Here's the thing: Enthrall me with a Love Story

At 35, I can confidently say that I’ve done my lifetime’s share of reading.  I treasure the mantle, “bibliophile,” and will add to my ever-expanding library until my time on earth has passed, even if I have to create pathways through my stacks to make my home livable.  It is telling that I am both giddy and comforted at the thought of that many books lingering in my home.   I’ve also watched my share of movies.  I majored in film for a few semesters as an undergrad, and still hoard the good ones as greedily as the books I love.  I get to both the local and national theater as often as I can.  I’m a card-carrying, lifetime thespian; though prefer now to watch others tread the boards more deftly than I ever could.  And as every aspiring novelist, I strive for publication, daily (ish) disciplining myself to take the pictures in my head and paint them on the paper with the words tucked in my heart. 

               Suffice it to say: I’m a big fan of a good story.

But there is a troubling theme rampant throughout all these mediums.  One that has put me off more books than I care to count or more movies than I am want to mention, and has kept me out of more theaters than I would like.   Sadly, this theme has to do with love.

It has become the prevailing notion that love is only exiting when it is new.  Very Romeo and Juliet, albeit; but it has been taken to an even more ridiculous extreme in contemporary art.  It has come to the point where love, when seemingly dulled by time and familiarity, flickers out.  And afterward, the only hope for the individual is to find new and fresh love again.  Elsewhere.

And while it feels exciting, with troupes of butterflies storming our insides, might I suggest that elsewhere is exactly the opposite of what beautiful love looks like?  That elsewhere is, in reality, the lazy, self-indulgent, narcissistic mockery of genuine love.  And quite frankly, it is this theme that should be routed from our art for the lie that it is. 

I have come to learn, with almost no help from the stories I’ve read and seen, that it is the journey that makes the love story enchanting.  Not the beginning.  And it is the end – the sweet, old couple all wrinkled and hunched, sitting together, hand-in-hand, stealing a peck in the I-know-you silence between them – that we are all striving for. 

                Because, honestly, have you ever heard of anyone who wants to die alone?  
                              Or with someone they just met?

Yes, marriage is hard.  Damn hard.  Which is likely why we are so entertained by the idea of abandoning it altogether.  But more than that, it is beautiful.  And joyful.  And full of struggle.  And sacrificial.  And defining.  And refining as well. 

But the messages we're getting through society and art is that most of the things above are “bad.”  

We shouldn’t be defined by another person.  We shouldn’t have to sacrifice parts of ourselves or our dreams for the sake of someone else.  Our relationships shouldn’t change us.  And we shouldn’t have to struggle.  Ever.  But let me tell you: society lies.  Art lies.    

The truth is that the very action of love is to sacrifice for the good of another person.  Sometimes it’s big – giving up your life for one you love.  Sometimes it’s small – getting up every morning and making coffee before the one you love wakes.  But sacrifice is the existential expression of what love is. 

And yes, to define ourselves by another person is also what love does.  I am still me.  You are still you.  But there is a new and overriding entity called US that takes precedent.  And yes, we slowly become more US than you or me.  Because that’s what happens when you meld two lives into one.  I start thinking about your needs over my own, and then consider our needs over mine.  And you do the same for me.  So the US that is who we are jointly becoming is more important than you or me.  That is how it was designed to be.     

We all change.  Throughout our lives, we morph into different version of ourselves based on our experiences up to that point.  So it is within marriage.  The beauty here is that there is another person helping refine us, rubbing off the sharp edges of self to reveal the soft truth of who we were meant to be.     

And struggle.  Well, that is just a part of life on this fallen rock.  There is no life apart from it.  Until the dawn of eternity, each person given even one heartbeat here will struggle.  And when you merge two lives into one, this truth holds for the new US as well. 

Mignon MacLaughlin said, 

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”  

I would amend this quote.  Not only a successful marriage, but a happy and thriving and beautiful one.  Love is an on-going, ever adapting, constant.  And it is the foundation that marriage should be built on.  So that we don’t crave elsewhere, either in reality or in our entertainment. 

A final note –

As for the crass and ridiculous assault on marital intimacy in contemporary media, I have two answers: 

Experiential: Fourteen years and a twice post-baby/post-breast-feeding, now peri-menopausal, body later, and I am more delighted with the intimate moments in my marriage than I ever was as a new, perky, peak of physical perfection bride discovering her groom.  Truly, I can only imagine it gets even better from here. 

