Category Archives: spirituality

March 21, 2013 · 11:50 am

The Fear

35weeksBW

Last Friday, I made a list of things people have said to me recently about my pregnancy.  Most of them were about my size, but one was just this:

“Come out, Baby Dwight!”

Before this past weekend, my response to that was a (sometimes aggressive) “No! Don’t!”

I thought it was because I had such a long to-do list of pre-baby practicalities staring me in the face, but over the weekend, something became clear to me: it was because of The Fear.

Saturday night, I got into bed and pulled out the little journal where I write letters to Adlai: things I want him to know when he’s older, things I want to remember myself.  I felt heavy as I wrote, and before I knew it, I was telling him I was scared.  And I was sad.  And I was mourning the end of this season of him and me.

Simon walked in to me scribbling hard and crying harder, and he asked what was wrong, and that was it.

It all came out.  Stuff I didn’t even know I felt, fears I’d been walking around with, holding onto, afraid to name.

I was scared.

Scared of how I’m going to cope with two small children.  Scared Adlai will feel abandoned.  Scared I won’t have what it takes.

Scared of having a horrendous labour.  Scared this baby will be sick, like Adlai was, and will have to go to the neo-natal unit and I will have to worry and cry over him, like I did for Adlai.

I was scared that the good God had done in Adlai’s first year of life – the healing He did in our marriage through us walking through the fire of sleepless nights and not communicating and learning to love each other and Adlai all at once – that it would be undone.

I was scared that the good God had done in my heart – the healing He did through my feeling like an outsider everywhere I went, through my sitting on the fringes, having to leave parties and church for feedings, feeling like a spectator – that it would all be undone.  That I would have to start from scratch.

All of it poured out there, tears on the pages of Adlai’s little journals, snot running down my face, great heaving sobs pouring out of me uncontrollably at 11:30pm, while I tried not to cry so loud I would wake Adlai in the next room.

Simon sat there on the bed and listened.  He got me a tissue.  And when I was done, I laid down, and he held my hand and prayed.  I fell asleep soon after, spent from being 39 weeks pregnant and from pouring myself out.

It took a little while on Sunday for it to sink in.  For me to realize the difference.  But I felt it.  The Lightness.  The Readiness.  And when someone at church said, “When’s he coming?” I said, “Soon, I hope.” And I meant it.

Often, great healing can take weeks, months, years.

But sometimes all it takes is one night.  One night of pouring your heart out, then resting, and waking to find the burden has been lifted.

The Fear is gone.

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January 23, 2013 · 10:34 am

I am.

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Some days, everything just hurts.

I am tired and sensitive and easily offended.  I am sure I am a selfish wife and a lazy mother and a rubbish friend. And I feel too weak to carry all the weight this world asks us to bear.

On those days of hurt feelings and two-year-old temper tantrums, of ruined plans and crap weather, everything that’s broken in me cries out, “Who am I?”

And often, honestly, I hear my words hit the wall.

But on the days when I am quiet enough to catch it, if the TV is off and my phone is on silent and I really want to know the answer, I can hear Him say, “I will tell you.”

Because only He knows.  Only He has it written down – scrawled in steadfast, permanent ink.

Not wife or mother or friend.  Not artist, not writer, and certainly not try-hard, wannabe, failure.

Only daughter.  Only His.

And here I can let go.  And close the curtains.  And rest. In the knowledge that my shortfalls and my setbacks do not define me. My weakness has not changed what is written, what cannot be erased.

Who He says that I am.

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December 18, 2012 · 10:39 am

On Newtown and This Tension

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A good friend and former co-worker of mine lost his 20-year-old son three years ago.  I am ashamed to say how long it took me to email him, to say that I’d heard, that I was so sorry.  When I finally did, I apologized profusely, and told him that I’d been delayed by the weight of the situation, by the fear of saying the wrong thing.  He was gracious, of course, because that’s the kind of man he is, but I know that my silence was the exact wrong thing I was so afraid of.

After Friday’s events at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I have that same feeling. I don’t know the residents of Newtown personally, or the parents of those sweet children, or the husbands/families/friends of those brave teachers, but just the same, I don’t want to wait a year before I say that I heard.  That I’m so sorry.  That I am 3,000 miles away and it is not just a headline.  My heart is broken.  My life is changed.

The morning after, I woke up early, before my two-year-old, even, which doesn’t happen often.  My mind immediately went to those parents.  My house was quiet because I’m pregnant and I can’t sleep anymore.  Their houses are quiet because their children are absent.  I laid in bed and shed tears over what that must feel like, over that morning-after moment when they woke up and realized it wasn’t all a bad dream.

On Twitter over the weekend, I saw a British person (only one, mind you) complaining at how much the BBC was covering the Newtown tragedy.  He wanted to know if it was really necessary, and “how much [Britons] were really affected.”

