Unexpected

If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life?" - from The Open Boat, by Stephen Crane

If I am going to be honest, this has been the way I've thought about the miscarriage. When I think about the miscarriage, that is, which I try really hard not to do.

I expected, when I left Birmingham, to be sad about leaving Georgia and Stephanie. I expected to be relieved to rent out the house, to be excited about the new opportunity, to be tired of being company, to get tired of eating out, to have to adjust to being around people again ... this is what I expected. What I didn't expect was to drive past the hospital where I would have (should have!) delivered, and think, my life was almost so different. I didn't expect to feel as though I was leaving that behind, too - the possibility, I guess, and the hope of another life.

I try not to think about the miscarriage because I don't like the questions that come up, and I know there really aren't any answers for them, and I don't want to hear the things people say when there really aren't any good answers. I am angry more than sad now, and when I think about it, I think, this wasn't supposed to happen. But if I stay angry, I'm going to miss the next thing. I won't get into the specifics in public, but if you believe in the Holy Spirit, email me and I'll explain this a little better ... It's enough to say that in a mediocre sermon last night, God pointed out to me that until I let this go, I can't do the next thing. I don't have to understand it, I don't have to like it. But as long as I'm here - just mad about it - I can't do what's next.

I wish it was as easy to accept that as it is to say it.

10-29-05

Today, standing in my parents' new house, my mom says, "When does this place become your home?" My first thought was, maybe it never does. Once I thought a little, though, I think it never will be and always will be. They are my family, and they live there. In that sense, that house will always have the familiarity that I sense when I am with my parents. But my current home is with Brian ... even if they lived in the house I grew up in, my home would not be there. And it's definitely not where I live now (which is, currently, in the Civic). I guess what I'm saying is that Home is a feeling more than a place. And I have known that before now, but this experience has reminded me.

That's all.

Home, Part 2

You wouldn't believe how long it has taken me to process this enough to write about it. At one point, Brian even asked, are you trying to actually publish this somewhere, or is it just a blog? It's just a blog, I know. But I think this conversation lies at the core of my experience in Birmingham. I wasn't satisfied with the first version because it was too much - too many words, too many thoughts, a little too disjointed - so I'm breaking it up. Apparently, I have more to say on the concept of Home than I thought I did. Stick with me, though, please ... I hope somewhere in this tangle of words is something worth sharing.

Having said that, on to Home, Part 2:
Why Are Americans so Isolated?

"And if your home is just another place where you're a stranger, and far away is just somewhere you've never been ..." - Rich Mullins

For her senior project, my friend Cindy studied the connection between hours spent on the Internet and depression among college students. She found a pretty strong correlation. Forgive me for oversimplifying psychological study and scientific method when I say this, but basically she found that people who were depressed spent more time on the Internet than people who were not depressed. This was such an interesting statement to me that I wrote a paper about it. The Internet is heralded for connecting us, both to information and to each other. So why would the most connected among us also be the saddest?

More recently, I have become aware of the cell phone phenomena. Cell phones are marketed as making us accessible to one another. But what I usually see is someone talking on their cell phone, while the people sitting in front of them wait for them to finish. Exactly who do cell phones give us access to?

It seems to me that technology that was meant to keep us in touch actually keeps us apart, because it has replaced face to face interaction. Cell phones, email, text messages, blogs ... they are only letters and sounds. We need body language, eye contact, laughter, nuances in voice pitch and tempo, even silence to say what words cannot. When we are connected only through technology, we're only simulating a relationship. It's a fraudulent form of human connection.

But technology is not the only fraud.

Looking back, I can't believe how easily I adjusted to life in Nashville. I'd hardly even been to other states, and though I had moved, I'd never moved outside of Alabama. I remember walking in Shakespeare Park in Montgomery one night with Brian, crying because I was sure I would not be cool enough to make friends in Nashville. My experience proved my fears to be silly. I moved in June, and by August I had met Mikkee and joined a small group that became my circle of friends. Since I'd never really moved before, I had no idea what a blessing this was, how hard it should have been to meet people. I have been in Birmingham almost exactly a year, and there is no one for me to say good-bye to today that I did not know before I moved here. I have been here a year, and I have no emotional attachment to this city. Why is that?

