“For I was hungry, while you had all you needed. I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water. I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported. I needed clothes, but you needed more clothes. I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness. I was in prison, and you said I was getting what I deserve.”
-Paraphrase of Matthew 25 by Richard Stearns, president of World Vision
“To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.”
-Confucius
“If charity cost nothing, the world would be full of philanthropists.
-Jewish proverb
A question has been rolling around in my head since I had to passionately (albeit uselessly) defend a company I believe is doing a commendable work for our world in the social justice realm about two weeks ago.
TOMS shoes is a company that, for every pair of shoes you buy from them, gives a pair of shoes to children in countries where covered feet can mean the difference between life and death because of diseases that inhabit the soil. Millions of children in these underdeveloped countries are getting shoes every year because of the people who decide it’s a worthy cause to support
Millions more are still walking around with unprotected feet touching toxins like our generations have never known in America.
Maybe we don’t realize what’s at stake here. Maybe we don’t quite fully understand that it’s life or death.
Maybe we just don’t care.
This is not an advertisement for TOMS shoes (though if you want it be, the Web site is www.toms.com). This is just a preface to the question that’s been following me for the last few weeks.
What if we lived in a TOMS economy?
One for one.
We buy that cute, overpriced-for-the-sake-of-fashion winter jacket (that might not even be warm). We give a jacket with the same price tag (but maybe a little more functional and a little less stylish) to that homeless person we pass every day on the way to work, who’s only wearing a T-shirt with threads so old it’s almost see-through.
We buy that overpriced-for-the-sake-of-health organic chicken at the grocery store. We give an actual chicken (because they cost about the same) to that widow in Africa who could use it to sustain her and her five children for years and years and years.
We buy that overpriced-for-the-sake-of-living-the-American-dream house. We build 400 houses for the people in India or Argentina or Haiti who live in paper boxes.
One for one.
What if?
What if, for those two bottles of mosquito spray we buy every summer so our kids won’t have to deal with the inconvenience of itchy, irritating bites, we sent a bed net to one of the millions of children in Sierra Leone who die every year from malaria-ridden mosquito bites?
What if, for every bottle of water we buy, we sent the same amount to help provide clean and sanitary drinking water for the children across the ocean who every day consume disease-infested water, who are drinking their death?
What if, every time we paid the monthly bill on our vehicle or our insurance, we sent the same amount to something like the Personal Energy Transportation Project, which provides wheelchairs and the gift of mobility for those in “greatest need and with the least resources in poor and underdeveloped countries” or to an organization like World Vision, which provides small business loans (amounting to about $200—unheard-of startup costs here in America) that impact the sustainability of not just a family but an entire community?
One for one.
What if?
What if, for every penny or quarter or dollar we spent, we gave one away?
What if, for every minute we spent shopping or just playing on facebook, we spent in a homeless shelter, serving up dinner for those who don’t know when they’ll eat again or sorting clothes for those who own only the dirty rags on their backs? What if, for every hour we spent working to maintain our standard of living, we spent walking the streets with the homeless who have lost everything or caring for our forgotten orphans in the foster care systems or the ones on the other side of the world who are watching a generation of parents die from AIDs and becoming heads of households at 8 years old.
What if?
I’ve just finished reading the letters and writings of Mother Teresa, a woman who spent her entire life ministering to the poor, living as one of them and denouncing the materialism of the world by vowing to own nothing. One of the most poignant things she said in her book was, “When you don’t have anything, then you have everything.” She was a woman who believed she could only get close to Jesus when she got close to the poor, when she traded everything for nothing.
What if?
In his book, The Hole in Our Gospel, Rich Stearns (president of World Vision, a Christian relief organization that changes the lives of orphans and widows around the world) said that the total income of American churchgoers is $5.2 trillion (more than five thousand billion dollars). He says it would take just a “little over 1 percent of the income of American Christians to lift the poorest one billion people in the world out of extreme poverty.”
What if?
Other statistics Stearns points out:
Amount available if all America churchgoers gave 10 percent of their salary: $520 billion
Estimated annual cost to eliminate extreme poverty in the world: $65 billion
Annual cost for universal primary education for ALL children in the world: $6 billion
Annual cost to bring clean water to most of the world: $9 billion
Annual cost to bring basic health and nutrition for the world: $13 billion
Total to eradicate the world’s greatest problems: $93 billion (1.8% of American Christians' income).
What if?
What if we could bring an end to world hunger, solve the clean water crisis, provide universal access to drugs and health care for the millions dealing with malaria and AIDs and tuberculosis and cholera? What if we could eliminate the 26,000 children dying every day—20,000 of those related to hunger?
Maybe we’ll never get there. Maybe we’ll never even come close.
But what if?
The other night, I was talking to my 3-year-old about how some kids in certain parts of the world don’t have enough food to eat or the right clothes to wear to protect them from diseases that could kill them or how they don't even have anyone to love them. Jadon, in his innocence and of his own volition, said, “Well, I’ll give them one of my shoes and some of my food, too. And I love them."
May we all have the hearts of a child, hearts that look so much like Jesus.
“It is not our fault that people are poor, but it is our responsibility to do something about it. God says that we are guilty if we allow people to remain deprived when we have the means to help them.”
-Richard Stearns
Thursday, November 18, 2010
letter to my husband
“Together they bore the complete image of God.”
Frank Viola, From Eternity to Here
“Place me like a seal over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm,
For love is as strong as death,
Its jealousy unyielding as the grave
It burns like a blazing fire,
Like a mighty flame
Many waters cannot quench love;
Rivers cannot wash it away.”
Song of Songs 8:6-7
-our wedding verse
Dear Ben,
Seven years. I can’t believe it’s been seven years since this life with you, as your wife, began. And if we’re counting all that came before that day, Oct. 11, 2003, when you recited your poem and I read my “love story” off nine college-ruled note cards held in shaking hands, it’s really been a decade.
A decade. How quickly it’s gone.
Do you remember the beginning?
Do you remember the excitement, the anticipation of meeting this person you’d e-mailed on a whim and who, strangely enough, happened to open the e-mail from an unknown address and responded with honest answers to your questions? Do you remember the traffic lights and the limited parking spaces that kept you from making it to worship practice, to the promised meeting place, on time? Do you remember the awkwardness of that first face-to-face conversation, me a little miffed that I’d waited around for a “no show,” you a little frazzled from fighting your way across the Texas State campus, just to finally say hello (because you knew worship practice had ended an hour ago)?
Do you remember the disappointment in discovering a relationship beyond friends was not part of God’s plan? Do you remember hanging out in the same places with the same people at the Baptist Student Ministry, worshiping together on the music team (I got to make all the decisions then because I was the worship leader :)), pretending the awkwardness had melted away even though it reddened our faces every time our eyes met? Do you remember being the “piano man,” the “guy with the awesome voice” who played every instrument known to man, the man of almost every girl’s dream there in that college ministry?
Do you remember moving on?
Do you remember, two years later, seeing each other for the first time in a year, possibility opening its petals like a midnight-blue morning glory when you realized I had written off all attachments and you had just become “free?” Do you remember watching Harry Potter at a mutual friend’s house, talking about your band and its newly recorded album, asking me casually if I might want to hang out sometime? Do you remember coming to watch me sing the national anthem at a Texas State basketball game—supporting me with friends and as a friend—and watching the football team beat Stephen F. Austin and playing beach volleyball on opposite teams?
Do you remember falling?
Do you remember walking me home at 3 in the morning, after I’d finally sent the university paper to print, holding your umbrella so it encapsulated the both of us while the rain fell in sheets on the pebbled pavement and soaked our shoes? Do you remember scaling the side of my apartment building when my roommate accidentally dead-bolted me out and sneaking in through the patio door we never kept locked and letting me in my own living room? Do you remember our first kiss, beside the theater building pond, when the campus was deserted except for the black birds that startled every time we moved?
Do you remember the certainty?
Do you remember our first date (after you stood me up on a double date to see Sweet Home Alabama and I ended up going as a third wheel), watching the sunrise from Prayer Mountain in Wimberley, driving to San Antonio in my car because all you had was a bike, falling asleep while I was talking on the way back home? Do you remember the Majestic Theatre, watching the Nutcracker ballet, practically dragging me backstage because you planned to propose and I was just hungry? Do you remember dinner at The Olive Garden and that Italian chocolate cake, celebrating our engagement, calling all our friends and family even though it was almost morning, the ring still foreign on my finger?
Do you remember dreaming?
