joy & pain

In August I visited my friend Val and her mother, Cheryl. This post is dedicated to them.The thing about joy is that it is compatible with pain. 

This past Thursday, the earthly army of believers lost a valiant warrior. Cheryl Mong, mother of my dear friend Val Schubert, went home to the arms of her Savior. She battled fiercely for the Kingdom, for her family, and finally against breast cancer. We surely feel the loss. I would like to dedicate this post to her. She lived a life worthy of the gospel. Her life testified to the fact that pain and joy can reside in the same tabernacle. 

I am aware that a great many in the body are hurting, suffering. I have to suppress a cringe when I hear some good-natured Christian exclaim “it was so God!” when something turned out exactly right for her. Haven’t we all had seasons where things didn’t “work out” as we had planned? And can’t we say that God’s grace was upon us during it?

I went through just such a season of unraveling after our return from Honduras.

Often I felt that my brokenness was not welcome in church. In all fairness, our pastors teach correctly on brokenness and pain. We do not hear a prosperity gospel. Nonetheless, I perceived that “there was no room in the Inn” for my suffering and pain. I watched video stories touting larger than life images of lives given away, healed from bondage, stretched and molded.  God had come through for them.

Yet I could not reconcile that with my experience of giving my life away and finding myself beaten up and mauled. Nobody wanted to see my story on the 40x40 video screen. I know other stories of heartbreak. I will share a few. A young man goes to Mexico to be a missionary and becomes so distraught with the suffering of children that he begins to starve himself to death surviving on one tomato a day. He loses his faith and to this day is an atheist. A missionary couple leaves medical practices and head to South America. They decide to return home because their children are not doing well. Thirty days later he walks away from his family and his faith. Another couple prays for years about adoption and decides God has called them to it. They invest over $25,000 to rescue a baby from an overseas orphanage. The government shuts down the adoption program for no good reason. They never see their money again or the baby God seemingly had called them to. It happens. People walk into situations/ministries that they believe God has called them into and the house falls in around them. Marriages over. Friendships destroyed. Children abused or abandoned. Ministries lost. Lives changed often appearing to be ruined.

Lest we feel like square pegs in round holes, look at Hebrews.  Our forefathers “were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.” Hebrews 11:35-38.

Lewis Smedes said something like this: The true test of joy’s integrity is this: is it compatible with pain? Only the heart that hurts has a right to joy. 

Sometimes pain invades our lives and takes our breath away. We don’t often talk about it at church, that life often doesn’t work out as planned - the elephant in the sanctuary. There are times when this Christian life does not look so great. In fact, life sucks. This colloquialism is biblically accurate. 

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. John 16:33. 

I just want to admit that often my life does not follow the four point plan I had. Whose does? Babies die. Father’s get colon cancer. Marriages fail. Children are sexually abused. Tribulation. Hell yeah, and how. When he says, “take heart!” It’s not take two verses and call me in the morning. It is this: take courage, be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. He has won! 

My cheer comes from knowing that one day - like Cheryl - I will see Him face to face. He is far, far angrier about evil than I am. He will end it one day in a lake of burning sulfur.  He will wipe every one of my tears away! He is my shield and my very great reward. 

And yet it may happen in these the most desperate trials of our human existence that beyond any rational explanation, we may feel a nail-scarred hand clutching ours. The tragedy radically alters the direction of our lives, but in our vulnerability and defenselessness we experience the power of Jesus in His present risenness. 

Apart from the risen Christ we live in a world without meaning, a world of shifting phenomena, a world of death, danger, and darkness. A world of inexplicable futility. Nothing is interconnected. Nothing is worth doing for nothing endures. It is all sound and fury with no ultimate significance.

The dark riddle of life is illuminated in Jesus; the meaning, purpose, and goal of everything that happens to us, and the way to make it all count can be learned only from the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

Living in the awareness of the risen Christ is not a trivial pursuit for the bored and lonely or a defense mechanism enabling us to cope with the stress and sorrow of life. It is the key that unlocks the door to grasping the meaning of existence. All day and every day we are being reshaped into the image of Christ. Everything that happens to us is designed to this end.  - Brennan Manning

mamas offer refuge

Photo of my high school graduation. I'm on the left, Mama in the middle. My sister Jere is on the right.

Mama. What a beautiful word. Nurture. Encourage. Invest. 

When I was little, my Mama would comfort me by letting me crawl under her arm and lie down beside her. She would say, “Come and get under my wing.” My sisters and I would run in after a bad dream or a disappointment at school and find refuge under her “wing.”