There's a fundamental difference between Birmingham and Nashville, and I think it points to a larger cultural issue that keeps us isolated from one another. There's no town square here, no common meeting place. Birmingham is a series of neighborhoods strung along the interstate. Life is compartmentalized - drive here to work, here to worship, here to shop, here to eat. It's the opposite of Nashville, where people squeeze into coffee shops and bars, wanting to see and be seen, wanting to perform, but mostly just wanting ... this city has no common longing, no universal desire except escape from itself. It's the most isolating place I've ever lived. And from my limited perspective, it appears that the people of this city are content in their pursuit of isolation. Suburban life in general is fragmented, segmented ... all of life has been contracted out. Pay one person to cut your grass, another to keep your children, another to cook your dinner, another to listen to your problems. Even the concept of "community" is compartmentalized ... once a week, drive to this person's house, and be "in community" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) with them. If you think about it, it's a very weird and complicated way to live.

We were so isolated here ...

Most of you have probably heard by now that we are going to live in Kansas City for a little while. We're going to stay with our friends Halle and Todd and their seven children; they have offered their basement to us. To some people, living in a house with nine other people and one bathroom sounds like a bad dream. But I can't wait ... it's the opposite of suburban isolation. It's real community - not a fluffy concept, but eating and talking and praying and working and arguing and laughing together. There's nothing compartmentalized about that ... It will be probably be crowded, probably be loud, probably be exciting sometimes and boring sometimes and unfamiliar all the time ... but that's real life. That's real community. What a beautiful thought.

10-25-05

For those of you who have been praying for us, as well as those who have been concerned about us eating squirrel meat and berries for the next three months, we got all of our deposit back from renting the house today. I also FINALLY was paid for the contract work I've been doing. Yay!

PS Stay tuned ... eventually I will finish and re-post my thoughts on community.

Love,
ssg

Interrupted

I wrote for about eight hours today, trying to sort out my thoughts on community and isolation for Home, Part 2. It's almost ready, but it's just not quite there. Twice, I completely wrote it, then threw it away. So, about 8:45, when I was in the throes of writing, we had a phone call. Someone wants to rent the house! Yay! And they want to move in two days! Boo!

All that to say, who knows if I'll finish what I worked on today. For the next 36 hours, I'll be packing like a mad woman.

Segue

In the past few years, I have become really critical of the Christian subculture, the books and music that imitate secular culture, but are a few years behind and not quite as good. Maybe it was bandlife that drew my attention to this. Or maybe it was living in Nashville, all of the black-shirted tattooed young men sitting in Fido in the middle of the day, taking meetings over coffee while their wives worked 50 hrs a week to support them. Maybe it's seeing friends churned up and spit out by the underbelly of the industry, and seeing them turn to that which betrayed them to find their redemption. Maybe it's the entire "Christian Fiction" section of any book store now (unbelievable) … it's hard to say exactly where my animosity towards All-Things-Christian took root. But it leaves me in an odd position.

It means I don't really fit anywhere.

Which leads us to Home, Part 2 …

A Little Miscellany

* I love to watch people create. Yesterday, Mikkee and I sat for her roommate's painting. I loved watching her mix colors, hearing her talk about the series she is finishing (for a show in Connecticut in two weeks - how exciting is that?). Last week, a friend of Brian's spoke at length about why he chooses certain chords when playing guitar. He got so excited about what he was saying. I love to watch people create. I believe this is the purest way we reflect the image of God.

* The weather is PERFECT in Nashville right now. I just came home from a weekend with my friends up there. I believe that Mikkee and I may actually have talked nonstop for 36 hours. Yet somehow I am energized, not tired, from that ... proof both that Mikkee is a good friend and that I am a quintessentially extroverted person.

* We're still in Alabama, for those who haven't heard. But we're nearing the end ... our refrigerator is nearly empty, our candles are burned to the nub. We think we'll be leaving for KC in a week.

