Blog

Dec 30 2014

Forever 27

As I walked into the movies the other evening with my three boys, my eldest son commented about a movie which is being released about a woman who is stuck being 25 forever. I don’t know anything about the movie really, but according to my son, the woman is tortured by the fact that she CAN’T age. My son, who is 17 and more a man than a boy most days, can’t fathom the problem with this.

“25 is the perfect age. You have a job and can do what you want, but your not too old…” with a bit of a sideways glance at me. As much as I wanted to say, “I’m not old,” I didn’t, plus I don’t really think he thinks I’m a complete dinosaur. What I did say way, “I used to think 27 was the perfect age.”

I did. I thought at 27 I would’ve arrived.
And when I was 27 my life was good: a stay-home-mom with two kids, living in an idyllic neighborhood with swingsets, playdates, and friends right next door.
By the time I was 30, I’d had another baby and while life was hectic and full with three small boys running around, there was nothing my life lacked.

At least not that I knew.

Just last night I sat with two of those friends that lived right next door to me when I was 27. We no longer chat over the backyard fence while the kids dash to and fro. The kids are older and I have moved away. Life has soldiered on.

We talked about that neighborhood and those times and how much has happened since then.
Over dinner we didn’t talk about 3rd grade teachers and summer vacations anymore. Sure, we reminisced, but mostly we talked about the boatload of shit each of us has dug through (and are still digging though). We talked about the divorces, the deaths, the diseases, the failures, letting our children go, and the lack of control we have…

We confessed ways we each f*cked up our lives. And how others have inflicted pain on us.
Really uplifting topics, I know.

Life was easier at 27, but it lacked one thing: pain.
You’d think I’d long for that innocent time of ease. But I don’t.

These women sat before me with their sharp shards of pain and scars and yet, as I listened to them and as tears welled up in the corners of my eyes (and theirs), I couldn’t help but feel like we were gazing on some hidden beauty of life.

One that at 27 I didn’t know existed.

I don’t know if I have words to say what exactly that ‘hidden beauty’ is per se (this is a great frustration of being a writer – when words utterly fail to give rise to emotion), but I do know to have another woman gently hold fragments of my life that I can hardly look at with tenderness and compassion and see me as ‘good’ despite my brokenness is a glimmer of the grace in this otherwise highly glossed world. I do know that to have someone pay attention enough to know that life is not as idyllic as it looks from the swingset is one of the most honoring things you can do for another.

So, to my sons, while I do not wish upon you any of the pain that I have known in my life, nor any of the longings that my friends have known, nor any of the realizations that beyond 30 holds… I do know that you will not stay 12, 15, 17… or 25 forever. And I for that I am thankful. Because I know that you will grow to know more beauty and grace than you can see now.

You may not believe me. But give yourself 15 years or so and let’s chat.

Aug 27 2014

I’m never getting married again… and other lies I told myself

I’m getting married…. like the whole church, cake, ring, dress, ‘before God’ thing. I know this isn’t ‘breaking news’. Over 2 million people get married just in the United States each year. Plus, anyone who knows me well, has been waiting for this announcement for some time now. My permasmile and living on cloud nine facebook posts are hard to miss. Not to mention the white dog fur constantly coating my black pants – a sure indicator I’ve been around my fiancé’s dog.

But, it is still unbelievable to me.

See, I was married once before and I promised myself (and repeatedly accounted to my therapist during those tumultuous times) that I would never ever get married again. And here I am… getting married.

I’m a pastor. I regularly sit with people who have decided to get married. Many pastors I know lament how God often seems an afterthought when it comes to weddings. The hoopla of the wedding planning tends to overshadow the marriage piece. I will admit that in my cursory preview of wedding apps available for my Iphone and the plethora of bridal magazines in newsstands, that there is little to no mention of God as the foundation in a marriage.

However, when couples meet with me for pre-marital counseling and share their love story, their hopes and dreams, their worries and struggles, all that wedding planning ‘drama’ is pushed aside for the moment. What sits before me is promise.

Maybe I was young and naïve, but I thought ‘forever’ truly was until I took my very last breath. So, even though my soul howled all the way through my separation and divorce, I never was able to dissuade myself from believing in the sanctity of marriage – – that in the joining of two people something of God lives, something holy and right.

But, still I got divorced. It was the right thing to do. Believe me – there are plenty of people who question me on this, especially as a pastor.

We live in a paparazzi society where divorce is almost a right of passage as much as marriage. It’s accepted, even expected in many cases.

