Tag: Christian life

adventures in stairwells

One of the strange and beautiful things about human nature is the way grief and sorrow can live next to joy and laughter. I don’t mean to say things that grieve us also make us laugh. I don’t mean to say that at all.

What I mean is the way one can get into a helpless state of the giggles on the same day one feels helpless about the state of things in the world.

I say all this because yesterday was my first day to “have court.” This is what all my co-workers say when they go to the courthouse, so I say it now too. When we “have court” we sit behind the DHS worker and the child’s attorney, available for information about the case.

It all sounds really serious because it is. You would be shocked to know what children face. You probably don’t want to know any more than that – just that it’s devastating.

So, here I am driving around downtown Des Moines looking for public parking so that I can “have court.” I’ve had problems with parking garages before, but I wrongly assumed Des Moines would be an easier animal to wrestle. I found a parking garage in plenty of time, but when I slung my briefcase over my shoulder and flew down the stairwell I decided I should be in a hurry.

Coming out of the parking garage was like someone had spun me around and set me down facing a different direction (which is actually exactly what a parking garage does). I didn’t know which way was North and what historical building to walk toward.

So, I picked one and hoped it was the courthouse. I got close enough to see “POLK COUNTY” written on it but as I was walking up the steps, a lady taking a smoke break said, “You don’t look too happy to be coming here. But, hey at least it’s not the courthouse!”

Yeah.

So, I walked in one door and out the other where I promptly asked a parking meter officer to point me in the direction of the courthouse. She looked at me, smiled with all kinds of pity, and said, “Just walk up Court Avenue right there and you’ll run right into it.”

Right. Court Avenue, silly me.

So, I got to court with time to spare (thanks to my enormous cushion I operate with due to my Latin tendencies). Everything went well enough and when I left I felt good about things.

And then I met the sidewalk and realized retracing my steps would lead me in all kinds of circles. Everything looked familiar because I had passed all of downtown on my adventure to the courthouse.

So, I did what any new-to-downtown would do – I walked briskly in the direction of a hunch with my briefcase slung over my shoulder and my heels clicking professionally on the pavement. I saw that nice parking meter lady again and gave her the grandest smile.

And then I walked in every parking garage stairwell I came to until I found the one that was just right. I can’t be sure how many stairwells I walked up, but I kept the brisk pace so anyone around thought I was going someplace important. I finally found the stairwell I was searching for – one with no numbers, partially inside/partially outside, and with my little car Eddie waiting on the fourth or fifth floor (no numbers).

And so my adventures in stairwells gave a different kind of ending to my first court experience – proof that a helpless state of giggles can live inside the helpless state of the world.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Posted on by Caroline 2

if I have to sell my soul

“This is *Christmas*. The season of perpetual hope. And I don’t care if I have to get out on your runway and hitchhike. If it costs me everything I own, if I have to sell my soul to the devil himself, I am going to get home to my son.” (Kate McCallister to the Scranton ticket agent in “Home Alone”)
Do you remember that scene? We see the raw desperation of a mom who loves her son with a love that says crazy things. Why do I bring it up, other than the fact that Home Alone ranks as one of the best movies of this season?
Because it reminds me of Paul’s desperate words for the Jews in Romans 9:
I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit—that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 9:1-5 ESV)

If you can’t hear Paul’s heart of love in this passage, read it until you do. The truth he speaks about has taken hold of him in such a way that he cannot bear to see others believe lies. He had “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” in his heart. This is not just a movement Paul joined or an experience or a short-lived passion. His heart got ill over the lost.

If you are not in anguish over the lost around you this morning, consider God’s great mercy in calling them to Himself. Consider that as one child chooses Him, she passes from a life of separation from Christ into a life of union with Christ.

Wow.

The knowledge impresses me into silence, but it also motivates. There are many motivators to do the good deeds God has prepared for us (Ephesians 2:10). We can be motivated by anguish and sorrow to share with urgency, but we can also be motivated by joy and gratitude to share with patience. Both motivators come from an understanding of the crazy love we’ve been shown. Crazy love speaks crazy things. 

