Mary the Law Breaker

Three years ago Waylon and I tag teamed a sermon together during one of the weeks leading up to Christmas. We went back and forth telling the story of Mary and Joseph. I told Mary's story and Waylon told Joseph's story. I reflect on that sermon now as I sit in a church that will not even allow women to become deacons. I sit and reflect on the story of Mary as I am a women who has no voice within a local church.
 
Mary had no voice.

What an odd situation. God chooses to use a woman who has no voice to bridge the eternal gap between humanity and the completeness of God and his Kingdom. I started to read a book about Mary, written by an Evangelical man. He tried to exegete the life of Mary, so that we may better understand her role within the story. I gave up on him by the second chapter, because he seemed to miss the point.

As do many people who have never experienced pain, oppression, or poverty. Mary was completely ostracized from her community. She carried around that reputation for the rest of her life. That reputation of being unfaithful to her husband, or being crazy enough to believe that God impregnated her. I am sure you have met one or two people within your life who had held similar views about their role within the Kingdom. You know, the person on the train, who says he is a prophet, or the woman that walks into your church and claims she has a special understanding of scripture.

Jesus wasn't just born in a humble cave. Jesus was born to a woman who held a dangerous reputation. A woman who did not even give birth within her community, but rather had her husband, help her give birth. A woman who did not follow the cleanly laws of the Israelite birth process but rode on a donkey to a foreign place to give birth. And let me tell you, pregnancy is a nervy process to begin with, let alone having to deliver a baby in a cold, dark, dank, place. This woman did not follow the Israelite law in anything. Yet she bore Abba's son.

A woman that had no voice brought Abba's son into the world. A woman who had a dangerous reputation raised Jesus, had authority over what he ate, and wore, and what kind of chores he would have around the house. I would be curious to sit across from Mary, and ask her how she felt about her son. And, how she reconciled her dangerous, law-breaking, reputation with trying to teach Jesus the truth and the law. While, I sit here reflecting on Mary the law-breaker, I ask myself that same question. Will I try and raise my child with an understanding that moral Christianity is crucial to understanding the life of Jesus, or will I try and demonstrate a faith that is more interested in following the Holy Spirit than in morality? Maybe a little bit of both?

Discipline

The last year I have been leading a women's bible study. We started going through 1 Corinthians and I eventually asked if they wanted the group to have worksheets while working through a book of the Bible.

They loved the idea. So, I took a model I learned in school and I changed the language to fit within the group's framework. I had all the group members buy a copy of The Bible book by book, and we started on 1 John together.

Every week we did some exegetical and contextual work. Every week we tried to immerse the group within the understanding that the Holy Spirit is crucial to our understanding of scripture. Every week I challenged their old framework. It was a lot of work but slowly I saw some of their old framework shift and take a new shape.

Now, many people would consider this discipline a waste of time. A lot of leaders in ministry focus on service and outreach to challenge their people. I think that is a wonderful discipline to practice. Some of the most convicting moments within my life have been in step with some sort of service activity.

However, I will defend the discipline of challenging theological frameworks using scripture even after the grave. I find it crucially important to our faith because while we will meet Jesus in service to others, without the eyes and ears to recognize what He looks like we will likely miss a holy moment.

Challenging this group's interpretative framework was not motivated by pride or Biblical arrogance. I am not foolish enough to believe that I have the key to an interpretative formula, but I am aware enough to know that the Kingdom's foundation is the many different views of faith that our ancestors experienced in their own life.

Hebrews 11 paints this ancestral illustration of faith that we get to be apart of as Kingdom people. Every person in that faith list had a different experience with God and the Kingdom. And every person within that list had a whole framework that had to be shaken, twisted, and molded into a framework that could glimpse more and more of the Kingdom.

Moses was not ready to lead the people into the promise land when God called him. God had to rework Moses' framework over a period of time to bring him to a place of leadership and understanding.

The women in my group, me included, have been immersed in a specific framework which limits our understanding of the Triune God. However, through the story we have been given within scripture, through our experience, through other Kingdom people, and through our Christian tradition we place ourselves in a place where God continues to shake, stir, twist and mold our framework.

Our Bible studies are a wonderful example of this discipline. As we are constantly being challenged with a Gospel that does not fit within our White, Middle class, slightly racist, American, gender specific framework.

As we meet we challenge each other to seek the story within scripture and to wrestle with the faith of our ancestors.

