Whose Life Do I Live?

Dorcas and I drove to Ann Arbor early Easter, heading straight to Knox Presbyterian. As we walked into the sanctuary, Pastor Chuck called Dorcas’s name, his arms wide. Then he held out his hand and said to me, “I’m Chuck Jacobs.” She turned blankly and I blushed, because she has been living in Chicago for two years and I have been attending Knox for five.

Dorcas sat in Chuck’s office four years ago, worked with Deacons and Elders, and still has a team of people reaching out to her. Me, I am a hider. I can’t imagine sitting in Chucks office. Every week I think I should go to the front after church where deacons and elders are waiting to pray and/or begin a conversation, but I can't do it.

Dorcas mentioned that based on the questions of one of her team at Knox, she sat down and outlined her experience of God speaking over her life and was able to see the patterns and discipher his voice vs white noise. I wonder about this for myself. I know that God speaks. For one thing, he says, "Go pray with deacons," and I say, Someone else needs them more." For a few years he has been encouraging me to start a “Doubt Night Event: A place people can bring questions” and talk about their own journeys in faith and doubt. I feel like he is calling me to accept rejection, as he did. He has been calling me to Evangelistic mission in my neighborhood and I keep pushing him off. God says speak, and I say, "You don't want me?"

So, I have set up a day of prayer about my mission. I want to explore evangelism and real ways I can share Jesus. This does not mean I have to be anything or do anything or please anyone, just that I listen and follow God, who had done and continues to do the saving.

Takes more guts then I have

Just before leaving for Chicago, my therapist asked me to ask God the question, “Do you love me?” So I asked and asked and asked and trembled in the silence that followed, knowing I had to trust God to speak.  I want to control God’s relationship with me from a distance, saying, “God loves you, he loves every, he is love.”  I put my words in his mouth.

Then I spent four days with Dorcas and as I sat at her table, I knew God loved her and so she was free to love me, I just had to receive her love. 

Another response to the question, “God, Do you love me,” is in watching how Jesus loves Peter. He prays for Peter [Luke 22:32]: “Simon [Peter], Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

Catholics believe that all the Saints are above, looking down and praying for us. In Dante’s Devine Comedy, Virgil comes to guide Dante, because Beatrice begs him to. I opened to the first page last Monday (coming into the Last Supper) and reading to he intro placed me in Dante’s shoes. To paraphrase: It is the eve of Good Friday, Dante is 35 and climbing a mountain where he finds himself in a dark wood of Error. He tries to run back to the valley and meets Virgil, who offers to guide him through the spirits of pain to get to bliss and Beatrice.

Dorcas and I attended her House Church in the heart of Rodgers Park (a rough neighborhood). There were an eclectic mix of ethnicities, ages and beliefs all sitting together to contemplate pain as seen in Exodus 5. In the chapter, the Israelites ask for a few days off to sacrifice to God and Pharaoh gets angry and increases their work, and pain. As they complain, Moses goes to God and prays, “O Lord, why have You brought harm to this people? Why did You ever send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done harm to this people and You have not delivered Your people at all.” As we sat on couches struggling to find an explanation, I jumped in with reason for suffering, saying pain is about seeing God, growing stronger and living the call of Jesus. Answers, answers, answers. I don’t experience chronic pain, migraines, or stage 4 cancer, as people there do.

I want to consider how I can be amidst the questions and struggles, and people listening for God in them. 

Blogging Bonds

I can't believe its been 5 months since I said a word here. Since then, I received my decline from Michigan's MFA program. Since then, I have believed and then doubted my calling. There is a frantic chaos to my head right now as I type in a coffee shop. I feel the silence of my blog and long for some explosion of new hopes. Some epiphany of Spring, some miracle in turning 37. I guess this new year is a good place for me to begin again. To dream of the liberation Zacheaus feels when Jesus looks straight at him and says, Come Down (from the tree), because I am coming to your house. A freedom to let Christ see me. Then like Zacheaus to form a new plan.

