She wanted healing on the sly
But he wanted more for her
He wanted to make her whole
So he called her out
Into the light
To give voice to her pain
In a sea of jaded faces,
to see HIS face smile
And there in front of everybody she named the wound
And returning his smile, announce its healing
All while seeing him see her
And she stayed seen
When she went in peace
according to his word
She lives still, seen
Knowing he knows her
All of her,
whole
(Based on the woman in Luke 8)
Some were fruitful, multiplied and were overpowered;
as they beheld the stubborn strength of their offspring
who towered over their shrinking forms
and they saw the terrors of the land, and their eagerness to fall headlong,
and their hands became powerless, and they quaked at the future,
sleep fled from their eyes and peace from their hearts
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He held tenderly their weak hearts, and taught them to smile at the future.
As he opened and emptied their hands, He filled them with himself.
Then they lifted their eyes and were glad, and His Word became their strength.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his faithfulness to generations
it just feels better to keep moving
to jump from one accomplishment to the next, strength tostrength tostrength
running, outrunning it all or at least movingforward fastforward
Pause. Stop.
Sit in quiet, in shocking, unsettling stillness
stillness like a straight jacket
and feel crawling restlessness in my arms and legs
a heart grasping about for something i should be
doing-cleaning-improving-planning
a soul, flailing around, unsettled, in empty space
off balance with no direction to point, no goal to race towards
What, am I supposed to just stand here?
Where do I put my hands when they are not busy?
a restless shuffling of feet, adjusting clothing, fiddling with hair
i’d rather be a speedboat going somewhere (anywhere)
than a buoy, just floating here
passive, moved and unmoving, anchored but not driving
i try to imagine myself,
tethered and still,
just bobbing
in
one
place
Can I close my eyes and just BE for five minutes?
without managing, moving, analyzing something, without holding a steering wheel?
all the speedboats around me and in my brain vie for my attention
i don’t know where to look, how to look away for a minute
to close my eyes and simply be SMALL
to feel the depths that go unnoticed at the surface
can i keep my hands at my sides, or, even better, FOLDED
for just a moment?
I hear my heartbeat
feel my breaths
they come unbidden
like the waves
Settle me down, Lord.
Still me,
and I
will
be
still.
What does it mean to be a good mother? To live this season well?
What will my kids remember, what forms of pouring out will fill them up in ways that matter?
I ask these questions when we pause from school. I try to take a breath, to orient myself again towards the most important things.
What does it mean to live well, today? Answers come at me from all directions like wild animals.
Have you seen their bedrooms? They need better daily habits; hospitality and service begins in the home, do they even understand that?
Note the conflict! We should talk more about compassion, self control, and forgiveness in this place. Managing one’s own body and spirit is probably the most important thing, really.
But also, the future is coming; do they even know what they’re going to do after high school? They should be asking questions, exploring options, feeling it all out NOW! Don’t waste the life you have been given, children!
Wait, what about playfulness? The checklists can strangle a human spirit! We MUST learn to live and play and be small together. This is how we learn to live under the gospel, to breathe in grace together- God upholds the world, we do not!
So I am over here cultivating an atmosphere of…
productive, driven, mindful, playful grace …. ??? Sure.
What do you do when it ALL matters?
When you find yourself as a human with limits and impossible, important, competing, valuable goals?
------
The other day I was cleaning the school room and I came across this old piece of paper.
“I love how you are always there in the morning.” - Peter
Hard pause.
I could notice the handwriting and spelling: has it even improved, am I failing him in this area?
I could notice that this idea I had once about saying nice things to each other in writing was a good one, and I could wonder why haven’t we continued to do that, and I could start a plan to implement another system, another habit…
But instead I noticed the adjective, the plain, old adjective: there.
He loves how mom is always there.
Not always patient, always fun, always teaching, always organized, or even always sane!
Just… there.
“I love how you are always there in the morning.”
----
Can showing up daily, imperfectly, really be enough? Can this blind, staggering best-guessing parenting somehow really bless these kids, really result in faithful functional adults?
