God of all seasons, at times, this Lenten path feels as if it will never end. Deep down, we all know that it will, but the winter seems determined to stay past its welcome and signs of spring are but a dream hovering in the distance. Help us to keep putting the hope of Easter before us on the horizon. It will come.

Gracious God, thank you for your abiding presence and for the peace you bring to our souls. Surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives, and we shall live in your sacred presence forever. Amen.

This was the Sunday Prayer at RevGals this morning.  I started breezing through it.  Then stopped and read more slowly.  Then stopped again.  I read that first sentence over and over and over again.  “… this Lenten path feels as if it will never end.”

Today marks a year of Sundays since we left our CLB.  In my life and faith, winter seems determined to stay past its welcome.  The hope of Easter is beyond the horizon.

It is because of this long, perilous journey to Jerusalem and extended time in the desert that I find myself seeing God in funny places now.  I hear him speaking in different voices than before.  I seek healing that is holistic and may not ever involve me.

Yet with my shaky knees I will stand and in barely whispered voice I will say, “Gracious God, thank you for your abiding presence and for the peace you bring my soul.  Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I shall live in your sacred presence forever. Amen.”

Those are some famous words, spoken to outline a deeply held and righteous dream of a culture. Many of us have dreams that are not so famous. Yet just as closely held. They speak of who we are and who we are meant to be. My beloved grandfather used to tell me, “If you never have a dream, you’ll never have a dream come true.” So I used to dream big dreams and hold them close, believing for sure that at least one would come true some day. None of them did. As the years went my dreams grew smaller and smaller and now I don’t bother much at all. I have a few scattered hopes left, but my dreams … well.

Late last year you may recall that I read and reviewed It’s A Dance by Patrick Oden. There’s a link to the book in my sidebar (over to the left there and down a little). I was quite enamoured by it. You can read my review here. Over the past year or so Patrick and I have developed a good cyber-friendship and corresponded with some regularity.

Shortly after It’s A Dance, I read The Shack by William P. Young. Now The Shack has gotten a much wider acclaim than IAD, so I did not write a review and I may not have even mentioned it here. However, I was deeply moved by it and am reading it a second time. What struck me though, was how much the two books were alike. The authors knew nothing about one another … nothing at all. I know that there are very few people who have read both books. Certainly very very few who read them back to back as I did.

Slowly, an idea was born that somehow the two books or the ideas in them, or the authors … or somehow in someway they needed to be together. But I kept putting the idea away. Because it was is impossible. I know Patrick. I don’t know Mr. Young. Don’t know him from a hole in the ground. And I’ve got no background with which to talk to him. No entree, so to speak.

Then the impossible became probable. Today, through a series of far out events, I am going to meet William (Paul) Young at the home of a friend. Sort of. The friend of a friend (whom I have met before and know) is having an open house and the guests of honor are Mr. Young and Wayne Jacobsen (another of my heroes). I don’t know if anything will come of this. Or if my hope is a silly hope. But if you read this and it crosses your mind today, I’d appreciate the prayers.

I’ve left this go too long, but now I need to ask …

On Tuesday, my younger female cousin was rushed to the hospital with chest pain.  It was discovered that she had a blocked coronary artery.  This is somewhat frightening as she is younger, slimmer and has always been more fit than I.  She is two years younger than I … the same age as my brother and my husband.

Other than the blocked artery her heart is in “pristine condition,” and the doctors are mystified as to the reason for the blocked artery.  She was released from the hospital on Thursday, but rushed back again today.

Please pray for her and her mother (her father passed away several years ago from cancer), my aunt.    Thanks tons …

Today is LightGirl’s 14th birthday. I write that in a much more understated manner than I feel. What the h e double hockeysticks happened? Where did the time go? How did thirteen whole years go by so fast? Why is she wearing so much makeup? So many, many questions with no answers. I feel all gulpy inside. Some days I want to hold her close and make certain that nothing bad ever happens. Most days I know that’s not possible; I have to know that she has a good head on her shoulders, a sprout of faith, and the best I can do as her mom is to prepare her to handle life with grace and aplomb. The rest is up to her. But I still feel all gulpy inside.

