Writing is my hobby. In my 30’s it was gardening. That was an activity I could do at home with my baby monitor hooked onto the belt loop of my jeans while the kids napped. Digging and planting. That’s therapy. In my 40’s I started to write instead. That’s therapy too and my husband likes it because it’s cheaper than gardening.
I’m kind of introverted but I love my people and do my best to contribute to their lives in ways that bless, encourage and inspire. All of my writing stems from that passion.
This is the cross my heart, hope to die, true story of how I got an account on Facebook. It was somewhere between 2007 and 2010. Somebody I didn’t know very well was coming to stay at our house and I decided to stalk him first. We had 4 littles sleeping in their bunkbeds and while I prayed for their safety, I acted on the premise that God needed a wingwoman to get the job done.
I discovered, to my delight, that Facebook invited me to re-connect over time and despite distance in ways I couldn’t have otherwise. I loved looking at picture perfect family photos and created them myself. For awhile, I was enamored. Over time; though, my feed started to be supplanted with posts of Facebook’s selection. Turns out they’re better stalkers than I am. Topics of conversation in Messenger, started showing up in my feed. Any post I paused over, I’d get more of and if I was took the clickbait, similar posts multiplied like baby hamsters. Facebook decided who I am, what I like, how I think and gave me more.
Here’s the thing, historically I’ve listened way too hard to other people’s voices claiming they know what is right, good and best for me. I don’t need patronizing on social media too. So, mostly, I’ve tried to ignore what I don’t like because the algorithms give me just enough SCOTLAND with its highland cows and Yorkshire sheep to keep me hooked. And, besides that, Marketplace is my happy space. However, in the current political climate which is boorish, vulgar, divisive and unhinged, I want out.
So, here’s my plan. I’m going to try this— keep my account open but only for accessing Marketplace and Messenger. Going forward, don’t assume that I’ve seen anything important that you post. When we meet in the grocery store, I won’t know if your dad died or your family just welcomed another grandkid, so tell me or text me or message me as I come to mind. And keep the family pictures coming too!
Over the years, I’ve posted links to my writing on my feed and some of you have connected with the words and feelings expressed. I am shutting my WordPress blog down as well, but probably not until the end of the year, when it’s time to pay my annual subscription fee. I ordered a printed copy of my blog, which turned into 3 volumes and 696 pages to be exact.
The past three years, I’ve been pretty quiet, my writing energy primarily channeled into academic papers, but, recently, I’ve been inspired to write again and have started a Substack account. Consider this your invitation to follow me there: https://substack.com/@hopewebster1?
Fall has been good to us here in the Great Lake State this year. I’ve been taking long, reflective walks in the tail end of the summer sunshine, the leaves blushing and dancing off the trees. The temperatures are noticeably cooling this week. Something is ending and something else is beginning. For everything, there is a season. So, too with Facebook. It was good back in the day, but that day is no more. “And I know, when it’s time to go.”
The tree is dying. The one smack dab in the center of my front yard. The one I’ve looked out the window at for approximately 3650 dinners. The one I took a picture of every day the first fall we moved back to Michigan, like an enamored tourist.
Even then, I noticed a root had encircled the stump. Maybe because the weed barrier and metal edging gagged it. What was meant to protect might have smothered the tree. Or maybe not.
Each year the leafing becomes thinner, like the hairline of an old woman. Some branches are bare, already naked, like Job’s proclamation. Last year, the leaves noticeably sagged. He said, “it’s 20% dead”. This year, I expect he’d say more, but how do you measure? How is he so sure? And when is it just plain dead? Is it more than 50%? Or, do we wait until only the ashen trunk protrudes from the ground to call it, like an unsuccessful resuscitation attempt. Maybe it has to topple over in a thunderstorm to make the final pronouncement.
I wonder, could the tree be saved? I don’t know and neither does anyone I’ve asked advice from. What if there’s hope and I’m just projecting the worst case scenario? If we were in Sunday School and the question was, “Who can save the tree?” We’d all answer “Jesus”, but I’d bet dessert for a year that if we sit around waiting for Jesus to heal this tree, it’s going to die all the same.
Maybe we should just cut it down. Take it out of its suffering–it’s slow, suffocating strangulation. Grind the stump then reseed the yard with Kentucky bluegrass in its place. Maybe we shouldn’t. And maybe it’s not actually a moral dilemma.
After all, even trees have a life cycle. There is planting and waiting and growing. There is pruning and flourishing. Pruning and flourishing. Pruning and flourishing. There are storms and injury, then resilience. Storms and injury, then resilience. Storms and injury, then resilience. There are storms and injury. There is disease. And finally, there is death.