Do you remember Oct. 11, that misty, disappointing-weather day, scrambling to move everything from our spot beside the lake into that small, historical church, starting the wedding 15 minutes late because your new mother-in-law spilled makeup all over her brand new dress, holding my white-gloved hands dampened by tears and nose drip because I just couldn’t hold it together? Do you remember the magical days after our wedding, skipping through Disney World like the two married kids we were, missing our carriage ride reservation, riding on every roller coaster we could find? Do you remember driving all night after our plane landed in Houston, walking into an apartment overflowing with presents and gift cards and hand-me-down furniture and knowing we were home?
Do you remember promising?
Do you remember starting our music ministry, playing in coffee shops and churches and whoever would let us in their doors, writing our first songs together, recording our first album after saving up more money than we’d ever saved and spending it on a CD instead of a home? Do you remember late-night conversations, my head on your chest, your cheek on my hair, date nights whenever the urge struck us, running miles and miles around high school tracks, panic-filled biking while trying to outrun a thunderstorm? Do you remember the one-year-anniversary trip back to Disney World, discovering Downtown Disney, fighting over video games, eating fudge and candy apples, buying our second set of Mickey and Minnie Mouse hats so people would think we were newlyweds and let us cut in line?
Do you remember hoping?
Do you remember that first pregnancy test and the three more after it because we couldn’t quite believe it was true, buying our first and only house (so far) and turning it into our home, new and old jobs? Do you remember Lake Conroe and reconnecting and strolling through Old Town Spring like just-married lovers and biking through Sam Houston National Park (well, I was biking at least…you were flying over your handlebars) and watching the sunset on Lake Conroe while devouring our Subway sandwiches (6-inch for me, 12-inch for you)? Do you remember the joy of number 2 and the surprise of number 3 and the fear mixed with excitement at our quickly growing family, the intentional late nights and early morning chats squeezed in after the kids were asleep and before they woke up for the day?
Do you remember?
In seven days we will mark our seventh anniversary. Seven years of memories. Seven years of this sometimes-intense, sometimes hard, always beautiful journey of getting to know each other better. Seven years of daily becoming a more and more complete image of God.
So I just wanted to tell you that, even if I had known the time I would waste cleaning our room or doing your separate laundry because, somehow, your shoes don’t make it into the walk-in closet and your clothes don’t make it into the laundry hampers, even if I had known how busy our life would be and how it sometimes just makes my head spin to think of all we have to do in one day, even if I had known we’d have a field growing in our backyard because you don’t like to mow, I would still choose you. Because you fit. What you bring to our marriage—strength, faith, love in spite of my imperfections—is exactly what completes me. And eight years ago, when I begged God to protect my heart so it wouldn’t be broken again, when I entreated him to only let go of my heart when the man-boy he had chosen for me came along, he did exactly that. He held it, and when the time was right, he gave it to you.
I love you more than any words could ever say. More than any numbers could quantify.
So here we are. Seven years down the road. Seven years of laughing and crying, fighting and making up, planning and dreaming. In the years to come, I look forward to learning even more of the mysteries of you. You have placed me “like a seal over your heart,” just like our wedding verse said. Thank you for the man you were, are and continue becoming. You are my lover, my sidekick, my best friend. And you are “radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand.”
143.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The whole world is in capable hands...
Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens,
Your faithfulness to the skies…
How priceless is your unfailing love!
Both high and low among men
Find refuge in the shadow of your wings.
-Psalm 36: 5,7
My 3-year-old just graduated to a booster car seat. My 15-month-old is daily increasing his vocabulary. My infant just turned one month old.
It’s been an eventful month since Hosea joined our family. There have been good times…like intentional family picnics and walks to the neighborhood pool—times when it was easy to say, “God, I love these children so much my heart is going to explode.” Even our first plane trip to Arizona so the band I share with my husband could record our third music project, a full-length worship album.
While it was difficult juggling the three boys and some days I had to remind myself, “God, I love these children so much my heart is going to explode”—the days when I would start to feed Hosea just minutes before Asa would slip on a blanket Jadon had left on the floor and bust his head on the tile at the same time Jadon would urgently announce, “I need to go potty!”—I count the trip among the good times of the last month.
Good times because there were some much more challenging times.
The first time we noticed the bruised bump on Jadon’s back, we thought it was exactly that. A bruise. One that would eventually go away.
A month, two, passed. It didn’t go away, but we thought maybe it was because he’s a normal boy—rough and rowdy and rambunctious—and kept bruising it during wrestling matches with his little brother or his daddy.
So we waited another month. Two. Three. I made a mental note to make an appointment with our pediatrician so he could check it out, give us his medical opinion. Set our hearts at ease.
Then Hosea was born. A fill-in pediatrician scratched down on her official notepad that his heart sounded like it might have a murmur that should technically have gone away 48 hours after his birth. A little side note on her “he’s healthy” assessment. A big, bold headline in our “he’s perfect” assessment.
A week after his birth, we took Hosea to our pediatrician. He’d gained almost a pound and had grown an inch and a half. The murmur was still there.
He couldn’t explain the lump on Jadon’s back.
So we found ourselves, one week before leaving for our Arizona trip, visiting a dermatologist for Jadon and a pediatric cardiologist for Hosea.
I couldn’t help but panic. My firstborn had a lump. My newborn had a heart murmur.
I cried so much in that one week. Every time I thought about Jadon, held his little-boy hand in mine, kissed his sweet, growing-up face, panic would claw at my throat. Every time I thought about Hosea, held the bundle that barely filled my lap, kissed his tiny-baby face, fear would burn my eyes. Every time I perused the Internet, looking for information about a lump on a child’s back and what it could possibly be and about a heart murmur and what we could possibly do, crushing despair would immobilize everything but the tears.
Oh, God, I love these boys so much my heart could explode.
The fear, the panic, the crushing despair, made me start to believe that God couldn’t possibly bless me with three perfectly healthy children. I kept thinking my “favor” had run out, that I didn’t deserve what favor I had been given.
Every time I thought about it—which was every time I had a moment to think—I cried.
Four days before our trip, we sat in the waiting room at a dermatologist’s office. My hands shook as I held Jadon’s all the way to the examination room. I began to think that maybe if I had protected Jadon more, tamed his wild ways, the lump would not be there. Maybe if I had spent more time praying or reading God’s word or just hanging out with him, none of this would be happening.
The dermatologist examined Jadon’s back, felt the raised area and concluded it was a benign buildup of fatty tissue that, as long as it’s not bothering Jadon, would not have to be removed. We made a follow-up appointment for October, just to make sure the lump hasn’t grown and still isn’t bothering Jadon, but the dermatologist didn’t seem concerned at all, said sometimes lipomas (his technical term) can develop if there’s been trauma to the area, which happens nearly every day with our energetic 3-year-old.
That same afternoon, Jadon and Asa made friends with some children in the waiting area while Hosea was hooked up to some machines at a cardiologist’s office. I watched the doctor do an echocardiogram of my 2-week-old, stared as he pointed out the four chambers of my tiny baby’s heart, marveled as he pointed out the miniature arteries and blood flow to and from the heart. Maybe every other day I take it for granted, but that day I saw the miracle of every miniscule piece working together to keep my baby alive.
The cardiologist concluded that Hosea’s heart is perfectly normal, that his blood just rushes quickly and makes a whooshing sound as it’s flowing to and from the heart, but that it’s nothing abnormal. He’s a perfectly healthy baby.
The relief was…overwhelming.
The day before our double-appointment day, Ben had sent me a text that said, “God’s love for you will not run out.” Made me cry, of course. Maybe he had no idea how much I needed to be reminded of that. Maybe he did.
But two weeks ago, when my children received their clean bills of health, I felt that love. I realized, with almost-desperate relief, that the God who loves me—who LOVES me more than I can even comprehend, more than I can possibly love my children—has every single detail of my world in his hands.
He’s got the tiny little babies in his hands. He’s got the mothers and the fathers in his hands. He’s go the sisters and the brothers in his hands. He’s got the whole world in his hands.
He’s got the whole world in his hands. The WHOLE world. That whole world includes Jadon. Asa. Hosea. Ben. Me.
Thank you, God, that you have the tiny little babies and the precious little boys and girls and even the mamas and daddies in your hands.
Your faithfulness to the skies…
How priceless is your unfailing love!
Both high and low among men
Find refuge in the shadow of your wings.
-Psalm 36: 5,7
My 3-year-old just graduated to a booster car seat. My 15-month-old is daily increasing his vocabulary. My infant just turned one month old.
It’s been an eventful month since Hosea joined our family. There have been good times…like intentional family picnics and walks to the neighborhood pool—times when it was easy to say, “God, I love these children so much my heart is going to explode.” Even our first plane trip to Arizona so the band I share with my husband could record our third music project, a full-length worship album.
