The Wonder of Ordinary Time

A few years ago, we stumbled upon the idea of using the part of the church calendar called Ordinary Time to bring a new energy to the summer months at Vintage Fellowship.  It has become some of the most sacred and amazing time of the year for many of us as it is a time to remove the veil between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies.  We bring ordinary life inside the church space. We sing songs from the radio. We eat bread and wine for communion, but also every other food that is beautiful and delicious.  This year we chose to anchor our experience in a word or phrase from this blessing from the Book of Common Prayer, asking different people from the body to share their thoughts each week.

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,

wherever He may send you.

May He guide you through the wilderness,

protect you through the storm.

May He bring you home rejoicing

at the wonders He has shown you.

May He bring you home rejoicing

once again into our doors.

This week, we considered "the wonders He has shown you..." and I wrote this to share.

When I was a little girl, I remember a morning in summer that called me outside before any other person in the house was awake to interrupt my own little plans.  There was probably a box of generic Cheerios propped on the table with the angular plastic bowls that had started life as margarine containers for the taking, but I was after something else.  When you grow up in the country in Pennsylvania, inside your house might stay the same year after year with the sun fading an ever-present throw pillow with the shadow of the cross - formed from the window munions, but outside was new every morning and needed daily exploration.  For example, You might go to sleep to impossible blackness that settled down after an orange sunset at 4 in the afternoon and wake up to every last branch and blade bent under the weight of snow as thick as butter cream frosting on a wedding cake.

I lived every day of my first 18 years on three acres of land facing a wooded hill that wanted to be an Appalachian mountain and couldn’t quite manage it.  First a blue and white striped mobile home and then a proud and cozy split level house that smelled like new wood faced that hill like the seats of an amphitheater.  Where the stage should be in the theater, instead there was a pond, draped on either side with apple trees that did what proper apple trees should do, blossoming out in the spring and producing green apples in the fall.  Every morning, the show would start with a light check, first pale gray, then salmon pink and finally the lemon yellow beams of sunlight.  Depending on the time of year, the sun itself might be reflected in the pond, and at night when the all the conditions were right, the moon did the same thing.  Most impressive were the Hunters Moons of October that rose eerily orange creating creepy silhouettes of the birch tree branches in the front yard just like a picture in one of my few picture books.  This was my whole world. 

On this morning, I slipped out in my bare feet, padding across the back porch constructed before the days of treated lumber, and therefore painted brick red to contain the slivers.  Down the four steps to the wet grass, to the left, a narrow creek cut the back yard in irregular pieces.  I avoided the wide, flat footbridge that spanned it, always conscious of how well the garter snakes liked to sun themselves. I was then –and still am- terrified of snakes.  Imagining stepping on one in my bare feet kept me awake at nights making my teeth chatter with fear.  Instead, I turned to the right, being careful not to slip on the heavy dew down the slight hill that hugged the side of the house. In winter it made the perfect sledding spot. If you plotted it just right, you could make it half way down the driveway from the rise, bread bags in your boots and hands screaming wet and red inside your wet yarny mittens. 

But it was summer. So it wasn’t snow calling me outside, but instead, the garden at the side of the yard. This was the lower, second garden.  A solid acre over the snake footbridge behind me was garden too: First a row a gladiolas, then rows of green, yellow and kidney beans. A half row of Swiss chard met a half row of creepy tumorous brussell sprouts and then a vast array of tomatoes, followed by at least six rows of corn with squash and pumpkins as the headlines. At the top of that garden was our tree house, more accurately -a cabin with built in bunk beds and screens on the windows. My mother sewed curtains for the windows just to make things pretty.  On top of the tree house rested a huge wooden beam taken from a torn-down railroad station that held three swings made with good nylon rope from Dad’s farm and garden store and flat wooden seats.  I would swing for hours, often alone, but sometimes in contests with my brother and sister to see who could jump the furthest from the highest point in the swing’s arc.

The lower garden, though, was for potatoes, zucchini, radishes, peas, lettuces and more tomatoes. It takes a lot of tomatoes to make the 100 quarts of tomato juice that would feed a hungry family of six all winter long. 

