watch and pray

Today we enter Holy Week. In Honduras, no greater holiday exists. La Semana Santa far outshines Christmas. Stores shut down. Most people, even the poorer families, find their way to the beach. 

In downtown Tegucigalpa, artists craft carpets of painted sawdust covering the narrow streets. Curators walk the streets with spray bottles sprinkling water so that the sawdust won’t blow away in the dry wind. On Holy Sunday, a priest and some men in white robes will walk the carpet and stop at each station of the cross. A mass is held at the end of that procession in a small cathedral nearby.

I am pondering the moment when Jesus enters the Garden of Gethsemane and asks his disciples to watch and pray. He says he is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. His disciples snoozed. 

When he returns, he says: “Stay alert; be in prayer so you don't wander into temptation without even knowing you're in danger. There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there's another part that's as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire."

This lenten season has been long. Amen, anybody? While I wait for spring, I am craning my neck to see the Resurrection just around the corner. It’s hard for us Protestants to stay in this death watch. Historically, I have paid little attention to this week. Living in Honduras changed me in a number of ways.

This week, I heed the words of Jesus: WATCH AND PRAY. The Spirit is willing but the body is weak. 

I want to learn to pray the words Jesus prayed. And mean it.

"My Father, if there is no other way than this, drinking this cup to the dregs, I'm ready. Do it your way."

carry me

This morning Sam woke up barking like a seal. He had swim lessons yesterday and I think the pool chlorine irritated his airways. His asthma makes him more sensitive like that. He asked me, like he usually does first thing, “Mom, do I have school today?” 

When I responded “yes,” he began to cry. Little whimpering cries required some effort on his part to maintain. I knew time would heal his airways and he would clear the drainage. And he did. 

But when he began to cry, I picked him up and just held him. His head nestled into my neck and rested on my shoulder. He is still small enough to cuddle and I can hold him and walk. We made our way to the chair where we sit in the mornings. Skip rested on the edge. My Bible was already open. The chair is large and holds Joshua as well when he pads in later in the mornings. 

I wrote in my journal... Lord I am fretful.

See I have a big meeting today with some people who have a little earthly power bequeathed to them by a title. Really, I have nothing to lose in this meeting. The only “bad” thing that could happen is they may choose not to believe me. It’s as if the Lord is saying to me... “Gigi, who will you choose to believe? Me or them? Will you believe what I say about you is true? Will you fret over what these people MAY think about you?”

Later today after I fed Joshua a hardy breakfast so he is ready for his tests, and after I dropped Sam at pre-school; I called a dear friend. I told her of my angst. She lead me to a verse in Deuteronomy.

The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.'

I thought of how I carried Sam this morning in his momentary distress. And so now, I lift my arms up to my Abba. And I say, “Carry me.”

Update on 04.16.2011 by gigi

Thank you to everyone who prayed for my meeting. God's Presence was very real to me during it. I am grateful that I went and for all that He is teaching me through it.

Wait

Wait is a four letter word. Our culture has taught us to abhor waiting. My flesh wants what it wants NOW!

This morning I drove to work in a van that smells like vomit. It smells like vomit because two weeks ago my son puked in it. Then my husband “cleaned” it up. So it still smells like vomit. I am WAITING for the smell to go away. As I wait, I am reminded of the stench of sin. Ever since the fall, the stench of sin has flooded the earth and tainted our experience as humans. Every day, every moment, we deal with the consequences of our choices to look to other gods and NOT the True God. 

We deal with Adam and Eve’s choices. We deal with our father’s, our mother’s choices. We deal with a virus that causes a child to vomit and then produces the vile odor that leads to a woman being very angry at a man for not cleaning a van well enough. We deal with the stench of sin.

Since the beginning of time, humans have waited on God. We either choose to wait on God or we make our own way. I am faced with the choice every moment to wait on God to save me or to make my own life work apart from Him. 

Today as I suffered in the stench of puke, I used a tiny dropper and spread a little fragrant peppercorn oil over the air vents. For a few moments, the van smelled of Christmas. Eventually, the puke overwhelmed the peppercorns and I sat again in the funk. 

I cannot sweeten the stench of sin.

To wait requires that I remain in the present - open and empty handed. To wait demands that I trust, that I hope in the only One who can save. But in fear; I numb, escape, deodorize and deaden parts of my soul to make waiting more palatable. These fixes are but temporary. 

Sometimes in the waiting, God unravels us. He unstacks the layers of bricks we have deposited to cope with life by hiding. The purpose of unraveling is always freedom. He desires to unbind us from these idols, addictions and so-called coping mechanisms.

The Hebrew word for “to wait” - qavah -  literally means to bind together like a cord. It implies twisting strings and weaving them together to form a rope - the more strands, the greater the strength. As I am unbound from my idols, He weaves me back together when I wait on Him.

In many languages and in Hebrew, the verb “to wait” is the same as “to hope.” The way to hope is to simplify: to believe that actually only ONE thing will save me and that is my HOPE in Jesus Christ. When I live for ONE man, my noisy heart and nervous spirit settle. Jesus paid a one-time sacrifice. He set me right before God for all eternity. I still wait on Him to come again and set things right on earth and in Heaven. Until then, I sit in the stench and wait. I struggle with sin and hope.

I wait for the LORD, my soul does wait, 

And in His word do I hope.
My soul waits for the Lord
More than the watchmen for the morning ;
Indeed, more than the watchmen for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the LORD ;
For with the LORD there is lovingkindness,
And with Him is abundant redemption.

Psalm 130:5-7

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

unbound

Unbind

1.to release from bonds or restraint, as a prisoner; free.

2.to unfasten or loose, as a bond or tie.

Unravel

1.to separate or disentangle the threads of (a woven or knitted fabric, a rope, etc.).

2.to free from complication or difficulty; make plain or clear; solve: to unravel a situation; to unravel a mystery.

3.to take apart; undo; destroy (a plan, agreement, or arrangement).

 Looking at the two definitions, it makes sense that the unraveling would occur first. Before you can unbind, you would need to unravel. And the unraveling is in a sense an unbinding. 

When the unraveling begins in my life, I only think of the third definition. Undo. Destroy. I don’t typically see that God is at work underneath the fabric separating, disentangling, freeing me from complications or difficulties. I can’t see that He wants to clear up or solve my addictions and idols. I grasp for faith that He is indeed unraveling a mystery in order to show me more plainly His Face.

In the past 10 weeks, I have had a bit of an unraveling. Again. 

I started working 2-3 days a week. With a busy family of three boys and a husband working also, the change was overwhelming if only taken from a logistics standpoint. Soon I began to nosedive: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. This does not mean that work was not good. I am aware of many blessings, gifts in returning to work. I enjoy my work. I can use an education and a language (Spanish), both gifts from God. This unexpected blessing is a provision financially for our family. And on and on. 

I hold both things: the blessing and the difficulties.

My tendency in the unraveling is to hunker down and hold on. To survive it. I grip the loose threads and try to knit them back together. I grasp for the unraveling fabric and attempt to hide behind it. Nothing in me wants to spread wide my arms and let go. Freedom? This does not feel like freedom.

I need time to be quiet. I need time to process. But life is coming so fast I cannot seem to get it all done. I really am demanding to UNDERSTAND. But God seems to be asking me to TRUST. I want to be the one to unravel the mystery. God wants me to just BE in his PRESENCE. And to worship the Mystery.

The unbinding, even the unraveling, is His work.