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A glimpse

I love coming home and looking through old photo albums. I actually just was given a photo album for Christmas that brought me to a reflection on why I love photographs. I often come in when I am at my parent's home and I mill through the photographs from when we were kids. I also love to look at photos of my folks as kids. One of the reasons I love photos is because it's a moment captured within time. Photographs reveal so much about the moment captured. The fashion style popular at the time, the relational dynamic, the age, and the action of the moment. I don't look back on the past and mourn the lost time, or wish for my time now to illustrate something similar to that life. I do look at photos to see who I was, to find my role within my family in a sense. Photographs give us glimpses of a story. However, interpretation is crucial in looking at these captured moments for everyone within the picture usually has a different feeling about that time in their life. I look at our family photos very differently then my siblings do, because I was at a different stage of life. My family photos remind me of our Holy Scriptures. We are often given glimpses of story and often times we interpret these glimpses differently as we grow throughout our lives. A part of a story means something different to us at age fifteen then at age thirty. When we experience the story for ourselves throughout our many days we get the opportunity to get a glimpse of the Kindom in our Holy Scriptures. So, what story have you been reflecting on these days?

This year has been a year of changes for the Lawrence family. We have been busy and searching this last year and it has been a fruitful, hard, challenging year thus far. Last December I quit my full time job to go back to Seminary to become a chaplain and that was life changing, in many ways. I finished my first summer and got a part job job at my favorite coffee shop over the summer. This last year has been a great year for our marriage, as we have gotten closer and have finally started a real faith journey together. Which is probably why we got pregnant in September! We were both shocked to find out we were expecting, but we are both excited for this new chapter in our lives to start. Right after my 24th Birthday(I know I am in mid twenties yuck!) I attended one of Waylon's prayer services. Every Wednesday he has a prayer service for the church where he leads them through three different scriptures and through three different times of prayer. It is a nice silent respite in the middle of the week. Well, we were in 1 Samuel reading over the life of Hannah. As we were reading through her life situation her character and her faithfulness struck me in a very convicting way. If you don't know much about Hannah, she was a woman that was married to a guy named Elkanah, who was head over heels in love with her. Elkanah had two wives and Hannah was the one that he truly loved. However, Hannah could not have children and this was a great burden to her. In Hannah's time having kids was the main role of a woman who was married. It was an honor and a great responsibility to bear children and to bear a lot of children. If you had a whole ton of kids you would have been considered a pretty important woman of that time. Hannah's sister wife, if I can use a cultural term, was a bitch. She was always being mean to Hannah, because Hannah was barren. For years Hannah dealt with ridicule and insecurity. Normally a person who is suffering cries out to God. I do. It is not recorded that Hannah spoke to God about her troubles until 1 Samuel 1. Until Hannah is so distraught that she cries out in such a physical and emotional way that the priest in the temple thinks she is drunk! Hannah comes to God in complete vulnerability and asks God to remember her in her misery. The Lord listens and remembers Hannah and blesses her with a son. Hannah responds to the Lord with a powerful prayer to the Lord. Through her faithfulness and trust in the Lord, and through her experience with the Living and active God she responds in a powerful and prophetic way. Hannah prayed: I'm bursting with God-news! I'm walking on air. I'm laughing at my rivals. I'm dancing my salvation. 2-5 Nothing and no one is holy like God, no rock mountain like our God. Don't dare talk pretentiously— not a word of boasting, ever! For God knows what's going on. He takes the measure of everything that happens. The weapons of the strong are smashed to pieces, while the weak are infused with fresh strength. The well-fed are out begging in the streets for crusts, while the hungry are getting second helpings. The barren woman has a houseful of children, while the mother of many is bereft. 6-10 God brings death and God brings life, brings down to the grave and raises up. God brings poverty and God brings wealth; he lowers, he also lifts up. He puts poor people on their feet again; he rekindles burned-out lives with fresh hope, Restoring dignity and respect to their lives— a place in the sun! For the very structures of earth are God's; he has laid out his operations on a firm foundation. He protectively cares for his faithful friends, step by step, but leaves the wicked to stumble in the dark. No one makes it in this life by sheer muscle! God's enemies will be blasted out of the sky, crashed in a heap and burned. God will set things right all over the earth, he'll give strength to his king, he'll set his anointed on top of the world! After I encountered Hannah and her story in July I felt that God was preparing my heart for a little Lawrence. However, Waylon and I felt that it would be better to wait a year before we starting trying and a month and half later we were surprised with a baby. While it wasn't an immaculate conception I do feel like the Lord had a definite role to play in this whole process. I know I do not relate to Hannah's years of being barren I do find her prayer to be encouraging and to be proof of an existential response to an eternal reality. As I passed my twelfth week of being pregnant and I will enter into my second semester in a couple of weeks Hannah's story has also pointed me towards the Immaculate Conception and the role of Mary within the Kingdom Story. As Advent approaches I continue to reflect on Mary and Jesus and the story that changed the world.