* Last one: I really like poems/songs that use descriptions of scenes to reflect characters or emotions. This is why I am enjoying Sandra McCracken so much right now ... she has several songs (such as "Gypsy Flat Road" and "Springtime Indiana") that do this beautifully. It's what I like about my mom's poem "Groundbreaking, 1967" (mentioned several weeks ago now - if I knew how to do links I would make one now), and it's what I like about William Carlos Williams, whom I have recently been reading.

That's all for now. I intend to write something worth posting later tonight. Until then, enjoy your evening.

Home, Part 1

"Start at the beginning. And when you get to the end, stop." - The Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland

With homelessness looming in front of me, I have lately been thinking about the concept of home - the word, the place, the emotion. Following in the blogging footsteps of Lane, I'm going to attempt a series of posts, to see if I can sort out my thoughts, and to see where the conversation takes us. We'll see how this goes.

I have a Home key on my computer keyboard. I've never noticed it until just now, just this minute, as I was beginning to gather my thoughts on the word. It's an interesting thought … push this key, go back to where you started. Go back to what's familiar and try again. I pressed the key, curious if such a thing were possible.

Nothing happened.

For my mom's birthday, I unpacked the remaining boxes in her new house. My parents built a beautiful house on the Coosa River, and, true to their nature, subsequently spend most of their time sitting on the back porch, hooting at the owls and smoking (Dad said recently, "We should have just bought a double-wide and built a good deck, for the time that we spend inside the house"). While enough was unpacked in the initial move-in-push to be able to wash clothes or find a book, there were still boxes lining the hallways, waiting for someone to find a place for the miscellany. So, as part of her gift, I spent a day sorting the innumerable stacks of papers and cleaning out baskets of pennies and paper clips.

Surrounded by loose piles mentally labeled "keep," "throw away," and "other," I found, among other things, little pieces of each family member's personal history. My dad's pictures from the year he spent in Vietnam, when Bob Hope performed for the soldiers on Christmas Day. A bulletin from a classical performance my mom attended with her piano instructor when she was in high school. My learner's permit. My pictures from Chrysalis. My sister's trip to Europe. The trip my parents took to New Orleans in 1998, all of those old homes and older trees nothing but debris now. The year my sister spent in the dorm, one picture after another of smiling girls, strangers to themselves and each other. My grandmother's pictures, inherited after her death, her memories of our lives, pictures I'd never seen, though I remember when they were taken. My grandfather walking my aunt down the aisle on her first wedding day. Box after box of loosely connected memories. As I thumbed through them, most of the pictures had no meaning for me.

My mom wanted me to sort the pictures, give each person their own pile for their own memories, keep my grandmother's things separate from ours. Sort: generation, by individual, by age. As if our lives could be detangled that easily.

I didn't do it. I put them all in one box. My memories stacked on top of Allison's underneath my dad's, my grandmother's sitting on top of us all. I love to think about it now … our history, all mingled and messy, sitting in a box in the upstairs bedroom, labeled "Life before 2005." I love it because this is what a family is … a general sense that we're all in this together. That this is where I've been, and because I went, in a sense, you've been there too. I took you with me when I went, the hope of you or the dread of you or the silly stories of what we did when we were little, and when I came back, you were changed by the way the experience changed me. This fundamental similitude is the cord blood for each of us, the basic material of what it means to have a home, and of what we will need to continue to grow. It's all in one box, and I won't look through that box again for a long time, because I don't need to. I don’t need the pictures, or even the memories. I just need what they mean.

The home key on my computer doesn't work, but it's okay; I don't need it. I don't need it to take me back, because I don't need to start over … I just need to know it's there, need to know where I've been, so that I can have the freedom and confidence to move forward. Everyone needs a home they can leave.

Worth Reading

In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you, the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence … Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only a reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust it to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited … The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret … Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation.

- CS Lewis


More to come ...