While it was difficult juggling the three boys and some days I had to remind myself, “God, I love these children so much my heart is going to explode”—the days when I would start to feed Hosea just minutes before Asa would slip on a blanket Jadon had left on the floor and bust his head on the tile at the same time Jadon would urgently announce, “I need to go potty!”—I count the trip among the good times of the last month.
Good times because there were some much more challenging times.
The first time we noticed the bruised bump on Jadon’s back, we thought it was exactly that. A bruise. One that would eventually go away.
A month, two, passed. It didn’t go away, but we thought maybe it was because he’s a normal boy—rough and rowdy and rambunctious—and kept bruising it during wrestling matches with his little brother or his daddy.
So we waited another month. Two. Three. I made a mental note to make an appointment with our pediatrician so he could check it out, give us his medical opinion. Set our hearts at ease.
Then Hosea was born. A fill-in pediatrician scratched down on her official notepad that his heart sounded like it might have a murmur that should technically have gone away 48 hours after his birth. A little side note on her “he’s healthy” assessment. A big, bold headline in our “he’s perfect” assessment.
A week after his birth, we took Hosea to our pediatrician. He’d gained almost a pound and had grown an inch and a half. The murmur was still there.
He couldn’t explain the lump on Jadon’s back.
So we found ourselves, one week before leaving for our Arizona trip, visiting a dermatologist for Jadon and a pediatric cardiologist for Hosea.
I couldn’t help but panic. My firstborn had a lump. My newborn had a heart murmur.
I cried so much in that one week. Every time I thought about Jadon, held his little-boy hand in mine, kissed his sweet, growing-up face, panic would claw at my throat. Every time I thought about Hosea, held the bundle that barely filled my lap, kissed his tiny-baby face, fear would burn my eyes. Every time I perused the Internet, looking for information about a lump on a child’s back and what it could possibly be and about a heart murmur and what we could possibly do, crushing despair would immobilize everything but the tears.
Oh, God, I love these boys so much my heart could explode.
The fear, the panic, the crushing despair, made me start to believe that God couldn’t possibly bless me with three perfectly healthy children. I kept thinking my “favor” had run out, that I didn’t deserve what favor I had been given.
Every time I thought about it—which was every time I had a moment to think—I cried.
Four days before our trip, we sat in the waiting room at a dermatologist’s office. My hands shook as I held Jadon’s all the way to the examination room. I began to think that maybe if I had protected Jadon more, tamed his wild ways, the lump would not be there. Maybe if I had spent more time praying or reading God’s word or just hanging out with him, none of this would be happening.
The dermatologist examined Jadon’s back, felt the raised area and concluded it was a benign buildup of fatty tissue that, as long as it’s not bothering Jadon, would not have to be removed. We made a follow-up appointment for October, just to make sure the lump hasn’t grown and still isn’t bothering Jadon, but the dermatologist didn’t seem concerned at all, said sometimes lipomas (his technical term) can develop if there’s been trauma to the area, which happens nearly every day with our energetic 3-year-old.
That same afternoon, Jadon and Asa made friends with some children in the waiting area while Hosea was hooked up to some machines at a cardiologist’s office. I watched the doctor do an echocardiogram of my 2-week-old, stared as he pointed out the four chambers of my tiny baby’s heart, marveled as he pointed out the miniature arteries and blood flow to and from the heart. Maybe every other day I take it for granted, but that day I saw the miracle of every miniscule piece working together to keep my baby alive.
The cardiologist concluded that Hosea’s heart is perfectly normal, that his blood just rushes quickly and makes a whooshing sound as it’s flowing to and from the heart, but that it’s nothing abnormal. He’s a perfectly healthy baby.
The relief was…overwhelming.
The day before our double-appointment day, Ben had sent me a text that said, “God’s love for you will not run out.” Made me cry, of course. Maybe he had no idea how much I needed to be reminded of that. Maybe he did.
But two weeks ago, when my children received their clean bills of health, I felt that love. I realized, with almost-desperate relief, that the God who loves me—who LOVES me more than I can even comprehend, more than I can possibly love my children—has every single detail of my world in his hands.
He’s got the tiny little babies in his hands. He’s got the mothers and the fathers in his hands. He’s go the sisters and the brothers in his hands. He’s got the whole world in his hands.
He’s got the whole world in his hands. The WHOLE world. That whole world includes Jadon. Asa. Hosea. Ben. Me.
Thank you, God, that you have the tiny little babies and the precious little boys and girls and even the mamas and daddies in your hands.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
The child who leads...
The lines on his face told as big a story as the pink scar on his right hand.
It was a knife that did it, he said. His mud-colored eyes were bright, agitated, hopeful—because Eddie, who makes his home between the shelters of downtown San Antonio and the courtyard of Travis Park, doesn’t often have a chance to share his story.
Self defense. That’s what landed him in prison with an eight-year sentence dangling over his head. That’s what chained him to the streets eight months later, when he was released on good behavior, when he checked “convict” on a job application, when the world turned its back on him.
Eddie didn’t turn his back on the world, though. He opened his arms to it.
We met him by chance. A handful of the launch team from Hope Arise, a new church plant in north San Antonio, finished the church’s first worship service together by carpooling downtown to hand out sack lunches to the city’s neediest.
If I’m honest, I’d have to say I didn’t really want to be there on that particular day. I was feeling tired because I hadn’t slept well the night before. It was colder than I expected because I don’t watch the weather channel, and my sons didn’t have jackets to protect them from the biting wind or face masks to protect them from the germs I imagined gripping the people who live on the streets. My stomach was complaining because I hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before.
My attitude was all wrong. Then I met Eddie.
I’ve never met anyone like Eddie.
He wore V-shaped blankets draped over his ragged clothes—more than enough blankets, he said, so he could give them away when he met someone who was colder than he was.
He was not the first in line. He was not the second or the third or the fourth. In fact, he didn’t even take a lunch that day—handed the last sack we had in our travel bin to a man in a wheelchair, a man who had more wrinkles on his face than Eddie had. A man Eddie said needed the food more than he did—because a group had delivered some breakfast tacos that morning, and Eddie had eaten his fill.
Maybe it’s silly, but the more I talked to Eddie, the more I heard him quote the word of God with the authority of a beloved friend of Jesus, the more I watched him love on my son, on our group, on his homeless buddies, the more I felt like I was watching a true disciple of Jesus.
A disciple of Jesus living on the streets, carrying a tattered backpack with the only possessions he owns, sharing what little he does have with the people he meets.
He was so much like Jesus.
He and Jadon—my innocent, sees-no-prejudice 3-year-old—formed an immediate friendship, strengthened within minutes by Eddie handing Jadon some stale crackers he’d found in his bag so that Jadon could feed the squirrels and pigeons hanging around. When the crumbs in Jadon’s hand had been offered and eaten, my son followed Eddie across to the other side of the park, where five or six of Eddie’s friends were eating. Even though horror-struck caution started burning my throat, I let him go because I knew he was teaching me something, and I blinked the tears out of my eyes like a mother watching her son opening his arms to danger and disease and almost-certain ruin.
I watched the people around him, people who had lived a life I could never imagine, smile at the words Jadon spoke. I watched them touch his face and his hair. I watched him smile with them and laugh with them and play with them.
Later, Eddie said, “That is priceless,” pointing to Jadon, who was running into the middle of a group of pigeons and laughing hysterically when they took flight. His smile made his eyes shine. “I could watch him do this all day.”
We stayed in the park talking with Eddie longer than we’d expected. That’s why we met Richard, another wrinkle-lined man who had hit hard times but was hopeful they’d turn around soon. I was standing beside him, holding my nine-month-old Asa, when Richard told me with shining eyes that he’d had two children of his own who’d been taken away at the height of his addiction. Regret darkened his face, but his white whiskers stretched into a smile when Asa reached his hands out to him.
I watched, emotion clogging my throat, as Asa nuzzled Richard’s scratchy beard, as Richard threw back his head and loosed a gruff laugh, as Asa smiled at him and touched Richard’s cheek with his tiny little hands.
When we were leaving, Ashleigh Pepper, minister of students for Hope Arise, asked Eddie if there was anything we could bring next time that might make a day easier for him and his friends.
Eddie looked at Jadon and said, “That right there,” with a smile that thawed the last bit of caution away from my heart.
My children, with their unclouded love, their unprejudiced eyes, their know-no-stranger way of making the most unlikely of friends, had made a day for a man who sleeps on iron park benches and wears the only clothes he owns and eats whatever he can find whenever he can find it just a little bit better.