From Scripture: King Solomon, the man whom Hugh Hefner could only fantasize of being, penned a number of proverbs and, eventually, the book of Ecclesiastes.  Bearing in mind that the Song of Solomon, the most erotic and beautiful poetry in the sixty-six books of scripture, is also attributed to his pen, Solomon admonished his reader to “rejoice in the wife of your youth,” and “enjoy life with your wife, whom you love.”[1]    

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Fellow sojourners, I urge you to cast off the lies that love is only about beginnings; that love is only beautiful in youth and newness.  Do not buy into the lie that one love can overtake another, if the first has grown still.  The second, dear one, is not love.  It is a vicious pirate and unabashed charlatan.  Do not stand for this theme in your entertainment.  Look for stories of love that are genuine, stories that honor the journey.  Beginnings are exciting.  But it is the endings that matter most.   For while art may mimic life, artist also have to eat.  And if you don't buy what they're selling, they might just explore new topics.  

Strain for that golden-aged park bench, with two lovers covered in the lines of their shared histories, fingers entwined and spirits at rest with the ease of the other’s nearness. 

For the best love story Disney every told was that of 

Carl & Ellie.      

Found this delightful fanart at Norke's deviantart site.  I get teary just looking at it.  Go here to see more. 

  

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[1]Proverbs 5:18 and Ecclesiastes 9:9  |   These admonitions are easily applicable to wives as well, now that women have the power to seek divorce with the same ease as men.  Whereas when these words of wisdom were written, women were not permitted to seek divorce; thus there was no need to admonish women against leaving the husband of her youth.                 

Failing Lent

The sink is full of dishes.  Again.  And overflowing onto the counters, and stove, and all the way ‘round the kitchen until they butt up against the impressive tower of papers, books, notes, and all variety of odds and ends that collect there.  To think, just two weeks ago, a sweet friend constructed and gifted me with an organization system to tame that part of my chaos.  Her gift, sadly, is sitting in a pile in the study nook/living room, surrounded by tottering piles of textbooks, more papers, and testamental dictionaires.  There are piles everywhere.  The rec room is buried under clean clothes waiting to be folded; the laundry room is swallowed by dirty ones waiting to be washed.  The bathrooms have piles of get-ready-so-we-can-get-out-the-door messes, and splotches of un-wiped toothpaste; the kids’ rooms are interwoven tapestries of toys and clothes.  Boots, hats, coats, and bags clutter up the stairs; more toys laundry and luggage are beginning to devour my room. 

And that’s only the state of the house.  One can’t escape the endless reading lists for class, the papers and responses, the I-should-be-at-least-start-on-my-big-papers-so-I’m-not-freaking-out-later that claws at the throat in the quietest moments.  Kids’ activities to be managed, scheduled, shuffled, and remembered.  I can’t forget that I’m also a wife, which requires more than a flying out the door peck on the check, because I’m too late to aim for your lips; and a friend – even if all I ever seem to do is say that I’m praying over you; and a daughter and sister and niece and grand-daughter – yep, praying for y’all, too!  And what about that bible study we told everyone we would host this semester?  We had it all planned out; well mostly.  And yes, Lord, I hear you tugging at my heart about joining – actively participating in, giving parts of myself to – a community of your followers; but can You find one that meets when I can?  And instead of adding to my reading, can’t I just go and listen?  Oh, yeah, Lord, about that promise to work-out every day…does sleep count? 

It’s not even two weeks into Lent and the oppressive I’m-failing-at-everything has curled up on the sofa and refuses to budge; more grafted-in family member than uninvited guest anymore.  And who wants to fail God?  It’s not so much that I think I’ll lose His love in my broken promises or undone chores or missed opportunities; but I do think that in these, I fail to make Him proud.  Like I’m not earning my keep, or taking advantage of all the gifts He’s so lavishly laid before me; that I’m squandering my time and treasures, or that I’m hoarding these things and somehow disappointing Him. 

But I hear the Father’s voice, repeating Himself across my kitchen table and in the texts for class, because sometimes I have to hear things more than once before I really listen. 

God can’t love you any less than He does right now;

He can’t love you any more, either.

The Father loves you no matter what you do or don’t.

