Recognizing depression’s faded fingerprints
February 22nd, 2012 by Susan Lawrence
This is Part 2 of a 4-part series on depression. Here is Part 1.
On December 2, 2009, I was sitting in a grocery store parking lot, with the baby asleep in his car seat. I could not go in. I could not get out. I could not go any farther. I called my husband Glenn and said that I didn’t know what was wrong with me but I couldn’t get the groceries, couldn’t nurse the baby in public anymore, and had no desire to do anything. He left his off-season job and tried to talk to me. I kept repeating, “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
We ended up getting groceries, but I don’t remember what else was said that day. The next day, I called him in the middle of the day. I was holding the baby as I called, with our two preschoolers around my legs. I told Glenn I was really tired and didn’t think I could handle having anyone over for supper that night (which we were scheduled to do). He asked if I wanted to cancel. I said I didn’t know. He said, “Well, I’d rather cancel than have them come and have things awkward around them.” And I said with my voice rising to a throttled yell, feeling as if someone were peeling back my fingers, one at a time, from my grip on reality, “It’s just that I never get any rest in this damn house!” and I threw down the phone, lay the baby on the floor, ran behind the couch, and lay on my side crying while the baby shrieked and who knows what the other two were doing.
Eventually, I calmed enough to stand up. My four-year-old had retrieved the cordless phone, now in pieces; I picked up the baby who then calmed down; my two-year-old watched me with her big eyes; and I noticed the answering machine had a new message. Glenn had called, but with no phone, nothing had rung, and the message was short: “Ok, I’m coming home.” We played trains until he arrived.
Since we often don’t know when we’re depressed, it’s hard to recognize it, especially since depression can come on gradually. Some of us even have a bent toward depression because of our personalities, our temperaments and our heredity. If one of our parents has dealt with depression, then chances are good we will, too. Depression can also result from trauma, physical abuse, prolonged parental illness, substance abuse, sexual abuse, and even chronic pain. It can follow loss: loss of a loved one, whether through the finality of death or through a broken or severed relationship; loss of job or status; loss of a family member through natural steps in life (a move or a graduation); loss of location; loss of support network of friends; and loss through change. These things can also trigger a depression that has been under the surface.
My story? Glenn and I had been living overseas, which comes with its own unique stress, for five years. Our last year there, we went through a lot of change. We’d had our first child, I became a stay-at-home mom after teaching full time, and we packed up everything for a move back to North America. In our first year in Canada, we continued to experience change. We looked for jobs, moved into an upstairs apartment from Glenn’s brother, attended a new church, and dealt with my first winter since 1991. Seven months after moving from Singapore, we tacked on even more change and moved 65 km away from the city to see if we could learn the greenhouse business. I was two weeks pregnant with our second child when we moved. Keep in mind — I’m trained as a high school English and drama teacher and couldn’t tell a pansy from a petunia when we moved out here. I had no friends here and had just started making acquaintances in the city when we moved to the country.
That’s two major moves in less than a year, along with two pregnancies in about the same time. Add to that moving from a city of 4 million to a city of 75,000 to a village of 400.
I had change galore.
Besides temperaments, traumas, and loss, depression can result from the normal physical changes in the course of a life. Looking back on the last several years, I think I was depressed my first winter in Canada. I didn’t know what to do with myself in the winter, in an upstairs apartment. Used to walking in shorts everywhere in the sunshine and heat of Southeast Asia and taking public transit, I was befuddled by all the layering of thick coats and scarves and short walks to cars. What to do with myself, much less with a toddler? Lack of sunshine, lack of exercise…Then, when I got pregnant with our second that winter, I believe I was still depressed, only more so because of all the new hormonal fluctuations happening from going off breast-feeding to being pregnant again, on top of the huge change with another move. I always felt horrible going to work in the greenhouse that spring: I didn’t know what I was doing; I was always nauseated; and I couldn’t seem to get enough sleep.
What does depression actually look like? When I started researching, I was dismayed to find that a person can get diagnosed with major depression by having at least five of the following characteristics for two weeks :
- persistent and unremitting sadness
- insomnia (or, too much sleep)
- no energy
- no appetite (or, increase in appetite)
- poor concentration
- an inability to feel pleasure (anhedonia)
- feelings of worthlessness or guilt
- thoughts of suicide or of deep anger
Many people put up with these characteristics for months and years without realizing that they signal a major problem.
