Everyday Ordinary Dawnings

An Open Letter to All Mike and I Ministered To and With

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Sat, 08 Aug 2020 03:17:00 +0000

Dear Loved Ones,

I wrote an essay exactly five years ago today entitled The Blog Post I Won't Write, about how much strain my marriage was under from ministry. Ministry costs resources that are like commodities in that they're in limited supply. Ministry costs time, commitment, and emotional and spiritual effort. There are also liabilities that come with ministry that drain life, one of which was the constant scrutiny of others. Five years ago, I was afraid it might all lead to burnout and breakdown.

Mike shared that essay with many who were with him the day I published it. I think he resonated with my sentiments and saw burnout and breakdown coming, too, maybe even better than I did.

When I reread that essay today, I realize I had no idea back then how bad things actually were or how bad they would become -- which turned out to be so bad that our marriage wouldn't survive.

Could I have done anything differently to change the outcome? I don't think so. I was living the best way I knew how at that time, doing my best to be honest and faithful before the Lord and serve the people before us. I still live that way today, although it looks very differently now than it did back then.

I have changed.

That's because I evaluated my faith when I was approaching fifty. I did so because I was outgrowing my faith. I became unwilling to adhere to a Christian walk and a ministry lifestyle that no longer fit. This meant having the courage to admit that my understanding of those things was incomplete and immature at best, or wrong, at worst.

My faith used to escalate everything to the urgency of black or white. There was no room for gray, or color, or nuance, or depth, or intelligence, or even relationship. I held no room for God to say to Moses the first time to strike the rock, and the second time to speak to the rock. I left no room for God to say to Peter, all those foods you were prohibited from eating? Well, nothing I made is unclean. Though God doesn't change, our understanding of him does, and some of the rigid rules that were in place to train us no longer serve us, and God wants us to grow.

I changed because I spent my fiftieth birthday sitting without Mike around a back yard fire pit gifted to me by our devastated children. They longed to somehow salvage my milestone birthday. I will always be grateful for that, but despite their beautiful efforts, it felt more like Job's ash heap than a celebration. We sat together heartsick and dumbstruck, while my marriage, family-as-I-knew-it, and ministry were cremated inside that gift.

I was devastated by the catastrophe of it. I could hardly sleep or eat or work or even stand up some moments. And yet sitting brave-faced with my children that chilly October night is forever burned into me like a branding that won't be undone or ignored. That experience and countless others in the last twenty-two months forged something permanent and irrevocable in me.

They changed me.

Some changes come from our own choices and some from the choices of others. And if, back then, I wrote the blog post I wouldn't write, today I write the one I never thought I'd need to.

My intention is not to expose anyone's sins, but to integrate the truth into my whole life and live without secrets or untold truths. I hope and pray my life is never a lie again, and that I never perpetrate a lie that might cause someone else to see their life as a lie. If I didn't know that God hates lies before, I certainly do now. I have come to abhor them in a way I never could have without this experience.

Many of the changes in my life are outward and speak of brokenness and failure, and are not in need of explanation. But these experiences have also changed my faith and much of that is positive and, indeed, good, so I'd like to unpack that a bit.

While these changes, both good and bad, came with great pain, the trial and tragedy are so connected with the woman I became from them, that I can't separate the good from the bad that have come as a result. And I believe that is just how "God means for good what others meant for evil," (Joseph, in Genesis).

Here are some of the changes that turned out to be "for good."

I know God better than I ever have before, and live before Him with more awe and authenticity.

I'm acquainted with lament. A life of faith on this sinful planet can't be achieved without it.

I know myself better, and I'm still learning I am not small.

I love myself better, which is to say I actually love myself (though not above others).

I have learned that "grieving, though not as those who have no hope" means there is actual grieving.

I found my own voice, maybe for the first time in my life, and I am not afraid to use it.

I learned to think for myself, proudly own my understanding of the world and live my life of faith accordingly, and humbly but also without apology when it doesn't meet with someone else's expectation.

I am no longer a scared little girl.

I won't hide in the shadow of another anymore.

I am not as afraid as I used to be. Fear, which kept me from fully embracing and experiencing my own life, is -- mercifully -- mostly gone now.

Mercy is another thing I know now, because it arrived as a passenger in the vehicle of the implosion of our marriage and ministry. Mercy arrives with the trial.

My children know God better because their hope has been tested and it did not break.

My relationship with my children and theirs with each other are more authentic and more tightly bound together than ever before. We give each other the grace to be a work in progress and see the beauty and fellowship there in the fluid middle.

These good things came at great price: the end of a marriage and an intact family unit that was supposed to last a lifetime.

Earthly circumstances do not thwart God's goodness. The good gifts of a father who loves his children are not compromised by sin, neither ours nor others.

Nor is any member of our family precluded from God's best for our lives. The future in store for us is not second best or a diminished Plan B. Our future in Christ is as bright as it ever was or ever will be. That's because the light of Christ is the light of Christ, and no earthly or human element or circumstance can either dim it or brighten it.

God has kept me through this trial. He has used his Word, prayer, the passage of time, and the Body of Christ to keep me. I know this because I have not perished in my affliction (Ps. 119:92).

Looking back, I see so many mistakes we made in ministry. We did our level best. I saw Mike try his hardest, so I don't mind speaking for him in saying this. But complex breakdown did happen in his life and that story is his to tell or keep private as he sees fit. I do, however, want to apologize for how I, as part of Mike's ministry, failed you, the people we ministered to and with. My intentions were always and only to serve God and you. I'm sorry my best was not good enough or maybe even right, but it was my best at the time.

The best we can do with the things we don't get quite right is to stop doing things the wrong way. We should grow. Change. Apologize. Give grace. Walk humbly with only forbearance and forgiveness between us. I am both asking for this and giving it. I believe that this is the love by which they will know we are His disciples (John 13:35).

I inscribed in Mike's wedding band and etched into our thirty-year marriage 1 Peter 4:8, which says, "Above all, love one another fervently. For love covers a multitude of sins."

When I first offered that verse to Mike, I believe it meant love blinds us to a multitude of sins.

When I learned my marriage was broken, I understood it to mean that love sees sin, but sidesteps it with a speedy offer of reconciliation.

For many excruciating months, I fought and prayed furiously for reconciliation, until I couldn't anymore. I gave up my blind hope and my painful efforts for a good outcome. I distanced my battered heart and I waited.

When I learned that divorce was imminent and realized that our marriage would finally fail, I was still convinced that love never fails. I had put forth valiant effort and sacrificed much and still got what I didn't want in the end. Only then did I realize that the love that covers a multitude of sin expresses itself as the kind that forgives.

If I had this understanding of 1 Peter 4:8 as a starry-eyed, naive girl of twenty, I would have chosen another verse to build my marriage on. Forgiveness is much harder than blindness. But God knew then I would need this wisdom now, so he faithfully walked me to this weighty knowledge in due time. He gives us the grace we need when we need it and not a moment before.

I want my last deed in both my marriage to Mike and the ministry I dearly loved, to be that of forgiveness. May it always cover a multitude of sin, and in its small way, both fulfill my covenant vow to Mike and relieve me of it.

May God richly bless you always. I love each of you and will cherish the many years of ministry and memories.

Always,

Dawn Crowninshield

When Things Don't Happen As You Expected

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 10:52:00 +0000

I committed to 40 days of writing, and then coronavirus crawled across the globe.

This is how life happens. Plans are made and circumstances chart their own course. Unexpected things, incomprehensible things, things we never heard of become our new normal: social distancing, global pandemic and thus, shutdown.

My professional life tripled overnight. I began working 50 hour weeks, and writing and life as we knew it went the way of the past.

But the fasting for Lent? My Lent, as in Lent-ish? It has quietly continued, even without me, because we, as a society, have been fasting in some magnificent ways.

1. The Church is fasting from buildings and programs and has been living as sent, rather than gathered. We've retreated to neighborhoods and the internet. Spontaneous worship on social media, from the recognizable to the unknown girl with the messy bun, leggings, and a beat up guitar becomes a cathedral for the world on a screen.

2. Gone are the soapboxes and judgy posts on social media of those who have an opinion of everything and are happy to share it with you.

3. Families have fasted from extra-curricular everything and are eating home-cooked meals at the table together. It's like a Norman Rockwell painting with all the puzzles and games and togetherness while sideways rays from the sunset slant through the window, turning everything golden.

2. The women in my neighborhood walk with chalk and fill driveways with pastel scripture verses. They now "prayer walk" several nights a week, praying for protection and neighborly kindness and provision.

3. I've walked at dawn in my neighborhood before work because my statehouse walks at lunch are no longer possible. With the overload in my office, I'm fasting my lunch hour and working straight through. But a boss has generously brought lunch in for two weeks for good measure, morale, and in support of local small business. He has quietly led with generosity and grace. He has fed us, literally and figuratively.

4. In 10 days it will be Easter. We will celebrate a resurrection that interrupted life as everyone on earth knew it. It was a fast from mortality that will hold us in everlasting hope until he comes again.

People have been sick. People have died. We suffer from loneliness, isolation, and fear. The economy has suffered. But there are some good things if we are brave enough to see them.

Just maybe there is life behind a stone that was rolled in front of a grave that gives us something to look forward to, something with which to tenaciously stand up against the fear and the dire situation it stems from.

