A Worthy Life

letting our ish hang out

It's funny, the things that people take away from a first impression. You manage not to burn the Easter brunch egg souffle casserole and suddenly you're June Cleaver. Or because you managed to wrestle your hair into an easy updo in time for an early morning appointment, clearly you must have it all together.

Sometimes, friends, on any given good day, the hair's the only thing one wrestles with and wins.

We wear our victories like a badge of honor, bragging on even our best efforts. We do it for others, to validate their successes, and others do it for us too, buoying us up over our created seas of self-doubt.

Admittedly there are struggles - we know no one is perfect. But we celebrate the high points, hoping to erase any signs of the tussle to prove that those hiccups were something of the past. And now we're relishing this fragile moment, eager to get through our acceptance speech before someone notices that the manicure done by our six year old needs a touch up.

No matter what we had to sweep under the rug to make you notice.

But for you to ever take notice and see me, just me, you're going to need to meet me right where I am.

Because honestly? What's under the rug tells a far truer story of who I am, of who I am becoming in this beautiful struggle.

I want to live honestly. I want to share the lessons gleaned from the ugly. I want you to know that there were tears, there are always tears, on the way to triumphs.

I want to testify to grace that showed up when I was least graceful. I want to deflect any temporary praise for what I managed to do in a moment to an eternal hope that keeps me plugging away in these never ending moments of life.

I'd rather disclose the ish hiding under my rug than, despite my best facade, to have the exposed realities suddenly pull the rug out from beneath me.

Which is why we've taken to celebrating the journey around our house. It's not just the peaks and A pluses that earn a place on the fridge. But the dips and detours too that prove our progress. The anonymous apology glued together from magazine clippings. The dictated story that tattles on the marital discord but testifies to the unity eventually fought for and won. The bad choices made and the ramifications that followed.

No hiding allowed. No acting accepted.

Just me and you. At our best and at our worst.

Because it's not the holy words enclosed by gilded frame on our walls or the bookshelves lined with paper spines boasting our higher learning that will speak into the lives of others.

It is our lives and our daily choices lived out in authentic transparency that show others how our stories - the good, the bad, and the ugly - are transformed into testimonies even as we ourselves are being transformed.

So, you've had a bad day. Me too. Tell me about yours and I'll let you read about mine from front and center on my refrigerator door.

//“The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.” - Tim Keller

scars of glory

She wears hers visibly, in plain view for the whole world to see. The tiny scar under her nose is her memorial, a witness to the story of her passing from death to life.

Told by those in the know that she would never survive her birth or, if she did, only as one horribly misshapen and void of even average intelligence, she defied what should have been by doing the only thing she had been created to do....live.

Today the line mars her flesh while proclaiming the beauty of her spirit and the goodness of God.

Six, almost seven years have passed since those days of God-wrestling in the waiting room of life or death. A proud mama, I continue to testify to the miracle in her while continuing to silently battle my own war within. Even while she resided inside me, siphoning from me the life she needed for her becoming, a bit of mine began to seep away. In the lonely tears and growing pains, my world began to shift from strong and healthy to weak and infirm.

I have never been the same.

The God-wrestles continue, this time in the private theatre of my soul. There are occasional days that find me weak and in pain, flat on my back but imploring face to the ground, hands to the heavens that same protaganist of Jacob of old. Prayers for healing and full deliverance, unabashed begging from one whose life exists only as a secondary character to the One whose plans and purposes construct The Eternal Story.

I continue to bear the scars of that mother/daughter journey, however invisible to the naked eye and buried deep inside. I too want life, one broader and more vibrant than this one of chronic affliction. In honest complaint I plead my case. I contend in faith, mano a mano with my God, believing, hoping that these trials can and will build my spirit stamina.

I will not waste this fight. Though trials touch my life, it will not mar the beauty of this life. Though pain and trial visit, yet will I raise my voice in telling the goodness of my God.

Whether healing or full contentment with my lot in life comes, I do not want to be found the same. I'd rather the internal scars bear some outward manifestation of this soul-beauty He is forging from the ugly fires of this life.

