Category: theology and philosophy

the news is good because of the Giver

The stress of Sunday felt like a 7 layer dip I got buried inside. We rolled out of church just before the lights shut off (as per uzh) and Pat looked at me and said “Should we get doughn–?” and I interrupted with, “Well, I don’t really want to clean u–” and then he said, “So, pizza?” and I was like, “…invite Margaret!”

We were all like, “yeah, totally YES AND!” in those beautifully spiritual words of improv. And after pizza and catching up with our friend, we had to stop for eucalyptus and then also garland and then by the time we got home… well, there wasn’t much time for sabbath rest before dinner and hosting preparations began.

I wrote the Magnificat on butcher paper in pink to acknowledge the subtle relief we feel this week as we light the candle of Joy. I found myself pausing, even as I haphazardly decided to bake and frost cookies with sprinkles an hour before people were supposed to arrive. My pausing was a mental one, connecting the bright dots of light across the sky behind my eyes and seeing a picture emerge while the chaos of color and sound happened in my view.

Constellations. It’s the best way I can explain how something can connect so completely inside my spirit that I am almost convinced I’ve known before and forgotten. And as I traced dots of light in my mind’s sky, I saw a different way to consider the absurdity of Mary’s worship. The news that she would give birth to the son of God was actually the worst news for her reputation and for conversations at family gatherings and for a “honeymoon” stage of marriage and for her young body that would shapeshift to hold the baby. When I asked the kids Sunday night what emotions she might have felt when receiving the news from the angel, they answered the way I always have, “Scared!” … “Nervous!” … “Confused!” … “Afraid!” and their answers hung just under the strings of eucalyptus and leaves and evergreen branches on the ceiling.

And yet, I have no problem picturing her joy because I’m on THIS SIDE of Jesus’s birth. I know it will be ok. I know she will be an outcast, but she will also be visited by shepherds and angels and far away kings. I know the crude manger scene will give way to assimilating into some sort of regular life where he gets left at the temple, teaching rabbis. I know her Son, my Savior will be the Messiah because I believe the historical fact of his birth and kingship more easily as I look backward. I am believing with the whole picture of what He came to accomplish and living in light of His victory over the grave.

But, Mary.

She may not have known that her baby boy would one day walk on water, but she did know the character of the One who made the waters and the winters and the womb home inside her where Jesus would reside. She did not know most things about how the Savior would do the saving. But as she is caught up (and us with her) in her song of joy, I am struck by how her worship was fueled by all she did know about her God.

The news was not good in the way we might celebrate the joys (ahem…success) of the past year on a Christmas card: job promotions, marriage, babies, trips, renovations, awards and Pinterest worthy hosting events. Mary’s update to her family and friends might have read something like, “This year, angels appeared miraculously to Joseph and me to tell us we would be the parents of God’s son, Jesus. We are overjoyed! We write to you from a long, lonely walk to Bethlehem and hope that we can find lodging there. We have had a hard time finding work and maintaining friends, but we are hopeful that someday soon you can join us in this joy that we know to have come from the Maker Himself. It is truly amazing!” She probably wouldn’t even write the sad parts which read passive aggressive now, as I read them back.

Mary’s joy somehow sat beside, and was not overshadowed by, the sorrow in her heart. And though this news would flip her life like a temple table in Jesus’ hands, she stepped into the miracle of it and sang for joy. I wonder if, like the words of Elizabeth when their wombs met, their access to such joy came because they weren’t afraid it would displace the appropriate ache of all the other things. The injustices in the land. Stress and tension among family. The sorrow of lost loved ones. The pain of estrangement. The everyday toil of torn muscles and stretching work schedules.

It was past dinnertime last night, our guests were running late and Pat would be walking in just moments before their arrival. I was a flurry of motion, praying the paprika chicken would be edible while I made dough balls for naan and let Vesper run between my legs. I spoke slowly and directly and sternly to the children in my charge, “I need your help. I’m asking you to help me because I cannot do this alone.” The crack in my armor was showing and Zella responded in her too-grown way, “Mom, you seem stressed. Ok, let’s say 5 things we’re thankful for, ok?”

Anger boiled behind my slow breaths, because I don’t run a tight ship in my house and it felt like we were sinking. But, her words glittered like stars in the darkened sky of my anger, above the sinking ship of my house. Somehow, by the grace of God, prayers of a friend and my daughter’s convicting words, we righted the ship under a less sailors-take-warning kind of sky. The pride and the pain in me are resistant to Mary’s type of worship because I want to know, “exactly how, God?” How will this turn out good, in the end? I don’t see your purpose in it. I don’t understand my role in it. I can’t work out the specifics of this type of saving.

But what Mary knew was enough: the giver of the News is what makes it Good.

God, heal my unbelief.

P.S. Dinner was fine. It was more than fine, it was wonderful. Both Advent and our guests last night were truly a gift from the One who knows my name. And I am humbled because I could have worshipped before I knew that the chicken was delicious and the kids would warm to candlelit trivia about Mary and our living room would fill with joy and honest prayers. I missed that opportunity, but I pray I won’t miss the next one. When I receive the words (however they come) that God is good, I pray my first words are rejoicing ones.

Posted on by Caroline 2

signs of life

Sun is speckling, slanting across the kitchen counter, then the dining table, the dresser in the bedroom and now the smudged glass of the hutch. A clock counting the daylight hours, I count too. My eyes follow the golden spotlights and the shadows.

