Blessings from the Bathroom

I found a way to survive an airport on a Sunday.  Play Christmas music and go to the bathroom next to gate E 5. 

The plane landed and I had just enough time to, you know, do some business before I had to jot quickly to my  gate that would take me to beloved Rocky Top.  I put in my headphones as I walked in and there was the jolliest  woman with lashes that extended to the Atlantic and a smile that disarmed defensive and weary passengers.  I happened to be a physically weary passenger fighting a cold and longing for my sweet home on West Glenwood.  

She greeted me as if I had entered the pearly gates and I was her long lost daughter.  “Welcome!!! I am so glad you are here!”  

I stared and then I looked around to see who she was talking to and point to myself with a question mark in my eye.

"Yes! Welcome!"

Does she know I am in a bathroom in the Charlotte airport?  Does she know SHE is in a bathroom in the Charlotte airport?

She continues. “I want you to have a blessed day.  I am glad to see you.” 

I continue staring.  

“Be BLESSED everyone!” she booms in her beautifully deep voice with a side of sass and warmth.  

How does she do it?  How does she work a job of standing 5 feet away from constant crap (literally) and have such joy in her heart?   I did my business and gave her a smile and put my earbuds back in and the song, “Our God is With Us - Emmanuel” was playing.  Looking around at all the sizes, shapes, colors and temperaments of people walking by, I could sense His heart for this woman.  Many people were coming and going out of that room without giving her a second glance.  She was present, even if no one noticed or acknowledged her, but was anyone WITH her?

He is WITH us. 

He is WITH me. 

Many times I am the hustling woman through the airport with a frantic look on her face, just trying to get to the next place in hopes of it taking me home, the place I really want to be, but I miss his WITHness. He is always present, but presence can be true of God and be oblivious to me. Somewhere in there I miss the togetherness that is always mine for the taking. This WITHness is becoming my life calling and life longing.  To enjoy His WITH as I am WITH others - even in a crowded airport.   That woman in the bathroom by E5 was WITH those she served, with such presence and joy. God Bless her.  I think God enjoys her so much.  I hope she knows that that He is WITH her today.

The sun sank down over the gulf and I could not quit smiling.  Feeling life and love pour over me was bringing such joy that I almost wept with gratitude.  I was sitting on the beach thinking about God keeping his promises. 

Exodus 6 tells of God talking with Moses and saying that now is the time that he wants to free the Israelites from the 400+ years of slavery that they have endured.  He wants to be their God and they be his beloved people.  God tells Moses to go tell the captives what HE has said. THIS IS THE BEST NEWS!  However, v. 9 of Exodus 6 says this, 

“Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”

I felt a punch in the gut.

I rubbed my eyes and said, “Wait! Did I read that wrong?”

I reread the passage and just sat in silence.  The familiar moving of the Holy Spirit was happening.  Logos explained “broken spirit” like this: 

“it was the inward pressure caused by deep anguish that prevented proper breathing—like children sobbing and gasping for their breath"

Let that settle.

I thought it sounded like a panic attack. 

The captives were about to be freed!! After years and years of pain, heartache, silence, wondering when the suffering would end, no glimmer of hope, and FINALLY news of hope comes and they could not even hear it.  Why?  “because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.” 

Being the one in captivity during seasons of life where it is difficult to hear God even if what he is telling you is good news is frightening.

When the internal anguish is great the struggle to receive hope can be elusive - to the point of the promises being what we might say as “too good to be true.” 

Are you crying so much about your life and disappointments that the thought of having hope feels terrifying?

Have you believed that hope teases you? Hope does not tease.  As my friend tells me, “Timing is what throws you off.”  Not hope. 

A lot of energy is wasted by ignoring what is going on inside.  In the circles I move in many cover it up with spiritual talk, doing “more ministry” and dodging questions that get to the heart.  It's not considered "spiritual" to talk about emotions.  Tell that to the Israelites. 

I continue to have to acknowledge how I am like that child sobbing and gasping for breath before I can actually begin to calm, breath again and HEAR.  

Hearing and receiving can bring even a twinge of Hope that can speak to the gasping for air places in our life and calm us like a child in need of comfort.

And get this...even though the Israelites could not receive the good news Moses shared, it did not stop God from rescuing them.  

Ain't no summer lovin'

This blog post will “bless your heart.” You will walk away with a deeper meaning of life.  

(Clear throat) 

True confession. Summer is my 4th favorite season.  All you summer peeps who get giddy about the lake, tank tops and the heat - well, good for you. It has taken me approximately 39 years to admit this earth shattering news.  I have been in denial. Who doesn’t like summer?  Apparently only people who have no soul. Some say that redheads do not have a soul.  You know what else those same people aren’t saying? Redheads spontaneously combust when out in the sun for longer than 4 minutes.  

