Living as Art

Freedom

Freedom is like cancer.  It clarifies cloudy priorities and reveals the tremendous treasures buried beneath the depths of want and desire.
In our attempt to cover too much in life - to know too much, do too much, to have too much - We often live like oscillating fans – unable to stay fixed on a singular target. Freedom and cancer expose both the fragility and fullness of every human life. 

I sat in a custody hearing recently.  The silence in the room crawled under my skin and infected me.  I wondered if the severe quiet would permanently suppress my ability to speak ever again.  The once married couple sat at separate tables.  I could see the back of their heads, which they never turned in the direction of each other – even once.  They sorted through documents in front of them.  The room seemed to even swallow the sound of shuffling papers. 

Finally the dark, heavy wooden door opened, and an equally heavy man wearing black flowing robes walked through it.  His entering jolted us from our soundless stupor.  We quickly stood in reverence.  The lawyers called witnesses, cross examined them, and objected regularly to stretching attempts from each other to ask or say too much.  Both the previous husband and the prior wife took the stand and attempted to prove they were the best suited to raise their shared children.  Even personal letters of affection from the times that were good were offered as evidence against the other one.  They had already lost so much – stood to lose so much more, and right in front of everyone – even the good moments and the better days were being torn apart and devoured, as they became weapons used against each other.   

I provided pre-marriage counseling for this couple; I participated in years of efforts to make the marriage work.  Their marriage became repressive to both of them – and both wanted freedom.  As lawyers shredded their most sacred memories in front of us all – I knew freedom was not what they felt.  As I watched more pieces break apart in their life I dreamed of some magical kind of superglue to help them somehow put the pieces back together.

I first used superglue when I was eight. I wanted fake nails.  I loved how my teachers tapped the books when they read them to us in class.  My aunt gave me a package of fake nails while clearing out her house for a garage sale.  I pulled the tube of super glue from the package - missing the directions about puncturing the end with a straight pin - I chose the biggest, sharpest kitchen knife for the job.  Unable to sustain the pressure – the glue exploded furiously all over my face – specifically targeting my left eye.  With her pants around her ankles, my mother ran like a hobbled horse or chained criminal into the kitchen as I began to voraciously belt out one scream on top of the other.  My mother saw me holding a massive knife and doubling over in pain.  She began to search my body for a bloody wound and eventually saw the assault of superglue on my face.  Sometime after pulling her pants up, calling my aunt and grandmother and putting my two small brothers into the car – maybe not in that order – we drove back to my aunt’s house who ran out to our 1979 white ____ cougar with her shirt twisted and turned around her flailing arms.  By the time she arrived at the ER to meet us, my grandmother had already fainted three times.  My family certainly didn’t need my help in accentuating the situation so I quickly quieted down.  Relief rushed over as the doctor wheeled me behind the swinging doors, strapped me on the cold metal table and painfully pried my eye open.  The worry about my family distracted me from the doctor sliding a tube attached to a suction cup twice as large as my eyeball under my eyelid.  All I could think about was made for TV movie about Helen Keller and I wondered if I could learn to read Braille.  I haven’t been to the ER since and it took me 29 years to want fake nails again. 

I lived for three weeks with one eye as the damaged one healed beneath patches and bandages.  My depth perception with one working eye left me insecure while doing any physical activity for those few weeks.  I remember constantly feeling like I would trip and fall – nothing was really as close or as far away as it looked from my one eye.   I remember the day the patch came off, I asked, “Has the world always been this bright?”  Freedom gives us two good eyes.  It guarantees confidence that our steps can be sure and our perception is accurate.  We see more around us when we are free.

Not long after my superglue saga, while visiting my Nana, I captured a butterfly and put it in one of her old canning jars.  Nana warned me, “Sugar, butterflies were not created to live in jars”.  I heard her, but I could not bear to release the wings I carefully pinched between my fingers.  I carried the Mason jar around for hours, until I realized the yellow and orange wings no longer flickered and flew within the glass prison.  Nana and I buried that butterfly in a shallow red clay grave.  She sang, I prayed.  Freedom cannot be captured, caged or controlled. 

I have often felt like that butterfly – suffocating in a glass jar.  I wondered if this broken couple felt the glass jar around them as well. 

As the judge left to deliberate the fate of this family – The silence swept in once again.  I sat staring at the United States flag in the room – the ultimate symbol of freedom.

My hometown was adjacent to a large military base.  Besides having all new classmates every two to three years, and camo fatigues smattering every scenario I can recall, practice bombs thundered through each night and slightly shook my bed as I slept.  I lived with a raw realization of the price paid for my freedom.  My friends and their parents offered their lives for it.  Freedom rewards us with more than it requires.  But freedom isn’t free.  Someone has to pay for it. 

Fifteen minutes later, the same wooden door opened for the same heavy man. With a bland expression and toneless voice he executed his judgment. Nobody was devastated.  Nobody was delighted.  I am not sure anyone won.  Where do they go from here?  I could almost hear them both screaming from the pain of the moment – but maybe – like my mother – I was mistaken about the source of the pain.  Maybe the wound was more about wanting something they never found than losing something they once had.

Maybe freedom is more about finding than escaping.  Maybe it is more about seeing something different than having something more.  Maybe it is actually more about the one paying for the freedom than the one living in it. 

Freedom, like cancer, consumes.  Their similarities end here, and the most striking difference lies in their purpose … one attempts to give life – one to take it.  Freedom, unlike cancer, is incurable and it is contagious.  Real freedom’s boundaries are not around one nation, nor is it symbolized by one flag. Freedom, though not definable by mankind, is intended for it.  And cancer, glass jars, and courtrooms cannot kill it.