So … in order to deal with that feeling of gulpyness here is a list of my personal favorites from last year. These are not necessarily the posts that got the most hits (in fact some of them barely got any), or the most comments (again, most of them got zero), but they are my favorites because they are the posts that I still think about. I may revisit these ideas this year in other forms, you never know …

On The Ways of Geese – perspectives on leadership
Losing Ground – decision making
My Vision – for faith communities
Shavuot-The Feast of Pentecost the Megillah of Ruth
Slice It, Dice It, Anyway You Want It … social, cultural constructs for looking at the Bible
Book Review – Organic Community – surprise! A book review.
Christendom? Post-Christendom? – a look at labels.
Critique, Criticism and the Gong Show – what’s love got to do with it?
On Creating Space – what do hockey and church have in common?
Living Within The System and Non-Violence – a look at living in the world but not being of it.
Good Gifts – every parent desires to give good gifts, but what are they?

A while ago my friend, Mr. Bill, and I publicly revealed that we have an agreement. We’ve agreed to always agree. When we don’t agree, well, we’ll disagree to disagree. Then, being a double negative, we’ll actually agree and everything will be all right. So, our agreement to agree works for us. We like it. One of the best parts of this agreement to agree is that Bill has one of the best blogrolls ever and I’ve been exposed to some new and wonderful writers through this arrangement.

I think one of the best has to be Brant Hansen at Letters from Kamp Krusty. If he’s not the best writer, he definitely has the best hair. If it’s not the best hair, it’s definitely the most like Jesus. For the longest time, I went to Brant’s blog and refused to believe that the guy pictured in the corner was really him … nobody who was real, really looked like that. Only fake people on television and in magazines look like that. But if you go to his blog, that really is him. Most of his writing is laugh out loud funny, but the photos aren’t. They are real.

You may have noticed I said that *most* of his writing is funny. It is too. He makes many a sharply aimed point with boisterous humor. It’s amazingly well done. He’s really smart. All good comedians are. He knows how to use language really well too. But once in a while he drops the curtain a little and gives us a peek into himself. And that is equally if not more well done.

Shortly after Thanksgiving Brant took a brief hiatus from blogging; about a week or so. When he came back he had a few posts about his reasons … here (1) and here (2). In one of them he revealed a long battle with depression and anger. He also revealed that he’s been using anti-depressants for sometime as a weapon in this battle. He confessed how inadequate this made him feel as a Christian and as a man and on a whole bunch of other levels. I wept. I read and wanted to comment. But what could I say? “Dude! I’m right there with you.” But I’m not. I’m right here with me. Brant’s experience is his and mine is mine. On some level they are similar because depression has similarities. But then again …

So. Several people linked to his posts and I read them again. I was undone. Like I was being unsupportive or something because I knew I was in this same boat so to speak, but remaining silent. Yet I am not in the same boat. We both have similar leaky barges on the same stream; there is a mixture of anger and relief about that. It might be that we both spend a lot of time waving our arms and yelling, when we could be bailing. Yet my silence was not condemnation or fear. If anything I had too much to say and eventually I realized I needed to let it process and write later in my own space. So here it is … my own words about being here with me.

A little less than two years ago I fell off a cliff. Most people would not know that to look at me, because no bones were broken and I have no lacerations or bruises … outwardly. But inwardly … well, now, that’s a whole other story. I faced a Balroc and like Gandalf, just when I thought he was gone, the tip of his lash caught the hem of my robe and pulled me over the edge with him. The fall was long, endless and sheer torture to a person with so great a fear of falling that I could not even watch that scene in the Fellowship of the Ring.

I had endless panic attacks and stopped eating and stopped drinking coffee (for the first and only time since my 12th birthday). I couldn’t sleep for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time and naps were out of the question … unless I snoozed out sitting up on the sofa. The only time I truly felt at peace was during the daily broadcast of the curling competitions in the Winter Olympics and when we were out on our daily walks. Whatever metaphorical demons had been unleashed in my brain were quelled during those brief moments. I could barely leave the house and only with an escort … LightHusband or BlazingEwe and had to have someone in the house with me at all times. In short … it was a nightmare.

