And it was good.

I'm in one of those perfected chemically imbalanced post mentrual meloncholy but not depressed moods. The ones that beckon me to do something creative with what little time remains in this night...

I scanned through pictures of mammals and amphibians and explained to my seven year-old that we aren't the same as monkeys even though we both have opposable thumbs, I read a chapter of "One Hundred Dresses" to a very whiny, very unamused and unappreciative four year-old daughter, and then went to the kitchen to check my e-mail and stalk random people on Facebook who I haven't seen in years. While looking at an old friend's pictures and listening to a C.D. my sister gave me the day before I moved to Italy, entitled "The Saddest Day of my Life," I decided something creative must be regergitated in a way that would allow me to see on paper or a screen or in a 4 x 6 image, the passion that flickers inside me, between wiping a two year old's butt and breaking up fights over whose room the new guinea pig will sleep in tonight.

And thus I reached for my camera, scurried around my apartment to find my card reader, slipped the card in and shoved it all into the computer in order to make sense of the images I see in my head that must in some way, be captured with my camera. If I don't see in flesh these things in my heart, I fear they will fade or drift away, like an old friend... an image... a friendship once so bright and vivid that now only holds a shell of memories and silent laughter.

I'm remembering one of those friends even now. I can see her laughing but the sound has been silenced by time and new memories, ones both beautiful and heart-wrenching...

But not even pictures or words can express one's soul. It's all just an attempt to beckon something to come forth...to make sense of the beautiful mess that lay before us here in this strange and yet familiar planet. I wonder if God felt that way before He spoke it all... and I wonder how He felt (not what He SAID, for "and it was good" are just words desperately trying to convey this deep emotion that FATHER GOD FELT) when He stood back and looked at it all. Not even the best cinematographer can tuck that feeling in his gut and make it appear on a big screen. The Father's expression of His emotions came in the form of long shadows cast across mountains at sunset... of waterfalls flowing from endless heights...of the body of a woman... the crest of the ocean. How amazing that his creatures get their inspiration from the very medium of art, namely Creation, that Father God sculpted with His mind.

That's neat.

Delicate

Well.

It's been awhile.

After my last attempt at a post (see Thrashing, but don't read past paragraph three...it's quite lame), I concluded that I would do best to lay my creative flow aside, as, well, I didn't have much of an option given that the orange was squeezed to its max and i was left looking like a shriveled old lady.

But today as I was watching a Subway worker (as in sandwich artist) feed some geese in the field of sorts across the street from our house, next to the interstate, I thought that perhaps it was time to write. After all, how desperate must I be to have been inspired by geese. It's just that they were rushing to this man, like they were starving. And the sun was setting and it was my favorite hour of the day because things were getting all orange and the trees were getting all black. And I had a McDonald's Diet Coke in hand. And I was thinking about Africa. About a very dear family we know there. I was thinking about how I just got an e-mail from the woman who was humbly asking for money because they didn't have any and their son had recently been chased home from school because he didn't have black shoes.

And I was alone. Talking to Jesus. Thinking to myself that I should probably write.

I was asked for the hundredth time today when we are leaving (for Italy that is). I wish I knew that answer. I sometimes wish I was one of those people who made these very solid plans and actually saw the whole thing unfold just as I had dreamed and planned it would. But alas, this has never been the case in my life. And as much as I'm up for adventure (i.e. I was dumb enough to ride the Diamondback at King's Island last week despite the post-three-children-nausea factor), sometimes I just wish I could know how it's all going to play out. At least how the next few months are going to play out. Living in limbo is not fun. And what's worse, sometimes, rarely but too often...too often as in a few hours ago, I get the dreaded question:

"So what will happen if you don't raise all the money???"

I really don't like this question. It really makes me feel kinda sick when someone asks me this. And I mean sick, like to my stomach.

And then I pause. Deep breaths, I tell myself. I can handle this. After all, we are living a life that is a lot different than the get a good job, have 2.5 kids, move further out of the city (where it's safe you know), eventually get a puppy, and put down some roots, kind of life...

Not that this is bad. In fact, some days it sounds pretty darn good. And if I ever do live in one of those neighborhoods, gosh darnit, I will find one with a neighborhood pool.

There. I said it.

A couple of deep breaths later, I found myself answering with my standard answer. It goes something like "Well, if God has brought us this far, I don't think He's going to just drop the ball. I can't even think like that because it takes away from everything He has done and has called us to do. Eventually, we just have to get out the boat."

And in the pit of my sick stomach, the six year-old in me begs Jesus to not let that answer be in vain. To not let us be put to shame. In that moment, I cling subconciously to David's words, the ones about God's favor. About not letting him be put to shame.