I'd rather be found beautiful in this waiting room of healing than sour and sullen, hiding the scars and denying HIm the glory due His name.

listening for his smile

Her question was for me, sincere and eager she pleaded while I waited for the pause. My answer in the affirmative came immediately, a full granting of her desire delivered with sweet enthusiasm.

But another voice answered, too. An antagonistic distractor from the backseat bent on malicious intent protested and denied her request, drowning out the words she had hoped to hear.

The tattles followed, fast and furious. "MOM! He said...and that I was a...and I want to...!!" and so loud was the crossfire zinging through from every corner of the van that she failed to hear my voice.

I smiled into the rear view mirror and, finding her eyes, urged her to silence. "Shh, just stop and listen, love, and you will know the truth. Stop. Don't listen to the rest, just listen to me. It is what I say that matters, it is what I answer that your life depends on."

It was a moment, brief among the others of the day, but my voice echoed the message I have sensed God wanting to speak to me as of late. I am a student by nature, always wondering, forever curious and searching out the answers to my questions and doubts and what ifs of life. So I read and I mine the minds of others that are seeking, looking for truths that lurk in the corners of gray that might shed light and certainty to my way.

The blogs and books and papers I scour all scream a million voices and choices but which is right, which is truth? And so bent have I become on absolutes that I have failed to hear the voice that really matters, the one on which all of life depends.

Looking back in my rear view at 2012, I would sometimes lose the smile of God bidding me come and learn, come and listen, come and linger. It wasn't that His smile ever went away, a scowling sovereign disappointed. It's that it faded from my view because it wasn't the object of my quest.

Knowledge became more than relationship.

I want truth and answers, I still want to know much about so many things. But not at the expense of knowing Him. 

This year my one resolution is to seek Him first. The books and opinions and teachings of others still, yes. But only after I have read His words and learned His voice and sought His smile.

Because there is always noise and distraction and enough "squirrels!" to chase down every fox and rabbit hole. But there is one voice that speaks truth every.single.time. and His is the one that I want to recognize above all the rest.

thank you, baby jesus

These are the smiles from forever ago, from that holiday of turkey and thanks that gets us remembering about how and when it all began. The plan was for the whole family to travel back home to celebrate. I'd bring the Native Americans and my sister would bring the Pilgrims, all festively dressed for the purpose of stuffing our faces and going round the table to give thanks for what we are most grateful for to the One who has granted it all.

It's a common practice for us, this going round with prayers of thanks. But these days it's hard for me. Hard not to shrink back with embarrassment over what we attribute to God's goodness, hard to keep confessing my meager thanks when it's so much stuff and temporal rubbish.

For the new couches paid for by insurance and new running shoes, I'm grateful. For the holiday sales that will keep my kids with clothes on their backs for one more year, thank you, Jesus. For a good paying job, the cars that keep us safe on the roads, for the piano and guitar lessons, for friends, for food, for fresh laundry and warm bathtubs, I am so very thankful.

But does God really long to give me better, newer couches? Does He want to give me more when so many do with less? Is it truly in His heart to lead me to clearance racks full of name brand jeans while others call on Him wanting only their daily bread?

This week my friend stands before Vietnamese authorities to be questioned for her faith. She longs to minister to the poor and orphaned in the name of Jesus and travels hours by moped to bring food to the most impoverished. She sleeps on the floor and eats watery soup and prays for strength and joy for this life of sacrifice and suffering. If anyone needed a couch or even two, maybe this one, Lord?

I'm reading of dozens of young girls in Asia exploited for their beauty and sold for a day's wages, sometimes by their own family. They long for warmth, for love, and for salvation while losing their youth and dignity to the beasts that would devour their spirits. If ever there was one in need of provision and safety, would they not qualify first?

I admit my angst to my husband. I struggle as I articulate my heart, careful not to slander the faith or the Person on which it all is founded on. If this list of wants and needs is being checked off by the very hand of God, where is the jolly benefactor with loaded sack of peace and joy for the rest of the world?

If Jesus, this newborn gift of love and eternal deliverance, isn't the problem then it must be us. We who have become so easily contented with comforts have been lulled into believing that our God's greatest desire for us is to prosper. We who would squander our privilege to pound on heaven's gates revel instead before minor pleasures while our sisters and brothers live with major need.

