A major survival tactic of hospital chaplains is to avoid becoming attached to our patients or their families.  No matter how good our boundaries, sometimes the people just suck us in emotionally.  This is one of those stories.  In fact, last week I flipped the lock, opened the door and kicked aside all of my personal attachment boundaries when I adopted one of my patients. 

Last Monday started off like any other day.  Sunshine lit my way to work, morning prayer with my fellow chaplains woke my mind, then I prepped for patient visits.  On rounds in the ICU, I encountered a new patient who I will call Mike.  This man was dying, which is common in the ICU, but his story was unique for several reasons.  Mike was homeless and he had no family.  Mike had a friend listed as an emergency contact but when the nurse called to inform the contact that Mike’s health was dire, the friend told her in no uncertain terms that he was “done with” Mike. 

I looked through the clear glass door to the room and saw a middle-aged man covered in stained sheets, his stomach bloated to four times its natural size.  Wires and tubes ran from Mike’s hands, elbows, chest, mouth and nose to machines, monitors and IV hooks.  One of the machines breathed for Mike but his chest barely moved.  The nurse reported that before he lost consciousness, Mike told the doctors, “If you think you can save me, go ahead and try; but if I look like I can’t fight anymore, let me go.”  The doctors would be deciding that afternoon whether to withdraw life-support — a decision that family usually makes.  I told the nurse that when they decided to withdraw care, to please call for the chaplain on call — no human being should have to die alone.  Six hours later I got a page to return to Mike’s room for his death. 

—————

When I get to room 216, I take a full breath hoping to chase away the tremors that are pulsing through my body.  It isn’t fear moving me; it’s reverence.  (I’ve learned that dying and death are sacred moments that are an honor to share with others.)  I step in the room and pull up a chair along the bed rail as the nurse, Jen, uncovers Mike’s arms and hands.  Without hesitation, I grasp Mike’s swollen right hand in both of mine.  I curl his stiff fingers around my palm and squeezed lightly.  It takes ten minutes for Jen and a respiratory therapist to unhook and detach Mike from the lines and tubes, machines and medicines that were preserving his life.  Finally, they remove the tube supplying air to his lungs.  Jen washes Mike’s face free of tape residue and dried blood.  She pauses to watch the monitors for a few moments and then withdraws to the hallway.  Mike and I are left alone together.  Softly, I introduce myself to this dying stranger. 

“Mike, my name is Corrie.  I’m here to stay with you.”

I pause because tears are already smearing my vision and voice.  All I see is a puddle-like image of a man swaddled in a gray cloud.  I blink a few times and wipe my face on my shoulder, not willing to let go of Mike’s hand for even a second.  My eyes trail up his arm, bruised from our medical interventions and scarred from Mike’s intravenous drug use.  I gaze at his face scruffy with a three-day beard and his thinned, spiky hair.  Except for the scars and bloating, he looks like anyone I might pass at the supermarket.  I wonder what Mike’s story is, what paths he traveled in life, what wounds he suffered that led him to this end — septic, scarred and abandoned, his only home a stained bed in room 216. 

Mike died over an hour.  The vitals monitor shows little change for the first thirty minutes.  Occasionally, Mike grimaces or his fingers twitch in mine.  His breaths are quick and raspy.  I speak with him on and off, pray silently, cry and breathe.  I try to match my breath to Mike’s but I can’t do it — I needed more air than he does.  Half way into our time together, my hand now numb in Mike’s, I break my silence.

“Mike, I don’t know what your story is, except that you don’t have a home or family.  I want you to know, that is no longer true.  Today, I’ve become your family.  Please know that I am here with you, until the end.  You can go quickly or take your time; it’s your choice.  I’m not going anywhere.”

For the first time, I realize there is music playing in the room.  The nurse must have left it on as companion for Mike.  The volume is very low, but I recognize Shawn Mullins’ Lullaby… 

she grew up with
the children of the stars
in the hollywood hills and the boulevard
her parents threw big parties
everyone was there
they hung out with folks like
dennis hopper, bob seeger, sonny and cher

now, she feels safe
in this bar on fairfax
and from the stage I can tell that
she can’t let go and she can’t relax
and just before
she hangs her head to cry
I sing to her a lullaby, I sing

everything’s gonna be all right
rockabye, rockabye
everything’s gonna be all right
rockabye, rockabye
rockabye

I sing along with the chorus, hoping and praying that this song, my voice, our clasped hands, my God will soothe the grimaces and twitches from Mike’s body.  Soon his vitals begin to fall.  Over the next twenty minutes I watch his heart rate and blood pressure sink low.  They plateau for the last ten minutes.  By now, Mike only takes two soggy breaths a minute.  I can feel his body sinking deeper into the mattress.  The monitor begins to flash and beep, a shofar alerting us to a pending Jubilee.  Jen comes in to silence the monitor and stand next to me.  Mike takes a breath that sucks his tongue to the roof of his open, cracked mouth.  His body is limp on the mattress; his hand pins mine to the bed.  I can’t leave now.  It’s the sacred moment.

It’s okay, Mike.  You can let go.  Let yourself relax.

Mike stops breathing.  His heart stops pumping.  Jen waits for the final electric current to blip across the monitor.  I see the flat line from the corner of my eye and think, ‘he’s free from all this pain.’   Jen gently closes Mike’s eyes with her pinky finger.  She writes the time of death on the board over my shoulder, 17:34, and leaves the room. 

I clasp Mike’s hand between mine for a final few seconds.  One last squeeze, I wipe my tears, take a deep breath and stand up.  I lay Mike’s hand on the bed and cover his chest with the blanket.  I breathe again and think that though his life may have been scarred and painful and lonely, his death wasn’t.  In his death, Mike had a place to lay his head, a hand to hold, a lullaby, and most importantly, family.  He didn’t die alone.  We did it together. 

Goodbye, brother.

