Quiet Anthem - Renee Ronika Klug

OF LOVE AND OTHER ASTONISHMENTS :: Marriage

2012-02-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

This week would appear to be dedicated to Greg in my publishing corners, with my This Is HowWe Met contribution and this post. I do want to acknowledge how much Greg has taught me about love and other astonishments, but we’ve not so much taught each other as we’ve learned through and from each other. This has created in us unity.

For Greg and me, unity has always been imperative in the church; in marriage, it’s of course preferable to bickering, but these past few weeks have shown me how thankful I am for a husband with whom I can share, with whom I can trust.

I share and trust with Greg, not in him. We unite in sharing with each other and trusting in the One who knows us best, and our marriage is good.

We’re still walking on water, the kind whose waves don’t pacify. There’s no lapping up against a stony wall with the kind of water we’re treading; we’re in the middle of the ocean and sharks may be near. If we keep walking, we’ll find our dwelling place; if we give up, we’re as good as dead.

In walking forward, in keeping our eyes on Jesus, in not letting go of the other’s hand, Greg and I have discovered that at the moment when a decision must be made, we come to the same answer. When we saw differently in one instance, I deferred to Greg because his response was rational, and mine was emotional; once I saw past my feelings, I came to his conclusion independently.

My husband and I abide in the same Spirit, and this Spirit gives us a life where—even if we’re not sure where to go or how to get there—we go forward together.

There is confidence in being together; there is also peace.

I believe my marriage endured its greatest test (the story I’ll tell here) because, through nearly drowning, we were revived. We came to understand each other as a gift, as the person who would speak most articulately into the other’s life because it’s a shared life. By tuning into what is best in each other, we harmonize.

This is the astonishment of marriage, of any relationship: we unite when we love.

This Is How We Met :: My Series Contribution on Love

2012-02-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Leigh Kramer is my new friend, though we've never met. When we do, however, I'll enjoy trying my first fried pickle and gushing over all the things we have in common: our love for God, for books, for writing, for adventure. Join me at her blog where I share a bit about my and Greg's story. Then linger there for awhile and read the journeys of other writers in discussing how they found love.

In late summer of 2004, on the eastern end of Long Island, where celebrities came to shake off the City, and locals cast fishing lines into the Shinnecock bay, I accepted an office job that I still leave off my resume. In retrospect, I see how God works everything—even our temporary diversions—into something good.

CONTINUE READING...

OF LOVE AND OTHER ASTONISHMENTS :: Momma

2012-02-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

When I was a young girl, I used to have night-terrors, the kind where demons stared down at me while I was trying to sleep. I ran into my parents’ room nightly, cuddling in next to my mom, who made room for me on the waterbed.

In junior high, when I walked to the lunch table one afternoon, my friends announced that I—the living dead—had arrived and that all were to leave my presence. They at turns taunted or ignored me, and prank called me randomly. At the end of the school year, after I had let my bangs grow long enough to cover my face and learned to close off my heart to the need for acceptance, the ringleader grabbed my yearbook and wrote: “Renee, I’m sorry for how we treated you this year. There was no reason for it. We just picked you.”

My history teacher, Mr. Mariani, wrote this in that same yearbook: “Renee, for not having been in class half the year, you certainly did a fine job.” Although I didn’t tell my mom what the girls had done to me, she showed up on intermittent afternoons and excused me from class. We’d go to lunch, sometimes the movies, and then I’d go home and hover over my homework, ensuring each assignment would garner its “A.”

Shortly before I turned sixteen, just months after I told my parents about my secret of having been molested by two men for ten years, I went to Vegas with an older friend. I tried drugs for the first time, and I sat in a room full of people where everyone else connected, but I leaned against a wall staring out at strangers. When I returned home from the trip, I awoke one morning to my mother in my bed, holding me. She told me her dream from the night before, in which I was at a house full of strangers doing drugs. I was dying, and as my body floated to the heavens, I reached down for help.

I never touched drugs again.

A year later, my mom and I met Jesus in the fifth pew back of a church where prophets still spoke.

During my childhood, my mother was grace. She was protective but generous. She was my friend.

My mom contains anthems: her father died when she was nine; she married a man from a culture that, in many instances, doesn't recognize the value of women, especially wives; she found a God who not only became her Father and Husband, but who gave her strength in the overcoming. After my brother and I moved out of the house, my mother earned her bachelor's and master's degrees. Now, she is a hospital chaplain, a mentor to young women, a pillar in her church community.

My favorite picture of us, on my wedding day

Love is my mother’s song, the quiet hum a daughter hears whose melody sings: you are loved unconditionally. I have taught you all that I know, and I learn from you. You can tell me anything, and I will love you still.

A childhood free from parental judgment—but full of high expectations—is one that I hope to gift to my daughters. My mother may have needed me as her friend and confidant in the midst of her loneliness, but I needed her to usher me into womanhood, to show me I could communicate and be heard; I could be a friend; I could be trusted.

Though I left my hometown at 17, thinking never to return, I ache now for the desert oasis, where lives my mom—where she’s been her entire life—who can stand by me as I escort my daughters into womanhood, into freedom, into an astonishing future full of grace.

1978

2011

OF LOVE AND OTHER ASTONISHMENTS :: God

2012-02-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

I’m from a Christian background that encourages believers to avoid alcohol, promiscuity, Lucky Charms cereal, and unicorns. The heart behind these aversions aims for holiness: drunkenness leads to debauchery; promiscuity to the grave; Lucky Charms to witchcraft; unicorns to paganism. Jesus, however, claims no one is good but God alone. Jesus reminds us of God’s goodness because God is good.

I spent the early part of my twenties forgetting about God’s goodness; my concern was being holy. I unwillingly ditched my “unrighteous” friends lest I be shunned by my then-church. I gained forty pounds because there was no way God cared out my health or well-being; He cared about my obedience! I stuffed who I was as a person to be like every other Christian who has forgotten that God loves her. I shrank into silence and shame. I had nothing left to give.

The emerging—as if from a cocoon—occurred over the past two years, in my husband’s and my entrance into grace. Together we discovered that focusing on sin and shame and obedience led only to our sinning in shame and disobedience—and subsequently feeling separated from God, ourselves, and each other.

We didn’t want our daughters to live like prisoners in a religion that is meant to set us free. Even though I’ve maintained friendships with “sinners” (like Jesus did, but don’t tell anyone), it occurred to me last week how thankful I am that I can share my faith openly in my writing and on social networking sites. Likewise, I cherish that many of my secular-minded friends feel at ease sharing their ideas openly with me without fearing my retort.

Last week, this sentiment compelled me to post this status update on my private Facebook page:

I love that I have friends across the spectrum—from fiercely conservative to left of liberal. I don’t have any right wing friends, though. They all unfriended me because I wouldn’t sic Jesus on all the sinners. True story.

In the comments, I qualified some language; by “fiercely conservative” I should have said “firmly,” and meant people who share beliefs quietly, with respect and dignity. “Quietly” referred to those who don’t spam Facebook and e-mail, rally around with picket signs, or bandy about guilt trips. They don't spit at others with a religious/political vitriolic spirit, with constant reminders of Sodom and Gomorrah and other possible outcomes for those who think differently.

The difference, I told my Facebook friends, was love. Jesus may well have been a firm conservative, but He still went out of His way (think the Samaritan and the Centurion) to recognize the best in people. He did get mad sometimes, though, at the religious/political vituperation (think Pharisees and holier-than-thous).

We had a healthy dialogue going, several “likes,” most people offering reasons as to why the religious right acts like it does (many assume “judge not” doesn’t apply to them). I even had a former creative writing student chime in that this was the best status update he had read—ever. I asked him if I could get a Pulitzer for it.

And then this post appeared in the strand:

You do not have sic Jesus on the sinners, they do it them selfs. John 3: 18

My legalistic past rushed forward to choke the life from me. Instead of feeling strangled, I quietly typed:

”...but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). I sic Jesus on myself a lot. Then He holds my hand and calls me ”daughter” and reminds me that I am forgiven and made wholly righteous in Him. Oh, how He loves us.

A Jewish friend commended me for my attitude, to which the author of the John 3:18 comment wrote:

Remember, G-d said "Jacob I love, Esau I hate".

It went back and forth with the above commenter and several other friends, some offering Scriptures in fairer (and larger) contexts, with the commenter flinging back random scriptures beholding God’s wrath. I felt the weight of my fingers as I typed:

Well, at least I know what I'm going to blog about next. I'll not comment again here. But I will seek to speak the truth in love.

That was the penultimate end to the conversation, with my dear friend from grad school pointing to her picture and concluding with this:

<---atheist liberal and supporter of Renee Ronika Klug.

Jesus was rebuked for dining with “sinners”; He reasoned this was because it is the sick, not the healthy, who need a doctor.

