Painful Grace

We close the covers of the beautiful book, and sit and look at each other. She sighs contentedly, the deep and satisfied sigh of a 10-year-old who has just heard the story of Beauty and the Beast translated from its original French. She sighs the fairytale sigh, the one that says, “They were good, but flawed. They hoped. They experienced hardship and suffering. Evil was defeated. Beautiful lessons were learned. They lived happily ever after.”

I close my eyes. Fairytales annoy me. When I was her age, I believed the plot lines. I wasn’t at all enamored of the magic, but I held steadfastly to the belief that the good girl heroine would triumph over trials and tribulations and, sometime in her late teens or early 20s, a prince on a white horse would whisk her to ever-after. And my life went according to script. After a not-all-that-happy childhood, I married my prince when I was 21. My father gave me a fine porcelain statue of Cinderella as a wedding gift. 

The following year, we welcomed a fair-haired, blue-eyed firstborn son. But of course. It’s in the script.

The year after that, I was diagnosed with cancer.

Did not see that sequel coming. Not at all. 

This time, I needed more than a fairytale horse to navigate the turbulence. I needed a lifeboat. I climbed aboard a giant one with “Religion” emblazoned on her bow. She carried me well through various storms of the cancer years and then the storms of the recovery years, the ones during which I was bearing children. I thought her a sturdy and dependable ship. 

The ship crashed headlong right around the time our ninth child was born. Like a young girl who learns that magic isn’t really a thing and that the horse will grow old and lame, I learned that even if the church is God’s perfect vehicle of grace, the people who comprise it are not. I can only compare this chapter in the story to the one where the heroine wanders in the woods at night and every familiar, comforting figure in the shadows shows itself to be something else entirely and hisses or bares fangs, or both. No one was to be trusted. 

The ship no longer seaworthy, the heroine is shipwrecked, and one after another, bottles wash up bearing bad news from home. And this time, the heroine is neither young, nor fair. She is neither idealistic, nor romantic. She is tired. She wonders if this is a trilogy.

Probably not. It’s unlikely that a tidy ending is in the script of the third installment. Instead it is an intermission marked with an asterisk, most certainly a point of reflection. This time, there is no white horse, no sturdy boat. This time, there is only faith in the grace of God. 

For so long, grace was a gentle word, the one that captured the nuanced breath of a nearly fairytale God. Now, I see that grace can be severe. I believed that the goal was to be transported from the suffering. Grace, I thought, was the intercession of a benevolent God who swept the heroine away from heartbreak. The whole point of the plot, I thought, was to get beyond the pain to the promised happiness. I learned that by the time one gets to the third episode, one is weary from the effort of pushing through to the happy ending.

Now, I see that grace is in the struggle itself. And I have been resisting grace in favor of fairytales. In the words of Flannery O’Connor, “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”

Vigorously resisting grace. Fighting against the suffering instead of leaning into it. Cursing the circumstances instead of confidently resting in the faith that God will use them to change me. Resisting grace. 

Even still, grace found me. It was there all along. In the fairytale moments, to be sure. But also in the dark woods moments. I see it now, in hindsight, because I recognize the moments of change.

Silencing the Voice of Perfectionism

I forced myself not to move anything before snapping this shot this morning. I'm good with that:-)

It happened for the first time almost exactly to the minute, 28 years from the moment my first baby was born. That morning, I didn’t have to silence the voice. For the entire span of a childhood and then some, the voice has been telling me the same lie over and over again. But the morning of my eldest boy’s birthday, I couldn’t hear the voice. I didn’t have to argue with it.

Like nearly every day, I was the first person in the kitchen that morning. I flipped on the lights at 6 a.m. and noted the piles — mountains of assorted books, art projects, dance forms, folded laundry, posters from last weekend’s soccer game and clean plates stacked by the sink.

“Dang,” I thought to myself. “We sure are getting a lot done around here these days.”

And then I made myself a cup of coffee without feeling even so much as a hint of adrenaline prompting me to hurry and clean up all the piles.

It wasn’t until I was deep into the morning’s Bible study that it dawned on me that I hadn’t heard the voice. No one had admonished me for the mess. No one had told me the neighbors would raise their eyebrows at my less than model home. No one had called me a failure for not maintaining a household of nine with perfect order. No one had compared me unfavorably to every other woman who seemingly could do it all and more.

The voice was gone.

