Category: Grace

Illuminated moments

Image Is Everything

I am not, nor will I ever be, a size 2. I would like to be a size 10; I have three sizes to go. I am overweight and out of shape, but I’m working on it. As an emotional eater and very busy person, that’s not an easy task. As a new mom facing down celebrity mom weight loss photos, it’s down right daunting. I know I’m never going to look like a magazine cover, but, sheesh, why can’t I melt away pounds like one? The one I really hate right now is a before and after picture floating around Facebook that shows Jessica Simpson at her heaviest (which was PREGNANT) and then slimmed down, with the tagline, “I lost 25 pounds in 5 weeks.”

This is TOTALLY unrealistic for anyone who doesn’t have a personal chef, personal trainer, personal assistant, and nothing better to do than exercise for hours and hours a day. Realistically, I can eat well and commit about 30 minutes per day to working out – if everything goes perfectly with my routine, which it never does. So, realistically, I can shape up, and I might eventually reach size 10 nirvana, but the bottom line is that my bottom line isn’t going to perk up instantly. I’m trying to make peace with that.

I am not giving myself a free pass for the bad behavior that landed me in overweight/out-of-shape territory. I am, however, looking for ways to remind myself that I am healthy and that my body is amazing just the way it is. With this body, I have completed a half-marathon, a sprint distance triathlon, and delivered a baby. That’s a pretty great list. It would be easy to beat my own drum every day because of my little list, but then I’m not likely to do the work I need to do to get back in shape. On the flip side, I’ve realized that when I’m critical of my own body, I’m usually judging everyone else’s, too.

My new experiment is to find something beautiful in each lady who crosses my path, especially when I find myself thinking something negative. I tend to be less judgmental of guys, so I largely exempt them from my thought experiment. So, when I see someone who doesn’t meet my ideal in some way, I pause to find something to appreciate. It’s also cheating to let myself off by thinking, “She has a great personality.” I find something physically attractive, no matter how small it may seem. If I happen to be in conversation with the person, like a cashier, then I try to compliment them while we’re talking (unless it’s weird, like “You have nice eyebrows” – then it’s just creepy).

I have never seen an ugly smile when offered sincerely. I have seen people more beautiful than have ever graced the covers of fashion magazines. And I have found that this thinking spreads to other areas of my life. It’s no secret that I struggle occasional with mostly mild bouts of depression. I know I’m having a rough time when I realize I am short fused and cursing like a sailor when I talk to myself. Those are also the days that I come as close as I get to road rage; it’s still really road annoyance rather than rage.

This afternoon, I was cut off in traffic twice by the same vehicle, which I found terribly obnoxious. When the other vehicle finally swerved to another lane to exit the interstate I expressed my relief as a quick, “Thank goodness!” But as I passed the car, I happened to glance at the driver, who was an older middle-aged woman who looked completely frazzled. My road annoyance disappeared, and then I felt a little guilty. This poor woman was probably following directions in an unfamiliar part of town, and the exit ramps were a little tricky. Instead of telling myself how badly this woman drove, I prayed for her to find her destination easily and to feel more calm about driving in strange territory. And then I hoped that someone would extend me the same grace next time I’m acting like an idiot. Maybe they’ll think I have nice eyebrows, too.

On the Subject of Altars

“Build for me an altar made of earth, and offer your sacrifices to me—your burnt offerings and peace offerings, your sheep and goats, and your cattle. Build my altar wherever I cause my name to be remembered, and I will come to you and bless you. If you use stones to build my altar, use only natural, uncut stones. Do not shape the stones with a tool, for that would make the altar unfit for holy use.” (Exodus 20:24, 25 NLT)

One of the things I love about the Old Testament is that it is all very existential, very present and earthy. It might be easy to get bogged down in the “begats” and the seemingly inane and endless levitical laws, but don’t get lost in the details because the big picture is beautiful. Sacrifices and altars might be part of the regulations that we want to skip because it doesn’t seem relevant to modern life. But we’d be wrong to miss something so essential.

