A Caterpillar's Heart

A couple of summers ago, my parsley crop was invaded and systematically eaten down to twigs by caterpillars just like the one in the picture. I was ticked. I considered them pests. And then, as is the case in nature, the miraculous happened. One day they just disappeared and in their places I found several little cocoons. And as if the story can't get any better, after what seemed like an eternity, beautiful Eastern Black Swallowtails began to emerge from those cocoons hanging on the bare parsley stalks.

They came just in time. They exhausted themselves to be born in my garden. And they came at a time when I, too, was exhausted. They were a gift of grace wrapped in gossamer wings and they brought me light when I was wrapped in darkness.

I didn't plant that parsley for those caterpillars, but I have never looked at it the same way since. And yesterday, after yet another difficult week, I looked closely at those plants and found the little guy in the picture. He brought friends and I welcome the havoc they will wreck on those plants. They will work hard and eventually, they will be changed. They are potential incarnate.  I always thought it was the butterfly that brought me hope, but I think I had it all wrong. It is this little striped guy working his way toward something we can't even see yet. That, my friends, is hope. I used to always want to be the butterfly, all light and loveliness. Grace and beauty. But I'm beginning to think that beauty is meaningless if I don't have the heart of a caterpillar. 

"Here comes the sun."

Donald Miller shares a story about how he never liked jazz until one night when he was outside a theater in Portland and saw a man playing a saxophone. He said that the whole time he stood there, the man never opened his eyes. He says that sometimes you have to see somebody love something to be able to love it yourself.

Yesterday I walked out of a hospital with my husband. Hopefully, it was the last hard leg of this journey we have been on for 10 months now. He spent three days isolated in a hospital room, his view little more than a piece of sky and the roof of the neighboring building. Stripped of his belongings, with limited human contact, he waited for the radiation to course through his body on a mission to seek and destroy harmful cells. One little pill can make that happen. I keep telling him it is worth the struggle and frustration.

I know it is worth it. As we walked out from under the shade of the portico into the warm sunlight, I watched him stop in the middle of a busy sidewalk, tilt his head back and let the light wash over him. It was as if he physically melted a bit. I love the sun. I love nature, the outdoors, and the beauty of creation. But I love it all a little bit differently after that moment. You only have to see a man with his face lifted to the sun and tears in his eyes to see everything more clearly. And in the words of George Harrison, "It's alright. It's alright."

The Waiting Place, Part II

Earlier this month I wrote about waiting. I went on and on about waiting with hope and peace. Then a couple of days ago I shared what I still consider to be an incredibly valuable video on a talk about vulnerability. And of course, I made this public proclamation of sorts on the value of vulnerability. I vowed to myself to seek to live in a way that is more wholehearted, walking through the good and the bad in a way that is real and honest.

Let's talk for a minute about what happens when you choose a posture of vulnerability for yourself. It may look like this: You find yourself in a situation in which you risk your personal safety to protect your personal property and hopefully, that of someone else. And as absurd as the interaction with a criminal who has taken too many Xanax can be, a couple of days later you find yourself afraid. You begin to deconstruct the actual events and you begin to realize all that could have happened. And despite reminding yourself the danger playing "What if" can do to a person, you can't help but wonder what is going to happen in the future. You dream about chaotic events and mugshots and you find yourself feeling exposed and edgy, completely vulnerable. And while you are normally pretty big on sucking it up, you cut yourself some slack, realizing that being vulnerable means starting with yourself. You show yourself some compassion.

Then there is the whole waiting thing. You want to sit reverently in The Waiting Place? It might look something like this: Your husband has a rountine doctors appointment on a Friday. After a short discussion, you suddenly find yourself on an accelerated course of treatment.  Radiation after Christmas isn't ideal, for sure, but after some thought and discussion, maybe it is for the best. Let's get this behind us. So the routine ultrasound a few days before Christmas is followed almost immediately by a highly concerned phone call from the doctor. Biopsy. Next week. And then you know that the door that closed behind you and the one that is yet to open leave you in The Waiting Place. So you cry a little bit because who wouldn't, right? Afterall, you are still counting your blessings from the beginning of this whole ordeal when you found yourself sitting in a waiting room holding your spouse's hand. Staring out the window, aware of the changing light of Fall, you asked of yourself and God: Is this what it feels like to have taken it all for granted? You realize once again that you aren't ready to know the answer to that question. So you hope. You promise that you won't rush the beauty and mystery of the humble birth of your Savior to get to next week. You will wait quietly. Actively. You will wait with hope, knowing that one day you will speak of this time as the time you learned to wait with peace. You cut yourself a little more slack and you share your real self, your fear and the questions that go with it in a public way, a way that let's people see you, because you remembered the truth as Brene Brown shared it: vulnerability is necessary. Perhaps you are learning. Just in time.

Annie

I have a confession to make. I have a tendency to read sad books, watch sad movies, and listen to sad songs when I am already sad. There, I said it. I'm that girl. Everyone knows her. You might even be her.

There is a series of young adult books by Lurlene McDaniel that were popular with many (meaning most) of my female students when I was teaching. I called them the "death books" because someone died in every book. I heard so many booktalks that tearily began, "This is the best book I have ever read." I watched student after student cry through page after page and yet, they could not tear themselves away from the series. I laughed about it, often with crying girls, about the fact that we enjoy being sad.

Maybe it isn't so much that we always enjoy it, but when we let ourselves be sad when we need to be sad, we understand a little better what it means to be happy. I've had a lot of conversations about sadness lately. If a person is going to be sad, the holidays with their sense of necessary joy and fuzzy-edged nostalgia can bring it to the surface. There is a lot of mourning that happens at Christmas. And I'm starting to think that is okay as long as we keep walking, purposely moving through it, firmly grasping hope on our way through.

