The fog is lifting...

I'm not feeling particularly inspired to write tonight, but it's been a while, so I figure I'd better write something just to keep the habit going. That said, things are definitely getting better with my emotional/mental state these days. I don't know if it's just that the depression is fading on its own, or if it's the omega-3 supplements I've been taking again (they've done the trick in the past...), but I'm really feeling a whole lot better about life these days. I have a lot more energy and excitement about what I'm doing in my home-work.

I had a close call shortly after Christmas. Since Sam's job had been so short on hours, I woke up early one morning (worried about things and couldn't sleep) and browsed online for jobs --presumably for him, when I ran across an ad for a production artist at a place in Sheboygan. In a fit of incredible stupidity and frustration, I emailed them my resume. No cover letter, just the resume. Wouldn't you believe it, when we returned from Christmas, there was a message on the phone. They wanted to do a phone interview. I was in a total funk the whole next two weeks. Finally I was persuaded to call them back and schedule a phone interview, figuring I'd better not eliminate my options at that point. Sam and I discussed the possibility of me working full-time first shift and him working full-time second shift, since then the kids wouldn't need daycare, and they'd see both of us. Sam and I, however, wouldn't see a whole lot of each other. We also discussed just me working and him quitting his job to stay home with the kids. I wasn't comfortable with either option and neither was Sam. We sat on the idea for about a week, and the morning of the scheduled interview, after a phone discussion with my mother in law (a woman of much wisdom), I decided the main problem causing our stress wasn't our debt or even our financial situation, but the limbo in which we'd been living since Sam decided not to return to Valley. Since that is our main stressor, it makes a lot more sense for me to be here at home full-time, keeping things relatively peaceful, sane, and making home a refuge from all the junk going on in our lives. If I were home full-time, I figured, I'd be better able to support Sam and sort of be his secretary and administrative assistant to help him find a better job, plus I'd be here to do all the stuff I already know how to do, but as of late, haven't had the energy or motivation to do well.

I've had a bit of a paradigm shift. I've been in "survival mode" for about a year and a half now. I've been doing what I need to get by, but I'd lost the joy in doing home work that I had back when things were stable. I used to love being a wife and a mom, yet somehow it'd disintegrated into "what I do to get by." Since I had my close call with the outside work world and envisioned what life would be like if I were gone most of the day working somewhere else, I've come to a new appreciation of the power and the value of being a homemaker. Not just a stay-at-home mom or a "housewife," but a real home-maker. I already have a job, and it's the one I was made to do for this season of my life. I will never again get a shot at teaching my kids to be civilized or how to relate to others and God in the same way that I can now by being with them most of the day. Sam would make a pretty good stay-at-home dad, I'm sure, but I'm realizing that doing it myself is a privilege I'm not willing to give up just yet.

So, I'm getting excited about doing this wholeheartedly again, not just in "survival mode," but doing my best to make a real home for our family, a place where they can come to and rest. A place of peace and harmony (although sometimes a kind of noisy peace). A safe place to land when everywhere else isn't. A place of acceptance and grace. That's what I want our home to be about, even if it is small and we don't have all the nice furniture or accessories that I'd like to have for us. I enjoy making do with what we have anyway --it's a fun challenge to me to find little things that build up a sense of home, in a different way than hundred-dollar window treatments or Ethan Allen furniture does. I may not have a lot of money in this season of life, but I am thankful that I do have a lot of creativity, and a lot more time now that the kids are growing older and more independent. What else could I ask for?

Currently Reading The Hidden Art of Homemaking By Edith Schaeffer see related

the year in review (because I can't think of a better title...)

I had a strange, new feeling while I was putting away the Christmas decorations a couple days ago. Relief.

I've never before actually felt glad that the year was over, but this year, I greeted the new year with relief. 2006 is a year I hope never to have to relive. It was a terrible year by many measures. We had to move. Again. Lost a job. Again. Circumstantially and emotionally, it's been the hardest year of my life so far, and, unlike the first job loss and move, I'm having a much harder time this time around finding the "why" of it all answered. I just don't know why we are back here. I don't know why Sam is slogging his tired self to a meaningless job every day with terrible hours and even worse pay. Financially, we're actually worse off than when he was in grad school, factoring that now we have three extra little ones to feed and care for. We're drained. There really isn't much more to say that isn't dark and bordering on the profane. 2006 was a terrible year, from my perspective.

