Church, at last!

Today I went to church. 

I put on decent clothes, drove in a car, and went to church for the first time in 10 months. 

While many churches in my city have been open for months, our church has held off having in-person services until this weekend. It wasn't like they opened up the flood gates and let in the masses. We're a megachurch, so we had to make reservations and wear masks and social distance. We were also encouraged by our church leaders to hold off a bit longer if we're doing fine with online church in order to make space for those who really needed to be there in person. 

As soon as I got the news about reopening, I knew I was a person who really needed to be there, but I couldn't have told you exactly why. As I was sitting there this morning, I figured it out. 

It's not because I missed the church building.

Not because I missed seeing other people.

Not because I missed hearing a live message or singing with a live worship band. (As a side note, I thought I really wouldn't sing at all because of the mask. I planned to sort of whisper-sing the words to myself, as I've mostly done at home the past 10 months in an effort to avoid being obnoxiously loud and annoying to my family members. But this morning, all thoughts of the mask quickly disappeared and I sang with reckless abandon, not caring one iota if my harmonizing was pitchy.)

My reason for needing to go back to church wasn't any of the things I would have guessed. It was because I need to feel like I'm making an offering to God, and that offering needs to cost me something. 

I'm reading Leviticus right now, which reminds me of how costly the Israelites' offerings were. A bull was expensive, so much so that most people couldn't give one. God needed to give the people other cheaper options, from smaller animals to grain offerings, but all of them were costly. Not only was there a monetary expense, but sacrifices were terribly inconvenient. Who "just happens" to have time in their day to stop what they're doing, look for a perfect animal, wrangle it to the tabernacle, and wait their turn for the priest in order to make their offering? They didn't exactly have a webinar to watch or kids to get to soccer, but I'm sure sacrifices never felt easy or convenient. 

While I am not comparing my experience today with the Israelites, I am comparing it to what "church" has looked like the past 10 months.

Today, I had to be mindful of getting up on time and using my minutes well. I fixed my hair and put on makeup. I dressed up (a little). I asked teenagers to get up three hours earlier than they're used to and dealt with the salty attitudes that produced. I herded sleepy, uncommunicative people into the car in a timely fashion, which was no small feat. Because we had inches of new snow today, shoveling and scraping were required, as was navigating all the cars in our driveway while not really being able to see out of the back windshield. (Thankfully, the only casualty was a broken broom that I ran over with my car.) 

These things are a little costly. Not sacrificing-a-bull-without-blemish-or-defect costly, but also not nothing. 

And then there are the things you encounter when you get to church. The icy parking lot. The person who parks too close to you. Listening to the loud woman sing off-key two rows behind you. A crying baby. A drafty room. A few too many flashing lights during worship. The traffic exiting the parking lot. 

It cost something to go to church today. It's not the same as picking the day and time that best fit with my schedule, strolling over to the couch in the clothes I slept in, and turning on the TV. You can slouch and even lie down during home church. You can check your phone occasionally, cozy up with a blanket, eat a snack, or get up to throw the clothes in the dryer. It's really all about you; do whatever's convenient and feels good. At least that's what it felt like to me. 

Going to church, a real, live church, is not necessarily convenient. Sometimes, it's downright difficult. But it's God's will for us. Based on Hebrews 10:25 ("let us not neglect our meeting together"), we could even say it's a command. Obedience to God's will requires sacrifice. And today, for the first time in my life, going to church felt like making a sacrifice to God. My offering to Him was tiny, but it was an offering. And that's what I've been missing. 

I'm not judging anyone who chooses online church. People have good reasons for making that choice. But for me personally, I need to worship in a way that feels like it's much less about me and much more about God. I need to go to church with all the costly things that entails. 

My 2020 Book List

 As it turns out, pandemics are good for readers. I read so many books this year that I'm not even including on this list those that were forgettable and unimportant. But I am including 22 reviews, which makes for a lot of words. I've listed my top six books of the year at the beginning, but there are some good ones further down the list if you're inclined to read that far. 