God required the Israelites to present perfect sacrifices – unblemished lambs, the first crops harvested – not to punish them or to make their lives more difficult, but to acknowledge that God is holy and perfect and righteous. The sacrifices cover the fact that we are not holy or perfect or righteous without grace. It stands to reason that since God requires perfect sacrifices that he might want the altar they are offered on to be perfect, too. But we’d be wrong to miss something so essential.

These verses from Exodus have been a balm to my ailing self image of late. The post-partum body is a hilarious and embarrassing collection of weakened muscle, body fat, leaking parts, and shedding hair. It’s easy to stare at the topographical map of stretch marks in the mirror and wonder if the sagging belly will ever stop jiggling. Even more than body image, though, I have always wrestled with my to-do lists, thinking I will never be even half of the Proverbs 31 ideal. Most days “bringing her food from afar” means pick up instead of delivery, and “providing for her household” means nobody died that day. I am a broken altar.

Read these verses again, and read closely for any mention of perfection. You didn’t see it either, did you? The only requirements are build where I tell you, and use natural, uncut stones; in fact, shaping the stones with a tool would “make the altar unfit for holy use.” I see a lot of things that make me very happy to put away my tools. First, God provided good raw material. He has given us everything we need to build the perfect altar (ourselves) for his use; it’s all there, but it must be assembled according to his instructions (that’s the tough part). Second, my tools are wholly inadequate to improve on God’s craftsmanship. Any shaping or cutting must be an act of God, not man. Third, the altar was made of earth; it needed to be raw and natural because it merely acted as a table for the sacrifices.

As a very raw altar stone, I can stop trying to chisel away what I see as blemishes and rest in the grace that I am as God made me. This does NOT mean that I stop growing or trying to be better or exercising. It means that I can focus on building where God tells me to build and building what he tells me to build. For instance, I will never look like Heidi Klum; I will only ever look like me. Accepting that I will not grow another four inches and lose half my body weight frees me to be the healthiest I can be. That may include losing weight but will never require looking like a German underwear model. Another example: I will never be Martha Stewart or Rachel Ray or any other semi-put-together homemaker. Accepting that I will never be able to keep my house immaculately clean and/or cook dinner every night while also working full time, raising a child, and volunteering frees me to realize that there are a lot of ways to be a good wife without a spotless house. My poor husband has resigned himself to sharing his living quarters with the occasional (or semi-permanent) dust bunny and a wife who will never be a German underwear model. He seems to have made his peace with that.

What matters most is that I am following God as closely as I can and that my family reflects that faith and love. It matters that this earthy altar gets used to glorify God more than it matters that each stone block was perfectly cubed before it got used. It matters that the altar is raw material, malleable and natural without the facades we humans use to hide our inglorious imperfections. That kind of altar is ready to offer up holy sacrifices of service and worship – ready to accept that Jesus made one perfect sacrifice for all humanity and my sacrifices are merely offerings of thanksgiving for what has been done already. It matters that I am fit for holy use just the way I am, regardless of what I see as my blemishes. Those extra pounds, my mound of stretch marks, my total lack of discipline in the presence of chocolate, my impatience, my humanity – those are God’s raw materials to shape as he sees fit. And underneath the imperfections that always catch my attention are some pretty neat building stones: creativity, humor and empathy to name a few. While it may be obvious to me how God is using those good things, it is less apparent to me that he is also using my broken bits, often in bigger ways than what I see as my strengths.

So, build where God tells you to build. Build according to his instructions, and remember that your raw materials are both worthy and holy if you allow God to shape them. Allow your altar to be used just as it is.

For Mother’s Day

“Sing, O childless woman, you who have never given birth! Break into loud and joyful song, O Jerusalem, you who have never been in labor. For the desolate woman now has more children than the woman who lives with her husband,” says the Lord. “Enlarge your house; build an addition. Spread out your home, and spare no expense! For you will soon be bursting at the seams. Your descendants will occupy other nations and resettle the ruined cities. “Fear not; you will no longer live in shame. Don’t be afraid; there is no more disgrace for you. You will no longer remember the shame of your youth and the sorrows of widowhood. For your Creator will be your husband; the Lord of Heaven’s Armies is his name! He is your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of all the earth. For the Lord has called you back from your grief— as though you were a young wife abandoned by her husband,” says your God. “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will take you back. In a burst of anger I turned my face away for a little while. But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer. (Isaiah 54:1-8 NLT)

