watch over me

watch over me by kirsten michelle (2010)

There aren't many words to my prayers these days. I find myself sending wordless thoughts and images, requests, petitions for which I cannot find the language, confident that the meaning of these things will not be lost in translation -- that they are better communicated as they are. No words. Just the pulses and surges of heart and soul.

So many unknowns looming in front of us: Ewan's heart. The lack of prospects (still -- after more than a year of looking) for James finding a job here. Given that, not knowing how soon after the birth I will need to return to work so we can make ends meet. These mysteries will break my heart if I let them.

Breathe. Trust. Pray.

Watch over me. Please, watch over me.

the wind and the waves

into the storm ahead by kirsten michelle (2010)

One thing that many Christians I know have done a lot of (and I can say this because I am one, because I have heard this a lot, and because I have been so ingenious as to do it myself -- repeatedly) is take real life historical accounts from Scripture out of context and turn them into something entirely metaphorical. The flesh and blood people who lived these stories become mere characters, and the events that take place in these vignettes of their lives are symbols for us to interpret and apply as broadly and as personally as we like.

The story to which I am about to refer is a classic example, and arguably the most common story where this takes place. Here's the synopsis: Jesus is in a boat with his disciples, and a terrible storm comes up that is tossing the boat. The disciples are afraid for their lives. And what is Jesus doing? He is asleep in the back of the boat. Asleep, mind you. While everyone else is afraid of drowning. It's not like the disciples were sissies about this kind of thing. No doubt they had seen a few storms in their day. But this was no small storm. It was not just a few white caps slapping against the sides of the boat here and there. The Gospel of Mark says that the boat was "nearly swamped." And Jesus is asleep (now that is some kind of tired!).

So the disciples wake Jesus up and ask Him what He's going to do about it. After rebuking the wind and the waves, He rebukes the disciples. "Do you still have no faith?" He asks, to which the disciples respond, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"

What I have heard people say about this passage (and what I have written in the margins of this passage in the Bible I used during my teen and college years) is this: Jesus is in control of the storms of my life.

This makes me cringe now. The gospel writers had a purpose for including the stories that they did; there was something each piece of their respective accounts was meant to communicate. And I'm willing to bet my next paycheck that what Mark wanted his audience to know was not that Jesus is in charge of the storms of life, but that He is God, who has sovereign command over nature. In fact, I think the disciples' statement at the end perfectly communicates the point of that story: Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!

The boat is not a symbol for my life, and the wind and the waves do not represent trial and tribulation. To put it simply, they are exactly what they say they are. The wind and the waves the disciples were afraid of were (get this) actual wind and waves. And they were real people in a real boat on a real lake, and they were really afraid of literally drowning in real water.

And in the midst of that, it is demonstrated: Jesus has the ability to command nature. Jesus is really God.

None of this is to say that it's not true that our lives can become rather turbulent and stormy. And it's certainly not to say that Jesus, as God, doesn't have command over those things too. But if I go straight for the symbolic meaning, I miss the real, the concrete, the nitty-gritty reality. I miss the truth that I can sink my fingers into -- and, in fact, the very truth Mark wanted to communicate.

It may be difficult to tell in the picture above, but I was facing a sky that was brewing up a terrific storm. On our last night in Kansas, I got to experience one of the fantastic Midwestern storms I had only ever heard about. Thunder ripped and bellowed across the entire landscape and made the earth reverberate under my feet. Lightning flashed not in the dramatic forks that make for prize-winning photographs, but in broad flashes that lit up the entire sky so that for a brief moment, it was bright as day. Wind blew, and thick and heavy drops of rain pelted the earth.

I was in awe. My God has supreme reign even over all of this. There was something so magnificent and powerful about that display, and even more magnificent was the knowledge that He held this storm under His thumb.

Incredible.