But even then, when its 30 feet horizontal, it won’t actually be gone. I’ll see it in my mind’s eye every time I look out my window and remember its glory days. Every single picnic we ate under the shade of its branches. Its wood, repurposed, may provide warm, cozy fires on frigid Pure Michigan winter nights or cook marshmallows to perfection in a campfire encircled by people who live and love and laugh together. The mulch might nourish the flowers in my perennial garden or decompose, giving back to the earth its life giving organs to nourish a new tree. And, maybe I’ll plant a weeping willow in its memory.
(Interwoven into this reflection are both my musings on my work of hospital chaplaincy and my own processing of personal losses.)
I’ve been quiet….Stringing words together in this liminal space feels clumsy. When the girls were little, we used to read a picture book together about a reptile named Verdi. When he was young he was bright yellow with sporty stripes. When he shed his skin, he turned green and it took some getting used to. I feel kind of like Verdi, shedding an itchy and uncomfortable iteration of myself and growing into something the same and different.
During this sacred silence, I spent a year dredging up layers of reasons and motivations and explanations for why I do and think and say and feel what I do. I feel like I excavated right down to my bowels during a yearlong Clinical Pastoral Education training. 302 single spaced pages of introspective writing, 400 hours of group processing and education and 1200 hours of clinical practicum hospital visits later, I became credentialed to serve as a medical care chaplain, a ministry God invited me to partner in to, as best as I am able, reflect Divine love and presence in the flesh.
This Hope, I’m still getting acquainted with her.
Here are her musings, random thoughts from today while driving, on autopilot, between a coffee date with a friend and workout at the gym.
47 degrees and sunny. January in Michigan. How is this even possible? No need for any of those artificial mood enhancing lights today. Vitamin D on demand. I hear it in my head, the 70’s rock classic song—Blinded by the Light. Today’s fresh mercies.
About light…. And darkness…..
When I grew up the daily offices of lowering and raising the window shades were our family’s non-liturgical practices equivalent to morning and evening prayers. I never heard my mom put words to it, but if she had, I imagine they might have been something like this. “Hello God, you’ve protected us in the darkness. It’s a new day now and I’m anticipating your mercies in the light.” That’s what I’m thinking anyway, as I replicate the sacred practice decades later.
Everybody knows that people just feel better in the light. And it’s not just our mood. The Bible uses these two images to delineate good from bad, desirable from undesirable. So….why do churches intentionally build sanctuaries that have no windows and then turn the lights out to worship God? I don’t get it! Never have. I tolerated it for a long time, like I tolerated a lot of things that I wish I hadn’t, but I don’t want to do that anymore. “May the light of your glory shine in through the windows of whatever sanctuary I gather with your people in, to worship You, God. Amen ”
Aldi is like the light. It brings out the best in people. A little old lady, frail but determined, stared me down as I approached the sliding front door, kindly holding a quarter out in front of me.
“Take this for a cart.” “Awww, thank you,” I replied. “I don’t actually think I need one today.” “Well pass it on then,” she said as she thrust it into the palm of my hand.
Where else do you find the carts lined up like dominoes at the entrance to a grocery store? And there’s almost always a quarter tucked into the slot of the one ready to pull out. At Aldi’s cart corral, rugged individualism gives way to communal charity and it’s like sunshine.
I might have to park myself at Aldi for the next four years to bask in the light of collective goodwill and generosity of spirit after the executive order on “Protecting The American People Against Invasion”. While we’re at it, maybe we should just drape a body bag over the Statue of Liberty to cover the New Colossus which reads, ”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Yesterday, in the daylight, I participated in a safety inservice at work where the commercial airline industry was elevated as a model of effective, systemic organizational protocols put into practice, demonstrated by a track record of 16 years without any major crashes. Then, last night, I watched a video of fireworks over the DC skyline, an air traffic collision resulting in the human light of 67 lives snuffed out— swallowed up in the darkness of the murky waters of the Potomac. I imagined what it might be like to be an airport chaplain, to sit with those loved ones dazed with fear at Reagan International and witness the cumulative grief.
Truth is, I fear flying. Xanax style. It started on 9/11 when I had three littles in tow. Recognizing that not even a mama bear can protect their babies from a plane crash, my sympathetic nervous system started responding on overdrive. Every time. So, I developed a meditation that I still practice 24 years later. It goes like this. When the plane starts to taxi toward the runway, I open my palm and imagine God sitting next to me, even if it’s actually a snoring dude who smells like marijuana. God takes my hand and I say silently, “Well God, I’m either going to (name my destination) or heaven today and either way, it’s all good.” Sometimes I’ve been traveling to Scotland or California or Tennessee. Sometimes its been Dallas, which, if I’m honest, I begrudgingly express gratitude for. Other times I’m coming home to Grand Rapids.
