A very goofy angel

It took parenthood to awaken me to the fragility of life. 

These days, as I make my way through the world, fearful thoughts dart through my mind: 

“What if that car, racing the red, hit me? I’d be brain-damaged, mangled. Would my daughter recognize me? When they wheeled me out of surgery would her face still crest like the sun at the sight of me? Or would she not know me at all?” 

I imagine her life without her mother and my eyes well with a flurry of tears.

In other moments, I think:

“What if something happened to my little girl? What if she had a life-threatening disease, her body shrunken to a mere few pounds as she fought for life? How would I cope with feeding tubes being laced down her throat? Would I crumble like paper or would I rise up, warring in the fight?”

I find my lips whispering prayers of thanks for life, every day. It’s a new posture for me. For most of my life I have taken life for granted. It was given. I am living it. But now, with a small life entrusted into my faulty hands, I tread lightly. I am mindful. I want to drive slower, look both ways, meander more, notice. 

It’s the way God sees, I think. He watches this spinning globe He made and hones in on a delightful little boy kicking soccer balls in Argentina. He smiles. Delights in this young child, destined for a profession in plumbing, fatherhood, public service. He sees the fullness of a life unfolding beneath dusty feet.

God is a God of love, the Bible tells us over and over. 

Psalm 33:18 reads: “The Lord watches over those who obey him, those who trust in his constant love.” 

How would our lives look differently if we believed it?

I’d be much less fearful, I think.

“The devout of this world perform their rituals without guarantee that anything good will ever come of it. Of course there are plenty of scriptures and plenty of priests who make plenty of promises as to what your good works will yield (or threats as to the punishments awaiting you if you lapse), but to even believe all this is an act of faith, because nobody amongst us is shown the endgame.

Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying, “Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.” There’s a reason we refer to “leaps of faith” — because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don’t care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn’t. If faith were rational, it wouldn’t be — by definition — faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be… a prudent insurance policy. 

I’m not impressed with the insurance industry. I’m tired of being a skeptic, I’m irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I couldn’t care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.”

- Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat. Pray. Love.

I love being a mother. The insomnia that plagued me for weeks has been a burden but not one God is too small to bear. I find myself praying: “Lord, you are greater than sleep, than skyscrapers, than galaxies and milk. This is a small thing to you. You can give me rest.” I recite the Lord’s Prayer over and over.

Tonight, for the first night in weeks, I have stayed up after Madeleine fell asleep. Michael and I talked and laughed as I baked date squares and wore an exfoliating mask — two things I have been hoping to do all week but did not have the time. I read in Red Book last night that staying up later than the baby can thoroughly exhaust you enough to sleep. My stepmom suggested tumeric so I am sipping a cup of vanilla steamed milk with a dash of it thrown in. Red Book also suggested writing out your thoughts and worries.

God, I need to write out my worry to you.

I worry I won’t be able to sleep.

I worry I will think too much and it will keep me up.

I worry I’ve lost the ability - THE GIFT - of lying my head down on the pillow and falling asleep.

Madeleine.

I want to write about her but words fail me, and even writing that seems cheap. I adore her. Her eyes are orbits. A kind of muddy, deep blue, grey, green that stare right through you. She is inquisitive, happy, full of wonder.

The truth is, I worry that I won’t be enough for her.

That’s the true worry.

She has so much. IS so much. She overwhelms me. I want to show her everything in the world and also hide her away from every dark corner. I fear for her. Dream for her. I am overwhelmed by her. I know she looks to me, at this time, for all things. I am her world and I fear I’ll fail her.

Just today my mom and I spoke about the disappointment she feels with her family. She is hurting and recognizes her need to heal, change and grow. I don’t want Madeleine to have to heal from her childhood, her parenting. I want her to BE WHOLE.

I want to give her the world… to break open every mountain and molehill for her. I want to get out of her way and stare into her eyes, forever, at the same time. I want this impossibility. I want her to live with an impossible spirit - believing in everything - truth, beauty, love - and knowing nothing, NOTHING, is impossible with God.