With such power as this, surely He must have reign over all of nature, including something so tiny and magnificent as a baby with a broken heart. And even if He appears to be for the moment (metaphorically speaking, of course) "asleep in the boat of my life" -- not making a sound -- then perhaps I should act as the disciples should have in that moment. Trust Him, and have the faith that He will see us safe to the other side of the lake.

ruthless trust :: number three

This is where (as far as I can see) the rubber meets the road: trusting God when in the face of unspeakable hurt and suffering. These, on the road of trust, are the speed bumps, the detours, and the road blocks. These are the things that make us wonder if we should turn ourselves around and go back to where we came from.

When the doctor calls and it is cancer. When the job is lost. When the house burns to the ground. When another miscarriage is suffered. When there aren't two pennies to rub together. When a spouse says "I don't love you anymore."

I believe that these are the kinds of moments that shape and begin to define trust in us.

That being said, there is not much else I can say that is not going to sound small and trite in my own mind. Megan, the author of a blog I've been following recently (referred to me for the similarity of their circumstances and ours), lost her son this past week. Baby Cohen, like Ewan, was diagnosed with multiple heart defects in the womb. And at just ten or eleven days old, his earthly life has ended. He never left the hospital, never got to breathe the open air. He never had a life that wasn't connected to tubes and wires.

I know it wouldn't make it hurt any less if I got the answer, but I still ask "why"? I know these things happen and that God is still God in the face of it, but it still shakes me when they do. I still maintain that God is good and can bring good even out of the most inexplicable suffering, but sometimes it is through gritted teeth.

Manning doesn't pretend to offer any easy answers either. In fact, he stands with the reader in the questioning:

"The ubiquitous presence of pain and suffering -- unwanted, apparently undeserved, and not amendable to explanation or remedy -- poses an enormous obstacle to unfailing trust in the infinite goodness of God. How does one dare to propose a way of trust in the face of raw, undifferentiated heartache, cosmic disorder, and the terror of history?

"Any Christian writer who ignores these grim realities or dismisses them as inconsequential is either naive, dishonest, or disconnected from the trust-busting anguish of many struggling seekers and believers."

Ruthless Trust, p. 39

Trust-busting anguish: truly spoken. I'm not sure that anyone will ever make sense of the great suffering and evil we witness and experience in this world as long as we are this side of heaven.

But Manning leaves us with this, too: "Anyone God uses significantly is always deeply wounded." It is something, but I imagine this truth is cold comfort to a mother who gave birth to and said goodbye to her baby in the space of two weeks. If we're honest, I think we can hold both of these truths: understanding that God will use this for good beyond anything we can imagine, and that there's a grieving mother in Texas who just wants to hold her baby.

So where do we go from here? Our friend Brennan does have a suggestion, and that is to "gaze on the vast, unbounded ocean of the glory of God."  He continues, "Irenaeus, a disciple of the apostle John, becomes our guide in his five-volume work Against the Heresy of Gnosticism. The oft-quoted first clause of one compound sentence reads, 'The glory of God is the human being fully alive.' But the less-quoted second clause reads, 'and the life of the human consists in beholding God.'" (p. 48)

We are, each one of us, wounded. Let us behold Him together. Perhaps there will be no answers found there that will satisfy our questioning, but maybe -- just maybe -- we will catch a glimpse of His face.

ruthless trust :: number two

Gratitude. At first blush, I didn't understand what the relationship between trust and gratitude could be. But that's precisely what Manning talks about in the second chapter of Ruthless Trust. I don't want to spoil the book for those of you who haven't read it and want to, but so much of this is too good not to share!

Manning explains, " ... the person with an abiding spirit of gratitude is the one who trusts God.

And he continues, "The foremost quality of a trusting disciple is gratefulness. Gratitude arises from the lived perception, evaluation, and acceptance of all of life as grace -- as an undeserved and unearned gift from the Father's hand. Such recognition is itself the work of grace, and acceptance of the gift is implicitly an acknowledgment of the Giver." (pp. 24-25)

I love how he doesn't waste any time, but goes straight for the jugular vein of your soul.

