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Looking behind, looking ahead

November 18, 2018 by michelle 12 Comments

I’m 40 today.

I’m not afraid of the number, nor am I disgusted by being this age. I’ve always been an old soul who enjoys simple things and as far as I’m concerned, laugh lines are a history of many laughters and forgetfulness is the result of a brain full of fantastic memories, so I’ll take these as gifts. And anyhow, I said goodbye to a friend just a few months ago, and although I don’t believe I was ever one to take life for granted, it’s less likely I’d be able to now without being reminded it’s a privilege growing older.

Birthdays are good days for reflection – on a year, on a season, on the interesting timeline of twists and turns that one calls their life. When I look at mine, I’m thankful. More than markers for a span of time, many of my birthdays are bookends, and in between are the volumes of a soul searching for God in certain places only to find Him somewhere I wouldn’t have expected. These are stories in pictures rather than words, in a song rather than a telling. There really isn’t a way to explain God experiences other than in musical poetry that opens and lilts, but never closes. I mean, to go searching for God and find Him is a story that ends with another beginning. Am I right?

A few days before my 18^th birthday I stood at the side of the road answering questions for a police report. I’d pleaded with God for months, asking my boyfriend’s heart might be changed by my birthday, but instead, he’d left me at the side of the road in a banged up car and a very pregnant belly. A friend had recently overheard a girl in her class forecasting my degenerate future – “Did you hear Michelle’s pregnant? She’s going to end up on welfare in a trailer park.” – and I’d shrugged it off because what did she know of my future? But police reports and hit and run accidents and questions about domestic violence sounded like the dismal ‘once upon a time’ story I wasn’t willing to live, so I went into single motherhood without a clue as to what my future might look like, but knowing full well it wouldn’t include abuse and addiction and promise after empty promise.

And God saw me there, forgotten at the side of the road. He saw me in the delivery room, eating my lunch alone, fighting the urge and instinct to imagine what it might be like to be one of two parents hovering over the tiny person sleeping in the bassinet, making all the observations two parents make when studying their cells amalgamated into one new life. Sometimes you just need a God who will help you forget, so you can see all the other good things He provides – like impossible safety and incredible opportunities, and the love of family and friends.

On my 22^nd birthday, the guy on one knee was taking quite a risk asking a girl he’d known for 3 months to be his wife. I was taking an equally big risk saying yes, but he loved me with the kind of love that let me be me (which is the best kind of love, if you ask me) and he loved my daughter as if he’d been curiously restless since the day she was born until the day he met her and it all made sense. We exchanged vows the next month, but no lawyer in town would do a legal ad adoption. I told them I wasn’t asking anyone’s permission to put a name in the blank ‘father’s name’ space on my daughter’s birth certificate, because blank spaces unpursued indicate invisible people and invisible help and I wouldn’t waste questions on answers I didn’t need.

And God provided. He sent a patent lawyer who had no reservations about legal ads and rights and signatures that technically aren’t needed at all, and the process was nearly a year long, but a few weeks before kindergarten, my daughter’s last name was legal. Yesterday was ‘National Adoption Day’ – another day to be thankful.

I was pregnant on a few birthdays, held babies on other birthdays – more grace, more abundance from the God who gives both and is both. There was a house contract written the day after my birthday and One More Truth came to life the week before another birthday, confirmation that God is the God of surprises and the completely unexpected. ‘Things can change in a day,’ He’s reminded me on crushing days. The better news, of course, is His faithfulness never changes.

The God of the Old Testament was God among His people – in a temple, in a cloud, in fire. The Savior of the New Testament is ‘God with us’, and when He sent His Spirit, we were given the privilege of accepting God in us. Throughout Scripture, there is one promise: when we search for God wholeheartedly, we find Him, and find He isn’t far off.

What can I expect in the year ahead? I’m not certain. Whatever I find myself doing, I know for Whom I’ll be doing it, and perhaps this more than age or knowledge or success is the best measure of where I’ve been or where I’m going. Perhaps when we speak of a person’s authenticity, we’re referring to their song. I pray mine is a song of overwhelming thankfulness.

