A Good Life...or a Godly One?

Three Sundays ago I was minding my own business, doing my part singing in the choir, as I do every week. I had a heart to worship, was looking forward to communion, but other than that wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary.

When out of nowhere a thought entered my head, seemingly without context, unprovoked, unrelated to anything in my life. But there it came, like something alive, with form and weight, and there it has stayed, setting up residence these fifteen days.

The thought was this: “What about becoming a foster parent?” Somewhere between the first song and communion these words slipped in, and instead of drying up and blowing away the way they came in, have stubbornly taken root, demanded my time and attention, refused to go away.

Before I could put up my defenses, I was flooded with thoughts in favor of such a thing. There’s such a need. You’ve been given so much. What about “being poured out”, doing things “unto the least of these”? And then during communion, “This is My body, broken for you…” and I’m not willing to set an extra plate at my abundantly supplied table?

Then Cole speaks about readiness and I think about how the need will only increase as the economy worsens and shouldn’t we as the church be ready to help, to be His light? Then he says those who desire to live a godly life will be persecuted, and I think how I’ve got my life so arranged that that’s very unlikely. His final haunting refrain, more words that I can’t escape, “We want a good life, not a Godly one.”

I think, “This idea is crazy.” Must be a hormone imbalance, a midlife crisis, a latent search for significance – something to explain this unwanted intrusion. It’ll go away by the morning. No need to tell Pat. If it is anything, God will tell him, too. That’ll be the fleece.

But it doesn’t go away. Monday morning I tell Pat who, ever the servant willing to say yes to the hardest and crummiest jobs, says, “We’ll have to look into it.” That afternoon I find myself googleing foster care; the kids see and ask what’s up. “I don’t know,” I say with tears, not sure whether they’re from self-pity, having been blindsided with this, for the hundreds of children needing a home, or just the joy from sensing God’s action in my life.

The next day I start reading my book club book, “The Glass Castle”, the memoir of a woman who grew up in a family so impoverished, so messed-up, that she at one point during her childhood, fantasizes that a beautiful foster family is coming to take her and her siblings away. While at the library getting that book, I check out “Hope’s Boy”, another memoir, but this one written by a boy who lived in foster care. If I’m wanting this idea to go away, I’m certainly not acting like it.

It’s a busy week, but I find time to ask Pat, “Are you still thinking about this?” “Yeah. And I keep coming up with objections. But they’re all just selfish.” I’d done the same thing, except I’d used the word “shallow”.

One afternoon, the smell of dinner cooking, listening to music playing on my newly refurbished stereo system, I look at Joanna,who is bent over her schoolbooks, happily studying, the sun shining through the window highlighting her hair. The scene is like a Dutch painting – a tranquil home, blessed with all that is good. I cry this time, overwhelmed with how much we have, how much we could share, that there should be enough love for someone else.

So I’ve gone from expecting the idea to go away, to distress that it hadn’t, to this current place of openness and even hope that we could actually do this some day. Mostly I’m humbled that God would consider me enough to speak to me, to get my attention, to nudge me to join my husband on his well-worn road of servanthood.

Whether we end up doing this or not, the question has left its mark on me, done its exploratory surgery, revealed that I had succumbed in great measure to desiring a good, safe life. I had managed to sew up tightly my life and lifestyle, content with lines that had fallen in pleasant places, resistant to things that might spell trouble, the down and dirty, sacrifice. I’ve discovered that I live in a family of servants: my own children and husband, who each so readily welcomed the idea of opening their hearts, sharing their home, following wherever Christ might lead. May I deserve to be in such company, to live a life worthy of Jesus' name, ready to go, ready to stay, willing to hold His people in my heart.

Kitchen Nightmares and a New Year's Prayer

Somewhere between Christmas and New Year's, I watched a reality show in which a master chef comes into a struggling restaurant and gives them the riot act. Apparently the owners asked for this even though surely they've seen the profanity-wielding chef humiliate and rant and rave, bringing hapless workers to tears.

Granted, it was a TV show, replete with stylized camera angles and shocking moments repeated over and over; and is probably just one step up from Jerry Springer on the evolutionary scale, but I watched it and am still thinking about it now three weeks later.

