Dancing: I've Been Changed

 

I love dance.  For me it is equal parts worship and fun, spiritual expression. The way I feel most alive as my spirit and body come together. Movement for me is holy and healing. It is one way God replaces my garments of grief with clothes of joy. 

These past two years, our collective world has been enveloped with death and suffering. Our country specifically has experienced political polarization and it seems that we have moved further from each other, retreating into our own tiny islands of isolation (my personal coping strategy) or lashing out via our social platforms. 

I have often forgotten to dance. Stopped listening to the music of beauty and truth, stopped looking for what is right and good and true. These things we must slow down and look for. Slow down and listen for. Tear our eyes away from what is hard and awful for a bit to remember. It is a miracle that we are here. That we have bodies with life breathed into them by God. That as believers we are gifted and filled with love, purpose, and life. That we are more fully alive when step off of our islands, move towards our neighbors and give these gifts away. 

This video below, by Jordan Feliz, is such a celebration of the life I hope to live. Passing down a legacy of love, of welcome, of invitation to a life of joy as these earthly attachments diminish.  

You can't watch this without feeling free and full of purpose.  

Jesus, move me today. 

Turn my mourning into dancing

Push my gaze out

Let me be a song, a dance 

That draws others in

And changes the tune of the world

Got A Hole In My Heart, Can You Handle My Love?

 

"Can You Handle My Love" by Walk the Moon. 

I can hear pretty much any song as a worship song. It may be a superpower (or perhaps it is just strange), but I hear from God often and in all kinds of music.  

I heard this one on the radio yesterday and the lyrics above cut deep for me, I can imagine they would for many of us.  The song is about that hole in our hearts and how we try to fill it with chemicals, or anything else.  The lyrics make it seem like it would be a sad song, but it isn't at all. The lyricist is simply stating his self-awareness while getting on about his life.  

I was thinking about how I do try to fill that hole in my heart with anything and everything.  A lot of people will say things like "That hole is just a God-sized hole and only God can fill it." Like we just declare one day "OK God, now you fill that hole in me", and BOOM, hole is gone now, so glad that's over, let's all praise the Lord. 

I think that this is total crap and bad theology. Our lives are filled with so many valleys and peaks. Periods of long straight paths and winding roads too. Sometimes my spirit is filled to bursting with God's love and presence; while other times it feels empty and parched, as though He has left me completely. Jesus Himself felt this way on the cross.  

So what do we do with this? I'm not sure. But today I put this jam on repeat and sang parts of it aloud to God. 

"All the possibilities got me feeling kinda free

Then my insecurities get me down on my knees

Like I can't believe I need a release

Gotta feed my soul, gotta spread my wings

I made mistakes but I still own up

I may be late but I still show up

If you can't relate then you're too grown-up

Life is the bomb and it might blow up

So can you handle my love?

Then take a chance with my love

Said can you handle my love?

Then close your eyes, roll the dice

Take a chance with my, chance with my love"

For Those Who Don't Belong. And a Prayer for Deconstruction.

 For those who would follow Him, Jesus began deconstructing ALL of their beliefs. Unpacking the heart motivations behind them.  Deconstruction feels a lot like losing yourself.  For me it began with unease.  Quiet disagreement stirring in my spirit that would grow more and more uncomfortable.  

When I began my journey as a believer, I was 30-ish years old. Jesus sealed the deal for me.  This Jesus, who loved like no other, who was a simple man with no pretenses of status. The humble carpenter who was holy and meek.  Somewhere along the journey of following Him, I lost that vision. The path got blurry, I thought I was following Him, but I was following a new shepherd.  I traded Free in Christ for Jesus Plus XYZ.  Staying in agreement with my faith community became more important than following Him. When the ”Christian community” at large began to look a lot less like Jesus and a lot more like the Pharisees, I clung to it hard at first.  I dug in. I tried listening to the echo chamber, but I began questioning those voices too. This ember had been lit in my spirit and it would grow.  God began to open my eyes to ways that I had been unloving to His beloved people. To views that encouraged abuse and elevated man over woman instead of Christ over all.  