Yesterday, I submit a page of words to a writing group and with their feedback, shriveled up. I hear often that my prose are dense, a lyrical challenge, and it is a struggle to get through a paragraph. I want to be simple and clear, but that is not currently how my brain functions. I seem to trip over my own language.

I let all my emotions loose on my therapist on Wednesday and his first comment was, this is a good place to be. It's true. The second had to do with a strategy for difficult moments. I can tell myself, "It's going to be ok and It's going to get better.

Step three included skills for supporting myself.

The skills include:
Powerful thinking - I can write. I love telling stories.
Accepting difficulties - I am failing in some areas, but I am capable of continuing and and trying again
(its ok if people don't like me)
I have a safe space inside me to breath - God is a loving, nurturing and warm presence
I can work on balance - running & writing as time with self, and prioritizing people over tasks!
I can name my feelings - anger, fear, sadness, guilt and watch them - Then ask what I need as a result.
I can meet my needs (and/or ask for God's help and receive his grace)

The final step in today's planning is that I am committing to a blog. Committing to a place where I log my life and seek renewal. In this cyber space, I would like to record my life and also explore local writing opportunities, in an effort to create an educational structure to grow communication and find channels for expression and translation that can connect me with a broader audience.

Thanks to anyone who is listening!!!

I desire resurrection prayers over the internal fears that render me mute.

I went on a family trip last week, and enjoyed real time with my boys. I woke from vivid dreams at 5 AM and wrote until the boys alighted at 7 and then we were off to experience the world together. 

On the Saturday of our return, the neighborhood knocked, with work day jobs and Halloween festivities distracting me from a household of hunger and dirt and early frost. To stand in the chaos of competing demands and find its order turned my into Sleeping Beastly during Sunday's sermon. 

In my five hours without children today, I stutter over words, and what I am supposed to say. My body revs and jitters with what might happen if another person needs me. I want someone else to send them away with some good excuse. I even asked my writing coach to decide my goals, because I am empty. 

Tonight the kids and I head to Chicago to celebrate a close friends entrance into her thirties, and I long for a "rebirth of wonder" and a living faith that drives me to rejoicing.

One Hour To Becoming

If you had an hour to yourself, what would you do with it. I have four whole hours on Monday's to write. I am dedicating one of it to prayer. I did this today, but it took time to accept and decide it would be worthwhile. I show up in a rush to accomplish something meaty and quick, and then settle with a timer and nothing else. The question I grapple with is, Is God worth my hour. For all he does and has given me, I cringe at my question. I feel guilt and sweat and despair at how terrible it sounds to ask if God is worthy of me, when I know I am so unworthy of him.

Taking my notebook and praying was easier then I imagined. The people and concerns and hearts of my friends came into view. I spent little time praising and wondering about God, even as I kept coming to that place and trying to focus on God himself. "God, Who are you?" Why do you love me, despite my lack of loving you back? Do you have to forever prove your value, like I have to prove myself to my neighbors, parents, friends and faith community. If I do the right things, then I am ok enough for today.

I call on God when I am desperate, but what about the relationship, the two-sided conversation about my quirky dad (here on a visit). What about my ability to write or create as a calling from God. It is not meant to be a defiant battle to include God or an exercise in robotic obedience, but a sitting as me with a real God.

So much of my life seems to be about the list of to-do's in making meals, showering, cleaning up, managing kids, etc. Are the daily chores about faith or works?  There is a risk in trying, because I might fail and if I succeed then it is a brief relief, followed by the next task that I have to worry over. I would like to celebrate fall temperatures, a meal, a sentence, a conversation with God and simply enjoy being in my own skin.

I have three stories in the works that are close to finished. One is my Celeste who shall show up in my  novel one day. She expresses so much of what I hope to accomplish in growing and becoming one's own. Maybe I will post some of her story here.