Rejection!

I was at the farm when I got the email, which is remarkable in that my reception at the farm is always spotty so I don't usually bother checking much.  When I saw the sender and the subject title (re: your submission) my heart leapt and I rushed to open it, praying the few bars I had would be enough for the content to load.  It was and as I scanned over the words of the message I found myself smiling despite what those words said.  It was a rejection letter.  My first rejection letter.

Well, to be clear this wasn’t my first rejection letter of all time.  I’ve received plenty of those.  In fact, there were a few weeks in 2001 when I received a string of rejection letters from almost every college I applied to.  Even the mailman started giving me sympathetic looks as I hopefully awaited his arrival.  This email was my first rejection letter for a writing submission.  And while outwardly I received that solid, unmistakable “no,” inside I was warm and even unmistakably happy.  

I’d thought about submitting pieces to magazines and online publications forever.  I’d toy with the essay contest for Real Simple each month, spend an inordinate amount of time researching “how and where to submit writing samples," think about what I’d write and where I’d submit it, sometimes actually start said submission but never, ever did I actually write, edit, finish and submit any of my writing.  

I don’t even remember exactly what was the catalyst for this submission.  For months I’d been circling the 15th in my calendar each month as a reminder that this was the deadline for submissions to a particular online magazine.  Each and every month the 15th would pass and I would fail to send anything, worried that whatever I’d been working on wasn’t quite “right” for their site.  I do remember, when I finally did finish something, thinking, this may not be quite what they’re looking for, but screw it.  Send it anyway.  And before I had a chance to overthink it or back out, I did.

And, a few weeks later I heard back from them.  The response to my very attempt at the sacred act of “putting yourself out there” in this area of my life was a resounding (but very kind and polite) no.

And so, in the face of that first rejection I became surprised at the overriding emotion of… pride.  I wasn’t upset at being told “thanks, but no thanks.”  Instead I was proud that I’d had the courage to follow through and submit something in the first place.  Instead of deleting that email, dejected, I smiled a little to myself and saved that sucker, proof that I’d been brave and vulnerable and lived to tell the tale.

In his memoir “On Writing” author Stephen King writes about how he used to stick all of his rejection letters to a nail in his wall and that by the age of 14 he’d had to upgrade to a spike because the nail could no longer support the weight of all those letters.  By the age of fourteen he’d had the courage to submit enough work that a nail couldn’t hold all the proof of his chutzpah!  I marveled over this story when I read it and committed to racking up at least a few more rejection emails.

I now have a file, nested under Personal in my complex and numerous gmail label system, entitled “rejections!” It looks just like that, too, with the ! serving as a reminder that these emails are exciting!  They are not rejections, but rather marks of your daring, your chance taking, your “putting it out there-ness”!  Collect them happily because it means you are trying.  In 2018 I just may set a goal for myself to receive a certain number of those emails.

This is easy to say, at the beginning of this journey.  When that file has accumulated hundreds of “thanks, but no thanks” emails, I may not be so cheerful about my rejection epiphany.  Be careful what you wish for and all that jazz.

But I am careful about what I’m wishing for.  I’m wishing to be brave and bold.  I’m wishing to follow through on long held dreams.  I’m wishing to show up and do the work for the work’s sake.  I’m wishing to put myself out there a bit more, to dare and chance and dream.  And so if all I end up with is an email file filled with receipts that I tried and took a risk I will still have gotten what I wished for.

And so, fellow dreamers, this one is for you.  Could we do this?  Can we wear letters of rejection as badges of honor, a testament to our bravery?  Can we face the fear and celebrate when we survive that of which we were so afraid?  What are your "rejection letters" and how can you flip the script on them?  

Let’s do this, friends.  Make your own rejections! pile and let them stack up, smiling with each one.  Follow in the footsteps of Stephen King and really rack ‘em up, high-fiving your chutzpah along the way.  Let’s try something, be brave, put ourselves out there and fail.  And then let’s happily get up and try again. 

Election and Redemption

I watched election night unfold that November 8, stress eating gummy bears and slowly sinking into despair as swing state after swing state went red.  I watched with one eye on the t.v. and one eye on twitter where the many people of color that I follow lamented the results.  I lamented with them.  

