Knitting As Living

This story was originally shared at my grandmother's 80th birthday party as a tribute to her influence on my life and as a means to present her with a small knitted nest of bluebirds.

I grew up across the street from Grandmom, Uncle Mike and later, Aunt Meg. When I was 12, we got the exciting news that Meg was going to have a baby. Not being a person of moderation, I threw myself into preparing to be the best cousin for the baby. At the time, I was a restless, energetic tomboy, and I also had a misplaced belief that if something was really hard to do, it was probably really valuable. So I decided I would make a blanket. A knitted blanket! Which also means that I would need to learn to knit. I knew it would be valuable enough because knitting wasn’t a thing I’d ever done, and a blanket would be good because it would take me a really long time. But we had months before the baby arrived and I was confident that I would pick up knitting quickly and have the blanket done in time. Besides, I had the Wilson crafting genes on my side. How could I fail? 

We didn’t know if Meg was going to have a boy or a girl, so I decided I would knit a yellow blanket. Later, when that sounded too easy, I changed my mind and decided to knit a blanket with yellow, blue and pink stripes, to cover all my bases. And because my blanket was going to be a legacy that lasted the entire lifespan of the child, I wouldn’t make a baby sized blanket. Oh no! I would make it large enough to cover her adult sized bed. 

I spent a lot of time imagining the baby wrapped up in the blanket I’d made with my hands and then when the baby grew up, he or she would often thank me for the gift of warmth and we would discuss together the value of doing hard things as the only real way of showing people you care. I was going to be an amazing cousin. 

This is the backdrop you needed in order to understand what kind of student Grandmom was taking on. And how incredibly patient she had to be in order to be my teacher. 

This was back before YouTube and smartphones, but I’d seen Grandmom knitting before. So I gathered a few (wrong) supplies and took the 50 or so steps across the street to her house. She patiently showed me how to knit, sometimes actually guiding my hands and moving the yarn for me while I tried to wrap my mind around the task. Knitting was a lot harder than I’d anticipated. But I was full of youthful motivation and the challenge only provided more fuel for my philosophy of hard=valuable. I listened halfway to Grandmom’s lesson and then rushed into my project. 


Here are some facts about knitting.

1. It’s a fairly simple and repetitive task requiring fine motor skills. 2. The hardest part is creating the muscle memory that makes those tiny motions automatic. 3. It’s much easier to learn on large needles with nice fat yarn so you can see what you’re doing and fix any mistakes. 

In short, knitting is all about time. Lots and lots of slow, one stitch-at-a-time hours and hours spent doing the same boring thing over and over. Needless to say, it was not a task that matched my profile at the time.  

In the spirit of making a hard thing even harder, I got the smallest circular needle I could find. And then I bought the first yarn I saw at Joann’s with “baby” on the label. Which also happened to be one of the thinnest baby yarns available. And I sat down to knit.

Ignoring Grandmom’s advice to count my stitches, I started with as many as would fit on my needle. Meaning that this blanket, had I finished it, would have been larger than a king size bed. And with my newly minted skills, one row (or about 1/8 of an inch) would take about an hour to complete. 

Obviously, I was setting myself an impossible task. I think Grandmom knew this, but like a good guide, I’m pretty sure she was watching quietly and providing education, and then allowing me to careen down a path of destruction so that I would learn my lesson. 

Looking back I realize that I was setting aside every wise bit of advice that a Grandmom can give to make my life easier. And when I got frustrated and tromped back across the street with my knitting to ask a question, I found that she was saying the same things every time. 

 “Count your stitches. Practice. Start slow and then try to get faster.”

I wasn’t a huge fan of any of those ideas, so I charged ahead focusing on speed over accuracy, eager to create the perception that I was fluidly knitting a super complicated work of art out of love for my unborn cousin. 

As can be expected, I burned out. After several weeks of this furious attempt, I went to Joann’s and bought four yards of purple fleece, stitched them together and stuffed some batting inside. I finished with a painstakingly stitched albeit amateur-looking monogram of Sara Mae’s initials. (Because by now we not only knew that Meg was expecting a girl, but she had a name.)

Maybe it was her wisdom, her kindness, her patience. But Grandmom never even rebuked me for giving up on the blanket. I dropped knitting except for a few scarves here and there over the years (also without counted stitches.) Until just last January, 15 years after my failure at making a baby blanket for Sara Mae. 

I had just finished some grad classes, and I found myself with odd times of day and nothing for my hands to do. After several years of reading and brain work needed for school, I was anxious to do something tactile with visible results. I remembered that I had some yarn and needles in the attic and decided to make a scarf for a friend. And then, I ran across a simple baby sock pattern that I managed to make without too much effort. 

And then there was a cascade. Remember, I’m not a person of moderation. I went from baby socks, to wallets, to bags, hats, bibs, shirts, fingerless gloves and finally even animals. With every completed project I brought a picture to Grandmom. Who celebrated with the kind of affirmation that little kids crave for their artwork. I never made anything that she didn’t make a huge deal over. From the simplest scarf to the most complicated acorn. She oo-ed and aw-ed and made me feel like a rock star. By this time, Grandmom had mostly put her needles away and passed most of her leftover yarn along to me. But she still enjoyed talking about knitting and comparing notes on patterns in that nerdy way that only two crafters can understand. 

In this way, I found myself spending quiet Friday mornings in her room, knitting and chatting (mostly about knitting) and counting my stitches. Finding that doing the same boring thing over and over sometimes leads to a sweetness that isn’t boring at all, but endearing and reliable. 