GREAT BOOKS

I read a lot of good books. Occasionally, I read a great book. This year I read two:

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride. Many book characters don't stay with me longer than it takes me to get the book back to the library. The people in McBride's book will linger in my mind a very long time. Written in 1996, this is a book I can't believe I hadn't read until now. It's become a standard university text, and I love the thought of it provoking college students to think, "I wonder if my parents had a life before me? I wonder where they came from and who they are?" McBride chronicles his journey of discovering his mother's story, and why she, a Jewish woman married to a black man, didn't look like him or his 11 siblings. His account is moving and powerful. It's painful, but also uplifting and a beautiful testimony of how one ordinary woman raised extraordinary children with no money but a whole lot of Jesus. 

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. It took 2020 to wake me up to a world I knew nothing about. This was one of a handful of books I read to help me understand what it's like to be black in America. It contains a part of history I never learned, the Great Migration of black southerners to the north and the west between 1917 and 1970. I learned more from this book than from any other this year. Wilkerson's massive amount of research is couched in such captivating storytelling that I breezed through 622 pages in a couple of weeks. 

GOOD BOOKS

Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion by Rebecca McLaughlin. This was Christianity Today's 2020 Beautiful Orthodoxy Book of the Year, and it is well deserved. If you or someone you know is struggling with questions like the tension about diversity and religion, if science and Christianity are compatible, if the Bible denigrates women, or how Christianity can say it's the only way to God, this book is a good choice. You can just tell that the author is brilliant, but she's also accessible and engaging. Her chapter on the Bible and slavery was an answer to prayer for me. Her goal is not to offer one-size-fits-all answers, but to introduce readers to new ways of thinking about the hard questions of faith. 

Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity by Alisa Childers. False teachers are nothing new. Paul, Peter, and Jude all wrote about them in their epistles, and they find a way into every generation of Christian thinkers and leaders. Today we know them as "progressive Christians." Childers was drawn in by one and on her way to the deconstruction that has become the buzz word of our day. But she didn't stay there. She threw herself into deep study of the legitimacy of the Bible and orthodox Christianity and came out with a fortified, robust belief in all that she'd believed in before. She puts her story and her hefty research into this book, which I will be giving to all the high school girls I have in Bible study. It's readable and relatable, and it will help them critically evaluate the false doctrines they're sure to face. 

New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp. Maybe more than any other year, it was good to start each day of 2020 with a shot of good theology. The theme of this devotional is grace, and I needed it every day. 

The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church's Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby. The author promised in his introduction that this would be a hard book to read, and he was right. But it wasn't hard for me for the reasons he anticipated. I have no problem acknowledging that the church has hidden its head in the sand for centuries regarding racism. I am not surprised that some of the great theologians of the past were also some of the biggest racists. Tisby did his research, his facts are well presented, and I believe them. My struggle was two-fold. First, I'm not sure it's fair to judge events of the past by the standards of today. In a bold move for his time, Billy Graham personally pulled down the segregation ropes at his revivals. Yet Tisby condemns him for not doing more, because by today's standards, that's not nearly enough. My second issue was one of personal reckoning. If I had been born on a plantation in the early 1800s, it would have been so easy for me to believe the Christian rhetoric that justified slavery: "We're saving souls!" If I was never taught how people were kidnapped from Africa and brought to the U.S. and didn't personally see how cruelly and inhumanely they were treated (and had no Netflix documentaries to show me), would I have taken a stand against something that my culture had always known and embraced? How I pray that I would have, but I fear that's not the case. This book sparked my year of repentance for myself, my ancestors, and the church. 

