fear: the bright side

As we unravel, God is present. He invites us to let it all unravel and to see Him with new eyes. Meet a man who in his unraveling, stumbled onto new life. The guard in the following story is supposed to be watching over Paul and Silas. The text says he is sleeping. 

Paul and Silas are in jail because Paul in a fit of exasperation had exorcised a demon from a slave girl. The owner is peeved because this slave made him a nice profit by divination. A ruckus ensues and Paul and Silas are beaten and thrown in jail. The hilarity of this story cannot be missed. 

So here they are... in jail... at midnight singing...

Along about midnight, Paul and Silas were at prayer and singing a robust hymn to God. The other prisoners couldn't believe their ears. Then, without warning, a huge earthquake! The jailhouse tottered, every door flew open, all the prisoners were loose. Startled from sleep, the jailer saw all the doors swinging loose on their hinges. Assuming that all the prisoners had escaped, he pulled out his sword and was about to do himself in, figuring he was as good as dead anyway, when Paul stopped him: "Don't do that! We're all still here! Nobody's run away!" The jailer got a torch and ran inside. Badly shaken, he collapsed in front of Paul and Silas. He led them out of the jail and asked, "Sirs, what do I have to do to be saved, to really live?" They said, "Put your entire trust in the Master Jesus. Then you'll live as you were meant to live - and everyone in your house included!"

One second the guard is going to kill himself. The next he runs in amidst the rubble and asks, “What must I do to be saved?” One moment in fear of his superiors, he grabs the sword figuring he is as good as dead. The next, he escorts the prisoners out of the jail, invites them to his home, feeds them and binds their wounds. 

In a split second of explosive grace, his perspective is changed. This is crystal clear: the One Whom He Should Fear. The guard is unraveled and unbound.  

I love the fact that the jailer walked into the rubble with a lantern. Once he found Paul, Silas and the other prisoners still there but loose, he collapsed trembling. His question is beautiful: Sirs, what do I have to do to be saved, to really live? 

In the midst of fear and rubble, isn’t this our question? Can we drop the guises of control and independence and drop to our knees? Can we mutter in the thick of the dust: What must I do to really live?

The response so simple yet so difficult. Put your entire trust in Master Jesus. Then you’ll live as you were meant to live – and everyone in your house included. What would happen if I put my entire trust in Master Jesus? If I gave up my cynicism, self-righteousness, comfort food and rescuing; what would my life look like? I use things (addictions, idols) to mask my fear. What if I ran in breathless to the rubble and ruins and asked the question simple and clear?

One element is conspicuous: the jailer gets a glimpse of the eternal. Paul and Silas introduce him to Jesus. I need to see Jesus to know what to fear. If I fear Him, the other fears shrink like so much burning plastic. 

That’s when the party starts.

They never did get to bed that night. The jailer made them feel at home, dressed their wounds, and then - he couldn't wait till morning! - was baptized, he and everyone in his family. There in his home, he had food set out for a festive meal. It was a night to remember: He and his entire family had put their trust in God; everyone in the house was in on the celebration.

When we unravel, we get a set of new eyes. We can see - really see - what is crucial. And that is worth a celebration! 

just be present

Yesterday I had the privilege of listening to two people from Nashville Cares tell their stories of hearing some of the hardest words ever spoken: I am sorry to inform you but you have tested positive for HIV.

Cheryl and Mr. S relayed their stories of courage and humiliation. Mr. S heard these words publicly as he “kicked it” in the lounge with others in a rehab facility. A nurse announced from the doorway that he had tested positive. As I sat listening to his sad tale in a room full of nurses, I think many of us wanted to crawl under the table. The actions of this nurse betrayed all that we are taught and all that we stand for, frankly. Nevertheless, the event is part of his story. He said, bravely, if it weren’t for HIV, he would be dead. He tried to “smoke” himself to death. That is smoke as in CRACK. Mr. S, a heterosexual male he proclaimed with a smile, contracted HIV as a IV drug-user. As he began to heal and fight to survive the HIV, he dealt with the ghosts that CRACK could not silence. He found the will to live. Now he helps others. “He doesn’t want anyone,” he bellowed as he paced the room, “to go through what he went through.”