When Christians hurl the dirt of shame and pour the sludge of condemnation on “sinners”—including atheists, homosexuals, Muslims, the Chinese, wine drinkers, movie watchers, and J.K. Rowling fans—they represent the same religious spirit as that of nineteen men before flying aircraft carriers into prominent American buildings.

According to the Bible, Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy. If we come against evil, it should be the satanic spirit of evil, not the people who are bound by it. In every interaction Jesus had with people warped by demons, illness, or self-sufficiency, they were healed of and not condemned for their maladies.

On Facebook, I followed up with the dissenting commenter in a private message about what the “Jacob, love; Esau, hate” reference meant. The response I received was that God does not love everyone.

If God does not love everyone, then how can He call Himself “love”? Why does Scripture say that God wishes none would perish but that all would have eternal life?

I will make clear that I do believe Jesus sets a standard of righteousness that will bring out the best in His children; we’ll operate in love, live healthy lives, and reveal the true nature of God to others.

Because only God is good, humans can only obtain such goodness—or righteousness, or holiness—by believing in the One whom God sent, and by allowing the Spirit sent by Jesus to fill our lives and motivate our behavior.

In doing this, we’ll bring Heaven to earth. Inasmuch as it is impossible to have Paradise in a fallen world, Christians are destined to reflect God’s character—which is Paradise.

I will also assert that no one can reflect God’s character without love; if God is love, it thus becomes impossible to reflect God without God. Those who are separated from Him—“sinners”—may behave “badly” simply because they have no other way to express their pain. If they know a God who loves them exists, that this God is the One True God of the Universe, then they can be healed.

They can be free.

If more Christians understood this very God, they too could be free.

It’s astonishing.

*photo credit: ournestoflove.blogspot.com

OF LOVE AND OTHER ASTONISHMENTS :: Eva, My Daughter

2012-02-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

When I discovered I was pregnant with Eva, I thought the pregnancy wouldn’t last its course. I feared disaster. Death had surrounded us that season—early 2010—when too many infants had died, and too many women mourned over miscarriages.

I was already mourning a different kind of personal near-death: my marriage had been Lazarus, dead and rotting in its tomb until being beckoned forth by Jesus. When the ultrasound tech announced Eva’s conception date, my husband and I smiled at each other over the white hue of the monitor; we had conceived her the night we renewed our vows to one another.

Eva’s name means life.

In the aftermath of trauma, when wounds still oozed and the psyche was still on alert for devastation, I worried over the pregnancy, fearing I would lose this baby, that something would be wrong, that I was being called as a fellow-sufferer.

Either way, I had to know, so I went before my God and asked Him for a Scripture for this child. “Lord,” I prayed, “whatever the outcome, speak to me so I don’t live in this fear anymore.”

I heard “Psalm 121.” I opened my Bible and read:

1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains—

where does my help come from?

2 My help comes from the LORD,

the Maker of heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot slip—

he who watches over you will not slumber;

4 indeed, he who watches over Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The LORD watches over you—

the LORD is your shade at your right hand;

6 the sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon by night.

7 The LORD will keep you from all harm—

he will watch over your life;

8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going

both now and forevermore.

Eva’s middle name is Samara—“the Lord is my protector.”

She arrived a week later than I had anticipated. When she came at last, the lights in the delivery room had been turned low, and Dr. O’Neil suggested twice that I “give a little push” before Eva emerged, without sound, with the umbilical cord choking her. They ushered her away from me, and I remembered God’s promise to me: in life or in death, He would protect my daughter.

Eva turns one this week. Ariel’s first year may have helped me in establishing my identity as a woman, but Eva’s first year has helped me in establishing the Lord’s identity in me.

On afternoons like today, while I write, I listen to Eva chattering. When she catches me staring at her, she stops, rises to her knees, lifts up her arms, and cheers. Eva laughs often. She screams only when we put her down when she’d rather be cuddling. She’s feisty in a way that reassures me she’ll never be anyone’s doormat. Once, an entire box of toys fell on her head; without wincing, Eva started playing with them as if they were her gift—fallen from a generous Heaven.

In Eva there is love waiting to be wholly expressed. People will be changed in her presence.

Eva, my daughter—my curious and observant reminder of peace—your affection is not just your gift, but mine. Eva, your life has silenced the death in me and speaks forth hope, a resurgence of what was lost but has since been found. Eva, my patient daughter, my victor, my surprise, you have shown me the Father’s love.

I need you, my Eva girl, though I never knew it. Through you I will grow stronger. Through you I will experience life satisfied.

You will stand strong all the days of your life. You will know your purpose was birthed in Heaven well before your life on earth began. My daughter, my Eva, my precious little girl, because of you I stand in quiet astonishment.

photo by Darci Hullah

Guest Post: AT THE LORD'S TABLE (on UNITY)

2012-02-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

Preston Yancey is hosting a beautiful series on the church called #ATLT, At the Lord's Table: A Conversation, and today I have the privilege of being a contributor. My piece is on unity. I hope you're as moved reading it as I was writing it. Please stick around on Preston's site to read others' posts on the church.

That They May Be One

“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

- John 17:23, ESV

The first time I felt the glory of God, I was at a small Catholic church in Mesa, Arizona. A black woman—a bellowing alto—sang “Amazing Grace” while I wept under the power of a Jesus I did not yet know.

Years later, after believing and committing to this Jesus, I worshipped Him at a charismatic prayer gathering in London, England. I knew little about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but a girl prophesied God’s response to questions I had asked Him in quiet desperation earlier that day. I came to know Jesus as a responsive God.

Punctuation: Rules to Write By

2012-01-30T23:30:00.001-07:00

I'm gifting to you here one of my sacred texts: an English teacher's double-sided handout for her students. You'd love my punctuation lecture; I actually make it interesting. Perhaps I'll record myself for my first v-blog (ha!). Feel free to print and use this, but don't forget to give me credit. Happy writing—and editing. Here's to overcoming any grammatical deficiency.

THE COMMA

6 Rules

1. Use a comma when connecting two COMPLETE sentences; use a comma before the following “coordinating conjunctions”: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so (remember them as FANBOYS ).

I haven’t finished my research paper, and it’s already four o’clock in the morning.
We argue about this issue all the time, but we usually manage to come to a fair agreement.
She hasn’t traveled on a plane in years, so she’s a bit nervous to take this trip to Australia.

2. Use a comma when separating three or more items in a series.

I have visited London, Paris, and Rome.

The comma before the and connecting the last two items of a series is optional; however, most instructors prefer students to use it. Remain consistent throughout papers.

When separating adjectives, ask whether the word and could be used between them. If so, a comma can replace the and:

The tall, colorful bookcase adds to the room’s personality.

For addresses and dates, put a comma around every item, including the last:

Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, and was given the name Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

3. Use a comma when a sentence begins with an introductory expression (whether a word, a phrase, or a dependent clause), or before a comment or question added to the end.

Wisely, the girl thought to patent her invention before marketing it.
After the last snowstorm, I spent an hour shoveling the driveway.
Once I figure out what my class schedule is for next semester, I’ll find a job.
He’s the one with the crooked smile, right?

4. Use a comma when addressing a person in the middle of a sentence.

We congratulate you, Ravi, for winning the spelling bee.

5. Use a comma when using expressions that interrupt the flow of the sentence (for instance: however, moreover, therefore, of course, by the way, on the other hand, I believe, I think).

She can, however, stay at my house if she’s too tired to drive home.
Your paper, by the way, was intriguing.
What the congresswoman said about health care reform, I believe, is right on.

6. Use a comma when including non-essential information (details that are not necessary) in a sentence.

Natalie Portman, who won for Best Actress this year, will award the Oscar to next year’s Best Actor recipient.

The clause who won for Best Actress this year is not needed in this sentence because the subject, Natalie Portman, is clearly stated.

The woman who won for Best Actress this year will award the Oscar to next year’s Best Actor recipient.

The clause who won for Best Actress this year is now necessary because the subject, the woman, is not specific. Without it the sentence would read: “The woman will award the Oscar to next year’s Best Actor recipient.” It would be unclear which woman is awarding the Oscar.

THE SEMI-COLON

A semi-colon separates TWO COMPLETE SENTENCES that are UNIFIED in thought.

Jacob needed to get at least a 600 on his verbal GRE to get into an Ivy League graduate school; he will start at Harvard this fall.

When separating two sentences while using a transition (however, nevertheless, therefore, hence, thus, etc.), place the transition after the semi-colon and always place a comma after the transition:

Keturah has seven sisters; nevertheless, her parents still hope to have a son.

NOTE: The semi-colon is like a period, not a comma. People use the semi-colon because of its illusion of intellectual grandeur; incidentally, their using it incorrectly has the opposite result.