Communion meditation

Communion meditation

My women's small group has been studying 1 John lately. One of the biggest themes we have noticed during our study is the contrast of light and dark. We get to choose whether we live in the light or in the dark. If we accept Christ and his love into our life than we are living in the light and if w reject Christ an his love than we are living in the dark.

John flushes this kind of love out in 1 John 4:7-12 let me read it for us...

If we want to live in the light than we must accept the reality that love comes from God alone and that christ's death and resurrection were the fullest expression of Gods love for us. If we buy into this radical and transformational story and accept it into our lives we are called to love each other wholly and completely even when we are hurt, or angry or frustrated.

Communion is a time where we get to display this love in a physical way. Before we take communion let us ask ourselves if we are seeing God's transformational love in the details of our lives and within our church body or are we lost in hopelessness and despair?

Let us reflect on whether we are living in the light or in the dark before we participate in the holy act of communion.

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Have you ever been to the desert? It's hot there during the day and very cold during the night. It's a variety of extreme conditions. You would not want to get stuck out in the desert. In Christian spirituality the desert image has strong historical roots. The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years seeking solace and reconciliation as they waited as they waited to enter the promiseland. Jesus himself went out into the "wilderness" for forty days and forty nights. In history we can see desert father and mothers who deserted the world and went to seek the holiness of solitude and sand using Jesus as their example. We have writings from many of these men and women who had to get out of the world to save their own souls. Now a days the desert imagery is used to describe wilderness spirituality. The desert is the place where your soul is dry and where you

Have you ever been to the desert? It's hot there during the day and very cold during the night. It's a variety of extreme conditions. You would not want to get stuck out in the desert. In Christian spirituality the desert image has strong historical roots. The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years seeking solace and reconciliation as they waited as they waited to enter the promiseland. Jesus himself went out into the "wilderness" for forty days and forty nights. In history we can see desert father and mothers who deserted the world and went to seek the holiness of solitude and sand using Jesus as their example. We have writings from many of these men and women who had to get out of the world to save their own souls. Now a days the desert imagery is used to describe wilderness spirituality. The desert is the place where your soul is dry and where you
wander and wonder and feel like God is very far away. This is where I have lived for the last three years.

I got married. I moved to southern Illinois. I became a preacher's wife. I grew into an adult. I got a full time job and then I quit. I went back to get my Masters degree.

All of this happened and I feel like I am still wandering around in the desert with bare feet. I have definitely continued to make decisions but I am not sure about any of them. I feel like my heart is no longer unified.

I am torn between the spiritual responsibility of where I am and who I am around with the knowledge of knowing I am called to do ministry full time in a vocational setting.

While I have been hanging out in the desert I have started to cultivate my some discipline. If you were trapped in the desert you wouldn't drink all your water at once, you wouldn't waste your energy walking around in the middle of the afternoon when the sun is the hottest. You would die if you wasted your energy and resources while stranded in the desert.

That is why I have started cultivating disciplines. I really don't want my soul to perish because I wasted my energy climbing up a sand dune of conflict that produced no results or change. I want to keep my cultivation in practice so that when I get to a place of rich greenery I can enjoy the beauty of the place. I do not want to get caught up in the beauty and in the belief that i created the beauty with my great leadership or righteous spirituality. I am cultivating now so wherever I am led I can try and see and hear the Creator. The one who has led me and the one who has been with me, and the one who is good.

While I wait for the green, cool, wet grass under my blistered bloody feet I will continue to practice the discipline of cultivation. While I sit in the desert and wait for the hottest part of the day to pass I cling to Romans 8:26-28.

God is still moving and breathing and living. I get to be in a place where God has taught me humility, discipline, and gratitude.

What are you learning in the desert?

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"Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol" Stanley Hauerwas

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Choice

My first semester of Seminary has been enlightening and discouraging. I have heard many things that I have come to disagree with theologically, which has led me on a theological journey. Trying to ask questions that no one seems to be able to answer, like;

Why are heaven and hell so crucial to our salvation? If neither existed would we still seek Christ?

Is the Bible supposed to be contextual? Is that is why there are so many contradictions within scripture?

Who is this God that we are worshiping? What is his character like?

And can we even verbally, physically, and psychologically know him?

Is baptism truly crucial to salvation?

Because of new brain research the soul does not really exist in a separate sense, do we have to go back and re-translate scripture?

Through our own Biblical translation how much of the message do we truly lose?

Can we actually know anything outside of our own context? And if we cannot does history matter?

What happens when the lamp stand of a church is taken away?

Why is the Restoration movement so disoriented and disconnected?

Is communion truly necessary to remember Christ? Can't we remember him through wearing a cross or saying a prayer? If there is no power in communion, if it is just a memorial, what's the point of doing it every week?

Why are there some Christians who actively work at their salvation with fear and trembling, and there are others who settle for a clean morality?