Grandmom has always been to me a seed planter. If you look around today, you’ll see tribute to her love for flowers and gardening. Since I’ve known her, she has always respected the slow quiet work of making things grow. In my life, the seeds of patience, perseverance, and care required to knit that she planted in my angsty pre-teen season, didn’t bloom for 15 years. 

Her legacy isn’t loud or intrusive. It’s the hallmark of another time, where people sat on front porches, sipped lemonade, and valued the slow and unseen work of being together. What better way to pass that legacy on than through the art of knitting where Grandmom taught me that while some valuable things are indeed difficult, no worthy endeavor is without the need to count your stitches, practice, and start slow.

A few months ago, I realized that in my excitement for rediscovering knitting, I had failed to make a knitted gift for the person most deserving, my teacher. And I’m thankful to be able to present these bluebirds as a tribute to her impact in my life thanks to which, they were very easy to make.

What Not to Wear (for an Interview)

I entered the restroom on the first floor because I was on crutches. Normally, I take the stairs to burn a few calories and use the second floor bathroom. But today I went into the first floor bathroom. I mention this because I kind of wish I'd taken the elevator upstairs. I wish I'd followed my sense of adventure and done something different because I could have avoided this whole thing. 

There was a girl I'd never seen before standing at the mirror fussing with her hair and her clothes. Since that's not an unusual scenario for a women's restroom, I just crutched on by her minding my own business. In fact I was so much minding my own business, when she spoke to me it took a second for me to realize that she was directing her panicky question to me. 

"You know how sometimes you put on a pair of pants and you don't realize that you can see the underwear line until it's too late and you've already left the house?"

I was, understandably I think, taken aback by this question from a stranger. I mustered up all my friendliness and tried smile. 

"Um...well....I guess. That sounds rough." 

And I tried to avert my gaze from her tight, salmon-colored pants and the very obvious underwear line. 

"Yeah, I just totally didn't notice. That's so awful..."

I tried to sympathize, but the truth is that I don't have any such pants in my wardrobe.  

So I said, unhelpfully I'm sure, "Well....at that point I usually just get rid of them...."

"Yeah..hahaha...I know...." She laughed awkwardly.

At this point I'm thinking, "No, you don't know. You don't know me. You don't know about my pants. And I don't really want to know about yours. I don't want to continue this conversation." But I just ducked into the handicapped stall thinking that this would cut off the conversation. 

It didn't. 

When I came out to wash my hands she was still there fussing and jabbering to me about her underwear. I was trapped and stressed about the layers of social awkwardness, and these feelings were exacerbated by my inability to make an efficient escape. Clearly her insecurity was driving her to extremes. I didn't know how to help and I needed to get back to work, a feat that would take a few more minutes than usual because of the crutches. 

I must not have been hiding it very well that I wanted to politely exit because she made jokes about how weird it was to be talking to a stranger about this sort of thing. I couldn't disagree. Not knowing what to say but thinking she probably just wanted some reassurance I said, 

"Well, there's no judgment from me anyway." 

And I left to return to my office to get ready for an interview at 11:30. 

The candidate for the position didn't show up until 11:50. 

And who was that candidate? 

A girl wearing salmon-colored pants. Only somehow magically now without an underwear line. 

When I crutched into the office to join my supervisor for the interview the girl turned a very bright red and started laughing.  

"So you've met before?" my supervisor asked. 

"Yes. Briefly. No pun intended." I replied.

Finding the One

It was a beautiful fall day; my favorite kind. My sixth grade class had just returned to the classroom after intensely battling it out in a game of soccer. We jostled each other while navigating the narrow pathway between the backpack rack and the first row of desks before finally settling in to work. Moments into my English workbook page, I noticed our teacher struggling with an interesting facial expression. She was trying to hide it, but I can pay no homage to her success. She took short, infrequent breaths followed by traces of a grimace and then rustled around in her desk drawer for a moment. Procuring a match, she quickly lit two candles which were strategically placed on opposite sides of the room. One apple cinnamon. The other pumpkin spice. A few moments later, she visibly relaxed into the ambient aroma.

This was the first time I recall feeling any embarrassment about body odor. I had been using deodorant by this time for a couple of years, but I still felt shame for our class. Those poor clueless souls who weren't even aware of their own stink! The event impressed me. I vowed never to experience it again, especially on a personal level. But I thought I was safe enough with my Sure brand deodorant. It wasn't fancy, but it got the job done. Even basketball games were no match for my antiperspirant; (though admittedly, I spent most of that time on the bench.) Still, I would occasionally sneak a whiff of my underarm to make sure it was still working. (You know what I mean, the stretch-arm-up-head-turn-quick-inhale move.)

My fear of odor followed me into adulthood. Last summer I was 45 minutes from home on my way to an all day teacher training when I realized that I'd forgotten to apply. Thankfully, the training was held in a hotel where I surreptitiously posed as a guest at the front desk and asked for a travel size deodorant which I now carry around in my purse just in case I ever make such a grave mistake again.

Somewhere around college, my armpits began sending me a complicated series of messages about the deodorant I used. My skin turned red and the itching drove me mad. So I switched. From Sure to Secret. Same effect. From Secret to Dove. Each new product would seem to work until a few months in, when suddenly my skin would realize that I was trying to pull one over on it and it would erupt in painful, itchy redness. Nothing was good enough for these elitist pair of pits. If it didn't result in itching, it also didn't result in odor-busting. And I couldn't have that. So the saga of my relentless search for the perfect deodorant continued.