A heart of thanks, this is my prayer. But a heart that wisely discerns that what I have chosen to give myself comes at the cost of sharing it with another.

Yes, Lord, for the house and car and clothes and food that comes through your provision, thank you. But may my appetite for more and bigger and better never be excused as having been your gifts to me. Rather, may my gratitude be the overflow of contentment and my heart one that turns prayers of thanks into prayers for direction on how I may best give of the overflow of all you have entrusted.

As the world pauses to remember heaven's King, may my celebration be in the gifts and offerings I bring.

new becomes old becomes new becomes

Our back living room is currently cordoned off from the kitchen and the rest of the house by a thick industrial plastic and emptied for the the removal of its ceiling. As I read quickly through our history lesson from our front row seats at the kitchen table to the deconstruction happening around us, my voice began to echo through the barrenness that the couches and picture frames and toys and tv had left.

I was reminded of our first tour through this new house in 2006, those first steps bouncing off freshly painted walls and shining hardwood. We had just delivered baby #4 to a hospital in the east end where she would live out the first couple months of her life in the NICU. With an expanding family and my husband needing a home office because of a recent providential job change, our tiny townhouse needed an upgrade.

This new house was 2200 square feet, a mini-mansion in our eyes, and boasted multiple living spaces, hence the necessary previous distinction for the back living room. We debated with the builder about the possibility of rebuilding an existing wall farther into our massive master bedroom to allow for more space in the one beside, never imagining for a minute that our needs would demand the expanse of this new and improved master suite. Our ensuite could be bedroom #5 and our walk-in closet was ample space for the nursery, these were the jests of our first impressions. This dream house was bigger and better than any childhood home my husband or I had ever lived in.

Yet, in the years since, our circle of friends has expanded to couples who live in houses double or triple the size of ours. One lives on an estate with multiple homes on the property with an indoor pool, outdoor tennis courts, and a workshop larger than our townhome. 'Our new home' has become 'this old house' and the empty spaces have been filled with life and stuff with a daily battle over which will conquer more.

Over the years, what once was excess and wide open spaces has dwarfed to average and our gratitude with it.

The new couches that arrived on move-in day are now scratched and rather conspicuously mended with duct tape and recently soaked with the overflow of the ensuite toilet, thus the renovations happening now behind me. Their absence from our daily perspective is what first awakened in me this new one, this thought of how quickly we forget the wealth so easily recognized when first presented.

My sweet Jesus, the one so dearly loved and fully believed on as a child, was once my everything. Through hard days and sparse provisions and impossible requests, He was my only, more than enough. These days though, I've much more than Jesus. Provision and companionship, distraction and opportunity have now decked the halls of my merry life and Jesus gets a reserved spot of an allotted recess in this life of excess.

My desire for Him has now dwindled to the space and time and attention I daily allow Him.

How quickly I have forgotten all that He is to me, how easily I have abandoned Him when He is not all I have.

This old house, this freshly renewed vision of God's provision, has become full, sometimes too full of what I want over what I need. As the new ceilings go up and fresh paint once again adorns these walls, new habits, new choices, new priorities must be the makeovers of my life that allows my spirit to breathe anew the openness of soul baring before my God.

He may not be all I have but I want to live again as though He were, remembering daily that all the rest - this house, this life - are from His hand. And so may these halls and walls always remind me...

beautiful people

Selena stood Sunday on a stage in front of thousands. She patiently listened to her introduction, demure in her waiting. Black hair, dark eyes downcast. She wasn't there for her glory - she went for His.

My daughter often gets told she looks like Selena. Selena Gomez. The tween tv actress, teen apparel capitalist, and emerging movie/music star has similar dark brown hair, wide brown eyes, and pint sized figure. She performs before thousands, is seen on the big and small screen by millions, and isn't known to shun the spotlight. My daughter hates the comparison, partially because she deplores any association with tween fads and probably because she wishes she was more known for being her than being someone else's look-alike.

But if I had to choose, and I hope if my daughter were given the choice, the first Selena I mentioned is the one I'd prefer she emulate.