I want her to know you, God — now. I bet she knows you already. She does. You visit her in her dreams. You take her to Saturn and back and you whisper your love for her in her ears. 

Like you do to me. Like you did. Like you want to.

Take us to Saturn together. 

Help me to understand, to experience (for this is the only true understanding) how you can love me and care for and see me so fully when there are billions of other people in the world. Help me to stop feeling like I am a fly and help me to start feeling like I am an ocean.

You see me. 

Help me to know it. Know your love like I know it with Madeleine. Show me in a million different ways. Give me eyes to see it, hear it, feel it. Every day. Begin tonight as I dream…

Bring me to rest, God. Nurse me in your arms, as I nurse Madeleine. Staring eye to eye. Staring into love.

The worst thing in the world is for me to look away from Madeleine. Sometimes I have to so she won’t wake up too much in the middle of the night. She gets too excited to see me.

My face makes her come alive. 

She searches out my eyes. Mommy, do you see me?

Daddy, do you see me? Let me see your face that I might live.

“Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.”

- Matthew 6:22, The Message Bible

Emotionally, motherhood is the deepest well from which I’ve ever drank. The Chantal Kreviazuk quote I shared the other day speaks to this. I feel a new lease on life. Freedom. A peace with myself. An altered view of the world.

… Afternoons are spent speaking to trees. Walking through the ravine behind our house, infant in arms, smiling at sunflower gold and the rainbow of rust dancing off branches … 

Spiritually, motherhood is a deep well. There is a sensitivity and awareness growing through the stillness that’s demanded of me.

… I gather up moments of reflection like a blind man reaching out for a steady hand …

Intellectually, socially, and actively, motherhood has seemed abysmal. I don’t expect it to remain this way but I don’t view it as a failure either. For the first time in my life I am the last to know. My evenings are spent inquiring of the day’s affairs from my husband. I gobble up front pages as I pass them by at the grocery store. No reason to purchase the paper, it won’t get read. I am still working on my third story from last weekend’s Globe and Mail. 

Creatively, I can envision motherhood being a deep well. Pictures, projects and stories are steeping in my mind. But where are the moments to write them? Pencil them? Paint them? Collage them? My hands are tied to my child.  

I must trust the hours are coming…

The well is waiting.

“It began on a long wooden pew.

I grew up on The Banner, Calvinettes (now GEMS), rolls of King peppermints, and the steadfast traditions of my Christian Reformed church in suburban British Columbia.

I used to believe that at some point all Christian Reformed kids had to spread their wings, fly the CRC coop, and explore the wider world of Christianity. We’d travel like vagabonds to charismatic revivals and Pentecostal worship services—finally, finally, experiencing the omnipotent God we’d learned so much about.

The moment my last high school bell rang, I hopped a plane to New Zealand. Eventually I settled in a prominent Baptist congregation in the heart of Queenstown, where my brother and I lived.

My memories of the church are sparse. I remember my brother, in a testosterone-induced flurry, scaling the church’s roof with his bare hands. I remember the calico church cat who’d comb through the pews looking for bored churchgoers’ attention. But the memory that stands out clearest is the particularly bright Sunday morning the minister read aloud the following passage:

Now listen, you say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. . . . Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:13-15).

Those words helped me, at the age of 18, first understand God’s bigger story. I could make my own plans, but ultimately God was guiding my path…”

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An excerpt of my piece in the October issue of The Banner. Read the full article here.

My hand, Bowen Island

“Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success.”

- Thomas Merton, Trappist monk

I reread the article “Five reasons to stay in church” by Aiden Enns, Publisher of Geez Magazine, this morning, as well as this comment from ‘angela’:

“This is a re-occuring event in my life: I am sitting in church, in my pew in the balcony, and someone is talking down below at the pulpit, and I start to twitch. I shift. I look out the window, out the door. I drink my coffee and stare at my hands, and I tell myself: Self, don’t leave. You will miss out.

