Abandoned Scrawls

3% and Enough

2026-08-12T22:43:52.809-04:00

This spring I planted like 100 daisies.

Outside of my office are brick built-in, building-adjacent, planting boxes. A few years ago, I decided I was sick of them being used as ash trays and have attempted to plant various flowers with various success.

There was the year of the gladiolas that another staff member thought were weeds and pulled out. There was the year the daffodils grew in one box and not in the other. There was the year with the small red flowers that grew up like a bushy weed…they were colorful, but more green-tangled-stem than flower and not quite as adorning as I would have liked.

This year, as my tulips came up in the front bed, I decided I again wanted to try flowers in the long side bed. Perhaps a little less…tangled. I found a package of colored daisy seeds promising small, bright petals. I love daisies. I thought they would be exactly the pop of color I was hoping for, so I bought two envelopes and waited.

I waited because I live in northern Michigan and even though the tulips had begun to pop, I knew we weren’t nearly over winter.

There was a day in mid-May where I felt adequately in the clear. I added fresh soil to the bed and planted two envelopes of daisies systematically along the stretch. Since last year’s busy weeds with flower buds game up in mass, I had high expectations.

I watered.

I waited.

Two green shoots came up.

I watched in anticipation.

One of the shoots died.

Nothing.

It did get a little cold again. Not quite frost-on-the-ground cold, but definitely a couple nights where we sat on the freezing line. Maybe I got ahead of myself. Maybe my daisies got too cold and froze and died. But now it was almost June, and the cold was officially done.

So, I bought two more envelopes of daisies.

As I planted them, I thought I saw another green shoot. “Best-worst-case scenario at this point, my previous seeds just needed more time and now I’ll have just a field of red and orange and yellow and pink daisies…”

My one remaining flower from the first planting continued to grow.

Slowly.

I continued to water.

Faithfully.

Two green shoots came up.

And have continued to come up.

That’s it.

I planted no less than 100 daisy seeds.

I grew three flowers.

And I’ll be real honest – one of those isn’t even a daisy!

I planted 100 daises to grow three*.

*Scratch that – two. (I have no idea what the third plant is, I’m just glad it tried).

Two daisies.

I wondered first what I did wrong. That’s a pretty natural default to me. If something I did isn’t living up to what it is supposed to be, then obviously I failed. I didn’t choose the right potting soil. I didn’t choose the right seeds. I planted too early or too late. I watered too much or not enough. The seeds were too shallow or too deep or something else completely in my control.

Or not.

I did what I know how to do in a way that has been successful before. And I failed.

Or not.

Because three flowers grew. It wasn’t 50 or 100. 3% with a 33% identity crisis is a really terrible set of odds.

But it’s not zero.

So, I wondered next about investment. About who gets to decide if investment is too much or not enough. Who gets to decide what investment is worth?

Were two daisies and a stray worth remembering to water? Were they worth the fresh soil and the repeat attempts? Were they worth continuing to care for when I realized that of 100 daisies, I would only be caring for 3?

And clearly, in this case, the determiner of worth was me.

Perhaps because I needed it for me. To prove I hadn’t completely failed.

Perhaps because I had failed the other 97, and it seemed cruel to intentionally fail the other three.

Perhaps because part of me was hoping eventually some of the other 97 would try a little bit.

Perhaps because despite the fact they were the only three to grow made them underdogs worth rooting for…

Or, perhaps, because once they started popping up strong and green, there was something about the very fact they existed which demanded their worthiness.

Planting 100 daisies and getting three(ish), felt like a metaphor for life. Maybe my own. For how much we give and how little we get back. For often great efforts appear to end in massive failure. It felt like a late blooming representation of the number of times lived above and beyond without thanks; beyond capacity without recognition. It felt like every best intended attempt at connection without reciprocity and a hustle for worthiness that is always a hustle and rarely a confirmation of worth. It felt like the living, growing, picture of “your best is never enough” and “it probably doesn’t matter”.

But the daisies started to bloom this week. My third unknown plant looks like it might try. And maybe for them it is enough. Maybe for those three daisies* it does matter. Maybe the very fact something, someone, exists demands us to acknowledge its worth.

3% with a 33% identity crises are really terrible odds. But they’re not zero. And so I’ll keep caring and fighting and failing and trying and hustling. Because maybe next time it won’t be a daisy who needs to be reminded they are worth it simply because they are. And maybe, just maybe, that's reason enough.

Anything Less

2025-10-23T23:11:00.003-04:00

Another long #AnikaStory. Ministry Edition. (Possibly worth the read if the latter resonates with your professions and callings and you or churches complain at all about “how to get more people to come to church”…)

Tonight I was invited to a community dinner. At a church I’ve been meaning to visit (my “pulpit supply” and “life” dance cards have been quite full post move). I’m painfully lacking in connections in the place I now call home and so I decided to accept the invitation (which the inviters went out of their way to extend. I wanted to acknowledge their gracious effort with at least a little of my own).

Except I literally knew no one at this church – including the inviters. (#AdultPK connections) I couldn’t pick them out of a line up. I exited the surprisingly full parking lot (this church is out of town and almost in the middle of nowhere and I was impressed by the turnout) and walked into a beautiful church building, which I had never before entered, not knowing what to expect or even the faces of those who invited me. What started as a genuine, if half-hearted, attempt at connection turned into a bit of a social experiment as this life long PK and a near professional pulpit supply (aka: I’ve been in and served in a LOT of churches) attempted to find a literal seat at the table.

To keep an extremely long story from getting excruciatingly long, here are the highlights:

I entered the church to a couple of ladies who looked up pleasantly but acknowledged me only by how high I jumped when the doors clanked behind me (“Looked like that surprised you!”). They returned to a conversation while I looked for directions, expectations, where to go, etc. Their table had a note pad with names (was I supposed to sign in??) and numbered cards (were those important??) but they didn’t point me towards it. Or anything for that matter. They hadn’t actually said even “hello”. After a minute or so I located the fellowship hall down a hall. A “thanks for coming!” followed me as I walked that way.
I wandered around the fellowship hall for several minutes. I saw many church people (identifiable by their bright shirts and aprons) but there were none to greet me or give me instructions. There was no identifiable food line and I couldn’t quite figure out where/how the flow was supposed to go. A slight bottle neck of people were by the kitchen window, but I couldn’t figure out quite what to do based on observations (Were they serving at the table? The window? What was being offered?) I saw drink pitchers on tables but no cups. A desert table with cakes being served, but no silverware. I kept wandering.
There were two or three friendly nods from a distance, but no one spoke to me or approached me. (Yes, I fully realized I could have asked, but by this point I really wanted to see how the numerous church people would respond to me, a random community person, at a free community dinner, who looked lost – because I was.)
I found the coffee as I circled back to the entrance – with mugs – finally something I could do on my own. Tables were set up family style (10-12 could fit comfortably around). Several were completely full. The rest were empty.; there were no half-filled tables. So, I sat down at a completely empty table, by myself, with my mug of coffee, and people watched. I sat alone for more than 20 minutes. NOT ONE of the two dozen people in bright church shirts did more than polite nod in my direction as they passed.
I was getting ready to leave when my inviter paused to say hello, asked my name, and then, realizing who I was, introduced herself and engaged in conversation. What struck me was her excitement over how invested this church is in missions with a list of the things they do. All I could think was “you’ve mastered the ‘to’ part; you’ve failed at the ‘with’.”

There were things the church did well. Pieces I could celebrate. But as someone who walked into a church where I wasn’t the guest preacher or the pastor’s (or the DS’s *gasp*) daughter for once, I wondered immediately what they are like on a Sunday morning. I want a church that cares that I exist, not just that I’m there (though I’m not sure the latter was true either). I want a church that wants to do life with me. That wants me to do life with them.

And the reality is, I’ve been in some of your churches on a Sunday morning (as the guest preacher or the pastor’s daughter and just someone looking for a church home, honestly) and have too often gotten versions of the same I experienced tonight. Some of you (or your churches, or just that one grumpy old lady in the back row. Please let me take a moment to note during this Pastors Appreciation month how many of my connections are pastors and how hard your job is and that the call to feed and shepherd your sheep comes along with the adage about bringing horses to water... I realize most of you are the choir.) are complaining about how to get more people in church pews on Sunday when you don’t care when they are literally in your own building on Thursday! And they are the ones who got as far as the building!

I’ve been to churches where I was yelled at for looking the for the bathroom when there was no one to ask, let alone put me in the right direction. I’ve been “huh-humph!”-ed out of more than one pew that apparently is occupied by a season ticket holder. I have filled pulpit at churches where I was asked if was a first time visitor - despite having worshipped with that same congregation more than a dozen times. There are the churches whose welcoming committee needs a less people-y ministry if they are going to greet first time visitors by bad mouthing other church members. And, honestly, I’ve visited SO many churches where I have sat alone in a pew, worshipping alone, may or may not have been given a cursory handshake by the pastor at the end of service, and left without a single person saying so much as “good morning”. If you don’t even care about me on Sunday when you can include me in the numbers, I guarantee you don’t care about me on Thursday.

I’ve been to conferences and had conversations about how to reach the next generation. I’ve heard well meaning speakers talk about Boomer churches valuing tradition over connection. I’ve heard pastors talk about what it means to reach younger people. And I gotta tell you, I agree with the premise, but I disagree with most solutions. I’m a millennial who loves a meaningful worship team but was raised on organ and piano and absolutely think your drums ruin “Great is the Thy Faithfulness”. And as a millennial I will tell you my generation (and those below I’ve chatted with though I in no way speak for all or even most), don’t actually care about whether or not you have a guitar player or an organist (though there is a desire for quality in whatever you’ve chosen). We don’t care about the size of your screens or even if you’ve finally updated to Canva instead of PowerPoint. We are looking for signs of life. For signs of intention. For honest connection. For relationship.

The thing is the good news of Jesus Christ has been changing lives for over 2000 years. And it’s been done with Gregorian Chants and pipe organs and electric drums. With incense and candles and smoke machines. With big churches and small churches and home churches and AA meetings where the smoke is more therapeutic than atmospheric. It’s been done with NIV and The Message and the KJV. Perhaps most confusingly, it’s been done with Latin. And church history is RIDDLED with problems and apologies and things that haven’t been done even a little bit well…but the hope of Christ has carried on despite it all. Which tells me that we need to care a lot more about the message than the mechanism. And a relational message needs to be communicated in relationship. Emmanuel literally means God WITH us… what makes us think that we can communicate such love and hope with anything less?

On Tulips and Waiting

2025-03-06T16:14:00.002-05:00

I’ll be the first to admit…I don’t hold an overly favorable opinion of Valentine’s Day. A day so completely divorced from its roots the irony of the day is almost laughable. That being said, however, over the years I’ve tried to create quiet traditions of doing something special for myself; using Valentines Day as an excuse. Typically, this involves a bottle of slightly-better-than-average wine and a planted tulip. I always choose small planted tulip arrangements. They tend to last longer and when the blossoms inevitably die, I carefully harvest and dry the bulbs, storing them to plant in the fall.

This year, with the sum total of the rest of my plants in foster care at my parents’ house as my own home is covered in paint and drywall dust, I didn’t pick up any tulips. But then I did. They were 50% off and I justified that I could always bring them to the office to enjoy.

It was quick to see these tulips were woefully neglected and 50% off because they were likely also about 50% dead. The dirt was far too dry. The stalks stilted. My love for tulips drove me. I convinced myself they just needed a little TLC. I watered the thirsty bulbs and made sure they had access to adequate sun. And watched as my tulips not only refused to bloom, but the top of the leaves began to wilt and crumble, despite my fervent care.

It didn’t matter how I watered. It didn’t matter whether it was sunny or the perfect ambient temperature. My tulip came too close to death and now it won’t bloom. In fact, if anything, the nourishing water and sun is hastening the inevitable end…

A sad look at my dying tulips and I found myself thinking about, well, me. About my soul. I thought about how fervent my spiritual life once was. How desperately I surrendered my heart and life to the Jesus I love and who I know loves me and how far I feel away from that love. I thought of the roads I’ve walked and of the lives I’ve lived. I considered how many times I’ve felt abandoned by people who claimed to care, or worse – the ones I thought actually did. I thought of how utterly bruised and beaten I’ve been by the Church and by churches over the past decade or more. The big “C” Church with its endless fighting and bickering and outright hatred and the way it looks so little like Jesus that, for the first time in my life, I find myself embarrassed to admit I’m a Christian – not because of who I am and know myself and my Jesus to be, but because “guilty by association” is real and I’m embarrassed by who YOU think I must be. The little “c” churches with the muchness of investment and pouring of myself into places that couldn’t or wouldn’t reciprocate. Churches I attended for years and the many churches I served for months upon months, without ever being “one of them”; how many lives I truly tried to invest in during my time…though few if any knew anything about me, including how to spell my name – though printed in the bulletin week after week. I wondered if that was what Jesus meant when he said “foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” That the cost of following Jesus often means you won’t belong in the places others find so natural, so much like home.

I thought of how, if I were a tulip, I would be embarrassed about the honesty of my 50% off tag. The one that says no one has wanted me to point and that maybe what I have left to give – no matter how much it feels of who I am – is less than 50% worthwhile. But how maybe now the pressure is off to constantly succeed, to constantly strive, let alone thrive. I thought about how dried out, worn out, and absolutely exhausted I am. By what life is and what life has been.

I thought about how church hasn’t been a healthy place for me lately. How even my favorite faith-based music is often annoying and my heady theological books, the prize of this nerd – books I finally have time to read – have left me feeling cynical. This attempt at watering is too much, too late. Instead of healing me, strengthening me, empowering me…I too feel like I’ve come too close to death and won’t bloom. Not in this season anyway.

But maybe not for always.

That’s the beauty of tulips. Maybe the beauty of me.

You see, after tulips bloom, if you let the foliage die rather than trying to resurrect them or force another bloom…then everything that looks like and is death nourishes the bulbs in the dirt below. Those same bulbs which seem to have nothing left to offer simply need a place away from everything it would otherwise need…no sun, no heat, no water. And then, and only then, you plant them again. And you wait. Because tulips need to almost die and struggle through frozen ground to bloom again.

Maybe I do too.

Boat Tours

2024-03-08T21:17:00.000-05:00

Boat Tours

AJK 2024

I’m wearing a life jacket

To cross the River Styx

A fight to stay alive,

While the Reaper’s clock ticks.

Darkness envelops.

Despair is a friend.

But I’m taking this boat tour

Just to see where it ends.

I’m throwing a finger

To the tide that pulls me under.

I’m screaming curses

At the despondency that tries these weary bones to sunder.

“It’s not over til it’s over” is a promise

Not a phrase,

You either fight to the death

Or death fights you for your days.

So I’m wearing a life jacket

To cross the River Styx.

A fight to stay alive,

Even while the Reaper’s clock ticks.

Darkness may envelop;

Despair still a friend;

But I’m taking this boat tour

Just to see where it ends.

I am gasping for air,

But the clutch is mine to grasp.

I’m holding out hope,

That the heaviness

Won’t last.

My brain spins out of control;

My heart races into over-drive;

And yet each haggard breath

Tells me I’m alive.

Put on your life jacket

To cross the River Styx.

It is a fight to stay alive,

Though the Reaper’s clock still ticks.

Hope is a small rebellion,

When “fine” is a four-letter word.

Light breaking though the Hell;

A glimpse the darkness blurred.

Though the battle rages,

And against the dawn the night tries to win…

I am taking this bout tour

Just to see where it ends.

The Leaning Tree

2020-12-24T14:19:00.034-05:00

The Leaning Tree

AJK 2020

“A little lower, a little lower!” Mom shouted from the corner.

I was flung partially over Dad’s shoulder and he was wrestling me through the living room door. My top had already banged against the front doorway, the hallway, and the kitchen floor! That’s just what happens when you happen to be me, a tall a mighty Christmas tree!

Still, Mom shouted to avoid more of my pine needles hitting the floor. “A little lower! That’s it! A little more!”

“I can’t wait to decorate!” Little Katie clapped her hands and jumped up and down.

“Can I put the star on the top?” Benjamin asked excitedly.

“We’ll see!” Dad laughed as he tipped me upright and pulled me around.

I wanted to laugh too; I was so filled with glee. All of this joy was about ME! We trees at the farm had talked about what it would mean…to be chosen for Christmas (the noblest of professions for an evergreen!) We talked of the lights and the smiles we would bring. We talked of how EVERYONE would stare with wonder and awe and join around us to sing. But nothing we talked of compared to this, the real thing!

Dad wiggled my trunk into the stand, my Christmas throne. I held my breath and clung to my cones! Soon I would stand, a true Christmas beauty; tall and straight – like a soldier on duty! Soon Katie and Benjamin would stare with eager eyes and Mom would hold Dad’s hand and everyone would agree…that I was the greatest, the finest, and the very best tree!

Finally, as I felt myself hoisted to my throne, I stood proud, I stood tall! I looked at my family. They looked confused, their bright eyes a bit downfall.

“It…leans.” Mom said, angling her head to the side.

“Yeah!” said Benjamin “it tilts like it’s a bit, well, cockeyed…”

I frowned and my branches sagged.

“Well, I think it’s a GREAT tree! Let’s put the lights on!” Katie nagged.

Mom smiled at Dad. “Katie is right. Maybe all it needs is some bulbs and some lights!”

Benjamin smirked. “Plus, even though it’s a little tippy…it’s really tall! I still want to put on the star when we’re finished with it all!”

And my branches swelled again with pride. All Christmas long they would be staring at me, looking at me all twinkly eyed! Benjamin and Katie laughed while covering my branches with twinkling lights and handmade ornaments while Christmas music played. I assumed it was the excitement that made me want to sway!

When they were finished, and Benjamin had put my star on top, they all stood together staring at me. My lights caught the twinkle in Benjamin’s eye and Katie’s smile.

“You know, it really is a pretty tree it seems...” Dad said, pulling Mom to his side. “Even if it leans…”

Inside, I was beaming as much as the lights I was wearing. I tried to stand a little taller. And a little straighter…

~-~-~-~-~

Yet, a tree can only stand as straight as a tree seems. I could not make myself any straighter. So, still, I leaned.

On the second day I felt my right side getting heavier and heavier. My trunk shook in its stand. I tried to scream for help but the next sound I heard was the sound of my branches against piano keys land. They did NOT a familiar carol play as on the chord book I continued to lay.

Mom ran into the living room, covered in baking flour from Christmas cookies and gasped, and Katie followed with a quiver to her lip.

“Dadddd!” Katie bellowed. “Help! The tree! It’s slipped!”

“It looks like I didn’t secure it quite right in the stand. The trunk was in straight, but the weight wasn’t balanced as I planned…” Dad said as Benjamin rushed to the scene. “…it is because, well, the tree, it leans…”

Dad resecured my base and tipped me upright. Katie and Benjamin gingerly picked up my fallen ornaments while mom dusted my lost needles off the piano so the keys were no longer green but black and white.

“It’s still a good tree.” Benjamin said as he and Katie looked at me with eyes which still glistened and gleaned. “It’s still a good tree, even though it leans…”

I tried to stand a little taller. And a little bit straighter.

~-~-~-~-~

Yet, a tree can only stand as straight as a tree seems. I could not make myself any straighter. So, still, I leaned.

On the fourth day of my monumental Christmas display, Katie and Benjamin came rushing in from their outside play. I heard their giggles and felt a rush of cold air as they come running in, still in their winter-wear. In their merriment I shook just a little in my stand as I saw that Benjamin was wielding a giant snowball in his hand.

“Don’t Benny!” Katie giggled as the icy ball flew and she ducked. The snowy ball went through the air and it was my needles it struck. It must be Benjamin has a really good arm because the snowball ended up delivering a forceful blow. I swayed and teetered and into Dad’s chair I did go.

“Mom’s going to ground us for life!” Benjamin said with eyes wide.

Katie’s eyes, however, began to glisten. “Dadddd! Help! The tree! It’s on its side!”

Dad ran into the room and calmy tipped me back up while, with the Christmas Cards she had been addressing still in hand, mom ran through the door. And Benjamin and Katie picked up my lost ornaments and fixed my garland while Mom mopped up the snowy puddles from off of the floor.

“It’s still a good tree.” Mom said with a now damp rag in her hand and the floor now clean. “It’s a good tree, even if it leans…”

I tried to stand a little taller. And a little bit straighter.

~-~-~-~-~

Yet, a tree can only stand as straight as a tree seems. I could not make myself any straighter. So, still, I leaned. My lean became my downfall and, indeed, I fell down a couple more times…because I leaned.

The cat, as enamored as the rest of the world with my glorious decor, batted my round ornament balls. And so, without much tottering, into the corner lamp both I and the cat did fall.

One day the door was slammed and I was caught quite by surprise. That day I quickly startled from my highs. Into the rocking chair I fell with a “whack!” and then I continued to teeter…forth and back, forth and back.

Or the time water was added to my stand and splashed a little more to the left than the right… I ended up on the couch tangled in a blanket. Now that was a sight!

Each time, Mom came running – still covered in her Christmas preparing. Each time, Dad was called and he picked me up with so much caring. Each time, Benjamin and Katie picked up my dropped canes and misplaced lights and green. And each time, it was decided that despite all it seemed, I was still a good tree – even if I happened to lean.

Each time I tried to stand a little bit taller. And a little bit straighter.

~-~-~-~-~

Yet, a tree can only stand as straight as a tree seems. I could not make myself any straighter. So, still, I leaned.

So even though I tried as much as I was able, it wasn’t long before I leaned right onto a festive looking table. If trees could sigh, I would have but Dad did for me instead. A deep, saddened, frustrated sigh as he shook his head.

“No more!” He said. “I can’t keep picking up this tree! I never should have kept a tree that leans!”

Mom unplugged my lights and Benjamin brought the storage bins. It wasn’t even Christmas day and already I was going to be turned in.

“Stop!” Katie yelled. Big tears sliding down her cheeks as her eyes leaked. “We can’t just have Christmas without a tree! What if we just let it lean?”

Dad took another big sigh and gathered Katie in his arms. “I suppose,” he replied, “if it leans against this table for a couple weeks, it won’t do any harm.”

So that is what they did. With my head on a table and my branches on a chair…for the next two weeks I stayed right there.

My view wasn’t quite as elegant as it had been standing up tall. I couldn’t see to the kitchen or out the hall. Most of the time no one looked at me with the same wonder and awe. I was left to be, leaning and all.

~-~-~-~-~

I was afraid I’d be lonely, having failed at my mission to be the reason for Christmas cheer. But, to my surprise, every night, the whole family gathered near!

Dad was telling a story – or so it seemed. He had a big book and Mom had these figurines. Each night Dad would read just a little bit more. And mom would pull another figurine from her secret store.

