Funny how books, sermons, and personal stories come into your life at just the right moment. Just in the nick of time! Just when God knows you need it!
How often I submit to my fears instead of submitting my fears to God. When things start going wonky, my mind rushes to the most disastrous outcome I can imagine. I call it catastrophizing, but its common name is worry.
Worry focuses me on everything that’s out of my control. It gives me a stomachache that drives me to the plumbing. Or drives me to the couch to watch silly reruns like Seinfeld because I can’t seem to do anything but distract myself. That’s not totally true, in times of deep worry, I’m driven to deep clean and reorganize my entire house. It’s as if all the blessings in my life are blotted out by a gigantic funnel cloud swirling any hope into smithereens, and I’m trying to batten down the hatches. In the moment, Bible verses become sawdust in my mouth. God feels distant. My cries for help, only echoes in my head.
Photo by NOAA on Unsplash
This week I had fresh cause to worry. The details don’t matter. The important fact is I have no control over them.
But just before the new worry launched its assault, I’d read a memoir titled Undone by Michele Cushatt. It’s the true story of a season in her life when she faced her first husband’s addiction, divorce, single parenthood, the trials of a new marriage and blended family, cancer, the addition of three special needs preschoolers to her family, and big surprise, panic attacks. Any one of these trials would have undone me.
I feel like such a spiritual and emotional wimp by comparison, but that’s not the point. Her story is an extreme example of what God allows in our lives, not to punish us or teach us a lesson, but to prove that his presence is enough to hold on to in a broken world where at any moment our comfort and seeming control can be overturned.
Towards the end of the book Michele references a Biblical episode where King Jehoshaphat is faced with the impending attack of a vast enemy army and says,
“For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
2 Chronicles 20:12 (NIV)
Jehoshaphat knew he was out gunned, and his only refuge was his God, so his focus was not on his own catastrophizing. He doesn’t collapse on his couch to distract himself with entertainment or start deep cleaning his tent.
Instead, he listens to the voice of God through one of his prophets.
“Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s”
2 Chronicles 20:15 (NIV)
My point is, until we leave our earthly bodies and see God face to face, we need to share our stories about his amazing grace in our ordinary lives. For it’s in the midst of our disasters big and small, that God works in, for, and through us to prove He is enough even as we long for perfection in a world continually smashed by sin.
So, tell your stories, sisters, as I tell mine, as Michele Cushatt so masterfully told hers, to encourage the body of Christ and drown out the catastrophizing shouts of the enemy. Instead, let’s keep our eyes on the salvation, provision, protection, and lovingkindness of our almighty, sovereign Lord.
Photo by NOAA on Unsplash
“In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
I confess, when I used to visit my brother at his rest home, Judge Judy was often on TV, and I was always tempted to sit down and watch the episode. Why? Because I love her stern justice, her ability and authority to call out the guilty party, name their offense, and nail them with real life consequences.
That said, as a Christian, I know I’m supposed to be more like Mother Teresa full of endless love for the sick, desperate, and dying.
Truth be told, we’re all a little like both Judy and Teresa.
No shocker. Since we’re created in God’s image, we crave justice, but when it suits us, because we’re also fallen, desperate, sick, and dying.
To show you what I mean, I’ll share a quick vignette from when I was in third grade and got into a playground fight.
My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Duval, wears a steel bun bolted to the back of her head and steel-rimmed glasses. Her self-appointed uniform, a white buttoned blouse and a black calf-length skirt over support hose and lace-up heels. Everything about her classroom is strict and regulated. Arithmetic in the morning. Word problems and counting backwards to make change. The new X that means multiplication. Grammar in the afternoon in books full of subjects, objects, and verbs. All this punctuated by a thirty-minute recess after lunch.
Mrs. McGinty, the recess lady, prowls the small playground not covered by snow and ice, a whistle around her neck. The swings beyond are useless, anchored in three feet of snow. The slides buried up to their necks. There is one concrete tube whose curved head is barely above the height of the snowbank. Ralphie La Brie has tunneled, so you can still crawl through it.
But I want to be on top, along with every other third grader scaling its summit to be king of the mountain. In a bunchy snowsuit I begin my ascent. Two ton Peggy climbs from the other side, and just as I reach the peak, she lunges for me, and we both fall off. I land on my back with Peggy sitting on my chest. I can’t squirm free. Ralphie climbs out of the tunnel like a troll and starts shoving snow in my ear. Peggy squeals with delight and won’t get off. Her cheeks round with laughter. Her curly pigtails jiggle as my red mittens pound her puffy, pink parka and slash at Ralphie’s stupid grin. Frustration bursts from my eyeballs, and I’m crying in front of the pee-wee crowd gathered in a tight circle. The whistle shrieks. Peggy flinches. I roll out from under, and punch Ralphie in the ear.
Mrs. McGinty marches Peggy and I, soggy and dripping, into Miss Ander’s principal office. We sit on a bench opposite her ordered desk. She lectures us on good citizenship and wants each of us to say sorry. But my red, sweaty face, glowers in silence. Even as a kid, I know that forgiveness is a tight bud that cannot be forced. No sorry lips can make my heart unfurl.