The other day a female patient, who I will call Jane, asked to see the chaplain when I happened to be on call.  After just a few seconds of conversation, Jane began to cry.  Her insurance was kicking her out of the hospital because she didn’t need to be there and she couldn’t find a short-term care facility that was willing to take her.  Despite a social worker’s diligent efforts, what would happen to Jane in just a few short hours was unknown.  It looked like she would have to go home but because of her multiple health conditions and an acute injury to be surgically repaired in a week, home was a place of  fear for Jane.  She doubted she would be able to get herself to the bathroom, to clean or feed herself.  Because of various life events, Jane had cut herself off from all of her friends years ago.  The rest of her support system was unavailable.  She was almost as helpless as a person can be.

It’s not often that I meet a patient with virtually no support system.  As a chaplain, I usually have the opposite problem — trouble connecting with and counseling patients because they have too many visitors streaming in and out.  So when I listened to this patient’s litany of woes, I couldn’t help but be overcome with compassion.  Unfortunately, my compassion wasn’t what she wanted.  Listen to the crux of our conversation.

Patient:  [Crying heavily with shuddering breaths] No one can help me…

Chaplain:  Jane (not her real name), the social worker is doing everything she can to help you.  Do you believe that she will do her job?

Patient:  It’s so hard.  I want to trust her, but I just can’t.  I’m so scared.  Nobody cares about me. 

Chaplain:  I care about you Jane.

Patient:  [Wailing] But you can’t help me!

What she really meant by this exclamation was, you can’t fix my problem.  My 2009 internship quickly taught me the difference between fixing and helping.  Seeing raw pain and suffering on a daily basis is difficult for anyone to handle.  Chaplains are people whose compassion for others propels them into caring relationships.   Our intentions are good, but too often we step (not fall) into the trap of trying to fix a person or their problems. 

I’m a chaplain not a physician.  My daily vocational reality is that I can fix little for my patients.  Most of them are in the hospital due to disease, injury or sickness and my spiritual toolbox has little to offer to cure such ailments.  I can’t sew a wound, remove a spleen, make a diagnosis or order life-saving medications and procedures.  However, I can often help my patients. 

Sometimes spiritual or emotional pain lead to physical illness.  Often spiritual and emotional pain are outcomes of illness.  For these complaints I can offer some relief.  If you open the door of your pain to me even an inch, I can usually gently nudge it open wide enough to catch a glimpse of the monster hiding inside.  (It’s a good thing that I’m not afraid of monsters because I’ve seen all kinds of them: shrieking rape banshees, hollow-eyed worthlessness zombies, ghouls of unforgiveness, death’s grim reapers.  I don’t mess around with these demons.)  If together we can expose the limits of the monster’s power and refocus your vision on your life beyond the monster, then maybe you can take a step onto a healing path. 

I’m a chaplain, not God.  I don’t have all the answers.  I don’t even have many.  In fact, every day at the hospital I practice not pretending to have answers to others’ problems.  When I respond to your deepest questions with silence or with the unpopular “I don’t know,”  I’m telling you that I’m human too.  I may not know how to fix you, but I’m showing you that I care enough about you, a complete stranger, to listen to any and all of your fears, to confront your monsters with you, to view what you see as your ugliness with an eye for beauty.   

As Jane wailed for forty minutes about how the world was against her and that no one cared about her, I stood quietly at her bedside and wiped her tears with fresh tissues.  When she needed a bed pan, I called for one.  To reassure her that people were acting on her behalf, I followed up with the social worker.  Did I fix her problem?  No.  Did I heal her body?  No.  But I believe that my simple acts of compassion were perhaps more helpful to her in that moment than any surgery.  I hope that Jane realized I was doing everything I could to affirm her worth, her personhood.  I hope that I helped her on her way toward healing.

This week was youth Sunday at my church and it was beautiful.  The music, testimonies and baptisms all combined into a poignant act of worship.  I cried, I laughed, I cheered, I sang and I stood in awe of the amazing work that God is doing in and through our youth.   Experiences like those help me put clothes on the word rejoice.  I certainly needed that kind of baptism this week. 

On August 8^th I started working full-time as a chaplain at a large local hospital.   My days and nights are now about caring for the sick, suffering, dying and grieving.  Last week while I was on call, I walked a mother to and from the bathroom.  Twenty minutes before, she lost her infant daughter at the smothering hands of a terrible disease.  As we travelled the short, veering hallways of the emergency department, the mother said to me, “You have a hard job.”  I marveled that she could be sympathizing with me at such a moment, our feet lightly tapping along a linoleum path leading us to her final kiss goodbye.

In just two short weeks, I’ve witnessed a dozen real-life tragedies.  Drownings, frightening diagnoses, avoidable deaths and accidents that rip the family curtain in two.  My assigned units are the neonatal intensive care unit, antepartum (high-risk pregnancies) and the adult ICUs.  Those hallways are hushed and still, an almost humid density of hope and fear.  Saturday morning, I saw a two-pound baby swaddled in pink stretch her tiny hand toward the lid of her incubator.  Her wave was a symbol of life’s fragility.   Later that day, I sat at the bedside of a dying elderly woman.  With every exhale she moaned out a marrow-deep weariness.  I held the daughter’s hand and together we prayed for the mother’s release from her earthly body. 

It’s my job to walk into these sacred moments and spaces and sit.  Sometimes I minister through conversation, prayer and guidance, often through silence, but mostly through listening.  I listen to families reflect on the life they have lost or are about to lose.  (These moments remind me that sometimes when sharing our lives with others, we downplay our pain if we hear a story that seems more tragic than our own.  We shouldn’t do this.  Loss cannot be measured with rulers and yardsticks.  All loss is loss, capable of shaping us into different people as quickly as the beat between inhale and exhale.)  None of the stories that I have seen or heard this month are the same, but they are all meaningful.   

I didn’t get much sleep Saturday night because I was at the hospital until 2am, but I made myself get up and go to church.  To grieve and to rejoice are both sacred experiences – they acknowledge that life is a gift from a benevolent Giver – so how could I miss an opportunity to balance out all that grief?  Worship rejuvenated my weary, care-giving soul.  Even with all the tragedy I’ve seen, Sunday’s stories and praise reminded me that life is beating loudly all around me.  Singing that Jesus is Healer refilled my vial of hope.  This week I return to the hospital grateful to God for the gift of life. 