THE COLON

A colon follows a complete sentence to introduce a series of items or to follow the sentence with a definition, quotation, or bold statement.

These are my favorite books: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fizgerald, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, and The Complete Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway.
My answer to your question remains the same: no.

Add a semi-colon to the mix when you are including lengthy information (Example 1) or additional information separated by commas (Example 2):

These literary pieces address the parent-child dynamic through various narrative devices: Raymond Carver’s essay “My Father’s Life” tells his and his father’s story chronologically; Annie Dillard’s memoir excerpt “Terwilliger Bunts One” imparts her mother’s lessons using vibrant examples; John Edgar Wideman’s short story “Weight” discusses his fears of his mother’s passing through consistent use of metaphor.
This is my week’s workout routine: Monday, chest and back; Tuesday, biceps and triceps; Wednesday, legs; Thursday, shoulders; Friday, abs.

THE DASH

A dash (or em-dash) interrupts a sentence by adding further detail (Example 1); it may also substitute a comma in the case a series of items are used within the dashes (Example 2). It often is seen as stronger and less obtrusive than parentheses ( ).

The problem with the dash—as you may have noticed!—is that it discourages truly efficient writing. It also—and this might be its worst sin—disrupts the flow of a sentence. Don’t you find it annoying—and you can tell me if you do, I won’t be hurt—when a writer inserts a thought into the midst of another one that’s not yet complete? (Noreen Malone, “The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em-Dash”)
The striking colors of her house—burgundy, amber, and green—reflect her ethnic heritage.

NOTE: An em-dash is different from an en-dash (or hyphen) because em-dashes punctuate sentences whereas en-dashes punctuate words (“sister-in-law”). They are named as such because an em-dash is longer, like the letter “m”; the en-dash, like the letter “n.”

______

Created by Renee Ronika Klug, spring 2012.

Primary reference: Glazier, Teresa Ferster and Paige Wilson. The Least You Should Know About English. 7th ed. Boston: Heinle and Heinle, 2002.

Photo Credit: dweebist.com

There is Now No Condemnation

2012-01-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

“To express an unfavorable or adverse judgment on; to pronounce to be guilty; to judge or pronounce to be unfit for use or service.”

-“Condemn,” Dictionary.com

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

-Romans 8:1 (ESV)

I am overwhelmed by the love of God, by Christ’s appearance on earth as a servant, as the Son of God who fulfills the law, who takes away the sin of the world, who offends all stereotypes. He offers us hope of redemption without condemnation.

Jesus fulfills a law that He knows we are unable to obey. By abiding in Him, we therefore fulfill the law with Him. This is grace. All is grace.

Jesus wants you to know that He knows. He understands the areas in which you doubt, struggle, curse, bemoan, bless. Nothing is lost on Him. You are not lost to Him. And He can be found in the quiet solace of your walk at noon, in the steady rhythm of sleep, in the chaos of your day, when you finally look up from the busy and consider your heart.

You need to remember one thing to be reconciled to your Creator, to hear the voice of God: you are not condemned.

There is nothing you can do to remove yourself from His love. To return, to remain, in His presence, the only requirement is belief. He died, He rose again. He forgives your sins. He lives in you.

He wants to heal you, bless you, and make you the person He created you to be. Your desires will be realized through Him.

If you doubt any of this, about yourself or about Jesus, remember this: Jesus did not condemn the woman caught in adultery; the woman at the well; Zacchaeus the tax collector; even Judas the backstabber. Instead, Jesus invited them into His life; He conversed with them; He even dined with some. He gave them the opportunity to turn from whatever sins bound them. They chose their fate once they experienced His grace.

So it is with us.

*Eye Photo Credit: kaynijo.wordpress.com

God in the Dark: on Hope

2012-01-18T10:10:00.001-07:00

This post is part of a synchroblog at Provoketive Magazine.

Gustav Klimt, "The Tree of Life"

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

-Proverbs 13:12

Sometimes at night, after my husband is heavy with sleep, and the girls in their cribs are turned just so—Ariel on her side; Eva on her belly—I sit alone on the couch, in the dark, and wait for the waking presence of my God.

He is the revelatory God, the One who speaks to me holy secrets, who ushers me forward into territory I’ve dreamed about but have never entered.

He says it’s time.

Sometimes in the dark, while I’m on the couch, I tell Him the power is too much; His presence is overwhelming.

He reminds me of where I had been—mangled, lonely, beaten down, cast aside. He tells me I am no longer in the hands of men, but engraved upon the palm of the God who breathed forth the universe with a sigh of relief.

In Him all things move and breathe and have their being.

Still I tremble. I tell Him if I let it all go to Him—everything I’ve lost; all that I’ve found—I may not be prepared for the hurt.

While in a circle of women who lay hands on me and pray, who prophesy words from my God in the dark, they remind me that when I gave everything over to Him in 2010, the week before I learned my marriage may be over, it was God’s fullness in me that remained. Without it, I would have experienced the same circumstances, empty.

God asks us to give Him everything so when we have nothing left, we are still full.

Now, in the dark, on nights when everyone but me is heavy with sleep, God appears and asks me to come with Him.

I tell Him I’m afraid of my dreams coming true. I run through the dark into my bedroom and wrap my arms around my husband, the one whom God restored and returned. My husband opens his eyes and smiles. He kisses me as he journeys back into sleep, and I am left in the dark again, waiting with my God.

My circle of women reassure with bold gestures and wide smiles that God is waiting to fulfill something in me; He is not here to hurt me.

My wounds would have happened anyway, they say, but with God, they were overcome.

My fists no longer force closed before the throne of the living God.

Late last night, with morning close on the horizon, I lay awake next to my husband who was heavy with sleep. I sat up with arms extended to a Heaven that no longer shrinks me.

Here I am, Lord. Send me.

Instead of the earthquake, the tearing of a veil that has already been removed, the peace of God rested upon me. It was heavy with meaning, with purpose that will come as I keep my hands lifted, as I walk beside my husband, as I carry my daughters, as I prophesy over circles of women.

There in the dark, in the quiet heavy of night, hope slumbered no more.

Please share your thoughts—or blog post—on hope in the comments below or on the Provoketive site. Don't forget to read the other blog posts on hope, too:

The Trouble With Hope: John Ptacek

Hope = Possibility x Imagination: Wayne Rumsby

Little Reminders: Mike Victorino

Where Is My Hope: Jonathan Brink

Hope for Hypocrites: Jeremy Myers

Now These Three Remain: Sonny Lemmons

Perplexed, But Still Hopeful: Carol Kuniholm

A Hope that Lives: Amy Mitchell

Generations Come and Generations Go: Adam Gonnerman

Demystifying Hope: Glenn Hager

Keeping Hope Alive: Maurice Broaddus

Are We Afraid to Hope?: Christine Sine

On Wobbly Wheels, Split Churches and Fear: Laura Droege

Adopting Hope: Travis Klassen

Hope is Held Between Us: Ellen Haroutunian

Hope: In the Hands of the Creatively Maladjusted: Mihee Kim-Kort

Paradox, Hope and Revival: City Safari

Good Theology Saves: Reverend Robyn

Linear: Never Was, Never Will Be: Kathy Escobar

Better Than Hope: Liz Dyer

Caroline for Congress: Hope for the Future: Wendy McCaig

Fumbling the Ball on Hope: KW Leslie

Content to Hope: Alise Wright

Hope: Oh, the Humanity!: Deanna Ogle

Hope: Sonnie

This is What It Feels Like to Walk on Water: Step One

2012-01-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Source: wutske.deviantart.com

Psalm 112

We’re not in Phoenix yet. We’re still in Colorado, where the air is brisk and cold enough to force fingers into fists. My ears hurt after being outside for too long. The pond at the park across the street is frozen; ducks walk across the ice to the bird sanctuary isle at its center.

We’re walking on water of a different kind. Like Peter, so long as we keep our eyes on Jesus, we’ll keep our footing.

Our plan was to have arrived in Phoenix today in order for us to have started teaching next week. But we hadn’t heard back from colleges—or so we believed. I had indeed been offered a full load of classes, but that email notification was sent to junk mail. I received it early this week. All was not lost: there are late start classes available—in mid-March.

Our plan was set: there was no point in moving to Phoenix in medias res: Greg will finish his dissertation here, and we plan to move in late February. In March, I’ll begin teaching in Phoenix. Plus, Greg may begin a promising—but still under wraps—composing opportunity.

In the meantime, I’d stay home with the girls and write.

Yesterday, while at the grocery store, I pushed through the aisles with the cart—heavy with the weight of the girls and reluctance. It was difficult negotiating what to put in the basket: should I buy blueberries if they’re not essential? What about orange juice? Afterwards, putting gas in the car had never felt so draining: as each number of the price ticked up, I could hear the coins exiting our bank account.