On the other side of death is resurrection. Until then, I will keep looking for light, finding the good, and discovering the beautiful surprises that come when things don't happen as you expected.

Jesus will be with us now, and there on the other side, too. There may be a measure of discomfort, uncertainty, grief, and loss for a time, but good and hope shine through in the midst of the suffering.

And maybe that's exactly what fasting is for in the first place. That we might go without the things we know so well that comfort us, in order to see the world with new eyes and hunger for that instead.

Photo Credit: ST, my neighbor

Things We Never Knew We'd Fast

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 10:57:00 +0000

I opened the mailbox on Saturday and saw a name from the past pushing up through the stack of mail from the return address corner. An old acquaintance I haven't thought of in a lifetime.

He mailed me grainy pictures taken by a disposable camera circa 1986. Pictures of teenagers at Ship Island, one of whom was Jeff.

I don't think of him so much anymore. Until he died, it was the hardest thing I had ever faced. Since then there's been cancer, Alzheimer's, divorce, Hurricane Katrina, the unthinkable. So many people and beautiful things are simply gone.

Ru looked through the pictures and was struck by the one that was the ancestor of today's selfie. Jeff's face filled the lens with a clear image. He's sandy and salty, and I had forgotten his hair was a little curly like mine if it was humid. She said, "Look at him. I've never been able to make out his face in all the old photographs. And, now, there he is." She touched his dimple with her index finger, I think because she has one of her own.

I marvel every time I see my children's affinity for an uncle they never met. So I re-read all the posts I've written about him here over the years and allowed myself to think of him.

So much of life doesn't make sense. We always say that about the bad parts, but never do we say it about the good.

I remember leaning onto his casket, letting him hold me up one last time, and promising him I would think of him every day for the rest of my life. That was 26 years ago, when I was 25. I don't even know when I failed that vow, I'm just glad I did.

The sky has been heavy with overcast clouds the last few days. The whole world is thinking about sickness and death in the face of COVID-19 crawling its way around the globe. I don't remember a time when we've been in one accord globally like this.

I've seen panic, kindness, fear, greed, and love. People have receded with fear and with caution. The earth seems eerily abandoned by those who are shutting themselves in against the unknown and a foe much bigger than the frail human body. It makes us compliant, and rightly so.

But it also makes me want to live. In the face of threat from virus and the reminder of loss in my mailbox, I want to live.

Sometimes you have to let the dead things go so you can really live.

I want to love and show kindness and generosity in the face of fear, isolation, sickness, and horror. I want to be beauty and light to a dying world.

I choose hope in the face of sorrow. I choose words that rise, and I choose to trust in tomorrow. I choose to embrace the broken and the redeemed and the ache, and walk with a limp for all life has dealt me.

The world is slowing and it hurts because I've been trying to outrun pain. I need to go fast right now, and even that is being taken from me in the shutting down and shutting in against pandemic.

We are asked to withdraw from each other and activity, so I must learn to live with fear and death and distance, not outrun them. I must relearn to be quiet and at ease in the stillness and slowness.

On this earth, we find we must fast the things we long for, things that are scarce right now: togetherness. love, fellowship, communion. But these are the things we will see and know in their fullness and feast on forever in heaven.

Dear Future Self

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 10:27:00 +0000

Dear Future Self,

Man, what I'd give to be where you are. Before you even read this letter, look around you. Take a minute to take in your life. And don't take a single thing you see, feel, and know for granted.

Even if it's broken and scarred, I hope you see that it's beautiful.

I'm working so hard to be sure you end up safe, loved, and respected. I'm pretty sure you have these things from some amazing humans because you had them back then when you were me.

But I hope by now you are much better at giving these things to yourself. You used to be terrible at it.

You are where you are today because of me, your past self, at least in part.

I hope you look around your life and find health, peace, and joy. I hope you find Jesus, and family and friends.

I hope you find a bountiful dinner table and still find joy in feeding the ones you love. I hope laughter and deep conversations find you and yours lingering long over engaging ideas and wrestled faith, while a glass of good wine swirls in your hand, the dishwasher whirs in the background, and the night grows long.

I hope you talk about the books you're reading and never stop learning and growing. I hope you still run and have finally learned how to build a fire in the backyard without a starter log.

I hope you always say yes when someone asks you to go for a walk with them. How many healing miles did we walk? Only God knows.

May you be kinder, gentler, and present for people when they are devastated, because you learned the hard way what kind of healing salve that is, and how those things have actual super powers to bring a person back to life.

May you carry yourself with dignity and not take yourself too seriously, both at the same time.

May you never stop having fun.

I hope you are proud of your life, and are mostly happy.

I hope you know intimately who you are and confidently accept — no, approve — of the woman you became. You know better than I do what finding yourself cost us both. And I hope and pray it was worth the price.

You were small for far too long.

Don't ever forget you owe a debt to words. There were so many words.

There were mantras and confessions. There were revelations and declarations shouted and whispered.

You filled journals with handwriting. You read stacks of books and articles.

There were countless counseling sessions with a compassionate and wise therapist, who either rattled you or rallied you in fifty minute segments, and was discerning enough to know which to employ when.

You spent hours texting and typing, and on phone calls that added up to months of your life.

You said so many words, so many times, to a small trusted circle you couldn't keep track of what you said to whom.

I hope all of those friends are still with you and are deeply trusted. I hope they have been with you for years now and that you've had a chance to return the exquisite gift of listening.

I hope there's an army of new friends, too. You were lonely for so long.

God's word and prayer served you so well. These were the best words. I'm sure your knees are worn because you can no longer live without either.

They fed you when food could not, and they became the only way you knew to process this fallen-down life on earth.

You still have problems, I know. But you are better equipped for them than I was. That came to you as a gift from the years between you and me.

Life is never without its problems. But I worked hard for you to have a sense of rest in your soul that anchors you because you survived a dark time and you didn't give up on yourself. I pray the wisdom you gained became a grace you now give to others.

Don't ever forget the tears you cried, the sleepless nights, or how proud you became of who your children grew up to be. I hope they still inspire you, teach you, challenge you, and are dear, dear friends. I can't imagine how proud you are of them based on how proud I already am now.

Don't ever forget any of these things. I suspect that, from your vantage point, they are the redeemed parts of the journey.

I love you so very much, Dawn. Don't ever lose track of that love ever again, you hear me?

You are the reason I do all the hard things these days. You are beautiful inside and out. We all are. You are strong, wise, and have a purpose.

Don't ever take for granted where you are, and all you have, including your challenges. Much of it was learned and earned the hard way, and some came as a gift of grace. But everything about who you are was forged in the fire, and if it lasted it's precious metal.

So you better be chasing your dreams hard, and not wasting a minute of your life. You better be wild and free, with equal measures of abandon and reverence in all you do. It better be freaking beautiful!

Man, what I'd give to be where you are, and know you in your fullness.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that as beautiful as it is where you are, getting there is going to be worth the journey and will be something you wouldn't have wanted to miss in the end. So I'll stay in the here and now, and work towards getting us there, even though I've asked God a million times, "Please, let's skip ahead to better days."

I promise I'll get up every morning and keep fighting for you. I won't let you down, because you're worth it.

I hope you know that you're worth it in your bones up there in our future together, because, right now, you're still learning that glorious truth, and you don't know it very well yet.

I can make you that promise to keep fighting for you, because when I get weary, I have a body of friends and family that love me, and carry me when I can't go on, and don't, won't, leave me.

I could never do this alone. I'm convinced we need people in our lives, a generous handful of beautiful, broken people who love unflinchingly. I have a hunch you became that kind of person.

Never discount the power of love, Dawn. And don't grow cynical.

Someday, if you find yourself in the middle of something you have no idea how to get through, stay there. Don't rush it. Relax into the hard middle and feel your way through. Stumble in awkward stammers if that's all you can manage in order to get to the other side. You already know from the past it's worth it. Keep going and never give up.

Until then, please know I can't wait to meet you. I'm pretty sure you're an amazing person. And I hope you smile ... a lot.

My all,
Your Former Self

Held

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 10:51:00 +0000

In light of the fact that all the heaven, the moon, and stars are just a little something you did with your fingers one day, God, who are we, that you would notice or care for us?

That's my paraphrase of Psalm 8:3-4.

The question is rhetorical, not meant to be answered necessarily, but asked to make a point. And the Psalmist goes on to talk about exactly how much he cares for us and our exact spot in the pecking order of all his majestic creation.

///

Do not fear, for I am with you;

Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you, surely, I will help you,

Surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. ~~Isaiah 41:10

Do you see the answer? The God who flings a universe into being with a little somethin' somethin' from his fingertips upholds us with his entire right arm, the strong arm.

It's okay to be weak. He is strong.

It's only natural that we would be anxious and fearful. We are not God.

But the true God? He says he is our God.

Not only do we belong to him, but he gave himself to us -- he belongs to us!

Our God has fingertips so mighty they can pitch galaxies into space on a whim. I think the Psalmist was saying "without lifting a finger."

And you are so precious that he uses his whole arm to hold you.

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Fear :: Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 10:06:00 +0000

{Fear :: Part 1 can be found here.}

Sunday, our pastor had us in Isaiah 44. His main points were:

1. God is worthy.
2. Idols are worthless.
3. Worship the worthy.

Sounds so simple, unless you have a fraught history with fear, which I do.