I have been walking through a sine wave of depression for most of my adult life. It ebbs and flows, sometimes greater and sometimes lesser, but it has been an ever present companion. A shadow, if you will, lengthening or drawing close depending upon the position of the sun. Always lurking and never overwhelming. It was enough to make me angry sometimes. Or make me wonder why I am so different. Or wonder why I see things that others don’t. Or how I could ever get through one more day and then another. And wonder what is real joy? What does happiness feel like? Is this it? How about now?

Here’s the thing about depression that goes on that long. After a while you begin to not trust happiness or joy. It’s not that you don’t enjoy them. You do. You love them. At first. But then you wonder how long they’re going to stick around; like a deadbeat dad, you wonder when they’re going to leave again. And you kick them out first so you won’t get hurt again when they leave too soon. You get conflicted about them after a while.

Depression was casting one of its longest shadows when I found Jesus sitting around in my neighborhood back in 1990. He came into my life in the form of my neighbor, a pastor’s wife. She saved my life from depression (caused in part by my personality and in part by some meds I was taking for a newly discovered seizure disorder) and from spiders that I have an inordinate fear of. She talked to me for hours about anything I wanted to talk about. Sometimes I even listened to her. That’s how I know she was Jesus. I was 29 at the time and then turned 30. And sometime in that time period I did it … I said the magical words and planted the magical beans … and got saved. Or whatever you want to call it. Got washed and then baptized. Gave my life to Christ. Etc. PW (pastor’s wife) was very good about reassuring me that nothing would likely change right away.

On the other hand, as time went on, I began to hear tales of people who had been saved and then SAVED from this or that. I heard especially about people being saved from depression and other mental illnesses. I heard that Jesus would be enough. Funny, Brant seems to have heard that too. I think a lot of people have heard that one. Jesus is enough. Well, I suspect He is. I’ll come back to that in a few minutes.

The shadow ebbed and flowed … sometimes longer and shorter. Like any roommate, I learned how to live with it’s eccentricities and quirks. What would happen if I left the toothpaste tube uncapped and how to handle the temper tantrums. I also began to give it due consideration. Was I just like this? After all, there were no clear indicators from childhood. Other than I come from a long line of phlegmatic personalities … my father, a grandfather, a great grandfather, a great grandmother. On my mother’s side of the family there is a documented history of depression and suicide for unknown causes. What if this just is … what if I am just wired this way? How does that figure into the equation?

Fast forward to my journey through the caverns of Moria and the fall off the cliff. I was very fortunate to have a sympathetic and proactive family doctor. She got me into a psychiatrist and a counselor very quickly. In turn they got me onto some good anti-depressants and mood stabilizers and got me talking, respectively. I’ve been with both of them for the rest of the journey since then and they are wonderful. My psychiatrist suggested that it was grounds for a celebration when I told him that I’d driven across the Bay Bridge not once, but four times in one week in early October. It was a mark of how far I’ve come from the days when not only could I not drive, I could barely leave my house. He has been conservative, yet sensitive to how I’ve reacted to the meds. Keeping me in just enough meds so that I can breath, but not so much that I am comatose.

That’s the thing about anti-depressants. When you have enough, you can breath and eat and grow. You become a living thing again … by Sesame Street standards. In all seriousness, I can … I can breath and eat and grow again. I have space in my head for all three, sometimes even at the same time. But if you have too much, you become a wooden stick. As someone else once told me, you can’t cry, even when you want to … or know you should. On the other hand, not enough medication and most times, just breathing is a chore, eating and growing are right out.

So now I have my blue and green happy pills. I call them my happy pills, not because they make me happy but because they allow me to live. They allow me space inside my head to consider different paths when the way before me is desperate and hard. They allow me to consider others. And, they allow me to be more me. Now we come right down to the fine hard grit. Who am I?