It’s entirely disconcerting spending money when none is coming in.

I had posted on Facebook our March plans, and my former boss jokingly offered me some classes. I texted her to see about the joke, and she gave me two classes—from 8-10 in the mornings—starting now. My contract will be over the last week of February.

We have gas money after all.

My One Word 2012

2012-01-05T15:56:00.000-07:00

Discover

If there’s one thing I’ve learned this past year, it’s that I still have a lot to learn. If there’s another, it’s that in order to receive any education in whatever misinformed area, I have to be willing not only to involve but to extend myself.

On Discovering, Part I: Involving Myself

I experienced a tremendous inner healing in 2011 that released me from what had been a debilitating self-hatred—brought to me by the cohorts Taking Everything Personally and Expecting Defeat. With obnoxious irony, my innate perfectionism sabotaged my ability to do anything right.

By swift arbitration brought to me by the very big God, His ever-loving son Jesus Christ, their enormously handy Holy Spirit, a collective gathering of trustworthy spiritual counselors, and Greg, I matured out of believing that everyone—including God—was out to bamboozle me, and that my life would result in nothing but thwarted promises and dead dreams.

But last week, while in New York, I had some flare-ups, reminders that although I’ve come a long way, I’m still not quite there: essentially, things had not worked out as I had planned during three separate instances, and the result of each occurrence would have ordinarily sent me hiding, where only nursing and diaper changes would have compelled me away from my funk. All three situations tested my emotional maturity.

The catalyst for each flare-up was an unexpected external force, something out of my control, invading a situation that I believed I had under control.

Thrice my high expectations were compromised by others’ behavior, and I had a choice: allow myself to be taken asunder as usual and choose defeat, or rise up and make the situation better.

It was an uneven victory—I left the room twice, but didn’t fall apart emotionally either time (!). Where I won was in acknowledging a still apparent emotional vulnerability and deciding to identify and address it.

In 2012, I choose to remain emotionally aware in order to continue maturing into a person who is stable yet still teachable.

On Discovering, Part II: Extending Myself

I’m not alone in my struggles. While in New York, after I had gotten my feelings hurt and left the room on one occasion, I tried to avoid a person by whom I felt judged when I saw him at church the following day.

He chased us out to the car—I had already closed the door and buckled my seatbelt in my supposed victorious escape—and he asked me to roll down my window. He apologized for something he had done out of emotional immaturity. I mentioned my behavior. Turns out, neither of us had even caught on to the other’s blunder; we were too wrapped up in our own shame.

We exchanged forgiveness, and he told me not to unbuckle my seatbelt as he leaned in the car to hug me.

I’ve learned to be aware of judgmental people’s tactics, their way of pushing their insecurities on others. Judgmental people aren’t my concern.

What concerns me are people who are mature enough to recognize they don’t get it the first time every time; they struggle with insecurities; they eat too many cookies when they’re trying to lose a few pounds; sometimes they yell, “Sh*t!” before saying, “Lord, help me.”

These people are my friends and, in 2012, I want to unite for and with them to see them healed in newer, more profound, ways.

I trust they’ll reciprocate my gesture.

In 2012, Eva will turn one; Ariel will be three; Greg will experience his last year in his twenties; I’ll be 35. We’ll be in a new, but totally familiar, city where we still don’t know what to expect. When will we actually move? Where will we work? Will the scorpions stay out of the house?

There’s so much to be discovered.

With Eva at Montauk Point, in search of the deep blue somewhere

What do you hope to discover in 2012? Or, what’s your One Word 2012? If you’ve written a One Word 2012 post, feel free to link up here in the comments.

2011: the Year of Blooming

2011-12-29T06:16:00.002-07:00

The week after I gave birth to Eva last February, I attended our church, which has an open Heaven above it. A lady approached me and, after speaking some healing words to me, prophesied: "2010 was a year of brokenness, but 2011 will be the year of restoration, of your realizing some of your dreams."

She was right.

I'm blooming because of what 2011 restored. After years of shrinking back, of believing no one cared about what I had to say, I say it anyway now.

In 2012, I plan to continue pursuing my writing goals, which include publishing regularly online and finishing my spiritual memoir. I hope to impart wisdom and knowledge to my daughters. By this time next year, Eva will know her ABCs and Ariel should be able to write them. I plan to have the most fun I've ever had with Greg. I look forward to being near my Phoenician family, where I expect a total lifestyle change since Greg—who will be a doctor of arts!—and I will have some relief. I anticipate discovering a church community in Phoenix, where I can watch others flourish personally and spiritually alongside me and my family.

May this new year lead you to serendipitous beginnings, to full restoration, to greater strength. I pray you would seek and find your calling. I speak forth to you the overcoming life, the joy that fulfilling your true potential brings.

I hope that by reading my words you have been encouraged on your own journey—at whatever point you may find yourself.

May 2012 find you in bloom.

Happy New Year from us

What is your deepest hope or goal for 2012?

How I Met My Husband: Happy 5th Anniversary

2011-12-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

Self-portrait by Gregory Klug

I saw Greg from across the room in Wood Hall at Southampton College. I could see his eyes were blue—cerulean, floods the room with light, eyes. I approached him after the Campus Crusade meeting and asked him about his major, business administration, and his passion, starting his own paper. He told me about his vision, and as he listed those pursuits he hoped to achieve, I noted that in every area, I had been trained.

It was the first time I had met somebody with a shared vision. It got even worse from there.

He came to my house for a Bible study shortly thereafter. We were standing in the dining room, and he started talking about C.S. Lewis, the idea of Heaven. He was answering questions I had asked myself the day before.

I interrupted him during his second quotation from The Abolition of Man and asked, “Wait. How old are you again?”

Nineteen.

I was twenty-five. I was teaching a section of the English class he was currently taking. I crushed my crush and never thought about Greg again.

It was heart-breaking, and I mentioned to God how thrilled I was to have met the man of my, clearly impossible, dreams.

Two years later, after I had broken up with a man whom I distracted myself with to distance myself from Greg, I got a phone call. I had hoped that it was my ex-boyfriend, calling to ask me to the movies, vowing his faithfulness and wishing me back. Instead it was Greg, calling to ask me to the movies, vowing nothing more than good conversation and friendship.

We saw The Bourne Supremacy and began a friendship there on the eastern end of Long Island built on double kayaking the bay before jumping over the dunes to dive into the ocean, and family dinners at his house. I fell in love with his broad shoulders and his parents.

Then I decided to move back to Phoenix.

I had come to New York for a master’s degree and had stayed well beyond graduation to teach, to find myself. Someone had told me I would meet my husband in New York, something I vaguely believed.

As I closed the door to the U-Haul truck, I turned to Greg and said, “If I ever get married, you’re going to have to shake my husband’s hand. It’s because of you that I don’t hate men.”

And then I left West, never anticipating to see Greg again.

But he visited for Christmas, and then for Spring Break. He decided to stay with my family for a summer in Phoenix. By fall, he was no closer to figuring out what to do with his future, so I asked him this question: “If money were not an option and you could be doing anything to make it, what would you be doing?”

He said music.

“Then that’s what you should pursue.”

Hunky Greg on keys

I visited him and his family for Christmas—it felt natural—and we kissed for the first time on New Year’s Day, 2006.

Times Square on New Year's Eve, 2005

He accompanied me to a wedding in Northern California that March, on a trip where our future still wasn’t certain. The idea of marrying each other did not seem an issue. The answer was decidedly no.

I told Greg this was it; our friendship would end here. I would be 29 soon, and the idea of not having a family amplified the hollow ache within.

We stopped talking for months. Greg sent me a gift for his birthday. I sent nothing.

When I felt to call Greg in June, what he may say to me terrified me; I deserved rebuke for having dismissed him so callously, but instead I received a confession: “Renee, I love you, and I want to marry you.” Greg had realized during our separation that he didn't want to live the rest of his life without me.

Words escaped me, possibly for the first time ever. I didn’t want to tell Greg I felt the same way when I didn’t, yet. I had buried those feelings for him, and it was up to Jesus to resurrect them. By the end of July, I told Greg I loved him and would marry him if he asked. Committing the rest of my life to the man whose character I admired above anyone else's was freeing.

In August, on his way from New York to Colorado to pursue a graduate degree in music composition and theory, he detoured to Arizona.

We escaped to Prescott and spent the day at Goldwater Lake. I fought sadness that day, mainly because I still wasn’t sure if Greg still meant what he had said in June.

Just before we were going to find a place to have dinner, Greg hugged me to reassure me that everything was going to be okay. In an act that I had never done before or have not done since, I put my hand into his back pocket. “Why is your cell phone—” I realized the square object I was touching was not his cell phone.

