Risk

Many of my friends have a word of the year. Whether their year goes from January through December or from their birthday to their next birthday, they listen for a word that calls them to something more. I have never had a word for my year, but a few months ago a word came to me that I know is mine until I’m done with it. That might be next week or more likely it will be months or possibly years from now. The word is, “Risk.”

For a long time I was extremely conscientious, guilt-ridden, emotionally-suppressed, self-controlled (my mother told me as a child that I was the most self-controlled person she knew)… You get the picture. Through psychotherapy and my own journey into the field of psychotherapy, but mostly God’s grace, I am freer of the idolatry and trap that many of those things can be, and have been, for me. And yet, to choose to Risk continues to be difficult. Risk seems foolish, impulsive, exposed, risky (risk seems risky, right?). And yet, if I am a person under grace, if I am a person of faith, then risk is inevitable. Faith is all about Risk – if we must trust what we cannot see, at many times cannot feel – then it is incredibly Risky. Some might even call it foolish.

One of my intentional and terrifying acts of Risk that I am choosing to take is to publish a novel; a romance novel, no less. Sure, I’d like to publish something profound and deep, a classic. But that is a gift bestowed on few and I recognize it is unlikely I am one of them. Don’t get me wrong, innumerable gifts, many of great significance have been bestowed on me, but I do not know writing a profound literary piece will be one of them.

It is always risky to expose oneself and one’s work to the world. But as my dear friend, Robin, reminded me, my work is now “other” than me. It is partially me, but it is also other. Many things happened in this novel and in the process of writing it that have nothing to do with me. I am merely a conduit in those best moments. A conduit for something larger, something grander, and more beautiful than anything I could ever scrawl.

By the time it is published, it will have been two years in the writing. And the process of writing has been so profoundly beautiful, freeing, and risky for me all at the same time.

So, lift your glasses to Risk, my friends. Lift your glasses to leaping over the cliff of publishing.

Nighttime Prayers

Since she was an infant, I have prayed a prayer every night for Annabelle. And in the last couple of months she has begun to finish every single sentence... I don't know that there is anything more beautiful as I hear her say the words that I have hoped and prayed and begged over her the last three years. May it be so...

"Dear God:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Thank you for today.
And thank you, that for Annabelle, today is over.
Please help her to sleep well.
Help her to know, even as she sleeps, 
that she is Seen, and Heard, and Known,
Cherished, and Celebrated, and Loved.
May she have beautiful dreams of You and Your Kingdom.
Watch over her, take care of her,
Help her to grow healthy and strong.
May she be a Blessing and a Joy,
Kind and Loving to Others."
(and then I ask if she wants to pray for anyone or anything... and this is where it gets interesting and beautifully childlike).
And then we say,
"God, thank you for Jesus and that He lived, and He died, and He lives again.
In His name we pray, Amen!"

I have prayed this prayer for many of you and your little ones too...

I hope you are seen and heard and known; cherished and celebrated and loved! And I hope you know it in the deepest places of your soul and even as you sleep.

Happy Friday!

Are men allergic to dishwashers?

I don’t want this to be a man-bashing piece. Really, I don’t. It’s just that I do wonder sometimes if my husband is allergic to the dishwasher.

I have evidence against the theory of a dishwasher allergy. My friend Brad* insists on always being the one to load and unload the dishwasher. It’s his OCD, he says. His wife doesn’t do it right and neither do their six kids, apparently.

I get it, the strong urge to keep the counters clean and the dishwasher loaded properly. But it’s more important to me that the counters stay clear and the dishes actually make it into the dishwasher, especially if I’ve gone to all the work to empty it, carefully putting everything away.

So you see I really want to believe there is another reason, besides the many negative explanations, for why my husband cannot seem to put a dish in the dishwasher until the sink and counters are overflowing and I’ve been out of town for two days. It has to be allergies.

I frequently talk with women who have learned that men don’t see the crumbs on the counters, with the exception of the obsessive compulsive ones of course. Perhaps it is just their obliviousness, their lack of paying attention in the kitchen that is the culprit. Or maybe it is allergies.

