full

What makes the difference in my view of this heap of dirty laundry? 

Gratitude.

Matthew is a senior at UT Knoxville. He doesn’t get home often. So when he rolls home bearing gifts of baskets of dirty clothes, I am elated. His presence far, and I mean far, outweighs the downer of hampers of dirt. In fact, when he comes in this house, this mother’s heart fills to capacity.

In part, the reason for this shift is that he was not here before. The joy of his presence is made richer by his absence. The house was emptier before he came. I missed him. Now it is fuller. 

As I sip my coffee and reflect on Thanksgiving, the whir of the washing machine fills the silence. The yeast rolls sit atop the oven. I have increased the thermostat in our home to 73 degrees. The oven, open-doored, is blowing out hot air to coax them to rise in this sub-freezing weather. 

Every year the rolls make me slightly neurotic. Will they rise? What exactly did I do last year to coax them? Will they be tough? I usually make a phone call to my grandmother, 89, in Mississippi about what I need to do next. She loves answering these questions. She taught me to make these rolls. Very few holidays in my life have passed without the aroma of her rolls.

During holidays more acutely than other days; we are aware of losses, of tensions, of emptiness. May we hold those things in tandem with the fullness we receive. 

I am learning to give thanks for the seasons. Everything rises and everything passes. We empty to be filled again. We are filled to be emptied again. This is the lesson of the seasons.

“Every breath’s a battle between grudgery and gratitude and we must keep thanks on the lips so we can sip from the holy grail of joy.” Ann Voskamp, 1000 Gifts

forgetfulness

Forgetfulness is the mortal enemy of gratitude. 

I must say the older I get the more forgetful I become. I’ve missed meetings. I have missed meals. I have even missed jury duty. 

But I am talking about spiritual memory here. When I forget what all God has done for me, I can easily become focussed on my circumstances. With my eyes on the problems at hand, I quickly begin sinking like ole Peter trying to walk on the waves. 

Today I burned myself while getting the sweet potatoes out of the oven. I got all my cooking done today for Thanksgiving. I averted a catastrophe narrowly by holding on to the full pan of sweet potatoes even though my hand was frying. 

Several hours later I was trying to think of what I could put on the burn. Then it hit me. I had an aloe plant! I bought it back in August specifically for treating burns in my family. When we lived in Honduras, we had a large aloe plant just out the back door. It is like a wonder cure for burns. 

Sure enough when I applied the balm of the aloe plant, my burn eased immediately. I had suffered for hours needlessly. The plant sat there all day long. 

This is how my forgetfulness works spiritually. I don’t apply the balm of faith to my circumstances. I forget that God has worked before to bring about good from chaos, character from calamity, and even reunions from broken relationships. 

Today I remembered a time when the Lord prepared me for a difficult circumstance through a dream. A dream! Now picture my head cocked to one side, my nose scrunched up and my voice emphasizing the words: A DREAM. As I reflected on that time, I told the Lord how thankful I was for that dream and the other ways He worked through that horrible time. 

Without walking in gratitude my faith flounders. When I apply the balm of gratitude, my faith inflates and my eyes rest on my Provider. 

wrecks, rainbows & reality

ex·pect v. ex·pect·ed, ex·pect·ing, ex·pects v.tr. 1. a. To look forward to the probable occurrence or appearance of:               expecting a telephone call; expects rain on Sunday.     b. To consider likely or certain: expect to see them soon.  2. To consider reasonable or due: We expect an apology. 3. To consider obligatory; require: The school expects its pupils to be on time. 4. Informal To presume; suppose. v.intr. 1. To look forward to the birth of one's child. Used in progressive tenses: His sister is expecting in May. 2. To be pregnant. Used in progressive tenses: My wife is expecting again.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/expect

“This is not what I expected.”

How many times have we uttered those words? Or how many times have they remained inside and lodged in our throats sitting heavy above our hearts?

It doesn’t take long to mentally walk through our circles of friends and find many levels of unmet expectations.

I thought I’d finish college sooner. I thought I’d get married and wait several years to have kids. I thought I’d live longer. I thought my kids would grow up and be mentally healthy. I thought he’d be faithful. I thought they would be fair.

I expected them to come home for Thanksgiving. I expected to see them at the wedding. I expected my cholesterol to go down. I expected to be able to buy my kids’ Christmas presents.

Our expectations stack several inches or feet or millimeters above reality. And the gap between them - expectations and reality - is disappointment. And sometimes life feels like one long series of disappointments. 

And when we feel like we are being hit by one after the other with no time for recovery, finding gratitude can be very challenging. Or impossible. 

Yesterday I picked up my new glasses. They are progressive lens. My vision had changed, and my life at 2 feet around me was blurry. The optometrist put these new lenses on my nose and made the necessary adjustments. Voila! I could see. I could read the close up and see the computer screen and then look around and see the shoppers lumbering through Costco. 

My spiritual eyes need adjusting sometimes. 

Henry Nouwan offers just such an adjustment in The Prodigal Son. 

