Bless Our Exhausted Hearts

Most days, I rush through the process of brewing my tea.

Years ago, I learned that brewing a cup of tea offers the tea drinker a meditative moment in an otherwise hurried day. When done correctly, this engages all five sense- We watch as the tea leaves color the water in which they are brewed. We listen as the kettle boils and the water fills the cup. We feel warmth as we cradle the steaming cup in our hands. We inhale the aroma of the tea as it brews. Finally, we taste the tea. (In my case, it is always sweet and milky.)

Comfort in a cup.

Then, a couple of years ago, an English friend let me in on his tea-brewing secret. “I have found,” he said, “that if I dunk the bags in the hot water a few times, squeeze them out, dunk them and squeeze them again, that the tea tastes pretty much the same as if I allow it to brew normally.”

Ah-ha! I thought. A shortcut!

And no one, NO ONE loves a time-saver more than me because frantic over-productivity is my drug.

Too often, I rush through my days, anxiously careening from one task to another. Sometimes, I even feel guilty about all I haven’t accomplished even as I am working my fingers to the bone on something else.

Work. Work. Work.

Fall into bed exhausted.

Get up the next day and start it all over again.

I am pretty sure I am not alone in this. As a matter of fact, I think this impulse began the day Eden’s gates clanged shut behind Adam and Eve. I think this is why, at least in part, that God gave us the Sabbath— Sort of a divine time-out for all of humanity in which God throws a weighted blanket over us, tucks us in, and kisses us on the forehead as we flail about, crying and whining about all we have to do when he knows what we in our exhaustion can’t comprehend—We just need a bit of rest so that we can be sane again.

I know this. I really do. But dang it, but most days I can’t even allow my cup of tea to brew in its own sweet time. And if I do manage to commit to leaving that tea bag in the water for five LONG minutes, I then look around to see what I can accomplish while it brews. Bless my poor, frazzled, exhausted heart.

Maybe this is a struggle for you too. Let me leave you with these verses from Psalm 127, sweet words of comfort and peace that God brings to my spinning mind over and over again.

Unless the Lord builds the house,
    the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
    the guards stand watch in vain.
 In vain you rise early
    and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
    for he grants sleep to those he loves.

Psalm 127:1-2

Peace, and rest, to you, my friends …

Dusting off Hope

Here’s a hard truth- There are long-reaching consequences when we have gone through too much hard stuff at one time. Too much loss. Too much grief. I’m not talking about the normal, daily struggle of living. I am talking about seasons that sweep you away, leaving you disoriented and gasping for breath in their wake.

As I approach the two-year anniversary of divorce and cancer, I have found, to my dismay, that one of the long-term consequences of my season of loss is that a worldview previously unfamiliar to me has stubbornly taken up root in my heart.

Cynicism.

Cynicism is, simply, a profound feeling of distrust. While this makes sense for someone who went endured all I went through at once, I don’t like the fact that cynicism moved in and set up housekeeping in my wounded heart.

“I don’t want to be like this,” I tell God through my tears. “Please heal my cynical heart.”

Lately, I have begun to wonder if cynicism is taking up space in my heart because I have been forced to redefine “hope.” Let me explain.

Once, I had a therapist tell me, “You are addicted to hope. And that is not a good thing.” What she was trying to say was that I had latched onto a warped version of hope, one that was stubbornly removed from reality, clinging to a false belief about my current situation despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. I wanted things to be different than they were, so I chose to believe that it was so.

That is not hope. That is denial. True hope, my friends, must exist in harmony with truth. So, since I didn’t have much experience with true hope, once my denial was uprooted I was left with cynicism.

What a bummer.

Lately, I have begun to tentatively reach out to touch the fringes of hope. I want it so much, but I also fear it because it feels like hope has the power to destroy me. What if I hope, and tragedy strikes again? What if hope breaks my barely-pieced-together-heart?

Kate Bowler says we turn up the dial on hope by making room for what only God can do.

So maybe that is what hope is - holding space for God. Perhaps hope is an intentional awareness of the places God is showing up, even when there are so many other places we wish he would. Maybe hope is gratitude for all the ways God showed up in the past, even as we grieved other prayers which remained unanswered.

This, according to the Psalms, is what Israel did in the moments when all was dark. She remembered.

The Red Sea parting …

Pharaoh’s armies swept away …

God’s sustenance in the wilderness …

Israel remembered. She praised him. She gave thanks. In doing so, she found the strength to hope that he was still the same God.

So, today, I will crack open the door to my heart where, in despair, I locked hope away. I will reach tenderly into the recesses of my soul, long-cloaked in grief, and bring hope back out into the light. The same God who mended my broken heart, who healed my cancer, who against all odds provided for my needs these two long years is still here.

His love endures forever.

His mercy is everlasting.

He was, and is, and is to come.

This is my God, and so, I dare to hope.

Though the Earth Give Way and the Mountains Fall into the Heart of the Sea

“Someday, your world may fall apart all around you and there will be nothing you can do about it.”

This was my response to a women’s ministry leader who blindsided me in a coffee shop with quick and brutal judgement over the state of my marriage. Let’s be clear—She had absolutely zero idea about why my marriage was in crisis. None.

Still, she felt confident, and entitled, to condemn me. I was already hanging onto my life by a thread. My heart had been broken and re-broken so many times that I was limping through my days, doing my best to love and parent my kids well, and cultivate a fledgling writing career, when I had nothing to give anymore.

I remember feeling like a thin-stretched thread of spun glass, so fragile that the slightest tremor might shatter me. Now, here this woman was, sitting across from me, dropping the anvil of blame and shame on my wounded heart.