When we read verses 19-20, they brought me back to my mental tracing of biblical fire from Genesis to Revelation.

"They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, "Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?" He feeds on the ashes, a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, "Is there not a lie in my right hand?"

Fear is an idol. I cling to it with my right hand, which holds me back from full surrender to all God has for me, my life, and future. I will not let fear hold me back. I must walk on. I am determined to unfurl my fingers from dead wood. God has been trying me by fire and I want Fear to burn. I want it burned to ash to float away in the wind of the Spirit that washes me clean. I want both hands free to serve God with my whole heart and life and future.

I knelt, all by myself in a church that doesn't kneel, with palms open for dust to fly, and proclaimed the true things with our local body's rendition of Andrew Peterson's "He Is Worthy." It was a contemporary liturgy in the modern worship service.

Then, I stood to my feet and named my idol. I wrote "Fear" on a small note card. I wrote it really big because Fear is big to me. I pinned it to the cross. It felt a little bit "old-school youth ministry retro," but there is something about physically engaging in letting something go from your life. Clinging to anything in my own right hand is no match for the God who made both the wood and me and can hold both and then some in his mighty right hand. So I went through the physical and metaphorical motions.

I am certain I will wrestle with Fear again. This exercise was not a miracle cure. It was a reminder. And I will burn the idol and let the ash fly as often as it takes to free my hands to be open only to God and his fullness for me.

Then the benediction: always a scripture reading to send the body into the world, with the words, "You are sent." I don't know what idols everyone else had pinned on the cross, but yesterday's benediction passage, Psalm 46:1-3 from The Passion translation, seemed to be hand selected just for me. It's about our true relationship with fear in light of God.

"God, you're such a safe and powerful place to find refuge! You're a proven help in time of trouble— more than enough and always available whenever I need you. Se we will never fear even if every structure of support were to crumble away. We will not fear even when the earth quakes and shakes, moving mountains and casting them into the sea. For the raging roar of stormy winds and crashing waves cannot erode our faith in you. Pause in his presence."

The idols we hold are worthless, but the One who holds us is worthy.

K

Fear :: Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 13:25:00 +0000

I hate fear. I'm giving it up for Lent and hopefully for life, but I'm wired that way. Fear and I go way back. I'm an Enneagram Six.

///

God has had me in the book of Isaiah for a long while, at least since last May. It started with chapter 55 and began spreading into neighboring chapters like an epidemic. Then a nine-month sermon series from Isaiah started last fall. By November, I had decided I was full-on doing Isaiah. I scoured the house for all my resources: an abandoned bible study I started 15 years ago, Wiersbe's Old Testament commentary, one of my study bibles with its own commentary. I planned to track down every cross-reference listed to every verse before I left a chapter. I had built Isaiah Mountain on my kitchen counter.

And then? Christmas shopping. And December in general.

Isaiah Mountain was never climbed. About three weeks later, I dismantled it, overwhelmed by the sight. But the sermon series had been amazing so far. I was learning so much, and Isaiah kept showing up in my life in serendipitous ways. I couldn't help but want more.

I stumbled upon a bible study series that moved a little faster than the exhaustive, unabridged version I had planned for myself. This one delved into one chapter a day. It was deeper than a devotional, but lighter than a graduate course in Isaiah, and so I began.

It pairs nicely with our Isaiah series at church, which is a wonderful mix of topical and expository approach.

///

Last week was a bear for me. I worked overtime, even though I was out of the office for:
--a car accident (fender bender, but still)
--court
--a doctor's visit with my daughter who had a viscous stomach virus for six day. SIX DAYS!
--a mother who needed a little extra time and attention
--a counseling session

Each one of these things brought with them a trail of extra weight, plus I had some unusual work-related emergencies. I didn't eat or sleep well, though I tried.

My bible and study laid dormant since last Monday. And Fear was sticking closer than a brother. Again. Because I was so stressed out, I didn't even recognized his presence.

I characterize him as male, because he feels stronger than me, like men are physically stronger. I recognize this is setting myself up for defeat from the beginning, but I have a long history here, and if you fact check it, you'll find it to be true. Fear usually wins when he picks a fight, at least with me.

I often struggle to see this verse prove true because of my longstanding battle with fear. But I won't ever give up fighting for this truth to be revealed in me.

{This essay concludes here in Fear :: Part 2.}

Tall

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 12:11:00 +0000

Today I stand tall
Hold my face high
I will feel love and
the weight of loss
Alone today I stand

Today I stand tall
Solemnly, with dignity
And a measure of grace
Which wrecks me and how
you know it’s grace

Today I stand tall
Proud of who I was
who I am now
I have cowered
My knees have wobbled
So I can stand tall

Today I stand tall
after bending low
After heart dissolved
And life grows slow
Before I knew nothing

Today I stand tall
On the right in
purple dignity
But also sackcloth
With courage and fear
And a God who let (led?) us here

I stand tall.

Against Tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 15:03:00 +0000

These are the day of sick babes and mothers.
These are the days of heartaches and troubles.
These are the days of dry bones walking.
These are the days of prophets, psalms, friends, and what ifs.
These are the days of crashing and shaking, hurting and waiting.
These are the days of responsibility and futility.
These are the days of chaos, confusion, disillusion, dissolution.
These are the days committed.

These are the days of falling: short, behind, out, in.
These are the days of not enough and less than, fragile and beautiful both.
These are the days you wish you never lived, but find life and love's growth
— the soil fertile because it laid fallow.

These are the days to pine and put behind.
These are the days of trusting, of stumbling and rising, of ruin, repair, and pioneer.

These are the days of fighting, resigning, and resisting.
These are the days to be quiet and hopeful and want wisdom.
These are the days to breathe in and breathe out, and rest heavy head full of doubt.
These are the days of hope for I don't know what.
These are the days to steer who knows where.
These are the gray days of cold rain, of winter into spring.
These are the days of iron gate, an early friend, and holding horror.
These are the days committed
— against tomorrow.

Photo by Keith McElroy

Shame

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 11:42:00 +0000

A friend has been praying for a specific concern for almost five months. The repetition gets old after awhile. You get tired of hearing your own voice, and frustration slowly sets in. Of course, you don't want to admit to it, because the Sunday School student in you knows someone above you in the spiritual food chain will call a technical foul for your aggravation with God.

So you ignore the aggravation and persist in your begging, while your inner critic is taunting you. You do know the definition of insanity, right...? And you roll your eyes at yourself instead of God because it's safer.

Months passed, and my friend couldn't contain his frustration and finally vented it all to God. Then, while he was feeling like a failure, answers came swiftly, as if on cue. He was glad God answered finally, but also felt like a shmuck for lashing out.

His version of this story sounded a lot like shame, and I couldn't let that lie because God doesn't shame us, and that's something I'm working very hard to unlearn myself these days.

So I suggested that God may have purposely withheld the answer until he expressed the frustration. Perhaps that was a good and necessary part of the prayer process. When we come to God with our needs and desires, He doesn't judge us. God doesn't shove his answers in our face right when we are the worst version of ourselves to prove a point. Even earthly fathers would never do that to their children they love, much less our heavenly father, the master at giving good gifts.

Maybe persisting in prayer isn't about wearing God down, but wearing us down. Maybe God hangs back long enough to coax us out of self-propelled performance into true vulnerable relationship. Besides, he already knows our inner selves, so maybe prayer is sometimes a lengthy process because we're the ones who need reacquainting with our own real selves.

God doesn't want the spruced up version of us. So he waits until we're reduced to the worst of ourselves, because that's the true "us" he loves, died for, and is pleased to give good gifts to.

Maybe instead of seeing the answer and timing through the lens of shame, we should see both answer and timing through the lens of reward when we finally come before him the way he wanted us from the beginning, and also this time and every time — broken and unable. When we are in that posture, he can draw us into deeper freedom and greater trust. That's when two glorious things are accomplished besides the answering of our prayers. We come to know ourselves better, and we come to know him better.

He loves the real you. When that person shows up at God's doorstep, truly needy rather than trying hard, he is moved with compassion and provides, even if the answer is no or not yet, and we don't understand why.

Let's unlearn living by shame, even if it takes the rest of our lives. God is good, and he for us. And this is truth worth fighting to live by.

Intertwined

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 18:18:00 +0000

The Ash Wednesday service I attended was my third. I went alone this year and slipped into the back pew a few minutes late.

This Anglican church is beautiful. I love being in this sanctuary. The floors are red brick with gritty mortar. There are paneless, clear glass windows letting in lots of natural light that bounces off white walls to high vaulted ceilings with exposed beams. It is not ostentatious like an ornate cathedral can be, nor practical like the auditoriums of modern day megachurches (not that either is bad). Instead, both its beauty and purpose are derived from and defined by its tranquil, understated sense of it being a place of unapologetic importance. It's a simple, earthy dwelling place for God and us that is deliberate but without pretense.

The acoustics are amazing, and I love its transepts that flank the nave, molding its congregants cruciform. The terms transept and nave sound too fanciful for this primitive-feeling place, but to speak of its parts without dignified language feels equally wrong. This sanctuary strikes the balance of holy and human so well.