Brian

Sitting in my mother-in-law's kitchen this morning, I said to her, "Watch. Brian knows I need to leave at 10:30, so he is going to walk in the door at 10:35 and say, 'You ready?'" No kidding - he got back to the house at precisely 10:35 and said, "Hey, you ready?"

This is what I love about being married.

I love the sameness of it. When we were dating, I couldn't possibly have grasped how our lives would meld into one. But I didn't lose my identity in the process, the way you might expect. We still disagree, but I know him so well that I already know what his arguments will be. I know his sense of humor so I know what the joke will be before he says it and am already rolling my eyes before he starts laughing. Isn't this what everybody wants? To know and be known by a person completely? The other night, I overheard his phone conversation. As he was explaining why I felt a certain way, he said exactly what I would have said, and he gave the same reasons that I would have given, even though we hadn't specifically talked about the question he was answering. He knew without asking how I would respond.

I think one of the most beautiful ideas in all of life is this one, the idea of sharing the whole of your life with one person. Most people are overwhelmed by the thought of just one person. But I'm overwhelmed when I think about the whole of life - the births and deaths we have seen and will see together; the friends we will know, and then won't; the places we will move to, love, and then leave; the families we will share, and then bury. The whole of life ... No matter how exhilarating or traumatic the moment, at the end of it, we get into the car and drive away together. I can't imagine my life any other way.

In closing, I leave you with Sandra McCracken (thanks Mary). She does a much better job of giving voice to my thoughts tonight.

Springtime Indiana
You are sleeping by my side
Here across the miles we ramble
Past where the road divides
I wish I could tell you…but I just can’t find the words

I’ve never been good with my thoughts
And even worse with my words
But you read like familiar poetry
That I have never heard…
I wish I could tell you…but I just can’t find the words

So let’s move across the ocean
And pitch the tent stakes wide
You be the one to come after me
And I will be your bride…
I wish I could tell you…but I just can’t find the words

I am all at once courageous
I am all at once afraid
It came over me like nightfall
Like a freight train
I can’t seem to hold it in
But I can’t seem to run away

You came in without notice
And settled all around my heart
Took up residence in all the places
That were vacant and dark…
I wish I could tell you…but I just can’t find the words

Springtime Indiana
You are starting to wake
And I am laden with the thoughts
Of everything I mean to say
I wish I could tell you,
But I just can’t find the words.

The Harder Thing

My friend Stephanie told me something really interesting last week. When she was studying the history and canonization of the Scriptures in seminary, they discussed the discrepancies in Biblical texts throughout history. She explained that errors in copying and misinterpretation of original texts have led to discrepancies that often affect the meaning of a text. In order to figure out which is more accurate, she was taught to look at both interpretations and choose the one that is harder to understand. A scribe, considering his devotion to copying the Scriptures as his life's work, presumably had good intentions. So if he is relying on his own understanding, he is going to write down the most reasonable text. (PLEASE don't read that statement and start debating the accuracy of Scripture here. The Internet is full of places to have such debates, and this is not a topic I wish to pursue with the world at large.) Stephanie's point was this: The harder concept is less likely to be fabricated, because it's human nature to want to make a concept less confusing. Left to our own devices, we will always choose the easier thing. So the harder thing is usually from God.

I left my lunch with Stephanie mulling over the concept of choosing the harder thing. Anyone who has spent half an hour with me in the past year has probably heard me say, "The world is just so small in Alabama." I have been utterly frustrated by a culture of hostility and rigid social and religious expectations. But, as Brian pointed out earlier today, that frustration can lead to a plank and sawdust paradox (see Matthew 7:3-5). Hostility breeds hostility; prejudice breeds prejudice. I see the injustices around me, and my rebellion is to treat those with power unjustly. I see the guilt birthed from rigid religious expectations, and in response I apply my own set of expectations to the religious. In short, I become that which I hate in other people. In response to my surroundings, I become a snob, I love neither my neighbors nor my enemies, and, couched in my own version of moral superiority, I am no different from the culture I am rebelling against.

The harder thing for me right now is to love other Christians. The harder thing is not to judge the judgers, to mock the mockers, to berate the ignorant. The harder thing is to love people who don't love me, and who refuse to love the people that I love.