The student in me pauses, rolls the theory over and over in my head – it’s awfully small a thing to be such a big truth.  I hold it up against the scriptures, just to be sure – does the whole counsel of God agree to this, or is it a pithy thing that placates followers like me who can’t get it together? 

{Matthew 3:13-17}

But there it is, at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry – before the resurrection, before the cross, before the miracles, before He even read from the scroll of Isaiah or said “ego emi.”  Before any of it, the “Father declare[d] that he [was] already ‘well pleased’ with His ‘beloved Son’ without reference to his works.”*  The Father loved the Son unconditionally; not for being incarnate; not for enduring the cross; not because Jesus followed God’s will without fail; not for Christ’s work with the poor and oppressed and forgotten.  The Father loved the Son.  That’s it.

And so it is with me.  And you.  There is nothing I, or you, could ever do to earn this love.  There is nothing I, or you, could do to maintain this love.  This is a love that is completely outside of you and me.  We have no power over it.  It is there on the days we fail; it is there on the days we nail it.  It was there before we knew it; it’s there when we can’t feel it.  It is a love that, before we even knew we needed it, goes to the cross on our behalf.  And bleeds for us, dies for us. 

And lives for us.      

There is nothing for us to do, but accept it.  To wrap it around our lives.  To live in it and out of it. 

So it is with Lent.  There is nothing for us to do, but live in wonder and awe at a love so big that it covers us, every day – good and bad, failing or nailing it.  Every single day we are loved with a vast and unwavering love that is not conditional upon us; but is a love that is a who-God-is love.  And that love is the reason for Lent.       

 

*Sanders, The Deep Things of God

I am Leah.

There is a story from the ancient scriptures that is oft told around Valentine’s Day.  One of determined and persistent love: the story of Jacob and his Rachel.  Theirs is the story of how he, after being overwhelmed by her beauty, worked for seven years simply to earn her hand; and then, having been duped into marrying her older sister, how he worked seven more.  And while this is terribly romantic, I am given pause at how often we neglect the other sister, the one Jacob first wed.  And when I open their story, I feel that I know this woman better than the two tenacious lovers – the undesired sister. 

I have heard so many teachers and pastors and lay ministry leaders claim that she was purposefully and actively complicit in her father’s treachery against Jacob.  But because the scriptures don’t say, I wonder.  Because, when researching of late a full theology of beauty, I find that even the scriptures say Leah was not beautiful; and certainly not in comparison to her sister, Rachel.  What stands behind this stark declaration is the fact that there is not a woman in all of creation who wouldn’t have felt the weight of this truth – every single day – as she grew, as she hoped for love, as she watched her younger sister capture the heart of this stranger with her beauty.  Leah knew; she lived in this truth: she was not beautiful.  She was not desired.  Not wanted.  Not good enough. 

Thus, I can be compelled to conclude that even if she were actively complicit in the plot to trick Jacob into marrying her, her spirit had been so wounded, so abused, so crippled by the knowledge that even her own father didn’t think she could be married off without deception, her part in this scheme would have come from a desolate place of wanting.  Wanting what is the crux of humanity – to be loved.

Yet another option remains: that she was not an active participant in this plot.  That she was forced, outside of her will, to enact this ruse on her sister’s fiancé.  It is a cultural possibility; though again, not explicit in scripture, so we cannot truly know.  And if it were the case, one must add to the desperate feelings of being so completely unwanted, the guilt of having to betray her beautiful younger sister and deprive Rachel of the love she had found.    

Either way, Leah was bound to this marriage of great compromise; for there were no mechanisms for a woman in this time to divorce herself of such abject un-love.  So that Leah remains the sister who was forever unwanted.  Even after the marriage consummated and the veil lifted, Jacob didn’t want her.  How that must have felt, after giving her body, herself, to this man – whatever her hopes or guilt or dreams – to be publically declared unwanted.  Branded as not good enough by her now-husband, her father, her sister, her people; to finally have the label of her lifelong pain spoken aloud.  Undesired.  Unwanted.  Unloved. 

And all because she wasn’t pretty enough.   

Leah tried those seven years that weren’t hers, to win Jacob’s heart.  But we know these few millennia later, what she didn’t: Jacob only had eyes for Rachel.  His Rachel – the woman who was beautiful, the one who was wanted. 