I still have my shadow-friend walking with me. I have come to accept that she is likely to be part of who I am. She is woven into my character from many threads in my life. I am not certain that she would or could be unwoven now. Here is where I begin to struggle with the question that haunted Brant and one which haunts many Christians in similar circumstances … if I am wired this way, then why is Jesus not enough? Why is who I am and how I was made so uncomfortable that I need to take pills in order to get along … for me, I need them to get along with myself some days. There are days when I am so crabby and unsettled that I cannot get along inside my own skin. We are told that Jesus should be enough for all of that … He will heal you. But He doesn’t … or something. So here are my several different answers to that conundrum of faith. I believe and use them all depending on my mood/attitude. On days when I have more grace, I am able to use the more gracious reasons. On days when I have less, I am more pugnacious. (You know? I’m not a robot … my mood and attitude does change from day to day. So deal with it. 😉 )

I’ve listed them as I think of them … not in any particular order:

One idea … God could heal my eyes too … but since I was seven I’ve worn glasses and no one bothers to tell me that Jesus is enough for my eyes. They just accept my glasses as part of me; the spectacles are not a character flaw, but the anti-depressants are? I wonder why that is. I also take acid reducers and multi-vitamins … Jesus should be enough for those too, I guess. But it’s a fallen world we live in, my body needs some help and no one sees that as a character flaw. But anti-depressants … well, that’s a horse of a different color. We’ve still got enough Puritan left in our cultural psyche to think that those who are depressed ought to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get over themselves. Okay … I’ll just do that.

Another idea … Jesus may be enough, but I am clearly not. Really. That’s the thought that runs through my mind when I hear that. I know for certain that Jesus is enough for all this and a bag of chips. He threw the stars into place and the sand into the sea. The oceans rise and fall at his breath, surely He is enough for me. Yep, He really is. But I am not. I am miserable. My bread doesn’t rise properly, I forget the physics of heat transfer and ask my son to pick up a scorching pan lid with no oven mitts on, I can’t keep all my friends straight and I can’t meet their expectations of me and I can’t meet my expectations of myself. No use telling me to lower my expectations because at 46 I’ve tried that over and over and over again. You think I haven’t? Like that’s a new idea? Yes, I’ve tried that … expectations are what they are. Try lowering your own sometime and see what happens. Nine times out ten that’s called … d i s a p p o i n t m e n t. Then you have doubled your fun. You don’t meet your expectations and now you’re miserable, because you also failed to lower them. YAY. So, by myself, I am not enough and I haven’t figured out how to do the partnering with Jesus thing.

Another idea … Grace is enough. Grace is enough, yet it is not enough either. Here is probably my most bitter commentary on the church and our greater culture in general. We do not accept others for who they are anymore. We have discovered that, “You know, there’s a pill for that …” instead of working at relationships and understanding that others are truly different from us, we all insist that others conform to us. Our culture has become a chaos of bubble Napoleonic little kingdoms each demanding that everyone else conform to them. We cannot accept one another as individuals anymore because we no longer have a vision for what that is. We want crazy Uncle Fred to take a pill so he’ll be like us, and overly affectionate Aunt Edna to keep her distance. I have to wonder, why is Uncle Fred crazy? Uncle Fred is a package … there’s crazy Uncle Fred PLUS genius Uncle Fred, but you can’t just have the genius. You have to have the crazy too. More than that, you must embrace the crazy … even if it hurts. That’s grace being enough. Telling Uncle Fred to “take a pill for that” is not grace, it’s legalism. Reducing Uncle Fred to the crazy guy in the corner is not grace, it’s contempt. Containing Uncle Fred out of fear is not grace … it’s fear.

Related similar idea … We have discovered the beast of legal mood altering drugs and released him on society. Now we can make everyone just alike. Don’t fit the cookie cutter? Let’s lop that awkward corner off with a pill. Smooth that rough edge with another one. Some days I wonder if we’ve entered that Brave New World that Aldous Huxley wrote about. Or the Big Brother of George Orwell. Too many of the outlandish mind control projects written about by the science fiction authors of the 30s and 40s seem to be morphing into existence today without government intervention, just a cultural demand for bland homogeneity of character. Stepford Wives and Redford Husbands; happy, smiling with nothing to mar their bland existence. Perfect teeth, beautiful hair, we must all conform to cultural norms. We’ve got a pill for that, ya know.

