the Holy inconvenience

 Another Christmas evening and I'm home with a toddler, watching Christmas Eve services online. He's quarantined even though he wears his mask like a religion, unable to be vaccinated. That's not the inconvenience testing my theology.

A sweet neighbor stopped by this afternoon with a plate of Christmas cookies. She asked to use our bathroom, but I said "better not" since our home is in quarantine. Instead she pressed and let herself in so she wouldn't be inconvenienced in wrapping her children's gifts at another neighbor's house where she parks her RV. Unmasked, unvaccinated, she walked into my house. Her presence altered the energy of our home, with our dogs alarmed and barking as they should. It woke up Beau, who had settled in for the first nap of the holidays. My vulnerable child ran naked outside to the deck with our dogs, in the chilly rain.

I guess that's how I'm to love my neighbor today?

After she left, I went to the drug store to pick up photo prints for our last-minute family gifts. My mind kept turning the question, "How do I love my neighbor?" The drug store employees were clearly overworked and understaffed. I dug deep to my empath soul as I watched the shift lead manage multiple situations at the check stands with poise, grace and calm. Seven separate customers walked into the pharmacy unmasked. Some wandered the aisles sampling Christmas card messages. Each walked brazenly past the multilingual sign explaining the mask mandate for public health.

I apologized to the calm checkstand supervisor, on behalf of the customers defying the masking rule. He told me that it's been really rough. So many staff are calling out sick that everyone is working through the holiday. He gets tomorrow off, but the store will be open at 10AM like every Saturday.

This anxiety about protecting my only living child doesn't make sense to many of my own family members. I try the best I'm able to love, anyways, regardless of how well any understand my pain. It's harder, though, to have sympathy for those who claim to love God within the Church. Tomorrow we celebrate the Holiest Inconvenience of all: God born out of doors. 

I pray my family understands the gravity of the Holy Inconvenience as we gather around a table under shelter from the snow. I pray we listen to the prophets in our midst, whose megaphones are not carried on cable news of any persuasion. I pray our hope and peace mimic the Holy Family, willing to be inconvenienced by government, for love, and willing to flee all comforts. I pray our joy reflects the shepherds interrupted by Glory. I pray our compassion is large as the astrologers who journeyed for years. I pray we can be quiet in worship, too.

Oh, how do we do any of this?

So the shepherds hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the words concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. 

Luke 2:16-20

pink candle week

I'm so grateful for the tradition of Advent: a liturgical season that my evangelical parents retained in our family practice. The nightly lighting of candles and the reading of sacred texts connects us in time to every witness seeking truth. In childhood, my family took turns coloring printed ornaments about stories pointing to Jesus' arrival. It's heart-warming to see my parents continue the practice with the same bin of Prismacolor pencils, now on Year 30. 

Little Love has celebrated Advent four times, now, but this is the first time he participates. We read the stories from the calendar I made deep in the throes of grief in 2019. We light the candles explained in Church each Sunday. He's been waiting since November to light "the pink one." Here we are, the week of joy. On our reading schedule, the week of redemption. Advent is the grounding experience each night to remember the darkness isn't really winning...no matter what it feels like. 

We started with the story of Abraham ready to murder his promised son (Genesis 22). Complicated and beautiful, like the Gospel the prophets continue recording for God's people. Then, we read how Joseph's slavery made possible Israel's very survival (Genesis 43). Again, light bursting through the tiniest crack in what feels like the darkest timeline. Hundreds of years pass in deeper slavery, but God leads all of the beloveds to safety through an impossible walkway in a sea (Exodus 14). We read how Ruth fought for faithfulness, at great risk (Ruth 3) and how the prophets pointed to a simple, selfless Savior (Isaiah 53). Each night, Little Love uses wooden nativity blocks to tell the story back to us. 

Tonight, we read the promise of a powerful Savior from humble beginnings (Micah 5). I felt so seen in the stories this time, overwhelmed by the culture wars and violence, standing at a dead end with limited hope. But thanks be to God, each story this week is redemption! The pink candle, the reminder of joy, kept my focus on the hope of redemption this week. It's hard to identify in poverty. It's hard to deal with mental illness, abuse, incarceration of role models. It's hard to live in isolation, as a society climbs out of isolation without you. So many of my students are in deep, deep darkness, waiting for the Light to burst through the crack. 

The stories of the pink candle remind me: 

God's love prevails in every story.

transformative kindness

A co-worker has a poster on her classroom door that asks "Is it helpful? Is it kind? Is it inspiring? Is it respectful?" along with a few others I can't remember without looking at it. Each time I walk through her classroom, it reminds me of Philippians 4:8: "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, whatever is excellent, whatever is praise-worthy, dwell on these things." -NIV 

 There is so much hurt and injustice exposed in my daily life as a middle school teacher in a rural, public school. Children experience widely different levels of resources at home, support from adults, and models of interpersonal relationships. I am regularly cursed by students and families. It would be very easy to fixate on the brokenness, the negativity and the sheer hatred that sneers at me each day. Instead, the poster in Megan's room reminds me of the transformative kindness that makes the Gospel so culturally infuriating. Catholic refugee families from Guatemala worship the same resurrected Savior. Mask-refusing and vaccine-rejecting families claim the same name under Heaven. Somehow in the mess of sin and humanity, there's grace to listen to exhausted pre-teens try to find a way in a world nobody understands. 

