living stones: we are building, not throwing

Posted on by March 21, 2024

I grabbed the phone and called one of the state offices we’ve been working with. Someone (several someones, actually) have repeatedly mentioned a miraculously helpful entity called a “care coordinator” to help us navigate part of the guardianship world we’re dealing with now on behalf of two of our kids.

But I didn’t even remember which office they went through, or what number to call. There have been so many phone calls.

living stones: we are building, not throwing

So I tried one, and a lady picked up.

“Hi,” I began, “I spoke with someone from your office a few weeks ago about applying for my disabled son’s benefits? He has a medical situation and we’re getting the runaround about Medicaid, and I’m wondering if I could get connected to a care coordinator through your office to help me navigate this, but I’m honestly not even sure if I’m calling the right place. Can you help me?”

Blarghhhhh. I just dumped all the details on her, no mercy.

“Umm…” the lady stammered. “Uh…maybe…I’ve actually only been here for four months. Umm…” She stalled again, and finally settled into awkward silence.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m just…just trying to–”

“No,” I assured her, “I’m pretty sure it’s definitely me, too.” The confusion is probably contagious.

And it turns out I was wrong; care coordinators are apparently fabulous at helping with one particular area, but not the actual area we need help with right now.

If I understood the process better, I could navigate it with more clarity. As it is, I pretty much only understand enough of it to complain. And there’s been plenty to complain about. I do not work in this system, I am just trying to work my way through it, and so far I have just enough experience to throw stones at it. Mea culpa. I should’ve paid more attention, should’ve taken notes or something, and should be speaking (and writing) blessings instead of curses.

(But this is the government, yo…) I know, it’s pretty hard to bless sometimes.

But I’ve noticed this among the Church, too. We don’t understand things, so we complain. We don’t pay attention, so we misunderstand. We misunderstand, so we accuse. The stones fly furiously, contagiously, and the only thing built up is confusion as the living stones divide, refusing to acknowledge the others in the same building.

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

– 1 Peter 2:4-5

The internet has always had a mean streak, and Pharisees have always been associated with stone-throwing. I’m not saying those two things have anything to do with each other; it might be a completely random coincidence that I put them in the same sentence. Draw your own conclusions.

But over the last two weeks I’ve heard “You need to be more careful” from a total stranger who didn’t like a video I shared, “You should do your homework” from a stranger who hadn’t actually listened to the sermon I shared, and “The word is ‘prating’ not babbling” from a stranger who didn’t like the translation of scripture I shared, miffed that I didn’t revert to King James, because that of course is what Jesus Himself used.

In years of writing online, I’ve noticed that normal people generally respond to posts in one of these ways:

  • constructive comment
  • hit the like button
  • simply keep scrolling

But weirdos on social media with a religious spirit tend to respond in these ways:

  • Why did you underline THOSE words?
  • What do you have against the other verses?
  • I don’t like the title of your post and have appointed myself as the religious police to protect any ignorant passersby from misinterpreting scripture and living a life of sin because of it
  • I didn’t bother reading/watching/listening to the link in your post, but here’s my redundant/irrelevant/argumentative comment, anyway
  • Why are you using a STICKY note as a BOOKMARK?! You are covering the WORD of GOD, heathen!

Smile…sigh.

Why is it that some Christians think their belief entitles them to act so unChristlike to others, especially Christians? Did they miss the part in the Bible about building up one another in love, and taking the log out of your own eye, and the world will know we are Christians by our love for each other, not by the vitriol we unleash on the internet?

I don’t think I’m the only one noticing this spike in the spirit of stupid, because I recently read this post and this thread, and this is a terrific video, also.

I can only imagine how confusing this must be for new Christians trying to navigate the Church. I’m sorry, I’ve actually only been here for four months…umm…

But another thing I’ve noticed is that if I listen – or, not even listen (as in, “actively attend to”) but just hear too much faith-quenching, belittling, nit-picking, stone-throwing, I start to feel stifled. And this surely indicates the enemy at work.

So here, to myself and anyone else needing the antidote to the enemy’s venom:

You can hear God’s voice in your life, in your days, and in your situation.

(You can also share what you’ve learned freely, and block the religious meanies on the internet.)

We have to remind ourselves of what is true.