Two weeks ago, it was Utah. The snow was blowing a gale as I boarded a plane at dusk, landing under a clear starry night in the desert with one of my little women. We spent three days walking together, just like my mom and I used to. Well, sort of… She and I never hiked up mountains or through deserts—at least not in real time, but we took some pretty sacred journeys nonetheless. And so it goes— from one generation to the next. A mom loves her kids, when they’re itty bitty and when they aren’t. And she hopes that when they grow up, they’ll continue to walk together, but separately too. That’s called individuation in the world of Psychology and there’s a learning curve to mastering that relational dance. It can be horrible hard sometimes, but it’s also beautiful and holy to try. Eventually, we realize that we’re all just God’s kids, beloved, one a few minutes older than the others. And in that sacred space we can cheer one another on as we grow and change and wonder and consider and delight and grieve and celebrate all of the mysteries of this broken beautiful life.
When I consider life’s brevity, and I consider it even more frequently now that I’m a chaplain, these realities come to mind and serve as trail markers for my life.
What is true about the cycle of life?
“A person’s life is like grass. Like a flower in the field it flourishes, but when the hot wind blows by, it disappears and can no longer even spot the place where it once grew.” Psalm 103:15-16
How can I steward the life I’ve been gifted?
“So teach us to consider our mortality, so that we might live wisely.” Psalm 90:12
and “Eat your food with joy and drink with a happy heart… Enjoy life with the people you love…Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might.” Ecclesiastes 9
What is my abiding hope?
“Nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” Romans 8:38
And as I crawl into my warm bed to rest, reflecting on the tapestry of human experience woven into this day, I recite this blessing from Psalm 4. “In peace and with a tranquil heart I will lie down and sleep. For You alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety and confident trust.”
The first day after Ash Wednesday. Here is where I begin to practice my commitments to deny myself small pleasures, ingrained coping strategies and lesser habits in order to honor the gargantuan sacrifice Jesus made for me. It’s not that I am paying him back or earning his favor as a result of my actions, it’s more like acknowledging that one love calls out to another, echoing reciprocal acts of sacrifice. The season gives time and opportunity for Jesus story to slow simmer and offers me the opportunity to reprogram life rhythms through repeated practice. Every time I say no to my defaults, I make space for something else. Something better, something more true.
In Lent, submission becomes palatable because the misappropriated definition focusing on power and authority structures is dethroned by Jesus human story. Single verses of scripture are contextualized in the gospel narrative where submission is top down instead of bottom up. Jesus is first to pay it forward. It starts with the King of the Hill and trickles down so we all have a model to follow as we replicate His example toward one another. And that is a lifelong training exercise.
Last night, I missed that gritty sensation of pasty ashes smearing across my lined forehead in the form of the cross. The words spoken over me that, “From dust I came and to dust I will return.” I entered this world under the curse of death and I will leave it that way too. Inside my mother’s womb and 6 feet under—they’re both as dark as the church was last night, sleety ice raining down from the heavens.
But that is not the whole story. The Lenten season is not a circular path. Where we commence forty days before Easter is not our concluding destination. Death is a temporary word. Resurrection is the eternal word.
And so my spectator’s journey to the cross and beyond begins. Again. Another year to ponder the conundrum of death and resurrection, God’s redemptive plan of choice, and to practice cruciform living, one decision, one discipline, one day at a time. And for the privilege and opportunity to follow where He leads, I’m grateful.
It happened at Planet Fitness this final day of the slog through January. I was working out on a strength training machine next to a strong, sculpted 20 something. Even drenched in sweat, she looked like a model. On the torso rotator, I lost internet connection and my audiobook went silent mid-sentence so I turned on my 2022 Spotify playlist for distraction and randomly, my friend, Ben Rector started singing about Heroes. It’s one of my most listened to songs of 2022 but today, it sounded brand new. As Ben lamented the loss of his childhood heroes, my eyes involuntarily sprung a slow, dripping leak.
His song tells a story about the innocence of childhood and in the archives of my memory, I see a kid riding her banana seat bike to Baskin Robbins and sitting on the front step licking a Superman cone. That was me. Back then, he recalls feeling certain that his heroes had the right answers to all of life’s biggest questions, whatever they were, until he realized they didn’t. We call this developmental awakening “growing up”. It’s when we start to notice with disillusion, disappointment and sometimes even disdain the ways our heroes are, at times, flawed, phonies and failures.
Ben says it like this: I miss when I had superpowers. My imagination was my friend and it ran wild and free. I could waste a couple hours without a worry in the world staring at stars out on my trampoline.
I miss when Andy Mc Arthur was the fastest kid there was and kid there was ever gonna be. Ken Griffey Jr. was a giant, before parents got divorced and I learned that there was gravity.
I miss my Bible study leader. Had all the answers for living in the big bad world. Don’t know if he still talks to Jesus but his wife’s remarried now and I think he sells garage doors.
I miss when I thought chasing dreams was holy magic behind curtains in a sacred place. Before it was managers and lawyers who colored up and cashed them out for vacation homes in coastal states.