Shame and guilt have very unequivocally become my brain-mates over my lifetime. So any time I am risking them being enlarged like a helium balloon in the confines of my small brain, I am tempted to jump off of a ledge. I think this could perhaps be the reason as to why I feel sick to my stomach when faced with rejection or harsh tones, or mean people or the idea that what we thought God was leading us to was just some whim of the imagination and that surely we are losing our minds, thinking God would actually speak to us, lead us and guide us, and work out all the details so that we could follow Him to wherever it is that He has asked us to go.

Oh, that's a little deep. But since I started...

When I'm honest with myself, I'm not so sure I'm living the reality of truly following Jesus...not when I know there is a man in India who has prayed for a bicycle for ten years so that He can go tell people about this Jesus who didn't remove him from the burden of living in poverty but who gave Him eternal life and who is a best friend to Him. That's a reality that I will probably never know. But I do know that even though I am a privelaged white girl from the suburbs of the Midwest in the richest country in the world, my reality of following Jesus carries a sort of heaviness to it. When you are given more, there's more to abandon. There's more to risk. And with risk, there's a sort of impending shame that haunts me like an evening shadow.

But then, I look back. Beyond the shadow. Into the darkest moments of my life. The moments in seventh grade when I really wanted to die. The moments when I was sure my marriage would end. Moments when relationships lay in shambles. Moments when I prayed to find money on the ground. Moments when I just didn't know how it would work out.

And I see it all. Like a movie. Like a good movie.

I see the light creeping slowly into the picture. And I see Jesus sorting through the muck, finding something beautiful to make out of this mess. I see Him taking it all...the harsh words, the depression, the loneliness, the fear, the shame, the guilt, the desperation over finances, my marriage, my future, my children, my relationships... and gently kneading it all together, leaving it alone for a bit...letting it settle into just the right texture.

And then, when the time is right, usually about the time I've given up, he picks up the big messy clump of clay and sprinkles some water on it. He takes it back and forth between his hands, sorting out all the lumps, softening it just so. He puts it on the wheel and very slowly, very gently, begins to spin it, holding that clump in a way that looks as if it would just slip out of his damp hands and onto the floor, adding to the mess it is already.

His hands are cupped around the clay now, as it cautiously makes its way into what simply resembles an okay-looking bowl.

He holds the bowl, like he's holding a baby, and he lifts its sides, moving so slowly that I don't even realize he's doing anything at all.

The wheel continues to spin. The bowl is getting taller. And much more delicate. A few times I think that it will surely fall to the ground. But it continues to grow. Upward. Outward. With a rim that looks as if it's reaching to the heavens. Every piece of what is now a rounded vase is perfect. Every ounce of every lump has been smoothed into this piece of art that now has the capabiity of holding its own. Holding something else even.

And perhaps in that redemption of all things broken is the capability of holding those who are broken. Holding people who are withering. Dying. Those who are hopeless. Ashamed. Abandoned. In need of Light.

This is my vase. It's the beatuiful mess I have to offer. It's the willingness to be broken and formed into something new. Even if it's not as delicate.

Because it's not my life.

I do not have the answers. But something tells me that's a good thing. That this "not knowing" is preparing us for something greater.

And for that reason, I'll find the rest I need. I won't stop begging Him to not be put to shame. I won't stop pleading with Him to make this calling a reality.

But I will find hope in how he redeems it all. How he forms it into something more beautiful, more useful, than we could ever have imagined.

Thrashing

When you are married with three small children, having a date night is something like a child arriving at an amusement park and staring at the mountains of steel that will soon move his insides in ways he never thought possible but which are surreal and exhilarating. Just the thought of getting to sit at a table and have food delivered to me, just me, especially when it comes in the form of Lettuce Wraps from PF Chang’s, gets me excited. And staring at my husband, even when we have nothing to say, gives me a new appreciation for silence. (And I’m quite aware after re-reading that paragraph at how it could be taken in a sensual way…I assure you that Lettuce Wraps are sensual in their own tofuey, soy saucey, crunchy noodly way.)

Last night, sweet Laura came to our rescue once again after receiving an e-mail that perhaps forcing us to have a date night would be a good thing, given that I really, really didn’t like my husband at the time the words were emphatically typed. Mentioning, “If we haven’t killed each other” always helps too.