“Christ is Light!” The second littlest proclaims after dinner. “In Him there is no darkness,” we respond. What a ride candles are with little kids. On Sunday’s advent dinner, a mess of fingers rushed for the lighter, the precarious (yet very cool, vintage) five candle holder dipped and dived as a separate mess of fingers held it “steady” for lighting. Life.

Outside, the rain and clouds made it feel like night around 4 pm, winter cold hanging in the damp dark. Inside, the oven was still warm and I opened the kitchen window to invite a breeze between our bodies. We were many, filling out every room and spilling potluck dishes on every counter. Abundance. Inside the dark day, inside the dark season, inside the dark world– we are bright defiance. Pièces de résistance.

Our neighbors shared a tip a few years ago after we gave them a young crepe myrtle from the abundance we dug up from an acreage “thinning their plants for maintenance reasons.” (Praise be!) When we apologized to our neighbors because we thought maybe the tree we gave them didn’t survive the uproot and replant process, they said, “Oh, actually… it looks dead, but if you just scrape the bark you can see it is green underneath. Ours is alive, so we think it’ll have leaves in the spring!” Praise. We ran to see if ours survived, too.

Our front lawn is a sad mess of wet, brown pecan leaves. We are now choosing to compost our leaves by doing absolutely nothing about their gathering every fall, but it does not look good or tidy or festive. We shoved our shoes in their cubbies and under dressers so that there was space on the mat for the friends who would come for advent dinner Sunday. We knelt to pray at 5:45 pm as a family that God would help us be good hosts, even if it was a small group. That little rubber mat didn’t stand a chance. The shoes piled as the plates filled and I had to walk sideways in order to make the circle from dining to living room and back again. Warmth stretched out from my middle, as Pat prayed for the provisions and kids crawled out from under tables.

We ate well and drank deep in that special, winter potluck way and then huddled together to mark another week of advent– to name the shadows where light appears to have faded almost completely in this present darkness. We prayed peace into wars and sibling fights and meanness and anger. We prayed peace where it is impossible. We prayed for miracles.

“All is not lost. Mm-mm.”

My body sags with the desperation of it, now Tuesday and sunlit. But it is still advent dark. Our prayers for peace inside wars and fights and meanness and anger, well… It is still advent dark. So, I hear this song on repeat and remember that planting seeds of peace is obedience.

We prayed the Collect to finish out our time on Sunday. I’m still learning these rhythms.

BLESSED Lord, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The time for teaching moments had passed. The kids attached well to the illustration from Isaiah 11 that Jesse proclaimed over the group, “The lion shall lie down with the lamb… the wolf and the goat… the baby and the cobra…” These are not relationships of peace in the kingdom of the world. This vision is the hope of a peace that Christ accomplished being fully realized on this earth– every inch of it. Their right answers earned them a Ukrainian chocolate that some of our guests brought to share from their home country. God be praised, but those kids weren’t hearing more lesson. So, we simply spoke the collect together. We let the words rise in a chorus above our heads, an unlikely choir of ages and stages and backgrounds. And, we may not have known it, but we were praying for the seed to be planted in us. We prayed that the Word would actually take root in us, so that we ourselves could be the very planting of the peace that Christ accomplished.

May these seeds defy the flippant scattering and the death underground and the complicated germination and the unlikely conditions and the hungry squirrels– may these seeds of peace sown in obedience bring about an otherworldly rest for the weary, the war-torn, the wintered and the waiting.

Advent is still so dark. When there is no sign of life, may Christ light the way to plant the seeds of peace. AMEN.

Posted on by Caroline 3

when I shout my lonely office

It’s full again. I empty the Dyson and the dust puffs up in my face. I check the simmering onion and garlic with a glance, tie the red strings and lift the garbage with my good arm while I close the door under the sink with my foot. Vesper is still boundary training. I throw a towel over the naan dough and pray it’s clean enough, and then rush out the front door in sock feet to sling the bag at the bottom of the front steps. Before I bend-snap my shoulders back up above my hips, I clock the distance to the garbage can.

The red, stretched out strings find my fingers and I take the long way– sidewalk, pavers, retaining wall before slinging the bag with my bad arm, careful not to rotate it too far above my shoulder. By the time I race my socks back inside, the garlic has nearly gone but can still be saved. Praise. Curry tonight and it’s got to be a swift and substitution-heavy turn around for our meal.

My mind wanders back to Robert Hayden. Lines from the poem yesterday are alighting like the chickadee bird of our school research today. Foster tells me that chickadees are so smooth in flight you can’t hear them. I imagine a chickadee might surprise me with its presence, though if I had eyes to see or ears to hear I might have noticed its arrival.

What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden in “Those Winter Sundays”

What do I know, about serving with a heart that doesn’t keep track of the broom sweeps and the simmered garlics and the nuance of a day’s schedule. What do I know of love’s lonely office? Still little, maybe nothing.

The office I keep is haphazard and more Jekyll + Hyde vibe than I would like, than I hoped… than I claimed for my future when I was envisioning this phase. I am not what I envisioned. I’ll say that, for sure. I’m far worse. Where has all the wisdom gone? That’s what I asked of Solomon over peppermint tea at Kiara’s house as we studied prophets in the Old Testament and somehow landed on Solomon’s backsliding. The man literally asked God for wisdom and was granted it and STILL he ended up with 700 wives and who knows what else in his disobedience. What we do know is the little letters in the text cannot contain the havoc his sin wreaked. Somehow, he got less wise as he got older! I sipped my tea and passed judgment and then listened as my sisters shared that shrinking in wisdom was a bit of an epidemic.

