my rescuer..

I have been living in suspension the last week. Full of feelings and full of peace and wondering how I reconcile the two. Or do I even? I had a trip to my hometown that fulfilled all my needs. It was beautiful in most every way. Visits and love and fun and rest and joy and water and ice cream and nieces and nephews and sisters and friends and worship and praise and I am brought to tears even now to think about it. But they are tears of peace. Can peace be overwhelming? Can peace bring you to your knees? I am not in turmoil, I am not wrung out from sorrow, I am feeling His presence in a way I have not felt in a long time. 

I have been a shadow of myself these last few years. Colleen is not an angry, sorrowful, nervous, anxious person. Colleen is quick to laugh, to make a joke. She is up for little adventures. She knows God is on her side and she surrenders to Him. But, over the last few years a stranger had taken up residence in my heart. It had pushed me down and controlled all my responses. It buried me 6 feet under. Under where it is cold and silent. Deep under where light cannot reach and decay begins. It was threatening destruction but it wouldn’t win. I felt someone calling for me. I had not been forgotten, I had not been left alone. I begged God to rescue me. I needed rescuing. The real Colleen needed rescuing from fear, from self oppression. My Jesus, he was already on the other side breaking the ground. It wasn’t overnight, but it began. In little ways He began to dig me out, as he always does, by reaching down to me. I continued to call to Him; my Saviour, “Here I am!” not for Him to find me but for me to keep my mind, my heart, my eyes on him. I could feel the weight of the earth above me releasing, my body felt lighter and lighter, I could breathe. I could feel the warm air, and finally, the light, the sun, the Son. He reached down one more time to wipe the earth from my eyes, my ears, my mouth and nose. His hands cupping my chin and lifting me from my grave of fear. He breathed life into me again and awoke my heart. 

He is life and breath in me and in Him I live and move and have my being. 

These past few years I have been trapped in my own space, my own feelings, trying to make sense of it all, trying to figure it out on my own. Impossible. I wasn’t calling on Him to help me. Fruitless. I carried my hurt with me everywhere I went, and my family felt it most. I was burdened to call on His grace but felt ashamed and unworthy of it. Turmoil. I was living the very opposites of the fruits of the Spirit, because I wasn’t allowing the spirit to move within me. But now, as I think about all those feelings, they melt away, they are important but they are not burdensome. I am staring into the Glory of the risen Christ who has rescued me! He has done it before and he did it again and will probably be asked to do it again.

I used to always feel guilty about this. That I kept stumbling and kept having to ask Him to help me back up. But now, I am just grateful. Grateful that His love never fails, that it is unstoppable, He is the one that never stumbles. That is why He can always catch me. I know I will never always be sure footed. I am a sinner. And now, I have peace in that. It sounds strange I know, but if I deny that, if I expect that I should be more than that, then I leave no room for Him, for His grace, for the gift of salvation. As Paul warns, we do not sin more to increase grace. That is not how it works. But we recognize our abilities and how much we lack without Him. 

So now, it is on to peace. And the greater the emptiness lived, the deeper the grave, the greater peace abounds. And in the best possible way, I am overwhelmed. His love is higher and greater and deeper that any heights or depths. Did He die so we could live in the grave? Was He bled for His own gain. By no means! Take it from a sinner. Call out to Him. He will answer you. He will rescue you. 

in need of..

I have been drowning lately. It’s the only way I can think to describe it. All my thoughts are muffled by deep water. I can’t even hear them let alone form them into coherence. I think about writing a post out and there is nothing. I am so burdened with so many things and none of them are clear. The only thing that has been clear for me lately is water. The notion of, presence, allegory, simile, cleansing, living of water in my life, how it has actually been a huge part of my life without realizing it. How I have lived beside it, conquered it, been defeated by it, swam with it, fought against it, in all its forms and delivery systems. 

I am a girl of the water. I have been drawn to the water my whole life and I never knew it until a week ago when I came across something someone else had written about her connection to water and I thought, “that’s me!” and I shed a few tears.