However, in my case (I’m not alone in this either), trying harder, sticking with it for the sake of others or the church or God doesn’t actually help. It makes you resent love. Love doesn’t cause you to be ashamed of who you are, nor does love cause you to question your existence. The essence of God’s love is that we are loved just because…. No conditions.

Vows aren’t conditional. Vows are promises.

When I promised, “For better or for worse,” I thought it meant arguing about late nights at the office or too little money. I had no idea ‘worse’ meant that one day, the man I’d known since I was 19 years old, would tell me he’s gay.

I don’t advocate divorce, nor wish it on anyone. I’ve witnessed in other divorcing couples how anger and retaliation can become all consuming, marring friendships and families, turning hearts stone cold. I’ve also experienced the sorrow and ripple affects it has on children. Still, for me (and my ex-husband) divorce was one of the most loving and most faithful actions of our marriage. It was the epitome of upholding my vows.

I always thought I’d write a book for people like me, because there were no books to help me. At least, there were no books I could find that seemed to echo what swirled around in the middle of the night. There are plenty of books on surviving divorce, how to tell your children, and wading through the legalities of it all (believe me, it’s much harder to take a marriage apart than putting one together).

But, there aren’t books to tell you how to reconcile a life you thought you were living with the one that was actually being lived. There are no books that tell you that it’s actually ‘okay’ to be a woman when being a woman is the exact wrong thing to be. There are no books that tell you how to explain sexuality to your children without vilifying it for desecrating your life.

That is a story that nobody wants to write, but it needs to be told.

As a means of protection, and most especially to bar my scarred heart from any further beatings, I told myself that marital love was for other people. Not for me. That lie was born out of a slew of other lies: I was unredeemable because of broken vows; I was unlovable because I wasn’t enough; I was a terrible mother because my children now came from a ‘broken’ home.

All lies.

God had a lot of truth-telling to do with me. During that time I cursed and cried; was angry and alone; lashed out at him and silently hated myself, but there is one thing I learned about marriage while taking one apart, and it has taught me how to continue writing the story of my life.

Being faithful to another person means letting them be who they are, who God created them to be, because in doing so you are also faithful to yourself and faithful to God. My ex-husband wasn’t the only one who discovered himself. Once, in jest, he said he felt he had hurt me so much that he drove me to God. There lies a bit of truth in that statement; however what he unknowingly drove me to was love.

I learned more during those few years about love and sacrifice and myself than if all the prior years of learnings in my life were lumped into one. The lie which under-girded all the other distortions I told myself was that in learning to accept myself, love God, and be vulnerable to other people I would NOT end up loving another person.

I did mention that I am getting married again, right? There are many reasons I know it’s ‘right’, but mostly because my fiancé’s ability to love me unconditionally, take a chance on me, and place his life in my hands is nothing short of how Jesus loved. At the risk of inflating his ego, much of the time I see God in him. No, he’s not God – trust me. But it is something holy.

So, yes. I’m getting married again. And I can’t wait!

May 27 2014

Jesus and New Math

I know that I am NOT the only person to ever say this:
I HATE MATH!

I mean like with a righteous passion. Somewhere along about the 7th grade ‘they’ mixed alphabet letters in with the numbers and it was all lost on me. Algebra became my nemesis and I grew up with huge insecurities relating to math. In high school I was nearly petrified in geometry (Now I had to EXPLAIN the math?! I was still trying to figure out where these letters came from). By the time I got to Algebra 2 I just wanted to ‘pass’ and be done with all my math requirements.

As I planned on majoring in music in college I knew that the end of my math requirements was near. All required math courses had been fulfilled in high school.

Free!

And then…
I had children.

Now, I can actually do math, but it certainly isn’t my natural leaning. My insecurities aside, I finally figured out the piece that was never told to me (or I didn’t hear because I was too busy passing notes): the letters stand for unknown numbers. They are just placeholders. AHA!

I also know my math limitations. Thus the fantastical concept of hiring a tutor for my 16 year old son who has way surpassed my math ‘expertise’ (used VERY loosely). I am actually fine with this. I know my strengths and math isn’t one.

However, I was not fine with not being able to help my 5th grade son with his math. And no, I didn’t get ‘dumber’. I do actually know how to do long division, multiplication of fractions, and decimals. However, our school system has adopted a new curriculum (I’m not debating whether or not the curriculum is a good one or not) and ‘they’ are teaching math in a whole new way.

Yes. Long division. No longer the same. All of a sudden there are boxes and arrows and all sorts of things that I have no idea where they came from and I am having a PTSD episode from the 7th grade.