We’re into our morning now, breakfast and reading aloud and prayers. I committed to ignore my phone until scripture finds my face in the morning, so the world could be ending and I am blissfully unaware for the next 17 minutes. We’re out of order, but we’re in the first week of advent school, so everything feels a bit disjointed. I come to our Scripture this week and we read from Isaiah 11.

I thought it would be a few verses, but as I am reading I become animated. I lean dramatic, so a prophetic passage can’t be appropriately delivered sitting down. “Righteousness will be the belt of his waist!” I proclaim as I motion for a giant belt securing my middle. “And faithfulness the belt of his loins!” I know less where to motion for this but I am dramatic, still. The whole passage comes alive in front of me– the impossibility of a Savior, the unlikelihood of people being around to even be looking for one. And yet the prophet paints the picture.

These are the words that had to be repeated, from generation to generation to generation to generation. Words guarded and savored like secret recipes passed down with a knowledge of their potency, their flavor and power. These words of the prophets were the words for all the years of silence, when the mornings and the noondays and the evenings seemed only dark. When the ordinary going out and coming in required belief in a faithful God who had spoken promises, but had stopped speaking.

Can you believe this? 700 years before Jesus came and THESE words were given to the prophet Isaiah? Wow, but do you see? I am jumping now and they are laughing. Praise God for laughter as it shakes off offenses of spilled milk and withheld apologies. These words about who? “Jesus,” they say. Yes! And when Jesus came did all the dark go away?

At this, they are not quite sure. It feels like the pep rally answer is YES but that somehow doesn’t feel true. That’s what I’m sensing in their faces at least. I get a mumbled majority, “No?” like a question. That’s right! When Jesus came into our darkness, fulfilling this prophecy, the darkness did not go away. But, he did give us a way out. He did open a door so we didn’t have to stay in this darkness forever.

And I felt alive in a new way. A mess of wires behind my ribs connected again and I felt the power of hope. Hope? What an impossible thing to hold.

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
    the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and might,
    the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
    or decide disputes by what his ears hear,
4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
    and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
    and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
    and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

Isaiah 11:1-5

This is the righteousness that will expose the wars within and without of my bones. My lack of love in my lonely office and the languishing faces of those despairing. This Jesus, the door out of the darkness, invites me come and walk with him. And I review my steps. Simmering garlic, running sock feet errands, reciting prophetic words, alone and lonely in a house full of disciples. The thoughts all tumble back down in the mental jenga game as Pat gets home from work and we sit down to pray over our curry while I take the naan out the oven foolishly with my fingers.

Something about conviction that I need to be seen and noticed and it’s not enough that God knows. I’ll return to it tonight, maybe tomorrow? I know it is an important thought about the poem, but now there is a basketball game for our dear Miles. Sweep the rice, clean the plates, sock the kids, and make a sign that says, “Go Miles!”

What do I know? It’s advent and the darkness is not hiding.

Posted on by Caroline 0

no better place

There is no place like home, it’s true. There is a familiar comfort in a cozy corner or books arranged systematically in a way no other human soul could understand or the steam rising from a freshly baked loaf cooling on the counter. But sometimes home isn’t home enough. It’s unexplainably lonely and cold and quiet, even as the joyful shouts of children smother your thoughts and you shuffle around with three layers of your husband’s socks. Just me?

How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young— a place near your altar, Lord Almighty, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you.

Psalm 84:1-4

This morning, after a mess and tangle of extra limbs in my bed and water requests before I opened my eyes, I remembered my home. I put the water on to boil, measured the coffee extra strong, and gave my littlest ones cereal in bowls with milk that I mentally prepared to clean up off the floor because they wanted to share a chair. Muscle memory pre-heated the oven to 460, because I have a hunch my oven runs cold. I formed the dough while the hot water rested, then rested the dough while I ground the coffee.

And, I thought of home. It’s a refuge I know well, but a place I have never lived. It’s the home God made for me and where my heart rests its head sometimes without my body fully participating. And it feels so desperately far from where I am. I sang the words with my winter-cold voice and it cracked extra as I achieved a level above the din of hide-and-seek madness circling three rooms.

I wanna be in Your presence, I wanna be near Your heart
I wanna know You’re close even when I’m feeling far
I don’t want what this world would offer, I want the living God
‘Cause there’s no place better than where You are

from Caroline Cobb’s “No Better Place”

I poured fluid ounces of meticulously heated water over coffee grounds and I cried. “Do I?” The thought surprised me, like reaching deep back into the freezer for a chocolate long hidden only to turn around to meet a child’s curious gaze. Shame and love warred for a moment– and I paused, wondering what my exposure would produce in me. I sang again, believing that singing my love for home would remind my heart where I belonged.

As I prepare for advent this year, I’m listening. I’m listening to Howard Thurman and Tish Harrison Warren and Fleming Rutledge. I am listening to old saints and seekers, monks and martyrs. And I am yearning with them for home. I am believing with them that Light has come, will come and is a Light that cannot be overcome. This is the Light that illuminates my true home. My yearning for this home feels fragile– wrapped as it is in my human understanding.

As I listen to others, I also hear my own condemnation. No matter how much I know, how many times the Spirit convicts, how often I face the facts of spiritual failure in my own life, I cannot accomplish my own mending. The ripped garments of my choosing can only be repaired with the torn veil of the Temple and the broken flesh of a Savior. And, those tiny words formed in a question hidden in the noisy kitchen chaos this morning, beckoned me, “come.”

Come, child. Come sit inside my mending. Come repent and rest. Come without all your defenses and reasons. Just come be in this Light and know that the exposure allows you to see, actually see the home I’ve made for you. Be here. Be with me. Sit with me. Listen to me. Come, child. Listen to the stories I tell of a world I made right, a world I am setting to right, a world I am actively mending by the blood of my Son, Jesus.

