when words feel hollow

She tells me she’s getting a divorce.

She sits across the table from me, shy-eyed, barely touching her tea.  It’s her first time in my home.  Her court date is on Thursday.

I want to reach out and cup her heart in my hands.  

I hold her eyes with mine instead, trying to communicate love, trying to let her see how much I genuinely care.  I see a glimpse of a smile.  

Her little 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter has a pixie grin, dimples, dark elfin hair.  She was born with a defect related to one of her kidneys which required its removal and created extra tissue all throughout her abdomen, and though surgery fixed the problem, she goes for bi-annual checks to make sure the condition doesn’t return.  I sense the mother’s protectiveness of her daughter, her pride in her impish, intelligent nature.  

I can feel her terror.  Her husband wants custody of their little girl.  

She’s suffered abuse from him for the two years they’ve been married, and she’s finally calling it quits.  He’s been slandering her to the court, telling them she’s a bad mother.  They’ve agreed to watch him at home with his daughter for one day - and around the table we agree that of course for that one day he’ll be on his best behavior.  Her sister (my house helper) told me her little niece doesn’t like her Daddy.  When she asked her why, the pixie said matter-of-factly, “He beat my mommy.” 

My helper told me her sister feels like she’s wasted the last two years of her life.  With her sitting in my kitchen, I tell her I believe God has a purpose for everything, even when life hurts beyond belief.  I tell her when I listen to her story, my heart aches and I ask God, “Why???”  I tell her I don’t understand either.  Looking into the dark fathomless depths of her eyes, my words sound and feel hollow.  

I tell her our lives are part of a carpet God is weaving, and the back view that we see sometimes looks ugly, ugly, ugly.  But from the front God can see the flowers and the beautiful pattern He’s creating.  I’m not sure she believes me.  She attempts a smile.  I watch her eyes drop.  She quietly says, with a hollow laugh, “Think I could just not show up on Thursday?  I don’t want to go.”  

We drink more tea, eat rice and vegetables for lunch, hand out yogurt cups as a treat for the kids.  I try to be as natural as possible.  I crack little jokes and am rewarded by laughter.  Will I ever know whether she felt truly loved or not, or whether she just felt dazzled by her first time in a foreigner’s home?  Is God’s love through me making any difference at all?  

Before they leave, I offer to pray.  I ask haltingly for peace, for wisdom, for a good outcome on Thursday.  Afterwards I think of so many more things I could have prayed for, and it’s hard not to feel glum.  

She bundles her little girl into her snow clothes (it’s snowing again today - so much for spring), and the pixie flashes me a dimpled smile and tries “Bye” in English.  I hug her mom, meet her eyes once more, tell her we’ll be praying for Thursday, follow them out to the gate.  I feel so helpless.  My heart is aching.  

What more do I have to give than what I gave?  The only love that can fill her heart is Christ Himself.  May soon she come to know the only Husband who always loves tenderly, heals compassionately, and births beauty out of ashes.  

{Postscript: Three days later the court granted her a divorce and custody of her little girl.  However, her ex-husband is still terrorizing her every chance he gets.  My heart aches for her; she’s been set free in the world’s eyes, but she’s still in terrible bondage to fear and doubt.  She desperately needs to meet the true Lover of her soul so she can be free indeed.}

there is no point B!

There is no point B.

Did you know that?  I didn’t.  In my Christian life, I always thought I was supposed to be moving from point A (acceptance of Christ and initial salvation) to point B (final perfection and glorification).  And this assumption always left me with a nagging sense of guilt, because no matter how many lessons I learned (or how many times I circled back around to learn the same lesson at a deeper level), I never seemed to be getting any closer to the goal.  Nor did I ever seem to be experiencing any more of Christ, regardless of what spiritual disciplines I tried or how much I dutifully read my Bible.  

Guess what?  There is no point B!  

“There is only point A, and more of A, which is to say, there is only Jesus and more of Jesus until his love envelopes all that you are, defines all that you are, and is powerfully expressed in everything you touch.”  