First Dad read of a girl named Mary and Joseph, her fiancé. He talked about how Mary was going to have a baby – even though that wasn’t the way. He talked about God’s love for everyone, for Mary and Joe; and about how through this baby, the whole world would know! Matthew 1:18, John 3:16

Dad read that when an angel came and told Mary she had questions and said “how can this be? Joseph will never believe that I’m having God’s baby!” But the angel told her not to be afraid and everything he was saying was true. Mary said “I’m God’s servant and what you have said, God will do!” Luke 1:26-28

“What about Joseph?” Benjamin asked the next night. “When he found out about the baby, did they have a big fight?” So, Mom took out Joseph and Dad read about him too, about how the angel stopped by Joseph and told him what to do! “Take Mary as your wife, without any fuss! That baby she carries is Emmanuel – that means ‘God with us!’” Matthew 1:19-24

The figurines of Mary and Joseph started alone on the table. They were really far away from where my top draped over a stable. Mom took out a donkey explained this was because they had to travel really far! They had to walk since in those days there were no cars. The Caesar had decided everyone should pay him a certain amount and so he sent them to their hometowns for this tax and a count. Luke 2:1-5

When Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem there was nowhere to stay! “We’re all full! We have no rooms! We’re tired, go away!” Mary was very pregnant, and they were tired too! Joseph asked the inn keeper what they were to do. Mom placed the innkeeper to the side and placed down a trough as Dad read from his book that there were no guest rooms but a barn out back, “take a look!” Luke 2:6-7

Dad read that if the baby were to come it would be in the manger he would lay. I looked at the cold little trough without any hay! This was no place for a baby and Katie agreed! “Mom, a barn? What if Mary has her baby?” Mom told her to wait, the story wasn’t done. Still, when no one was looking I shook some soft tinsel and needles down to soften the crib should Mary have her son.

The following day Mom pulled a couple shepherds from her box. Dad explained shepherds protected sheep from danger like cliffs, wolfs, and fox. That same night the shepherds were not far away in the field. They were just watching their sheep, acting as their shield. This would have been their job, like every other night. Yet this time something happened, which gave them quite a fright! Luke 2:8-11

“What happened??” Katie and Benjamin asked with a whine.

Dad looked at Mom and nodded and she said “One more part. Just this time…”

Mom pulled out an angel with large wings and a flowing gown. She was beautiful and if I were Mom, I’d never want to put her down. Benjamin and Katie stared, engrossed! And mom explained she represented just one of the heavenly host! Dad opened his book again, and read of how the angel spoke to the frightened men. “Don’t be afraid; I bring news of great joy! It’s meant for every man, woman, girl, and boy! A Savior has been born and in a manger he lays!” Then the host of angels broke into songs of praise! “Glory to God and peace on earth where his favor rests!” The shepherds ran off, to find this savior was their quest! Luke 2:9-14

Benjamin and Katie stood with eyes aglow. That seemed the way they looked at ME not so long ago. I wanted their attention, their giggles, their laugh. But it was then that I noticed a shepherd without his tall staff. “He must have dropped it as he ran to see” and I wondered if I could help with something from my tree. So, when my family turned for the day, I dropped a candy cane for the shepherd to use on his way.

The next nights to the stable Mom added sheep and a goat and a cow. She said, “we don’t know what animals were there, but let’s add these for now…” Dad read about how the shepherds found Mary and Joseph and baby just like the angels said. He read about how the babe was laid in a box from which those same animals were fed. Luke 2:15-16

“It’s cool that the shepherds came since they were so far from their friends! But did they get any presents?” asked a curious Ben.

“WE get presents at Christmas and birthdays both!” echoed excited Katie. “Were there any presents for the new little baby?”

What a good question, I thought. If I wasn’t leaning, I would be protecting all of those beautiful packages that had been bought!

To answer their question mom pulled out three figurines more. She said “the best gift for the baby couldn’t have been bought at a store! The angels and shepherds, they brought worship and praise. These aren’t things you find in window displays.”

Then Dad grabbed his book and said with a grin “Worship and praise are the first place to begin! Still, if we go to our story’s end, we will find other gifts brought by some special guests who attend. They came from a great distance, a land very far. They said they had seen and followed a star. They were important, the likes of scholars or kings we are told. They came to worship and brought with them gifts of myrrh, frankincense, and gold.” Matthew 2:1-2, 9-12

Benjamin protested: “I would have brought diapers! Or a bottle! That just seems commonsense! Who gives a baby gold or frankincense?”

Katie nodded in agreement and then thoughtfully considered what she would bring. “Except, maybe,” she said “their gifts weren’t meant for a baby – but a king!”

Mom and Dad smiled and then Mom explained: “to be a King the world had never known was the reason this baby came!”

I didn’t quite understand what Mom said was supposed to mean…but even I understood the honor meant for a king. So while the magi stood stately with their gifts, I allowed my favorite ornament from my branches to slip. Something special for the king who was a baby, the one who came or was still coming, maybe.

Finally, it was Christmas Eve and Katie turned and looked at me! “I know our tree tips, I know that it leans, but since it’s almost Christmas can’t we turn its lights on…please?”

Dad smiled and nodded and soon I was aglow. A leaning tree that shone from head to toe.

“Look!” Benjamin shouted and I froze in place. He was pointing at me with joy and excitement on his face. My old pride awakened and thought “now’s the time! I may lean but it’s finally my time to shine!”

I soon realized he wasn’t as concerned with my branches as he was with how my lean touched the table. And his gaze rested not me but the stable.

“I didn’t realize until now, with the tree lit, how, because the tree leans…well, just looks where the star sits!”

I couldn’t see the star on my top, but I could see the table and the stable and I had a good idea of where I stopped. Even I was taken a bit by surprise. My star rested over the table where the stable lies.

“It’s like the star that helped the wise men to know…that there was a king born and where to go!” Katie was excited and she pointed this out. She was beaming and shouting, dancing about!

“What’s this excitement?” Mom asked, grabbing one last figure as she entered.

Dad grinned and gestured “It appears it’s over our manger that the tree’s star has centered.” Grabbing his book he gathered Benjamin and Katie around. “I think that means it’s time for where our true Christmas excitement is found!”

Dad recounted the kings, the shepherd, and the sheep. How there was no room in the inn for Mary and Joseph to sleep. He reminded them the angels had promised joy for the earth – all on account of a special birth. Mom placed a baby in a manger to lay – right there with my tinsel, some needles, and hay. Dad read “The baby came, her firstborn, a son, while Mary and Joseph were there. Mary placed him in the manger after wrapping him in some cloths to wear.” Luke 2:6-7

“This is baby Jesus?” Katie pondered.

Benjamin asked “Was it really a baby that filled both shepherds and kinds with worship and wonder?”

“Except Jesus was no ordinary baby,” Mom replied with a nod. “You see Jesus was the Son of Mary but first the Son of God.”

“To us a child is born, a Son is given…” Dad read before saying “it’s because of Jesus our sins are forgiven. He is called ‘Wonderful Counselor’ and ‘Mighty God’… because for us to understand God’s love, He had to come where people trod. So God became like you and like me, so we would know hope, joy, and peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

Mom added: “For God so loved the world, so loved you, so loved me…He came nothing more than a simple baby. He humbled Himself, though He was God and King, even though he was the One of whom the angels did sing! God knew that if we were to ever understand His forgiveness and love, He would have to come down from heaven above. He came in a way we could understand. In the form of a baby would grow into a man.” John 3:16, Philippians 2:5

Dad continued, “One day that man, Jesus, would show God’s love for us in this – He would die for us while we were still caught in our sins. But he would defeat death forever, so time separated from God would be never!”

“Don’t you see, there is no doubt!” Mom added, “Jesus is what Christmas is about! The baby that the angels did sing, is the Lord of lords and King of Kings...”

Something stirred deep in my trunk I couldn’t quite explain. I stared intently where the baby Jesus was lain. It was as if everything made sense now…I leaned even further and made my lean, a bow.

I know now however, what I wish I had known when I was smaller…it’s not about standing straighter; it’s not about standing taller. Christmas isn’t about the presents, the carols or the tree. It was never, actually, all about me.

I don’t know how long a Christmas tree stays. How long before I’ll be ushered out of the house, the next holiday to make way. But I know that no matter what it seems, I am proud to be a tree that at the manger, bows. A tree, that leans…

Anika J. Kasper, 2020 - all rights to this work are my own

Freedom Swings

2020-07-30T16:25:00.001-04:00

I have been desperate for a swing.

A literal swing.

You know, the ones at a good community playground with the long black rubber seat and attached to chains that hang from 15-foot-high steel frames and creak like they were bought from an Azkaban rummage sale?

I love a good swing and, these days, they have been surprisingly hard to find...

In especially small towns (where I’ve found myself for the last 13+ months) you’ll be lucky to locate a park with an available swing set (and, if you’re lucky enough to find one – it’s likely at the elementary school and already in use and you can’t just sit around like a creeper, staring at the swings, waiting your turn. I might call somebody come talk to me…).

And in Michigan, the land of potentially perpetual winter, if you’ve managed to locate a park with swings, they are likely not going to be put back up until the last 10 day forecast, and the next 10 day forecast, all promise higher than 32 degrees and less than six inches of snow…

And this spring? This spring the parks were all shut down (some still are) as to avoid them becoming a public meeting place and therefore a COViD transmission potential. There were twice I found beautiful swings, completely available for use, on days when I would have loved to swing – but I couldn’t.

When I helped my best friend move out of her apartment, she reminded me the camp had gotten a swing set after I left and, though the swings were child sized and the set placed precariously in between trees, I did I get to swing for a few minutes then. It was good for my soul. Though not quite the same…

Because I love a good swing and have for years, perhaps even decades now. I have distinct, clear, crisp memories of being a tween and teen and finding swings at a park after a walk or church picnic or some other type excursion. I remember pumping my legs long and hard, going as high as I could – so high gravity would jolt me a bit at the top, and so hard I would pendulum back and forth… There was something about a swing that made me feel weightless, burdenless, unhindered, free. I love the way a good swing makes me feel free…

In college I would seek them out. I discovered an otherwise relatively pathetic park just down the road from the dorms with an excellent set of swings. When life got too crazy. When my head got too busy. When I needed to escape. When I needed to feel free... I’d go for a short walk, swing until my legs gave out, and walk back…somehow better able to take on life, and better able to untangle the thoughts in my head and the stirrings in my heart – for better or worse.

And all week I’ve been desperate to find a swing.

I pass a park on my way to work. Not far from where I’m staying. I know they have swings. Twice I stopped.

The first time there was a ball game going on and there was a gaggle of children on the play equipment. I would have to wait my turn, which would make me some kind of creeper…

The second time there were less people. I could have swung with the three or four kids on the monkey bars but I glanced at the swings as they were – without kids on them. They were swings. On play equipment. At a park. Meant for children. They were small. And short. And the frame not high enough for someone taller than 4 feet to pump and win… I drove back to the house and made dinner before dark (an especially admirable feat in my life!) instead.

Tonight, I wasn’t exactly restless. But nor was I settled. I picked up the book I had been reading, making it through a few pages with a disinterested distraction. I put it aside and picked up my phone; browsing, I found myself doing much of the same. I glanced at my watch. I declared, with the air of someone who is clearly no longer a young adult, that it was getting to be too late for adventures. Still, I countered: “What I need to do is find some swings…”

I ventured into the town in the opposite direction (seeing as the obvious park in the town on the other side had already let me down) and Google searched parks, typing the address into my maps. Several miles later and the “destination on my right” was DEFINITELY someone’s house. As were the properties on all sides. (One of them did appear to have a swing set – like the kind we had in the 90’s but you can still get at Wal-Mart for like $198.99, all metal with a plastic slide on the side and when you pumped too hard the legs would come up? – but it felt weird to ask to borrow it). I tried typing in the name of the park. I backtracked two miles. I came upon something of a park – but people were totally setting up tents! Already dusk, I didn’t have time to walk the trails to see if they did indeed have swings… somewhere. Dejected, I drove into town and started driving around the block… when I came across the school playground and a family just leaving. In the dusk I saw three swings.

I walked over, chose the swing in the middle and sat down.

For a while I just swayed softly. The familiar sense of being able to exist without strings attached (sans the two chains holding me up, of course) playing in the recesses of my mind. I heard the ever so slight creak of the chains and I smiled, my head leaning gently on the links.

I turned forward from the sideways lean I had been at and began to pump. Slowly and lightly at first, and then faster and harder as I picked up steam; my legs matching the momentum of my body as it continued in its arc-shaped flight, a pendulum back and forth and back and forth.

And that’s where this long (aka: Anika-length) story finds its climax…

Because this is where the story should end or begin to conclude with some note of my blissful sense of freedom just as maximum height and gravity met in a war for my body and my soul. Because swings help me to feel free… Because something about swings sets the world to right.

But that’s not what happened.

I didn’t end up in some blissful zen-like flight pattern. I had no sooner made it back and forth a fifth or sixth time when my brain did the opposite of what my brain normally does and went into hyperdrive. I was processing the lackluster sunset and the sirens in the distance and why the lights were on in the school and whether I needed to stop for gas and how grateful I was to find a swing but how this couldn’t be my park because I didn’t want to share my sacred space with everyone and it was quite a bit out of my way and plus I wasn’t going to be living where I was forever which reminded me, I really needed to start apartment hunting again…

I wanted to say that it was my spiraling thoughts which caused my raging nausea, but I don’t think that was the case at all. If anything, the motion sickness started at the same time and I was trying to push past it – confident that the swinging would do what it does best and take care of the things in my heart and my head…

But it didn’t.

Less than 10 minutes after I found my swing, I found myself I shakily dismounting it.

In college I could have kept going for a half an hour or more. Stopping only when I had I had pumped all my inner angst loose. This time, had I not stopped, the only thing pumped loose would have been the lunch I consumed some several hours prior.

The drive back was quiet. You would think most lonely drives are but mine only are when I’m thinking. Otherwise I’m listening to music. Or more often than not, an audiobook. Or talking to myself.

The drive was quiet.

I was thinking. And seething. And trying a little not to cry. It’s not like one night of motion sickness could ruin my love for swings, but it was a bit like being disappointed by an old friend. A close friend. Knowing she’d be there for you. That he wouldn’t let you down. Being so excited to spend time, to share your life, to be yourself. And then getting everything but. Leaving feeling like your friend wasn’t who you remembered and that though you loved them, you weren’t sure if they loved you. And that hurts!

It hurts to be suddenly trapped by something which is supposed to help you feel free…

It’s where I’ve been with words.

Another silly thing to say. To write. Especially, to write. I’ve only written a handful of times in the last five years. Since before grad school… Oh I wrote papers, endless papers. And I wrote camp curriculum which filled thick binders. And I wrote sermons. For the last year I wrote a sermon week after week after week. All of it writing and all of it so far away from the way my fingers used to fly across a keyboard, flooding a screen to keep up with my heart and mind. All of it felt so confining. So trapping. So imprisoning. I was working on a sermon at my parents’ house once last fall and my sister asked what I was working on. When I replied “my sermon”, she sighed. “I figured. But I keep hoping you’ll say you’re writing. And then I’ll know. I’ll know you’re back…”

Even the words now feel like burning, feel like clawing, painfully and slowly out of place I don’t know if I should yet return.

It hurts to have been trapped by something which once always helped me to feel free…

And maybe there are profound and divine words here. Words about where my true freedom should lay and Who they should lay with. Maybe I should be spending time with John and recalling that “if the Son has set you free, you are free indeed!” (Jn 8:36). Maybe I should be imparting something true right now… Because those words are true.

But right now, all I know is that I’m stuck some where between the dark and the light. Somewhere between the fact I know while I crave to be free, that freedom in my soul, the freedom writing and swings and a bad run on a long road helped me tap into, isn’t something I’ve known in quite some time.

An Ode to Teachers

2019-01-29T20:34:00.002-05:00

At the beginning of October, I began a long-term sub placement. It was at the school where I served as an “Academic-Behavioral Interventionist” part time for a school year and where I’ve frequently served as substitute teacher amidst my other jobs since. This fall, with my extensive summer job search and application process proving completely unsuccessful, I found myself in need of a job…and Hillside found itself in need of a sub willing to carry out the day-to-day and teaching for one of their beloved 5^th grade teachers who would be out for a back surgery. I agreed, thankful for the community I knew was at Hillside and for God’s provision for my needs.

The fact remains…I’m not a teacher. I am a decent instructor. And a notable substitute as I come with enough experience and a bag of tricks to make the day survivable for both me and my class. But there are MANY reasons I didn’t go to school for elementary education. It turns out I like lesson planning (I love lists and am a great planner and there is a strategy to lesson plans) but the day in and out of classroom management for talkative pre-pubescent 10 and 11-year-olds proved beyond my key “niche”. I often felt like an overwhelmed island. I had no idea what I didn’t know or what help to ask for…but I had 29 crashing waves reminding me constantly of what was being asked of me. To say it was a learning curve would be, at least, accurate.

I found I learned other things as well as time went on. Mostly about the teachers whom I’ve always appreciated but haven’t been awarded sainthood. At one point a teacher friend commented something along the lines of “no one will be a bigger supporter of teachers than you after this!” I responded that I was applying to be president of their fan clubs. I learned much about what it is like to be a teacher and what is required of them in the classroom. Below is my (incomplete) list of some of those things. And, if you are anyway anticipating a third snow/cold day with children whom you love but are wondering, with wide eyes and decreasing patience, how you all are going to make it out alive…thank the teachers you know. I promise you they don’t hear it enough...

I was in a FULLY STOCKED classroom for less than a week when I felt the compulsion to buy things for my students and room. I can only imagine what a teacher goes through at the beginning of a school year, pre-anticipating the real needs of students.

Every post about drinking cold coffee is true. No matter how soon I get to school. No matter how soon I start the coffee pot and no matter how soon I start drinking the coffee…

I enjoy an occasional adult beverage. Sometimes I even enjoy one to wind down. I VERY rarely drink copiously and never as an escape. That being said…I find it an absolute miracle that more teachers aren’t raging alcoholics. If they were, it would make sense to me…

Every time you read something about staying awake, unable to sleep, because of a student, believe it. It isn’t an over generalized sentiment. It is impossible to spend 8 hours a day with individuals and not care deeply about who they are as individuals. (I anxiety slept about my class and students almost every night.)

Everyday I looked at students and said “You are NOT stupid! We are still learning this skill!” and “you are going to do something incredible with your life!” and “everyone judges success differently. I judge it most by people who keep working even when it’s hard!” and “you need to give yourself more credit! Just because you don’t have it yet, doesn’t mean you won’t. You are half way there!” I didn’t say these things as platitudes. I truly believed in my students. I repeated often to the class “You need to believe in your selves half as much as I do, and you’ll change the world!” Did they believe me? Maybe not. But someday I hope they know they are capable and think back not back to me, their long-term sub, but the dozens of teachers who have been saying the same thing for YEARS!

5^th graders, (or many other -graders for that matter), are not necessarily inherently nice kids. I lost count of the times I was called “stupid”, “ugly”, “fat”, and any number of things. I have been sworn at, kicked, punched, the target of jokes and drawings and gossip that would have made me leave school crying as a 10-year-old. Teachers would like to say they are immune to these kinds of comments and jabs. (I mean, after all, it most often came on behalf of whatever student whose behavior I most recently corrected. We would have a conversation about the need for me to feel something I didn’t like because they were feeling something they didn’t like. Kids are still working on how to respond in appropriate ways. Most teachers get this.) But…teachers are human too. They have like 30 students they give up time and sleep and energy for. Students they invest into academically and personally. Students who might thank them for help on a problem, but it may take years – if they ever get there at all – to be thankful for the investment. Teachers aren’t immune. I’ve seen calloused teachers; I haven’t seen immune teachers. Stuff builds up. Stuff hurts.

Teachers try to prove themselves to each other. I witnessed some incredible teaching “teams”. Pockets of teachers in the same grade level who were all committed to working together and sharing ideas and the best worksheets and STEM projects and “crazy red squirrel on crack” student stories. And yet…there is this subtle recognition that all teachers want to show each other they are doing enough. Good enough. I spent pretty much my whole time trying to prove myself. Sometimes I cut myself enough slack to recognize I wasn’t and am not an elementary teacher. I was just the long-term sub. That no one was expecting me to understand grade level standards and learning targets or how to take the new reading curriculum that the students DESPISE and make it usable. But part of me expected it from me. And most of me tried really hard to convince myself that I wasn’t being thought less of because of my failure to measure up. And every so often I saw that same flinch in even seasoned teachers who were capable of feeling the same things…

Teachers spend a lot of their non-teaching time doing things that involve their teaching time. Conferences. Online trainings. Reading dozens of articles about other teaching strategies, projects and ideas that are working, ways to better care for the whole person of their students, and studies on education. They are browsing Pinterest for projects, fresh ideas, and encouragement. They are paying for subscriptions to sites with more tools and helps and premade worksheets. And yes, based on the conversations I heard and calendars I saw, they are doing this on their summer “breaks” (the ones everyone is always so jealous of…)

Since I mentioned curriculum…I only got my feet wet in the world of “grade level standards”. I have only a cursory knowledge about what all goes into creating those standards at a state level and barely more about implementing them. But based on what I saw, experienced, and know about the classroom…to meet all of the grade level standards in all subjects would require 10-hour school days, 6 days a week, for at least 11 months a year. A classroom without any behavioral issues, perfectly attentive students, and another teacher wouldn’t hurt either. I have NO IDEA how teachers get through it all!

Group projects. If you let them choose their partners, they goof off the entire time. If you choose their partners for them, they fight the whole time. I’m pretty sure, based on the chaos which ensues by assigning a group project, I know how wars are actually started. The struggle between “this would be a fun project/this is a good skill/they don’t do enough hands-on things/they need to learn how to work together” and “is this worth curling up in a corner and crying about for three days?” is REAL.

Speaking of wars…seating charts take the strategy of seasoned Army generals, the patience of UN diplomats, the daring sense of adventure of Indiana Jones, and the problem-solving genius of a published mathematician. “Billy can’t sit next to Danny, Brad, or Shelly. He does sit well next to Sally and Robby, but Robby can’t sit next to Sally. Robby also can’t sit next to Brad or Shelly but works surprisingly well with Danny…” And then the earth-shattering sass when they discover who their new neighbors are…

Teachers say things that just don’t make sense. It’s like (I imagine) parenting but with 30 super different children with very specific personalities and needs. At least once a week I said something like “new rule: you can’t make art out of an apple and leave it on your desk. It needs to go home at the end of the day!” and “I don’t know why I need to remind you of this, but we don’t lick our friends!” and “For the love of recess! Why are your cradling him? Put him down!”

If you have a child whose teacher is out sick, pray for them. If they are gone for more than a couple of days, consider meals and community gatherings of support; they might be dying. This wasn’t a case of the sniffles, they are really not okay! The only basis I have for this knowledge is the sheer terror of lesson plans. Granted, as a non-teacher lesson plans may have been more challenging for me than a gifted teacher who can do such things with flourish and speed. But, shoot! I was gone for the equivalent of six school days when I went to Israel and I put an embarrassing amount of time into lesson plans. What content was reasonable for a sub to cover? Was I leaving enough work? Not enough? What would I have to reteach when I got back? How did I leave notes on students that didn’t automatically make the sub form negative opinion of students but gave them the information they needed to give my special students the care they needed? And the headache of having to go through it all and figure it all out again when you come back? Yeah, teachers don’t take sick days lightly.