And also…..strawberries.  Everything else my parents plopped into the black dirt seemed to grow like a beanstalk, but that patch of strawberries simply could not be relied upon.  They might grow or they might not.  And never with the abundance required to make enough jam for the thousands of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we must have consumed.  Mom and Dad finally gave up and put in a patch of more predictable red raspberries that yielded more than enough for jam and for garnishing our cereal on a regular basis.  On that morning, though, I found the berries I was hoping for.  I ate one, and then gathered a handful for a project I had in mind.  I hesitated a bit before heading to the garage.  I was wondering if I had enough.  Perhaps I should check the field?  Beyond the side garden, a grassy hay field curved up and around the corner where my aunt and uncle had a low, green shingled ranch house where they raised six cousins, four older than me and two younger. 

Between us, in that hayfield, growing low to the ground, a patch of wild strawberries flourished.  They were tiny and tart and better tasting than any tame strawberry ever could be.  To reach the patch, I would have to wade waste deep through goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace, wild daisies and milkweed. My mother was never in short supply of bouquets because I often picked handfuls to grace her red and white checked table.  The risk in running the field either way was one of two things: if you ran from the field toward the house, you had to mind the clothesline, which sagged exactly at the line of my chin, and during a particularly good game of hide and go seek in the dark one night, I had hit that line running full tilt and landed flat on my back, gasping for the breath that had been knocked out of me, a line-shaped bruise forming at my jaw line.   The other very real danger in running the field was breaking the ribbon of an orb spider web with your chest and winning the gold medal of a three-inch spider around your neck. 

My little hands clutched the handful of berries in front of me like an offering and I made my way to the side door of the garage, pushing the sticky door open with my backside.  Inside the cool, dark space, I found the metal lid of a Miracle Whip jar, blue with white stars, and dumped my berries into it.  I reached for the soft rubber cord of my toy stove.  It was teal blue, circa 1960, freshly mined from my great grandparents house.  Great grandpa had died doing what he loved: bowling.  I remembered him as a softly smiling man with great drooping earlobes.  If I squinted, I could remember great grandma Mattie, who had died a few years before.  All I could make out was pearl trimmed cat-eye glasses and the blue green paisley of her cotton housedress, and maybe faint laughter. What I knew to be very real was the curiosity of a house they had filled with auction finds and oddities.  Their daughter, my Grandma and Grandpa were going to move into the house and modernize it and they said we could take anything we wanted out of it. We filled mom’s blue Chevrolet station wagon to the brim with old school readers, and a pith helmet, cotton tablecloths and McCoy pottery vases and aurora borealis rhinestone jewelry and pink curlers and stacks of fancy and not so fancy dishes and rickety rocking chairs and a toy princess phone and any other oddity that we found poking through rooms we never got to see because they were the mysterious “upstairs” where polite little children never got to see under ordinary circumstances.  My prize treasure Suzy Homemaker stove had a real electric cord and had a 60-watt light bulb inside that lit up when I plugged the cord into the socket above dad’s workbench.  I slipped my pan of berries into the oven and closed the door, my little heart filled with expectation that my berries, stems and all, would come out just like Mom’s jam.

I kicked the wet grass clippings off my feet, and felt the itchy half-second when your bare skin seems to absorb the dew and you are suddenly sparkly clean.  Just then, my mother softly appeared from behind the interior basement door.  “What are you doing?” she wondered aloud, taking in the scene of six year old girl, brown curls teased out of long braided pigtails, bare feet, pajama clad, with light glowing out of a toy stove that never knew a safety standard. “Oh!  That won’t work!” the corners of her mouth twisting up and down at the same time, while she unplugged my stove.

I couldn’t imagine why my plan wouldn’t work.  I had berries and I had a stove.  Just like Mom. What other wonders would I need to be all grown up? 

It seems to me that for every tiny thing in my small world that opened me up to wonder, a place was made for wonder to remain in me.  Like the tiny seeds of a strawberry, they grew to make space for the huge wonders of the world.... Niagara Falls, falling in love, the New York City skyline, and my own babies.  The last of those four surprises pushes open my door at ungodly early hours of the morning with a clear agenda.  She has gray eyes and three freckles on each cheek that appeared over night when I wasn’t looking.  She wears a 12 year old shirt, soft and ragged that I prophetically saved from her oldest sister. It reads, “It’s great to be an American girl.”  Her miraculously tiny human underwear are miraculously dry through the whole night.  And before I can form a clear thought beyond “coffee,” she announces her intention to go right on outside to our own suburban garden.

 “I check the berries, Mom.” 