It isn't cool to be humble. It sucks to lay down my own agenda, especially when I believe it to be a good and noble agenda, for the sake of loving and serving others, particularly people that I don't like. But when I look at the life of Jesus, this is what I see him doing. And following Christ means choosing the harder thing.

Intercepting the Music Baton

So, it looks as though there's a possibility we'll be leaving the state a week from Friday. If everything works out with the house, that is.

In light of that statement, along with my previous post, I'm going to play the music game even though I haven't been officially invited to join in. I could use the distraction.

Amount of music on your computer:
On our computer at home, I think we have about 9 days worth of music. Not sure how that translates into computer lingo.

Currently listening to:
Clothes turning in the dryer. But the past few weeks I've been alternating between Nickel Creek's Why Should the Fire Die? and Charlie Hall's On the Road to Beautiful.

Five songs that mean a lot to you:

"The Color Green," by Rich Mullins

"Something in the Way She Moves," by James Taylor

"Cathedrals," by Jump Little Children

"Sweet Lorraine," by Patty Griffin

"Language or the Kiss," by the Indigo Girls

Honorable Mention would be "#15," by our very own Days of Lot

Top five albums:

Living with Ghosts by Patty Griffin

Ten by Pearl Jam

Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morisette

A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band by Rich Mullins. A close second would be The World as Best as I can Remember It.

Room for Squares by John Mayer (remember the days when John Mayer wasn't a mega star? This album reminds me of fall in Montgomery.)

Last album bought:
Devils and Dust by Bruce Springsteen

Recent discoveries:
Rather than listing recent discoveries, I'm creating a new list: Favorite Bands Not Otherwise Mentioned
The Be Good Tanyas
Eastmountainsouth
Derek Webb
Howie Day
Jennifer Knapp
Nickel Creek
Norah Jones
Switchfoot
U2

PS - You keep reminding me of songs/albums/artists I love and forgot to mention. Another album: Coming to Life by The Normals.

Beware: Heavy Post Ahead

When I signed up for the blogworld, my hesitation was that not all of life is clean and cute, and I'm not willing to create another space where I need to pretend otherwise. This would be an un-clean, un-cute post. So if you're not in the mood, or if you're my mom and already concerned about my mental well-being, maybe you should wait and read this another day.

Don't say you weren't warned ...

Did you see Oprah last week? I'm not always an Oprah fan. I'm not into celebrity worship, so I'm just as likely to turn the TV off as I am to watch her on any given day. But last week, while I was keeping my friend's baby, I turned on Oprah. Oprah, apparently, is pissed. Her entire show on that particular day was about children who have been abducted, brutalized, and killed by men who are known sex offenders. www.oprah.com has more on the show. You know what, Oprah? I'm pretty pissed, too.

I've worked with kids with disabilities for five years now. I'm guessing, but I would bet I've either evaluated or taught 300 children. I've seen 8 of those children buried. I've probably seen another 10-12 who were referred to the program because of abuse. I've met children who were put in ovens, infants thrown across the room, baby girls terrified of bathrooms and closets. Children - babies, to be sure, because kids graduate from the program when they turn three - who won't look you in the eye, won't talk, won't laugh. Children who will always limp, always need glasses, always need special education. And I'm tired of it.

This list doesn't include people I've met - friends, mostly, and occasionally strangers who have chosen to tell their stories - who, as teenagers or adults, are struggling to put their lives back together after abuse. I won't get into those stories out of respect for those who have shared them. Plus, I'm not sure you could stomach it.

Like Oprah, I'm mad. I'm tired of being sad, tired of shaking my head and walking away. When is enough enough? What must be done to protect children in our society? Seriously, guys, our laws are laughable. There's been a recent uproar about the treatment of AIDS orphans in Africa. I'm glad for that, because the way children have been treated there is horrible and must change. But there's some irony in rallying around children far away, while kids in our own towns are in similar situations. I'm tired of putting the pieces back together, tired of teaching kids to walk who should be running down sidewalks. Tired of seeing them shuffled around in foster care, forgotten by the system, by their parents, by us. It's wrong. It has to end.

