Morning exercise

It's still dark outside. But instead of watching the morning unfold from my usual perch behind the counter at work, I'm propped up against a pillow on a window bench at my favorite cafe in Ballard, observing the quietness of the usually bustling street as it wakes up. The rain falls steadily outside, painting drizzly streaks of polka dots down the window. Rap music fills the cozy, hip French cafe, an odd juxtaposition to a dark and drizzly morning. I don't work until later this morning, and tempting as it was to stay curled up in bed, I wanted to seize a rare opportunity to enjoy the morning from the other side of the coffee counter. I figured I could use the reflection time to set the course for this day, something that's gotten lost in my early morning work schedule. It's much harder to be intentional about starting the day out right when very little stands between waking up and starting work.

Hmm, intentionality, it seems I have lost you at some little juncture on the road. And I wonder why, when I hit the ground running each day, it becomes harder and harder to live out of a full reservoir. The "fruit of the Spirit", which I memorized long ago in Sunday school, may not be as evident in my life as I'd like to believe they are. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Just reading this list is an exercise in humility for me. If these qualities are hallmarks of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, then friends, I confess I'm sorely lacking. And it comes back to that weighty little word, intentionality.

I've been thinking a lot lately about gratitude. About how easy it is not to notice God throughout the day, and in that lack of intentionality, that lack of seeing and hearing and touching and tasting and sensing, how hard it is to cultivate a daily perspective of gratitude. I hate to oversimplify life, to reduce things to a formula or a "key" to unlocking something profound. I'm not going to do that. But I've been thinking, if there were a key to living each day fully, what if it began with gratitude? Gratitude, like love, is a continual choice. I make the choice every day to live from a place of gratitude, even some days in spite of the challenges that are present, whether physically or in circumstance or emotion. I can choose to respond out of gratitude or react out of my unrestrained self. I can make the choice to speak kindly and gently, to be quick to listen and slow to anger, every bit as much as I can make the choice to speak quickly and sharply out of irritation.

I'm beginning to appreciate that gratitude and the fruit of the Spirit are exercises, developing spiritual muscles that don't just show up without intentionality and hard work. I may not like that, but I've got to admit, it appears to be true. Like physical fitness and toned muscles, these desired qualities and attitudes do not magically appear on their own. I've got to go after them, every day, relentlessly cultivating them in my life. No, actually, relentlessly coming to God and admitting that I cannot cultivate them on my own. I need the help of the Spirit. And herein lies the difference between self-help and God-help. Living out of gratitude and the fruit of the Spirit is not ultimately something I can achieve by simply having the right strategies, reading the right books and trying hard enough. It takes commitment on my part, but God does a lot of the work if I can be humble enough to admit I need his help. Every day.

The question is, if all I can ever be certain of is that I have been given this moment, what will I choose to live out of - gratitude or forgetfulness?

Thankfulness

What opening line could I begin my new chapter with? What would set the tone of the story to unfold? Today God clearly penned the first sentence on my heart: Thankfulness. It's too common to lose sight of God during the activities of the day, of the week, to take for granted that some things just happen because they should and to get frustrated or disappointed when things don't happen as (I think) they should. I take the gifts that God has given me and think, perhaps not deliberately but in my heart, that they are expected of Him. Such pride, softly disguised, seeping in, when everything is actually a gift graciously given. Even my very life is a gift sustained by the will of God as long as He chooses.

So I ask myself the question the pastor posed today at church: How much feast does God have to spread for us before we think, "Wow!" ? What has happened to the wonder, to my capacity to be thankful for both the pleasant and the unpleasant, because at the very least, I still have Christ? And I dare say I would never utter that He is not enough; yet that is how I tend to live.

I'm at a point in my story where it calls for the development of a new kind of faith. My "old" faith, the one I lived with up until my Papa died, was real and served me well through many things. But it all but crumbled in the wake of that disaster. It has taken me quite a while to see that my old faith was based on the principle of, "Live as if my dreams must come true and my fears not come near me." After nearly a decade of those dreams not coming true and my fears pounding down my door, I withdrew from God, as if He were suddenly a stranger, no longer safe.