So looking behind and looking ahead, I expect one thing for this year of 40: God will be there, and so will His goodness.

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Holding onto Hope When It’s Hard to Trust

September 21, 2018 by michelle 2 Comments

A Guest Post with (In)courage!

I’m at the stove sautéing dinner. There is no recipe, just meat and veggies and a cabinet full of spices, and I’m watching the skillet become art. My phone streams music and my hands keep time by chopping. I smell and taste, engaging all five senses. This is living.

The light tinkling of an alarm cuts my music short and for once it’s not a reminder of an appointment or a necessary task I’d likely forget, it’s only a little nudge to witness beauty if I have the time. I turn toward the windows. The small stripe of visible sky promises a colorful display, convincing me in seconds to leave my duties. I cover the pan and turn down the heat, grab my keys and move toward the door, but I see feet peeking from the side of the couch. I stop.

“Let’s go see the sunset.”

My daughter’s been lounging in the same position since she got home from school. She barely looks up from her phone. “I’m good.”

But she knows – and I know – she’s not good.

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Moving in the tension, seeing God in the middle

September 6, 2018 by michelle 3 Comments

Most Sunday mornings my husband and I bike out to a local coffee shop. There are several reasons for this Sabbath routine: we like the exercise, we like coffee, we like mornings, and we like each other. It’s a win-win-win-win. And being morning people, we’re terrible about going on traditional dates because a conversation such as, ‘Hey, it’s Friday night, and after a long work week I’m exhausted, but let’s get all fancy, go to a restaurant where we can’t hear over the terrible choice in music, and pretend we’re enjoying an over-priced dinner, even though right this moment, we’re literally feet away from a fridge stocked with delicious food, which we could eat most contentedly without excusing frequent yawning’ isn’t a conversation we have very often. Boring, I know, but practical has its own elegance. You can quote me on that.

We recently biked on both Saturday and Sunday, which had us feeling fit, well-caffeinated, and fantastic. Until Sunday’s ride home. The miles already pedaled had trashed our quads, making the ride a little tougher, but the fatigue got real when we were assaulted by gale-force winds that never, ever let up…for six and a half miles. It was grueling. And that’s the benefit of biking far distances – there’s only one way to get where I want to be, and if that means pedaling tornado winds ‘til I get there, then pedal I must.

I need those forced opportunities where want joins will; where I’m reminded I’m capable of doing hard things. Muscles don’t grow stronger without resistance. Holistic growth is the same. Mental and emotional growth won’t happen without pause and healthy introspection. Letting go of good things lost or destructive things held is a process of discipline. Naming triggers and taming trigger responses takes consistent practice. Strength of spirit develops in change and adjustment. Fulfilling relationships require real intention. And let’s not forget, fetuses grow for 9 extremely long months – proof the growing of a person takes effort and time.

Often it’s the time-taking things that feel like the hardest things, because the middle…the middle is so dang long! But when I appreciate the journey for what it is, I find joy in the experience. I notice the beauty around me and learn to be grateful for the breath in my lungs and the strength to move forward.

It’s in the middle I discover the truth about growing and being alive.

That it’s ok to be uncomfortable. It’s ok to hurt. It’s ok to be misunderstood. It’s ok if I don’t quite understand or if things don’t make sense. It’s ok to be in between the start of change and the finish line. It’s ok to be who I am right now while striving to become. It’s ok if the distance ahead isn’t a feel-good number. It’s ok to be in the middle, it’s ok to feel the tension and resistance, because the only way through it is through it, so just

keep

moving

forward.

Counter-cultural truths, I know. Resisting the mindset of convenient, comfortable, and quickly achieved is a challenge, but I’m opening up to the in-between places – they’re the only spaces with room enough for the flourishing life I want most. Humility and gentleness, patience and wisdom, love for others and for myself – I want those things! You know when I’ve seen them take root? In the struggle. In the resolving of conflict. In the pushing through sticking points. In the forgiving and moving on. In the middle of resistance and the winds of change. The best things in life don’t come easy, but they’re worth the diligence. Diligence grows the good stuff.