Ordination

I grew up in Fundamentalist Christianity, and that tradition does not allow women to be ordained or to have a leadership role that would result in women teaching men.  I am not a part of this tradition any more and have not been for more than a decade.  I find myself wondering at times what my life might have looked like if I had not been required to take such a scenic route to my life's work, but ultimately I come back to a place of gratitude for my journey.  I married into ministry because that was the only on-ramp there was for me, and I "so happened" to marry a truly egalitarian man who never bought into the constraints placed on women, even in the early days when we were both committed fundamentalists.  I always served shoulder to shoulder with my husband in our churches, even in a church that tried very hard to limit my involvement, telling me they didn't expect a "two for one deal."  I suppose that was honorable of them, but those years were frankly miserable because I was cut off from what mattered most to me: tending to the well-being and health of the church.  Back then, I wormed my way into being church secretary just to stay as close to the action as I could.

Nothing pleases me quite as much as accurate words. I long for a specificity that must be exhausting for people around me to watch me snatching at. In the years while we planted Vintage, it was always awkward to find a word or phrase that expressed what I was in the church, and my people struggled with me. They introduced me to their friends as "My Pastor's wife. But more than that. My friend. And also....Kind of my pastor too."  I chalked it up to the ever-bizarre role of being a pastor's wife, which always seemed to me to be only really like a First Lady in its level of involvement. But in time, and after a variety of experiences where words failed me, I came to the realization that the reason the words "Pastors Wife" didn't accurately describe me was because I was more than that and always had been.  It would be another three years before I could put meat on the bones of that realization.

The church has a tradition of recognizing people who stand out in their midst for their ability and calling to lead them.   The process of ordination is different in various denominations and has various levels of intensity.  Many mainline denominations like Episcopalians, Anglicans, etc. require formal training in a seminary to be ordained, while most "low church" gatherings only require the ability to successfully navigate an ordination council convening with them to examine their life and doctrine.  In my case, based on my twenty years of experience serving the church,  my requirements were to present a paper citing my belief system and a defense of that paper in an exam that was lovingly dubbed "a witch trial" by my charming congregants.  A small group consisting of a three teachers and two former pastors served as my ordination council.  They reviewed my paper and prepared follow-up questions which I answered in a public forum. When their questions were exhausted, the public crowd was allowed to ask some questions. That was a fun night!   I didn't know the questions ahead of time, so just before hand, I got nervous and started cramming, but once the questions started coming, I was just having fun.  The council recommended my ordination to the Oversight Team that serves like trustees, deacons or elders of Vintage and they formalized the ordination with an installation service.

I'm fond of exaggeration to prove a point, but I use no hyperbole when I say that the day of my service will live in my memory on par with my wedding day.  My husband and children were fully supportive and present.  A friend from a former church came for the weekend to celebrate with us, and a series of video greetings took my breath away with their words of confirmation, encouragement, excitement and participation.


For many years, I joked that if I ever met Brian McLaren in person, I would punch him in the face.  His book A New Kind of Christian was the match that lit the fuse that exploded our life as fundamentalists. The resulting destruction sent us hurling into life in Arkansas with a house in foreclosure and my imagined future burned to the ground. Not even my irony-loving soul could have guessed that a few years later, Brian would be sending a greeting, speaking words of blessing and confirmation not to my accomplished husband, but to me, as a pastor in my own right.

My fellow enneagram 4, Mark Scandrette sent a message, giving me the beautiful phrase, "spiritual midwife" as a description of my calling.  Mark has been a friend for years now, and his books have helped us give birth to new ways of thinking and gathering.  But maybe most important to me, Mark has always talked to me as an equal, even before I realized my own calling.  In all our visits, he included me in the conversation.  This might not seem like much, and I suspect he didn't even know he was doing it, but for a girl who grew up in the shadow of men, being included and welcomed into theological conversation about the life of the church meant a great deal to me.

The room lit up when Jerusalem Greer appeared onscreen.  Not only is she a friend of Vintage, she is a role model, a source of joy and inspiration, and a personal friend.  This Preacher Lady, author and fellow Arkansan caught my eye years ago at a conference and I quietly began stalking her blog.  There is no doubt that her simply being Jerusalem made space for me to crash through the glass ceiling in my mind.  I finally let her in on the secret that I am "totally picking up what she is putting down" when she came to speak at Vintage a year ago.  I played nicely with others and shared her with my friends, but hearing her heart and just chatting for a short time told me that this was a sister, a colleague, a companion on a journey that I needed.  Our lives in the work of church prevent us from all the time it would take to have all the conversations that reveal all the ways we would end up saying, "Me too!"   But sometimes you just know a member of "the tribe that knows Joseph."  Go read her new book. Get to know her.  She's delightful.