     I don’t know why Jesus won’t let me go. He has just passionately pursued me, even after I grab idol after idol. He is just so kind and that is the only reason I can’t walk away from Him or His church. He is worth deconstructing over. Again and again. He is worth giving up everything for.  But He will ALWAYS lead you towards loving interactions. He will lead you towards the outsider, the unloved, the powerless, the poor, the orphan. His beautiful gospels show us everything he is for.  

“Lord, these days I don’t want to argue, I want to walk in freedom with You.

I pray for those who are hurting.

I pray for those who feel like Christians are horrible.

For those who feel like they are horrible.

I pray for those believers who are wrestling.

I pray for anyone that has been told they are not welcome in your Kingdom unless XYZ.

Help us to remember that YOU are still good.

You are our Good Shepherd. You are more than enough and we are loved beyond measure by You.

Help us give grace to those we disagree with, remembering that we may have sat on that side of the table once. 

Help us give grace to ourselves, to have space for the idea that we may still have it “wrong.” 

Help us get out of your way so your Spirit can work through us.

Jesus, let us leave all this baggage at your feet.

Take our pain and lift our eyes.

Restore our souls and lead us in the right direction.

Help us to spend more time loving your people than slinging stones.”   

Amen

15

Our firstborn turned 15 on Sunday. He’s somewhere between boyhood and manhood. What a tender age. Glimpses of the different versions of the man he could become. 

Oh that we would steward your heart well. That you would choose love and mercy even as you begin to see the hate that is in the world. That it would even grow your faith and affection for Jesus. That you would never stop playing. Never stop praying. Never stop hoping. Never stop looking for the good and the beautiful. 

Happy Birthday Isaac! 

You are so beloved. 

Media That Inspired Me This Year, Habits to Leave Behind, and a Word for 2021

 2020 may have been one for the dumper, but there were some really great podcasts, books, and blogs that shaped me this year. I thought I would share some of them.  

BOOKS:

This was not my best reading year. But these were my top reads of 2020:

Miracle and Other Reasonable Things, by Sarah Bessey.  This is my number one pick of the year.  It was balm for my soul (as the pandemic unfolded during an election year) while I had an unraveling and rebuilding of my faith and views. Sarah Bessey knows a thing or two about wrestling and holding tight to Jesus even as our understanding of Him shifts.  

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb.  A memoir about a therapist who finds herself in therapy.  It was sweet, tender, engaging. 

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, by Grady Hendrix.  80's housewives in Charleston SC have a fabulous trashy book club, and then a vampire comes to town.  Think Steel Magnolias meets Stephen King.  I loved it.  There was a lot of misogyny displayed by the husbands, which felt very accurate to me for the time period.  It also showcased the racial and economic injustices of the time period as well, but no comment was made on them and I appreciated the author letting it sit out there for the reader to contend with.  And there was violence and gore and quirky characters.  It was fantastic for me. 

PODCASTS:

In no particular order...

The Good List, with Tsh Oxenreider This podcast will inspire you to look for the good and beautiful in the world, and cultivating practices for living a sacred everyday kind of life.  

10 Things to Tell You by Laura Tremaine.  Laura has incredible book recommendations. She also shares really deep prompts for self-reflection.  She has episodes on the mind-body connection, the power of intuition, anxiety, and so much more.  I loved her series on racial biases and her episode on sitting in stillness was one of my favorites of the year.  

The Minimalists.  Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus.  I have followed these guys for years and I am a superfan.  I don't even care if you think I'm weird.  Their podcast has definitely shaped my thinking and how I live life, trying to "love people and use things, because the opposite never works."  I love their banter and they have a crazy eclectic mix of guests and ideas.  

Sorta Awesome.  Meg Tietz.  I am an OG Awesome.  This is just a bright space in the Podcast sphere and their Facebook group is truly a safe haven.  They really talk about all things awesome and bringing out the awesome in yourself.  LOVE. 

Reply All.  PJ Vogt, Alex Goldman.  This is a podcast about the internet.  But it is so much more. PJ and Alex have crazy chemistry and hearing them laughing is one of my favorite things.  

For The Love with Jen Hatmaker.  The whole series on faith leaders.  And specifically episode from June 26, 2020, with her daughter Sydney on Being Gay and Loved.  This was the listen of the year for me and it completely changed my mind.  Just like that.  