These poor owners had asked an expert to swoop in and tell them what they were doing wrong. They'd been in business for a while; they had customers, they thought they were doing okay, just wanted some pointers.

What they got was a full-scale condemnation of just about everything they were doing. When Chef Gordon Ramsay went into the back of the refrigerator and scooped up a wet handful of nastiness for a camera close-up, the owner protested that the kitchen was a lot cleaner than it was before he bought it. The more things Chef Ramsay found wrong, the more defensive the owner became, finally stomping off and declaring he'd rather shut the doors and walk away than put up with that kind of "worse than a dog" treatment.

Yes, yes, I know that it was possibly 98% staged, and my writing about it is not to give creedance to reality shows, but to relate how the premise of the show struck me the next morning as I lay in bed thinking about it.

What if I asked an expert in, say, marriage to come in and see all? To move the boxes out of the way, with his bare hand reach into long-neglected places and bring to light the refuse of years of accumulated grime? In the face of a glaring, tell-all camera, would I insist that my marriage (or work-ethic, parenting, citizenship, discipleship) was just fine, better than it used to be, not nearly so bad as the guy's-next-door?

When Chef Ramsay asked the cook, "So what's the deal with these potatoes in a box?" and she said sheepishly, "I mix in a little instant with the leftover potatoes from yesterday to stretch them", I pitied the girl. She must have thought it seemed like a good idea at the time, and surely would never have done it, much less told him, if she'd seen the dastardly deed through his eyes. His admonition, "We will serve nothing but FRESH food" was so simple, so pure, so basic, but had obviously been grossly forsaken.

I can't forget the Instant Potatoes Lesson. How often do I serve up worn-out leftovers, depending on the loyalty of yesterday's affections, assuming, albeit unconsciously, that even half-hearted tokens will suffice? Am I, like the poor cook, lacking in passion, just putting in my hours?

This year, for the first time in years I didn't make any New Year's resolutions. But I do have a New Year's prayer and I ask you to pray it with me. "Expert in all, Maker and Sustainer of all, please come on in. Tell me what you see. Show me the back of the refrigerator. Tell me how it ought to be."

He Watching Over Israel

When a friend’s ax hit a stubborn branch, volleying the ax back onto his head, leaving him on the ground to be found by his children and subsequently air-lifted to the Med, some of us who gathered to help and pray, couldn’t help but ask, “Why?” Just one swing of an ax, perhaps just an angle, a few degrees, a shifting of weight, an error in judgment, and a brilliant oncologist, fresh out of residency, married, with four children is struck down.

Fortunately, that story ended well and he recovered fully, but I remember finally acknowledging the obvious, “He got hit in the head with the ax because of the laws of nature.” It’s not that life is random or capricious or that God is off-duty. It’s just that cause and effect are realities. And as much as we want God to intervene to prevent accidents and illnesses, we know that often He does not.

But He does intervene. He does heal. He acts. He works. He causes things to happen. He parts seas, confuses enemies, sends angels, warns of imminent dangers. I’m sure we’ll all be astonished when we get to heaven to see how much He did intervene and we didn’t see it, acknowledge it. For every time something awful doesn’t happen, the cynic recalls the hundreds of times it did, and concludes that God is helpless or unconcerned, and I confess that even as a Christian, I can think that way, too.

But not today. Today I’m filled with thanksgiving for what I see as divine intervention, divine protection.

Natalie was driving on I-40, three hours into her trip back to school at UT Chattanooga, our minivan packed to the full, when she decided to stop for a bathroom break and fill up the tank. The price wasn’t good, so she pulled up to the front of the quick mart instead of the gas pump. As she pulled into the space she noticed a burning smell, saw smoke, jumped out of the car, was met with someone yelling, “Your car is on fire!” She then saw the flames coming out of the hood. Within seconds they had a fire extinguisher and were able to put the fire out. The wonderful people at the Pilot Gas Station in Dickson, TN made sure the fire was out completely, took Natalie inside, comforted her, offered coffee.

Those of us who’ve had cars start smoking or catch on fire while driving down a highway know how frightening that is. We’ve seen a car in flames on the side of the road, the poor owner standing there helpless. We know of worse outcomes I’ll only allude to, myself unwilling to let my mind go there.