It wasn’t the sack lunch, with its peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and its cheesy Doritos and its 20-ounce bottle of water. It was the children. My children.
Driving home with a tired and hungry Jadon, we asked our son if he’d had fun. He said he liked Eddie. He said, “I want to go see Eddie again really soon.”
I wonder what Eddie would say if he could hear those words.
I saw more angels that day than I’ve ever seen in my two-car-garage-, cable-TV-watching-, too-busy-making-ends-meet-to-really-be-friends world. Two of them were Richard and Eddie.
Two of them were my sons.
It’s true what Jesus says. It’s true that a little child will lead us. My children bore the truth of His words that day.
Thank you, God, that you have given me the privilege and honor of watching, raising, loving these angels. May I never, ever, ever forget.
It was a knife that did it, he said. His mud-colored eyes were bright, agitated, hopeful—because Eddie, who makes his home between the shelters of downtown San Antonio and the courtyard of Travis Park, doesn’t often have a chance to share his story.
Self defense. That’s what landed him in prison with an eight-year sentence dangling over his head. That’s what chained him to the streets eight months later, when he was released on good behavior, when he checked “convict” on a job application, when the world turned its back on him.
Eddie didn’t turn his back on the world, though. He opened his arms to it.
We met him by chance. A handful of the launch team from Hope Arise, a new church plant in north San Antonio, finished the church’s first worship service together by carpooling downtown to hand out sack lunches to the city’s neediest.
If I’m honest, I’d have to say I didn’t really want to be there on that particular day. I was feeling tired because I hadn’t slept well the night before. It was colder than I expected because I don’t watch the weather channel, and my sons didn’t have jackets to protect them from the biting wind or face masks to protect them from the germs I imagined gripping the people who live on the streets. My stomach was complaining because I hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before.
My attitude was all wrong. Then I met Eddie.
I’ve never met anyone like Eddie.
He wore V-shaped blankets draped over his ragged clothes—more than enough blankets, he said, so he could give them away when he met someone who was colder than he was.
He was not the first in line. He was not the second or the third or the fourth. In fact, he didn’t even take a lunch that day—handed the last sack we had in our travel bin to a man in a wheelchair, a man who had more wrinkles on his face than Eddie had. A man Eddie said needed the food more than he did—because a group had delivered some breakfast tacos that morning, and Eddie had eaten his fill.
Maybe it’s silly, but the more I talked to Eddie, the more I heard him quote the word of God with the authority of a beloved friend of Jesus, the more I watched him love on my son, on our group, on his homeless buddies, the more I felt like I was watching a true disciple of Jesus.
A disciple of Jesus living on the streets, carrying a tattered backpack with the only possessions he owns, sharing what little he does have with the people he meets.
He was so much like Jesus.
He and Jadon—my innocent, sees-no-prejudice 3-year-old—formed an immediate friendship, strengthened within minutes by Eddie handing Jadon some stale crackers he’d found in his bag so that Jadon could feed the squirrels and pigeons hanging around. When the crumbs in Jadon’s hand had been offered and eaten, my son followed Eddie across to the other side of the park, where five or six of Eddie’s friends were eating. Even though horror-struck caution started burning my throat, I let him go because I knew he was teaching me something, and I blinked the tears out of my eyes like a mother watching her son opening his arms to danger and disease and almost-certain ruin.
I watched the people around him, people who had lived a life I could never imagine, smile at the words Jadon spoke. I watched them touch his face and his hair. I watched him smile with them and laugh with them and play with them.
Later, Eddie said, “That is priceless,” pointing to Jadon, who was running into the middle of a group of pigeons and laughing hysterically when they took flight. His smile made his eyes shine. “I could watch him do this all day.”
We stayed in the park talking with Eddie longer than we’d expected. That’s why we met Richard, another wrinkle-lined man who had hit hard times but was hopeful they’d turn around soon. I was standing beside him, holding my nine-month-old Asa, when Richard told me with shining eyes that he’d had two children of his own who’d been taken away at the height of his addiction. Regret darkened his face, but his white whiskers stretched into a smile when Asa reached his hands out to him.
I watched, emotion clogging my throat, as Asa nuzzled Richard’s scratchy beard, as Richard threw back his head and loosed a gruff laugh, as Asa smiled at him and touched Richard’s cheek with his tiny little hands.
When we were leaving, Ashleigh Pepper, minister of students for Hope Arise, asked Eddie if there was anything we could bring next time that might make a day easier for him and his friends.
Eddie looked at Jadon and said, “That right there,” with a smile that thawed the last bit of caution away from my heart.
My children, with their unclouded love, their unprejudiced eyes, their know-no-stranger way of making the most unlikely of friends, had made a day for a man who sleeps on iron park benches and wears the only clothes he owns and eats whatever he can find whenever he can find it just a little bit better.
It wasn’t the sack lunch, with its peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and its cheesy Doritos and its 20-ounce bottle of water. It was the children. My children.
Driving home with a tired and hungry Jadon, we asked our son if he’d had fun. He said he liked Eddie. He said, “I want to go see Eddie again really soon.”
I wonder what Eddie would say if he could hear those words.
I saw more angels that day than I’ve ever seen in my two-car-garage-, cable-TV-watching-, too-busy-making-ends-meet-to-really-be-friends world. Two of them were Richard and Eddie.
Two of them were my sons.
It’s true what Jesus says. It’s true that a little child will lead us. My children bore the truth of His words that day.
Thank you, God, that you have given me the privilege and honor of watching, raising, loving these angels. May I never, ever, ever forget.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Let's get a little messy...
Away with your noisy hymns of praise
I will not listen to the music of your harps (strings)
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice
An endless river of righteous living.
Amos 5:23-24 (parenthesis added)
The first time I saw her, I didn’t have any children of my own.
Ben and I were at the Rock Opera with his youth group from Alamo Heights Baptist church. Some people had just handed out these folders that had African kids’ pictures on them, and Rebecca St. James was on stage talking about an organization called World Vision. I wasn’t really listening.
Instead, I was staring at Kedija Juhar, the little girl a woman had passed to Ben and me. She had brown eyes and wild hair, and I knew we would sponsor her before I even read that she lived in Tanzania and was the “water bearer” for her family and that her father had died of AIDs and that she took care of her brother and sister while her mother tried to find work.
I knew even before I saw that her birthday was the day before Ben’s and my anniversary.
Those eyes…they just wouldn’t let me go.
Six years ago we signed up to send $35 each month to this precious little girl across the ocean. She was 6. Didn’t go to school. Had no drinking water within a five-mile radius. Wore no shoes.
Today, Kedija is 12. Her favorite subject is science, and she’s not so good at math but she’s excelling at her native language. Her community has a well from which they draw water now. She saves her shoes for school.
Moses Mwesige came along in 2005, after we’d signed up to become World Vision Artist Associates. He’s from Zimbabwe, a part of Africa so ravaged by AIDs that World Vision leaders compare it to an “Asian tsunami every six days.” So many places in Africa are the same.
Moses has seen the destruction of the disease. His family has buried sons, daughters, parents and grandparents in the 12 years he’s been alive, and even in a community where death is almost commonplace, it is no less damaging. In his first letter to us, Moses wrote, “Thank you for loving me so much that you would choose to sponsor me.” His words made me cry the day I opened up that dirt-streaked envelope and unfolded the paper stamped with World Vision’s Zimbabwe seal. If I’m really being honest, they still make me cry today because, though simple and sweet, they are at the same time intense and difficult. He saw our love in that paltry $35 we sent every month.
How little I knew of the love that would blister my heart like the scorching dirt in Africa blisters their feet, the same love that would make my heart dance and laugh and sting and cry every time I saw “Zimbabwe” scribbled on an envelope.
How little I knew of its addiction.
We sponsored our third child three months after Jadon was born, when I found a little boy from Peru, Juaquin, who was born the same day Jadon was born in 2006. I saw his face, and I saw my son.
Juaquin is almost 3 now. His colored pictures hang alongside Jadon’s artwork on our refrigerator (which is getting a little crowded by now), and when Jadon’s old enough to write, they’ll be pen pals. When he has his own money, Jadon will help make sure Juaquin has enough to eat.
Philani Lugogo came along a few months later. He’s from a rural community in South Africa. His first picture showed a skinny 3-year-old with melancholy eyes and dirty feet. The picture we got a few weeks ago shows a healthy 5-year-old with smiling eyes and shoes to cover his probably-still-dirty feet. He just started school.