~Judith Hougen, Transformed Into Fire

Wow.  If this is true, I have already reached my destination.  I’m already there!  I already have the complete, glorious fullness of Christ wondrously living, breathing in me.  All that’s left is to discover the reality of Him-in-me more deeply and fully every day, to learn how to experience His love minute by minute, and to live out of that experience of love.  

On the previous page, Judith shares a quote from Thomas Merton, prefaced with the comment, “A few times in my life, I’ve read something and instantly known that my life lived on the other side of those words would never be the same.”  I felt a little skeptical, like, would what came next actually live up to that description in my own life?  

It did.

Merton is talking about prayer, but his thoughts can be expanded to the whole spiritual journey into discovering your true self in Christ:

“We were indoctrinated so much into means and ends that we don’t realize that there is a different dimension in the life of prayer.  In technology you have this horizontal progress, where you must start at one point and move to another and then another.  But that is not the way to build a life of prayer.  In prayer we discover what we already have.  And you realize that you are already there.  We already have everything, but we don’t know it and we don’t experience it.  Everything has been given to us in Christ.  All we need is to experience what we already possess.  The trouble is we aren’t taking time to do so.” 

~quoted in Transformed by Fire, p. 119 (emphasis mine)

I closed the book and got into the shower, with those words reverberating through my soul.

All I need is to experience what I already possess.

I closed my eyes and felt the warm water beating down on me, and I imagined the warm river of God’s love flowing over me and through me.  All I need is to experience what I already have: I’m already full to bursting with Christ’s Presence and power and love!  All that’s left is to choose to take long, slow minutes here and minutes there to close my eyes (or fully open my eyes) and experience Him, in me.  

I’ve been suddenly full of peace this morning.  The knowledge that there is no point B and that I can stop striving to get there and just be filled with Christ, the knowledge that all I have to do is enjoy what I already have, is setting me free.  

for when you take water for granted

I used to take indoor running water completely for granted.  

Not anymore.

For reasons we have yet to understand, the man who controls the water pump in our village only turns on the water three times a day.  To combat this, we installed two huge tanks in our basement that fill up when the town water’s turned on, and a pump to move the tank-water through our house when the town water’s turned off, creating 24-hour running water in our house.  (I think we’re only house out of 4000 in our village who considers this a priority.  Those lucky enough to have indoor plumbing just deal with the on-off mess, and those without just draw water in buckets from the local pump on their street.)  In warm weather, our tank system works great.  In winter… not so much.  

After our delectable two weeks in warm tropical sunshine, we returned to sub-zero temperatures to find the water pipes to our house from the street frozen solid.  (A common occurrence - every house on our street currently has their pipes frozen, for lack of proper insulation and being buried too shallow.  Why they didn’t bury them deeper to begin with, since the winters here have always been frigid….)  We hired a welder to use his element to thaw the pipes, and the town water obligingly flowed into our tanks for the day and we did laundry and took showers … and then the pipes froze again overnight.  In the past month since getting back, we’ve called that same welder every 3-4 days - once we’ve used up all the water from our basement tanks, and then spent at least one day dipping water out of the two barrels we store in our kitchen and bathroom.  

We are so ready for spring.

But… I’m trying hard to be thankful.  And here are the things I’m most thankful for in this trying situation:

1. Running water.  I will never take it for granted again. 

2. This welder, willing to come a couple times a week for a minimal fee and spend 2+ hours in our basement thawing our pipes. 

3. Our tank system, and my husband who faithfully maintains its finicky valves and adjustments. 

4. My new house helper, Ellen, who is used to not having running water and happily dips water and boils it on the stove to wash my mountain of dishes each morning. 

5. Her sparkly head-scarf that catches the morning sunlight and throws it in dancing dapples across the ceiling, eliciting shrieks of delight and wild gyrations from both my boys!   

6. How my daily mountain of dishes magically shrinks and transforms under her capable fingers from slimy, grime-encrusted to shining and clean.   

7. The fact that spring is just around the corner...

of friendship and inequalities

The inequity here just kills me sometimes.