Greg pulled away from me and ushered me into the car. He jumped into the driver’s seat and peeled away from the curb, racing back toward Phoenix. “Greg, what are you doing?”

He stopped the car in the middle of the highway and began driving in reverse. He pulled over, raced to the passenger side, and picked me up. He began to run in the darkness, the light from his cell phone led the way. We reached the top of a hill before Greg set me down.

He knelt and looked up at me, “I’ve spoken to your father, and I received his blessing. Renee Ronika Bhatti, will you marry me?”

When I was in college during the late-nineties, people asked me often why I never dated. I didn't feel the need to tell them that I thought the idea of dating was a sham, an inauthentic way to get to know someone I likely wouldn't marry anyway. To shut them up, I told them that my husband was still in junior high, and I was waiting for him to grow up.

I hadn't realized I was prophesying my fate.

Engaged

Three months later, on a December day unlike all the others, we got married under a big, white tent where our friends and family gathered in witness.

Married

Witnesses

We flew to Fiji on the 24^th, arriving on the 26^th, with Christmas getting lost in the sky.

Fiji

We moved to Colorado, together, in January, where I knew we would be for the next five years.

I knew we would have a daughter, but I never imagined we’d have another so soon—our double blessing.

Daughters

Greg and I are back in New York this Christmas, five years later, where we shared our first kiss—where our friendship was set on fire.

Read the essay I wrote for our wedding program.

Why I Believe in Jesus

2011-12-15T08:43:00.001-07:00

"I would dearly like to know how you developed such a giant faith. I am really struggling. Not with my faith (big picture) but with believing [that] the every day God gives a sh*t about me. I know this is too full of self pity and definitely buoyed by my depression but I feel so lost. to. God. And worthless.”

-A Quiet Anthem reader

My first encounter with the living God was like that of Moses’. In August of 1995, right before a woman in church approached me to prophesy over me, I felt a fire that burned but did not consume me. It initially terrified me, but then I realized it was God and felt astonishing peace. I was 17-years-old. The prophetess spoke to me secrets she could never have known; she told me God saw what I had been through. She reassured me that not only was He going to do a lot of good things to me but much more through me.

John’s Gospel takes us to Samaria, where Jesus speaks with a woman at a well. She is adulterous but, in the presence of Jesus, her shame vanishes. After her conversation with Jesus, in which He speaks out her secrets, she rushes to town to tell people of the Messiah: “Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me all that I ever did’" (John 4:39 ESV).

What the prophetess didn’t know about me on that summer day was that I wanted to kill myself. After my parents had confronted a perpetrator for sexually abusing me, I was accused of being a liar. But God acknowledged the abuse in my conversation with the prophetess. He pointed out my greatest need: to be heard, to be rescued.

I spent the rest of that day knowing I had a purpose, a life that could not be blotted out by suicide.

In response, I went to Bible school; I obeyed God at every turn: listening to His voice, avoiding alcohol and sinners, remaining a virgin until marriage, putting aside some dreams for new dreams I later discovered were my calling. I did everything a Christian was supposed to do. Of some choices—like the sex and the dream fulfillment—I still feel proud.

When I finally stopped fighting for my salvation, when I pacified the wildfire that dictated I had to be perfect or else be labeled a failure, I saw Jesus.

Next to him stood Satan, nullifying in my own mind everything Jesus represented.

In deciding whom I was going to believe—the Jesus who gives grace, or Satan who accuses—I understood the real Jesus, the one who stands apart from mere religion, is without condemnation.

Believing in Jesus includes a recognition of His enemy, Satan. For me, understanding and fighting against Satan’s tactics, which directly oppose the Lord’s best intentions, is key to my overcoming depression, rejection, or the overwhelming sense of failure that sometimes plagues me.

The ultimate source of my faith is my perception of Jesus. He’s not like most people claim He is. He’s much more loving than I ever imagined. He also doesn’t judge us as harshly as we judge ourselves or others.

Jesus does not hate anyone—homosexuals, adulterers, addicts, Muslims, you, or me.

He does call everyone into repentance, though. Repentance of our sins frees us from oppression, just the same as with our forgiving others. We have greater power to forgive when we have been forgiven. I walk in a spirit of repentance and forgiveness not as a form of self-abasement, but as a response to the overcoming life. I need grace. Grace is the resurrected, living Jesus, who is seated beside God the Father, championing every person to fulfill her destiny.

Jesus is our intercessor. He prays for us. He knows our deepest wound and, what’s more, He knows how to heal it.

I am a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of two men; verbal and physical abuse by alcoholic family members; bullying by children during my youth for my ethnic appearance and adults during my womanhood for my faith; corrupt Christianity in its legalism and control, its judgment and condemnation, its avoidance of the issues that require honesty; and the greatest test of a marriage, in which I endured the uncertainty of not knowing whether or not I would birth my second daughter as a single mother.

For every theft, each scar, any lie, and all the betrayals, my Jesus took me back to each memory and spoke over me the reality of where He was during that incident and my value through His eyes: when my heart broke during every occasion of my forsaken childhood and sullied adulthood, Jesus’ heart broke, too.

I am not alone.

And neither are you.

I know depression. I know fear. I understand what it’s like to feel far away from God.

I’ve had the sh*t kicked out of me. I’ve watched my life fall apart before my very eyes while I stood wondering where in the seemingly abandoned universe the God I had served so faithfully was.

In being honest with myself, with my God, and with others, I had to face not just the horrors that had been done to me against my will but also the lies I chose to believe as a result of negative experiences.

I believe in Jesus not because He makes life easy. I believe in Jesus because He gives life its truest worth. He brings value to that which has been bankrupted.

The revelation that God exists—not just as an ethereal entity, but as a caring, loving, all-knowing consciousness—is the bedrock of my faith. What had occurred in my life before my conversion to Christianity, and particularly what was to come after it, could not unearth my knowledge of this: Jesus Christ is real. He is alive. He knows me. And He loves me.

His love is power.

He loves you with a love so strong that He gave His life for it: that love inspired Jesus to replace His birthright as God’s Son with a death sentence that resulted in the salvation of the world. This is the story you hear when evangelists tell you about Jesus, and it’s true.

What you may not know is that it didn’t stop there. It doesn’t stop at Jesus’ resurrection.

You have been resurrected with Him.

In Christ, you have defeated the power of Satan. In Christ, you have been made whole. In Christ, you will be resurrected from the dead for the life in the world to come.

My reader asks how my faith is so giant, and I respond with this: my God is big; He has allowed me to overcome a lifetime of injustice. But even this doesn’t require giant faith.

My faith is giant because in my Jesus there is honesty.

Whether I fear my traumatic experiences revisiting my daughters, or I question if He really will provide for my family’s needs when He asks us to step out of our comfort zones, or I struggle with inflammations from past hurts, I know I can be open with Him.

And He responds.

Through the Holy Spirit, which is Jesus’ presence on earth within every believer, there is power to withstand and surmount any fear, question or struggle.

Belief is the only requirement.

God still speaks. The Holy Spirit, through the same Jesus who stood with the Samaritan woman at the well, can perceive the details of our lives. He gets to the root of our shame, and then He teaches us how to pray: “My people will worship me in Spirit and in Truth.”

This week initiated Greg and me into our by-faith phase; we’re uprooting our family and moving back to Phoenix, believing the next chapter in our life is best written there. I’ve grown used to hearing the voice of God, a concept I’ll explain in a different essay, but panic overwhelmed me the other night while I was making dinner.

I cried out to God that I needed a word from Him; I needed the confidence that He was calling us out of this city into another. Really I wanted proof just in case five months from now I stand bewildered at a life that doesn’t make sense.

Greg came into the house from the gym shortly thereafter and told me something amazing had just happened. “I was in the middle of doing a seated row when the Lord spoke the words ‘flos campi’ to me. That’s Latin for ‘flowers of the field,’ Renee. The Lord gave me a word of confidence about our future.”

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? …. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:28-33, emphases mine, ESV)

My faith is not always giant, but it’s real. I’ve made a decision to seek first the kingdom of God, to remember that his righteousness is already mine by the atonement of the resurrected Jesus. I am made righteous by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Sometimes I struggle with wondering if my life will be sabotaged; I fear that no matter what I do or don't do, life won't be fair, that I'll lose again.

When this happens, I exert my belief: I worship God with my mouth, my hands, my song. Sometimes the only word that comes is "Jesus."

There is nothing that can change my identity in Christ. Even better is that by believing in my inherent righteousness through Christ, I am compelled to love others and myself. I seek peace and pursue it; I acknowledge my worth independent of others’ or my own opinions.

I’m not afraid to call out Satanic tactics and tear them down—over my and others’ lives.

All of this takes faith. And faith is giant.