My high school English teacher went on to become an Anglican priest and was recently ordained herself. What was the mad respect of a student for one of the best teachers ever has bloomed into a grown-up friendship.  Her greeting reminded me to "listen, listen, listen," which is really to love my role as student like I reveled in being a student in her classroom years ago.  A private chat later revealed that we share a love for some of the same authors and for the exquisite beauty and reverence of liturgy.  When someone who has known you as one kind of person but makes room for you in their imagination to be something else, that is a special grace.

My college roommate is one of the most generous souls I have ever known.  She is a world of kindness and still has the best sense of humor, which is a rare combination. She rejoiced with us, spoke such wise and loving words to our church, and was the single person to recognize my husband for the role he played in being the kind of man who actively encourages his wife to  have her share of what he has enjoyed all these years without the slightest hint of insecurity.  She noticed and she rejoiced. Not everyone who "knew me when..."  can or did or would be so excited with me.  This too is grace.

And then my siblings showed up like an Army of Enthusiasts.  My sister-in-law, Cathy, who is as loyal as Samwise Gangee and fifty times as strong and brave. My brother, who hinted at the feeling of a wedding again when he toasted me as "high voodoo princess" followed by my sister, whom I adore for so many things, not the least of which is being Nadia Bolz Weber's doppleganger in appearance, strength, and vocabulary. Finally, my youngest sister brought down the house with a custom remixed tune played on her ukelele. (Her original debut album was just released by the way.) They have known me the longest. They have the most reasons to call my ordination a joke.  But instead, they showed up with support, love, laughter, and song.

The ordination council and Oversight Team laid hands on me and prayed over me after presenting me with my framed certificate, and tears fell down the protective glass.  These people believe in me, recognize me, support me and agree with what the Holy Spirit has brought about.  They are the witnesses, willing to invest their time and energy in formalities, recognition and a thirteen page paper to boot.

They join me in recognizing more than anything that people who have left a narrow Christianity behind are still going to need a pastor.  People who can't go to a church that teaches that only men have a calling to teach need a pastor.  People who can't sit under a pastor whose teaching bears the ugly, poison fruit of authoritarianism and abuse are going to need a pastor.  People who celebrate an end to slavery and the end of inequality as equal progress are going to need a pastor.   People who look another person in the eye and don't mentally categorize them as "dangerous" are going to need a pastor.  People who have released their own mental idols of how God has to act are going to need a pastor. People who have studied scripture for more than fifteen minutes without wearing patriarchy-tinted glasses are going to need a pastor.  They will need a pastor who believes that when we pray "Your Kingdom come"  it doesn't mean we keep acting like the Kingdom will be split into traditional gender roles for all of eternity.

And I am that pastor.

*A very special thanks to Michael and Julie Drager for the beautiful photographs!

A Young Girl and a Powerful Man

As a freshman in college, I was cast in the lead role of the play Antigone.  A week ago, today,  I was back on campus with my husband and my daughter.  We toured the campus and visited all the important places, even gaining entrance into the costume room where members of every cast would sign the wall.  That play changed my life.  It was the door that would open my heart and mind to who I am today.

Later that day, we were settling to bed at a hotel, watching the breaking news about Trump's terrible (albeit not surprising) conversation, recorded eleven years ago.  Talking heads were going insane, suggesting this was the end for Trump, that he would back out of the race, etc. etc.  I was so tired. I went to sleep.

Back at home, I attempted to settle back into my routine, but my mind grew increasingly troubled as I watched Trump's version of an apology and the resulting commentary that followed from people I know...some of them even part of the cast of that play that so altered my life. My stomach ached. I couldn't sleep.  I obsessively read article after article on Facebook.

Their reaction goes something like this:  Well, yeah. What he said was bad.  But we've got to think about the Supreme Court. We've got to have pro-life judges! We've got to have judges that believe in traditional families!  Besides, it's only words.  Women don't seem to mind trashy talk in dirty books and movies and tv shows.  Kind of hypocritical, don't you think?

Antigone is a Greek tragedy.  We utilized a translation that had been modernized.  I found it online and read the whole thing through, hearing it in my memory in our own young voices.  The gist of the story is that Antigone has two brothers who have killed each other in a civil war. Their uncle Creon has taken power and to settle the matter, gives one brother a hero's burial and one brother is left to rot, unburied, as an example to the people.  Antigone is young and engaged to Creon's son. She has her whole life before her. But leaving her brother unburied meant that his soul would wander forever and he would have no rest in the afterlife.  Knowing it would cost her life, she buries the body and defies the king.  They exchange a lengthy debate, but ultimately, she cannot be dissuaded.  Decency and human dignity must be upheld.  Even if her brother was not a good man.  It is a moral double-bind.  A logic vs. heart decision.

