Kate is making her First Communion with four of her good friends. So the moms hired a photographer and on Sunday we dressed them up, took them to a pretty farm and took pictures.
Officially, to mark the importance of the occasion.
But in the far-reaching, planner’s part of my heart, it’s so we have these pictures to show at rehearsal dinners when they are all bridesmaids in each other’s weddings. We do live in a small valley. You never know.
These three met at our house to get their hair done. By the moms, none of whom qualify as “hair people”. It required wine…
We hired the magnificent and magical Tonya Poitevint, who did our family pictures last Fall. She was amazing, like a mother hen with five snow white chicks following her around. She has such a way of coaxing beautiful smiles.
In the middle of the shoot, it came to me what we were really doing.
We were guiding our girls to the next place. We were doing it together and they were doing it together and Tonya became part of our together. It was this amazing, prayerful feminine energy and it was powerful.
These five beautiful girls, with their arms around each other, laughing in God’s sunshine.
And the mothers, who have brought them this far in keeping with the promises we made when they were baptized, but really before that, when they were whispers of hope in our hearts.
As our mothers before us. And before them. And back and back and back.
All of this to say: You are a beloved child of God, and of mine. And it is your province as a woman to wear these things as symbols of who you are and celebrate what is holy and sacred.
This is what it means to be a woman and a mother in our church.
Sometimes I get a little nudge that I haven’t talked about Grace in a while. This Sunday it was a BIG nudge.
On Holy Thursday night, the Apostle Peter, who my church recognizes as the first earthly leader of the Church, denied that he knew Jesus three times. As Jesus had foretold at the Last Supper.
I have never blamed Peter. Our first human instinct is to LIVE. Plus, at that point, he didn’t know what was at stake.
This was Peter’s all-In moment. Right? How many times has this happened to us, where we’re kind-of-committed to something in our lives, but at that last moment, we walk—from fear, from uncertainty, from misunderstanding.
Then we know almost immediately that we blew it. That we walked from something hard, but good. And usually, it’s only at this moment of loss that we see the true value of the thing we almost had, if only we had been all-in.
This happens so often in our lives that there are lots of sayings about it: Oh well. That’s the one that got away. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Can’t unring the bell.
In this moment right here—the Peter moment—we can make a lot of choices. We can regret, or hate ourselves for missing out, or become angry, or blame others.
Or.
Here is Sunday’s Gospel reading:
After breakfast Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?[e]”
“Yes, Lord,” Peter replied, “you know I love you.”
“Then feed my lambs,” Jesus told him.
16 Jesus repeated the question: “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
“Yes, Lord,” Peter said, “you know I love you.”
“Then take care of my sheep,” Jesus said.
17 A third time he asked him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt that Jesus asked the question a third time. He said, “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Then feed my sheep.” (John 21: 15-17)
I swear, the hair stood up on my arms in church. Because that right there is LOVE. And FORGIVENESS. And REDEMPTION. Face to face, one by one, Jesus healed Peter’s denials.
Peter went on to become the first earthly leader of Jesus’ followers and he was so all-in that he died on a cross for his faith.
Holy Grace.
Life is full of it. There is no wound that cannot be healed, no sin that cannot be forgiven, no fear that cannot be overcome and no Peter Moment that cannot become all-in.
A mom in the comments said she stood in support of the bill because her young girls shouldn’t have to see THAT. And after she took a solid challenge from other readers, she signed off by saying that we are really screwing our kids up and IT is sad.
THAT and IT.
They jump off the page at me. Old habit. All English teachers know what I’m saying here. In the beginning of my career I would write little notes to my students in the margins, encouraging them to be more precise. By the end, I just circled the words, and drew a big question mark. On a poster board in the back of the room was a key to my corrections:
? = WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU SAYING???
When I read her comment, I thought What the heck is she saying? What is THAT and what is IT?
I played it out in my head:
A transgendered woman comes into the women’s room to pee. Regardless of how long she lived as a he, someone taught her that it’s not polite to pee in the sink. So off to a stall she goes.
