Advent Reflection : Love Made Flesh.

I went looking for myself yesterday. I do this sometimes when I’m feeling lost and numb; I go looking for the more hopeful, articulate, comforting version of me in the one place I know I’ll find her: my words. Lately I’ve been feeling sad and cynical and Bah-Humbug-ish, like I’m going through the motions of this season instead of really feeling its joy. Thus began my search for the me somewhere in time that had a better grasp on this whole Advent thing. I found this post that I wrote last year and it centered my heart right where it needed to be. I hope it does the same for you.

This is an edit and repost of a piece I wrote for Allison Vesterfelt last December.

A few nights ago, my husband and I went to a Christmas party. We sang carols and ate cookies and caught up with old friends, and to my surprise, a newborn baby found his way into my arms. Friends of ours just gave birth to their firstborn son a few weeks ago, and they brought him to the party with them.

Christmastime is a season of grief for me as I remember the last days of my mother’s life. It is difficult to reconcile the merry and bright with that sense of brokenness and longing, difficult to keep my heart open to the hope and joy of Advent when it is being swallowed by commercialism. But as I held that fragile, perfect, eight-pound peanut of a baby boy, the cynicism and cliche of this whole season didn’t seem so cheap. I looked at his sleeping face, felt his tiny heart beating against his tiny ribcage as I wrapped my arms around him and I was reminded of how Christ came to us:  not as a fully grown man, but as a baby. He could have chosen to come to us in any form He wanted. He could have chosen not to come at all.

But instead, He chose to take on the full experience of humanity from birth to death.

He understood things like grief and government oppression and the mundane brokenness of everyday life. He has always understood it, but He chose to demonstrate it in the most profound way possible, by taking on the journey of humanity.

When tragedy happens, we want an end to the pain and oppression and injustice. We want to make laws and condemn people, we want to overthrow governments, we want to eradicate all illness, everywhere, forever. We want change, and we want it by force.

But God has shown us in the life of Christ that redemption begins with humility, relationship, empathy. 

I find that so radical, so comforting, and it is this that fills me with joy in a season so riddled with cliches and catchphrases and commercialism. This is where I find healing for the hurt when I miss my mother or when someone says something terrible or when I hear that someone I love has lost someone they love :

That God saw fit to walk in our shoes, to put flesh on His love for us, to come directly into the darkness with us.

My hope is that we can offer that kind of hope to others this holiday season. Not the kind that offers any sort of platitude for their pain or any sort of policy to place over the brokenness.

Just empathy. Light in the darkness. Love in the flesh. Comfort and joy.

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Book Review of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I was wandering through a small bookshop in Fargo, North Dakota when I found a copy of Wild and bought it on impulse. I should have been focused on Christmas shopping for friends and family rather than myself, but we had a long drive back to Chicago the next day with my inlaws and I knew I needed something to read on the ride home. Friends had recommended Strayed’s memoir to me on several different occasions, and I’d also had friends say they were disappointed by it, so I decided to satisfy my curiosity.

For those of you that haven’t heard of it, Wild is the story of Cheryl Strayed’s solo hike across the Pacific Crest Trail. In the wake of her mother’s death from lung cancer, Strayed’s relationships to her siblings and stepdad disintegrated and she destroyed her marriage with a series of infidelities. So in the summer of 1995, at the age of 26 and newly divorced, Strayed packed up her life and hiked 1,100 miles – completely alone – from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State in order to “save herself.”

Few books have made me cry harder than this one. Strayed’s writing is sharp and raw and honest in a way that made me feel as though I was hiking 1,100 miles right through her emotions. Considering that I lost my own mother to cancer two short years ago at nearly the same age and stage of my life, it wasn’t hard for me to empathize. Our lives and beliefs are very different from one another, but our bonds to our mothers and their subsequent deaths are agonizingly similar.

“She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could fill. I’d have to fill it myself again and again and again.”

While I know myself better than to think I could hike a thousand miles through desert and wilderness all alone, even so, grief feels exactly that way: you are walking through a solitary, unyielding landscape while the rest of the world hums on around you in the distance.

I have often longed for a literal wilderness to run to in my own journey through grief. Living “life as usual” after this kind of loss is in some ways harder than doing what Strayed did. The normalcy of everyday life doesn’t reflect the wildness and turmoil taking place in your inner life. Thus, the urge to self-destruct is more powerful than one imagines before such profound loss. This urge is not so much a desire to destroy every good thing you have left so much as it is a force at work inside you, a chasm within yourself, a black hole where the bright star of your loved one once existed, around which you once orbited, steady and safe. You think yourself a reasonable, grounded, healthy person with a support system of loved ones who will never let you waiver over the edges of your life … until that person who loved you and knew you better than anyone else is gone. Then the vast emptiness left in their place threatens to swallow your life whole, no matter how hard you try. It is disorienting and therefore very hard to recover any sense of stability you may have had in that “before” version of yourself. Were it not for my family and my faith, I may have made similar choices to Strayed.