FICTION

Apeirogon by Colum McCann. This was the most unique book I've ever read. It's fiction? Sort of? It's a novel? Not really? It tells one cohesive story in its 457 pages, but in a most unusual way. I chose to read it because I'm overdue in understanding the Israel-Palestine conflict, and this book went a long way in filling my gaps. It also had me googling words like Nakba and intifada. (If 457 pages isn't for you, Vox.com has a good series of articles that explain the decades-long conflict.) The story is centered on the unlikely friendship between two fathers--an Israeli and a Palestinian who both lost young daughters in the conflict--and their mission for peace. But you'll also get snippets on how many gallons of water a swimming pool holds, where Nothing Compares 2 U was originally recorded, and more facts about birds than you ever wanted to know. I kinda loved it? I think?

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurson. Called by one reviewer "the most widely read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American literature," I read this one as part of my aim to get outside my own world and way of thinking. The story moves slowly at first, and it's hard to keep the characters straight. The dialogue is challenging. It's one of those books where you want to go back and read the first several pages again once you've finished. This was not a light, breezy read. It was perplexing and stretching as I had to put on different lenses to read it. But as I think back on it, I like it more and more, and I realize it had much to teach me. 

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. What Hurston's book lacked in readability, Reid more than made up for, even though this book is equally deep. The main character is a young black woman who is questioned in a grocery store for being with her babysitting charge, a 3-year-old blonde girl, in the middle of the night. That event has ramifications for all the characters, black and white, and their relationships with one another. Reid's sharp, insightful writing reveals the true nature of people's internal dialogue (much of which I could relate to, sadly), though a lot of the language is rated R. 

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This is the fictionalized account of a Nigerian woman who moves to the United States to attend college. Adichie, who herself moves back and forth between Nigeria and the U.S., has much to say about race in the U.S. Rather than a good story with compelling characters, this novel felt more like a series of essays on race. But for anyone who wants to understand how Africans living in America view our country and our racial issues, Adichie gives a helpful perspective. The main character didn't even know race was an issue until she moved to the U.S. In the end, she made the decision to forgo fancy salads and reliable air conditioning to return to Nigeria, where her children would treat adults with respect and be evaluated by something other than the color of their skin. (This one's also R rated.)

The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett. This book is near the top of all 2020 Best Books lists, and I can see why. It's a fascinating story about two light-skinned black twin sisters who run away from home and choose different directions for their lives. One marries the blackest man she can find and has a daughter with him before escaping his abuse. The other "passes" for white, marries a wealthy white executive, and has a blonde daughter. The story offers a sad look at what it's like to live under the burden of lifelong secrets and shame. I'd recommend this book except that I did not enjoy a secondary plot about a transgender relationship. It was uncomfortably graphic and, in my opinion, added nothing to the story. 

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout. I remember liking the first Olive Kitteridge book, which I read years ago. This one, not so much, although it opened my eyes to the kind of spiritual questioning, fear, and hopelessness people have. I'm not sure that's what Strout was going for, but as she wrote a book centered around older people, those approaching death and terrified of it, it made me thankful that I don't have to live with that kind of fear.

NON-FICTION

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. I guess pandemics make me crave memoirs, because I read three this year. I didn't enjoy this one like I did James McBride's book, but it was hard to put down. The author grew up in a doomsday/antigovernment/survivalist Mormon family in Idaho and never attended a day of school until she managed to get into college. Her story is disturbing on many levels, but especially in how she was raised to see God. This is a story about false religion as much as anything. 

Why We Can't Sleep by Ada Calhoun. This is a well-written book subtitled "Women's New Midlife Crisis." But not just any women. Gen X women, of which I am one. I identified with nearly everything Calhoun wrote. I remember growing up with the Enjolie perfume commercial, where the woman can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you're a man. I remember being told, "You can have it all." I was a latch-key kid with minimal parental supervision and dreams of changing the world. Calhoun hits all the notes of growing up in the 70s and 80s, only to arrive in the 90s and 2000s realizing that things weren't quite what we expected. With chapters on caregiving (young children and aging parents), money panic, decision fatigue, singleness, childlessness, divorce, job instability, menopause, and the simple doldrums ("Is this really what my life was supposed to look like?"), the book was insightful but depressing. Her conclusions were to find a good support system, ditch unrealistic expectations, and wait until things get better, like after 60. I find the hope of Jesus much more satisfying. I found myself trying to identify with the mopey discontentment apparently shared among women my age, only to come back to how much difference a transformed-by-Christ perspective makes on, well, everything. 