I miss back when the world was small and we had all the answers. I miss how it was when we were young. I miss back before I understood all the ways that life would break your heart, before I knew that’s what they called growing up.
I miss my old heroes. I had to give them all away. I miss my old heroes. God, I wish they could’ve stayed. ‘Cause it turns out that the hardest part of growing up’s not getting old, it’s learning how the real world goes. I miss my old…. I miss my old heroes.
I’ve got 20 years on Ben and at least 30 on the model using the leg press. But I remember when that was me too. At first, I just felt mad. Mad that my bubble burst. Mad that my rose colored glasses got removed. Mad that my earlier images of people I’d trusted and respected seemed as distorted as a house of mirrors. Anger often masks a more primal emotion- fear. And this coming of age is as terrifying as a toddler losing their security blanket. But fear feels so vulnerable, I powered up instead of groaned. Barely an adult, I didn’t know how to regulate my angst and like Ben describes in his song, I fired my heroes and went looking for replacements.
My parents heads were first on the chopping block. They often are once we recognize that we’ve absorbed some of their toxicity. Besides, they’re easy targets because they’ll love us even when we act like punks. At least, mine did.
Then came religious leaders who manipulated the Bible to advance their messages of name-it-and-claim-it prosperity gospel, or fundamentalist legalism or christian nationalism, and I started to recognize the distortions.
Even God. I thought He was supposed to superintend the world according to the general principles laid out in Proverbs until I started living out the paradoxes of Ecclesiastes, where resolution to our knotty problems are as illusive as vapor.
All through life our heroes rise and fall. Old ones and new ones alike. And sometimes we outgrow them and their answers. I wish this process was a once and done, like adolescence but growing up really is a perpetual experience, a repeating exercise in making space for people as they are rather than what we pretended they were.
Some of my heroes had to go. It was best to kick them to the curb and keep walking. Most of them aren’t like that though. Maturity morphed my mad into sad. Black and white blaming turned at least 50 shades of gray as I began to grapple with the irreducible complexity of the human experience. When I listen to Ben’s song as 56 year old me, I mostly muse about how many of my heroes have been people trying their best to live out their convictions, just like I am. They haven’t gotten it all right. Sometimes they’ve royally screwed up and I have been harmed. Other times, the same people have been a wellspring of good and I have been helped. Because we all are both image bearers of God and sinners by birth, choice and generational influence, there is no other way than the conundrum of the broken-beautiful.
Days morphed into weeks and months and years and decades and now, I’ve raised four amazing humans. A compassionate observer, I’m hearing their questions reverberate mine. Watching them sort through the same confusion. Experience similar dissolution. Walk out their own unique, lifelong journeys of growing up.
To them, to me, to us all— May we find peace and rest and security in Jesus when our heroes disappoint and fail us. May we grow in grace for the irreducible complexity of every person whose influence paradoxically helps and hurts, including ourselves. May we cultivate repentance when it is our defects that dispirit others. May we all find a soft spot to land in our Heavenly Father’s arms when we need to have our injuries nursed, Rest in His green pastures when we are weary of having our hearts broken, Courage to fly on eagles wings when our strength has been restored, Endurance to run our marathon, a cloud of witnesses cheering us on. And may we see Jesus footprints behind us, beside us and before us, all the way to the finish line. Amen
Advent is a season of waiting in anticipation for the coming of Christ. Back in the day, Gabriel visited Mary after 400 years of deafening divine silence and communal subjugation to a narcissist Roman savior-wanna-be, announcing that God would arrive on the scene. I imagine some had despaired of hope. Some had disappointedly marked God tardy. Some were trying to fix their problems themselves with a rag-tag mutiny. Others nursed a quiet, persistent, longing.
True to His word, God made a special appearance, in the most unexpected form, in the least desirable place, through the most unlikely conduit. God has a way of doing that. Intervening in what feels like the 11th hour. Collaborating with the secular instead of the religiously pious. Conjuring up a redemptive scheme that is entirely counter-intuitive to human understanding.
Today might as well have been Christmas morning for the Cherin Marie family and those who have been sharing their 3+ year wait to experience Immanuel as God with them. Lord knows, they haven’t received His tangible presence or His tender compassion from their church leaders, their community of faith, their Bishop or their denomination, the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA).The shepherds God assigned to them, to image His care have been derelict of duty. Getting their steps in taking the most distant route around their wounded, hyper focused on self-protecting their personal and institutional reputations, appeals for help from innocent assault victims having fallen on deaf ears.
Enter, the honorable Judge John Barsanti. 1,315 days after the complaint entered the public accountability system, he read the verdict. Mark Rivera is guilty of multiple Class X felonies for the criminal sexual assault of a child under the age of 13. Sentence forthcoming—somewhere between 15 and 120+ years in prison. God weighed in at the Kane County courthouse yesterday in the public naming of what is true, in the clearly defined distinction of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator, and in the validation of retributive punishment for the evil that has been committed.