This isn’t Newtown’s crisis.  It isn’t even America’s crisis.  It belongs to this world, to this human race.

This place is broken, and though I don’t think I’ll ever not be shocked by crimes like this, I’ll never truly be shocked by our brokenness.

It was broken all along, and things like the untimely death of a friend’s young son, like the massacre of 26 people, like our quickness to point fingers and blame you and you and you and everyone but myself – they are a reminder that the Kingdom is here but not yet.  That we live in the tension between beauty and sorrow, between the now and the waiting.

I realize I haven’t given any answers here, and it wasn’t my intention to.  Only to break my silence, so that you, and they, know that I heard, and that I’m so sorry.

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you and his glory will be seen upon you.  And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.

Lift up your eyes all around, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip.  Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and exult…”

Isaiah 60:1-5

Some people who have kind and courageous words for this time:

Emily Freeman

Rachel Held Evans

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December 13, 2012 · 11:26 am

The place where my hope comes from

Life could take, take every dream away
You’d still be my Risen One, the place where my hope comes from
Life could break, You’d still be my saving grace
My promise of all to come, the place where my hope comes from

-Trent, Perfect Sacrifice

At a Christmas party the other night, I sat across from a woman who has seven children.  When her youngest was eight months old, her husband left her and all of them, out of the blue.  She is Scandinavian and they were living and working in the Middle East.

Beside her at dinner was her “new” husband, whom she fell in love with several months later.  Who married her and became a father to her seven children.  They’ve been married 15 years.

Earlier that day, I’d read the story of a couple who are planning a wedding for this coming June.  He lost his daughter to cancer, and then his wife.  She is a mother of five whose marriage ended painfully.

Sometimes the thought of something tragic creeps into my imagination.  It sneaks in when I’m not ready, when my guard is down.  It’s often when Simon is late home from work and he’s riding his bike and it’s dark and icy outside.  Or when I turn my back in the park and lose sight of Adlai for a split-second.  And when these things creep in, they sit hard on my chest, and I squeeze my eyes tight and whisper, out loud, “I couldn’t go on.”

The thing that is so amazing to me about these stories?  About these women and this man?  Is that every single one of them can say, and does, “God is good.”

Oh, to know hope like that.

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November 8, 2012 · 10:43 am

To Go Beyond the Fences

I became a Christian at a Billy Graham crusade when I was five years old.  At the end of Mr. Graham’s sermon, he called for anyone who wanted to know Jesus to come to the front of the stadium.  Thousands of people poured from their seats and down the aisles, and I told my dad, a preacher, that I wanted to go too.

Understandably, my dad held me back for a moment, asking me if I knew what I was doing, what it all meant.  When I felt like he wasn’t going to let me go, my little heart began to panic.  I burst into tears and cried, “I want to go!  I want to know Jesus!”

With all eyes on him and his five-year-old begging to become a Christian, my dad gave in and took me down to the middle of the football field, where I asked Jesus to come into my heart.

It’s a story I am hesitant to tell, because it is not dramatic.  I wasn’t a 25-year-old drug addict who was miraculously transformed.  I wasn’t an 18-year-old atheist who had a Damascus road experience.  I was just a little girl who knew God was real and wanted to know Him.

Over the years, He has rescued me from disasters of my own – bouts of depression, dangerous relationships, being a naive 21-year-old traveling through Europe and making stupid, unsafe decisions.  And there have been milestones for me, ones I’ve talked about here and a few I haven’t, where I heard Him, I knew Him closer than ever.

But there is something unique to a person who meets Jesus as a child, who knows Him her whole life.  Knowing him becomes second nature and, if she’s not careful, habit.  It’s easy to coast when you know the lingo and the songs, from It Is Well to Better is One Day to How He Loves Us. To feel so familiar with Him that you forget to know Him, to really know Him.  To find Him in the place His glory dwells.

That’s where I am now.  I talked to my friend Kezia about it the other day, about how I coast.  She has known Him her whole life, too, and she knew, and that felt comforting.  She is an artist and creates beautiful pictures, even with her words.

Sometimes, she told me, He leads us into big pastures where we find freedom and comfort and we know Him better, and we think we’ll never get tired of being there, there’s so much to see and do and discover.  But sooner or later we reach the fence, and we feel we’ve reached the end.  We feel dissatisfied.  We want more.

I’m standing at the fence now.  Dissatisfied.  Aching to know what I have never known before.  To discover Truth in a way I haven’t seen it before.  I feel so desperate I can only describe it as thirsty, though I know it’s a cliché.  It’s like seeing a river in the distance and running and running but never reaching it.