Psalm 91:4 says “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.” Mama may not have known it at the time, but she was teaching me about the faithfulness and protection of God.

Beginning with the womb, mothers offer refuge. A safe place. A place to be yourself. A place to learn who you are.

The story goes that my mom got her name, Joy, because of the overflowing gratitude her parents felt at the time of her birth. Mom’s older sister had died as an infant from a heart defect. The grief left my grandparents empty in heart and arms. What else could they name their next baby girl but JOY?

My mother personifies the word.

She lives with an incomparable zest for life. When she is in a room, not one inch of space is left untouched. Her quick wit and creativity splash the space with JOY. She likes to laugh and her laugh is as infectious as it is healing. I am thankful for that laughter as it was a frequent balm during my childhood.

Perhaps the most admirable quality in my mother is her courage. She faced overwhelming hardship in the deterioration of her marriage when I was 12 years old. She did not hide her hurt but her courage shone as she grieved and picked up pieces and built something beautiful. With her courage, she breathed something into me.

From my mother, I learned to value intelligence, a good book and a beautifully decorated table. She taught me to play tennis, to water ski, to snow ski and to stand up for what is right. I admire her ability to find adventure in picking a sunflower on the side of the road or to be astonished by some small bit of nature. I inherited from her a love of oceans, an eye for beauty, and compassion for the downtrodden.

In one week, I will board a plane and travel to a country I have dreamt of visiting most of my life. Italy. Mama will come and care for my children. They will be better for having spent a week with their grandmother so aptly named JOY. And so her investment continues. 

Leave a comment on how your mother invested in you.

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

a tribute to my grandmother

Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances. Like an earring of gold and an ornament of fine gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear.  Proverbs 25:11-12

In this verse the wise reprover is a person who gives practical advice based on divine revelation and her own experience and observation. The word can refer to the skillfulness of artisans which explains the analogy to jewelry. This is my inheritance from my grandmother. 

I’d like to honor her today by telling you of a time she, the wise reprover, blessed me like a skilled artisan. This story is just one interaction over the course of a long life. The story represents her life.

The apples of gold are delivered in just the right circumstances. There was a day in my life when everything changed. It was a critical juncture. The choices I had been making had been disappointing many. And I had a choice to make about my future. I was lost, disoriented. The entire map of my future lay crumpled on the floor in a heap. 

I called Momice to tell her of my circumstances. I don’t remember the exact words she gave me but one phrase sticks in my mind. She said, “You have never disappointed me.” Through those words and others I have forgotten, she breathed life-giving oxygen into my deflated soul. She spoke words of blessing when I really least deserved them.

Momice’s words pointed me to the path ahead. In so many words she said, “Remember who you are.” I don’t exaggerate when I say that the conversation changed me forever. It marked me and 19 years later I draw strength from it. At a point when I thought all was lost - when I was exposed, naked, and vulnerable - she spoke words of tenderness and kindness. She spoke words of eternity. Her gentleness was and is a compass for me.

The message resonated with my soul because she had spoken it to me all my life – in words, actions, in silent acceptance. She loved me without condition. That was her life. For those of us lucky enough to be loved by her – that was her investment. And she is honored today by us as she lives on through us. 

Her investment in my life is best portrayed by this conversation. Think about it. How many times have you received a rebuke or correction that marked your life or that picked you up off of a path of destruction and set you back on the path of life? Not many. Maybe not even one. A rebuke is best delivered with a lightness of heart, a twinkle in the eye and a soft snicker of hope for the future. I think that is how Momice lived her life. 

Momice gave me a taste of redemption. It left me hungry for more. She showed me that true redemption is when you are struck dumb by the enormity of your failure but struck even dumber by the enormity of God’s heart to cancel our debt. When you experience that, you are grateful. And this gratitude frees the heart to dole out to others what has been freely given to you. 

Zelda means “woman warrior.” Bernice adds some spice meaning “brings victory.” I did not find this out until later on in the year that she died. The meaning of it has hit me like waves over time. That is what she leant to us – the ones she loved. She taught us to fight. She taught us to win. Femininity was not lost on her because her victories were sweet without violence. Her gentleness was a compass to us. But make no mistake; she was a warrior for her family. 

The love Momice had for me enlarged my heart. 

I wrote about the conversation I had with Momice in my journal the week before she died. It is a privilege for me to honor her today and to share her golden apples in settings of silver with you. They are my inheritance.