On the home page of the ACNA website, a list of priorities and initiatives in large, bold, capital letters reads,
SERVING THE MARGINALIZED. God’s heart for the vulnerable and under resourced moves us to work for justice, mercy and reconciliation.
Shouldn’t that have applied to the pre-pubescent girl who was repeatedly sexually abused by their own lay minister? And what about her family? And the slew of other casualties left in the wake of Mark’s service? And how about the laundry list of victims preyed upon by bad actors manning their pulpits and warming their pews?
God have mercy on your church. Cleanse the temple for the sake of your glory. And God, companion your traumatized children with vigilant tender care. This day, this verdict, this justice is not the end of their harrowing journey. The tragic reality is that every day, under the sun, they will walk with a limp. Steady them, God, with your strong arm so they can finish the race you have intended for them to run. Companion them on their journey with your empathy.
Remind them that you, too, have been betrayed, assaulted, backed into a corner, stark naked and exploited. You, too, have been the victim of injustice, experiencing public humiliation, slander, rejection by the prevailing religious system and abandonment by your trusted community.
As counterintuitively to our human comprehension as your first incarnation was, your plan to redeem all that is broken and evil was equally mysterious. You volunteered to be a victim so we would know that we have an advocate who understands.
Surely, you have borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. (Isaiah 53)
You agreed to be declared guilty on behalf of our collective evil and receive God’s punishment in our place.
Indeed,the chastisement of our peace was upon you. And God, the Father, laid on you the judgment for our iniquity. (Isaiah 53)
We cannot fathom what you have done and what you are doing from beginning to end, but this we know. In your first incarnation, you served the marginalized. You demonstrated God’s heart for the vulnerable and the under resourced. And in your second appearing, you will reconcile all things according to your perfect justice and mercy. That is the source our hope, joy, and peace this and every Christmas.
(For more information on this story of abuse, see my earlier post.)
Thanksgiving. The crescendo of my year. With an enormous deposit in the Thanksgiving bank of happy memories, anticipation swells as I cross each tiny detail of preparation off my list.
It’s was the Sunday night before THE Thursday and the text arrived quietly as I was admitting a premature baby to the neo-natal unit. “Hey, wanna do an unofficial Turkey Trot, the three of us on Thanksgiving morning?” That was my daughter Robyn. “Brennan is a great cheerleader while running and will make sure we all finish,” she added convincingly.
A handful of years ago, jogging in a 5K event got written in permanent marker on my bucket list. An invitation to cross it off with my beloveds felt like winning the lottery without buying a ticket. I briefly calculated the risks. I am an Enneagram 6 after all. The snow had taken a dump the last three days. It could be icy. I can’t afford to break a hip. I haven’t jogged in 4 months. What if I fail? Or what if I jog so slowly, they laugh and tell me they might as well be walking. Could I risk that sort of humiliation? I answered cautiously. “If it’s not icy on the trail, I’ll try.” “If we do this, you’re not trying, you’re doing!” Brennan replied emphatically. Well, OK then….I guess I’m doing!
On Thanksgiving Eve, we all collaborated on our jogging strategies. Being a morning sleepyhead, I considered the merits of an energy drink or a cup of coffee but Robyn’s instructed, “Drink water, mom…but not too much.” “Eat something too, but only a little.”
Thanksgiving dawned all Pure Michigan sunshine. My baby decided to join the party and the four of us met up at the trailhead, the mood anticipatory and optimistic. Brennan managed our playlist including several Disney favorites. The kids sandwiched me in the middle and we headed north. My favorite direction. There were friendly holiday greetings between strangers along the way. The kids occasionally added, “2 breaths in and 1 out.” Or, “We’re halfway there!” Or “Watch up ahead. I think there’s some ice.” Never did they run ahead. Never did they complain I was going too slow. And when I started to hit a wall, they started a countdown. “3.1…. 3.11…. 3.12…. 3.13….” We crossed the finish line together at 3.20 miles. 5 kilometers exactly. “You did it mommy!” “You can cross it off your list!” They announced celebratorily. Initially, I thought they’d invited me to join them in their thing, until I realized that they’d concocted this plan to support me in mine instead. I had been seen and heard and valued, the very definition of being loved. And right then, I felt loved.
The rest of the day had other green pasture moments. Traditions old and new, near and dear. Our sweatshirts read TAINGEIL. That’s Grateful in Gaelic, a nod to the memory of our hiking adventure in the Scottish Highlands last summer. A supremely good and perfect gift.
We wore them on our gratitude walk and listed the mercies, one after another. At the table spread before us, we joined the Psalmist in recounting the cornucopia of blessings God provides for his hungry children.