Somehow, by the patience of a crucified Savior, I can be patient as terrified caregivers try to blame me for the behaviors of the children in our shared care. I am convinced that the kindness of Christ transforms broken relationships. I'm as weary as ever, but there are ancient promises about that, too.

Finding community

The deepest cry of my heart is for community. Wounds of abandonment, no matter how small, shaped my soul to search out and create community.

weep with my namesakes

 As a child, I loved learning about the meaning of names. An old baby name book was one of my favorite reads. I would research meanings and name variants, dreaming up names of entire imaginary families. My childhood church would minister to the neighborhood summer festival every year with hand-calligraphed cards explaining the meaning of even the most unique names. I knew my name meant "victorious spirit" and liked how my middle name sounded close enough to a Bible character.

My sweet mother dressed me up as Miriam one year for a Halloween-timed Harvest party at church. Head covered in a scarf and baby Moses in a wicker basket slung over my arm, it was her best costume of my childhood. I thought of myself in Miriam's situation, as a humble older sister who was brave in the face of authority (Exodus 2:4-8). Did she cry as she waited and watched her baby brother floating in the river? Was she old enough to know that she was a slave, and that her brother's life had become illegal in Egypt? Her name means "beloved" or "sea of bitterness." This little girl had every reason to choose a life around either meaning, as a slave first and a free woman in the wilderness. I wasn't named after Miriam, though.

My middle name honors a great grandfather I never met. His name can mean "beloved" when it comes from France and honors the Blessed Mother. His name can also mean "bitter" when it moves from Hebrew into western languages, like when Naomi renames herself in grief (Ruth 1:20). But my favorite meaning for Marion is "drop of sea." My soul opened to the beautiful history of the Church at a congregation named Star of the Sea, after Mary's traditional name meaning. We can each find ourselves in this beautiful metaphor, a single drop in the sea. The tension amongst beloved and bitter also finds it's meaning in the swirling of the oceans.

Later in my journey I discovered the Bible figure with a name closest to mine: Lo-Ruhamah. She's a child only described by the audacity of her existence: the prophet Hosea marries Gomer, her whoring mother. Her story is never elaborated, but her name is a prophecy against Israel. Her name means "not loved." She is named by God to show favor and forgiveness to Judah, not Israel. Her name brings judgment to an entire people.

This is only a repeated older prophecy, one brought through a weeping mother of God's people: Rachel. Rachel's name means "ewe," a fitting name for a shepherdess. Her story is messy and awful, like many stories of women in the ancient middle east. Like a sheep, her father switches her out of her own wedding. Like a sheep, she is favored and then cast aside. She weeps and bargains with God and man as she struggles with fertility throughout the 3rd quarter of the Genesis story. She lies about her period in order to steal an idol from her father's house, craving a son. She bargains with her sister over mandrakes as a fertility charm. She was beloved (Genesis 29:8) and becomes bitter, offering her servant to her husband in pursuit of the blessing of children.

Jeremiah prophesies the genocide that will accompany Jesus' birth by describing Rachel's weeping, "a sound is heard in Ramah, a sound of weeping and bitter grief. It is the sound of Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more." (Jeremiah 31:15, referenced in Matthew 2:18). The New Testament explanation connects this prophecy to the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth and reminds Jewish readers of Miriam's role in rescuing Moses from a similar genocide. Rachel, though, would have known deep loss as she struggled with jealousy towards her fertile sister and hatred towards her husband's concubines. She weeps with bitter grief. This ewe will not be the mother of the Lamb, but her unloved sister will, instead. God enables Rachel to have a son and she rejoices, then another and she dies.

These women are connected with narratives of grief and hope. Their stories explain the complexity within grief, being beloved and struggling with bitterness. There's a reminder of our smallness, a drop in the sea. Yet, always a theme of God's love finding triumph. I rejoice with Miriam as children find homes. I weep with Rachel, struggling to be comforted for children who are no more. Even Lo-Ruhamah's story transforms as God promises "I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them." (Hosea 14:4) I hope to lean into this layer of the Gospel story as I live life with the name Laura Marion.

deck Church

 It's a postcard perfect night on the Church deck.

The boys of my home are all asleep for various reasons, so I rest in the quiet whir of the Heights.  String lights begin to glow as the sunlight reaches in its farthest wavelengths of reds and purples. Soft waves crest with the faintest hint of breeze. Birds and bats transition between their homes and the sky.

My Love built this deck in his grief. Tear stains, and dog pee stains, blend in with the actual wood stain. This deck has hosted celebrations and rituals, reunions and goodbyes. The deck became my favorite part of our home because our deck became the Church. 