If you think of me, please pray for continued courage and stamina to keep stepping into those sacred moments.

A week into August and I’m sighing over all the blog entries I wrote in my head but never published.  It’s been a rich summer full of new friendships and priceless experiences, many of which have been fodder for thought and writing.  Unfortunately, no one has invented a machine that can transpose my mental posts to the computer screen.  Sorry, friends.  To fill in some of the gaps that future posts will spring from, I offer you a mini-comprehensive summer review.

Exercise — Discipline has always been a weakness of mine.  It’s not that I can’t ever be disciplined, but I struggle to be disciplined about discipline.  Case and point: exercise.  There have been times in my life when I worked out five days a week bookended by times when I exercised one day in five months.  To be honest, I strongly dislike working out.  People who say it is at all enjoyable must be a different species.   Though I dislike exercise, I know I need to do it for myself.  So since May, when I purchased a gym membership, I’ve been puffing and panting on various machines and in the pool. 

Aquatic workouts have become the least hated of all exercise.  The water welcomes me with its refreshing temperature after a day in the desert heat.  Though the laps back and forth are monotonous, the white noise of splashing water and my rhythmic gasps for air lull me into an intense focus I couldn’t manufacture.  In the water, I’m alone with my thoughts and its become an excellent time to forget that I’m working out, and work on processing the challenges of my life.  The pool has become my prayer chapel, and oh the things I have to pray over.

Grief — I’m grieving over a seismic shift in my life.  It’s as though I’ve suffered a tremendous earthquake which knocked down the solid structures of trust and honesty on which I built a primary relationship.  Though not a death, for me this shift is a real loss that causes almost as many tears.  Now as I swim or jog, or when pray and lay awake at night, I’m constantly holding an image of this person in my mind.  I ponder fundamental questions like, who are you, what was real in our relationship, what suffering have you experienced that would lead to such destruction, how do I reconcile all this hurt and hope and betrayal with a love that will not let me go?  The other day in the gym locker room an elderly woman told me that I swim quite vigorously.  If she only knew what is propelling me through that water.

Bedbugs — In April I picked up bedbugs from a hotel in northern Arizona.  I woke up one morning with these really itchy bites running down my leg.  A few days later I had them on my arms, then more on my legs.  Unfortunately, I brought at least one home with me, who then established a colony in my box spring.  The problem is over now and I successfully kept them from spreading elsewhere in my room or house,  but these bedbugs introduced me to helplessness.  They exhausted my emotions and my checkbook quite quickly.  I’d recommend that anyone planning hotel stays in the near future, educate yourself by going to bedbugcentral.com

Pastoring — Since May I have been serving as the Interim Associate Pastor of a medium-sized Church here in Arizona.  This opportunity is one of the top five gifts I have ever been given.  I preached several times, taught a nine week, in-depth Bible study on the Gospel of John, offered pastoral care and oversaw various adult ministries.  The people of this church have been encouraging, affirming and helpful – an invaluable resource and support system for a young pastor.   If it hadn’t been for the earthquake and the bedbugs, it would have been the most exhilarating season of my life.  Imagine me dancing in silly circles singing with abandon.  That is what it feels like to finally have a place where I have been not just permitted to use my gifts, but encouraged to freely use all the pastoral gifts that God gave me.  Thank you God!  Thank you Duane, elders and all the people of Hope!

Beloved — It’s hard to find people who listen and share in equal parts and extremely rare to find people with whom you can safely and openly share your pain as well as your dreams.  A friend invited me to join a small women’s group focused on Henri Nouwen’s book, Life of the Beloved.  Two months later I have six new friends who truly know me, perhaps not every aspect and event of my life, but these women can feel my pulse. 

If I believe, know or feel anything to be true, it is that God is real and God loves me with an everlasting love.  Sometimes I falsely think that I am God’s beloved because I am good, moral, kind, loving, etc.  This thinking is unbiblical and it diminishes God’s love.  God’s love is so great that he sacrificed his only son for the world, even for the people whose actions reduce the lives of their loved ones to rubble.  Who am I to think that my life or my actions haven’t upset the balance of someone else’s life or caused them to question the foundation of our relationship?  I am not fundamentally good, but I am fundamentally beloved.  I proclaim part of my belovedness as I mourn and rejoice openly and honestly with others.  Thanks to Sheri, Lily, Jessica, Alyssa, Blanca and Sharon for revealing their belovedness and for revealing mine.

One of my most formative seminary moments was during an evening public lecture with professor John Stackhouse, who was launching his book, “Finally Feminist.”  Stackhouse told us about his upbringing, the family and church contexts which framed his worldview.  After many years as a theologian, teacher, writer, son, husband and father, he came to a very different view on gender roles than the view with which he grew up.

For me, the enlightening moment of the evening came in the question and answer period, when a very thoughtful and courageous male student got up to the mic and said something like, “I find your arguments and theology compelling, but if all this is true, then what does it mean for me to be a man?  What does this mean for my manhood?”  Very good question, for which there was a great answer from Stackhouse, who said, after a ponderous pause, something like, “Don’t worry so much about what it means to be a man.  Figure out what it means to be you, who God made you to be, and then live out you to the fullest.  If you are living out your uniqueness, then you won’t be any less of a man.”  These words aren’t an exact quote, but that was the sense of what Stackhouse said, and what good sense! 

Theologies of gender and gender roles are big topics of discussion in the evangelical world, because we evangelicals are so very concerned to get it right or more importantly, to not get it wrong.   But when I read scripture, I don’t see the plot of God’s story hinging on the topic of gender roles.  Yes, some of Paul’s letters have what seem to be very limiting directives for women in the church (if interpreted in a way that disregards historical and cultural context or fails to probe the question why) but we don’t have entire biblical chapters or books centered on a theology of gender.  Instead, we have chapters and books within an epic narrative about a God who:

• chooses people for his own,
• dwells with, leads, guides and instructs people through intimate relationship,
• shows mercy to constantly sinful, worldly and wayward people
• sends his one and only son to die on a cross because of his great love for humans
• anoints people with the Holy Spirit and gives spiritual gifts so they can spread the good news of God’s kingdom

None of the meta-narratives of scripture (the above is not an exhaustive list) have to do with what it means to be a man or a woman.  I take that as my cue.