Maureen is the last of our sponsored kids. We just began our relationship with her two months ago, so the only thing I know about Maureen is that her birthday is on the day my grandmother died. Memaw would be glad to know that a little girl’s life was changed so drastically the day she died.
You may be wondering why I’m telling you all of this. Because they are my children. And, just as Jadon and Asa have done, Kedija, Moses, Juaquin, Philani and Maureen have taught me so much over the years.
Namely this: I. Am. Still. Selfish.
It took me a while to realize this, and even longer to admit it, but it’s true.
I eat half my oversized plate at Chili’s and I buy that overpriced organic chicken at H-E-B and I drink that oversweet Starbucks hot chocolate, and I complain about how my budget doesn’t seem to be working out this month. While the millions who live on less than $2 a day eat their beans and rice and, maybe once a week, that piece of almost-rotten fruit and walk those five miles to get that clean water, and they sing “I’ve got this joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart” and they mean it.
I sit in my three-bedroom, 1,988-square-foot house, with its centralized heating and cooling system, and I turn on my wide-screen television with more channels than I’d watch in a lifetime and I grumble about how the honey-colored book shelf that sits in our gameroom will have to be replaced eventually because my sons (and probably husband) have nicked some of the wood with their rough-housing. They sit in their houses made of cardboard or fabric or see-through sheets and thank God that they have shade from the burning sun.
I try to hold on, with cramping fingers, to the bit of comfort I have here…while my children—MY children—across the ocean are starving. Hurting. Dying.
I am so selfish.
So I’ve found myself begging God to break my heart for what breaks his, to show me what else I might do in my little corner of easy living, to make the lives of those millions just a tiny bit easier.
Back in July, Ben and I attended a worship leader’s conference in Leawood, Kansas. The idea that worship cannot be separated from justice had been on our hearts for a while, and it was reaffirmed at the conference.
While there, God urged Ben and me to start working on a project, which we’ve since titled “Heart Like Your Heart Project,” that will effect change in the lives of children and orphans all over the world. Progeny plans to go into the studio in March to record a brand new worship album, with brand new original worship songs, that will release sometime in April or May.
Here’s the important thing, though: all sales of the album will go directly to World Vision. Ten percent of the profits will be distributed to Progeny’s sponsored children, to purchase goats and cows and chickens in order to raise the communities’ economic status for their own good and the good of surrounding communities. The other 90 percent of the profits will go directly to the work of World Vision—building wells, providing food and clothing and shelter and administering health care to the ones who need it most.
Our goal is to sell 10,000 CDs, which will raise $135,000 for the work of World Vision (Visit www.progenyworship for more info on the project and e-mail ben@progenyband.com if you’re interested in hosting a house party or worship concert).
I’ve never been to Zimbabwe or Tanzania or Peru or South Africa. But I have children there. Children who go to bed hungry, children who raise their brothers and sisters because disease stole their parents. Children who want to know that they are worth the sacrifice of my monthly Chili’s tab.
Listen to what Leonard Sweet says in "The Three Hardest Words in the World to Get Right:"
“Everything we do—our learning, our strivings, our dreaming and daydreaming—needs to be shaped by the one in three people who live on less than two dollars per day. We need to be shaped by the ten thousand Africans who die of AIDs, TB and malaria every day, and the fifty million people who die of hunger every year. That’s why the condition of our souls has a direct relation to the condition of our neighborhoods and our nations. Something is wrong when the wealth of some depends on the poverty of others. Something is wrong when the ascent up the ladder for some depends on the descent down the ladder for others.”
Amen, Leonard.
So I say, let us run, dance, walk, limp, whatever it looks like to us, toward God’s heart in caring for the orphan and the widow and the foreigner. Because if we want to see Jesus—and I mean really, really see him—we’ll have to crumple our perfectly-pressed pants and roll up the sleeves of our Tide-white shirts and get a little messy. Because where the dirt-smudged children, the poverty-stricken foreigners and the not-exactly-aromatic homeless are is right where Jesus loves to be.
Break our hearts for what breaks yours, oh God.
(For sneak peeks of three of Progeny’s new worship songs, visit www.progenyworship.com.)
I will not listen to the music of your harps (strings)
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice
An endless river of righteous living.
Amos 5:23-24 (parenthesis added)
The first time I saw her, I didn’t have any children of my own.
Ben and I were at the Rock Opera with his youth group from Alamo Heights Baptist church. Some people had just handed out these folders that had African kids’ pictures on them, and Rebecca St. James was on stage talking about an organization called World Vision. I wasn’t really listening.
Instead, I was staring at Kedija Juhar, the little girl a woman had passed to Ben and me. She had brown eyes and wild hair, and I knew we would sponsor her before I even read that she lived in Tanzania and was the “water bearer” for her family and that her father had died of AIDs and that she took care of her brother and sister while her mother tried to find work.
I knew even before I saw that her birthday was the day before Ben’s and my anniversary.
Those eyes…they just wouldn’t let me go.
Six years ago we signed up to send $35 each month to this precious little girl across the ocean. She was 6. Didn’t go to school. Had no drinking water within a five-mile radius. Wore no shoes.
Today, Kedija is 12. Her favorite subject is science, and she’s not so good at math but she’s excelling at her native language. Her community has a well from which they draw water now. She saves her shoes for school.
Moses Mwesige came along in 2005, after we’d signed up to become World Vision Artist Associates. He’s from Zimbabwe, a part of Africa so ravaged by AIDs that World Vision leaders compare it to an “Asian tsunami every six days.” So many places in Africa are the same.
Moses has seen the destruction of the disease. His family has buried sons, daughters, parents and grandparents in the 12 years he’s been alive, and even in a community where death is almost commonplace, it is no less damaging. In his first letter to us, Moses wrote, “Thank you for loving me so much that you would choose to sponsor me.” His words made me cry the day I opened up that dirt-streaked envelope and unfolded the paper stamped with World Vision’s Zimbabwe seal. If I’m really being honest, they still make me cry today because, though simple and sweet, they are at the same time intense and difficult. He saw our love in that paltry $35 we sent every month.
How little I knew of the love that would blister my heart like the scorching dirt in Africa blisters their feet, the same love that would make my heart dance and laugh and sting and cry every time I saw “Zimbabwe” scribbled on an envelope.
How little I knew of its addiction.
We sponsored our third child three months after Jadon was born, when I found a little boy from Peru, Juaquin, who was born the same day Jadon was born in 2006. I saw his face, and I saw my son.
Juaquin is almost 3 now. His colored pictures hang alongside Jadon’s artwork on our refrigerator (which is getting a little crowded by now), and when Jadon’s old enough to write, they’ll be pen pals. When he has his own money, Jadon will help make sure Juaquin has enough to eat.
Philani Lugogo came along a few months later. He’s from a rural community in South Africa. His first picture showed a skinny 3-year-old with melancholy eyes and dirty feet. The picture we got a few weeks ago shows a healthy 5-year-old with smiling eyes and shoes to cover his probably-still-dirty feet. He just started school.
Maureen is the last of our sponsored kids. We just began our relationship with her two months ago, so the only thing I know about Maureen is that her birthday is on the day my grandmother died. Memaw would be glad to know that a little girl’s life was changed so drastically the day she died.
You may be wondering why I’m telling you all of this. Because they are my children. And, just as Jadon and Asa have done, Kedija, Moses, Juaquin, Philani and Maureen have taught me so much over the years.
Namely this: I. Am. Still. Selfish.
It took me a while to realize this, and even longer to admit it, but it’s true.
I eat half my oversized plate at Chili’s and I buy that overpriced organic chicken at H-E-B and I drink that oversweet Starbucks hot chocolate, and I complain about how my budget doesn’t seem to be working out this month. While the millions who live on less than $2 a day eat their beans and rice and, maybe once a week, that piece of almost-rotten fruit and walk those five miles to get that clean water, and they sing “I’ve got this joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart” and they mean it.
I sit in my three-bedroom, 1,988-square-foot house, with its centralized heating and cooling system, and I turn on my wide-screen television with more channels than I’d watch in a lifetime and I grumble about how the honey-colored book shelf that sits in our gameroom will have to be replaced eventually because my sons (and probably husband) have nicked some of the wood with their rough-housing. They sit in their houses made of cardboard or fabric or see-through sheets and thank God that they have shade from the burning sun.
I try to hold on, with cramping fingers, to the bit of comfort I have here…while my children—MY children—across the ocean are starving. Hurting. Dying.
I am so selfish.
So I’ve found myself begging God to break my heart for what breaks his, to show me what else I might do in my little corner of easy living, to make the lives of those millions just a tiny bit easier.