Teacher’s aren’t thanked. Not really. I can say this because I’m not and wasn’t a real teacher. I say it as someone who was meaningfully thanked EVERY time I saw the teacher whose classroom I was covering. I know many phenomenal teachers and they are phenomenal because they didn’t go into teaching for the thanks but because they truly love what they do and, more importantly those they do it for. But it’s still not taking place. Not in so many words. If they teach in elementary, there is probably a collection of art from their students or occasionally there is a hug. Small pieces of a student expressing their love and thanks in ways they know how. There is the satisfaction of watching a student grow in and own skills in life and academics. There is the inner knowledge that what they do makes a difference. But not many people turn around and say, “thank you”. Not many professions have so many expectations…from law makers, administration, parents, teachers, and childless strangers…with so few actual resources…that are accomplished with joy and creativity and ingenuity and personal sacrifice…and are done with nare a word of acknowledgment or thanks.

I was asked routinely if I would do it again…I often admit reluctantly I probably wouldn’t. Reluctant because it makes it sound like a bad experience when mostly it was just a lot. I was working a 50+ hour week, for the same pay I would make for a sub job that included giving out worksheets and reading homework while the kids were at PE. I made less than minimum wage, still had to put hours in at my other job, and was still doing homework for my last class. I wasn’t eating, not sleeping well, and constantly worried about my kids. I learned I’m capable of many things but that teaching 5^th graders is not likely my life’s calling. I am thankful for those for whom it is. I am incredibly grateful for the teachers I’ve had throughout my life who taught, encouraged, inspired, and helped shape me into the person I’ve become. It is likely you haven’t heard it recently, so thank you.

Crashing for Turtles

2018-09-26T01:13:00.001-04:00

I was driving to Annual Conference the first weekend in June…in Traverse City…after class…in Fort Wayne. It was a five-hour drive after a four-hour class after an hour-and-a-half drive. I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. I plugged in an audio book novelette (that I was bound and determined to finish before I arrived…I did) and began the northward journey.

I was a little more than half way through and driving past Grand Rapids on 131. Traffic was pretty busy, and, eager to be done with my drive, I weaved in and out of the lanes at 77 mph with the cars merging in and off the expressway. Until, all of the sudden, the right lane was at a near standstill, hazard lights creating a parade.

Cars flew by, passing the parade at an otherwise normal speed. Already in the left lane, I was one of them. I slowed and looked curiously towards the beginning of the line. And then I saw the reason for the cautious traffic. Looking to have made it across the merging lane and into right lane was a huge box turtle.

It took giant steps, racing across the traffic. I was proud of its persistence but as it made it ever closer to the left lane of northbound traffic, I thought for sure it was toast. I flew past but looked back several times in my review mirror. A giant red semi barreled ahead. I wanted to close my eyes but realizing I was looking in my review mirror, I simply focused on the road ahead, cheering on the turtle I was positive was about to reach its certain doom.

I glanced back one last time as I merged to the right and saw it. The semi saw the turtle, now just a dark speck in the dead middle of the lane. The driver pulled so far to the left, the truck tilted in the ditch. It’s tail and nose were in the lane, creating a semi-circle hedge of protection as the turtle continued in its unstopped mission to the grass and the truck made its way slowly back onto the road.

I cheered! Like literally clapped a couple of times.

And I texted a friend (through voice-to-text, calm yourselves) and told him, in very short version, about the miraculous turtle save and the semi who swerved off the road for it. He responded shortly after with a message that read “good for the turtle! But be safe! Don’t go crashing for turtles!”

I decided, first, that “Crashing for Turtles” would be an EXCELLENT band name (if you are looking for a band name and use it, please give me at least a nod of credit or let me play kazoo in one song or something because you know it’s a sweet name!). And then I was struck by the profundity of the phrase.

The idea of what it meant to crash for turtles and whether it was a good thing or bad thing, metaphorically, consumed me all through conference. And then for days. Even weeks. I declared it one of the most beautiful images of self-sacrifice I could possibly muster, and I dreamed of writing about it. The latter might not seem like much but for someone who hasn’t wrote anything of greater worth than a research paper in months, the desire to write fanned the tiniest little spark inside of me. A spark that said maybe all of the pieces of me I thought I once knew weren’t gone…

Then life got in the way. First it was school: Heady reading and several papers. Then the end of my job where I was working way too many hours. Then camp. Then the start of another class. Then just about the time I felt compelled to maybe, just maybe, finish my thoughts and what it meant to crash for a turtle in my twisted brain of metaphors and pictures and images…more life got in the way. When I opened the file on my computer marked “crashing for turtles” today – it was dated as “last edited by user on July 17”. Significant because that was a day before the boy who, technically, coined the phrase (though my brain did all of the running away with it, so it was never really his or had anything to do with him), suddenly but quietly exited my life. At almost the exact same time, I found out a dear friend was killed in a fatal car accident. I lost all desire to talk about crashing for anything. Let alone turtles.

But more than two months later and the image hasn’t left. If anything, it’s become richer and more meaningful and poignant. And harder and more painful and more real… Because, you see, ultimately, the idea of crashing for turtles is about putting yourself on the line for something inferior. It either displays the ultimate heart of service or the reality of being made a slave and the distance between the two is striking.

There is something incredible, for me, in the concept of the turtle as a person or mission or reality. Someone not inferior in value or worth but in some other way. (*Insert the first disenfranchised, discriminated, unrecognized, or “forgotten” person or people group that comes to your mind here, for example*). I love to the point of chills and tears what it means for the biggest and most powerful (of which all off us are in different places and spaces) to throw a piece of themselves off the proverbial road to protect the innocent, the vulnerable, the ones without the means to protect themselves (and yes this can be as simple as greeting the visitors sitting in the fifth row on the right at church even if you’re not really the outgoing type). Creating that semi-circle of protection. It's something I witnessed my friend Nick do often...and there were many previous "turtles" who attended his funeral to tell the tales...

And, though the semi put itself at risk, made the choice to protect, it was only part. Because what actually happened, as happened with the right lane of cars previous, is that it forced the cars behind it to stop and take notice. The turtle survived that day because if it was important enough for a big ol’ semi to throw itself off the road, then surely it was important enough for the sedan behind it to at least look towards what it was swerving around. I was awed by the thought that I passed a mile of cars in the right lane (and merging lane) going nare 10mph with hazard lights on and those in the back would have NO IDEA the reason for the first and yet they too had trusted that the reduced speed and caution was important and necessary.

I think this kind of crashing for turtles in underused and important and Biblical. It seems like it is very much like the task of the Good Samaritan, the call of the Rich Young Ruler, and the drive of the early church (among many other things). In our me-centric world of selfish gain and a gospel that fits my needs and wants and ministry in my comfort zones and is convenient for my schedule and matches my political leanings and my picture of the way the world should go…there is something unfortunately revolutionary and uncommonly heroic about the one who choose to lay aside her [comfortable, convenient, satisfying, desired, etc] life for her friends. Let alone a vulnerable stranger.

And yet I’m torn. Not with that particular reality but because “crashing for turtles” is a metaphor with a double-edged sword. I’m torn because I realize that if something had happened with that giant red semi, if the itty-bitty little sedan behind it didn’t slow or stop or see, if traffic felt the need to dangerously merge at the wrong time, real people in real time could have been really hurt. If that had happened, the headlines on the paper wouldn’t read “huge box turtle courageously saved by sacrificial truck driver”, it would have read something terrible like “Alcohol not in play in Thursday’s deadly accident”. And no one would have easily forgiven the report of “Driver notes turtle cause of Thursday’s crash causing two deaths and seven injuries…” Because the very real actual turtle was important and worthwhile. But not as valuable or worthwhile as that of a human life.

And we all crash for these kinds of non-literal turtles. We all have things in our lives that get valued above and beyond what is right and reasonable. We have “turtles” which are given worth and importance and investment…turtles that, in seeking to save, we destroy parts of ourselves, parts of lives. I think about the long-toted idols of work and money and busyness and sex and drugs and stuff and gluttony. And the seventeen other deadly sins and whatever else it is that seems like something we are willing to stake our lives on, willing to crash for, things which seem like they are worth something and maybe some are in the short term but aren’t worth anything near a human life. I think about the nights I didn’t sleep to finish the homework I was unwilling to settle for a “B” on. I think about the jobs I went above and beyond simply to prove to someone else, somewhere else, that I had what it took. I think about my sometimes consuming anxiety or my crippling thought obsessions. I think about the relationship with a boy who first caused me, quite unknowingly, to spiral from the phrase “crashing for turtles” at all. The relationship being something I was willing to crash for but in the end being something which, when it crashed, how it crashed, deeply affected how I knew and understood “me” and what I had in value and worth. I think about all of the friendships I’ve had which ended in one way or another. Those too being something I would crash for and did crash for and yet caused the same and even worse crash of identity when it came to trying to decide why some people stay and some people go.

I think about the ways that “self-care” is becoming a needed and important piece of mental health education…not because of the selfishness created in a me-centric reality but because in knowing and doing and moving and being (often out of an unhealthy core and unhealthy identity) people crash and burn in a way that seems to destroy them and takes others down with them and leaves them no good to themselves or anyone else. And sometimes those are the same people who thought they were saving some turtle, when in fact nothing was saved and much was lost.

I’m stuck with these competing narratives, the ones warring against each other that demand an answer. Any answer. And the answer is important because it seems like the turtles I am willing to crash for or the ones I already do and have say a great deal about who I am and whose I am. So I’m desperate to know and see and understand. I want the answer telling me how to move forward. How to know which turtles to crash for and which to entrust. Answers that say something like “this is how you know what turtles are worth it!” or “here is a definitive way to know whether or not this crash is Christlike or chaos inducing” or “when you encounter a turtle that you are unsure of, proceed with the following seven steps…” But life isn’t like that, is it? Life is full of questions and incomprehinsibles and unknowables and things most unfair.

And so, despite the fact words have finally made it to page, I’m still caught in the tension. I wish I weren’t. I like when things wrap up in neat packages. When there are conclusions and steps to purpose. When I finish writing something and can tie some sort of bow and say “This. These. Here are the words which have been burning deep and needing to be found.” But I’m only newly back into the writing world. And these words themselves are coming out of place of tension – of both insecurity and hope. So, turtles or not, perhaps, the tension must remain. And maybe little by little it can be less about me and more about the God I wish to serve. And maybe that will be enough…

The Scar Chronicles

2018-01-03T20:46:00.005-05:00

Today is my scar’s 10^th birthday.

Over the years I have come to really love scars – and mine in particular. (Let’s face it, we have been through A LOT together!) I love scars for a couple of reasons for sure. For one, scars have stories! Oft untold, some unknown, but always more than just the mark they bear. For two, scars are the reminder of pain but the presence of healing. It’s proof where something was once broken and hurt, has now been made new. My scar isn’t “pretty” but the cells used to create that flesh were brand new! Brand. Freaking. New. Something broken turned into something healed and whole. And that will preach…

Everyone told me my scar would be “hardly noticeable” after a year or two but 10 years later and we are still going strong! Which, honestly, I’m okay with. I did everything to reduce it early on. The scar cream and the lotions and protecting it from the sun and hiding it… But now, if I were to wake up without it one morning? I think I would miss it. It is so much a part of me… And it stands as this incredible reminder. Life has changed a lot but still it remains. Much like God’s faithfulness…

Granted, it’s not quite the scar it once was! From a five inch long slight smile across my neck that was bumpy and slightly grotesque to a nearly 7 ½ inch beauty (second surgery) which was somewhat cosmetically better…to today! The end is just a faint pink line, but most is still quite visible.

And so, 10 years later and I still get questions about my scar! I think when you have a large scar on your arm, people start assuming fun accidents involving ladders or chainsaws or grizzly bears. When you have a large scar across your neck, people don’t know what to think! As a result, my scar has garnered quite an array of responses!

When I say array…I literally mean array! Think less of the color wheel and more of a color spectrum… People’s reactions and responses have been numerous and often hilarious. Good, bad, ugly, downright confusing… You name it, I’ve probably heard it!

I decided the best celebration of my scar’s 10^th birthday was to chronicle some of those stories. In the words of another old, good friend – Larry the Cucumber – “I laughed, I cried, they moved me, Bob!”

So, without further ado…

The Scar Chronicles

When I first came back to SAU after surgery, I didn’t really know how to let people in on the dramatic life changes since we left for Christmas break. Still covered in bloody gauze, I covered my neck with a scarf. People heard my [nonexistent] voice before they ever saw my neck. They would always say “Are you sick?” And, much to my elder sister’s displeasure I would say “Oh! Not really!” (I thought this was funny because I didn’t have the head cold they expected… Faith did not.) When they did see my scar, they would gasp ‘what happened?!” “Umm, over break I found out I had cancer and they took out my thyroid…” was just a little awkward. For the same surprised reaction, however, I found I could tell a better story. So, I started to say “Well, an old lady came up to me in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Robbed me at knife point. Stole my Carmex!” Most looked shocked for like a second, laughed, and then asked what really happened. While I felt the story softened the blow, I had to stop telling it when the reactions I received included “But why did she want your Carmex?!” and “Was that the Wal-Mart in Jackson? That is why I NEVER shop there! I only go to the Meijer. Way less dangerous!” People still talk about this story. Mostly me.

This probably should have deterred me from making up stories but sometimes I still do occasionally for a laugh. One of my favorites is to tell young people that I was born with my head on backwards, which of course was fine until I wanted to learn how to drive. So, I had to have a couple of surgeries to turn my head back around. “If you look closely,” I say while demonstrating “my head still doesn’t sit totally straight. It kind of points to the left and I can’t get it all the way to the right. So someday they might have to fix that.” Most pause and go “nuh-uh! That’s not true!” And I tell them the real story. Last year I told it to a kid in a class I subbed (instead of my normal spiel found somewhere below). He tended to be a bit of a punk and I wanted a reaction out of him. But he just said “oh” and left. The next day I was in the class again and some other student asked me about my scar. He whipped around and went “You’re so stupid! She told us about it yesterday. She had to have her head turned around because she was born with it backwards! DUH!” He body slammed a reading pillow while rolling his eyes at his “ignorant” classmate. I cleared it up with her. I have no idea what he believes…

My first scar especially, curved up like a slight smile. When people ask questions by saying “what is that?” I like to respond with “It’s my second smile! See! I smile even when I frown!” Then I typically frown and trace my smiling scar. The kids I work with get PUMPED about this. (I was once introduced to a parent by an excited student saying, “see her second smile, mom!”) I can really attribute it back to a friend from college, however. We worked together on a custodial team and he said, “can I turn your scar into a smiley face?” “Why not!” I replied, expecting him to take the sharpie in his hands to put two single dots for eyes. When I realized the dot was becoming a full-fledged eye, it was too late. What did I do? Leave it as a cyclops? Two full sharpie eyes and nose later and my neck had a face! Which could only be [mostly] removed with 100% acetone! The smile (without the face) lives.

For whatever reason, when people see what appears to be a slit throat, they assume the worst. I’ve gotten many questions about suicide attempts. My trigeminal nerve, carotid artery, and jugular all sit directly behind my scar (cancer was “carved” off of all three). If I was aiming with the scar I have, I don’t think I would have missed. But it also isn’t the residual scar from a rope burn from an attempted hanging. Guys, I promise I didn’t try to slit my throat! Or hang myself! Or…anything in that direction!

My scar is (or was), for whatever reason, a people deterrent. Some have come clean about it. Others I hear about through the grape vine. My scar scares people apparently?? It’s how I found out about one of my favorite rumors!

My junior year I lived on a floor of mostly freshmen. I pretty much kept to myself (for reasons in another story) but one girl seemed to avoid me like the plague. For a freshman who didn’t know me, I thought this strange. But, remember, I was at a pretty tame Christian Liberal Arts College. We were eating a floor dinner once and I was talking to my RA about my upcoming/recent surgery or something and freshie sat nearby, listening nervously. At one point she released a visible relief style sigh. I asked her about it casually. It was then I found out that, (though it wouldn’t surprise me if it somehow went back to my own mugging at Wal-Mart story…), I found out I was in a gang! Or had been. She had been avoiding me because she was afraid. Because someone told her I had been in a gang. (This story is WAY funnier if you know anything about me and my general persona in college or high school!). After her confession, the stories trickled in from others. At least twice it was reported I got my scar in a gang initiation. A few times it was in a gang fight. The most common report was, thank the Lord for redemption, I was in a gang, but I turned my life around and wanted out and they slit my throat. I’ve never been so hard core before or since!

Not related but part of the “deters people” family of stories…years later I was working in Outdoor Education when I coworker reported the humorous story of a kid who, after being scratched in Reptiles and Amphibians class, declared he didn’t care because girls liked guys with scars! We laughed collectively before I (it is my fault, really, I don’t know why I said anything!) commented something along the lines of “guys get more attractive with scars, but girls don’t, how does that work??” And a male coworker replied, “It’s true! I think girls with scars are super unattractive.” The table went quiet. Another coworker went, “Dude, Anika has a super noticeable scar…” To which the first responded with “I know.” I had long expected my scar was an “attraction deterrent”. While I had ZERO desire to attract any of my male coworkers, it was the first time it had been voiced so clearly. Cheers!

Sometimes people get confused about anatomy…

I had a professor that I SUPER appreciated in college. He cared about his students in and outside of the classroom and prayed and supported me through a lot that first semester especially. He had this tendency the first few weeks (up to a couple of months) I was back, however, to look at me with these eyes. Eyes that spoke a pity and an appreciation I didn’t feel I deserved – like maybe I was a living, breathing miracle. I was in his office middle of the semester, talking about life, and at one point he stopped me. He said “Wait, when you talk about your thyroid, you keep gesturing to your neck. Where is the thyroid?” I explained that it was a butterfly shaped organ that sits over the larynx, toward the base of the neck and I watched a lightbulb go on. He responded “You’ve always said thyroid, but I think I was thinking hypothalamus. I thought they opened your neck and went up from there into your brain… That makes way more sense!” The conversation moved on from there. In my mind it was a simple mistake: he thought something first and it lodged. It happens! Until I remembered what the hypothalamus does. No wonder he looked at me like I was a miracle! Although, I did notice the weird look seemed to stop…

The summer after my first surgery I was counseling at camp. I, (as part of another no longer remembered conversation), mentioned that I didn’t have a bellybutton (the button was lost with my gallbladder surgery, just the indent-ish hole remains, but saying you don’t have a bellybutton gets a fun response). The other responded with a quick but otherwise serious “oh! Is that why you have that scar across your neck??” “No…?” And then I shared the story with my friends and other counselors and we still laugh.

Last year I was subbing in a third-grade classroom. I had been in this room a few times as the teacher was a friend of mine. Towards the end of one day, a young gentleman came up to me and said, “Miss Kasper, did you just have a baby?” I was suddenly very self-conscious and confused. “No…” I replied hesitantly, waiting for the explanation I knew was coming from this particular young lad. I braced myself. “Then why do you have that scar across your neck?” I chuckled and told him I would tell him tomorrow. The class left, and I LAUGHED! At eight years old, I’m glad he didn’t have all of the facts of life figured out yet, but I am still concerned about how he thought babies were born…

Not quite anatomy but questions about my scar sometimes warrant further concern. Like the young girls who asked about my scar and when I gave them a brief synopsis one replied with wide eyes and not enough laughter to be attempting a joke: “DID YOU DIE???” She seemed relieved when I told I did not and was still, in fact, very much alive.

Most people don’t just come up and make comments about my scar unless they are children. Which I get. I am totally okay with people asking about my scar and, in fact, I would rather they just ask then create rumors about my shady past. But I also realize that not everybody is, and I while I know the answer, they don’t! Others’ stories don’t include a quick surgery. As a result, however, I am surprised when adults do comment. Here are some of my favorites:

At a grocery store a late teen/early 20’s cashier decided to make small talk by asking “so what’s up with your neck?” I’m normally pretty vague (because I don’t always have the time or energy to deal emotionally or otherwise with people’s reactions to “cancer”) but perhaps my shock and his abruptness caused me to reply with a simple “Cancer. Surgery for nearly five hours.” It is the fastest I have ever seen someone ring up groceries (outside of Aldi – those people are like cheetas!) and he ended with a quick mumbled “have-a-nice-day-ma’am”. I felt bad for ruining his cheery mood. And also for laughing at him in the car…
As a bonding/why not? activity, I went with my fellow female RA’s and RD boss to do water aerobics my senior year of college. Now, the water aerobics class was about 96% people over the age of 60. At one point, an elderly(er) gentleman came up to me in the pool. Pointed to my neck and said “I see you’ve got yourself a zipper! Me too! Wanna see?” I didn’t say yes but he moved the swim shorts (pulled up to his chest hair) down to his bellybutton to show me a scar that looked like his gallbladder had been taken out. I didn’t stick around for the story…
I had one concerned stranger tell me in a one sentence lecture that my “neck tattoo” was the reason no one respected my generation.
I had someone ask me to explain the meaning behind my confusing “neck tattoo”…
I had a kid on a skateboard, however, tell me that my “neck tattoo” was “sick!” with a thumbs up of approval. Another teen once told me it was a “kickin’ tattoo!”
(*Apparently tattoos are like their own section. Do people actually get tattoos to look like scars? Also, I once joked I would get it tattooed over. With ivy. Or barbed wire. If I wasn’t so attached to my scar as is, I think barbed wire would be sweet!)
I have had random people (typically women in their 40’s and 50’s) tell me if they had such a hideous scar they would use some decent cover-up! Because there is nothing people like better than unsolicited advice from strangers!

My favorite reactions are the ones from kids! They have less of a filter and less inhibition. Their natural curiosity lends more quickly to a voiced question. “Miss Anika, Miss Kasper, Anika…umm, teacher person…” (Depends on the environment) “…what happened to your neck right here?” (as they draw an imaginary line across their own necks…or mine). I eventually will give them a short health and science lesson that includes them feeling for their own thyroids and telling them some of the important stuff it does and telling them mine “got sick” and had to be taken out. Before that, however, I always ask “Well, what do you think happened?” First – it gives them a chance to think about why they asked and what they actually want to know. Second – it gives me a chance to figure out what people, even little people, think about it. Third – it often results in funny, occasionally well thought-out, answers… Including (but nowhere limited to)…

You probably just had some sort of surgery or something…
A dog attacked you! (I’ve also gotten cat, bear, and dinosaur)
You were playing “Red Rover” but they caught you!
You dropped your necklace into the fire and you picked up and put it back on when it was still hot and it burned you.
You were at a rodeo and the cowboy threw the rope too far
You were clothes-lined (this is also a common question of well-meaning adults)
My mom said you shouldn’t play with knives...
You were wearing a hoody and you jumped off the playground equipment, but your hood got caught and you just dangled there until someone helped you out of your sweatshirt. *shrug* It happened to my brother once…

*I can’t make this stuff up! I’ve tried! Also, when I worked at the daycare it became, unintentionally a favorite story. Sometimes a preschooler would climb on my lap and request “Miss Anika, will you tell us the story about how you got that thing on your neck?” And then she would summon the others… I mean, it IS a good story…

I think this synopsis needs to end with the reality that even though I love my scar… I wasn’t always okay with it. Even when I got past the “make it go away” and found myself relatively attached to it, it also made kind of insecure. People were/are sometimes weird around my scar. I can sometimes get weird (unintentionally) around my scar…like it turns darker red when I’m stressed or struggling, and I cover it when I’m feeling vulnerable or overwhelmed… It left this looming of question of “will people accept me with my scar?” Not in spite of or despite my scar but with it. Not because they are able to look past it but because it was so much part of my picture. It’s no longer the burning question – mostly because I have friends who are stinking amazing…

I was honored to stand in a wedding for dear friends of mine the summer after my second surgery. That meant that my scar was red, bumpy and noticeable to boot! I fretted about how I didn’t want attention to be on my scar (for me or others) on their special day. An older friend said she had some great coverup samples and told me to experiment with them, use what worked, and later give back the rest. I found one that nearly completely faded it! BUT it didn’t erase it. In the end, it was okay. My newly married friends came and visited around the holidays and brought their wedding album which I had made it into as a member of the bridal party. My dear friend said, “did I tell you what happened?” “No…” I replied (trying to figure out if I should tell her I forgot to take my white hair tie off my wrist and it was in like every photo). She responded “my photographers called when editing photos and said they noticed one of my bridesmaids had a pretty noticeable scar and asked if we wanted it edited out. I told them ‘no’ and that it was something I loved about you.” [I told them about the hair tie then because I was a little irritated they could edit out my scar but not my awkward white “bracelet”]. Sometimes when I’m in a funk where I don’t like my scar, or just need to be reminded of the incredible people in my life, I think of this story and tear a little. I am SO grateful for friends such as these!