It's just wood. Well, it's a lot of wood. But, that's as ordinary and holy as a Church needs to be. The Church exists among God's people, and that's how the deck became Church. Throughout every changing rule of COVID, the deck is a space for relationship. Even for my own family, the deck is sacred space.

Yesterday I built a pillow fort on the deck with my Little Love. We made a house with many rooms and my heart dreamed of Heaven. Snuggling my son in a little room, I see the reality of Heaven on Earth. The world is broken. You can see it from the deck. Yet, the Church is hopeful! There's an air of hope on the deck that you have to experience to understand. That's the purpose of Church: experiences to understand Jesus.

We share Communion with our friends every Sunday on this second-hand table I'm typing from tonight. The sunset turns to twilight. The string lights glow brighter in comparison. You can see the lights from the freeway, or even across the Inlet, if you know where to look. It's an image of the community made possible in Church.

"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." -Romans 6:5-11 NRSV

Death isn't a stranger on the deck, but LIFE in Christ is a resident!

owning my scars

A cluster of dogwood flowers are now engraved inside my left arm, a reminder of the babies who entered our lives for the shortest season. I warned the tattoo artist that I could start weeping at any point during the appointment. Instead, I winced and gritted my teeth. My tears never welled up, because the pain was only physical. The specifics of each loss already blur together in my mind, just like the flowers compete for space and complement one another.

I am still in the thick of grief.

This new tribute to my never-mets is a reminder of God's faithfulness. Each loss was painful, dark and scary. Each life, beautiful. My hope for myself and my never-born children is the same: a resurrected Savior. The Christian symbol of rebirth seemed fitting to honor the hardest experience I've yet endured.

And scars, ultimately, save me.

"Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." 1 Peter 2:24 NIV

Dar la luz

 So many summers ago, I learned the beautiful Dominican phrase for birth "Dar la luz." To bring into the Light. It's a picture that fills in the gaps of my theology of life and birth and loss. A reconciliation of sorts for the acknowledgment of life never truly exposed, corrupted or enlightened.

I long for the unfulfilled reality of any of my five last pregnancies to manifest in a person I can snuggle, mother and learn alongside. Yet, here I find myself in the Light without any of their lives beside me. Not alone, of course.

This phrase burrows deep into my soul. Dar la luz. The hope of Life and Light together. Of birth and breath, of sight and knowledge. Job longed to be a stillborn child, calling woe onto the day of his entry to the living. He could not unsee his suffering. He could not escape the burden of lost children. I'm not there. I still love the Light. 

update

 Another month of grieving. My body responds incompletely, so I still ache and bleed. My mind longs for a different reality. My spirit craves community, just beyond reach.

"My aim is to know Christ, experience the power of Christ's resurrection, to share in Christ's suffering, and to be like Christ in death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection of the dead." Phil 3:10-11 NET

The fellowship of suffering is painfully inclusive. The loneliness of another miscarriage is met in the loving, knowing acceptance of Jesus. Death continues to invade my body. My children keep dying. God continues to be good, deeply good. It's not a trite adage, rather a profound and complicated Truth I am learning through the literal blood of my actual womb.

semantics

 

I'm tired of hearing people discuss "justice" when they really want "privilege." And I no longer have space to explain the difference with patience and civility. It seems glaring and egregious when I consider the outrage fellow Christians have about abortion and the endorsement of suffering for immigrants, the poor, and black men in our nation.

I'm tired of background checks for life-ending weapons being a mark of the beast. I'm tired of hearing that COVID is a lie, or made up, or a judgment. I'm tired of people called illegal. I have studied and found the Church to be the champion of the marginalized.

Why would I rally with the oppressors?

seasons

There is a time to be quiet.

mothering

 Little Love has a bedtime book called Snuggle Time Psalms. There's the sweetest rendition of Psalm 91 that describes God as a Mommy bird, keeping a little baby warm and safe.

"As for you, the one who lives in the shelter of the Most High,

and resides in the protective shadow of the Sovereign One--

I say this about the LORD, my shelter and my stronghold,

my God in whom I trust--

God will certainly rescue you from the snare of the hunter and from the destructive plague.

God will shelter you with (Mama bird) wings;

You will find safety under God's wings." -Psalm 91:1-4 NET.

It's funny how a book for my own child challenges my thinking about God as mothering. I've known God to be caring. I've known God to be protective. I've known God to be powerful and gentle all at once. I've known God to be slow to anger, compassionate, kind and just. So why not mothering?

I take obnoxious care to refer to God as "God" and without pronouns for my Little Love. We're in the stage of potty training where we talk about penises more than I hope we will in the future. I want my own child to have a large enough perception of God's holiness to not insist that God has a penis, too. Yet here in the mess of a national Church obsessed with gender issues, we see that God shelters and gives safety. It's what Mama birds do. Comforting. Rescuing. Protecting.

I have been blessed with an abundance of mothers in my life. My biological family is blessed with excellent mothers at every generation. By marriage and friendship, Church fellowship and intentional pursuit, I am grateful for a tribe of mothers who showcase God's greatest strengths. I mother because I am mothered well.