In its place was the voice of encouragement. I had just told myself something affirmative and positive from the outset, despite the obvious imperfections of my environment. All grace. So much grace.

This journey to silence the voice has been an arduous uphill climb. Through the perfect storm of nature and nurture, perfectionism and self-recrimination are hardwired into my psyche. I’ve been one to try too hard, move too fast, produce too much and reach too high for as long as I can remember. All my life, I have lived with the exhaustion and utter despair of never measuring up to my own perfectionistic standards. The first response in my brain, until that morning, was always the critical one.

The voice was back around lunchtime, as I hustled to get everyone out of the house in time to celebrate the neighborhood opening of Chick-fil-A. We had to move quickly and efficiently, because I knew the lines would be long and we barely had time for lunch before I’d have to hurry a child to a physical therapy appointment. Someone couldn’t find her shoes.

“Why is it I’m so incompetent that we can’t even do something fun because we can never find what we need when we need it?” I stormed aloud to no one in particular.

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” came a small voice. “I was so tired when I got home yesterday that I forget where I left my shoes. “

Now I remembered. She really, really was that tired. She’d had an allergic reaction and been fully dosed on an antihistamine. She’d tumbled into bed a weepy, wilted mess. Frankly, I couldn’t remember where we’d taken off her shoes, either.

This lost shoe thing wasn’t inefficiency. It was the honest result of choosing to meet the moment with compassion and letting something slide in the process.

I apologized to myself — and my kids — for the ugly chastisement, blowing away the voice of shame with a breath of honest grace for all of us.

Begin again, I told myself. Invite again the peace of the morning, the knowing deep down that I was not created to prove myself the latest model of perfection. I was created to rest in the knowledge that we’re doing the best we can and keeping step with our Savior. His voice is the only one that matters.

Create a New Ritual

It’s that time of year in the life of a family when calendar squares begin to fill. Pencils in hand (because things change and it’s not quite time for pens yet), we grid in the soccer schedule, the “first day of” dates, the fall birthdays, the auditions, the new lessons. When finished, we stare in disbelief at how full it all looks. Yet that fullness rarely inspires a sense of abundance. Instead, there are alternate feelings of dread and disbelief. Sometimes, there is even fear. How in the world will all these things pull together for a life that is meaningful and not chaotic? May I suggest that the day-to-day rushing that seems so inevitable with growing families desperately needs intentional ritual?

Our children need routines. They thrive in structured time and ordered settings. We need it, too. Routines provide security; they calm the chaos, comfort us and make life at least a little predictable. Beyond routine, we need the richness of rituals. Rituals imbue ordinary time with a sense of grace. Both routines and rituals require discipline. The virtue applied to such discipline is rewarded almost immediately.

To create rituals in your life that will nurture you, begin with intention. Consider how your ritual will affect your day. Do you need a few moments in the morning to review your plans, collect yourself, to pray quietly and invite God into your agenda? (Hint: you do.) Create a ritual for that need. Awaken 15 minutes earlier. Brew a favorite beverage and pour it into a favorite cup. Sit in a particular chair, one that catches the morning light. Grant yourself a few moments of quiet, alert time that is focused and aware. Do it every day. There, you have a ritual.

After several days of practicing such discipline, your ritual will gain momentum. You’ll find that the morning focus continues to pay itself forward into the rest of the day. Where else shall we establish a ritual? Find something that is repeated daily and imbue it with some meaning and purpose. When you walk over the threshold of your office, do you bless the day and begin with integrity? Every day, can you establish the same movements of intention?

What about the drive home? We live in a traffic quagmire. Can you establish a ritual that divides the time and offers you an opportunity to transition from work to home peacefully? For the first few minutes, listen to news, catch up on the world events that happened during your workday. Then, with discipline, turn off the talking and the shouting and listen to music. Better yet, listen to the Divine Office app and pray Vespers.

Finally, spend the last 10 or 15 minutes in silence. Focus on the family waiting behind the door of your home. Pray about how you will give them the best of you, despite the fatigue that has come with a long day and seemingly longer drive home. Let the ritual carry you from the workaday world to the peace of home.