I am glad to be taking my lovely blue and green pills, don’t get me wrong. They help me understand my life and process my emotions in ways that I need right now. I guess I just wonder about the pace and tectonic forces of a culture which has pushed so many of us to this point. Why do so many people need mood-altering psychotropic drugs just to get through the day? Why do we need a pill for that?

P.S. Don’t answer more hard work, or less stuff … those are the easy answers and they do not account for the complexities of where our society and culture are right now. And anyone who comes by and says some version of, “you need God.” will be hung at sunrise – virtually … and in the kindest, most Christian way – by their toes.

Well … the end of another calendar year is in sight. I’m working on some posts right now … but I also got bit by a designing bug and I’ve got quilts coming out of my ears. Not literally, yet. But I have to get the ideas down, or I’ll lose them. So in the meantime, I thought I’d do some best of posts …

Tonight, a list of the most commented posts of the year. I just went through by month and picked the post for each month with the most comments. August was unique because there was a tie that month for most comments and it was a high too … 26 for both posts. So, I’ll begin with January, end with December and see where the road takes us.

January – Comestible Consumption Competition – Day 8
February – Love Them Patriots
March – Leaving Oz
April – The People Known As the Bride of Christ
May – Perspectives On Women
June – 7 Books I’m Reading
July – Losing My Religion
August – The Appearance of Holiness
To Whom Shall I Turn
September – OMG!!!
October – Vampire Protection
November – WWJS …
December – Twaddle and a Confession

Having spent so much time in my own writing this evening, I no longer have any confidence in myself. What am I thinking? Oy … my 7 readers are filled with grace. Thank you from the bottom of my pea-pickin little heart.

Tomorrow, or Sunday, a list of my favorite posts from the year. Maybe a photo of the quilt I’m designing too as a special extra (it’s an art quilt, so it’s small).

Rachel … a woman downunder that I have the privilege of getting to know, virtually, has tagged me in the Thankfulness meme that has become viral during this season of gratitude. It’s kind of cool to watch how these things meander through blogdom. I’d love to have the skill to write a code and make a map of it. That would be quite a map.

I’ve been thinking hard about the things for which I am thankful, grateful and appreciative. There are many for which I could post. I’ve been trying to write this post for days now and it just would not leap out of my fingertips. Though there are many, many things I could write about. I was uninspired. This is not like me. Not at all.

Then, this morning, as I stood at the mirror, with my mouth full of toothpaste, it hit me. The words to the Jewish prayer floated through my mind and I felt weak in my knees, “”Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe who has not created me a woman, a Gentile or a slave.” For centuries this was the daily prayer of gratitude for millions of Hebrew men. I don’t want to go into the misogyny or the racism or any of that here, although I certainly could. That’s not my point. My point is this … any time I am thankful for something, it carries with it the possibility of pointing out a drought for someone else. Of unintentionally poking at a friend’s sore spot.

If I am thankful for my children, there are those who read this blog struggling with fertility issues. If I am thankful for my friends, there are many struggling with solitude and neighbor issues. If I am thankful for how God has spoken in my life, there are many to whom God has been silent. It carries the possibility of creating a stumbling block, a rage, a hurt. It carries the possibility of doing violence to someone else without ever having that intention at all.

So, for today and the days to come, I am thankful. I am grateful for so many, many things this year. I am indeed a much blessed woman. But I will keep the specifics between me and the source of all Gratitude. Which, in the end, is as She would wish.

If you want to be involved in this meme, you can do the following things.
1. Post 5 things you are thankful for
2. Tag 5 friends to take part also
3. Link back to John’s post (optional) and encourage others to leave a link in his comments section back to their completed post so we get to keep track of all this thankfulness!

I’m supposed to tag five people now … but while I’ve been following this, I cannot remember who has been tagged and who has not. So, if I’ve double tagged anyone, I apologize.

Doug
Mak
Matt
Michael
Peggy

We have family coming to town for Thanksgiving.  The first are scheduled to arrive next Tuesday (four days from now).  I’m stressing a little big damn lot about that and you can read about it here.  But the short story is that I probably won’t be posting too much between now and sometime after Thanksgiving.  Don’t give up on me or anything … and if you would be so kind, please say a prayer for me and my family when you happen to think of it.  We have big doings, and lots and lots of people going to be around.  For little old introverted me, this means I’ll be working from my weak spots, so I’ll appreciate all the help I can get.  Thanks …

This weekend was tough. It began on Friday when I demolished my kitchen. Just took it out.