I’m sort of in the middle right now, pedaling through gusts, pushing with diligence. Maybe you are, too. Take courage – middle places are where we see God. And He is faithful. When we do the trusting work of diligently moving toward Him, He graciously meets us in the middle, completing our efforts in His time, in His plan, in the journey.

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Pink Warrior

June 28, 2018 by michelle 8 Comments

My friend died last week. I echo innumerable voices – victims, survivors, loved ones standing by or standing without – in saying, “Cancer sucks.”

It sucked when my friend was diagnosed 18 months ago and when she endured an aggressive treatment plan only to learn cancer hadn’t left, it just found a new place to reside. During her next round of treatments, I took her to Friday chemo and watched a day in her fight. Benadryl was first, a precautionary measure to keep her body from reacting poorly to the chemicals about to drip into her veins and sicken her for most the weekend. She’d sleep the weakness away, enjoy a couple good days, then go back for more. And after months of this, her body scan didn’t read clean.

There were hospital visits and texts. I rallied the prayers of family and friends while she rallied her war cry. She watched her son’s college graduation online and during the graduation party everyone ate and laughed while she lay in another room coughing and breathing from a tank, but she never complained. She allowed me in and we talked for a while about our kids, about their futures, about anxiety created by motherhood or breathing machines or simply by life itself.

When her husband texted ‘It doesn’t look good’, I didn’t finish drying my hair, I just left. ‘It doesn’t look good’ are words of urgency, not words to ready a person. And indeed, no one was ready. Not her children or husband, nor her mother and father, or her oncologist who’d been so positive last month. The fighter herself said it all morning: ‘I’m not ready.’ She’d intended to write letters to her kids. She’d expected to see her youngest through high school and she’d hoped to attend the weddings of her older children – grown, but not grown enough to be motherless.

I just listened and nodded my head because my mouth wasn’t working so well. The living don’t advise the dying, and anyway, it’s best not to speak about things you don’t understand. And I didn’t understand.

I’d prayed healing for my friend throughout her battle; many of my loved ones prayed too. Healing prayers and miracle pleas are natural prayers, natural as verbalizing hopes and admitting we don’t understand. But that morning, my prayers were for a soul, not a body. They were prayers my friend would be ready.

The previous Sunday, I’d listened to the words, ‘It is well with my soul’ and I’d tried to sing them, but I choked up instead. I’d never really liked the song that much, but I’d heard it and sung it since I was a child, and suddenly I couldn’t escape the message of it: Trusting God means ‘even though’ and ‘in spite of’, ‘but’ and ‘without’ must become ‘it is well with my soul.’ What if I lost plans, possibilities, people – would the song of my soul be peace? Could I trust Him enough to say ‘I don’t understand this world, but my spirit is good. God is good. It is well.’?

A week later I was watching my friend face those questions for real – no hypotheticals. The battle for remission was now the battle of reconciling finality. In our years together we’d talked about hope and living well, but we didn’t talk about God. We didn’t talk about God that morning either – we talked to God, together. She said her plans were different from God’s, but she’d trust Him anyway, and she gave Him the hopes she had for her children, knowing she wouldn’t be part of their futures. It was a big deal moment for the both of us. It still shakes me.

And then she got ready. She poured copious ‘I love yous’ on her family, righted wrongs, and let grace fall where only grace fits. She blessed her children and they sang her praises. She said things that matter, things we know we should live by but can’t because we’re busy taking life for granted. Things like, ‘Be patient with each other. Don’t work yourself to death. Spend more time with your family.’ Not a word was wasted, not a minute spilled. And the next day, she was gone.

Grief is a tragically brand new experience each and every time, and although loss is a universal language, there aren’t words good enough to explain it. When I pass my friend’s house or see her kids with my kids and think to send her a picture, it hurts. I expect it will for a long time.

Uncertain tomorrows are certain, so I’ll do my best with today. I’ll trust God more instead of trying to understand first. I’ll practice more patience, open my mouth for truth and grace, and when I’m brave enough, I’ll ask those close to me if I’m getting any better at it. I’ll spend more simple moments with loved ones and I’ll write more notes to my children. I’ll allow ‘it is well’ to shape my prayers. And I’ll look forward to seeing my friend again one day.

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