This Selena is an older woman, not much in her beauty or her composure to garner attention. She appears meek and quiet, speaking only to tell God's story at work through her hands and feet going where very few have gone before. Her life and journey remains largely unnoticed as she spends these few weeks in Canada before returning to the years already invested in Cambodia. There she runs three different programs for the disadvantaged and disregarded, the headquarters of her work the same as where she lays her head for the night.

Her moments on stage were brief. There were many in the audience who probably have already forgotten her only two days since. But this woman, this is the role model I want my girls to watch and to imitate. Hers is the kind of story I want them to write with their life choices.

It might not require of them a going, it might not require huge sacrifice and harsh environments.

But it will require that they exercise a voice for grace and truth. It will require the courage to stand before others, perhaps one on one or to a clamoring crowd, and sing of the glories of their God and King.

Such a life pays little dividends in the here and now. But such a life will be rewarded with beauty -"How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news!"

And it will resound with the triumphant cheers of heaven's hosts welcoming the lost that they helped to lead to the eternal home of Him who loves them so.

As my girls walk the paths God lays before each of them, I pray that they will dare to be those Selenas whose beauty only continues to emerge through the long years as, by their example, they lead many souls to glory.

tender love for tough hearts

These mom days are hard.

The tough love too rough on this mama's tender heart. The impulse too strong to want to be so soft.

I'd rather coax and cajole and plead and persuade them to choose right, to do what is required instead of choosing to do wrong. I'd rather wait insufferably than to allow them to bear the consequence of their choices. I'd rather bear the pain of all their sorrow than to see them suffer with the weight of all their sin.

And so I do.

I bear these long days of short legs and teetering tiptoes still navigating life and the choosing of their paths.

I'm tender with their rough patches, the squeals of self that insist on stubbornness.

I'm soft with their breaking hearts, the ones that bleed their shame and sorrow right through their weeping eyes.

I coax and plead, teaching them that consequences follow each of our decisions and that I want to spare them the pain by leading them, through Jesus, to full reconciliation and redemption beyond this brief folly.

I wait, never flinching at the anger that spews or the ignorance that lashes out - I know too well the lies that flood and how the desire to be boss debilitates our ability to see love when it is looking straight into our hearts.

I bear the pain of their rejection as they struggle under the burden of self. Willingly bearing what I don't wish to so they can experience the only thing that may cause them to consider reversing their self-led marching orders...love.

And then I do it again. Over and over, again and again.

Impressing upon them my love and tenderness towards them, holding them, speaking words of my heart softly into theirs, I plead with them to accept it, to believe it, to let it in and let it heal their hurt.

All of this, the lost moments of joy, the energy squandered on the struggle, the sobs that wrack the body, all of it, it could be over with a simple surrender. With just a humble wave of that white flag of self-conquering, victory is theirs and ours.

Coming to the One who made a way out of receiving only what we deserve, that is the same way out of these hard scrabbles with soft hearts. Turning from what destroys and to the One who redeems, that is their way too of reconciliation. This is where I lead them, this Cross the only message of instruction I know.

Their quivering voices betray the melting of their hearts. Their fierce hugs confirm that the blinders have at once fallen off and that this love, Jesus' love and mine, has led them straight back home, finally comforted in the arms of mama.

I teach them this way because it is the only way I know, a way that I know has been tried, tested, and best in the times of my own choosing. This is the way I strive to parent because this is how my own heavenly Father parents me.

He is patient in my ignorance. He is long suffering, not wanting any to suffer the agonizing consequence of their own choosing. He bled so I no longer must,  no more wallowing in the red of my unrighteousness. He is my good shepherd, leading gently, prodding tenderly.

Because He endured for me, I wait for them. Because His kindness leads me to repentance, I offer it to them.

Because He is Father, I know just how to mother.

diamonds in the rough

She's been checking the mailbox daily for months now. Her balancing on stretched toes with fingertips that can barely, just barely, meet their mark.

This morning I saw the mail truck pull past our house and before the full announcement was past my lips, her feet took flight through the front door, walking the tightrope of sparse asphalt between parked car and grass, and, finally finding room to dance, bursting into a full leaping sprint down the sidewalk.