Fear drives me so much in my parenting. I don’t want to choose the wrong things, to miss the big things, to mishandle the important things and yet I feel like I do that very thing constantly. If their success depends on my righteousness or enoughness, the weight of it all will crush me. But what if it doesn’t? What if their lives are complicated equations that God is working out, and I am just a factor, and the Creator of all things can take not only my faithfulness but even my brokenness and work it into the equation for their good?
If i can remember that He is the Author here,
that He loves them more than I do,
that He uses crap for fertilizer,
then maybe I can keep showing up, imperfectly, relentlessly.
God, grant us the courage, morning after morning, to be there.
*Confession- this post was delayed in publishing because I chased the rabbit trail question “Is the word ‘there’ an adjective or an adverb?” There are plenty of uses for the word “there,” and they’re complicated. So there.
Another day of
pushing boulders up a hill,
using back and hands and face and feet
being the momentum behind it all,
fighting complaints, laziness, gravity, the universe itself
holding the boulders up, and the standards
accountability and measuring progress
with shaking arms and sweat and exhausted determination
She’s trying to convince the boulders that UP is UP
when they argue “what’s even the point?”
thinking that they would be happier if mom would just let them go
that a roll downhill would be fun,
they want peace in the valley
(the mountain is too much work)
and she does too! But pushing boulders up a hill
bearing the weight of each one and the way they should go
(always up,
always up,
miles and miles more to go)
this seems to be her job right now
always up, she pushes
boulders who sometimes hate her for pushing
angry boulders
who wish they were anywhere else but here
on this mountain,
with her
and the constant pushing.
Will they be happy to know
that her arms are giving out?
Will she be flattened when she lets go?
---
She’s taking a minute, these days,
She’s sitting, for just a minute, and she’s wondering…
Is she living the wrong metaphor?
What if kids don’t actually need to be FORCED through the seasons
What if the growth is what’s natural, not just the gravity,
What if growing up is more like rolling DOWN the hill?
What if gravity and growth are both the work of God
a work that will happen with or without her?
How much of her parenting efforts are like trying to turn a river sideways,
when really all the river needs is a little bit of shoring up on the sides?
Or maybe some rivers do need turning, but she’s not strong enough
If she died tomorrow, time will keep moving and they will keep growing, rolling without her.
They would still grow up.
What if some of her pushing boulders UP the hill is actually fighting the plan of God,
pushing against her own powerlessness,
trying to control what she can’t control,
pushing hard against simply LETTING God’s plan unfold?
What if they are all going to grow up with broken parts,
like she did,
and what if there’s nothing she can do about that?
And what if God will help them work it out
and cover it all in grace
and it will still be OK?
What if He actually has a purpose for them?
What if it includes suffering?
What if she could believe suffering didn’t mean his absence,
didn’t mean all was lost?
What if she didn’t think it was her job to help everyone avoid pain?
What if her work to avoid suffering
is pushing a boulder up a hill
fighting gravity
AND fighting God?
What if no matter what she does the boulders are going to roll
and her only real choice is to fruitlessly fight it
or get out of the way?
And sometimes even be flattened by it?
What if boulders rolling down the hill
are not always plans out of control,
or despair,
or backtracking,
but are sometimes like shedding a weight not meant to be carried,
like joyful resignation,
like
children running down a hill,
learning how legs work,
how grass feels under their feet
taking the risks of falling,
wind in their hair,
gaining speed,
figuring it out
what if the boulders are people,
learning to run and not grow weary
gravity and God and risk and suffering and joy all together
What if someday she could learn to run with them?
Can we put our struggles under a microscope, can we dice up our brain-body-soul in such a way that we can categorize all the pieces?
Biology, idolatry, chemical triggers, environment, selfishness, need, wounds given, wounds received, genetics, and downright sin- What is what and how does it all go together?
I once thought the answer to that question was of supreme importance.
Surely, I need to sort it out, because I need to respond and work in the right direction in order to heal, right?
Well, no, actually.