I know not all were lamenting.  I know that for many this was a victory, a win for the Republican party.  For me this was not about Republican and Democrats.  While I’ve voted for Democratic Presidential candidates, I’ve voted for both Republicans and Democrats in other positions.  My dad was an elected Republican official in our town.  Until this election I would have said I was an Independent who leaned left, or, a fiscally conservative, socially liberal Independent.  This election felt different.  Donald Trump felt different.

I won’t go into all the ways he made my stomach turn during the election.  The examples are well documented.  I will say that as a person who has cared an awful lot about social justice through out my adult life, Trump’s rhetoric and complete lack of self-awareness has felt dangerous and just down right wrong.

In the weeks immediately following the election I wandered around in a state of anxiety and fear.  The news reports of hate crimes committed in Trump’s name and Neo Nazi groups celebrations of his victory did nothing to assuage this.  

And then, through it all, there were Christian leaders joyously celebrating his victory, saying it was ordained by God.

This, of course, caused me to simultaneously throw things and deeply question my understanding of God.  The God I have known, the one that has made my heart worship, was on the side of justice for the oppressed, was against bigotry and prejudice, promoted goodness and kindness and humility.  That God was not found in Trump.  At least to me.

When swastikas were showing up across the country bearing the words “Trump’s America” alongside them, it felt hard to believe that God would ordain this.  When people of color were shoved and intimidated and told it was time to “go home!  This is Trump’s America now!” it was hard to believe that God would ordain that.  And when hundreds were detained at the airport, and refugees, the most vulnerable among us, were turned away, it was hard to believe that the God who very specifically says to welcome the refugee stranger would ordain that. 

But then something else started to happen.  There was a march, attended by millions all across the world.  People stepped up, who wanted to say, no, this is not ok and I’m standing on the side of justice.  There were reports of people stepping in, standing up when people of color were being targeted for hate crimes.

  

Signs started popping up all around my neighborhood.  Signs that said, “We are not afraid” in regard to refugees and signs in three different languages, Hispanic, Arabic and English that said, “No matter what language you speak, we’re glad to call you neighbor.”  Signs that gave me hope.

In our suburban town a refugee relief organization held an introductory meeting to people who wanted to get involved by helping refugee families transition to America.  I heard one report that over a thousand people showed up for the meeting.

And then there was this report.  On a subway in Manhattan someone had graffitied Swastikas and other hateful messages on every advertisement and window.  People on the subway were uncomfortably aware of this and unsure of how to act.  Someone knew that alcohol erased permanent marker and soon an entire subway car full of New Yorkers were taking out their hand sanitizer and tissues and erasing the crap out of those hateful messages. 

Trump, it seems, has made activists of us all.  More and more people are asking themselves tough questions, paying attention to injustice and bigotry and standing up for the vulnerable, oppressed and marginalized.  

And it’s working.  I saw this on twitter and I hope very much that it is true.

Over the weekend, as I reflected on all the ways good people are standing up for truth and justice I wondered if maybe God was behind Trump’s win after all.  Not because Trump and his ideals embody what God wants for our broken world but because Trump and his ideals gave the rest of us something to fight against for our broken world.  It moved us to action in a way that his win would not have.  On the day of his inauguration in a text conversation with some friends I said, “If he hadn’t won we wouldn’t be marching tomorrow, but the things, the beliefs, the injustice that gave him so much popularity and put people in the position to overlook it all for a political party would still be there tomorrow.  Now we know where we stand and which side we want to stand on.  It was hard to fight the things we collectively, as a society, tried to pretend weren’t there at all.  You can’t fight the things you’re keeping hidden.  Now it’s out there and in some weird way I’m actually thankful for that.” 

And maybe that was what was ordained by God.  The stripping of the false security we all gave ourselves that we were a post racial society.  Or the sense that there wasn’t any work left to be done.  The calling of arms of people who may never considered themselves activists.  People all over the world are saying, not on my watch.

I don’t know if God ordained Trump’s victory.  I don’t know that I can go that far, or speak in that way by God.  But I do know that it is just like God to take brokenness and pain and use it for redemption.  I do know that what broke in our society on November 8, 2016, is being redeemed in a hundred thousand ways since then.  And I, for one, am excited to take part with God in this redeeming work.