After going out to eat, we went to Wal-Mart to get an iron (which I am realizing at this moment, we forgot to buy). While standing in the car isle, trying to decide which refrigerant to buy for our leaky air conditioner in our ghetto van, I found it necessary to have Thomas massage my very achy neck. As I was making the oohing and awing sounds that may have left quite a few employees wondering what was going on in aisle 17, for the first time in about a week, I felt whole. As Thomas compared products, I stood there, peacefully, allowing the humor and seriousness of our evening to ensue in my mind, recalling the conversation we had over dinner. I had shared with Thomas how I doubted God’s goodness and provision for this “calling” He has both burdened and blessed us with. How I was feeling “done” in the sense that we are slowly moving to our destination, all the while living in limbo of trying to embrace the present while longing to be in the future. I am finally to a place where I really, really want to get to Italy, set up camp, and get to work. But here we are, awaiting His timing, His provision. In the meantime, thoughts of doubt and guilt and very earthly frustrations have been nearly drowning me. Here is a word picture of this:

I’m in the ocean, in the midst of drowning…and there is this life-saving device attached to me. As I frenziedly try to stay afloat, the little ring moves with me, waiting for me to notice it, like my friend Joy’s dog. My to-do lists push me under…the calls and e-mails and meetings. Worry and anxiety push me further down. I try to swim, but guilt comes in the form of a giant wave and I’m barely making it to the top.

Little lifesaver, gently knotted around my ankle, bobs up and down, wondering why I haven’t noticed it by this point. It stays on top of the water, moving this way and that as water fills my mouth three feet below. We drift along, moving toward the shore, as the Wind takes us where only It can.

My arms: flailing. Lifesaver: riding the waves like a tanned surfer.

Just as I start to give up, realizing my destiny at this point is to die a sad and lonely death in the middle of a murky sea, my toe catches on something. My other toes begin to feel it too. My feet and ankles are now immersed in this familiar squishy feeling. I press my foot down, as this is my last hope for survival. Sand meets my feet and I straighten my tired body. My head comes up from the water as quickly as it immersed from the womb. I look down and notice that not only is my head above the water, but my neck and shoulders as well.

I look to my right and notice the tube. I grab it for fear that it will float away. It must have drifted out here from the shore. Then I notice it is attached to something and that the something is me. I grab onto it, as I am very weak at this point. It guides me, nearly pulls me, to the shore.

It was my destiny all along. Oh the needless and ridiculous thrashing about. The questioning. The missing out on all of the blessings right in front of me. The exchange of the quiet drifting only to be inundated by waters too chaotic for my helpless body to endure. The Holy Spirit alongside me, pushing me ever so slowly to the shore. Jesus, my companion, never leaving me, attached to me, for that is His promise. The Father, the ground on which I stand when alas I have been too ignorant to receive His Helper and His Son.

And this is the cycle in which, day in and day out, I find myself.

But in that dinner conversation with my newfound friend Thomas (a.k.a. my husband), he reminded me that this is our life, not someone else’s. The way Jesus moves in our lives is not like the way He moves in your life…or the life of your best friend or your brother or your mom. Each of our journeys is so unique. And each story is meant to bring glory to Jesus in its very distinctive hurt, pain, suffering, laughter, joy and contentedness. We cannot take what works in someone else’s life and replicate it in our own.

I was talking to this guy at our friends’ wedding last weekend. He is an actor who has been in a couple films. The one he just finished is about the early years of Billy Graham. He talked about what an incredible opportunity he had to be light among some very broken people in Hollywood. But he also mentioned that the film lacked something because of its secular take on a very spiritual figure. “It lacks the Spirit of God…. it’s told like a story rather than what it really is.”

This is so true in our lives as well. When we try to be someone or do something or live someone else’s life that we were never intended to live, something inside of us dies. Suddenly practicality and earthly comforts and anxiety rush in to meet us in our shirts that are too baggy, our shoes that are too small, our hair that is too long or too short or too pink or too green. Something is off. And I believe others can feel it when we aren’t living a life guided by the Holy Spirit. We thrash about like a tired two year-old.

This past week, I’ve tried to force myself and my family, mostly my husband, into a plan that was my own and not God’s. Sure, my plan makes sense to me. And I bet I could get a list of a hundred people who would agree with my plan. But if Jesus isn’t on the list, what good is it? I only get the wonderful opportunity of becoming a nagging and bitter woman with whom I wouldn’t even want to live (and I’m pretty sure there’s a Proverb about that one…something about it being better to live on the corner of a roof than with a bitter wife. Too bad we don’t have an accessible roof).

But grace and redemption have once again met me in the form of a new day and a very forgiving husband (of course, I must say there is always forgiving to be done on my part as well. For those of you who know us… and I mean “us” in terms of the messy, catty us, you know that my husband needs lots of forgiveness and grace. Almost as much as I do. See, I couldn’t just be the quiet, humble wife that many wish I were. I had to go and insert my pride in here).