There was no music, except for the a cappella congregational chant of Psalm 51 that sounded ancient and sorrowful, making me think I heard King David's voice sing-chanting with us. ... Yes, Lord. May his confession be mine, also, as I contemplate my sin and its resulting death. Make me always this desperate for your forgiveness.

There was time to think and reflect and be alone with my thoughts and my God in the soft, rhythmic spaces between each steady, intentional event in the order of worship. I always get the sense that God comes close in the slowness and our simply "being present" instead of all the doing we moderns are used to. There was no awkwardness in the moments of silence. Love's presence is the only thing that can create a comfortable lack of awkwardness.

This worship is opposite of the loud, contemporary, demonstrative kind I am accustomed to. When I go to this room and atmosphere, I realize I'm starving to slow down and breathe deeply, unencumbered, in God's presence. I feel his dignity and holiness about me, and I can't drink in enough of it. Everything else falls away.

Worshiping this way reminds me how big he is and how small I am. I'm not saying small is unimportant. But if my modern worship likens me to an exuberant child, then this liturgical worship makes me an infant. I am no less human, no less alive, no less daughter to my father, no less in love relationship.

The difference is the absence of desire to perform for him or the need to seek his approval (Hey, Dad, watch this! Dad, watch. Dad. Dad! ... Watch this!!). An infant need only be held by strong arms. Being together in this room, holding one another, God and me, and me and God, is all that's needed.

I don't know if I would like to worship this way every Sunday, but from time to time, I crave the stripping of 21st century trappings like flesh-toned microphones hung over the ear of dynamic preachers, stages with professional lighting, and shiny over-sized screens. The robes, a real altar, lit candles ensconced in ironwork, the kneeling, and the reciting in unison the thoughtfully prepared words are reminders that God is ginormous, mysterious, and dangerous. It behooves us to be respectful, careful, and tread lightly.

He is God.

And, yes, he's also my father who laughs and loves. He striped the zebra, paints the sky red and purple every evening and morning, and made our bodies to pass their gases so we don't explode. Everything about us is both disgusting and magnificent at the same time. It's all equally flesh and spirit. All the earth sings his holy praise! But I digress...or is breaking into spontaneous praise progress?

Hmmmm.

Anyway, back to my point. Certainly he laughs. He loves to smile and delight in all his creation and skip and dance with us, the apples of his eye, all. He wants this communion so badly he will send his Son at great sacrifice to bring us home to him.

That's my daddy.

I love that I have a personal relationship with him. He draws me near, and I am not afraid. I run unabashed right up into his enthroned lap like the entitled daughter I am.

But he's also the Maker of the universe. I need to meet with him in solemn dignity sometimes to remember he is that too, because that aspect of him can be just as needful and comforting. While there is familiarity between us, he's not one to be trifled with. It does my heart good to remember anew his power and authority.

He could fling me away from him with a flick of his ear without a thought (Dad-Dad-Dad-Dad— flick.). But he never does. Never. This emboldens me most of the time to run wild and free in his temple, excused for my lack of decorum for being the Maker's heir. I'm grateful I can live in that uninhibited self-expression with him, dance naked before him like David did, and it not be disrespectful. To be wild and free and royal is a beautiful thing, indeed.

But I'm also grateful for this Anglican church to which I am drawn every Ash Wednesday, where he woos me with silent moments pregnant with intimate love. Somehow intimacy is found in both approaches to God and are true worship.

This glorious space, however, is the place where I am invited to hold the truths of both his holiness and mine in the balance of my humanity. I participate every year in this Ash Wednesday service because it reminds me of the exquisite tension yet intertwining cacophony of all these timeless truths:

He is God.
I am not.
But I am his.
And he loves me,
even though he knows me.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Fire

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 21:43:00 +0000

The ashes smeared onto my forehead were to represent dust, but I couldn't help wondering what exact "thing" burned to provide the ashes for us to wear dust for a day.

I rehearsed all the biblical fire that came to mind as I returned to my pew to kneel, head ashed:

The angel touching Isaiah with the burning coal before the vision of Jesus' throne.
Moses' fascination with a bush that burned but wasn't consumed, inviting him closer.
Sodom. And Gomorrah.
The bright, shining descriptions of Jesus as he will be when he returns to finish what he started.
The heaping of burning coals on their heads which is the very kindness of feeding of your enemy simply because he's hungry.
A pillar of fire by night. (God led them in circles for 40 years?!)
Burnt offerings.
The various lamp stands scattered throughout from Genesis to Revelation.
Four in the fiery furnace.
The tongues of fire resting above 120 believers on the Day Jesus told them to wait for, the ones who didn't give up the waiting.
Hell and Holy Spirit both.

What can all this fire in scripture mean? Is there a trail of ashes (and no ashes) that tells a unified story of the flame somehow?

I felt humbled yesterday behind my ash-stained forehead thinking of my frailty in comparison to fire in all its varieties. The ashes are the ruin, what's left after fire's deadly fury. They speak of finality and complete consumption. I am defenseless. Fire wins every time. Like I said — humbled.

Feeling exposed, I leaned into the One who made both the earth and the heavens, the sun-fire and the moon, the fire that destroys and the fire that purifies, the fires he inflicts and the fires from which he delivers, fires so dangerous they are my potential undoing in every form and context.

I utterly need him because, without him, I am and will only ever be burnt dust.

And then one more biblical fire came to mind: the flame of our giftings we are to fan. I realize suddenly that all the fire that was and is and is to come breathes. Every fire is full of life, and God is the one who breathes life. Every fire serves his purpose then, even if it appears to destroy and reduce to ash. And even if we never understand why so many things have to burn, may we be reminded that we are frail, and He is a consuming fire.

Unfinished

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 21:29:00 +0000

Dinner was late. I wanted to go running first, and one of my married ones worked late. But eventually we sat down to black beans and rice and another Cuban dish I can halfway pull of called picadillo.

Adrian did a lot of the talking, as he tends to do. But his stories and insight were so good tonight. Deep. Crystallizing. Satisfying in an unfinished way, like finding and fitting the next piece into an incomplete puzzle. Adrian is a deep thinker, and I sometimes say he has wisdom beyond his years. The gift of discernment perhaps?

At 9:30 our intense huddle at the dinner table broke when someone suggested Sonic for ice cream.

Reagan rushed upstairs for shoes. She added her cheetah print flats to her flannel shirt and red Christmas pajama pants with gingerbread men all over, and cat-walked flamboyantly back into the kitchen. It was her personal fashion runway, and she was recognizing, no – celebrating!, her outlandish appearance.

The weightiness and intimacy of our conversation was gone now, fully tamped down by her silly strut and giddy, child-like excitement about ice cream. She radiated a ridiculousness that swept away the gravity of the dinner communion among us. This change in mood was welcome and a glorious way to end such a meal.

Alone in the kitchen, I put leftovers away and tucked some quivering shafts of light from our conversation into my heart for safekeeping. Could they possibly be illuminating some cracks in hard, long-held exteriors, the beginnings of healing? I dare to believe so. Hope, tonight, was a leftover worth saving for later.

When the kids returned, ice cream in hand, Adrian hugged and kissed me goodbye. I said, "Thanks for all you shared tonight." Then I said what I've said to my children countless times: I'm proud of you.

"Hmmf," he replied, mid-embrace. "I chased after hearing those words all my life. And now, I don't really need to hear them anymore, Mom." And he shrugged, as if he didn't understand. He was surprised he felt this way tonight.

I was not.

Lent-ish

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 21:29:00 +0000

I have not written much here in the last year and a half. And writing is not like riding a bike. Art skills languish when left un-exercised, and I feel very out of shape as a writer.

But chasing my unfinished faith and writing are things that used to bring me life and joy. I'm currently in need of both. And I've been challenged by several close and wise friends to begin writing again. And I think I found a way.

I read "Lent ish" by Megan Westra yesterday.

The faith tradition I came from does not observe the Church calendar, and I have only ever approached Lent in very small ways.

Megan's life has been hard lately, and she wants to approach Lent this year with authenticity and from the context of her circumstances.

Lent is traditionally a solemn time (40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday) of reminding ourselves of death and the frailty of life. It is not a setting aside of our salvation and rejoicing in it. Rather, it's a time of remembering how desperate we once were apart from the saving work of Christ. Lent is a time to remember we were once dead in our sin and that we still are but dust.

Let's full stop there for a season and feel the weight of it again by reacquainting ourselves with our desperate hopelessness and neediness.

Many people approach Lent with sacrifice or with fasting from something — meat, chocolate, social media, for instance.

I want to approach these days leading to a celebration of the resurrection with an eye to sin's destructive forces on my life and thus my utter need of deliverance. I want to lean into the tension of living in an age when Christ has already come, but not yet in a way that sets all things aright.

This is the age of sin's rule over the earth. We endure the effects of a fallen creation, our sin nature's presence, and the consequences of resulting sin. But we do it with the hope of his second coming to finish redemption's good work.

I want to not only live, but thrive, in this age of sin's continued presence. I want to participate in this solemn season when we focus on death so we can fully appreciate and celebrate the precious, costly gift of eternal life. I want to sacrifice. I want to fast (relinquish) something that will honor God as worship. I want to embrace death for a season.

So I am choosing to write through Lent.