And yet, still Jacob lay with Leah.  She bore him children because the Lord saw that Leah was unloved.  Year after year, Leah made herself available to Jacob; hoping to win just a portion of his love.  Through sex, through bearing him sons, through being the best wife she could be [ok, that last one’s a hermeneutical leap].  But Jacob doggedly made it known that Rachel was the one whom his heart desired.  And implicit in his constant proclamation was the over-and-over annunciation that Leah was not.

Sadly, it was only after Leah gave up hoping that Jacob could love her, she found peace in her spirit.  After all the sons, all the striving, all the praying, all the never-ending rejection, she had her last son and finally said, “This time, I will praise the Lord.”  And she stopped having children.[1]  What we don’t know is whether she was thereafter unable to have children, or if she stopped sleeping with Jacob.  Both are possible.  Perhaps Leah finally gave up; quit trying to win the love of a man, and instead became content with herself, her life, and her Lord.    

While Leah’s story isn’t a romantic one, I find myself drawn to it as I ponder beauty and love.  A combination with which so many are infatuated even to this day.  And I think of all the women hurting themselves in the pursuit of both.  Living lives out of the desperate loneliness of not good enough  and unloved.  Being driven to sacrifice the best parts of themselves on the altar of false hope and phantom promises. 

If only I were prettier/skinnier/smarter/younger. 

If only he loved me. 

And all the myriad of wishes that assault us, when we are empty of love. 

This year, on Valentine’s Day, I have decided to be mindful of Leah; to burn a candle for her, to buy her flowers, and offer her just a bit of my day.  I will do this for the wife who was unloved; and for all the Leahs since.  Women who have wanted so very desperately to be loved, of whom I could number my younger self.  Women who have sought this love in the arms of the wrong man; who have traded their bodies chasing after phantoms of love; women who have sacrificed their time and great portions of their lives on the altar of this false hope.  Women who have heard over and over and over again, that they are not enough. 

I will buy them – us – flowers because there is an unquenchable love that is as strong as death and as jealous as the grave.  We have only but to look to Christ, for He loves each one of us so much that he would sell off all of the universe just to ransom you.  And me.  Regardless of the nights spent in the arms of our Jacob, men who don’t want us.  Regardless of where these lonely paths have taken us.  Regardless of what we have traded for the hope of love.  Because that is a love more powerful and more beautiful than Jacob’s.  And through it, you and I, beloved, are made more lovely than Rachel; and more content than Leah.

The love of Jesus Christ – the only man who knows all that we’ve done while pursuing love, and cares only for our hearts.  The Son of God, who loves each one of us, be we Rachel or Leah, anyway.       

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[1] Genesis 29:35

7 tips from 13 years of married life

Yesterday was my 13^th wedding anniversary.  Because the Officer had to work, we’re celebrating today.  The man I met at new student orientation for the University of New Mexico [and then again on frat row, which is another story entirely] is now treating me to an overnight escape at a swanky hotel in downtown Denver and a VIP showing of the DAM’s “Becoming Van Gogh” exhibit.  Art isn’t exactly his thing, nor is sleeping in a bed that is a mere thirty minutes from his, but he’ll do just about anything to make me smile.  He’s a keeper. 

And yes, “escape” is just the right word for our celebration.  I’ll be quite honest, dear reader, this year was hard.  Phenomenally, unexpectedly, lingeringly hard.  And no, neither of us has come out of it unscathed.  There were internal struggles, but mostly there were external forces at work that tested the very fabric of our marriage.  But God…broke through everything we were going through and helped us focus on what really mattered: Him first [always] and each other.  The rest of it, well, it’s going to burn away, to wither and rot.  My prayer, as we put this year behind us, is that our marriage will be a testament of God’s grace in a world full of fallen people who are just like us and need nothing but to be loved.  
    
There were those who knew us way back when who wagered among themselves as to whether or not we’d last six months.  Apparently, most of our close friends and even some family felt that our union was the Seabiscuit of marriages.  I’d smirk now, except that I can take none of the credit.  I have often said that on that crisp night under the desert stars, I made a covenant with a God I didn’t know, to love in a way that I couldn’t understand a man I had, really, only just met.  Thirteen years, three states, and two children later, we are still learning what it means to honor that covenant.  What has amazed me most is that God has held me to my word, even as He held up His end of the deal; in spite of the fact that I was just a starry-eyed girl swathed in white, giddy with the prospect of being in swooning-love for the rest of forever, and who had no idea what that commitment would require of her.