My dad made sure we knew how to swim, buying an above ground pool to help us learn. I lived in that pool in the summer and he called me a little fish. We took more than one family trip to the Oregon coast and I could sit and listen to the waves crashing for hours. I could never get enough. It’s constant and relentless.

Some people love the shelter of the mountains, others the sweeping vastness of the prairies. Me, I love the water. The oceans primarily but, I’ll take rivers and lakes too. It represents everything there is about life. You can have fun with it and you can be swallowed up by it. This girl has lived on the waters edge most of her life. Cautiously dipping her toe in to check the temperature, refusing to dive from anything higher than the edge of a pool.

Growing up in Vancouver you are surrounded by it. The multiple arms of the Fraser River make you feel like you’re on an island. The water permeates the air, the mood of the city and I didn’t realize how much it is a part of me until just recently. I am aching, longing to be near the water again. The ache and longing is so deep that I can’t even think of anything to liken it to other than how your soul searches for the Lord in the midst of troubles.

And that is where the water is so much of me, so much more than just water, so much more than just waves crashing.

It is life and breath in me, it is the living water and I have never really known the thirst for it until I moved here. Back home it was all around me and I took it for granted. Here I have to search for it, I have to get on my knees and dig for it. And the harder I search the more obstacles get in my way. I want to swim in His ocean of grace but for some reason it is just miles and miles of dry land all around me.

“It’s your love that we adore, it’s like a sea without a shore” -David Crowder

“Here is love, vast as the ocean” - William Rees

But somehow, I am stuck on dry land.

I am in a wilderness, dry and barren, and there is a battle within me, for me and I am overwhelmed by it. I need the Lord to show up. I need the living water to refresh my soul because I am not prepared for what I feel is ahead of me. My daily prayer has been for a refreshing, a renewal, a rediscovery by the living water.

Holy Spirit, by your power, lead me to the living water, its endless rushing, its eternal quenching, its perfect cleansing, because I have become stagnant, thirsty and dirty. Fill my cup Lord. Holy Spirit lift me with waves of grace, pour your joy and peace upon me. Anoint my head with your love and power. Bring me to your water, oh Lord.

my two cents..

Now, I don't usually enter into this topic because I know where most of my friends fall on both sides of it and I have come to feel that social media is not the place to openly and honestly and kindly and lovingly and genuinely have discussions.. about anything.

What I know and will say is this:

These were 50 people (maybe more) that did nothing to this person that killed them. It wasn't revenge for a wrong done. These individuals did not each of them commit a crime against this person for which he needed payback, as if even that would make it ok.

They were not on a battle field where almost anything goes. They were not at Paschendale or Vimy Ridge or Normandy or Bunker Hill. 

The reality is that no one deserves to be arbitrarily killed because of how they identify themselves. NO ONE. We can make arguments (if you fall in evangelical circles) about sin and degrees of sin but the truth is that we lost the legal right to act out justice on who lives or dies when Christ came and fulfilled the law. And all praises for that because no way would I be able to stone one of my kids for being lippy. 

Christ came as the fulfillment and grace of God’s love for all people, and he gently, graciously, radically drew the line in the sand and made the Pharisees drop their stones. And if you are going to fight to preserve the lives of unborn babies because "every life is precious" - any one of whom might grow up to be LGBTQ then their lives are equally worth fighting for no matter how old they are. 

We don't get to tell people wether or not God loves them. We don't get to speak for God. We get to show Christ's love. And how did Christ love? By laying His life down for ours, one lash, one thorn, one nail, one spear at a time.