Why do we let historical examples of theological subjects determine our now moments?

In Evangelical Protestantism who is our Hermeneutical Pope or Magisterial Authority?


These questions have led me to question the very foundational theology that forms the restoration denomination. These questions have also led me to seek out different streams of Christianity. As I have been pondering whether to stay within the restoration movement I have been led to a choice. A choice whether to stay or go. A choice to leave my foundation, my home, my brothers and sisters, my mentors, and strike on a new journey.

As I have been sitting in class this morning the topic of church membership came up. My professor was addressing my generations abhorrence of membership. He stated that the reason my generation does not make a committed decision in any aspect of life is because we want to have our cake and eat it too. We do not want to make a public committed decision to a person, or a body because we want all of our options open. We want a quick escape. However, we also want the benefits of church membership, or marriage, or a specific career. We, as a generation, are so fearful of making the wrong choice, that we do not make a choice at all. In this sad decision we become shallow, impatient, and ungracious people. We can not stand another person's belief system because we are so insecure of our own.

However, being apart of this generation I understand this feeling. There is such a weight to be a great or powerful or wonderful person, that to just be ordinary is terrifying. I understand this feeling and I have lived through giving this feeling up.

While it was not easy to give up this 'great responsibility' I have been able to see that to be ordinary is deepening. To accept your ordinariness is life changing. This ordinariness frees you to be yourself, instead of someone you can never be. When you give up the illusion of grandeur, you find yourself on the other side, living.

A year ago I would be terrified to leave the Restoration movement. I would have felt that I was 'called' to be a trailblazer, or a wonderful author, or a great preacher.

However, God has only called me to follow him. He does not require me to save the world, or to make a wonderful contribution or to do great, powerful things. He only requires me to follow. To follow in my ordinariness.

Through my questioning I have been led to make a choice. And through my ordinariness I am free to make the choice. And through the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, I have been set free.

Prayer

I think I have become more fearful as I have gotten older. I think of things more and I have become more concerned with my own morality and the morality of others. I think Satan uses these thoughts to cause worry and the need to control. I think the mind is a fun playground for Satan, because I truly believe that more than not we as human beings, are not aware of our own thinking.

I believe that is the reason we are called to pray. Often times prayer is looked at as a tool to communicate our needs to God. During my time growing up within the restoration movement I have not seen a deep understanding of prayer. I have noticed within the restoration movement, that prayer is an emotional response to God's work, or to human despair. Prayer is driven by our emotions rather than by our
minds.

While in high school my home church gave out journals along with yearly scripture plans to encourage Biblical reading. I began to write my prayers out. While my emotions still drove my prayer life, my journal helped me become a disciplined prayer.

When I met Waylon we would go to his home church in Central Illinois occasionally and I was told in a Sunday school class that you could not write your prayers out, because written prayers are not Biblical. The Sunday school teacher must have not gotten around to studying the book of Psalms. I had always wondered if my written prayers were being heard.

As I have gotten out of college and I have started becoming an adult I have lost my prayer writing. I have gotten out of the discipline of writing my prayers down. However, I have become more aware of the complexity of prayer and how it is a holistic response to God, rather than just an emotional response. I pray more deeply than I have prayed before, and often times I don't use words to do it.

However, I see the reality of prayer being a lifestyle choice that scripture gives us to help submit our minds to Jesus. I think that is why Jesus' form of prayer is so focused on God and his providence rather than on our own emotional insecurities and problems.

I truly believe that prayer is more about our minds becoming disciplined and submissive to the Spirit rather than anything else. Prayer allows the Spirit to convict our mental sins and gives the Spirit a chance to protect us from Satan's sneaky attacks.

When we are not self aware of our own challenges and our own sin we become a victim to Satan and his attacks and our mental sin seeps into the rest of our spirituality like a cancer. As I allow my negative thoughts to run rampant I find when I prayer and encompass my mind on God I find a peace that overcomes all my worry and anxiety. Just as we train our bodies and our emotions, we must also train our minds to preach and represent the Gospel.

Good Friday

In Southern Illinois we have been having Thunderstorms for about a week and a half. I am usually a large proponent of thunderstorms, but I don't think I actually experienced t-storms like the ones we have been getting. Usually these storms will come in and storm for about an hour and then move on. These storms have come and come and come.

On Good Friday it stormed all night. The Thunder was shaking the house, the wind was ghostly, and the lightning light the house up when the power went out. As I was lying in bed and listening to this storm I thought of the cross. I reflected on the feeling of the cross as sleep evaded me.

While the cross was interrupted human history, we often forget that all of Creation was influenced by the cross. As I was lying in bed I was thinking of the moments after Christ's last breath. In Matthew the scene is mind altering. The earth and the rocks shake, and the dead bodies that have been within the earth are resurrected and walk, or float themselves, into the city.