I read a story a couple of days ago that made me cry the ugly cry while I read it. It is a story of pure grief.  A heartbreaking story of deep sorrow, but deeper hope. We need these stories at Christmas. We need these stories. Period. To remind us that when we are lost in our own thoughts, independently living with our own hurts and griefs, there are others out there doing the same. And thankfully, some of these people let us walk with them, in a small way, through their pain, showing us that hurt is universal. But so is hope. And it is easier to grasp when we hand it to each other.

Here is Annie's story. I hope you read it and share it. May we all hand someone the hope of our Savior this Christmas.

The Gift of Gilbert

I finally did something today I have wanted to do, planned to do, often thought about doing, but for whatever reason, just never did. I signed up to sponsor a child through Compassion. I have sponsored a child before as part of a group, but this is the first time my husband and I have a sponsored child to call our own.

We needed this. We try very hard to make sure that we are making our world a better place, but too often that world is no bigger than the small town in which we live. Gilbert will remind us the world is bigger. And hope is something to be shared. And oddly, I take hope in sharing hope.

My prayers tonight and every night from now on will be different. There is already the precious smiling face of a little boy named Gilbert imprinted on my heart. I smile when I picture him, and one day, I hope that when he thinks of me, he will smile too.

I laughed today because I was thinking that all I really wanted for Christmas this year was a new composter. It is true, I just really don't want for a lot. But apparently, I needed a lot more. I needed the gift of Gilbert.

The Waiting Place

This month, in celebration of Advent, our Sunday morning conversations have revolved around the theme of waiting. So far, specifically, what it means to wait with hope and wait with peace. It is a sticky subject, this idea of waiting.

These past two Sundays have brought forth memories of specific moments in my life when I have had no choice but to wait. And "the waiting places" as Dr. Seuss calls them, are not always happy places. I know what it feels like to wait with hope when my brokenness tells me I should be hopeless. I know what it feels like to sit very, very quietly when circumstances scream chaos. I'm not saying these were my finest moments, moments that prove me to be the woman God calls me to be. I'm just saying I kept breathing. And somehow found people and moments in which I could find great beauty. And I held faith in a God who was keeping me alive for something I couldn't quite see yet.

I had a conversation with some students tonight about why my husband and I don't have children. I've learned that conversation is just a natural occurence when people are trying to get to know me--us. Tonight, it went much differently than it often does with adults. These young people sought to understand--the process of how I got to where I am today--sharing hope and peace with them--after reconciling myself to the fact that I would not be a mother. Hear me say: They simply sought to understand.

I wish I had a dollar for everytime an adult thought I misjudged the meaning of hope when we were unsuccessfully enduring surgery, treatment, physical sickness, debt beyond our capacity to pay without damaging our financial future, and heartache and disappointment beyond our capacity to share verbally outside the privacy of our home. Enduring those things and being sad, scared, and confused, yet still moving forward was nothing if not an act of hope. Prayerfully deciding to stop subjecting ourselves to those same things was not an act of hopelessness, although many people said they were sorry we gave up hope. There are people still saying that. I choose to think of it as a tremendously hopeful act. It was an act of hope with a heavenly perspective. When we stopped waiting to see what the next month would hold, we started waiting to see how God was going to heal our hearts. That is a faith healing of the miraculous sort and I find that it many ways, it is still happening. But while I wait, I do so with hope, and by sharing peace, I am receiving it, as well.

You see, I know what it means to wait. I have known season after season of waiting. Weeks that seemed like months, months that seemed like years, and years that seemed like one long, painful, unending present. I have waiting down to an artform. But tonight, I knew that without learning to wait with hope, I would not have been standing there among beautiful young people who are learning what it means to live a faith that is so new for them. A faith that will be challenged. A faith that at some point will teach them about waiting with hope and peace. A faith that can be damaged when someone tells them the wrong story about their own hope. I told them a little bit about my story and then later, while waiting at a redlight, I thanked God for keeping me alive.

Primum non nocere

When I began working on my master's in counseling, I was taught that when counseling a client, a professional should Do no harm. A relatively simple concept. Short and to the point. It is a directive, not a request. It is not conditional and needs no qualification. Do no harm.

I've been thinking about this maxim lately. Mainly because I have seen an incredible amount of harm done. I'm fully human and have done harm so I know what it looks like. I know what it is to have hurt someone's feelings. I know what it is to have broken relationships with those you love, to act coldly, to keep score, to give up on someone. But I also know what it is to pray for restoration that is yet to come, to turn the other cheek, to return hate with love, to extend an apology, to try to pick up the pieces when my own brokenness caused someone else's, to humble myself before another because I messed up. Of course, I still regularly get it all wrong. I still act out my own brokenness on someone else. But hopefully, I get it right more than I get it wrong. And when I'm aware of it, I try to fix it. Even in my personal life--especially in my personal life--I try to do no harm.

I wonder what would happen if all of us humans lived by that motto? Would there be less pieces to pick up, and more healed hearts? Would we not act with disregard when we are trusted with the love of another? Would we realize the implications of our actions, and act judiciously when we would rather hold someone in contempt? Would we walk away when we'd rather assault? Would we stand guard over the hearts of the wounded when it is safer to retreat? Would see with clear eyes our own potential for inflicting harm and know that sometimes we may be tempted to use it in the name of good, or even worse, God?

I like to think so. I'm an optimist, even though sometimes I have to remind myself of that fact. As long as there is potential, there is hope. And hope is bigger than our brokenness when it is placed in a God who redeems and restores.