Doing Life with Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out by Jim Burns. I have entered the stage of life where this is the kind of parenting book I read. Sigh. The subtitle of this one says it all. While a lot of the book addressed problems I don't yet have, the best advice I got from Burns was to remember that any unsolicited advice offered to an adult child will be heard as criticism. 

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo. I reviewed this book on my blog in July. It helped me understand the reasoning of Critical Race theorists, of which DiAngelo is one of the loudest voices. I thought the book started out well. She pointed out things I need to know, and she did it in a mostly helpful way. About halfway through, the tone seemed to change, and I felt like I was being chastised, not educated. 

Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts by Jennie Allen. I really like Jennie Allen, and she's written a timely, necessary book. It's an expanded version of "take every thought captive," complete with the author's own story, biblical and scientific research, and practical recommendations. Late in the book it all started to sound the same, so I stopped reading, but I have a feeling this is a book I will return to again and again. 

How We Think by John Dewey. I read this one pre-Covid, which feels like another lifetime, so I barely remember what it said. It centered on why we have closed minds and aren't willing to challenge our own thoughts, including a checklist at the end to help readers think in new ways. 

Moving Mountains: Praying with Passion, Confidence, and Authority by John Eldredge. I'm still processing this one. Eldredge writes about prayer of intervention, listening prayer, warfare prayer, inner healing, and physical healing, among other things. He includes his own sample prayers, which are helpful, but there was something that rubbed me ever-so-slightly the wrong way about how he approaches God. Still, I'm taking it to heart and thinking more about how to pray boldly, powerfully, and confidently. 

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr. I wanted to like this one, but I never quite got it. I resonated with Rohr's argument that we all need closure at the end of every major life transition. I agreed with the idea that we don't really become who we're meant to be until we've suffered. His point, I think, was that falling down is actually moving upward. I got more from the jacket cover than from the actual book: "If you are on course at all, your world should grow much larger in the second half of life. But your circle of real confidants and truly close friends will normally grow smaller, but also more intimate. You are no longer surprised or angered when most people, even institutions, are doing first-half-of-life tasks." 

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I keep running into this title in other books, so I finally decided to check it out. If it hadn't been short, I wouldn't have stuck with it, as it wasn't what I expected. It's Didion's story of losing her husband, writer John Dunne, while their daughter was on life support fighting for her own life. Didion is an acclaimed writer, and her words are elegant. But the book felt like wallowing in someone else's grief for 227 pages, which is not what I needed during a pandemic. One really good point, though: Didion defines grief as a passive condition, something that is thrust upon you. She defines mourning as what you actively choose to do with your grief. 

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. This was on a "must-read" list of 2019 books, and the author was named "the voice of millennial women." I was up for learning more about millennial women and how they think, so I was game to check this out. I didn't find anything likable about the author or her voice. Now, clearly, I was not her target audience. She grew up an evangelical Christian, but exchanged Jesus for psychedelic mushrooms, which she decided gave her the same religious experience. She is a hard-core feminist and writes about how stupid it is to get married and how oppressive it is to take a man's name. I read this book, like many others this year, to see the world through the eyes of another person. By the time I finished this one, I was extremely thankful to have my own eyes back. 

Two Days Before Christmas

A bi-polar teenager living far away from his family. Another teenager with a compromised immune system and a Covid-induced fever of 102. A bedridden nursing-home resident who hasn't seen her family in nine months, fighting off Covid. A friend's husband, young and healthy, who suddenly finds himself unable to sit, stand, or walk. Friends mourning the sudden, shocking death of their husband/father. An elderly neighbor experiencing seizures and disorientation, placed in the hospital's oncology unit because there were no other open beds. Two little girls in a chaotic, dangerous home surrounded by evil. 