Warren writes about the prophet Isaiah pairing repentance and rest (Isaiah 30:15) and how it might seem curious at first. We might assume that turning from sin is work. It makes sense, because resisting temptation is work. But, in our turning we are also accepting the joy of the true work accomplished. In Christ, our repentance is not work but freedom. In Christ, we walk through an open door to be both fully exposed and fully at rest. Home. Not a home with dusty corners or shadows or shame. The home we have in Christ is rest and my body relaxes into a deep and yearning sadness to be fully arrived mind, body and soul. There is no better place.

Now, I return to the hide-and-seek madness as we prepare for Sabbath. A little one will sit on my hip as I vacuum and another will keep me company on the kitchen floor while I clean and bake. I will tend the sick one with sips of Sprite and listen as another regales me with tales of the worlds inside her books. I will share elbow space with my partner as we set to the tasks of the day. And I pray all day I will hear the refrain, “there is no better place” and think of the invitation into the Lord’s presence somehow, mysteriously, in the midst of it all.

Posted on by Caroline 2

elevating ordinary days in Eastertide

The greens are technicolor now, covering ground and overflowing branch and filling vase. Every shade and new ones without names greet my tired, morning eyes and I try to blink away the ordinary. All the impossible, tiny Spring buds gave way to a green life that is thicker than winter’s death. And I want my fingers to tingle with it, I want my cheeks to glow and my words to sing— that Christ is Risen from the grave and I rose with Him in victory. I want all 50 days of Easter to feel like a party, because this thing is impossible that He has done. For life to come from death and for my own death to die, nothing should feel mundane. It should feel like the magic it is. And not just Easter Sunday.

Easter week … ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom?

N.T. Wright in Surprised by Hope

Yes, just yes.

We raise glasses and light every candle, we say yes extra and look for light. We get silly with the wildness imprinted on our souls and eat marshmallows with chocolate chasers. If there is ever a season to shake free the shackles, it’s this one. We invite friends and neighbors and family and strangers to toast the One who could not stay dead, the One who invites us to a feast that never ends.

When my mom asked about Zella’s favorite part of Easter day, her face melted behind the biggest smile and she confessed, “Lottie and me got 4 or maybe 5 marshmallows and we ate them.” Her entire little folded frame, splashed in firelight and snuggled into Grandma’s lap, savored the memory and the thrill of eating so much sugar at one time.

To her credit, we made a big display of the marshmallows at our Easter party— filled a whole punch bowl with those fluffy white sugar clouds and set them right next to the champagne and the tall candles and the sparkler sticks. Because this is the season to get lost completely— inside wonder and joy and hope and victory and the Truth that the grave could not hold the one true God.

But, the kids spent last night throwing up and the confetti I ordered for our party was *not* the compostable kind, so you can find me in Eastertide sitting in small patches of our backyard picking up metallic foil strips while the kids make more laundry play with their Grandpa-made mud kitchen. The work does not disappear in celebration season. The baseboards need attention and the wind blew down all the loose branches stuck in our three lush pecan trees. There is no end in sight to the dishes in the kitchen. But, bathed in the beauty of Christ’s resurrected life is the life Christ resurrected in me— the regular, mundane, clean-up-puke-and-do-the-dishes life.

This is the life we celebrate in Eastertide— not a life that escapes ordinary, but one that elevates it.

Caroline KOlts

He redeems the lives we are living right now, not just eternity-in-heaven life or #Sundayfunday life or the life we wish we had. His redemption and this Easter season is about raising our current lives up from the grave. Our Monday afternoons and our Thursday mornings, our passive aggressive conversations with co-workers and our “is that your lunch on the floor again?” queries to toddlers. It does not all feel sparkly, Eastertide, because it is all still regular. But God has freed the dull and dirt, the mundane and monotony. He has freed us from the weight of sin that so easily entangles and freed us to the weight of glory that so easily delights in God and doing good. Eternity’s celebration is today’s confetti.

In Easter, we aim to cover regular moments with magic, to delight in what we know is true in a more intentional way.

So, here’s a short list and it needs your additions. These are just things we are doing at our house to cover regular moments with magic. They are both exceptional and ordinary. Some require planning and others are already in our schedule.

  • Throw parties. Every Sunday of Eastertide, we are having a backyard party where we invite friends, neighbors, strangers, and friends. If you want to bring your regular self, DM me for directions and then go find your party pants.
  • Go outside. We love listening to bird songs and finding snails, feeling small among tall trees and going on new adventures. God’s world is big and small and intricate and awesome and we want to see more of it!
  • Eat sweets. Normally, I’m a serious naysayer when it comes to sweet things. But, it is a love language my kids understand and I won’t be mad if they connect sweetness with Eastertide. Bake the cookies! Eat the s’mores! Pour the maple syrup! And we’ll say, “It’s Eastertide!”
  • Give invites. Basically, we want to invite people more, and not just current friends— to bonfires and popsicle runs, to neighborhood walks and sno cone stops, to church and to playdates and to sing-a-longs.
  • Sing and say celebration. We want the prayers we pray and the songs we sing to be especially full of joy. Extra, I think, is the name of the game. More sparkly celebration talk, more dance parties to celebration music. Start here and just try not to praise.
Posted on by Caroline 0

how I am making peace with the war against my dust

I forgot about the cross shaped ash above my eyes until gray shaded Zella’s right temple. My human wore off on her human and we sat snuggled, human dust together. She refused the ashes offered at the service, “One day,” she told me later, “when it’s that time, I’ll get some ashes on my forehead.” But she got them anyway, by way of her clinging nearness to me. Like Jesus, but with defiance and doubt.