At the time, we planned to create allusions to the pro-life movement within the production, but as rehearsals went on, the idea was dropped.  We hoped that the words of the play and the story itself would be enough to say that dignity of human life was worth protecting, even dying for, in the face of powerful leaders who would not uphold it.

There are important political agendas and there is basic human decency and you cannot skip one to get to the other.

"What a person can do, a person should do."  Antigone says flatly.

Trump's words and actions have ripped open a wound in the souls of women. An article about Kelly Oxford's Twitter question to women (here) left me nearly paralyzed by memories and shame. But for women like me, who grew up in the evangelical/fundamentalist church, there is a something especially venomous about this.  You speak of being pro-life.  How we must hold our noses and vote for Trump because of the babies.  But please, can somebody tell me, who of you is standing up for women?

For years, you told us that women shouldn't go to work. Our duty was homemaking and taking care of the children. You told us we can't teach the Bible to boys older than twelve. You told us we could never be pastors. You told us that we must be modest because our brothers in Christ were relying on us to “not cause them to stumble.” You had us kneel down before you to measure our commitment to God...or our skirts...we didn't know the difference. You made us so self-conscious that when we looked in the mirror, we learned to be a little plainer, a little uglier, a little less. You told us that we were the keepers of our purity, while the boys scaled the walls to gawk at us in the locker room from the ceiling. When the girl got pregnant, she had to get up in front of the whole school and apologize. When the man molested girls in our school, you gave him a love offering and sent him quietly on his way "for the sake of the gospel." And he molested again. When the missionary abused the missionary kids, you told the girl it was her fault. And he abused again. When we got to Bible college we talked to the other girls: "At your Christian school, too?” You told us over and over again that we could never really be equal because of the curse. And when we got married, you expected us to be attractive, but never sexy. You told us to never say no to our husbands, especially on Saturday night so that he wouldn't be lusting after other women in the church on Sunday morning. You created a collective culture of ignorant mistreatment, inequality, abuse, assault, and objectification, in the name of Jesus.

And now, you would lead those women to vote for a man to lead the whole country in that tone.  For the greater good, of course.

In 4th grade penmanship class, I practiced my cursive writing with this quote: "It's never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right."   -Dr. Bob Jones Sr.  The repetition of penmanship practice led to the permanence of the idea in my mind.

And that is the crux of the thing for me.  I have friends who will vote for  Trump because of finances or military concerns, and I'm ok with that. But for those of you who want to believe that you will achieve some greater good for the Kingdom of God by voting for someone who denigrates other human beings,  in the words of Antigone, "I spit on that." 

This is not about who you vote for.  It is about what you think you are accomplishing.  Do not assume that the Kingdom of God is the same as the empires of men.  It is not built on the backs of those who can be assaulted into submission.

You can't make the world safer for babies by making it more unsafe for women.

Twenty - Part 4

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

As the plane rose in the sky and the few clouds scattered to make the scene below us visible, Robb promptly drifted off to sleep.  Apparently, planning a massive surprise 20th anniversary vow renewal, reception, and 2nd honeymoon in the middle of a job change while pastoring a church and parenting four kids, followed by four days of beach life can really take it out of a guy.  Who knew?

Alone with my thoughts, I could probably have spent the whole flight going over the trip in my mind, much like I did for the few hours of rest we had after we left the reception.  All I knew then was that I was to pack for four days for a hot beach.  I didn't know where the beach was, but I knew Robb was packing our passports.  It was his last surprise.  The flight would leave early Sunday morning, so we would have just a couple of hours to pack and sleep and then leave the kids in the care of my parents.  I was too overwhelmed to sleep, though, and instead, I spent those few hours going over the perfection of every detail in my mind.  I could not stop smiling.  I think I smiled through the flight from XNA to Atlanta where finally, all the way at the end of the terminal, I saw our destination designated at the gate:  Nassau, Bahamas.

Of course.   Of course he would take me to the Bahamas.  Twenty years ago, he had gone there on his senior trip for college, learning to sail chartered boats around the islands on a grand adventure, while  I was back at home in snowy Pennsylvania.  He bought a handcrafted box with a butterfly on it from the Straw Market there, and used it to hide my engagement ring the night he proposed. Of course he always intended to bring me back there with him.