Just a sample of the people I'm praying for two days before Christmas. When I come up for air, I remember all those who are sick, all those separated from loved ones, all who have experienced unthinkable loss this year. I think of church scandals and racial injustice, poverty and violence. 

God, it all feels like so much. And I only know the tiniest fraction of human suffering. You know it all. 

And yet you say: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30). 

Has there ever been a more welcome offer: "Come to me and find rest for your souls"? Not just my troubled mind, but my very soul? 

I'm also struck by Jesus's words, "Come to me." The Most Holy God invites us to come closer.

It's ironic, because holiness means set apart, separate, other. God is many, many things, but it would be hard to argue that God is anything more than He is holy. The Old Testament is full of examples of God protecting people from His holiness: hiding Moses in the cleft of a rock, keeping His people from climbing up the mountain to meet Him, allowing only one person, the high priest, to enter the Holy of Holies, and even then only once a year. God's holiness is all-consuming. No one can see Him and live. And yet this Holy One tells us, "Come to me." 

Not only that, but He went a step further. He said, "I'll come to you." This completely holy, completely "other," set-apart God wrapped Himself in human flesh and made His dwelling among us. What had to happen in order for this holy God, so consuming that to see Him was to die, to become human? And to become a baby, at that? Philippians 2:7 tries to explain it to us, saying He "emptied himself" in order to be born like all of us were. I can't even grasp that kind of emptying. 

How was it that the One whose face could not be glimpsed was the One swaddled by a teenage mother?

How was it that the God who is a consuming fire touched the eyes of the blind man without burning a hole through his head? 

How was it soldiers drove nails into the hands and feet of One so holy that people had to be shielded from His glory or be killed? 

How is it that this One whose presence caused Isaiah to wail, "I am ruined," not only calls out for me to come to Him, but took the first step by coming to me? 

He is Emmanuel, God with us.

He knew the depth and breadth of our suffering and sorrows, and He entered into it anyway. 

He surrendered His glory and greatness to live among hurting, hurtful people. 

He wept among those people. 

He gave His life for those people.

His yoke is easy and His burden is light. 

What if I had known?

In his most recent online message, our pastor said something about how it's somehow December, but he feels like he's still waiting for the spring break that never arrived back in March. Yes, I get that. I feel displaced in time, like we've been in a holding pattern for nine months, and how can we possibly be putting up the Christmas lights?

Every year when I haul out the Christmas decorations, I can't help but think back on what things were like the last time I saw them, when I boxed them up on that melancholy day somewhere around January 2 or 3. This year, of course, the whole world has changed. It's hard to think of much of anything that's the same as it was in January. My kids went to school. We went to basketball games and friends' houses and restaurants and church. That was just life as we knew it; it wasn't anything we gave thought to. I don't remember ever thanking God that I could walk into a Chick-fil-A and sit down and eat. I've had a lot of emotions while waiting in my kids' carpool line, but gratitude for a completed, uneventful school day was never one of them. Life is so different now.  

So, I wonder, what would I have told myself last January 2 if I had known what 2020 would hold? What would I have said to that sappy mama who was boxing up the nativity animals, wishing for just a little more time with all the kids home? How would I tell her to prepare for the year that had just arrived with so much hopeful expectation? 

Of course there are dozens of practical things. Make hair appointments for everyone and get the dog groomed. Stock up on meat and toilet paper. Make sure that home gym is ready to go. (Thankfully, my husband had that one covered.) 

I would tell her to let go of the little things that seemed so big at the time--spring break plans, graduation plans, family visit plans, kids' summer internship plans, or basically any plans at all. 

I would say to her, "You know all those times you felt overwhelmed and just wanted to stop the merry-go-round, get off, recenter, and rest a bit? Take heart, because it's comin'." 

