Look at the Fruit ~ Jen

Big ups to Adopting James for blowing my mind on this one.

Last week, AJ posted an article by the band Switchfoot, in which the lead singer said he doesn’t want to be known as a Christian singer because he thinks people then make the assumption that he is a better Christian than other musicians. He believes that we all have one calling: obedience. None of us knows what that means to another and we can only be obedient to our own calling. A teacher is not being more or less obedient than a preacher, if that is what God has called them to be.

AJ invited discussion about this topic at the bottom of his blog and I basically asked the question “How do we know when someone in the secular world is being obedient?” My example was Beyonce, who calls herself a Christian, but her music tells another story. I while I may be able to relate to the kind of mother and wife and woman she is off the stage, the sexualized and money hungry message of her music is not something I want in my life.

AJ responded to me with this: “Beyonce, I assume, has no fruit bearing from her songs. That is how we can tell.”

Say what?

Forget about Beyonce. Let me get this straight. All those sleepless nights I spent wondering if I was doing the right thing with the right people for the right reasons? Good Lord, how do I knooooooowwww?????

And all I had to do was think about the fruit??

Man, while I am sure that somewhere along my 42 year path, someone has said this same type of thing to me before, this time was the one that stuck.

Look at the fruit. That’s all I have to do. Because God knows the plans He has for me, to prosper me and not harm me. So if I am in right relationship, if I am obedient then my fruit of the spirit will be abundant, nourishing, sustaining.

And if I’m not, well. We know what that looks and feels like because we’ve all been there. Our souls screaming at us that we are doing the wrong thing with the wrong people for the wrong reasons and the fruits of our spirit are shriveled and dead from anger, jealousy, greed, spite, vengeance and fear.

Even if we are in that wrong place, the Good News is that we just have to get right to make our fruits blossom again.

Yet another reason to give up sleepless nights.

Just look at the fruit. That’s how we know.

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Friends, the one year anniversary of the passing of Dana’s dad is approaching and it’s been really hard for her. A year ago were the toughest times of her life. If you could please wing a prayer in her direction or send her an encouraging thought, I think it would nourish her soul and I would be so incredibly grateful.

Thank you.

The Moon

Have you ever been loved well by someone? So well that you are secure that person will receive you and will forgive your worst fault? That’s the kind of security the soul receives from God. When the soul lives in that kind of security, it is no longer occupied with technique. We can go back and do the rituals, the spiritual disciplines, but they are no longer idolatrously followed. We don’t condemn people who don’t do it our way. All techniques, rituals and spiritual disciplines are just fingers pointing to the moon.

But the moon is the important thing, not the pointing fingers.

~ Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

We are entering the end of Lent and Holy Week is fast approaching. This is a Christian’s most sacred time, when all our pretensions should be stripped away, and we reach for the poor, the humble, the hurting both outside and inside ourselves.

Don’t get distracted by the pointing fingers. Everything we need is inside of us. Just look to the moon.

Because what is the moon?

A bright light shining in the darkness.

A Real Bible, Just Small ~ Jen

“Mom” Gabriel says one day when he comes home from school, “For my birthday, can I have a Boys Backpack Bible?”

“A what?”

“A Boys Backpack Bible. It’s small so it can fit in my backpack.”

“Is it a kids bible? With pictures?”

“No, it’s a real Bible, just small.” This with an eyeroll.

Pretty much, when your eight year old son asks for a Bible for his birthday, you make that happen. Even if the good folks who make the backpack Bible don’t make a Catholic version.

Don’t worry my Catholic friends, Grandma was in charge of getting the Bible and when she was at the Religious Education Congress last week, she let some publishers know they got out maneuvered by the Protestants in the boys backpack Bible market.

The adults in my family, Catholic and non-dom church alike, could not wait to see what this backpack Bible was all about. When Gabriel opened it last weekend, we snatched it out of his hands and passed it around.

I can report that you need to be eight to read the teeny tiny print required to make the Bible backpack sized.

I can also report that there’s an insert called Grossology, with a list of scripture where gnarly things happen. And before you wonder if that’s appropriate, I found Gabe huddled with the Bible looking up those scripture, book, chapter and line. You know, studying.