So, I raise my glass and toast to the past…because it’s been a hilarious ride! Happy 10^th Birthday my old friend! Cheers!

It's just a sewing tracer! Promise!

After Surgery #1

After Surgery #2 (This is my "I just won a goldfish!"picture)

10 Years Later and Here I Am

2017-12-26T22:10:00.001-05:00

Today is my 10-Year Cancer-Versary.

It was December 26, 2007…the microwave clock read 5:17…when the doctor who had done the biopsy only a handful of days before called to let me know that the results were exactly opposite of what he expected. At the time the most common demographic for thyroid cancer was women over 40 from who had a “Pacific Island” ethnicity…primarily those who had been exposed to a significant degree of radiation. I am…female. So, I had that going for me. Up to 50% of Americans are expected to have spots on the thyroid. In 2007, approximately 5% of the spots were suspicious and far less were cancerous. Statistically, thyroid cancer wasn’t really something I, a 19-year-old college sophomore, should have had to worry about. But there it was.

And 10 years later, here I am.

It was part of my picture all through Sophomore and Junior years of college with more surgery and radiation. It lingered (without a surgery or radiation attempt) into my Senior year. My bloodwork said to hold tight until the remaining cells either died or grew. I felt like a time bomb until 2011 when my bloodwork said I was finally free.

10 years later, and here I am.

Cancer is part of my history, my story, but not part of my days. If it weren’t for the occasional questions about my slightly faded 6 ½ inch scar and the need to mark yes when asked “have you had any kind of cancer” when donating blood, there are many days I wouldn’t think about it at all.

But here I am. My heart and mind a muddle of memories from the last ten years.

I was trying to decide how to commemorate the last 10 years. A post seemed obvious as it was during my first processings with cancer that my blog was begun. In those days my fingers flowed over a keyboard, trying to keep up with the way my brain just wouldn’t stop. And yet…how does one commemorate something like cancer? Do you? It’s not typically something you necessarily celebrate…

Still, here I am.

So much has changed. Yesteryear feels like yesterday today and yet no part of me could have imagined that this is where life would bring me. And still…I know that where I am is, in many respects, a direct result of the role cancer played in my life. For good or for bad, I am who I am because of the journey which began a decade ago… People don’t typically celebrate cancer, but, I suppose, in a way I do. Cancer sucks. I wish it upon no one – not my worst enemy. But I am sitting here puzzling over the last ten years and knowing that, given the choice, I would not erase it from my past. I wouldn’t change the story. I would again allow something so painful and hard to be in a place for God to work in me and through me and around me. To see the way God’s strength was and is made perfect in my imperfection.

And maybe that’s enough. That realization is enough. Yet, with a head and heart full of memories, I’ve decided to commemorate my 10-Year-Cancer-Versary with 10 of the things I feel like cancer has taught me in the last 10 years. The pieces which have, in some way, shaped me and continue in their own ways to influence who I am and who I’m becoming. Some of them are specific to [my] cancer. Some I think apply to many “hard things” and “painful storms”. All of them leave me giving thanks for the places I’ve been, the place I find myself, and the way God continues to be the Beauty in my storms…

10 Things I’ve Learned from Cancer Over the Last 10 Years…

1. Time doesn’t heal all wounds…but it does lessen the force of impact. Fall semester of my Junior year, with another surgery on the schedule and more questions with answers unknown, a professor spoke of his good friend, for whom days were limited as cancer ravaged his body. My hand immediately went to my scar (a common occurrence which I later realized I did when I felt vulnerable – like I had to protect the rawest part of me), my breathing quickened, and my head started to spin. I remember that I was standing and that I wished I could sit down without drawing attention to myself. The idea of cancer consumed me. A movie with a cancer plotline could leave me in pieces. A book with cancer left me out of sorts for days and wide awake at night. But they don’t anymore. There are times when I am still deeply affected. For the most part, however, there is now just a light sting where the gut wrenching inner destruction used to be. There is something beautiful about the way God uses the richness of life to slowly but surely begin to heal the places that hurt.

2. Life changes. If you’re hoping that you can be a 20-year-old college student who has classes to take, grades to make, extracurriculars to pursue, a job to keep, and an identity to preserve…who merely happens to also have cancer, you might be a little crazy. And you might be me. I was so convinced that the best kind of kid with cancer was the kind of kid who acted like she didn’t have cancer at all! While God taught me SO much when life crashed in on me, it crashed in harder than it may have had to because I was secretly convinced that nothing needed to change. I wish I would have been more open to the inevitable change so that I could have helped direct the reconstruction. Instead there are still a couple pieces out of place!   What’s the modern beatitude? “Blessed is the flexible for they won’t be bent out of shape?” For good or bad, I’m not the person I was on December 25^th of 2007. Sometimes I miss the old Anika. Our cores are the same though…the Anika I am and the Anika I was. Life changes. It’s gonna be okay.

3. It’s okay to have hard days. It’s okay to question. It’s okay to doubt. It’s okay to know one thing in your head but feel another one in your reality... It’s okay to know God is as near as my next breath and still scream into the darkness, asking Him to show up.   I caught a lot of flak – especially early on – at my Christian Liberal Arts school where questions and doubts were a sign of spiritual weakness and a deteriorating relationship with God. REAL Christians ALWAYS had the joy of the Lord and NEVER were angry at God or enquiring or unsure… But they are. Real Christians are real humans – and as such have real feelings and real emotions that require real responses. I didn’t want to go through Christian-ese motions... I wanted my faith to be real – one that didn’t say “God is good!” because I should but because amidst life that wasn’t, I could search and find and know God’s goodness amidst the pain. I wanted to be to walk through hard stuff and come out on the other end knowing the God I serve is big enough to handle my questions, my doubts, my fight, my storm, and me... And somehow, through it all, God reveals Himself nearer than ever before…

4. The reality of cancer is hard to digest…especially for other people. Cancer has this awesome way of affecting absolutely everything. Health and identity and relationships. And when that effect is felt by those around you, some will rally. The others will flee. It used to bother me that so many “left”, that when I needed people the most (but couldn’t always articulate that need), I looked around to find previously occupied presences gone. The reality is…many just don’t know what to do. For reasons valid and not. There is a sense of guilt (they are healthy and you’re not); there is a fear and uncertainty around the idea and the future and the pieces; there is a realization that the role you played in their life has suddenly and drastically changed; there is a lack of knowledge of what to say or do or be, a helplessness… And so, they leave. Does knowing this mean it didn’t hurt? Not a bit. Do I think it was my job to help them grieve and cope? No. I couldn’t even if I had wanted to! Have I been the friend on the other side of hard stuff that wonders about the balance between presence and space, perceived need and actual need, their grief and my own? Yeah. It’s not easy. Things like cancer are hard. There are people who, to this day, take a step back when they learn I once had cancer. It’s not something everyone can handle. Cancer was hard for me to stomach. But it was hard for those who cared about me too…

5. If you want to be a good friend, be present and listen. Show up. Do things that don’t involve whatever painful thing is going on in her life (because life is already about it). But be willing to get in the trenches too (because there are times when she will be dying to talk about it and feel like no one wants to hear about it). Give her space when needed without getting offended. Learn the phrases “do you want to talk about it?” and “is this a time you want me to give advice and feedback or do you just want me to listen?” Don’t answer all the questions. Don’t tell her she has no reason to question or doubt. Tell her instead that God is big enough for questions and doubts. Ask what God is teaching amidst the storm. Help her look for joy. It’s not an easy job. I would like to think that cancer has helped me see with different eyes, hear past my ears, and love beyond platitudes. I’ve tried to be the friend I needed. I often fail. But I would rather fail than not have tried.

6. Not everyone gets the whole story. This is twofold…a “gets” in terms of reception and in terms of comprehension. It is ALWAYS a journey to decide how much people get to know about the truest pieces of you. There are times I overshared. There were times at the beginning when God was giving me glimpses of Him amidst the crazy and I would spill them to anyone who would listen. And there were times I didn’t want to share at all. At the beginning people would find out about “cancer” and would want to know…how I found out, how I was doing, how I was “feeling”. I hated that question: “How are you feeling?” I was attending classes fulltime. I kept my on-campus job. For many onlookers, I was any normal college sophomore/junior. When someone asked how I was feeling, it was almost always a polite way of making a surface level connection. When I responded in kind with a surface level, “tired but okay…good…making life happen…one day at a time…” it was almost always followed by a “well, I’ll be praying for you!” before turning and walking away. Most never asked beyond my “okay”. I became protective of my story to save it from the people who didn’t truly care.   And so there were times – many over the last ten years – where people would find out I had cancer and a piece of me would scream on the inside, secretly pleading with the other to ask. Wishing they would be a safe place to tell my story. My story isn’t a secret. But not everyone needs it. Some I share with don’t get it. And they won’t. It’s okay. Sometimes God nudges me to share with someone I honestly think could care less. Sometimes I listen to that prod. Sometimes I share a little. Sometimes a lot. And over the years, some people have come to know the whole story. And they get it. And they get me. It’s an incredible gift.

7. "Cancer” is a deep layer and I am in charge of protecting the way others respond. While not everyone gets the whole story, it was still my reality. It has become a natural part of my story. For me, simply stating I had cancer is like saying I also had a dog – who died. Is it a little sad? Sure. Is that declaration deep? Not for me. For me, that’s a pretty surface level disclosure. For others, simply saying “I” and “cancer” in the same sentences sounds like I’m bearing my soul. They aren’t ready to respond to perceived deep layer with one of their own. (It’s the onion principle of mutual communication). Sometimes I hold off on sharing cancer because I don’t want to scare people away. Sometimes I guard the truth to protect others. When I worked at camp or in the schools and kids would ask me about my scar, I would tell them about the thyroid and how important it is and let them know mine was “really sick”. Because a word like cancer is scary. And not every person is in a place to emotionally handle the baggage attached with it. Some say it’s not my job. But cancer isn’t just about me…

8. In the midst of storms, always look for reasons to laugh. Cancer can be funny! Do you get to make fun of cancer? Not without an “in” (aka: a relationship with someone with cancer who participates in the humor and says it’s okay). Could I? Yes. But only of my own (unless given an in with another individual). And under those parameters, it’s not only okay but even healthy. One of the greatest balms to my soul early on came in the friends who would joke about cancer and my scar and the ridiculousness of things with me. I wasn’t dying! Let’s laugh about being radioactive and the “cancer card” and pity puppy eyes. I had a resident in my building during my senior year of college with a prosthetic. The two of us could laugh until our sides hurt exchanging the stories we’d encountered, experienced, and (upon occasion) provoked. I was most okay with cancer when I could laugh about it…

9. The un-surrendered life isn’t worth living. Henry Nouwen tells the story of a women who was committed to a facility for the sake of her mental health. For her safety she had to be stripped of everything in her possession. In the end, she clutched something in her hand so tightly her nails dug into the flesh of her palm. Hours later when, finally, they managed to loosen her grip, there was single coin. Of almost no value. Nouwen talks of how we do this with God. How we hold onto things which have no value and it keeps us from opening our hands to the One who wishes to fill them. Ultimate surrender asks us to hold everything we hold dear in open hands and let go that we may take hold. Hold of the hand of the One who already holds our hopes and dreams, hurts and fears. Surrender, is ultimately about trust. It’s terrifying. But it’s worth it…

10.  God is Faithful. When people ask me what cancer taught me, I respond with three words: God is faithful. It’s one of those phrases that explains everything and yet I can’t explain it. All I know is that God is faithful. That it is He who sustains. It is He who guides. It is He who exists as the purpose amidst something without. God is faithful. When the rest of the world slips away, He is constant. God is good. God is present. And His faithfulness gives way to hope. “Yet this I call to mind and so I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness!” (Lam 3)

10 years later and still I am here. And by the grace of God, go I.

One Year and A Lifetime Ago - AK 2008

Found

2017-11-14T12:05:00.000-05:00

From the Anika archives: March 2008

Sometimes desperately frustrated by how far away God felt...longing and yearning for a connection to my Savior...I would close my eyes and simply beg God to show up. At times there was silence and I would feel no answer at all. Occasionally there would the remnant of a verse I’d almost forgotten or the briefest whisper of affirmation...the quiet knowledge that God was not as far away as I may have thought. And every so often my pleas were answered with the vividness of reality playing out before my eyes and in my heart, with the reassurance God has been waiting for me to beg Him to show up...

I am looking. Searching. Like a game of hide-and-seek where I am the seeker. The sun is bright and the day beautiful. I move deliberately, slowly, almost as if I am walking on tiptoes – trying not to make any noise as I look one way, and then the other…behind that tree, in that thicket of flowers. I bite my bottom lip with a mischievous grin. The look on my face screams: “You’re not hiding from me, You’re hiding for me. You are giving me a reason to seek; I just have to keep looking. This is just a game…”

But time passes and the sun is not quite so high in the sky. The flowers are tall on both sides of me and I do not have a good view of the path or expanse of land in either direction. This no longer feels like a game; this is no longer enjoyable. My breathing quickens; the smile drops from my face. “Where are You? Why are You hiding for me anyway?”

Silence. I nearly scream into the air but there is no answer. I begin to walk away. My pace accelerates and my seeking becomes more of a frantic search. The branches snap underneath of feet as I walk quickly down the path. With a quivering voice I shout again. “I can’t find You!” My words reverberate off the trees but again there is no answer. The wind blows and I shiver. I am cold...alone...desperate.

And so I start running. The path is narrow, almost non-existent, and the brush catches me from all sides. My arms and legs are becoming scratched and bruised. I continue to run. A fallen tree limb snags the flesh on my leg. A branch above slams into my forehead. While I am conscious of the pain – the blood trickling down my leg, the sudden pounding in my head - I do not have time to stop and see what caused and is causing my pain. I no longer care. All I know is that it hurts. And so I keep running. Pushing the flowers and branches out of my way, I am dying... dying to know where You are.

Breathing heavily, I feel myself begin to give up hope. It is too hard to continue to run; there is no use continuing to try… And my run becomes a jog and my jog becomes a weary pant. I am just barely moving and I cannot go on anymore. As I slow the back of my hand reaches to brush my tousled hair out of my face. My cheek is wet and I realize I am crying. My walk slows further, so slow I am just barely moving, and I fall. My attempts to move are that of a crawl and I am no longer crying, I am sobbing. I can go no further. And so, I stop all together. I have nothing left to give, nothing to go on.

I sit on the cold ground and am vaguely aware that is all but dusk as my face falls onto my scarred arms. I bawl. Salty tears fall into the fresh cuts on my hands and I wince as my arm brazes the raw bump on my head. “Where are You?” I whimper. “You promised if I were to go looking, I would find You. What happened? Are you really hiding from me? I can’t see you if You’re not here…” And my body convulses as I collapse.

And then, just then, You’re there. Gently, tenderly, You pick me up and place my head on Your shoulder even as I am still sobbing. You rub my back softly and whisper in my ear: “Ssshhh... It’s alright. Just rest. I’ve got you. That’s right. Lay your head on my shoulder and rest…”

My convulsing stops and just a few sobs cause me to shake as my breathing slows. I lift my head and look into your eyes, “I couldn’t find You…and now I’m dirty and scratched and…” I choke back more tears and am ready to again hide my eyes in Your shoulder when I see them. There, in the corner of Your eyes, are tears of Your own.

And with Your free hand, You take Your thumb and wipe the tear out of the corner of Your eye. Your thumb, still wet from Your tear, moves from Your eyes to mine as You use it to wipe the streams from my tear-stained cheeks. And then I know. While I was looking for You, You had been waiting, looking for me too. Your hands rub over my gashes, wounds, bumps, and scars and heal my hurts. The warmness of Your touch overwhelms me. I would be scarred again and again to be held as I am now being held. Because in Your arms, in Your eyes, I am perfect, I am Yours, I am found.

And You kiss my forehead as it nestles into Your neck. With feeling and emotion in Your voice you again whisper into my ear: “Relax my daughter. You are safe. You have fought and you have found. I have you and I will not let you go. Just rest…”

Psalm 13...

Rearranging, Readjusting, Rerouting...and Whether I Give it or Not

2017-07-24T17:54:00.002-04:00

It’s hard to believe that, as I sit and begin to type these words, it was a week ago that I endeavored to take a group of teens on a local “backyard” mission trip. It’s hard to believe that it has already been a week since the insanity which still has me shaking my head – and yawning.

It was a trip “doomed” from the beginning…a celebration of Murphy’s Law at its finest. If it could go wrong, it did. Sometimes in multiple ways!

Here is the backstory with just a few of the highlights of this endeavor…

November: Anika gets hired as District Youth Coordinator (works with 66 churches in the district to help their youth ministries be viable).
Before November is up: Anika has been approached by several distinct churches about doing a “backyard” (local) mission trip as was done a few years prior.
By the first of the year: Anika sends out information in her bi-weekly newsletter, looking for interest. Enough interest is garnered to proceed.
By the end of February: Mission Trip flier makes it into every newsletter. Individual fliers with information are emailed to every contact. Individual letters are mailed to every church. Church specific emails are sent to the initially interested parties.
By the end of May: one church is committed with zero interest from every other church in the District

But it was going to be good. The one church happened to be my own. The youth happened to be individuals I attempt to invest in on a normal basis. Teens I thoroughly enjoy. And their youth leader was not only on board but more excited than I was! It was nice not to have to try to plan and execute another district event on my own. We would be a small group, but the ducks were so perfectly ordered they could have marched in an infantry!

Fast forward… amidst the insanity of starting classes back up, of trying to put in hours for my other job, of trying to invest in people (including my new nephew and his mom and dad), of trying some reasonable amount of self-care (aka: sleeping for more than a few hours at night) …suddenly the mission trip snuck up out of nowhere. With it came instant stress. But it was going to be fine. Because my ducks were off in the corner doing synchronized baton routines. Plus, I expressed with deep satisfaction, how my schedule was an accordion – plenty of room for ebb and flow, for flexibility.

And then my ducks went AWOL. Not a single one reported for duty.

It was a little bit of everything you could possibly imagine.

My youth leader – my precious partner-in-crime and the reason my sanity was still in check – got sick. I rearranged. I readjusted. I rerouted. I did the last-minute shopping. I recruited a helper for food prep. Shoot! Half of my youth even showed up in time to eat leftovers! I mean, they weren’t much help but the spirit was there!

Storms came. Awesome storms. With the prospect of more awesome storms. I rearranged. I readjusted. I rerouted. We delayed leave time. I created no less than four back up plans. We set up camp with hardly a sprinkle.

My beloved youth leader was still fantastically sick. My other adults weren’t available until late that night – per the duck plan. I had a dozen kids and two vehicles and only one me to transport. I rearranged. I readjusted. I rerouted. I made several calls and was about to get to my “maybe a parent can help…” list when my sister came in and saved all kinds of days (on account of her own AWOL ducks).

The magnificent thunderstorms kept us up much of the night – and cancelled the partnership we had scheduled for the Thursday. With the help of my now present adult leaders… we rearranged, we readjusted, we rerouted. We found a new place to invest. We moved some of Friday to Thursday. People who had no idea we existed were blessed.

Friday came with a giant question mark. I was physically and mentally incapable of rerouting one more time but we had to…because we used Friday’s projects on Thursday. With the help of my adult leaders…we rearranged, we readjusted, we rerouted. And then we did it again when the agenda items which shouldn’t have changed, did. And we had some extra time for community and fun. And people who had no reason to expect anything from anyone were blessed.

And Saturday came and I gave my youth both the Friday night and Saturday morning pep talk…of how the day would go and what I needed from them and that I wanted them to remember who they were and Whose they were. It was the guaranteed part of the schedule – set in stone, the only piece not open to the accordion. The free family carnival came and the carnival left and maybe 50 of the 400-expected people came and we spent the day rearranging, readjusting, and rerouting… And the church we partnered with (who couldn’t have pulled anything off without my group) made plans for next year and started reworking ideas and weekends and potential with hope and excitement…

By this point I am not angry. I am not even upset. But I am discouraged. I spent months and put dozens and dozens of hours into a trip I wanted to bless a group of teens and bless a community and bless God. I was told from the get-go by my superiors that it wasn’t worth attempting and there were too many problems and it just wouldn’t work. I had stood then with my ever-decreasing list of churches and committed youth and said, “but it is still worth it!” And now I stood wearily with the 350 unopened prize bags I was packaging neatly into a box and saying, “so much for proving ya’ll wrong…”

I took a deep breath and tried not to get frustrated – mostly with myself. I had been honest with my team about times where I was disappointed and even overwhelmed by the change of plans. I desperately sought to make sure my stress didn’t affect how I interacted with them and I praised them for their willingness to go with the flow and serve with joyful hearts. But now I was tired. And I could do absolutely no more rerouting. And I just didn’t know how to pray any more fervently or work any harder for an event which had seemingly nose-dived into the concrete…

And I watched my teens stand in goofy costumes waving viciously at cars passing by… If they were embarrassed, it didn’t show. They were joyful and energetic.

And I listened as one of my youth said “where are the people running games? There are only like three kids here but they deserve to have a good time!”

And I questioned our “bonus youth” (the only one connected to another district church) who stood with the largest, most ridiculous smile on his face, as he informed me that this week - which he had entered into hesitantly – was one of the best of his life.

And I thought back to the fervor my teens put into serving people, (who had no idea they were going to be served!), to the joy and laughter they put into menial tasks which were never part of the plan (and seemingly less “important” than the ones scheduled) – how proud I was of them.

And I considered the fact that while there were a (very) few reminders to rally and to “step it up” in maturity, I never once had to deal with inter-group behavior because they genuinely enjoyed being together…they served in community and out of their community.

And I giggled as they all went up for children’s time at the church we visited (something they always do with the little ones at their home church) to the encouragement and delight of the congregation…

And I near teared as I watched them, without any known instruction or guidance (or adult invitation!), circle up on the church lawn, with their parents waiting in the parking lot, for their own time of prayer before parting ways.