I could write much more on that, and likely will as I go, but for now I will capture what is to be central to the foundation of my new faith. Simply put, if I cannot learn to be thankful for Christ through whatever comes along in the plot of my life, I cannot be thankful for anything. I've said it before, and it is time to remind myself again, that God owes me nothing. It is time for a faith that learns to truly hold my life and everything in it with open hands, an open heart.

Chapter one

I remember hating to lose as a kid. Not always because I couldn't stand the thought of someone else being better than me, as much as I couldn't stand the thought of my best effort not being good enough. Falling short was failure, and failure was bad; I obviously wasn't trying hard enough. So, I grew up being very competitive - with myself mostly. And it appears this mindset, threaded throughout my story, has prevailed throughout my life.

Maybe that's how I ended up sitting in a counselor's office recently, complaining of feeling stuck in life. My story seemed to come to a grinding halt over two years ago, when my Papa died, and the only story that I continue to tell is one of loss, marked by that tragic moment when my world as I knew it collided. My faith, my identity, my sense of purpose and direction in life, all seemed to crash and burn, and I haven't known how to pick up those pieces again. So miserable as it can be, I have continued to live and relive in that story, reading and writing the same page over and over again, hoping to make some sense of it enough to turn the page. I wrote months ago of being in a place of needing to turn the page and not knowing how. Even then, I finally admitted it was likely due to fear, but I still fought taking complete ownership of it.

Like a little girl losing at a card game, I decided I didn't like this losing business and set my cards down, walking away. I don't want to play this game anymore, I suck at it. In other words, this story isn't working out for me, not the way I planned. I began to sink into a funk, a bit of a depression, looking alright on the outside but full of anxiety, fear and failing hope on the inside. Funny how clearly this screams "control freak" and I thought I'd dealt with that already. As my counselor described, I've been frustrated that God isn't driving my car like I've asked him to, and yet I won't get out of the driver's seat. Last time I checked, two people can't drive a car. Oops, there's that "C" word again.

And then, the epitome moment came. That "aha" moment in the counseling office when I realized what needs to change. Not my circumstances per se, but me. Beginning with my beliefs. How easy, and yes, sometimes convenient, it can be to hide behind pain. To call myself a failure, to believe nothing good lies ahead for me in life, that my story has failed and now I'm stuck with what I've got, oddly enough there's something I benefit from with these beliefs. A false sense of security. If I'm a failure and I can't do much about it, I'm exempt from taking a risk that might lead to more failure. The familiarity of my failed story, painful as it is, can feel more comfortable than turning the page and beginning to write a new story. A new story whose ending I don't know, let alone what unfolds in the first chapter.

It requires laying down my illusion of control, as I like to call it (since, let's face it, none of us really have control), and deeper, choosing to believe God's character. There's a difference I'm well aware of between believing in God and believing God. One is more an intellectual acknowledgement, and the other, comprised completely of faith. And I'm thankful right now for my counselor, who having read some of my writings, is strong and wise enough to hold them up in front of my face and ask me, essentially, are these just words? Or do you intend to act on them?

It can be deceptively easy to put words on paper (or on a screen), sending theological and philosophical questions out into the stratosphere, and call that good enough. Sure, the questions in life seem to far outnumber the answers, but that doesn't mean there aren't answers. It's easy to ask questions, to feel helpless in the silence, but it's a hell of a lot harder to say, I may not know why my story is turning out this way and I certainly didn't choose all of this, but I can choose how I will respond to it and what I will believe about God, myself and life. I can choose to believe that a different story is not necessarily a bad story. And what I've deemed as failure isn't necessarily a failure at all, as much as a change of plot.

I've never wanted to be someone who writes what they cannot live out, so here I am, committing to the drafting of a new chapter with the true Author. Let the pages turn, I'm ready to be unstuck.