Red Buds

Relationships are like red buds.  Just as you become almost bored to death of the barren branches, flowers break open from them almost overnight.  My husband I met at twelve, began a relationship at 14 and married by 20.  The night before our wedding, I lay in my twin sized, floral comforter covered bed and briefly mourned the end of the before- marriage-part of our relationship.  I had no doubts, no worries, and I welcomed the unknown but certain changes we’d face in the covenant committed part of our relationship; but what we’d had up to that point had been remarkable, wonderful…and a little part of me hated to leave it behind.  But I knew it was time. 

Our new marriage made us feel like we had won the jackpot with each other, except for occasionally when we felt more like we were washed up gamblers who kept putting all they had on the table but walked away broke.  Overall – the wins outnumbered the losses, but I found myself needing more - needing a new dimension to our relationship.  Mashed potatoes are good – but gravy makes them better.  We were good – but I wanted better.  I wanted a new challenge, I wanted a new level of sharing life with him, I wanted to commit even more deeply to each other. I wanted a baby. 

It took longer than we thought.  So long we doubted it would ever happen.  I knew a baby would stretch our relationship, but I didn’t know that the possibility of never having a baby would sieve through our marriage like a giant colander.  Our future without children looked to me a lot like a red bud tree before March.

Years passed and just when we thought the barren branches would never bloom –two pink little lines on a pregnancy test ushered in a new season for us - one filled of growth, exploding with beauty, and smelling fresh and new.  The news of our coming twins eclipsed everything for us.  The universe had a new rotation and although the transition jolted us a bit, we loved the shift. 

But the night before the twins were born, I lay in my queen sized Navajo comforter covered bed I grabbed my husband’s hand and briefly mourned the end of the before kids part of our marriage.  I had no doubts, no worries, and I welcomed the unknown but certain changes we’d face in the parenting part of our relationship; but what we’d had up to that point had been remarkable, wonderful…and a little part of me hated to leave it behind.  But I knew it was time.

As I cared non-stop for two tiny beings whose sole dependency fell on me, I had a revelation.  Maybe it was more of a realization. I realized I had been a baby.  A baby who woke my mother night after night needing comforted and fed.  A baby who needed burped and changed.  A baby whose mother starred at me with that love drunk look on her face while rubbing my fuzzy head until I fell asleep in her arms.

My children wouldn’t remember those first days of unceasing attention or care, nor will they understand the pleasure and agony of my love for them until the day their own red bud bursts with blooms.  Then they will know.  Then they will see. Then they will understand.

Our parents all took turns coming to see our life in full bloom, much like the spring season that served as the stage for our new family.  My Nana came too.  She flew for her very first and only time to visit us. My husband amazed her with his agile, speedy, diapering techniques.  One brow lifted and her eyes brightened as she told me …  “When your daddy was just a baby, I had to take the laundry in once a week to the wash.”  Then she began to refer to herself in the third person. I knew the memory provoked her …”Corene took the baby and the laundry, and your Papa Bob went to the barbershop and had a cut and a coke.  Well, if Corene had it to do it over again, she would hand Bob that wiggly baby to watch while he enjoyed his coke.” She finished with an assertive head nod.   As I watched my husband wrangle both babies at once – pride infused my love for my diapers and wipes superhero to terrifying levels. 

The same Papa who’s fathering prowess came into question, would drive for an hour to fix my car, pick me up, or bring me chips and cheese dip throughout my teenage years.  Though I cannot speak for him as a father, as a grandfather he gallantly redefined the role.  We’d often drive with the widows down.  He loved smelling the different seasons.  I remember his face fashioning into the most pleasurable expression as he inhaled spring’s ethereal perfume, summer’s verdant aroma, fall’s tangy fragrance, and winter’s crisp scent.  He loved it when the seasons changed.  He loved the coming and going of them all.  He knew how to both accept and let go.  The day after my wedding, I had to start learning the lesson he’d worked to teach me.  He died suddenly.  Unexpected.

I like the red bud only when it’s blooming. If I were the designer of trees, I would have the tree wear the color all year.  I can accept change – but I don’t like letting go.  I have a cedar box full of worthless trinkets.  Broken jewelry, plastic and wooden rings, watches that don’t work, and a lapel pin in the shape of a Viking.  They represent more than a memory – they remind me of people – none of which I want to take out of my cedar box. One of the watches that doesn’t work was a gift my husband gave me on my birthday in 9th grade. I keep it to remember my husband at 14.  To remember how he changed my life so long ago.  We’ve shared many birthdays since then, but this last one was especially fabulous.  It was the kind of day I wish I had the ability to Zip-lock and freeze so I could dethaw it and enjoy later - my children’s voices singing to me, my husband’s arms holding me.   I know someday it would taste even better than it did the first time.

Much like that spring week I spent with Nana.  During her stay a tornado launched newscasters into ceaseless coverage of the weather as sirens sounded.  We left her with a baby in each arm, in front of a video camera we failed to turn off in the excitement as we went outside to evaluate for ourselves.  Later watching her attempt at comforting the infants while terror hijacked her nerves remains one of the funniest things I have seen in my life.  She’s gone now – and I didn’t know how high those memories would appreciate. 

The red bud was a gift to my family – in honor of Nana when she passed.  Today the blooms cover her tree.  Papa would appreciate the display – but would understand when the vivid pinks and purples gave way to the rich green leaves.  He would tell me to not be anxious when the leaves cannot hold their places any longer and leave the tree bare, naked, and vulnerable.  It’s the accepting and letting go of the seasons that makes the red bud thrive. Spring always gives way to summer, summer eventually submits to fall, and fall never fails to relinquish its stay for winter to weigh in with its heavy pause on all life.  But winter, like a gentleman brings spring in on his arm.  And she - she dresses and drapes everything in her rich textures and vivid designs. I love her work – but know I cannot zip-lock or freeze it, nor can I hide it away in my little cedar box. 