How do we know we need help?
If our symptoms are obvious to us or someone close to us and have a negative impact on our daily lives, we need help.
If we’re not able to function as usual on the job or at home…
If our thoughts are very negative and pessimistic or our minds become preoccupied with thoughts about dying…
If our appetites have significantly changed, either through eating too little or too much…
If our sexual desire is seriously disrupted from what was normal…
If we feel so desperate that we don’t know whether we can continue with life…
If we identify with these, then we need help.
___________
Images from panic-attacks.maxupdates.tv, healthjockey.com
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Remembering hard days
February 21st, 2012 by Susan Lawrence
This is Part 1 of a 4-part series on depression.
From outside, I scrutinized my front door. “Hey!” I hollered. “HUSTLE UP!” Day 2 of school in January and my 6-year-old was still in our entryway, wrestling with boots, gloves and snowpants.
My 8-year-old daughter had already headed up the road with my high-school age niece, and I was in front of the house waving my hands at the windows by the front door, repeating, “HUSTLE!”
Out he popped, and we quickly crunched up the way together.
Oh man, but didn’t I hear it then in the chilly distance…the school bus. Since our country road doesn’t get a lot of traffic, we can hear the bus thundering from a distance. It thundered now, and we were halfway from the stop. I reached back, grabbed my son’s coat, and started hauling and hollering, “RUN, RUN, RUN! HOLD THAT BUS!” I ran like mad, slowing down only when my son wiped out, and only for as long as it took to pick him back up and continue hauling. Bob the bus driver got his morning chuckle out of our mad dash and, as I heaved my son on board, gave the predictable but true, “Got your exercise for the day now, eh?”
Waving to the back of the bus, I heartily, somewhat breathlessly, laughed, then turned and started up the road, settling down to enjoy the cold, blue January walk to our snow-covered house. I laughed again.
It was good, good to be alive.
Yet, as I walked, I remembered a time when making that same trip to the same bus stop felt agonizingly hard, blood-letting in its difficulty — a twice-a-day endurance test that I kept failing.
I was depressed, you see, though I did not know it.
It was hard, hard to be alive.
Since we often don’t know when we’re depressed, it’s difficult to recognize, especially since depression can come on gradually. I certainly did not suspect myself of actual, official “Depression.” Instead, I put it down to a rough first trimester (and they are notorious for being draining) with my fourth child. Yet, after the baby was born, everything got more difficult. Everything. Still, I did not suspect depression. Frankly, I did not have time to suspect it.
Toward the end of 2009, I was running on nervous energy and constantly waking through the night (besides when nursing the baby), after having had a difficult time falling asleep in the first place. Mentally, I had a hard time concentrating, and it felt as if I jumped from idea to idea to idea, all the time. Routine things took more effort and therefore more time, such as getting a lesson ready for Sunday School. My energy sagged but I still had to move throughout the days to keep up with a 5 month old, a 2 year old, a just-turned 4 year old and all the laundry, diaper changes, breastfeeding, housecleaning, boardbook reading, playing-on-the-floor sessions that that entailed, along with engaging the 6 year old when she got home from school.
I wasn’t enjoying it either. It was a hard slog, and it felt like work, work, work.
My appetite increased, though I’d often completely forget about my own breakfast in the morning rush. And I was angry, often very angry, with my kids and with people in general, though never with the baby. I didn’t want to hurt myself (though I somehow had a desire, never really articulated, to be somewhere — anywhere — else, sleeping or reading my own books, or just sitting), but I really felt angry all the time. I was too intense about normal events, like having someone over for a meal, and constantly extending invitations to stay for the next meal if someone was over. Then, instead of making something simple, I’d make something — or several somethings — from scratch and be on my feet, working in the kitchen while they were visiting in the living room with the kids or each other or Glenn.
Just about everything I heard or read online weighed me down. Reading news headlines weighed me down. Christian radio programs weighed me down, and I had to stop listening to them.
I thought I was managing. I thought — when I had fleeting moments of coherent thoughts — that this must be what it’s like with kids this age, at this point in life.
But the day I could not get out of the van to get groceries, I realized that something was wrong.
I was all wrong.
___________
Images from wfuv.org, technabob.com
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My dirty laundry on grace
February 17th, 2012 by Jonalyn Fincher
“For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.”
(John 1:16)
I’ve struggled with an accusatory posture since I was a wee one. The oldest in a brood of four, I had plenty to accuse and harass.