Back in July, Ben and I attended a worship leader’s conference in Leawood, Kansas. The idea that worship cannot be separated from justice had been on our hearts for a while, and it was reaffirmed at the conference.
While there, God urged Ben and me to start working on a project, which we’ve since titled “Heart Like Your Heart Project,” that will effect change in the lives of children and orphans all over the world. Progeny plans to go into the studio in March to record a brand new worship album, with brand new original worship songs, that will release sometime in April or May.
Here’s the important thing, though: all sales of the album will go directly to World Vision. Ten percent of the profits will be distributed to Progeny’s sponsored children, to purchase goats and cows and chickens in order to raise the communities’ economic status for their own good and the good of surrounding communities. The other 90 percent of the profits will go directly to the work of World Vision—building wells, providing food and clothing and shelter and administering health care to the ones who need it most.
Our goal is to sell 10,000 CDs, which will raise $135,000 for the work of World Vision (Visit www.progenyworship for more info on the project and e-mail ben@progenyband.com if you’re interested in hosting a house party or worship concert).
I’ve never been to Zimbabwe or Tanzania or Peru or South Africa. But I have children there. Children who go to bed hungry, children who raise their brothers and sisters because disease stole their parents. Children who want to know that they are worth the sacrifice of my monthly Chili’s tab.
Listen to what Leonard Sweet says in "The Three Hardest Words in the World to Get Right:"
“Everything we do—our learning, our strivings, our dreaming and daydreaming—needs to be shaped by the one in three people who live on less than two dollars per day. We need to be shaped by the ten thousand Africans who die of AIDs, TB and malaria every day, and the fifty million people who die of hunger every year. That’s why the condition of our souls has a direct relation to the condition of our neighborhoods and our nations. Something is wrong when the wealth of some depends on the poverty of others. Something is wrong when the ascent up the ladder for some depends on the descent down the ladder for others.”
Amen, Leonard.
So I say, let us run, dance, walk, limp, whatever it looks like to us, toward God’s heart in caring for the orphan and the widow and the foreigner. Because if we want to see Jesus—and I mean really, really see him—we’ll have to crumple our perfectly-pressed pants and roll up the sleeves of our Tide-white shirts and get a little messy. Because where the dirt-smudged children, the poverty-stricken foreigners and the not-exactly-aromatic homeless are is right where Jesus loves to be.
Break our hearts for what breaks yours, oh God.
(For sneak peeks of three of Progeny’s new worship songs, visit www.progenyworship.com.)
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Celebrate Recovery testimony, shared 10/13/09
I’m a believer in Jesus Christ who struggles with perfectionism, a skewed body image and low self worth.
All of this…messiness…began a long, long time ago. I grew up with a small town, in a two-bedroom house with my mom, my dad, my older brother and my younger sister. We knew everybody’s secrets in that town. They knew all of ours.
The first time I remember my dad leaving home was the day after I’d sung my first solo in church. I was 4. He drove off that day on a Harley motorcycle, to “go find work” in his home state of Ohio, while we stayed behind in Texas. I watched him with dripping eyes until that motorcycle was too far away to even imagine, and I remember thinking my solo is what made him leave.
He worked out of state for a month or so. Maybe he sent home some money, maybe he didn’t. I don’t really know. I do know that he came home with a box of Jones Potato chips (a brand of chips made only in Ohio) and the clothes on his back. Seemed like he’d never left.
Short absences—a month or two—were normal after that. When friends would ask about my dad, I recited what he’d told us: that the jobs were better in Ohio. They looked at me with skeptical eyes. Maybe deep down inside I knew it was a lie, too.
The next time Daddy left for an extended trip (I knew because he took a backpack of clothes with him this time) was the same day I found out I needed glasses. I cried and cried and cried—partly because he was leaving but mostly because I needed glasses, and if I needed glasses, that meant I could no longer be perfect for him. And that meant he would stay away even longer.
He did.
He was gone for two years. At the end of those two years, my mom packed us up and drove the night through to Ohio. We rented a house in Mansfield. I could count on one hand the number of times Daddy slept in his own house while we were living in the same town. So my mom moved us back to Texas. A year later, she got a letter from her sister-in-law saying that Daddy had a 3-year-old daughter and a baby on the way with a woman he’d been fooling around with for years.
I was 11 years old when my parents split up, when I figured out I wasn’t good enough to keep my dad at home. I spent the next 10 years trying to prove I was good enough.
My mom moved us back to where we’d spent our first few years in school. I got contacts. She got debt, bought a shabby house surrounded by corn fields. Everybody in that town knew why we’d come back.
I threw myself into school, focused on my studies, played sports, joined the junior high band, did everything I possibly could to make my dad, to make others, notice what a wonderful person I was.
We visited my dad the summer between my sixth and seventh grade years. It was the first time I met my half-brother, my half-sister and the woman who’d caused my parents’ divorce. After a rough month, my dad took us shopping for school clothes—his contribution since he never sent child support. I remember moving out of the dressing room to those big mirrors outside, just to make sure the shorts I’d chosen fit right. Daddy and my stepmom were there. He said, “I thought she would have lost all her baby fat by now” in a kind of off-hand, nonchalant way.
I stopped eating lunch my seventh grade year. Told all my friends it was because our athletics class was right after lunch and my food didn’t have time to settle. I cut out breakfast my freshman year in high school because I wasn’t “hungry that early in the morning.” I’d forget my lunch, too. Only ate dinner, and that’s just because my mom was there, watching me with eyes that said she knew what I was doing.
It got easier in college because those eyes weren’t there. I would limit myself to a small smoothie every day—about 600 calories—and obsessively worked off that 600 calories—and more—by running six or seven miles and lifting some weights. I made excuses when my mom came to visit once a month or so. The Texas State marching band was really hard work, and I couldn’t keep the weight on because of it. She knew better. I know that now.
It wasn’t just the body image, either. The desire to be the best, to be perfect, pushed me to seriously focus on my studies. I graduated valedictorian of my high school class, got a full ride to college and graduated with highest honors from Texas State University in San Marcos. I still remember crying when I brought home my first B on a philosophy essay. I never let it happen again.
My sophomore year of college I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment with roommates who saw my pantry shelf and the very few groceries that sat there. At the time, I was news editor of the university newspaper, and the excuse I offered to them was that my job didn’t pay much (it didn’t) and I didn’t have money for more than the can of green beans I ate every day.
I got more involved in the Baptist Student Ministry during my junior year. The director there asked me to be the worship leader, and I remember thinking, “He has no idea how messed up I am.” But I did it, even while I struggled through my relationship with God. Working out, counting calories, was way more important to me than spending time with a living, able-to-heal God.
Recovery began my senior year of college, when I finally found it in me to admit I had a problem.
The summer prior to that, I’d gotten a call from my dad. He lived in Florida now. He was sober, which was unusual at that time. He told me he’d made a mistake, that he didn’t mean to do what he’d done. He apologized for leaving us high and dry, said it wasn’t my fault or my brother’s fault or my sister’s fault, that the fault was his alone. I told him I forgave everything, that I didn’t hold any of it against him because I loved him. He cried. I sobbed. Healing stretched its arms around us.
A month later, Ben and I decided to pursue a relationship together. When he and I first started dating, I’d moved up to editor in chief of the university newspaper. I spent hours and hours every day in my office—writing, editing, editing some more—and because I still had trouble eating three meals a day, Ben stuck a note on my computer that said “skinny = beautiful” with a line through the equal sign. I looked at it every single day, and maybe deep down inside I started to believe it.
Things have changed since those college days. My relationships are different—because I no longer (or at least try hard not to) compare myself to my friends or try to measure up to some impossible-to-reach bar just to prove I’m good enough to like.
My relationship with Ben is deeper than it used to be because I know he loves me even if there are 10 extra pounds on my body that weren’t there when we married. Maybe six years of telling me it doesn’t matter what I look like have finally lodged those words into my stubborn brain.
My relationship with my dad has been restored, to a certain extent. He knows where we stand. I know he’s suffered more than enough for what he’s done. Contact is still spotty, like it was when I was a kid, but I call him every other month just to let him know I’m thinking about him. I still love him as much as I did before he made his mistakes. Maybe I love him more because of his mistakes.
I still run five or six miles a day. But the eating disorder is gone. The tendency toward perfectionism is still there, but maybe I’m okay with that because it reminds me how I need God’s grace every single day to dodge the shackles that chase standards like that.
Some days I look in the mirror and don’t think that what I see is beautiful or thin enough. Those are the days I ask—maybe beg—Jesus to give me eyes to see myself the way he sees me—because the temptation is still there, curling its icy fingers around my arm. But Jesus never disappoints. Never. And some days, I do see what He sees: imperfect-but-still-beautiful me. Psalm 139:14 says, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You works are wonderful. I know that full well.”