March

On  a Saturday in January I, along with 250,000 new friends, took to the streets of Chicago to march.  We joined 600 other marches here in the U.S. and around the world.  The response was overwhelming.  In Chicago and a few other places, there were so many more people in attendance than anticipated that the actual march portion of the morning had to be cancelled; there were too many people to safely take to the streets.

It was an unbelievably beautiful day for a January in Chicago.  The sun shone for the first time in what felt like an eternity and there was a warmth in the air we hadn’t felt in a while.  As we waited in our suburban train station I was surprised at just how many people were also waiting.  I’d sort of assumed there would just be a few of us, mostly young women or hipster guys.  Instead there was a pretty large group of people already gathered, carrying signs, wearing pink, sharing stories about why they were standing there on a Saturday morning, ready to March.  And it wasn’t just young people.  I was surprised to see how many people my mom’s age were there too.

After our stop the train was deemed full and went express, another train coming behind us to pick up the rest.  As we blew through stop after stop I saw so many people patiently waiting, signs in hand, pink hats on.  This was going to be bigger than I thought.

My friend Charity and I met up with our friends in the city, watching as train after train arrived and people flooded into the station.  There was an energy and excitement in the air as the sheer number of people buoyed energy to one another.  We started making our way with the masses towards the place where the march was to gather.

On of our friends had brought her parents.  Her sweet father was so excited to be marching.  He kept saying, “We are all activists now.”  Indeed.

The signs ranged from hilarious (one of my favorites: “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit”) to poignant (“‘My humanity is bound up in yours, for only together can we be truly human’ Hope Wanted”) and it each one reminded me why it mattered that I was there.

For me, and I think many others, this wasn’t sour grapes about an election that went to the other guy.  And I certainly wasn’t protesting the GOP or republicans (my beloved father was an elected republican and many people I love most dearly claim that party’s allegiance.  I cannot or will not hate republicans).  But after a year and a half of watching the very worst in humanity play out I needed to be with others who felt angry and inspired to action.  

If I’m being honest my heart has always been drawn towards the fight for justice; my very favorite books growing up were the ones that centered on this theme. Maybe it started in third grade with my teacher Mrs. Gibson, who captivated me with her stories of marching with Martin Luther King, Jr.  Or maybe that was just how I was created: to care deeply for the marginalized and oppressed.  Years ago, in college, I took women’s studies and African American studies courses where my eyes were opened wide to the depth racism, sexism, prejudice, oppression and injustice that still existed in the world. I have been drawn to understanding and fighting this ever since.

There was something I learned during those African American courses in college that I was reminded of again and again during the course of 2016.  When you start to pay attention to racism, sexism, prejudice, and oppression, you start to see it everywhere, sometimes in the most unlikely places.  It’s scary and ugly and quite frankly can make a person a little overwhelmed and despondent.  As a person who comes from a place of privilege (and we need to be honest here when we say that all white people in the United States hold some level of privilege that is not afforded to everyone) there will come a point during this period of discovery that you will want to stop looking.  It will be so hard, you will feel so terrible and guilty and bad about yourself as a person whose race had and continues to perpetuate so much injustice, that you will just want to stick your head in the sand and return to what is comfortable.  

It is at this point, as a person of privilege that you will be afforded a choice.  You can ignore what you’ve seen and quite easily return to life as status quo or you can stand up and choose a side on which to fight.  (It is here where I would argue that by choosing to ignore and return to a comfortable life pretending the injustice doesn’t exist you are actually choosing a side on which to fight; your passivity contributes to and supports injustice, but that is another conversation for another day.)

And so on that Saturday in January I marched because I wanted to physically stand against oppression and prejudice.  Because I wanted to speak truth to power.  And also because I’ve come to believe, deep in my bones the truth of that protest sign: “my humanity is tied up in yours, for only together can we truly be human.”

But I also marched for hope and love and redemption because I’ve found that when you go looking for those things, you can find them everywhere too, often in the most unlikely places.

Now of course, the work has just begun.  I marched on that Saturday morning but I continue to march each day.  I’m paying attention.  I’m calling people in power.  I’m looking for ways to lend my resources and time to fight injustice.  The march was the call to action.  Now it’s time to move.  