Church at Ikea

In Italy it isn’t uncommon to share a table with someone you don’t know. So today at the café at Ikea, when a woman pulled up a chair next to us and set her bags down between Thomas and her chairs, as a divider of sorts, we thought nothing of it. We continued eating our couscous, pasta and very yummy “dolce” (Italian for dessert).

As I was nearing the end of my chocolate crunchy cheesecake bliss, I asked the woman, in Italian, if she spoke English (I had a very important question to ask her). She said, “yes” without so much of a hint of an Italian accent and so I asked her if she knew if the mall next door was open today or not (apparently most things are closed here on Sundays). She answered me with a wonderful British accent, which took us into the next question travelers always ask: “Where are you from?” We exchanged our answers and then began asking (and answering) the next set of questions regarding marital status, children, work, length of time in Italy, etc.

This all spawned our conversation into something of a very spiritual and intense nature. It was way beyond the moment. I knew just by what felt like a force field around our table that this was holy…this was Jesus answering this woman’s cry for help. She didn’t go into detail but told us that she and her (Italian) husband of twenty years were separated…that everything had seemed to fall apart as of late. This very beautiful and kind woman who looked like a friendly sitcom wife said that in the car on the way to Ikea she had been questioning whether or not she was “possessed” because everything in her life had been going so terribly. She couldn’t believe how strange her encounter with us was, given the conversation didn’t start with this intention. Given she was seemingly desperate for some sort of answer to the questions burning in her soul.

We shared about our marriage and God’s redemption and Jesus’ love and abundant grace. At the beginning of the conversation, when it started taking on a more spiritual tone, she mentioned that, having grown up in a home where one of her parents was Catholic and the other a mix between Protestant and Jehovah’s Witness, she thought it was ridiculous that people would fight over little things regarding this one “God.” She mentioned Buddha and Ala in all of this and so we got the opportunity to share the difference between these religions (which was fresh in our minds given we talked with a Muslim man on the plane for about two hours regarding the differences in our faiths). We talked about the assurance of salvation Jesus offers because of his death and resurrection on the cross. The man on the plane said that by doing good works, he “hoped” to get to heaven. In this moment, with this woman, I re-lived my salvation experience, realizing that I really am sure that if I died this very moment, I’d be with Jesus. Not because of anything I’ve done, but because God chose to send His only Son to die for me. It’s because of this that there is anything holy and good that dwells in me and allows me to do “good works.”

At the end of the conversation, Thomas asked if he could pray with her. “Please do,” she said, a woman not too proud to pray in this very unreligious and overcrowded restaurant of sorts. We all closed our eyes and Thomas put his hand on her. We all felt it. I know. It was a rare and beautiful moment of the sweet presence of God. When we opened our eyes, hers were filled with tears. She got up from the chair and we rose to hug her. I felt like I was hugging my sister.

We exchanged information in the midst of all this and I told her that we should keep in touch. “Yah,” she said. “I’ll tell you in an e-mail why this is all so strange.” With that she turned to leave and looking back, she let out a deep breath, as if weight had lifted from her and said, “Well. I’m going to be thinking about this all day.” She smiled, her eyes dry now, and walked away.

I believe she walked away knowing that God is big enough for her questions. Big enough to seat her next to two foreigners who simply wanted to know whether or not the mall was open. Foreigners who God has asked to go to this place, to encounter people like her, to give answers to those who are seeking…to harvest these seeds that have been planted in the hearts of His people. His sons. His daughters.

This is church. Yes, even at Ikea.

Train Ride

Everything I could possibly say about Italy seems incredibly cliché’ and rather asinine. I could talk about the beauty or the culture or the history, but who hasn’t seen the pictures of the Italian villages hanging on every wall of every “Italian” restaurant in the U.S.? Who hasn’t heard about the rich history here? The wars. The fashion. The wine. The cheese. And the bread. Oh, the bread. Foccocia has an entirely different meaning here. Though I have to say that, after eating at an oddly inviting (and a bit dirty) Italian diner of sorts, the only very small glass of wine I ingested left me unimpressed.

Even as I’m riding the train through the mountains, I feel a bit removed from it all. I’m remembering an 18-hour bus (very old VW bus, that is) ride I took through the mountains of Eastern Europe some ten years ago. Recalling how I had to pee so bad and finally we stopped at the home of an elderly Albanian couple in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere… and was directed to a little room with concrete floors and a drain.

I am, however, reflecting on the “aura,” if you will, that I got from our time in Genova the last few days. Our friends, the Paces, live in an apartment that, if you can make it to the top of without heart failure, is beautiful. It has a large balcony that overlooks the ocean that is only a couple of miles away. The day we arrived, Donna and I sat on the balcony, the sun warming our exposed arms, soaking in each other’s presence and awing over the beauty of the view that God has so amazingly given them day in and day out.