Each night I tuck my kids in their beds:  the blue comforter one, the sports themed one, the Bohemian colored one, and the white tiger themed one.  Each night – for just a moment – I mourn the passing of a day I will never have with them again. I have no doubts, no worries, and I welcome the unknown but certain changes we’ll face in the many coming seasons of our relationship as a family; but what we’ve had up to this point has been remarkable, wonderful…and a little part of me hates to leave each passing season behind.  But one of my most important jobs as their mom is to know when it is time.   

Risk and Responsibility

I drive my kids around for millions of hours per week. While in transit a couple of days ago I stopped next to a young girl in a small white two-door car. She looked fourteen. Not only did her youth disturb me but she was on the phone, filing her nails, and had one foot in her seat, leaving only one out of four limbs apparently in control of her driving skills. I looked at my youngest sons face in my rear view mirror. I work constantly at protecting my children – at maintaining their physical, emotional and mental well-being. Yet I had strapped him into my car and drove him onto the same highway with potentially irresponsible, deadly drivers.

As we sat 5 yards away from one of them I briefly contemplated what to do. Should I get out of my car and rap on her window and explain driving safety to her? I would call her mother if I knew her. That is usually the best guarantee to resolve any issue I have found. Since her number wasn’t anywhere on her daughter’s car I continued my deliberation. I considered getting her license number and calling the police. Then I saw myself in that car 20 years ago and a little mercy lightened my judgment of her. Should I pull in to the nearest gas station and wait for her to clear our path before we continued? But who is to say the driver in the van behind me isn’t texting someone, or the one in the semi in front of me isn’t driving on little or no sleep? I had never considered the risk I took everyday just driving my children around to their schools and practices.

I suddenly became acutely aware of my responsibility on the road, not only for my precious cargo – but for the family in the car behind the multi-tasking driving nightmare, and for her as well – she had a mother somewhere – I just wish I knew her number. Relationships are just as risky – and it’s vital to assume responsibility for our part in them. Whether we accept our responsibility or deny it impacts everyone around us. It is terrifying as a parent to see how much our children are influenced by our relationships. I could see my son’s eyes growing heavy.

Those same eyes set and turn to steel anytime he hears “Eye of the Tiger”. My five year old loves Rocky – and he loves to box. For his birthday, grandparents decked the kid out in all kinds of boxing equipment – complete with the shorts and robe. For fun, we put the gloves on both him and our twelve-year-old son and put them in the middle of the living room. We have a few basic rules…the 12 year old has to box on his knees and he has to remember his brother is only 5. We turn the “Eye of the Tiger” on as loud as we can and let them go at it. It’s humorous and a little painful to watch the youngest one waylay the older one who works really hard to not hurt him. Watching, we all know the older one isn’t going to do anything to hurt his little brother. We know if he wanted to, he could hit him hard enough to make him never want to box again. But we trust him. He’s proven he cares about his sibling, and that he is responsible enough to take the risk of being hurt in order to be an equal opponent for him to box. The goal for him is not to prove anything to his little brother or to us, but to participate in a relationship with him. He knows that if he wants to box with him, he must not exert his own power to dominate him.

It’s easy to forget that the goal in a relationship is not proving anything to anyone, and its not exerting our own power and control over another just because we can. It’s a risk – and it means laying down our own rights in order to protect the relationship. But that the only way a healthy relationship can occur is when we accept our responsibility in it. In some relationships, like the one between these two brothers, one might have to accept much more responsibility than the other – because they can, because they are able to.

I don’t know any relationship that works in the 50 to 50 ratio. In every relationship I know (whether its spouses, siblings, friends, cousins etc.), one partner usually always gives more than the other. In my marriage – although we both really do give our all, my husband is the one who gives more to our relationship. In my relationship with my children – I take the majority of the responsibility – because I can, and because I should. Taking responsibility in a relationship is based on what you are able to give and what you should give just because it is right. It means laying down our rights to do what is right, and respecting the rights of another even at the sake of your own – much like my oldest son, laying down his right to stand and hit many times harder than he does. He takes responsibility – he lays down his rights to do what is right by his little brother and to respect the rights of his 5 year old need to be safe and confident that he is loved.

That’s all I really want for him. To be safe and confident that he is loved. What parent wouldn’t want that for their child? And because of that I lay down my rights every day and take up the responsibility of doing what is right for him, respecting his rights as a child, and offering my most valuable possession on his behalf – my heart. It’s a risk. He might forget everything I give him, and might not understand or appreciate it – ever. He might disappoint me, he might not be there for me when I want or need him to be someday.

Either way – if there is any hope for us to have a great relationship in our future – it means right now – I take the risk – and the responsibility because he can’t, and I can. I let the blond driving hazard pass me. My phone rings on the armrest between the seats. I decide to not answer. I checked my hands – 10 and 2. I turned my stereo down. I couldn’t just lock myself away at home with my kids to avoid the potential damage of those who do not take their driving responsibility seriously. It just means I have to take more responsibility for my driving choices.

Easter Photo

Yesterday, we Reese’s participated in our long-standing family tradition.  We gather dozens of eggs, boil them and decorate them in every imaginable color by dunking them, swirling them, and tie - dying them.  All little egg artists present pass wax crayons for laying color, straws for blowing colors, baggies for rubbing color and glue for glittering color.  They flourish the eggs with stickers, plastic wraps, and colored pipe cleaners.  At times, the atmosphere becomes intense – each one wanting to create the best egg masterpiece of the year.  I care much less about the eggs than I do my children and their cousins - all gathered around one table - together.