And I sat, alone, in a very full car in an empty parking lot, for several minutes after everyone had left. Without warning, I cried violently for several minutes. It was odd and out of place until I considered the fact that, for the first time in nearly a week, I didn’t have to have my brave face on for my teens and the pressure of needing to be director, leader, mentor, friend, cook, alarm clock, and liaison on a constantly rearranged, readjusted, and rerouted schedule, released in one fellow swoop.

I shook my head (but not my fist) as I drove the mile back to my parents’ house to unpack my car and get started on homework.

You see, on Wednesday, before I would know the extent of the rearranging, readjusting, and rerouting ahead of me, I had chatted with my friend, the mom of a couple of my teens. After mutually agreeing that despite the wrinkles (thus far!) everything would be fine, I proclaimed half-heartedly and with slightly clenched teeth “God will get the glory whether I want to give it to Him or not!”

Without the hint (but still the lingering stench) of the irony which so often characterizes my life, I started the homework I was terribly behind on. It just so happened to include a conversation about the glory of God and how clearly in the Gospels individuals were ready to give Jesus glory for the things which they had expected from Him but how the true glory of God was manifested in the least glorifying way – a criminal’s death. How whether the glory due God was being given or not, it was being made known.

I taught and praised my teens. I encouraged them to dig into their bibles, to think critically about what it meant to be on a mission in service and leadership and outreach. I was SO proud of them SO many times for the way they took life by the horns and served with joy and hospitality and God’s love. I thanked God multiple times for my teens. I don’t remember thanking God for the trip. I told my youth “do this for Jesus” and we talked about what that meant… I thanked God for protection and provision and projects. But I also gift-horsed them as I made sure He knew that while they were “fine”, they weren’t my ducks or my plans.

The truth is, I didn’t want to give God the glory. In the stress and chaos inside my head, no part of me wanted to pause and declare God’s goodness for it. “Thanks for this change of plans, again! I am tired and overwhelmed and at a loss for my next move and you get the glory for it all!” I couldn’t say it without sarcasm…

However, I was leaving out the “but”. I love to tell my youth how often in scripture the “but of the matter is the heart of the matter”. What comes first is important, what comes after the “but” is the heart of what is being said. “God, you get the glory. These were not my plans, but….”

But…You provided.

But…You protected.

But…You sustained.

But…conversations were had.

But...community was built.

But…people were served.

But…people were blessed.

But…a congregation was encouraged.

But…Your name was made known.

But…my teens (whether they realize it yet or not) grew in understanding of You…

But…you WILL get the glory whether I decide to give it or not…

My list of “buts” could and likely should go on. Though this was written a week post our leave, it is being posted a week post our return. It was originally written as a set of my own reflections. My own way of putting into right perspective and attitude the reality of the experience. Experiences should always be considered in light of the inherent reality of God’s goodness. If there is anything other than my reflections here for your, that is alone for you to decide. I do, however, pray that my life is a testament to the reality of the glory of God. That I choose to give it all circumstances. Whether I want to or not.

BUT I'M. STILL. HUNGRY!

2016-09-20T17:58:00.000-04:00

I was 11, maybe 12. We were still at the Hersey Church and it was Communion Sunday.

In the United Methodist Church, we have an “open table”. Meaning you don’t have to be a member to take communion and anyone who professes Jesus as Savior and Lord may partake. Parents often use this as a teaching opportunity as they walk forward with their young children. Such was the case with young Tommy Johnson on this particular Sunday.

The Johnson family always sat in the very back row of that rather small church. And they had about 100 kids. Or so it seemed. In reality they fostered many children and adopted out of the foster care system and cared for the ones otherwise “left behind”. It is probably why they sat in the back row...to have an easy escape route. Tommy, at the time their youngest...fostered and later adopted, was memorable. Probably because he was only a year or so older than Gabe, my youngest brother. That and because of one fateful Communion Sunday.

Per usual, Tommy’s parents had taken him in arm to the front for communion. Pastor Dad leaned in with special words just for him as three (or so) year-old Tommy ate the small chunk of bread with juice. And then began the long journey to return to the back row.

They hadn’t made it more than half way back when Tommy screamed boldly through feisty squirms. The organ music continued in the background as Tommy bellowed loudly enough for the deafest congregant to hear...

“BUT I’M. STILL HUNGRY!”

Most people looked with wide eyes; shocked out of their reverent moment if nothing else. There were a few giggles (okay, mostly from my row of siblings). His mom looked mortified as she quietly scolded him and moved faster down the side aisle. The organ continued without missing a note and communion with it. But my 11 or 12 year old brain had locked in. Locked in to words truer than young Tommy’s mind could have possibly meant or understood.

Tommy was responding to an intrinsic need. Hunger. Nearing noon, that delicious crouton sized bread chunk was a reminder that lunch should be happening. Soon. He fought backwards and upside down trying to get back – back to where just a taste was enough to remind him of his need. His want. His desire. A want and desire and need real enough to proclaim loudly and boldly about what, indeed, he was fighting for...

He had a point there. Communion as a sacrament can be very ritualistic, even routine as a reminder of supreme importance. But broken down to its basic premise? To have but a mere taste of Christ and to leave satisfied? The idea is nearly preposterous. Yet, as a body of believers we would be doing well if leaving satisfied after experiencing the reality of Christ was limited to only communion.

It’s not.

I suppose there is some essence in which we recognize God as more than enough. Jesus tells us that in terms of spiritual hunger and thirst – He himself is the bread of life (John 6:35). He sustains, fulfills, and is far more than we could ever ask or require. We recognize this best at the depth of need. But even then – we come to God empty and are thankful to be full. Who defines “full”? Often...we do. We’re complacent consumers. Too many of us come for just what we think we need and leave resembling not as someone even filled to the measure but rather one with superior self-control on a no-sugar diet at a Christmas cookie tasting. We claim to be full even though we are left wanting. Or maybe it’s just me. I’m not insatiable. I’m not longing. I think I’m satisfied but what I am is self-decidedly full even though I should still be hungry...

When I was in Uganda the locals treated us as honored guests and they would heap food on our plates. It was one of the first days in country and one of the few guys on our trip responded to another helping in a very American way: “No! No thank you! I am so full!” The hostess walked away politely. And then she later came back and offered the same gentleman something else, but something more. He was so confused as he again tried to explain that he was very full. Our professor, someone who had spent considerable time in Africa, looked at us and said “never say ‘I’m full’; instead always say ‘I am satisfied’ when you’ve had enough...” In the states to lean back with hands on stomach and pronounce ourselves “so full!” is a compliment. In Uganda it was quite rude. Our professor explained that to say we were full was a way of saying we wanted no more – but it was almost like saying it wasn’t very good. Likely, in attempts to redeem themselves, the hostess would try to serve something again to make sure you left satisfied. To be satisfied to was to have enjoyed the meal to its fullness (not ours) and to indicate that what we had was so good we required no more and no less.

How often, under such a distinction, do we leave the presence of God decidedly satisfied when really, we are, at best, full?

To leave satisfied... A perfect compliment for a generous meal. To be perfectly filled to the measure of the fullness of all something has to offer... I think of this often and find it fantastic for many things. But not for God. To be satisfied comes with a measure and limitations...

As a human I am limited. I can go to God and find myself full. I have reached my limit. But I can never truly be satisfied. To be satisfied would be to experience God in His fullness and it’s something I am incapable of...

When I first started toying with this thought process, it felt wrong. “Surely God satisfies!” I declared thinking of the ways in which God reveals Himself as more than enough... And then I realized what a box that put Him in. “No! No! He doesn’t and He shouldn’t!” When did I, when did we, become “okay” with being satisfied with God? When did we think to ourselves “ah yes, of God I have had enough! Am I not blessed?” We proclaim it honestly enough and often without a hint of mal-intent. But it is a shame. For of God we will only scratch the surface...

At one of the camps I was at this summer there was one chorus sang every night around the fire... “Set a fire down in my soul that I can’t contain, that I can’t control. I want more of you God. I want more of you God...”

The words routinely struck me: “...that I can’t contain, that I can’t control....”

The thing with fires is that they are NEVER satisfied. A fire will burn as long as there is fuel. In fact, the right fuel at the right time will cause it to burn bigger and brighter and bolder. A fire that doesn’t want? Isn’t fueled? It’s dead. A true fire, an alive fire burns. Endlessly. I think of the forest fires fought out west... Those are fires which were and could not be satisfied. They couldn’t be contained or controlled. The more it was fed, the more it wanted. More and more....

Is that now how it should be with out relationship with Christ? The more we are fed the more we should want. More and more. To be given just a single taste and proclaim with Tommy’s gusto: “I’m still hungry! I want more and more and more. Beyond what I contain and what I can control. I want more of you and refused to be satisfied...”

The Psalmist cries out over and over how he longs for God....

“As a deer pants for streams of water so my soul longs for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when can I go and meet with God?” (Psalm 42)

“I stretch out my hands to You; my soul longs for You, as a parched land..." (Psalm 143)

God is SO much more than who I am and what know and what I think. And when I realize I can never truly be satisfied, I start fighting. Backwards and upside down just trying to get back – back to where just a taste is enough to remind me of my need. My want. My desire. A want and desire and need real enough to proclaim loudly and boldly about what or rather who it is I am fighting for...

“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will up my hands...” - Psalm 63:1-4

Bookshelves for a Fox Den

2016-08-21T16:41:00.002-04:00

Bookshelves.

I literally day dream about bookshelves.

I was thinking black but I’m currently in love with sandalwood. The black would be sharp but the sandalwood...that I could get to match the black/tan of my bedroom or the browns that will undoubtedly be part of my living room. I would like them tall – but not too tall. Sturdy but not expensive. I want them to be classy but practical and functional – extraordinarily so!

And then I begin to plan how my books will be placed on them. I would love to go merely alphabetically but that is just not feasible. I can’t split topics apart in order to put them in alphabetical order. But to put them by topics or genre could split authors and I rather like the idea of having all of one author together in one place... It’s conflicting.

I don’t daydream about bookshelves because of a passion for interior decorating.

It’s not even because I have run out of space on some current shelves.

And, believe it or not, it’s not because I’m a book nerd. I mean, I am but it’s not why I want shelves.

I want shelves because of what they would represent in my life. Namely...stability.

You see, I have boxes and boxes of books. Several for being 28 and living in my parents’ basement. I love to read and learn. And I do go back to previous reads and books. Not only do I go back, I struggle – truthfully – with whether I can justify rereading books and series I’ve already been through and love (and miss...I find myself missing fictional characters I haven’t spent time with in years) when there are so many books in the world and even several in my own collection which I have not yet read.

But all of the books are in boxes. Packed and tucked away and not nearly as accessible as I would like them. In fact, with grad school part of my life’s picture for the last year and a half, I have only had one or two classes where I didn’t open two or three boxes to pull out books I could use in reference. I hate taking books out of boxes and having to guess where titles I know I have can be found. Even more, I hate when everything is said and done, putting it back in that box.

I want my books on a shelf. Displayed. Accessible. Able to be taken off and returned. Able to be read one at a time without having to preplan which three to take out of the box and later attempt to fit back in...

I could explain – in detail – about my attempts for bookcases and reasons for not obtaining one. Often my space was too small for a single bookcase, (as if a single bookcase would suffice!) And where I have had space or could potentially make space...it isn’t mine. The space that is? It is temporary. I can’t put bookcases in temporary locations – it would make more sense to store them. If I’m storing books AND shelves? Well...now we’re just getting ridiculous!

Bookshelves can go up when they have a place to be. When I have a place to be. When I’m home. Somehow, in my mind, bookshelves have become the symbol of “home”.

As a pastor’s kid with several moves and the inability to ever truly put down roots – roots are something I crave. The question “Where are you from? What is your hometown?” is my least favorite question. In the right/wrong context, it’s made me upset. “Why does it matter what my hometown is? Who cares? What is it going to do?” The question in and of itself is simple enough: “Where did you/do you come from? What place shaped you and launched you?” It shouldn’t be that hard. But I don’t have an answer. “Nowhere? And everywhere?” or “Michigan?” It’s always a question and people always look at me funny and say either “that’s a state...” or “okay, but where in Michigan?” “Well I live in... But it’s not actually where I’m from... I grew up in a few places... My parents live... I’ll be ___ in/for a couple weeks/months...”

The question really being asked is... “Where is home?”

And I don’t know.

If I knew...I could go buy some bookcases.

I was trying to explain all of this to someone at the beginning of the summer. I had just finished my two temporary part-time jobs. I was/am job searching again. I was being asked for the millionth time what I hoped to do; what I wanted...

I told them I wanted bookshelves.

That I was willing to pursue a lot of nothing – if the nothing meant not uprooting my life every six to nine months (which is basically what I’ve done consistently in the six years since graduation) – to get them.

I said these things before an anticipated eight week hiatus from...well...everything. Jobs finished. School break. I hoped to accomplish a lot and to have the time to move on to bigger and better things. I wanted to transition during those eight weeks...into something of the semi-permanent sort, something real. Any extra time? I would be busy but with living instead of life. I anticipated being able to just be.

The joke, of course, was on me. If I am going to start the summer by articulating a longing for book shelves and anticipating the feasibility to obtain them... of course that will mean I have the least stable summer in the books.

I finished my spring grad class. Went to counsel/teach at family camp. Was roped into deaning/nursing/leading programming for a camp #2 the next week. I turned around to go down state where I had a dentist appointment, spoke in Fort Wayne, visited friends. I made it north just in time to return to camp #1 to counsel for another camp I was roped into. I turned around the next day to head down to camp #3/week 4 to help nurse for the camp my brother/future sister-in-law/friends were leading. I went from that week to counsel for day camp during a busy week at camp #4/week 5. A weekend in Ohio. A partial week at home base with projects and appointments and then back down to camp #4 to counsel day camp in another busy week – week 6 of camp.

Sounds like stability, right?

For a summer where my eight week plan was to find and create stability – the actuality of what it became was a huge fail.

I am pretty sure I have spent more time in my car than I have in my own bed.

It was...good. I wasn’t always excited about various adventures going in but I don’t regret any of my experiences. Still...I struggled.

I struggled because the summer I wanted stability to be my end goal, contained anything but.

I struggled because to have a place in the world, to lay roots, and to truly feel like a place is “home” is still a great longing...

I struggled because every time I paused in the midst of the chaos and thought about how exhausting my summer on the go was becoming and how much I longed to have a spot I belonged, a spot for bookshelves...the only verse, the only one, to come to mind is the one in which is Jesus talking to people who wish to follow Him and he replies not with a “yes” or “no” or “here are the three things you need to do/know to follow me”... He speaks in a near riddle of personal narrative.

“Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’” (Luke 9:58)

The cost of following Jesus means be willing to leave everything else behind. It means wandering into uncertain waters and unguaranteed futures.

It’s forced me to ask myself the hard question(s): “What if God calls you to be without a den, without a nest, without a place to lay your head? What if this summer of bouncing from place to place is somehow representative of the reality in the midst of the longing? What if you are being asked to be a houseplant...shallow roots but portable? What if you’ll never have a reason to buy a bookshelf? What then?”

Then I guess my books stay in their growing number of boxes.

Which is a hard realization to swallow. The job search is discouraging. The road ahead is foggy at best. I want to answer a call to follow in the same way those who wished to follow Jesus answered. “Okay. I’ll be right there. BUT, FIRST...” (see the surrounding verses of Luke 9)

I don’t know where God is taking me. I want to be faithful in following even if it means I never get a fox den or perfect sandalwood bookshelves. When it comes to the “treasure” I think I want...Matthew 6:33 reminds me to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added as well...” If God is my first longing either He will satisfy the other or re-direct them and re-orient them to what He wants them to be.

And in the meantime? In the meantime I wait. I wait and hold to the passages and promises which speak to being faithful in the places I find myself and trusting in a story bigger than the one I could write for myself. I’m reminded to be content – content in all and through all and regardless. (Philippians 4)

Regardless of whether or not I ever get my bookshelves.

But if I don't...I'm legit going to need a couple more boxes. The floor in my room is starting to look like a thrift store stock room... Just saying.

"I Ate This Pickle For You!"

2016-07-03T18:43:00.000-04:00

We had narrowly made it through an incredibly demanding week of camp; escaping within an inch of our lives – or so it felt! With enough collective sleep on board to almost spell our names (a very mild exaggeration), I suggested lunch in town. With a shrug and a collective “why not?”... we drove into a tourist town on a holiday weekend to eat lunch at a trademark restaurant. (We were tired and our judgment was perhaps a little...flawed...don’t judge us).

As we sat down at our table I turned to the two individuals who had kept me sane and alive all week (not even a mild exaggeration) and said “I have a very important question!” I don’t know if my face was serious or if they were still in camp mode but both responded with a very direct “what do you need?” kind of answer.

“Pickles. Fried pickles. Do you like them? Do you eat them? I really enjoy them and they are good here but they only come in like a million of them so if I am going to justify getting them then people have to eat them with me...”

Keli sort of chuckled and said she would commit to one or two.

Laura’s responded with “Umm...We sell them at work but I’ve never tried them. I don’t really like pickles very much. So I’m only good for one.”

It was all I needed to confirm my appetizer order. It wasn’t until later that I realized the absurdity of this conversation. I don’t remember the exact context in which it arose – large parts of the day, including the drive home, are rather a blur – but somehow it occurred to me/us that I had purchased fried pickles because Laura agreed to eat one – even though she doesn’t enjoy pickles. Though she said it wasn’t too bad – she intentionally ate a pickle, when she knew she normally wouldn’t – because I said I need people to commit to eating them with me.

“I ate this pickle for you!” became the humorously stated reality. We laughed. A lot actually. Small things seem very funny in the context of sleep deprivation. “It’ll be the name of the book you write about this week” I proclaimed through chuckles. “I Ate This Pickle for You! Subtitle: And other things I did against my better judgment for Anika Kasper, A Memoir”. We laughed more I’m pretty sure.

It was honest. There was more than a little bit of truth in the reality of the absolute absurdity. “I don’t like pickles – so of course I’ll eat a pickle for you!” She did it for me.

Not that such a fact was surprising. A week of camp planned on the fly while serving at another camp, accomplished by a very small team on very little sleep...Laura was a God send. I asked how comfortable she would be as my left-hand woman*. And she ended up saying “yes” every time I asked if she’d be willing to do something...leading crafts everyday for all of our campers, even when we had already discussed the fact she really really didn’t want to and I wouldn’t make her (being a character in the skit), and before I could really ask and/or with little to no warning (entertaining with silly camp songs while I looked for a misplaced cabin). It was a thing.

Laura loves Jesus, loves kids, and loves camp – but she ate proverbial pickles for me all week.

I realized I had been too. But, though this will sound a little terrible, I did it for God. I did it for the things I felt like He was asking me to do...

I was asked to organize, program, and lead a week of camp on 72 hours notice. I didn’t want to. But I am too passionate about the power of camp and in the end that’s why I agreed. I couldn’t stand the idea of 25 kids showing up at camp and having an experience where they couldn’t see Jesus on the mountaintop, let alone not be able to go to camp at all. I ate a pickle.

We didn’t hardly have a staff. Let alone a nurse (until Keli came in and saved the day!). It was up to me. I didn’t want to. I especially didn’t want to get up at 2am (and sometimes also 4 or 5am...) to do a glucose check on one of our campers. A first-time medically needy camper who repeated daily how this was the “best week of his life!” and on Friday night, when we all but ready to collapse, declared he “never wanted to leave”. So I ate a pickle.

A group of boys insisted on pranking. It was severely affecting a cabin of little girls. I didn’t want to have to routinely discipline a whole cabin...but it is important to me that camp is a place of safety – even felt safety. So I ate a pickle.

Firebowl was delayed 30 minutes one night because of a conversation which needed to happen with boy with a heck of story. His answers made me think, I felt a nudge. I audibly told God “no” five times as I walked to light the fire. I didn’t want to share any part of my story – not this week. But with the conversation still burning and the nudge still nudging, I shared just a piece. A very small piece. And I was so mad at God for that one – but I ate a pickle anyway.

The list could go on – don’t worry, it won’t. If you look at it, however, this whole week was nearly as absurd as Laura eating a fried pickle so I could. But I did... I wanted to look God dead in the eye as I drove home and state “I ate this pickle for You!” He didn’t apologize. Instead there was this sense in which the answer was “Good.”

When working with children my most oft stated phrase is “Safety first is my number two rule!” It’s typically yelled after children running with their shoes untied or attempting some group lift into a tree or something. Sometimes the kids catch that the phrase doesn’t necessarily make sense. “So then what’s your number one rule?” “Jesus” I say. “Jesus is my number one rule. Jesus doesn’t always ask you to do safe things. But once it checks out through Jesus...then safety first should be your next agenda”.

Eating pickles is making safety first my number two rule.

I, me, what I want, what I think I need – the thing which is otherwise first on my agenda – it should always come second to whatever it looks like, whatever it means, to be found in obedience to what God’s asked me to do.

Part of me thinks every believer ought to be able to have a book entitled “I Ate This Pickle for You! And other things I did because God asked me to...” It can’t and shouldn’t be a hubris book of personal accolades but instead a testimony of faithfulness. God’s faithfulness to you and God’s faithfulness through you. Your faithfulness in service to God in places where it was asked of you whether it was a choice you would have made or not. Places where God said “whom shall I send?” And though maybe you knew you’re the last person you wanted to volunteer...you say “here I am, send me”.

“I ate this pickle for You!” ... it’s the statement screamed at God when it feels as if you are eating the pickle which seems far too big for you and you’re in over your head.

“I ate this pickle for You...” It’s the whimpered words of desperation when you’re eating the pickle feeling all alone and wishing God would just show up, seeing as it was something He asked you to do...

“I ate this pickle for You.” It’s a declaration of offering when you successfully finish something far beyond your power or your control or energy or strength or ability – when people want to congratulate you and exalt you for everything you’ve accomplished. When you know it had nothing to do with you and so you give it back. “This I did for You alone, take it and use it for Your glory and honor, that Your will may be accomplished in me and through me...”

John 3:30 finds itself in the midst of a testimony by John the Baptist. His followers are worried because, (I find this terribly funny), people are going to Jesus to be baptized instead of to John. He responds that his job, the work he does, it is only to make way for Jesus. He was eating pickles so Christ could be known. And his attitude ends the conversation as to why “He must increase and I must decrease”. It has to be more about making God known than his own popularity, ego, or aspiration.

In the end... “I ate this pickle for you” was an act of humility and service and friendship on Laura’s part. Though goofy, she was willing to leave her place of comfort and desire so the goals of another could be accomplished. It’s the same with us and God. God calls us to respond not necessarily out of our comfort or desire but out our service and love for Him. We need to be willing to risk ourselves for the sake of the one who put the entirety of Himself on the line for us.

If Jesus really is my “number one rule” then more often than I do I need to be able to respond with a life which proclaims “I ate this pickle for you”...

*I’m left handed and routinely automatically turn to the left, when making a reference, looking for a volunteer, etc. It’s a thing.

To avoid inevitable confusion...the pickle is a metaphor and I would dare say there will be very few circumstances in which the literal consumption of a pickle will be an act of bold, self-sacrificing obedience for God. Unless of course you’re my brother-in-law...for if he ever eats a pickle, that’s exactly what it will be!

Lent: Not Forfeit but Formation...

