Is the Waiting Really Over….

It is hard to believe how much has happened in a year. As I sit here and think about spending tonight in worship at First UMC Pasadena, a place that has quickly embraced me as one of their own over the last 6 months, I think about where I was a year ago, celebrating Christmas in Florida with my family and having no clue what 2014 would bring. There was so much anxiety for me then as I thought about the future and not having a job, not knowing where I was going to live or if I would find a place to serve as a deacon. Looking back I realize that there were so many things at that point in my life that I couldn’t know. I couldn’t know I would find a home at First UMC Pasadena. I couldn’t know that I would be living on my own in a beautiful apartment furnished by the generosity of beloved friends. I couldn’t imagine all the wonderful persons who have come into my life in the past year and how dear they would become or the experiences I would share with beloved family and friends.

As I reflect on other moments in my life too, I remember that this isn't the first time where there were things I couldn’t have known that God had in store for me. And I remember the anxiety, the worry, the not knowing, and the waiting… And so as I sit and reflect about the end of Advent, this time of waiting and preparation for the birth of Jesus, I realize that in many ways nothing has changed. We all still sit in this in between time of the already and the not yet. There are still so many things that we simply cannot know about our future at this point in time. And for some strange reason that gives me hope. Hope in the unexpected arrival of a baby in the unlikeliest of places. Hope in the fact that God moves in (strange) ways we never could have imagined. Hope that there are so many amazing things that are still to be lived and experienced for all of us. Things that we wouldn’t know how to dream up even if we tried.

In some ways, tonight, with the lighting of candles and the singing of carols, and tomorrow, with the opening of presents, the wait will be over. Christmas will have arrived. And yet, we will all still be waiting. Waiting for everything that we couldn’t possibly know from where we stand right now… And somehow that brings me great peace. God is not done creating yet. God is still about the business of forgiveness and reconciliation. God has not given up on us.

And that is indeed good news on earth….

An Advent Prayer...

God of hope… Emmanuel… be with us in our Advent journey to the stable and beyond.

Be with us in our waiting, for new life to come, for all lives to matter, for hope to show up once again in the most unexpected of places.

Be with us as we meet together… to celebrate life, to protest, to eat, to laugh, to vision and dream of a better future.

Be with us in our worship… as we remember and give thanks for the stories that make us who we are, and for all that you have done and continue to do.

Be with us in our sadness… help us to not be afraid to name the fears, pains and wounds that lay in the deepest places of our hearts. Help us draw them out into the light of your healing love.

Be with us in our travelling… in our coming and going, and in the busyness of our daily lives. Show up and surprise us with fresh winds of grace that cause us to slow down and be present…to you and to others.

Be with us as we pray… when words fail us and we don’t know what to say, when thoughts clutter our minds and distractions make it hard to listen, and when our stubborn hearts don’t want to reach out to you…

Be with us God, as we journey to the stable and beyond. Prepare us to embrace the one who is waiting for us there. Give us eyes to see, hearts to receive, and courage to follow the one who leads us out of the stable and into your kingdom…

Amen.

In Search of Healing

It is hard to believe that it is already December. Once again Thanksgiving has flown by and we are already in the midst of busy preparations for Christmas. Presents to buy, houses to decorate, parties to plan for, etc. etc. And in spite of how exhausting this season of Christmas can be, I have to confess that there is something comforting about the busyness of the holidays, or about any day, really. Keeping myself busy and distracted, I can avoid having to stop and take a deeper look at myself and ask, “how is it with your soul today?” That is a tough question and I would venture to say, most of us don’t dare stop and ask ourselves this because we are perhaps quite afraid of the answer. If we stop long enough to let our souls speak to us in the silence, think of what they might say- I am lonely. I don’t feel that I am enough. I am not happy. I want out of my marriage. I am terrified of what would happen if people knew the real me. I feel like a failure. I think God is disappointed in me.

         And so it is easier to stay busy, to turn to noise and distractions to keep us distanced from ourselves and these louder voices that clamor for our attention. It is no surprise that with technology and the internet on our phones, so many of us have become addicted to having something constantly at our reach to distract our minds whenever we have to wait, at the grocery store, at the doctor’s office, even when we are with other people. We are afraid of what that little voice might say to us if we ever became quiet enough to listen, and so we don’t. And yet, as scary as it may be, healing can only begin once we gather up the courage to stop and give name to the brokenness that lies so close to each of our hearts. Only then the road to wholeness can begin.

         I remember when I was a little girl my mom would always tell me it was okay to be sad, that I didn’t have to hide my sadness or be embarrassed by it. As an adult, I realize now, how often we run to other things to make us feel better immediately instead of just sitting with our sadness, even for just a little while, facing our grief, our wounds, our humanity. Instead we turn to food, alcohol, busyness or anything to escape facing the pain or sadness that lies hidden, yet so close to the surface that if we dared touch it, we fear it would overwhelm us.

         And when we finally do have enough courage to face our pain, our sense of loss, our fears, how many of us feel like the psalmist, crying out to God, “how long, O Lord, How long… Will you forget me forever? How long must I bear this pain? When will my soul stop aching?”* Perhaps, as the writer of Lamentations, we feel that God has shut out our prayers even when we call for help, that God has filled us with bitterness and tribulation and that maybe we are to blame for feeling this way, that we are being punished. We are bereft of peace and it must be our own fault. I should have known better that to open myself up to love, again. I should have been stronger, or more careful. I should have been a better wife, or a better friend. I should have worked harder. I have no one to blame for this but myself.