This may seem an odd introduction for a Mother’s Day post, but I wanted those words in your head first. I have held on to this Bible passage for at least fifteen years now. It struck me in college as I was working with youth and kids that even though I didn’t have children (nor did I want them in that stage of life), each life I touched was enlarging my house. One translation says move your tent pegs out, which is such a lovely way to think of adding to your family. Create a little more space; add a little water to the soup pot; be ready to nourish anyone who comes your way.

In broad strokes, this passage, like most of the Old Testament is God wooing his errant Israel back into the fold, back to his tent, back to life and love. Here, God is promising Israel that he will have compassion on their captivity and return them to the land he promised them, like a husband tenderly making up with his wife. This marriage imagery runs throughout the Bible, and as a woman and a wife, I can instantly identify with the roles of God and his people – Christ and his church. There are so, so many layers to this passage, but I only want to point you to one.

Mother’s Day is a bitter pill for me, and this year is a grab bag of emotions. It will be a tough day for so many of my friends who are struggling to become pregnant, who have lost pregnancies, and who long for children someday but realize that someday is dangerously close to passing them by. If you’re in any of those situations, may this offer you the same consolation I’ve gleaned from these verses. Israel is a childless widow, meaning she has no possible way to have children. Without promising her that she would ever give birth to any children, God still promises to act as Israel’s husband – her provider – and to give her more children than even the married woman has.

God tells Israel to enlarge her house – move her tent pegs – for the descendants that will soon be “bursting at the seams.” She’ll forget all about the “disgrace” and “shame” of her current situation. I put those two words in quotations because I know that you feel shame and disgrace if you are a woman longing for a child. You feel as if you’re out of sync with nature and maybe even God, but there is no reason for your guilt. A beautiful thing about women is that we are built to nourish other people. It’s biological as well as emotional and spiritual, and most of us nurture others everyday without even thinking.

So this Mother’s Day, look around you and consider how many lives yours enriches. Do you work with children? Do you volunteer to help others? How many people have you supported through tough times or adopted as extended family? Celebrate those things today, because you, my friend, are a mother whether you have given birth or not. Expand your tent pegs to make room for all of your children, because once you look past the physical aspect of childbirth, you’ve actually given birth to a huge family. If you have nurtured another being, nourished another soul, you are a mother, and worthy of being celebrated.

All the Time

You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing.
You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy,
that I might sing praises to you and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever! (Psalm 30:11, 12 NLT)

That pretty much sums up how I feel this week. I may seem a little quiet compared to some of my friends about praising God for our good lab work. Let me pause right here and say, God deserves all the credit and glory for continuing to give us good news about this pregnancy. Let me continue by adding that he deserves all the glory from every situation in my life, including the losses. Any good that has come from that pain has all come from him. Any good that comes from continuing this pregnancy will all come from him.

I hope that my faith has been acted out in my life plainly enough that anyone reading this would know that my faith is in God all the time. I have been exhorted more than once this week to remember that God can do anything and that we should never doubt his power. If I didn’t forget that through nine pregnancy losses, I’m not going to forget it now. What I don’t want to happen is for my focus to shift from relying on God to letting my faith rest on what he can do for me. I don’t want anyone else to be shaken in their faith if our desired and prayed for outcome doesn’t come to be. I praise God for keeping me whole and sane and for giving me great news about this pregnancy. I will not stop praising God if our good news changes – “O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever!” No matter what.

This has to be your prayer, too, if you are praying for me. I would love nothing more than to find twins on our ultrasound in a few weeks; I would love nothing more than to see a single heartbeat; I would love nothing more than to experience a complete pregnancy and hold a squirmy baby early next year. Any part of that dream coming true would be a blessing from God; none of it is a measure of his love for me. We tend to be if-then thinkers: if God gives me a baby this time, he loves me a lot. Wrong. There is no if-then with God except that he loves us, and IF we accept the sacrifice his son made as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, THEN we become his children and will live to praise him forever. The good things he gives us are gifts – wholly undeserved, and absolutely no reflection of any goodness we may have demonstrated in our lives.