Leaving Smellytown, CO

2011-12-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

From mid-2005 to 2006, I prayed before closing my eyes for bed and felt God ask me to tell Him what I wanted. The answer was the same every night: “Lord, I want a full-time teaching job and a family of my own.”

Neither seemed a reasonable prospect. I had just moved back to Phoenix from New York and started adjuncting at local colleges. It takes time to gain clout. I hadn’t expected my friend Greg to tell me he loved me during the summer of 2006; I also hadn’t expected a phone call from the chair of one college English department the day Greg proposed to me.

The Chair offered me a full-time teaching position, with benefits, starting the following week. It was the best job I ever had—I loved the subject matter, the students, my cozy office, and the view of the mountains, which were right around the corner from a lake. Some of my students attended our December wedding.

My favorite teaching job was the one I left for my new family.

I had the overwhelming inclination that December to resign my job. I had been offered a teaching job in Colorado, where Greg and I would be moving in January, but I had an equally overpowering feeling not to take the position, which was part-time anyway.

I resolved to be working at Starbucks until August, when a full-time job would be a miracle.

A month into our blustery Colorado tenure, where the snow had been piling on itself for weeks, I woke up with a certainty that Greg and I needed to attend a particular church that morning. We trudged through the yet unplowed snowy roadways and eventually found the church.

We sat through the service, not particularly moved by anything, until a friendly couple in front of us turned around and began asking us the obligatory newcomer questions. When the woman, Marsha, found out my profession, she called over another woman named Trish.

“Trish is the coordinator of the Intensive English Program at UNC,” Marsha informed me as Trish and I shook hands.

“Are you hiring?” The question hung in the air before I realized it had exited my mouth.

Trish gave me that knowing look of furled eyebrows and squinting eyes, and said with a half-smile, “As a matter of fact, I just got a letter of resignation on Friday. Why don’t you come in tomorrow and we’ll talk?”

With that, I had a full-time, full-benefits, teaching job in March. If I had accepted the other part-time offer, I would not have been able to take this far better position.

The university had also decided the following summer to allow spouses of faculty members free tuition.

I tell people I make over $200,000 as an ESL instructor.

This job ended up not being my favorite. Colorado wasn’t my favorite either. Greeley is a small town, much too small for someone who has lived in Phoenix, Los Angeles, London, Long Island.

At its best, in Greeley verdant trees hang above the sidewalks. It’s quiet and easy to save money here. Parks are plentiful. Glenmere Park, across the street from us, has a winding path lined with pear trees that flower in late spring.

Under the flowering pear trees

Photo by Darci Hullah

But there are two Wal-Marts in Greeley, one Sam’s Club. There are at least seven McDonald’s. It’s a town with just over 90,000 people. Funky stores and privately-owned restaurants die early in Greeley. Gangs are prevalent, as is crime (people steal stuff from our garage often). The air reeks of cow dung.

Coming into Greeley is like going into a Yankee Candle store, and the label on this candle reads: “Poop Muffin.”

Right after I started my job, depression hit me fast. Perhaps I needed more Vitamin D; I knew I was over snow when I had left New York in 2005.

To counteract the gloom, Greg and I made a pact to leave Greeley every weekend. We explored nearly every Coloradan peak and valley that year.

The sadness overtook me on occasion. Sometimes I didn’t know how to stop venting.

Greg pulled the car over one afternoon on our way home from church. He unbuckled his seatbelt and faced me: “Renee, complaining will only make us stay here longer.”

I thought about the children of Israel, of Moses, of their adventure lasting forty years when trekking from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea should take forty days.

I resolved to remember what I had perceived God say on our way into Colorado, that we would be here five years. Sometimes I have problems trusting my instincts. Other times I forget to look at the green grass right outside my window that symbolizes what Greeley means to me:

My daughters were born in Greeley, Colorado, at a medical center that operates more like a luxury hotel. When I call my dentist’s office in Greeley well past the six-month marker, they immediately ask about my children by name.

Greg’s closest friend Mike lives in a nearby town, and their 25-year-long friendship motivated Greg to seek out universities here. Greg and Mike’s friendship is like David and Jonathan’s—they’re brothers in spirit.

Even though I won’t miss my ESL job, I acknowledge my colleagues as the hardest working, most generous women. For a department to be comprised of entirely female instructors and coordinators, yet to have a harmonious atmosphere with no backbiting or manipulating, is miraculous. I’ll miss Elaine for her sensitivity; Maureen for her honesty; Sandy for her forthrightness; Heidi for her free opinions; Susan for her friendship; Sharon for her quiet strength.

Our neighbors John and Patricia bring us cupcakes as a thanks for having taken tomatoes from our garden all summer. They live in one of the most beautiful houses in our vintage neighborhood, where all the homes are unique, each bearing the signature from the decade they were incarnated. John and Patricia’s house has ivy crawling up the sides of its red brick, edging into the half-timbering typical of the Tudor style. Sometimes I’m late coming home from work because I stop to talk to John in his front yard. We talk religion and feminism and Newt Gingrich with slightly different perspectives but zero vitriol.

Around the corner from John and Patricia, and across the park from us, are Sandy and Ken. For each of our daughters’ births, Sandy has brought over a book. During my first pregnancy, she brought over Oh, the Places You’ll Go—in Utero!, which I read to both daughters as I lay my hand on my protruding belly. Last month our electricity went out for several days amidst arctic temperatures. Sandy invited us to stay at their house when they received a generator. Just as we were about to go over, the electricity came back on. The following week, Ken offered Greg his Turkey Trot ticket, with a warning to Greg not to run through the finish line, as it would skew the numbers for the age-70+ runners.

Darci and Brett, Cru ministers, rented the house next to us before buying a house across the park. They were the second young couple with a small child to live in our neighborhood. Darci and I take our children to the playground, so they can frolic and we can feel reassured by how alike we are as mothers of two very young children.

Photo by Darci Hullah

For almost five years, I had just one close friend here, Anna (pronouncedAh-nah). She is a true friend, the only one I could go to when things went south a few years back. Anna and I don’t see each other too often, but when we do there is no chit-chat. We get out the goods.

Anna’s daughter is Ariel’s age. They’re best friends. I will miss seeing the girls’ friendship develop like it has these past two years. Anna and I met the week she found out she was expecting her daughter; we took our birthing class together. Our daughters talk about each other all week and, when they finally get to play together at church, it’s like watching two fledglings flutter to higher branches on an Aspen.

Girlfriends

Our church has an open Heaven above it. Healing occurs there; I’m one of its testimonies. In the past three months, I’ve engaged with more women and operated more fully in my spiritual gifting than I have in many years. I feel equipped to move back to Phoenix ready to pour the oil of gladness I’ve received here into women stranded in the desert there.

When I go to Phoenix, I expect an increase in favor—like Esther, like Ruth.

People ask me if I plan to teach when I get there, and I tell them I don’t know. I plan to write. I plan to host a bi-monthly women’s gathering. I plan to introduce my daughters to Pottery Barn and In-N-Out Burger.

I plan to live.

When I resigned my job two weeks ago, two days before Thanksgiving, I felt the resolve that follows endless nights of tossing and days of fighting migraines. I’ve wanted to quit all semester, but the time hadn’t been right; I would have been leaving out of emotion, out of exhaustion over students who haven’t quite learned the art of acculturation. In fairness, so many more of my international students have been treasures to me, safe havens and reminders of how we're all connected, regardless of race or language or creed.

I still don’t know what I’ve learned from this teaching job, but I think it may have been the job that strengthened me in a way no other faculty appointment could. By being forced to stand up to bullying or lying or cheating students, I overcame the need to be liked. Teaching troublesome students educated me into self-maturity.

Standing for my convictions may come at the cost of losing others’ admiration, but I know now that admiration, like Cyril Tourneaur said of joy, “is a subtle elf. I think man's happiest when he forgets himself.”

Although I will not record Greeley—or Smelly, as I like to call it—as having been my favorite place to live, it is where I encountered some of my favorite memories. It was the wilderness where I walked round and round, waiting for God to move us on. And now that we’re moving on, I look back and realize that, in Greeley, I’ve become the woman of my dreams.

We're Moving

2011-12-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Nearly five years ago I found myself driving in another moving truck with my furniture and cats Quimby and Sage. It was my third faith move with them in ten years. However, it was my first as a married woman. It was also my first move to a state in which I had not dreamed about living. What I had dreamed of was being married to the love of my life, my best friend. Greg and I had planned to stay in Northern Colorado for a year, enough time for Greg to complete his master’s degree in music and for us to return to Phoenix.

On the trip up, just after crossing into Colorado from New Mexico, as the Rocky Mountains flared up to our left, the presence of God overcame me with this knowledge: “You’ll be here for five years, and Greg is going to get his doctorate.”