A few years ago, I learned that deodorant can actually be made at home using the simple combination of coconut oil, baking soda, and arrowroot powder. I had to search diligently for the arrowroot powder, but the results were fantastic! I reveled in my lovely smell and my happy skin. Enjoying the natural independence of making my own deodorant, I thought I'd found the one. I thought we could be happy together forever. Until this past spring when my very own creation turned on me like the sad ending to a miserable Frankenstein flick. I woke one morning to the old rash and burn under my arms. It was like fire burning from my underarms, which might make for a really interesting superpower, but it's an awful day-to-day experience for a mere mortal like myself. I wept tears of frustration and headed back to store to try to find something, anything, that might relieve the symptoms.

I applied aloe for a few days and then purchased a new deodorant. This was a little more extreme. It was a rock crystal that claimed to be safe for skin as well as do an awesome job of killing odor. (Haven't I heard that one before though?) I ended up returning it unopened after reading online about some of the ingredients being harsh on skin. The quest seemed endless. I was a hapless knight attempting to slay the dragon of random allergic reactions to who-even-knows-what while the monster of body-odor loomed behind me with deadly toxic breath. What was I to do?

My situation, as you can now tell, was quite dire. Until I happened upon something simple and something that (fingers crossed) seems to do the job quite well for a mere $1.88.

Arm and Hammer Essentials Natural Unscented Deodorant

Now I must talk myself out of an overwhelming desire to hoard this product in case of zombie apocalypse or some other disaster. I might get eaten, but at least I'll smell great. 

Wearing White

From my elementary years, my parents worked as wedding photographers on the side of their day jobs. They were pretty good. Maybe it could have been their full time gig, but my dad has a big heart and a small understanding of business. As a result, their name was associated with kindness and price breaks in the wedding world. Word of mouth was their best marketing, and there were many springs and summers where I never saw them on the weekends except in the nighttime hours between rehearsal dinners and weddings.
As a consequence of this interesting life, my brothers and I were exposed early to the myriad controversies surrounding wedding traditions. Some traditions didn't make any sense.

• Why did the bride have to have something old, new, borrowed, and blue?
• What's the point of a ring bearer when he doesn't usually bear the ring?
• Why does the groom not walk down the aisle? 
• Why does no one give the groom away?

But some traditions, I never questioned.
Notably, the white dress. Why does almost every bride wear white?
That was obvious. 
Because she's supposed to be a picture of purity.  

Growing up in a highly legalistic church tradition which idolized virginity, I remember my attitude about white wedding dresses. In a culture of legalism, I learned to look disdainfully at brides who wore white dresses even though they'd been married before, co-habitated, or had a reputation for promiscuity. It seemed like lying. It felt like they were stealing a symbol meant for pure people (namely, me) and using it to pretend to be something they aren't. After all, I was working hard for my purity, and I didn't like other people getting the prize without the pain.

I'm not proud of what I used to believe. In my arrogance, I saw my virginity as a mark of purity that made me more acceptable to God. I thought that if I remained sexually pure, I would have the blessing of God, and He would love me more. 
And at the end of the day, I wanted so much to be loved.
Of course that way of living comes with a high price. You've got to be perfect. Everything is at stake.

I didn't know back then that I had the whole thing upside down. 
I was already impure, virginity notwithstanding.
But I was already loved too. More than I knew. 

In 22 days, I get to marry my best friend. 
One of the things I know now is that I don't deserve to wear a white wedding dress as a symbol of my purity, because I am not pure on my own. An accurate depiction of me before Jesus would be to walk down the aisle in filthy rags, because that's what my righteousness was before I was in Christ. 
The truth is though, that that isn't who I am anymore in Christ, and only through Christ, not because I've earned the right to some special status. 
For me, the white dress doesn't represent my purity anymore, it represents the purity of Jesus which was given to me at the cost of his blood. 
A purity that can't be marred no matter what happens. 
A purity that I don't have to protect, but one that motivates me to love Him from a grateful heart. 

1 Corinthians 6:11
"...and such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." 

Light Applied

Of the many rich metaphors of Scripture, I love best the picture of light and darkness that asserts itself so often as to nearly reach theme status. From the first page of Genesis when God creates light to the final pages of the story when the nations walk in the light of the lamb, our innate longing for light is affirmed by a God who has every intention of satisfying it.

Maybe it's a quirk of personality, or a season I'm in, but I find myself often overwhelmed by the darkness. I feel suffocated by it, and it drags me into despair and depression. I am so prone to forget the current and the coming light of the gospel and get lost in hopeless apathy. But in a recent rereading of 2 Corinthians 4, I found a few grace-fully lit candles to guide me when I feel the darkness pressing in.

2 Corinthians 4:6For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 

1. Dependence: For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts... Note the active verb has a subject. God. I am often not able to "find" the light. He finds me. And only He can be the source of all the Light I long for. The verse hearkens back to the Genesis act of creating light from nothing. God alone can do this.

2. Identity: has shone in our hearts... Look at the verb again. It's past tense, like so much of the grace language of the New Testament. He has already shone in my heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. This is who I am now. I already have this light, even when I can't feel it or see it. It's real, and it's already mine.

3. Hope: to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God... The light is here defined as "the knowledge of the glory of God." The reality is that this is not the end of the story. What is broken (the Image of God) will be restored. What is dark will be made light. This is the glory of God made visible once and for all.

4. Relationship: in the face of Jesus Christ. The light is found in the face of Jesus. Not the tablet of the Law or the pseudo-goodness of my once-dark heart, but in the living face of Love Incarnate. Do I feel punished by the darkness? I can always turn to Jesus, and in knowing Him more, I am healed by the eyeball-scorching light which reverses the blindness of my sin and guides me. In being reconciled to Jesus, I am now given light to see the Father whom I could never have hoped to see otherwise.

Though I often think I sit in darkness, there is hope for me. And for you too.

Isaiah 9:2 fulfilled in Matthew 4:16
"...the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned."