When an oil cap falls off in a moving car, oil spills out onto the engine. Engines get hot. Oil catches on fire. Fires burn and destroy. It’s cause and effect. It’s as it should be. A world that didn’t follow laws of physics would be much more precarious and dangerous than we imagine this one to be. (I guess it would be impossible to have a world without these laws, but I can’t speak on things scientific though I am currently trying to read, “Intelligent Design”. Trying being the operative word.)

Natalie was protected. She is safe because she got off the interstate and stopped at a safe place with a fire extinguisher close by. A skeptic would say that was cause and effect, too, a lucky coincidence. We don’t see it that way. We are so thankful that He directed her to stop when she did, just in time, protecting her from all that could have happened had she not stopped at that time, had no one been there to help her, had the price of gas been cheaper, the fire extinguisher empty.

We praise Him for protecting her, for guiding her to safety, for making a bad situation turn out so well. I just wanted you to share in our joy, to join me in worshiping the God who is there, who condescends to involve Himself in our affairs, who "watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps.” Psalms 121:4.

Why Have a Party?

Several times along the way I questioned it, wished we weren’t doing it, wondered what in the world was motivating us in the first place. No, I’m not talking about getting married, or buying a house, or having kids. It was just a New Year’s Eve party.

But any party takes time, money, and effort, so there are qualms. The cynic in me says, “That’s much ado about nothing. It’s just another day.” The frugal side says, “You could get the car fixed with that money.” My insecurity wonders, “Will they want to come?" The ascetic whispers that it’s frivolous. The melancholy says, “How can you celebrate in the worst recession in history?”

(I thought all these things and more, which I won’t relate lest you think I’m the most hopelessly introspective and analytical person you’ve ever met.)

The day of the party, around noon, I got a call from the place we were renting saying there was a big problem. Plumbing? A fire? Vandalism? No, they had double-booked the place. For about three hours it was up in the air, but in the end our party was trumped by the square dancers who refused to do-si-do somewhere else.

I’m in tears when I call Pat, so of course he becomes optimism incarnate, “I’ll borrow some tents from the church, get some heaters; we’ll have it at our house and in the yard. It’ll be great.” It was going down to 23 degrees that night.

Fortunately, another place was found for us, and after a flurry of phone calls and Facebook messages, a small window of time in which to decorate, and a scramble to find speakers for our messed-up stereo system, we ended up having our party in a much nicer place than we’d originally paid for.

The next day, exhausted, reflecting, I wonder ...

Why do people have parties? Why do we celebrate? What is in us that wants to mark the end of something, a new beginning? Why do we go to great lengths to make special foods, polish the silver, string lights, starch shirts, squeeze into high heels, all for just a few hours of fun?

Because celebration is in the heart of God, that’s why. As creatures made in His image, we want and need to celebrate, to rejoice, make merry. In every culture, there is this desire to single out one day, one person, one event, to focus energy and resources to culminate in a gathering that is festive, separate from the hum-drum of everyday life.

That celebration is often expressed with more vigor outside the faith community than inside is a shameful irony. Of all people, we have the most to celebrate, but we’re often like the pious people in Babette’s Feast, who lived joyless, grim lives in the name of religion, and didn't see that all good things are gifts from a loving, joyous God.

Before the party, a minister friend asked what kind of gathering it would be, saying that while his wife liked a “spiritual” New Year’s Eve, he preferred a fun one, a party. For me, the two go together. Like Babette, like the father for his prodigal son, like God Himself who promises a feast beyond compare, I enjoyed providing a party for those I love.

Eric Liddell, the Olympic runner become missionary whose story is beautifully told in the movie, Chariots of Fire, said of his running, “I feel His pleasure.” When I saw that movie back in the 80’s, I longed to have something like that in my life, something so tangibly human that was also so profoundly spiritual. Alas, I never felt it running, but I do feel it when I’m preparing for guests, when I’m anticipating a celebration, making ready for a party.

The Soul Felt Its Worth

I kept staring at her, the woman whose eyes were childlike with wonder, whose face shone with health and life and peace. She, along with the others at her table, was dressed in her finest. They all no doubt felt that the night was like something from a dream, but she was especially radiant.