And it had been perfect.  Just the right mix of adventures and doing nothing.  The water, so clear and blue, the sand so fine and white, the waves smaller and calmer than they are on the Great Lakes.  The all-inclusive hotel provided one delicious meal after another, and enough alcohol to pickle our livers. And the best part, as any other parent of four children could verify, we didn't have to worry about anyone but ourselves.  The lovely Bahamian people have made it their business to make their guests relax and have fun, and they are good at it.

I even got a chance to wear that cute dress I had bought.  It was perfect for our actual anniversary on that Tuesday night, when we followed a delicious dinner of steak and lobster with a moonlit walk on the beach.   We talked about our dreams and hopes for the future, especially as we were about to really start a whole new routine with Robb's new job, working from home, and the kids heading back to school.  I tried again to explain what I was feeling back at the very beginning of this huge surprise... why I asked "Am I dying?"   It was such an odd thing to say. I fumbled for an explanation as we made our way down the soft sand with the beach all to ourselves. 

 "I just feel like I'm due some sadness with all this joy."  

"Why?  We live by grace, Honey, not karma." 

Something about the objectivity of that theological statement settled me, like it often does, and our conversation drifted to other things. 

But, back on the plane on the way home, feelings I didn't quite understand began to build.  My heart pounded as I tried to ascertain what I was seeing below us.  The water was so clear, I could discern what seemed to be shallow water around the edges of land.  But I knew from flipping a jet-ski earlier that morning,  that even though it looked shallow, it was actually quite deep.  As the turquoise turned to dark blue, the vastness of the water frightened me.  What is comforting and relaxing while you curl your toes into the sand -the bigness of the ocean verses the smallness of your problems-  it becomes something entirely different as you fly above it and cannot find the orienting edges of where the water ends and the dry land appears.  I tried to read, but the opening chapters of Dave Egger's book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius are nothing short of a parent's nightmare.  The more I tried to calm myself, the more I could feel panic rising.  The thought of waking Robb to tell him I was freaking out seemed too cruel. He had just given me such a perfect gift...how could I turn around and tell him I was unhappy in any way?   It seemed like the blood pounding in my ears and the pressure of the air of the plane were both pushing me into a corner of my imagination.  I wanted to cry.  I wanted to scream.  I wanted everything to stop.  I wanted to hide.  I wanted to stop feeling whatever it was that I was feeling.

"God. You have to come get me.  I'm freaking out here."  I prayed.
"I'm serious. Drop whatever you are doing. I need you."

__________________________

Back at home,  the school year resumed. So much newness.  Not only was Robb really getting in gear for his new job, I started a part-time gig with my friend Stacie and her shop Gingiber, answering customer service questions and helping with other areas of communication.  My ordination paper still unfinished, I observed the days and tried to guess how I might construct them in ways that let me accomplish as much as possible, while running the mom-taxi and keeping this crazy little toddler of ours occupied in ways other than say...coating herself in eyelash glue from her sister's bathroom (Sorry, Mattie).  The air cooled unusually for the weather in August here in Arkansas, and we gulped down each new day like another bite of dessert.

We had a therapy session on the calendar already, which Robb had cleverly pushed back a week or two longer than our usual interval, so there was much to talk about. We practiced telling the story of Robb's surprise with our therapist, since we will be telling it for years to come.  Much of the hour was gone by the time I brought up the anxious moments from the plane.

"What is the deal with that?" I asked flippantly, not really expecting any real answer of substance. The time was too short to cover such a big topic.  And besides, obviously, I had so much happiness to live off of, I could push anxiety away by replaying the happy story to myself and other people.   Those hours of being so perfectly loved. So perfectly safe. So perfectly relaxed.  My only job being to feel joy.

I had even described it to Robb as being life-changing.  He had raised an eyebrow to that and teased that I was being a little dramatic.  "No! I'm really not."  I explained.  It was as if my parameters of what was possible had been pushed back to a much wider, more beautiful, more hopeful, space.  Robb's "why not" of grace had cleared back a landscape that I often allow to become overgrown with doubts, mismanaged practicalities, self-imposed limitations and childhood hangups.

 Our therapist cleared his throat.  "Well, it seems to me that anxiety comes up so often for people because we exist in the world as adults the way we learned to exist in the world as children."

I choked down a sob that caught me totally by surprise.