Happy New Year

A terribly cute/terrible toddler with some current sleep issues kept Tommy and I from ringing in the New Year together this year.  He took the big three kids to the Farm while I stayed home with the youngest.  My NYE consisted of sushi with my mom, and binge watching New Girl alone in bed, all of which had me asleep well before midnight.  NYE looks a little different these days and that is fine by me.

As a result, however, nothing about the last few days felt like any sort of “holiday” and I kind of forgot that there was any real significance to the day, other than the fact that I got to bust out my brand new Paper Source Art Grid calendar.  Instagram reminded me quickly though and I watched as many people posted their joy that the dumpster fire of a year that was 2016 was finally put to bed.

2016 was a crazy making year and unfortunately much of what made me crazy will be coming with us into the new year.  For me, when I look at our country and our world, the things that produced anxiety and hopelessness in me this past year are still very much in play.  And I don’t really know what to do with that as I look ahead to 2017.  The scary things feel too much outside of my control and out of my ability to produce any kind of change.

I really haven’t written much since the election.  I haven’t known how to start or finish anything.  When I write I’m looking for grace and hope and redemption and, well, that’s been harder for me to find.

But it’s a new year and I want to get back to old practices. I want to look at life a bit more like a camera lens this year.  My resolve in 2017 is to zoom that lens in and out this year.  I want to remember to zoom out, to look at the big picture and to care about what’s going on in the whole world.  For me this will look like paying attention, getting involved in whatever is resisting bigotry and hatred and injustice, and using whatever cards I have to speak up when necessary.  I’m going to read and listen and learn.  I’m going to be extra aware of what’s going on when I zoom that lens out and see the big picture.

But, that big picture can be overwhelming at times and I can seem powerless.  There is a lot I can’t fix or do.  And so I’m going to remember to zoom that lens in real close too and pay attention to my people, my kids and my husband, my family and the friends that have become family.  I’m going to focus the lens on them and their needs and how I can be of service.  I will make my world very small and settle into it, because this is where I can do the most good, this is where my actions produce the strongest ripples.

There will be a time for zooming the lens out and pulling it back in close and I need to do both.  My job this year is to pay attention and respond accordingly.  I can’t forget that there is a greater world out there that is hurting, that there are real injustices and abuses of power that need attention and resistance.  And I must remember that first and foremost I am called to the people in my home and in my community.  That making dinner, or reading stories or listening with full, undivided attention to my four-year-old as she rambles on about a weird dream she had last night about a unicorn, wonder woman and her best friend is often my most important ministry for the moment.

So this year I’m attempting to zoom in and out with my lens, to remember both views and forget neither.  

Happy 2017, friends.  

The Fire I'm Refusing to Ignore

I started this post yesterday but couldn't finish it.  I woke up this morning to the news of the Dallas shootings and my heart is heavier still.  I don't really know if I have any words of wisdom or if I'm just another white girl who is more clueless than not.  But my reasons for not posting this had more to do with my own self-preservation and fear of judgement which felt small and selfish.  I can't pretend there isn't a fire anymore.  

I’m heavy hearted this morning, unable to shake the feeling that something is wrong.  My Facebook feed is filled with #AltonSterling and #PhilandoCastile and pleas for our country to wake up and see that for some the world is on fire and the people with water are denying the flames’ existence.  Because they can.  Because they live in safe, fireproof houses and they don’t even realize that those fireproof houses allow them to chose blindness and that is privilege.  I can’t stop thinking about Alton Sterling’s fifteen year old son.  I was going to post something dumb about the books I’m reading but it all feels trite right now.

I don’t like feeling like this, heavy hearted with the burdens of others.  I don’t enjoy lamenting and feeling angry at God for not doing something already.  And I suppose you could say that I bring this on myself.  In an attempt to see and hear I’ve started following more people of color, those in the LGBTQ community and civil rights activists on social media.  Which of course fills my feed with more hashtags documenting the names of men and women whose lives were taken unjustly.  I’m forcing myself to look at the problems and that in turn makes my heart break.  