When I read scripture, I see a God who has patterned ways of relating to people and who instructs people how to relate to each other, but I also see a God who also isn’t afraid to work beyond, outside of and around human standards and worldviews.  Isn’t our God the one who chose to save Israelite spies from capture through a Canaanite (unclean, sinful) prostitute?  Isn’t that same prostitute the ancestor of Jesus?  Isn’t our God the one who called a shepherd to fight a battle against a giant, seasoned warrior?  Isn’t our God the one who then anointed that shepherd as king over God’s people?  What business does a shepherd have battling a warrior or ruling a kingdom?  Isn’t our God the one who sent his son to earth to be born of a woman, raised as a poor Jewish carpenter from Nazareth (what good ever came out of Nazareth?), given authority greater than the rabbis, pharisees and temple priests, only to save the world from sin through the humiliation of a Roman crucifixion?  Scandalous, subversive, unexpected, and hard to understand — God’s ways are (somehow, always) the best ways.

I find Professor Stackhouse’s idea, “figure out who you are and live it to the fullest,” refreshing because it makes room for God to live out God’s purposes in God’s mysterious ways, whether or not it satisfies human expectations or cleanly aligns with your/my/our theology.  God, as God, can do as God sees fit.  Who am I to protest or edit or attempt to enhance God’s ways?

Recently a friend sent me a message on Facebook.  Her young adults Sunday school class is studying biblical manhood and womanhood and she solicited feedback from many friends as she grapples with this topic.  Last fall, my brother and sister-in-law’s pastor did a two month sermon series on biblical manhood and womanhood.  Yesterday, I was perusing the course requirements of a Doctor of Ministry program and I saw a course on biblical manhood and womanhood.  We evangelicals seem very concerned with what it means to be a man or a woman from God’s perspective.  Are we worried that God is sitting up in his heavily bejeweled throne looking down at us, his face like a red-delicious apple, lightening coming out his ears, beard wet with spittle, as he fumes about how we’ve totally messed up our manhood or womanhood?  Trust me friends, he’s not going to send a second Messiah just because we may have screwed up this part of our humanness. 

What helps me maintain a spirit of joy and healthy blood pressure when this topic comes up is this single thought — first and foremost, I am a child of God.  Yes, my femaleness is beautiful to God.  He created me female with intention so my gender is meaningful to me, but my womanhood pales in comparison to my primary, eternal way of being as a child of God.  I can’t find biblical chapters and whole books about how I should live out my femaleness because that isn’t one of God’s primary concerns for how I live on earth.  Sure, God loves me this way, but he is far more concerned that I love him as a child would a parent, or that I follow him like a disciple or that I freely and joyfully serve him with my whole heart.  Because there is so much meaning in and biblical emphasis on being a child of God, I don’t have to worry about pinning on my womanhood like Peter Pan did his shadow.  Instead, I’m released to live fully and freely as Corrie, a beloved and blessed child of God.

One of the joys of my life is being an aunt.  I have three nieces (whom you’ve been introduced to in the post Coco’s Girls) and four nephews courtesy of my two older brothers.  While I’ve been able to see my nieces two or three times a year since they were born, my nephews have been a bit less accessible.  Things are changing in our family and one of the good changes is the opportunity to reconnect with “the boys.”  Phillip (12), Taylor (10), Mason (8) and Clayton (5) recently spent three weeks in our home.  I had my concerns when I imagined four young boys moving in with us.  There were biblical plagues looming on my horizon — the toilet seat constantly left up, toys littering every surface, constant noise I couldn’t escape from, bickering, demands for attention I didn’t have the energy to give.  All of these things became a reality, but they were far from the hardships I expected.  The annoyances were quickly overridden by the delight I experienced.  Yes, three adults, four young boys and two toilets created some (urgent) challenges, but after I adjusted to the swarm of energy zooming through our house, I witnessed some very beautiful, and very silly, moments.  Here are some highlights from the month of invasion.

Boys Are Bloodthirsty

When they arrived in Arizona, my nephews jumped out of their car and entered our house like a militia of veterans.  They were armed to the hilt with Nerf guns and before they even said hello to me, they shot me.  After just two hours, our home was a war zone littered with all kinds of weaponry and ammunition.  Someone was always “killing” someone else and I worked hard over the last three weeks training them not to aim guns at my face. 

While I’m philosophically opposed to guns as toys or war “games”, I’ve learned that you can take the boy away from the gun, but you can’t take the gun away from the boy.  Even when we left the toys at the house and were out on an adventure, I’d hear the sound of gunfire from the backseat.  For little boys, pointed fingers and mouthed sound effects are sufficient replacements for physical weapons. 

Last night, Mason was playing by himself in his bedroom when Papa (my dad) asked him if he would like to join us watching a tv show.  Mason’s only question in considering the offer was, “Does it have guns in it?”  When Papa said yes, he jumped up and ran to the living room.  Sigh

They’d Rather Be Naked

I’m glad my nephews have healthy self-esteem when it comes to their bodies, but I found myself wishing we had a fig tree in the backyard.  What we have instead is a pool and the boys spent hours swimming.  When it was time to get in or out, they’d simply drop their clothes where they stood.  No hesitation, no embarrassment.  In fact, I had to curb their enthusiasm for skinny dipping by limiting flesh-suits to after dark.  (We have neighbors with telescopes.)  Even when we are inside the house or in the car and they get hot, the boys will just strip off their shirts, lay back and sigh like little kings.  Their propensity for nakedness is a refreshing expression of an innocence they will lose all too soon.  As their aunt, it’s both endearing and exasperating.  I changed their diapers as babies, so I’ve seen it all before, but I guess I assumed the days of displaying of the family jewels were behind me.  Sigh

Boys “play” LEGOs

As a girl I’ve never understood the male fascination with LEGOs.  I mean, baby dolls are at least life-size and dressable, but LEGOs seem so cold and impersonal.  One day Mason was a little grumpy and he got so frustrated that he just yelled out, “Will someone PLEASE play LEGOs with me?”   To me, he was speaking a foreign language.  How do you “play” LEGOs?  Don’t you just put them together according to the instructions and then admire your handiwork?  Apparently not.  Papa and Clayton got down on the carpet with Mason and I watched, fascinated, as they played LEGOs for a half hour.  Surprisingly, I discovered that the LEGO people have just as great adventures as my cabbage patch kids did 25 years ago.  Who knew?