But last night, or early this morning rather (jetlag is killing us), as the Paces and we listened to my favorite worship song together (From the Inside Out), one lyric struck a chord in me, in a way that is not really profound at all, but which awakened my heart once again to the reality of people’s need for Light in this place. “Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades…” And in this place, after sojourning through the labyrinth in the downtown district last night, noticing the prostitutes and the street kids and the drunk men and the lack of children, I felt surrounded by darkness and admittedly felt a twinge of hopelessness in giving these people a message of Jesus’ love, as if any of us is “too far gone” for such a God.

And then, like the enemy’s nefarious clockwork, I awoke in a terrible mood and nearly hated my husband for a good two hours for no apparent reason other than he was acting a bit like a child. Donna could see my very obvious frustration building and she prayed with me that I could be kind and filled with love. “Deep breaths,” she kept saying, half joking and half not. Deep breaths, Holy Spirit, Zoloft, a meditative trinity of sorts, got me through the bus ride to the train station. Listening to my IPod and reading 1 Corinthians 13, the infamous chapter on love, got me through the first twenty minutes of the train ride until it stopped, at which point all other passengers exited. Then the train’s engine turned off and we were left on what resembled a ghost train, all alone, questioning weather or not sweet Phil put us on the right train or not.

Turns out, after the janitor guy came through picking up trash and noticed us sitting there like the ridiculous foreigners that we are, that this train was no longer running and indeed it was not heading to Torino and never was for that matter. So we got off and in the midst of waiting another hour for the right train, I began liking my husband again. Of course it helps that he was acting much less like a child and I had gotten a Coke Zero from the little man at the “Chef Express.” And he (my husband, not the little man) is wearing black. And his red hat. And jeans that make his butt look cute. That always helps a little. I overlooked the dog poop on his shoe and made peace with the multi-faceted, flawed but wonderful human that he is. (It seems I come to this conclusion a lot in my writing… much less expensive than a counselor…).

And now we are heading to Torino, our future home. It all seems a bit dreamlike. I mean dreamlike in the sense that most of my dreams are not wonderful, but odd rather, and sometimes scary and most of the time confusing. I imagine our experience in Torino, while wonderful because it’s like a first honeymoon of sorts for us, will be a bit like my dreams.

Our future is truly in the hands of God. It’s both fun and nerve wrecking to follow His lead. It’s fun when it all works out. Nerve-wrecking when we step out of the boat and aren’t really sure whether or not we will sink or walk. Turns out Jesus can handle it all, the days when I’m so sure He’s real and good and a God who provides, and the dreadful days, which make up many, when I ask Him if He’s really sure He knows what He’s doing… and if using us, ridiculous, over-sensitive, critical and melancholy us, is really a good idea. But then I put one foot in front of the other, like a baby learning to walk. Knowing all the while that I will indeed fall, but that God’s kingdom isn’t contingent on my perfection, rather His grace toward very flawed people like me.

And in minutes, I will get up out of this seat and step off this train into a land I know little of. It’s one step at a time…one little baby step will take us off this train and into another unknown.

Tsunami

A couple of years ago, I had this obsession with watching the Tsunami footage on You Tube. I have no idea how the mania began. Perhaps it was because when the disaster occurred, I was forty-one weeks pregnant and in my own self-pitiful world. The evening after the floods reigned in, I found myself in a small hospital room holding my baby girl, staring at her beautiful face and thanking God for this perfect gift, while in the background the death toll scrolled across the bottom of the screen on CNN. I had this strange feeling in my stomach as the collision of these two absolutely contradictory and overwhelming emotions collided with one another somewhere deep inside my postpartum gut. I turned off the TV and tried to forget about the thousands of families grieving the loss of their loved ones.

So at one point, I had to come to grips with what happened that fateful December day. I looked up “Tsunami footage” and to my surprise found hundreds of videos that fit the bill. I watched intently as people who were simply vacationing and taking home videos of their kids on the beach suddenly became alarmed and eventually terrified, as they watched a massive wave quickly approaching. Voices of leisurely laughter turned into voices of terror as they ran with their families and their cameras to avoid the raging waters that were all too quickly approaching. One after another, I watched, shocked at this dreadful phenomenon. Amazed at how one minute life is calm and the next minute full of chaos.