I am so stuck, or out of breath, or lost in thoughts that are more like noise, or claustrophobic, or in a vacuous empty space where no noise exists. I’m stuck in the monotony of my day to day. It’s all the same, one day to the next, there is no difference. I’m at home 95% of my week because it is too frustrating to have the car and have to lug 3 boys around with me everywhere I go and it defeats the purpose of getting time out of the house because it just feels like I’m bringing the frustrations of the house with me. I thrive off of visiting with grown-ups - like any stay at home mom of littles would. I actually had an opportunity to visit with adults last week and came home feeling charged (odd for this introvert). But those moments are so few and far between. Like, eons between. The exhaustion of my days that run together into one suck up all my energy, my thought energy, my emotional energy, my lust for my husband energy, my desire for anything else energy. I’m so spent that I can’t even imagine anything different. My journal entries are almost all sorrow or frustration or questioning or anger. The occasional positive entry is because I fight to force myself to write something good. I go a day of trying to find gratitude and then feel defeated by the battles with the boys. I’d sit and cry in the closet everyday except I just feel too numb. I feel like bread with no salt or sugar. Bland, dry, wasted.

I never knew this about myself, I never knew that I was the kind of person that could be beaten down by circumstance, or I just never paid attention to it before. I didn’t know I was the kind of person that needed more than this, this state I’m living in. I spent half my life believing I just wanted to be a wife and a mom, as if that was what would fulfill me, give me purpose, give me all the charge I would need. These days it just charges me to anger, to a quick response, to frustration, to resentment and regret.

 I used to be the joyful person, I used to be the encourager. I sparked Brad’s interest in me with a joke about dimpled chads. I wrote a letter of encouragement to a select handful of leaders of our church and it went “viral” in a sense, going beyond who I wrote it to, reaching other members and encouraging them as well. 

These days, joy is not natural for me, the encouragement is sparse. I do not feel like myself. There is a stranger walking around inside me, and I don’t know how to evict her. I have days of spending time reading my bible and praying and nothing changes. Every morning I wake up and think Shakespeare, “once more into the breach dear friends” I’m tired before my feet hit the floor. 

This is what it is to feel empty.

When you might as well be wandering the desert and out of nowhere comes a whetting of your lips and it feels good for the moment and then it’s gone. It is so much of a tease you’d almost rather it never happened. It’s not enough to get you to the next dune, just enough to drive you mad. 

Why is there more dry than wet? Why is there more sorrow than joy, more dark than light? How am I getting through the days. How did I become an unintentional hermit? How do I go about finding new people? None of my people are here. So, what do I do about that?

I saw on social media a picture of a handful of women I don’t even know, and the person who posted it talked about the meeting and how great it was to talk about the matters of the heart and I could have wept and burned my phone all at once. SO jealous was I, that I walked around with a knot in my gut all day. I had no idea how desperately I longed for that kind of face to face connection with women of faith within the realm of my own creative disposition. To be encouraged creatively, to be heard and loved, not judged, not hidden. Do be given an opportunity, space to move and live and have my being. I don’t feel like I have that freedom. I sit at the computer to write and the boys crawl all over me and cry that I won’t let them play games on it. So long, creativity. 

Don’t cry for me. This isn’t a plea for sympathy. This is just me writing out my feelings to try to understand them. I am aching for community, MY OWN community. Something that is just me. Not because of Brad or the boys but something that has come out of who I am. I am not finding it here. And I have tried. I feel like I am being stopped, held back, hidden. 

It’s not about you right now Colleen - Your husband and children are more important than you. 

That is the feeling I am blanketed with most days. 

Your husband is filling his calling, you know.. to GOD, so don't f@#$ that up. And your kids are growing up in a nice quiet town, they have a good school and your house has a big yard and your street has lots of neighbour friends to play with so, don’t get your whiny self in there and mess it up. Just keep laying yourself down for others and everything will be fine. Besides, how important are your needs anyways? Be a good Christian girl and sacrifice. 

I don’t know where to go from here. I feel like I should be the faithful Christian and sum this up, tie it neatly with a bow about hope and strength and the Lord sustains me, and I suppose somehow he has because somehow I’m not lost, but I do not feel quite found yet either.

beautiful for its own time..

I knew it was coming, I saw it on the calendar, and with full honestly I’m always aware of these two days. It is the first reason I don’t like the month of May. 