It was one of the most profoundly painful moments of my life. As soon as I escaped that coffee shop, I broke. I began crying and didn’t stop for almost 24 hours. It was the last hit I could take.

Since that time, my world has fallen apart all around me more than once. Each time it happens, it feels like life will never be okay again. But, somehow, I have smiled again. Somehow, I have found joy on the other side of the breaking.

My friend, if that is where you are today, hold on. May the God of all Comfort wrap you in his tender embrace. May you know the peace that passes all understanding. May you relinquish your desperate grasping for the illusion of control that you have believed will save you.

Sometimes, the world falls apart. But we have this hope—we are beautifully, eternally loved by a God who restores.

God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,  though its waters roar and foam
    and the mountains quake with their surging.

Psalm 46:1-3

A Little More Mercy, Please

I have begun tentatively looking for a new home. Ideally, this would have been a change I made back at the end of my divorce. But…I had cancer and I felt like a move just might have killed me.

So, I made difficult financial choices to stay in the house where I reared my five children. It was an expensive mercy, but one we all needed. I don’t regret that decision, but lately I have begun thinking that mercy for myself might look like moving on.

Yesterday, I went to see a gorgeous home in a small town about an hour and a half northwest of where I live now. It was built in 1911 and once was the home of a senator, so I hear. It received an update in the early 70’s or late 60’s and has remained untouched since. It was like stepping back in time. There was a lot to love, but to say it needed work would be an understatement.

My friend who went with me to tour it, bounced up and down a bit in the dinning room before solemnly pronouncing judgement- “This floor doesn’t feel right.”

Yikes.

We wandered room to room as I dreamed of what could be. I lovingly ran my hand over the breathtaking banister of the main stairwell and the original tiles gracing one of many fireplaces. We climbed all the way up to the unfinished third floor where a cold January wind whistled through the broken front window. My friend pointed to a dark corner of the space and asked the realtor, “What is that!?!”

It was something dead. Rat? Bird? I didn’t look, and no one else wanted to get too close to figure it out.

Back downstairs, we thanked the realtor and exchanged contact info before race-walking to the warmth of the car. It wasn’t until I sat down in the driver’s seat that I knew the truth-

I am way too tired to buy that house.

Isn’t it strange how we are sometimes unaware of our weaknesses and limitations until life throws up a set of circumstances we can’t manage? I spent a lifetime refusing to accept my limitations. (It is what the women in my family do, darn it!) I truly believed that if I drove myself to the brink mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, that I could do ANYTHING.

Oh, how I had to suffer to find out that I indeed have limitations.

Cancer on the heels of divorce gave me many gifts, but the realization that I too need mercy is one of the sweetest. I am learning to offer myself kindness, compassion, and rest. Over and over I hear the tender voice of God whisper in the depths of my soul, “You are a child, not a slave. Mercy and rest, daughter. Mercy and rest…”

I’m not very good at it, but by the grace of God I am trying to do better. Perhaps walking away from my 1911 HGTV nightmare is step in the right direction.

Light

“It’s okay.”

These two astonishing words came to me yesterday as I watched four of my five kids (between the ages of 20-25) bake and decorate Christmas cookies. They were busily working in the kitchen while discussing when they would be at their Dad’s place for Christmas and when they would be at mine.

I was struck by how content they seemed, happy even, and that is when it hit me-

It’s okay.

I could never have imagined the possibility of “okay” two years ago. “Okay” certainly seemed like a long lost hope three months after that when I was diagnosed with breast cancer (the day after signing divorce papers.)

Between you and me, I never thought I would see “okay” again. I thought that, perhaps, I had reached the agonizing terminus of a painful road. Dark and treacherous. A tragic dead end. (No pun intended.) But, here I am, one year and nine months after divorce and cancer diagnosis and, somehow, we all made it. The stuff of miracles, I tell you.

The house is quiet as I write this. The only kid at home is curled up in her favorite spot near the Christmas tree with a new book. An empty cup of tea is at my elbow, a new seed catalog, as thick as the Sears and Roebuck toy catalog I loved as a kid, is at my feet. From its open pages, bright marigolds in orange and yellow smile up at me. It is a stark contrast to the remnants of my garden, framed by the window in front of me where last summer’s bounty now lies desiccated, patiently waiting for me to clean it up and prepare it for next year’s growing season.

Behind me, bits of colorful icing still cling to the kitchen table, left over from yesterday’s festivities. Beyond that, is a kitchen adorned with early 1990’s oak cabinetry, topped with granite that I once heard a kitchen designer describe as the “rotten meat” look.

Yikes.

The door on the 16-year old oven, which has cooked countless meals for my family, will no longer stay closed. I know its days are numbered, but I can’t afford to replace it so I am stuck with just praying over it every time I use it.

The window screen has holes in it. The paint on the walls is chipped here and there. Someone left a football atop a patio table that has seen better days.

It is all a bit of a mess, actually.

But we are okay. Miraculously, mercifully, astoundingly okay. And gratitude for that takes my breath away.

This, to me, is the wonder of this season- God came to us, was wrapped in rags and nestled into a manger filled with hay, and the weary world rejoiced. We, truly, were walking in darkness, and when Mary’s Baby Boy took His first breath, light dawned for us.

It is all about restoration, you see. It is about the moments in our life in which all hope has been extinguished. Snuffed out.

That is the gift of Jesus, the Wonderful Counselor.

The Everlasting Father.

The Prince of Peace.

The Great Restorer. The Light Giver.

Oh, come let us adore Him…