Here is a list of what a person who has a soul (non-gingers) loves about summer:

• wearing almost no clothing because it is hot
• the heat
• going to the pool everyday because of heat
• getting tan because the sun is relentlessly beating down on the souls of summer lovers
• wearing chaco’s with dresses
• splash pads because sometimes it is hotter than 3 hells in the summer
• more things to do outside. in the heat. 

Here is a list of what a person who has no soul (gingers) dislike about summer:

• combustion
• chronic sunburn

• wearing zinc oxide that reminds you of when you were 5 and at the beach with your sun loving family 
  
• wearing chaco’s with dresses because chaco’s make me feel like a man (sorry, but they do). I guess I have bigger issues than the sun. 
  
• mosquitos

If Ann Voskamp (1000gifts) happened to read this blog she would come have a heart to heart with me.  So, for Ann’s sake and everyone else I’ll list what I am grateful for about today. 

• I am grateful that I can paddle board and not combust
• I am grateful for hiding my chaco’s for half the year and dealing with my masculine issues
• I am grateful that the mosquitos will go back from the pit of you know where so I can swing on my porch and enjoy fall
• I am grateful for pumpkins, white lights, a breeze, warm drinks, hay rides, and CLOTHING.
• I am grateful that I can stand on my porch today, jump up and down, waving and yelling to summer, “Don’t let the door hit ya……”

The Tension

August 7, 2014

Several years ago at UT’s annual fall retreat for Cru, I facilitated a women’s time for about 60 college students.  I have no recollection of what was shared or said, but I do remember a conversation I had with three of the girls afterwards.  “Millie” shared with me that she just wanted God to take away her feelings for someone.  She felt that if she surrendered and asked God that he should remove all feelings of longing. Then she could happily get on with life.  Sounds right, huh?  Wrong.  Millie felt ashamed of her desire.  She felt that someone who had it more together wouldn’t want something so “un-Godly” as a relationship.  She should want to go to Africa and share Jesus more than she should want a relationship, right?  I will never forget the look on her face as we talked about what it would look like to walk in her longing and not try and get rid of it like a bad haircut from the 7th grade.  Her face lit up as she realized that there was another way.  A way in which she could be fully surrendered to her Father and yet have desire and longing.  

The struggle is real.  1) The struggle to want to demand our longing be met when we want it,  or  2) the opposite - to kill desire.  That’s what a good Buddhist would do.  If you have no desire then you have no suffering (read Larry Crabb - Shattered Dreams). 

We are invited to live in the tension of our longings.  The waiting will surface every bit of entitlement, bad coping mechanism and neediness.  The tension of living in longing will surface demand - demands of other people and demands of God to meet what we think our greatest needs are and to answer in the timing that we think best.  Living in the tension will highlight our relational sin and how our interactions with others can be insincere and selfish in an effort to get a need met.  

Longings in friends lives right now include longing to be free of cancer, longing to have children,  longing to have a heart healed from a broken relationship, longing to find community, longing for husband to be free of addiction, longing for a life to have weight and meaning and a longing to be known and loved.

I have no magical answers other than to keep leaning in to your longing with others who have empathy and the ability to be WITH you in your vulnerable place.  

Here are a few tips for those of you who struggle a little with knowing how to be WITH someone:

1. Listen without feeling the need to give advice.  Is your desire to give advice due to your own insecurity of feeling like you don’t have anything to offer your hurting friend?  Pay attention to your relational motivation.
2. If you don’t understand your friend’s longing then that’s ok.  A healthy friend won’t demand you understand, but appreciate your effort in asking questions and just sitting in silence with them.
3. Don’t underestimate the power of your presence and kindness in asking questions.  
4. Basically all of these points sound the same. :)  

Beth Moore recently said something that has stuck with me.  She said, “If there’s a breakdown in unbelief, it’s not His issue, it’s yours.”  It may sound harsh, but I’ve loved it because it reminds me to think about things that are true - He loves us. He is for us. He is WITH.  So the next time you are tempted to kill desire or to demand it be answered, just give me or a trusted friend a call.  We can walk through it together.

Hello, goodbye.

Hello, goodbye.

No one ever warned me that life was full of hello’s and goodbyes.  I mean, to be fair, it is obvious since the very nature of the life cycle screams birth and death - a hello, goodbye of sorts that no one eludes. My heart longs for home.  The constant hello’s and goodbyes have brought me to a quiet Saturday night of allowing myself to acknowledge that risking to go deep in relationships also means greater sadness when having to say “goodbye” to people who become so dear.  This week I have said “goodbye” to three of my dearest friends.  It is not like they have died, they are just moving away, but it feels in some ways like a death for a time and must be acknowledged, because they mean so much to me.  