I could stop looking.  I could easily unfollow all those voices on social media, take Facebook and Instagram off my phone all together and never open another news outlet site again.  I could easily pretend like those injustices don’t exist.  Because of my white privilege I have the choice to look the other way.  But I can’t un-know what I know.  My eyes were opened when I was fifteen and I read “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and “Black Boy.”  They were opened again when I was 19 and I took my first African American Studies class.  And again when I was 21 and took the Social Justice track at Intervarsity’s summer camp.  I can’t un-see what I saw when I taught at George Westinghouse high school in Brooklyn, New York, a stone’s throw away from the projects that raised Jay Z.  I could feign ignorance, but the truth is I know.  I’ve seen the injustice and one day I think I will be accountable to God for what I did with that knowledge.

So I keep looking.  I keep reading.  I keep feeling heavy and helpless because it feels like the least I can do.  To not look away.  To see it and bear just a fraction of the burden my black brothers and sisters bear.  

And maybe that’s the hard part for me.  It feels like the absolute least I can do, but I don’t know what else to do.  I’ve been reliving this cycle for years now, since the Trayvon Martin shooting.  I feel the burden and the grief, I lament and post articles and like posts on Facebook until the media coverage dies down and the death becomes a little more removed.  And then I can forget (I have the luxury of forgetting) for a little while until the next shooting, the next unarmed or unaggressive black man or boy dies and the cycle repeats.  It feels so… worthless and unhelpful.

I heard on the Liturgists podcast (episode 30: Prophet or Ass, around the 18 minute mark) that in order to bring about real social change two kinds of people are needed.  We need the prophets, the ones who are outside of the power structure and who decry injustice loudly and clearly.  For the others outside the power structure these prophets are affirming and life giving.  They are leading the cause, giving a voice, pointing to the injustice and spreading the message needed for change.  Martin Luther King Jr. would be an example of such a prophet.  Those most empathetic within a power structure are also affected by the prophet’s message.  What happens though is that as human beings it is essential to our cognition to identify as a good person and so we subconsciously filter any information that undermines our self identification as a good person.  When a prophet brings forth evidence that our way of life oppresses another group of people we get defensive and we tune out because it challenges our identity as good.  For most within power structure we are unable to hear the message of the prophet.  Mentally we shut down.  And so a second group is necessary.  I like to think of them as allies.  An ally is someone within the power structure that can present the message of the prophet in a way that clearly and specifically calls out oppressive behavior while still speaking in a language that affirms the goodness of the identity of those within the oppressing groups.  An ally can take the prophet’s message back to the others and gently educate and inform.  Allies can have lower stakes conversations about the structure of white supremacy and its damage with those who have benefited (whether they realize it or not) from that structure.  They can call it out in a way that acknowledges that most of these actions are unthinking and affirm the basic goodness of those inside the oppressing group.  Both groups are needed to bring about social change on a large scale.   

I’m beginning to understand my role as an ally.  I need to speak up, to have hard conversations, to call out oppressive behavior.  And I need to do it in a way that still affirms our basic decency.  Without this approach it is scientifically proven that cognitively those in power will shut down, tune out, and forget. 

So I’m trying that today.  I’m refusing to look away and I’m being brave and kind with those around me.  In person I want to keep quiet because it’s hard to have difficult conversations face to face and point out someone’s conscious or subconscious bias.  Online I want to be cutting and snarky because I’m angry at myself for being so quiet and impatient with those that I think just don’t understand.  It’s easy to be bold and harsh online when you don’t have to see the effect of your words.  I’m raising my voice AND I’m doing it in love.  Because my role in bringing about social change is to be an ally, and this is the best way I know how.

For what it’s worth, this podcast is an excellent listen.  It’s another one from The Liturgists, called Black and White: Racism in America.  I think it’s a great entry point for those of us within the power structure to begin to open our eyes and learn.  

Thirty-Two Things...

Oh hey there.  Remember when I was awesome in the beginning of 2015 and writing all the time?  Well February happened.  February is pretty much my least favorite month.  It's still cold and dreary and I've been over winter for about two months already at that point.  And this February was lost to sick kids and sick grown ups and I don't know what else.  All I can say is that if you look at my planner for the month of February there are a whole lot of things that were supposed to happen, but never did.  Cleaning my house was at the top of that list.  Anyway, let's just pretend February never happened and I didn't take a six-week blogging break.  Cool?  Thanks.