Songs of deliverance

I wait for You

Beside the bubbling fountain waters

Just to hear Your song in the night.

I wait.

I cry to You

Here upon this rain soaked rock

To feel Your touch again upon my heart

I cry.

And Father, You surround me

You surround me

You surround me with songs of deliverance.

The waters sing,

Calling out to my heart

Now is the time

Return, every broken piece that was scattered

You are whole. You are pure. You are renewed. You are lovely.

Return.

My heart leaps,

My fingers open

And the key that has no power over me

Slips down into the the waters.

And from the waters rise

You are free -

Free to love,

Free to be loved -

You are free, My child.

Be free.

The ground beneath us

I never used to notice the ground beneath my feet. Never appreciated how firm and dependable it felt, just took for granted that it was a solid mass. I’ve taken science classes and read the news stories of how the earth moves, of how it devastates when in one ordinary day what seemed immovable begins to falter. When those plates that are out of sight, out of mind below the earth’s surface shift, everything above begins to rumble and shake and tumble. Solid ground is no longer a casual assumption.

It’s difficult to know the scope of how such a rumbling and shaking changes you. How it shakes, not only your family and your memories, your present and your future, your physical and your emotional health, your friendships and relationships, but also your identity and personality. Your beliefs about God and life and meaning. It dangles truth in your face like a tattered question mark.

It often frustrates me that I am not as resilient as I used to be. No longer am I a fan of change, so flexible and adaptable, bending gracefully with each twist and turn and gust of wind. Towards life, I feel more like a pioneer in the race for a plot of land on the new frontier, staking my claim and hunkering down with vulnerability cloaked in weary determination. Change feels threatening, and I wish I understood why. Why sometimes the small things shake me, to the point of producing tears from a place much deeper than the prick that provoked these tears.

“After my dad died.” I wish this phrase weren’t so often the preface to understanding and explaining my reactions to life now. But it shook me, violently, and like a region that has experienced a significant natural disaster, where the recovery period extends for years after the tragedy, I am still rebuilding in the recognizable but highly altered landscape that is my life.

Growing up with God, though I was not sheltered from our own family pains and tragedies, I never questioned that he was solid. My rock. When things shook, he was immovable. But when my Papa died, so unexpectedly, so traumatically, everything shifted beneath my feet. I lost my bearings. God no longer felt safe, nor did life. I was introduced to the unsettling feeling that millions of others share because of what they’ve experienced: that tragedy can strike anyone at any time, unannounced. When the boy I loved broke my heart a year later, I again felt someone, something, I loved yanked from my hands unexpectedly. And while I’ve healed a lot from these losses, grown immensely through these losses, I feel the pain of the unfinished healing process whenever change is thrust upon me, whether big or small.

Change triggers fear. Fear springs from a lie I began to believe, beginning with my Papa’s death and deepening with the loss of relationship with the boy I loved. God is not safe, and not safe in a way that places his goodness in question. I am alone, left to face things that are once again beyond my control, and all I yearn for is a safe place. Solid ground. A place where I can settle in and rest, unmoved, unafraid that the people and things about life that I love will be jerked away. I want to catch my breath, to not be looking over my shoulder for the next bad thing to happen, to trust that some things are in fact real, albeit imperfect, even new love. But especially, to find that place of peace in God where I am settled in on the solid mass that is him, where all around me can shake but he doesn’t move.

I want to lay this lie to rest, this lie that I have no safe place, that nothing good in life will ever last, because it haunts me. Because it robs me of living life fully, of hoping for good things instead of fearing that bad things will always be lurking in the shadows. In the dark, this lie is huge and imposing, but there comes a day when it's time to face it squarely and flip the light switch on, to see it exposed for the wimpy, cowering creature it is in the daylight. Learning to trust again is a process; to know in the furthest corners of my heart that God may not be safe in all the ways I define the word, but he is forever good. That is the only unshakable ground.