I yelled after her, wanting in on the secret of expectation. She hollered back, "Because I need to see if Atchaya has written to me!"

Moments later, her smile betrayed her findings. Today, of all days, it finally came.

As I watched my daughter impatiently rip through the envelope like wrapping paper on a coveted gift, I wanted what she in that moment possessed.

I wanted her joy. Her contentment. Her acceptance of life on those days, even most days, when there is nothing. No gratified expectation, no inner longing fulfilled. I wanted her innocent peace and calm and patience, yes, patience! on the days of faithful waiting. I envied her hope that, even if today didn't deliver what she so long desired, there would be tomorrow, there was, as a matter of fact, five full days each week burgeoning with potential.

My perspective as of late has been quite different. I wake each morning expecting failure, just wincing my way through each challenge and wondering if it will be this moment, if this will be the one when I lose it with my husband or child or friend or the whole bloody world. If it will be this pile of laundry or this mathematical theory explained for the thousandth time or prints, footprints! on freshly painted walls or another soggy towel thrown on hardwood floor that will undo me.

Will it be the longing for appreciation or the desperation for approval that burdens me to give up on the waiting, to give up on the faithful doing in obscurity?

I long for reward, for immediate gratification not just for my labors but for the burgeoning of my heart, for all the ways I care and give and pray.

But most days there is nothing.

And I wonder, is it for lack of gifts or for my lack of unwrapping?

What if I woke with wonder, grateful for the breath of life? And then with curious fascination tiptoed into my day just waiting for the unveiling of gifts all around...

If that sudden hug from little arms was wrapped in luxe silk would it, could it be more precious? If the nightly massages to relieve my aching shoulders and quiet my restless mind were the silent affirmation of how hard I live and give, aren't they not gifts balancing on kneading fingertips? Aren't their soft apologies, gained from patient grace-giving to my willful will-be women, diamonds gathered from the rough?

Tomorrow they will be, and not just because I will have the wisdom to see them as such. They always were - commissions bankrolled on the contented sighs of children tucked close as we learn and from eager mouths devouring what I gave up me-time to prepare and even in the ways he speaks the words he doesn't say.

And tomorrow, my eyes will wake with a different anticipation, looking for them as they are. Because, sure, not everyday holds unexpected promise and blessings custom wrapped.

Somedays, most days even, they are usually unwrapped. If only I would learn to expect them.

mustarding faith

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of God moments, moments and experiences when, from my vantage point inside the eye of the catalytic events, I've had this overwhelming sense of exhilaration and expectation because I know that something, Someone bigger than me is at work.

For almost two years, our family has been in a bit of a holding pattern in many ways. After years of busy involvement outwards, we pressed pause and put a much needed spotlight inwards. We changed churches, made our marriage a higher priority, and began deeper conversations about how we were going to live as a family. Along the way, we found like-minded people who challenged and inspired us.

Though there was a restlessness in what appeared to be idleness, my husband and I both knew that to truly impact our children and, more broadly, the world, it would have to start with us. And so we dug deeper, doing the necessary work in our own personal lives that would better equip us for involving ourselves with the needs of others.

However, this summer my husband and I's spirits began to be simultaneously agitated with a similar sense and general peace that it was time. The last many months had been healing and reviving and now it was our turn to turn outward once again.

I attended a Justice Summit, read books on human trafficking and living with less and being radical, and even watched movies that brought harsh realities of grave immoral epidemics to light.  The scale and reach of such inhumanity makes your blood boil and your heart want to cheer at the courage of those willing to join the fight against such injustice.

It also begs the question, if presented with the same knowledge, would I be willing to stand against such darkness even at great personal cost?

For most of us, the world's problems like hunger and human trafficking and orphans seem too big and, thankfully, far enough away so as to affect us directly. We want to do something but most times our meager efforts seem to be an attempt at draining an ocean with an eyedropper (K. Davis).