I know how to do 5th grade math, but I no longer know how to speak the language.
I know how to do 5th grade math, but I don’t know how to help my 5th grade son.
I know how to do 5th grade math as long as we do it my way.

Often I’ve said to him, “Let me just show you the way I learned.”

I mean it works. I know it does. I still balance my checkbook (OK. Ok. The bank balances my checkbook…) with the same long division I used in high school.

He’s not ‘allowed’ to do it my way (this actually frustrates me to no end), but…
what it did get me thinking about is how hard it is to start thinking about a concept that you’ve known your whole life and renvision it in a new way.

This is where the Jesus piece comes in. No, I’m not suggesting I should start asking God to bestow me with an aptitude for math. I mean, I’m still pretty sure that Jesus was really backed up in the ‘answering prayer department’ those days I was taking Geometry finals, because he really didn’t seem to be paying a bit of attention…

But I see ‘new math’ at work all the time in the church.
This is my classic example:
~What’s heaven?
(Answer this in your head before moving on….)
~Why did Jesus die on the cross?
(Again, formulate your answer before moving to the next question)
~What does it mean to be ‘saved’?
(Ok, now keep your answers in mind… let’s see how we answered.)

If I were to guess how you answered, maybe your answers sound a bit like this~
Heaven is: a beautiful place free from pain and suffering where God lives and after we die we get to go there.
Jesus died on the cross: so that our sins might be forgiven as he sacrificed himself for us.
Being saved means: we are forgiven and get to go to heaven.

So, maybe your answers vary a little from those, but did I catch the basic gist of how you’d answer?

Now, what if I told you there’s another way to look at all that?
What if heaven isn’t a place to go after you die? What if heaven is a place to go while you’re alive?
What if Jesus didn’t sacrifice himself? What if we sacrificed him?
What if being saved has nothing to do with getting into heaven? What if salvation is about now?

And what if I asked you to explain all of that without using our ‘pat’ answers. You know, the ones we are taught in 5th grade Sunday school class that we all still carry with us…

It would be really hard if you had to think about something you’ve always known (God, the Bible, church) from different angles. It would make your brain hurt, right?

I PUSH the boundaries when I read the Bible…and when I say PUSH, I mean it. I question everything. However, I remember a time when there was nothing ‘fun’ about thinking differently.

I almost dropped out of seminary during my first Old Testament class when we started talking about there being a bunch of ‘creation stories’ (you know – how the earth came into being), how Adam and Eve were figurative (Ok – I actually was already totally on board with this, I mean otherwise those were two VERY busy people), how there’s little, if any, archaeological proof of an exodus from Egypt, and those giant tablets that fell free-form from the sky…

Anyway, I remember thinking if all this ‘stuff’ is up for grabs then how do I make sense of the Bible? And God? And Jesus?
My brain hurt so much, but that wasn’t the worst part. Questioning what I knew as truth and foundation and belief … hurt my heart. At least geometry didn’t hurt my heart.

On this side of all that struggle I’ve learned to love the questions and embrace new ways of thinking about God. It’s fun for me.
But in the church (as in the institutional church) I see how not fun it can be.

I see new math at work.
It makes people nervous when we ask them to think in a new way. Our natural inclination is, “What’s wrong with the old way?”
And… if there is something wrong with the ‘old’ way of thinking then that must mean we’ve been doing and believing the wrong things all along.

No thank you. We’d rather stick with long division the way we know to do it, right?

Here’s the thing with the ‘new math’ though. It doesn’t actually make my way wrong. It is just another way to think about the problem… you don’t end up with a different answer.

So, why bother? Why bother doing all these mental gymnastics if we end up with the same answer?

Is there value in ending up with fuller understanding? In math you end up with a broader understanding of ‘why’ something is the way it is. This isn’t exactly the case with God and theology. We can think and process and discuss and still not come up with a ‘pat’ answer.

And I thought math was hard.
God is harder. More complex. More variable. More abstract.

But the more ‘new’ ways I think about God, approach God, contemplate God the more I feel I learn about who God is. And not only that… I learn a lot more about myself too.

The Biblical verse, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” isn’t threatened because I begin to ask more questions… or different questions… or even unanswerable questions.

My questioning cannot change God, just like 23, 689/24 = 987.416667 no matter if I use ‘old’ math, ‘new’ math, or a calculator.

Yes. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, and… until infinity.
‘New math’ skills might just help me to learn more about this Jesus who always has been and always will be.