Let’s be willing to speak crazy things as a result of God’s love for us and in us.

I’m not petitioning for the words “Merry Christmas” to be shared at the checkout counter. Nope, I’m talking about getting on our knees to ask for crazy love so that we can open up our hearts to share that crazy love with others. 

Imagine saying Kate McCallister’s words about your neighbors, your co-workers, your family, your best friend. Does it feel awkward? Might we ask God to grow that kind of crazy love in us so we can pray as Paul did?

Christmas is a miracle. How are you going to tell the story?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy 

Posted on by Caroline 0

oh, how I need You

Today, I need my Savior because there is nothing else to need. Sometimes that need looks like a monster and sometimes it looks like a paper airplane and sometimes it looks like a hideaway. But, it’s always there – my need.

Today I am reminded that all I need is Christ and all I can give is Christ.

Words fail and the world falls apart and I need.
I need, I need, I need.

And the world aches with need, too.

Posted on by Caroline 2

counting blessings, and what to do when there are too many

We sang, crowded in concentric circles around the basement with my mom pounding out the hymn on the piano. We sang the familiar song that has accompanied every Thanksgiving I can remember – even the Thanksgivings where I have been far from this little countryside gathering. It seems that counting blessings got into my bloodstream real early and has never left.

When we had little, we counted. When we had much, we counted. When we struggled, we counted. When we prevailed, we counted.

The blessings always seemed to outnumber our math, so we counted by song and we’re still counting.

I can’t put my finger on the emotion hanging in that long skinny room this past Thursday, but every year it seems to swell for the new little ones and the ones married in. The emotion is heavier than the scent of turkey and stuffing and Aunt Jane’s coconut pecan pie. The emotion of counting blessings is a heavy one.

I wonder if we count our blessings like someone counts a harvest… and we’re accountable for what happens after it’s been stored away.

Sometimes I find myself getting caught up in the counting, overwhelmed by what I’ve been given. I’m drawn into thanks and into joy as I reflect on these gifts – as I look on the storehouses of blessings that are bent to bursting. And as I get caught up, I get stuck.

I stop at counting and thanking.

This year, I’m feeling the Lord asking me to count my blessings so that I know exactly what I am giving back to Him. It is not enough to be thankful. It is not enough to get overwhelmed and weepy at the Lord’s provision. It is not enough.

Thanksgiving and joy are part of the journey into greater joy and greater thanksgiving as we count the blessings as they go out from our possession. In the same way that we count the blessings we’ve been given, we must also count the blessings as we give. Because we were never meant to hold fast to anything but Christ.

I have so many blessings to count, but having many blessings is never the problem. The problem is my hoarding what has been counted.

As I read through Kevin DeYoung‘s Hole in Our Holiness, I came to his reflection on this passage from Timothy 4 and specifically verse 15, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.”

I thought of all the ways I make excuses for my slow progress on the holiness road and the excuses I allow others to make for me. I thought of the conversations in my head where I’ve said, “But you aren’t making hardly any money right now…” and “No one really expects you to give…” and “No one really knows your schedule, anyway…”

And I thought about how my beliefs about blessings sometimes stretch a great distance from my behavior with blessings.

Command and teach these things. Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

1 Timothy 4:11-16 ESV (emphasis mine)

Counting blessings is only the first of a two-part transfer. The second part is the way you transfer the blessings to others. This I must practice in a way that my progress is noticeable. I must make my behavior – my speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity – match my beliefs in a way that transfers blessings into the lives of others.

I’m not discounting the ways I have succeeded in blessing others – by God’s grace I hope it does happen. But, we have never arrived at a final destination on the holiness road, so we must keep journeying.

And when my pack gets full of blessings, I know I must transfer the joyful load so I may travel light.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 1

sick for home

I’m not the kind of sick that needs a doctor. My stomach is flu-free and my nose breathes easy. It’s not an ear infection, so a prescription antibiotic won’t do. It’s not migraines or measles or malaria. It’s none of those things.