I am sacrificing the safety that comes from withdrawing in painful circumstances.
I am fasting hopelessness, despair, and fear.
I am offering (giving up for Lent) the audacity to find hope and a future in Christ that is healed and whole and lacking in nothing as a living sacrifice
I will work out my salvation with fear and trembling, and with pain and desire.

Choosing hope is a a courageous act of defiance. It is an act of worship I will offer in faith, because right now I don't have even one day's worth of hope or grace or joy in me to offer. I have no words whatsoever worth sharing right now as I commit to public words for 40 days.

These 40 days of writing sacrificially will be faith — the assurance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen.

I am certain that writing publicly words I don't currently possess for 40 consecutive days after a long season of no writing at all will result in some pretty poor writing. (You've been warned.) But it will be good exercise for my soul. So I will publish daily, no matter how worthy or unworthy of readership. I want to show up here every day, persistent and relentless in pursuit of God from the dark unrest.

And maybe you'll find your faith here, too, through the lens of your own doubt and uncertainty through my words being wrangled to the altar of sacrifice.

The words will come from both life's storm(s) and the defiance against it(them).

Peter did this when he walked on water. He boldly looked to Jesus who called him onto the water while he lacked the discipline to not look at the dangerous waves beneath him. What he was doing made no earthly sense, but he did it anyway. He walked, he sank, and Jesus, who walked in the storm with him, lifted.

I hope he will do the same for me if I put one word in front of the other.

I am choosing to tenaciously practice hope in this season of darkness before resurrection.

Join me?

Cuban But Not Cuban

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Sun, 02 Feb 2020 22:39:00 +0000

Since I married a Cuban-American and we had three children together, my life story became somewhat Cuban. I married into an existing story, and then my three children carried that story into my future. So Cuba is forever a part of my identity. I don't speak the language, but it is the background noise of the last 33 years of my life. The food, the culture, the music, the people, they all infiltrated who I am slowly over time and changed me.

So when I listened to the podcast Scattered, it was like hearing a part of our family story unknown until now. Chris Garcia is an American-born child of Cuban refugee parents. Theirs is a story of;

-- the blending of two nations,
-- a proud, heartbreaking patriotism,
-- the letting go of the past in favor of the promise of a future,
-- American prosperity in the face of unseen and unheard from family languishing in the homeland.

It's all so familiar to me because it's part of my own life story by marriage and by birth (of my children).

It's a refugee story.

It's a love story.

It's a beauty from ashes story.

It's complicated.

It's a story of family, survival, and devotion.

You don't need to have a personal connection to Cuba or the plight of Cuban refugees to be moved by this compelling story of Chris Garcia's learning about his late father's past.

His story will break your heart but cause your spirit to rise up. It will make you proud and grateful to be an American. It will make you desperately want to not squander your opportunity and freedom and affluence. This story will make you a more compassionate human being. It will remind you that there are people you come into contact with every day who have suffered unspeakable atrocity, tragedy, and sorrow. This story will encourage you to be kinder, gentler, and more patient.

Listen to Scattered: One dead dad, a box of ashes, and a mysterious past, and be a better human for having invested three hours in this particular someone else's story. Then remember, everyone has a story.

Find out more here.

Scattered's Instagram.

The Day after Christmas and the Day After That and the ...

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 14:22:00 +0000

I turned on the tree lights this morning. The dryer tumbles a load of mixed colors and textures, because separating laundry is too tedious a task for the day after Christmas.

The boxes and bags I collapsed and folded as we opened presents are a leaning tower peeking out from beneath the coffee table where I stashed them. There's still a pile of bows juxtaposed beside our coffee-table Jesus in his manger.

Can our gifts and their beautiful presentation hold weight on one end of a scale that holds God in the flesh on the other side?

The silver and china are clean and awaiting storage on the remnants of the Christmas tablescape in the dining room.

The untidiness lingers because, for the first time in years, I went back to work the day after Christmas. I usually spend the day after Christmas scrubbing our home clean of the lavish celebration.

This year, remnants of Christmas morning linger two days later. And while the lights bring the tree to life this morning, it looks stale not even 48 hours after we celebrated a newborn God birthed in a barn.

Because the mess remains this year, I am pondering the Messiah mixed with our forgotten wrappings, and why Christmas tree lights fail to cast any beautiful light on this scene today.

We need the other 364 days each year to parse what it means to live now in the aftermath -- now that we know a God, who is kind, came for us, a God who, if we allow him to, will wreck us only to right us.

I don't know how to live in light of this. How can it be stale today, already?

I make coffee, pack my lunchbox with more leftovers, and sit with a book and the stark, cold, quiet of being alone downstairs, unwrapped from the warm, peace of cocooned sleep my daughters still enjoy. I'm mulling the disarming questions as I open Small Victories.

Anne Lamott is exploring her fraught relationship with her mother, and I well with tears when I read this about her mother's ashes:

So I left her in the closet for two years as I worked on forgiving her for having been a terrified, furious clinging maw of neediness and arrogance. I suppose that sounds harsh. I assumed Jesus wanted me to forgive her, but I also know He loves honesty and transparency. I don't think He was rolling His eyes impatiently at me while she was in the closet. I don't think much surprises Him. This is how we make important changes -- barely, poorly, slowly. And still, He raises His fist in triumph (pp. 140-141).

Sometimes a thing can change us in a moment. Light pierces the darkness, a baby God fulfills all the prophecies, angel hosts sing heavenly song to the earthen, and nothing is ever the same again.

But most of the time, we have to turn on the lights each cold, lonely morning and spend another day trying to figure out what it all means and how in this world we will live now in the days after knowing this benevolence. This might take some time.

It is work done humbly, poorly, barely, and work celebrated, perhaps with a fist pump, by a God who comes to us the same way.

Lament: The Best Place to Be Your Worst Self

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 22:01:00 +0000

Partly because I'm still embracing gray, and partly because I'm in a season of trial, I discovered lament. It's a facet of Christianity absent from my experience and theology. But in the midst of trial, it's proving an apt tool to process pain, frustration, anger, hopelessness, confusion, sadness, hope, love, fear, desperation, disillusionment -- all the raw emotions that accompany grief and suffering.

If I'm going to feel all these things anyway, I might as well feel them before the Lord. Exposing my worst self to God is risky and bold and dangerous. But, defiant against my fear, I expose myself nonetheless, because I can't find a safer place to do the ugly, untidy, faltering parts of faith.

That is how lament is an act of faith rather than evidence of no faith. We take the parts of life that don't seem to jive with a loving God directly to the Source and in so doing acknowledge he is, indeed, God. And going to him for answers we don't have but desperately desire implies that he has them, whether he shares them or not.

Faith isn't having it all together when we stand before the Lord. Faith is standing before the Lord as helpless and hopeless save for Him. Faith is admitting we are shockingly unsuited for this life without him. A robust faith not only embraces the lamenting of this fact but requires it and is woefully shallow and incomplete without it.

Anything and everything, big and small, that we need to grieve, wrestle with, and agonize over deserves to be grieved, wrestled and agonized in God's presence. Every single thing we need to say out loud, we should say to God.

I cannot urge you more strongly: say it to God! Even if it's borderline blasphemous and you have to apologize in humility for it later. Bravely and brazenly say it all: every bitter thing, every mean thing, every sad thing, every mangled thing, every angry thing, every unfair and unjust thing, every selfish thing. Bring them all. Empty your inadequate, unfortunate, disgraced and disgraceful self before him.

Job has taught me that God will patiently hear our grievances. Take a minute to take that in. God listens to our laments. He hears us, sees us, and knows us.

Job brought his hard questions, his suicidal thoughts, his protest, his arguments. He persisted, crying out his pain and insisting upon his innocence. God listened so well and remained so silent that Job concludes God is disastrously absent and begins to despair.

Only when Job has exhausted himself against a fearsome God does God speak. He moved from Heaven to Job's heartbreaking circumstances in the vehicle of Job's lament.

God comes to Job precisely when Job has no more fight left in him. God brings his strength to the express time and place where our strength fails. He holds us when we can't hold on anymore.

It is grace: we receive everything when we deserve nothing.

God finally gifts Job with his presence and his conversation. Job learns that God had listened all along, and then God asks more difficult questions than Job's. God's harder questions somehow reassure Job God is capable and competent. Not one of Job's words of lament tumbled out unto a deaf, mute, detached, uncaring, or unable God. They spilled out unto a God who, moved by compassion, comes close and enters our torturous circumstances and offers his intimate presence.

Job courageously voiced his agony and grievances to God and found a hard-won, long-awaited, almost-unrealized, glorious communion.

Job had heard of God with his ears, but now saw God with his eyes much like Jacob wrestled with God and limped away blessed.

So risk it. Speak your grievances to God. Wrestle with him. You will surely lose, but it's better to lose and limp forever than walk without truly knowing God. The choosing to speak openly in complaint and wrestle through lament is a choice to lose your life so you can find it.

The horrifying and harrowing paths that lead us to the end of ourselves can also wondrously lead to the Lord. And lament is the most efficient mode of travel for such treacherous terrain.

Embracing Yes

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 13:15:00 +0000

Fifteen years ago, I'd get in the car and drive Corley Mill Road from one end to the other for the fun of it. Corley Mill was a two lane road with rolling hills through a forest made up of mostly hardwoods, a novelty in the pine belt. It was also reminiscent of the woods in my New England hometown, and made me nostalgic for the leaves that canopied the narrow road and the hills I missed from Massachusetts. It was my happy place after leaving my other hometown in the deep south, where my happy place was a swing at the waterfront on the Back Bay.

