I have learned to kiss the wave that slams me into the Rock of Ages. – Charles Spurgeon
When I was in Hawaii, my friends and I had a beach across the street from our guest cottage, and Kaneohe Bay in our backyard. Many times a day, alone or together, we’d patter down the steps from the back deck and into the rocky tide pools behind the house. As a tropical Atlantic girl, I was endlessly fascinated by the giant lava rocks. I did the Ariel “part of your woooorld” pose more than just the one time for a picture, because it was fun. I kept swimming around the rocks, climbing onto and over them like a kid, looking for the best places to sit and look out to sea without getting concussed.
On one of our last afternoons, I decided to venture out to the furthest rock point accessible from our house. I knew the waves would be rougher out there, but the challenge made it more appealing. YEAR OF ALIVE!!! Sure enough, the water’s force as it crashed through the rocks was unsettling even for an ocean veteran. But I found a good place to stand and hang on. In some unexplainable way, I wanted to contend with the waves and experience their might. I wanted salt spray in my face and wind in my hair. I needed to feel small and brave at the same time, to be enveloped by something much more powerful than myself, but to be part of it nonetheless.
After a while I started my descent back into the water, congratulating myself on completing the adventure injury-free. That’s when an enormous wave took my feet out from under me and scraped my legs across a rock. I had no defense against it, no control over my own body aside from hanging on. Realizing that this could have been bad, I thought, Okay, ocean. You win. Good game. I went back to the house bleeding but weirdly exultant.
Last week, applying lotion to my now winter-dry legs, I was surprised to notice pink lines standing out on my calf from my game of chicken with the ocean. Huh, I thought. If I’d thought I’d still have scars from that almost three months later, maybe I wouldn’t have done it.
Except I totally would have.
4 Comments + Posted in: reflections
As I rummaged through my five bins of Christmas decorations last week, I realized I wasn’t in the mood to over-deck the halls this year. I took out only my favorite things, and it was very freeing!
I used to have a traditional (fake) pine wreath, but last year I picked up my white wood wreath on clearance at Target. I’d had my eye on it for years. It’s simple and classy, and neutral enough that I can leave it up through January.
My dining table remains basically the same throughout the year – I just change the placemat or runner under my ruffled bowl, as well as what’s in it.
This is the Nativity creche I grew up with, which was passed to me after my parents got a hand-carved set from Bethlehem. When I was a kid, I used to add my Little People to the scene. I don’t know where the creche came from. Last night I checked it over to see if it’s a Fontanini like the one Alanna just got. It is not, so no need to feel bad about the years of abuse it took!
My tree is flocked, pre-lit, and even has tiny pinecones. I love it. Still haven’t figured out how to keep the star from drooping over, though.
Some of my favorite ornaments: a golden aspen leaf that I picked up in Colorado last year, and a lobster from Maine; an ornament I made from fabric scraps at a crafting event with Hillary a few years ago; a snowflake made of sheet music from Pottery Barn; my initial (from Kirkland’s, I think) and Charlie Brown.
To me, this will always be my cat Gandalf’s ornament. It was actually given to me by the same former boss who gave me Gandalf himself. The ornament makes music (or used to, before the battery died), and its song freaked him right out. He was simultaneously intrigued and terrified by it. I have a short video of him smelling the ornament, meowing and pawing at it, then rushing into my lap like “HELP!!” It’s now something I would save from a fire. (The video and the ornament.)
I kept the mantel simple: a Charlie Brown tree, a bowl of pinecones, a glass star, and some verses from Isaiah. The poster design came from a free printable I found on Pinterest, but rather than pay to have it printed up at size, I freehanded it myself on black posterboard with a metallic Sharpie and White-Out. Then I stuck it to a canvas I already had with double-sided tape. I am ridiculously pleased with my work. I didn’t realize until later that the laurel leaf pattern matches my stocking (and tree skirt!), and then it all felt like destiny.
And that’s it! I might put up a string of outside lights this weekend, but with or without them, this is a pretty pared-down Christmas and I’m happy about it.