Everything is a Competition

My oldest nephew Phillip has always been über competitive.  When he was six, he pouted for two hours after I won a silly basketball game of Horse.  Each of his brothers seem to have inherited the same competitive instinct.  Yesterday, we went bowling.  The competition began even as we loaded our names into the electronic scoreboard.  I have a tradition of always using an alias at bowling alleys (as protection from creepy people who usually hang out at said alleys) so I suggested the nephews make up funny names.  Phillip was Rush Nike 10 (his soccer team/jersey number) and Taylor insisted on being Awesome Man.  Whenever Taylor’s turn came, the board automatically abbreviated his name to simply “Awesome.”  Only Mason and Clayton caught the spirit of the exercise, dubbing themselves, Happy Meal and Bobby Wobby. 

In our third game, Clayton bowled down 9 out of 10 pins.  (We had bumpers, but it was impressive nonetheless because he has a cast on his dominant arm.)  When he saw the pins fall, he spun around, threw his hands up in the air and shouted, “I’m awesome!  Did you see that?”  Mason followed him with 9 out of 10 too, but instead of rejoicing, our 8-year-old hung his shoulders and sat down to pout.  The ever-positive Coco said, “Mason you got 9 out of 10 pins.  If this was a test, you would have an A!  You should be jumping up and down like Clayton.”  Probably unhappy to have his bowling skills compared to his 5-year-old brother’s, Mason just scowled at me.  Sigh

The Male Food Pyramid

Like typical children, most of my nephews do not consider vegetables food, let alone a food group.  For them, the foundation of the food pyramid is candy.  On the next level, in equal importance, are soda-pop and dessert.  (It’s been carefully documented that candy and dessert should be separate categories.  Candy is eaten throughout the day to maintain energy levels and a sense of well-being.  Dessert is a meal served every evening to encourage a good night’s sleep.)  At the top of the pyramid are staple foods that can be eaten at any meal: pizza, corn dogs, hamburgers, chips, s’mores, crackers and peanut butter and copious amounts of (processed) cheese.  Phillip and Taylor are better eaters than the two youngest, eating many “adult” foods that could be considered a meal, but the concept of fruit is still a challenge. 

We expected Clayton to eat at least three bites of whatever the adults were having.  If he didn’t feel like it, he’d prop his cute little face on two hands and stare at his grandparents with puppy-dog eyes.  Afraid that he would starve if we didn’t force him to eat something, Papa struck a goldmine when he threatened to withhold dessert for the whole family if Clayton didn’t eat his food.  Ever-competitive,  Clayton stuffed his food down and told his brothers, “I saved your dessert!”

To Cuddle Or Not To Cuddle

Taylor has always been the most physically affectionate of my nephews, even when he was a baby.  During his stay I discovered that he’s still as cuddly as ever.  Each night, as we’d prepare for after-dinner activities, Taylor would ask me, “Can I sit with you Coco?” or “Can we cuddle Coco?”  Even if we just came inside from the 110 degree heat and we were both damp with sweat, I never turned down those requests.  It’s not easy for a single, 30-something woman to find an appropriate person to cuddle with.  Curling up with Taylor each night was a sweet connection.  Sigh

On the other hand, I have three other nephews who like me but wouldn’t be caught dead hugging me, let alone cuddling with me.  Phillip, at 12, is too cool to cuddle.  Mason, at 8, is constantly moving so he’s hard to get a hold of.  When I tell Clay that I love him, he says, “I don’t love you!”  He thinks he’s being funny but I can’t help but want a little sincere love.  Sigh

Potty Humor

Occasionally we’d light up a Duralog and roast s’mores.  (Yes, even on a Phoenix summer night.  It’s a sign of great love and devotion.)  I started a tradition of group storytelling.  We’d go around the circle and each person would add a sentence.  The stories were always a strange adult-child mix of vocabulary and plot, but inevitably the stories would deteriorate with potty humor.  What is it with boys and bodily functions?  If they are not doing them, they are talking about them.  You know what my reaction is here.

Loud, Louder and Ear-piercingly Loud are the Only Volumes

Our house has been breaking the sound barrier this month.  One boy can make a lot of noise, but when you put four boys between the ages of 5 and 12 in one house with refined sugar it becomes other-worldly loud.  There is no way to escape such noise, even if you go into your bedroom, shut the door, turn on your sound machine and turn on your ipod.  The noise of four boys defies description.  It probably defies science.

Though I’ve done a lot of sighing during the last month, I have been happily surprised at my capacity to let go of the small stuff and just love these boys.  They have the beautiful eyes of their mother and the expressiveness of their father.  They are always competitive, sometimes naughty but mostly fun and loving.  My life was turned inside-out this month and though the invasion was a loud, ever-moving swarm of sugarfied gun-slingers, my love for my nephews expanded in the chaos.  I’ll miss the boys.  I’m excited to see them again at Thanksgiving, but this silence is really, really nice.  Sigh

In the past two weeks, I’ve heard five different people describe their spiritual lives as a desert.  It’s a metaphor we’ve probably all heard before — stretches of time in a spiritual journey that are dominated by feelings of isolation, dryness or silence from God.  I’m not talking about feeling lost or spiritually numb for a few days or weeks but spiritual droughts that last months, sometimes years.  One friend shared that he has been in a spiritual desert for ten years.  Ten years.  That’s sounds as life-sucking as a journey across the Sahara.  As I listened to his story, I felt such tremendous compassion and concern for him.  Every instinct in me was to soothe his hurt, to help him out of his desert, to fix the problem.  If only it was that easy.  Relief for a spiritual drought lasting months, years or decades has to be more complicated than turning on a faucet and filling a bathtub or drinking a glass of ice water after a day in the sun. 