It happened, without my having discussed this premonition. Greg, by his own volition, brought up getting the doctorate. My full-time faculty status provided tuition reimbursement for spouses, so it seemed logical for Greg to pursue the fullest education afforded to him.

Here we are: five years, two degrees, two daughters, three cats later.

We’re moving back to Phoenix.

The double rainbow day in Phoenix
5/18/11

What's the biggest leap of faith you've made? What's one that you'd like to make?

If you pray, please pray for us.

ARTICLE: Gender Roles as God Intended

2011-11-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

My piece "Gender Roles as God Intended" has been published by Provoketive Magazine; please visit their site to read my missive about the necessity of women speaking up both in their marriages and at church. It's an anthem of my heart, and I trust you'll enjoy the read. Here's a preview:

Before I was married, my hairdresser told me about a woman in her sixties who explained to him the meaning of marriage, the breakdown of gender roles, and the secret to staying together. She could see beyond her husband’s analytical nature. She was perspicacious. It thus became her job to let her husband in on the nuances of others—ticks, sidelong glances, subtleties. Once her husband had been informed of her observations and ensuing opinions, she trusted his judgment. Her husband, a prominent entrepreneur, used her insights to make the best decisions for business, for family, for himself. After forty years of marriage, by operating out of their inherent strengths, they had created a peaceful and thriving life together, as one.

I usually can see a thing before it happens. I believe I was born this way, but I also know that in reconciling with my creator as a Christian, I’ve learned how to harness these gifts for the greater good.

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Giving Thanks: We Say Grace

2011-11-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago, I put out an all-call for people to send in their thanks, what they will say during grace, as Thanksgiving should be about more than just turkey with cranberries. There should also be pie. And ice cream.

I had friends and family send replies, for which I was thankful; there were also "strangers" who noted their thanks, for which I was grateful.

Friends who had been struggling financially were thankful for their jobs, their ability to pay bills; family members who had experienced losses were appreciative of remaining family members.

Some among those whom I didn’t know gave thanks for their family members who had survived harrowing diseases; one new friend shared that 2011 brought her the gift of international family. Nearly every respondent mentioned loved ones—family or friends.

We are thankful for what gives us identity:

Our careers illuminate our agendas; they can cast shadows or light depending on whether we’ve learned the art of navigating them. Even if we haven’t, the stability in being able to pay for our responsibilities is sometimes enough.

Our friends and families make us who we are; they are light. We see ourselves more clearly when they are near. We know we are not alone in a world that is isolating, in a world that does not guarantee acceptance.

We are more thankful for arriving on the other side of last year's heartaches.

My career is one I didn’t choose; I felt ordained to teach people how to write better. For ten years, I’ve migrated the country and taught hundreds of adults—some young, others not as young—how to articulate thoughts fairly. Now, as I consider leaving my field to spend more time with my daughters and my writing, I lay awake at night wondering what life will look like without a lesson plan.

Then I remember the girls with whom I’ve interacted this year, the women who in reaching out to me for support brought my life greater meaning. I think about how I teach them—not by using grammar or citations, but by reminding them to punctuate life with bold vulnerability and to give credit to the One who makes them whole.

My husband and I, after having nearly lost sight of why we had gotten married, discovered this past year a love and respect and admiration for each other that allows us to function better individually. I know Greg is the person created by God to help me become the woman I am destined to be. He believes the same of me. I trust Greg more now than I did when we were in our young twenties, kayaking the sea, recklessly committed to a friendship we had not anticipated would be set on fire—both in love, and then in trial. Satan tried to sabotage our marriage, but we retaliated and overcame.

Together, Greg and I share two daughters who although unique, are still reflections of us. When we see ourselves in our daughters, it frees us to be less self-critical than we ordinarily would be: in admiring idiosyncratic qualities in them, we learn to appreciate the same quirks in ourselves.

My God has used this year to deliver me from a prison I did not know I was in. I am a different person today than I was on this day last year. I’m less inclined these days to take things too personally. I no longer self-reject. I will never speak out self-fulfilling prophecies that serve only to exclude myself from a life God desires for me.

Last year, I was pregnant with Eva. Ariel would only eat the mashed potatoes during our Thanksgiving meal.

This year I am pregnant with expectation. My family and I feast daily on the goodness of God.

Even though Greg and I don’t know the specifics of our careers come 2012, we are certain in this: our God has revealed to us the depth of our marriage—we contain multitudes—and together we can pummel through any storm, pray through every ordeal. We owe it to our daughters to teach them what we’ve learned, what we know is the most profound blessing among all blessings: God will provide all of our needs, even some of our wants. The effect may not resemble the fantasy, but the reality sustains us throughout the generations—like cornucopias. Like grace.

Happy Thanksgiving, friend.

May the God who deserves all thanks bless you with the desires of your heart.

Has this year brought solace to your heart because of a heartache you faced last year? If so, has healing secured you more in your true identity? If you blogged about your thanks, post a link to it here!

What Spalding Gray Didn't Teach Me: On Finding my Voice

2011-11-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Michelangelo: "The Prophet Jeremiah"

NOTE: The Spalding Gray Estate contacted me to ask if they could post this link to their site. It was an honor to have told them yes.

The day after September 11, 2001, I entered into the classroom of what I thought would be the biggest opportunity of my academic and professional career: I would be taking a storytelling class with Spalding Gray, the author who had harnessed his story into monologue. I had been captivated by him for decades.

That summer, I was working as the graphic designer of Hampton Shorts literary magazine when the editor received a call one afternoon that her friend Spalding had been in a devastating car accident in Ireland.

Spalding would never be the same.

He walked into the classroom months later, disheveled and worn. He was an old man by then. He smelled of injury, as if he had brought with him the gauze and vials from a hospital. But here we were, in a classroom on the eastern shore of Long Island. This was where the wealthy came to relax. This was where artists came to inspire.

Spalding said nothing of the previous day’s events; he wanted us to go up and introduce ourselves in artful monologue. I did my best but left the classroom feeling discouraged and sapped.

One of my greatest strengths has been in public speaking, but in front of Spalding Gray, I had nothing to communicate. I dropped the class the next day.

For all these years I thought it was Spalding’s fault—his infirmity, his depression. He threw himself into the East River a few years later, and none of us who had been in that classroom on September 12 was surprised.

Spalding Gray’s depression had won.

So had mine.

I had been in New York a year by the time I took Spalding’s class. It became a year of disenchantment, punctuated by the destruction of a city that I—like so many other dreamers—had expected to rescue me. I expected to be made well in New York.

Instead, the church I joined was full of demons. The pastor manipulated scriptures from the pulpit, then went backstage to screw women who commented well on his sermons. Witches entered the sanctuary and spoke spells over congregants. When people began to notice the disparity between authentic Christianity and the debacle the church had become, they were killed.

I had most of my possessions and much of my money stolen from me by the elders of the church. They ran me out because I have the God-given ability to discern supernatural activity.

I knew something was not right, and I was forced out of the church. Thank God I wasn’t murdered.

In the aftermath of that experience, I shut down. Storytelling was arduous, yet I had come to New York to pursue an MFA in creative writing. I no longer cared what I ate; I stopped exercising.

I silenced.

Friends throughout the country approached me to ask where I had gone. New friends on Long Island confronted me to ask why I never shared anything of my life, of myself.

It wasn’t Spalding Gray’s fault that I walked out of that classroom defeated. It was mine.

Sanctified denial occurs when a Christian is in so much pain—usually because of disillusionment—that she denies herself the option of healing and instead masquerades as a level-headed, born-again evangelical. She may convince herself that everything is all right.

I may not have drank like the other writers in New York, I may not have entered and exited the beds of men whose names I would not remember later, I may not have betrayed other women through scandalous gossip, but I did worse: I pretended to be okay, to be the perfect Christian, when it was clear by my escalating weight and my putrefying talent that I was exactly the opposite.

Although I haven’t thought about Spalding Gray since finding out about his death in 2004, last week it occurred to me that, had I not been in my own bell jar then, I would have flourished in his class.

In the ten years since then, I have experienced a personal reckoning, and it’s been through supernatural means. Actually in the past five months, I have recognized that my choice in the early 2000s to squelch who I truly was became the biggest deterrent to my achieving my dreams.

Since writing about my pain on this blog in June, since inviting other women to share their anthems in August, since opening up to a world of writers and ministers to declare I am no longer afraid—I am no longer dead—I have experienced the sanctification I need to become not just the writer or teacher or mother or wife that I’ve dreamt of being, but the woman who I was formed by God to be.

Here I am.

When memories would haunt me, and they did frequently—from the sexual abuse by my cousin and family friend, to the verbal vomit shot out by alcoholic family members, to the spiritual legalism of the church community to which I belonged—I used to let those voices torment my sleep, shut me up at the altar, dry up my ink.