It is good to say thank you to the Lord, to sing praises to the God who is above all gods. Every morning tell him, “Thank you for your kindness,” and every evening rejoice in all his faithfulness. Sing his praises, accompanied by music. You have done so much for me, O Lord. No wonder I am glad! I sing for joy. O Lord, what miracles you do! And how deep are your thoughts! Unthinking people do not understand them! No fool can comprehend this: that although the wicked flourish like weeds, there is only eternal destruction ahead of them. But the Lord continues forever, exalted in the heavens, while his enemies—all evildoers—shall be scattered. But you have made me as strong. How refreshed I am by your blessings! I have heard the doom of my enemies announced and seen them destroyed. But the godly shall flourish like palm trees and grow tall as the cedars of Lebanon. For they are transplanted into the Lord’s own garden and are under his personal care. Even in old age they will still produce fruit and be vital and green. This honors the Lord and exhibits his faithful care. He is my shelter. There is nothing but goodness in him!
Psalm 92 (The Living Bible)
Once a year, on the fourth Thursday of November, we feast on His goodness. It’s the day we set aside to count our blessings and number our gifts instead of dwelling on our disappointments and rehearsing our annoyances. In a world where there is otherwise so much personal and communal sadness, injury, injustice and loss, Thanksgiving offers us a 24 hour sabbath rest from the chaos of another year. And for this year’s opportunity to celebrate with the ones I love best, I’m grateful.
When the 666th text from a political candidate dinged in on my phone, here’s how I replied. “I think I’ll vote for the person who sends me the least number of texts.” STOP2quit would have been a more mature response.
I’m going to be brutally honest. It’s hard for me to be nice right before an election, not because I’m politically passionate about candidates and causes. You won’t find me plastering social media with propaganda and videos and if you do, presume I’ve been hacked. But this is my space, where I offer up what I have and you choose to read it—or not. And so I will tell you that I’m disillusioned by the political machine and their grimy mud fights. I resent the continental divide that has grown between family members, friends and neighbors over political players and their self-promoting interests.
Case in point, it’s going to be agonizingly hard for me to vote for the same candidates on my ballot as the dude down the street. Back in November 2020, he crudely painted a 4 x8 sheet of plywood and in gigantic letters wrote “Trump Won”, then screwed it into his deck fence for all the world to look and be amazed. Afterwards, he added spotlights so nobody would fail to see his important message even in the dark.
I get it. He’s frustrated. His candidate didn’t win and he considers it a breach of justice but DT is not the first presidential candidate in recent history to be declared “the loser” after a razor close and contested race. Remember the Bush-Gore election of 2000? Ultimately the results turned on a couple hundred votes in Florida that did or didn’t have faulty chads. Was he morally incensed about that as well and publicly grudging for two subsequent years or was he confident about the investigation, maybe even smug as he praised the integrity of our checks and balances because his party came out on top. Does his sign actually represent an amplified moral compass or is he the kind of dude who you’d never want to play a game with because he’s so mean if he doesn’t win.
Can you hear it? Obviously my neighbor triggers me. I’m not even done complaining yet…. Can you imagine what it might be like for his wife if he navigates his marriage like he does his political preferences? If he rams his opinions down her throat day after agonizing day. If he has to be right and requires that she agree that he is. That sounds both like a narcissist and a living hell. Actually, I don’t even know if he’s married, but if he is, my sincerest sympathy goes to his spouse.
Listen to me. I am not being nice. That single sign—well actually, it’s been a whole series of graffiti like billboards littering his yard the past 7 years- should not cause this level of hostility in my spirit but my neighbor and I are experiencing a Grand Canyon like fissure in our relationship and we don’t even know each other. A counselor could more fully unpack what lies behind my strong response and perhaps someday, I’ll process it with him—or her. Today, the Holy Spirit reminds me that my attitude doesn’t replicate God’s posture toward my neighbor.
So, I take a moment to box breathe like the Navy Seals do. To regulate my cortisol levels and lower my blood pressure. When I decompress, I can think with my rational brain rather than my emotional brain. And I tell myself, this is the truth. My conviction was that Trump’s character and moral qualities deemed him unfit for the prestigious position of President of the United States. Other people thought differently. Neither of us are more or less virtuous than the other. And this election is not actually about Trump. His rule and reign is in the history books. His influence, however, does still dominate the party that I historically affiliate with and most of the current candidates have publicly amalgamated themselves to his endorsement. Even so, they are their own unique individuals and should be assessed on their particular records, platforms and character. This is a new year, a different election with separate candidates. Be a big girl, Hope, and vote your conscience, regardless of how the guy down the street votes.
Good advice!
After November 2016, I felt disillusioned. Got lazy. Maybe I was throwing my own little temper tantrum, less conspicuously than my neighbor. Anyway, I missed the 2018 mid term election and our state was voting on whether or not to legalize recreational marijuana. That’ll never pass, I thought. Who on God’s Pure Michigan green earth would think it’s a good idea to have mass cannabis usage permitable in the public square, if for no other reason than our communities would start perpetually smelling like a skunk. Turned out that more than 50% of voters did and now I am destined to tolerate mass nasal pollution for the foreseeable future and I have only myself to blame.