Perhaps you want to read those words again and see how that bit of free therapy I'm passing along affects you. I can only tell you that I suddenly had the image of my own self, at about 7 years old.  In my imagination, I poke my head in, like moms do, to see her playing by herself in her room.  I know what is inside the mom's head. And I know what is inside the girl's head.  So often, when we look back on ourselves, we are condescending; "So dumb!" we think.  But in this moment, I saw that child with compassion, the way I would feel about my own kids.  My eyes followed the unruly curls on her head and observed her easy smile.  She is full of curiosity. Creativity.  Industry.  She is always thinking up a day-dream, a pretty, innocent thing.  She sees the world as basically good and she sees herself as basically strong.

But you know how kids pack for things in ways that seem so silly?  You tell them, "We're going on a trip!" And they pack their favorite stuffed animal and four shirts, and a few toys and no socks or toothbrush or pants?   I imagine myself that way too.  For life, I packed some ridiculous notions.

I packed the expectation that nothing good comes without some string attached.  I learned somehow as a kid to never think that good things just came along without something equally and oppositely bad.
There is no free lunch.
Into every life a little rain must fall.
Don't tempt the gods by being too happy.

I should make the disclaimer that I don't know if anyone was really trying to teach me that or not.  Kids just try to make sense of their worlds the best they can.

The image faded from my mind as I came back to our therapist's office and I heard his voice clarifying his comment:

"We are trying to decipher, is it a benevolent universe, or isn't it?  How are God and my father different?"

"It's Psychology 101" I said.  "I get it."

________________________________________

Back on the plane, my desperate attempt to reach Heaven for an answer had just been sent, and I waited for a reply like an important text.  I snapped photos, trying to look calm when I felt like any second I might start screaming.

And then I heard it.

I don't often hear from God.  Probably because I'm not often poised on the edge of terror.  I can usually find some activity to busy myself and push anxious thoughts away.  But on a few occasions, I have heard that unmistakable voice.  The economy of words is what tips me off.  They speak straight to the real thing.  My own imagination is ...obviously.... wordy in the extreme.

It was not the promise "Nothing bad will happen to you."  or "You are never going to get cancer"  or "You'll always get to have the relationships you want to have."  or even "This plane will land safely."

Instead, the words spoke to the source of my real anxiety.  My panic attack on the plane was born out of the belief that because I had experienced such bliss, I would pay for it.  It would come after me and break my thumbs and demand equal suffering. And it would be soon. Because, as one psychologist explains it, "What fires together, wires together."  If you were having a perfectly nice time and let your guard down and were just having fun, that was the moment that everything would turn south.  The principal would walk in on your dance party in Study Hall.  The family vacation turned into a yelling match. The snake slithered down the creek where you were wading.  So don't be too happy. Don't have too much fun. Don't get too relaxed.

God said to me: "I made this for you."

"I made this for you. "

"I made this for you."

There is no other shoe to drop.

You don't have to pay for sunrises.  They just happen. Everyday.  You don't have to earn leaves changing colors. It just happens.  We don't work for waves. They just happen.  A daily, reliable, tangible gift.  Love. Goodness. Beauty.  Grace.  The deep water we don't always understand. The islands of calm.  The colors. The air.  The vastness. All of it.  It's right there in front of you.

My heart stopped pounding and took Robb's hand and went home to my beautiful life.

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Twenty - Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

When we were 21 years old, we accepted that a wedding reception involved a nicely decorated church fellowship hall or gym,
punch and cake,
church-approved background music,
and if you were really on the cutting edge....a picture slideshow.
And not much else.
 
Back then there were plenty of relatives and friends to hug.  We got almost nothing to eat while visiting with everyone and woke up in the middle of the night at a bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere starving to death.  I deeply regretted not having more formal photos taken of the groom's side of the family that had assembled from parts unknown across the country. There is a photo of Robb fake-dancing with my Mom.  We had fun....I mean...we had pulled off the wedding part and were very relieved. But it was a buttoned-down affair, reflective of our theology at the time.

Fast forward 20 years and we found ourselves once again in a church.  But this time, there was no question about having fun.  This was a party. And Robb had thought of everything.  For him, God is in the details.