This morning, I awoke in a reasonable mood. Typically, I awake in one extreme or the other. The few times I wake up in a really good mood usually coincide with warm, sunny weather and sleeping children. The other times, I basically wake up wanting to die. Not in a suicidal way. Just in an “I’m not happy to be alive” kind of way. Meaning I don’t want to get a very whiny Elias out of bed and ready for school. I don’t want to listen to my daughter’s demands for Cocoa Wheats and candy. And I certainly don’t want to face the aroma of Ezra’s daily dose of nastiness when I enter his room.

But we are in Kansas City today and I didn’t have to deal with the first two scenarios, so I was in an okay mood. Surprisingly, even though it’s the beginning of February, it was warm and sunny, with the kind of breeze that teases my senses, making them think spring is nearly here. I made my way to the little workout room and walked twenty-five minutes on the treadmill while watching the biography of Reese Witherspoon. Afterward, I took the kids outside to the playground and let them run around.

So it seemed odd, after returning from a quiet retreat (meaning I was by myself) to McDonald’s and the Dollar Tree later that afternoon, that I found myself emotionally out of sorts. It wasn’t until an hour or so later that I apprehended the familiar cloud of loneliness and depression looming over me, concealing the sunshine that warmed me only a few hours prior. I wasn’t sure quite what to do with this feeling…this Tsunami of sorts, which was fast approaching.

So I ran from it.

I subconsciously decided that a pity party was in order. For starters, I would remind myself that I am not a likeable person and this is why when I walked up the stairs to chat with my team, everyone disbanded (nothing to do with the fact that they had been sitting there together the whole time I was gone and probably wanted a little solace). And then, I would begin criticizing people I love, namely my husband. This one always works really well, especially because it gives him a good reason to be mad at me and thus adds some fiery flavor to the pitiful atmosphere I have created, at this point, for the whole family.

Around six o’clock, we made our way over to the home of a couple on our team who lives a mere football field away from the training center where we were staying. The team was convening there in order to head over to the main office. I decided that instead of forcing myself to be a part of the conversation that was happening on the other side of the cul-de-sac, I’d tend to a shrilly Ezra who kept pulling me away from the group, his chubby hands using all their fortitude to drag me into his two year-old world, a world of open fields and plenty of room to run and explore. Thomas calls Ezra our little John the Baptist, and I have to say that in terms of being a wild man, this is true, even down to his crazy hair that matches wholly his personality.

I felt something inside of me churning while he led me into the open field. Something deep and God-like. I knew this was a teaching moment. Only this time, I was the student and my two year-old, the teacher.

He kept walking, his little Chuck Taylors picking up speed with every step. He had something to show me. Something way too big for his little two-word sentences to explain. I kept following him, getting further and further away from our team…from my agenda…from my self-pity.

Suddenly, he stopped, like a man reaching the edge of the Grand Canyon. He took my hand again and turned around, silently asking me to mimic him. I turned just as Keziah and her little friend Katie came racing down the hill, hand in hand, giggling as their bare feet ran over the damp grass and their bellies filled with tickly butterflies. The sun was just setting and pink and orange filled the sky behind their silhouetted figures. I took in the scene, like I was watching a really good independent film. I let the feeling settle down into that place that’s made just for Jesus and me. The place where revelation supernaturally prevails any life circumstance.

I breathed deep, suddenly realizing all of my senses were in tact and that they were all in perfect sync with one another, down to the crisp and dry smell of winter and the feeling of wheatgrass tickling my legs. Ezra stood next to me, like Morgan Freeman on Evan Almighty. It was like he was enjoying this moment every bit as much as I was. Keziah and Katie fell to the ground and their little dresses blew in the wind as their bare legs flew toward the sky. They continued laughing together, so hard, so freely. They were abandoned to the simple pleasures of life. The pleasures I so staunchly repress in all my grown-upness.

Instead of continuing to run from the sad and lonely feelings I held within for half the day, I unknowingly ran into them, knowing that God was beckoning me to embrace the beauty in front of me. All we really need is always in front of us, isn’t it? It’s just that we are sometimes way too sensible to see it. We think, in our very human minds, that we know what we need. And what we need certainly can’t be embracing our negative emotions… or can it?

We forget that Jesus felt lonely. That he spent much of his life empathizing with very sad people, mourning with them and for them. That he was rejected and despised and that even down to the evening before his betrayal, he wanted the cup of despair to pass him.

But He walked into the darkness. And from it came the most glorious moment in all of history. A moment on which hinges every bit of light that this sad world embodies.

I could have told Ezra to hold on for the hundredth time that day and tried desperately to repress my emotions and partake very superficially in the ensuing conversation. But I would have missed the reminder of how blessed I am to have these children. What’s more, I would have missed the opportunity to walk into the bigness of God, where my emotions are all put into perspective…where laughter and solitude dance together, hand in hand, as they apprehend the freedom and simplicity that comes with being children of a Father who delights in meeting us in our moments of angst.