In New Zealand or America, we would not be considered rich.  We would probably barely qualify as lower middle-class, at best.  We’re a one-car family, we don’t pay for private preschool or daycare, we don’t go out to eat, we don’t buy lots of luxury items, we don’t even own our own home.  

But here...

This morning I sat at my kitchen table drinking tea with one of my best friends in this place.  We munched chocolate chip cookies that tasted suspiciously like Chips-A-Hoy, bought from a local store, and I wondered when was the last time she had extra money to buy cookies.  I poured milk into a pitcher from a 1.5 liter carton that cost more than 4 times as much as the raw milk she buys and pasteurizes at home.  

I cut up apple and orange slices for the kids, which were devoured in seconds.  Unless they had their own apples stored in the basement, this family wouldn’t have been able to afford the price of fresh fruit for the last three months at least.  

I served leftover pizza with our chicken soup for lunch, and my friend remarked innocently that she made my pizza recipe one time and her family loved it, but cheese has gotten so expensive they can’t afford to buy it any more.  I wince.  I pour more tea.  

James brings home vitamins for me from the drugstore, and I think of all the bottles of baby Tylenol I’ve given my friend for her little 10-month-old baby girl at the head of the table, and how she has to scrape together money for every prescription, every shot at the hospital, even every single diaper they buy.  

Later, sitting outside together in the winter sunshine while the boys ride trikes up and down the driveway, my friend asks to see pictures of our recent holiday. Grudgingly, I bring out my laptop and bounce her baby on my knee while my friend eagerly scrolls through snapshots of another world: miles of blue ocean, wet sandy beaches, Will and Ben with their floaties swimming in a pristine pool, our family on a boat going to an island to feed monkeys. Her little boy comes over to the see the monkeys and asks, “What do monkeys eat?” And when she tells him bananas, his eyes get big. Here, bananas cost 50 cents apiece. I can almost hear him thinking, “Those are some really rich monkeys!”

When my friend gets to a photo of a stunning pink tropical flower, she turns to me and says, “You went to heaven!” I smile and nod and say, “We’re thankful to God!” but inside I’m cringing again. My life feels worlds away from hers.

Before they leave, she asks me if we’re going to use the logs of wood James chainsawed down in the backyard.  These late winter days, everyone’s scrounging for fuel to feed their indoor furnace-stoves.  She asks to borrow my lightweight umbrella stroller this summer if we’re not using it anymore.   She asks if my mom sent any more used kids’ clothes from the States.  She tells me she’s only been able to go to the bathroom once a week lately, and when I tell her the answer is to drink lots of water and eat more raw fruits and vegetables, she laughs and says, “Well, water’s free, but I can’t afford fruit and vegetables!”  I run inside to our overflowing fruit bowl and bring out a bag of apples and a ziploc of raisins for her to take home.  

After we kiss each other goodbye, I slowly climb the steps up to my nice, warm, diesel-furnace-heated house (with a thermostat - my local friends don’t even know what the thermostat is when they see it on our wall - they’ve never seen one before).  I put my boys down for naps, and crawl under my own blanket with a heavy heart.  

Not once did our talk turn to spiritual things today.  Not that that necessarily needs to happen every time... but today, especially, I felt like what I have came between us.  That what I have to give her physically was a distraction from I have to give her spiritually.

Don’t misunderstand my friend.  She has been a true and genuine friend who has loved me unconditionally since we met and who is frank, open and honest with me.  I really enjoy our friendship.  She just can’t help wanting what I have.  Good baby Tylenol that actually works.  Warm kids’ clothing that doesn’t fall apart.  Fresh fruit and vegetables.  Extras like cookies and cheese.  Who wouldn’t want those things?  In the West we even feel like we’re entitled to them. 

And it’s because she and I are so close and she feels so comfortable with me that she asks so much.  In some ways, that makes me feel good.  In other ways, it makes me feel pretty wretched.  

What other choice do I have but…

to be grateful for what I have, 

to be generous with what I have, and 

to visit her more often at her house than at mine, so the symbols of our differences fade 

and what stands out are the things we have in common:

Our motherhood.  Our wifehood.  Our womanhood.  Our personhood.  