Cheryl, at least, heard the words from a kinder nurse. She too described the day as feeling surreal. A nurse gave her a card and ushered her out of the door. Cheryl had contracted HIV through her fiance. He did not tell her he was HIV positive. Needless to say, a sacred trust broke wide open and Cheryl remains single “by choice” today. “Relationships,” she quipped, “are full time jobs!”

Both of these survivors found their way to Nashville Cares. Now they tell their stories and educate other people about HIV/AIDS. And yesterday they stood in front of a roomful of nurses and took us to school. 

How do you respond to someone when you have to give them such news? Mr. S said, “Just be present with them.” Don’t, he raised his voice, give them a card and usher them out the door. I wish you could hear his accent and his deep raspy voice. Don’t tell them it will be ok. How do you know it will be ok? It won’t be ok. At least not for a while, maybe never. 

Just be present. Is there anything harder? 1,000,000 things might be easier than sitting in the room with someone who has just been told they have HIV. We bolt from the present when it is unpalatable to us. We bolt when we have not done the work around our own pain. We bolt when we are afraid. When we think someone will fall to pieces in front of us. When we have no answers and we cannot appear competent and confident and full of power.

To sit with another broken human being requires that we allow ourselves to feel deep sorrow. To feel deep sorrow, we have to look at our own pain. I’ve noticed that when a hurting person brings their pain into the room, most people begin to feel extremely uncomfortable. Afraid. We become “triggered.” We begin to relive our most painful moments and that is not ok so we shut down. We tell a man he has HIV from across the room. We hand a dying woman a card and rush her out the door. 

As Christians, we may tack on a couple of feel-good verses. Take two verses and call me in the morning. We almost cannot bear to live among the ruins of the fall. 

What does it look like to suffer well? To remain present to this fallen, broken world? 

The amazing thing about Jesus’ life is His Presentness. And he called others to be WITH him. He asked Peter, James and John to follow him further in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed by Judas. You know the story, they fell asleep. They could not remain present with him. I am comforted by this and that Jesus knew they were frail humans that bolt when the going gets tough.

I think Jesus wants us to practice remaining present. And each time we do bolt, we can always just come back. We can admit that we are frail; we don’t have answers. We don’t have that much POWER over HIV/AIDS or over other people’s responses. And in those moments, Our God is strong. 

I don’t know how I would find the nerve, the strength to tell someone they have HIV. But I learned a lot from Mr. S and Cheryl. After hearing their stories, I have a better chance of remaining present to someone in that position. I have a better idea of what it looks like to “JUST BE PRESENT WITH THEM.”

Today, I hold these precious stories told by fragile yet spirited human beings. They are gifts - the kind that keep on blossoming. Stories, gifts, that tell a tale of unraveling, disentangling. Clearing up. Freed from complication or difficulty. A distillation to what is important. To be unraveled is to be unbound. 

Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size - abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become. II Corinthians 12:10

grace under water, under pressure, under construction

Susan exemplifies the concept of God at work in the unraveling. She embraces it. If you want a fellow soldier in the bunker with you during an episode of unraveling, Susan’s your girl. She asks probing questions. She draws you to the truth. She envelops you with love and caring. And in a rare gift of humankind, Susan is present to those around her.

Inside at Fellowship Bible Church on Saturday, May 1, Lloyd Shadrach opened the Bible and taught on The Flood. Outside God illustrated. Sixty or so of us weathered the flood to hear about The Flood. On the way home from church, my friend Susan Babcock texted me. “Send Matt over. We are moving furniture upstairs.” I replied, “On way home. Be there in 10 mins.” She sent back, “I don’t have 10 mins.” 

Surreal. Is this really happening in Cottonwood? To a friend of mine? Will the water get in her home? Will it get in mine? Where is the rainbow?