2016-02-09T22:41:00.000-05:00

As a pastor’s kid, I was acutely aware of the church calendar...especially as it related to Advent and Lent. (aka: the times of the year I was going to see my dad the least...) But it’s never left. So, its one of those things I anticipate still to this day. I’ve been gearing up for Lent, in some ways, since Christmas.

Lent officially begins today (Ash Wednesday) in protestant churches and it’s been an extra piece of contemplation for me in the last few weeks. Much like Advent, is a time of reflection and preparation and so I’ve been preparing to prepare (the idea of “preparing to prepare” makes me giggle a little) for a while now. Preparing in the last few years have including thinking considerably more about the root and purpose of Lent.

With an opinion from just about anybody and everybody...I realized that sometimes the most important part of learning about something (or someone for that matter!) includes learning about what it isn’t...

So, what isn’t Lent? Lent isn’t self mutilation. It’s not about personal flogging until you are spiritually ready. It isn’t about self deprivation or abuse. And that gets confusing...because isn’t self deprivation and abuse the point of a Lenten fast or sacrifice? Culture certainly says so!

But it’s not. Lent isn’t a sacrifice.

I had several conversations during Lent last year (and especially the year before...it’s what got me contemplating to begin with) which caught me by surprise. Some more than others...

As a believer, it makes sense that Lent would mean something to me but most have friends and family members and acquaintances without a faith to speak of who will declare their Lenten sacrifices. I will undoubtedly have multiple notifications of facebook status updates reading things like “won’t be back for 40 days! PM for my number to text or call instead” or “don’t know what I’ll do with Mt. Dew ‘til Easter but here it goes!” A conversation with a Lent-practicing but non-believing friend included the insightful and profound explanation “it’s just what you do”.

Cultural fasting...interesting but not totally surprising.

What was surprising were the multiple convos with believers – including a pastor and another who talked to their pastor and another who had the message preached from the pulpit from their pastor...who believed Lenten fasting wasn’t biblical. Their responses were almost identical: “It’s misguided! To believe you could sacrifice for 40 days as a part of sharing in Christ’s sacrifice is ludicrous! I don’t fast because such a mindset is to grossly undercut the sacrifice Christ made.”

The basic tenants I don’t disagree with...but it does show a gross misunderstanding of Lent. We are told by Paul several times to share in the sufferings of Christ...most often connected to persecution for the sake of the gospel...but even those he personally cast aside as being meaningless in light of Jesus. It seems entirely unlikely that Early Church Fathers would have supported a “40 day trial run” of sharing in Christ’s suffering. And in fact they didn’t. Why? Because Lent isn’t a sacrifice. Sacrifice, or rather, fasting is a part of Lent... But it is also not the purpose.

The purpose of lent isn’t forfeiting things...it’s about spiritual formation.

But, Lent also isn’t about a purge which makes one somehow holier and therefore “good-enough” for Easter...(which is another thing I’ve heard about Lent). As if yesterday, happily known by believer and unbeliever alike as “Fat Tuesday” could empty us of all of our wrong and forty days of holiness could some how win us God’s favor. This makes God out to be a domineering vending machine...Like if we push the right buttons, God’s favor will be unleashed instead of the gift given out of pure grace. Romans 5:8 tells us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died...meaning at the height of humanity’s shortcomings, we were offered redemption. Forty days is never going to be long enough to repay or earn salvation...because a lifetime won’t be. It’s the height of the beauty of grace.

So what is lent? Well “Lent” oft refers to “40” in its root in many languages but literally is an anglo saxon word meaning “spring”. Lent is about life. And furthermore true life that is available through Christ.

Officially? The “encyclopedia” version would say something like:

Traditionally, in the protestant church (I make this distinction because Catholic and Orthodox traditions have some different practices), Lent is the 40 days - sans Sundays - leading up to Easter. Sundays are left out as each is supposed to represent a mini Easter and therefore be a day of celebration. The 40 days are symbolic to the 40 days Jesus spent being tempted in the wilderness before he was made ready for ministry. In the same way Lent is supposed to represent our own temptation in a spiritual wilderness, a state of fasting and simplicity in preparation.

As it has been since the beginning...original Lenten practices dating back to the time of the Nicean creed so 300’s AD...the overall purpose is literally spiritual formation. In that we allow ourselves to be formed by the Spirit for His purposes. Every part of Lent, including fasting, is in hopes of taking our attention off of ourselves and our desires and putting them on Christ. I don’t know if there is a better verse than Hebrews 12:2 “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus...the maker and perfector of our faith”.

Furthermore, while we think of Lent as being a time of fasting (which we’ve already discussed – it’s not in and of itself)...it is actually six things: fasting, praying, almsgiving, thankfulness, service, and scriptural reflection. Fasting, praying, and almsgiving were considered noncompromiseable in the early church and the fasts, especially, were very strict.

While I didn’t find any research on it, my guess is that fasting stuck out as the height of Lenten practices because it is most unlike the other five and most unlike day to day. Many see Lenten fasting as an act of penitence...an act of repentance. And in many ways it is.

True fasting isn’t about what or how the sacrifice is made but what takes its spot. Not forfeit but formation. Fix your eyes on Jesus...

Choosing to fast should not be based on what others decide or don’t decide to do or their motives behind it. It shouldn’t be a whim, a diet plan, or easy. Me giving up dairy for Lent because I’m lactose intolerant is like my mother giving up peppermint...because she hates it and therefore will never have to worry about failing. I think choosing to fast should come with the fear of failing. Fasting should be hard...in such a way that it will force us to place dependence in some area of our lives back where it already belongs – on Christ. The act of “missing it” will force thought to go to the commitment, force one to think of Lent, cause one to think of the preparation to acknowledge Christ’s gift to us and accept that grace fresh and anew day after day after day. Fasting isn’t suffering – it’s finding ourselves empty and so able to be filled by Christ.

I have been challenged (and would also challenge you) to also look at the other five tenants of Lent: praying, almsgiving, thankfulness, service, and scriptural reflection. I think it gives us room and opportunity to be creative. I once read a quick post which split each of the six into weeks: one a week for each of the six weeks of Lent. Maybe this is worth emulating and so finding ways to incorporate them all little bits at a time. Or perhaps a couple could be chosen to focus on for forty days. After all, studies show it takes between 21 and 30 days to create a habit. Make Lent about thankfulness and service (fore example) and it might be enough to make a life about them...

So make Lent about fasting and finding yourself with palms up looking to receive what God puts in to empty hands.

Make Lent also about prayer: make time in your days to pray, incorporate it into the things you do and the thoughts you conjure as you go about the day.

Make Lent about scripture...be intentional in seeking God through His word, allow His word to challenge and convict and to comfort and to guide.

Make Lent about giving...use the unique gifts God has given you to serve others and therefore to honor him...giving doesn’t always have to be monetary.

Make Lent about service...think critically about how your actions value others and follow a Philippians 2 model of humility and service to make that value known and true.

And make Lent about thanksgiving...thank God for his grace and his goodness...intentionally seek out and thank someone who has expressed God’s goodness to you.

(Check out what Jesus has to say about how to go about practicing these tenants years before Lent would be considered in Matthew 6:1-21...)

And in all...put God first. Make it about Him and not about you or about what others think. And if you fail or miss a day or forget...start again. My experience tells me God’s grace often waits at about the same place I fell. Regardless of what Lent means to you or what you decide to commit to in Lent...put your treasure somewhere your heart will follow...

Laundered Rags, Really?

2016-02-02T22:34:00.000-05:00

My mom washes rags.

Like “cleaned the whole kitchen and then wiped up a mild mudslide” rags.

We’re not talking expensive or meaningful rags. These aren’t sham-wow’s or those things that can absorb a whole bucket of water (wait, are those sham-wows??) or the ones that polish the stains off of silver and re-varnish wood tables.

These are old socks...which sprouted holes and were filleted to serve a new purpose.

These are the remnants of t-shirts...the fronts of which were turned into a t-shirt quilt...

These are towels...which covered you – sort of – (if you were open to unfortunate peep shows), that were cut into squares.

These are (unfortunately) underwear from, well, no one wants to know. Admittedly this is no longer really true but oft was when I was a child. It doesn’t seem so long ago we retired the “rag” with the Mickey Mouse print...

I should also note that we have no shortage of rags. We could clean up several mild mudslides. They aren’t a rare commodity...

And my mom, she uses them. She abuses them. Like when you find one, you don’t question where all it’s been. It could be an X-file episode with a warning label.

And afterwards? She washes them.

Takes ‘em, tosses ‘em in with a load of whites, bleaches the snot out of that poor rag (which vaguely remembers being a sock in some previous life), and it shows up somewhere else a few days later. Faithful rags...

You wanna know what I do with rags?

I commit them to a task. I take one rag (typically one the 19 formed from some t-shirt) and I give it a mission. Say “the bathroom”. I grab my cleaner. And then I wipe down the counter and the sink. Then I wipe out the bathtub. Then, after scrubbing out the inside of the toilet with a brush, I wipe down the rest of it with my rag.

And after? When this rag has spent its last repurposed moment with a bleach laden toilet bowl?

I throw it away. I throw it. Away. I throw it. In the garbage. With tissues and hairballs and dental floss. And then I take the trash out of the bathroom.

Call me crazy, (it’s been done before...you wouldn’t be the first nor would you be the last), but no part of me wants to take that rag which has seen the nastiness of potentially all nastiness and just toss it in with some towels and socks and whatever. I can’t do it.

Now, I come from a very proud Dutch heritage. I can claim with some degree of certainty that in this melting pot called America that I am 100% Dutch*. If you know someone this Dutch you probably know a few things about my kindred. The Dutch are notoriously stubborn and notoriously proud... “you can always tell a Dutchman but you can’t tell him much!”...and notoriously frugal... “have you ever heard how copper wire was invented? Two Dutchmen fighting over a penny!” (But for real...where did you think the phrase “going Dutch” came from?)

Now, I did use the word “frugal” and not the similar but different word “stingy”. I suppose I can’t speak for all of us, but I have found most to be extraordinarily generous and giving...but where there is a penny to be saved? There is definitely a penny to be earned! You use things until they die and then you repurpose them and use it again! We routinely washed Ziploc bags and left them open to dry overnight when I was young. When we had to rebuild part of grandpa’s greenhouses after a tornado? We salvaged and drilled back in many old screws. And cool whip containers? Oh...don’t get me started on cool whip containers!

Making rags out of old socks is a given. (It is practically genetic!) And washing them is merely the natural outsourcing of the “use it till it’s dead!” lifestyle.

I am a stubborn, proud, (and pretty frugal!) Dutch woman. I try to do too much on my own. I do things people tell me I can’t do just to prove to them I can. I don’t back down from something I believe in. I am a thrifty shopper and a champion budgeter. However, I do not and will not wash rags. It will not happen. Ever.

This long narrative?

First...I love stories. And story telling. I’ve come to accept this and I find no reason to apologize.

Second...when switching out the laundry I found three of the afore mentioned washed rags (and promptly shook my head with deep sigh)

Third...I was reading the other day in Isaiah. Specifically Isaiah 64. Specifically verse 6. “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags...”

Filthy rags.

Mudslide rags.

Toilet rags.

Actually pretty literally. Forgive the “oh gross!” factor (if you feel like you need the warning) but most biblical scholars will point to the connection of “ceremonial un-cleanliness”; those who translate out of the original Hebrew (which I can’t do so I take their word for it) assert its literal translation is “menstrual rag”.

Menstrual being "a woman’s period". Rag being “thing to sop up said period”.

This poem given in Isaiah 64 speaking of God’s greatness and humanity’s, (specifically God’s chosen people, Israel – to whom we have been grafted in), depravity creates a staggering contrast. Here is God – before whom the mountains tremble and twigs blaze and water boils and nations quake and then there are His people. His people whose most righteous acts, the best of who we are, are menstrual rags. Used tampons. Soiled maxi pad (or “Always with Wings” – take your pick).

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been called some pretty terrible things in my life. Creative, terrible things even (not all bullies are as stupid as they look!). But I don’t recall ever being called a dirty tampon. I’m a chick. I’ve been around this block more than a few times and explained the “magic of womanhood” to more than a few terrified sixth graders. Still, there is something incredibly disgusting about being called a dirty tampon.

Culture has come a long way in normalizing this very normal occurrence (I used to say things to my campers like “the good news is...only like 40 or 50 more years!”). And when I say “a long way” I am saying that what I view as both normal and pretty fantastically gross was the height of insult in Isaiah.

Ya wanna know why? Blood.

Blood was ceremonially unclean. According the Levitcal law (Check out Leviticus 15), anyone who touched a woman on her period was unclean. Anything she sat on or touched was unclean. Anyone who touched something she touched was unclean. And after the bleeding stopped? Count off seven days...then you can be clean. Cleanliness was far more than a social issue. It was a God issue. Being unclean kept people away from God. Clearly this oversimplifies the bigger picture but it gives an idea of what’s going on in Isaiah.

Isaiah is literally saying: “what you think is getting you closer to God is doing the exact opposite, it’s revolting.” And, as Isaiah continues, their fate is sealed...shrivel like a leaf, swept away by sin, made to waste away...

Those toilet rags were as good as mine...trashed!

There was this moment of self-triumph when I thought I had biblical evidence for my rag disposal...

It was short lived.

Short lived because if this is reality, it is also my fate. Or should be...

Except the book of Isaiah, much like the narrative of scripture as a whole, is about more than Israel’s shortcomings. It’s about God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s grace, God’s faithfulness to an unfaithful people, God’s salvation for an unworthy people.

Ultimately God does what only my mom has dared to do since – He washes those rags. 1 John promises that God cleanses from the unrighteousness. He makes clean what before was the epitome of unrighteousness. He takes toilet rags – something no one should go near even if they wanted to, something without Christ He had to be separate from – and washes them. Repurposes again and again and again...Repurposes for His purposes...

Lent is approaching and so this reality brings me ever closer to my knees – and on more than one occasion – to tears. I can see myself as a dirty rag. I know the height of my unworthiness...and putting up next to God’s righteousness? The distance separating is staggering. But so is His love for me. I have a sense of what God’s redeeming from...

My brain took it a step further though. It always does.

See...I realize I am a washed a redeemed dirty rag (I don’t mean to be a heretic, I’m aware Jesus was Jewish, I just think He would make a good Dutch man...just staying). But I am also the one who all too easily throws away dirty rags. One mission, remember? Sometimes I think I do that with people too...

I see where God has washed and redeemed me...but I forget He is always and still in the process of redeeming.

Not just me but others. Not just the others I like...but especially the ones I don’t. Especially the ones who make me angry. Who hurt me. Who, worse, hurt those who are important to me. The ones who do stupid things and make bad decisions and I shake my fist at the pictures on the news. The ones who endanger the world, the innocent, the defenseless. The ones that make me growl as I mentally curse the parents of students whom I love but I know aren’t the parents they need to be (as their kids tell me through tears and hugs and nonchalant “yeah the police were at my house again...” comments).

Jesus and I have been talking a lot about forgiveness in the last year. I’ve had to come to this point of realization where I know forgiveness is important and necessary for those who have wronged me but I forget that a) I have to forgive those people who haven’t directly wronged me but whom I still hold accountable and that b) forgiveness is oft WAY bigger than me – I have to give it and them to God to forgive and c) God forgives those who acknowledge sin (flashback to 1 John...) AND d) God is in the practice of washing dirty rags. God is in the practice of redeeming the ones I am ready to throw away...

The moral of the story? I could take some lessons from my mom. Maybe wash a dirty rag from time to time... If for no other reason than maybe it would remind me to be more like Jesus. To be more dedicated to the process of redemption...

*I’m secretly compelled by and terrified of those Ancestry.com commercials where the one guy finds out he’s not German. I think it would be fascinating to have my DNA tested but am afraid that it is going to reveal that somewhere way way back there was a single lonely strain of Russian or something and so I’m only 98% Dutch. I want to know...but I don’t want to know. I want to live in my pureblood pride as long as I can...

Sunglasses on a Cloudy Day...

2015-12-29T00:08:00.001-05:00

The synopsis of my muddled brain which follows requires (at least) two back stories...

Back Story 1: If you know me personally, or interact with me on a relatively normal basis, you are probably already aware: I have this thing for sunglasses. It stems, at least in partial, from necessity rooted in especially sensitive eyes (my doc told me back in the day radiation would intensify this and it’s a legit warning on the label of my life-preserving medication). I rarely go anywhere without a pair of sunglasses. Even if it doesn’t seem necessary. There is nothing worse than suddenly needing sunglasses and not having any. Also I have a few issues (friends and family call it my “OCD” but really I just like things to match...and be in alphabetical order...and to keep track of percentages as I read or complete a project...and a couple other small things...) and I really like when my sunglasses (like my socks and underwear) match my outfit. Which has resulted in me purchasing multiple pairs of sunglasses that I might have some for every occasion. I have A LOT of sunglasses. I was working at the elementary school for less than two hours when my first student noticed (I work on the playground, mostly) my “shades”. And, as the weeks progressed, my students would begin to watch and look for my various pairs...and then note how they matched...and how I ALWAYS had them with me...

Back Story 2: (Connected to the Prior) I have a “Lunch Box” which I keep with me at work. It is an old Whitman’s Chocolate Sampler box which contains “musical chairs”, Story Cubes, Mad Gab, Silly Putty, Would You Rather?... Once my kiddos sit down with their lunches I find a table group with whom I haven’t sat in a while and we play games until lunch recess. I/it gets fought over with every grade at every lunch. I love the way it fosters their imagination and lets me into their worlds in subtle ways. They are obsessed with “Would You Rather” (Story Cubes a close second). One of the questions (a frequent reoccurrence) is “Would You Rather...have a bestselling book or top-chart song written about you?” I typically follow their answers with “what would the title be?” and receive many eclectic responses. A fourth grader asked me what my title would be and another instantly responded with “It should be something about her sunglasses!” A pair were propped characteristically on the top of my head – despite the fact the day was cloudy at best.

The title of the best-selling book (obviously it was book! Psh!) written about my life?

“Sunglasses on a Cloudy Day”

Though probably a mid October declaration, it has been a favorite thing to ponder. (The title not the hypothetical book). I smirk when that question comes back into rotation. I sometimes find myself reflective as I go to pick out the most suitable pair for the day.

Sunglasses on a Cloudy Day

This is not a title that would refer to my chronic over-preparedness. It goes deeper than that. The longer I’ve sat with this make-believe title, the less whimsical it appears and the more defining it becomes...of me and my life as whole.

Wearing sunglasses even if the sun isn’t shining yet is not about “thinking ahead”; it is not the result of mere folly; it isn’t even definitely connected to my innate fear of being caught with burning retinas. It’s about the “yet”. The sun isn’t shining...yet.

Wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day is about expectation. It’s about hope...

I have a love/hate relationship with the word “hope”. It, (with the word “joy”), has been one of my “words” for several years. Definitively...eight (although perceivably longer). It is a love/hate relationship because I love what it means, what it stands for, what it refers to in my life...but it was a word thrust upon me more than it was a word I chose. A word rich with meaning, especially in my life, and so I love it. But a word so rich I struggle to live into it and so I hate it because it demands so much of me.

Yet in seasons of my life such as this, it’s a word close to my heart, nearly always on my mind. This is an apt time for me to consider. My brain and heart are oft busy this time of year regardless of the rest of life.

It’s December 29. I am somewhere directly in-between my eight year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis (12.26) and my eight year anniversary of receiving my smile-shaped necklace scar (1.3). I’ve officially been clear as long as I was diagnosed and yet my wheels spin and my memory blasts quickly and sharply and raw. It often does about this time of year. It’s strange to have to process something which turned my life upside down and inside out and spit me out with pieces of my world screaming “where is your God?”

It was the beginning of my journey with hope. It didn’t happen all at once. It wasn’t something I could see or understand from the beginning. But it was the gift I was given. I was given the picture of a “glimpse”...when it is stormy and the sky is gray and clouds completely cover the skyline and there is just gray, forever gray. But then the clouds break, just a little, just a moment...in that break the sun pours through and floods a piece of the sky, though small, with light. And there is the reminder that all along the sun has existed just beyond the clouds.

Hope is realizing and putting faith and trust beyond the temporary and holding out for the transformational. It is Abraham’s hope, acting on the promise that God is going to show up. Collins, a Christian counselor wrote that hope is “more than the wish that God will perform a miracle. It is the confidence that God, who is living and sovereign, also controls all things and can be expected to bring to pass that which ultimately is best...” Hope arises out of the belief that God sustains; God restores.

In the world's worst research paper (it was a “good” paper but totally removed from my heart on the matter in order to please a finicky professor) I had to detail how hope was integrated into the counseling office. In the midst of my research I poured through passages of scripture dealing with hope. I was struck anew by the fact hope rarely stands alone and is seldom admonished or pursued separate of suffering and the faithfulness of God...

The writer of Lamentations bemoans his predicament and is burdened with bitterness and affliction but transitions to an attitude of hope stating “Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, His compassion never fails...” (Lamentations 3:19-26, emphasis added). God’s faithfulness is the “therefore”.

On the other side of the resurrection there is an additional understanding of the promise given to Christians of God’s power, presence, and authority. Peter refers to it as “living hope” – implying it is not stagnant but active and growing – which is made possible through the resurrection of Jesus and fulfilled in an inheritance resulting from suffering of many trials (1 Peter 1:3-9).

Paul expresses it even further stating not just the inheritance but the suffering itself should be rejoiced in; not for the suffering in and of itself but for what it accomplishes: “Not only so but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character hope. And hope does not disappoint, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5).

Trials, suffering, and crises give way to hope when properly considered and, unlike the crisis itself, it will not disappoint. Suffering births hope.

So...why this? Why now? What now?

Here I am on December 29. Part way between Christmas and the start of a New Year. Two calendar days which sandwich the depth of “hope”. The New Year always has this way of encompassing the idea of anticipation and expectation and looking forward to not what has been but what will be. And Christmas, Christmas is the reality of hope fulfilled. The ultimate display of what it means for God to “show up”; what it means for God to fulfill His promises; what it means for God’s faithfulness to break into the lives of a hurting world; what it means to continue to give reason, to be the “therefore” of hope.

So I find myself looking forward, which is forcing me to look back. I am considering what 2016 will hold, where I am and what I’m doing and what God possibly is thinking with the life He has me living. I struggle to see His plan, His purpose, and sometimes...His presence.

This time of year can be hard to process. Hard to recall. It’s life. It happens...because it happened. But it also can be a refreshing and joy filled reminder. “This I call to mind and therefore I hope...” God has been SO faithful in my life in so many places, so many ways – ways far greater and thicker and richer than the questions and doubts I find myself with.

So instead I find myself wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day. Filled with expectation rooted in the promises of the transformational. Because every so often the sun breaks through the clouds and I’m reminded it has been there all along...

Coffee, Oughts and Wants

2015-11-07T17:29:00.000-05:00

The first time I drank coffee, it was for a boy I liked.

I was a sophomore in college. Doing my best to just get by in terms of life and school with the added problem of “cancer” in the mix. I was on my way out of the Dining Commons, having just finished my iodine free meal all alone...and he was on his way in. He asked where I was headed and if I was in a hurry. He’d love to catch up on life. He noted I was on my way out but did I have time for some coffee? Had I tried this coffee? It was so good! It was a mix, he knew, but seriously some good stuff. I was short on friends and I wasn’t in his “inner circle” but he was a solid addition to mine. Not to mention I was not at all about to turn down an opportunity to chat with the guy I called “friend” but had also been secretly crushing on for the last couple years. I agreed.