How does my daughter even know what is happening behind those closed doors?
Or a transgendered man comes into the men’s room. The urinals are not an option—I actually know this from personal experience, it’s a physical impossibility—so off to the stall he goes.
My son would assume one thing: serious business. And he would get out there as soon as possible to avoid the smell.
All good so far.
What WOULD cause an uproar is the reverse of that. There’s a McDonald’s in Redding where the bathrooms are reversed. Usually the women’s room is on the right. THE RIGHT. Annie had to pee and the door needed a token and no, I didn’t look at the sign.
The guy at the urinal sure did shriek like a woman when I rolled in there with my preschooler. Safe to say that he didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to be there.
In my world, it will be a few more years before my little people notice things that may be seem different to them. I stand firmly by my “Need to Know” style of parenting. I’ll find the words then.
Because I have never once thought how I would explain transgendered to my kids.
There it is.
Maybe this mom who commented was her older self, with kids who are asking questions that need answers. Maybe she’s watching her babies take giant steps towards adulthood and suddenly all those hard words she was going to find on a far-away tomorrow have to be in her head today.
So she’s freaking out and using relative pronouns.
Sister girl, I can relate to THAT.
But I don’t want to live in a relative pronoun world. And I need to stop punting to my older self because I’m tired now and my older self, the one with teenagers, will be tired and old.
So I’m going to remember that we are people who believe where we stand on the important things in life is not as important as how we stand. We stand in love.
Then I’m going to call my girlfriends and invite them for coffee but really it will be a brainstorming session called “What to tell our kids when”. Together we will buck up and find the hard words because fear is no excuse to use relative pronouns.
But also.
For the love of God, can we build children with hardier hearts? Children who aren’t so fragile that they will need twenty years of therapy at the sight of a woman peeing standing up? Or whose faith in all that is good and holy will not fall to pieces in the face of a man who appears to have boobs? That’s a house of cards built on shifting sands and I am not interested in that.
I want mighty warriors.
If I’m doing my job well, they will see things different from their idea of right and wrong and say “Huh.” Then go about their holy and sacred business of standing in love.
If, when you think “Christian music concert”, you see lots of guitars and banjos—then we need to talk.
Four years ago, I was you.
Then a friend suggested I try the Air1 radio station, at the same time I was struggling to recover from my postpartum anxiety. I turned it on, figuring that melodic, folksy guitar music would be soothing, if nothing else.
Yeah it was soothing. But not folksy or melodic. Hip hop. Rock. Pop.
The same types of music on any top 40 station, except clean, faith-filled, uplifting. That was the end of secular radio in mama’s car.
Our kids really like music. Kate loves to sing along and Gabe is interested in drums. So last summer, when Toby Mac was coming to town, Shea got us tickets.
I didn’t know what to expect. My first concert was Bon Jovi in 1989. I’ve seen Pearl Jam and U2, Pink and Lenny Kravitz.
Can Christian concerts be that big, loud, fun?
Yes they can. Minus the pot, liquor and boobs.
And—they’re cheaper.
Last weekend we took our kids to Toby Mac’s Hits Deep Tour in Eugene. We saw 8 top artists in 4 hours. We got churched up. We danced and sang til we were dripping sweat. I may have cried once or twice.
The place was sold out. Easily 10,000 people. Lots of kids of all ages. Lots of smiles and hugs and manners.
Not one curse word. Not. One.
These artists—they are amazing live. Dancing, standing on tables, jumping into the pit. They could be making so much more money in the secular music world. And instead, they use their gifts for God.
That’s the kind of role model I’m talking about. Not to mention, these are grown men and women testifying. They are walking their talk.
You better believe I want my kids to see that.
The tour has partnered with Food For the Hungry, so at one point, an African pastor came out and talked to us about their mission. His story went like this: If all of the people in the world could be represented by 100 people standing in a line, then we are all at the front. And at the back are children who are starving to death. One child dies from hunger every three seconds. 1-2-3. Another one gone. We may wonder why we are lucky enough to be at the front of the line. It’s because we have the power to make a difference for those at the back of the line. We can’t fix it all, but we can fix one. And God will see us fix that one and He will know we did what we could.