We need to remember that not every thought in our head is our own. Sometimes it’s an accusation the enemy planted through someone else.

We need to keep in mind that people don’t judge us the way we think they might be judging us. And those who are judging us should probably be minding the logs in their own eyes.

And we need to remember that what anyone thinks about us isn’t as important as what God thinks of us.

When we hear the accuser pounding thoughts through our heads, what do we do?

Run back to the truth. Do it fast. Get it in your head and keep it there — pin it on your bathroom mirror and your kitchen cabinets and the dashboard of your car — and make it louder than the harping, and clearer than the smoke and mirrors.

Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power.

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

— Ephesians 3:7-12

There’s a movement out there that wants to pooh-pooh the Spirit’s voice in your life. It’s not from unbelievers, but from believers, and they probably (hopefully) don’t even intend to do it. They have no idea that their fear or legalism or concentrated zeal in their pet subject is quenching the Spirit and leaking onto others. And they don’t mean wrong (oh no, being right is their goal); they seem to think that they’re doing the Church a favor by throwing stones at entire segments of believers who practice things they’re not familiar or comfortable with.

For example, I’ve seen this in criticism about worship being “too emotional” or revival being “about feelings,” as if emotions or feelings immediately invalidated things…which they don’t…because God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit all have emotions.

For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

— Exodus 34:14

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

— Ephesians 4:30

Jesus felt compassion, felt angry, felt sad, and even felt surprised and impressed by someone’s faith.

Other critics (or, many of the same) declare that prophetic words or personally hearing God’s voice outside of what is expressly written in the pages of Scripture, are suspect. They feel that these challenge the Bible, when in fact, if they read the Bible more thoroughly, they would see that personal words and hearing God’s voice are all throughout it:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

— John 10:27

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

— John 14:26

And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.

— Mark 13:11

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

— Acts 1:8

…and on and on and on.

Another common stone thrown is that some expressions of worship or devotion are “disorderly.” This comes back to the scripture that all things should be done in order (which, if you read it, has another topic often taken out of context and grossly abused, to the detriment of the Church) but who gets to define “order?” Does it mean calm, predictable, understandable, and within our comfort zone? We need to be careful here because this is similar to how the Pharisees and others justified their arrest and persecution of the followers of Jesus.

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

— Acts 4:31

And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”

– Acts 2:12-13

And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening.

– Acts 4:1-3

We don’t see the calm, predictable, understandable, comfortable, pre-scheduled, societally-approved kind of order in Acts. So it makes sense that if that’s how someone defines “order,” they would be very uncomfortable with moves of the Holy Spirit.

And this is where we need to remember that just because something is uncomfortable doesn’t mean it is wrong. Just because we don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s not true. Just because we aren’t familiar with something doesn’t mean it’s not genuine, because we are not God and He gets to define the terms. We don’t make the rules. We are all learning; we all have different backgrounds, and not one of us here has arrived yet.

The Kingdom is built outside our comfort zone.

Sure, anything can be abused. But when we focus more on the abuse, we tend to disregard the real thing and throw the abundance of good out with the lesser portion that is counterfeit. And scripture has a lesson for us here, too:

The servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ 

He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’

So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 

But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”

– Matthew 13:27-30

This is sort of the Lord’s version of saying, “It will all shake out; let Me deal with it.” He has not anointed any of us as the Church Police to root up the wheat in our zeal. Throwing stones at other believers is not a spiritual gift.

But He has anointed us to other things: We have the Holy Spirit, and the mind of Christ, and every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and we are seated at the right hand of Christ. We are building up, not tearing others down.

What does all that mean? What does it really look like, here and now?

I’m not completely sure. But let’s not throw stones at each other while we figure it out.

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how the colors come together: grieving & celebrating the emptying nest

Posted on by March 8, 2024

The fog left its mark in hoarfrost on the trees along the Parks Highway, and we drove home from church with all eight of us in the vehicle. It was the last time I would sit crammed between two 6-foot-something men in the front seat of the Stagecoach; one of them has moved out and is on his own now.

how the colors come together: grieving & celebrating the emptying nest

I gave him the quilt I’d been working on for months, often right in front of him while he was oblivious because almost-18-year-old boys don’t pay attention to their mother’s crafty shenanigans. Two nights before, Iree and I spent several hours finishing it and the seams had “significant wonk,” meaning they veered and shifted in ways I didn’t intend them to because I’m still new at this and don’t know what I’m doing and it is hard to wrestle these giant things through a small short-armed machine.