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the predicament of my friends in the desert.  My pastoral heart has me intensely wishing that I were a rainmaker, but if I understand anything about my calling it is that my most important work is not to fix but to walk alongside.  So how do I support someone who is in the desert?  How can those of us living in a spiritual garden walk alongside you in the desert?  As one friend beautifully put it, “How can we be water for you?”  Here are a few of my thoughts, hopefully received even as a small cupful of cool water.

First, to you desert dwellers who have shared your story with me or others, thank you.  Your honesty is so important.  More than materialism or apathy, I worry that pretense is the sickness eating away at the health of the American church.  What you have done by sharing your story is to resist the power of pretense.   You’ve taken a very courageous step toward keeping our dialogue grounded in reality rather than fantasy.  You’ve shown that you, at least, will be a person who speaks truth, even when it’s risky and uncomfortable. 

I hope you know how refreshing your honesty is, what a radical gift of hospitality you’ve offered us.  Your honesty welcomes me, even calls me, to follow your example and be real about the parts of my relationship with Christ that are stale or shriveled.  I’m sure the first century church did not thrive and spread because the Christians gathered weekly and pretended the persecution they were facing was no big deal.  Instead, I imagine that the literal and spiritual survival of the early church depended on coming together to openly share their struggles, to cry out to God and to worship even when answers were unclear.   

I’ve been sifting through scripture the past few weeks, going back to the source of the desert metaphor, to renew my hope through the biblical story.  The desert is a timeless physical and spiritual reality for the people of God.  Moses and the Israelites were delivered from a life of slavery and harsh oppression.  Their very next steps were spent wandering in a barren desert for four decades, their long-hoped for destination – a promised land flowing with milk and honey – always appearing and disappearing along the hazy mirage of the horizon.  Even though their needs were always miraculously met by God, their faith was messy.  They praised and trusted in God when their bellies were full and their thirst was quenched, but they grumbled and fretted and worshipped idols when the hikes grew too long, when God seemed absent or when their cravings for Egyptian meat overcame their satisfaction in heavenly manna.  The desert is all over the biblical narrative.  Psalms, Job, the prophets, 1 Peter — all give raw and real testimony that faith is difficult.  Even Jesus entered the desert and was tempted to betray his Father.    

Thankfully, Jesus lived as a man without pretense.  He told his disciples plainly, “In this life you will have trouble” (Jn. 16:33).  It seems like the witness of scripture gives us permission to be honest about the difficulty of faith with ourselves, with each other and with God.  (Take a few minutes to listen to Psalm 22 or 42.)  Perhaps there is wisdom in understanding the desert not as a personal failing of faith, but an inevitable reality, the refining path of hot coals we walk across when we choose to follow Jesus.   

Surviving a spiritual drought is certainly one of the hardest tests of the Christian faith.  We Evangelicals put so much emphasis on spiritual high experiences and the feelings of faith that it’s no wonder that we fall apart when we reach dry, flat, silent places.  An overemphasis on feeling faith might disable us from knowing how to find spiritual nourishment when we are numb. 

It’s a common story – a Christian confronts a crisis or gets stuck in the desert and they can’t reconcile their experience with their knowledge of a good and loving God.  When they reach a certain point of exhaustion or exasperation, many people abandon their faith in God.  Thankfully, scripture offers us real hope, messages that tell us that faith is more than feelings.  It is a daily act of believing that God is, that he is Yahweh, literally, the one who is with you.  Faith is believing, not despite, but through the exhaustion, confusion, heat, fear and abandonment you are feeling, that God is getting dusty in the desert with you.  Faith is clinging to what you know to be true rather than being enslaved by what you feel.  Faith is trusting the reality taught by scripture rather than embracing the false reality projected by our culture.

Last week in a bible study I co-lead, we read and reflected on John chapter 6 where Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”  Like God’s relationship with the Israelites in the desert, Jesus miraculously provided for hungry people’s most basic and immediate physical needs when he fed 5,000 from a few fishes and loaves.  But then he declared himself to be bread that can completely and eternally satisfy their spiritual hunger.   These are either soothing or tough words for those in the spiritual desert who feel disconnected from God.  This raises a whole new set of questions for desert wanderers who are earnestly seeking a revival in their relationship with God.  Why doesn’t God just relieve our pain, enliven our faith and lead us back to spiritual vitality when that is what we desperately want?  Why must we wait?  How can our faith survive in a barren land? 

So I’ve circled back to where I started, staring up at questions as big as the Sahara.  Ultimately, I wonder, what water do I have to offer to those in the desert?  As I’ve read and reflected and prayed my mind keeps coming back to the phrase “remain in me.”  Jesus used these words when he spoke of himself as the bread of life (Jn. 6) and as the true vine (Jn. 15).  What does it mean to remain in Jesus?  I could fill a whole article on this question alone, but in the context of the desert, I think it means to obey God’s commands, to read God’s word, to love God and our neighbors as best we can with what resources we have within us.  If you feel disconnected from God, lost or alone, remaining in God might look like a simple daily declaration of your commitment to follow God.  It might look like praying the words or patterns of the Psalms when you have no of your own words.  It might be an intentionality to attend church even when you don’t feel like going, and especially making sure we get there on days when you can join your family in the Lord’s Supper.  Remaining in Jesus certainly means continuing to share your faith, even the difficult, messy, dry parts, with your fellow Christians and with God.  It surely means clinging to scripture as your reality and hope.  Remaining in Jesus absolutely means following God through the desert.

Two weeks ago I preached for the first time in five years.  I preached about satan.  The father of lies is not something I’d choose as my introductory sermon at a church where I will soon be serving as interim associate pastor, but what’s a girl to do when the date she’s needed corresponds with the middle of a five-part series and the day’s topic is fallen angels?  I relished the opportunity to craft a sermon again, but I was more than a little wary of the topic.  Can you imagine my dilemma?  Picture me smiling, speaking with my usual enthusiasm as I say, “Hi, I’m Corrie, one of your new pastors and I’m excited to minister alongside you.  Now let’s turn to the Bible and talk about a serpent, a ferocious dragon, a murderer, the great deceiver who, along with a horde of demons, is trying to destroy our lives and tear us away from God.”  Not a great beginning for ministry, is it?  My challenge was to tackle an intimidating topic without getting lost in the bad news that is a very real part of satan. 