Same Rain

The house does not fall, but it is not exempt from the storm.

The parable of the two houses (Matthew 7) usually receives attention for the promise. Jesus says that if we live according to His Words, we will be like a wise builder who builds on a strong foundation, namely Himself, the Rock. One of my favorite songs in first grade Sunday school consisted of a repetition of the story that ended with hand motions highlighting the drama, "...and the house on the sand went SPLAT!"

This results-orientation glosses over an important element.

"And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house..."

It's true that it doesn't fall. It's true that the Rock holds it up. But the wind still shakes it and the floods still threaten and the house is beaten with the same storm that wracks the house on the sand.
The wording in the passage is identical for both houses. Not a drop of rain omitted.

Somewhere along the way, Christians picked up the idea that we would experience different rain than the houses built on the sand. Yes, Jesus said we would deal with suffering, but certainly it wouldn't be mental illness or sexual confusion or divorce or child abuse or incarceration. Maybe we expected that we would be persecuted for our faith or have a financial strain here and there, but there are some things (you know....the truly awful things) for which we think we'll get a pass.

We're Christians, after all.

But that's not the picture that we get from Matthew 7.

If your rain looks remarkably like the rain falling next door, do not despair. Your source of hope is not the difference in weather, but the Rock on which your life is built.

Let it rain.

Below the Stars

The sky enchants me. I love orange sunrises and watercolor sunsets, moody clouds and sapphire blues, sparkling stars and midnight cloaks. In the ever-changing canvas of the sky, I read the extravagant language of color and texture flung wide to the watching world, a message sent to a world peopled for praise. I AM here. 

How we need the reminder to look up.

I was driving through Staunton last night, near the rural farmlands of Virginia where the lack of city sky glow allows the stars a chance to sing a little louder. The cloudless night gifted me a perfect view of Orion, his glittering sword hanging from his belt and his arm raised in anticipated victory in the hunt. I thought about how the stars look to me and about the pictures we've made from them in an effort to classify, mythologize, and understand the infinite. And then I wondered how God sees the stars without the limitations of a sub-celestial perspective.

For a moment in the car as I gazed on the expanse above me, I felt a great distance from Him as lightyears of space and the eons of time pushed me from the Holy One who placed the stars on purpose in their orbits and can see them with perfect knowledge as if looking down on them from His exalted place.

But even this is not accurate. The picture I formed ignores His even greater transcendency. Even the way I think of Him includes false limitations, because He isn't merely "above the stars" as my locational perspective tends to place Him, as if He is part of the universe instead of the Source. He is incomprehensibly outside of that realm altogether. This chilled me even more, and I felt the naked ignorance of my humanity as if I was lost on a floating asteroid.

God, where are you? 

The answer was a quiet whisper to my soul. Not audible. Not visionary.
Just the reminder of who He is and the reconciliatory point of the story from the beginning.

Emmanuel. God is with us. 

When Jesus looked into the night sky, He saw the same stars that I can see. He walked under the same dying sun and lived based on a Jewish calendar using the phases of the same moon I marvel at. He is God With Us. He limited Himself to my perspective and walked below the stars to know and feel my distance from the Father. Now, knowing my limitations and being fully aware of my inaccuracies, He does not correct them immediately. He does not reprimand me for my inability to lift myself to interstellar vision. He did the reconciling by coming and living and dying for me. He rose with orange sunrises and fell asleep with watercolor sunsets on the same planet where I do my rising and falling and breaking and healing. We get to be together.

How can I not trust Him? He sees Orion, like I do. But He can love me perfectly because He also sees the whole universe like the Father. This is the kind of with us I need so much. 

God is For Me

We met in a basement. Like most little girls attending Sunday school in the 90's, I wore frilly dresses with lace collars and puffed sleeves patterned with flowers. My teacher, Miss Mary Cooley, was impossibly old and wise, a fact I surmised because of the million laugh lines around her eyes and the tight curls of snowy white hair piled on top of her head. I never knew her life story, but as far as I was concerned she had always been a very old, very wise Sunday school teacher. I distinctly remember carrying the strong conviction that she knew literally everything there was to know about God. So when she told us week after week that God loved us, I believed her. She would know. She had spent a lifetime wearing dresses and teaching first grade Sunday school in the basement. So God must love me. 

I'm glad she said it every week, because she knew most of all that we wouldn't always be first graders. I did not stay a little girl in frilly dresses. But in spite of her dedicated reminders, the assurance of her words faded as I grew up. I became a creative sinner, a better hypocrite, a suspicious suspect. Until I reached a point where I no longer believed it at all. If she had been able to speak from her grave, Miss Mary Cooley would have wept. 

God loves you!

No, I could not believe it. I had sunk too low. God was against me. 

For what is love if not to be radically for the other? 

I had no assurance that this Holy God could be for this exhausted pharisee. 

And even if He did love me, how could I know for sure? 

My friend was engaged when she told me how she reveled in the words, "He loves me." She broke down the sentence to see each part as special and spent energy thinking about how her fiancee beautified each petal of the linguistic flower. I follow her pattern for the words of Paul in Romans 8, which inspired this message, which inspired this post. :) 

"If God is for us, who can be against us?"

God- The Trinity living in loving relationship and desiring to be reconciled to the Image Bearers. The Creator of the ends of the earth. The never-weary One. The Burden Bearer. The Covenant Keeper who walked between the carcasses while Abraham slept. The Sinless Savior who alone could be the replacement for Isaac (and for me) on the altar. The worship worthy Lamb whose act in death and resurrection embodies Love.

God is- He exists. He lives. So real I cannot always perceive Him with my finitude. So alive that my eyes cannot yet see Him for preservation of their vision. So complex that my lists of attributes dissolve in the Presence. 