6 Comments + Posted in: christmas, domestic
In order to join my new church, I had to write a personal testimony or “Gospel story.” The process was surprisingly difficult for me, for reasons I’ll talk about later because I think others will relate. But I finally submitted it this weekend. It’s nothing revolutionary, but I thought I’d share a slightly edited version of it here.
Please note that a testimony and a statement of faith are two different things (thanks to Alanna for helping me articulate this). If you have questions about who Jesus is to me now or why I became and/or remain a Christian, I’m happy to talk about it – and may write another post along those lines.
When I was ten years old, I responded to an altar call in Sunday school at my Pentecostal church. I had attended church for as long as I could remember, so God, Jesus, and salvation weren’t new concepts to me. But that morning, my Sunday school teacher asked whether we were sure we were going to heaven if we died in a car accident on the way home. I wasn’t, so I prayed the traditional sinner’s prayer along with my teacher. Although I mainly did so as spiritual insurance, I think it was somewhat genuine. Two years later I decided to be baptized, and was happy about it.
Outwardly, my teen years were pretty smooth. I was a people-pleasing good girl who prayed and read the Bible regularly, went to youth group, and didn’t drink, smoke, or sleep around. I was so busy with school and activities that I didn’t have much energy to question or wrestle spiritually, but sometimes the weight of the works-based theology I lived under was overwhelming. One night when I was seventeen, watching TBN with my mom (did I mention I grew up Pentecostal?), I “rededicated” my life to Christ. I don’t remember my reasoning, but I have a lingering impression that it was less about guilt over sin and more about being spiritually exhausted and at the end of myself.
Contrary to stereotype, I didn’t go crazy in college; it was actually one of the most intense periods of my faith. Also contrary to stereotype, I thrived spiritually at a big, bad public university. I developed relationships with Christians of different backgrounds, like my Catholic roommate (who’s still one of my best friends). After a couple of years of heavy involvement at the Baptist Student Union, I felt at the end of myself again. I was aware on a new level that no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t holy and could never measure up to God’s requirements. I couldn’t reconcile that with constant messages about holiness and walking ever-narrower spiritual roads. Around that time, someone invited me to a Reformed University Fellowship large group, and the things I heard there turned everything back right side up for me. I wasn’t crazy – my sinfulness was real, but Jesus hadn’t come to hold me to a set of rules. He came to earn God’s favor for me. I didn’t have to worry often about my salvation – it would hold because Jesus doesn’t lose His sheep. It was the first time in my life that I fully understood and appreciated grace. While I believe my faith was real before then, this was a major turning point.
I got married when I was 25. I had met my husband at RUF and was basically in love with him for several years before we started dating. For our first few years together, I was so in love and thankful to be with him that I failed to notice how one-sided our marriage was. While I wasn’t a perfect wife and now wish I’d done some things differently, he routinely neglected me and put his hobbies and interests ahead of our marriage as well as his relationship with God. The message I got from church and Christian books was that if I just submitted more and prayed harder, God would change his heart and set our relationship right. Things got steadily worse until I was exhausted, depressed, and felt more alone than I ever have. I felt like a powerless non-person, a blank slate only existing to serve others’ needs and be what everyone else – including God – wanted me to be. Eventually I decided I couldn’t live that way anymore. I started going to counseling and believing that God loved and valued ME, myself, and created me on purpose. That He didn’t intend for me to endlessly pour myself out to the last drop… not because I was a woman, and not because I was a Christian.
This soul work was put to the test in November 2009, when my husband confessed to an affair. I was completely devastated, but still loved him and wanted to work things out. He waffled, left briefly, and then agreed to reconcile. While I was totally committed to the marriage, in the aftermath I set a much higher bar for how I expected to be treated. So, six months later, he told me he had cheated again and was no longer interested in staying married to me. He left that night, and my divorce was final a few weeks after my 31st birthday. During this worst time of my life, I have never felt closer to God. I knew in my soul that He was grieving with me and wasn’t okay with what had happened to me. I was heartbroken and all my plans had turned to dust, but I felt God’s presence and a deep conviction that He was still at work and would bring good out of my suffering. From day one I wanted to use my experience to comfort and advise others in similar situations, and I still try to do that, mainly through my blog. It means everything to me when people, especially other divorced people, tell me they were helped by something I wrote. I don’t know much about God’s plans for me, but I know that’s one of the reasons why I’m here.