Creative multiplication

Jesus, I love that you never get overwhelmed. Not by circumstances or by personalities, not by sin or by need, not by nature or by disease, and not by biological reasons, like hormones or lack of sleep. Time and time again when I come back to the story of you feeding the thousands of people, I’m first of all captivated by the fact that you didn’t run. If I had a horde of thousands of hungry, tired people flocking to me, I think I might run. I might hide. I might roll my eyes, let out an exasperated sigh, and mutter about why they couldn’t just leave me alone for a day. And that’s precisely one of a bazillion reasons why I’m not you. I get overwhelmed.

I love that you are incredibly resourceful in your creativity. Sometimes you create something out of nothing, but equally amazing are the times when you use what’s right in front of you to bring provision. You work with what you’ve got, even though you could pull a rabbit out of a non-existent hat if you wanted. And you did that in this story, when you fed the thousands.

I can really resonate with the disciples’ question when they took inventory of what resources they had to work with and brought the report back to you.

It wasn’t impressive by our standards. “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many?” (John 6:9)

Man, does that hit home with me, Father. You ask what I have. I scramble around checking my pockets and wallet and refrigerator, my bedroom drawers and all my purses, my emotional reservoire and my dayplanner. And then I come back to you, saying, I’ve got sixty-five cents, a passport, a jar of peanut butter, a couple hours on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and an emotional capacity of supporting one hurting person, but what good is that with so much need? Or, I’ve got a Master’s degree I’m not using; a decade of occasional spurts of focused pursuit in a direction, sprawling between long bouts of foggy wandering; I’ve got old dreams that are growing dusty and current dreams without an action plan; but what are they among so many?

Oh, me of little faith. I’m every bit as guilty as these dense disciples who, in chapter fourteen of Matthew witnessed your miraculous multiplication of resources and freaked out in chapter fifteen when the same scenario mysteriously happened again.

How many times have you taken my table scraps and made a feast for someone else to dine on? I don’t even know, but I do know it’s happened. I remember some of those humbling moments when, after feeling like I have nothing but cheese and crackers to offer someone, I stand back and watch you go to town like Julia Childs. And they leave not only satisfied; they leave blessed, encouraged, strengthened. You let me be the one to pass out the food, but it’s you who does the multiplication.

I never need to wonder if there will be enough with you. I never need to wonder if what I have to offer is enough for you to work with. If all it takes is faith the size of a teeny tiny mustard seed for you to move a mountain, then any little bit I have to bring to the table is enough for you to do something incredible, among one person or among so many. I'll just bring you what I have.

Pinto Bean runs out of gas

I was supposed to be attending my first writer's meeting with a group of writers in Bothell. I had a small window of time before catching my bus, so I optimistically opted for a run along the waterfront with Pinto. It would be our farewell run, the last one before I said goodbye to him tomorrow and gave him over to a new family. Conditions were perfect: sunny, late summer afternoon, clipping along at a good pace (well, for someone who hasn't run much in the last 9 months). Until we turned around at our mile and a half marker and started heading back. He decided he'd had enough of running and flopped down in the grass. Wouldn't budge. I coaxed, cajoled, and yes, begged and pleaded. Nada. Finally I thought, if I can't convince him I might as well join him, so I flopped down beside him with his head in my lap and petted him.

About ten minutes later, I thought that was a generous break and attempted to start running again. He wouldn't have a thing to do with it. Couples strolled by chuckling. An eccentric woman on a bicycle rode by leisurely and laughed loudly at my predicament. My dog was having a two-year old tantrum, puppy style.

Finally I got him to start running with me, as long as he was off his leash. We were cruising, he was loping along freely beside me. All was well. Until we passed a guy resting off to the side with his bike near the gymnastic bars. Pinto run right up to him and plopped down. When the guy tried to do his sit-ups, Pinto was right there, nose in his face.

I ran over, embarrassed and apologetic. "So sorry. C'mon, Pinto. Time to go." I started running, looking back, calling for him to come, but to no avail. The guy watched my pitiful attempt and shook his head, chuckling. After watching this act for a few minutes, he introduced himself and we chatted for a bit.