 I am challenged to let go of all the voices of doom and damnation that drag me into depression and allow the “small” joys to reveal the truth about the world I live in. When Jesus speaks about the world, He is very realistic. He speaks about wars and revolution, earthquakes, plagues and famines, persecution and imprisonment, betrayal, hatred and assassinations. There is no suggestion at all that these signs of the world’s darkness will ever be absent. But still God’s joy can be ours in the midst of it all. It is the joy of belonging to the household of God whose love is stronger than death and who empowers us to be in the world while already belonging to the kingdom of joy.

I drew the above illustration in my journal in 2009. It was a season of feeling the waves of disappointment - one after another. I kept expecting the rainbows and flowers and the bombs and wrecks kept coming. I wrote, “I live in the ‘not yet’ looking for signs of God’s grace. Yes. He shooed us from the garden, but He has not left us as orphans.”

I still need to be reminded that this world is not our home, that disasters and disappointment are part of life, and that in those joy is not absent.

Tell fearful souls, "Courage! Take heart! God is here, right here, on his way to put things right And redress all wrongs. He's on his way! He'll save you!" Isaiah 34: 5

do not cling

Lately I have been aware of places in my soul in deep need of grace. I shared some of those places and thoughts with some friends the other night. One precious new friend beseeched me to be gentle and find grace for myself. She said she would pray for me to find that grace. 

It has not even been 24 hours since then and already Jesus is answering. 

This harshness arises from the inner Pharisee (or critic) who stands in judgment of me. Her god is perfection. And when I don’t measure up, she swiftly pounds the gavel. She has relied on performance and approval to get by and to survive. She is hungry for grace but doesn’t know it all that well. 

For some time, in fact for seven years, I have judged our time in Honduras as a failure. Failure is a harsh word. The posture of the critic is even harsher. My eyes are coming unveiled to see what a tragedy it is to view it that way. It arises from an arrogant idea that I know what is best and God does not. I have judged His plan, doubted His care for orphans, and floundered under comparison of our journey with others. 

In reality, I am clinging to an idea of how I wanted things to work. I wanted to stay with those children and see them through graduation from high school. I hoped to never inflict upon them pain and loss. I wanted to keep living the dream of caring for them and fulfilling our calling as I understood it.  

After Jesus had died and was buried, the disciples stood around in the garden for a while. Then they went home. All but Mary. She cried as she stood there, and then went over and peeked in the tomb. She found it empty. She thought she saw the gardener and through teary eyes begged him to tell her where they had put Jesus’ body. When Jesus said her name, “Mary!” her eyes opened and she saw Jesus standing before her. ALIVE! 

He said to her, “Do not cling to me. Go to the brothers and tell them I have ascended to the Father.”

In that moment she transformed from a clingy, fearful, grieving woman to the first apostle to carry the good news on this earth. She let go of the reality she had wanted. Jesus is back. He is alive. Things can go back to the way they were. She grabbed hold of the future as Jesus set forth. “Go!” 

My hands are open. My arms are wide for the Pharisee to come in and receive warmth and grace. My eyes are on the horizon to see the path open wide before me.

stress and prayer

Today Sam grinned his half-snaggle-toothed smile at me and asked me: “Are you coming to the bus stop with me?” Typical of me, I was running late. But I did not hesitate to nod in the affirmative.

The walk to our bus stop includes wet grass. Matt has started a habit of giving him a back ride across the grassy sea. My heart fills up when I watch the two of them gallop off in the mornings. But today I was up to be the horsey.

So I grabbed my rain boots and hitched Sam up. About three-quarters of the way over the sea, Sam yells out, “My helmet!” 

The horse stops. What helmet?! He had packed in a small lego super hero to take to school. The helmet came off in the grassy sea. A moment of panic threatened us as we realized the small lego helmet is out in this grassy sea. I prayed aloud, “Jesus, help us find the helmet” because I am trying to remember to invite Him into my stress and anxiety. 

Stress threatens not only our peace but does a number on our bodies as well. I am learning about the neurotransmitters in the body. When we perceive a threat, the amygdala (a walnut-sized part of the brain) sends out a virtual army of helpers. These neuro-messengers allow us to run fast, see in the dark and have a load of glucose dumped in our blood for quick energy. 

Problem is that even if the threat is small (like a lost lego helmet), our bodies do the job with precision and consistency. Over time our adrenal glands wear out. The adrenals sit like little helmets themselves atop each of our kidneys. They manufacture some of these stress hormones. When they tire, the picture is not pretty. We fatigue. We keep asking our bodies for energy, but none is there. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. The message goes out but nobody is responding. 

My adrenals are worn out. Thus the need to invite Jesus. I am reminded of my creature-hood. I can ask for help. My frontal cortex (the part of the brain reserved for higher reasoning just behind the forehead) says to my amygdala and adrenals, “Hey, it’s a helmet. And the Lord is with us even in the small details. Relax.”

Guess what! We found that pea-sized helmet. “It’s a miracle!” I yelled! Sam danced. I thanked Jesus who is involved in the details. Yes, He is.