None of the other Gospels speak of the natural implications of the Cross. Matthew is the only writer that mentions the natural reaction to the death of Christ. As the thunder was knocking on my roof I was reminded of the all encompassing redemption that was intended for the world.

Psalm 22

My husband and I went up to his folks for Easter on Sunday. After church we drove up to Shelbyville, Illinois and spent some time with his family. Monday I had a meeting with my Seminary adviser in regards to my vocational endeavors. Before I met with him we went through Decatur and saw an old friend who I had interned with my Senior year of college. We spoke of our passion for the church and the challenges that we all were facing. It was very encouraging to see a brother in Christ. As we were leaving Dan hugged me and told me "Don't lose your faith!"

After my meeting we caught up with a college professor who was very influential in my husband's life. We sat and talked with him for a couple of hours about our losses and our wins within ministry. As we left he continued to say, 'pray and God will answer your prayers, be encouraged, be faithful'.

Through our rich conversations we were reminded that we are not alone in this work. We were reminded that God had worked within the lives of these men in their past ministries and He was continuing to work.

These Christian fathers encouraged us to keep the faith, and to continue to seek God, and to continue to study, and to continue to serve. Through their lives, they had seen God do wonderful things, and they continued to believe that God was still at work.

These catch up conversations reminded me of Psalm 22. Waylon preached on Psalm 22 on Sunday in reflection of the resurrection. Psalm 22 was written by David and has some prophetic inkling to the crucifixion of Christ. The first verse in the Psalm is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This famous statement that Jesus makes on the Cross was not a question driven by Theodicy, but rather was a prayer. Jesus was praying Psalm 22 on the cross.

Psalm 22 is a Psalm written by David within his despair. David is feeling abandoned and alone. Not only is David feeling this way about his God, he is also feeling this way about his community. As the Psalm goes on he is describing in detail, his spiritual and physical despair.

David is longing for deliverance, and God is no where to be seen.

However, even though God is not immediately delivering David, David still remembers the presence of God within his people's history. David remembers the deliverance God provides his people from the Egyptians. David remembers that God has been ever present within David's own life. As David is wallowing in his despair he is continually encouraged, because as God delivered his chosen people within the past, David can trust that God will continue to deliver him in the future.

As God has worked his redemption out within our history, he will continue to work his redemption out within our future.

Even when God does not deliver us in our present despair, we can trust that God will continue to deliver us within the future.

Jesus prays this Psalm on the cross. While, Jesus is in utter despair, he knows the plan. Because of Jesus' humanity the despair is very real and very painful, however, because Jesus is fully divine, he knows that deliverance will be given to all humanity through his Resurrection.

Just as my older brothers in Christ can look back on their lives and see the deliverance and redemption of God the father, they can look forward and trust in the ultimate deliverance that was given to us through the cross and resurrection.
This ultimate deliverance will free us entirely to be complete human beings.

Kingdom people will no longer be enslaved by their chains, but will be free in the despair and the deliverance of Christ.

Okay

So, I am not the best hymn writer. I think I will stick with regular, non rhyming words from now on. I have been doing some writing, some thinking, and some reading, and I have stumbled onto a couple of questions.

What if our presuppositions were cause for a greater Christ? What if our presuppositions led us to a contextual Christ? Is the historical Christ more important than our contextual Christ? Or are they both on equal playing fields?

For example, clearly Christ has not lived in the twenty first century. Now spiritually he has lived through the Spirit, but I am talking about being born, living through the treacherous adolescent years, and eventually dying. Jesus Christ actually lived and died back in the first century. The question I am pondering has to do with the importance of the historical Jesus in regards to our own presuppositions. Most of us did not grow up with an indoctrinated view of the historical Jesus. Most of us grew up in Sunday morning kid's church, learning about the great miracles of Jesus, and about how God love's all the little children of the world, no matter what color you are.

So, we grow up and maybe some of us never come to terms with this 'historical' Jesus. Maybe some of us live in the spiritual world of miracles, and love, and grace, and forgiveness. But, the historical Jesus lived. Thanks to Josephus we know that there was an actual Jesus who was called the Christ.

However, because we cannot time travel out of our own living contexts and into the first century we do not hear Jesus' words first hand and we do not know this living dying, living Jesus.

All that rambled, the question I have is; who is more important to our theology, the historical Jesus or our own contextual Jesus?

Now, this question, from a logical and restored stand point is easy. Everyone who chooses to study the Bible is called to understand the historical implications of scripture. Because a parable about farming within the first century might look and feel different than a Midwestern farming today. However, when we unveil the historical side of scripture, does it really matter. Does that Midwestern farmer in the pulpit say, wow that parable has nothing to do with the drought I am facing with, this scripture really means this....