The occasion was a renewal of wedding vows ceremony for their pastor and his wife. The church fellowship hall had been transformed by the decorations, the party clothes, live saxophone music, and the seated dinner served by teenagers in white shirts and black pants and ties. The tables were elegant, each place-setting a statement, “This is just for you, my friend. You were invited to share in our joy.”

“Who is that?” I whispered to my friend. “She looks familiar…could it be Shawn?”

“No way,” said she.

Finally, after looking at her so much she began to notice, I went to her table, approached a woman I knew, asking her to introduce the rest of her table to me.

“You know my husband, and this is my sister Shawn.”

“It is you! I can’t believe it!” I cried. “You’re so beautiful!” My words were uncensored, my response heartfelt and spontaneous. I touched her shoulder; she was real.

She smiled a self-conscious, but happy smile; her eyes teared up as she looked straight into my eyes and said, “I’m saved.”
____________________________

Once, when I pulled into the parking lot of the housing project to pick up her son to take him to anger-management counseling, she walked up. She was gaunt, with matted hair, dusty-dry skin, and lifeless eyes. She had a deep scar across her forehead, proof of some violence. Her voice was so slurred I couldn’t understand her, but surmised she was asking for money. I introduced myself, explaining my purpose there. She muttered and shuffled off.

Twenty years as an addict and a gunshot wound to the head had left her not much more than a mixed-up tangle of raw nerves and needs. Having tutored five of her eight children, some of whom were born on crack, I had no sympathy for her. I did not even see her as a person. It seemed the boys did better when she was gone; custody of the children had been taken away from her long ago.
_____________________________

Later that evening, I asked another church member about her. Three months ago, having begun a drug treatment program, she said she needed to come back to church. That God had been dealing with her. “She’s doing great. When I come to pick her up for church, she’s always waiting for me and literally runs to the van.”

“I’m saved,” she had said. Simple present tense, used to state a fact or condition that is true yesterday, today, tomorrow. Not, “I was saved,” or “I have been saved.” Without adornment, naked in its simplicity, vibrant in its immediacy: “I’m saved.”

She might as well have said, “I’m alive!” For that was what she was; that’s what I saw that night. A dead woman made alive, a wretched wraith become a beautiful woman, glowing with health and life and joy.

“Joy to the World, the Savior Reigns”. It’s true. I saw it with my own eyes.

Sweet Sixteen

Sixteen years and nine months ago, upon the failure of Magic Johnson’s oft-promoted method for safe sex, I said to my husband, “You know what this means.”


Without missing a beat, he said, “We’re having another baby.”

We had decided that our family was complete. It was settled. I had even looked with derision on people who got pregnant unexpectedly, thinking, “What do you mean you don’t know how it happened? There is such a thing as birth control.”

But here we were. Number four. An astronomical number. An embarrassing number. Not even Pat’s Catholic relatives had this many children. Our relatives sighed or were reproachful. Friends looked upon us with sympathetic eyes.

At first I prayed that I wouldn’t really be pregnant, that our family would remain as it was, each child planned, then conceived, with scientific precision. But when the fears were confirmed, our hearts changed, and we welcomed this pregnancy as the others.

With that heart change came the thought that what had happened was possibly, if not really, an act of divine intervention from a good God who knew that we didn’t know what was best for us, but wanted to bless us anyway. It’s hard for me to say that because I don’t breezily slap the label of “God did it” on things that are basic cause and effect. People who have sex should expect to have babies. Birth control methods fail.

Other than the general acknowledgement that all babies are “planned” by God, I can’t say for sure that He actively sabotaged our birth control method, so that we’d have Joanna. What I do know is that we were stupid to not want another child, and had we more say in the matter, we wouldn’t have “allowed” an unplanned pregnancy, but are so glad our plans were overruled.

So, Joanna is our child of grace, the incarnation of blessing promised to people undeserving, undesiring, even unwilling. We don’t know what’s best for us, but God does, and will act in ways for our good even as we ignore or even spurn Him. “Forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing,” said Jesus, as sublime a statement of our condition and His heart I know of. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” All action is from Him towards us, wave upon wave of inexhaustible, prolific, often unasked-for blessing.