I had a dream earlier this week. In my dream I was talking to a friend, someone who is, unfortunately, well versed in brutality. I said to her, if I had one wish, it would be to go back in time and stop it all. And then, I did. I went back to when she was five years old, and the rest of her childhood was different. I can't do that in real life. I know that only Christ can save or heal people. But I also know that God often works, in real and practical ways, through His People. So what are we doing for kids right now?

Oprah's mad, and so am I. It's my prayer that Oprah will be to abuse what Bono has been to AIDS. I'm afraid of what happens if she isn't.

October 9, 2005

I'm not going to spend my time here telling you about the experience, but if you're interested, www.thejourney.org. It was beautiful.

But I don't want to talk about that tonight. Instead, I want to read to you a little.

"As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, 'I will follow you wherever you go.'
Jesus replied, 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'
He said to another man, 'Follow me.'
But the man replied, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.'
Jesus said to him, 'Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.'
Still another said, 'I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.'
Jesus replied, 'No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.'"
(Luke 9)

It's been a stressful week for us. What I wanted to do is trust God, but what I've done instead is worry. So I confess to you that I haven't lived out my faith very well. I haven't trusted God to take care of me. And the result has been pretty bad; you can't choose a life of faith and then become faithless - the translation is that you have chosen a life of STRESS.

Jesus says here that you can't make your choices and then look back. You're not fit for the work ahead of you if you do. I can't keep living out this calling and wondering how my life would have been if I'd chosen a less risky path. We know that God has led us toward a radical (radical is more PC than weird, but you can call me weird, too, if you'd like) way of life. And we have accepted the calling. So I can't start looking back now - I'll turn into a pillar of salt, the plow lines will be crooked, and in general I won't have any focus in my life. What did I say a few weeks ago? It's time to either piss or get off the potty? Well, we did. Every choice is the sacrifice of another possibility. That's always true in life. If I start questioning that now, both possibilities are lost, and I have nothing at all.

There is a Psalm that I hear in my head anytime our future looks bleak: "I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread." (Psalm 37:25) The Psalmist is right. I have never seen faithful people forsaken by God. Regardless of how bad their circumstances got, I've never seen them left alone.

So, if you love me and you think I'm crazy, then just pray for me. But don't tell me how crazy I am - I can't take it right now. If you don't have any opinion at all, or if you think this is a good idea, please pray for me, too. It will only be through the patience and power of God that we can live out our choices.

Grace and Jeans

I need a new pair of jeans. My favorite pair, that I wear about four days a week, is faded and worn in the knees from sitting eye-level with toddlers. I have another pair that I hate (they fit funny, even though they are the same size and style as my favorites), and a pair that's too big. And that's it. Since we anticipate flying out for weekend interviews pretty soon, I also anticipate needing clothes to wear for those "get to know you" lunches. Hence, I need a new pair of jeans.

I was driving along the interstate today, thinking about new jeans, and my mind wandered to size and weight and body image in general. It's interesting to me how, as a nation, we can discuss "the obesity epidemic," but in our own lives, weight and size is an intensely personal topic. Most people I know are more comfortable talking about sex than they are their weight. Even as I'm writing this, I feel my face starting to burn ... why is that? Is it because of the emphasis in the media on beauty, and the equation of beauty to being thin? Or is the media simply reflecting what we as Americans believe about the relationship between our size and our significance? AND, if we do see the two as being intricately related, then why are so many people in the U.S. obese?

I can talk about this because I used to be fat. Eating was an emotional issue that became a physical problem for me. I can trace my steps now, see how it happened, how it ended. I don't think I'm fat any more, but I never quite feel thin enough. (What does it mean to "feel thin"? The fact that I even use that term speaks to my point). There are always ten pounds in the back of my mind. Just ten more pounds, and that would be enough - if only I were one size smaller. It's absurd. I am not obsessed, I am not ill - I still eat junk food and skip exercising like everyone else. I am not out of control; I'm just not satisfied.