Strayed draws on the wildness of nature to help us better understand this wildness of grief. In the lifestyle that most of us live in (sub)urban sprawl, it’s easy to ignore life’s transience, but in the wilderness, we’re forced into awareness of nature’s rhythms, to confront our smallness and mortality. Strayed captures this parallel journey between hiking the PCT and her emotional pilgrimage through grief with great power and precision. There are several parts of the book that made me teary and one part that was absolutely annihilating. I won’t allude to which passage because I think part of what made it so powerful was the element of surprise – one moment she’s hiking down the trail and the next, I am bent over the book sobbing uncontrollably, much to the bewilderment of my husband. It’s intense.

All of that being said, a few people warned me that Strayed’s book would disappoint me, and I have to admit that they were partly right. The end of her journey felt anticlimactic. I found myself wishing that she would have lingered longer over the moment when she reached her chosen destination, creating a stronger emotional shift as she ended her hike. After four months and 1,100 miles, I wanted there to be a vivid and tangible sense of resolution to counteract the emotional turmoil we find her in at the beginning.

But it’s this sense of disappointment that I think is important, and maybe even intentional on Strayed’s part. It speaks to the frustration of grief and how it never really and finally resolves itself. And I think that’s where I understand and respect her ending.

When you’ve suffered such a profound loss, you want to conquer grief once and for all and come away from it a totally transformed person, having straightened out your bent towards self-destruction, entirely at peace with yourself. You long for accomplishment. A clear beginning and end. But the reality is that you may come to a point in your grief when you feel like the worst is behind you, but instead of feeling fiercely victorious, you feel a sense of gratitude mixed with confusion. You wonder why you’re not crying with relief like you expected to. But it’s because you know that while you’ve reached this point, there will also be more moments ahead of you when you’ll feel the old familiar ache again.

You will realize anew that no matter where you are in life, you are always making the same choice.

“I looked north, in its direction – the very thought of that bridge a beacon to me. I looked south, to where I’d been, to the wild land that had schooled and scorched me, and considered my options. There was only one, I knew. There was always only one. To keep walking.”

Ultimately, I think Strayed remained to true to herself, to her journey, and to the universal experience of grief. As a writer in the midst of telling my own grief story, I’m challenged by that. I don’t necessarily want my readers to feel like I’ve wasted their time by the end of my book, but I also don’t want to leave them with the false impression that it all comes to a tidy, triumphant end. That’s just not the nature of grief. It is wild and untamed. Let it be.

Have you read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild? What did you think of it? Did it resonate with your experiences of grief ? Why or why not? What are the best memoirs you have read on grief? 

When It’s the Worst Thanksgiving Ever.

It was a knock-down, drag out fight. And it was happening in our living room on Thanksgiving Day 2011. There was no family gathering of the eat-turkey-and-watch-football variety, but there in our living room, we were gathered around a hospice bed that other people had died in, and now it was mom’s turn, and for shame, we were standing over her and shouting.

We had just brought her home from the hospital. She had been there for weeks, I’ve forgotten how long. I had been camped out in her room of the fifth floor oncology wing of Sparrow Hospital during most of that time, sleeping on a vinyl pull-out couch at night, driving home every couple days to shower and grab clean clothes. A couple of days before the holiday, her doctors sat us down in a half-circle of chairs around her bed to tell us that she only had a six weeks left. I remember that as one of the worst days of my life, perhaps more than the morning of her death. They made arrangements for her to have in-home hospice care, and we brought her home on that Thanksgiving afternoon.

And so there we were, each of us shaken and exhausted. We all wanted every other person in the room to go to the Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparents’ house so that we could have time alone with mom. And so, in our attempt to love her well to the end, we argued over her.

It was The Worst Thanksgiving Ever.

It felt like acutely like failure and death, made all the more painful with the knowledge that while we were grieving and fighting, everyone else was cozying up by the big Butterball turkey and toasting to another great year. I felt so utterly bitter and broken.

But after we had each retreated to a small corner of the house for the night, after we had each shed our tears and gotten a little bit of sleep and found some forgiveness, we were able to regroup and say some hard, necessary apologies.