I had a birthday earlier this week.  This is the first birthday I’ve encountered where I’m actually starting to feel old.  I’ve joked about feeling old around past birthdays and pretended to hate the annual passing of time birthdays mark.  But this year.  This year I’m feeling it.  I Google things like “skin care regimens” and pay attention to all those before and after pictures people post on Facebook because I’m starting to look…older.  And this was the year I started forgetting my age.  I could not for the life of me remember if I was turning 32 or 33.  (For the record it was 32.) (Also for the record, until this year I could never understand how people could forget their age.  How was that possible?  32 years and 3 kids later I get it.)

This year also marked a significant shift in the age of people doing the things that I aspire to do.  There are a few secret, deep down aspirations I hold in my heart.  In the past I’ve watched other women set down paths similar to the one I’ve longed for.  And in the past those women have always been older.  I’ve always had a few years left to start achieving those dreams.  Until now.  I’m more and more aware of women younger than me starting down the paths I’ve dreamed of taking.  It’s making me feel panicked.  Like there isn’t any more room at the tables I hope to occupy and I’m getting to old for those tables anyway.  Anxiety sets in and I begin to believe that I’ve run out of time, I’ll never accomplish anything and my life has been small and uneventful and when I’m 85 I will lament all the things I didn’t do.

So today, in an effort to remind myself that I have, in fact, lived 32 good years thus far I’ve compiled a list of 32 things I DID do before I turned 32.  Kind of the anti- x, y, or z things to do before you turn x, y or z age.  I want to be someone who celebrates what I’ve done.  Who sees the glass, and life, as half-full.  So in an effort to be kinder to myself I’m focusing on this list.  I’d love to hear your own list.  Maybe it’s not 32 things, but what have YOU done in your years thus far that makes you proud?

 Thirty-Two things I did before I turned Thirty-Two:

      1.)  Backpacked through Europe

      2.)  Lived in the one place I always said I wanted to live

      3.)  Got my masters

      4.)  Taught high school English to a challenging group of kids, and loved it (and them)

      5.)  Stayed out all night dancing in Spain 

      6.)  Celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin

      7.)  Became a mom 

      8.)  Got married

      9.)  Made the kind of friends I always hoped I would

      10.)   Found myself in the back of a police car

      11.) Got a tattoo

      12.) Changed careers

      13.) Started writing publicly

      14.) Helped kids fall in love with reading

      15.) Lived alone

      16.) Lived with strangers 

      17.) Waitressed (poorly) at a diner

      18.) Ran three marathons

      19.) Learned how to cook 

      20.) Taught a different group of high school kids about God and loved it (and them)

      21.) Said no when it was hard to do

      22.) Said yes when it was hard to do

      23.) Zip lined in Costa Rica

      24.) Nurtured relationships with my girlfriends

      25.) Learned how to host a great dinner party, and opened my home to others every chance I got

      26.) Leaned into vulnerability

      27.)  Learned how to advocate for my kid when he needed it

      28.) Got tipsy with my husband on date nights

      29.) Made a commitment to God and continued to work at that commitment even during seasons I  didn’t want to

      30.) Made peace with the things I’m not and the things I don’t do

      31.) Mourned the loss of my dad

      32.) Lived thirty-two years with very few regrets in regard to the decisions I made, the ways I treated people, and the person I was

       So how about you?  What's on your list?

On Redemption

I had an interesting discussion with my co-workers recently that I haven’t quite been able to get out of my head.  We were discussion that theological dilemma about whether or not God intervenes (or chooses not to intervene) in order to teach us a lesson.  More specifically, did God cause my co-worker to get an intense thyroid virus that rendered him incapable of doing pretty much anything as a way to “slow him down?”  This conversation sprung from an incredibly insensitive comment that I made- pretty much to that effect. 

For the record I felt awful when I realized what I’d said.  I mean if he were battling cancer, I would never in a million years have told him that God caused his cancer in order to slow him down.  That would be awful.  And if someone had told me that God allowed my dad to die so that I could learn something I would have punched that person in the face.  It’s a problematic theology, this “God’s hand in stressful/difficult/tragic situations in order for us to learn something” theology.

And I’ve wrestled with it much this year following my dad’s death.  I don’t believe that God would put our family through the hell of this year to teach us something.  It’s pretty twisted.  I don’t think God causes cancer in order to wake us up or makes us hit that tree with our car to teach us a lesson.  I just don’t think God is that manipulative or cruel. 