“Jake, turn off the radio. No, not like that. Get out of the way you’re taking too long!” And being older by three years I had the physical strength to dominate.
“Stop being the mother!” my mother repeated.
Now I am a mother and find myself mothering my husband with as much ease as my son.
My requests come closer to orders than supplication.
Questions sound like accusation rather than curiosity.
Were you planning on getting the laundry tonight?
I really don’t want to know his plans. I want him to get the laundry done — tonight.
Did you see my hamper overflowing?
Ironically, Grace is my middle name, translated from my petite hispanic grandmother, Engracia Cruz, into English and stuck between Jonalyn and Fincher.
Grace for me has been anything but easily developed during my 32 years. I’m not saying I don’t need people to be gracious to me. I do.
I’m saying I want to know how to offer grace, more, well, graciously.
I’d like to be more gracious, but I hate the way you have to go about getting grace. You have to wait for some undeserving person to show up so you can practice.
And why would I want to ask God for undeserving people to start popping in or acting up in my life?
It’s like praying for patience or long-suffering.
Do you really want opportunity to practice patience? My grandpa, Mama Grace’s husband, refuses to pray for patience. He says, “No sir. I don’t want patience, for then I will get more trials. Pray for me to have strength instead.”
I wish it worked like that. But, you cannot get strong unless you seek out some resistance.
Dale and I have been working out on Tuesdays, formal weight-lifting, ab-crunching workouts. I’m learning the whole gym culture with its sensuality and intensity. And we’re getting stronger but only through walking through trial.
Are all the virtues earned only through resistance?
Is it true that you cannot verify your joy unless you face unhappy times?
Does love only know its ardor when its flame sputters?
Is peace only an anchor when the ship is tossed in the storm?
Is patience verified in the court of tribulations?
Is kindness a badge only worn after facing hurdles of cruelty?
It seems so.
So what hardship must I face to become Grace?
It’s not walking with book balanced on head through a tea shop.
It’s not being a hostess who graciously smiles and invites others in. Or is it?
This last Fall I noticed how unkind and impatient, demanding and graceless I became the hour immediately preceding company.
I wanted Dale to help me clear off the table, which doubles as his desk in our small space, while simultaneously watching Finn and flipping the steaks.
No one (ahem, Dale) was moving fast enough. So I shoved people (Dale) out of the way. “Get out of the way, you’re taking too long” has simply become “Let me do it, you’ll never finish in time!”
Competitive, naturally, I’ve decided to take up hostessing purposefully, but this time to begin to face the situations where grace might grow.
We begin small and simple.
I stop attempting to be quite so impressive or experimental.
I make crock-pot chicken and carrots.
I learn to prepare meals ahead of time that are tried and true (even if uninteresting to me).
I ask to cook in kitchens that are not my own, on the road, in rented homes, without my equipment and cookbooks.
I get adventurous in simplicity and scoop nutella onto silver spoons and serve it as dessert.
I permit Finn to leave before eating to watch Finding Nemo and when he comes back I allow our guests to watch as we suggest a drumstick of chicken before a spoon of Nutella.
And I don’t worry about him eating Nutella for dinner.
I purposely invite friends over in the midst…
In the midst of dusty counters and typical toilets.
In the midst of facing the cancer and death of our oldest, sweetest corgi.
In the midst of failed carrot cake and tough bread sticks.
And I’m climbing the rungs of grace.
I’m clambering to the tippy-top and jumping with a billowing parachute spun by laughter of new friends and community clean up afterwards.
And while suspended in my grace parachute I float down smelling heaven on earth, a grace aroma — much like a batch of chocolate chip cookies — floating upwards, spreading hope and comfort, freedom and flight.
Grace upon grace.
The kind that Jesus brings.
Postscript: Hostessing is a small place to discover grace. Can you help me think of other spots for grace to grow?
—————
Photo credit: http://thomasinaknits.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html and http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f34/beautiful-parachute-245414/
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What we learn from ducks
February 14th, 2012 by Dale Fincher
Ducks on the Yampa River in winter.
Some ducks refuse to migrate.
Once upon a time, I thought a ducky luxury caused this: food thrown from irresponsible human hands. Most observed ducks that do not migrate are in areas where they are regularly observed, like public ponds. And if humans observe them, then humans must have food for them.