(By the way, I’ve de-capitalized satan’s name.  Any being whose vocation is deception should not be awarded the respect of a capital letter. )

There’s plenty of bad news in our world: tornadoes that suck a teenager through a sunroof, earthquakes that send tsunamis that cause nuclear meltdown, broken marriages, drowned children, domestic violence, human beings abducted or enticed into the sex-trade, etc., etc., etc.  Bad news is as easy to spot as an SUV on a city street.  All we have to do is live to know that destruction and pain and evil are real.  What’s more evil, more depressing, and perhaps more frightening, than the reality of a being whose sole purpose is to keep each of us from living the full, joyful and free life that God intended? 

To use a very evangelical phrase, I grew up in the church.  I have a hymnal full of memories from a childhood spent in stiff pews and paste-scented Sunday school rooms.  The most striking memory I’ve retained from those pews, other than the bold mauve of the church carpeting, is hearing preachers expound on the bad news – sin, satan, hell and its fires waiting to devour sinners.  It wasn’t preaching with the hair-raising force that I imagine came from Jonathan Edwards, but the themes were the same.  I saw these fearsome descriptions motivate many people forward during regular altar calls so they could give their lives to Christ. 

As an adult I cringe at the idea of hellfire and brimstone preaching.  Yes, I believe that evil is real, that satan is real and that he is the worst of all bad news, but I worry when fear sets the stage for faith.  Would you become a patron of a theatre where each play gave the brightest spotlight, the longest monologues and the power to control major plot shifts solely to the antagonist?  If tragedy and menace was all that was ever reported, would you rush to buy magazine subscriptions? 

I’m exaggerating with a purpose.  Of course the good news was shared at my childhood pulpits; how could I have become a joyful Christian otherwise?  But the problem that I see as an adult is too much time and attention given to bad news.  As a pastor, I am truly concerned anytime I see or hear bad news overshadowing good news.  Hearing too much bad news is like pumping tar into our veins.  The human heart is a strong organ but if you fill it three-quarters full with the oozing blackness of guilt, personal depravity, the presence and power of evil forces, how can it possibly keep pumping?  Have you ever seen seabirds blackened and disabled by a oilspill?  Rescue workers spend hours soaking and stripping the crude oil from the birds’ feathers so they can fly again.

Jesus preached the gospel, literally the good news of the kingdom of God.  Though he was born into a time and place that had a lot of bad news – Roman oppression, Jewish corruption, poverty, demon possession, unjust beheadings, crucifixions for petty theft – Jesus walked all over his country preaching about redemption, freedom, salvation and eternal life.  His news was about a good king, his father, who loves humans so much that the king prepared a mansion big enough for all who choose to follow him.  Jesus’ headlines read: Man Blind Since Birth Healed,  Lazarus Alive After Three Days in a Tomb, Forgiveness of Sins – No Ritual Sacrifices Necessary, Living Water of Eternal Life – FREE!  Jesus spoke plainly about the reality of sin and confronted the sins he saw in people but he did not beat them over their heads with their own guilt.  He exposed the black parts of their hearts, offered forgiveness, symbolically cleansed them through baptism and then told these new children of God to spread the good news.  Jesus acknowledged the reality and power of satan, but he did not give satan any kind of spotlight.  Instead, Jesus preached sermon after sermon on the reality of the kingdom of God that is more powerful than the kingdom of darkness.  He proved his words by resisting temptation, casting out demons, curing diseases and raising people from the dead.  Jesus gave life. 

Christianity is life-giving when there’s the right calibration of good news to bad.  Unfortunately, not all Christians and not all preachers get the storytelling measurements right.  This is what I was thinking about as I prepared my sermon on satan.  I wanted to follow the best example of preaching that I knew.  My goal was to simply and clearly confront the reality and power of satan, being very careful to not let message get bogged down in the tar of fear or hopelessness.  We turned to the good news and embraced it like a dear friend just arrived at a party.  I expounded about the limits of satan’s power when compared to the almighty power of the resurrected Christ.  We talked about our empowerment by the Holy Spirit.  We read the end of the story where we see satan’s everlasting torment and God’s everlasting glory.  And then we worshiped together.  Our worship was the true conclusion of my sermon.  The people of Hope Covenant Church sang loudly in celebration.  I had a big smile on my face because the bad news had been overshadowed by the good news, as it is and should be.

Crisis sculpts a recognizable mask on all its victims.  We all have experienced it – the moments when our well-ordered, happy lives seem to suddenly crumble into dust and blow away on the wind.  Emotion is stripped from our faces like paint ruthlessly scraped off a once-colorful vase.  We feel exposed, vulnerable, raw.  In just a moment our lives are changed, and not for the better.  Whether we are facing illness, death, or another type of loss, our universe has been tipped upside-down and gradually we realize that this strange, suspended vantage point is our new normal.  From here, it is very hard to look into our future (and that could be just a minute from now) and feel hopeful.  We wonder – where is God in all of this, how am I going to make it through today, will I ever feel happy again?

When you are on the safe-side of a tragedy, untouched by the horror that has ripped someone’s life apart, it’s much easier to keep perspective.  Hope for a supporter is more than a single pin-hole on a mammoth bulletin board.  For the sufferer, talk of hope can seem trite, spark anger, or halt conversation.  But eventually, grieving people want hope.  They begin to search for it; they want to grasp it, even if they don’t believe it’s attainable. 

It’s hard to know how to guide hurting people toward hope.  They can be so pessimistic, so despondent.  A few years ago I stumbled over a caring tool that really works and you don’t have to be a pastor to use it.  I was reading a few stories in the Old Testament and I saw a theme.  Each time the people of God were facing what seemed to be an insurmountable task, God reminded them of their past.  God would say to his worried, skeptical people, “I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”  God wasn’t tooting his own horn.  With this single sentence he was calling them to hope.  He jogged their memory and helped them recall all of the miraculous things he had done for them.  When they were slaves of an oppressive ruler and couldn’t save themselves, he interceded.  He loosened their chains, led them out of Egypt unharmed, parted a sea so they could escape chasing soldiers, and guided them through a strange desert, providing water from rock!  Ultimately, he led them to a promised, bountiful land.  With a single sentence, God reminded them of the testimony of their past.  The freedom, guidance, protection and provision that they received from their God in the past would certainly be part of their future. 

