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Sacred Hoarding

“Your grandparents and my generation were forced hoarders.  Growing up post-depression era, you never threw anything away because if you didn’t need it, someone else might.  Then it sort of became habit.  Which is why it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that your grandma tried to give you shorts from when your aunts were sixteen and I found a letter from my first boyfriend in 1947 last week. But it was different back then.”  

As we sat listening to her regale times from what seemed like a different world, my mind wandered to the richness of this space we sat in.  Nothing particularly fancy or noteworthy for the front page of a newspaper.  My 24-year-old sister and I popping over to check-in on our grandmother-like friend during my quick trip to town after a work conference.  An early Saturday afternoon in jeans and sweaters, the intention of bringing flowers thwarted by the grocery store being out and not drinking coffee or eating anything because she was tired and we were full from breakfast.  An ordinary day, with ordinary girls, listening to an ordinary story of an ordinary woman growing up in the dust bowl era of Kansas.  And yet, there was something sacred about that space.  Something holy about the far-off look in her eyes as she drew my sister and I back to the time where two-room school houses were fancy and electricity wasn’t commonplace in homes.  Maybe I have forgotten what it’s like to step outside my narcissistic problems and really listen to someone.  Maybe I’ve been so caught up in the hustle and bustle of doing when what I really need is to be Mary instead of Martha.  But whatever the case, it got me thinking of how each of us has a beautiful story to tell.  It probably won’t make the news.  It may not even make it out of our diaries and shower singing.  And that was what really got my mind noodling—the potential of our stories getting lost altogether and only the “exciting” ones persevering throughout the years.  That’s what the history books say, anyway.  The winners and pot-stirrers are the ones worth writing down and remembering generations later.  But that’s where the beauty of Jesus shows up.  He didn’t come to Earth as a president or rockstar or military leader, but as a carpenter to an unmarried woman with some barn animals and shepherds to welcome him to our world, living the first few years of his life as a refugee, cast out by his own town as an adult.  Yes, he radically changed our world, but not because of a newsworthy biography.  At least, by the world’s standards.

Perhaps I don’t feel worthy enough or good enough or smart enough or Enough enough to find the connection with my fellow Created and make some room in the margins for storytelling. Maybe I do give into the world’s definition of worth rather than the One who created us and answer, “Fine” when asked how I am, even though I’m definitely not fine all the time.  And maybe I spend dinner scrolling through my Facebook and Instagram, desperate for just one more “like” instead of finding worth in the Creator.  And what I miss in my perpetual virtual world refreshing and silencing of my true self is creating the memories my sister and I sat listening to this afternoon.

What if, instead of picking up a fashion magazine to find the latest boot that our friends will gush over, we go to our friend’s house and make ourselves cry, laughing over the ridiculous fashion in our current closets?  Not to be on the edge of the trend, but to find that connection through laughter and tears of the ones we journey through the mundane pieces of life.

What if, instead of binge watching Netflix by ourselves so we can be in the know with our co-workers over the latest show, we cuddle up with our loved ones under a blanket for indoor camping and binge watch Netflix together?  Not to feel part of the conversation, but to be part of a deep relationship with our beloveds.

What if, instead of putting our phones on the table during dinner to text people who aren’t there, we take out our phones at dinner to capture the pictures of the ones we are with? Not necessarily to post to social media later, but to solidify the night in our memories when we are telling stories to our grandchildren about the “good ol’ days”.

There’s no need to return to the era of paying an 8th grader a dime a week to haul in the coal to warm the country schoolhouse, but there is infinite worth in creating the space for living life in the present so, fifty years from now, we can continue to create that holy ground for someone else choosing to value the life of another Created. We pause to let our spirits catch up with our bodies, intentionally carving out space in the margins for when your 8-year-old (or husband) comes in the bedroom to show off his newly built Lego Star Wars flying craft.  May you put down your phone, close your magazine, stop your list-making and learn all about its special features, laser shooters and bad-guy qualities because he is another Created.  And when you have the opportunity to share your life, whether verbally or in written word, may you put that moment in it.  Chances are, it won’t make a history book or news reel or maybe even your thoughts the next day, but you catch a snapshot of the kingdom in both the creation and recreation of that moment.  Those little moments add up, filling journals and rooms and years of memories.  They may even be seen as hoarding to one who doesn’t look closely.  But the intentional cycle of creating and retelling and listening and creating is a sacred one in which we affirm to one another, “You are worth it.  Your life, however mundane and ordinary, plays a part in the larger story.”  We reflect the truth from our Creator to other Created that we are beloved and have a purpose, an intentionality.  And in speaking that truth, we point back to the Creator as the source of life, the one who causes the sun to rise and the world to turn and calls us into this beautiful relationship with Himself. In Him is where we find our meaning, our purpose and the charge to speak these values to and about one another.