God is for- This God is not against me. He is dedicated to working in my favor. He has worked in my favor already through Christ. He went to great lengths to resolve the distance between us. He always does for me what is best. 

God is for us- Me. A sinner. Weak. Weary. Unwise. Burdened. And Beloved!

Yes! God is for me.

By grace in Christ...for me! 

Maybe the impact would be increased to reorder it and realize my identity without Him before being floored by His grace. But then, it starts as it must always start (and as the Spirit rightly wrote through Paul) with God as the subject and not with me. Believers here find themselves in the proper place as the object of eternal, inescapable affection with the focus on the One who loves.  

God is for us. 

What proof does Paul offer for such a bold declaration? 

Not a perfect record of service offered, nor a life of blessings and sunshine. 

But an unchanging reality: He did not spare even His own Son. 

Unresolved

"I need resolution."

She looks at me with desperate eyes, and I understood in the deepest, most wounded places of my heart. She wants what I have asked for. What we all have asked for a thousand times when the gap between "is" and "should be" spans galaxies and eons outside our comprehension. But resolution does not show up. It would be nice to find it like the last Christmas gift accidentally pushed behind the tree and discovered neatly tied up and waiting for you hours after all the others had been opened. A surprise and a comfort. Your favorite uncle did not forget you after all.

I wish it was more like that. I wish I could progress through the stages of my life without dragging the past with me. Can't I leave these bricks behind? No! They are the last remnants of my childhood village burned to the ground! Can't I set these planks on the side of the path? No! Of course, not! They were all that formed the bridge to adolescence! Even when I try to set them down and walk away, I run back to them with tears and gasps of relief. They burden me, but they define me too. They hinder me, but I cherish them. I don't know how to walk without them. And I falsely imagine that resolution would be that one gift worth so much that I would not see the value of these bulky weights anymore. A replacement for the pain. Simple, neat, explained. An answer for the "why" and clarity for the "how."

Instead, I'm left with a tangle of threads chopped off at odd lengths and uncategorized with which I feel a pressure to invent something beautiful. Then I look around me and judge my craft in comparison to all the rest. No wonder I am stressed. No wonder I feel inferior and alone. I have not exchanged my yoke for His.

Life in Christ exists in tensions of un-resolution. I'm chasing Jesus while toying with the idea of sin. I'm loving one brother while I'm hating another. I'm hoping He will come today and wishing He would wait until I've finished a few things. I'm thrilled to walk with Him and hesitant to take another step. I am a self contradiction even as I claim logic to be my teacher. Paul understood. I hopelessly imprison myself unless I have considered Christ. Christ who is the gift most precious. Christ who makes everything beautiful from my tangled threads. Christ who sees exactly what I am in searing specificity and loves me still, so much that He humbled himself to die in my place.
(Thanks, Andrew Peterson, for your exquisite poetry highlighting this truth.)

I cannot wait for resolution before I take the next step. Such would be faithless unbelief in the God who says He is with me "even here." (Psalm 139:10) I want resolution and label it as a need, but God gives me something else. Something better. Because it is not resolution that replaces my burdens with hope. It is Him.   

Passive Voices: When A Verb Reveals The Heart

"You may not use any 'be' verbs in your paper."

It was a bold statement and I was well aware of how it would affect my students, an expectation that proved correct when their mouths dropped open, their eyes bugged out, and a gasp of dismay filled the room. The senior English class had been shuffled off to me mid-semester in hopes of salvaging their deficient writing skills. Excited about the challenge, but overwhelmed with the task, I spent much of class time teaching them a holy dissatisfaction with their current quality of written expression and demanding that they show me their intelligent, intricate, God-reflecting souls on paper. They had made some progress. But they weren't done yet.

After shuffling through the simpler problems of comma rules and unclear pronoun references, we had come to the issue of strong verbs. No linking verbs. No "is" or "are." No "was" or "were." Their papers must flourish like living gardens full of meaning in which word weeds were not permitted. But they stood on the edge of their plots of land and looked with despair at the tiny, forbidden words. Most of all, they felt the impossibility of removing all passive voice from the papers. It took weeks, but eventually they shifted their language and began to turn "Sally was given a flower by her sister" to "Sally's sister gave her a flower." Which soon, to my extreme delight, became "Sally's sister surprised her with a flower."

Like many first year English majors, I developed my hatred for passive voice in my freshman English class. I chased it out of my papers with fiery passion and guarded every sentence from the deleterious effects of weak syntax. "Live!" I told my words. "Express!" I demanded of myself. I knew subconsciously that passive voice had a place, but it was mostly considered a mistake. I think this phase of my life was necessary. It taught me how the right word matters and makes the difference between communicating and saying.

But the construct of active verbs attracted my already law-driven heart to a form of self worship. Already addicted to the self-righteous arrogance of doing things for God, my obsession for active rather than passive verbs revealed my dysfunctional relationship with him. Nothing was done for me, passive. I did everything, active.

Nowhere is this more evident than my journaled prayers from college.

"God, I will love you."
"God, I will serve you." 
"God, I will go wherever you want." 
"God, I will destroy sin in my life."

These were my frantic efforts to do what I felt I had to do to be loved. I became the source of all my own grace, which is not grace, but self sufficiency and death. I did not realize that the passive "be loved" is not achieved by activity "do." Passive verbs are gifts. They are expressions of what is done and what is given.

The other day I heard a song that struck me for its use of passive voice.
The main line is "stop holding on and just be held."

The linguistic change is minor.
From "hold on" to "be held" you do not change the verb but the position of the action.

I did not know that there would be so much peace and joy in a passive verb.