Corley Mill is now the gateway to multiple subdivisions and a new high school, not even a shadow of its former self. A new swing hangs in homage to the one of my childhood on Paw Paw's property, which now belonging to my uncle.

Time does its relentless work of change.

And here I am a year from my declaration that I was boldly embracing gray. I don't know when or why I chose this arbitrary amount of time of one year to figure out my broader worldview, one that traded in black and white for all the hues of gray in between.

I have done much to explore this expansive territory and it is changing me.

I've worshipped in Anglican, Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches.
I've read academic works from both camps on what the Bible teaches about women and have become somewhat of a feminist.
I've discovered new-to-me approaches to scripture beyond systematic theology that have breathed new life into my relationship with the Bible I so love.
I've had wine with family and friends.
I've allowed myself to be seen and heard and have weight, even though it still feels like clunking around in my mother's red loafers when I was five. But I know its a good gift to give myself, so I keep trying and hoping I will grow into it.
I've left the confines of legalistic, small boundaries for complex freedom in my walk with Christ.
I bought a copy of The Book of Common Prayer to read and pray through beautiful words that Christians worldwide are reading/pondering/praying. It feels like another aspect of community, added to my personal relationship with Jesus.
We'll be opening the door this Halloween and hurrah for the candy, the costumes, and the giddy children with tired moms and dads. What was I thinking all these years?
I've added stillness, contemplation, and listening to my corporate worship repertoire of loud singing, clapping, and hand raising (the more demonstrative the better).

I thought this would be an "after" post. But this isn't a bucket list as much as it is a way of living, another beautiful discovery this past year. It didn't turn out to be a process or project with deadlines. Even this is a shade of gray and not black and white.

So instead of an "after" post, let this serve as a progress report. And long live the progress, I say. May we never stop folding gently into all the ways to live into the freedom of Christ.

My faith is no longer flat and linear. It's nuanced and multidimensional. I've pressed on hollow platitudes and formulaic approaches with small, stingy boundaries. I didn't know they would crumple to reveal a wider world full of wonder and peril, and in need of God's love, generosity and freedom.

My faith now incorporates doubt, questions, pain, fear and things I will never understand, all without taking away anything from God's worthiness of everything perfect. Because he's also deserving of my everything, including the sad, earthly-fallen parts that persist. He is the only one who knows what to do with these things, and ignoring them didn't make them go away.

I don't think I realized how hard I tried to wear blinders to those unsettled, broken parts. I did it because I didn't think they served my witness or spoke well of God. How laughable to think that I could edit my faith to protect the reputation of a fearsome and untameable God. What if the opposite is what's true: that living in victory and faith alongside the hard, unreconciled things speaks the most eloquently about God's character?

The commonality in all these things is that they are more generous and expansive than my former stances.

It takes more mindfulness to be true to God's principles in each circumstance than it was to adhere to a set of succinct rules judiciously if not smugly laid atop every situation, one size fits all. But it's also abundant and deeply satisfying, tethers me closer to my Lord, and keeps me looking and listening for him. It's more like what he said he came to bring us.

I serve a God whose every promise is yes and amen.

Linking with Addie Zierman's "Let Go and Let God" conversation today.

Worthy Reading Recs Since I Haven't Been Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 18:07:00 +0000

With family in town on the heels of a week at the beach and three days of Benadryl-induced zombie land due to a frightening allergic reaction, I've somehow managed to find and read some amazing things on the internet worth recommending.

Music, Children, and Chaos by Drew Miller for the Rabbit Room

No hints other than the title. Read Drew Miller. It will bring beauty to your life.

The Sentence I Thought I'd Never Write by Rebecca K. Reynolds
She's one of my faves. And I love this for the wounded deviation into a Protestant mainline denom, the healing that came from a five-year spiritual convalescence there and, of course, you have to know this sentence an amazing writer thought she'd never write. Redemptive, beautiful.

The Summer I Wasn't Attacked by a Shark by Kathy Warner for Image Journal

"In the surf the day after seeing Jaws again, my best friend grabs my legs, yanking me under. I thrash against her.

This time it isn't funny.

I think how most attacks happen in three feet of water. I'm in three feet, maybe four of water so green I can't see through it. I can't explain why, but if there's a shark out here—it's out to get me.

Kicking attracts sharks, so I keep still, floating without moving.

I know how to keep still, keep panic motionless."

The Plus Factor by Housewife Theologian, Amiee Byrd

It's a post that highlights two books about the biblical book of Ruth by Carolyn Curtis. Since that sounds the opposite of intriguing, here's a quote from the post that also quotes one of the books:

"if you want an amazing example of 'biblical manhood' look no further than Boaz, who 'in response to Ruth's initiatives, will subvert the very patriarchal mores that most benefit him as a man. Instead, he will sacrificially employ those e and privileges to empower Ruth and to benefit Naomi. In the process, he will put on display Jesus' kingdom brand of manhood that is desperately needed in today's world." a fascinating article, promise.

#MeToo and #ChurchToo: Time to Empower Women with Equality

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 18:52:00 +0000

I've been venturing into the gray areas, a learning experience like none other. I'm examining things I used to accept without scrutiny. I've learned a new ways to approach scripture. I'm beginning to give myself the beautiful gift of weight and space. And all the while, #MeToo happened, and then #ChurchToo, and I've been watching. This convergence of the shift inside me with the shift in society and the shift in the Church seems suspiciously not like a coincidence.

I haven't written about this aspect of my journey yet because it still feels like a work in progress. I am still searching the scriptures in this area of women's empowerment and equality. I still have much to study that will ultimately inform where I land on this issue, so this is not a definitive piece. One thing I know for sure though — my view on women and our roles is changing. And after the events of this week in the conservative evangelical church and some of the reading I've done, I want to process and document some of the shift in me here.

For starters, I can look back even further than my embracing gray confession of last fall and see fault lines becoming unstable. In about 2012 , when my daughters were in their early teens, I began thinking more earnestly about modesty, what that means for me, and what I wanted to teach my girls as they were on the cusp of womanhood. They were experimenting with make up and more mature clothing choices, learning to become themselves in the face of pressure to conform to middle school and high school norms. I wanted to give room for their curiosity and mistakes (a valid part of healthy learning). I needed to trust the spiritual and soulful training Mike and I had invested in them to that point, let them figure it out for themselves rather than dictate to them what kind of woman they would grow up to be and what positions they would hold. I wanted them to own their own beliefs, approaches to style, and senses of self-worth and self-respect. Dignity and self-respect were things I desperately wanted to communicate. Shame was something I desperately wanted to avoid. I was beginning to feel some judgment from others for what I was allowing with my girls, but I kept my struggle with the judgment private at the time, not feeling I owed anyone else an explanation. I wanted to focus on teaching this tricky issue to my daughters and have all of us come out on the other side unharmed. So I ignored the opinions of others, and instead collected my thoughts and those of others in a folder to process the subject privately. I still have those notes and may revisit them while I'm embracing gray. (Some of my thoughts on the subject bled into this piece.)

Then, during the last presidential inauguration, I thought long and hard about that powder blue suit.

These were the beginnings of my questioning and rethinking how I feel about womanhood.

I wrote my gray post, then one on new (to me) approaches to the scripture, and then on being small.

As I've continued to explore, I have found others who have voiced similar ideas about women adopting an attitude and position of being small, like this piece for Fathom Magazine by Jasmine Holmes. I also found it here, in this article by a male elementary school teacher who has witnessed firsthand how his female counterparts diminish themselves and are expected to do so by colleagues. Chimanda Ngozi Adichi touches on smallness in her TED talk entitled "The Danger of a Single Story."

I see now that my "small" experience is not unique to me as a southern woman or a Christian woman. I am watching the #churchtoo movement spread to the Church with fascination, sadness, humility, introspection, and repentance.

There is still so much work to be done.

I have revisited the complementarian view I was taught in the early 1990s by the founders of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood at the time of its inception, and find it ill-fitting, confining, restrictive, and controlling. This view is lacking in grace, human dignity and freedom, all concepts Jesus came to give freely to all. It diminishes women, regardless that they would claim otherwise. It was my experience and they cannot refute that. It makes entirely too much of our differences as men and women.

This talk by Jen Wilkin helped me to see the biblical support of emphasizing our sameness rather than our differentness. I listened three times in a row because it was water to my thirsty soul. It's what I want to teach the church ladies and our daughters. I want to empower them beyond traditional roles, just as Jesus did when he commended Mary for stepping out of the kitchen in favor of learning of him at his feet like a disciple, something only men were permitted to do at the time.

I've never studied the egalitarian view before. I am now. I know now that when I look at my own marriage, it functions much more in the vein of egalitarian regardless of the fact that we called ourselves complementarian. We make decisions together, we shoulder responsibilities together, and we acquiesce together to the best ideas, resources, hopes and dreams for our family regardless of where they originated: Mike or me, male or female. We are both completely invested in doing whatever it takes, no matter what it looks like to get the job done with as much excellence as we can muster. And if that means I take the car to the shop when Mike was in cancer treatment and if Mike does the cooking when I have a broken arm, then so be it. And if we prefer jobs that bend traditional gender roles, so what? Does it matter who takes the trash out or does the yard work or fixes the clogged sink drain?