As soon as Afton’s room was empty, Cham moved into it. We’ve started to fill her vacated area – which was his space not long ago, before last year’s rearrangement – with a table for spring seedlings and about 200 books that he didn’t want to take with him. There’s still room for the sewing machine, and once the space is filled and echo-less, I’ll be recording audio in there, too. So we have plans, just like he does, and plans are good.

I spent one evening shelving all the books in the new space and sorting through what to keep and what to get rid of: Nineteen books by Patrick F. McManus. Also, the ones on blacksmithing and leatherworking from those phases, and the manuals on knifemaking from that phase. And the first copy of the bread book he learned artisan bakery from – the one we have two copies of, because he used the original until the spine broke and pages fell out from his blissfully long but sadly abandoned passion for breadmaking, when we all learned terms like poolish, pan de mie, and bâtard.

On the day he moved I was fine until that night, making dinner in the kitchen, and suddenly felt the gentle wrench of his absence. Some of his things were missing because he’d taken them, and others of his were still there, discarded because he didn’t want them anymore. I searched the cabinet for a jar and found his collection of cheesecloth from the cheesemaking phase.

He won’t be back for dinner tonight, I realized. Not that he’s been eating with us; he’s been raiding the kitchen late at night when he gets home from work. He’d ask, “What’d you guys have for dinner?” and, depending on whether or not he liked the answer, he’d respond with “Is there any left?” or bored dismissal, and make his own thing.

And that song was playing again – the same one Iree played all last year before she moved, the anthem of the hatch. But this time it wasn’t her, it was the station playing Einaudi like it knows the soundtrack of our home.

I thought to myself that day, Oh, this is easy, I must’ve done all my grieving last summer when he left for fish camp, because I didn’t even feel like crying, all day I was fine. But then it was dinnertime in the kitchen that was so often his wheelhouse, and I still wasn’t crying, but now I knew for sure it would come later.

The song was finishing and I sat on the couch and filled three scraps of paper with grief, tearing sheets from the pad as I went, surprised at how many words and feelings were still pouring out.

I started this quilt not knowing what I was doing, just following the process, just trying to make something beautiful out of the materials on hand. Some of the fabric was good and new, some was old and recycled – pieces of one of Vin’s shirts, some old sheets, other scraps salvaged from an abandoned project. I was just running the machine, just doing the next thing I knew to do to patch things together, snipping ends and threads that stuck out in the wrong places, making pieces line up, and when they went wonky, I’d go back and seam rip and make them square again.

I got so frustrated with all the ironing because it felt like it was such an interruption to forward momentum – stop what you’re doing, iron these panels. Stop again and iron these other pieces. It wasn’t just to smooth things over, though; I realized at the end when I flipped the whole thing over that when you iron seams open, it covers a multitude of wonkiness and uneven lines. The areas I thought might go astray and slant off to an angle looked fine.

I was afraid it would be ruined, or ugly, or a disaster, but it was fine. Beautiful, even.

He smiled when I gave it to him and seemed to know what kind of gift it was.

Here, I made this for you. I hope you like it. I hope you don’t notice or mind all the flaws; I know it’s not perfect. I worked hard on it, but could have done better. I wonder if you’ll look at it more closely later and recognize some of these pieces, and realize where they came from.

We leave our marks on each other just by proximity and relation, and sometimes they are uneven lines and empty spaces we don’t know what to do with. Sometimes when we move away we do whatever we can to rub those marks out for a while, as though they’ve taken up space without our permission and we want to see what’s underneath without their influence.

Here, this is part of me, take it – and we pluck the feathers from ourselves, and thrust them onto our young men and women as they take their own flights, hoping they won’t cast our affection to the wind.

I paused, tore another sheet from the notepad, looked at all the words. Folded the papers in half, stared at the highway traffic out the dark window, the headlights going north and south.

Unfolded the paper, flipped it over, and kept going.

We miss their presence when they leave. But also, as they’ve been longing to leave – which we remember and relate to and rejoice in with them – we realize that we’ve already been missing them because part of them has been gone for a long time. They’ve changed and emotionally moved on already in many ways. The grief has been sneaking up on us, slipping in and surprising us at random intervals for over a year now.