It rained Saturday all day. And Sunday ALL DAY. On Sunday evening, we went to see the water line. While we were there, the National Guard drove up in its Amphibian Vehicle. We called our children back from the murky water. We watched with bug-eyes as canoes brought out downcast souls from their homes. Some people embraced these creatures crawling out of the water. Some said, “I’m sorry.” I wept as my friend, Charlie, waded out of the river with his phone held high over his head. 

The next day, we awoke to dry ground. The water receded! Now what?!?!???????

Matt and I took off to the Babcock’s house. A small crowd was gathering there. People looked around. What do we do? Charlie and Susan vacillated in and out of presence of mind to pinch-me-this-can’t-be-happening. One second, they had a home. Next one, they did not. How do you make that reality?

Phone calls were made. Experts showed up like J. Mac Brown and John Farkas and Rob Marrero and Brad Taylor. People brought food and water and drills and extension cords. Children pushed coolers with popsicles. The experts barked orders and warm bodies went to work. Some of us (I won’t mention names) sneaked next door and looked through the window to see what the paid experts were up to. 

I’ll never forget meeting a man named Matt. He climbed the front steps of the Babcock home with an orange extension cord adorned around his neck and waist like Clint Eastwood’s artillery in A Fistful of Dollars. (I watched it with my Daddy when I was 4.) His drill weighed down his left hand like a Colt 45. I stuck out my right hand to introduce myself. He smiled (no toothpick) and said, “What can I do to help?” 

He got right to work marking the walls, cutting the dry-wall, pulling out insulation. When everyone broke for dinner, he asked what time he should return. I mumbled something about being done for the day. He said, “I’ll be back tomorrow.” And he was. 

That is one story of sacrifice. One snapshot among millions of the way neighbors served neighbors personifying the “Volunteer” in Volunteer State. Words cannot contain the goodwill spilling over from Cottonwood during flood-week and for weeks afterward. 

While the newness has worn off and the mold has grown, many of the flooded are still without homes. Long-suffering, they eek out a life moving from pillar to post. Among these flood-victims are my friends Susan and Charlie Babcock and their beautiful children – Jacob and Anna. 

The Babcock family could have walked out of the pages of a J Crew catalogue.  Blue eyes blaze forth an inner light unveiling their LIVE SPIRITS. In other words, their spirits are even more gorgeous than their forms. Even as they endure the trauma of a natural disaster, they have exhibited grace and love. 

A few weeks ago, I ran into Susan. “Words,” she said, “are so important.”

Really? I told her of my difficulty. Truth is I had hardly blogged since the flood. Who has words for this event? Who can attempt to contain all of it in a blog entry?

“Words,” she said, “are so powerful!” She bore through me with her steel blue eyes. Some wayward path within me corrected on the spot. This is all I had been thinking about words: they are impotent. They cannot contain this. From then on, I plotted to bless her on this blog. 

She exemplifies the concept of God at work in the unraveling. She embraces it. If you want a fellow soldier in the bunker with you during an episode of unraveling, Susan’s your girl. She asks probing questions. She draws you to the truth. She envelops you with love and caring. And in a rare gift of humankind, Susan is present to those around her.

Now, don’t think she is a saint. She would not want that. But she is a daughter of the King. She wakes up each day with a desire to live that identity out well. We’ve talked many times about how the unraveling leads us to freedom. 

Today or tomorrow, Susan, Charlie and a host of neighbors will begin to move in with couches and crayons, portraits and pots, linens and lamps. Keenly aware of the fact that none of these things constitutes a home, we will nonetheless place these things back into the shell of a house that has been virtually demolished and rebuilt. In the construction vernacular, they were “down to the studs.” Susan will tell you it is a metaphor for an inner process. A flood takes your soul down to the studs. The journey spotlights what is in there: some things to keep, some to cull, some to hold you up.

Sue Monk Kidd, author of Secret Life of Bees, once endured a hurricane. She penned these words. They beautifully convey the unraveling. 