Our friendship.  

down with a thud

In January, God gave us the gift of rest.  

A whole week of sun and sand and blue ocean, and eating delicious food I didn’t have to cook on dishes I didn’t have to wash.

It was wonderful.

But even as I was stretched out full length in the sun, uncurling inside and out, luxuriously unwinding from the cold weather and stresses of life in Central Asia, I found my mind irresistibly drawn to the question of “How can I preserve this feeling when I get back?”  

Every moment in the sunshine I had to choose to live in that moment and enjoy everything it held, instead of fretting over how to plunk it in formaldehyde so I could take it home with me.

On the flight home, my suitcase in the belly of the plane filled with dried papaya, shells and silk scarves, I felt the heaviness start to descend again.  The closer we flew to the cold and the dreariness of bureaucracy and politics and frozen pipes, the more my heart sank.  Forgetting my slightly tanned skin, massaged shoulders, lighter heart, and images of blue ocean filling my mind’s eye… I could feel the fingers tightening around my stomach.  

Frustrated, I spent the first few days home spreading reminders around my house: bowls of shells, a windchime, woven baskets… I wore my new silk scarf every single day, and in defiance, I even layered my new sundresses with warm leggings and a merino undershirt to try to preserve the tropical feeling a little longer.  

It’s not that I don’t love our life here.  It is truly everything I dreamed for my life to be - deep down, at the heart level, where it counts.  I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else or be ministering to anybody else.  But living in Central Asia is just plain hard sometimes.  It’s inconvenient,  frustrating, depressing - a daily fight to stay joyful, cheerful and focused.  Hence, the reason our week of resting in the sun was so essential and delightful - and why it is always hard to come down with a thud.

So… what‘s the secret to staying sunny and relaxed in a stressful, challenging environment?  Well, if you have any thoughts, leave them in the comments, since I sure don’t have it all figured out yet!  

But part of it, I think, is choosing to be all there, right where you are, wherever you are.  I chose to be all in the sun while I was in the sun, and when I got back to the snow, I had to choose to be all there in the snow too.  Our first week back home from our holiday we went sledding, drank hot chocolate, lit candles, watched movies, lit a fire, cuddled up with cozy blankets and read new books from a wonderful package from home that was waiting for us when we got back.  

And I wore my sundresses and listened to my windchime and caressed my shells, and put the ocean on my computer desktop.  I think part of being all there is weaving in bits of everything you love, wherever you are.  Don’t you?

*****

What’s one way you’ve found to be all there, wherever you are?

exercising the gratefulness muscle

Another Monday… and I’m struggling to be grateful.  This gratefulness thing is like a muscle in my heart: when I consistently give thanks, the habit gets stronger and stronger and joy flows steadily, even in inconvenience.  When I stop for a few days (or a few weeks), my heart-muscle degenerates quickly back into mushy complaining, and the world goes back to looking gray and dour.  

Maybe it’s because I’m so “all or nothing” - if I don’t write down a whole list in a day, I just don’t write down anything at all.  And I feel awful.  Bland.  Joyless.  Guilty.  Heavy.

How do I keep strengthening this gratitude-muscle?  What if I gave thanks for just three things a day?  What if I wrote down JUST ONE THING?

The cross of Christ.

My healthy, thriving children.

My faithful, loving husband.

A roof over our heads.

Aren’t these things true every single day?  And couldn’t remembering to give thanks for them spark joy every single time?

I write “Feb 20” at the top of a fresh page in my gratitude journal, and start new today: 

1199. New praise from Kari Jobe1200. Fresh sounds, inspiration1201. WATER RUNNING1202. Living Water1203. Chicken and dumplings1204. A little more energy1205. That even though I keep taking my eyes off of You, You shine out so gloriously that You call me back to You, and I come running

Deep down, under the tiredness and the water issues and the depressing, defeating state of affairs we’re currently walking through, I can feel the joy-trickle start.  

He never changes.  

He is always the same.  

He is always Joy Himself, Joy-filled, and able to Fill with Joy.  

