Reformation, Part I

I’m in need of Reformation.

When you begin to feel like you totally get God, like you know how He thinks and can anticipate His every move, you’re in trouble. And delusional.

 More and more things don’t work out the way I think they will, the way it seems they ought to. I’m seeing that what God does—or doesn’t do—doesn’t always mesh with who I think God is and how I think He works. Resolute in my belief that God doesn’t change, I am left with only one conclusion: My perception of God is off. And that’s a bummer, because I’ve got a lot invested in it. But I think God might be telling me that for this season, instead of running around like a crazy woman trying to do things for Him, I should sit still and get to know Him. All over again.

 Reformation means to improve what is wrong, corrupt, or unsatisfactory. My ideas about God are not corrupt, but I think some of them may be wrong, unsatisfactory, incomplete. They’ve been formed by three decades of church teaching, family, college professors, song writers, book writers, speakers, The Navigators, friends, strangers, all in the small context of American evangelical Christianity.

 I am thankful for all of these influences in my life, but during my Reformation, I want to listen much less to people and much more to God Himself. My recent prayer has been for God to strip away all my preconceived notions, to take me back to square one, to meet Him as if for the first time. A missionary friend of mine illustrates getting to the heart of the Gospel by wrapping an orange in paper until it’s the size of a volleyball. Then he peels off the western Christian wrappings, one by one, until he gets to the orange. Just when you think you’ve finally gotten to it, he rips off the peel itself; only after all the layers of wrappings (and trappings) have been removed can you clearly see the Gospel.

I believe there are layers and layers separating me from who God actually is. The thickest layer, the one that’s hardest to peel off, may very well be my picture of who I want God to be. But I don’t want to serve a God I construct in my head. I want to serve the God Who Is.

 Lord, please give me Reformation. 

Grown-Up Eyes

I’m approaching 40, the age at which many people begin losing their ability to see close up. But God is merciful and compensates for this by giving us a new kind of eyesight. It’s called perspective.

When we’re little, we think that whatever is going on around us must be all there is. We assume that everyone’s mother must start drinking before 8 a.m. if that’s what ours did, or that all parents must stomp around for days without speaking because that’s what is normal in our house. Sometimes it’s the opposite; we have it so good that we don’t realize there are kids who regularly go to bed hungry or who don’t have a mom who tucks them in every night. We hold onto our own “normal” for a remarkably long time, until adolescence and at last adulthood push us out into stark reality.

I had a similar experience recently. I returned to the place I used to work for a celebration of two veteran staff who are now in their mid 90s. The event was well done and the staff we honored are two of the most inspiring people I’ve ever known. It was a privilege just to be among the standing-room-only crowd. But as I sat in the back row of the balcony of a room that held such huge memories for me, I got a shift in perspective. This room, in fact, this whole building, which was the site of my first foray into public-speaking, in which I attended numerous meetings that impacted my life, and in which I was even married—well, it’s just a room. Being that it’s in a castle and all, it’s fairly magnificent, but it’s not necessarily any more hallowed ground than my living room.

And the people sitting in the chairs below me? The mostly gray-haired people I have revered as God’s most chosen ambassadors? Lovely, godly people, yes, but no more so than the moms from preschool. Sitting in this room were people who have struggled with divorce, drugs, alcoholism, wayward children, and faith-shattering doubts just like everyone else. They’re not saints. They’re just people. And the mission to which they all are called? The mission that so strongly bound me together with them? It’s a beautiful one, and they do it very well, but it’s not the only way to advance the Gospel and make disciples. I used to think we had the market on discipleship, that no one did it like we did. Now I see that God is much too big to be confined to one particular method or mission.

What used to seem to me as the Best Way I now see as merely one way. How weird is it that it took 16 years and heartbreaking separation to give me this perspective? But that’s maturity’s job, I guess. To knock things off pedestals and put things in right perspective. Growing up is a good thing, even if it means living the rest of our lives with a pair of reading glasses perched on our heads.

Midway

This year marks the midway point between my college graduation and my youngest child’s high school graduation. In other words, halfway between right-out-of-the-nest and empty-nester. I graduated in 1993; Camryn turns 18 in 2025. (I figured this out all by myself. Who says I can’t do math?) 1993 doesn’t sound like it was all that long ago, at least not to me. But when you consider that most of us had never heard of the Internet and Bill Clinton was just beginning his first term, it seems a bit more remote.

I was telling my teenage niece and nephew recently about my one and only hitchhiking adventure. I was in college, driving from northern to southern California, when my car broke down. When they wondered why I didn’t just call someone for help, I had to explain that in 1992, no one but the super rich or the super eccentric had a phone in their car. Yeah, it was a long time ago.