It’s as if I am being pared down like a piece of fruit, stripped, peeled, distilled to a simplicity of spirit. The events are exfoliating. They shuck me down to some place that is thick with luminosity and resilience, an enduring inner ground. What comes rising to my lips is the word God, and in the next breath, home. The whole thing is so palpable it carries an actual physical sensation. 

I learned all over again that intensely fraying events in life, like hurricanes, sometimes have a particular effect. They plunge us into a mysterious, inward divestiture, a distillation we could truly call sacred, because for a while we know – in a way that we rarely know – what matters. I mean what really matters. We know it utterly. And this unimpeachable knowing ushers us once again to the authentic ground that resides at the heart of life. We seem to understand – if only partially – this is the Ground of Presence. It’s as if the foreground of life, where we spend the majority of our time, fades away, and we are left in the great background that is God, against which all life exists. 

Sue Monk Kidd, Firstlight

the summitt

On the day that we moved my oldest son to college, I walked into his room among the boxes holding his future. “Hey, want me to help you make your bed?” I asked smiling. We tidied the covers and I tucked his teddy bear in among the pillows. 

We drove east into the rising sun and Vol-land. The pit of my stomach turned and rumbled as I joined the throngs of parents pushing loaded carts vying for elevators. The dismal and exhausted dorm room has welcomed students since 1965. We packed as much warmth into it as we could leaving the white walls a blank slate. 

A college friend of Matt’s from Knoxville offered us respite in his beautiful home. Some of the most tender steak I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating settled my rumbly tummy. The fellowship warmed my weak heart. A few months earlier we had spent the weekend with Woody and Jennifer. We had told him Matthew may be attending UT. He smiled, took a sip of his cold beer and said, “You know if he does come to UT, he’s mine.” I’ve never heard such comforting words. 

On Matthew’s first night in the dorm, I spent a long and restless night at Woody’s with Matt and Sam. Awake from 3-4 a.m., I listed the things we could do to bring some life to the cell of a dorm room. Up to now, the males had given me a lot of flack. Being as I am outnumbered in this family, it added up to quite a bit! Boys don’t care about a dorm room. Boys don’t need it to be beautiful. Mom, (eyes rolling) I don’t care what comforter I have or if it matches Sean’s! But now everyone was brainstorming!

Sunday morning early, we arrived to the dorm early and dragged Matthew out of bed. We headed to the equivalent of Mecca for new dorm residents: Walmart. Zealous parents and students had ransacked the place. No hangers. No cork boards. A kind employee dug in a box to find shower curtain rings. 

Back at Alcatraz, I mean Massey Dorm, we added the Walmart-touch and the place livened up. As I placed pictures on the wall, Matt said, “It’s time to go.” Matthew’s tour of campus began in 5 minutes. “But can’t we just stay here and work on the room while he’s gone?” 

“No,” Matt said. No explanation.

“Is it against the rules?” I stammered.

“It’s time for us to go,” he gently reassured. 

We all rolled out the door into the hall with the force of a tsunami. There next to the elevators sat 8 or so freshman young men with the RA, Hunter. Awkward. We quickly hugged goodbye and I boarded the elevator with Rhode Island in my throat. I had been told not to look back. Afraid of what may happen if Rhode Island broke up, I checked my flip flops. On the ground, I kicked the gravel and spit out, “That was just awful.” Matt agreed. 

“We don’t have to leave on that note,” we both agreed. We decided to eat and return for a better goodbye. Now, if a parent had asked for my advice in this situation, I would have said, “Leave. Go on home.” Reason did not have the wheel.

Amidst tears, we found our way to the Old City, a quirky and whimsical part of Knoxville. “You have not told me about these shops,” I accused Matt. 

“These were not here when we dated 20 years ago,” he said.

“Yeah, right.”

I texted Matthew: We have a gift for you. Can you meet us after the tour to pick it up?

Shameful. We had visited the bookstore and bought him a lanyard for his keys. For me visiting the all-orange store traumatized me even more. I am an Ole Miss girl by heart. 