It’s taken me 16 years to believe that I am one of his works.
People have asked me over the years if I would change anything about my past. My answer is no. Because my past has made me who I am, has helped me see things in a different way, has offered me an opportunity to minister to God’s people. I’ve written about my past in a book I shopped to agents last week. I’ve shared my past in the songs my band records.
No, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because God is glorified in what might look like my mess. He’s glorified in all of our messes, and that is the beauty in mistakes.
All of this…messiness…began a long, long time ago. I grew up with a small town, in a two-bedroom house with my mom, my dad, my older brother and my younger sister. We knew everybody’s secrets in that town. They knew all of ours.
The first time I remember my dad leaving home was the day after I’d sung my first solo in church. I was 4. He drove off that day on a Harley motorcycle, to “go find work” in his home state of Ohio, while we stayed behind in Texas. I watched him with dripping eyes until that motorcycle was too far away to even imagine, and I remember thinking my solo is what made him leave.
He worked out of state for a month or so. Maybe he sent home some money, maybe he didn’t. I don’t really know. I do know that he came home with a box of Jones Potato chips (a brand of chips made only in Ohio) and the clothes on his back. Seemed like he’d never left.
Short absences—a month or two—were normal after that. When friends would ask about my dad, I recited what he’d told us: that the jobs were better in Ohio. They looked at me with skeptical eyes. Maybe deep down inside I knew it was a lie, too.
The next time Daddy left for an extended trip (I knew because he took a backpack of clothes with him this time) was the same day I found out I needed glasses. I cried and cried and cried—partly because he was leaving but mostly because I needed glasses, and if I needed glasses, that meant I could no longer be perfect for him. And that meant he would stay away even longer.
He did.
He was gone for two years. At the end of those two years, my mom packed us up and drove the night through to Ohio. We rented a house in Mansfield. I could count on one hand the number of times Daddy slept in his own house while we were living in the same town. So my mom moved us back to Texas. A year later, she got a letter from her sister-in-law saying that Daddy had a 3-year-old daughter and a baby on the way with a woman he’d been fooling around with for years.
I was 11 years old when my parents split up, when I figured out I wasn’t good enough to keep my dad at home. I spent the next 10 years trying to prove I was good enough.
My mom moved us back to where we’d spent our first few years in school. I got contacts. She got debt, bought a shabby house surrounded by corn fields. Everybody in that town knew why we’d come back.
I threw myself into school, focused on my studies, played sports, joined the junior high band, did everything I possibly could to make my dad, to make others, notice what a wonderful person I was.
We visited my dad the summer between my sixth and seventh grade years. It was the first time I met my half-brother, my half-sister and the woman who’d caused my parents’ divorce. After a rough month, my dad took us shopping for school clothes—his contribution since he never sent child support. I remember moving out of the dressing room to those big mirrors outside, just to make sure the shorts I’d chosen fit right. Daddy and my stepmom were there. He said, “I thought she would have lost all her baby fat by now” in a kind of off-hand, nonchalant way.
I stopped eating lunch my seventh grade year. Told all my friends it was because our athletics class was right after lunch and my food didn’t have time to settle. I cut out breakfast my freshman year in high school because I wasn’t “hungry that early in the morning.” I’d forget my lunch, too. Only ate dinner, and that’s just because my mom was there, watching me with eyes that said she knew what I was doing.
It got easier in college because those eyes weren’t there. I would limit myself to a small smoothie every day—about 600 calories—and obsessively worked off that 600 calories—and more—by running six or seven miles and lifting some weights. I made excuses when my mom came to visit once a month or so. The Texas State marching band was really hard work, and I couldn’t keep the weight on because of it. She knew better. I know that now.
It wasn’t just the body image, either. The desire to be the best, to be perfect, pushed me to seriously focus on my studies. I graduated valedictorian of my high school class, got a full ride to college and graduated with highest honors from Texas State University in San Marcos. I still remember crying when I brought home my first B on a philosophy essay. I never let it happen again.
My sophomore year of college I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment with roommates who saw my pantry shelf and the very few groceries that sat there. At the time, I was news editor of the university newspaper, and the excuse I offered to them was that my job didn’t pay much (it didn’t) and I didn’t have money for more than the can of green beans I ate every day.
I got more involved in the Baptist Student Ministry during my junior year. The director there asked me to be the worship leader, and I remember thinking, “He has no idea how messed up I am.” But I did it, even while I struggled through my relationship with God. Working out, counting calories, was way more important to me than spending time with a living, able-to-heal God.
Recovery began my senior year of college, when I finally found it in me to admit I had a problem.
The summer prior to that, I’d gotten a call from my dad. He lived in Florida now. He was sober, which was unusual at that time. He told me he’d made a mistake, that he didn’t mean to do what he’d done. He apologized for leaving us high and dry, said it wasn’t my fault or my brother’s fault or my sister’s fault, that the fault was his alone. I told him I forgave everything, that I didn’t hold any of it against him because I loved him. He cried. I sobbed. Healing stretched its arms around us.
A month later, Ben and I decided to pursue a relationship together. When he and I first started dating, I’d moved up to editor in chief of the university newspaper. I spent hours and hours every day in my office—writing, editing, editing some more—and because I still had trouble eating three meals a day, Ben stuck a note on my computer that said “skinny = beautiful” with a line through the equal sign. I looked at it every single day, and maybe deep down inside I started to believe it.
Things have changed since those college days. My relationships are different—because I no longer (or at least try hard not to) compare myself to my friends or try to measure up to some impossible-to-reach bar just to prove I’m good enough to like.
My relationship with Ben is deeper than it used to be because I know he loves me even if there are 10 extra pounds on my body that weren’t there when we married. Maybe six years of telling me it doesn’t matter what I look like have finally lodged those words into my stubborn brain.
My relationship with my dad has been restored, to a certain extent. He knows where we stand. I know he’s suffered more than enough for what he’s done. Contact is still spotty, like it was when I was a kid, but I call him every other month just to let him know I’m thinking about him. I still love him as much as I did before he made his mistakes. Maybe I love him more because of his mistakes.
I still run five or six miles a day. But the eating disorder is gone. The tendency toward perfectionism is still there, but maybe I’m okay with that because it reminds me how I need God’s grace every single day to dodge the shackles that chase standards like that.
Some days I look in the mirror and don’t think that what I see is beautiful or thin enough. Those are the days I ask—maybe beg—Jesus to give me eyes to see myself the way he sees me—because the temptation is still there, curling its icy fingers around my arm. But Jesus never disappoints. Never. And some days, I do see what He sees: imperfect-but-still-beautiful me. Psalm 139:14 says, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You works are wonderful. I know that full well.”
It’s taken me 16 years to believe that I am one of his works.
People have asked me over the years if I would change anything about my past. My answer is no. Because my past has made me who I am, has helped me see things in a different way, has offered me an opportunity to minister to God’s people. I’ve written about my past in a book I shopped to agents last week. I’ve shared my past in the songs my band records.
No, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because God is glorified in what might look like my mess. He’s glorified in all of our messes, and that is the beauty in mistakes.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The beauty of messy love...
Overwhelming.
The love that bubbles in my heart, rises to my throat and lodges there when I look at my two sons, at their gem-of-a-man father, at their hands reaching for my face, my arm, my hair.
Overwhelming.
The panic that gurgles in my veins, claws at my throat and lodges there when I look at the mountains of laundry to be done, the piles of toys to be picked up, the layer of dust lounging on the tables and the bookshelves and the books that line them…not to mention the pages I need to design for work, the queries I need to write to agents so they’ll shop my book to publishers, the chapters I still need to write for my next book.
These emotions, so completely different from each other, live under the same roof. Sometimes it’s just…overwhelming.
Maybe you should know something about me. Maybe you already know it. I’m a perfectionist. Always have been…trying hard not to be.
But it sneaks in on days like today. Days when I look at that layer of dirt and wonder how we can even breathe in this house with two weeks of dust caking the ceiling fans that spin all night and the shelves my boys touch (and sometimes gnaw on, if we’re talking about Asa) and the beds where we sleep.
On days like today, I want to drop everything and clean until my hands fall off, until my feet scream for relief, until the whole house shouts, “Thank you, God, that she finally saw fit to pick up a duster.”
But on days like today, it is nearly impossible.
Because those boys (okay, and man)—a 2-year-old who would rather walk on toys than clean them up and a five-month-old who doesn’t even comprehend the word clean and a 27-year-old who seems like he should have been trained by now—are there, staring at me with eyes that say, “Stay here with me.”