You would think that after16 years in college ministry that I would get used to the constant hello, goodbye cyle, but somehow the older I get, the more I wonder, “Is this how relationships are supposed to be?”  Here for a season and then transitioning to something not quite like a stranger, but a more distant memory of that person in your every day? It seems wrong.   Year after year,  class of 2003, 2005, 2007, 2010 and on and on…..staff team after staff team, staff get married, some get transferred.  Hours and hours, weeks, months and years of pouring into students and then throw in the summer projects where you have temporary staff teams for 7 weeks and new students and there’s another hello, goodbye.  Cru staff get so used to it sometimes that we don’t really bat an eye over sharing our life story with people we will only be with for a few weeks. We do this over and over and over.  This kind of vulnerability and risk that is almost expected.  

Then there’s the more gut wrenching hello, goodbye of life and death.  Grandparents, parents, sons, uncles, friends and pets (except for mine, because she will live forever).  Wow. This is such an uplifting post.  I want you to know that it is okay to struggle, grieve and ACKNOWLEDGE that the people in your life matter enough to you that when the time comes for a goodbye that it should hurt, even in the midst of celebrating what is next. Constant hello’s and goodbye’s are not normal.  Maybe here on earth. Living with an eternal perspective gives me hope. One day the constant beginnings and endings of relationship will also come to an end.  I look forward to a forever season of forever community.  

I love you, Jeff, Sara and Haley.  These goodbye’s have been some of the hardest.  Thank you for making them hard because we chose to go deep.  

Books - My favorites

Over the past two years a number of people have asked me to put together a list of books that are my favorites.  Well, here's a first draft.  I'd love to hear what your favorite books are as well.

A few of my favorites…..

Gratitude in all things

ONE THOUSAND GIFTS - Ann Voskamp

Best books with the worst titles

Strong Women Soft Hearts - Paula Rinehart (terrible title, but incredible book)

Keep Your Love On - Danny Silk (another terrible title, but incredible book)

Shattered Dreams - Larry Crabb (my favorite book of all time)

It’s like sitting down with a good friend and talking about life

Bittersweet - Shauna Niequist

Cold Tangerines - Shauna Niequist

Bread and Wine - Shauna Niequist

Wise old sages

The Papa Prayer - Larry Crabb

Becoming a True Spiritual Community - Larry Crabb

A Severe Mercy - Sheldon VanAuken

A Grace Disguised - Jerry Sittser

A Grief Observed - C.S. Lewis 

The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis

Transforming Grace - Jerry Bridges

The Furious Longing of God - Brennan Manning

When Heaven is Silent - Ron Dunn

Thinking Spiritually - John Owen

Children’s books that are really for adults too

At the Back of the North Wind - George Macdonald

Sir Gibbie - George Macdonald

Chronicles of Narnia - C.S.Lewis

All of the Anne of Green Gables books - L.M. Montgomery

Challenges me to live a better story

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years - Donald Miller

7 - Jen Hatmaker

Birthing the Miraculous - Heidi Baker

Love Does - Bob Goff

Advent

The Greatest Gift - Ann Voskamp

Spiritual Direction/Formation

The Wounded Healer - Henri Nouwen

Spiritual Formation - Henri Nouwen

Honest Leadership

Leading With a Limp - Dan Allender

Leading On Empty - Wayne Cordiero

Favorite emerging author

Prototype - Jonathan Martin

Sabbatical Reads

A Testament of Devotion - Thomas R. Kelly

Soul Keeping - John Ortberg

Care of Souls - David Benner

Challenging

Jesus Feminist - Sarah Bessey (before you choke on your drink and label me a heretic, read it!)

Half the Church - Carolyn James

When Life and Beliefs Collide - Carolyn James

Fully Alive - Larry Crabb (femininity and masculinity - amazing!!)

Fiction

Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd

UNBROKEN - Laura Hillenbrand

Politics, but more focus on the relational aspects of the Presidency

Decision Points - George W. Bush

The Presidents Club - Gibbs & Duffy

The ONLY good book I’ve ever read about singleness because she is honest and not cliche’