Returning from spending a week at Disney World, my cousin, her husband and 3 small children slowed to turn off the main highway, just thirty minutes from home.  They survived the over seventeen hour long drive back to Oklahoma, and both kids and parents anticipated crawling into their own beds, satisfied from a week well spent together.    The suitcases bulged with laundry to be washed, the trunk brimmed full of expensive souvenirs, and the car suffered wounds from too many snacks and drinks consumed on the long drive.

Relationships are like granola bars.  Packed full of a variety of both meaningful and insignificant events, textured opinions and flavorful personalities that individually may not be so appealing – but stuck together and served with milk – they are fulfilling and nutritious.  Not all granola bars are the same.  Some are nutty, others dry and flavorless.  All have the same basic principal at work – combining individual ingredients as one food item. Whether they are crunchy or chewy, plain or chocolate covered, the ingredients must merge together while remaining distinctly noticeable for their individual presence. They can be designed to suit preferred tastes and to accomplish specific nutritional goals, but a granola bar must have merged ingredients working together for a single culinary cause.  However – if any of the ingredients attempt to go solo – they must relinquish their granola bar status. 

Being in a relationship is a decision – a choice. People do not randomly fall in love any more than the ingredients in the granola bar make a conscious choice to combine.  Although relationships can be as varied as the kinds of granola bars, there are standards that define a relationship – or at least a good one.

During that long drive, my cousin and her husband had many long hours of reflection about their relationship with each other and their children –absorbing the euphoric torture of being confined in such a small space – together.  They attempted to soak up every moment – the strained ones and the enchanted ones.  Time passed quickly, the week went well.  Gratefulness shrouded their tired bodies and full hearts.

The kids slumped sleeping over one another in a heap of arms, legs and stringy hair.  My cousin knew the recovery from the week would be intense. Her eyes closed as they watched her husband drive.  She doesn’t remember the other car speeding straight toward them.  There wasn’t time to move out of its path – it veered so suddenly into their lane.  However, my cousin’s husband had just enough time to turn the wheel so that his side of the car received the full force of the impact.  My cousin and three children were severely injured.  The doctors said it could have been fatal for all of them if he hadn’t turned the car at the slight angle that he did. 

His instinctive reflexes came from a choice he made before the lights of another car headed straight at his family.  It began when he met my cousin in Junior high school, it solidified when he proposed to her, it expanded coverage when he held each child in his arms for the first time ever, it intensified every first step and each sick and sleepless night, and it crested during that week in June, the last one he would spend with the family who compelled him to turn the wheel just in time. 

Time erased any memory I may have ever had of my parent’s relationship.  Our family barely lasted long enough for the one picture taken of the three of us.  And it’s blurry.  It was taken on Easter morning, 1974.  It shows a white and maroon leisure suit garnished with an extremely wide tie on a tall, handsome man.  It shows a pale green shirt and matching skirt on a much too pretty, and much too young mother.  It shows a little pink frilly dress with white dots on a toddler whose just walking legs are covered in white tights. She has a shiny bracelet that almost disappears in the folds of her chubby wrist.  Her white paten shoes and pink bow on her perfectly combed and parted dark sprout in the middle of her head complete the photo.

What cannot be seen in the poor quality photo is the strawberry banana patch pie splattered all over the floor of the green panel truck the family rode in just hours earlier.  Nor can you see the two drunken farmers crying because they broke the eggs in the little toddlers Easter basket when they missed the stop sign and pulled out in front of the family in their three-quarter-ton truck.  If the tall handsome man in the maroon leisure suit with the overly wide tie hadn’t been able to fix the green panel truck the night before, the family would have been driving their small Chevy Vega, which would have certainly slid right under the drunk farmers truck and the picture might not have ever been taken.

My mother and father both tell the same story of that Easter Sunday, of how altered their lives would have been that day if the green paneled truck didn’t work the one and only day it did.  That fuzzy photo shows me a family I cannot remember having, a relationship where individuals decided they couldn’t be combined anymore.

All granola bars have to have one similar ingredient or none of the others make sense together. I guess that’s how the man in maroon suit and the young mother in pale green felt, like they didn’t make sense together.  Both say that their immaturity greatly affected their inability to work through their relational issues.  Neither of them knew that morning that so much more than eggs would be broken that year from an impact neither of them saw coming.

My cousin’s husband chose to commit his life completely to his family.  Only he saw the impact coming and only he had the ability to save his family from it.  But it cost him. 

At his funeral his son stopped the funeral and asked to speak.  He said very few words – and they were not to us, they were to his dad.  He said, “Dad, I love you.  You are the best dad in the whole world.”  Emotion waved over me, over all of us and drowned us in the moment.  It was grief – but something else weighed heavier.  Looking at my cousin, her son and two daughters, one in a neck-brace, three of them in casts, and one in a wheel chair, the love that her husband and their father conferred on them engulfed every person in the room.  We were face to face with the ones so precious, so valuable, yet so imperfect and fragile, the ones that he died to save. 


Yesterday, as the last layer of color was carefully applied to the eggs, I took a photo of the children holding their eggs in their equally dyed hands.  I remembered being the one barely able to reach the eggs and dye on the table.  Suddenly as if overnight, here I had my own egg artists. 