I struggled to be completely present as we walked the short aisle to my “from dust you came and to dust you shall return” pronouncement. I spent all 14 steps whispering into Zella’s squirming cheek the reasons why we were doing this strange thing. But later, when motherhood wasn’t on my hip, I considered that Jesus became sin. His coming to earth was nothing like a charade, nothing pretend; God made Jesus to be sin (2 Corinthians 5:20, ESV), a crumbled corpse of human wretchedness so that we could enjoy the glorious perfection of God’s righteousness. Jesus became sin so that sin could die.

Jesus got so clinging near to me that He took on my worst thoughts, my worst days, my worst dust. And I am, yes, the child squirming on the hip – the defiant and doubtful toddler with skeptical eyebrows and too-loud voice.

The weight and the wild of this season pushes down and presses out, and I stretch my limbs in a contorted, desperate dance to make the mystery less ethereal; to feel the flesh and the blood and the dust of it on my skin and in my lungs and with my teeth.

“I love you and I want you to come here to my house and I don’t want you to die,” she said, “write that to her.” I filtered. I decided it wasn’t the kind of uplifting message we wanted for Zella’s library teacher, Miss Lisa. But as her crazy, fly-away (three day old) top knot bounced with squealing excitement to deliver the message, I knew I would have to tell Miss Lisa what I edited out. Zella does not want her to die and that is a wonderful thing to want for a person. A beautiful and pure and human thing to want for a person.

Maybe it is not ethereal yet, for her. Maybe she feels everything with her skin and lungs and teeth and I have long forgotten how.

I war against my dust. I am tempted to poof it like chalkboard erasers – to make much and little of it all at once, getting caught up and long-winded and concerned with the way the light hits it or how I can’t seem to see anything else. In Ecclesiastes, the word often translated as “meaningless” is used nearly 40 times to stress this human condition, but it is the Hebrew word “hevel,” which means: smoke or vapor. In Jesus, God again makes something out of nothing. He repeats the good work of Creation when he takes dust and makes it divine.

Jesus got so clinging near to get all my dust that I might get all His righteousness. 

Posted on by Caroline 0

how God can use my weakness to show He is steadfast

Every morning, I pull seven long curtains back on seven long windows in our front room so sunlight will stream into our home space. I press a pen onto paper. The swirling black ink in firm strokes is pre-dawn, pregnant therapy — an effort to convince myself there is order and purpose while the teapot whistles and I glory in moments alone. I wrestle the daily lectionary for something profound and desperately hope the Scripture gets in me good, better than yesterday because that didn’t go very well. 

Yes, we have seven windows. We live in Atlanta now, where they don’t come at such a premium. They are old and historic and dirty wonderful. The bars on the front remind me of Brooklyn, and I love that too.

The first few days and weeks of our new southern life, I felt lonely for shared Brooklyn apartment walls. I grieved the distance between front doors, the yards and the fences and the streets in between. The vast physical space followed me like a giant personal bubble – equal parts fresh air and far country where all the city used to sit. We arrived strangers in the South in late August and by early September I longed for crowded, colorful streets and common laundry establishments and an elevator full of neighbors. Homesick for shared space, I guess. 

I am 33 now. Yesterday was the magic day and hour that my body officially adjusted to the new numerals. Baby was due to join this side of the world as a celebration, but (surprise, surprise) Baby is stubborn. I get it Baby, take your time. I am not ready either. I mean, my belly is stretched to the max, so don’t get any bigger. I can still touch my toes but I sometimes need help getting out of bed. 

I had a small hope of knowing myself a little better before number two arrived — maybe even destroying some of the demons and facing more squarely the fears that fester secretly in the corners of my soul. I blame the complex emotions of moving across the country and nesting in a strange place and growing another mystery in my belly, but I know it is my human condition that remains the thorn in my stubborn side. I am still weak and weakness is a stage I will never outgrow.

And inside weakness – inside hot shower tears and endless “Oh, so, nice to meet you!” conversations, inside GPS disasters and unnecessary selfish implosions – I see you, God.

I have tried to conquer weakness all my life. At times in small, subtle ways and at other times with great flair and volume. Something about the daily lectionary reigns over my whitewashed importance and anchors me in a Strength I will never attain. It is slow, steady work that calmly lives inside the liturgical year – absent any flourish or savvy and present a faithful plodding toward the most important Easter season. The Bible readings rest confidently and quietly on each day just because the words are True. It is good for my weakness to read the Bible this way, I think. In my pen to paper reflections, I often read myself saying “It is good for me to be in the Word… I need more of the Word, more Truth.” I read back things like that and instead of emotion, there is confirmation.

Anyway, I do not feel less weak. Or less homesick or more nested or any sort of strong.

I am the same amount of weak I was at 13 – when I wrote chapter markings into my journal and in pencil because I thought it might be published someday and I’d need to make revisions. It’s always been a deceptive strength for Caroline Marie, a wrestling to establish where the roots are firmly planted and what control I can wield in the growing. And I see you, God.

Zella runs down the concrete steps of our front porch (remember, we live in Atlanta now) to chase the people passing by. “Hiiiiiiii!” and with a sloppy wave and a head tilt she goes on, “You can come over next time, if you want to!”

Then she runs back to me and says, “Friends, mama! Look, I say hi to them! And they can come overrrrrrrrrr next time!”

