Day 16: How on earth?

When I saw the word of the day, I thought about how I was already 2 days behind on my posting and the only thought I had was -- how on earth am I going to get that done?

How on earth.... On earth we have a lot of constraints. We have physical constraints - time, space, gravity. We have biological constraints -- strength, energy, mental aptitude. But it seems that we have longings to defy these and reach beyond them. We long to fly, to teleport, to achieve more in a day than is possible, to solve impossible problems. We were created in God's image and so, I think, we have a natural desire to be more like God. To operate outside our earthly constraints.

God became man and took on our earthly existence. He became part of our story and understands our frustrations. Still, he meets us right where we are, in the midst of our limitations and invites us to join him on a spiritual journey where we can be freed from some of our constraints. When walking in step with the Spirit, our earthly constraints are blurred. Those moments when God draws near, we can find ourselves drawn up into the supernatural. Somehow a few loaves and fish feed a crowd of 5,000. The storms of life, the winds and rain, are calmed with a word.

Day 15: I wonder what God hears?

Eddie loves to play with a wooden magnetic train set. He particularly loves to connect all the trains into one big long train and pull it along a single loop. He can, in fact, do this for hours on end if left to his own devices. There's one problem. If he makes the train too long, the magnets aren't strong enough to keep it together. When he's well-rested, not hungry and generally in his best state of mind, this presents a learning opportunity to test the strength of the magnets on different trains. However, as he gets hungry or tired, or both, the frustration associated with the train breaking apart is too much to handle and he squeals. From across the house, I can tell by the frequency of the squeals how far he is from a complete meltdown. And that, triangulated with the time of day can provide me a course of action -- feed snacks, put on movie, put in bath, read books.

Other times, he comes up to me with a 2 minute run on sentence about some imaginary thing he's playing. I'm often tempted to ignore him because on the surface, the words don't make sense. But, when I listen, I can piece together a fairly deep thought. Sentence fragments show that he's remembering an event from a prior day, a conversation we had and if I really listen, I can tell that he's telling me with genuine purpose. He's often with a great number of words trying to tell me -- I love you. I want to connect with you. I want your approval. I want your attention. 

Eddie doesn't have a developed sense of self awareness nor does he have the skills to communicate coherent thoughts. But I, in love, can hear what he wants and needs in his incomprehensible squeals. I can piece together the thought that he can't fully form in his mind yet by hearing the fragments that he is able to articulate. 

This makes me wonder. What does God hear when I pray? My attempts to approach the divine like a toddler run on sentence made up of incoherent fragments. I can't articulate or fully even mentally conjure my relationship with God but I still try. I groan in my frustrations and God hears something deeper. I can't imagine what God so simply understands. The responses to my prayers are so often what I need but not at all what I expect. I wonder what God hears underneath it all... 

Day 14: Lifting spiritual weights

Several years ago my body was a mess. I was over-weight and beginning down a path towards chronic disease. My internal signals were confused. Fatigue and stress felt like hunger. A need for activity felt like exhaustion. There was a negative feedback loop that continued to spiral me away from health. The things that made me feel better actually worsened my condition.

To turn this around, I had to push myself to suffer. I had to start really dieting which felt like starvation. I had to start exercising. My first runs made me throw up. It was a hard uphill climb. But I was determined to take back my health. As my new healthy habits became ingrained in me, I found myself awakening to my physical self. I became aware of my body's needs. I felt alive. I felt like a freshly watered plant reaching towards the sun's warm rays. When I ate junk food, it made me feel bad. When I didn't exercise I felt atrophy.

Lately I've had conversations that made me realize that our spiritual health is similar. Years of poor living. Of ignoring faith or the larger questions lead to a deadening of the soul and a misinterpretation of it's yearnings. Deep cries for purpose or a connection to something deeper mistaken for a need for more stuff or to control things.

An invitation to begin wrestling with faith can be like the first workout after a long time. Opening up to the deeper questions can create anxiety, crisis or disillusion. But, as with our physical health, once we journey down the path a while our faith feeds us and builds in us a deeper awareness of life around us. We find gratitude for the simple things, sacredness in the ordinary and a deep acceptance and trust in that bigger something in the universe that allows us to let go and wonder at the beauty of life.

Day 13: Covered in Faith

Andrew was left to his own devices with an avocado. The result, he was covered in it. We get covered in whatever our hands have been into. Work, kids, hobbies, life. What we fill our time with leaves a mark on us, both inside and out. It determines how we dress, our activity level, our mental engagement, or emotional energy.