This is not summer camp, or youth overnight, or fish camp. This is launching. And he’ll be back, I know he will; there will be dinners and barbecues and birthdays and it will be better. We’ve done this twice before and we know there’s a stretching distance for a while before the elastic springs back and things reach a new equilibrium. And it will be good. Really, really good.

But it won’t be the same. And that’s the thing we grieve most: It will never be the same. We cannot get that time back. The binding is on, the quilt is finished, there’s no time left for seam ripping and rearranging colors and redoing those panels.

Jesus redeems and leads and saves, and Holy Spirit continues doing the work we can’t, couldn’t, or didn’t. But still, we want to do better and wish we had done better — and I think this is the sign of a good parent, rather than one who’s perfectly satisfied with every aspect of their parenting and confident they’ve made no mistakes — and I’m grateful to still have little and younger ones to keep doing better with.

But it’s not over with the older ones, because we have new time that’s different from before. This time looks like broad, new conversations, and tentative efforts to bring buried things into the open, and a willingness to let spaces stay empty that aren’t ready to be filled. It looks like hilarious confessions and new levels of respect in both directions, and inside jokes filled with a vocabulary that only our family knows. It looks like mutual appreciation and recognition and repentance, and a whole different level of starting again.

Here, this is yours. I love the way some of these colors come together, and I regret not trying harder to make even lines in some of these places. But I hope you love it. I hope it keeps you warm, I hope you remember your mother and your family and your childhood and where you came from…with warmth, and fondness, and gratitude. I hope you know you are so loved.

It might be a while before they realize they didn’t notice all the things we did right in front of them, trying to make something beautiful out of the materials we had on hand.

It was so imperfect. There was significant wonk and things veered and shifted in ways we didn’t intend them to because we were learning and didn’t always know what we were doing. It is hard to wrestle these giant, complex souls to adulthood and keep our lines even.

But it was good, and warm, and filled with pieces of ourselves as the colors came together, and that is even better.

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dying into life: what will be well is even now well

Posted on by February 22, 2024

A gloomy, grey, windy day. It’s finally warm and that’s the silver lining; at forty degrees, we are eighty degrees higher than a few weeks ago when we had the coldest cold snap I’ve ever known. The water melting off the roof flies sideways in the wind, and soon there will be hopeful patches of bare ground, but not today.

It was one of those weeks; the grey bleakness seemed a little in-your-face as it collided with exhaustion and PMS and the loss of three birds in one day. All the noises were louder and I was overstimulated and hypersensitive, on edge over little things like the grating sound of rattling tin foil, the shrieking of a kid, and the frustration of not being able to finish a task. But it was big things, too, like medical situations with two sons, and the transition of another son moving out. And the ache all over.

dying into life: what will be well is even now well

The best prescription is to go to bed early. That sounds simple but what it really means is take vitamins, check on boys, turn Kav around so he doesn’t roll off his bed, spray the couch with pet deterrent, brush and floss teeth, and finally go to the shower to have a good cry.

The next day was better, and this is how it often goes, these slumps: downward frustration, level out in rest, rise upward again. It was still windy, though; the ravens lifted at odd angles, caught themselves on extended wings, and drifted back down. Another gust and they did it again, choreography above the highway. Their fight with the wind makes the storm visible.

We were forecasted to get a big storm but it must’ve stalled out because the highest gusts were overnight and even then the stovepipe wasn’t as shrill as normal. And that’s encouraging, because it’s a picture of figurative storms, too – situations often seem dire but end up petering out into a threat that was just used to prepare and strengthen you.

Which brings me to our latest medical drama.

We saw a surgeon this week about Andrey’s cyst; he said a lot of unhelpful and unhopeful things about future needs, current dilemmas, and the catch-22 of money solving everything if only we were billionaires. But since we aren’t, things are “difficult,” and apparently not being a billionaire is called a “social problem” in condescending doctor-speak. In real English though, three front teeth will need to go and bone mass is missing; something about food moving into the nasal cavity if things aren’t reconstructed fully. Seattle was repeatedly mentioned. And even though the latest CT scan shows no change to the area in the last few months (an answer to prayer), the surgeon said “the situation has changed” – meaning, last fall he thought we could easily take care of this in Alaska, and now he realizes he was wrong but doesn’t want to say so.