In the weeks that followed, I remember the feeling that Death was right at our doorstep, but Love was just as present, gathering us together by candlelight in the darkness. We survived somehow, although the feelings of thankfulness and peace and joy were slow coming.

There are some seasons of your life when it all just feels like too much, you know?

Instead of counting our blessings, Thanksgiving feels like a cruel cliche rubbed into our pain like salt on a wound. Instead of rearranging furniture for the Christmas tree, we find ourselves making room for a hospice bed. Instead of bringing everyone together for the big feasts of our childhood, we’re planning for a funeral. Instead of greeting the season with glad tidings and great joy, we’re saying goodbye to the life we knew.

It’s enough to make you scream and shout and weep and fall apart, and if you do, I want you to know, it’s okay. Everyone wants to act like the holidays are the time to have our ish together, all charming and cheerful like a freaking Norman Rockwell, but we all know it’s never really like that, even on our best days, right? Everyone will deal with the situation the best they know how, and sometimes that looks like the worst ever. And sometimes, it looks like starting over with an apology and a hug more comforting and life-giving than even mom’s sweet potato casserole.

Give each other space and forgiveness.

Give yourself space and forgiveness to grieve this season.

Grace is the blessing that is always present.

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The Good Things.

Today I’m doing something a bit different on the blog, thanks to Hännah Ettinger over at Wine & Marble, who suggested that we link up and share at least five unidentified thanks to those who have made 2013 a better, more whole, and more healing year for us. Frankly, after the week I’ve had (first car accident, heavy work load, minimal writing productivity, internet crazies) I could do with a bit of gratitude. Also, I’m fiercely protective Thanksgiving season and I refuse to get Christmasy before first giving thanks. So there. Here we go :

1. At the beginning of the year, I got involved in an online discussion regarding a certain post (that shall not be named or linked to for the sake of everyone’s sanity.) One thing led to another, and basically, I had a mini meltdown on twitter, complete with subtweets and a call for Christian unity. #facepalm #NotMyProudestMoment. So this particular note of gratitude is to those that got caught in the crosshairs of my frustration, and I want to start by saying I’m sorry. I really regret it – both my opinions and my behavior. It was coming from a place of ignorance about a lot of different things and since then I’ve tried my damndest to shut up and listen to you. We don’t always agree, and I’m not very vocal either way, but it’s not because I’m not paying attention to you, it’s because I learned my lesson. Thank you for speaking up. Thank you for not letting me silence you. Thank you for not totally writing me off, and in some cases, for befriending me in spite of what happened.

2. As the only appropriate follow-up to Thank You No. 1, this is a thank-you to the people in my life who have walked with me through so many personal changes. A lot of what I believe about faith and politics have shifted in the last few years. I am deeply grateful to those of you who never treated me like a lost cause in my ignorance, who graciously offered me a new perspective, who heard out my doubts and frustrations and crazy questions, who continue to show me love and respect. Even if we never agree with each other on certain issues, you’ve taught me Grace.

3. For almost a year now we’ve been chatting to each other back and forth nearly every day about everything from the internets to birth control to career building to relationships, and I have to say it’s been a highlight of this season in my life. Thank you for letting me be vulnerable with you about the best and worst parts of me; thank you for being vulnerable with me about yours. We’re each going through so many personal transitions, but your friendship has been a steadfast place of comfort and encouragement. Whoever said that online friendships are fake is doing it wrong.

4. You’ve had a tough year, friend. But I’ve watched you flourish in it, too. My heart broke for you last fall, and again early this summer. We both know what it feels like to lose faith and trust for this whole hope thing, don’t we? And yet you continue to be brave and take risks and in case you haven’t noticed, you have community of women, a flock of beautiful birds, that have found a haven in your brave mama heart. I just want you to know how thankful I am for you, whom I consider a big sister in both faith and storytelling. Thank you for the moments we’ve shared of leaning into the hard places of our lives, talking about our fears, talking about our plans, talking about our dreams.

5. We don’t see each other or talk to each other every day or even every week, but we’ve been close friends for close to a decade now and your joyfulness, silliness, and go-get-’em attitude inspire me daily. You have always been there for me, even when I’m quiet, even when I’m angry, even when we lived together and I was forever leaving my dirty dishes in the sink without washing them off first. I lovelovelove you. Always.

6. Remember that day when you texted me the words to my favorite Shel Silverstein poem as an apology for that really ugly fight we had the day before? It’s been two years, and I still think about that moment every time I think about you and how much our relationship has changed. Your support means the world to me. I have a lifetime of thank-yous that I can’t list here, but this I can say : thank you for seeing me, for working hard with me to change our relationship, for saying you’re sorry and accepting my apologies too, and for always taking care of me the best that you know how. I love you.