This baby is already a gift from God; born or unborn it’s his creation, and it’s part of my life forever. Have no doubt that I am giving God the glory for this gift and our joy. Have no doubt that God is good all the time, when you can see his good gifts – like our lab work this week – but even when it hurts, even when you’ve lost, and even when you mourn. ALL the time, God is good.

Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is not my favorite day to deal with, and this year it had the added sting of following so closely behind a loss and sharing the date with my birthday. I have often skipped church on Mother’s Day to avoid dealing with it – the awkward (for me, anyway) invitation to stand as an acknowledgement of achieving motherhood, the awkward (for me, anyway) gift that I can’t gracefully accept or decline without losing it a little, and the simple recognition of a day that I can’t really participate in even though I have children. It’s just not the same, and it’s a reminder of loss and unattainable dreams. The absolute hardest Mother’s Day church service is definitely baby dedication. It’s a sweet tradition – if you’ve had babies to dedicate – otherwise, it’s a good day to sleep in.
This year, there was no baby dedication during the service, and we decided to brave it. (Actually, I decided to try it, and my sweet husband who wouldn’t have been too affected by the day agreed to support whatever I felt like I could handle…) There was no extra standing ovation for the moms present this year, but there was a request during the greeting to hug a mom near you while greeting the people sitting around you. In the choir loft, mass hugging ensued, but I noticed one of our sweet older ladies on the back row had tears forming in her eyes while she tried to keep her face still. She and her husband have been married for over fifty years, and they never had children. She’s never told me so, but I get the feeling that she probably lost at least one pregnancy; she’s told me that people her age just don’t talk about things like that. I went over to give her a special hug, and she said, “It’s just a hard day.” I said, “I know” and spent the next song trying not to cry when I realized what I needed to tell her after the service.
After church I caught her in the ladies robing room before she had a chance to get out into the crowd so I could tell her this: “You are just as much a mother as anyone else here today who actually gave birth. You count today for all the time and love you have put into the lives around you – including mine. You are a mom, and you deserved a special hug today and to know that.” We were both crying by then, and she said, “It’s so nice to hear that you count.” It is nice, and it’s hard to feel like you count on a day like Mother’s Day when you have failed the simple biological task of becoming a mother. You feel like you shouldn’t count because you failed. It’s silly when viewed logically, but that’s the emotional toll.
I had the honor of helping another hurting lady through that day, and I was reminded less than five minutes later almost word for word by a sweet friend that I count for the same reasons I gave my choir buddy. Mother’s Day was still not an easy day for me, but it was a sweet reminder of how the body of Christ should work: serving and being served, building up and being built up, encouraging each other in love.