Our differences are biological. That's what weaker vessel means: physical strength. That's it.

The Proverbs 31 woman is not an actual person. It's a list of traits for Solomon to look for in a wife. One woman cannot possibly rise early and work late into the night. She cannot possibly be a business woman selling fine fabrics at the city square and tend to her children at the same time. Proverbs 31 is a list of valuable traits given to a man for consideration. Context is important. In this case it turns everything I've ever heard about that passage on its head.

There are still passages that make me queasy, Old and New Testament alike, but maybe they don't mean what they appear to mean on their surface through modern Western eyes. Maybe historical and cultural context has been lost or ignored. Maybe those passages validate and empower women rather than diminish and constrain them. Here's a fine example explained by Wendy Alsup, author of "Is the Bible Good for Women?".

I no longer want to define myself in terms of the people I love. I'm more than a wife and a mother. I love those traditional roles and responsibilities and count them a privilege and joy. Instead I want to define myself by my humanity alone. I have a full body and brain complete with strengths, weaknesses, personality quirks, friendships, growing maturity, a sense of humor, and an introverted streak. I am a thinking, feeling, fully-engaged person. I want to be more than my gender. I want to be more than a sex appeal not to be encountered alone in any public place by a male (The Pence Rule), and I want to see men as more than a sex drive. If we see one another as brothers and sisters as the Bible teaches, we might find common ground beyond sexual attraction and be better for what we might find in those relationships. Surely we can rise above the basest forms of ourselves, and afford one another the honor and dignity each person and each gender deserves.

I am happy to see the validation of women and our rights as human beings not to be subject to abuse, discrimination, and limited educational and career options. I am happy it has begun, even if it started in the world with the #MeToo movement before it spread to the Church. Shame on us, the Church, for following instead of leading in this. I support the brave women who have come forward to lead the charge and the men and women who are listening, making changes, calling unaccountable, powerful male leaders to account, and laying the groundwork for a much healthier future for all of us moving forward.

My three children are millenials. I'm excited to see what ground their generaion will cover in terms of equity and empowerment in their lifetimes. I hope to continue sharing with my adult children all I am learning and all the ways I am refusing to be a product of the errors in my upbringing: Christian, Southern, American, and otherwise. I want to be a part of empowering them to see that women can indeed accomplish and contribute much given the freedom and empowerment in which to thrive. I want to model it for them.

Growth and paradigm change take effort and time. I will continue to seek the Lord, thankful for the promise I will find him, trusting the Holy Spirit to do his job as my teacher who lives within me. I trust this process and method of learning that God created. It was God's provision for educating and relating to his children. I will embrace it and trust it to conform me to his image in due time.

Photo Credit: Becca Tapert on Unsplash

Lent :: The Journal

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Sat, 17 Feb 2018 15:17:00 +0000

Wednesday, 14 February 2018 -- Day 1

Lent started for me when I went to the 11:00p Christmas Eve service with two friends and my son at the Episcopal cathedral. The building was beautiful, the acoustics fantastic, the choir so timelessly beautiful. I'm trying to find another word, but beauty is the right one. It was all so beautiful, as if beauty is its own thing that glorifies God. All the beauty was worship. And to know that many Christians around the world that night were experiencing the same service, hearing/reading/reflecting on the same scriptures made my individual worship take on a sense of community and oneness in the body of Christ.

It made me want to experience a liturgical Ash Wednesday service. Adrian and I went to the Anglican church at 7:00a and sat in our quiet contemplation in a sparsely filled simple but beautiful sanctuary. We sat with our sinfulness, something I rarely do. I let sin's gravity and consequence sink in with the pressed ashes to my forehead. It is good and holy to remember from where I came. It was the perfect background for a day also designated to celebrate love. And then the unspeakable, again. in Florida. And we are back, full circle, staring into the evil face of our grim depravity. Lent is the search for hope. And this is how we grieve, but not as those who have no hope.

Saturday, 17 February 2018 -- Day 4

My Lent readings from Bread and Wine have been so profound. Uncovering and dusting off the concepts of sorrow over sin and self-denial are so needed in my life. Self-discipline is a fruit of the Spirit as well as a surrender to the same Spirit. I need to walk in self-discipline more fully, more regularly, as a personal liturgy. Surrender is a Lenten sacrifice. This I have learned.

This may become an ongoing series of posts as I experience the season of Lent as someone from mostly a Christian tradition that does not interact with the Church calendar. I pray that sharing my experience will encourage others to expand their own Christian practices in whichever direction has been neglected or left unexplored.

Small :: An Embracing Gray Essay

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 18:32:00 +0000

Early on, I learned to make myself small.

I learned it through layers and repetition, slowly, in a million little ways.

I order my meal with the word "just" in front of it: "I'll just have the grilled chicken."

I apologize too quickly and for things that need no apology. "I'm sorry, could you pass the salt and pepper?" When I bump into someone in the hallway at work, it's always, "I'm sorry," and never "Excuse me."

I eat the leftovers. I play the board games with the pawn nobody wants. I go last and acquiesce to what the other person wants to do, where they want to go, what they want to talk about.

This is not a complaint, because if it were anything other than this way of compliance and chameleon camouflage, I'd be terribly uncomfortable.

I make just a quick announcement at church, sorry to take up precious time in the service as if I'm the hidden stepchild instead of the pastor's wife and the women's ministry leader.

So as not to bring attention to myself, I opt to go along with the prevailing opinion rather than to have a mind of my own. I am thankful for whatever is offered me, not wanting to be a burden. I am praised for being demur, peaceable, and quietly submissive.

Being introverted and shying away from controversy and conflict play right into this small way of life I have made.

I make myself as invisible as possible, discounting and dismissing myself time and time again. "Oh, no problem. Maybe next time."

***

Roxane Gay's book Bad Feminist was on the Campus Bestseller display table for months when I managed a university bookstore. The title intrigued me.

I picked up somewhere along the way a vague notion that feminism was bad, although I can't tell you why. I never talked about feminism or knew anyone who claimed to be a feminist. Maybe it was the rebellious nature intrinsic in feminism that cast it in a bad light for me, and I dutifully kept my distance.

What can I say? I grew up in the South under the tutelage of classy, polite, graceful, and poised female family members as role models. These are the women I love.

There wasn't a single Steel Magnolia in my life until the movie when I was new bride of 20. To date at that point in my life, those six fictitious characters were the only examples I had of unruly, unapologetic, subtly rebellious women who didn't have it all together but would die (or kill) trying to figure life out. There was nothing "just" about any of them. They were large and weighty and loveable.

But I went right back to my life and cultural norm of quiet, small, invisible.

Until Gay's book title intrigued me. Did it support feminism or not? Is a bad feminist good? What, exactly, is a bad feminist?

I never read the book -- again, too complicit to venture outside my lane.

But I did read Gay's next book, Hunger: A Memoir of My Body. Gay is a very different person than me with very different values, beliefs, and life experiences. But the writing was good, and I stayed with it. I am learning there is value in reading things I don't always agree with and hearing out an alternate point of view.

The book is Gay's statement on her relationship with her obesity. One of her coping mechanisms involved overeating purposefully, in order to become large, after she was gang raped as a girl. "I needed to take up space," she says.

After I read those words and the many ways -- both healthy and not -- Gay lived in the aftermath of being sexually assaulted, her notion of not wanting to be small still resonates in me.

The concept has taken its time to do its work, my paradigm still shifting, but I'm ready to be large, or at least the right size. Not in stature like Gay, but in value. I'm ready to value myself as equal to the value I afford others.

I'm ready to breathe the air and require resources. I'm ready for my words to have weight, my voice to be heard, my thoughts, desires, and needs to be valid. I'm ready to take up due space and time and consideration. All without apology or just as a qualifier.

I've diminished myself out of expectation, real or perceived, and it's wrong. I am finished being stingy toward myself, while generous towards others, which I have mistakenly done out of a desire to be feminine and humble. It is neither.

I am a full human being. I may have a lot of unlearning to do, but when God made humanity, he stepped back and evaluated his day's work and said it was very good. He gave his crowning creation a greater glory, which is to say he gave them weight. I'm ready to do the same.

Weekend Wanderings: Winter Words

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 07:55:00 +0000

I read so many wonderful essays this week on the internet. Wise, somber, deep, challenging words that are beautiful and speak hope and life and truth.

Addie Zierman has "been trying, lately, to figure out what it means to be hopeful in this wintering world.What does hope look like in a landscape that keeps erupting into wildfires and tsunamis, landslides and earthquakes? ... the whole world seems to be buried deep underneath the weight of winter itself."

Addie's The Grouundwater of the Soul

Nadine Schroeder wrote a stunning piece called 12 Minute Walks for Off the Page, where she explores all the things there are to forgive, and all the ways we need each other, and how it all adds up to love and many 12 minute walks. And it really did make one cohesive amazing piece of writing.

12 Minute Walks

Kaitlin Wernet's piece for Fathom Magazine about being the 20-something sister of a brother whose life was snuffed out too soon hit so close to home for me, but is also so achingly beautiful -- for everyone. "I’m no longer satisfied with putting off thoughts about heaven until I get there, not when living a life where the youngest die first and the oldest grieve most."