 

[And here’s where I get to sound like an old, married lady:] Because today I can say without hesitation that marriage takes work.  That swooning-breathless love is possible to keep, but it requires lots and lots and lots of arduous effort to maintain; or to recover, if ever it becomes lost.  While we’re still figuring this whole two-people-becoming-one thing,  I have found the following seven points to be the ones to which we return time and again:

1.        Share each other’s interests: The boy [for really, at that point we were hardly grown-up] who took swimming and Hitchcockian film classes just to be with me is the same Officer who enjoys our Christmas tradition of the Nutcracker ballet and surprises me with art museum tours for date night.  He’s the one for whom I actually read the sports section during football season, so I might be able engage in a decent conversation about the Broncos [until Elway shirked on his word to let Tebow start and put the-reason-we’ll-be-looking-for-a-new-quarterback-in-two-years-at-best on the roster, but I digress...].  And he’s the reason I am going for a concealed carry permit; and the only person with whom I enjoy pumping iron, or summiting 14ners after tenting in the woods, or watching movies that involve centurions or Spartans or Black Hawks.  And he is absolutely the only man with whom I grapple…unless I’m attacked by a scary man in some dark alley, at which point I’ll be glad of his training me thus.  Remember that you did things that were outside of your comfort zone before you married, and you probably enjoyed them for the simple reason that you did them with your then-future spouse.  Why should that stop after the vows have been said?       

2.        Figure out each other’s weaknesses and fill in the gaps with your strengths: The Officer’s the one I call when I’m scared.  He’s talked me down from pulling our kids out of school or shadowing their every breath, he’s the level head for medical emergencies [though his deft and expert maneuvering of the car at speeds exceeding legal parameters belie his quiet concern], and the one I wake when I can’t move but know that we have to pray in the darkest watches of the night.  He is patient when I’m all out; he keeps going when I want to quit.  He can schedule the heck out of a week-long hiking trip.  And I’m the one who buys random pets [ferrets, puppies, chinchillas, and chicks], moves furniture around monthly because I can’t stand monotony, and hosts mud-pit carnivals in our backyard.  I’m also the one who edits those 20 page term papers while he teaches the 9 year old math.  He carries all the water and lets me hold little hands, pick flowers, and turn over rocks.  He takes the pictures and lets me post them on Facebook.  Face life as a team; cover each other’s blind spots and back one another up.  It will bring you closer if you can appreciate the uniqueness in your spouse and live out of yours as well. 

3.        Care for each other: The Officer’s the one who babies me:  when I’m sick, when I’m tired, when I’m both.  I’m the one who, though not great at nurturing, will cajole him into taking a nap when he can’t keep his eyes open.  When he was in school [and I wasn’t], I’d bring him snacks to help him make it through his lessons.  When I was in school [and he was, too], he’d handle dinner and the kids so that I could make it through my papers.  Sometimes he does the dishes; sometimes I take out the trash.  It’s a phone call to see if he needs anything from the store, or if I need him to start dinner.  It is simply finding little ways to show one another that s/he, and his/her time, is important to you.       

4.       Talk, talk, talk, talk.  And then talk some more: Tell each other your dreams, no matter how wild they are.  If you want to live in Paris for a year, talk about it.  Pull out maps of the city, pick places you’d live or work or eat.  Share your ideas; if you want to redecorate, show your spouse pictures; conversely, if your spouse wants to redecorate, look at his/her pictures.  If you want to write a book, start a blog, paint, teach, rebuild a car…tell your spouse.  And if your spouse wants to do those things, read their manuscript [without criticism], follow their blog, buy them a canvas, go to junk yards, or encourage them to enroll in classes.  Be his/her biggest cheerleader.  And watch as s/he believes you and begins to live out what you already knew was true about them.  Talk about what you’re learning, what you want to learn, what your day was like, what you remember about the past, what you hope for in the future.  Share who you are; learn who they are.  Communicate.  And then get up the next day and do it again.  This is absolutely vital to every marriage. 