But in our town, I rarely see anyone feeding the ducks in winter. And the ducks spend their time in areas, like the Yampa River and its ice covered banks, where feeding them is no pleasure for the children.
A few days ago, my wife and I walked along the snowy river with our son and pointed out the ducks, who were swimming up stream, circling in eddies, and flying in pairs. The ducks nosed down in the frigid river and came up again. Sometimes they leisurely drift downstream, like summer tubers. ”Why are they not with their families on vacation at a warmer Disney World?” I wondered.
Obviously, all the indiscretion of nose-diving and bottom-upping means something is below the surface that the ducks like. Something so delicious that the southern regions cannot compare with their desert-y and flatland-y foods. Yet what use is delicious food if you’re freezing?
Hot springs populate our river. Along some shores, the hot springs make a warm beach that we like to play in during the summer. We have a membership to the local gym whose pools are heated entirely by natural springs which flow into this river.
Ducks, apparently, have a membership too, wading in and out of their own river hot tubs, drying off, basking on the sunny rocks, and paddling on the river treadmill. Their quacking tells me they think paddling upstream — going nowhere — is good cardio.
On our walk a few days ago, as the sunny skies turned overcast and the wind blew through us, I noticed a duck finding a feast outside the eddy where the river raced in full motion. The duck pushed his head down and floated downstream beyond the food. He repositioned and tried something new. Trying again, he throw his bottom into the air and paddled, splashing awkwardly, to keep himself steady in the flow. His webbed feet, half kicking the cold air, thrust his momentum forward enough to munch. He looked like a child first learning to plunge into the water, rolling, waddling and kicking in the air, while still wearing a life vest.
Splashing, flailing, steadying, chomping, the duck lunched.
Dallas Willard said that it is difficult to be angry while watching ducks. That ridiculous ducky seriousness takes us out of ourselves. And when we are tempted to migrate into our anger, maybe this lesson from the duck, the indiscreet duck on a snowy river, will help us see ourselves. It will help us see ourselves, often with our head down and our bottom up, and see that God is with us, in our simple circumstances, in our harsh winters, in our daily bread.
___________
Image credit: steamboattoday.com
Here’s an image of our river with ducks by a professional photographer,
whose image I couldn’t use above due to copyright.
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Doubting Christ in college
February 10th, 2012 by Philip Kenney
I’ve made it an annual ritual to read G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. He described it as his spiritual autobiography that chronicles his unique journey from agnosticism to Christianity. It’s influence is still felt today, and for good reason.
Orthodoxy is so loved because he swiftly and creatively defends Christianity. But also because we have all been on a spiritual journey, toward or away from Christianity. Although I grew up in church, I still found myself doubting everything. Not just questioning, mind you. I question my wife when I’m ignorant of dinner arrangements, but doubting her is to distrust her. And that is the catch: trust. To doubt is to no longer trust what you have presumably taken for granted.
My first struggle with doubt was in college. I was in a philosophy of religion course with a professor that cared more about defecting Christians than teaching. He bombarded us class after class on why this is false and why that is a hoax. It wears on you. The issue was not just the Problem of Evil, or the authors of Genesis, or the seemingly Platonic skew in the New Testament – it was all of these and more.
Every class I would run home and research. I was scared. “I’ve read C. S. Lewis, I listen to podcasts, but I can’t find the answers!” my thinking went. Beyond the questions, I was learning that answering questions was not the heart of the issue for me. Of course, it is important to know how to respond, but let’s be honest, who hasn’t experienced a young child asking us a question we can’t answer? A stumped question didn’t suddenly make the child smarter than you? Or their playground worldview better than yours? If anything, it shows us how proud and frail we are to think we can have all (even some) of the answers.
What I learned that semester was that my professor was attacking his form of Christianity using his form of reasoning from his school of thought, which postdates Christianity by about 1,600 years. Scripture teaches us something important just by its very existence: that looking at the landscape from our own hillside in history is not enough for us to stand on. We need something grander than our own, small point of view to truly see the world correctly.
In his closing to Orthodoxy, Chesterton talked from experience that in the peripherals of life, he had much joy. But when it came to the foundations of life, he and his fellow agnostics were quite sad and lost because it was beyond man’s reason, beyond his hillside. But after he found Christ, the joy was in the foundations. The peripherals would take care of themselves.
My professor spent a lot of time smiling as he poked holes in the peripherals of Christianity; it is quite possible he was saddened and maybe scared of the foundations.