I am not the physician here. I am the patient; and all that is required of me is check in to the hospital. The healing work is Jesus’ work.
What is sin-- He sees, and forgives, cleanses. He makes the crooked places straight.
What are wounds- He sees, and He listens to their stories while He treats them. Many are still healing; He checks on them often.
What is weakness--- He sees, and sometimes we start physical therapy.
Sometimes, even if I want physical therapy, He gives me the gift of acceptance instead, and teaches me to compensate, to hobble along imperfectly, and to stop fighting for something that is not promised.
When it’s all tangled up and I’m just a mess of need, He is not unsettled.
He simply pulls up a chair next to my hospital bed and hears me out. Then He reminds me of His capability, and tells me I should drink some water and take a nap.
Healing takes time.
Jesus is near me as my surgeon, nurse, and friend.
Biology, idolatry, chemical triggers, environment, selfishness, need, wounds given, wounds received, genetics, and downright sin- What is what and how does it all go together?
Child, you can rest without all the answers. Jesus is your physician, and you are in His care.
I have been at war with my own body since as long as I can remember.
I have lived in a world with too much food and not enough food simultaneously, always, in a body screaming and nagging all the time, cravings clawing at my brain and even thinking in my own voice, bullying and manipulating for the sole purpose of keeping me in the crazy cycle. My body literally cannot tell me what to eat or when to stop because it’s distorted and twisted and broken and craving and starving in ways that nobody can see.
About 3 years ago, I was driven (again) to desperate googling, and I came across the words “food addiction.” I didn’t think it was a real thing, but the more I read the more I saw myself, the more I finally felt like my battle was becoming clearer.
I say it with confidence now. I am a food addict.
When I say “addict,” I do not mean I just really like food, or that I am a little emotionally dependent on food. I am using that word in its most serious sense: persistent, compulsive use of a drug despite substantial harm and adverse consequences.
I have lived with “Oh no, this is hurting me/ ruining my life;” and also “I can’t stop, why can’t I stop?” I am “unable to call to mind with sufficient force the suffering of a day/week/month ago to stop myself from picking (food) up again…”
UNABLE. Like, my brain CANNOT do it. I have a massive blind spot: I cannot trust my own brain to make reasonable decisions around food. (To realize one cannot trust one’s own brain is rather terrifying.)
I have been staggering down the path of recovery, and trying to live in accordance with what I have learned in these years. I am not “all better,” I have come to accept that I will never be “normal” in this life. But I am learning to live in a freedom I never thought possible before, and I think I’m finally ready to talk about it.
I have an addiction, an eating disorder, a brain set out to destroy me with food / drink (or anything else ya got, probably)
I am an addict.
And it’s also true that I am OK.
I’m great, even; by the grace of God and with the help of others.
For me, peace and freedom is only possible when I hold the hand of Jesus and walk inside the boundaries layed out in Bright Line Eating. This is my treatment plan:. No sugar. No flour. Weighed, measured, pre-planned meals. No snacks, no impulse food decisions. Ever.
That sounds intense, and it is. It is a treatment plan for an intense problem.
I would have never tried this had I not been sick and desperate. I would never have followed it one day at a time if I did not have active help from God Himself and the support of others.
It is no small thing for me to be able to write these words with honesty--
I am no longer at war with myself.
I am learning another layer of living “weak and loved” as God meets me in this weakness. And even in this, He forgives, loves, and provides, abundantly, and proves to me over and over that He is faithful and He is enough.
----
Why am I sharing this?
In part, because I was helped by other people sharing their stories. Addiction comes with oceans of shame, and shame bullies us into isolation. Isolation is the opposite of what we actually need to heal.
The reality of the grace of God in Christ frees us to be the children that we are; to come to God with a tangled mess of a life and barf it all out in front of him and then let HIM put the pieces back together. Speaking truth in the presence of God and others (and others) is the beginning of health and freedom.
If this resonates with you, consider researching food addiction, and know that there IS help.
Check out my favorite resources including Bright Line Eating
(especially the addiction susceptibility scale/ quiz)
You are not alone.
There is hope.