Yet, though, there was progress, in a way, when I look at it in terms of where I am now versus where I was this time last year. I have found my vision and my calling, or at least clarified it a little. I'm free of the burden of being what I want to be and freed to be what God wants me to be. That's an improvement over last year. Another thing that God is reminding me of is that the things I lack now are really eternally inconsequential. It's just stuff, really. We still have happy kids who are growing to know God more daily, we have a solid, faithful, God-honoring marriage, we are healthy, and our family relationships are full of kindness and love. That's saying a lot, when I survey the landscape.

In the months since we've returned to Oostburg, I've taken a closer look at the culture of the community I thought I knew, and it's really not the sheltered little Mayberry I had it taken for. I sat a few weeks ago over our Coffee Break Bible study as we were sharing prayer requests and realized that I knew every one of the women there had gone through at least one life-altering tragedy or struggle in the time that I knew them. Every one. And most of the tragedies and struggles were ones that couldn't be fixed by a better job or a shift in circumstances, like our situation. I didn't really realize there was that much pain in such a small place before. It's easy to get so centered on my own world's crises that I miss that sometimes. So, despite all this year has left in ruins and all the disappointments and frustrations, I am left thankful that the important stuff is still unscathed. God is here. He never left.

I was reminded of that this past Sunday. A young woman from our church gave her profession of faith yesterday. I know her mother from the group of women I talked about earlier. This young lady was born with serious health problems, and, although I wasn't part of that church family twenty years ago when all this happened, from hearing the story, it was a miracle that she even lived to be baptized. To see her standing there yesterday in front of God and her church family in consummation of her baptism was a testament to the fact that God still laughs. If I asked her mom twenty years ago, I'm sure she would have acknowledged God's working in the situation, but I can imagine she walked through some dark valleys herself as she kissed her baby daughter goodbye before she was wheeled into surgery for her liver transplant. ...And somewhere, there's a wounded family who may or may not know that part of the life that was taken from them lives on in a young lady who publicly proclaims God as her Savior and lives to serve him. One of the greatest joys in my life has been watching God at work, turning tragedies to cause for laughter.

So, although I am sitting here typing all this with a wounded spirit and I am tired and drained, I am still going to stick around for the end of the story. Last year around this time the first Narnia movie came out, and I left the movie with the joy of realizing for the first time that although one advent is complete, another greater one awaits. I know that He has a reason and a plan, whether it will be revealed by the new year or many years from now --or maybe not until I've entered eternity, but God is here, and He is laughing.

being known

I don't know if this will amount to anything profound, but here goes. I've been thinking a lot about the Bible verses that talk about (no exact location yet here, it will magically appear when I get motivated enough to get out of my chair and get my Bible) the people that will appear before God at the judgment saying "Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name," but God replies, "You never knew me."

 ...Extra points if you caught the error there. It's not "You never knew me"-- it's "I never knew you." So how does one go about being known by God? How do you do something like that? "Knowing God" seems a lot easier, at least if you consider that it's in active voice. Being known is a lot harder. So, do I go about waving my arms, trying to get his attention? Why should He even bother with knowing me in the first place? I guess He did spend all that time and effort and DNA on me ...I'd hate to see it all go to waste.

I'm afraid this entry is going to be more questions than answers. This has been ruminating in my brain for a long time, and I haven't really fleshed it out yet, but I know in my soul that this is vitally important. I think this is one of those secret things in Scripture --we spend so much of our time on what we think is important, only to stumble over the big, important stuff --and I (humbly) think this is one of those things.

Doesn't he already know us? He made us for crying out loud! He has our blueprints. He remembers the stuff we forgot long ago. In that sense, he knows us better than we know ourselves. But does he KNOW us? I am remembering (and hesitant to put it out for thought, but here goes) that "to know" someone in the KJV old testament was code for ...physical intimacy. Obviously, you can't just know someone in that way without both parties being involved. Are we missing a picture here? I think so, but I'm having a hard time with it.