Miss Anders ushers Peggy and I back to our room. Our class is diagramming sentences while Mrs. Duval marks math papers at her desk. Miss Anders whispers our infraction in Mrs. Duval’s ear. She peers over her steel-rimmed frames as I return to my seat. In her world of plusses and minuses surely Peggy is in the negative column, and counting backwards, owes me a big fat apology. And how about Ralphie La Brie? He multiplied the offense. Isn’t it obvious who the subject and object of the verb are? But Mrs. Duval’s expression contains no exoneration or mercy. Her answer book as useless as swings locked in ice.
I share this example to show that even a child knows when someone hurts you, they owe you something. There’s also no doubt that saying sorry without a contrite heart is worthless. But do you hear my child’s heart full of pride and desire for revenge?
Thankfully God is nothing like my third-grade teacher. He is completely good, so he must be completely just.
When I was a brand-new Christian, I drew a cross inside the cover of my Bible. Along its vertical axis I scribbled the word LOVE. Along the horizontal, the word JUSTICE.
The vertical line represented God’s love reaching down through Christ to protect me from the eternal damnation we all deserve for screwing up a million different ways.
Some versions of The Lord’s prayer call sin trespasses. The word trespass means to enter an owner’s property without permission. Those who trespass against us have crossed a line into our lives where they don’t belong, demanding things, taking things, destroying things that are not theirs. That’s what the horizontal line represents.
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
In other versions of the Lord’s prayer, sin is referred to as debt. Those who have trespassed into our intimate space owe us a debt for what they have stolen or damaged. And we owe others for what we have wreaked in theirs.
Forgiveness is trusting God with what others owe us. But trusting God does not come naturally, even for the believer, so how in the world can we forgive others let alone ourselves?
Jesus told this story:
“A man loaned money to two people—500 pieces of silver[a] to one and 50 pieces to the other. 42 But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?”
43 Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt.”
“That’s right,” Jesus said. 44 Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look at this woman kneeling here… 47 “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” Luke 7:41-47 (NLT)
I came to Christ as ashamed as this woman of my sins and the sins done to me, and so grateful to be cleansed from them all.
And yet, even though I knew, in my head, I was clean, I continued to drag along the garbage can containing all my trash as well as the dead weight of those who hurt me.
Over the years, learning my Bible, I became a Pharisee myself, at times acting like Judge Judy, so eager to hold others who hurt me, even in small ways, accountable with a heart full of vengeance as if I was back in third grade.
I knew this was not the gospel. When was I going to get it together and turn into Mother Teresa?
In Relationships, a Mess Worth Making, author Paul Tripp says, “An entrenched refusal to forgive is a sign that you have not known God’s amazing forgiveness yourself… holding onto an offense will make you a bitter and unloving person, and you will inevitably damage all your relationships.”
But he goes on to ask, “How can I forgive without acting like what he/she did is okay?”
He confirms my paradigm of forgiveness saying, “The vertical aspect of forgiveness is unconditional, but the horizontal aspect depends on the offender admitting guilt and asking for forgiveness.
The idea is no one can single-handedly bring about reconciliation in a relationship because reconciliation depends on trust, not simply giving lip service to the words, I’m sorry. Rather, trust between people is built over time through acts of remorse and faithfulness.
So how do I begin to unravel my mess?
The Cure by John Lynch, Bruce Mc Nicol, and Bill Thrall says, “Forgiveness has an order. We must initiate the vertical transaction with God before we can move into the horizontal transaction with another. First, before God I forgive the offender for what they’ve done and the consequences in my life. This is before God and me, and it is for my sake. It doesn’t let anyone off the hook; it does not excuse any action. It does not restore relational forgiveness to the other. This is the vertical transaction. It is a choice to free myself, to begin healing.”
It’s the decision to cut ourselves free from that person and the baggage we share.
The Cure, goes onto say, “God never tells me to get over something and just get past it. Never. Instead, he asks me to trust him with every circumstance.”
So, the first step is to get it all out to God, everything that is rotting in your soul. Everything that’s pissed you off. Everything that makes you feel fearful, used, diminished, unable to trust, unlovable. Name it as best you can. The wages of sin is death, so ask yourself what has been destroyed?
Then spit it out, cry it out, spill it into a journal, confess to a trusted friend. Do this as often as the rot replaces itself with new confusion, angst, regret, and shame.
Next, immerse yourself in God’s Word in order to know, really know his character, his strength, and the depth of his desire to love and protect you. The book of Romans makes the point over and over again that we are new creatures in Christ, that Christ paid for all our grotesque experiences and mistakes with his holy blood.
Memorize the verses that confirm your impossible burden of debt was charged to Jesus’ infinite account, so your heart can unclench, your fingers can release their grip, so everything moves out of your hands into the sphere of God Almighty whose justice is divine. Then you can raise your emptied arms in praise to the savior who has turned the key that kept you caged in your past.