I read in a magazine the other day about an experiment that a group of atheists were doing, where they planned to pray for three minutes a day for 40 days and to document their experiences, whether miraculous or nothing at all.  And something in it inspired me, because I really believe that if you seek Him you will find Him, just like He said, but it’s a Truth I’ve often believed for everyone but myself.

I’m taking it for myself now.  Saying, “This is it.  I want to find You.” I started on October 31st, making room in my busy days – the days I can fill with the meaningful and the meaningless, the ones where excuses are plenty and time is short – to talk to Him.  To say, “I really, really want to know You.” I jokingly referred to it as “Know-vember” to my friend Sarah, because I like to name things.

I know it’s November 8th now, but if you’re like me, and you’re coasting; or you’ve never known Him but you’ve wanted to; or you’re just curious, I want to invite you join me.  To tell Him you want to know Him.  To ask Him to show Himself to you, however He likes.  And if He does, I want you to tell us here.  And if He doesn’t, you can tell us that, too.

Meanwhile, every time I squeeze in my few minutes a day, I will leave one at the end to ask for you, on your behalf.  I’ll pray He takes us beyond the fences, that He shows us how He loves us.

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November 1, 2012 · 10:54 am

On Halloween

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There are a few times every year that I’m reminded I don’t live in America anymore.  Halloween is one of those times.

My facebook wall this morning was plastered with photos of my American friends and their kids decked out in their Halloween costumes, plastic pumpkins full to the brim with fun-size Snickers bars (I’m not sure what’s fun about a chocolate bar the size of my pinky toe, but that’s for another day).  On my Christian English friends’ facebook walls?  Statuses about how much they hate Halloween.  About sitting in the dark with their curtains closed so they wouldn’t get any trick-or-treaters.

Growing up in a Christian family, we weren’t huge Halloweeners.  We normally carved a jack-o-lantern (not too scary), were allowed to dress up (as princesses and pumpkins and hobos – never as devils or skeletons or vampires), and would occasionally go trick-or-treating at a few select houses in our neighborhood.
We never watched scary movies or went to haunted houses.  For me, it was a little bit about my homemade princess outfit and mostly about the candy.

I had a few friends growing up who didn’t celebrate Halloween, but not many.  There were churches, too, who threw alternative “harvest festivals”, and one in my hometown who held a – I cringe to type it – “Hallelujah-een” party.  They were pretty much the same things we did at home anyway – fancy dress, chocolate, bobbing for apples – and none of the scary stuff.

So that’s the Halloween I grew up with.  And that’s probably why, when I first came to England in 2003 and someone asked me why I celebrated Halloween, I was a little bit tongue-tied.

Yesterday, I briefly considered dressing Adlai up and taking him to a couple of friends’ houses to trick-or-treat.  And, to be honest, I would’ve done it if it wasn’t raining and I didn’t have a chest infection.  Instead, we drove to the pharmacy when Simon got home from work to pick up antibiotics.  But while driving around, I caught a glimpse of between 20-30 trick-or-treaters, and out of those, I saw one – a princess – who wasn’t dressed up as a devil or a grim reaper or a werewolf or a vampire.  And while there are kids who dress up as those things in America, I feel like there are more who are superheroes and Pocahontases and cowboys and dinosaurs.

I understand that the roots of Halloween are in darker things, and I’m sure it’s in large part because of the culture I grew up in that I’ve been able to separate that out from my Halloween experience for most of my life.

One of my English friends asked me yesterday why American Christians think it’s okay to celebrate Halloween, and I think that’s my best answer – that the Halloween I knew growing up, the one fashioned for me by my parents and my community wasn’t dark or grim or scary.

I’m interested to hear what you think, whether you’re British or American (or something else), a Christian or not.

Do you celebrate Halloween?  Why or why not?

*For a little something extra to think about, read Rachael’s thoughts here.

Also read this, by my friend Amaris, about her “Halloweeniversary.”

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September 10, 2012 · 3:32 pm

What I Know

There are things I don’t know.

I don’t know why there are children starving in Africa, and in this country too.

I don’t know why I’ve seen blind people see again, deaf people hear, while a girl from my high school died of cancer just a couple of months after giving birth to her baby girl.

I don’t know why other babies are born to parents who will hurt them.

 

There are other things I do know.

I do know that I heard a voice, loud and clear, say that I would be Simon’s wife three years before he asked me.

I do know that my son spent his first week of life in the hospital on antibiotics, feeding through a nose tube, only for all his tests to come back clear and healthy.

I do know that, on numerous occasions, we have silently, fervently asked God to fill in the holes of our finances, only to find hundred-pound-notes slipped through our mail slot the next day.

I do know that I have seen drug addicts and violent offenders on their knees, tears streaming down their faces, hands raised in worship.