And it’s true. Some days, I swear I need to mount those stairs to the pew in the balcony with a sack of nails and a hammer and pound my shoes to the floor because (lord almighty) I can hardly breathe from what’s being said, and then other days I sit, I drink my coffee, and god siddles up alongside me and smashes my heart to smithereens with all that beauty he’s got pouring out of that stained glass window, that preacher’s mouth, that 200 year old song we just sang, that grandpa that camps out at church to keep the furnace going in the winter, those flaws, flaws, flaws. 

I love my church. It disapoints me, hurts my heart, leads me astray. And it elevates me, heals me, and shines God’s face on me.

It ain’t heaven yet, baby. That’s not the point.”

I couldn’t agree more.

For the past few months I have been thinking a great deal about church. In our absence from Vancouver Michael and I have been intentional about discussing and praying together about where God is calling us in this next season of life (living in Burnaby, being new parents.) A couple of weeks ago, while Michael met with Oxford colleges, I sat down and tried to put my very complicated emotions about God and Church into words. No simple task, for me at least.

:::::::

I’m sitting on a Tuesday morning sipping a hazelnut latte on Ship Street in Oxford. I’m staring out the window at a narrow lane. Three bicycles lean chained in front of a stone church nestled in this busy bit of Englandshire. A sign outside says: Enter. Rest. Pray.

Amen. This is what church should be: An open door. 

I feel so broken by my experience of church. It has changed how I see God. It has stripped the mystery from His face like the curling of paint: unwelcome moisture lacing papers, slowly. 

I carry regret and hurt like a stone. 

I have quieted my voice. I fear my words sifting through air, like a vapour: gone. Can words change anything? (Actions speak louder than words…) 

So many friends have been hurting, and disillusioned. Now: J, M & A. Then: K, J, P, R, dozens of others. Still, I’ve stayed steadfast.  

God gave us the entirety of the Bible with all of its mysteries. There is no room for mystery, innuendo, or questioning in our community. I feel we are pale and one-dimensional because of it. 

Is this the Gospel? The Gospel that has spilled from century to century, confounding the wise of every known culture? Is this the Gospel that whispers beyond the heavens? Beyond creation?

To my mind, reducing God to a five-part sermon is a serious sin, the greatest act of treason to the cross, to Jesus, to His sacrifice. 

How dare we take the depth and complexity of His everlasting love for us and reduce it to a simile? 

I sit in a city where brilliant men like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein spent their lives in wonder, discussion and service to our Lord. These men dedicated pages, chapters and books to their questions, their struggles with this Jesus, and yet remained chaste to Him.

Should this not be our model? Should we too not reach out to touch the Teacher’s cloak? This encounter is a beginning. Our lives here, and beyond the grave, are for the knowing. And the knowing and being known lead to praise. 

There is much that I long to know in this life but it all pales in comparison to a moment, an hour, shared in the presence of God. 

His wisdom sustains and guides.

As I walked through Oxford’s streets this morning, brought to smiles by penny whistles, busking, and the birds, welcoming spring, I heard the whisper of these words:

“In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.”

A truth I have neglected too long. 

In every step of worship God fulfills our heart’s desires. We need not fret over the trajectory. In mystery and devotion we worship, and God fulfills.

I long to be a part of a community who is free to be lost in the mystery of God, the beauty of His creation, the marvel of His plan, the pain of His sacrifice and the depth of Christ’s commitment to his father’s will. 

This Jesus is not an abstraction. If we let Him, He can become our life’s obsession. A man who in every moment set His desires aside for the best of others. This, He, is enough to sustain a lifetime of study, questions, mystery and emulation.

I am grateful to people whose life work, they feel, is to simplify the complexities of the Gospel so that those — children, teenagers, and adults who have never encountered the Bible — have a starting point. 

But the Gospel (that is, the good news) extends far beyond the introduction. What rests beyond our first meeting?

Enter. Rest. Pray.  Let us begin.