As far as "active voice" things --the only answers I have so far about being known by God involve getting naked. Not physically --he's already seen all that, of course. I mean soul-level, gut-honest naked. The kind of naked that David got with God. I really think this is one of the reasons he was called "a man after God's own heart." God knew David. David (like all of us) had no CLUE who God was. He just trusted, and talked all the time with Him, about whatever was stressing him out or making him happy. Why do we waste so much time and effort on "knowing God," when it seems to me, at least, like the whole point is being known? God is so vast and beyond our comprehension! Maybe it's a matter of getting the order out of sync --be known by God and he will reveal Himself to us. If we listen, He will speak ...I hope. It's happened before in my life and experience anyway. I've met very few people who can say that without a little embarrassment. There's something truly pompous and arrogant about saying "God talks to me," isn't there? But what's the point of a monologue? If I get to know you, I can pick and choose the parts of me I want you to see. If I want you to know me, really know me, in a way that matters, I have to take the risk that you'll maybe find out stuff that I really didn't want you to know at all. But if you know those things, and accept me anyway, how much better is that? Perfect love casts out fear (see xanga blog on love and fear...), doesn't it? If you love me, warts and all, I need not fear those things any more.

Wow. Maybe I am coming up with a few answers. Well, enough profundity for one night. Corwin's up, got to help him sleep again. Hope that made sense to you, at least a little.

Currently Reading Divine Nobodies Shedding Religion to Find God (And the Unlikely People Who Help You) By Jim Palmer see related

I've Moved...

Grassroots Christianity

(cross-posted on Flaming Edna's... I put it up here as well... Not trying to start controversy --just trying to think this through.)

Our state has a vote tomorrow on defining marriage as between a man and a woman (as opposed to same sex), and I am having a really hard time getting excited about voting for it. I'm kind of surprised at myself. For two weeks now, there's been an insert in my church bulletin telling me that I should be part of the righteous and 'stand up' for man-woman marriage. After all, we don't want these gay people to have the same rights as we normal people do, do we...

At least, that's how it reads to me. Something just sounds wrong about the whole way we're going about this. I do believe that practicing homosexuality is incompatible with living as a Christian as defined Biblically. That is not up for argument. I believe homosexuality grieves God and is not God's best. However, we, living in a sin-warped world have to deal with homosexuality. We can't run away from the fact that gay people exist. ...And they are our neighbors, and that means that we are called to love them.

So what would Jesus do? Would Jesus picket an abortion clinic? Would Jesus be busy on the phones at the local Republican Party office tonight urging people to 'vote for morality'? I don't think so. Somewhere along the line, we got this misguided notion that by putting things into law, we make them happen. Do we need good laws? Of course we do. But what did Jesus come to do? To throw away the law? No. To write better laws? No. He came to fulfill the Law. He came to love people to the Kingdom. What we say matters, but what we do matters more, because it reveals the truth or lies in what we say.

Instead of spending so much time and effort as grassroots citizens of the United States of America in making laws to outlaw gay marriage, how about spending more time as grassroots citizens of the Family of God getting to know our neighbor and building the kind of love and trust in relationships that change lives so much that instead of sending people away, we draw people even more --not by a watered-down easy gospel, but an unapologetic lifestyle that compels them to give their lives to a God whose own children have so much love inside them that they can't help overflow it onto everything they touch. Not an all-accepting patronizing love, but a love so strong that it won't stand by when one's neighbor is in danger. A love that gets its hands dirty. A love that isn't afraid to throw aside personal comfort and emotional safety to point another to the source of true comfort and eternal safety.

Where are people like this? Maybe if they existed more, we wouldn't need things like Roe V. Wade, gay marriage amendments, or people protesting statues of God's Law taken from public places. It is ironic that in the week that this is up for vote, there is a very public scandal involving a child of God who has been caught in homosexual sin. He publicly and vehemently stood up against the very lifestyle he was battling against himself. Borrowing from a blog by Gordon MacDonald (link coming as soon as I can find it again --it's on Christianity Today's website, I believe...), one can't help but wonder whether his public battle was closely tied to his personal battle. I wonder if things would have gone differently if he had directed that battle internally instead of publicly. What if, when he had found sin in himself, he had somewhere to be sorrowful about it and someone to point him to God's grace and forgiveness? What if in response to the compulsion to run and hide, there was a community that helped him understand that God was calling him back?

I guess what I'm wondering about is why is it that the Church is so much not a safe place to land.  Granted, by definition, the church is made up of people who fall short. We're not perfect, and most of us don't claim to be, when we're accused of being perfect anyway. So instead of trying so hard to act like we've got it together because we've got the Answer, let's listen a little harder to what the question was in the first place.