Joanna is now a young lady, full of sweetness, affection, and compassion. She’s a happy soul, content with her lot, grateful for what at times have been scraps, yet always eager to push forward for what she wants and needs. Her teachable spirit puts me to shame. Literally every single day she has brightened and brought “more” to our lives.

We’re so glad she’s our “one who got through.”

The Current Economic Crisis

When the economic crisis hit the news, I was escaping to 19th century France by reading The Count of Monte Cristo. Who wants to think about a coming depression when you need to find out who Madame Villefort will poison next? And the Count’s manipulation of the stock market is much easier to understand than why our dollar is up when banks are failing. But all good books end, and I've felt compelled ever since to write these thoughts.

I’ve heard all kinds of things blamed for our current woes, but I’ve not heard much about what I think is really at the heart of it. It’s not my idea, but one I’ve stolen from two people I love: my husband and Wendell Berry.

My husband is a home-improvement contractor, or as he calls himself: a handyman. He works long and hard and, like Job’s wife, though I’ve never said curse God and die, I’ve had many suggestions. Such as, “Why don’t you just paint? Or, just do wood replacement? Decks? That way you wouldn’t encounter so many unforeseen problems. You’d know the costs. You’d make more money, wouldn’t have to have every tool known to man cluttering our garage and your truck, and would get really great at ONE thing.” He just listened, said “Mmm”, and kept on doing what he was doing.

If he had answered, “I don’t want to because I’d get bored”, I would have accepted that. But unlike me, he isn’t into self-actualization. He’ll do the most monotonous tasks without complaining. But what I have learned from him, albeit slowly, is that he doesn’t want to specialize because he abhors that mentality. The plumber puts in his pipes without regard for the electrician, who does his thing without regard for the sheetrock guy, who has his way of doing things that make his job easier, more profitable.

What motivates my husband is taking care of the homeowner. Whatever they need. He doesn’t ask himself if it will be profitable or efficient or a job he would enjoy. He doesn’t work with profitability in mind, but rather with quality in mind. That’s why he’ll never “flip” a house. He can’t do it. He can’t slap on a coat of paint and walk away. The work has to be done right, to last. He won’t specialize.

Wendell Berry wrote in 1977 in The Unsettling of America:

The disease of the modern character is specialization. Looked at from the standpoint of the social system, the aim of specialization may seem desirable enough. The aim is to see that the responsibilities of government, law, medicine, engineering, agriculture, education, etc., are given into the hands of the most skilled, best prepared people. . . . The first, and best known, hazard of the specialist system is that it produces specialists - people who are elaborately and expensively trained to do one thing. We get into absurdity very quickly here. There are, for instance, educators who have nothing to teach, communicators who have nothing to say, medical doctors skilled at expensive cures for diseases that they have no skill, and no interest, in preventing. More common, and more damaging, are the inventors, manufacturers, and salesmen of devices who have no concern for the possible effects of those devices. Specialization is thus seen to be a way of institutionalizing, justifying, and paying highly for a calamitous disintegration and scattering-out of the various functions of character: workmanship, care, conscience, responsibility.

The entire process of buying a home has become specialized, creating a system in which a person can make a profit on one little part without being responsible for the whole. A broker can originate a loan and make his fee. His success depends solely on making the loan go through. The loan is then sold, sometimes over and over, with various players along the way getting a piece of the pie, but no one is tied to whether or not that original buyer pays the mortgage.

It’s axiomatic. When you have a stake in final outcomes, in the whole of something, you care more for the big picture. In the mortgage industry, where banks sold and kept their own mortgages, they’ve seen much fewer defaults.

Several years ago when my husband’s grandfather was in a coma, breathing by machine, we would wind our way through a gray maze to get to intensive care, anxious for a divine visitation from a doctor. A surgeon said the surgery went well, even as Pawpaw lay there in a coma. The kidney doctor said the medicine for the lungs was hurting the kidneys. The lung doctor was watching the lungs, not the kidneys. A heart doctor was happy about the heart. We asked, in vain, “Where is the doctor for Pawpaw, the man?”

The tunnel vision and shortsightedness that comes from specialization is made even worse by the fact that everyone is pressured to make decisions that bring profits and results TODAY. A “calamitous disintegration” indeed.