But it sunk into my soul last week, sitting across from my mentor in a local coffee shop downtown: I’m sick.

We were talking about being lonely in a crowded room and feeling distant when people are close. We were wrestling the word loneliness and trying to make it mean something else – something that we felt even when life is everything but lonely. And then she wondered aloud if we are longing for our forever home. And there sunk the sickness – all gathered up in my tired bones. I’m homesick.

Sometimes, the mess of sin that pales in comparison to future glory makes one long for that future. Sometimes, that longing can feel like loneliness. It can mean feeling out of place everywhere. That longing can be a tired but eager white flag stretching up to break the battle-weary skyline. Sometimes we get homesick.

Maybe when you are close to the battle, you have a more urgent desire for the other side of victory even as you are fighting. Weird thing is, sometimes stories from the frontline can have the same effect. There are never too few stories about sin – they monopolize the headlines and scatter themselves everywhere. We fail and others fail us. We hurt and others hurt us. It’s a big, black dreary hole that feels lonely from the inside and lonely from the outside. But it’s not loneliness, really. It is a homesickness for peace – for a place where relationship is rightly restored.

And that place of future glory set in my heart will also be the anchor for my gratitude today. The Lord has given me this breath for a purpose, but He’s let me breathe it with eternity in view.

Sometimes sick for home is an okay way to feel.

Posted on by Caroline 1

not lonely, mostly

I am not lonely, mostly.

I mostly have full days and full thoughts and full plans. Mostly.

Over and underneath all this fullness, like a needle and thread, is sometimes woven a very strange loneliness. There is no reason for it, or at least no reason I will admit. The Lord has made my life full. The over-the-top, splashing-out-on-all-sides kind of full. I can find a hundred things to love every morning before I get out of bed – before coffee and before my heels click out the door. A hundred is a lot and it could probably be more if my mind worked better that early.

Maybe the weather makes me this way – thoughtfully theorizing with my cups full of tea and thinking about… well, me. Lonely is really a very selfish state of mind and that’s probably why I won’t admit to having one.

It usually works out because I am not lonely, mostly.

Then that little needle and thread starts to weaving and I end up with a patchwork quilt I can curl up inside.

Posted on by Caroline 2

marveling at the power of affections

“If I was as busy as my daughter, I wouldn’t find time to sleep. She’s got 3 dogs, 5 cats, works full-time and goes to school full-time,” the portly old man said as he stood at the counter, “I usually don’t come here in the afternoon, but she said she wanted coffee and so I said okay and here I am.”

“Yeah,” the barista replied, “It seems like it’s hard for anyone to find time these days.”

“Well, I’m retired,” he said, “So I don’t do much a nothing.”

And there he was in the coffee shop waiting on his daughter’s coffee order. Because that’s what he chose to do with all his time doing nothing. I don’t know if that little exchange is significant in its reflection of our culture (schedules, family dynamics, consumerism and all that jazz). But I do know that something struck me as I eavesdropped.

This kind man was retired, well-fed, and eager to tell a stranger about one thing: his daughter. I got the impression he didn’t see a lot of her, because of her dogs and cats and two-timing full-time gigs. I’m not sure their paths cross all that often. For some reason, on this day, the daughter called her dad to say she would have time to stop by for coffee in between all her running around.

I just imagine him hurriedly pulling his cell phone from his hip while simultaneously rousing himself from his afternoon nap. And then I imagine his haste to get out the door when she said the words, “I might have time to have a cup of coffee…”

I imagine all this because you could hear the affection in his voice (I couldn’t see his face, but I imagine it beaming) for his daughter and the moments he would spend with her, even if they were fleeting.

Well, I guess I am just marveling at the power of our affections. It doesn’t matter how our stories read today – how different they are or how similar. What does matter is that we are made in the image of a relational God who has designed us with these affections towards one another that would point to Himself.