________
Image credit: chrisstubbs.com
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The Shameful Bits and Stupid Kevin-what’s-his-face
February 7th, 2012 by Kelsey Vandeventer
The bell rang and kids quickly began lining up at the door. Walking eagerly past them, I smiled, despite missing four front teeth. I opened our coat closet, searching for her lunch so she didn’t have to. I called to Kate that I had it, raising on my tip-toes. I couldn’t see her yet. Oh well, she’s short. She’s back there. They all stood there and looked and wondered and seemed so far away. Stupid and short Kevin-what’s-his-face sneered: “It’s recess, not lunch.” I swear a “neener-neener” followed. My face got hot, tomato-ing up my pale and freckled skin. Tears blurred, burned, and seared, spilling. Lips closed, I turned back to the closet, opening it again, and started placing the lunches back in hopes that the red and tears would shut up with them. My baby-girl-’skin’ essentially shredded then and there. Then my second grade teacher — the beautiful, perfect, and tall, and slim and creamy porcelain complexioned Ms. Snell — came over and bent down to place her hand on my shoulder. “Kelsey, it’s okay,” she told me. But I could tell she thought I was a little silly. And I knew the stakes. Recess wasn’t that long! If I held them up any more, she’d kill me. They’d all kill me. No one — no kids, no teacher — wants restless, pent up energy. My neck slunk down, and bangs curtained my view. I cried harder. It didn’t make any sense. It’s so stupid. Why can’t I stop crying?
Shame. It’s fear, embarrassment, and guilt and self-hatred — being found out and exposed — all combined and enforced by ‘shoulds’ and lies and false expectations. God, I can still see baby-faced Kevin looking up from beneath his blonde bowl cut, squinty eyes and scrunchy face, like the brazen know-it-all he was. It turns out he had a crush on me, but I didn’t know that then. So yes, you still have to think he’s a meanie. Because I was ashamed for what seems like nothing. Winnie the Pooh says, “The smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” Sure, the smallest, shortest, most seemingly insignificant instances often speak to the biggest truths about our lives, but does that make it any easier to accept?
So, I hate shame. I want it to take a hike. But it’s broken-up pecans in cookie dough. After a while, it’s hard to tell the bits from the rest of the mixture. And what if your guests are allergic? Too bad. You gingerly fold the dough over, and there they are again. Those damn, shameful bits. You take them out one by one, but each time you spread the dough like the Red Sea, eight more poke through. They hide in dark recesses like mold in a fridge. Sneaky buggers.
Psychologists talk about the ‘child inside.’ I scoff at that a lot. But she still bubbles up too often for some reason. It seems to me she’s not quite convinced or thrilled by the way she’s been treated. What does she want? Does she ask for a treat? Have something to say? Giggle? Blow spit bubbles? Scream? What have I got to lose? By all means, let her come out and play and do her thing. Maybe she’ll shout and cry or stare but she’ll have to stop running in circles and knocking over paint and toys sometime and may even skip, hum, and tell her story before laying down at the end of it all to take a nap. Phew. Take a load off, little girl.
________
Image Credit: thebreakthrough.org/blog
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God’s wellness plan
February 3rd, 2012 by Cathy Holsey
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Genesis 1:31
I’m often amazed at God’s selection of instruments. Given his foreknowledge of the Fall, I have at times wondered why He went ahead with the Plan to create beings with the possibility to mistrust and sin. But still, in love and omniscience, He spoke words that birthed our created world, and, taking dust, formed man, breathing His life-breath into Adam’s body, soul, and spirit.
There are juxtapositions in the course of time that defy imagining. The creation moment being one — angels looking into the face of Almighty God — His love poured into the creating and birthing of His first human child. Delivering again, with the creation of Eve — bringing further delight and joy, both to Himself and to Adam — new beginnings, all tucked into a garden named Eden. You can hear the whisper of Teresa of Avila, “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Footfalls
And all too soon, a daughter’s ears, bend towards deception; her hands, reach for the forbidden; lips, taste the fruit of death. A soul, smeared by sin’s filth, and then another soul — marked by Satan and left to die. Heaven’s tears falling from the Father’s eyes upon his little ones, whose eyes and hearts wept, too. Shame marking intimacy and necessitating a covering that only their Father could provide.
As one continues to read the Genesis account, the silence of hiding deepens, broken by the cadence of God’s presence; his walk, in the cool of the day, echoing grace and mercy with every footfall.