Let me add here that I hate pat answers that diminish the pain and struggle involved in all this. Please understand that everything I’ve said about forgiveness and the freedom that God alone supplies is a process, a daily process, a moment-by-moment process, a mind game, a heart battle, a habit to be cultivated as we become more and more intimate with God’s truth and absorb it.
It’s also a mysterious process beyond formula, something that God does for us and in us.
I have a note on my refrigerator to remind myself that:
Truth trusted transforms!
With the new year, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could be who we really want to be? More like Mother Teresa and less like Judge Judy. May the Holy Spirit move us moment by moment towards the quiet end of forgiveness. And may our hearts freely unfurl in God’s love and perfect justice for ourselves and others, even our enemies.
January is the month where we begin again, and in doing so inevitably re-evaluate where we’ve been and what we’ve done. Do we want to keep doing it? Does it matter? Is there somewhere else we want to go? Something else more important we need to spend our time on.
A quick perusal of last year’s posts tells me I wrote about alcoholism and its effect on family members, death, grief, regret, high school reunions, childhood friends and frenemies, being adopted, finding my true name, and biological siblings. I wrote about introverts and extroverts, about the mystery of the writing process and how to turn fact into fiction. I wrote about my father, my mother, the craft of hope, and unwrapping yourself from the spider glue of your past.
No matter the subject, I always strive to take you with me, dear reader, into a specific life experience that imprinted my identity, self-worth, and place in the universe. I offer you the shot gun seat in my story mobile, so together we can blast into my past and out the other side towards God’s unconditional love.
Photo by Alessio Lin on Unsplash
If as authors we write not merely for our own satisfaction, but to serve our readers, perhaps January is also a good time for audience participation to find out how our work is being received. What resonates? What hits the spot? What does not? And why?
Therefore I’d love to know a little bit about you, dear readers. What is it about my essays in subject and style that draws you in, and keeps you reading? What’s useful or encouraging? Please tell me a little bit about yourself and why you read my blog in the comments.
I guess I want to know what’s worth your while because that’s what’s worth my time as a writer.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
In another month I will turn 69 years old, the big 70 a mere twelve months beyond that.
Some people pick a word for the new year. I’ve never done that before, but this year the Lord has impressed me with the word complete. So if I could make a New Year’s resolution and live it out, this is what I’d resolve — to complete the work the Lord has put me here to do.
Let’s make every day count. Happy New Year!
10 Seventy years are given to us!
Some even live to eighty.
But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble;
soon they disappear, and we fly away.
11 Who can comprehend the power of your anger?
Your wrath is as awesome as the fear you deserve.
12 Teach us to realize the brevity of life,
so that we may grow in wisdom.
13 O Lord, come back to us!
How long will you delay?
Take pity on your servants!
14 Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love,
so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives.
15 Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery!
I just learned that my husband tested positive for Covid 19 which means Christmas as planned is cancelled, and my calendar for two weeks wiped clean. So far so good. He is fully vaccinated and boosted with no dire symptoms or complaints.
If I don’t have to bake cookies or cook a roast, what shall I do instead? Finish painting the trim in the bathroom? Catch up on laundry? It feels almost sacrilegious to let Christmas melt into an ordinary day.
Besides, my house is already decked out with twinkle lights and greenery in anticipation of wide-eyed grandchildren experiencing the wonder of the holiday, some for the first time, at Gramma’s house with their cousins. The table is covered with a scarlet cloth. The candles ready to light. Pinecones and silver balls, the perfect centerpiece. My childhood creche set up in the hutch to give the little ones tangible shepherds, angels, wise men and their chipped camel, all come in awe of the king of angels born surrounded by manure.
Photo by Ann C. Averill
Of course, I’ve been praying for the added magic of snow. I got ice instead, but it was so beautiful, I ran for my phone and shared this pic on Facebook.
Photo by Ann C. Averill
Paul the apostle talks about how God’s invisible qualities are made visible through the natural world, so his eternal power and divine character, should be obvious to all. (Romans 1:20) So, I wasn’t surprised to find comments like: beautiful, magical, heavenly, awesome, amazing capture, should be published. Published means made public, so I’m sharing my picture here as well.
Which reminds me of the angels’ news flash to the shepherds who were terrified by celestial radiance in the darkness.
8 Messenger:11 Today, in the city of David, a Liberator has been born for you! He is the promised Anointed One, the Supreme Authority! 12 You will know you have found Him when you see a baby, wrapped in a blanket, lying in a feeding trough.
13 At that moment, the first heavenly messenger was joined by thousands of other messengers—a vast heavenly choir. They praised God.
14 Heavenly Choir: To the highest heights of the universe, glory to God!
And on earth, peace among all people who bring pleasure to God!
15 As soon as the heavenly messengers disappeared into heaven, the shepherds were buzzing with conversation.
Shepherds: Let’s rush down to Bethlehem right now! Let’s see what’s happening! Let’s experience what the Lord has told us about!