Today, I am marveling at the power of affections.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 4

safe place

Sometimes, it is best to step into the safest place. And sometimes the safe place breaks free from the dark of the night and splatters golden sun on your face.

I was a stranger the day He called my name but now He calls me friend. A wider, deeper, purer love I will never know. Only in the safe place of His love is laughter unleashed and only in this safe place are dancing feet freed.

That’s the place I’m living this morning.

A laugh-dancing place.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

 

Posted on by Caroline 0

the naked state of nescience

“If you know what a man’s doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he’s doing, keep behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when he stops; travel as slowly as he. Then you may see what he saw and may act as he acted.”

Wise words spoken by the character Valentin in G.K. Chesterton’s novel The Complete Father Brown Mysteries. He is tracking a notorious thief, Flambeau, and explaining to two policemen why he chose to track the thief in a bus instead of in a much faster taxi.

Aristide Valentin is Chief of the Paris Police, but in this particular thief-chasing caper, he didn’t have any clue where to look. He was stuck in what he called the “naked state of nescience.” I like how he is so articulate about his lack of knowledge – I guess sometimes we need to sound impressive and confident even about our ignorance. I’m most interested, though, in Valentin’s method in chasing the thief once he realizes how little he knows.

His method? “If you want to guess what he’s doing, keep behind him.”

I’ve been trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus and I think I’ll take a cue from Valentin on this one.

I’m not about to propose I know enough of what Jesus is doing to get in front of Him, but I’ll confess I’ve done it before. I’ve run ahead, made plans, entertained assumptions and arrived at conclusions. The more I study the life of Jesus, the more I think Valentin’s tracking tactic is the way to understand my Savior.

Because I seem to always be in the naked state of nescience when it comes to doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God. So, in my searching today, I will remember:

Keep behind him.
Travel as slowly as He.
See what He sees so I can act as He would act.

 

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

 

 

Posted on by Caroline 4

fruit is meant to be eaten

 

My uncle sent me a text not too long ago after I asked him about the farms in southwest Iowa. It read, “Many mouths will be empty in the world, I fear.” The summer has been a big, ugly drought here in the Midwest.

And that has me thinking about provision.

There’s no way around it – we need food. We might be confused about how much we need, but the fact that we need it is not up for debate. We are wired to need food.

The reality that we depend on food is something God uses every day to remind us of our dependence on Him. When we have daily bread, we are thankful. When we lack daily bread, we remember that He is the bread of life. Whether we are hungry or full, God is always the Provider.

As I think about the fruit produced in John 15, I wonder what happens to all of the produce. Have you ever thought of that? God is the vine and we are the branches. If we remain in Him, we will bear MUCH FRUIT. It is clear that God is the Provider – what branch can produce fruit separate from the vine? But, for the person who remains in the Lord, what is to become of the fruit he/she produces? Does it just accumulate and then fall to the ground under the fruit-heavy branches?

Fruit is meant to be eaten, at least where I come from. I love the summer months that bring blueberries and sweet bing cherries. I love the fall months that bring Honeycrisp apples and grapes and pomegranates. I love the winter months that bring out the canned peaches and strawberry jams. I love these fruits because they are delicious.

So, what if we thought of the fruit on our branches in the same way? What if, as we are remaining in the Lord – knowing Him, finding out what pleases Him, and delighting to do those things – we are a fruit factory? 

What if God serves up fruit through our lives so that others can taste and see that HE IS GOOD? Isn’t this what it says in Matthew 5:16, “Let your light shine bright before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise the Father in heaven.”?

As we remain in Him, we cannot help but produce fruit – delicious, ripe, fresh-off-the-vine fruit. Now, if we could just find ways to serve others with this precious produce. Our fruit is not meant to rot on the branch, but to be shared and enjoyed!

The fruit produced by branches connected to the vine is meant to be eaten by others, enjoyed by others, and served to others. Let this be the way we handle the fruit of the Spirit.

Posted on by Caroline 0