Everyone is all kinds of sweet about it and she lifts her face like a sunflower to the attention and the possible hope of new friendship. She chased one boy at the park when his mom determined it was time to leave and said, “It is hard to leave sometimes,” nodding her head like a little grandma who learned the lesson long ago. Her new friends’ names are folded into our conversations and our prayers as they show up to our campfires and library classes and long walks through the city’s center. 

And she is weak, too. Her weakness frustrates me because it looks so like mine – impatience and anger and selfishness. I speak slowly and calmly (a truly spiritual effort) and explain her crazy while inwardly I rebuke myself for all the same things.

None of the weakness is shaking out like I thought, like I maybe hoped it would – like some sort of magic skin shedding when you move from one city to another. But I see you, God. And somehow, I have not yet exasperated You or Your love.

You extend steadfast love in a way my weakness will never be able to match.

The lectionary is taking me through the Exodus story and I am seeing God’s steadfastness anew. In Hebrew, steadfast love is “chesed” and English fumbles to find a word equal in depth. It means something like “loving kindness” and “mercy” and “loyalty.” The entire meaning has articles written about it. I lean towards “loyalty,” mainly because Dick Lucas leans that way and I really respect his study of Scripture. Anyway, he pointed out that this kind of loyal love is mentioned in the Psalms 125 times and always in reference to God’s love for His people and never in reference to our love for Him.

I see you, God. 

I am too weak to respond in kind to your loyal love, to your steadfastness and your kindness. I’ll never be able to give You back the kind of glory that comes with the sun streaming in morning windows or the beauty of new neighbor thoughtfulness or the faithfulness of churches holding up Your Word as True. I am just too weak, all 33 years of me.

God chose inarticulate Moses, pursued the wayward Israelites, and moved us to the heart of Atlanta … not in spite of weakness but in order that He would be glorified for His strength.

I see you, God. And I’m probably going to forget this tomorrow, just FYI.

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the liturgy of ordinary time

I am keeping track of time, barely. Sweat drops and slices of fruit and sips from iced cold brew. Molasses and moonshine; slow, fast, strong, fragrant.

My fingers tickle the contours of her face. Feather soft eyebrows, a tender dip in the bridge of her nose, a jaw line that hides under squishy cheeks, and her little jut of a chin with a bumpy, brave scar. We started the tickle when she was tiny. Maybe it was one of those long car rides from Iowa to New York when I realized she loved all kinds of soft touch. Then it got bundled up with her night and nap routines and now she makes specific requests. “Tickle my hands, Mama.” 

Most days, I count it a privilege and the tickle is sweet and slow and savored. Every once in a while, I wrestle the inner voices arguing about my being subject to the tickle whims of a two year old as images of ‘real work’ roll through my mind. And then the tickles are rushed and tired and phoned in.

One night, mind drifting to our guests on the other side of the door, I rolled my eyes as my fingers flicked past nose, ears and cheeks hoping for a fast sleepfall. Then, she reached out her pudgy fingers and started her own tracing. “Tickle Mama’s eyebowwwws.” I didn’t know my shoulders were tense until they relaxed completely at her touch. “Tickle Mama’s nooooohs.” I hid my surprise behind the early summer darkness and gloried in the generous mind of my girl. And so, she traced my face and I felt the sweet and savored slowness of a rightly executed tickle. 

She fell asleep eventually. And we are still in Ordinary Time.

Ordinary Time – that long and feastless stretch following Advent and Pentecost on the church calendar where there is nothing to anchor or move us like the drama of the seasons before. I’ve been waking up for more of the ordinary minutes – the slower, silent ticks of the clock before the day feels fast forward.  The sun reaches its bright, Eastern arms through our bedroom window at 5 and 6 am and my mind will not stay tucked in sleep.

C.S. Lewis and Martin Laird meet somewhere in my mind now, as I pick up the remains of coloring projects and a trail of books leading back to a disheveled bottom shelf. That passage from The Weight of Glory muddles into view: 

War makes death real to us, and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality. I am inclined to think they were right.
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

When I first devoured these pages in college (oof, years ago), I felt lazy and disengaged in my slow moments. I prayed – Lord, please never find me inactive in the serious work of the Christian life. It is somber like war and I don’t want to be a mere civilian.

I wanted death to be real – all the awkward and cold angles of it – because I thought that meant I would do better at living.

Yesterday, I was bad at being alive. I transmorphed after those early, solitary moments of apartment sunshine into a turtle snail, a snurtle… or something that could escape inside itself without explanation. Except that I was in almost constant motion – in my mind and with my hands. I jostled household chores early and made plans for midday, but everything played like a private concert of dischord – all the notes were wrong and only I could hear the sound. 

I guess that was death – the awkward and cold angles of it – keeping me aware of my mortality and making me a human I did not recognize.

Because “aware of my mortality” means sin and demons and a herd of wolves looking like sheep – and all of that buried deep in my chest where the discordant symphony played its miserable song. This is who you are, human – short-tempered, impulsive, ungrateful, cynical, distressed. Living aware of my mortality is the real pits.

I read “A Grief Observed” after my brother died. Yesterday marked three years since that terrible phone call collapsed me on our apartment floor. I crawled inside the broken tenderness of C.S. Lewis’s grieving heart that pushed against death and all its agony for the living. Confused, angered, depleted, desperate, tired… not exactly motivated to greater motion, greater purpose. Just paralyzed by an invisible, writhing pain monster I could sometimes see. 