Now...I had drunk coffee before. Floofy coffee that was mostly cappuccino. And...desperate Thursday camp coffee...containing a handful of sugars and at least as many creams per cup. You know, the kind to help one survive at the end of a marathon week. But I wouldn’t have called myself a “coffee drinker”...

We walked over to the beverage bar and he poured himself some coffee. I took a stryofoam cup and filled mine. And paused. I couldn’t add any cream because of the precarious iodine content it undoubtedly contained. And I wasn’t about to add sugar without cream. I sipped. Black. He was right. Not the worst stuff... although it was bitter and hot and I didn’t know if I was totally up for the challenge. I looked at him, smiled, and held my coffee. I continued to sip.

I recall not moving very far from the beverage bar. I have no idea why. I’m sure we must have drove people insane. But we chatted. He filled up his cup at least once more and I continued to sip on mine, black. All the while smiling and listening to him talk about, well, I don’t fully remember but I do know it included Ghost Busters.

I remember later telling a friend proudly I drank my first cup of coffee. I think I even called and told my dad. I didn’t tell them I did it for the boy I liked. That I drank my first cup of coffee for a boy...

It was the first of many.

Cups of coffee that is.

Boy removed.

Although it would have happened eventually.

The coffee that is.

A year later and I found myself in Uganda. Coffee is a major export. When we had the chance to drink real coffee (some areas it was ALL exported and natives drank Nescafe. I have to be pretty desperate for that)...it was always rich and delicious. Milk, however, was in short supply. And sugar was always a dark cane sugar. Not exactly the mixture you put in coffee. I first drank coffee for a boy...but Uganda taught me to love it...

I first drank coffee for a boy...

But eventually I would have made it there on my own. If not Uganda then something else. Because I never hated coffee and I really love coffee now. If I wasn’t going to love coffee (unlikely end: my grandmother Baas used to talk of her 24 cups a day in her prime, it was literally in my blood...), no boy would have been able to change my mind; no matter how long I had crushed on him. But for me and coffee? It was just a matter of time.

HOWEVER, it took the boy to show me, to “make” me do what I was going to want to do anyway.

Now coffee...coffee isn’t necessarily a “should”...not anything important in the long run (legitimate claims to it being the elixir of life aside), but other things in life are. Now, there are certainly things we do for others which shouldn’t be done. Compromising the essence of who we are and who God created us to be for another is a generally bad idea. (I know about Peer Pressure – I went through DARE). And yet, sometimes, we need people to remind us of what we ought to do to reorient us around what we want to do.

I do this with running. When I wake up in the morning, I have zero desire to jump on the elliptical or (depending on the location) throw on a pair of tennis shoes. No part of me does. My bed has the ideal number of blankets – for one. Generally it takes a snooze and a pep talk; generally I have to convince myself it something I ought to do. By the time I’m done, however, I am glad I did. I feel more awake and often less stiff and like I am better ready for the day. Despite what I told the first pep talk, I had wanted to...but the desire came out of an “ought”.

I saw that phrase “ought to remind of want” in my counseling text book for my most recent grad class. The author was discussing forgiveness. The fact that Jesus instructs it. We can’t ignore it. That for believers it’s something we typically genuinely want to do but it often takes someone reminding us, helping to show us and guide us to it, to remember that we want it as well.

I am intrigued by the idea of “ought” being not just a directive – but a relationship.

While, again, there are times we do things in and for relationship which are more or less compromising...

I’m reminded of all the times relationship helped guide me into the person I needed to be.

Wanted to be.

In and for relationship I drank coffee and jumped off of cliffs.

In relationship I was propelled to go through my extra ear piercing as a freshman in college and the tattoo I had been toying with getting as a 20-something.

In relationship I’ve written and developed things I didn’t know existed inside of me...

In relationship I have experienced God in the most real and awesome ways.

In relationship I have been given the picture of what steadfastness and commitment and sacrificial love look like.

In relationship I was given examples of the transformative power of forgiveness, prayer, devotion.

In relationship I was encouraged to stick with projects and decisions which would have otherwise been too difficult or terrifying to endeavor on my own.

What makes me smirk is the fact I was willing to step into something uncomfortable for a boy I liked. (That’s not the part that makes me smirk – okay a little but not the contemplative smirk with which I now finish this string of thoughts). What makes me smirk is that we, as humans, are oft willing to go to incredible lengths for those we like/love/care about. If I claim to like Jesus, love Him more than anything or anyone, should His “oughts” not be compelling? Should my relationship with him not lead me into things I’m not so sure about, lacking in true commitment to, but truly and honestly desire? Should not forgiveness, love, service, thanks, prayer, joy, hope...all be actions which, though sometimes uncomfortable, are the things I’m propelled into for the sake of the One I love the most? Might not those oughts which stir us become wants as well? And if my relationship with Christ moves me to such things – should not my relationship with others draw them to similar ends?

I first drank coffee for a boy.

What relationships will I allow to lead me...

And to lead others...

To such life giving extremes...

To far greater Life-giving streams...?

The Cowardly Lion

2015-10-16T19:40:00.000-04:00

If you have followed my blogs at any point over the last several years, you’ll be the first to realize there has been nothing to follow for the last nine months.

I haven’t posted a blog in nine months.

I don’t know I’ve ever had a gap that long...

I have excuses. Meaningful ones...

I was working 60 plus hours a week...

I was trying to figure out why my meds were off...

I had just started grad school...

I was developing camp curriculum in some way, shape, or form for three camps...

I was preparing several messages...

I was doing my best to invest in a team of summer counseling staff...

I was job searching...

I was apartment hunting...

And did I mention I was in grad school? (With all of the reading and papers there-of)...

Time was in short supply.

I have been running a marathon that I am even just now beginning to recover from and redefine.

The days were always too long...

The nights were always too short...

There were never spare moments...

And when there were? No part of me wanted to stare at a computer screen any longer.

But there was more...

Time had been so short for so long with my life demanded by so much with the return being so little...

I didn’t have anything left to give.

Not in word form.

It used to be in this same physical drain...

The mental emptiness...

That the words would just flow.

But not this time...

I was out of words.

I was out of me.

If you’ve followed my blog at all you know my blog has always been uniquely me...

Some odd combination of the way the life looked through my eyes...

The way God showed up in the midst of my moments...

But I was missing.

There wasn’t anything of “me” I could put in word form...

Because I didn’t know who I was and where I fit in the midst of the life I was living...

So at least now we are being honest.

Somewhere at the core of the “problem” that is my abandoned “Abandoned Scawls” is the fact that I lost a sense of my identity.

Who is Anika now? What is she like? What are her passions? Her hopes? Her dreams? Her goals? All of them exist (even now) as fill in the blanks. Your answer is as good as mine. Maybe better.

Truly.

But as longs as we are being honest...

Those questions are only half of the dilemma...

Half of the reality.

In all honesty,

I have written.

Written some...

There was the one about soul keeping...

And the blurb about my soul mirror...

And the reflections on the dusting of my grandparents antiques...

The one with the analogy from my short lived free cell addiction...

And the journey through my boxes of memories...

Not a ton, obviously.

I didn’t post any of them – clearly.

But I’ve written some.*

Honestly, I couldn’t.

I was too afraid.

I couldn’t post because I lacked the courage.

The courage to reveal part of me...

The realization that the part I revealed may or may not be someone I recognized.

I can’t and won’t dive into detail but I spent the year traversing from (what seemed to be) one disappointment to the next. Some things are just things, just life (car problems and school delays and doctor changes and medical questions) and some were very personal. Some were direct stabs. I was betrayed by people I trusted, hurt by people I had called friend. I was lied to and lied about. I worked endlessly to serve people who didn’t care, would never understand the extent of my investment, who left at the end of the week because camp was over or, worse, who never left but also never showed up.

I slowly but surely withdrew.

I limited the people I could trust.

I only spent time with those people.

I was embittered by reality and calloused by my own objective.

To put my most basic thoughts in a public space was like putting a sign around my neck that said “I’m bruised and broken and I’ve just stopped the bleeding, so hey! Why not take another stab??” It seems melodramatic but in many ways it was the way I felt. If I could be attacked without any of my cards showing, what could possibly propel me to leave myself exposed?

I couldn’t do it.

I was too afraid.

I’ve felt like the Cowardly Lion...

Remember how Dorothy approached him with trepidation?

...Only to find out HE was the one who truly feared?

He talked a big talk...

But walked a shallow walk...

I had all of these thoughts...

Muddled and uncertain...

Stuck but pushing...

And none of them would I let put through.

None of them would reach a public sphere...

I was raw.

I was confused.

I wasn’t driven – at least not that internal-can’t-get-these-words-out-fast-enough kind of driven...

I sat down and I ran out of words to say.

And when the words came...

I wondered...

I wondered if they were me.

And I wondered if they were me if that would give permission,

Permission for the world to tear off a piece I couldn’t afford to lose.

Because life had me living the life of an oxymoron...

A Wordless Writer

A Bottled Explosion

A Cowardly Lion

The thing about the Cowardly Lion, though, for those who know the story’s end... [For those of you who don’t...a) spoiler! and b) for real?? Where have you been? We are talking a cinema masterpiece!]...is that all of the characters, Lion included, are awarded the things they most covet at the end. Why? Because he was deserving? Because he had traveled so far and wanted it so badly? No...because his journey proved the courage he had so desired had been inside of him all along. The Lion was limited only by the cowardice he assigned himself...not the breadth of ability or the lack of intention. He feared because he didn’t know (perhaps what he really needed was Scarecrow’s brain!), he didn’t know the stuff he was made of, he didn’t know the companions for his journey...

I am reminded of scripture.

Joshua specifically

(Although my brain goes to so many places the examples could be near endless...)

Here we are at the beginning of Joshua 1

Moses has died and the reigns of leadership are being given to Joshua...

Whose task it will be to take the Israelites into the Promised Land.

Joshua is being given instructions in the form of a blessing...

Over and over his instructions include “be strong and courageous”.

Biblical accounts point to the fact that Joshua was faithful...

But also relatively strong and courageous.

(From brave spy to brilliant warrior to faithful servant who accompanied Moses in receiving the 10 commandments from Mt. Sinai...)

I have to wonder if he was ready to take over the leadership Moses had previously,

If he always believed in himself,

But his character spoke for itself.

Much like the Cowardly Lion, Joshua’s instructions weren’t to give him the power...

They were given to remind him of the actions he had already displayed...

The actions required of him when the moment demanded.

“Be strong and very courageous”.

Instructions as a blessing came with a promise, however.

Joshua was told “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous” (1:5-6) and the well known words of 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Where do all these thoughts connect? That’s a good question. Because in my head – they don’t. But in my heart they do.

See...it’s in writing quite often that God shows up. It’s not that He hasn’t been there but who He is and insights into His character and where He has been active in my life...somehow it all starts to become clear when I write. When I allow words to flow with or without my permission... it’s in looking back that occasionally it all makes sense.

See it’s not about blogging or even posting – it’s about the moment of realizing that fear is petty in comparison to the One who meets me in the words such produce. Petty in thinking a cowardly response to the life which hurt was better than intentionally embracing the gift of space I was given to simply meet God amidst the words.

I’ve been the Cowardly Lion. It’s not that I couldn’t. I was limited only by the cowardice I assigned myself. Not the breadth of my ability or even the lack of attention. I feared because I didn’t know. Feared because I didn’t know the stuff I was made of (the problem of definition and who I would find in the pages) and I knew – but acted as if I didn’t – the One who was along for the journey.

The thing about promises in scripture is that though given by God to an original audience (fresh out of a Bib-terp class this important to note), as a people grafted in – the promises can be and are true for us too...thousands of years later. “As I was with Moses so I will be with you...be strong and courageous.”

A strange inaugural blog after a nine month hiatus, I’ll be the first to admit. Application for you? Only if you want it. See my blog was always supposed to be this public space in which the thoughts I had pondered and the words I had scrawled in this massive collision between where life happened and God showed up. Abandoned for the world to find if it wished to be found... But existing as a pillar of testimony to the collision itself.

May this stand as a pillar showing God isn’t finished with me yet...

Soli Deo Gloria.

May I be found faithful.

*Some of these may some day be posted. Some will sit in the files. I’ll try not to let all words go unsaid... : )

Crossed I's and Dotted T's

2015-01-14T22:38:00.000-05:00

I match my socks to my t-shirt...

Everyday.

If I can even possibly begin to help it.

Lesser known fact: my underwear must also match.

To both my socks and my t-shirt...

If I can even possibly begin to help it.

Whole outfits have been changed on the basis of one missing sock.

I’ve had mini meltdowns (normally about the time laundry becomes a desperate situation) because I can’t quite put together the right combination.

There is this little part of me that legitimately, (though the ridiculousness even as I admit it to myself reaches preposterous heights), has a bit of internal anxiety well up inside on days I choose to leave the house without proper coordination.

I wish I were joking...

I wasn’t always like this.

I mean, I’m sure I always had plenty of odd quirks and I know I’ve gone through plenty of strange obsessions... (For example, my affinity for VeggieTales and the right shade of neon green during my high school years could and should go nearly unnamed).

Yet this strange compulsion isn’t quite five years old.

I can tell you almost precisely when it began. The right search for the right journal entry and I could even give you a date...

The details which surround are unnecessary. But I do recall quite vividly the fact several pieces of my life were starting to spiral. I was slowly but surely loosing the grasp of a couple items which always before made me feel like I had control. The whirlwind inside flared with impressive fury. And then one day, as life would have it, everything matched. For the first time that day I was filled with such relief. I remember extensive pleasure in the perfection of the ensemble. I also remember very little deliberate and immediate focus on such past that exact moment. It would be several weeks before I realized I had been subconsciously and unintentionally designing my wardrobe choices around such a phenomenon. In would be several more before it was a daily and purposeful decision.

It was and is innocent and simple enough. I chose a piece of my life – hidden and unknown, a piece for which no one could have an opinion or a say, a place which caused neither the world nor me any harm – and I created a power center around it. Only I knew that the pieces pulled themselves together. Only I needed to know. It gave me a sense of control at an uncertain time. When all else seemed chaotic – it was one thing I could guarantee was right about my day. And for whatever psychological reason, many days...it was enough.

This is a long and somewhat precarious story and confession with which to lead off. Though if you’re familiar with my blog probably not at all surprising or unexpected. And yet, why is it I share this detail? Well, because it seems relevant. Relevant because matching my socks and underwear to my t-shirts is on many days enough – but lately, not even close. Relevant because it’s not uncommon in my blogs (when I write them that is...) to breach topics of control and subsequent surrender. Relevant because it turns out I really love to have a sense of control (when I can’t over one area, it plays out in another) and I really struggle with the surrender that should be happening as a result...

I wasn’t always like this...

[Or maybe I was. Life has a way or rewriting memories sometimes]. As a child, I liked to envision myself a free spirit. I was goofy and sarcastic and unruly and curious and creative and I was pretty sure all of that meant boundaries were what I made them. But I think I always enjoyed putting the lines on my boundaries, even then...

Regardless, when I look back, for quite some time now, mostly what I see is a pile of ducks.

Emphasis on the pile.

I would love to see them in nice, straight lines.

Rows would be preferable.

Not my ducks though.

My ducks like to be in piles.

I don’t know the last time I’ve felt like my ducks have really all been in a row...

So I go back to grasping for control and looking for thicker socks to be worn in the winter and still match the day’s outfit to somehow feel a semblance of having the pieces of my life in order...

It’s harder than it looks.

And maybe also unnecessary.

About a year ago (I think), my brother, Caleb, and I were talking about life. Life such as this where the ducks are undoubtedly deaf, mute, and blind (and also struggling with one leg which is just enough shorter than the other as to propel them naturally in circles rather than lines). It was then Caleb mentioned his own desire to have t’s crossed and i’s dotted in life. (A task harder some days than others...) In the midst of our conversation Caleb noted how some days he felt like the best he did ended with him crossing his i’s and dotting his t’s.

Still he ended with this profound truth:

“Except, what I’m realizing, Anika...” Caleb told me on the phone, “...is even though I’m crossing my i’s and dotting my t’s...either way I’m still ending up with i’s and t’s.”

Our conversation continued to explore this mind-shattering breakthrough. Though it was true the resulting i’s and t’s may end up seemingly out of place in some cases, not at all where we wanted or planned them to go, the product was still the same. A t crossed and an i dotted leaves me with t’s and i’s. A t dotted and an i crossed leaves me with i’s and t’s. The result is equal. All that has really changed is the journey.

I’m reminded of the story of Joseph... Now there is a guy who seems like he learned a few things about deaf, mute, blind, and tilted ducks. (For a full account of Joseph, check out Genesis 37-50). I don’t think you could convince Joseph to tell you that life went the way he planned...(although curiously for Joseph at least...perhaps in fact the way he dreamed?). I wonder how many questions Joseph was left with at the end of the day. How did he deal with the uncertainty of God’s plan and provision (although clearly knowing the certainty of God’s hand upon his life?) in the midst of it all?

“Dear Scroll Diary, Here I am in prison again. I mean, if you count the hole my brothers threw me in the first time. I thought Potiphar was really starting to trust me. It was like I was more than a slave. But his wife...she’s....well, I guess using that word isn’t becoming. *sigh*. I thought things were really beginning to look up. I know the Lord is with me but...right now all I see are a pile of ducks!”

Yet, as Genesis draws to a close, Joseph affirms the Greater. He reassures his brothers with the words: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done...” (Genesis 50:20)

Honestly, Joseph could have pegged a lot on his brothers. Their bullying and badgering and eventual sale of his personhood got the ball rolling on even worse situations. This was not the dream God had given to Joseph. And yet each step along the way brought Joseph closer to the life God had in store. In the end, it looked like Joseph had all of his ducks in nice neat rows. In reality those rows are the result of a journey of dotted t’s and crossed i’s. God revealed not only His plan but the fullness of the dreams given. The realities of every seemingly out of place “i” and “t” now fit perfectly into place when considered from the end.

I don’t always want to wait until the end. In fact I rarely want to wait. I wish I could at least get my ducks to learn a little sign language to hint at what row they are headed towards. I like nice dots over i’s and proper crosses on t’s. But instead I’m left relishing my perfectly matched socks. But I can come to a sigh of relief realizing God's faithfulness is far more certain than matching underwear. More than that, I’m looking to see where God is putting the crosses on i’s and dots on t’s in such a way as to take the life that doesn’t make sense [to me] and use it for His purposes and His glory. Perhaps one day down the line I’ll round up my ducks and sit them down and we will look back and see how just maybe my life, with every out of place crossed i and dotted t, will get used to “accomplish what is now being done...”

A Christmas Hallelujah

2014-12-24T12:17:00.000-05:00

Christmas.

It’s upon us once again and has been so for quite some time. Normally the very fact the commercialism of Christmas takes over about the same time pencils are being sharpened fresh for back-to-school, embitters me. By the time Christmas rolls around – I’m ready to be done.

But, this Christmas season? It’s felt different this year. I’ve found myself relatively into Christmas...but not in all of the normal or necessarily identifiable ways. I’m not feeling compelled to make dozens of cookies or decorate a handful of trees or string garland from one end of the world to the other...but Christmas definitely comes with it’s own excitement and appreciation and expectation this year. Christmas can be hard...and I have had a lot of life happen around Christmas time (for one example: my cancer diagnosis came the day after Christmas) and Christmas just wasn’t the same anymore. Things little and big year after year and then it just didn’t come with the same sparkle or pizzazz… But, this Christmas season? This year there is something internal...

In such a way that the whole of the Christmas story, when I pause to truly consider it, makes me a little weak in the knees. Not figuratively either. I’m truly blown away by the reality of a God who, as Paul tells us in Romans 5, sent a son while we were yet sinners. The reality and immensity of God with us – Emmanuel.

Emmanuel is one of my favorite names and resulting concepts of the nature of God. The fact that between Malachi, the last book of the old testament, and Matthew, the first book of the new testament – there are 400 years. 400 years where God was silent. Where there was no record of prophet or priest with a voice from heaven, no word from God. 400 years and the silence is broken by Emmanuel. Silence is broken by not just a word from God but the Word which, John tells us in chapter 1, WAS God… And God took on the form of a baby – the most beautiful and most powerless thing in the entire world – born in the lowliest of places though one day his name would be exalted above all names that at it every knee would bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. If that doesn’t give you chills…

There is the somewhat cliché phrase “you can’t have Christmas without Easter and you can’t have Easter without Christmas”. The two, in my head, should always be celebrated together. You’ve probably seen the picture of the manager in the shadow of the cross. And I think of the fact that light came into the darkness but darkness couldn’t understand it. Part of me pictures Jesus, in a manager, covered in the ring of shekinah glory, with blackness surrounding. But if I were to put a magnifying glass to the blackness, I would see the principalities of darkness, held at bay, unable to touch the one who would one day willing place all of the sin and shame and weight of that darkness on his back and drag it down to Hell in order that we would have opportunity at restored relationship… I tremble a little when I truly stop to consider the reality of it…

And then one word comes to mind. It shouldn’t be surprising that it is the word my brain chooses…it’s been one of recurring pattern and them in my brain for the last six months or so. It gets screamed at me in songs on the radio and in the smallest snippets of sermons. But it did surprise me a little because it’s not a typical word associated with Christmas, necessarily.

Peace.

Joy.

Glory.

Hope.

Love.

Those are Christmas words. This was a good word, but not necessarily a Christmas one... But it struck me as the perfect word and perfect Christmas word, especially after listening to my current favorite “Christmas song” – a song which, though quite familiar in origin, had been covered to tell the whole of the Christmas story in a very profound way. (It was the only “Christmas song” I would listen to before Thanksgiving and it is the only song I would willingly play on repeat.) I encourage you to click on the youTube link and check out Cloverton’s “A Hallelujah Christmas” if you haven’t already. If you do, really listen to the Christmas story being told through the lyrics of the song and really listen to challenge it gives to offer up a Hallelujah…

You see, the song walks through the familiar Christmas story. The story of a baby boy, who was God, who came to earth – the very acknowledgment alone calling to sing out “Hallelujah” with every breath. A couple went to Bethlehem...but there was no room and so God’s son was born in a barn. Hallelujah. Angels came to shepherds...who went and found Emmanuel in the manger and left proclaiming “Hallelujah”. Wise men from the East traveled long and came with gifts and the cry of “Hallelujah”. But the story doesn’t end with a baby, because “That rugged cross was my cross too”...and Jesus was nailed to it crying out “Hallelujah”...

Hallelujah...

After about the 20^th time of looping the song, I looked up the word “hallelujah” because I realized it was a word I knew the meaning of – kind of – because it always came with its own context – but I wanted to know to understand. And I learned, unsurprisingly, that it is a Hebrew word, originally “allelujah”, literally translating “praise ye the Lord!” (which makes that call and response song make SO much more sense!). It is a shout, a proclamation, and an exclamation of joy, praise, gratitude and exaltation – meaning to lift one to the highest level.