I wondered what kind of relationships my children would have with each other, with their cousins, with my husband and with me.  Our granola is so good right now – all the right ingredients – all completely balanced and content to be a part of one single, unified relationship.  There are so many unknowns though.  So much that can happen to a family – to a relationship - in what seems like just a moment.  Today – the worst thing that can happen is their basket of eggs being broken.  But I know that at some point, somewhere - whether or not they see it coming – they will be impacted by something difficult, something hard, something potentially dangerous.  When they see the headlights, I hope they will know that they are safe.  That they have a dad in the car that loves them so much he will take the impact for them. 

As we put the Easter eggs in their baskets I was engulfed with emotions much like I was at that funeral years ago.  Grief over what it cost.  Overwhelmed by the decision of love.   What if that day, at my cousin’s husband funeral – in the midst of her son’s elegant eulogy – what if my cousin’s husband had walked in the room, embraced his injured family, and comforted them.  What if when they realized he was back with them – their injuries disappeared? Surely, their mourning would have turned to the most joyous celebration any of us had ever witnessed.  Surely the whole room would have gone wild with excitement.  Certainly – all of us would have walked away forever changed.  And his family would have walked away that day not only healed, not only joyous, but completely combined in one effort, reunited with the unifying ingredient that made sense of everything.

I smiled.  For just a brief moment, I imagined a different picture taken on Easter day, a lot further back than 1974.  It was a clear picture, not fuzzy at all.  It showed a dad who took the impact.  One who saved everyone else in the photo.  I’m sure I saw myself there.  It’s taken right when intense grief exploded into elation as he walked back in the room. He comforted. He healed. And he made sense - of everything. 

Cool Baskets

This week I spent hours at a dealer waiting for my car to be repaired.  While waiting in a room filled entirely with people I was certain suffered from the swine flu, I reflected on days when my thoughts were virgin to worries – especially ones that involved broken cars, air born viruses and warranty’s.  My entire existence used to be utterly controlled by someone other than me.  Although not always pleasant…my job was simply to play and sleep. 

It all ended when my parents made me learn to ride a bike.  Santa brought me an unasked for pink Huffy with streamers, a long cushy seat, and a basket on the front.  I loved that basket. However, I could care less about the bike once attached to it, so I promptly removed that awesome basket from the Huffy and used it for my barbies. One day with that “you’re gonna do this whether you like it or not” look in his eyes, my dad told me, “it was time”.  I remember barely being able to hoist my leg over the unscratched, pink frame. I remember the terror I felt immediately as I began to pedal with my dad running behind me holding on to the seat.  I remember screaming, “Don’t let go! Don’t let go!” and I remember him saying, “I’m letting go now…”  I remember how a crack in the sidewalk sent my steering askew and how sore my knees felt after the savage concrete scraped the skin off of them.

Since then, I have had many first rides.  Ones that left me bruised and bleeding, dreaming of reclaiming the moments before the ride as my reality once more.  A few weeks ago, my friends, husband and I visited a metaphysical mall in Sedona, AZ.  Cowboy malls, clothing malls, book malls, craft malls, and antique malls heavily seasoned my undeniable Oklahoma flavor, one that lacked even a hint of the metaphysical. We wanted to talk to the people inside, the searchers and the guides.  Curious about how God’s power had been repackaged in a new age version of “truth”, we entered as obvious tourists. Paul must have felt much the same when he walked into Athens.  An entire room displayed the various gods for sale on hundreds of shelves.  They came in every shape, size, medium and price one could want.  If a god was more of a commitment than you were willing to make, saints offered a nice compromise.  I felt dizzy. Why did I feel so nervous?

I hadn’t felt this nervous since my parents made me learn to drive.  My first car was a  1979 Honda civic, which would have been fine anytime before 1989.  It cost $500.  Most of the letters on the back went missing leaving the lonely “o” and “d” awkwardly marking the back hatch. Much like that unasked for bike, the “od” entered my life.  Much unlike 99.9% of the 16-year-old population, I didn’t want my license. I understood economics more than most my age and I wasn’t interested in using my limited resources on fuel.  However, my mom grew weary of me relying so heavily on her adept driving skills.  She wanted to refocus her cabby role on my nowhere near sixteen-year-old brothers.  After one failed driving test at 16, finally at 17 my mom couldn’t wait any longer for my driving independence. 

Determined to teach me, we took the “od” on a drive.  As I attempted to coordinate the clutch, brake, shift, and accelerator dance, I longed for my pink Huffy.  Not far into the lesson, I had to stop on a hill.  This alone constituted terse tones and tense words between mom and me.  However we both became silent when a brand new, right-off-the-lot, red corvette pulled up behind the “od”. My brilliant mother gets out of the car and asks if they wouldn’t mind backing up, way back.  I remember the sweat running down my back onto the black fuzzy fur covered seat.  After three or four lurches, one stall and restart, I launched like a rocket out onto the street.

I felt just as clumsy and out of control as my first Huffy ride or my first drive in the “od” when I first attempted to embrace the power of God’s Spirit working in my life. I had always had dreams, visions and thoughts that eventually, actually happened.  I sometimes sat down with people and knew either their past or a directive for their future.  The church wasn’t there to run behind me or to direct traffic as I embarked on my first Spirit experiences. No one told me that the Spirit’s influence and power in my life was like riding a bike and driving a car – that His operation through me would become as natural as breathing.   I didn’t know that operating in God’s Spirit should be a necessary life function.  I didn’t know that He was a gift that would offer me much more than spiritual status or an irrelevant emotional encounter. Like the searchers in the metaphysical mall – I became desperate enough to investigate – to explore – to hike my leg over the unasked for and unfamiliar gift in my life and attempt to see where it would take me.  I knew it would be awkward, I knew I might have a few out of control moments, and I might end up hitting something I wanted to avoid, or shooting ahead at a faster pace than I’d anticipated, but unlike before – I was ready – I wanted to go where I felt in my heart God’s Spirit might take me.  I knew it wouldn’t be somewhere I could get on my own two legs.

