Tempted to Be Weary

My birthday is coming up in the fall and the schedule for my chemotherapy indicates that I will spend my special day attached to the pump of toxicity. Noticing that scheduling quirk caused me to reflect on the circumstances of my last few birthdays:

• three years ago: preparing to sell our house and move as Husband took a new call
• two years ago: the week we realized Husband needed a medical leave for severe depression
• last year: at the hospital with my 3-year-old son and his ruptured appendix

A strange little tradition I've got there. I could find other formats to fill in with timelines of discouragement. Some weeks I feel like the frustrations, large and small, accumulate endlessly and I am tempted to be weary. I feel sometimes that I have suffered enough and have earned the right to throw up my hands and give in. Who can endure this? Who keeps paddling against this flow of bad mojo when the current does not slow?

God is so gentle with me. He has not once whacked me on the head for thinking these things. He reminds me that I'm not paddling, I'm sitting in the canoe and He is paddling.

The other night, while Husband was at a meeting, my youngest son vomited several times. It lasted for exactly the two hours that I was alone with the kids. I was nearly overwhelmed with the feeling that I could not continue, that life was becoming too much for me. God brought to mind the passage from Isaiah, "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." (40:31).

I have never understood that "they will run and not grow weary" because God strengthens them. I now think of this every day. Life is so hard right now, and every day I am tempted to think that I cannot stay in the canoe. God reminds me that He will keep me here and give me what I need today.

I expect that next year my birthday will be free of crisis. I know that it might not be. It is possible that some circumstance even more distressing than those of recent years is waiting for me there. My hope rests on knowing that God will be there either way.

What I (Don’t) Pray For

God pointed out something distressing to me today. I write down some of the people I want to remember to pray for and all of them are people who do not live in my house. I neglect to ask God’s blessing on the people closest to me! It’s shameful.

The reason for the omission was immediately clear to me. Every intercessory prayer on my list is a person or situation over which I am sure I have no control - people who are sick or grieving, or who are on the periphery of my life such that I care about them but have no influence over them.

My family, however, is *my* responsibility. I take care of my kids and participate in the important aspects of my husband’s life. If something is not right with one of them, I take steps to make it better.

The layers of my illusion that I have control are stunning. I’ve written down the names of my kids and my husband because it seems I need to be reminded that God is responsible for them and He’s invited me to express His care and love for them.

Sunday

Going to a new church is making me realize just how much I have hated going to church lately. En route yesterday my kids were acting crazy in the car, and I remembered how that used to put me over the edge on Sunday morning. Yesterday, it seemed fine and I knew they'd quit as soon as they unbuckled.

At our new church, lots of people smile and shake my hand and it's easy for me to say, "I'm new here. Could you tell me where to find...? How to ...?" There is a kids' church during the sermon, so we found the person who manages that and she showed us how it all works. When it was time for them to leave the service, my kids just got up and followed everyone else and were happy as could be.

The sermon addressed, in part, our identity. Does your identity rest in Christ, or in obedience, or right doctrine, etc. I tried to apply this only to myself, but my mind kept wandering to sr. pastor. My experience of him suggests that his identity is in something like being right. Technically speaking, that's not my concern anymore since I don't need to see him. But it is very hard to stop judging him.

Thankfully, there was also confession & absolution during the service.

A Forgiving Community

I've been following the Church Whisperer blog, which deals with church conflict, and this post particularly struck me. It's a meditation on Luke 7:41-47, in which Jesus explains the connection between being forgiven and forgiving. The kind of transparency and humility he describes is exactly what I crave in a congregation.

Utter Dependence

I found myself in an unexpected situation last week: kneeling in front a pastor’s personal altar, receiving private confession and absolution. I grew up in a nice open-minded Christian denomination with no sacraments and moderate respect for ritual. I love that church. It nurtured my faith in Christ and is an important part of who I am. I became Lutheran when I married my husband, and muddled through at the seminary trying to figure out what was going on.

In the last several months I have felt profoundly sinned against and have become quite angry and resentful about it. That is definitely an interpersonal issue – how to cope with unrelenting assaults and not collapse? – but I finally realized it’s also a spiritual issue. I asked a pastor outside our congregation to advise me. I told him I’ve been struggling with needing to forgive those who’ve sinned against me, and have felt burdened by a keener awareness of my own sinfulness.

We talked about God’s intention for me and my family, about how I might develop a forgiving attitude toward the church leaders who’ve hurt us, trusting God to work through this situation and leaving justice to Him. Then he offered me the opportunity to confess any particularly burdensome sins and receive Christ’s absolution using the formal rite of individual confession.

I told my (Lutheran) girlfriend about it later and she nearly screamed, “What are you Catholic now?”

It sounded promising, but how incredibly awkward. Who wants to enumerate their most shameful failings aloud anywhere, much less in front of another person?

Blessedly, the pastor was very gracious, kind, and sincere about it all. He even showed me the order of confession and absolution from the hymnal and talked me through it before we began. We knelt, he lit candles on an altar with a crucifix and several icons.

Kneeling there, speaking the general written confession aloud, and then having the freedom (freedom?!) to name my burdens was powerful. The pastor offered relevant admonition and reassurance from scripture, and then forgave me by the power of Christ. I am not much given to crying, but I did then. I believe that God forgives me, but the specificity and directness of that ritual was like handing over a load of bricks.

That moment comes often to my mind now, reassuring me that God has forgiven me and keeping me in mind of the desire to do better. In the course of our conversation, the pastor used the phrase “utter dependence on God.” That is a condition I have only recently come to understand as desirable, and for a moment, before that altar, I had a taste of it.