I started my post-divorce life overflowing with hope even as I grieved, but that hope has faded. I believed that after this long (four years), I’d have an amazing new life with a fulfilling, purposeful job, a loving relationship with a wonderful man, and maybe even a family. That’s how God turns ashes into beauty, right? Instead, I’ve made no progress in my career and still lack a bright and shining purpose. I haven’t had a close relationship (even a platonic one) with any guy, and hadn’t even been on A Date until this year. (Many other Christians I know have divorced and remarried in this intervening time.) I’m 35 and am slowly accepting that I probably won’t have kids. I doubt increasingly how much my story and experience are worth, because people want a happy ending. I have an active, fun life and more than my share of loving friends, but the years the locusts ate have not been restored, and I’m no longer sure if they ever will be. I don’t really know how to cope with that, so I have trouble imagining how others can be encouraged by it. My intimacy with God has suffered as I try to find a positive framework for a future that might always fall short of my hopes.
However, God has definitely provided for me this year by bringing me to my new church. It’s a place where you can be loved, valued, and useful regardless of your gender or demographic, where people aren’t afraid to admit they’re broken, where people are dreaming big dreams for themselves, each other, and our city. I’ve wanted to belong in a place like that for a long time. I’m excited to be part of it and hopeful for how God might use it in my life.
15 Comments + Posted in: faith
I refuse to engage in any Christmas activities until Thanksgiving is over. But now that December is here, I’m firing up the holiday music! I love to hear about people’s Christmas-music traditions and favorites, so I thought I’d share mine. Shamelessly.
The two albums I can’t do without in December are Mariah Carey’s classic Merry Christmas (the recent sequel wasn’t even close) and Barenaked Ladies’ Barenaked for the Holidays. Yes, I’m serious. In addition to creative takes on Christmas classics and excellent inclusion of Hanukkah songs, BNL’s album boasts my favorite holiday recording of all time, their “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings” featuring Sarah McLachlan. On my second tier are Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas – of course – and Hanson’s 1997 masterwork Snowed In, recorded before Taylor’s voice broke. I dare you not to feel Yuletide cheer listening to their “Merry Christmas Baby.”
More recent favorites: Over the Rhine’s Snow Angels (“New Redemption Song” has become a year-round staple) and Pentatonix’ amazing PTXMas. The Hotel Cafe presents Winter Songs has some original songs and unusual variations, including a perfect duet by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson, which still makes me cry every time I listen to it.
My childhood in the tropics is reflected in my love of Jimmy Buffett’s Christmas Island… and then there’s “Feliz Navidad.” This bilingual classic is tied to one of the craziest stories in my family’s history. Sometime in the 1960s or maybe early 70s, my uncle was running the Delta ticket counter at Miami International Airport when Jose Feliciano tried to board a flight with his seeing-eye dog. My uncle insisted that no animals were allowed on the plane, and when Mr. Feliciano insistently disagreed, a fistfight broke out. Actually, the story goes that my uncle leaped over the counter and started throwing punches, and from what I’ve heard about his temper at the time, it seems plausible. Obviously I don’t condone this behavior AT ALL, but from a distance of 50 years it totally cracks me up. I can’t listen to the cheery song without picturing my uncle and Mr. Feliz Navidad whaling on each other in front of the Delta logo. In my head, it’s like a scene from a Tarantino movie.
Well, no further discussion of music will be exciting after that, but feel free to partake of my Ultimate Holidays Playlist on Spotify. Please share some of your Christmas favorites, especially the less common recordings. I’m always looking for new tunes!
5 Comments + Posted in: christmas, family, music
I’m always looking for cool phone wallpapers. I also still miss Hawaii over two months after my trip there. So I created iPhone 5 wallpapers from some of my favorite Hawaii pictures for your free download and enjoyment. They may work well enough for other phones too!
Click on the thumbnail to go to the full-size image. You know what to dooooo.
Enjoy!