Signs and Wonders

Yesterday was obviously a difficult day; after a week of waiting, we found out that our suspicions were correct and our pregnancy had not continued. One thing I always question God about in this situation is why he doesn’t perform a miracle for me. It’s selfish and a little silly to compare what God is doing in my life with other people who have had miraculous intervention that saved their baby when the pregnancy was endangered. But it’s a hard pill to swallow if I look at it too long from my human perspective without considering that I can’t see the bigger picture of what he’s doing through our losses.
Here are the miracles that did happen yesterday: two people separately and specifically prayed that
God would be enough to sustain me and my husband through this loss; a whole mass of people sent us love and support and prayers through messages and phone calls; we were directly loved by God through an amazing network of family and friends who will continue to hold us up with prayer and physical comfort through the next weeks and months. We have been the body of Christ supporting others, and now we are receiving the support of the body of Christ.
God could have performed a miracle and continued our pregnancy, and he would have received glory from that. It would have been a great story. But what’s the better story? Which ending gives more glory to God? I don’t know, but I am grateful to be able to see that his love being expressed through dozens of people is also a miracle that not everyone will experience. Any loss can be isolating, and miscarriage tends to be even more so because people don’t share it or family and friends feel uncomfortable discussing it. We have the blessing of feeling the wagons circling around us and isolating us from the loneliness instead of the other way around.
I heard more than once yesterday that I should be a bigger mess than I am because of this pregnancy loss and because of the sheer volume of our losses. There are two reasons I haven’t fallen apart yet. Right now the news, even though expected, doesn’t feel real; it will become real and painful soon enough. And, I can confidently say that I have faith that will sustain me, and I have the love of Christ expressed in so many ways in my life that I have no reason to fall apart. This walk would be impossible without that knowledge; logic alone would give me the right to give in to the self-pity and depression. Faith and the sacrificial love of Christ demand and empower me to work through it (trust me, there will be depression and anger and every other stage of grief in its time) and not let it cripple the rest of my life. The song “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger” has been extremely popular, probably because people cling to the thought that just surviving a trial makes us stronger, better people. I won’t pretend to know enough of the words to claim that the song as a whole has any sort of biblical message, but the title certainly does. God uses our weaknesses to show his strength. When we can demonstrate his strengths rather than rely on our own, we are stronger, better people who thrive rather than just survive a trial.
While it certainly isn’t the miracle I was hoping for, God is showing us signs and wonders of a different sort. The weeks and months to come will certainly hold different perspectives for me, and most of them will not be this reasonable or faithful. Once survival mode ends later this week or next week, the even greater miracle will be continuing to seek God’s face through the pain.

The Mary Perspective

For at least the last eight years, I have played the older Mary in our Easter productions at church.  Yes, I still have at least another 15-20 years before I am the same age as Mary at the time of the crucifixion, but I have makeup and stage lighting to complete the illusion.  I usually end up with this role by default since I can fake the age and I know how to direct on stage without being noticed.  The last several times I have played her, Mary has been a monologue speaking role.  No matter what the role has entailed, it has forced my view of the events surrounding the crucifixion to be colored by Mary’s view, even the Lord’s Supper that our church observed last week.

Perhaps the monologue has been the most pointed in requiring me to look at Jesus’s death as a mother and to feel the injustice that Mary must have felt.  She knew from the first announcement of the angel that this child would be destined for supernatural things, but she probably never imagined that he would be taken from her in such a cruel form of death.  Parents never want to consider that they could outlive their children; we think it violates the natural order of life.  How painful was it to watch her child be sentenced to death and then crucified?  We’ve probably all seen at least a photo of Michelangelo’s Pieta which depicts Mary holding the dead Jesus in her arms just after the crucifixion.  It’s a beautiful and moving sculpture.  To portray that moment on stage puts you inside the sculpture – inside the intense sadness and agony that Mary must have felt.

Of course she knew that he had predicted his own death, and she would know in a few days that her son had been resurrected from the dead to live forever.  But in that moment, it must have felt like the end of her own life and the beginning of something far more terrible than death: any parent who must live on after a child’s death knows that you wish you had died with them so that you wouldn’t have to face the daily pain of living without them.  This isn’t suicidal; it is a natural part of grief and a feeling you’ll face until you learn how to cope with the loss. I’m sure that once I move past this stage of loss in my life that I will see still more perspectives of the crucifixion.  Right now, I feel that Mary and I have a lot in common, and it colors every part of my Easter experience.  It doesn’t change the most important part of Easter: Jesus Christ came to earth as a human, lived a perfect and sinless life, was killed on a cross as a perfect and holy sacrifice for my sins, and then rose from the dead so that I could live in relationship with God forever.  That’s the Easter story no matter what perspective I bring to it.

Praying Big

I have for some time been at a loss when it comes to praying about having a child.  Our pastor has challenged us more than once about our prayer lives to “pray big.”  The point being that we ask too little of God, and he’s just waiting for someone to go all out.  The challenge being that we ought to pray for things that will make much of God; we most often pray for God to handle small things in our lives without venturing beyond the Sunday School requests.  We far less often ask for God to do something huge, like bring 50 new visitors to our church service this week (or even 5 for that matter).