He hired Fayetteville's poet laureate, Clayton Scott,  turned food-truck-chef of Best Frickin' Chicken to cater with chicken and waffles on the menu.  Their secret maple cream gravy is no longer available on the menu, but Robb got him to make me my own delicious batch because he knew how much I love it!  Long-time friend Derek from Core Brewery brought kegs of delicious local beer.  Samantha, who is one of the single most interesting and beautiful people I have ever met in my life, created the cake with a nod to our original wedding cake, with gorgeous flowers on top and candied rose petals on the cupcakes.  Scott was emcee and spun the tunes ...a masterful mix that included personal favorites and crowdsourced dance-tunes...while his exquisite Julie arranged all the flowers, including the bouquets and boutonnieres...using daisies and roses, our original flowers.  The whole thing smacked of thoughtful planning, generosity, joy, collaboration, inclusion, and un-self-conscious celebration.

Our friends Derek and Natalie spoke words of blessing over us in the form of toasts. Their words reminded us again that the love we have for each other, the life we are building, isn't just for ourselves, but instead, brings good to our community, both in and out of our church.

Somewhere in all of this, I was getting bits and pieces about the secret Facebook Event Page where the collaboration had run wild since March.  That's right...for almost five months, this joyous scheming had been simmering away.  There had been a moment when I glimpsed the page open on Robb's computer and I saw the picture at the top of the page from our wedding day, and I asked him what it was, and he had fumbled for an answer.  I chalked it up to "the surprise" and didn't think much else about it.  Little did I know of the playlist suggestions, group-thinking, and clandestine virtual high-fives that were going on under my nose as each piece of the puzzle fell into place.

What I did know was that something wonderful was becoming obvious:  My husband, who finds it so difficult at times to be vulnerable, had dropped all masks while planning this event with everyone. He was telling the truth when he wrote on the event page: "If you ruin this surprise, I will never speak to you again."  But he was also bringing people along on a grand adventure. Instead of acting as a lone wolf, he shared the whole project, inviting everyone in on the fun.  Creativity IS leadership, and he was building trust and bonds with our children and with everyone involved with the event.  Who does something like this unless they are an extraordinary person?  He believes deeply in the comedy and the fairy tale of the gospel and he has a gift for keeping child-like wonder alive for people who sometimes drift out of Narnia and think they've outgrown it.  That is what fuels him.  That is the consistent, stubborn, nearly insane assertion he has been rock-steady about since I met him: this belief in God's grace as the transformational element above and beyond all we could ask or imagine. So why not throw a perfect party for the love of his wife?  Why not pastor a church tirelessly with a full time job as well? Why not help a stranger in need?  Why not welcome all to the communion table? Why not attempt to wade the water of politics with love in your heart for everyone?  Why not believe the Cleveland Browns could win the Super Bowl?   All is grace.

If he had a twin, separated from him at birth, it would be Natalie.  They are wired so similarly and appear so differently.  So it is no wonder that my beautiful friend was intricately involved in the whole thing, I couldn't possibly explain all that she did, except perhaps that she "got it."  She knew what he was shooting for and worked to make it all happen.

 We never learned to dance.  It was "not done" at weddings by most in our circles and there are no dances at Christian schools, either.  I would fumble badly through even the Chicken Dance.  It is kind of a metaphor, really, for how we learned to be in the world: some unfortunate mix of my personality type, circumstances and lousy theology had kept me for years under the impression that emotions must always be expressed neatly and tidily and our bodies aren't to be trusted as a medium of tidy emotional expression.  But looking around, I was easily reminded that everyone was here for joy and not one person in the room would judge us. We could dance like David and there would be no snooty Michal to ruin the fun.  So we danced the night away.   Which suited my parents just fine, because my parents are nothing but smooth and elegant on the dance floor and Robb was sure to include "their song" in the playlist.

Our Charleigh was born for dancing.  I asked her where she learned to dance like she does and she turned her chin and said, "I just make it up."   Her athleticism and fully-committed attitude had us in stitches.  I tried to keep up with her once and ended up with burning thigh muscles and a river of sweat running down my back.  But how we laughed!  And our friends!  I knew I could count on them to keep that party swinging. I could watch them dance for hours and my sides burned from laughing.

At the end of the evening,  our friends whisked us out the door without letting us help clean up.  Their send off was a sweet detail:  At our wedding, I dreamed of being sent away under a shower of rose petals, of course captured iconically by the photographer.  But our florist forgot the rose petals, and instead, I have a photo of 300 people outside a church that always reminds me of the frankly awkward scene in the Sound of Music when the partygoers wave to the children and echo their "Goodnight."  It always bothered me.   (the movie and the omission of the rose petals. Equally.)

So of course, my husband remembered the rose petals.  Of course he did.   And Nikki captured it all.

And then he said,
"Are you ready for one more surprise?"