16 So they ran into town, and eventually they found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in the feeding trough. After they saw the baby, 17 they spread the story of what they had experienced and what had been said to them about this child. 18
Luke 2: 11-18
Christ’s birth was the amazing capture of God’s plan for the liberation of a broken world manifest in the natural birth of a supernatural savior. That’s good news worth publishing.
I guess that’s what I’m trying to do here, even if I’m home with only my dear husband for the holiday. I want to spread the story of what has been said about the baby Jesus and make public what I’ve experienced with him as my liberating King.
One more angelic newsflash. While I was writing this, my husband received a message from his primary provider. There was a clerical error, and the results of his test were actually negative.
Hallelujah! Game on! Light the candles and let the celebration begin.
Does it matter if you take your kids to church? Even if they hate it and fuss? Even if as teens or young adults they dismiss the Gospel? Take heart! Here’s a small part of my salvation story.
My parents always took me to church. Can you identify?
So, I learned Bible stories. Moses parting the Red Sea. Daniel in the den with lockjaw lions. The star of Bethlehem, and a baby boy born in a barn.
I learned hymns, “On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame…”
I liked the ones in a minor key that sounded mysterious and ethereal, “Oh come, oh come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel…” But who was Emmanuel? Why did we want him to come? And ransomcaptiveisrael was just one long nonsense word.
One of my favorites had a Celtic tune full of longing, but what did, “Be thou my vision oh Lord of my heart…” even mean?
My childhood church was blonde in every sense of the word. We were a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant congregation. The pews, pulpit, and rafters were made of honey-colored oak. Behind the pulpits were two choir stalls. Men on one side, women on the other, all wearing red robes with white satin collars. And at the end of every service, a boy, also robed, walked ceremoniously to the altar, and snuffed the candles using a long brass rod. It looked like fun, and I wondered why girls never got to do it.
The cross on the back wall was engraved with the letters INRI? That wasn’t a word, so I always wondered what it meant.
Fast forward to my junior year in college spent studying abroad in London, England. On weekends, classmates and I did lots of sightseeing. Among the places of interest were innumerable cathedrals. I saw Westminster Abbey with famous saints and poets entombed in its walls and St. Paul’s, an architectural wonder.
Photo by Derek Story on Unsplash
But it was Salisbury Cathedral that rocked me to my core. Begun in 1220, it’s spire, the tallest in England, was completed in 1320. The façade alone was breathtaking. Walking down the nave, my footsteps echoing on ancient stones, I felt the brevity of my human span. Lifting my gaze to Gothic arches high above, I’d never felt so small. Dwarfed by stained-glass magnificence, something deep within me wanted to kneel—but I was with my classmates, so I stuffed my awe and followed the group back to the bus.
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
A few miles north, we stopped at Stonehenge, a circular array of megaliths set on a green plain pocked with sheep. It was massive, impossible, a prehistoric wonder aimed at light in a dreary land. Still mysterious in many ways, it seemed to shout man’s desperate need to worship something.
Flash forward, another decade to when I struggled as a stay-at-home mom and narrowly avoided a divorce. I hadn’t been to a church in years, and didn’t consider myself a believer, but when a neighbor invited me to her plain blonde church, I said yes and found myself full circle, back in the basement for adult Sunday School. But Jesus and I were different now. He was no longer a baby doll in a manger scene, and I was no longer an innocent child.
A week before Christmas a red-robed choir filled the dais. The accompanist began Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, and thunderous praise rose to simple rafters. Can you hear the music?
“For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”
I suddenly felt as puny as I did in Salisbury Cathedral.
The choir continued,
“The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord.
And of His Christ, and of His Christ.”
I now knew that Christ is the Greek word for Messiah,
The chorus continued,
“And He shall reign for ever and ever.”
I’d seen how since Neolithic times, men have looked for the light.
The bass voices bellowed,
“King of Kings.”
And I recalled the letters INRI engraved at the top of the cross. Now I knew what they stood for, Ieusus Nazarenus Rex Ludaeorum, the initials for the Latin Jesus the Nazarene King of the Jews. The words Pontius Pilate had written above the cross where Jesus’ corpse was pinned like a butterfly in grotesque display.
Photo by Thong Do on Unsplash
The sopranos echoed,
“and Lord of Lords.”
The grandeur of the oratorio rolled over me like an ocean swell, and suddenly my soul understood the necessity for Jesus’ sacrifice, as bloody as any pagan ritual. It was the ransom paid for the primordial evil that wreaks havoc here on earth. And, finally I comprehended the hymn I’d sung as a child, Jesus was Emmanuel, God come in bodily form to rescue people like me, captive of my own shame and regret.
That’s the thing about music, it somehow bypasses the brain and speaks directly to the heart. A church, I discovered, is not an edifice no matter how magnificent, no matter the history buried in its walls, but rather people whose hearts are desperate for God and cast their vision to his Messiah the light of the world.
All those years my parents made me go to church, surely this is what they were hoping—that my heart would find its hallelujah in Christ and sing in chorus with the congregation.
