I meant anyway. Even if they didn’t I knew Tim did and enjoyed the transparency.

I realized from the beginning that transparency [and the transformation it brings] was the pathway connecting that car-ride conversation and our walk in the rain in my thoughts.

And in them both God was teaching me how true it is that the knowledge that one is deeply loved makes the opinions of culture, and even our opinions of ourselves stop mattering. This is mystery to me, I can’t word it, but I feel deep in the core of me. God and Tim both like me a whole lot more than I like myself… and a part of my liking them back is choosing to believe them about myself.

This Sunday night as I returned to work God reinforced this concept with a verbal picture that captures way Love transforms exactly. I had been catching up on reading Brennan Manning’s Abba’s Child to fill the lonely hours of my overnight shift. As I read this portion Manning’s words cut into me, touched a wound, gave me goose bumps of hope:

“God who spoke us into existence, speaks to us now: “Come out of self-hatred into my love. Come to me now,” he says. “Forget about yourself. Accept who I long to be for you, who I am for you--- Your Rescuer--- endlessly loving, forever patient, unbearably forgiving. Stop projecting your sick feelings onto me. You are a broken flower--- I will not crush you---- a flickering candle---- I will not extinguish you. For once and forever, relax: of all places, you are safe with me.”

My heart knows it’s true. Not because people won’t be made uncomfortable by my embrace of the expansive love of God, but because His love is all sufficient. He walks with me in rainstorms. He lives with me and likes me.

I am loved and liked by my Creator. Nothing else matters.

Come Wave of Justice, Come Wave of Mercy

O LORD, the God who saves me,
day and night I cry out before you.

May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.

For my soul is full of trouble
and my life draws near the grave.
You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.

Your wrath lies heavily upon me;
you have overwhelmed me

with all your waves.

Psalm 88

Unjust. That has been the cry of my heart since I can remember, but I recognized it more today. As I read my friends’ Facebook statuses the anger welled up in me again, and I mouthed once more athe sob-choking, fisting-raising prayer of the psalmist, “God this is not right. We trusted you to protect us; where are you?”

With rage threatening to paralyze my faith for the thousandth time, I turned to the gospels. I had this desperate need for a catharsis. I needed to remember I really do believe Jesus is alive and that this belief should speak in the way I live. I wanted to read between the lines that God was going to be quick and merciful in His intervention this time. I longed for a key to comprehending why He was again allowing evil to happen to people who trust Him for protection.

And this is what I ended up reading in Matthew 5:

1-2 When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:

3"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

4"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

5"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

6"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

7"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.

8"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

9"You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.

10"You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom.

This is not the good news I was looking for:

To me it seems that the beatitudes are pretty poetry for walls, but hard prescriptions for life. Their promises are beautiful and poetic until you recall your friend who is emotionally at the end of her rope, and

your friends are who literally faced with
the possibility of losing that which they cherish.

These words are comforting until you remember you are not the person you dreamed of becoming, and you wonder if you could ever accept the broken way you are. These words are salve until you remember there are thousands of children throughout the world whose physical bodies are racked with the pains of malnutrition. And you can almost forget the part tacked on in the end about persecution until persecution knocks at the door of your community and starts taking out people who you care deeply about.

In the desperate times, the lonely times,the times where we let the persecution of Christ become a concrete reality in our minds ---- we realize that what Christ is beckoning us into in the beatitudes is an identification with Him as a measure of His persecution becomes a reality in our lives.

And He seems to imply He will have the ultimate last word—for our healing,

For every soul that accepts Him the healing word is already breaking in--- a testimony that He has already begun to make everything new. But today the healing is incomplete and the restoration isn’t being parceled out equally.

My heart’s response to incompleteness:

I could hardly stand reading the beatitudes,

but when I was done I read it over again…

I was shaking and sick of faith. I felt worse after reading the Bible than I did to start with. I had imagined Jesus sitting beside me and asked Him to wave a wand and fix everything. I pleaded with Him to hold my hand and promise that the evil was vanquished forever… My heart was demanding “Lord you must do this—I don’t want someday promises, give me complete restoration today…Only this certainty will comfort me,” and Jesus, instead of giving into my demands, talked about a blessing that comes only by remaining soft to God in the face of the world’s injustice.

I threw my tantrum. Got angry. Got distant. Yelled a little. Cried awhile. and when I got the angst out of my system Jesus was still sat beside me, whispering to my heart, “Injustice has not slipped my sight."

He showed me I was angry at the power evil has been allowed to have over the world, and the disparity of healing we experience in this life

He began to define again “gospel” for me,

“Sarah” He spoke with tenderness that disarmed my rage, “This side of history the gospel is not a promise:

• that children won’t be abused,
• that the disabled won’t be marginalized,
• that the sick won’t suffer and die,
• that the world won’t be plagued by famine, war, and loneliness,

but that I have not abandoned history and I have not abandoned you. The climax in the painful narrative of humanity’s redemption was the cross and the conclusion to the story is already in motion.”

“Will you accept me on my terms,” I sensed the Spirit of Christ alternately challenging and soothing me, “ Do not be afraid, I have new and happier stories for my children…”

My heart see-sawed here between obstinate control and obedient trust. I felt like a little girl. So small. So defensless. So afraid. Then Peter’s profession rose up in my throat and shot out in a gaspy-breath, “Where would I go; you alone have the words of life?”

All once I was no longer sitting beside Jesus, but begging at his feet,

Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. I need you. I won’t survive without you. I’ll do anything only keep holding me---- don’t leave me alone in my sin. Don’t abandon me in a world who hates me for trying to follow you.

and in my desperate brokenness; He lifted and held me—close and tight--- until I fell asleep.

In the morning:

I remembered that this experience of disillusionment is shared. The psalmists often voice a desperate searching for God in the pain of their world. We all feel abandoned, but we are not. I remembered hearing a haunting song by u2 which asked if the “ If the rain came now--- would it wash us all away on a wave of Sorrow?” and interpreted the beatitudes:

Blessed are the meek who scratch in the dirt
For they shall inherit what's left of the earth
Blessed are the kings who've left their thrones
They are buried in this valley of dry bones

Blessed all of you with an empty heart
For you got nothing from which you cannot part
Blessed is the ego
It's all we got this hour

Blessed is the voice that speaks truth to power
Blessed is the sex worker who sold her body tonight
She used what she got
To save her children's life

Blessed are the deaf who cannot hear her scream
Blessed are the stupid who can dream
Blessed are the tin canned cardboard slums
Blessed is the spirit that overcomes

and I prayed that I would see the Spirit overcome the persecution which has come against my friends very soon.

Come Spirit,

Come Wave of Justice,

Come Wave of Mercy, so that in disillusionment our hearts may stay soft to You Lord.