Only the Good

Housewife Theologian Amiee Byrd wrote a thought-provoking piece on sibling relationships between males and females in the early church and the timeless body of Christ. "For both the sake of appearances and the threat of lust and sexual impropriety, Christians are often counseled not to text, email, share a lunch, ride in a car, or even share an elevator unchaperoned with the opposite sex. Is this the way we should be seen treating brothers and sisters in the Lord? Is this how we show the love of Christ to the watching world?"

You Promiscuously Call One Another Brothers and Sisters!

I started reading the bible through, but slowly and thoughtfully with the smart and talented Rebecca K. Reynolds. This piece ties together thematically four chapters and as many mini-stories from Genesis. It is lovely and relevant and you begin to see how the one story of all of scripture is a mirror to your soul.

Rain on a Barren Land

And, finally, some spot-on analysis of The Greatest Showman. by Jenna Badeker for The Rabbit Room.
"I can enjoy the story of characters who quickly regain their footing and crow about their life “from now on.” But I truly identify with and love the stories of characters who have done their time in the trenches, who live in the tension longer than they want to before the payoff comes. This is what feels authentic. The groaning of creation. The people in the desert. The silence of God for hundreds of years. The barrenness for almost a century. A hope deferred."
She isn't hating on this movie-musical. Promise. And if it brings you down instead of ringing true, then listen to the soundtrack and you'll be instantly inspired and flying high again, because it is the feel good movie of the year.

The Greatest Showman (or at least the Fairly Decent Showman)

A New Way to Read the Bible : : An Embracing Gray Essay

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 03:18:00 +0000

I wrote a post a few months ago called Embracing Gray. I'm still on that journey, both the physical one to gray hair as well as the spiritual one that had a fuzzy, gray start sometime last year.

I'm an avid student of the word and have a deep love of scripture. I learned to speak the language of inductive study method and systematic theology in our seminary days and never looked back. Until now.

Two years ago, my co-teacher of the 3-5 year-olds Sunday school class and I decided to tie all the Bible stories together into one connected narrative with our kiddos, so they wouldn't have a bunch of random Bible stories with no anchor. We pieced together our own curriculum and unfurled a roll of butcher paper around our classroom like wallpaper border to create a timeline as we studied week by week with crayons, glue, and blunt scissors. Impressive, I know, but, honestly, it was the beginning of a seismic shift for me. I just didn't know it yet.

Anyway, we crafted our way through the usual simple versions of Bible stories and added them to our timeline and our larger story. I learned so much from stringing preschool stories together to create a different story that it was downright humbling.

What's worse is, this was my second foray into approaching the Bible as a comprehensive narrative with one cohesive story arc. A decade previously, I read through the bible in a year for the second time in my life, and like the good Precept Bible teacher I was, noticed a recurring key phrase from beginning to end. I began marking it in Exodus and sure enough I found the phrase or any number of variations clear through to Revelation: So they will know there is a God in Israel. So you will know that I am the Lord your God. Etc.

After our preschool timeline was complete, I was hungry for more, something not on the preschool level perhaps. I researched "read through" plans and audible versions of scripture, website offerings, and different approaches. As last fall approached, I toyed with the idea of asking our church's women's ministry to do it with me. I'd have everyone read on their own and meet weekly for an hour to discuss, stay on track, commiserate, and celebrate.

I opened a word document to write what turned out to be a sales pitch, that touted the value of word studies and micro-study, but then introduced the concept and benefits of macro-study. Preparing that sales pitch taught me that a telescopic view is just as valuable as a microscopic view, and a full grasp of scripture is incomplete without both approaches. In hindsight the person I was trying to sell was myself.

I dusted off what notes still survive from a college English class called Survey of the Bible as Literature I took long ago. I relearned from my state university course, that the Bible is written in basically three literary forms: Narrative, Poetry, and Prose, and the way to approach literature varies according to genre.

Poetry's purpose isn't to teach an intellectual concept by way of reason, logic and deduction. That is the aim of biblical prose. Poetry wants us to come away from it moved, affected by all the feelings. If poetry takes us to the same destination as narrative or prose, it takes an altogether different route.

Poetry's goal is to make a powerful impression through sparse language that is carefully chosen to evoke imagination and emotion. Poetry isn't conveying information as much as it is providing an experience, and narrative has its own nuances and ways of forming and informing us.

About one third of the Bible is poetry and almost half of the Bible is narrative. So all these decades I've approached 75% of God's word forcing it to be non-fiction/essay/information that I could reason out logically and apply to my life.

What if I let Biblical poetry be poetry in my Christian life? How might the cadence and rhythm and parallelism of Hebrew poetry form me spiritually? How might the piquing of my imagination and the invitation to not just hear the details of Israel's story but to enter into it move me closer to feeling the heart of God, hearing its rhythmic beat? What if instead of "knowing" Jonah was in the belly of the whale, I entered that dark, dank, desperate chamber with him in Jonah's poetic prayer?

And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights (Jonah 1:17, narrative).

Water encompassed me to the point of death,
The great deep engulfed me,
Weeds were wrapped around my head.
I descended to the roots of the mountains.
The earth with its bars were around me forever,
But you have brought up my life from the pit,
O Lord my God.
While I was fainting away,
I remembered the Lord. (Jonah 2:5-7, poetry)

See how they aren't at all the same thing? One tells the facts, while the other invites us into Jonah's distress and dire circumstances and plunges us into darkness to feel his peril then relief that that fish has saved him in one gulp. The one gives us knowledge. The other gives us an experience that affects us in a different way than does the narrative or prose. All forms of literature can do their respective work, but they only do what they do. Poetry cannot do the work of prose.

I am ready to embrace that. I'm not abandoning my systematic theology. I'm just finally expanding beyond that starting place. I'm adding to my tools for coming before the scripture and the Lord to let God mold me as he wills with it any and every way he wants to.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

(Billy Collins, excerpted from "Introduction to Poetry" from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1988)

I'm no longer interested in asking poetry to be non-fiction prose.

I'd much rather approach a burning bush that isn't being consumed and take off my shoes. I want to feel the heat, know its unending intensity, danger, and mystery up close, while standing—trembling—on exposed, bare flesh.

I no longer think reason and observation/interpretation/application are the only appropriate approaches for that. Perhaps the poetic passages are best received by sliding out of our shoes, wiggling our toes into the hot, hot earth and experiencing flesh that is somehow standing on holy ground and yet, merciful miracle beyond explanation, not being consumed.

The Week In Between

noreply@blogger.com (Dawn) — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 17:35:00 +0000

Beginnings and endings can be unexpectedly and breathtakingly beautiful.

This week between the old year and the new, I have been reflecting. A year ago, I noticed many online were reflecting using probing questions and offered printable worksheets. Because I'm a slow processor, it takes me more than a day to reflect effectively. So I printed them all out and put them on file until this December 1. I indulged in a whole month of reflection.

So rewarding. While I've never been much of a resolution person at new year, reflection was a back door into the new year as goals, things I'd like to change, start, stop, and embrace better emerged organically.

Of the many questions I pondered, there are some that deeply moved me, my perspective, or my approach. Perhaps they will do the same for you.

Q: What is missing from my life as I look back and what will I do to add it?
Q: What is the most helpful way I could strengthen our church?
Q: What one single thing that I plan to do this year will matter most in 10 years? Eternity?
Q: What habit would I most like to establish this year?
Q: If those who know me best gave me one piece of advice, what would they say?
Q: What is the single most important thing I can do to improve the quality of my work life this year?

If you want to get better at something, pay attention to it. This includes anything you want to change, quit, or add to your life.

And habits can be the training ground for our desires. Outward repetition can be the vehicle by which we learn to love what is good and right and pure. Sometimes inner change happens when what we do on the outside penetrates our core.

Doing what feels good is rarely the same thing as doing what creates good. So reflecting, soul-searching, and goals can be the path to better quality human beings. I'm counting on it this year.

While my journal reveals specifics, here are some broader themes that resulted from my month of reflecting.

Eat well.
Drink water.
Go for walks.
Read good books.
Challenge yourself intellectually and spiritually.
Care well about and for others.
Establish healthy boundaries and learn to be comfortable in the freedom that comes from limits.
Heed wise counsel.
Be wise.
Be unhurried.
Make margin space and protect it.
Be strong.
Be kind.
Be generous.
Be brave.

And finally, a few pieces I loved this week from the hinterlands of the internet.

Inside the heart and spirit of an humble leader, this essay is one man's experience, but there's so much to glean from what he learned. This is for you if leadership in your new year wheelhouse.

How Charlie Brown Saved My Ministry (Twice) by Russell Moore

If you want think pieces that will challenge the mind and the spirit, this girl theologian will hit the spot. Rebecca K. Reynolds has invited us deep thinkers to (possibly, after a two month trial run) read the Bible through the year in community on her blog and Facebook page. She's following The Bible Project's plan and videos. I can't wait. Find the details on her blog (here) and discussions on Facebook (here). And if you need proof this is not for the theologically wimpy, I invite you to get brainy and prepare yourself to be challenged and learn from a smart girl.

Before We Begin Reading the Book of Genesis by Rebecca K. Reynolds