I can see the people of Israel hunched over campfires, surely planning for their uncertain future, but mostly sharing stories from their past.  One story leads to another.  Laughter and tears trail through their history, but with each tale, with each testimony of lessons learned and blessings received, hope burns brighter and warmer from within.  They lie down to sleep peaceful, hopeful that as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, as certain as their God loves them, there will be a way forward.

Memories are a very important part of finding hope when the future is a shadowy dead-end.  Next time you are at a loss, search your memories like you would a photo album or old journal.  Look for those pictures and stories where God provided richly for you.  Pile them up like a stack of quilts waiting for winter’s chill.  Wrap yourself up in these memories, and hope.

Was it four years ago or thirty years ago that I began my journey toward motherhood?  How much longer will I wait until I can share life with my child?  Where is she and what is she going through?   These are the questions that made me tear up as I drove to church on Mother’s Day.

I’ve known the warmth and security of a mother’s love my whole life.   I can’t imagine a life where that relationship was threatened or absent or stolen away.  Because of the love I have received, I’ve grown into a woman with a lot of love to give and I want to share my life with a child.  I specifically feel called to share my home with a child who has lost her or his parents.  I’ve thought about adopting since I was a teenager.  I don’t really know why it had such personal significance to me when I was young.  I had two adopted cousins, but they lived far away and I didn’t know them very well.  As I’ve aged, my compassion for the parentless has grown.  Several years ago, I felt almost plagued by the thought of all the children needing homes.  Here’s a snippet from an email I wrote to friends in January of 2008: 

For several years, actually, I have felt this gentle prodding to consider adopting an older child, one who has little chance of adoption because of his or her age, but regardless needs a loving person to become their family.  Over the past year, the yearning to share my life with a child has grown exponentially to the point of pretty much every time I see a child, I feel this huge tug on my heart.  This fall I was challenged by two people to allow myself to listen to this desire, to follow it and see where it is leading me…to consider it as a desire that God has given to me.

I spent a year in discernment, along the way becoming a certified foster parent in Pennsylvania.  The whole process was really all about listening.  What I heard in the end was God saying to me, “Corrie, I’m not limiting you.  You are limiting yourself.”  Though I live my life, in many ways, unafraid of being unconventional (I’m a single, female, evangelical pastor, after all) but adopting a child as a single parent tested even my own capacity for courage and boldness.  I took a few deep breaths and reminded myself that there was plenty of time to prepare for this new adventure.  For the past two years I have been saving money and praying over our future.  I hope to begin the formal process by summer of 2012. 

While I wait, the uncertainty and fear that are daily emotions for at-risk children are often on my mind.  My concern grows when I see statistics and facts like these:

• In 2009, 700,000 children were in the United States foster care system. 
• 65% of those children had been in the system for over a year. 
• Only 57,000 of them were adopted out of foster care. 
• An additional 115,000 were classified as “waiting” to be adopted. 
• The mean age of children waiting for adoption is seven and a half years old.  (According to the US Department of Health and Human Sciences, Administration for Children and Families.)

A public adoption through the child welfare system in Pennsylvania would have cost me only $3,500 in legal and court fees, most of which I would have redeemed through federal tax credits.  If I’d wanted to select my child based on their race, gender, family of origin and/or medical history, then I would have been recommended for private adoption, which can cost around $10,000.  If I only wanted a white infant, I could expect to spend upwards of $35,000.  International adoptions can cost even more. 

I’m really just looking for a child who needs a home, a child that I connect with, and a child that I will be a good fit for as a parent; everything else is negotiable.  What shocked me as I did my research was that adoption, as an industry, treats children like a commodity.  Demand determines their price.  Those healthy white babies are certainly intrinsically valuable, but not “worth” $30,000 more than a mixed race infant or a school age child, or a child with a physical disability.  It’s heartbreaking when you realize that there are thousands of “free” children that will remain orphans due to characteristics that our society has deemed undesirable. 

A few years ago I befriended a young, black woman who was forced into the system when she was an adolescent.  Her mother was sent to prison for life; her father is unknown.  She was moved from one foster home to another until she aged-out of the system at 18.  I met her because she lived in the dorm that I supervised.  When the college shut down for vacations, she literally had nowhere to go.  She had no family to go to and no former foster families that would take her in.  She came to my office to ask for my help in solving “a small problem.”  That’s not a small problem, it’s a travesty.

Seek justice, encourage the oppressed.  Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:17)  In the Old Testament, the prophets were constantly giving encouragement and instructions about how God’s people should live their lives.  Generally, it was a time when their behavior was unethical, amoral and far from pleasing to God.  Read any of the prophets and you will run across these great little zingers, like the one above, that sum up Godly living.  In biblical times, children, women, the elderly and slaves were the most vulnerable people groups; they had no economic value in patriarchal society.  Orphans and widows were of particular concern to God because if you had no husband or father, then you had no access to food, clothing or shelter.  

We live thousands of years later and many things have changed, but the plight of orphans is still very real.  Imagine the emotional trauma of losing your parents at the age of five.  Maybe they beat you or neglected you or they couldn’t shake their addiction.  Or maybe they died, suddenly, in an accident.  Now every day begins with a question – who do I belong to? – and a thousand other uncertainties stem from that fundamental worry.  Will I be warm?  Will I be hurt?  What will I eat?  Where will they send me?  How long will they keep me?  Will they be nice?  Can I take my teddy bear?  Will I have friends?  

These are my questions: where is my daughter?  What does she love to do?  What is her favorite color?  Does she like music or does she love to read as much as I do?  These are the things I’m curious about.  I pray regularly for her safety and about the risks and trauma she might be facing.  Mother’s Day was no exception.   I pray through all the possible circumstances of her life, but mostly I pray for her protection and for patience while we wait to become a family.