Of course, this challenge hit more than a few sore spots.  My prayer life is probably the least consistent and least disciplined part of my spiritual life.  Ouch.  I find it easy to believe that God still performs miracles, but I find it difficult to imagine that he would do so just because I asked.  More ouch.  The greatest subject of prayer in my life for the last four years has been miscarriage/baby related – usually along the lines of, “Lord, I can’t handle any more of this,” which hardly makes much of God.  But, more than that, I have no idea what I should pray in this situation that will glorify God.  So much ouch that I will punch you if you touch it again.

Before I finish this train of thought, please note that I am not at all saying that we shouldn’t pray about the small things.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The Bible instructs us to pray without ceasing.  God can be glorified in the tiniest details of our lives when we give him credit for working out those details and rely on him to do so.  I am, however, echoing the challenge to pray big.  Why don’t we?  Why are we offended by the suggestion?

Personally, I am afraid to commit to a particular line of prayer when I can just pray for God’s direction and for him to do his will.  Of course he’s going to do his will!  But am I willing to stick my neck out and ask for what I want?  Not so much.  I am technically being faithful in prayer by asking him to do his will, but it is not the type of prayer that will change the mind of God, a la Moses.  Exodus 32:14 tells us that the Lord changed his mind about destroying the disobedient Israelites after Moses pleaded for them.  I don’t know that I’ve pleaded with God in such a manner that I could change his mind.  I’m not sure how I would handle it if the answer to my pleading was “no,” so I have refrained from pleading all out.

I work with 5th and 6th grade kids on Wednesday nights at church, and several weeks ago one of them taught me a giant lesson through the tiniest request.  Someone had left a package of M & M’s sitting out on a table for several weeks and one of the boys asked a teacher if he could take them.  One of the other boys saw this happen and realized that the children’s ministry director probably had more M & M’s, and he might get his own pack if he asked Miss Rhonda.  As Miss Rhonda consented and went to get him a pack, this boy looked at me with an expression that said, “Can you believe what just happened?  All I had to do was ask!”  (Where are the spiritual band-aids, as the ouch is now a grievous wound…)

Since that Wednesday night, I have sheepishly, in the manner of a child asking for some outrageous Christmas present that his parents will never in a million years consent to buy, been asking God if I can have a baby.  I keep asking God if I can carry my own child and hold it in my arms, even if his answer is no – even if it breaks my heart again.

Stupid Human Tricks

You are probably far more sane than I.  I have so many quirks as to be considered certifiable rather than merely lovably quirky – just ask my husband.  I have a perfectionist streak that’s at least a mile wide, and it tends to exhibit itself in slightly O.C.D. behaviors.  While some behaviors tend to have roots in childhood trauma – like my fear of an unorganized Tupperware cabinet causing further head injury – I have a few unexplainable, borderline psychotic habits.  I take great care to load my grocery cart in such a manner that you can’t help but unload it so that all my groceries are grouped together, thus making it virtually impossible to bag it out of order.  Yes, there is a correct order to bagging groceries: like things go together, cold things go together, eggs and bread never go with canned goods…  I could go on for a while.  I pretend that the logical reason for this is that I usually have to unload the groceries at home by myself, so it’s important to be able to prioritize what goes in first, especially since I have to climb a flight of stairs for every load.

The reality is I have no idea why I’m so obnoxious about my groceries.  I don’t even let the baggers help me to my car; I like to put the bags in a particular order, and I like to do it myself.  Perhaps I like the sense of control.  I really have no idea, and I’m okay with never plumbing the depths of that particular psychosis.  Not too long ago I was purchasing a large amount of toothpaste and toothbrushes to complete some shoeboxes a friend let us help put together for Operation Christmas Child.  I had other grocery items as well, so I had taken great care to load my buggy perfectly.  Even if a bagger helped me unload it, there was no way to mess it up.  I thought.

One of my favorite baggers came over to help, and he began pulling things out willy-nilly.  Toothpaste commingled with soup cans and cleaning supplies and produce.  I was losing my mind.  Not only had my items been hopelessly mixed, but my large volume of toothpaste was attracting a crowd.  My cashier, the bagger and at least two other store employees were helping to load the items into my re-usable bags, each one remarking on the astounding amount of toothpaste I was purchasing.  I glanced over to watch the bagging process, vaguely hoping that the girls would sort it as they bagged, and noted that the bagging was happening in an even more haphazard manner than the buggy unloading.