Walking by all the gods and gimmicks punctuated everything.  The vivid colors of the rocks and crystals used for healing, the smells of the herbs, incense and other “natural” products that balanced the body, the faces of those questing for love, peace, and happiness.  For a full and balanced life.  I had expected something so different – for them to be so different than me.  Their sudden familiarity startled me. Something other than judgment wafted in the room.  Compassion. 

We shared conversation with a lady that ran the facility and interviewed another woman that read auras.  After sharing with them why we were there, both suggested we visit several of the vortexes that surrounded the area.  I had never heard of a vortex.  Iphones revolutionized information much like airplanes did transportation.  We found out those vortexes happen when energy and power spiral from the earth to one of the designated, specific locations (imagine an upside down tornado).  People visit one site to find balance, one to strengthen the male characteristics such as courageousness and the ability to reason, and they visit others to enhance their feminine attributes of nurturing and emotional response.  We drove to several of the vortex sites but the pouring rain dissuaded us from making the three hour long hike to their pinnacle of power; but many other people determinedly made the trek.  We asked one man as he returned from the trail if he had in fact experienced the power of the vortex – his answered “yes” that it had a “very powerful energy and presence”. 

We headed to our hotel.  Our Oklahoma flavor had been spiced up a bit with the new experiences added into our recipe.  I reflected on the ridiculous possibility that anyone might feel power at any of the vortexes, or that people thought they might buy power at the metaphysical mall.  Then I thought about church.  My church.  What if the searchers and guides we had met that day disbelieved that the church provided any kind of spiritual energy or power.  Although I myself regularly encountered it – they might perceive my going to church much like I perceive their visiting the vortexes.  Questions poured over me like the rain that accompanied our ride.  How can the church show the searchers that God is more powerful than all their vortexes combined?  How can we show them that everything they could buy or experience in that metaphysical mall was free with Jesus?  How could God’s presence, power, energy be so evident that anyone searching would see it?

After three hours, a mechanic came out to my table in the infested waiting room and told me they didn’t have the part they needed to fix my car.  I had to come back and sit and wait.  I really didn’t have a choice. I now am the mom cabby who drives my children to their life experiences.  I need the car.  It had to be fixed.  All because of the pink Huffy.  What once was so difficult to embrace is now mandatory for my functionality.

People everywhere are just like me - hesitant at first to trust anything but their own two legs to get them anywhere they need to go. Reluctant to relinquish denominations, churches or people the responsibility of driving our spiritual experiences.  As I drove off the car manufacturers lot I thought about the searchers out there. I wondered how many lived disappointed from visiting powerless vortexes or powerless churches. Without God’s Spirit, we won’t be able to access real power, authentic love, absolute peace, and unmolested joy, no-matter how cool the basket…

Check out these two podcasts.....
Mars Hill - Intentions - Rob Bell - Audio 12/5/09
Mars Hill - Luke: Jesus And Demons - Mark Driscoll 2/14/10

March 6, 2010 - 17 Years and Counting

I first encountered my husband one summer at a swim party.   We were 12.  He got in a fight with another boy and so impressed me that he became the headline of every note I would pass for the remainder of 6th grade.  My next major encounter with him was two years later.  We were 14.  It was fall.  We were at the high school football game sitting on a grassy hill, next to the bleachers watching – or at least pretending to watch – the game.  I tried to not look at him too often. Suddenly – he started to move toward me. Before I could give him the smile I’d rehearsed 29 times in my bathroom mirror, he grabbed my blue converse high top covered ankles and drug me down the hill as fast as he could run. I dug my fingers in the thick, cool sod but I could not stop the momentum or the scream detonating from my throat.  When we finally ran out of grass and hill, he turned to me and gave me a smile and his hand.  I returned my hand and a smile (I forgot the one I’d rehearsed) to him.  On the way down that hill, in just seconds, I lost my voice, two heirloom rings and my favorite jeans to grass stains, but I found the love of my life.

We married 6 years later.  During our years together – we’ve had 4 children, 5 dogs, 1 cat, and 10 cars.  We’ve lived in 10 homes, traveled to 27 states and 2 countries. He taught me to eat vegetables and fruit, and I taught him to eat meat.  Since those first encounters, we accumulated a montage of them.  Treasured ones, so valuable that we can live forever off of their interest alone. Dark and dingy ones, the kind we only hope to forget in time.  The neither brilliant nor the dull ones – the just matter-of-fact ones - that attached to us much like birthdates and social security numbers.  Individually – we could take some and leave others, but like ingredients to a favorite recipe, it took all of them to make our marriage delicious. 

What if after the first couple of encounters – I kept trying to recreate them?  What if every time we went on a date – I wanted him to take me to that same football stadium, pull me down the same hill, ruin the same jeans (if only I could get into those jeans again!) and me experience all the same emotions? What if all of these years, every encounter that wasn’t dazzling completely dissuaded us from our devotion to each?  What would our relationship look like?

A few weeks ago my husband, friends and I ate at the Red Planet Diner in Sedona Arizona.  It celebrates the community’s fixation on the metaphysical and paranormal.  It particularly came about as the result of over 5,000 visitors gathering at the Bell Rock vortex in 1987 in hopes that the top of the rock would open and expose a UFO or some kind of extraterrestrial happening.  This event served as a catalyst to the current new age culture and tourism of Sedona.