5.        Fight.  But don’t go to bed angry: Not a single one of us is perfect.  We are going to disagree; we’re going to have times when we don’t like the other person very much.  And when two fallen people are making their way to becoming one, there are going to be fights along the way.  That doesn’t mean you throw in the towel and cut your losses; it means that you remember the promise you made, you do your very best to see your spouse through loving eyes, and be ready to sacrifice parts of your sinful and selfish self for the greater good of US.  Don’t stuff your feelings, but don’t be ruled by them either.  Do respectfully tell your spouse what hurts you; and listen to him/her as s/he tells you what hurts him/her.  But know that these problems aren’t going to be solved in a 22 minute session, complete with commercial breaks, and that the last thing on our minds before we sleep is what sticks for the day.  If it’s angry words and tearful stone-walling, then that’s what tomorrow will feel like.  If it’s apologies and finding common ground, then that’s what tomorrow will be colored with as well.  And if you see the dawn before you come to a resolution, ask yourself, is my marriage worth the lost sleep?  Is the person across from me valuable enough to sacrifice my comfort for?  And know that the answer is always, “yes.”       

6.       Get naked together.  A lot.  Yep, I purposefully followed fighting with sex, because that’s how it should work in marriage, too. Touch is one of the most powerful tools for building, or restoring, any relationship; the marriage relationship is no different.  The spectacular thing about marriage is that because it is the closest relationship, couples have been given the most beautiful, mind-blowing expression of tender intimacy.  I won’t be graphic here [my Mom reads this blog], but neither will I pretend that God didn’t intend sex for the edification and enjoyment of two married people as they express their love for one another.  Read Song of Solomon [together, ideally] and remember that God created your spouse with you in mind.  And this is the one person with whom you can be completely open and, honestly, enjoy in a way that no other person ever can.  And you can be enjoyed in such a way by your spouse as well.  Don’t ever look to outside sources for the definition of beauty; find it in your spouse.  Don’t let the world tell you what you should or shouldn’t be doing, how you should or shouldn’t be doing it, or when or where you should.  Do what you both enjoy.  And do it often.  Seriously.  Remember that I-can’t-not-touch-this-person feeling; and if you have to, hire a sitter and book a hotel room, and spend some serious time reminding one another why sex is so intoxicatingly amazing.            

7.        Be Grace-full:  The Officer is a remarkable, heroic, can’t-believe-I-get-to-be-married-to-him guy, but he still leaves his clothes beside the bed most mornings.  And I would rather do anything than fold laundry, or put it away.  Anything.  Thus he is guaranteed a mountain of clean laundry stashed somewhere in our home at any given time.  I’m sure there are a million little things that we do that have the potential to drive the other person out of their mind.  This is what happens when two lives are smashed together and are meant to blend into one.  I’m an interrupter; it’s chronic.  And yes, I know how irritating and flat out rude it is.  I hate that I do it, maybe even more than the Officer hates being interrupted.  Maybe.  But when I do, he practices grace with me.  He doesn’t lecture, he doesn’t glare; he simply waits because he knows that this tendency in me is one that requires his grace.  He can give me this grace because he fills himself upon the Grace that is freely given through the Love and Word of God; so that when the Officer is with me, he can overflow this into our marriage.  And every marriage, every life, is always in need of more grace.  Thus we encourage one another to be in God’s Word daily, we ask how the other is doing spiritually, and we pray together.  Not every day, because we’re not perfect.  But we do pray for one another daily, and seek to pray together as often as we can.  I have to encourage you to do the same; even if it’s awkward or embarrassing at first, it’s worth it.  Far more than I have time to explain here.  But always remember that you have to get Grace before you can give it; and of anyone on the planet, your spouse needs your grace most of all.           

Now, I’m not going to insult you, dear reader, by pretending that there aren’t hurts and struggles that are so much bigger than this pithy list can conquer.  And I won’t ever insinuate that by doing more or just trying harder you can, all by yourself, mend what’s wrong in a marriage.  Because marriage is two sinners trying to get their poop in a group and live life together; it requires two willing parties.  This is merely a few things I’ve found important in my own marriage; and believe me, mine has not been without struggles or dark times.  But I will tell you that in spite of the dark times, and maybe even because of them, my marriage is stronger today than it was thirteen years ago.  Or even six months ago.  Marriage is a work in progress, an organic and fluid endeavor by two sinful souls making their way through a fallen world.  But because it can be the most glorious and brightest relationship outside of one with Jesus, it is worth every ounce of effort and attention you can afford. 

May you be blessed in your marriage, may you have happiness and lasting joy, and may your marriage outlast even your own expectations!    