BLOGS:

Shutterbean, Tracy Benjamin. I have loved Tracy Benjamin's website for a long time. It is totally unique.  Photography, food, art.  Her Instagram is really lovely too.  

Good News Network. Only good and inspiring stories to be found here.  

Hard NOS OF 2020:

The News: Basically all of it, except the one listed above. 

Facebook: The dumpster fire of the internet.

HABITS TO LEAVE BEHIND:

I wonder if we could think about bad habits we would like to leave behind instead of new years resolutions.  Do you have any? 

Facebook and the news were two of mine.  Doomscrolling as well.  I think I want to try and share more of myself and the ways God has changed me this year.  I'm a Peacemaker by nature, and this past year was so hard.  I realized I was stuffing down big important things to make others comfortable.  Until that Peacemaking left me feeling no peace inside.

A WORD FOR 2021: STAND

Do you pick a word for the year? Mine for 2020 was Behold, and here's a post about it. This year my word came to me in such a strong way of knowing.  I had just sat and prayed, asking if He had a word for me that I would know it was from Him and not my own head.  Less than 5 minutes later, Jay and I turned on The Stand to watch the first episode of the new miniseries on CBS.  We were stoked for this series, we love Stephen King! It opened with the narrator gave a creepy prophetic intro to the show, and the intro closed with "This is where you will make your Stand. For that is God's will for you."  And I got chills and knew that 100%, like it or not, that was my word for 2021.  

Won't you Stand with me and show up for 2021? Arms open, hearts full of love.

Reflections on 2020: A Year to Behold

 

We kicked off 2020 with a word for the year, and I had some aspirations and goals. I am not even sure WHERE those journal pages are, but I do remember that I wrote with so much intention. Our word for 2020 however, was nearly prophetic, and there were many days I sat with it at the front of my mind.  Our word was Behold.  And man, did we ever.  This year we beheld many things, some of them precious, some painful. 

In February, we started to hear about the pandemic as it began its slow and menacing spread into our country.  At the beginning of March, Jay’s grandmother died. We found ourselves driving up to Rhode Island as the pandemic ramped up. We drove 16 hours. We visited and laughed and cried. We celebrated a life while mourning a death and we worried about the packed house full of friends and family.  We looked through a lifetime’s worth of photos and belongings.  Sacred objects found new homes.  We took a drive out to Newport and wandered around.  We drove by the mansions.  Ate at a pizza shop. 

We returned home and then lockdown came.  Eden celebrated her 11th birthday with just immediate family.  She smiled like it was the best day ever.  Isaac matched and then outgrew his Dad. Black Lives Mattered.  We found a baby snapping turtle. I began a weight loss journey in the middle of a pandemic.  The COVID numbers soared, summer came.  We played games. People protested.  An election year ramped up.  In July, Jason was cutting grass out back and had a freak accident.  A metal rod shot into the side of his ankle, inches deep.  We went to the ER.  I had to wait in the car at 1 a.m. because of Covid precautions. Jay couldn’t walk.  My incredibly active, UPS driver husband was couch-bound and out of work for weeks.  We beheld all these things.  His healing was slow, he went from crutches to limping.  We were so thankful nothing was broken, but ligaments were torn and healing was painful. We spent time together. We lamented the brokenness of the world around us.  We budgeted. We crossed our fingers. Jay went back to work.  We began a new school year.  We beheld all these things. 

 

I listened to a story that I didn’t want to and changed my entire mind, just snap like that.  It felt divine; like God took my thinking and turned it, “Nope, this way now, this is the way of love; you go this way”.  We watched dear friends and others become unraveled over politics.  We became unraveled in a different way.  We questioned church leadership.  We spoke up.  We questioned our own beliefs.  We wrestled and we became tired of swallowing down practices that felt like lumps in our throats.  We peacefully stepped away from our church home of 10 years.  We hoped dear friendships would not be lost. We grieved.  We sat in the space of uncertainty and we BEHELD the God of the Wilderness.  The God that sets a table wide for ALL.  We read and studied the book of John with friends.  We got a beautiful new dining table from my in-laws after Jay’s grandmother’s estate settled.  