Glorious Vegetarian Body

I was about to eat some asparagus tonight, but my husband warned me of its lengthy stay in Hotel Refrigerator. So I ate leftover manicotti instead. I don’t really like vegetables all that much. In Chicago, I have an ex-Amishy friend (I say Amishy because I can’t remember if she was Amish or Mennonite) who is as sincere and happy as the lady that plays the piano at Nordstrom. We took a walk around the block one afternoon and as we were discussing my vegetarianism and how I’d take a donut over celery any day, she said to me, very nonchalantly, “Yah, you aren’t like most vegetarians. I’ve never known one that wasn’t really skinny.”

Now, I could have given her the benefit of the doubt. I’m a far cry from really skinny. However, I don’t like that other people actually have the conscious thought when looking at me that indeed those are love handles that I’m trying desperately to tuck behind a mid-length cardigan and yes, that is most likely back fat you are seeing spill out of my bra indentation. I’m convinced that if I keep my black pea coat on, I can pass for somewhat skinny. Black works wonders in hiding all those post-three pregnancy creases. And coats, especially wool ones, well they were obviously invented by a woman who knew what she was doing. They are that perfect thickness, so as to not enlarge nor cling. Brilliant, I say.

I didn’t say anything to the Amish girl (she’s Amish now; she said I wasn’t skinny so she’s Amish, dangit). I just laughed that awkward “I don’t like what you just said but I’m not sure what to say” laugh and went on about the day, the thought lingering somewhere inside me that I probably should do something to become really skinny, like all “good” vegetarians. By the end of the day, that thought dissolved and Diet Coke and a Snickers bar were practically calling my name. I became okay, at least for the moment, with being chunky vegetarian girl.

If you were to meet me…perhaps you already have…you would not think that I’m overweight. I know this because, well, I just know. It’s not like I shop in the plus sizes or have considered bariatric surgery, though this is the reality of many of my friends...friends whose weight has never stopped me from seeing their inward and outward beauty (why can’t I be this kind to myself?). It’s just that I don’t know a time in all of my 29 years that I have been happy with my body. I take that back, maybe when I was two and three, before the four year-old dance recital trauma where I had to dress in a shiny green jumper and bright white tights and pretend to be a Magic Flower. I remember rather vividly wishing I had taken Jazz because they got to wear these cool black skeleton suits that covered them from head to toe. We’ve always had a good relationship, black and I. We were destined for one another, almost as much as I was destined to fall in love with that good skinny mirror in my bathroom.

So for, let’s just say 26 years, I have not been content with this vessel that I have inhabited. When I was younger, it was my thighs. I had this routine where I’d take a long walk down our upstairs hallway, sporting only undergoods, and glaring at twelve year-old me in the mirror on the back of the door, I’d focus on the jiggle factor of my inner thighs. I hated them. Really hated them. There is a reason why in Africa, showing your inner thighs is like going without a shirt in an American mall. They weren’t meant for public exposure. Who wants to see the two pads of fat that aren’t sure what to do with themselves while just chilling there between otherwise normal legs?

At some point, thigh jigglage was no longer the issue. In high school, my complaints were filed against my belly and my arms. I’d like to say I moved on with the body assault after that, or even better, that I overcame my self-esteem issues and am hopelessly in love with this body, but the truth is that I’m still fixated on doing something about the belly bulge. Only, whereas the problem used to lie in the front part, like a college girl who drank too much beer (I hate beer and was never that kind of college girl…and why does the phrase college girl sound so x-rated?), now the fat has spilled around my sides and back, creating the ultimate love handles, or better put in Oprah’s words, “The muffin top.” My sweet friend Carina, who is all of eighteen, likes to squeeze my handles, like she is squishing Play-Doh. I’m not sure why. But she’s one of very few people who could get away with such antics. And then she tries to tell me how she too has love handles and “see, feel them.” Upon squeezing the fringes of her abdomen, every bit as hard as she did mine, I tell her that what I feel is merely skin, not the rubbery stuff spilling out of my jeans.

Therefore, I have actually considered buying my first pair of mommy jeans. I own all of these jeans that prefer to cut my non-waist in half and leave the spillage issue obvious at hand. Somehow when I’m in the dressing room, I tell myself that the jeans actually go over the muffin top. But when I get them home, strangely, they no longer cover and when I wear them once, they loosen enough to fall down, because unlike most women, I have no butt and no hips. Which brings me to the other problem: I look like a man with boobs. I have calves that could be likened to the statue of David’s legs. And while I’m not up for a sex change and don’t even like males most of the time, I think I could be a pretty good-looking man.