I used to know a girl who was morbidly thin. Really - I don't think I could describe for you how tiny she was, how she wore sweaters and multiple pairs of pants to look bigger, cut her hair short so you couldn't see the brittle ends. When you hugged her, you could feel every bone. The medical clinic at her school tried to force her to drop out for a semester and go to an inpatient facility. But she'd done that, years before, and she wasn't willing to go again. I think about this girl now and hope she lives long enough to overcome this. Does she feel thin enough yet?

In the Scripture, Paul talks about a thorn in his side. God's response to Paul's request for the thorn to be removed was, "My grace is made perfect in your weakness." I would love to be the girl who skipped meals because she just forgot to eat, who didn't remember how many servings of bread she's already had today, but I'm not. So I thank God that His grace is made perfect in my weakness. By the grace of God, this one thought does not swarm out all the others. By the grace of God, I am healthy, emotionally and physically. I have been spared so much. And while it's not the answer I want - the answer I want is, like Paul, to have the thorn removed completely - it's the one I've been given. If I'm not satisfied with my size, I can be satisfied that God is glorified, even in my weakness. God's grace is enough. Grace, that is, and a new pair of jeans.

Back when I was five ...

Most of you know that my niece, Morgan, and I are pretty close - as close as any child is to a distant family member, anyway. I have this very clear memory of Morgan, six years old, sitting in the passenger seat of my car, telling me a story about her life in South Carolina. She began by saying, "Back when I was five ..." I don't remember the rest of the story, because I was thinking very hard about not laughing out loud. How does a six-year-old reflect on being five? And, really, is there a difference between being six and being five? If you're six, there is.

So I'm not going to do that. We could potentially have hours of conversation about our current circumstance - what went wrong, what went right, what happens next, etc. - but I don't think it's wise to hash it out yet. I know that our Christian culture wants to understand everything as it is happening, wants to see the bigger picture all the time, but we need to get through this first. When we're on the other side, we'll all sit in the safety of the present and discuss the past, and we'll smile at the way it all worked out, as though we always knew it would. For now, I need to finish being five.

With that in mind, let's change the subject, shall we?

Well.

Our little social and religious experiment in Alabama is over.

I don't really have the distance needed for reflection yet. All day today I have been thinking of Jesus' warnings about the cost of following Him. Any delusions I have that this will be fun, or profitable, or easy, are self-imposed. Jesus never said anything like that. Even though tonight I feel like I've followed Christ off a cliff, I also have to remember that God never promised me otherwise.

Damn.

I am tempted to second-guess our decisions a year ago, but this year has been too good to do that. Most of what we've learned is too personal to be discussed in a public domain, but this much I'll say: when we left Nashville, my friend Halle predicted that the next year would be similar to the Year of Jubilee in the Old Testament. It was the year that no crops were planted, but the soil was replenished for the next season. She was right; this year was for us. It was a year of restoration, and I'm thankful for it. But externally, this year has been a disaster ... and I'm thankful to see that part end, too. So mostly, I guess, I'm thankful. I'm glad I've had this time, and I'm glad to see it go.

The next logical question is, now what? I have no idea. I hate staring into the abyss; I don't like having this many options (or none at all, depending on your perspective). Right now, we're just doing what comes next. And we're learning to trust God. At this point, that's all we can do.

Different

Their movements grew more fluid as the night wore on. Their shoulders went slack, their words more loose and sharp, their laughter longer and less shrill, their smiles less contrived. I could sense the air changing in the room, though it took several minutes to understand what was happening around me.

For the first time, I was the minority.

Sitting in my kitchen, I was slightly out of place, not quite understanding their jokes or innuendos and laughing anyway. I was not left out or called out. I was just different. Most of the time, most of their energy is spent trying to appease my world. But for a few hours that night, I was allowed into theirs, and for a little while, they had nothing to hide, and no one to hide from.

Though we were all molded from the same red clay, our lives are no longer mirrors of one another, echoes of an unnamed emptiness. I look at them now and wonder at the God who is forming us all.