“Forever and ever, Amen!”
So readers, if you worry about your children and their salvation, take courage. You never know how or when God will give the gift of his grace to those you love. Merry Christmas!
“I want you to know that you can fully rely on the things you have been taught about Jesus, God’s anointed one.” The Messiah!
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? What difference does it make if both are fine ways of being in the world? A lot, according to Holley Gerth in her fabulous book, The Powerful Purpose of Introverts: Why the world Needs You to Be You.
The central theme of the book is stated clearly in the subtitle; in order to lead the fullest, most effective life you can, it helps to know yourself, your tendencies, your strengths, your skills, your patterns of thinking, what depletes and restores you. She makes the case that your make-up is intricately linked to the purpose and destiny for which God created you, so know yourself, learn what you need to thrive, and what you passionately want to offer the world.
Holley helps us begin this quest by defining what introversion is and what it is not. Introversion isn’t shyness. She quotes Susan Cain, author of Quiet who says, “Shyness is fear of negative judgment, and introversion is a preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments.” She explores the physiology of introvert/extrovert brain chemistry and offers a series of simple quizzes based on the most respected personality indicators.
Here are just some of her questions to help you locate yourself on the introvert/extrovert continuum.
Do you enjoy spending time in solitude?
Are you drawn to deep conversations and thoughts?
Do you need time to process before speaking or making decisions?
Do you prefer working in quiet independent environments?
Do you need time alone to recharge and reflect?
Are you beginning to see yourself in the introvert crowd? I certainly did!
Photo by Tingey Injury law Firm on Unsplash
But Holley concludes her chapter by emphasizing that however you answered, and wherever you found yourself on the scale, she believes, “Your true identity goes beyond your preferences, processes, patterns, and personal relationships. You’re created in the image of God. You’re loved as you are. You have nothing to prove.”
That said, she delves deeper into the tendencies of introverts, making the case that being sensitive and quiet are not weaknesses, but strengths and offers a list of skill sets these characteristics bring to the world. Introverts tend to be analytic, creative, and empathic to name just a few, so they make up a disproportionate portion of the world’s writers, artists, inventors, teachers, counselors, and advocates to name just a few. This section of the book helped me understand, with hindsight, why certain jobs, relationships, and roles chaffed and others fit like a second skin. This insight gave me permission and guidance to better focus my energies in the future.
The mid-section of the book takes up the common problems of anxiety, depression, self-criticism, and perfectionism and follows on with self-care adaptations and practices that help introverts stay in their safe lane, and not do self-damage by pushing themselves to be and do what they are not designed for. This was profoundly useful for helping me understand my own limits. It also shed light on how introverts and extroverts can learn to accept, understand, and support each other based on their inner settings.
Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash
The final chapter culminates with how to craft a mission statement based on fresh self-discovery.
All this to say, I highly recommend this book as a gift to yourself or a loved one this holiday season. What better way to celebrate Christmas than to make peace with ourselves, our neighbors, and the God who put love and grace into motion with the birth of Christ. Our broken world so needs us to understand who we are and how to best serve our Lord according to the divine destiny he has for us all.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jer. 11 (NIV)
Click here for Holley’s great book, The Powerful Purpose of Introverts: Why the World Needs You to Be You.
Click here for my own book, Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School, the story of an introvert (me) in a tough environment, struggling to find my worth, core identity, and a place to belong.
A few days before Thanksgiving, I woke up forming a mental list of the things I needed to accomplish before hosting the holiday feast.
Bake a pumpkin dessert
Make fresh cranberry relish
Press the tablecloth
Craft a centerpiece
Photo by Libby Penner on Unsplash
Then I read a Facebook post by my writer friend, Elisa Sue Edwards Johnston. After recently being diagnosed as both pregnant AND with a life-threatening disease, she described her state of mind, “My life and my baby’s life are directly linked to whether I can practice the craft of hope. Right now, my best way to survive is by clinging to ridiculous hope—hope for supernatural miracles or contentment in suffering.”
As a result of her words, another list began to form in my mind, a list of hard things in my history that with hindsight were not setbacks, but set-ups for trusting who I am to God and all He is to me.
My illegitimate conception placed me in God’s hands before I drew my first breath
My adoption by loving parents foreshadowed my adoption by a loving God
My extended family demonstrated inclusion, not by birth, but by unconditional love
My desperation to belong caused me to try out diverse social groups and their values
My confusion and insecurity drove me to pre-marital sex and a brush with adultery
My marriage crisis revealed my desperate need for forgiveness
My desire to protect my children revealed my desperate need for control
My brother’s alcoholism and subsequent homelessness destroyed my sense of control
My professional failure as a teacher destroyed my sense of worth and identity
My writing about professional failure helped me discover my core identity in Christ
My identity in Christ brought freedom from shame, inadequacy, and judgment
My grandchildren demonstrated God’s joy in us isn’t based on our behavior but his love
My faithful husband showed God’s sovereignty and protection through it all
This is just a taste of my trials and their blessings that continue day by day. Surely you have your own, friend. Therefore, I’m giving you yet another list filled with the truth of God’s Word, praying it will provide you with ridiculous hope in a ridiculous world.