 

 

Grace-full

Declaration 10: The new creation that I am is Grace-full, extending this beauty to those around me, both dear and unknown; and also to myself.  For Grace is the tangible realization of Love, the highest calling of the soul, the deepest yearning of creation.  It holds the entirety of the gospel, the glory of the history of the universe, the overwhelming power of God, and the depth of His Love; all caged in five little letters: ca.ris

Read: Ephesians 2:6-10

          It is by Grace…

Four words that give the sum of this mortal coil: it is by Grace.  What exists or occurs, what good, what beauty, what joy, what love happens apart from grace?  A mere cluster of words that encompass the entire gospel, the purpose of the passion, the victory of the resurrection, the parent-heart of God.  Grace.

 But grace didn’t come into existence on the cross, for Christ breathed grace into a world crazy-desperate for it.  Neither was its inception at the incarnation, the humble and eternity-altering entrance of Immanuel into willful humanity.  No, Grace pre-existed those for whom it was intended.  For if God is omniscient then He had to know that creating beings with an individual will meant that they could intentionally choose wrong.  What then, when these beings have turned their backs on the Creator that designed them?  The answer: Love, housed in Grace, as Divinity was housed in flesh.  Grace is the palpable expression of this Love; something to which I, and you, beloved, can point as my experience of God’s unfathomable, incomprehensible, unchangeable Love.     

Thus, if I am changed by this Grace [and how could I not be if I have actually experienced it, this trading of my wrongs for the innocence of God’s only Son?] I will exude it.  It will literally ooze out of my pores, embody my breath.  For if Heaven can’t contain it, how can I?  Yet this can only happen if I am daily found at the fount of Grace, that it might pour, like a rushing river, over my rough edges into a world of people just like me---who are in desperate need of it. 

First, I must know my place: I am a redeemed daughter of the King of Kings, adopted into His family, rejoiced over, delighted in, and loved beyond all understanding.  Regardless of how I am performing or behaving  at the time.  Also, I must know who I am: a sinner, a fallen and defeated warrior who has a bent toward darkness, selfishness, and pride; but for Christ.  Therefore, I can empathized with other lost and wandering sinners: those who have never found the light; and those like me, who have been found and should consequently know better, but who like Paul, can’t seem to help themselves.  And at the same time, the exact same time, I am the woman whom God took great joy in creating, for this time and this place and this life.  A woman who is called by His purposed to be whom He created her to; a woman who, through the sacrifice of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, can be.

Second, I must feast on God’s Love that I might be full of His Grace.  For me, this looks like spending time in His Word, every day.  And talking with Him all the time.  And asking the Holy Spirit to pinch me when I’m stepping out of line, and poke me when I should be offering what I’ve been freely given.  I even have to ask for help obeying.  And I must bend my will to His, turn my life over to this molten love that it will melt away what is undesirable and purify what is good.  Even this will not happen absent of the Spirit’s work in me, for I am too prone to return to debauchery and rebellion and the altar of me.       

Finally, I must see all these weary souls around me as God does: precious, beloved, lost vagrants scraping out a hollow life in a destitute land.  This includes my children, who, as their mother does, willfully flout parental laws.  This includes the Officer, who, as his wife does, fails to live up to the perfection of Love.  This includes my friends and family, who like their sister/daughter/niece/comrade, disappoint in flawless relationships.  And it includes people who are vapors in my life, the ones I see and don’t because my flurried and selfish eyes don’t have time to register them. 

Grace requires the knowledge that I am flawed and broken, and so is everyone else.  It demands that I live out of this truth with every person with whom I interact.  That this way of loving others become the rhythm of my days.  And in my daily stumbling I should be able recall the need to be Grace-full to each person, even myself.  For if God can love them and me when we are weak and full of failures, how can I not do the same? 

 

     

    

 

Identified by Grace

A Precursor to Declaration 10.

[Spoiler alerts/trigger warnings:  my full testimony, which is in the works, involves abortion.  Read with appropriate care.]