But the reality is that the world's victims are numbered right within your city limits. I walked a neighborhood recently with a young girl who pointed out to me her apartment building, right next to the one where "the killers live" and yet she was allowed to hang out with me for the afternoon after having only met me that day on the street. I have friends that purposely move into rough parts of town just to befriend the ordinary citizen, single mothers and recent refugess - moving out from their ivory palaces into a world of woe. The number of children waiting for adoption in my own city number more than the sum total of the children on my street.

The needs are many and they aren't always way over there.

It's tough, knowing the need and yet not knowing exactly where to start or what to do or how and if and but... But the last few weeks have shown us that by taking little steps forward with whatever faith you can mustard (Matthew 17:20 ;), glimmers of hope and whispers of redemption begin to consume you and you see what is possible, always what is possible.

And it is then that we realize that sometimes the greatest service any of us could give is the willingness to confront these oceans of need with our eye drops of love. And by simply getting involved when and where we can, we begin to join the movement of those who are changing the world.

leading a horse to water/a child to destiny

Earlier this year, I had an appointment with an internist. After his perusal through my lengthy medical files and a quick physical, he asked me if I was a ballerina. I laughed and made, I'm sure, a dumb joke to hide my confusion. His tone was all business when he answered back, insisting that I had perfect joint movement and flexibility, that my limbs were made for clean dance lines and graceful pliès.

I spent the drive home from his office mentally cursing my mother for, through her neglect to enroll me in dance classes, squandering my obvious destiny.

Even now as a mother of my own blossoming future-this and future-that, I watch them carefully, hopeful for some sign of destiny. A flash of brilliance in our Latin studies, an invented maneuver during a game of driveway hoops, a whisper or a whistle that brings the neighborhood puppies running to follow single file - anything that might offer suggestion or direction to the way that I might lead them. "I must choose precisely, I must enroll wisely, I must watch them closely", I think to myself.

After all, I have no interest in being a squanderer of destinies.

I took Eden horseback riding last week as a celebration of her ninth birthday. She's a horse lover from way back and had this request at the top of her wish list for some time. Prior to our excursion, she had frequently imagined herself bareback, galloping through meadows with her knuckles deep in the horse's mane. Even for her first time on a horse, her expectation was much the same. Everyone knows all great future horsewomen are naturals from their inaugural seat in the saddle.

The reality didn't quite match up with the dream. The learning curve was steep, the instructions lengthy and the amount of things that must be done right at exactly the right time overwhelming. She caught on quick enough however and was off on a trot before my horse would even obey my basic command.

Our trail ride was a lesson in itself. We both have a better appreciation for phrases such as, "I've got to pee like a racehorse" and "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." We saw deer and wildflowers and happened upon many a chickadee mid chickadee-dee-dee. At the end of our day together, I learned alot but I'm no more certain about horses being a part of my daughter's destiny than I am about pigs or penguins.

If her joints and limbs were created for life as an equestrian, I hadn't noticed.

But what I did gather from our day on the farm was that there are lessons all around us. Whether by reading or riding together, we are approaching her destiny in daily increments. Life lesson upon academic lesson upon experience upon discipline is building the foundation of who she is and who she will become.

I realized that there are no missed destinies, no squandered greatness when we are continually learning and reaching for our potential and striving for a legacy co-authored with God that continues to burn throughout eternity.

Whether my daughter's interests, heart, and talents collide in a future in academics or athletics or the arts, her greatness will be exposed through repeated efforts and an indefatigable spirit. As her mom, I can introduce her to and cultivate in her these attributes. I can even help her identify and isolate her talents and prioritize her interests.

I can lead my child to destiny but she will have to do the hard work it requires to take hold of it and make it her own.

For now, we continue in our quest for destiny, both hers and mine. As we daily learn and have our minds expanded and our hearts continually stretched, my prayer is that our ultimate pursuit would not be for our personal elevation nor a complete absorption in our own desires.

Because, after all, life is more than temporal destiny. It is ultimately about eternal destination.

And who among us would want to squander our granted opportunity in living our lives for the purpose of bringing the world to it's forever destiny?

We went riding here. Wonderful farm, beautiful people! The owner asked my daugther if she knew the saying, A family that prays together, stays together, and it has stayed with her. Highly recommended!