But if I don’t believe that, can I believe that God does intervene in some cases?  Was it his hand that caused me to be late, narrowly missing that car crash by mere seconds?  If he saved me, why didn’t he also do it for the others?  It’s a tricky rabbit hole to go down. 

And it’s hard because I don’t want to pick and choose, acknowledging God’s intervention when the outcome is good but not when the outcome is bad.  But then is the solution to acknowledge God’s intervention in ALL things or in NO things?

Like most things regarding God I’m finding myself more and more comfortable with a simple “I don’t really know.”  And that’s how I left it in the conversation with my co-workers.  I’m just not really sure.

But then later, as I drove home, I realized there is something that I’m beginning to know for sure.  I’m beginning to know that in all things God redeems.  This is the story told over and over again throughout the Bible.  God redeems.   He takes what is broken, what is lost, what is ruined and he makes it new, better, beautiful.  He turns a horrific death on a cross into salvation for all.  He redeems.  God is in the business of redemption.

For a long time I believed that God’s work of redemption was a begrudging work.  We stupid humans kept messing up what God had created and he kept swooping in to “fix it.”  And each time he did, it came with an eye roll, a heavy sigh and a hint of annoyance that there was yet another thing in need of redemption. 

But I’m starting to wonder if God maybe loves being in the business of redemption.  If this is the kind of work that makes his heart sing.  If it is exhilarating and fulfilling and exciting work for him.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been binge watching last season of Gray’s Anatomy on Netflix, but this idea of God loving the work of redemption makes me think of surgeons.  Surgery is long, and complicated and exhausting.  And yet surgeons, the ones who were made to be surgeons, can’t get enough of it.  They would stand in one place for hours and hours at a time fixing what is broken in the human body and walk out of that operating room exhilarated, fulfilled and excited.  They aren’t rolling their eyes and huffing about having to fix another heart.  They are in the business of fixing hearts.  It’s what they were made to do. 

And I think God is in the business of redeeming what is broken, hard and hurting. 

So I’m starting to pay attention to this work.  When I do this well I notice it all around.  God is redeeming hard things all the time.  Which is good because we humans are really effective at creating hard things in need of redemption.  I want to partner with God in that work of redemption.  I want to pull people out of wells and help redeem their stories.  I want to be a person who looks for ways to bring about something redemptive in all things.

Because there is something different about redemptive work.  It’s not false positivity.  So many times in this past year of grieving I would get so frustrated with people who constantly wanted to point out any positives or push me along to happier thoughts.  Comments like, “I know this is hard but I pray that you can draw on all your happy memories of your dad right now” did anything but uplift me.  People are uncomfortable with sadness and so they are desperate to find anything positive and I get that.  But it left me feeling like I shouldn’t be sad, like if I just focused on the happy stuff the unbearable pain would just go away.  False positivity wants to hide the pain, cover it up, distract from it, pretend that it doesn’t exist.

Redemption is different.  Redemption sits in the pain and broken.   Honors it.  Allows for it.  And then out of that pain creates something new.  Redemption is rooted in the broken so that you don’t have to ignore or deny it, but blooms something beautiful out of pain.  Where false positivity wants to pretend like things can be the same, as before, if we just focus on what’s positive, redemption recognizes that nothing will ever be the same, but beauty is still possible.  Something new is created and it is good.  It is something altogether different than before it was broken, but it is beautiful and redeemed.

Redemption is everywhere I’m realizing.  Just as God is everywhere, so is his redemptive work.  In all things God redeems.   

On Holding the Happy and the Sad- My Messy Beautiful

This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!  I LOVE Carry on Warrior.  I keep ordering more copies for myself because I keep giving them away to my friends.  If you haven't read it yet- do.  Please.  She says it all better than I ever could :)

We bought a house last month.  If my dad were alive there would have been champagne popping and celebratory hugs.  Instead there were tears and panicked phone calls to my friends for reassurance that moving forward was permissible.  We moved our family of four into my parents’ home 12 months ago, expecting our stay to be a year, tops, while we got Monster into his school and through surgery then found a home of our own.  We moved in whole and intact and then 7 months into this new living arrangement my dad died and nothing was as it should be.