 

I used to be afraid to say “I don’t know.”  As if I needed all the answers to prove that He’s real.  I don’t have all the answers, and I only know a few things for sure, but those are my stones in the desert.  They’re the things I look back on when the I-don’t-knows come thick and fast.

I don’t know a lot of things, but I know Him, and for today, that’s enough.

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August 24, 2012 · 9:31 am

When Manna is a Plane Ticket

My cute parents

In a little less than a month, Simon, Adlai and I will make the long journey to North Carolina.  To say I’m excited is the understatement of the century.

A few weeks ago, when we began to look at flights, I got overwhelmed at the price of the tickets.

We had some money in our savings account, but we’ve been patiently storing it away for the last three years, in hopes that it will one day make up part of the down payment on the first house we own.

Simon was out with some friends one night, and I was looking at flights, on the verge of tears.  I emailed a few close girlfriends who always pray faithfully for me.  Then I got in bed, turned the lights off, and talked to God.

I asked Him for cheap flights.  I asked Him for miraculous money.  I asked Him for provision.

And then I heard His reply:  ”I have already provided for you.  You have what you need.  And when the day comes that you need more, I will provide for that too.”

I told Simon the next morning, and we used half our savings to buy our tickets.

This past Sunday, my friend Wendy spoke at church about how we know God is good.  One of the things she talked about was how God provides for us.  She told the story from Exodus, of how God provided manna for the Israelites as they wandered in the desert.  His instructions to them were simple: to gather every morning as much as they needed for one day.

And still, many of them hoarded the manna away out of panic, fear, distrust.  And every morning, whatever they had hoarded was moldy.  But there was new, fresh manna on the ground.  Always.  Just like He said.

I nudged Simon. “This is like the flights,” I whispered.

Sometimes wisdom with money looks like saving, not spending, so that you sacrifice something small now for something bigger in the future.

But sometimes it looks like letting go in obedience.  Like using what He has provided for you to buy a ticket to take your child to see his grandparents.  Like knowing that you are a child of the King, that He has provided for this today, and He will provide again tomorrow.  Always.  Just like He said.

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July 16, 2012 · 8:56 am

Overwhelmed by Joy

In college, I used to meet up with about ten other girls once a week to talk, pray, and study the Bible together.  They were a beautiful group of women, and I’ll tell you more about them another time.

At the beginning of our evenings together, after our initial snacking and chatting was done, we’d take turns saying what was happening in our lives.  If you’ve ever been in a Bible study or community group, you know what this looks like.  In my current small group, we call it “highs and lows”, where we each say something good that’s happening, and then something we feel like we need prayer or support for.

This one particular night, we were doing that.  Girls were talking about feeling stressed about their exams, about new friends they were making, about how their relationships with their boyfriends were going.  And as each one talked, I could feel a knot in my chest growing tighter and tighter.  I was overwhelmed and tired.  I had only just met Simon a few months earlier, and he was 3,000 miles away.  I was doing really badly in my biology class.  I was struggling with my roommates.  I couldn’t wait to spew all this out to my friends, so that they could pray and ask God to help me.

Finally, it was my turn.  But when I opened my mouth to speak, what came out wasn’t a string of worries and prayer requests.  It was a deep, rolling laughter that bubbled up from somewhere in the pit of my stomach.  You probably think it sounds like hysteria, and that’s likely what some of them were thinking, too.  But in the middle of the laughter,  I had the greatest sense of peace.  And all I could manage to mutter was, “He loves us.”

In the midst of all of my worries, I was overwhelmed by the joy I hadn’t yet asked for.

Today, I’m praying the same for you.

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April 20, 2012 · 8:24 am

My Own Kind of Sashes

“She makes linen garments and sells them,

and supplies the merchants with sashes.

 She is clothed with strength and dignity;

she can laugh at the days to come.”

Proverbs 31:24-25

Earlier this week, I wrote a post for Jessi’s blog about celebrating and creating.

I talked there about big dreams, about how I’ve learned that God gave me these dreams, about the way that has made me free to create.

This week, I’ve been working hard, during every naptime and after bedtime, on a big copywriting project for a large charity.  It’s work that is pretty well-paid, and that came in a few weeks ago on (shocker) the day after we got on our knees and asked God to fill in the gaps where our income was falling short.

Yesterday, as I was washing dishes (second only to the shower for my great thinking times), I had a moment of pure celebration.  Not because this work is fulfilling one of my huge bestseller/celebrated photographer/taking over the world dreams, but because I am able to use my creating for something more subtle – something that not only makes a difference to a charity doing good work, but brings an income to my family.

There is a quieter celebration in my heart over this creating, because it won’t hang on the walls of the National Gallery or win any major literary awards.

But it blesses my husband.

And it feeds my child.

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