I think I like Lent so much because it is the time of year that I intentionally seek to cover myself with God. To seep my life and my heart in mediation and prayer. I reach out and try to put my hands around faith and it squishes like ripe avocado and inevitably makes my life a little messier. I'm not all put together. I forget stuff. I miss deadlines sometime. My house gets disorganized. I take forever to get my Christmas and thank you cards out. I need to cut the grass out front. I feel bad sometimes about how much of a mess, but I can't keep myself from squishing into faith. Leaning into love. Following my heart and my call. Like Andrew, I seem to like it. This messy, God-following business makes like feel more vibrant and colorful.

Day 12: Vision

I've always had poor vision. I can remember my first pair of glasses. They changed my world. From some cloudy impressionist painting of blue blended with green, I suddenly saw trees with branches and individual leaves, blades of grass and a sharpness that took my breath away.

When I was 14, I went on my first mission trip overseas to Ghana where I worked for 2 weeks in an eyeglass clinic. In that time I fitted an 80 something year old man with a pair of thick glasses. For those of you who wear glasses, his prescription was -18. He was basically blind. When I put those glasses on him, he hugged me and started to cry. He could see.

But sight doesn't only come from the eyes. We see with our minds. We dream. We imagine. We experience something that doesn't exist anywhere else but within us. Sometimes that vision is so strong that it pushes us to act. To create a change in the world, so that we can see with our eyes and share with others the thing we imagine. Today, I got to do that.

Ever since I gave birth to Eddie, I've dreamed of an opportunity to worship with my kids. A church service where they could run up and bang on the drum. Where I could be authentic and worshipful and they could be themselves and we could experience God together. I want them to grow up seeing the faith in the world that I experience in my spirit. A joyful, exuberant, abundant faith that meets us where we are and journeys with us. Today, we experimented with a family worship service at my church. It's definitely an experiment trying to create an worship experience that speaks to everyone -- toddlers, kids, teenagers, adults. It's a crazy experiment, but amidst the shakers, crayons, and candles I had moments of authentic communion with God and I saw Eddie fully present and engaged in the service. My heart was glad. Vision.

Day 11: Reaching for light

One of the few pleasures I try to carve out time for is gardening. There is something for me that is absolutely holy and refreshing about working in the dirt and growing plants. It is a way for me to meditate in the sunlight while the kids enjoy the fresh air. I have found that is one time that I can authentically be with them while only being half present. I rake. I weed. I till dirt. I plant with Eddie and the activities are so rhythmic that a whole part of my brain can disengage and I can breath deeply and find Sabbath time.

One of the best part of gardening is that even on the days and weeks where life is too busy to attend to them, the plants grow. Day by day they shoot out new buds, new flowers, new fruit. They grow. They fill an empty space with green. With life.

Plants show the tenacity of life. Though they can't move or defend themselves, they fight to live. They come back after being trampled on. If the place where they are growing doesn't have enough light, they send out shoots searching for the light. Bending and shaping themselves to be in the light.

They offer us an image of living faith. Silent tenacity to search out life. To reach for light and allow themselves to be shaped by it.

Day 10: Walking in step with the spirit

"For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God"

Yesterday was a long, tiring day, which is why I am only posting now. I was at McDonald's letting Eddie run off steam when I had an interesting interaction that has caused me to stop and ponder a minute. When we first came in, the place was empty except for a 2 year old girl and her parents (who were a little on the older side). Eddie ran into the play area and right up to the mom and said "Hi." The mom jumped back a little and I could tell she was getting her feathers raised, quickly judging Eddie to be a hellion. Arms full of Andrew and food, I reluctantly sprang into action and called Eddie to come sit down with me at the table -- a little dismayed that my time to relax was going to be spent on guard.

We sat there and Eddie ate some bites of food, then ran to the playground. He climbed up. The little girl, feeling brave, followed him. "She's never gone that high before." I told her that Eddie used to be afraid of climbing and only recently has started going to the top of the structure. Slowly, her demeanor changed. Her guard came down. She told me how it was always full of rowdy kids which made her nervous.

Then, the place started filling up with the dinner rush. The first to come was a couple of older kids - maybe 7 yr old girl and 10 yr old boy. The boy came up to Eddie and his new little playmate and said "wanna be friends" He repeated over and over. I saw mama's tail feathers ruffle. "He's wierd." she whispered to me. He reminded me of me at that age.... awkward and socially under-developed. I saw brokenness in the room. Brokenness in the fear of the mom at a world she couldn't control. Brokenness in a boy who perhaps knew a type of loneliness

We have such a hard time recognizing and communicating with each other. We are so caught up in our own stories. Our fears, our loneliness, our pride, our tiredness that we don't take the time to really see who's around us and what's going on with them. And even if we do happen to notice each other's words and actions, we can't understand the spirit behind them. I don't know what was really going on under the surface. But in each of them I sensed something deeper going on and had a flickering desire to offer compassion.

God can teach us new ways to see the world, the languages of love and compassion that allow us first to notice and then to be moved by compassion. We can learn to walk in the ways of the spirit and offer light if we just take a moment to be present.