Photo by Dimitry Ratushny on Unsplash
John 13:7 “Jesus replied, “You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will.” (NLT)
Romans 8:28 “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (NLT)
Jer. 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” (NLT)
Romans 8:11 “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.” (NLT)
1 Cor. 13:12 “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (KJV)
1 Cor. 1:18 “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
Psalm 34:8 “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!” (NLT)
Psalm 100:4-5 “Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good. His unfailing love continues forever, and his faithfulness continues to each generation.” (NLT)
Lastly sisters, remember, whatever it is you’re facing this holiday season, God’s power is made perfect in weakness, (2 Cor. 12:9) so practice the craft of hope, and hang on! His grace is sufficient.
It seems appropriate that my brother passed away only days before Halloween. As a child, he loved to dress up as someone else, and as an adult, he always hid who he really was, saying what he thought you wanted to hear, hiding his true emotions, revealing as little as possible of his inner life. Perhaps it was his fear of rejection. Certainly it was part of masking his struggle with alcoholism.
Since he left this earth, I’ve been consumed with the details of his death.
When my husband and I went to the rest home where he’d spent the last thirteen years to clean out his room, I was not surprised to find empty bottles of vodka secreted in every pocket of every coat in his closet—enough to fill a husky garbage bag. By the time we were done, all we had to bring home were pictures of his children, a denim jacket requested by his son, and the watch his ex-wife requested for said son. Not much to show for sixty odd years of life.
And yet the whole time we were cleaning and purging, both residents and staff stopped by to express their condolences, saying things like: your brother was a really good friend, or he was like a father to me, or I’ll really miss him, he was so kind and generous, he knew how to make people smile and laugh. Their words in a major key were totally dissonant with the minor key he’d always played in my life.
Putting together a eulogy to be shared with these fellow rest home residents, I began with the crisis point in my brother’s life when his alcoholism had stripped him of his job, his family, and a place to live and how the Catholic rest home had welcomed him as one of their own. Since then, people at the rest home came to know him as the bingo meister, or the guy hunched over the intricate puzzles in the day room. They knew him as the cat whisperer of the home’s pet, Miss Willow, and as the backyard gardener, who also acted as the dreaded cigarette butt police.
Photo by Saso Tusar on Unsplash
I wrote some things they probably didn’t know about my brother, I suppose to illicit their sympathy. Like me, he was born out of wedlock in the 1950’s when illegitimate children were given away as quickly as possible. I was in a foster home for nine months before I was adopted. My brother was in two different foster homes, one abusive before he joined our family as a frightened little four-year-old clutching a red tricycle. Much later I learned he chose our family over another only because my parents said he could bring his tricycle with him.
Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash
It took so long for my brother to be adopted because, in between foster homes, he lived with his mother who couldn’t bear to give him up. But finally, at a point in time and culture when it was impossible to keep him, she dropped him off at the adoption agency and said she was going to California and would come back for him. When he first slept in the little room next to my parents’ bedroom, I sometimes heard him sobbing himself to sleep. I learned much later that when my mom would go to comfort him, he’d ask her how far away California was.
Photo by Martin Jernberg on Unsplash
I wrote that as kids we were never close. We fought over stupid stuff like whether to watch The Flintstones or The Patty Duke Show. He was a boy, I was a girl, and we had our own set of friends. He loved board games and would play Monopoly for days with the little genius who lived across the street. One Christmas, he got a minibike, a kind of baby motorcycle, he used to take to the pine barrens at the end of the neighborhood to race around a sandy track he made with a pack of other boys. As a high school kid, he was on the track team and was a wrestling champion. One summer he worked on the dairy farm of a family friend and loved it.
My brother could sail a boat and paddle a canoe. He made canoe trips down the Mohawk with friends, camping along the shore. He rode his bike sixty miles north into the Adirondacks and spent the night in the wilderness. He could play a guitar and was in a band with his buddies. He married his high school sweetheart. He was a great guy!
However, I confess when his alcoholism really took hold as a young adult, I didn’t like to be around him. He didn’t feel safe, so I saw him less and less.
Once he was at the rest home however, we spent lots of time in the car together going out for lunch or shopping for treats and necessities, and we talked as we’d never talked before. We talked about the past when he was a locksmith. At the height of his career, he was the chief locksmith for Albany Med, the biggest and best hospital in the tri-city area. When he got fired for his drinking, he had his own locksmith company. He bought a camper and enjoyed taking his little family on adventures to Atlantic City and the like. He had a pool in the backyard for his kids, and he was the go-to fix-it guy for all his neighbors.
All this to say, writing his eulogy made me realize even if his alcoholism had headlined every neon memory associated with his name, there was so much more to the man who lived and died in the small room across from the nursing station than his alcohol abuse.
I guess, if I really believe that God’s grace can never be earned or lost, I can’t measure his life as the sum of all its parts, computing his positive qualities and deeds against his negative like a simple math problem.