Once I swam through the swamp thick waters of hard feelings about our new house I was able to tread in clearer, stiller waters of excitement about this house that will become our home.  It has character and charm and an openness that is begging to be filled with our people.  When I let myself get there, I was excited, happy, and grateful for our new home. 

But buying a new house means not living with my mom anymore.  When we moved in a year ago my dad helped direct the movers and every morning he drove Tommy to the train station on his way to the gym, then rushed home early to help get the kids breakfast.  It’s where the four of us, my mom and dad, Tommy and I would sit down with a glass of wine after the kids were down and watch episode after episode of The West Wing.  And then it was where we rushed home to the night we got the call that my dad died.  Where we woke up, morning after morning, overwhelmed by grief.  It’s where we’ve been with my mom, watching helplessly as she has struggled to learn what life looks like without her other half.  Where my sister has come home to every weekend.  It’s where we’ve been as we’ve grieved the loss of my dad together, so that we wouldn’t do it alone.

And so the sadness of leaving here, of moving forward taints the happiness of leaving here, of moving forward.  Sometimes the sadness distorts the happy altogether. 

Over the coming weeks we will welcome a baby into this world.  Our third.  And yet all I can think about is what it will feel like without my dad.  Will it be more bitter than sweet?  More tears than joy?

The list of these types of occasions goes on and on- occasions we always assumed my dad would be present for.  Will sadness over his absence eclipse all the happiness in these moments?  I worry about my sister’s wedding day, my brother’s graduation from art school, the day my youngest brother gets his first real job.  When you lose a parent so young the greatest heartache seems to surround all the future happy events.  Can they still be happy without a key player?  Can I hold happy and sad together?

I’ve been fumbling, carrying these opposing emotions for months as the pain has eclipsed the joy, tainting it beyond recognition at times.  And I long for the carefree days before my loss when happy didn’t also contain a bit of sad.

Maybe I’m longing for something that can’t be.  I don’t know if any of us who want to live fully present and wholeheartedly in our lives can expect to not have to hold joy and pain simultaneously.  My messy beautiful is learning to hold the happy and the sad together in my heart. 

I’m learning that holding these opposing emotions together may be the necessary work of growing up and living with my whole heart.

Because life is not getting any easier.  When I look at my friends, all of us in our thirties now for the most part, I see that life is getting harder, heavier, sometimes sadder.  Our 20’s were all about the happy.  Weddings and fun trips, disposable income and babies and lots of showers to celebrate all the happy.  As we approached our 30’s I noticed a shift.  Suddenly we found ourselves facing the scary stuff.  Spouses had health scares, mortgages and bills added pressure, marriages went through significant battles, we lost babies and jobs, our kids got diagnoses and our parents died.  I can’t tell you how many friends waged difficult seasons in the last few years.  Time and again I listened to friends nostalgically wish for the ease and happiness of our twenties, watched as they worked to find ways to bring lightness to their world.

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I’m accepting the truth of Ann Voskamp’s words above more and more these days.  If I want to live fully, presently, and whole-heartedly in this messy beautiful world God created I have to learn to live in both dynamics.  Maybe the holiness is being able to coexist with them both, not just to tolerate the pain but to embrace it, to let it make you fully human.   Maybe the sad doesn’t just taint the happy.  Maybe the happy also seeps into the sad.

I want a life that sadness doesn’t touch, I want happy to just be happy.  For most of my life until now, that’s been pretty realistic.  I’ve had hard things, but never a loss like this.  Never something that felt so permanent.  The last five months have taught me that life is hard.  Life is messy and darkness can sometimes abound.  But it is oh so beautiful too.  If I don’t learn to hold the messy with the beautiful I’ll never see the beautiful.  But I think too, that the messy enhances the beautiful.  The sad is real and true and in some ways beautiful in it’s own messy right.  I could write thousands more words on the ways that my grieving has opened me up to deeper relationships and more honesty and vulnerability.  There is value in the sadness; it's not just something to endure.   

Holding both the sad and the happy keeps me from going numb.  Keeps the happy from feeling fake.  It’s a hard won happy, the kind that coexists with sad.  But I’m learning that it may just be the best kind.