I would advise her to put down the frivolous fiction book she was reading and instead ready her mind for the mental battles and faith challenges that were about to land like a hurricane. I would tell her to worship and fellowship at every opportunity, to say yes to every invitation to be with people. I would encourage her to be creative in finding ways to worship on her own. 

I'd tell her never to pray lightly for her kids to grow in resilience. And to watch them, and all the teenagers she knows, when she wonders how to respond when the world is pulled out from underneath you. 

I would try to convince her that days spent in a misty-eyed funk, days in which there is no trace of productivity or accomplishment (except maybe getting the dishwasher loaded for the third time), can still be very good days. Those are the kinds of days where you learn who you are. The days when if you really listen hard, you can hear the still, small voice of God. 

I would tell her that the cancellations and disappointments soon to be punching her in the gut would be met with the equally fierce grace of God. Grace that made what would have seemed inconceivably sad on January 2 or 3 some of our best memories of the year. Like 75 visitors to our driveway to wish a brand new teenager a happy birthday. Or a backyard graduation where every attendee is a speaker and the graduate performs her own Pomp and Circumstance. 

I'd say to her, "No matter how bizarre the day was, watch the sun set over Pikes Peak and remember that God is still on the throne."

Secretly, I would laugh to myself that she thought she was doing pretty well with patience and endurance, humility and surrender. Bless her heart. Let her live in ignorant bliss for a few more months until she learns the truth the hard way. 

Maybe the most amusing thing would be to talk with her about her word for the year: Release.  

This all makes me wonder what December 2021 Me would say to the current me. I guess she's already started speaking. By faith, I just placed an online order for hairspray and mascara. I'm looking at my church clothes with high hopes. I think what she may be saying is this: "Let yourself look forward to the year ahead. Just don't for a second forget what you learned from 2020."

And now it's November

As we begin this month, our ninth month living with the coronavirus and the climactic month of this contentious political season, here are three things I'm pondering:

1. What motivates us to fight so hard for our rights? It could be argued that Americans value their individual rights above anything else. Why is this? Why are rights so meaningful to us that we're quick to do battle with coworkers, neighbors, and strangers over them? Why are they so important to us that we're willing to break relationship with friends and family members just to preserve them? The Constitution guarantees us certain rights, but do we stop to think about what those rights are for? Just so I can be free to do whatever I think is right or will make me happy? Or is there more to it? How should we be using our rights? How do we balance our rights with our responsibilities to others? 

2. We all wish things would just get better already. But I wonder, why do we think that's going to happen? And what if "better" isn't what's best? I'm as fed up with 2020 as the next person. I look back longingly at how things were in the past. But in this bubbling stew of emotions I feel, one of them is excitement. I am excited to see God work. I don't relish the hardship of it, but I long for God to purify His church, His people, and do a mighty work in us. If this is what that looks like, then I'm all in. 

Like most everyone else I know, I am praying for God to heal our land. But I'm open to the possibility that that could look different from what I'm hoping for. Maybe things won't get better. Maybe they'll get worse. What if worse is what we need? The church changes, focuses, and grows under pressure. We have plenty of examples (hello, China) of how God's kingdom advances in times of persecution. We can probably all look back in our lives and see how suffering brought greater devotion. As much as I love the words "easy" and "comfortable," I love "sanctification" and "righteousness" even more. With a big, deep gulp I pray, God, make us holy, by whatever means necessary. 

3. My favorite passage of Scripture recently has been Psalm 103:13-14.

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed; he remembers that we are dust."

Psalm 103 is worth reading every day. All of it is uplifting. But, oh, am I thankful that God included verses 13 and 14. I need Him to remind me that He knows how I'm formed. He knows I'm dust. No one has lofty expectations for dust. The messaging of my day tells me that I am strong, powerful, capable, ready to take on the world, and sometimes, on my best days, I might feel that way. But usually, I feel like dust, very aware of my weaknesses and shortcomings. God knows that. He reminds me that even though I am dust, I'm "a piece of earth breathing holy breath" as Twila Paris said it, and He has compassion on me. 