In Which I Learn to Call Myself a Jesus Feminist.

Awhile back Sarah Bessey wrote this post, In Which I am Learning to Own My Authority. It was one of those posts that echoed in my hearts for days and weeks and months afterward. It sprang up in my thoughts whenever I came face-to-face with my self-doubt, calling me toward boldness.

“I’m a woman still learning how to walk in my authority as a daughter of the King. I’m not supposed to apologize for what God has shown me or done in my life. But here I am, dulling my voice, fitting the too-small box of God-breathed womanhood, shrugging off. […] After all this time, I still minimize the work and goodness and grace of God in my life out of fear. […] Because I am writing about a thorny issue, and because I am nervous about how it will be received, my fear was coming across in my tone more than I realized. And that tone – apologizing, fearful, ‘hey, here’s an idea…’ – was undermining the very message and intent of my work at its very core, disproving my very thesis.”

Her words resonate so deeply because they are my experience too. Like Sarah, I’ve begun to notice the subtle, deeply engrained habit of doubting God’s work in my life and my own ability to discern it.

Even six months ago, I was not comfortable with calling myself a feminist. I’ve loved the idea of feminism, I’ve loved the idea of women’s equality, I’ve written about it here and there for years as I’ve felt empowered to do so. But I would always shrink back from it, afraid that I would become the caricature of feminism that church and secular culture depict: shrill, man-hating, hell-bent on flipping the gender-hierarchy in women’s favor and destroying the nuclear family.

If I call myself a feminist, am I working against God’s will? Is it really not His desire that all people be treated as fully human, male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and free? 

But I’ve learned so much about feminism from people like Sarah Bessey and Rachel Held Evans and Dianna Anderson and Hila Sachar and Danielle Vermeer and Emily Maynard, who have introduced me to other voices that have changed my understanding of both feminism and my faith. And the more I’ve learned about feminism, the more I’ve learned that my longing to see men and women work together, is God at work in my life. And I had been letting the fear and sexism of my culture (Christian and secular alike) tell me that I was not capable of discerning God’s work in my own heart.

My fear and doubt and insecurity over calling myself a feminist is symptomatic of patriarchy at work in my own life. Questioning my own authority is a product of abusive power dynamics. And it occurred to me, even amidst my wavering hope in the Church, that Jesus was never the one to silence or shame people for asking questions, male or female.

My conservative, evangelical upbringing did not give me a theological framework for engaging feminism, but that didn’t mean the theological framework didn’t exist.

The door has been flung wide open to express the doubt and hurt and frustration that I had been trying to hide away for so long. And I’ve found hope and joy for what my faith, my work, my relationships and my politics could be if I just stepped into my identity as God’s daughter, as equal and capable as His sons. There is so much I still don’t understand, so much I still don’t know about living this out in my life, but I believe that even learning to voice our questions in safe community with one another is an important part of debunking the false authority of patriarchal power structures. Those power structures tell us that asking questions is a form of weakness, but it is a form of strength. I don’t need to have it all figured out in order to call myself a feminist. I don’t need to have it all figured out to call myself a Christian.

Jesus Feminism is where I’ve found my voice to articulate my faith and my feminism in a new way, to engage them together, rather than holding them at odds.

So I am my mother’s daughter : I am the daughter of strong female leadership. I am the daughter of a mother who worked a full time job, lived with breast cancer for 14 years, and was one of the first women to serve on the board of her American Baptist Church.*

I am married to a musician : I am the wife of a husband who is kind and creative in a time when our culture doesn’t value those qualities in men. I believe that patriarchal power structures hurt all of society, men and women alike, and my husband and I are working together to overcome that.

I am baptist born-and-raised : I am the child of a church that was very conservative and very evangelical, but also very loving and *willing to change when they felt God moving.

I am a millennial writer : I am a member of an “entitled” generation, who earned my degree and entered the job market in the middle of a recession, who has struggled through my fair share of cynicism toward the Church, and I am living out my calling as a writer both in my full-time job and in my creative endeavors.

And I am a Jesus Feminist. I am learning to be a feminist the way that Jesus is a feminist. Because I follow Jesus, I want to see God’s redemptive movement for women arch towards justice. And I am not afraid to say that this is how God is at work in my life.

This post is in conjunction with Sarah Bessey’s Jesus Feminist synchroblog to celebrate the launch of her book. I received my copy in the mail this weekend and I’m already loving it. Wherever you are in your beliefs about gender roles or Christianity or both, I highly recommend it.