But 2025 sounds even further away. It even sounds science-fictiony to me to write it. And Camryn 18? The child who still sleeps in a crib and regularly reminds us, “I’m a beebee”? Almost impossible to imagine her in a cap and gown.

When I was a little girl growing up in Akron, the nearest town was a half-hour away. It was another one-stoplight town not much different from ours except it was notoriously windy and it had a steakhouse that we occasionally visited. When you’re seven and never ride more than a few blocks at a time in a car, thirty miles is a long, long way. There was a little landmark halfway between the two towns called Midway, nothing more than a dilapidated house and some rusting farm equipment, but to me it represented progress. It took forever to get to Midway, but once we got there, the rest of the trip went twice as fast. We were there before you knew it.

I have a hunch my life might be a little like that. The 16 years since my college graduation were monopolized by one big job and four small children. (And you, too, my Big Handsome Stud!) The demands of the four little children have pretty much consumed every waking moment of the past 10 years. I’ve loved nearly every minute of it (some I’d choose to forget), but it’s not exactly like they’ve flown by.

And now I’m at Midway. Uh-oh.

I can almost hear Pomp and Circumstance now.

Less Rabbit, More Pooh

Which Hundred Acre Woods character are you?

(From sex to Winnie the Pooh? Seriously?)

The kids and I are reading, for the fiftieth time, or something like that, The House on Pooh Corner. It’s my favorite children’s book of all time. It is one of my favorite pieces of literature of all time. The writing is some of the best you’ll ever find. It inspires me in my own writing to be real and quirky and thoughtful and deep without trying very hard to really be deep at all. And the character study there? Nearly enough to earn you a psychology degree.

There’s gloomy, poor-me Eeyore (the name alone is genius); unruly Tigger; wise and revered Owl; nurturing, common-sense Kanga; wide-eyed Roo who hates being too young to miss out on things; timid, insecure Piglet; and Pooh himself, A Bear of No Brain At All who humbly ponders life in the most simplistic and profound of ways. Christopher Robin, creator of this world, walks among them all, reminding me a little of God in the Garden of Eden.

And then there’s Rabbit: “It was going to be one of Rabbit’s busy days. As soon as he woke up he felt important, as if everything depended upon him. It was just the day for Organizing Something, or for Writing a Notice Signed Rabbit, or for Seeing What Everybody Else Thought About It. It was the perfect morning for hurrying round.”

There's more:

“ ‘After all,’ said Rabbit to himself, ‘Christopher Robin depends on Me. He’s fond of Pooh and Piglet and Eeyore, and so am I, but they haven’t any Brain. And he respects Owl, because you can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. And Kanga is too busy looking after Roo, and Roo is too young and Tigger is too bouncy to be any help, so there’s really nobody but Me, when you come to look at it.’ ”

I’m afraid I’m Rabbit. Bother! In fact, sometimes when Milne’s writing about Rabbit, it’s like he plucked The Thoughts Right Out Of My Brain. I wouldn’t come right out and say the things Rabbit says, but deep down, those kinds of thoughts are there. Maybe there’s a little Rabbit in all of us.

So when I read Pooh Corner to my kids, playing up all the voices and reading the very long sentences without taking a breath and emphasizing certain parts to be sure that they catch the subtle yet brilliant humor, I’m also thinking to myself, “God, as much as I love Rabbit, I don’t want to be like him. I wanna be more like Pooh.”

“And while he waited for Piglet not to answer, he jumped up and down to keep warm, and a hum came suddenly into his head, which seemed to him a Good Hum, such as is Hummed Hopefully to Others.”

That’s Pooh—one who hums hopefully to others. That’s who I want to be.

The Final Frontier

Let’s talk about sex, baby!

If that line made you blush, this might not be the post for you. (Or maybe you’re just not a fan of Salt ’n’Pepa?) Tune in next week for a more mundane topic. But this week—and this summer, actually—I’m talking about sex. Married, Christian sex. And ladies, we’ve got issues.

We’re just not talking about them.

Women talk about everything. We share the intricate details of spats with our husbands, our childbirth horror stories, and the consistency of our kid’s poop. But our sex lives? Huh-uh. That’s sacred, taboo territory, especially for good Christian girls who were raised to keep that hush-hush. But what I’m finding, as I’ve gotten brave enough to broach the subject, is that many, many of us—especially us good Christian girls—are suffering in silence. Whether they’re physical, emotional, or psychological, we’ve got problems. And we think we’re alone. Surely no one else has these embarrassing kinds of problems—certainly not the Desperate Housewives or the women we read about in books. And my neighbor across the street—the one with six children? If that isn’t a sign of a perfect sex life, what is?

It’s fiction, that’s what it is. We’re not alone. Time and time again I talk to women whose sex lives are one of the biggest struggles of their married lives. They’ve been married five, ten, twenty years, have beautiful families and healthy marriages, yet this is their secret sadness.