If I’m at all honest — there are times when I’m not — I do not want to hear Christ’s steps approaching my heart’s closed door. I do not want to hear the rap of his staff or rod calling me to confession, change or some perceived inconvenience, preferring instead to dim the light and wait for the sound of retreating steps.
At these times I often choose to recall the infractions of others on my hard-heart drive, scrolling past “Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly…” all bookmarked by my Server. Instead I open the file Cathy’s Rules of Order, often downloading unhealthy and caustic troubleshooting strategies.
Comin’ to Town
I’m reminded of a memorable scene in the movie, Santa Claus 2. Santa has just left the North Pole, after getting word that his son, Charlie, has made the Naughty List. The Santa replacement, a plastic prototype of the real one, created by Curtis the Elf, is put in charge of running Toyland Central. Following a careful reading of the Santa Handbook, the imposter determines North Pole operations are WAY too lax and then proceeds to reign in his charges.
After one too many days at the grindstone, the head elves devise a plan to help Fake Santa lighten up a bit — engage Fake Santa, along with his charges, in a friendly game of touch football. Given a quick review of the rules by Curtis, the jolly old man takes the snapped ball, breaks through the defensive line of deer-in-the-headlights elves and bulldozes his way to the goal line with all the sportsmanship of Conan the Barbarian. Fake Santa dances his touchdown boogie on the back of a downed elf. All is not well on Santa’s playing field.
All Defenses Terminated
When I am choosing truthfulness over hiding, I take a closer look at my playing field with family and friends. As I run the replays of the day through my mind, I often see myself guilty of offside penalties. 
I interrupt others to make my point first. I run with the ball as an ineligible receiver — talking like I know it all when I don’t. I clip (taking a player down from behind, at the knees), verbally blindsiding my spouse while he is heading for the sidelines to take a break and down a Gatorade.
Opening my heart’s door requires a move towards a different security system: no deadbolts of pride, blame shifting or slow-burn anger. My defenses dismantled, I put them in the curbside bin marked “Repentance.” Jesus’ familiar face is already there. My debris removed with His spoken word, “Forgiven!”
Home and Garden Networking
Together, Jesus and I renovate my heart’s home with seeds of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control; fruit of the Spirit planted in a cultured soul. The playing field is now cleared of debris. And the penalties? All paid in full by the Shepherd of my heart. “All shall be well, all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
___________
Cathy hails from North Carolina, and, along with her husband, Mickey, are transversing the vast and unfamiliar terrain of raising two teenage sons. Her oldest suggested she let readers know just how old she is — 1,000 years and counting of growing more appropriately human. 
Image credits: Freeimages-photos.com & Getty Images
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Decapitated Heads, Whiteboard Diagrams, and the Way
January 31st, 2012 by Molly Davis
Part One
“Years ago, when I began my Recovery journey from addiction, I quickly learned that it’s not what people say. It’s what they do. I hardly even listen to the words anymore. I just watch what people are actually doing. You learn a whole lot that way.”
The wise woman looked at me piercingly as she spoke. I had been sharing with her a frustration I was having with someone who spoke often about “ethics” but yet operated in a disturbing fashion.
The person’s words about ethical behavior were superb. It had taken me a few months to realize that the words were spinning one story while the actual behavior was telling quite another — confusing to me because the words were so good, so well strung together.
Long being a lover of words, I gave more credence to the words than to the actions. I even doubted my own interpretation of the questionable behavior, because I could not believe that someone with such amazing words could possibly behave in such a disturbing fashion.
So while I nodded in agreement with her, I found myself protesting, too. I was angry with myself for not seeing through the words earlier. Why did this situation take me months to wade through? I thought I had learned this already. I thought I was past this lesson. I wanted to be past this lesson.
“Yes, I agree, but you don’t understand. I come from the world where it’s all about what you say and very rarely about what you do. If you say the right words, we will assume you are doing the right thing. It’s been a long time of being trained to measure the human based on their theological beliefs and the ability to quote Bible verses and their service attendance and… Argh! I do not come from a world where hands and feet tell the story!”
And as I spoke, I thought of spiritual leaders I had known — some of whom I myself had followed — esteemed among the congregations, men who spoke with authority and had the Scriptures at their command, yet did not operate with love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness or self-control.