Nine years ago, May 7th our first child came and went too early, too quickly, too violently, too quietly. With no celebration, with no fanfare with no prayer of dedication our child was born,  because he arrived too soon, because in his arrival he died. And five days later that year was mother’s day. The only thing that got me through that day was watching Brad baptize a handful of youth. I was able to rejoice with them and their decision to follow Jesus. And yet, it was a stark reminder of all the events, the milestones I would never bear witness to in my son’s life. 

And so, my first mother’s day found me with empty arms and a broken heart. Feeling too much like a new mom, with swollen breasts and post partum cramping, and not like a mom at all. It renders mother’s day down to an impotent masquerade. I joined the ranks of millions of women all over the world, mother’s with empty arms, bearing their silent pain, their grief, guilt, loneliness like a one tonne elephant on their backs. Visible only to her. Not even the closest to her can see that it is there.

This is the first time in the nine years since that the two days have collided. I knew it was coming and so did my body. All week I was surprised with shadow kicks and phantom cramps. My hands would tremble on and off and I was exhausted. The body never forgets. When my eyes opened this morning I wanted to hide under the bed. The thought of going to church and screwing a smile on my face and being wished a happy mother’s day and then having to wish it back was exhausting.

But, up I got and showered and dressed and fed myself - all on auto pilot, just as I had the done the day after nine years ago. All while thinking about that day, all while asking God to help me through. I carried that elephant out of the house, into the car and into church. I thought I was making it through, holding it quiet. I thought no one could see.

Someone saw. And she asked the right question.

“how are you doing?”

That's it.

She already knew my story, and she has a story of her own. So she saw my elephant, I couldn’t hide it any longer, and she came over and hugged me so tight, that for a moment there was no room for the elephant. The burden I was bearing was made to lay bare and I wept into her bosom and she held my face with her eyes and spoke grace. And I could breathe. And the rest of the day wasn’t so horrible.

She doesn’t share my story, but she shouldered my burden. She reminded me that we make our own loneliness as much as we make our community. You may be in a community where no one else shares your story, and you just can’t bare to tell them. But then, how can they share God’s grace with you if you never give them the opportunity? You may not be ready to bear witness to your story, to turn that pain to grace, to sing joy in the sorrow, to say it is well with my soul. But don’t let that stop you from asking others how they can. 

Later in the day the Spirit flashed a verse in my mind. And while it doesn’t fix what happened nine years ago, it is a reminder of the hope we have a Christ. That..

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people can not see the scope of God’s work from beginning to end.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

easy..

What is easy? What do we know of hard?

We each have our own stories of hard and easy and never should we measure one to the other. I have times where I pray for easy. Lord, just three months of easy, because I have had two years of hard. But, my hard is easy to someone else.

Why do we want easy?

Where does it lead us?

Easy is the road most travelled.

Easy does not lead to strength.

Easy does not lead to persevering love.

But, sometimes easy means quiet, peace. Breathing.

Sometimes, I just need to breathe.

Breathe on me, oh breath of God.

Create in me a clean heart.

And that is not easy.

A clean heart takes work.

Takes pain.

Because sometimes our heart is already hard and we need a shattering to be soft.

Where is your easy?

Where is your hard?

Has God brought you from hard to easy or easy to hard?

*********************

This post is part of a word prompt group I have joined. Five Minute Fridays. One word to write about, five minutes to write it. 

always wanted..

“I just want to be a wife and a mom”

I used to say this in my teens and early twenties. It was all I saw, it was all I thought I could do. I thought since I hadn’t found my career by graduation I was out of luck and all the standard options presented to me were either out of my reach or didn’t interest me. No one showed me other options, no one told me my value was bigger, wider, deeper than the stereotyped catalogue before me. I said yes to being a wife and mom because I thought it was all I could do. As if to say that that life would require so little of me. I didn’t know there was more. I didn’t know it could be enough, that I would be enough. I didn’t know I would be so empty and so full.

I grew up not knowing the world was so much bigger in it’s smallness. I believed my role to play was small. No one told me there were so many more choices. Or that the choices I make would change the way I see the world, or impact the way the world is seen. I believed my world was only for a husband and babies and that world only impacted me. And, when neither of those things came in the timing I expected people continued to encourage me to hold fast to that goal rather than to seek new roads to travel. This just made the hole bigger, and emptier.