I did not know that I don't have to hold on, because I am held.

To Want Joy

I'm often surprised upon self-reflection how what I want and what I really want are contradictory. This is never more true than with suffering. On one level, I want it to be removed. I want eradication of all my pain and the agony that surrounds me in the broken world. I want peace. And I want it immediately without struggle or tension or battle. I just want it to appear magically and envelope me in the safety of the presence of God.

But in another sense, this is not at all what I want.

What I really want is Beauty, which is code for value and worth and essence.  I want the suffering to mean something and to matter to what is ultimately important. I want the pain to increase the glory. That's what I really want. And, by the mystery of grace, that's what Jesus really offers. Not a magic spell to erase the effects of sin, but a strong, faithful hand holding mine in the dark. A friend in the valley. A fellow struggler on the trail. What I want is Emmanuel, who felt and feels my pain. He suffered for me so He can now suffer with me. I'm not exempt from the bitterness of the curse, but I'm not alone in it either. And somehow I know that exemption would cheapen it in the end. So I smile in the company of His presence and take another step.

It's like the summer I went hiking in Alaska. I wanted to climb the mountain more than anything. Ask my fellow camp staffers and they'll tell you how I trembled with excitement. What for most of them was the annual team building exercise was for me an adventure of epic proportions. Nothing in my athletic experience had ever looked so daunting and so inviting at the same time. Of course, my goal was to reach the top, but I didn't want to be transported there by some Star Trek voodoo. I wanted to climb. I wanted to feel every step and touch the trees on the way up. And having reached the top, I wanted to remember the journey as the excellent means to a glorious end.

Without the agony of the climb, the mountain would mean about as much as a stroll to the mailbox on junkmail day.

I do not minimize the longing for restoration. Actually, it is that longing that drives Frodo to Mt. Doom, isn't it? And the metaphor holds true. For the joy set before Him, He endured. For the joy set before us, we endure. What I emphasize here is that suffering does not hinder our longing, but increases it. It galvanizes the experience into something also worthwhile. I wish I spent more of my life remembering that God values the journey.

How could He collect our tears if He did not walk with us each agonizing step up the path?

How could the God who put Himself in the position to give His own Son for our sake remain ignorant to our pain and deaf to our cries?

How could He allow it unless He knew with sovereign certainty that this, too, would bring joy? 

On Pain of Death

I understand why many Christians embrace some form of evolution.
There's a push for neutrality and tolerance that isn't all bad, as much as conservatives yell about it with their shoes superglued to the marble floors of their ancient temples. We're trying to make sense of a confusing world, accept people without judgment, and fit together theory and faith. All good motivations.

Popular as it was, I felt that the Nye/Ham debate last year was not productive at all, but only served to further misconceptions and raise the tensions of both Christians and Naturalists everywhere. Unlike Ham, my objections to evolution have much more to do with human hearts and logic than any scientific evidence. I do believe there is scientific evidence for Intelligent Design, but I also know that we interpret evidence based on our already-held beliefs.

What is more compelling to me is the universal pain of death.

If we define death as separation (from each other, from physical existence, from all we love), we can connect all pain back to it. Bad breakups are a death of sorts. So are broken families and abandoned children and murders and poverty and disease. Of course, the grief of an actual death bears psychological and spiritual damage for those left behind. All of these deaths are part of Death itself. And I find it interesting that no one likes or desires Death, unless they are categorically psychopathic or else pretending for the sake of hipster counterculturalism. And most people try to avoid it in all of its forms unless they have lost all hope. Death grates on our souls and strikes fear into us. We have the sense that we were not supposed to experience it. It feels so wrong.

We have to wonder where this hatred of Death comes from. If, as evolution theory asserts, death is part of the natural process and has always been part of our world in the blind effort to improve, then why do we hate it? From where do we get the audacity to assert an individuality that wants us (as individuals) to survive even if it's better for the species for us to die? Shouldn't our instincts, trained to value the survival of the species, destroy that tendency? And at what point in the epochal history of time did our ancestral primates begin to value life instead? Especially when all they knew was death? Why do we still fear being forgotten and alone? Why do we spend our lives seeking connection with each other and weep when we are separated?

Naturalistic Evolution has attempted answers to (or avoidance of) these questions without God being part of the picture. These arguments I find to be most unsatisfactory, but are beyond the scope of this post. The problem I have with Theistic Evolution is a refusal to recognize that death is an integral part of the evolutionary process. Whether God started that process going or it started by chance, you still have millions of years without a rational human able to sin thereby bringing death into the world. You still have death as a natural, normal thing, and I suspect we would not feel its effects in the same way that we do if this were so.

Essentially, evolution in all its forms reverses the order. Death is a result of sin, and sin couldn't happen until Adam and Eve had formed into full human beings and could disobey. If evolution formed them, you have a lot of death happening before sin. And it just doesn't work that way. What's more, we would probably feel comfortable here. The fact that we don't says something about what we are and what we were made to be. The sense of trying to escape should give us cause to question from what and why.

Death is wrong. Not in a moral sense, but in a fitness sense. We feel it to be inappropriate. Unbelievable. Shocking. Tragic. Raw. And I think we only feel this way because we know we were never meant to experience it.

Respected scientist Carl Sagan made a revealing statement in his book Cosmos (p.4),

"Our feeblest contemplations of the cosmos stir us--there is is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height." 

Why would humanity as a general whole feel this memory if it were not in some way true? From what height was there to fall if we evolved through a process of deaths before sin brought the separation we find so repulsive?

This is also why Christianity is not ultimately about morality or ethics. Hebrews chapter 2 tells us that Jesus came to reverse Death (which inherently means dealing with the sin problem since Death results from sin.)