 

For me, grace lives in a certain living room and on a particular mountain top.  I have seen its lithe and willowy arms softly curl about shoulders hung low with grief and bondage and failure; watched as it drew ethereal thumb across wounded visage, wiping away the tears of too much hurt and too much darkness.  And I have seen grace weep, too.  I have fought for this grace on behalf of so many beautiful prisoners; been injured and exhausted, with dented shield and bloodied sword, that they might have the victory given me.  I have heard the thunderous roar of armies of angels give standing ovation when this grace is believed and accepted.  And I have been afforded the honor of witnessing countenances grow luminous as the breath of freedom finally pierces their lungs. I have had the distinct privilege to watch these once shackled souls take their place in the kingdom; not as wretches scurrying about furtively as though they don’t belong, but as beloved and doted upon children of the King, who have a purpose as His emissaries, His image, His very presence to a broken and mutilated world. 

I can tell you, without hesitation or doubt, that Grace is the most beautiful thing in all the world.  It is the very bent of Faith, the climax of Hope, the truest expression of Love.  

It is to this living room, and this mountain, that my thoughts always turn when I look hard after Grace.  [Followed closely with a certain pew in a Baptist church tucked in to ice and berms on the last frontier, where I finally trusted just enough to have the entirety of my sins removed from my shoulders; a burden physically lifted from me.]  I think of these places because that is where Grace was most evident, most palpable, most visible. 

But Grace is all around.  All the time.

Before I can really address Grace, I have to know who I am in Christ.  Because for a very, very long time I held onto an identity that was not true to the Grace which had come at such a high cost.  One that told me that I had to be good enough to deserve God’s love, because of my past; for I was without doubt far worse than any other sinner planted on the pews around me.  And then, even after God used His word and His ministers to remove that lie from my life, I found myself floundering in another.  The lie that Grace saw me through a lens of redemption, a filter dependent on my past that it might define my present and future.  I was Jenni, the post-abortive woman whom Jesus saved.  And while this title is true, I am post-abortive and Jesus did forgive, save, redeem, and restore me.  Neither He, nor God the Father, nor the Holy Spirit have ever called me Jenni-the-post-abortive-woman-who-has-now-been-redeemed-and-set-free.  Not before my abortion, not during, not after when I walked ceaselessly into the darkness that followed, and not even after I allowed His Grace to wash over this pain and to ultimately remove it and make me clean and whole once again. 

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have always called me:

          Jenni, My beloved.

Once I traded my sin for Christ's righteouness, there has been no sin attached to my name in the eyes of Jesus.  Though there has been in the eyes of His followers.  And for a time, I allowed myself to be defined by it.  I wore my scarlet A for the glory of His kingdom: surely, my purpose was to show others that even someone like me could be saved.  And I believed that the only calling someone like me could have would be as a post-abortive women who ministers to other post-abortive women.  Because that was who I am. 

And yet, in the scriptures we see that God sent the most zealous of the Jews to bring the truth of Jesus to the Gentiles.  We find that a five-times scorned foreign woman was the first missionary of the gospel.  A prince of Egypt delivered the Hebrews, a woman Judge lead Israel against their foes, an unwed teenager gave birth to the Messiah, and the man who denied Christ three times led the church in Rome.  God doesn’t appear to be in the habit of pigeon-holing people into the roles for which they are most logically suited.

So must it be with me.  And with you, dear one.  Because the only identity I want to claim is the one by which Grace has always known me: Jenni, beloved.  Yes, God can, has, and I have to assume will use my testimony of His Grace to build His kingdom.  But I also trust that He will do it as it suits Him; not as it suits me or anyone else around me.  If I am to minister to women or girls or couples who have experienced abortions, then it will be by His summoning and authority alone; not by the suggestion of humanity.  Or if I am to share this story of beautiful and wild grace with those who have no knowledge or experience with abortion, then it will be by God’s calling and power, for I will be quite out of my league. 

Yet, I know that the call of Grace is meant for every heart.  And it is winsome and overwhelming.  And it is the most beautiful thing in all the world.       

Jason Gray: "Remind Me Who I Am"

             

If you have experienced an abortion in your past, please know that there is hope and healing through the grace of the cross, beloved.  Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient; and His love is greater than our darkest moments and His mercy pierces our longest night.  If you have questions, concerns, or just to need to talk, I am always available.  Visit my ministry website at http://aletheiaministries.webs.com/ and click on the “Contact” button at the top of the page.  This will send a confidential e-mail to my private, personal account.  And I will respond in the same manner: confidentially and privately.  But know that no matter what your past, present, or future struggle, you are greatly delighted in.  And you are loved more than the weight of the universe.  And there is always hope for those who look to Jesus.