Similarly, if you take children to school, institute a subtle shift in that routine to bring gentle, grace-filled ritual. In the car or as you walk, informally review together the known plans of the day. This isn’t the time to troubleshoot or seek alternatives or solve the problem of the mean girl. Just get on the same page. Promise to pray for their days and assure them that you will hold them in your prayers all day long. Then, as you approach the sign that tells you you’re in a school zone and to slow down, let that be your family reminder to pray aloud for the day. Keep it short and simple, but do it every day at the same time. Let your rituals reassure, then be prepared to see how much more they can do.

God in the Darkness

It will come as no surprise to frequent readers to learn that I have lately struggled with depression. I'm certain I'm genetically predisposed to such bouts, and that predisposition has been fed copious amounts of environmental stress to trigger a dark season. For the longest time (and it has seemed the longest time), I kept operating under the assumption that there was something I needed to do or say or pray to turn on the light. Slowly, I have begun to recognize that it is better to know that this season isn't one to be pushed away under my own power and that God is with me in the dark. I really am feeling better, but it's still more than a little murky most days, a delicate balance of light and dark. Sharing (in person) with people who walk this way, too, often helps me to understand better myself. We wait together for the sun to rise.

I recently spoke with a woman in her early 30s who was surprised to find herself in an extended period of darkness. She and her husband had suffered a job loss, a pregnancy loss, and a move resulting in loss of support — all in the last two years. She goes through the motions of a practicing Catholic, but she feels as if God has abandoned her.

“When the calendar changed,” she said, “I thought now it will get better. Now God will show up in a new year. Now He’ll make good things happen and we’ll know He’s real and He loves us and maybe we’ll understand His plan. Now, I’ll feel God. Then, something else happened and I felt nothing but alone.”

It is a rite of passage perhaps to learn that life isn’t happily ever after and that extended periods of darkness are just as likely as extended periods of light. Perhaps the dark is precipitated by a series of unfortunate events as in the case of my friend. Or, perhaps, it’s the dark night of the soul that settles when one feels the loneliness that comes with at once knowing God exists and feeling distanced from Him.

Mother Teresa, who will soon be canonized, experienced prolonged bouts of profound feelings of abandonment. She confided, “Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. Love — the word — it brings nothing. I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.” Yet, she is remembered as a woman of cheerful service. How does one reconcile the darkness within in order to bear light to the world?

With that first dark night (and maybe with several that follow), it is entirely possible to stumble around futilely wondering why the Lord of light has abandoned you there. In the black, in the pain, in the unrelenting questioning, the key to survival is to recognize that the times that are hard beyond imagination are not devoid of God.

God is there in the darkness. He’s just as present as He is in the light. You don’t have to know why it happened or how it ends or whether it’s all going to work out in a way you consider favorable. You don’t have to hear answers to your questions. As Ravi Zaccharias so succinctly put it recently, “Having the answers is not essential to living. What is essential is the sense of God's presence during dark seasons of questioning.”

Essential.

When something is essential, it is absolutely necessary. We cannot survive unless we know God is present in the black. Something slowly dies within us unless we can rest in the presence of God even in darkness. What is needed on our behalf is not the wit or the strength to find the switch and turn on the lights so that we can see Him. On the contrary, we can have peace in the darkness only when we learn be still with Him in the dark.

The Best Book of the Summer, By Far

Every once in a rare while, a book comes along that seeps into my soul. When it happens, it's an answer to prayer, a whisper of the Holy Spirit after i've been casting about, begging to hear Him. It is extraordinary.

A few months ago, a draft copy of my friend Colleen Mitchell's new book Who Does He Say You Are? found its way to my inbox. I read it with tears streaming down my face, her good words watering my parched spirit. I know that dear readers here will recognize that Colleen is one of my best friends and that perhaps that makes my endorsement and hearty recommendation of this book somewhat unbiased;-), but  please hear me. This is one that you will return to again and again. You will flip it open at random and trust it to speak into your dark spaces, your wounds, your loneliness. 

Still don't quite believe me? Here are just a few quotes I gathered for myself. There were so many more. I've culled this list to a fraction of what I stopped to record on my first reading.(And truthfully, I chose by eliminating the ones with which Squarespace and I fought over formatting.)

As I write this morning, as I sift through just the quotes I've chosen and pick a few for you, I find this book ministering to me anew. I got up early (actually the smoke detector awakened us at 4:30--no fire, thank God) and I took the book with me on a morning run. I carried heavy burdens into the woods with me this morning, and a restlessness that miles and miles of running can't seem to vanquish. Now, post-run, in the relative stillness of a coffee shop at rush hour, these words bring peace.