"...he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death -- that is, the devil-- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." Hebrews 2:14-15

There is no measurable, objective way to prove my point other than the affirmation felt strongly in the soul of a person who has just lost someone dear to them. But it is for me another signpost to the One who loved me and gave Himself for me. It is not an argument to convince anybody because it assumes the reality of God's love which not all are willing to receive. In the end, I guess the strongest evidence I have is subjective: the fact that it seems to me inconsistent with the character of the God I know to allow a blind process to produce humans made in His Image, loved relentlessly, and meant to reflect the glory of His grace.

Stumbling with God

My nephew's mobility started overnight from my perspective.

One day he was merely attempting to crawl and it felt like the next time I saw him, he was fully upright and taking sequential, albeit wobbly, steps and crossing entire rooms with a grin on his face stretching the entire surface of his adorable, chubby cheeks.

We brought him over last week for the afternoon while his parents went on a date. I listened to him laugh in the car (a laugh radiating from the exact center of his little body), and as every shard of my soul mysteriously joined in his happiness I thought, "This is the joy that music tries to capture and can't quite reach. The joy that poetry attempts to articulate and falls just short. The joy that doesn't have language or symbol or thought. It just is." It was like falling headlong in love and hoping to drown in his exquisite little light.

When we got out of the car, we had to cross the front lawn to get to the door. Leo likes his independence, so he endeavored to take every painstaking step from the station wagon to the stairs. I held his hand as we navigated the uneven terrain and he raised his tiny shoes into the air one at a time to place them carefully on the next few inches of grass.

Something struck me about how I walked with him. I'm 5'5" and it takes me no more than five seconds to make this trip from the car to the house. Leo is less than two feet tall and it took about 10 times as long for him, even holding my hand. But I didn't feel irritated. I slowed my steps and altered my center of gravity to adjust to his need for support. I watched the path ahead and vigilantly removed obstacles he couldn't handle on his own. When he stumbled, I let him wrestle a bit to find his footing, but I didn't let go of his hand, and I let him know that I wasn't going to leave him alone. I even whispered little words of affirmation to let him know that I noticed his progress and was proud of his efforts. And all this for the simple task of getting to the front door on a summer afternoon.

In that moment, I realized something else in the intricate shards of my being.

This is how God loves me too. 

Be Yourself: Romans 6

In my favorite young adult series, Janner Igiby, a simple son of a farmer, finds out that his real name is Janner Wingfeather, Throne Warden of the Shining Isle. Janner becomes the protector of his brother, the young King Kalmar, whose life circumstances eventually give him due cause to question his true identity as a king, a son, and even a human being. Numerous times throughout the book, Janner must remind his brother of his true identity by calling him by his real name. By reminding him who he really is, Janner is able to bring Kalmar back from the edge of insanity. It's that easy. And that impossibly difficult.

It's popular to hear the phrase, "be yourself." It's a phrase I always imagine being drawn with a colored pencil while flowers and unicorns and sparkles spew from the letters like on a commercial for a laser jet printer. But for all our encouraging each other to do it, few people seem to know how. We are expert turtles of soul skilled in strategies for hiding what we think is our true identity. Some people hide by being loud and hilarious to cover up their insecurities. Others hide by talking less and avoiding people or wearing lots of makeup or insisting on long dresses or making intellectual comments or devising blatant lies. But whatever our cover of choice, our propensity to shield ourselves from others is at least partly rooted in shame. We think we know who we are, and we're afraid of what people will think if they were to find out. We're bad people, after all. We know what we've done. What we used to do. And doesn't the Bible affirm this? We're sinners to the core, even if Jesus saved us. 

Or are we? 

I've been thinking about what my pastor said this past week. If we explain the gospel correctly, it will evoke the question, "Well, wait...doesn't that mean I can do whatever I want?" It's a paraphrase of Paul's "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Of course, Paul answers with the emphatic, "God forbid!" But the point here is that the question has to be asked and answered as a natural outflow of proper gospel focus. It's one of those necessary mistakes that has to be made in holding the tension of the gospel. And the gospel is dangerous, isn't it? It's so radically grace-based that a coworker of mine responded by saying, "I think it's a beautiful idea, but it can too easily be abused." 

I agree with my friend. It can be horribly abused. But that doesn't make it less true. And what's more, it's not the need for morality or ethics that makes it so. Paul's inspired reasons for tenaciously holding to the gospel are backed up, unbelievably, without laying down the law. He doesn't write a detailed instruction manual or a list of guidelines to prevent people from abusing grace. He does something entirely different and entirely consistent with the character of the God I am coming to know. Paul's imperatives in this chapter have nothing to do with avoiding specific sins or doing specific good works. They are in order: "know," "consider," and "present." What keeps us from sin? What keeps us from abusing this gift of grace? Apparently, it's as simple (but often excruciatingly difficult) as knowing who we are in Christ, believing that we are who He says we are, and living from that reality moment to moment. This is a holy "be yourself." Be who you really are. But not the you that you think you are, whether that's a sniveling sinner or a righteous pharisee. Rather, be who God says you are.
Remember your name.

This goes much deeper than creating a false reality in hopes of changing yourself. God is stating the reality of my identity, and I am agreeing with him that I'm no longer a sinner by identity. I am only a sinner by description when I fail to believe the truth about God and myself. In my innermost being, I am forgiven of all sin and covered in the righteousness of Christ. God sees me the same way He sees Jesus, the One who lived under the Law and died under the Law so that I could die to the flesh and live under grace. 