When I couldn’t push away the memories, when I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to stay with them for awhile, I began to understand what God was trying to do.

Over a three month period, chronological memories would come back to disturb me. Instead of hiding them, though, I sat with them. I reflected over what was said and how I had internalized vitriolic words. God would show me how a destructive behavior pattern in me formed from that event. He didn’t stop there; He didn’t even wait for my repentance. He didn’t need it. Instead, God spoke to me the opposite message that I had received during those memories of abuse.

God spoke the truth of my identity, my worth, through every memory, and He allowed me to come forth.

I was left with a stunning display of redemption. I am not who those men or women had assigned me to be. I am better.

I am God’s. He is good. He does not err. He makes all things new.

When I think back to the young woman I was standing before Spalding Gray, trying to tell my story, nothing came because I had not allowed myself to believe that I was worth anything.

So no one saw my value.

When I stand before a crowd now, I understand my worth, and I know my voice. I understand that I am created by a God who purposes good for His children, especially through suffering. I know each word that exits my pen, and my mouth, will declare this anthem of my having so often faced death but having stood quietly long enough to hear God speak above the lies: you are free, Renee. Go and do likewise for others.

Have you found your voice? How do you share it with others?

On Confidence: the Steve Jobs 1970s Stank

2011-11-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

“In the 1970s [Steve] Jobs was a big hippy, and for years he was on a weird diet that he believed made it unnecessary for him to bathe. Practically everyone who knew Jobs in the seventies mentions how incredibly bad he smelled.”

–Lev Grossman, “Steve Jobs and Joan Didion: The Untold Story,” Time, 28 Oct. 2011

This anecdote on Steve Jobs makes me want to write, to speak, to teach, to remember that we all have elements about our past that are less-than-appealing, embarrassing even. If Steve Jobs had reclused himself because of the 1970s stank, he never would have developed the iPod, the iPhone, or the iPad. Life as we know it would not exist.

Just because in elementary school my clothes came from K-mart, and in junior high the girls shunned me, and in high school I had no hope, and in college I wrote stories ornately as if to be hiding, and in grad school I had forty extra pounds, does not disqualify me now from pursuing my dreams, my potential.

Steve Jobs is proof that a stinky past does not preclude a fragrant future. His past proves that our idiosyncrasies are the details of a story only we can write.

SPECIAL POST: Your Thanks

2011-11-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

For Thanksgiving week, since I blog on Thursdays, I'd love to be able to write a post that reflects a compilation of thankfulness. Don't worry, I'll keep it anonymous. I want a sense, though, of what people truly value.

So, tell me: what are you most thankful for? You can focus just on this year, or you can make it more collective, all-encompassing.

I'd like to encourage you to be hopeful and even turn a prayer request into a thanks; for instance, come January 2012, I don't know where our income is coming from. Greg and I are trusting God about our careers and stepping out into the great, wide somewhere. We have one mortgage, two daughters, three cats and a God who can provide for our needs.

I'm thankful for God's provision for my family come 2012.

Reply on Twitter, post to my Facebook wall, send me a message via either network, email by clicking the "Contact Me" button on the top left screen, or leave a comment below.

I hope to hear from you soon!

Giving thanks.

Forgiveness Justified

2011-11-03T14:45:00.002-06:00

People wrong us—sometimes in invasive, catastrophic ways; other times in small, niggling ways.

The same Christ who died at Calvary for our sins also died for everyone else's—including the person who has sinned against us.

For us to withhold forgiveness is to declare over the wrongdoer that Christ's sacrifice was not intended for everyone.

Even if the other person never changes, our forgiveness releases him/her to the care of the Lord, who says, "Vengeance is mine."

And we are free to fester no more.

What's your attitude on forgiveness? Do you have a story of forgiveness that resulted in your overcoming?

Announcing: A New Book Project!

2011-11-01T09:56:00.003-06:00

I'm ecstatic to share with you a new community book project that can include you!

Remember that post I wrote last month responding to Tamara Out Loud's question, "What is a woman worth?" Tamara received an overwhelming response. From there, she teamed with Civitas Press to create a new community project: What a Woman is Worth.

I'm one of the contributors!

And you can be too! Click here to read the guidelines and submit your essay for possible publication.

Tamara Lunardo will edit and write introductions for a community collection of essays for the book, releasing in July of 2012.

The project summary reads: "The essays will explore ways in which women and girls are led into disbelieving their worth and offer messages that combat the devaluing of women and girls with godly truth."

As you know, this theme is essentially my anthem and the reason Quiet Anthem and The Anthem Exposition exist. I'm thankful to the Lord for opening up doors for writing and ministry. Pray that the essay I write will be full of His wisdom, power and truth. I want to see women set free.

I want to see people healed.

Even Still: on Writing When It's Hard

2011-10-27T20:52:00.000-06:00

Photo from shelovesmagazine

I know I'm not alone in this because other women have admitted the same sentiment: writing is terrifying; publishing is daunting.

Most women question their worth. They wonder if anyone recognizes the lovely within.

In writing, the most sacred is set before others. If readers reject what's been written—what has emerged from a woman's secret heart—then worth is shattered; a heart, broken.

Even still.

Despite rejections, despite my struggle with not feeling encouraged or accepted by some people, especially a few closest to me, I still believe my story should be told.

My first memory is of a man who took what was not his. My most recent memory is of a God who restored to me what was mine all along.

My story reveals Jesus' power.

It reminds me that I was created for a purpose. Even if no one recognizes my worth, my value is published in the heavens, authored by the God who calls me His.

My husband Greg has been encouraging me to write my memoir. He knows its value, too.

There are a handful of you who have been vocal on this blog, on Facebook, in messages, and in person; you have championed me in writing my journey. I am so grateful to and for you. Thank you.

In the next several months, as inspiration permits, these blog entries may be shorter, or may include excerpts from a larger work, so I can accomplish why I started back writing after all: I am going to tell my story.

"Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. All my life the God of the Mountain has been wooing me. Oh, look up once at least before the end and wish me joy. I am going to my lover."

-C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

I hope you'll be encouraged to write your story, too. Let's be in this together. I'll even help launch your piece: www.anthemexposition.com

Rules for Driving: No Stereotyping

2011-10-20T15:59:00.000-06:00

Driving styles, much like fashion, vary according to person: the girl who wears Prada may also like to text or apply mascara behind the wheel; the man who is keen on loafers may prefer driving slowly in the left lane. With both driving and fashion, others deem it totally normal—acceptable, even—to assess stereotypes upon the driver or fashionite. To be fair, I know plenty of Prada lovers who wouldn't dare text while driving (I also know several who would); likewise, although I don’t know a tremendous amount of people who wear loafers, I do know people who wear sneakers and stilettos who dawdle in the fast lane.

Stereotypes—or narrow-minded assumptions, as I like to call them—may feel true, but judging others results only in our missing out on what's deeper within another person.

This afternoon, my colleagues and I were talking about this subject, swapping stories about how we typecast others while driving. I shared how a boy I dated for about ten minutes (too long) in college would follow any complaint he had with a driver with, “Probably a Korean.” He felt justified in being childish because three of his long-term ex-girlfriends had been Korean.

One of my co-workers admitted that her husband, when he sees a bad driver ahead, sometimes says, “Probably a woman.” She said she cringes every time it is a woman. She followed this with a story of how she, an aggressive driver, once made a blunder and had a man yell out to her: “You’re old enough to know better!” After her initial indignation toward him, she realized that she should have known better. “It gave me pause for thought,” she said.

Come again? Just because my co-worker is visibly middle-aged doesn’t mean she has been driving for the past forty years. Maybe she just moved here from Saudi Arabia. Or, perhaps, she as an assertive driver was behaving aggressively because that’s her nature. I suppose we could go around launching you-should-have-known-betters more often. I’m sure Bill Clinton or Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen would have benefitted greatly from such admonitions.

The first time I rode in a car with Greg, when we were just friends, I was terrified by his haphazard, slow-to-break but fast-to-launch driving (picture the fashion equivalent of a 6-year-old boy in Underoos). In fabulous ironical fate, I told myself that if this guy were ever going to have children, his wife would have to sort out his driving. She did. In retrospect, what I know to be true about my husband is that his driving behavior reflected something deep in his character: passion. It’s the quality about him I admire most.

Our personas can be displayed by driving habits or wardrobe choices, but they aren’t necessarily determined by ethnicity or gender or age. The luxurious freedom of being alive during this moment in history and in this country is our ability to choose Prada slides or Lauren loafers, a mini Cooper or a mini-van. The rest of us ought to recognize this and deal with bad drivers without assessing judgments: pass in the right lane, slow down, politely honk.

After all, aren’t we too cultured, too liberated, and too mature a people to stereotype others?