We followed them, we tried to emulate them, we viewed them as the example of the true Christian, yet it never occurred to us that the fruit of the Spirit provided us with an authentic indicator of their spiritual journey, not their ability to quote from Calvin, Augustine, Luther or the Apostle Paul. Because they could weave a Bible verse into every sentence, because they operated with an assumed air of authority and confidence, because they spoke for God so boldly, we assumed that God was speaking through them.
She just smiled and looked at me patiently. And I knew that it had been a hard lesson for her to learn as well, and I felt embarrassed at my complaint. Is it ever an easy thing, to sit humbly at the feet of Life and learn a new way of living?
No. Not really.
“It may be when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.”
- Wendell Berry
Part Two
Some critics of Christianity in America say that the Church is great on “talk,” but not so great on “walk.” It appears we are good at telling people that we love them, but when it comes to actually loving them? Not so much. We know all about love, on paper. But the thing is, love isn’t something on paper.
Perhaps Father Michael O’Halloran, a priest in the New York archdiocese helps explain it more accurately when he says, “Christianity is long on content but short on method and technique.”
This thing that Christianity has become says a lot about all sorts of things — sermons upon sermons, Bible studies out the whazoo, and programs, events, and books beyond counting — but helping us experientially realize the dirty glorious art of being? Epic fail.
Have we become like the leader in C.S. Lewis’ final Space Trilogy book? Just a head, a brain artificially kept running, running the show in a little room somewhere, long lost to the world of the senses, the world of the body, the world of hands and feet and of falling and getting back up?
My own experience, for example, was that a “simple theological concept” like grace was something that I, having attended Bible College, ever a student of theology and always active in “ministry work,” could easily teach on. Sheesh, I could even diagram out the concept on a whiteboard, if you would just give me a marker, animatedly explaining to you the dynamics and theological implications of grace…all while having no clue what Grace was.
How can that be?
Because Grace — like Love, like Faith, like Hope — is not a thing to be diagrammed. Grace is not actually a word. Grace is not actually a concept. Grace is not a sermon, a teaching or a book. Grace is a way. Grace is a way of being, a way of seeing, a way, a way, a way, a way. So when we talk about Grace using words, books, or diagrams, we are only trying our human best to know and to share something that isn’t actually capable of being known in that manner.
It’s not that our best is a bad thing. It’s just that we must always remember that talking about a way as if it is a thing that can be known through head-knowledge is merely our flailing attempt to capture the essence of something that we will never truly comprehend in our heads.
Dissecting a frog isn’t a bad thing. Dissecting has its place. But the budding biology student knows that pulling the muscle from the bone with a set of tweezers has hardly anything to do with the actual experience of being a frog.
“So it is that there is nothing to be taught,
But yet there is something to be learned.”
- Sheldon B. Kopp
Part Three
The early Christians were said to be Followers of the Way.
Today, we define the “way” of being a Christian as attending regular church services, doing “daily devotionals,” voting Republican, being anti-evolution (and anti-gay, anti-rock-music, anti-public-school, anti-Harry-Potter, or whatever your particular grouping’s list is comprised of), ascribing to the “good/right/best” set of Christian leaders and ministries — James Dobson, Mark Driscoll, John MacArthur, John Piper, ad nauseum (on and on goes the list of those who we are sure “truly do speak for God”), knowing and regularly humming the lyrics of the latest “Praise and Worship” songs, etc…
When Jesus said, “I am the way,” did He mean that kind of Way?
Was that the Way the early Christians were walking in?
Are the critics right, when they look at us and say that we are big on talk, short on action?
Have we lost our Way?
In our religious love affair with the human brain, have we forgotten that this Way involves our hands, our feet, our bodies, our senses, our sloppy tripping attempts to be authentic, to be present, to be loved and to be in love.
The man beaten by robbers lay on the roadside while men of the religiously-well-trained-brain passed him by. They may have been able to speak eloquently about the Way, just as I was able to dissect Grace on a whiteboard…but talking and walking are two wholly different things. How many times have we heard the “Good Samaritan” story dissected, after all?
I put away the whiteboard.
I put away the microscopes, the scalpels, the operating tables.
I put away my beloved tools for parsing and teasing.
There was a time for learning words. Now there is a time for being. And, thankfully, the Way is always with us. It is not a place to be found — it is always right here. It is merely a matter of waking up from the dream.
I sleep often. But I am learning to wake up.
“Not known because not looked for,
But heard, half-heard in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick, now, here, now always,
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything).