He sees us, He knows how we are formed, and He has compassion on us. That's reason for rejoicing, even this November. 

Inspiring Marriage in a "Not-So-Interested" Culture

Marriage is getting rarer. I read this in a well-researched article published by sociologist Mark Regnerus in Christianity Today. The author interviewed 200 churchgoing young adult Christians in seven countries and concluded that the institution of marriage, even within the Church, is "under severe strain." 

This was not an article about divorce. It's about people who don't even get married in the first place. The concept of marriage as a positive life choice is getting rarer. 

It makes sense, doesn't it? We are a people with unending options, terrified of making a wrong choice. We don't want to tether ourselves to anything, especially not for life, without the ability to change our minds. We want to try before we buy, and our world doesn't bat an eye at cohabitation anymore. (What a change from my Three's Company childhood!) We are a people raised on Disney princesses and Meg Ryan movies, indoctrinated with the belief that there is a soul mate out there for every one of us and that romance is the pinnacle experience of life. We are a people afraid to fail, surrounded on all sides by examples of failed marriages. (I recently watched Marriage Story, a 2019 Best Picture nominee. The movie's title says so much about how our culture views marriage. It was actually Divorce Story, portraying the nasty, soul-crushing process of ending a marriage and battling over custody of a child. Parts of it should be required viewing for any married parents considering the dissolution of their family.) 

Perhaps the most interesting finding in Regnerus's study was that marriage has gone from being perceived as a foundational event to being seen as a capstone event. My parents and grandparents and the generations preceding them got married shortly after graduating from high school. It was the logical next step for young adults who were leaving their parents' homes and transitioning to independent lives of their own. Being newly married usually meant being poor, scraping by, and making sacrifices to build a new life together. 

A capstone event, on the other hand, means you've already arrived. On your own. You've gotten an education, a good job, a house; you've seen the world and sewn your wild oats. The capstone of your self-achievement is to find your soul mate, the person who will finally complete you. 

It's no wonder  that author Russell Moore has called marriage today "a vehicle of self-actualization rather than a setting for self-sacrifice." 

My husband and I celebrated our 25th anniversary last month. As exotic travel is not really a thing in 2020, we traveled as far as a restaurant on the west side of town, taking with us our two kids still at home. (It's a beautiful season of life when you actually want your kids with you on your anniversary, versus being willing to invest any amount of money and logistical inconvenience trying to get away from them . . . but that's a story for another day.) When I prodded our girls into asking marriage advice from a couple of veterans like us, Kevin and I both found ourselves saying similar things. 

We married by blind, dumb luck. That is not to discount the grace of God, but on the surface, it looks like a lot of luck. We were in the same place at the same time. We were approximately the same age. We had similar values and similar goals. We had strong faith in God. We were ready for the next stage of life. We were attracted to each other. So we said, "Let's do this," and got engaged 10 months to the day after our first date. We had no idea what we were getting into, but we knew it was for life, and we trusted God to help us make it work. And He has.

Are we living a fairy tale? Um, no. Have we mastered self-sacrifice? Are you kidding, it's only been 25 years. We've got miles to go. Did we make the right decision? Yes! Are we better together than we'd be apart? Absolutely. At 24 and 26, we made a half-baked decision and committed our lives to each other in the eyes of God, and we meant it. Til death do us part. Twenty-five years later, I wouldn't trade our life together for anything in the world. 

And that's one thing the researcher noticed. When marriage is viewed in spiritual terms, as a covenant between two people and God, it is more desirable and more successful. This is good news, and it presents Christians with an opportunity. We in the Church are much more likely to characterize marriage in sacred terms. We see marriage first and foremost as a commitment to God, then to our spouse. We see marriage as an instrument of God's sanctification, believing that He is not just asking us to do hard, sacrificial work, but that He's making us more holy in the process. Marriage is also a huge way that He blesses us, as anyone who has ever laid in a dark room laughing hysterically next to their spouse can attest. Being married is actually fun.