I emailed an old friend who was an Episcopal Priest. We visited an Episcopal Church.  We worshiped wearing masks in a new space that was so different,  but full of the same Holy Presence. We read school books. We picked apples and pumpkins.  We listened to Isaac play guitar.  I watched Eden draw and paint.  I read the Daily Office and prayed. Sometimes I cried and I didn’t quite know why.  Sometimes I doom-scrolled the news.  We decorated for Christmas. Advent began: a new season of waiting following a year of waiting. But with Advent, we wait with confidence of what is coming and this gives me so much hope.  

     This year seemed to unfold in ways that I had never imagined and I can’t recall a year where I have felt so strongly that we were pulled along as passengers.  And yet it was a beautiful year. There was coffee and coziness and laughter.  There was GROWTH and the shedding of dead things.  There was the sacred and the monotonous and pain and joy. Confrontation, unraveling, courage. Dread and fear. Hope and new beginnings.  Scarcity and abundance.

We encountered the God of the wilderness.  The God also, of the Promised Land.  This Jesus who when reviled, blessed; when persecuted, endured; when slandered; spoke kindly.  I hope that this is what I will remember most about this year:  what I learned about my God when I set out to behold Him.

ReMade

*****TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Assault, abuse

This is one of those blog posts that I publish and then change to unlisted, again and again.  As the years pass I will probably continue to edit this story as I grow and journey on.  

In May of 2017 had been 22 years since I was raped. I was out on a date with my husband. We were dining outside and Jay had gone back in to get our food when I saw him. It was a rush of blind terror.  A panic attack in an instant. It felt like I would die. I bolted to the car.

I never felt responsible for what was done to me. I was a senior in high school as the relationship unfolded.  It quickly escalated from possessiveness, to physical abuse. He called me names. He would talk about my clothes and shame my body. He would grab my arms and throw things at me. Shove me, scream in my face. He would cry hysterically after he hurt me. 

But I never expected the violence would escalate the way it did on the night of my Senior Prom. There were two people who could have helped me, who saw and heard my begging and pleading, but they turned and walked out, drove away. No call for help. What happened after was horrific. Violent. Big chunks I don’t remember, but I do I remember thinking he might kill me. And afterwards, over and over on a loop "if I can just get him to take me home I will be ok." The next Monday, he brought me roses to school, knocking on the portable classroom door, charming the teachers. The girls in 6th period swooned. I threw them in the trash. 

Even after ALL these years:

The sight of rose bouquets still makes me sick. 

I hate being grabbed or touched from behind

Prom season is hard, every year. 

As I met with a counselor, I began to put words to why I held onto so much pain. The idea of giving it to God, or offering "forgiveness" felt like my saying that what happened didn't matter. Didn't crush me into a million pieces. That I wasn't left like a piece of my Dad's beautiful pottery, shattered and crudely glued back together.

But, I thought, sitting in that space of brokenness for the rest of my life and saying “look how ugly this is” was not the end I had in mind. 

Truly, the wounds are ugly, these invisible scars that wrap through my flesh and all the way down deep into my heart, curling up into my brain. They are life-changing scars, yes, but they are scars of a survivor. I took them with me into college and through a psych degree, magna cum laude. Through an abusive marriage: out the door, quick-like this time, you see, they had left me with wisdom. Then into a beautiful second marriage.  Through the miracle of two pregnancies and motherhood and coming into faith. Through deconstruction and a new church home. These scars remind me that there is beauty and wickedness in the world.  That every one of us chooses each moment of our lives, whether we will move towards loving or hurting each other.  

When I think of the wounds of Jesus, I know they were wounds from the wrath of man, not God. These wounds show us the depths of our wrath, but more importantly, they show the love of Jesus and the potential of the work of love. He did not crush us, He loved us.  

He took our wrath and in return he gave the Spirit of Love. 

Even when we are crushed by this world, we are loved. 

Sometimes the best way to show the unsearchable love at work within us is to say, "Look these are my scars.  They wrecked me. But the love of Christ at work in me has made them scars of love, scars of empathy, of tenderness, of compassion, of freedom, of grace."