So whether we are soaking up the inspiring tale of a woman who fought for equal rights for African-Americans and women in the 1800s or the inspiring tale of a woman whose reminiscing and mindfulness of dust-filled two-roomed schoolhouses forces you to take a deep breath and abide in the grace of the One who created it all, be there.  Share the highlights, the lowlights, the neon lights, the night lights, the flashlights, the stage lights, the florescent lights you forget are there, and the times the lights go out.  Shine the light on one another as Created and revel in the uniqueness of each others’ lives.  Because in doing so, we become a little more like the light of the world we are called to be.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

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For anyone who wants to get a real look at our journey with infertility. And no, we still don’t have any answers. But we do have hope.

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Dark Twinkle Lights

Have you ever looked out the window while you’re flying at night and watched the lines of cars streaming along? They’re kind of like those twinkle lights you string up on your mini Christmas tree or around your dorm room in college; inviting, almost fluid streams of hope on their way to make a difference.  Some light paths are grids, criss-crossing their way across the city, very orderly citizens keeping to their sections.  Some light paths meander and flow in and out and all around the hills and valleys of the towns, paying no heed to boundaries or lines.  And in between the light paths are the dark spaces.

Right now, crossing over somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico, the dark overpowers the twinkle lights.  The occasional Light, it seems, is lost in the vastness of Dark, caught on a backroad to nowhere on an empty tank.  How could Twinkle Light find its way back to the city of Lights, the route of hope? Dark reaches its hands, arms, ever multiplying, ever growing like Hexxus from Fern Gully.  Drive quickly, little one; don’t let Dark catch you!

And then there are the cities so full of Light that you forget Dark even exists.  So much hustle there, bustle there; so much movement going, Going, GOING!  Twinkle Lights so congested they become one giant blur, almost too bright to look at.  Careening and swirling, caught in the Fear of Missing Out!  Turning sharply here and there and everywhere only to find we’re back where we started.  Slow down, little one; don’t let Light rush you!

Too much Dark and we lose our way.  Too much Light and we lose our way.  Fighting the tension between the light and the dark, the already and the not yet, caught in the in between.  The dark between the light and Light between Dark; a constant tightrope of where we’re headed and where we’ve been.  Then, in the distance, you see it.  Dark and Light, sharing space together down the road. And you recognize sometimes all you can do is put one step in front of the other to keep both at bay and make your way along this messy journey we aren’t really sure how to navigate. Trusting in the balance of hope.  Twinkle Lights and the Dark.

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There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you.

James 2:13, NLT

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"Erick Barrondo wins Guatemala’s first-ever Olympic medal, then pleads for peace in his country"

Read the short story here on this young man's win for his country and urge to end the violence raging in Guatemala.  On earth as it is in heaven.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/erick-barrondo-wins-guatemala-first-ever-olympic-medal-230300866--oly.html

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[We need to] focus not on the question of which human beings God is going to take to heaven and how he is going to do it but on the question of how God is going to redeem and renew his creation through human beings and how he is going to rescue those humans themselves as part of the process but not as the point of it all.

Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright pg. 185

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One in three

                                          "Violence surveys generally place lifetime prevalence of intimate partner violence against women at between 25% and 30% and annual prevalence at between approximately 2% and 12%." Wathen C, MacMillan H.  Interventions for Violence Against Women.  JAMA 2003; 289(5): 589-599.

That's one in three women in their lifetime.  Experiencing physical, emotional, sexual, psychological, and/or property abuse. From a spouse or partner. Someone's mother, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, neighbor, co-worker, Nana, unborn baby.

And the story could end there because we live in a broken place.

But God is continually renewing us and His world. The kingdom has broken through, if only in pieces. And the statistics aren't the end. Satan does not have the final word.

Here are some resources for anyone experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) or who knows someone going through this.  

You are not alone. You are created for so much more. And there is help. I'm praying with you and for you.

-National Online Research Center on Violence Against Women: http://www.vawnet.org/

-Resource Center on Domestic Violence: http://www.nrcdv.org/

-Battered Women's Justice Project: http://www.bwjp.org/

-White Ribbon Campaign: http://www.whiteribbon.ca/

-The DELTA Program: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/DELTA_AAG-a.pdf

-Faith Trust Institute: http://www.faithtrustinstitute.org/

-Futures Without Violence: http://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/

-Women of Color Against Violence: http://www.incite-national.org/

-Help and Healing for Victims of Violence: http://www.witnessjustice.org/

*image retrieved from: http://generalhealthtopics.com/understanding-intimate-partner-violence-1118.html 

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Getting our wizarding skills on