What struck me must about “Hallelujah” in the context of the song was the way it was presented as an offering. And furthermore an offering which HAD to be given. Not “had” as in when your mom forced you to share with your brother, but the necessity to cry it out as if it were impossible to keep in. What does it mean to live and to leave that kind of Hallelujah as an offering?

Furthermore, it brought into fore light an otherwise neglected piece of the Christmas story – neglected at least in my mind. The profound realization of the dichotomy that both prince and pauper came to lay their “hallelujahs” before the Lord:

Shepherds, being the lowliest of the low, not well liked, not always well trusted with nothing to give but themselves, left glorifying and praising God and offering up a hallelujah to any who would listen.

Yet, on the same token, were the kings. People of status and power and wealth (things we can glean without being told because, lets face it, if you’re capable of taking two plus years off work to travel through the desert to hunt down a baby boy and leave physically valuable and impressive gifts…there’s a good chance you’re a “somebody” in the world). But they too came. When I consider or think about the magi, I think of their gifts. What I often forget is that before they gave any of their physical gifts to Jesus, they bowed down to worship Him. Their physical gifts were in addition to the gift of their hallelujah. The stocking stuffers to the gift they came to give. Though scholars will tell us these gifts had specific significance to the life and ministry of Jesus...they were secondary to a bowed knee and a gift of praise.

No one was above or beneath being welcomed to encounter Christ, and all who encountered left with a hallelujah. A hallelujah which was also offered by Christ himself. He, who humbled himself to the point of death on the cross for the glory of God, was exalted to the right hand of the Father (Philippians 2), but His hallelujah came first – and was evident through his life.

So where does that leave us? If we have encountered Christ, have we left an offering of hallelujah? Does every breath strive to cry it out? Do we come full and rich and whole as the magi? Do we come broken and ostracized as the shepherd? Does either, regardless, come with the response of hallelujah?

I’ve been struck for the last six months especially and again with the idea of a broken hallelujah and how beautiful a hallelujah is when it comes out of brokenness. Whether it be brokenness like David whose psalms of woes due to the depth of his sin are followed by psalms of praise as he recognizes God’s mercy and grace…or brokenness like Ruth who lost everything outside of her desire and control and still sought the face of God… (“Broken Hallelujah” may in fact be a blog for another time for it has occurred to me that every biblical figure we give merit, endured brokenness and still came to a place of hallelujah. None were praising from a place of physical wholeness – but of spiritual completion.) Hallelujahs which are louder and brighter for they come in the middle of life that doesn’t make sense.

Christmas is upon us once again. But, this Christmas season? It’s felt different this year. This year there is something internal. Something internal which has me “into Christmas” in a way which has lacked in years prior. In such a way that the whole of the Christmas story, when I pause to truly consider it, makes me a little weak in the knees. Makes me wonder. Makes me tremble. Takes my breath away. Something internal which causes my soul to well up, with a Hallelujah.

Luke 2:1-20

“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manager. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” When the angel had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.”

Matthew 2:1-2,9-11

“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him...After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped ove3r the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, the saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.”

Stop. Drop. Roll.

2014-09-28T16:01:00.000-04:00

I remember the first “drill”. The first “tutorial”.

It remains ingrained in my memory. In the file reserved for the events of my six-year-old self.

There we were, standing in a straight line on the “grassy knoll” outside of the front doors of my elementary school. The flag billowed behind us with a light breeze.

I stood next to my first grade best friend, Jeff, and we, along with the rest of our class, squinted into the sun as we stared at our teacher and the fireman (who, much to our disappointment, wasn’t dressed in his heavy fire-fighting gear). There was respectful silence as we listened to more instructions about fire safety but small gasps and anxious murmurs were heard as we were informed of an unbelievable and terrifying reality:

Someday, I could catch on fire.

My active imagination pictured my little body ablaze.

My classmates must not have been very far behind me because, as I recall, we took the next ten minutes of calisthenics very seriously! Calisthenics resulting from very specific instructions:

“When you find yourself on fire, you need to do three things: Stop. Drop. And then Roll. And Keep rolling until the fire is out!”

Freeze. Down. Roll in the grass. Up. Shake off the dirt. Do it again. All with military precision. I’m sure we looked like a pile of puppies out there in the grass by the front doors of the school, but you had to know – we weren’t about to be found standing doing nothing when we, ourselves were engulfed in flames!

I remember taking my new skill home and explaining quite thoroughly how prepared I was to catch on fire. I demonstrated my technique and insisted my siblings take part in my fire-preventing exercise! I also remember waiting, sometimes in the fear of my dark bedroom (I had some pretty awesome anxiety issues and fire safety week often did a number on me in terms of the nightmare department), for the moment I would catch on fire and need to implement the three life saving steps. I would repeat them over and over again in my head.

Alright, so granted, my memory probably remembers the situation more dramatic than the reality but the intensity of my memory has insisted I’ve never forgotten. And yet, that memory also serves as the last time I can actively remember stopping and dropping and rolling…at least in that order for that purpose.

I grew up believing “Stop. Drop. Roll.” was going to be a MUCH bigger deal in my life. At the very least, I was relatively certain there was going to be higher instance of catching on fire.

I did sort of catch on fire. Once. The cuff of my jeans trailed over a still hot coal while at the barn preparing to teach a class. The team of instructors at the time (and I!) all started to smell smoke. We went looking for the source. Each room I walked into, I was convinced the smell was getting stronger, that we must be getting closer. I was mentally deciding whether to grab a bucket of water now or later in anticipation for rising flames I was surely about to discover. And then, all of the sudden, we realized it was me. I was on fire. My first grade instincts did NOT kick in. No part of me considered the need to stop, drop, or roll. Instead we re-enacted a short version of a tribal dance where I stomped, patted, and subsequently squelched the burning denim. My newly exposed ankle wasn’t even a little a hot. Truly catching on fire had been avoided once more.

Turns out, generally speaking, it is always good to be prepared for an emergency; important to know what to do and when to enact it, but emergency preparedness is typically just preparedness.

Turns out, generally speaking, most adults I know can recite “stop, drop, and roll” and when it should be utilized. Yet, I rarely see groups of adults in front yards running drills with military precision on the off chance their bodies would burst into flames. While probably their own first grade memory will enact if the necessity ever arose, turns out, generally speaking, most adults I know are completely unconcerned about the prospect of catching on fire.

Turns out, generally speaking (in my experience*), most Christians are as well.

A read through the book of Acts and most of the New Testament would make one think Christians could be bursting in flames with a much higher instance. I can nearly envision Peter and Bartholomew and Paul and John and Timothy standing in front of groups of the curious and confused, the open and the skeptical. I can hear Paul passionately proving the Old Testament scriptures and how they had been fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I can hear Peter admitting his denial and God’s faithfulness in light of his infidelity; his fervent desire to “feed the sheep”. I can hear John reminding the crowds of the words Christ has spoken, encouraging each to find him or herself connected to the Vine, to see Jesus as the way to the Father and the way to life. And I can almost hear the gasp and anxious murmurs from the crowd as Followers of The Way convey an unbelievable and terrifying reality:

Those who become followers of Christ will catch on fire.

Perhaps it was never quite communicated in such a way but it was a known result. The disciples themselves had been anointed with fire at Pentecost, were filled with the Holy Spirit, were commissioned to go forward teaching and bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the very ends of the earth. This fire wasn’t only something they had to prepare for it was undeniable and certain. The Holy Spirit, promised to every believer as a guarantee of our inheritance, set lives ablaze in incredible ways.

Christians hear this. Learn this. Know this. And are mostly unburdened and unconcerned with catching on fire…

I recently finished reading the book “Forgotten God” by Francis Chan**. A book which suggests we’ve forgotten about catching on fire. More so, we’ve neglected the Holy Spirit. We neither seek to understand what it means to be anointed with fire or to have lives ablaze by the work of the Holy Spirit. We are comfortable, complacent, consumers of spirituality and have forgotten the Spirit lives within us and the passion and fire of following should makes us cities on hill, the light of the world, those who shine like stars in a crooked and depraved generation. And instead, too often, we’ve smelled the smoke, experienced just enough of the flames raising to tribal dance stomp that baby right out…to avoid truly catching on fire.

Confronted with the reality of both our spiritual depravity and what should be the both terrifying and exciting realization of catching on fire, I recognize we are still given the opportunity to stop and drop and roll. Not to put the spark out but instead to fan it into flames.

Stop. Where we are. What we are doing. Find ourselves in the pause; the moment where the spark first takes root. Not being so quick to disregard, to forget, to carry on without it, but allow it to burn.

Drop. Everything. Our whole lives. Our whole beings. Our wants. Our desires. Our passions. Our fears. It’s hard to faithfully follow when our arms and hearts are full of the life we are supposed to surrender. Throw off what so easily entangles. Cast burdens on Jesus. Being in tune with the Spirit is about surrender. Being on fire is about throwing off the bushel which would otherwise snuff it out.

Roll. Or better yet... Run. Run with perseverance the race set out for us. It isn’t enough to stop or drop if we don’t also roll. If we don’t find ourselves willing to be led to where God would have us at any moment. Rolling is impossible without stopping and dropping…as it is not a mindless a pursuit but determined act of obedience….and requires a trust which knows no borders and no limits.

And then keep rolling. Rolling because the more we move, the more we follow, the more licks of fire will touch every person and everything we encounter. To be ablaze with the Holy Spirit is to be contagious, passionate, moving, active, faithful. To not be found doing nothing when we realize we’ve caught on fire.

My eyes are squinty, my brain is racing. These are unfinished thoughts as I have considerations and ideas and ponderings I haven’t quite explored and am still trying to figure out. Especially as it relates to my life. My acts of obedience. My openness and willingness to put myself aside to be in tune with Father…and what I need to do to really make the act of “Stop. Drop. Roll” a MUCH bigger deal in my life. To know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that in doing so there would be a much higher instance of catching the world on fire…

*I realize my experience is limited and not a full or completely accurate description of the world as a whole.

**I would recommend Forgotten God as a read. Thought provoking, compelling, and challenging – it very biblically presented a case for understanding the Holy Spirit and His role in the lives of believers. Regardless of where you “stand”, I think Chan does a good job of forcing readers to consider how they relate to the Holy Spirit and why having a relationship with the Spirit is essential…

Unsung Thank You's

2014-08-12T19:49:00.001-04:00

Last week, much to my amazement and surprise (and hers as well, I believe!), I ran into a college professor. Perhaps this wouldn’t have been such a surprising interaction if our run-in hadn’t taken place at the camp where I happen to be currently employed and where she happens to have been coming with a church for the last 25 years. The surprise, for me, was met with delight. Though a professor outside of my “field of study”, and my professor for a very specific “class” (namely the class which led into and included a three week stay in Uganda), my memories attest to a fondness. Not just a fondness built out of an admiration, although such is most definitely present as she was and is a remarkable lady, but a fondness rooted in appreciation.

I wondered, after connecting for a few minutes, if I had ever expressed as a student, or if there was a good way to express now, such appreciation. Had I thanked her for meeting with me prior to the class to confide in her the reality of my life and ensure the trip would be plausible? Did I thank her for the intentionality before she really knew me; insisting my soon to be “team” prayed for me as I returned from a second surgery? Does she know how much it meant to me that she checked in with me pretty specifically about a couple key things during our trip… that while I couldn’t find a way to confide in her about everything, the fact she noticed meant the world?

Not unrelated, almost a month ago, I was able to reconnect with the “older” couple who “hosted” me in their home the summer after my freshman year of college. Shy and awkward and introverted as a way of life and not a personality trait, I’m sure I was an odd addition to their basement that summer. As I strove to work with their church’s office and children’s ministry and servant evangelism programs as an intern, I learned a great deal about leadership and initiative and impact. My summer internship was catalyst in changing my entire educational and life trajectory. While I wouldn’t say we “bonded”, I do still hold them both dear and am terribly grateful for their willingness to invest in me. To, as a result, invest in who I was and who I was becoming. I know I thanked them then. But do they really know? Do they really have any idea?

Appreciation. Gratitude. Thanks.

I grew up instilled with the power of the words “please” and “thank you”. I know them to be magic words. And I know that while “please” can often be the magic word to getting what you want; “thank you” is often the set of magic words which give meaning to what was given. As a “grown up”, I’ve come to see that the most powerful “thank you’s” are in return for gifts the giver didn’t always know he or she had bestowed.

My life has been full of these gifts. My unique experiences have given opportunity for people to be in and give into my life in ways, some for but a moment, for which I have attempted to communicate gratitude and yet I know I’ve fallen short. For some I didn’t always see the gift for what it was until it was too late to thank effectively. Or I was afraid of it being awkward. Or, I don’t know. How do you thank some one for giving you something which had an impact they had no idea about? I hope I tried, awkward though it may have been. And yet, I feel the weight of a dozen unsung thank you’s. So while I can’t possibly cover them all, know that if I don’t cover “our story” specifically, this thank you is for you…

This thank you is for you…for the individual who came out of the woodwork as an intentional connection for but mere moments. Several scattered throughout a given year over the course of several. Someone who affirmed postscript the work I had done with camping and who invited me to share in new ways…both publicly in ministry and privately as an individual. Who, in a very unimportant manner of ways, pointed to “tools with the tags still on” in my toolbox of gifts and graces and handed me some projects with which to use them. For encouraging me as an individual and as one called to be active in ministry…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the friend to whom my deepest secrets became known. Who held my confessions carefully as the broken offering they were. Who listened without judgment. Who supported without question. Who bore the weight of my secrecy so I could be strong enough to fight the things which haunted me. For holding things and me when there was little I could give back, for time and for friendship…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the trip leader who stayed intentional in the short weeks post the return from Puerto Rico. The one who heard me nonchalantly explain my weekend plans and who asked me what I was going to do for Anika; if I had time to take care of me in the midst of the insanity before me. The one who caught me off-guard by being the first to call out the attempt I made to be superhero and to do it all and be it all and challenged it (on the missions trip and after). For beginning to see past a mask to the core of who I was before I was at a spot in life to let that mask down…thank you.

This thank you is for you...for the college classmate who became an unlikely friend. The one with whom I had nothing in common (or so I thought). The one with whom I had no thought of our paths ever crossing in any meaningful way outside of a major or a Kono class...but they did. The one with whom very little life was ever "done with" but who much life was once or twice discussed with... The one with whom false pretenses could be dropped and each of us could be allowed the ability and freedom to be real. For long chats and personal affirmation and an unlikely friendship...thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the RD who was sort-of-my-boss-but-not my senior year of college. The one who listened to me talk about where God had been showing up in the midst of the life that hurt. For asking intentional questions and giving intentional responses. For allowing me to pour out my soul on the sidewalk between Apartments A and B. For affirmation and genuineness…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the classmates who picked me up at my apartment and forcefully demanded I get in their car and drove me to the ER when they thought I had appendicitis (but I was "too busy" to get it checked out). The ones who were willing to put their own commitments aside on the chance I might need some convincing. For making someone outside of your normal circle of friends a priority…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the male classmate who, upon awkwardly hearing my afore-mentioned “appendicitis scare” was actually an ovarian cyst the size of a tennis ball, took it upon himself to check in daily. For asking sincerely if there was anything he could do to make it better and who, when finding out it simply needed to burst, would greet me across the plaza by mock shooting his own side and aiming his finger gun at mine. For making me laugh and for caring genuinely about something you couldn’t possibly understand…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the college professor whose 9am class I fell asleep in religiously during my first semester of cancer treatment. The one to whom I attempted to apologize to but who instead apologized to me for not meeting me to pray over me sooner. Who told me quick naps or not I was still rightfully earning the “A” I was receiving in his challenging class. For grace and understanding…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the friend who stopped what he was doing with his core group of friends to check in on me when I first got sick (but I didn’t know what was wrong yet). The one who lost the race to ask if I had heard anything new and if there was anything he could do. The one who prayed for me there in the middle of campus. The one who came to visit me in the hospital while I was still hopped up on pain killers and looking like a champion in bloody bandages and my hospital gown. For epitomizing “friend” (though our friendship had been an odd one) when I needed friends the most…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the pastor who deaned the camp I volunteered at. The one who called me a leader when, looking back, I doubt I had displayed much worth noting. The one who knew I would strive to live up to such a meaningful identity. The one who gave me tasks I knew nothing of and told me I was capable…in such a way that I would see that I did have what it took. The one who gave me the spring board for curriculum development and fundamental leadership. The one who, by example, helped confirm a passion in myself to be about intentional ministry. For perhaps unknowingly and unintentionally being a coach from the sidelines and as a result empowering me to play in this game called life…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the high school teacher who highlighted my ability to be creative with my writing. The one who knew I was quiet but saw almost instantly that I used words as an outlet for thoughts louder than I was. The one who encouraged me to continue to allow words to flow. For unknowingly giving me the tool I would need to cope and for fanning a spark so it wouldn’t go out before I had a chance to allow it to catch fire…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the mom of the girls I babysat so many times during my high school years. The one who found unique ways to value me and my personhood far outside the fact she and her husband employed me as an occasional caregiver for her children. The one who engaged me in conversation about classes and homework and college applications as she drove me home and who gave me a luggage carrier to help tote around my monstrosity of a backpack. The one whom I was tempted to believe (and wished I would have somehow taken advantage of…), though older and wiser, was also my friend. For being willing to invest…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the counselor at Wesley Woods. The one every girl camper at camp wished was their counselor. True when I was but 11 and a camper for the first time and true when I was 16 and counselor in training for the first time. The one who was bubbly and passionate and fantastic…the person (and eventually counselor) I so desperately wished to be. The one who quite unknowingly showed me what it looked like to live and serve in such a way that others would see Christ. The one who listened to me shakily share my story at a firebowl and then came to tell me that through me Christ was shown to you (what a table turner in my brain!). For being Jesus was skin on and an example this young girl desperately needed…thank you.

This thank you is to you…for the 8^th grade teacher at my new school who noticed. Who saw that life for me somehow wasn’t what it could be. Who saw I didn’t fit in and was struggling to be a student…let alone the student of excellence I wished to be. Who assigned me work outside of the curriculum for the rest of the class...to challenge me and to keep me engaged. Who wrote me a letter of recommendation to get into an accelerated academic program in high school which would empower me outside of the school I was in. For seeing what I was capable of and for freeing me…thank you.

This thank you is for you…for the only true youth leader I ever had. The one who invested herself as well as her time into the straggly teens in her care. The one who is the first I recall affirming me in such a way as to say “Anika is strange but Anika is okay”. The one who opened my eyes to the idea that there was more than one way to do life and one of them might be without nylons… For loving me for me – including all the awkwardness a 12 year old could possibly hold in her body – in such a way that I still feel the reverberations of such an impact today…thank you.

And on my list could and should go…

And so this thank you is for you…for the one reading this right now. For the way(s) you have perhaps unintentionally, perhaps unknowingly, perhaps unwillingly impacted my life. The ways in which I am shaped because of the experience I have had, even for the briefest moment, with you. Thank you for the gift given by your presence and existence. Thank you for ordinary interactions which made for extraordinary moments. I wish this “thank you” could some how be a repayment gift enough to give meaning to the touches you’ve placed into my world. And though I know it still falls short, for 1000 unsung thank you’s…may this be one which finally is heard sung back to you…

This thank you is for you…

Do That Again!

2014-08-07T23:16:00.001-04:00

“Again! Again!” He giggles with a huge toothy grin and thrusts his arms in the air. I swoop down and clasp my “big hands” underneath of his arms, scoop him up, whirl him in circle with a “whooshing” noise and his precious and consistent giggles and then land him on the floor.

He staggers for a moment as he finds his center and balance. Shoots me a mischievous grin and the process repeats itself. “Again! Again! Do dat again!”

So we spin in circles until Anika is the one too dizzy to keep up the process.

“Okay. Last one buddy!” He reluctantly agrees. He’s only two but seems to understand that adults have limits (and unfortunate centers of gravity!) even if little boys don’t. I know, however, that if I didn’t tire…he wouldn’t either.

Such an occurrence isn’t uncommon for me these last few weeks (now several as I find myself finishing a before-started thought). Life with my “small friends” is much of the same – regardless of the activity. Spinning circles. Singing songs. Dancing something (while spinning circles and singing songs…) When it comes to doing life, simple joys never get old. And there is something incredibly precious about the delight of a child running back to you one more time… “Again! Again! Do dat again!”

Their giggles and their smiles make me consider Christ’s instructions – to come to Him like a child. With innocence and trust. To simply be loved and to be known. To delight in Him and Him in us.

Children often have no trouble with faith. It is adults, hardened by life and experience and intelligence, who want answers. Faith, when rightfully considered, seems foolish. Faith, when wholly considered, is the power of God…

It brought my mind immediately 1 Corinthians: “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength…But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak thinks of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this wold and the despise things - and the things that are not to nullify things that are, so that no one may boast before him...” (1 Corinthians 1:22-29)

In part of all of us resides that child. The one who knows simple joys don’t get old. For some of us its harder to find (so hard I dare say there are some I’ve met who will never “find it back”) and harder still to recognize. But believers: ones who, like a child (the nobodies and weaklings of society), have grasped onto the foolishness of God and claimed it as power, can’t help but admit the truth. There is something both incredibly intricate and undeniably important about realizing identity as a child of God…

And part of me believes we connect best to God when we come as a child because part of the heart of God is that of a child as well. If for no other reason than because He never tires of doing the same things over and over and over again – He seems to delight in it! He is a God of repetition! A God who set the world in motion in that seasons come and go and come again; the tide rises and falls; day follows night and night follows day. A God whose mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22)… Whose faithfulness has never run out. Whose promises are still true. Yes, a God who delights in “doing it again”.

And so do we…

I pause to consider what twitch my body starts to convulse in after I’ve heard the same song on repeat for two hours and I wonder. I think about how my eyes start to glaze over after working on data entry and copying into multiple files for multiple hours (and days) on the computer and I scoff. Repetition? Boring. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about finding meaning in the mundane but everyone has a limit!

And yet…

Very few people look at a night sky as the sun is beginning to set; the scene streaked with purples and pinks and reds and oranges; a hint of blue sky still behind billowy clouds with a golden sun shining as it falls; and think “Mmm. Boring. I already saw this one.” Even if only for a moment, there is a pause to comment on its beauty or majesty; a smile of appreciation and a nod of agreement at nothing in particular noting it is indeed good. Longer moments come with wide eyes and gaping mouths; a sharp intake of air because breath has been taken and replaced with awe. And those who really pause to consider watch until the sun finally sets and as a dusky hue of coming night sky replaces the masterpiece they just took in and respond with “Again! Again! Do it again!”

Sunset after sunset and sunrise after sunrise. With every imaginable piece of majesty and splendor in between. Not just in creation where His presence and hand becomes so physically evident but in people and situations and moments… It baffles me sometimes how many things seem to exist in this world simply for our enjoyment. Things which seem to serve no other purpose than to make our eyes widen and our smiles broaden. How blessed we are that God does not grow tired or weary. His arms don’t give out and His head doesn’t spin in dizzy circles. God gives again and again that we might respond again and again with the same glee, the same praise, the same adoration. He delights in us that we might delight in Him. Almost as if He is at the end of something He has done a million times before...just waiting. Just waiting with a goofy grin on His face to hear us say “Again! Again! Do dat again!”