Not entirely. Not literally. But figuratively and enough that it is virtually unuseable. We hired a painter to come in an paint the kitchen and our eat-in area for us. He got most of it done, but not all. He thought he’d get it all done. But there are a few dribbles left. He was miraculous to watch.

No. Tape.

Now the kitchen looks like Fresh Butter. Beautiful.

We left early Saturday morning for another hockey weekend … this time to Raleigh, NC. Two very hard hockey games and two demoralizing losses later we arrived back home Sunday afternoon. The girls learned more about working losing together as a team, but this was brutally difficult work and it hurt to watch them go through it.

We spent a lot of time in the car (7 hours total) and I had a lot time to think. Jamie has been doing a Friday series on St. Francis that I’ve been enjoying. I didn’t really know why until this weekend. But all the tiles fell into place on the car ride.

In another life time (before kids), I used to do counted cross-stitch. It was one of my hobbies before quilting took over. I’ve had many hobbies in my life. I also used to do stained glass (I’ll tell that story another time). This was also during the days before I knew Jesus too. A friend taught me how to count my stitches. There is something very soothing to me about this hobby. It’s extremely controlled and yet … almost anything can be created with your stitches. I love that.

Shortly after I learned the basics my friend and her mom took me to a store to buy a pattern and supplies so that I could make something of my own. I still remember that first pattern and project … in part, because I never finished it! This is the story of my life. I manage to complete projects I’m doing for someone else. The projects I do for me, languish on a shelf. It’s still here in a box somewhere. I picked it because it was a prayer that I wanted for myself. I read this prayer and connected with it on so many levels. It was the prayer that is commonly known as the Prayer of St. Francis.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.

I fell in love with it because it was simple, heartfelt, and unadorned. The project was the words of the prayer surrounded by dogwood blossoms, which are prevalent in the spring here in Virginia. I can still see it in my mind’s eye. Someday, I may find that project again and finish it up. I stitched the words, but got overwhelmed with the blossoms. I moved on to other projects; then to stained glass and then quilting. But I’ve always felt a special connection with St. Francis because of that silly, unfinished project that spoke to me long before I could hear Jesus speaking.

It is, in my mind, an ebenezer … a marker or monument, to the working of God in my life before I recognized it or truly recognized Him. I think that’s why I’ve been enjoying Jamie’s series so much. At long last, I’m learning more about the saint who spoke through the centuries into my heart when I couldn’t hear much of anything else.

Today has not been good. Okay, several days in a row have not been good.

No … it’s the whole damn year. As I wrote in an e-mail to a friend earlier today:

2007 – the year which sucketh mightily for all of us.

All of us was referring to a small group of friends. It’s been bad all around for all of us. I cannot reveal details here. But suffice it to say that I feel like Sisyphus of Greek legend. Only I’m not pushing a boulder up hill … I’m pushing a snowball. And every night when it rolls down hill, it picks up crap, as in manure, as in sh!t. So I’m pushing a crap covered snowball back up hill. It’s useless, tragic, powerless, endless work.

Speaking of myths, today is election day in Virginia, as elsewhere around the country. What a stupid myth. As if my vote counts for anything. I’ll go vote. But it won’t do a damn bit of good. Of all the lies I was told in school, that’s the one I despise the most. The lie that I count for something here in this country. But we don’t. The fat cats and big wigs are pulling the strings. The little guy is just a cog in the machine.

Happy election day.

Yeah … I’m bitter and dis-illusioned. It’s a good thing I’m not depending on the things of this world for salvation. I’d be in a heap of trouble if I were. God forgive us.

UPDATE: I did vote … at 5:30, so, yes, Will Samson, I can complain. I did show up.  Not that it will change anything.  What I most want to change is the atmosphere of fear.  No politician can change that.  So I guess a vote is meaningless anyway.