At the end, he counted again: 1-2-3. Then he shouted “Who will help save the ones at the back of the line?!” and Kate shot out of her seat with her hands and voice raised: “ME!!!!!!!”
So we adopted another African child. His name is Kirodunge and he lives in Burundi. It costs $35/month, but there’s no way to put a price on my little girl using her tithing money to help another child.
It challenges and convicts. It parks your heart in the shadow of the Cross and makes you look up.
I have never been good at looking up. I don’t want to see. I tell myself it is enough to know.
Everything I read tells me that I’m wrong. My suffering has not been enough, although it has taught me so much about life and myself and fear and pain. It’s only the first step.
To truly walk where Jesus did, our suffering has to be used for someone else.
Which means I have to see. I have to look up from the foot of the cross and see.
I don’t want to read the Facebook post from my cousin’s friend who lost her six year old to cancer two years ago. On the second anniversary of her daughter’s death, she’s asking me to stand with her against pediatric cancer. I don’t want to see, because I have a sweet girl who was six two years ago. I don’t want to know that children we know get sick from cancer and die.
I want to look away and go about my business.
I don’t want to read the story about the woman in my state who tried to kill her newborn and toddler. I have to see that she is vilified in the media and the comments underneath the articles. I have to read until I see what my heart is already telling me, that she was sick, like I was sick. I don’t want to remember how that time felt to me. I don’t want to admit that she is me and I might have been her if we hadn’t made the right call, finally.
I want to look away and go about my business.
I don’t want to see pictures of drowned toddlers on the beaches in Greece, or news reports of the danger and squalor of refugee camps. I don’t want to know about the migrant camps in my own city. I don’t want to consider that in this day and age, families suffer while others turn them away. I’ll write a check or make a donation, but that’s as much as I feel I can handle. It’s a swamp of hopelessness.
I want to look away and go about my business.
But then I read this, in Richard Rohr’s Hope Against Darkness:
“When we’re not sure what is certain…we’re going to be anxious. We want to get rid of that anxiety as quickly as we can. Yet to be a good leader of anything today—to be a good pastor, a good bishop, or, I’m sure, a good father or mother—you have to be able to contain, to hold patiently a certain degree of anxiety.
(…)That’s probably why the Bible says so often ‘Do not be afraid.’”
This is me. I am not good—terrible, actually—at holding anxiety. I do want to get rid of it as quickly as I can. I work hard to not invite it into my heart in the first place. My leadership skills are horribly limited by my anxieties. So I have convinced myself that I am safer occupying my space, and my space only. I busy myself with controlling the heck out of what I can control: my home, my family, my personal relationship with my church and my God.
Rohr says that “expelling what you can’t embrace gives you an identity, but it’s a negative identity. It’s not life energy, it’s death energy. Formulating what you are against gives you a very quick, clear and clean sense of yourself. Thus, most people fall for it. People more easily define themselves by what they are against, by who they hate, by who else is wrong, instead of by what they believe in and by whom they love.”
I’m convicted. In giving my anxieties primary place in my life—whether managing them, medicating them, avoiding them, expelling them—I have chosen not to see. If I don’t see, how can I help? Walk beside? Love?
Have I literally scared the “Be Jesus” out of myself?
There’s a reason this is in front of me now. I have no idea what it might be, but I’ll hold on patiently and wait for it. And while I do, I’ll work at replacing my fear with my faith.
Look up and see.
Hold the anxiety.
Be not afraid.
Put the “Be Jesus” back where it belongs.
This popped up on Toby Mac’s Facebook feed as I was typing this post. Thanks to Mr. Hybels and Mr. Mac for the reminder!
Sometimes I get a little nudge that I haven’t talked about Grace in a while. This Sunday it was a BIG nudge.
Full Of Graces 