So I am taking that lesson from the school of hard knocks to heart this time, pulling up my big girl pants and researching the candidates and proposals in preparation to vote. Actually that mostly means my husband is doing the research and sharing his recommendations with editorial. My ballot won’t necessarily replicate his but he knows what matters to me and will comment on that with his recommendations, which I appreciate. And this election is particularly epic with the overturning of Roe vs. Wade earlier this year and our state’s opportunity to shape new policies about life and death for the unborn going forward. So, this time around, I’m all in.
Some of you reading this blog are cringing right now. I get it. I feel the same way sometimes when I read what you post too. We don’t agree on everything politically. We might not agree on Trump, but here’s the bottom line. Trump should not have the power to divide us as family, friends or neighbors. We should not ostracize each other from our affection or our mutual respect because of political differences of opinion.
So, I need to preach to myself first and say, “That neighbor of mine, he gets to express his political stance on his property however he chooses.” My job is to smile and wave when I drive by. And, better yet, I could start praying for him, but not the prayer of the pharisee, the one who says, “Thank you God that I’m not a Trump enthusiast like he is.” Rather, I need the tax collector’s prayer, the one where I cry out to Jesus, because I recognize the judgement in my heart with, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” More than any particular political outcome, humility is what I most need this election.
Can we just take a few minutes to admire the womb? The miraculous incubator designed to grow a life until it is ready to meet the world.
It runs like a well oiled machine. Month after month, year after year, decade after decade, messengers from the brain we call hormones prepare a 5 star hotel in womens’ uteruses in anticipation of a baby reserving the room. This accommodation boasts a memory foam mattress created out of blood and tissue covered in 800 count Egyptian cotton sheets. Those same couriers automatically trigger the release of a microscopic golden egg from an ovary, priceless treasure within its penetrable shell. It floats down the fallopian tube like clock-work where it meets up with a sperm —or not.
If it doesn’t and the reservation gets canceled, the bed is stripped in preparation for the next potential guest and we call that experience menstruation.
If it does, the two amalgamate and a teeny-tiny human is conceived. The nanoscopic person burrows itself into the wall of the uterus. Its cells create a life support system we call the placenta wherein the baby lives in its very own self-protective swimming pool. From the egg sac, a connective stalk emerges and tethers the baby to its mothership. This cord contains a delivery system for oxygen and a sewage system for depleted lifeblood. Nothing is wasted.
A new somebody, called a baby, grows in an older somebody’s body. That’s the mother. And the womb is the location designed for this task. Nine months down the assembly line, the baby gets a quality control stamp of approval and is ready to leave the manufacturing plant. The escape route is through the mom’s vagina. An automated message tells uterine muscles to contract expanding the vaginal exit. After a rigorous workout that pushes mom to her limits, the tiny tot passes through the wardrobe into Narnia, thanks to the womb.
It doesn’t always go like this though. Sometimes the machine glitches resulting in infertility, miscarriage, premature birth, C-section, stillbirth. Sometimes messages in the golden eggs can’t be decoded resulting in disease, defect, anomaly, demise. Sometimes the host body is sick, malignant, endangered. Sometimes the creation of new life occurs under violent circumstances beyond a female’s consensual control or in the throws of addiction, poverty and dysfunction. And it is legitimate to have concern for the quality of life a child will experience when it’s born to a mother who is not prepared to nurture it.
All life matters. Mother’s lives and baby’s lives. And when both cannot co-exist, gnarly questions are asked and answered. Questions I am grateful I did not have to personally consider.
True story. I was conceived when my mom was 45. Those were the days before abortions services were legally and conveniently available and there were just a handful of neonatal care units cross country. My mom’s physician evaluated the statistical risks and offered some under the table advice. “There’s a place I know of where you can go to protect mom from this high-risk pregnancy and eliminate the probability of brith defects and developmental disabilities for baby.” My parents declined termination and said yes to the gift of life instead and here we are today, two generations and four healthy granddaughters later.
I work in a neonatal unit and see every kind of disaster recovery after the reproductive machine malfunctions. Unthinkably petite newborns, some of whom arrive in helicopters with a whole entourage of clinical traveling companions receive cutting edge medical care. Outside of the womb, there is a unanimous commitment to the ethical rules of modern medicine—help and not harm. Every little person’s life is equally valued regardless of how dire their prognosis or family circumstances are. We have a photo shoot booth that reads NICU Graduate in large, bold letters on the backdrop. It’s the last stop before discharged infants depart the unit. We congratulate the ones carrying the car seats and bless the babes on to a beautiful life because that’s what we want for them and that’s what they deserve.