So let me add this, a few days before he died, never being “religious,” he asked the hospice nurse for prayer which surprised me. I came the next day and prayed a good-bye to a brother who could no longer open his eyes or speak.
After he passed, one of the nurses took me aside to tell me my brother died with a smile on his face, his eyes open wide.
Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash
I can only hope it was because he saw the angel sent to carry him to his true home with God. A god willing to adopt any soul who reaches out unmasked about his or her desperate need to be loved just as they are, desperate for a permanent place to belong, longing for the savior who has known them fully even before they were born into this scary, broken world haunted by death.
So, my friends
be real,
be loved,
and belong in Jesus.
He is the way home to paradise.
Photo by Matthew Hamilton on Unsplash
Jesus: “Don’t get lost in despair; believe in God, and keep on believing in Me. 2 My Father’s home is designed to accommodate all of you. If there were not room for everyone, I would have told you that. I am going to make arrangements for your arrival. 3 I will be there to greet you personally and welcome you home, where we will be together. 4 You know where I am going and how to get there.
Thomas:5 Lord, we don’t know where You are going, so how can we know the path?
Jesus:6 I am the path, the truth, and the energy of life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. 7 If you know Me, you know the Father. Rest assured now; you know Him and have seen Him. John 14: 1-7 (VOICE)
What if you didn’t know your name? Your first name? Your last name? Not just the name, but everything behind your name? What if you didn’t know who your people were and what they were like? Where they were from? What if you didn’t see yourself reflected in the people that loved and raised you?
As an adoptee, I didn’t know the answer to any of these questions until I found both my biological mother and father’s families. I share my experience in this week’s blog which first appeared as guest blog on Taylored Intent https://www.tayloredintent.com/blog.
In olden days your last name often described your family’s occupation and reflected your status in the community. The Bakers baked bread. The Carpenters built things out of wood. The Smiths crafted items from iron, silver, and gold. For as long as I can remember I’ve known I was adopted, so my family name was not my own and seemed to reveal nothing about me.
That’s not to say I wasn’t treasured as a longed-for baby adopted at nine months and an adored only child until I was six when my adopted brother joined our family as a four-year-old stranger.
Let’s say my family’s name was Farmer. Although I was unconditionally loved by the whole Farmer clan, I never felt like a Farmer. My mom had a laid-back temperament. Mine was more intense. My mom liked to sew. I had no inclination as a seamstress. Fitting my dresses, she often commented on how our proportions were so different.
When I was in fourth grade, I discovered I had a different first name before I was adopted, and growing up, always wondered what was behind that name. Who were my people, and what were they like?
Out of respect for my adoptive mom and dad, however, I never searched for my biological parents while they were alive.
But when my adoptive parents passed away, my husband said, “Your bio mother and father are getting old too. If you want to find them, you better hurry up,” so we opened the green metal box always kept in the downstairs closet of my childhood home and dug through official papers to find the name of my adoption agency.
When I read the family history they recorded, I discovered a great uncle was active in community theatre, and so was I. Another great uncle was a teacher of foreign language who later became a diplomat to Uganda. I got my masters in language, literacy and culture, and my favorite job later in life was teaching English to brand-new immigrants.
When I finally met my bio mom, she invited me on a family vacation. We walked a Cape Cod beach, in our bathing suits, and I marveled that her body was proportioned just like mine. My husband videoed us chatting, so I could see how our animated mannerisms mirrored each other. She shared that my grandmother’s favorite flowers were lilacs, my favorite scent, and that my grandmother was a DJ for a classical music and public affairs radio station. I’d just discovered opera, and my grandmother’s favorite arias, were also mine. The icing on the cake was when she told me, that my great, great, great grandfather was Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter.
Recently, my husband urged me to do a 23andMe DNA test, to locate my bio dad’s family we’d never been able to locate. As a result, I found a bio half-brother and subsequently the rest of his siblings. Neither of my maternal half-sibs look like me, so when I saw my paternal half-sibs, I was stunned. Let’s call my father’s family The Jones. There was no denying I was a Jones.
Recently someone told me, “Trauma can be not only something bad that happened to you, but the lack of something you desperately needed.” This average family resemblance flooded a gaping void I was unaware of.
Although finding my biological family proved that God made no mistakes when he designed me for his purposes, my adopted family demonstrated the unconditional love of God.
All this to say, whether you’re adopted or not, there is power in knowing your name and everything behind it. That’s why my most important name is from neither my birth parents or the parents who claimed me as their own. Under the banner of Christ, no matter my origin or circumstances, I am a chosen, holy, beloved member of the family of God made in his image with a blood connection to Jesus, the first born of many siblings. And dear readers, those siblings are you.
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
“But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! 2 “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you. 3 “For I am the Lord your God, The Holy One of Israel, your Savior; Isaiah 43:1-3 (NASB)
All summer the West burned, the South succumbed to hurricanes and Covid, and the East Coast sobbed with rain and flash floods, as if nature itself was manifesting all the emotions whirling through me after my brother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
When I talk about my relationship with my brother, I’m apt to say it’s complicated. After a lifetime lived with alcohol as his master, my relationship with him has been reduced to little more than a healthcare proxy and financial fiduciary to keep him from being homeless.