Where bad marriages serve as "a sort of vaccine against marriage," according to one participant in the study, good marriages inspire. Younger people don't need the message of Marriage Story, that marriage is ultimately unsatisfying and murders your personal dreams, or the message of Disney movies, that marriage leads to "happily-ever-after" eternal bliss. The next generation needs examples of people who are unwavering in their commitment to God and one another, who have found joy and peace in both the hard work and many rewards of marriage. They need to see what faithful love looks like over the long haul, to desire that even more than a temporary enraptured state of romance. 

Let's be sure to show them. 

Another Christian Scandal and Where It Leads My Thoughts

One of the songs providing fuel for my run a few days ago was DC Talk's "What If I Stumble?" It starts with this quote from Brennan Manning:

"The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and then walk out the door and deny them by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." 

In light of what's been happening at my son's college, Liberty University, the words hit me hard. I can't control the craziness in the world. I can't control what other people do and say. But I can listen and lean in when God says, "Let's work on you." 

Here are two things He has invited me this week to meditate on with Him. 

First, my own testimony. Do my behaviors match my doctrine? Do I practice what I preach? I am doing a thorough examination to be sure I'm not denying Christ by my lifestyle. I don't have any pool boys hiding in my closet, but what about the way I talk about other people? How do I respond when things don't go my way? Do I live like I trust Jesus?

I've also been thinking about why my testimony matters at all. Are there really people watching me to decide if they'll follow Christ or not? Hard to imagine who that might be. But when I think of the kind of testimony I want to have and why it's important, four sets of watching blue eyes immediately come to mind. My kids have received a lifetime of teaching and preaching from me, and there's nothing more horrifying than to think that I would give them reason to doubt the truthfulness of my message. 

If I were to fall into some hidden, unconfessed sin, I would be embarrassed and ashamed for my friends to find out. I would feel sick at the thought of dishonoring my husband and disappointing my mom. But my children? I would be torn to shreds, done in, for my children to see me as a phony and my testimony as a joke. Lord, give me grace, strength, and conviction every day to not betray my witness to my children. 

The second thing I'm thinking about this week is related to judgment. I can grab hold of Brennan Manning's words, hop up on my high horse, and scream down to the Christians caught in scandalous sin, "What on earth were you people thinking? Do you have no fear of the Lord?!" Righteous anger is legitimate, but for me, it's just a stone's throw away from violating Jesus's command, "Do not judge lest you be judged." 

I am not tempted by drugs or alcohol or elicit sex. I am tempted hourly by self-righteousness, which is just as much a slavemaster as the sins that get more coverage. 

I have recently returned to an article that I read this spring on the prophet Daniel's prayer for repentance in Daniel 9. Without any known moral lapses of his own, Daniel prayed, "We have been wicked." "We have sinned and done wrong." "We are covered with shame." "We have turned away." 

The author of the article, Jeff Peabody, says this:

"I find myself desperately wanting non-Christians to know what I am not. And that seems to be the trend. We decry the despicable brokenness of other believers and encourage the world to turn away from them and look at us instead for a more palatable, truer depiction of faith. But adopting a wholesale separatist approach feeds the lie that we are intrinsically different sheep from the rest of the flock. It deludes us into believing that our proper theology, superior morality, or enhanced sense of justice make us the keepers of God's full perspective. We lean further and further into our own self-righteousness. 

This is where Daniel's prayer is so jarring. Instead of recoiling from the wickedness he sees around him, he places himself squarely in the middle of other people's sin in addition to his own. There is no daylight between his personal failings and those of the larger community."  

This is sobering. It pulls me off my high horse into a place of repentance--for my "me sins" and my "we sins." I am not intrinsically different than the other sheep in the flock.