I considered this is relationship to our present circumstances. Over the last four or so weeks, I have experienced many moments of profound gratitude. I woke up early this past Saturday morning, just as the light was starting to creep through the blinds of our bedroom window. My husband was asleep beside me, and I put my hands on my belly and felt Ewan squirming around in there. I looked around the bedroom of our new apartment, a space for which we have a profound appreciation (if you had seen our first apartment, you'd understand) and considered the mountains rising up outside, veiled by the bedroom blinds, covered in evergreen trees. This place is so quiet, and feels so far away from the things that make people stressed, harried, and anxious. In that moment, I was deeply grateful for everything right around me: for a man who loves me more than I knew was possible, for this baby who is uniquely ours, for where we live, and for every painful and blissful experience that brought us to this place. All things considered, I knew in a deep, deep way how profoundly blessed we are.

And I was so grateful.

But honestly, I have had moments where I've done my share of grumbling, whether or not anyone has heard them out loud. I have had those moments where I lamented this was happening to us. I didn't want to be the exception. I didn't want people to pity us. I didn't want to give up the birthing experience I have hoped and planned for. I didn't want people to think, "Oh, poor Ewan!" Whine whine whine. Grumble grumble grumble.

I wasn't grateful for what was happening. I wasn't trusting the role this experience might play in something far greater, something that I do not have the foresight to see. I wasn't considering that blessings that will come and that, in truth, have already come as a result of what we have learned about Ewan's heart.

Manning quotes another favorite author of mine, the late Henri Nouwen from his work Bread for the Journey:

"To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives -- the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections -- that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let's not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God."
Henri Nouwen, qtd. in Manning (p. 31)

And so I am grateful -- for James, for Ewan, and for his broken heart. I am grateful for what this little one is teaching me already. I am grateful for every moment of this pregnancy, for every kick and nudge and roll, for learning to feel and know acutely just how very delicate life is. I'm grateful for the support and encouragement that has been poured out on us. I'm so grateful that so many others love my little bean before he's even born. I'm grateful for the space I live in, for a place to write, and for the grace to know -- to really, really know -- that whether in the midst of profound ecstasy or excruciating pain (or anywhere in between), God is good.

Now it's your turn. Yesterday you told me about those things and moments in your life in which you learned to trust. It was such a gift to me to hear your stories and to learn from you how you've been shaped by those crucible moments in your life. And now I want to know: What are you grateful for right now? What makes you rise up and say thank you?

ruthless trust :: number one

I'm reading the Brennan Manning classic again: Ruthless Trust. This book was my companion during a particularly extended time of difficulty in my life a few years ago. Thumbing through its pages again, I can see the underlines, the brackets, the stars in the margins, and the copious notes filling what was once white space. It is quite nearly a journal of that time. I am filling it again, having learned something about God and myself, and now walking a path where I'm being asked to go deeper, learning even more of the deep wisdom of trust.

The following quotes grabbed me firmly around the soul:

* * *

The basic premise of biblical trust is the conviction that God wants us to grow, to unfold, and to experience fullness of life. However, this kind of trust is acquired only gradually and most often through a series of crises and trials. Through the indescribable anguish on Mount Moriah with his son Isaac, Abraham learned that the God who had called him to hope against hope was eminently reliable and that the only thing expected of him was unconditional trust. The great old man models the essence of trust in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures: to be convinced of the reliability of God.
Page 9

The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of a pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.
Pages 12-13

And that's only from the first chapter.

* * *

If you haven't had a chance yet, I'm now also sharing Ewan and pregnancy-related updates over at the Team Ewan blog, and just generally journaling about this whole process.

And now I'm wondering, dear community of bloggers: When and how have you learned trust? If you're willing to share, I'd love to hear your stories too.

* * *

The latest belly shot:
I would just embed it in the post, but Blogger is being funny about it. And by funny, I mean exceedingly aggravating. So you can view the latest belly shot here.