*****

What do you do to exercise your gratitude muscle when you just don’t feel thankful?

of trust and knotted shoulders

Proverbs 3

5  Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

and lean not on your own understanding

6  In all your ways, acknowledge Him,

and he will make straight your paths.

7  Be not wise in your own eyes;

fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.

8  It will be healing to your flesh,

and refreshment to your bones.

Morning and evening, all of January, I’m mulling over these words.  I’m practicing trust.  One day, my mind zeroes in on the last two phrases, as though I’ve never heard them before: 

It (trust) will be healing to your flesh,

and refreshment to your bones.

I’m a wound-up tight kinda girl.  I’ve had chronic tension in my shoulders and neck for years.  It’s hard to fall asleep at night because my mind churns over all the things I didn’t get done that day.  

Could trusting the Lord actually heal my tight shoulders?  And what would “refreshment to my bones” feel like?  

After an evening of ending up in a sobbing puddle over tangles of addresses and spreadsheets and imperfect systems, I call my Mom the next morning.  She can tell I’m wound up tighter than a steel drum.  I snap, “Be QUIET!  Mommy’s on the PHONE!” at the boys in the first five minutes of our conversation.  I can feel her taking deep breaths (for me) on the other end of the line.

Eventually, I’m calming down under her familiar, loving voice.  We wind around through the tangles until we get to the root: In this “Year of Letting Go” (newborn, less than one month old), I just can’t seem to figure out how to “let go” of things that are actually and rightfully my responsibility.

She reads me a quote from C.S. Lewis.  We’ve always loved reading aloud to each other.  

“Man’s love for God must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a need-love.  This is obvious where we implore forgiveness for our sins or support in our tribulations.  But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing - for it ought to be growing - awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose. (emphasis added)”

~C.S.Lewis, The Four Loves

"Him who can untie things that are now knotted together." 

Proverbs 3:8. [Trust] will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.  Of course.  We are holistic beings, all connected within ourselves, and something knotting up my heart will of course knot up my body as well.  

My knotted stomach starts to uncurl. 

It’s okay to be needy.  It’s okay for me to need from God. 

It’s okay to not be perfect, because that is the reality of my real relationship with God: imperfection meets endless grace.  

I take slow, deep breaths.  I work this out.  

I am incomplete.  Preparatory.  Empty, yet cluttered.  

My neediness is where God can show His glory.  (Of course - it’s all over Scripture - but now it’s becoming Real in my daily-ness.) 

I hate being needy.  I reject it and fight it.  It bruises my pride.  It feels messy and incomplete.  I don’t like receiving, or needing to receive, or admitting I need to receive.  

But... God gets most glory by meeting my need.  I am one vast need, and my craving is Him, Himself.  And isn’t my greatest joy found in His glory?  Isn’t that why I exist, in the first place?  

Let’s get down to brass tacks, here: Isn’t this really all about Him anyway?  

In the moment of failure, I am utterly miserable, because I have become the center of my own universe, and I hate feeling like a failure - that is my idol.  As I read Lewis’ words, it hits me: that moment of my abject, miserable need is not only permitted and even validated, but planned, and should be given thanks for because it is a chance for God to show His glory through me!  

And in my snapping at the boys, in my puddles of tears and panicky flailings against things I can’t control, I have a choice: will I deny my need, clench my fists, and stay utterly miserable in my failure, or will I let go and be willingly needy and let God be big and glorious in me?

Each moment is another chance to choose trust.  

*****

Two Trust-Level Checks

(I’m so glad God is practical.)

Here are two helpful tests the Holy Spirit gave me for checking my trust-level (maybe they'll help you too?:

1) How stressed am I feeling right now, on a scale of 1 to 10?If I’m above a 3 or 4, I’m hanging on to something too tightly.  {Since I can only feel one feeling at a time, I cannot feel stress and trust at the same time.  Where trust is present, stress cannot survive.} 

2) Check my tone of voice:
If my tone of voice is causing someone (including me) to wince, I’m clinging to an idol (usually control, or an expectation) in my heart and loving it more than Jesus, and more than the person I’m speaking to.