- T.S. Eliot
Tags: Molly Davis
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The Heart and the Integrated Life
January 27th, 2012 by Jonathan Morrow
I deeply believe that to become who God calls us to be, we must move in our thinking from isolation to integration. Christianity, if true, requires this. Our great danger is to so compartmentalize our Christian lives that one area does not impact, influence, or inform another, resulting in the equally tragic outcomes of fragmented lives and diminished impact for the kingdom of God. This kind of integration is only possible if we understand that the heart and mind are allies when it comes to flourishing as Jesus’ disciple and engaging our culture well.
Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, carefully studied and wrote about many topics. So when we come across a passage where he writes “above all else,” our ears ought to perk up! “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Prov. 4:23). Our hearts equal our lives. Picking up on this theme, Jesus teaches that “the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart . . . For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders” (Matt. 15:18-19 NASB).
On another occasion, Jesus taught, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:43–45). Our behavior is the outworking of what’s really going on in our heart. The Bible teaches that the heart is the core of our being, the CEO of our inner life, from which all of our actions flow. We live from our hearts, but transformation begins with the mind (Rom. 12:2). And without being transformed we will not be becoming the kind of people who can love and engage well. To see all of life from God’s perspective and have the confidence to enter into conversations in a non-defensive way about the questions and issues that really matter requires an integrated devotion to God as we try and keep in step with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25).
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Jonathan Morrow is the founder of www.thinkChristianly.org. He is the author of the newly released Think Christianly: Looking at the Intersection of Faith and Culture and Welcome to College: A Christ-follower’s Guide for the Journey. Jonathan cowrote (with Sean McDowell) Is God Just a Human Invention and graduated with an MDiv and an MA from Talbot School of Theology and serves as equipping pastor at Fellowship Bible Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
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Magic, magic everywhere
January 24th, 2012 by Dale Fincher
As I washed the dishes a few nights ago, my wife built a fire with my 22-month old son. While the winter flakes blew around our cabin outside, they sat on the hearth and watched the small flickering crawl up the pile of kindling and newspaper. Then the aspen and oak caught flame on their fringes. Then, like a swelling symphony, everything went up at once with a timpani of popping, sizzling, and smoking.
“Fire is amazing,” my wife said from across the warm room.
Imagine being an early human and being asked, “What if you mixed some oxygen, heat, and wood together, what would happen?” I doubt anyone would have guessed the beautiful fingers of yellows, golds, blues, and reds that magically spring to life and dance for spectators, sustaining the heat, eating the wood. Fire came from the land of unicorns, rainbows and silver apples.
What kind of magic is in this universe that springs forth flame? Secrets flicker here we know not of.
The following morning, my son insists, even before we climb out of bed, that he wants that thing by the bed. He points and babbles words that we should understand. “The guitar?” I ask. “Yeah,” he nods.
I take it to him, holding it for him to strum as I finger the chords. He fluffs his hand over the soundhole, making the strings sing. “Isn’t music incredible?” my wife said.
We talked about it, looking at the frets down the neck of the guitar, each dot and line showing the scales. Visual music. I remembered studying Pythagoras for a graduate project and his discovery of musical notes corresponding to numbers. Take a string and pluck it, you have one note. Half the string, and you’ve jumped an octive. Half it again, and so on. He called it the music of the spheres… the harmony of the universe. Music trapped in numbers that magically escape by plucking.
The next morning, I hear my wife teaching my son about the seed he spit out from his grapefruit slice. “That’s a seed. You bury it in dirt outside and it becomes a plant.” Later she retells the story to me, “That explanation must have sounded weird. A seed under dirt becomes a plant?” With the right eyes, we know this world is no ordinary place. The farmer plants and waters. But something heavenly makes it sprout that is not in the farmer’s tools but in his prayers.
That evening, walking along our snowy path from the garage to home, we looked up at the sky. A moonless night. The passel of stars. The same ones Abraham saw every night from his pillow, looking up at his decedents and hanging on to promise.
Magic everywhere, if we use our better eyes. The kindling of fire is no less magical than the parting of a sea. The strumming of a song as fascinating as trumpets laying down city walls. The stars in their heavenly dance as magical as a voice raising the dead with words.
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.*
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* “What a Wonderful World,” written by George David Weiss and George Douglas, and Bob Thiele. Performed by Louis Armstrong.
Image credit: images.wikia.com/narnia
Tags: Dale Fincher
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