We proceeded as planned since we did not hear from him. Funny how my texts and calls are not answered even though the phone grows out of his right palm. He may have been strategizing: how can I get them to leave?

At last, the phone rang. “Mom, I’m pretty busy. I have something else at 4.” 

“We just wanted to say goodbye over. That goodbye was terribly awkward,” I explained. “It will only take a second.”

Our Odyssey roared back to campus. There on the corner sat Matthew with his tour. He hurried over to our car. We tried to park out of the way and out of sight certainly out of earshot. I said the things I wanted to say without an audience. Hugged him. Touched his face. Matt gave him a huge man-hug. We drove off. Again. 

Tomato Head Restaurant offered yet another respite. Good food is a comfort. Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan Ale is brewed in Kiln, MS. From the first drop on my tongue I felt the love. Apparently, it is the only beer in the world made with roasted pecans. I needed a Mississippi touch. Outside, Sam danced in the water fountain. Then, we headed west: home. 

Some things remain private. The ride home. The tears. The talk. The snorts. 

The family who kept Joshua lives on one of the most beautiful stretches of road in the country. We rounded Del Rio and the stunning sunset bade us welcome.

The next morning I awoke before the sunrise aware of an emptiness in my gut. I’ve been reading a book about getting in touch with the gut: the seat of emotions, the home of the soul. I stealthily stole out to the patio. As I wrote in my journal, the pages turned golden under the sunrise. I checked in with the gut. Warmth, fullness, life. The emptiness is true: I miss Matthew. 

The life is truer. 

So much of parenting is negotiating endings, the unceasing process of disconnecting the strings that tie our children to us, preparing them for a life on their own. That has always been the ache and beauty of it for me – taking the deep breath and trusting somehow in the goodness of life, in God, in something beyond myself. – Sue Monk Kidd

Update on 08.14.2014 by gigi

Many of my friends are taking children to college, launching young adults into the crazy and chaotic world of college. Each year after we dropped my oldest son off at University of Tennessee, I reflect on that day and pray for my friends. Releasing is never easy. And it is essential. We begin the beautiful job of parenting with a series of letting go's. Blessings to you, my friends, as you walk this journey. For me, the hardest part was the drive home. Every day became easier after that. And now five years later, we are in a rhythm that suits us. You will live through this! Take courage!

Update on 05.12.2016 by gigi

I like to post this in May when my friends are all wigged out and sending their babies off to college. Let me tell you, I have two more to send one day... I WILL BE WIGGED OUT. So grab a box of tissue and read on. 

Happy 10th Birthday, Joshua

Ten years ago today, I was on bedrest in Baptist Hospital and Joshua tap-danced his way out of the womb. We like to tell the story at our house like this: Joshua entered the world via C-section like all McMurray boys. When the doctor pulled him out of my womb, Joshua grabbed a blue surgical rag on his way up. Dr. Growden’s jaw fell open wide at the site of this 4 pound baby boy gripping a quite large blue rag. He held onto it. “I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years!” exclaimed Dr. Growden.

Strength. A quiet strength possesses Joshua. I say it like that because it emanates from him something like his spirit shining through to say hello to the world. Once several years ago when Joshua had been wounded by life’s harshness, I drew a sketch of Joshua in my arms standing in front of the King of Kings in His Holy of Holies. That is what my soul could do for his soul at that time. Just bring him in my arms to Jesus. 

That sketch has come to mean a lot to me. I have begun to see it as myself bringing a younger wounded version of myself to Jesus. I can take my own inner child in my arms and bring her into the Presence. That is when inner healing happens. Being a mom is a lot like that. You see your children laugh, play, struggle, cry, grieve, push your buttons and you realize that it is pushing you farther in and making you a better person. 

In his ten short years, Joshua has done that for me. He has made me better. 

Every night as Matt and I put him to bed, we say thanks to God. Thank you, God, for choosing us to be his parents. We are blessed.

This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. Psalm 118:23