When my husband read the story to me, I rolled my eyes and made that sound someone makes when they feel superior to all humanity.  In the middle of my snooty “guffaw” truth slinked in from nowhere, grabbed my ankles and pulled me down my haughty hill. 

Years ago – in the infant stages of my spiritual journey, I encountered God many times in inexplicable ways. I could physically feel His presence, I saw visions, and experienced His power surging through me to help others.  I fell in love, and ashamedly it was more with encountering God than God Himself.  I became addicted to the euphoric physical reaction to Him.  I found myself attempting to reset the same stage week after week, day after day to recreate that spiritual high.  Eventually – like any addict – I became desperate - willing to do just about anything for another “hit” of God’s Spirit.

I began to question everything.  Was I crazy?  Had I ever really encountered God?  Did God still love me?  Had I made him angry?  What had I done so terribly wrong?  I felt abandoned, rejected and lonely - like I was the kid forgotten at the gas station on a family trip. 

One afternoon at the pinnacle of my misery, my four children and husband went outside to play in the yard.  Oklahoma has two official perfect days of weather a year – and it was one of them.  They begged me to go play with them, but in an act of arrogant penance I chose to clean the house instead.  In my OCD frenzy I glanced out the window and saw their faces exploding with smiles of delight, heard their voices pealing melodiously with life, and watched their bodies moving like ballerinas carried and thrown about by the breeze in natures magnificent theater. 

Have you ever had one of those moments when you crumple under the weight of sudden truth? 

How do we get things so wrong? Maybe it’s just because at the time, we had a limited understanding of what was really happening. 

Between ages three and four, my mother and I lived with my grandparents.  My Mema watched me in the evenings while Mom worked at Anthony’s department store.  One evening, I noticed Mema getting particularly “nervous” as we used to call it.  She circled anxiously throughout the house like a racehorse on a track.  Her circles quickened and she made her best effort to shoot me a sharp smile every now and then in an attempt to camouflage the panic in her eyes.  Soon, sounds started to come from her mouth – starting out low and mumbled and growing increasingly high and bell like. 

All of the sudden a siren sounded from somewhere – I wasn’t completely sure that it didn’t come from Mema until she snatched me up from my dolls and held me suffocatingly close to her as she danced “a jig” in her now three foot circles.  She began to plead “Jesus! Save us from the tomato!”  Terror shot through me like a bullet and I clutched her like I did the tree I climbed in her back yard. I hated tomatoes.  They were squishy and tart and I didn’t want them near anything on my plate.  I could not understand how one could evidently grow large and formidable that it could elicit this response from my otherwise peaceable grandmother. 

The lightening whipped the sky, the thunder growled, and the winds slapped the screen door.  Mema asked me if I “had Jesus in my heart”.  I did not want to take any chances with a giant tomato about to pummel me so she stopped dancing circles long enough for us to kneel in her living room as I prayed to the soundtrack of sirens, lightening, thunder, and slamming screen doors.  This began my Christian experience.

This is before I understood Oklahoma only had two beautiful days, and the others likely offered ice, humidity or tornadoes.  Of course looking back I realize my mistake, but in the moment I really didn’t know what I was encountering. 

As I watched my family out the window – I realized I had made a similar mistake.  I thought encountering God was visions and goose bumps.  Holding Pine-sol in one hand and paper towels in the other I finally understood that some of the most profound ways that I could encounter Him were playing football together in my back yard, without me.  How many encounters had I missed?  How many times had God tried to woo me, get my attention?  I felt myself sliding down a hill – ankles first. 


Today, My husband and I have been married 17 years. The many “encounters” I have had with him don’t mean anything outside of our relationship.  If encounters were all we wanted, we wouldn’t have lasted this long.  But we want a relationship – a good one – one that will experience encounters of every kind – brilliant ones, dull ones, matter-of-fact ones and many unexpected ones. 

Now, when we laugh about his romantic, chivalrous ankle pull, he tells me – “how else was I suppose to get your attention?” 

Brussels Sprouts

In downtown Tempe last Friday night on the corner – the main one – right across from Starbucks and not far from Hooters, two clean shaven young men set up a lone mic and speaker which they used to share their faith with anyone and everyone within hearing range. We watched as many walked by with their faces contorted and twisted like something from a Saturday morning cartoon.  Their looks reminded me of the face I make at the mention of brussels sprouts.  I hate brussels sprouts. I understand their nutritional value – but their wretched smell makes my stomach turn and everything within me tense – ready to hurl.  Honestly, if my life depended on it, they might be the one food I would choose death over eating.  Give me asparagus, green beans, even spinach – anything but brussels sprouts.  What if brussels sprouts were the tastiest food one could eat…what if their smell is keeping me from the culinary experience of a lifetime?  I know people who love them – who enjoy them above all green vegetables. I cannot comprehend any affection for them anymore than I understand gravity or politics.  I checked to make sure the boys hadn’t sprouted brussels from their heads. 

 

We continued to observe from the Starbucks across the street. My friends and I watched others walk by the preaching boys – pretending to not see them – like ostriches burying their heads.  They headed straight for us – or for the coffee.  Coffee – unlike brussels sprouts – smells like a cozy home on a winter morning.  It smells like deep thoughts and rich emotions.  I have always relished the aroma.  However – only in recent years have I enjoyed to taste.  It took years – and many attempts – and pounds and pounds and pounds of sugar to convince my taste buds that I liked the flavor as much as I did the smell. “Eventually” best describes my love for coffee. The aroma wooed me until I succumbed…. Although it holds no nutritional value – it is addictive and provides a sense of community.  While drinking our coffee we sat near a lesbian couple and we engaged in easy and comfortable conversations with an atheist and a psychic.  Both of which were more than curios about who we were and what we were doing.  Our talks were relaxed and interesting and it seemed natural and obvious to pray with the psychic about his finances before we parted ways.  I wondered if I should buy the preaching boys some coffee. 