Okay, I know there are a few of you right now who are rather angry with me in this moment, or in the very least, annoyed (oh, I can just hear my good friend Linda now). I sound like a sad woman on Dr. Phil, or worse still, Tyra, lamenting over her body image and what not. And trust me, I always hated it in high s school when the girl who was a size 2 complained about being “fat,” while all the rest of us were left squeezing into our size 8 (or was that a 10?) hip huggers (made for those with hips, not for us she-men folk). We always assured her that indeed she was skinny, all the while despising all 98 pounds of her preposterous self.

But as I have had friends who have struggled with eating disorders throughout the years, I have come to see that it isn’t about being fat or skinny. I have a good friend who has struggled with bulimia for a long time. When she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t ever see her tiny waist (which yes, I might consider giving up a toe for) or her very womanly body or her beautiful facial features. What she sees is everything she would change. She hates those outward features enough to damage her insides. It doesn’t matter how many of us tell her how skinny or beautiful she is (which is not hard…she is gorgeous), there is something inside of her that screams that she will never be good enough.

And therein lies the problem. While our culture doesn’t make it easy to be satisfied with anything short of a perfectly airbrushed Victoria’s Secret model, the reality of our discontentment is that we just want to be good enough…accepted and loved, not in spite of, but with this body, no matter its misplaced bulges and lumps. I have this theory, one that I did not come up with but which I read somewhere in some book, which means it wouldn’t really be my theory, so I recant and start this sentence again: I read one time that at age 12 or 13, the mother’s role in a girl’s life takes a back seat. At this crucial age, it is the father’s job to affirm this pre-adolescent…to make her feel completely accepted and loveable in the face of raging hormones and a changing body. I saw this movie once that starred Adam Sandler. I can’t remember the title and I have to say that after Billy Madison, I haven’t been too impressed by Mr. Sandler; however, in this particular movie, he played a father, married to this woman who is very critical of her overweight daughter. He loved his daughter unconditionally and despite the mother’s words, told her she was beautiful and made her feel completely worthy of his love. Something inside of me melted at their interaction.

Maybe that’s why I still have a certain image branded in my mind, an entrancing icon, and one that takes my breath away, like a burnished sunset. It was about this time last year and our daughter had just turned three. She was chubby and squishy in all the right places, meaning all the places that I like to tickle and squeeze. Keziah is perhaps the most kindhearted little girl I have known. She is in tuned to other people’s needs and emotions, the way I envision Mother Teresa was as a child. I’d like to say I taught her this, but because I have birthed two strong-willed boys who seem to think the world revolves around them at times, I know this isn’t true. Empathy and compassion and sharing come to her as natural as a mother’s love for her newborn.

She had just gotten out of the bath and while Thomas was drying her off, he lifted her up to the vanity and took the towel off her. He looked at her in the mirror, her sweet chubby body, her baby soft skin, and, as she made faces at herself in the mirror, he said to her, “Look at you Keziah. You are so beautiful.”

Tears welled up in my eyes as I peered through the small crack in the door. She smiled and continued to ask questions, her daddy’s words remaining inherent in her little mind. Of course she was beautiful. Of course her daddy was captivated by just one look at her.

And just like that, I watched how a woman’s self-esteem is formed.

I thought for a long time after that about how if we all received that same affirmation, we’d probably be perfectly fine with our not-so-baby-chubbiness, despite our cultural standards. We’d bask in the Father’s love because we had a father who modeled this. That love would be tangible and we would sense it every day, breathe it in every morning, be in awe of this body with its amazing gifts and talents, of the ways in which it carries babies and brings them into the world, and then astonishingly makes its way back to a beautifully altered, more motherly (and humbling) form.

And when we aren’t carrying babies within, we are running marathons, dancing like swans, diving from platforms, caring for the sick, creating machines, jumping out of airplanes, using every ounce of splendor these bodies have offered us. They are glorious, these womanly bodies. If only we believed it on the inside, where beauty exudes and glitters, like Tinkerbell, through the tiny holes of our outer selves.

We are all 13 year-old girls. I believe we all want to know that there is a prince whose heart we have captured. How beautiful when that prince is first and foremost our earthly fathers. How much more completely whole and enchanting it will be when, upon receiving the respect and dignity we deserve, a husband comes along and affirms the beauty, hopes, and dreams of our inner selves.

Just as my uninhibited daughter stands naked before her father, so we stand before our heavenly Father, the True Prince, who I like to think laughs at my ludicrous assaults on my body while gently guiding me toward confidence in this lumpy non-vegetarian-like being that has the audacity to be used in such wonderful, glorious ways.