When we are facing our own despair do the historical implications matter? Let's be honest, we cannot actually 'know' the truest historical situation, without the historian's presuppositions of history anyway, so does this historical Jesus truly matter to our theology? Can we ever get through the layers of everyone's presuppositions to reach a pure, untainted view of Jesus? Or is this historical Jesus a scapegoat for our spiritual apathy? Do we cling to the history behind the text so that we do not truly have to live out the text in our own context?

Hymn 1

Lately I have been intrigued by hymns. I have decided to write one. Here it is;

We are without words,
Within the presence of your patience
For your patience has taught us to wait within our despair.
To find the hope within our own moments,
Rather to dream and grasp for hope within our own care.

For our future is determined by Christ alone.
For our present is found within our defection.
As our past was determined by Christ atoned.
As our present is cleansed by the Spirit’s direction.

As we pour out our being
To understand each other
We grasp for the false tenderness of our world
to determine our love for one another.

For our future is determined by Christ alone.
For our present is found within our defection.
As our past was determined by Christ atoned.
As our present is cleansed by the Spirit’s direction.

We need the tenderness and the violence of Christ
To rip away the veil from our hearts
So that we may seek ourselves as whole
Rather than in separate and conflicted parts.

Bridge:
Through our human toil
we find our humanity soiled
And we long to find the wholeness
In our broken united closeness

A Listening Ear

I have been in a very dark place for two years. My soul has been in despair because my insides are broken. My heart, my soul, my spirit, my strength has been broken. When I graduated college my dreams broke which ultimately broke my heart. The identity that I had built for twenty years broke.

I wallowed in my broken identity. I searched the five stages of grief to try and work through my sorrow. I first denied my brokenness by trying to form my ministry around my broken identity. I did this through demanding expectations and judgmental teaching. I was so clouded by denial that I could not see the wound I was creating within the ministry I was given.

I then felt the anger seep into my spirituality and into my life. I took my anger out on my loving husband and my loving God. I blamed my husband for tricking me into marrying him and for making me move away from everyone I knew and loved. I felt betrayed and angry because it was his fault for my broken identity. I blamed my loving God by calling him indifferent and uninvolved. I did not believe that a "loving" God would put me in such a despairing place. How could my God betray me! How could this God place me in such a miserable place?

I then bargained for my old identity back. I told God that I would do anything if he would free me from my own broken despair. I tried to get God to release me from my despair. I no longer cared about my ministry or about my gifts. I wanted to be free from this ache within my own soul. I longed to feel loved again, I longed to feel anything other than the despair that was with me at all times. I wanted to be free of the responsibility of growing and the responsibility of being a Christ follower. I bargained with God and pleaded with God to set me free from this life of burden. I just wanted my brokenness and I wanted to be left alone in my brokenness. I longed to sit in my self pity and my despair and be left completely alone. I tried to get God to let me live my broken life in exchange for my surrender.

Then I realized that my bargaining was not going to work. God was not going to let me live in my own dying brokenness. God wanted me to accept my broken identity and to move to a new place of completion. I refused to accept my brokenness and I sank into a deep depression. I so craved to die in my own brokenness. I carried this depression in every single part of my life. I came home from work and crawled into bed and wept. I wept my own death. I wept my brokenness and misunderstandings. I wept for my husband who was speechless. The forming of my depression has lasted two years. It officially ended my first day of seminary.

I have finally accepted and repented of my brokenness. I have repented of my longing to be put to death along with my broken identity. I have finally come to accept the "loving" God that I had so resented. This loving God longs for me to feel the freedom of completion rather than the death of slavery. This freedom has brought me into a deep humility. A humility that is now shaping how I listen to God and to everyone around me. A humility that I pray never abandons my heart because it has opened my ears up to the Good news.

I am tired of the restoration movement.

Holy Mourning

Living in a social networking world I think it is interesting that mourning continues to be a private matter. For the most part people don't know how to interact with mourners. The setting is akward and unfriendly. While working at DMH and even at UMCH I dealt with mourning in different settings. The first of course was in a hospital setting. Mourning happened and as an intern I glimpsed into the sadness of the world. Unfortunatley I carried that sadness around with me. Wondering when the last hug would be or the last meaningful conversation. I was not good at seperating myself from the grief.

At UMCH I worked with a different type of mourner. Since I was working with emotionally sick teenagers the mourning was more like a living state of being. These kids were stuck in a stage of mourning. Mourning their lives because they wern't 'normal'. Mourning because their mom's and dad's abandoned then, abused them, or ignored them.