And then I realized that I was being utterly ridiculous.  Sure, the mixed up grocery bags would take me more time to sort at home, but I was wasting an opportunity to explain WHY I was buying all that toothpaste.  I laughed off my frustration and explained what Operation Christmas Child does and that the toothpaste they were helping me with was going to a child in another country along with information about Jesus and ways to learn more about being a Christian.  As it happens, all of the people helping me claimed to attend churches that were also participating, but what if I had missed a chance to share my faith with someone who needed hope, only because I was cranky about my grocery compulsion?  How many times do we all get wrapped up in details that really won’t matter past the next hour or day and miss the opportunities we have to share our lives with others?  Did it REALLY matter that I spent an extra fifteen minutes re-sorting my toiletry items?  Not if meant that I was rude to someone else or otherwise returned frustration for well-meaning help.

Maybe one day I’ll throw caution to the wind and not care if my produce gets bagged with canned goods and dog food.  Or maybe I’ll just have to keep reminding myself that it’s more important to inhabit each moment and reflect God’s love to others in every circumstance.

Poop or Get off the Pot

While the title may be a little crass, it’s very much the theme of my life’s contemplations for the last few years.  When I was struggling to decide if I could believe in a God who had allowed me to lose three pregnancies for no apparent reason, let alone eight, I had to get back to basics.  Once I determined that I could not deny God’s existence and convert to atheism, I knew that I had to either believe it all or believe nothing.  But belief without any action is only theory and semantics.  “Love your neighbor” sounds nice, but it’s meaningless if I don’t do it.

Several months ago, our Sunday School teacher was discussing grief and loss and how we handle those as Christians.  He looked at me and asked if I had any wisdom I’d gleaned over the last few years – how had I handled repeated grief and loss?  My response: I have no great words of wisdom – you keep breathing and putting one foot in front of the other until you realize that one day it hurts a little less; and you have to poop or get of the pot.  Decide what you believe and live it, or decide that you believe something else entirely based on your actions.  There seem to be two great and conflicting theories on when it’s easiest to live your faith.  One theory is that it’s easy to serve God when your life is in order and you’re not facing loss or pain.  The other theory is very commonly stated: “There are no atheists in foxholes.”  Times of trial and loss make us want to cling to God, while in times of joy and plenty we tend to forget about him.

In my experience, I may pray more fervently when facing grief, but it’s much harder to act on what I believe when I’m trying to answer the eternal “Why me?” conundrum.  I want my faith to be a meritocracy: I do good things, so good things should happen to me, and I want to pick the good things that happen.  God has given me great blessings materially and in the family and friends he has surrounded me with.  I have more good things in my life than I can count, and I’m acting like a two-year-old over what I don’t get.  Don’t get me wrong, having a child is a huge thing, but when it’s the only thing I care about, my focus gets skewed and I get cranky and jealous.  Trust me, it’s not a pretty look for me (or anyone else, really).

The only way I have been able to get one foot in front of the other is to realize that my primary motivation has to be to exemplify Christ in my life.  I have miles and miles to go, but each day I want to look more like Christ than the day before.  The only way to do that is to live with the blessings and the trials I’ve been given and to do the best work that I can do in every aspect of my life.  Some days that means going to work when I’d much rather pull the covers over my head and avoid my life altogether.  Some days that means painting a smile on my face and reporting to duty at a commitment that it would be easier for me to skip.  Almost every time, what I was hoping to avoid turns out to be less horrible than I thought it would be; in fact, most of the time I find that I enjoy the dreaded activity and realize that I would have missed out on great joy.  Funny how that works.  If I had simply said I believe that God will take care of me and heal my heart but continued to hide under the covers, I would still be hiding under the covers with a broken heart.  When I actually participate in my life and act on that belief, then God uses those actions to keep me in close contact with friends who comfort me, and it keeps me active and distracted from the pain until I wake up one day and don’t want to hide under the covers anymore.

James 2:14-17 is how the Bible sums up my “poop or get of the pot” theory:

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.