"I hate to say this," he said matter-of-factly, "But you have absolutely no control over your dog." He sounded now like he was trying to suppress some laughter, mixed with some pity, that such an ignorant girl ended up with such a smart puppy.

I laughed it off. "Oh, you think?"

I attached the leash to Pinto again, who stuck his paws out in front of him and flattened himself like a pancake. Stepping back, leash taut, I resumed the "Come, Pinto" routine. Tim the Biker stood by discreetly and finally asked if he could take a picture with his iPhone and email it to me. "You've gotta see this picture. You guys look so funny."

Tim took the picture and said goodbye, wishing me luck. I figured I would make the most of our pit stop and do some crunches and arm dips on the bars. A young couple wandered over and began using the bars beside us. I tried again to move Pinto along down the path. In a flash of brilliance (took long enough), I found a stick nearby and dangled it in front of Pinto's face, running off before he could snatch it. It worked! For about 25 yards. But Pinto did a U-turn near a bench where two guys were stopped on their workout routine. They weren't as chatty as Tim, so I managed to coax Pinto away from them, wave the stick, and get him to follow me further down the path.

After flopping down a few more times, the next stop was to chase another dog who was carrying a ball in his mouth. Pinto tailed him, round and round a field, down the forbidden beach and through the water, tongue waving in the breeze, while the dog occasionally turned his head to look back at Pinto, growling in displeasure at this intrusion.

I once again clipped Pinto's leash back on and we ran about a quarter mile this time. My hopes were beginning to rise, thinking maybe, just maybe, we were on the home stretch. But no, Pinto was done. Office hours were over. He was staging his coup, exercising his right to protest going home. I knew by now what this was all about. Pinto was not tired or sick. Pinto just hated being in that apartment, so much so that he refused to walk home.

The last person he passed out in front of was a girl studying at Mars Hill Graduate school downtown. I saw her psychology books and struck up a conversation with her, since I saw we'd be here for awhile. We shared some feelings about our grad school experiences and thoughts of what we wanted to do (or in my case, not do) with our degrees. A homeless man stopped and plopped down beside us, petting Pinto and commenting on all the people in the park in not so gracious language, asking the girl if she was old enough to smoke pot, to which she smiled politely and changed the topic. After a few minutes, he said goodbye and moved along, and we she wondered if she could help me get Pinto jumpstarted again. It was a nice thought.

This is it, I decided, gritting my teeth. Pinto's not budging, and I'm not going to be seen dragging a dog by his neck down the street, looking like a dog beater to all the Seattle-ites and tourists and families out for nice evening walks with their little ones and puppy dogs. Crouching down beside Pinto, I said goodbye to the girl and thanked her for her patience (we did interrupt her moment of privacy and study, after all). Then I slid my arms underneath Pinto's head and back legs and scooped him up in my arms. All 65 pounds of him, hanging limply. I almost dropped him as I tried to suppress my laughter at how ridiculous we must look. And then I started walking.

Down the waterfront path, past a woman with kids and an empty stroller who asked if I needed her stroller. Past the buses and taxis, the walkers and joggers, the park security guy and the people I'd passed several times during our stilted run. My arms ached, so I put him down, hoping he'd be ready to stop this childish act and walk like a decent dog. But he just gazed up at me with those sad, sad eyes and hunkered down in one spot like he was waiting for the end of the world. I sighed and whined and shook my head in disbelief. "So we're really doing this, huh? Really?? I can't believe you, Pintito." I scooped him up once more and carried him a little farther. We did this little routine all the way home, as I huffed and puffed for breath, tried to ignore the stares and grins of people driving or walking by (just so I didn't lose it and start laughing), feeling the sweat coming on, my heart rate accelerating, my arms entering into a state of exhaustion.

All the romanticism of a walk with the dog in the park drained away with my energy.

I didn't make it to my writer's meeting. But Pinto gave me plenty to write about.

Ai, Pintito. He ran out of gas.