I have another friend, Stanley,* when asked to do the dishes because his wife was putting the kids to bed, promptly put them all in the fridge unwashed, as if he was incapable of remembering what he was doing. She got a good laugh and a good lesson from that one. She’s never asked him to do the dishes again.

And then there’s me. I don’t imagine myself a normal woman by any stretch of the imagination (whatever the heck 'normal' is anyway). I love things neat and clean, but if I have to choose, I’ll pick clean over neat any day. My husband is the reverse. He doesn’t see the hairs on the bathroom floor or the crumbs on the counter, but he sees my piles of papers yet to be sorted and bills yet to be paid. Miraculously he often doesn’t see his piles of clothes in the bathroom or bedroom. Maybe that’s another allergy?

There was a while early on in our marriage when I would say, “I love you,” to my husband every time I came across one of these bothersome things about which I had made my thoughts clear. For me it was a reminder that I loved him regardless of these small silly things, but he felt like it was passive aggressive. You don’t want an “I love you” to be perceived as passive aggressive. So, I stopped.

However, I do still try to remind myself that I love him, regardless of whether he is allergic to the dishwasher, or he’s just oblivious, or whatever the reason may be that I find dishes in the clean sink when the dishwasher is sitting there empty and forlorn.**

*Names and details changed to protect the identities of the innocent. No humans or animals were harmed in the writing of this post.
**I love my husband very much and I am incredibly grateful for the countless other things he does to keep our family and our lives chugging forward. Furthermore, I have no doubt he could write numerous funny posts about the things I do, or don't do, that are mysteries to himself and the rest of mankind.

For the Valley Pastoral Counseling Center Spring Newsletter

I Do Not Know

I do not know how winter seeps into brittle earth slowly thawing.

I do not know how brown drought under pearly-sheen white blanket suddenly springs Vibrant.

I just curl under blanket white, shivering and hoping for spring.

I do not know how Life grows.

I do not know how green shoots shove aside black earth to Light.

I do not know how power shimmers in an Empty tomb.

It is not me; that much I know. I could not do this. Could not make it happen.

Even if I really wanted to. And I do… I do, so want to make it happen.

But I cannot. I must simply watch and wait, breathing until something Bursts forth.

Resurrected and Newly Alive.

I do not know how Life grows.

Your Life is a Desert: Lenten Delight

Your life is a desert,

And you marvel at the sand.

Your life, a dry dirty place,

And you gape mouth-wide,

At the expanse of sky and horizon.

Your life is a wilderness,

And you do not see mirages,

That your unconscious desires to pull forth.

No, you hear the silence…

And the soft sound of your feet,

Bare and burned,

Crunching softly into the grains,

From which we all emerge and to which we all return.

Your linen garment billowing in the dust-filled wind,

The sun burning through,

Searing away whatever dross,

Might be left in your heart.

Your life is a desert,

And you marvel at the sand.

A radical embracing of the moment,

You throw arms wide, neck craning, eyes close,

To shut the easiest sense,

And you cheer like a child.

Tears of bliss pour out of ducts,

As you take pleasure,

And pleasure is taken in you.

Your life is a desert,

And you marvel at the sand.

For there is no illusion you can create in this place.

You are far past all that. The fantasies.

You also left the grumbling (unlike the Israelites) behind long ago.

You have repented of the false,

And illusory ridiculousness of yourself.

The place where most of us love to dwell.

And you would wish to be nowhere else,

Beside this parched and hallowed ground.

Reveling in your belovedness.

Soul sinking into the specks,

Each one created with care and intention.

Absorbed in He, Who is more vast than any of us,

Could even imagine we could be.

Your life is a desert,

And you marvel at the sand.

And we can only imagine what Job-like tragedies,

You must have known to be this free.

This alive. This present.

Burning from within, in the sand and sun.

Your flesh ablaze with inner light,

Blinding to the blue-white sky.

Thanks - to All Souls Charlottesville for being a conduit (once again) for the inspiration... for this Lenten poem.