There’s also a list of Good Guys and a list of bizarre happenings.

I think this is brilliant. Christians believe the Bible is a dynamic, inspired book but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Especially for kids. But here’s this approach—to meet the boys where they are and show them there is something for them in there.

Yes, there’s a girls version, but I haven’t seen it. We could get into the whole gender specific argument but this Christian mom is going to shake it. My eight year old is reading his bible, people. ‘Nough said.

The company who makes this bible is called Zondervan and they have a ton of different and accessible bibles for kids and young adults.

I did some preliminary research and couldn’t find a complete bible in a smaller, light size for Catholic kids. There are lots of kid’s versions here, but they don’t appear to be scripture. I am sure there is something out there that would do and I just didn’t find it.

And even if there’s not, Grandma made sure some people know that needs to change.

Mouthy Women

This morning, Dana and I made it to yoga for the first time in two weeks. My kids have been sick, her kids have been sick, and the dang time changed. You know what I’m saying right? One of those weeks.

So what to write about?

We just passed the one year anniversary of Full of Graces….Almost 500 honest to goodness readers…we just had our first comment criticism and throw down, which made us very excited because you must be doing something right if you can’t keep everyone happy…it’s women’s history month, you know we have things to say about that…and it’s Lent, a very holy and sacred time of the year.

Too many choices, too many choices! So today we’re going to punt, to ourselves and a post that originally appeared on Hallelujah Highway in 2012.

Do you know Glennon, from Momastery?

She’s been talking lately about a woman named Brene Brown, a research professor from Texas who has spent ten years researching shame and courage. She posted a pic of a page of Brown’s new book Daring Greatly. This page talked about the social rules women are expected to follow, summed up here: “Basically, we are expected to stay as small, sweet and quiet as possible”.

Glennon was almost smothered by these rules. So many women can relate to that feeling. Trying to stuff themselves into some mold and feeling inadequate when they don’t quite make it.

But her post made me think about other women, the ones who never followed the rules, or at least knew the rules were crap from the beginning. They never stayed small, sweet and quiet. They opened their mouths and said what they felt, thought and meant. Or, they looked small and sweet, but opened their mouths and roared like lions.

I have always been a mouthy woman.

Maybe because I was six feet tall since I was twelve, I did not feel constrained by the rules. The small and quiet ship sailed fairly early in my life, and I was not on it.

It could also be that in my family, children were seen and heard. We were encouraged to talk and the adults listened to us. I knew my opinion was important very early in my life. I saw my dad honor my mom’s opinion, and my grandfathers honor my grandmothers’. Not once in my life have I ever struggled to voice my opinion. More often, my struggle is to discern when my opinion should be voiced, or how to express it appropriately.

Maybe it was sports. My success was not tied to how I looked or dressed, but how hard I played. And I controlled that. In college, boys flocked to us, drawn by our strength, health, intelligence. They were the men who didn’t need us to be quiet or small. Most of us married men like this—men who are delighted at our “take on the world” approach to life.

But they are the exception. Most people are extremely uncomfortable with the Mouthy Woman. Some men don’t like her because she seems threatening, like she’s reaching out of her province and into theirs. See how male politicians expressed Cave Man opinions in this last election. See women at the highest levels of politics in this country and how they are treated. See that we have not had a female president. Yet.

More distressing to me, though, is how women turn on the Mouthy Woman. Why is that? Why do women eat their own? Why do we poke those who do the very thing we all say we wish we were strong enough to do?

Just recently, a friend of mine told me that my very presence demands honesty. It took me a minute to see the whole truth of this statement: it’s a compliment for sure; but also a question, a “How can you be so sure that you are right?”; and a request to go easy—honesty seems like a hard standard to meet.

I do hold myself to a standard of truth. I believe in truth. Lies are unpredictable and messy. Truth is simple. Truth is a survival skill.