I floated through the emptiness in my twenties - a job here, a job there - not knowing what to do, nothing striking a flame, not challenging my feelings or life-spectations. 

And just as I was making peace with the never-gonna-happen

A family burst into my life. A husband and two years later a child, and then another, and then another, and then another.

Making a life with another person is not a career option you are presented with in high school, yet, it is a spoken and unspoken expectation of our lives.

   “When you get married and have kids”

But lets focus on preparing you for anything but that-

How do you school yourself for fights with your spouse? How do you gain the tools for miscarriage and the inadequacy, guilt and shame that follow? Where do you find classes on raising your children - before you have them - to give them the best chance at their lives, to not feel like I’m fucking it up at every turn, requiring therapy in twenty years. Every spill, every shout, every fight between them, every defiance. I don’t remember receiving any training for that. I remember struggling to dissect a rat and wondering why Mesopotamia was so damned important.

Eleven years later and I’m up to my armpits in what I “always wanted” Because I thought I wasn’t good enough to do anything else, because maybe this felt like the easy way. Because maybe just being a wife and mom is just not a big deal.

I didn’t know when I said I wanted to be a wife I was saying I wanted unexplained friction from things unsaid by fear. That what I “always wanted” was to live with someone who changes, someone I’m still getting to know and that it’s hard to live with changes. How do you navigate a relationship that requires a visceral intimacy based on a comparatively short “getting to know you”

“Oh, you sleep that way?”

“Wait, you hate getting up in the morning?”

“How hard is it to clean the espresso dispenser cup after you’ve used it?”

“How hard is it to not squeeze the toothpaste from the middle?”

“I don’t agree with what you’re doing here”

“why won’t you tell me how you’re feeling?”

“how you doin’? - wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean?”

“HAH! - Oh wait, you’re serious. Ok, give me a minute (or a hundred) to try to forget about all the crap I dealt with today”

When I said I wanted to have kids I didn’t know what I was saying was I never wanted to sleep again, for sex to never feel the same again, to go years without a hot meal, to have my body used as a dairy farm and a jungle gym at the same time. To one moment be yelled at for trying to help and the next turn around be yelled at for not helping. Apparently what I “always wanted” was to be responsible for remembering where every single thing they’ve ever had in their entire lives is, even if they haven’t touched it in months. Saying I just want to be a mom meant I wanted a constant onslaught of noise and need, and a loss of personal space and privacy. I didn’t know that I was saying I wanted surprise shower buddies, or to be serenaded (see also: shouted) with the Star Wars theme at 5:30 am Wanting to be a mom means I wanted daily battles over the same thing. Why oh why won’t they listen to me?!

I wish someone had told me that to say I just wanted to be a wife and mom reduces them to an achievement and minimizes my value and importance. 

I don’t just want to me a wife and mom. I want to be a partner, a teacher a leader and a learner. I want to be humble and brave, I want to rejoice the small victories and celebrate the spills. Because no one told me that being a wife and mom means you weep for your spouse when they feel like they’ve failed and you can’t do anything for them but put yourself aside to build them back up. When your four year old yells they hate you and you want to yell it back at them but instead, out of your mouth comes “I still love you”

Or that when your child is in tears over having to use the potty you take a deep breath and say “Ok, we don’t have to do this now” even though you know their bladder is bursting.

When one child comes home broken because no one will play with them and you pray with them and give every ounce of you to help them see why they are loved.

And you look at them in their messes and your heart is bursting because you realize that when you said you just wanted to be a wife and mom you thought it was just to fill your needs, but then you learn that you must be broken first before you can be healed. And then then you see what you “always wanted” was really for them. And then you see it was for you too but not how you expected.

I said yes to this because I thought I wasn’t good enough, that this was the best of options. And I learned it’s the most, it is the highest of options and I still don’t feel good enough - and I am thankful for grace.