This summer, a friend and I have pulled together a group of these women to begin talking. We have no magic formula, but we know there is hope and strength in bringing your secret pain and disappointments into the light. (No, it’s nothing like that scene in Fried Green Tomatoes if that’s what you’re thinking.) We talk about things that would shock our mothers and sometimes shock us. But we’ve found that when you provide a safe, comfortable environment and share your own struggles, women will talk. They’ll purge the most intimate, hidden details of their lives in a way that’s constructive and honoring to God. We don’t allow gossip, crudeness, or sex-bashing. We remember that what we’re talking about is a gift from God, whether we’re experiencing it that way or not.

Some are further along than others, and with that comes hope. Some bring years of counseling with them, and that brings new insight. And the Bible—which has a lot to say about sex—brings God’s voice into a subject that most Christian women would rather avoid talking about.

It can be intimidating, awkward, and down-right scary initially. One woman joining us for the first time walked up my friend’s long driveway feeling shakier and sicker by the step. She says it was the power of God and sheer obedience that got her to ring the doorbell, and there were times later in the evening when I thought we might have to heave her jaw up off the carpet. But like the rest of us, she walked away feeling more hopeful and less alone. My friend and I dream of Christian women all over the city getting together in groups like this. Please e-mail me if you’d like some ideas about starting your own group.

This is our final frontier, ladies. Let’s get talking.

100

This is my 100th post. Release confetti. Cue guest stars. Roll out the cake. You guys deserve a party.

Thanks for sticking with me the past 100 weeks or so. There are a million other blogs you could be reading—and 999,990 are cooler, funkier, wittier, and flashier than mine. I am so not a blogger’s blogger. I’m not really a blogger at all. I’m just a person who thinks and writes. And I desperately want to believe there’s still a place in this world for quiet reflection and honest, thoughtful writing.

The online world scares the bejeebers out of me. First, it’s made me a 38-year-old dinosaur. I’m just a few wrinkles away from being one of those old ladies who has to call her children just to send a photo attachment. But I’m OK with that. I accept the fact that if I were an eager learner, I could keep up with the rest of the world. And maybe my bumbling hours of inefficiency will one day give me the kick in the pants I need to make online photo albums and upload my own videos onto YouTube. I sorta doubt it though.

My own technological extinction takes a backseat to my biggest fear about the online world. What I most fear are the effects of a world that communicates primarily for the purposes of self-promotion. Or a generation that mindlessly types code into a phone with no regard for well-formulated thoughts or good sentence structure. What will become of a society in which face-to-face communication is awkward, dull, and inconvenient?

I'm not all gloom and doom. Actually, I like the challenge it offers. 

As much as possible, we are choosing a tech-free lifestyle for our children. We have no intention of getting them iPods, cell phones, or Facebook accounts. I know it sounds self-righteous (not to mention impractical), but hear me out. I want their questions to be answered from the library as often as the Internet. I hope their friendships will grow through soul-searching, eyeball-to-eyeball conversations and shared experiences rather than text messages. I hope their teachers will explain Shakespeare to them in person rather than on a classroom blog. I pray they’ll be able to find friends who value the person in the room with them more than a plastic piece of equipment.

Yeah, easy for me to say. My oldest just turned 10. Who knows what technology will throw at us in the next 10 years? Internet access may be required for breathing. But until then, we’ll give it our best shot.

Encouraging Freaks

Ever notice that the word “encourage” has the word “courage” in it? I went my whole life without noticing this, but I’ve heard it about ten times in the past six months. A simple definition of “encourage” is to put courage into another person. Who doesn’t need a little more courage?

Encouragement is one of my spiritual gifts, but not one I practice nearly as often as my gift of prophecy (not the telling-the-future kind of prophecy—helpful as that would be—but the hosing-people-down-with-truth kind). I’m still trying to figure out how these two work in tandem: “Can I just slam you with truth for a minute, and then I promise to encourage you”?

I want to focus more on encouragement. Christians, it seems, don’t have a problem encouraging each other until one of them wants to do something wild for God. Then all of a sudden we start talking about reality, responsibility, being sensible. Here, the prophet in me and the encourager in me have a tense encounter. Yes, people need to be rooted in biblical truth and practicality, but what if encouragement stepped up first?

Hebrews 10:25 says, “Let us encourage one another.” In other words, let’s put courage into one another. Let’s cheer people on. Let’s say, “Go for it! With God’s calling and His Spirit in you, you can do anything. You really can change the world.” Instead, most of us are quick to say, “Um, what about your mortgage payment?” “What about your kids?”

I used to think that people who did radical things for God were freaks. I still do, only now I want to be like them. I want to be a freak, and I want to be an encourager of freaks. In a world that does its best to suck the courage right out of us, I love the idea of putting courage into anyone who’s got a wild idea about serving God.