 

But by the time we finished our lattes and macchiatos, the preaching boys had gathered their things and headed home.  The smells on the street were strong and pungent with coffee, booze, pigeon poo, cigarettes and patchouli from the Hippie Gypsy store across the street.  I wondered about the preaching boys.  I understood their passion and respected their bold attempt to share their faith, however it didn’t seem to work for these boys.  My own passion began to taunt me, tease me, provoke me.  What can I do?  What will work?  How can I share the most important message of my life with anyone and everyone?  What will provide the aroma and taste people are looking for as well as satisfy their nutritional needs? Have I ever seen anyone do it right?

 

Suddenly – I could smell dough cooking from the brick oven at the Italian restaurant down the street.  It rose above all other smells and I felt hunger pains hit my gut like a punch.  My stomach cursed at me for using coffee instead of food to fill it. Bread – who have I ever met that didn’t like the smell or taste of bread?  I couldn’t think of one.  Jesus said he was “the bread” of life – not “the brussels” sprouts which may be good for you if you can get past the putrid smell, not “the coffee" that holds no nutritional value and requires you to develop a taste for, but “the bread”.  Bread. Something that tantalizes, with both its aroma and flavor.  Something that settles our cravings and quiets our hungers. Something we need as the foundation in our diet.  I remembered the food pyramid my middle school twins brought home– and at the base are grains – breads. 

 

Our new psychic friend – once he found out we were Christians, said he would come to our church if he lived near us.  He said he had never sat with a born again believer and felt love.  The atheist invited us to an event in town – wanted to be around us again.  People – all people like bread.  The thousands who went for days without eating just to be around the best bread they’d ever smelled or tasted…the psychic, the atheist, the preaching boys, the crowd in Hooters, the lesbians in Starbucks, me…  It connects us all.  We may not all sit down to a table of brussels sprouts, and even coffee will lose a few, but bread will join everyone, everywhere.

 

Like someone checking for deodorant, I sniffed myself, making sure I couldn’t smell brussels sprouts.  

Dreams Like Bullies

My life dreams are like big fat boys in middle school who bully and bluff with the one thing they have on everyone else – their size. Like a skinny thirteen-year old girl, I pretend they don’t exist anymore than the pimple on the end of my nose does.  But they do.  Large, irritated and potentially bursting at any moment.  Perspective offers my only hope.  For example, high school reunions reveal these same bullies became bald mechanics assistants who survive entirely on beer and beef.  And the skinny girl with the zit immerges curvy and clear faced with only just a little help from puberty and retinol.  The dreams might not go away – but perspective reveals the truth of their power, or sometimes lack of….

 

I want to be BFFs with my dreams.  I want to giggle at the thought of them and doodle their names in curly letters with bubbles on them.  I want to share secrets and know that when I buy a tunic thinking it is a dress that they will be the first to offer me support and their leggings.  What went wrong with my dreams and me?  How did we get to a non-functioning relationship?  Where can you go for dream counseling?  How can once again the partnership be rekindled so that someday my dreams and I can work together instead of apart?

 

It occurred to me while using a lavatory in a plane that if this is possible – then surely befriending my dreams is too. Just like using a plane’s potty, it might be awkward…but it’s always worth it.

 

If I were thirteen and wanted a bully to be my friend – what would I do?  How would I bridge a gap that seems wider than the Grand Canyon?  I might smile, might text, maybe even invite them to become my facebook friend.  There has to be something that starts us both moving closer to each other… One thing I know about dreams is they don’t respond to feigned kindness.  They know when we genuinely see value and worth in them. 

 

Ok.  My first step is to put down my critical opinions of how they invaded my life, unwanted and unasked, and to open myself up to see potential in them.  This is hard.  To have a friend – we have to first be a friend.  I first have to see potential in me.  It would be easier to watch network television without seeing at least one commercial using a half naked woman to advertise their product.  But I am determined.

 

What did my dreams see in me?  Why didn’t they pick another somebody, anybody?

In American Idol style, I want to solicit votes to see if I really should be the one chosen for their destiny – or them for mine.  However, I know the Olympian way is a better indicator of how I measure up to my dreams.  I have to do the work, the long, tedious, hours of disciplining myself to own my dreams and to let them become apart of me.  I have to put myself out there – on 8 ft. long skis, in freezing temperatures if I want to fly high and achieve the highest goal for a girl and her dreams.  Oh wait – girls can’t ski jump in the Olympics.  Ice-skating it is.  If I want to skate in complete synchronicity with my dreams – we have Salchow simultaneously. 

 

As I look out the plane’s window and see the city’s skyscrapers stretch unimpressively toward me, I relax.  It truly is all about perspective.  In my cramped upright position – or maybe I in my reclined position – I never can tell on a plane – I pledge resolutely to befriend my big fat bully dreams.  I am not sure but I think they smiled at me.

Waves

Moments wash over me like waves. These moments - much like those waves – suffocate me with torrents of insatiable love and instinctive protection.  These moments rush in and before I know what hit me, they almost sweep my feet away.  They go as quickly as they come... waves rolling in as moments and rolling out as memories.  I want to explore this ocean – one wave at a time. They mesmerize me - the sound of them, the smell of them, the feel of them, …. I will stand here until I have experienced each and every wave… until one of them claims me and I become one of them.