If you read one book this summer, give yourself the gift of this one.

Oh, how I want to be an Elizabeth to our world. I want to be a woman whose faith in God’s promises holds no matter how long there is no visible evidence of it—a woman who uses her voice to bring hope to the weary and to rejoice with those who rejoice. I want to proclaim God’s goodness and faithfulness steadily, with great joy, regardless of what the world around me looks like—because when it is darkest, that is when my voice is most needed.

I forget that my hope is not that things will go as I planned, but that the Lord will make himself known, in the faces of my husband and children, in the unexpected joys of family life that pop up right in the middle of our messy chaos, in the ways he provides for me and shows me his tender care in the most detailed ways.

The courage to live the call to share Jesus with others comes from a hope that gives way to the discipline of prayer. Prayer inspires a life of joyful dependence on the Lord, which allows us to see and recognize him at work in the most surprising of ways. And from a heart focused on God blossoms the thanksgiving that overflows into sharing Christ with a waiting world.

In that embrace, she takes up the same work of all the righteous women we have already seen, that of Anna and Elizabeth, and of Woman herself: Mary. This woman whose life has been lived in anything but righteousness according to Jewish Law becomes their equal, their sister. And she shares in their work of professing Jesus to all she meets, announcing the coming of a Savior. In the eyes of the Lord, nothing in her past prohibits her from taking up her place at their sides.

He doesn’t ask that we compete for holiness or that we mold ourselves into some ill-fitting definition in order to appease him. But he wants us to learn to accept the grace of being loved by him, to learn to be content in who we are in him, so that we can be confident of what he can do for us.

I bet that you, like me, have known what it is like to be the invisible one in your own community, to be so wary of the judgmental glances and the avoidance maneuvers of others that you find it easier just to steer clear altogether

No one knew why the woman in this story kept bleeding. No one knew how to help her. No one knew what to do for her. And over time, no one knew her at all. Do you find yourself in that place? Bearing a pain that no one fully understands, so that no one fully knows what to do with you? And after enough time passes, it begins to seem that no one really knows you at all. You skim the outskirts of your own community, your own family, your own life, hide from the places where people gather, and learn to accept that you will never be fully healed, fully known, or fully accepted again.

We assume that our humanity and our sin are obstacles to Jesus, when, in fact, he has come to the place where we are and waited for us just so he can blow away the lines the world has drawn in the dust, and all the lines we ourselves have drawn too, with the breath of mercy.

He wants to heal us not only from the outside shame that keeps us baking in the public glare, but from the deep, personal shame that keeps us gingerly sidestepping our real wounds while we wither within.

I bow low to kiss the dirt, sure that I have earned my fate, that I deserve to be right where I am, buried under my sin and bruised and broken open by the guilty verdict I cannot rebuff. And more often than not, the fists waiting to cast the stones that will do me in are a million better versions of myself that I have not been, jeering and scoffing and mocking me in my weakness. Yes, the most sanctimonious Pharisee I ever face is the perfect version of myself, who just loves to barge into the heart of the real me—weak, tempted, sinner that I am—and pronounce her judgments with surety: failure, guilty, dirty, tainted, worthless.

First, he forgives. And then, he speaks the words that save—the words we don’t deserve, the words we could never merit, the words that revoke our death sentence and proclaim in its place life, hope, and wild grace.

I think of the way the sacrament of confession works on my own soul, how often I start out afraid to confront my own sin and bring it into the light, forgetting that the goal is not for me to sit shamefaced with my sin but to draw it out so that my own healing can take place. I leave confession, not bowed lower because of facing my sin, but restored by God’s mercy and sent out to live my purpose once again, to serve him with joy and hope. Jesus does not ignore my sin. He looks at it with the tenderness of his mercy and draws me up from it so that I may rise in freedom

The better portion she chose was to set aside the worry and anxiety that comes from measuring our worth by comparing ourselves to those around us, and to instead gaze fully on the face of her Savior who was there in their midst, present to her and offering her a freely given, unearned stamp of approval out of love. Leaning in, she wasn’t worried about what she could offer him, but she focused on what she could learn from him.

We do not have to find a way to be something we are not in order to please Jesus. We do not have to work for his approval. We only have to keep our gaze on him, to lean in and listen from whatever position in which we find ourselves, and to know that he is near. This is the only necessary thing for us to do to find contentment in our lives.