As I was reading Winner's chapter on the discipline of mourning I found myself opening this discipline to all kinds of mourning. Mourning a lost job, a lost dream, a lost faith, a lost role, a lost identity. Winner recognizes that mourning is not a strong point of the modern day church.

The church is bad at mourning because, "while you the mourner are still bawling your eyes out and slamming fists into the wall, everyone else, understandably, forgets and goes back to their normal lives and you find, that you are left alone. You are without the church, and without a church vocabulary for what happens to the living after the dead are dead."(27-28).

The church has never dealt with mourning. Part of it is the way the church is structured. I know that our church has a commitee to organize funeral dinners, but beyond that, we are unequipped to deal with mourning. We don't have a follow up program, or a team of people who attends to the mourner.

The Jewish people were intentional about their mourning. While the mourner was struck by the shock of their family members death, the community came in and took care of everything. Everything seems intentional, even the mourner's process of grief. The mourner's "neighbors bring food. At the first meal after the funeral-called the seudat havra'ah, of the meal of recovery-the mourner is meant to eat an egg, whose obvious circular fertility is to begin the slow work of reminding the bereaved that she will live."(30)

The Jewish mourner has a calender which they stick too. The first week, the first month, and the first year. All these times are intentional for the mourner as they continue to seperate themselves from their loss and back into a more ordinary routine of life.

Through this year the mourner is required to say the Kaddish twice a day. The mourner cannot say this prayer alone, he/she has to be within the community.

The prayer is this, "Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, mighty, unpraised, and lauded be the Name of the Holy One, Blessed is He, beyond any blessing or song."

The mourner is called to do the Kaddish so that "even in the pit, even in depression and loss and nonsense, still we respond to God with praise. This is not to say that the mourner should not feel what he feels-anger, disbelief, hatred. He can feel those things (and shout them out to God; God can take it). You do not have to feel praise int he intense moments of mourning, but the praise is still true, and insisting upon it over and over twice a day every day, ensures that eventually you will come to remember the truth of those praises."(36)

The church can learn a lesson or two from the Jewish discipline of mourning. We can start being more involved in the loss of our Christian brother's and sisters. We can start to admit that the loss of a person, a job, an idenity, a role, or a relationship can truly damage a person's faith. We can start being the community that can take a damaged person and help them find healing.

Let us not let the akwardness of pain and grief come between our love for the church.

Creation Returned

"'What happens when we stop working and controlling nature?" Moishe Konigsberg responds. "When we don't operate machines, or pick flowers, or pluck fish from the sea?...When we cease interfering in the world we acknowledge that it is God's world.'" (6-7)

I love this imagery. When we stop working, playing, eating, we become to a still sense that we are not alone. I found this when I worked for Decatur Memorial Hospital and Hospice. I would walk into patient's rooms and find a uneasy silence. Through being sick these people were required to stop. Stop working, stop eating, stop fighting, stop driving, stop everything that was ordinary in their lives. They were found dependant on other people where they had the chance to sit in stillness and review their lives thus far.

Whenever I visited hospice patients I found storytelling. My first visit was with an elderly women who lived in a assisted living community. She came to tell me her life story. Who she was married to, who her children were, how they came and visited for Christmas, who took care of her, where she used to live, what she used to do, how she used to serve within the church. This woman's struggle with the church was herself. She could no longer serve, take communion, attend weekly worship meetings. She felt her faith had teetered and was fading.

I found this need to tell stories was great within all hospice patients. The more you inquired the deeper the story went.

The first discipline that Winner discusses is keeping the discipline of keeping the Sabbath. Sabbath keeping was not a part of my upbringing. Actually 75% of my family was active on Sunday mornings within the worship band and by the time Sunday afternoon we were all exhausted. I heard about Sabbath keeping in college but I was in college. Discipline was not necessarliy on the top of the list, even though it should have been.

While reading this first chapter I kept coming back to creation. As Christians we are not required to keep Sabbath. We are not even commanded to keep Sabbath. However, when we choose to let our time point our lives to Jesus we have found Sabbath.

My preaching professor said it best, "Get to your calenders first." Often times we find we have no time for new things, like excercise, friendly dinners, family time, or date night. I think that is because we let our calenders ruin our lives. We forget to surrender our time to Christ. And the best part is that we don't even have to make up some new trendy way to surrender our calenders; the Sabbath!

The reason that we surrender our time is not so that we can be more productive or so that we can rest from our crazy schedules, but so we can recognize our stories within the Kingdom. We can have a chance at reflecting on God and who he is and what he has done. We have the chance to stop creating, to stop worrying, to stop consuming, and to start reflecting on creation and resurrection. We shouldn't wait until we are at the end our of our lives to recall and reflect. We shouldn't have to be forced into a stillness through sickness or loss to find our time is important and is fleeting.