Glennon would agree. She is with those of you who are still struggling to find your truth, to silence your shame, to open your mouths. I know you can do it. You can find and live your truth. I don’t know any secrets. I just made a choice. You can make it, too. Start by telling yourself the truth. Then tell others the truth. Make a commitment to never lie. This doesn’t mean you have to speak all your truths all the time. Sometimes it’s enough that you know the truth. But never speak a lie. Not to yourself, not to your partner, not to your kids, not to your friends. Make truth a habit.

To my mouthy sisters, to the ones who were never concerned with being small and quiet in the first place, or have learned to speak the truth: Keep talking. Talk for your daughters and grand-daughters, so they will know that truth is safe. Talk for your sons, so they will know the value of an honest woman. Talk for those less fortunate, talk for those who cannot talk.

And listen to them all. Show them the respect of being heard. Grow a future that believes in itself and the honesty of what it knows. Grow a future built on a mighty mountain of truth.

The Names We Call Ourselves ~ Jen

For a long time I have thought about a tattoo to commemorate that I am a cancer survivor. But for four years, I haven’t done it. The hesitation came from something I read in an illness recovery book, that we have to be careful about the way we visualize our illness and our struggle against it. It makes so much sense not to use images of violence, domination, anger, loss. A sick person does not need to bring these energies into their life.

I didn’t battle my cancer. I told it to leave. And then I shut the door against its return. I guard the door carefully, with all the things that reduce my stress and keep me peaceful: food, exercise, God, family, friends and creating.

This is not new age-y philosophy. This is ancient wisdom, reflected in the scripture of Proverbs 17:22: A joyful heart is good medicine, But a broken spirit dries up the bones.

So even though the symbol of thyroid cancer is a butterfly–and what could be more peaceful than a butterfly–I wasn’t sure this was good medicine.

Then last week I read this*:

If we stay survivors only without moving to thriving, we limit ourselves and we cut our energy to ourselves and our power in the world to less than half…once the threat is past, there is a potential trap in calling ourselves by names taken on during the most terrible times of our lives…it is not good to base the soul identity solely on the feats and losses and victories of the bad times”.

That’s it.

For a long time, every time I said out loud that I was a cancer survivor, a voice in my head yelled “GOOD LORD! I HAD CANCER! I COULD HAVE DIED A YOUNG WIFE AND LEFT BEHIND MY KIDS WHO WOULD HAVE NEVER REMEMBERED ME!!!!”

Every time, it was like hitting a wall. Or any other metaphor that describes the moment in a perfectly wonderful normal day when something makes you remember: I have been hurt. I have been abused. I have lost. I could have died.

It took me a long time to get past that place. It took a lot of work, prayer, reading and support. That time in my life is still framed in fear and anger and doubt, but those emotions are no longer with me on a daily basis.

If I marked my body with a symbol of that time, then those emotions would permanently be present. And for the love of all that is good, why would I do that to myself?

Whatever we have survived—cancer, sexual assault, violence, addiction, loss, our parent’s ugly divorce, our own ugly divorce—it’s part of us, but not who we are. It’s a piece of our story, but not the whole story. The story isn’t over yet and we have to choose carefully which emotions and energies we are going to carry forward.

Not just for our mental and emotional health, but for our physical health as well. Because how we feel, and what’s inside of us deep, deep down will manifest itself physically. It will make us pay attention.

If you are in the midst of surviving, in the midst of the battle for your life and your heart, soldier on. Don’t be scared of the scars you are earning. Scars heal stronger than what was there before. I’m proud of my scars.

But if you are past the battle, like I am, then we have to consider the truth in the words: There is danger in calling ourselves by names we earn in the hardest times in our lives. We can get stuck there, in the pain, fear, anger, grief, bitterness, abandonment, addiction. Or worse, bring these things forward into our future where they will constantly demand our attention and make us sick in body and spirit.

I don’t want to manifest anger, fear, illness. I want to manifest joy and health. So no butterfly.

But that doesn’t mean no ink. It just means I am waiting for the right inspiration.

For you make me glad by your deeds, Lord; I sing for joy at what your hands have done. How great are your works, Lord, how profound your thoughts!– Psalm 92:4-5

*From Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

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