Your problem is, you don’t know who you are. Let me tell you who you are. You are a ray of God’s own light. You say you seek God, but a ray of light doesn’t seek the sun; it’s coming from the sun. You are a branch on the vine of God. A branch doesn’t seek the vine; it’s already part of the vine. A wave doesn’t look for the ocean; it’s already full of ocean.

Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land

My eyes stung when I woke this morning, evidence of what I couldn’t keep inside yesterday. I am still wearing the shirt that was soaked in snot less than 12 hours ago. We read the morning Psalm together and prayed as directed, “In the depths of our isolation we cry to you, Lord God; give light in our darkness and bring us out of the prison of our despair through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.“

And this small, crawling motion. This, rhythm of entering the Lord’s presence with my fickle humanity and asking impossible things, is my mortal pace. I am trapped, bound in this body and darkness, but God – completely outside this constraint – shares His glory and shines His light.

Lord, I have called daily upon you; 
I have stretched out my hands to you.
Do you work wonders for the dead?
Will the shades stand up and praise you?
Shall your loving-kindness be declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in the land of destruction?
Shall your wonders be known in the dark
or your righteous deeds in the land where all is forgotten? 
But as for me, O Lord, I will cry to you;
early in the morning my prayer shall come before you.

I paused and read again Psalm 88 – about wonders and darkness and the forgotten land. I don’t have an exegesis hiding in my head, but I know my heart wonders often if the Light can reach all the dark – even the places I don’t understand, the places language fails and nothing is right. I am tempted to filter the verses with a simpler, safer tone in my reading with Zella. But God’s Word does not allow it. The darkness is too stark to be sweet, ever. And His light is too glorious to be anything less than complete.

My mortality is not going away, but neither is God’s eternity. And He has somehow mysteriously linked the two in the death of His Son. And that somehow mysteriously informs my identity – yesterday in my transmorphed paralysis and today in my Light-infused slow motion. And that all somehow makes sense in His economy.

I most hated that yesterday felt ordinary. I hated that oatmeal still cooked the same and the stroller was still cumbersome and the storm still changed plans. I hated forgetfulness and poorly timed naps and the innocence that was attached at my hip and in my belly. I hated the ordinary-ness so thoroughly I could not think of anything else.

Because death is not ordinary.

But, here we are – positioned still inside those dreadfully unimpressive words – Ordinary Time. Like the stretch of time after a dramatic Pentecost… the clock creeps on and the days stretch without celebration and I am mortal. But, God in His great mercy, reminds me I am His and He has conquered death and dark and despair in the kingdom come. He is Light and His mystery brings the morning sun that dried my puffy eyes in ordinary time.

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when identity is anchored outside of worry

It started like a subtle uneasiness, bubbling somewhere between my bulging belly and my disappearing collarbone. I am not nervous, exactly. Lost, treading, hidden, furrowed, heavy… but not exactly nervous. Whatever it is beats in the blood stretching out toward my fingertips.

“I am alive,” this baby reminds me with a flutter. I watch the rise and the fall, the ebb and the flow of the new life hidden in me that is starting to hide my toes when I look down. It must be so dark in there, like the sea or outer space or the deep underground. Someone once told me that my emotional state affects the babies I carry. But then, I was pregnant in grief and birthed a joy child. So, even if this baby is perceiving my emotional waves or my pregnant negligence, there must still be hope.

Can this baby feel my strange worry, hovering just above the first home God is building around his/her life? Or maybe the refuge inside this womb is absolute – a formidable, soft fortress against whatever ails me on this side of birth.

“By the way, you are evil. That is half the gospel. That’s half the gospel, you are nothing.” – Tim Keller

Um, thanks Keller. That’s like one of those demotivational posters, but way worse. I need affirmation and approval and good vibes. The antidote to strange worry, I am almost certain, is not a giant wa-wa-wa.

Baby is twirling now. Oh, little one – does your home feel like a safe place to dance? And swim? And dream? And be? Do you feel like you are nothing inside there? Does the whole or the half of the gospel reach you?

Do you have my heart condition already – the one where you constantly need approval and good vibes only? In a talk on Galatians 6, Keller calls this heart condition “empty of glory,” which is to be desperate for recognition and affirmation. Because, according to Romans 1 and 2, deep down we know we were made to serve and honor God and nothing else.

It seems unreasonable for the baby inside me to be empty of glory while also being so close to it, knitted and formed and covered by Glory Himself. But then, I guess, the knowing is knitted in, too. We don’t begin to know we were made to serve and honor God. It’s a knowing that’s just there like blood and cells, I guess.

Imprinted on us, between the DNA and eternity, is a knowing that God is full of glory and we are empty of it.

But back to that demotivational, half-gospel before pregnancy brain unravels me completely. I am nothing – disappearing dust, withering grass, a whole year of my life passes like a sigh (Psalm 90).

And I feel the dissonance. It is 6 am and I am hungry. My body is growing in mass around this baby. All the cells on top of cells amount to something or my eyes and all my clothes are playing bad tricks. Also, this strange worry. Something chemical or physical or emotional or maternal is making my brain and my heart crazy. It is not nothing.

Galatians 6:3, “For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”

So, I guess this is different – this nothingness. At the root of things, deep in the underground of it, I want to know who I am and (maybe more) that who I am is important. And, in this particular moment, I want to be seen and recognized and known for all the complicated, strange worry that I cannot explain. I am not even sure how to ask for this kind of knowing – for something to crawl into the space between belly and collarbone and sort it all out. 

 “Nothing will heal your heart except God looking at you and saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” Keller says. We are wired to want to hear those words. And not just from a Prime Minister or the Pope or Bey. We are wired to desperately want to hear those words from our Creator because His approval upon us matters more than anything else. And in our sinful search to find approval, fill the empty glory, and feel that we matter, we see a distorted view of creation. Our eyes are too clouded to see the people who need care.

Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

I can’t see to serve the toddling dancer who just dunked her cookie in milk before leaving it in a mess on the plate. I have no vision for friends and neighbors, each with bodies full of burdens, and even my husband fades behind my need. I cannot fulfill the law of Christ – to lay down my life for others. I cannot serve because I am in the middle of a constant search for who I am, hoping that who I am is important.

I still can’t find the words for this worry, but (praise Jesus) the words, the whole words, of the Gospel have found me.

And it is offensive. It is offensive to everyone, because everyone is empty and looking to be filled. Everyone is looking for affirmation – assurance that we are something and something important. Ideally, we want this kind of affirmation without God getting involved. We want to be so much something that we have enough to give away. But not a single person, even the most generous, has enough substance to serve out of abundance instead of need. 

But, God.

And Jesus. And the cross. The Gospel uncovers all the ways we look for recognition and approval in other things, but then it offers Jesus – our only hope of feeling the full approval we were designed to crave. Because, in Christ and “at the heart of creation and redemption,” says Keller, is Jesus saying “my life for yours.” At the cross, He embodied love in sacrifice. And, in Christ alone, we see past our need to be something so that we can offer all of who Christ is to the people around us. Real abundance.

Is this strange worry a tangled mess of approval seeking madness? I actually have no idea. But I do know that it is my human heart condition to swim inside it – to let it define, even a little bit, who I am right now and what I need. It is human to convince myself that, because I can’t explain it, it is incurable and requires endless and special attention. 

There is no darkness – anywhere – that is resistant to the light of Truth. The cross makes the midnight shine like noonday (Psalm 139). It anchors my identity outside today’s strange worry and enables me to offer abundance when I am completely empty. The cross is my only boast and battle cry, because apart from it I am nothing.

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how to win while losing at motherhood

“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 1:14

She clung to my shoulders with her arms and knees, her neck wrapped on mine as the fountain misted our backs and absorbed our squeals. As soon as the wind changed, she anticipated the next mist and around the Bailey Fountain we went – a blurred, bouncing spectacle for the tourists posing in front of the mysterious, mythological scene. The sun beat down just as the mist dewed our faces and there are no photos of our delight. It lived so perfectly in that moment, just after 12 noon on a Tuesday.

Her little, tumbling giggle surprised us both. It was almost too generous – too full and wild. And, if I was guessing, I would say this is a little bit why little children can come to Jesus. 

This full and wild generosity of a child is unrestrained – like their Maker, ready to unleash lavish goodness in response to beauty and in the middle of delight.

There are many ways an adult can ‘become like a child’ and none of them are so easy. I have moments, like the fountain, where delight washes over and nothing ‘adult’ matters. But, most moments, I am aware of my unfortunate maturity. I squirm in skin that has worked hard to shake free of dependence – to get established and known and significant. But, the world is stingy with delight, starved of any true kind. All my slow (and unsteady) progress toward adulthood often feels like chasing after the wind. Meaningless. Culture doesn’t help me get past this curse – I’m constantly reminded that my life is supposed to be linear, that my work is supposed to build and progress and flourish into an evolving and important identity.

There is another baby bulging out of my belly, did I mention that? That’s very adult. The second time around is different for all the obvious reasons, but also because I am not in my first months of marriage and my brother did not just die. But my favorite part has been watching Zella’s sweet affection grow with the size of my belly. She leans in to sing her own made up songs. She tells the baby about all the excitement of this world (mostly noting the baby will get to drink milk). She perceives when the baby is awake and asleep. I’m glad she is paying attention; her wonder pulls me in.

Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;

I think about that stanza often. It plays in my head without invitation and all my neurons rush to find its melody. Maybe the elusive “winning” is the undercurrent of my everyday, the obvious wanting in every disrupted simple task. The edge of the full dustpan tips on the trashcan and empties on the floor. Not winning. The internet refreshes on days of blog rambles and doesn’t save a word. Not winning. The laundromat increases their prices 8 quarters more than all your cash and the nearest free ATM is 10 blocks away and your potty-trained lady just made a puddle by washer number 4. Not winning.

But God undoes win-lose scenarios – actually disappears them, and not because my daily losses are unimportant or irrelevant. But because he cares so intimately about the sweeping and the creating and the laundry, that He redeems and redefines winning completely. His measurement is an altogether different scale, interstellar dimension status. If not, the “right man on our side” would have been one big loser.

Were not the right man on our side,
a man of God’s own choosing

I get now why He let the little children come. They aren’t so wrapped up and weighted down with losses. Or, at least they aren’t keeping such close track. Or, they get His measurement system – where delight can disrupt the scales in the middle of a series of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad moments. If I’m honest, I need a million of those blurred, bouncing moments – chasing fountain mist with a giggling toddler. I need almost constant reminders of the different win-lose dimension scale.

In a recent talk (which, BTW is winning), Jen Wilkin said, “Human love is based on need. God’s love is not. His covenant stands because it is in no way dependent on me.”

Because God is altogether different, in being and knowing and doing, He is hope against wind chasing. Even as we become like little children – embracing their delight and dependence – we must be supremely aware of His absolute goodness and absolute other-ness. He is true and present in a windstorm and on a still day. In our struggle against a world of devils, it is His truth that triumphs through us – not because of all of our wind chasing, but because He is good. That is why He can be so generous, why His generosity never changes with temperaments or time.

His absolute goodness is in Him like our infinite humanity is in us.

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