As Christian we are called to live radically different than the world. Why don't we start with surrendering our time to Christ?

Mudhouse Sabbath

One of my Old Testament professors recommended Mudhouse Sabbath my Junior year of college. I went to the bookstore and only found it on c.d. So I passed. Well about a month ago Waylon and I were in Barnes and Noble. We go there and walk around, even though we know that we can get any book for half the price on amazon. What can I say, we like the smell of new books.

While we were walking down the Christian spirituality section, I saw mudhouse sabbath. I was so suprised to see it in Barnes and Noble and I had to snatch it up. I started reading it while we were waiting on frieds at a restraunt and felt my soul stir.

The author, Lauren f. Winner, is a Jewish woman who converted to Christianity. The book is about 11 Jewish disciplilnes that she considers valuable for the Christian life. The introduction fascinated me, because she considers discipline essential to the Christian life.

Growing up I enjoyed lovely, and emotionally driven mountain top experiences. I felt on top of the world. I usually found these mountain top experiences at church camp, or at an emotional church service. I lived, and still live a chaotic, messy, and unorganized life. I would feel great for about a day and a half and then doubt would creep into my life. These days of doubt would be enforced by my own insecurities. Even now, as I have been making conversion decisions to follow Christ, I have had my doubts. I was called to quit my job and go back to school, and in that decision, I have worried about money, transportation, whether I am making the 'right' decision.

However, when I finally make the decision I feel wonderful. I actually did feel wonderful for about a week. I was on the Mountaintop! In that week I decided to go back the gym, to develop a discipline for excercise, housecleaning, and eating right. I also made a pact to myself to be a good wife, whatever that means. I felt wonderful. I felt like I could conquer the world and that Satan would fall beneath my 'oh so righteous' feet.

Then Saturday came, and I fell into a weepy mess. The reason I like Winner's introduction is because she finds "mostly [spritual practice/discipline] is about training so that you'll know the moutaintop for what it is when you get there."(xi)

I have always thought spiritual disciipline was for the wilderness times. The times when you feel lonley, desperate, in doubt, and full of insecurity. I figured if you could discipline yourself in those times that the mountaintop experiences would just be a break from your grueling disciplined life. Like going out for cake when you have good news. Or treating yourself to some new clothes when you get some money in the mail from a relative.

I just figured the mountaintop experience would be a chance for a bit of freedom from the discplined life. I have found however, that the disciplined life is supposed to be a life of freedom. We are called to followw Christ, to carry our cross towards our own death. We are called to a life of freedom from death and sin!!!!!

But, how can we even pick up our cross if we do not recognize what we are enslaved to? Discpline allows us to uncover our wonderful impulses. It allows us to find what we are addicted to and how to stop our addictions. It gives us the choice. The choice whether to eat the cake or not. The choice to spend the money or not. The choice to stay silent or to speak.

Discipline finds our sin and allows us to choose who to follow. Do we follow our impulses or do we follow our Lord?

And as I have grown, and gotten older, I have found a discpline for almost everything. Just as I have been reading in the Mudhouse Sabbath, there is a discipline for rest, a discpline for grieving, a discipline for body, for food, for spending money, for suffering, for speaking and staying silent. Wherever you start your discpline life you will not be disappointed when the Holy Spirit uses the practice to uncover more sin within your heart.

So, when I am atop the moutnain, I can feel free knowing that when I descend back into the lonley pits of misery I will be free.

Understanding Eternity

I have found Facebook extremely boring. I actually made a post about it the other day. There are just too many people, half of which I don't remember. But, today I got on facebook and started to look at pictures of families that made a huge investment in my life throughout the years. I looked at pictures of the communities they are involved in with now and how they are continuing to live within the Kingdom of God.

As I continued to look at pictures it would be very easy for me to get depressed and say, well how lonely am I know, I don't feel like I have community like that, I don't know of anyone who knows me like that anymore. But how can I get depressed when I see pictures of small groups, worship settings, and people feeling the impression of Christ. These families that have made an impression on me are continuing to make impressions of Christ on the people that they are surrounded by. Even though life has so drastically changed, these families have continued to run the race of perserverance.

They have not let change, death, sadness, frustration, or anger overcome their love for Christ. While these fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters have gone to college, moved, started new churches, they are still influencing and making an impression on me. I come to find a glimpse of eternity in these pictures because I see the Kingdom living. I don't have to feel sad or loneley because I get to spend eternity with these wonderful people.

I get a glimpse of understanding an eterninty that isn't boring, it is full of personalities, wisdom, love, and care. Eternity is not going to be a place where we have to sing all the time, and where we have to do it a certian way every week. Eternity is going to be full of people and that is the best kind of Eternity!