But life is complicated and broken and fallen. Both in the womb and in the world, children aren’t safe. If we claim that we are advocates for protecting children from abuse and violence, then we must start with the place they are most vulnerable, in the womb. And if we claim to champion the protection of the unborn, we must be a proponent for the programs and services that protect children from the suffering and trauma they encounter living outside the womb. To be one and not the other is to be a hypocrite.
Last week, my son in law and I talked about pregnancy. I told him that I’m sorry he’ll never get the privilege of growing a baby in his womb. Of feeling it flutter in his abdomen or kick on his bladder . Of having his abdominal skin expand like a balloon or his vagina dilate to give birth. I don’t know why, but God reserved this phenomenon for a woman’s body only. We are the ones who experience the miracle.
This is my theology of the womb. That it is the remarkable invention of God’s mind and heart for reproducing human beings, a beautifully complex process that generally works like magic. By design, a biological girl greets the world with all the parts and pieces necessary for replicating the miracle once she’s matured. And the baby boy comes supplied with undeveloped sperm cells that grow and exponentially duplicate following puberty. And when the two sexually conjoin, the ordinary and the extraordinary greet one another with a holy kiss.
God describes it like this:
So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and steward it…..Then God looked over all that he had made, and he saw that it was very good!
(Genesis 1: 27-31 paraphrased)
Very Good! That’s God’s proclamation about the womb. And for the privilege of being a woman and participating in God’s plan for the circle of life through my womb, I’m grateful.
Yesterday it was Halloween. Adorable little ladybugs, princesses and cowboys walked the streets of our community loading up on candy from neighbors in their cute, little, plastic, pumpkin buckets, their parents tagging along behind them on the sidewalk. At least, that’s the Norman Rockwell portrayal of the festivities of the night. And I have friends whose families experience replicate it idyllically.
We didn’t celebrate Halloween when our kids were little. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about cute and candy makes me exceedingly happy. I like the Rockwell picture. It’s pretty much what I experienced as a kid back in the good old days.
But Halloween isn’t just that. It’s also scary costumes, spooky houses and horror movies. For some, it’s a Wiccan celebration for connecting with the dead and the spirit world too. And, if you’re an Enneagram 6 like I am, you remember isolated news reports about evil people who laced kids candy with toxins and menacingly killed them. And that takes you over the edge.
So, when my kids were itty-bitties, I decided to find an alternative that offered all the fun without any of the fear. And the church calendar made it easy. The day after Halloween is All Saints Day, a celebration that honors martyrs and saints, known and unknown, flesh and blood humans who lived imperfect but devout lives.
Our festivities began on October 1. The kids decorated their brown paper bags with markers and stickers, stencils and crayons, ribbon and glitter. Every night after dinner we read aloud a story about somebody, somewhere who did something with their life that made Jesus smile. Then we asked the question, “Who lived a sweet life for Jesus?” In unison the girls called out the name of the character in our story.
I spent a fortune on our candy stash. No tootsie rolls here. Only the best of the favorites in our candy bowl. The kids chose one piece for their bag and another for desert except on bonus nights when they got two. They earned extra candy by independently reading stories about heroes and heroines of the faith and re-telling them to the fam. Some years we decorated pumpkins with happy faces, carved out a cross or planted fall pansies inside.
On November 1, the night after the neighbor kids got all hyped up on sugar, I cooked a special meal. The kids plundered the dress up clothes bins and created costumes based on their favorite saint and wore them to dinner for the big “reveal”. After they told us who they were and why they chose that person, they got to dump their candy out of their bags and over-consume like the neighbor kids.
Traditions are sacred spaces where family communal practices shape our relationships and I wanted to include Jesus in every single one. I figured that if God’s instructions about loving Him explicitly told me to include Him in my family’s daily routine of sitting and walking and lying down and getting up, then surely, He should also be a focal point in our holiday celebrations.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Deut. 6:5-9
And in those fleeting early years of innocence and tenderness, I determined to be vigilant about bathing them in beautiful images, lovely thoughts, and good ideas while insulating them as best as I was able from the scary, ugly, evil realities of a broken world.
Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
Phillipians 4:8
I’ve loved this tradition we shared, not because it’s better than anybody else’s but because it was ours and it was special and it was good.
This year, I texted the family chat and wished everybody a happy All Saints Day. I told them who I chose as my heroine of the faith this year and why. I asked them who theirs were. One response. I texted again telling them that in my heart, I’m sending each of them their favorite candy. Crickets. Sometimes it’s hard to let a good thing go. To end a tradition. To wonder if they’ll forget. To hope they’ll remember. To acknowledge that the season has changed. To bless the leaf that first budded, then offered shade and life giving carbon dioxide before coloring our world all golden as it died. Sometimes we’ve got to just watch it float away from the tree, held by invisible arms as it dances gracefully toward the ground. To say it aloud like a benediction, “To Everything There Is A Season.” Amen.
50+ Musings 