“I don’t know if you’re able to consider liquidating some resources…” he says. “Of course you want to do what’s right for him.” As though we need a pep talk to make the right choices, and also as though we don’t have other children who need a roof over their heads and food to eat. We need to do what’s right for them, also, and this young doctor doesn’t understand the legalities of guardianship or the fact that Andrey’s medical expenses are no longer in our financial jurisdiction. He doesn’t know we’ve emptied our accounts for this kid before; it’s how we started this process. And he has no idea we drive a 25-year-old vehicle. My bag of tricks is running pretty low right now.

“Have we to die again?” I asked.

“No,” he answered, with a smile like the Mother’s; “you have died into life, and will die no more; you have only to keep dead. Once dying as we die here, all the dying is over. Now you have only to live, and that you must, with all your blessed might. The more you live, the stronger you become to live.”

– George MacDonald, Lilith

And I think we must be growing stronger, because it’s a battle to keep the wind at bay when it’s trying to fly right in your face, flinging words of weighty responsibility that aren’t ours to really be concerned about. The storm may turn out to be nothing. And the storm isn’t the end-all-be-all anyway, although the enemy wants us to think so. The storm answers to the same God we do – the difference is that God gave us authority to speak to the wind and waves like He did.

For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

– Galatians 2:19-20

The more we live, the more we understand that the storm doesn’t command us. We command it.

Which doesn’t mean we don’t (or shouldn’t) grieve as we face it, because oh, the wind is terrible sometimes. Parenting can rip you wide open, and whether it’s done badly or done well, it leads to pain. The only safe place is in the lukewarm middle where nothing matters because you willfully hold yourself back, refusing to let grief touch you, and I’ve been tempted there before. But that’s not trusting God or dying to self; that’s protecting yourself while everything dies around you. And that protection is a lie that leads to the wrong kind of death.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”

– Matthew 16:24-26

How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

– Romans 6:2b-4

So there are two kinds of pain, just as there are two kinds of death – one side is fruitful and leads to healing and restoration and life, and the other is pointless, just leading to more pain and death.

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

– 2 Corinthians 7:10

Over the last week I’ve grieved over a dead chicken, a distant child, and my own selfishness and imperfections. We grieve our inability to be all things to all people. We grieve the lost time and gained absence and the increasing gap between things that should be close instead of far apart.

But just because a situation is not what it should be doesn’t mean it won’t be what it ought to be later – either in the near future, or on the other side. And this is what God keeps reminding me.

“I told you, brother, all would be well!—When next you would comfort, say, ‘What will be well, is even now well.’”

– George MacDonald, Lilith

What will be well, is even now well. That doesn’t mean the pain or sickness or wrongdoing or sin was God’s will. It means He makes all things new.

So we don’t need to protect ourselves from the grief or the storm, because we get to command in the middle of it – and sometimes what we need to command is ourselves, and remember it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. We are keeping dead, staying low, so we can live with all our blessed might. We have not lost our lives, but found them.

“But shall I not grow weary with living so strong?” I said. “What if I cease to live with all my might?”

“It needs but the will, and the strength is there!” said the Mother. “Pure life has no weakness to grow weary withal. The Life keeps generating ours.—Those who will not die, die many times, die constantly, keep dying deeper, never have done dying; here all is upwardness and love and gladness.”

– George MacDonald, Lilith

I feel that will, commanding it when an enthusiastic little guy hugs me but also inadvertently pulls my hair, and again when the huge blond tabby wants to cuddle but his claws drive through my jeans. Pain all over, amplified, but the strength is there, and so is love and gladness.

Celebration and grief mingle confusedly amid these new phases and stages, and fear threads its way into the unfamiliar. But we live dead and have done with dying, and I remind myself that all is upward from here.

Soon there will be hopeful patches of bare ground, and green life sprouting. New chicks peeping.

We’ve made it through the hardest part of winter, through the cold snap, through the grief and the storm. We’ve seen past the unhelpful and unhopeful things into the truth beyond, that all that will be well is even now well. Some things still hurt, they still matter, many of them still should’ve been different, but it will be well because God is redeeming all things, so even now it is well with my soul.