You can try to modify your behavior. The example one of my pastors mentioned is famous for its scathing mention in James 3: you can attempt to tame your tongue. But since your words, like all other actions, only reveal what's in the heart, you really need a new heart. A new you. And if you have a new you, why are you so afraid of being yourself? Your true self is the one Jesus gave you, so you can be that redeemed child of God in freedom and joy living in righteousness from the heart. That was the point all along, from the very beginning: People who want to be with God. Not people who follow a moral code out of duty. The goodness (misnamed "morality" sometimes) that comes out of this relationship with Him is a byproduct, but by no means the point. 

Practically speaking, we can stop trying to encourage each other with directives to "make Jesus happy" or "keep pursuing God" or anything else that implies a "try harder" mentality. Instead we can exhort each other, like Paul does, to remember our identity in Christ and live out of that grace. Sometimes, like King Kalmar of the Shining Isle, we forget that we are rescued royalty. We just need someone to remind us who we are.

Mat Kearney: Just Kids

You will spend the rest of your life recovering (or not recovering) from the loss of innocence. 

No one escapes the brokenness. 

It was a moment that you remember well, because up until that point you didn't have a clue. You weren't aware that the darkness was so dark. You hadn't felt the pressure of being here, in this inescapable coffin of a world. Your disappointments until that day were small and easily solved with a kind word or a lollipop or a hard game of soccer. 

But then it happened. 

And nothing was ever going to be the same. 

Maybe you've been fighting it, and lashing out at a world you rightly hate for the crime and the loss and the death and the pain. Maybe you're pretending that it isn't so bad and grasping at whatever fantasy numbs the searing wounds of your shattered heart. But I know, and you know, we don't belong here ultimately. At least not the here that we can see and feel and taste. And we long for a way to be strong enough to face the abyss with courage and yet be joyful enough to walk away untouched. 

This is the longing I feel when I listen to Mat Kearney's song Just Kids. The imagery of his personal memories make the experience powerful. This is one man's wrestle with the loss, not of his youth, but of the simplicity that made relationships beautiful. The first verse poetically refers to the "wet cement" in the souls of children that catches whatever happens around them. Of course, the cement hardens and can't be changed, whatever was marked there. The first chorus expresses his longing that he could have started this relationship back when things didn't feel broken, back before they even knew about the pain they would cause each other and the messiness of the families they come from. 

After detailing the chaos of their backgrounds, the artist cries out for answers in a second chorus that resonates with anyone who senses the relentless, ubiquitousness of the Fall and the gnawing desire for restoration. 

For crying out loud I wanna know
How the waves keep on crashing down the doors.
Feel the weight of the world and they keep on bringing more.
If it's just you and me on the floor,
Go grab your coat, and I'll drive us home
Like we were just kids. 

Kearney articulates that it will take a return to that innocence and simplicity to make the relationship work.  That return will require the paradox of embracing the brokenness and surrendering it. Without denying or fighting, we can be just kids again.

Thinking Gospel: Romans 5

There may come a day when I will not have to be so intentional in my war against the poisonous legalism that my heart loves. But I think not. These scars do not disqualify me from joy. And I'm beginning to understand that the necessity of conscious dependence on the grace of God hardly discounts me from relaxing in it.

This weekend, my pastor led us through the first part of Romans chapter 5. (Listen to it here! It's worth the time.) I realized afresh that legalism is only thinly veiled heresy. It doesn't drive me to Jesus. Instead, it drives me to selfishness. Through it, I want gifts and rewards for good behavior. I cannot accept that He gives freely, and I don't like what He offers. The six gifts of justification by faith laid out in the passage are twisted when I see them through a false lens. When I wrote out these contrasts of how the gifts are received on the basis of law or grace, it helped me to see how devoid of the cross my natural thinking is. I am praying that God will continue to weed out the old, deadly thinking and replace it with the gospel.

Romans 5

Peace with God

The Gospel: Because of Jesus' death and resurrection, I am no longer at war with God; instead He and I are waging war against my sin. But my sin is completely forgiven and He gives me His righteousness.
Legalism: He forgives my sin if I ask correctly, but I have to work for the righteousness. God and I can't be at peace until I have done enough.

Access to God

The Gospel: I am invited to come boldly as His precious child without thought for what I'm interrupting or worry over how I'll be received. I'm already in. I'm accepted. I'm loved and cherished.
Legalism: I can't really talk to God unless I'm performing well. He might love me, but it doesn't change how He interacts with me. I'm a bad person trying hard to be a good person.

Hope

The Gospel: I will see Him! I will be in His presence and I'll finally reflect Him completely as I was created to do. I'm sure of this, because He has promised it.
Legalism: I might be sure of Heaven if I work hard enough, but I am not sure He will be delighted to have me there.

Joy in Suffering

The Gospel: I'm suffering, but it's not because He is angry at me. He is using everything to shape me into a beautiful reflection of His Son. Nothing can destroy me. All I have left to do is rejoice as He works in me.
Legalism: I'm suffering, so I must have done something wrong. I can remove the suffering if I find where I messed up and fix it.

Experience of the Love of God

The Gospel: He loves me. Always. He proved it by living the life I couldn't live and dying the death I deserved. He loved me when I was against Him, so of course He loves me now that I'm reconciled. I didn't do anything to earn His love so I can't do anything to lose it either. He was for me when I was against Him. Now I can experience His love.
Legalism: He loves me when I'm doing a good job. I live in constant terror of His wrath if I make a wrong move.

God Himself

The Gospel: Greater than the gifts of the gospel and more wonderful even than the peace is the gift of God Himself. I get to be with Him! He is the greatest treasure and the One for whom I was created. I love Him!
Legalism: I want safety and dignity and a sense of self righteousness. I'm not really interested in God for who He is, as long as I can have what I want. I love me.