So I do. I sit and watch Jadon pull out more toys and add to the pile that’s already out of hand. And I feel it growing inside me—the frustration, the horror, the panic of seeing my carefully-put-together game room becoming a tornado-went-through-here play room. I watch Asa stare at him, learning how to make a mess, and my eye starts to twitch a little. I watch Ben leave his shoes where he took them off instead of walking them to the closet where they belong, and my throat starts to burn a little.
And then I have to make myself remember something a very wise woman—my mama—told me just a few days ago: “There is no room for perfectionism in marriage or in parenting.”
No room for perfectionism. Oh, man.
But after the initial panic—“But if I can’t be perfect, what can I be?”—stops clawing at my face and my neck, I feel my shoulders relax a little, and I start to really watch the boys. Really watch them. And listen. I listen to Asa laughing hysterically at something Jadon has done. I listen to Jadon say, “I’m not a boy. I’m a man,” and I find myself thinking that he’ll make a fine man someday. I listen to Ben do everything he can to make Asa and Jadon laugh again, and I find myself thinking what a fine man, what a beautiful example, he really is (with the exception of the cleanliness, of course).
That’s when my heart starts to swell. That’s when I find myself remembering what started it all—this beautiful, messy life we four share together.
It was mid-September, 2002. I had just gotten home from singing the national anthem at a college basketball game. One of the assistant coaches had asked me out. I said no. Didn’t offer a reason, even though I knew it was because I’d written off dating, asked God to hold my heart until the right person came along. I drove back to my apartment, wondering if I’d made the right decision, and my roommate and her fiancé were standing outside, talking to this boy-man I had met before, had even been friends with for a while. The guys invited my roommate and me to watch a move at a mutual friend’s house. Something pushed me to say yes.
Ben and I talked during the whole movie. Six days later, God told me He’d given my heart to Ben. On Sept. 30, Ben told me he’d had a vision from God, a vision of his future wife. My mouth got dry until he told me the girl in his vision was me.
The next few months were sweet, sweet times. I was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper and would stay up at my office (Old Main on the campus of Texas State University) until 2 or 3 a.m. Sometimes Ben would meet me after work and walk me to my car because it was dark and dangerous, or so he said. Sometimes we would walk all the way to my apartment, enjoying the quiet of the morning hours and the way our hands fit together. Sometimes, when I was too tired to see, he would sit in my office keeping me awake while I did the final edit on the paper and sent it to press.
Two months after we’d decided to pursue a relationship, Ben asked me to marry him on stage at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio. We’d just gotten done watching The Nutcracker. His hands shook. My eyes leaked. We celebrated at The Olive Garden.
Oct. 11 will mark six years of marriage for us. I can’t believe it’s been that long since I wrote my vows and read them aloud for the 150 people crammed in that little historical church. He wrote a poem for me. I remember thinking, “I’m so glad I married a poet.”
I’m still glad, even if his dirty clothes do end up on the floor in the same pile as his clean ones (at least I’m not the one who has to do the “smell test”).
So this is the love that started it all. It’s that love, my love for him, my love for his children, that keeps me thinking—even when I look at the mess my sons can make in a matter of seconds—that I’m so glad I have a mess of toys to pick up. I’m so thankful I have five loads of laundry to do every week. I’m so blessed to have a sink full of dishes every morning.
Because it means they are here, alive and well. And I’m needed. Favored. Loved. That is what the mess and the disasters and the cries in my house tell me.
And that is what drowns the perfectionism.
Thank you, God, that they are here.
Asa talking to whoever will listen
Jadon sporting a mohawk
Asa
The brothers
The love that bubbles in my heart, rises to my throat and lodges there when I look at my two sons, at their gem-of-a-man father, at their hands reaching for my face, my arm, my hair.
Overwhelming.
The panic that gurgles in my veins, claws at my throat and lodges there when I look at the mountains of laundry to be done, the piles of toys to be picked up, the layer of dust lounging on the tables and the bookshelves and the books that line them…not to mention the pages I need to design for work, the queries I need to write to agents so they’ll shop my book to publishers, the chapters I still need to write for my next book.
These emotions, so completely different from each other, live under the same roof. Sometimes it’s just…overwhelming.
Maybe you should know something about me. Maybe you already know it. I’m a perfectionist. Always have been…trying hard not to be.
But it sneaks in on days like today. Days when I look at that layer of dirt and wonder how we can even breathe in this house with two weeks of dust caking the ceiling fans that spin all night and the shelves my boys touch (and sometimes gnaw on, if we’re talking about Asa) and the beds where we sleep.
On days like today, I want to drop everything and clean until my hands fall off, until my feet scream for relief, until the whole house shouts, “Thank you, God, that she finally saw fit to pick up a duster.”
But on days like today, it is nearly impossible.
Because those boys (okay, and man)—a 2-year-old who would rather walk on toys than clean them up and a five-month-old who doesn’t even comprehend the word clean and a 27-year-old who seems like he should have been trained by now—are there, staring at me with eyes that say, “Stay here with me.”
So I do. I sit and watch Jadon pull out more toys and add to the pile that’s already out of hand. And I feel it growing inside me—the frustration, the horror, the panic of seeing my carefully-put-together game room becoming a tornado-went-through-here play room. I watch Asa stare at him, learning how to make a mess, and my eye starts to twitch a little. I watch Ben leave his shoes where he took them off instead of walking them to the closet where they belong, and my throat starts to burn a little.
And then I have to make myself remember something a very wise woman—my mama—told me just a few days ago: “There is no room for perfectionism in marriage or in parenting.”
No room for perfectionism. Oh, man.
But after the initial panic—“But if I can’t be perfect, what can I be?”—stops clawing at my face and my neck, I feel my shoulders relax a little, and I start to really watch the boys. Really watch them. And listen. I listen to Asa laughing hysterically at something Jadon has done. I listen to Jadon say, “I’m not a boy. I’m a man,” and I find myself thinking that he’ll make a fine man someday. I listen to Ben do everything he can to make Asa and Jadon laugh again, and I find myself thinking what a fine man, what a beautiful example, he really is (with the exception of the cleanliness, of course).
That’s when my heart starts to swell. That’s when I find myself remembering what started it all—this beautiful, messy life we four share together.
It was mid-September, 2002. I had just gotten home from singing the national anthem at a college basketball game. One of the assistant coaches had asked me out. I said no. Didn’t offer a reason, even though I knew it was because I’d written off dating, asked God to hold my heart until the right person came along. I drove back to my apartment, wondering if I’d made the right decision, and my roommate and her fiancé were standing outside, talking to this boy-man I had met before, had even been friends with for a while. The guys invited my roommate and me to watch a move at a mutual friend’s house. Something pushed me to say yes.
Ben and I talked during the whole movie. Six days later, God told me He’d given my heart to Ben. On Sept. 30, Ben told me he’d had a vision from God, a vision of his future wife. My mouth got dry until he told me the girl in his vision was me.
The next few months were sweet, sweet times. I was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper and would stay up at my office (Old Main on the campus of Texas State University) until 2 or 3 a.m. Sometimes Ben would meet me after work and walk me to my car because it was dark and dangerous, or so he said. Sometimes we would walk all the way to my apartment, enjoying the quiet of the morning hours and the way our hands fit together. Sometimes, when I was too tired to see, he would sit in my office keeping me awake while I did the final edit on the paper and sent it to press.
Two months after we’d decided to pursue a relationship, Ben asked me to marry him on stage at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio. We’d just gotten done watching The Nutcracker. His hands shook. My eyes leaked. We celebrated at The Olive Garden.
Oct. 11 will mark six years of marriage for us. I can’t believe it’s been that long since I wrote my vows and read them aloud for the 150 people crammed in that little historical church. He wrote a poem for me. I remember thinking, “I’m so glad I married a poet.”
I’m still glad, even if his dirty clothes do end up on the floor in the same pile as his clean ones (at least I’m not the one who has to do the “smell test”).
So this is the love that started it all. It’s that love, my love for him, my love for his children, that keeps me thinking—even when I look at the mess my sons can make in a matter of seconds—that I’m so glad I have a mess of toys to pick up. I’m so thankful I have five loads of laundry to do every week. I’m so blessed to have a sink full of dishes every morning.
Because it means they are here, alive and well. And I’m needed. Favored. Loved. That is what the mess and the disasters and the cries in my house tell me.
And that is what drowns the perfectionism.
Thank you, God, that they are here.
Asa talking to whoever will listen
Jadon sporting a mohawk
Asa
The brothers
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