Revelations of a Single Woman - Connaly Gilliam

Studies or Devotionals

31 Days to Coming Alive - Jen Hand

Breaking Free - Beth Moore

Revolution Within and Experiencing Christ Within - Dwight Edwards

The Prodigal God - Tim Keller

A Place of Quiet Rest - Nancy Demoss

Joshua - D.R. Davis

1 & 2 Samuel - D.R. Davis

I read this every year when I need rest

Gift from the Sea - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

About the “other” - Men

What’s He Really Thinking? - Paula Rinehart 

Wild at Heart - John Eldredge

A favorite tool for growth of my students and staff women

Changes That Heal - Henry Cloud

Amazing People

The Hiding Place - Corrie Ten Boom

Spiritual Secrets of Hudson Taylor - Lance Wubbels

The Knowledge of the Holy - A.W. Tozer

Kick fear to the curb and live out your calling

Undaunted - Christine Caine

Commentaries

Any commentary by Dale Ralph Davis

Puritan prayers

The Valley of Vision 

Finances

Women & Money - Suze Orman

A few of my faves from grad school

Lettters to a Young Therapist - Mary Pipher

Addiction & Grace - Gerald May

The Gift of Therapy - Irvin Yalom

MODERN PSYCHOPATHOLOGIES: A Comprehensive Christian Appraisal

Let Your Life Speak - Parker Palmer

Community

Tonight a dozen memories flood my mind and almost causes my heart to catch in my throat.  

It’s the summer before my senior year in high school and Tammi, Christie, Anne, Chris, Steven and I lie down on a blanket out on the hot concrete at the end of Tammi’s street.  We watched for shooting stars. We were quiet and then we laughed and talked and couldn’t even possibly imagine where we would be some 20 years later.  We had done life together since we were little.  No one could ever replace these friends.

It’s the end of my junior year in college.  Once again I sit at the end of a runway of an abandoned airport with 10 of my closest girlfriends.  It’s late at night and of course we were trying to make dirt cake and no one had brought a spoon, but alas! I had a flashlight to stir it with.  We laughed and cried and we celebrated our friend Lisa who was graduating and because she had a summer birthday, she never got celebrated, so we made it a Lisa night.  Someone still has a recording of that night.  No one could ever replace these friends.

It’s my second year on staff at UT.  Darren, Haley, Brad and I decided we wanted to go caving.  Haley lost her shoe in the mud and reached down to pull it out, only to discover it was someone else’s shoe.  It’s like an episode of Criminal Minds.  Brad and D had to shove us up out of the cave.  For any girl, you know what that means and how awkward that was for all involved.  Act cool.  Act like it’s normal for Brad Crawford to be shoving your arse up through a grate. NBD. We were covered in mud and we laughed and laughed.  No one could replace these friends.

I have 1000 memories of people, sacred moments, many more serious than the ones I wrote about.  It’s the ones I wrote about that capture a taste of adventure and Life.  So many other memories would capture the things we wouldn’t choose to share; the things that make caving, watching shooting stars and sitting at the end of an abandoned runway with people more RICH.

My friend Brad (not the one who shoved our rears up a grate) shared his definition of community with me tonight.  “Community - Family. Like minded friends sharing a goal. Living and thriving in the good and growing through the bad.”  Then he asked me a question that made me stop in my tracks.  “But if you remove the goal, what are you?”   

I have found myself wrestling with this question over and over and over the past few months.  Community. Family.  Sharing a goal.  Maybe that’s too complex or you think I’m overthinking it.  But when you get to the stage of life that I’m in, I want my relationships/community to count.  To have weight.  To give life and to receive life. To be on mission together. These days the people I want to spend time with and be with are in a really different season than I am. Mostly families, but it’s worth pursuing because these are MY PEOPLE.  So if getting time with Allison means sitting with her for hours because her husband’s having surgery, then by golly, I’m sitting with Al.  I didn't want to leave today because time with she and my other friend Jen filled my soul.  We had conversation that mattered and their words had weight. We have community and it has not come easy.  If it means driving to Chattanooga or to Charlotte, then that needs to happen. The focus of friendship is beginning to narrow in my life and it is a relief, because no one can replace these friends.

Why is community (using the definition B gave me) important?  Even before Adam and Eve ate the fruit, it says in Genesis that it is not good for man to be alone.  We need one another and there is nothing BAD about that desire.  Nothing.  

As a counselor, one of the first questions I know to ask someone who is struggling is, “Do you have support? Community?”  We know that being and staying healthy requires other people.  The irony here is that sometimes you don’t know who God wants to give you to journey with. Do they have to look a certain way? Be the coolest ones in the room?  Do they have something that I want?  Do they make me feel better about myself?  Do I get my needs met?  

Friendship that matters isn’t built on endless social gatherings, although that is a blast and needed.  Friendship and community that matters means living and thriving in the good and growing in the bad.  And I would add, committing to growing through the bad.  Community sounds like such a beautiful word and concept until crap hits the fan and I want to run.  This past year God in his severe mercy has walked me through a season of being so exposed in my weakness and neediness and I couldn’t even pretend as I had in the past.  And in his kindness he has taught me about community through some key people.  I hope they are in my life for years to come.  It’s been worth every hard and painful moment, and I know it is only the beginning. No one can replace these friends.