I wish I could say I feel more compassion for him now that he’s a toothless, emaciated, old man with pain in his gut, but if I’m honest, I resent the burden of handling his affairs, as well as the anxiety, regret, and disappointment his drinking spilled all over my life.
Photo by Anshu A on Unsplash
Recently, a friend challenged me that although I preach the sovereignty of God, I wasn’t trusting God with the brother he chose for me. Yes, I believe God is in control. Yes, I know I’m being selfish, but how do you change your feelings? They just are. And at that moment, I didn’t care.
I was so tired of the shadow of death. I needed to get off the merry-go-round of doctor appointments and trips to the Emergency Room, so I put on my pajamas in the middle of a Sunday afternoon and flopped on the couch to watch junk TV.
I clicked to a remodeling show called Save My Reno where in twenty minutes, a master carpenter and designer team up to help homeowners remodel ugly, dysfunctional rooms into beautiful spaces they couldn’t produce on their own.
As I watched uninterrupted, I recalled a time before TV remotes when my brother and I argued over what cartoon to watch. I clicked the dial to my show. He clicked to his. It was the battle of the dial until he left the room and returned with a kitchen carving knife. Needless to say, we watched his show, and even before he started drinking, even before I was old enough to understand the pain he carried, I had reason to fear instead of trust him.
You see, I was adopted as a baby, and spent the first six years of my life as an adored only child. My brother was four when he joined our family and had already been in two foster homes, one abusive. Of course, I didn’t know this as a child, but I was acutely aware of the new stranger who slept in the little bedroom next to my parents, and cried himself to sleep.
On the outside our family was the perfect Leave-it-to-Beaver home, but on the inside, I could never connect with him. We developed separate sets of friends, and by middle school, he was sneaking alcohol to his friend’s tree fort at the end of the street.
My thoughts turned back to the TV. As I clicked through YouTube, I stumbled upon a fabulous street busker, Allie Sherlock, singing “We’re Far from the Shallows Now.” Far from the shallows reminded me of the summer our family sailed a small boat to Martha’s Vineyard. It was a foggy day, and when we were out of sight of land, my father got out a chart, put my brother’s twelve-year-old hand on the tiller, and taught him how to navigate to the island we couldn’t see. I was amazed my brother could do it and terrified that my father had put the steerage of our tiny vessel in his untried hand.
My binge watching concluded with a movie about the real life events behind the creation of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Apparently, Charles had a complicated relationship with his ne’er do well father because, after Dickens senior was put in debtor’s prison, Charles was sent to work as a child in a boot blacking factory. According to the movie, Dickens originally intended his short book to end with Scrooge meeting justice, for being a miser. Then his young house maid urged him to show both Scrooge and Tiny Tim a happy ending.
This reminded me of all the awkward holiday meals I spent with my brother and his family while we were both young marrieds back at our parents’ home. My brother would arrive already quietly inebriated, and crawl off to the basement or the garage to have another, then another beer to avoid his alcoholic wife’s relentlessly ragging. Finally, assembled at the table, I couldn’t eat fast enough to end the whole ordeal.
After a long day of escapist television, I finally went to bed where my brain and heart often do their best sorting.
Next morning, in that blurry space where dreams still make sense and daylight has not fully crept over the window ledge, I realized I was a Scrooge unwilling to forgive my emotionally crippled little brother for all the damage his alcoholism did to our family dynamic, and I asked God to renovate my heart in this final fluid space where my feet can’t touch the bottom.
Since my junk TV Sunday, I’ve talked to a hospice social worker about my complex feelings for my brother. I told her so much more than there’s space for here. She assured me, all my emotions are normal. We can carry both negative and positive sentiments at the same time, and neither invalidates the other. She told me this is all part of the grieving process, a process of resolving my relationship with my brother that will probably continue long after his death.
I share my experience because I know I’m not the only one, dealing with drinking, disease, and grief over all that alcohol can steal from those who consume it and those who try to love them.
You may be at a different stage in your relationship with your loved one and their addiction, but, I’m thankful for this last chance to show compassion I couldn’t conjure on my own, for the brother God chose to be mine.
I’ve learned it’s never too late to love when love is not just a feeling, but a verb:
to show up, to put up, to never give up.
So, I encourage you dear readers with this. Now that he’s an old man close to the edge of the cliff, his once distant children have gathered around him with visits and phone calls as never before. He seems at peace with his disease and its outcome. We’ve shared old family photos of the Leave-it-to-Beaver elements of our childhood.
And yesterday, sitting next to my brother, quietly doing a puzzle together, we rejoiced that I found the top to the mast of the ship sailing into the sunset. And he found the lighted window in the distant mansion at the head of the bay.
Photo by Daniel Barnes on Unsplash
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21 (NIV)