         Whenever we face the pain of loss or grief, our most natural response is to ask why. Our souls clamor for an answer. A reason. If I knew this had a bigger purpose then I could endure it. And in the absence of any definitive sense or reasoning behind the suffering we see in the world or even in our own lives, we find well meaning people reciting kind phrases that don’t really seem to help much in the current moment: “don’t worry, everything happens for a reason”; “I guess God must have needed another angel”; or “God is just testing you to make you stronger.”

         I remember a seminary professor of mine telling us a story of a couple in a church he once served. The wife had been estranged from her parents ever since she and her husband had been married due to misunderstandings between her parents and husband. Tragically, several years later, within a few months of each other, both her husband and her father both died due to a car accident and a heart attack. In their grief, she and her mother, now both widows, were able to reconcile their differences and became close once again. The wife told her pastor, my professor, many months later, “I guess that’s why my husband and dad had to die, so me and my mom could have a relationship again.” Unfortunately, he said, all too often, our tendency is to mistake the consequences of suffering for the cause of suffering. When we see the good things that God has been able to redeem out of our pain, we assume that God caused our suffering in the first place in order for those things to occur. But as the writer of lamentations reminds us, God does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.* We live in a broken world and as a result of that brokenness we will inevitably experience pain, immeasurable grief, and hopelessness from time to time. Our promise here is not that God only causes bad things simply so that good things will happen eventually, but that there is no situation beyond the scope of God’s healing and redemption. No matter what pain we are facing in our lives, there are always these two words: “and yet”… The writer of Lamentations says, “my soul is continually bowed down in me… and yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’

         We are not promised a life without pain, but we are promised a life of presence, a savior that decided to become Emmanuel, God with us, to walk in our grief, to experience our wounds and our pain. To cry the same tears we cry and to sit with us until the morning comes, no matter how long that takes. This is why we grieve with hope. This is how we have the strength to face those hidden wounds that we too often run away from. Because God grieves with us and walks with us; and will continue to do so until the pain subsides. God is still at work. He isn’t done yet and so neither are we.

*Psalm 13/ Lamentations 3:1-9;14-26; 31-33

To the Woman in the Dressing Room in Target

I have to confess that it almost impossible for me to go into Target without even briefly meandering through their clothing section. And yesterday was no different. I was in the dressing room when I heard this monologue taking place in the dressing room beside me.

[Woman, exasperated and seemingly in tears]: Oh no, I can’t believe this is happening.  Ugh. Why, why? Seriously, this is so depressing.

After a few seconds of wondering what the tragedy was that someone was telling her over the phone, I found my answer (it shouldn’t have even taken me that long): she was trying on clothes and they didn’t fit. A bit overdramatic perhaps… but we have all been there.

Several minutes later as I paused to peruse another section, I hear her again, on the other side of a display.

[Same woman, still exasperated, no tears, on the phone to a loved one]: I am just depressed. I can’t believe I am this disgusting. Seriously, why do I do this to myself? Why do I even eat? I am just gross.

At this point I was a little more taken aback for two reasons.

One- Her 6 year old daughter was right next to her (blissfully playing in and around the bras and panties- hopefully oblivious to her mother’s self deprecating rants). It broke my heart to see the cycle once again perpetuated of a young girl inheriting the toxic and self-loathing messages of an “imperfect body” from older women in her life.

Two- the bigger issue that made me so uncomfortable was that I recognized that the things she was saying about herself were so harsh, so unkind, almost violent in a sense. And then it dawned on me…

She wasn’t saying anything out loud that I haven’t said a hundred times before to myself, in the privacy of my own inner thoughts, after walking out of a dressing room or standing in front of a mirror.  But there was something about hearing it out loud from someone else that was just shocking. I would never say these unkind words to someone else, to someone I loved, and hearing them verbalized made me realize just how toxic and violent these seemingly flippant words can be.

Brené Brown calls these shame voices- those little voices inside our heads that tell us we aren’t “enough”; those inner dialogues that break us down and keep us chained to the shame of feeling that we are lacking, that there is always something more and better that we could be, that there is a fatal flaw about our character, our body, our psyche that makes us un lovable and unwanted.  We all have them, although mine probably sound different than yours do.

I have found that at times shame voices like to run rampant in my head, as if on repeat and perhaps the only way to make them stop is to verbalize them. To expose them for the unkind, harsh and terrible lies that they are. When I verbalize my shame voices, when I say out loud to a trusted loved one, through their eyes I see how unnecessarily harsh I am being with myself. I am reminded that being a kind and gentle and loving person starts with extending grace to your very own self, forgiving yourself, trusting at the deepest level that you are loved beyond your faults and failures. That’s the pesky thing about shame voices, or any of the lies that we believe about ourselves. They gain power in silence. And perhaps the only way to diffuse them, to expose them, is to listen to them out loud, or imagine saying them to a loved one. My guess is that you wouldn’t be able to.

So to the woman at Target, I don’t know your name but I heard you. I heard your shame voices (and mine) loud and clear. And if I could go back I would probably tell you (and myself) that I think you are beautiful, that you are enough. Regardless of size or shape or anything else. You are loved beyond your ability to comprehend, and that starts by loving yourself. So be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself for being human and imperfect and embrace the life you have before you.

Ps. Your daughter thinks you are beautiful too.  And right now she just wants you to play hide and seek with her in the clothing racks...